diff --git a/.github/workflows/release.yml b/.github/workflows/release.yml
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b2f5601
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.github/workflows/release.yml
@@ -0,0 +1,27 @@
+name: Release Pypi package
+
+on:
+  release:
+    types: [created]
+  workflow_dispatch:
+
+jobs:
+  deploy:
+    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
+    steps:
+      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
+      - name: Set up Python
+        uses: actions/setup-python@v2
+        with:
+          python-version: "3.x"
+      - name: Install dependencies
+        run: |
+          python -m pip install --upgrade pip
+          pip install setuptools wheel twine
+      - name: Build and publish
+        env:
+          TWINE_USERNAME: ${{ secrets.TWINE_USERNAME }}
+          TWINE_PASSWORD: ${{ secrets.TWINE_PASSWORD }}
+        run: |
+          python setup.py sdist bdist_wheel
+          twine upload --repository pypi dist/*
diff --git a/.github/workflows/test.yml b/.github/workflows/test.yml
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e234a5a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.github/workflows/test.yml
@@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
+name: Test Pypi package
+
+on:
+  push:
+    branches:
+      - main
+    paths-ignore:
+      - README.md
+  pull_request:
+    branches:
+      - main
+    paths-ignore:
+      - README.md
+          
+jobs:
+  build:
+    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
+    strategy:
+      matrix:
+        python: [3.10.11]
+
+    steps:
+      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
+      - name: Setup Python
+        uses: actions/setup-python@v2
+        with:
+          python-version: ${{ matrix.python }}
+      - name: Install Tox and any other packages
+        run: pip install tox
+      - name: Run Tox
+        # Run tox using the version of Python in `PATH`
+        run: tox -e py
diff --git a/Burrows Delta Walkthrough.ipynb b/Burrows Delta Walkthrough.ipynb
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cc083e8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Burrows Delta Walkthrough.ipynb	
@@ -0,0 +1,579 @@
+{
+ "cells": [
+  {
+   "cell_type": "markdown",
+   "metadata": {},
+   "source": [
+    "# Walkthrough for using the Fast Stylometry model for Burrows' Delta\n",
+    "\n",
+    "By [Thomas Wood](https://freelancedatascientist.net), [Fast Data Science](https://fastdatascience.com)\n",
+    "\n",
+    "Burrows' Delta is an algorithm for comparing the similarity of the writing styles of documents, known as [forensic stylometry](https://fastdatascience.com/how-you-can-identify-the-author-of-a-document/).\n",
+    "\n",
+    "* [A useful explanation of the maths and thinking behind Burrows' Delta and how it works](https://programminghistorian.org/en/lessons/introduction-to-stylometry-with-python#third-stylometric-test-john-burrows-delta-method-advanced)\n",
+    "\n",
+    "Demonstration of Burrows' Delta on a small corpus downloaded from Project Gutenberg.\n",
+    "\n",
+    "We will test the Burrows' Delta code on two \"unknown\" texts: Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, and Villette by Charlotte Bronte. Both authors are in our training corpus.\n",
+    "\n",
+    "This notebook demonstrates how to use the library to calculate the Burrows' Delta value of six candidate authors, and also to calculate the probability that each one is the author of the mystery text."
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "code",
+   "execution_count": 1,
+   "metadata": {},
+   "outputs": [],
+   "source": [
+    "from faststylometry import Corpus\n",
+    "\n",
+    "from faststylometry import load_corpus_from_folder\n",
+    "from faststylometry import tokenise_remove_pronouns_en\n",
+    "from faststylometry import calculate_burrows_delta\n",
+    "from faststylometry import predict_proba, calibrate, get_calibration_curve"
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "code",
+   "execution_count": 2,
+   "metadata": {},
+   "outputs": [],
+   "source": [
+    "train_corpus = load_corpus_from_folder(\"faststylometry/data/train\")\n",
+    "\n",
+    "train_corpus.tokenise(tokenise_remove_pronouns_en)"
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "markdown",
+   "metadata": {},
+   "source": [
+    "# Load two books by \"unknown\" authors to test the algorithm"
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "code",
+   "execution_count": 3,
+   "metadata": {},
+   "outputs": [],
+   "source": [
+    "# Load Sense and Sensibility, written by Jane Austen (marked as \"janedoe\")\n",
+    "# and Villette, written by Charlotte Bronte (marked as \"currerbell\", Bronte's real pseudonym)\n",
+    "\n",
+    "test_corpus = load_corpus_from_folder(\"faststylometry/data/test\", pattern=None)\n",
+    "# You can set pattern to a string value to just load a subset of the corpus.\n",
+    "\n",
+    "test_corpus.tokenise(tokenise_remove_pronouns_en)"
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "markdown",
+   "metadata": {},
+   "source": [
+    "# Calculate Burrows' Delta for both candidate authors"
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "code",
+   "execution_count": 4,
+   "metadata": {},
+   "outputs": [
+    {
+     "data": {
+      "text/html": [
+       "<div>\n",
+       "<style scoped>\n",
+       "    .dataframe tbody tr th:only-of-type {\n",
+       "        vertical-align: middle;\n",
+       "    }\n",
+       "\n",
+       "    .dataframe tbody tr th {\n",
+       "        vertical-align: top;\n",
+       "    }\n",
+       "\n",
+       "    .dataframe thead th {\n",
+       "        text-align: right;\n",
+       "    }\n",
+       "</style>\n",
+       "<table border=\"1\" class=\"dataframe\">\n",
+       "  <thead>\n",
+       "    <tr style=\"text-align: right;\">\n",
+       "      <th></th>\n",
+       "      <th>currerbell - villette</th>\n",
+       "      <th>janedoe - sense_and_sensibility</th>\n",
+       "    </tr>\n",
+       "    <tr>\n",
+       "      <th>author</th>\n",
+       "      <th></th>\n",
+       "      <th></th>\n",
+       "    </tr>\n",
+       "  </thead>\n",
+       "  <tbody>\n",
+       "    <tr>\n",
+       "      <th>austen</th>\n",
+       "      <td>0.997936</td>\n",
+       "      <td>0.444582</td>\n",
+       "    </tr>\n",
+       "    <tr>\n",
+       "      <th>bronte</th>\n",
+       "      <td>0.521358</td>\n",
+       "      <td>0.933160</td>\n",
+       "    </tr>\n",
+       "    <tr>\n",
+       "      <th>carroll</th>\n",
+       "      <td>1.116466</td>\n",
+       "      <td>1.433247</td>\n",
+       "    </tr>\n",
+       "    <tr>\n",
+       "      <th>conan_doyle</th>\n",
+       "      <td>0.867025</td>\n",
+       "      <td>1.094766</td>\n",
+       "    </tr>\n",
+       "    <tr>\n",
+       "      <th>dickens</th>\n",
+       "      <td>0.800223</td>\n",
+       "      <td>1.050542</td>\n",
+       "    </tr>\n",
+       "    <tr>\n",
+       "      <th>swift</th>\n",
+       "      <td>1.480868</td>\n",
+       "      <td>1.565499</td>\n",
+       "    </tr>\n",
+       "  </tbody>\n",
+       "</table>\n",
+       "</div>"
+      ],
+      "text/plain": [
+       "             currerbell - villette  janedoe - sense_and_sensibility\n",
+       "author                                                             \n",
+       "austen                    0.997936                         0.444582\n",
+       "bronte                    0.521358                         0.933160\n",
+       "carroll                   1.116466                         1.433247\n",
+       "conan_doyle               0.867025                         1.094766\n",
+       "dickens                   0.800223                         1.050542\n",
+       "swift                     1.480868                         1.565499"
+      ]
+     },
+     "execution_count": 4,
+     "metadata": {},
+     "output_type": "execute_result"
+    }
+   ],
+   "source": [
+    "calculate_burrows_delta(train_corpus, test_corpus, vocab_size = 50)"
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "markdown",
+   "metadata": {},
+   "source": [
+    "# Calibrate the model and calculate the probability of each candidate in the training set being the author"
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "code",
+   "execution_count": 5,
+   "metadata": {},
+   "outputs": [],
+   "source": [
+    "calibrate(train_corpus)"
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "code",
+   "execution_count": 6,
+   "metadata": {},
+   "outputs": [
+    {
+     "data": {
+      "text/html": [
+       "<div>\n",
+       "<style scoped>\n",
+       "    .dataframe tbody tr th:only-of-type {\n",
+       "        vertical-align: middle;\n",
+       "    }\n",
+       "\n",
+       "    .dataframe tbody tr th {\n",
+       "        vertical-align: top;\n",
+       "    }\n",
+       "\n",
+       "    .dataframe thead th {\n",
+       "        text-align: right;\n",
+       "    }\n",
+       "</style>\n",
+       "<table border=\"1\" class=\"dataframe\">\n",
+       "  <thead>\n",
+       "    <tr style=\"text-align: right;\">\n",
+       "      <th></th>\n",
+       "      <th>currerbell - villette</th>\n",
+       "      <th>janedoe - sense_and_sensibility</th>\n",
+       "    </tr>\n",
+       "    <tr>\n",
+       "      <th>author</th>\n",
+       "      <th></th>\n",
+       "      <th></th>\n",
+       "    </tr>\n",
+       "  </thead>\n",
+       "  <tbody>\n",
+       "    <tr>\n",
+       "      <th>austen</th>\n",
+       "      <td>0.324233</td>\n",
+       "      <td>0.808401</td>\n",
+       "    </tr>\n",
+       "    <tr>\n",
+       "      <th>bronte</th>\n",
+       "      <td>0.757315</td>\n",
+       "      <td>0.382278</td>\n",
+       "    </tr>\n",
+       "    <tr>\n",
+       "      <th>carroll</th>\n",
+       "      <td>0.231463</td>\n",
+       "      <td>0.079831</td>\n",
+       "    </tr>\n",
+       "    <tr>\n",
+       "      <th>conan_doyle</th>\n",
+       "      <td>0.445207</td>\n",
+       "      <td>0.246974</td>\n",
+       "    </tr>\n",
+       "    <tr>\n",
+       "      <th>dickens</th>\n",
+       "      <td>0.510598</td>\n",
+       "      <td>0.280685</td>\n",
+       "    </tr>\n",
+       "    <tr>\n",
+       "      <th>swift</th>\n",
+       "      <td>0.067123</td>\n",
+       "      <td>0.049068</td>\n",
+       "    </tr>\n",
+       "  </tbody>\n",
+       "</table>\n",
+       "</div>"
+      ],
+      "text/plain": [
+       "             currerbell - villette  janedoe - sense_and_sensibility\n",
+       "author                                                             \n",
+       "austen                    0.324233                         0.808401\n",
+       "bronte                    0.757315                         0.382278\n",
+       "carroll                   0.231463                         0.079831\n",
+       "conan_doyle               0.445207                         0.246974\n",
+       "dickens                   0.510598                         0.280685\n",
+       "swift                     0.067123                         0.049068"
+      ]
+     },
+     "execution_count": 6,
+     "metadata": {},
+     "output_type": "execute_result"
+    }
+   ],
+   "source": [
+    "predict_proba(train_corpus, test_corpus)"
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "markdown",
+   "metadata": {},
+   "source": [
+    "# Plot the calibration curve\n",
+    "\n",
+    "We have used Scikit Learn's Logistic Regression to calculate the calibration curve of the model. You could also use your own calibration curve."
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "code",
+   "execution_count": 7,
+   "metadata": {},
+   "outputs": [],
+   "source": [
+    "import numpy as np\n",
+    "x_values =  np.arange(0, 3, 0.1)\n",
+    "\n",
+    "import matplotlib.pyplot as plt"
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "code",
+   "execution_count": 8,
+   "metadata": {},
+   "outputs": [
+    {
+     "data": {
+      "text/plain": [
+       "''"
+      ]
+     },
+     "execution_count": 8,
+     "metadata": {},
+     "output_type": "execute_result"
+    },
+    {
+     "data": {
+      "image/png": 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\n",
+      "text/plain": [
+       "<Figure size 432x288 with 1 Axes>"
+      ]
+     },
+     "metadata": {
+      "needs_background": "light"
+     },
+     "output_type": "display_data"
+    }
+   ],
+   "source": [
+    "plt.plot(x_values, train_corpus.probability_model.predict_proba(np.reshape(x_values, (-1, 1)))[:,1])\n",
+    "plt.xlabel(\"Burrows delta\")\n",
+    "plt.ylabel(\"Probability of same author\")\n",
+    "plt.title(\"Calibration curve of the Burrows Delta probability model\\nUsing Logistic Regression with correction for class imbalance\")\n",
+    ";"
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "markdown",
+   "metadata": {},
+   "source": [
+    "# Plot the ROC curve\n",
+    "\n",
+    "The ROC curve and the AUC metric are useful ways of measuring the performance of a classifier.\n",
+    "\n",
+    "In our case the Burrows' Delta method, when used as a two-class text classifier (different author vs. same author), has an incredibly easy task, because it has learnt from entire books."
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "code",
+   "execution_count": 9,
+   "metadata": {
+    "scrolled": true
+   },
+   "outputs": [],
+   "source": [
+    "ground_truths, deltas = get_calibration_curve(train_corpus)"
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "code",
+   "execution_count": 10,
+   "metadata": {},
+   "outputs": [],
+   "source": [
+    "probabilities = train_corpus.probability_model.predict_proba(np.reshape(deltas, (-1, 1)))[:,1]"
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "code",
+   "execution_count": 11,
+   "metadata": {},
+   "outputs": [],
+   "source": [
+    "from sklearn.metrics import roc_curve, auc"
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "code",
+   "execution_count": 12,
+   "metadata": {},
+   "outputs": [],
+   "source": [
+    "fpr, tpr, thresholds = roc_curve(ground_truths, probabilities)"
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "code",
+   "execution_count": 13,
+   "metadata": {},
+   "outputs": [],
+   "source": [
+    "roc_auc = auc(fpr, tpr)"
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "code",
+   "execution_count": 14,
+   "metadata": {
+    "scrolled": true
+   },
+   "outputs": [
+    {
+     "data": {
+      "image/png": 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\n",
+      "text/plain": [
+       "<Figure size 432x288 with 1 Axes>"
+      ]
+     },
+     "metadata": {
+      "needs_background": "light"
+     },
+     "output_type": "display_data"
+    }
+   ],
+   "source": [
+    "plt.figure()\n",
+    "plt.plot(fpr, tpr, color='darkorange',\n",
+    "         label='ROC curve (area = %0.4f)' % roc_auc)\n",
+    "plt.plot([0, 1], [0, 1], color='navy', linestyle='--')\n",
+    "plt.xlim([0.0, 1.0])\n",
+    "plt.ylim([0.0, 1.05])\n",
+    "plt.xlabel('False Positive Rate')\n",
+    "plt.ylabel('True Positive Rate')\n",
+    "plt.title('Receiver operating curve of the Burrows\\' Delta classifier\\noperating on entire books')\n",
+    "plt.legend(loc=\"lower right\")\n",
+    "plt.show()"
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "markdown",
+   "metadata": {},
+   "source": [
+    "# Segment the corpus and display the various books in a scatter graph using PCA\n",
+    "\n",
+    "Scatter graph shows books' stylistic similarities by placing similar books or segments close together in 2D space."
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "code",
+   "execution_count": 15,
+   "metadata": {},
+   "outputs": [],
+   "source": [
+    "from sklearn.decomposition import PCA\n",
+    "import re\n",
+    "import pandas as pd"
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "code",
+   "execution_count": 16,
+   "metadata": {},
+   "outputs": [],
+   "source": [
+    "# Reload the training corpus as the \"test corpus\", re-tokenise it, and segment it this time\n",
+    "test_corpus = load_corpus_from_folder(\"faststylometry/data/train\")\n",
+    "test_corpus.tokenise(tokenise_remove_pronouns_en)"
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "code",
+   "execution_count": 17,
+   "metadata": {},
+   "outputs": [],
+   "source": [
+    "split_test_corpus = test_corpus.split(80000)"
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "code",
+   "execution_count": 18,
+   "metadata": {},
+   "outputs": [],
+   "source": [
+    "df_delta = calculate_burrows_delta(train_corpus, split_test_corpus)"
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "code",
+   "execution_count": 19,
+   "metadata": {},
+   "outputs": [],
+   "source": [
+    "df_z_scores = split_test_corpus.df_author_z_scores"
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "code",
+   "execution_count": 20,
+   "metadata": {},
+   "outputs": [],
+   "source": [
+    "pca_model = PCA(n_components=2)"
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "code",
+   "execution_count": 21,
+   "metadata": {},
+   "outputs": [],
+   "source": [
+    "pca_matrix = pca_model.fit_transform(df_z_scores)"
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "code",
+   "execution_count": 22,
+   "metadata": {},
+   "outputs": [],
+   "source": [
+    "authors = df_z_scores.index.map(lambda x : re.sub(\" - .+\", \"\", x))"
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "code",
+   "execution_count": 23,
+   "metadata": {},
+   "outputs": [],
+   "source": [
+    "df_pca_by_author = pd.DataFrame(pca_matrix)\n",
+    "df_pca_by_author[\"author\"] = authors"
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "code",
+   "execution_count": 24,
+   "metadata": {},
+   "outputs": [
+    {
+     "data": {
+      "text/plain": [
+       "Text(0.5, 1.0, 'Representation using PCA of works in training corpus')"
+      ]
+     },
+     "execution_count": 24,
+     "metadata": {},
+     "output_type": "execute_result"
+    },
+    {
+     "data": {
+      "image/png": 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\n",
+      "text/plain": [
+       "<Figure size 1080x1080 with 1 Axes>"
+      ]
+     },
+     "metadata": {
+      "needs_background": "light"
+     },
+     "output_type": "display_data"
+    }
+   ],
+   "source": [
+    "plt.figure(figsize=(15,15)) \n",
+    "\n",
+    "for author, pca_coordinates in df_pca_by_author.groupby(\"author\"):\n",
+    "    plt.scatter(*zip(*pca_coordinates.drop(\"author\", axis=1).to_numpy()), label=author)\n",
+    "for i in range(len(pca_matrix)):\n",
+    "    plt.text(pca_matrix[i][0], pca_matrix[i][1],\"  \" + df_z_scores.index[i], alpha=0.5)\n",
+    "\n",
+    "plt.legend()\n",
+    "\n",
+    "plt.title(\"Representation using PCA of works in training corpus\")"
+   ]
+  }
+ ],
+ "metadata": {
+  "kernelspec": {
+   "display_name": "Python 3 (ipykernel)",
+   "language": "python",
+   "name": "python3"
+  },
+  "language_info": {
+   "codemirror_mode": {
+    "name": "ipython",
+    "version": 3
+   },
+   "file_extension": ".py",
+   "mimetype": "text/x-python",
+   "name": "python",
+   "nbconvert_exporter": "python",
+   "pygments_lexer": "ipython3",
+   "version": "3.11.3"
+  }
+ },
+ "nbformat": 4,
+ "nbformat_minor": 4
+}
diff --git a/LICENSE b/LICENSE
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7842175
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE
@@ -0,0 +1,25 @@
+MIT License
+
+Copyright (c) 2023 Fast Data Science Ltd (https://fastdatascience.com)
+
+Maintainer: Thomas Wood
+
+Tutorial at https://fastdatascience.com/faststylometry-python-library/
+
+Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
+of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
+in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
+to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
+copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
+furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
+
+The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
+copies or substantial portions of the Software.
+
+THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
+IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
+FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
+AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
+LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
+OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
+SOFTWARE.
diff --git a/MANIFEST.in b/MANIFEST.in
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b1dbe7e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/MANIFEST.in
@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+include pyproject.toml
+include *.md
+include LICENSE
+recursive-include tests test*.py
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..62acf59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,186 @@
+# Fast Stylometry Python library
+
+<!-- badges: start -->
+![my badge](https://badgen.net/badge/Status/In%20Development/orange)
+
+[![PyPI package](https://img.shields.io/badge/pip%20install-faststylometry-brightgreen)](https://pypi.org/project/faststylometry/) [![version number](https://img.shields.io/pypi/v/faststylometry?color=green&label=version)](https://github.com/fastdatascience/faststylometry/releases) [![License](https://img.shields.io/github/license/fastdatascience/faststylometry)](https://github.com/fastdatascience/faststylometry/blob/main/LICENSE)
+
+<!-- badges: end -->
+
+# Fast Stylometry - Burrows Delta
+
+Developed by Fast Data Science, https://fastdatascience.com
+
+Source code at https://github.com/fastdatascience/faststylometry
+
+Tutorial at https://fastdatascience.com/fast-stylometry-python-library/
+
+This is a lightweight Python library for finding drug names in a string, otherwise known as named entity recognition (NER) and named entity linking.
+
+Python library for calculating the Burrows Delta.
+
+Burrows' Delta is an algorithm for comparing the similarity of the writing styles of documents, known as [forensic stylometry](https://fastdatascience.com/how-you-can-identify-the-author-of-a-document/).
+
+* [A useful explanation of the maths and thinking behind Burrows' Delta and how it works](https://programminghistorian.org/en/lessons/introduction-to-stylometry-with-python#third-stylometric-test-john-burrows-delta-method-advanced)
+
+
+# Installing Fast Stylometry Python package
+
+You can install from [PyPI](https://pypi.org/project/faststylometry).
+
+```
+pip install faststylometry
+```
+
+
+
+# Usage examples
+
+Demonstration of Burrows' Delta on a small corpus downloaded from Project Gutenberg.
+
+We will test the Burrows' Delta code on two "unknown" texts: Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, and Villette by Charlotte Bronte. Both authors are in our training corpus.
+
+You can get the training corpus by cloning https://github.com/woodthom2/faststylometry, the data is in faststylometry/data.
+
+## Create a corpus
+
+To create a corpus and add books, the pattern is as follows:
+
+```
+corpus = Corpus()
+corpus.add_book("Jane Austen", "Pride and Prejudice", [whole book text])
+```
+
+Here is the pattern for creating a corpus and adding books from a directory on your system. You can also use the method ```util.load_corpus_from_folder(folder, pattern)```.
+
+```
+import os
+import re
+
+from faststylometry.corpus import Corpus
+
+corpus = Corpus()
+for root, _, files in os.walk(folder):
+    for filename in files:
+        if filename.endswith(".txt") and "_" in filename:
+            with open(os.path.join(root, filename), "r", encoding="utf-8") as f:
+                text = f.read()
+            author, book = re.split("_-_", re.sub(r'\.txt', '', filename))
+
+            corpus.add_book(author, book, text)
+```
+
+## Example 1
+
+Load a corpus and calculate Burrows' Delta
+
+```
+from faststylometry.util import load_corpus_from_folder
+from faststylometry.en import tokenise_remove_pronouns_en
+from faststylometry.burrows_delta import calculate_burrows_delta
+
+train_corpus = load_corpus_from_folder("faststylometry/data/train")
+
+train_corpus.tokenise(tokenise_remove_pronouns_en)
+
+test_corpus_sense_and_sensibility = load_corpus_from_folder("faststylometry/data/test", pattern="sense")
+
+test_corpus_sense_and_sensibility.tokenise(tokenise_remove_pronouns_en)
+
+calculate_burrows_delta(train_corpus, test_corpus_sense_and_sensibility)
+```
+
+returns a Pandas dataframe of Burrows' Delta scores
+
+## Example 2
+
+Using the probability calibration functionality, you can calculate the probability of two books being by the same author.
+
+```
+from faststylometry.probability import predict_proba, calibrate
+calibrate(train_corpus)
+predict_proba(train_corpus, test_corpus_sense_and_sensibility)
+```
+
+outputs a Pandas dataframe of probabilities.
+
+# Who to contact
+
+Thomas Wood at [Fast Data Science](https://fastdatascience.com)
+
+## Contributing to the project
+
+If you'd like to contribute to this project, you can contact us at https://fastdatascience.com/ or make a pull request on our [Github repository](https://github.com/fastdatascience/faststylometry). You can also [raise an issue](https://github.com/fastdatascience/faststylometry/issues). 
+
+## Developing the library
+
+### Automated tests
+
+Test code is in **tests/** folder using [unittest](https://docs.python.org/3/library/unittest.html).
+
+The testing tool `tox` is used in the automation with GitHub Actions CI/CD.
+
+### Use tox locally
+
+Install tox and run it:
+
+```
+pip install tox
+tox
+```
+
+In our configuration, tox runs a check of source distribution using [check-manifest](https://pypi.org/project/check-manifest/) (which requires your repo to be git-initialized (`git init`) and added (`git add .`) at least), setuptools's check, and unit tests using pytest. You don't need to install check-manifest and pytest though, tox will install them in a separate environment.
+
+The automated tests are run against several Python versions, but on your machine, you might be using only one version of Python, if that is Python 3.9, then run:
+
+```
+tox -e py39
+```
+
+Thanks to GitHub Actions' automated process, you don't need to generate distribution files locally. But if you insist, click to read the "Generate distribution files" section.
+
+### Continuous integration/deployment to PyPI
+
+This package is based on the template https://pypi.org/project/example-pypi-package/
+
+This package
+
+- uses GitHub Actions for both testing and publishing
+- is tested when pushing `master` or `main` branch, and is published when create a release
+- includes test files in the source distribution
+- uses **setup.cfg** for [version single-sourcing](https://packaging.python.org/guides/single-sourcing-package-version/) (setuptools 46.4.0+)
+
+## Re-releasing the package manually
+
+The code to re-release Harmony on PyPI is as follows:
+
+```
+source activate py311
+pip install twine
+rm -rf dist
+python setup.py sdist
+twine upload dist/*
+```
+
+## Who worked on the Fast Stylometry library?
+
+The tool was developed:
+
+* Thomas Wood ([Fast Data Science](https://fastdatascience.com))
+
+## License of Fast Stylometry library
+
+MIT License. Copyright (c) 2023 [Fast Data Science](https://fastdatascience.com)
+
+## Citing the Fast Stylometry library
+
+Wood, T.A., Fast Stylometry [Computer software], Version 1.0.0, accessed at [https://fastdatascience.com/fast-stylometry-python-library](https://fastdatascience.com/fast-stylometry-python-library), Fast Data Science Ltd (2023)
+
+```
+@unpublished{faststylometry,
+    AUTHOR = {Wood, T.A.},
+    TITLE  = {Fast Stylometry (Computer software), Version 1.0.0},
+    YEAR   = {2023},
+    Note   = {To appear},
+}
+```
diff --git a/data/test/currerbell_-_villette.txt b/data/test/currerbell_-_villette.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a05106
--- /dev/null
+++ b/data/test/currerbell_-_villette.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,21592 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Villette, by Charlotte Brontë
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+Title: Villette
+
+Author: Charlotte Brontë
+
+Release Date: September 12, 2003 [EBook #9182]
+[Most recently updated: November 5, 2020]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VILLETTE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Delphine Lettau, Charles Franks and Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+Villette
+
+by Charlotte Brontë
+
+
+Contents
+
+ I. BRETTON
+ II. PAULINA
+ III. THE PLAYMATES
+ IV. MISS MARCHMONT
+ V. TURNING A NEW LEAF
+ VI. LONDON
+ VII. VILLETTE
+ VIII. MADAME BECK
+ IX. ISIDORE
+ X. DR. JOHN
+ XI. THE PORTRESS’S CABINET
+ XII. THE CASKET
+ XIII. A SNEEZE OUT OF SEASON
+ XIV. THE FÊTE
+ XV. THE LONG VACATION
+ XVI. AULD LANG SYNE
+ XVII. LA TERRASSE
+ XVIII. WE QUARREL
+ XIX. THE CLEOPATRA
+ XX. THE CONCERT
+ XXI. REACTION
+ XXII. THE LETTER
+ XXIII. VASHTI
+ XXIV. M. DE BASSOMPIERRE
+ XXV. THE LITTLE COUNTESS
+ XXVI. A BURIAL
+ XXVII. THE HÔTEL CRÉCY
+ XXVIII. THE WATCHGUARD
+ XXIX. MONSIEUR’S FÊTE
+ XXX. M. PAUL
+ XXXI. THE DRYAD
+ XXXII. THE FIRST LETTER
+ XXXIII. M. PAUL KEEPS HIS PROMISE
+ XXXIV. MALEVOLA
+ XXXV. FRATERNITY
+ XXXVI. THE APPLE OF DISCORD
+ XXXVII. SUNSHINE
+ XXXVIII. CLOUD
+ XXXIX. OLD AND NEW ACQUAINTANCE
+ XL. THE HAPPY PAIR
+ XLI. FAUBOURG CLOTILDE
+ XLII. FINIS
+
+
+
+
+VILLETTE.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+BRETTON.
+
+
+My godmother lived in a handsome house in the clean and ancient town of
+Bretton. Her husband’s family had been residents there for generations,
+and bore, indeed, the name of their birthplace—Bretton of Bretton:
+whether by coincidence, or because some remote ancestor had been a
+personage of sufficient importance to leave his name to his
+neighbourhood, I know not.
+
+When I was a girl I went to Bretton about twice a year, and well I
+liked the visit. The house and its inmates specially suited me. The
+large peaceful rooms, the well-arranged furniture, the clear wide
+windows, the balcony outside, looking down on a fine antique street,
+where Sundays and holidays seemed always to abide—so quiet was its
+atmosphere, so clean its pavement—these things pleased me well.
+
+One child in a household of grown people is usually made very much of,
+and in a quiet way I was a good deal taken notice of by Mrs. Bretton,
+who had been left a widow, with one son, before I knew her; her
+husband, a physician, having died while she was yet a young and
+handsome woman.
+
+She was not young, as I remember her, but she was still handsome, tall,
+well-made, and though dark for an Englishwoman, yet wearing always the
+clearness of health in her brunette cheek, and its vivacity in a pair
+of fine, cheerful black eyes. People esteemed it a grievous pity that
+she had not conferred her complexion on her son, whose eyes were
+blue—though, even in boyhood, very piercing—and the colour of his long
+hair such as friends did not venture to specify, except as the sun
+shone on it, when they called it golden. He inherited the lines of his
+mother’s features, however; also her good teeth, her stature (or the
+promise of her stature, for he was not yet full-grown), and, what was
+better, her health without flaw, and her spirits of that tone and
+equality which are better than a fortune to the possessor.
+
+In the autumn of the year —— I was staying at Bretton; my godmother
+having come in person to claim me of the kinsfolk with whom was at that
+time fixed my permanent residence. I believe she then plainly saw
+events coming, whose very shadow I scarce guessed; yet of which the
+faint suspicion sufficed to impart unsettled sadness, and made me glad
+to change scene and society.
+
+Time always flowed smoothly for me at my godmother’s side; not with
+tumultuous swiftness, but blandly, like the gliding of a full river
+through a plain. My visits to her resembled the sojourn of Christian
+and Hopeful beside a certain pleasant stream, with “green trees on each
+bank, and meadows beautified with lilies all the year round.” The charm
+of variety there was not, nor the excitement of incident; but I liked
+peace so well, and sought stimulus so little, that when the latter came
+I almost felt it a disturbance, and wished rather it had still held
+aloof.
+
+One day a letter was received of which the contents evidently caused
+Mrs. Bretton surprise and some concern. I thought at first it was from
+home, and trembled, expecting I know not what disastrous communication:
+to me, however, no reference was made, and the cloud seemed to pass.
+
+The next day, on my return from a long walk, I found, as I entered my
+bedroom, an unexpected change. In, addition to my own French bed in its
+shady recess, appeared in a corner a small crib, draped with white; and
+in addition to my mahogany chest of drawers, I saw a tiny rosewood
+chest. I stood still, gazed, and considered.
+
+“Of what are these things the signs and tokens?” I asked. The answer
+was obvious. “A second guest is coming: Mrs. Bretton expects other
+visitors.”
+
+On descending to dinner, explanations ensued. A little girl, I was
+told, would shortly be my companion: the daughter of a friend and
+distant relation of the late Dr. Bretton’s. This little girl, it was
+added, had recently lost her mother; though, indeed, Mrs. Bretton ere
+long subjoined, the loss was not so great as might at first appear.
+Mrs. Home (Home it seems was the name) had been a very pretty, but a
+giddy, careless woman, who had neglected her child, and disappointed
+and disheartened her husband. So far from congenial had the union
+proved, that separation at last ensued—separation by mutual consent,
+not after any legal process. Soon after this event, the lady having
+over-exerted herself at a ball, caught cold, took a fever, and died
+after a very brief illness. Her husband, naturally a man of very
+sensitive feelings, and shocked inexpressibly by too sudden
+communication of the news, could hardly, it seems, now be persuaded but
+that some over-severity on his part—some deficiency in patience and
+indulgence—had contributed to hasten her end. He had brooded over this
+idea till his spirits were seriously affected; the medical men insisted
+on travelling being tried as a remedy, and meanwhile Mrs. Bretton had
+offered to take charge of his little girl. “And I hope,” added my
+godmother in conclusion, “the child will not be like her mamma; as
+silly and frivolous a little flirt as ever sensible man was weak enough
+to marry. For,” said she, “Mr. Home _is_ a sensible man in his way,
+though not very practical: he is fond of science, and lives half his
+life in a laboratory trying experiments—a thing his butterfly wife
+could neither comprehend nor endure; and indeed” confessed my
+godmother, “I should not have liked it myself.”
+
+In answer to a question of mine, she further informed me that her late
+husband used to say, Mr. Home had derived this scientific turn from a
+maternal uncle, a French savant; for he came, it seems; of mixed French
+and Scottish origin, and had connections now living in France, of whom
+more than one wrote _de_ before his name, and called himself noble.
+
+That same evening at nine o’clock, a servant was despatched to meet the
+coach by which our little visitor was expected. Mrs. Bretton and I sat
+alone in the drawing-room waiting her coming; John Graham Bretton being
+absent on a visit to one of his schoolfellows who lived in the country.
+My godmother read the evening paper while she waited; I sewed. It was a
+wet night; the rain lashed the panes, and the wind sounded angry and
+restless.
+
+“Poor child!” said Mrs. Bretton from time to time. “What weather for
+her journey! I wish she were safe here.”
+
+A little before ten the door-bell announced Warren’s return. No sooner
+was the door opened than I ran down into the hall; there lay a trunk
+and some band-boxes, beside them stood a person like a nurse-girl, and
+at the foot of the staircase was Warren with a shawled bundle in his
+arms.
+
+“Is that the child?” I asked.
+
+“Yes, miss.”
+
+I would have opened the shawl, and tried to get a peep at the face, but
+it was hastily turned from me to Warren’s shoulder.
+
+“Put me down, please,” said a small voice when Warren opened the
+drawing-room door, “and take off this shawl,” continued the speaker,
+extracting with its minute hand the pin, and with a sort of fastidious
+haste doffing the clumsy wrapping. The creature which now appeared made
+a deft attempt to fold the shawl; but the drapery was much too heavy
+and large to be sustained or wielded by those hands and arms. “Give it
+to Harriet, please,” was then the direction, “and she can put it away.”
+This said, it turned and fixed its eyes on Mrs. Bretton.
+
+“Come here, little dear,” said that lady. “Come and let me see if you
+are cold and damp: come and let me warm you at the fire.”
+
+The child advanced promptly. Relieved of her wrapping, she appeared
+exceedingly tiny; but was a neat, completely-fashioned little figure,
+light, slight, and straight. Seated on my godmother’s ample lap, she
+looked a mere doll; her neck, delicate as wax, her head of silky curls,
+increased, I thought, the resemblance.
+
+Mrs. Bretton talked in little fond phrases as she chafed the child’s
+hands, arms, and feet; first she was considered with a wistful gaze,
+but soon a smile answered her. Mrs. Bretton was not generally a
+caressing woman: even with her deeply-cherished son, her manner was
+rarely sentimental, often the reverse; but when the small stranger
+smiled at her, she kissed it, asking, “What is my little one’s name?”
+
+“Missy.”
+
+“But besides Missy?”
+
+“Polly, papa calls her.”
+
+“Will Polly be content to live with me?”
+
+“Not _always_; but till papa comes home. Papa is gone away.” She shook
+her head expressively.
+
+“He will return to Polly, or send for her.”
+
+“Will he, ma’am? Do you know he will?”
+
+“I think so.”
+
+“But Harriet thinks not: at least not for a long while. He is ill.”
+
+Her eyes filled. She drew her hand from Mrs. Bretton’s and made a
+movement to leave her lap; it was at first resisted, but she
+said—“Please, I wish to go: I can sit on a stool.”
+
+She was allowed to slip down from the knee, and taking a footstool, she
+carried it to a corner where the shade was deep, and there seated
+herself. Mrs. Bretton, though a commanding, and in grave matters even a
+peremptory woman, was often passive in trifles: she allowed the child
+her way. She said to me, “Take no notice at present.” But I did take
+notice: I watched Polly rest her small elbow on her small knee, her
+head on her hand; I observed her draw a square inch or two of
+pocket-handkerchief from the doll-pocket of her doll-skirt, and then I
+heard her weep. Other children in grief or pain cry aloud, without
+shame or restraint; but this being wept: the tiniest occasional sniff
+testified to her emotion. Mrs. Bretton did not hear it: which was quite
+as well. Ere long, a voice, issuing from the corner, demanded—“May the
+bell be rung for Harriet!”
+
+I rang; the nurse was summoned and came.
+
+“Harriet, I must be put to bed,” said her little mistress. “You must
+ask where my bed is.”
+
+Harriet signified that she had already made that inquiry.
+
+“Ask if you sleep with me, Harriet.”
+
+“No, Missy,” said the nurse: “you are to share this young lady’s room,”
+designating me.
+
+Missy did not leave her seat, but I saw her eyes seek me. After some
+minutes’ silent scrutiny, she emerged from her corner.
+
+“I wish you, ma’am, good night,” said she to Mrs. Bretton; but she
+passed me mute.
+
+“Good-night, Polly,” I said.
+
+“No need to say good-night, since we sleep in the same chamber,” was
+the reply, with which she vanished from the drawing-room. We heard
+Harriet propose to carry her up-stairs. “No need,” was again her
+answer—“no need, no need:” and her small step toiled wearily up the
+staircase.
+
+On going to bed an hour afterwards, I found her still wide awake. She
+had arranged her pillows so as to support her little person in a
+sitting posture: her hands, placed one within the other, rested quietly
+on the sheet, with an old-fashioned calm most unchildlike. I abstained
+from speaking to her for some time, but just before extinguishing the
+light, I recommended her to lie down.
+
+“By and by,” was the answer.
+
+“But you will take cold, Missy.”
+
+She took some tiny article of raiment from the chair at her crib side,
+and with it covered her shoulders. I suffered her to do as she pleased.
+Listening awhile in the darkness, I was aware that she still wept,—wept
+under restraint, quietly and cautiously.
+
+On awaking with daylight, a trickling of water caught my ear. Behold!
+there she was risen and mounted on a stool near the washstand, with
+pains and difficulty inclining the ewer (which she could not lift) so
+as to pour its contents into the basin. It was curious to watch her as
+she washed and dressed, so small, busy, and noiseless. Evidently she
+was little accustomed to perform her own toilet; and the buttons,
+strings, hooks and eyes, offered difficulties which she encountered
+with a perseverance good to witness. She folded her night-dress, she
+smoothed the drapery of her couch quite neatly; withdrawing into a
+corner, where the sweep of the white curtain concealed her, she became
+still. I half rose, and advanced my head to see how she was occupied.
+On her knees, with her forehead bent on her hands, I perceived that she
+was praying.
+
+Her nurse tapped at the door. She started up.
+
+“I am dressed, Harriet,” said she; “I have dressed myself, but I do not
+feel neat. Make me neat!”
+
+“Why did you dress yourself, Missy?”
+
+“Hush! speak low, Harriet, for fear of waking _the girl_” (meaning me,
+who now lay with my eyes shut). “I dressed myself to learn, against the
+time you leave me.”
+
+“Do you want me to go?”
+
+“When you are cross, I have many a time wanted you to go, but not now.
+Tie my sash straight; make my hair smooth, please.”
+
+“Your sash is straight enough. What a particular little body you are!”
+
+“It must be tied again. Please to tie it.”
+
+“There, then. When I am gone you must get that young lady to dress
+you.”
+
+“On no account.”
+
+“Why? She is a very nice young lady. I hope you mean to behave prettily
+to her, Missy, and not show your airs.”
+
+“She shall dress me on no account.”
+
+“Comical little thing!”
+
+“You are not passing the comb straight through my hair, Harriet; the
+line will be crooked.”
+
+“Ay, you are ill to please. Does that suit?”
+
+“Pretty well. Where should I go now that I am dressed?”
+
+“I will take you into the breakfast-room.”
+
+“Come, then.”
+
+They proceeded to the door. She stopped.
+
+“Oh! Harriet, I wish this was papa’s house! I don’t know these people.”
+
+“Be a good child, Missy.”
+
+“I am good, but I ache here;” putting her hand to her heart, and
+moaning while she reiterated, “Papa! papa!”
+
+I roused myself and started up, to check this scene while it was yet
+within bounds.
+
+“Say good-morning to the young lady,” dictated Harriet. She said,
+“Good-morning,” and then followed her nurse from the room. Harriet
+temporarily left that same day, to go to her own friends, who lived in
+the neighbourhood.
+
+On descending, I found Paulina (the child called herself Polly, but her
+full name was Paulina Mary) seated at the breakfast-table, by Mrs.
+Bretton’s side; a mug of milk stood before her, a morsel of bread
+filled her hand, which lay passive on the table-cloth: she was not
+eating.
+
+“How we shall conciliate this little creature,” said Mrs. Bretton to
+me, “I don’t know: she tastes nothing, and by her looks, she has not
+slept.”
+
+I expressed my confidence in the effects of time and kindness.
+
+“If she were to take a fancy to anybody in the house, she would soon
+settle; but not till then,” replied Mrs. Bretton.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+PAULINA.
+
+
+Some days elapsed, and it appeared she was not likely to take much of a
+fancy to anybody in the house. She was not exactly naughty or wilful:
+she was far from disobedient; but an object less conducive to
+comfort—to tranquillity even—than she presented, it was scarcely
+possible to have before one’s eyes. She moped: no grown person could
+have performed that uncheering business better; no furrowed face of
+adult exile, longing for Europe at Europe’s antipodes, ever bore more
+legibly the signs of home sickness than did her infant visage. She
+seemed growing old and unearthly. I, Lucy Snowe, plead guiltless of
+that curse, an overheated and discursive imagination; but whenever,
+opening a room-door, I found her seated in a corner alone, her head in
+her pigmy hand, that room seemed to me not inhabited, but haunted.
+
+And again, when of moonlight nights, on waking, I beheld her figure,
+white and conspicuous in its night-dress, kneeling upright in bed, and
+praying like some Catholic or Methodist enthusiast—some precocious
+fanatic or untimely saint—I scarcely know what thoughts I had; but they
+ran risk of being hardly more rational and healthy than that child’s
+mind must have been.
+
+I seldom caught a word of her prayers, for they were whispered low:
+sometimes, indeed, they were not whispered at all, but put up
+unuttered; such rare sentences as reached my ear still bore the burden,
+“Papa; my dear papa!” This, I perceived, was a one-idea’d nature;
+betraying that monomaniac tendency I have ever thought the most
+unfortunate with which man or woman can be cursed.
+
+What might have been the end of this fretting, had it continued
+unchecked, can only be conjectured: it received, however, a sudden
+turn.
+
+One afternoon, Mrs. Bretton, coaxing her from her usual station in a
+corner, had lifted her into the window-seat, and, by way of occupying
+her attention, told her to watch the passengers and count how many
+ladies should go down the street in a given time. She had sat
+listlessly, hardly looking, and not counting, when—my eye being fixed
+on hers—I witnessed in its iris and pupil a startling transfiguration.
+These sudden, dangerous natures—_sensitive_ as they are called—offer
+many a curious spectacle to those whom a cooler temperament has secured
+from participation in their angular vagaries. The fixed and heavy gaze
+swum, trembled, then glittered in fire; the small, overcast brow
+cleared; the trivial and dejected features lit up; the sad countenance
+vanished, and in its place appeared a sudden eagerness, an intense
+expectancy. “It _is_!” were her words.
+
+Like a bird or a shaft, or any other swift thing, she was gone from the
+room. How she got the house-door open I cannot tell; probably it might
+be ajar; perhaps Warren was in the way and obeyed her behest, which
+would be impetuous enough. I—watching calmly from the window—saw her,
+in her black frock and tiny braided apron (to pinafores she had an
+antipathy), dart half the length of the street; and, as I was on the
+point of turning, and quietly announcing to Mrs. Bretton that the child
+was run out mad, and ought instantly to be pursued, I saw her caught
+up, and rapt at once from my cool observation, and from the wondering
+stare of the passengers. A gentleman had done this good turn, and now,
+covering her with his cloak, advanced to restore her to the house
+whence he had seen her issue.
+
+I concluded he would leave her in a servant’s charge and withdraw; but
+he entered: having tarried a little while below, he came up-stairs.
+
+His reception immediately explained that he was known to Mrs. Bretton.
+She recognised him; she greeted him, and yet she was fluttered,
+surprised, taken unawares. Her look and manner were even expostulatory;
+and in reply to these, rather than her words, he said,—“I could not
+help it, madam: I found it impossible to leave the country without
+seeing with my own eyes how she settled.”
+
+“But you will unsettle her.”
+
+“I hope not. And how is papa’s little Polly?”
+
+This question he addressed to Paulina, as he sat down and placed her
+gently on the ground before him.
+
+“How is Polly’s papa?” was the reply, as she leaned on his knee, and
+gazed up into his face.
+
+It was not a noisy, not a wordy scene: for that I was thankful; but it
+was a scene of feeling too brimful, and which, because the cup did not
+foam up high or furiously overflow, only oppressed one the more. On all
+occasions of vehement, unrestrained expansion, a sense of disdain or
+ridicule comes to the weary spectator’s relief; whereas I have ever
+felt most burdensome that sort of sensibility which bends of its own
+will, a giant slave under the sway of good sense.
+
+Mr. Home was a stern-featured—perhaps I should rather say, a
+hard-featured man: his forehead was knotty, and his cheekbones were
+marked and prominent. The character of his face was quite Scotch; but
+there was feeling in his eye, and emotion in his now agitated
+countenance. His northern accent in speaking harmonised with his
+physiognomy. He was at once proud-looking and homely-looking. He laid
+his hand on the child’s uplifted head. She said—“Kiss Polly.”
+
+He kissed her. I wished she would utter some hysterical cry, so that I
+might get relief and be at ease. She made wonderfully little noise: she
+seemed to have got what she wanted—_all_ she wanted, and to be in a
+trance of content. Neither in mien nor in features was this creature
+like her sire, and yet she was of his strain: her mind had been filled
+from his, as the cup from the flagon.
+
+Indisputably, Mr. Home owned manly self-control, however he might
+secretly feel on some matters. “Polly,” he said, looking down on his
+little girl, “go into the hall; you will see papa’s great-coat lying on
+a chair; put your hand into the pockets, you will find a
+pocket-handkerchief there; bring it to me.”
+
+She obeyed; went and returned deftly and nimbly. He was talking to Mrs.
+Bretton when she came back, and she waited with the handkerchief in her
+hand. It was a picture, in its way, to see her, with her tiny stature,
+and trim, neat shape, standing at his knee. Seeing that he continued to
+talk, apparently unconscious of her return, she took his hand, opened
+the unresisting fingers, insinuated into them the handkerchief, and
+closed them upon it one by one. He still seemed not to see or to feel
+her; but by-and-by, he lifted her to his knee; she nestled against him,
+and though neither looked at nor spoke to the other for an hour
+following, I suppose both were satisfied.
+
+During tea, the minute thing’s movements and behaviour gave, as usual,
+full occupation to the eye. First she directed Warren, as he placed the
+chairs.
+
+“Put papa’s chair here, and mine near it, between papa and Mrs.
+Bretton: _I_ must hand his tea.”
+
+She took her own seat, and beckoned with her hand to her father.
+
+“Be near me, as if we were at home, papa.”
+
+And again, as she intercepted his cup in passing, and would stir the
+sugar, and put in the cream herself, “I always did it for you at home;
+papa: nobody could do it as well, not even your own self.”
+
+Throughout the meal she continued her attentions: rather absurd they
+were. The sugar-tongs were too wide for one of her hands, and she had
+to use both in wielding them; the weight of the silver cream-ewer, the
+bread-and-butter plates, the very cup and saucer, tasked her
+insufficient strength and dexterity; but she would lift this, hand
+that, and luckily contrived through it all to break nothing. Candidly
+speaking, I thought her a little busy-body; but her father, blind like
+other parents, seemed perfectly content to let her wait on him, and
+even wonderfully soothed by her offices.
+
+“She is my comfort!” he could not help saying to Mrs. Bretton. That
+lady had her own “comfort” and nonpareil on a much larger scale, and,
+for the moment, absent; so she sympathised with his foible.
+
+This second “comfort” came on the stage in the course of the evening. I
+knew this day had been fixed for his return, and was aware that Mrs.
+Bretton had been expecting him through all its hours. We were seated
+round the fire, after tea, when Graham joined our circle: I should
+rather say, broke it up—for, of course, his arrival made a bustle; and
+then, as Mr. Graham was fasting, there was refreshment to be provided.
+He and Mr. Home met as old acquaintance; of the little girl he took no
+notice for a time.
+
+His meal over, and numerous questions from his mother answered, he
+turned from the table to the hearth. Opposite where he had placed
+himself was seated Mr. Home, and at his elbow, the child. When I say
+_child_ I use an inappropriate and undescriptive term—a term suggesting
+any picture rather than that of the demure little person in a mourning
+frock and white chemisette, that might just have fitted a good-sized
+doll—perched now on a high chair beside a stand, whereon was her toy
+work-box of white varnished wood, and holding in her hands a shred of a
+handkerchief, which she was professing to hem, and at which she bored
+perseveringly with a needle, that in her fingers seemed almost a
+skewer, pricking herself ever and anon, marking the cambric with a
+track of minute red dots; occasionally starting when the perverse
+weapon—swerving from her control—inflicted a deeper stab than usual;
+but still silent, diligent, absorbed, womanly.
+
+Graham was at that time a handsome, faithless-looking youth of sixteen.
+I say faithless-looking, not because he was really of a very perfidious
+disposition, but because the epithet strikes me as proper to describe
+the fair, Celtic (not Saxon) character of his good looks; his waved
+light auburn hair, his supple symmetry, his smile frequent, and
+destitute neither of fascination nor of subtlety (in no bad sense). A
+spoiled, whimsical boy he was in those days.
+
+“Mother,” he said, after eyeing the little figure before him in silence
+for some time, and when the temporary absence of Mr. Home from the room
+relieved him from the half-laughing bashfulness, which was all he knew
+of timidity—-“Mother, I see a young lady in the present society to whom
+I have not been introduced.”
+
+“Mr. Home’s little girl, I suppose you mean,” said his mother.
+
+“Indeed, ma’am,” replied her son, “I consider your expression of the
+least ceremonious: Miss Home _I_ should certainly have said, in
+venturing to speak of the gentlewoman to whom I allude.”
+
+“Now, Graham, I will not have that child teased. Don’t flatter yourself
+that I shall suffer you to make her your butt.”
+
+“Miss Home,” pursued Graham, undeterred by his mother’s remonstrance,
+“might I have the honour to introduce myself, since no one else seems
+willing to render you and me that service? Your slave, John Graham
+Bretton.”
+
+She looked at him; he rose and bowed quite gravely. She deliberately
+put down thimble, scissors, work; descended with precaution from her
+perch, and curtsying with unspeakable seriousness, said, “How do you
+do?”
+
+“I have the honour to be in fair health, only in some measure fatigued
+with a hurried journey. I hope, ma’am, I see you well?”
+
+“Tor-rer-ably well,” was the ambitious reply of the little woman and
+she now essayed to regain her former elevation, but finding this could
+not be done without some climbing and straining—a sacrifice of decorum
+not to be thought of—and being utterly disdainful of aid in the
+presence of a strange young gentleman, she relinquished the high chair
+for a low stool: towards that low stool Graham drew in his chair.
+
+“I hope, ma’am, the present residence, my mother’s house, appears to
+you a convenient place of abode?”
+
+“Not par-tic-er-er-ly; I want to go home.”
+
+“A natural and laudable desire, ma’am; but one which, notwithstanding,
+I shall do my best to oppose. I reckon on being able to get out of you
+a little of that precious commodity called amusement, which mamma and
+Mistress Snowe there fail to yield me.”
+
+“I shall have to go with papa soon: I shall not stay long at your
+mother’s.”
+
+“Yes, yes; you will stay with me, I am sure. I have a pony on which you
+shall ride, and no end of books with pictures to show you.”
+
+“Are _you_ going to live here now?”
+
+“I am. Does that please you? Do you like me?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“I think you queer.”
+
+“My face, ma’am?”
+
+“Your face and all about you: You have long red hair.”
+
+“Auburn hair, if you please: mamma, calls it auburn, or golden, and so
+do all her friends. But even with my ‘long red hair’” (and he waved his
+mane with a sort of triumph—tawny he himself well knew that it was, and
+he was proud of the leonine hue), “I cannot possibly be queerer than is
+your ladyship.”
+
+“You call me queer?”
+
+“Certainly.”
+
+(After a pause), “I think I shall go to bed.”
+
+“A little thing like you ought to have been in bed many hours since;
+but you probably sat up in the expectation of seeing me?”
+
+“No, indeed.”
+
+“You certainly wished to enjoy the pleasure of my society. You knew I
+was coming home, and would wait to have a look at me.”
+
+“I sat up for papa, and not for you.”
+
+“Very good, Miss Home. I am going to be a favourite: preferred before
+papa soon, I daresay.”
+
+She wished Mrs. Bretton and myself good-night; she seemed hesitating
+whether Graham’s deserts entitled him to the same attention, when he
+caught her up with one hand, and with that one hand held her poised
+aloft above his head. She saw herself thus lifted up on high, in the
+glass over the fireplace. The suddenness, the freedom, the disrespect
+of the action were too much.
+
+“For shame, Mr. Graham!” was her indignant cry, “put me down!”—and when
+again on her feet, “I wonder what you would think of me if I were to
+treat you in that way, lifting you with my hand“ (raising that mighty
+member) “as Warren lifts the little cat.”
+
+So saying, she departed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+THE PLAYMATES.
+
+
+Mr. Home stayed two days. During his visit he could not be prevailed on
+to go out: he sat all day long by the fireside, sometimes silent,
+sometimes receiving and answering Mrs. Bretton’s chat, which was just
+of the proper sort for a man in his morbid mood—not over-sympathetic,
+yet not too uncongenial, sensible; and even with a touch of the
+motherly—she was sufficiently his senior to be permitted this touch.
+
+As to Paulina, the child was at once happy and mute, busy and watchful.
+Her father frequently lifted her to his knee; she would sit there till
+she felt or fancied he grew restless; then it was—“Papa, put me down; I
+shall tire you with my weight.”
+
+And the mighty burden slid to the rug, and establishing itself on
+carpet or stool just at “papa’s“ feet, the white work-box and the
+scarlet-speckled handkerchief came into play. This handkerchief, it
+seems, was intended as a keepsake for “papa,” and must be finished
+before his departure; consequently the demand on the sempstress’s
+industry (she accomplished about a score of stitches in half-an-hour)
+was stringent.
+
+The evening, by restoring Graham to the maternal roof (his days were
+passed at school), brought us an accession of animation—a quality not
+diminished by the nature of the scenes pretty sure to be enacted
+between him and Miss Paulina.
+
+A distant and haughty demeanour had been the result of the indignity
+put upon her the first evening of his arrival: her usual answer, when
+he addressed her, was—“I can’t attend to you; I have other things to
+think about.” Being implored to state _what_ things:
+
+“Business.”
+
+Graham would endeavour to seduce her attention by opening his desk and
+displaying its multifarious contents: seals, bright sticks of wax,
+pen-knives, with a miscellany of engravings—some of them gaily
+coloured—which he had amassed from time to time. Nor was this powerful
+temptation wholly unavailing: her eyes, furtively raised from her work,
+cast many a peep towards the writing-table, rich in scattered pictures.
+An etching of a child playing with a Blenheim spaniel happened to
+flutter to the floor.
+
+“Pretty little dog!” said she, delighted.
+
+Graham prudently took no notice. Ere long, stealing from her corner,
+she approached to examine the treasure more closely. The dog’s great
+eyes and long ears, and the child’s hat and feathers, were
+irresistible.
+
+“Nice picture!” was her favourable criticism.
+
+“Well—you may have it,” said Graham.
+
+She seemed to hesitate. The wish to possess was strong, but to accept
+would be a compromise of dignity. No. She put it down and turned away.
+
+“You won’t have it, then, Polly?”
+
+“I would rather not, thank you.”
+
+“Shall I tell you what I will do with the picture if you refuse it?”
+
+She half turned to listen.
+
+“Cut it into strips for lighting the taper.”
+
+“No!”
+
+“But I shall.”
+
+“Please—don’t.”
+
+Graham waxed inexorable on hearing the pleading tone; he took the
+scissors from his mother’s work-basket.
+
+“Here goes!” said he, making a menacing flourish. “Right through Fido’s
+head, and splitting little Harry’s nose.”
+
+“No! _No!_ NO!”
+
+“Then come to me. Come quickly, or it is done.”
+
+She hesitated, lingered, but complied.
+
+“Now, will you have it?” he asked, as she stood before him.
+
+“Please.”
+
+“But I shall want payment.”
+
+“How much?”
+
+“A kiss.”
+
+“Give the picture first into my hand.”
+
+Polly, as she said this, looked rather faithless in her turn. Graham
+gave it. She absconded a debtor, darted to her father, and took refuge
+on his knee. Graham rose in mimic wrath and followed. She buried her
+face in Mr. Home’s waistcoat.
+
+“Papa—papa—send him away!”
+
+“I’ll not be sent away,” said Graham.
+
+With face still averted, she held out her hand to keep him off.
+
+“Then, I shall kiss the hand,” said he; but that moment it became a
+miniature fist, and dealt him payment in a small coin that was not
+kisses.
+
+Graham—not failing in his way to be as wily as his little
+playmate—retreated apparently quite discomfited; he flung himself on a
+sofa, and resting his head against the cushion, lay like one in pain.
+Polly, finding him silent, presently peeped at him. His eyes and face
+were covered with his hands. She turned on her father’s knee, and gazed
+at her foe anxiously and long. Graham groaned.
+
+“Papa, what is the matter?” she whispered.
+
+“You had better ask him, Polly.”
+
+“Is he hurt?” (groan second.)
+
+“He makes a noise as if he were,” said Mr. Home.
+
+“Mother,” suggested Graham, feebly, “I think you had better send for
+the doctor. Oh my eye!” (renewed silence, broken only by sighs from
+Graham.)
+
+“If I were to become blind——?” suggested this last.
+
+His chastiser could not bear the suggestion. She was beside him
+directly.
+
+“Let me see your eye: I did not mean to touch it, only your mouth; and
+I did not think I hit so _very_ hard.”
+
+Silence answered her. Her features worked,—“I am sorry; I am sorry!”
+
+Then succeeded emotion, faltering; weeping.
+
+“Have done trying that child, Graham,” said Mrs. Bretton.
+
+“It is all nonsense, my pet,” cried Mr. Home.
+
+And Graham once more snatched her aloft, and she again punished him;
+and while she pulled his lion’s locks, termed him—“The naughtiest,
+rudest, worst, untruest person that ever was.”
+
+On the morning of Mr. Home’s departure, he and his daughter had some
+conversation in a window-recess by themselves; I heard part of it.
+
+“Couldn’t I pack my box and go with you, papa?” she whispered
+earnestly.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+“Should I be a trouble to you?”
+
+“Yes, Polly.”
+
+“Because I am little?”
+
+“Because you are little and tender. It is only great, strong people
+that should travel. But don’t look sad, my little girl; it breaks my
+heart. Papa, will soon come back to his Polly.”
+
+“Indeed, indeed, I am not sad, scarcely at all.”
+
+“Polly would be sorry to give papa pain; would she not?”
+
+“Sorrier than sorry.”
+
+“Then Polly must be cheerful: not cry at parting; not fret afterwards.
+She must look forward to meeting again, and try to be happy meanwhile.
+Can she do this?”
+
+“She will try.”
+
+“I see she will. Farewell, then. It is time to go.”
+
+“_Now_?—just _now_?
+
+“Just now.”
+
+She held up quivering lips. Her father sobbed, but she, I remarked, did
+not. Having put her down, he shook hands with the rest present, and
+departed.
+
+When the street-door closed, she dropped on her knees at a chair with a
+cry—“Papa!”
+
+It was low and long; a sort of “Why hast thou forsaken me?” During an
+ensuing space of some minutes, I perceived she endured agony. She went
+through, in that brief interval of her infant life, emotions such as
+some never feel; it was in her constitution: she would have more of
+such instants if she lived. Nobody spoke. Mrs. Bretton, being a mother,
+shed a tear or two. Graham, who was writing, lifted up his eyes and
+gazed at her. I, Lucy Snowe, was calm.
+
+The little creature, thus left unharassed, did for herself what none
+other could do—contended with an intolerable feeling; and, ere long, in
+some degree, repressed it. That day she would accept solace from none;
+nor the next day: she grew more passive afterwards.
+
+On the third evening, as she sat on the floor, worn and quiet, Graham,
+coming in, took her up gently, without a word. She did not resist: she
+rather nestled in his arms, as if weary. When he sat down, she laid her
+head against him; in a few minutes she slept; he carried her upstairs
+to bed. I was not surprised that, the next morning, the first thing she
+demanded was, “Where is Mr. Graham?”
+
+It happened that Graham was not coming to the breakfast-table; he had
+some exercises to write for that morning’s class, and had requested his
+mother to send a cup of tea into the study. Polly volunteered to carry
+it: she must be busy about something, look after somebody. The cup was
+entrusted to her; for, if restless, she was also careful. As the study
+was opposite the breakfast-room, the doors facing across the passage,
+my eye followed her.
+
+“What are you doing?” she asked, pausing on the threshold.
+
+“Writing,” said Graham.
+
+“Why don’t you come to take breakfast with your mamma?”
+
+“Too busy.”
+
+“Do you want any breakfast?”
+
+“Of course.”
+
+“There, then.”
+
+And she deposited the cup on the carpet, like a jailor putting a
+prisoner’s pitcher of water through his cell-door, and retreated.
+Presently she returned.
+
+“What will you have besides tea—what to eat?”
+
+“Anything good. Bring me something particularly nice; that’s a kind
+little woman.”
+
+She came back to Mrs. Bretton.
+
+“Please, ma’am, send your boy something good.”
+
+“You shall choose for him, Polly; what shall my boy have?”
+
+She selected a portion of whatever was best on the table; and, ere
+long, came back with a whispered request for some marmalade, which was
+not there. Having got it, however, (for Mrs. Bretton refused the pair
+nothing), Graham was shortly after heard lauding her to the skies;
+promising that, when he had a house of his own, she should be his
+housekeeper, and perhaps—if she showed any culinary genius—his cook;
+and, as she did not return, and I went to look after her, I found
+Graham and her breakfasting _tête-à-tête_—she standing at his elbow,
+and sharing his fare: excepting the marmalade, which she delicately
+refused to touch, lest, I suppose, it should appear that she had
+procured it as much on her own account as his. She constantly evinced
+these nice perceptions and delicate instincts.
+
+The league of acquaintanceship thus struck up was not hastily
+dissolved; on the contrary, it appeared that time and circumstances
+served rather to cement than loosen it. Ill-assimilated as the two were
+in age, sex, pursuits, &c., they somehow found a great deal to say to
+each other. As to Paulina, I observed that her little character never
+properly came out, except with young Bretton. As she got settled, and
+accustomed to the house, she proved tractable enough with Mrs. Bretton;
+but she would sit on a stool at that lady’s feet all day long, learning
+her task, or sewing, or drawing figures with a pencil on a slate, and
+never kindling once to originality, or showing a single gleam of the
+peculiarities of her nature. I ceased to watch her under such
+circumstances: she was not interesting. But the moment Graham’s knock
+sounded of an evening, a change occurred; she was instantly at the head
+of the staircase. Usually her welcome was a reprimand or a threat.
+
+“You have not wiped your shoes properly on the mat. I shall tell your
+mamma.”
+
+“Little busybody! Are you there?”
+
+“Yes—and you can’t reach me: I am higher up than you“ (peeping between
+the rails of the banister; she could not look over them).
+
+“Polly!”
+
+“My dear boy!” (such was one of her terms for him, adopted in imitation
+of his mother.)
+
+“I am fit to faint with fatigue,” declared Graham, leaning against the
+passage-wall in seeming exhaustion. “Dr. Digby“ (the headmaster) “has
+quite knocked me up with overwork. Just come down and help me to carry
+up my books.”
+
+“Ah! you’re cunning!”
+
+“Not at all, Polly—it is positive fact. I’m as weak as a rush. Come
+down.”
+
+“Your eyes are quiet like the cat’s, but you’ll spring.”
+
+“Spring? Nothing of the kind: it isn’t in me. Come down.”
+
+“Perhaps I may—if you’ll promise not to touch—not to snatch me up, and
+not to whirl me round.”
+
+“I? I couldn’t do it!” (sinking into a chair.)
+
+“Then put the books down on the first step, and go three yards off.“
+
+This being done, she descended warily, and not taking her eyes from the
+feeble Graham. Of course her approach always galvanized him to new and
+spasmodic life: the game of romps was sure to be exacted. Sometimes she
+would be angry; sometimes the matter was allowed to pass smoothly, and
+we could hear her say as she led him up-stairs: “Now, my dear boy, come
+and take your tea—I am sure you must want something.”
+
+It was sufficiently comical to observe her as she sat beside Graham,
+while he took that meal. In his absence she was a still personage, but
+with him the most officious, fidgety little body possible. I often
+wished she would mind herself and be tranquil; but no—herself was
+forgotten in him: he could not be sufficiently well waited on, nor
+carefully enough looked after; he was more than the Grand Turk in her
+estimation. She would gradually assemble the various plates before him,
+and, when one would suppose all he could possibly desire was within his
+reach, she would find out something else: “Ma’am,” she would whisper to
+Mrs. Bretton,—“perhaps your son would like a little cake—sweet cake,
+you know—there is some in there“ (pointing to the sideboard cupboard).
+Mrs. Bretton, as a rule, disapproved of sweet cake at tea, but still
+the request was urged,—“One little piece—only for him—as he goes to
+school: girls—such as me and Miss Snowe—don’t need treats, but _he_
+would like it.”
+
+Graham did like it very well, and almost always got it. To do him
+justice, he would have shared his prize with her to whom he owed it;
+but that was never allowed: to insist, was to ruffle her for the
+evening. To stand by his knee, and monopolize his talk and notice, was
+the reward she wanted—not a share of the cake.
+
+With curious readiness did she adapt herself to such themes as
+interested him. One would have thought the child had no mind or life of
+her own, but must necessarily live, move, and have her being in
+another: now that her father was taken from her, she nestled to Graham,
+and seemed to feel by his feelings: to exist in his existence. She
+learned the names of all his schoolfellows in a trice: she got by heart
+their characters as given from his lips: a single description of an
+individual seemed to suffice. She never forgot, or confused identities:
+she would talk with him the whole evening about people she had never
+seen, and appear completely to realise their aspect, manners, and
+dispositions. Some she learned to mimic: an under-master, who was an
+aversion of young Bretton’s, had, it seems, some peculiarities, which
+she caught up in a moment from Graham’s representation, and rehearsed
+for his amusement; this, however, Mrs. Bretton disapproved and forbade.
+
+The pair seldom quarrelled; yet once a rupture occurred, in which her
+feelings received a severe shock.
+
+One day Graham, on the occasion of his birthday, had some friends—lads
+of his own age—to dine with him. Paulina took much interest in the
+coming of these friends; she had frequently heard of them; they were
+amongst those of whom Graham oftenest spoke. After dinner, the young
+gentlemen were left by themselves in the dining-room, where they soon
+became very merry and made a good deal of noise. Chancing to pass
+through the hall, I found Paulina sitting alone on the lowest step of
+the staircase, her eyes fixed on the glossy panels of the dining-room
+door, where the reflection of the hall-lamp was shining; her little
+brow knit in anxious, meditation.
+
+“What are you thinking about, Polly?”
+
+“Nothing particular; only I wish that door was clear glass—that I might
+see through it. The boys seem very cheerful, and I want to go to them:
+I want to be with Graham, and watch his friends.”
+
+“What hinders you from going?”
+
+“I feel afraid: but may I try, do you think? May I knock at the door,
+and ask to be let in?”
+
+I thought perhaps they might not object to have her as a playmate, and
+therefore encouraged the attempt.
+
+She knocked—too faintly at first to be heard, but on a second essay the
+door unclosed; Graham’s head appeared; he looked in high spirits, but
+impatient.
+
+“What do you want, you little monkey?”
+
+“To come to you.”
+
+“Do you indeed? As if I would be troubled with you! Away to mamma and
+Mistress Snowe, and tell them to put you to bed.” The auburn head and
+bright flushed face vanished,—the door shut peremptorily. She was
+stunned.
+
+“Why does he speak so? He never spoke so before,” she said in
+consternation. “What have I done?”
+
+“Nothing, Polly; but Graham is busy with his school-friends.”
+
+“And he likes them better than me! He turns me away now they are here!”
+
+I had some thoughts of consoling her, and of improving the occasion by
+inculcating some of those maxims of philosophy whereof I had ever a
+tolerable stock ready for application. She stopped me, however, by
+putting her fingers in her ears at the first words I uttered, and then
+lying down on the mat with her face against the flags; nor could either
+Warren or the cook root her from that position: she was allowed to lie,
+therefore, till she chose to rise of her own accord.
+
+Graham forgot his impatience the same evening, and would have accosted
+her as usual when his friends were gone, but she wrenched herself from
+his hand; her eye quite flashed; she would not bid him good-night; she
+would not look in his face. The next day he treated her with
+indifference, and she grew like a bit of marble. The day after, he
+teased her to know what was the matter; her lips would not unclose. Of
+course he could not feel real anger on his side: the match was too
+unequal in every way; he tried soothing and coaxing. “Why was she so
+angry? What had he done?” By-and-by tears answered him; he petted her,
+and they were friends. But she was one on whom such incidents were not
+lost: I remarked that never after this rebuff did she seek him, or
+follow him, or in any way solicit his notice. I told her once to carry
+a book or some other article to Graham when he was shut up in his
+study.
+
+“I shall wait till he comes out,” said she, proudly; “I don’t choose to
+give him the trouble of rising to open the door.”
+
+Young Bretton had a favourite pony on which he often rode out; from the
+window she always watched his departure and return. It was her ambition
+to be permitted to have a ride round the courtyard on this pony; but
+far be it from her to ask such a favour. One day she descended to the
+yard to watch him dismount; as she leaned against the gate, the longing
+wish for the indulgence of a ride glittered in her eye.
+
+“Come, Polly, will you have a canter?” asked Graham, half carelessly.
+
+I suppose she thought he was _too_ careless.
+
+“No, thank you,” said she, turning away with the utmost coolness.
+
+“You’d better,” pursued he. “You will like it, I am sure.”
+
+“Don’t think I should care a fig about it,” was the response.
+
+“That is not true. You told Lucy Snowe you longed to have a ride.”
+
+“Lucy Snowe is a _tatter_-box,” I heard her say (her imperfect
+articulation was the least precocious thing she had about her); and
+with this; she walked into the house.
+
+Graham, coming in soon after, observed to his mother,—“Mamma, I believe
+that creature is a changeling: she is a perfect cabinet of oddities;
+but I should be dull without her: she amuses me a great deal more than
+you or Lucy Snowe.”
+
+“Miss Snowe,” said Paulina to me (she had now got into the habit of
+occasionally chatting with me when we were alone in our room at night),
+“do you know on what day in the week I like Graham best?”
+
+“How can I possibly know anything so strange? Is there one day out of
+the seven when he is otherwise than on the other six?”
+
+“To be sure! Can’t you see? Don’t you know? I find him the most
+excellent on a Sunday; then we have him the whole day, and he is quiet,
+and, in the evening, _so_ kind.”
+
+This observation was not altogether groundless: going to church, &c.,
+kept Graham quiet on the Sunday, and the evening he generally dedicated
+to a serene, though rather indolent sort of enjoyment by the parlour
+fireside. He would take possession of the couch, and then he would call
+Polly.
+
+Graham was a boy not quite as other boys are; all his delight did not
+lie in action: he was capable of some intervals of contemplation; he
+could take a pleasure too in reading, nor was his selection of books
+wholly indiscriminate: there were glimmerings of characteristic
+preference, and even of instinctive taste in the choice. He rarely, it
+is true, remarked on what he read, but I have seen him sit and think of
+it.
+
+Polly, being near him, kneeling on a little cushion or the carpet, a
+conversation would begin in murmurs, not inaudible, though subdued. I
+caught a snatch of their tenor now and then; and, in truth, some
+influence better and finer than that of every day, seemed to soothe
+Graham at such times into no ungentle mood.
+
+“Have you learned any hymns this week, Polly?”
+
+“I have learned a very pretty one, four verses long. Shall I say it?”
+
+“Speak nicely, then: don’t be in a hurry.”
+
+The hymn being rehearsed, or rather half-chanted, in a little singing
+voice, Graham would take exceptions at the manner, and proceed to give
+a lesson in recitation. She was quick in learning, apt in imitating;
+and, besides, her pleasure was to please Graham: she proved a ready
+scholar. To the hymn would succeed some reading—perhaps a chapter in
+the Bible; correction was seldom required here, for the child could
+read any simple narrative chapter very well; and, when the subject was
+such as she could understand and take an interest in, her expression
+and emphasis were something remarkable. Joseph cast into the pit; the
+calling of Samuel; Daniel in the lions’ den;—these were favourite
+passages: of the first especially she seemed perfectly to feel the
+pathos.
+
+“Poor Jacob!” she would sometimes say, with quivering lips. “How he
+loved his son Joseph! As much,” she once added—“as much, Graham, as I
+love you: if you were to die“ (and she re-opened the book, sought the
+verse, and read), “I should refuse to be comforted, and go down into
+the grave to you mourning.”
+
+With these words she gathered Graham in her little arms, drawing his
+long-tressed head towards her. The action, I remember, struck me as
+strangely rash; exciting the feeling one might experience on seeing an
+animal dangerous by nature, and but half-tamed by art, too heedlessly
+fondled. Not that I feared Graham would hurt, or very roughly check
+her; but I thought she ran risk of incurring such a careless, impatient
+repulse, as would be worse almost to her than a blow. On the whole,
+however, these demonstrations were borne passively: sometimes even a
+sort of complacent wonder at her earnest partiality would smile not
+unkindly in his eyes. Once he said:—“You like me almost as well as if
+you were my little sister, Polly.”
+
+“Oh! I _do_ like you,” said she; “I _do_ like you very much.”
+
+I was not long allowed the amusement of this study of character. She
+had scarcely been at Bretton two months, when a letter came from Mr.
+Home, signifying that he was now settled amongst his maternal kinsfolk
+on the Continent; that, as England was become wholly distasteful to
+him, he had no thoughts of returning hither, perhaps, for years; and
+that he wished his little girl to join him immediately.
+
+“I wonder how she will take this news?” said Mrs. Bretton, when she had
+read the letter. _I_ wondered, too, and I took upon myself to
+communicate it.
+
+Repairing to the drawing-room—in which calm and decorated apartment she
+was fond of being alone, and where she could be implicitly trusted, for
+she fingered nothing, or rather soiled nothing she fingered—I found her
+seated, like a little Odalisque, on a couch, half shaded by the
+drooping draperies of the window near. She seemed happy; all her
+appliances for occupation were about her; the white wood workbox, a
+shred or two of muslin, an end or two of ribbon collected for
+conversion into doll-millinery. The doll, duly night-capped and
+night-gowned, lay in its cradle; she was rocking it to sleep, with an
+air of the most perfect faith in its possession of sentient and
+somnolent faculties; her eyes, at the same time, being engaged with a
+picture-book, which lay open on her lap.
+
+“Miss Snowe,” said she in a whisper, “this is a wonderful book.
+Candace” (the doll, christened by Graham; for, indeed, its begrimed
+complexion gave it much of an Ethiopian aspect)—“Candace is asleep now,
+and I may tell you about it; only we must both speak low, lest she
+should waken. This book was given me by Graham; it tells about distant
+countries, a long, long way from England, which no traveller can reach
+without sailing thousands of miles over the sea. Wild men live in these
+countries, Miss Snowe, who wear clothes different from ours: indeed,
+some of them wear scarcely any clothes, for the sake of being cool, you
+know; for they have very hot weather. Here is a picture of thousands
+gathered in a desolate place—a plain, spread with sand—round a man in
+black,—a good, _good_ Englishman—a missionary, who is preaching to them
+under a palm-tree.” (She showed a little coloured cut to that effect.)
+“And here are pictures” (she went on) “more stranger” (grammar was
+occasionally forgotten) “than that. There is the wonderful Great Wall
+of China; here is a Chinese lady, with a foot littler than mine. There
+is a wild horse of Tartary; and here, most strange of all—is a land of
+ice and snow, without green fields, woods, or gardens. In this land,
+they found some mammoth bones: there are no mammoths now. You don’t
+know what it was; but I can tell you, because Graham told me. A mighty,
+goblin creature, as high as this room, and as long as the hall; but not
+a fierce, flesh-eating thing, Graham thinks. He believes, if I met one
+in a forest, it would not kill me, unless I came quite in its way; when
+it would trample me down amongst the bushes, as I might tread on a
+grasshopper in a hayfield without knowing it.”
+
+Thus she rambled on.
+
+“Polly,” I interrupted, “should you like to travel?”
+
+“Not just yet,” was the prudent answer; “but perhaps in twenty years,
+when I am grown a woman, as tall as Mrs. Bretton, I may travel with
+Graham. We intend going to Switzerland, and climbing Mount Blanck; and
+some day we shall sail over to South America, and walk to the top of
+Kim-kim-borazo.”
+
+“But how would you like to travel now, if your papa was with you?”
+
+Her reply—not given till after a pause—evinced one of those unexpected
+turns of temper peculiar to her.
+
+“Where is the good of talking in that silly way?” said she. “Why do you
+mention papa? What is papa to you? I was just beginning to be happy,
+and not think about him so much; and there it will be all to do over
+again!”
+
+Her lip trembled. I hastened to disclose the fact of a letter having
+been received, and to mention the directions given that she and Harriet
+should immediately rejoin this dear papa. “Now, Polly, are you not
+glad?” I added.
+
+She made no answer. She dropped her book and ceased to rock her doll;
+she gazed at me with gravity and earnestness.
+
+“Shall not you like to go to papa?”
+
+“Of course,” she said at last in that trenchant manner she usually
+employed in speaking to me; and which was quite different from that she
+used with Mrs. Bretton, and different again from the one dedicated to
+Graham. I wished to ascertain more of what she thought but no: she
+would converse no more. Hastening to Mrs. Bretton, she questioned her,
+and received the confirmation of my news. The weight and importance of
+these tidings kept her perfectly serious the whole day. In the evening,
+at the moment Graham’s entrance was heard below, I found her at my
+side. She began to arrange a locket-ribbon about my neck, she displaced
+and replaced the comb in my hair; while thus busied, Graham entered.
+
+“Tell him by-and-by,” she whispered; “tell him I am going.”
+
+In the course of tea-time I made the desired communication. Graham, it
+chanced, was at that time greatly preoccupied about some school-prize,
+for which he was competing. The news had to be told twice before it
+took proper hold of his attention, and even then he dwelt on it but
+momently.
+
+“Polly going? What a pity! Dear little Mousie, I shall be sorry to lose
+her: she must come to us again, mamma.”
+
+And hastily swallowing his tea, he took a candle and a small table to
+himself and his books, and was soon buried in study.
+
+“Little Mousie” crept to his side, and lay down on the carpet at his
+feet, her face to the floor; mute and motionless she kept that post and
+position till bed-time. Once I saw Graham—wholly unconscious of her
+proximity—push her with his restless foot. She receded an inch or two.
+A minute after one little hand stole out from beneath her face, to
+which it had been pressed, and softly caressed the heedless foot. When
+summoned by her nurse she rose and departed very obediently, having bid
+us all a subdued good-night.
+
+I will not say that I dreaded going to bed, an hour later; yet I
+certainly went with an unquiet anticipation that I should find that
+child in no peaceful sleep. The forewarning of my instinct was but
+fulfilled, when I discovered her, all cold and vigilant, perched like a
+white bird on the outside of the bed. I scarcely knew how to accost
+her; she was not to be managed like another child. She, however,
+accosted me. As I closed the door, and put the light on the
+dressing-table, she turned to me with these words:—“I cannot—_cannot_
+sleep; and in this way I cannot—_cannot_ live!”
+
+I asked what ailed her.
+
+“Dedful miz-er-y!” said she, with her piteous lisp.
+
+“Shall I call Mrs. Bretton?”
+
+“That is downright silly,” was her impatient reply; and, indeed, I well
+knew that if she had heard Mrs. Bretton’s foot approach, she would have
+nestled quiet as a mouse under the bedclothes. Whilst lavishing her
+eccentricities regardlessly before me—for whom she professed scarcely
+the semblance of affection—she never showed my godmother one glimpse of
+her inner self: for her, she was nothing but a docile, somewhat quaint
+little maiden. I examined her; her cheek was crimson; her dilated eye
+was both troubled and glowing, and painfully restless: in this state it
+was obvious she must not be left till morning. I guessed how the case
+stood.
+
+“Would you like to bid Graham good-night again?” I asked. “He is not
+gone to his room yet.”
+
+She at once stretched out her little arms to be lifted. Folding a shawl
+round her, I carried her back to the drawing-room. Graham was just
+coming out.
+
+“She cannot sleep without seeing and speaking to you once more,” I
+said. “She does not like the thought of leaving you.”
+
+“I’ve spoilt her,” said he, taking her from me with good humour, and
+kissing her little hot face and burning lips. “Polly, you care for me
+more than for papa, now—”
+
+“I _do_ care for you, but you care nothing for me,” was her whisper.
+
+She was assured to the contrary, again kissed, restored to me, and I
+carried her away; but, alas! not soothed.
+
+When I thought she could listen to me, I said—“Paulina, you should not
+grieve that Graham does not care for you so much as you care for him.
+It must be so.”
+
+Her lifted and questioning eyes asked why.
+
+“Because he is a boy and you are a girl; he is sixteen and you are only
+six; his nature is strong and gay, and yours is otherwise.”
+
+“But I love him so much; he _should_ love me a little.”
+
+“He does. He is fond of you. You are his favourite.”
+
+“Am I Graham’s favourite?”
+
+“Yes, more than any little child I know.”
+
+The assurance soothed her; she smiled in her anguish.
+
+“But,” I continued, “don’t fret, and don’t expect too much of him, or
+else he will feel you to be troublesome, and then it is all over.”
+
+“All over!” she echoed softly; “then I’ll be good. I’ll try to be good,
+Lucy Snowe.”
+
+I put her to bed.
+
+“Will he forgive me this one time?” she asked, as I undressed myself. I
+assured her that he would; that as yet he was by no means alienated;
+that she had only to be careful for the future.
+
+“There is no future,” said she: “I am going. Shall I ever—ever—see him
+again, after I leave England?”
+
+I returned an encouraging response. The candle being extinguished, a
+still half-hour elapsed. I thought her asleep, when the little white
+shape once more lifted itself in the crib, and the small voice
+asked—“Do you like Graham, Miss Snowe?”
+
+“Like him! Yes, a little.”
+
+“Only a little! Do you like him as I do?”
+
+“I think not. No: not as you do.”
+
+“Do you like him much?”
+
+“I told you I liked him a little. Where is the use of caring for him so
+very much: he is full of faults.”
+
+“Is he?”
+
+“All boys are.”
+
+“More than girls?”
+
+“Very likely. Wise people say it is folly to think anybody perfect; and
+as to likes and dislikes, we should be friendly to all, and worship
+none.”
+
+“Are you a wise person?”
+
+“I mean to try to be so. Go to sleep.”
+
+“I _cannot_ go to sleep. Have you no pain just here” (laying her elfish
+hand on her elfish breast,) “when you think _you_ shall have to leave
+Graham; for _your_ home is not here?”
+
+“Surely, Polly,” said I, “you should not feel so much pain when you are
+very soon going to rejoin your father. Have you forgotten him? Do you
+no longer wish to be his little companion?”
+
+Dead silence succeeded this question.
+
+“Child, lie down and sleep,” I urged.
+
+“My bed is cold,” said she. “I can’t warm it.”
+
+I saw the little thing shiver. “Come to me,” I said, wishing, yet
+scarcely hoping, that she would comply: for she was a most strange,
+capricious, little creature, and especially whimsical with me. She
+came, however, instantly, like a small ghost gliding over the carpet. I
+took her in. She was chill: I warmed her in my arms. She trembled
+nervously; I soothed her. Thus tranquillized and cherished she at last
+slumbered.
+
+“A very unique child,” thought I, as I viewed her sleeping countenance
+by the fitful moonlight, and cautiously and softly wiped her glittering
+eyelids and her wet cheeks with my handkerchief. “How will she get
+through this world, or battle with this life? How will she bear the
+shocks and repulses, the humiliations and desolations, which books, and
+my own reason, tell me are prepared for all flesh?”
+
+She departed the next day; trembling like a leaf when she took leave,
+but exercising self-command.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+MISS MARCHMONT.
+
+
+On quitting Bretton, which I did a few weeks after Paulina’s
+departure—little thinking then I was never again to visit it; never
+more to tread its calm old streets—I betook myself home, having been
+absent six months. It will be conjectured that I was of course glad to
+return to the bosom of my kindred. Well! the amiable conjecture does no
+harm, and may therefore be safely left uncontradicted. Far from saying
+nay, indeed, I will permit the reader to picture me, for the next eight
+years, as a bark slumbering through halcyon weather, in a harbour still
+as glass—the steersman stretched on the little deck, his face up to
+heaven, his eyes closed: buried, if you will, in a long prayer. A great
+many women and girls are supposed to pass their lives something in that
+fashion; why not I with the rest?
+
+Picture me then idle, basking, plump, and happy, stretched on a
+cushioned deck, warmed with constant sunshine, rocked by breezes
+indolently soft. However, it cannot be concealed that, in that case, I
+must somehow have fallen overboard, or that there must have been wreck
+at last. I too well remember a time—a long time—of cold, of danger, of
+contention. To this hour, when I have the nightmare, it repeats the
+rush and saltness of briny waves in my throat, and their icy pressure
+on my lungs. I even know there was a storm, and that not of one hour
+nor one day. For many days and nights neither sun nor stars appeared;
+we cast with our own hands the tackling out of the ship; a heavy
+tempest lay on us; all hope that we should be saved was taken away. In
+fine, the ship was lost, the crew perished.
+
+As far as I recollect, I complained to no one about these troubles.
+Indeed, to whom could I complain? Of Mrs. Bretton I had long lost
+sight. Impediments, raised by others, had, years ago, come in the way
+of our intercourse, and cut it off. Besides, time had brought changes
+for her, too: the handsome property of which she was left guardian for
+her son, and which had been chiefly invested in some joint-stock
+undertaking, had melted, it was said, to a fraction of its original
+amount. Graham, I learned from incidental rumours, had adopted a
+profession; both he and his mother were gone from Bretton, and were
+understood to be now in London. Thus, there remained no possibility of
+dependence on others; to myself alone could I look. I know not that I
+was of a self-reliant or active nature; but self-reliance and exertion
+were forced upon me by circumstances, as they are upon thousands
+besides; and when Miss Marchmont, a maiden lady of our neighbourhood,
+sent for me, I obeyed her behest, in the hope that she might assign me
+some task I could undertake.
+
+Miss Marchmont was a woman of fortune, and lived in a handsome
+residence; but she was a rheumatic cripple, impotent, foot and hand,
+and had been so for twenty years. She always sat upstairs: her
+drawing-room adjoined her bed-room. I had often heard of Miss
+Marchmont, and of her peculiarities (she had the character of being
+very eccentric), but till now had never seen her. I found her a
+furrowed, grey-haired woman, grave with solitude, stern with long
+affliction, irritable also, and perhaps exacting. It seemed that a
+maid, or rather companion, who had waited on her for some years, was
+about to be married; and she, hearing of my bereaved lot, had sent for
+me, with the idea that I might supply this person’s place. She made the
+proposal to me after tea, as she and I sat alone by her fireside.
+
+“It will not be an easy life;” said she candidly, “for I require a good
+deal of attention, and you will be much confined; yet, perhaps,
+contrasted with the existence you have lately led, it may appear
+tolerable.”
+
+I reflected. Of course it ought to appear tolerable, I argued inwardly;
+but somehow, by some strange fatality, it would not. To live here, in
+this close room, the watcher of suffering—sometimes, perhaps, the butt
+of temper—through all that was to come of my youth; while all that was
+gone had passed, to say the least, not blissfully! My heart sunk one
+moment, then it revived; for though I forced myself to _realise_ evils,
+I think I was too prosaic to _idealise_, and consequently to exaggerate
+them.
+
+“My doubt is whether I should have strength for the undertaking,” I
+observed.
+
+“That is my own scruple,” said she; “for you look a worn-out creature.”
+
+So I did. I saw myself in the glass, in my mourning-dress, a faded,
+hollow-eyed vision. Yet I thought little of the wan spectacle. The
+blight, I believed, was chiefly external: I still felt life at life’s
+sources.
+
+“What else have you in view—anything?”
+
+“Nothing clear as yet: but I may find something.”
+
+“So you imagine: perhaps you are right. Try your own method, then; and
+if it does not succeed, test mine. The chance I have offered shall be
+left open to you for three months.”
+
+This was kind. I told her so, and expressed my gratitude. While I was
+speaking, a paroxysm of pain came on. I ministered to her; made the
+necessary applications, according to her directions, and, by the time
+she was relieved, a sort of intimacy was already formed between us. I,
+for my part, had learned from the manner in which she bore this attack,
+that she was a firm, patient woman (patient under physical pain, though
+sometimes perhaps excitable under long mental canker); and she, from
+the good-will with which I succoured her, discovered that she could
+influence my sympathies (such as they were). She sent for me the next
+day; for five or six successive days she claimed my company. Closer
+acquaintance, while it developed both faults and eccentricities,
+opened, at the same time, a view of a character I could respect. Stern
+and even morose as she sometimes was, I could wait on her and sit
+beside her with that calm which always blesses us when we are sensible
+that our manners, presence, contact, please and soothe the persons we
+serve. Even when she scolded me—which she did, now and then, very
+tartly—it was in such a way as did not humiliate, and left no sting; it
+was rather like an irascible mother rating her daughter, than a harsh
+mistress lecturing a dependant: lecture, indeed, she could not, though
+she could occasionally storm. Moreover, a vein of reason ever ran
+through her passion: she was logical even when fierce. Ere long a
+growing sense of attachment began to present the thought of staying
+with her as companion in quite a new light; in another week I had
+agreed to remain.
+
+Two hot, close rooms thus became my world; and a crippled old woman, my
+mistress, my friend, my all. Her service was my duty—her pain, my
+suffering—her relief, my hope—her anger, my punishment—her regard, my
+reward. I forgot that there were fields, woods, rivers, seas, an
+ever-changing sky outside the steam-dimmed lattice of this sick
+chamber; I was almost content to forget it. All within me became
+narrowed to my lot. Tame and still by habit, disciplined by destiny, I
+demanded no walks in the fresh air; my appetite needed no more than the
+tiny messes served for the invalid. In addition, she gave me the
+originality of her character to study: the steadiness of her virtues, I
+will add, the power of her passions, to admire; the truth of her
+feelings to trust. All these things she had, and for these things I
+clung to her.
+
+For these things I would have crawled on with her for twenty years, if
+for twenty years longer her life of endurance had been protracted. But
+another decree was written. It seemed I must be stimulated into action.
+I must be goaded, driven, stung, forced to energy. My little morsel of
+human affection, which I prized as if it were a solid pearl, must melt
+in my fingers and slip thence like a dissolving hailstone. My small
+adopted duty must be snatched from my easily contented conscience. I
+had wanted to compromise with Fate: to escape occasional great agonies
+by submitting to a whole life of privation and small pains. Fate would
+not so be pacified; nor would Providence sanction this shrinking sloth
+and cowardly indolence.
+
+One February night—I remember it well—there came a voice near Miss
+Marchmont’s house, heard by every inmate, but translated, perhaps, only
+by one. After a calm winter, storms were ushering in the spring. I had
+put Miss Marchmont to bed; I sat at the fireside sewing. The wind was
+wailing at the windows; it had wailed all day; but, as night deepened,
+it took a new tone—an accent keen, piercing, almost articulate to the
+ear; a plaint, piteous and disconsolate to the nerves, trilled in every
+gust.
+
+“Oh, hush! hush!” I said in my disturbed mind, dropping my work, and
+making a vain effort to stop my ears against that subtle, searching
+cry. I had heard that very voice ere this, and compulsory observation
+had forced on me a theory as to what it boded. Three times in the
+course of my life, events had taught me that these strange accents in
+the storm—this restless, hopeless cry—denote a coming state of the
+atmosphere unpropitious to life. Epidemic diseases, I believed, were
+often heralded by a gasping, sobbing, tormented, long-lamenting east
+wind. Hence, I inferred, arose the legend of the Banshee. I fancied,
+too, I had noticed—but was not philosopher enough to know whether there
+was any connection between the circumstances—that we often at the same
+time hear of disturbed volcanic action in distant parts of the world;
+of rivers suddenly rushing above their banks; and of strange high tides
+flowing furiously in on low sea-coasts. “Our globe,” I had said to
+myself, “seems at such periods torn and disordered; the feeble amongst
+us wither in her distempered breath, rushing hot from steaming
+volcanoes.”
+
+I listened and trembled; Miss Marchmont slept.
+
+About midnight, the storm in one half-hour fell to a dead calm. The
+fire, which had been burning dead, glowed up vividly. I felt the air
+change, and become keen. Raising blind and curtain, I looked out, and
+saw in the stars the keen sparkle of a sharp frost.
+
+Turning away, the object that met my eyes was Miss Marchmont awake,
+lifting her head from the pillow, and regarding me with unusual
+earnestness.
+
+“Is it a fine night?” she asked.
+
+I replied in the affirmative.
+
+“I thought so,” she said; “for I feel so strong, so well. Raise me. I
+feel young to-night,” she continued: “young, light-hearted, and happy.
+What if my complaint be about to take a turn, and I am yet destined to
+enjoy health? It would be a miracle!”
+
+“And these are not the days of miracles,” I thought to myself, and
+wondered to hear her talk so. She went on directing her conversation to
+the past, and seeming to recall its incidents, scenes, and personages,
+with singular vividness.
+
+“I love Memory to-night,” she said: “I prize her as my best friend. She
+is just now giving me a deep delight: she is bringing back to my heart,
+in warm and beautiful life, realities—not mere empty ideas, but what
+were once realities, and that I long have thought decayed, dissolved,
+mixed in with grave-mould. I possess just now the hours, the thoughts,
+the hopes of my youth. I renew the love of my life—its only love—almost
+its only affection; for I am not a particularly good woman: I am not
+amiable. Yet I have had my feelings, strong and concentrated; and these
+feelings had their object; which, in its single self, was dear to me,
+as to the majority of men and women, are all the unnumbered points on
+which they dissipate their regard. While I loved, and while I was
+loved, what an existence I enjoyed! What a glorious year I can
+recall—how bright it comes back to me! What a living spring—what a
+warm, glad summer—what soft moonlight, silvering the autumn
+evenings—what strength of hope under the ice-bound waters and
+frost-hoar fields of that year’s winter! Through that year my heart
+lived with Frank’s heart. O my noble Frank—my faithful Frank—my _good_
+Frank! so much better than myself—his standard in all things so much
+higher! This I can now see and say: if few women have suffered as I did
+in his loss, few have enjoyed what I did in his love. It was a far
+better kind of love than common; I had no doubts about it or him: it
+was such a love as honoured, protected, and elevated, no less than it
+gladdened her to whom it was given. Let me now ask, just at this
+moment, when my mind is so strangely clear,—let me reflect why it was
+taken from me? For what crime was I condemned, after twelve months of
+bliss, to undergo thirty years of sorrow?
+
+“I do not know,” she continued after a pause: “I cannot—_cannot_ see
+the reason; yet at this hour I can say with sincerity, what I never
+tried to say before, Inscrutable God, Thy will be done! And at this
+moment I can believe that death will restore me to Frank. I never
+believed it till now.”
+
+“He is dead, then?” I inquired in a low voice.
+
+“My dear girl,” she said, “one happy Christmas Eve I dressed and
+decorated myself, expecting my lover, very soon to be my husband, would
+come that night to visit me. I sat down to wait. Once more I see that
+moment—I see the snow twilight stealing through the window over which
+the curtain was not dropped, for I designed to watch him ride up the
+white walk; I see and feel the soft firelight warming me, playing on my
+silk dress, and fitfully showing me my own young figure in a glass. I
+see the moon of a calm winter night, float full, clear, and cold, over
+the inky mass of shrubbery, and the silvered turf of my grounds. I
+wait, with some impatience in my pulse, but no doubt in my breast. The
+flames had died in the fire, but it was a bright mass yet; the moon was
+mounting high, but she was still visible from the lattice; the clock
+neared ten; he rarely tarried later than this, but once or twice he had
+been delayed so long.
+
+“Would he for once fail me? No—not even for once; and now he was
+coming—and coming fast—to atone for lost time. ‘Frank! you furious
+rider,’ I said inwardly, listening gladly, yet anxiously, to his
+approaching gallop, ‘you shall be rebuked for this: I will tell you it
+is _my_ neck you are putting in peril; for whatever is yours is, in a
+dearer and tenderer sense, mine.’ There he was: I saw him; but I think
+tears were in my eyes, my sight was so confused. I saw the horse; I
+heard it stamp—I saw at least a mass; I heard a clamour. _Was_ it a
+horse? or what heavy, dragging thing was it, crossing, strangely dark,
+the lawn. How could I name that thing in the moonlight before me? or
+how could I utter the feeling which rose in my soul?
+
+“I could only run out. A great animal—truly, Frank’s black horse—stood
+trembling, panting, snorting before the door; a man held it, Frank, as
+I thought.
+
+“‘What is the matter?’ I demanded. Thomas, my own servant, answered by
+saying sharply, ‘Go into the house, madam.’ And then calling to another
+servant, who came hurrying from the kitchen as if summoned by some
+instinct, ‘Ruth, take missis into the house directly.’ But I was
+kneeling down in the snow, beside something that lay there—something
+that I had seen dragged along the ground—something that sighed, that
+groaned on my breast, as I lifted and drew it to me. He was not dead;
+he was not quite unconscious. I had him carried in; I refused to be
+ordered about and thrust from him. I was quite collected enough, not
+only to be my own mistress but the mistress of others. They had begun
+by trying to treat me like a child, as they always do with people
+struck by God’s hand; but I gave place to none except the surgeon; and
+when he had done what he could, I took my dying Frank to myself. He had
+strength to fold me in his arms; he had power to speak my name; he
+heard me as I prayed over him very softly; he felt me as I tenderly and
+fondly comforted him.
+
+“‘Maria,’ he said, ‘I am dying in Paradise.’ He spent his last breath
+in faithful words for me. When the dawn of Christmas morning broke, my
+Frank was with God.
+
+“And that,” she went on, “happened thirty years ago. I have suffered
+since. I doubt if I have made the best use of all my calamities. Soft,
+amiable natures they would have refined to saintliness; of strong, evil
+spirits they would have made demons; as for me, I have only been a
+woe-struck and selfish woman.”
+
+“You have done much good,” I said; for she was noted for her liberal
+almsgiving.
+
+“I have not withheld money, you mean, where it could assuage
+affliction. What of that? It cost me no effort or pang to give. But I
+think from this day I am about to enter a better frame of mind, to
+prepare myself for reunion with Frank. You see I still think of Frank
+more than of God; and unless it be counted that in thus loving the
+creature so much, so long, and so exclusively, I have not at least
+blasphemed the Creator, small is my chance of salvation. What do you
+think, Lucy, of these things? Be my chaplain, and tell me.”
+
+This question I could not answer: I had no words. It seemed as if she
+thought I _had_ answered it.
+
+“Very right, my child. We should acknowledge God merciful, but not
+always for us comprehensible. We should accept our own lot, whatever it
+be, and try to render happy that of others. Should we not? Well,
+to-morrow I will begin by trying to make you happy. I will endeavour to
+do something for you, Lucy: something that will benefit you when I am
+dead. My head aches now with talking too much; still I am happy. Go to
+bed. The clock strikes two. How late you sit up; or rather how late I,
+in my selfishness, keep you up. But go now; have no more anxiety for
+me; I feel I shall rest well.”
+
+She composed herself as if to slumber. I, too, retired to my crib in a
+closet within her room. The night passed in quietness; quietly her doom
+must at last have come: peacefully and painlessly: in the morning she
+was found without life, nearly cold, but all calm and undisturbed. Her
+previous excitement of spirits and change of mood had been the prelude
+of a fit; one stroke sufficed to sever the thread of an existence so
+long fretted by affliction.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+TURNING A NEW LEAF.
+
+
+My mistress being dead, and I once more alone, I had to look out for a
+new place. About this time I might be a little—a very little—shaken in
+nerves. I grant I was not looking well, but, on the contrary, thin,
+haggard, and hollow-eyed; like a sitter-up at night, like an
+overwrought servant, or a placeless person in debt. In debt, however, I
+was not; nor quite poor; for though Miss Marchmont had not had time to
+benefit me, as, on that last night, she said she intended, yet, after
+the funeral, my wages were duly paid by her second cousin, the heir, an
+avaricious-looking man, with pinched nose and narrow temples, who,
+indeed, I heard long afterwards, turned out a thorough miser: a direct
+contrast to his generous kinswoman, and a foil to her memory, blessed
+to this day by the poor and needy. The possessor, then, of fifteen
+pounds; of health, though worn, not broken, and of a spirit in similar
+condition; I might still; in comparison with many people, be regarded
+as occupying an enviable position. An embarrassing one it was, however,
+at the same time; as I felt with some acuteness on a certain day, of
+which the corresponding one in the next week was to see my departure
+from my present abode, while with another I was not provided.
+
+In this dilemma I went, as a last and sole resource, to see and consult
+an old servant of our family; once my nurse, now housekeeper at a grand
+mansion not far from Miss Marchmont’s. I spent some hours with her; she
+comforted, but knew not how to advise me. Still all inward darkness, I
+left her about twilight; a walk of two miles lay before me; it was a
+clear, frosty night. In spite of my solitude, my poverty, and my
+perplexity, my heart, nourished and nerved with the vigour of a youth
+that had not yet counted twenty-three summers, beat light and not
+feebly. Not feebly, I am sure, or I should have trembled in that lonely
+walk, which lay through still fields, and passed neither village nor
+farmhouse, nor cottage: I should have quailed in the absence of
+moonlight, for it was by the leading of stars only I traced the dim
+path; I should have quailed still more in the unwonted presence of that
+which to-night shone in the north, a moving mystery—the Aurora
+Borealis. But this solemn stranger influenced me otherwise than through
+my fears. Some new power it seemed to bring. I drew in energy with the
+keen, low breeze that blew on its path. A bold thought was sent to my
+mind; my mind was made strong to receive it.
+
+“Leave this wilderness,” it was said to me, “and go out hence.”
+
+“Where?” was the query.
+
+I had not very far to look; gazing from this country parish in that
+flat, rich middle of England—I mentally saw within reach what I had
+never yet beheld with my bodily eyes: I saw London.
+
+The next day I returned to the hall, and asking once more to see the
+housekeeper, I communicated to her my plan.
+
+Mrs. Barrett was a grave, judicious woman, though she knew little more
+of the world than myself; but grave and judicious as she was, she did
+not charge me with being out of my senses; and, indeed, I had a staid
+manner of my own which ere now had been as good to me as cloak and hood
+of hodden grey, since under its favour I had been enabled to achieve
+with impunity, and even approbation, deeds that, if attempted with an
+excited and unsettled air, would in some minds have stamped me as a
+dreamer and zealot.
+
+The housekeeper was slowly propounding some difficulties, while she
+prepared orange-rind for marmalade, when a child ran past the window
+and came bounding into the room. It was a pretty child, and as it
+danced, laughing, up to me—for we were not strangers (nor, indeed, was
+its mother—a young married daughter of the house—a stranger)—I took it
+on my knee.
+
+Different as were our social positions now, this child’s mother and I
+had been schoolfellows, when I was a girl of ten and she a young lady
+of sixteen; and I remembered her, good-looking, but dull, in a lower
+class than mine.
+
+I was admiring the boy’s handsome dark eyes, when the mother, young
+Mrs. Leigh, entered. What a beautiful and kind-looking woman was the
+good-natured and comely, but unintellectual, girl become! Wifehood and
+maternity had changed her thus, as I have since seen them change others
+even less promising than she. Me she had forgotten. I was changed too,
+though not, I fear, for the better. I made no attempt to recall myself
+to her memory; why should I? She came for her son to accompany her in a
+walk, and behind her followed a nurse, carrying an infant. I only
+mention the incident because, in addressing the nurse, Mrs. Leigh spoke
+French (very bad French, by the way, and with an incorrigibly bad
+accent, again forcibly reminding me of our school-days): and I found
+the woman was a foreigner. The little boy chattered volubly in French
+too. When the whole party were withdrawn, Mrs. Barrett remarked that
+her young lady had brought that foreign nurse home with her two years
+ago, on her return from a Continental excursion; that she was treated
+almost as well as a governess, and had nothing to do but walk out with
+the baby and chatter French with Master Charles; “and,” added Mrs.
+Barrett, “she says there are many Englishwomen in foreign families as
+well placed as she.”
+
+I stored up this piece of casual information, as careful housewives
+store seemingly worthless shreds and fragments for which their
+prescient minds anticipate a possible use some day. Before I left my
+old friend, she gave me the address of a respectable old-fashioned inn
+in the City, which, she said, my uncles used to frequent in former
+days.
+
+In going to London, I ran less risk and evinced less enterprise than
+the reader may think. In fact, the distance was only fifty miles. My
+means would suffice both to take me there, to keep me a few days, and
+also to bring me back if I found no inducement to stay. I regarded it
+as a brief holiday, permitted for once to work-weary faculties, rather
+than as an adventure of life and death. There is nothing like taking
+all you do at a moderate estimate: it keeps mind and body tranquil;
+whereas grandiloquent notions are apt to hurry both into fever.
+
+Fifty miles were then a day’s journey (for I speak of a time gone by:
+my hair, which, till a late period, withstood the frosts of time, lies
+now, at last white, under a white cap, like snow beneath snow). About
+nine o’clock of a wet February night I reached London.
+
+My reader, I know, is one who would not thank me for an elaborate
+reproduction of poetic first impressions; and it is well, inasmuch as I
+had neither time nor mood to cherish such; arriving as I did late, on a
+dark, raw, and rainy evening, in a Babylon and a wilderness, of which
+the vastness and the strangeness tried to the utmost any powers of
+clear thought and steady self-possession with which, in the absence of
+more brilliant faculties, Nature might have gifted me.
+
+When I left the coach, the strange speech of the cabmen and others
+waiting round, seemed to me odd as a foreign tongue. I had never before
+heard the English language chopped up in that way. However, I managed
+to understand and to be understood, so far as to get myself and trunk
+safely conveyed to the old inn whereof I had the address. How
+difficult, how oppressive, how puzzling seemed my flight! In London for
+the first time; at an inn for the first time; tired with travelling;
+confused with darkness; palsied with cold; unfurnished with either
+experience or advice to tell me how to act, and yet—to act obliged.
+
+Into the hands of common sense I confided the matter. Common sense,
+however, was as chilled and bewildered as all my other faculties, and
+it was only under the spur of an inexorable necessity that she
+spasmodically executed her trust. Thus urged, she paid the porter:
+considering the crisis, I did not blame her too much that she was
+hugely cheated; she asked the waiter for a room; she timorously called
+for the chambermaid; what is far more, she bore, without being wholly
+overcome, a highly supercilious style of demeanour from that young
+lady, when she appeared.
+
+I recollect this same chambermaid was a pattern of town prettiness and
+smartness. So trim her waist, her cap, her dress—I wondered how they
+had all been manufactured. Her speech had an accent which in its
+mincing glibness seemed to rebuke mine as by authority; her spruce
+attire flaunted an easy scorn to my plain country garb.
+
+“Well, it can’t be helped,” I thought, “and then the scene is new, and
+the circumstances; I shall gain good.”
+
+Maintaining a very quiet manner towards this arrogant little maid, and
+subsequently observing the same towards the parsonic-looking,
+black-coated, white-neckclothed waiter, I got civility from them ere
+long. I believe at first they thought I was a servant; but in a little
+while they changed their minds, and hovered in a doubtful state between
+patronage and politeness.
+
+I kept up well till I had partaken of some refreshment, warmed myself
+by a fire, and was fairly shut into my own room; but, as I sat down by
+the bed and rested my head and arms on the pillow, a terrible
+oppression overcame me. All at once my position rose on me like a
+ghost. Anomalous, desolate, almost blank of hope it stood. What was I
+doing here alone in great London? What should I do on the morrow? What
+prospects had I in life? What friends had I on, earth? Whence did I
+come? Whither should I go? What should I do?
+
+I wet the pillow, my arms, and my hair, with rushing tears. A dark
+interval of most bitter thought followed this burst; but I did not
+regret the step taken, nor wish to retract it. A strong, vague
+persuasion that it was better to go forward than backward, and that I
+_could_ go forward—that a way, however narrow and difficult, would in
+time open—predominated over other feelings: its influence hushed them
+so far, that at last I became sufficiently tranquil to be able to say
+my prayers and seek my couch. I had just extinguished my candle and
+lain down, when a deep, low, mighty tone swung through the night. At
+first I knew it not; but it was uttered twelve times, and at the
+twelfth colossal hum and trembling knell, I said: “I lie in the shadow
+of St. Paul’s.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+LONDON.
+
+
+The next day was the first of March, and when I awoke, rose, and opened
+my curtain, I saw the risen sun struggling through fog. Above my head,
+above the house-tops, co-elevate almost with the clouds, I saw a
+solemn, orbed mass, dark blue and dim—THE DOME. While I looked, my
+inner self moved; my spirit shook its always-fettered wings half loose;
+I had a sudden feeling as if I, who never yet truly lived, were at last
+about to taste life. In that morning my soul grew as fast as Jonah’s
+gourd.
+
+“I did well to come,” I said, proceeding to dress with speed and care.
+“I like the spirit of this great London which I feel around me. Who but
+a coward would pass his whole life in hamlets; and for ever abandon his
+faculties to the eating rust of obscurity?”
+
+Being dressed, I went down; not travel-worn and exhausted, but tidy and
+refreshed. When the waiter came in with my breakfast, I managed to
+accost him sedately, yet cheerfully; we had ten minutes’ discourse, in
+the course of which we became usefully known to each other.
+
+He was a grey-haired, elderly man; and, it seemed, had lived in his
+present place twenty years. Having ascertained this, I was sure he must
+remember my two uncles, Charles and Wilmot, who, fifteen, years ago,
+were frequent visitors here. I mentioned their names; he recalled them
+perfectly, and with respect. Having intimated my connection, my
+position in his eyes was henceforth clear, and on a right footing. He
+said I was like my uncle Charles: I suppose he spoke truth, because
+Mrs. Barrett was accustomed to say the same thing. A ready and obliging
+courtesy now replaced his former uncomfortably doubtful manner;
+henceforth I need no longer be at a loss for a civil answer to a
+sensible question.
+
+The street on which my little sitting-room window looked was narrow,
+perfectly quiet, and not dirty: the few passengers were just such as
+one sees in provincial towns: here was nothing formidable; I felt sure
+I might venture out alone.
+
+Having breakfasted, out I went. Elation and pleasure were in my heart:
+to walk alone in London seemed of itself an adventure. Presently I
+found myself in Paternoster Row—classic ground this. I entered a
+bookseller’s shop, kept by one Jones: I bought a little book—a piece of
+extravagance I could ill afford; but I thought I would one day give or
+send it to Mrs. Barrett. Mr. Jones, a dried-in man of business, stood
+behind his desk: he seemed one of the greatest, and I one of the
+happiest of beings.
+
+Prodigious was the amount of life I lived that morning. Finding myself
+before St. Paul’s, I went in; I mounted to the dome: I saw thence
+London, with its river, and its bridges, and its churches; I saw
+antique Westminster, and the green Temple Gardens, with sun upon them,
+and a glad, blue sky, of early spring above; and between them and it,
+not too dense, a cloud of haze.
+
+Descending, I went wandering whither chance might lead, in a still
+ecstasy of freedom and enjoyment; and I got—I know not how—I got into
+the heart of city life. I saw and felt London at last: I got into the
+Strand; I went up Cornhill; I mixed with the life passing along; I
+dared the perils of crossings. To do this, and to do it utterly alone,
+gave me, perhaps an irrational, but a real pleasure. Since those days,
+I have seen the West End, the parks, the fine squares; but I love the
+city far better. The city seems so much more in earnest: its business,
+its rush, its roar, are such serious things, sights, and sounds. The
+city is getting its living—the West End but enjoying its pleasure. At
+the West End you may be amused, but in the city you are deeply excited.
+
+Faint, at last, and hungry (it was years since I had felt such healthy
+hunger), I returned, about two o’clock, to my dark, old, and quiet inn.
+I dined on two dishes—a plain joint and vegetables; both seemed
+excellent: how much better than the small, dainty messes Miss
+Marchmont’s cook used to send up to my kind, dead mistress and me, and
+to the discussion of which we could not bring half an appetite between
+us! Delightfully tired, I lay down, on three chairs for an hour (the
+room did not boast a sofa). I slept, then I woke and thought for two
+hours.
+
+My state of mind, and all accompanying circumstances, were just now
+such as most to favour the adoption of a new, resolute, and
+daring—perhaps desperate—line of action. I had nothing to lose.
+Unutterable loathing of a desolate existence past, forbade return. If I
+failed in what I now designed to undertake, who, save myself, would
+suffer? If I died far away from—home, I was going to say, but I had no
+home—from England, then, who would weep?
+
+I might suffer; I was inured to suffering: death itself had not, I
+thought, those terrors for me which it has for the softly reared. I
+had, ere this, looked on the thought of death with a quiet eye.
+Prepared, then, for any consequences, I formed a project.
+
+That same evening I obtained from my friend, the waiter, information
+respecting, the sailing of vessels for a certain continental port,
+Boue-Marine. No time, I found, was to be lost: that very night I must
+take my berth. I might, indeed, have waited till the morning before
+going on board, but would not run the risk of being too late.
+
+“Better take your berth at once, ma’am,” counselled the waiter. I
+agreed with him, and having discharged my bill, and acknowledged my
+friend’s services at a rate which I now know was princely, and which in
+his eyes must have seemed absurd—and indeed, while pocketing the cash,
+he smiled a faint smile which intimated his opinion of the donor’s
+_savoir-faire_—he proceeded to call a coach. To the driver he also
+recommended me, giving at the same time an injunction about taking me,
+I think, to the wharf, and not leaving me to the watermen; which that
+functionary promised to observe, but failed in keeping his promise: on
+the contrary, he offered me up as an oblation, served me as a dripping
+roast, making me alight in the midst of a throng of watermen.
+
+This was an uncomfortable crisis. It was a dark night. The coachman
+instantly drove off as soon as he had got his fare: the watermen
+commenced a struggle for me and my trunk. Their oaths I hear at this
+moment: they shook my philosophy more than did the night, or the
+isolation, or the strangeness of the scene. One laid hands on my trunk.
+I looked on and waited quietly; but when another laid hands on me, I
+spoke up, shook off his touch, stepped at once into a boat, desired
+austerely that the trunk should be placed beside me—“Just there,”—which
+was instantly done; for the owner of the boat I had chosen became now
+an ally: I was rowed off.
+
+Black was the river as a torrent of ink; lights glanced on it from the
+piles of building round, ships rocked on its bosom. They rowed me up to
+several vessels; I read by lantern-light their names painted in great
+white letters on a dark ground. “The Ocean,” “The Phoenix,” “The
+Consort,” “The Dolphin,” were passed in turns; but “The Vivid” was my
+ship, and it seemed she lay further down.
+
+Down the sable flood we glided, I thought of the Styx, and of Charon
+rowing some solitary soul to the Land of Shades. Amidst the strange
+scene, with a chilly wind blowing in my face and midnight clouds
+dropping rain above my head; with two rude rowers for companions, whose
+insane oaths still tortured my ear, I asked myself if I was wretched or
+terrified. I was neither. Often in my life have I been far more so
+under comparatively safe circumstances. “How is this?” said I.
+“Methinks I am animated and alert, instead of being depressed and
+apprehensive?” I could not tell how it was.
+
+“THE VIVID” started out, white and glaring, from the black night at
+last.—“Here you are!” said the waterman, and instantly demanded six
+shillings.
+
+“You ask too much,” I said. He drew off from the vessel and swore he
+would not embark me till I paid it. A young man, the steward as I found
+afterwards, was looking over the ship’s side; he grinned a smile in
+anticipation of the coming contest; to disappoint him, I paid the
+money. Three times that afternoon I had given crowns where I should
+have given shillings; but I consoled myself with the reflection, “It is
+the price of experience.”
+
+“They’ve cheated you!” said the steward exultingly when I got on board.
+I answered phlegmatically that “I knew it,” and went below.
+
+A stout, handsome, and showy woman was in the ladies’ cabin. I asked to
+be shown my berth; she looked hard at me, muttered something about its
+being unusual for passengers to come on board at that hour, and seemed
+disposed to be less than civil. What a face she had—so comely—so
+insolent and so selfish!
+
+“Now that I am on board, I shall certainly stay here,” was my answer.
+“I will trouble you to show me my berth.”
+
+She complied, but sullenly. I took off my bonnet, arranged my things,
+and lay down. Some difficulties had been passed through; a sort of
+victory was won: my homeless, anchorless, unsupported mind had again
+leisure for a brief repose. Till the “Vivid” arrived in harbour, no
+further action would be required of me; but then…. Oh! I could not look
+forward. Harassed, exhausted, I lay in a half-trance.
+
+The stewardess talked all night; not to me but to the young steward,
+her son and her very picture. He passed in and out of the cabin
+continually: they disputed, they quarrelled, they made it up again
+twenty times in the course of the night. She professed to be writing a
+letter home—she said to her father; she read passages of it aloud,
+heeding me no more than a stock—perhaps she believed me asleep. Several
+of these passages appeared to comprise family secrets, and bore special
+reference to one “Charlotte,” a younger sister who, from the bearing of
+the epistle, seemed to be on the brink of perpetrating a romantic and
+imprudent match; loud was the protest of this elder lady against the
+distasteful union. The dutiful son laughed his mother’s correspondence
+to scorn. She defended it, and raved at him. They were a strange pair.
+She might be thirty-nine or forty, and was buxom and blooming as a girl
+of twenty. Hard, loud, vain and vulgar, her mind and body alike seemed
+brazen and imperishable. I should think, from her childhood, she must
+have lived in public stations; and in her youth might very likely have
+been a barmaid.
+
+Towards morning her discourse ran on a new theme: “the Watsons,” a
+certain expected family-party of passengers, known to her, it appeared,
+and by her much esteemed on account of the handsome profit realized in
+their fees. She said, “It was as good as a little fortune to her
+whenever this family crossed.”
+
+At dawn all were astir, and by sunrise the passengers came on board.
+Boisterous was the welcome given by the stewardess to the “Watsons,”
+and great was the bustle made in their honour. They were four in
+number, two males and two females. Besides them, there was but one
+other passenger—a young lady, whom a gentlemanly, though
+languid-looking man escorted. The two groups offered a marked contrast.
+The Watsons were doubtless rich people, for they had the confidence of
+conscious wealth in their bearing; the women—youthful both of them, and
+one perfectly handsome, as far as physical beauty went—were dressed
+richly, gaily, and absurdly out of character for the circumstances.
+Their bonnets with bright flowers, their velvet cloaks and silk
+dresses, seemed better suited for park or promenade than for a damp
+packet deck. The men were of low stature, plain, fat, and vulgar; the
+oldest, plainest, greasiest, broadest, I soon found was the husband—the
+bridegroom I suppose, for she was very young—of the beautiful girl.
+Deep was my amazement at this discovery; and deeper still when I
+perceived that, instead of being desperately wretched in such a union,
+she was gay even to giddiness. “Her laughter,” I reflected, “must be
+the mere frenzy of despair.” And even while this thought was crossing
+my mind, as I stood leaning quiet and solitary against the ship’s side,
+she came tripping up to me, an utter stranger, with a camp-stool in her
+hand, and smiling a smile of which the levity puzzled and startled me,
+though it showed a perfect set of perfect teeth, she offered me the
+accommodation of this piece of furniture. I declined it of course, with
+all the courtesy I could put into my manner; she danced off heedless
+and lightsome. She must have been good-natured; but what had made her
+marry that individual, who was at least as much like an oil-barrel as a
+man?
+
+The other lady passenger, with the gentleman-companion, was quite a
+girl, pretty and fair: her simple print dress, untrimmed straw-bonnet
+and large shawl, gracefully worn, formed a costume plain to quakerism:
+yet, for her, becoming enough. Before the gentleman quitted her, I
+observed him throwing a glance of scrutiny over all the passengers, as
+if to ascertain in what company his charge would be left. With a most
+dissatisfied air did his eye turn from the ladies with the gay flowers;
+he looked at me, and then he spoke to his daughter, niece, or whatever
+she was: she also glanced in my direction, and slightly curled her
+short, pretty lip. It might be myself, or it might be my homely
+mourning habit, that elicited this mark of contempt; more likely, both.
+A bell rang; her father (I afterwards knew that it was her father)
+kissed her, and returned to land. The packet sailed.
+
+Foreigners say that it is only English girls who can thus be trusted to
+travel alone, and deep is their wonder at the daring confidence of
+English parents and guardians. As for the “jeunes Meess,” by some their
+intrepidity is pronounced masculine and “inconvenant,” others regard
+them as the passive victims of an educational and theological system
+which wantonly dispenses with proper “surveillance.” Whether this
+particular young lady was of the sort that can the most safely be left
+unwatched, I do not know: or, rather did not _then_ know; but it soon
+appeared that the dignity of solitude was not to her taste. She paced
+the deck once or twice backwards and forwards; she looked with a little
+sour air of disdain at the flaunting silks and velvets, and the bears
+which thereon danced attendance, and eventually she approached me and
+spoke.
+
+“Are you fond of a sea-voyage?” was her question.
+
+I explained that my _fondness_ for a sea-voyage had yet to undergo the
+test of experience; I had never made one.
+
+“Oh, how charming!” cried she. “I quite envy you the novelty: first
+impressions, you know, are so pleasant. Now I have made so many, I
+quite forget the first: I am quite _blasée_ about the sea and all
+that.”
+
+I could not help smiling.
+
+“Why do you laugh at me?” she inquired, with a frank testiness that
+pleased me better than her other talk.
+
+“Because you are so young to be _blasée_ about anything.”
+
+“I am seventeen” (a little piqued).
+
+“You hardly look sixteen. Do you like travelling alone?”
+
+“Bah! I care nothing about it. I have crossed the Channel ten times,
+alone; but then I take care never to be long alone: I always make
+friends.”
+
+“You will scarcely make many friends this voyage, I think” (glancing at
+the Watson-group, who were now laughing and making a great deal of
+noise on deck).
+
+“Not of those odious men and women,” said she: “such people should be
+steerage passengers. Are you going to school?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Where are you going?”
+
+“I have not the least idea—beyond, at least, the port of Boue-Marine.”
+
+She stared, then carelessly ran on:
+
+“I am going to school. Oh, the number of foreign schools I have been at
+in my life! And yet I am quite an ignoramus. I know nothing—nothing in
+the world—I assure you; except that I play and dance beautifully,—and
+French and German of course I know, to speak; but I can’t read or write
+them very well. Do you know they wanted me to translate a page of an
+easy German book into English the other day, and I couldn’t do it. Papa
+was so mortified: he says it looks as if M. de Bassompierre—my godpapa,
+who pays all my school-bills—had thrown away all his money. And then,
+in matters of information—in history, geography, arithmetic, and so on,
+I am quite a baby; and I write English so badly—such spelling and
+grammar, they tell me. Into the bargain I have quite forgotten my
+religion; they call me a Protestant, you know, but really I am not sure
+whether I am one or not: I don’t well know the difference between
+Romanism and Protestantism. However, I don’t in the least care for
+that. I was a Lutheran once at Bonn—dear Bonn!—charming Bonn!—where
+there were so many handsome students. Every nice girl in our school had
+an admirer; they knew our hours for walking out, and almost always
+passed us on the promenade: ‘Schönes Mädchen,’ we used to hear them
+say. I was excessively happy at Bonn!”
+
+“And where are you now?” I inquired.
+
+“Oh! at—_chose_,” said she.
+
+Now, Miss Ginevra Fanshawe (such was this young person’s name) only
+substituted this word “_chose_” in temporary oblivion of the real name.
+It was a habit she had: “_chose_” came in at every turn in her
+conversation—the convenient substitute for any missing word in any
+language she might chance at the time to be speaking. French girls
+often do the like; from them she had caught the custom. “_Chose_,”
+however, I found in this instance, stood for Villette—the great capital
+of the great kingdom of Labassecour.
+
+“Do you like Villette?” I asked.
+
+“Pretty well. The natives, you know, are intensely stupid and vulgar;
+but there are some nice English families.”
+
+“Are you in a school?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“A good one?”
+
+“Oh, no! horrid: but I go out every Sunday, and care nothing about the
+_maîtresses_ or the _professeurs_, or the _élèves_, and send lessons
+_au diable_ (one daren’t say that in English, you know, but it sounds
+quite right in French); and thus I get on charmingly…. You are laughing
+at me again?”
+
+“No—I am only smiling at my own thoughts.”
+
+“What are they?” (Without waiting for an answer)—“Now, _do_ tell me
+where you are going.”
+
+“Where Fate may lead me. My business is to earn a living where I can
+find it.”
+
+“To earn!” (in consternation) “are you poor, then?”
+
+“As poor as Job.”
+
+(After a pause)—“Bah! how unpleasant! But _I_ know what it is to be
+poor: they are poor enough at home—papa and mamma, and all of them.
+Papa is called Captain Fanshawe; he is an officer on half-pay, but
+well-descended, and some of our connections are great enough; but my
+uncle and godpapa De Bassompierre, who lives in France, is the only one
+that helps us: he educates us girls. I have five sisters and three
+brothers. By-and-by we are to marry—rather elderly gentlemen, I
+suppose, with cash: papa and mamma manage that. My sister Augusta is
+married now to a man much older-looking than papa. Augusta is very
+beautiful—not in my style—but dark; her husband, Mr. Davies, had the
+yellow fever in India, and he is still the colour of a guinea; but then
+he is rich, and Augusta has her carriage and establishment, and we all
+think she has done perfectly well. Now, this is better than ‘earning a
+living,’ as you say. By the way, are you clever?”
+
+“No—not at all.”
+
+“You can play, sing, speak three or four languages?”
+
+“By no means.”
+
+“Still I think you are clever” (a pause and a yawn).
+
+“Shall you be sea-sick?”
+
+“Shall you?”
+
+“Oh, immensely! as soon as ever we get in sight of the sea: I begin,
+indeed, to feel it already. I shall go below; and won’t I order about
+that fat odious stewardess! Heureusement je sais faire aller mon
+monde.”
+
+Down she went.
+
+It was not long before the other passengers followed her: throughout
+the afternoon I remained on deck alone. When I recall the tranquil, and
+even happy mood in which I passed those hours, and remember, at the
+same time, the position in which I was placed; its hazardous—some would
+have said its hopeless—character; I feel that, as—
+
+Stone walls do not a prison make,
+Nor iron bars—a cage,
+
+
+so peril, loneliness, an uncertain future, are not oppressive evils, so
+long as the frame is healthy and the faculties are employed; so long,
+especially, as Liberty lends us her wings, and Hope guides us by her
+star.
+
+I was not sick till long after we passed Margate, and deep was the
+pleasure I drank in with the sea-breeze; divine the delight I drew from
+the heaving Channel waves, from the sea-birds on their ridges, from the
+white sails on their dark distance, from the quiet yet beclouded sky,
+overhanging all. In my reverie, methought I saw the continent of
+Europe, like a wide dream-land, far away. Sunshine lay on it, making
+the long coast one line of gold; tiniest tracery of clustered town and
+snow-gleaming tower, of woods deep massed, of heights serrated, of
+smooth pasturage and veiny stream, embossed the metal-bright prospect.
+For background, spread a sky, solemn and dark blue, and—grand with
+imperial promise, soft with tints of enchantment—strode from north to
+south a God-bent bow, an arch of hope.
+
+Cancel the whole of that, if you please, reader—or rather let it stand,
+and draw thence a moral—an alliterative, text-hand copy—
+
+Day-dreams are delusions of the demon.
+
+
+Becoming excessively sick, I faltered down into the cabin.
+
+Miss Fanshawe’s berth chanced to be next mine; and, I am sorry to say,
+she tormented me with an unsparing selfishness during the whole time of
+our mutual distress. Nothing could exceed her impatience and
+fretfulness. The Watsons, who were very sick too, and on whom the
+stewardess attended with shameless partiality, were stoics compared
+with her. Many a time since have I noticed, in persons of Ginevra
+Fanshawe’s light, careless temperament, and fair, fragile style of
+beauty, an entire incapacity to endure: they seem to sour in adversity,
+like small beer in thunder. The man who takes such a woman for his
+wife, ought to be prepared to guarantee her an existence all sunshine.
+Indignant at last with her teasing peevishness, I curtly requested her
+“to hold her tongue.” The rebuff did her good, and it was observable
+that she liked me no worse for it.
+
+As dark night drew on, the sea roughened: larger waves swayed strong
+against the vessel’s side. It was strange to reflect that blackness and
+water were round us, and to feel the ship ploughing straight on her
+pathless way, despite noise, billow, and rising gale. Articles of
+furniture began to fall about, and it became needful to lash them to
+their places; the passengers grew sicker than ever; Miss Fanshawe
+declared, with groans, that she must die.
+
+“Not just yet, honey,” said the stewardess. “We’re just in port.”
+Accordingly, in another quarter of an hour, a calm fell upon us all;
+and about midnight the voyage ended.
+
+I was sorry: yes, I was sorry. My resting-time was past; my
+difficulties—my stringent difficulties—recommenced. When I went on
+deck, the cold air and black scowl of the night seemed to rebuke me for
+my presumption in being where I was: the lights of the foreign sea-port
+town, glimmering round the foreign harbour, met me like unnumbered
+threatening eyes. Friends came on board to welcome the Watsons; a whole
+family of friends surrounded and bore away Miss Fanshawe; I—but I dared
+not for one moment dwell on a comparison of positions.
+
+Yet where should I go? I must go somewhere. Necessity dare not be nice.
+As I gave the stewardess her fee—and she seemed surprised at receiving
+a coin of more value than, from such a quarter, her coarse calculations
+had probably reckoned on—I said, “Be kind enough to direct me to some
+quiet, respectable inn, where I can go for the night.”
+
+She not only gave me the required direction, but called a
+commissionaire, and bid him take charge of me, and—_not_ my trunk, for
+that was gone to the custom-house.
+
+I followed this man along a rudely-paved street, lit now by a fitful
+gleam of moonlight; he brought me to the inn. I offered him sixpence,
+which he refused to take; supposing it not enough, I changed it for a
+shilling; but this also he declined, speaking rather sharply, in a
+language to me unknown. A waiter, coming forward into the lamp-lit
+inn-passage, reminded me, in broken English, that my money was foreign
+money, not current here. I gave him a sovereign to change. This little
+matter settled, I asked for a bedroom; supper I could not take: I was
+still sea-sick and unnerved, and trembling all over. How deeply glad I
+was when the door of a very small chamber at length closed on me and my
+exhaustion. Again I might rest: though the cloud of doubt would be as
+thick to-morrow as ever; the necessity for exertion more urgent, the
+peril (of destitution) nearer, the conflict (for existence) more
+severe.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+VILLETTE.
+
+
+I awoke next morning with courage revived and spirits refreshed:
+physical debility no longer enervated my judgment; my mind felt prompt
+and clear.
+
+Just as I finished dressing, a tap came to the door: I said, “Come in,”
+expecting the chambermaid, whereas a rough man walked in and said,—
+
+“Gif me your keys, Meess.”
+
+“Why?” I asked.
+
+“Gif!” said he impatiently; and as he half-snatched them from my hand,
+he added, “All right! haf your tronc soon.”
+
+Fortunately it did turn out all right: he was from the custom-house.
+Where to go to get some breakfast I could not tell; but I proceeded,
+not without hesitation, to descend.
+
+I now observed, what I had not noticed in my extreme weariness last
+night, viz. that this inn was, in fact, a large hotel; and as I slowly
+descended the broad staircase, halting on each step (for I was in
+wonderfully little haste to get down), I gazed at the high ceiling
+above me, at the painted walls around, at the wide windows which filled
+the house with light, at the veined marble I trod (for the steps were
+all of marble, though uncarpeted and not very clean), and contrasting
+all this with the dimensions of the closet assigned to me as a chamber,
+with the extreme modesty of its appointments, I fell into a
+philosophizing mood.
+
+Much I marvelled at the sagacity evinced by waiters and chamber-maids
+in proportioning the accommodation to the guest. How could inn-servants
+and ship-stewardesses everywhere tell at a glance that I, for instance,
+was an individual of no social significance, and little burdened by
+cash? They _did_ know it evidently: I saw quite well that they all, in
+a moment’s calculation, estimated me at about the same fractional
+value. The fact seemed to me curious and pregnant: I would not disguise
+from myself what it indicated, yet managed to keep up my spirits pretty
+well under its pressure.
+
+Having at last landed in a great hall, full of skylight glare, I made
+my way somehow to what proved to be the coffee-room. It cannot be
+denied that on entering this room I trembled somewhat; felt uncertain,
+solitary, wretched; wished to Heaven I knew whether I was doing right
+or wrong; felt convinced that it was the last, but could not help
+myself. Acting in the spirit and with the calm of a fatalist, I sat
+down at a small table, to which a waiter presently brought me some
+breakfast; and I partook of that meal in a frame of mind not greatly
+calculated to favour digestion. There were many other people
+breakfasting at other tables in the room; I should have felt rather
+more happy if amongst them all I could have seen any women; however,
+there was not one—all present were men. But nobody seemed to think I
+was doing anything strange; one or two gentlemen glanced at me
+occasionally, but none stared obtrusively: I suppose if there was
+anything eccentric in the business, they accounted for it by this word
+“Anglaise!”
+
+Breakfast over, I must again move—in what direction? “Go to Villette,”
+said an inward voice; prompted doubtless by the recollection of this
+slight sentence uttered carelessly and at random by Miss Fanshawe, as
+she bid me good-by: “I wish you would come to Madame Beck’s; she has
+some marmots whom you might look after; she wants an English
+gouvernante, or was wanting one two months ago.”
+
+Who Madame Beck was, where she lived, I knew not; I had asked, but the
+question passed unheard: Miss Fanshawe, hurried away by her friends,
+left it unanswered. I presumed Villette to be her residence—to Villette
+I would go. The distance was forty miles. I knew I was catching at
+straws; but in the wide and weltering deep where I found myself, I
+would have caught at cobwebs. Having inquired about the means of
+travelling to Villette, and secured a seat in the diligence, I departed
+on the strength of this outline—this shadow of a project. Before you
+pronounce on the rashness of the proceeding, reader, look back to the
+point whence I started; consider the desert I had left, note how little
+I perilled: mine was the game where the player cannot lose and may win.
+
+Of an artistic temperament, I deny that I am; yet I must possess
+something of the artist’s faculty of making the most of present
+pleasure: that is to say, when it is of the kind to my taste. I enjoyed
+that day, though we travelled slowly, though it was cold, though it
+rained. Somewhat bare, flat, and treeless was the route along which our
+journey lay; and slimy canals crept, like half-torpid green snakes,
+beside the road; and formal pollard willows edged level fields, tilled
+like kitchen-garden beds. The sky, too, was monotonously gray; the
+atmosphere was stagnant and humid; yet amidst all these deadening
+influences, my fancy budded fresh and my heart basked in sunshine.
+These feelings, however, were well kept in check by the secret but
+ceaseless consciousness of anxiety lying in wait on enjoyment, like a
+tiger crouched in a jungle. The breathing of that beast of prey was in
+my ear always; his fierce heart panted close against mine; he never
+stirred in his lair but I felt him: I knew he waited only for sun-down
+to bound ravenous from his ambush.
+
+I had hoped we might reach Villette ere night set in, and that thus I
+might escape the deeper embarrassment which obscurity seems to throw
+round a first arrival at an unknown bourne; but, what with our slow
+progress and long stoppages—what with a thick fog and small, dense
+rain—darkness, that might almost be felt, had settled on the city by
+the time we gained its suburbs.
+
+I know we passed through a gate where soldiers were stationed—so much I
+could see by lamplight; then, having left behind us the miry Chaussée,
+we rattled over a pavement of strangely rough and flinty surface. At a
+bureau, the diligence stopped, and the passengers alighted. My first
+business was to get my trunk; a small matter enough, but important to
+me. Understanding that it was best not to be importunate or over-eager
+about luggage, but to wait and watch quietly the delivery of other
+boxes till I saw my own, and then promptly claim and secure it, I stood
+apart; my eye fixed on that part of the vehicle in which I had seen my
+little portmanteau safely stowed, and upon which piles of additional
+bags and boxes were now heaped. One by one, I saw these removed,
+lowered, and seized on.
+
+I was sure mine ought to be by this time visible: it was not. I had
+tied on the direction-card with a piece of green ribbon, that I might
+know it at a glance: not a fringe or fragment of green was perceptible.
+Every package was removed; every tin-case and brown-paper parcel; the
+oilcloth cover was lifted; I saw with distinct vision that not an
+umbrella, cloak, cane, hat-box or band-box remained.
+
+And my portmanteau, with my few clothes and little pocket-book
+enclasping the remnant of my fifteen pounds, where were they?
+
+I ask this question now, but I could not ask it then. I could say
+nothing whatever; not possessing a phrase of _speaking_ French: and it
+was French, and French only, the whole world seemed now gabbling around
+me. _What_ should I do? Approaching the conductor, I just laid my hand
+on his arm, pointed to a trunk, thence to the diligence-roof, and tried
+to express a question with my eyes. He misunderstood me, seized the
+trunk indicated, and was about to hoist it on the vehicle.
+
+“Let that alone—will you?” said a voice in good English; then, in
+correction, “Qu’est-ce que vous faîtes donc? Cette malle est à moi.”
+
+But I had heard the Fatherland accents; they rejoiced my heart; I
+turned: “Sir,” said I, appealing to the stranger, without, in my
+distress, noticing what he was like, “I cannot speak French. May I
+entreat you to ask this man what he has done with my trunk?”
+
+Without discriminating, for the moment, what sort of face it was to
+which my eyes were raised and on which they were fixed, I felt in its
+expression half-surprise at my appeal and half-doubt of the wisdom of
+interference.
+
+“_Do_ ask him; I would do as much for you,” said I.
+
+I don’t know whether he smiled, but he said in a gentlemanly tone—that
+is to say, a tone not hard nor terrifying,—“What sort of trunk was
+yours?”
+
+I described it, including in my description the green ribbon. And
+forthwith he took the conductor under hand, and I felt, through all the
+storm of French which followed, that he raked him fore and aft.
+Presently he returned to me.
+
+“The fellow avers he was overloaded, and confesses that he removed your
+trunk after you saw it put on, and has left it behind at Boue-Marine
+with other parcels; he has promised, however, to forward it to-morrow;
+the day after, therefore, you will find it safe at this bureau.”
+
+“Thank you,” said I: but my heart sank.
+
+Meantime what should I do? Perhaps this English gentleman saw the
+failure of courage in my face; he inquired kindly, “Have you any
+friends in this city?”
+
+“No, and I don’t know where to go.”
+
+There was a little pause, in the course of which, as he turned more
+fully to the light of a lamp above him, I saw that he was a young,
+distinguished, and handsome man; he might be a lord, for anything I
+knew: nature had made him good enough for a prince, I thought. His face
+was very pleasant; he looked high but not arrogant, manly but not
+overbearing. I was turning away, in the deep consciousness of all
+absence of claim to look for further help from such a one as he.
+
+“Was all your money in your trunk?” he asked, stopping me.
+
+How thankful was I to be able to answer with truth—“No. I have enough
+in my purse” (for I had near twenty francs) “to keep me at a quiet inn
+till the day after to-morrow; but I am quite a stranger in Villette,
+and don’t know the streets and the inns.”
+
+“I can give you the address of such an inn as you want,” said he; “and
+it is not far off: with my direction you will easily find it.”
+
+He tore a leaf from his pocket-book, wrote a few words and gave it to
+me. I _did_ think him kind; and as to distrusting him, or his advice,
+or his address, I should almost as soon have thought of distrusting the
+Bible. There was goodness in his countenance, and honour in his bright
+eyes.
+
+“Your shortest way will be to follow the Boulevard and cross the park,”
+he continued; “but it is too late and too dark for a woman to go
+through the park alone; I will step with you thus far.”
+
+He moved on, and I followed him, through the darkness and the small
+soaking rain. The Boulevard was all deserted, its path miry, the water
+dripping from its trees; the park was black as midnight. In the double
+gloom of trees and fog, I could not see my guide; I could only follow
+his tread. Not the least fear had I: I believe I would have followed
+that frank tread, through continual night, to the world’s end.
+
+“Now,” said he, when the park was traversed, “you will go along this
+broad street till you come to steps; two lamps will show you where they
+are: these steps you will descend: a narrower street lies below;
+following that, at the bottom you will find your inn. They speak
+English there, so your difficulties are now pretty well over.
+Good-night.”
+
+“Good-night, sir,” said I: “accept my sincerest thanks.” And we parted.
+
+The remembrance of his countenance, which I am sure wore a light not
+unbenignant to the friendless—the sound in my ear of his voice, which
+spoke a nature chivalric to the needy and feeble, as well as the
+youthful and fair—were a sort of cordial to me long after. He was a
+true young English gentleman.
+
+On I went, hurrying fast through a magnificent street and square, with
+the grandest houses round, and amidst them the huge outline of more
+than one overbearing pile; which might be palace or church—I could not
+tell. Just as I passed a portico, two mustachioed men came suddenly
+from behind the pillars; they were smoking cigars: their dress implied
+pretensions to the rank of gentlemen, but, poor things! they were very
+plebeian in soul. They spoke with insolence, and, fast as I walked,
+they kept pace with me a long way. At last I met a sort of patrol, and
+my dreaded hunters were turned from the pursuit; but they had driven me
+beyond my reckoning: when I could collect my faculties, I no longer
+knew where I was; the staircase I must long since have passed. Puzzled,
+out of breath, all my pulses throbbing in inevitable agitation, I knew
+not where to turn. It was terrible to think of again encountering those
+bearded, sneering simpletons; yet the ground must be retraced, and the
+steps sought out.
+
+I came at last to an old and worn flight, and, taking it for granted
+that this must be the one indicated, I descended them. The street into
+which they led was indeed narrow, but it contained no inn. On I
+wandered. In a very quiet and comparatively clean and well-paved
+street, I saw a light burning over the door of a rather large house,
+loftier by a story than those round it. _This_ might be the inn at
+last. I hastened on: my knees now trembled under me: I was getting
+quite exhausted.
+
+No inn was this. A brass-plate embellished the great porte-cochère:
+“Pensionnat de Demoiselles” was the inscription; and beneath, a name,
+“Madame Beck.”
+
+I started. About a hundred thoughts volleyed through my mind in a
+moment. Yet I planned nothing, and considered nothing: I had not time.
+Providence said, “Stop here; this is _your_ inn.” Fate took me in her
+strong hand; mastered my will; directed my actions: I rang the
+door-bell.
+
+While I waited, I would not reflect. I fixedly looked at the
+street-stones, where the door-lamp shone, and counted them and noted
+their shapes, and the glitter of wet on their angles. I rang again.
+They opened at last. A bonne in a smart cap stood before me.
+
+“May I see Madame Beck?” I inquired.
+
+I believe if I had spoken French she would not have admitted me; but,
+as I spoke English, she concluded I was a foreign teacher come on
+business connected with the pensionnat, and, even at that late hour,
+she let me in, without a word of reluctance, or a moment of hesitation.
+
+The next moment I sat in a cold, glittering salon, with porcelain
+stove, unlit, and gilded ornaments, and polished floor. A pendule on
+the mantel-piece struck nine o’clock.
+
+A quarter of an hour passed. How fast beat every pulse in my frame! How
+I turned cold and hot by turns! I sat with my eyes fixed on the door—a
+great white folding-door, with gilt mouldings: I watched to see a leaf
+move and open. All had been quiet: not a mouse had stirred; the white
+doors were closed and motionless.
+
+“You ayre Engliss?” said a voice at my elbow. I almost bounded, so
+unexpected was the sound; so certain had I been of solitude.
+
+No ghost stood beside me, nor anything of spectral aspect; merely a
+motherly, dumpy little woman, in a large shawl, a wrapping-gown, and a
+clean, trim nightcap.
+
+I said I was English, and immediately, without further prelude, we fell
+to a most remarkable conversation. Madame Beck (for Madame Beck it
+was—she had entered by a little door behind me, and, being shod with
+the shoes of silence, I had heard neither her entrance nor
+approach)—Madame Beck had exhausted her command of insular speech when
+she said, “You ayre Engliss,” and she now proceeded to work away
+volubly in her own tongue. I answered in mine. She partly understood
+me, but as I did not at all understand her—though we made together an
+awful clamour (anything like Madame’s gift of utterance I had not
+hitherto heard or imagined)—we achieved little progress. She rang, ere
+long, for aid; which arrived in the shape of a “maîtresse,” who had
+been partly educated in an Irish convent, and was esteemed a perfect
+adept in the English language. A bluff little personage this maîtresse
+was—Labassecourienne from top to toe: and how she did slaughter the
+speech of Albion! However, I told her a plain tale, which she
+translated. I told her how I had left my own country, intent on
+extending my knowledge, and gaining my bread; how I was ready to turn
+my hand to any useful thing, provided it was not wrong or degrading;
+how I would be a child’s-nurse, or a lady’s-maid, and would not refuse
+even housework adapted to my strength. Madame heard this; and,
+questioning her countenance, I almost thought the tale won her ear:
+
+“Il n’y a que les Anglaises pour ces sortes d’entreprises,” said she:
+“sont-elles donc intrépides ces femmes là!”
+
+She asked my name, my age; she sat and looked at me—not pityingly, not
+with interest: never a gleam of sympathy, or a shade of compassion,
+crossed her countenance during the interview. I felt she was not one to
+be led an inch by her feelings: grave and considerate, she gazed,
+consulting her judgment and studying my narrative. A bell rang.
+
+“Voilà pour la prière du soir!” said she, and rose. Through her
+interpreter, she desired me to depart now, and come back on the morrow;
+but this did not suit me: I could not bear to return to the perils of
+darkness and the street. With energy, yet with a collected and
+controlled manner, I said, addressing herself personally, and not the
+maîtresse: “Be assured, madame, that by instantly securing my services,
+your interests will be served and not injured: you will find me one who
+will wish to give, in her labour, a full equivalent for her wages; and
+if you hire me, it will be better that I should stay here this night:
+having no acquaintance in Villette, and not possessing the language of
+the country, how can I secure a lodging?”
+
+“It is true,” said she; “but at least you can give a reference?”
+
+“None.”
+
+She inquired after my luggage: I told her when it would arrive. She
+mused. At that moment a man’s step was heard in the vestibule, hastily
+proceeding to the outer door. (I shall go on with this part of my tale
+as if I had understood all that passed; for though it was then scarce
+intelligible to me, I heard it translated afterwards).
+
+“Who goes out now?” demanded Madame Beck, listening to the tread.
+
+“M. Paul,” replied the teacher. “He came this evening to give a reading
+to the first class.”
+
+“The very man I should at this moment most wish to see. Call him.”
+
+The teacher ran to the salon door. M. Paul was summoned. He entered: a
+small, dark and spare man, in spectacles.
+
+“Mon cousin,” began Madame, “I want your opinion. We know your skill in
+physiognomy; use it now. Read that countenance.”
+
+The little man fixed on me his spectacles: A resolute compression of
+the lips, and gathering of the brow, seemed to say that he meant to see
+through me, and that a veil would be no veil for him.
+
+“I read it,” he pronounced.
+
+“Et qu’en dites vous?”
+
+“Mais—bien des choses,” was the oracular answer.
+
+“Bad or good?”
+
+“Of each kind, without doubt,” pursued the diviner.
+
+“May one trust her word?”
+
+“Are you negotiating a matter of importance?”
+
+“She wishes me to engage her as bonne or gouvernante; tells a tale full
+of integrity, but gives no reference.”
+
+“She is a stranger?”
+
+“An Englishwoman, as one may see.”
+
+“She speaks French?”
+
+“Not a word.”
+
+“She understands it?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“One may then speak plainly in her presence?”
+
+“Doubtless.”
+
+He gazed steadily. “Do you need her services?”
+
+“I could do with them. You know I am disgusted with Madame Svini.”
+
+Still he scrutinized. The judgment, when it at last came, was as
+indefinite as what had gone before it.
+
+“Engage her. If good predominates in that nature, the action will bring
+its own reward; if evil—eh bien! ma cousine, ce sera toujours une bonne
+oeuvre.” And with a bow and a “bon soir,” this vague arbiter of my
+destiny vanished.
+
+And Madame did engage me that very night—by God’s blessing I was spared
+the necessity of passing forth again into the lonesome, dreary, hostile
+street.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+MADAME BECK.
+
+
+Being delivered into the charge of the maîtresse, I was led through a
+long narrow passage into a foreign kitchen, very clean but very
+strange. It seemed to contain no means of cooking—neither fireplace nor
+oven; I did not understand that the great black furnace which filled
+one corner, was an efficient substitute for these. Surely pride was not
+already beginning its whispers in my heart; yet I felt a sense of
+relief when, instead of being left in the kitchen, as I half
+anticipated, I was led forward to a small inner room termed a
+“cabinet.” A cook in a jacket, a short petticoat and sabots, brought my
+supper: to wit—some meat, nature unknown, served in an odd and acid,
+but pleasant sauce; some chopped potatoes, made savoury with, I know
+not what: vinegar and sugar, I think: a tartine, or slice of bread and
+butter, and a baked pear. Being hungry, I ate and was grateful.
+
+After the “prière du soir,” Madame herself came to have another look at
+me. She desired me to follow her up-stairs. Through a series of the
+queerest little dormitories—which, I heard afterwards, had once been
+nuns’ cells: for the premises were in part of ancient date—and through
+the oratory—a long, low, gloomy room, where a crucifix hung, pale,
+against the wall, and two tapers kept dim vigils—she conducted me to an
+apartment where three children were asleep in three tiny beds. A heated
+stove made the air of this room oppressive; and, to mend matters, it
+was scented with an odour rather strong than delicate: a perfume,
+indeed, altogether surprising and unexpected under the circumstances,
+being like the combination of smoke with some spirituous essence—a
+smell, in short, of whisky.
+
+Beside a table, on which flared the remnant of a candle guttering to
+waste in the socket, a coarse woman, heterogeneously clad in a broad
+striped showy silk dress, and a stuff apron, sat in a chair fast
+asleep. To complete the picture, and leave no doubt as to the state of
+matters, a bottle and an empty glass stood at the sleeping beauty’s
+elbow.
+
+Madame contemplated this remarkable tableau with great calm; she
+neither smiled nor scowled; no impress of anger, disgust, or surprise,
+ruffled the equality of her grave aspect; she did not even wake the
+woman! Serenely pointing to a fourth bed, she intimated that it was to
+be mine; then, having extinguished the candle and substituted for it a
+night-lamp, she glided through an inner door, which she left ajar—the
+entrance to her own chamber, a large, well-furnished apartment; as was
+discernible through the aperture.
+
+My devotions that night were all thanksgiving. Strangely had I been led
+since morning—unexpectedly had I been provided for. Scarcely could I
+believe that not forty-eight hours had elapsed since I left London,
+under no other guardianship than that which protects the
+passenger-bird—with no prospect but the dubious cloud-tracery of hope.
+
+I was a light sleeper; in the dead of night I suddenly awoke. All was
+hushed, but a white figure stood in the room—Madame in her night-dress.
+Moving without perceptible sound, she visited the three children in the
+three beds; she approached me: I feigned sleep, and she studied me
+long. A small pantomime ensued, curious enough. I daresay she sat a
+quarter of an hour on the edge of my bed, gazing at my face. She then
+drew nearer, bent close over me; slightly raised my cap, and turned
+back the border so as to expose my hair; she looked at my hand lying on
+the bedclothes. This done, she turned to the chair where my clothes
+lay: it was at the foot of the bed. Hearing her touch and lift them, I
+opened my eyes with precaution, for I own I felt curious to see how far
+her taste for research would lead her. It led her a good way: every
+article did she inspect. I divined her motive for this proceeding, viz.
+the wish to form from the garments a judgment respecting the wearer,
+her station, means, neatness, &c. The end was not bad, but the means
+were hardly fair or justifiable. In my dress was a pocket; she fairly
+turned it inside out: she counted the money in my purse; she opened a
+little memorandum-book, coolly perused its contents, and took from
+between the leaves a small plaited lock of Miss Marchmont’s grey hair.
+To a bunch of three keys, being those of my trunk, desk, and work-box,
+she accorded special attention: with these, indeed, she withdrew a
+moment to her own room. I softly rose in my bed and followed her with
+my eye: these keys, reader, were not brought back till they had left on
+the toilet of the adjoining room the impress of their wards in wax. All
+being thus done decently and in order, my property was returned to its
+place, my clothes were carefully refolded. Of what nature were the
+conclusions deduced from this scrutiny? Were they favourable or
+otherwise? Vain question. Madame’s face of stone (for of stone in its
+present night aspect it looked: it had been human, and, as I said
+before, motherly, in the salon) betrayed no response.
+
+Her duty done—I felt that in her eyes this business was a duty—she
+rose, noiseless as a shadow: she moved towards her own chamber; at the
+door, she turned, fixing her eye on the heroine of the bottle, who
+still slept and loudly snored. Mrs. Svini (I presume this was Mrs.
+Svini, Anglicé or Hibernicé, Sweeny)—Mrs. Sweeny’s doom was in Madame
+Beck’s eye—an immutable purpose that eye spoke: Madame’s visitations
+for shortcomings might be slow, but they were sure. All this was very
+un-English: truly I was in a foreign land.
+
+The morrow made me further acquainted with Mrs. Sweeny. It seems she
+had introduced herself to her present employer as an English lady in
+reduced circumstances: a native, indeed, of Middlesex, professing to
+speak the English tongue with the purest metropolitan accent.
+Madame—reliant on her own infallible expedients for finding out the
+truth in time—had a singular intrepidity in hiring service off-hand (as
+indeed seemed abundantly proved in my own case). She received Mrs.
+Sweeny as nursery-governess to her three children. I need hardly
+explain to the reader that this lady was in effect a native of Ireland;
+her station I do not pretend to fix: she boldly declared that she had
+“had the bringing-up of the son and daughter of a marquis.” I think
+myself, she might possibly have been a hanger-on, nurse, fosterer, or
+washerwoman, in some Irish family: she spoke a smothered tongue,
+curiously overlaid with mincing cockney inflections. By some means or
+other she had acquired, and now held in possession, a wardrobe of
+rather suspicious splendour—gowns of stiff and costly silk, fitting her
+indifferently, and apparently made for other proportions than those
+they now adorned; caps with real lace borders, and—the chief item in
+the inventory, the spell by which she struck a certain awe through the
+household, quelling the otherwise scornfully disposed teachers and
+servants, and, so long as her broad shoulders _wore_ the folds of that
+majestic drapery, even influencing Madame herself—_a real Indian
+shawl_—“un véritable cachemire,” as Madame Beck said, with unmixed
+reverence and amaze. I feel quite sure that without this “cachemire”
+she would not have kept her footing in the pensionnat for two days: by
+virtue of it, and it only, she maintained the same a month.
+
+But when Mrs. Sweeny knew that I was come to fill her shoes, then it
+was that she declared herself—then did she rise on Madame Beck in her
+full power—then come down on me with her concentrated weight. Madame
+bore this revelation and visitation so well, so stoically, that I for
+very shame could not support it otherwise than with composure. For one
+little moment Madame Beck absented herself from the room; ten minutes
+after, an agent of the police stood in the midst of us. Mrs. Sweeny and
+her effects were removed. Madame’s brow had not been ruffled during the
+scene—her lips had not dropped one sharply-accented word.
+
+This brisk little affair of the dismissal was all settled before
+breakfast: order to march given, policeman called, mutineer expelled;
+“chambre d’enfans” fumigated and cleansed, windows thrown open, and
+every trace of the accomplished Mrs. Sweeny—even to the fine essence
+and spiritual fragrance which gave token so subtle and so fatal of the
+head and front of her offending—was annihilated from the Rue Fossette:
+all this, I say, was done between the moment of Madame Beck’s issuing
+like Aurora from her chamber, and that in which she coolly sat down to
+pour out her first cup of coffee.
+
+About noon, I was summoned to dress Madame. (It appeared my place was
+to be a hybrid between gouvernante and lady’s-maid.) Till noon, she
+haunted the house in her wrapping-gown, shawl, and soundless slippers.
+How would the lady-chief of an English school approve this custom?
+
+The dressing of her hair puzzled me; she had plenty of it: auburn,
+unmixed with grey: though she was forty years old. Seeing my
+embarrassment, she said, “You have not been a femme-de-chambre in your
+own country?” And taking the brush from my hand, and setting me aside,
+not ungently or disrespectfully, she arranged it herself. In performing
+other offices of the toilet, she half-directed, half-aided me, without
+the least display of temper or impatience. N.B.—That was the first and
+last time I was required to dress her. Henceforth, on Rosine, the
+portress, devolved that duty.
+
+When attired, Madame Beck appeared a personage of a figure rather short
+and stout, yet still graceful in its own peculiar way; that is, with
+the grace resulting from proportion of parts. Her complexion was fresh
+and sanguine, not too rubicund; her eye, blue and serene; her dark silk
+dress fitted her as a French sempstress alone can make a dress fit; she
+looked well, though a little bourgeoise; as bourgeoise, indeed, she
+was. I know not what of harmony pervaded her whole person; and yet her
+face offered contrast, too: its features were by no means such as are
+usually seen in conjunction with a complexion of such blended freshness
+and repose: their outline was stern: her forehead was high but narrow;
+it expressed capacity and some benevolence, but no expanse; nor did her
+peaceful yet watchful eye ever know the fire which is kindled in the
+heart or the softness which flows thence. Her mouth was hard: it could
+be a little grim; her lips were thin. For sensibility and genius, with
+all their tenderness and temerity, I felt somehow that Madame would be
+the right sort of Minos in petticoats.
+
+In the long run, I found she was something else in petticoats too. Her
+name was Modeste Maria Beck, née Kint: it ought to have been Ignacia.
+She was a charitable woman, and did a great deal of good. There never
+was a mistress whose rule was milder. I was told that she never once
+remonstrated with the intolerable Mrs. Sweeny, despite her tipsiness,
+disorder, and general neglect; yet Mrs. Sweeny had to go the moment her
+departure became convenient. I was told, too, that neither masters nor
+teachers were found fault with in that establishment; yet both masters
+and teachers were often changed: they vanished and others filled their
+places, none could well explain how.
+
+The establishment was both a pensionnat and an externat: the externes
+or day-pupils exceeded one hundred in number; the boarders were about a
+score. Madame must have possessed high administrative powers: she ruled
+all these, together with four teachers, eight masters, six servants,
+and three children, managing at the same time to perfection the pupils’
+parents and friends; and that without apparent effort; without bustle,
+fatigue, fever, or any symptom of undue, excitement: occupied she
+always was—busy, rarely. It is true that Madame had her own system for
+managing and regulating this mass of machinery; and a very pretty
+system it was: the reader has seen a specimen of it, in that small
+affair of turning my pocket inside out, and reading my private
+memoranda. “Surveillance,” “espionage,”—these were her watchwords.
+
+Still, Madame knew what honesty was, and liked it—that is, when it did
+not obtrude its clumsy scruples in the way of her will and interest.
+She had a respect for “Angleterre;” and as to “les Anglaises,” she
+would have the women of no other country about her own children, if she
+could help it.
+
+Often in the evening, after she had been plotting and counter-plotting,
+spying and receiving the reports of spies all day, she would come up to
+my room—a trace of real weariness on her brow—and she would sit down
+and listen while the children said their little prayers to me in
+English: the Lord’s Prayer, and the hymn beginning “Gentle Jesus,”
+these little Catholics were permitted to repeat at my knee; and, when I
+had put them to bed, she would talk to me (I soon gained enough French
+to be able to understand, and even answer her) about England and
+Englishwomen, and the reasons for what she was pleased to term their
+superior intelligence, and more real and reliable probity. Very good
+sense she often showed; very sound opinions she often broached: she
+seemed to know that keeping girls in distrustful restraint, in blind
+ignorance, and under a surveillance that left them no moment and no
+corner for retirement, was not the best way to make them grow up honest
+and modest women; but she averred that ruinous consequences would ensue
+if any other method were tried with continental children: they were so
+accustomed to restraint, that relaxation, however guarded, would be
+misunderstood and fatally presumed on. She was sick, she would declare,
+of the means she had to use, but use them she must; and after
+discoursing, often with dignity and delicacy, to me, she would move
+away on her “souliers de silence,” and glide ghost-like through the
+house, watching and spying everywhere, peering through every keyhole,
+listening behind every door.
+
+After all, Madame’s system was not bad—let me do her justice. Nothing
+could be better than all her arrangements for the physical well-being
+of her scholars. No minds were overtasked: the lessons were well
+distributed and made incomparably easy to the learner; there was a
+liberty of amusement, and a provision for exercise which kept the girls
+healthy; the food was abundant and good: neither pale nor puny faces
+were anywhere to be seen in the Rue Fossette. She never grudged a
+holiday; she allowed plenty of time for sleeping, dressing, washing,
+eating; her method in all these matters was easy, liberal, salutary,
+and rational: many an austere English school-mistress would do vastly
+well to imitate her—and I believe many would be glad to do so, if
+exacting English parents would let them.
+
+As Madame Beck ruled by espionage, she of course had her staff of
+spies: she perfectly knew the quality of the tools she used, and while
+she would not scruple to handle the dirtiest for a dirty
+occasion—flinging this sort from her like refuse rind, after the orange
+has been duly squeezed—I have known her fastidious in seeking pure
+metal for clean uses; and when once a bloodless and rustless instrument
+was found, she was careful of the prize, keeping it in silk and
+cotton-wool. Yet, woe be to that man or woman who relied on her one
+inch beyond the point where it was her interest to be trustworthy:
+interest was the master-key of Madame’s nature—the mainspring of her
+motives—the alpha and omega of her life. I have seen her _feelings_
+appealed to, and I have smiled in half-pity, half-scorn at the
+appellants. None ever gained her ear through that channel, or swayed
+her purpose by that means. On the contrary, to attempt to touch her
+heart was the surest way to rouse her antipathy, and to make of her a
+secret foe. It proved to her that she had no heart to be touched: it
+reminded her where she was impotent and dead. Never was the distinction
+between charity and mercy better exemplified than in her. While devoid
+of sympathy, she had a sufficiency of rational benevolence: she would
+give in the readiest manner to people she had never seen—rather,
+however, to classes than to individuals. “Pour les pauvres,” she opened
+her purse freely—against _the poor man_, as a rule, she kept it closed.
+In philanthropic schemes for the benefit of society at large she took a
+cheerful part; no private sorrow touched her: no force or mass of
+suffering concentrated in one heart had power to pierce hers. Not the
+agony in Gethsemane, not the death on Calvary, could have wrung from
+her eyes one tear.
+
+I say again, Madame was a very great and a very capable woman. That
+school offered her for her powers too limited a sphere; she ought to
+have swayed a nation: she should have been the leader of a turbulent
+legislative assembly. Nobody could have browbeaten her, none irritated
+her nerves, exhausted her patience, or over-reached her astuteness. In
+her own single person, she could have comprised the duties of a first
+minister and a superintendent of police. Wise, firm, faithless; secret,
+crafty, passionless; watchful and inscrutable; acute and
+insensate—withal perfectly decorous—what more could be desired?
+
+The sensible reader will not suppose that I gained all the knowledge
+here condensed for his benefit in one month, or in one half-year. No!
+what I saw at first was the thriving outside of a large and flourishing
+educational establishment. Here was a great house, full of healthy,
+lively girls, all well-dressed and many of them handsome, gaining
+knowledge by a marvellously easy method, without painful exertion or
+useless waste of spirits; not, perhaps, making very rapid progress in
+anything; taking it easy, but still always employed, and never
+oppressed. Here was a corps of teachers and masters, more stringently
+tasked, as all the real head-labour was to be done by them, in order to
+save the pupils, yet having their duties so arranged that they relieved
+each other in quick succession whenever the work was severe: here, in
+short, was a foreign school; of which the life, movement, and variety
+made it a complete and most charming contrast to many English
+institutions of the same kind.
+
+Behind the house was a large garden, and, in summer, the pupils almost
+lived out of doors amongst the rose-bushes and the fruit-trees. Under
+the vast and vine-draped berceau, Madame would take her seat on summer
+afternoons, and send for the classes, in turns, to sit round her and
+sew and read. Meantime, masters came and went, delivering short and
+lively lectures, rather than lessons, and the pupils made notes of
+their instructions, or did _not_ make them—just as inclination
+prompted; secure that, in case of neglect, they could copy the notes of
+their companions. Besides the regular monthly _jours de sortie_, the
+Catholic fête-days brought a succession of holidays all the year round;
+and sometimes on a bright summer morning, or soft summer evening; the
+boarders were taken out for a long walk into the country, regaled with
+_gaufres_ and _vin blanc_, or new milk and _pain bis_, or _pistolets au
+beurre_ (rolls) and coffee. All this seemed very pleasant, and Madame
+appeared goodness itself; and the teachers not so bad but they might be
+worse; and the pupils, perhaps, a little noisy and rough, but types of
+health and glee.
+
+Thus did the view appear, seen through the enchantment of distance; but
+there came a time when distance was to melt for me—when I was to be
+called down from my watch-tower of the nursery, whence I had hitherto
+made my observations, and was to be compelled into closer intercourse
+with this little world of the Rue Fossette.
+
+I was one day sitting up-stairs, as usual, hearing the children their
+English lessons, and at the same time turning a silk dress for Madame,
+when she came sauntering into the room with that absorbed air and brow
+of hard thought she sometimes wore, and which made her look so little
+genial. Dropping into a seat opposite mine, she remained some minutes
+silent. Désirée, the eldest girl, was reading to me some little essay
+of Mrs. Barbauld’s, and I was making her translate currently from
+English to French as she proceeded, by way of ascertaining that she
+comprehended what she read: Madame listened.
+
+Presently, without preface or prelude, she said, almost in the tone of
+one making an accusation, “Meess, in England you were a governess?”
+
+“No, Madame,” said I smiling, “you are mistaken.”
+
+“Is this your first essay at teaching—this attempt with my children?”
+
+I assured her it was. Again she became silent; but looking up, as I
+took a pin from the cushion, I found myself an object of study: she
+held me under her eye; she seemed turning me round in her
+thoughts—measuring my fitness for a purpose, weighing my value in a
+plan. Madame had, ere this, scrutinized all I had, and I believe she
+esteemed herself cognizant of much that I was; but from that day, for
+the space of about a fortnight, she tried me by new tests. She listened
+at the nursery door when I was shut in with the children; she followed
+me at a cautious distance when I walked out with them, stealing within
+ear-shot whenever the trees of park or boulevard afforded a sufficient
+screen: a strict preliminary process having thus been observed, she
+made a move forward.
+
+One morning, coming on me abruptly, and with the semblance of hurry,
+she said she found herself placed in a little dilemma. Mr. Wilson, the
+English master, had failed to come at his hour, she feared he was ill;
+the pupils were waiting in classe; there was no one to give a lesson;
+should I, for once, object to giving a short dictation exercise, just
+that the pupils might not have it to say they had missed their English
+lesson?
+
+“In classe, Madame?” I asked.
+
+“Yes, in classe: in the second division.”
+
+“Where there are sixty pupils,” said I; for I knew the number, and with
+my usual base habit of cowardice, I shrank into my sloth like a snail
+into its shell, and alleged incapacity and impracticability as a
+pretext to escape action. If left to myself, I should infallibly have
+let this chance slip. Inadventurous, unstirred by impulses of practical
+ambition, I was capable of sitting twenty years teaching infants the
+hornbook, turning silk dresses and making children’s frocks. Not that
+true contentment dignified this infatuated resignation: my work had
+neither charm for my taste, nor hold on my interest; but it seemed to
+me a great thing to be without heavy anxiety, and relieved from
+intimate trial: the negation of severe suffering was the nearest
+approach to happiness I expected to know. Besides, I seemed to hold two
+lives—the life of thought, and that of reality; and, provided the
+former was nourished with a sufficiency of the strange necromantic joys
+of fancy, the privileges of the latter might remain limited to daily
+bread, hourly work, and a roof of shelter.
+
+“Come,” said Madame, as I stooped more busily than ever over the
+cutting-out of a child’s pinafore, “leave that work.”
+
+“But Fifine wants it, Madame.”
+
+“Fifine must want it, then, for I want _you_.”
+
+And as Madame Beck did really want and was resolved to have me—as she
+had long been dissatisfied with the English master, with his
+shortcomings in punctuality, and his careless method of tuition—as,
+too, _she_ did not lack resolution and practical activity, whether _I_
+lacked them or not—she, without more ado, made me relinquish thimble
+and needle; my hand was taken into hers, and I was conducted
+down-stairs. When we reached the carré, a large square hall between the
+dwelling-house and the pensionnat, she paused, dropped my hand, faced,
+and scrutinized me. I was flushed, and tremulous from head to foot:
+tell it not in Gath, I believe I was crying. In fact, the difficulties
+before me were far from being wholly imaginary; some of them were real
+enough; and not the least substantial lay in my want of mastery over
+the medium through which I should be obliged to teach. I had, indeed,
+studied French closely since my arrival in Villette; learning its
+practice by day, and its theory in every leisure moment at night, to as
+late an hour as the rule of the house would allow candle-light; but I
+was far from yet being able to trust my powers of correct oral
+expression.
+
+“Dîtes donc,” said Madame sternly, “vous sentez vous réellement trop
+faible?”
+
+I might have said “Yes,” and gone back to nursery obscurity, and there,
+perhaps, mouldered for the rest of my life; but looking up at Madame, I
+saw in her countenance a something that made me think twice ere I
+decided. At that instant she did not wear a woman’s aspect, but rather
+a man’s. Power of a particular kind strongly limned itself in all her
+traits, and that power was not my kind of power: neither sympathy, nor
+congeniality, nor submission, were the emotions it awakened. I
+stood—not soothed, nor won, nor overwhelmed. It seemed as if a
+challenge of strength between opposing gifts was given, and I suddenly
+felt all the dishonour of my diffidence—all the pusillanimity of my
+slackness to aspire.
+
+“Will you,” she said, “go backward or forward?” indicating with her
+hand, first, the small door of communication with the dwelling-house,
+and then the great double portals of the classes or schoolrooms.
+
+“En avant,” I said.
+
+“But,” pursued she, cooling as I warmed, and continuing the hard look,
+from very antipathy to which I drew strength and determination, “can
+you face the classes, or are you over-excited?”
+
+She sneered slightly in saying this: nervous excitability was not much
+to Madame’s taste.
+
+“I am no more excited than this stone,” I said, tapping the flag with
+my toe: “or than you,” I added, returning her look.
+
+“Bon! But let me tell you these are not quiet, decorous, English girls
+you are going to encounter. Ce sont des Labassecouriennes, rondes,
+franches, brusques, et tant soit peu rebelles.”
+
+I said: “I know; and I know, too, that though I have studied French
+hard since I came here, yet I still speak it with far too much
+hesitation—too little accuracy to be able to command their respect I
+shall make blunders that will lay me open to the scorn of the most
+ignorant. Still I mean to give the lesson.”
+
+“They always throw over timid teachers,” said she.
+
+“I know that too, Madame; I have heard how they rebelled against and
+persecuted Miss Turner”—a poor friendless English teacher, whom Madame
+had employed, and lightly discarded; and to whose piteous history I was
+no stranger.
+
+“C’est vrai,” said she, coolly. “Miss Turner had no more command over
+them than a servant from the kitchen would have had. She was weak and
+wavering; she had neither tact nor intelligence, decision nor dignity.
+Miss Turner would not do for these girls at all.”
+
+I made no reply, but advanced to the closed schoolroom door.
+
+“You will not expect aid from me, or from any one,” said Madame. “That
+would at once set you down as incompetent for your office.”
+
+I opened the door, let her pass with courtesy, and followed her. There
+were three schoolrooms, all large. That dedicated to the second
+division, where I was to figure, was considerably the largest, and
+accommodated an assemblage more numerous, more turbulent, and
+infinitely more unmanageable than the other two. In after days, when I
+knew the ground better, I used to think sometimes (if such a comparison
+may be permitted), that the quiet, polished, tame first division was to
+the robust, riotous, demonstrative second division, what the English
+House of Lords is to the House of Commons.
+
+The first glance informed me that many of the pupils were more than
+girls—quite young women; I knew that some of them were of noble family
+(as nobility goes in Labassecour), and I was well convinced that not
+one amongst them was ignorant of my position in Madame’s household. As
+I mounted the estràde (a low platform, raised a step above the
+flooring), where stood the teacher’s chair and desk, I beheld opposite
+to me a row of eyes and brows that threatened stormy weather—eyes full
+of an insolent light, and brows hard and unblushing as marble. The
+continental “female” is quite a different being to the insular “female”
+of the same age and class: I never saw such eyes and brows in England.
+Madame Beck introduced me in one cool phrase, sailed from the room, and
+left me alone in my glory.
+
+I shall never forget that first lesson, nor all the under-current of
+life and character it opened up to me. Then first did I begin rightly
+to see the wide difference that lies between the novelist’s and poet’s
+ideal “jeune fille” and the said “jeune fille” as she really is.
+
+It seems that three titled belles in the first row had sat down
+predetermined that a _bonne d’enfants_ should not give them lessons in
+English. They knew they had succeeded in expelling obnoxious teachers
+before now; they knew that Madame would at any time throw overboard a
+professeur or maitresse who became unpopular with the school—that she
+never assisted a weak official to retain his place—that if he had not
+strength to fight, or tact to win his way, down he went: looking at
+“Miss Snowe,” they promised themselves an easy victory.
+
+Mesdemoiselles Blanche, Virginie, and Angélique opened the campaign by
+a series of titterings and whisperings; these soon swelled into murmurs
+and short laughs, which the remoter benches caught up and echoed more
+loudly. This growing revolt of sixty against one, soon became
+oppressive enough; my command of French being so limited, and exercised
+under such cruel constraint.
+
+Could I but have spoken in my own tongue, I felt as if I might have
+gained a hearing; for, in the first place, though I knew I looked a
+poor creature, and in many respects actually was so, yet nature had
+given me a voice that could make itself heard, if lifted in excitement
+or deepened by emotion. In the second place, while I had no flow, only
+a hesitating trickle of language, in ordinary circumstances, yet—under
+stimulus such as was now rife through the mutinous mass—I could, in
+English, have rolled out readily phrases stigmatizing their proceedings
+as such proceedings deserved to be stigmatized; and then with some
+sarcasm, flavoured with contemptuous bitterness for the ringleaders,
+and relieved with easy banter for the weaker but less knavish
+followers, it seemed to me that one might possibly get command over
+this wild herd, and bring them into training, at least. All I could now
+do was to walk up to Blanche—Mademoiselle de Melcy, a young baronne—the
+eldest, tallest, handsomest, and most vicious—stand before her desk,
+take from under her hand her exercise-book, remount the estrade,
+deliberately read the composition, which I found very stupid, and, as
+deliberately, and in the face of the whole school, tear the blotted
+page in two.
+
+This action availed to draw attention and check noise. One girl alone,
+quite in the background, persevered in the riot with undiminished
+energy. I looked at her attentively. She had a pale face, hair like
+night, broad strong eyebrows, decided features, and a dark, mutinous,
+sinister eye: I noted that she sat close by a little door, which door,
+I was well aware, opened into a small closet where books were kept. She
+was standing up for the purpose of conducting her clamour with freer
+energies. I measured her stature and calculated her strength. She
+seemed both tall and wiry; but, so the conflict were brief and the
+attack unexpected, I thought I might manage her.
+
+Advancing up the room, looking as cool and careless as I possibly
+could, in short, _ayant l’air de rien_, I slightly pushed the door and
+found it was ajar. In an instant, and with sharpness, I had turned on
+her. In another instant she occupied the closet, the door was shut, and
+the key in my pocket.
+
+It so happened that this girl, Dolores by name, and a Catalonian by
+race, was the sort of character at once dreaded and hated by all her
+associates; the act of summary justice above noted proved popular:
+there was not one present but, in her heart, liked to see it done. They
+were stilled for a moment; then a smile—not a laugh—passed from desk to
+desk: then—when I had gravely and tranquilly returned to the estrade,
+courteously requested silence, and commenced a dictation as if nothing
+at all had happened—the pens travelled peacefully over the pages, and
+the remainder of the lesson passed in order and industry.
+
+“C’est bien,” said Madame Beck, when I came out of class, hot and a
+little exhausted. “Ca ira.”
+
+She had been listening and peeping through a spy-hole the whole time.
+
+From that day I ceased to be nursery governess, and became English
+teacher. Madame raised my salary; but she got thrice the work out of me
+she had extracted from Mr. Wilson, at half the expense.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+ISIDORE.
+
+
+My time was now well and profitably filled up. What with teaching
+others and studying closely myself, I had hardly a spare moment. It was
+pleasant. I felt I was getting, on; not lying the stagnant prey of
+mould and rust, but polishing my faculties and whetting them to a keen
+edge with constant use. Experience of a certain kind lay before me, on
+no narrow scale. Villette is a cosmopolitan city, and in this school
+were girls of almost every European nation, and likewise of very varied
+rank in life. Equality is much practised in Labassecour; though not
+republican in form, it is nearly so in substance, and at the desks of
+Madame Beck’s establishment the young countess and the young bourgeoise
+sat side by side. Nor could you always by outward indications decide
+which was noble and which plebeian; except that, indeed, the latter had
+often franker and more courteous manners, while the former bore away
+the bell for a delicately-balanced combination of insolence and deceit.
+In the former there was often quick French blood mixed with the
+marsh-phlegm: I regret to say that the effect of this vivacious fluid
+chiefly appeared in the oilier glibness with which flattery and fiction
+ran from the tongue, and in a manner lighter and livelier, but quite
+heartless and insincere.
+
+To do all parties justice, the honest aboriginal Labassecouriennes had
+an hypocrisy of their own, too; but it was of a coarse order, such as
+could deceive few. Whenever a lie was necessary for their occasions,
+they brought it out with a careless ease and breadth altogether
+untroubled by the rebuke of conscience. Not a soul in Madame Beck’s
+house, from the scullion to the directress herself, but was above being
+ashamed of a lie; they thought nothing of it: to invent might not be
+precisely a virtue, but it was the most venial of faults. “J’ai menti
+plusieurs fois,” formed an item of every girl’s and woman’s monthly
+confession: the priest heard unshocked, and absolved unreluctant. If
+they had missed going to mass, or read a chapter of a novel, that was
+another thing: these were crimes whereof rebuke and penance were the
+unfailing weed.
+
+While yet but half-conscious of this state of things, and unlearned in
+its results, I got on in my new sphere very well. After the first few
+difficult lessons, given amidst peril and on the edge of a moral
+volcano that rumbled under my feet and sent sparks and hot fumes into
+my eyes, the eruptive spirit seemed to subside, as far as I was
+concerned. My mind was a good deal bent on success: I could not bear
+the thought of being baffled by mere undisciplined disaffection and
+wanton indocility, in this first attempt to get on in life. Many hours
+of the night I used to lie awake, thinking what plan I had best adopt
+to get a reliable hold on these mutineers, to bring this stiff-necked
+tribe under permanent influence. In, the first place, I saw plainly
+that aid in no shape was to be expected from Madame: her righteous plan
+was to maintain an unbroken popularity with the pupils, at any and
+every cost of justice or comfort to the teachers. For a teacher to seek
+her alliance in any crisis of insubordination was equivalent to
+securing her own expulsion. In intercourse with her pupils, Madame only
+took to herself what was pleasant, amiable, and recommendatory; rigidly
+requiring of her lieutenants sufficiency for every annoying crisis,
+where to act with adequate promptitude was to be unpopular. Thus, I
+must look only to myself.
+
+Imprimis—it was clear as the day that this swinish multitude were not
+to be driven by force. They were to be humoured, borne with very
+patiently: a courteous though sedate manner impressed them; a very rare
+flash of raillery did good. Severe or continuous mental application
+they could not, or would not, bear: heavy demand on the memory, the
+reason, the attention, they rejected point-blank. Where an English girl
+of not more than average capacity and docility would quietly take a
+theme and bind herself to the task of comprehension and mastery, a
+Labassecourienne would laugh in your face, and throw it back to you
+with the phrase,—“Dieu, que c’est difficile! Je n’en veux pas. Cela
+m’ennuie trop.”
+
+A teacher who understood her business would take it back at once,
+without hesitation, contest, or expostulation—proceed with even
+exaggerated care to smoothe every difficulty, to reduce it to the level
+of their understandings, return it to them thus modified, and lay on
+the lash of sarcasm with unsparing hand. They would feel the sting,
+perhaps wince a little under it; but they bore no malice against this
+sort of attack, provided the sneer was not _sour_, but _hearty_, and
+that it held well up to them, in a clear, light, and bold type, so that
+she who ran might read, their incapacity, ignorance, and sloth. They
+would riot for three additional lines to a lesson; but I never knew
+them rebel against a wound given to their self-respect: the little they
+had of that quality was trained to be crushed, and it rather liked the
+pressure of a firm heel than otherwise.
+
+By degrees, as I acquired fluency and freedom in their language, and
+could make such application of its more nervous idioms as suited their
+case, the elder and more intelligent girls began rather to like me in
+their way: I noticed that whenever a pupil had been roused to feel in
+her soul the stirring of worthy emulation, or the quickening of honest
+shame, from that date she was won. If I could but once make their
+(usually large) ears burn under their thick glossy hair, all was
+comparatively well. By-and-by bouquets began to be laid on my desk in
+the morning; by way of acknowledgment for this little foreign
+attention, I used sometimes to walk with a select few during
+recreation. In the course of conversation it befel once or twice that I
+made an unpremeditated attempt to rectify some of their singularly
+distorted notions of principle; especially I expressed my ideas of the
+evil and baseness of a lie. In an unguarded moment, I chanced to say
+that, of the two errors; I considered falsehood worse than an
+occasional lapse in church-attendance. The poor girls were tutored to
+report in Catholic ears whatever the Protestant teacher said. An
+edifying consequence ensued. Something—an unseen, an indefinite, a
+nameless—something stole between myself and these my best pupils: the
+bouquets continued to be offered, but conversation thenceforth became
+impracticable. As I paced the alleys or sat in the berceau, a girl
+never came to my right hand but a teacher, as if by magic, appeared at
+my left. Also, wonderful to relate, Madame’s shoes of silence brought
+her continually to my back, as quick, as noiseless and unexpected, as
+some wandering zephyr.
+
+The opinion of my Catholic acquaintance concerning my spiritual
+prospects was somewhat naïvely expressed to me on one occasion. A
+pensionnaire, to whom I had rendered some little service, exclaimed one
+day as she sat beside me: “Mademoiselle, what a pity you are a
+Protestant!”
+
+“Why, Isabelle?”
+
+“Parceque, quand vous serez morte—vous brûlerez tout de suite dans
+l’Enfer.”
+
+“Croyez-vous?”
+
+“Certainement que j’y crois: tout le monde le sait; et d’ailleurs le
+prêtre me l’a dit.”
+
+Isabelle was an odd, blunt little creature. She added, _sotto voce_:
+“Pour assurer votre salut là-haut, on ferait bien de vous brûler toute
+vive ici-bas.”
+
+I laughed, as, indeed, it was impossible to do otherwise.
+
+Has the reader forgotten Miss Ginevra Fanshawe? If so, I must be
+allowed to re-introduce that young lady as a thriving pupil of Madame
+Beck’s; for such she was. On her arrival in the Rue Fossette, two or
+three days after my sudden settlement there, she encountered me with
+very little surprise. She must have had good blood in her veins, for
+never was any duchess more perfectly, radically, unaffectedly
+_nonchalante_ than she: a weak, transient amaze was all she knew of the
+sensation of wonder. Most of her other faculties seemed to be in the
+same flimsy condition: her liking and disliking, her love and hate,
+were mere cobweb and gossamer; but she had one thing about her that
+seemed strong and durable enough, and that was—her selfishness.
+
+She was not proud; and—_bonne d’enfants_ as I was—she would forthwith
+have made of me a sort of friend and confidant. She teased me with a
+thousand vapid complaints about school-quarrels and household economy:
+the cookery was not to her taste; the people about her, teachers and
+pupils, she held to be despicable, because they were foreigners. I bore
+with her abuse of the Friday’s salt fish and hard eggs—with her
+invective against the soup, the bread, the coffee—with some patience
+for a time; but at last, wearied by iteration, I turned crusty, and put
+her to rights: a thing I ought to have done in the very beginning, for
+a salutary setting down always agreed with her.
+
+Much longer had I to endure her demands on me in the way of work. Her
+wardrobe, so far as concerned articles of external wear, was well and
+elegantly supplied; but there were other habiliments not so carefully
+provided: what she had, needed frequent repair. She hated
+needle-drudgery herself, and she would bring her hose, &c. to me in
+heaps, to be mended. A compliance of some weeks threatening to result
+in the establishment of an intolerable bore—I at last distinctly told
+her she must make up her mind to mend her own garments. She cried on
+receiving this information, and accused me of having ceased to be her
+friend; but I held by my decision, and let the hysterics pass as they
+could.
+
+Notwithstanding these foibles, and various others needless to
+mention—but by no means of a refined or elevating character—how pretty
+she was! How charming she looked, when she came down on a sunny Sunday
+morning, well-dressed and well-humoured, robed in pale lilac silk, and
+with her fair long curls reposing on her white shoulders. Sunday was a
+holiday which she always passed with friends resident in town; and
+amongst these friends she speedily gave me to understand was one who
+would fain become something more. By glimpses and hints it was shown
+me, and by the general buoyancy of her look and manner it was ere long
+proved, that ardent admiration—perhaps genuine love—was at her command.
+She called her suitor “Isidore:” this, however, she intimated was not
+his real name, but one by which it pleased her to baptize him—his own,
+she hinted, not being “very pretty.” Once, when she had been bragging
+about the vehemence of “Isidore’s” attachment, I asked if she loved him
+in return.
+
+“Comme cela,” said she: “he is handsome, and he loves me to
+distraction, so that I am well amused. Ca suffit.”
+
+Finding that she carried the thing on longer than, from her very fickle
+tastes, I had anticipated, I one day took it upon me to make serious
+inquiries as to whether the gentleman was such as her parents, and
+especially her uncle—on whom, it appeared, she was dependent—would be
+likely to approve. She allowed that this was very doubtful, as she did
+not believe “Isidore” had much money.
+
+“Do you encourage him?” I asked.
+
+“Furieusement sometimes,” said she.
+
+“Without being certain that you will be permitted to marry him?”
+
+“Oh, how dowdyish you are! I don’t want to be married. I am too young.”
+
+“But if he loves you as much as you say, and yet it comes to nothing in
+the end, he will be made miserable.”
+
+“Of course he will break his heart. I should be shocked and,
+disappointed if he didn’t.”
+
+“I wonder whether this M. Isidore is a fool?” said I.
+
+“He is, about me; but he is wise in other things, à ce qu’on dit. Mrs.
+Cholmondeley considers him extremely clever: she says he will push his
+way by his talents; all I know is, that he does little more than sigh
+in my presence, and that I can wind him round my little finger.”
+
+Wishing to get a more definite idea of this love-stricken M. Isidore;
+whose position seemed to me of the least secure, I requested her to
+favour me with a personal description; but she could not describe: she
+had neither words nor the power of putting them together so as to make
+graphic phrases. She even seemed not properly to have noticed him:
+nothing of his looks, of the changes in his countenance, had touched
+her heart or dwelt in her memory—that he was “beau, mais plutôt bel
+homme que joli garçon,” was all she could assert. My patience would
+often have failed, and my interest flagged, in listening to her, but
+for one thing. All the hints she dropped, all the details she gave,
+went unconsciously to prove, to my thinking, that M. Isidore’s homage
+was offered with great delicacy and respect. I informed her very
+plainly that I believed him much too good for her, and intimated with
+equal plainness my impression that she was but a vain coquette. She
+laughed, shook her curls from her eyes, and danced away as if I had
+paid her a compliment.
+
+Miss Ginevra’s school-studies were little better than nominal; there
+were but three things she practised in earnest, viz. music, singing,
+and dancing; also embroidering the fine cambric handkerchiefs which she
+could not afford to buy ready worked: such mere trifles as lessons in
+history, geography, grammar, and arithmetic, she left undone, or got
+others to do for her. Very much of her time was spent in visiting.
+Madame, aware that her stay at school was now limited to a certain
+period, which would not be extended whether she made progress or not,
+allowed her great licence in this particular. Mrs. Cholmondeley—her
+_chaperon_—a gay, fashionable lady, invited her whenever she had
+company at her own house, and sometimes took her to evening-parties at
+the houses of her acquaintance. Ginevra perfectly approved this mode of
+procedure: it had but one inconvenience; she was obliged to be well
+dressed, and she had not money to buy variety of dresses. All her
+thoughts turned on this difficulty; her whole soul was occupied with
+expedients for effecting its solution. It was wonderful to witness the
+activity of her otherwise indolent mind on this point, and to see the
+much-daring intrepidity to which she was spurred by a sense of
+necessity, and the wish to shine.
+
+She begged boldly of Mrs. Cholmondeley—boldly, I say: not with an air
+of reluctant shame, but in this strain:—
+
+“My darling Mrs. C., I have nothing in the world fit to wear for your
+party next week; you _must_ give me a book-muslin dress, and then a
+_ceinture bleu celeste_: _do_—there’s an angel! will you?”
+
+The “darling Mrs. C.” yielded at first; but finding that applications
+increased as they were complied with, she was soon obliged, like all
+Miss Fanshawe’s friends, to oppose resistance to encroachment. After a
+while I heard no more of Mrs. Cholmondeley’s presents; but still,
+visiting went on, and the absolutely necessary dresses continued to be
+supplied: also many little expensive _etcetera_—gloves, bouquets, even
+trinkets. These things, contrary to her custom, and even nature—for she
+was not secretive—were most sedulously kept out of sight for a time;
+but one evening, when she was going to a large party for which
+particular care and elegance of costume were demanded, she could not
+resist coming to my chamber to show herself in all her splendour.
+
+Beautiful she looked: so young, so fresh, and with a delicacy of skin
+and flexibility of shape altogether English, and not found in the list
+of continental female charms. Her dress was new, costly, and perfect. I
+saw at a glance that it lacked none of those finishing details which
+cost so much, and give to the general effect such an air of tasteful
+completeness.
+
+I viewed her from top to toe. She turned airily round that I might
+survey her on all sides. Conscious of her charms, she was in her best
+humour: her rather small blue eyes sparkled gleefully. She was going to
+bestow on me a kiss, in her school-girl fashion of showing her delights
+but I said, “Steady! Let us be Steady, and know what we are about, and
+find out the meaning of our magnificence”—and so put her off at arm’s
+length, to undergo cooler inspection.
+
+“Shall I do?” was her question.
+
+“Do?” said I. “There are different ways of doing; and, by my word, I
+don’t understand yours.”
+
+“But how do I look?”
+
+“You look well dressed.”
+
+She thought the praise not warm enough, and proceeded to direct
+attention to the various decorative points of her attire. “Look at this
+_parure_,” said she. “The brooch, the ear-rings, the bracelets: no one
+in the school has such a set—not Madame herself.”
+
+“I see them all.” (Pause.) “Did M. de Bassompierre give you those
+jewels?”
+
+“My uncle knows nothing about them.”
+
+“Were they presents from Mrs. Cholmondeley?”
+
+“Not they, indeed. Mrs. Cholmondeley is a mean, stingy creature; she
+never gives me anything now.”
+
+I did not choose to ask any further questions, but turned abruptly
+away.
+
+“Now, old Crusty—old Diogenes” (these were her familiar terms for me
+when we disagreed), “what is the matter now?”
+
+“Take yourself away. I have no pleasure in looking at you or your
+_parure_.”
+
+For an instant, she seemed taken by surprise.
+
+“What now, Mother Wisdom? I have not got into debt for it—that is, not
+for the jewels, nor the gloves, nor the bouquet. My dress is certainly
+not paid for, but uncle de Bassompierre will pay it in the bill: he
+never notices items, but just looks at the total; and he is so rich,
+one need not care about a few guineas more or less.”
+
+“Will you go? I want to shut the door…. Ginevra, people may tell you
+you are very handsome in that ball-attire; but, in _my_ eyes, you will
+never look so pretty as you did in the gingham gown and plain straw
+bonnet you wore when I first saw you.”
+
+“Other people have not your puritanical tastes,” was her angry reply.
+“And, besides, I see no right you have to sermonize me.”
+
+“Certainly! I have little right; and you, perhaps, have still less to
+come flourishing and fluttering into my chamber—a mere jay in borrowed
+plumes. I have not the least respect for your feathers, Miss Fanshawe;
+and especially the peacock’s eyes you call a _parure_: very pretty
+things, if you had bought them with money which was your own, and which
+you could well spare, but not at all pretty under present
+circumstances.”
+
+“On est là pour Mademoiselle Fanshawe!” was announced by the portress,
+and away she tripped.
+
+This semi-mystery of the _parure_ was not solved till two or three days
+afterwards, when she came to make a voluntary confession.
+
+“You need not be sulky with me,” she began, “in the idea that I am
+running somebody, papa or M. de Bassompierre, deeply into debt. I
+assure you nothing remains unpaid for, but the few dresses I have
+lately had: all the rest is settled.”
+
+“There,” I thought, “lies the mystery; considering that they were not
+given you by Mrs. Cholmondeley, and that your own means are limited to
+a few shillings, of which I know you to be excessively careful.”
+
+“Ecoutez!” she went on, drawing near and speaking in her most
+confidential and coaxing tone; for my “sulkiness” was inconvenient to
+her: she liked me to be in a talking and listening mood, even if I only
+talked to chide and listened to rail. “Ecoutez, chère grogneuse! I will
+tell you all how and about it; and you will then see, not only how
+right the whole thing is, but how cleverly managed. In the first place,
+I _must_ go out. Papa himself said that he wished me to see something
+of the world; he particularly remarked to Mrs. Cholmondeley, that,
+though I was a sweet creature enough, I had rather a
+bread-and-butter-eating, school-girl air; of which it was his special
+desire that I should get rid, by an introduction to society here,
+before I make my regular début in England. Well, then, if I go out, I
+_must_ dress. Mrs. Cholmondeley is turned shabby, and will give nothing
+more; it would be too hard upon uncle to make him pay for _all_ the
+things I need: _that_ you can’t deny—_that_ agrees with your own
+preachments. Well, but SOMEBODY who heard me (quite by chance, I assure
+you) complaining to Mrs. Cholmondeley of my distressed circumstances,
+and what straits I was put to for an ornament or two—_somebody_, far
+from grudging one a present, was quite delighted at the idea of being
+permitted to offer some trifle. You should have seen what a _blanc-bec_
+he looked when he first spoke of it: how he hesitated and blushed, and
+positively trembled from fear of a repulse.”
+
+“That will do, Miss Fanshawe. I suppose I am to understand that M.
+Isidore is the benefactor: that it is from him you have accepted that
+costly _parure_; that he supplies your bouquets and your gloves?”
+
+“You express yourself so disagreeably,” said she, “one hardly knows how
+to answer; what I mean to say is, that I occasionally allow Isidore the
+pleasure and honour of expressing his homage by the offer of a trifle.”
+
+“It comes to the same thing…. Now, Ginevra, to speak the plain truth, I
+don’t very well understand these matters; but I believe you are doing
+very wrong—seriously wrong. Perhaps, however, you now feel certain that
+you will be able to marry M. Isidore; your parents and uncle have given
+their consent, and, for your part, you love him entirely?”
+
+“Mais pas du tout!” (she always had recourse to French when about to
+say something specially heartless and perverse). “Je suis sa reine,
+mais il n’est pas mon roi.”
+
+“Excuse me, I must believe this language is mere nonsense and coquetry.
+There is nothing great about you, yet you are above profiting by the
+good nature and purse of a man to whom you feel absolute indifference.
+You love M. Isidore far more than you think, or will avow.”
+
+“No. I danced with a young officer the other night, whom I love a
+thousand times more than he. I often wonder why I feel so very cold to
+Isidore, for everybody says he is handsome, and other ladies admire
+him; but, somehow, he bores me: let me see now how it is….”
+
+And she seemed to make an effort to reflect. In this I encouraged her.
+
+“Yes!” I said, “try to get a clear idea of the state of your mind. To
+me it seems in a great mess—chaotic as a rag-bag.”
+
+“It is something in this fashion,” she cried out ere long: “the man is
+too romantic and devoted, and he expects something more of me than I
+find it convenient to be. He thinks I am perfect: furnished with all
+sorts of sterling qualities and solid virtues, such as I never had, nor
+intend to have. Now, one can’t help, in his presence, rather trying to
+justify his good opinion; and it does so tire one to be goody, and to
+talk sense,—for he really thinks I am sensible. I am far more at my
+ease with you, old lady—you, you dear crosspatch—who take me at my
+lowest, and know me to be coquettish, and ignorant, and flirting, and
+fickle, and silly, and selfish, and all the other sweet things you and
+I have agreed to be a part of my character.”
+
+“This is all very well,” I said, making a strenuous effort to preserve
+that gravity and severity which ran risk of being shaken by this
+whimsical candour, “but it does not alter that wretched business of the
+presents. Pack them up, Ginevra, like a good, honest girl, and send
+them back.”
+
+“Indeed, I won’t,” said she, stoutly.
+
+“Then you are deceiving M. Isidore. It stands to reason that by
+accepting his presents you give him to understand he will one day
+receive an equivalent, in your regard…”
+
+“But he won’t,” she interrupted: “he has his equivalent now, in the
+pleasure of seeing me wear them—quite enough for him: he is only
+bourgeois.”
+
+This phrase, in its senseless arrogance, quite cured me of the
+temporary weakness which had made me relax my tone and aspect. She
+rattled on:
+
+“My present business is to enjoy youth, and not to think of fettering
+myself, by promise or vow, to this man or that. When first I saw
+Isidore, I believed he would help me to enjoy it I believed he would be
+content with my being a pretty girl; and that we should meet and part
+and flutter about like two butterflies, and be happy. Lo, and behold! I
+find him at times as grave as a judge, and deep-feeling and thoughtful.
+Bah! Les penseurs, les hommes profonds et passionnés ne sont pas à mon
+goût. Le Colonel Alfred de Hamal suits me far better. Va pour les beaux
+fats et les jolis fripons! Vive les joies et les plaisirs! A bas les
+grandes passions et les sévères vertus!”
+
+She looked for an answer to this tirade. I gave none.
+
+“J’aime mon beau Colonel,” she went on: “je n’aimerai jamais son rival.
+Je ne serai jamais femme de bourgeois, moi!”
+
+I now signified that it was imperatively necessary my apartment should
+be relieved of the honour of her presence: she went away laughing.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+DR JOHN.
+
+
+Madame Beck was a most consistent character; forbearing with all the
+world, and tender to no part of it. Her own children drew her into no
+deviation from the even tenor of her stoic calm. She was solicitous
+about her family, vigilant for their interests and physical well-being;
+but she never seemed to know the wish to take her little children upon
+her lap, to press their rosy lips with her own, to gather them in a
+genial embrace, to shower on them softly the benignant caress, the
+loving word.
+
+I have watched her sometimes sitting in the garden, viewing the little
+bees afar off, as they walked in a distant alley with Trinette, their
+_bonne_; in her mien spoke care and prudence. I know she often pondered
+anxiously what she called “leur avenir;” but if the youngest, a puny
+and delicate but engaging child, chancing to spy her, broke from its
+nurse, and toddling down the walk, came all eager and laughing and
+panting to clasp her knee, Madame would just calmly put out one hand,
+so as to prevent inconvenient concussion from the child’s sudden onset:
+“Prends garde, mon enfant!” she would say unmoved, patiently permit it
+to stand near her a few moments, and then, without smile or kiss, or
+endearing syllable, rise and lead it back to Trinette.
+
+Her demeanour to the eldest girl was equally characteristic in another
+way. This was a vicious child. “Quelle peste que cette Désirée! Quel
+poison que cet enfant là!” were the expressions dedicated to her, alike
+in kitchen and in schoolroom. Amongst her other endowments she boasted
+an exquisite skill in the art, of provocation, sometimes driving her
+_bonne_ and the servants almost wild. She would steal to their attics,
+open their drawers and boxes, wantonly tear their best caps and soil
+their best shawls; she would watch her opportunity to get at the buffet
+of the salle-à-manger, where she would smash articles of porcelain or
+glass—or to the cupboard of the storeroom, where she would plunder the
+preserves, drink the sweet wine, break jars and bottles, and so
+contrive as to throw the onus of suspicion on the cook and the
+kitchen-maid. All this when Madame saw, and of which when she received
+report, her sole observation, uttered with matchless serenity, was:
+
+“Désirée a besoin d’une surveillance toute particulière.” Accordingly
+she kept this promising olive-branch a good deal at her side. Never
+once, I believe, did she tell her faithfully of her faults, explain the
+evil of such habits, and show the results which must thence ensue.
+Surveillance must work the whole cure. It failed of course. Désirée was
+kept in some measure from the servants, but she teased and pillaged her
+mamma instead. Whatever belonging to Madame’s work-table or toilet she
+could lay her hands on, she stole and hid. Madame saw all this, but she
+still pretended not to see: she had not rectitude of soul to confront
+the child with her vices. When an article disappeared whose value
+rendered restitution necessary, she would profess to think that Désirée
+had taken it away in play, and beg her to restore it. Désirée was not
+to be so cheated: she had learned to bring falsehood to the aid of
+theft, and would deny having touched the brooch, ring, or scissors.
+Carrying on the hollow system, the mother would calmly assume an air of
+belief, and afterwards ceaselessly watch and dog the child till she
+tracked her: to her hiding-places—some hole in the garden-wall—some
+chink or cranny in garret or out-house. This done, Madame would send
+Désirée out for a walk with her _bonne_, and profit by her absence to
+rob the robber. Désirée proved herself the true daughter of her astute
+parent, by never suffering either her countenance or manner to betray
+the least sign of mortification on discovering the loss.
+
+The second child, Fifine, was said to be like its dead father.
+Certainly, though the mother had given it her healthy frame, her blue
+eye and ruddy cheek, not from her was derived its moral being. It was
+an honest, gleeful little soul: a passionate, warm-tempered, bustling
+creature it was too, and of the sort likely to blunder often into
+perils and difficulties. One day it bethought itself to fall from top
+to bottom of a steep flight of stone steps; and when Madame, hearing
+the noise (she always heard every noise), issued from the
+salle-à-manger and picked it up, she said quietly,—“Cet enfant a un os
+cassé.”
+
+At first we hoped this was not the case. It was, however, but too true:
+one little plump arm hung powerless.
+
+“Let Meess” (meaning me) “take her,” said Madame; “et qu’on aille tout
+de suite chercher un fiacre.”
+
+In a _fiacre_ she promptly, but with admirable coolness and
+self-possession, departed to fetch a surgeon.
+
+It appeared she did not find the family-surgeon at home; but that
+mattered not: she sought until she laid her hand on a substitute to her
+mind, and brought him back with her. Meantime I had cut the child’s
+sleeve from its arm, undressed and put it to bed.
+
+We none of us, I suppose (by _we_ I mean the bonne, the cook, the
+portress, and myself, all which personages were now gathered in the
+small and heated chamber), looked very scrutinizingly at the new doctor
+when he came into the room. I, at least, was taken up with endeavouring
+to soothe Fifine; whose cries (for she had good lungs) were appalling
+to hear. These cries redoubled in intensity as the stranger approached
+her bed; when he took her up, “Let alone!” she cried passionately, in
+her broken English (for she spoke English as did the other children).
+“I will not you: I will Dr. Pillule!”
+
+“And Dr. Pillule is my very good friend,” was the answer, in perfect
+English; “but he is busy at a place three leagues off, and I am come in
+his stead. So now, when we get a little calmer, we must commence
+business; and we will soon have that unlucky little arm bandaged and in
+right order.”
+
+Hereupon he called for a glass of _eau sucrée_, fed her with some
+teaspoonfuls of the sweet liquid (Fifine was a frank gourmande; anybody
+could win her heart through her palate), promised her more when the
+operation should be over, and promptly went to work. Some assistance
+being needed, he demanded it of the cook, a robust, strong-armed woman;
+but she, the portress, and the nurse instantly fled. I did not like to
+touch that small, tortured limb, but thinking there was no alternative,
+my hand was already extended to do what was requisite. I was
+anticipated; Madame Beck had put out her own hand: hers was steady
+while mine trembled.
+
+“Ca vaudra mieux,” said the doctor, turning from me to her.
+
+He showed wisdom in his choice. Mine would have been feigned stoicism,
+forced fortitude. Hers was neither forced nor feigned.
+
+“Merci, Madame; très bien, fort bien!” said the operator when he had
+finished. “Voilà un sang-froid bien opportun, et qui vaut mille élans
+de sensibilité déplacée.”
+
+He was pleased with her firmness, she with his compliment. It was
+likely, too, that his whole general appearance, his voice, mien, and
+manner, wrought impressions in his favour. Indeed, when you looked well
+at him, and when a lamp was brought in—for it was evening and now
+waxing dusk—you saw that, unless Madame Beck had been less than woman,
+it could not well be otherwise. This young doctor (he _was_ young) had
+no common aspect. His stature looked imposingly tall in that little
+chamber, and amidst that group of Dutch-made women; his profile was
+clear, fine and expressive: perhaps his eye glanced from face to face
+rather too vividly, too quickly, and too often; but it had a most
+pleasant character, and so had his mouth; his chin was full, cleft,
+Grecian, and perfect. As to his smile, one could not in a hurry make up
+one’s mind as to the descriptive epithet it merited; there was
+something in it that pleased, but something too that brought surging up
+into the mind all one’s foibles and weak points: all that could lay one
+open to a laugh. Yet Fifine liked this doubtful smile, and thought the
+owner genial: much as he had hurt her, she held out her hand to bid him
+a friendly good-night. He patted the little hand kindly, and then he
+and Madame went down-stairs together; she talking in her highest tide
+of spirits and volubility, he listening with an air of good-natured
+amenity, dashed with that unconscious roguish archness I find it
+difficult to describe.
+
+I noticed that though he spoke French well, he spoke English better; he
+had, too, an English complexion, eyes, and form. I noticed more. As he
+passed me in leaving the room, turning his face in my direction one
+moment—not to address me, but to speak to Madame, yet so standing, that
+I almost necessarily looked up at him—a recollection which had been
+struggling to form in my memory, since the first moment I heard his
+voice, started up perfected. This was the very gentleman to whom I had
+spoken at the bureau; who had helped me in the matter of the trunk; who
+had been my guide through the dark, wet park. Listening, as he passed
+down the long vestibule out into the street, I recognised his very
+tread: it was the same firm and equal stride I had followed under the
+dripping trees.
+
+It was to be concluded that this young surgeon-physician’s first visit
+to the Rue Fossette would be the last. The respectable Dr. Pillule
+being expected home the next day, there appeared no reason why his
+temporary substitute should again represent him; but the Fates had
+written their decree to the contrary.
+
+Dr. Pillule had been summoned to see a rich old hypochondriac at the
+antique university town of Bouquin-Moisi, and upon his prescribing
+change of air and travel as remedies, he was retained to accompany the
+timid patient on a tour of some weeks; it but remained, therefore, for
+the new doctor to continue his attendance at the Rue Fossette.
+
+I often saw him when he came; for Madame would not trust the little
+invalid to Trinette, but required me to spend much of my time in the
+nursery. I think he was skilful. Fifine recovered rapidly under his
+care, yet even her convalescence did not hasten his dismissal. Destiny
+and Madame Beck seemed in league, and both had ruled that he should
+make deliberate acquaintance with the vestibule, the private staircase
+and upper chambers of the Rue Fossette.
+
+No sooner did Fifine emerge from his hands than Désirée declared
+herself ill. That possessed child had a genius for simulation, and
+captivated by the attentions and indulgences of a sick-room, she came
+to the conclusion that an illness would perfectly accommodate her
+tastes, and took her bed accordingly. She acted well, and her mother
+still better; for while the whole case was transparent to Madame Beck
+as the day, she treated it with an astonishingly well-assured air of
+gravity and good faith.
+
+What surprised me was, that Dr. John (so the young Englishman had
+taught Fifine to call him, and we all took from her the habit of
+addressing him by this name, till it became an established custom, and
+he was known by no other in the Rue Fossette)—that Dr. John consented
+tacitly to adopt Madame’s tactics, and to fall in with her manoeuvres.
+He betrayed, indeed, a period of comic doubt, cast one or two rapid
+glances from the child to the mother, indulged in an interval of
+self-consultation, but finally resigned himself with a good grace to
+play his part in the farce. Désirée eat like a raven, gambolled day and
+night in her bed, pitched tents with the sheets and blankets, lounged
+like a Turk amidst pillows and bolsters, diverted herself with throwing
+her shoes at her bonne and grimacing at her sisters—over-flowed, in
+short, with unmerited health and evil spirits; only languishing when
+her mamma and the physician paid their diurnal visit. Madame Beck, I
+knew, was glad, at any price, to have her daughter in bed out of the
+way of mischief; but I wondered that Dr. John did not tire of the
+business.
+
+Every day, on this mere pretext of a motive, he gave punctual
+attendance; Madame always received him with the same empressement, the
+same sunshine for himself, the same admirably counterfeited air of
+concern for her child. Dr. John wrote harmless prescriptions for the
+patient, and viewed her mother with a shrewdly sparkling eye. Madame
+caught his rallying looks without resenting them—she had too much good
+sense for that. Supple as the young doctor seemed, one could not
+despise him—this pliant part was evidently not adopted in the design to
+curry favour with his employer: while he liked his office at the
+pensionnat, and lingered strangely about the Rue Fossette, he was
+independent, almost careless in his carriage there; and yet, too, he
+was often thoughtful and preoccupied.
+
+It was not perhaps my business to observe the mystery of his bearing,
+or search out its origin or aim; but, placed as I was, I could hardly
+help it. He laid himself open to my observation, according to my
+presence in the room just that degree of notice and consequence a
+person of my exterior habitually expects: that is to say, about what is
+given to unobtrusive articles of furniture, chairs of ordinary joiner’s
+work, and carpets of no striking pattern. Often, while waiting for
+Madame, he would muse, smile, watch, or listen like a man who thinks
+himself alone. I, meantime, was free to puzzle over his countenance and
+movements, and wonder what could be the meaning of that peculiar
+interest and attachment—all mixed up with doubt and strangeness, and
+inexplicably ruled by some presiding spell—which wedded him to this
+demi-convent, secluded in the built-up core of a capital. He, I
+believe, never remembered that I had eyes in my head, much less a brain
+behind them.
+
+Nor would he ever have found this out, but that one day, while he sat
+in the sunshine and I was observing the colouring of his hair,
+whiskers, and complexion—the whole being of such a tone as a strong
+light brings out with somewhat perilous force (indeed I recollect I was
+driven to compare his beamy head in my thoughts to that of the “golden
+image” which Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up), an idea new, sudden,
+and startling, riveted my attention with an over-mastering strength and
+power of attraction. I know not to this day how I looked at him: the
+force of surprise, and also of conviction, made me forget myself; and I
+only recovered wonted consciousness when I saw that his notice was
+arrested, and that it had caught my movement in a clear little oval
+mirror fixed in the side of the window recess—by the aid of which
+reflector Madame often secretly spied persons walking in the garden
+below. Though of so gay and sanguine a temperament, he was not without
+a certain nervous sensitiveness which made him ill at ease under a
+direct, inquiring gaze. On surprising me thus, he turned and said, in a
+tone which, though courteous, had just so much dryness in it as to mark
+a shade of annoyance, as well as to give to what was said the character
+of rebuke, “Mademoiselle does not spare me: I am not vain enough to
+fancy that it is my merits which attract her attention; it must then be
+some defect. Dare I ask—what?”
+
+I was confounded, as the reader may suppose, yet not with an
+irrecoverable confusion; being conscious that it was from no emotion of
+incautious admiration, nor yet in a spirit of unjustifiable
+inquisitiveness, that I had incurred this reproof. I might have cleared
+myself on the spot, but would not. I did not speak. I was not in the
+habit of speaking to him. Suffering him, then, to think what he chose
+and accuse me of what he would, I resumed some work I had dropped, and
+kept my head bent over it during the remainder of his stay. There is a
+perverse mood of the mind which is rather soothed than irritated by
+misconstruction; and in quarters where we can never be rightly known,
+we take pleasure, I think, in being consummately ignored. What honest
+man, on being casually taken for a housebreaker, does not feel rather
+tickled than vexed at the mistake?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+THE PORTRESS’S CABINET.
+
+
+It was summer and very hot. Georgette, the youngest of Madame Beck’s
+children, took a fever. Désirée, suddenly cured of her ailments, was,
+together with Fifine, packed off to Bonne-Maman, in the country, by way
+of precaution against infection. Medical aid was now really needed, and
+Madame, choosing to ignore the return of Dr. Pillule, who had been at
+home a week, conjured his English rival to continue his visits. One or
+two of the pensionnaires complained of headache, and in other respects
+seemed slightly to participate in Georgette’s ailment. “Now, at last,”
+I thought, “Dr. Pillule must be recalled: the prudent directress will
+never venture to permit the attendance of so young a man on the
+pupils.”
+
+The directress was very prudent, but she could also be intrepidly
+venturous. She actually introduced Dr. John to the school-division of
+the premises, and established him in attendance on the proud and
+handsome Blanche de Melcy, and the vain, flirting Angélique, her
+friend. Dr. John, I thought, testified a certain gratification at this
+mark of confidence; and if discretion of bearing could have justified
+the step, it would by him have been amply justified. Here, however, in
+this land of convents and confessionals, such a presence as his was not
+to be suffered with impunity in a “pensionnat de demoiselles.” The
+school gossiped, the kitchen whispered, the town caught the rumour,
+parents wrote letters and paid visits of remonstrance. Madame, had she
+been weak, would now have been lost: a dozen rival educational houses
+were ready to improve this false step—if false step it were—to her
+ruin; but Madame was not weak, and little Jesuit though she might be,
+yet I clapped the hands of my heart, and with its voice cried “brava!”
+as I watched her able bearing, her skilled management, her temper and
+her firmness on this occasion.
+
+She met the alarmed parents with a good-humoured, easy grace for nobody
+matched her in, I know not whether to say the possession or the
+assumption of a certain “rondeur et franchise de bonne femme;” which on
+various occasions gained the point aimed at with instant and complete
+success, where severe gravity and serious reasoning would probably have
+failed.
+
+“Ce pauvre Docteur Jean!” she would say, chuckling and rubbing joyously
+her fat little white hands; “ce cher jeune homme! le meilleur créature
+du monde!” and go on to explain how she happened to be employing him
+for her own children, who were so fond of him they would scream
+themselves into fits at the thought of another doctor; how, where she
+had confidence for her own, she thought it natural to repose trust for
+others, and au reste, it was only the most temporary expedient in the
+world; Blanche and Angélique had the migraine; Dr. John had written a
+prescription; voilà tout!
+
+The parents’ mouths were closed. Blanche and Angélique saved her all
+remaining trouble by chanting loud duets in their physician’s praise;
+the other pupils echoed them, unanimously declaring that when they were
+ill they would have Dr. John and nobody else; and Madame laughed, and
+the parents laughed too. The Labassecouriens must have a large organ of
+philoprogenitiveness: at least the indulgence of offspring is carried
+by them to excessive lengths; the law of most households being the
+children’s will. Madame now got credit for having acted on this
+occasion in a spirit of motherly partiality: she came off with flying
+colours; people liked her as a directress better than ever.
+
+To this day I never fully understood why she thus risked her interest
+for the sake of Dr. John. What people said, of course I know well: the
+whole house—pupils, teachers, servants included—affirmed that she was
+going to marry him. So they had settled it; difference of age seemed to
+make no obstacle in their eyes: it was to be so.
+
+It must be admitted that appearances did not wholly discountenance this
+idea; Madame seemed so bent on retaining his services, so oblivious of
+her former protégé, Pillule. She made, too, such a point of personally
+receiving his visits, and was so unfailingly cheerful, blithe, and
+benignant in her manner to him. Moreover, she paid, about this time,
+marked attention to dress: the morning dishabille, the nightcap and
+shawl, were discarded; Dr. John’s early visits always found her with
+auburn braids all nicely arranged, silk dress trimly fitted on, neat
+laced brodequins in lieu of slippers: in short the whole toilette
+complete as a model, and fresh as a flower. I scarcely think, however,
+that her intention in this went further than just to show a very
+handsome man that she was not quite a plain woman; and plain she was
+not. Without beauty of feature or elegance of form, she pleased.
+Without youth and its gay graces, she cheered. One never tired of
+seeing her: she was never monotonous, or insipid, or colourless, or
+flat. Her unfaded hair, her eye with its temperate blue light, her
+cheek with its wholesome fruit-like bloom—these things pleased in
+moderation, but with constancy.
+
+Had she, indeed, floating visions of adopting Dr. John as a husband,
+taking him to her well-furnished home, endowing him with her savings,
+which were said to amount to a moderate competency, and making him
+comfortable for the rest of his life? Did Dr. John suspect her of such
+visions? I have met him coming out of her presence with a mischievous
+half-smile about his lips, and in his eyes a look as of masculine
+vanity elate and tickled. With all his good looks and good-nature, he
+was not perfect; he must have been very imperfect if he roguishly
+encouraged aims he never intended to be successful. But did he not
+intend them to be successful? People said he had no money, that he was
+wholly dependent upon his profession. Madame—though perhaps some
+fourteen years his senior—was yet the sort of woman never to grow old,
+never to wither, never to break down. They certainly were on good
+terms. _He_ perhaps was not in love; but how many people ever _do_
+love, or at least marry for love, in this world. We waited the end.
+
+For what _he_ waited, I do not know, nor for what he watched; but the
+peculiarity of his manner, his expectant, vigilant, absorbed, eager
+look, never wore off: it rather intensified. He had never been quite
+within the compass of my penetration, and I think he ranged farther and
+farther beyond it.
+
+One morning little Georgette had been more feverish and consequently
+more peevish; she was crying, and would not be pacified. I thought a
+particular draught ordered, disagreed with her, and I doubted whether
+it ought to be continued; I waited impatiently for the doctor’s coming
+in order to consult him.
+
+The door-bell rang, he was admitted; I felt sure of this, for I heard
+his voice addressing the portress. It was his custom to mount straight
+to the nursery, taking about three degrees of the staircase at once,
+and coming upon us like a cheerful surprise. Five minutes
+elapsed—ten—and I saw and heard nothing of him. What could he be doing?
+Possibly waiting in the corridor below. Little Georgette still piped
+her plaintive wail, appealing to me by her familiar term, “Minnie,
+Minnie, me very poorly!” till my heart ached. I descended to ascertain
+why he did not come. The corridor was empty. Whither was he vanished?
+Was he with Madame in the _salle-à-manger?_ Impossible: I had left her
+but a short time since, dressing in her own chamber. I listened. Three
+pupils were just then hard at work practising in three proximate
+rooms—the dining-room and the greater and lesser drawing-rooms, between
+which and the corridor there was but the portress’s cabinet
+communicating with the salons, and intended originally for a boudoir.
+Farther off, at a fourth instrument in the oratory, a whole class of a
+dozen or more were taking a singing lesson, and just then joining in a
+“barcarole” (I think they called it), whereof I yet remember these
+words “fraîchë,” “brisë,” and “Venisë.” Under these circumstances, what
+could I hear? A great deal, certainly; had it only been to the purpose.
+
+Yes; I heard a giddy treble laugh in the above-mentioned little
+cabinet, close by the door of which I stood—that door half-unclosed; a
+man’s voice in a soft, deep, pleading tone, uttered some, words,
+whereof I only caught the adjuration, “For God’s sake!” Then, after a
+second’s pause, forth issued Dr. John, his eye full shining, but not
+with either joy or triumph; his fair English cheek high-coloured; a
+baffled, tortured, anxious, and yet a tender meaning on his brow.
+
+The open door served me as a screen; but had I been full in his way, I
+believe he would have passed without seeing me. Some mortification,
+some strong vexation had hold of his soul: or rather, to write my
+impressions now as I received them at the time I should say some
+sorrow, some sense of injustice. I did not so much think his pride was
+hurt, as that his affections had been wounded—cruelly wounded, it
+seemed to me. But who was the torturer? What being in that house had
+him so much in her power? Madame I believed to be in her chamber; the
+room whence he had stepped was dedicated to the portress’s sole use;
+and she, Rosine Matou, an unprincipled though pretty little French
+grisette, airy, fickle, dressy, vain, and mercenary—it was not, surely,
+to _her_ hand he owed the ordeal through which he seemed to have
+passed?
+
+But while I pondered, her voice, clear, though somewhat sharp, broke
+out in a lightsome French song, trilling through the door still ajar: I
+glanced in, doubting my senses. There at the table she sat in a smart
+dress of “jaconas rose,” trimming a tiny blond cap: not a living thing
+save herself was in the room, except indeed some gold fish in a glass
+globe, some flowers in pots, and a broad July sunbeam.
+
+Here was a problem: but I must go up-stairs to ask about the medicine.
+
+Dr. John sat in a chair at Georgette’s bedside; Madame stood before
+him; the little patient had been examined and soothed, and now lay
+composed in her crib. Madame Beck, as I entered, was discussing the
+physician’s own health, remarking on some real or fancied change in his
+looks, charging him with over-work, and recommending rest and change of
+air. He listened good-naturedly, but with laughing indifference,
+telling her that she was “trop bonne,” and that he felt perfectly well.
+Madame appealed to me—Dr. John following her movement with a slow
+glance which seemed to express languid surprise at reference being made
+to a quarter so insignificant.
+
+“What do you think, Miss Lucie?” asked Madame. “Is he not paler and
+thinner?”
+
+It was very seldom that I uttered more than monosyllables in Dr. John’s
+presence; he was the kind of person with whom I was likely ever to
+remain the neutral, passive thing he thought me. Now, however, I took
+licence to answer in a phrase: and a phrase I purposely made quite
+significant.
+
+“He looks ill at this moment; but perhaps it is owing to some temporary
+cause: Dr. John may have been vexed or harassed.” I cannot tell how he
+took this speech, as I never sought his face for information. Georgette
+here began to ask me in her broken English if she might have a glass of
+_eau sucrée_. I answered her in English. For the first time, I fancy,
+he noticed that I spoke his language; hitherto he had always taken me
+for a foreigner, addressing me as “Mademoiselle,” and giving in French
+the requisite directions about the children’s treatment. He seemed on
+the point of making a remark; but thinking better of it, held his
+tongue.
+
+Madame recommenced advising him; he shook his head, laughing, rose and
+bid her good-morning, with courtesy, but still with the regardless air
+of one whom too much unsolicited attention was surfeiting and spoiling.
+
+When he was gone, Madame dropped into the chair he had just left; she
+rested her chin in her hand; all that was animated and amiable vanished
+from her face: she looked stony and stern, almost mortified and morose.
+She sighed; a single, but a deep sigh. A loud bell rang for
+morning-school. She got up; as she passed a dressing-table with a glass
+upon it, she looked at her reflected image. One single white hair
+streaked her nut-brown tresses; she plucked it out with a shudder. In
+the full summer daylight, her face, though it still had the colour,
+could plainly be seen to have lost the texture of youth; and then,
+where were youth’s contours? Ah, Madame! wise as you were, even _you_
+knew weakness. Never had I pitied Madame before, but my heart softened
+towards her, when she turned darkly from the glass. A calamity had come
+upon her. That hag Disappointment was greeting her with a grisly
+“All-hail,” and her soul rejected the intimacy.
+
+But Rosine! My bewilderment there surpasses description. I embraced
+five opportunities of passing her cabinet that day, with a view to
+contemplating her charms, and finding out the secret of their
+influence. She was pretty, young, and wore a well-made dress. All very
+good points, and, I suppose, amply sufficient to account, in any
+philosophic mind, for any amount of agony and distraction in a young
+man, like Dr. John. Still, I could not help forming half a wish that
+the said doctor were my brother; or at least that he had a sister or a
+mother who would kindly sermonize him. I say _half_ a wish; I broke it,
+and flung it away before it became a whole one, discovering in good
+time its exquisite folly. “Somebody,” I argued, “might as well
+sermonize Madame about her young physician: and what good would that
+do?”
+
+I believe Madame sermonized herself. She did not behave weakly, or make
+herself in any shape ridiculous. It is true she had neither strong
+feelings to overcome, nor tender feelings by which to be miserably
+pained. It is true likewise that she had an important avocation, a real
+business to fill her time, divert her thoughts, and divide her
+interest. It is especially true that she possessed a genuine good sense
+which is not given to all women nor to all men; and by dint of these
+combined advantages she behaved wisely—she behaved well. Brava! once
+more, Madame Beck. I saw you matched against an Apollyon of a
+predilection; you fought a good fight, and you overcame!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+THE CASKET.
+
+
+Behind the house at the Rue Fossette there was a garden—large,
+considering that it lay in the heart of a city, and to my recollection
+at this day it seems pleasant: but time, like distance, lends to
+certain scenes an influence so softening; and where all is stone
+around, blank wall and hot pavement, how precious seems one shrub, how
+lovely an enclosed and planted spot of ground!
+
+There went a tradition that Madame Beck’s house had in old days been a
+convent. That in years gone by—how long gone by I cannot tell, but I
+think some centuries—before the city had over-spread this quarter, and
+when it was tilled ground and avenue, and such deep and leafy seclusion
+as ought to embosom a religious house—that something had happened on
+this site which, rousing fear and inflicting horror, had left to the
+place the inheritance of a ghost-story. A vague tale went of a black
+and white nun, sometimes, on some night or nights of the year, seen in
+some part of this vicinage. The ghost must have been built out some
+ages ago, for there were houses all round now; but certain
+convent-relics, in the shape of old and huge fruit-trees, yet
+consecrated the spot; and, at the foot of one—a Methuselah of a
+pear-tree, dead, all but a few boughs which still faithfully renewed
+their perfumed snow in spring, and their honey-sweet pendants in
+autumn—you saw, in scraping away the mossy earth between the half-bared
+roots, a glimpse of slab, smooth, hard, and black. The legend went,
+unconfirmed and unaccredited, but still propagated, that this was the
+portal of a vault, imprisoning deep beneath that ground, on whose
+surface grass grew and flowers bloomed, the bones of a girl whom a
+monkish conclave of the drear middle ages had here buried alive for
+some sin against her vow. Her shadow it was that tremblers had feared,
+through long generations after her poor frame was dust; her black robe
+and white veil that, for timid eyes, moonlight and shade had mocked, as
+they fluctuated in the night-wind through the garden-thicket.
+
+Independently of romantic rubbish, however, that old garden had its
+charms. On summer mornings I used to rise early, to enjoy them alone;
+on summer evenings, to linger solitary, to keep tryste with the rising
+moon, or taste one kiss of the evening breeze, or fancy rather than
+feel the freshness of dew descending. The turf was verdant, the
+gravelled walks were white; sun-bright nasturtiums clustered beautiful
+about the roots of the doddered orchard giants. There was a large
+berceau, above which spread the shade of an acacia; there was a
+smaller, more sequestered bower, nestled in the vines which ran all
+along a high and grey wall, and gathered their tendrils in a knot of
+beauty, and hung their clusters in loving profusion about the favoured
+spot where jasmine and ivy met and married them.
+
+Doubtless at high noon, in the broad, vulgar middle of the day, when
+Madame Beck’s large school turned out rampant, and externes and
+pensionnaires were spread abroad, vying with the denizens of the boys’
+college close at hand, in the brazen exercise of their lungs and
+limbs—doubtless _then_ the garden was a trite, trodden-down place
+enough. But at sunset or the hour of _salut_, when the externes were
+gone home, and the boarders quiet at their studies; pleasant was it
+then to stray down the peaceful alleys, and hear the bells of St. Jean
+Baptiste peal out with their sweet, soft, exalted sound.
+
+I was walking thus one evening, and had been detained farther within
+the verge of twilight than usual, by the still-deepening calm, the
+mellow coolness, the fragrant breathing with which flowers no sunshine
+could win now answered the persuasion of the dew. I saw by a light in
+the oratory window that the Catholic household were then gathered to
+evening prayer—a rite, from attendance on which, I now and then, as a
+Protestant, exempted myself.
+
+“One moment longer,” whispered solitude and the summer moon, “stay with
+us: all is truly quiet now; for another quarter of an hour your
+presence will not be missed: the day’s heat and bustle have tired you;
+enjoy these precious minutes.”
+
+The windowless backs of houses built in this garden, and in particular
+the whole of one side, was skirted by the rear of a long line of
+premises—being the boarding-houses of the neighbouring college. This
+rear, however, was all blank stone, with the exception of certain attic
+loopholes high up, opening from the sleeping-rooms of the
+women-servants, and also one casement in a lower story said to mark the
+chamber or study of a master. But, though thus secure, an alley, which
+ran parallel with the very high wall on that side the garden, was
+forbidden to be entered by the pupils. It was called indeed “l’allée
+défendue,” and any girl setting foot there would have rendered herself
+liable to as severe a penalty as the mild rules of Madame Beck’s
+establishment permitted. Teachers might indeed go there with impunity;
+but as the walk was narrow, and the neglected shrubs were grown very
+thick and close on each side, weaving overhead a roof of branch and
+leaf which the sun’s rays penetrated but in rare chequers, this alley
+was seldom entered even during day, and after dusk was carefully
+shunned.
+
+From the first I was tempted to make an exception to this rule of
+avoidance: the seclusion, the very gloom of the walk attracted me. For
+a long time the fear of seeming singular scared me away; but by
+degrees, as people became accustomed to me and my habits, and to such
+shades of peculiarity as were engrained in my nature—shades, certainly
+not striking enough to interest, and perhaps not prominent enough to
+offend, but born in and with me, and no more to be parted with than my
+identity—by slow degrees I became a frequenter of this strait and
+narrow path. I made myself gardener of some tintless flowers that grew
+between its closely-ranked shrubs; I cleared away the relics of past
+autumns, choking up a rustic seat at the far end. Borrowing of Goton,
+the cuisinière, a pail of water and a scrubbing-brush, I made this seat
+clean. Madame saw me at work and smiled approbation: whether sincerely
+or not I don’t know; but she _seemed_ sincere.
+
+“Voyez-vous,” cried she, “comme elle est propre, cette demoiselle
+Lucie? Vous aimez donc cette allée, meess?”
+
+“Yes,” I said, “it is quiet and shady.”
+
+“C’est juste,” cried she with an air of bonté; and she kindly
+recommended me to confine myself to it as much as I chose, saying, that
+as I was not charged with the surveillance, I need not trouble myself
+to walk with the pupils: only I might permit her children to come
+there, to talk English with me.
+
+On the night in question, I was sitting on the hidden seat reclaimed
+from fungi and mould, listening to what seemed the far-off sounds of
+the city. Far off, in truth, they were not: this school was in the
+city’s centre; hence, it was but five minutes’ walk to the park, scarce
+ten to buildings of palatial splendour. Quite near were wide streets
+brightly lit, teeming at this moment with life: carriages were rolling
+through them to balls or to the opera. The same hour which tolled
+curfew for our convent, which extinguished each lamp, and dropped the
+curtain round each couch, rang for the gay city about us the summons to
+festal enjoyment. Of this contrast I thought not, however: gay
+instincts my nature had few; ball or opera I had never seen; and though
+often I had heard them described, and even wished to see them, it was
+not the wish of one who hopes to partake a pleasure if she could only
+reach it—who feels fitted to shine in some bright distant sphere, could
+she but thither win her way; it was no yearning to attain, no hunger to
+taste; only the calm desire to look on a new thing.
+
+A moon was in the sky, not a full moon, but a young crescent. I saw her
+through a space in the boughs overhead. She and the stars, visible
+beside her, were no strangers where all else was strange: my childhood
+knew them. I had seen that golden sign with the dark globe in its curve
+leaning back on azure, beside an old thorn at the top of an old field,
+in Old England, in long past days, just as it now leaned back beside a
+stately spire in this continental capital.
+
+Oh, my childhood! I had feelings: passive as I lived, little as I
+spoke, cold as I looked, when I thought of past days, I _could_ feel.
+About the present, it was better to be stoical; about the future—such a
+future as mine—to be dead. And in catalepsy and a dead trance, I
+studiously held the quick of my nature.
+
+At that time, I well remember whatever could excite—certain accidents
+of the weather, for instance, were almost dreaded by me, because they
+woke the being I was always lulling, and stirred up a craving cry I
+could not satisfy. One night a thunder-storm broke; a sort of hurricane
+shook us in our beds: the Catholics rose in panic and prayed to their
+saints. As for me, the tempest took hold of me with tyranny: I was
+roughly roused and obliged to live. I got up and dressed myself, and
+creeping outside the casement close by my bed, sat on its ledge, with
+my feet on the roof of a lower adjoining building. It was wet, it was
+wild, it was pitch-dark. Within the dormitory they gathered round the
+night-lamp in consternation, praying loud. I could not go in: too
+resistless was the delight of staying with the wild hour, black and
+full of thunder, pealing out such an ode as language never delivered to
+man—too terribly glorious, the spectacle of clouds, split and pierced
+by white and blinding bolts.
+
+I did long, achingly, then and for four and twenty hours afterwards,
+for something to fetch me out of my present existence, and lead me
+upwards and onwards. This longing, and all of a similar kind, it was
+necessary to knock on the head; which I did, figuratively, after the
+manner of Jael to Sisera, driving a nail through their temples. Unlike
+Sisera, they did not die: they were but transiently stunned, and at
+intervals would turn on the nail with a rebellious wrench: then did the
+temples bleed, and the brain thrill to its core.
+
+To-night, I was not so mutinous, nor so miserable. My Sisera lay quiet
+in the tent, slumbering; and if his pain ached through his slumbers,
+something like an angel—the ideal—knelt near, dropping balm on the
+soothed temples, holding before the sealed eyes a magic glass, of which
+the sweet, solemn visions were repeated in dreams, and shedding a
+reflex from her moonlight wings and robe over the transfixed sleeper,
+over the tent threshold, over all the landscape lying without. Jael,
+the stern woman; sat apart, relenting somewhat over her captive; but
+more prone to dwell on the faithful expectation of Heber coming home.
+By which words I mean that the cool peace and dewy sweetness of the
+night filled me with a mood of hope: not hope on any definite point,
+but a general sense of encouragement and heart-ease.
+
+Should not such a mood, so sweet, so tranquil, so unwonted, have been
+the harbinger of good? Alas, no good came of it! I Presently the rude
+Real burst coarsely in—all evil grovelling and repellent as she too
+often is.
+
+Amid the intense stillness of that pile of stone overlooking the walk,
+the trees, the high wall, I heard a sound; a casement [all the windows
+here are casements, opening on hinges] creaked. Ere I had time to look
+up and mark where, in which story, or by whom unclosed, a tree overhead
+shook, as if struck by a missile; some object dropped prone at my feet.
+
+Nine was striking by St. Jean Baptiste’s clock; day was fading, but it
+was not dark: the crescent moon aided little, but the deep gilding of
+that point in heaven where the sun beamed last, and the crystalline
+clearness of a wide space above, sustained the summer twilight; even in
+my dark walk I could, by approaching an opening, have managed to read
+print of a small type. Easy was it to see then that the missile was a
+box, a small box of white and coloured ivory; its loose lid opened in
+my hand; violets lay within, violets smothering a closely folded bit of
+pink paper, a note, superscribed, “Pour la robe grise.” I wore indeed a
+dress of French grey.
+
+Good. Was this a billet-doux? A thing I had heard of, but hitherto had
+not had the honour of seeing or handling. Was it this sort of commodity
+I held between my finger and thumb at this moment?
+
+Scarcely: I did not dream it for a moment. Suitor or admirer my very
+thoughts had not conceived. All the teachers had dreams of some lover;
+one (but she was naturally of a credulous turn) believed in a future
+husband. All the pupils above fourteen knew of some prospective
+bridegroom; two or three were already affianced by their parents, and
+had been so from childhood: but into the realm of feelings and hopes
+which such prospects open, my speculations, far less my presumptions,
+had never once had warrant to intrude. If the other teachers went into
+town, or took a walk on the boulevards, or only attended mass, they
+were very certain (according to the accounts brought back) to meet with
+some individual of the “opposite sex,” whose rapt, earnest gaze assured
+them of their power to strike and to attract. I can’t say that my
+experience tallied with theirs, in this respect. I went to church and I
+took walks, and am very well convinced that nobody minded me. There was
+not a girl or woman in the Rue Fossette who could not, and did not
+testify to having received an admiring beam from our young doctor’s
+blue eyes at one time or other. I am obliged, however humbling it may
+sound, to except myself: as far as I was concerned, those blue eyes
+were guiltless, and calm as the sky, to whose tint theirs seemed akin.
+So it came to pass that I heard the others talk, wondered often at
+their gaiety, security, and self-satisfaction, but did not trouble
+myself to look up and gaze along the path they seemed so certain of
+treading. This then was no billet-doux; and it was in settled
+conviction to the contrary that I quietly opened it. Thus it ran—I
+translate:—
+
+“Angel of my dreams! A thousand, thousand thanks for the promise kept:
+scarcely did I venture to hope its fulfilment. I believed you, indeed,
+to be half in jest; and then you seemed to think the enterprise beset
+with such danger—the hour so untimely, the alley so strictly
+secluded—often, you said, haunted by that dragon, the English
+teacher—une véritable bégueule Britannique à ce que vous dites—espèce
+de monstre, brusque et rude comme un vieux caporal de grenadiers, et
+revêche comme une religieuse” (the reader will excuse my modesty in
+allowing this flattering sketch of my amiable self to retain the slight
+veil of the original tongue). “You are aware,” went on this precious
+effusion, “that little Gustave, on account of his illness, has been
+removed to a master’s chamber—that favoured chamber, whose lattice
+overlooks your prison-ground. There, I, the best uncle in the world, am
+admitted to visit him. How tremblingly I approached the window and
+glanced into your Eden—an Eden for me, though a desert for you!—how I
+feared to behold vacancy, or the dragon aforesaid! How my heart
+palpitated with delight when, through apertures in the envious boughs,
+I at once caught the gleam of your graceful straw-hat, and the waving
+of your grey dress—dress that I should recognise amongst a thousand.
+But why, my angel, will you not look up? Cruel, to deny me one ray of
+those adorable eyes!—how a single glance would have revived me! I write
+this in fiery haste; while the physician examines Gustave, I snatch an
+opportunity to enclose it in a small casket, together with a bouquet of
+flowers, the sweetest that blow—yet less sweet than thee, my Peri—my
+all-charming! ever thine-thou well knowest whom!”
+
+“I wish I did know whom,” was my comment; and the wish bore even closer
+reference to the person addressed in this choice document, than to the
+writer thereof. Perhaps it was from the fiancé of one of the engaged
+pupils; and, in that case, there was no great harm done or
+intended—only a small irregularity. Several of the girls, the majority,
+indeed, had brothers or cousins at the neighbouring college. But “la
+robe grise, le chapeau de paille,” here surely was a clue—a very
+confusing one. The straw-hat was an ordinary garden head-screen, common
+to a score besides myself. The grey dress hardly gave more definite
+indication. Madame Beck herself ordinarily wore a grey dress just now;
+another teacher, and three of the pensionnaires, had had grey dresses
+purchased of the same shade and fabric as mine: it was a sort of
+every-day wear which happened at that time to be in vogue.
+
+Meanwhile, as I pondered, I knew I must go in. Lights, moving in the
+dormitory, announced that prayers were over, and the pupils going to
+bed. Another half-hour and all doors would be locked—all lights
+extinguished. The front door yet stood open, to admit into the heated
+house the coolness of the summer night; from the portress’s cabinet
+close by shone a lamp, showing the long vestibule with the two-leaved
+drawing-room doors on one side, the great street-door closing the
+vista.
+
+All at once, quick rang the bell—quick, but not loud—a cautious
+tinkle—a sort of warning metal whisper. Rosine darted from her cabinet
+and ran to open. The person she admitted stood with her two minutes in
+parley: there seemed a demur, a delay. Rosine came to the garden door,
+lamp in hand; she stood on the steps, lifting her lamp, looking round
+vaguely.
+
+“Quel conte!” she cried, with a coquettish laugh. “Personne n’y a été.”
+
+“Let me pass,” pleaded a voice I knew: “I ask but five minutes;” and a
+familiar shape, tall and grand (as we of the Rue Fossette all thought
+it), issued from the house, and strode down amongst the beds and walks.
+It was sacrilege—the intrusion of a man into that spot, at that hour;
+but he knew himself privileged, and perhaps he trusted to the friendly
+night. He wandered down the alleys, looking on this side and on that—he
+was lost in the shrubs, trampling flowers and breaking branches in his
+search—he penetrated at last the “forbidden walk.” There I met him,
+like some ghost, I suppose.
+
+“Dr. John! it is found.”
+
+He did not ask by whom, for with his quick eye he perceived that I held
+it in my hand.
+
+“Do not betray her,” he said, looking at me as if I were indeed a
+dragon.
+
+“Were I ever so disposed to treachery, I cannot betray what I do not
+know,” was my answer. “Read the note, and you will see how little it
+reveals.”
+
+“Perhaps you have read it,” I thought to myself; and yet I could not
+believe he wrote it: that could hardly be his style: besides, I was
+fool enough to think there would be a degree of hardship in his calling
+me such names. His own look vindicated him; he grew hot, and coloured
+as he read.
+
+“This is indeed too much: this is cruel, this is humiliating,” were the
+words that fell from him.
+
+I thought it _was_ cruel, when I saw his countenance so moved. No
+matter whether he was to blame or not; somebody, it seemed to me, must
+be more to blame.
+
+“What shall you do about it?” he inquired of me. “Shall you tell Madame
+Beck what you have found, and cause a stir—an esclandre?”
+
+I thought I ought to tell, and said so; adding that I did not believe
+there would be either stir or esclandre: Madame was much too prudent to
+make a noise about an affair of that sort connected with her
+establishment.
+
+He stood looking down and meditating. He was both too proud and too
+honourable to entreat my secresy on a point which duty evidently
+commanded me to communicate. I wished to do right, yet loathed to
+grieve or injure him. Just then Rosine glanced out through the open
+door; she could not see us, though between the trees I could plainly
+see her: her dress was grey, like mine. This circumstance, taken in
+connection with prior transactions, suggested to me that perhaps the
+case, however deplorable, was one in which I was under no obligation
+whatever to concern myself. Accordingly, I said,—“If you can assure me
+that none of Madame Beck’s pupils are implicated in this business, I
+shall be very happy to stand aloof from all interference. Take the
+casket, the bouquet, and the billet; for my part, I gladly forget the
+whole affair.”
+
+“Look there!” he whispered suddenly, as his hand closed on what I
+offered, and at the same time he pointed through the boughs.
+
+I looked. Behold Madame, in shawl, wrapping-gown, and slippers, softly
+descending the steps, and stealing like a cat round the garden: in two
+minutes she would have been upon Dr. John. If _she_ were like a cat,
+however, _he_, quite as much, resembled a leopard: nothing could be
+lighter than his tread when he chose. He watched, and as she turned a
+corner, he took the garden at two noiseless bounds. She reappeared, and
+he was gone. Rosine helped him, instantly interposing the door between
+him and his huntress. I, too, might have got, away, but I preferred to
+meet Madame openly.
+
+Though it was my frequent and well-known custom to spend twilight in
+the garden, yet, never till now, had I remained so late. Full sure was
+I that Madame had missed—was come in search of me, and designed now to
+pounce on the defaulter unawares. I expected a reprimand. No. Madame
+was all goodness. She tendered not even a remonstrance; she testified
+no shade of surprise. With that consummate tact of hers, in which I
+believe she was never surpassed by living thing, she even professed
+merely to have issued forth to taste “la brise du soir.”
+
+“Quelle belle nuit!” cried she, looking up at the stars—the moon was
+now gone down behind the broad tower of Jean Baptiste. “Qu’il fait bon?
+que l’air est frais!”
+
+And, instead of sending me in, she detained me to take a few turns with
+her down the principal alley. When at last we both re-entered, she
+leaned affably on my shoulder by way of support in mounting the
+front-door steps; at parting, her cheek was presented to my lips, and
+“Bon soir, my bonne amie; dormez bien!” was her kindly adieu for the
+night.
+
+I caught myself smiling as I lay awake and thoughtful on my
+couch—smiling at Madame. The unction, the suavity of her behaviour
+offered, for one who knew her, a sure token that suspicion of some kind
+was busy in her brain. From some aperture or summit of observation,
+through parted bough or open window, she had doubtless caught a
+glimpse, remote or near, deceptive or instructive, of that night’s
+transactions. Finely accomplished as she was in the art of
+surveillance, it was next to impossible that a casket could be thrown
+into her garden, or an interloper could cross her walks to seek it,
+without that she, in shaken branch, passing shade, unwonted footfall,
+or stilly murmur (and though Dr. John had spoken very low in the few
+words he dropped me, yet the hum of his man’s voice pervaded, I
+thought, the whole conventual ground)—without, I say, that she should
+have caught intimation of things extraordinary transpiring on her
+premises. _What_ things, she might by no means see, or at that time be
+able to discover; but a delicious little ravelled plot lay tempting her
+to disentanglement; and in the midst, folded round and round in
+cobwebs, had she not secured “Meess Lucie” clumsily involved, like the
+foolish fly she was?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+A SNEEZE OUT OF SEASON.
+
+
+I had occasion to smile—nay, to laugh, at Madame again, within the
+space of four and twenty hours after the little scene treated of in the
+last chapter.
+
+Villette owns a climate as variable, though not so humid, as that of
+any English town. A night of high wind followed upon that soft sunset,
+and all the next day was one of dry storm—dark, beclouded, yet
+rainless,—the streets were dim with sand and dust, whirled from the
+boulevards. I know not that even lovely weather would have tempted me
+to spend the evening-time of study and recreation where I had spent it
+yesterday. My alley, and, indeed, all the walks and shrubs in the
+garden, had acquired a new, but not a pleasant interest; their
+seclusion was now become precarious; their calm—insecure. That casement
+which rained billets, had vulgarized the once dear nook it overlooked;
+and elsewhere, the eyes of the flowers had gained vision, and the knots
+in the tree-boles listened like secret ears. Some plants there were,
+indeed, trodden down by Dr. John in his search, and his hasty and
+heedless progress, which I wished to prop up, water, and revive; some
+footmarks, too, he had left on the beds: but these, in spite of the
+strong wind, I found a moment’s leisure to efface very early in the
+morning, ere common eyes had discovered them. With a pensive sort of
+content, I sat down to my desk and my German, while the pupils settled
+to their evening lessons; and the other teachers took up their
+needlework.
+
+The scene of the “etude du soir” was always the refectory, a much
+smaller apartment than any of the three classes or schoolrooms; for
+here none, save the boarders, were ever admitted, and these numbered
+only a score. Two lamps hung from the ceiling over the two tables;
+these were lit at dusk, and their kindling was the signal for
+school-books being set aside, a grave demeanour assumed, general
+silence enforced, and then commenced “la lecture pieuse.” This said
+“lecture pieuse” was, I soon found, mainly designed as a wholesome
+mortification of the Intellect, a useful humiliation of the Reason; and
+such a dose for Common Sense as she might digest at her leisure, and
+thrive on as she best could.
+
+The book brought out (it was never changed, but when finished,
+recommenced) was a venerable volume, old as the hills—grey as the Hôtel
+de Ville.
+
+I would have given two francs for the chance of getting that book once
+into my hands, turning over the sacred yellow leaves, ascertaining the
+title, and perusing with my own eyes the enormous figments which, as an
+unworthy heretic, it was only permitted me to drink in with my
+bewildered ears. This book contained legends of the saints. Good God!
+(I speak the words reverently) what legends they were. What gasconading
+rascals those saints must have been, if they first boasted these
+exploits or invented these miracles. These legends, however, were no
+more than monkish extravagances, over which one laughed inwardly; there
+were, besides, priestly matters, and the priestcraft of the book was
+far worse than its monkery. The ears burned on each side of my head as
+I listened, perforce, to tales of moral martyrdom inflicted by Rome;
+the dread boasts of confessors, who had wickedly abused their office,
+trampling to deep degradation high-born ladies, making of countesses
+and princesses the most tormented slaves under the sun. Stories like
+that of Conrad and Elizabeth of Hungary, recurred again and again, with
+all its dreadful viciousness, sickening tyranny and black impiety:
+tales that were nightmares of oppression, privation, and agony.
+
+I sat out this “lecture pieuse” for some nights as well as I could, and
+as quietly too; only once breaking off the points of my scissors by
+involuntarily sticking them somewhat deep in the worm-eaten board of
+the table before me. But, at last, it made me so burning hot, and my
+temples, and my heart, and my wrist throbbed so fast, and my sleep
+afterwards was so broken with excitement, that I could sit no longer.
+Prudence recommended henceforward a swift clearance of my person from
+the place, the moment that guilty old book was brought out. No Mause
+Headrigg ever felt a stronger call to take up her testimony against
+Sergeant Bothwell, than I—to speak my mind in this matter of the popish
+“lecture pieuse.” However, I did manage somehow to curb and rein in;
+and though always, as soon as Rosine came to light the lamps, I shot
+from the room quickly, yet also I did it quietly; seizing that vantage
+moment given by the little bustle before the dead silence, and
+vanishing whilst the boarders put their books away.
+
+When I vanished—it was into darkness; candles were not allowed to be
+carried about, and the teacher who forsook the refectory, had only the
+unlit hall, schoolroom, or bedroom, as a refuge. In winter I sought the
+long classes, and paced them fast to keep myself warm—fortunate if the
+moon shone, and if there were only stars, soon reconciled to their dim
+gleam, or even to the total eclipse of their absence. In summer it was
+never quite dark, and then I went up-stairs to my own quarter of the
+long dormitory, opened my own casement (that chamber was lit by five
+casements large as great doors), and leaning out, looked forth upon the
+city beyond the garden, and listened to band-music from the park or the
+palace-square, thinking meantime my own thoughts, living my own life,
+in my own still, shadow-world.
+
+This evening, fugitive as usual before the Pope and his works, I
+mounted the staircase, approached the dormitory, and quietly opened the
+door, which was always kept carefully shut, and which, like every other
+door in this house, revolved noiselessly on well-oiled hinges. Before I
+_saw_, I _felt_ that life was in the great room, usually void: not that
+there was either stir or breath, or rustle of sound, but Vacuum lacked,
+Solitude was not at home. All the white beds—the “lits d’ange,” as they
+were poetically termed—lay visible at a glance; all were empty: no
+sleeper reposed therein. The sound of a drawer cautiously slid out
+struck my ear; stepping a little to one side, my vision took a free
+range, unimpeded by falling curtains. I now commanded my own bed and my
+own toilet, with a locked work-box upon it, and locked drawers
+underneath.
+
+Very good. A dumpy, motherly little body, in decent shawl and the
+cleanest of possible nightcaps, stood before this toilet, hard at work
+apparently doing me the kindness of “tidying out” the “meuble.” Open
+stood the lid of the work-box, open the top drawer; duly and
+impartially was each succeeding drawer opened in turn: not an article
+of their contents but was lifted and unfolded, not a paper but was
+glanced over, not a little box but was unlidded; and beautiful was the
+adroitness, exemplary the care with which the search was accomplished.
+Madame wrought at it like a true star, “unhasting yet unresting.” I
+will not deny that it was with a secret glee I watched her. Had I been
+a gentleman I believe Madame would have found favour in my eyes, she
+was so handy, neat, thorough in all she did: some people’s movements
+provoke the soul by their loose awkwardness, hers—satisfied by their
+trim compactness. I stood, in short, fascinated; but it was necessary
+to make an effort to break this spell a retreat must be beaten. The
+searcher might have turned and caught me; there would have been nothing
+for it then but a scene, and she and I would have had to come all at
+once, with a sudden clash, to a thorough knowledge of each other: down
+would have gone conventionalities, away swept disguises, and _I_ should
+have looked into her eyes, and she into mine—we should have known that
+we could work together no more, and parted in this life for ever.
+
+Where was the use of tempting such a catastrophe? I was not angry, and
+had no wish in the world to leave her. I could hardly get another
+employer whose yoke would be so light and so, easy of carriage; and
+truly I liked Madame for her capital sense, whatever I might think of
+her principles: as to her system, it did me no harm; she might work me
+with it to her heart’s content: nothing would come of the operation.
+Loverless and inexpectant of love, I was as safe from spies in my
+heart-poverty, as the beggar from thieves in his destitution of purse.
+I turned, then, and fled; descending the stairs with progress as swift
+and soundless as that of the spider, which at the same instant ran down
+the bannister.
+
+How I laughed when I reached the schoolroom. I knew now she had
+certainly seen Dr. John in the garden; I knew what her thoughts were.
+The spectacle of a suspicious nature so far misled by its own
+inventions, tickled me much. Yet as the laugh died, a kind of wrath
+smote me, and then bitterness followed: it was the rock struck, and
+Meribah’s waters gushing out. I never had felt so strange and
+contradictory an inward tumult as I felt for an hour that evening:
+soreness and laughter, and fire, and grief, shared my heart between
+them. I cried hot tears: not because Madame mistrusted me—I did not
+care twopence for her mistrust—but for other reasons. Complicated,
+disquieting thoughts broke up the whole repose of my nature. However,
+that turmoil subsided: next day I was again Lucy Snowe.
+
+On revisiting my drawers, I found them all securely locked; the closest
+subsequent examination could not discover change or apparent
+disturbance in the position of one object. My few dresses were folded
+as I had left them; a certain little bunch of white violets that had
+once been silently presented to me by a stranger (a stranger to me, for
+we had never exchanged words), and which I had dried and kept for its
+sweet perfume between the folds of my best dress, lay there unstirred;
+my black silk scarf, my lace chemisette and collars, were unrumpled.
+Had she creased one solitary article, I own I should have felt much
+greater difficulty in forgiving her; but finding all straight and
+orderly, I said, “Let bygones be bygones. I am unharmed: why should I
+bear malice?”
+
+A thing there was which puzzled myself, and I sought in my brain a key
+to that riddle almost as sedulously as Madame had sought a guide to
+useful knowledge in my toilet drawers. How was it that Dr. John, if he
+had not been accessory to the dropping of that casket into the garden,
+should have known that it _was_ dropped, and appeared so promptly on
+the spot to seek it? So strong was the wish to clear up this point that
+I began to entertain this daring suggestion: “Why may I not, in case I
+should ever have the opportunity, ask Dr. John himself to explain this
+coincidence?”
+
+And so long as Dr. John was absent, I really believed I had courage to
+test him with such a question.
+
+Little Georgette was now convalescent; and her physician accordingly
+made his visits very rare: indeed, he would have ceased them
+altogether, had not Madame insisted on his giving an occasional call
+till the child should be quite well.
+
+She came into the nursery one evening just after I had listened to
+Georgette’s lisped and broken prayer, and had put her to bed. Taking
+the little one’s hand, she said, “Cette enfant a toujours un peu de
+fièvre.” And presently afterwards, looking at me with a quicker glance
+than was habitual to her quiet eye, “Le Docteur John l’a-t-il vue
+dernièrement? Non, n’est-ce pas?”
+
+Of course she knew this better than any other person in the house.
+“Well,” she continued, “I am going out, pour faire quelques courses en
+fiacre. I shall call on Dr. John, and send him to the child. I will
+that he sees her this evening; her cheeks are flushed, her pulse is
+quick; _you_ will receive him—for my part, I shall be from home.”
+
+Now the child was well enough, only warm with the warmth of July; it
+was scarcely less needful to send for a priest to administer extreme
+unction than for a doctor to prescribe a dose; also Madame rarely made
+“courses,” as she called them, in the evening: moreover, this was the
+first time she had chosen to absent herself on the occasion of a visit
+from Dr. John. The whole arrangement indicated some plan; this I saw,
+but without the least anxiety. “Ha! ha! Madame,” laughed Light-heart
+the Beggar, “your crafty wits are on the wrong tack.”
+
+She departed, attired very smartly, in a shawl of price, and a certain
+_chapeau vert tendre_—hazardous, as to its tint, for any complexion
+less fresh than her own, but, to her, not unbecoming. I wondered what
+she intended: whether she really would send Dr. John or not; or whether
+indeed he would come: he might be engaged.
+
+Madame had charged me not to let Georgette sleep till the doctor came;
+I had therefore sufficient occupation in telling her nursery tales and
+palavering the little language for her benefit. I affected Georgette;
+she was a sensitive and a loving child: to hold her in my lap, or carry
+her in my arms, was to me a treat. To-night she would have me lay my
+head on the pillow of her crib; she even put her little arms round my
+neck. Her clasp, and the nestling action with which she pressed her
+cheek to mine, made me almost cry with a tender pain. Feeling of no
+kind abounded in that house; this pure little drop from a pure little
+source was too sweet: it penetrated deep, and subdued the heart, and
+sent a gush to the eyes. Half an hour or an hour passed; Georgette
+murmured in her soft lisp that she was growing sleepy. “And you _shall_
+sleep,” thought I, “malgré maman and médecin, if they are not here in
+ten minutes.”
+
+Hark! There was the ring, and there the tread, astonishing the
+staircase by the fleetness with which it left the steps behind. Rosine
+introduced Dr. John, and, with a freedom of manner not altogether
+peculiar to herself, but characteristic of the domestics of Villette
+generally, she stayed to hear what he had to say. Madame’s presence
+would have awed her back to her own realm of the vestibule and the
+cabinet—for mine, or that of any other teacher or pupil, she cared not
+a jot. Smart, trim and pert, she stood, a hand in each pocket of her
+gay grisette apron, eyeing Dr. John with no more fear or shyness than
+if he had been a picture instead of a living gentleman.
+
+“Le marmot n’a rien, nest-ce pas?” said she, indicating Georgette with
+a jerk of her chin.
+
+“Pas beaucoup,” was the answer, as the doctor hastily scribbled with
+his pencil some harmless prescription.
+
+“Eh bien!” pursued Rosine, approaching him quite near, while he put up
+his pencil. “And the box—did you get it? Monsieur went off like a
+coup-de-vent the other night; I had not time to ask him.”
+
+“I found it: yes.”
+
+“And who threw it, then?” continued Rosine, speaking quite freely the
+very words I should so much have wished to say, but had no address or
+courage to bring it out: how short some people make the road to a point
+which, for others, seems unattainable!
+
+“That may be my secret,” rejoined Dr. John briefly, but with no sort of
+hauteur: he seemed quite to understand the Rosine or grisette
+character.
+
+“Mais enfin,” continued she, nothing abashed, “monsieur knew it was
+thrown, since he came to seek it—how did he know?”
+
+“I was attending a little patient in the college near,” said he, “and
+saw it dropped out of his chamber window, and so came to pick it up.”
+
+How simple the whole explanation! The note had alluded to a physician
+as then examining “Gustave.”
+
+“Ah ça!” pursued Rosine; “il n’y a donc rien là-dessous: pas de
+mystère, pas d’amourette, par exemple?”
+
+“Pas plus que sur ma main,” responded the doctor, showing his palm.
+
+“Quel dommage!” responded the grisette: “et moi—à qui tout cela
+commençait à donner des idées.”
+
+“Vraiment! vous en êtes pour vos frais,” was the doctor’s cool
+rejoinder.
+
+She pouted. The doctor could not help laughing at the sort of “moue”
+she made: when he laughed, he had something peculiarly good-natured and
+genial in his look. I saw his hand incline to his pocket.
+
+“How many times have you opened the door for me within this last
+month?” he asked.
+
+“Monsieur ought to have kept count of that,” said Rosine, quite
+readily.
+
+“As if I had not something better to do!” rejoined he; but I saw him
+give her a piece of gold, which she took unscrupulously, and then
+danced off to answer the door-bell, ringing just now every five
+minutes, as the various servants came to fetch the half-boarders.
+
+The reader must not think too hardly of Rosine; on the whole, she was
+not a bad sort of person, and had no idea there could be any disgrace
+in grasping at whatever she could get, or any effrontery in chattering
+like a pie to the best gentleman in Christendom.
+
+I had learnt something from the above scene besides what concerned the
+ivory box: viz., that not on the robe de jaconas, pink or grey, nor yet
+on the frilled and pocketed apron, lay the blame of breaking Dr. John’s
+heart: these items of array were obviously guiltless as Georgette’s
+little blue tunic. So much the better. But who then was the culprit?
+What was the ground—what the origin—what the perfect explanation of the
+whole business? Some points had been cleared, but how many yet remained
+obscure as night!
+
+“However,” I said to myself, “it is no affair of yours;” and turning
+from the face on which I had been unconsciously dwelling with a
+questioning gaze, I looked through the window which commanded the
+garden below. Dr. John, meantime, standing by the bed-side, was slowly
+drawing on his gloves and watching his little patient, as her eyes
+closed and her rosy lips parted in coming sleep. I waited till he
+should depart as usual, with a quick bow and scarce articulate
+“good-night.”. Just as he took his hat, my eyes, fixed on the tall
+houses bounding the garden, saw the one lattice, already commemorated,
+cautiously open; forth from the aperture projected a hand and a white
+handkerchief; both waved. I know not whether the signal was answered
+from some viewless quarter of our own dwelling; but immediately after
+there fluttered from, the lattice a falling object, white and
+light—billet the second, of course.
+
+“There!” I ejaculated involuntarily.
+
+“Where?”, asked Dr. John with energy, making direct for the window.
+“What, is it?”
+
+“They have gone and done it again,” was my reply. “A handkerchief waved
+and something fell:” and I pointed to the lattice, now closed and
+looking hypocritically blank.
+
+“Go, at once; pick it up and bring it here,” was his prompt direction;
+adding, “Nobody will take notice of _you: I_ should be seen.”
+
+Straight I went. After some little search, I found a folded paper,
+lodged on the lower branch of a shrub; I seized and brought it direct
+to Dr. John. This time, I believe not even Rosine saw me.
+
+He instantly tore the billet into small pieces, without reading it. “It
+is not in the least _her_ fault, you must remember,” he said, looking
+at me.
+
+“_Whose_ fault?” I asked. “_Who_ is it?”
+
+“You don’t yet know, then?”
+
+“Not in the least.”
+
+“Have you no guess?”
+
+“None.”
+
+“If I knew you better, I might be tempted to risk some confidence, and
+thus secure you as guardian over a most innocent and excellent, but
+somewhat inexperienced being.”
+
+“As a duenna?” I asked.
+
+“Yes,” said he abstractedly. “What snares are round her!” he added,
+musingly: and now, certainly for the first time, he examined my face,
+anxious, doubtless, to see if any kindly expression there, would
+warrant him in recommending to my care and indulgence some ethereal
+creature, against whom powers of darkness were plotting. I felt no
+particular vocation to undertake the surveillance of ethereal
+creatures; but recalling the scene at the bureau, it seemed to me that
+I owed _him_ a good turn: if I _could_ help him then I would, and it
+lay not with me to decide how. With as little reluctance as might be, I
+intimated that “I was willing to do what I could towards taking care of
+any person in whom he might be interested.”.
+
+“I am no farther interested than as a spectator,” said he, with a
+modesty, admirable, as I thought, to witness. “I happen to be
+acquainted with the rather worthless character of the person, who, from
+the house opposite, has now twice invaded the sanctity of this place; I
+have also met in society the object at whom these vulgar attempts are
+aimed. Her exquisite superiority and innate refinement ought, one would
+think, to scare impertinence from her very idea. It is not so, however;
+and innocent, unsuspicious as she is, I would guard her from evil if I
+could. In person, however, I can do nothing I cannot come near her”—he
+paused.
+
+“Well, I am willing to help you,” said I, “only tell me how.” And
+busily, in my own mind, I ran over the list of our inmates, seeking
+this paragon, this pearl of great price, this gem without flaw. “It
+must be Madame,” I concluded. “_She_ only, amongst us all, has the art
+even to _seem_ superior: but as to being unsuspicious, inexperienced,
+&c., Dr. John need not distract himself about that. However, this is
+just his whim, and I will not contradict him; he shall be humoured: his
+angel shall be an angel.
+
+“Just notify the quarter to which my care is to be directed,” I
+continued gravely: chuckling, however, to myself over the thought of
+being set to chaperon Madame Beck or any of her pupils. Now Dr. John
+had a fine set of nerves, and he at once felt by instinct, what no more
+coarsely constituted mind would have detected; namely, that I was a
+little amused at him. The colour rose to his cheek; with half a smile
+he turned and took his hat—he was going. My heart smote me.
+
+“I will—I will help you,” said I eagerly. “I will do what you wish. I
+will watch over your angel; I will take care of her, only tell me who
+she is.”
+
+“But you _must_ know,” said he then with earnestness, yet speaking very
+low. “So spotless, so good, so unspeakably beautiful! impossible that
+one house should contain two like her. I allude, of course—”
+
+Here the latch of Madame Beck’s chamber-door (opening into the nursery)
+gave a sudden click, as if the hand holding it had been slightly
+convulsed; there was the suppressed explosion of an irrepressible
+sneeze. These little accidents will happen to the best of us.
+Madame—excellent woman! was then on duty. She had come home quietly,
+stolen up-stairs on tip-toe; she was in her chamber. If she had not
+sneezed, she would have heard all, and so should I; but that unlucky
+sternutation routed Dr. John. While he stood aghast, she came forward
+alert, composed, in the best yet most tranquil spirits: no novice to
+her habits but would have thought she had just come in, and scouted the
+idea of her ear having been glued to the key-hole for at least ten
+minutes. She affected to sneeze again, declared she was “enrhumée,” and
+then proceeded volubly to recount her “courses en fiacre.” The
+prayer-bell rang, and I left her with the doctor.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+THE FÊTE.
+
+
+As soon as Georgette was well, Madame sent her away into the country. I
+was sorry; I loved the child, and her loss made me poorer than before.
+But I must not complain. I lived in a house full of robust life; I
+might have had companions, and I chose solitude. Each of the teachers
+in turn made me overtures of special intimacy; I tried them all. One I
+found to be an honest woman, but a narrow thinker, a coarse feeler, and
+an egotist. The second was a Parisienne, externally refined—at heart,
+corrupt—without a creed, without a principle, without an affection:
+having penetrated the outward crust of decorum in this character, you
+found a slough beneath. She had a wonderful passion for presents; and,
+in this point, the third teacher—a person otherwise characterless and
+insignificant—closely resembled her. This last-named had also one other
+distinctive property—that of avarice. In her reigned the love of money
+for its own sake. The sight of a piece of gold would bring into her
+eyes a green glisten, singular to witness. She once, as a mark of high
+favour, took me up-stairs, and, opening a secret door, showed me a
+hoard—a mass of coarse, large coin—about fifteen guineas, in five-franc
+pieces. She loved this hoard as a bird loves its eggs. These were her
+savings. She would come and talk to me about them with an infatuated
+and persevering dotage, strange to behold in a person not yet
+twenty-five.
+
+The Parisienne, on the other hand, was prodigal and profligate (in
+disposition, that is: as to action, I do not know). That latter quality
+showed its snake-head to me but once, peeping out very cautiously. A
+curious kind of reptile it seemed, judging from the glimpse I got; its
+novelty whetted my curiosity: if it would have come out boldly, perhaps
+I might philosophically have stood my ground, and coolly surveyed the
+long thing from forked tongue to scaly tail-tip; but it merely rustled
+in the leaves of a bad novel; and, on encountering a hasty and
+ill-advised demonstration of wrath, recoiled and vanished, hissing. She
+hated me from that day.
+
+This Parisienne was always in debt; her salary being anticipated, not
+only in dress, but in perfumes, cosmetics, confectionery, and
+condiments. What a cold, callous epicure she was in all things! I see
+her now. Thin in face and figure, sallow in complexion, regular in
+features, with perfect teeth, lips like a thread, a large, prominent
+chin, a well-opened, but frozen eye, of light at once craving and
+ingrate. She mortally hated work, and loved what she called pleasure;
+being an insipid, heartless, brainless dissipation of time.
+
+Madame Beck knew this woman’s character perfectly well. She once talked
+to me about her, with an odd mixture of discrimination, indifference,
+and antipathy. I asked why she kept her in the establishment. She
+answered plainly, “because it suited her interest to do so;” and
+pointed out a fact I had already noticed, namely, that Mademoiselle St.
+Pierre possessed, in an almost unique degree, the power of keeping
+order amongst her undisciplined ranks of scholars. A certain petrifying
+influence accompanied and surrounded her: without passion, noise, or
+violence, she held them in check as a breezeless frost-air might still
+a brawling stream. She was of little use as far as communication of
+knowledge went, but for strict surveillance and maintenance of rules
+she was invaluable. “Je sais bien qu’elle n’a pas de principes, ni,
+peut-être, de moeurs,” admitted Madame frankly; but added with
+philosophy, “son maintien en classe est toujours convenable et rempli
+même d’une certaine dignité: c’est tout ce qu’il faut. Ni les élèves ni
+les parents ne regardent plus loin; ni, par conséquent, moi non plus.”
+
+A strange, frolicsome, noisy little world was this school: great pains
+were taken to hide chains with flowers: a subtle essence of Romanism
+pervaded every arrangement: large sensual indulgence (so to speak) was
+permitted by way of counterpoise to jealous spiritual restraint. Each
+mind was being reared in slavery; but, to prevent reflection from
+dwelling on this fact, every pretext for physical recreation was seized
+and made the most of. There, as elsewhere, the CHURCH strove to bring
+up her children robust in body, feeble in soul, fat, ruddy, hale,
+joyous, ignorant, unthinking, unquestioning. “Eat, drink, and live!”
+she says. “Look after your bodies; leave your souls to me. I hold their
+cure—guide their course: I guarantee their final fate.” A bargain, in
+which every true Catholic deems himself a gainer. Lucifer just offers
+the same terms: “All this power will I give thee, and the glory of it;
+for that is delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will I give it. If
+thou, therefore, wilt worship me, all shall be thine!”
+
+About this time—in the ripest glow of summer—Madame Beck’s house became
+as merry a place as a school could well be. All day long the broad
+folding-doors and the two-leaved casements stood wide open: settled
+sunshine seemed naturalized in the atmosphere; clouds were far off,
+sailing away beyond sea, resting, no doubt, round islands such as
+England—that dear land of mists—but withdrawn wholly from the drier
+continent. We lived far more in the garden than under a roof: classes
+were held, and meals partaken of, in the “grand berceau.” Moreover,
+there was a note of holiday preparation, which almost turned freedom
+into licence. The autumnal long vacation was but two months distant;
+but before that, a great day—an important ceremony—none other than the
+fête of Madame—awaited celebration.
+
+The conduct of this fête devolved chiefly on Mademoiselle St. Pierre:
+Madame herself being supposed to stand aloof, disinterestedly
+unconscious of what might be going forward in her honour. Especially,
+she never knew, never in the least suspected, that a subscription was
+annually levied on the whole school for the purchase of a handsome
+present. The polite tact of the reader will please to leave out of the
+account a brief, secret consultation on this point in Madame’s own
+chamber.
+
+“What will you have this year?” was asked by her Parisian lieutenant.
+
+“Oh, no matter! Let it alone. Let the poor children keep their francs,”
+And Madame looked benign and modest.
+
+The St. Pierre would here protrude her chin; she knew Madame by heart;
+she always called her airs of “bonté”—“des grimaces.” She never even
+professed to respect them one instant.
+
+“Vite!” she would say coldly. “Name the article. Shall it be jewellery
+or porcelain, haberdashery or silver?”
+
+“Eh bien! Deux ou trois cuillers, et autant de fourchettes en argent.”
+
+And the result was a handsome case, containing 300 francs worth of
+plate.
+
+The programme of the fête-day’s proceedings comprised: Presentation of
+plate, collation in the garden, dramatic performance (with pupils and
+teachers for actors), a dance and supper. Very gorgeous seemed the
+effect of the whole to me, as I well remember. Zélie St. Pierre
+understood these things and managed them ably.
+
+The play was the main point; a month’s previous drilling being there
+required. The choice, too, of the actors required knowledge and care;
+then came lessons in elocution, in attitude, and then the fatigue of
+countless rehearsals. For all this, as may well be supposed, St. Pierre
+did not suffice: other management, other accomplishments than hers were
+requisite here. They were supplied in the person of a master—M. Paul
+Emanuel, professor of literature. It was never my lot to be present at
+the histrionic lessons of M. Paul, but I often saw him as he crossed
+the _carré_ (a square hall between the dwelling-house and
+school-house). I heard him, too, in the warm evenings, lecturing with
+open doors, and his name, with anecdotes of him, resounded in ones ears
+from all sides. Especially our former acquaintance, Miss Ginevra
+Fanshawe,—who had been selected to take a prominent part in the
+play—used, in bestowing upon me a large portion of her leisure, to lard
+her discourse with frequent allusions to his sayings and doings. She
+esteemed him hideously plain, and used to profess herself frightened
+almost into hysterics at the sound of his step or voice. A dark little
+man he certainly was; pungent and austere. Even to me he seemed a harsh
+apparition, with his close-shorn, black head, his broad, sallow brow,
+his thin cheek, his wide and quivering nostril, his thorough glance,
+and hurried bearing. Irritable he was; one heard that, as he
+apostrophized with vehemence the awkward squad under his orders.
+Sometimes he would break out on these raw amateur actresses with a
+passion of impatience at their falseness of conception, their coldness
+of emotion, their feebleness of delivery. “Ecoutez!” he would cry; and
+then his voice rang through the premises like a trumpet; and when,
+mimicking it, came the small pipe of a Ginevra, a Mathilde, or a
+Blanche, one understood why a hollow groan of scorn, or a fierce hiss
+of rage, rewarded the tame echo.
+
+“Vous n’êtes donc que des poupées,” I heard him thunder. “Vous n’avez
+pas de passions—vous autres. Vous ne sentez donc rien? Votre chair est
+de neige, votre sang de glace! Moi, je veux que tout cela s’allume,
+qu’il ait une vie, une âme!”
+
+Vain resolve! And when he at last found it _was_ vain, he suddenly
+broke the whole business down. Hitherto he had been teaching them a
+grand tragedy; he tore the tragedy in morsels, and came next day with a
+compact little comic trifle. To this they took more kindly; he
+presently knocked it all into their smooth round pates.
+
+Mademoiselle St. Pierre always presided at M. Emanuel’s lessons, and I
+was told that the polish of her manner, her seeming attention, her tact
+and grace, impressed that gentleman very favourably. She had, indeed,
+the art of pleasing, for a given time, whom she would; but the feeling
+would not last: in an hour it was dried like dew, vanished like
+gossamer.
+
+The day preceding Madame’s fête was as much a holiday as the fête
+itself. It was devoted to clearing out, cleaning, arranging and
+decorating the three schoolrooms. All within-doors was the gayest
+bustle; neither up-stairs nor down could a quiet, isolated person find
+rest for the sole of her foot; accordingly, for my part, I took refuge
+in the garden. The whole day did I wander or sit there alone, finding
+warmth in the sun, shelter among the trees, and a sort of companionship
+in my own thoughts. I well remember that I exchanged but two sentences
+that day with any living being: not that I felt solitary; I was glad to
+be quiet. For a looker-on, it sufficed to pass through the rooms once
+or twice, observe what changes were being wrought, how a green-room and
+a dressing-room were being contrived, a little stage with scenery
+erected, how M. Paul Emanuel, in conjunction with Mademoiselle St.
+Pierre, was directing all, and how an eager band of pupils, amongst
+them Ginevra Fanshawe, were working gaily under his control.
+
+The great day arrived. The sun rose hot and unclouded, and hot and
+unclouded it burned on till evening. All the doors and all the windows
+were set open, which gave a pleasant sense of summer freedom—and
+freedom the most complete seemed indeed the order of the day. Teachers
+and pupils descended to breakfast in dressing-gowns and curl-papers:
+anticipating “avec délices” the toilette of the evening, they seemed to
+take a pleasure in indulging that forenoon in a luxury of slovenliness;
+like aldermen fasting in preparation for a feast. About nine o’clock
+A.M., an important functionary, the “coiffeur,” arrived. Sacrilegious
+to state, he fixed his head-quarters in the oratory, and there, in
+presence of _bénitier_, candle, and crucifix, solemnised the mysteries
+of his art. Each girl was summoned in turn to pass through his hands;
+emerging from them with head as smooth as a shell, intersected by
+faultless white lines, and wreathed about with Grecian plaits that
+shone as if lacquered. I took my turn with the rest, and could hardly
+believe what the glass said when I applied to it for information
+afterwards; the lavished garlandry of woven brown hair amazed me—I
+feared it was not all my own, and it required several convincing pulls
+to give assurance to the contrary. I then acknowledged in the coiffeur
+a first-rate artist—one who certainly made the most of indifferent
+materials.
+
+The oratory closed, the dormitory became the scene of ablutions,
+arrayings and bedizenings curiously elaborate. To me it was, and ever
+must be an enigma, how they contrived to spend so much time in doing so
+little. The operation seemed close, intricate, prolonged: the result
+simple. A clear white muslin dress, a blue sash (the Virgin’s colours),
+a pair of white, or straw-colour kid gloves—such was the gala uniform,
+to the assumption whereof that houseful of teachers and pupils devoted
+three mortal hours. But though simple, it must be allowed the array was
+perfect—perfect in fashion, fit, and freshness; every head being also
+dressed with exquisite nicety, and a certain compact taste—suiting the
+full, firm comeliness of Labassecourien contours, though too stiff for
+any more flowing and flexible style of beauty—the general effect was,
+on the whole, commendable.
+
+In beholding this diaphanous and snowy mass, I well remember feeling
+myself to be a mere shadowy spot on a field of light; the courage was
+not in me to put on a transparent white dress: something thin I must
+wear—the weather and rooms being too hot to give substantial fabrics
+sufferance, so I had sought through a dozen shops till I lit upon a
+crape-like material of purple-gray—the colour, in short, of dun mist,
+lying on a moor in bloom. My _tailleuse_ had kindly made it as well as
+she could: because, as she judiciously observed, it was “si triste—si
+pen voyant,” care in the fashion was the more imperative: it was well
+she took this view of the matter, for I, had no flower, no jewel to
+relieve it: and, what was more, I had no natural rose of complexion.
+
+We become oblivious of these deficiencies in the uniform routine of
+daily drudgery, but they _will_ force upon us their unwelcome blank on
+those bright occasions when beauty should shine.
+
+However, in this same gown of shadow, I felt at home and at ease; an
+advantage I should not have enjoyed in anything more brilliant or
+striking. Madame Beck, too, kept me in countenance; her dress was
+almost as quiet as mine, except that she wore a bracelet, and a large
+brooch bright with gold and fine stones. We chanced to meet on the
+stairs, and she gave me a nod and smile of approbation. Not that she
+thought I was looking well—a point unlikely to engage her interest—but
+she considered me dressed “convenablement,” “décemment,” and la
+Convenance et la Décence were the two calm deities of Madame’s worship.
+She even paused, laid on my shoulder her gloved hand, holding an
+embroidered and perfumed handkerchief, and confided to my ear a sarcasm
+on the other teachers (whom she had just been complimenting to their
+faces). “Nothing so absurd,” she said, “as for des femmes mûres ‘to
+dress themselves like girls of fifteen’—quant à la. St. Pierre, elle a
+l’air d’une vieille coquette qui fait l’ingénue.”
+
+Being dressed at least a couple of hours before anybody else, I felt a
+pleasure in betaking myself—not to the garden, where servants were busy
+propping up long tables, placing seats, and spreading cloths in
+readiness for the collation but to the schoolrooms, now empty, quiet,
+cool, and clean; their walls fresh stained, their planked floors fresh
+scoured and scarce dry; flowers fresh gathered adorning the recesses in
+pots, and draperies, fresh hung, beautifying the great windows.
+
+Withdrawing to the first classe, a smaller and neater room than the
+others, and taking from the glazed bookcase, of which I kept the key, a
+volume whose title promised some interest, I sat down to read. The
+glass-door of this “classe,” or schoolroom, opened into the large
+berceau; acacia-boughs caressed its panes, as they stretched across to
+meet a rose-bush blooming by the opposite lintel: in this rose-bush
+bees murmured busy and happy. I commenced reading. Just as the stilly
+hum, the embowering shade, the warm, lonely calm of my retreat were
+beginning to steal meaning from the page, vision from my eyes, and to
+lure me along the track of reverie, down into some deep dell of
+dreamland—just then, the sharpest ring of the street-door bell to which
+that much-tried instrument had ever thrilled, snatched me back to
+consciousness.
+
+Now the bell had been ringing all the morning, as workmen, or servants,
+or _coiffeurs_, or _tailleuses_, went and came on their several
+errands. Moreover, there was good reason to expect it would ring all
+the afternoon, since about one hundred externes were yet to arrive in
+carriages or fiacres: nor could it be expected to rest during the
+evening, when parents and friends would gather thronging to the play.
+Under these circumstances, a ring—even a sharp ring—was a matter of
+course: yet this particular peal had an accent of its own, which chased
+my dream, and startled my book from my knee.
+
+I was stooping to pick up this last, when—firm, fast, straight—right on
+through vestibule—along corridor, across carré, through first division,
+second division, grand salle—strode a step, quick, regular, intent. The
+closed door of the first classe—my sanctuary—offered no obstacle; it
+burst open, and a paletôt and a bonnet grec filled the void; also two
+eyes first vaguely struck upon, and then hungrily dived into me.
+
+“C’est cela!” said a voice. “Je la connais: c’est l’Anglaise. Tant pis.
+Toute Anglaise, et, par conséquent, toute bégueule qu’elle soit—elle
+fera mon affaire, ou je saurai pourquoi.”
+
+Then, with a certain stern politeness (I suppose he thought I had not
+caught the drift of his previous uncivil mutterings), and in a jargon
+the most execrable that ever was heard, “Meess——, play you must: I am
+planted there.”
+
+“What can I do for you, M. Paul Emanuel?” I inquired: for M. Paul
+Emanuel it was, and in a state of no little excitement.
+
+“Play you must. I will not have you shrink, or frown, or make the
+prude. I read your skull that night you came; I see your moyens: play
+you can; play you must.”
+
+“But how, M. Paul? What do you mean?”
+
+“There is no time to be lost,” he went on, now speaking in French; “and
+let us thrust to the wall all reluctance, all excuses, all minauderies.
+You must take a part.”
+
+“In the vaudeville?”
+
+“In the vaudeville. You have said it.”
+
+I gasped, horror-struck. _What_ did the little man mean?
+
+“Listen!” he said. “The case shall be stated, and you shall then answer
+me Yes, or No; and according to your answer shall I ever after estimate
+you.”
+
+The scarce-suppressed impetus of a most irritable nature glowed in his
+cheek, fed with sharp shafts his glances, a nature—the injudicious, the
+mawkish, the hesitating, the sullen, the affected, above all, the
+unyielding, might quickly render violent and implacable. Silence and
+attention was the best balm to apply: I listened.
+
+“The whole matter is going to fail,” he began. “Louise Vanderkelkov has
+fallen ill—at least so her ridiculous mother asserts; for my part, I
+feel sure she might play if she would: it is only good-will that lacks.
+She was charged with a _rôle_, as you know, or do _not_ know—it is
+equal: without that _rôle_ the play is stopped. There are now but a few
+hours in which to learn it: not a girl in this school would hear
+reason, and accept the task. Forsooth, it is not an interesting, not an
+amiable, part; their vile _amour-propre_—that base quality of which
+women have so much—would revolt from it. Englishwomen are either the
+best or the worst of their sex. Dieu sait que je les déteste comme la
+peste, ordinairement” (this between his recreant teeth). “I apply to an
+Englishwoman to rescue me. What is her answer—Yes, or No?”
+
+A thousand objections rushed into my mind. The foreign language, the
+limited time, the public display… Inclination recoiled, Ability
+faltered, Self-respect (that “vile quality”) trembled. “Non, non, non!”
+said all these; but looking up at M. Paul, and seeing in his vexed,
+fiery, and searching eye, a sort of appeal behind all its menace, my
+lips dropped the word “oui”. For a moment his rigid countenance relaxed
+with a quiver of content: quickly bent up again, however, he went on,—
+
+“Vite à l’ouvrage! Here is the book; here is your _rôle_: read.” And I
+read. He did not commend; at some passages he scowled and stamped. He
+gave me a lesson: I diligently imitated. It was a disagreeable part—a
+man’s—an empty-headed fop’s. One could put into it neither heart nor
+soul: I hated it. The play—a mere trifle—ran chiefly on the efforts of
+a brace of rivals to gain the hand of a fair coquette. One lover was
+called the “Ours,” a good and gallant but unpolished man, a sort of
+diamond in the rough; the other was a butterfly, a talker, and a
+traitor: and I was to be the butterfly, talker, and traitor.
+
+I did my best—which was bad, I know: it provoked M. Paul; he fumed.
+Putting both hands to the work, I endeavoured to do better than my
+best; I presume he gave me credit for good intentions; he professed to
+be partially content. “Ca ira!” he cried; and as voices began sounding
+from the garden, and white dresses fluttering among the trees, he
+added: “You must withdraw: you must be alone to learn this. Come with
+me.”
+
+Without being allowed time or power to deliberate, I found myself in
+the same breath convoyed along as in a species of whirlwind, up-stairs,
+up two pair of stairs, nay, actually up three (for this fiery little
+man seemed as by instinct to know his way everywhere); to the solitary
+and lofty attic was I borne, put in and locked in, the key being, in
+the door, and that key he took with him and vanished.
+
+The attic was no pleasant place: I believe he did not know how
+unpleasant it was, or he never would have locked me in with so little
+ceremony. In this summer weather, it was hot as Africa; as in winter,
+it was always cold as Greenland. Boxes and lumber filled it; old
+dresses draped its unstained wall—cobwebs its unswept ceiling. Well was
+it known to be tenanted by rats, by black beetles, and by
+cockroaches—nay, rumour affirmed that the ghostly Nun of the garden had
+once been seen here. A partial darkness obscured one end, across which,
+as for deeper mystery, an old russet curtain was drawn, by way of
+screen to a sombre band of winter cloaks, pendent each from its pin,
+like a malefactor from his gibbet. From amongst these cloaks, and
+behind that curtain, the Nun was said to issue. I did not believe this,
+nor was I troubled by apprehension thereof; but I saw a very dark and
+large rat, with a long tail, come gliding out from that squalid alcove;
+and, moreover, my eye fell on many a black-beetle, dotting the floor.
+These objects discomposed me more, perhaps, than it would be wise to
+say, as also did the dust, lumber, and stifling heat of the place. The
+last inconvenience would soon have become intolerable, had I not found
+means to open and prop up the skylight, thus admitting some freshness.
+Underneath this aperture I pushed a large empty chest, and having
+mounted upon it a smaller box, and wiped from both the dust, I gathered
+my dress (my best, the reader must remember, and therefore a legitimate
+object of care) fastidiously around me, ascended this species of
+extempore throne, and being seated, commenced the acquisition of my
+task; while I learned, not forgetting to keep a sharp look-out on the
+black-beetles and cockroaches, of which, more even, I believe, than of
+the rats, I sat in mortal dread.
+
+My impression at first was that I had undertaken what it really was
+impossible to perform, and I simply resolved to do my best and be
+resigned to fail. I soon found, however, that one part in so short a
+piece was not more than memory could master at a few hours’ notice. I
+learned and learned on, first in a whisper, and then aloud. Perfectly
+secure from human audience, I acted my part before the garret-vermin.
+Entering into its emptiness, frivolity, and falsehood, with a spirit
+inspired by scorn and impatience, I took my revenge on this “fat,” by
+making him as fatuitous as I possibly could.
+
+In this exercise the afternoon passed: day began to glide into evening;
+and I, who had eaten nothing since breakfast, grew excessively hungry.
+Now I thought of the collation, which doubtless they were just then
+devouring in the garden far below. (I had seen in the vestibule a
+basketful of small _pâtés à la crême_, than which nothing in the whole
+range of cookery seemed to me better). A _pâté_, or a square of cake,
+it seemed to me would come very _àpropos;_ and as my relish for those
+dainties increased, it began to appear somewhat hard that I should pass
+my holiday, fasting and in prison. Remote as was the attic from the
+street-door and vestibule, yet the ever-tinkling bell was faintly
+audible here; and also the ceaseless roll of wheels, on the tormented
+pavement. I knew that the house and garden were thronged, and that all
+was gay and glad below; here it began to grow dusk: the beetles were
+fading from my sight; I trembled lest they should steal on me a march,
+mount my throne unseen, and, unsuspected, invade my skirts. Impatient
+and apprehensive, I recommenced the rehearsal of my part merely to kill
+time. Just as I was concluding, the long-delayed rattle of the key in
+the lock came to my ear—no unwelcome sound. M. Paul (I could just see
+through the dusk that it _was_ M. Paul, for light enough still lingered
+to show the velvet blackness of his close-shorn head, and the sallow
+ivory of his brow) looked in.
+
+“Brava!” cried he, holding the door open and remaining at the
+threshold. “J’ai tout entendu. C’est assez bien. Encore!”
+
+A moment I hesitated.
+
+“Encore!” said he sternly. “Et point de grimaces! A bas la timidité!”
+
+Again I went through the part, but not half so well as I had spoken it
+alone.
+
+“Enfin, elle sait,” said he, half dissatisfied, “and one cannot be
+fastidious or exacting under the circumstances.” Then he added, “You
+may yet have twenty minutes for preparation: au revoir!” And he was
+going.
+
+“Monsieur,” I called out, taking courage.
+
+“Eh bien! Qu’est-ce que c’est, Mademoiselle?”
+
+“J’ai bien faim.”
+
+“Comment, vous avez faim! Et la collation?”
+
+“I know nothing about it. I have not seen it, shut up here.”
+
+“Ah! C’est vrai,” cried he.
+
+In a moment my throne was abdicated, the attic evacuated; an inverse
+repetition of the impetus which had brought me up into the attic,
+instantly took me down—down—down to the very kitchen. I thought I
+should have gone to the cellar. The cook was imperatively ordered to
+produce food, and I, as imperatively, was commanded to eat. To my great
+joy this food was limited to coffee and cake: I had feared wine and
+sweets, which I did not like. How he guessed that I should like a
+_petit pâté à la crême_ I cannot tell; but he went out and procured me
+one from some quarter. With considerable willingness I ate and drank,
+keeping the _petit pâté_ till the last, as a _bonne bouche_. M. Paul
+superintended my repast, and almost forced upon me more than I could
+swallow.
+
+“A la bonne heure,” he cried, when I signified that I really could take
+no more, and, with uplifted hands, implored to be spared the additional
+roll on which he had just spread butter. “You will set me down as a
+species of tyrant and Bluebeard, starving women in a garret; whereas,
+after all, I am no such thing. Now, Mademoiselle, do you feel courage
+and strength to appear?”
+
+I said, I thought I did; though, in truth, I was perfectly confused,
+and could hardly tell how I felt: but this little man was of the order
+of beings who must not be opposed, unless you possessed an all-dominant
+force sufficient to crush him at once.
+
+“Come then,” said he, offering his hand.
+
+I gave him mine, and he set off with a rapid walk, which obliged me to
+run at his side in order to keep pace. In the carré he stopped a
+moment: it was lit with large lamps; the wide doors of the classes were
+open, and so were the equally wide garden-doors; orange-trees in tubs,
+and tall flowers in pots, ornamented these portals on each side; groups
+of ladies and gentlemen in evening-dress stood and walked amongst the
+flowers. Within, the long vista of the school-rooms presented a
+thronging, undulating, murmuring, waving, streaming multitude, all
+rose, and blue, and half translucent white. There were lustres burning
+overhead; far off there was a stage, a solemn green curtain, a row of
+footlights.
+
+“Nest-ce pas que c’est beau?” demanded my companion.
+
+I should have said it was, but my heart got up into my throat. M. Paul
+discovered this, and gave me a side-scowl and a little shake for my
+pains.
+
+“I will do my best, but I wish it was over,” said I; then I asked: “Are
+we to walk through that crowd?”
+
+“By no means: I manage matters better: we pass through the
+garden—here.”
+
+In an instant we were out of doors: the cool, calm night revived me
+somewhat. It was moonless, but the reflex from the many glowing windows
+lit the court brightly, and even the alleys—dimly. Heaven was
+cloudless, and grand with the quiver of its living fires. How soft are
+the nights of the Continent! How bland, balmy, safe! No sea-fog; no
+chilling damp: mistless as noon, and fresh as morning.
+
+Having crossed court and garden, we reached the glass door of the first
+classe. It stood open, like all other doors that night; we passed, and
+then I was ushered into a small cabinet, dividing the first classe from
+the grand salle. This cabinet dazzled me, it was so full of light: it
+deafened me, it was clamorous with voices: it stifled me, it was so
+hot, choking, thronged.
+
+“De l’ordre! Du silence!” cried M. Paul. “Is this chaos?”, he demanded;
+and there was a hush. With a dozen words, and as many gestures, he
+turned out half the persons present, and obliged the remnant to fall
+into rank. Those left were all in costume: they were the performers,
+and this was the green-room. M. Paul introduced me. All stared and some
+tittered. It was a surprise: they had not expected the Englishwoman
+would play in a _vaudeville_. Ginevra Fanshawe, beautifully dressed for
+her part, and looking fascinatingly pretty, turned on me a pair of eyes
+as round as beads. In the highest spirit, unperturbed by fear or
+bashfulness, delighted indeed at the thought of shining off before
+hundreds—my entrance seemed to transfix her with amazement in the midst
+of her joy. She would have exclaimed, but M. Paul held her and all the
+rest in check.
+
+Having surveyed and criticized the whole troop, he turned to me.
+
+“You, too, must be dressed for your part.”
+
+“Dressed—dressed like a man!” exclaimed Zélie St. Pierre, darting
+forwards; adding with officiousness, “I will dress her myself.”
+
+To be dressed like a man did not please, and would not suit me. I had
+consented to take a man’s name and part; as to his dress—_halte là!_
+No. I would keep my own dress, come what might. M. Paul might storm,
+might rage: I would keep my own dress. I said so, with a voice as
+resolute in intent, as it was low, and perhaps unsteady in utterance.
+
+He did not immediately storm or rage, as I fully thought he would he
+stood silent. But Zélie again interposed.
+
+“She will make a capital _petit-mâitre_. Here are the garments, all—all
+complete: somewhat too large, but—I will arrange all that. Come, chère
+amie—belle Anglaise!”
+
+And she sneered, for I was not “belle.” She seized my hand, she was
+drawing me away. M. Paul stood impassable—neutral.
+
+“You must not resist,” pursued St. Pierre—for resist I did. “You will
+spoil all, destroy the mirth of the piece, the enjoyment of the
+company, sacrifice everything to your _amour-propre_. This would be too
+bad—monsieur will never permit this?”
+
+She sought his eye. I watched, likewise, for a glance. He gave her one,
+and then he gave me one. “Stop!” he said slowly, arresting St. Pierre,
+who continued her efforts to drag me after her. Everybody awaited the
+decision. He was not angry, not irritated; I perceived that, and took
+heart.
+
+“You do not like these clothes?” he asked, pointing to the masculine
+vestments.
+
+“I don’t object to some of them, but I won’t have them all.”
+
+“How must it be, then? How accept a man’s part, and go on the stage
+dressed as a woman? This is an amateur affair, it is true—a _vaudeville
+de pensionnat;_ certain modifications I might sanction, yet something
+you must have to announce you as of the nobler sex.”
+
+“And I will, Monsieur; but it must be arranged in my own way: nobody
+must meddle; the things must not be forced upon me. Just let me dress
+myself.”
+
+Monsieur, without another word, took the costume from St. Pierre, gave
+it to me, and permitted me to pass into the dressing-room. Once alone,
+I grew calm, and collectedly went to work. Retaining my woman’s garb
+without the slightest retrenchment, I merely assumed, in addition, a
+little vest, a collar, and cravat, and a paletôt of small dimensions;
+the whole being the costume of a brother of one of the pupils. Having
+loosened my hair out of its braids, made up the long back-hair close,
+and brushed the front hair to one side, I took my hat and gloves in my
+hand and came out. M. Paul was waiting, and so were the others. He
+looked at me. “That may pass in a pensionnat,” he pronounced. Then
+added, not unkindly, “Courage, mon ami! Un peu de sangfroid—un peu
+d’aplomb, M. Lucien, et tout ira bien.”
+
+St. Pierre sneered again, in her cold snaky manner.
+
+I was irritable, because excited, and I could not help turning upon her
+and saying, that if she were not a lady and I a gentleman, I should
+feel disposed to call her out.
+
+“After the play, after the play,” said M. Paul. “I will then divide my
+pair of pistols between you, and we will settle the dispute according
+to form: it will only be the old quarrel of France and England.”
+
+But now the moment approached for the performance to commence. M. Paul,
+setting us before him, harangued us briefly, like a general addressing
+soldiers about to charge. I don’t know what he said, except that he
+recommended each to penetrate herself with a sense of her personal
+insignificance. God knows I thought this advice superfluous for some of
+us. A bell tinkled. I and two more were ushered on to the stage. The
+bell tinkled again. I had to speak the very first words.
+
+“Do not look at the crowd, nor think of it,” whispered M. Paul in my
+ear. “Imagine yourself in the garret, acting to the rats.”
+
+He vanished. The curtain drew up—shrivelled to the ceiling: the bright
+lights, the long room, the gay throng, burst upon us. I thought of the
+black-beetles, the old boxes, the worm-eaten bureau. I said my say
+badly; but I said it. That first speech was the difficulty; it revealed
+to me this fact, that it was not the crowd I feared so much as my own
+voice. Foreigners and strangers, the crowd were nothing to me. Nor did
+I think of them. When my tongue once got free, and my voice took its
+true pitch, and found its natural tone, I thought of nothing but the
+personage I represented—and of M. Paul, who was listening, watching,
+prompting in the side-scenes.
+
+By-and-by, feeling the right power come—the spring demanded gush and
+rise inwardly—I became sufficiently composed to notice my
+fellow-actors. Some of them played very well; especially Ginevra
+Fanshawe, who had to coquette between two suitors, and managed
+admirably: in fact she was in her element. I observed that she once or
+twice threw a certain marked fondness and pointed partiality into her
+manner towards me—the fop. With such emphasis and animation did she
+favour me, such glances did she dart out into the listening and
+applauding crowd, that to me—who knew her—it presently became evident
+she was acting _at_ some one; and I followed her eye, her smile, her
+gesture, and ere long discovered that she had at least singled out a
+handsome and distinguished aim for her shafts; full in the path of
+those arrows—taller than other spectators, and therefore more sure to
+receive them—stood, in attitude quiet but intent, a well-known
+form—that of Dr. John.
+
+The spectacle seemed somehow suggestive. There was language in Dr.
+John’s look, though I cannot tell what he said; it animated me: I drew
+out of it a history; I put my idea into the part I performed; I threw
+it into my wooing of Ginevra. In the “Ours,” or sincere lover, I saw
+Dr. John. Did I pity him, as erst? No, I hardened my heart, rivalled
+and out-rivalled him. I knew myself but a fop, but where _he_ was
+outcast _I_ could please. Now I know I acted as if wishful and resolute
+to win and conquer. Ginevra seconded me; between us we half-changed the
+nature of the _rôle_, gilding it from top to toe. Between the acts M.
+Paul, told us he knew not what possessed us, and half expostulated.
+“C’est peut-être plus beau que votre modèle,” said he, “mais ce n’est
+pas juste.” I know not what possessed me either; but somehow, my
+longing was to eclipse the “Ours,” _i.e._, Dr. John. Ginevra was
+tender; how could I be otherwise than chivalric? Retaining the letter,
+I recklessly altered the spirit of the _rôle_. Without heart, without
+interest, I could not play it at all. It must be played—in went the
+yearned-for seasoning—thus favoured, I played it with relish.
+
+What I felt that night, and what I did, I no more expected to feel and
+do, than to be lifted in a trance to the seventh heaven. Cold,
+reluctant, apprehensive, I had accepted a part to please another: ere
+long, warming, becoming interested, taking courage, I acted to please
+myself. Yet the next day, when I thought it over, I quite disapproved
+of these amateur performances; and though glad that I had obliged M.
+Paul, and tried my own strength for once, I took a firm resolution,
+never to be drawn into a similar affair. A keen relish for dramatic
+expression had revealed itself as part of my nature; to cherish and
+exercise this new-found faculty might gift me with a world of delight,
+but it would not do for a mere looker-on at life: the strength and
+longing must be put by; and I put them by, and fastened them in with
+the lock of a resolution which neither Time nor Temptation has since
+picked.
+
+No sooner was the play over, and _well_ over, than the choleric and
+arbitrary M. Paul underwent a metamorphosis. His hour of managerial
+responsibility past, he at once laid aside his magisterial austerity;
+in a moment he stood amongst us, vivacious, kind, and social, shook
+hands with us all round, thanked us separately, and announced his
+determination that each of us should in turn be his partner in the
+coming ball. On his claiming my promise, I told him I did not dance.
+“For once I must,” was the answer; and if I had not slipped aside and
+kept out of his way, he would have compelled me to this second
+performance. But I had acted enough for one evening; it was time I
+retired into myself and my ordinary life. My dun-coloured dress did
+well enough under a paletôt on the stage, but would not suit a waltz or
+a quadrille. Withdrawing to a quiet nook, whence unobserved I could
+observe—the ball, its splendours and its pleasures, passed before me as
+a spectacle.
+
+Again Ginevra Fanshawe was the belle, the fairest and the gayest
+present; she was selected to open the ball: very lovely she looked,
+very gracefully she danced, very joyously she smiled. Such scenes were
+her triumphs—she was the child of pleasure. Work or suffering found her
+listless and dejected, powerless and repining; but gaiety expanded her
+butterfly’s wings, lit up their gold-dust and bright spots, made her
+flash like a gem, and flush like a flower. At all ordinary diet and
+plain beverage she would pout; but she fed on creams and ices like a
+humming-bird on honey-paste: sweet wine was her element, and sweet cake
+her daily bread. Ginevra lived her full life in a ball-room; elsewhere
+she drooped dispirited.
+
+Think not, reader, that she thus bloomed and sparkled for the mere sake
+of M. Paul, her partner, or that she lavished her best graces that
+night for the edification of her companions only, or for that of the
+parents and grand-parents, who filled the carré, and lined the
+ball-room; under circumstances so insipid and limited, with motives so
+chilly and vapid, Ginevra would scarce have deigned to walk one
+quadrille, and weariness and fretfulness would have replaced animation
+and good-humour, but she knew of a leaven in the otherwise heavy festal
+mass which lighted the whole; she tasted a condiment which gave it
+zest; she perceived reasons justifying the display of her choicest
+attractions.
+
+In the ball-room, indeed, not a single male spectator was to be seen
+who was not married and a father—M. Paul excepted—that gentleman, too,
+being the sole creature of his sex permitted to lead out a pupil to the
+dance; and this exceptional part was allowed him, partly as a matter of
+old-established custom (for he was a kinsman of Madame Beck’s, and high
+in her confidence), partly because he would always have his own way and
+do as he pleased, and partly because—wilful, passionate, partial, as he
+might be—he was the soul of honour, and might be trusted with a
+regiment of the fairest and purest; in perfect security that under his
+leadership they would come to no harm. Many of the girls—it may be
+noted in parenthesis—were not pure-minded at all, very much otherwise;
+but they no more dare betray their natural coarseness in M. Paul’s
+presence, than they dare tread purposely on his corns, laugh in his
+face during a stormy apostrophe, or speak above their breath while some
+crisis of irritability was covering his human visage with the mask of
+an intelligent tiger. M. Paul, then, might dance with whom he would—and
+woe be to the interference which put him out of step.
+
+Others there were admitted as spectators—with (seeming) reluctance,
+through prayers, by influence, under restriction, by special and
+difficult exercise of Madame Beck’s gracious good-nature, and whom she
+all the evening—with her own personal surveillance—kept far aloof at
+the remotest, drearest, coldest, darkest side of the carré—a small,
+forlorn band of “jeunes gens;” these being all of the best families,
+grown-up sons of mothers present, and whose sisters were pupils in the
+school. That whole evening was Madame on duty beside these “jeunes
+gens”—attentive to them as a mother, but strict with them as a dragon.
+There was a sort of cordon stretched before them, which they wearied
+her with prayers to be permitted to pass, and just to revive themselves
+by one dance with that “belle blonde,” or that “jolie brune,” or “cette
+jeune fille magnifique aux cheveux noirs comme le jais.”
+
+“Taisez-vous!” Madame would reply, heroically and inexorably. “Vous ne
+passerez pas à moins que ce ne soit sur mon cadavre, et vous ne
+danserez qu’avec la nonnette du jardin” (alluding to the legend). And
+she majestically walked to and fro along their disconsolate and
+impatient line, like a little Bonaparte in a mouse-coloured silk gown.
+
+Madame knew something of the world; Madame knew much of human nature. I
+don’t think that another directress in Villette would have dared to
+admit a “jeune homme” within her walls; but Madame knew that by
+granting such admission, on an occasion like the present, a bold stroke
+might be struck, and a great point gained.
+
+In the first place, the parents were made accomplices to the deed, for
+it was only through their mediation it was brought about. Secondly: the
+admission of these rattlesnakes, so fascinating and so dangerous,
+served to draw out Madame precisely in her strongest character—that of
+a first-rate _surveillante_. Thirdly: their presence furnished a most
+piquant ingredient to the entertainment: the pupils knew it, and saw
+it, and the view of such golden apples shining afar off, animated them
+with a spirit no other circumstance could have kindled. The children’s
+pleasure spread to the parents; life and mirth circulated quickly round
+the ball-room; the “jeunes gens” themselves, though restrained, were
+amused: for Madame never permitted them to feel dull—and thus Madame
+Beck’s fête annually ensured a success unknown to the fête of any other
+directress in the land.
+
+I observed that Dr. John was at first permitted to walk at large
+through the classes: there was about him a manly, responsible look,
+that redeemed his youth, and half-expiated his beauty; but as soon as
+the ball began, Madame ran up to him.
+
+“Come, Wolf; come,” said she, laughing: “you wear sheep’s clothing, but
+you must quit the fold notwithstanding. Come; I have a fine menagerie
+of twenty here in the carré: let me place you amongst my collection.”
+
+“But first suffer me to have one dance with one pupil of my choice.”
+
+“Have you the face to ask such a thing? It is madness: it is impiety.
+Sortez, sortez, au plus vite.”
+
+She drove him before her, and soon had him enclosed within the cordon.
+
+Ginevra being, I suppose, tired with dancing, sought me out in my
+retreat. She threw herself on the bench beside me, and (a demonstration
+I could very well have dispensed with) cast her arms round my neck.
+
+“Lucy Snowe! Lucy Snowe!” she cried in a somewhat sobbing voice, half
+hysterical.
+
+“What in the world is the matter?” I drily said.
+
+“How do I look—how do I look to-night?” she demanded.
+
+“As usual,” said I; “preposterously vain.”
+
+“Caustic creature! You never have a kind word for me; but in spite of
+you, and all other envious detractors, I know I am beautiful; I feel
+it, I see it—for there is a great looking-glass in the dressing-room,
+where I can view my shape from head to foot. Will you go with me now,
+and let us two stand before it?”
+
+“I will, Miss Fanshawe: you shall be humoured even to the top of your
+bent.”
+
+The dressing-room was very near, and we stepped in. Putting her arm
+through mine, she drew me to the mirror. Without resistance
+remonstrance, or remark, I stood and let her self-love have its feast
+and triumph: curious to see how much it could swallow—whether it was
+possible it could feed to satiety—whether any whisper of consideration
+for others could penetrate her heart, and moderate its vainglorious
+exultation.
+
+Not at all. She turned me and herself round; she viewed us both on all
+sides; she smiled, she waved her curls, she retouched her sash, she
+spread her dress, and finally, letting go my arm, and curtseying with
+mock respect, she said: “I would not be you for a kingdom.”
+
+The remark was too _naïve_ to rouse anger; I merely said: “Very good.”
+
+“And what would _you_ give to be ME?” she inquired.
+
+“Not a bad sixpence—strange as it may sound,” I replied. “You are but a
+poor creature.”
+
+“You don’t think so in your heart.”
+
+“No; for in my heart you have not the outline of a place: I only
+occasionally turn you over in my brain.”
+
+“Well, but,” said she, in an expostulatory tone, “just listen to the
+difference of our positions, and then see how happy am I, and how
+miserable are you.”
+
+“Go on; I listen.”
+
+“In the first place: I am the daughter of a gentleman of family, and
+though my father is not rich, I have expectations from an uncle. Then,
+I am just eighteen, the finest age possible. I have had a continental
+education, and though I can’t spell, I have abundant accomplishments. I
+_am_ pretty; _you_ can’t deny that; I may have as many admirers as I
+choose. This very night I have been breaking the hearts of two
+gentlemen, and it is the dying look I had from one of them just now,
+which puts me in such spirits. I do so like to watch them turn red and
+pale, and scowl and dart fiery glances at each other, and languishing
+ones at me. There is _me_—happy ME; now for _you_, poor soul!
+
+“I suppose you are nobody’s daughter, since you took care of little
+children when you first came to Villette: you have no relations; you
+can’t call yourself young at twenty-three; you have no attractive
+accomplishments—no beauty. As to admirers, you hardly know what they
+are; you can’t even talk on the subject: you sit dumb when the other
+teachers quote their conquests. I believe you never were in love, and
+never will be: you don’t know the feeling, and so much the better, for
+though you might have your own heart broken, no living heart will you
+ever break. Isn’t it all true?”
+
+“A good deal of it is true as gospel, and shrewd besides. There must be
+good in you, Ginevra, to speak so honestly; that snake, Zélie St.
+Pierre, could not utter what you have uttered. Still, Miss Fanshawe,
+hapless as I am, according to your showing, sixpence I would not give
+to purchase you, body and soul.”
+
+“Just because I am not clever, and that is all _you_ think of. Nobody
+in the world but you cares for cleverness.”
+
+“On the contrary, I consider you _are_ clever, in your way—very smart
+indeed. But you were talking of breaking hearts—that edifying amusement
+into the merits of which I don’t quite enter; pray on whom does your
+vanity lead you to think you have done execution to-night?”
+
+She approached her lips to my ear—“Isidore and Alfred de Hamal are both
+here,” she whispered.
+
+“Oh! they are? I should like to see them.”
+
+“There’s a dear creature! your curiosity is roused at last. Follow me,
+I will point them out.”
+
+She proudly led the way—“But you cannot see them well from the
+classes,” said she, turning, “Madame keeps them too far off. Let us
+cross the garden, enter by the corridor, and get close to them behind:
+we shall be scolded if we are seen, but never mind.”
+
+For once, I did not mind. Through the garden we went—penetrated into
+the corridor by a quiet private entrance, and approaching the _carré_,
+yet keeping in the corridor shade, commanded a near view of the band of
+“jeunes gens.”
+
+I believe I could have picked out the conquering de Hamal even
+undirected. He was a straight-nosed, very correct-featured little
+dandy. I say _little_ dandy, though he was not beneath the middle
+standard in stature; but his lineaments were small, and so were his
+hands and feet; and he was pretty and smooth, and as trim as a doll: so
+nicely dressed, so nicely curled, so booted and gloved and cravated—he
+was charming indeed. I said so. “What, a dear personage!” cried I, and
+commended Ginevra’s taste warmly; and asked her what she thought de
+Hamal might have done with the precious fragments of that heart she had
+broken—whether he kept them in a scent-vial, and conserved them in otto
+of roses? I observed, too, with deep rapture of approbation, that the
+colonel’s hands were scarce larger than Miss Fanshawe’s own, and
+suggested that this circumstance might be convenient, as he could wear
+her gloves at a pinch. On his dear curls, I told her I doated: and as
+to his low, Grecian brow, and exquisite classic headpiece, I confessed
+I had no language to do such perfections justice.
+
+“And if he were your lover?” suggested the cruelly exultant Ginevra.
+
+“Oh! heavens, what bliss!” said I; “but do not be inhuman, Miss
+Fanshawe: to put such thoughts into my head is like showing poor
+outcast Cain a far, glimpse of Paradise.”
+
+“You like him, then?”
+
+“As I like sweets, and jams, and comfits, and conservatory flowers.”
+
+Ginevra admired my taste, for all these things were her adoration; she
+could then readily credit that they were mine too.
+
+“Now for Isidore,” I went on. I own I felt still more curious to see
+him than his rival; but Ginevra was absorbed in the latter.
+
+“Alfred was admitted here to-night,” said she, “through the influence
+of his aunt, Madame la Baronne de Dorlodot; and now, having seen him,
+can you not understand why I have been in such spirits all the evening,
+and acted so well, and danced with such life, and why I am now happy as
+a queen? Dieu! Dieu! It was such good fun to glance first at him and
+then at the other, and madden them both.”
+
+“But that other—where is he? Show me Isidore.”
+
+“I don’t like.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“I am ashamed of him.”
+
+“For what reason?”
+
+“Because—because” (in a whisper) “he has such—such whiskers,
+orange—red—there now!”
+
+“The murder is out,” I subjoined. “Never mind, show him all the same; I
+engage not to faint.”
+
+She looked round. Just then an English voice spoke behind her and me.
+
+“You are both standing in a draught; you must leave this corridor.”
+
+“There is no draught, Dr. John,” said I, turning.
+
+“She takes cold so easily,” he pursued, looking at Ginevra with extreme
+kindness. “She is delicate; she must be cared for: fetch her a shawl.”
+
+“Permit me to judge for myself,” said Miss Fanshawe, with hauteur. “I
+want no shawl.”
+
+“Your dress is thin, you have been dancing, you are heated.”
+
+“Always preaching,” retorted she; “always coddling and admonishing.”
+
+The answer Dr. John would have given did not come; that his heart was
+hurt became evident in his eye; darkened, and saddened, and pained, he
+turned a little aside, but was patient. I knew where there were plenty
+of shawls near at hand; I ran and fetched one.
+
+“She shall wear this, if I have strength to make her,” said I, folding
+it well round her muslin dress, covering carefully her neck and her
+arms. “Is that Isidore?” I asked, in a somewhat fierce whisper.
+
+She pushed up her lip, smiled, and nodded.
+
+“Is _that_ Isidore?” I repeated, giving her a shake: I could have given
+her a dozen.
+
+“C’est lui-même,” said she. “How coarse he is, compared with the
+Colonel-Count! And then—oh ciel!—the whiskers!”
+
+Dr. John now passed on.
+
+“The Colonel-Count!” I echoed. “The doll—the puppet—the manikin—the
+poor inferior creature! A mere lackey for Dr. John his valet, his
+foot-boy! Is it possible that fine generous gentleman—handsome as a
+vision—offers you his honourable hand and gallant heart, and promises
+to protect your flimsy person and feckless mind through the storms and
+struggles of life—and you hang back—you scorn, you sting, you torture
+him! Have you power to do this? Who gave you that power? Where is it?
+Does it lie all in your beauty—your pink and white complexion, and your
+yellow hair? Does this bind his soul at your feet, and bend his neck
+under your yoke? Does this purchase for you his affection, his
+tenderness, his thoughts, his hopes, his interest, his noble, cordial
+love—and will you not have it? Do you scorn it? You are only
+dissembling: you are not in earnest: you love him; you long for him;
+but you trifle with his heart to make him more surely yours?”
+
+“Bah! How you run on! I don’t understand half you have said.”
+
+I had got her out into the garden ere this. I now set her down on a
+seat and told her she should not stir till she had avowed which she
+meant in the end to accept—the man or the monkey.
+
+“Him you call the man,” said she, “is bourgeois, sandy-haired, and
+answers to the name of John!—cela suffit: je n’en veux pas. Colonel de
+Hamal is a gentleman of excellent connections, perfect manners, sweet
+appearance, with pale interesting face, and hair and eyes like an
+Italian. Then too he is the most delightful company possible—a man
+quite in my way; not sensible and serious like the other; but one with
+whom I can talk on equal terms—who does not plague and bore, and harass
+me with depths, and heights, and passions, and talents for which I have
+no taste. There now. Don’t hold me so fast.”
+
+I slackened my grasp, and she darted off. I did not care to pursue her.
+
+Somehow I could not avoid returning once more in the direction of the
+corridor to get another glimpse of Dr. John; but I met him on the
+garden-steps, standing where the light from a window fell broad. His
+well-proportioned figure was not to be mistaken, for I doubt whether
+there was another in that assemblage his equal. He carried his hat in
+his hand; his uncovered head, his face and fine brow were most handsome
+and manly. _His_ features were not delicate, not slight like those of a
+woman, nor were they cold, frivolous, and feeble; though well cut, they
+were not so chiselled, so frittered away, as to lose in expression or
+significance what they gained in unmeaning symmetry. Much feeling spoke
+in them at times, and more sat silent in his eye. Such at least were my
+thoughts of him: to me he seemed all this. An inexpressible sense of
+wonder occupied me, as I looked at this man, and reflected that _he_
+could not be slighted.
+
+It was, not my intention to approach or address him in the garden, our
+terms of acquaintance not warranting such a step; I had only meant to
+view him in the crowd—myself unseen: coming upon him thus alone, I
+withdrew. But he was looking out for me, or rather for her who had been
+with me: therefore he descended the steps, and followed me down the
+alley.
+
+“You know Miss Fanshawe? I have often wished to ask whether you knew
+her,” said he.
+
+“Yes: I know her.”
+
+“Intimately?”
+
+“Quite as intimately as I wish.”
+
+“What have you done with her now?”
+
+“Am I her keeper?” I felt inclined to ask; but I simply answered, “I
+have shaken her well, and would have shaken her better, but she escaped
+out of my hands and ran away.”
+
+“Would you favour me,” he asked, “by watching over her this one
+evening, and observing that she does nothing imprudent—does not, for
+instance, run out into the night-air immediately after dancing?”
+
+“I may, perhaps, look after her a little; since you wish it; but she
+likes her own way too well to submit readily to control.”
+
+“She is so young, so thoroughly artless,” said he.
+
+“To me she is an enigma,” I responded.
+
+“Is she?” he asked—much interested. “How?”
+
+“It would be difficult to say how—difficult, at least, to tell _you_
+how.”
+
+“And why me?”
+
+“I wonder she is not better pleased that you are so much her friend.”
+
+“But she has not the slightest idea how much I _am_ her friend. That is
+precisely the point I cannot teach her. May I inquire did she ever
+speak of me to you?”
+
+“Under the name of ‘Isidore’ she has talked about you often; but I must
+add that it is only within the last ten minutes I have discovered that
+you and ‘Isidore’ are identical. It is only, Dr. John, within that
+brief space of time I have learned that Ginevra Fanshawe is the person,
+under this roof, in whom you have long been interested—that she is the
+magnet which attracts you to the Rue Fossette, that for her sake you
+venture into this garden, and seek out caskets dropped by rivals.”
+
+“You know all?”
+
+“I know so much.”
+
+“For more than a year I have been accustomed to meet her in society.
+Mrs. Cholmondeley, her friend, is an acquaintance of mine; thus I see
+her every Sunday. But you observed that under the name of ‘Isidore’ she
+often spoke of me: may I—without inviting you to a breach of
+confidence—inquire what was the tone, what the feeling of her remarks?
+I feel somewhat anxious to know, being a little tormented with
+uncertainty as to how I stand with her.”
+
+“Oh, she varies: she shifts and changes like the wind.”
+
+“Still, you can gather some general idea—?”
+
+“I can,” thought I, “but it would not do to communicate that general
+idea to you. Besides, if I said she did not love you, I know you would
+not believe me.”
+
+“You are silent,” he pursued. “I suppose you have no good news to
+impart. No matter. If she feels for me positive coldness and aversion,
+it is a sign I do not deserve her.”
+
+“Do you doubt yourself? Do you consider yourself the inferior of
+Colonel de Hamal?”
+
+“I love Miss Fanshawe far more than de Hamal loves any human being, and
+would care for and guard her better than he. Respecting de Hamal, I
+fear she is under an illusion; the man’s character is known to me, all
+his antecedents, all his scrapes. He is not worthy of your beautiful
+young friend.”
+
+“My ‘beautiful young friend’ ought to know that, and to know or feel
+who is worthy of her,” said I. “If her beauty or her brains will not
+serve her so far, she merits the sharp lesson of experience.”
+
+“Are you not a little severe?”
+
+“I am excessively severe—more severe than I choose to show you. You
+should hear the strictures with which I favour my ‘beautiful young
+friend,’ only that you would be unutterably shocked at my want of
+tender considerateness for her delicate nature.”
+
+“She is so lovely, one cannot but be loving towards her. You—every
+woman older than herself, must feel for such a simple, innocent,
+girlish fairy a sort of motherly or elder-sisterly fondness. Graceful
+angel! Does not your heart yearn towards her when she pours into your
+ear her pure, childlike confidences? How you are privileged!” And he
+sighed.
+
+“I cut short these confidences somewhat abruptly now and then,” said I.
+“But excuse me, Dr. John, may I change the theme for one instant? What
+a god-like person is that de Hamal! What a nose on his face—perfect!
+Model one in putty or clay, you could not make a better or straighter,
+or neater; and then, such classic lips and chin—and his
+bearing—sublime.”
+
+“De Hamal is an unutterable puppy, besides being a very white-livered
+hero.”
+
+“You, Dr. John, and every man of a less-refined mould than he, must
+feel for him a sort of admiring affection, such as Mars and the coarser
+deities may be supposed to have borne the young, graceful Apollo.”
+
+“An unprincipled, gambling little jackanapes!” said Dr. John curtly,
+“whom, with one hand, I could lift up by the waistband any day, and lay
+low in the kennel if I liked.”
+
+“The sweet seraph!” said I. “What a cruel idea! Are you not a little
+severe, Dr. John?”
+
+And now I paused. For the second time that night I was going beyond
+myself—venturing out of what I looked on as my natural habits—speaking
+in an unpremeditated, impulsive strain, which startled me strangely
+when I halted to reflect. On rising that morning, had I anticipated
+that before night I should have acted the part of a gay lover in a
+vaudeville; and an hour after, frankly discussed with Dr. John the
+question of his hapless suit, and rallied him on his illusions? I had
+no more presaged such feats than I had looked forward to an ascent in a
+balloon, or a voyage to Cape Horn.
+
+The Doctor and I, having paced down the walk, were now returning; the
+reflex from the window again lit his face: he smiled, but his eye was
+melancholy. How I wished that he could feel heart’s-ease! How I grieved
+that he brooded over pain, and pain from such a cause! He, with his
+great advantages, _he_ to love in vain! I did not then know that the
+pensiveness of reverse is the best phase for some minds; nor did I
+reflect that some herbs, “though scentless when entire, yield fragrance
+when they’re bruised.”
+
+“Do not be sorrowful, do not grieve,” I broke out. “If there is in
+Ginevra one spark of worthiness of your affection, she will—she _must_
+feel devotion in return. Be cheerful, be hopeful, Dr. John. Who should
+hope, if not you?”
+
+In return for this speech I got—what, it must be supposed, I deserved—a
+look of surprise: I thought also of some disapprobation. We parted, and
+I went into the house very chill. The clocks struck and the bells
+tolled midnight; people were leaving fast: the fête was over; the lamps
+were fading. In another hour all the dwelling-house, and all the
+pensionnat, were dark and hushed. I too was in bed, but not asleep. To
+me it was not easy to sleep after a day of such excitement.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+THE LONG VACATION.
+
+
+Following Madame Beck’s fête, with its three preceding weeks of
+relaxation, its brief twelve hours’ burst of hilarity and dissipation,
+and its one subsequent day of utter languor, came a period of reaction;
+two months of real application, of close, hard study. These two months,
+being the last of the “année scolaire,” were indeed the only genuine
+working months in the year. To them was procrastinated—into them
+concentrated, alike by professors, mistresses, and pupils—the main
+burden of preparation for the examinations preceding the distribution
+of prizes. Candidates for rewards had then to work in good earnest;
+masters and teachers had to set their shoulders to the wheel, to urge
+on the backward, and diligently aid and train the more promising. A
+showy demonstration—a telling exhibition—must be got up for public
+view, and all means were fair to this end.
+
+I scarcely noted how the other teachers went to work; I had my own
+business to mind; and _my_ task was not the least onerous, being to
+imbue some ninety sets of brains with a due tincture of what they
+considered a most complicated and difficult science, that of the
+English language; and to drill ninety tongues in what, for them, was an
+almost impossible pronunciation—the lisping and hissing dentals of the
+Isles.
+
+The examination-day arrived. Awful day! Prepared for with anxious care,
+dressed for with silent despatch—nothing vaporous or fluttering now—no
+white gauze or azure streamers; the grave, close, compact was the order
+of the toilette. It seemed to me that I was this day, especially
+doomed—the main burden and trial falling on me alone of all the female
+teachers. The others were not expected to examine in the studies they
+taught; the professor of literature, M. Paul, taking upon himself this
+duty. He, this school autocrat, gathered all and sundry reins into the
+hollow of his one hand; he irefully rejected any colleague; he would
+not have help. Madame herself, who evidently rather wished to undertake
+the examination in geography—her favourite study, which she taught
+well—was forced to succumb, and be subordinate to her despotic
+kinsman’s direction. The whole staff of instructors, male and female,
+he set aside, and stood on the examiner’s estrade alone. It irked him
+that he was forced to make one exception to this rule. He could not
+manage English: he was obliged to leave that branch of education in the
+English teacher’s hands; which he did, not without a flash of naïve
+jealousy.
+
+A constant crusade against the “amour-propre” of every human being but
+himself, was the crotchet of this able, but fiery and grasping little
+man. He had a strong relish for public representation in his own
+person, but an extreme abhorrence of the like display in any other. He
+quelled, he kept down when he could; and when he could not, he fumed
+like a bottled storm.
+
+On the evening preceding the examination-day, I was walking in the
+garden, as were the other teachers and all the boarders. M. Emanuel
+joined me in the “allée défendue;” his cigar was at his lips; his
+paletôt—a most characteristic garment of no particular shape—hung dark
+and menacing; the tassel of his bonnet grec sternly shadowed his left
+temple; his black whiskers curled like those of a wrathful cat; his
+blue eye had a cloud in its glitter.
+
+“Ainsi,” he began, abruptly fronting and arresting me, “vous allez
+trôner comme une reine; demain—trôner à mes côtés? Sans doute vous
+savourez d’avance les délices de l’autorité. Je crois voir en je ne
+sais quoi de rayonnante, petite ambitieuse!”
+
+Now the fact was, he happened to be entirely mistaken. I did not—could
+not—estimate the admiration or the good opinion of tomorrow’s audience
+at the same rate he did. Had that audience numbered as many personal
+friends and acquaintance for me as for him, I know not how it might
+have been: I speak of the case as it stood. On me school-triumphs shed
+but a cold lustre. I had wondered—and I wondered now—how it was that
+for him they seemed to shine as with hearth-warmth and hearth-glow.
+_He_ cared for them perhaps too much; _I_, probably, too little.
+However, I had my own fancies as well as he. I liked, for instance, to
+see M. Emanuel jealous; it lit up his nature, and woke his spirit; it
+threw all sorts of queer lights and shadows over his dun face, and into
+his violet-azure eyes (he used to say that his black hair and blue eyes
+were “une de ses beautés”). There was a relish in his anger; it was
+artless, earnest, quite unreasonable, but never hypocritical. I uttered
+no disclaimer then of the complacency he attributed to me; I merely
+asked where the English examination came in—whether at the commencement
+or close of the day?
+
+“I hesitate,” said he, “whether at the very beginning, before many
+persons are come, and when your aspiring nature will not be gratified
+by a large audience, or quite at the close, when everybody is tired,
+and only a jaded and worn-out attention will be at your service.”
+
+“Que vous êtes dur, Monsieur!” I said, affecting dejection.
+
+“One ought to be ‘dur’ with you. You are one of those beings who must
+be _kept down_. I know you! I know you! Other people in this house see
+you pass, and think that a colourless shadow has gone by. As for me, I
+scrutinized your face once, and it sufficed.”
+
+“You are satisfied that you understand me?”
+
+Without answering directly, he went on, “Were you not gratified when
+you succeeded in that vaudeville? I watched you and saw a passionate
+ardour for triumph in your physiognomy. What fire shot into the glance!
+Not mere light, but flame: je me tiens pour averti.”
+
+“What feeling I had on that occasion, Monsieur—and pardon me, if I say,
+you immensely exaggerate both its quality and quantity—was quite
+abstract. I did not care for the vaudeville. I hated the part you
+assigned me. I had not the slightest sympathy with the audience below
+the stage. They are good people, doubtless, but do I know them? Are
+they anything to me? Can I care for being brought before their view
+again to-morrow? Will the examination be anything but a task to me—a
+task I wish well over?”
+
+“Shall I take it out of your hands?”
+
+“With all my heart; if you do not fear failure.”
+
+“But I should fail. I only know three phrases of English, and a few
+words: par exemple, de sonn, de mone, de stares—est-ce bien dit? My
+opinion is that it would be better to give up the thing altogether: to
+have no English examination, eh?”
+
+“If Madame consents, I consent.”
+
+“Heartily?”
+
+“Very heartily.”
+
+He smoked his cigar in silence. He turned suddenly.
+
+“Donnez-moi la main,” said he, and the spite and jealousy melted out of
+his face, and a generous kindliness shone there instead.
+
+“Come, we will not be rivals, we will be friends,” he pursued. “The
+examination shall take place, and I will choose a good moment; and
+instead of vexing and hindering, as I felt half-inclined ten minutes
+ago—for I have my malevolent moods: I always had from childhood—I will
+aid you sincerely. After all, you are solitary and a stranger, and have
+your way to make and your bread to earn; it may be well that you should
+become known. We will be friends: do you agree?”
+
+“Out of my heart, Monsieur. I am glad of a friend. I like that better
+than a triumph.”
+
+“Pauvrette?” said he, and turned away and left the alley.
+
+The examination passed over well; M. Paul was as good as his word, and
+did his best to make my part easy. The next day came the distribution
+of prizes; that also passed; the school broke up; the pupils went home,
+and now began the long vacation.
+
+That vacation! Shall I ever forget it? I think not. Madame Beck went,
+the first day of the holidays, to join her children at the sea-side;
+all the three teachers had parents or friends with whom they took
+refuge; every professor quitted the city; some went to Paris, some to
+Boue-Marine; M. Paul set forth on a pilgrimage to Rome; the house was
+left quite empty, but for me, a servant, and a poor deformed and
+imbecile pupil, a sort of crétin, whom her stepmother in a distant
+province would not allow to return home.
+
+My heart almost died within me; miserable longings strained its chords.
+How long were the September days! How silent, how lifeless! How vast
+and void seemed the desolate premises! How gloomy the forsaken
+garden—grey now with the dust of a town summer departed. Looking
+forward at the commencement of those eight weeks, I hardly knew how I
+was to live to the end. My spirits had long been gradually sinking; now
+that the prop of employment was withdrawn, they went down fast. Even to
+look forward was not to hope: the dumb future spoke no comfort, offered
+no promise, gave no inducement to bear present evil in reliance on
+future good. A sorrowful indifference to existence often pressed on
+me—a despairing resignation to reach betimes the end of all things
+earthly. Alas! When I had full leisure to look on life as life must be
+looked on by such as me, I found it but a hopeless desert: tawny sands,
+with no green fields, no palm-tree, no well in view. The hopes which
+are dear to youth, which bear it up and lead it on, I knew not and
+dared not know. If they knocked at my heart sometimes, an inhospitable
+bar to admission must be inwardly drawn. When they turned away thus
+rejected, tears sad enough sometimes flowed: but it could not be
+helped: I dared not give such guests lodging. So mortally did I fear
+the sin and weakness of presumption.
+
+Religious reader, you will preach to me a long sermon about what I have
+just written, and so will you, moralist: and you, stern sage: you,
+stoic, will frown; you, cynic, sneer; you, epicure, laugh. Well, each
+and all, take it your own way. I accept the sermon, frown, sneer, and
+laugh; perhaps you are all right: and perhaps, circumstanced like me,
+you would have been, like me, wrong. The first month was, indeed, a
+long, black, heavy month to me.
+
+The crétin did not seem unhappy. I did my best to feed her well and
+keep her warm, and she only asked food and sunshine, or when that
+lacked, fire. Her weak faculties approved of inertion: her brain, her
+eyes, her ears, her heart slept content; they could not wake to work,
+so lethargy was their Paradise.
+
+Three weeks of that vacation were hot, fair, and dry, but the fourth
+and fifth were tempestuous and wet. I do not know why that change in
+the atmosphere made a cruel impression on me, why the raging storm and
+beating rain crushed me with a deadlier paralysis than I had
+experienced while the air had remained serene; but so it was; and my
+nervous system could hardly support what it had for many days and
+nights to undergo in that huge empty house. How I used to pray to
+Heaven for consolation and support! With what dread force the
+conviction would grasp me that Fate was my permanent foe, never to be
+conciliated. I did not, in my heart, arraign the mercy or justice of
+God for this; I concluded it to be a part of his great plan that some
+must deeply suffer while they live, and I thrilled in the certainty
+that of this number, I was one.
+
+It was some relief when an aunt of the crétin, a kind old woman, came
+one day, and took away my strange, deformed companion. The hapless
+creature had been at times a heavy charge; I could not take her out
+beyond the garden, and I could not leave her a minute alone: for her
+poor mind, like her body, was warped: its propensity was to evil. A
+vague bent to mischief, an aimless malevolence, made constant vigilance
+indispensable. As she very rarely spoke, and would sit for hours
+together moping and mowing, and distorting her features with
+indescribable grimaces, it was more like being prisoned with some
+strange tameless animal, than associating with a human being. Then
+there were personal attentions to be rendered which required the nerve
+of a hospital nurse; my resolution was so tried, it sometimes fell
+dead-sick. These duties should not have fallen on me; a servant, now
+absent, had rendered them hitherto, and in the hurry of holiday
+departure, no substitute to fill this office had been provided. This
+tax and trial were by no means the least I have known in life. Still,
+menial and distasteful as they were, my mental pain was far more
+wasting and wearing. Attendance on the crétin deprived me often of the
+power and inclination to swallow a meal, and sent me faint to the fresh
+air, and the well or fountain in the court; but this duty never wrung
+my heart, or brimmed my eyes, or scalded my cheek with tears hot as
+molten metal.
+
+The crétin being gone, I was free to walk out. At first I lacked
+courage to venture very far from the Rue Fossette, but by degrees I
+sought the city gates, and passed them, and then went wandering away
+far along chaussées, through fields, beyond cemeteries, Catholic and
+Protestant, beyond farmsteads, to lanes and little woods, and I know
+not where. A goad thrust me on, a fever forbade me to rest; a want of
+companionship maintained in my soul the cravings of a most deadly
+famine. I often walked all day, through the burning noon and the arid
+afternoon, and the dusk evening, and came back with moonrise.
+
+While wandering in solitude, I would sometimes picture the present
+probable position of others, my acquaintance. There was Madame Beck at
+a cheerful watering-place with her children, her mother, and a whole
+troop of friends who had sought the same scene of relaxation. Zélie St.
+Pierre was at Paris, with her relatives; the other teachers were at
+their homes. There was Ginevra Fanshawe, whom certain of her
+connections had carried on a pleasant tour southward. Ginevra seemed to
+me the happiest. She was on the route of beautiful scenery; these
+September suns shone for her on fertile plains, where harvest and
+vintage matured under their mellow beam. These gold and crystal moons
+rose on her vision over blue horizons waved in mounted lines.
+
+But all this was nothing; I too felt those autumn suns and saw those
+harvest moons, and I almost wished to be covered in with earth and
+turf, deep out of their influence; for I could not live in their light,
+nor make them comrades, nor yield them affection. But Ginevra had a
+kind of spirit with her, empowered to give constant strength and
+comfort, to gladden daylight and embalm darkness; the best of the good
+genii that guard humanity curtained her with his wings, and canopied
+her head with his bending form. By True Love was Ginevra followed:
+never could she be alone. Was she insensible to this presence? It
+seemed to me impossible: I could not realize such deadness. I imagined
+her grateful in secret, loving now with reserve; but purposing one day
+to show how much she loved: I pictured her faithful hero half conscious
+of her coy fondness, and comforted by that consciousness: I conceived
+an electric chord of sympathy between them, a fine chain of mutual
+understanding, sustaining union through a separation of a hundred
+leagues—carrying, across mound and hollow, communication by prayer and
+wish. Ginevra gradually became with me a sort of heroine. One day,
+perceiving this growing illusion, I said, “I really believe my nerves
+are getting overstretched: my mind has suffered somewhat too much a
+malady is growing upon it—what shall I do? How shall I keep well?”
+
+Indeed there was no way to keep well under the circumstances. At last a
+day and night of peculiarly agonizing depression were succeeded by
+physical illness, I took perforce to my bed. About this time the Indian
+summer closed and the equinoctial storms began; and for nine dark and
+wet days, of which the hours rushed on all turbulent, deaf,
+dishevelled—bewildered with sounding hurricane—I lay in a strange fever
+of the nerves and blood. Sleep went quite away. I used to rise in the
+night, look round for her, beseech her earnestly to return. A rattle of
+the window, a cry of the blast only replied—Sleep never came!
+
+I err. She came once, but in anger. Impatient of my importunity she
+brought with her an avenging dream. By the clock of St. Jean Baptiste,
+that dream remained scarce fifteen minutes—a brief space, but sufficing
+to wring my whole frame with unknown anguish; to confer a nameless
+experience that had the hue, the mien, the terror, the very tone of a
+visitation from eternity. Between twelve and one that night a cup was
+forced to my lips, black, strong, strange, drawn from no well, but
+filled up seething from a bottomless and boundless sea. Suffering,
+brewed in temporal or calculable measure, and mixed for mortal lips,
+tastes not as this suffering tasted. Having drank and woke, I thought
+all was over: the end come and past by. Trembling fearfully—as
+consciousness returned—ready to cry out on some fellow-creature to help
+me, only that I knew no fellow-creature was near enough to catch the
+wild summons—Goton in her far distant attic could not hear—I rose on my
+knees in bed. Some fearful hours went over me: indescribably was I
+torn, racked and oppressed in mind. Amidst the horrors of that dream I
+think the worst lay here. Methought the well-loved dead, who had loved
+_me_ well in life, met me elsewhere, alienated: galled was my inmost
+spirit with an unutterable sense of despair about the future. Motive
+there was none why I should try to recover or wish to live; and yet
+quite unendurable was the pitiless and haughty voice in which Death
+challenged me to engage his unknown terrors. When I tried to pray I
+could only utter these words: “From my youth up Thy terrors have I
+suffered with a troubled mind.”
+
+Most true was it.
+
+On bringing me my tea next morning Goton urged me to call in a doctor.
+I would not: I thought no doctor could cure me.
+
+One evening—and I was not delirious: I was in my sane mind, I got up—I
+dressed myself, weak and shaking. The solitude and the stillness of the
+long dormitory could not be borne any longer; the ghastly white beds
+were turning into spectres—the coronal of each became a death’s-head,
+huge and sun-bleached—dead dreams of an elder world and mightier race
+lay frozen in their wide gaping eyeholes. That evening more firmly than
+ever fastened into my soul the conviction that Fate was of stone, and
+Hope a false idol—blind, bloodless, and of granite core. I felt, too,
+that the trial God had appointed me was gaining its climax, and must
+now be turned by my own hands, hot, feeble, trembling as they were. It
+rained still, and blew; but with more clemency, I thought, than it had
+poured and raged all day. Twilight was falling, and I deemed its
+influence pitiful; from the lattice I saw coming night-clouds trailing
+low like banners drooping. It seemed to me that at this hour there was
+affection and sorrow in Heaven above for all pain suffered on earth
+beneath; the weight of my dreadful dream became alleviated—that
+insufferable thought of being no more loved—no more owned, half-yielded
+to hope of the contrary—I was sure this hope would shine clearer if I
+got out from under this house-roof, which was crushing as the slab of a
+tomb, and went outside the city to a certain quiet hill, a long way
+distant in the fields. Covered with a cloak (I could not be delirious,
+for I had sense and recollection to put on warm clothing), forth I set.
+The bells of a church arrested me in passing; they seemed to call me in
+to the _salut_, and I went in. Any solemn rite, any spectacle of
+sincere worship, any opening for appeal to God was as welcome to me
+then as bread to one in extremity of want. I knelt down with others on
+the stone pavement. It was an old solemn church, its pervading gloom
+not gilded but purpled by light shed through stained glass.
+
+Few worshippers were assembled, and, the _salut_ over, half of them
+departed. I discovered soon that those left remained to confess. I did
+not stir. Carefully every door of the church was shut; a holy quiet
+sank upon, and a solemn shade gathered about us. After a space,
+breathless and spent in prayer, a penitent approached the confessional.
+I watched. She whispered her avowal; her shrift was whispered back; she
+returned consoled. Another went, and another. A pale lady, kneeling
+near me, said in a low, kind voice:—“Go you now, I am not quite
+prepared.”
+
+Mechanically obedient, I rose and went. I knew what I was about; my
+mind had run over the intent with lightning-speed. To take this step
+could not make me more wretched than I was; it might soothe me.
+
+The priest within the confessional never turned his eyes to regard me;
+he only quietly inclined his ear to my lips. He might be a good man,
+but this duty had become to him a sort of form: he went through it with
+the phlegm of custom. I hesitated; of the formula of confession I was
+ignorant: instead of commencing, then, with the prelude usual, I
+said:—“Mon père, je suis Protestante.”
+
+He directly turned. He was not a native priest: of that class, the cast
+of physiognomy is, almost invariably, grovelling: I saw by his profile
+and brow he was a Frenchman; though grey and advanced in years, he did
+not, I think, lack feeling or intelligence. He inquired, not unkindly,
+why, being a Protestant, I came to him?
+
+I said I was perishing for a word of advice or an accent of comfort. I
+had been living for some weeks quite alone; I had been ill; I had a
+pressure of affliction on my mind of which it would hardly any longer
+endure the weight.
+
+“Was it a sin, a crime?” he inquired, somewhat startled. I reassured
+him on this point, and, as well as I could, I showed him the mere
+outline of my experience.
+
+He looked thoughtful, surprised, puzzled. “You take me unawares,” said
+he. “I have not had such a case as yours before: ordinarily we know our
+routine, and are prepared; but this makes a great break in the common
+course of confession. I am hardly furnished with counsel fitting the
+circumstances.”
+
+Of course, I had not expected he would be; but the mere relief of
+communication in an ear which was human and sentient, yet
+consecrated—the mere pouring out of some portion of long accumulating,
+long pent-up pain into a vessel whence it could not be again
+diffused—had done me good. I was already solaced.
+
+“Must I go, father?” I asked of him as he sat silent.
+
+“My daughter,” he said kindly—and I am sure he was a kind man: he had a
+compassionate eye—“for the present you had better go: but I assure you
+your words have struck me. Confession, like other things, is apt to
+become formal and trivial with habit. You have come and poured your
+heart out; a thing seldom done. I would fain think your case over, and
+take it with me to my oratory. Were you of our faith I should know what
+to say—a mind so tossed can find repose but in the bosom of retreat,
+and the punctual practice of piety. The world, it is well known, has no
+satisfaction for that class of natures. Holy men have bidden penitents
+like you to hasten their path upward by penance, self-denial, and
+difficult good works. Tears are given them here for meat and
+drink—bread of affliction and waters of affliction—their recompence
+comes hereafter. It is my own conviction that these impressions under
+which you are smarting are messengers from God to bring you back to the
+true Church. You were made for our faith: depend upon it our faith
+alone could heal and help you—Protestantism is altogether too dry,
+cold, prosaic for you. The further I look into this matter, the more
+plainly I see it is entirely out of the common order of things. On no
+account would I lose sight of you. Go, my daughter, for the present;
+but return to me again.”
+
+I rose and thanked him. I was withdrawing when he signed me to return.
+
+“You must not come to this church,” said he: “I see you are ill, and
+this church is too cold; you must come to my house: I live——” (and he
+gave me his address). “Be there to-morrow morning at ten.”
+
+In reply to this appointment, I only bowed; and pulling down my veil,
+and gathering round me my cloak, I glided away.
+
+Did I, do you suppose, reader, contemplate venturing again within that
+worthy priest’s reach? As soon should I have thought of walking into a
+Babylonish furnace. That priest had arms which could influence me: he
+was naturally kind, with a sentimental French kindness, to whose
+softness I knew myself not wholly impervious. Without respecting some
+sorts of affection, there was hardly any sort having a fibre of root in
+reality, which I could rely on my force wholly to withstand. Had I gone
+to him, he would have shown me all that was tender, and comforting, and
+gentle, in the honest Popish superstition. Then he would have tried to
+kindle, blow and stir up in me the zeal of good works. I know not how
+it would all have ended. We all think ourselves strong in some points;
+we all know ourselves weak in many; the probabilities are that had I
+visited Numero 10, Rue des Mages, at the hour and day appointed, I
+might just now, instead of writing this heretic narrative, be counting
+my beads in the cell of a certain Carmelite convent on the Boulevard of
+Crécy, in Villette. There was something of Fénélon about that benign
+old priest; and whatever most of his brethren may be, and whatever I
+may think of his Church and creed (and I like neither), of himself I
+must ever retain a grateful recollection. He was kind when I needed
+kindness; he did me good. May Heaven bless him!
+
+Twilight had passed into night, and the lamps were lit in the streets
+ere I issued from that sombre church. To turn back was now become
+possible to me; the wild longing to breathe this October wind on the
+little hill far without the city walls had ceased to be an imperative
+impulse, and was softened into a wish with which Reason could cope: she
+put it down, and I turned, as I thought, to the Rue Fossette. But I had
+become involved in a part of the city with which I was not familiar; it
+was the old part, and full of narrow streets of picturesque, ancient,
+and mouldering houses. I was much too weak to be very collected, and I
+was still too careless of my own welfare and safety to be cautious; I
+grew embarrassed; I got immeshed in a network of turns unknown. I was
+lost and had no resolution to ask guidance of any passenger.
+
+If the storm had lulled a little at sunset, it made up now for lost
+time. Strong and horizontal thundered the current of the wind from
+north-west to south-east; it brought rain like spray, and sometimes a
+sharp hail, like shot: it was cold and pierced me to the vitals. I bent
+my head to meet it, but it beat me back. My heart did not fail at all
+in this conflict; I only wished that I had wings and could ascend the
+gale, spread and repose my pinions on its strength, career in its
+course, sweep where it swept. While wishing this, I suddenly felt
+colder where before I was cold, and more powerless where before I was
+weak. I tried to reach the porch of a great building near, but the mass
+of frontage and the giant spire turned black and vanished from my eyes.
+Instead of sinking on the steps as I intended, I seemed to pitch
+headlong down an abyss. I remember no more.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+AULD LANG SYNE.
+
+
+Where my soul went during that swoon I cannot tell. Whatever she saw,
+or wherever she travelled in her trance on that strange night she kept
+her own secret; never whispering a word to Memory, and baffling
+imagination by an indissoluble silence. She may have gone upward, and
+come in sight of her eternal home, hoping for leave to rest now, and
+deeming that her painful union with matter was at last dissolved. While
+she so deemed, an angel may have warned her away from heaven’s
+threshold, and, guiding her weeping down, have bound her, once more,
+all shuddering and unwilling, to that poor frame, cold and wasted, of
+whose companionship she was grown more than weary.
+
+I know she re-entered her prison with pain, with reluctance, with a
+moan and a long shiver. The divorced mates, Spirit and Substance, were
+hard to re-unite: they greeted each other, not in an embrace, but a
+racking sort of struggle. The returning sense of sight came upon me,
+red, as if it swam in blood; suspended hearing rushed back loud, like
+thunder; consciousness revived in fear: I sat up appalled, wondering
+into what region, amongst what strange beings I was waking. At first I
+knew nothing I looked on: a wall was not a wall—a lamp not a lamp. I
+should have understood what we call a ghost, as well as I did the
+commonest object: which is another way of intimating that all my eye
+rested on struck it as spectral. But the faculties soon settled each in
+his place; the life-machine presently resumed its wonted and regular
+working.
+
+Still, I knew not where I was; only in time I saw I had been removed
+from the spot where I fell: I lay on no portico-step; night and tempest
+were excluded by walls, windows, and ceiling. Into some house I had
+been carried—but what house?
+
+I could only think of the pensionnat in the Rue Fossette. Still
+half-dreaming, I tried hard to discover in what room they had put me;
+whether the great dormitory, or one of the little dormitories. I was
+puzzled, because I could not make the glimpses of furniture I saw
+accord with my knowledge of any of these apartments. The empty white
+beds were wanting, and the long line of large windows. “Surely,”
+thought I, “it is not to Madame Beck’s own chamber they have carried
+me!” And here my eye fell on an easy-chair covered with blue damask.
+Other seats, cushioned to match, dawned on me by degrees; and at last I
+took in the complete fact of a pleasant parlour, with a wood fire on a
+clear-shining hearth, a carpet where arabesques of bright blue relieved
+a ground of shaded fawn; pale walls over which a slight but endless
+garland of azure forget-me-nots ran mazed and bewildered amongst myriad
+gold leaves and tendrils. A gilded mirror filled up the space between
+two windows, curtained amply with blue damask. In this mirror I saw
+myself laid, not in bed, but on a sofa. I looked spectral; my eyes
+larger and more hollow, my hair darker than was natural, by contrast
+with my thin and ashen face. It was obvious, not only from the
+furniture, but from the position of windows, doors, and fireplace, that
+this was an unknown room in an unknown house.
+
+Hardly less plain was it that my brain was not yet settled; for, as I
+gazed at the blue arm-chair, it appeared to grow familiar; so did a
+certain scroll-couch, and not less so the round centre-table, with a
+blue-covering, bordered with autumn-tinted foliage; and, above all, two
+little footstools with worked covers, and a small ebony-framed chair,
+of which the seat and back were also worked with groups of brilliant
+flowers on a dark ground.
+
+Struck with these things, I explored further. Strange to say, old
+acquaintance were all about me, and “auld lang syne” smiled out of
+every nook. There were two oval miniatures over the mantel-piece, of
+which I knew by heart the pearls about the high and powdered “heads;”
+the velvets circling the white throats; the swell of the full muslin
+kerchiefs: the pattern of the lace sleeve-ruffles. Upon the
+mantel-shelf there were two china vases, some relics of a diminutive
+tea-service, as smooth as enamel and as thin as egg-shell, and a white
+centre ornament, a classic group in alabaster, preserved under glass.
+Of all these things I could have told the peculiarities, numbered the
+flaws or cracks, like any _clairvoyante_. Above all, there was a pair
+of handscreens, with elaborate pencil-drawings finished like line
+engravings; these, my very eyes ached at beholding again, recalling
+hours when they had followed, stroke by stroke and touch by touch, a
+tedious, feeble, finical, school-girl pencil held in these fingers, now
+so skeleton-like.
+
+Where was I? Not only in what spot of the world, but in what year of
+our Lord? For all these objects were of past days, and of a distant
+country. Ten years ago I bade them good-by; since my fourteenth year
+they and I had never met. I gasped audibly, “Where am I?”
+
+A shape hitherto unnoticed, stirred, rose, came forward: a shape
+inharmonious with the environment, serving only to complicate the
+riddle further. This was no more than a sort of native bonne, in a
+common-place bonne’s cap and print-dress. She spoke neither French nor
+English, and I could get no intelligence from her, not understanding
+her phrases of dialect. But she bathed my temples and forehead with
+some cool and perfumed water, and then she heightened the cushion on
+which I reclined, made signs that I was not to speak, and resumed her
+post at the foot of the sofa.
+
+She was busy knitting; her eyes thus drawn from me, I could gaze on her
+without interruption. I did mightily wonder how she came there, or what
+she could have to do among the scenes, or with the days of my girlhood.
+Still more I marvelled what those scenes and days could now have to do
+with me.
+
+Too weak to scrutinize thoroughly the mystery, I tried to settle it by
+saying it was a mistake, a dream, a fever-fit; and yet I knew there
+could be no mistake, and that I was not sleeping, and I believed I was
+sane. I wished the room had not been so well lighted, that I might not
+so clearly have seen the little pictures, the ornaments, the screens,
+the worked chair. All these objects, as well as the blue-damask
+furniture, were, in fact, precisely the same, in every minutest detail,
+with those I so well remembered, and with which I had been so
+thoroughly intimate, in the drawing-room of my godmother’s house at
+Bretton. Methought the apartment only was changed, being of different
+proportions and dimensions.
+
+I thought of Bedreddin Hassan, transported in his sleep from Cairo to
+the gates of Damascus. Had a Genius stooped his dark wing down the
+storm to whose stress I had succumbed, and gathering me from the
+church-steps, and “rising high into the air,” as the eastern tale said,
+had he borne me over land and ocean, and laid me quietly down beside a
+hearth of Old England? But no; I knew the fire of that hearth burned
+before its Lares no more—it went out long ago, and the household gods
+had been carried elsewhere.
+
+The bonne turned again to survey me, and seeing my eyes wide open, and,
+I suppose, deeming their expression perturbed and excited, she put down
+her knitting. I saw her busied for a moment at a little stand; she
+poured out water, and measured drops from a phial: glass in hand, she
+approached me. What dark-tinged draught might she now be offering? what
+Genii-elixir or Magi-distillation?
+
+It was too late to inquire—I had swallowed it passively, and at once. A
+tide of quiet thought now came gently caressing my brain; softer and
+softer rose the flow, with tepid undulations smoother than balm. The
+pain of weakness left my limbs, my muscles slept. I lost power to move;
+but, losing at the same time wish, it was no privation. That kind bonne
+placed a screen between me and the lamp; I saw her rise to do this, but
+do not remember seeing her resume her place: in the interval between
+the two acts, I “fell on sleep.”
+
+At waking, lo! all was again changed. The light of high day surrounded
+me; not, indeed, a warm, summer light, but the leaden gloom of raw and
+blustering autumn. I felt sure now that I was in the pensionnat—sure by
+the beating rain on the casement; sure by the “wuther” of wind amongst
+trees, denoting a garden outside; sure by the chill, the whiteness, the
+solitude, amidst which I lay. I say _whiteness_—for the dimity
+curtains, dropped before a French bed, bounded my view.
+
+I lifted them; I looked out. My eye, prepared to take in the range of a
+long, large, and whitewashed chamber, blinked baffled, on encountering
+the limited area of a small cabinet—a cabinet with seagreen walls;
+also, instead of five wide and naked windows, there was one high
+lattice, shaded with muslin festoons: instead of two dozen little
+stands of painted wood, each holding a basin and an ewer, there was a
+toilette-table dressed, like a lady for a ball, in a white robe over a
+pink skirt; a polished and large glass crowned, and a pretty
+pin-cushion frilled with lace, adorned it. This toilette, together with
+a small, low, green and white chintz arm-chair, a washstand topped with
+a marble slab, and supplied with utensils of pale greenware,
+sufficiently furnished the tiny chamber.
+
+Reader; I felt alarmed! Why? you will ask. What was there in this
+simple and somewhat pretty sleeping-closet to startle the most timid?
+Merely this—These articles of furniture could not be real, solid
+arm-chairs, looking-glasses, and washstands—they must be the ghosts of
+such articles; or, if this were denied as too wild an hypothesis—and,
+confounded as I was, I _did_ deny it—there remained but to conclude
+that I had myself passed into an abnormal state of mind; in short, that
+I was very ill and delirious: and even then, mine was the strangest
+figment with which delirium had ever harassed a victim.
+
+I knew—I was obliged to know—the green chintz of that little chair; the
+little snug chair itself, the carved, shining-black, foliated frame of
+that glass; the smooth, milky-green of the china vessels on the stand;
+the very stand too, with its top of grey marble, splintered at one
+corner;—all these I was compelled to recognise and to hail, as last
+night I had, perforce, recognised and hailed the rosewood, the drapery,
+the porcelain, of the drawing-room.
+
+Bretton! Bretton! and ten years ago shone reflected in that mirror. And
+why did Bretton and my fourteenth year haunt me thus? Why, if they came
+at all, did they not return complete? Why hovered before my distempered
+vision the mere furniture, while the rooms and the locality were gone?
+As to that pincushion made of crimson satin, ornamented with gold beads
+and frilled with thread-lace, I had the same right to know it as to
+know the screens—I had made it myself. Rising with a start from the
+bed, I took the cushion in my hand and examined it. There was the
+cipher “L. L. B.” formed in gold beds, and surrounded with an oval
+wreath embroidered in white silk. These were the initials of my
+godmother’s name—Lonisa Lucy Bretton.
+
+“Am I in England? Am I at Bretton?” I muttered; and hastily pulling up
+the blind with which the lattice was shrouded, I looked out to try and
+discover _where_ I was; half-prepared to meet the calm, old, handsome
+buildings and clean grey pavement of St. Ann’s Street, and to see at
+the end the towers of the minster: or, if otherwise, fully expectant of
+a town view somewhere, a rue in Villette, if not a street in a pleasant
+and ancient English city.
+
+I looked, on the contrary, through a frame of leafage, clustering round
+the high lattice, and forth thence to a grassy mead-like level, a
+lawn-terrace with trees rising from the lower ground beyond—high
+forest-trees, such as I had not seen for many a day. They were now
+groaning under the gale of October, and between their trunks I traced
+the line of an avenue, where yellow leaves lay in heaps and drifts, or
+were whirled singly before the sweeping west wind. Whatever landscape
+might lie further must have been flat, and these tall beeches shut it
+out. The place seemed secluded, and was to me quite strange: I did not
+know it at all.
+
+Once more I lay down. My bed stood in a little alcove; on turning my
+face to the wall, the room with its bewildering accompaniments became
+excluded. Excluded? No! For as I arranged my position in this hope,
+behold, on the green space between the divided and looped-up curtains,
+hung a broad, gilded picture-frame enclosing a portrait. It was
+drawn—well drawn, though but a sketch—in water-colours; a head, a boy’s
+head, fresh, life-like, speaking, and animated. It seemed a youth of
+sixteen, fair-complexioned, with sanguine health in his cheek; hair
+long, not dark, and with a sunny sheen; penetrating eyes, an arch
+mouth, and a gay smile. On the whole a most pleasant face to look at,
+especially for, those claiming a right to that youth’s
+affections—parents, for instance, or sisters. Any romantic little
+school-girl might almost have loved it in its frame. Those eyes looked
+as if when somewhat older they would flash a lightning-response to
+love: I cannot tell whether they kept in store the steady-beaming shine
+of faith. For whatever sentiment met him in form too facile, his lips
+menaced, beautifully but surely, caprice and light esteem.
+
+Striving to take each new discovery as quietly as I could, I whispered
+to myself—
+
+“Ah! that portrait used to hang in the breakfast-room, over the
+mantel-piece: somewhat too high, as I thought. I well remember how I
+used to mount a music-stool for the purpose of unhooking it, holding it
+in my hand, and searching into those bonny wells of eyes, whose glance
+under their hazel lashes seemed like a pencilled laugh; and well I
+liked to note the colouring of the cheek, and the expression of the
+mouth.” I hardly believed fancy could improve on the curve of that
+mouth, or of the chin; even _my_ ignorance knew that both were
+beautiful, and pondered perplexed over this doubt: “How it was that
+what charmed so much, could at the same time so keenly pain?” Once, by
+way of test, I took little Missy Home, and, lifting her in my arms,
+told her to look at the picture.
+
+“Do you like it, Polly?” I asked. She never answered, but gazed long,
+and at last a darkness went trembling through her sensitive eye, as she
+said, “Put me down.” So I put her down, saying to myself: “The child
+feels it too.”
+
+All these things do I now think over, adding, “He had his faults, yet
+scarce ever was a finer nature; liberal, suave, impressible.” My
+reflections closed in an audibly pronounced word, “Graham!”
+
+“Graham!” echoed a sudden voice at the bedside. “Do you want Graham?”
+
+I looked. The plot was but thickening; the wonder but culminating. If
+it was strange to see that well-remembered pictured form on the wall,
+still stranger was it to turn and behold the equally well-remembered
+living form opposite—a woman, a lady, most real and substantial, tall,
+well-attired, wearing widow’s silk, and such a cap as best became her
+matron and motherly braids of hair. Hers, too, was a good face; too
+marked, perhaps, now for beauty, but not for sense or character. She
+was little changed; something sterner, something more robust—but she
+was my godmother: still the distinct vision of Mrs. Bretton.
+
+I kept quiet, yet internally _I_ was much agitated: my pulse fluttered,
+and the blood left my cheek, which turned cold.
+
+“Madam, where am I?” I inquired.
+
+“In a very safe asylum; well protected for the present; make your mind
+quite easy till you get a little better; you look ill this morning.”
+
+“I am so entirely bewildered, I do not know whether I can trust my
+senses at all, or whether they are misleading me in every particular:
+but you speak English, do you not, madam?”
+
+“I should think you might hear that: it would puzzle me to hold a long
+discourse in French.”
+
+“You do not come from England?”
+
+“I am lately arrived thence. Have you been long in this country? You
+seem to know my son?”
+
+“Do, I, madam? Perhaps I do. Your son—the picture there?”
+
+“That is his portrait as a youth. While looking at it, you pronounced
+his name.”
+
+“Graham Bretton?”
+
+She nodded.
+
+“I speak to Mrs. Bretton, formerly of Bretton, ——shire?”
+
+“Quite right; and you, I am told, are an English teacher in a foreign
+school here: my son recognised you as such.”
+
+“How was I found, madam, and by whom?”
+
+“My son shall tell you that by-and-by,” said she; “but at present you
+are too confused and weak for conversation: try to eat some breakfast,
+and then sleep.”
+
+Notwithstanding all I had undergone—the bodily fatigue, the
+perturbation of spirits, the exposure to weather—it seemed that I was
+better: the fever, the real malady which had oppressed my frame, was
+abating; for, whereas during the last nine days I had taken no solid
+food, and suffered from continual thirst, this morning, on breakfast
+being offered, I experienced a craving for nourishment: an inward
+faintness which caused me eagerly to taste the tea this lady offered,
+and to eat the morsel of dry toast she allowed in accompaniment. It was
+only a morsel, but it sufficed; keeping up my strength till some two or
+three hours afterwards, when the bonne brought me a little cup of broth
+and a biscuit.
+
+As evening began to darken, and the ceaseless blast still blew wild and
+cold, and the rain streamed on, deluge-like, I grew weary—very weary of
+my bed. The room, though pretty, was small: I felt it confining: I
+longed for a change. The increasing chill and gathering gloom, too,
+depressed me; I wanted to see—to feel firelight. Besides, I kept
+thinking of the son of that tall matron: when should I see him?
+Certainly not till I left my room.
+
+At last the bonne came to make my bed for the night. She prepared to
+wrap me in a blanket and place me in the little chintz chair; but,
+declining these attentions, I proceeded to dress myself:
+
+The business was just achieved, and I was sitting down to take breath,
+when Mrs. Bretton once more appeared.
+
+“Dressed!” she exclaimed, smiling with that smile I so well knew—a
+pleasant smile, though not soft. “You are quite better then? Quite
+strong—eh?”
+
+She spoke to me so much as of old she used to speak that I almost
+fancied she was beginning to know me. There was the same sort of
+patronage in her voice and manner that, as a girl, I had always
+experienced from her—a patronage I yielded to and even liked; it was
+not founded on conventional grounds of superior wealth or station (in
+the last particular there had never been any inequality; her degree was
+mine); but on natural reasons of physical advantage: it was the shelter
+the tree gives the herb. I put a request without further ceremony.
+
+“Do let me go down-stairs, madam; I am so cold and dull here.”
+
+“I desire nothing better, if you are strong enough to bear the change,”
+was her reply. “Come then; here is an arm.” And she offered me hers: I
+took it, and we descended one flight of carpeted steps to a landing
+where a tall door, standing open, gave admission into the blue-damask
+room. How pleasant it was in its air of perfect domestic comfort! How
+warm in its amber lamp-light and vermilion fire-flush! To render the
+picture perfect, tea stood ready on the table—an English tea, whereof
+the whole shining service glanced at me familiarly; from the solid
+silver urn, of antique pattern, and the massive pot of the same metal,
+to the thin porcelain cups, dark with purple and gilding. I knew the
+very seed-cake of peculiar form, baked in a peculiar mould, which
+always had a place on the tea-table at Bretton. Graham liked it, and
+there it was as of yore—set before Graham’s plate with the silver knife
+and fork beside it. Graham was then expected to tea: Graham was now,
+perhaps, in the house; ere many minutes I might see him.
+
+“Sit down—sit down,” said my conductress, as my step faltered a little
+in passing to the hearth. She seated me on the sofa, but I soon passed
+behind it, saying the fire was too hot; in its shade I found another
+seat which suited me better. Mrs. Bretton was never wont to make a fuss
+about any person or anything; without remonstrance she suffered me to
+have my own way. She made the tea, and she took up the newspaper. I
+liked to watch every action of my godmother; all her movements were so
+young: she must have been now above fifty, yet neither her sinews nor
+her spirit seemed yet touched by the rust of age. Though portly, she
+was alert, and though serene, she was at times impetuous—good health
+and an excellent temperament kept her green as in her spring.
+
+While she read, I perceived she listened—listened for her son. She was
+not the woman ever to confess herself uneasy, but there was yet no lull
+in the weather, and if Graham were out in that hoarse wind—roaring
+still unsatisfied—I well knew his mother’s heart would be out with him.
+
+“Ten minutes behind his time,” said she, looking at her watch; then, in
+another minute, a lifting of her eyes from the page, and a slight
+inclination of her head towards the door, denoted that she heard some
+sound. Presently her brow cleared; and then even my ear, less
+practised, caught the iron clash of a gate swung to, steps on gravel,
+lastly the door-bell. He was come. His mother filled the teapot from
+the urn, she drew nearer the hearth the stuffed and cushioned blue
+chair—her own chair by right, but I saw there was one who might with
+impunity usurp it. And when that _one_ came up the stairs—which he soon
+did, after, I suppose, some such attention to the toilet as the wild
+and wet night rendered necessary, and strode straight in—
+
+“Is it you, Graham?” said his mother, hiding a glad smile and speaking
+curtly.
+
+“Who else should it be, mamma?” demanded the Unpunctual, possessing
+himself irreverently of the abdicated throne.
+
+“Don’t you deserve cold tea, for being late?”
+
+“I shall not get my deserts, for the urn sings cheerily.”
+
+“Wheel yourself to the table, lazy boy: no seat will serve you but
+mine; if you had one spark of a sense of propriety, you would always
+leave that chair for the Old Lady.”
+
+“So I should; only the dear Old Lady persists in leaving it for me. How
+is your patient, mamma?”
+
+“Will she come forward and speak for herself?” said Mrs. Bretton,
+turning to my corner; and at this invitation, forward I came. Graham
+courteously rose up to greet me. He stood tall on the hearth, a figure
+justifying his mother’s unconcealed pride.
+
+“So you are come down,” said he; “you must be better then—much better.
+I scarcely expected we should meet thus, or here. I was alarmed last
+night, and if I had not been forced to hurry away to a dying patient, I
+certainly would not have left you; but my mother herself is something
+of a doctress, and Martha an excellent nurse. I saw the case was a
+fainting-fit, not necessarily dangerous. What brought it on, I have yet
+to learn, and all particulars; meantime, I trust you really do feel
+better?”
+
+“Much better,” I said calmly. “Much better, I thank you, Dr. John.”
+
+For, reader, this tall young man—this darling son—this host of
+mine—this Graham Bretton, _was_ Dr. John: he, and no other; and, what
+is more, I ascertained this identity scarcely with surprise. What is
+more, when I heard Graham’s step on the stairs, I knew what manner of
+figure would enter, and for whose aspect to prepare my eyes. The
+discovery was not of to-day, its dawn had penetrated my perceptions
+long since. Of course I remembered young Bretton well; and though ten
+years (from sixteen to twenty-six) may greatly change the boy as they
+mature him to the man, yet they could bring no such utter difference as
+would suffice wholly to blind my eyes, or baffle my memory. Dr. John
+Graham Bretton retained still an affinity to the youth of sixteen: he
+had his eyes; he had some of his features; to wit, all the
+excellently-moulded lower half of the face; I found him out soon. I
+first recognised him on that occasion, noted several chapters back,
+when my unguardedly-fixed attention had drawn on me the mortification
+of an implied rebuke. Subsequent observation confirmed, in every point,
+that early surmise. I traced in the gesture, the port, and the habits
+of his manhood, all his boy’s promise. I heard in his now deep tones
+the accent of former days. Certain turns of phrase, peculiar to him of
+old, were peculiar to him still; and so was many a trick of eye and
+lip, many a smile, many a sudden ray levelled from the irid, under his
+well-charactered brow.
+
+To _say_ anything on the subject, to _hint_ at my discovery, had not
+suited my habits of thought, or assimilated with my system of feeling.
+On the contrary, I had preferred to keep the matter to myself. I liked
+entering his presence covered with a cloud he had not seen through,
+while he stood before me under a ray of special illumination which
+shone all partial over his head, trembled about his feet, and cast
+light no farther.
+
+Well I knew that to him it could make little difference, were I to come
+forward and announce, “This is Lucy Snowe!” So I kept back in my
+teacher’s place; and as he never asked my name, so I never gave it. He
+heard me called “Miss,” and “Miss Lucy;” he never heard the surname,
+“Snowe.” As to spontaneous recognition—though I, perhaps, was still
+less changed than he—the idea never approached his mind, and why should
+I suggest it?
+
+During tea, Dr. John was kind, as it was his nature to be; that meal
+over, and the tray carried out, he made a cosy arrangement of the
+cushions in a corner of the sofa, and obliged me to settle amongst
+them. He and his mother also drew to the fire, and ere we had sat ten
+minutes, I caught the eye of the latter fastened steadily upon me.
+Women are certainly quicker in some things than men.
+
+“Well,” she exclaimed, presently, “I have seldom seen a stronger
+likeness! Graham, have you observed it?”
+
+“Observed what? What ails the Old Lady now? How you stare, mamma! One
+would think you had an attack of second sight.”
+
+“Tell me, Graham, of whom does that young lady remind you?” pointing to
+me.
+
+“Mamma, you put her out of countenance. I often tell you abruptness is
+your fault; remember, too, that to you she is a stranger, and does not
+know your ways.”
+
+“Now, when she looks down; now, when she turns sideways, who is she
+like, Graham?”
+
+“Indeed, mamma, since you propound the riddle, I think you ought to
+solve it!”
+
+“And you have known her some time, you say—ever since you first began
+to attend the school in the Rue Fossette:—yet you never mentioned to me
+that singular resemblance!”
+
+“I could not mention a thing of which I never thought, and which I do
+not now acknowledge. What _can_ you mean?”
+
+“Stupid boy! look at her.”
+
+Graham did look: but this was not to be endured; I saw how it must end,
+so I thought it best to anticipate.
+
+“Dr. John,” I said, “has had so much to do and think of, since he and I
+shook hands at our last parting in St. Ann’s Street, that, while I
+readily found out Mr. Graham Bretton, some months ago, it never
+occurred to me as possible that he should recognise Lucy Snowe.”
+
+“Lucy Snowe! I thought so! I knew it!” cried Mrs. Bretton. And she at
+once stepped across the hearth and kissed me. Some ladies would,
+perhaps, have made a great bustle upon such a discovery without being
+particularly glad of it; but it was not my godmother’s habit to make a
+bustle, and she preferred all sentimental demonstrations in bas-relief.
+So she and I got over the surprise with few words and a single salute;
+yet I daresay she was pleased, and I know I was. While we renewed old
+acquaintance, Graham, sitting opposite, silently disposed of his
+paroxysm of astonishment.
+
+“Mamma calls me a stupid boy, and I think I am so,” at length he said;
+“for, upon my honour, often as I have seen you, I never once suspected
+this fact: and yet I perceive it all now. Lucy Snowe! To be sure! I
+recollect her perfectly, and there she sits; not a doubt of it. But,”
+he added, “you surely have not known me as an old acquaintance all this
+time, and never mentioned it.”
+
+“That I have,” was my answer.
+
+Dr. John commented not. I supposed he regarded my silence as eccentric,
+but he was indulgent in refraining from censure. I daresay, too, he
+would have deemed it impertinent to have interrogated me very closely,
+to have asked me the why and wherefore of my reserve; and, though he
+might feel a little curious, the importance of the case was by no means
+such as to tempt curiosity to infringe on discretion.
+
+For my part, I just ventured to inquire whether he remembered the
+circumstance of my once looking at him very fixedly; for the slight
+annoyance he had betrayed on that occasion still lingered sore on my
+mind.
+
+“I think I do!” said he: “I think I was even cross with you.”
+
+“You considered me a little bold; perhaps?” I inquired.
+
+“Not at all. Only, shy and retiring as your general manner was, I
+wondered what personal or facial enormity in me proved so magnetic to
+your usually averted eyes.”
+
+“You see how it was now?”
+
+“Perfectly.”
+
+And here Mrs. Bretton broke in with many, many questions about past
+times; and for her satisfaction I had to recur to gone-by troubles, to
+explain causes of seeming estrangement, to touch on single-handed
+conflict with Life, with Death, with Grief, with Fate. Dr. John
+listened, saying little. He and she then told me of changes they had
+known: even with them all had not gone smoothly, and fortune had
+retrenched her once abundant gifts. But so courageous a mother, with
+such a champion in her son, was well fitted to fight a good fight with
+the world, and to prevail ultimately. Dr. John himself was one of those
+on whose birth benign planets have certainly smiled. Adversity might
+set against him her most sullen front: he was the man to beat her down
+with smiles. Strong and cheerful, and firm and courteous; not rash, yet
+valiant; he was the aspirant to woo Destiny herself, and to win from
+her stone eyeballs a beam almost loving.
+
+In the profession he had adopted, his success was now quite decided.
+Within the last three months he had taken this house (a small château,
+they told me, about half a league without the Porte de Crécy); this
+country site being chosen for the sake of his mother’s health, with
+which town air did not now agree. Hither he had invited Mrs. Bretton,
+and she, on leaving England, had brought with her such residue
+furniture of the former St. Ann’s Street mansion as she had thought fit
+to keep unsold. Hence my bewilderment at the phantoms of chairs, and
+the wraiths of looking-glasses, tea-urns, and teacups.
+
+As the clock struck eleven, Dr. John stopped his mother.
+
+“Miss Snowe must retire now,” he said; “she is beginning to look very
+pale. To-morrow I will venture to put some questions respecting the
+cause of her loss of health. She is much changed, indeed, since last
+July, when I saw her enact with no little spirit the part of a very
+killing fine gentleman. As to last night’s catastrophe, I am sure
+thereby hangs a tale, but we will inquire no further this evening.
+Good-night, Miss Lucy.”
+
+And so he kindly led me to the door, and holding a wax-candle, lighted
+me up the one flight of stairs.
+
+When I had said my prayers, and when I was undressed and laid down, I
+felt that I still had friends. Friends, not professing vehement
+attachment, not offering the tender solace of well-matched and
+congenial relationship; on whom, therefore, but moderate demand of
+affection was to be made, of whom but moderate expectation formed; but
+towards whom my heart softened instinctively, and yearned with an
+importunate gratitude, which I entreated Reason betimes to check.
+
+“Do not let me think of them too often, too much, too fondly,” I
+implored: “let me be content with a temperate draught of this living
+stream: let me not run athirst, and apply passionately to its welcome
+waters: let me not imagine in them a sweeter taste than earth’s
+fountains know. Oh! would to God I may be enabled to feel enough
+sustained by an occasional, amicable intercourse, rare, brief,
+unengrossing and tranquil: quite tranquil!”
+
+Still repeating this word, I turned to my pillow; and _still_ repeating
+it, I steeped that pillow with tears.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+LA TERRASSE.
+
+
+These struggles with the natural character, the strong native bent of
+the heart, may seem futile and fruitless, but in the end they do good.
+They tend, however slightly, to give the actions, the conduct, that
+turn which Reason approves, and which Feeling, perhaps, too often
+opposes: they certainly make a difference in the general tenour of a
+life, and enable it to be better regulated, more equable, quieter on
+the surface; and it is on the surface only the common gaze will fall.
+As to what lies below, leave that with God. Man, your equal, weak as
+you, and not fit to be your judge, may be shut out thence: take it to
+your Maker—show Him the secrets of the spirit He gave—ask Him how you
+are to bear the pains He has appointed—kneel in His presence, and pray
+with faith for light in darkness, for strength in piteous weakness, for
+patience in extreme need. Certainly, at some hour, though perhaps not
+_your_ hour, the waiting waters will stir; in _some_ shape, though
+perhaps not the shape you dreamed, which your heart loved, and for
+which it bled, the healing herald will descend, the cripple and the
+blind, and the dumb, and the possessed will be led to bathe. Herald,
+come quickly! Thousands lie round the pool, weeping and despairing, to
+see it, through slow years, stagnant. Long are the “times” of Heaven:
+the orbits of angel messengers seem wide to mortal vision; they may
+enring ages: the cycle of one departure and return may clasp unnumbered
+generations; and dust, kindling to brief suffering life, and through
+pain, passing back to dust, may meanwhile perish out of memory again,
+and yet again. To how many maimed and mourning millions is the first
+and sole angel visitant, him easterns call Azrael!
+
+I tried to get up next morning, but while I was dressing, and at
+intervals drinking cold water from the _carafe_ on my washstand, with
+design to brace up that trembling weakness which made dressing so
+difficult, in came Mrs. Bretton.
+
+“Here is an absurdity!” was her morning accost. “Not so,” she added,
+and dealing with me at once in her own brusque, energetic fashion—that
+fashion which I used formerly to enjoy seeing applied to her son, and
+by him vigorously resisted—in two minutes she consigned me captive to
+the French bed.
+
+“There you lie till afternoon,” said she. “My boy left orders before he
+went out that such should be the case, and I can assure you my son is
+master and must be obeyed. Presently you shall have breakfast.”
+
+Presently she brought that meal—brought it with her own active
+hands—not leaving me to servants. She seated herself on the bed while I
+ate. Now it is not everybody, even amongst our respected friends and
+esteemed acquaintance, whom we like to have near us, whom we like to
+watch us, to wait on us, to approach us with the proximity of a nurse
+to a patient. It is not every friend whose eye is a light in a sick
+room, whose presence is there a solace: but all this was Mrs. Bretton
+to me; all this she had ever been. Food or drink never pleased me so
+well as when it came through her hands. I do not remember the occasion
+when her entrance into a room had not made that room cheerier. Our
+natures own predilections and antipathies alike strange. There are
+people from whom we secretly shrink, whom we would personally avoid,
+though reason confesses that they are good people: there are others
+with faults of temper, &c., evident enough, beside whom we live
+content, as if the air about them did us good. My godmother’s lively
+black eye and clear brunette cheek, her warm, prompt hand, her
+self-reliant mood, her decided bearing, were all beneficial to me as
+the atmosphere of some salubrious climate. Her son used to call her
+“the old lady;” it filled me with pleasant wonder to note how the
+alacrity and power of five-and-twenty still breathed from her and
+around her.
+
+“I would bring my work here,” she said, as she took from me the emptied
+teacup, “and sit with you the whole day, if that overbearing John
+Graham had not put his veto upon such a proceeding. ‘Now, mamma,’ he
+said, when he went out, ‘take notice, you are not to knock up your
+god-daughter with gossip,’ and he particularly desired me to keep close
+to my own quarters, and spare you my fine company. He says, Lucy, he
+thinks you have had a nervous fever, judging from your look,—is that
+so?”
+
+I replied that I did not quite know what my ailment had been, but that
+I had certainly suffered a good deal especially in mind. Further, on
+this subject, I did not consider it advisable to dwell, for the details
+of what I had undergone belonged to a portion of my existence in which
+I never expected my godmother to take a share. Into what a new region
+would such a confidence have led that hale, serene nature! The
+difference between her and me might be figured by that between the
+stately ship cruising safe on smooth seas, with its full complement of
+crew, a captain gay and brave, and venturous and provident; and the
+life-boat, which most days of the year lies dry and solitary in an old,
+dark boat-house, only putting to sea when the billows run high in rough
+weather, when cloud encounters water, when danger and death divide
+between them the rule of the great deep. No, the “Louisa Bretton” never
+was out of harbour on such a night, and in such a scene: her crew could
+not conceive it; so the half-drowned life-boat man keeps his own
+counsel, and spins no yarns.
+
+She left me, and I lay in bed content: it was good of Graham to
+remember me before he went out.
+
+My day was lonely, but the prospect of coming evening abridged and
+cheered it. Then, too, I felt weak, and rest seemed welcome; and after
+the morning hours were gone by,—those hours which always bring, even to
+the necessarily unoccupied, a sense of business to be done, of tasks
+waiting fulfilment, a vague impression of obligation to be
+employed—when this stirring time was past, and the silent descent of
+afternoon hushed housemaid steps on the stairs and in the chambers, I
+then passed into a dreamy mood, not unpleasant.
+
+My calm little room seemed somehow like a cave in the sea. There was no
+colour about it, except that white and pale green, suggestive of foam
+and deep water; the blanched cornice was adorned with shell-shaped
+ornaments, and there were white mouldings like dolphins in the
+ceiling-angles. Even that one touch of colour visible in the red satin
+pincushion bore affinity to coral; even that dark, shining glass might
+have mirrored a mermaid. When I closed my eyes, I heard a gale,
+subsiding at last, bearing upon the house-front like a settling swell
+upon a rock-base. I heard it drawn and withdrawn far, far off, like a
+tide retiring from a shore of the upper world—a world so high above
+that the rush of its largest waves, the dash of its fiercest breakers,
+could sound down in this submarine home, only like murmurs and a
+lullaby.
+
+Amidst these dreams came evening, and then Martha brought a light; with
+her aid I was quickly dressed, and stronger now than in the morning, I
+made my way down to the blue saloon unassisted.
+
+Dr. John, it appears, had concluded his round of professional calls
+earlier than usual; his form was the first object that met my eyes as I
+entered the parlour; he stood in that window-recess opposite the door,
+reading the close type of a newspaper by such dull light as closing day
+yet gave. The fire shone clear, but the lamp stood on the table unlit,
+and tea was not yet brought up.
+
+As to Mrs. Bretton, my active godmother—who, I afterwards found, had
+been out in the open air all day—lay half-reclined in her
+deep-cushioned chair, actually lost in a nap. Her son seeing me, came
+forward. I noticed that he trod carefully, not to wake the sleeper; he
+also spoke low: his mellow voice never had any sharpness in it;
+modulated as at present, it was calculated rather to soothe than
+startle slumber.
+
+“This is a quiet little château,” he observed, after inviting me to sit
+near the casement. “I don’t know whether you may have noticed it in
+your walks: though, indeed, from the chaussée it is not visible; just a
+mile beyond the Porte de Crécy, you turn down a lane which soon becomes
+an avenue, and that leads you on, through meadow and shade, to the very
+door of this house. It is not a modern place, but built somewhat in the
+old style of the Basse-Ville. It is rather a manoir than a château;
+they call it ‘La Terrasse,’ because its front rises from a broad turfed
+walk, whence steps lead down a grassy slope to the avenue. See yonder!
+The moon rises: she looks well through the tree-boles.”
+
+Where, indeed, does the moon not look well? What is the scene, confined
+or expansive, which her orb does not hallow? Rosy or fiery, she mounted
+now above a not distant bank; even while we watched her flushed ascent,
+she cleared to gold, and in very brief space, floated up stainless into
+a now calm sky. Did moonlight soften or sadden Dr. Bretton? Did it
+touch him with romance? I think it did. Albeit of no sighing mood, he
+sighed in watching it: sighed to himself quietly. No need to ponder the
+cause or the course of that sigh; I knew it was wakened by beauty; I
+knew it pursued Ginevra. Knowing this, the idea pressed upon me that it
+was in some sort my duty to speak the name he meditated. Of course he
+was ready for the subject: I saw in his countenance a teeming plenitude
+of comment, question and interest; a pressure of language and
+sentiment, only checked, I thought, by sense of embarrassment how to
+begin. To spare him this embarrassment was my best, indeed my sole use.
+I had but to utter the idol’s name, and love’s tender litany would flow
+out. I had just found a fitting phrase, “You know that Miss Fanshawe is
+gone on a tour with the Cholmondeleys,” and was opening my lips to
+speak to it, when he scattered my plans by introducing another theme.
+
+“The first thing this morning,” said he, putting his sentiment in his
+pocket, turning from the moon, and sitting down, “I went to the Rue
+Fossette, and told the cuisinière that you were safe and in good hands.
+Do you know that I actually found that she had not yet discovered your
+absence from the house: she thought you safe in the great dormitory.
+With what care you must have been waited on!”
+
+“Oh! all that is very conceivable,” said I. “Goton could do nothing for
+me but bring me a little tisane and a crust of bread, and I had
+rejected both so often during the past week, that the good woman got
+tired of useless journeys from the dwelling-house kitchen to the
+school-dormitory, and only came once a day at noon to make my bed. I
+believe, however, that she is a good-natured creature, and would have
+been delighted to cook me côtelettes de mouton, if I could have eaten
+them.”
+
+“What did Madame Beck mean by leaving you alone?”
+
+“Madame Beck could not foresee that I should fall ill.”
+
+“Your nervous system bore a good share of the suffering?”
+
+“I am not quite sure what my nervous system is, but I was dreadfully
+low-spirited.”
+
+“Which disables me from helping you by pill or potion. Medicine can
+give nobody good spirits. My art halts at the threshold of
+Hypochondria: she just looks in and sees a chamber of torture, but can
+neither say nor do much. Cheerful society would be of use; you should
+be as little alone as possible; you should take plenty of exercise.”
+
+Acquiescence and a pause followed these remarks. They sounded all
+right, I thought, and bore the safe sanction of custom, and the
+well-worn stamp of use.
+
+“Miss Snowe,” recommenced Dr. John—my health, nervous system included,
+being now, somewhat to my relief, discussed and done with—“is it
+permitted me to ask what your religion is? Are you a Catholic?”
+
+I looked up in some surprise—“A Catholic? No! Why suggest such an
+idea?”
+
+“The manner in which you were consigned to me last night made me
+doubt.”
+
+“I consigned to you? But, indeed, I forget. It yet remains for me to
+learn how I fell into your hands.”
+
+“Why, under circumstances that puzzled me. I had been in attendance all
+day yesterday on a case of singularly interesting and critical
+character; the disease being rare, and its treatment doubtful: I saw a
+similar and still finer case in a hospital in Paris; but that will not
+interest you. At last a mitigation of the patient’s most urgent
+symptoms (acute pain is one of its accompaniments) liberated me, and I
+set out homeward. My shortest way lay through the Basse-Ville, and as
+the night was excessively dark, wild, and wet, I took it. In riding
+past an old church belonging to a community of Béguines, I saw by a
+lamp burning over the porch or deep arch of the entrance, a priest
+lifting some object in his arms. The lamp was bright enough to reveal
+the priest’s features clearly, and I recognised him; he was a man I
+have often met by the sick beds of both rich and poor: and chiefly the
+latter. He is, I think, a good old man, far better than most of his
+class in this country; superior, indeed, in every way, better informed,
+as well as more devoted to duty. Our eyes met; he called on me to stop:
+what he supported was a woman, fainting or dying. I alighted.
+
+“‘This person is one of your countrywomen,’ he said: ‘save her, if she
+is not dead.’
+
+“My countrywoman, on examination, turned out to be the English teacher
+at Madame Beck’s pensionnat. She was perfectly unconscious, perfectly
+bloodless, and nearly cold.
+
+“‘What does it all mean?’ was my inquiry.
+
+“He communicated a curious account; that you had been to him that
+evening at confessional; that your exhausted and suffering appearance,
+coupled with some things you had said—”
+
+“Things I had said? I wonder what things!”
+
+“Awful crimes, no doubt; but he did not tell me what: there, you know,
+the seal of the confessional checked his garrulity, and my curiosity.
+Your confidences, however, had not made an enemy of the good father; it
+seems he was so struck, and felt so sorry that you should be out on
+such a night alone, that he had esteemed it a Christian duty to watch
+you when you quitted the church, and so to manage as not to lose sight
+of you, till you should have reached home. Perhaps the worthy man
+might, half unconsciously, have blent in this proceeding some little of
+the subtlety of his class: it might have been his resolve to learn the
+locality of your home—did you impart that in your confession?”
+
+“I did not: on the contrary, I carefully avoided the shadow of any
+indication: and as to my confession, Dr. John, I suppose you will think
+me mad for taking such a step, but I could not help it: I suppose it
+was all the fault of what you call my ‘nervous system.’ I cannot put
+the case into words, but my days and nights were grown intolerable: a
+cruel sense of desolation pained my mind: a feeling that would make its
+way, rush out, or kill me—like (and this you will understand, Dr. John)
+the current which passes through the heart, and which, if aneurism or
+any other morbid cause obstructs its natural channels, seeks abnormal
+outlet. I wanted companionship, I wanted friendship, I wanted counsel.
+I could find none of these in closet or chamber, so I went and sought
+them in church and confessional. As to what I said, it was no
+confidence, no narrative. I have done nothing wrong: my life has not
+been active enough for any dark deed, either of romance or reality: all
+I poured out was a dreary, desperate complaint.”
+
+“Lucy, you ought to travel for about six months: why, your calm nature
+is growing quite excitable! Confound Madame Beck! Has the little buxom
+widow no bowels, to condemn her best teacher to solitary confinement?”
+
+“It was not Madame Beck’s fault,” said I; “it is no living being’s
+fault, and I won’t hear any one blamed.”
+
+“Who is in the wrong, then, Lucy?”
+
+“Me—Dr. John—me; and a great abstraction on whose wide shoulders I like
+to lay the mountains of blame they were sculptured to bear: me and
+Fate.”
+
+“‘Me’ must take better care in future,” said Dr. John—smiling, I
+suppose, at my bad grammar.
+
+“Change of air—change of scene; those are my prescriptions,” pursued
+the practical young doctor. “But to return to our muttons, Lucy. As
+yet, Père Silas, with all his tact (they say he is a Jesuit), is no
+wiser than you choose him to be; for, instead of returning to the Rue
+Fossette, your fevered wanderings—there must have been high fever—”
+
+“No, Dr. John: the fever took its turn that night—now, don’t make out
+that I was delirious, for I know differently.”
+
+“Good! you were as collected as myself at this moment, no doubt. Your
+wanderings had taken an opposite direction to the pensionnat. Near the
+Béguinage, amidst the stress of flood and gust, and in the perplexity
+of darkness, you had swooned and fallen. The priest came to your
+succour, and the physician, as we have seen, supervened. Between us we
+procured a fiacre and brought you here. Père Silas, old as he is, would
+carry you up-stairs, and lay you on that couch himself. He would
+certainly have remained with you till suspended animation had been
+restored: and so should I, but, at that juncture, a hurried messenger
+arrived from the dying patient I had scarcely left—the last duties were
+called for—the physician’s last visit and the priest’s last rite;
+extreme unction could not be deferred. Père Silas and myself departed
+together, my mother was spending the evening abroad; we gave you in
+charge to Martha, leaving directions, which it seems she followed
+successfully. Now, are you a Catholic?”
+
+“Not yet,” said I, with a smile. “And never let Père Silas know where I
+live, or he will try to convert me; but give him my best and truest
+thanks when you see him, and if ever I get rich I will send him money
+for his charities. See, Dr. John, your mother wakes; you ought to ring
+for tea.”
+
+Which he did; and, as Mrs. Bretton sat up—astonished and indignant at
+herself for the indulgence to which she had succumbed, and fully
+prepared to deny that she had slept at all—her son came gaily to the
+attack.
+
+“Hushaby, mamma! Sleep again. You look the picture of innocence in your
+slumbers.”
+
+“My slumbers, John Graham! What are you talking about? You know I never
+_do_ sleep by day: it was the slightest doze possible.”
+
+“Exactly! a seraph’s gentle lapse—a fairy’s dream. Mamma, under such
+circumstances, you always remind me of Titania.”
+
+“That is because you, yourself, are so like Bottom.”
+
+“Miss Snowe—did you ever hear anything like mamma’s wit? She is a most
+sprightly woman of her size and age.”
+
+“Keep your compliments to yourself, sir, and do not neglect your own
+size: which seems to me a good deal on the increase. Lucy, has he not
+rather the air of an incipient John Bull? He used to be slender as an
+eel, and now I fancy in him a sort of heavy dragoon bent—a beef-eater
+tendency. Graham, take notice! If you grow fat I disown you.”
+
+“As if you could not sooner disown your own personality! I am
+indispensable to the old lady’s happiness, Lucy. She would pine away in
+green and yellow melancholy if she had not my six feet of iniquity to
+scold. It keeps her lively—it maintains the wholesome ferment of her
+spirits.”
+
+The two were now standing opposite to each other, one on each side the
+fire-place; their words were not very fond, but their mutual looks
+atoned for verbal deficiencies. At least, the best treasure of Mrs.
+Bretton’s life was certainly casketed in her son’s bosom; her dearest
+pulse throbbed in his heart. As to him, of course another love shared
+his feelings with filial love, and, no doubt, as the new passion was
+the latest born, so he assigned it in his emotions Benjamin’s portion.
+Ginevra! Ginevra! Did Mrs. Bretton yet know at whose feet her own young
+idol had laid his homage? Would she approve that choice? I could not
+tell; but I could well guess that if she knew Miss Fanshawe’s conduct
+towards Graham: her alternations between coldness and coaxing, and
+repulse and allurement; if she could at all suspect the pain with which
+she had tried him; if she could have seen, as I had seen, his fine
+spirits subdued and harassed, his inferior preferred before him, his
+subordinate made the instrument of his humiliation—_then_ Mrs. Bretton
+would have pronounced Ginevra imbecile, or perverted, or both. Well—I
+thought so too.
+
+That second evening passed as sweetly as the first—_more_ sweetly
+indeed: we enjoyed a smoother interchange of thought; old troubles were
+not reverted to, acquaintance was better cemented; I felt happier,
+easier, more at home. That night—instead of crying myself asleep—I went
+down to dreamland by a pathway bordered with pleasant thoughts.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+WE QUARREL.
+
+
+During the first days of my stay at the Terrace, Graham never took a
+seat near me, or in his frequent pacing of the room approached the
+quarter where I sat, or looked pre-occupied, or more grave than usual,
+but I thought of Miss Fanshawe and expected her name to leap from his
+lips. I kept my ear and mind in perpetual readiness for the tender
+theme; my patience was ordered to be permanently under arms, and my
+sympathy desired to keep its cornucopia replenished and ready for
+outpouring. At last, and after a little inward struggle, which I saw
+and respected, he one day launched into the topic. It was introduced
+delicately; anonymously as it were.
+
+“Your friend is spending her vacation in travelling, I hear?”
+
+“Friend, forsooth!” thought I to myself: but it would not do to
+contradict; he must have his own way; I must own the soft impeachment:
+friend let it be. Still, by way of experiment, I could not help asking
+whom he meant?
+
+He had taken a seat at my work-table; he now laid hands on a reel of
+thread which he proceeded recklessly to unwind.
+
+“Ginevra—Miss Fanshawe, has accompanied the Cholmondeleys on a tour
+through the south of France?”
+
+“She has.”
+
+“Do you and she correspond?”
+
+“It will astonish you to hear that I never once thought of making
+application for that privilege.”
+
+“You have seen letters of her writing?”
+
+“Yes; several to her uncle.”
+
+“They will not be deficient in wit and _naïveté_; there is so much
+sparkle, and so little art in her soul?”
+
+“She writes comprehensively enough when she writes to M. de
+Bassompierre: he who runs may read.” (In fact, Ginevra’s epistles to
+her wealthy kinsman were commonly business documents, unequivocal
+applications for cash.)
+
+“And her handwriting? It must be pretty, light, ladylike, I should
+think?”
+
+It was, and I said so.
+
+“I verily believe that all she does is well done,” said Dr. John; and
+as I seemed in no hurry to chime in with this remark, he added “You,
+who know her, could you name a point in which she is deficient?”
+
+“She does several things very well.” (“Flirtation amongst the rest,”
+subjoined I, in thought.)
+
+“When do you suppose she will return to town?” he soon inquired.
+
+“Pardon me, Dr. John, I must explain. You honour me too much in
+ascribing to me a degree of intimacy with Miss Fanshawe I have not the
+felicity to enjoy. I have never been the depositary of her plans and
+secrets. You will find her particular friends in another sphere than
+mine: amongst the Cholmondeleys, for instance.”
+
+He actually thought I was stung with a kind of jealous pain similar to
+his own!
+
+“Excuse her,” he said; “judge her indulgently; the glitter of fashion
+misleads her, but she will soon find out that these people are hollow,
+and will return to you with augmented attachment and confirmed trust. I
+know something of the Cholmondeleys: superficial, showy, selfish
+people; depend on it, at heart Ginevra values you beyond a score of
+such.”
+
+“You are very kind,” I said briefly.
+
+A disclaimer of the sentiments attributed to me burned on my lips, but
+I extinguished the flame. I submitted to be looked upon as the
+humiliated, cast-off, and now pining confidante of the distinguished
+Miss Fanshawe: but, reader, it was a hard submission.
+
+“Yet, you see,” continued Graham, “while I comfort _you_, I cannot take
+the same consolation to myself; I cannot hope she will do me justice.
+De Hamal is most worthless, yet I fear he pleases her: wretched
+delusion!”
+
+My patience really gave way, and without notice: all at once. I suppose
+illness and weakness had worn it and made it brittle.
+
+“Dr. Bretton,” I broke out, “there is no delusion like your own. On all
+points but one you are a man, frank, healthful, right-thinking,
+clear-sighted: on this exceptional point you are but a slave. I
+declare, where Miss Fanshawe is concerned, you merit no respect; nor
+have you mine.”
+
+I got up, and left the room very much excited.
+
+This little scene took place in the morning; I had to meet him again in
+the evening, and then I saw I had done mischief. He was not made of
+common clay, not put together out of vulgar materials; while the
+outlines of his nature had been shaped with breadth and vigour, the
+details embraced workmanship of almost feminine delicacy: finer, much
+finer, than you could be prepared to meet with; than you could believe
+inherent in him, even after years of acquaintance. Indeed, till some
+over-sharp contact with his nerves had betrayed, by its effects, their
+acute sensibility, this elaborate construction must be ignored; and the
+more especially because the sympathetic faculty was not prominent in
+him: to feel, and to seize quickly another’s feelings, are separate
+properties; a few constructions possess both, some neither. Dr. John
+had the one in exquisite perfection; and because I have admitted that
+he was not endowed with the other in equal degree, the reader will
+considerately refrain from passing to an extreme, and pronouncing him
+_un_sympathizing, unfeeling: on the contrary, he was a kind, generous
+man. Make your need known, his hand was open. Put your grief into
+words, he turned no deaf ear. Expect refinements of perception,
+miracles of intuition, and realize disappointment. This night, when Dr.
+John entered the room, and met the evening lamp, I saw well and at one
+glance his whole mechanism.
+
+To one who had named him “slave,” and, on any point, banned him from
+respect, he must now have peculiar feelings. That the epithet was well
+applied, and the ban just, might be; he put forth no denial that it was
+so: his mind even candidly revolved that unmanning possibility. He
+sought in this accusation the cause of that ill-success which had got
+so galling a hold on his mental peace: Amid the worry of a
+self-condemnatory soliloquy, his demeanour seemed grave, perhaps cold,
+both to me and his mother. And yet there was no bad feeling, no malice,
+no rancour, no littleness in his countenance, beautiful with a man’s
+best beauty, even in its depression. When I placed his chair at the
+table, which I hastened to do, anticipating the servant, and when I
+handed him his tea, which I did with trembling care, he said: “Thank
+you, Lucy,” in as kindly a tone of his full pleasant voice as ever my
+ear welcomed.
+
+For my part, there was only one plan to be pursued; I must expiate my
+culpable vehemence, or I must not sleep that night. This would not do
+at all; I could not stand it: I made no pretence of capacity to wage
+war on this footing. School solitude, conventual silence and
+stagnation, anything seemed preferable to living embroiled with Dr.
+John. As to Ginevra, she might take the silver wings of a dove, or any
+other fowl that flies, and mount straight up to the highest place,
+among the highest stars, where her lover’s highest flight of fancy
+chose to fix the constellation of her charms: never more be it mine to
+dispute the arrangement. Long I tried to catch his eye. Again and again
+that eye just met mine; but, having nothing to say, it withdrew, and I
+was baffled. After tea, he sat, sad and quiet, reading a book. I wished
+I could have dared to go and sit near him, but it seemed that if I
+ventured to take that step, he would infallibly evince hostility and
+indignation. I longed to speak out, and I dared not whisper. His mother
+left the room; then, moved by insupportable regret, I just murmured the
+words “Dr. Bretton.”
+
+He looked up from his book; his eyes were not cold or malevolent, his
+mouth was not cynical; he was ready and willing to hear what I might
+have to say: his spirit was of vintage too mellow and generous to sour
+in one thunder-clap.
+
+“Dr. Bretton, forgive my hasty words: _do, do_ forgive them.”
+
+He smiled that moment I spoke. “Perhaps I deserved them, Lucy. If you
+don’t respect me, I am sure it is because I am not respectable. I fear,
+I am an awkward fool: I must manage badly in some way, for where I wish
+to please, it seems I don’t please.”
+
+“Of that you cannot be sure; and even if such be the case, is it the
+fault of your character, or of another’s perceptions? But now, let me
+unsay what I said in anger. In one thing, and in all things, I deeply
+respect you. If you think scarcely enough of yourself, and too much of
+others, what is that but an excellence?”
+
+“Can I think too much of Ginevra?”
+
+“_I_ believe you may; _you_ believe you can’t. Let us agree to differ.
+Let me be pardoned; that is what I ask.”
+
+“Do you think I cherish ill-will for one warm word?”
+
+“I see you do not and cannot; but just say, ‘Lucy, I forgive you!’ Say
+that, to ease me of the heart-ache.”
+
+“Put away your heart-ache, as I will put away mine; for you wounded me
+a little, Lucy. Now, when the pain is gone, I more than forgive: I feel
+grateful, as to a sincere well-wisher.”
+
+“I _am_ your sincere well-wisher: you are right.”
+
+Thus our quarrel ended.
+
+Reader, if in the course of this work, you find that my opinion of Dr.
+John undergoes modification, excuse the seeming inconsistency. I give
+the feeling as at the time I felt it; I describe the view of character
+as it appeared when discovered.
+
+He showed the fineness of his nature by being kinder to me after that
+misunderstanding than before. Nay, the very incident which, by my
+theory, must in some degree estrange me and him, changed, indeed,
+somewhat our relations; but not in the sense I painfully anticipated.
+An invisible, but a cold something, very slight, very transparent, but
+very chill: a sort of screen of ice had hitherto, all through our two
+lives, glazed the medium through which we exchanged intercourse. Those
+few warm words, though only warm with anger, breathed on that frail
+frost-work of reserve; about this time, it gave note of dissolution. I
+think from that day, so long as we continued friends, he never in
+discourse stood on topics of ceremony with me. He seemed to know that
+if he would but talk about himself, and about that in which he was most
+interested, my expectation would always be answered, my wish always
+satisfied. It follows, as a matter of course, that I continued to hear
+much of “Ginevra.”
+
+“Ginevra!” He thought her so fair, so good; he spoke so lovingly of her
+charms, her sweetness, her innocence, that, in spite of my plain prose
+knowledge of the reality, a kind of reflected glow began to settle on
+her idea, even for me. Still, reader, I am free to confess, that he
+often talked nonsense; but I strove to be unfailingly patient with him.
+I had had my lesson: I had learned how severe for me was the pain of
+crossing, or grieving, or disappointing him. In a strange and new
+sense, I grew most selfish, and quite powerless to deny myself the
+delight of indulging his mood, and being pliant to his will. He still
+seemed to me most absurd when he obstinately doubted, and desponded
+about his power to win in the end Miss Fanshawe’s preference. The fancy
+became rooted in my own mind more stubbornly than ever, that she was
+only coquetting to goad him, and that, at heart, she coveted everyone
+of his words and looks. Sometimes he harassed me, in spite of my
+resolution to bear and hear; in the midst of the indescribable
+gall-honey pleasure of thus bearing and hearing, he struck so on the
+flint of what firmness I owned, that it emitted fire once and again. I
+chanced to assert one day, with a view to stilling his impatience, that
+in my own mind, I felt positive Miss Fanshawe _must_ intend eventually
+to accept him.
+
+“Positive! It was easy to say so, but had I any grounds for such
+assurance?”
+
+“The best grounds.”
+
+“Now, Lucy, _do_ tell me what!”
+
+“You know them as well as I; and, knowing them, Dr. John, it really
+amazes me that you should not repose the frankest confidence in her
+fidelity. To doubt, under the circumstances, is almost to insult.”
+
+“Now you are beginning to speak fast and to breathe short; but speak a
+little faster and breathe a little shorter, till you have given an
+explanation—a full explanation: I must have it.”
+
+“You shall, Dr. John. In some cases, you are a lavish, generous man:
+you are a worshipper ever ready with the votive offering should Père
+Silas ever convert _you_, you will give him abundance of alms for his
+poor, you will supply his altar with tapers, and the shrine of your
+favourite saint you will do your best to enrich: Ginevra, Dr. John—”
+
+“Hush!” said he, “don’t go on.”
+
+“Hush, I will _not_: and go on I _will_: Ginevra has had her hands
+filled from your hands more times than I can count. You have sought for
+her the costliest flowers; you have busied your brain in devising gifts
+the most delicate: such, one would have thought, as only a woman could
+have imagined; and in addition, Miss Fanshawe owns a set of ornaments,
+to purchase which your generosity must have verged on extravagance.”
+
+The modesty Ginevra herself had never evinced in this matter, now
+flushed all over the face of her admirer.
+
+“Nonsense!” he said, destructively snipping a skein of silk with my
+scissors. “I offered them to please myself: I felt she did me a favour
+in accepting them.”
+
+“She did more than a favour, Dr. John: she pledged her very honour that
+she would make you some return; and if she cannot pay you in affection,
+she ought to hand out a business-like equivalent, in the shape of some
+rouleaux of gold pieces.”
+
+“But you don’t understand her; she is far too disinterested to care for
+my gifts, and too simple-minded to know their value.”
+
+I laughed out: I had heard her adjudge to every jewel its price; and
+well I knew money-embarrassment, money-schemes; money’s worth, and
+endeavours to realise supplies, had, young as she was, furnished the
+most frequent, and the favourite stimulus of her thoughts for years.
+
+He pursued. “You should have seen her whenever I have laid on her lap
+some trifle; so cool, so unmoved: no eagerness to take, not even
+pleasure in contemplating. Just from amiable reluctance to grieve me,
+she would permit the bouquet to lie beside her, and perhaps consent to
+bear it away. Or, if I achieved the fastening of a bracelet on her
+ivory arm, however pretty the trinket might be (and I always carefully
+chose what seemed to _me_ pretty, and what of course was not
+valueless), the glitter never dazzled her bright eyes: she would hardly
+cast one look on my gift.”
+
+“Then, of course, not valuing it, she would unloose, and return it to
+you?”
+
+“No; for such a repulse she was too good-natured. She would consent to
+seem to forget what I had done, and retain the offering with lady-like
+quiet and easy oblivion. Under such circumstances, how can a man build
+on acceptance of his presents as a favourable symptom? For my part,
+were I to offer her all I have, and she to take it, such is her
+incapacity to be swayed by sordid considerations, I should not venture
+to believe the transaction advanced me one step.”
+
+“Dr. John,” I began, “Love is blind;” but just then a blue subtle ray
+sped sideways from Dr. John’s eye: it reminded me of old days, it
+reminded me of his picture: it half led me to think that part, at
+least, of his professed persuasion of Miss Fanshawe’s _naïveté_ was
+assumed; it led me dubiously to conjecture that perhaps, in spite of
+his passion for her beauty, his appreciation of her foibles might
+possibly be less mistaken, more clear-sighted, than from his general
+language was presumable. After all it might be only a chance look, or
+at best the token of a merely momentary impression. Chance or
+intentional real or imaginary, it closed the conversation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+THE CLEOPATRA.
+
+
+My stay at La Terrasse was prolonged a fortnight beyond the close of
+the vacation. Mrs. Bretton’s kind management procured me this respite.
+Her son having one day delivered the dictum that “Lucy was not yet
+strong enough to go back to that den of a pensionnat,” she at once
+drove over to the Rue Fossette, had an interview with the directress,
+and procured the indulgence, on the plea of prolonged rest and change
+being necessary to perfect recovery. Hereupon, however, followed an
+attention I could very well have dispensed with, viz—a polite call from
+Madame Beck.
+
+That lady—one fine day—actually came out in a fiacre as far as the
+château. I suppose she had resolved within herself to see what manner
+of place Dr. John inhabited. Apparently, the pleasant site and neat
+interior surpassed her expectations; she eulogized all she saw,
+pronounced the blue salon “une pièce magnifique,” profusely
+congratulated me on the acquisition of friends, “tellement dignes,
+aimables, et respectables,” turned also a neat compliment in my favour,
+and, upon Dr. John coming in, ran up to him with the utmost buoyancy,
+opening at the same time such a fire of rapid language, all sparkling
+with felicitations and protestations about his “château,”—“madame sa
+mère, la digne châtelaine:” also his looks; which, indeed, were very
+flourishing, and at the moment additionally embellished by the
+good-natured but amused smile with which he always listened to Madame’s
+fluent and florid French. In short, Madame shone in her very best phase
+that day, and came in and went out quite a living catherine-wheel of
+compliments, delight, and affability. Half purposely, and half to ask
+some question about school-business, I followed her to the carriage,
+and looked in after she was seated and the door closed. In that brief
+fraction of time what a change had been wrought! An instant ago, all
+sparkles and jests, she now sat sterner than a judge and graver than a
+sage. Strange little woman!
+
+I went back and teased Dr. John about Madame’s devotion to him. How he
+laughed! What fun shone in his eyes as he recalled some of her fine
+speeches, and repeated them, imitating her voluble delivery! He had an
+acute sense of humour, and was the finest company in the world—when he
+could forget Miss Fanshawe.
+
+To “sit in sunshine calm and sweet” is said to be excellent for weak
+people; it gives them vital force. When little Georgette Beck was
+recovering from her illness, I used to take her in my arms and walk
+with her in the garden by the hour together, beneath a certain wall
+hung with grapes, which the Southern sun was ripening: that sun
+cherished her little pale frame quite as effectually as it mellowed and
+swelled the clustering fruit.
+
+There are human tempers, bland, glowing, and genial, within whose
+influence it is as good for the poor in spirit to live, as it is for
+the feeble in frame to bask in the glow of noon. Of the number of these
+choice natures were certainly both Dr. Bretton’s and his mother’s. They
+liked to communicate happiness, as some like to occasion misery: they
+did it instinctively; without fuss, and apparently with little
+consciousness; the means to give pleasure rose spontaneously in their
+minds. Every day while I stayed with them, some little plan was
+proposed which resulted in beneficial enjoyment. Fully occupied as was
+Dr. John’s time, he still made it in his way to accompany us in each
+brief excursion. I can hardly tell how he managed his engagements; they
+were numerous, yet by dint of system, he classed them in an order which
+left him a daily period of liberty. I often saw him hard-worked, yet
+seldom over-driven, and never irritated, confused, or oppressed. What
+he did was accomplished with the ease and grace of all-sufficing
+strength; with the bountiful cheerfulness of high and unbroken
+energies. Under his guidance I saw, in that one happy fortnight, more
+of Villette, its environs, and its inhabitants, than I had seen in the
+whole eight months of my previous residence. He took me to places of
+interest in the town, of whose names I had not before so much as heard;
+with willingness and spirit he communicates much noteworthy
+information. He never seemed to think it a trouble to talk to me, and,
+I am sure, it was never a task to me to listen. It was not his way to
+treat subjects coldly and vaguely; he rarely generalized, never prosed.
+He seemed to like nice details almost as much as I liked them myself:
+he seemed observant of character: and not superficially observant,
+either. These points gave the quality of interest to his discourse; and
+the fact of his speaking direct from his own resources, and not
+borrowing or stealing from books—here a dry fact, and there a trite
+phrase, and elsewhere a hackneyed opinion—ensured a freshness, as
+welcome as it was rare. Before my eyes, too, his disposition seemed to
+unfold another phase; to pass to a fresh day: to rise in new and nobler
+dawn.
+
+His mother possessed a good development of benevolence, but he owned a
+better and larger. I found, on accompanying him to the Basse-Ville—the
+poor and crowded quarter of the city—that his errands there were as
+much those of the philanthropist as the physician. I understood
+presently that cheerfully, habitually, and in single-minded
+unconsciousness of any special merit distinguishing his deeds—he was
+achieving, amongst a very wretched population, a world of active good.
+The lower orders liked him well; his poor, patients in the hospitals
+welcomed him with a sort of enthusiasm.
+
+But stop—I must not, from the faithful narrator, degenerate into the
+partial eulogist. Well, full well, do I know that Dr. John was not
+perfect, anymore than I am perfect. Human fallibility leavened him
+throughout: there was no hour, and scarcely a moment of the time I
+spent with him that in act or speech, or look, he did not betray
+something that was not of a god. A god could not have the cruel vanity
+of Dr. John, nor his sometime levity. No immortal could have resembled
+him in his occasional temporary oblivion of all but the present—in his
+passing passion for that present; shown not coarsely, by devoting it to
+material indulgence, but selfishly, by extracting from it whatever it
+could yield of nutriment to his masculine self-love: his delight was to
+feed that ravenous sentiment, without thought of the price of
+provender, or care for the cost of keeping it sleek and high-pampered.
+
+The reader is requested to note a seeming contradiction in the two
+views which have been given of Graham Bretton—the public and
+private—the out-door and the in-door view. In the first, the public, he
+is shown oblivious of self; as modest in the display of his energies,
+as earnest in their exercise. In the second, the fireside picture,
+there is expressed consciousness of what he has and what he is;
+pleasure in homage, some recklessness in exciting, some vanity in
+receiving the same. Both portraits are correct.
+
+It was hardly possible to oblige Dr. John quietly and in secret. When
+you thought that the fabrication of some trifle dedicated to his use
+had been achieved unnoticed, and that, like other men, he would use it
+when placed ready for his use, and never ask whence it came, he amazed
+you by a smilingly-uttered observation or two, proving that his eye had
+been on the work from commencement to close: that he had noted the
+design, traced its progress, and marked its completion. It pleased him
+to be thus served, and he let his pleasure beam in his eye and play
+about his mouth.
+
+This would have been all very well, if he had not added to such kindly
+and unobtrusive evidence a certain wilfulness in discharging what he
+called debts. When his mother worked for him, he paid her by showering
+about her his bright animal spirits, with even more affluence than his
+gay, taunting, teasing, loving wont. If Lucy Snowe were discovered to
+have put her hand to such work, he planned, in recompence, some
+pleasant recreation.
+
+I often felt amazed at his perfect knowledge of Villette; a knowledge
+not merely confined to its open streets, but penetrating to all its
+galleries, salles, and cabinets: of every door which shut in an object
+worth seeing, of every museum, of every hall, sacred to art or science,
+he seemed to possess the “Open! Sesame.” I never had a head for
+science, but an ignorant, blind, fond instinct inclined me to art. I
+liked to visit the picture-galleries, and I dearly liked to be left
+there alone. In company, a wretched idiosyncracy forbade me to see much
+or to feel anything. In unfamiliar company, where it was necessary to
+maintain a flow of talk on the subjects in presence, half an hour would
+knock me up, with a combined pressure of physical lassitude and entire
+mental incapacity. I never yet saw the well-reared child, much less the
+educated adult, who could not put me to shame, by the sustained
+intelligence of its demeanour under the ordeal of a conversable,
+sociable visitation of pictures, historical sights or buildings, or any
+lions of public interest. Dr. Bretton was a cicerone after my own
+heart; he would take me betimes, ere the galleries were filled, leave
+me there for two or three hours, and call for me when his own
+engagements were discharged. Meantime, I was happy; happy, not always
+in admiring, but in examining, questioning, and forming conclusions. In
+the commencement of these visits, there was some misunderstanding and
+consequent struggle between Will and Power. The former faculty exacted
+approbation of that which it was considered orthodox to admire; the
+latter groaned forth its utter inability to pay the tax; it was then
+self-sneered at, spurred up, goaded on to refine its taste, and whet
+its zest. The more it was chidden, however, the more it wouldn’t
+praise. Discovering gradually that a wonderful sense of fatigue
+resulted from these conscientious efforts, I began to reflect whether I
+might not dispense with that great labour, and concluded eventually
+that I might, and so sank supine into a luxury of calm before
+ninety-nine out of a hundred of the exhibited frames.
+
+It seemed to me that an original and good picture was just as scarce as
+an original and good book; nor did I, in the end, tremble to say to
+myself, standing before certain _chef-d’oeuvres_ bearing great names,
+“These are not a whit like nature. Nature’s daylight never had that
+colour: never was made so turbid, either by storm or cloud, as it is
+laid out there, under a sky of indigo: and that indigo is not ether;
+and those dark weeds plastered upon it are not trees.” Several very
+well executed and complacent-looking fat women struck me as by no means
+the goddesses they appeared to consider themselves. Many scores of
+marvellously-finished little Flemish pictures, and also of sketches,
+excellent for fashion-books displaying varied costumes in the
+handsomest materials, gave evidence of laudable industry whimsically
+applied. And yet there were fragments of truth here and there which
+satisfied the conscience, and gleams of light that cheered the vision.
+Nature’s power here broke through in a mountain snow-storm; and there
+her glory in a sunny southern day. An expression in this portrait
+proved clear insight into character; a face in that historical
+painting, by its vivid filial likeness, startlingly reminded you that
+genius gave it birth. These exceptions I loved: they grew dear as
+friends.
+
+One day, at a quiet early hour, I found myself nearly alone in a
+certain gallery, wherein one particular picture of portentous size, set
+up in the best light, having a cordon of protection stretched before
+it, and a cushioned bench duly set in front for the accommodation of
+worshipping connoisseurs, who, having gazed themselves off their feet,
+might be fain to complete the business sitting: this picture, I say,
+seemed to consider itself the queen of the collection.
+
+It represented a woman, considerably larger, I thought, than the life.
+I calculated that this lady, put into a scale of magnitude, suitable
+for the reception of a commodity of bulk, would infallibly turn from
+fourteen to sixteen stone. She was, indeed, extremely well fed: very
+much butcher’s meat—to say nothing of bread, vegetables, and
+liquids—must she have consumed to attain that breadth and height, that
+wealth of muscle, that affluence of flesh. She lay half-reclined on a
+couch: why, it would be difficult to say; broad daylight blazed round
+her; she appeared in hearty health, strong enough to do the work of two
+plain cooks; she could not plead a weak spine; she ought to have been
+standing, or at least sitting bolt upright. She, had no business to
+lounge away the noon on a sofa. She ought likewise to have worn decent
+garments; a gown covering her properly, which was not the case: out of
+abundance of material—seven-and-twenty yards, I should say, of
+drapery—she managed to make inefficient raiment. Then, for the wretched
+untidiness surrounding her, there could be no excuse. Pots and
+pans—perhaps I ought to say vases and goblets—were rolled here and
+there on the foreground; a perfect rubbish of flowers was mixed amongst
+them, and an absurd and disorderly mass of curtain upholstery smothered
+the couch and cumbered the floor. On referring to the catalogue, I
+found that this notable production bore the name “Cleopatra.”
+
+Well, I was sitting wondering at it (as the bench was there, I thought
+I might as well take advantage of its accommodation), and thinking that
+while some of the details—as roses, gold cups, jewels, &c., were very
+prettily painted, it was on the whole an enormous piece of claptrap;
+the room, almost vacant when I entered, began to fill. Scarcely
+noticing this circumstance (as, indeed, it did not matter to me) I
+retained my seat; rather to rest myself than with a view to studying
+this huge, dark-complexioned gipsy-queen; of whom, indeed, I soon
+tired, and betook myself for refreshment to the contemplation of some
+exquisite little pictures of still life: wild-flowers, wild-fruit,
+mossy woodnests, casketing eggs that looked like pearls seen through
+clear green sea-water; all hung modestly beneath that coarse and
+preposterous canvas.
+
+Suddenly a light tap visited my shoulder. Starting, turning, I met a
+face bent to encounter mine; a frowning, almost a shocked face it was.
+
+“Que faites-vous ici?” said a voice.
+
+“Mais, Monsieur, je m’amuse.”
+
+“Vous vous amusez! et à quoi, s’il vous plait? Mais d’abord, faites-moi
+le plaisir de vous lever; prenez mon bras, et allons de l’autre côté.”
+
+I did precisely as I was bid. M. Paul Emanuel (it was he) returned from
+Rome, and now a travelled man, was not likely to be less tolerant of
+insubordination now, than before this added distinction laurelled his
+temples.
+
+“Permit me to conduct you to your party,” said he, as we crossed the
+room.
+
+“I have no party.”
+
+“You are not alone?”
+
+“Yes, Monsieur.”
+
+“Did you come here unaccompanied?”
+
+“No, Monsieur. Dr. Bretton brought me here.”
+
+“Dr. Bretton and Madame his mother, of course?”
+
+“No; only Dr. Bretton.”
+
+“And he told you to look at _that_ picture?”
+
+“By no means; I found it out for myself.”
+
+M. Paul’s hair was shorn close as raven down, or I think it would have
+bristled on his head. Beginning now to perceive his drift, I had a
+certain pleasure in keeping cool, and working him up.
+
+“Astounding insular audacity!” cried the Professor. “Singulières femmes
+que ces Anglaises!”
+
+“What is the matter, Monsieur?”
+
+“Matter! How dare you, a young person, sit coolly down, with the
+self-possession of a garçon, and look at _that_ picture?”
+
+“It is a very ugly picture, but I cannot at all see why I should not
+look at it.”
+
+“Bon! bon! Speak no more of it. But you ought not to be here alone.”
+
+“If, however, I have no society—no _party_, as you say? And then, what
+does it signify whether I am alone, or accompanied? nobody meddles with
+me.”
+
+“Taisez-vous, et asseyez-vous là—là!”—setting down a chair with
+emphasis in a particularly dull corner, before a series of most
+specially dreary “cadres.”
+
+“Mais, Monsieur?”
+
+“Mais, Mademoiselle, asseyez-vous, et ne bougez
+pas—entendez-vous?—jusqu’à ce qu’on vienne vous chercher, ou que je
+vous donne la permission.”
+
+“Quel triste coin!” cried I, “et quelles laids tableaux!”
+
+And “laids,” indeed, they were; being a set of four, denominated in the
+catalogue “La vie d’une femme.” They were painted rather in a
+remarkable style—flat, dead, pale, and formal. The first represented a
+“Jeune Fille,” coming out of a church-door, a missal in her hand, her
+dress very prim, her eyes cast down, her mouth pursed up—the image of a
+most villanous little precocious she-hypocrite. The second, a “Mariée,”
+with a long white veil, kneeling at a prie-dieu in her chamber, holding
+her hands plastered together, finger to finger, and showing the whites
+of her eyes in a most exasperating manner. The third, a “Jeune Mère,”
+hanging disconsolate over a clayey and puffy baby with a face like an
+unwholesome full moon. The fourth, a “Veuve,” being a black woman,
+holding by the hand a black little girl, and the twain studiously
+surveying an elegant French monument, set up in a corner of some Père
+la Chaise. All these four “Anges” were grim and grey as burglars, and
+cold and vapid as ghosts. What women to live with! insincere,
+ill-humoured, bloodless, brainless nonentities! As bad in their way as
+the indolent gipsy-giantess, the Cleopatra, in hers.
+
+It was impossible to keep one’s attention long confined to these
+master-pieces, and so, by degrees, I veered round, and surveyed the
+gallery.
+
+A perfect crowd of spectators was by this time gathered round the
+Lioness, from whose vicinage I had been banished; nearly half this
+crowd were ladies, but M. Paul afterwards told me, these were “des
+dames,” and it was quite proper for them to contemplate what no
+“demoiselle” ought to glance at. I assured him plainly I could not
+agree in this doctrine, and did not see the sense of it; whereupon,
+with his usual absolutism, he merely requested my silence, and also, in
+the same breath, denounced my mingled rashness and ignorance. A more
+despotic little man than M. Paul never filled a professor’s chair. I
+noticed, by the way, that he looked at the picture himself quite at his
+ease, and for a very long while: he did not, however, neglect to glance
+from time to time my way, in order, I suppose, to make sure that I was
+obeying orders, and not breaking bounds. By-and-by, he again accosted
+me.
+
+“Had I not been ill?” he wished to know: “he understood I had.”
+
+“Yes, but I was now quite well.”
+
+“Where had I spent the vacation?”
+
+“Chiefly in the Rue Fossette; partly with Madame Bretton.”
+
+“He had heard that I was left alone in the Rue Fossette; was that so?”
+
+“Not quite alone: Marie Broc” (the crétin) “was with me.”
+
+He shrugged his shoulders; varied and contradictory expressions played
+rapidly over his countenance. Marie Broc was well known to M. Paul; he
+never gave a lesson in the third division (containing the least
+advanced pupils), that she did not occasion in him a sharp conflict
+between antagonistic impressions. Her personal appearance, her
+repulsive manners, her often unmanageable disposition, irritated his
+temper, and inspired him with strong antipathy; a feeling he was too
+apt to conceive when his taste was offended or his will thwarted. On
+the other hand, her misfortunes, constituted a strong claim on his
+forbearance and compassion—such a claim as it was not in his nature to
+deny; hence resulted almost daily drawn battles between impatience and
+disgust on the one hand, pity and a sense of justice on the other; in
+which, to his credit be it said, it was very seldom that the former
+feelings prevailed: when they did, however, M. Paul showed a phase of
+character which had its terrors. His passions were strong, his
+aversions and attachments alike vivid; the force he exerted in holding
+both in check by no means mitigated an observer’s sense of their
+vehemence. With such tendencies, it may well be supposed he often
+excited in ordinary minds fear and dislike; yet it was an error to fear
+him: nothing drove him so nearly frantic as the tremor of an
+apprehensive and distrustful spirit; nothing soothed him like
+confidence tempered with gentleness. To evince these sentiments,
+however, required a thorough comprehension of his nature; and his
+nature was of an order rarely comprehended.
+
+“How did you get on with Marie Broc?” he asked, after some minutes’
+silence.
+
+“Monsieur, I did my best; but it was terrible to be alone with her!”
+
+“You have, then, a weak heart! You lack courage; and, perhaps, charity.
+Yours are not the qualities which might constitute a Sister of Mercy.”
+
+[He was a religious little man, in his way: the self-denying and
+self-sacrificing part of the Catholic religion commanded the homage of
+his soul.]
+
+“I don’t know, indeed: I took as good care of her as I could; but when
+her aunt came to fetch her away, it was a great relief.”
+
+“Ah! you are an egotist. There are women who have nursed hospitals-full
+of similar unfortunates. You could not do that?”
+
+“Could Monsieur do it himself?”
+
+“Women who are worthy the name ought infinitely to surpass; our coarse,
+fallible, self-indulgent sex, in the power to perform such duties.”
+
+“I washed her, I kept her clean, I fed her, I tried to amuse her; but
+she made mouths at me instead of speaking.”
+
+“You think you did great things?”
+
+“No; but as great as I _could_ do.”
+
+“Then limited are your powers, for in tending one idiot you fell sick.”
+
+“Not with that, Monsieur; I had a nervous fever: my mind was ill.”
+
+“Vraiment! Vous valez peu de chose. You are not cast in an heroic
+mould; your courage will not avail to sustain you in solitude; it
+merely gives you the temerity to gaze with sang-froid at pictures of
+Cleopatra.”
+
+It would have been easy to show anger at the teasing, hostile tone of
+the little man. I had never been angry with him yet, however, and had
+no present disposition to begin.
+
+“Cleopatra!” I repeated, quietly. “Monsieur, too, has been looking at
+Cleopatra; what does he think of her?”
+
+“Cela ne vaut rien,” he responded. “Une femme superbe—une taille
+d’impératrice, des formes de Junon, mais une personne dont je ne
+voudrais ni pour femme, ni pour fille, ni pour soeur. Aussi vous ne
+jeterez plus un seul coup d’oeil de sa côté.”
+
+“But I have looked at her a great many times while Monsieur has been
+talking: I can see her quite well from this corner.”
+
+“Turn to the wall and study your four pictures of a woman’s life.”
+
+“Excuse me, M. Paul; they are too hideous: but if you admire them,
+allow me to vacate my seat and leave you to their contemplation.”
+
+“Mademoiselle,” he said, grimacing a half-smile, or what he intended
+for a smile, though it was but a grim and hurried manifestation. “You
+nurslings of Protestantism astonish me. You unguarded Englishwomen walk
+calmly amidst red-hot ploughshares and escape burning. I believe, if
+some of you were thrown into Nebuchadnezzar’s hottest furnace you would
+issue forth untraversed by the smell of fire.”
+
+“Will Monsieur have the goodness to move an inch to one side?”
+
+“How! At what are you gazing now? You are not recognising an
+acquaintance amongst that group of jeunes gens?”
+
+“I think so—Yes, I see there a person I know.”
+
+In fact, I had caught a glimpse of a head too pretty to belong to any
+other than the redoubted Colonel de Hamal. What a very finished, highly
+polished little pate it was! What a figure, so trim and natty! What
+womanish feet and hands! How daintily he held a glass to one of his
+optics! with what admiration he gazed upon the Cleopatra! and then, how
+engagingly he tittered and whispered a friend at his elbow! Oh, the man
+of sense! Oh, the refined gentleman of superior taste and tact! I
+observed him for about ten minutes, and perceived that he was
+exceedingly taken with this dusk and portly Venus of the Nile. So much
+was I interested in his bearing, so absorbed in divining his character
+by his looks and movements, I temporarily forgot M. Paul; in the
+interim a group came between that gentleman and me; or possibly his
+scruples might have received another and worse shock from my present
+abstraction, causing him to withdraw voluntarily: at any rate, when I
+again looked round, he was gone.
+
+My eye, pursuant of the search, met not him, but another and dissimilar
+figure, well seen amidst the crowd, for the height as well as the port
+lent each its distinction. This way came Dr. John, in visage, in shape,
+in hue, as unlike the dark, acerb, and caustic little professor, as the
+fruit of the Hesperides might be unlike the sloe in the wild thicket;
+as the high-couraged but tractable Arabian is unlike the rude and
+stubborn “sheltie.” He was looking for me, but had not yet explored the
+corner where the schoolmaster had just put me. I remained quiet; yet
+another minute I would watch.
+
+He approached de Hamal; he paused near him; I thought he had a pleasure
+in looking over his head; Dr. Bretton, too, gazed on the Cleopatra. I
+doubt if it were to his taste: he did not simper like the little Count;
+his mouth looked fastidious, his eye cool; without demonstration he
+stepped aside, leaving room for others to approach. I saw now that he
+was waiting, and, rising, I joined him.
+
+We took one turn round the gallery; with Graham it was very pleasant to
+take such a turn. I always liked dearly to hear what he had to say
+about either pictures or books; because without pretending to be a
+connoisseur, he always spoke his thought, and that was sure to be
+fresh: very often it was also just and pithy. It was pleasant also to
+tell him some things he did not know—he listened so kindly, so
+teachably; unformalized by scruples lest so to bend his bright handsome
+head, to gather a woman’s rather obscure and stammering explanation,
+should imperil the dignity of his manhood. And when he communicated
+information in return, it was with a lucid intelligence that left all
+his words clear graven on the memory; no explanation of his giving, no
+fact of his narrating, did I ever forget.
+
+As we left the gallery, I asked him what he thought of the Cleopatra
+(after making him laugh by telling him how Professor Emanuel had sent
+me to the right about, and taking him to see the sweet series of
+pictures recommended to my attention.)
+
+“Pooh!” said he. “My mother is a better-looking woman. I heard some
+French fops, yonder, designating her as ‘le type du voluptueux;’ if so,
+I can only say, ‘le voluptueux’ is little to my liking. Compare that
+mulatto with Ginevra!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+THE CONCERT.
+
+
+One morning, Mrs. Bretton, coming promptly into my room, desired me to
+open my drawers and show her my dresses; which I did, without a word.
+
+“That will do,” said she, when she had turned them over. “You must have
+a new one.”
+
+She went out. She returned presently with a dressmaker. She had me
+measured. “I mean,” said she, “to follow my own taste, and to have my
+own way in this little matter.”
+
+Two days after came home—a pink dress!
+
+“That is not for me,” I said, hurriedly, feeling that I would almost as
+soon clothe myself in the costume of a Chinese lady of rank.
+
+“We shall see whether it is for you or not,” rejoined my godmother,
+adding with her resistless decision: “Mark my words. You will wear it
+this very evening.”
+
+I thought I should not; I thought no human force should avail to put me
+into it. A pink dress! I knew it not. It knew not me. I had not proved
+it.
+
+My godmother went on to decree that I was to go with her and Graham to
+a concert that same night: which concert, she explained, was a grand
+affair to be held in the large salle, or hall, of the principal musical
+society. The most advanced of the pupils of the Conservatoire were to
+perform: it was to be followed by a lottery “au bénéfice des pauvres;”
+and to crown all, the King, Queen, and Prince of Labassecour were to be
+present. Graham, in sending tickets, had enjoined attention to costume
+as a compliment due to royalty: he also recommended punctual readiness
+by seven o’clock.
+
+About six, I was ushered upstairs. Without any force at all, I found
+myself led and influenced by another’s will, unconsulted, unpersuaded,
+quietly overruled. In short, the pink dress went on, softened by some
+drapery of black lace. I was pronounced to be en grande tenue, and
+requested to look in the glass. I did so with some fear and trembling;
+with more fear and trembling, I turned away. Seven o’clock struck; Dr.
+Bretton was come; my godmother and I went down. _She_ was clad in brown
+velvet; as I walked in her shadow, how I envied her those folds of
+grave, dark majesty! Graham stood in the drawing-room doorway.
+
+“I _do_ hope he will not think I have been decking myself out to draw
+attention,” was my uneasy aspiration.
+
+“Here, Lucy, are some flowers,” said he, giving me a bouquet. He took
+no further notice of my dress than was conveyed in a kind smile and
+satisfied nod, which calmed at once my sense of shame and fear of
+ridicule. For the rest; the dress was made with extreme simplicity,
+guiltless of flounce or furbelow; it was but the light fabric and
+bright tint which scared me, and since Graham found in it nothing
+absurd, my own eye consented soon to become reconciled.
+
+I suppose people who go every night to places of public amusement, can
+hardly enter into the fresh gala feeling with which an opera or a
+concert is enjoyed by those for whom it is a rarity: I am not sure that
+I expected great pleasure from the concert, having but a very vague
+notion of its nature, but I liked the drive there well. The snug
+comfort of the close carriage on a cold though fine night, the pleasure
+of setting out with companions so cheerful and friendly, the sight of
+the stars glinting fitfully through the trees as we rolled along the
+avenue; then the freer burst of the night-sky when we issued forth to
+the open chaussée, the passage through the city gates, the lights there
+burning, the guards there posted, the pretence of inspection, to which
+we there submitted, and which amused us so much—all these small matters
+had for me, in their novelty, a peculiarly exhilarating charm. How much
+of it lay in the atmosphere of friendship diffused about me, I know
+not: Dr. John and his mother were both in their finest mood, contending
+animatedly with each other the whole way, and as frankly kind to me as
+if I had been of their kin.
+
+Our way lay through some of the best streets of Villette, streets
+brightly lit, and far more lively now than at high noon. How brilliant
+seemed the shops! How glad, gay, and abundant flowed the tide of life
+along the broad pavement! While I looked, the thought of the Rue
+Fossette came across me—of the walled-in garden and school-house, and
+of the dark, vast “classes,” where, as at this very hour, it was my
+wont to wander all solitary, gazing at the stars through the high,
+blindless windows, and listening to the distant voice of the reader in
+the refectory, monotonously exercised upon the “lecture pieuse.” Thus
+must I soon again listen and wander; and this shadow of the future
+stole with timely sobriety across the radiant present.
+
+By this time we had got into a current of carriages all tending in one
+direction, and soon the front of a great illuminated building blazed
+before us. Of what I should see within this building, I had, as before
+intimated, but an imperfect idea; for no place of public entertainment
+had it ever been my lot to enter yet.
+
+We alighted under a portico where there was a great bustle and a great
+crowd, but I do not distinctly remember further details, until I found
+myself mounting a majestic staircase wide and easy of ascent, deeply
+and softly carpeted with crimson, leading up to great doors closed
+solemnly, and whose panels were also crimson-clothed.
+
+I hardly noticed by what magic these doors were made to roll back—Dr.
+John managed these points; roll back they did, however, and within was
+disclosed a hall—grand, wide, and high, whose sweeping circular walls,
+and domed hollow ceiling, seemed to me all dead gold (thus with nice
+art was it stained), relieved by cornicing, fluting, and garlandry,
+either bright, like gold burnished, or snow-white, like alabaster, or
+white and gold mingled in wreaths of gilded leaves and spotless lilies:
+wherever drapery hung, wherever carpets were spread, or cushions
+placed, the sole colour employed was deep crimson. Pendent from the
+dome, flamed a mass that dazzled me—a mass, I thought, of rock-crystal,
+sparkling with facets, streaming with drops, ablaze with stars, and
+gorgeously tinged with dews of gems dissolved, or fragments of rainbows
+shivered. It was only the chandelier, reader, but for me it seemed the
+work of eastern genii: I almost looked to see if a huge, dark, cloudy
+hand—that of the Slave of the Lamp—were not hovering in the lustrous
+and perfumed atmosphere of the cupola, guarding its wondrous treasure.
+
+We moved on—I was not at all conscious whither—but at some turn we
+suddenly encountered another party approaching from the opposite
+direction. I just now see that group, as it flashed—upon me for one
+moment. A handsome middle-aged lady in dark velvet; a gentleman who
+might be her son—the best face, the finest figure, I thought, I had
+ever seen; a third person in a pink dress and black lace mantle.
+
+I noted them all—the third person as well as the other two—and for the
+fraction of a moment believed them all strangers, thus receiving an
+impartial impression of their appearance. But the impression was hardly
+felt and not fixed, before the consciousness that I faced a great
+mirror, filling a compartment between two pillars, dispelled it: the
+party was our own party. Thus for the first, and perhaps only time in
+my life, I enjoyed the “giftie” of seeing myself as others see me. No
+need to dwell on the result. It brought a jar of discord, a pang of
+regret; it was not flattering, yet, after all, I ought to be thankful;
+it might have been worse.
+
+At last, we were seated in places commanding a good general view of
+that vast and dazzling, but warm and cheerful hall. Already it was
+filled, and filled with a splendid assemblage. I do not know that the
+women were very beautiful, but their dresses were so perfect; and
+foreigners, even such as are ungraceful in domestic privacy, seem to
+posses the art of appearing graceful in public: however blunt and
+boisterous those every-day and home movements connected with peignoir
+and papillotes, there is a slide, a bend, a carriage of the head and
+arms, a mien of the mouth and eyes, kept nicely in reserve for gala
+use—always brought out with the grande toilette, and duly put on with
+the “parure.”
+
+Some fine forms there were here and there, models of a peculiar style
+of beauty; a style, I think, never seen in England; a solid, firm-set,
+sculptural style. These shapes have no angles: a caryatid in marble is
+almost as flexible; a Phidian goddess is not more perfect in a certain
+still and stately sort. They have such features as the Dutch painters
+give to their madonnas: low-country classic features, regular but
+round, straight but stolid; and for their depth of expressionless calm,
+of passionless peace, a polar snow-field could alone offer a type.
+Women of this order need no ornament, and they seldom wear any; the
+smooth hair, closely braided, supplies a sufficient contrast to the
+smoother cheek and brow; the dress cannot be too simple; the rounded
+arm and perfect neck require neither bracelet nor chain.
+
+With one of these beauties I once had the honour and rapture to be
+perfectly acquainted: the inert force of the deep, settled love she
+bore herself, was wonderful; it could only be surpassed by her proud
+impotency to care for any other living thing. Of blood, her cool veins
+conducted no flow; placid lymph filled and almost obstructed her
+arteries.
+
+Such a Juno as I have described sat full in our view—a sort of mark for
+all eyes, and quite conscious that so she was, but proof to the
+magnetic influence of gaze or glance: cold, rounded, blonde, and
+beauteous as the white column, capitalled with gilding, which rose at
+her side.
+
+Observing that Dr. John’s attention was much drawn towards her, I
+entreated him in a low voice “for the love of heaven to shield well his
+heart. You need not fall in love with _that_ lady,” I said, “because, I
+tell you beforehand, you might die at her feet, and she would not love
+you again.”
+
+“Very well,” said he, “and how do you know that the spectacle of her
+grand insensibility might not with me be the strongest stimulus to
+homage? The sting of desperation is, I think, a wonderful irritant to
+my emotions: but” (shrugging his shoulders) “you know nothing about
+these things; I’ll address myself to my mother. Mamma, I’m in a
+dangerous way.”
+
+“As if that interested me!” said Mrs. Bretton.
+
+“Alas! the cruelty of my lot!” responded her son. “Never man had a more
+unsentimental mother than mine: she never seems to think that such a
+calamity can befall her as a daughter-in-law.”
+
+“If I don’t, it is not for want of having that same calamity held over
+my head: you have threatened me with it for the last ten years. ‘Mamma,
+I am going to be married soon!’ was the cry before you were well out of
+jackets.”
+
+“But, mother, one of these days it will be realized. All of a sudden,
+when you think you are most secure, I shall go forth like Jacob or
+Esau, or any other patriarch, and take me a wife: perhaps of these
+which are of the daughters of the land.”
+
+“At your peril, John Graham! that is all.”
+
+“This mother of mine means me to be an old bachelor. What a jealous old
+lady it is! But now just look at that splendid creature in the pale
+blue satin dress, and hair of paler brown, with ‘reflets satinés’ as
+those of her robe. Would you not feel proud, mamma, if I were to bring
+that goddess home some day, and introduce her to you as Mrs. Bretton,
+junior?”
+
+“You will bring no goddess to La Terrasse: that little château will not
+contain two mistresses; especially if the second be of the height,
+bulk, and circumference of that mighty doll in wood and wax, and kid
+and satin.”
+
+“Mamma, she would fill your blue chair so admirably!”
+
+“Fill my chair? I defy the foreign usurper! a rueful chair should it be
+for her: but hush, John Graham! Hold your tongue, and use your eyes.”
+
+During the above skirmish, the hall, which, I had thought, seemed full
+at the entrance, continued to admit party after party, until the
+semicircle before the stage presented one dense mass of heads, sloping
+from floor to ceiling. The stage, too, or rather the wide temporary
+platform, larger than any stage, desert half an hour since, was now
+overflowing with life; round two grand pianos, placed about the centre,
+a white flock of young girls, the pupils of the Conservatoire, had
+noiselessly poured. I had noticed their gathering, while Graham and his
+mother were engaged in discussing the belle in blue satin, and had
+watched with interest the process of arraying and marshalling them. Two
+gentlemen, in each of whom I recognised an acquaintance, officered this
+virgin troop. One, an artistic-looking man, bearded, and with long
+hair, was a noted pianiste, and also the first music-teacher in
+Villette; he attended twice a week at Madame Beck’s pensionnat, to give
+lessons to the few pupils whose parents were rich enough to allow their
+daughters the privilege of his instructions; his name was M. Josef
+Emanuel, and he was half-brother to M. Paul: which potent personage was
+now visible in the person of the second gentleman.
+
+M. Paul amused me; I smiled to myself as I watched him, he seemed so
+thoroughly in his element—standing conspicuous in presence of a wide
+and grand assemblage, arranging, restraining, over-aweing about one
+hundred young ladies. He was, too, so perfectly in earnest—so
+energetic, so intent, and, above all, so absolute: and yet what
+business had he there? What had he to do with music or the
+Conservatoire—he who could hardly distinguish one note from another? I
+knew that it was his love of display and authority which had brought
+him there—a love not offensive, only because so naive. It presently
+became obvious that his brother, M. Josef, was as much under his
+control as were the girls themselves. Never was such a little hawk of a
+man as that M. Paul! Ere long, some noted singers and musicians dawned
+upon the platform: as these stars rose, the comet-like professor set.
+Insufferable to him were all notorieties and celebrities: where he
+could not outshine, he fled.
+
+And now all was prepared: but one compartment of the hall waited to be
+filled—a compartment covered with crimson, like the grand staircase and
+doors, furnished with stuffed and cushioned benches, ranged on each
+side of two regal chairs, placed solemnly under a canopy.
+
+A signal was given, the doors rolled back, the assembly stood up, the
+orchestra burst out, and, to the welcome of a choral burst, enter the
+King, the Queen, the Court of Labassecour.
+
+Till then, I had never set eyes on living king or queen; it may
+consequently be conjectured how I strained my powers of vision to take
+in these specimens of European royalty. By whomsoever majesty is beheld
+for the first time, there will always be experienced a vague surprise
+bordering on disappointment, that the same does not appear seated, en
+permanence, on a throne, bonneted with a crown, and furnished, as to
+the hand, with a sceptre. Looking out for a king and queen, and seeing
+only a middle-aged soldier and a rather young lady, I felt half
+cheated, half pleased.
+
+Well do I recall that King—a man of fifty, a little bowed, a little
+grey: there was no face in all that assembly which resembled his. I had
+never read, never been told anything of his nature or his habits; and
+at first the strong hieroglyphics graven as with iron stylet on his
+brow, round his eyes, beside his mouth, puzzled and baffled instinct.
+Ere long, however, if I did not know, at least I felt, the meaning of
+those characters written without hand. There sat a silent sufferer—a
+nervous, melancholy man. Those eyes had looked on the visits of a
+certain ghost—had long waited the comings and goings of that strangest
+spectre, Hypochondria. Perhaps he saw her now on that stage, over
+against him, amidst all that brilliant throng. Hypochondria has that
+wont, to rise in the midst of thousands—dark as Doom, pale as Malady,
+and well-nigh strong as Death. Her comrade and victim thinks to be
+happy one moment—“Not so,” says she; “I come.” And she freezes the
+blood in his heart, and beclouds the light in his eye.
+
+Some might say it was the foreign crown pressing the King’s brows which
+bent them to that peculiar and painful fold; some might quote the
+effects of early bereavement. Something there might be of both these;
+but these are embittered by that darkest foe of humanity—constitutional
+melancholy. The Queen, his wife, knew this: it seemed to me, the
+reflection of her husband’s grief lay, a subduing shadow, on her own
+benignant face. A mild, thoughtful, graceful woman that princess
+seemed; not beautiful, not at all like the women of solid charms and
+marble feelings described a page or two since. Hers was a somewhat
+slender shape; her features, though distinguished enough, were too
+suggestive of reigning dynasties and royal lines to give unqualified
+pleasure. The expression clothing that profile was agreeable in the
+present instance; but you could not avoid connecting it with remembered
+effigies, where similar lines appeared, under phase ignoble; feeble, or
+sensual, or cunning, as the case might be. The Queen’s eye, however,
+was her own; and pity, goodness, sweet sympathy, blessed it with
+divinest light. She moved no sovereign, but a lady—kind, loving,
+elegant. Her little son, the Prince of Labassecour, and young Duc de
+Dindonneau, accompanied her: he leaned on his mother’s knee; and, ever
+and anon, in the course of that evening, I saw her observant of the
+monarch at her side, conscious of his beclouded abstraction, and
+desirous to rouse him from it by drawing his attention to their son.
+She often bent her head to listen to the boy’s remarks, and would then
+smilingly repeat them to his sire. The moody King started, listened,
+smiled, but invariably relapsed as soon as his good angel ceased
+speaking. Full mournful and significant was that spectacle! Not the
+less so because, both for the aristocracy and the honest bourgeoisie of
+Labassecour, its peculiarity seemed to be wholly invisible: I could not
+discover that one soul present was either struck or touched.
+
+With the King and Queen had entered their court, comprising two or
+three foreign ambassadors; and with them came the elite of the
+foreigners then resident in Villette. These took possession of the
+crimson benches; the ladies were seated; most of the men remained
+standing: their sable rank, lining the background, looked like a dark
+foil to the splendour displayed in front. Nor was this splendour
+without varying light and shade and gradation: the middle distance was
+filled with matrons in velvets and satins, in plumes and gems; the
+benches in the foreground, to the Queen’s right hand, seemed devoted
+exclusively to young girls, the flower—perhaps, I should rather say,
+the bud—of Villette aristocracy. Here were no jewels, no head-dresses,
+no velvet pile or silken sheen: purity, simplicity, and aërial grace
+reigned in that virgin band. Young heads simply braided, and fair forms
+(I was going to write _sylph_ forms, but that would have been quite
+untrue: several of these “jeunes filles,” who had not numbered more
+than sixteen or seventeen years, boasted contours as robust and solid
+as those of a stout Englishwoman of five-and-twenty)—fair forms robed
+in white, or pale rose, or placid blue, suggested thoughts of heaven
+and angels. I knew a couple, at least, of these “rose et blanche”
+specimens of humanity. Here was a pair of Madame Beck’s late
+pupils—Mesdemoiselles Mathilde and Angélique: pupils who, during their
+last year at school, ought to have been in the first class, but whose
+brains never got them beyond the second division. In English, they had
+been under my own charge, and hard work it was to get them to translate
+rationally a page of _The Vicar of Wakefield_. Also during three months
+I had one of them for my vis-à-vis at table, and the quantity of
+household bread, butter, and stewed fruit, she would habitually consume
+at “second déjeuner” was a real world’s wonder—to be exceeded only by
+the fact of her actually pocketing slices she could not eat. Here be
+truths—wholesome truths, too.
+
+I knew another of these seraphs—the prettiest, or, at any rate, the
+least demure and hypocritical looking of the lot: she was seated by the
+daughter of an English peer, also an honest, though haughty-looking
+girl: both had entered in the suite of the British embassy. She (_i.e._
+my acquaintance) had a slight, pliant figure, not at all like the forms
+of the foreign damsels: her hair, too, was not close-braided, like a
+shell or a skull-cap of satin; it looked _like_ hair, and waved from
+her head, long, curled, and flowing. She chatted away volubly, and
+seemed full of a light-headed sort of satisfaction with herself and her
+position. I did not look at Dr. Bretton; but I knew that he, too, saw
+Ginevra Fanshawe: he had become so quiet, he answered so briefly his
+mother’s remarks, he so often suppressed a sigh. Why should he sigh? He
+had confessed a taste for the pursuit of love under difficulties; here
+was full gratification for that taste. His lady-love beamed upon him
+from a sphere above his own: he could not come near her; he was not
+certain that he could win from her a look. I watched to see if she
+would so far favour him. Our seat was not far from the crimson benches;
+we must inevitably be seen thence, by eyes so quick and roving as Miss
+Fanshawe’s, and very soon those optics of hers were upon us: at least,
+upon Dr. and Mrs. Bretton. I kept rather in the shade and out of sight,
+not wishing to be immediately recognised: she looked quite steadily at
+Dr. John, and then she raised a glass to examine his mother; a minute
+or two afterwards she laughingly whispered her neighbour; upon the
+performance commencing, her rambling attention was attracted to the
+platform.
+
+On the concert I need not dwell; the reader would not care to have my
+impressions thereanent: and, indeed, it would not be worth while to
+record them, as they were the impressions of an ignorance crasse. The
+young ladies of the Conservatoire, being very much frightened, made
+rather a tremulous exhibition on the two grand pianos. M. Josef Emanuel
+stood by them while they played; but he had not the tact or influence
+of his kinsman, who, under similar circumstances, would certainly have
+_compelled_ pupils of his to demean themselves with heroism and
+self-possession. M. Paul would have placed the hysteric débutantes
+between two fires—terror of the audience, and terror of himself—and
+would have inspired them with the courage of desperation, by making the
+latter terror incomparably the greater: M. Josef could not do this.
+
+Following the white muslin pianistes, came a fine, full-grown, sulky
+lady in white satin. She sang. Her singing just affected me like the
+tricks of a conjuror: I wondered how she did it—how she made her voice
+run up and down, and cut such marvellous capers; but a simple Scotch
+melody, played by a rude street minstrel, has often moved me more
+deeply.
+
+Afterwards stepped forth a gentleman, who, bending his body a good deal
+in the direction of the King and Queen, and frequently approaching his
+white-gloved hand to the region of his heart, vented a bitter outcry
+against a certain “fausse Isabelle.” I thought he seemed especially to
+solicit the Queen’s sympathy; but, unless I am egregiously mistaken,
+her Majesty lent her attention rather with the calm of courtesy than
+the earnestness of interest. This gentleman’s state of mind was very
+harrowing, and I was glad when he wound up his musical exposition of
+the same.
+
+Some rousing choruses struck me as the best part of the evening’s
+entertainment. There were present deputies from all the best provincial
+choral societies; genuine, barrel-shaped, native Labassecouriens. These
+worthies gave voice without mincing the matter their hearty exertions
+had at least this good result—the ear drank thence a satisfying sense
+of power.
+
+Through the whole performance—timid instrumental duets, conceited vocal
+solos, sonorous, brass-lunged choruses—my attention gave but one eye
+and one ear to the stage, the other being permanently retained in the
+service of Dr. Bretton: I could not forget him, nor cease to question
+how he was feeling, what he was thinking, whether he was amused or the
+contrary. At last he spoke.
+
+“And how do you like it all, Lucy? You are very quiet,” he said, in his
+own cheerful tone.
+
+“I am quiet,” I said, “because I am so very, _very_ much interested:
+not merely with the music, but with everything about me.”
+
+He then proceeded to make some further remarks, with so much equanimity
+and composure that I began to think he had really not seen what I had
+seen, and I whispered—“Miss Fanshawe is here: have you noticed her?”
+
+“Oh, yes! and I observed that you noticed her too.”
+
+“Is she come with Mrs. Cholmondeley, do you think?”
+
+“Mrs. Cholmondeley is there with a very grand party. Yes; Ginevra was
+in _her_ train; and Mrs. Cholmondeley was in Lady ——’s train, who was
+in the Queen’s train. If this were not one of the compact little minor
+European courts, whose very formalities are little more imposing than
+familiarities, and whose gala grandeur is but homeliness in Sunday
+array, it would sound all very fine.”
+
+“Ginevra saw you, I think?”
+
+“So do I think so. I have had my eye on her several times since you
+withdrew yours; and I have had the honour of witnessing a little
+spectacle which you were spared.”
+
+I did not ask what; I waited voluntary information, which was presently
+given.
+
+“Miss Fanshawe,” he said, “has a companion with her—a lady of rank. I
+happen to know Lady Sara by sight; her noble mother has called me in
+professionally. She is a proud girl, but not in the least insolent, and
+I doubt whether Ginevra will have gained ground in her estimation by
+making a butt of her neighbours.”
+
+“What neighbours?”
+
+“Merely myself and my mother. As to me it is all very natural: nothing,
+I suppose, can be fairer game than the young bourgeois doctor; but my
+mother! I never saw her ridiculed before. Do you know, the curling lip,
+and sarcastically levelled glass thus directed, gave me a most curious
+sensation?”
+
+“Think nothing of it, Dr. John: it is not worth while. If Ginevra were
+in a giddy mood, as she is eminently to-night, she would make no
+scruple of laughing at that mild, pensive Queen, or that melancholy
+King. She is not actuated by malevolence, but sheer, heedless folly. To
+a feather-brained school-girl nothing is sacred.”
+
+“But you forget: I have not been accustomed to look on Miss Fanshawe in
+the light of a feather-brained school-girl. Was she not my divinity—the
+angel of my career?”
+
+“Hem! There was your mistake.”
+
+“To speak the honest truth, without any false rant or assumed romance,
+there actually was a moment, six months ago, when I thought her divine.
+Do you remember our conversation about the presents? I was not quite
+open with you in discussing that subject: the warmth with which you
+took it up amused me. By way of having the full benefit of your lights,
+I allowed you to think me more in the dark than I really was. It was
+that test of the presents which first proved Ginevra mortal. Still her
+beauty retained its fascination: three days—three hours ago, I was very
+much her slave. As she passed me to-night, triumphant in beauty, my
+emotions did her homage; but for one luckless sneer, I should yet be
+the humblest of her servants. She might have scoffed at _me_, and,
+while wounding, she would not soon have alienated me: through myself,
+she could not in ten years have done what, in a moment, she has done
+through my mother.”
+
+He held his peace awhile. Never before had I seen so much fire, and so
+little sunshine in Dr. John’s blue eye as just now.
+
+“Lucy,” he recommenced, “look well at my mother, and say, without fear
+or favour, in what light she now appears to you.”
+
+“As she always does—an English, middle-class gentlewoman; well, though
+gravely dressed, habitually independent of pretence, constitutionally
+composed and cheerful.”
+
+“So she seems to me—bless her! The merry may laugh _with_ mamma, but
+the weak only will laugh _at_ her. She shall not be ridiculed, with my
+consent, at least; nor without my—my scorn—my antipathy—my—”
+
+He stopped: and it was time—for he was getting excited—more it seemed
+than the occasion warranted. I did not then know that he had witnessed
+double cause for dissatisfaction with Miss Fanshawe. The glow of his
+complexion, the expansion of his nostril, the bold curve which disdain
+gave his well-cut under lip, showed him in a new and striking phase.
+Yet the rare passion of the constitutionally suave and serene, is not a
+pleasant spectacle; nor did I like the sort of vindictive thrill which
+passed through his strong young frame.
+
+“Do I frighten you, Lucy?” he asked.
+
+“I cannot tell why you are so very angry.”
+
+“For this reason,” he muttered in my ear. “Ginevra is neither a pure
+angel, nor a pure-minded woman.”
+
+“Nonsense! you exaggerate: she has no great harm in her.”
+
+“Too much for me. _I_ can see where _you_ are blind. Now dismiss the
+subject. Let me amuse myself by teasing mamma: I will assert that she
+is flagging. Mamma, pray rouse yourself.”
+
+“John, I will certainly rouse you if you are not better conducted. Will
+you and Lucy be silent, that I may hear the singing?”
+
+They were then thundering in a chorus, under cover of which all the
+previous dialogue had taken place.
+
+“_You_ hear the singing, mamma! Now, I will wager my studs, which are
+genuine, against your paste brooch—”
+
+“My paste brooch, Graham? Profane boy! you know that it is a stone of
+value.”
+
+“Oh! that is one of your superstitions: you were cheated in the
+business.”
+
+“I am cheated in fewer things than you imagine. How do you happen to be
+acquainted with young ladies of the court, John? I have observed two of
+them pay you no small attention during the last half-hour.”
+
+“I wish you would not observe them.”
+
+“Why not? Because one of them satirically levels her eyeglass at me?
+She is a pretty, silly girl: but are you apprehensive that her titter
+will discomfit the old lady?”
+
+“The sensible, admirable old lady! Mother, you are better to me than
+ten wives yet.”
+
+“Don’t be demonstrative, John, or I shall faint, and you will have to
+carry me out; and if that burden were laid upon you, you would reverse
+your last speech, and exclaim, ‘Mother, ten wives could hardly be worse
+to me than you are!’”
+
+The concert over, the Lottery “au bénéfice des pauvres” came next: the
+interval between was one of general relaxation, and the pleasantest
+imaginable stir and commotion. The white flock was cleared from the
+platform; a busy throng of gentlemen crowded it instead, making
+arrangements for the drawing; and amongst these—the busiest of
+all—re-appeared that certain well-known form, not tall but active,
+alive with the energy and movement of three tall men. How M. Paul did
+work! How he issued directions, and, at the same time, set his own
+shoulder to the wheel! Half-a-dozen assistants were at his beck to
+remove the pianos, &c.; no matter, he must add to their strength his
+own. The redundancy of his alertness was half-vexing, half-ludicrous:
+in my mind I both disapproved and derided most of this fuss. Yet, in
+the midst of prejudice and annoyance, I could not, while watching,
+avoid perceiving a certain not disagreeable naïveté in all he did and
+said; nor could I be blind to certain vigorous characteristics of his
+physiognomy, rendered conspicuous now by the contrast with a throng of
+tamer faces: the deep, intent keenness of his eye, the power of his
+forehead, pale, broad, and full—the mobility of his most flexible
+mouth. He lacked the calm of force, but its movement and its fire he
+signally possessed.
+
+Meantime the whole hall was in a stir; most people rose and remained
+standing, for a change; some walked about, all talked and laughed. The
+crimson compartment presented a peculiarly animated scene. The long
+cloud of gentlemen, breaking into fragments, mixed with the rainbow
+line of ladies; two or three officer-like men approached the King and
+conversed with him. The Queen, leaving her chair, glided along the rank
+of young ladies, who all stood up as she passed; and to each in turn I
+saw her vouchsafe some token of kindness—a gracious word, look or
+smile. To the two pretty English girls, Lady Sara and Ginevra Fanshawe,
+she addressed several sentences; as she left them, both, and especially
+the latter, seemed to glow all over with gratification. They were
+afterwards accosted by several ladies, and a little circle of gentlemen
+gathered round them; amongst these—the nearest to Ginevra—stood the
+Count de Hamal.
+
+“This room is stiflingly hot,” said Dr. Bretton, rising with sudden
+impatience. “Lucy—mother—will you come a moment to the fresh air?”
+
+“Go with him, Lucy,” said Mrs. Bretton. “I would rather keep my seat.”
+
+Willingly would I have kept mine also, but Graham’s desire must take
+precedence of my own; I accompanied him.
+
+We found the night-air keen; or at least I did: he did not seem to feel
+it; but it was very still, and the star-sown sky spread cloudless. I
+was wrapped in a fur shawl. We took some turns on the pavement; in
+passing under a lamp, Graham encountered my eye.
+
+“You look pensive, Lucy: is it on my account?”
+
+“I was only fearing that you were grieved.”
+
+“Not at all: so be of good cheer—as I am. Whenever I die, Lucy, my
+persuasion is that it will not be of heart-complaint. I may be stung, I
+may seem to droop for a time, but no pain or malady of sentiment has
+yet gone through my whole system. You have always seen me cheerful at
+home?”
+
+“Generally.”
+
+“I am glad she laughed at my mother. I would not give the old lady for
+a dozen beauties. That sneer did me all the good in the world. Thank
+you, Miss Fanshawe!” And he lifted his hat from his waved locks, and
+made a mock reverence.
+
+“Yes,” he said, “I thank her. She has made me feel that nine parts in
+ten of my heart have always been sound as a bell, and the tenth bled
+from a mere puncture: a lancet-prick that will heal in a trice.”
+
+“You are angry just now, heated and indignant; you will think and feel
+differently to-morrow.”
+
+“_I_ heated and indignant! You don’t know me. On the contrary, the heat
+is gone: I am as cool as the night—which, by the way, may be too cool
+for you. We will go back.”
+
+“Dr. John, this is a sudden change.”
+
+“Not it: or if it be, there are good reasons for it—two good reasons: I
+have told you one. But now let us re-enter.”
+
+We did not easily regain our seats; the lottery was begun, and all was
+excited confusion; crowds blocked the sort of corridor along which we
+had to pass: it was necessary to pause for a time. Happening to glance
+round—indeed I half fancied I heard my name pronounced—I saw quite
+near, the ubiquitous, the inevitable M. Paul. He was looking at me
+gravely and intently: at me, or rather at my pink dress—sardonic
+comment on which gleamed in his eye. Now it was his habit to indulge in
+strictures on the dress, both of the teachers and pupils, at Madame
+Beck’s—a habit which the former, at least, held to be an offensive
+impertinence: as yet I had not suffered from it—my sombre daily attire
+not being calculated to attract notice. I was in no mood to permit any
+new encroachment to-night: rather than accept his banter, I would
+ignore his presence, and accordingly steadily turned my face to the
+sleeve of Dr. John’s coat; finding in that same black sleeve a prospect
+more redolent of pleasure and comfort, more genial, more friendly, I
+thought, than was offered by the dark little Professor’s unlovely
+visage. Dr. John seemed unconsciously to sanction the preference by
+looking down and saying in his kind voice, “Ay, keep close to my side,
+Lucy: these crowding burghers are no respecters of persons.”
+
+I could not, however, be true to myself. Yielding to some influence,
+mesmeric or otherwise—an influence unwelcome, displeasing, but
+effective—I again glanced round to see if M. Paul was gone. No, there
+he stood on the same spot, looking still, but with a changed eye; he
+had penetrated my thought, and read my wish to shun him. The mocking
+but not ill-humoured gaze was turned to a swarthy frown, and when I
+bowed, with a view to conciliation, I got only the stiffest and
+sternest of nods in return.
+
+“Whom have you made angry, Lucy?” whispered Dr. Bretton, smiling. “Who
+is that savage-looking friend of yours?”
+
+“One of the professors at Madame Beck’s: a very cross little man.”
+
+“He looks mighty cross just now: what have you done to him? What is it
+all about? Ah, Lucy, Lucy! tell me the meaning of this.”
+
+“No mystery, I assure you. M. Emanuel is very exigeant, and because I
+looked at your coat-sleeve, instead of curtseying and dipping to him,
+he thinks I have failed in respect.”
+
+“The little—” began Dr. John: I know not what more he would have added,
+for at that moment I was nearly thrown down amongst the feet of the
+crowd. M. Paul had rudely pushed past, and was elbowing his way with
+such utter disregard to the convenience and security of all around,
+that a very uncomfortable pressure was the consequence.
+
+“I think he is what he himself would call ‘méchant,’” said Dr. Bretton.
+I thought so, too.
+
+Slowly and with difficulty we made our way along the passage, and at
+last regained our seats. The drawing of the lottery lasted nearly an
+hour; it was an animating and amusing scene; and as we each held
+tickets, we shared in the alternations of hope and fear raised by each
+turn of the wheel. Two little girls, of five and six years old, drew
+the numbers: and the prizes were duly proclaimed from the platform.
+These prizes were numerous, though of small value. It so fell out that
+Dr. John and I each gained one: mine was a cigar-case, his a lady’s
+head-dress—a most airy sort of blue and silver turban, with a streamer
+of plumage on one side, like a snowy cloud. He was excessively anxious
+to make an exchange; but I could not be brought to hear reason, and to
+this day I keep my cigar-case: it serves, when I look at it, to remind
+me of old times, and one happy evening.
+
+Dr. John, for his part, held his turban at arm’s length between his
+finger and thumb, and looked at it with a mixture of reverence and
+embarrassment highly provocative of laughter. The contemplation over,
+he was about coolly to deposit the delicate fabric on the ground
+between his feet; he seemed to have no shadow of an idea of the
+treatment or stowage it ought to receive: if his mother had not come to
+the rescue, I think he would finally have crushed it under his arm like
+an opera-hat; she restored it to the band-box whence it had issued.
+
+Graham was quite cheerful all the evening, and his cheerfulness seemed
+natural and unforced. His demeanour, his look, is not easily described;
+there was something in it peculiar, and, in its way, original. I read
+in it no common mastery of the passions, and a fund of deep and healthy
+strength which, without any exhausting effort, bore down Disappointment
+and extracted her fang. His manner, now, reminded me of qualities I had
+noticed in him when professionally engaged amongst the poor, the
+guilty, and the suffering, in the Basse-Ville: he looked at once
+determined, enduring, and sweet-tempered. Who could help liking him?
+_He_ betrayed no weakness which harassed all your feelings with
+considerations as to how its faltering must be propped; from _him_
+broke no irritability which startled calm and quenched mirth; _his_
+lips let fall no caustic that burned to the bone; _his_ eye shot no
+morose shafts that went cold, and rusty, and venomed through your
+heart: beside him was rest and refuge—around him, fostering sunshine.
+
+And yet he had neither forgiven nor forgotten Miss Fanshawe. Once
+angered, I doubt if Dr. Bretton were to be soon propitiated—once
+alienated, whether he were ever to be reclaimed. He looked at her more
+than once; not stealthily or humbly, but with a movement of hardy, open
+observation. De Hamal was now a fixture beside her; Mrs. Cholmondeley
+sat near, and they and she were wholly absorbed in the discourse,
+mirth, and excitement, with which the crimson seats were as much astir
+as any plebeian part of the hall. In the course of some apparently
+animated discussion, Ginevra once or twice lifted her hand and arm; a
+handsome bracelet gleamed upon the latter. I saw that its gleam
+flickered in Dr. John’s eye—quickening therein a derisive, ireful
+sparkle; he laughed:——
+
+“I think,” he said, “I will lay my turban on my wonted altar of
+offerings; there, at any rate, it would be certain to find favour: no
+grisette has a more facile faculty of acceptance. Strange! for after
+all, I know she is a girl of family.”
+
+“But you don’t know her education, Dr. John,” said I. “Tossed about all
+her life from one foreign school to another, she may justly proffer the
+plea of ignorance in extenuation of most of her faults. And then, from
+what she says, I believe her father and mother were brought up much as
+she has been brought up.”
+
+“I always understood she had no fortune; and once I had pleasure in the
+thought,” said he.
+
+“She tells me,” I answered, “that they are poor at home; she always
+speaks quite candidly on such points: you never find her lying, as
+these foreigners will often lie. Her parents have a large family: they
+occupy such a station and possess such connections as, in their
+opinion, demand display; stringent necessity of circumstances and
+inherent thoughtlessness of disposition combined, have engendered
+reckless unscrupulousness as to how they obtain the means of sustaining
+a good appearance. This is the state of things, and the only state of
+things, she has seen from childhood upwards.”
+
+“I believe it—and I thought to mould her to something better: but,
+Lucy, to speak the plain truth, I have felt a new thing to-night, in
+looking at her and de Hamal. I felt it before noticing the impertinence
+directed at my mother. I saw a look interchanged between them
+immediately after their entrance, which threw a most unwelcome light on
+my mind.”
+
+“How do you mean? You have been long aware of the flirtation they keep
+up?”
+
+“Ay, flirtation! That might be an innocent girlish wile to lure on the
+true lover; but what I refer to was not flirtation: it was a look
+marking mutual and secret understanding—it was neither girlish nor
+innocent. No woman, were she as beautiful as Aphrodite, who could give
+or receive such a glance, shall ever be sought in marriage by me: I
+would rather wed a paysanne in a short petticoat and high cap—and be
+sure that she was honest.”
+
+I could not help smiling. I felt sure he now exaggerated the case:
+Ginevra, I was certain, was honest enough, with all her giddiness. I
+told him so. He shook his head, and said he would not be the man to
+trust her with his honour.
+
+“The only thing,” said I, “with which you may safely trust her. She
+would unscrupulously damage a husband’s purse and property, recklessly
+try his patience and temper: I don’t think she would breathe, or let
+another breathe, on his honour.”
+
+“You are becoming her advocate,” said he. “Do you wish me to resume my
+old chains?”
+
+“No: I am glad to see you free, and trust that free you will long
+remain. Yet be, at the same time, just.”
+
+“I am so: just as Rhadamanthus, Lucy. When once I am thoroughly
+estranged, I cannot help being severe. But look! the King and Queen are
+rising. I like that Queen: she has a sweet countenance. Mamma, too, is
+excessively tired; we shall never get the old lady home if we stay
+longer.”
+
+“I tired, John?” cried Mrs. Bretton, looking at least as animated and
+as wide-awake as her son. “I would undertake to sit you out yet: leave
+us both here till morning, and we should see which would look the most
+jaded by sunrise.”
+
+“I should not like to try the experiment; for, in truth, mamma, you are
+the most unfading of evergreens and the freshest of matrons. It must
+then be on the plea of your son’s delicate nerves and fragile
+constitution that I found a petition for our speedy adjournment.”
+
+“Indolent young man! You wish you were in bed, no doubt; and I suppose
+you must be humoured. There is Lucy, too, looking quite done up. For
+shame, Lucy! At your age, a week of evenings-out would not have made me
+a shade paler. Come away, both of you; and you may laugh at the old
+lady as much as you please, but, for my part, I shall take charge of
+the bandbox and turban.”
+
+Which she did accordingly. I offered to relieve her, but was shaken off
+with kindly contempt: my godmother opined that I had enough to do to
+take care of myself. Not standing on ceremony now, in the midst of the
+gay “confusion worse confounded” succeeding to the King and Queen’s
+departure, Mrs. Bretton preceded us, and promptly made us a lane
+through the crowd. Graham followed, apostrophizing his mother as the
+most flourishing grisette it had ever been his good fortune to see
+charged with carriage of a bandbox; he also desired me to mark her
+affection for the sky-blue turban, and announced his conviction that
+she intended one day to wear it.
+
+The night was now very cold and very dark, but with little delay we
+found the carriage. Soon we were packed in it, as warm and as snug as
+at a fire-side; and the drive home was, I think, still pleasanter than
+the drive to the concert. Pleasant it was, even though the
+coachman—having spent in the shop of a “marchand de vin” a portion of
+the time we passed at the concert—drove us along the dark and solitary
+chaussée far past the turn leading down to La Terrasse; we, who were
+occupied in talking and laughing, not noticing the aberration till, at
+last, Mrs. Bretton intimated that, though she had always thought the
+château a retired spot, she did not know it was situated at the world’s
+end, as she declared seemed now to be the case, for she believed we had
+been an hour and a half en route, and had not yet taken the turn down
+the avenue.
+
+Then Graham looked out, and perceiving only dim-spread fields, with
+unfamiliar rows of pollards and limes ranged along their else invisible
+sunk-fences, began to conjecture how matters were, and calling a halt
+and descending, he mounted the box and took the reins himself. Thanks
+to him, we arrived safe at home about an hour and a half beyond our
+time.
+
+Martha had not forgotten us; a cheerful fire was burning, and a neat
+supper spread in the dining-room: we were glad of both. The winter dawn
+was actually breaking before we gained our chambers. I took off my pink
+dress and lace mantle with happier feelings than I had experienced in
+putting them on. Not all, perhaps, who had shone brightly arrayed at
+that concert could say the same; for not all had been satisfied with
+friendship—with its calm comfort and modest hope.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+REACTION.
+
+
+Yet three days, and then I must go back to the _pensionnat_. I almost
+numbered the moments of these days upon the clock; fain would I have
+retarded their flight; but they glided by while I watched them: they
+were already gone while I yet feared their departure.
+
+“Lucy will not leave us to-day,” said Mrs. Bretton, coaxingly at
+breakfast; “she knows we can procure a second respite.”
+
+“I would not ask for one if I might have it for a word,” said I. “I
+long to get the good-by over, and to be settled in the Rue Fossette
+again. I must go this morning: I must go directly; my trunk is packed
+and corded.”
+
+It appeared; however, that my going depended upon Graham; he had said
+he would accompany, me, and it so fell out that he was engaged all day,
+and only returned home at dusk. Then ensued a little combat of words.
+Mrs. Bretton and her son pressed me to remain one night more. I could
+have cried, so irritated and eager was I to be gone. I longed to leave
+them as the criminal on the scaffold longs for the axe to descend: that
+is, I wished the pang over. How much I wished it, they could not tell.
+On these points, mine was a state of mind out of their experience.
+
+It was dark when Dr. John handed me from the carriage at Madame Beck’s
+door. The lamp above was lit; it rained a November drizzle, as it had
+rained all day: the lamplight gleamed on the wet pavement. Just such a
+night was it as that on which, not a year ago, I had first stopped at
+this very threshold; just similar was the scene. I remembered the very
+shapes of the paving-stones which I had noted with idle eye, while,
+with a thick-beating heart, I waited the unclosing of that door at
+which I stood—a solitary and a suppliant. On that night, too, I had
+briefly met him who now stood with me. Had I ever reminded him of that
+rencontre, or explained it? I had not, nor ever felt the inclination to
+do so: it was a pleasant thought, laid by in my own mind, and best kept
+there.
+
+Graham rung the bell. The door was instantly opened, for it was just
+that period of the evening when the half-boarders took their
+departure—consequently, Rosine was on the alert.
+
+“Don’t come in,” said I to him; but he stepped a moment into the
+well-lighted vestibule. I had not wished him to see that “the water
+stood in my eyes,” for his was too kind a nature ever to be needlessly
+shown such signs of sorrow. He always wished to heal—to relieve—when,
+physician as he was, neither cure nor alleviation were, perhaps, in his
+power.
+
+“Keep up your courage, Lucy. Think of my mother and myself as true
+friends. We will not forget you.”
+
+“Nor will I forget you, Dr. John.”
+
+My trunk was now brought in. We had shaken hands; he had turned to go,
+but he was not satisfied: he had not done or said enough to content his
+generous impulses.
+
+“Lucy,”—stepping after me—“shall you feel very solitary here?”
+
+“At first I shall.”
+
+“Well, my mother will soon call to see you; and, meantime, I’ll tell
+you what I’ll do. I’ll write—just any cheerful nonsense that comes into
+my head—shall I?”
+
+“Good, gallant heart!” thought I to myself; but I shook my head,
+smiling, and said, “Never think of it: impose on yourself no such task.
+_You_ write to _me_!—you’ll not have time.”
+
+“Oh! I will find or make time. Good-by!”
+
+He was gone. The heavy door crashed to: the axe had fallen—the pang was
+experienced.
+
+Allowing myself no time to think or feel—swallowing tears as if they
+had been wine—I passed to Madame’s sitting-room to pay the necessary
+visit of ceremony and respect. She received me with perfectly
+well-acted cordiality—was even demonstrative, though brief, in her
+welcome. In ten minutes I was dismissed. From the salle-à-manger I
+proceeded to the refectory, where pupils and teachers were now
+assembled for evening study: again I had a welcome, and one not, I
+think, quite hollow. That over, I was free to repair to the dormitory.
+
+“And will Graham really write?” I questioned, as I sank tired on the
+edge of the bed.
+
+Reason, coming stealthily up to me through the twilight of that long,
+dim chamber, whispered sedately—“He may write once. So kind is his
+nature, it may stimulate him for once to make the effort. But it
+_cannot_ be continued—it _may_ not be repeated. Great were that folly
+which should build on such a promise—insane that credulity which should
+mistake the transitory rain-pool, holding in its hollow one draught,
+for the perennial spring yielding the supply of seasons.”
+
+I bent my head: I sat thinking an hour longer. Reason still whispered
+me, laying on my shoulder a withered hand, and frostily touching my ear
+with the chill blue lips of eld.
+
+“If,” muttered she, “if he _should_ write, what then? Do you meditate
+pleasure in replying? Ah, fool! I warn you! Brief be your answer. Hope
+no delight of heart—no indulgence of intellect: grant no expansion to
+feeling—give holiday to no single faculty: dally with no friendly
+exchange: foster no genial intercommunion….”
+
+“But I have talked to Graham and you did not chide,” I pleaded.
+
+“No,” said she, “I needed not. Talk for you is good discipline. You
+converse imperfectly. While you speak, there can be no oblivion of
+inferiority—no encouragement to delusion: pain, privation, penury stamp
+your language….”
+
+“But,” I again broke in, “where the bodily presence is weak and the
+speech contemptible, surely there cannot be error in making written
+language the medium of better utterance than faltering lips can
+achieve?”
+
+Reason only answered, “At your peril you cherish that idea, or suffer
+its influence to animate any writing of yours!”
+
+“But if I feel, may I _never_ express?”
+
+“_Never!_” declared Reason.
+
+I groaned under her bitter sternness. Never—never—oh, hard word! This
+hag, this Reason, would not let me look up, or smile, or hope: she
+could not rest unless I were altogether crushed, cowed, broken-in, and
+broken-down. According to her, I was born only to work for a piece of
+bread, to await the pains of death, and steadily through all life to
+despond. Reason might be right; yet no wonder we are glad at times to
+defy her, to rush from under her rod and give a truant hour to
+Imagination—_her_ soft, bright foe, _our_ sweet Help, our divine Hope.
+We shall and must break bounds at intervals, despite the terrible
+revenge that awaits our return. Reason is vindictive as a devil: for me
+she was always envenomed as a step-mother. If I have obeyed her it has
+chiefly been with the obedience of fear, not of love. Long ago I should
+have died of her ill-usage her stint, her chill, her barren board, her
+icy bed, her savage, ceaseless blows; but for that kinder Power who
+holds my secret and sworn allegiance. Often has Reason turned me out by
+night, in mid-winter, on cold snow, flinging for sustenance the gnawed
+bone dogs had forsaken: sternly has she vowed her stores held nothing
+more for me—harshly denied my right to ask better things…. Then,
+looking up, have I seen in the sky a head amidst circling stars, of
+which the midmost and the brightest lent a ray sympathetic and attent.
+A spirit, softer and better than Human Reason, has descended with quiet
+flight to the waste—bringing all round her a sphere of air borrowed of
+eternal summer; bringing perfume of flowers which cannot fade—fragrance
+of trees whose fruit is life; bringing breezes pure from a world whose
+day needs no sun to lighten it. My hunger has this good angel appeased
+with food, sweet and strange, gathered amongst gleaning angels,
+garnering their dew-white harvest in the first fresh hour of a heavenly
+day; tenderly has she assuaged the insufferable fears which weep away
+life itself—kindly given rest to deadly weariness—generously lent hope
+and impulse to paralyzed despair. Divine, compassionate, succourable
+influence! When I bend the knee to other than God, it shall be at thy
+white and winged feet, beautiful on mountain or on plain. Temples have
+been reared to the Sun—altars dedicated to the Moon. Oh, greater glory!
+To thee neither hands build, nor lips consecrate: but hearts, through
+ages, are faithful to thy worship. A dwelling thou hast, too wide for
+walls, too high for dome—a temple whose floors are space—rites whose
+mysteries transpire in presence, to the kindling, the harmony of
+worlds!
+
+Sovereign complete! thou hadst, for endurance, thy great army of
+martyrs; for achievement, thy chosen band of worthies. Deity
+unquestioned, thine essence foils decay!
+
+This daughter of Heaven remembered me to-night; she saw me weep, and
+she came with comfort: “Sleep,” she said. “Sleep, sweetly—I gild thy
+dreams!”
+
+She kept her word, and watched me through a night’s rest; but at dawn
+Reason relieved the guard. I awoke with a sort of start; the rain was
+dashing against the panes, and the wind uttering a peevish cry at
+intervals; the night-lamp was dying on the black circular stand in the
+middle of the dormitory: day had already broken. How I pity those whom
+mental pain stuns instead of rousing! This morning the pang of waking
+snatched me out of bed like a hand with a giant’s gripe. How quickly I
+dressed in the cold of the raw dawn! How deeply I drank of the ice-cold
+water in my carafe! This was always my cordial, to which, like other
+dram-drinkers, I had eager recourse when unsettled by chagrin.
+
+Ere long the bell rang its _réveillée_ to the whole school. Being
+dressed, I descended alone to the refectory, where the stove was lit
+and the air was warm; through the rest of the house it was cold, with
+the nipping severity of a continental winter: though now but the
+beginning of November, a north wind had thus early brought a wintry
+blight over Europe: I remember the black stoves pleased me little when
+I first came; but now I began to associate with them a sense of
+comfort, and liked them, as in England we like a fireside.
+
+Sitting down before this dark comforter, I presently fell into a deep
+argument with myself on life and its chances, on destiny and her
+decrees. My mind, calmer and stronger now than last night, made for
+itself some imperious rules, prohibiting under deadly penalties all
+weak retrospect of happiness past; commanding a patient journeying
+through the wilderness of the present, enjoining a reliance on faith—a
+watching of the cloud and pillar which subdue while they guide, and awe
+while they illumine—hushing the impulse to fond idolatry, checking the
+longing out-look for a far-off promised land whose rivers are, perhaps,
+never to be, reached save in dying dreams, whose sweet pastures are to
+be viewed but from the desolate and sepulchral summit of a Nebo.
+
+By degrees, a composite feeling of blended strength and pain wound
+itself wirily round my heart, sustained, or at least restrained, its
+throbbings, and made me fit for the day’s work. I lifted my head.
+
+As I said before, I was sitting near the stove, let into the wall
+beneath the refectory and the carré, and thus sufficing to heat both
+apartments. Piercing the same wall, and close beside the stove, was a
+window, looking also into the carré; as I looked up a cap-tassel, a
+brow, two eyes, filled a pane of that window; the fixed gaze of those
+two eyes hit right against my own glance: they were watching me. I had
+not till that moment known that tears were on my cheek, but I felt them
+now.
+
+This was a strange house, where no corner was sacred from intrusion,
+where not a tear could be shed, nor a thought pondered, but a spy was
+at hand to note and to divine. And this new, this out-door, this male
+spy, what business had brought him to the premises at this unwonted
+hour? What possible right had he to intrude on me thus? No other
+professor would have dared to cross the carré before the class-bell
+rang. M. Emanuel took no account of hours nor of claims: there was some
+book of reference in the first-class library which he had occasion to
+consult; he had come to seek it: on his way he passed the refectory. It
+was very much his habit to wear eyes before, behind, and on each side
+of him: he had seen me through the little window—he now opened the
+refectory door, and there he stood.
+
+“Mademoiselle, vous êtes triste.”
+
+“Monsieur, j’en ai bien le droit.”
+
+“Vous êtes malade de coeur et d’humeur,” he pursued. “You are at once
+mournful and mutinous. I see on your cheek two tears which I know are
+hot as two sparks, and salt as two crystals of the sea. While I speak
+you eye me strangely. Shall I tell you of what I am reminded while
+watching you?”
+
+“Monsieur, I shall be called away to prayers shortly; my time for
+conversation is very scant and brief at this hour—excuse——”
+
+“I excuse everything,” he interrupted; “my mood is so meek, neither
+rebuff nor, perhaps, insult could ruffle it. You remind me, then, of a
+young she wild creature, new caught, untamed, viewing with a mixture of
+fire and fear the first entrance of the breaker-in.”
+
+Unwarrantable accost!—rash and rude if addressed to a pupil; to a
+teacher inadmissible. He thought to provoke a warm reply; I had seen
+him vex the passionate to explosion before now. In me his malice should
+find no gratification; I sat silent.
+
+“You look,” said he, “like one who would snatch at a draught of sweet
+poison, and spurn wholesome bitters with disgust.”
+
+“Indeed, I never liked bitters; nor do I believe them wholesome. And to
+whatever is sweet, be it poison or food, you cannot, at least, deny its
+own delicious quality—sweetness. Better, perhaps, to die quickly a
+pleasant death, than drag on long a charmless life.”
+
+“Yet,” said he, “you should take your bitter dose duly and daily, if I
+had the power to administer it; and, as to the well-beloved poison, I
+would, perhaps, break the very cup which held it.”
+
+I sharply turned my head away, partly because his presence utterly
+displeased me, and partly because I wished to shun questions: lest, in
+my present mood, the effort of answering should overmaster
+self-command.
+
+“Come,” said he, more softly, “tell me the truth—you grieve at being
+parted from friends—is it not so?”
+
+The insinuating softness was not more acceptable than the inquisitorial
+curiosity. I was silent. He came into the room, sat down on the bench
+about two yards from me, and persevered long, and, for him, patiently,
+in attempts to draw me into conversation—attempts necessarily
+unavailing, because I _could_ not talk. At last I entreated to be let
+alone. In uttering the request, my voice faltered, my head sank on my
+arms and the table. I wept bitterly, though quietly. He sat a while
+longer. I did not look up nor speak, till the closing door and his
+retreating step told me that he was gone. These tears proved a relief.
+
+I had time to bathe my eyes before breakfast, and I suppose I appeared
+at that meal as serene as any other person: not, however, quite as
+jocund-looking as the young lady who placed herself in the seat
+opposite mine, fixed on me a pair of somewhat small eyes twinkling
+gleefully, and frankly stretched across the table a white hand to be
+shaken. Miss Fanshawe’s travels, gaieties, and flirtations agreed with
+her mightily; she had become quite plump, her cheeks looked as round as
+apples. I had seen her last in elegant evening attire. I don’t know
+that she looked less charming now in her school-dress, a kind of
+careless peignoir of a dark-blue material, dimly and dingily plaided
+with black. I even think this dusky wrapper gave her charms a triumph;
+enhancing by contrast the fairness of her skin, the freshness of her
+bloom, the golden beauty of her tresses.
+
+“I am glad you are come back, Timon,” said she. Timon was one of her
+dozen names for me. “You don’t know how often I have wanted you in this
+dismal hole.”
+
+“Oh, have you? Then, of course, if you wanted me, you have something
+for me to do: stockings to mend, perhaps.” I never gave Ginevra a
+minute’s or a farthing’s credit for disinterestedness.
+
+“Crabbed and crusty as ever!” said she. “I expected as much: it would
+not be you if you did not snub one. But now, come, grand-mother, I hope
+you like coffee as much, and pistolets as little as ever: are you
+disposed to barter?”
+
+“Take your own way.”
+
+This way consisted in a habit she had of making me convenient. She did
+not like the morning cup of coffee; its school brewage not being strong
+or sweet enough to suit her palate; and she had an excellent appetite,
+like any other healthy school-girl, for the morning pistolets or rolls,
+which were new-baked and very good, and of which a certain allowance
+was served to each. This allowance being more than I needed, I gave
+half to Ginevra; never varying in my preference, though many others
+used to covet the superfluity; and she in return would sometimes give
+me a portion of her coffee. This morning I was glad of the draught;
+hunger I had none, and with thirst I was parched. I don’t know why I
+chose to give my bread rather to Ginevra than to another; nor why, if
+two had to share the convenience of one drinking-vessel, as sometimes
+happened—for instance, when we took a long walk into the country, and
+halted for refreshment at a farm—I always contrived that she should be
+my convive, and rather liked to let her take the lion’s share, whether
+of the white beer, the sweet wine, or the new milk: so it was, however,
+and she knew it; and, therefore, while we wrangled daily, we were never
+alienated.
+
+After breakfast my custom was to withdraw to the first classe, and sit
+and read, or think (oftenest the latter) there alone, till the
+nine-o’clock bell threw open all doors, admitted the gathered rush of
+externes and demi-pensionnaires, and gave the signal for entrance on
+that bustle and business to which, till five P.M., there was no relax.
+
+I was just seated this morning, when a tap came to the door.
+
+“Pardon, Mademoiselle,” said a pensionnaire, entering gently; and
+having taken from her desk some necessary book or paper, she withdrew
+on tip-toe, murmuring as she passed me, “Que mademoiselle est
+appliquée!”
+
+Appliquée, indeed! The means of application were spread before me, but
+I was doing nothing; and had done nothing, and meant to do nothing.
+Thus does the world give us credit for merits we have not. Madame Beck
+herself deemed me a regular bas-bleu, and often and solemnly used to
+warn me not to study too much, lest “the blood should all go to my
+head.” Indeed, everybody in the Rue Fossette held a superstition that
+“Meess Lucie” was learned; with the notable exception of M. Emanuel,
+who, by means peculiar to himself, and quite inscrutable to me, had
+obtained a not inaccurate inkling of my real qualifications, and used
+to take quiet opportunities of chuckling in my ear his malign glee over
+their scant measure. For my part, I never troubled myself about this
+penury. I dearly like to think my own thoughts; I had great pleasure in
+reading a few books, but not many: preferring always those on whose
+style or sentiment the writer’s individual nature was plainly stamped;
+flagging inevitably over characterless books, however clever and
+meritorious: perceiving well that, as far as my own mind was concerned,
+God had limited its powers and, its action—thankful, I trust, for the
+gift bestowed, but unambitious of higher endowments, not restlessly
+eager after higher culture.
+
+The polite pupil was scarcely gone, when, unceremoniously, without tap,
+in burst a second intruder. Had I been blind I should have known who
+this was. A constitutional reserve of manner had by this time told with
+wholesome and, for me, commodious effect, on the manners of my
+co-inmates; rarely did I now suffer from rude or intrusive treatment.
+When I first came, it would happen once and again that a blunt German
+would clap me on the shoulder, and ask me to run a race; or a riotous
+Labassecourienne seize me by the arm and drag me towards the
+playground: urgent proposals to take a swing at the “Pas de Géant,” or
+to join in a certain romping hide-and-seek game called “Un, deux,
+trois,” were formerly also of hourly occurrence; but all these little
+attentions had ceased some time ago—ceased, too, without my finding it
+necessary to be at the trouble of point-blank cutting them short. I had
+now no familiar demonstration to dread or endure, save from one
+quarter; and as that was English I could bear it. Ginevra Fanshawe made
+no scruple of—at times—catching me as I was crossing the carré,
+whirling me round in a compulsory waltz, and heartily enjoying the
+mental and physical discomfiture her proceeding induced. Ginevra
+Fanshawe it was who now broke in upon “my learned leisure.” She carried
+a huge music-book under her arm.
+
+“Go to your practising,” said I to her at once: “away with you to the
+little salon!”
+
+“Not till I have had a talk with you, chère amie. I know where you have
+been spending your vacation, and how you have commenced sacrificing to
+the graces, and enjoying life like any other belle. I saw you at the
+concert the other night, dressed, actually, like anybody else. Who is
+your tailleuse?”
+
+“Tittle-tattle: how prettily it begins! My tailleuse!—a fiddlestick!
+Come, sheer off, Ginevra. I really don’t want your company.”
+
+“But when I want yours so much, ange farouche, what does a little
+reluctance on your part signify? Dieu merci! we know how to manoeuvre
+with our gifted compatriote—the learned ‘ourse Britannique.’ And so,
+Ourson, you know Isidore?”
+
+“I know John Bretton.”
+
+“Oh, hush!” (putting her fingers in her ears) “you crack my tympanums
+with your rude Anglicisms. But, how is our well-beloved John? Do tell
+me about him. The poor man must be in a sad way. What did he say to my
+behaviour the other night? Wasn’t I cruel?”
+
+“Do you think I noticed you?”
+
+“It was a delightful evening. Oh, that divine de Hamal! And then to
+watch the other sulking and dying in the distance; and the old lady—my
+future mamma-in-law! But I am afraid I and Lady Sara were a little rude
+in quizzing her.”
+
+“Lady Sara never quizzed her at all; and for what _you_ did, don’t make
+yourself in the least uneasy: Mrs. Bretton will survive _your_ sneer.”
+
+“She may: old ladies are tough; but that poor son of hers! Do tell me
+what he said: I saw he was terribly cut up.”
+
+“He said you looked as if at heart you were already Madame de Hamal.”
+
+“Did he?” she cried with delight. “He noticed that? How charming! I
+thought he would be mad with jealousy.
+
+“Ginevra, have you seriously done with Dr. Bretton? Do you want him to
+give you up?”
+
+“Oh! you know he _can’t_ do that: but wasn’t he mad?”
+
+“Quite mad,” I assented; “as mad as a March hare.”
+
+“Well, and how _ever_ did you get him home?”
+
+“How _ever_, indeed! Have you no pity on his poor mother and me? Fancy
+us holding him tight down in the carriage, and he raving between us,
+fit to drive everybody delirious. The very coachman went wrong,
+somehow, and we lost our way.”
+
+“You don’t say so? You are laughing at me. Now, Lucy Snowe—”
+
+“I assure you it is fact—and fact, also, that Dr. Bretton would _not_
+stay in the carriage: he broke from us, and _would_ ride outside.”
+
+“And afterwards?”
+
+“Afterwards—when he _did_ reach home—the scene transcends description.”
+
+“Oh, but describe it—you know it is such fun!”
+
+“Fun for _you_, Miss Fanshawe? but” (with stern gravity) “you know the
+proverb—‘What is sport to one may be death to another.’”
+
+“Go on, there’s a darling Timon.”
+
+“Conscientiously, I cannot, unless you assure me you have some heart.”
+
+“I have—such an immensity, you don’t know!”
+
+“Good! In that case, you will be able to conceive Dr. Graham Bretton
+rejecting his supper in the first instance—the chicken, the sweetbread
+prepared for his refreshment, left on the table untouched. Then——but it
+is of no use dwelling at length on the harrowing details. Suffice it to
+say, that never, in the most stormy fits and moments of his infancy,
+had his mother such work to tuck the sheets about him as she had that
+night.”
+
+“He wouldn’t lie still?”
+
+“He wouldn’t lie still: there it was. The sheets might be tucked in,
+but the thing was to keep them tucked in.”
+
+“And what did he say?”
+
+“Say! Can’t you imagine him demanding his divine Ginevra,
+anathematizing that demon, de Hamal—raving about golden locks, blue
+eyes, white arms, glittering bracelets?”
+
+“No, did he? He saw the bracelet?”
+
+“Saw the bracelet? Yes, as plain as I saw it: and, perhaps, for the
+first time, he saw also the brand-mark with which its pressure has
+encircled your arm. Ginevra” (rising, and changing my tone), “come, we
+will have an end of this. Go away to your practising.”
+
+And I opened the door.
+
+“But you have not told me all.”
+
+“You had better not wait until I _do_ tell you all. Such extra
+communicativeness could give you no pleasure. March!”
+
+“Cross thing!” said she; but she obeyed: and, indeed, the first classe
+was my territory, and she could not there legally resist a notice of
+quittance from me.
+
+Yet, to speak the truth, never had I been less dissatisfied with her
+than I was then. There was pleasure in thinking of the contrast between
+the reality and my description—to remember Dr. John enjoying the drive
+home, eating his supper with relish, and retiring to rest with
+Christian composure. It was only when I saw him really unhappy that I
+felt really vexed with the fair, frail cause of his suffering.
+
+A fortnight passed; I was getting once more inured to the harness of
+school, and lapsing from the passionate pain of change to the palsy of
+custom. One afternoon, in crossing the carré, on my way to the first
+classe, where I was expected to assist at a lesson of “style and
+literature,” I saw, standing by one of the long and large windows,
+Rosine, the portress. Her attitude, as usual, was quite nonchalante.
+She always “stood at ease;” one of her hands rested in her
+apron-pocket, the other at this moment held to her eyes a letter,
+whereof Mademoiselle coolly perused the address, and deliberately
+studied the seal.
+
+A letter! The shape of a letter similar to that had haunted my brain in
+its very core for seven days past. I had dreamed of a letter last
+night. Strong magnetism drew me to that letter now; yet, whether I
+should have ventured to demand of Rosine so much as a glance at that
+white envelope, with the spot of red wax in the middle, I know not. No;
+I think I should have sneaked past in terror of a rebuff from
+Disappointment: my heart throbbed now as if I already heard the tramp
+of her approach. Nervous mistake! It was the rapid step of the
+Professor of Literature measuring the corridor. I fled before him.
+Could I but be seated quietly at my desk before his arrival, with the
+class under my orders all in disciplined readiness, he would, perhaps,
+exempt me from notice; but, if caught lingering in the carré, I should
+be sure to come in for a special harangue. I had time to get seated, to
+enforce perfect silence, to take out my work, and to commence it amidst
+the profoundest and best trained hush, ere M. Emanuel entered with his
+vehement burst of latch and panel, and his deep, redundant bow,
+prophetic of choler.
+
+As usual he broke upon us like a clap of thunder; but instead of
+flashing lightning-wise from the door to the estrade, his career halted
+midway at my desk. Setting his face towards me and the window, his back
+to the pupils and the room, he gave me a look—such a look as might have
+licensed me to stand straight up and demand what he meant—a look of
+scowling distrust.
+
+“Voilà! pour vous,” said he, drawing his hand from his waist-coat, and
+placing on my desk a letter—the very letter I had seen in Rosine’s
+hand—the letter whose face of enamelled white and single Cyclop’s-eye
+of vermilion-red had printed themselves so clear and perfect on the
+retina of an inward vision. I knew it, I felt it to be the letter of my
+hope, the fruition of my wish, the release from my doubt, the ransom
+from my terror. This letter M. Paul, with his unwarrantably interfering
+habits, had taken from the portress, and now delivered it himself.
+
+I might have been angry, but had not a second for the sensation. Yes: I
+held in my hand not a slight note, but an envelope, which must, at
+least, contain a sheet: it felt not flimsy, but firm, substantial,
+satisfying. And here was the direction, “Miss Lucy Snowe,” in a clean,
+clear, equal, decided hand; and here was the seal, round, full, deftly
+dropped by untremulous fingers, stamped with the well-cut impress of
+initials, “J. G. B.” I experienced a happy feeling—a glad emotion which
+went warm to my heart, and ran lively through all my veins. For once a
+hope was realized. I held in my hand a morsel of real solid joy: not a
+dream, not an image of the brain, not one of those shadowy chances
+imagination pictures, and on which humanity starves but cannot live;
+not a mess of that manna I drearily eulogized awhile ago—which, indeed,
+at first melts on the lips with an unspeakable and preternatural
+sweetness, but which, in the end, our souls full surely loathe; longing
+deliriously for natural and earth-grown food, wildly praying Heaven’s
+Spirits to reclaim their own spirit-dew and essence—an aliment divine,
+but for mortals deadly. It was neither sweet hail nor small
+coriander-seed—neither slight wafer, nor luscious honey, I had lighted
+on; it was the wild, savoury mess of the hunter, nourishing and
+salubrious meat, forest-fed or desert-reared, fresh, healthful, and
+life-sustaining. It was what the old dying patriarch demanded of his
+son Esau, promising in requital the blessing of his last breath. It was
+a godsend; and I inwardly thanked the God who had vouchsafed it.
+Outwardly I only thanked man, crying, “Thank you, thank you, Monsieur!”
+
+Monsieur curled his lip, gave me a vicious glance of the eye, and
+strode to his estrade. M. Paul was not at all a good little man, though
+he had good points.
+
+Did I read my letter there and then? Did I consume the venison at once
+and with haste, as if Esau’s shaft flew every day?
+
+I knew better. The cover with its address—the seal, with its three
+clear letters—was bounty and abundance for the present. I stole from
+the room, I procured the key of the great dormitory, which was kept
+locked by day. I went to my bureau; with a sort of haste and trembling
+lest Madame should creep up-stairs and spy me, I opened a drawer,
+unlocked a box, and took out a case, and—having feasted my eyes with
+one more look, and approached the seal with a mixture of awe and shame
+and delight, to my lips—I folded the untasted treasure, yet all fair
+and inviolate, in silver paper, committed it to the case, shut up box
+and drawer, reclosed, relocked the dormitory, and returned to class,
+feeling as if fairy tales were true, and fairy gifts no dream. Strange,
+sweet insanity! And this letter, the source of my joy, I had not yet
+read: did not yet know the number of its lines.
+
+When I re-entered the schoolroom, behold M. Paul raging like a
+pestilence! Some pupil had not spoken audibly or distinctly enough to
+suit his ear and taste, and now she and others were weeping, and he was
+raving from his estrade, almost livid. Curious to mention, as I
+appeared, he fell on me.
+
+“Was I the mistress of these girls? Did I profess to teach them the
+conduct befitting ladies?—and did I permit and, he doubted not,
+encourage them to strangle their mother-tongue in their throats, to
+mince and mash it between their teeth, as if they had some base cause
+to be ashamed of the words they uttered? Was this modesty? He knew
+better. It was a vile pseudo sentiment—the offspring or the forerunner
+of evil. Rather than submit to this mopping and mowing, this mincing
+and grimacing, this, grinding of a noble tongue, this general
+affectation and sickening stubbornness of the pupils of the first
+class, he would throw them up for a set of insupportable petites
+maîtresses, and confine himself to teaching the ABC to the babies of
+the third division.”
+
+What could I say to all this? Really nothing; and I hoped he would
+allow me to be silent. The storm recommenced.
+
+“Every answer to his queries was then refused? It seemed to be
+considered in _that_ place—that conceited boudoir of a first classe,
+with its pretentious book-cases, its green-baized desks, its rubbish of
+flower-stands, its trash of framed pictures and maps, and its foreign
+surveillante, forsooth!—it seemed to be the fashion to think _there_
+that the Professor of Literature was not worthy of a reply! These were
+new ideas; imported, he did not doubt, straight from ‘la Grande
+Bretagne:’ they savoured of island insolence and arrogance.”
+
+Lull the second—the girls, not one of whom was ever known to weep a
+tear for the rebukes of any other master, now all melting like
+snow-statues before the intemperate heat of M. Emanuel: I not yet much
+shaken, sitting down, and venturing to resume my work.
+
+Something—either in my continued silence or in the movement of my hand,
+stitching—transported M. Emanuel beyond the last boundary of patience;
+he actually sprang from his estrade. The stove stood near my desk, he
+attacked it; the little iron door was nearly dashed from its hinges,
+the fuel was made to fly.
+
+“Est-ce que vous avez l’intention de m’insulter?” said he to me, in a
+low, furious voice, as he thus outraged, under pretence of arranging
+the fire.
+
+It was time to soothe him a little if possible.
+
+“Mais, Monsieur,” said I, “I would not insult you for the world. I
+remember too well that you once said we should be friends.”
+
+I did not intend my voice to falter, but it did: more, I think, through
+the agitation of late delight than in any spasm of present fear. Still
+there certainly was something in M. Paul’s anger—a kind of passion of
+emotion—that specially tended to draw tears. I was not unhappy, nor
+much afraid, yet I wept.
+
+“Allons, allons!” said he presently, looking round and seeing the
+deluge universal. “Decidedly I am a monster and a ruffian. I have only
+one pocket-handkerchief,” he added, “but if I had twenty, I would offer
+you each one. Your teacher shall be your representative. Here, Miss
+Lucy.”
+
+And he took forth and held out to me a clean silk handkerchief. Now a
+person who did not know M. Paul, who was unused to him and his
+impulses, would naturally have bungled at this offer—declined accepting
+the same—et cetera. But I too plainly felt this would never do: the
+slightest hesitation would have been fatal to the incipient treaty of
+peace. I rose and met the handkerchief half-way, received it with
+decorum, wiped therewith my eyes, and, resuming my seat, and retaining
+the flag of truce in my hand and on my lap, took especial care during
+the remainder of the lesson to touch neither needle nor thimble,
+scissors nor muslin. Many a jealous glance did M. Paul cast at these
+implements; he hated them mortally, considering sewing a source of
+distraction from the attention due to himself. A very eloquent lesson
+he gave, and very kind and friendly was he to the close. Ere he had
+done, the clouds were dispersed and the sun shining out—tears were
+exchanged for smiles.
+
+In quitting the room he paused once more at my desk.
+
+“And your letter?” said he, this time not quite fiercely.
+
+“I have not yet read it, Monsieur.”
+
+“Ah! it is too good to read at once; you save it, as, when I was a boy,
+I used to save a peach whose bloom was very ripe?”
+
+The guess came so near the truth, I could not prevent a suddenly-rising
+warmth in my face from revealing as much.
+
+“You promise yourself a pleasant moment,” said he, “in reading that
+letter; you will open it when alone—n’est-ce pas? Ah! a smile answers.
+Well, well! one should not be too harsh; ‘la jeunesse n’a qu’un
+temps.’”
+
+“Monsieur, Monsieur!” I cried, or rather whispered after him, as he
+turned to go, “do not leave me under a mistake. This is merely a
+friend’s letter. Without reading it, I can vouch for that.”
+
+“Je conçois, je conçois: on sait ce que c’est qu’un ami. Bonjour,
+Mademoiselle!”
+
+“But, Monsieur, here is your handkerchief.”
+
+“Keep it, keep it, till the letter is read, then bring it me; I shall
+read the billet’s tenor in your eyes.”
+
+When he was gone, the pupils having already poured out of the
+schoolroom into the berceau, and thence into the garden and court to
+take their customary recreation before the five-o’clock dinner, I stood
+a moment thinking, and absently twisting the handkerchief round my arm.
+For some reason—gladdened, I think, by a sudden return of the golden
+glimmer of childhood, roused by an unwonted renewal of its buoyancy,
+made merry by the liberty of the closing hour, and, above all, solaced
+at heart by the joyous consciousness of that treasure in the case, box,
+drawer up-stairs,—I fell to playing with the handkerchief as if it were
+a ball, casting it into the air and catching it—as it fell. The game
+was stopped by another hand than mine—a hand emerging from a
+paletôt-sleeve and stretched over my shoulder; it caught the
+extemporised plaything and bore it away with these sullen words:
+
+“Je vois bien que vous vous moquez de moi et de mes effets.”
+
+Really that little man was dreadful: a mere sprite of caprice and,
+ubiquity: one never knew either his whim or his whereabout.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+THE LETTER.
+
+
+When all was still in the house; when dinner was over and the noisy
+recreation-hour past; when darkness had set in, and the quiet lamp of
+study was lit in the refectory; when the externes were gone home, the
+clashing door and clamorous bell hushed for the evening; when Madame
+was safely settled in the salle-à-manger in company with her mother and
+some friends; I then glided to the kitchen, begged a bougie for one
+half-hour for a particular occasion, found acceptance of my petition at
+the hands of my friend Goton, who answered, “Mais certainement,
+chou-chou, vous en aurez deux, si vous voulez;” and, light in hand, I
+mounted noiseless to the dormitory.
+
+Great was my chagrin to find in that apartment a pupil gone to bed
+indisposed,—greater when I recognised, amid the muslin nightcap
+borders, the “figure chiffonnée” of Mistress Ginevra Fanshawe; supine
+at this moment, it is true—but certain to wake and overwhelm me with
+chatter when the interruption would be least acceptable: indeed, as I
+watched her, a slight twinkling of the eyelids warned me that the
+present appearance of repose might be but a ruse, assumed to cover sly
+vigilance over “Timon’s” movements; she was not to be trusted. And I
+had so wished to be alone, just to read my precious letter in peace.
+
+Well, I must go to the classes. Having sought and found my prize in its
+casket, I descended. Ill-luck pursued me. The classes were undergoing
+sweeping and purification by candle-light, according to hebdomadal
+custom: benches were piled on desks, the air was dim with dust, damp
+coffee-grounds (used by Labassecourien housemaids instead of
+tea-leaves) darkened the floor; all was hopeless confusion. Baffled,
+but not beaten, I withdrew, bent as resolutely as ever on finding
+solitude _somewhere_.
+
+Taking a key whereof I knew the repository, I mounted three staircases
+in succession, reached a dark, narrow, silent landing, opened a
+worm-eaten door, and dived into the deep, black, cold garret. Here none
+would follow me—none interrupt—not Madame herself. I shut the
+garret-door; I placed my light on a doddered and mouldy chest of
+drawers; I put on a shawl, for the air was ice-cold; I took my letter;
+trembling with sweet impatience, I broke its seal.
+
+“Will it be long—will it be short?” thought I, passing my hand across
+my eyes to dissipate the silvery dimness of a suave, south-wind shower.
+
+It was long.
+
+“Will it be cool?—will it be kind?”
+
+It was kind.
+
+To my checked, bridled, disciplined expectation, it seemed very kind:
+to my longing and famished thought it seemed, perhaps, kinder than it
+was.
+
+So little had I hoped, so much had I feared; there was a fulness of
+delight in this taste of fruition—such, perhaps, as many a human being
+passes through life without ever knowing. The poor English teacher in
+the frosty garret, reading by a dim candle guttering in the wintry air,
+a letter simply good-natured—nothing more; though that good-nature then
+seemed to me godlike—was happier than most queens in palaces.
+
+Of course, happiness of such shallow origin could be but brief; yet,
+while it lasted it was genuine and exquisite: a bubble—but a sweet
+bubble—of real honey-dew. Dr. John had written to me at length; he had
+written to me with pleasure; he had written with benignant mood,
+dwelling with sunny satisfaction on scenes that had passed before his
+eyes and mine,—on places we had visited together—on conversations we
+had held—on all the little subject-matter, in short, of the last few
+halcyon weeks. But the cordial core of the delight was, a conviction
+the blithe, genial language generously imparted, that it had been
+poured out not merely to content _me_—but to gratify _himself_. A
+gratification he might never more desire, never more seek—an hypothesis
+in every point of view approaching the certain; but _that_ concerned
+the future. This present moment had no pain, no blot, no want; full,
+pure, perfect, it deeply blessed me. A passing seraph seemed to have
+rested beside me, leaned towards my heart, and reposed on its throb a
+softening, cooling, healing, hallowing wing. Dr. John, you pained me
+afterwards: forgiven be every ill—freely forgiven—for the sake of that
+one dear remembered good!
+
+Are there wicked things, not human, which envy human bliss? Are there
+evil influences haunting the air, and poisoning it for man? What was
+near me?
+
+Something in that vast solitary garret sounded strangely. Most surely
+and certainly I heard, as it seemed, a stealthy foot on that floor: a
+sort of gliding out from the direction of the black recess haunted by
+the malefactor cloaks. I turned: my light was dim; the room was
+long—but as I live! I saw in the middle of that ghostly chamber a
+figure all black and white; the skirts straight, narrow, black; the
+head bandaged, veiled, white.
+
+Say what you will, reader—tell me I was nervous or mad; affirm that I
+was unsettled by the excitement of that letter; declare that I dreamed;
+this I vow—I saw there—in that room—on that night—an image like—a NUN.
+
+I cried out; I sickened. Had the shape approached me I might have
+swooned. It receded: I made for the door. How I descended all the
+stairs I know not. By instinct I shunned the refectory, and shaped my
+course to Madame’s sitting-room: I burst in. I said—
+
+“There is something in the grenier; I have been there: I saw something.
+Go and look at it, all of you!”
+
+I said, “All of you;” for the room seemed to me full of people, though
+in truth there were but four present: Madame Beck; her mother, Madame
+Kint, who was out of health, and now staying with her on a visit; her
+brother, M. Victor Kint, and another gentleman, who, when I entered the
+room, was conversing with the old lady, and had his back towards the
+door.
+
+My mortal fear and faintness must have made me deadly pale. I felt cold
+and shaking. They all rose in consternation; they surrounded me. I
+urged them to go to the grenier; the sight of the gentlemen did me good
+and gave me courage: it seemed as if there were some help and hope,
+with men at hand. I turned to the door, beckoning them to follow. They
+wanted to stop me, but I said they must come this way: they must see
+what I had seen—something strange, standing in the middle of the
+garret. And, now, I remembered my letter, left on the drawers with the
+light. This precious letter! Flesh or spirit must be defied for its
+sake. I flew up-stairs, hastening the faster as I knew I was followed:
+they were obliged to come.
+
+Lo! when I reached the garret-door, all within was dark as a pit: the
+light was out. Happily some one—Madame, I think, with her usual calm
+sense—had brought a lamp from the room; speedily, therefore, as they
+came up, a ray pierced the opaque blackness. There stood the bougie
+quenched on the drawers; but where was the letter? And I looked for
+_that_ now, and not for the nun.
+
+“My letter! my letter!” I panted and plained, almost beside myself. I
+groped on the floor, wringing my hands wildly. Cruel, cruel doom! To
+have my bit of comfort preternaturally snatched from me, ere I had well
+tasted its virtue!
+
+I don’t know what the others were doing; I could not watch them: they
+asked me questions I did not answer; they ransacked all corners; they
+prattled about this and that disarrangement of cloaks, a breach or
+crack in the sky-light—I know not what. “Something or somebody has been
+here,” was sagely averred.
+
+“Oh! they have taken my letter!” cried the grovelling, groping,
+monomaniac.
+
+“What letter, Lucy? My dear girl, what letter?” asked a known voice in
+my ear. Could I believe that ear? No: and I looked up. Could I trust my
+eyes? Had I recognised the tone? Did I now look on the face of the
+writer of that very letter? Was this gentleman near me in this dim
+garret, John Graham—Dr. Bretton himself?
+
+Yes: it was. He had been called in that very evening to prescribe for
+some access of illness in old Madame Kint; he was the second gentleman
+present in the salle-à-manger when I entered.
+
+“Was it _my_ letter, Lucy?”
+
+“Your own: yours—the letter you wrote to me. I had come here to read it
+quietly. I could not find another spot where it was possible to have it
+to myself. I had saved it all day—never opened it till this evening: it
+was scarcely glanced over: I _cannot bear_ to lose it. Oh, my letter!”
+
+“Hush! don’t cry and distress yourself so cruelly. What is it worth?
+Hush! Come out of this cold room; they are going to send for the police
+now to examine further: we need not stay here—come, we will go down.”
+
+A warm hand, taking my cold fingers, led me down to a room where there
+was a fire. Dr. John and I sat before the stove. He talked to me and
+soothed me with unutterable goodness, promising me twenty letters for
+the one lost. If there are words and wrongs like knives, whose
+deep-inflicted lacerations never heal—cutting injuries and insults of
+serrated and poison-dripping edge—so, too, there are consolations of
+tone too fine for the ear not fondly and for ever to retain their echo:
+caressing kindnesses—loved, lingered over through a whole life,
+recalled with unfaded tenderness, and answering the call with undimmed
+shine, out of that raven cloud foreshadowing Death himself. I have been
+told since that Dr. Bretton was not nearly so perfect as I thought him:
+that his actual character lacked the depth, height, compass, and
+endurance it possessed in my creed. I don’t know: he was as good to me
+as the well is to the parched wayfarer—as the sun to the shivering
+jailbird. I remember him heroic. Heroic at this moment will I hold him
+to be.
+
+He asked me, smiling, why I cared for his letter so very much. I
+thought, but did not say, that I prized it like the blood in my veins.
+I only answered that I had so few letters to care for.
+
+“I am sure you did not read it,” said he; “or you would think nothing
+of it!”
+
+“I read it, but only once. I want to read it again. I am sorry it is
+lost.” And I could not help weeping afresh.
+
+“Lucy, Lucy, my poor little god-sister (if there be such a
+relationship), here—_here_ is your letter. Why is it not better worth
+such tears, and such tenderly exaggerating faith?”
+
+Curious, characteristic manoeuvre! His quick eye had seen the letter on
+the floor where I sought it; his hand, as quick, had snatched it up. He
+had hidden it in his waistcoat pocket. If my trouble had wrought with a
+whit less stress and reality, I doubt whether he would ever have
+acknowledged or restored it. Tears of temperature one degree cooler
+than those I shed would only have amused Dr. John.
+
+Pleasure at regaining made me forget merited reproach for the teasing
+torment; my joy was great; it could not be concealed: yet I think it
+broke out more in countenance than language. I said little.
+
+“Are you satisfied now?” asked Dr. John.
+
+I replied that I was—satisfied and happy.
+
+“Well then,” he proceeded, “how do you feel physically? Are you growing
+calmer? Not much: for you tremble like a leaf still.”
+
+It seemed to me, however, that I was sufficiently calm: at least I felt
+no longer terrified. I expressed myself composed.
+
+“You are able, consequently, to tell me what you saw? Your account was
+quite vague, do you know? You looked white as the wall; but you only
+spoke of ‘something,’ not defining _what_. Was it a man? Was it an
+animal? What was it?”
+
+“I never will tell exactly what I saw,” said I, “unless some one else
+sees it too, and then I will give corroborative testimony; but
+otherwise, I shall be discredited and accused of dreaming.”
+
+“Tell me,” said Dr. Bretton; “I will hear it in my professional
+character: I look on you now from a professional point of view, and I
+read, perhaps, all you would conceal—in your eye, which is curiously
+vivid and restless: in your cheek, which the blood has forsaken; in
+your hand, which you cannot steady. Come, Lucy, speak and tell me.”
+
+“You would laugh—?”
+
+“If you don’t tell me you shall have no more letters.”
+
+“You are laughing now.”
+
+“I will again take away that single epistle: being mine, I think I have
+a right to reclaim it.”
+
+I felt raillery in his words: it made me grave and quiet; but I folded
+up the letter and covered it from sight.
+
+“You may hide it, but I can possess it any moment I choose. You don’t
+know my skill in sleight of hand; I might practise as a conjuror if I
+liked. Mamma says sometimes, too, that I have a harmonizing property of
+tongue and eye; but you never saw that in me—did you, Lucy?”
+
+“Indeed—indeed—when you were a mere boy I used to see both: far more
+then than now—for now you are strong, and strength dispenses with
+subtlety. But still,—Dr. John, you have what they call in this country
+‘un air fin,’ that nobody can, mistake. Madame Beck saw it, and—”
+
+“And liked it,” said he, laughing, “because she has it herself. But,
+Lucy, give me that letter—you don’t really care for it.”
+
+To this provocative speech I made no answer. Graham in mirthful mood
+must not be humoured too far. Just now there was a new sort of smile
+playing about his lips—very sweet, but it grieved me somehow—a new sort
+of light sparkling in his eyes: not hostile, but not reassuring. I rose
+to go—I bid him good-night a little sadly.
+
+His sensitiveness—that peculiar, apprehensive, detective faculty of
+his—felt in a moment the unspoken complaint—the scarce-thought
+reproach. He asked quietly if I was offended. I shook my head as
+implying a negative.
+
+“Permit me, then, to speak a little seriously to you before you go. You
+are in a highly nervous state. I feel sure from what is apparent in
+your look and manner, however well controlled, that whilst alone this
+evening in that dismal, perishing sepulchral garret—that dungeon under
+the leads, smelling of damp and mould, rank with phthisis and catarrh:
+a place you never ought to enter—that you saw, or _thought_ you saw,
+some appearance peculiarly calculated to impress the imagination. I
+know that you _are_ not, nor ever were, subject to material terrors,
+fears of robbers, &c.—I am not so sure that a visitation, bearing a
+spectral character, would not shake your very mind. Be calm now. This
+is all a matter of the nerves, I see: but just specify the vision.”
+
+“You will tell nobody?”
+
+“Nobody—most certainly. You may trust me as implicitly as you did Père
+Silas. Indeed, the doctor is perhaps the safer confessor of the two,
+though he has not grey hair.”
+
+“You will not laugh?”
+
+“Perhaps I may, to do you good: but not in scorn. Lucy, I feel as a
+friend towards you, though your timid nature is slow to trust.”
+
+He now looked like a friend: that indescribable smile and sparkle were
+gone; those formidable arched curves of lip, nostril, eyebrow, were
+depressed; repose marked his attitude—attention sobered his aspect. Won
+to confidence, I told him exactly what I had seen: ere now I had
+narrated to him the legend of the house—whiling away with that
+narrative an hour of a certain mild October afternoon, when he and I
+rode through Bois l’Etang.
+
+He sat and thought, and while he thought, we heard them all coming
+down-stairs.
+
+“Are they going to interrupt?” said he, glancing at the door with an
+annoyed expression.
+
+“They will not come here,” I answered; for we were in the little salon
+where Madame never sat in the evening, and where it was by mere chance
+that heat was still lingering in the stove. They passed the door and
+went on to the salle-à-manger.
+
+“Now,” he pursued, “they will talk about thieves, burglars, and so on:
+let them do so—mind you say nothing, and keep your resolution of
+describing your nun to nobody. She may appear to you again: don’t
+start.”
+
+“You think then,” I said, with secret horror, “she came out of my
+brain, and is now gone in there, and may glide out again at an hour and
+a day when I look not for her?”
+
+“I think it a case of spectral illusion: I fear, following on and
+resulting from long-continued mental conflict.”
+
+“Oh, Doctor John—I shudder at the thought of being liable to such an
+illusion! It seemed so real. Is there no cure?—no preventive?”
+
+“Happiness is the cure—a cheerful mind the preventive: cultivate both.”
+
+No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being
+told to _cultivate_ happiness. What does such advice mean? Happiness is
+not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure. Happiness
+is a glory shining far down upon us out of Heaven. She is a divine dew
+which the soul, on certain of its summer mornings, feels dropping upon
+it from the amaranth bloom and golden fruitage of Paradise.
+
+“Cultivate happiness!” I said briefly to the doctor: “do _you_
+cultivate happiness? How do you manage?”
+
+“I am a cheerful fellow by nature: and then ill-luck has never dogged
+me. Adversity gave me and my mother one passing scowl and brush, but we
+defied her, or rather laughed at her, and she went by.”.
+
+“There is no cultivation in all this.”
+
+“I do not give way to melancholy.”
+
+“Yes: I have seen you subdued by that feeling.”
+
+“About Ginevra Fanshawe—eh?”
+
+“Did she not sometimes make you miserable?”
+
+“Pooh! stuff! nonsense! You see I am better now.”
+
+If a laughing eye with a lively light, and a face bright with beaming
+and healthy energy, could attest that he was better, better he
+certainly was.
+
+“You do not look much amiss, or greatly out of condition,” I allowed.
+
+“And why, Lucy, can’t you look and feel as I do—buoyant, courageous,
+and fit to defy all the nuns and flirts in Christendom? I would give
+gold on the spot just to see you snap your fingers. Try the manoeuvre.”
+
+“If I were to bring Miss Fanshawe into your presence just now?”
+
+“I vow, Lucy, she should not move me: or, she should move me but by one
+thing—true, yes, and passionate love. I would accord forgiveness at no
+less a price.”
+
+“Indeed! a smile of hers would have been a fortune to you a while
+since.”
+
+“Transformed, Lucy: transformed! Remember, you once called me a slave!
+but I am a free man now!”
+
+He stood up: in the port of his head, the carriage of his figure, in
+his beaming eye and mien, there revealed itself a liberty which was
+more than ease—a mood which was disdain of his past bondage.
+
+“Miss Fanshawe,” he pursued, “has led me through a phase of feeling
+which is over: I have entered another condition, and am now much
+disposed to exact love for love—passion for passion—and good measure of
+it, too.”
+
+“Ah, Doctor! Doctor! you said it was your nature to pursue Love under
+difficulties—to be charmed by a proud insensibility!”.
+
+He laughed, and answered, “My nature varies: the mood of one hour is
+sometimes the mockery of the next. Well, Lucy” (drawing on his gloves),
+“will the Nun come again to-night, think you?”
+
+“I don’t think she will.”
+
+“Give her my compliments, if she does—Dr. John’s compliments—and
+entreat her to have the goodness to wait a visit from him. Lucy, was
+she a pretty nun? Had she a pretty face? You have not told me that yet;
+and _that_ is the really important point.”
+
+“She had a white cloth over her face,” said I, “but her eyes
+glittered.”
+
+“Confusion to her goblin trappings!” cried he, irreverently: “but at
+least she had handsome eyes—bright and soft.”
+
+“Cold and fixed,” was the reply.
+
+“No, no, we’ll none of her: she shall not haunt you, Lucy. Give her
+that shake of the hand, if she comes again. Will she stand _that_, do
+you think?”
+
+I thought it too kind and cordial for a ghost to stand: and so was the
+smile which matched it, and accompanied his “Good-night.”
+
+And had there been anything in the garret? What did they discover? I
+believe, on the closest examination, their discoveries amounted to very
+little. They talked, at first, of the cloaks being disturbed; but
+Madame Beck told me afterwards she thought they hung much as usual: and
+as for the broken pane in the skylight, she affirmed that aperture was
+rarely without one or more panes broken or cracked: and besides, a
+heavy hail-storm had fallen a few days ago. Madame questioned me very
+closely as to what I had seen, but I only described an obscure figure
+clothed in black: I took care not to breathe the word “nun,” certain
+that this word would at once suggest to her mind an idea of romance and
+unreality. She charged me to say nothing on the subject to any servant,
+pupil, or teacher, and highly commended my discretion in coming to her
+private salle-à-manger, instead of carrying the tale of horror to the
+school refectory. Thus the subject dropped. I was left secretly and
+sadly to wonder, in my own mind, whether that strange thing was of this
+world, or of a realm beyond the grave; or whether indeed it was only
+the child of malady, and I of that malady the prey.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+VASHTI.
+
+
+To wonder sadly, did I say? No: a new influence began to act upon my
+life, and sadness, for a certain space, was held at bay. Conceive a
+dell, deep-hollowed in forest secresy; it lies in dimness and mist: its
+turf is dank, its herbage pale and humid. A storm or an axe makes a
+wide gap amongst the oak-trees; the breeze sweeps in; the sun looks
+down; the sad, cold dell becomes a deep cup of lustre; high summer
+pours her blue glory and her golden light out of that beauteous sky,
+which till now the starved hollow never saw.
+
+A new creed became mine—a belief in happiness.
+
+It was three weeks since the adventure of the garret, and I possessed
+in that case, box, drawer up-stairs, casketed with that first letter,
+four companions like to it, traced by the same firm pen, sealed with
+the same clear seal, full of the same vital comfort. Vital comfort it
+seemed to me then: I read them in after years; they were kind letters
+enough—pleasing letters, because composed by one well pleased; in the
+two last there were three or four closing lines half-gay, half-tender,
+“by _feeling_ touched, but not subdued.” Time, dear reader, mellowed
+them to a beverage of this mild quality; but when I first tasted their
+elixir, fresh from the fount so honoured, it seemed juice of a divine
+vintage: a draught which Hebe might fill, and the very gods approve.
+
+Does the reader, remembering what was said some pages back, care to ask
+how I answered these letters: whether under the dry, stinting check of
+Reason, or according to the full, liberal impulse of Feeling?
+
+To speak truth, I compromised matters; I served two masters: I bowed
+down in the houses of Rimmon, and lifted the heart at another shrine. I
+wrote to these letters two answers—one for my own relief, the other for
+Graham’s perusal.
+
+To begin with: Feeling and I turned Reason out of doors, drew against
+her bar and bolt, then we sat down, spread our paper, dipped in the ink
+an eager pen, and, with deep enjoyment, poured out our sincere heart.
+When we had done—when two sheets were covered with the language of a
+strongly-adherent affection, a rooted and active gratitude—(once, for
+all, in this parenthesis, I disclaim, with the utmost scorn, every
+sneaking suspicion of what are called “warmer feelings:” women do not
+entertain these “warmer feelings” where, from the commencement, through
+the whole progress of an acquaintance, they have never once been
+cheated of the conviction that, to do so would be to commit a mortal
+absurdity: nobody ever launches into Love unless he has seen or dreamed
+the rising of Hope’s star over Love’s troubled waters)—when, then, I
+had given expression to a closely-clinging and deeply-honouring
+attachment—an attachment that wanted to attract to itself and take to
+its own lot all that was painful in the destiny of its object; that
+would, if it could, have absorbed and conducted away all storms and
+lightnings from an existence viewed with a passion of solicitude—then,
+just at that moment, the doors of my heart would shake, bolt and bar
+would yield, Reason would leap in vigorous and revengeful, snatch the
+full sheets, read, sneer, erase, tear up, re-write, fold, seal, direct,
+and send a terse, curt missive of a page. She did right.
+
+I did not live on letters only: I was visited, I was looked after; once
+a week I was taken out to La Terrasse; always I was made much of. Dr.
+Bretton failed not to tell me _why_ he was so kind: “To keep away the
+nun,” he said; “he was determined to dispute with her her prey. He had
+taken,” he declared, “a thorough dislike to her, chiefly on account of
+that white face-cloth, and those cold grey eyes: the moment he heard of
+those odious particulars,” he affirmed, “consummate disgust had incited
+him to oppose her; he was determined to try whether he or she was the
+cleverest, and he only wished she would once more look in upon me when
+he was present:” but _that_ she never did. In short, he regarded me
+scientifically in the light of a patient, and at once exercised his
+professional skill, and gratified his natural benevolence, by a course
+of cordial and attentive treatment.
+
+One evening, the first in December, I was walking by myself in the
+carré; it was six o’clock; the classe-doors were closed; but within,
+the pupils, rampant in the licence of evening recreation, were
+counterfeiting a miniature chaos. The carré was quite dark, except a
+red light shining under and about the stove; the wide glass-doors and
+the long windows were frosted over; a crystal sparkle of starlight,
+here and there spangling this blanched winter veil, and breaking with
+scattered brilliance the paleness of its embroidery, proved it a clear
+night, though moonless. That I should dare to remain thus alone in
+darkness, showed that my nerves were regaining a healthy tone: I
+thought of the nun, but hardly feared her; though the staircase was
+behind me, leading up, through blind, black night, from landing to
+landing, to the haunted grenier. Yet I own my heart quaked, my pulse
+leaped, when I suddenly heard breathing and rustling, and turning, saw
+in the deep shadow of the steps a deeper shadow still—a shape that
+moved and descended. It paused a while at the classe-door, and then it
+glided before me. Simultaneously came a clangor of the distant
+door-bell. Life-like sounds bring life-like feelings: this shape was
+too round and low for my gaunt nun: it was only Madame Beck on duty.
+
+“Mademoiselle Lucy!” cried Rosine, bursting in, lamp in hand, from the
+corridor, “on est là pour vous au salon.”
+
+Madame saw me, I saw Madame, Rosine saw us both: there was no mutual
+recognition. I made straight for the salon. There I found what I own I
+anticipated I should find—Dr. Bretton; but he was in evening-dress.
+
+“The carriage is at the door,” said he; “my mother has sent it to take
+you to the theatre; she was going herself, but an arrival has prevented
+her: she immediately said, ‘Take Lucy in my place.’ Will you go?”
+
+“Just now? I am not dressed,” cried I, glancing despairingly at my dark
+merino.
+
+“You have half an hour to dress. I should have given you notice, but I
+only determined on going since five o’clock, when I heard there was to
+be a genuine regale in the presence of a great actress.”
+
+And he mentioned a name that thrilled me—a name that, in those days,
+could thrill Europe. It is hushed now: its once restless echoes are all
+still; she who bore it went years ago to her rest: night and oblivion
+long since closed above her; but _then_ her day—a day of Sirius—stood
+at its full height, light and fervour.
+
+“I’ll go; I will be ready in ten minutes,” I vowed. And away I flew,
+never once checked, reader, by the thought which perhaps at this moment
+checks you: namely, that to go anywhere with Graham and without Mrs.
+Bretton could be objectionable. I could not have conceived, much less
+have expressed to Graham, such thought—such scruple—without risk of
+exciting a tyrannous self-contempt: of kindling an inward fire of shame
+so quenchless, and so devouring, that I think it would soon have licked
+up the very life in my veins. Besides, my godmother, knowing her son,
+and knowing me, would as soon have thought of chaperoning a sister with
+a brother, as of keeping anxious guard over our incomings and
+outgoings.
+
+The present was no occasion for showy array; my dun mist crape would
+suffice, and I sought the same in the great oak-wardrobe in the
+dormitory, where hung no less than forty dresses. But there had been
+changes and reforms, and some innovating hand had pruned this same
+crowded wardrobe, and carried divers garments to the grenier—my crape
+amongst the rest. I must fetch it. I got the key, and went aloft
+fearless, almost thoughtless. I unlocked the door, I plunged in. The
+reader may believe it or not, but when I thus suddenly entered, that
+garret was not wholly dark as it should have been: from one point there
+shone a solemn light, like a star, but broader. So plainly it shone,
+that it revealed the deep alcove with a portion of the tarnished
+scarlet curtain drawn over it. Instantly, silently, before my eyes, it
+vanished; so did the curtain and alcove: all that end of the garret
+became black as night. I ventured no research; I had not time nor will;
+snatching my dress, which hung on the wall, happily near the door, I
+rushed out, relocked the door with convulsed haste, and darted
+downwards to the dormitory.
+
+But I trembled too much to dress myself: impossible to arrange hair or
+fasten hooks-and-eyes with such fingers, so I called Rosine and bribed
+her to help me. Rosine liked a bribe, so she did her best, smoothed and
+plaited my hair as well as a coiffeur would have done, placed the lace
+collar mathematically straight, tied the neck-ribbon accurately—in
+short, did her work like the neat-handed Phillis she could be when she
+chose. Having given me my handkerchief and gloves, she took the candle
+and lighted me down-stairs. After all, I had forgotten my shawl; she
+ran back to fetch it; and I stood with Dr. John in the vestibule,
+waiting.
+
+“What is this, Lucy?” said he, looking down at me narrowly. “Here is
+the old excitement. Ha! the nun again?”
+
+But I utterly denied the charge: I was vexed to be suspected of a
+second illusion. He was sceptical.
+
+“She has been, as sure as I live,” said he; “her figure crossing your
+eyes leaves on them a peculiar gleam and expression not to be
+mistaken.”
+
+“She has _not_ been,” I persisted: for, indeed, I could deny her
+apparition with truth.
+
+“The old symptoms are there,” he affirmed: “a particular pale, and what
+the Scotch call a ‘raised’ look.”
+
+He was so obstinate, I thought it better to tell him what I really
+_had_ seen. Of course with him it was held to be another effect of the
+same cause: it was all optical illusion—nervous malady, and so on. Not
+one bit did I believe him; but I dared not contradict: doctors are so
+self-opinionated, so immovable in their dry, materialist views.
+
+Rosine brought the shawl, and I was bundled into the carriage.
+
+The theatre was full—crammed to its roof: royal and noble were there:
+palace and hotel had emptied their inmates into those tiers so thronged
+and so hushed. Deeply did I feel myself privileged in having a place
+before that stage; I longed to see a being of whose powers I had heard
+reports which made me conceive peculiar anticipations. I wondered if
+she would justify her renown: with strange curiosity, with feelings
+severe and austere, yet of riveted interest, I waited. She was a study
+of such nature as had not encountered my eyes yet: a great and new
+planet she was: but in what shape? I waited her rising.
+
+She rose at nine that December night: above the horizon I saw her come.
+She could shine yet with pale grandeur and steady might; but that star
+verged already on its judgment-day. Seen near, it was a chaos—hollow,
+half-consumed: an orb perished or perishing—half lava, half glow.
+
+I had heard this woman termed “plain,” and I expected bony harshness
+and grimness—something large, angular, sallow. What I saw was the
+shadow of a royal Vashti: a queen, fair as the day once, turned pale
+now like twilight, and wasted like wax in flame.
+
+For awhile—a long while—I thought it was only a woman, though an unique
+woman, who moved in might and grace before this multitude. By-and-by I
+recognised my mistake. Behold! I found upon her something neither of
+woman nor of man: in each of her eyes sat a devil. These evil forces
+bore her through the tragedy, kept up her feeble strength—for she was
+but a frail creature; and as the action rose and the stir deepened, how
+wildly they shook her with their passions of the pit! They wrote HELL
+on her straight, haughty brow. They tuned her voice to the note of
+torment. They writhed her regal face to a demoniac mask. Hate and
+Murder and Madness incarnate she stood.
+
+It was a marvellous sight: a mighty revelation.
+
+It was a spectacle low, horrible, immoral.
+
+Swordsmen thrust through, and dying in their blood on the arena sand;
+bulls goring horses disembowelled, made a meeker vision for the
+public—a milder condiment for a people’s palate—than Vashti torn by
+seven devils: devils which cried sore and rent the tenement they
+haunted, but still refused to be exorcised.
+
+Suffering had struck that stage empress; and she stood before her
+audience neither yielding to, nor enduring, nor, in finite measure,
+resenting it: she stood locked in struggle, rigid in resistance. She
+stood, not dressed, but draped in pale antique folds, long and regular
+like sculpture. A background and entourage and flooring of deepest
+crimson threw her out, white like alabaster—like silver: rather, be it
+said, like Death.
+
+Where was the artist of the Cleopatra? Let him come and sit down and
+study this different vision. Let him seek here the mighty brawn, the
+muscle, the abounding blood, the full-fed flesh he worshipped: let all
+materialists draw nigh and look on.
+
+I have said that she does not _resent_ her grief. No; the weakness of
+that word would make it a lie. To her, what hurts becomes immediately
+embodied: she looks on it as a thing that can be attacked, worried
+down, torn in shreds. Scarcely a substance herself, she grapples to
+conflict with abstractions. Before calamity she is a tigress; she rends
+her woes, shivers them in convulsed abhorrence. Pain, for her, has no
+result in good: tears water no harvest of wisdom: on sickness, on death
+itself, she looks with the eye of a rebel. Wicked, perhaps, she is, but
+also she is strong; and her strength has conquered Beauty, has overcome
+Grace, and bound both at her side, captives peerlessly fair, and docile
+as fair. Even in the uttermost frenzy of energy is each maenad movement
+royally, imperially, incedingly upborne. Her hair, flying loose in
+revel or war, is still an angel’s hair, and glorious under a halo.
+Fallen, insurgent, banished, she remembers the heaven where she
+rebelled. Heaven’s light, following her exile, pierces its confines,
+and discloses their forlorn remoteness.
+
+Place now the Cleopatra, or any other slug, before her as an obstacle,
+and see her cut through the pulpy mass as the scimitar of Saladin clove
+the down cushion. Let Paul Peter Rubens wake from the dead, let him
+rise out of his cerements, and bring into this presence all the army of
+his fat women; the magian power or prophet-virtue gifting that slight
+rod of Moses, could, at one waft, release and re-mingle a sea
+spell-parted, whelming the heavy host with the down-rush of overthrown
+sea-ramparts.
+
+Vashti was not good, I was told; and I have said she did not look good:
+though a spirit, she was a spirit out of Tophet. Well, if so much of
+unholy force can arise from below, may not an equal efflux of sacred
+essence descend one day from above?
+
+What thought Dr. Graham of this being?
+
+For long intervals I forgot to look how he demeaned himself, or to
+question what he thought. The strong magnetism of genius drew my heart
+out of its wonted orbit; the sunflower turned from the south to a
+fierce light, not solar—a rushing, red, cometary light—hot on vision
+and to sensation. I had seen acting before, but never anything like
+this: never anything which astonished Hope and hushed Desire; which
+outstripped Impulse and paled Conception; which, instead of merely
+irritating imagination with the thought of what _might_ be done, at the
+same time fevering the nerves because it was _not_ done, disclosed
+power like a deep, swollen winter river, thundering in cataract, and
+bearing the soul, like a leaf, on the steep and steelly sweep of its
+descent.
+
+Miss Fanshawe, with her usual ripeness of judgment, pronounced Dr.
+Bretton a serious, impassioned man, too grave and too impressible. Not
+in such light did I ever see him: no such faults could I lay to his
+charge. His natural attitude was not the meditative, nor his natural
+mood the sentimental; _impressionable_ he was as dimpling water, but,
+almost as water, _unimpressible:_ the breeze, the sun, moved him—metal
+could not grave, nor fire brand.
+
+Dr. John _could_ think and think well, but he was rather a man of
+action than of thought; he _could_ feel, and feel vividly in his way,
+but his heart had no chord for enthusiasm: to bright, soft, sweet
+influences his eyes and lips gave bright, soft, sweet welcome,
+beautiful to see as dyes of rose and silver, pearl and purple, imbuing
+summer clouds; for what belonged to storm, what was wild and intense,
+dangerous, sudden, and flaming, he had no sympathy, and held with it no
+communion. When I took time and regained inclination to glance at him,
+it amused and enlightened me to discover that he was watching that
+sinister and sovereign Vashti, not with wonder, nor worship, nor yet
+dismay, but simply with intense curiosity. Her agony did not pain him,
+her wild moan—worse than a shriek—did not much move him; her fury
+revolted him somewhat, but not to the point of horror. Cool young
+Briton! The pale cliffs of his own England do not look down on the
+tides of the Channel more calmly than he watched the Pythian
+inspiration of that night.
+
+Looking at his face, I longed to know his exact opinions, and at last I
+put a question tending to elicit them. At the sound of my voice he
+awoke as if out of a dream; for he had been thinking, and very intently
+thinking, his own thoughts, after his own manner. “How did he like
+Vashti?” I wished to know.
+
+“Hm-m-m,” was the first scarce articulate but expressive answer; and
+then such a strange smile went wandering round his lips, a smile so
+critical, so almost callous! I suppose that for natures of that order
+his sympathies _were_ callous. In a few terse phrases he told me his
+opinion of, and feeling towards, the actress: he judged her as a woman,
+not an artist: it was a branding judgment.
+
+That night was already marked in my book of life, not with white, but
+with a deep-red cross. But I had not done with it yet; and other
+memoranda were destined to be set down in characters of tint indelible.
+
+Towards midnight, when the deepening tragedy blackened to the
+death-scene, and all held their breath, and even Graham bit his
+under-lip, and knit his brow, and sat still and struck—when the whole
+theatre was hushed, when the vision of all eyes centred in one point,
+when all ears listened towards one quarter—nothing being seen but the
+white form sunk on a seat, quivering in conflict with her last, her
+worst-hated, her visibly-conquering foe—nothing heard but her throes,
+her gaspings, breathing yet of mutiny, panting still defiance; when, as
+it seemed, an inordinate will, convulsing a perishing mortal frame,
+bent it to battle with doom and death, fought every inch of ground,
+sold every drop of blood, resisted to the latest the rape of every
+faculty, _would_ see, _would_ hear, _would_ breathe, _would_ live, up
+to, within, well-nigh _beyond_ the moment when death says to all sense
+and all being—“Thus far and no farther!”—
+
+Just then a stir, pregnant with omen, rustled behind the scenes—feet
+ran, voices spoke. What was it? demanded the whole house. A flame, a
+smell of smoke replied.
+
+“Fire!” rang through the gallery. “Fire!” was repeated, re-echoed,
+yelled forth: and then, and faster than pen can set it down, came
+panic, rushing, crushing—a blind, selfish, cruel chaos.
+
+And Dr. John? Reader, I see him yet, with his look of comely courage
+and cordial calm.
+
+“Lucy will sit still, I know,” said he, glancing down at me with the
+same serene goodness, the same repose of firmness that I have seen in
+him when sitting at his side amid the secure peace of his mother’s
+hearth. Yes, thus adjured, I think I would have sat still under a
+rocking crag: but, indeed, to sit still in actual circumstances was my
+instinct; and at the price of my very life, I would not have moved to
+give him trouble, thwart his will, or make demands on his attention. We
+were in the stalls, and for a few minutes there was a most terrible,
+ruthless pressure about us.
+
+“How terrified are the women!” said he; “but if the men were not almost
+equally so, order might be maintained. This is a sorry scene: I see
+fifty selfish brutes at this moment, each of whom, if I were near, I
+could conscientiously knock down. I see some women braver than some
+men. There is one yonder—Good God!”
+
+While Graham was speaking, a young girl who had been very quietly and
+steadily clinging to a gentleman before us, was suddenly struck from
+her protector’s arms by a big, butcherly intruder, and hurled under the
+feet of the crowd. Scarce two seconds lasted her disappearance. Graham
+rushed forwards; he and the gentleman, a powerful man though
+grey-haired, united their strength to thrust back the throng; her head
+and long hair fell back over his shoulder: she seemed unconscious.
+
+“Trust her with me; I am a medical man,” said Dr. John.
+
+“If you have no lady with you, be it so,” was the answer. “Hold her,
+and I will force a passage: we must get her to the air.”
+
+“I have a lady,” said Graham; “but she will be neither hindrance nor
+incumbrance.”
+
+He summoned me with his eye: we were separated. Resolute, however, to
+rejoin him, I penetrated the living barrier, creeping under where I
+could not get between or over.
+
+“Fasten on me, and don’t leave go,” he said; and I obeyed him.
+
+Our pioneer proved strong and adroit; he opened the dense mass like a
+wedge; with patience and toil he at last bored through the
+flesh-and-blood rock—so solid, hot, and suffocating—and brought us to
+the fresh, freezing night.
+
+“You are an Englishman!” said he, turning shortly on Dr. Bretton, when
+we got into the street.
+
+“An Englishman. And I speak to a countryman?” was the reply.
+
+“Right. Be good enough to stand here two minutes, whilst I find my
+carriage.”
+
+“Papa, I am not hurt,” said a girlish voice; “am I with papa?”
+
+“You are with a friend, and your father is close at hand.”
+
+“Tell him I am not hurt, except just in my shoulder. Oh, my shoulder!
+They trod just here.”
+
+“Dislocation, perhaps!” muttered the Doctor: “let us hope there is no
+worse injury done. Lucy, lend a hand one instant.”
+
+And I assisted while he made some arrangement of drapery and position
+for the ease of his suffering burden. She suppressed a moan, and lay in
+his arms quietly and patiently.
+
+“She is very light,” said Graham, “like a child!” and he asked in my
+ear, “Is she a child, Lucy? Did you notice her age?”
+
+“I am not a child—I am a person of seventeen,” responded the patient,
+demurely and with dignity. Then, directly after: “Tell papa to come; I
+get anxious.”
+
+The carriage drove up; her father relieved Graham; but in the exchange
+from one bearer to another she was hurt, and moaned again.
+
+“My darling!” said the father, tenderly; then turning to Graham, “You
+said, sir, you are a medical man?”
+
+“I am: Dr. Bretton, of La Terrasse.”
+
+“Good. Will you step into my carriage?”
+
+“My own carriage is here: I will seek it, and accompany you.”
+
+“Be pleased, then, to follow us.” And he named his address: “The Hôtel
+Crécy, in the Rue Crécy.”
+
+We followed; the carriage drove fast; myself and Graham were silent.
+This seemed like an adventure.
+
+Some little time being lost in seeking our own equipage, we reached the
+hotel perhaps about ten minutes after these strangers. It was an hotel
+in the foreign sense: a collection of dwelling-houses, not an inn—a
+vast, lofty pile, with a huge arch to its street-door, leading through
+a vaulted covered way, into a square all built round.
+
+We alighted, passed up a wide, handsome public staircase, and stopped
+at Numéro 2 on the second landing; the first floor comprising the abode
+of I know not what “prince Russe,” as Graham informed me. On ringing
+the bell at a second great door, we were admitted to a suite of very
+handsome apartments. Announced by a servant in livery, we entered a
+drawing-room whose hearth glowed with an English fire, and whose walls
+gleamed with foreign mirrors. Near the hearth appeared a little group:
+a slight form sunk in a deep arm-chair, one or two women busy about it,
+the iron-grey gentleman anxiously looking on.
+
+“Where is Harriet? I wish Harriet would come to me,” said the girlish
+voice, faintly.
+
+“Where is Mrs. Hurst?” demanded the gentleman impatiently and somewhat
+sternly of the man-servant who had admitted us.
+
+“I am sorry to say she is gone out of town, sir; my young lady gave her
+leave till to-morrow.”
+
+“Yes—I did—I did. She is gone to see her sister; I said she might go: I
+remember now,” interposed the young lady; “but I am so sorry, for Manon
+and Louison cannot understand a word I say, and they hurt me without
+meaning to do so.”
+
+Dr. John and the gentleman now interchanged greetings; and while they
+passed a few minutes in consultation, I approached the easy-chair, and
+seeing what the faint and sinking girl wished to have done, I did it
+for her.
+
+I was still occupied in the arrangement, when Graham drew near; he was
+no less skilled in surgery than medicine, and, on examination, found
+that no further advice than his own was necessary to the treatment of
+the present case. He ordered her to be carried to her chamber, and
+whispered to me:—“Go with the women, Lucy; they seem but dull; you can
+at least direct their movements, and thus spare her some pain. She must
+be touched very tenderly.”
+
+The chamber was a room shadowy with pale-blue hangings, vaporous with
+curtainings and veilings of muslin; the bed seemed to me like
+snow-drift and mist—spotless, soft, and gauzy. Making the women stand
+apart, I undressed their mistress, without their well-meaning but
+clumsy aid. I was not in a sufficiently collected mood to note with
+separate distinctness every detail of the attire I removed, but I
+received a general impression of refinement, delicacy, and perfect
+personal cultivation; which, in a period of after-thought, offered in
+my reflections a singular contrast to notes retained of Miss Ginevra
+Fanshawe’s appointments.
+
+The girl was herself a small, delicate creature, but made like a model.
+As I folded back her plentiful yet fine hair, so shining and soft, and
+so exquisitely tended, I had under my observation a young, pale, weary,
+but high-bred face. The brow was smooth and clear; the eyebrows were
+distinct, but soft, and melting to a mere trace at the temples; the
+eyes were a rich gift of nature—fine and full, large, deep, seeming to
+hold dominion over the slighter subordinate features—capable, probably,
+of much significance at another hour and under other circumstances than
+the present, but now languid and suffering. Her skin was perfectly
+fair, the neck and hands veined finely like the petals of a flower; a
+thin glazing of the ice of pride polished this delicate exterior, and
+her lip wore a curl—I doubt not inherent and unconscious, but which, if
+I had seen it first with the accompaniments of health and state, would
+have struck me as unwarranted, and proving in the little lady a quite
+mistaken view of life and her own consequence.
+
+Her demeanour under the Doctor’s hands at first excited a smile; it was
+not puerile—rather, on the whole, patient and firm—but yet, once or
+twice she addressed him with suddenness and sharpness, saying that he
+hurt her, and must contrive to give her less pain; I saw her large
+eyes, too, settle on his face like the solemn eyes of some pretty,
+wondering child. I know not whether Graham felt this examination: if he
+did, he was cautious not to check or discomfort it by any retaliatory
+look. I think he performed his work with extreme care and gentleness,
+sparing her what pain he could; and she acknowledged as much, when he
+had done, by the words:—“Thank you, Doctor, and good-night,” very
+gratefully pronounced as she uttered them, however, it was with a
+repetition of the serious, direct gaze, I thought, peculiar in its
+gravity and intentness.
+
+The injuries, it seems, were not dangerous: an assurance which her
+father received with a smile that almost made one his friend—it was so
+glad and gratified. He now expressed his obligations to Graham with as
+much earnestness as was befitting an Englishman addressing one who has
+served him, but is yet a stranger; he also begged him to call the next
+day.
+
+“Papa,” said a voice from the veiled couch, “thank the lady, too; is
+she there?”
+
+I opened the curtain with a smile, and looked in at her. She lay now at
+comparative ease; she looked pretty, though pale; her face was
+delicately designed, and if at first sight it appeared proud, I believe
+custom might prove it to be soft.
+
+“I thank the lady very sincerely,” said her father: “I fancy she has
+been very good to my child. I think we scarcely dare tell Mrs. Hurst
+who has been her substitute and done her work; she will feel at once
+ashamed and jealous.”
+
+And thus, in the most friendly spirit, parting greetings were
+interchanged; and refreshment having been hospitably offered, but by
+us, as it was late, refused, we withdrew from the Hôtel Crécy.
+
+On our way back we repassed the theatre. All was silence and darkness:
+the roaring, rushing crowd all vanished and gone—the damps, as well as
+the incipient fire, extinct and forgotten. Next morning’s papers
+explained that it was but some loose drapery on which a spark had
+fallen, and which had blazed up and been quenched in a moment.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+M. DE BASSOMPIERRE.
+
+
+Those who live in retirement, whose lives have fallen amid the
+seclusion of schools or of other walled-in and guarded dwellings, are
+liable to be suddenly and for a long while dropped out of the memory of
+their friends, the denizens of a freer world. Unaccountably, perhaps,
+and close upon some space of unusually frequent intercourse—some
+congeries of rather exciting little circumstances, whose natural sequel
+would rather seem to be the quickening than the suspension of
+communication—there falls a stilly pause, a wordless silence, a long
+blank of oblivion. Unbroken always is this blank; alike entire and
+unexplained. The letter, the message once frequent, are cut off; the
+visit, formerly periodical, ceases to occur; the book, paper, or other
+token that indicated remembrance, comes no more.
+
+Always there are excellent reasons for these lapses, if the hermit but
+knew them. Though he is stagnant in his cell, his connections without
+are whirling in the very vortex of life. That void interval which
+passes for him so slowly that the very clocks seem at a stand, and the
+wingless hours plod by in the likeness of tired tramps prone to rest at
+milestones—that same interval, perhaps, teems with events, and pants
+with hurry for his friends.
+
+The hermit—if he be a sensible hermit—will swallow his own thoughts,
+and lock up his own emotions during these weeks of inward winter. He
+will know that Destiny designed him to imitate, on occasion, the
+dormouse, and he will be conformable: make a tidy ball of himself,
+creep into a hole of life’s wall, and submit decently to the drift
+which blows in and soon blocks him up, preserving him in ice for the
+season.
+
+Let him say, “It is quite right: it ought to be so, since so it is.”
+And, perhaps, one day his snow-sepulchre will open, spring’s softness
+will return, the sun and south-wind will reach him; the budding of
+hedges, and carolling of birds, and singing of liberated streams, will
+call him to kindly resurrection. _Perhaps_ this may be the case,
+perhaps not: the frost may get into his heart and never thaw more; when
+spring comes, a crow or a pie may pick out of the wall only his
+dormouse-bones. Well, even in that case, all will be right: it is to be
+supposed he knew from the first he was mortal, and must one day go the
+way of all flesh, “As well soon as syne.”
+
+Following that eventful evening at the theatre, came for me seven weeks
+as bare as seven sheets of blank paper: no word was written on one of
+them; not a visit, not a token.
+
+About the middle of that time I entertained fancies that something had
+happened to my friends at La Terrasse. The mid-blank is always a
+beclouded point for the solitary: his nerves ache with the strain of
+long expectancy; the doubts hitherto repelled gather now to a mass
+and—strong in accumulation—roll back upon him with a force which
+savours of vindictiveness. Night, too, becomes an unkindly time, and
+sleep and his nature cannot agree: strange starts and struggles harass
+his couch: the sinister band of bad dreams, with horror of calamity,
+and sick dread of entire desertion at their head, join the league
+against him. Poor wretch! He does his best to bear up, but he is a
+poor, pallid, wasting wretch, despite that best.
+
+Towards the last of these long seven weeks I admitted, what through the
+other six I had jealously excluded—the conviction that these blanks
+were inevitable: the result of circumstances, the fiat of fate, a part
+of my life’s lot and—above all—a matter about whose origin no question
+must ever be asked, for whose painful sequence no murmur ever uttered.
+Of course I did not blame myself for suffering: I thank God I had a
+truer sense of justice than to fall into any imbecile extravagance of
+self-accusation; and as to blaming others for silence, in my reason I
+well knew them blameless, and in my heart acknowledged them so: but it
+was a rough and heavy road to travel, and I longed for better days.
+
+I tried different expedients to sustain and fill existence: I commenced
+an elaborate piece of lace-work, I studied German pretty hard, I
+undertook a course of regular reading of the driest and thickest books
+in the library; in all my efforts I was as orthodox as I knew how to
+be. Was there error somewhere? Very likely. I only know the result was
+as if I had gnawed a file to satisfy hunger, or drank brine to quench
+thirst.
+
+My hour of torment was the post-hour. Unfortunately, I knew it too
+well, and tried as vainly as assiduously to cheat myself of that
+knowledge; dreading the rack of expectation, and the sick collapse of
+disappointment which daily preceded and followed upon that
+well-recognised ring.
+
+I suppose animals kept in cages, and so scantily fed as to be always
+upon the verge of famine, await their food as I awaited a letter.
+Oh!—to speak truth, and drop that tone of a false calm which long to
+sustain, outwears nature’s endurance—I underwent in those seven weeks
+bitter fears and pains, strange inward trials, miserable defections of
+hope, intolerable encroachments of despair. This last came so near me
+sometimes that her breath went right through me. I used to feel it like
+a baleful air or sigh, penetrate deep, and make motion pause at my
+heart, or proceed only under unspeakable oppression. The letter—the
+well-beloved letter—would not come; and it was all of sweetness in life
+I had to look for.
+
+In the very extremity of want, I had recourse again, and yet again, to
+the little packet in the case—the five letters. How splendid that month
+seemed whose skies had beheld the rising of these five stars! It was
+always at night I visited them, and not daring to ask every evening for
+a candle in the kitchen, I bought a wax taper and matches to light it,
+and at the study-hour stole up to the dormitory and feasted on my crust
+from the Barmecide’s loaf. It did not nourish me: I pined on it, and
+got as thin as a shadow: otherwise I was not ill.
+
+Reading there somewhat late one evening, and feeling that the power to
+read was leaving me—for the letters from incessant perusal were losing
+all sap and significance: my gold was withering to leaves before my
+eyes, and I was sorrowing over the disillusion—suddenly a quick
+tripping foot ran up the stairs. I knew Ginevra Fanshawe’s step: she
+had dined in town that afternoon; she was now returned, and would come
+here to replace her shawl, &c. in the wardrobe.
+
+Yes: in she came, dressed in bright silk, with her shawl falling from
+her shoulders, and her curls, half-uncurled in the damp of night,
+drooping careless and heavy upon her neck. I had hardly time to
+recasket my treasures and lock them up when she was at my side her
+humour seemed none of the best.
+
+“It has been a stupid evening: they are stupid people,” she began.
+
+“Who? Mrs. Cholmondeley? I thought you always found her house
+charming?”
+
+“I have not been to Mrs. Cholmondeley’s.”
+
+“Indeed! Have you made new acquaintance?”
+
+“My uncle de Bassompierre is come.”
+
+“Your uncle de Bassompierre! Are you not glad?—I thought he was a
+favourite.”
+
+“You thought wrong: the man is odious; I hate him.”
+
+“Because he is a foreigner? or for what other reason of equal weight?”
+
+“He is not a foreigner. The man is English enough, goodness knows; and
+had an English name till three or four years ago; but his mother was a
+foreigner, a de Bassompierre, and some of her family are dead and have
+left him estates, a title, and this name: he is quite a great man now.”
+
+“Do you hate him for that reason?”
+
+“Don’t I know what mamma says about him? He is not my own uncle, but
+married mamma’s sister. Mamma detests him; she says he killed aunt
+Ginevra with unkindness: he looks like a bear. Such a dismal evening!”
+she went on. “I’ll go no more to his big hotel. Fancy me walking into a
+room alone, and a great man fifty years old coming forwards, and after
+a few minutes’ conversation actually turning his back upon me, and then
+abruptly going out of the room. Such odd ways! I daresay his conscience
+smote him, for they all say at home I am the picture of aunt Ginevra.
+Mamma often declares the likeness is quite ridiculous.”
+
+“Were you the only visitor?”
+
+“The only visitor? Yes; then there was missy, my cousin: little
+spoiled, pampered thing.”
+
+“M. de Bassompierre has a daughter?”
+
+“Yes, yes: don’t tease one with questions. Oh, dear! I am so tired.”
+
+She yawned. Throwing herself without ceremony on my bed she added, “It
+seems Mademoiselle was nearly crushed to a jelly in a hubbub at the
+theatre some weeks ago.”
+
+“Ah! indeed. And they live at a large hotel in the Rue Crécy?”
+
+“Justement. How do _you_ know?”
+
+“I have been there.”
+
+“Oh, you have? Really! You go everywhere in these days. I suppose
+Mother Bretton took you. She and Esculapius have the _entrée_ of the de
+Bassompierre apartments: it seems ‘my son John’ attended missy on the
+occasion of her accident—Accident? Bah! All affectation! I don’t think
+she was squeezed more than she richly deserves for her airs. And now
+there is quite an intimacy struck up: I heard something about ‘auld
+lang syne,’ and what not. Oh, how stupid they all were!”
+
+“_All!_ You said you were the only visitor.”
+
+“Did I? You see one forgets to particularize an old woman and her boy.”
+
+“Dr. and Mrs. Bretton were at M. de Bassompierre’s this evening?”
+
+“Ay, ay! as large as life; and missy played the hostess. What a
+conceited doll it is!”
+
+Soured and listless, Miss Fanshawe was beginning to disclose the causes
+of her prostrate condition. There had been a retrenchment of incense, a
+diversion or a total withholding of homage and attention coquetry had
+failed of effect, vanity had undergone mortification. She lay fuming in
+the vapours.
+
+“Is Miss de Bassompierre quite well now?” I asked.
+
+“As well as you or I, no doubt; but she is an affected little thing,
+and gave herself invalid airs to attract medical notice. And to see the
+old dowager making her recline on a couch, and ‘my son John’
+prohibiting excitement, etcetera—faugh! the scene was quite sickening.”
+
+“It would not have been so if the object of attention had been changed:
+if you had taken Miss de Bassompierre’s place.”
+
+“Indeed! I hate ‘my son John!’”
+
+“‘My son John!’—whom do you indicate by that name? Dr. Bretton’s mother
+never calls him so.”
+
+“Then she ought. A clownish, bearish John he is.”
+
+“You violate the truth in saying so; and as the whole of my patience is
+now spun off the distaff, I peremptorily desire you to rise from that
+bed, and vacate this room.”
+
+“Passionate thing! Your face is the colour of a coquelicot. I wonder
+what always makes you so mighty testy à l’endroit du gros Jean? ‘John
+Anderson, my Joe, John!’ Oh, the distinguished name!”
+
+Thrilling with exasperation, to which it would have been sheer folly to
+have given vent—for there was no contending with that unsubstantial
+feather, that mealy-winged moth—I extinguished my taper, locked my
+bureau, and left her, since she would not leave me. Small-beer as she
+was, she had turned insufferably acid.
+
+The morrow was Thursday and a half-holiday. Breakfast was over; I had
+withdrawn to the first classe. The dreaded hour, the post-hour, was
+nearing, and I sat waiting it, much as a ghost-seer might wait his
+spectre. Less than ever was a letter probable; still, strive as I
+would, I could not forget that it was possible. As the moments
+lessened, a restlessness and fear almost beyond the average assailed
+me. It was a day of winter east wind, and I had now for some time
+entered into that dreary fellowship with the winds and their changes,
+so little known, so incomprehensible to the healthy. The north and east
+owned a terrific influence, making all pain more poignant, all sorrow
+sadder. The south could calm, the west sometimes cheer: unless, indeed,
+they brought on their wings the burden of thunder-clouds, under the
+weight and warmth of which all energy died.
+
+Bitter and dark as was this January day, I remember leaving the classe,
+and running down without bonnet to the bottom of the long garden, and
+then lingering amongst the stripped shrubs, in the forlorn hope that
+the postman’s ring might occur while I was out of hearing, and I might
+thus be spared the thrill which some particular nerve or nerves, almost
+gnawed through with the unremitting tooth of a fixed idea, were
+becoming wholly unfit to support. I lingered as long as I dared without
+fear of attracting attention by my absence. I muffled my head in my
+apron, and stopped my ears in terror of the torturing clang, sure to be
+followed by such blank silence, such barren vacuum for me. At last I
+ventured to re-enter the first classe, where, as it was not yet nine
+o’clock, no pupils had been admitted. The first thing seen was a white
+object on my black desk, a white, flat object. The post had, indeed,
+arrived; by me unheard. Rosine had visited my cell, and, like some
+angel, had left behind her a bright token of her presence. That shining
+thing on the desk was indeed a letter, a real letter; I saw so much at
+the distance of three yards, and as I had but one correspondent on
+earth, from that one it must come. He remembered me yet. How deep a
+pulse of gratitude sent new life through my heart.
+
+Drawing near, bending and looking on the letter, in trembling but
+almost certain hope of seeing a known hand, it was my lot to find, on
+the contrary, an autograph for the moment deemed unknown—a pale female
+scrawl, instead of a firm, masculine character. I then thought fate was
+_too_ hard for me, and I said, audibly, “This is cruel.”
+
+But I got over that pain also. Life is still life, whatever its pangs:
+our eyes and ears and their use remain with us, though the prospect of
+what pleases be wholly withdrawn, and the sound of what consoles be
+quite silenced.
+
+I opened the billet: by this time I had recognised its handwriting as
+perfectly familiar. It was dated “La Terrasse,” and it ran thus:—
+
+“DEAR LUCY,—It occurs to me to inquire what you have been doing with
+yourself for the last month or two? Not that I suspect you would have
+the least difficulty in giving an account of your proceedings. I
+daresay you have been just as busy and as happy as ourselves at La
+Terrasse. As to Graham, his professional connection extends daily: he
+is so much sought after, so much engaged, that I tell him he will grow
+quite conceited. Like a right good mother, as I am, I do my best to
+keep him down: no flattery does he get from me, as you know. And yet,
+Lucy, he is a fine fellow: his mother’s heart dances at the sight of
+him. After being hurried here and there the whole day, and passing the
+ordeal of fifty sorts of tempers, and combating a hundred caprices, and
+sometimes witnessing cruel sufferings—perhaps, occasionally, as I tell
+him, inflicting them—at night he still comes home to me in such kindly,
+pleasant mood, that really, I seem to live in a sort of moral
+antipodes, and on these January evenings my day rises when other
+people’s night sets in.
+    “Still he needs keeping in order, and correcting, and repressing,
+    and I do him that good service; but the boy is so elastic there is
+    no such thing as vexing him thoroughly. When I think I have at last
+    driven him to the sullens, he turns on me with jokes for
+    retaliation: but you know him and all his iniquities, and I am but
+    an elderly simpleton to make him the subject of this epistle.
+    “As for me, I have had my old Bretton agent here on a visit, and
+    have been plunged overhead and ears in business matters. I do so
+    wish to regain for Graham at least some part of what his father
+    left him. He laughs to scorn my anxiety on this point, bidding me
+    look and see how he can provide for himself and me too, and asking
+    what the old lady can possibly want that she has not; hinting about
+    sky-blue turbans; accusing me of an ambition to wear diamonds, keep
+    livery servants, have an hotel, and lead the fashion amongst the
+    English clan in Villette.
+    “Talking of sky-blue turbans, I wish you had been with us the other
+    evening. He had come in really tired, and after I had given him his
+    tea, he threw himself into my chair with his customary presumption.
+    To my great delight, he dropped asleep. (You know how he teases me
+    about being drowsy; I, who never, by any chance, close an eye by
+    daylight.) While he slept, I thought he looked very bonny, Lucy:
+    fool as I am to be so proud of him; but who can help it? Show me
+    his peer. Look where I will, I see nothing like him in Villette.
+    Well, I took it into my head to play him a trick: so I brought out
+    the sky-blue turban, and handling it with gingerly precaution, I
+    managed to invest his brows with this grand adornment. I assure you
+    it did not at all misbecome him; he looked quite Eastern, except
+    that he is so fair. Nobody, however, can accuse him of having red
+    hair _now_—it is genuine chestnut—a dark, glossy chestnut; and when
+    I put my large cashmere about him, there was as fine a young bey,
+    dey, or pacha improvised as you would wish to see.
+    “It was good entertainment; but only half-enjoyed, since I was
+    alone: you should have been there.
+    “In due time my lord awoke: the looking-glass above the fireplace
+    soon intimated to him his plight: as you may imagine, I now live
+    under threat and dread of vengeance.
+    “But to come to the gist of my letter. I know Thursday is a
+    half-holiday in the Rue Fossette: be ready, then, by five in the
+    afternoon, at which hour I will send the carriage to take you out
+    to La Terrasse. Be sure to come: you may meet some old
+    acquaintance. Good-by, my wise, dear, grave little
+    god-daughter.—Very truly yours,
+
+
+“LOUISA BRETTON.”
+
+
+Now, a letter like that sets one to rights! I might still be sad after
+reading that letter, but I was more composed; not exactly cheered,
+perhaps, but relieved. My friends, at least, were well and happy: no
+accident had occurred to Graham; no illness had seized his
+mother—calamities that had so long been my dream and thought. Their
+feelings for me too were—as they had been. Yet, how strange it was to
+look on Mrs. Bretton’s seven weeks and contrast them with my seven
+weeks! Also, how very wise it is in people placed in an exceptional
+position to hold their tongues and not rashly declare how such position
+galls them! The world can understand well enough the process of
+perishing for want of food: perhaps few persons can enter into or
+follow out that of going mad from solitary confinement. They see the
+long-buried prisoner disinterred, a maniac or an idiot!—how his senses
+left him—how his nerves, first inflamed, underwent nameless agony, and
+then sunk to palsy—is a subject too intricate for examination, too
+abstract for popular comprehension. Speak of it! you might almost as
+well stand up in an European market-place, and propound dark sayings in
+that language and mood wherein Nebuchadnezzar, the imperial
+hypochondriac, communed with his baffled Chaldeans. And long, long may
+the minds to whom such themes are no mystery—by whom their bearings are
+sympathetically seized—be few in number, and rare of rencounter. Long
+may it be generally thought that physical privations alone merit
+compassion, and that the rest is a figment. When the world was younger
+and haler than now, moral trials were a deeper mystery still: perhaps
+in all the land of Israel there was but one Saul—certainly but one
+David to soothe or comprehend him.
+
+The keen, still cold of the morning was succeeded, later in the day, by
+a sharp breathing from Russian wastes: the cold zone sighed over the
+temperate zone, and froze it fast. A heavy firmament, dull, and thick
+with snow, sailed up from the north, and settled over expectant Europe.
+Towards afternoon began the descent. I feared no carriage would come,
+the white tempest raged so dense and wild. But trust my godmother! Once
+having asked, she would have her guest. About six o’clock I was lifted
+from the carriage over the already blocked-up front steps of the
+château, and put in at the door of La Terrasse.
+
+Running through the vestibule, and up-stairs to the drawing-room, there
+I found Mrs. Bretton—a summer-day in her own person. Had I been twice
+as cold as I was, her kind kiss and cordial clasp would have warmed me.
+Inured now for so long a time to rooms with bare boards, black benches,
+desks, and stoves, the blue saloon seemed to me gorgeous. In its
+Christmas-like fire alone there was a clear and crimson splendour which
+quite dazzled me.
+
+When my godmother had held my hand for a little while, and chatted with
+me, and scolded me for having become thinner than when she last saw me,
+she professed to discover that the snow-wind had disordered my hair,
+and sent me up-stairs to make it neat and remove my shawl.
+
+Repairing to my own little sea-green room, there also I found a bright
+fire, and candles too were lit: a tall waxlight stood on each side the
+great looking glass; but between the candles, and before the glass,
+appeared something dressing itself—an airy, fairy thing—small, slight,
+white—a winter spirit.
+
+I declare, for one moment I thought of Graham and his spectral
+illusions. With distrustful eye I noted the details of this new vision.
+It wore white, sprinkled slightly with drops of scarlet; its girdle was
+red; it had something in its hair leafy, yet shining—a little wreath
+with an evergreen gloss. Spectral or not, here truly was nothing
+frightful, and I advanced.
+
+Turning quick upon me, a large eye, under long lashes, flashed over me,
+the intruder: the lashes were as dark as long, and they softened with
+their pencilling the orb they guarded.
+
+“Ah! you are come!” she breathed out, in a soft, quiet voice, and she
+smiled slowly, and gazed intently.
+
+I knew her now. Having only once seen that sort of face, with that cast
+of fine and delicate featuring, I could not but know her.
+
+“Miss de Bassompierre,” I pronounced.
+
+“No,” was the reply, “not Miss de Bassompierre for _you!_” I did not
+inquire who then she might be, but waited voluntary information.
+
+“You are changed, but still you are yourself,” she said, approaching
+nearer. “I remember you well—your countenance, the colour of your hair,
+the outline of your face….”
+
+I had moved to the fire, and she stood opposite, and gazed into me; and
+as she gazed, her face became gradually more and more expressive of
+thought and feeling, till at last a dimness quenched her clear vision.
+
+“It makes me almost cry to look so far back,” said she: “but as to
+being sorry, or sentimental, don’t think it: on the contrary, I am
+quite pleased and glad.”
+
+Interested, yet altogether at fault, I knew not what to say. At last I
+stammered, “I think I never met you till that night, some weeks ago,
+when you were hurt…?”
+
+She smiled. “You have forgotten then that I have sat on your knee, been
+lifted in your arms, even shared your pillow? You no longer remember
+the night when I came crying, like a naughty little child as I was, to
+your bedside, and you took me in. You have no memory for the comfort
+and protection by which you soothed an acute distress? Go back to
+Bretton. Remember Mr. Home.”
+
+At last I saw it all. “And you are little Polly?”
+
+“I am Paulina Mary Home de Bassompierre.”
+
+How time can change! Little Polly wore in her pale, small features, her
+fairy symmetry, her varying expression, a certain promise of interest
+and grace; but Paulina Mary was become beautiful—not with the beauty
+that strikes the eye like a rose—orbed, ruddy, and replete; not with
+the plump, and pink, and flaxen attributes of her blond cousin Ginevra;
+but her seventeen years had brought her a refined and tender charm
+which did not lie in complexion, though hers was fair and clear; nor in
+outline, though her features were sweet, and her limbs perfectly
+turned; but, I think, rather in a subdued glow from the soul outward.
+This was not an opaque vase, of material however costly, but a lamp
+chastely lucent, guarding from extinction, yet not hiding from worship,
+a flame vital and vestal. In speaking of her attractions, I would not
+exaggerate language; but, indeed, they seemed to me very real and
+engaging. What though all was on a small scale, it was the perfume
+which gave this white violet distinction, and made it superior to the
+broadest camelia—the fullest dahlia that ever bloomed.
+
+“Ah! and you remember the old time at Bretton?”
+
+“Better,” said she, “better, perhaps, than you. I remember it with
+minute distinctness: not only the time, but the days of the time, and
+the hours of the days.”
+
+“You must have forgotten some things?”
+
+“Very little, I imagine.”
+
+“You were then a little creature of quick feelings: you must, long ere
+this, have outgrown the impressions with which joy and grief, affection
+and bereavement, stamped your mind ten years ago.”
+
+“You think I have forgotten whom I liked, and in what degree I liked
+them when a child?”
+
+“The sharpness must be gone—the point, the poignancy—the deep imprint
+must be softened away and effaced?”
+
+“I have a good memory for those days.”
+
+She looked as if she had. Her eyes were the eyes of one who can
+remember; one whose childhood does not fade like a dream, nor whose
+youth vanish like a sunbeam. She would not take life, loosely and
+incoherently, in parts, and let one season slip as she entered on
+another: she would retain and add; often review from the commencement,
+and so grow in harmony and consistency as she grew in years. Still I
+could not quite admit the conviction that _all_ the pictures which now
+crowded upon me were vivid and visible to her. Her fond attachments,
+her sports and contests with a well-loved playmate, the patient, true
+devotion of her child’s heart, her fears, her delicate reserves, her
+little trials, the last piercing pain of separation…. I retraced these
+things, and shook my head incredulous. She persisted. “The child of
+seven years lives yet in the girl of seventeen,” said she.
+
+“You used to be excessively fond of Mrs. Bretton,” I remarked,
+intending to test her. She set me right at once.
+
+“Not _excessively_ fond,” said she; “I liked her: I respected her as I
+should do now: she seems to me very little altered.”
+
+“She is not much changed,” I assented.
+
+We were silent a few minutes. Glancing round the room she said, “There
+are several things here that used to be at Bretton! I remember that
+pincushion and that looking-glass.”
+
+Evidently she was not deceived in her estimate of her own memory; not,
+at least, so far.
+
+“You think, then, you would have known Mrs. Bretton?” I went on.
+
+“I perfectly remembered her; the turn of her features, her olive
+complexion, and black hair, her height, her walk, her voice.”
+
+“Dr. Bretton, of course,” I pursued, “would be out of the question:
+and, indeed, as I saw your first interview with him, I am aware that he
+appeared to you as a stranger.”
+
+“That first night I was puzzled,” she answered.
+
+“How did the recognition between him and your father come about?”
+
+“They exchanged cards. The names Graham Bretton and Home de
+Bassompierre gave rise to questions and explanations. That was on the
+second day; but before then I was beginning to know something.”
+
+“How—know something?”
+
+“Why,” she said, “how strange it is that most people seem so slow to
+feel the truth—not to see, but _feel_! When Dr. Bretton had visited me
+a few times, and sat near and talked to me; when I had observed the
+look in his eyes, the expression about his mouth, the form of his chin,
+the carriage of his head, and all that we _do_ observe in persons who
+approach us—how could I avoid being led by association to think of
+Graham Bretton? Graham was slighter than he, and not grown so tall, and
+had a smoother face, and longer and lighter hair, and spoke—not so
+deeply—more like a girl; but yet _he_ is Graham, just as _I_ am little
+Polly, or you are Lucy Snowe.”
+
+I thought the same, but I wondered to find my thoughts hers: there are
+certain things in which we so rarely meet with our double that it seems
+a miracle when that chance befalls.
+
+“You and Graham were once playmates.”
+
+“And do you remember that?” she questioned in her turn.
+
+“No doubt he will remember it also,” said I.
+
+“I have not asked him: few things would surprise me so much as to find
+that he did. I suppose his disposition is still gay and careless?”
+
+“Was it so formerly? Did it so strike you? Do you thus remember him?”
+
+“I scarcely remember him in any other light. Sometimes he was studious;
+sometimes he was merry: but whether busy with his books or disposed for
+play, it was chiefly the books or game he thought of; not much heeding
+those with whom he read or amused himself.”
+
+“Yet to you he was partial.”
+
+“Partial to me? Oh, no! he had other playmates—his school-fellows; I
+was of little consequence to him, except on Sundays: yes, he was kind
+on Sundays. I remember walking with him hand-in-hand to St. Mary’s, and
+his finding the places in my prayer-book; and how good and still he was
+on Sunday evenings! So mild for such a proud, lively boy; so patient
+with all my blunders in reading; and so wonderfully to be depended on,
+for he never spent those evenings from home: I had a constant fear that
+he would accept some invitation and forsake us; but he never did, nor
+seemed ever to wish to do it. Thus, of course, it can be no more. I
+suppose Sunday will now be Dr. Bretton’s dining-out day….?”
+
+“Children, come down!” here called Mrs. Bretton from below. Paulina
+would still have lingered, but I inclined to descend: we went down.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+THE LITTLE COUNTESS.
+
+
+Cheerful as my godmother naturally was, and entertaining as, for our
+sakes, she made a point of being, there was no true enjoyment that
+evening at La Terrasse, till, through the wild howl of the
+winter-night, were heard the signal sounds of arrival. How often, while
+women and girls sit warm at snug fire-sides, their hearts and
+imaginations are doomed to divorce from the comfort surrounding their
+persons, forced out by night to wander through dark ways, to dare
+stress of weather, to contend with the snow-blast, to wait at lonely
+gates and stiles in wildest storms, watching and listening to see and
+hear the father, the son, the husband coming home.
+
+Father and son came at last to the château: for the Count de
+Bassompierre that night accompanied Dr. Bretton. I know not which of
+our trio heard the horses first; the asperity, the violence of the
+weather warranted our running down into the hall to meet and greet the
+two riders as they came in; but they warned us to keep our distance:
+both were white—two mountains of snow; and indeed Mrs. Bretton, seeing
+their condition, ordered them instantly to the kitchen; prohibiting
+them, at their peril, from setting foot on her carpeted staircase till
+they had severally put off that mask of Old Christmas they now
+affected. Into the kitchen, however, we could not help following them:
+it was a large old Dutch kitchen, picturesque and pleasant. The little
+white Countess danced in a circle about her equally white sire,
+clapping her hands and crying, “Papa, papa, you look like an enormous
+Polar bear.”
+
+The bear shook himself, and the little sprite fled far from the frozen
+shower. Back she came, however, laughing, and eager to aid in removing
+the arctic disguise. The Count, at last issuing from his dreadnought,
+threatened to overwhelm her with it as with an avalanche.
+
+“Come, then,” said she, bending to invite the fall, and when it was
+playfully advanced above her head, bounding out of reach like some
+little chamois.
+
+Her movements had the supple softness, the velvet grace of a kitten;
+her laugh was clearer than the ring of silver and crystal; as she took
+her sire’s cold hands and rubbed them, and stood on tiptoe to reach his
+lips for a kiss, there seemed to shine round her a halo of loving
+delight. The grave and reverend seignor looked down on her as men _do_
+look on what is the apple of their eye.
+
+“Mrs. Bretton,” said he: “what am I to do with this daughter or
+daughterling of mine? She neither grows in wisdom nor in stature. Don’t
+you find her pretty nearly as much the child as she was ten years ago?”
+
+“She cannot be more the child than this great boy of mine,” said Mrs.
+Bretton, who was in conflict with her son about some change of dress
+she deemed advisable, and which he resisted. He stood leaning against
+the Dutch dresser, laughing and keeping her at arm’s length.
+
+“Come, mamma,” said he, “by way of compromise, and to secure for us
+inward as well as outward warmth, let us have a Christmas wassail-cup,
+and toast Old England here, on the hearth.”
+
+So, while the Count stood by the fire, and Paulina Mary still danced to
+and fro—happy in the liberty of the wide hall-like kitchen—Mrs. Bretton
+herself instructed Martha to spice and heat the wassail-bowl, and,
+pouring the draught into a Bretton flagon, it was served round, reaming
+hot, by means of a small silver vessel, which I recognised as Graham’s
+christening-cup.
+
+“Here’s to Auld Lang Syne!” said the Count; holding the glancing cup on
+high. Then, looking at Mrs. Bretton.—
+
+  “We twa ha’ paidlet i’ the burn
+      Fra morning sun till dine,
+  But seas between us braid ha’ roared
+      Sin’ auld lane syne.
+
+  “And surely ye’ll be your pint-stoup,
+      And surely I’ll be mine;
+  And we’ll taste a cup o’ kindness yet
+      For auld lang syne.”
+
+
+“Scotch! Scotch!” cried Paulina; “papa is talking Scotch; and Scotch he
+is, partly. We are Home and de Bassompierre, Caledonian and Gallic.”
+
+“And is that a Scotch reel you are dancing, you Highland fairy?” asked
+her father. “Mrs. Bretton, there will be a green ring growing up in the
+middle of your kitchen shortly. I would not answer for her being quite
+cannie: she is a strange little mortal.”
+
+“Tell Lucy to dance with me, papa; there is Lucy Snowe.”
+
+Mr. Home (there was still quite as much about him of plain Mr. Home as
+of proud Count de Bassompierre) held his hand out to me, saying kindly,
+“he remembered me well; and, even had his own memory been less
+trustworthy, my name was so often on his daughter’s lips, and he had
+listened to so many long tales about me, I should seem like an old
+acquaintance.”
+
+Every one now had tasted the wassail-cup except Paulina, whose pas de
+fée, ou de fantaisie, nobody thought of interrupting to offer so
+profanatory a draught; but she was not to be overlooked, nor baulked of
+her mortal privileges.
+
+“Let me taste,” said she to Graham, as he was putting the cup on the
+shelf of the dresser out of her reach.
+
+Mrs. Bretton and Mr. Home were now engaged in conversation. Dr. John
+had not been unobservant of the fairy’s dance; he had watched it, and
+he had liked it. To say nothing of the softness and beauty of the
+movements, eminently grateful to his grace-loving eye, that ease in his
+mother’s house charmed him, for it set _him_ at ease: again she seemed
+a child for him—again, almost his playmate. I wondered how he would
+speak to her; I had not yet seen him address her; his first words
+proved that the old days of “little Polly” had been recalled to his
+mind by this evening’s child-like light-heartedness.
+
+“Your ladyship wishes for the tankard?”
+
+“I think I said so. I think I intimated as much.”
+
+“Couldn’t consent to a step of the kind on any account. Sorry for it,
+but couldn’t do it.”
+
+“Why? I am quite well now: it can’t break my collar-bone again, or
+dislocate my shoulder. Is it wine?”
+
+“No; nor dew.”
+
+“I don’t want dew; I don’t like dew: but what is it?”
+
+“Ale—strong ale—old October; brewed, perhaps, when I was born.”
+
+“It must be curious: is it good?”
+
+“Excessively good.”
+
+And he took it down, administered to himself a second dose of this
+mighty elixir, expressed in his mischievous eyes extreme contentment
+with the same, and solemnly replaced the cup on the shelf.
+
+“I should like a little,” said Paulina, looking up; “I never had any
+‘old October:’ is it sweet?”
+
+“Perilously sweet,” said Graham.
+
+She continued to look up exactly with the countenance of a child that
+longs for some prohibited dainty. At last the Doctor relented, took it
+down, and indulged himself in the gratification of letting her taste
+from his hand; his eyes, always expressive in the revelation of
+pleasurable feelings, luminously and smilingly avowed that it _was_ a
+gratification; and he prolonged it by so regulating the position of the
+cup that only a drop at a time could reach the rosy, sipping lips by
+which its brim was courted.
+
+“A little more—a little more,” said she, petulantly touching his hand
+with the forefinger, to make him incline the cup more generously and
+yieldingly. “It smells of spice and sugar, but I can’t taste it; your
+wrist is so stiff, and you are so stingy.”
+
+He indulged her, whispering, however, with gravity: “Don’t tell my
+mother or Lucy; they wouldn’t approve.”
+
+“Nor do I,” said she, passing into another tone and manner as soon as
+she had fairly assayed the beverage, just as if it had acted upon her
+like some disenchanting draught, undoing the work of a wizard: “I find
+it anything but sweet; it is bitter and hot, and takes away my breath.
+Your old October was only desirable while forbidden. Thank you, no
+more.”
+
+And, with a slight bend—careless, but as graceful as her dance—she
+glided from him and rejoined her father.
+
+I think she had spoken truth: the child of seven was in the girl of
+seventeen.
+
+Graham looked after her a little baffled, a little puzzled; his eye was
+on her a good deal during the rest of the evening, but she did not seem
+to notice him.
+
+As we ascended to the drawing-room for tea, she took her father’s arm:
+her natural place seemed to be at his side; her eyes and her ears were
+dedicated to him. He and Mrs. Bretton were the chief talkers of our
+little party, and Paulina was their best listener, attending closely to
+all that was said, prompting the repetition of this or that trait or
+adventure.
+
+“And where were you at such a time, papa? And what did you say then?
+And tell Mrs. Bretton what happened on that occasion.” Thus she drew
+him out.
+
+She did not again yield to any effervescence of glee; the infantine
+sparkle was exhaled for the night: she was soft, thoughtful, and
+docile. It was pretty to see her bid good-night; her manner to Graham
+was touched with dignity: in her very slight smile and quiet bow spoke
+the Countess, and Graham could not but look grave, and bend responsive.
+I saw he hardly knew how to blend together in his ideas the dancing
+fairy and delicate dame.
+
+Next day, when we were all assembled round the breakfast-table,
+shivering and fresh from the morning’s chill ablutions, Mrs. Bretton
+pronounced a decree that nobody, who was not forced by dire necessity,
+should quit her house that day.
+
+Indeed, egress seemed next to impossible; the drift darkened the lower
+panes of the casement, and, on looking out, one saw the sky and air
+vexed and dim, the wind and snow in angry conflict. There was no fall
+now, but what had already descended was torn up from the earth, whirled
+round by brief shrieking gusts, and cast into a hundred fantastic
+forms.
+
+The Countess seconded Mrs. Bretton.
+
+“Papa shall not go out,” said she, placing a seat for herself beside
+her father’s arm-chair. “I will look after him. You won’t go into town,
+will you, papa?”
+
+“Ay, and No,” was the answer. “If you and Mrs. Bretton are _very_ good
+to me, Polly—kind, you know, and attentive; if you pet me in a very
+nice manner, and make much of me, I may possibly be induced to wait an
+hour after breakfast and see whether this razor-edged wind settles.
+But, you see, you give me no breakfast; you offer me nothing: you let
+me starve.”
+
+“Quick! please, Mrs. Bretton, and pour out the coffee,” entreated
+Paulina, “whilst I take care of the Count de Bassompierre in other
+respects: since he grew into a Count, he has needed _so_ much
+attention.”
+
+She separated and prepared a roll.
+
+“There, papa, are your ‘pistolets’ charged,” said she. “And there is
+some marmalade, just the same sort of marmalade we used to have at
+Bretton, and which you said was as good as if it had been conserved in
+Scotland—”
+
+“And which your little ladyship used to beg for my boy—do you remember
+that?” interposed Mrs. Bretton. “Have you forgotten how you would come
+to my elbow and touch my sleeve with the whisper, ‘Please, ma’am,
+something good for Graham—a little marmalade, or honey, or jam?’”
+
+“No, mamma,” broke in Dr. John, laughing, yet reddening; “it surely was
+not so: I could not have cared for these things.”
+
+“Did he or did he not, Paulina?”
+
+“He liked them,” asserted Paulina.
+
+“Never blush for it, John,” said Mr. Home, encouragingly. “I like them
+myself yet, and always did. And Polly showed her sense in catering for
+a friend’s material comforts: it was I who put her into the way of such
+good manners—nor do I let her forget them. Polly, offer me a small
+slice of that tongue.”
+
+“There, papa: but remember you are only waited upon with this
+assiduity; on condition of being persuadable, and reconciling yourself
+to La Terrasse for the day.”
+
+“Mrs. Bretton,” said the Count, “I want to get rid of my daughter—to
+send her to school. Do you know of any good school?”
+
+“There is Lucy’s place—Madame Beck’s.”
+
+“Miss Snowe is in a school?”
+
+“I am a teacher,” I said, and was rather glad of the opportunity of
+saying this. For a little while I had been feeling as if placed in a
+false position. Mrs. Bretton and son knew my circumstances; but the
+Count and his daughter did not. They might choose to vary by some
+shades their hitherto cordial manner towards me, when aware of my grade
+in society. I spoke then readily: but a swarm of thoughts I had not
+anticipated nor invoked, rose dim at the words, making me sigh
+involuntarily. Mr. Home did not lift his eyes from his breakfast-plate
+for about two minutes, nor did he speak; perhaps he had not caught the
+words—perhaps he thought that on a confession of that nature,
+politeness would interdict comment: the Scotch are proverbially proud;
+and homely as was Mr. Home in look, simple in habits and tastes, I have
+all along intimated that he was not without his share of the national
+quality. Was his a pseudo pride? was it real dignity? I leave the
+question undecided in its wide sense. Where it concerned me
+individually I can only answer: then, and always, he showed himself a
+true-hearted gentleman.
+
+By nature he was a feeler and a thinker; over his emotions and his
+reflections spread a mellowing of melancholy; more than a mellowing: in
+trouble and bereavement it became a cloud. He did not know much about
+Lucy Snowe; what he knew, he did not very accurately comprehend: indeed
+his misconceptions of my character often made me smile; but he saw my
+walk in life lay rather on the shady side of the hill: he gave me
+credit for doing my endeavour to keep the course honestly straight; he
+would have helped me if he could: having no opportunity of helping, he
+still wished me well. When he did look at me, his eye was kind; when he
+did speak, his voice was benevolent.
+
+“Yours,” said he, “is an arduous calling. I wish you health and
+strength to win in it—success.”
+
+His fair little daughter did not take the information quite so
+composedly: she fixed on me a pair of eyes wide with wonder—almost with
+dismay.
+
+“Are you a teacher?” cried she. Then, having paused on the unpalatable
+idea, “Well, I never knew what you were, nor ever thought of asking:
+for me, you were always Lucy Snowe.”
+
+“And what am I now?” I could not forbear inquiring.
+
+“Yourself, of course. But do you really teach here, in Villette?”
+
+“I really do.”
+
+“And do you like it?”
+
+“Not always.”
+
+“And why do you go on with it?”
+
+Her father looked at, and, I feared, was going to check her; but he
+only said, “Proceed, Polly, proceed with that catechism—prove yourself
+the little wiseacre you are. If Miss Snowe were to blush and look
+confused, I should have to bid you hold your tongue; and you and I
+would sit out the present meal in some disgrace; but she only smiles,
+so push her hard, multiply the cross-questions. Well, Miss Snowe, why
+do you go on with it?”
+
+“Chiefly, I fear, for the sake of the money I get.”
+
+“Not then from motives of pure philanthropy? Polly and I were clinging
+to that hypothesis as the most lenient way of accounting for your
+eccentricity.”
+
+“No—no, sir. Rather for the roof of shelter I am thus enabled to keep
+over my head; and for the comfort of mind it gives me to think that
+while I can work for myself, I am spared the pain of being a burden to
+anybody.”
+
+“Papa, say what you will, I pity Lucy.”
+
+“Take up that pity, Miss de Bassompierre; take it up in both hands, as
+you might a little callow gosling squattering out of bounds without
+leave; put it back in the warm nest of a heart whence it issued, and
+receive in your ear this whisper. If my Polly ever came to know by
+experience the uncertain nature of this world’s goods, I should like
+her to act as Lucy acts: to work for herself, that she might burden
+neither kith nor kin.”
+
+“Yes, papa,” said she, pensively and tractably. “But poor Lucy! I
+thought she was a rich lady, and had rich friends.”
+
+“You thought like a little simpleton. _I_ never thought so. When I had
+time to consider Lucy’s manner and aspect, which was not often, I saw
+she was one who had to guard and not be guarded; to act and not be
+served: and this lot has, I imagine, helped her to an experience for
+which, if she live long enough to realize its full benefit, she may yet
+bless Providence. But this school,” he pursued, changing his tone from
+grave to gay: “would Madame Beck admit my Polly, do you think, Miss
+Lucy?”
+
+I said, there needed but to try Madame; it would soon be seen: she was
+fond of English pupils. “If you, sir,” I added, “will but take Miss de
+Bassompierre in your carriage this very afternoon, I think I can answer
+for it that Rosine, the portress, will not be very slow in answering
+your ring; and Madame, I am sure, will put on her best pair of gloves
+to come into the salon to receive you.”
+
+“In that case,” responded Mr. Home, “I see no sort of necessity there
+is for delay. Mrs. Hurst can send what she calls her young lady’s
+‘things’ after her; Polly can settle down to her horn-book before
+night; and you, Miss Lucy, I trust, will not disdain to cast an
+occasional eye upon her, and let me know, from time to time, how she
+gets on. I hope you approve of the arrangement, Countess de
+Bassompierre?”
+
+The Countess hemmed and hesitated. “I thought,” said she, “I thought I
+had finished my education—”
+
+“That only proves how much we may be mistaken in our thoughts. I hold a
+far different opinion, as most of these will who have been auditors of
+your profound knowledge of life this morning. Ah, my little girl, thou
+hast much to learn; and papa ought to have taught thee more than he has
+done! Come, there is nothing for it but to try Madame Beck; and the
+weather seems settling, and I have finished my breakfast—”
+
+“But, papa!”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“I see an obstacle.”
+
+“I don’t at all.”
+
+“It is enormous, papa; it can never be got over; it is as large as you
+in your greatcoat, and the snowdrift on the top.”
+
+“And, like that snowdrift, capable of melting?”
+
+“No! it is of too—too solid flesh: it is just your own self. Miss Lucy,
+warn Madame Beck not to listen to any overtures about taking me,
+because, in the end, it would turn out that she would have to take papa
+too: as he is so teasing, I will just tell tales about him. Mrs.
+Bretton and all of you listen: About five years ago, when I was twelve
+years old, he took it into his head that he was spoiling me; that I was
+growing unfitted for the world, and I don’t know what, and nothing
+would serve or satisfy him, but I must go to school. I cried, and so
+on; but M. de Bassompierre proved hard-hearted, quite firm and flinty,
+and to school I went. What was the result? In the most admirable
+manner, papa came to school likewise: every other day he called to see
+me. Madame Aigredoux grumbled, but it was of no use; and so, at last,
+papa and I were both, in a manner, expelled. Lucy can just tell Madame
+Beck this little trait: it is only fair to let her know what she has to
+expect.”
+
+Mrs. Bretton asked Mr. Home what he had to say in answer to this
+statement. As he made no defence, judgment was given against him, and
+Paulina triumphed.
+
+But she had other moods besides the arch and naïve. After breakfast;
+when the two elders withdrew—I suppose to talk over certain of Mrs.
+Bretton’s business matters—and the Countess, Dr. Bretton, and I, were
+for a short time alone together—all the child left her; with us, more
+nearly her companions in age, she rose at once to the little lady: her
+very face seemed to alter; that play of feature, and candour of look,
+which, when she spoke to her father, made it quite dimpled and round,
+yielded to an aspect more thoughtful, and lines distincter and less
+_mobile_.
+
+No doubt Graham noted the change as well as I. He stood for some
+minutes near the window, looking out at the snow; presently he,
+approached the hearth, and entered into conversation, but not quite
+with his usual ease: fit topics did not seem to rise to his lips; he
+chose them fastidiously, hesitatingly, and consequently infelicitously:
+he spoke vaguely of Villette—its inhabitants, its notable sights and
+buildings. He was answered by Miss de Bassompierre in quite womanly
+sort; with intelligence, with a manner not indeed wholly
+disindividualized: a tone, a glance, a gesture, here and there, rather
+animated and quick than measured and stately, still recalled little
+Polly; but yet there was so fine and even a polish, so calm and
+courteous a grace, gilding and sustaining these peculiarities, that a
+less sensitive man than Graham would not have ventured to seize upon
+them as vantage points, leading to franker intimacy.
+
+Yet while Dr. Bretton continued subdued, and, for him, sedate, he was
+still observant. Not one of those petty impulses and natural breaks
+escaped him. He did not miss one characteristic movement, one
+hesitation in language, or one lisp in utterance. At times, in speaking
+fast, she still lisped; but coloured whenever such lapse occurred, and
+in a painstaking, conscientious manner, quite as amusing as the slight
+error, repeated the word more distinctly.
+
+Whenever she did this, Dr. Bretton smiled. Gradually, as they
+conversed, the restraint on each side slackened: might the conference
+have but been prolonged, I believe it would soon have become genial:
+already to Paulina’s lip and cheek returned the wreathing, dimpling
+smile; she lisped once, and forgot to correct herself. And Dr. John, I
+know not how _he_ changed, but change he did. He did not grow gayer—no
+raillery, no levity sparkled across his aspect—but his position seemed
+to become one of more pleasure to himself, and he spoke his augmented
+comfort in readier language, in tones more suave. Ten years ago this
+pair had always found abundance to say to each other; the intervening
+decade had not narrowed the experience or impoverished the intelligence
+of either: besides, there are certain natures of which the mutual
+influence is such, that the more they say, the more they have to say.
+For these out of association grows adhesion, and out of adhesion,
+amalgamation.
+
+Graham, however, must go: his was a profession whose claims are neither
+to be ignored nor deferred. He left the room; but before he could leave
+the house there was a return. I am sure he came back—not for the paper,
+or card in his desk, which formed his ostensible errand—but to assure
+himself, by one more glance, that Paulina’s aspect was really such as
+memory was bearing away: that he had not been viewing her somehow by a
+partial, artificial light, and making a fond mistake. No! he found the
+impression true—rather, indeed, he gained than lost by this return: he
+took away with him a parting look—shy, but very soft—as beautiful, as
+innocent, as any little fawn could lift out of its cover of fern, or
+any lamb from its meadow-bed.
+
+Being left alone, Paulina and I kept silence for some time: we both
+took out some work, and plied a mute and diligent task. The white-wood
+workbox of old days was now replaced by one inlaid with precious
+mosaic, and furnished with implements of gold; the tiny and trembling
+fingers that could scarce guide the needle, though tiny still, were now
+swift and skilful: but there was the same busy knitting of the brow,
+the same little dainty mannerisms, the same quick turns and
+movements—now to replace a stray tress, and anon to shake from the
+silken skirt some imaginary atom of dust—some clinging fibre of thread.
+
+That morning I was disposed for silence: the austere fury of the
+winter-day had on me an awing, hushing influence. That passion of
+January, so white and so bloodless, was not yet spent: the storm had
+raved itself hoarse, but seemed no nearer exhaustion. Had Ginevra
+Fanshawe been my companion in that drawing-room, she would not have
+suffered me to muse and listen undisturbed. The presence just gone from
+us would have been her theme; and how she would have rung the changes
+on one topic! how she would have pursued and pestered me with questions
+and surmises—worried and oppressed me with comments and confidences I
+did not want, and longed to avoid.
+
+Paulina Mary cast once or twice towards me a quiet but penetrating
+glance of her dark, full eye; her lips half opened, as if to the
+impulse of coming utterance: but she saw and delicately respected my
+inclination for silence.
+
+“This will not hold long,” I thought to myself; for I was not
+accustomed to find in women or girls any power of self-control, or
+strength of self-denial. As far as I knew them, the chance of a gossip
+about their usually trivial secrets, their often very washy and paltry
+feelings, was a treat not to be readily foregone.
+
+The little Countess promised an exception: she sewed till she was tired
+of sewing, and then she took a book.
+
+As chance would have it, she had sought it in Dr. Bretton’s own
+compartment of the bookcase; and it proved to be an old Bretton
+book—some illustrated work of natural history. Often had I seen her
+standing at Graham’s side, resting that volume on his knee, and reading
+to his tuition; and, when the lesson was over, begging, as a treat,
+that he would tell her all about the pictures. I watched her keenly:
+here was a true test of that memory she had boasted; would her
+recollections now be faithful?
+
+Faithful? It could not be doubted. As she turned the leaves, over her
+face passed gleam after gleam of expression, the least intelligent of
+which was a full greeting to the Past. And then she turned to the
+title-page, and looked at the name written in the schoolboy hand. She
+looked at it long; nor was she satisfied with merely looking: she
+gently passed over the characters the tips of her fingers, accompanying
+the action with an unconscious but tender smile, which converted the
+touch into a caress. Paulina loved the Past; but the peculiarity of
+this little scene was, that she _said_ nothing: she could feel without
+pouring out her feelings in a flux of words.
+
+She now occupied herself at the bookcase for nearly an hour; taking
+down volume after volume, and renewing her acquaintance with each. This
+done, she seated herself on a low stool, rested her cheek on her hand,
+and thought, and still was mute.
+
+The sound of the front door opened below, a rush of cold wind, and her
+father’s voice speaking to Mrs. Bretton in the hall, startled her at
+last. She sprang up: she was down-stairs in one second.
+
+“Papa! papa! you are not going out?”
+
+“My pet, I must go into town.”
+
+“But it is too—_too_ cold, papa.”
+
+And then I heard M. de Bassompierre showing to her how he was well
+provided against the weather; and how he was going to have the
+carriage, and to be quite snugly sheltered; and, in short, proving that
+she need not fear for his comfort.
+
+“But you will promise to come back here this evening, before it is
+quite dark;—you and Dr. Bretton, both, in the carriage? It is not fit
+to ride.”
+
+“Well, if I see the Doctor, I will tell him a lady has laid on him her
+commands to take care of his precious health and come home early under
+my escort.”
+
+“Yes, you must say a lady; and he will think it is his mother, and be
+obedient. And, papa, mind to come soon, for I _shall_ watch and
+listen.”
+
+The door closed, and the carriage rolled softly through the snow; and
+back returned the Countess, pensive and anxious.
+
+She _did_ listen, and watch, when evening closed; but it was in
+stillest sort: walking the drawing-room with quite noiseless step. She
+checked at intervals her velvet march; inclined her ear, and consulted
+the night sounds: I should rather say, the night silence; for now, at
+last, the wind was fallen. The sky, relieved of its avalanche, lay
+naked and pale: through the barren boughs of the avenue we could see it
+well, and note also the polar splendour of the new-year moon—an orb
+white as a world of ice. Nor was it late when we saw also the return of
+the carriage.
+
+Paulina had no dance of welcome for this evening. It was with a sort of
+gravity that she took immediate possession of her father, as he entered
+the room; but she at once made him her entire property, led him to the
+seat of her choice, and, while softly showering round him honeyed words
+of commendation for being so good and coming home so soon, you would
+have thought it was entirely by the power of her little hands he was
+put into his chair, and settled and arranged; for the strong man seemed
+to take pleasure in wholly yielding himself to this dominion-potent
+only by love.
+
+Graham did not appear till some minutes after the Count. Paulina half
+turned when his step was heard: they spoke, but only a word or two;
+their fingers met a moment, but obviously with slight contact. Paulina
+remained beside her father; Graham threw himself into a seat on the
+other side of the room.
+
+It was well that Mrs. Bretton and Mr. Home had a great deal to say to
+each other—almost an inexhaustible fund of discourse in old
+recollections; otherwise, I think, our party would have been but a
+still one that evening.
+
+After tea, Paulina’s quick needle and pretty golden thimble were busily
+plied by the lamp-light, but her tongue rested, and her eyes seemed
+reluctant to raise often their lids, so smooth and so full-fringed.
+Graham, too, must have been tired with his day’s work: he listened
+dutifully to his elders and betters, said very little himself, and
+followed with his eye the gilded glance of Paulina’s thimble; as if it
+had been some bright moth on the wing, or the golden head of some
+darting little yellow serpent.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+A BURIAL.
+
+
+From this date my life did not want variety; I went out a good deal,
+with the entire consent of Madame Beck, who perfectly approved the
+grade of my acquaintance. That worthy directress had never from the
+first treated me otherwise than with respect; and when she found that I
+was liable to frequent invitations from a château and a great hotel,
+respect improved into distinction.
+
+Not that she was fulsome about it: Madame, in all things worldly, was
+in nothing weak; there was measure and sense in her hottest pursuit of
+self-interest, calm and considerateness in her closest clutch of gain;
+without, then, laying herself open to my contempt as a time-server and
+a toadie, she marked with tact that she was pleased people connected
+with her establishment should frequent such associates as must
+cultivate and elevate, rather than those who might deteriorate and
+depress. She never praised either me or my friends; only once when she
+was sitting in the sun in the garden, a cup of coffee at her elbow and
+the Gazette in her hand, looking very comfortable, and I came up and
+asked leave of absence for the evening, she delivered herself in this
+gracious sort:—
+
+“Oui, oui, ma bonne amie: je vous donne la permission de coeur et de
+gré. Votre travail dans ma maison a toujours été admirable, rempli de
+zèle et de discrétion: vous avez bien le droit de vous amuser. Sortez
+donc tant que vous voudrez. Quant à votre choix de connaissances, j’en
+suis contente; c’est sage, digne, laudable.”
+
+She closed her lips and resumed the Gazette.
+
+The reader will not too gravely regard the little circumstance that
+about this time the triply-enclosed packet of five letters temporarily
+disappeared from my bureau. Blank dismay was naturally my first
+sensation on making the discovery; but in a moment I took heart of
+grace.
+
+“Patience!” whispered I to myself. “Let me say nothing, but wait
+peaceably; they will come back again.”
+
+And they did come back: they had only been on a short visit to Madame’s
+chamber; having passed their examination, they came back duly and
+truly: I found them all right the next day.
+
+I wonder what she thought of my correspondence? What estimate did she
+form of Dr. John Bretton’s epistolary powers? In what light did the
+often very pithy thoughts, the generally sound, and sometimes original
+opinions, set, without pretension, in an easily-flowing, spirited
+style, appear to her? How did she like that genial, half humorous vein,
+which to me gave such delight? What did she think of the few kind words
+scattered here and there—not thickly, as the diamonds were scattered in
+the valley of Sindbad, but sparely, as those gems lie in unfabled beds?
+Oh, Madame Beck! how seemed these things to you?
+
+I think in Madame Beck’s eyes the five letters found a certain favour.
+One day after she had _borrowed_ them of me (in speaking of so suave a
+little woman, one ought to use suave terms), I caught her examining me
+with a steady contemplative gaze, a little puzzled, but not at all
+malevolent. It was during that brief space between lessons, when the
+pupils turned out into the court for a quarter of an hour’s recreation;
+she and I remained in the first classe alone: when I met her eye, her
+thoughts forced themselves partially through her lips.
+
+“Il y a,” said she, “quelquechose de bien remarquable dans le caractère
+Anglais.”
+
+“How, Madame?”
+
+She gave a little laugh, repeating the word “how” in English.
+
+“Je ne saurais vous dire ‘how;’ mais, enfin, les Anglais ont des idées
+à eux, en amitié, en amour, en tout. Mais au moins il n’est pas besoin
+de les surveiller,” she added, getting up and trotting away like the
+compact little pony she was.
+
+“Then I hope,” murmured I to myself, “you will graciously let alone my
+letters for the future.”
+
+Alas! something came rushing into my eyes, dimming utterly their
+vision, blotting from sight the schoolroom, the garden, the bright
+winter sun, as I remembered that never more would letters, such as she
+had read, come to me. I had seen the last of them. That goodly river on
+whose banks I had sojourned, of whose waves a few reviving drops had
+trickled to my lips, was bending to another course: it was leaving my
+little hut and field forlorn and sand-dry, pouring its wealth of waters
+far away. The change was right, just, natural; not a word could be
+said: but I loved my Rhine, my Nile; I had almost worshipped my Ganges,
+and I grieved that the grand tide should roll estranged, should vanish
+like a false mirage. Though stoical, I was not quite a stoic; drops
+streamed fast on my hands, on my desk: I wept one sultry shower, heavy
+and brief.
+
+But soon I said to myself, “The Hope I am bemoaning suffered and made
+me suffer much: it did not die till it was full time: following an
+agony so lingering, death ought to be welcome.”
+
+Welcome I endeavoured to make it. Indeed, long pain had made patience a
+habit. In the end I closed the eyes of my dead, covered its face, and
+composed its limbs with great calm.
+
+The letters, however, must be put away, out of sight: people who have
+undergone bereavement always jealously gather together and lock away
+mementos: it is not supportable to be stabbed to the heart each moment
+by sharp revival of regret.
+
+One vacant holiday afternoon (the Thursday) going to my treasure, with
+intent to consider its final disposal, I perceived—and this time with a
+strong impulse of displeasure—that it had been again tampered with: the
+packet was there, indeed, but the ribbon which secured it had been
+untied and retied; and by other symptoms I knew that my drawer had been
+visited.
+
+This was a little too much. Madame Beck herself was the soul of
+discretion, besides having as strong a brain and sound a judgment as
+ever furnished a human head; that she should know the contents of my
+casket, was not pleasant, but might be borne. Little Jesuit
+inquisitress as she was, she could see things in a true light, and
+understand them in an unperverted sense; but the idea that she had
+ventured to communicate information, thus gained, to others; that she
+had, perhaps, amused herself with a companion over documents, in my
+eyes most sacred, shocked me cruelly. Yet, that such was the case I now
+saw reason to fear; I even guessed her confidant. Her kinsman, M. Paul
+Emanuel, had spent yesterday evening with her: she was much in the
+habit of consulting him, and of discussing with him matters she
+broached to no one else. This very morning, in class, that gentleman
+had favoured me with a glance which he seemed to have borrowed from
+Vashti, the actress; I had not at the moment comprehended that blue,
+yet lurid, flash out of his angry eye; but I read its meaning now.
+_He_, I believed, was not apt to regard what concerned me from a fair
+point of view, nor to judge me with tolerance and candour: I had always
+found him severe and suspicious: the thought that these letters, mere
+friendly letters as they were, had fallen once, and might fall again,
+into his hands, jarred my very soul.
+
+What should I do to prevent this? In what corner of this strange house
+was it possible to find security or secresy? Where could a key be a
+safeguard, or a padlock a barrier?
+
+In the grenier? No, I did not like the grenier. Besides, most of the
+boxes and drawers there were mouldering, and did not lock. Rats, too,
+gnawed their way through the decayed wood; and mice made nests amongst
+the litter of their contents: my dear letters (most dear still, though
+Ichabod was written on their covers) might be consumed by vermin;
+certainly the writing would soon become obliterated by damp. No; the
+grenier would not do—but where then?
+
+While pondering this problem, I sat in the dormitory window-seat. It
+was a fine frosty afternoon; the winter sun, already setting, gleamed
+pale on the tops of the garden-shrubs in the “allée défendue.” One
+great old pear-tree—the nun’s pear-tree—stood up a tall dryad skeleton,
+grey, gaunt, and stripped. A thought struck me—one of those queer
+fantastic thoughts that will sometimes strike solitary people. I put on
+my bonnet, cloak, and furs, and went out into the city.
+
+Bending my steps to the old historical quarter of the town, whose hoar
+and overshadowed precincts I always sought by instinct in melancholy
+moods, I wandered on from street to street, till, having crossed a half
+deserted “place” or square, I found myself before a sort of broker’s
+shop; an ancient place, full of ancient things. What I wanted was a
+metal box which might be soldered, or a thick glass jar or bottle which
+might be stoppered or sealed hermetically. Amongst miscellaneous heaps,
+I found and purchased the latter article.
+
+I then made a little roll of my letters, wrapped them in oiled silk,
+bound them with twine, and, having put them in the bottle, got the old
+Jew broker to stopper, seal, and make it air-tight. While obeying my
+directions, he glanced at me now and then suspiciously from under his
+frost-white eyelashes. I believe he thought there was some evil deed on
+hand. In all this I had a dreary something—not pleasure—but a sad,
+lonely satisfaction. The impulse under which I acted, the mood
+controlling me, were similar to the impulse and the mood which had
+induced me to visit the confessional. With quick walking I regained the
+pensionnat just at dark, and in time for dinner.
+
+At seven o’clock the moon rose. At half-past seven, when the pupils and
+teachers were at study, and Madame Beck was with her mother and
+children in the salle-à-manger, when the half-boarders were all gone
+home, and Rosine had left the vestibule, and all was still—I shawled
+myself, and, taking the sealed jar, stole out through the first-classe
+door, into the berceau and thence into the “allée défendue.”
+
+Methusaleh, the pear-tree, stood at the further end of this walk, near
+my seat: he rose up, dim and gray, above the lower shrubs round him.
+Now Methusaleh, though so very old, was of sound timber still; only
+there was a hole, or rather a deep hollow, near his root. I knew there
+was such a hollow, hidden partly by ivy and creepers growing thick
+round; and there I meditated hiding my treasure. But I was not only
+going to hide a treasure—I meant also to bury a grief. That grief over
+which I had lately been weeping, as I wrapped it in its winding-sheet,
+must be interred.
+
+Well, I cleared away the ivy, and found the hole; it was large enough
+to receive the jar, and I thrust it deep in. In a tool-shed at the
+bottom of the garden, lay the relics of building-materials, left by
+masons lately employed to repair a part of the premises. I fetched
+thence a slate and some mortar, put the slate on the hollow, secured it
+with cement, covered the hole with black mould, and, finally, replaced
+the ivy. This done, I rested, leaning against the tree; lingering, like
+any other mourner, beside a newly-sodded grave.
+
+The air of the night was very still, but dim with a peculiar mist,
+which changed the moonlight into a luminous haze. In this air, or this
+mist, there was some quality—electrical, perhaps—which acted in strange
+sort upon me. I felt then as I had felt a year ago in England—on a
+night when the aurora borealis was streaming and sweeping round heaven,
+when, belated in lonely fields, I had paused to watch that mustering of
+an army with banners—that quivering of serried lances—that swift ascent
+of messengers from below the north star to the dark, high keystone of
+heaven’s arch. I felt, not happy, far otherwise, but strong with
+reinforced strength.
+
+If life be a war, it seemed my destiny to conduct it single-handed. I
+pondered now how to break up my winter-quarters—to leave an encampment
+where food and forage failed. Perhaps, to effect this change, another
+pitched battle must be fought with fortune; if so, I had a mind to the
+encounter: too poor to lose, God might destine me to gain. But what
+road was open?—what plan available?
+
+On this question I was still pausing, when the moon, so dim hitherto,
+seemed to shine out somewhat brighter: a ray gleamed even white before
+me, and a shadow became distinct and marked. I looked more narrowly, to
+make out the cause of this well-defined contrast appearing a little
+suddenly in the obscure alley: whiter and blacker it grew on my eye: it
+took shape with instantaneous transformation. I stood about three yards
+from a tall, sable-robed, snowy-veiled woman.
+
+Five minutes passed. I neither fled nor shrieked. She was there still.
+I spoke.
+
+“Who are you? and why do you come to me?”
+
+She stood mute. She had no face—no features: all below her brow was
+masked with a white cloth; but she had eyes, and they viewed me.
+
+I felt, if not brave, yet a little desperate; and desperation will
+often suffice to fill the post and do the work of courage. I advanced
+one step. I stretched out my hand, for I meant to touch her. She seemed
+to recede. I drew nearer: her recession, still silent, became swift. A
+mass of shrubs, full-leaved evergreens, laurel and dense yew,
+intervened between me and what I followed. Having passed that obstacle,
+I looked and saw nothing. I waited. I said,—“If you have any errand to
+men, come back and deliver it.” Nothing spoke or re-appeared.
+
+This time there was no Dr. John to whom to have recourse: there was no
+one to whom I dared whisper the words, “I have again seen the nun.”
+
+Paulina Mary sought my frequent presence in the Rue Crécy. In the old
+Bretton days, though she had never professed herself fond of me, my
+society had soon become to her a sort of unconscious necessary. I used
+to notice that if I withdrew to my room, she would speedily come
+trotting after me, and opening the door and peeping in, say, with her
+little peremptory accent,—“Come down. Why do you sit here by yourself?
+You must come into the parlour.”
+
+In the same spirit she urged me now—“Leave the Rue Fossette,” she said,
+“and come and live with us. Papa would give you far more than Madame
+Beck gives you.”
+
+Mr. Home himself offered me a handsome sum—thrice my present salary—if
+I would accept the office of companion to his daughter. I declined. I
+think I should have declined had I been poorer than I was, and with
+scantier fund of resource, more stinted narrowness of future prospect.
+I had not that vocation. I could teach; I could give lessons; but to be
+either a private governess or a companion was unnatural to me. Rather
+than fill the former post in any great house, I would deliberately have
+taken a housemaid’s place, bought a strong pair of gloves, swept
+bedrooms and staircases, and cleaned stoves and locks, in peace and
+independence. Rather than be a companion, I would have made shirts and
+starved.
+
+I was no bright lady’s shadow—not Miss de Bassompierre’s. Overcast
+enough it was my nature often to be; of a subdued habit I was: but the
+dimness and depression must both be voluntary—such as kept me docile at
+my desk, in the midst of my now well-accustomed pupils in Madame Beck’s
+first classe; or alone, at my own bedside, in her dormitory, or in the
+alley and seat which were called mine, in her garden: my qualifications
+were not convertible, nor adaptable; they could not be made the foil of
+any gem, the adjunct of any beauty, the appendage of any greatness in
+Christendom. Madame Beck and I, without assimilating, understood each
+other well. I was not _her_ companion, nor her children’s governess;
+she left me free: she tied me to nothing—not to herself—not even to her
+interests: once, when she had for a fortnight been called from home by
+a near relation’s illness, and on her return, all anxious and full of
+care about her establishment, lest something in her absence should have
+gone wrong finding that matters had proceeded much as usual, and that
+there was no evidence of glaring neglect—she made each of the teachers
+a present, in acknowledgment of steadiness. To my bedside she came at
+twelve o’clock at night, and told me she had no present for me: “I must
+make fidelity advantageous to the St. Pierre,” said she; “if I attempt
+to make it advantageous to you, there will arise misunderstanding
+between us—perhaps separation. One thing, however, I _can_ do to please
+you—leave you alone with your liberty: c’est-ce que je ferai.” She kept
+her word. Every slight shackle she had ever laid on me, she, from that
+time, with quiet hand removed. Thus I had pleasure in voluntarily
+respecting her rules: gratification in devoting double time, in taking
+double pains with the pupils she committed to my charge.
+
+As to Mary de Bassompierre, I visited her with pleasure, though I would
+not live with her. My visits soon taught me that it was unlikely even
+my occasional and voluntary society would long be indispensable to her.
+M. de Bassompierre, for his part, seemed impervious to this conjecture,
+blind to this possibility; unconscious as any child to the signs, the
+likelihoods, the fitful beginnings of what, when it drew to an end, he
+might not approve.
+
+Whether or not he would cordially approve, I used to speculate.
+Difficult to say. He was much taken up with scientific interests; keen,
+intent, and somewhat oppugnant in what concerned his favourite
+pursuits, but unsuspicious and trustful in the ordinary affairs of
+life. From all I could gather, he seemed to regard his “daughterling”
+as still but a child, and probably had not yet admitted the notion that
+others might look on her in a different light: he would speak of what
+should be done when “Polly” was a woman, when she should be grown up;
+and “Polly,” standing beside his chair, would sometimes smile and take
+his honoured head between her little hands, and kiss his iron-grey
+locks; and, at other times, she would pout and toss her curls: but she
+never said, “Papa, I _am_ grown up.”
+
+She had different moods for different people. With her father she
+really was still a child, or child-like, affectionate, merry, and
+playful. With me she was serious, and as womanly as thought and feeling
+could make her. With Mrs. Bretton she was docile and reliant, but not
+expansive. With Graham she was shy, at present very shy; at moments she
+tried to be cold; on occasion she endeavoured to shun him. His step
+made her start; his entrance hushed her; when he spoke, her answers
+failed of fluency; when he took leave, she remained self-vexed and
+disconcerted. Even her father noticed this demeanour in her.
+
+“My little Polly,” he said once, “you live too retired a life; if you
+grow to be a woman with these shy manners, you will hardly be fitted
+for society. You really make quite a stranger of Dr. Bretton: how is
+this? Don’t you remember that, as a little girl, you used to be rather
+partial to him?”
+
+“_Rather_, papa,” echoed she, with her slightly dry, yet gentle and
+simple tone.
+
+“And you don’t like him now? What has he done?”
+
+“Nothing. Y—e—s, I like him a little; but we are grown strange to each
+other.”
+
+“Then rub it off, Polly; rub the rust and the strangeness off. Talk
+away when he is here, and have no fear of him?”
+
+“_He_ does not talk much. Is he afraid of me, do you think, papa?”
+
+“Oh, to be sure, what man would not be afraid of such a little silent
+lady?”
+
+“Then tell him some day not to mind my being silent. Say that it is my
+way, and that I have no unfriendly intention.”
+
+“Your way, you little chatter-box? So far from being your way, it is
+only your whim!”
+
+“Well, I’ll improve, papa.”
+
+And very pretty was the grace with which, the next day, she tried to
+keep her word. I saw her make the effort to converse affably with Dr.
+John on general topics. The attention called into her guest’s face a
+pleasurable glow; he met her with caution, and replied to her in his
+softest tones, as if there was a kind of gossamer happiness hanging in
+the air which he feared to disturb by drawing too deep a breath.
+Certainly, in her timid yet earnest advance to friendship, it could not
+be denied that there was a most exquisite and fairy charm.
+
+When the Doctor was gone, she approached her father’s chair.
+
+“Did I keep my word, papa? Did I behave better?”
+
+“My Polly behaved like a queen. I shall become quite proud of her if
+this improvement continues. By-and-by we shall see her receiving my
+guests with quite a calm, grand manner. Miss Lucy and I will have to
+look about us, and polish up all our best airs and graces lest we
+should be thrown into the shade. Still, Polly, there is a little
+flutter, a little tendency to stammer now and then, and even, to lisp
+as you lisped when you were six years old.”
+
+“No, papa,” interrupted she indignantly, “that can’t be true.”
+
+“I appeal to Miss Lucy. Did she not, in answering Dr. Bretton’s
+question as to whether she had ever seen the palace of the Prince of
+Bois l’Etang, say, ‘yeth,’ she had been there ‘theveral’ times?”
+
+“Papa, you are satirical, you are méchant! I can pronounce all the
+letters of the alphabet as clearly as you can. But tell me this you are
+very particular in making me be civil to Dr. Bretton, do you like him
+yourself?”
+
+“To be sure: for old acquaintance sake I like him: then he is a very
+good son to his mother; besides being a kind-hearted fellow and clever
+in his profession: yes, the callant is well enough.”
+
+“_Callant_! Ah, Scotchman! Papa, is it the Edinburgh or the Aberdeen
+accent you have?”
+
+“Both, my pet, both: and doubtless the Glaswegian into the bargain. It
+is that which enables me to speak French so well: a gude Scots tongue
+always succeeds well at the French.”
+
+“_The_ French! Scotch again: incorrigible papa. You, too, need
+schooling.”
+
+“Well, Polly, you must persuade Miss Snowe to undertake both you and
+me; to make you steady and womanly, and me refined and classical.”
+
+The light in which M. de Bassompierre evidently regarded “Miss Snowe,”
+used to occasion me much inward edification. What contradictory
+attributes of character we sometimes find ascribed to us, according to
+the eye with which we are viewed! Madame Beck esteemed me learned and
+blue; Miss Fanshawe, caustic, ironic, and cynical; Mr. Home, a model
+teacher, the essence of the sedate and discreet: somewhat conventional,
+perhaps, too strict, limited, and scrupulous, but still the pink and
+pattern of governess-correctness; whilst another person, Professor Paul
+Emanuel, to wit, never lost an opportunity of intimating his opinion
+that mine was rather a fiery and rash nature—adventurous, indocile, and
+audacious. I smiled at them all. If any one knew me it was little
+Paulina Mary.
+
+As I would not be Paulina’s nominal and paid companion, genial and
+harmonious as I began to find her intercourse, she persuaded me to join
+her in some study, as a regular and settled means of sustaining
+communication: she proposed the German language, which, like myself,
+she found difficult of mastery. We agreed to take our lessons in the
+Rue Crécy of the same mistress; this arrangement threw us together for
+some hours of every week. M. de Bassompierre seemed quite pleased: it
+perfectly met his approbation, that Madame Minerva Gravity should
+associate a portion of her leisure with that of his fair and dear
+child.
+
+That other self-elected judge of mine, the professor in the Rue
+Fossette, discovering by some surreptitious spying means, that I was no
+longer so stationary as hitherto, but went out regularly at certain
+hours of certain days, took it upon himself to place me under
+surveillance. People said M. Emanuel had been brought up amongst
+Jesuits. I should more readily have accredited this report had his
+manoeuvres been better masked. As it was, I doubted it. Never was a
+more undisguised schemer, a franker, looser intriguer. He would analyze
+his own machinations: elaborately contrive plots, and forthwith indulge
+in explanatory boasts of their skill. I know not whether I was more
+amused or provoked, by his stepping up to me one morning and whispering
+solemnly that he “had his eye on me: _he_ at least would discharge the
+duty of a friend, and not leave me entirely to my own devices. My
+proceedings seemed at present very unsettled: he did not know what to
+make of them: he thought his cousin Beck very much to blame in
+suffering this sort of fluttering inconsistency in a teacher attached
+to her house. What had a person devoted to a serious calling, that of
+education, to do with Counts and Countesses, hotels and châteaux? To
+him, I seemed altogether ‘en l’air.’ On his faith, he believed I went
+out six days in the seven.”
+
+I said, “Monsieur exaggerated. I certainly had enjoyed the advantage of
+a little change lately, but not before it had become necessary; and the
+privilege was by no means exercised in excess.”
+
+“Necessary! How was it necessary? I was well enough, he supposed?
+Change necessary! He would recommend me to look at the Catholic
+‘religieuses,’ and study _their_ lives. _They_ asked no change.”
+
+I am no judge of what expression crossed my face when he thus spoke,
+but it was one which provoked him: he accused me of being reckless,
+worldly, and epicurean; ambitious of greatness, and feverishly athirst
+for the pomps and vanities of life. It seems I had no “dévouement,” no
+“récueillement” in my character; no spirit of grace, faith, sacrifice,
+or self-abasement. Feeling the inutility of answering these charges, I
+mutely continued the correction of a pile of English exercises.
+
+“He could see in me nothing Christian: like many other Protestants, I
+revelled in the pride and self-will of paganism.”
+
+I slightly turned from him, nestling still closer under the wing of
+silence.
+
+A vague sound grumbled between his teeth; it could not surely be a
+“juron:” he was too religious for that; but I am certain I heard the
+word _sacré_. Grievous to relate, the same word was repeated, with the
+unequivocal addition of _mille_ something, when I passed him about two
+hours afterwards in the corridor, prepared to go and take my German
+lesson in the Rue Crécy. Never was a better little man, in some points,
+than M. Paul: never, in others, a more waspish little despot.
+
+Our German mistress, Fräulein Anna Braun, was a worthy, hearty woman,
+of about forty-five; she ought, perhaps, to have lived in the days of
+Queen Elizabeth, as she habitually consumed, for her first and second
+breakfasts, beer and beef: also, her direct and downright Deutsch
+nature seemed to suffer a sensation of cruel restraint from what she
+called our English reserve; though we thought we were very cordial with
+her: but we did not slap her on the shoulder, and if we consented to
+kiss her cheek, it was done quietly, and without any explosive smack.
+These omissions oppressed and depressed her considerably; still, on the
+whole, we got on very well. Accustomed to instruct foreign girls, who
+hardly ever will think and study for themselves—who have no idea of
+grappling with a difficulty, and overcoming it by dint of reflection or
+application—our progress, which in truth was very leisurely, seemed to
+astound her. In her eyes, we were a pair of glacial prodigies, cold,
+proud, and preternatural.
+
+The young Countess _was_ a little proud, a little fastidious: and
+perhaps, with her native delicacy and beauty, she had a right to these
+feelings; but I think it was a total mistake to ascribe them to me. I
+never evaded the morning salute, which Paulina would slip when she
+could; nor was a certain little manner of still disdain a weapon known
+in my armoury of defence; whereas, Paulina always kept it clear, fine,
+and bright, and any rough German sally called forth at once its steelly
+glisten.
+
+Honest Anna Braun, in some measure, felt this difference; and while she
+half-feared, half-worshipped Paulina, as a sort of dainty nymph—an
+Undine—she took refuge with me, as a being all mortal, and of easier
+mood.
+
+A book we liked well to read and translate was Schiller’s Ballads;
+Paulina soon learned to read them beautifully; the Fräulein would
+listen to her with a broad smile of pleasure, and say her voice sounded
+like music. She translated them, too, with a facile flow of language,
+and in a strain of kindred and poetic fervour: her cheek would flush,
+her lips tremblingly smile, her beauteous eyes kindle or melt as she
+went on. She learnt the best by heart, and would often recite them when
+we were alone together. One she liked well was “Des Mädchens Klage:”
+that is, she liked well to repeat the words, she found plaintive melody
+in the sound; the sense she would criticise. She murmured, as we sat
+over the fire one evening:—
+
+Du Heilige, rufe dein Kind zurück,
+Ich habe genossen das irdische Glück,
+    Ich habe gelebt und geliebet!
+
+
+“Lived and loved!” said she, “is that the summit of earthly happiness,
+the end of life—to love? I don’t think it is. It may be the extreme of
+mortal misery, it may be sheer waste of time, and fruitless torture of
+feeling. If Schiller had said to _be_ loved, he might have come nearer
+the truth. Is not that another thing, Lucy, to be loved?”
+
+“I suppose it may be: but why consider the subject? What is love to
+you? What do you know about it?”
+
+She crimsoned, half in irritation, half in shame.
+
+“Now, Lucy,” she said, “I won’t take that from you. It may be well for
+papa to look on me as a baby: I rather prefer that he should thus view
+me; but _you_ know and shall learn to acknowledge that I am verging on
+my nineteenth year.”
+
+“No matter if it were your twenty-ninth; we will anticipate no feelings
+by discussion and conversation; we will not talk about love.”
+
+“Indeed, indeed!” said she—all in hurry and heat—“you may think to
+check and hold me in, as much as you please; but I _have_ talked about
+it, and heard about it too; and a great deal and lately, and
+disagreeably and detrimentally: and in a way you wouldn’t approve.”
+
+And the vexed, triumphant, pretty, naughty being laughed. I could not
+discern what she meant, and I would not ask her: I was nonplussed.
+Seeing, however, the utmost innocence in her countenance—combined with
+some transient perverseness and petulance—I said at last,—
+
+“Who talks to you disagreeably and detrimentally on such matters? Who
+that has near access to you would dare to do it?”
+
+“Lucy,” replied she more softly, “it is a person who makes me miserable
+sometimes; and I wish she would keep away—I don’t want her.”
+
+“But who, Paulina, can it be? You puzzle me much.”
+
+“It is—it is my cousin Ginevra. Every time she has leave to visit Mrs.
+Cholmondeley she calls here, and whenever she finds me alone she begins
+to talk about her admirers. Love, indeed! You should hear all she has
+to say about love.”
+
+“Oh, I have heard it,” said I, quite coolly; “and on the whole, perhaps
+it is as well you should have heard it too: it is not to be regretted,
+it is all right. Yet, surely, Ginevra’s mind cannot influence yours.
+You can look over both her head and her heart.”
+
+“She does influence me very much. She has the art of disturbing my
+happiness and unsettling my opinions. She hurts me through the feelings
+and people dearest to me.”
+
+“What does she say, Paulina? Give me some idea. There may be
+counteraction of the damage done.”
+
+“The people I have longest and most esteemed are degraded by her. She
+does not spare Mrs. Bretton—she does not spare…. Graham.”
+
+“No, I daresay: and how does she mix up these with her sentiment and
+her…._love_? She does mix them, I suppose?”
+
+“Lucy, she is insolent; and, I believe, false. You know Dr. Bretton. We
+both know him. He may be careless and proud; but when was he ever mean
+or slavish? Day after day she shows him to me kneeling at her feet,
+pursuing her like her shadow. She—repulsing him with insult, and he
+imploring her with infatuation. Lucy, is it true? Is any of it true?”
+
+“It may be true that he once thought her handsome: does she give him
+out as still her suitor?”
+
+“She says she might marry him any day: he only waits her consent.”
+
+“It is these tales which have caused that reserve in your manner
+towards Graham which your father noticed.”
+
+“They have certainly made me all doubtful about his character. As
+Ginevra speaks, they do not carry with them the sound of unmixed truth:
+I believe she exaggerates—perhaps invents—but I want to know how far.”
+
+“Suppose we bring Miss Fanshawe to some proof. Give her an opportunity
+of displaying the power she boasts.”
+
+“I could do that to-morrow. Papa has asked some gentlemen to dinner,
+all savants. Graham, who, papa is beginning to discover, is a savant,
+too—skilled, they say, in more than one branch of science—is among the
+number. Now I should be miserable to sit at table unsupported, amidst
+such a party. I could not talk to Messieurs A—— and Z——, the Parisian
+Academicians: all my new credit for manner would be put in peril. You
+and Mrs. Bretton must come for my sake; Ginevra, at a word, will join
+you.”
+
+“Yes; then I will carry a message of invitation, and she shall have the
+chance of justifying her character for veracity.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+THE HÔTEL CRÉCY.
+
+
+The morrow turned out a more lively and busy day than we—or than I, at
+least—had anticipated. It seems it was the birthday of one of the young
+princes of Labassecour—the eldest, I think, the Duc de Dindonneau, and
+a general holiday was given in his honour at the schools, and
+especially at the principal “Athénée,” or college. The youth of that
+institution had also concocted, and were to present a loyal address;
+for which purpose they were to be assembled in the public building
+where the yearly examinations were conducted, and the prizes
+distributed. After the ceremony of presentation, an oration, or
+“discours,” was to follow from one of the professors.
+
+Several of M. de Bassompierre’s friends—the savants—being more or less
+connected with the Athénée, they were expected to attend on this
+occasion; together with the worshipful municipality of Villette, M. le
+Chevalier Staas, the burgomaster, and the parents and kinsfolk of the
+Athenians in general. M. de Bassompierre was engaged by his friends to
+accompany them; his fair daughter would, of course, be of the party,
+and she wrote a little note to Ginevra and myself, bidding us come
+early that we might join her.
+
+As Miss Fanshawe and I were dressing in the dormitory of the Rue
+Fossette, she (Miss F.) suddenly burst into a laugh.
+
+“What now?” I asked; for she had suspended the operation of arranging
+her attire, and was gazing at me.
+
+“It seems so odd,” she replied, with her usual half-honest
+half-insolent unreserve, “that you and I should now be so much on a
+level, visiting in the same sphere; having the same connections.”
+
+“Why, yes,” said I; “I had not much respect for the connections you
+chiefly frequented awhile ago: Mrs. Cholmondeley and Co. would never
+have suited me at all.”
+
+“Who _are_ you, Miss Snowe?” she inquired, in a tone of such
+undisguised and unsophisticated curiosity, as made me laugh in my turn.
+
+“You used to call yourself a nursery governess; when you first came
+here you really had the care of the children in this house: I have seen
+you carry little Georgette in your arms, like a bonne—few governesses
+would have condescended so far—and now Madame Beck treats you with more
+courtesy than she treats the Parisienne, St. Pierre; and that proud
+chit, my cousin, makes you her bosom friend!”
+
+“Wonderful!” I agreed, much amused at her mystification. “Who am I
+indeed? Perhaps a personage in disguise. Pity I don’t look the
+character.”
+
+“I wonder you are not more flattered by all this,” she went on; “you
+take it with strange composure. If you really are the nobody I once
+thought you, you must be a cool hand.”
+
+“The nobody you once thought me!” I repeated, and my face grew a little
+hot; but I would not be angry: of what importance was a school-girl’s
+crude use of the terms nobody and somebody? I confined myself,
+therefore, to the remark that I had merely met with civility; and asked
+“what she saw in civility to throw the recipient into a fever of
+confusion?”
+
+“One can’t help wondering at some things,” she persisted.
+
+“Wondering at marvels of your own manufacture. Are you ready at last?”
+
+“Yes; let me take your arm.”
+
+“I would rather not: we will walk side by side.”
+
+When she took my arm, she always leaned upon me her whole weight; and,
+as I was not a gentleman, or her lover, I did not like it.
+
+“There, again!” she cried. “I thought, by offering to take your arm, to
+intimate approbation of your dress and general appearance: I meant it
+as a compliment.”
+
+“You did? You meant, in short, to express that you are not ashamed to
+be seen in the street with me? That if Mrs. Cholmondeley should be
+fondling her lapdog at some window, or Colonel de Hamal picking his
+teeth in a balcony, and should catch a glimpse of us, you would not
+quite blush for your companion?”
+
+“Yes,” said she, with that directness which was her best point—which
+gave an honest plainness to her very fibs when she told them—which was,
+in short, the salt, the sole preservative ingredient of a character
+otherwise not formed to keep.
+
+I delegated the trouble of commenting on this “yes” to my countenance;
+or rather, my under-lip voluntarily anticipated my tongue of course,
+reverence and solemnity were not the feelings expressed in the look I
+gave her.
+
+“Scornful, sneering creature!” she went on, as we crossed a great
+square, and entered the quiet, pleasant park, our nearest way to the
+Rue Crécy. “Nobody in this world was ever such a Turk to me as you
+are!”
+
+“You bring it on yourself: let me alone: have the sense to be quiet: I
+will let you alone.”
+
+“As if one _could_ let you alone, when you are so peculiar and so
+mysterious!”
+
+“The mystery and peculiarity being entirely the conception of your own
+brain—maggots—neither more nor less, be so good as to keep them out of
+my sight.”
+
+“But _are_ you anybody?” persevered she, pushing her hand, in spite of
+me, under my arm; and that arm pressed itself with inhospitable
+closeness against my side, by way of keeping out the intruder.
+
+“Yes,” I said, “I am a rising character: once an old lady’s companion,
+then a nursery-governess, now a school-teacher.”
+
+“Do—_do_ tell me who you are? I’ll not repeat it,” she urged, adhering
+with ludicrous tenacity to the wise notion of an incognito she had got
+hold of; and she squeezed the arm of which she had now obtained full
+possession, and coaxed and conjured till I was obliged to pause in the
+park to laugh. Throughout our walk she rang the most fanciful changes
+on this theme; proving, by her obstinate credulity, or incredulity, her
+incapacity to conceive how any person not bolstered up by birth or
+wealth, not supported by some consciousness of name or connection,
+could maintain an attitude of reasonable integrity. As for me, it quite
+sufficed to my mental tranquillity that I was known where it imported
+that known I should be; the rest sat on me easily: pedigree, social
+position, and recondite intellectual acquisition, occupied about the
+same space and place in my interests and thoughts; they were my
+third-class lodgers—to whom could be assigned only the small
+sitting-room and the little back bedroom: even if the dining and
+drawing-rooms stood empty, I never confessed it to them, as thinking
+minor accommodations better suited to their circumstances. The world, I
+soon learned, held a different estimate: and I make no doubt, the world
+is very right in its view, yet believe also that I am not quite wrong
+in mine.
+
+There are people whom a lowered position degrades morally, to whom loss
+of connection costs loss of self-respect: are not these justified in
+placing the highest value on that station and association which is
+their safeguard from debasement? If a man feels that he would become
+contemptible in his own eyes were it generally known that his ancestry
+were simple and not gentle, poor and not rich, workers and not
+capitalists, would it be right severely to blame him for keeping these
+fatal facts out of sight—for starting, trembling, quailing at the
+chance which threatens exposure? The longer we live, the more our
+experience widens; the less prone are we to judge our neighbour’s
+conduct, to question the world’s wisdom: wherever an accumulation of
+small defences is found, whether surrounding the prude’s virtue or the
+man of the world’s respectability, there, be sure, it is needed.
+
+We reached the Hôtel Crécy; Paulina was ready; Mrs. Bretton was with
+her; and, under her escort and that of M. de Bassompierre, we were soon
+conducted to the place of assembly, and seated in good seats, at a
+convenient distance from the Tribune. The youth of the Athénée were
+marshalled before us, the municipality and their bourgmestre were in
+places of honour, the young princes, with their tutors, occupied a
+conspicuous position, and the body of the building was crowded with the
+aristocracy and first burghers of the town.
+
+Concerning the identity of the professor by whom the “discours” was to
+be delivered, I had as yet entertained neither care nor question. Some
+vague expectation I had that a savant would stand up and deliver a
+formal speech, half dogmatism to the Athenians, half flattery to the
+princes.
+
+The Tribune was yet empty when we entered, but in ten minutes after it
+was filled; suddenly, in a second of time, a head, chest, and arms grew
+above the crimson desk. This head I knew: its colour, shape, port,
+expression, were familiar both to me and Miss Fanshawe; the blackness
+and closeness of cranium, the amplitude and paleness of brow, the
+blueness and fire of glance, were details so domesticated in the
+memory, and so knit with many a whimsical association, as almost by
+this their sudden apparition, to tickle fancy to a laugh. Indeed, I
+confess, for my part, I did laugh till I was warm; but then I bent my
+head, and made my handkerchief and a lowered veil the sole confidants
+of my mirth.
+
+I think I was glad to see M. Paul; I think it was rather pleasant than
+otherwise, to behold him set up there, fierce and frank, dark and
+candid, testy and fearless, as when regnant on his estrade in class.
+His presence was such a surprise: I had not once thought of expecting
+him, though I knew he filled the chair of Belles Lettres in the
+college. With _him_ in that Tribune, I felt sure that neither formalism
+nor flattery would be our doom; but for what was vouchsafed us, for
+what was poured suddenly, rapidly, continuously, on our heads—I own I
+was not prepared.
+
+He spoke to the princes, the nobles, the magistrates, and the burghers,
+with just the same ease, with almost the same pointed, choleric
+earnestness, with which he was wont to harangue the three divisions of
+the Rue Fossette. The collegians he addressed, not as schoolboys, but
+as future citizens and embryo patriots. The times which have since come
+on Europe had not been foretold yet, and M. Emanuel’s spirit seemed new
+to me. Who would have thought the flat and fat soil of Labassecour
+could yield political convictions and national feelings, such as were
+now strongly expressed? Of the bearing of his opinions I need here give
+no special indication; yet it may be permitted me to say that I
+believed the little man not more earnest than right in what he said:
+with all his fire he was severe and sensible; he trampled Utopian
+theories under his heel; he rejected wild dreams with scorn;—but when
+he looked in the face of tyranny—oh, then there opened a light in his
+eye worth seeing; and when he spoke of injustice, his voice gave no
+uncertain sound, but reminded me rather of the band-trumpet, ringing at
+twilight from the park.
+
+I do not think his audience were generally susceptible of sharing his
+flame in its purity; but some of the college youth caught fire as he
+eloquently told them what should be their path and endeavour in their
+country’s and in Europe’s future. They gave him a long, loud, ringing
+cheer, as he concluded: with all his fierceness, he was their favourite
+professor.
+
+As our party left the Hall, he stood at the entrance; he saw and knew
+me, and lifted his hat; he offered his hand in passing, and uttered the
+words “Qu’en dites vous?”—question eminently characteristic, and
+reminding me, even in this his moment of triumph, of that inquisitive
+restlessness, that absence of what I considered desirable self-control,
+which were amongst his faults. He should not have cared just then to
+ask what I thought, or what anybody thought, but he _did_ care, and he
+was too natural to conceal, too impulsive to repress his wish. Well! if
+I blamed his over-eagerness, I liked his _naiveté_. I would have
+praised him: I had plenty of praise in my heart; but, alas! no words on
+my lips. Who _has_ words at the right moment? I stammered some lame
+expressions; but was truly glad when other people, coming up with
+profuse congratulations, covered my deficiency by their redundancy.
+
+A gentleman introduced him to M. de Bassompierre; and the Count, who
+had likewise been highly gratified, asked him to join his friends (for
+the most part M. Emanuel’s likewise), and to dine with them at the
+Hôtel Crécy. He declined dinner, for he was a man always somewhat shy
+at meeting the advances of the wealthy: there was a strength of sturdy
+independence in the stringing of his sinews—not obtrusive, but pleasant
+enough to discover as one advanced in knowledge of his character; he
+promised, however, to step in with his friend, M. A——, a French
+Academician, in the course of the evening.
+
+At dinner that day, Ginevra and Paulina each looked, in her own way,
+very beautiful; the former, perhaps, boasted the advantage in material
+charms, but the latter shone pre-eminent for attractions more subtle
+and spiritual: for light and eloquence of eye, for grace of mien, for
+winning variety of expression. Ginevra’s dress of deep crimson relieved
+well her light curls, and harmonized with her rose-like bloom.
+Paulina’s attire—in fashion close, though faultlessly neat, but in
+texture clear and white—made the eye grateful for the delicate life of
+her complexion, for the soft animation of her countenance, for the
+tender depth of her eyes, for the brown shadow and bounteous flow of
+her hair—darker than that of her Saxon cousin, as were also her
+eyebrows, her eyelashes, her full irids, and large mobile pupils.
+Nature having traced all these details slightly, and with a careless
+hand, in Miss Fanshawe’s case; and in Miss de Bassompierre’s, wrought
+them to a high and delicate finish.
+
+Paulina was awed by the savants, but not quite to mutism: she conversed
+modestly, diffidently; not without effort, but with so true a
+sweetness, so fine and penetrating a sense, that her father more than
+once suspended his own discourse to listen, and fixed on her an eye of
+proud delight. It was a polite Frenchman, M. Z——, a very learned, but
+quite a courtly man, who had drawn her into discourse. I was charmed
+with her French; it was faultless—the structure correct, the idioms
+true, the accent pure; Ginevra, who had lived half her life on the
+Continent, could do nothing like it not that words ever failed Miss
+Fanshawe, but real accuracy and purity she neither possessed, nor in
+any number of years would acquire. Here, too, M. de Bassompierre was
+gratified; for, on the point of language, he was critical.
+
+Another listener and observer there was; one who, detained by some
+exigency of his profession, had come in late to dinner. Both ladies
+were quietly scanned by Dr. Bretton, at the moment of taking his seat
+at the table; and that guarded survey was more than once renewed. His
+arrival roused Miss Fanshawe, who had hitherto appeared listless: she
+now became smiling and complacent, talked—though what she said was
+rarely to the purpose—or rather, was of a purpose somewhat mortifyingly
+below the standard of the occasion. Her light, disconnected prattle
+might have gratified Graham once; perhaps it pleased him still: perhaps
+it was only fancy which suggested the thought that, while his eye was
+filled and his ear fed, his taste, his keen zest, his lively
+intelligence, were not equally consulted and regaled. It is certain
+that, restless and exacting as seemed the demand on his attention, he
+yielded courteously all that was required: his manner showed neither
+pique nor coolness: Ginevra was his neighbour, and to her, during
+dinner, he almost exclusively confined his notice. She appeared
+satisfied, and passed to the drawing-room in very good spirits.
+
+Yet, no sooner had we reached that place of refuge, than she again
+became flat and listless: throwing herself on a couch, she denounced
+both the “discours” and the dinner as stupid affairs, and inquired of
+her cousin how she could hear such a set of prosaic “gros-bonnets” as
+her father gathered about him. The moment the gentlemen were heard to
+move, her railings ceased: she started up, flew to the piano, and
+dashed at it with spirit. Dr. Bretton entering, one of the first, took
+up his station beside her. I thought he would not long maintain that
+post: there was a position near the hearth to which I expected to see
+him attracted: this position he only scanned with his eye; while _he_
+looked, others drew in. The grace and mind of Paulina charmed these
+thoughtful Frenchmen: the fineness of her beauty, the soft courtesy of
+her manner, her immature, but real and inbred tact, pleased their
+national taste; they clustered about her, not indeed to talk science;
+which would have rendered her dumb, but to touch on many subjects in
+letters, in arts, in actual life, on which it soon appeared that she
+had both read and reflected. I listened. I am sure that though Graham
+stood aloof, he listened too: his hearing as well as his vision was
+very fine, quick, discriminating. I knew he gathered the conversation;
+I felt that the mode in which it was sustained suited him
+exquisitely—pleased him almost to pain.
+
+In Paulina there was more force, both of feeling and character; than
+most people thought—than Graham himself imagined—than she would ever
+show to those who did not wish to see it. To speak truth, reader, there
+is no excellent beauty, no accomplished grace, no reliable refinement,
+without strength as excellent, as complete, as trustworthy. As well
+might you look for good fruit and blossom on a rootless and sapless
+tree, as for charms that will endure in a feeble and relaxed nature.
+For a little while, the blooming semblance of beauty may flourish round
+weakness; but it cannot bear a blast: it soon fades, even in serenest
+sunshine. Graham would have started had any suggestive spirit whispered
+of the sinew and the stamina sustaining that delicate nature; but I who
+had known her as a child, knew or guessed by what a good and strong
+root her graces held to the firm soil of reality.
+
+While Dr. Bretton listened, and waited an opening in the magic circle,
+his glance restlessly sweeping the room at intervals, lighted by chance
+on me, where I sat in a quiet nook not far from my godmother and M. de
+Bassompierre, who, as usual, were engaged in what Mr. Home called “a
+two-handed crack:” what the Count would have interpreted as a
+tête-à-tête. Graham smiled recognition, crossed the room, asked me how
+I was, told me I looked pale. I also had my own smile at my own
+thought: it was now about three months since Dr. John had spoken to
+me—a lapse of which he was not even conscious. He sat down, and became
+silent. His wish was rather to look than converse. Ginevra and Paulina
+were now opposite to him: he could gaze his fill: he surveyed both
+forms—studied both faces.
+
+Several new guests, ladies as well as gentlemen, had entered the room
+since dinner, dropping in for the evening conversation; and amongst the
+gentlemen, I may incidentally observe, I had already noticed by
+glimpses, a severe, dark, professorial outline, hovering aloof in an
+inner saloon, seen only in vista. M. Emanuel knew many of the gentlemen
+present, but I think was a stranger to most of the ladies, excepting
+myself; in looking towards the hearth, he could not but see me, and
+naturally made a movement to approach; seeing, however, Dr. Bretton
+also, he changed his mind and held back. If that had been all, there
+would have been no cause for quarrel; but not satisfied with holding
+back, he puckered up his eyebrows, protruded his lip, and looked so
+ugly that I averted my eyes from the displeasing spectacle. M. Joseph
+Emanuel had arrived, as well as his austere brother, and at this very
+moment was relieving Ginevra at the piano. What a master-touch
+succeeded her school-girl jingle! In what grand, grateful tones the
+instrument acknowledged the hand of the true artist!
+
+“Lucy,” began Dr. Bretton, breaking silence and smiling, as Ginevra
+glided before him, casting a glance as she passed by, “Miss Fanshawe is
+certainly a fine girl.”
+
+Of course I assented.
+
+“Is there,” he pursued, “another in the room as lovely?”
+
+“I think there is not another as handsome.”
+
+“I agree with you, Lucy: you and I do often agree in opinion, in taste,
+I think; or at least in judgment.”
+
+“Do we?” I said, somewhat doubtfully.
+
+“I believe if you had been a boy, Lucy, instead of a girl—my mother’s
+god-son instead of her god-daughter, we should have been good friends:
+our opinions would have melted into each other.”
+
+He had assumed a bantering air: a light, half-caressing, half-ironic,
+shone aslant in his eye. Ah, Graham! I have given more than one
+solitary moment to thoughts and calculations of your estimate of Lucy
+Snowe: was it always kind or just? Had Lucy been intrinsically the same
+but possessing the additional advantages of wealth and station, would
+your manner to her, your value for her, have been quite what they
+actually were? And yet by these questions I would not seriously infer
+blame. No; you might sadden and trouble me sometimes; but then mine was
+a soon-depressed, an easily-deranged temperament—it fell if a cloud
+crossed the sun. Perhaps before the eye of severe equity I should stand
+more at fault than you.
+
+Trying, then, to keep down the unreasonable pain which thrilled my
+heart, on thus being made to feel that while Graham could devote to
+others the most grave and earnest, the manliest interest, he had no
+more than light raillery for Lucy, the friend of lang syne, I inquired
+calmly,—“On what points are we so closely in accordance?”
+
+“We each have an observant faculty. You, perhaps, don’t give me credit
+for the possession; yet I have it.”
+
+“But you were speaking of tastes: we may see the same objects, yet
+estimate them differently?”
+
+“Let us bring it to the test. Of course, you cannot but render homage
+to the merits of Miss Fanshawe: now, what do you think of others in the
+room?—my mother, for instance; or the lions yonder, Messieurs A—— and
+Z——; or, let us say, that pale little lady, Miss de Bassompierre?”
+
+“You know what I think of your mother. I have not thought of Messieurs
+A—— and Z——.”
+
+“And the other?”
+
+“I think she is, as you say, a pale little lady—pale, certainly, just
+now, when she is fatigued with over-excitement.”
+
+“You don’t remember her as a child?”
+
+“I wonder, sometimes, whether you do.”
+
+“I had forgotten her; but it is noticeable, that circumstances,
+persons, even words and looks, that had slipped your memory, may, under
+certain conditions, certain aspects of your own or another’s mind,
+revive.”
+
+“That is possible enough.”
+
+“Yet,” he continued, “the revival is imperfect—needs confirmation,
+partakes so much of the dim character of a dream, or of the airy one of
+a fancy, that the testimony of a witness becomes necessary for
+corroboration. Were you not a guest at Bretton ten years ago, when Mr.
+Home brought his little girl, whom we then called ‘little Polly,’ to
+stay with mamma?”
+
+“I was there the night she came, and also the morning she went away.”
+
+“Rather a peculiar child, was she not? I wonder how I treated her. Was
+I fond of children in those days? Was there anything gracious or kindly
+about me—great, reckless, schoolboy as I was? But you don’t recollect
+me, of course?”
+
+“You have seen your own picture at La Terrasse. It is like you
+personally. In manner, you were almost the same yesterday as to-day.”
+
+“But, Lucy, how is that? Such an oracle really whets my curiosity. What
+am I to-day? What was I the yesterday of ten years back?”
+
+“Gracious to whatever pleased you—unkindly or cruel to nothing.”
+
+“There you are wrong; I think I was almost a brute to _you_, for
+instance.”
+
+“A brute! No, Graham: I should never have patiently endured brutality.”
+
+“_This_, however, I _do_ remember: quiet Lucy Snowe tasted nothing of
+my grace.”
+
+“As little of your cruelty.”
+
+“Why, had I been Nero himself, I could not have tormented a being
+inoffensive as a shadow.”
+
+I smiled; but I also hushed a groan. Oh!—I just wished he would let me
+alone—cease allusion to me. These epithets—these attributes I put from
+me. His “quiet Lucy Snowe,” his “inoffensive shadow,” I gave him back;
+not with scorn, but with extreme weariness: theirs was the coldness and
+the pressure of lead; let him whelm me with no such weight. Happily, he
+was soon on another theme.
+
+“On what terms were ‘little Polly’ and I? Unless my recollections
+deceive me, we were not foes—”
+
+“You speak very vaguely. Do you think little Polly’s memory, not more
+definite?”
+
+“Oh! we don’t talk of ‘little Polly’ _now_. Pray say, Miss de
+Bassompierre; and, of course, such a stately personage remembers
+nothing of Bretton. Look at her large eyes, Lucy; can they read a word
+in the page of memory? Are they the same which I used to direct to a
+horn-book? She does not know that I partly taught her to read.”
+
+“In the Bible on Sunday nights?”
+
+“She has a calm, delicate, rather fine profile now: once what a little
+restless, anxious countenance was hers! What a thing is a child’s
+preference—what a bubble! Would you believe it? that lady was fond of
+me!”
+
+“I think she was in some measure fond of you,” said I, moderately.
+
+“You don’t remember then? _I_ had forgotten; but I remember _now_. She
+liked me the best of whatever there was at Bretton.”
+
+“You thought so.”
+
+“I quite well recall it. I wish I could tell her all I recall; or
+rather, I wish some one, you for instance, would go behind and whisper
+it all in her ear, and I could have the delight—here, as I sit—of
+watching her look under the intelligence. Could you manage that, think
+you, Lucy, and make me ever grateful?”
+
+“Could I manage to make you ever grateful?” said I. “No, _I could
+not_.” And I felt my fingers work and my hands interlock: I felt, too,
+an inward courage, warm and resistant. In this matter I was not
+disposed to gratify Dr. John: not at all. With now welcome force, I
+realized his entire misapprehension of my character and nature. He
+wanted always to give me a role not mine. Nature and I opposed him. He
+did not at all guess what I felt: he did not read my eyes, or face, or
+gestures; though, I doubt not, all spoke. Leaning towards me coaxingly,
+he said, softly, “_Do_ content me, Lucy.”
+
+And I would have contented, or, at least, I would clearly have
+enlightened him, and taught him well never again to expect of me the
+part of officious soubrette in a love drama; when, following his, soft,
+eager, murmur, meeting almost his pleading, mellow—“_Do_ content me,
+Lucy!” a sharp hiss pierced my ear on the other side.
+
+“Petite chatte, doucerette, coquette!” sibillated the sudden
+boa-constrictor; “vous avez l’air bien triste, soumis, rêveur, mais
+vous ne l’êtes pas: c’est moi qui vous le dis: Sauvage! la flamme à
+l’âme, l’éclair aux yeux!”
+
+“Oui; j’ai la flamme à l’âme, et je dois l’avoir!” retorted I, turning
+in just wrath: but Professor Emanuel had hissed his insult and was
+gone.
+
+The worst of the matter was, that Dr. Bretton, whose ears, as I have
+said, were quick and fine, caught every word of this apostrophe; he put
+his handkerchief to his face, and laughed till he shook.
+
+“Well done, Lucy,” cried he; “capital! petite chatte, petite coquette!
+Oh, I must tell my mother! Is it true, Lucy, or half-true? I believe it
+is: you redden to the colour of Miss Fanshawe’s gown. And really, by my
+word, now I examine him, that is the same little man who was so savage
+with you at the concert: the very same, and in his soul he is frantic
+at this moment because he sees me laughing. Oh! I must tease him.”
+
+And Graham, yielding to his bent for mischief, laughed, jested, and
+whispered on till I could bear no more, and my eyes filled.
+
+Suddenly he was sobered: a vacant space appeared near Miss de
+Bassompierre; the circle surrounding her seemed about to dissolve. This
+movement was instantly caught by Graham’s eye—ever-vigilant, even while
+laughing; he rose, took his courage in both hands, crossed the room,
+and made the advantage his own. Dr. John, throughout his whole life,
+was a man of luck—a man of success. And why? Because he had the eye to
+see his opportunity, the heart to prompt to well-timed action, the
+nerve to consummate a perfect work. And no tyrant-passion dragged him
+back; no enthusiasms, no foibles encumbered his way. How well he looked
+at this very moment! When Paulina looked up as he reached her side, her
+glance mingled at once with an encountering glance, animated, yet
+modest; his colour, as he spoke to her, became half a blush, half a
+glow. He stood in her presence brave and bashful: subdued and
+unobtrusive, yet decided in his purpose and devoted in his ardour. I
+gathered all this by one view. I did not prolong my observation—time
+failed me, had inclination served: the night wore late; Ginevra and I
+ought already to have been in the Rue Fossette. I rose, and bade
+good-night to my godmother and M. de Bassompierre.
+
+I know not whether Professor Emanuel had noticed my reluctant
+acceptance of Dr. Bretton’s badinage, or whether he perceived that I
+was pained, and that, on the whole, the evening had not been one flow
+of exultant enjoyment for the volatile, pleasure-loving Mademoiselle
+Lucie; but, as I was leaving the room, he stepped up and inquired
+whether I had any one to attend me to the Rue Fossette. The professor
+_now_ spoke politely, and even deferentially, and he looked apologetic
+and repentant; but I could not recognise his civility at a word, nor
+meet his contrition with crude, premature oblivion. Never hitherto had
+I felt seriously disposed to resent his brusqueries, or freeze before
+his fierceness; what he had said to-night, however, I considered
+unwarranted: my extreme disapprobation of the proceeding must be
+marked, however slightly. I merely said:—“I am provided with
+attendance.”
+
+Which was true, as Ginevra and I were to be sent home in the carriage;
+and I passed him with the sliding obeisance with which he was wont to
+be saluted in classe by pupils crossing his estrade.
+
+Having sought my shawl, I returned to the vestibule. M. Emanuel stood
+there as if waiting. He observed that the night was fine.
+
+“Is it?” I said, with a tone and manner whose consummate chariness and
+frostiness I could not but applaud. It was so seldom I could properly
+act out my own resolution to be reserved and cool where I had been
+grieved or hurt, that I felt almost proud of this one successful
+effort. That “Is it?” sounded just like the manner of other people. I
+had heard hundreds of such little minced, docked, dry phrases, from the
+pursed-up coral lips of a score of self-possessed, self-sufficing
+misses and mesdemoiselles. That M. Paul would not stand any prolonged
+experience of this sort of dialogue I knew; but he certainly merited a
+sample of the curt and arid. I believe he thought so himself, for he
+took the dose quietly. He looked at my shawl and objected to its
+lightness. I decidedly told him it was as heavy as I wished. Receding
+aloof, and standing apart, I leaned on the banister of the stairs,
+folded my shawl about me, and fixed my eyes on a dreary religious
+painting darkening the wall.
+
+Ginevra was long in coming: tedious seemed her loitering. M. Paul was
+still there; my ear expected from his lips an angry tone. He came
+nearer. “Now for another hiss!” thought I: had not the action been too
+uncivil I could have, stopped my ears with my fingers in terror of the
+thrill. Nothing happens as we expect: listen for a coo or a murmur; it
+is then you will hear a cry of prey or pain. Await a piercing shriek,
+an angry threat, and welcome an amicable greeting, a low kind whisper.
+M. Paul spoke gently:—“Friends,” said he, “do not quarrel for a word.
+Tell me, was it I or ce grand fat d’Anglais” (so he profanely
+denominated Dr. Bretton), “who made your eyes so humid, and your cheeks
+so hot as they are even now?”
+
+“I am not conscious of you, monsieur, or of any other having excited
+such emotion as you indicate,” was my answer; and in giving it, I again
+surpassed my usual self, and achieved a neat, frosty falsehood.
+
+“But what did I say?” he pursued; “tell me: I was angry: I have
+forgotten my words; what were they?”
+
+“Such as it is best to forget!” said I, still quite calm and chill.
+
+“Then it was _my_ words which wounded you? Consider them unsaid: permit
+my retractation; accord my pardon.”
+
+“I am not angry, Monsieur.”
+
+“Then you are worse than angry—grieved. Forgive me, Miss Lucy.”
+
+“M. Emanuel, I _do_ forgive you.”
+
+“Let me hear you say, in the voice natural to you, and not in that
+alien tone, ‘Mon ami, je vous pardonne.’”
+
+He made me smile. Who could help smiling at his wistfulness, his
+simplicity, his earnestness?
+
+“Bon!” he cried. “Voilà que le jour va poindre! Dites donc, mon ami.”
+
+“Monsieur Paul, je vous pardonne.”
+
+“I will have no monsieur: speak the other word, or I shall not believe
+you sincere: another effort—_mon ami_, or else in English,—my friend!”
+
+Now, “my friend” had rather another sound and significancy than “_mon
+ami_;” it did not breathe the same sense of domestic and intimate
+affection; “_mon ami_” I could _not_ say to M. Paul; “my friend,” I
+could, and did say without difficulty. This distinction existed not for
+him, however, and he was quite satisfied with the English phrase. He
+smiled. You should have seen him smile, reader; and you should have
+marked the difference between his countenance now, and that he wore
+half an hour ago. I cannot affirm that I had ever witnessed the smile
+of pleasure, or content, or kindness round M. Paul’s lips, or in his
+eyes before. The ironic, the sarcastic, the disdainful, the
+passionately exultant, I had hundreds of times seen him express by what
+he called a smile, but any illuminated sign of milder or warmer
+feelings struck me as wholly new in his visage. It changed it as from a
+mask to a face: the deep lines left his features; the very complexion
+seemed clearer and fresher; that swart, sallow, southern darkness which
+spoke his Spanish blood, became displaced by a lighter hue. I know not
+that I have ever seen in any other human face an equal metamorphosis
+from a similar cause. He now took me to the carriage: at the same
+moment M. de Bassompierre came out with his niece.
+
+In a pretty humour was Mistress Fanshawe; she had found the evening a
+grand failure: completely upset as to temper, she gave way to the most
+uncontrolled moroseness as soon as we were seated, and the
+carriage-door closed. Her invectives against Dr. Bretton had something
+venomous in them. Having found herself impotent either to charm or
+sting him, hatred was her only resource; and this hatred she expressed
+in terms so unmeasured and proportion so monstrous, that, after
+listening for a while with assumed stoicism, my outraged sense of
+justice at last and suddenly caught fire. An explosion ensued: for I
+could be passionate, too; especially with my present fair but faulty
+associate, who never failed to stir the worst dregs of me. It was well
+that the carriage-wheels made a tremendous rattle over the flinty
+Choseville pavement, for I can assure the reader there was neither dead
+silence nor calm discussion within the vehicle. Half in earnest, half
+in seeming, I made it my business to storm down Ginevra. She had set
+out rampant from the Rue Crécy; it was necessary to tame her before we
+reached the Rue Fossette: to this end it was indispensable to show up
+her sterling value and high deserts; and this must be done in language
+of which the fidelity and homeliness might challenge comparison with
+the compliments of a John Knox to a Mary Stuart. This was the right
+discipline for Ginevra; it suited her. I am quite sure she went to bed
+that night all the better and more settled in mind and mood, and slept
+all the more sweetly for having undergone a sound moral drubbing.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+THE WATCHGUARD.
+
+
+M. Paul Emanuel owned an acute sensitiveness to the annoyance of
+interruption, from whatsoever cause occurring, during his lessons: to
+pass through the classe under such circumstances was considered by the
+teachers and pupils of the school, individually and collectively, to be
+as much as a woman’s or girl’s life was worth.
+
+Madame Beck herself, if forced to the enterprise, would “skurry”
+through, retrenching her skirts, and carefully coasting the formidable
+estrade, like a ship dreading breakers. As to Rosine, the portress—on
+whom, every half-hour, devolved the fearful duty of fetching pupils out
+of the very heart of one or other of the divisions to take their
+music-lessons in the oratory, the great or little saloon, the
+salle-à-manger, or some other piano-station—she would, upon her second
+or third attempt, frequently become almost tongue-tied from excess of
+consternation—a sentiment inspired by the unspeakable looks levelled at
+her through a pair of dart-dealing spectacles.
+
+One morning I was sitting in the carré, at work upon a piece of
+embroidery which one of the pupils had commenced but delayed to finish,
+and while my fingers wrought at the frame, my ears regaled themselves
+with listening to the crescendos and cadences of a voice haranguing in
+the neighbouring classe, in tones that waxed momentarily more unquiet,
+more ominously varied. There was a good strong partition-wall between
+me and the gathering storm, as well as a facile means of flight through
+the glass-door to the court, in case it swept this way; so I am afraid
+I derived more amusement than alarm from these thickening symptoms.
+Poor Rosine was not safe: four times that blessed morning had she made
+the passage of peril; and now, for the fifth time, it became her
+dangerous duty to snatch, as it were, a brand from the burning—a pupil
+from under M. Paul’s nose.
+
+“Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!” cried she. “Que vais-je devenir? Monsieur va me
+tuer, je suis sûre; car il est d’une colère!”
+
+Nerved by the courage of desperation, she opened the door.
+
+“Mademoiselle La Malle au piano!” was her cry.
+
+Ere she could make good her retreat, or quite close the door, this
+voice uttered itself:—
+
+“Dès ce moment!—la classe est défendue. La première qui ouvrira cette
+porte, ou passera par cette division, sera pendue—fut-ce Madame Beck
+elle-même!”
+
+Ten minutes had not succeeded the promulgation of this decree when
+Rosine’s French pantoufles were again heard shuffling along the
+corridor.
+
+“Mademoiselle,” said she, “I would not for a five-franc piece go into
+that classe again just now: Monsieur’s lunettes are really terrible;
+and here is a commissionaire come with a message from the Athénée. I
+have told Madame Beck I dare not deliver it, and she says I am to
+charge you with it.”
+
+“Me? No, that is rather too bad! It is not in my line of duty. Come,
+come, Rosine! bear your own burden. Be brave—charge once more!”
+
+“I, Mademoiselle?—impossible! Five times I have crossed him this day.
+Madame must really hire a gendarme for this service. Ouf! Je n’en puis
+plus!”
+
+“Bah! you are only a coward. What is the message?”
+
+“Precisely of the kind with which Monsieur least likes to be pestered:
+an urgent summons to go directly to the Athénée, as there is an
+official visitor—inspector—I know not what—arrived, and Monsieur _must_
+meet him: you know how he hates a _must_.”
+
+Yes, I knew well enough. The restive little man detested spur or curb:
+against whatever was urgent or obligatory, he was sure to revolt.
+However, I accepted the responsibility—not, certainly, without fear,
+but fear blent with other sentiments, curiosity, amongst them. I opened
+the door, I entered, I closed it behind me as quickly and quietly as a
+rather unsteady hand would permit; for to be slow or bustling, to
+rattle a latch, or leave a door gaping wide, were aggravations of crime
+often more disastrous in result than the main crime itself. There I
+stood then, and there he sat; his humour was visibly bad—almost at its
+worst; he had been giving a lesson in arithmetic—for he gave lessons on
+any and every subject that struck his fancy—and arithmetic being a dry
+subject, invariably disagreed with him: not a pupil but trembled when
+he spoke of figures. He sat, bent above his desk: to look up at the
+sound of an entrance, at the occurrence of a direct breach of his will
+and law, was an effort he could not for the moment bring himself to
+make. It was quite as well: I thus gained time to walk up the long
+classe; and it suited my idiosyncracy far better to encounter the near
+burst of anger like his, than to bear its menace at a distance.
+
+At his estrade I paused, just in front; of course I was not worthy of
+immediate attention: he proceeded with his lesson. Disdain would not
+do: he must hear and he must answer my message.
+
+Not being quite tall enough to lift my head over his desk, elevated
+upon the estrade, and thus suffering eclipse in my present position, I
+ventured to peep round, with the design, at first, of merely getting a
+better view of his face, which had struck me when I entered as bearing
+a close and picturesque resemblance to that of a black and sallow
+tiger. Twice did I enjoy this side-view with impunity, advancing and
+receding unseen; the third time my eye had scarce dawned beyond the
+obscuration of the desk, when it was caught and transfixed through its
+very pupil—transfixed by the “lunettes.” Rosine was right; these
+utensils had in them a blank and immutable terror, beyond the mobile
+wrath of the wearer’s own unglazed eyes.
+
+I now found the advantage of proximity: these short-sighted “lunettes”
+were useless for the inspection of a criminal under Monsieur’s nose;
+accordingly, he doffed them, and he and I stood on more equal terms.
+
+I am glad I was not really much afraid of him—that, indeed, close in
+his presence, I felt no terror at all; for upon his demanding cord and
+gibbet to execute the sentence recently pronounced, I was able to
+furnish him with a needleful of embroidering thread with such
+accommodating civility as could not but allay some portion at least of
+his surplus irritation. Of course I did not parade this courtesy before
+public view: I merely handed the thread round the angle of the desk,
+and attached it, ready noosed, to the barred back of the Professor’s
+chair.
+
+“Que me voulez-vous?” said he in a growl of which the music was wholly
+confined to his chest and throat, for he kept his teeth clenched; and
+seemed registering to himself an inward vow that nothing earthly should
+wring from him a smile.
+
+My answer commenced uncompromisingly: “Monsieur,” I said, “je veux
+l’impossible, des choses inouïes;” and thinking it best not to mince
+matters, but to administer the “douche” with decision, in a low but
+quick voice, I delivered the Athenian message, floridly exaggerating
+its urgency.
+
+Of course, he would not hear a word of it. “He would not go; he would
+not leave his present class, let all the officials of Villette send for
+him. He would not put himself an inch out of his way at the bidding of
+king, cabinet, and chambers together.”
+
+I knew, however, that he _must_ go; that, talk as he would, both his
+duty and interest commanded an immediate and literal compliance with
+the summons: I stood, therefore, waiting in silence, as if he had not
+yet spoken. He asked what more I wanted.
+
+“Only Monsieur’s answer to deliver to the commissionaire.”
+
+He waved an impatient negative.
+
+I ventured to stretch my hand to the bonnet-grec which lay in grim
+repose on the window-sill. He followed this daring movement with his
+eye, no doubt in mixed pity and amazement at its presumption.
+
+“Ah!” he muttered, “if it came to that—if Miss Lucy meddled with his
+bonnet-grec—she might just put it on herself, turn garçon for the
+occasion, and benevolently go to the Athénée in his stead.”
+
+With great respect, I laid the bonnet on the desk, where its tassel
+seemed to give me an awful nod.
+
+“I’ll write a note of apology—that will do!” said he, still bent on
+evasion.
+
+Knowing well it would _not_ do, I gently pushed the bonnet towards his
+hand. Thus impelled, it slid down the polished slope of the varnished
+and unbaized desk, carried before it the light steel-framed “lunettes,”
+and, fearful to relate, they fell to the estrade. A score of times ere
+now had I seen them fall and receive no damage—_this_ time, as Lucy
+Snowe’s hapless luck would have it, they so fell that each clear pebble
+became a shivered and shapeless star.
+
+Now, indeed, dismay seized me—dismay and regret. I knew the value of
+these “lunettes”: M. Paul’s sight was peculiar, not easily fitted, and
+these glasses suited him. I had heard him call them his treasures: as I
+picked them up, cracked and worthless, my hand trembled. Frightened
+through all my nerves I was to see the mischief I had done, but I think
+I was even more sorry than afraid. For some seconds I dared not look
+the bereaved Professor in the face; he was the first to speak.
+
+“Là!” said he: “me voilà veuf de mes lunettes! I think Mademoiselle
+Lucy will now confess that the cord and gallows are amply earned; she
+trembles in anticipation of her doom. Ah, traitress! traitress! You are
+resolved to have me quite blind and helpless in your hands!”
+
+I lifted my eyes: his face, instead of being irate, lowering, and
+furrowed, was overflowing with the smile, coloured with the bloom I had
+seen brightening it that evening at the Hotel Crécy. He was not
+angry—not even grieved. For the real injury he showed himself full of
+clemency; under the real provocation, patient as a saint. This event,
+which seemed so untoward—which I thought had ruined at once my chance
+of successful persuasion—proved my best help. Difficult of management
+so long as I had done him no harm, he became graciously pliant as soon
+as I stood in his presence a conscious and contrite offender.
+
+Still gently railing at me as “une forte femme—une Anglaise
+terrible—une petite casse-tout”—he declared that he dared not but obey
+one who had given such an instance of her dangerous prowess; it was
+absolutely like the “grand Empereur smashing the vase to inspire
+dismay.” So, at last, crowning himself with his bonnet-grec, and taking
+his ruined “lunettes” from my hand with a clasp of kind pardon and
+encouragement, he made his bow, and went off to the Athénée in
+first-rate humour and spirits.
+
+After all this amiability, the reader will be sorry for my sake to hear
+that I was quarrelling with M. Paul again before night; yet so it was,
+and I could not help it.
+
+It was his occasional custom—and a very laudable, acceptable custom,
+too—to arrive of an evening, always à l’improviste, unannounced, burst
+in on the silent hour of study, establish a sudden despotism over us
+and our occupations, cause books to be put away, work-bags to be
+brought out, and, drawing forth a single thick volume, or a handful of
+pamphlets, substitute for the besotted “lecture pieuse,” drawled by a
+sleepy pupil, some tragedy made grand by grand reading, ardent by fiery
+action—some drama, whereof, for my part, I rarely studied the intrinsic
+merit; for M. Emanuel made it a vessel for an outpouring, and filled it
+with his native verve and passion like a cup with a vital brewage. Or
+else he would flash through our conventual darkness a reflex of a
+brighter world, show us a glimpse of the current literature of the day,
+read us passages from some enchanting tale, or the last witty
+feuilleton which had awakened laughter in the saloons of Paris; taking
+care always to expunge, with the severest hand, whether from tragedy,
+melodrama, tale, or essay, whatever passage, phrase, or word, could be
+deemed unsuited to an audience of “jeunes filles.” I noticed more than
+once, that where retrenchment without substitute would have left
+unmeaning vacancy, or introduced weakness, he could, and did, improvise
+whole paragraphs, no less vigorous than irreproachable; the
+dialogue—the description—he engrafted was often far better than that he
+pruned away.
+
+Well, on the evening in question, we were sitting silent as nuns in a
+“retreat,” the pupils studying, the teachers working. I remember my
+work; it was a slight matter of fancy, and it rather interested me; it
+had a purpose; I was not doing it merely to kill time; I meant it when
+finished as a gift; and the occasion of presentation being near, haste
+was requisite, and my fingers were busy.
+
+We heard the sharp bell-peal which we all knew; then the rapid step
+familiar to each ear: the words “Voilà Monsieur!” had scarcely broken
+simultaneously from every lip, when the two-leaved door split (as split
+it always did for his admission—such a slow word as “open” is
+inefficient to describe his movements), and he stood in the midst of
+us.
+
+There were two study tables, both long and flanked with benches; over
+the centre of each hung a lamp; beneath this lamp, on either side the
+table, sat a teacher; the girls were arranged to the right hand and the
+left; the eldest and most studious nearest the lamps or tropics; the
+idlers and little ones towards the north and south poles. Monsieur’s
+habit was politely to hand a chair to some teacher, generally Zélie St.
+Pierre, the senior mistress; then to take her vacated seat; and thus
+avail himself of the full beam of Cancer or Capricorn, which, owing to
+his near sight, he needed.
+
+As usual, Zélie rose with alacrity, smiling to the whole extent of her
+mouth, and the full display of her upper and under rows of teeth—that
+strange smile which passes from ear to ear, and is marked only by a
+sharp thin curve, which fails to spread over the countenance, and
+neither dimples the cheek nor lights the eye. I suppose Monsieur did
+not see her, or he had taken a whim that he would not notice her, for
+he was as capricious as women are said to be; then his “lunettes” (he
+had got another pair) served him as an excuse for all sorts of little
+oversights and shortcomings. Whatever might be his reason, he passed by
+Zélie, came to the other side of the table, and before I could start up
+to clear the way, whispered, “Ne bougez pas,” and established himself
+between me and Miss Fanshawe, who always would be my neighbour, and
+have her elbow in my side, however often I declared to her, “Ginevra, I
+wish you were at Jericho.”
+
+It was easy to say, “Ne bougez pas;” but how could I help it? I must
+make him room, and I must request the pupils to recede that _I_ might
+recede. It was very well for Ginevra to be gummed to me, “keeping
+herself warm,” as she said, on the winter evenings, and harassing my
+very heart with her fidgetings and pokings, obliging me, indeed,
+sometimes to put an artful pin in my girdle by way of protection
+against her elbow; but I suppose M. Emanuel was not to be subjected to
+the same kind of treatment, so I swept away my working materials, to
+clear space for his book, and withdrew myself to make room for his
+person; not, however, leaving more than a yard of interval, just what
+any reasonable man would have regarded as a convenient, respectful
+allowance of bench. But M. Emanuel never _was_ reasonable; flint and
+tinder that he was! he struck and took fire directly.
+
+“Vous ne voulez pas de moi pour voisin,” he growled: “vous vous donnez
+des airs de caste; vous me traitez en paria;” he scowled. “Soit! je
+vais arranger la chose!” And he set to work.
+
+“Levez vous toutes, Mesdemoiselles!” cried he.
+
+The girls rose. He made them all file off to the other table. He then
+placed me at one extremity of the long bench, and having duly and
+carefully brought me my work-basket, silk, scissors, all my implements,
+he fixed himself quite at the other end.
+
+At this arrangement, highly absurd as it was, not a soul in the room
+dared to laugh; luckless for the giggler would have been the giggle. As
+for me, I took it with entire coolness. There I sat, isolated and cut
+off from human intercourse; I sat and minded my work, and was quiet,
+and not at all unhappy.
+
+“Est ce assez de distance?” he demanded.
+
+“Monsieur en est l’arbitre,” said I.
+
+“Vous savez bien que non. C’est vous qui avez crée ce vide immense: moi
+je n’y ai pas mis la main.”
+
+And with this assertion he commenced the reading.
+
+For his misfortune he had chosen a French translation of what he called
+“un drame de Williams Shackspire; le faux dieu,” he further announced,
+“de ces sots païens, les Anglais.” How far otherwise he would have
+characterized him had his temper not been upset, I scarcely need
+intimate.
+
+Of course, the translation being French, was very inefficient; nor did
+I make any particular effort to conceal the contempt which some of its
+forlorn lapses were calculated to excite. Not that it behoved or
+beseemed me to say anything: but one can occasionally _look_ the
+opinion it is forbidden to embody in words. Monsieur’s lunettes being
+on the alert, he gleaned up every stray look; I don’t think he lost
+one: the consequence was, his eyes soon discarded a screen, that their
+blaze might sparkle free, and he waxed hotter at the north pole to
+which he had voluntarily exiled himself, than, considering the general
+temperature of the room, it would have been reasonable to become under
+the vertical ray of Cancer itself.
+
+The reading over, it appeared problematic whether he would depart with
+his anger unexpressed, or whether he would give it vent. Suppression
+was not much in his habits; but still, what had been done to him
+definite enough to afford matter for overt reproof? I had not uttered a
+sound, and could not justly be deemed amenable to reprimand or penalty
+for having permitted a slightly freer action than usual to the muscles
+about my eyes and mouth.
+
+The supper, consisting of bread, and milk diluted with tepid water, was
+brought in. In respectful consideration of the Professor’s presence,
+the rolls and glasses were allowed to stand instead of being
+immediately handed round.
+
+“Take your supper, ladies,” said he, seeming to be occupied in making
+marginal notes to his “Williams Shackspire.” They took it. I also
+accepted a roll and glass, but being now more than ever interested in
+my work, I kept my seat of punishment, and wrought while I munched my
+bread and sipped my beverage, the whole with easy _sang-froid_; with a
+certain snugness of composure, indeed, scarcely in my habits, and
+pleasantly novel to my feelings. It seemed as if the presence of a
+nature so restless, chafing, thorny as that of M. Paul absorbed all
+feverish and unsettling influences like a magnet, and left me none but
+such as were placid and harmonious.
+
+He rose. “Will he go away without saying another word?” Yes; he turned
+to the door.
+
+No: he _re_-turned on his steps; but only, perhaps, to take his
+pencil-case, which had been left on the table.
+
+He took it—shut the pencil in and out, broke its point against the
+wood, re-cut and pocketed it, and . . . walked promptly up to me.
+
+The girls and teachers, gathered round the other table, were talking
+pretty freely: they always talked at meals; and, from the constant
+habit of speaking fast and loud at such times, did not now subdue their
+voices much.
+
+M. Paul came and stood behind me. He asked at what I was working; and I
+said I was making a watchguard.
+
+He asked, “For whom?” And I answered, “For a gentleman—one of my
+friends.”
+
+M. Paul stooped down and proceeded—as novel-writers say, and, as was
+literally true in his case—to “hiss” into my ear some poignant words.
+
+He said that, of all the women he knew, I was the one who could make
+herself the most consummately unpleasant: I was she with whom it was
+least possible to live on friendly terms. I had a “caractère
+intraitable,” and perverse to a miracle. How I managed it, or what
+possessed me, he, for his part, did not know; but with whatever pacific
+and amicable intentions a person accosted me—crac! I turned concord to
+discord, good-will to enmity. He was sure, he—M. Paul—wished me well
+enough; he had never done me any harm that he knew of; he might, at
+least, he supposed, claim a right to be regarded as a neutral
+acquaintance, guiltless of hostile sentiments: yet, how I behaved to
+him! With what pungent vivacities—what an impetus of mutiny—what a
+“fougue” of injustice!
+
+Here I could not avoid opening my eyes somewhat wide, and even slipping
+in a slight interjectional observation: “Vivacities? Impetus? Fougue? I
+didn’t know….”
+
+“Chut! à l’instant! There! there I went—vive comme la poudre!” He was
+sorry—he was very sorry: for my sake he grieved over the hapless
+peculiarity. This “emportement,” this “chaleur”—generous, perhaps, but
+excessive—would yet, he feared, do me a mischief. It was a pity: I was
+not—he believed, in his soul—wholly without good qualities: and would I
+but hear reason, and be more sedate, more sober, less “en l’air,” less
+“coquette,” less taken by show, less prone to set an undue value on
+outside excellence—to make much of the attentions of people remarkable
+chiefly for so many feet of stature, “des couleurs de poupée,” “un nez
+plus ou moins bien fait,” and an enormous amount of fatuity—I might yet
+prove an useful, perhaps an exemplary character. But, as it was—And
+here, the little man’s voice was for a minute choked.
+
+I would have looked up at him, or held out my hand, or said a soothing
+word; but I was afraid, if I stirred, I should either laugh or cry; so
+odd, in all this, was the mixture of the touching and the absurd.
+
+I thought he had nearly done: but no; he sat down that he might go on
+at his ease.
+
+“While he, M. Paul, was on these painful topics, he would dare my anger
+for the sake of my good, and would venture to refer to a change he had
+noticed in my dress. He was free to confess that when he first knew
+me—or, rather, was in the habit of catching a passing glimpse of me
+from time to time—I satisfied him on this point: the gravity, the
+austere simplicity, obvious in this particular, were such as to inspire
+the highest hopes for my best interests. What fatal influence had
+impelled me lately to introduce flowers under the brim of my bonnet, to
+wear ‘des cols brodés,’ and even to appear on one occasion in a
+_scarlet gown_—he might indeed conjecture, but, for the present, would
+not openly declare.”
+
+Again I interrupted, and this time not without an accent at once
+indignant and horror-struck.
+
+“Scarlet, Monsieur Paul? It was not scarlet! It was pink, and pale pink
+too, and further subdued by black lace.”
+
+“Pink or scarlet, yellow or crimson, pea-green or sky-blue, it was all
+one: these were all flaunting, giddy colours; and as to the lace I
+talked of, _that_ was but a ‘colifichet de plus.’” And he sighed over
+my degeneracy. “He could not, he was sorry to say, be so particular on
+this theme as he could wish: not possessing the exact names of these
+‘babioles,’ he might run into small verbal errors which would not fail
+to lay him open to my sarcasm, and excite my unhappily sudden and
+passionate disposition. He would merely say, in general terms—and in
+these general terms he knew he was correct—that my costume had of late
+assumed ‘des façons mondaines,’ which it wounded him to see.”
+
+What “façons mondaines” he discovered in my present winter merino and
+plain white collar, I own it puzzled me to guess: and when I asked him,
+he said it was all made with too much attention to effect—and besides,
+“had I not a bow of ribbon at my neck?”
+
+“And if you condemn a bow of ribbon for a lady, Monsieur, you would
+necessarily disapprove of a thing like this for a gentleman?”—holding
+up my bright little chainlet of silk and gold. His sole reply was a
+groan—I suppose over my levity.
+
+After sitting some minutes in silence, and watching the progress of the
+chain, at which I now wrought more assiduously than ever, he inquired:
+“Whether what he had just said would have the effect of making me
+entirely detest him?”
+
+I hardly remember what answer I made, or how it came about; I don’t
+think I spoke at all, but I know we managed to bid good-night on
+friendly terms: and, even after M. Paul had reached the door, he turned
+back just to explain, “that he would not be understood to speak in
+entire condemnation of the scarlet dress” (“Pink! pink!” I threw in);
+“that he had no intention to deny it the merit of _looking_ rather
+well” (the fact was, M. Emanuel’s taste in colours decidedly leaned to
+the brilliant); “only he wished to counsel me, whenever, I wore it, to
+do so in the same spirit as if its material were ‘bure,’ and its hue
+‘gris de poussière.’”
+
+“And the flowers under my bonnet, Monsieur?” I asked. “They are very
+little ones—?”
+
+“Keep them little, then,” said he. “Permit them not to become
+full-blown.”
+
+“And the bow, Monsieur—the bit of ribbon?”
+
+“Va pour le ruban!” was the propitious answer.
+
+And so we settled it.
+
+“Well done, Lucy Snowe!” cried I to myself; “you have come in for a
+pretty lecture—brought on yourself a ‘rude savant,’ and all through
+your wicked fondness for worldly vanities! Who would have thought it?
+You deemed yourself a melancholy sober-sides enough! Miss Fanshawe
+there regards you as a second Diogenes. M. de Bassompierre, the other
+day, politely turned the conversation when it ran on the wild gifts of
+the actress Vashti, because, as he kindly said, ‘Miss Snowe looked
+uncomfortable.’ Dr. John Bretton knows you only as ‘quiet Lucy’—‘a
+creature inoffensive as a shadow;’ he has said, and you have heard him
+say it: ‘Lucy’s disadvantages spring from over-gravity in tastes and
+manner—want of colour in character and costume.’ Such are your own and
+your friends’ impressions; and behold! there starts up a little man,
+differing diametrically from all these, roundly charging you with being
+too airy and cheery—too volatile and versatile—too flowery and coloury.
+This harsh little man—this pitiless censor—gathers up all your poor
+scattered sins of vanity, your luckless chiffon of rose-colour, your
+small fringe of a wreath, your small scrap of ribbon, your silly bit of
+lace, and calls you to account for the lot, and for each item. You are
+well habituated to be passed by as a shadow in Life’s sunshine: it is a
+new thing to see one testily lifting his hand to screen his eyes,
+because you tease him with an obtrusive ray.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+MONSIEUR’S FÊTE.
+
+
+I was up the next morning an hour before daybreak, and finished my
+guard, kneeling on the dormitory floor beside the centre stand, for the
+benefit of such expiring glimmer as the night-lamp afforded in its last
+watch.
+
+All my materials—my whole stock of beads and silk—were used up before
+the chain assumed the length and richness I wished; I had wrought it
+double, as I knew, by the rule of contraries, that to, suit the
+particular taste whose gratification was in view, an effective
+appearance was quite indispensable. As a finish to the ornament, a
+little gold clasp was needed; fortunately I possessed it in the
+fastening of my sole necklace; I duly detached and re-attached it, then
+coiled compactly the completed guard; and enclosed it in a small box I
+had bought for its brilliancy, made of some tropic shell of the colour
+called “nacarat,” and decked with a little coronal of sparkling blue
+stones. Within the lid of the box, I carefully graved with my scissors’
+point certain initials.
+
+The reader will, perhaps, remember the description of Madame Beck’s
+fête; nor will he have forgotten that at each anniversary, a handsome
+present was subscribed for and offered by the school. The observance of
+this day was a distinction accorded to none but Madame, and, in a
+modified form, to her kinsman and counsellor, M. Emanuel. In the latter
+case it was an honour spontaneously awarded, not plotted and contrived
+beforehand, and offered an additional proof, amongst many others, of
+the estimation in which—despite his partialities, prejudices, and
+irritabilities—the professor of literature was held by his pupils. No
+article of value was offered to him: he distinctly gave it to be
+understood, that he would accept neither plate nor jewellery. Yet he
+liked a slight tribute; the cost, the money-value, did not touch him: a
+diamond ring, a gold snuff-box, presented, with pomp, would have
+pleased him less than a flower, or a drawing, offered simply and with
+sincere feelings. Such was his nature. He was a man, not wise in his
+generation, yet could he claim a filial sympathy with “the dayspring on
+high.”
+
+M. Paul’s fête fell on the first of March and a Thursday. It proved a
+fine sunny day; and being likewise the morning on which it was
+customary to attend mass; being also otherwise distinguished by the
+half-holiday which permitted the privilege of walking out, shopping, or
+paying visits in the afternoon: these combined considerations induced a
+general smartness and freshness of dress. Clean collars were in vogue;
+the ordinary dingy woollen classe-dress was exchanged for something
+lighter and clearer. Mademoiselle Zélie St. Pierre, on this particular
+Thursday, even assumed a “robe de soie,” deemed in economical
+Labassecour an article of hazardous splendour and luxury; nay, it was
+remarked that she sent for a “coiffeur” to dress her hair that morning;
+there were pupils acute enough to discover that she had bedewed her
+handkerchief and her hands with a new and fashionable perfume. Poor
+Zélie! It was much her wont to declare about this time, that she was
+tired to death of a life of seclusion and labour; that she longed to
+have the means and leisure for relaxation; to have some one to work for
+her—a husband who would pay her debts (she was woefully encumbered with
+debt), supply her wardrobe, and leave her at liberty, as she said, to
+“goûter un peu les plaisirs.” It had long been rumoured, that her eye
+was upon M. Emanuel. Monsieur Emanuel’s eye was certainly often upon
+her. He would sit and watch her perseveringly for minutes together. I
+have seen him give her a quarter-of-an-hour’s gaze, while the class was
+silently composing, and he sat throned on his estrade, unoccupied.
+Conscious always of this basilisk attention, she would writhe under it,
+half-flattered, half-puzzled, and Monsieur would follow her sensations,
+sometimes looking appallingly acute; for in some cases, he had the
+terrible unerring penetration of instinct, and pierced in its
+hiding-place the last lurking thought of the heart, and discerned under
+florid veilings the bare; barren places of the spirit: yes, and its
+perverted tendencies, and its hidden false curves—all that men and
+women would not have known—the twisted spine, the malformed limb that
+was born with them, and far worse, the stain or disfigurement they have
+perhaps brought on themselves. No calamity so accursed but M. Emanuel
+could pity and forgive, if it were acknowledged candidly; but where his
+questioning eyes met dishonest denial—where his ruthless researches
+found deceitful concealment—oh, then, he could be cruel, and I thought
+wicked! he would exultantly snatch the screen from poor shrinking
+wretches, passionately hurry them to the summit of the mount of
+exposure, and there show them all naked, all false—poor living lies—the
+spawn of that horrid Truth which cannot be looked on unveiled. He
+thought he did justice; for my part I doubt whether man has a right to
+do such justice on man: more than once in these his visitations, I have
+felt compelled to give tears to his victims, and not spared ire and
+keen reproach to himself. He deserved it; but it was difficult to shake
+him in his firm conviction that the work was righteous and needed.
+
+Breakfast being over and mass attended, the school-bell rang and the
+rooms filled: a very pretty spectacle was presented in classe. Pupils
+and teachers sat neatly arrayed, orderly and expectant, each bearing in
+her hand the bouquet of felicitation—the prettiest spring-flowers all
+fresh, and filling the air with their fragrance: I only had no bouquet.
+I like to see flowers growing, but when they are gathered, they cease
+to please. I look on them as things rootless and perishable; their
+likeness to life makes me sad. I never offer flowers to those I love; I
+never wish to receive them from hands dear to me. Mademoiselle St.
+Pierre marked my empty hands—she could not believe I had been so
+remiss; with avidity her eye roved over and round me: surely I must
+have some solitary symbolic flower somewhere: some small knot of
+violets, something to win myself praise for taste, commendation for
+ingenuity. The unimaginative “Anglaise” proved better than the
+Parisienne’s fears: she sat literally unprovided, as bare of bloom or
+leaf as the winter tree. This ascertained, Zélie smiled, well pleased.
+
+“How wisely you have acted to keep your money, Miss Lucie,” she said:
+“silly I have gone and thrown away two francs on a bouquet of hot-house
+flowers!”
+
+And she showed with pride her splendid nosegay.
+
+But hush! a step: _the_ step. It came prompt, as usual, but with a
+promptitude, we felt disposed to flatter ourselves, inspired by other
+feelings than mere excitability of nerve and vehemence of intent. We
+thought our Professor’s “foot-fall” (to speak romantically) had in it a
+friendly promise this morning; and so it had.
+
+He entered in a mood which made him as good as a new sunbeam to the
+already well-lit first classe. The morning light playing amongst our
+plants and laughing on our walls, caught an added lustre from M. Paul’s
+all-benignant salute. Like a true Frenchman (though I don’t know why I
+should say so, for he was of strain neither French nor Labassecourien),
+he had dressed for the “situation” and the occasion. Not by the vague
+folds, sinister and conspirator-like, of his soot-dark paletôt were the
+outlines of his person obscured; on the contrary, his figure (such as
+it was, I don’t boast of it) was well set off by a civilized coat and a
+silken vest quite pretty to behold. The defiant and pagan bonnet-grec
+had vanished: bare-headed, he came upon us, carrying a Christian hat in
+his gloved hand. The little man looked well, very well; there was a
+clearness of amity in his blue eye, and a glow of good feeling on his
+dark complexion, which passed perfectly in the place of beauty: one
+really did not care to observe that his nose, though far from small,
+was of no particular shape, his cheek thin, his brow marked and square,
+his mouth no rose-bud: one accepted him as he was, and felt his
+presence the reverse of damping or insignificant.
+
+He passed to his desk; he placed on the same his hat and gloves. “Bon
+jour, mes amies,” said he, in a tone that somehow made amends to some
+amongst us for many a sharp snap and savage snarl: not a jocund,
+good-fellow tone, still less an unctuous priestly, accent, but a voice
+he had belonging to himself—a voice used when his heart passed the
+words to his lips. That same heart did speak sometimes; though an
+irritable, it was not an ossified organ: in its core was a place,
+tender beyond a man’s tenderness; a place that humbled him to little
+children, that bound him to girls and women to whom, rebel as he would,
+he could not disown his affinity, nor quite deny that, on the whole, he
+was better with them than with his own sex.
+
+“We all wish Monsieur a good day, and present to him our
+congratulations on the anniversary of his fête,” said Mademoiselle
+Zélie, constituting herself spokeswoman of the assembly; and advancing
+with no more twists of affectation than were with her indispensable to
+the achievement of motion, she laid her costly bouquet before him. He
+bowed over it.
+
+The long train of offerings followed: all the pupils, sweeping past
+with the gliding step foreigners practise, left their tributes as they
+went by. Each girl so dexterously adjusted her separate gift, that when
+the last bouquet was laid on the desk, it formed the apex to a blooming
+pyramid—a pyramid blooming, spreading, and towering with such
+exuberance as, in the end, to eclipse the hero behind it. This ceremony
+over, seats were resumed, and we sat in dead silence, expectant of a
+speech.
+
+I suppose five minutes might have elapsed, and the hush remained
+unbroken; ten—and there was no sound.
+
+Many present began, doubtless, to wonder for what Monsieur waited; as
+well they might. Voiceless and viewless, stirless and wordless, he kept
+his station behind the pile of flowers.
+
+At last there issued forth a voice, rather deep, as if it spoke out of
+a hollow:—
+
+“Est-ce là tout?”
+
+Mademoiselle Zélie looked round.
+
+“You have all presented your bouquets?” inquired she of the pupils.
+
+Yes; they had all given their nosegays, from the eldest to the
+youngest, from the tallest to the most diminutive. The senior mistress
+signified as much.
+
+“Est-ce là tout?” was reiterated in an intonation which, deep before,
+had now descended some notes lower.
+
+“Monsieur,” said Mademoiselle St. Pierre, rising, and this time
+speaking with her own sweet smile, “I have the honour to tell you that,
+with a single exception, every person in classe has offered her
+bouquet. For Meess Lucie, Monsieur will kindly make allowance; as a
+foreigner she probably did not know our customs, or did not appreciate
+their significance. Meess Lucie has regarded this ceremony as too
+frivolous to be honoured by her observance.”
+
+“Famous!” I muttered between my teeth: “you are no bad speaker, Zélie,
+when you begin.”
+
+The answer vouchsafed to Mademoiselle St Pierre from the estrade was
+given in the gesticulation of a hand from behind the pyramid. This
+manual action seemed to deprecate words, to enjoin silence.
+
+A form, ere long, followed the hand. Monsieur emerged from his eclipse;
+and producing himself on the front of his estrade, and gazing straight
+and fixedly before him at a vast “mappe-monde” covering the wall
+opposite, he demanded a third time, and now in really tragic tones—
+
+“Est-ce là tout?”
+
+I might yet have made all right, by stepping forwards and slipping into
+his hand the ruddy little shell-box I at that moment held tight in my
+own. It was what I had fully purposed to do; but, first, the comic side
+of Monsieur’s behaviour had tempted me to delay, and now, Mademoiselle
+St. Pierre’s affected interference provoked contumacity. The reader not
+having hitherto had any cause to ascribe to Miss Snowe’s character the
+most distant pretensions to perfection, will be scarcely surprised to
+learn that she felt too perverse to defend herself from any imputation
+the Parisienne might choose to insinuate and besides, M. Paul was so
+tragic, and took my defection so seriously, he deserved to be vexed. I
+kept, then, both my box and my countenance, and sat insensate as any
+stone.
+
+“It is well!” dropped at length from the lips of M. Paul; and having
+uttered this phrase, the shadow of some great paroxysm—the swell of
+wrath, scorn, resolve—passed over his brow, rippled his lips, and lined
+his cheeks. Gulping down all further comment, he launched into his
+customary “discours.”
+
+I can’t at all remember what this “discours” was; I did not listen to
+it: the gulping-down process, the abrupt dismissal of his mortification
+or vexation, had given me a sensation which half-counteracted the
+ludicrous effect of the reiterated “Est-ce là tout?”
+
+Towards the close of the speech there came a pleasing diversion my
+attention was again amusingly arrested.
+
+Owing to some little accidental movement—I think I dropped my thimble
+on the floor, and in stooping to regain it, hit the crown of my head
+against the sharp corner of my desk; which casualties (exasperating to
+me, by rights, if to anybody) naturally made a slight bustle—M. Paul
+became irritated, and dismissing his forced equanimity, and casting to
+the winds that dignity and self-control with which he never cared long
+to encumber himself, he broke forth into the strain best calculated to
+give him ease.
+
+I don’t know how, in the progress of his “discours,” he had contrived
+to cross the Channel and land on British ground; but there I found him
+when I began to listen.
+
+Casting a quick, cynical glance round the room—a glance which scathed,
+or was intended to scathe, as it crossed me—he fell with fury upon “les
+Anglaises.”
+
+Never have I heard English women handled as M. Paul that morning
+handled them: he spared nothing—neither their minds, morals, manners,
+nor personal appearance. I specially remember his abuse of their tall
+stature, their long necks, their thin arms, their slovenly dress, their
+pedantic education, their impious scepticism(!), their insufferable
+pride, their pretentious virtue: over which he ground his teeth
+malignantly, and looked as if, had he dared, he would have said
+singular things. Oh! he was spiteful, acrid, savage; and, as a natural
+consequence, detestably ugly.
+
+“Little wicked venomous man!” thought I; “am I going to harass myself
+with fears of displeasing you, or hurting your feelings? No, indeed;
+you shall be indifferent to me, as the shabbiest bouquet in your
+pyramid.”
+
+I grieve to say I could not quite carry out this resolution. For some
+time the abuse of England and the English found and left me stolid: I
+bore it some fifteen minutes stoically enough; but this hissing
+cockatrice was determined to sting, and he said such things at
+last—fastening not only upon our women, but upon our greatest names and
+best men; sullying, the shield of Britannia, and dabbling the union
+jack in mud—that I was stung. With vicious relish he brought up the
+most spicy current continental historical falsehoods—than which nothing
+can be conceived more offensive. Zélie, and the whole class, became one
+grin of vindictive delight; for it is curious to discover how these
+clowns of Labassecour secretly hate England. At last, I struck a sharp
+stroke on my desk, opened my lips, and let loose this cry:—
+
+“Vive l’Angleterre, l’Histoire et les Héros! A bas la France, la
+Fiction et les Faquins!”
+
+The class was struck of a heap. I suppose they thought me mad. The
+Professor put up his handkerchief, and fiendishly smiled into its
+folds. Little monster of malice! He now thought he had got the victory,
+since he had made me angry. In a second he became good-humoured. With
+great blandness he resumed the subject of his flowers; talked
+poetically and symbolically of their sweetness, perfume, purity,
+etcetera; made Frenchified comparisons between the “jeunes filles” and
+the sweet blossoms before him; paid Mademoiselle St. Pierre a very
+full-blown compliment on the superiority of her bouquet; and ended by
+announcing that the first really fine, mild, and balmy morning in
+spring, he intended to take the whole class out to breakfast in the
+country. “Such of the class, at least,” he added, with emphasis, “as he
+could count amongst the number of his friends.”
+
+“Donc je n’y serai pas,” declared I, involuntarily.
+
+“Soit!” was his response; and, gathering his flowers in his arms, he
+flashed out of classe; while I, consigning my work, scissors, thimble,
+and the neglected little box, to my desk, swept up-stairs. I don’t know
+whether _he_ felt hot and angry, but I am free to confess that _I_ did.
+
+Yet with a strange evanescent anger, I had not sat an hour on the edge
+of my bed, picturing and repicturing his look, manner, words ere I
+smiled at the whole scene. A little pang of regret I underwent that the
+box had not been offered. I had meant to gratify him. Fate would not
+have it so.
+
+In the course of the afternoon, remembering that desks in classe were
+by no means inviolate repositories, and thinking that it was as well to
+secure the box, on account of the initials in the lid, P. C. D. E., for
+Paul Carl (or Carlos) David Emanuel—such was his full name—these
+foreigners must always have a string of baptismals—I descended to the
+schoolroom.
+
+It slept in holiday repose. The day pupils were all gone home, the
+boarders were out walking, the teachers, except the surveillante of the
+week, were in town, visiting or shopping; the suite of divisions was
+vacant; so was the grande salle, with its huge solemn globe hanging in
+the midst, its pair of many-branched chandeliers, and its horizontal
+grand piano closed, silent, enjoying its mid-week Sabbath. I rather
+wondered to find the first classe door ajar; this room being usually
+locked when empty, and being then inaccessible to any save Madame Beck
+and myself, who possessed a duplicate key. I wondered still more, on
+approaching, to hear a vague movement as of life—a step, a chair
+stirred, a sound like the opening of a desk.
+
+“It is only Madame Beck doing inspection duty,” was the conclusion
+following a moment’s reflection. The partially-opened door gave
+opportunity for assurance on this point. I looked. Behold! not the
+inspecting garb of Madame Beck—the shawl and the clean cap—but the
+coat, and the close-shorn, dark head of a man. This person occupied my
+chair; his olive hand held my desk open, his nose was lost to view
+amongst my papers. His back was towards me, but there could not be a
+moment’s question about identity. Already was the attire of ceremony
+discarded: the cherished and ink-stained paletôt was resumed; the
+perverse bonnet-grec lay on the floor, as if just dropped from the
+hand, culpably busy.
+
+Now I knew, and I had long known, that that hand of M. Emanuel’s was on
+the most intimate terms with my desk; that it raised and lowered the
+lid, ransacked and arranged the contents, almost as familiarly as my
+own. The fact was not dubious, nor did he wish it to be so: he left
+signs of each visit palpable and unmistakable; hitherto, however, I had
+never caught him in the act: watch as I would, I could not detect the
+hours and moments of his coming. I saw the brownie’s work in exercises
+left overnight full of faults, and found next morning carefully
+corrected: I profited by his capricious good-will in loans full welcome
+and refreshing. Between a sallow dictionary and worn-out grammar would
+magically grow a fresh interesting new work, or a classic, mellow and
+sweet in its ripe age. Out of my work-basket would laughingly peep a
+romance, under it would lurk the pamphlet, the magazine, whence last
+evening’s reading had been extracted. Impossible to doubt the source
+whence these treasures flowed: had there been no other indication, one
+condemning and traitor peculiarity, common to them all, settled the
+question—_they smelt of cigars_. This was very shocking, of course: _I_
+thought so at first, and used to open the window with some bustle, to
+air my desk, and with fastidious finger and thumb, to hold the peccant
+brochures forth to the purifying breeze. I was cured of that formality
+suddenly. Monsieur caught me at it one day, understood the inference,
+instantly relieved my hand of its burden, and, in another moment, would
+have thrust the same into the glowing stove. It chanced to be a book,
+on the perusal of which I was bent; so for once I proved as decided and
+quicker than himself; recaptured the spoil, and—having saved this
+volume—never hazarded a second. With all this, I had never yet been
+able to arrest in his visits the freakish, friendly, cigar-loving
+phantom.
+
+But now at last I had him: there he was—the very brownie himself; and
+there, curling from his lips, was the pale blue breath of his Indian
+darling: he was smoking into my desk: it might well betray him.
+Provoked at this particular, and yet pleased to surprise him—pleased,
+that is, with the mixed feeling of the housewife who discovers at last
+her strange elfin ally busy in the dairy at the untimely churn—I softly
+stole forward, stood behind him, bent with precaution over his
+shoulder.
+
+My heart smote me to see that—after this morning’s hostility, after my
+seeming remissness, after the puncture experienced by his feelings, and
+the ruffling undergone by his temper—he, all willing to forget and
+forgive, had brought me a couple of handsome volumes, of which the
+title and authorship were guarantees for interest. Now, as he sat
+bending above the desk, he was stirring up its contents; but with
+gentle and careful hand; disarranging indeed, but not harming. My heart
+smote me: as I bent over him, as he sat unconscious, doing me what good
+he could, and I daresay not feeling towards me unkindly, my morning’s
+anger quite melted: I did not dislike Professor Emanuel.
+
+I think he heard me breathe. He turned suddenly: his temperament was
+nervous, yet he never started, and seldom changed colour: there was
+something hardy about him.
+
+“I thought you were gone into town with the other teachers,” said he,
+taking a grim gripe of his self-possession, which half-escaped him—“It
+is as well you are not. Do you think I care for being caught? Not I. I
+often visit your desk.”
+
+“Monsieur, I know it.”
+
+“You find a brochure or tome now and then; but you don’t read them,
+because they have passed under this?”—touching his cigar.
+
+“They have, and are no better for the process; but I read them.”
+
+“Without pleasure?”
+
+“Monsieur must not be contradicted.”
+
+“Do you like them, or any of them?—are they acceptable?” “Monsieur has
+seen me reading them a hundred times, and knows I have not so many
+recreations as to undervalue those he provides.”
+
+“I mean well; and, if you see that I mean well, and derive some little
+amusement from my efforts, why can we not be friends?”
+
+“A fatalist would say—because we cannot.”
+
+“This morning,” he continued, “I awoke in a bright mood, and came into
+classe happy; you spoiled my day.”
+
+“No, Monsieur, only an hour or two of it, and that unintentionally.”
+
+“Unintentionally! No. It was my fête-day; everybody wished me happiness
+but you. The little children of the third division gave each her knot
+of violets, lisped each her congratulation:—you—nothing. Not a bud,
+leaf, whisper—not a glance. Was this unintentional?”
+
+“I meant no harm.”
+
+“Then you really did not know our custom? You were unprepared? You
+would willingly have laid out a few centimes on a flower to give me
+pleasure, had you been aware that it was expected? Say so, and all is
+forgotten, and the pain soothed.”
+
+“I did know that it was expected: I _was_ prepared; yet I laid out no
+centimes on flowers.”
+
+“It is well—you do right to be honest. I should almost have hated you
+had you flattered and lied. Better declare at once ‘Paul Carl
+Emanuel—je te déteste, mon garçon!’—than smile an interest, look an
+affection, and be false and cold at heart. False and cold I don’t think
+you are; but you have made a great mistake in life, that I believe; I
+think your judgment is warped—that you are indifferent where you ought
+to be grateful—and perhaps devoted and infatuated, where you ought to
+be cool as your name. Don’t suppose that I wish you to have a passion
+for me, Mademoiselle; Dieu vous en garde! What do you start for?
+Because I said passion? Well, I say it again. There is such a word, and
+there is such a thing—though not within these walls, thank heaven! You
+are no child that one should not speak of what exists; but I only
+uttered the word—the thing, I assure you, is alien to my whole life and
+views. It died in the past—in the present it lies buried—its grave is
+deep-dug, well-heaped, and many winters old: in the future there will
+be a resurrection, as I believe to my souls consolation; but all will
+then be changed—form and feeling: the mortal will have put on
+immortality—it will rise, not for earth, but heaven. All I say to
+_you_, Miss Lucy Snowe, is—that you ought to treat Professor Paul
+Emanuel decently.”
+
+I could not, and did not contradict such a sentiment.
+
+“Tell me,” he pursued, “when it is _your_ fête-day, and I will not
+grudge a few centimes for a small offering.”
+
+“You will be like me, Monsieur: this cost more than a few centimes, and
+I did not grudge its price.”
+
+And taking from the open desk the little box, I put it into his hand.
+
+“It lay ready in my lap this morning,” I continued; “and if Monsieur
+had been rather more patient, and Mademoiselle St. Pierre less
+interfering—perhaps I should say, too, if _I_ had been calmer and
+wiser—I should have given it then.”
+
+He looked at the box: I saw its clear warm tint and bright azure
+circlet, pleased his eyes. I told him to open it.
+
+“My initials!” said he, indicating the letters in the lid. “Who told
+you I was called Carl David?”
+
+“A little bird, Monsieur.”
+
+“Does it fly from me to you? Then one can tie a message under its wing
+when needful.”
+
+He took out the chain—a trifle indeed as to value, but glossy with silk
+and sparkling with beads. He liked that too—admired it artlessly, like
+a child.
+
+“For me?”
+
+“Yes, for you.”
+
+“This is the thing you were working at last night?”
+
+“The same.”
+
+“You finished it this morning?”
+
+“I did.”
+
+“You commenced it with the intention that it should be mine?”
+
+“Undoubtedly.”
+
+“And offered on my fête-day?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“This purpose continued as you wove it?”
+
+Again I assented.
+
+“Then it is not necessary that I should cut out any portion—saying,
+this part is not mine: it was plaited under the idea and for the
+adornment of another?”
+
+“By no means. It is neither necessary, nor would it be just.”
+
+“This object is _all_ mine?”
+
+“That object is yours entirely.”
+
+Straightway Monsieur opened his paletôt, arranged the guard splendidly
+across his chest, displaying as much and suppressing as little as he
+could: for he had no notion of concealing what he admired and thought
+decorative. As to the box, he pronounced it a superb bonbonnière—he was
+fond of bonbons, by the way—and as he always liked to share with others
+what pleased himself, he would give his “dragées” as freely as he lent
+his books. Amongst the kind brownie’s gifts left in my desk, I forgot
+to enumerate many a paper of chocolate comfits. His tastes in these
+matters were southern, and what we think infantine. His simple lunch
+consisted frequently of a “brioche,” which, as often as not, he shared
+with some child of the third division.
+
+“A présent c’est un fait accompli,” said he, re-adjusting his paletôt;
+and we had no more words on the subject. After looking over the two
+volumes he had brought, and cutting away some pages with his penknife
+(he generally pruned before lending his books, especially if they were
+novels, and sometimes I was a little provoked at the severity of his
+censorship, the retrenchments interrupting the narrative), he rose,
+politely touched his bonnet-grec, and bade me a civil good-day.
+
+“We are friends now,” thought I, “till the next time we quarrel.”
+
+We _might_ have quarrelled again that very same evening, but, wonderful
+to relate, failed, for once, to make the most of our opportunity.
+
+Contrary to all expectation, M. Paul arrived at the study-hour. Having
+seen so much of him in the morning, we did not look for his presence at
+night. No sooner were we seated at lessons, however, than he appeared.
+I own I was glad to see him, so glad that I could not help greeting his
+arrival with a smile; and when he made his way to the same seat about
+which so serious a misunderstanding had formerly arisen, I took good
+care not to make too much room for him; he watched with a jealous,
+side-long look, to see whether I shrank away, but I did not, though the
+bench was a little crowded. I was losing the early impulse to recoil
+from M. Paul. Habituated to the paletôt and bonnet-grec, the
+neighbourhood of these garments seemed no longer uncomfortable or very
+formidable. I did not now sit restrained, “asphyxiée” (as he used to
+say) at his side; I stirred when I wished to stir, coughed when it was
+necessary, even yawned when I was tired—did, in short, what I pleased,
+blindly reliant upon his indulgence. Nor did my temerity, this evening
+at least, meet the punishment it perhaps merited; he was both indulgent
+and good-natured; not a cross glance shot from his eyes, not a hasty
+word left his lips. Till the very close of the evening, he did not
+indeed address me at all, yet I felt, somehow, that he was full of
+friendliness. Silence is of different kinds, and breathes different
+meanings; no words could inspire a pleasanter content than did M.
+Paul’s worldless presence. When the tray came in, and the bustle of
+supper commenced, he just said, as he retired, that he wished me a good
+night and sweet dreams; and a good night and sweet dreams I had.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+M. PAUL.
+
+
+Yet the reader is advised not to be in any hurry with his kindly
+conclusions, or to suppose, with an over-hasty charity, that from that
+day M. Paul became a changed character—easy to live with, and no longer
+apt to flash danger and discomfort round him.
+
+No; he was naturally a little man of unreasonable moods. When
+over-wrought, which he often was, he became acutely irritable; and,
+besides, his veins were dark with a livid belladonna tincture, the
+essence of jealousy. I do not mean merely the tender jealousy of the
+heart, but that sterner, narrower sentiment whose seat is in the head.
+
+I used to think, as I sat looking at M. Paul, while he was knitting his
+brow or protruding his lip over some exercise of mine, which had not as
+many faults as he wished (for he liked me to commit faults: a knot of
+blunders was sweet to him as a cluster of nuts), that he had points of
+resemblance to Napoleon Bonaparte. I think so still.
+
+In a shameless disregard of magnanimity, he resembled the great
+Emperor. M. Paul would have quarrelled with twenty learned women, would
+have unblushingly carried on a system of petty bickering and
+recrimination with a whole capital of coteries, never troubling himself
+about loss or lack of dignity. He would have exiled fifty Madame de
+Staëls, if, they had annoyed, offended, outrivalled, or opposed him.
+
+I well remember a hot episode of his with a certain Madame Panache—a
+lady temporarily employed by Madame Beck to give lessons in history.
+She was clever—that is, she knew a good deal; and, besides, thoroughly
+possessed the art of making the most of what she knew; of words and
+confidence she held unlimited command. Her personal appearance was far
+from destitute of advantages; I believe many people would have
+pronounced her “a fine woman;” and yet there were points in her robust
+and ample attractions, as well as in her bustling and demonstrative
+presence, which, it appeared, the nice and capricious tastes of M. Paul
+could not away with. The sound of her voice, echoing through the carré,
+would put him into a strange taking; her long free step—almost
+stride—along the corridor, would often make him snatch up his papers
+and decamp on the instant.
+
+With malicious intent he bethought himself, one day, to intrude on her
+class; as quick as lightning he gathered her method of instruction; it
+differed from a pet plan of his own. With little ceremony, and less
+courtesy, he pointed out what he termed her errors. Whether he expected
+submission and attention, I know not; he met an acrid opposition,
+accompanied by a round reprimand for his certainly unjustifiable
+interference.
+
+Instead of withdrawing with dignity, as he might still have done, he
+threw down the gauntlet of defiance. Madame Panache, bellicose as a
+Penthesilea, picked it up in a minute. She snapped her fingers in the
+intermeddler’s face; she rushed upon him with a storm of words. M.
+Emanuel was eloquent; but Madame Panache was voluble. A system of
+fierce antagonism ensued. Instead of laughing in his sleeve at his fair
+foe, with all her sore amour-propre and loud self-assertion, M. Paul
+detested her with intense seriousness; he honoured her with his earnest
+fury; he pursued her vindictively and implacably, refusing to rest
+peaceably in his bed, to derive due benefit from his meals, or even
+serenely to relish his cigar, till she was fairly rooted out of the
+establishment. The Professor conquered, but I cannot say that the
+laurels of this victory shadowed gracefully his temples. Once I
+ventured to hint as much. To my great surprise he allowed that I might
+be right, but averred that when brought into contact with either men or
+women of the coarse, self-complacent quality, whereof Madame Panache
+was a specimen, he had no control over his own passions; an unspeakable
+and active aversion impelled him to a war of extermination.
+
+Three months afterwards, hearing that his vanquished foe had met with
+reverses, and was likely to be really distressed for want of
+employment, he forgot his hatred, and alike active in good and evil, he
+moved heaven and earth till he found her a place. Upon her coming to
+make up former differences, and thank him for his recent kindness, the
+old voice—a little loud—the old manner—a little forward—so acted upon
+him that in ten minutes he started up and bowed her, or rather himself,
+out of the room, in a transport of nervous irritation.
+
+To pursue a somewhat audacious parallel, in a love of power, in an
+eager grasp after supremacy, M. Emanuel was like Bonaparte. He was a
+man not always to be submitted to. Sometimes it was needful to resist;
+it was right to stand still, to look up into his eyes and tell him that
+his requirements went beyond reason—that his absolutism verged on
+tyranny.
+
+The dawnings, the first developments of peculiar talent appearing
+within his range, and under his rule, curiously excited, even disturbed
+him. He watched its struggle into life with a scowl; he held back his
+hand—perhaps said, “Come on if you have strength,” but would not aid
+the birth.
+
+When the pang and peril of the first conflict were over, when the
+breath of life was drawn, when he saw the lungs expand and contract,
+when he felt the heart beat and discovered life in the eye, he did not
+yet offer to foster.
+
+“Prove yourself true ere I cherish you,” was his ordinance; and how
+difficult he made that proof! What thorns and briers, what flints, he
+strewed in the path of feet not inured to rough travel! He watched
+tearlessly—ordeals that he exacted should be passed through—fearlessly.
+He followed footprints that, as they approached the bourne, were
+sometimes marked in blood—followed them grimly, holding the austerest
+police-watch over the pain-pressed pilgrim. And when at last he allowed
+a rest, before slumber might close the eyelids, he opened those same
+lids wide, with pitiless finger and thumb, and gazed deep through the
+pupil and the irids into the brain, into the heart, to search if
+Vanity, or Pride, or Falsehood, in any of its subtlest forms, was
+discoverable in the furthest recess of existence. If, at last, he let
+the neophyte sleep, it was but a moment; he woke him suddenly up to
+apply new tests: he sent him on irksome errands when he was staggering
+with weariness; he tried the temper, the sense, and the health; and it
+was only when every severest test had been applied and endured, when
+the most corrosive aquafortis had been used, and failed to tarnish the
+ore, that he admitted it genuine, and, still in clouded silence,
+stamped it with his deep brand of approval.
+
+I speak not ignorant of these evils.
+
+Till the date at which the last chapter closes, M. Paul had not been my
+professor—he had not given me lessons, but about that time,
+accidentally hearing me one day acknowledge an ignorance of some branch
+of education (I think it was arithmetic), which would have disgraced a
+charity-school boy, as he very truly remarked, he took me in hand,
+examined me first, found me, I need not say, abundantly deficient, gave
+me some books and appointed me some tasks.
+
+He did this at first with pleasure, indeed with unconcealed exultation,
+condescending to say that he believed I was “bonne et pas trop faible”
+(i.e. well enough disposed, and not wholly destitute of parts), but,
+owing he supposed to adverse circumstances, “as yet in a state of
+wretchedly imperfect mental development.”
+
+The beginning of all effort has indeed with me been marked by a
+preternatural imbecility. I never could, even in forming a common
+acquaintance, assert or prove a claim to average quickness. A
+depressing and difficult passage has prefaced every new page I have
+turned in life.
+
+So long as this passage lasted, M. Paul was very kind, very good, very
+forbearing; he saw the sharp pain inflicted, and felt the weighty
+humiliation imposed by my own sense of incapacity; and words can hardly
+do justice to his tenderness and helpfulness. His own eyes would
+moisten, when tears of shame and effort clouded mine; burdened as he
+was with work, he would steal half his brief space of recreation to
+give to me.
+
+But, strange grief! when that heavy and overcast dawn began at last to
+yield to day; when my faculties began to struggle themselves, free, and
+my time of energy and fulfilment came; when I voluntarily doubled,
+trebled, quadrupled the tasks he set, to please him as I thought, his
+kindness became sternness; the light changed in his eyes from a beam to
+a spark; he fretted, he opposed, he curbed me imperiously; the more I
+did, the harder I worked, the less he seemed content. Sarcasms of which
+the severity amazed and puzzled me, harassed my ears; then flowed out
+the bitterest inuendoes against the “pride of intellect.” I was vaguely
+threatened with I know not what doom, if I ever trespassed the limits
+proper to my sex, and conceived a contraband appetite for unfeminine
+knowledge. Alas! I had no such appetite. What I loved, it joyed me by
+any effort to content; but the noble hunger for science in the
+abstract—the godlike thirst after discovery—these feelings were known
+to me but by briefest flashes.
+
+Yet, when M. Paul sneered at me, I wanted to possess them more fully;
+his injustice stirred in me ambitious wishes—it imparted a strong
+stimulus—it gave wings to aspiration.
+
+In the beginning, before I had penetrated to motives, that
+uncomprehended sneer of his made my heart ache, but by-and-by it only
+warmed the blood in my veins, and sent added action to my pulses.
+Whatever my powers—feminine or the contrary—God had given them, and I
+felt resolute to be ashamed of no faculty of his bestowal.
+
+The combat was very sharp for a time. I seemed to have lost M. Paul’s
+affection; he treated me strangely. In his most unjust moments he would
+insinuate that I had deceived him when I appeared, what he called
+“faible”—that is incompetent; he said I had feigned a false incapacity.
+Again, he would turn suddenly round and accuse me of the most
+far-fetched imitations and impossible plagiarisms, asserting that I had
+extracted the pith out of books I had not so much as heard of—and over
+the perusal of which I should infallibly have fallen down in a sleep as
+deep as that of Eutychus.
+
+Once, upon his preferring such an accusation, I turned upon him—I rose
+against him. Gathering an armful of his books out of my desk, I filled
+my apron and poured them in a heap upon his estrade, at his feet.
+
+“Take them away, M. Paul,” I said, “and teach me no more. I never asked
+to be made learned, and you compel me to feel very profoundly that
+learning is not happiness.”
+
+And returning to my desk, I laid my head on my arms, nor would I speak
+to him for two days afterwards. He pained and chagrined me. His
+affection had been very sweet and dear—a pleasure new and incomparable:
+now that this seemed withdrawn, I cared not for his lessons.
+
+The books, however, were not taken away; they were all restored with
+careful hand to their places, and he came as usual to teach me. He made
+his peace somehow—too readily, perhaps: I ought to have stood out
+longer, but when he looked kind and good, and held out his hand with
+amity, memory refused to reproduce with due force his oppressive
+moments. And then, reconcilement is always sweet!
+
+On a certain morning a message came from my godmother, inviting me to
+attend some notable lecture to be delivered in the same public rooms
+before described. Dr. John had brought the message himself, and
+delivered it verbally to Rosine, who had not scrupled to follow the
+steps of M. Emanuel, then passing to the first classe, and, in his
+presence, stand “carrément” before my desk, hand in apron-pocket, and
+rehearse the same, saucily and aloud, concluding with the words, “Qu’il
+est vraiment beau, Mademoiselle, ce jeune docteur! Quels yeux—quel
+regard! Tenez! J’en ai le coeur tout ému!”
+
+When she was gone, my professor demanded of me why I suffered “cette
+fille effrontée, cette créature sans pudeur,” to address me in such
+terms.
+
+I had no pacifying answer to give. The terms were precisely such as
+Rosine—a young lady in whose skull the organs of reverence and reserve
+were not largely developed—was in the constant habit of using. Besides,
+what she said about the young doctor was true enough. Graham _was_
+handsome; he had fine eyes and a thrilling glance. An observation to
+that effect actually formed itself into sound on my lips.
+
+“Elle ne dit que la vérité,” I said.
+
+“Ah! vous trouvez?”
+
+“Mais, sans doute.”
+
+The lesson to which we had that day to submit was such as to make us
+very glad when it terminated. At its close, the released, pupils rushed
+out, half-trembling, half-exultant. I, too, was going. A mandate to
+remain arrested me. I muttered that I wanted some fresh air sadly—the
+stove was in a glow, the classe over-heated. An inexorable voice merely
+recommended silence; and this salamander—for whom no room ever seemed
+too hot—sitting down between my desk and the stove—a situation in which
+he ought to have felt broiled, but did not—proceeded to confront me
+with—a Greek quotation!
+
+In M. Emanuel’s soul rankled a chronic suspicion that I knew both Greek
+and Latin. As monkeys are said to have the power of speech if they
+would but use it, and are reported to conceal this faculty in fear of
+its being turned to their detriment, so to me was ascribed a fund of
+knowledge which I was supposed criminally and craftily to conceal. The
+privileges of a “classical education,” it was insinuated, had been
+mine; on flowers of Hymettus I had revelled; a golden store, hived in
+memory, now silently sustained my efforts, and privily nurtured my
+wits.
+
+A hundred expedients did M. Paul employ to surprise my secret—to
+wheedle, to threaten, to startle it out of me. Sometimes he placed
+Greek and Latin books in my way, and then watched me, as Joan of Arc’s
+jailors tempted her with the warrior’s accoutrements, and lay in wait
+for the issue. Again he quoted I know not what authors and passages,
+and while rolling out their sweet and sounding lines (the classic tones
+fell musically from his lips—for he had a good voice—remarkable for
+compass, modulation, and matchless expression), he would fix on me a
+vigilant, piercing, and often malicious eye. It was evident he
+sometimes expected great demonstrations; they never occurred, however;
+not comprehending, of course I could neither be charmed nor annoyed.
+
+Baffled—almost angry—he still clung to his fixed idea; my
+susceptibilities were pronounced marble—my face a mask. It appeared as
+if he could not be brought to accept the homely truth, and take me for
+what I was: men, and women too, must have delusion of some sort; if not
+made ready to their hand, they will invent exaggeration for themselves.
+
+At moments I _did_ wish that his suspicions had been better founded.
+There were times when I would have given my right hand to possess the
+treasures he ascribed to me. He deserved condign punishment for his
+testy crotchets. I could have gloried in bringing home to him his worst
+apprehensions astoundingly realized. I could have exulted to burst on
+his vision, confront and confound his “lunettes,” one blaze of
+acquirements. Oh! why did nobody undertake to make me clever while I
+was young enough to learn, that I might, by one grand, sudden, inhuman
+revelation—one cold, cruel, overwhelming triumph—have for ever crushed
+the mocking spirit out of Paul Carl David Emanuel!
+
+Alas! no such feat was in my power. To-day, as usual, his quotations
+fell ineffectual: he soon shifted his ground.
+
+“Women of intellect” was his next theme: here he was at home. A “woman
+of intellect,” it appeared, was a sort of “lusus naturae,” a luckless
+accident, a thing for which there was neither place nor use in
+creation, wanted neither as wife nor worker. Beauty anticipated her in
+the first office. He believed in his soul that lovely, placid, and
+passive feminine mediocrity was the only pillow on which manly thought
+and sense could find rest for its aching temples; and as to work, male
+mind alone could work to any good practical result—hein?
+
+This “hein?” was a note of interrogation intended to draw from me
+contradiction or objection. However, I only said—“Cela ne me regarde
+pas: je ne m’en soucie pas;” and presently added—“May I go, Monsieur?
+They have rung the bell for the second déjeuner” (_i.e._ luncheon).
+
+“What of that? You are not hungry?”
+
+“Indeed I was,” I said; “I had had nothing since breakfast, at seven,
+and should have nothing till dinner, at five, if I missed this bell.”
+
+“Well, he was in the same plight, but I might share with him.”
+
+And he broke in two the “brioche” intended for his own refreshment, and
+gave me half. Truly his bark was worse than his bite; but the really
+formidable attack was yet to come. While eating his cake, I could not
+forbear expressing my secret wish that I really knew all of which he
+accused me.
+
+“Did I sincerely feel myself to be an ignoramus?” he asked, in a
+softened tone.
+
+If I had replied meekly by an unqualified affirmative, I believe he
+would have stretched out his hand, and we should have been friends on
+the spot, but I answered—
+
+“Not exactly. I am ignorant, Monsieur, in the knowledge you ascribe to
+me, but I _sometimes_, not _always_, feel a knowledge of my own.”
+
+“What did I mean?” he inquired, sharply.
+
+Unable to answer this question in a breath, I evaded it by change of
+subject. He had now finished his half of the brioche feeling sure that
+on so trifling a fragment he could not have satisfied his appetite, as
+indeed I had not appeased mine, and inhaling the fragrance of baked
+apples afar from the refectory, I ventured to inquire whether he did
+not also perceive that agreeable odour. He confessed that he did. I
+said if he would let me out by the garden-door, and permit me just to
+run across the court, I would fetch him a plateful; and added that I
+believed they were excellent, as Goton had a very good method of
+baking, or rather stewing fruit, putting in a little spice, sugar, and
+a glass or two of vin blanc—might I go?
+
+“Petite gourmande!” said he, smiling, “I have not forgotten how pleased
+you were with the pâté â la crême I once gave you, and you know very
+well, at this moment, that to fetch the apples for me will be the same
+as getting them for yourself. Go, then, but come back quickly.”
+
+And at last he liberated me on parole. My own plan was to go and return
+with speed and good faith, to put the plate in at the door, and then to
+vanish incontinent, leaving all consequences for future settlement.
+
+That intolerably keen instinct of his seemed to have anticipated my
+scheme: he met me at the threshold, hurried me into the room, and fixed
+me in a minute in my former seat. Taking the plate of fruit from my
+hand, he divided the portion intended only for himself, and ordered me
+to eat my share. I complied with no good grace, and vexed, I suppose,
+by my reluctance, he opened a masked and dangerous battery. All he had
+yet said, I could count as mere sound and fury, signifying nothing: not
+so of the present attack.
+
+It consisted in an unreasonable proposition with which he had before
+afflicted me: namely, that on the next public examination-day I should
+engage—foreigner as I was—to take my place on the first form of
+first-class pupils, and with them improvise a composition in French, on
+any subject any spectator might dictate, without benefit of grammar or
+lexicon.
+
+I knew what the result of such an experiment would be. I, to whom
+nature had denied the impromptu faculty; who, in public, was by nature
+a cypher; whose time of mental activity, even when alone, was not under
+the meridian sun; who needed the fresh silence of morning, or the
+recluse peace of evening, to win from the Creative Impulse one evidence
+of his presence, one proof of his force; I, with whom that Impulse was
+the most intractable, the most capricious, the most maddening of
+masters (him before me always excepted)—a deity which sometimes, under
+circumstances—apparently propitious, would not speak when questioned,
+would not hear when appealed to, would not, when sought, be found; but
+would stand, all cold, all indurated, all granite, a dark Baal with
+carven lips and blank eye-balls, and breast like the stone face of a
+tomb; and again, suddenly, at some turn, some sound, some
+long-trembling sob of the wind, at some rushing past of an unseen
+stream of electricity, the irrational demon would wake unsolicited,
+would stir strangely alive, would rush from its pedestal like a
+perturbed Dagon, calling to its votary for a sacrifice, whatever the
+hour—to its victim for some blood, or some breath, whatever the
+circumstance or scene—rousing its priest, treacherously promising
+vaticination, perhaps filling its temple with a strange hum of oracles,
+but sure to give half the significance to fateful winds, and grudging
+to the desperate listener even a miserable remnant—yielding it
+sordidly, as though each word had been a drop of the deathless ichor of
+its own dark veins. And this tyrant I was to compel into bondage, and
+make it improvise a theme, on a school estrade, between a Mathilde and
+a Coralie, under the eye of a Madame Beck, for the pleasure, and to the
+inspiration of a bourgeois of Labassecour!
+
+Upon this argument M. Paul and I did battle more than once—strong
+battle, with confused noise of demand and rejection, exaction and
+repulse.
+
+On this particular day I was soundly rated. “The obstinacy of my whole
+sex,” it seems, was concentrated in me; I had an “orgueil de diable.” I
+feared to fail, forsooth! What did it matter whether I failed or not?
+Who was I that I should not fail, like my betters? It would do me good
+to fail. He wanted to see me worsted (I knew he did), and one minute he
+paused to take breath.
+
+“Would I speak now, and be tractable?”
+
+“Never would I be tractable in this matter. Law itself should not
+compel me. I would pay a fine, or undergo an imprisonment, rather than
+write for a show and to order, perched up on a platform.”
+
+“Could softer motives influence me? Would I yield for friendship’s
+sake?”
+
+“Not a whit, not a hair-breadth. No form of friendship under the sun
+had a right to exact such a concession. No true friendship would harass
+me thus.”
+
+He supposed then (with a sneer—M. Paul could sneer supremely, curling
+his lip, opening his nostrils, contracting his eyelids)—he supposed
+there was but one form of appeal to which I would listen, and of that
+form it was not for him to make use.
+
+“Under certain persuasions, from certain quarters, je vous vois d’ici,”
+said he, “eagerly subscribing to the sacrifice, passionately arming for
+the effort.”
+
+“Making a simpleton, a warning, and an example of myself, before a
+hundred and fifty of the ‘papas’ and ‘mammas’ of Villette.”
+
+And here, losing patience, I broke out afresh with a cry that I wanted
+to be liberated—to get out into the air—I was almost in a fever.
+
+“Chut!” said the inexorable, “this was a mere pretext to run away; _he_
+was not hot, with the stove close at his back; how could I suffer,
+thoroughly screened by his person?”
+
+“I did not understand his constitution. I knew nothing of the natural
+history of salamanders. For my own part, I was a phlegmatic islander,
+and sitting in an oven did not agree with me; at least, might I step to
+the well, and get a glass of water—the sweet apples had made me
+thirsty?”
+
+“If that was all, he would do my errand.”
+
+He went to fetch the water. Of course, with a door only on the latch
+behind me, I lost not my opportunity. Ere his return, his half-worried
+prey had escaped.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+THE DRYAD.
+
+
+The spring was advancing, and the weather had turned suddenly warm.
+This change of temperature brought with it for me, as probably for many
+others, temporary decrease of strength. Slight exertion at this time
+left me overcome with fatigue—sleepless nights entailed languid days.
+
+One Sunday afternoon, having walked the distance of half a league to
+the Protestant church, I came back weary and exhausted; and taking
+refuge in my solitary sanctuary, the first classe, I was glad to sit
+down, and to make of my desk a pillow for my arms and head.
+
+Awhile I listened to the lullaby of bees humming in the berceau, and
+watched, through the glass door and the tender, lightly-strewn spring
+foliage, Madame Beck and a gay party of friends, whom she had
+entertained that day at dinner after morning mass, walking in the
+centre-alley under orchard boughs dressed at this season in blossom,
+and wearing a colouring as pure and warm as mountain-snow at sun-rise.
+
+My principal attraction towards this group of guests lay, I remember,
+in one figure—that of a handsome young girl whom I had seen before as a
+visitor at Madame Beck’s, and of whom I had been vaguely told that she
+was a “filleule,” or god-daughter, of M. Emanuel’s, and that between
+her mother, or aunt, or some other female relation of hers, and the
+Professor, had existed of old a special friendship. M. Paul was not of
+the holiday band to-day, but I had seen this young girl with him ere
+now, and as far as distant observation could enable me to judge, she
+seemed to enjoy him with the frank ease of a ward with an indulgent
+guardian. I had seen her run up to him, put her arm through his, and
+hang upon him. Once, when she did so, a curious sensation had struck
+through me—a disagreeable anticipatory sensation—one of the family of
+presentiments, I suppose—but I refused to analyze or dwell upon it.
+While watching this girl, Mademoiselle Sauveur by name, and following
+the gleam of her bright silk robe (she was always richly dressed, for
+she was said to be wealthy) through the flowers and the glancing leaves
+of tender emerald, my eyes became dazzled—they closed; my lassitude,
+the warmth of the day, the hum of bees and birds, all lulled me, and at
+last I slept.
+
+Two hours stole over me. Ere I woke, the sun had declined out of sight
+behind the towering houses, the garden and the room were grey, bees had
+gone homeward, and the flowers were closing; the party of guests, too,
+had vanished; each alley was void.
+
+On waking, I felt much at ease—not chill, as I ought to have been after
+sitting so still for at least two hours; my cheek and arms were not
+benumbed by pressure against the hard desk. No wonder. Instead of the
+bare wood on which I had laid them, I found a thick shawl, carefully
+folded, substituted for support, and another shawl (both taken from the
+corridor where such things hung) wrapped warmly round me.
+
+Who had done this? Who was my friend? Which of the teachers? Which of
+the pupils? None, except St. Pierre, was inimical to me; but which of
+them had the art, the thought, the habit, of benefiting thus tenderly?
+Which of them had a step so quiet, a hand so gentle, but I should have
+heard or felt her, if she had approached or touched me in a day-sleep?
+
+As to Ginevra Fanshawe, that bright young creature was not gentle at
+all, and would certainly have pulled me out of my chair, if she had
+meddled in the matter. I said at last: “It is Madame Beck’s doing; she
+has come in, seen me asleep, and thought I might take cold. She
+considers me a useful machine, answering well the purpose for which it
+was hired; so would not have me needlessly injured. And now,”
+methought, “I’ll take a walk; the evening is fresh, and not very
+chill.”
+
+So I opened the glass door and stepped into the berceau.
+
+I went to my own alley: had it been dark, or even dusk, I should have
+hardly ventured there, for I had not yet forgotten the curious illusion
+of vision (if illusion it were) experienced in that place some months
+ago. But a ray of the setting sun burnished still the grey crown of
+Jean Baptiste; nor had all the birds of the garden yet vanished into
+their nests amongst the tufted shrubs and thick wall-ivy. I paced up
+and down, thinking almost the same thoughts I had pondered that night
+when I buried my glass jar—how I should make some advance in life, take
+another step towards an independent position; for this train of
+reflection, though not lately pursued, had never by me been wholly
+abandoned; and whenever a certain eye was averted from me, and a
+certain countenance grew dark with unkindness and injustice, into that
+track of speculation did I at once strike; so that, little by little, I
+had laid half a plan.
+
+“Living costs little,” said I to myself, “in this economical town of
+Villette, where people are more sensible than I understand they are in
+dear old England—infinitely less worried about appearance, and less
+emulous of display—where nobody is in the least ashamed to be quite as
+homely and saving as he finds convenient. House-rent, in a prudently
+chosen situation, need not be high. When I shall have saved one
+thousand francs, I will take a tenement with one large room, and two or
+three smaller ones, furnish the first with a few benches and desks, a
+black tableau, an estrade for myself; upon it a chair and table, with a
+sponge and some white chalks; begin with taking day-pupils, and so work
+my way upwards. Madame Beck’s commencement was—as I have often heard
+her say—from no higher starting-point, and where is she now? All these
+premises and this garden are hers, bought with her money; she has a
+competency already secured for old age, and a flourishing establishment
+under her direction, which will furnish a career for her children.
+
+“Courage, Lucy Snowe! With self-denial and economy now, and steady
+exertion by-and-by, an object in life need not fail you. Venture not to
+complain that such an object is too selfish, too limited, and lacks
+interest; be content to labour for independence until you have proved,
+by winning that prize, your right to look higher. But afterwards, is
+there nothing more for me in life—no true home—nothing to be dearer to
+me than myself, and by its paramount preciousness, to draw from me
+better things than I care to culture for myself only? Nothing, at whose
+feet I can willingly lay down the whole burden of human egotism, and
+gloriously take up the nobler charge of labouring and living for
+others? I suppose, Lucy Snowe, the orb of your life is not to be so
+rounded: for you, the crescent-phase must suffice. Very good. I see a
+huge mass of my fellow-creatures in no better circumstances. I see that
+a great many men, and more women, hold their span of life on conditions
+of denial and privation. I find no reason why I should be of the few
+favoured. I believe in some blending of hope and sunshine sweetening
+the worst lots. I believe that this life is not all; neither the
+beginning nor the end. I believe while I tremble; I trust while I
+weep.”
+
+So this subject is done with. It is right to look our life-accounts
+bravely in the face now and then, and settle them honestly. And he is a
+poor self-swindler who lies to himself while he reckons the items, and
+sets down under the head—happiness that which is misery. Call
+anguish—anguish, and despair—despair; write both down in strong
+characters with a resolute pen: you will the better pay your debt to
+Doom. Falsify: insert “privilege” where you should have written “pain;”
+and see if your mighty creditor will allow the fraud to pass, or accept
+the coin with which you would cheat him. Offer to the strongest—if the
+darkest angel of God’s host—water, when he has asked blood—will he take
+it? Not a whole pale sea for one red drop. I settled another account.
+
+Pausing before Methusaleh—the giant and patriarch of the garden—and
+leaning my brow against his knotty trunk, my foot rested on the stone
+sealing the small sepulchre at his root; and I recalled the passage of
+feeling therein buried; I recalled Dr. John; my warm affection for him;
+my faith in his excellence; my delight in his grace. What was become of
+that curious one-sided friendship which was half marble and half life;
+only on one hand truth, and on the other perhaps a jest?
+
+Was this feeling dead? I do not know, but it was buried. Sometimes I
+thought the tomb unquiet, and dreamed strangely of disturbed earth, and
+of hair, still golden, and living, obtruded through coffin-chinks.
+
+Had I been too hasty? I used to ask myself; and this question would
+occur with a cruel sharpness after some brief chance interview with Dr.
+John. He had still such kind looks, such a warm hand; his voice still
+kept so pleasant a tone for my name; I never liked “Lucy” so well as
+when he uttered it. But I learned in time that this benignity, this
+cordiality, this music, belonged in no shape to me: it was a part of
+himself; it was the honey of his temper; it was the balm of his mellow
+mood; he imparted it, as the ripe fruit rewards with sweetness the
+rifling bee; he diffused it about him, as sweet plants shed their
+perfume. Does the nectarine love either the bee or bird it feeds? Is
+the sweetbriar enamoured of the air?
+
+“Good-night, Dr. John; you are good, you are beautiful; but you are not
+mine. Good-night, and God bless you!”
+
+Thus I closed my musings. “Good-night” left my lips in sound; I heard
+the words spoken, and then I heard an echo—quite close.
+
+“Good-night, Mademoiselle; or, rather, good-evening—the sun is scarce
+set; I hope you slept well?”
+
+I started, but was only discomposed a moment; I knew the voice and
+speaker.
+
+“Slept, Monsieur! When? where?”
+
+“You may well inquire when—where. It seems you turn day into night, and
+choose a desk for a pillow; rather hard lodging—?”
+
+“It was softened for me, Monsieur, while I slept. That unseen,
+gift-bringing thing which haunts my desk, remembered me. No matter how
+I fell asleep; I awoke pillowed and covered.”
+
+“Did the shawls keep you warm?”
+
+“Very warm. Do you ask thanks for them?”
+
+“No. You looked pale in your slumbers: are you home-sick?”
+
+“To be home-sick, one must have a home; which I have not.”
+
+“Then you have more need of a careful friend. I scarcely know any one,
+Miss Lucy, who needs a friend more absolutely than you; your very
+faults imperatively require it. You want so much checking, regulating,
+and keeping down.”
+
+This idea of “keeping down” never left M. Paul’s head; the most
+habitual subjugation would, in my case, have failed to relieve him of
+it. No matter; what did it signify? I listened to him, and did not
+trouble myself to be too submissive; his occupation would have been
+gone had I left him nothing to “keep down.”
+
+“You need watching, and watching over,” he pursued; “and it is well for
+you that I see this, and do my best to discharge both duties. I watch
+you and others pretty closely, pretty constantly, nearer and oftener
+than you or they think. Do you see that window with a light in it?”
+
+He pointed to a lattice in one of the college boarding-houses.
+
+“That,” said he, “is a room I have hired, nominally for a
+study—virtually for a post of observation. There I sit and read for
+hours together: it is my way—my taste. My book is this garden; its
+contents are human nature—female human nature. I know you all by heart.
+Ah! I know you well—St. Pierre, the Parisienne—cette maîtresse-femme,
+my cousin Beck herself.”
+
+“It is not right, Monsieur.”
+
+“Comment? it is not right? By whose creed? Does some dogma of Calvin or
+Luther condemn it? What is that to me? I am no Protestant. My rich
+father (for, though I have known poverty, and once starved for a year
+in a garret in Rome—starved wretchedly, often on a meal a day, and
+sometimes not that—yet I was born to wealth)—my rich father was a good
+Catholic; and he gave me a priest and a Jesuit for a tutor. I retain
+his lessons; and to what discoveries, grand Dieu! have they not aided
+me!”
+
+“Discoveries made by stealth seem to me dishonourable discoveries.”
+
+“Puritaine! I doubt it not. Yet see how my Jesuit’s system works. You
+know the St. Pierre?”
+
+“Partially.”
+
+He laughed. “You say right—_‘partially’_; whereas _I_ know her
+_thoroughly_; there is the difference. She played before me the
+amiable; offered me patte de velours; caressed, flattered, fawned on
+me. Now, I am accessible to a woman’s flattery—accessible against my
+reason. Though never pretty, she was—when I first knew her—young, or
+knew how to look young. Like all her countrywomen, she had the art of
+dressing—she had a certain cool, easy, social assurance, which spared
+me the pain of embarrassment—”
+
+“Monsieur, that must have been unnecessary. I never saw you embarrassed
+in my life.”
+
+“Mademoiselle, you know little of me; I can be embarrassed as a petite
+pensionnaire; there is a fund of modesty and diffidence in my nature—”
+
+“Monsieur, I never saw it.”
+
+“Mademoiselle, it is there. You ought to have seen it.”
+
+“Monsieur, I have observed you in public—on platforms, in tribunes,
+before titles and crowned heads—and you were as easy as you are in the
+third division.”
+
+“Mademoiselle, neither titles nor crowned heads excite my modesty; and
+publicity is very much my element. I like it well, and breathe in it
+quite freely;—but—but, in short, here is the sentiment brought into
+action, at this very moment; however, I disdain to be worsted by it.
+If, Mademoiselle, I were a marrying man (which I am not; and you may
+spare yourself the trouble of any sneer you may be contemplating at the
+thought), and found it necessary to ask a lady whether she could look
+upon me in the light of a future husband, then would it be proved that
+I am as I say—modest.”
+
+I quite believed him now; and, in believing, I honoured him with a
+sincerity of esteem which made my heart ache.
+
+“As to the St. Pierre,” he went on, recovering himself, for his voice
+had altered a little, “she once intended to be Madame Emanuel; and I
+don’t know whither I might have been led, but for yonder little lattice
+with the light. Ah, magic lattice! what miracles of discovery hast thou
+wrought! Yes,” he pursued, “I have seen her rancours, her vanities, her
+levities—not only here, but elsewhere: I have witnessed what bucklers
+me against all her arts: I am safe from poor Zélie.”
+
+“And my pupils,” he presently recommenced, “those blondes jeunes
+filles—so mild and meek—I have seen the most reserved—romp like boys,
+the demurest—snatch grapes from the walls, shake pears from the trees.
+When the English teacher came, I saw her, marked her early preference
+for this alley, noticed her taste for seclusion, watched her well, long
+before she and I came to speaking terms; do you recollect my once
+coming silently and offering you a little knot of white violets when we
+were strangers?”
+
+“I recollect it. I dried the violets, kept them, and have them still.”
+
+“It pleased me when you took them peacefully and promptly, without
+prudery—that sentiment which I ever dread to excite, and which, when it
+is revealed in eye or gesture, I vindictively detest. To return. Not
+only did _I_ watch you; but often—especially at eventide—another
+guardian angel was noiselessly hovering near: night after night my
+cousin Beck has stolen down yonder steps, and glidingly pursued your
+movements when you did not see her.”
+
+“But, Monsieur, you could not from the distance of that window see what
+passed in this garden at night?”
+
+“By moonlight I possibly might with a glass—I use a glass—but the
+garden itself is open to me. In the shed, at the bottom, there is a
+door leading into a court, which communicates with the college; of that
+door I possess the key, and thus come and go at pleasure. This
+afternoon I came through it, and found you asleep in classe; again this
+evening I have availed myself of the same entrance.”
+
+I could not help saying, “If you were a wicked, designing man, how
+terrible would all this be!”
+
+His attention seemed incapable of being arrested by this view of the
+subject: he lit his cigar, and while he puffed it, leaning against a
+tree, and looking at me in a cool, amused way he had when his humour
+was tranquil, I thought proper to go on sermonizing him: he often
+lectured me by the hour together—I did not see why I should not speak
+my mind for once. So I told him my impressions concerning his
+Jesuit-system.
+
+“The knowledge it brings you is bought too dear, Monsieur; this coming
+and going by stealth degrades your own dignity.”
+
+“My dignity!” he cried, laughing; “when did you ever see me trouble my
+head about my dignity? It is you, Miss Lucy, who are ‘digne.’ How
+often, in your high insular presence, have I taken a pleasure in
+trampling upon, what you are pleased to call, my dignity; tearing it,
+scattering it to the winds, in those mad transports you witness with
+such hauteur, and which I know you think very like the ravings of a
+third-rate London actor.”
+
+“Monsieur, I tell you every glance you cast from that lattice is a
+wrong done to the best part of your own nature. To study the human
+heart thus, is to banquet secretly and sacrilegiously on Eve’s apples.
+I wish you were a Protestant.”
+
+Indifferent to the wish, he smoked on. After a space of smiling yet
+thoughtful silence, he said, rather suddenly—“I have seen other
+things.”
+
+“What other things?”
+
+Taking the weed from his lips, he threw the remnant amongst the shrubs,
+where, for a moment, it lay glowing in the gloom.
+
+“Look, at it,” said he: “is not that spark like an eye watching you and
+me?”
+
+He took a turn down the walk; presently returning, he went on:—“I have
+seen, Miss Lucy, things to me unaccountable, that have made me watch
+all night for a solution, and I have not yet found it.”
+
+The tone was peculiar; my veins thrilled; he saw me shiver.
+
+“Are you afraid? Whether is it of my words or that red jealous eye just
+winking itself out?”
+
+“I am cold; the night grows dark and late, and the air is changed; it
+is time to go in.”
+
+“It is little past eight, but you shall go in soon. Answer me only this
+question.”
+
+Yet he paused ere he put it. The garden was truly growing dark; dusk
+had come on with clouds, and drops of rain began to patter through the
+trees. I hoped he would feel this, but, for the moment, he seemed too
+much absorbed to be sensible of the change.
+
+“Mademoiselle, do you Protestants believe in the supernatural?”
+
+“There is a difference of theory and belief on this point amongst
+Protestants as amongst other sects,” I answered. “Why, Monsieur, do you
+ask such a question?”
+
+“Why do you shrink and speak so faintly? Are you superstitious?”
+
+“I am constitutionally nervous. I dislike the discussion of such
+subjects. I dislike it the more because—”
+
+“You believe?”
+
+“No: but it has happened to me to experience impressions—”
+
+“Since you came here?”
+
+“Yes; not many months ago.”
+
+“Here?—in this house?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Bon! I am glad of it. I knew it, somehow; before you told me. I was
+conscious of rapport between you and myself. You are patient, and I am
+choleric; you are quiet and pale, and I am tanned and fiery; you are a
+strict Protestant, and I am a sort of lay Jesuit: but we are
+alike—there is affinity between us. Do you see it, Mademoiselle, when
+you look in the glass? Do you observe that your forehead is shaped like
+mine—that your eyes are cut like mine? Do you hear that you have some
+of my tones of voice? Do you know that you have many of my looks? I
+perceive all this, and believe that you were born under my star. Yes,
+you were born under my star! Tremble! for where that is the case with
+mortals, the threads of their destinies are difficult to disentangle;
+knottings and catchings occur—sudden breaks leave damage in the web.
+But these ‘impressions,’ as you say, with English caution. I, too, have
+had my ‘impressions.’”
+
+“Monsieur, tell me them.”
+
+“I desire no better, and intend no less. You know the legend of this
+house and garden?”
+
+“I know it. Yes. They say that hundreds of years ago a nun was buried
+here alive at the foot of this very tree, beneath the ground which now
+bears us.”
+
+“And that in former days a nun’s ghost used to come and go here.”
+
+“Monsieur, what if it comes and goes here still?”
+
+“Something comes and goes here: there is a shape frequenting this house
+by night, different to any forms that show themselves by day. I have
+indisputably seen a something, more than once; and to me its conventual
+weeds were a strange sight, saying more than they can do to any other
+living being. A nun!”
+
+“Monsieur, I, too, have seen it.”
+
+“I anticipated that. Whether this nun be flesh and blood, or something
+that remains when blood is dried, and flesh is wasted, her business is
+as much with you as with me, probably. Well, I mean to make it out; it
+has baffled me so far, but I mean to follow up the mystery. I mean—”
+
+Instead of telling what he meant, he raised his head suddenly; I made
+the same movement in the same instant; we both looked to one point—the
+high tree shadowing the great berceau, and resting some of its boughs
+on the roof of the first classe. There had been a strange and
+inexplicable sound from that quarter, as if the arms of that tree had
+swayed of their own motion, and its weight of foliage had rushed and
+crushed against the massive trunk. Yes; there scarce stirred a breeze,
+and that heavy tree was convulsed, whilst the feathery shrubs stood
+still. For some minutes amongst the wood and leafage a rending and
+heaving went on. Dark as it was, it seemed to me that something more
+solid than either night-shadow, or branch-shadow, blackened out of the
+boles. At last the struggle ceased. What birth succeeded this travail?
+What Dryad was born of these throes? We watched fixedly. A sudden bell
+rang in the house—the prayer-bell. Instantly into our alley there came,
+out of the berceau, an apparition, all black and white. With a sort of
+angry rush-close, close past our faces—swept swiftly the very NUN
+herself! Never had I seen her so clearly. She looked tall of stature,
+and fierce of gesture. As she went, the wind rose sobbing; the rain
+poured wild and cold; the whole night seemed to feel her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+THE FIRST LETTER.
+
+
+Where, it becomes time to inquire, was Paulina Mary? How fared my
+intercourse with the sumptuous Hôtel Crécy? That intercourse had, for
+an interval, been suspended by absence; M. and Miss de Bassompierre had
+been travelling, dividing some weeks between the provinces and capital
+of France. Chance apprised me of their return very shortly after it
+took place.
+
+I was walking one mild afternoon on a quiet boulevard, wandering slowly
+on, enjoying the benign April sun, and some thoughts not unpleasing,
+when I saw before me a group of riders, stopping as if they had just
+encountered, and exchanging greetings in the midst of the broad,
+smooth, linden-bordered path; on one side a middle-aged gentleman and
+young lady, on the other—a young and handsome man. Very graceful was
+the lady’s mien, choice her appointments, delicate and stately her
+whole aspect. Still, as I looked, I felt they were known to me, and,
+drawing a little nearer, I fully recognised them all: the Count Home de
+Bassompierre, his daughter, and Dr. Graham Bretton.
+
+How animated was Graham’s face! How true, how warm, yet how retiring
+the joy it expressed! This was the state of things, this the
+combination of circumstances, at once to attract and enchain, to subdue
+and excite Dr. John. The pearl he admired was in itself of great price
+and truest purity, but he was not the man who, in appreciating the gem,
+could forget its setting. Had he seen Paulina with the same youth,
+beauty, and grace, but on foot, alone, unguarded, and in simple attire,
+a dependent worker, a demi-grisette, he would have thought her a pretty
+little creature, and would have loved with his eye her movements and
+her mien, but it required other than this to conquer him as he was now
+vanquished, to bring him safe under dominion as now, without loss, and
+even with gain to his manly honour, one saw that he was reduced; there
+was about Dr. John all the man of the world; to satisfy himself did not
+suffice; society must approve—the world must admire what he did, or he
+counted his measures false and futile. In his victrix he required all
+that was here visible—the imprint of high cultivation, the consecration
+of a careful and authoritative protection, the adjuncts that Fashion
+decrees, Wealth purchases, and Taste adjusts; for these conditions his
+spirit stipulated ere it surrendered: they were here to the utmost
+fulfilled; and now, proud, impassioned, yet fearing, he did homage to
+Paulina as his sovereign. As for her, the smile of feeling, rather than
+of conscious power, slept soft in her eyes.
+
+They parted. He passed me at speed, hardly feeling the earth he
+skimmed, and seeing nothing on either hand. He looked very handsome;
+mettle and purpose were roused in him fully.
+
+“Papa, there is Lucy!” cried a musical, friendly voice. “Lucy, dear
+Lucy—_do_ come here!”
+
+I hastened to her. She threw back her veil, and stooped from her saddle
+to kiss me.
+
+“I was coming to see you to-morrow,” said she; “but now to-morrow you
+will come and see me.”
+
+She named the hour, and I promised compliance.
+
+The morrow’s evening found me with her—she and I shut into her own
+room. I had not seen her since that occasion when her claims were
+brought into comparison with those of Ginevra Fanshawe, and had so
+signally prevailed; she had much to tell me of her travels in the
+interval. A most animated, rapid speaker was she in such a tête-à-tête,
+a most lively describer; yet with her artless diction and clear soft
+voice, she never seemed to speak too fast or to say too much. My own
+attention I think would not soon have flagged, but by-and-by, she
+herself seemed to need some change of subject; she hastened to wind up
+her narrative briefly. Yet why she terminated with so concise an
+abridgment did not immediately appear; silence followed—a restless
+silence, not without symptoms of abstraction. Then, turning to me, in a
+diffident, half-appealing voice—“Lucy—”
+
+“Well, I am at your side.”
+
+“Is my cousin Ginevra still at Madame Beck’s?”
+
+“Your cousin is still there; you must be longing to see her.”
+
+“No—not much.”
+
+“You want to invite her to spend another evening?”
+
+“No… I suppose she still talks about being married?”
+
+“Not to any one you care for.”
+
+“But of course she still thinks of Dr. Bretton? She cannot have changed
+her mind on that point, because it was so fixed two months ago.”
+
+“Why, you know, it does not matter. You saw the terms on which they
+stood.”
+
+“There was a little misunderstanding that evening, certainly; does she
+seem unhappy?”
+
+“Not she. To change the subject. Have you heard or seen nothing of, or
+from, Graham during your absence?”
+
+“Papa had letters from him once or twice about business, I think. He
+undertook the management of some affair which required attention while
+we were away. Dr. Bretton seems to respect papa, and to have pleasure
+in obliging him.”
+
+“Yes: you met him yesterday on the boulevard; you would be able to
+judge from his aspect that his friends need not be painfully anxious
+about his health?”
+
+“Papa seems to have thought with you. I could not help smiling. He is
+not particularly observant, you know, because he is often thinking of
+other things than what pass before his eyes; but he said, as Dr.
+Bretton rode away, Really it does a man good to see the spirit and
+energy of that boy.’ He called Dr. Bretton a boy; I believe he almost
+thinks him so, just as he thinks me a little girl; he was not speaking
+to me, but dropped that remark to himself. Lucy….”
+
+Again fell the appealing accent, and at the same instant she left her
+chair, and came and sat on the stool at my feet.
+
+I liked her. It is not a declaration I have often made concerning my
+acquaintance, in the course of this book: the reader will bear with it
+for once. Intimate intercourse, close inspection, disclosed in Paulina
+only what was delicate, intelligent, and sincere; therefore my regard
+for her lay deep. An admiration more superficial might have been more
+demonstrative; mine, however, was quiet.
+
+“What have you to ask of Lucy?” said I; “be brave, and speak out.”
+
+But there was no courage in her eye; as it met mine, it fell; and there
+was no coolness on her cheek—not a transient surface-blush, but a
+gathering inward excitement raised its tint and its temperature.
+
+“Lucy, I _do_ wish to know your thoughts of Dr. Bretton. Do, _do_ give
+me your real opinion of his character, his disposition.”
+
+“His character stands high, and deservedly high.”
+
+“And his disposition? Tell me about his disposition,” she urged; “you
+know him well.”
+
+“I know him pretty well.”
+
+“You know his home-side. You have seen him with his mother; speak of
+him as a son.”
+
+“He is a fine-hearted son; his mother’s comfort and hope, her pride and
+pleasure.”
+
+She held my hand between hers, and at each favourable word gave it a
+little caressing stroke.
+
+“In what other way is he good, Lucy?”
+
+“Dr. Bretton is benevolent—humanely disposed towards all his race, Dr.
+Bretton would have benignity for the lowest savage, or the worst
+criminal.”
+
+“I heard some gentlemen, some of papa’s friends, who were talking about
+him, say the same. They say many of the poor patients at the hospitals,
+who tremble before some pitiless and selfish surgeons, welcome him.”
+
+“They are right; I have witnessed as much. He once took me over a
+hospital; I saw how he was received: your father’s friends are right.”
+
+The softest gratitude animated her eye as she lifted it a moment. She
+had yet more to say, but seemed hesitating about time and place. Dusk
+was beginning to reign; her parlour fire already glowed with twilight
+ruddiness; but I thought she wished the room dimmer, the hour later.
+
+“How quiet and secluded we feel here!” I remarked, to reassure her.
+
+“Do we? Yes; it is a still evening, and I shall not be called down to
+tea; papa is dining out.”
+
+Still holding my hand, she played with the fingers unconsciously,
+dressed them, now in her own rings, and now circled them with a twine
+of her beautiful hair; she patted the palm against her hot cheek, and
+at last, having cleared a voice that was naturally liquid as a lark’s,
+she said:—
+
+“You must think it rather strange that I should talk so much about Dr.
+Bretton, ask so many questions, take such an interest, but—”.
+
+“Not at all strange; perfectly natural; you like him.”
+
+“And if I did,” said she, with slight quickness, “is that a reason why
+I should talk? I suppose you think me weak, like my cousin Ginevra?”
+
+“If I thought you one whit like Madame Ginevra, I would not sit here
+waiting for your communications. I would get up, walk at my ease about
+the room, and anticipate all you had to say by a round lecture. Go on.”
+
+“I mean to go on,” retorted she; “what else do you suppose I mean to
+do?”
+
+And she looked and spoke—the little Polly of Bretton—petulant,
+sensitive.
+
+“If,” said she, emphatically, “if I liked Dr. John till I was fit to
+die for liking him, that alone could not license me to be otherwise
+than dumb—dumb as the grave—dumb as you, Lucy Snowe—you know it—and you
+know you would despise me if I failed in self-control, and whined about
+some rickety liking that was all on my side.”
+
+“It is true I little respect women or girls who are loquacious either
+in boasting the triumphs, or bemoaning the mortifications, of feelings.
+But as to you, Paulina, speak, for I earnestly wish to hear you. Tell
+me all it will give you pleasure or relief to tell: I ask no more.”
+
+“Do you care for me, Lucy?”
+
+“Yes, I do, Paulina.”
+
+“And I love you. I had an odd content in being with you even when I was
+a little, troublesome, disobedient girl; it was charming to me then to
+lavish on you my naughtiness and whims. Now you are acceptable to me,
+and I like to talk with and trust you. So listen, Lucy.”
+
+And she settled herself, resting against my arm—resting gently, not
+with honest Mistress Fanshawe’s fatiguing and selfish weight.
+
+“A few minutes since you asked whether we had not heard from Graham
+during our absence, and I said there were two letters for papa on
+business; this was true, but I did not tell you all.”
+
+“You evaded?”
+
+“I shuffled and equivocated, you know. However, I am going to speak the
+truth now; it is getting darker; one can talk at one’s ease. Papa often
+lets me open the letter-bag and give him out the contents. One morning,
+about three weeks ago, you don’t know how surprised I was to find,
+amongst a dozen letters for M. de Bassompierre, a note addressed to
+Miss de Bassompierre. I spied it at once, amidst all the rest; the
+handwriting was not strange; it attracted me directly. I was going to
+say, ‘Papa, here is another letter from Dr. Bretton;’ but the ‘Miss’
+struck me mute. I actually never received a letter from a gentleman
+before. Ought I to have shown it to papa, and let him open it and read
+it first? I could not for my life, Lucy. I know so well papa’s ideas
+about me: he forgets my age; he thinks I am a mere school-girl; he is
+not aware that other people see I am grown up as tall as I shall be;
+so, with a curious mixture of feelings, some of them self-reproachful,
+and some so fluttering and strong, I cannot describe them, I gave papa
+his twelve letters—his herd of possessions—and kept back my one, my
+ewe-lamb. It lay in my lap during breakfast, looking up at me with an
+inexplicable meaning, making me feel myself a thing double-existent—a
+child to that dear papa, but no more a child to myself. After breakfast
+I carried my letter up-stairs, and having secured myself by turning the
+key in the door, I began to study the outside of my treasure: it was
+some minutes before I could get over the direction and penetrate the
+seal; one does not take a strong place of this kind by instant
+storm—one sits down awhile before it, as beleaguers say. Graham’s hand
+is like himself, Lucy, and so is his seal—all clear, firm, and
+rounded—no slovenly splash of wax—a full, solid, steady drop—a distinct
+impress; no pointed turns harshly pricking the optic nerve, but a
+clean, mellow, pleasant manuscript, that soothes you as you read. It is
+like his face—just like the chiselling of his features: do you know his
+autograph?”
+
+“I have seen it: go on.”
+
+“The seal was too beautiful to be broken, so I cut it round with my
+scissors. On the point of reading the letter at last, I once more drew
+back voluntarily; it was too soon yet to drink that draught—the sparkle
+in the cup was so beautiful—I would watch it yet a minute. Then I
+remembered all at once that I had not said my prayers that morning.
+Having heard papa go down to breakfast a little earlier than usual, I
+had been afraid of keeping him waiting, and had hastened to join him as
+soon as dressed, thinking no harm to put off prayers till afterwards.
+Some people would say I ought to have served God first and then man;
+but I don’t think heaven could be jealous of anything I might do for
+papa. I believe I am superstitious. A voice seemed now to say that
+another feeling than filial affection was in question—to urge me to
+pray before I dared to read what I so longed to read—to deny myself yet
+a moment, and remember first a great duty. I have had these impulses
+ever since I can remember. I put the letter down and said my prayers,
+adding, at the end, a strong entreaty that whatever happened, I might
+not be tempted or led to cause papa any sorrow, and might never, in
+caring for others, neglect him. The very thought of such a possibility,
+so pierced my heart that it made me cry. But still, Lucy, I felt that
+in time papa would have to be taught the truth, managed, and induced to
+hear reason.
+
+“I read the letter. Lucy, life is said to be all disappointment. _I_
+was not disappointed. Ere I read, and while I read, my heart did more
+than throb—it trembled fast—every quiver seemed like the pant of an
+animal athirst, laid down at a well and drinking; and the well proved
+quite full, gloriously clear; it rose up munificently of its own
+impulse; I saw the sun through its gush, and not a mote, Lucy, no moss,
+no insect, no atom in the thrice-refined golden gurgle.
+
+“Life,” she went on, “is said to be full of pain to some. I have read
+biographies where the wayfarer seemed to journey on from suffering to
+suffering; where Hope flew before him fast, never alighting so near, or
+lingering so long, as to give his hand a chance of one realizing grasp.
+I have read of those who sowed in tears, and whose harvest, so far from
+being reaped in joy, perished by untimely blight, or was borne off by
+sudden whirlwind; and, alas! some of these met the winter with empty
+garners, and died of utter want in the darkest and coldest of the
+year.”
+
+“Was it their fault, Paulina, that they of whom you speak thus died?”
+
+“Not always their fault. Some of them were good endeavouring people. I
+am not endeavouring, nor actively good, yet God has caused me to grow
+in sun, due moisture, and safe protection, sheltered, fostered, taught,
+by my dear father; and now—now—another comes. Graham loves me.”
+
+For some minutes we both paused on this climax.
+
+“Does your father know?” I inquired, in a low voice.
+
+“Graham spoke with deep respect of papa, but implied that he dared not
+approach that quarter as yet; he must first prove his worth: he added
+that he must have some light respecting myself and my own feelings ere
+he ventured to risk a step in the matter elsewhere.”
+
+“How did you reply?”
+
+“I replied briefly, but I did not repulse him. Yet I almost trembled
+for fear of making the answer too cordial: Graham’s tastes are so
+fastidious. I wrote it three times—chastening and subduing the phrases
+at every rescript; at last, having confected it till it seemed to me to
+resemble a morsel of ice flavoured with ever so slight a zest of fruit
+or sugar, I ventured to seal and despatch it.”
+
+“Excellent, Paulina! Your instinct is fine; you understand Dr.
+Bretton.”
+
+“But how must I manage about papa? There I am still in pain.”
+
+“Do not manage at all. Wait now. Only maintain no further
+correspondence till your father knows all, and gives his sanction.”
+
+“Will he ever give it?”
+
+“Time will show. Wait.”
+
+“Dr. Bretton wrote one other letter, deeply grateful for my calm, brief
+note; but I anticipated your advice, by saying, that while my
+sentiments continued the same, I could not, without my father’s
+knowledge, write again.”
+
+“You acted as you ought to have done; so Dr. Bretton will feel: it will
+increase his pride in you, his love for you, if either be capable of
+increase. Paulina, that gentle hoar-frost of yours, surrounding so much
+pure, fine flame, is a priceless privilege of nature.”
+
+“You see I feel Graham’s disposition,” said she. “I feel that no
+delicacy can be too exquisite for his treatment.”
+
+“It is perfectly proved that you comprehend him, and then—whatever Dr.
+Bretton’s disposition, were he one who expected to be more nearly
+met—you would still act truthfully, openly, tenderly, with your
+father.”
+
+“Lucy, I trust I shall thus act always. Oh, it will be pain to wake
+papa from his dream, and tell him I am no more a little girl!”
+
+“Be in no hurry to do so, Paulina. Leave the revelation to Time and
+your kind Fate. I also have noticed the gentleness of her cares for
+you: doubt not she will benignantly order the circumstances, and fitly
+appoint the hour. Yes: I have thought over your life just as you have
+yourself thought it over; I have made comparisons like those to which
+you adverted. We know not the future, but the past has been propitious.
+
+“As a child I feared for you; nothing that has life was ever more
+susceptible than your nature in infancy: under harshness or neglect,
+neither your outward nor your inward self would have ripened to what
+they now are. Much pain, much fear, much struggle, would have troubled
+the very lines of your features, broken their regularity, would have
+harassed your nerves into the fever of habitual irritation; you would
+have lost in health and cheerfulness, in grace and sweetness.
+Providence has protected and cultured you, not only for your own sake,
+but I believe for Graham’s. His star, too, was fortunate: to develop
+fully the best of his nature, a companion like you was needed: there
+you are, ready. You must be united. I knew it the first day I saw you
+together at La Terrasse. In all that mutually concerns you and Graham
+there seems to me promise, plan, harmony. I do not think the sunny
+youth of either will prove the forerunner of stormy age. I think it is
+deemed good that you two should live in peace and be happy—not as
+angels, but as few are happy amongst mortals. Some lives _are_ thus
+blessed: it is God’s will: it is the attesting trace and lingering
+evidence of Eden. Other lives run from the first another course. Other
+travellers encounter weather fitful and gusty, wild and variable—breast
+adverse winds, are belated and overtaken by the early closing winter
+night. Neither can this happen without the sanction of God; and I know
+that, amidst His boundless works, is somewhere stored the secret of
+this last fate’s justice: I know that His treasures contain the proof
+as the promise of its mercy.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+M. PAUL KEEPS HIS PROMISE.
+
+
+On the first of May, we had all—i.e. the twenty boarders and the four
+teachers—notice to rise at five o’clock of the morning, to be dressed
+and ready by six, to put ourselves under the command of M. le
+Professeur Emanuel, who was to head our march forth from Villette, for
+it was on this day he proposed to fulfil his promise of taking us to
+breakfast in the country. I, indeed, as the reader may perhaps
+remember, had not had the honour of an invitation when this excursion
+was first projected—rather the contrary; but on my now making allusion
+to this fact, and wishing to know how it was to be, my ear received a
+pull, of which I did not venture to challenge the repetition by
+raising, further difficulties.
+
+“Je vous conseille de vous faire prier,” said M. Emanuel, imperially
+menacing the other ear. One Napoleonic compliment, however, was enough,
+so I made up my mind to be of the party.
+
+The morning broke calm as summer, with singing of birds in the garden,
+and a light dew-mist that promised heat. We all said it would be warm,
+and we all felt pleasure in folding away heavy garments, and in
+assuming the attire suiting a sunny season. The clean fresh print
+dress, and the light straw bonnet, each made and trimmed as the French
+workwoman alone can make and trim, so as to unite the utterly
+unpretending with the perfectly becoming, was the rule of costume.
+Nobody flaunted in faded silk; nobody wore a second-hand best article.
+
+At six the bell rang merrily, and we poured down the staircase, through
+the carré, along the corridor, into the vestibule. There stood our
+Professor, wearing, not his savage-looking paletôt and severe
+bonnet-grec, but a young-looking belted blouse and cheerful straw hat.
+He had for us all the kindest good-morrow, and most of us for him had a
+thanksgiving smile. We were marshalled in order and soon started.
+
+The streets were yet quiet, and the boulevards were fresh and peaceful
+as fields. I believe we were very happy as we walked along. This chief
+of ours had the secret of giving a certain impetus to happiness when he
+would; just as, in an opposite mood, he could give a thrill to fear.
+
+He did not lead nor follow us, but walked along the line, giving a word
+to every one, talking much to his favourites, and not wholly neglecting
+even those he disliked. It was rather my wish, for a reason I had, to
+keep slightly aloof from notice, and being paired with Ginevra
+Fanshawe, bearing on my arm the dear pressure of that angel’s not
+unsubstantial limb—(she continued in excellent case, and I can assure
+the reader it was no trifling business to bear the burden of her
+loveliness; many a time in the course of that warm day I wished to
+goodness there had been less of the charming commodity)—however, having
+her, as I said, I tried to make her useful by interposing her always
+between myself and M. Paul, shifting my place, according as I heard him
+coming up to the right hand or the left. My private motive for this
+manoeuvre might be traced to the circumstance of the new print dress I
+wore, being pink in colour—a fact which, under our present convoy, made
+me feel something as I have felt, when, clad in a shawl with a red
+border, necessitated to traverse a meadow where pastured a bull.
+
+For awhile, the shifting system, together with some modifications in
+the arrangement of a black silk scarf, answered my purpose; but,
+by-and-by, he found out, that whether he came to this side or to that,
+Miss Fanshawe was still his neighbour. The course of acquaintance
+between Ginevra and him had never run so smooth that his temper did not
+undergo a certain crisping process whenever he heard her English
+accent: nothing in their dispositions fitted; they jarred if they came
+in contact; he held her empty and affected; she deemed him bearish,
+meddling, repellent.
+
+At last, when he had changed his place for about the sixth time,
+finding still the same untoward result to the experiment—he thrust his
+head forward, settled his eyes on mine, and demanded with impatience,
+“Qu’est-ce que c’est? Vous me jouez des tours?”
+
+The words were hardly out of his mouth, however, ere, with his
+customary quickness, he seized the root of this proceeding: in vain I
+shook out the long fringe, and spread forth the broad end of my scarf.
+“A-h-h! c’est la robe rose!” broke from his lips, affecting me very
+much like the sudden and irate low of some lord of the meadow.
+
+“It is only cotton,” I alleged, hurriedly; “and cheaper, and washes
+better than any other colour.”
+
+“Et Mademoiselle Lucy est coquette comme dix Parisiennes,” he answered.
+“A-t-on jamais vu une Anglaise pareille. Regardez plutôt son chapeau,
+et ses gants, et ses brodequins!” These articles of dress were just
+like what my companions wore; certainly not one whit smarter—perhaps
+rather plainer than most—but Monsieur had now got hold of his text, and
+I began to chafe under the expected sermon. It went off, however, as
+mildly as the menace of a storm sometimes passes on a summer day. I got
+but one flash of sheet lightning in the shape of a single bantering
+smile from his eyes; and then he said, “Courage!—à vrai dire je ne suis
+pas fâché, peut-être même suis je content qu’on s’est fait si belle
+pour ma petite fête.”
+
+“Mais ma robe n’est pas belle, Monsieur—elle n’est que propre.”
+
+“J’aime la propreté,” said he. In short, he was not to be dissatisfied;
+the sun of good humour was to triumph on this auspicious morning; it
+consumed scudding clouds ere they sullied its disk.
+
+And now we were in the country, amongst what they called “les bois et
+les petits sentiers.” These woods and lanes a month later would offer
+but a dusty and doubtful seclusion: now, however, in their May
+greenness and morning repose, they looked very pleasant.
+
+We reached a certain well, planted round, in the taste of Labassecour,
+with an orderly circle of lime-trees: here a halt was called; on the
+green swell of ground surrounding this well, we were ordered to be
+seated, Monsieur taking his place in our midst, and suffering us to
+gather in a knot round him. Those who liked him more than they feared,
+came close, and these were chiefly little ones; those who feared more
+than they liked, kept somewhat aloof; those in whom much affection had
+given, even to what remained of fear, a pleasurable zest, observed the
+greatest distance.
+
+He began to tell us a story. Well could he narrate: in such a diction
+as children love, and learned men emulate; a diction simple in its
+strength, and strong in its simplicity. There were beautiful touches in
+that little tale; sweet glimpses of feeling and hues of description
+that, while I listened, sunk into my mind, and since have never faded.
+He tinted a twilight scene—I hold it in memory still—such a picture I
+have never looked on from artist’s pencil.
+
+I have said, that, for myself, I had no impromptu faculty; and perhaps
+that very deficiency made me marvel the more at one who possessed it in
+perfection. M. Emanuel was not a man to write books; but I have heard
+him lavish, with careless, unconscious prodigality, such mental wealth
+as books seldom boast; his mind was indeed my library, and whenever it
+was opened to me, I entered bliss. Intellectually imperfect as I was, I
+could read little; there were few bound and printed volumes that did
+not weary me—whose perusal did not fag and blind—but his tomes of
+thought were collyrium to the spirit’s eyes; over their contents,
+inward sight grew clear and strong. I used to think what a delight it
+would be for one who loved him better than he loved himself, to gather
+and store up those handfuls of gold-dust, so recklessly flung to
+heaven’s reckless winds.
+
+His story done, he approached the little knoll where I and Ginevra sat
+apart. In his usual mode of demanding an opinion (he had not reticence
+to wait till it was voluntarily offered) he asked, “Were you
+interested?”
+
+According to my wonted undemonstrative fashion, I simply
+answered—“Yes.”
+
+“Was it good?”
+
+“Very good.”
+
+“Yet I could not write that down,” said he.
+
+“Why not, Monsieur?”
+
+“I hate the mechanical labour; I hate to stoop and sit still. I could
+dictate it, though, with pleasure, to an amanuensis who suited me.
+Would Mademoiselle Lucy write for me if I asked her?”
+
+“Monsieur would be too quick; he would urge me, and be angry if my pen
+did not keep pace with his lips.”
+
+“Try some day; let us see the monster I can make of myself under the
+circumstances. But just now, there is no question of dictation; I mean
+to make you useful in another office. Do you see yonder farm-house?”
+
+“Surrounded with trees? Yes.”
+
+“There we are to breakfast; and while the good fermière makes the café
+au lait in a caldron, you and five others, whom I shall select, will
+spread with butter half a hundred rolls.”
+
+Having formed his troop into line once more, he marched us straight on
+the farm, which, on seeing our force, surrendered without capitulation.
+
+Clean knives and plates, and fresh butter being provided, half-a-dozen
+of us, chosen by our Professor, set to work under his directions, to
+prepare for breakfast a huge basket of rolls, with which the baker had
+been ordered to provision the farm, in anticipation of our coming.
+Coffee and chocolate were already made hot; cream and new-laid eggs
+were added to the treat, and M. Emanuel, always generous, would have
+given a large order for “jambon” and “confitures” in addition, but that
+some of us, who presumed perhaps upon our influence, insisted that it
+would be a most reckless waste of victual. He railed at us for our
+pains, terming us “des ménagères avares;” but we let him talk, and
+managed the economy of the repast our own way.
+
+With what a pleasant countenance he stood on the farm-kitchen hearth
+looking on! He was a man whom it made happy to see others happy; he
+liked to have movement, animation, abundance and enjoyment round him.
+We asked where he would sit. He told us, we knew well he was our slave,
+and we his tyrants, and that he dared not so much as choose a chair
+without our leave; so we set him the farmer’s great chair at the head
+of the long table, and put him into it.
+
+Well might we like him, with all his passions and hurricanes, when he
+could be so benignant and docile at times, as he was just now. Indeed,
+at the worst, it was only his nerves that were irritable, not his
+temper that was radically bad; soothe, comprehend, comfort him, and he
+was a lamb; he would not harm a fly. Only to the very stupid, perverse,
+or unsympathizing, was he in the slightest degree dangerous.
+
+Mindful always of his religion, he made the youngest of the party say a
+little prayer before we began breakfast, crossing himself as devotedly
+as a woman. I had never seen him pray before, or make that pious sign;
+he did it so simply, with such child-like faith, I could not help
+smiling pleasurably as I watched; his eyes met my smile; he just
+stretched out his kind hand, saying, “Donnez-moi la main! I see we
+worship the same God, in the same spirit, though by different rites.”
+
+Most of M. Emanuel’s brother Professors were emancipated free-thinkers,
+infidels, atheists; and many of them men whose lives would not bear
+scrutiny; he was more like a knight of old, religious in his way, and
+of spotless fame. Innocent childhood, beautiful youth were safe at his
+side. He had vivid passions, keen feelings, but his pure honour and his
+artless piety were the strong charm that kept the lions couchant.
+
+That breakfast was a merry meal, and the merriment was not mere vacant
+clatter: M. Paul originated, led, controlled and heightened it; his
+social, lively temper played unfettered and unclouded; surrounded only
+by women and children there was nothing to cross and thwart him; he had
+his own way, and a pleasant way it was.
+
+The meal over, the party were free to run and play in the meadows; a
+few stayed to help the farmer’s wife to put away her earthenware. M.
+Paul called me from among these to come out and sit near him under a
+tree—whence he could view the troop gambolling, over a wide pasture—and
+read to him whilst he took his cigar. He sat on a rustic bench, and I
+at the tree-root. While I read (a pocket-classic—a Corneille—I did not
+like it, but he did, finding therein beauties I never could be brought
+to perceive), he listened with a sweetness of calm the more impressive
+from the impetuosity of his general nature; the deepest happiness
+filled his blue eye and smoothed his broad forehead. I, too, was
+happy—happy with the bright day, happier with his presence, happiest
+with his kindness.
+
+He asked, by-and-by, if I would not rather run to my companions than
+sit there? I said, no; I felt content to be where he was. He asked
+whether, if I were his sister, I should always be content to stay with
+a brother such as he. I said, I believed I should; and I felt it.
+Again, he inquired whether, if he were to leave Villette, and go far
+away, I should be sorry; and I dropped Corneille, and made no reply.
+
+“Petite soeur,” said he; “how long could you remember me if we were
+separated?”
+
+“That, Monsieur, I can never tell, because I do not know how long it
+will be before I shall cease to remember everything earthly.”
+
+“If I were to go beyond seas for two—three—five years, should you
+welcome me on my return?”
+
+“Monsieur, how could I live in the interval?”
+
+“Pourtant j’ai été pour vous bien dur, bien exigeant.”
+
+I hid my face with the book, for it was covered with tears. I asked him
+why he talked so; and he said he would talk so no more, and cheered me
+again with the kindest encouragement. Still, the gentleness with which
+he treated me during the rest of the day, went somehow to my heart. It
+was too tender. It was mournful. I would rather he had been abrupt,
+whimsical, and irate as was his wont.
+
+When hot noon arrived—for the day turned out as we had anticipated,
+glowing as June—our shepherd collected his sheep from the pasture, and
+proceeded to lead us all softly home. But we had a whole league to
+walk, thus far from Villette was the farm where he had breakfasted; the
+children, especially, were tired with their play; the spirits of most
+flagged at the prospect of this mid-day walk over chaussées flinty,
+glaring, and dusty. This state of things had been foreseen and provided
+for. Just beyond the boundary of the farm we met two spacious vehicles
+coming to fetch us—such conveyances as are hired out purposely for the
+accommodation of school-parties; here, with good management, room was
+found for all, and in another hour M. Paul made safe consignment of his
+charge at the Rue Fossette. It had been a pleasant day: it would have
+been perfect, but for the breathing of melancholy which had dimmed its
+sunshine a moment.
+
+That tarnish was renewed the same evening.
+
+Just about sunset, I saw M. Emanuel come out of the front-door,
+accompanied by Madame Beck. They paced the centre-alley for nearly an
+hour, talking earnestly: he—looking grave, yet restless; she—wearing an
+amazed, expostulatory, dissuasive air.
+
+I wondered what was under discussion; and when Madame Beck re-entered
+the house as it darkened, leaving her kinsman Paul yet lingering in the
+garden, I said to myself—“He called me ‘petite soeur’ this morning. If
+he were really my brother, how I should like to go to him just now, and
+ask what it is that presses on his mind. See how he leans against that
+tree, with his arms crossed and his brow bent. He wants consolation, I
+know: Madame does not console: she only remonstrates. What now——?”
+
+Starting from quiescence to action, M. Paul came striding erect and
+quick down the garden. The carré doors were yet open: I thought he was
+probably going to water the orange-trees in the tubs, after his
+occasional custom; on reaching the court, however, he took an abrupt
+turn and made for the berceau and the first-classe glass door. There,
+in that first classe I was, thence I had been watching him; but there I
+could not find courage to await his approach. He had turned so
+suddenly, he strode so fast, he looked so strange; the coward within me
+grew pale, shrank and—not waiting to listen to reason, and hearing the
+shrubs crush and the gravel crunch to his advance—she was gone on the
+wings of panic.
+
+Nor did I pause till I had taken sanctuary in the oratory, now empty.
+Listening there with beating pulses, and an unaccountable, undefined
+apprehension, I heard him pass through all the schoolrooms, clashing
+the doors impatiently as he went; I heard him invade the refectory
+which the “lecture pieuse” was now holding under hallowed constraint; I
+heard him pronounce these words—“Où est Mademoiselle Lucie?”
+
+And just as, summoning my courage, I was preparing to go down and do
+what, after all, I most wished to do in the world—viz., meet him—the
+wiry voice of St. Pierre replied glibly and falsely, “Elle est au lit.”
+And he passed, with the stamp of vexation, into the corridor. There
+Madame Beck met, captured, chid, convoyed to the street-door, and
+finally dismissed him.
+
+As that street-door closed, a sudden amazement at my own perverse
+proceeding struck like a blow upon me. I felt from the first it was me
+he wanted—me he was seeking—and had not I wanted him too? What, then,
+had carried me away? What had rapt me beyond his reach? He had
+something to tell: he was going to tell me that something: my ear
+strained its nerve to hear it, and I had made the confidence
+impossible. Yearning to listen and console, while I thought audience
+and solace beyond hope’s reach—no sooner did opportunity suddenly and
+fully arrive, than I evaded it as I would have evaded the levelled
+shaft of mortality.
+
+Well, my insane inconsistency had its reward. Instead of the comfort,
+the certain satisfaction, I might have won—could I but have put choking
+panic down, and stood firm two minutes—here was dead blank, dark doubt,
+and drear suspense.
+
+I took my wages to my pillow, and passed the night counting them.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+MALEVOLA.
+
+
+Madame Beck called me on Thursday afternoon, and asked whether I had
+any occupation to hinder me from going into town and executing some
+little commissions for her at the shops.
+
+Being disengaged, and placing myself at her service, I was presently
+furnished with a list of the wools, silks, embroidering thread,
+etcetera, wanted in the pupils’ work, and having equipped myself in a
+manner suiting the threatening aspect of a cloudy and sultry day, I was
+just drawing the spring-bolt of the street-door, in act to issue forth,
+when Madame’s voice again summoned me to the salle-à-manger.
+
+“Pardon, Meess Lucie!” cried she, in the seeming haste of an impromptu
+thought, “I have just recollected one more errand for you, if your
+good-nature will not deem itself over-burdened?”
+
+Of course I “confounded myself” in asseverations to the contrary; and
+Madame, running into the little salon, brought thence a pretty basket,
+filled with fine hothouse fruit, rosy, perfect, and tempting, reposing
+amongst the dark green, wax-like leaves, and pale yellow stars of, I
+know not what, exotic plant.
+
+“There,” she said, “it is not heavy, and will not shame your neat
+toilette, as if it were a household, servant-like detail. Do me the
+favour to leave this little basket at the house of Madame Walravens,
+with my felicitations on her fête. She lives down in the old town,
+Numéro 3, Rue des Mages. I fear you will find the walk rather long, but
+you have the whole afternoon before you, and do not hurry; if you are
+not back in time for dinner, I will order a portion to be saved, or
+Goton, with whom you are a favourite, will have pleasure in tossing up
+some trifle, for your especial benefit. You shall not be forgotten, ma
+bonne Meess. And oh! please!” (calling me back once more) “be sure to
+insist on seeing Madame Walravens herself, and giving the basket into
+her own hands, in order that there may be no mistake, for she is rather
+a punctilious personage. Adieu! Au revoir!”
+
+And at last I got away. The shop commissions took some time to execute,
+that choosing and matching of silks and wools being always a tedious
+business, but at last I got through my list. The patterns for the
+slippers, the bell-ropes, the cabas were selected—the slides and
+tassels for the purses chosen—the whole “tripotage,” in short, was off
+my mind; nothing but the fruit and the felicitations remained to be
+attended to.
+
+I rather liked the prospect of a long walk, deep into the old and grim
+Basse-Ville; and I liked it no worse because the evening sky, over the
+city, was settling into a mass of black-blue metal, heated at the rim,
+and inflaming slowly to a heavy red.
+
+I fear a high wind, because storm demands that exertion of strength and
+use of action I always yield with pain; but the sullen down-fall, the
+thick snow-descent, or dark rush of rain, ask only resignation—the
+quiet abandonment of garments and person to be, drenched. In return, it
+sweeps a great capital clean before you; it makes you a quiet path
+through broad, grand streets; it petrifies a living city as if by
+eastern enchantment; it transforms a Villette into a Tadmor. Let, then,
+the rains fall, and the floods descend—only I must first get rid of
+this basket of fruit.
+
+An unknown clock from an unknown tower (Jean Baptiste’s voice was now
+too distant to be audible) was tolling the third quarter past five,
+when I reached that street and house whereof Madame Beck had given me
+the address. It was no street at all; it seemed rather to be part of a
+square: it was quiet, grass grew between the broad grey flags, the
+houses were large and looked very old—behind them rose the appearance
+of trees, indicating gardens at the back. Antiquity brooded above this
+region, business was banished thence. Rich men had once possessed this
+quarter, and once grandeur had made her seat here. That church, whose
+dark, half-ruinous turrets overlooked the square, was the venerable and
+formerly opulent shrine of the Magi. But wealth and greatness had long
+since stretched their gilded pinions and fled hence, leaving these
+their ancient nests, perhaps to house Penury for a time, or perhaps to
+stand cold and empty, mouldering untenanted in the course of winters.
+
+As I crossed this deserted “place,” on whose pavement drops almost as
+large as a five-franc piece were now slowly darkening, I saw, in its
+whole expanse, no symptom or evidence of life, except what was given in
+the figure of an infirm old priest, who went past, bending and propped
+on a staff—the type of eld and decay.
+
+He had issued from the very house to which I was directed; and when I
+paused before the door just closed after him, and rang the bell, he
+turned to look at me. Nor did he soon avert his gaze; perhaps he
+thought me, with my basket of summer fruit, and my lack of the dignity
+age confers, an incongruous figure in such a scene. I know, had a young
+ruddy-faced bonne opened the door to admit me, I should have thought
+such a one little in harmony with her dwelling; but, when I found
+myself confronted by a very old woman, wearing a very antique peasant
+costume, a cap alike hideous and costly, with long flaps of native
+lace, a petticoat and jacket of cloth, and sabots more like little
+boats than shoes, it seemed all right, and soothingly in character.
+
+The expression of her face was not quite so soothing as the cut of her
+costume; anything more cantankerous I have seldom seen; she would
+scarcely reply to my inquiry after Madame Walravens; I believe she
+would have snatched the basket of fruit from my hand, had not the old
+priest, hobbling up, checked her, and himself lent an ear to the
+message with which I was charged.
+
+His apparent deafness rendered it a little difficult to make him fully
+understand that I must see Madame Walravens, and consign the fruit into
+her own hands. At last, however, he comprehended the fact that such
+were my orders, and that duty enjoined their literal fulfilment.
+Addressing the aged bonne, not in French, but in the aboriginal tongue
+of Labassecour, he persuaded her, at last, to let me cross the
+inhospitable threshold, and himself escorting me up-stairs, I was
+ushered into a sort of salon, and there left.
+
+The room was large, and had a fine old ceiling, and almost church-like
+windows of coloured-glass; but it was desolate, and in the shadow of a
+coming storm, looked strangely lowering. Within—opened a smaller room;
+there, however, the blind of the single casement was closed; through
+the deep gloom few details of furniture were apparent. These few I
+amused myself by puzzling to make out; and, in particular, I was
+attracted by the outline of a picture on the wall.
+
+By-and-by the picture seemed to give way: to my bewilderment, it shook,
+it sunk, it rolled back into nothing; its vanishing left an opening
+arched, leading into an arched passage, with a mystic winding stair;
+both passage and stair were of cold stone, uncarpeted and unpainted.
+Down this donjon stair descended a tap, tap, like a stick; soon there
+fell on the steps a shadow, and last of all, I was aware of a
+substance.
+
+Yet, was it actual substance, this appearance approaching me? this
+obstruction, partially darkening the arch?
+
+It drew near, and I saw it well. I began to comprehend where I was.
+Well might this old square be named quarter of the Magi—well might the
+three towers, overlooking it, own for godfathers three mystic sages of
+a dead and dark art. Hoar enchantment here prevailed; a spell had
+opened for me elf-land—that cell-like room, that vanishing picture,
+that arch and passage, and stair of stone, were all parts of a fairy
+tale. Distincter even than these scenic details stood the chief
+figure—Cunegonde, the sorceress! Malevola, the evil fairy. How was she?
+
+She might be three feet high, but she had no shape; her skinny hands
+rested upon each other, and pressed the gold knob of a wand-like ivory
+staff. Her face was large, set, not upon her shoulders, but before her
+breast; she seemed to have no neck; I should have said there were a
+hundred years in her features, and more perhaps in her eyes—her malign,
+unfriendly eyes, with thick grey brows above, and livid lids all round.
+How severely they viewed me, with a sort of dull displeasure!
+
+This being wore a gown of brocade, dyed bright blue, full-tinted as the
+gentianella flower, and covered with satin foliage in a large pattern;
+over the gown a costly shawl, gorgeously bordered, and so large for
+her, that its many-coloured fringe swept the floor. But her chief
+points were her jewels: she had long, clear earrings, blazing with a
+lustre which could not be borrowed or false; she had rings on her
+skeleton hands, with thick gold hoops, and stones—purple, green, and
+blood-red. Hunchbacked, dwarfish, and doting, she was adorned like a
+barbarian queen.
+
+“Que me voulez-vous?” said she, hoarsely, with the voice rather of male
+than of female old age; and, indeed, a silver beard bristled her chin.
+
+I delivered my basket and my message.
+
+“Is that all?” she demanded.
+
+“It is all,” said I.
+
+“Truly, it was well worth while,” she answered. “Return to Madame Beck,
+and tell her I can buy fruit when I want it, et quant à ses
+félicitations, je m’en moque!” And this courteous dame turned her back.
+
+Just as she turned, a peal of thunder broke, and a flash of lightning
+blazed broad over salon and boudoir. The tale of magic seemed to
+proceed with due accompaniment of the elements. The wanderer, decoyed
+into the enchanted castle, heard rising, outside, the spell-wakened
+tempest.
+
+What, in all this, was I to think of Madame Beck? She owned strange
+acquaintance; she offered messages and gifts at an unique shrine, and
+inauspicious seemed the bearing of the uncouth thing she worshipped.
+There went that sullen Sidonia, tottering and trembling like palsy
+incarnate, tapping her ivory staff on the mosaic parquet, and muttering
+venomously as she vanished.
+
+Down washed the rain, deep lowered the welkin; the clouds, ruddy a
+while ago, had now, through all their blackness, turned deadly pale, as
+if in terror. Notwithstanding my late boast about not fearing a shower,
+I hardly liked to go out under this waterspout. Then the gleams of
+lightning were very fierce, the thunder crashed very near; this storm
+had gathered immediately above Villette; it seemed to have burst at the
+zenith; it rushed down prone; the forked, slant bolts pierced athwart
+vertical torrents; red zigzags interlaced a descent blanched as white
+metal: and all broke from a sky heavily black in its swollen abundance.
+
+Leaving Madame Walravens’ inhospitable salon, I betook myself to her
+cold staircase; there was a seat on the landing—there I waited.
+Somebody came gliding along the gallery just above; it was the old
+priest.
+
+“Indeed Mademoiselle shall not sit there,” said he. “It would
+displeasure our benefactor if he knew a stranger was so treated in this
+house.”
+
+And he begged me so earnestly to return to the salon, that, without
+discourtesy, I could not but comply. The smaller room was better
+furnished and more habitable than the larger; thither he introduced me.
+Partially withdrawing the blind, he disclosed what seemed more like an
+oratory than a boudoir, a very solemn little chamber, looking as if it
+were a place rather dedicated to relics and remembrance, than designed
+for present use and comfort.
+
+The good father sat down, as if to keep me company; but instead of
+conversing, he took out a book, fastened on the page his eyes, and
+employed his lips in whispering—what sounded like a prayer or litany. A
+yellow electric light from the sky gilded his bald head; his figure
+remained in shade—deep and purple; he sat still as sculpture; he seemed
+to forget me for his prayers; he only looked up when a fiercer bolt, or
+a harsher, closer rattle told of nearing danger; even then, it was not
+in fear, but in seeming awe, he raised his eyes. I too was awe-struck;
+being, however, under no pressure of slavish terror, my thoughts and
+observations were free.
+
+To speak truth, I was beginning to fancy that the old priest resembled
+that Père Silas, before whom I had kneeled in the church of the
+Béguinage. The idea was vague, for I had seen my confessor only in dusk
+and in profile, yet still I seemed to trace a likeness: I thought also
+I recognized the voice. While I watched him, he betrayed, by one lifted
+look, that he felt my scrutiny; I turned to note the room; that too had
+its half mystic interest.
+
+Beside a cross of curiously carved old ivory, yellow with time, and
+sloped above a dark-red _prie-dieu_, furnished duly, with rich missal
+and ebon rosary—hung the picture whose dim outline had drawn my eyes
+before—the picture which moved, fell away with the wall and let in
+phantoms. Imperfectly seen, I had taken it for a Madonna; revealed by
+clearer light, it proved to be a woman’s portrait in a nun’s dress. The
+face, though not beautiful, was pleasing; pale, young, and shaded with
+the dejection of grief or ill health. I say again it was not beautiful;
+it was not even intellectual; its very amiability was the amiability of
+a weak frame, inactive passions, acquiescent habits: yet I looked long
+at that picture, and could not choose but look.
+
+The old priest, who at first had seemed to me so deaf and infirm, must
+yet have retained his faculties in tolerable preservation; absorbed in
+his book as he appeared, without once lifting his head, or, as far as I
+knew, turning his eyes, he perceived the point towards which my
+attention was drawn, and, in a slow distinct voice, dropped, concerning
+it, these four observations:—
+
+“She was much beloved.
+
+“She gave herself to God.
+
+“She died young.
+
+“She is still remembered, still wept.”
+
+“By that aged lady, Madame Walravens?” I inquired, fancying that I had
+discovered in the incurable grief of bereavement, a key to that same
+aged lady’s desperate ill-humour.
+
+The father shook his head with half a smile.
+
+“No, no,” said he; “a grand-dame’s affection for her children’s
+children may be great, and her sorrow for their loss, lively; but it is
+only the affianced lover, to whom Fate, Faith, and Death have trebly
+denied the bliss of union, who mourns what he has lost, as Justine
+Marie is still mourned.”
+
+I thought the father rather wished to be questioned, and therefore I
+inquired who had lost and who still mourned “Justine Marie.” I got, in
+reply, quite a little romantic narrative, told not unimpressively, with
+the accompaniment of the now subsiding storm. I am bound to say it
+might have been made much more truly impressive, if there had been less
+French, Rousseau-like sentimentalizing and wire-drawing; and rather
+more healthful carelessness of effect. But the worthy father was
+obviously a Frenchman born and bred (I became more and more persuaded
+of his resemblance to my confessor)—he was a true son of Rome; when he
+did lift his eyes, he looked at me out of their corners, with more and
+sharper subtlety than, one would have thought, could survive the wear
+and tear of seventy years. Yet, I believe, he was a good old man.
+
+The hero of his tale was some former pupil of his, whom he now called
+his benefactor, and who, it appears, had loved this pale Justine Marie,
+the daughter of rich parents, at a time when his own worldly prospects
+were such as to justify his aspiring to a well-dowered hand. The
+pupil’s father—once a rich banker—had failed, died, and left behind him
+only debts and destitution. The son was then forbidden to think of
+Marie; especially that old witch of a grand-dame I had seen, Madame
+Walravens, opposed the match with all the violence of a temper which
+deformity made sometimes demoniac. The mild Marie had neither the
+treachery to be false, nor the force to be quite staunch to her lover;
+she gave up her first suitor, but, refusing to accept a second with a
+heavier purse, withdrew to a convent, and there died in her noviciate.
+
+Lasting anguish, it seems, had taken possession of the faithful heart
+which worshipped her, and the truth of that love and grief had been
+shown in a manner which touched even me, as I listened.
+
+Some years after Justine Marie’s death, ruin had come on her house too:
+her father, by nominal calling a jeweller, but who also dealt a good
+deal on the Bourse, had been concerned in some financial transactions
+which entailed exposure and ruinous fines. He died of grief for the
+loss, and shame for the infamy. His old hunchbacked mother and his
+bereaved wife were left penniless, and might have died too of want; but
+their lost daughter’s once-despised, yet most true-hearted suitor,
+hearing of the condition of these ladies, came with singular
+devotedness to the rescue. He took on their insolent pride the revenge
+of the purest charity—housing, caring for, befriending them, so as no
+son could have done it more tenderly and efficiently. The mother—on the
+whole a good woman—died blessing him; the strange, godless, loveless,
+misanthrope grandmother lived still, entirely supported by this
+self-sacrificing man. Her, who had been the bane of his life, blighting
+his hope, and awarding him, for love and domestic happiness, long
+mourning and cheerless solitude, he treated with the respect a good son
+might offer a kind mother. He had brought her to this house, “and,”
+continued the priest, while genuine tears rose to his eyes, “here, too,
+he shelters me, his old tutor, and Agnes, a superannuated servant of
+his father’s family. To our sustenance, and to other charities, I know
+he devotes three-parts of his income, keeping only the fourth to
+provide himself with bread and the most modest accommodations. By this
+arrangement he has rendered it impossible to himself ever to marry: he
+has given himself to God and to his angel-bride as much as if he were a
+priest, like me.”
+
+The father had wiped away his tears before he uttered these last words,
+and in pronouncing them, he for one instant raised his eyes to mine. I
+caught this glance, despite its veiled character; the momentary gleam
+shot a meaning which struck me.
+
+These Romanists are strange beings. Such a one among them—whom you know
+no more than the last Inca of Peru, or the first Emperor of China—knows
+you and all your concerns; and has his reasons for saying to you so and
+so, when you simply thought the communication sprang impromptu from the
+instant’s impulse: his plan in bringing it about that you shall come on
+such a day, to such a place, under such and such circumstances, when
+the whole arrangement seems to your crude apprehension the ordinance of
+chance, or the sequel of exigency. Madame Beck’s suddenly-recollected
+message and present, my artless embassy to the Place of the Magi, the
+old priest accidentally descending the steps and crossing the square,
+his interposition on my behalf with the bonne who would have sent me
+away, his reappearance on the staircase, my introduction to this room,
+the portrait, the narrative so affably volunteered—all these little
+incidents, taken as they fell out, seemed each independent of its
+successor; a handful of loose beads: but threaded through by that
+quick-shot and crafty glance of a Jesuit-eye, they dropped pendent in a
+long string, like that rosary on the prie-dieu. Where lay the link of
+junction, where the little clasp of this monastic necklace? I saw or
+felt union, but could not yet find the spot, or detect the means of
+connection.
+
+Perhaps the musing-fit into which I had by this time fallen, appeared
+somewhat suspicious in its abstraction; he gently interrupted:
+“Mademoiselle,” said he, “I trust you have not far to go through these
+inundated streets?”
+
+“More than half a league.”
+
+“You live——?”
+
+“In the Rue Fossette.”
+
+“Not” (with animation), “not at the pensionnat of Madame Beck?”
+
+“The same.”
+
+“Donc” (clapping his hands), “donc, vous devez connaître mon noble
+élève, mon Paul?”
+
+“Monsieur Paul Emanuel, Professor of Literature?”
+
+“He and none other.”
+
+A brief silence fell. The spring of junction seemed suddenly to have
+become palpable; I felt it yield to pressure.
+
+“Was it of M. Paul you have been speaking?” I presently inquired. “Was
+he your pupil and the benefactor of Madame Walravens?”
+
+“Yes, and of Agnes, the old servant: and moreover, (with a certain
+emphasis), he was and _is_ the lover, true, constant and eternal, of
+that saint in heaven—Justine Marie.”
+
+“And who, father, are _you?_” I continued; and though I accentuated the
+question, its utterance was well nigh superfluous; I was ere this quite
+prepared for the answer which actually came.
+
+“I, daughter, am Père Silas; that unworthy son of Holy Church whom you
+once honoured with a noble and touching confidence, showing me the core
+of a heart, and the inner shrine of a mind whereof, in solemn truth, I
+coveted the direction, in behalf of the only true faith. Nor have I for
+a day lost sight of you, nor for an hour failed to take in you a rooted
+interest. Passed under the discipline of Rome, moulded by her high
+training, inoculated with her salutary doctrines, inspired by the zeal
+she alone gives—I realize what then might be your spiritual rank, your
+practical value; and I envy Heresy her prey.”
+
+This struck me as a special state of things—I half-realized myself in
+that condition also; passed under discipline, moulded, trained,
+inoculated, and so on. “Not so,” thought I, but I restrained
+deprecation, and sat quietly enough.
+
+“I suppose M. Paul does not live here?” I resumed, pursuing a theme
+which I thought more to the purpose than any wild renegade dreams.
+
+“No; he only comes occasionally to worship his beloved saint, to make
+his confession to me, and to pay his respects to her he calls his
+mother. His own lodging consists but of two rooms: he has no servant,
+and yet he will not suffer Madame Walravens to dispose of those
+splendid jewels with which you see her adorned, and in which she takes
+a puerile pride as the ornaments of her youth, and the last relics of
+her son the jeweller’s wealth.”
+
+“How often,” murmured I to myself, “has this man, this M. Emanuel,
+seemed to me to lack magnanimity in trifles, yet how great he is in
+great things!”
+
+I own I did not reckon amongst the proofs of his greatness, either the
+act of confession, or the saint-worship.
+
+“How long is it since that lady died?” I inquired, looking at Justine
+Marie.
+
+“Twenty years. She was somewhat older than M. Emanuel; he was then very
+young, for he is not much beyond forty.”
+
+“Does he yet weep her?”
+
+“His heart will weep her always: the essence of Emanuel’s nature
+is—constancy.”
+
+This was said with marked emphasis.
+
+And now the sun broke out pallid and waterish; the rain yet fell, but
+there was no more tempest: that hot firmament had cloven and poured out
+its lightnings. A longer delay would scarce leave daylight for my
+return, so I rose, thanked the father for his hospitality and his tale,
+was benignantly answered by a “pax vobiscum,” which I made kindly
+welcome, because it seemed uttered with a true benevolence; but I liked
+less the mystic phrase accompanying it.
+
+“Daughter, you _shall_ be what you _shall_ be!” an oracle that made me
+shrug my shoulders as soon as I had got outside the door. Few of us
+know what we are to come to certainly, but for all that had happened
+yet, I had good hopes of living and dying a sober-minded Protestant:
+there was a hollowness within, and a flourish around “Holy Church”
+which tempted me but moderately. I went on my way pondering many
+things. Whatever Romanism may be, there are good Romanists: this man,
+Emanuel, seemed of the best; touched with superstition, influenced by
+priestcraft, yet wondrous for fond faith, for pious devotion, for
+sacrifice of self, for charity unbounded. It remained to see how Rome,
+by her agents, handled such qualities; whether she cherished them for
+their own sake and for God’s, or put them out to usury and made booty
+of the interest.
+
+By the time I reached home, it was sundown. Goton had kindly saved me a
+portion of dinner, which indeed I needed. She called me into the little
+cabinet to partake of it, and there Madame Beck soon made her
+appearance, bringing me a glass of wine.
+
+“Well,” began she, chuckling, “and what sort of a reception did Madame
+Walravens give you? Elle est drôle, n’est-ce pas?”
+
+I told her what had passed, delivering verbatim the courteous message
+with which I had been charged.
+
+“Oh la singulière petite bossue!” laughed she. “Et figurez-vous qu’elle
+me déteste, parcequ’elle me croit amoureuse de mon cousin Paul; ce
+petit dévot qui n’ose pas bouger, à moins que son confesseur ne lui
+donne la permission! Au reste” (she went on), “if he wanted to marry
+ever so much—soit moi, soit une autre—he could not do it; he has too
+large a family already on his hands: Mère Walravens, Père Silas, Dame
+Agnes, and a whole troop of nameless paupers. There never was a man
+like him for laying on himself burdens greater than he can bear,
+voluntarily incurring needless responsibilities. Besides, he harbours a
+romantic idea about some pale-faced Marie Justine—personnage assez
+niaise à ce que je pense” (such was Madame’s irreverent remark), “who
+has been an angel in heaven, or elsewhere, this score of years, and to
+whom he means to go, free from all earthly ties, pure comme un lis, à
+ce qu’il dit. Oh, you would laugh could you but know half M. Emanuel’s
+crotchets and eccentricities! But I hinder you from taking refreshment,
+ma bonne Meess, which you must need; eat your supper, drink your wine,
+oubliez les anges, les bossues, et surtout, les Professeurs—et bon
+soir!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+FRATERNITY.
+
+
+“Oubliez les Professeurs.” So said Madame Beck. Madame Beck was a wise
+woman, but she should not have uttered those words. To do so was a
+mistake. That night she should have left me calm—not excited,
+indifferent, not interested, isolated in my own estimation and that of
+others—not connected, even in idea, with this second person whom I was
+to forget.
+
+Forget him? Ah! they took a sage plan to make me forget him—the
+wiseheads! They showed me how good he was; they made of my dear little
+man a stainless little hero. And then they had prated about his manner
+of loving. What means had I, before this day, of being certain whether
+he could love at all or not?
+
+I had known him jealous, suspicious; I had seen about him certain
+tendernesses, fitfulnesses—a softness which came like a warm air, and a
+ruth which passed like early dew, dried in the heat of his
+irritabilities: _this_ was all I had seen. And they, Père Silas and
+Modeste Maria Beck (that these two wrought in concert I could not
+doubt) opened up the adytum of his heart—showed me one grand love, the
+child of this southern nature’s youth, born so strong and perfect, that
+it had laughed at Death himself, despised his mean rape of matter,
+clung to immortal spirit, and in victory and faith, had watched beside
+a tomb twenty years.
+
+This had been done—not idly: this was not a mere hollow indulgence of
+sentiment; he had proven his fidelity by the consecration of his best
+energies to an unselfish purpose, and attested it by limitless personal
+sacrifices: for those once dear to her he prized—he had laid down
+vengeance, and taken up a cross.
+
+Now, as for Justine Marie, I knew what she was as well as if I had seen
+her. I knew she was well enough; there were girls like her in Madame
+Beck’s school—phlegmatics—pale, slow, inert, but kind-natured, neutral
+of evil, undistinguished for good.
+
+If she wore angels’ wings, I knew whose poet-fancy conferred them. If
+her forehead shone luminous with the reflex of a halo, I knew in the
+fire of whose irids that circlet of holy flame had generation.
+
+Was I, then, to be frightened by Justine Marie? Was the picture of a
+pale dead nun to rise, an eternal barrier? And what of the charities
+which absorbed his worldly goods? What of his heart sworn to virginity?
+
+Madame Beck—Père Silas—you should not have suggested these questions.
+They were at once the deepest puzzle, the strongest obstruction, and
+the keenest stimulus, I had ever felt. For a week of nights and days I
+fell asleep—I dreamt, and I woke upon these two questions. In the whole
+world there was no answer to them, except where one dark little man
+stood, sat, walked, lectured, under the head-piece of a bandit
+bonnet-grec, and within the girth of a sorry paletôt, much be-inked,
+and no little adust.
+
+After that visit to the Rue des Mages, I _did_ want to see him again. I
+felt as if—knowing what I now knew—his countenance would offer a page
+more lucid, more interesting than ever; I felt a longing to trace in it
+the imprint of that primitive devotedness, the signs of that
+half-knightly, half-saintly chivalry which the priest’s narrative
+imputed to his nature. He had become my Christian hero: under that
+character I wanted to view him.
+
+Nor was opportunity slow to favour; my new impressions underwent her
+test the next day. Yes: I was granted an interview with my “Christian
+hero”—an interview not very heroic, or sentimental, or biblical, but
+lively enough in its way.
+
+About three o’clock of the afternoon, the peace of the first
+classe—safely established, as it seemed, under the serene sway of
+Madame Beck, who, _in propriâ personâ_ was giving one of her orderly
+and useful lessons—this peace, I say, suffered a sudden fracture by the
+wild inburst of a paletôt.
+
+Nobody at the moment was quieter than myself. Eased of responsibility
+by Madame Beck’s presence, soothed by her uniform tones, pleased and
+edified with her clear exposition of the subject in hand (for she
+taught well), I sat bent over my desk, drawing—that is, copying an
+elaborate line engraving, tediously working up my copy to the finish of
+the original, for that was my practical notion of art; and, strange to
+say, I took extreme pleasure in the labour, and could even produce
+curiously finical Chinese facsimiles of steel or mezzotint
+plates—things about as valuable as so many achievements in
+worsted-work, but I thought pretty well of them in those days.
+
+What was the matter? My drawing, my pencils, my precious copy, gathered
+into one crushed-up handful, perished from before my sight; I myself
+appeared to be shaken or emptied out of my chair, as a solitary and
+withered nutmeg might be emptied out of a spice-box by an excited cook.
+That chair and my desk, seized by the wild paletôt, one under each
+sleeve, were borne afar; in a second, I followed the furniture; in two
+minutes they and I were fixed in the centre of the grand salle—a vast
+adjoining room, seldom used save for dancing and choral
+singing-lessons—fixed with an emphasis which seemed to prohibit the
+remotest hope of our ever being permitted to stir thence again.
+
+Having partially collected my scared wits, I found myself in the
+presence of two men, gentlemen, I suppose I should say—one dark, the
+other light—one having a stiff, half-military air, and wearing a
+braided surtout; the other partaking, in garb and bearing, more of the
+careless aspect of the student or artist class: both flourishing in
+full magnificence of moustaches, whiskers, and imperial. M. Emanuel
+stood a little apart from these; his countenance and eyes expressed
+strong choler; he held forth his hand with his tribune gesture.
+
+“Mademoiselle,” said he, “your business is to prove to these gentlemen
+that I am no liar. You will answer, to the best of your ability, such
+questions as they shall put. You will also write on such theme as they
+shall select. In their eyes, it appears, I hold the position of an
+unprincipled impostor. I write essays; and, with deliberate forgery,
+sign to them my pupils’ names, and boast of them as their work. You
+will disprove this charge.”
+
+Grand ciel! Here was the show-trial, so long evaded, come on me like a
+thunder-clap. These two fine, braided, mustachioed, sneering
+personages, were none other than dandy professors of the
+college—Messieurs Boissec and Rochemorte—a pair of cold-blooded fops
+and pedants, sceptics, and scoffers. It seems that M. Paul had been
+rashly exhibiting something I had written—something, he had never once
+praised, or even mentioned, in my hearing, and which I deemed
+forgotten. The essay was not remarkable at all; it only _seemed_
+remarkable, compared with the average productions of foreign
+school-girls; in an English establishment it would have passed scarce
+noticed. Messieurs Boissec and Rochemorte had thought proper to
+question its genuineness, and insinuate a cheat; I was now to bear my
+testimony to the truth, and to be put to the torture of their
+examination.
+
+A memorable scene ensued.
+
+They began with classics. A dead blank. They went on to French history.
+I hardly knew Mérovée from Pharamond. They tried me in various
+’ologies, and still only got a shake of the head, and an unchanging “Je
+n’en sais rien.”
+
+After an expressive pause, they proceeded to matters of general
+information, broaching one or two subjects which I knew pretty well,
+and on which I had often reflected. M. Emanuel, who had hitherto stood
+looking on, dark as the winter-solstice, brightened up somewhat; he
+thought I should now show myself at least no fool.
+
+He learned his error. Though answers to the questions surged up fast,
+my mind filling like a rising well, ideas were there, but not words. I
+either _could_ not, or _would_ not speak—I am not sure which: partly, I
+think, my nerves had got wrong, and partly my humour was crossed.
+
+I heard one of my examiners—he of the braided surtout—whisper to his
+co-professor, “Est-elle donc idiote?”
+
+“Yes,” I thought, “an idiot she is, and always will be, for such as
+you.”
+
+But I suffered—suffered cruelly; I saw the damps gather on M. Paul’s
+brow, and his eye spoke a passionate yet sad reproach. He would not
+believe in my total lack of popular cleverness; he thought I _could_ be
+prompt if I _would_.
+
+At last, to relieve him, the professors, and myself, I stammered out:
+
+“Gentlemen, you had better let me go; you will get no good of me; as
+you say, I am an idiot.”
+
+I wish I could have spoken with calm and dignity, or I wish my sense
+had sufficed to make me hold my tongue; that traitor tongue tripped,
+faltered. Beholding the judges cast on M. Emanuel a hard look of
+triumph, and hearing the distressed tremor of my own voice, out I burst
+in a fit of choking tears. The emotion was far more of anger than
+grief; had I been a man and strong, I could have challenged that pair
+on the spot—but it _was_ emotion, and I would rather have been scourged
+than betrayed it.
+
+The incapables! Could they not see at once the crude hand of a novice
+in that composition they called a forgery? The subject was classical.
+When M. Paul dictated the trait on which the essay was to turn, I heard
+it for the first time; the matter was new to me, and I had no material
+for its treatment. But I got books, read up the facts, laboriously
+constructed a skeleton out of the dry bones of the real, and then
+clothed them, and tried to breathe into them life, and in this last aim
+I had pleasure. With me it was a difficult and anxious time till my
+facts were found, selected, and properly jointed; nor could I rest from
+research and effort till I was satisfied of correct anatomy; the
+strength of my inward repugnance to the idea of flaw or falsity
+sometimes enabled me to shun egregious blunders; but the knowledge was
+not there in my head, ready and mellow; it had not been sown in Spring,
+grown in Summer, harvested in Autumn, and garnered through Winter;
+whatever I wanted I must go out and gather fresh; glean of wild herbs
+my lapful, and shred them green into the pot. Messieurs Boissec and
+Rochemorte did not perceive this. They mistook my work for the work of
+a ripe scholar.
+
+They would not yet let me go: I must sit down and write before them. As
+I dipped my pen in the ink with a shaking hand, and surveyed the white
+paper with eyes half-blinded and overflowing, one of my judges began
+mincingly to apologize for the pain he caused.
+
+“Nous agissons dans l’intérêt de la vérité. Nous ne voulons pas vous
+blesser,” said he.
+
+Scorn gave me nerve. I only answered,—
+
+“Dictate, Monsieur.”
+
+Rochemorte named this theme: “Human Justice.”
+
+Human Justice! What was I to make of it? Blank, cold abstraction,
+unsuggestive to me of one inspiring idea; and there stood M. Emanuel,
+sad as Saul, and stern as Joab, and there triumphed his accusers.
+
+At these two I looked. I was gathering my courage to tell them that I
+would neither write nor speak another word for their satisfaction, that
+their theme did not suit, nor their presence inspire me, and that,
+notwithstanding, whoever threw the shadow of a doubt on M. Emanuel’s
+honour, outraged that truth of which they had announced themselves
+the—champions: I _meant_ to utter all this, I say, when suddenly, a
+light darted on memory.
+
+Those two faces looking out of the forest of long hair, moustache, and
+whisker—those two cold yet bold, trustless yet presumptuous
+visages—were the same faces, the very same that, projected in full
+gaslight from behind the pillars of a portico, had half frightened me
+to death on the night of my desolate arrival in Villette. These, I felt
+morally certain, were the very heroes who had driven a friendless
+foreigner beyond her reckoning and her strength, chased her breathless
+over a whole quarter of the town.
+
+“Pious mentors!” thought I. “Pure guides for youth! If Human Justice’
+were what she ought to be, you two would scarce hold your present post,
+or enjoy your present credit.”
+
+An idea once seized, I fell to work. “Human Justice” rushed before me
+in novel guise, a red, random beldame, with arms akimbo. I saw her in
+her house, the den of confusion: servants called to her for orders or
+help which she did not give; beggars stood at her door waiting and
+starving unnoticed; a swarm of children, sick and quarrelsome, crawled
+round her feet, and yelled in her ears appeals for notice, sympathy,
+cure, redress. The honest woman cared for none of these things. She had
+a warm seat of her own by the fire, she had her own solace in a short
+black pipe, and a bottle of Mrs. Sweeny’s soothing syrup; she smoked
+and she sipped, and she enjoyed her paradise; and whenever a cry of the
+suffering souls about her pierced her ears too keenly—my jolly dame
+seized the poker or the hearth-brush: if the offender was weak,
+wronged, and sickly, she effectually settled him: if he was strong,
+lively, and violent, she only menaced, then plunged her hand in her
+deep pouch, and flung a liberal shower of sugar-plums.
+
+Such was the sketch of “Human Justice,” scratched hurriedly on paper,
+and placed at the service of Messrs. Boissec and Rochemorte. M. Emanuel
+read it over my shoulder. Waiting no comment, I curtsied to the trio,
+and withdrew.
+
+After school that day, M. Paul and I again met. Of course the meeting
+did not at first run smooth; there was a crow to pluck with him; that
+forced examination could not be immediately digested. A crabbed
+dialogue terminated in my being called “une petite moqueuse et
+sans-coeur,” and in Monsieur’s temporary departure.
+
+Not wishing him to go quite away, only desiring he should feel that
+such a transport as he had that day given way to, could not be indulged
+with perfect impunity, I was not sorry to see him, soon after,
+gardening in the berceau. He approached the glass door; I drew near
+also. We spoke of some flowers growing round it. By-and-by Monsieur
+laid down his spade; by-and-by he recommenced conversation, passed to
+other subjects, and at last touched a point of interest.
+
+Conscious that his proceeding of that day was specially open to a
+charge of extravagance, M. Paul half apologized; he half regretted,
+too, the fitfulness of his moods at all times, yet he hinted that some
+allowance ought to be made for him. “But,” said he, “I can hardly
+expect it at your hands, Miss Lucy; you know neither me, nor my
+position, nor my history.”
+
+His history. I took up the word at once; I pursued the idea.
+
+“No, Monsieur,” I rejoined. “Of course, as you say, I know neither your
+history, nor your position, nor your sacrifices, nor any of your
+sorrows, or trials, or affections, or fidelities. Oh, no! I know
+nothing about you; you are for me altogether a stranger.”
+
+“Hein?” he murmured, arching his brows in surprise.
+
+“You know, Monsieur, I only see you in classe—stern, dogmatic, hasty,
+imperious. I only hear of you in town as active and wilful, quick to
+originate, hasty to lead, but slow to persuade, and hard to bend. A man
+like you, without ties, can have no attachments; without dependants, no
+duties. All we, with whom you come in contact, are machines, which you
+thrust here and there, inconsiderate of their feelings. You seek your
+recreations in public, by the light of the evening chandelier: this
+school and yonder college are your workshops, where you fabricate the
+ware called pupils. I don’t so much as know where you live; it is
+natural to take it for granted that you have no home, and need none.”
+
+“I am judged,” said he. “Your opinion of me is just what I thought it
+was. For you I am neither a man nor a Christian. You see me void of
+affection and religion, unattached by friend or family, unpiloted by
+principle or faith. It is well, Mademoiselle; such is our reward in
+this life.”
+
+“You are a philosopher, Monsieur; a cynic philosopher” (and I looked at
+his paletôt, of which he straightway brushed the dim sleeve with his
+hand), “despising the foibles of humanity—above its
+luxuries—independent of its comforts.”
+
+“Et vous, Mademoiselle? vous êtes proprette et douillette, et
+affreusement insensible, par-dessus le marché.”
+
+“But, in short, Monsieur, now I think of it, you _must_ live somewhere?
+Do tell me where; and what establishment of servants do you keep?”
+
+With a fearful projection of the under-lip, implying an impetus of
+scorn the most decided, he broke out—
+
+“Je vis dans un trou! I inhabit a den, Miss—a cavern, where you would
+not put your dainty nose. Once, with base shame of speaking the whole
+truth, I talked about my ‘study’ in that college: know now that this
+‘study’ is my whole abode; my chamber is there and my drawing-room. As
+for my ‘establishment of servants’” (mimicking my voice) “they number
+ten; les voilà.”
+
+And he grimly spread, close under my eyes, his ten fingers.
+
+“I black my boots,” pursued he savagely. “I brush my paletôt.”
+
+“No, Monsieur, it is too plain; you never do that,” was my parenthesis.
+
+“Je fais mon lit et mon ménage; I seek my dinner in a restaurant; my
+supper takes care, of itself; I pass days laborious and loveless;
+nights long and lonely; I am ferocious, and bearded and monkish; and
+nothing now living in this world loves me, except some old hearts worn
+like my own, and some few beings, impoverished, suffering, poor in
+purse and in spirit, whom the kingdoms of this world own not, but to
+whom a will and testament not to be disputed has bequeathed the kingdom
+of heaven.”
+
+“Ah, Monsieur; but I know!”
+
+“What do you know? many things, I verily believe; yet not me, Lucy!”
+
+“I know that you have a pleasant old house in a pleasant old square of
+the Basse-Ville—why don’t you go and live there?”
+
+“Hein?” muttered he again.
+
+“I liked it much, Monsieur; with the steps ascending to the door, the
+grey flags in front, the nodding trees behind—real trees, not
+shrubs—trees dark, high, and of old growth. And the
+boudoir-oratoire—you should make that room your study; it is so quiet
+and solemn.”
+
+He eyed me closely; he half-smiled, half-coloured. “Where did you pick
+up all that? Who told you?” he asked.
+
+“Nobody told me. Did I dream it, Monsieur, do you think?”
+
+“Can I enter into your visions? Can I guess a woman’s waking thoughts,
+much less her sleeping fantasies?”
+
+“If I dreamt it, I saw in my dream human beings as well as a house. I
+saw a priest, old, bent, and grey, and a domestic—old, too, and
+picturesque; and a lady, splendid but strange; her head would scarce
+reach to my elbow—her magnificence might ransom a duke. She wore a gown
+bright as lapis-lazuli—a shawl worth a thousand francs: she was decked
+with ornaments so brilliant, I never saw any with such a beautiful
+sparkle; but her figure looked as if it had been broken in two and bent
+double; she seemed also to have outlived the common years of humanity,
+and to have attained those which are only labour and sorrow. She was
+become morose—almost malevolent; yet _somebody_, it appears, cared for
+her in her infirmities—somebody forgave her trespasses, hoping to have
+his trespasses forgiven. They lived together, these three people—the
+mistress, the chaplain, the servant—all old, all feeble, all sheltered
+under one kind wing.”
+
+He covered with his hand the upper part of his face, but did not
+conceal his mouth, where I saw hovering an expression I liked.
+
+“I see you have entered into my secrets,” said he, “but how was it
+done?”
+
+So I told him how—the commission on which I had been sent, the storm
+which had detained me, the abruptness of the lady, the kindness of the
+priest.
+
+“As I sat waiting for the rain to cease, Père Silas whiled away the
+time with a story,” I said.
+
+“A story! What story? Père Silas is no romancist.”
+
+“Shall I tell Monsieur the tale?”
+
+“Yes: begin at the beginning. Let me hear some of Miss Lucy’s
+French—her best or her worst—I don’t much care which: let us have a
+good poignée of barbarisms, and a bounteous dose of the insular
+accent.”
+
+“Monsieur is not going to be gratified by a tale of ambitious
+proportions, and the spectacle of the narrator sticking fast in the
+midst. But I will tell him the title—the ‘Priest’s Pupil.’”
+
+“Bah!” said he, the swarthy flush again dyeing his dark cheek. “The
+good old father could not have chosen a worse subject; it is his weak
+point. But what of the ‘Priest’s Pupil?’”
+
+“Oh! many things.”
+
+“You may as well define _what_ things. I mean to know.”
+
+“There was the pupil’s youth, the pupil’s manhood;—his avarice, his
+ingratitude, his implacability, his inconstancy. Such a bad pupil,
+Monsieur!—so thankless, cold-hearted, unchivalrous, unforgiving!
+
+“Et puis?” said he, taking a cigar.
+
+“Et puis,” I pursued, “he underwent calamities which one did not
+pity—bore them in a spirit one did not admire—endured wrongs for which
+one felt no sympathy; finally took the unchristian revenge of heaping
+coals of fire on his adversary’s head.”
+
+“You have not told me all,” said he.
+
+“Nearly all, I think: I have indicated the heads of Père Silas’s
+chapters.”
+
+“You have forgotten one—that which touched on the pupil’s lack of
+affection—on his hard, cold, monkish heart.”
+
+“True; I remember now. Père Silas _did_ say that his vocation was
+almost that of a priest—that his life was considered consecrated.”
+
+“By what bonds or duties?”
+
+“By the ties of the past and the charities of the present.”
+
+“You have, then, the whole situation?”
+
+“I have now told Monsieur all that was told me.”
+
+Some meditative minutes passed.
+
+“Now, Mademoiselle Lucy, look at me, and with that truth which I
+believe you never knowingly violate, answer me one question. Raise your
+eyes; rest them on mine; have no hesitation; fear not to trust me—I am
+a man to be trusted.”
+
+I raised my eyes.
+
+“Knowing me thoroughly now—all my antecedents, all my
+responsibilities—having long known my faults, can you and I still be
+friends?”
+
+“If Monsieur wants a friend in me, I shall be glad to have a friend in
+him.”
+
+“But a close friend I mean—intimate and real—kindred in all but blood.
+Will Miss Lucy be the sister of a very poor, fettered, burdened,
+encumbered man?”
+
+I could not answer him in words, yet I suppose I _did_ answer him; he
+took my hand, which found comfort, in the shelter of his. _His_
+friendship was not a doubtful, wavering benefit—a cold, distant hope—a
+sentiment so brittle as not to bear the weight of a finger: I at once
+felt (or _thought_ I felt) its support like that of some rock.
+
+“When I talk of friendship, I mean _true_ friendship,” he repeated
+emphatically; and I could hardly believe that words so earnest had
+blessed my ear; I hardly could credit the reality of that kind, anxious
+look he gave. If he _really_ wished for my confidence and regard, and
+_really_ would give me his—why, it seemed to me that life could offer
+nothing more or better. In that case, I was become strong and rich: in
+a moment I was made substantially happy. To ascertain the fact, to fix
+and seal it, I asked—
+
+“Is Monsieur quite serious? Does he really think he needs me, and can
+take an interest in me as a sister?”
+
+“Surely, surely,” said he; “a lonely man like me, who has no sister,
+must be but too glad to find in some woman’s heart a sister’s pure
+affection.”
+
+“And dare I rely on Monsieur’s regard? Dare I speak to him when I am so
+inclined?”
+
+“My little sister must make her own experiments,” said he; “I will give
+no promises. She must tease and try her wayward brother till she has
+drilled him into what she wishes. After all, he is no inductile
+material in some hands.”
+
+While he spoke, the tone of his voice, the light of his now
+affectionate eye, gave me such a pleasure as, certainly, I had never
+felt. I envied no girl her lover, no bride her bridegroom, no wife her
+husband; I was content with this my voluntary, self-offering friend. If
+he would but prove reliable, and he _looked_ reliable, what, beyond his
+friendship, could I ever covet? But, if all melted like a dream, as
+once before had happened—?
+
+“Qu’est-ce donc? What is it?” said he, as this thought threw its weight
+on my heart, its shadow on my countenance. I told him; and after a
+moment’s pause, and a thoughtful smile, he showed me how an equal
+fear—lest I should weary of him, a man of moods so difficult and
+fitful—had haunted his mind for more than one day, or one month.
+
+On hearing this, a quiet courage cheered me. I ventured a word of
+re-assurance. That word was not only tolerated; its repetition was
+courted. I grew quite happy—strangely happy—in making him secure,
+content, tranquil. Yesterday, I could not have believed that earth
+held, or life afforded, moments like the few I was now passing.
+Countless times it had been my lot to watch apprehended sorrow close
+darkly in; but to see unhoped-for happiness take form, find place, and
+grow more real as the seconds sped, was indeed a new experience.
+
+“Lucy,” said M. Paul, speaking low, and still holding my hand, “did you
+see a picture in the boudoir of the old house?”
+
+“I did; a picture painted on a panel.”
+
+“The portrait of a nun?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“You heard her history?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“You remember what we saw that night in the berceau?”
+
+“I shall never forget it.”
+
+“You did not connect the two ideas; that would be folly?”
+
+“I thought of the apparition when I saw the portrait,” said I; which
+was true enough.
+
+“You did not, nor will you fancy,” pursued he, “that a saint in heaven
+perturbs herself with rivalries of earth? Protestants are rarely
+superstitious; these morbid fancies will not beset _you?_”
+
+“I know not what to think of this matter; but I believe a perfectly
+natural solution of this seeming mystery will one day be arrived at.”
+
+“Doubtless, doubtless. Besides, no good-living woman—much less a pure,
+happy spirit—would trouble amity like ours n’est-il pas vrai?”
+
+Ere I could answer, Fifine Beck burst in, rosy and abrupt, calling out
+that I was wanted. Her mother was going into town to call on some
+English family, who had applied for a prospectus: my services were
+needed as interpreter. The interruption was not unseasonable:
+sufficient for the day is always the evil; for this hour, its good
+sufficed. Yet I should have liked to ask M. Paul whether the “morbid
+fancies,” against which he warned me, wrought in his own brain.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+THE APPLE OF DISCORD.
+
+
+Besides Fifine Beck’s mother, another power had a word to say to M.
+Paul and me, before that covenant of friendship could be ratified. We
+were under the surveillance of a sleepless eye: Rome watched jealously
+her son through that mystic lattice at which I had knelt once, and to
+which M. Emanuel drew nigh month by month—the sliding panel of the
+confessional.
+
+“Why were you so glad to be friends with M. Paul?” asks the reader.
+“Had he not long been a friend to you? Had he not given proof on proof
+of a certain partiality in his feelings?”
+
+Yes, he had; but still I liked to hear him say so earnestly—that he was
+my close, true friend; I liked his modest doubts, his tender
+deference—that trust which longed to rest, and was grateful when taught
+how. He had called me “sister.” It was well. Yes; he might call me what
+he pleased, so long as he confided in me. I was willing to be his
+sister, on condition that he did not invite me to fill that relation to
+some future wife of his; and tacitly vowed as he was to celibacy, of
+this dilemma there seemed little danger.
+
+Through most of the succeeding night I pondered that evening’s
+interview. I wanted much the morning to break, and then listened for
+the bell to ring; and, after rising and dressing, I deemed prayers and
+breakfast slow, and all the hours lingering, till that arrived at last
+which brought me the lesson of literature. My wish was to get a more
+thorough comprehension of this fraternal alliance: to note with how
+much of the brother he would demean himself when we met again; to prove
+how much of the sister was in my own feelings; to discover whether I
+could summon a sister’s courage, and he a brother’s frankness.
+
+He came. Life is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, will
+not, match the expectation. That whole day he never accosted me. His
+lesson was given rather more quietly than usual, more mildly, and also
+more gravely. He was fatherly to his pupils, but he was not brotherly
+to me. Ere he left the classe, I expected a smile, if not a word; I got
+neither: to my portion fell one nod—hurried, shy.
+
+This distance, I argued, is accidental—it is involuntary; patience, and
+it will vanish. It vanished not; it continued for days; it increased. I
+suppressed my surprise, and swallowed whatever other feelings began to
+surge.
+
+Well might I ask when he offered fraternity—“Dare I rely on you?” Well
+might he, doubtless knowing himself, withhold all pledge. True, he had
+bid me make my own experiments—tease and try him. Vain injunction!
+Privilege nominal and unavailable! Some women might use it! Nothing in
+my powers or instinct placed me amongst this brave band. Left alone, I
+was passive; repulsed, I withdrew; forgotten—my lips would not utter,
+nor my eyes dart a reminder. It seemed there had been an error
+somewhere in my calculations, and I wanted for time to disclose it.
+
+But the day came when, as usual, he was to give me a lesson. One
+evening in seven he had long generously bestowed on me, devoting it to
+the examination of what had been done in various studies during the
+past week, and to the preparation of work for the week in prospect. On
+these occasions my schoolroom was anywhere, wherever the pupils and the
+other teachers happened to be, or in their close vicinage, very often
+in the large second division, where it was easy to choose a quiet nook
+when the crowding day pupils were absent, and the few boarders gathered
+in a knot about the surveillante’s estrade.
+
+On the customary evening, hearing the customary hour strike, I
+collected my books and papers, my pen and ink, and sought the large
+division.
+
+In classe there was no one, and it lay all in cool deep shadow; but
+through the open double doors was seen the carré, filled with pupils
+and with light; over hall and figures blushed the westering sun. It
+blushed so ruddily and vividly, that the hues of the walls and the
+variegated tints of the dresses seemed all fused in one warm glow. The
+girls were seated, working or studying; in the midst of their circle
+stood M. Emanuel, speaking good-humouredly to a teacher. His dark
+paletôt, his jetty hair, were tinged with many a reflex of crimson; his
+Spanish face, when he turned it momentarily, answered the sun’s
+animated kiss with an animated smile. I took my place at a desk.
+
+The orange-trees, and several plants, full and bright with bloom,
+basked also in the sun’s laughing bounty; they had partaken it the
+whole day, and now asked water. M. Emanuel had a taste for gardening;
+he liked to tend and foster plants. I used to think that working
+amongst shrubs with a spade or a watering-pot soothed his nerves; it
+was a recreation to which he often had recourse; and now he looked to
+the orange-trees, the geraniums, the gorgeous cactuses, and revived
+them all with the refreshment their drought needed. His lips meantime
+sustained his precious cigar, that (for him) first necessary and prime
+luxury of life; its blue wreaths curled prettily enough amongst the
+flowers, and in the evening light. He spoke no more to the pupils, nor
+to the mistresses, but gave many an endearing word to a small
+spanieless (if one may coin a word), that nominally belonged to the
+house, but virtually owned him as master, being fonder of him than any
+inmate. A delicate, silky, loving, and lovable little doggie she was,
+trotting at his side, looking with expressive, attached eyes into his
+face; and whenever he dropped his bonnet-grec or his handkerchief,
+which he occasionally did in play, crouching beside it with the air of
+a miniature lion guarding a kingdom’s flag.
+
+There were many plants, and as the amateur gardener fetched all the
+water from the well in the court, with his own active hands, his work
+spun on to some length. The great school-clock ticked on. Another hour
+struck. The carré and the youthful group lost the illusion of sunset.
+Day was drooping. My lesson, I perceived, must to-night be very short;
+but the orange-trees, the cacti, the camelias were all served now. Was
+it my turn?
+
+Alas! in the garden were more plants to be looked after,—favourite
+rose-bushes, certain choice flowers; little Sylvie’s glad bark and
+whine followed the receding paletôt down the alleys. I put up some of
+my books; I should not want them all; I sat and thought; and waited,
+involuntarily deprecating the creeping invasion of twilight.
+
+Sylvie, gaily frisking, emerged into view once more, heralding the
+returning paletôt; the watering-pot was deposited beside the well; it
+had fulfilled its office; how glad I was! Monsieur washed his hands in
+a little stone bowl. There was no longer time for a lesson now; ere
+long the prayer-bell must ring; but still we should meet; he would
+speak; a chance would be offered of reading in his eyes the riddle of
+his shyness. His ablutions over, he stood, slowly re-arranging his
+cuffs, looking at the horn of a young moon, set pale in the opal sky,
+and glimmering faint on the oriel of Jean Baptiste. Sylvie watched the
+mood contemplative; its stillness irked her; she whined and jumped to
+break it. He looked down.
+
+“Petite exigeante,” said he; “you must not be forgotten one moment, it
+seems.”
+
+He stopped, lifted her in his arms, sauntered across the court, within
+a yard of the line of windows near one of which I sat: he sauntered
+lingeringly, fondling the spaniel in his bosom, calling her tender
+names in a tender voice. On the front-door steps he turned; once again
+he looked at the moon, at the grey cathedral, over the remoter spires
+and house-roofs fading into a blue sea of night-mist; he tasted the
+sweet breath of dusk, and noted the folded bloom of the garden; he
+suddenly looked round; a keen beam out of his eye rased the white
+façade of the classes, swept the long line of croisées. I think he
+bowed; if he did, I had no time to return the courtesy. In a moment he
+was gone; the moonlit threshold lay pale and shadowless before the
+closed front door.
+
+Gathering in my arms all that was spread on the desk before me, I
+carried back the unused heap to its place in the third classe. The
+prayer-bell rang; I obeyed its summons.
+
+The morrow would not restore him to the Rue Fossette, that day being
+devoted entirely to his college. I got through my teaching; I got over
+the intermediate hours; I saw evening approaching, and armed myself for
+its heavy ennuis. Whether it was worse to stay with my co-inmates, or
+to sit alone, I had not considered; I naturally took up the latter
+alternative; if there was a hope of comfort for any moment, the heart
+or head of no human being in this house could yield it; only under the
+lid of my desk could it harbour, nestling between the leaves of some
+book, gilding a pencil-point, the nib of a pen, or tinging the black
+fluid in that ink-glass. With a heavy heart I opened my desk-lid; with
+a weary hand I turned up its contents.
+
+One by one, well-accustomed books, volumes sewn in familiar covers,
+were taken out and put back hopeless: they had no charm; they could not
+comfort. Is this something new, this pamphlet in lilac? I had not seen
+it before, and I re-arranged my desk this very day—this very afternoon;
+the tract must have been introduced within the last hour, while we were
+at dinner.
+
+I opened it. What was it? What would it say to me?
+
+It was neither tale nor poem, neither essay nor history; it neither
+sung, nor related, not discussed. It was a theological work; it
+preached and it persuaded.
+
+I lent to it my ear very willingly, for, small as it was, it possessed
+its own spell, and bound my attention at once. It preached Romanism; it
+persuaded to conversion. The voice of that sly little book was a
+honeyed voice; its accents were all unction and balm. Here roared no
+utterance of Rome’s thunders, no blasting of the breath of her
+displeasure. The Protestant was to turn Papist, not so much in fear of
+the heretic’s hell, as on account of the comfort, the indulgence, the
+tenderness Holy Church offered: far be it from her to threaten or to
+coerce; her wish was to guide and win. _She_ persecute? Oh dear no! not
+on any account!
+
+This meek volume was not addressed to the hardened and worldly; it was
+not even strong meat for the strong: it was milk for babes: the mild
+effluence of a mother’s love towards her tenderest and her youngest;
+intended wholly and solely for those whose head is to be reached
+through the heart. Its appeal was not to intellect; it sought to win
+the affectionate through their affections, the sympathizing through
+their sympathies: St. Vincent de Paul, gathering his orphans about him,
+never spoke more sweetly.
+
+I remember one capital inducement to apostacy was held out in the fact
+that the Catholic who had lost dear friends by death could enjoy the
+unspeakable solace of praying them out of purgatory. The writer did not
+touch on the firmer peace of those whose belief dispenses with
+purgatory altogether: but I thought of this; and, on the whole,
+preferred the latter doctrine as the most consolatory. The little book
+amused, and did not painfully displease me. It was a canting,
+sentimental, shallow little book, yet something about it cheered my
+gloom and made me smile; I was amused with the gambols of this unlicked
+wolf-cub muffled in the fleece, and mimicking the bleat of a guileless
+lamb. Portions of it reminded me of certain Wesleyan Methodist tracts I
+had once read when a child; they were flavoured with about the same
+seasoning of excitation to fanaticism. He that had written it was no
+bad man, and while perpetually betraying the trained cunning—the cloven
+hoof of his system—I should pause before accusing himself of
+insincerity. His judgment, however, wanted surgical props; it was
+rickety.
+
+I smiled then over this dose of maternal tenderness, coming from the
+ruddy old lady of the Seven Hills; smiled, too, at my own
+disinclination, not to say disability, to meet these melting favours.
+Glancing at the title-page, I found the name of “Père Silas.” A
+fly-leaf bore in small, but clear and well-known pencil characters:
+“From P. C. D. E. to L—y.” And when I saw this I laughed: but not in my
+former spirit. I was revived.
+
+A mortal bewilderment cleared suddenly from my head and vision; the
+solution of the Sphinx-riddle was won; the conjunction of those two
+names, Père Silas and Paul Emanuel, gave the key to all. The penitent
+had been with his director; permitted to withhold nothing; suffered to
+keep no corner of his heart sacred to God and to himself; the whole
+narrative of our late interview had been drawn from him; he had avowed
+the covenant of fraternity, and spoken of his adopted sister. How could
+such a covenant, such adoption, be sanctioned by the Church? Fraternal
+communion with a heretic! I seemed to hear Père Silas annulling the
+unholy pact; warning his penitent of its perils; entreating, enjoining
+reserve, nay, by the authority of his office, and in the name, and by
+the memory of all M. Emanuel held most dear and sacred, commanding the
+enforcement of that new system whose frost had pierced to the marrow of
+my bones.
+
+These may not seem pleasant hypotheses; yet, by comparison, they were
+welcome. The vision of a ghostly troubler hovering in the background,
+was as nothing, matched with the fear of spontaneous change arising in
+M. Paul himself.
+
+At this distance of time, I cannot be sure how far the above
+conjectures were self-suggested: or in what measure they owed their
+origin and confirmation to another quarter. Help was not wanting.
+
+This evening there was no bright sunset: west and east were one cloud;
+no summer night-mist, blue, yet rose-tinged, softened the distance; a
+clammy fog from the marshes crept grey round Villette. To-night the
+watering-pot might rest in its niche by the well: a small rain had been
+drizzling all the afternoon, and still it fell fast and quietly. This
+was no weather for rambling in the wet alleys, under the dripping
+trees; and I started to hear Sylvie’s sudden bark in the garden—her
+bark of welcome. Surely she was not accompanied and yet this glad,
+quick bark was never uttered, save in homage to one presence.
+
+Through the glass door and the arching berceau, I commanded the deep
+vista of the allée défendue: thither rushed Sylvie, glistening through
+its gloom like a white guelder-rose. She ran to and fro, whining,
+springing, harassing little birds amongst the bushes. I watched five
+minutes; no fulfilment followed the omen. I returned to my books;
+Sylvie’s sharp bark suddenly ceased. Again I looked up. She was
+standing not many yards distant, wagging her white feathery tail as
+fast as the muscle would work, and intently watching the operations of
+a spade, plied fast by an indefatigable hand. There was M. Emanuel,
+bent over the soil, digging in the wet mould amongst the rain-laden and
+streaming shrubs, working as hard as if his day’s pittance were yet to
+earn by the literal sweat of his brow.
+
+In this sign I read a ruffled mood. He would dig thus in frozen snow on
+the coldest winter day, when urged inwardly by painful emotion, whether
+of nervous excitation, or, sad thoughts of self-reproach. He would dig
+by the hour, with knit brow and set teeth, nor once lift his head, or
+open his lips.
+
+Sylvie watched till she was tired. Again scampering devious, bounding
+here, rushing there, snuffing and sniffing everywhere; she at last
+discovered me in classe. Instantly she flew barking at the panes, as if
+to urge me forth to share her pleasure or her master’s toil; she had
+seen me occasionally walking in that alley with M. Paul; and I doubt
+not, considered it my duty to join him now, wet as it was.
+
+She made such a bustle that M. Paul at last looked up, and of course
+perceived why, and at whom she barked. He whistled to call her off; she
+only barked the louder. She seemed quite bent upon having the glass
+door opened. Tired, I suppose, with her importunity, he threw down his
+spade, approached, and pushed the door ajar. Sylvie burst in all
+impetuous, sprang to my lap, and with her paws at my neck, and her
+little nose and tongue somewhat overpoweringly busy about my face,
+mouth, and eyes, flourished her bushy tail over the desk, and scattered
+books and papers far and wide.
+
+M. Emanuel advanced to still the clamour and repair the disarrangement.
+Having gathered up the books, he captured Sylvie, and stowed her away
+under his paletôt, where she nestled as quiet as a mouse, her head just
+peeping forth. She was very tiny, and had the prettiest little innocent
+face, the silkiest long ears, the finest dark eyes in the world. I
+never saw her, but I thought of Paulina de Bassompierre: forgive the
+association, reader, it _would_ occur.
+
+M. Paul petted and patted her; the endearments she received were not to
+be wondered at; she invited affection by her beauty and her vivacious
+life.
+
+While caressing the spaniel, his eye roved over the papers and books
+just replaced; it settled on the religious tract. His lips moved; he
+half checked the impulse to speak. What! had he promised never to
+address me more? If so, his better nature pronounced the vow “more
+honoured in the breach than in the observance,” for with a second
+effort, he spoke.—“You have not yet read the brochure, I presume? It is
+not sufficiently inviting?”
+
+I replied that I had read it.
+
+He waited, as if wishing me to give an opinion upon it unasked.
+Unasked, however, I was in no mood to do or say anything. If any
+concessions were to be made—if any advances were demanded—that was the
+affair of the very docile pupil of Père Silas, not mine. His eye
+settled upon me gently: there was mildness at the moment in its blue
+ray—there was solicitude—a shade of pathos; there were meanings
+composite and contrasted—reproach melting into remorse. At the moment
+probably, he would have been glad to see something emotional in me. I
+could not show it. In another minute, however, I should have betrayed
+confusion, had I not bethought myself to take some quill-pens from my
+desk, and begin soberly to mend them.
+
+I knew that action would give a turn to his mood. He never liked to see
+me mend pens; my knife was always dull-edged—my hand, too, was
+unskilful; I hacked and chipped. On this occasion I cut my own
+finger—half on purpose. I wanted to restore him to his natural state,
+to set him at his ease, to get him to chide.
+
+“Maladroit!” he cried at last, “she will make mincemeat of her hands.”
+
+He put Sylvie down, making her lie quiet beside his bonnet-grec, and,
+depriving me of the pens and penknife, proceeded to slice, nib, and
+point with the accuracy and celerity of a machine.
+
+“Did I like the little book?” he now inquired.
+
+Suppressing a yawn, I said I hardly knew.
+
+“Had it moved me?”
+
+“I thought it had made me a little sleepy.”
+
+(After a pause:) “Allons donc! It was of no use taking that tone with
+him. Bad as I was—and he should be sorry to have to name all my faults
+at a breath—God and nature had given me ‘trop de sensibilité et de
+sympathie’ not to be profoundly affected by an appeal so touching.”
+
+“Indeed!” I responded, rousing myself quickly, “I was not affected at
+all—not a whit.”
+
+And in proof, I drew from my pocket a perfectly dry handkerchief, still
+clean and in its folds.
+
+Hereupon I was made the object of a string of strictures rather piquant
+than polite. I listened with zest. After those two days of unnatural
+silence, it was better than music to hear M. Paul haranguing again just
+in his old fashion. I listened, and meantime solaced myself and Sylvie
+with the contents of a bonbonnière, which M. Emanuel’s gifts kept well
+supplied with chocolate comfits: It pleased him to see even a small
+matter from his hand duly appreciated. He looked at me and the spaniel
+while we shared the spoil; he put up his penknife. Touching my hand
+with the bundle of new-cut quills, he said:—“Dites donc, petite
+soeur—speak frankly—what have you thought of me during the last two
+days?”
+
+But of this question I would take no manner of notice; its purport made
+my eyes fill. I caressed Sylvie assiduously. M. Paul, leaning—over the
+desk, bent towards me:—“I called myself your brother,” he said: “I
+hardly know what I am—brother—friend—I cannot tell. I know I think of
+you—I feel I wish, you well—but I must check myself; you are to be
+feared. My best friends point out danger, and whisper caution.”
+
+“You do right to listen to your friends. By all means be cautious.”
+
+“It is your religion—your strange, self-reliant, invulnerable creed,
+whose influence seems to clothe you in, I know not what, unblessed
+panoply. You are good—Père Silas calls you good, and loves you—but your
+terrible, proud, earnest Protestantism, there is the danger. It
+expresses itself by your eye at times; and again, it gives you certain
+tones and certain gestures that make my flesh creep. You are not
+demonstrative, and yet, just now—when you handled that tract—my God! I
+thought Lucifer smiled.”
+
+“Certainly I don’t respect that tract—what then?”
+
+“Not respect that tract? But it is the pure essence of faith, love,
+charity! I thought it would touch you: in its gentleness, I trusted
+that it could not fail. I laid it in your desk with a prayer: I must
+indeed be a sinner: Heaven will not hear the petitions that come
+warmest from my heart. You scorn my little offering. Oh, cela me fait
+mal!”
+
+“Monsieur, I don’t scorn it—at least, not as your gift. Monsieur, sit
+down; listen to me. I am not a heathen, I am not hard-hearted, I am not
+unchristian, I am not dangerous, as they tell you; I would not trouble
+your faith; you believe in God and Christ and the Bible, and so do I.”
+
+“But _do_ you believe in the Bible? Do you receive Revelation? What
+limits are there to the wild, careless daring of your country and sect.
+Père Silas dropped dark hints.”
+
+By dint of persuasion, I made him half-define these hints; they
+amounted to crafty Jesuit-slanders. That night M. Paul and I talked
+seriously and closely. He pleaded, he argued. _I_ could not argue—a
+fortunate incapacity; it needed but triumphant, logical opposition to
+effect all the director wished to be effected; but I could talk in my
+own way—the way M. Paul was used to—and of which he could follow the
+meanderings and fill the hiatus, and pardon the strange stammerings,
+strange to him no longer. At ease with him, I could defend my creed and
+faith in my own fashion; in some degree I could lull his prejudices. He
+was not satisfied when he went away, hardly was he appeased; but he was
+made thoroughly to feel that Protestants were not necessarily the
+irreverent Pagans his director had insinuated; he was made to
+comprehend something of their mode of honouring the Light, the Life,
+the Word; he was enabled partly to perceive that, while their
+veneration for things venerable was not quite like that cultivated in
+his Church, it had its own, perhaps, deeper power—its own more solemn
+awe.
+
+I found that Père Silas (himself, I must repeat, not a bad man, though
+the advocate of a bad cause) had darkly stigmatized Protestants in
+general, and myself by inference, with strange names, had ascribed to
+us strange “isms;” Monsieur Emanuel revealed all this in his frank
+fashion, which knew not secretiveness, looking at me as he spoke with a
+kind, earnest fear, almost trembling lest there should be truth in the
+charges. Père Silas, it seems, had closely watched me, had ascertained
+that I went by turns, and indiscriminately, to the three Protestant
+Chapels of Villette—the French, German, and English—_id est_, the
+Presbyterian, Lutheran, Episcopalian. Such liberality argued in the
+father’s eyes profound indifference—who tolerates all, he reasoned, can
+be attached to none. Now, it happened that I had often secretly
+wondered at the minute and unimportant character of the differences
+between these three sects—at the unity and identity of their vital
+doctrines: I saw nothing to hinder them from being one day fused into
+one grand Holy Alliance, and I respected them all, though I thought
+that in each there were faults of form, incumbrances, and trivialities.
+Just what I thought, that did I tell M. Emanuel, and explained to him
+that my own last appeal, the guide to which I looked, and the teacher
+which I owned, must always be the Bible itself, rather than any sect,
+of whatever name or nation.
+
+He left me soothed, yet full of solicitude, breathing a wish, as strong
+as a prayer, that if I were wrong, Heaven would lead me right. I heard,
+poured forth on the threshold, some fervid murmurings to “Marie, Reine
+du Ciel,” some deep aspiration that _his_ hope might yet be _mine_.
+
+Strange! I had no such feverish wish to turn him from the faith of his
+fathers. I thought Romanism wrong, a great mixed image of gold and
+clay; but it seemed to me that _this_ Romanist held the purer elements
+of his creed with an innocency of heart which God must love.
+
+The preceding conversation passed between eight and nine o’clock of the
+evening, in a schoolroom of the quiet Rue Fossette, opening on a
+sequestered garden. Probably about the same, or a somewhat later hour
+of the succeeding evening, its echoes, collected by holy obedience,
+were breathed verbatim in an attent ear, at the panel of a
+confessional, in the hoary church of the Magi. It ensued that Père
+Silas paid a visit to Madame Beck, and stirred by I know not what
+mixture of motives, persuaded her to let him undertake for a time the
+Englishwoman’s spiritual direction.
+
+Hereupon I was put through a course of reading—that is, I just glanced
+at the books lent me; they were too little in my way to be thoroughly
+read, marked, learned, or inwardly digested. And besides, I had a book
+up-stairs, under my pillow, whereof certain chapters satisfied my needs
+in the article of spiritual lore, furnishing such precept and example
+as, to my heart’s core, I was convinced could not be improved on.
+
+Then Père Silas showed me the fair side of Rome, her good works; and
+bade me judge the tree by its fruits.
+
+In answer, I felt and I avowed that these works were _not_ the fruits
+of Rome; they were but her abundant blossoming, but the fair promise
+she showed the world, that bloom when set, savoured not of charity; the
+apple full formed was ignorance, abasement, and bigotry. Out of men’s
+afflictions and affections were forged the rivets of their servitude.
+Poverty was fed and clothed, and sheltered, to bind it by obligation to
+“the Church;” orphanage was reared and educated that it might grow up
+in the fold of “the Church;” sickness was tended that it might die
+after the formula and in the ordinance of “the Church;” and men were
+overwrought, and women most murderously sacrificed, and all laid down a
+world God made pleasant for his creatures’ good, and took up a cross,
+monstrous in its galling weight, that they might serve Rome, prove her
+sanctity, confirm her power, and spread the reign of her tyrant
+“Church.”
+
+For man’s good was little done; for God’s glory, less. A thousand ways
+were opened with pain, with blood-sweats, with lavishing of life;
+mountains were cloven through their breasts, and rocks were split to
+their base; and all for what? That a Priesthood might march straight on
+and straight upward to an all-dominating eminence, whence they might at
+last stretch the sceptre of their Moloch “Church.”
+
+It will not be. God is not with Rome, and, were human sorrows still for
+the Son of God, would he not mourn over her cruelties and ambitions, as
+once he mourned over the crimes and woes of doomed Jerusalem!
+
+Oh, lovers of power! Oh, mitred aspirants for this world’s kingdoms! an
+hour will come, even to you, when it will be well for your
+hearts—pausing faint at each broken beat—that there is a Mercy beyond
+human compassions, a Love, stronger than this strong death which even
+you must face, and before it, fall; a Charity more potent than any sin,
+even yours; a Pity which redeems worlds—nay, absolves Priests.
+
+My third temptation was held out in the pomp of Rome—the glory of her
+kingdom. I was taken to the churches on solemn occasions—days of fête
+and state; I was shown the Papal ritual and ceremonial. I looked at it.
+
+Many people—men and women—no doubt far my superiors in a thousand ways,
+have felt this display impressive, have declared that though their
+Reason protested, their Imagination was subjugated. I cannot say the
+same. Neither full procession, nor high mass, nor swarming tapers, nor
+swinging censers, nor ecclesiastical millinery, nor celestial
+jewellery, touched my imagination a whit. What I saw struck me as
+tawdry, not grand; as grossly material, not poetically spiritual.
+
+This I did not tell Père Silas; he was old, he looked venerable:
+through every abortive experiment, under every repeated disappointment,
+he remained personally kind to me, and I felt tender of hurting his
+feelings. But on the evening of a certain day when, from the balcony of
+a great house, I had been made to witness a huge mingled procession of
+the church and the army—priests with relics, and soldiers with weapons,
+an obese and aged archbishop, habited in cambric and lace, looking
+strangely like a grey daw in bird-of-paradise plumage, and a band of
+young girls fantastically robed and garlanded—_then_ I spoke my mind to
+M. Paul.
+
+“I did not like it,” I told him; “I did not respect such ceremonies; I
+wished to see no more.”
+
+And having relieved my conscience by this declaration, I was able to go
+on, and, speaking more currently and clearly than my wont, to show him
+that I had a mind to keep to my reformed creed; the more I saw of
+Popery the closer I clung to Protestantism; doubtless there were errors
+in every church, but I now perceived by contrast how severely pure was
+my own, compared with her whose painted and meretricious face had been
+unveiled for my admiration. I told him how we kept fewer forms between
+us and God; retaining, indeed, no more than, perhaps, the nature of
+mankind in the mass rendered necessary for due observance. I told him I
+could not look on flowers and tinsel, on wax-lights and embroidery, at
+such times and under such circumstances as should be devoted to lifting
+the secret vision to Him whose home is Infinity, and His
+being—Eternity. That when I thought of sin and sorrow, of earthly
+corruption, mortal depravity, weighty temporal woe—I could not care for
+chanting priests or mumming officials; that when the pains of existence
+and the terrors of dissolution pressed before me—when the mighty hope
+and measureless doubt of the future arose in view—_then_, even the
+scientific strain, or the prayer in a language learned and dead,
+harassed: with hindrance a heart which only longed to cry—“God be
+merciful to me, a sinner!”
+
+When I had so spoken, so declared my faith, and so widely severed
+myself, from him I addressed—then, at last, came a tone accordant, an
+echo responsive, one sweet chord of harmony in two conflicting spirits.
+
+“Whatever say priests or controversialists,” murmured M. Emanuel, “God
+is good, and loves all the sincere. Believe, then, what you can;
+believe it as you can; one prayer, at least, we have in common; I also
+cry—‘O Dieu, sois appaisé envers moi qui suis pécheur!’”
+
+He leaned on the back of my chair. After some thought he again spoke:
+
+“How seem in the eyes of that God who made all firmaments, from whose
+nostrils issued whatever of life is here, or in the stars shining
+yonder—how seem the differences of man? But as Time is not for God, nor
+Space, so neither is Measure, nor Comparison. We abase ourselves in our
+littleness, and we do right; yet it may be that the constancy of one
+heart, the truth and faith of one mind according to the light He has
+appointed, import as much to Him as the just motion of satellites about
+their planets, of planets about their suns, of suns around that mighty
+unseen centre incomprehensible, irrealizable, with strange mental
+effort only divined.
+
+“God guide us all! God bless you, Lucy!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+SUNSHINE.
+
+
+It was very well for Paulina to decline further correspondence with
+Graham till her father had sanctioned the intercourse. But Dr. Bretton
+could not live within a league of the Hôtel Crécy, and not contrive to
+visit there often. Both lovers meant at first, I believe, to be
+distant; they kept their intention so far as demonstrative courtship
+went, but in feeling they soon drew very near.
+
+All that was best in Graham sought Paulina; whatever in him was noble,
+awoke, and grew in her presence. With his past admiration of Miss
+Fanshawe, I suppose his intellect had little to do, but his whole
+intellect, and his highest tastes, came in question now. These, like
+all his faculties, were active, eager for nutriment, and alive to
+gratification when it came.
+
+I cannot say that Paulina designedly led him to talk of books, or
+formally proposed to herself for a moment the task of winning him to
+reflection, or planned the improvement of his mind, or so much as
+fancied his mind could in any one respect be improved. She thought him
+very perfect; it was Graham himself, who, at first by the merest
+chance, mentioned some book he had been reading, and when in her
+response sounded a welcome harmony of sympathies, something, pleasant
+to his soul, he talked on, more and better perhaps than he had ever
+talked before on such subjects. She listened with delight, and answered
+with animation. In each successive answer, Graham heard a music waxing
+finer and finer to his sense; in each he found a suggestive,
+persuasive, magic accent that opened a scarce-known treasure-house
+within, showed him unsuspected power in his own mind, and what was
+better, latent goodness in his heart. Each liked the way in which the
+other talked; the voice, the diction, the expression pleased; each
+keenly relished the flavour of the other’s wit; they met each other’s
+meaning with strange quickness, their thoughts often matched like
+carefully-chosen pearls. Graham had wealth of mirth by nature; Paulina
+possessed no such inherent flow of animal spirits—unstimulated, she
+inclined to be thoughtful and pensive—but now she seemed merry as a
+lark; in her lover’s genial presence, she glanced like some soft glad
+light. How beautiful she grew in her happiness, I can hardly express,
+but I wondered to see her. As to that gentle ice of hers—that reserve
+on which she had depended; where was it now? Ah! Graham would not long
+bear it; he brought with him a generous influence that soon thawed the
+timid, self-imposed restriction.
+
+Now were the old Bretton days talked over; perhaps brokenly at first,
+with a sort of smiling diffidence, then with opening candour and still
+growing confidence. Graham had made for himself a better opportunity
+than that he had wished me to give; he had earned independence of the
+collateral help that disobliging Lucy had refused; all his
+reminiscences of “little Polly” found their proper expression in his
+own pleasant tones, by his own kind and handsome lips; how much better
+than if suggested by me.
+
+More than once when we were alone, Paulina would tell me how wonderful
+and curious it was to discover the richness and accuracy of his memory
+in this matter. How, while he was looking at her, recollections would
+seem to be suddenly quickened in his mind. He reminded her that she had
+once gathered his head in her arms, caressed his leonine graces, and
+cried out, “Graham, I _do_ like you!” He told her how she would set a
+footstool beside him, and climb by its aid to his knee. At this day he
+said he could recall the sensation of her little hands smoothing his
+cheek, or burying themselves in his thick mane. He remembered the touch
+of her small forefinger, placed half tremblingly, half curiously, in
+the cleft in his chin, the lisp, the look with which she would name it
+“a pretty dimple,” then seek his eyes and question why they pierced so,
+telling him he had a “nice, strange face; far nicer, far stranger, than
+either his mamma or Lucy Snowe.”
+
+“Child as I was,” remarked Paulina, “I wonder how I dared be so
+venturous. To me he seems now all sacred, his locks are inaccessible,
+and, Lucy, I feel a sort of fear, when I look at his firm, marble chin,
+at his straight Greek features. Women are called beautiful, Lucy; he is
+not like a woman, therefore I suppose he is not beautiful, but what is
+he, then? Do other people see him with my eyes? Do _you_ admire him?”
+
+“I’ll tell you what I do, Paulina,” was once my answer to her many
+questions. “_I never see him_. I looked at him twice or thrice about a
+year ago, before he recognised me, and then I shut my eyes; and if he
+were to cross their balls twelve times between each day’s sunset and
+sunrise, except from memory, I should hardly know what shape had gone
+by.”
+
+“Lucy, what do you mean?” said she, under her breath.
+
+“I mean that I value vision, and dread being struck stone blind.”
+
+It was best to answer her strongly at once, and to silence for ever the
+tender, passionate confidences which left her lips sweet honey, and
+sometimes dropped in my ear—molten lead. To me, she commented no more
+on her lover’s beauty.
+
+Yet speak of him she would; sometimes shyly, in quiet, brief phrases;
+sometimes with a tenderness of cadence, and music of voice exquisite in
+itself; but which chafed me at times miserably; and then, I know, I
+gave her stern looks and words; but cloudless happiness had dazzled her
+native clear sight, and she only thought Lucy—fitful.
+
+“Spartan girl! Proud Lucy!” she would say, smiling at me. “Graham says
+you are the most peculiar, capricious little woman he knows; but yet
+you are excellent; we both think so.”
+
+“You both think you know not what,” said I. “Have the goodness to make
+me as little the subject of your mutual talk and thoughts as possible.
+I have my sort of life apart from yours.”
+
+“But ours, Lucy, is a beautiful life, or it will be; and you shall
+share it.”
+
+“I shall share no man’s or woman’s life in this world, as you
+understand sharing. I think I have one friend of my own, but am not
+sure; and till I _am_ sure, I live solitary.”
+
+“But solitude is sadness.”
+
+“Yes; it is sadness. Life, however; has worse than that. Deeper than
+melancholy, lies heart-break.”
+
+“Lucy, I wonder if anybody will ever comprehend you altogether.”
+
+There is, in lovers, a certain infatuation of egotism; they will have a
+witness of their happiness, cost that witness what it may. Paulina had
+forbidden letters, yet Dr. Bretton wrote; she had resolved against
+correspondence, yet she answered, were it only to chide. She showed me
+these letters; with something of the spoiled child’s wilfulness, and of
+the heiress’s imperiousness, she _made_ me read them. As I read
+Graham’s, I scarce wondered at her exaction, and understood her pride:
+they were fine letters—manly and fond—modest and gallant. Hers must
+have appeared to him beautiful. They had not been written to show her
+talents; still less, I think, to express her love. On the contrary, it
+appeared that she had proposed to herself the task of hiding that
+feeling, and bridling her lover’s ardour. But how could such letters
+serve such a purpose? Graham was become dear as her life; he drew her
+like a powerful magnet. For her there was influence unspeakable in all
+he uttered, wrote, thought, or looked. With this unconfessed
+confession, her letters glowed; it kindled them, from greeting to
+adieu.
+
+“I wish papa knew; I _do_ wish papa knew!” began now to be her anxious
+murmur. “I wish, and yet I fear. I can hardly keep Graham back from
+telling him. There is nothing I long for more than to have this affair
+settled—to speak out candidly; and yet I dread the crisis. I know, I am
+certain, papa will be angry at the first; I fear he will dislike me
+almost; it will seem to him an untoward business; it will be a
+surprise, a shock: I can hardly foresee its whole effect on him.”
+
+The fact was—her father, long calm, was beginning to be a little
+stirred: long blind on one point, an importunate light was beginning to
+trespass on his eye.
+
+To _her_, he said nothing; but when she was not looking at, or perhaps
+thinking of him, I saw him gaze and meditate on her.
+
+One evening—Paulina was in her dressing-room, writing, I believe, to
+Graham; she had left me in the library, reading—M. de Bassompierre came
+in; he sat down: I was about to withdraw; he requested me to
+remain—gently, yet in a manner which showed he wished compliance. He
+had taken his seat near the window, at a distance from me; he opened a
+desk; he took from it what looked like a memorandum-book; of this book
+he studied a certain entry for several minutes.
+
+“Miss Snowe,” said he, laying it down, “do you know my little girl’s
+age?”
+
+“About eighteen, is it not, sir?”
+
+“It seems so. This old pocket-book tells me she was born on the 5th of
+May, in the year 18—, eighteen years ago. It is strange; I had lost the
+just reckoning of her age. I thought of her as twelve—fourteen—an
+indefinite date; but she seemed a child.”
+
+“She is about eighteen,” I repeated. “She is grown up; she will be no
+taller.”
+
+“My little jewel!” said M. de Bassompierre, in a tone which penetrated
+like some of his daughter’s accents.
+
+He sat very thoughtful.
+
+“Sir, don’t grieve,” I said; for I knew his feelings, utterly unspoken
+as they were.
+
+“She is the only pearl I have,” he said; “and now others will find out
+that she is pure and of price: they will covet her.”
+
+I made no answer. Graham Bretton had dined with us that day; he had
+shone both in converse and looks: I know not what pride of bloom
+embellished his aspect and mellowed his intercourse. Under the stimulus
+of a high hope, something had unfolded in his whole manner which
+compelled attention. I think he had purposed on that day to indicate
+the origin of his endeavours, and the aim of his ambition. M. de
+Bassompierre had found himself forced, in a manner, to descry the
+direction and catch the character of his homage. Slow in remarking, he
+was logical in reasoning: having once seized the thread, it had guided
+him through a long labyrinth.
+
+“Where is she?” he asked.
+
+“She is up-stairs.”
+
+“What is she doing?”
+
+“She is writing.”
+
+“She writes, does she? Does she receive letters?”
+
+“None but such as she can show me. And—sir—she—_they_ have long wanted
+to consult you.”
+
+“Pshaw! They don’t think of me—an old father! I am in the way.”
+
+“Ah, M. de Bassompierre—not so—that can’t be! But Paulina must speak
+for herself: and Dr. Bretton, too, must be his own advocate.”
+
+“It is a little late. Matters are advanced, it seems.”
+
+“Sir, till you approve, nothing is done—only they love each other.”
+
+“Only!” he echoed.
+
+Invested by fate with the part of confidante and mediator, I was
+obliged to go on: “Hundreds of times has Dr. Bretton been on the point
+of appealing to you, sir; but, with all his high courage, he fears you
+mortally.”
+
+“He may well—he may well fear me. He has touched the best thing I have.
+Had he but let her alone, she would have remained a child for years
+yet. So. Are they engaged?”
+
+“They could not become engaged without your permission.”
+
+“It is well for you, Miss Snowe, to talk and think with that propriety
+which always characterizes you; but this matter is a grief to me; my
+little girl was all I had: I have no more daughters and no son; Bretton
+might as well have looked elsewhere; there are scores of rich and
+pretty women who would not, I daresay, dislike him: he has looks, and
+conduct, and connection. Would nothing serve him but my Polly?”
+
+“If he had never seen your ‘Polly,’ others might and would have pleased
+him—your niece, Miss Fanshawe, for instance.”
+
+“Ah! I would have given him Ginevra with all my heart; but Polly!—I
+can’t let him have her. No—I can’t. He is not her equal,” he affirmed,
+rather gruffly. “In what particular is he her match? They talk of
+fortune! I am not an avaricious or interested man, but the world thinks
+of these things—and Polly will be rich.”
+
+“Yes, that is known,” said I: “all Villette knows her as an heiress.”
+
+“Do they talk of my little girl in that light?”
+
+“They do, sir.”
+
+He fell into deep thought. I ventured to say, “Would you, sir, think
+any one Paulina’s match? Would you prefer any other to Dr. Bretton? Do
+you think higher rank or more wealth would make much difference in your
+feelings towards a future son-in-law?”
+
+“You touch me there,” said he.
+
+“Look at the aristocracy of Villette—you would not like them, sir?”
+
+“I should not—never a duc, baron, or vicomte of the lot.”
+
+“I am told many of these persons think about her, sir,” I went on,
+gaining courage on finding that I met attention rather than repulse.
+“Other suitors will come, therefore, if Dr. Bretton is refused.
+Wherever you go, I suppose, aspirants will not be wanting. Independent
+of heiress-ship, it appears to me that Paulina charms most of those who
+see her.”
+
+“Does she? How? My little girl is not thought a beauty.”
+
+“Sir, Miss de Bassompierre is very beautiful.”
+
+“Nonsense!—begging your pardon, Miss Snowe, but I think you are too
+partial. I like Polly: I like all her ways and all her looks—but then I
+am her father; and even I never thought about beauty. She is amusing,
+fairy-like, interesting to me;—you must be mistaken in supposing her
+handsome?”
+
+“She attracts, sir: she would attract without the advantages of your
+wealth and position.”
+
+“My wealth and position! Are these any bait to Graham? If I thought
+so——”
+
+“Dr. Bretton knows these points perfectly, as you may be sure, M. de
+Bassompierre, and values them as any gentleman would—as _you_ would
+yourself, under the same circumstances—but they are not his baits. He
+loves your daughter very much; he feels her finest qualities, and they
+influence him worthily.”
+
+“What! has my little pet ‘fine qualities?’”
+
+“Ah, sir! did you observe her that evening when so many men of eminence
+and learning dined here?”
+
+“I certainly was rather struck and surprised with her manner that day;
+its womanliness made me smile.”
+
+“And did you see those accomplished Frenchmen gather round her in the
+drawing-room?”
+
+“I did; but I thought it was by way of relaxation—as one might amuse
+one’s self with a pretty infant.”
+
+“Sir, she demeaned herself with distinction; and I heard the French
+gentlemen say she was ‘pétrie d’esprit et de graces.’ Dr. Bretton
+thought the same.”
+
+“She is a good, dear child, that is certain; and I _do_ believe she has
+some character. When I think of it, I was once ill; Polly nursed me;
+they thought I should die; she, I recollect, grew at once stronger and
+tenderer as I grew worse in health. And as I recovered, what a sunbeam
+she was in my sick-room! Yes; she played about my chair as noiselessly
+and as cheerful as light. And now she is sought in marriage! I don’t
+want to part with her,” said he, and he groaned.
+
+“You have known Dr. and Mrs. Bretton so long,” I suggested, “it would
+be less like separation to give her to him than to another.”
+
+He reflected rather gloomily.
+
+“True. I have long known Louisa Bretton,” he murmured. “She and I are
+indeed old, old friends; a sweet, kind girl she was when she was young.
+You talk of beauty, Miss Snowe! _she_ was handsome, if you will—tall,
+straight, and blooming—not the mere child or elf my Polly seems to me:
+at eighteen, Louisa had a carriage and stature fit for a princess. She
+is a comely and a good woman now. The lad is like her; I have always
+thought so, and favoured and wished him well. Now he repays me by this
+robbery! My little treasure used to love her old father dearly and
+truly. It is all over now, doubtless—I am an incumbrance.”
+
+The door opened—his “little treasure” came in. She was dressed, so to
+speak, in evening beauty; that animation which sometimes comes with the
+close of day, warmed her eye and cheek; a tinge of summer crimson
+heightened her complexion; her curls fell full and long on her lily
+neck; her white dress suited the heat of June. Thinking me alone, she
+had brought in her hand the letter just written—brought it folded but
+unsealed. I was to read it. When she saw her father, her tripping step
+faltered a little, paused a moment—the colour in her cheek flowed rosy
+over her whole face.
+
+“Polly,” said M. de Bassompierre, in a low voice, with a grave smile,
+“do you blush at seeing papa? That is something new.”
+
+“I don’t blush—I never _do_ blush,” affirmed she, while another eddy
+from the heart sent up its scarlet. “But I thought you were in the
+dining-room, and I wanted Lucy.”
+
+“You thought I was with John Graham Bretton, I suppose? But he has just
+been called out: he will be back soon, Polly. He can post your letter
+for you; it will save Matthieu a ‘course,’ as he calls it.”
+
+“I don’t post letters,” said she, rather pettishly.
+
+“What do you do with them, then?—come here and tell me.”
+
+Both her mind and gesture seemed to hesitate a second—to say “Shall I
+come?”—but she approached.
+
+“How long is it since you became a letter-writer, Polly? It only seems
+yesterday when you were at your pot-hooks, labouring away absolutely
+with both hands at the pen.”
+
+“Papa, they are not letters to send to the post in your letter-bag;
+they are only notes, which I give now and then into the person’s hands,
+just to satisfy.”
+
+“The person! That means Miss Snowe, I suppose?”
+
+“No, papa—not Lucy.”
+
+“Who then? Perhaps Mrs. Bretton?”
+
+“No, papa—not Mrs. Bretton.”
+
+“Who, then, my little daughter? Tell papa the truth.”
+
+“Oh, papa!” she cried with earnestness, “I will—I _will_ tell you the
+truth—all the truth; I am glad to tell you—glad, though I tremble.”
+
+She _did_ tremble: growing excitement, kindling feeling, and also
+gathering courage, shook her.
+
+“I hate to hide my actions from you, papa. I fear you and love you
+above everything but God. Read the letter; look at the address.”
+
+She laid it on his knee. He took it up and read it through; his hand
+shaking, his eyes glistening meantime.
+
+He re-folded it, and viewed the writer with a strange, tender, mournful
+amaze.
+
+“Can _she_ write so—the little thing that stood at my knee but
+yesterday? Can she feel so?”
+
+“Papa, is it wrong? Does it pain you?”
+
+“There is nothing wrong in it, my innocent little Mary; but it pains
+me.”
+
+“But, papa, listen! You shall not be pained by me. I would give up
+everything—almost” (correcting herself); “I would die rather than make
+you unhappy; that would be too wicked!”
+
+She shuddered.
+
+“Does the letter not please you? Must it not go? Must it be torn? It
+shall, for your sake, if you order it.”
+
+“I order nothing.”
+
+“Order something, papa; express your wish; only don’t hurt, don’t
+grieve Graham. I cannot, _cannot_ bear that. I love you, papa; but I
+love Graham too—because—because—it is impossible to help it.”
+
+“This splendid Graham is a young scamp, Polly—that is my present notion
+of him: it will surprise you to hear that, for my part, I do not love
+him one whit. Ah! years ago I saw something in that lad’s eye I never
+quite fathomed—something his mother has not—a depth which warned a man
+not to wade into that stream too far; now, suddenly, I find myself
+taken over the crown of the head.”
+
+“Papa, you don’t—you have not fallen in; you are safe on the bank; you
+can do as you please; your power is despotic; you can shut me up in a
+convent, and break Graham’s heart to-morrow, if you choose to be so
+cruel. Now, autocrat, now czar, will you do this?”
+
+“Off with him to Siberia, red whiskers and all; I say, I don’t like
+him, Polly, and I wonder that you should.”
+
+“Papa,” said she, “do you know you are very naughty? I never saw you
+look so disagreeable, so unjust, so almost vindictive before. There is
+an expression in your face which does not belong to you.”
+
+“Off with him!” pursued Mr. Home, who certainly did look sorely crossed
+and annoyed—even a little bitter; “but, I suppose, if he went, Polly
+would pack a bundle and run after him; her heart is fairly won—won, and
+weaned from her old father.”
+
+“Papa, I say it is naughty, it is decidedly wrong, to talk in that way.
+I am _not_ weaned from you, and no human being and no mortal influence
+_can_ wean me.”
+
+“Be married, Polly! Espouse the red whiskers. Cease to be a daughter;
+go and be a wife!”
+
+“Red whiskers! I wonder what you mean, papa. You should take care of
+prejudice. You sometimes say to me that all the Scotch, your
+countrymen, are the victims of prejudice. It is proved now, I think,
+when no distinction is to be made between red and deep nut-brown.”
+
+“Leave the prejudiced old Scotchman; go away.”
+
+She stood looking at him a minute. She wanted to show firmness,
+superiority to taunts; knowing her father’s character, guessing his few
+foibles, she had expected the sort of scene which was now transpiring;
+it did not take her by surprise, and she desired to let it pass with
+dignity, reliant upon reaction. Her dignity stood her in no stead.
+Suddenly her soul melted in her eyes; she fell on his neck:—“I won’t
+leave you, papa; I’ll never leave you. I won’t pain you! I’ll never
+pain you!” was her cry.
+
+“My lamb! my treasure!” murmured the loving though rugged sire. He said
+no more for the moment; indeed, those two words were hoarse.
+
+The room was now darkening. I heard a movement, a step without.
+Thinking it might be a servant coming with candles, I gently opened, to
+prevent intrusion. In the ante-room stood no servant: a tall gentleman
+was placing his hat on the table, drawing off his gloves
+slowly—lingering, waiting, it seemed to me. He called me neither by
+sign nor word; yet his eye said:—“Lucy, come here.” And I went.
+
+Over his face a smile flowed, while he looked down on me: no temper,
+save his own, would have expressed by a smile the sort of agitation
+which now fevered him.
+
+“M. de Bassompierre is there—is he not?” he inquired, pointing to the
+library.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“He noticed me at dinner? He understood me?”
+
+“Yes, Graham.”
+
+“I am brought up for judgment, then, and so is _she_?”
+
+“Mr. Home” (we now and always continued to term him Mr. Home at times)
+“is talking to his daughter.”
+
+“Ha! These are sharp moments, Lucy!”
+
+He was quite stirred up; his young hand trembled; a vital (I was going
+to write _mortal_, but such words ill apply to one all living like
+him)—a vital suspense now held, now hurried, his breath: in all this
+trouble his smile never faded.
+
+“Is he _very_ angry, Lucy?”
+
+“_She_ is very faithful, Graham.”
+
+“What will be done unto me?”
+
+“Graham, your star must be fortunate.”
+
+“Must it? Kind prophet! So cheered, I should be a faint heart indeed to
+quail. I think I find all women faithful, Lucy. I ought to love them,
+and I do. My mother is good; _she_ is divine; and _you_ are true as
+steel. Are you not?”
+
+“Yes, Graham.”
+
+“Then give me thy hand, my little god-sister: it is a friendly little
+hand to me, and always has been. And now for the great venture. God be
+with the right. Lucy, say Amen!”
+
+He turned, and waited till I said “Amen!”—which I did to please him:
+the old charm, in doing as he bid me, came back. I wished him success;
+and successful I knew he would be. He was born victor, as some are born
+vanquished.
+
+“Follow me!” he said; and I followed him into Mr. Home’s presence.
+
+“Sir,” he asked, “what is my sentence?”
+
+The father looked at him: the daughter kept her face hid.
+
+“Well, Bretton,” said Mr. Home, “you have given me the usual reward of
+hospitality. I entertained you; you have taken my best. I was always
+glad to see you; you were glad to see the one precious thing I had. You
+spoke me fair; and, meantime, I will not say you _robbed_ me, but I am
+bereaved, and what I have lost, _you_, it seems, have won.”
+
+“Sir, I cannot repent.”
+
+“Repent! Not you! You triumph, no doubt: John Graham, you descended
+partly from a Highlander and a chief, and there is a trace of the Celt
+in all you look, speak, and think. You have his cunning and his charm.
+The red—(Well then, Polly, the _fair_) hair, the tongue of guile, and
+brain of wile, are all come down by inheritance.”
+
+“Sir, I _feel_ honest enough,” said Graham; and a genuine English blush
+covered his face with its warm witness of sincerity. “And yet,” he
+added, “I won’t deny that in some respects you accuse me justly. In
+your presence I have always had a thought which I dared not show you. I
+did truly regard you as the possessor of the most valuable thing the
+world owns for me. I wished for it: I tried for it. Sir, I ask for it
+now.”
+
+“John, you ask much.”
+
+“Very much, sir. It must come from your generosity, as a gift; from
+your justice, as a reward. I can never earn it.”
+
+“Ay! Listen to the Highland tongue!” said Mr. Home. “Look up, Polly!
+Answer this ‘braw wooer;’ send him away!”
+
+She looked up. She shyly glanced at her eager, handsome suitor. She
+gazed tenderly on her furrowed sire.
+
+“Papa, I love you both,” said she; “I can take care of you both. I need
+not send Graham away—he can live here; he will be no inconvenience,”
+she alleged with that simplicity of phraseology which at times was wont
+to make both her father and Graham smile. They smiled now.
+
+“He will be a prodigious inconvenience to me,” still persisted Mr.
+Home. “I don’t want him, Polly, he is too tall; he is in my way. Tell
+him to march.”
+
+“You will get used to him, papa. He seemed exceedingly tall to me at
+first—like a tower when I looked up at him; but, on the whole, I would
+rather not have him otherwise.”
+
+“I object to him altogether, Polly; I can do without a son-in-law. I
+should never have requested the best man in the land to stand to me in
+that relation. Dismiss this gentleman.”
+
+“But he has known you so long, papa, and suits you so well.”
+
+“Suits _me_, forsooth! Yes; he has pretended to make my opinions and
+tastes his own. He has humoured me for good reasons. I think, Polly,
+you and I will bid him good-by.”
+
+“Till to-morrow only. Shake hands with Graham, papa.”
+
+“No: I think not: I am not friends with him. Don’t think to coax me
+between you.”
+
+“Indeed, indeed, you _are_ friends. Graham, stretch out your right
+hand. Papa, put out yours. Now, let them touch. Papa, don’t be stiff;
+close your fingers; be pliant—there! But that is not a clasp—it is a
+grasp? Papa, you grasp like a vice. You crush Graham’s hand to the
+bone; you hurt him!”
+
+He must have hurt him; for he wore a massive ring, set round with
+brilliants, of which the sharp facets cut into Graham’s flesh and drew
+blood: but pain only made Dr. John laugh, as anxiety had made him
+smile.
+
+“Come with me into my study,” at last said Mr. Home to the doctor. They
+went. Their intercourse was not long, but I suppose it was conclusive.
+The suitor had to undergo an interrogatory and a scrutiny on many
+things. Whether Dr. Bretton was at times guileful in look and language
+or not, there was a sound foundation below. His answers, I understood
+afterwards, evinced both wisdom and integrity. He had managed his
+affairs well. He had struggled through entanglements; his fortunes were
+in the way of retrieval; he proved himself in a position to marry.
+
+Once more the father and lover appeared in the library. M. de
+Bassompierre shut the door; he pointed to his daughter.
+
+“Take her,” he said. “Take her, John Bretton: and may God deal with you
+as you deal with her!”
+
+Not long after, perhaps a fortnight, I saw three persons, Count de
+Bassompierre, his daughter, and Dr. Graham Bretton, sitting on one
+seat, under a low-spreading and umbrageous tree, in the grounds of the
+palace at Bois l’Etang. They had come thither to enjoy a summer
+evening: outside the magnificent gates their carriage waited to take
+them home; the green sweeps of turf spread round them quiet and dim;
+the palace rose at a distance, white as a crag on Pentelicus; the
+evening star shone above it; a forest of flowering shrubs embalmed the
+climate of this spot; the hour was still and sweet; the scene, but for
+this group, was solitary.
+
+Paulina sat between the two gentlemen: while they conversed, her little
+hands were busy at some work; I thought at first she was binding a
+nosegay. No; with the tiny pair of scissors, glittering in her lap, she
+had severed spoils from each manly head beside her, and was now
+occupied in plaiting together the grey lock and the golden wave. The
+plait woven—no silk-thread being at hand to bind it—a tress of her own
+hair was made to serve that purpose; she tied it like a knot, prisoned
+it in a locket, and laid it on her heart.
+
+“Now,” said she, “there is an amulet made, which has virtue to keep you
+two always friends. You can never quarrel so long as I wear this.”
+
+An amulet was indeed made, a spell framed which rendered enmity
+impossible. She was become a bond to both, an influence over each, a
+mutual concord. From them she drew her happiness, and what she
+borrowed, she, with interest, gave back.
+
+“Is there, indeed, such happiness on earth?” I asked, as I watched the
+father, the daughter, the future husband, now united—all blessed and
+blessing.
+
+Yes; it is so. Without any colouring of romance, or any exaggeration of
+fancy, it is so. Some real lives do—for some certain days or
+years—actually anticipate the happiness of Heaven; and, I believe, if
+such perfect happiness is once felt by good people (to the wicked it
+never comes), its sweet effect is never wholly lost. Whatever trials
+follow, whatever pains of sickness or shades of death, the glory
+precedent still shines through, cheering the keen anguish, and tinging
+the deep cloud.
+
+I will go farther. I _do_ believe there are some human beings so born,
+so reared, so guided from a soft cradle to a calm and late grave, that
+no excessive suffering penetrates their lot, and no tempestuous
+blackness overcasts their journey. And often, these are not pampered,
+selfish beings, but Nature’s elect, harmonious and benign; men and
+women mild with charity, kind agents of God’s kind attributes.
+
+Let me not delay the happy truth. Graham Bretton and Paulina de
+Bassompierre were married, and such an agent did Dr. Bretton prove. He
+did not with time degenerate; his faults decayed, his virtues ripened;
+he rose in intellectual refinement, he won in moral profit: all dregs
+filtered away, the clear wine settled bright and tranquil. Bright, too,
+was the destiny of his sweet wife. She kept her husband’s love, she
+aided in his progress—of his happiness she was the corner stone.
+
+This pair was blessed indeed, for years brought them, with great
+prosperity, great goodness: they imparted with open hand, yet wisely.
+Doubtless they knew crosses, disappointments, difficulties; but these
+were well borne. More than once, too, they had to look on Him whose
+face flesh scarce can see and live: they had to pay their tribute to
+the King of Terrors. In the fulness of years, M. de Bassompierre was
+taken: in ripe old age departed Louisa Bretton. Once even there rose a
+cry in their halls, of Rachel weeping for her children; but others
+sprang healthy and blooming to replace the lost: Dr. Bretton saw
+himself live again in a son who inherited his looks and his
+disposition; he had stately daughters, too, like himself: these
+children he reared with a suave, yet a firm hand; they grew up
+according to inheritance and nurture.
+
+In short, I do but speak the truth when I say that these two lives of
+Graham and Paulina were blessed, like that of Jacob’s favoured son,
+with “blessings of Heaven above, blessings of the deep that lies
+under.” It was so, for God saw that it was good.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+CLOUD.
+
+
+But it is not so for all. What then? His will be done, as done it
+surely will be, whether we humble ourselves to resignation or not. The
+impulse of creation forwards it; the strength of powers, seen and
+unseen, has its fulfilment in charge. Proof of a life to come must be
+given. In fire and in blood, if needful, must that proof be written. In
+fire and in blood do we trace the record throughout nature. In fire and
+in blood does it cross our own experience. Sufferer, faint not through
+terror of this burning evidence. Tired wayfarer, gird up thy loins;
+look upward, march onward. Pilgrims and brother mourners, join in
+friendly company. Dark through the wilderness of this world stretches
+the way for most of us: equal and steady be our tread; be our cross our
+banner. For staff we have His promise, whose “word is tried, whose way
+perfect:” for present hope His providence, “who gives the shield of
+salvation, whose gentleness makes great;” for final home His bosom, who
+“dwells in the height of Heaven;” for crowning prize a glory, exceeding
+and eternal. Let us so run that we may obtain: let us endure hardness
+as good soldiers; let us finish our course, and keep the faith, reliant
+in the issue to come off more than conquerors: “Art thou not from
+everlasting mine Holy One? WE SHALL NOT DIE!”
+
+On a Thursday morning we were all assembled in classe, waiting for the
+lesson of literature. The hour was come; we expected the master.
+
+The pupils of the first classe sat very still; the cleanly-written
+compositions prepared since the last lesson lay ready before them,
+neatly tied with ribbon, waiting to be gathered by the hand of the
+Professor as he made his rapid round of the desks. The month was July,
+the morning fine, the glass-door stood ajar, through it played a fresh
+breeze, and plants, growing at the lintel, waved, bent, looked in,
+seeming to whisper tidings.
+
+M. Emanuel was not always quite punctual; we scarcely wondered at his
+being a little late, but we wondered when the door at last opened and,
+instead of him with his swiftness and his fire, there came quietly upon
+us the cautious Madame Beck.
+
+She approached M. Paul’s desk; she stood before it; she drew round her
+the light shawl covering her shoulders; beginning to speak in low, yet
+firm tones, and with a fixed gaze, she said, “This morning there will
+be no lesson of literature.”
+
+The second paragraph of her address followed, after about two minutes’
+pause.
+
+“It is probable the lessons will be suspended for a week. I shall
+require at least that space of time to find an efficient substitute for
+M. Emanuel. Meanwhile, it shall be our study to fill the blanks
+usefully.
+
+“Your Professor, ladies,” she went on, “intends, if possible, duly to
+take leave of you. At the present moment he has not leisure for that
+ceremony. He is preparing for a long voyage. A very sudden and urgent
+summons of duty calls him to a great distance. He has decided to leave
+Europe for an indefinite time. Perhaps he may tell you more himself.
+Ladies, instead of the usual lesson with M. Emanuel, you will, this
+morning, read English with Mademoiselle Lucy.”
+
+She bent her head courteously, drew closer the folds of her shawl, and
+passed from the classe.
+
+A great silence fell: then a murmur went round the room: I believe some
+pupils wept.
+
+Some time elapsed. The noise, the whispering, the occasional sobbing
+increased. I became conscious of a relaxation of discipline, a sort of
+growing disorder, as if my girls felt that vigilance was withdrawn, and
+that surveillance had virtually left the classe. Habit and the sense of
+duty enabled me to rally quickly, to rise in my usual way, to speak in
+my usual tone, to enjoin, and finally to establish quiet. I made the
+English reading long and close. I kept them at it the whole morning. I
+remember feeling a sentiment of impatience towards the pupils who
+sobbed. Indeed, their emotion was not of much value: it was only an
+hysteric agitation. I told them so unsparingly. I half ridiculed them.
+I was severe. The truth was, I could not do with their tears, or that
+gasping sound; I could not bear it. A rather weak-minded, low-spirited
+pupil kept it up when the others had done; relentless necessity obliged
+and assisted me so to accost her, that she dared not carry on the
+demonstration, that she was forced to conquer the convulsion.
+
+That girl would have had a right to hate me, except that, when school
+was over and her companions departing, I ordered her to stay, and when
+they were gone, I did what I had never done to one among them
+before—pressed her to my heart and kissed her cheek. But, this impulse
+yielded to, I speedily put her out of the classe, for, upon that
+poignant strain, she wept more bitterly than ever.
+
+I filled with occupation every minute of that day, and should have
+liked to sit up all night if I might have kept a candle burning; the
+night, however, proved a bad time, and left bad effects, preparing me
+ill for the next day’s ordeal of insufferable gossip. Of course this
+news fell under general discussion. Some little reserve had accompanied
+the first surprise: that soon wore off; every mouth opened; every
+tongue wagged; teachers, pupils, the very servants, mouthed the name of
+“Emanuel.” He, whose connection with the school was contemporary with
+its commencement, thus suddenly to withdraw! All felt it strange.
+
+They talked so much, so long, so often, that, out of the very multitude
+of their words and rumours, grew at last some intelligence. About the
+third day I heard it said that he was to sail in a week; then—that he
+was bound for the West Indies. I looked at Madame Beck’s face, and into
+her eyes, for disproof or confirmation of this report; I perused her
+all over for information, but no part of her disclosed more than what
+was unperturbed and commonplace.
+
+“This secession was an immense loss to her,” she alleged. “She did not
+know how she should fill up the vacancy. She was so used to her
+kinsman, he had become her right hand; what should she do without him?
+She had opposed the step, but M. Paul had convinced her it was his
+duty.”
+
+She said all this in public, in classe, at the dinner-table, speaking
+audibly to Zélie St. Pierre.
+
+“Why was it his duty?” I could have asked her that. I had impulses to
+take hold of her suddenly, as she calmly passed me in classe, to
+stretch out my hand and grasp her fast, and say, “Stop. Let us hear the
+conclusion of the whole matter. _Why_ is it his duty to go into
+banishment?” But Madame always addressed some other teacher, and never
+looked at me, never seemed conscious I could have a care in the
+question.
+
+The week wore on. Nothing more was said about M. Emanuel coming to bid
+us good-by; and none seemed anxious for his coming; none questioned
+whether or not he would come; none betrayed torment lest he should
+depart silent and unseen; incessantly did they talk, and never, in all
+their talk, touched on this vital point. As to Madame, she of course
+could see him, and say to him as much as she pleased. What should _she_
+care whether or not he appeared in the schoolroom?
+
+The week consumed. We were told that he was going on such a day, that
+his destination was “Basseterre in Guadaloupe:” the business which
+called him abroad related to a friend’s interests, not his own: I
+thought as much.
+
+“Basseterre in Guadaloupe.” I had little sleep about this time, but
+whenever I _did_ slumber, it followed infallibly that I was quickly
+roused with a start, while the words “Basseterre,” “Guadaloupe,” seemed
+pronounced over my pillow, or ran athwart the darkness round and before
+me, in zigzag characters of red or violet light.
+
+For what I felt there was no help, and how could I help feeling? M.
+Emanuel had been very kind to me of late days; he had been growing
+hourly better and kinder. It was now a month since we had settled the
+theological difference, and in all that time there had been no quarrel.
+Nor had our peace been the cold daughter of divorce; we had not lived
+aloof; he had come oftener, he had talked with me more than before; he
+had spent hours with me, with temper soothed, with eye content, with
+manner home-like and mild. Kind subjects of conversation had grown
+between us; he had inquired into my plans of life, and I had
+communicated them; the school project pleased him; he made me repeat it
+more than once, though he called it an Alnaschar dream. The jar was
+over; the mutual understanding was settling and fixing; feelings of
+union and hope made themselves profoundly felt in the heart; affection
+and deep esteem and dawning trust had each fastened its bond.
+
+What quiet lessons I had about this time! No more taunts on my
+“intellect,” no more menaces of grating public shows! How sweetly, for
+the jealous gibe, and the more jealous, half-passionate eulogy, were
+substituted a mute, indulgent help, a fond guidance, and a tender
+forbearance which forgave but never praised. There were times when he
+would sit for many minutes and not speak at all; and when dusk or duty
+brought separation, he would leave with words like these, “Il est doux,
+le repos! Il est précieux le calme bonheur!”
+
+One evening, not ten short days since, he joined me whilst walking in
+my alley. He took my hand. I looked up in his face. I thought he meant
+to arrest my attention.
+
+“Bonne petite amie!” said he, softly; “douce consolatrice!” But through
+his touch, and with his words, a new feeling and a strange thought
+found a course. Could it be that he was becoming more than friend or
+brother? Did his look speak a kindness beyond fraternity or amity?
+
+His eloquent look had more to say, his hand drew me forward, his
+interpreting lips stirred. No. Not now. Here into the twilight alley
+broke an interruption: it came dual and ominous: we faced two bodeful
+forms—a woman’s and a priest’s—Madame Beck and Père Silas.
+
+The aspect of the latter I shall never forget. On the first impulse it
+expressed a Jean-Jacques sensibility, stirred by the signs of affection
+just surprised; then, immediately, darkened over it the jaundice of
+ecclesiastical jealousy. He spoke to _me_ with unction. He looked on
+his pupil with sternness. As to Madame Beck, she, of course, saw
+nothing—nothing; though her kinsman retained in her presence the hand
+of the heretic foreigner, not suffering withdrawal, but clasping it
+close and fast.
+
+Following these incidents, that sudden announcement of departure had
+struck me at first as incredible. Indeed, it was only frequent
+repetition, and the credence of the hundred and fifty minds round me,
+which forced on me its full acceptance. As to that week of suspense,
+with its blank, yet burning days, which brought from him no word of
+explanation—I remember, but I cannot describe its passage.
+
+The last day broke. Now would he visit us. Now he would come and speak
+his farewell, or he would vanish mute, and be seen by us nevermore.
+
+This alternative seemed to be present in the mind of not a living
+creature in that school. All rose at the usual hour; all breakfasted as
+usual; all, without reference to, or apparent thought of their late
+Professor, betook themselves with wonted phlegm to their ordinary
+duties.
+
+So oblivious was the house, so tame, so trained its proceedings, so
+inexpectant its aspect—I scarce knew how to breathe in an atmosphere
+thus stagnant, thus smothering. Would no one lend me a voice? Had no
+one a wish, no one a word, no one a prayer to which I could say—Amen?
+
+I had seen them unanimous in demand for the merest trifle—a treat, a
+holiday, a lesson’s remission; they could not, they _would_ not now
+band to besiege Madame Beck, and insist on a last interview with a
+Master who had certainly been loved, at least by some—loved as _they_
+could love—but, oh! what _is_ the love of the multitude?
+
+I knew where he lived: I knew where he was to be heard of, or
+communicated with; the distance was scarce a stone’s-throw: had it been
+in the next room—unsummoned, I could make no use of my knowledge. To
+follow, to seek out, to remind, to recall—for these things I had no
+faculty.
+
+M. Emanuel might have passed within reach of my arm: had he passed
+silent and unnoticing, silent and stirless should I have suffered him
+to go by.
+
+Morning wasted. Afternoon came, and I thought all was over. My heart
+trembled in its place. My blood was troubled in its current. I was
+quite sick, and hardly knew how to keep at my post—or do my work. Yet
+the little world round me plodded on indifferent; all seemed jocund,
+free of care, or fear, or thought: the very pupils who, seven days
+since, had wept hysterically at a startling piece of news, appeared
+quite to have forgotten the news, its import, and their emotion.
+
+A little before five o’clock, the hour of dismissal, Madame Beck sent
+for me to her chamber, to read over and translate some English letter
+she had received, and to write for her the answer. Before settling to
+this work, I observed that she softly closed the two doors of her
+chamber; she even shut and fastened the casement, though it was a hot
+day, and free circulation of air was usually regarded by her as
+indispensable. Why this precaution? A keen suspicion, an almost fierce
+distrust, suggested such question. Did she want to exclude sound? what
+sound?
+
+I listened as I had never listened before; I listened like the evening
+and winter-wolf, snuffing the snow, scenting prey, and hearing far off
+the traveller’s tramp. Yet I could both listen and write. About the
+middle of the letter I heard—what checked my pen—a tread in the
+vestibule. No door-bell had rung; Rosine—acting doubtless by orders—had
+anticipated such réveillée. Madame saw me halt. She coughed, made a
+bustle, spoke louder. The tread had passed on to the classes.
+
+“Proceed,” said Madame; but my hand was fettered, my ear enchained, my
+thoughts were carried off captive.
+
+The classes formed another building; the hall parted them from the
+dwelling-house: despite distance and partition, I heard the sudden stir
+of numbers, a whole division rising at once.
+
+“They are putting away work,” said Madame.
+
+It was indeed the hour to put away work, but why that sudden hush—that
+instant quell of the tumult?
+
+“Wait, Madame—I will see what it is.”
+
+And I put down my pen and left her. Left her? No: she would not be
+left: powerless to detain me, she rose and followed, close as my
+shadow. I turned on the last step of the stair.
+
+“Are you coming, too?” I asked.
+
+“Yes,” said she; meeting my glance with a peculiar aspect—a look,
+clouded, yet resolute.
+
+We proceeded then, not together, but she walked in my steps.
+
+He was come. Entering the first classe, I saw him. There, once more
+appeared the form most familiar. I doubt not they had tried to keep him
+away, but he was come.
+
+The girls stood in a semicircle; he was passing round, giving his
+farewells, pressing each hand, touching with his lips each cheek. This
+last ceremony, foreign custom permitted at such a parting—so solemn, to
+last so long.
+
+I felt it hard that Madame Beck should dog me thus; following and
+watching me close; my neck and shoulder shrunk in fever under her
+breath; I became terribly goaded.
+
+He was approaching; the semicircle was almost travelled round; he came
+to the last pupil; he turned. But Madame was before me; she had stepped
+out suddenly; she seemed to magnify her proportions and amplify her
+drapery; she eclipsed me; I was hid. She knew my weakness and
+deficiency; she could calculate the degree of moral paralysis—the total
+default of self-assertion—with which, in a crisis, I could be struck.
+She hastened to her kinsman, she broke upon him volubly, she mastered
+his attention, she hurried him to the door—the glass-door opening on
+the garden. I think he looked round; could I but have caught his eye,
+courage, I think, would have rushed in to aid feeling, and there would
+have been a charge, and, perhaps, a rescue; but already the room was
+all confusion, the semicircle broken into groups, my figure was lost
+among thirty more conspicuous. Madame had her will; yes, she got him
+away, and he had not seen me; he thought me absent. Five o’clock
+struck, the loud dismissal-bell rang, the school separated, the room
+emptied.
+
+There seems, to my memory, an entire darkness and distraction in some
+certain minutes I then passed alone—a grief inexpressible over a loss
+unendurable. _What_ should I do; oh! _what_ should I do; when all my
+life’s hope was thus torn by the roots out of my riven, outraged heart?
+
+What I _should_ have done, I know not, when a little child—the least
+child in the school—broke with its simplicity and its unconsciousness
+into the raging yet silent centre of that inward conflict.
+
+“Mademoiselle,” lisped the treble voice, “I am to give you that. M.
+Paul said I was to seek you all over the house, from the grenier to the
+cellar, and when I found you, to give you that.”
+
+And the child delivered a note; the little dove dropped on my knee, its
+olive leaf plucked off. I found neither address nor name, only these
+words:—
+
+“It was not my intention to take leave of you when I said good-by to
+the rest, but I hoped to see you in classe. I was disappointed. The
+interview is deferred. Be ready for me. Ere I sail, I must see you at
+leisure, and speak with you at length. Be ready; my moments are
+numbered, and, just now, monopolized; besides, I have a private
+business on hand which I will not share with any, nor communicate—even
+to you.—PAUL.”
+
+“Be ready?” Then it must be this evening: was he not to go on the
+morrow? Yes; of that point I was certain. I had seen the date of his
+vessel’s departure advertised. Oh! _I_ would be ready, but could that
+longed-for meeting really be achieved? the time was so short, the
+schemers seemed so watchful, so active, so hostile; the way of access
+appeared strait as a gully, deep as a chasm—Apollyon straddled across
+it, breathing flames. Could my Greatheart overcome? Could my guide
+reach me?
+
+Who might tell? Yet I began to take some courage, some comfort; it
+seemed to me that I felt a pulse of his heart beating yet true to the
+whole throb of mine.
+
+I waited my champion. Apollyon came trailing his Hell behind him. I
+think if Eternity held torment, its form would not be fiery rack, nor
+its nature despair. I think that on a certain day amongst those days
+which never dawned, and will not set, an angel entered Hades—stood,
+shone, smiled, delivered a prophecy of conditional pardon, kindled a
+doubtful hope of bliss to come, not now, but at a day and hour unlooked
+for, revealed in his own glory and grandeur the height and compass of
+his promise: spoke thus—then towering, became a star, and vanished into
+his own Heaven. His legacy was suspense—a worse boon than despair.
+
+All that evening I waited, trusting in the dove-sent olive-leaf, yet in
+the midst of my trust, terribly fearing. My fear pressed heavy. Cold
+and peculiar, I knew it for the partner of a rarely-belied
+presentiment. The first hours seemed long and slow; in spirit I clung
+to the flying skirts of the last. They passed like drift cloud—like the
+wrack scudding before a storm.
+
+They passed. All the long, hot summer day burned away like a Yule-log;
+the crimson of its close perished; I was left bent among the cool blue
+shades, over the pale and ashen gleams of its night.
+
+Prayers were over; it was bed-time; my co-inmates were all retired. I
+still remained in the gloomy first classe, forgetting, or at least
+disregarding, rules I had never forgotten or disregarded before.
+
+How long I paced that classe I cannot tell; I must have been afoot many
+hours; mechanically had I moved aside benches and desks, and had made
+for myself a path down its length. There I walked, and there, when
+certain that the whole household were abed, and quite out of
+hearing—there, I at last wept. Reliant on Night, confiding in Solitude,
+I kept my tears sealed, my sobs chained, no longer; they heaved my
+heart; they tore their way. In this house, what grief could be sacred?
+
+Soon after eleven o’clock—a very late hour in the Rue Fossette—the door
+unclosed, quietly but not stealthily; a lamp’s flame invaded the
+moonlight; Madame Beck entered, with the same composed air, as if
+coming on an ordinary occasion, at an ordinary season. Instead of at
+once addressing me, she went to her desk, took her keys, and seemed to
+seek something: she loitered over this feigned search long, too long.
+She was calm, too calm; my mood scarce endured the pretence; driven
+beyond common range, two hours since I had left behind me wonted
+respects and fears. Led by a touch, and ruled by a word, under usual
+circumstances, no yoke could now be borne—no curb obeyed.
+
+“It is more than time for retirement,” said Madame; “the rule of the
+house has already been transgressed too long.”
+
+Madame met no answer: I did not check my walk; when she came in my way,
+I put her out of it.
+
+“Let me persuade you to calm, Meess; let me lead you to your chamber,”
+said she, trying to speak softly.
+
+“No!” I said; “neither you nor another shall persuade or lead me.”
+
+“Your bed shall be warmed. Goton is sitting up still. She shall make
+you comfortable: she shall give you a sedative.”
+
+“Madame,” I broke out, “you are a sensualist. Under all your serenity,
+your peace, and your decorum, you are an undenied sensualist. Make your
+own bed warm and soft; take sedatives and meats, and drinks spiced and
+sweet, as much as you will. If you have any sorrow or
+disappointment—and, perhaps, you have—nay, I _know_ you have—seek your
+own palliatives, in your own chosen resources. Leave me, however.
+_Leave me_, I say!”
+
+“I must send another to watch you, Meess: I must send Goton.”
+
+“I forbid it. Let me alone. Keep your hand off me, and my life, and my
+troubles. Oh, Madame! in _your_ hand there is both chill and poison.
+You envenom and you paralyze.”
+
+“What have I done, Meess? You must not marry Paul. He cannot marry.”
+
+“Dog in the manger!” I said: for I knew she secretly wanted him, and
+had always wanted him. She called him “insupportable:” she railed at
+him for a “dévot:” she did not love, but she wanted to marry, that she
+might bind him to her interest. Deep into some of Madame’s secrets I
+had entered—I know not how: by an intuition or an inspiration which
+came to me—I know not whence. In the course of living with her too, I
+had slowly learned, that, unless with an inferior, she must ever be a
+rival. She was _my_ rival, heart and soul, though secretly, under the
+smoothest bearing, and utterly unknown to all save her and myself.
+
+Two minutes I stood over Madame, feeling that the whole woman was in my
+power, because in some moods, such as the present—in some stimulated
+states of perception, like that of this instant—her habitual disguise,
+her mask and her domino, were to me a mere network reticulated with
+holes; and I saw underneath a being heartless, self-indulgent, and
+ignoble. She quietly retreated from me: meek and self-possessed, though
+very uneasy, she said, “If I would not be persuaded to take rest, she
+must reluctantly leave me.” Which she did incontinent, perhaps even
+more glad to get away, than I was to see her vanish.
+
+This was the sole flash-eliciting, truth-extorting, rencontre which
+ever occurred between me and Madame Beck: this short night-scene was
+never repeated. It did not one whit change her manner to me. I do not
+know that she revenged it. I do not know that she hated me the worse
+for my fell candour. I think she bucklered herself with the secret
+philosophy of her strong mind, and resolved to forget what it irked her
+to remember. I know that to the end of our mutual lives there occurred
+no repetition of, no allusion to, that fiery passage.
+
+That night passed: all nights—even the starless night before
+dissolution—must wear away. About six o’clock, the hour which called up
+the household, I went out to the court, and washed my face in its cold,
+fresh well-water. Entering by the carré, a piece of mirror-glass, set
+in an oaken cabinet, repeated my image. It said I was changed: my
+cheeks and lips were sodden white, my eyes were glassy, and my eyelids
+swollen and purple.
+
+On rejoining my companions, I knew they all looked at me—my heart
+seemed discovered to them: I believed myself self-betrayed. Hideously
+certain did it seem that the very youngest of the school must guess why
+and for whom I despaired.
+
+“Isabelle,” the child whom I had once nursed in sickness, approached
+me. Would she, too, mock me!
+
+“Que vous êtes pâle! Vous êtes donc bien malade, Mademoiselle!” said
+she, putting her finger in her mouth, and staring with a wistful
+stupidity which at the moment seemed to me more beautiful than the
+keenest intelligence.
+
+Isabelle did not long stand alone in the recommendation of ignorance:
+before the day was over, I gathered cause of gratitude towards the
+whole blind household. The multitude have something else to do than to
+read hearts and interpret dark sayings. Who wills, may keep his own
+counsel—be his own secret’s sovereign. In the course of that day, proof
+met me on proof, not only that the cause of my present sorrow was
+unguessed, but that my whole inner life for the last six months, was
+still mine only. It was not known—it had not been noted—that I held in
+peculiar value one life among all lives. Gossip had passed me by;
+curiosity had looked me over; both subtle influences, hovering always
+round, had never become centred upon me. A given organization may live
+in a full fever-hospital, and escape typhus. M. Emanuel had come and
+gone: I had been taught and sought; in season and out of season he had
+called me, and I had obeyed him: “M. Paul wants Miss Lucy”—“Miss Lucy
+is with M. Paul”—such had been the perpetual bulletin; and nobody
+commented, far less condemned. Nobody hinted, nobody jested. Madame
+Beck read the riddle: none else resolved it. What I now suffered was
+called illness—a headache: I accepted the baptism.
+
+But what bodily illness was ever like this pain? This certainty that he
+was gone without a farewell—this cruel conviction that fate and
+pursuing furies—a woman’s envy and a priest’s bigotry—would suffer me
+to see him no more? What wonder that the second evening found me like
+the first—untamed, tortured, again pacing a solitary room in an
+unalterable passion of silent desolation?
+
+Madame Beck did not herself summon me to bed that night—she did not
+come near me: she sent Ginevra Fanshawe—a more efficient agent for the
+purpose she could not have employed. Ginevra’s first words—“Is your
+headache very bad to-night?” (for Ginevra, like the rest, thought I had
+a headache—an intolerable headache which made me frightfully white in
+the face, and insanely restless in the foot)—her first words, I say,
+inspired the impulse to flee anywhere, so that it were only out of
+reach. And soon, what followed—plaints about her own
+headaches—completed the business.
+
+I went up-stairs. Presently I was in my bed—my miserable bed—haunted
+with quick scorpions. I had not been laid down five minutes, when
+another emissary arrived: Goton came, bringing me something to drink. I
+was consumed with thirst—I drank eagerly; the beverage was sweet, but I
+tasted a drug.
+
+“Madame says it will make you sleep, chou-chou,” said Goton, as she
+received back the emptied cup.
+
+Ah! the sedative had been administered. In fact, they had given me a
+strong opiate. I was to be held quiet for one night.
+
+The household came to bed, the night-light was lit, the dormitory
+hushed. Sleep soon reigned: over those pillows, sleep won an easy
+supremacy: contented sovereign over heads and hearts which did not
+ache—he passed by the unquiet.
+
+The drug wrought. I know not whether Madame had overcharged or
+under-charged the dose; its result was not that she intended. Instead
+of stupor, came excitement. I became alive to new thought—to reverie
+peculiar in colouring. A gathering call ran among the faculties, their
+bugles sang, their trumpets rang an untimely summons. Imagination was
+roused from her rest, and she came forth impetuous and venturous. With
+scorn she looked on Matter, her mate—“Rise!” she said. “Sluggard! this
+night I will have _my_ will; nor shalt thou prevail.”
+
+“Look forth and view the night!” was her cry; and when I lifted the
+heavy blind from the casement close at hand—with her own royal gesture,
+she showed me a moon supreme, in an element deep and splendid.
+
+To my gasping senses she made the glimmering gloom, the narrow limits,
+the oppressive heat of the dormitory, intolerable. She lured me to
+leave this den and follow her forth into dew, coolness, and glory.
+
+She brought upon me a strange vision of Villette at midnight.
+Especially she showed the park, the summer-park, with its long alleys
+all silent, lone and safe; among these lay a huge stone basin—that
+basin I knew, and beside which I had often stood—deep-set in the
+tree-shadows, brimming with cool water, clear, with a green, leafy,
+rushy bed. What of all this? The park-gates were shut up, locked,
+sentinelled: the place could not be entered.
+
+Could it not? A point worth considering; and while revolving it, I
+mechanically dressed. Utterly incapable of sleeping or lying
+still—excited from head to foot—what could I do better than dress?
+
+The gates were locked, soldiers set before them: was there, then, no
+admission to the park?
+
+The other day, in walking past, I had seen, without then attending to
+the circumstance, a gap in the paling—one stake broken down: I now saw
+this gap again in recollection—saw it very plainly—the narrow,
+irregular aperture visible between the stems of the lindens, planted
+orderly as a colonnade. A man could not have made his way through that
+aperture, nor could a stout woman, perhaps not Madame Beck; but I
+thought I might: I fancied I should like to try, and once within, at
+this hour the whole park would be mine—the moonlight, midnight park!
+
+How soundly the dormitory slept! What deep slumbers! What quiet
+breathing! How very still the whole large house! What was the time? I
+felt restless to know. There stood a clock in the classe below: what
+hindered me from venturing down to consult it? By such a moon, its
+large white face and jet black figures must be vividly distinct.
+
+As for hindrance to this step, there offered not so much as a creaking
+hinge or a clicking latch. On these hot July nights, close air could
+not be tolerated, and the chamber-door stood wide open. Will the
+dormitory-planks sustain my tread untraitorous? Yes. I know wherever a
+board is loose, and will avoid it. The oak staircase creaks somewhat as
+I descend, but not much:—I am in the carré.
+
+The great classe-doors are close shut: they are bolted. On the other
+hand, the entrance to the corridor stands open. The classes seem to my
+thought, great dreary jails, buried far back beyond thoroughfares, and
+for me, filled with spectral and intolerable Memories, laid miserable
+amongst their straw and their manacles. The corridor offers a cheerful
+vista, leading to the high vestibule which opens direct upon the
+street.
+
+Hush!—the clock strikes. Ghostly deep as is the stillness of this
+convent, it is only eleven. While my ear follows to silence the hum of
+the last stroke, I catch faintly from the built-out capital, a sound
+like bells or like a band—a sound where sweetness, where victory, where
+mourning blend. Oh, to approach this music nearer, to listen to it
+alone by the rushy basin! Let me go—oh, let me go! What hinders, what
+does not aid freedom?
+
+There, in the corridor, hangs my garden-costume, my large hat, my
+shawl. There is no lock on the huge, heavy, porte-cochère; there is no
+key to seek: it fastens with a sort of spring-bolt, not to be opened
+from the outside, but which, from within, may be noiselessly withdrawn.
+Can I manage it? It yields to my hand, yields with propitious facility.
+I wonder as that portal seems almost spontaneously to unclose—I wonder
+as I cross the threshold and step on the paved street, wonder at the
+strange ease with which this prison has been forced. It seems as if I
+had been pioneered invisibly, as if some dissolving force had gone
+before me: for myself, I have scarce made an effort.
+
+Quiet Rue Fossette! I find on this pavement that wanderer-wooing summer
+night of which I mused; I see its moon over me; I feel its dew in the
+air. But here I cannot stay; I am still too near old haunts: so close
+under the dungeon, I can hear the prisoners moan. This solemn peace is
+not what I seek, it is not what I can bear: to me the face of that sky
+bears the aspect of a world’s death. The park also will be calm—I know,
+a mortal serenity prevails everywhere—yet let me seek the park.
+
+I took a route well known, and went up towards the palatial and royal
+Haute-Ville; thence the music I had heard certainly floated; it was
+hushed now, but it might re-waken. I went on: neither band nor bell
+music came to meet me; another sound replaced it, a sound like a strong
+tide, a great flow, deepening as I proceeded. Light broke, movement
+gathered, chimes pealed—to what was I coming? Entering on the level of
+a Grande Place, I found myself, with the suddenness of magic, plunged
+amidst a gay, living, joyous crowd.
+
+Villette is one blaze, one broad illumination; the whole world seems
+abroad; moonlight and heaven are banished: the town, by her own
+flambeaux, beholds her own splendour—gay dresses, grand equipages, fine
+horses and gallant riders throng the bright streets. I see even scores
+of masks. It is a strange scene, stranger than dreams. But where is the
+park?—I ought to be near it. In the midst of this glare the park must
+be shadowy and calm—_there_, at least, are neither torches, lamps, nor
+crowd?
+
+I was asking this question when an open carriage passed me filled with
+known faces. Through the deep throng it could pass but slowly; the
+spirited horses fretted in their curbed ardour. I saw the occupants of
+that carriage well: me they could not see, or, at least, not know,
+folded close in my large shawl, screened with my straw hat (in that
+motley crowd no dress was noticeably strange). I saw the Count de
+Bassompierre; I saw my godmother, handsomely apparelled, comely and
+cheerful; I saw, too, Paulina Mary, compassed with the triple halo of
+her beauty, her youth, and her happiness. In looking on her countenance
+of joy, and eyes of festal light, one scarce remembered to note the
+gala elegance of what she wore; I know only that the drapery floating
+about her was all white and light and bridal; seated opposite to her I
+saw Graham Bretton; it was in looking up at him her aspect had caught
+its lustre—the light repeated in _her_ eyes beamed first out of his.
+
+It gave me strange pleasure to follow these friends viewlessly, and I
+_did_ follow them, as I thought, to the park. I watched them alight
+(carriages were inadmissible) amidst new and unanticipated splendours.
+Lo! the iron gateway, between the stone columns, was spanned by a
+flaming arch built of massed stars; and, following them cautiously
+beneath that arch, where were they, and where was I?
+
+In a land of enchantment, a garden most gorgeous, a plain sprinkled
+with coloured meteors, a forest with sparks of purple and ruby and
+golden fire gemming the foliage; a region, not of trees and shadow, but
+of strangest architectural wealth—of altar and of temple, of pyramid,
+obelisk, and sphinx: incredible to say, the wonders and the symbols of
+Egypt teemed throughout the park of Villette.
+
+No matter that in five minutes the secret was mine—the key of the
+mystery picked up, and its illusion unveiled—no matter that I quickly
+recognised the material of these solemn fragments—the timber, the
+paint, and the pasteboard—these inevitable discoveries failed to quite
+destroy the charm, or undermine the marvel of that night. No matter
+that I now seized the explanation of the whole great fête—a fête of
+which the conventual Rue Fossette had not tasted, though it had opened
+at dawn that morning, and was still in full vigour near midnight.
+
+In past days there had been, said history, an awful crisis in the fate
+of Labassecour, involving I know not what peril to the rights and
+liberties of her gallant citizens. Rumours of wars there had been, if
+not wars themselves; a kind of struggling in the streets—a bustle—a
+running to and fro, some rearing of barricades, some burgher-rioting,
+some calling out of troops, much interchange of brickbats, and even a
+little of shot. Tradition held that patriots had fallen: in the old
+Basse-Ville was shown an enclosure, solemnly built in and set apart,
+holding, it was said, the sacred bones of martyrs. Be this as it may, a
+certain day in the year was still kept as a festival in honour of the
+said patriots and martyrs of somewhat apocryphal memory—the morning
+being given to a solemn Te Deum in St. Jean Baptiste, the evening
+devoted to spectacles, decorations, and illuminations, such as these I
+now saw.
+
+While looking up at the image of a white ibis, fixed on a column—while
+fathoming the deep, torch-lit perspective of an avenue, at the close of
+which was couched a sphinx—I lost sight of the party which, from the
+middle of the great square, I had followed—or, rather, they vanished
+like a group of apparitions. On this whole scene was impressed a
+dream-like character: every shape was wavering, every movement
+floating, every voice echo-like—half-mocking, half-uncertain. Paulina
+and her friends being gone, I scarce could avouch that I had really
+seen them; nor did I miss them as guides through the chaos, far less
+regret them as protectors amidst the night.
+
+That festal night would have been safe for a very child. Half the
+peasantry had come in from the outlying environs of Villette, and the
+decent burghers were all abroad and around, dressed in their best. My
+straw-hat passed amidst cap and jacket, short petticoat, and long
+calico mantle, without, perhaps, attracting a glance; I only took the
+precaution to bind down the broad leaf gipsy-wise, with a supplementary
+ribbon—and then I felt safe as if masked.
+
+Safe I passed down the avenues—safe I mixed with the crowd where it was
+deepest. To be still was not in my power, nor quietly to observe. I
+took a revel of the scene; I drank the elastic night-air—the swell of
+sound, the dubious light, now flashing, now fading. As to Happiness or
+Hope, they and I had shaken hands, but just now—I scorned Despair.
+
+My vague aim, as I went, was to find the stone-basin, with its clear
+depth and green lining: of that coolness and verdure I thought, with
+the passionate thirst of unconscious fever. Amidst the glare, and
+hurry, and throng, and noise, I still secretly and chiefly longed to
+come on that circular mirror of crystal, and surprise the moon glassing
+therein her pearly front.
+
+I knew my route, yet it seemed as if I was hindered from pursuing it
+direct: now a sight, and now a sound, called me aside, luring me down
+this alley and down that. Already I saw the thick-planted trees which
+framed this tremulous and rippled glass, when, choiring out of a glade
+to the right, broke such a sound as I thought might be heard if Heaven
+were to open—such a sound, perhaps, as _was_ heard above the plain of
+Bethlehem, on the night of glad tidings.
+
+The song, the sweet music, rose afar, but rushing swiftly on
+fast-strengthening pinions—there swept through these shades so full a
+storm of harmonies that, had no tree been near against which to lean, I
+think I must have dropped. Voices were there, it seemed to me,
+unnumbered; instruments varied and countless—bugle, horn, and trumpet I
+knew. The effect was as a sea breaking into song with all its waves.
+
+The swaying tide swept this way, and then it fell back, and I followed
+its retreat. It led me towards a Byzantine building—a sort of kiosk
+near the park’s centre. Round about stood crowded thousands, gathered
+to a grand concert in the open air. What I had heard was, I think, a
+wild Jäger chorus; the night, the space, the scene, and my own mood,
+had but enhanced the sounds and their impression.
+
+Here were assembled ladies, looking by this light most beautiful: some
+of their dresses were gauzy, and some had the sheen of satin, the
+flowers and the blond trembled, and the veils waved about their
+decorated bonnets, as that host-like chorus, with its greatly-gathering
+sound, sundered the air above them. Most of these ladies occupied the
+little light park-chairs, and behind and beside them stood guardian
+gentlemen. The outer ranks of the crowd were made up of citizens,
+plebeians and police.
+
+In this outer rank I took my place. I rather liked to find myself the
+silent, unknown, consequently unaccosted neighbour of the short
+petticoat and the sabot; and only the distant gazer at the silk robe,
+the velvet mantle, and the plumed chapeau. Amidst so much life and joy,
+too, it suited me to be alone—quite alone. Having neither wish nor
+power to force my way through a mass so close-packed, my station was on
+the farthest confines, where, indeed, I might hear, but could see
+little.
+
+“Mademoiselle is not well placed,” said a voice at my elbow. Who dared
+accost _me_, a being in a mood so little social? I turned, rather to
+repel than to reply. I saw a man—a burgher—an entire stranger, as I
+deemed him for one moment, but the next, recognised in him a certain
+tradesman—a bookseller, whose shop furnished the Rue Fossette with its
+books and stationery; a man notorious in our pensionnat for the
+excessive brittleness of his temper, and frequent snappishness of his
+manner, even to us, his principal customers: but whom, for my solitary
+self, I had ever been disposed to like, and had always found civil,
+sometimes kind; once, in aiding me about some troublesome little
+exchange of foreign money, he had done me a service. He was an
+intelligent man; under his asperity, he was a good-hearted man; the
+thought had sometimes crossed me, that a part of his nature bore
+affinity to a part of M. Emanuel’s (whom he knew well, and whom I had
+often seen sitting on Miret’s counter, turning over the current month’s
+publications); and it was in this affinity I read the explanation of
+that conciliatory feeling with which I instinctively regarded him.
+
+Strange to say, this man knew me under my straw-hat and closely-folded
+shawl; and, though I deprecated the effort, he insisted on making a way
+for me through the crowd, and finding me a better situation. He carried
+his disinterested civility further; and, from some quarter, procured me
+a chair. Once and again, I have found that the most cross-grained are
+by no means the worst of mankind; nor the humblest in station, the
+least polished in feeling. This man, in his courtesy, seemed to find
+nothing strange in my being here alone; only a reason for extending to
+me, as far as he could, a retiring, yet efficient attention. Having
+secured me a place and a seat, he withdrew without asking a question,
+without obtruding a remark, without adding a superfluous word. No
+wonder that Professor Emanuel liked to take his cigar and his lounge,
+and to read his feuilleton in M. Miret’s shop—the two must have suited.
+
+I had not been seated five minutes, ere I became aware that chance and
+my worthy burgher friend had brought me once more within view of a
+familiar and domestic group. Right before me sat the Brettons and de
+Bassompierres. Within reach of my hand—had I chosen to extend it—sat a
+figure like a fairy-queen, whose array, lilies and their leaves seemed
+to have suggested; whatever was not spotless white, being forest-green.
+My godmother, too, sat so near, that, had I leaned forward, my breath
+might have stirred the ribbon of her bonnet. They were too near; having
+been just recognised by a comparative stranger, I felt uneasy at this
+close vicinage of intimate acquaintance.
+
+It made me quite start when Mrs. Bretton, turning to Mr. Home, and
+speaking out of a kind impulse of memory, said,—“I wonder what my
+steady little Lucy would say to all this if she were here? I wish we
+had brought her, she would have enjoyed it much.”
+
+“So she would, so she would, in her grave sensible fashion; it is a
+pity but we had asked her,” rejoined the kind gentleman; and added, “I
+like to see her so quietly pleased; so little moved, yet so content.”
+
+Dear were they both to me, dear are they to this day in their
+remembered benevolence. Little knew they the rack of pain which had
+driven Lucy almost into fever, and brought her out, guideless and
+reckless, urged and drugged to the brink of frenzy. I had half a mind
+to bend over the elders’ shoulders, and answer their goodness with the
+thanks of my eyes. M. de Bassompierre did not well know _me_, but I
+knew _him_, and honoured and admired his nature, with all its plain
+sincerity, its warm affection, and unconscious enthusiasm. Possibly I
+might have spoken, but just then Graham turned; he turned with one of
+his stately firm movements, so different from those, of a
+sharp-tempered under-sized man: there was behind him a throng, a
+hundred ranks deep; there were thousands to meet his eye and divide its
+scrutiny—why then did he concentrate all on me—oppressing me with the
+whole force of that full, blue, steadfast orb? Why, if he _would_ look,
+did not one glance satisfy him? why did he turn on his chair, rest his
+elbow on its back, and study me leisurely? He could not see my face, I
+held it down; surely, he _could_ not recognise me: I stooped, I turned,
+I _would_ not be known. He rose, by some means he contrived to
+approach, in two minutes he would have had my secret: my identity would
+have been grasped between his, never tyrannous, but always powerful
+hands. There was but one way to evade or to check him. I implied, by a
+sort of supplicatory gesture, that it was my prayer to be let alone;
+after that, had he persisted, he would perhaps have seen the spectacle
+of Lucy incensed: not all that was grand, or good, or kind in him (and
+Lucy felt the full amount) should have kept her quite tame, or
+absolutely inoffensive and shadowlike. He looked, but he desisted. He
+shook his handsome head, but he was mute. He resumed his seat, nor did
+he again turn or disturb me by a glance, except indeed for one single
+instant, when a look, rather solicitous than curious, stole my
+way—speaking what somehow stilled my heart like “the south-wind
+quieting the earth.” Graham’s thoughts of me were not entirely those of
+a frozen indifference, after all. I believe in that goodly mansion, his
+heart, he kept one little place under the sky-lights where Lucy might
+have entertainment, if she chose to call. It was not so handsome as the
+chambers where he lodged his male friends; it was not like the hall
+where he accommodated his philanthropy, or the library where he
+treasured his science, still less did it resemble the pavilion where
+his marriage feast was splendidly spread; yet, gradually, by long and
+equal kindness, he proved to me that he kept one little closet, over
+the door of which was written “Lucy’s Room.” I kept a place for him,
+too—a place of which I never took the measure, either by rule or
+compass: I think it was like the tent of Peri-Banou. All my life long I
+carried it folded in the hollow of my hand yet, released from that hold
+and constriction, I know not but its innate capacity for expanse might
+have magnified it into a tabernacle for a host.
+
+Forbearing as he was to-night, I could not stay in this proximity; this
+dangerous place and seat must be given up: I watched my opportunity,
+rose, and stole away. He might think, he might even believe that Lucy
+was contained within that shawl, and sheltered under that hat; he never
+could be certain, for he did not see my face.
+
+Surely the spirit of restlessness was by this time appeased? Had I not
+had enough of adventure? Did I not begin to flag, quail, and wish for
+safety under a roof? Not so. I still loathed my bed in the school
+dormitory more than words can express: I clung to whatever could
+distract thought. Somehow I felt, too, that the night’s drama was but
+begun, that the prologue was scarce spoken: throughout this woody and
+turfy theatre reigned a shadow of mystery; actors and incidents
+unlooked-for, waited behind the scenes: I thought so foreboding told me
+as much.
+
+Straying at random, obeying the push of every chance elbow, I was
+brought to a quarter where trees planted in clusters, or towering
+singly, broke up somewhat the dense packing of the crowd, and gave it a
+more scattered character. These confines were far from the music, and
+somewhat aloof even from the lamps, but there was sound enough to
+soothe, and with that full, high moon, lamps were scarce needed. Here
+had chiefly settled family-groups, burgher-parents; some of them, late
+as was the hour, actually surrounded by their children, with whom it
+had not been thought advisable to venture into the closer throng.
+
+Three fine tall trees growing close, almost twined stem within stem,
+lifted a thick canopy of shade above a green knoll, crowned with a
+seat—a seat which might have held several, yet it seemed abandoned to
+one, the remaining members of the fortunate party in possession of this
+site standing dutifully round; yet, amongst this reverend circle was a
+lady, holding by the hand a little girl.
+
+When I caught sight of this little girl, she was twisting herself round
+on her heel, swinging from her conductress’s hand, flinging herself
+from side to side with wanton and fantastic gyrations. These perverse
+movements arrested my attention, they struck me as of a character
+fearfully familiar. On close inspection, no less so appeared the
+child’s equipment; the lilac silk pelisse, the small swansdown boa, the
+white bonnet—the whole holiday toilette, in short, was the gala garb of
+a cherub but too well known, of that tadpole, Désirée Beck—and Désirée
+Beck it was—she, or an imp in her likeness.
+
+I might have taken this discovery as a thunder-clap, but such hyperbole
+would have been premature; discovery was destined to rise more than one
+degree, ere it reached its climax.
+
+On whose hand could the amiable Désirée swing thus selfishly, whose
+glove could she tear thus recklessly, whose arm thus strain with
+impunity, or on the borders of whose dress thus turn and trample
+insolently, if not the hand, glove, arm, and robe of her lady-mother?
+And there, in an Indian shawl and a pale-green crape bonnet—there,
+fresh, portly, blithe, and pleasant—there stood Madame Beck.
+
+Curious! I had certainly deemed Madame in her bed, and Désirée in her
+crib, at this blessed minute, sleeping, both of them, the sleep of the
+just, within the sacred walls, amidst the profound seclusion of the Rue
+Fossette. Most certainly also they did not picture “Meess Lucie”
+otherwise engaged; and here we all three were taking our “ébats” in the
+fête-blazing park at midnight!
+
+The fact was, Madame was only acting according to her quite justifiable
+wont. I remembered now I had heard it said among the teachers—though
+without at the time particularly noticing the gossip—that often, when
+we thought Madame in her chamber, sleeping, she was gone, full-dressed,
+to take her pleasure at operas, or plays, or balls. Madame had no sort
+of taste for a monastic life, and took care—largely, though
+discreetly—to season her existence with a relish of the world.
+
+Half a dozen gentlemen of her friends stood about her. Amongst these, I
+was not slow to recognise two or three. There was her brother, M.
+Victor Kint; there was another person, moustached and with long hair—a
+calm, taciturn man, but whose traits bore a stamp and a semblance I
+could not mark unmoved. Amidst reserve and phlegm, amidst contrasts of
+character and of countenance, something there still was which recalled
+a face—mobile, fervent, feeling—a face changeable, now clouded, and now
+alight—a face from my world taken away, for my eyes lost, but where my
+best spring-hours of life had alternated in shadow and in glow; that
+face, where I had often seen movements so near the signs of genius—that
+why there did not shine fully out the undoubted fire, the thing, the
+spirit, and the secret itself—I could never tell. Yes—this Josef
+Emanuel—this man of peace—reminded me of his ardent brother.
+
+Besides Messieurs Victor and Josef, I knew another of this party. This
+third person stood behind and in the shade, his attitude too was
+stooping, yet his dress and bald white head made him the most
+conspicuous figure of the group. He was an ecclesiastic: he was Père
+Silas. Do not fancy, reader, that there was any inconsistency in the
+priest’s presence at this fête. This was not considered a show of
+Vanity Fair, but a commemoration of patriotic sacrifice. The Church
+patronised it, even with ostentation. There were troops of priests in
+the park that night.
+
+Père Silas stooped over the seat with its single occupant, the rustic
+bench and that which sat upon it: a strange mass it was—bearing no
+shape, yet magnificent. You saw, indeed, the outline of a face, and
+features, but these were so cadaverous and so strangely placed, you
+could almost have fancied a head severed from its trunk, and flung at
+random on a pile of rich merchandise. The distant lamp-rays glanced on
+clear pendants, on broad rings; neither the chasteness of moonlight,
+nor the distance of the torches, could quite subdue the gorgeous dyes
+of the drapery. Hail, Madame Walravens! I think you looked more
+witch-like than ever. And presently the good lady proved that she was
+indeed no corpse or ghost, but a harsh and hardy old woman; for, upon
+some aggravation in the clamorous petition of Désirée Beck to her
+mother, to go to the kiosk and take sweetmeats, the hunchback suddenly
+fetched her a resounding rap with her gold-knobbed cane.
+
+There, then, were Madame Walravens, Madame Beck, Père Silas—the whole
+conjuration, the secret junta. The sight of them thus assembled did me
+good. I cannot say that I felt weak before them, or abashed, or
+dismayed. They outnumbered me, and I was worsted and under their feet;
+but, as yet, I was not dead.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+OLD AND NEW ACQUAINTANCE.
+
+
+Fascinated as by a basilisk with three heads, I could not leave this
+clique; the ground near them seemed to hold my feet. The canopy of
+entwined trees held out shadow, the night whispered a pledge of
+protection, and an officious lamp flashed just one beam to show me an
+obscure, safe seat, and then vanished. Let me now briefly tell the
+reader all that, during the past dark fortnight, I have been silently
+gathering from Rumour, respecting the origin and the object of M.
+Emanuel’s departure. The tale is short, and not new: its alpha is
+Mammon, and its omega Interest.
+
+If Madame Walravens was hideous as a Hindoo idol, she seemed also to
+possess, in the estimation of these her votaries, an idol’s
+consequence. The fact was, she had been rich—very rich; and though, for
+the present, without the command of money, she was likely one day to be
+rich again. At Basseterre, in Guadaloupe, she possessed a large estate,
+received in dowry on her marriage sixty years ago, sequestered since
+her husband’s failure; but now, it was supposed, cleared of claim, and,
+if duly looked after by a competent agent of integrity, considered
+capable of being made, in a few years, largely productive.
+
+Père Silas took an interest in this prospective improvement for the
+sake of religion and the church, whereof Magliore Walravens was a
+devout daughter. Madame Beck, distantly related to the hunchback and
+knowing her to be without family of her own, had long brooded over
+contingencies with a mother’s calculating forethought, and, harshly
+treated as she was by Madame Walravens, never ceased to court her for
+interest’s sake. Madame Beck and the priest were thus, for money
+reasons, equally and sincerely interested in the nursing of the West
+Indian estate.
+
+But the distance was great, and the climate hazardous. The competent
+and upright agent wanted, must be a devoted man. Just such a man had
+Madame Walravens retained for twenty years in her service, blighting
+his life, and then living on him, like an old fungus; such a man had
+Père Silas trained, taught, and bound to him by the ties of gratitude,
+habit, and belief. Such a man Madame Beck knew, and could in some
+measure influence. “My pupil,” said Père Silas, “if he remains in
+Europe, runs risk of apostacy, for he has become entangled with a
+heretic.” Madame Beck made also her private comment, and preferred in
+her own breast her secret reason for desiring expatriation. The thing
+she could not obtain, she desired not another to win: rather would she
+destroy it. As to Madame Walravens, she wanted her money and her land,
+and knew Paul, if he liked, could make the best and faithfullest
+steward: so the three self-seekers banded and beset the one unselfish.
+They reasoned, they appealed, they implored; on his mercy they cast
+themselves, into his hands they confidingly thrust their interests.
+They asked but two or three years of devotion—after that, he should
+live for himself: one of the number, perhaps, wished that in the
+meantime he might die.
+
+No living being ever humbly laid his advantage at M. Emanuel’s feet, or
+confidingly put it into his hands, that he spurned the trust or
+repulsed the repository. What might be his private pain or inward
+reluctance to leave Europe—what his calculations for his own
+future—none asked, or knew, or reported. All this was a blank to me.
+His conferences with his confessor I might guess; the part duty and
+religion were made to play in the persuasions used, I might conjecture.
+He was gone, and had made no sign. There my knowledge closed.
+
+With my head bent, and my forehead resting on my hands, I sat amidst
+grouped tree-stems and branching brushwood. Whatever talk passed
+amongst my neighbours, I might hear, if I would; I was near enough; but
+for some time, there was scarce motive to attend. They gossiped about
+the dresses, the music, the illuminations, the fine night. I listened
+to hear them say, “It is calm weather for _his_ voyage; the _Antigua_”
+(his ship) “will sail prosperously.” No such remark fell; neither the
+_Antigua_, nor her course, nor her passenger were named.
+
+Perhaps the light chat scarcely interested old Madame Walravens more
+than it did me; she appeared restless, turning her head now to this
+side, now that, looking through the trees, and among the crowd, as if
+expectant of an arrival and impatient of delay. “Où sont-ils? Pourquoi
+ne viennent-ils?” I heard her mutter more than once; and at last, as if
+determined to have an answer to her question—which hitherto none seemed
+to mind, she spoke aloud this phrase—a phrase brief enough, simple
+enough, but it sent a shock through me—“Messieurs et mesdames,” said
+she, “où donc est Justine Marie?”
+
+“Justine Marie!” What was this? Justine Marie—the dead nun—where was
+she? Why, in her grave, Madame Walravens—what can you want with her?
+You shall go to her, but she shall not come to you.
+
+Thus _I_ should have answered, had the response lain with me, but
+nobody seemed to be of my mind; nobody seemed surprised, startled, or
+at a loss. The quietest commonplace answer met the strange, the
+dead-disturbing, the Witch-of-Endor query of the hunchback.
+
+“Justine Marie,” said one, “is coming; she is in the kiosk; she will be
+here presently.”
+
+Out of this question and reply sprang a change in the chat—chat it
+still remained, easy, desultory, familiar gossip. Hint, allusion,
+comment, went round the circle, but all so broken, so dependent on
+references to persons not named, or circumstances not defined, that
+listen as intently as I would—and I _did_ listen _now_ with a fated
+interest—I could make out no more than that some scheme was on foot, in
+which this ghostly Justine Marie—dead or alive—was concerned. This
+family-junta seemed grasping at her somehow, for some reason; there
+seemed question of a marriage, of a fortune—for whom I could not quite
+make out—perhaps for Victor Kint, perhaps for Josef Emanuel—both were
+bachelors. Once I thought the hints and jests rained upon a young
+fair-haired foreigner of the party, whom they called Heinrich Mühler.
+Amidst all the badinage, Madame Walravens still obtruded from time to
+time, hoarse, cross-grained speeches; her impatience being diverted
+only by an implacable surveillance of Désirée, who could not stir but
+the old woman menaced her with her staff.
+
+“La voilà!” suddenly cried one of the gentlemen, “voilà Justine Marie
+qui arrive!”
+
+This moment was for me peculiar. I called up to memory the pictured nun
+on the panel; present to my mind was the sad love-story; I saw in
+thought the vision of the garret, the apparition of the alley, the
+strange birth of the berceau; I underwent a presentiment of discovery,
+a strong conviction of coming disclosure. Ah! when imagination once
+runs riot where do we stop? What winter tree so bare and
+branchless—what way-side, hedge-munching animal so humble, that Fancy,
+a passing cloud, and a struggling moonbeam, will not clothe it in
+spirituality, and make of it a phantom?
+
+With solemn force pressed on my heart, the expectation of mystery
+breaking up: hitherto I had seen this spectre only through a glass
+darkly; now was I to behold it face to face. I leaned forward; I
+looked.
+
+“She comes!” cried Josef Emanuel.
+
+The circle opened as if opening to admit a new and welcome member. At
+this instant a torch chanced to be carried past; its blaze aided the
+pale moon in doing justice to the crisis, in lighting to perfection the
+dénouement pressing on. Surely those near me must have felt some little
+of the anxiety I felt, in degree so unmeted. Of that group the coolest
+must have “held his breath for a time!” As for me, my life stood still.
+
+It is over. The moment and the nun are come. The crisis and the
+revelation are passed by.
+
+The flambeau glares still within a yard, held up in a park-keeper’s
+hand; its long eager tongue of flame almost licks the figure of the
+Expected—there—where she stands full in my sight. What is she like?
+What does she wear? How does she look? Who is she?
+
+There are many masks in the park to-night, and as the hour wears late,
+so strange a feeling of revelry and mystery begins to spread abroad,
+that scarce would you discredit me, reader, were I to say that she is
+like the nun of the attic, that she wears black skirts and white
+head-clothes, that she looks the resurrection of the flesh, and that
+she is a risen ghost.
+
+All falsities—all figments! We will not deal in this gear. Let us be
+honest, and cut, as heretofore, from the homely web of truth.
+
+_Homely_, though, is an ill-chosen word. What I see is not precisely
+homely. A girl of Villette stands there—a girl fresh from her
+pensionnat. She is very comely, with the beauty indigenous to this
+country. She looks well-nourished, fair, and fat of flesh. Her cheeks
+are round, her eyes good; her hair is abundant. She is handsomely
+dressed. She is not alone; her escort consists of three persons—two
+being elderly; these she addresses as “Mon Oncle” and “Ma Tante.” She
+laughs, she chats; good-humoured, buxom, and blooming, she looks, at
+all points, the bourgeoise belle.
+
+“So much for Justine Marie;” so much for ghosts and mystery: not that
+this last was solved—this girl certainly is not my nun: what I saw in
+the garret and garden must have been taller by a span.
+
+We have looked at the city belle; we have cursorily glanced at the
+respectable old uncle and aunt. Have we a stray glance to give to the
+third member of this company? Can we spare him a moment’s notice? We
+ought to distinguish him so far, reader; he has claims on us; we do not
+now meet him for the first time. I clasped my hands very hard, and I
+drew my breath very deep: I held in the cry, I devoured the
+ejaculation, I forbade the start, I spoke and I stirred no more than a
+stone; but I knew what I looked on; through the dimness left in my eyes
+by many nights’ weeping, I knew him. They said he was to sail by the
+_Antigua_. Madame Beck said so. She lied, or she had uttered what was
+once truth, and failed to contradict it when it became false. The
+_Antigua_ was gone, and there stood Paul Emanuel.
+
+Was I glad? A huge load left me. Was it a fact to warrant joy? I know
+not. Ask first what were the circumstances attendant on this respite?
+How far did this delay concern _me?_ Were there not those whom it might
+touch more nearly?
+
+After all, who may this young girl, this Justine Marie, be? Not a
+stranger, reader; she is known to me by sight; she visits at the Rue
+Fossette: she is often of Madame Beck’s Sunday parties. She is a
+relation of both the Becks and Walravens; she derives her baptismal
+name from the sainted nun who would have been her aunt had she lived;
+her patronymic is Sauveur; she is an heiress and an orphan, and M.
+Emanuel is her guardian; some say her godfather.
+
+The family junta wish this heiress to be married to one of their
+band—which is it? Vital question—which is it?
+
+I felt very glad now, that the drug administered in the sweet draught
+had filled me with a possession which made bed and chamber intolerable.
+I always, through my whole life, liked to penetrate to the real truth;
+I like seeking the goddess in her temple, and handling the veil, and
+daring the dread glance. O Titaness among deities! the covered outline
+of thine aspect sickens often through its uncertainty, but define to us
+one trait, show us one lineament, clear in awful sincerity; we may gasp
+in untold terror, but with that gasp we drink in a breath of thy
+divinity; our heart shakes, and its currents sway like rivers lifted by
+earthquake, but we have swallowed strength. To see and know the worst
+is to take from Fear her main advantage.
+
+The Walravens’ party, augmented in numbers, now became very gay. The
+gentlemen fetched refreshments from the kiosk, all sat down on the turf
+under the trees; they drank healths and sentiments; they laughed, they
+jested. M. Emanuel underwent some raillery, half good-humoured, half, I
+thought, malicious, especially on Madame Beck’s part. I soon gathered
+that his voyage had been temporarily deferred of his own will, without
+the concurrence, even against the advice, of his friends; he had let
+the _Antigua_ go, and had taken his berth in the _Paul et Virginie_,
+appointed to sail a fortnight later. It was his reason for this resolve
+which they teased him to assign, and which he would only vaguely
+indicate as “the settlement of a little piece of business which he had
+set his heart upon.” What _was_ this business? Nobody knew. Yes, there
+was one who seemed partly, at least, in his confidence; a meaning look
+passed between him and Justine Marie. “La petite va m’aider—n’est-ce
+pas?” said he. The answer was prompt enough, God knows?
+
+“Mais oui, je vous aiderai de tout mon coeur. Vous ferez de moi tout ce
+que vous voudrez, mon parrain.”
+
+And this dear “parrain” took her hand and lifted it to his grateful
+lips. Upon which demonstration, I saw the light-complexioned young
+Teuton, Heinrich Mühler, grow restless, as if he did not like it. He
+even grumbled a few words, whereat M. Emanuel actually laughed in his
+face, and with the ruthless triumph of the assured conqueror, he drew
+his ward nearer to him.
+
+M. Emanuel was indeed very joyous that night. He seemed not one whit
+subdued by the change of scene and action impending. He was the true
+life of the party; a little despotic, perhaps, determined to be chief
+in mirth, as well as in labour, yet from moment to moment proving
+indisputably his right of leadership. His was the wittiest word, the
+pleasantest anecdote, the frankest laugh. Restlessly active, after his
+manner, he multiplied himself to wait on all; but oh! I saw which was
+his favourite. I saw at whose feet he lay on the turf, I saw whom he
+folded carefully from the night air, whom he tended, watched, and
+cherished as the apple of his eye.
+
+Still, hint and raillery flew thick, and still I gathered that while M.
+Paul should be absent, working for others, these others, not quite
+ungrateful, would guard for him the treasure he left in Europe. Let him
+bring them an Indian fortune: they would give him in return a young
+bride and a rich inheritance. As for the saintly consecration, the vow
+of constancy, that was forgotten: the blooming and charming Present
+prevailed over the Past; and, at length, his nun was indeed buried.
+
+Thus it must be. The revelation was indeed come. Presentiment had not
+been mistaken in her impulse: there is a kind of presentiment which
+never _is_ mistaken; it was I who had for a moment miscalculated; not
+seeing the true bearing of the oracle, I had thought she muttered of
+vision when, in truth, her prediction touched reality.
+
+I might have paused longer upon what I saw; I might have deliberated
+ere I drew inferences. Some, perhaps, would have held the premises
+doubtful, the proofs insufficient; some slow sceptics would have
+incredulously examined ere they conclusively accepted the project of a
+marriage between a poor and unselfish man of forty, and his wealthy
+ward of eighteen; but far from me such shifts and palliatives, far from
+me such temporary evasion of the actual, such coward fleeing from the
+dread, the swift-footed, the all-overtaking Fact, such feeble suspense
+of submission to her the sole sovereign, such paltering and faltering
+resistance to the Power whose errand is to march conquering and to
+conquer, such traitor defection from the TRUTH.
+
+No. I hastened to accept the whole plan. I extended my grasp and took
+it all in. I gathered it to me with a sort of rage of haste, and folded
+it round me, as the soldier struck on the field folds his colours about
+his breast. I invoked Conviction to nail upon me the certainty,
+abhorred while embraced, to fix it with the strongest spikes her
+strongest strokes could drive; and when the iron had entered well my
+soul, I stood up, as I thought, renovated.
+
+In my infatuation, I said, “Truth, you are a good mistress to your
+faithful servants! While a Lie pressed me, how I suffered! Even when
+the Falsehood was still sweet, still flattering to the fancy, and warm
+to the feelings, it wasted me with hourly torment. The persuasion that
+affection was won could not be divorced from the dread that, by another
+turn of the wheel, it might be lost. Truth stripped away Falsehood, and
+Flattery, and Expectancy, and here I stand—free!”
+
+Nothing remained now but to take my freedom to my chamber, to carry it
+with me to my bed and see what I could make of it. The play was not
+yet, indeed, quite played out. I might have waited and watched longer
+that love-scene under the trees, that sylvan courtship. Had there been
+nothing of love in the demonstration, my Fancy in this hour was so
+generous, so creative, she could have modelled for it the most salient
+lineaments, and given it the deepest life and highest colour of
+passion. But I _would_ not look; I had fixed my resolve, but I would
+not violate my nature. And then—something tore me so cruelly under my
+shawl, something so dug into my side, a vulture so strong in beak and
+talon, I must be alone to grapple with it. I think I never felt
+jealousy till now. This was not like enduring the endearments of Dr.
+John and Paulina, against which while I sealed my eyes and my ears,
+while I withdrew thence my thoughts, my sense of harmony still
+acknowledged in it a charm. This was an outrage. The love born of
+beauty was not mine; I had nothing in common with it: I could not dare
+to meddle with it, but another love, venturing diffidently into life
+after long acquaintance, furnace-tried by pain, stamped by constancy,
+consolidated by affection’s pure and durable alloy, submitted by
+intellect to intellect’s own tests, and finally wrought up, by his own
+process, to his own unflawed completeness, this Love that laughed at
+Passion, his fast frenzies and his hot and hurried extinction, in
+_this_ Love I had a vested interest; and whatever tended either to its
+culture or its destruction, I could not view impassibly.
+
+I turned from the group of trees and the “merrie companie” in its
+shade. Midnight was long past; the concert was over, the crowds were
+thinning. I followed the ebb. Leaving the radiant park and well-lit
+Haute-Ville (still well lit, this it seems was to be a “nuit blanche”
+in Villette), I sought the dim lower quarter.
+
+Dim I should not say, for the beauty of moonlight—forgotten in the
+park—here once more flowed in upon perception. High she rode, and calm
+and stainlessly she shone. The music and the mirth of the fête, the
+fire and bright hues of those lamps had out-done and out-shone her for
+an hour, but now, again, her glory and her silence triumphed. The rival
+lamps were dying: she held her course like a white fate. Drum, trumpet,
+bugle, had uttered their clangour, and were forgotten; with pencil-ray
+she wrote on heaven and on earth records for archives everlasting. She
+and those stars seemed to me at once the types and witnesses of truth
+all regnant. The night-sky lit her reign: like its slow-wheeling
+progress, advanced her victory—that onward movement which has been, and
+is, and will be from eternity to eternity.
+
+These oil-twinkling streets are very still: I like them for their
+lowliness and peace. Homeward-bound burghers pass me now and then, but
+these companies are pedestrians, make little noise, and are soon gone.
+So well do I love Villette under her present aspect, not willingly
+would I re-enter under a roof, but that I am bent on pursuing my
+strange adventure to a successful close, and quietly regaining my bed
+in the great dormitory, before Madame Beck comes home.
+
+Only one street lies between me and the Rue Fossette; as I enter it,
+for the first time, the sound of a carriage tears up the deep peace of
+this quarter. It comes this way—comes very fast. How loud sounds its
+rattle on the paved path! The street is narrow, and I keep carefully to
+the causeway. The carriage thunders past, but what do I see, or fancy I
+see, as it rushes by? Surely something white fluttered from that
+window—surely a hand waved a handkerchief. Was that signal meant for
+me? Am I known? Who could recognise me? That is not M. de
+Bassompierre’s carriage, nor Mrs. Bretton’s; and besides, neither the
+Hôtel Crécy nor the château of La Terrasse lies in that direction.
+Well, I have no time for conjecture; I must hurry home.
+
+Gaining the Rue Fossette, reaching the pensionnat, all there was still;
+no fiacre had yet arrived with Madame and Désirée. I had left the great
+door ajar; should I find it thus? Perhaps the wind or some other
+accident may have thrown it to with sufficient force to start the
+spring-bolt? In that case, hopeless became admission; my adventure must
+issue in catastrophe. I lightly pushed the heavy leaf; would it yield?
+
+Yes. As soundless, as unresisting, as if some propitious genius had
+waited on a sesame-charm, in the vestibule within. Entering with bated
+breath, quietly making all fast, shoelessly mounting the staircase, I
+sought the dormitory, and reached my couch.
+
+Ay! I reached it, and once more drew a free inspiration. The next
+moment, I almost shrieked—almost, but not quite, thank Heaven!
+
+Throughout the dormitory, throughout the house, there reigned at this
+hour the stillness of death. All slept, and in such hush, it seemed
+that none dreamed. Stretched on the nineteen beds lay nineteen forms,
+at full-length and motionless. On mine—the twentieth couch—nothing
+_ought_ to have lain: I had left it void, and void should have found
+it. What, then; do I see between the half-drawn curtains? What dark,
+usurping shape, supine, long, and strange? Is it a robber who has made
+his way through the open street-door, and lies there in wait? It looks
+very black, I think it looks—not human. Can it be a wandering dog that
+has come in from the street and crept and nestled hither? Will it
+spring, will it leap out if I approach? Approach I must. Courage! One
+step!—
+
+My head reeled, for by the faint night-lamp, I saw stretched on my bed
+the old phantom—the NUN.
+
+A cry at this moment might have ruined me. Be the spectacle what it
+might, I could afford neither consternation, scream, nor swoon.
+Besides, I was not overcome. Tempered by late incidents, my nerves
+disdained hysteria. Warm from illuminations, and music, and thronging
+thousands, thoroughly lashed up by a new scourge, I defied spectra. In
+a moment, without exclamation, I had rushed on the haunted couch;
+nothing leaped out, or sprung, or stirred; all the movement was mine,
+so was all the life, the reality, the substance, the force; as my
+instinct felt. I tore her up—the incubus! I held her on high—the
+goblin! I shook her loose—the mystery! And down she fell—down all
+around me—down in shreds and fragments—and I trode upon her.
+
+Here again—behold the branchless tree, the unstabled Rosinante; the
+film of cloud, the flicker of moonshine. The long nun proved a long
+bolster dressed in a long black stole, and artfully invested with a
+white veil. The garments in very truth, strange as it may seem, were
+genuine nun’s garments, and by some hand they had been disposed with a
+view to illusion. Whence came these vestments? Who contrived this
+artifice? These questions still remained. To the head-bandage was
+pinned a slip of paper: it bore in pencil these mocking words—
+
+“The nun of the attic bequeaths to Lucy Snowe her wardrobe. She will be
+seen in the Rue Fossette no more.”
+
+And what and who was she that had haunted me? She, I had actually seen
+three times. Not a woman of my acquaintance had the stature of that
+ghost. She was not of a female height. Not to any man I knew could the
+machination, for a moment, be attributed.
+
+Still mystified beyond expression, but as thoroughly, as suddenly,
+relieved from all sense of the spectral and unearthly; scorning also to
+wear out my brain with the fret of a trivial though insoluble riddle, I
+just bundled together stole, veil, and bandages, thrust them beneath my
+pillow, lay down, listened till I heard the wheels of Madame’s
+home-returning fiacre, then turned, and worn out by many nights’
+vigils, conquered, too, perhaps, by the now reacting narcotic, I deeply
+slept.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+THE HAPPY PAIR.
+
+
+The day succeeding this remarkable Midsummer night, proved no common
+day. I do not mean that it brought signs in heaven above, or portents
+on the earth beneath; nor do I allude to meteorological phenomena, to
+storm, flood, or whirlwind. On the contrary: the sun rose jocund, with
+a July face. Morning decked her beauty with rubies, and so filled her
+lap with roses, that they fell from her in showers, making her path
+blush: the Hours woke fresh as nymphs, and emptying on the early hills
+their dew-vials, they stepped out dismantled of vapour: shadowless,
+azure, and glorious, they led the sun’s steeds on a burning and
+unclouded course.
+
+In short, it was as fine a day as the finest summer could boast; but I
+doubt whether I was not the sole inhabitant of the Rue Fossette, who
+cared or remembered to note this pleasant fact. Another thought busied
+all other heads; a thought, indeed, which had its share in my
+meditations; but this master consideration, not possessing for me so
+entire a novelty, so overwhelming a suddenness, especially so dense a
+mystery, as it offered to the majority of my co-speculators thereon,
+left me somewhat more open than the rest to any collateral observation
+or impression.
+
+Still, while walking in the garden, feeling the sunshine, and marking
+the blooming and growing plants, I pondered the same subject the whole
+house discussed.
+
+What subject?
+
+Merely this. When matins came to be said, there was a place vacant in
+the first rank of boarders. When breakfast was served, there remained a
+coffee-cup unclaimed. When the housemaid made the beds, she found in
+one, a bolster laid lengthwise, clad in a cap and night-gown; and when
+Ginevra Fanshawe’s music-mistress came early, as usual, to give the
+morning lesson, that accomplished and promising young person, her
+pupil, failed utterly to be forthcoming.
+
+High and low was Miss Fanshawe sought; through length and breadth was
+the house ransacked; vainly; not a trace, not an indication, not so
+much as a scrap of a billet rewarded the search; the nymph was
+vanished, engulfed in the past night, like a shooting star swallowed up
+by darkness.
+
+Deep was the dismay of surveillante teachers, deeper the horror of the
+defaulting directress. Never had I seen Madame Beck so pale or so
+appalled. Here was a blow struck at her tender part, her weak side;
+here was damage done to her interest. How, too, had the untoward event
+happened? By what outlet had the fugitive taken wing? Not a casement
+was found unfastened, not a pane of glass broken; all the doors were
+bolted secure. Never to this day has Madame Beck obtained satisfaction
+on this point, nor indeed has anybody else concerned, save and
+excepting one, Lucy Snowe, who could not forget how, to facilitate a
+certain enterprise, a certain great door had been drawn softly to its
+lintel, closed, indeed, but neither bolted nor secure. The thundering
+carriage-and-pair encountered were now likewise recalled, as well as
+that puzzling signal, the waved handkerchief.
+
+From these premises, and one or two others, inaccessible to any but
+myself, I could draw but one inference. It was a case of elopement.
+Morally certain on this head, and seeing Madame Beck’s profound
+embarrassment, I at last communicated my conviction. Having alluded to
+M. de Hamal’s suit, I found, as I expected, that Madame Beck was
+perfectly au fait to that affair. She had long since discussed it with
+Mrs. Cholmondeley, and laid her own responsibility in the business on
+that lady’s shoulders. To Mrs. Cholmondeley and M. de Bassompierre she
+now had recourse.
+
+We found that the Hôtel Crécy was already alive to what had happened.
+Ginevra had written to her cousin Paulina, vaguely signifying hymeneal
+intentions; communications had been received from the family of de
+Hamal; M. de Bassompierre was on the track of the fugitives. He
+overtook them too late.
+
+In the course of the week, the post brought me a note. I may as well
+transcribe it; it contains explanation on more than one point:—
+
+‘DEAR OLD TIM “(short for Timon),—” I am off you see—gone like a shot.
+Alfred and I intended to be married in this way almost from the first;
+we never meant to be spliced in the humdrum way of other people; Alfred
+has too much spirit for that, and so have I—Dieu merci! Do you know,
+Alfred, who used to call you ‘the dragon,’ has seen so much of you
+during the last few months, that he begins to feel quite friendly
+towards you. He hopes you won’t miss him now that he has gone; he begs
+to apologize for any little trouble he may have given you. He is afraid
+he rather inconvenienced you once when he came upon you in the grenier,
+just as you were reading a letter seemingly of the most special
+interest; but he could not resist the temptation to give you a start,
+you appeared so wonderfully taken up with your correspondent. En
+revanche, he says you once frightened him by rushing in for a dress or
+a shawl, or some other chiffon, at the moment when he had struck a
+light, and was going to take a quiet whiff of his cigar, while waiting
+for me.
+
+“Do you begin to comprehend by this time that M. le Comte de Hamal was
+the nun of the attic, and that he came to see your humble servant? I
+will tell you how he managed it. You know he has the entrée of the
+Athénée, where two or three of his nephews, the sons of his eldest
+sister, Madame de Melcy, are students. You know the court of the
+Athénée is on the other side of the high wall bounding your walk, the
+allée défendue. Alfred can climb as well as he can dance or fence: his
+amusement was to make the escalade of our pensionnat by mounting, first
+the wall; then—by the aid of that high tree overspreading the grand
+berceau, and resting some of its boughs on the roof of the lower
+buildings of our premises—he managed to scale the first classe and the
+grand salle. One night, by the way, he fell out of this tree, tore down
+some of the branches, nearly broke his own neck, and after all, in
+running away, got a terrible fright, and was nearly caught by two
+people, Madame Beck and M. Emanuel, he thinks, walking in the alley.
+From the grande salle the ascent is not difficult to the highest block
+of building, finishing in the great garret. The skylight, you know, is,
+day and night, left half open for air; by the skylight he entered.
+Nearly a year ago I chanced to tell him our legend of the nun; that
+suggested his romantic idea of the spectral disguise, which I think you
+must allow he has very cleverly carried out.
+
+“But for the nun’s black gown and white veil, he would have been caught
+again and again both by you and that tiger-Jesuit, M. Paul. He thinks
+you both capital ghost-seers, and very brave. What I wonder at is,
+rather your secretiveness than your courage. How could you endure the
+visitations of that long spectre, time after time, without crying out,
+telling everybody, and rousing the whole house and neighbourhood?
+
+“Oh, and how did you like the nun as a bed-fellow? _I_ dressed her up:
+didn’t I do it well? Did you shriek when you saw her: I should have
+gone mad; but then you have such nerves!—real iron and bend-leather! I
+believe you feel nothing. You haven’t the same sensitiveness that a
+person of my constitution has. You seem to me insensible both to pain
+and fear and grief. You are a real old Diogenes.
+
+“Well, dear grandmother! and are you not mightily angry at my moonlight
+flitting and run away match? I assure you it is excellent fun, and I
+did it partly to spite that minx, Paulina, and that bear, Dr. John: to
+show them that, with all their airs, I could get married as well as
+they. M. de Bassompierre was at first in a strange fume with Alfred; he
+threatened a prosecution for ‘détournement de mineur,’ and I know not
+what; he was so abominably in earnest, that I found myself forced to do
+a little bit of the melodramatic—go down on my knees, sob, cry, drench
+three pocket-handkerchiefs. Of course, ‘mon oncle’ soon gave in;
+indeed, where was the use of making a fuss? I am married, and that’s
+all about it. He still says our marriage is not legal, because I am not
+of age, forsooth! As if that made any difference! I am just as much
+married as if I were a hundred. However, we are to be married again,
+and I am to have a trousseau, and Mrs. Cholmondeley is going to
+superintend it; and there are some hopes that M. de Bassompierre will
+give me a decent portion, which will be very convenient, as dear Alfred
+has nothing but his nobility, native and hereditary, and his pay. I
+only wish uncle would do things unconditionally, in a generous,
+gentleman-like fashion; he is so disagreeable as to make the dowry
+depend on Alfred’s giving his written promise that he will never touch
+cards or dice from the day it is paid down. They accuse my angel of a
+tendency to play: I don’t know anything about that, but I _do_ know he
+is a dear, adorable creature.
+
+“I cannot sufficiently extol the genius with which de Hamal managed our
+flight. How clever in him to select the night of the fête, when Madame
+(for he knows her habits), as he said, would infallibly be absent at
+the concert in the park. I suppose _you_ must have gone with her. I
+watched you rise and leave the dormitory about eleven o’clock. How you
+returned alone, and on foot, I cannot conjecture. That surely was _you_
+we met in the narrow old Rue St. Jean? Did you see me wave my
+handkerchief from the carriage window?
+
+“Adieu! Rejoice in my good luck: congratulate me on my supreme
+happiness, and believe me, dear cynic and misanthrope, yours, in the
+best of health and spirits,
+
+GINEVRA LAURA DE HAMAL,
+née FANSHAWE.
+
+
+“P.S.—Remember, I am a countess now. Papa, mamma, and the girls at
+home, will be delighted to hear that. ‘My daughter the Countess!’ ‘My
+sister the Countess!’ Bravo! Sounds rather better than Mrs. John
+Bretton, hein?”
+
+In winding up Mistress Fanshawe’s memoirs, the reader will no doubt
+expect to hear that she came finally to bitter expiation of her
+youthful levities. Of course, a large share of suffering lies in
+reserve for her future.
+
+A few words will embody my farther knowledge respecting her.
+
+I saw her towards the close of her honeymoon. She called on Madame
+Beck, and sent for me into the salon. She rushed into my arms laughing.
+She looked very blooming and beautiful: her curls were longer, her
+cheeks rosier than ever: her white bonnet and her Flanders veil, her
+orange-flowers and her bride’s dress, became her mightily.
+
+“I have got my portion!” she cried at once; (Ginevra ever stuck to the
+substantial; I always thought there was a good trading element in her
+composition, much as she scorned the “bourgeoise;”) “and uncle de
+Bassompierre is quite reconciled. I don’t mind his calling Alfred a
+‘nincompoop’—that’s only his coarse Scotch breeding; and I believe
+Paulina envies me, and Dr. John is wild with jealousy—fit to blow his
+brains out—and I’m so happy! I really think I’ve hardly anything left
+to wish for—unless it be a carriage and an hotel, and, oh! I—must
+introduce you to ‘mon mari.’ Alfred, come here!”
+
+And Alfred appeared from the inner salon, where he was talking to
+Madame Beck, receiving the blended felicitations and reprimands of that
+lady. I was presented under my various names: the Dragon, Diogenes, and
+Timon. The young Colonel was very polite. He made me a prettily-turned,
+neatly-worded apology, about the ghost-visits, &c., concluding with
+saying that “the best excuse for all his iniquities stood there!”
+pointing to his bride.
+
+And then the bride sent him back to Madame Beck, and she took me to
+herself, and proceeded literally to suffocate me with her unrestrained
+spirits, her girlish, giddy, wild nonsense. She showed her ring
+exultingly; she called herself Madame la Comtesse de Hamal, and asked
+how it sounded, a score of times. I said very little. I gave her only
+the crust and rind of my nature. No matter she expected of me nothing
+better—she knew me too well to look for compliments—my dry gibes
+pleased her well enough and the more impassible and prosaic my mien,
+the more merrily she laughed.
+
+Soon after his marriage, M. de Hamal was persuaded to leave the army as
+the surest way of weaning him from certain unprofitable associates and
+habits; a post of attaché was procured for him, and he and his young
+wife went abroad. I thought she would forget me now, but she did not.
+For many years, she kept up a capricious, fitful sort of
+correspondence. During the first year or two, it was only of herself
+and Alfred she wrote; then, Alfred faded in the background; herself and
+a certain, new comer prevailed; one Alfred Fanshawe de Bassompierre de
+Hamal began to reign in his father’s stead. There were great boastings
+about this personage, extravagant amplifications upon miracles of
+precocity, mixed with vehement objurgations against the phlegmatic
+incredulity with which I received them. I didn’t know “what it was to
+be a mother;” “unfeeling thing that I was, the sensibilities of the
+maternal heart were Greek and Hebrew to me,” and so on. In due course
+of nature this young gentleman took his degrees in teething, measles,
+hooping-cough: that was a terrible time for me—the mamma’s letters
+became a perfect shout of affliction; never woman was so put upon by
+calamity: never human being stood in such need of sympathy. I was
+frightened at first, and wrote back pathetically; but I soon found out
+there was more cry than wool in the business, and relapsed into my
+natural cruel insensibility. As to the youthful sufferer, he weathered
+each storm like a hero. Five times was that youth “in articulo mortis,”
+and five times did he miraculously revive.
+
+In the course of years there arose ominous murmurings against Alfred
+the First; M. de Bassompierre had to be appealed to, debts had to be
+paid, some of them of that dismal and dingy order called “debts of
+honour;” ignoble plaints and difficulties became frequent. Under every
+cloud, no matter what its nature, Ginevra, as of old, called out
+lustily for sympathy and aid. She had no notion of meeting any distress
+single-handed. In some shape, from some quarter or other, she was
+pretty sure to obtain her will, and so she got on—fighting the battle
+of life by proxy, and, on the whole, suffering as little as any human
+being I have ever known.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+FAUBOURG CLOTILDE.
+
+
+Must I, ere I close, render some account of that Freedom and Renovation
+which I won on the fête-night? Must I tell how I and the two stalwart
+companions I brought home from the illuminated park bore the test of
+intimate acquaintance?
+
+I tried them the very next day. They had boasted their strength loudly
+when they reclaimed me from love and its bondage, but upon my demanding
+deeds, not words, some evidence of better comfort, some experience of a
+relieved life—Freedom excused himself, as for the present impoverished
+and disabled to assist; and Renovation never spoke; he had died in the
+night suddenly.
+
+I had nothing left for it then but to trust secretly that conjecture
+might have hurried me too fast and too far, to sustain the oppressive
+hour by reminders of the distorting and discolouring magic of jealousy.
+After a short and vain struggle, I found myself brought back captive to
+the old rack of suspense, tied down and strained anew.
+
+Shall I yet see him before he goes? Will he bear me in mind? Does he
+purpose to come? Will this day—will the next hour bring him? or must I
+again assay that corroding pain of long attent—that rude agony of
+rupture at the close, that mute, mortal wrench, which, in at once
+uprooting hope and doubt, shakes life; while the hand that does the
+violence cannot be caressed to pity, because absence interposes her
+barrier!
+
+It was the Feast of the Assumption; no school was held. The boarders
+and teachers, after attending mass in the morning, were gone a long
+walk into the country to take their goûter, or afternoon meal, at some
+farm-house. I did not go with them, for now but two days remained ere
+the _Paul et Virginie_ must sail, and I was clinging to my last chance,
+as the living waif of a wreck clings to his last raft or cable.
+
+There was some joiners’ work to do in the first classe, some bench or
+desk to repair; holidays were often turned to account for the
+performance of these operations, which could not be executed when the
+rooms were filled with pupils. As I sat solitary, purposing to adjourn
+to the garden and leave the coast clear, but too listless to fulfil my
+own intent, I heard the workmen coming.
+
+Foreign artisans and servants do everything by couples: I believe it
+would take two Labassecourien carpenters to drive a nail. While tying
+on my bonnet, which had hitherto hung by its ribbons from my idle hand,
+I vaguely and momentarily wondered to hear the step of but one
+“ouvrier.” I noted, too—as captives in dungeons find sometimes dreary
+leisure to note the merest trifles—that this man wore shoes, and not
+sabots: I concluded that it must be the master-carpenter, coming to
+inspect before he sent his journeymen. I threw round me my scarf. He
+advanced; he opened the door; my back was towards it; I felt a little
+thrill—a curious sensation, too quick and transient to be analyzed. I
+turned, I stood in the supposed master-artisan’s presence: looking
+towards the door-way, I saw it filled with a figure, and my eyes
+printed upon my brain the picture of M. Paul.
+
+Hundreds of the prayers with which we weary Heaven bring to the
+suppliant no fulfilment. Once haply in life, one golden gift falls
+prone in the lap—one boon full and bright, perfect from Fruition’s
+mint.
+
+M. Emanuel wore the dress in which he probably purposed to travel—a
+surtout, guarded with velvet; I thought him prepared for instant
+departure, and yet I had understood that two days were yet to run
+before the ship sailed. He looked well and cheerful. He looked kind and
+benign: he came in with eagerness; he was close to me in one second; he
+was all amity. It might be his bridegroom mood which thus brightened
+him. Whatever the cause, I could not meet his sunshine with cloud. If
+this were my last moment with him, I would not waste it in forced,
+unnatural distance. I loved him well—too well not to smite out of my
+path even Jealousy herself, when she would have obstructed a kind
+farewell. A cordial word from his lips, or a gentle look from his eyes,
+would do me good, for all the span of life that remained to me; it
+would be comfort in the last strait of loneliness; I would take it—I
+would taste the elixir, and pride should not spill the cup.
+
+The interview would be short, of course: he would say to me just what
+he had said to each of the assembled pupils; he would take and hold my
+hand two minutes; he would touch my cheek with his lips for the first,
+last, only time—and then—no more. Then, indeed, the final parting, then
+the wide separation, the great gulf I could not pass to go to
+him—across which, haply, he would not glance, to remember me.
+
+He took my hand in one of his, with the other he put back my bonnet; he
+looked into my face, his luminous smile went out, his lips expressed
+something almost like the wordless language of a mother who finds a
+child greatly and unexpectedly changed, broken with illness, or worn
+out by want. A check supervened.
+
+“Paul, Paul!” said a woman’s hurried voice behind, “Paul, come into the
+salon; I have yet a great many things to say to you—conversation for
+the whole day—and so has Victor; and Josef is here. Come Paul, come to
+your friends.”
+
+Madame Beck, brought to the spot by vigilance or an inscrutable
+instinct, pressed so near, she almost thrust herself between me and M.
+Emanuel.
+
+“Come, Paul!” she reiterated, her eye grazing me with its hard ray like
+a steel stylet. She pushed against her kinsman. I thought he receded; I
+thought he would go. Pierced deeper than I could endure, made now to
+feel what defied suppression, I cried—
+
+“My heart will break!”
+
+What I felt seemed literal heart-break; but the seal of another
+fountain yielded under the strain: one breath from M. Paul, the
+whisper, “Trust me!” lifted a load, opened an outlet. With many a deep
+sob, with thrilling, with icy shiver, with strong trembling, and yet
+with relief—I wept.
+
+“Leave her to me; it is a crisis: I will give her a cordial, and it
+will pass,” said the calm Madame Beck.
+
+To be left to her and her cordial seemed to me something like being
+left to the poisoner and her bowl. When M. Paul answered deeply,
+harshly, and briefly—“Laissez-moi!” in the grim sound I felt a music
+strange, strong, but life-giving.
+
+“Laissez-moi!” he repeated, his nostrils opening, and his facial
+muscles all quivering as he spoke.
+
+“But this will never do,” said Madame, with sternness. More sternly
+rejoined her kinsman—
+
+“Sortez d’ici!”
+
+“I will send for Père Silas: on the spot I will send for him,” she
+threatened pertinaciously.
+
+“Femme!” cried the Professor, not now in his deep tones, but in his
+highest and most excited key, “Femme! sortez à l’instant!”
+
+He was roused, and I loved him in his wrath with a passion beyond what
+I had yet felt.
+
+“What you do is wrong,” pursued Madame; “it is an act characteristic of
+men of your unreliable, imaginative temperament; a step impulsive,
+injudicious, inconsistent—a proceeding vexatious, and not estimable in
+the view of persons of steadier and more resolute character.”
+
+“You know not what I have of steady and resolute in me,” said he, “but
+you shall see; the event shall teach you. Modeste,” he continued less
+fiercely, “be gentle, be pitying, be a woman; look at this poor face,
+and relent. You know I am your friend, and the friend of your friends;
+in spite of your taunts, you well and deeply know I may be trusted. Of
+sacrificing myself I made no difficulty but my heart is pained by what
+I see; it _must_ have and give solace. _Leave me!_”
+
+This time, in the “_leave me_” there was an intonation so bitter and so
+imperative, I wondered that even Madame Beck herself could for one
+moment delay obedience; but she stood firm; she gazed upon him
+dauntless; she met his eye, forbidding and fixed as stone. She was
+opening her lips to retort; I saw over all M. Paul’s face a quick
+rising light and fire; I can hardly tell how he managed the movement;
+it did not seem violent; it kept the form of courtesy; he gave his
+hand; it scarce touched her I thought; she ran, she whirled from the
+room; she was gone, and the door shut, in one second.
+
+The flash of passion was all over very soon. He smiled as he told me to
+wipe my eyes; he waited quietly till I was calm, dropping from time to
+time a stilling, solacing word. Ere long I sat beside him once more
+myself—re-assured, not desperate, nor yet desolate; not friendless, not
+hopeless, not sick of life, and seeking death.
+
+“It made you very sad then to lose your friend?” said he.
+
+“It kills me to be forgotten, Monsieur,” I said. “All these weary days
+I have not heard from you one word, and I was crushed with the
+possibility, growing to certainty, that you would depart without saying
+farewell!”
+
+“Must I tell you what I told Modeste Beck—that you do not know me? Must
+I show and teach you my character? You _will_ have proof that I can be
+a firm friend? Without clear proof this hand will not lie still in
+mine, it will not trust my shoulder as a safe stay? Good. The proof is
+ready. I come to justify myself.”
+
+“Say anything, teach anything, prove anything, Monsieur; I can listen
+now.”
+
+“Then, in the first place, you must go out with me a good distance into
+the town. I came on purpose to fetch you.”
+
+Without questioning his meaning, or sounding his plan, or offering the
+semblance of an objection, I re-tied my bonnet: I was ready.
+
+The route he took was by the boulevards: he several times made me sit
+down on the seats stationed under the lime-trees; he did not ask if I
+was tired, but looked, and drew his own conclusions.
+
+“All these weary days,” said he, repeating my words, with a gentle,
+kindly mimicry of my voice and foreign accent, not new from his lips,
+and of which the playful banter never wounded, not even when coupled,
+as it often was, with the assertion, that however I might _write_ his
+language, I _spoke_ and always should speak it imperfectly and
+hesitatingly. “‘All these weary days’ I have not for one hour forgotten
+you. Faithful women err in this, that they think themselves the sole
+faithful of God’s creatures. On a very fervent and living truth to
+myself, I, too, till lately scarce dared count, from any quarter;
+but——look at me.”
+
+I lifted my happy eyes: they _were_ happy now, or they would have been
+no interpreters of my heart.
+
+“Well,” said he, after some seconds’ scrutiny, “there is no denying
+that signature: Constancy wrote it: her pen is of iron. Was the record
+painful?”
+
+“Severely painful,” I said, with truth. “Withdraw her hand, Monsieur; I
+can bear its inscribing force no more.”
+
+“Elle est toute pâle,” said he, speaking to himself; “cette figure-là
+me fait mal.”
+
+“Ah! I am not pleasant to look at——?”
+
+I could not help saying this; the words came unbidden: I never remember
+the time when I had not a haunting dread of what might be the degree of
+my outward deficiency; this dread pressed me at the moment with special
+force.
+
+A great softness passed upon his countenance; his violet eyes grew
+suffused and glistening under their deep Spanish lashes: he started up;
+“Let us walk on.”
+
+“Do I displease your eyes _much_?” I took courage to urge: the point
+had its vital import for me.
+
+He stopped, and gave me a short, strong answer; an answer which
+silenced, subdued, yet profoundly satisfied. Ever after that I knew
+what I was for _him_; and what I might be for the rest of the world, I
+ceased painfully to care. Was it weak to lay so much stress on an
+opinion about appearance? I fear it might be; I fear it was; but in
+that case I must avow no light share of weakness. I must own great fear
+of displeasing—a strong wish moderately to please M. Paul.
+
+Whither we rambled, I scarce knew. Our walk was long, yet seemed short;
+the path was pleasant, the day lovely. M. Emanuel talked of his
+voyage—he thought of staying away three years. On his return from
+Guadaloupe, he looked forward to release from liabilities and a clear
+course; and what did I purpose doing in the interval of his absence? he
+asked. I had talked once, he reminded me, of trying to be independent
+and keeping a little school of my own: had I dropped the idea?
+
+“Indeed, I had not: I was doing my best to save what would enable me to
+put it in practice.”
+
+“He did not like leaving me in the Rue Fossette; he feared I should
+miss him there too much—I should feel desolate—I should grow sad—?”
+
+This was certain; but I promised to do my best to endure.
+
+“Still,” said he, speaking low, “there is another objection to your
+present residence. I should wish to write to you sometimes: it would
+not be well to have any uncertainty about the safe transmission of
+letters; and in the Rue Fossette—in short, our Catholic discipline in
+certain matters—though justifiable and expedient—might possibly, under
+peculiar circumstances, become liable to misapplication—perhaps abuse.”
+
+“But if you write,” said I, “I _must_ have your letters; and I _will_
+have them: ten directors, twenty directresses, shall not keep them from
+me. I am a Protestant: I will not bear that kind of discipline:
+Monsieur, I _will not_.”
+
+“Doucement—doucement,” rejoined he; “we will contrive a plan; we have
+our resources: soyez tranquille.”
+
+So speaking, he paused.
+
+We were now returning from the long walk. We had reached the middle of
+a clean Faubourg, where the houses were small, but looked pleasant. It
+was before the white door-step of a very neat abode that M. Paul had
+halted.
+
+“I call here,” said he.
+
+He did not knock, but taking from his pocket a key, he opened and
+entered at once. Ushering me in, he shut the door behind us. No servant
+appeared. The vestibule was small, like the house, but freshly and
+tastefully painted; its vista closed in a French window with vines
+trained about the panes, tendrils, and green leaves kissing the glass.
+Silence reigned in this dwelling.
+
+Opening an inner door, M. Paul disclosed a parlour, or salon—very tiny,
+but I thought, very pretty. Its delicate walls were tinged like a
+blush; its floor was waxed; a square of brilliant carpet covered its
+centre; its small round table shone like the mirror over its hearth;
+there was a little couch, a little chiffonnière, the half-open,
+crimson-silk door of which, showed porcelain on the shelves; there was
+a French clock, a lamp; there were ornaments in biscuit china; the
+recess of the single ample window was filled with a green stand,
+bearing three green flower-pots, each filled with a fine plant glowing
+in bloom; in one corner appeared a guéridon with a marble top, and upon
+it a work-box, and a glass filled with violets in water. The lattice of
+this room was open; the outer air breathing through, gave freshness,
+the sweet violets lent fragrance.
+
+“Pretty, pretty place!” said I. M. Paul smiled to see me so pleased.
+
+“Must we sit down here and wait?” I asked in a whisper, half awed by
+the deep pervading hush.
+
+“We will first peep into one or two other nooks of this nutshell,” he
+replied.
+
+“Dare you take the freedom of going all over the house?” I inquired.
+
+“Yes, I dare,” said he, quietly.
+
+He led the way. I was shown a little kitchen with a little stove and
+oven, with few but bright brasses, two chairs and a table. A small
+cupboard held a diminutive but commodious set of earthenware.
+
+“There is a coffee service of china in the salon,” said M. Paul, as I
+looked at the six green and white dinner-plates; the four dishes, the
+cups and jugs to match.
+
+Conducted up the narrow but clean staircase, I was permitted a glimpse
+of two pretty cabinets of sleeping-rooms; finally, I was once more led
+below, and we halted with a certain ceremony before a larger door than
+had yet been opened.
+
+Producing a second key, M. Emanuel adjusted it to the lock of this
+door. He opened, put me in before him.
+
+“Voici!” he cried.
+
+I found myself in a good-sized apartment, scrupulously clean, though
+bare, compared with those I had hitherto seen. The well-scoured boards
+were carpetless; it contained two rows of green benches and desks, with
+an alley down the centre, terminating in an estrade, a teacher’s chair
+and table; behind them a tableau. On the walls hung two maps; in the
+windows flowered a few hardy plants; in short, here was a miniature
+classe—complete, neat, pleasant.
+
+“It is a school then?” said I. “Who keeps it? I never heard of an
+establishment in this faubourg.”
+
+“Will you have the goodness to accept of a few prospectuses for
+distribution in behalf of a friend of mine?” asked he, taking from his
+surtout-pocket some quires of these documents, and putting them into my
+hand. I looked, I read—printed in fair characters:—
+
+“Externat de demoiselles. Numéro 7, Faubourg Clotilde, Directrice,
+Mademoiselle Lucy Snowe.”
+
+And what did I say to M. Paul Emanuel?
+
+Certain junctures of our lives must always be difficult of recall to
+memory. Certain points, crises, certain feelings, joys, griefs, and
+amazements, when reviewed, must strike us as things wildered and
+whirling, dim as a wheel fast spun.
+
+I can no more remember the thoughts or the words of the ten minutes
+succeeding this disclosure, than I can retrace the experience of my
+earliest year of life: and yet the first thing distinct to me is the
+consciousness that I was speaking very fast, repeating over and over
+again:—
+
+“Did you do this, M. Paul? Is this your house? Did you furnish it? Did
+you get these papers printed? Do you mean me? Am I the directress? Is
+there another Lucy Snowe? Tell me: say something.”
+
+But he would not speak. His pleased silence, his laughing down-look,
+his attitude, are visible to me now.
+
+“How is it? I must know all—_all_,” I cried.
+
+The packet of papers fell on the floor. He had extended his hand, and I
+had fastened thereon, oblivious of all else.
+
+“Ah! you said I had forgotten you all these weary days,” said he. “Poor
+old Emanuel! These are the thanks he gets for trudging about three
+mortal weeks from house-painter to upholsterer, from cabinet-maker to
+charwoman. Lucy and Lucy’s cot, the sole thoughts in his head!”
+
+I hardly knew what to do. I first caressed the soft velvet on his cuff,
+and then. I stroked the hand it surrounded. It was his foresight, his
+goodness, his silent, strong, effective goodness, that overpowered me
+by their proved reality. It was the assurance of his sleepless interest
+which broke on me like a light from heaven; it was his—I will dare to
+say it—his fond, tender look, which now shook me indescribably. In the
+midst of all I forced myself to look at the practical.
+
+“The trouble!” I cried, “and the cost! Had you money, M. Paul?”
+
+“Plenty of money!” said he heartily. “The disposal of my large teaching
+connection put me in possession of a handsome sum with part of it I
+determined to give myself the richest treat that I _have_ known or
+_shall_ know. I like this. I have reckoned on this hour day and night
+lately. I would not come near you, because I would not forestall it.
+Reserve is neither my virtue nor my vice. If I had put myself into your
+power, and you had begun with your questions of look and lip—Where have
+you been, M. Paul? What have you been doing? What is your mystery?—my
+solitary first and last secret would presently have unravelled itself
+in your lap. Now,” he pursued, “you shall live here and have a school;
+you shall employ yourself while I am away; you shall think of me
+sometimes; you shall mind your health and happiness for my sake, and
+when I come back—”
+
+There he left a blank.
+
+I promised to do all he told me. I promised to work hard and willingly.
+“I will be your faithful steward,” I said; “I trust at your coming the
+account will be ready. Monsieur, monsieur, you are _too_ good!”
+
+In such inadequate language my feelings struggled for expression: they
+could not get it; speech, brittle and unmalleable, and cold as ice,
+dissolved or shivered in the effort. He watched me, still; he gently
+raised his hand to stroke my hair; it touched my lips in passing; I
+pressed it close, I paid it tribute. He was my king; royal for me had
+been that hand’s bounty; to offer homage was both a joy and a duty.
+
+The afternoon hours were over, and the stiller time of evening shaded
+the quiet faubourg. M. Paul claimed my hospitality; occupied and afoot
+since morning, he needed refreshment; he said I should offer him
+chocolate in my pretty gold and white china service. He went out and
+ordered what was needful from the restaurant; he placed the small
+guéridon and two chairs in the balcony outside the French window under
+the screening vines. With what shy joy I accepted my part as hostess,
+arranged the salver, served the benefactor-guest.
+
+This balcony was in the rear of the house, the gardens of the faubourg
+were round us, fields extended beyond. The air was still, mild, and
+fresh. Above the poplars, the laurels, the cypresses, and the roses,
+looked up a moon so lovely and so halcyon, the heart trembled under her
+smile; a star shone subject beside her, with the unemulous ray of pure
+love. In a large garden near us, a jet rose from a well, and a pale
+statue leaned over the play of waters.
+
+M. Paul talked to me. His voice was so modulated that it mixed
+harmonious with the silver whisper, the gush, the musical sigh, in
+which light breeze, fountain and foliage intoned their lulling vesper:
+
+Happy hour—stay one moment! droop those plumes, rest those wings;
+incline to mine that brow of Heaven! White Angel! let thy light linger;
+leave its reflection on succeeding clouds; bequeath its cheer to that
+time which needs a ray in retrospect!
+
+Our meal was simple: the chocolate, the rolls, the plate of fresh
+summer fruit, cherries and strawberries bedded in green leaves formed
+the whole: but it was what we both liked better than a feast, and I
+took a delight inexpressible in tending M. Paul. I asked him whether
+his friends, Père Silas and Madame Beck, knew what he had done—whether
+they had seen my house?
+
+“Mon amie,” said he, “none knows what I have done save you and myself:
+the pleasure is consecrated to us two, unshared and unprofaned. To
+speak truth, there has been to me in this matter a refinement of
+enjoyment I would not make vulgar by communication. Besides” (smiling)
+“I wanted to prove to Miss Lucy that I _could_ keep a secret. How often
+has she taunted me with lack of dignified reserve and needful caution!
+How many times has she saucily insinuated that all my affairs are the
+secret of Polichinelle!”
+
+This was true enough: I had not spared him on this point, nor perhaps
+on any other that was assailable. Magnificent-minded, grand-hearted,
+dear, faulty little man! You deserved candour, and from me always had
+it.
+
+Continuing my queries, I asked to whom the house belonged, who was my
+landlord, the amount of my rent. He instantly gave me these particulars
+in writing; he had foreseen and prepared all things.
+
+The house was not M. Paul’s—that I guessed: he was hardly the man to
+become a proprietor; I more than suspected in him a lamentable absence
+of the saving faculty; he could get, but not keep; he needed a
+treasurer. The tenement, then, belonged to a citizen in the
+Basse-Ville—a man of substance, M. Paul said; he startled me by adding:
+“a friend of yours, Miss Lucy, a person who has a most respectful
+regard for you.” And, to my pleasant surprise, I found the landlord was
+none other than M. Miret, the short-tempered and kind-hearted
+bookseller, who had so kindly found me a seat that eventful night in
+the park. It seems M. Miret was, in his station, rich, as well as much
+respected, and possessed several houses in this faubourg; the rent was
+moderate, scarce half of what it would have been for a house of equal
+size nearer the centre of Villette.
+
+“And then,” observed M. Paul, “should fortune not favour you, though I
+think she will, I have the satisfaction to think you are in good hands;
+M. Miret will not be extortionate: the first year’s rent you have
+already in your savings; afterwards Miss Lucy must trust God, and
+herself. But now, what will you do for pupils?”
+
+“I must distribute my prospectuses.”
+
+“Right! By way of losing no time, I gave one to M. Miret yesterday.
+Should you object to beginning with three petite bourgeoises, the
+Demoiselles Miret? They are at your service.”
+
+“Monsieur, you forget nothing; you are wonderful. Object? It would
+become me indeed to object! I suppose I hardly expect at the outset to
+number aristocrats in my little day-school; I care not if they never
+come. I shall be proud to receive M. Miret’s daughters.”
+
+“Besides these,” pursued he, “another pupil offers, who will come daily
+to take lessons in English; and as she is rich, she will pay
+handsomely. I mean my god-daughter and ward, Justine Marie Sauveur.”
+
+What is in a name?—what in three words? Till this moment I had listened
+with living joy—I had answered with gleeful quickness; a name froze me;
+three words struck me mute. The effect could not be hidden, and indeed
+I scarce tried to hide it.
+
+“What now?” said M. Paul.
+
+“Nothing.”
+
+“Nothing! Your countenance changes: your colour and your very eyes
+fade. Nothing! You must be ill; you have some suffering; tell me what.”
+
+I had nothing to tell.
+
+He drew his chair nearer. He did not grow vexed, though I continued
+silent and icy. He tried to win a word; he entreated with perseverance,
+he waited with patience.
+
+“Justine Marie is a good girl,” said he, “docile and amiable; not
+quick—but you will like her.”
+
+“I think not. I think she must not come here.”
+
+Such was my speech.
+
+“Do you wish to puzzle me? Do you know her? But, in truth, there _is_
+something. Again you are pale as that statue. Rely on Paul Carlos; tell
+him the grief.”
+
+His chair touched mine; his hand, quietly advanced, turned me towards
+him.
+
+“Do you know Marie Justine?” said he again.
+
+The name re-pronounced by his lips overcame me unaccountably. It did
+not prostrate—no, it stirred me up, running with haste and heat through
+my veins—recalling an hour of quick pain, many days and nights of
+heart-sickness. Near me as he now sat, strongly and closely as he had
+long twined his life in mine—far as had progressed, and near as was
+achieved our minds’ and affections’ assimilation—the very suggestion of
+interference, of heart-separation, could be heard only with a
+fermenting excitement, an impetuous throe, a disdainful resolve, an
+ire, a resistance of which no human eye or cheek could hide the flame,
+nor any truth-accustomed human tongue curb the cry.
+
+“I want to tell you something,” I said: “I want to tell you all.”
+
+“Speak, Lucy; come near; speak. Who prizes you, if I do not? Who is
+your friend, if not Emanuel? Speak!”
+
+I spoke. All escaped from my lips. I lacked not words now; fast I
+narrated; fluent I told my tale; it streamed on my tongue. I went back
+to the night in the park; I mentioned the medicated draught—why it was
+given—its goading effect—how it had torn rest from under my head,
+shaken me from my couch, carried me abroad with the lure of a vivid yet
+solemn fancy—a summer-night solitude on turf, under trees, near a deep,
+cool lakelet. I told the scene realized; the crowd, the masques, the
+music, the lamps, the splendours, the guns booming afar, the bells
+sounding on high. All I had encountered I detailed, all I had
+recognised, heard, and seen; how I had beheld and watched himself: how
+I listened, how much heard, what conjectured; the whole history, in
+brief, summoned to his confidence, rushed thither, truthful, literal,
+ardent, bitter.
+
+Still as I narrated, instead of checking, he incited me to proceed he
+spurred me by the gesture, the smile, the half-word. Before I had half
+done, he held both my hands, he consulted my eyes with a most piercing
+glance: there was something in his face which tended neither to calm
+nor to put me down; he forgot his own doctrine, he forsook his own
+system of repression when I most challenged its exercise. I think I
+deserved strong reproof; but when have we our deserts? I merited
+severity; he looked indulgence. To my very self I seemed imperious and
+unreasonable, for I forbade Justine Marie my door and roof; he smiled,
+betraying delight. Warm, jealous, and haughty, I knew not till now that
+my nature had such a mood: he gathered me near his heart. I was full of
+faults; he took them and me all home. For the moment of utmost mutiny,
+he reserved the one deep spell of peace. These words caressed my ear:—
+
+“Lucy, take my love. One day share my life. Be my dearest, first on
+earth.”
+
+We walked back to the Rue Fossette by moonlight—such moonlight as fell
+on Eden—shining through the shades of the Great Garden, and haply
+gilding a path glorious for a step divine—a Presence nameless. Once in
+their lives some men and women go back to these first fresh days of our
+great Sire and Mother—taste that grand morning’s dew—bathe in its
+sunrise.
+
+In the course of the walk I was told how Justine Marie Sauveur had
+always been regarded with the affection proper to a daughter—how, with
+M. Paul’s consent, she had been affianced for months to one Heinrich
+Mühler, a wealthy young German merchant, and was to be married in the
+course of a year. Some of M. Emanuel’s relations and connections would,
+indeed, it seems, have liked him to marry her, with a view to securing
+her fortune in the family; but to himself the scheme was repugnant, and
+the idea totally inadmissible.
+
+We reached Madame Beck’s door. Jean Baptiste’s clock tolled nine. At
+this hour, in this house, eighteen months since, had this man at my
+side bent before me, looked into my face and eyes, and arbitered my
+destiny. This very evening he had again stooped, gazed, and decreed.
+How different the look—how far otherwise the fate!
+
+He deemed me born under his star: he seemed to have spread over me its
+beam like a banner. Once—unknown, and unloved, I held him harsh and
+strange; the low stature, the wiry make, the angles, the darkness, the
+manner, displeased me. Now, penetrated with his influence, and living
+by his affection, having his worth by intellect, and his goodness by
+heart—I preferred him before all humanity.
+
+We parted: he gave me his pledge, and then his farewell. We parted: the
+next day—he sailed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+FINIS.
+
+
+Man cannot prophesy. Love is no oracle. Fear sometimes imagines a vain
+thing. Those years of absence! How had I sickened over their
+anticipation! The woe they must bring seemed certain as death. I knew
+the nature of their course: I never had doubt how it would harrow as it
+went. The juggernaut on his car towered there a grim load. Seeing him
+draw nigh, burying his broad wheels in the oppressed soil—I, the
+prostrate votary—felt beforehand the annihilating craunch.
+
+Strange to say—strange, yet true, and owning many parallels in life’s
+experience—that anticipatory craunch proved all—yes—nearly _all_ the
+torture. The great Juggernaut, in his great chariot, drew on lofty,
+loud, and sullen. He passed quietly, like a shadow sweeping the sky, at
+noon. Nothing but a chilling dimness was seen or felt. I looked up.
+Chariot and demon charioteer were gone by; the votary still lived.
+
+M. Emanuel was away three years. Reader, they were the three happiest
+years of my life. Do you scout the paradox? Listen. I commenced my
+school; I worked—I worked hard. I deemed myself the steward of his
+property, and determined, God willing, to render a good account. Pupils
+came—burghers at first—a higher class ere long. About the middle of the
+second year an unexpected chance threw into my hands an additional
+hundred pounds: one day I received from England a letter containing
+that sum. It came from Mr. Marchmont, the cousin and heir of my dear
+and dead mistress. He was just recovering from a dangerous illness; the
+money was a peace-offering to his conscience, reproaching him in the
+matter of, I know not what, papers or memoranda found after his
+kinswoman’s death—naming or recommending Lucy Snowe. Mrs. Barrett had
+given him my address. How far his conscience had been sinned against, I
+never inquired. I asked no questions, but took the cash and made it
+useful.
+
+With this hundred pounds I ventured to take the house adjoining mine. I
+would not leave that which M. Paul had chosen, in which he had left,
+and where he expected again to find me. My externat became a
+pensionnat; that also prospered.
+
+The secret of my success did not lie so much in myself, in any
+endowment, any power of mine, as in a new state of circumstances, a
+wonderfully changed life, a relieved heart. The spring which moved my
+energies lay far away beyond seas, in an Indian isle. At parting, I had
+been left a legacy; such a thought for the present, such a hope for the
+future, such a motive for a persevering, a laborious, an enterprising,
+a patient and a brave course—I _could_ not flag. Few things shook me
+now; few things had importance to vex, intimidate, or depress me: most
+things pleased—mere trifles had a charm.
+
+Do not think that this genial flame sustained itself, or lived wholly
+on a bequeathed hope or a parting promise. A generous provider supplied
+bounteous fuel. I was spared all chill, all stint; I was not suffered
+to fear penury; I was not tried with suspense. By every vessel he
+wrote; he wrote as he gave and as he loved, in full-handed,
+full-hearted plenitude. He wrote because he liked to write; he did not
+abridge, because he cared not to abridge. He sat down, he took pen and
+paper, because he loved Lucy and had much to say to her; because he was
+faithful and thoughtful, because he was tender and true. There was no
+sham and no cheat, and no hollow unreal in him. Apology never dropped
+her slippery oil on his lips—never proffered, by his pen, her coward
+feints and paltry nullities: he would give neither a stone, nor an
+excuse—neither a scorpion; nor a disappointment; his letters were real
+food that nourished, living water that refreshed.
+
+And was I grateful? God knows! I believe that scarce a living being so
+remembered, so sustained, dealt with in kind so constant, honourable
+and noble, could be otherwise than grateful to the death.
+
+Adherent to his own religion (in him was not the stuff of which is made
+the facile apostate), he freely left me my pure faith. He did not tease
+nor tempt. He said:—
+
+“Remain a Protestant. My little English Puritan, I love Protestantism
+in you. I own its severe charm. There is something in its ritual I
+cannot receive myself, but it is the sole creed for ‘Lucy.’”
+
+All Rome could not put into him bigotry, nor the Propaganda itself make
+him a real Jesuit. He was born honest, and not false—artless, and not
+cunning—a freeman, and not a slave. His tenderness had rendered him
+ductile in a priest’s hands, his affection, his devotedness, his
+sincere pious enthusiasm blinded his kind eyes sometimes, made him
+abandon justice to himself to do the work of craft, and serve the ends
+of selfishness; but these are faults so rare to find, so costly to
+their owner to indulge, we scarce know whether they will not one day be
+reckoned amongst the jewels.
+
+And now the three years are past: M. Emanuel’s return is fixed. It is
+Autumn; he is to be with me ere the mists of November come. My school
+flourishes, my house is ready: I have made him a little library, filled
+its shelves with the books he left in my care: I have cultivated out of
+love for him (I was naturally no florist) the plants he preferred, and
+some of them are yet in bloom. I thought I loved him when he went away;
+I love him now in another degree: he is more my own.
+
+The sun passes the equinox; the days shorten, the leaves grow sere;
+but—he is coming.
+
+Frosts appear at night; November has sent his fogs in advance; the wind
+takes its autumn moan; but—he is coming.
+
+The skies hang full and dark—a wrack sails from the west; the clouds
+cast themselves into strange forms—arches and broad radiations; there
+rise resplendent mornings—glorious, royal, purple as monarch in his
+state; the heavens are one flame; so wild are they, they rival battle
+at its thickest—so bloody, they shame Victory in her pride. I know some
+signs of the sky; I have noted them ever since childhood. God watch
+that sail! Oh! guard it!
+
+The wind shifts to the west. Peace, peace, Banshee—“keening” at every
+window! It will rise—it will swell—it shrieks out long: wander as I may
+through the house this night, I cannot lull the blast. The advancing
+hours make it strong: by midnight, all sleepless watchers hear and fear
+a wild south-west storm. That storm roared frenzied, for seven days. It
+did not cease till the Atlantic was strewn with wrecks: it did not lull
+till the deeps had gorged their full of sustenance. Not till the
+destroying angel of tempest had achieved his perfect work, would he
+fold the wings whose waft was thunder—the tremor of whose plumes was
+storm.
+
+Peace, be still! Oh! a thousand weepers, praying in agony on waiting
+shores, listened for that voice, but it was not uttered—not uttered
+till; when the hush came, some could not feel it: till, when the sun
+returned, his light was night to some!
+
+Here pause: pause at once. There is enough said. Trouble no quiet, kind
+heart; leave sunny imaginations hope. Let it be theirs to conceive the
+delight of joy born again fresh out of great terror, the rapture of
+rescue from peril, the wondrous reprieve from dread, the fruition of
+return. Let them picture union and a happy succeeding life.
+
+Madame Beck prospered all the days of her life; so did Père Silas;
+Madame Walravens fulfilled her ninetieth year before she died.
+Farewell.
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Villette, by Charlotte Brontë
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diff --git a/data/test/janedoe_-_sense_and_sensibility.txt b/data/test/janedoe_-_sense_and_sensibility.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b178475
--- /dev/null
+++ b/data/test/janedoe_-_sense_and_sensibility.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,13639 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Sense and Sensibility
+
+Author: Jane Austen
+
+Commentator: Austin Dobson
+
+Illustrator: Hugh Thomson
+
+Release Date: June 15, 2007 [EBook #21839]
+[Most recently updated: December 29, 2020]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Fritz Ohrenschall and Sankar Viswanathan
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SENSE AND SENSIBILITY ***
+
+
+
+
+                         Transcriber's Note:
+
+The Table of Contents is not part of the original book. The illustration
+on page 290 is missing from the book. The Introduction ends abruptly.
+Seems incomplete.
+
+
+       [Illustration: _Mr. Dashwood introduced him._--P. 219.]
+
+
+
+                         SENSE & SENSIBILITY
+
+
+
+                                  BY
+
+                             JANE AUSTEN
+
+
+
+                         WITH AN INTRODUCTION
+
+
+                                  BY
+
+                            AUSTIN DOBSON
+
+
+
+                             ILLUSTRATED
+
+
+                                  BY
+
+                             HUGH THOMSON
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                  LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
+
+                   NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+
+                                 1902
+
+
+
+        _First Edition with Hugh Thomson's Illustrations_ 1896
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+CHAPTER I
+CHAPTER II
+CHAPTER III
+CHAPTER IV
+CHAPTER V
+CHAPTER VI
+CHAPTER VII
+CHAPTER VIII
+CHAPTER IX
+CHAPTER X
+CHAPTER XI
+CHAPTER XII
+CHAPTER XIII
+CHAPTER XIV
+CHAPTER XV
+CHAPTER XVI
+CHAPTER XVII
+CHAPTER XVIII
+CHAPTER XIX
+CHAPTER XX
+CHAPTER XXI
+CHAPTER XXII
+CHAPTER XXIII
+CHAPTER XXIV
+CHAPTER XXV
+CHAPTER XXVI
+CHAPTER XXVII
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+CHAPTER XXIX
+CHAPTER XXX
+CHAPTER XXXI
+CHAPTER XXXII
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+CHAPTER XXXV
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+CHAPTER XL
+CHAPTER XLI
+CHAPTER XLII
+CHAPTER XLIII
+CHAPTER XLIV
+CHAPTER XLV
+CHAPTER XLVI
+CHAPTER XLVII
+CHAPTER XLVIII
+CHAPTER XLIX
+CHAPTER L
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+With the title of _Sense and Sensibility_ is connected one of those minor
+problems which delight the cummin-splitters of criticism. In the _Cecilia_
+of Madame D'Arblay--the forerunner, if not the model, of Miss Austen--is a
+sentence which at first sight suggests some relationship to the name of
+the book which, in the present series, inaugurated Miss Austen's novels.
+'The whole of this unfortunate business'--says a certain didactic Dr.
+Lyster, talking in capitals, towards the end of volume three of
+_Cecilia_--'has been the result of PRIDE and PREJUDICE,' and looking to
+the admitted familiarity of Miss Austen with Madame D'Arblay's work, it
+has been concluded that Miss Austen borrowed from _Cecilia_, the title of
+her second novel. But here comes in the little problem to which we have
+referred. _Pride and Prejudice_ it is true, was written and finished
+before _Sense and Sensibility_--its original title for several years being
+_First Impressions_. Then, in 1797, the author fell to work upon an older
+essay in letters _‡ la_ Richardson, called _Elinor and Marianne_, which
+she re-christened _Sense and Sensibility._ This, as we know, was her first
+published book; and whatever may be the connection between the title of
+_Pride and Prejudice_ and the passage in _Cecilia_, there is an obvious
+connection between the title of _Pride and Prejudice_ and the _title of
+Sense and Sensibility_. If Miss Austen re-christened _Elinor and
+Marianne_ before she changed the title of _First Impressions_, as she well
+may have, it is extremely unlikely that the name of _Pride and Prejudice_
+has anything to do with _Cecilia_ (which, besides, had been published at
+least twenty years before). Upon the whole, therefore, it is most likely
+that the passage in Madame D'Arblay is a mere coincidence; and that in
+_Sense and Sensibility_, as well as in the novel that succeeded it in
+publication, Miss Austen, after the fashion of the old morality plays,
+simply substituted the leading characteristics of her principal personages
+for their names. Indeed, in _Sense and Sensibility_ the sense of Elinor,
+and the sensibility (or rather _sensiblerie_) of Marianne, are markedly
+emphasised in the opening pages of the book But Miss Austen subsequently,
+and, as we think, wisely, discarded in her remaining efforts the cheap
+attraction of an alliterative title. _Emma_ and _Persuasion, Northanger
+Abbey_ and _Mansfield Park_, are names far more in consonance with the
+quiet tone of her easy and unobtrusive art.
+
+_Elinor and Marianne_ was originally written about 1792. After the
+completion--or partial completion, for it was again revised in
+1811--of _First Impressions_ (subsequently _Pride and Prejudice_),
+Miss Austen set about recasting _Elinor and Marianne_, then composed
+in the form of letters; and she had no sooner accomplished this task,
+than she began _Northanger Abbey_. It would be interesting to know to
+what extent she remodelled _Sense and Sensibility_ in 1797-98, for we
+are told that previous to its publication in 1811 she again devoted a
+considerable time to its preparation for the press, and it is clear
+that this does not mean the correction of proofs alone, but also a
+preliminary revision of MS. Especially would it be interesting if we
+could ascertain whether any of its more finished passages, _e.g._ the
+admirable conversation between the Miss Dashwoods and Willoughby in
+chapter x., were the result of those fallow and apparently barren
+years at Bath and Southampton, or whether they were already part of
+the second version of 1797-98. But upon this matter the records are
+mute. A careful examination of the correspondence published by Lord
+Brabourne in 1884 only reveals two definite references to _Sense and
+Sensibility_ and these are absolutely unfruitful in suggestion. In
+April 1811 she speaks of having corrected two sheets of 'S and S,'
+which she has scarcely a hope of getting out in the following June;
+and in September, an extract from the diary of another member of the
+family indirectly discloses the fact that the book had by that time
+been published. This extract is a brief reference to a letter which
+had been received from Cassandra Austen, begging her correspondent not
+to mention that Aunt Jane wrote _Sense and Sensibility._ Beyond these
+minute items of information, and the statement--already referred to in
+the Introduction to _Pride and Prejudice_--that she considered herself
+overpaid for the labour she had bestowed upon it, absolutely nothing
+seems to have been preserved by her descendants respecting her first
+printed effort. In the absence of particulars some of her critics have
+fallen to speculate upon the reason which made her select it, and not
+_Pride and Prejudice_, for her dÈbut; and they have, perhaps
+naturally, found in the fact a fresh confirmation of that traditional
+blindness of authors to their own best work, which is one of the
+commonplaces of literary history. But this is to premise that she
+_did_ regard it as her masterpiece, a fact which, apart from this
+accident of priority of issue, is, as far as we are aware, nowhere
+asserted. A simpler solution is probably that, of the three novels she
+had written or sketched by 1811, _Pride and Prejudice_ was languishing
+under the stigma of having been refused by one bookseller without the
+formality of inspection, while _Northanger Abbey_ was lying _perdu_ in
+another bookseller's drawer at Bath. In these circumstances it is
+intelligible that she should turn to _Sense and Sensibility_, when, at
+length--upon the occasion of a visit to her brother in London in the
+spring of 1811--Mr. T. Egerton of the 'Military Library,' Whitehall,
+dawned upon the horizon as a practicable publisher.
+
+By the time _Sense and Sensibility_ left the press, Miss Austen was
+again domiciled at Chawton Cottage. For those accustomed to the
+swarming reviews of our day, with their Babel of notices, it may seem
+strange that there should be no record of the effect produced, seeing
+that, as already stated, the book sold well enough to enable its
+putter-forth to hand over to its author what Mr. Gargery, in _Great
+Expectations_, would have described as 'a cool £150.' Surely Mr.
+Egerton, who had visited Miss Austen at Sloane Street, must have later
+conveyed to her some intelligence of the way in which her work had
+been welcomed by the public. But if he did, it is no longer
+discoverable. Mr. Austen Leigh, her first and best biographer, could
+find no account either of the publication or of the author's feelings
+thereupon. As far as it is possible to judge, the critical verdicts
+she obtained were mainly derived from her own relatives and intimate
+friends, and some of these latter--if one may trust a little anthology
+which she herself collected, and from which Mr. Austen Leigh prints
+extracts--must have been more often exasperating than sympathetic. The
+long chorus of intelligent approval by which she was afterwards
+greeted did not begin to be really audible before her death, and her
+'fit audience' during her lifetime must have been emphatically 'few,'
+Of two criticisms which came out in the _Quarterly_ early in the
+century, she could only have seen one, that of 1815; the other, by
+Archbishop Whately, the first which treated her in earnest, did not
+appear until she had been three years dead. Dr. Whately deals mainly
+with _Mansfield Park_ and _Persuasion_; his predecessor professed to
+review _Emma_, though he also gives brief summaries of _Sense and
+Sensibility_ and _Pride and Prejudice_. Mr. Austen Leigh, we think,
+speaks too contemptuously of this initial notice of 1815. If, at
+certain points, it is half-hearted and inadequate, it is still fairly
+accurate in its recognition of Miss Austen's supreme merit, as
+contrasted with her contemporaries--to wit, her skill in investing the
+fortunes of ordinary characters and the narrative of common
+occurrences with all the sustained excitement of romance. The Reviewer
+points out very justly that this kind of work, 'being deprived of all
+that, according to Bayes, goes "to elevate and surprise," must make
+amends by displaying depth of knowledge and dexterity of execution.'
+And in these qualities, even with such living competitors of her own
+sex as Miss Edgeworth and Miss Brunton (whose _Self-control_ came out
+in the same year as _Sense and Sensibility_), he does not scruple to
+declare that 'Miss Austen stands almost alone.' If he omits to lay
+stress upon her judgment, her nice sense of fitness, her restraint,
+her fine irony, and the delicacy of her artistic touch, something must
+be allowed for the hesitations and reservations which invariably beset
+the critical pioneer.
+
+To contend, however, for a moment that the present volume is Miss
+Austen's greatest, as it was her first published, novel, would be a
+mere exercise in paradox. There are, who swear by _Persuasion_; there
+are, who prefer _Emma_ and _Mansfield Park_; there is a large
+contingent for _Pride and Prejudice_; and there is even a section
+which advocates the pre-eminence of _Northanger Abbey_. But no one, as
+far as we can remember, has ever put _Sense and Sensibility_ first,
+nor can we believe that its author did so herself. And yet it is she
+herself who has furnished the standard by which we judge it, and it is
+by comparison with _Pride and Prejudice_, in which the leading
+characters are also two sisters, that we assess and depress its merit.
+The Elinor and Marianne of _Sense and Sensibility_ are only inferior
+when they are contrasted with the Elizabeth and Jane of _Pride and
+Prejudice_; and even then, it is probably because we personally like
+the handsome and amiable Jane Bennet rather better than the obsolete
+survival of the sentimental novel represented by Marianne Dashwood.
+Darcy and Bingley again are much more 'likeable' (to use Lady
+Queensberry's word) than the colourless Edward Ferrars and the
+stiff-jointed Colonel Brandon. Yet it might not unfairly be contended
+that there is more fidelity to what Mr. Thomas Hardy has termed
+'life's little ironies' in Miss Austen's disposal of the two Miss
+Dashwoods than there is in her disposal of the heroines of _Pride and
+Prejudice_. Every one does not get a Bingley, or a Darcy (with a
+park); but a good many sensible girls like Elinor pair off contentedly
+with poor creatures like Edward Ferrars, while not a few enthusiasts
+like Marianne decline at last upon middle-aged colonels with flannel
+waistcoats. George Eliot, we fancy, would have held that the fates of
+Elinor and Marianne were more probable than the fortunes of Jane and
+Eliza Bennet. That, of the remaining characters, there is certainly
+none to rival Mr. Bennet, or Lady Catherine de Bourgh, or the
+ineffable Mr. Collins, of _Pride and Prejudice_, is true; but we
+confess to a kindness for vulgar matchmaking Mrs. Jennings with her
+still-room 'parmaceti for an inward bruise' in the shape of a glass of
+old Constantia; and for the diluted Squire Western, Sir John
+Middleton, whose horror of being alone carries him to the point of
+rejoicing in the acquisition of _two_ to the population of London.
+Excellent again are Mr. Palmer and his wife; excellent, in their
+sordid veracity, the self-seeking figures of the Miss Steeles. But the
+pearls of the book must be allowed to be that egregious amateur in
+toothpick-cases, Mr. Robert Ferrars (with his excursus in chapter
+xxxvi. on life in a cottage), and the admirably-matched Mr. and Mrs.
+John Dashwood. Miss Austen herself has never done anything better than
+the inimitable and oft-quoted chapter wherein is debated between the
+last-named pair the momentous matter of the amount to be devoted to
+Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters; while the suggestion in chapters
+xxxiii. and xxxiv. that the owner of Norland was once within some
+thousands of having to sell out at a loss, deserves to be remembered
+with that other memorable escape of Sir Roger de Coverley's ancestor,
+who was only not killed in the civil wars because 'he was sent out of
+the field upon a private message, the day before the battle of
+Worcester.'
+
+Of local colouring there is as little in _Sense and Sensibility_ as in
+_Pride and Prejudice_. It is not unlikely that some memories of
+Steventon may survive in Norland; and it may be noted that there is
+actually a Barton Place to the north of Exeter, not far from Lord
+Iddesleigh's well-known seat of Upton Pynes. It is scarcely possible,
+also, not to believe that, in Mrs. Jennings's description of
+Delaford--'a nice place, I can tell you; exactly what I call a nice
+old-fashioned place, full of comforts and conveniences; quite shut in
+with great garden walls that are covered with the best fruit-trees in
+the country; and such a mulberry tree in one corner!'--Miss Austen had
+in mind some real Hampshire or Devonshire country house. In any case,
+it comes nearer a picture than what we usually get from her pen. 'Then
+there is a dovecote, some delightful stew-ponds, and a very pretty
+canal; and everything, in short, that one could wish for; and,
+moreover, it is close to the church, and only a quarter of a mile
+from the turnpike-road, so 'tis never dull, for if you only go and sit
+up in an old yew arbour behind the house, you may see all the
+carriages that pass along.' The last lines suggest those quaint
+'gazebos' and alcoves, which, in the coaching days, were so often to
+be found perched at the roadside, where one might sit and watch the
+Dover or Canterbury stage go whirling by. Of genteel accomplishments
+there is a touch In the 'landscape in coloured silks' which Charlotte
+Palmer had worked at school (chap, xxvi.); and of old remedies for the
+lost art of swooning, in the 'lavender drops' of chapter xxix. The
+mention of a dance as a 'little hop' in chapter ix. reads like a
+premature instance of middle Victorian slang. But nothing is new--even
+in a novel--and 'hop,' in this sense, is at least as old as _Joseph
+Andrews_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+Mr. Dashwood introduced him             _Frontispiece_
+
+His son's son, a child of four years old
+
+"I cannot imagine how they will spend half of it"
+
+So shy before company
+
+They sang together
+
+He cut off a long lock of her hair
+
+"I have found you out in spite of all your tricks"
+
+Apparently In violent affliction
+
+Begging her to stop
+
+Came to take a survey of the guest
+
+"I declare they are quite charming"
+
+Mischievous tricks
+
+Drinking to her best affections
+
+Amiably bashful
+
+"I can answer for it," said Mrs. Jennings
+
+At that moment she first perceived him
+
+"How fond he was of it!"
+
+Offered him one of Folly's puppies
+
+A very smart beau
+
+Introduced to Mrs. Jennings
+
+Mrs. Jennings assured him directly that she should not stand
+upon ceremony
+
+Mrs. Ferrars
+
+Drawing him a little aside
+
+In a whisper
+
+"You have heard, I suppose"
+
+Talking over the business
+
+"She put in the feather last night"
+
+Listening at the door
+
+Both gained considerable amusement
+
+"Of one thing I may assure you"
+
+Showing her child to the housekeeper
+
+The gardener's lamentations
+
+Opened a window-shutter
+
+"I entreat you to stay"
+
+"I was formally dismissed"
+
+"I have entered many a shop to avoid your sight"
+
+"And see how the children go on"
+
+"I suppose you know, ma'am, that Mr. Ferrars is married"
+
+It _was_ Edward
+
+"Everything in such respectable condition"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+The family of Dashwood had long been settled in Sussex. Their estate
+was large, and their residence was at Norland Park, in the centre of
+their property, where, for many generations, they had lived in so
+respectable a manner as to engage the general good opinion of their
+surrounding acquaintance. The late owner of this estate was a single
+man, who lived to a very advanced age, and who for many years of his
+life, had a constant companion and housekeeper in his sister. But her
+death, which happened ten years before his own, produced a great
+alteration in his home; for to supply her loss, he invited and
+received into his house the family of his nephew Mr. Henry Dashwood,
+the legal inheritor of the Norland estate, and the person to whom he
+intended to bequeath it. In the society of his nephew and niece, and
+their children, the old Gentleman's days were comfortably spent. His
+attachment to them all increased. The constant attention of Mr. and
+Mrs. Henry Dashwood to his wishes, which proceeded not merely from
+interest, but from goodness of heart, gave him every degree of solid
+comfort which his age could receive; and the cheerfulness of the
+children added a relish to his existence.
+
+By a former marriage, Mr. Henry Dashwood had one son: by his present
+lady, three daughters. The son, a steady respectable young man, was
+amply provided for by the fortune of his mother, which had been large,
+and half of which devolved on him on his coming of age. By his own
+marriage, likewise, which happened soon afterwards, he added to his
+wealth. To him therefore the succession to the Norland estate was not
+so really important as to his sisters; for their fortune, independent
+of what might arise to them from their father's inheriting that
+property, could be but small. Their mother had nothing, and their
+father only seven thousand pounds in his own disposal; for the
+remaining moiety of his first wife's fortune was also secured to her
+child, and he had only a life-interest in it.
+
+The old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every
+other will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so
+unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew; but
+he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the
+bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife
+and daughters than for himself or his son; but to his son, and his
+son's son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way,
+as to leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most
+dear to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the
+estate, or by any sale of its valuable woods. The whole was tied up
+for the benefit of this child, who, in occasional visits with his
+father and mother at Norland, had so far gained on the affections of
+his uncle, by such attractions as are by no means unusual in children
+of two or three years old; an imperfect articulation, an earnest
+desire of having his own way, many cunning tricks, and a great deal of
+noise, as to outweigh all the value of all the attention which, for
+years, he had received from his niece and her daughters. He meant not
+to be unkind, however, and, as a mark of his affection for the three
+girls, he left them a thousand pounds a-piece.
+
+Mr. Dashwood's disappointment was, at first, severe; but his temper
+was cheerful and sanguine; and he might reasonably hope to live many
+years, and by living economically, lay by a considerable sum from the
+produce of an estate already large, and capable of almost immediate
+improvement. But the fortune, which had been so tardy in coming, was
+his only one twelvemonth. He survived his uncle no longer; and ten
+thousand pounds, including the late legacies, was all that remained
+for his widow and daughters.
+
+His son was sent for as soon as his danger was known, and to him Mr.
+Dashwood recommended, with all the strength and urgency which illness
+could command, the interest of his mother-in-law and sisters.
+
+Mr. John Dashwood had not the strong feelings of the rest of the
+family; but he was affected by a recommendation of such a nature at
+such a time, and he promised to do every thing in his power to make
+them comfortable. His father was rendered easy by such an assurance,
+and Mr. John Dashwood had then leisure to consider how much there
+might prudently be in his power to do for them.
+
+[Illustration: _His son's son, a child of four years old._]
+
+He was not an ill-disposed young man, unless to be rather cold hearted
+and rather selfish is to be ill-disposed: but he was, in general, well
+respected; for he conducted himself with propriety in the discharge of
+his ordinary duties. Had he married a more amiable woman, he might
+have been made still more respectable than he was: he might even have
+been made amiable himself; for he was very young when he married, and
+very fond of his wife. But Mrs. John Dashwood was a strong caricature
+of himself; more narrow-minded and selfish.
+
+When he gave his promise to his father, he meditated within himself to
+increase the fortunes of his sisters by the present of a thousand
+pounds a-piece. He then really thought himself equal to it. The
+prospect of four thousand a-year, in addition to his present income,
+besides the remaining half of his own mother's fortune, warmed his
+heart, and made him feel capable of generosity. "Yes, he would give
+them three thousand pounds: it would be liberal and handsome! It would
+be enough to make them completely easy. Three thousand pounds! he
+could spare so considerable a sum with little inconvenience." He
+thought of it all day long, and for many days successively, and he did
+not repent.
+
+No sooner was his father's funeral over, than Mrs. John Dashwood,
+without sending any notice of her intention to her mother-in-law,
+arrived with her child and their attendants. No one could dispute her
+right to come; the house was her husband's from the moment of his
+father's decease; but the indelicacy of her conduct was so much the
+greater, and to a woman in Mrs. Dashwood's situation, with only common
+feelings, must have been highly unpleasing. But in _her_ mind there
+was a sense of honor so keen, a generosity so romantic, that any
+offence of the kind, by whomsoever given or received, was to her a
+source of immovable disgust. Mrs. John Dashwood had never been a
+favourite with any of her husband's family; but she had had no
+opportunity, till the present, of showing them with how little
+attention to the comfort of other people she could act when occasion
+required it.
+
+So acutely did Mrs. Dashwood feel this ungracious behaviour, and so
+earnestly did she despise her daughter-in-law for it, that, on the
+arrival of the latter, she would have quitted the house for ever, had
+not the entreaty of her eldest girl induced her first to reflect on
+the propriety of going, and her own tender love for all her three
+children determined her afterwards to stay, and for their sakes avoid
+a breach with their brother.
+
+Elinor, this eldest daughter, whose advice was so effectual, possessed
+a strength of understanding, and coolness of judgment, which qualified
+her, though only nineteen, to be the counsellor of her mother, and
+enabled her frequently to counteract, to the advantage of them all,
+that eagerness of mind in Mrs. Dashwood which must generally have led
+to imprudence. She had an excellent heart; her disposition was
+affectionate, and her feelings were strong; but she knew how to govern
+them: it was a knowledge which her mother had yet to learn; and which
+one of her sisters had resolved never to be taught.
+
+Marianne's abilities were, in many respects, quite equal to Elinor's.
+She was sensible and clever; but eager in everything: her sorrows, her
+joys, could have no moderation. She was generous, amiable,
+interesting: she was everything but prudent. The resemblance between
+her and her mother was strikingly great.
+
+Elinor saw, with concern, the excess of her sister's sensibility; but
+by Mrs. Dashwood it was valued and cherished. They encouraged each
+other now in the violence of their affliction. The agony of grief
+which overpowered them at first, was voluntarily renewed, was sought
+for, was created again and again. They gave themselves up wholly to
+their sorrow, seeking increase of wretchedness in every reflection
+that could afford it, and resolved against ever admitting consolation
+in future. Elinor, too, was deeply afflicted; but still she could
+struggle, she could exert herself. She could consult with her brother,
+could receive her sister-in-law on her arrival, and treat her with
+proper attention; and could strive to rouse her mother to similar
+exertion, and encourage her to similar forbearance.
+
+Margaret, the other sister, was a good-humored, well-disposed girl;
+but as she had already imbibed a good deal of Marianne's romance,
+without having much of her sense, she did not, at thirteen, bid fair
+to equal her sisters at a more advanced period of life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Mrs. John Dashwood now installed herself mistress of Norland; and her
+mother and sisters-in-law were degraded to the condition of visitors.
+As such, however, they were treated by her with quiet civility; and by
+her husband with as much kindness as he could feel towards anybody
+beyond himself, his wife, and their child. He really pressed them,
+with some earnestness, to consider Norland as their home; and, as no
+plan appeared so eligible to Mrs. Dashwood as remaining there till she
+could accommodate herself with a house in the neighbourhood, his
+invitation was accepted.
+
+A continuance in a place where everything reminded her of former
+delight, was exactly what suited her mind. In seasons of cheerfulness,
+no temper could be more cheerful than hers, or possess, in a greater
+degree, that sanguine expectation of happiness which is happiness
+itself. But in sorrow she must be equally carried away by her fancy,
+and as far beyond consolation as in pleasure she was beyond alloy.
+
+Mrs. John Dashwood did not at all approve of what her husband intended
+to do for his sisters. To take three thousand pounds from the fortune
+of their dear little boy would be impoverishing him to the most
+dreadful degree. She begged him to think again on the subject. How
+could he answer it to himself to rob his child, and his only child
+too, of so large a sum? And what possible claim could the Miss
+Dashwoods, who were related to him only by half blood, which she
+considered as no relationship at all, have on his generosity to so
+large an amount. It was very well known that no affection was ever
+supposed to exist between the children of any man by different
+marriages; and why was he to ruin himself, and their poor little
+Harry, by giving away all his money to his half sisters?
+
+"It was my father's last request to me," replied her husband, "that I
+should assist his widow and daughters."
+
+"He did not know what he was talking of, I dare say; ten to one but he
+was light-headed at the time. Had he been in his right senses, he
+could not have thought of such a thing as begging you to give away
+half your fortune from your own child."
+
+"He did not stipulate for any particular sum, my dear Fanny; he only
+requested me, in general terms, to assist them, and make their
+situation more comfortable than it was in his power to do. Perhaps it
+would have been as well if he had left it wholly to myself. He could
+hardly suppose I should neglect them. But as he required the promise,
+I could not do less than give it; at least I thought so at the time.
+The promise, therefore, was given, and must be performed. Something
+must be done for them whenever they leave Norland and settle in a new
+home."
+
+"Well, then, _let_ something be done for them; but _that_ something
+need not be three thousand pounds. Consider," she added, "that when
+the money is once parted with, it never can return. Your sisters will
+marry, and it will be gone for ever. If, indeed, it could be restored
+to our poor little boy--"
+
+"Why, to be sure," said her husband, very gravely, "that would make
+great difference. The time may come when Harry will regret that so
+large a sum was parted with. If he should have a numerous family, for
+instance, it would be a very convenient addition."
+
+"To be sure it would."
+
+"Perhaps, then, it would be better for all parties, if the sum were
+diminished one half. Five hundred pounds would be a prodigious
+increase to their fortunes!"
+
+"Oh! beyond anything great! What brother on earth would do half so
+much for his sisters, even if _really_ his sisters! And as it is--only
+half blood! But you have such a generous spirit!"
+
+"I would not wish to do any thing mean," he replied. "One had rather,
+on such occasions, do too much than too little. No one, at least, can
+think I have not done enough for them: even themselves, they can
+hardly expect more."
+
+"There is no knowing what _they_ may expect," said the lady, "but we
+are not to think of their expectations: the question is, what you can
+afford to do."
+
+"Certainly; and I think I may afford to give them five hundred pounds
+a-piece. As it is, without any addition of mine, they will each have
+about three thousand pounds on their mother's death--a very
+comfortable fortune for any young woman."
+
+"To be sure it is; and, indeed, it strikes me that they can want no
+addition at all. They will have ten thousand pounds divided amongst
+them. If they marry, they will be sure of doing well, and if they do
+not, they may all live very comfortably together on the interest of
+ten thousand pounds."
+
+"That is very true, and, therefore, I do not know whether, upon the
+whole, it would not be more advisable to do something for their mother
+while she lives, rather than for them--something of the annuity kind I
+mean. My sisters would feel the good effects of it as well as herself.
+A hundred a year would make them all perfectly comfortable."
+
+His wife hesitated a little, however, in giving her consent to this
+plan.
+
+"To be sure," said she, "it is better than parting with fifteen
+hundred pounds at once. But, then, if Mrs. Dashwood should live
+fifteen years we shall be completely taken in."
+
+"Fifteen years! my dear Fanny; her life cannot be worth half that
+purchase."
+
+"Certainly not; but if you observe, people always live for ever when
+there is an annuity to be paid them; and she is very stout and
+healthy, and hardly forty. An annuity is a very serious business; it
+comes over and over every year, and there is no getting rid of it. You
+are not aware of what you are doing. I have known a great deal of the
+trouble of annuities; for my mother was clogged with the payment of
+three to old superannuated servants by my father's will, and it is
+amazing how disagreeable she found it. Twice every year these
+annuities were to be paid; and then there was the trouble of getting
+it to them; and then one of them was said to have died, and afterwards
+it turned out to be no such thing. My mother was quite sick of it. Her
+income was not her own, she said, with such perpetual claims on it;
+and it was the more unkind in my father, because, otherwise, the money
+would have been entirely at my mother's disposal, without any
+restriction whatever. It has given me such an abhorrence of annuities,
+that I am sure I would not pin myself down to the payment of one for
+all the world."
+
+"It is certainly an unpleasant thing," replied Mr. Dashwood, "to have
+those kind of yearly drains on one's income. One's fortune, as your
+mother justly says, is _not_ one's own. To be tied down to the regular
+payment of such a sum, on every rent day, is by no means desirable: it
+takes away one's independence."
+
+"Undoubtedly; and after all you have no thanks for it. They think
+themselves secure, you do no more than what is expected, and it raises
+no gratitude at all. If I were you, whatever I did should be done at
+my own discretion entirely. I would not bind myself to allow them any
+thing yearly. It may be very inconvenient some years to spare a
+hundred, or even fifty pounds from our own expenses."
+
+"I believe you are right, my love; it will be better that there should
+be no annuity in the case; whatever I may give them occasionally will
+be of far greater assistance than a yearly allowance, because they
+would only enlarge their style of living if they felt sure of a larger
+income, and would not be sixpence the richer for it at the end of the
+year. It will certainly be much the best way. A present of fifty
+pounds, now and then, will prevent their ever being distressed for
+money, and will, I think, be amply discharging my promise to my
+father."
+
+"To be sure it will. Indeed, to say the truth, I am convinced within
+myself that your father had no idea of your giving them any money at
+all. The assistance he thought of, I dare say, was only such as might
+be reasonably expected of you; for instance, such as looking out for a
+comfortable small house for them, helping them to move their things,
+and sending them presents of fish and game, and so forth, whenever
+they are in season. I'll lay my life that he meant nothing farther;
+indeed, it would be very strange and unreasonable if he did. Do but
+consider, my dear Mr. Dashwood, how excessively comfortable your
+mother-in-law and her daughters may live on the interest of seven
+thousand pounds, besides the thousand pounds belonging to each of the
+girls, which brings them in fifty pounds a year a-piece, and, of
+course, they will pay their mother for their board out of it.
+Altogether, they will have five hundred a-year amongst them, and what
+on earth can four women want for more than that?--They will live so
+cheap! Their housekeeping will be nothing at all. They will have no
+carriage, no horses, and hardly any servants; they will keep no
+company, and can have no expenses of any kind! Only conceive how
+comfortable they will be! Five hundred a year! I am sure I cannot
+imagine how they will spend half of it; and as to your giving them
+more, it is quite absurd to think of it. They will be much more able
+to give _you_ something."
+
+"Upon my word," said Mr. Dashwood, "I believe you are perfectly right.
+My father certainly could mean nothing more by his request to me than
+what you say. I clearly understand it now, and I will strictly fulfil
+my engagement by such acts of assistance and kindness to them as you
+have described. When my mother removes into another house my services
+shall be readily given to accommodate her as far as I can. Some little
+present of furniture too may be acceptable then."
+
+"Certainly," returned Mrs. John Dashwood. "But, however, _one_ thing
+must be considered. When your father and mother moved to Norland,
+though the furniture of Stanhill was sold, all the china, plate, and
+linen was saved, and is now left to your mother. Her house will
+therefore be almost completely fitted up as soon as she takes it."
+
+"That is a material consideration undoubtedly. A valuable legacy
+indeed! And yet some of the plate would have been a very pleasant
+addition to our own stock here."
+
+"Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what
+belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for
+any place _they_ can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is.
+Your father thought only of _them_ And I must say this: that you owe
+no particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we
+very well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything
+in the world to _them._"
+
+This argument was irresistible. It gave to his intentions whatever of
+decision was wanting before; and he finally resolved, that it would be
+absolutely unnecessary, if not highly indecorous, to do more for the
+widow and children of his father, than such kind of neighbourly acts
+as his own wife pointed out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Mrs. Dashwood remained at Norland several months; not from any
+disinclination to move when the sight of every well known spot ceased
+to raise the violent emotion which it produced for a while; for when
+her spirits began to revive, and her mind became capable of some other
+exertion than that of heightening its affliction by melancholy
+remembrances, she was impatient to be gone, and indefatigable in her
+inquiries for a suitable dwelling in the neighbourhood of Norland; for
+to remove far from that beloved spot was impossible. But she could
+hear of no situation that at once answered her notions of comfort and
+ease, and suited the prudence of her eldest daughter, whose steadier
+judgment rejected several houses as too large for their income, which
+her mother would have approved.
+
+[Illustration: "_I cannot imagine how they will spend half of it._"]
+
+Mrs. Dashwood had been informed by her husband of the solemn promise
+on the part of his son in their favour, which gave comfort to his last
+earthly reflections. She doubted the sincerity of this assurance no
+more than he had doubted it himself, and she thought of it for her
+daughters' sake with satisfaction, though as for herself she was
+persuaded that a much smaller provision than 7000L would support her
+in affluence. For their brother's sake, too, for the sake of his own
+heart, she rejoiced; and she reproached herself for being unjust to
+his merit before, in believing him incapable of generosity. His
+attentive behaviour to herself and his sisters convinced her that
+their welfare was dear to him, and, for a long time, she firmly relied
+on the liberality of his intentions.
+
+The contempt which she had, very early in their acquaintance, felt for
+her daughter-in-law, was very much increased by the farther knowledge
+of her character, which half a year's residence in her family
+afforded; and perhaps in spite of every consideration of politeness or
+maternal affection on the side of the former, the two ladies might
+have found it impossible to have lived together so long, had not a
+particular circumstance occurred to give still greater eligibility,
+according to the opinions of Mrs. Dashwood, to her daughters'
+continuance at Norland.
+
+This circumstance was a growing attachment between her eldest girl and
+the brother of Mrs. John Dashwood, a gentlemanlike and pleasing young
+man, who was introduced to their acquaintance soon after his sister's
+establishment at Norland, and who had since spent the greatest part of
+his time there.
+
+Some mothers might have encouraged the intimacy from motives of
+interest, for Edward Ferrars was the eldest son of a man who had died
+very rich; and some might have repressed it from motives of prudence,
+for, except a trifling sum, the whole of his fortune depended on the
+will of his mother. But Mrs. Dashwood was alike uninfluenced by either
+consideration. It was enough for her that he appeared to be amiable,
+that he loved her daughter, and that Elinor returned the partiality.
+It was contrary to every doctrine of her's that difference of fortune
+should keep any couple asunder who were attracted by resemblance of
+disposition; and that Elinor's merit should not be acknowledged by
+every one who knew her, was to her comprehension impossible.
+
+Edward Ferrars was not recommended to their good opinion by any
+peculiar graces of person or address. He was not handsome, and his
+manners required intimacy to make them pleasing. He was too diffident
+to do justice to himself; but when his natural shyness was overcome,
+his behaviour gave every indication of an open, affectionate heart.
+His understanding was good, and his education had given it solid
+improvement. But he was neither fitted by abilities nor disposition to
+answer the wishes of his mother and sister, who longed to see him
+distinguished as--they hardly knew what. They wanted him to make a
+fine figure in the world in some manner or other. His mother wished to
+interest him in political concerns, to get him into parliament, or to
+see him connected with some of the great men of the day. Mrs. John
+Dashwood wished it likewise; but in the mean while, till one of these
+superior blessings could be attained, it would have quieted her
+ambition to see him driving a barouche. But Edward had no turn for
+great men or barouches. All his wishes centered in domestic comfort
+and the quiet of private life. Fortunately he had a younger brother
+who was more promising.
+
+Edward had been staying several weeks in the house before he engaged
+much of Mrs. Dashwood's attention; for she was, at that time, in such
+affliction as rendered her careless of surrounding objects. She saw
+only that he was quiet and unobtrusive, and she liked him for it. He
+did not disturb the wretchedness of her mind by ill-timed
+conversation. She was first called to observe and approve him farther,
+by a reflection which Elinor chanced one day to make on the
+difference between him and his sister. It was a contrast which
+recommended him most forcibly to her mother.
+
+"It is enough," said she; "to say that he is unlike Fanny is enough.
+It implies everything amiable. I love him already."
+
+"I think you will like him," said Elinor, "when you know more of him."
+
+"Like him!" replied her mother with a smile. "I feel no sentiment of
+approbation inferior to love."
+
+"You may esteem him."
+
+"I have never yet known what it was to separate esteem and love."
+
+Mrs. Dashwood now took pains to get acquainted with him. Her manners
+were attaching, and soon banished his reserve. She speedily
+comprehended all his merits; the persuasion of his regard for Elinor
+perhaps assisted her penetration; but she really felt assured of his
+worth: and even that quietness of manner, which militated against all
+her established ideas of what a young man's address ought to be, was
+no longer uninteresting when she knew his heart to be warm and his
+temper affectionate.
+
+No sooner did she perceive any symptom of love in his behaviour to
+Elinor, than she considered their serious attachment as certain, and
+looked forward to their marriage as rapidly approaching.
+
+"In a few months, my dear Marianne," said she, "Elinor will, in all
+probability be settled for life. We shall miss her; but _she_ will be
+happy."
+
+"Oh! Mamma, how shall we do without her?"
+
+"My love, it will be scarcely a separation. We shall live within a few
+miles of each other, and shall meet every day of our lives. You will
+gain a brother--a real, affectionate brother. I have the highest
+opinion in the world of Edward's heart. But you look grave, Marianne;
+do you disapprove your sister's choice?"
+
+"Perhaps," said Marianne, "I may consider it with some surprise.
+Edward is very amiable, and I love him tenderly. But yet--he is not
+the kind of young man; there is something wanting--his figure is not
+striking; it has none of that grace which I should expect in the man
+who could seriously attach my sister. His eyes want all that spirit,
+that fire, which at once announce virtue and intelligence. And besides
+all this, I am afraid, Mamma, he has no real taste. Music seems
+scarcely to attract him, and though he admires Elinor's drawings very
+much, it is not the admiration of a person who can understand their
+worth. It is evident, in spite of his frequent attention to her while
+she draws, that in fact he knows nothing of the matter. He admires as
+a lover, not as a connoisseur. To satisfy me, those characters must be
+united. I could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every
+point coincide with my own. He must enter into all my feelings; the
+same books, the same music must charm us both. Oh! mama, how
+spiritless, how tame was Edward's manner in reading to us last night!
+I felt for my sister most severely. Yet she bore it with so much
+composure, she seemed scarcely to notice it. I could hardly keep my
+seat. To hear those beautiful lines which have frequently almost
+driven me wild, pronounced with such impenetrable calmness, such
+dreadful indifference!"
+
+"He would certainly have done more justice to simple and elegant
+prose. I thought so at the time; but you _would_ give him Cowper."
+
+"Nay, Mamma, if he is not to be animated by Cowper!--but we must allow
+for difference of taste. Elinor has not my feelings, and therefore she
+may overlook it, and be happy with him. But it would have broke _my_
+heart, had I loved him, to hear him read with so little sensibility.
+Mama, the more I know of the world, the more am I convinced that I
+shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much! He
+must have all Edward's virtues, and his person and manners must
+ornament his goodness with every possible charm."
+
+"Remember, my love, that you are not seventeen. It is yet too early in
+life to despair of such a happiness. Why should you be less fortunate
+than your mother? In one circumstance only, my Marianne, may your
+destiny be different from her's!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+"What a pity it is, Elinor," said Marianne, "that Edward should have
+no taste for drawing."
+
+"No taste for drawing!" replied Elinor, "why should you think so? He
+does not draw himself, indeed, but he has great pleasure in seeing the
+performances of other people, and I assure you he is by no means
+deficient in natural taste, though he has not had opportunities of
+improving it. Had he ever been in the way of learning, I think he
+would have drawn very well. He distrusts his own judgment in such
+matters so much, that he is always unwilling to give his opinion on
+any picture; but he has an innate propriety and simplicity of taste,
+which in general direct him perfectly right."
+
+Marianne was afraid of offending, and said no more on the subject; but
+the kind of approbation which Elinor described as excited in him by
+the drawings of other people, was very far from that rapturous
+delight, which, in her opinion, could alone be called taste. Yet,
+though smiling within herself at the mistake, she honoured her sister
+for that blind partiality to Edward which produced it.
+
+"I hope, Marianne," continued Elinor, "you do not consider him as
+deficient in general taste. Indeed, I think I may say that you cannot,
+for your behaviour to him is perfectly cordial, and if _that_ were
+your opinion, I am sure you could never be civil to him."
+
+Marianne hardly knew what to say. She would not wound the feelings of
+her sister on any account, and yet to say what she did not believe was
+impossible. At length she replied:
+
+"Do not be offended, Elinor, if my praise of him is not in every thing
+equal to your sense of his merits. I have not had so many
+opportunities of estimating the minuter propensities of his mind, his
+inclinations and tastes, as you have; but I have the highest opinion
+in the world of his goodness and sense. I think him every thing that
+is worthy and amiable."
+
+"I am sure," replied Elinor, with a smile, "that his dearest friends
+could not be dissatisfied with such commendation as that. I do not
+perceive how you could express yourself more warmly."
+
+Marianne was rejoiced to find her sister so easily pleased.
+
+"Of his sense and his goodness," continued Elinor, "no one can, I
+think, be in doubt, who has seen him often enough to engage him in
+unreserved conversation. The excellence of his understanding and his
+principles can be concealed only by that shyness which too often keeps
+him silent. You know enough of him to do justice to his solid worth.
+But of his minuter propensities, as you call them you have from
+peculiar circumstances been kept more ignorant than myself. He and I
+have been at times thrown a good deal together, while you have been
+wholly engrossed on the most affectionate principle by my mother. I
+have seen a great deal of him, have studied his sentiments and heard
+his opinion on subjects of literature and taste; and, upon the whole,
+I venture to pronounce that his mind is well-informed, enjoyment of
+books exceedingly great, his imagination lively, his observation just
+and correct, and his taste delicate and pure. His abilities in every
+respect improve as much upon acquaintance as his manners and person.
+At first sight, his address is certainly not striking; and his person
+can hardly be called handsome, till the expression of his eyes, which
+are uncommonly good, and the general sweetness of his countenance, is
+perceived. At present, I know him so well, that I think him really
+handsome; or at least, almost so. What say you, Marianne?"
+
+"I shall very soon think him handsome, Elinor, if I do not now. When
+you tell me to love him as a brother, I shall no more see imperfection
+in his face, than I now do in his heart."
+
+Elinor started at this declaration, and was sorry for the warmth she
+had been betrayed into, in speaking of him. She felt that Edward stood
+very high in her opinion. She believed the regard to be mutual; but
+she required greater certainty of it to make Marianne's conviction of
+their attachment agreeable to her. She knew that what Marianne and her
+mother conjectured one moment, they believed the next--that with them,
+to wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect. She tried to explain
+the real state of the case to her sister.
+
+"I do not attempt to deny," said she, "that I think very highly of
+him--that I greatly esteem, that I like him."
+
+Marianne here burst forth with indignation--
+
+"Esteem him! Like him! Cold-hearted Elinor! Oh! worse than
+cold-hearted! Ashamed of being otherwise. Use those words again, and I
+will leave the room this moment."
+
+Elinor could not help laughing. "Excuse me," said she; "and be assured
+that I meant no offence to you, by speaking, in so quiet a way, of my
+own feelings. Believe them to be stronger than I have declared;
+believe them, in short, to be such as his merit, and the
+suspicion--the hope--of his affection for me may warrant, without
+imprudence or folly. But farther than this you must not believe. I am
+by no means assured of his regard for me. There are moments when the
+extent of it seems doubtful; and till his sentiments are fully known,
+you cannot wonder at my wishing to avoid any encouragement of my own
+partiality, by believing or calling it more than it is. In my heart I
+feel little--scarcely any doubt of his preference. But there are other
+points to be considered besides his inclination. He is very far from
+being independent. What his mother really is we cannot know; but, from
+Fanny's occasional mention of her conduct and opinions, we have never
+been disposed to think her amiable; and I am very much mistaken if
+Edward is not himself aware that there would be many difficulties in
+his way, if he were to wish to marry a woman who had not either a
+great fortune or high rank."
+
+Marianne was astonished to find how much the imagination of her mother
+and herself had outstripped the truth.
+
+"And you really are not engaged to him!" said she. "Yet it certainly
+soon will happen. But two advantages will proceed from this delay. I
+shall not lose you so soon, and Edward will have greater opportunity
+of improving that natural taste for your favourite pursuit which must
+be so indispensably necessary to your future felicity. Oh! if he
+should be so far stimulated by your genius as to learn to draw
+himself, how delightful it would be!"
+
+Elinor had given her real opinion to her sister. She could not
+consider her partiality for Edward in so prosperous a state as
+Marianne had believed it. There was, at times, a want of spirits about
+him which, if it did not denote indifference, spoke of something
+almost as unpromising. A doubt of her regard, supposing him to feel
+it, need not give him more than inquietude. It would not be likely to
+produce that dejection of mind which frequently attended him. A more
+reasonable cause might be found in the dependent situation which
+forbade the indulgence of his affection. She knew that his mother
+neither behaved to him so as to make his home comfortable at present,
+nor to give him any assurance that he might form a home for himself,
+without strictly attending to her views for his aggrandizement. With
+such a knowledge as this, it was impossible for Elinor to feel easy on
+the subject. She was far from depending on that result of his
+preference of her, which her mother and sister still considered as
+certain. Nay, the longer they were together the more doubtful seemed
+the nature of his regard; and sometimes, for a few painful minutes,
+she believed it to be no more than friendship.
+
+But, whatever might really be its limits, it was enough, when
+perceived by his sister, to make her uneasy, and at the same time,
+(which was still more common,) to make her uncivil. She took the first
+opportunity of affronting her mother-in-law on the occasion, talking
+to her so expressively of her brother's great expectations, of Mrs.
+Ferrars's resolution that both her sons should marry well, and of the
+danger attending any young woman who attempted to _draw him in_, that
+Mrs. Dashwood could neither pretend to be unconscious, nor endeavor to
+be calm. She gave her an answer which marked her contempt, and
+instantly left the room, resolving that, whatever might be the
+inconvenience or expense of so sudden a removal, her beloved Elinor
+should not be exposed another week to such insinuations.
+
+In this state of her spirits, a letter was delivered to her from the
+post, which contained a proposal particularly well timed. It was the
+offer of a small house, on very easy terms, belonging to a relation of
+her own, a gentleman of consequence and property in Devonshire. The
+letter was from this gentleman himself, and written in the true spirit
+of friendly accommodation. He understood that she was in need of a
+dwelling; and though the house he now offered her was merely a
+cottage, he assured her that everything should be done to it which she
+might think necessary, if the situation pleased her. He earnestly
+pressed her, after giving the particulars of the house and garden, to
+come with her daughters to Barton Park, the place of his own
+residence, from whence she might judge, herself, whether Barton
+Cottage, for the houses were in the same parish, could, by any
+alteration, be made comfortable to her. He seemed really anxious to
+accommodate them and the whole of his letter was written in so
+friendly a style as could not fail of giving pleasure to his cousin;
+more especially at a moment when she was suffering under the cold and
+unfeeling behaviour of her nearer connections. She needed no time for
+deliberation or inquiry. Her resolution was formed as she read. The
+situation of Barton, in a county so far distant from Sussex as
+Devonshire, which, but a few hours before, would have been a
+sufficient objection to outweigh every possible advantage belonging to
+the place, was now its first recommendation. To quit the neighbourhood
+of Norland was no longer an evil; it was an object of desire; it was a
+blessing, in comparison of the misery of continuing her
+daughter-in-law's guest; and to remove for ever from that beloved
+place would be less painful than to inhabit or visit it while such a
+woman was its mistress. She instantly wrote Sir John Middleton her
+acknowledgment of his kindness, and her acceptance of his proposal;
+and then hastened to show both letters to her daughters, that she
+might be secure of their approbation before her answer were sent.
+
+Elinor had always thought it would be more prudent for them to settle
+at some distance from Norland, than immediately amongst their present
+acquaintance. On _that_ head, therefore, it was not for her to oppose
+her mother's intention of removing into Devonshire. The house, too, as
+described by Sir John, was on so simple a scale, and the rent so
+uncommonly moderate, as to leave her no right of objection on either
+point; and, therefore, though it was not a plan which brought any
+charm to her fancy, though it was a removal from the vicinity of
+Norland beyond her wishes, she made no attempt to dissuade her mother
+from sending a letter of acquiescence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+No sooner was her answer dispatched, than Mrs. Dashwood indulged
+herself in the pleasure of announcing to her son-in-law and his wife
+that she was provided with a house, and should incommode them no
+longer than till every thing were ready for her inhabiting it. They
+heard her with surprise. Mrs. John Dashwood said nothing; but her
+husband civilly hoped that she would not be settled far from Norland.
+She had great satisfaction in replying that she was going into
+Devonshire. Edward turned hastily towards her, on hearing this, and,
+in a voice of surprise and concern, which required no explanation to
+her, repeated, "Devonshire! Are you, indeed, going there? So far from
+hence! And to what part of it?" She explained the situation. It was
+within four miles northward of Exeter.
+
+"It is but a cottage," she continued, "but I hope to see many of my
+friends in it. A room or two can easily be added; and if my friends
+find no difficulty in travelling so far to see me, I am sure I will
+find none in accommodating them."
+
+She concluded with a very kind invitation to Mr. and Mrs. John
+Dashwood to visit her at Barton; and to Edward she gave one with still
+greater affection. Though her late conversation with her
+daughter-in-law had made her resolve on remaining at Norland no longer
+than was unavoidable, it had not produced the smallest effect on her
+in that point to which it principally tended. To separate Edward and
+Elinor was as far from being her object as ever; and she wished to
+show Mrs. John Dashwood, by this pointed invitation to her brother,
+how totally she disregarded her disapprobation of the match.
+
+Mr. John Dashwood told his mother again and again how exceedingly
+sorry he was that she had taken a house at such a distance from
+Norland as to prevent his being of any service to her in removing her
+furniture. He really felt conscientiously vexed on the occasion; for
+the very exertion to which he had limited the performance of his
+promise to his father was by this arrangement rendered impracticable.
+The furniture was all sent around by water. It chiefly consisted of
+household linen, plate, china, and books, with a handsome pianoforte
+of Marianne's. Mrs. John Dashwood saw the packages depart with a sigh:
+she could not help feeling it hard that as Mrs. Dashwood's income
+would be so trifling in comparison with their own, she should have any
+handsome article of furniture.
+
+Mrs. Dashwood took the house for a twelvemonth; it was ready
+furnished, and she might have immediate possession. No difficulty
+arose on either side in the agreement; and she waited only for the
+disposal of her effects at Norland, and to determine her future
+household, before she set off for the west; and this, as she was
+exceedingly rapid in the performance of everything that interested
+her, was soon done. The horses which were left her by her husband had
+been sold soon after his death, and an opportunity now offering of
+disposing of her carriage, she agreed to sell that likewise at the
+earnest advice of her eldest daughter. For the comfort of her
+children, had she consulted only her own wishes, she would have kept
+it; but the discretion of Elinor prevailed. _Her_ wisdom too limited
+the number of their servants to three; two maids and a man, with whom
+they were speedily provided from amongst those who had formed their
+establishment at Norland.
+
+The man and one of the maids were sent off immediately into
+Devonshire, to prepare the house for their mistress's arrival; for as
+Lady Middleton was entirely unknown to Mrs. Dashwood, she preferred
+going directly to the cottage to being a visitor at Barton Park; and
+she relied so undoubtingly on Sir John's description of the house, as
+to feel no curiosity to examine it herself till she entered it as her
+own. Her eagerness to be gone from Norland was preserved from
+diminution by the evident satisfaction of her daughter-in-law in the
+prospect of her removal; a satisfaction which was but feebly attempted
+to be concealed under a cold invitation to her to defer her departure.
+Now was the time when her son-in-law's promise to his father might
+with particular propriety be fulfilled. Since he had neglected to do
+it on first coming to the estate, their quitting his house might be
+looked on as the most suitable period for its accomplishment. But Mrs.
+Dashwood began shortly to give over every hope of the kind, and to be
+convinced, from the general drift of his discourse, that his
+assistance extended no farther than their maintenance for six months
+at Norland. He so frequently talked of the increasing expenses of
+housekeeping, and of the perpetual demands upon his purse, which a man
+of any consequence in the world was beyond calculation exposed to,
+that he seemed rather to stand in need of more money himself than to
+have any design of giving money away.
+
+In a very few weeks from the day which brought Sir John Middleton's
+first letter to Norland, every thing was so far settled in their
+future abode as to enable Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters to begin
+their journey.
+
+Many were the tears shed by them in their last adieus to a place so
+much beloved. "Dear, dear Norland!" said Marianne, as she wandered
+alone before the house, on the last evening of their being there;
+"when shall I cease to regret you!--when learn to feel a home
+elsewhere! Oh! happy house, could you know what I suffer in now
+viewing you from this spot, from whence perhaps I may view you no
+more! And you, ye well-known trees!--but you will continue the same.
+No leaf will decay because we are removed, nor any branch become
+motionless although we can observe you no longer! No; you will
+continue the same; unconscious of the pleasure or the regret you
+occasion, and insensible of any change in those who walk under your
+shade! But who will remain to enjoy you?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+The first part of their journey was performed in too melancholy a
+disposition to be otherwise than tedious and unpleasant. But as they
+drew towards the end of it, their interest in the appearance of a
+country which they were to inhabit overcame their dejection, and a
+view of Barton Valley as they entered it gave them cheerfulness. It
+was a pleasant fertile spot, well wooded, and rich in pasture. After
+winding along it for more than a mile, they reached their own house. A
+small green court was the whole of its demesne in front; and a neat
+wicket gate admitted them into it.
+
+As a house, Barton Cottage, though small, was comfortable and compact;
+but as a cottage it was defective, for the building was regular, the
+roof was tiled, the window shutters were not painted green, nor were
+the walls covered with honeysuckles. A narrow passage led directly
+through the house into the garden behind. On each side of the entrance
+was a sitting room, about sixteen feet square; and beyond them were
+the offices and the stairs. Four bedrooms and two garrets formed the
+rest of the house. It had not been built many years and was in good
+repair. In comparison of Norland, it was poor and small indeed!--but
+the tears which recollection called forth as they entered the house
+were soon dried away. They were cheered by the joy of the servants on
+their arrival, and each for the sake of the others resolved to appear
+happy. It was very early in September; the season was fine, and from
+first seeing the place under the advantage of good weather, they
+received an impression in its favour which was of material service in
+recommending it to their lasting approbation.
+
+The situation of the house was good. High hills rose immediately
+behind, and at no great distance on each side; some of which were open
+downs, the others cultivated and woody. The village of Barton was
+chiefly on one of these hills, and formed a pleasant view from the
+cottage windows. The prospect in front was more extensive; it
+commanded the whole of the valley, and reached into the country
+beyond. The hills which surrounded the cottage terminated the valley
+in that direction; under another name, and in another course, it
+branched out again between two of the steepest of them.
+
+With the size and furniture of the house Mrs. Dashwood was upon the
+whole well satisfied; for though her former style of life rendered
+many additions to the latter indispensable, yet to add and improve was
+a delight to her; and she had at this time ready money enough to
+supply all that was wanted of greater elegance to the apartments. "As
+for the house itself, to be sure," said she, "it is too small for our
+family, but we will make ourselves tolerably comfortable for the
+present, as it is too late in the year for improvements. Perhaps in
+the spring, if I have plenty of money, as I dare say I shall, we may
+think about building. These parlors are both too small for such
+parties of our friends as I hope to see often collected here; and I
+have some thoughts of throwing the passage into one of them with
+perhaps a part of the other, and so leave the remainder of that other
+for an entrance; this, with a new drawing room which may be easily
+added, and a bed-chamber and garret above, will make it a very snug
+little cottage. I could wish the stairs were handsome. But one must
+not expect every thing; though I suppose it would be no difficult
+matter to widen them. I shall see how much I am before-hand with the
+world in the spring, and we will plan our improvements accordingly."
+
+In the mean time, till all these alterations could be made from the
+savings of an income of five hundred a-year by a woman who never
+saved in her life, they were wise enough to be contented with the
+house as it was; and each of them was busy in arranging their
+particular concerns, and endeavoring, by placing around them books and
+other possessions, to form themselves a home. Marianne's pianoforte
+was unpacked and properly disposed of; and Elinor's drawings were
+affixed to the walls of their sitting room.
+
+In such employments as these they were interrupted soon after
+breakfast the next day by the entrance of their landlord, who called
+to welcome them to Barton, and to offer them every accommodation from
+his own house and garden in which theirs might at present be
+deficient. Sir John Middleton was a good looking man about forty. He
+had formerly visited at Stanhill, but it was too long for his young
+cousins to remember him. His countenance was thoroughly good-humoured;
+and his manners were as friendly as the style of his letter. Their
+arrival seemed to afford him real satisfaction, and their comfort to
+be an object of real solicitude to him. He said much of his earnest
+desire of their living in the most sociable terms with his family, and
+pressed them so cordially to dine at Barton Park every day till they
+were better settled at home, that, though his entreaties were carried
+to a point of perseverance beyond civility, they could not give
+offence. His kindness was not confined to words; for within an hour
+after he left them, a large basket full of garden stuff and fruit
+arrived from the park, which was followed before the end of the day by
+a present of game. He insisted, moreover, on conveying all their
+letters to and from the post for them, and would not be denied the
+satisfaction of sending them his newspaper every day.
+
+Lady Middleton had sent a very civil message by him, denoting her
+intention of waiting on Mrs. Dashwood as soon as she could be assured
+that her visit would be no inconvenience; and as this message was
+answered by an invitation equally polite, her ladyship was introduced
+to them the next day.
+
+[Illustration: _So shy before company._]
+
+They were, of course, very anxious to see a person on whom so much of
+their comfort at Barton must depend; and the elegance of her
+appearance was favourable to their wishes. Lady Middleton was not more
+than six or seven and twenty; her face was handsome, her figure tall
+and striking, and her address graceful. Her manners had all the
+elegance which her husband's wanted. But they would have been improved
+by some share of his frankness and warmth; and her visit was long
+enough to detract something from their first admiration, by showing
+that, though perfectly well-bred, she was reserved, cold, and had
+nothing to say for herself beyond the most common-place inquiry or
+remark.
+
+Conversation however was not wanted, for Sir John was very chatty, and
+Lady Middleton had taken the wise precaution of bringing with her
+their eldest child, a fine little boy about six years old, by which
+means there was one subject always to be recurred to by the ladies in
+case of extremity, for they had to enquire his name and age, admire
+his beauty, and ask him questions which his mother answered for him,
+while he hung about her and held down his head, to the great surprise
+of her ladyship, who wondered at his being so shy before company, as
+he could make noise enough at home. On every formal visit a child
+ought to be of the party, by way of provision for discourse. In the
+present case it took up ten minutes to determine whether the boy were
+most like his father or mother, and in what particular he resembled
+either, for of course every body differed, and every body was
+astonished at the opinion of the others.
+
+An opportunity was soon to be given to the Dashwoods of debating on
+the rest of the children, as Sir John would not leave the house
+without securing their promise of dining at the park the next day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Barton Park was about half a mile from the cottage. The ladies had
+passed near it in their way along the valley, but it was screened from
+their view at home by the projection of a hill. The house was large
+and handsome; and the Middletons lived in a style of equal hospitality
+and elegance. The former was for Sir John's gratification, the latter
+for that of his lady. They were scarcely ever without some friends
+staying with them in the house, and they kept more company of every
+kind than any other family in the neighbourhood. It was necessary to
+the happiness of both; for however dissimilar in temper and outward
+behaviour, they strongly resembled each other in that total want of
+talent and taste which confined their employments, unconnected with
+such as society produced, within a very narrow compass. Sir John was a
+sportsman, Lady Middleton a mother. He hunted and shot, and she
+humoured her children; and these were their only resources. Lady
+Middleton had the advantage of being able to spoil her children all
+the year round, while Sir John's independent employments were in
+existence only half the time. Continual engagements at home and
+abroad, however, supplied all the deficiencies of nature and
+education; supported the good spirits of Sir John, and gave exercise
+to the good breeding of his wife.
+
+Lady Middleton piqued herself upon the elegance of her table, and of
+all her domestic arrangements; and from this kind of vanity was her
+greatest enjoyment in any of their parties. But Sir John's
+satisfaction in society was much more real; he delighted in collecting
+about him more young people than his house would hold, and the noisier
+they were the better was he pleased. He was a blessing to all the
+juvenile part of the neighbourhood, for in summer he was for ever
+forming parties to eat cold ham and chicken out of doors, and in
+winter his private balls were numerous enough for any young lady who
+was not suffering under the insatiable appetite of fifteen.
+
+The arrival of a new family in the country was always a matter of joy
+to him, and in every point of view he was charmed with the inhabitants
+he had now procured for his cottage at Barton. The Miss Dashwoods were
+young, pretty, and unaffected. It was enough to secure his good
+opinion; for to be unaffected was all that a pretty girl could want to
+make her mind as captivating as her person. The friendliness of his
+disposition made him happy in accommodating those, whose situation
+might be considered, in comparison with the past, as unfortunate. In
+showing kindness to his cousins therefore he had the real satisfaction
+of a good heart; and in settling a family of females only in his
+cottage, he had all the satisfaction of a sportsman; for a sportsman,
+though he esteems only those of his sex who are sportsmen likewise, is
+not often desirous of encouraging their taste by admitting them to a
+residence within his own manor.
+
+Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters were met at the door of the house by
+Sir John, who welcomed them to Barton Park with unaffected sincerity;
+and as he attended them to the drawing room repeated to the young
+ladies the concern which the same subject had drawn from him the day
+before, at being unable to get any smart young men to meet them. They
+would see, he said, only one gentleman there besides himself; a
+particular friend who was staying at the park, but who was neither
+very young nor very gay. He hoped they would all excuse the smallness
+of the party, and could assure them it should never happen so again.
+He had been to several families that morning in hopes of procuring
+some addition to their number, but it was moonlight and every body was
+full of engagements. Luckily Lady Middleton's mother had arrived at
+Barton within the last hour, and as she was a very cheerful agreeable
+woman, he hoped the young ladies would not find it so very dull as
+they might imagine. The young ladies, as well as their mother, were
+perfectly satisfied with having two entire strangers of the party, and
+wished for no more.
+
+Mrs. Jennings, Lady Middleton's mother, was a good-humoured, merry,
+fat, elderly woman, who talked a great deal, seemed very happy, and
+rather vulgar. She was full of jokes and laughter, and before dinner
+was over had said many witty things on the subject of lovers and
+husbands; hoped they had not left their hearts behind them in Sussex,
+and pretended to see them blush whether they did or not. Marianne was
+vexed at it for her sister's sake, and turned her eyes towards Elinor
+to see how she bore these attacks, with an earnestness which gave
+Elinor far more pain than could arise from such common-place raillery
+as Mrs. Jennings's.
+
+Colonel Brandon, the friend of Sir John, seemed no more adapted by
+resemblance of manner to be his friend, than Lady Middleton was to be
+his wife, or Mrs. Jennings to be Lady Middleton's mother. He was
+silent and grave. His appearance however was not unpleasing, in spite
+of his being in the opinion of Marianne and Margaret an absolute old
+bachelor, for he was on the wrong side of five and thirty; but though
+his face was not handsome, his countenance was sensible, and his
+address was particularly gentlemanlike.
+
+There was nothing in any of the party which could recommend them as
+companions to the Dashwoods; but the cold insipidity of Lady Middleton
+was so particularly repulsive, that in comparison of it the gravity
+of Colonel Brandon, and even the boisterous mirth of Sir John and his
+mother-in-law was interesting. Lady Middleton seemed to be roused to
+enjoyment only by the entrance of her four noisy children after
+dinner, who pulled her about, tore her clothes, and put an end to
+every kind of discourse except what related to themselves.
+
+In the evening, as Marianne was discovered to be musical, she was
+invited to play. The instrument was unlocked, every body prepared to
+be charmed, and Marianne, who sang very well, at their request went
+through the chief of the songs which Lady Middleton had brought into
+the family on her marriage, and which perhaps had lain ever since in
+the same position on the pianoforte, for her ladyship had celebrated
+that event by giving up music, although by her mother's account, she
+had played extremely well, and by her own was very fond of it.
+
+Marianne's performance was highly applauded. Sir John was loud in his
+admiration at the end of every song, and as loud in his conversation
+with the others while every song lasted. Lady Middleton frequently
+called him to order, wondered how any one's attention could be
+diverted from music for a moment, and asked Marianne to sing a
+particular song which Marianne had just finished. Colonel Brandon
+alone, of all the party, heard her without being in raptures. He paid
+her only the compliment of attention; and she felt a respect for him
+on the occasion, which the others had reasonably forfeited by their
+shameless want of taste. His pleasure in music, though it amounted not
+to that ecstatic delight which alone could sympathize with her own,
+was estimable when contrasted against the horrible insensibility of
+the others; and she was reasonable enough to allow that a man of five
+and thirty might well have outlived all acuteness of feeling and every
+exquisite power of enjoyment. She was perfectly disposed to make every
+allowance for the colonel's advanced state of life which humanity
+required.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Mrs. Jennings was a widow with an ample jointure. She had only two
+daughters, both of whom she had lived to see respectably married, and
+she had now therefore nothing to do but to marry all the rest of the
+world. In the promotion of this object she was zealously active, as
+far as her ability reached; and missed no opportunity of projecting
+weddings among all the young people of her acquaintance. She was
+remarkably quick in the discovery of attachments, and had enjoyed the
+advantage of raising the blushes and the vanity of many a young lady
+by insinuations of her power over such a young man; and this kind of
+discernment enabled her soon after her arrival at Barton decisively to
+pronounce that Colonel Brandon was very much in love with Marianne
+Dashwood. She rather suspected it to be so, on the very first evening
+of their being together, from his listening so attentively while she
+sang to them; and when the visit was returned by the Middletons'
+dining at the cottage, the fact was ascertained by his listening to
+her again. It must be so. She was perfectly convinced of it. It would
+be an excellent match, for _he_ was rich, and _she_ was handsome. Mrs.
+Jennings had been anxious to see Colonel Brandon well married, ever
+since her connection with Sir John first brought him to her knowledge;
+and she was always anxious to get a good husband for every pretty
+girl.
+
+The immediate advantage to herself was by no means inconsiderable, for
+it supplied her with endless jokes against them both. At the park she
+laughed at the colonel, and in the cottage at Marianne. To the former
+her raillery was probably, as far as it regarded only himself,
+perfectly indifferent; but to the latter it was at first
+incomprehensible; and when its object was understood, she hardly knew
+whether most to laugh at its absurdity, or censure its impertinence,
+for she considered it as an unfeeling reflection on the colonel's
+advanced years, and on his forlorn condition as an old bachelor.
+
+Mrs. Dashwood, who could not think a man five years younger than
+herself, so exceedingly ancient as he appeared to the youthful fancy
+of her daughter, ventured to clear Mrs. Jennings from the probability
+of wishing to throw ridicule on his age.
+
+"But at least, Mamma, you cannot deny the absurdity of the accusation,
+though you may not think it intentionally ill-natured. Colonel Brandon
+is certainly younger than Mrs. Jennings, but he is old enough to be
+_my_ father; and if he were ever animated enough to be in love, must
+have long outlived every sensation of the kind. It is too ridiculous!
+When is a man to be safe from such wit, if age and infirmity will not
+protect him?"
+
+"Infirmity!" said Elinor, "do you call Colonel Brandon infirm? I can
+easily suppose that his age may appear much greater to you than to my
+mother; but you can hardly deceive yourself as to his having the use
+of his limbs!"
+
+"Did not you hear him complain of the rheumatism? and is not that the
+commonest infirmity of declining life?"
+
+"My dearest child," said her mother, laughing, "at this rate you must
+be in continual terror of _my_ decay; and it must seem to you a
+miracle that my life has been extended to the advanced age of forty."
+
+"Mamma, you are not doing me justice. I know very well that Colonel
+Brandon is not old enough to make his friends yet apprehensive of
+losing him in the course of nature. He may live twenty years longer.
+But thirty-five has nothing to do with matrimony."
+
+"Perhaps," said Elinor, "thirty-five and seventeen had better not have
+any thing to do with matrimony together. But if there should by any
+chance happen to be a woman who is single at seven and twenty, I
+should not think Colonel Brandon's being thirty-five any objection to
+his marrying _her_ ."
+
+"A woman of seven and twenty," said Marianne, after pausing a moment,
+"can never hope to feel or inspire affection again, and if her home be
+uncomfortable, or her fortune small, I can suppose that she might
+bring herself to submit to the offices of a nurse, for the sake of the
+provision and security of a wife. In his marrying such a woman
+therefore there would be nothing unsuitable. It would be a compact of
+convenience, and the world would be satisfied. In my eyes it would be
+no marriage at all, but that would be nothing. To me it would seem
+only a commercial exchange, in which each wished to be benefited at
+the expense of the other."
+
+"It would be impossible, I know," replied Elinor, "to convince you
+that a woman of seven and twenty could feel for a man of thirty-five
+anything near enough to love, to make him a desirable companion to
+her. But I must object to your dooming Colonel Brandon and his wife to
+the constant confinement of a sick chamber, merely because he chanced
+to complain yesterday (a very cold damp day) of a slight rheumatic
+feel in one of his shoulders."
+
+"But he talked of flannel waistcoats," said Marianne; "and with me a
+flannel waistcoat is invariably connected with aches, cramps,
+rheumatisms, and every species of ailment that can afflict the old and
+the feeble."
+
+"Had he been only in a violent fever, you would not have despised him
+half so much. Confess, Marianne, is not there something interesting to
+you in the flushed cheek, hollow eye, and quick pulse of a fever?"
+
+Soon after this, upon Elinor's leaving the room, "Mamma," said
+Marianne, "I have an alarm on the subject of illness which I cannot
+conceal from you. I am sure Edward Ferrars is not well. We have now
+been here almost a fortnight, and yet he does not come. Nothing but
+real indisposition could occasion this extraordinary delay. What else
+can detain him at Norland?"
+
+"Had you any idea of his coming so soon?" said Mrs. Dashwood. "I had
+none. On the contrary, if I have felt any anxiety at all on the
+subject, it has been in recollecting that he sometimes showed a want
+of pleasure and readiness in accepting my invitation, when I talked of
+his coming to Barton. Does Elinor expect him already?"
+
+"I have never mentioned it to her, but of course she must."
+
+"I rather think you are mistaken, for when I was talking to her
+yesterday of getting a new grate for the spare bed-chamber, she
+observed that there was no immediate hurry for it, as it was not
+likely that the room would be wanted for some time."
+
+"How strange this is! what can be the meaning of it! But the whole of
+their behaviour to each other has been unaccountable! How cold, how
+composed were their last adieus! How languid their conversation the
+last evening of their being together! In Edward's farewell there was
+no distinction between Elinor and me: it was the good wishes of an
+affectionate brother to both. Twice did I leave them purposely
+together in the course of the last morning, and each time did he most
+unaccountably follow me out of the room. And Elinor, in quitting
+Norland and Edward, cried not as I did. Even now her self-command is
+invariable. When is she dejected or melancholy? When does she try to
+avoid society, or appear restless and dissatisfied in it?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+The Dashwoods were now settled at Barton with tolerable comfort to
+themselves. The house and the garden, with all the objects surrounding
+them, were now become familiar, and the ordinary pursuits which had
+given to Norland half its charms were engaged in again with far
+greater enjoyment than Norland had been able to afford, since the loss
+of their father. Sir John Middleton, who called on them every day for
+the first fortnight, and who was not in the habit of seeing much
+occupation at home, could not conceal his amazement on finding them
+always employed.
+
+Their visitors, except those from Barton Park, were not many; for, in
+spite of Sir John's urgent entreaties that they would mix more in the
+neighbourhood, and repeated assurances of his carriage being always at
+their service, the independence of Mrs. Dashwood's spirit overcame the
+wish of society for her children; and she was resolute in declining to
+visit any family beyond the distance of a walk. There were but few who
+could be so classed; and it was not all of them that were attainable.
+About a mile and a half from the cottage, along the narrow winding
+valley of Allenham, which issued from that of Barton, as formerly
+described, the girls had, in one of their earliest walks, discovered
+an ancient respectable looking mansion which, by reminding them a
+little of Norland, interested their imagination and made them wish to
+be better acquainted with it. But they learnt, on enquiry, that its
+possessor, an elderly lady of very good character, was unfortunately
+too infirm to mix with the world, and never stirred from home.
+
+The whole country about them abounded in beautiful walks. The high
+downs which invited them from almost every window of the cottage to
+seek the exquisite enjoyment of air on their summits, were a happy
+alternative when the dirt of the valleys beneath shut up their
+superior beauties; and towards one of these hills did Marianne and
+Margaret one memorable morning direct their steps, attracted by the
+partial sunshine of a showery sky, and unable longer to bear the
+confinement which the settled rain of the two preceding days had
+occasioned. The weather was not tempting enough to draw the two others
+from their pencil and their book, in spite of Marianne's declaration
+that the day would be lastingly fair, and that every threatening cloud
+would be drawn off from their hills; and the two girls set off
+together.
+
+They gaily ascended the downs, rejoicing in their own penetration at
+every glimpse of blue sky; and when they caught in their faces the
+animating gales of a high south-westerly wind, they pitied the fears
+which had prevented their mother and Elinor from sharing such
+delightful sensations.
+
+"Is there a felicity in the world," said Marianne, "superior to
+this?--Margaret, we will walk here at least two hours."
+
+Margaret agreed, and they pursued their way against the wind,
+resisting it with laughing delight for about twenty minutes longer,
+when suddenly the clouds united over their heads, and a driving rain
+set full in their face. Chagrined and surprised, they were obliged,
+though unwillingly, to turn back, for no shelter was nearer than their
+own house. One consolation however remained for them, to which the
+exigence of the moment gave more than usual propriety,--it was that of
+running with all possible speed down the steep side of the hill which
+led immediately to their garden gate.
+
+They set off. Marianne had at first the advantage, but a false step
+brought her suddenly to the ground; and Margaret, unable to stop
+herself to assist her, was involuntarily hurried along, and reached
+the bottom in safety.
+
+A gentleman carrying a gun, with two pointers playing round him, was
+passing up the hill and within a few yards of Marianne, when her
+accident happened. He put down his gun and ran to her assistance. She
+had raised herself from the ground, but her foot had been twisted in
+her fall, and she was scarcely able to stand. The gentleman offered
+his services; and perceiving that her modesty declined what her
+situation rendered necessary, took her up in his arms without farther
+delay, and carried her down the hill. Then passing through the garden,
+the gate of which had been left open by Margaret, he bore her directly
+into the house, whither Margaret was just arrived, and quitted not his
+hold till he had seated her in a chair in the parlour.
+
+Elinor and her mother rose up in amazement at their entrance, and
+while the eyes of both were fixed on him with an evident wonder and a
+secret admiration which equally sprung from his appearance, he
+apologized for his intrusion by relating its cause, in a manner so
+frank and so graceful that his person, which was uncommonly handsome,
+received additional charms from his voice and expression. Had he been
+even old, ugly, and vulgar, the gratitude and kindness of Mrs.
+Dashwood would have been secured by any act of attention to her child;
+but the influence of youth, beauty, and elegance, gave an interest to
+the action which came home to her feelings.
+
+She thanked him again and again; and, with a sweetness of address
+which always attended her, invited him to be seated. But this he
+declined, as he was dirty and wet. Mrs. Dashwood then begged to know
+to whom she was obliged. His name, he replied, was Willoughby, and his
+present home was at Allenham, from whence he hoped she would allow him
+the honour of calling tomorrow to enquire after Miss Dashwood. The
+honour was readily granted, and he then departed, to make himself
+still more interesting, in the midst of a heavy rain.
+
+His manly beauty and more than common gracefulness were instantly the
+theme of general admiration, and the laugh which his gallantry raised
+against Marianne received particular spirit from his exterior
+attractions. Marianne herself had seen less of his person than the
+rest, for the confusion which crimsoned over her face, on his lifting
+her up, had robbed her of the power of regarding him after their
+entering the house. But she had seen enough of him to join in all the
+admiration of the others, and with an energy which always adorned her
+praise. His person and air were equal to what her fancy had ever drawn
+for the hero of a favourite story; and in his carrying her into the
+house with so little previous formality, there was a rapidity of
+thought which particularly recommended the action to her. Every
+circumstance belonging to him was interesting. His name was good, his
+residence was in their favourite village, and she soon found out that
+of all manly dresses a shooting-jacket was the most becoming. Her
+imagination was busy, her reflections were pleasant, and the pain of a
+sprained ankle was disregarded.
+
+Sir John called on them as soon as the next interval of fair weather
+that morning allowed him to get out of doors; and Marianne's accident
+being related to him, he was eagerly asked whether he knew any
+gentleman of the name of Willoughby at Allenham.
+
+"Willoughby!" cried Sir John; "what, is _he_ in the country? That is
+good news however; I will ride over tomorrow, and ask him to dinner on
+Thursday."
+
+"You know him then," said Mrs. Dashwood.
+
+"Know him! to be sure I do. Why, he is down here every year."
+
+"And what sort of a young man is he?"
+
+"As good a kind of fellow as ever lived, I assure you. A very decent
+shot, and there is not a bolder rider in England."
+
+"And is that all you can say for him?" cried Marianne, indignantly.
+"But what are his manners on more intimate acquaintance? What his
+pursuits, his talents, and genius?"
+
+Sir John was rather puzzled.
+
+"Upon my soul," said he, "I do not know much about him as to all
+_that._ But he is a pleasant, good humoured fellow, and has got the
+nicest little black bitch of a pointer I ever saw. Was she out with
+him today?"
+
+But Marianne could no more satisfy him as to the colour of Mr.
+Willoughby's pointer, than he could describe to her the shades of his
+mind.
+
+"But who is he?" said Elinor. "Where does he come from? Has he a house
+at Allenham?"
+
+On this point Sir John could give more certain intelligence; and he
+told them that Mr. Willoughby had no property of his own in the
+country; that he resided there only while he was visiting the old lady
+at Allenham Court, to whom he was related, and whose possessions he
+was to inherit; adding, "Yes, yes, he is very well worth catching I
+can tell you, Miss Dashwood; he has a pretty little estate of his own
+in Somersetshire besides; and if I were you, I would not give him up
+to my younger sister, in spite of all this tumbling down hills. Miss
+Marianne must not expect to have all the men to herself. Brandon will
+be jealous, if she does not take care."
+
+"I do not believe," said Mrs. Dashwood, with a good humoured smile,
+"that Mr. Willoughby will be incommoded by the attempts of either of
+_my_ daughters towards what you call _catching him._ It is not an
+employment to which they have been brought up. Men are very safe with
+us, let them be ever so rich. I am glad to find, however, from what
+you say, that he is a respectable young man, and one whose
+acquaintance will not be ineligible."
+
+"He is as good a sort of fellow, I believe, as ever lived," repeated
+Sir John. "I remember last Christmas at a little hop at the park, he
+danced from eight o'clock till four, without once sitting down."
+
+"Did he indeed?" cried Marianne with sparkling eyes, "and with
+elegance, with spirit?"
+
+"Yes; and he was up again at eight to ride to covert."
+
+"That is what I like; that is what a young man ought to be. Whatever
+be his pursuits, his eagerness in them should know no moderation, and
+leave him no sense of fatigue."
+
+"Aye, aye, I see how it will be," said Sir John, "I see how it will
+be. You will be setting your cap at him now, and never think of poor
+Brandon."
+
+"That is an expression, Sir John," said Marianne, warmly, "which I
+particularly dislike. I abhor every common-place phrase by which wit
+is intended; and 'setting one's cap at a man,' or 'making a conquest,'
+are the most odious of all. Their tendency is gross and illiberal; and
+if their construction could ever be deemed clever, time has long ago
+destroyed all its ingenuity."
+
+Sir John did not much understand this reproof; but he laughed as
+heartily as if he did, and then replied--
+
+"Ay, you will make conquests enough, I dare say, one way or other.
+Poor Brandon! he is quite smitten already, and he is very well worth
+setting your cap at, I can tell you, in spite of all this tumbling
+about and spraining of ankles."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+Marianne's preserver, as Margaret, with more elegance than precision,
+styled Willoughby, called at the cottage early the next morning to
+make his personal enquiries. He was received by Mrs. Dashwood with
+more than politeness; with a kindness which Sir John's account of him
+and her own gratitude prompted; and every thing that passed during the
+visit tended to assure him of the sense, elegance, mutual affection,
+and domestic comfort of the family to whom accident had now introduced
+him. Of their personal charms he had not required a second interview
+to be convinced.
+
+Miss Dashwood had a delicate complexion, regular features, and a
+remarkably pretty figure. Marianne was still handsomer. Her form,
+though not so correct as her sister's, in having the advantage of
+height, was more striking; and her face was so lovely, that when in
+the common cant of praise, she was called a beautiful girl, truth was
+less violently outraged than usually happens. Her skin was very brown,
+but, from its transparency, her complexion was uncommonly brilliant;
+her features were all good; her smile was sweet and attractive; and in
+her eyes, which were very dark, there was a life, a spirit, an
+eagerness, which could hardily be seen without delight. From
+Willoughby their expression was at first held back, by the
+embarrassment which the remembrance of his assistance created. But
+when this passed away, when her spirits became collected, when she saw
+that to the perfect good-breeding of the gentleman, he united
+frankness and vivacity, and above all, when she heard him declare,
+that of music and dancing he was passionately fond, she gave him such
+a look of approbation as secured the largest share of his discourse to
+herself for the rest of his stay.
+
+It was only necessary to mention any favourite amusement to engage her
+to talk. She could not be silent when such points were introduced, and
+she had neither shyness nor reserve in their discussion. They speedily
+discovered that their enjoyment of dancing and music was mutual, and
+that it arose from a general conformity of judgment in all that
+related to either. Encouraged by this to a further examination of his
+opinions, she proceeded to question him on the subject of books; her
+favourite authors were brought forward and dwelt upon with so
+rapturous a delight, that any young man of five and twenty must have
+been insensible indeed, not to become an immediate convert to the
+excellence of such works, however disregarded before. Their taste was
+strikingly alike. The same books, the same passages were idolized by
+each; or if any difference appeared, any objection arose, it lasted no
+longer than till the force of her arguments and the brightness of her
+eyes could be displayed. He acquiesced in all her decisions, caught
+all her enthusiasm; and long before his visit concluded, they
+conversed with the familiarity of a long-established acquaintance.
+
+"Well, Marianne," said Elinor, as soon as he had left them, "for _one_
+morning I think you have done pretty well. You have already
+ascertained Mr. Willoughby's opinion in almost every matter of
+importance. You know what he thinks of Cowper and Scott; you are
+certain of his estimating their beauties as he ought, and you have
+received every assurance of his admiring Pope no more than is proper.
+But how is your acquaintance to be long supported, under such
+extraordinary despatch of every subject for discourse? You will soon
+have exhausted each favourite topic. Another meeting will suffice to
+explain his sentiments on picturesque beauty, and second marriages,
+and then you can have nothing farther to ask."
+
+"Elinor," cried Marianne, "is this fair? is this just? are my ideas so
+scanty? But I see what you mean. I have been too much at my ease, too
+happy, too frank. I have erred against every common-place notion of
+decorum; I have been open and sincere where I ought to have been
+reserved, spiritless, dull, and deceitful:--had I talked only of the
+weather and the roads, and had I spoken only once in ten minutes, this
+reproach would have been spared."
+
+"My love," said her mother, "you must not be offended with Elinor--she
+was only in jest. I should scold her myself, if she were capable of
+wishing to check the delight of your conversation with our new
+friend." Marianne was softened in a moment.
+
+Willoughby, on his side, gave every proof of his pleasure in their
+acquaintance, which an evident wish of improving it could offer. He
+came to them every day. To enquire after Marianne was at first his
+excuse; but the encouragement of his reception, to which every day
+gave greater kindness, made such an excuse unnecessary before it had
+ceased to be possible, by Marianne's perfect recovery. She was
+confined for some days to the house; but never had any confinement
+been less irksome. Willoughby was a young man of good abilities, quick
+imagination, lively spirits, and open, affectionate manners. He was
+exactly formed to engage Marianne's heart, for with all this, he
+joined not only a captivating person, but a natural ardour of mind
+which was now roused and increased by the example of her own, and
+which recommended him to her affection beyond every thing else.
+
+His society became gradually her most exquisite enjoyment. They read,
+they talked, they sang together; his musical talents were
+considerable; and he read with all the sensibility and spirit which
+Edward had unfortunately wanted.
+
+In Mrs. Dashwood's estimation he was as faultless as in Marianne's;
+and Elinor saw nothing to censure in him but a propensity, in which he
+strongly resembled and peculiarly delighted her sister, of saying too
+much what he thought on every occasion, without attention to persons
+or circumstances. In hastily forming and giving his opinion of other
+people, in sacrificing general politeness to the enjoyment of
+undivided attention where his heart was engaged, and in slighting too
+easily the forms of worldly propriety, he displayed a want of caution
+which Elinor could not approve, in spite of all that he and Marianne
+could say in its support.
+
+Marianne began now to perceive that the desperation which had seized
+her at sixteen and a half, of ever seeing a man who could satisfy her
+ideas of perfection, had been rash and unjustifiable. Willoughby was
+all that her fancy had delineated in that unhappy hour and in every
+brighter period, as capable of attaching her; and his behaviour
+declared his wishes to be in that respect as earnest, as his abilities
+were strong.
+
+[Illustration: _They sang together._]
+
+Her mother too, in whose mind not one speculative thought of their
+marriage had been raised, by his prospect of riches, was led before
+the end of a week to hope and expect it; and secretly to congratulate
+herself on having gained two such sons-in-law as Edward and
+Willoughby.
+
+Colonel Brandon's partiality for Marianne, which had so
+early been discovered by his friends, now first became perceptible to
+Elinor, when it ceased to be noticed by them. Their attention and wit
+were drawn off to his more fortunate rival; and the raillery which the
+other had incurred before any partiality arose, was removed when his
+feelings began really to call for the ridicule so justly annexed to
+sensibility. Elinor was obliged, though unwillingly, to believe that
+the sentiments which Mrs. Jennings had assigned him for her own
+satisfaction, were now actually excited by her sister; and that
+however a general resemblance of disposition between the parties might
+forward the affection of Mr. Willoughby, an equally striking
+opposition of character was no hindrance to the regard of Colonel
+Brandon. She saw it with concern; for what could a silent man of five
+and thirty hope, when opposed to a very lively one of five and twenty?
+and as she could not even wish him successful, she heartily wished him
+indifferent. She liked him--in spite of his gravity and reserve, she
+beheld in him an object of interest. His manners, though serious, were
+mild; and his reserve appeared rather the result of some oppression of
+spirits than of any natural gloominess of temper. Sir John had dropped
+hints of past injuries and disappointments, which justified her belief
+of his being an unfortunate man, and she regarded him with respect and
+compassion.
+
+Perhaps she pitied and esteemed him the more because he was slighted
+by Willoughby and Marianne, who, prejudiced against him for being
+neither lively nor young, seemed resolved to undervalue his merits.
+
+"Brandon is just the kind of man," said Willoughby one day, when they
+were talking of him together, "whom every body speaks well of, and
+nobody cares about; whom all are delighted to see, and nobody
+remembers to talk to."
+
+"That is exactly what I think of him," cried Marianne.
+
+"Do not boast of it, however," said Elinor, "for it is injustice in
+both of you. He is highly esteemed by all the family at the park, and
+I never see him myself without taking pains to converse with him."
+
+"That he is patronised by _you_," replied Willoughby, "is certainly in
+his favour; but as for the esteem of the others, it is a reproach in
+itself. Who would submit to the indignity of being approved by such a
+woman as Lady Middleton and Mrs. Jennings, that could command the
+indifference of any body else?"
+
+"But perhaps the abuse of such people as yourself and Marianne will
+make amends for the regard of Lady Middleton and her mother. If their
+praise is censure, your censure may be praise, for they are not more
+undiscerning, than you are prejudiced and unjust."
+
+"In defence of your _protÈgÈ_ you can even be saucy."
+
+"My _protÈgÈ_, as you call him, is a sensible man; and sense will
+always have attractions for me. Yes, Marianne, even in a man between
+thirty and forty. He has seen a great deal of the world; has been
+abroad, has read, and has a thinking mind. I have found him capable of
+giving me much information on various subjects; and he has always
+answered my inquiries with readiness of good-breeding and good
+nature."
+
+"That is to say," cried Marianne contemptuously, "he has told you,
+that in the East Indies the climate is hot, and the mosquitoes are
+troublesome."
+
+"He _would_ have told me so, I doubt not, had I made any such
+inquiries, but they happened to be points on which I had been
+previously informed."
+
+"Perhaps," said Willoughby, "his observations may have extended to the
+existence of nabobs, gold mohrs, and palanquins."
+
+"I may venture to say that _his_ observations have stretched much
+further than _your_ candour. But why should you dislike him?"
+
+"I do not dislike him. I consider him, on the contrary, as a very
+respectable man, who has every body's good word, and nobody's notice;
+who, has more money than he can spend, more time than he knows how to
+employ, and two new coats every year."
+
+"Add to which," cried Marianne, "that he has neither genius, taste,
+nor spirit. That his understanding has no brilliancy, his feelings no
+ardour, and his voice no expression."
+
+"You decide on his imperfections so much in the mass," replied Elinor,
+"and so much on the strength of your own imagination, that the
+commendation I am able to give of him is comparatively cold and
+insipid. I can only pronounce him to be a sensible man, well-bred,
+well-informed, of gentle address, and, I believe, possessing an
+amiable heart."
+
+"Miss Dashwood," cried Willoughby, "you are now using me unkindly. You
+are endeavouring to disarm me by reason, and to convince me against my
+will. But it will not do. You shall find me as stubborn as you can be
+artful. I have three unanswerable reasons for disliking Colonel
+Brandon; he threatened me with rain when I wanted it to be fine; he
+has found fault with the hanging of my curricle, and I cannot persuade
+him to buy my brown mare. If it will be any satisfaction to you,
+however, to be told, that I believe his character to be in other
+respects irreproachable, I am ready to confess it. And in return for
+an acknowledgment, which must give me some pain, you cannot deny me
+the privilege of disliking him as much as ever."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Little had Mrs. Dashwood or her daughters imagined when they first
+came into Devonshire, that so many engagements would arise to occupy
+their time as shortly presented themselves, or that they should have
+such frequent invitations and such constant visitors as to leave them
+little leisure for serious employment. Yet such was the case. When
+Marianne was recovered, the schemes of amusement at home and abroad,
+which Sir John had been previously forming, were put into execution.
+The private balls at the park then began; and parties on the water
+were made and accomplished as often as a showery October would allow.
+In every meeting of the kind Willoughby was included; and the ease and
+familiarity which naturally attended these parties were exactly
+calculated to give increasing intimacy to his acquaintance with the
+Dashwoods, to afford him opportunity of witnessing the excellencies of
+Marianne, of marking his animated admiration of her, and of receiving,
+in her behaviour to himself, the most pointed assurance of her
+affection.
+
+Elinor could not be surprised at their attachment. She only wished
+that it were less openly shown; and once or twice did venture to
+suggest the propriety of some self-command to Marianne. But Marianne
+abhorred all concealment where no real disgrace could attend
+unreserve; and to aim at the restraint of sentiments which were not in
+themselves illaudable, appeared to her not merely an unnecessary
+effort, but a disgraceful subjection of reason to common-place and
+mistaken notions. Willoughby thought the same; and their behaviour at
+all times, was an illustration of their opinions.
+
+When he was present she had no eyes for any one else. Every thing he
+did, was right. Every thing he said, was clever. If their evenings at
+the park were concluded with cards, he cheated himself and all the
+rest of the party to get her a good hand. If dancing formed the
+amusement of the night, they were partners for half the time; and when
+obliged to separate for a couple of dances, were careful to stand
+together and scarcely spoke a word to any body else. Such conduct made
+them of course most exceedingly laughed at; but ridicule could not
+shame, and seemed hardly to provoke them.
+
+Mrs. Dashwood entered into all their feelings with a warmth which left
+her no inclination for checking this excessive display of them. To her
+it was but the natural consequence of a strong affection in a young
+and ardent mind.
+
+This was the season of happiness to Marianne. Her heart was devoted to
+Willoughby, and the fond attachment to Norland, which she brought with
+her from Sussex, was more likely to be softened than she had thought
+it possible before, by the charms which his society bestowed on her
+present home.
+
+Elinor's happiness was not so great. Her heart was not so much at
+ease, nor her satisfaction in their amusements so pure. They afforded
+her no companion that could make amends for what she had left behind,
+nor that could teach her to think of Norland with less regret than
+ever. Neither Lady Middleton nor Mrs. Jennings could supply to her the
+conversation she missed; although the latter was an everlasting
+talker, and from the first had regarded her with a kindness which
+ensured her a large share of her discourse. She had already repeated
+her own history to Elinor three or four times; and had Elinor's memory
+been equal to her means of improvement, she might have known very
+early in their acquaintance all the particulars of Mr. Jennings's last
+illness, and what he said to his wife a few minutes before he died.
+Lady Middleton was more agreeable than her mother only in being more
+silent. Elinor needed little observation to perceive that her reserve
+was a mere calmness of manner with which sense had nothing to do.
+Towards her husband and mother she was the same as to them; and
+intimacy was therefore neither to be looked for nor desired. She had
+nothing to say one day that she had not said the day before. Her
+insipidity was invariable, for even her spirits were always the same;
+and though she did not oppose the parties arranged by her husband,
+provided every thing were conducted in style and her two eldest
+children attended her, she never appeared to receive more enjoyment
+from them than she might have experienced in sitting at home; and so
+little did her presence add to the pleasure of the others, by any
+share in their conversation, that they were sometimes only reminded of
+her being amongst them by her solicitude about her troublesome boys.
+
+In Colonel Brandon alone, of all her new acquaintance, did Elinor find
+a person who could in any degree claim the respect of abilities,
+excite the interest of friendship, or give pleasure as a companion.
+Willoughby was out of the question. Her admiration and regard, even
+her sisterly regard, was all his own; but he was a lover; his
+attentions were wholly Marianne's, and a far less agreeable man might
+have been more generally pleasing. Colonel Brandon, unfortunately for
+himself, had no such encouragement to think only of Marianne, and in
+conversing with Elinor he found the greatest consolation for the
+indifference of her sister.
+
+Elinor's compassion for him increased, as she had reason to suspect
+that the misery of disappointed love had already been known to him.
+This suspicion was given by some words which accidentally dropped from
+him one evening at the park, when they were sitting down together by
+mutual consent, while the others were dancing. His eyes were fixed on
+Marianne, and, after a silence of some minutes, he said, with a faint
+smile, "Your sister, I understand, does not approve of second
+attachments."
+
+"No," replied Elinor, "her opinions are all romantic."
+
+"Or rather, as I believe, she considers them impossible to exist."
+
+"I believe she does. But how she contrives it without reflecting on
+the character of her own father, who had himself two wives, I know
+not. A few years however will settle her opinions on the reasonable
+basis of common sense and observation; and then they may be more easy
+to define and to justify than they now are, by any body but herself."
+
+"This will probably be the case," he replied; "and yet there is
+something so amiable in the prejudices of a young mind, that one is
+sorry to see them give way to the reception of more general opinions."
+
+"I cannot agree with you there," said Elinor. "There are
+inconveniences attending such feelings as Marianne's, which all the
+charms of enthusiasm and ignorance of the world cannot atone for. Her
+systems have all the unfortunate tendency of setting propriety at
+nought; and a better acquaintance with the world is what I look
+forward to as her greatest possible advantage."
+
+After a short pause he resumed the conversation by saying--
+
+"Does your sister make no distinction in her objections against a
+second attachment? or is it equally criminal in every body? Are those
+who have been disappointed in their first choice, whether from the
+inconstancy of its object, or the perverseness of circumstances, to be
+equally indifferent during the rest of their lives?"
+
+"Upon my word, I am not acquainted with the minutiÊ of her principles.
+I only know that I never yet heard her admit any instance of a second
+attachment's being pardonable."
+
+"This," said he, "cannot hold; but a change, a total change of
+sentiments--No, no, do not desire it; for when the romantic
+refinements of a young mind are obliged to give way, how frequently
+are they succeeded by such opinions as are but too common, and too
+dangerous! I speak from experience. I once knew a lady who in temper
+and mind greatly resembled your sister, who thought and judged like
+her, but who from an enforced change--from a series of unfortunate
+circumstances--" Here he stopped suddenly; appeared to think that he
+had said too much, and by his countenance gave rise to conjectures,
+which might not otherwise have entered Elinor's head. The lady would
+probably have passed without suspicion, had he not convinced Miss
+Dashwood that what concerned her ought not to escape his lips. As it
+was, it required but a slight effort of fancy to connect his emotion
+with the tender recollection of past regard. Elinor attempted no more.
+But Marianne, in her place, would not have done so little. The whole
+story would have been speedily formed under her active imagination;
+and every thing established in the most melancholy order of disastrous
+love.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+As Elinor and Marianne were walking together the next morning the
+latter communicated a piece of news to her sister, which in spite of
+all that she knew before of Marianne's imprudence and want of thought,
+surprised her by its extravagant testimony of both. Marianne told her,
+with the greatest delight, that Willoughby had given her a horse, one
+that he had bred himself on his estate in Somersetshire, and which was
+exactly calculated to carry a woman. Without considering that it was
+not in her mother's plan to keep any horse, that if she were to alter
+her resolution in favour of this gift, she must buy another for the
+servant, and keep a servant to ride it, and after all, build a stable
+to receive them, she had accepted the present without hesitation, and
+told her sister of it in raptures.
+
+"He intends to send his groom into Somersetshire immediately for it,"
+she added, "and when it arrives we will ride every day. You shall
+share its use with me. Imagine to yourself, my dear Elinor, the
+delight of a gallop on some of these downs."
+
+Most unwilling was she to awaken from such a dream of felicity to
+comprehend all the unhappy truths which attended the affair; and for
+some time she refused to submit to them. As to an additional servant,
+the expense would be a trifle; Mamma she was sure would never object
+to it; and any horse would do for _him_; he might always get one at
+the park; as to a stable, the merest shed would be sufficient. Elinor
+then ventured to doubt the propriety of her receiving such a present
+from a man so little, or at least so lately known to her. This was too
+much.
+
+"You are mistaken, Elinor," said she warmly, "in supposing I know very
+little of Willoughby. I have not known him long indeed, but I am much
+better acquainted with him, than I am with any other creature in the
+world, except yourself and mama. It is not time or opportunity that is
+to determine intimacy; it is disposition alone. Seven years would be
+insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven
+days are more than enough for others. I should hold myself guilty of
+greater impropriety in accepting a horse from my brother, than from
+Willoughby. Of John I know very little, though we have lived together
+for years; but of Willoughby my judgment has long been formed."
+
+Elinor thought it wisest to touch that point no more. She knew her
+sister's temper. Opposition on so tender a subject would only attach
+her the more to her own opinion. But by an appeal to her affection for
+her mother, by representing the inconveniences which that indulgent
+mother must draw on herself, if (as would probably be the case) she
+consented to this increase of establishment, Marianne was shortly
+subdued; and she promised not to tempt her mother to such imprudent
+kindness by mentioning the offer, and to tell Willoughby when she saw
+him next, that it must be declined.
+
+She was faithful to her word; and when Willoughby called at the
+cottage, the same day, Elinor heard her express her disappointment to
+him in a low voice, on being obliged to forego the acceptance of his
+present. The reasons for this alteration were at the same time
+related, and they were such as to make further entreaty on his side
+impossible. His concern however was very apparent; and after
+expressing it with earnestness, he added, in the same low voice, "But,
+Marianne, the horse is still yours, though you cannot use it now. I
+shall keep it only till you can claim it. When you leave Barton to
+form your own establishment in a more lasting home, Queen Mab shall
+receive you."
+
+This was all overheard by Miss Dashwood; and in the whole of the
+sentence, in his manner of pronouncing it, and in his addressing her
+sister by her Christian name alone, she instantly saw an intimacy so
+decided, a meaning so direct, as marked a perfect agreement between
+them. From that moment she doubted not of their being engaged to each
+other; and the belief of it created no other surprise than that she,
+or any of their friends, should be left by tempers so frank, to
+discover it by accident.
+
+Margaret related something to her the next day, which placed this
+matter in a still clearer light. Willoughby had spent the preceding
+evening with them, and Margaret, by being left some time in the
+parlour with only him and Marianne, had had opportunity for
+observations, which, with a most important face, she communicated to
+her eldest sister, when they were next by themselves.
+
+"Oh, Elinor!" she cried, "I have such a secret to tell you about
+Marianne. I am sure she will be married to Mr. Willoughby very soon."
+
+"You have said so," replied Elinor, "almost every day since they first
+met on High-church Down; and they had not known each other a week, I
+believe, before you were certain that Marianne wore his picture round
+her neck; but it turned out to be only the miniature of our great
+uncle."
+
+"But indeed this is quite another thing. I am sure they will be
+married very soon, for he has got a lock of her hair."
+
+"Take care, Margaret. It may be only the hair of some great uncle of
+_his_."
+
+"But, indeed, Elinor, it is Marianne's. I am almost sure it is, for I
+saw him cut it off. Last night after tea, when you and mama went out
+of the room, they were whispering and talking together as fast as
+could be, and he seemed to be begging something of her, and presently
+he took up her scissors and cut off a long lock of her hair, for it
+was all tumbled down her back; and he kissed it, and folded it up in a
+piece of white paper; and put it into his pocket-book."
+
+For such particulars, stated on such authority, Elinor could not
+withhold her credit; nor was she disposed to it, for the circumstance
+was in perfect unison with what she had heard and seen herself.
+
+Margaret's sagacity was not always displayed in a way so satisfactory
+to her sister. When Mrs. Jennings attacked her one evening at the
+park, to give the name of the young man who was Elinor's particular
+favourite, which had been long a matter of great curiosity to her,
+Margaret answered by looking at her sister, and saying, "I must not
+tell, may I, Elinor?"
+
+This of course made every body laugh; and Elinor tried to laugh too.
+But the effort was painful. She was convinced that Margaret had fixed
+on a person whose name she could not bear with composure to become a
+standing joke with Mrs. Jennings.
+
+[Illustration: _He cut off a long lock of her hair._]
+
+Marianne felt for her most sincerely; but she did more harm than good
+to the cause, by turning very red and saying in an angry manner to
+Margaret--
+
+"Remember that whatever your conjectures may be, you have no right to
+repeat them."
+
+"I never had any conjectures about it," replied Margaret; "it was you
+who told me of it yourself."
+
+This increased the mirth of the company, and Margaret was eagerly
+pressed to say something more.
+
+"Oh! pray, Miss Margaret, let us know all about it," said Mrs.
+Jennings. "What is the gentleman's name?"
+
+"I must not tell, ma'am. But I know very well what it is; and I know
+where he is too."
+
+"Yes, yes, we can guess where he is; at his own house at Norland to be
+sure. He is the curate of the parish I dare say."
+
+"No, _that_ he is not. He is of no profession at all."
+
+"Margaret," said Marianne with great warmth, "you know that all this
+is an invention of your own, and that there is no such person in
+existence."
+
+"Well, then, he is lately dead, Marianne, for I am sure there was such
+a man once, and his name begins with an F."
+
+Most grateful did Elinor feel to Lady Middleton for observing, at this
+moment, "that it rained very hard," though she believed the
+interruption to proceed less from any attention to her, than from her
+ladyship's great dislike of all such inelegant subjects of raillery as
+delighted her husband and mother. The idea however started by her, was
+immediately pursued by Colonel Brandon, who was on every occasion
+mindful of the feelings of others; and much was said on the subject of
+rain by both of them. Willoughby opened the piano-forte, and asked
+Marianne to sit down to it; and thus amidst the various endeavours of
+different people to quit the topic, it fell to the ground. But not so
+easily did Elinor recover from the alarm into which it had thrown her.
+
+A party was formed this evening for going on the following day to see
+a very fine place about twelve miles from Barton, belonging to a
+brother-in-law of Colonel Brandon, without whose interest it could not
+be seen, as the proprietor, who was then abroad, had left strict
+orders on that head. The grounds were declared to be highly beautiful,
+and Sir John, who was particularly warm in their praise, might be
+allowed to be a tolerable judge, for he had formed parties to visit
+them, at least, twice every summer for the last ten years. They
+contained a noble piece of water--a sail on which was to a form a
+great part of the morning's amusement; cold provisions were to be
+taken, open carriages only to be employed, and every thing conducted
+in the usual style of a complete party of pleasure.
+
+To some few of the company it appeared rather a bold undertaking,
+considering the time of year, and that it had rained every day for the
+last fortnight; and Mrs. Dashwood, who had already a cold, was
+persuaded by Elinor to stay at home.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+Their intended excursion to Whitwell turned out very different from
+what Elinor had expected. She was prepared to be wet through,
+fatigued, and frightened; but the event was still more unfortunate,
+for they did not go at all.
+
+By ten o'clock the whole party was assembled at the park, where they
+were to breakfast. The morning was rather favourable, though it had
+rained all night, as the clouds were then dispersing across the sky,
+and the sun frequently appeared. They were all in high spirits and
+good humour, eager to be happy, and determined to submit to the
+greatest inconveniences and hardships rather than be otherwise.
+
+While they were at breakfast the letters were brought in. Among the
+rest there was one for Colonel Brandon:--he took it, looked at the
+direction, changed colour, and immediately left the room.
+
+"What is the matter with Brandon?" said Sir John.
+
+Nobody could tell.
+
+"I hope he has had no bad news," said Lady Middleton. "It must be
+something extraordinary that could make Colonel Brandon leave my
+breakfast table so suddenly."
+
+In about five minutes he returned.
+
+"No bad news, Colonel, I hope;" said Mrs. Jennings, as soon as he
+entered the room.
+
+"None at all, ma'am, I thank you."
+
+"Was it from Avignon? I hope it is not to say that your sister is
+worse."
+
+"No, ma'am. It came from town, and is merely a letter of business."
+
+"But how came the hand to discompose you so much, if it was only a
+letter of business? Come, come, this won't do, Colonel; so let us hear
+the truth of it."
+
+"My dear madam," said Lady Middleton, "recollect what you are saying."
+
+"Perhaps it is to tell you that your cousin Fanny is married?" said
+Mrs. Jennings, without attending to her daughter's reproof.
+
+"No, indeed, it is not."
+
+"Well, then, I know who it is from, Colonel. And I hope she is well."
+
+"Whom do you mean, ma'am?" said he, colouring a little.
+
+"Oh! you know who I mean."
+
+"I am particularly sorry, ma'am," said he, addressing Lady Middleton,
+"that I should receive this letter today, for it is on business which
+requires my immediate attendance in town."
+
+"In town!" cried Mrs. Jennings. "What can you have to do in town at
+this time of year?"
+
+"My own loss is great," he continued, "in being obliged to leave so
+agreeable a party; but I am the more concerned, as I fear my presence
+is necessary to gain your admittance at Whitwell."
+
+What a blow upon them all was this!
+
+"But if you write a note to the housekeeper, Mr. Brandon," said
+Marianne, eagerly, "will it not be sufficient?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"We must go," said Sir John. "It shall not be put off when we are so
+near it. You cannot go to town till tomorrow, Brandon, that is all."
+
+"I wish it could be so easily settled. But it is not in my power to
+delay my journey for one day!"
+
+"If you would but let us know what your business is," said Mrs.
+Jennings, "we might see whether it could be put off or not."
+
+"You would not be six hours later," said Willoughby, "if you were to
+defer your journey till our return."
+
+"I cannot afford to lose _one_ hour."
+
+Elinor then heard Willoughby say, in a low voice to Marianne, "There
+are some people who cannot bear a party of pleasure. Brandon is one of
+them. He was afraid of catching cold I dare say, and invented this
+trick for getting out of it. I would lay fifty guineas the letter was
+of his own writing."
+
+"I have no doubt of it," replied Marianne.
+
+"There is no persuading you to change your mind, Brandon, I know of
+old," said Sir John, "when once you are determined on anything. But,
+however, I hope you will think better of it. Consider, here are the
+two Miss Careys come over from Newton, the three Miss Dashwoods walked
+up from the cottage, and Mr. Willoughby got up two hours before his
+usual time, on purpose to go to Whitwell."
+
+Colonel Brandon again repeated his sorrow at being the cause of
+disappointing the party; but at the same time declared it to be
+unavoidable.
+
+"Well, then, when will you come back again?"
+
+"I hope we shall see you at Barton," added her ladyship, "as soon as
+you can conveniently leave town; and we must put off the party to
+Whitwell till you return."
+
+"You are very obliging. But it is so uncertain, when I may have it in
+my power to return, that I dare not engage for it at all."
+
+"Oh! he must and shall come back," cried Sir John. "If he is not here
+by the end of the week, I shall go after him."
+
+"Ay, so do, Sir John," cried Mrs. Jennings, "and then perhaps you may
+find out what his business is."
+
+"I do not want to pry into other men's concerns. I suppose it is
+something he is ashamed of."
+
+Colonel Brandon's horses were announced.
+
+"You do not go to town on horseback, do you?" added Sir John.
+
+"No. Only to Honiton. I shall then go post."
+
+"Well, as you are resolved to go, I wish you a good journey. But you
+had better change your mind."
+
+"I assure you it is not in my power."
+
+He then took leave of the whole party.
+
+"Is there no chance of my seeing you and your sisters in town this
+winter, Miss Dashwood?"
+
+"I am afraid, none at all."
+
+"Then I must bid you farewell for a longer time than I should wish to
+do."
+
+To Marianne, he merely bowed and said nothing.
+
+"Come Colonel," said Mrs. Jennings, "before you go, do let us know
+what you are going about."
+
+He wished her a good morning, and, attended by Sir John, left the
+room.
+
+The complaints and lamentations which politeness had hitherto
+restrained, now burst forth universally; and they all agreed again and
+again how provoking it was to be so disappointed.
+
+"I can guess what his business is, however," said Mrs. Jennings
+exultingly.
+
+"Can you, ma'am?" said almost every body.
+
+"Yes; it is about Miss Williams, I am sure."
+
+"And who is Miss Williams?" asked Marianne.
+
+"What! do not you know who Miss Williams is? I am sure you must have
+heard of her before. She is a relation of the Colonel's, my dear; a
+very near relation. We will not say how near, for fear of shocking the
+young ladies." Then, lowering her voice a little, she said to Elinor,
+"She is his natural daughter."
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"Oh, yes; and as like him as she can stare. I dare say the Colonel
+will leave her all his fortune."
+
+When Sir John returned, he joined most heartily in the general regret
+on so unfortunate an event; concluding however by observing, that as
+they were all got together, they must do something by way of being
+happy; and after some consultation it was agreed, that although
+happiness could only be enjoyed at Whitwell, they might procure a
+tolerable composure of mind by driving about the country. The
+carriages were then ordered; Willoughby's was first, and Marianne
+never looked happier than when she got into it. He drove through the
+park very fast, and they were soon out of sight; and nothing more of
+them was seen till their return, which did not happen till after the
+return of all the rest. They both seemed delighted with their drive;
+but said only in general terms that they had kept in the lanes, while
+the others went on the downs.
+
+It was settled that there should be a dance in the evening, and that
+every body should be extremely merry all day long. Some more of the
+Careys came to dinner, and they had the pleasure of sitting down
+nearly twenty to table, which Sir John observed with great
+contentment. Willoughby took his usual place between the two elder
+Miss Dashwoods. Mrs. Jennings sat on Elinor's right hand; and they had
+not been long seated, before she leant behind her and Willoughby, and
+said to Marianne, loud enough for them both to hear, "I have found you
+out in spite of all your tricks. I know where you spent the morning."
+
+Marianne coloured, and replied very hastily, "Where, pray?"
+
+"Did not you know," said Willoughby, "that we had been out in my
+curricle?"
+
+"Yes, yes, Mr. Impudence, I know that very well, and I was determined
+to find out _where_ you had been to. I hope you like your house, Miss
+Marianne. It is a very large one, I know; and when I come to see you,
+I hope you will have new-furnished it, for it wanted it very much when
+I was there six years ago."
+
+Marianne turned away in great confusion. Mrs. Jennings laughed
+heartily; and Elinor found that in her resolution to know where they
+had been, she had actually made her own woman enquire of Mr.
+Willoughby's groom; and that she had by that method been informed that
+they had gone to Allenham, and spent a considerable time there in
+walking about the garden and going all over the house.
+
+Elinor could hardly believe this to be true, as it seemed very
+unlikely that Willoughby should propose, or Marianne consent, to enter
+the house while Mrs. Smith was in it, with whom Marianne had not the
+smallest acquaintance.
+
+As soon as they left the dining-room, Elinor enquired of her about it;
+and great was her surprise when she found that every circumstance
+related by Mrs. Jennings was perfectly true. Marianne was quite angry
+with her for doubting it.
+
+"Why should you imagine, Elinor, that we did not go there, or that we
+did not see the house? Is not it what you have often wished to do
+yourself?"
+
+"Yes, Marianne, but I would not go while Mrs. Smith was there, and
+with no other companion than Mr. Willoughby."
+
+[Illustration: "_I have found you out in spite of all your tricks._"]
+
+"Mr. Willoughby however is the only person who can have a right to
+show that house; and as he went in an open carriage, it was
+impossible to have any other companion. I never spent a pleasanter
+morning in my life."
+
+"I am afraid," replied Elinor, "that the pleasantness of an employment
+does not always evince its propriety."
+
+"On the contrary, nothing can be a stronger proof of it, Elinor; for
+if there had been any real impropriety in what I did, I should have
+been sensible of it at the time, for we always know when we are acting
+wrong, and with such a conviction I could have had no pleasure."
+
+"But, my dear Marianne, as it has already exposed you to some very
+impertinent remarks, do you not now begin to doubt the discretion of
+your own conduct?"
+
+"If the impertinent remarks of Mrs. Jennings are to be the proof of
+impropriety in conduct, we are all offending every moment of our
+lives. I value not her censure any more than I should do her
+commendation. I am not sensible of having done anything wrong in
+walking over Mrs. Smith's grounds, or in seeing her house. They will
+one day be Mr. Willoughby's, and--"
+
+"If they were one day to be your own, Marianne, you would not be
+justified in what you have done."
+
+She blushed at this hint; but it was even visibly gratifying to her;
+and after a ten minutes' interval of earnest thought, she came to her
+sister again, and said with great good humour, "Perhaps, Elinor, it
+_was_ rather ill-judged in me to go to Allenham; but Mr. Willoughby
+wanted particularly to show me the place; and it is a charming house,
+I assure you. There is one remarkably pretty sitting room up stairs;
+of a nice comfortable size for constant use, and with modern furniture
+it would be delightful. It is a corner room, and has windows on two
+sides. On one side you look across the bowling-green, behind the
+house, to a beautiful hanging wood, and on the other you have a view
+of the church and village, and, beyond them, of those fine bold hills
+that we have so often admired. I did not see it to advantage, for
+nothing could be more forlorn than the furniture; but if it were newly
+fitted up--a couple of hundred pounds, Willoughby says, would make it
+one of the pleasantest summer-rooms in England."
+
+Could Elinor have listened to her without interruption from the
+others, she would have described every room in the house with equal
+delight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+The sudden termination of Colonel Brandon's visit at the park, with
+his steadiness in concealing its cause, filled the mind, and raised
+the wonder of Mrs. Jennings for two or three days; she was a great
+wonderer, as every one must be who takes a very lively interest in all
+the comings and goings of all their acquaintance. She wondered, with
+little intermission what could be the reason of it; was sure there
+must be some bad news, and thought over every kind of distress that
+could have befallen him, with a fixed determination that he should not
+escape them all.
+
+"Something very melancholy must be the matter, I am sure," said she.
+"I could see it in his face. Poor man! I am afraid his circumstances
+may be bad. The estate at Delaford was never reckoned more than two
+thousand a year, and his brother left everything sadly involved. I do
+think he must have been sent for about money matters, for what else
+can it be? I wonder whether it is so. I would give anything to know
+the truth of it. Perhaps it is about Miss Williams and, by the bye, I
+dare say it is, because he looked so conscious when I mentioned her.
+May be she is ill in town; nothing in the world more likely, for I
+have a notion she is always rather sickly. I would lay any wager it is
+about Miss Williams. It is not so very likely he should be distressed
+in his circumstances _now_, for he is a very prudent man, and to be
+sure must have cleared the estate by this time. I wonder what it can
+be! May be his sister is worse at Avignon, and has sent for him over.
+His setting off in such a hurry seems very like it. Well, I wish him
+out of all his trouble with all my heart, and a good wife into the
+bargain."
+
+So wondered, so talked Mrs. Jennings. Her opinion varying with every
+fresh conjecture, and all seeming equally probable as they arose.
+Elinor, though she felt really interested in the welfare of Colonel
+Brandon, could not bestow all the wonder on his going so suddenly
+away, which Mrs. Jennings was desirous of her feeling; for besides
+that the circumstance did not in her opinion justify such lasting
+amazement or variety of speculation, her wonder was otherwise
+disposed of. It was engrossed by the extraordinary silence of her
+sister and Willoughby on the subject, which they must know to be
+peculiarly interesting to them all. As this silence continued, every
+day made it appear more strange and more incompatible with the
+disposition of both. Why they should not openly acknowledge to her
+mother and herself, what their constant behaviour to each other
+declared to have taken place, Elinor could not imagine.
+
+She could easily conceive that marriage might not be immediately in
+their power; for though Willoughby was independent, there was no
+reason to believe him rich. His estate had been rated by Sir John at
+about six or seven hundred a year; but he lived at an expense to which
+that income could hardly be equal, and he had himself often complained
+of his poverty. But for this strange kind of secrecy maintained by
+them relative to their engagement, which in fact concealed nothing at
+all, she could not account; and it was so wholly contradictory to
+their general opinions and practice, that a doubt sometimes entered
+her mind of their being really engaged, and this doubt was enough to
+prevent her making any inquiry of Marianne.
+
+Nothing could be more expressive of attachment to them all, than
+Willoughby's behaviour. To Marianne it had all the distinguishing
+tenderness which a lover's heart could give, and to the rest of the
+family it was the affectionate attention of a son and a brother. The
+cottage seemed to be considered and loved by him as his home; many
+more of his hours were spent there than at Allenham; and if no general
+engagement collected them at the park, the exercise which called him
+out in the morning was almost certain of ending there, where the rest
+of the day was spent by himself at the side of Marianne, and by his
+favourite pointer at her feet.
+
+One evening in particular, about a week after Colonel Brandon left the
+country, his heart seemed more than usually open to every feeling of
+attachment to the objects around him; and on Mrs. Dashwood's happening
+to mention her design of improving the cottage in the spring, he
+warmly opposed every alteration of a place which affection had
+established as perfect with him.
+
+"What!" he exclaimed, "Improve this dear cottage! No. _That_ I will
+never consent to. Not a stone must be added to its walls, not an inch
+to its size, if my feelings are regarded."
+
+"Do not be alarmed," said Miss Dashwood, "nothing of the kind will be
+done; for my mother will never have money enough to attempt it."
+
+"I am heartily glad of it," he cried. "May she always be poor, if she
+can employ her riches no better."
+
+"Thank you, Willoughby. But you may be assured that I would not
+sacrifice one sentiment of local attachment of yours, or of any one
+whom I loved, for all the improvements in the world. Depend upon it
+that whatever unemployed sum may remain, when I make up my accounts in
+the spring, I would even rather lay it uselessly by than dispose of it
+in a manner so painful to you. But are you really so attached to this
+place as to see no defect in it?"
+
+"I am," said he. "To me it is faultless. Nay, more, I consider it as
+the only form of building in which happiness is attainable, and were I
+rich enough I would instantly pull Combe down, and build it up again
+in the exact plan of this cottage."
+
+"With dark narrow stairs and a kitchen that smokes, I suppose," said
+Elinor.
+
+"Yes," cried he in the same eager tone, "with all and every thing
+belonging to it--in no one convenience or inconvenience about it,
+should the least variation be perceptible. Then, and then only, under
+such a roof, I might perhaps be as happy at Combe as I have been at
+Barton."
+
+"I flatter myself," replied Elinor, "that even under the disadvantage
+of better rooms and a broader staircase, you will hereafter find your
+own house as faultless as you now do this."
+
+"There certainly are circumstances," said Willoughby, "which might
+greatly endear it to me; but this place will always have one claim of
+my affection, which no other can possibly share."
+
+Mrs. Dashwood looked with pleasure at Marianne, whose fine eyes were
+fixed so expressively on Willoughby, as plainly denoted how well she
+understood him.
+
+"How often did I wish," added he, "when I was at Allenham this time
+twelvemonth, that Barton cottage were inhabited! I never passed within
+view of it without admiring its situation, and grieving that no one
+should live in it. How little did I then think that the very first
+news I should hear from Mrs. Smith, when I next came into the country,
+would be that Barton cottage was taken: and I felt an immediate
+satisfaction and interest in the event, which nothing but a kind of
+prescience of what happiness I should experience from it, can account
+for. Must it not have been so, Marianne?" speaking to her in a lowered
+voice. Then continuing his former tone, he said, "And yet this house
+you would spoil, Mrs. Dashwood? You would rob it of its simplicity by
+imaginary improvement! and this dear parlour in which our acquaintance
+first began, and in which so many happy hours have been since spent by
+us together, you would degrade to the condition of a common entrance,
+and every body would be eager to pass through the room which has
+hitherto contained within itself more real accommodation and comfort
+than any other apartment of the handsomest dimensions in the world
+could possibly afford."
+
+Mrs. Dashwood again assured him that no alteration of the kind should
+be attempted.
+
+"You are a good woman," he warmly replied. "Your promise makes me
+easy. Extend it a little farther, and it will make me happy. Tell me
+that not only your house will remain the same, but that I shall ever
+find you and yours as unchanged as your dwelling; and that you will
+always consider me with the kindness which has made everything
+belonging to you so dear to me."
+
+The promise was readily given, and Willoughby's behaviour during the
+whole of the evening declared at once his affection and happiness.
+
+"Shall we see you tomorrow to dinner?" said Mrs. Dashwood, when he was
+leaving them. "I do not ask you to come in the morning, for we must
+walk to the park, to call on Lady Middleton."
+
+He engaged to be with them by four o'clock.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+Mrs. Dashwood's visit to Lady Middleton took place the next day, and
+two of her daughters went with her; but Marianne excused herself from
+being of the party, under some trifling pretext of employment; and her
+mother, who concluded that a promise had been made by Willoughby the
+night before of calling on her while they were absent, was perfectly
+satisfied with her remaining at home.
+
+On their return from the park they found Willoughby's curricle and
+servant in waiting at the cottage, and Mrs. Dashwood was convinced
+that her conjecture had been just. So far it was all as she had
+foreseen; but on entering the house she beheld what no foresight had
+taught her to expect. They were no sooner in the passage than Marianne
+came hastily out of the parlour apparently in violent affliction, with
+her handkerchief at her eyes; and without noticing them ran up stairs.
+Surprised and alarmed they proceeded directly into the room she had
+just quitted, where they found only Willoughby, who was leaning
+against the mantelpiece with his back towards them. He turned round
+on their coming in, and his countenance showed that he strongly
+partook of the emotion which overpowered Marianne.
+
+"Is anything the matter with her?" cried Mrs. Dashwood as she
+entered:--"is she ill?"
+
+"I hope not," he replied, trying to look cheerful; and with a forced
+smile presently added, "It is I who may rather expect to be ill--for I
+am now suffering under a very heavy disappointment!"
+
+"Disappointment?"
+
+"Yes, for I am unable to keep my engagement with you. Mrs. Smith has
+this morning exercised the privilege of riches upon a poor dependent
+cousin, by sending me on business to London. I have just received my
+dispatches, and taken my farewell of Allenham; and by way of
+exhilaration I am now come to take my farewell of you."
+
+"To London!--and are you going this morning?"
+
+"Almost this moment."
+
+[Illustration: _Apparently in violent affliction._]
+
+"This is very unfortunate. But Mrs. Smith must be obliged, and her
+business will not detain you from us long I hope."
+
+He coloured as he replied, "You are very kind, but I have no idea of
+returning into Devonshire immediately. My visits to Mrs. Smith are
+never repeated within the twelvemonth."
+
+"And is Mrs. Smith your only friend? Is Allenham the only house in the
+neighbourhood to which you will be welcome? For shame, Willoughby, can
+you wait for an invitation here?"
+
+His colour increased; and with his eyes fixed on the ground he only
+replied, "You are too good."
+
+Mrs. Dashwood looked at Elinor with surprise. Elinor felt equal
+amazement. For a few moments every one was silent. Mrs. Dashwood first
+spoke.
+
+"I have only to add, my dear Willoughby, that at Barton cottage you
+will always be welcome; for I will not press you to return here
+immediately, because you only can judge how far _that_ might be
+pleasing to Mrs. Smith; and on this head I shall be no more disposed
+to question your judgment than to doubt your inclination."
+
+"My engagements at present," replied Willoughby, confusedly, "are of
+such a nature--that--I dare not flatter myself--"
+
+He stopped. Mrs. Dashwood was too much astonished to speak, and
+another pause succeeded. This was broken by Willoughby, who said with
+a faint smile, "It is folly to linger in this manner. I will not
+torment myself any longer by remaining among friends whose society it
+is impossible for me now to enjoy."
+
+He then hastily took leave of them all and left the room. They saw him
+step into his carriage, and in a minute it was out of sight.
+
+Mrs. Dashwood felt too much for speech, and instantly quitted the
+parlour to give way in solitude to the concern and alarm which this
+sudden departure occasioned.
+
+Elinor's uneasiness was at least equal to her mother's. She thought of
+what had just passed with anxiety and distrust. Willoughby's behaviour
+in taking leave of them, his embarrassment, and affectation of
+cheerfulness, and, above all, his unwillingness to accept her mother's
+invitation--a backwardness so unlike a lover, so unlike
+himself--greatly disturbed her. One moment she feared that no serious
+design had ever been formed on his side; and the next that some
+unfortunate quarrel had taken place between him and her sister. The
+distress in which Marianne had quitted the room was such as a serious
+quarrel could most reasonably account for, though when she considered
+what Marianne's love for him was, a quarrel seemed almost impossible.
+
+But whatever might be the particulars of their separation, her
+sister's affliction was indubitable; and she thought with the
+tenderest compassion of that violent sorrow which Marianne was in all
+probability not merely giving way to as a relief, but feeding and
+encouraging as a duty.
+
+In about half an hour her mother returned, and though her eyes were
+red, her countenance was not uncheerful.
+
+"Our dear Willoughby is now some miles from Barton, Elinor," said she,
+as she sat down to work, "and with how heavy a heart does he travel?"
+
+"It is all very strange. So suddenly to be gone! It seems but the work
+of a moment. And last night he was with us so happy, so cheerful, so
+affectionate? And now, after only ten minutes notice,--gone too
+without intending to return! Something more than what he owned to us
+must have happened. He did not speak, he did not behave like himself.
+_You_ must have seen the difference as well as I. What can it be? Can
+they have quarrelled? Why else should he have shown such unwillingness
+to accept your invitation here?"
+
+"It was not inclination that he wanted, Elinor; I could plainly see
+_that._ He had not the power of accepting it. I have thought it all
+over I assure you, and I can perfectly account for every thing that at
+first seemed strange to me as well as to you."
+
+"Can you, indeed!"
+
+"Yes. I have explained it to myself in the most satisfactory way; but
+you, Elinor, who love to doubt where you can--it will not satisfy
+_you_, I know; but you shall not talk _me_ out of my trust in it. I am
+persuaded that Mrs. Smith suspects his regard for Marianne,
+disapproves of it, (perhaps because she has other views for him,) and
+on that account is eager to get him away; and that the business which
+she sends him off to transact is invented as an excuse to dismiss
+him. This is what I believe to have happened. He is, moreover, aware
+that she _does_ disapprove the connection, he dares not therefore at
+present confess to her his engagement with Marianne, and he feels
+himself obliged, from his dependent situation, to give into her
+schemes, and absent himself from Devonshire for a while. You will tell
+me, I know, that this may or may _not_ have happened; but I will
+listen to no cavil, unless you can point out any other method of
+understanding the affair as satisfactory at this. And now, Elinor,
+what have you to say?"
+
+"Nothing, for you have anticipated my answer."
+
+"Then you would have told me, that it might or might not have
+happened. Oh, Elinor, how incomprehensible are your feelings! You had
+rather take evil upon credit than good. You had rather look out for
+misery for Marianne, and guilt for poor Willoughby, than an apology
+for the latter. You are resolved to think him blamable, because he
+took leave of us with less affection than his usual behaviour has
+shown. And is no allowance to be made for inadvertence, or for spirits
+depressed by recent disappointment? Are no probabilities to be
+accepted, merely because they are not certainties? Is nothing due to
+the man whom we have all such reason to love, and no reason in the
+world to think ill of?--to the possibility of motives unanswerable in
+themselves, though unavoidably secret for a while? And, after all,
+what is it you suspect him of?"
+
+"I can hardly tell myself. But suspicion of something unpleasant is
+the inevitable consequence of such an alteration as we just witnessed
+in him. There is great truth, however, in what you have now urged of
+the allowances which ought to be made for him, and it is my wish to be
+candid in my judgment of every body. Willoughby may undoubtedly have
+very sufficient reasons for his conduct, and I will hope that he has.
+But it would have been more like Willoughby to acknowledge them at
+once. Secrecy may be advisable; but still I cannot help wondering at
+its being practiced by him."
+
+"Do not blame him, however, for departing from his character, where
+the deviation is necessary. But you really do admit the justice of
+what I have said in his defence?--I am happy--and he is acquitted."
+
+"Not entirely. It may be proper to conceal their engagement (if they
+_are_ engaged) from Mrs. Smith; and if that is the case, it must be
+highly expedient for Willoughby to be but little in Devonshire at
+present. But this is no excuse for their concealing it from us."
+
+"Concealing it from us! my dear child, do you accuse Willoughby and
+Marianne of concealment? This is strange indeed, when your eyes have
+been reproaching them every day for incautiousness."
+
+"I want no proof of their affection," said Elinor; "but of their
+engagement I do."
+
+"I am perfectly satisfied of both."
+
+"Yet not a syllable has been said to you on the subject, by either of
+them."
+
+"I have not wanted syllables where actions have spoken so plainly. Has
+not his behaviour to Marianne and to all of us, for at least the last
+fortnight, declared that he loved and considered her as his future
+wife, and that he felt for us the attachment of the nearest relation?
+Have we not perfectly understood each other? Has not my consent been
+daily asked by his looks, his manner, his attentive and affectionate
+respect? My Elinor, is it possible to doubt their engagement? How
+could such a thought occur to you? How is it to be supposed that
+Willoughby, persuaded as he must be of your sister's love, should
+leave her, and leave her perhaps for months, without telling her of
+his affection,--that they should part without a mutual exchange of
+confidence?"
+
+"I confess," replied Elinor, "that every circumstance except _one_ is
+in favour of their engagement; but that _one_ is the total silence of
+both on the subject, and with me it almost outweighs every other."
+
+"How strange this is! You must think wretchedly indeed of Willoughby,
+if, after all that has openly passed between them, you can doubt the
+nature of the terms on which they are together. Has he been acting a
+part in his behaviour to your sister all this time? Do you suppose him
+really indifferent to her?"
+
+"No, I cannot think that. He must and does love her I am sure."
+
+"But with a strange kind of tenderness, if he can leave her with such
+indifference, such carelessness of the future, as you attribute to
+him."
+
+"You must remember, my dear mother, that I have never considered this
+matter as certain. I have had my doubts, I confess; but they are
+fainter than they were, and they may soon be entirely done away. If we
+find they correspond, every fear of mine will be removed."
+
+"A mighty concession indeed! If you were to see them at the altar, you
+would suppose they were going to be married. Ungracious girl! But I
+require no such proof. Nothing in my opinion has ever passed to
+justify doubt; no secrecy has been attempted; all has been uniformly
+open and unreserved. You cannot doubt your sister's wishes. It must be
+Willoughby therefore whom you suspect. But why? Is he not a man of
+honour and feeling? Has there been any inconsistency on his side to
+create alarm? can he be deceitful?"
+
+"I hope not, I believe not," cried Elinor. "I love Willoughby,
+sincerely love him; and suspicion of his integrity cannot be more
+painful to yourself than to me. It has been involuntary, and I will
+not encourage it. I was startled, I confess, by the alteration in his
+manners this morning; he did not speak like himself, and did not
+return your kindness with any cordiality. But all this may be
+explained by such a situation of his affairs as you have supposed. He
+had just parted from my sister, had seen her leave him in the greatest
+affliction; and if he felt obliged, from a fear of offending Mrs.
+Smith, to resist the temptation of returning here soon, and yet aware
+that by declining your invitation, by saying that he was going away
+for some time, he should seem to act an ungenerous, a suspicious part
+by our family, he might well be embarrassed and disturbed. In such a
+case, a plain and open avowal of his difficulties would have been more
+to his honour I think, as well as more consistent with his general
+character;--but I will not raise objections against any one's conduct
+on so illiberal a foundation, as a difference in judgment from myself,
+or a deviation from what I may think right and consistent."
+
+"You speak very properly. Willoughby certainly does not deserve to be
+suspected. Though _we_ have not known him long, he is no stranger in
+this part of the world; and who has ever spoken to his disadvantage?
+Had he been in a situation to act independently and marry immediately,
+it might have been odd that he should leave us without acknowledging
+everything to me at once: but this is not the case. It is an
+engagement in some respects not prosperously begun, for their marriage
+must be at a very uncertain distance; and even secrecy, as far as it
+can be observed, may now be very advisable."
+
+They were interrupted by the entrance of Margaret; and Elinor was then
+at liberty to think over the representations of her mother, to
+acknowledge the probability of many, and hope for the justice of all.
+
+They saw nothing of Marianne till dinner time, when she entered the
+room and took her place at the table without saying a word. Her eyes
+were red and swollen; and it seemed as if her tears were even then
+restrained with difficulty. She avoided the looks of them all, could
+neither eat nor speak, and after some time, on her mother's silently
+pressing her hand with tender compassion, her small degree of
+fortitude was quite overcome, she burst into tears and left the room.
+
+This violent oppression of spirits continued the whole evening. She
+was without any power, because she was without any desire of command
+over herself. The slightest mention of anything relative to Willoughby
+overpowered her in an instant; and though her family were most
+anxiously attentive to her comfort, it was impossible for them, if
+they spoke at all, to keep clear of every subject which her feelings
+connected with him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+Marianne would have thought herself very inexcusable had she been able
+to sleep at all the first night after parting from Willoughby. She
+would have been ashamed to look her family in the face the next
+morning, had she not risen from her bed in more need of repose than
+when she lay down in it. But the feelings which made such composure a
+disgrace, left her in no danger of incurring it. She was awake the
+whole night, and she wept the greatest part of it. She got up with a
+headache, was unable to talk, and unwilling to take any nourishment;
+giving pain every moment to her mother and sisters, and forbidding
+all attempt at consolation from either. Her sensibility was potent
+enough!
+
+When breakfast was over she walked out by herself, and wandered about
+the village of Allenham, indulging the recollection of past enjoyment
+and crying over the present reverse for the chief of the morning.
+
+The evening passed off in the equal indulgence of feeling. She played
+over every favourite song that she had been used to play to
+Willoughby, every air in which their voices had been oftenest joined,
+and sat at the instrument gazing on every line of music that he had
+written out for her, till her heart was so heavy that no farther
+sadness could be gained; and this nourishment of grief was every day
+applied. She spent whole hours at the pianoforte alternately singing
+and crying; her voice often totally suspended by her tears. In books
+too, as well as in music, she courted the misery which a contrast
+between the past and present was certain of giving. She read nothing
+but what they had been used to read together.
+
+Such violence of affliction indeed could not be supported for ever; it
+sunk within a few days into a calmer melancholy; but these
+employments, to which she daily recurred, her solitary walks and
+silent meditations, still produced occasional effusions of sorrow as
+lively as ever.
+
+No letter from Willoughby came; and none seemed expected by Marianne.
+Her mother was surprised, and Elinor again became uneasy. But Mrs.
+Dashwood could find explanations whenever she wanted them, which at
+least satisfied herself.
+
+"Remember, Elinor," said she, "how very often Sir John fetches our
+letters himself from the post, and carries them to it. We have already
+agreed that secrecy may be necessary, and we must acknowledge that it
+could not be maintained if their correspondence were to pass through
+Sir John's hands."
+
+Elinor could not deny the truth of this, and she tried to find in it a
+motive sufficient for their silence. But there was one method so
+direct, so simple, and in her opinion so eligible of knowing the real
+state of the affair, and of instantly removing all mystery, that she
+could not help suggesting it to her mother.
+
+"Why do you not ask Marianne at once," said she, "whether she is or
+she is not engaged to Willoughby? From you, her mother, and so kind,
+so indulgent a mother, the question could not give offence. It would
+be the natural result of your affection for her. She used to be all
+unreserve, and to you more especially."
+
+"I would not ask such a question for the world. Supposing it possible
+that they are not engaged, what distress would not such an enquiry
+inflict! At any rate it would be most ungenerous. I should never
+deserve her confidence again, after forcing from her a confession of
+what is meant at present to be unacknowledged to any one. I know
+Marianne's heart: I know that she dearly loves me, and that I shall
+not be the last to whom the affair is made known, when circumstances
+make the revealment of it eligible. I would not attempt to force the
+confidence of any one; of a child much less; because a sense of duty
+would prevent the denial which her wishes might direct."
+
+Elinor thought this generosity overstrained, considering her sister's
+youth, and urged the matter farther, but in vain; common sense, common
+care, common prudence, were all sunk in Mrs. Dashwood's romantic
+delicacy.
+
+It was several days before Willoughby's name was mentioned before
+Marianne by any of her family; Sir John and Mrs. Jennings, indeed,
+were not so nice; their witticisms added pain to many a painful hour;
+but one evening, Mrs. Dashwood, accidentally taking up a volume of
+Shakespeare, exclaimed--
+
+"We have never finished _Hamlet_, Marianne; our dear Willoughby went
+away before we could get through it. We will put it by, that when he
+comes again--; But it may be months, perhaps, before _that_ happens."
+
+"Months!" cried Marianne, with strong surprise. "No--nor many weeks."
+
+Mrs. Dashwood was sorry for what she had said; but it gave Elinor
+pleasure, as it produced a reply from Marianne so expressive of
+confidence in Willoughby and knowledge of his intentions.
+
+One morning, about a week after his leaving the country, Marianne was
+prevailed on to join her sisters in their usual walk, instead of
+wandering away by herself. Hitherto she had carefully avoided every
+companion in her rambles. If her sisters intended to walk on the
+downs, she directly stole away towards the lanes; if they talked of
+the valley, she was as speedy in climbing the hills, and could never
+be found when the others set off. But at length she was secured by the
+exertions of Elinor, who greatly disapproved such continual seclusion.
+They walked along the road through the valley, and chiefly in silence,
+for Marianne's _mind_ could not be controlled, and Elinor, satisfied
+with gaining one point, would not then attempt more. Beyond the
+entrance of the valley, where the country, though still rich, was less
+wild and more open, a long stretch of the road which they had
+travelled on first coming to Barton, lay before them; and on reaching
+that point, they stopped to look around them, and examine a prospect
+which formed the distance of their view from the cottage, from a spot
+which they had never happened to reach in any of their walks before.
+
+Amongst the objects in the scene, they soon discovered an animated
+one; it was a man on horseback riding towards them. In a few minutes
+they could distinguish him to be a gentleman; and in a moment
+afterwards Marianne rapturously exclaimed--
+
+"It is he; it is indeed--I know it is!" and was hastening to meet him,
+when Elinor cried out--
+
+"Indeed, Marianne, I think you are mistaken. It is not Willoughby. The
+person is not tall enough for him, and has not his air."
+
+"He has, he has," cried Marianne, "I am sure he has. His air, his
+coat, his horse. I knew how soon he would come."
+
+She walked eagerly on as she spoke; and Elinor, to screen Marianne
+from particularity, as she felt almost certain of its not being
+Willoughby, quickened her pace and kept up with her. They were soon
+within thirty yards of the gentleman. Marianne looked again; her heart
+sunk within her; and abruptly turning round, she was hurrying back,
+when the voices of both her sisters were raised to detain her; a
+third, almost as well known as Willoughby's, joined them in begging
+her to stop, and she turned round with surprise to see and welcome
+Edward Ferrars.
+
+[Illustration: _Begging her to stop._]
+
+He was the only person in the world who could at that moment be
+forgiven for not being Willoughby; the only one who could have gained
+a smile from her; but she dispersed her tears to smile on _him_, and
+in her sister's happiness forgot for a time her own disappointment.
+
+He dismounted, and giving his horse to his servant, walked back with
+them to Barton, whither he was purposely coming to visit them.
+
+He was welcomed by them all with great cordiality, but especially by
+Marianne, who showed more warmth of regard in her reception of him
+than even Elinor herself. To Marianne, indeed, the meeting between
+Edward and her sister was but a continuation of that unaccountable
+coldness which she had often observed at Norland in their mutual
+behaviour. On Edward's side, more particularly, there was a deficiency
+of all that a lover ought to look and say on such an occasion. He was
+confused, seemed scarcely sensible of pleasure in seeing them, looked
+neither rapturous nor gay, said little but what was forced from him by
+questions, and distinguished Elinor by no mark of affection. Marianne
+saw and listened with increasing surprise. She began almost to feel a
+dislike of Edward; and it ended, as every feeling must end with her,
+by carrying back her thoughts to Willoughby, whose manners formed a
+contrast sufficiently striking to those of his brother elect.
+
+After a short silence which succeeded the first surprise and enquiries
+of meeting, Marianne asked Edward if he came directly from London. No,
+he had been in Devonshire a fortnight.
+
+"A fortnight!" she repeated, surprised at his being so long in the
+same county with Elinor without seeing her before.
+
+He looked rather distressed as he added, that he had been staying with
+some friends near Plymouth.
+
+"Have you been lately in Sussex?" said Elinor.
+
+"I was at Norland about a month ago."
+
+"And how does dear, dear Norland look?" cried Marianne.
+
+"Dear, dear Norland," said Elinor, "probably looks much as it always
+does at this time of the year--the woods and walks thickly covered
+with dead leaves."
+
+"Oh," cried Marianne, "with what transporting sensation have I
+formerly seen them fall! How have I delighted, as I walked, to see
+them driven in showers about me by the wind! What feelings have they,
+the season, the air altogether inspired! Now there is no one to regard
+them. They are seen only as a nuisance, swept hastily off, and driven
+as much as possible from the sight."
+
+"It is not every one," said Elinor, "who has your passion for dead
+leaves."
+
+"No; my feelings are not often shared, not often understood. But
+_sometimes_ they are." As she said this, she sunk into a reverie for a
+few moments; but rousing herself again, "Now, Edward," said she,
+calling his attention to the prospect, "here is Barton valley. Look up
+to it, and be tranquil if you can. Look at those hills! Did you ever
+see their equals? To the left is Barton park, amongst those woods and
+plantations. You may see the end of the house. And there, beneath that
+farthest hill, which rises with such grandeur, is our cottage."
+
+"It is a beautiful country," he replied; "but these bottoms must be
+dirty in winter."
+
+"How can you think of dirt, with such objects before you?"
+
+"Because," replied he, smiling, "among the rest of the objects before
+me, I see a very dirty lane."
+
+"How strange!" said Marianne to herself as she walked on.
+
+"Have you an agreeable neighbourhood here? Are the Middletons pleasant
+people?"
+
+"No, not all," answered Marianne; "we could not be more unfortunately
+situated."
+
+"Marianne," cried her sister, "how can you say so? How can you be so
+unjust? They are a very respectable family, Mr. Ferrars; and towards
+us have behaved in the friendliest manner. Have you forgot, Marianne,
+how many pleasant days we have owed to them?"
+
+"No," said Marianne, in a low voice, "nor how many painful moments."
+
+Elinor took no notice of this; and directing her attention to their
+visitor, endeavoured to support something like discourse with him, by
+talking of their present residence, its conveniences, &c. extorting
+from him occasional questions and remarks. His coldness and reserve
+mortified her severely; she was vexed and half angry; but resolving to
+regulate her behaviour to him by the past rather than the present,
+she avoided every appearance of resentment or displeasure, and treated
+him as she thought he ought to be treated from the family connection.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+Mrs. Dashwood was surprised only for a moment at seeing him; for his
+coming to Barton was, in her opinion, of all things the most natural.
+Her joy and expression of regard long outlived her wonder. He received
+the kindest welcome from her; and shyness, coldness, reserve could not
+stand against such a reception. They had begun to fail him before he
+entered the house, and they were quite overcome by the captivating
+manners of Mrs. Dashwood. Indeed a man could not very well be in love
+with either of her daughters, without extending the passion to her;
+and Elinor had the satisfaction of seeing him soon become more like
+himself. His affections seemed to reanimate towards them all, and his
+interest in their welfare again became perceptible. He was not in
+spirits, however; he praised their house, admired its prospect, was
+attentive, and kind; but still he was not in spirits. The whole family
+perceived it, and Mrs. Dashwood, attributing it to some want of
+liberality in his mother, sat down to table indignant against all
+selfish parents.
+
+"What are Mrs. Ferrars's views for you at present, Edward?" said she,
+when dinner was over and they had drawn round the fire; "are you still
+to be a great orator in spite of yourself?"
+
+"No. I hope my mother is now convinced that I have no more talents
+than inclination for a public life!"
+
+"But how is your fame to be established? for famous you must be to
+satisfy all your family; and with no inclination for expense, no
+affection for strangers, no profession, and no assurance, you may find
+it a difficult matter."
+
+"I shall not attempt it. I have no wish to be distinguished; and have
+every reason to hope I never shall. Thank Heaven! I cannot be forced
+into genius and eloquence."
+
+"You have no ambition, I well know. Your wishes are all moderate."
+
+"As moderate as those of the rest of the world, I believe. I wish as
+well as every body else to be perfectly happy; but, like every body
+else it must be in my own way. Greatness will not make me so."
+
+"Strange that it would!" cried Marianne. "What have wealth or grandeur
+to do with happiness?"
+
+"Grandeur has but little," said Elinor, "but wealth has much to do
+with it."
+
+"Elinor, for shame!" said Marianne, "money can only give happiness
+where there is nothing else to give it. Beyond a competence, it can
+afford no real satisfaction, as far as mere self is concerned."
+
+"Perhaps," said Elinor, smiling, "we may come to the same point.
+_Your_ competence and _my_ wealth are very much alike, I dare say; and
+without them, as the world goes now, we shall both agree that every
+kind of external comfort must be wanting. Your ideas are only more
+noble than mine. Come, what is your competence?"
+
+"About eighteen hundred or two thousand a year; not more than _that._"
+
+Elinor laughed. "_Two_ thousand a year! _One_ is my wealth! I guessed
+how it would end."
+
+"And yet two thousand a-year is a very moderate income," said
+Marianne. "A family cannot well be maintained on a smaller. I am sure
+I am not extravagant in my demands. A proper establishment of
+servants, a carriage, perhaps two, and hunters, cannot be supported on
+less."
+
+Elinor smiled again, to hear her sister describing so accurately their
+future expenses at Combe Magna.
+
+"Hunters!" repeated Edward; "but why must you have hunters? Every body
+does not hunt."
+
+Marianne coloured as she replied, "But most people do."
+
+"I wish," said Margaret, striking out a novel thought, "that somebody
+would give us all a large fortune a-piece!"
+
+"Oh that they would!" cried Marianne, her eyes sparkling with
+animation, and her cheeks glowing with the delight of such imaginary
+happiness.
+
+"We are all unanimous in that wish, I suppose," said Elinor, "in spite
+of the insufficiency of wealth."
+
+"Oh dear!" cried Margaret, "how happy I should be! I wonder what I
+should do with it!"
+
+Marianne looked as if she had no doubt on that point.
+
+"I should be puzzled to spend so large a fortune myself," said Mrs.
+Dashwood, "if my children were all to be rich without my help."
+
+"You must begin your improvements on this house," observed Elinor,
+"and your difficulties will soon vanish."
+
+"What magnificent orders would travel from this family to London,"
+said Edward, "in such an event! What a happy day for booksellers,
+music-sellers, and print-shops! You, Miss Dashwood, would give a
+general commission for every new print of merit to be sent you--and as
+for Marianne, I know her greatness of soul, there would not be music
+enough in London to content her. And books!--Thomson, Cowper,
+Scott--she would buy them all over and over again: she would buy up
+every copy, I believe, to prevent their falling into unworthy hands;
+and she would have every book that tells her how to admire an old
+twisted tree. Should not you, Marianne? Forgive me, if I am very
+saucy. But I was willing to show you that I had not forgot our old
+disputes."
+
+"I love to be reminded of the past, Edward--whether it be melancholy
+or gay, I love to recall it--and you will never offend me by talking
+of former times. You are very right in supposing how my money would be
+spent; some of it, at least--my loose cash--would certainly be
+employed in improving my collection of music and books."
+
+"And the bulk of your fortune would be laid out in annuities on the
+authors or their heirs."
+
+"No, Edward, I should have something else to do with it."
+
+"Perhaps, then, you would bestow it as a reward on that person who
+wrote the ablest defence of your favourite maxim, that no one can ever
+be in love more than once in their life--for your opinion on that
+point is unchanged, I presume?"
+
+"Undoubtedly. At my time of life opinions are tolerably fixed. It is
+not likely that I should now see or hear any thing to change them."
+
+"Marianne is as steadfast as ever, you see," said Elinor, "she is not
+at all altered."
+
+"She is only grown a little more grave than she was."
+
+"Nay, Edward," said Marianne, "you need not reproach me. You are not
+very gay yourself."
+
+"Why should you think so!" replied he, with a sigh. "But gaiety never
+was a part of _my_ character."
+
+"Nor do I think it a part of Marianne's," said Elinor; "I should
+hardly call her a lively girl--she is very earnest, very eager in all
+she does--sometimes talks a great deal and always with animation--but
+she is not often really merry."
+
+"I believe you are right," he replied, "and yet I have always set her
+down as a lively girl."
+
+"I have frequently detected myself in such kind of mistakes," said
+Elinor, "in a total misapprehension of character in some point or
+other: fancying people so much more gay or grave, or ingenious or
+stupid than they really are, and I can hardly tell why or in what the
+deception originated. Sometimes one is guided by what they say of
+themselves, and very frequently by what other people say of them,
+without giving oneself time to deliberate and judge."
+
+"But I thought it was right, Elinor," said Marianne, "to be guided
+wholly by the opinion of other people. I thought our judgments were
+given us merely to be subservient to those of neighbours. This has
+always been your doctrine, I am sure."
+
+"No, Marianne, never. My doctrine has never aimed at the subjection of
+the understanding. All I have ever attempted to influence has been the
+behaviour. You must not confound my meaning. I am guilty, I confess,
+of having often wished you to treat our acquaintance in general with
+greater attention; but when have I advised you to adopt their
+sentiments or to conform to their judgment in serious matters?"
+
+"You have not been able to bring your sister over to your plan of
+general civility," said Edward to Elinor, "Do you gain no ground?"
+
+"Quite the contrary," replied Elinor, looking expressively at
+Marianne.
+
+"My judgment," he returned, "is all on your side of the question; but
+I am afraid my practice is much more on your sister's. I never wish to
+offend, but I am so foolishly shy, that I often seem negligent, when I
+am only kept back by my natural awkwardness. I have frequently thought
+that I must have been intended by nature to be fond of low company, I
+am so little at my ease among strangers of gentility!"
+
+"Marianne has not shyness to excuse any inattention of hers," said
+Elinor.
+
+"She knows her own worth too well for false shame," replied Edward.
+"Shyness is only the effect of a sense of inferiority in some way or
+other. If I could persuade myself that my manners were perfectly easy
+and graceful, I should not be shy."
+
+"But you would still be reserved," said Marianne, "and that is worse."
+
+Edward started. "Reserved! Am I reserved, Marianne?"
+
+"Yes, very."
+
+"I do not understand you," replied he, colouring. "Reserved!--how, in
+what manner? What am I to tell you? What can you suppose?"
+
+Elinor looked surprised at his emotion; but trying to laugh off the
+subject, she said to him, "Do not you know my sister well enough to
+understand what she means? Do not you know she calls every one
+reserved who does not talk as fast, and admire what she admires as
+rapturously as herself?"
+
+Edward made no answer. His gravity and thoughtfulness returned on him
+in their fullest extent--and he sat for some time silent and dull.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+Elinor saw, with great uneasiness the low spirits of her friend. His
+visit afforded her but a very partial satisfaction, while his own
+enjoyment in it appeared so imperfect. It was evident that he was
+unhappy; she wished it were equally evident that he still
+distinguished her by the same affection which once she had felt no
+doubt of inspiring; but hitherto the continuance of his preference
+seemed very uncertain; and the reservedness of his manner towards her
+contradicted one moment what a more animated look had intimated the
+preceding one.
+
+He joined her and Marianne in the breakfast-room the next morning
+before the others were down; and Marianne, who was always eager to
+promote their happiness as far as she could, soon left them to
+themselves. But before she was half way upstairs she heard the parlour
+door open, and, turning round, was astonished to see Edward himself
+come out.
+
+"I am going into the village to see my horses," said he, "as you are
+not yet ready for breakfast; I shall be back again presently."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Edward returned to them with fresh admiration of the surrounding
+country; in his walk to the village, he had seen many parts of the
+valley to advantage; and the village itself, in a much higher
+situation than the cottage, afforded a general view of the whole,
+which had exceedingly pleased him. This was a subject which ensured
+Marianne's attention, and she was beginning to describe her own
+admiration of these scenes, and to question him more minutely on the
+objects that had particularly struck him, when Edward interrupted her
+by saying, "You must not enquire too far, Marianne: remember I have no
+knowledge in the picturesque, and I shall offend you by my ignorance
+and want of taste if we come to particulars. I shall call hills steep,
+which ought to be bold; surfaces strange and uncouth, which ought to
+be irregular and rugged; and distant objects out of sight, which ought
+only to be indistinct through the soft medium of a hazy atmosphere.
+You must be satisfied with such admiration as I can honestly give. I
+call it a very fine country,--the hills are steep, the woods seem full
+of fine timber, and the valley looks comfortable and snug,--with rich
+meadows and several neat farm houses scattered here and there. It
+exactly answers my idea of a fine country, because it unites beauty
+with utility--and I dare say it is a picturesque one too, because you
+admire it; I can easily believe it to be full of rocks and
+promontories, grey moss and brush wood, but these are all lost on me.
+I know nothing of the picturesque."
+
+"I am afraid it is but too true," said Marianne; "but why should you
+boast of it?"
+
+"I suspect," said Elinor, "that to avoid one kind of affectation,
+Edward here falls into another. Because he believes many people
+pretend to more admiration of the beauties of nature than they really
+feel, and is disgusted with such pretensions, he affects greater
+indifference and less discrimination in viewing them himself than he
+possesses. He is fastidious and will have an affectation of his own."
+
+"It is very true," said Marianne, "that admiration of landscape
+scenery is become a mere jargon. Every body pretends to feel and tries
+to describe with the taste and elegance of him who first defined what
+picturesque beauty was. I detest jargon of every kind, and sometimes I
+have kept my feelings to myself, because I could find no language to
+describe them in but what was worn and hackneyed out of all sense and
+meaning."
+
+"I am convinced," said Edward, "that you really feel all the delight
+in a fine prospect which you profess to feel. But, in return, your
+sister must allow me to feel no more than I profess. I like a fine
+prospect, but not on picturesque principles. I do not like crooked,
+twisted, blasted trees. I admire them much more if they are tall,
+straight, and flourishing. I do not like ruined, tattered cottages. I
+am not fond of nettles or thistles, or heath blossoms. I have more
+pleasure in a snug farm-house than a watch-tower,--and a troop of
+tidy, happy villages please me better than the finest banditti in the
+world."
+
+Marianne looked with amazement at Edward, with compassion at her
+sister. Elinor only laughed.
+
+The subject was continued no farther; and Marianne remained
+thoughtfully silent, till a new object suddenly engaged her attention.
+She was sitting by Edward, and in taking his tea from Mrs. Dashwood,
+his hand passed so directly before her, as to make a ring, with a
+plait of hair in the centre, very conspicuous on one of his fingers.
+
+"I never saw you wear a ring before, Edward," she cried. "Is that
+Fanny's hair? I remember her promising to give you some. But I should
+have thought her hair had been darker."
+
+Marianne spoke inconsiderately what she really felt; but when she saw
+how much she had pained Edward, her own vexation at her want of
+thought could not be surpassed by his. He coloured very deeply, and
+giving a momentary glance at Elinor, replied, "Yes; it is my sister's
+hair. The setting always casts a different shade on it, you know."
+
+Elinor had met his eye, and looked conscious likewise. That the hair
+was her own, she instantaneously felt as well satisfied as Marianne;
+the only difference in their conclusions was, that what Marianne
+considered as a free gift from her sister, Elinor was conscious must
+have been procured by some theft or contrivance unknown to herself.
+She was not in a humour, however, to regard it as an affront, and
+affecting to take no notice of what passed, by instantly talking of
+something else, she internally resolved henceforward to catch every
+opportunity of eyeing the hair and of satisfying herself, beyond all
+doubt, that it was exactly the shade of her own.
+
+Edward's embarrassment lasted some time, and it ended in an absence of
+mind still more settled. He was particularly grave the whole morning.
+Marianne severely censured herself for what she had said; but her own
+forgiveness might have been more speedy, had she known how little
+offence it had given her sister.
+
+Before the middle of the day, they were visited by Sir John and Mrs.
+Jennings, who, having heard of the arrival of a gentleman at the
+cottage, came to take a survey of the guest. With the assistance of
+his mother-in-law, Sir John was not long in discovering that the name
+of Ferrars began with an F. and this prepared a future mine of
+raillery against the devoted Elinor, which nothing but the newness of
+their acquaintance with Edward could have prevented from being
+immediately sprung. But, as it was, she only learned, from some very
+significant looks, how far their penetration, founded on Margaret's
+instructions, extended.
+
+Sir John never came to the Dashwoods without either inviting them to
+dine at the park the next day, or to drink tea with them that evening.
+On the present occasion, for the better entertainment of their
+visitor, towards whose amusement he felt himself bound to contribute,
+he wished to engage them for both.
+
+"You _must_ drink tea with us to night," said he, "for we shall be
+quite alone; and tomorrow you must absolutely dine with us, for we
+shall be a large party."
+
+Mrs. Jennings enforced the necessity. "And who knows but you may raise
+a dance," said she. "And that will tempt _you_, Miss Marianne."
+
+"A dance!" cried Marianne. "Impossible! Who is to dance?"
+
+[Illustration: _Came to take a survey of the guest._]
+
+"Who? why yourselves, and the Careys, and Whitakers to be sure.
+What! you thought nobody could dance because a certain person that
+shall be nameless is gone!"
+
+"I wish with all my soul," cried Sir John, "that Willoughby were among
+us again."
+
+This, and Marianne's blushing, gave new suspicions to Edward. "And who
+is Willoughby?" said he, in a low voice, to Miss Dashwood, by whom he
+was sitting.
+
+She gave him a brief reply. Marianne's countenance was more
+communicative. Edward saw enough to comprehend, not only the meaning
+of others, but such of Marianne's expressions as had puzzled him
+before; and when their visitors left them, he went immediately round
+her, and said, in a whisper, "I have been guessing. Shall I tell you
+my guess?"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Shall I tell you."
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Well then; I guess that Mr. Willoughby hunts."
+
+Marianne was surprised and confused, yet she could not help smiling at
+the quiet archness of his manner, and after a moment's silence, said--
+
+"Oh, Edward! How can you?--But the time will come I hope--I am sure
+you will like him."
+
+"I do not doubt it," replied he, rather astonished at her earnestness
+and warmth; for had he not imagined it to be a joke for the good of
+her acquaintance in general, founded only on a something or a nothing
+between Mr. Willoughby and herself, he would not have ventured to
+mention it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+Edward remained a week at the cottage; he was earnestly pressed by
+Mrs. Dashwood to stay longer; but, as if he were bent only on
+self-mortification, he seemed resolved to be gone when his enjoyment
+among his friends was at the height. His spirits, during the last two
+or three days, though still very unequal, were greatly improved--he
+grew more and more partial to the house and environs--never spoke of
+going away without a sigh--declared his time to be wholly
+disengaged--even doubted to what place he should go when he left
+them--but still, go he must. Never had any week passed so quickly--he
+could hardly believe it to be gone. He said so repeatedly; other
+things he said too, which marked the turn of his feelings and gave the
+lie to his actions. He had no pleasure at Norland; he detested being
+in town; but either to Norland or London, he must go. He valued their
+kindness beyond any thing, and his greatest happiness was in being
+with them. Yet, he must leave them at the end of a week, in spite of
+their wishes and his own, and without any restraint on his time.
+
+Elinor placed all that was astonishing in this way of acting to his
+mother's account; and it was happy for her that he had a mother whose
+character was so imperfectly known to her, as to be the general excuse
+for every thing strange on the part of her son. Disappointed, however,
+and vexed as she was, and sometimes displeased with his uncertain
+behaviour to herself, she was very well disposed on the whole to
+regard his actions with all the candid allowances and generous
+qualifications, which had been rather more painfully extorted from
+her, for Willoughby's service, by her mother. His want of spirits, of
+openness, and of consistency, were most usually attributed to his want
+of independence, and his better knowledge of Mrs. Ferrars's
+disposition and designs. The shortness of his visit, the steadiness of
+his purpose in leaving them, originated in the same fettered
+inclination, the same inevitable necessity of temporizing with his
+mother. The old well-established grievance of duty against will,
+parent against child, was the cause of all. She would have been glad
+to know when these difficulties were to cease, this opposition was to
+yield, when Mrs. Ferrars would be reformed, and her son be at liberty
+to be happy. But from such vain wishes she was forced to turn for
+comfort to the renewal of her confidence in Edward's affection, to the
+remembrance of every mark of regard in look or word which fell from
+him while at Barton, and above all to that flattering proof of it
+which he constantly wore round his finger.
+
+"I think, Edward," said Mrs. Dashwood, as they were at breakfast the
+last morning, "you would be a happier man if you had any profession to
+engage your time and give an interest to your plans and actions. Some
+inconvenience to your friends, indeed, might result from it--you would
+not be able to give them so much of your time. But (with a smile) you
+would be materially benefited in one particular at least--you would
+know where to go when you left them."
+
+"I do assure you," he replied, "that I have long thought on this
+point, as you think now. It has been, and is, and probably will always
+be a heavy misfortune to me, that I have had no necessary business to
+engage me, no profession to give me employment, or afford me any thing
+like independence. But unfortunately my own nicety, and the nicety of
+my friends, have made me what I am, an idle, helpless being. We never
+could agree in our choice of a profession. I always preferred the
+church, as I still do. But that was not smart enough for my family.
+They recommended the army. That was a great deal too smart for me. The
+law was allowed to be genteel enough; many young men, who had chambers
+in the Temple, made a very good appearance in the first circles, and
+drove about town in very knowing gigs. But I had no inclination for
+the law, even in this less abstruse study of it, which my family
+approved. As for the navy, it had fashion on its side, but I was too
+old when the subject was first started to enter it; and, at length, as
+there was no necessity for my having any profession at all, as I might
+be as dashing and expensive without a red coat on my back as with one,
+idleness was pronounced on the whole to be most advantageous and
+honourable, and a young man of eighteen is not in general so earnestly
+bent on being busy as to resist the solicitations of his friends to do
+nothing. I was therefore entered at Oxford and have been properly idle
+ever since."
+
+"The consequence of which, I suppose, will be," said Mrs. Dashwood,
+"since leisure has not promoted your own happiness, that your sons
+will be brought up to as many pursuits, employments, professions, and
+trades as Columella's."
+
+"They will be brought up," said he, in a serious accent, "to be as
+unlike myself as is possible. In feeling, in action, in condition, in
+every thing."
+
+"Come, come; this is all an effusion of immediate want of spirits,
+Edward. You are in a melancholy humour, and fancy that any one unlike
+yourself must be happy. But remember that the pain of parting from
+friends will be felt by every body at times, whatever be their
+education or state. Know your own happiness. You want nothing but
+patience--or give it a more fascinating name, call it hope. Your
+mother will secure to you, in time, that independence you are so
+anxious for; it is her duty, and it will, it must ere long become her
+happiness to prevent your whole youth from being wasted in discontent.
+How much may not a few months do?"
+
+"I think," replied Edward, "that I may defy many months to produce any
+good to me."
+
+This desponding turn of mind, though it could not be communicated to
+Mrs. Dashwood, gave additional pain to them all in the parting, which
+shortly took place, and left an uncomfortable impression on Elinor's
+feelings especially, which required some trouble and time to subdue.
+But as it was her determination to subdue it, and to prevent herself
+from appearing to suffer more than what all her family suffered on his
+going away, she did not adopt the method so judiciously employed by
+Marianne, on a similar occasion, to augment and fix her sorrow, by
+seeking silence, solitude and idleness. Their means were as different
+as their objects, and equally suited to the advancement of each.
+
+Elinor sat down to her drawing-table as soon as he was out of the
+house, busily employed herself the whole day, neither sought nor
+avoided the mention of his name, appeared to interest herself almost
+as much as ever in the general concerns of the family, and if, by this
+conduct, she did not lessen her own grief, it was at least prevented
+from unnecessary increase, and her mother and sisters were spared much
+solicitude on her account.
+
+Such behaviour as this, so exactly the reverse of her own, appeared no
+more meritorious to Marianne, than her own had seemed faulty to her.
+The business of self-command she settled very easily;--with strong
+affections it was impossible, with calm ones it could have no merit.
+That her sister's affections _were_ calm, she dared not deny, though
+she blushed to acknowledge it; and of the strength of her own, she
+gave a very striking proof, by still loving and respecting that
+sister, in spite of this mortifying conviction.
+
+Without shutting herself up from her family, or leaving the house in
+determined solitude to avoid them, or lying awake the whole night to
+indulge meditation, Elinor found every day afforded her leisure enough
+to think of Edward, and of Edward's behaviour, in every possible
+variety which the different state of her spirits at different times
+could produce,--with tenderness, pity, approbation, censure, and
+doubt. There were moments in abundance, when, if not by the absence of
+her mother and sisters, at least by the nature of their employments,
+conversation was forbidden among them, and every effect of solitude
+was produced. Her mind was inevitably at liberty; her thoughts could
+not be chained elsewhere; and the past and the future, on a subject so
+interesting, must be before her, must force her attention, and engross
+her memory, her reflection, and her fancy.
+
+From a reverie of this kind, as she sat at her drawing-table, she was
+roused one morning, soon after Edward's leaving them, by the arrival
+of company. She happened to be quite alone. The closing of the little
+gate, at the entrance of the green court in front of the house, drew
+her eyes to the window, and she saw a large party walking up to the
+door. Amongst them were Sir John and Lady Middleton and Mrs. Jennings,
+but there were two others, a gentleman and lady, who were quite
+unknown to her. She was sitting near the window, and as soon as Sir
+John perceived her, he left the rest of the party to the ceremony of
+knocking at the door, and stepping across the turf, obliged her to
+open the casement to speak to him, though the space was so short
+between the door and the window, as to make it hardly possible to
+speak at one without being heard at the other.
+
+"Well," said he, "we have brought you some strangers. How do you like
+them?"
+
+"Hush! they will hear you."
+
+"Never mind if they do. It is only the Palmers. Charlotte is very
+pretty, I can tell you. You may see her if you look this way."
+
+As Elinor was certain of seeing her in a couple of minutes, without
+taking that liberty, she begged to be excused.
+
+"Where is Marianne? Has she run away because we are come? I see her
+instrument is open."
+
+"She is walking, I believe."
+
+They were now joined by Mrs. Jennings, who had not patience enough to
+wait till the door was opened before she told _her_ story. She came
+hallooing to the window, "How do you do, my dear? How does Mrs.
+Dashwood do? And where are your sisters? What! all alone! you will be
+glad of a little company to sit with you. I have brought my other son
+and daughter to see you. Only think of their coming so suddenly! I
+thought I heard a carriage last night, while we were drinking our tea,
+but it never entered my head that it could be them. I thought of
+nothing but whether it might not be Colonel Brandon come back again;
+so I said to Sir John, I do think I hear a carriage; perhaps it is
+Colonel Brandon come back again--"
+
+Elinor was obliged to turn from her, in the middle of her story, to
+receive the rest of the party; Lady Middleton introduced the two
+strangers; Mrs. Dashwood and Margaret came down stairs at the same
+time, and they all sat down to look at one another, while Mrs.
+Jennings continued her story as she walked through the passage into
+the parlour, attended by Sir John.
+
+Mrs. Palmer was several years younger than Lady Middleton, and totally
+unlike her in every respect. She was short and plump, had a very
+pretty face, and the finest expression of good humour in it that could
+possibly be. Her manners were by no means so elegant as her sister's,
+but they were much more prepossessing. She came in with a smile,
+smiled all the time of her visit, except when she laughed, and smiled
+when she went away. Her husband was a grave looking young man of five
+or six and twenty, with an air of more fashion and sense than his
+wife, but of less willingness to please or be pleased. He entered the
+room with a look of self-consequence, slightly bowed to the ladies,
+without speaking a word, and, after briefly surveying them and their
+apartments, took up a newspaper from the table, and continued to read
+it as long as he stayed.
+
+Mrs. Palmer, on the contrary, who was strongly endowed by nature with
+a turn for being uniformly civil and happy, was hardly seated before
+her admiration of the parlour and every thing in it burst forth.
+
+"Well! what a delightful room this is! I never saw anything so
+charming! Only think, Mamma, how it is improved since I was here last!
+I always thought it such a sweet place, ma'am! (turning to Mrs.
+Dashwood) but you have made it so charming! Only look, sister, how
+delightful every thing is! How I should like such a house for myself!
+Should not you, Mr. Palmer?"
+
+Mr. Palmer made her no answer, and did not even raise his eyes from
+the newspaper.
+
+"Mr. Palmer does not hear me," said she, laughing; "he never does
+sometimes. It is so ridiculous!"
+
+This was quite a new idea to Mrs. Dashwood; she had never been used to
+find wit in the inattention of any one, and could not help looking
+with surprise at them both.
+
+Mrs. Jennings, in the meantime, talked on as loud as she could, and
+continued her account of their surprise, the evening before, on seeing
+their friends, without ceasing till every thing was told. Mrs. Palmer
+laughed heartily at the recollection of their astonishment, and every
+body agreed, two or three times over, that it had been quite an
+agreeable surprise.
+
+"You may believe how glad we all were to see them," added Mrs.
+Jennings, leaning forward towards Elinor, and speaking in a low voice
+as if she meant to be heard by no one else, though they were seated on
+different sides of the room; "but, however, I can't help wishing they
+had not travelled quite so fast, nor made such a long journey of it,
+for they came all round by London upon account of some business, for
+you know (nodding significantly and pointing to her daughter) it was
+wrong in her situation. I wanted her to stay at home and rest this
+morning, but she would come with us; she longed so much to see you
+all!"
+
+Mrs. Palmer laughed, and said it would not do her any harm.
+
+"She expects to be confined in February," continued Mrs. Jennings.
+
+Lady Middleton could no longer endure such a conversation, and
+therefore exerted herself to ask Mr. Palmer if there was any news in
+the paper.
+
+"No, none at all," he replied, and read on.
+
+"Here comes Marianne," cried Sir John. "Now, Palmer, you shall see a
+monstrous pretty girl."
+
+He immediately went into the passage, opened the front door, and
+ushered her in himself. Mrs. Jennings asked her, as soon as she
+appeared, if she had not been to Allenham; and Mrs. Palmer laughed so
+heartily at the question, as to show she understood it. Mr. Palmer
+looked up on her entering the room, stared at her some minutes, and
+then returned to his newspaper. Mrs. Palmer's eye was now caught by
+the drawings which hung round the room. She got up to examine them.
+
+[Illustration: "_I declare they are quite charming_."]
+
+"Oh! dear, how beautiful these are! Well! how delightful! Do but look,
+mama, how sweet! I declare they are quite charming; I could look at
+them for ever." And then sitting down again, she very soon forgot that
+there were any such things in the room.
+
+When Lady Middleton rose to go away, Mr. Palmer rose also, laid down
+the newspaper, stretched himself and looked at them all around.
+
+"My love, have you been asleep?" said his wife, laughing.
+
+He made her no answer; and only observed, after again examining the
+room, that it was very low pitched, and that the ceiling was crooked.
+He then made his bow, and departed with the rest.
+
+Sir John had been very urgent with them all to spend the next day at
+the park. Mrs. Dashwood, who did not choose to dine with them oftener
+than they dined at the cottage, absolutely refused on her own account;
+her daughters might do as they pleased. But they had no curiosity to
+see how Mr. and Mrs. Palmer ate their dinner, and no expectation of
+pleasure from them in any other way. They attempted, therefore,
+likewise, to excuse themselves; the weather was uncertain, and not
+likely to be good. But Sir John would not be satisfied--the carriage
+should be sent for them and they must come. Lady Middleton too, though
+she did not press their mother, pressed them. Mrs. Jennings and Mrs.
+Palmer joined their entreaties, all seemed equally anxious to avoid a
+family party; and the young ladies were obliged to yield.
+
+"Why should they ask us?" said Marianne, as soon as they were gone.
+"The rent of this cottage is said to be low; but we have it on very
+hard terms, if we are to dine at the park whenever any one is staying
+either with them, or with us."
+
+"They mean no less to be civil and kind to us now," said Elinor, "by
+these frequent invitations, than by those which we received from them
+a few weeks ago. The alteration is not in them, if their parties are
+grown tedious and dull. We must look for the change elsewhere."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+As the Miss Dashwoods entered the drawing-room of the park the next
+day, at one door, Mrs. Palmer came running in at the other, looking as
+good humoured and merry as before. She took them all most
+affectionately by the hand, and expressed great delight in seeing them
+again.
+
+"I am so glad to see you!" said she, seating herself between Elinor
+and Marianne, "for it is so bad a day I was afraid you might not come,
+which would be a shocking thing, as we go away again tomorrow. We must
+go, for the Westons come to us next week you know. It was quite a
+sudden thing our coming at all, and I knew nothing of it till the
+carriage was coming to the door, and then Mr. Palmer asked me if I
+would go with him to Barton. He is so droll! He never tells me any
+thing! I am so sorry we cannot stay longer; however we shall meet
+again in town very soon, I hope."
+
+They were obliged to put an end to such an expectation.
+
+"Not go to town!" cried Mrs. Palmer, with a laugh, "I shall be quite
+disappointed if you do not. I could get the nicest house in world for
+you, next door to ours, in Hanover-square. You must come, indeed. I am
+sure I shall be very happy to chaperon you at any time till I am
+confined, if Mrs. Dashwood should not like to go into public."
+
+They thanked her; but were obliged to resist all her entreaties.
+
+"Oh, my love," cried Mrs. Palmer to her husband, who just then entered
+the room--"you must help me to persuade the Miss Dashwoods to go to
+town this winter."
+
+Her love made no answer; and after slightly bowing to the ladies,
+began complaining of the weather.
+
+"How horrid all this is!" said he. "Such weather makes every thing and
+every body disgusting. Dullness is as much produced within doors as
+without, by rain. It makes one detest all one's acquaintance. What the
+devil does Sir John mean by not having a billiard room in his house?
+How few people know what comfort is! Sir John is as stupid as the
+weather."
+
+The rest of the company soon dropt in.
+
+"I am afraid, Miss Marianne," said Sir John, "you have not been able
+to take your usual walk to Allenham today."
+
+Marianne looked very grave and said nothing.
+
+"Oh, don't be so sly before us," said Mrs. Palmer; "for we know all
+about it, I assure you; and I admire your taste very much, for I think
+he is extremely handsome. We do not live a great way from him in the
+country, you know. Not above ten miles, I dare say."
+
+"Much nearer thirty," said her husband.
+
+"Ah, well! there is not much difference. I never was at his house; but
+they say it is a sweet pretty place."
+
+"As vile a spot as I ever saw in my life," said Mr. Palmer.
+
+Marianne remained perfectly silent, though her countenance betrayed
+her interest in what was said.
+
+"Is it very ugly?" continued Mrs. Palmer--"then it must be some other
+place that is so pretty I suppose."
+
+When they were seated in the dining room, Sir John observed with
+regret that they were only eight all together.
+
+"My dear," said he to his lady, "it is very provoking that we should
+be so few. Why did not you ask the Gilberts to come to us today?"
+
+"Did not I tell you, Sir John, when you spoke to me about it before,
+that it could not be done? They dined with us last."
+
+"You and I, Sir John," said Mrs. Jennings, "should not stand upon such
+ceremony."
+
+"Then you would be very ill-bred," cried Mr. Palmer.
+
+"My love you contradict every body," said his wife with her usual
+laugh. "Do you know that you are quite rude?"
+
+"I did not know I contradicted any body in calling your mother
+ill-bred."
+
+"Ay, you may abuse me as you please," said the good-natured old lady,
+"you have taken Charlotte off my hands, and cannot give her back
+again. So there I have the whip hand of you."
+
+Charlotte laughed heartily to think that her husband could not get rid
+of her; and exultingly said, she did not care how cross he was to her,
+as they must live together. It was impossible for any one to be more
+thoroughly good-natured, or more determined to be happy than Mrs.
+Palmer. The studied indifference, insolence, and discontent of her
+husband gave her no pain; and when he scolded or abused her, she was
+highly diverted.
+
+"Mr. Palmer is so droll!" said she, in a whisper, to Elinor. "He is
+always out of humour."
+
+Elinor was not inclined, after a little observation, to give him
+credit for being so genuinely and unaffectedly ill-natured or ill-bred
+as he wished to appear. His temper might perhaps be a little soured by
+finding, like many others of his sex, that through some unaccountable
+bias in favour of beauty, he was the husband of a very silly
+woman,--but she knew that this kind of blunder was too common for any
+sensible man to be lastingly hurt by it. It was rather a wish of
+distinction, she believed, which produced his contemptuous treatment
+of every body, and his general abuse of every thing before him. It was
+the desire of appearing superior to other people. The motive was too
+common to be wondered at; but the means, however they might succeed by
+establishing his superiority in ill-breeding, were not likely to
+attach any one to him except his wife.
+
+"Oh, my dear Miss Dashwood," said Mrs. Palmer soon afterwards, "I have
+got such a favour to ask of you and your sister. Will you come and
+spend some time at Cleveland this Christmas? Now, pray do,--and come
+while the Westons are with us. You cannot think how happy I shall be!
+It will be quite delightful!--My love," applying to her husband,
+"don't you long to have the Miss Dashwoods come to Cleveland?"
+
+"Certainly," he replied, with a sneer--"I came into Devonshire with no
+other view."
+
+"There now,"--said his lady, "you see Mr. Palmer expects you; so you
+cannot refuse to come."
+
+They both eagerly and resolutely declined her invitation.
+
+"But indeed you must and shall come. I am sure you will like it of all
+things. The Westons will be with us, and it will be quite delightful.
+You cannot think what a sweet place Cleveland is; and we are so gay
+now, for Mr. Palmer is always going about the country canvassing
+against the election; and so many people came to dine with us that I
+never saw before, it is quite charming! But, poor fellow! it is very
+fatiguing to him! for he is forced to make every body like him."
+
+Elinor could hardly keep her countenance as she assented to the
+hardship of such an obligation.
+
+"How charming it will be," said Charlotte, "when he is in
+Parliament!--won't it? How I shall laugh! It will be so ridiculous to
+see all his letters directed to him with an M.P. But do you know, he
+says, he will never frank for me? He declares he won't. Don't you, Mr.
+Palmer?"
+
+Mr. Palmer took no notice of her.
+
+"He cannot bear writing, you know," she continued; "he says it is
+quite shocking."
+
+"No," said he, "I never said any thing so irrational. Don't palm all
+your abuses of languages upon me."
+
+"There now; you see how droll he is. This is always the way with him!
+Sometimes he won't speak to me for half a day together, and then he
+comes out with something so droll--all about any thing in the world."
+
+She surprised Elinor very much as they returned into the drawing-room,
+by asking her whether she did not like Mr. Palmer excessively.
+
+"Certainly," said Elinor; "he seems very agreeable."
+
+"Well--I am so glad you do. I thought you would, he is so pleasant;
+and Mr. Palmer is excessively pleased with you and your sisters I can
+tell you, and you can't think how disappointed he will be if you don't
+come to Cleveland. I can't imagine why you should object to it."
+
+Elinor was again obliged to decline her invitation; and by changing
+the subject, put a stop to her entreaties. She thought it probable
+that as they lived in the same county, Mrs. Palmer might be able to
+give some more particular account of Willoughby's general character,
+than could be gathered from the Middletons' partial acquaintance with
+him; and she was eager to gain from any one, such a confirmation of
+his merits as might remove the possibility of fear from Marianne. She
+began by inquiring if they saw much of Mr. Willoughby at Cleveland,
+and whether they were intimately acquainted with him.
+
+"Oh dear, yes; I know him extremely well," replied Mrs. Palmer;--"Not
+that I ever spoke to him, indeed; but I have seen him for ever in
+town. Somehow or other I never happened to be staying at Barton while
+he was at Allenham. Mama saw him here once before, but I was with my
+uncle at Weymouth. However, I dare say we should have seen a great
+deal of him in Somersetshire, if it had not happened very unluckily
+that we should never have been in the country together. He is very
+little at Combe, I believe; but if he were ever so much there, I do
+not think Mr. Palmer would visit him, for he is in the opposition, you
+know, and besides it is such a way off. I know why you inquire about
+him, very well; your sister is to marry him. I am monstrous glad of
+it, for then I shall have her for a neighbour you know."
+
+"Upon my word," replied Elinor, "you know much more of the matter than
+I do, if you have any reason to expect such a match."
+
+"Don't pretend to deny it, because you know it is what every body
+talks of. I assure you I heard of it in my way through town."
+
+"My dear Mrs. Palmer!"
+
+"Upon my honour I did. I met Colonel Brandon Monday morning in
+Bond-street, just before we left town, and he told me of it directly."
+
+"You surprise me very much. Colonel Brandon tell you of it! Surely you
+must be mistaken. To give such intelligence to a person who could not
+be interested in it, even if it were true, is not what I should expect
+Colonel Brandon to do."
+
+"But I do assure you it was so, for all that, and I will tell you how
+it happened. When we met him, he turned back and walked with us; and
+so we began talking of my brother and sister, and one thing and
+another, and I said to him, 'So, Colonel, there is a new family come
+to Barton cottage, I hear, and mama sends me word they are very
+pretty, and that one of them is going to be married to Mr. Willoughby
+of Combe Magna. Is it true, pray? for of course you must know, as you
+have been in Devonshire so lately.'"
+
+"And what did the Colonel say?"
+
+"Oh--he did not say much; but he looked as if he knew it to be true,
+so from that moment I set it down as certain. It will be quite
+delightful, I declare! When is it to take place?"
+
+"Mr. Brandon was very well I hope?"
+
+"Oh! yes, quite well; and so full of your praises, he did nothing but
+say fine things of you."
+
+"I am flattered by his commendation. He seems an excellent man; and I
+think him uncommonly pleasing."
+
+"So do I. He is such a charming man, that it is quite a pity he should
+be so grave and so dull. Mamma says _he_ was in love with your sister
+too. I assure you it was a great compliment if he was, for he hardly
+ever falls in love with any body."
+
+"Is Mr. Willoughby much known in your part of Somersetshire?" said
+Elinor.
+
+"Oh! yes, extremely well; that is, I do not believe many people are
+acquainted with him, because Combe Magna is so far off; but they all
+think him extremely agreeable I assure you. Nobody is more liked than
+Mr. Willoughby wherever he goes, and so you may tell your sister. She
+is a monstrous lucky girl to get him, upon my honour; not but that he
+is much more lucky in getting her, because she is so very handsome and
+agreeable, that nothing can be good enough for her. However, I don't
+think her hardly at all handsomer than you, I assure you; for I think
+you both excessively pretty, and so does Mr. Palmer too I am sure,
+though we could not get him to own it last night."
+
+Mrs. Palmer's information respecting Willoughby was not very material;
+but any testimony in his favour, however small, was pleasing to her.
+
+"I am so glad we are got acquainted at last," continued Charlotte.
+"And now I hope we shall always be great friends. You can't think how
+much I longed to see you! It is so delightful that you should live at
+the cottage! Nothing can be like it, to be sure! And I am so glad your
+sister is going to be well married! I hope you will be a great deal at
+Combe Magna. It is a sweet place, by all accounts."
+
+"You have been long acquainted with Colonel Brandon, have not you?"
+
+"Yes, a great while; ever since my sister married. He was a particular
+friend of Sir John's. I believe," she added in a low voice, "he would
+have been very glad to have had me, if he could. Sir John and Lady
+Middleton wished it very much. But mama did not think the match good
+enough for me, otherwise Sir John would have mentioned it to the
+Colonel, and we should have been married immediately."
+
+"Did not Colonel Brandon know of Sir John's proposal to your mother
+before it was made? Had he never owned his affection to yourself?"
+
+"Oh, no; but if mama had not objected to it, I dare say he would have
+liked it of all things. He had not seen me then above twice, for it
+was before I left school. However, I am much happier as I am. Mr.
+Palmer is the kind of man I like."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+The Palmers returned to Cleveland the next day, and the two families
+at Barton were again left to entertain each other. But this did not
+last long; Elinor had hardly got their last visitors out of her head,
+had hardly done wondering at Charlotte's being so happy without a
+cause, at Mr. Palmer's acting so simply, with good abilities, and at
+the strange unsuitableness which often existed between husband and
+wife, before Sir John's and Mrs. Jennings's active zeal in the cause
+of society, procured her some other new acquaintance to see and
+observe.
+
+In a morning's excursion to Exeter, they had met with two young
+ladies, whom Mrs. Jennings had the satisfaction of discovering to be
+her relations, and this was enough for Sir John to invite them
+directly to the park, as soon as their present engagements at Exeter
+were over. Their engagements at Exeter instantly gave way before such
+an invitation, and Lady Middleton was thrown into no little alarm on
+the return of Sir John, by hearing that she was very soon to receive a
+visit from two girls whom she had never seen in her life, and of whose
+elegance--whose tolerable gentility even--she could have no proof; for
+the assurances of her husband and mother on that subject went for
+nothing at all. Their being her relations too made it so much the
+worse; and Mrs. Jennings's attempts at consolation were therefore
+unfortunately founded, when she advised her daughter not to care about
+their being so fashionable; because they were all cousins and must put
+up with one another. As it was impossible, however, now to prevent
+their coming, Lady Middleton resigned herself to the idea of it, with
+all the philosophy of a well-bred woman, contenting herself with
+merely giving her husband a gentle reprimand on the subject five or
+six times every day.
+
+The young ladies arrived: their appearance was by no means ungenteel
+or unfashionable. Their dress was very smart, their manners very
+civil, they were delighted with the house, and in raptures with the
+furniture, and they happened to be so doatingly fond of children that
+Lady Middleton's good opinion was engaged in their favour before they
+had been an hour at the Park. She declared them to be very agreeable
+girls indeed, which for her ladyship was enthusiastic admiration. Sir
+John's confidence in his own judgment rose with this animated praise,
+and he set off directly for the cottage to tell the Miss Dashwoods of
+the Miss Steeles' arrival, and to assure them of their being the
+sweetest girls in the world. From such commendation as this, however,
+there was not much to be learned; Elinor well knew that the sweetest
+girls in the world were to be met with in every part of England, under
+every possible variation of form, face, temper and understanding. Sir
+John wanted the whole family to walk to the Park directly and look at
+his guests. Benevolent, philanthropic man! It was painful to him even
+to keep a third cousin to himself.
+
+"Do come now," said he--"pray come--you must come--I declare you shall
+come--You can't think how you will like them. Lucy is monstrous
+pretty, and so good humoured and agreeable! The children are all
+hanging about her already, as if she was an old acquaintance. And they
+both long to see you of all things, for they have heard at Exeter that
+you are the most beautiful creatures in the world; and I have told
+them it is all very true, and a great deal more. You will be delighted
+with them I am sure. They have brought the whole coach full of
+playthings for the children. How can you be so cross as not to come?
+Why they are your cousins, you know, after a fashion. _You_ are my
+cousins, and they are my wife's, so you must be related."
+
+But Sir John could not prevail. He could only obtain a promise of
+their calling at the Park within a day or two, and then left them in
+amazement at their indifference, to walk home and boast anew of their
+attractions to the Miss Steeles, as he had been already boasting of
+the Miss Steeles to them.
+
+When their promised visit to the Park and consequent introduction to
+these young ladies took place, they found in the appearance of the
+eldest, who was nearly thirty, with a very plain and not a sensible
+face, nothing to admire; but in the other, who was not more than two
+or three and twenty, they acknowledged considerable beauty; her
+features were pretty, and she had a sharp quick eye, and a smartness
+of air, which though it did not give actual elegance or grace, gave
+distinction to her person. Their manners were particularly civil, and
+Elinor soon allowed them credit for some kind of sense, when she saw
+with what constant and judicious attention they were making themselves
+agreeable to Lady Middleton. With her children they were in continual
+raptures, extolling their beauty, courting their notice, and humouring
+their whims; and such of their time as could be spared from the
+importunate demands which this politeness made on it, was spent in
+admiration of whatever her ladyship was doing, if she happened to be
+doing any thing, or in taking patterns of some elegant new dress, in
+which her appearance the day before had thrown them into unceasing
+delight. Fortunately for those who pay their court through such
+foibles, a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children,
+the most rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous;
+her demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the
+excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her
+offspring were viewed therefore by Lady Middleton without the smallest
+surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all the
+impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her cousins
+submitted. She saw their sashes untied, their hair pulled about their
+ears, their work-bags searched, and their knives and scissors stolen
+away, and felt no doubt of its being a reciprocal enjoyment. It
+suggested no other surprise than that Elinor and Marianne should sit
+so composedly by, without claiming a share in what was passing.
+
+"John is in such spirits today!" said she, on his taking Miss Steele's
+pocket handkerchief, and throwing it out of window--"He is full of
+monkey tricks."
+
+And soon afterwards, on the second boy's violently pinching one of the
+same lady's fingers, she fondly observed, "How playful William is!"
+
+[Illustration: _Mischievous tricks._]
+
+"And here is my sweet little Annamaria," she added, tenderly caressing
+a little girl of three years old, who had not made a noise for the
+last two minutes; "And she is always so gentle and quiet--Never was
+there such a quiet little thing!"
+
+But unfortunately in bestowing these embraces, a pin in her ladyship's
+head dress slightly scratching the child's neck, produced from this
+pattern of gentleness such violent screams, as could hardly be outdone
+by any creature professedly noisy. The mother's consternation was
+excessive; but it could not surpass the alarm of the Miss Steeles, and
+every thing was done by all three, in so critical an emergency, which
+affection could suggest as likely to assuage the agonies of the little
+sufferer. She was seated in her mother's lap, covered with kisses, her
+wound bathed with lavender-water, by one of the Miss Steeles, who was
+on her knees to attend her, and her mouth stuffed with sugar plums by
+the other. With such a reward for her tears, the child was too wise to
+cease crying. She still screamed and sobbed lustily, kicked her two
+brothers for offering to touch her, and all their united soothings
+were ineffectual till Lady Middleton luckily remembering that in a
+scene of similar distress last week, some apricot marmalade had been
+successfully applied for a bruised temple, the same remedy was eagerly
+proposed for this unfortunate scratch, and a slight intermission of
+screams in the young lady on hearing it, gave them reason to hope that
+it would not be rejected. She was carried out of the room therefore in
+her mother's arms, in quest of this medicine, and as the two boys
+chose to follow, though earnestly entreated by their mother to stay
+behind, the four young ladies were left in a quietness which the room
+had not known for many hours.
+
+"Poor little creatures!" said Miss Steele, as soon as they were gone.
+"It might have been a very sad accident."
+
+"Yet I hardly know how," cried Marianne, "unless it had been under
+totally different circumstances. But this is the usual way of
+heightening alarm, where there is nothing to be alarmed at in
+reality."
+
+"What a sweet woman Lady Middleton is!" said Lucy Steele.
+
+Marianne was silent; it was impossible for her to say what she did not
+feel, however trivial the occasion; and upon Elinor therefore the
+whole task of telling lies when politeness required it, always fell.
+She did her best when thus called on, by speaking of Lady Middleton
+with more warmth than she felt, though with far less than Miss Lucy.
+
+"And Sir John too," cried the elder sister, "what a charming man he
+is!"
+
+Here too, Miss Dashwood's commendation, being only simple and just,
+came in without any Èclat. She merely observed that he was perfectly
+good humoured and friendly.
+
+"And what a charming little family they have! I never saw such fine
+children in my life. I declare I quite doat upon them already, and
+indeed I am always distractedly fond of children."
+
+"I should guess so," said Elinor, with a smile, "from what I have
+witnessed this morning."
+
+"I have a notion," said Lucy, "you think the little Middletons rather
+too much indulged; perhaps they may be the outside of enough; but it
+is so natural in Lady Middleton; and for my part, I love to see
+children full of life and spirits; I cannot bear them if they are tame
+and quiet."
+
+"I confess," replied Elinor, "that while I am at Barton Park, I never
+think of tame and quiet children with any abhorrence."
+
+A short pause succeeded this speech, which was first broken by Miss
+Steele, who seemed very much disposed for conversation, and who now
+said rather abruptly, "And how do you like Devonshire, Miss Dashwood?
+I suppose you were very sorry to leave Sussex."
+
+In some surprise at the familiarity of this question, or at least of
+the manner in which it was spoken, Elinor replied that she was.
+
+"Norland is a prodigious beautiful place, is not it?" added Miss
+Steele.
+
+"We have heard Sir John admire it excessively," said Lucy, who seemed
+to think some apology necessary for the freedom of her sister.
+
+"I think every one _must_ admire it," replied Elinor, "who ever saw
+the place; though it is not to be supposed that any one can estimate
+its beauties as we do."
+
+"And had you a great many smart beaux there? I suppose you have not so
+many in this part of the world; for my part, I think they are a vast
+addition always."
+
+"But why should you think," said Lucy, looking ashamed of her sister,
+"that there are not as many genteel young men in Devonshire as
+Sussex?"
+
+"Nay, my dear, I'm sure I don't pretend to say that there an't. I'm
+sure there's a vast many smart beaux in Exeter; but you know, how
+could I tell what smart beaux there might be about Norland; and I was
+only afraid the Miss Dashwoods might find it dull at Barton, if they
+had not so many as they used to have. But perhaps you young ladies may
+not care about the beaux, and had as lief be without them as with
+them. For my part, I think they are vastly agreeable, provided they
+dress smart and behave civil. But I can't bear to see them dirty and
+nasty. Now there's Mr. Rose at Exeter, a prodigious smart young man,
+quite a beau, clerk to Mr. Simpson, you know, and yet if you do but
+meet him of a morning, he is not fit to be seen. I suppose your
+brother was quite a beau, Miss Dashwood, before he married, as he was
+so rich?"
+
+"Upon my word," replied Elinor, "I cannot tell you, for I do not
+perfectly comprehend the meaning of the word. But this I can say, that
+if he ever was a beau before he married, he is one still for there is
+not the smallest alteration in him."
+
+"Oh! dear! one never thinks of married men's being beaux--they have
+something else to do."
+
+"Lord! Anne," cried her sister, "you can talk of nothing but
+beaux;--you will make Miss Dashwood believe you think of nothing
+else." And then to turn the discourse, she began admiring the house
+and the furniture.
+
+This specimen of the Miss Steeles was enough. The vulgar freedom and
+folly of the eldest left her no recommendation, and as Elinor was not
+blinded by the beauty, or the shrewd look of the youngest, to her want
+of real elegance and artlessness, she left the house without any wish
+of knowing them better.
+
+Not so the Miss Steeles. They came from Exeter, well provided with
+admiration for the use of Sir John Middleton, his family, and all his
+relations, and no niggardly proportion was now dealt out to his fair
+cousins, whom they declared to be the most beautiful, elegant,
+accomplished, and agreeable girls they had ever beheld, and with whom
+they were particularly anxious to be better acquainted. And to be
+better acquainted therefore, Elinor soon found was their inevitable
+lot, for as Sir John was entirely on the side of the Miss Steeles,
+their party would be too strong for opposition, and that kind of
+intimacy must be submitted to, which consists of sitting an hour or
+two together in the same room almost every day. Sir John could do no
+more; but he did not know that any more was required: to be together
+was, in his opinion, to be intimate, and while his continual schemes
+for their meeting were effectual, he had not a doubt of their being
+established friends.
+
+To do him justice, he did every thing in his power to promote their
+unreserve, by making the Miss Steeles acquainted with whatever he knew
+or supposed of his cousins' situations in the most delicate
+particulars,--and Elinor had not seen them more than twice, before the
+eldest of them wished her joy on her sister's having been so lucky as
+to make a conquest of a very smart beau since she came to Barton.
+
+"'Twill be a fine thing to have her married so young to be sure," said
+she, "and I hear he is quite a beau, and prodigious handsome. And I
+hope you may have as good luck yourself soon,--but perhaps you may
+have a friend in the corner already."
+
+Elinor could not suppose that Sir John would be more nice in
+proclaiming his suspicions of her regard for Edward, than he had been
+with respect to Marianne; indeed it was rather his favourite joke of
+the two, as being somewhat newer and more conjectural; and since
+Edward's visit, they had never dined together without his drinking to
+her best affections with so much significancy and so many nods and
+winks, as to excite general attention. The letter F had been likewise
+invariably brought forward, and found productive of such countless
+jokes, that its character as the wittiest letter in the alphabet had
+been long established with Elinor.
+
+The Miss Steeles, as she expected, had now all the benefit of these
+jokes, and in the eldest of them they raised a curiosity to know the
+name of the gentleman alluded to, which, though often impertinently
+expressed, was perfectly of a piece with her general inquisitiveness
+into the concerns of their family. But Sir John did not sport long
+with the curiosity which he delighted to raise, for he had at least as
+much pleasure in telling the name, as Miss Steele had in hearing it.
+
+"His name is Ferrars," said he, in a very audible whisper; "but pray
+do not tell it, for it's a great secret."
+
+[Illustration: _Drinking to her best affections._]
+
+"Ferrars!" repeated Miss Steele; "Mr. Ferrars is the happy man, is he?
+What! your sister-in-law's brother, Miss Dashwood? a very agreeable
+young man to be sure; I know him very well."
+
+"How can you say so, Anne?" cried Lucy, who generally made an
+amendment to all her sister's assertions. "Though we have seen him
+once or twice at my uncle's, it is rather too much to pretend to know
+him very well."
+
+Elinor heard all this with attention and surprise. "And who was this
+uncle? Where did he live? How came they acquainted?" She wished very
+much to have the subject continued, though she did not choose to join
+in it herself; but nothing more of it was said, and for the first time
+in her life, she thought Mrs. Jennings deficient either in curiosity
+after petty information, or in a disposition to communicate it. The
+manner in which Miss Steele had spoken of Edward, increased her
+curiosity; for it struck her as being rather ill-natured, and
+suggested the suspicion of that lady's knowing, or fancying herself to
+know something to his disadvantage. But her curiosity was unavailing,
+for no farther notice was taken of Mr. Ferrars's name by Miss Steele
+when alluded to, or even openly mentioned by Sir John.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+Marianne, who had never much toleration for any thing like
+impertinence, vulgarity, inferiority of parts, or even difference of
+taste from herself, was at this time particularly ill-disposed, from
+the state of her spirits, to be pleased with the Miss Steeles, or to
+encourage their advances; and to the invariable coldness of her
+behaviour towards them, which checked every endeavour at intimacy on
+their side, Elinor principally attributed that preference of herself
+which soon became evident in the manners of both, but especially of
+Lucy, who missed no opportunity of engaging her in conversation, or of
+striving to improve their acquaintance by an easy and frank
+communication of her sentiments.
+
+Lucy was naturally clever; her remarks were often just and amusing;
+and as a companion for half an hour Elinor frequently found her
+agreeable; but her powers had received no aid from education: she was
+ignorant and illiterate; and her deficiency of all mental improvement,
+her want of information in the most common particulars, could not be
+concealed from Miss Dashwood, in spite of her constant endeavour to
+appear to advantage. Elinor saw, and pitied her for, the neglect of
+abilities which education might have rendered so respectable; but she
+saw, with less tenderness of feeling, the thorough want of delicacy,
+of rectitude, and integrity of mind, which her attentions, her
+assiduities, her flatteries at the Park betrayed; and she could have
+no lasting satisfaction in the company of a person who joined
+insincerity with ignorance; whose want of instruction prevented their
+meeting in conversation on terms of equality, and whose conduct toward
+others made every show of attention and deference towards herself
+perfectly valueless.
+
+"You will think my question an odd one, I dare say," said Lucy to her
+one day, as they were walking together from the park to the
+cottage--"but pray, are you personally acquainted with your
+sister-in-law's mother, Mrs. Ferrars?"
+
+Elinor _did_ think the question a very odd one, and her countenance
+expressed it, as she answered that she had never seen Mrs. Ferrars.
+
+"Indeed!" replied Lucy; "I wonder at that, for I thought you must have
+seen her at Norland sometimes. Then, perhaps, you cannot tell me what
+sort of a woman she is?"
+
+"No," returned Elinor, cautious of giving her real opinion of Edward's
+mother, and not very desirous of satisfying what seemed impertinent
+curiosity; "I know nothing of her."
+
+"I am sure you think me very strange, for enquiring about her in such
+a way," said Lucy, eyeing Elinor attentively as she spoke; "but
+perhaps there may be reasons--I wish I might venture; but however I
+hope you will do me the justice of believing that I do not mean to be
+impertinent."
+
+Elinor made her a civil reply, and they walked on for a few minutes in
+silence. It was broken by Lucy, who renewed the subject again by
+saying, with some hesitation--
+
+"I cannot bear to have you think me impertinently curious. I am sure I
+would rather do any thing in the world than be thought so by a person
+whose good opinion is so well worth having as yours. And I am sure I
+should not have the smallest fear of trusting _you_; indeed, I should
+be very glad of your advice how to manage in such and uncomfortable
+situation as I am; but, however, there is no occasion to trouble
+_you._ I am sorry you do not happen to know Mrs. Ferrars."
+
+"I am sorry I do _not_," said Elinor, in great astonishment, "if it
+could be of any use to _you_ to know my opinion of her. But really I
+never understood that you were at all connected with that family, and
+therefore I am a little surprised, I confess, at so serious an inquiry
+into her character."
+
+"I dare say you are, and I am sure I do not at all wonder at it. But
+if I dared tell you all, you would not be so much surprised. Mrs.
+Ferrars is certainly nothing to me at present--but the time _may_
+come--how soon it will come must depend upon herself--when we may be
+very intimately connected."
+
+She looked down as she said this, amiably bashful, with only one side
+glance at her companion to observe its effect on her.
+
+"Good heavens!" cried Elinor, "what do you mean? Are you acquainted
+with Mr. Robert Ferrars? Can you be?" And she did not feel much
+delighted with the idea of such a sister-in-law.
+
+"No," replied Lucy, "not to Mr. _Robert_ Ferrars--I never saw him in
+my life; but," fixing her eyes upon Elinor, "to his eldest brother."
+
+What felt Elinor at that moment? Astonishment, that would have been as
+painful as it was strong, had not an immediate disbelief of the
+assertion attended it. She turned towards Lucy in silent amazement,
+unable to divine the reason or object of such a declaration; and
+though her complexion varied, she stood firm in incredulity, and felt
+in no danger of an hysterical fit, or a swoon.
+
+"You may well be surprised," continued Lucy; "for to be sure you could
+have had no idea of it before; for I dare say he never dropped the
+smallest hint of it to you or any of your family; because it was
+always meant to be a great secret, and I am sure has been faithfully
+kept so by me to this hour. Not a soul of all my relations know of it
+but Anne, and I never should have mentioned it to you, if I had not
+felt the greatest dependence in the world upon your secrecy; and I
+really thought my behaviour in asking so many questions about Mrs.
+Ferrars must seem so odd, that it ought to be explained. And I do not
+think Mr. Ferrars can be displeased, when he knows I have trusted
+you, because I know he has the highest opinion in the world of all
+your family, and looks upon yourself and the other Miss Dashwoods
+quite as his own sisters."--She paused.
+
+[Illustration: _Amiably bashful._]
+
+Elinor for a few moments remained silent. Her astonishment at what she
+heard was at first too great for words; but at length forcing herself
+to speak, and to speak cautiously, she said, with calmness of manner,
+which tolerably well concealed her surprise and solicitude--"May I ask
+if your engagement is of long standing?"
+
+"We have been engaged these four years."
+
+"Four years!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Elinor, though greatly shocked, still felt unable to believe it.
+
+"I did not know," said she, "that you were even acquainted till the
+other day."
+
+"Our acquaintance, however, is of many years date. He was under my
+uncle's care, you know, a considerable while."
+
+"Your uncle!"
+
+"Yes; Mr. Pratt. Did you never hear him talk of Mr. Pratt?"
+
+"I think I have," replied Elinor, with an exertion of spirits, which
+increased with her increase of emotion.
+
+"He was four years with my uncle, who lives at Longstaple, near
+Plymouth. It was there our acquaintance begun, for my sister and me
+was often staying with my uncle, and it was there our engagement was
+formed, though not till a year after he had quitted as a pupil; but he
+was almost always with us afterwards. I was very unwilling to enter
+into it, as you may imagine, without the knowledge and approbation of
+his mother; but I was too young, and loved him too well, to be so
+prudent as I ought to have been. Though you do not know him so well as
+me, Miss Dashwood, you must have seen enough of him to be sensible he
+is very capable of making a woman sincerely attached to him."
+
+"Certainly," answered Elinor, without knowing what she said; but after
+a moment's reflection, she added, with revived security of Edward's
+honour and love, and her companion's falsehood--"Engaged to Mr. Edward
+Ferrars!--I confess myself so totally surprised at what you tell me,
+that really--I beg your pardon; but surely there must be some mistake
+of person or name. We cannot mean the same Mr. Ferrars."
+
+"We can mean no other," cried Lucy, smiling. "Mr. Edward Ferrars, the
+eldest son of Mrs. Ferrars, of Park Street, and brother of your
+sister-in-law, Mrs. John Dashwood, is the person I mean; you must
+allow that I am not likely to be deceived as to the name of the man on
+who all my happiness depends."
+
+"It is strange," replied Elinor, in a most painful perplexity, "that I
+should never have heard him even mention your name."
+
+"No; considering our situation, it was not strange. Our first care has
+been to keep the matter secret. You knew nothing of me, or my family,
+and, therefore, there could be no _occasion_ for ever mentioning my
+name to you; and, as he was always particularly afraid of his sister's
+suspecting any thing, _that_ was reason enough for his not mentioning
+it."
+
+She was silent. Elinor's security sunk; but her self-command did not
+sink with it.
+
+"Four years you have been engaged," said she with a firm voice.
+
+"Yes; and heaven knows how much longer we may have to wait. Poor
+Edward! It puts him quite out of heart." Then taking a small miniature
+from her pocket, she added, "To prevent the possibility of mistake, be
+so good as to look at this face. It does not do him justice, to be
+sure, but yet I think you cannot be deceived as to the person it was
+drew for. I have had it above these three years."
+
+She put it into her hands as she spoke; and when Elinor saw the
+painting, whatever other doubts her fear of a too hasty decision, or
+her wish of detecting falsehood might suffer to linger in her mind,
+she could have none of its being Edward's face. She returned it almost
+instantly, acknowledging the likeness.
+
+"I have never been able," continued Lucy, "to give him my picture in
+return, which I am very much vexed at, for he has been always so
+anxious to get it! But I am determined to set for it the very first
+opportunity."
+
+"You are quite in the right," replied Elinor calmly. They then
+proceeded a few paces in silence. Lucy spoke first.
+
+"I am sure," said she, "I have no doubt in the world of your
+faithfully keeping this secret, because you must know of what
+importance it is to us, not to have it reach his mother; for she
+would never approve of it, I dare say. I shall have no fortune, and I
+fancy she is an exceeding proud woman."
+
+"I certainly did not seek your confidence," said Elinor; "but you do
+me no more than justice in imagining that I may be depended on. Your
+secret is safe with me; but pardon me if I express some surprise at so
+unnecessary a communication. You must at least have felt that my being
+acquainted with it could not add to its safety."
+
+As she said this, she looked earnestly at Lucy, hoping to discover
+something in her countenance; perhaps the falsehood of the greatest
+part of what she had been saying; but Lucy's countenance suffered no
+change.
+
+"I was afraid you would think I was taking a great liberty with you,"
+said she, "in telling you all this. I have not known you long to be
+sure, personally at least, but I have known you and all your family by
+description a great while; and as soon as I saw you, I felt almost as
+if you was an old acquaintance. Besides in the present case, I really
+thought some explanation was due to you after my making such
+particular inquiries about Edward's mother; and I am so unfortunate,
+that I have not a creature whose advice I can ask. Anne is the only
+person that knows of it, and she has no judgment at all; indeed, she
+does me a great deal more harm than good, for I am in constant fear of
+her betraying me. She does not know how to hold her tongue, as you
+must perceive, and I am sure I was in the greatest fright in the world
+t'other day, when Edward's name was mentioned by Sir John, lest she
+should out with it all. You can't think how much I go through in my
+mind from it altogether. I only wonder that I am alive after what I
+have suffered for Edward's sake these last four years. Every thing in
+such suspense and uncertainty; and seeing him so seldom--we can hardly
+meet above twice a-year. I am sure I wonder my heart is not quite
+broke."
+
+Here she took out her handkerchief; but Elinor did not feel very
+compassionate.
+
+"Sometimes," continued Lucy, after wiping her eyes, "I think whether
+it would not be better for us both to break off the matter entirely."
+As she said this, she looked directly at her companion. "But then at
+other times I have not resolution enough for it. I cannot bear the
+thoughts of making him so miserable, as I know the very mention of
+such a thing would do. And on my own account too--so dear as he is to
+me--I don't think I could be equal to it. What would you advise me to
+do in such a case, Miss Dashwood? What would you do yourself?"
+
+"Pardon me," replied Elinor, startled by the question; "but I can give
+you no advice under such circumstances. Your own judgment must direct
+you."
+
+"To be sure," continued Lucy, after a few minutes silence on both
+sides, "his mother must provide for him sometime or other; but poor
+Edward is so cast down by it! Did you not think him dreadful
+low-spirited when he was at Barton? He was so miserable when he left
+us at Longstaple, to go to you, that I was afraid you would think him
+quite ill."
+
+"Did he come from your uncle's, then, when he visited us?"
+
+"Oh, yes; he had been staying a fortnight with us. Did you think he
+came directly from town?"
+
+"No," replied Elinor, most feelingly sensible of every fresh
+circumstance in favour of Lucy's veracity; "I remember he told us,
+that he had been staying a fortnight with some friends near Plymouth."
+She remembered too, her own surprise at the time, at his mentioning
+nothing farther of those friends, at his total silence with respect
+even to their names.
+
+"Did not you think him sadly out of spirits?" repeated Lucy.
+
+"We did, indeed, particularly so when he first arrived."
+
+"I begged him to exert himself for fear you should suspect what was
+the matter; but it made him so melancholy, not being able to stay more
+than a fortnight with us, and seeing me so much affected. Poor
+fellow!--I am afraid it is just the same with him now; for he writes
+in wretched spirits. I heard from him just before I left Exeter;"
+taking a letter from her pocket and carelessly showing the direction
+to Elinor. "You know his hand, I dare say, a charming one it is; but
+that is not written so well as usual. He was tired, I dare say, for he
+had just filled the sheet to me as full as possible."
+
+Elinor saw that it _was_ his hand, and she could doubt no longer. This
+picture, she had allowed herself to believe, might have been
+accidentally obtained; it might not have been Edward's gift; but a
+correspondence between them by letter, could subsist only under a
+positive engagement, could be authorised by nothing else; for a few
+moments, she was almost overcome--her heart sunk within her, and she
+could hardly stand; but exertion was indispensably necessary; and she
+struggled so resolutely against the oppression of her feelings, that
+her success was speedy, and for the time complete.
+
+"Writing to each other," said Lucy, returning the letter into her
+pocket, "is the only comfort we have in such long separations. Yes, I
+have one other comfort in his picture, but poor Edward has not even
+_that._ If he had but my picture, he says he should be easy. I gave
+him a lock of my hair set in a ring when he was at Longstaple last,
+and that was some comfort to him, he said, but not equal to a picture.
+Perhaps you might notice the ring when you saw him?"
+
+"I did," said Elinor, with a composure of voice, under which was
+concealed an emotion and distress beyond any thing she had ever felt
+before. She was mortified, shocked, confounded.
+
+Fortunately for her, they had now reached the cottage, and the
+conversation could be continued no farther. After sitting with them a
+few minutes, the Miss Steeles returned to the Park, and Elinor was
+then at liberty to think and be wretched.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+However small Elinor's general dependence on Lucy's veracity might be,
+it was impossible for her on serious reflection to suspect it in the
+present case, where no temptation could be answerable to the folly of
+inventing a falsehood of such a description. What Lucy had asserted to
+be true, therefore, Elinor could not, dared not longer doubt;
+supported as it was too on every side by such probabilities and
+proofs, and contradicted by nothing but her own wishes. Their
+opportunity of acquaintance in the house of Mr. Pratt was a foundation
+for the rest, at once indisputable and alarming; and Edward's visit
+near Plymouth, his melancholy state of mind, his dissatisfaction at
+his own prospects, his uncertain behaviour towards herself, the
+intimate knowledge of the Miss Steeles as to Norland and their family
+connections, which had often surprised her, the picture, the letter,
+the ring, formed altogether such a body of evidence, as overcame
+every fear of condemning him unfairly, and established as a fact,
+which no partiality could set aside, his ill-treatment of herself. Her
+resentment of such behaviour, her indignation at having been its dupe,
+for a short time made her feel only for herself; but other ideas,
+other considerations, soon arose. Had Edward been intentionally
+deceiving her? Had he feigned a regard for her which he did not feel?
+Was his engagement to Lucy an engagement of the heart? No; whatever it
+might once have been, she could not believe it such at present. His
+affection was all her own. She could not be deceived in that. Her
+mother, sisters, Fanny, all had been conscious of his regard for her
+at Norland; it was not an illusion of her own vanity. He certainly
+loved her. What a softener of the heart was this persuasion! How much
+could it not tempt her to forgive! He had been blamable, highly
+blamable, in remaining at Norland after he first felt her influence
+over him to be more than it ought to be. In that, he could not be
+defended; but if he had injured her, how much more had he injured
+himself; if her case were pitiable, his was hopeless. His imprudence
+had made her miserable for a while; but it seemed to have deprived
+himself of all chance of ever being otherwise. She might in time
+regain tranquillity; but _he_, what had he to look forward to? Could
+he ever be tolerably happy with Lucy Steele; could he, were his
+affection for herself out of the question, with his integrity, his
+delicacy, and well-informed mind, be satisfied with a wife like
+her--illiterate, artful, and selfish?
+
+The youthful infatuation of nineteen would naturally blind him to
+every thing but her beauty and good nature; but the four succeeding
+years--years, which if rationally spent, give such improvement to the
+understanding, must have opened his eyes to her defects of education,
+while the same period of time, spent on her side in inferior society
+and more frivolous pursuits, had perhaps robbed her of that simplicity
+which might once have given an interesting character to her beauty.
+
+If in the supposition of his seeking to marry herself, his
+difficulties from his mother had seemed great, how much greater were
+they now likely to be, when the object of his engagement was
+undoubtedly inferior in connections, and probably inferior in fortune
+to herself. These difficulties, indeed, with a heart so alienated
+from Lucy, might not press very hard upon his patience; but melancholy
+was the state of the person by whom the expectation of family
+opposition and unkindness, could be felt as a relief!
+
+As these considerations occurred to her in painful succession, she
+wept for him, more than for herself. Supported by the conviction of
+having done nothing to merit her present unhappiness, and consoled by
+the belief that Edward had done nothing to forfeit her esteem, she
+thought she could even now, under the first smart of the heavy blow,
+command herself enough to guard every suspicion of the truth from her
+mother and sisters. And so well was she able to answer her own
+expectations, that when she joined them at dinner only two hours after
+she had first suffered the extinction of all her dearest hopes, no one
+would have supposed from the appearance of the sisters, that Elinor
+was mourning in secret over obstacles which must divide her for ever
+from the object of her love, and that Marianne was internally dwelling
+on the perfections of a man, of whose whole heart she felt thoroughly
+possessed, and whom she expected to see in every carriage which drove
+near their house.
+
+The necessity of concealing from her mother and Marianne, what had
+been entrusted in confidence to herself, though it obliged her to
+unceasing exertion, was no aggravation of Elinor's distress. On the
+contrary it was a relief to her, to be spared the communication of
+what would give such affliction to them, and to be saved likewise from
+hearing that condemnation of Edward, which would probably flow from
+the excess of their partial affection for herself, and which was more
+than she felt equal to support.
+
+From their counsel, or their conversation, she knew she could receive
+no assistance, their tenderness and sorrow must add to her distress,
+while her self-command would neither receive encouragement from their
+example nor from their praise. She was stronger alone, and her own
+good sense so well supported her, that her firmness was as unshaken,
+her appearance of cheerfulness as invariable, as with regrets so
+poignant and so fresh, it was possible for them to be.
+
+Much as she had suffered from her first conversation with Lucy on the
+subject, she soon felt an earnest wish of renewing it; and this for
+more reasons than one. She wanted to hear many particulars of their
+engagement repeated again, she wanted more clearly to understand what
+Lucy really felt for Edward, whether there were any sincerity in her
+declaration of tender regard for him, and she particularly wanted to
+convince Lucy, by her readiness to enter on the matter again, and her
+calmness in conversing on it, that she was no otherwise interested in
+it than as a friend, which she very much feared her involuntary
+agitation, in their morning discourse, must have left at least
+doubtful. That Lucy was disposed to be jealous of her appeared very
+probable: it was plain that Edward had always spoken highly in her
+praise, not merely from Lucy's assertion, but from her venturing to
+trust her on so short a personal acquaintance, with a secret so
+confessedly and evidently important. And even Sir John's joking
+intelligence must have had some weight. But indeed, while Elinor
+remained so well assured within herself of being really beloved by
+Edward, it required no other consideration of probabilities to make it
+natural that Lucy should be jealous; and that she was so, her very
+confidence was a proof. What other reason for the disclosure of the
+affair could there be, but that Elinor might be informed by it of
+Lucy's superior claims on Edward, and be taught to avoid him in
+future? She had little difficulty in understanding thus much of her
+rival's intentions, and while she was firmly resolved to act by her as
+every principle of honour and honesty directed, to combat her own
+affection for Edward and to see him as little as possible; she could
+not deny herself the comfort of endeavouring to convince Lucy that her
+heart was unwounded. And as she could now have nothing more painful to
+hear on the subject than had already been told, she did not mistrust
+her own ability of going through a repetition of particulars with
+composure.
+
+But it was not immediately that an opportunity of doing so could be
+commanded, though Lucy was as well disposed as herself to take
+advantage of any that occurred; for the weather was not often fine
+enough to allow of their joining in a walk, where they might most
+easily separate themselves from the others; and though they met at
+least every other evening either at the park or cottage, and chiefly
+at the former, they could not be supposed to meet for the sake of
+conversation. Such a thought would never enter either Sir John or
+Lady Middleton's head; and therefore very little leisure was ever
+given for a general chat, and none at all for particular discourse.
+They met for the sake of eating, drinking, and laughing together,
+playing at cards, or consequences, or any other game that was
+sufficiently noisy.
+
+One or two meetings of this kind had taken place, without affording
+Elinor any chance of engaging Lucy in private, when Sir John called at
+the cottage one morning, to beg, in the name of charity, that they
+would all dine with Lady Middleton that day, as he was obliged to
+attend the club at Exeter, and she would otherwise be quite alone,
+except her mother and the two Miss Steeles. Elinor, who foresaw a
+fairer opening for the point she had in view, in such a party as this
+was likely to be, more at liberty among themselves under the tranquil
+and well-bred direction of Lady Middleton than when her husband united
+them together in one noisy purpose, immediately accepted the
+invitation; Margaret, with her mother's permission, was equally
+compliant, and Marianne, though always unwilling to join any of their
+parties, was persuaded by her mother, who could not bear to have her
+seclude herself from any chance of amusement, to go likewise.
+
+The young ladies went, and Lady Middleton was happily preserved from
+the frightful solitude which had threatened her. The insipidity of the
+meeting was exactly such as Elinor had expected; it produced not one
+novelty of thought or expression, and nothing could be less
+interesting than the whole of their discourse both in the dining
+parlour and drawing room: to the latter, the children accompanied
+them, and while they remained there, she was too well convinced of the
+impossibility of engaging Lucy's attention to attempt it. They quitted
+it only with the removal of the tea-things. The card-table was then
+placed, and Elinor began to wonder at herself for having ever
+entertained a hope of finding time for conversation at the park. They
+all rose up in preparation for a round game.
+
+"I am glad," said Lady Middleton to Lucy, "you are not going to finish
+poor little Annamaria's basket this evening; for I am sure it must
+hurt your eyes to work filigree by candlelight. And we will make the
+dear little love some amends for her disappointment to-morrow, and
+then I hope she will not much mind it."
+
+This hint was enough, Lucy recollected herself instantly and replied,
+"Indeed you are very much mistaken, Lady Middleton; I am only waiting
+to know whether you can make your party without me, or I should have
+been at my filigree already. I would not disappoint the little angel
+for all the world: and if you want me at the card-table now, I am
+resolved to finish the basket after supper."
+
+"You are very good, I hope it won't hurt your eyes:--will you ring the
+bell for some working candles? My poor little girl would be sadly
+disappointed, I know, if the basket was not finished tomorrow, for
+though I told her it certainly would not, I am sure she depends upon
+having it done."
+
+Lucy directly drew her work table near her and reseated herself with
+an alacrity and cheerfulness which seemed to infer that she could
+taste no greater delight than in making a filigree basket for a spoilt
+child.
+
+Lady Middleton proposed a rubber of Casino to the others. No one made
+any objection but Marianne, who with her usual inattention to the
+forms of general civility, exclaimed, "Your Ladyship will have the
+goodness to excuse _me_--you know I detest cards. I shall go to the
+piano-forte; I have not touched it since it was tuned." And without
+farther ceremony, she turned away and walked to the instrument.
+
+Lady Middleton looked as if she thanked heaven that _she_ had never
+made so rude a speech.
+
+"Marianne can never keep long from that instrument you know, ma'am,"
+said Elinor, endeavouring to smooth away the offence; "and I do not
+much wonder at it; for it is the very best toned piano-forte I ever
+heard."
+
+The remaining five were now to draw their cards.
+
+"Perhaps," continued Elinor, "if I should happen to cut out, I may be
+of some use to Miss Lucy Steele, in rolling her papers for her; and
+there is so much still to be done to the basket, that it must be
+impossible I think for her labour singly, to finish it this evening. I
+should like the work exceedingly, if she would allow me a share in
+it."
+
+"Indeed I shall be very much obliged to you for your help," cried
+Lucy, "for I find there is more to be done to it than I thought there
+was; and it would be a shocking thing to disappoint dear Annamaria
+after all."
+
+"Oh! that would be terrible, indeed," said Miss Steele. "Dear little
+soul, how I do love her!"
+
+"You are very kind," said Lady Middleton to Elinor; "and as you
+really like the work, perhaps you will be as well pleased not to cut
+in till another rubber, or will you take your chance now?"
+
+Elinor joyfully profited by the first of these proposals, and thus by
+a little of that address which Marianne could never condescend to
+practise, gained her own end, and pleased Lady Middleton at the same
+time. Lucy made room for her with ready attention, and the two fair
+rivals were thus seated side by side at the same table, and, with the
+utmost harmony, engaged in forwarding the same work. The pianoforte at
+which Marianne, wrapped up in her own music and her own thoughts, had
+by this time forgotten that any body was in the room besides herself,
+was luckily so near them that Miss Dashwood now judged she might
+safely, under the shelter of its noise, introduce the interesting
+subject, without any risk of being heard at the card-table.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+In a firm, though cautious tone, Elinor thus began.
+
+"I should be undeserving of the confidence you have honoured me with,
+if I felt no desire for its continuance, or no farther curiosity on
+its subject. I will not apologize therefore for bringing it forward
+again."
+
+"Thank you," cried Lucy warmly, "for breaking the ice; you have set my
+heart at ease by it; for I was somehow or other afraid I had offended
+you by what I told you that Monday."
+
+"Offended me! How could you suppose so? Believe me," and Elinor spoke
+it with the truest sincerity, "nothing could be farther from my
+intention than to give you such an idea. Could you have a motive for
+the trust, that was not honourable and flattering to me?"
+
+"And yet I do assure you," replied Lucy, her little sharp eyes full of
+meaning, "there seemed to me to be a coldness and displeasure in your
+manner that made me quite uncomfortable. I felt sure that you was
+angry with me; and have been quarrelling with myself ever since, for
+having took such a liberty as to trouble you with my affairs. But I am
+very glad to find it was only my own fancy, and that you really do not
+blame me. If you knew what a consolation it was to me to relieve my
+heart speaking to you of what I am always thinking of every moment of
+my life, your compassion would make you overlook every thing else I am
+sure."
+
+"Indeed, I can easily believe that it was a very great relief to you,
+to acknowledge your situation to me, and be assured that you shall
+never have reason to repent it. Your case is a very unfortunate one;
+you seem to me to be surrounded with difficulties, and you will have
+need of all your mutual affection to support you under them. Mr.
+Ferrars, I believe, is entirely dependent on his mother."
+
+"He has only two thousand pounds of his own; it would be madness to
+marry upon that, though for my own part, I could give up every
+prospect of more without a sigh. I have been always used to a very
+small income, and could struggle with any poverty for him; but I love
+him too well to be the selfish means of robbing him, perhaps, of all
+that his mother might give him if he married to please her. We must
+wait, it may be for many years. With almost every other man in the
+world, it would be an alarming prospect; but Edward's affection and
+constancy nothing can deprive me of I know."
+
+"That conviction must be every thing to you; and he is undoubtedly
+supported by the same trust in your's. If the strength of your
+reciprocal attachment had failed, as between many people, and under
+many circumstances it naturally would during a four years' engagement,
+your situation would have been pitiable, indeed."
+
+Lucy here looked up; but Elinor was careful in guarding her
+countenance from every expression that could give her words a
+suspicious tendency.
+
+"Edward's love for me," said Lucy, "has been pretty well put to the
+test, by our long, very long absence since we were first engaged, and
+it has stood the trial so well, that I should be unpardonable to doubt
+it now. I can safely say that he has never gave me one moment's alarm
+on that account from the first."
+
+Elinor hardly knew whether to smile or sigh at this assertion.
+
+Lucy went on. "I am rather of a jealous temper too by nature, and from
+our different situations in life, from his being so much more in the
+world than me, and our continual separation, I was enough inclined for
+suspicion, to have found out the truth in an instant, if there had
+been the slightest alteration in his behaviour to me when we met, or
+any lowness of spirits that I could not account for, or if he had
+talked more of one lady than another, or seemed in any respect less
+happy at Longstaple than he used to be. I do not mean to say that I am
+particularly observant or quick-sighted in general, but in such a case
+I am sure I could not be deceived."
+
+"All this," thought Elinor, "is very pretty; but it can impose upon
+neither of us."
+
+"But what," said she after a short silence, "are your views? or have
+you none but that of waiting for Mrs. Ferrars's death, which is a
+melancholy and shocking extremity?--Is her son determined to submit to
+this, and to all the tediousness of the many years of suspense in
+which it may involve you, rather than run the risk of her displeasure
+for a while by owning the truth?"
+
+"If we could be certain that it would be only for a while! But Mrs.
+Ferrars is a very headstrong proud woman, and in her first fit of
+anger upon hearing it, would very likely secure every thing to Robert,
+and the idea of that, for Edward's sake, frightens away all my
+inclination for hasty measures."
+
+"And for your own sake too, or you are carrying your disinterestedness
+beyond reason."
+
+Lucy looked at Elinor again, and was silent.
+
+"Do you know Mr. Robert Ferrars?" asked Elinor.
+
+"Not at all--I never saw him; but I fancy he is very unlike his
+brother--silly and a great coxcomb."
+
+"A great coxcomb!" repeated Miss Steele, whose ear had caught those
+words by a sudden pause in Marianne's music. "Oh, they are talking of
+their favourite beaux, I dare say."
+
+"No sister," cried Lucy, "you are mistaken there, our favourite beaux
+are _not_ great coxcombs."
+
+"I can answer for it that Miss Dashwood's is not," said Mrs. Jennings,
+laughing heartily; "for he is one of the modestest, prettiest behaved
+young men I ever saw; but as for Lucy, she is such a sly little
+creature, there is no finding out who _she_ likes."
+
+[Illustration: "_I can answer for it," said Mrs. Jennings._]
+
+"Oh," cried Miss Steele, looking significantly round at them, "I dare
+say Lucy's beau is quite as modest and pretty behaved as Miss
+Dashwood's."
+
+Elinor blushed in spite of herself. Lucy bit her lip, and looked
+angrily at her sister. A mutual silence took place for some time. Lucy
+first put an end to it by saying in a lower tone, though Marianne was
+then giving them the powerful protection of a very magnificent
+concerto--
+
+"I will honestly tell you of one scheme which has lately come into my
+head, for bringing matters to bear; indeed I am bound to let you into
+the secret, for you are a party concerned. I dare say you have seen
+enough of Edward to know that he would prefer the church to every
+other profession; now my plan is that he should take orders as soon as
+he can, and then through your interest, which I am sure you would be
+kind enough to use out of friendship for him, and I hope out of some
+regard to me, your brother might be persuaded to give him Norland
+living; which I understand is a very good one, and the present
+incumbent not likely to live a great while. That would be enough for
+us to marry upon, and we might trust to time and chance for the rest."
+
+"I should always be happy," replied Elinor, "to show any mark of my
+esteem and friendship for Mr. Ferrars; but do you not perceive that my
+interest on such an occasion would be perfectly unnecessary? He is
+brother to Mrs. John Dashwood--_that_ must be recommendation enough to
+her husband."
+
+"But Mrs. John Dashwood would not much approve of Edward's going into
+orders."
+
+"Then I rather suspect that my interest would do very little."
+
+They were again silent for many minutes. At length Lucy exclaimed with
+a deep sigh--
+
+"I believe it would be the wisest way to put an end to the business at
+once by dissolving the engagement. We seem so beset with difficulties
+on every side, that though it would make us miserable for a time, we
+should be happier perhaps in the end. But you will not give me your
+advice, Miss Dashwood?"
+
+"No," answered Elinor, with a smile, which concealed very agitated
+feelings, "on such a subject I certainly will not. You know very well
+that my opinion would have no weight with you, unless it were on the
+side of your wishes."
+
+"Indeed you wrong me," replied Lucy, with great solemnity; "I know
+nobody of whose judgment I think so highly as I do of yours; and I do
+really believe, that if you was to say to me, 'I advise you by all
+means to put an end to your engagement with Edward Ferrars, it will be
+more for the happiness of both of you,' I should resolve upon doing it
+immediately."
+
+Elinor blushed for the insincerity of Edward's future wife, and
+replied, "This compliment would effectually frighten me from giving
+any opinion on the subject had I formed one. It raises my influence
+much too high; the power of dividing two people so tenderly attached
+is too much for an indifferent person."
+
+"'Tis because you are an indifferent person," said Lucy, with some
+pique, and laying a particular stress on those words, "that your
+judgment might justly have such weight with me. If you could be
+supposed to be biased in any respect by your own feelings, your
+opinion would not be worth having."
+
+Elinor thought it wisest to make no answer to this, lest they might
+provoke each other to an unsuitable increase of ease and unreserve;
+and was even partly determined never to mention the subject again.
+Another pause therefore of many minutes' duration, succeeded this
+speech, and Lucy was still the first to end it.
+
+"Shall you be in town this winter, Miss Dashwood?" said she with all
+her accustomary complacency.
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"I am sorry for that," returned the other, while her eyes brightened
+at the information, "it would have gave me such pleasure to meet you
+there! But I dare say you will go for all that. To be sure, your
+brother and sister will ask you to come to them."
+
+"It will not be in my power to accept their invitation if they do."
+
+"How unlucky that is! I had quite depended upon meeting you there.
+Anne and me are to go the latter end of January to some relations who
+have been wanting us to visit them these several years! But I only go
+for the sake of seeing Edward. He will be there in February, otherwise
+London would have no charms for me; I have not spirits for it."
+
+Elinor was soon called to the card-table by the conclusion of the
+first rubber, and the confidential discourse of the two ladies was
+therefore at an end, to which both of them submitted without any
+reluctance, for nothing had been said on either side to make them
+dislike each other less than they had done before; and Elinor sat down
+to the card table with the melancholy persuasion that Edward was not
+only without affection for the person who was to be his wife; but that
+he had not even the chance of being tolerably happy in marriage, which
+sincere affection on _her_ side would have given, for self-interest
+alone could induce a woman to keep a man to an engagement, of which
+she seemed so thoroughly aware that he was weary.
+
+From this time the subject was never revived by Elinor, and when
+entered on by Lucy, who seldom missed an opportunity of introducing
+it, and was particularly careful to inform her confidante, of her
+happiness whenever she received a letter from Edward, it was treated
+by the former with calmness and caution, and dismissed as soon as
+civility would allow; for she felt such conversations to be an
+indulgence which Lucy did not deserve, and which were dangerous to
+herself.
+
+The visit of the Miss Steeles at Barton Park was lengthened far beyond
+what the first invitation implied. Their favour increased; they could
+not be spared; Sir John would not hear of their going; and in spite of
+their numerous and long arranged engagements in Exeter, in spite of
+the absolute necessity of returning to fulfill them immediately, which
+was in full force at the end of every week, they were prevailed on to
+stay nearly two months at the park, and to assist in the due
+celebration of that festival which requires a more than ordinary share
+of private balls and large dinners to proclaim its importance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+Though Mrs. Jennings was in the habit of spending a large portion of
+the year at the houses of her children and friends, she was not
+without a settled habitation of her own. Since the death of her
+husband, who had traded with success in a less elegant part of the
+town, she had resided every winter in a house in one of the streets
+near Portman Square. Towards this home, she began on the approach of
+January to turn her thoughts, and thither she one day abruptly, and
+very unexpectedly by them, asked the elder Misses Dashwood to
+accompany her. Elinor, without observing the varying complexion of her
+sister, and the animated look which spoke no indifference to the plan,
+immediately gave a grateful but absolute denial for both, in which she
+believed herself to be speaking their united inclinations. The reason
+alleged was their determined resolution of not leaving their mother at
+that time of the year. Mrs. Jennings received the refusal with some
+surprise, and repeated her invitation immediately.
+
+"Oh, Lord! I am sure your mother can spare you very well, and I _do_
+beg you will favour me with your company, for I've quite set my heart
+upon it. Don't fancy that you will be any inconvenience to me, for I
+shan't put myself at all out of my way for you. It will only be
+sending Betty by the coach, and I hope I can afford _that._ We three
+shall be able to go very well in my chaise; and when we are in town,
+if you do not like to go wherever I do, well and good, you may always
+go with one of my daughters. I am sure your mother will not object to
+it; for I have had such good luck in getting my own children off my
+hands that she will think me a very fit person to have the charge of
+you; and if I don't get one of you at least well married before I have
+done with you, it shall not be my fault. I shall speak a good word for
+you to all the young men, you may depend upon it."
+
+"I have a notion," said Sir John, "that Miss Marianne would not object
+to such a scheme, if her elder sister would come into it. It is very
+hard indeed that she should not have a little pleasure, because Miss
+Dashwood does not wish it. So I would advise you two, to set off for
+town, when you are tired of Barton, without saying a word to Miss
+Dashwood about it."
+
+"Nay," cried Mrs. Jennings, "I am sure I shall be monstrous glad of
+Miss Marianne's company, whether Miss Dashwood will go or not, only
+the more the merrier say I, and I thought it would be more comfortable
+for them to be together; because, if they got tired of me, they might
+talk to one another, and laugh at my old ways behind my back. But one
+or the other, if not both of them, I must have. Lord bless me! how do
+you think I can live poking by myself, I who have been always used
+till this winter to have Charlotte with me. Come, Miss Marianne, let
+us strike hands upon the bargain, and if Miss Dashwood will change her
+mind by and bye, why so much the better."
+
+"I thank you, ma'am, sincerely thank you," said Marianne, with warmth:
+"your invitation has insured my gratitude for ever, and it would give
+me such happiness, yes, almost the greatest happiness I am capable of,
+to be able to accept it. But my mother, my dearest, kindest mother,--I
+feel the justice of what Elinor has urged, and if she were to be made
+less happy, less comfortable by our absence--Oh! no, nothing should
+tempt me to leave her. It should not, must not be a struggle."
+
+Mrs. Jennings repeated her assurance that Mrs. Dashwood could spare
+them perfectly well; and Elinor, who now understood her sister, and
+saw to what indifference to almost every thing else she was carried by
+her eagerness to be with Willoughby again, made no farther direct
+opposition to the plan, and merely referred it to her mother's
+decision, from whom however she scarcely expected to receive any
+support in her endeavour to prevent a visit, which she could not
+approve of for Marianne, and which on her own account she had
+particular reasons to avoid. Whatever Marianne was desirous of, her
+mother would be eager to promote--she could not expect to influence
+the latter to cautiousness of conduct in an affair respecting which
+she had never been able to inspire her with distrust; and she dared
+not explain the motive of her own disinclination for going to London.
+That Marianne, fastidious as she was, thoroughly acquainted with Mrs.
+Jennings' manners, and invariably disgusted by them, should overlook
+every inconvenience of that kind, should disregard whatever must be
+most wounding to her irritable feelings, in her pursuit of one object,
+was such a proof, so strong, so full, of the importance of that object
+to her, as Elinor, in spite of all that had passed, was not prepared
+to witness.
+
+On being informed of the invitation, Mrs. Dashwood, persuaded that
+such an excursion would be productive of much amusement to both her
+daughters, and perceiving through all her affectionate attention to
+herself, how much the heart of Marianne was in it, would not hear of
+their declining the offer upon _her_ account; insisted on their both
+accepting it directly; and then began to foresee, with her usual
+cheerfulness, a variety of advantages that would accrue to them all,
+from this separation.
+
+"I am delighted with the plan," she cried, "it is exactly what I could
+wish. Margaret and I shall be as much benefited by it as yourselves.
+When you and the Middletons are gone, we shall go on so quietly and
+happily together with our books and our music! You will find Margaret
+so improved when you come back again! I have a little plan of
+alteration for your bedrooms too, which may now be performed without
+any inconvenience to any one. It is very right that you _should_ go to
+town; I would have every young woman of your condition in life
+acquainted with the manners and amusements of London. You will be
+under the care of a motherly good sort of woman, of whose kindness to
+you I can have no doubt. And in all probability you will see your
+brother, and whatever may be his faults, or the faults of his wife,
+when I consider whose son he is, I cannot bear to have you so wholly
+estranged from each other."
+
+"Though with your usual anxiety for our happiness," said Elinor, "you
+have been obviating every impediment to the present scheme which
+occurred to you, there is still one objection which, in my opinion,
+cannot be so easily removed."
+
+Marianne's countenance sunk.
+
+"And what," said Mrs. Dashwood, "is my dear prudent Elinor going to
+suggest? What formidable obstacle is she now to bring forward? Do not
+let me hear a word about the expense of it."
+
+"My objection is this; though I think very well of Mrs. Jennings's
+heart, she is not a woman whose society can afford us pleasure, or
+whose protection will give us consequence."
+
+"That is very true," replied her mother, "but of her society,
+separately from that of other people, you will scarcely have any thing
+at all, and you will almost always appear in public with Lady
+Middleton."
+
+"If Elinor is frightened away by her dislike of Mrs. Jennings," said
+Marianne, "at least it need not prevent _my_ accepting her invitation.
+I have no such scruples, and I am sure I could put up with every
+unpleasantness of that kind with very little effort."
+
+Elinor could not help smiling at this display of indifference towards
+the manners of a person, to whom she had often had difficulty in
+persuading Marianne to behave with tolerable politeness; and resolved
+within herself, that if her sister persisted in going, she would go
+likewise, as she did not think it proper that Marianne should be left
+to the sole guidance of her own judgment, or that Mrs. Jennings should
+be abandoned to the mercy of Marianne for all the comfort of her
+domestic hours. To this determination she was the more easily
+reconciled, by recollecting that Edward Ferrars, by Lucy's account,
+was not to be in town before February; and that their visit, without
+any unreasonable abridgement, might be previously finished.
+
+"I will have you _both_ go," said Mrs. Dashwood; "these objections are
+nonsensical. You will have much pleasure in being in London, and
+especially in being together; and if Elinor would ever condescend to
+anticipate enjoyment, she would foresee it there from a variety of
+sources; she would, perhaps, expect some from improving her
+acquaintance with her sister-in-law's family."
+
+Elinor had often wished for an opportunity of attempting to weaken her
+mother's dependence on the attachment of Edward and herself, that the
+shock might be less when the whole truth were revealed, and now on
+this attack, though almost hopeless of success, she forced herself to
+begin her design by saying, as calmly as she could, "I like Edward
+Ferrars very much, and shall always be glad to see him; but as to the
+rest of the family, it is a matter of perfect indifference to me,
+whether I am ever known to them or not."
+
+Mrs. Dashwood smiled, and said nothing. Marianne lifted up her eyes in
+astonishment, and Elinor conjectured that she might as well have held
+her tongue.
+
+After very little farther discourse, it was finally settled that the
+invitation should be fully accepted. Mrs. Jennings received the
+information with a great deal of joy, and many assurances of kindness
+and care; nor was it a matter of pleasure merely to her. Sir John was
+delighted; for to a man, whose prevailing anxiety was the dread of
+being alone, the acquisition of two, to the number of inhabitants in
+London, was something. Even Lady Middleton took the trouble of being
+delighted, which was putting herself rather out of her way; and as
+for the Miss Steeles, especially Lucy, they had never been so happy in
+their lives as this intelligence made them.
+
+Elinor submitted to the arrangement which counteracted her wishes with
+less reluctance than she had expected to feel. With regard to herself,
+it was now a matter of unconcern whether she went to town or not, and
+when she saw her mother so thoroughly pleased with the plan, and her
+sister exhilarated by it in look, voice, and manner, restored to all
+her usual animation, and elevated to more than her usual gaiety, she
+could not be dissatisfied with the cause, and would hardly allow
+herself to distrust the consequence.
+
+Marianne's joy was almost a degree beyond happiness, so great was the
+perturbation of her spirits and her impatience to be gone. Her
+unwillingness to quit her mother was her only restorative to calmness;
+and at the moment of parting her grief on that score was excessive.
+Her mother's affliction was hardly less, and Elinor was the only one
+of the three, who seemed to consider the separation as any thing short
+of eternal.
+
+Their departure took place in the first week in January. The
+Middletons were to follow in about a week. The Miss Steeles kept their
+station at the park, and were to quit it only with the rest of the
+family.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+Elinor could not find herself in the carriage with Mrs. Jennings, and
+beginning a journey to London under her protection, and as her guest,
+without wondering at her own situation, so short had their
+acquaintance with that lady been, so wholly unsuited were they in age
+and disposition, and so many had been her objections against such a
+measure only a few days before! But these objections had all, with
+that happy ardour of youth which Marianne and her mother equally
+shared, been overcome or overlooked; and Elinor, in spite of every
+occasional doubt of Willoughby's constancy, could not witness the
+rapture of delightful expectation which filled the whole soul and
+beamed in the eyes of Marianne, without feeling how blank was her own
+prospect, how cheerless her own state of mind in the comparison, and
+how gladly she would engage in the solicitude of Marianne's situation
+to have the same animating object in view, the same possibility of
+hope. A short, a very short time however must now decide what
+Willoughby's intentions were; in all probability he was already in
+town. Marianne's eagerness to be gone declared her dependence on
+finding him there; and Elinor was resolved not only upon gaining every
+new light as to his character which her own observation or the
+intelligence of others could give her, but likewise upon watching his
+behaviour to her sister with such zealous attention, as to ascertain
+what he was and what he meant, before many meetings had taken place.
+Should the result of her observations be unfavourable, she was
+determined at all events to open the eyes of her sister; should it be
+otherwise, her exertions would be of a different nature--she must then
+learn to avoid every selfish comparison, and banish every regret which
+might lessen her satisfaction in the happiness of Marianne.
+
+They were three days on their journey, and Marianne's behaviour as
+they travelled was a happy specimen of what future complaisance and
+companionableness to Mrs. Jennings might be expected to be. She sat in
+silence almost all the way, wrapt in her own meditations, and scarcely
+ever voluntarily speaking, except when any object of picturesque
+beauty within their view drew from her an exclamation of delight
+exclusively addressed to her sister. To atone for this conduct
+therefore, Elinor took immediate possession of the post of civility
+which she had assigned herself, behaved with the greatest attention to
+Mrs. Jennings, talked with her, laughed with her, and listened to her
+whenever she could; and Mrs. Jennings on her side treated them both
+with all possible kindness, was solicitous on every occasion for their
+ease and enjoyment, and only disturbed that she could not make them
+choose their own dinners at the inn, nor extort a confession of their
+preferring salmon to cod, or boiled fowls to veal cutlets. They
+reached town by three o'clock the third day, glad to be released,
+after such a journey, from the confinement of a carriage, and ready to
+enjoy all the luxury of a good fire.
+
+The house was handsome, and handsomely fitted up, and the young
+ladies were immediately put in possession of a very comfortable
+apartment. It had formerly been Charlotte's, and over the mantelpiece
+still hung a landscape in coloured silks of her performance, in proof
+of her having spent seven years at a great school in town to some
+effect.
+
+As dinner was not to be ready in less than two hours from their
+arrival, Elinor determined to employ the interval in writing to her
+mother, and sat down for that purpose. In a few moments Marianne did
+the same. "I am writing home, Marianne," said Elinor; "had not you
+better defer your letter for a day or two?"
+
+"I am _not_ going to write to my mother," replied Marianne, hastily,
+and as if wishing to avoid any farther inquiry. Elinor said no more;
+it immediately struck her that she must then be writing to Willoughby;
+and the conclusion which as instantly followed was, that, however
+mysteriously they might wish to conduct the affair, they must be
+engaged. This conviction, though not entirely satisfactory, gave her
+pleasure, and she continued her letter with greater alacrity.
+Marianne's was finished in a very few minutes; in length it could be
+no more than a note; it was then folded up, sealed, and directed with
+eager rapidity. Elinor thought she could distinguish a large W in the
+direction; and no sooner was it complete than Marianne, ringing the
+bell, requested the footman who answered it to get that letter
+conveyed for her to the two-penny post. This decided the matter at
+once.
+
+Her spirits still continued very high; but there was a flutter in them
+which prevented their giving much pleasure to her sister, and this
+agitation increased as the evening drew on. She could scarcely eat any
+dinner, and when they afterwards returned to the drawing room, seemed
+anxiously listening to the sound of every carriage.
+
+It was a great satisfaction to Elinor that Mrs. Jennings, by being
+much engaged in her own room, could see little of what was passing.
+The tea things were brought in, and already had Marianne been
+disappointed more than once by a rap at a neighbouring door, when a
+loud one was suddenly heard which could not be mistaken for one at any
+other house, Elinor felt secure of its announcing Willoughby's
+approach, and Marianne, starting up, moved towards the door. Every
+thing was silent; this could not be borne many seconds; she opened
+the door, advanced a few steps towards the stairs, and after listening
+half a minute, returned into the room in all the agitation which a
+conviction of having heard him would naturally produce; in the ecstasy
+of her feelings at that instant she could not help exclaiming, "Oh,
+Elinor, it is Willoughby, indeed it is!" and seemed almost ready to
+throw herself into his arms, when Colonel Brandon appeared.
+
+It was too great a shock to be borne with calmness, and she
+immediately left the room. Elinor was disappointed too; but at the
+same time her regard for Colonel Brandon ensured his welcome with her;
+and she felt particularly hurt that a man so partial to her sister
+should perceive that she experienced nothing but grief and
+disappointment in seeing him. She instantly saw that it was not
+unnoticed by him, that he even observed Marianne as she quitted the
+room, with such astonishment and concern, as hardly left him the
+recollection of what civility demanded towards herself.
+
+"Is your sister ill?" said he.
+
+Elinor answered in some distress that she was, and then talked of
+head-aches, low spirits, and over fatigues; and of every thing to
+which she could decently attribute her sister's behaviour.
+
+He heard her with the most earnest attention, but seeming to recollect
+himself, said no more on the subject, and began directly to speak of
+his pleasure at seeing them in London, making the usual inquiries
+about their journey, and the friends they had left behind.
+
+In this calm kind of way, with very little interest on either side,
+they continued to talk, both of them out of spirits, and the thoughts
+of both engaged elsewhere. Elinor wished very much to ask whether
+Willoughby were then in town, but she was afraid of giving him pain by
+any enquiry after his rival; and at length, by way of saying
+something, she asked if he had been in London ever since she had seen
+him last. "Yes," he replied, with some embarrassment, "almost ever
+since; I have been once or twice at Delaford for a few days, but it
+has never been in my power to return to Barton."
+
+This, and the manner in which it was said, immediately brought back to
+her remembrance all the circumstances of his quitting that place, with
+the uneasiness and suspicions they had caused to Mrs. Jennings, and
+she was fearful that her question had implied much more curiosity on
+the subject than she had ever felt.
+
+Mrs. Jennings soon came in. "Oh! Colonel," said she, with her usual
+noisy cheerfulness, "I am monstrous glad to see you--sorry I could not
+come before--beg your pardon, but I have been forced to look about me
+a little, and settle my matters; for it is a long while since I have
+been at home, and you know one has always a world of little odd things
+to do after one has been away for any time; and then I have had
+Cartwright to settle with. Lord, I have been as busy as a bee ever
+since dinner! But pray, Colonel, how came you to conjure out that I
+should be in town today?"
+
+"I had the pleasure of hearing it at Mr. Palmer's, where I have been
+dining."
+
+"Oh, you did; well, and how do they all do at their house? How does
+Charlotte do? I warrant you she is a fine size by this time."
+
+"Mrs. Palmer appeared quite well, and I am commissioned to tell you,
+that you will certainly see her to-morrow."
+
+"Ay, to be sure, I thought as much. Well, Colonel, I have brought two
+young ladies with me, you see--that is, you see but one of them now,
+but there is another somewhere. Your friend, Miss Marianne, too--which
+you will not be sorry to hear. I do not know what you and Mr.
+Willoughby will do between you about her. Ay, it is a fine thing to be
+young and handsome. Well! I was young once, but I never was very
+handsome--worse luck for me. However, I got a very good husband, and I
+don't know what the greatest beauty can do more. Ah! poor man! he has
+been dead these eight years and better. But Colonel, where have you
+been to since we parted? And how does your business go on? Come, come,
+let's have no secrets among friends."
+
+He replied with his accustomary mildness to all her inquiries, but
+without satisfying her in any. Elinor now began to make the tea, and
+Marianne was obliged to appear again.
+
+After her entrance, Colonel Brandon became more thoughtful and silent
+than he had been before, and Mrs. Jennings could not prevail on him to
+stay long. No other visitor appeared that evening, and the ladies were
+unanimous in agreeing to go early to bed.
+
+Marianne rose the next morning with recovered spirits and happy looks.
+The disappointment of the evening before seemed forgotten in the
+expectation of what was to happen that day. They had not long finished
+their breakfast before Mrs. Palmer's barouche stopped at the door, and
+in a few minutes she came laughing into the room: so delighted to see
+them all, that it was hard to say whether she received most pleasure
+from meeting her mother or the Miss Dashwoods again. So surprised at
+their coming to town, though it was what she had rather expected all
+along; so angry at their accepting her mother's invitation after
+having declined her own, though at the same time she would never have
+forgiven them if they had not come!
+
+"Mr. Palmer will be so happy to see you," said she; "What do you think
+he said when he heard of your coming with Mamma? I forget what it was
+now, but it was something so droll!"
+
+After an hour or two spent in what her mother called comfortable chat,
+or in other words, in every variety of inquiry concerning all their
+acquaintance on Mrs. Jennings's side, and in laughter without cause on
+Mrs. Palmer's, it was proposed by the latter that they should all
+accompany her to some shops where she had business that morning, to
+which Mrs. Jennings and Elinor readily consented, as having likewise
+some purchases to make themselves; and Marianne, though declining it
+at first was induced to go likewise.
+
+Wherever they went, she was evidently always on the watch. In Bond
+Street especially, where much of their business lay, her eyes were in
+constant inquiry; and in whatever shop the party were engaged, her
+mind was equally abstracted from every thing actually before them,
+from all that interested and occupied the others. Restless and
+dissatisfied every where, her sister could never obtain her opinion of
+any article of purchase, however it might equally concern them both:
+she received no pleasure from anything; was only impatient to be at
+home again, and could with difficulty govern her vexation at the
+tediousness of Mrs. Palmer, whose eye was caught by every thing
+pretty, expensive, or new; who was wild to buy all, could determine on
+none, and dawdled away her time in rapture and indecision.
+
+It was late in the morning before they returned home; and no sooner
+had they entered the house than Marianne flew eagerly up stairs, and
+when Elinor followed, she found her turning from the table with a
+sorrowful countenance, which declared that no Willoughby had been
+there.
+
+"Has no letter been left here for me since we went out?" said she to
+the footman who then entered with the parcels. She was answered in the
+negative. "Are you quite sure of it?" she replied. "Are you certain
+that no servant, no porter has left any letter or note?"
+
+The man replied that none had.
+
+"How very odd!" said she, in a low and disappointed voice, as she
+turned away to the window.
+
+"How odd, indeed!" repeated Elinor within herself, regarding her
+sister with uneasiness. "If she had not known him to be in town she
+would not have written to him, as she did; she would have written to
+Combe Magna; and if he is in town, how odd that he should neither come
+nor write! Oh! my dear mother, you must be wrong in permitting an
+engagement between a daughter so young, a man so little known, to be
+carried on in so doubtful, so mysterious a manner! I long to inquire;
+and how will _my_ interference be borne."
+
+She determined, after some consideration, that if appearances
+continued many days longer as unpleasant as they now were, she would
+represent in the strongest manner to her mother the necessity of some
+serious enquiry into the affair.
+
+Mrs. Palmer and two elderly ladies of Mrs. Jennings's intimate
+acquaintance, whom she had met and invited in the morning, dined with
+them. The former left them soon after tea to fulfill her evening
+engagements; and Elinor was obliged to assist in making a whist table
+for the others. Marianne was of no use on these occasions, as she
+would never learn the game; but though her time was therefore at her
+own disposal, the evening was by no means more productive of pleasure
+to her than to Elinor, for it was spent in all the anxiety of
+expectation and the pain of disappointment. She sometimes endeavoured
+for a few minutes to read; but the book was soon thrown aside, and she
+returned to the more interesting employment of walking backwards and
+forwards across the room, pausing for a moment whenever she came to
+the window, in hopes of distinguishing the long-expected rap.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+"If this open weather holds much longer," said Mrs. Jennings, when
+they met at breakfast the following morning, "Sir John will not like
+leaving Barton next week; 'tis a sad thing for sportsmen to lose a
+day's pleasure. Poor souls! I always pity them when they do; they seem
+to take it so much to heart."
+
+"That is true," cried Marianne, in a cheerful voice, and walking to
+the window as she spoke, to examine the day. "I had not thought of
+that. This weather will keep many sportsmen in the country."
+
+It was a lucky recollection, all her good spirits were restored by it.
+"It is charming weather for _them_ indeed," she continued, as she sat
+down to the breakfast table with a happy countenance. "How much they
+must enjoy it! But" (with a little return of anxiety) "it cannot be
+expected to last long. At this time of the year, and after such a
+series of rain, we shall certainly have very little more of it. Frosts
+will soon set in, and in all probability with severity. In another day
+or two perhaps; this extreme mildness can hardly last longer--nay,
+perhaps it may freeze tonight!"
+
+"At any rate," said Elinor, wishing to prevent Mrs. Jennings from
+seeing her sister's thoughts as clearly as she did, "I dare say we
+shall have Sir John and Lady Middleton in town by the end of next
+week."
+
+"Ay, my dear, I'll warrant you we do. Mary always has her own way."
+
+"And now," silently conjectured Elinor, "she will write to Combe by
+this day's post."
+
+But if she _did_, the letter was written and sent away with a privacy
+which eluded all her watchfulness to ascertain the fact. Whatever the
+truth of it might be, and far as Elinor was from feeling thorough
+contentment about it, yet while she saw Marianne in spirits, she could
+not be very uncomfortable herself. And Marianne was in spirits; happy
+in the mildness of the weather, and still happier in her expectation
+of a frost.
+
+The morning was chiefly spent in leaving cards at the houses of Mrs.
+Jennings's acquaintance to inform them of her being in town; and
+Marianne was all the time busy in observing the direction of the wind,
+watching the variations of the sky and imagining an alteration in the
+air.
+
+"Don't you find it colder than it was in the morning, Elinor? There
+seems to me a very decided difference. I can hardly keep my hands warm
+even in my muff. It was not so yesterday, I think. The clouds seem
+parting too, the sun will be out in a moment, and we shall have a
+clear afternoon."
+
+Elinor was alternately diverted and pained; but Marianne persevered,
+and saw every night in the brightness of the fire, and every morning
+in the appearance of the atmosphere, the certain symptoms of
+approaching frost.
+
+The Miss Dashwoods had no greater reason to be dissatisfied with Mrs.
+Jennings's style of living, and set of acquaintance, than with her
+behaviour to themselves, which was invariably kind. Every thing in her
+household arrangements was conducted on the most liberal plan, and
+excepting a few old city friends, whom, to Lady Middleton's regret,
+she had never dropped, she visited no one to whom an introduction
+could at all discompose the feelings of her young companions. Pleased
+to find herself more comfortably situated in that particular than she
+had expected, Elinor was very willing to compound for the want of much
+real enjoyment from any of their evening parties, which, whether at
+home or abroad, formed only for cards, could have little to amuse her.
+
+Colonel Brandon, who had a general invitation to the house, was with
+them almost every day; he came to look at Marianne and talk to Elinor,
+who often derived more satisfaction from conversing with him than from
+any other daily occurrence, but who saw at the same time with much
+concern his continued regard for her sister. She feared it was a
+strengthening regard. It grieved her to see the earnestness with which
+he often watched Marianne, and his spirits were certainly worse than
+when at Barton.
+
+About a week after their arrival, it became certain that Willoughby
+was also arrived. His card was on the table when they came in from the
+morning's drive.
+
+"Good God!" cried Marianne, "he has been here while we were out."
+Elinor, rejoiced to be assured of his being in London, now ventured
+to say, "Depend upon it, he will call again tomorrow." But Marianne
+seemed hardly to hear her, and on Mrs. Jennings's entrance, escaped
+with the precious card.
+
+This event, while it raised the spirits of Elinor, restored to those
+of her sister all, and more than all, their former agitation. From
+this moment her mind was never quiet; the expectation of seeing him
+every hour of the day, made her unfit for any thing. She insisted on
+being left behind, the next morning, when the others went out.
+
+Elinor's thoughts were full of what might be passing in Berkeley
+Street during their absence; but a moment's glance at her sister when
+they returned was enough to inform her, that Willoughby had paid no
+second visit there. A note was just then brought in, and laid on the
+table.
+
+"For me!" cried Marianne, stepping hastily forward.
+
+"No, ma'am, for my mistress."
+
+But Marianne, not convinced, took it instantly up.
+
+"It is indeed for Mrs. Jennings; how provoking!"
+
+"You are expecting a letter, then?" said Elinor, unable to be longer
+silent.
+
+"Yes, a little--not much."
+
+After a short pause. "You have no confidence in me, Marianne."
+
+"Nay, Elinor, this reproach from _you_--you who have confidence in no
+one!"
+
+"Me!" returned Elinor in some confusion; "indeed, Marianne, I have
+nothing to tell."
+
+"Nor I," answered Marianne with energy, "our situations then are
+alike. We have neither of us any thing to tell; you, because you do
+not communicate, and I, because I conceal nothing."
+
+Elinor, distressed by this charge of reserve in herself, which she was
+not at liberty to do away, knew not how, under such circumstances, to
+press for greater openness in Marianne.
+
+Mrs. Jennings soon appeared, and the note being given her, she read it
+aloud. It was from Lady Middleton, announcing their arrival in Conduit
+Street the night before, and requesting the company of her mother and
+cousins the following evening. Business on Sir John's part, and a
+violent cold on her own, prevented their calling in Berkeley Street.
+The invitation was accepted; but when the hour of appointment drew
+near, necessary as it was in common civility to Mrs. Jennings, that
+they should both attend her on such a visit, Elinor had some
+difficulty in persuading her sister to go, for still she had seen
+nothing of Willoughby; and therefore was not more indisposed for
+amusement abroad, than unwilling to run the risk of his calling again
+in her absence.
+
+Elinor found, when the evening was over, that disposition is not
+materially altered by a change of abode, for although scarcely settled
+in town, Sir John had contrived to collect around him, nearly twenty
+young people, and to amuse them with a ball. This was an affair,
+however, of which Lady Middleton did not approve. In the country, an
+unpremeditated dance was very allowable; but in London, where the
+reputation of elegance was more important and less easily attained, it
+was risking too much for the gratification of a few girls, to have it
+known that Lady Middleton had given a small dance of eight or nine
+couple, with two violins, and a mere side-board collation.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Palmer were of the party; from the former, whom they had
+not seen before since their arrival in town, as he was careful to
+avoid the appearance of any attention to his mother-in-law, and
+therefore never came near her, they received no mark of recognition on
+their entrance. He looked at them slightly, without seeming to know
+who they were, and merely nodded to Mrs. Jennings from the other side
+of the room. Marianne gave one glance round the apartment as she
+entered: it was enough--_he_ was not there--and she sat down, equally
+ill-disposed to receive or communicate pleasure. After they had been
+assembled about an hour, Mr. Palmer sauntered towards the Miss
+Dashwoods to express his surprise on seeing them in town, though
+Colonel Brandon had been first informed of their arrival at his house,
+and he had himself said something very droll on hearing that they were
+to come.
+
+"I thought you were both in Devonshire," said he.
+
+"Did you?" replied Elinor.
+
+"When do you go back again?"
+
+"I do not know." And thus ended their discourse.
+
+Never had Marianne been so unwilling to dance in her life, as she was
+that evening, and never so much fatigued by the exercise. She
+complained of it as they returned to Berkeley Street.
+
+"Aye, aye," said Mrs. Jennings, "we know the reason of all that very
+well; if a certain person who shall be nameless, had been there, you
+would not have been a bit tired: and to say the truth it was not very
+pretty of him not to give you the meeting when he was invited."
+
+"Invited!" cried Marianne.
+
+"So my daughter Middleton told me, for it seems Sir John met him
+somewhere in the street this morning." Marianne said no more, but
+looked exceedingly hurt. Impatient in this situation to be doing
+something that might lead to her sister's relief, Elinor resolved to
+write the next morning to her mother, and hoped by awakening her fears
+for the health of Marianne, to procure those inquiries which had been
+so long delayed; and she was still more eagerly bent on this measure
+by perceiving after breakfast on the morrow, that Marianne was again
+writing to Willoughby, for she could not suppose it to be to any other
+person.
+
+About the middle of the day, Mrs. Jennings went out by herself on
+business, and Elinor began her letter directly, while Marianne, too
+restless for employment, too anxious for conversation, walked from one
+window to the other, or sat down by the fire in melancholy meditation.
+Elinor was very earnest in her application to her mother, relating all
+that had passed, her suspicions of Willoughby's inconstancy, urging
+her by every plea of duty and affection to demand from Marianne an
+account of her real situation with respect to him.
+
+Her letter was scarcely finished, when a rap foretold a visitor, and
+Colonel Brandon was announced. Marianne, who had seen him from the
+window, and who hated company of any kind, left the room before he
+entered it. He looked more than usually grave, and though expressing
+satisfaction at finding Miss Dashwood alone, as if he had somewhat in
+particular to tell her, sat for some time without saying a word.
+Elinor, persuaded that he had some communication to make in which her
+sister was concerned, impatiently expected its opening. It was not the
+first time of her feeling the same kind of conviction; for, more than
+once before, beginning with the observation of "your sister looks
+unwell to-day," or "your sister seems out of spirits," he had
+appeared on the point, either of disclosing, or of inquiring,
+something particular about her. After a pause of several minutes,
+their silence was broken, by his asking her in a voice of some
+agitation, when he was to congratulate her on the acquisition of a
+brother? Elinor was not prepared for such a question, and having no
+answer ready, was obliged to adopt the simple and common expedient, of
+asking what he meant? He tried to smile as he replied, "your sister's
+engagement to Mr. Willoughby is very generally known."
+
+"It cannot be generally known," returned Elinor, "for her own family
+do not know it."
+
+He looked surprised and said, "I beg your pardon, I am afraid my
+inquiry has been impertinent; but I had not supposed any secrecy
+intended, as they openly correspond, and their marriage is universally
+talked of."
+
+"How can that be? By whom can you have heard it mentioned?"
+
+"By many--by some of whom you know nothing, by others with whom you
+are most intimate, Mrs. Jennings, Mrs. Palmer, and the Middletons. But
+still I might not have believed it, for where the mind is perhaps
+rather unwilling to be convinced, it will always find something to
+support its doubts, if I had not, when the servant let me in today,
+accidentally seen a letter in his hand, directed to Mr. Willoughby in
+your sister's writing. I came to inquire, but I was convinced before I
+could ask the question. Is every thing finally settled? Is it
+impossible to-? But I have no right, and I could have no chance of
+succeeding. Excuse me, Miss Dashwood. I believe I have been wrong in
+saying so much, but I hardly know what to do, and on your prudence I
+have the strongest dependence. Tell me that it is all absolutely
+resolved on, that any attempt, that in short concealment, if
+concealment be possible, is all that remains."
+
+These words, which conveyed to Elinor a direct avowal of his love for
+her sister, affected her very much. She was not immediately able to
+say anything, and even when her spirits were recovered, she debated
+for a short time, on the answer it would be most proper to give. The
+real state of things between Willoughby and her sister was so little
+known to herself, that in endeavouring to explain it, she might be as
+liable to say too much as too little. Yet as she was convinced that
+Marianne's affection for Willoughby, could leave no hope of Colonel
+Brandon's success, whatever the event of that affection might be, and
+at the same time wished to shield her conduct from censure, she
+thought it most prudent and kind, after some consideration, to say
+more than she really knew or believed. She acknowledged, therefore,
+that though she had never been informed by themselves of the terms on
+which they stood with each other, of their mutual affection she had no
+doubt, and of their correspondence she was not astonished to hear.
+
+He listened to her with silent attention, and on her ceasing to speak,
+rose directly from his seat, and after saying in a voice of emotion,
+"to your sister I wish all imaginable happiness; to Willoughby that he
+may endeavour to deserve her,"--took leave, and went away.
+
+Elinor derived no comfortable feelings from this conversation, to
+lessen the uneasiness of her mind on other points; she was left, on
+the contrary, with a melancholy impression of Colonel Brandon's
+unhappiness, and was prevented even from wishing it removed, by her
+anxiety for the very event that must confirm it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+Nothing occurred during the next three or four days, to make Elinor
+regret what she had done, in applying to her mother; for Willoughby
+neither came nor wrote. They were engaged about the end of that time
+to attend Lady Middleton to a party, from which Mrs. Jennings was kept
+away by the indisposition of her youngest daughter; and for this
+party, Marianne, wholly dispirited, careless of her appearance, and
+seeming equally indifferent whether she went or staid, prepared,
+without one look of hope or one expression of pleasure. She sat by the
+drawing-room fire after tea, till the moment of Lady Middleton's
+arrival, without once stirring from her seat, or altering her
+attitude, lost in her own thoughts, and insensible of her sister's
+presence; and when at last they were told that Lady Middleton waited
+for them at the door, she started as if she had forgotten that any one
+was expected.
+
+They arrived in due time at the place of destination, and as soon as
+the string of carriages before them would allow, alighted, ascended
+the stairs, heard their names announced from one landing-place to
+another in an audible voice, and entered a room splendidly lit up,
+quite full of company, and insufferably hot. When they had paid their
+tribute of politeness by curtsying to the lady of the house, they were
+permitted to mingle in the crowd, and take their share of the heat and
+inconvenience, to which their arrival must necessarily add. After some
+time spent in saying little or doing less, Lady Middleton sat down to
+Cassino, and as Marianne was not in spirits for moving about, she and
+Elinor luckily succeeding to chairs, placed themselves at no great
+distance from the table.
+
+They had not remained in this manner long, before Elinor perceived
+Willoughby, standing within a few yards of them, in earnest
+conversation with a very fashionable looking young woman. She soon
+caught his eye, and he immediately bowed, but without attempting to
+speak to her, or to approach Marianne, though he could not but see
+her; and then continued his discourse with the same lady. Elinor
+turned involuntarily to Marianne, to see whether it could be
+unobserved by her. At that moment she first perceived him, and her
+whole countenance glowing with sudden delight, she would have moved
+towards him instantly, had not her sister caught hold of her.
+
+"Good heavens!" she exclaimed, "he is there--he is there--Oh! why does
+he not look at me? why cannot I speak to him?"
+
+"Pray, pray be composed," cried Elinor, "and do not betray what you
+feel to every body present. Perhaps he has not observed you yet."
+
+This however was more than she could believe herself; and to be
+composed at such a moment was not only beyond the reach of Marianne,
+it was beyond her wish. She sat in an agony of impatience which
+affected every feature.
+
+[Illustration: _At that moment she first perceived him._]
+
+At last he turned round again, and regarded them both; she started up,
+and pronouncing his name in a tone of affection, held out her hand to
+him. He approached, and addressing himself rather to Elinor than
+Marianne, as if wishing to avoid her eye, and determined not to
+observe her attitude, inquired in a hurried manner after Mrs.
+Dashwood, and asked how long they had been in town. Elinor was robbed
+of all presence of mind by such an address, and was unable to say a
+word. But the feelings of her sister were instantly expressed. Her
+face was crimsoned over, and she exclaimed, in a voice of the greatest
+emotion, "Good God! Willoughby, what is the meaning of this? Have you
+not received my letters? Will you not shake hands with me?"
+
+He could not then avoid it, but her touch seemed painful to him, and
+he held her hand only for a moment. During all this time he was
+evidently struggling for composure. Elinor watched his countenance and
+saw its expression becoming more tranquil. After a moment's pause, he
+spoke with calmness.
+
+"I did myself the honour of calling in Berkeley Street last Tuesday,
+and very much regretted that I was not fortunate enough to find
+yourselves and Mrs. Jennings at home. My card was not lost, I hope."
+
+"But have you not received my notes?" cried Marianne in the wildest
+anxiety. "Here is some mistake I am sure--some dreadful mistake. What
+can be the meaning of it? Tell me, Willoughby; for heaven's sake tell
+me, what is the matter?"
+
+He made no reply; his complexion changed and all his embarrassment
+returned; but as if, on catching the eye of the young lady with whom
+he had been previously talking, he felt the necessity of instant
+exertion, he recovered himself again, and after saying, "Yes, I had
+the pleasure of receiving the information of your arrival in town,
+which you were so good as to send me," turned hastily away with a
+slight bow and joined his friend.
+
+Marianne, now looking dreadfully white, and unable to stand, sunk into
+her chair, and Elinor, expecting every moment to see her faint, tried
+to screen her from the observation of others, while reviving her with
+lavender water.
+
+"Go to him, Elinor," she cried, as soon as she could speak, "and force
+him to come to me. Tell him I must see him again--must speak to him
+instantly. I cannot rest--I shall not have a moment's peace till this
+is explained--some dreadful misapprehension or other. Oh, go to him
+this moment."
+
+"How can that be done? No, my dearest Marianne, you must wait. This is
+not the place for explanations. Wait only till tomorrow."
+
+With difficulty however could she prevent her from following him
+herself; and to persuade her to check her agitation, to wait, at
+least, with the appearance of composure, till she might speak to him
+with more privacy and more effect, was impossible; for Marianne
+continued incessantly to give way in a low voice to the misery of her
+feelings, by exclamations of wretchedness. In a short time Elinor saw
+Willoughby quit the room by the door towards the staircase, and
+telling Marianne that he was gone, urged the impossibility of speaking
+to him again that evening, as a fresh argument for her to be calm. She
+instantly begged her sister would entreat Lady Middleton to take them
+home, as she was too miserable to stay a minute longer.
+
+Lady Middleton, though in the middle of a rubber, on being informed
+that Marianne was unwell, was too polite to object for a moment to her
+wish of going away, and making over her cards to a friend, they
+departed as soon as the carriage could be found. Scarcely a word was
+spoken during their return to Berkeley Street. Marianne was in a
+silent agony, too much oppressed even for tears; but as Mrs. Jennings
+was luckily not come home, they could go directly to their own room,
+where hartshorn restored her a little to herself. She was soon
+undressed and in bed, and as she seemed desirous of being alone, her
+sister then left her, and while she waited the return of Mrs.
+Jennings, had leisure enough for thinking over the past.
+
+That some kind of engagement had subsisted between Willoughby and
+Marianne she could not doubt, and that Willoughby was weary of it,
+seemed equally clear; for however Marianne might still feed her own
+wishes, _she_ could not attribute such behaviour to mistake or
+misapprehension of any kind. Nothing but a thorough change of
+sentiment could account for it. Her indignation would have been still
+stronger than it was, had she not witnessed that embarrassment which
+seemed to speak a consciousness of his own misconduct, and prevented
+her from believing him so unprincipled as to have been sporting with
+the affections of her sister from the first, without any design that
+would bear investigation. Absence might have weakened his regard, and
+convenience might have determined him to overcome it, but that such a
+regard had formerly existed she could not bring herself to doubt.
+
+As for Marianne, on the pangs which so unhappy a meeting must already
+have given her, and on those still more severe which might await her
+in its probable consequence, she could not reflect without the deepest
+concern. Her own situation gained in the comparison; for while she
+could _esteem_ Edward as much as ever, however they might be divided
+in future, her mind might be always supported. But every circumstance
+that could embitter such an evil seemed uniting to heighten the misery
+of Marianne in a final separation from Willoughby--in an immediate and
+irreconcilable rupture with him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+Before the housemaid had lit their fire the next day, or the sun
+gained any power over a cold, gloomy morning in January, Marianne,
+only half dressed, was kneeling against one of the window-seats for
+the sake of all the little light she could command from it, and
+writing as fast as a continual flow of tears would permit her. In this
+situation, Elinor, roused from sleep by her agitation and sobs, first
+perceived her; and after observing her for a few moments with silent
+anxiety, said, in a tone of the most considerate gentleness--
+
+"Marianne, may I ask--"
+
+"No, Elinor," she replied, "ask nothing; you will soon know all."
+
+The sort of desperate calmness with which this was said, lasted no
+longer than while she spoke, and was immediately followed by a return
+of the same excessive affliction. It was some minutes before she could
+go on with her letter, and the frequent bursts of grief which still
+obliged her, at intervals, to withhold her pen, were proofs enough of
+her feeling how more than probable it was that she was writing for the
+last time to Willoughby.
+
+Elinor paid her every quiet and unobtrusive attention in her power;
+and she would have tried to sooth and tranquilize her still more, had
+not Marianne entreated her, with all the eagerness of the most nervous
+irritability, not to speak to her for the world. In such
+circumstances, it was better for both that they should not be long
+together; and the restless state of Marianne's mind not only prevented
+her from remaining in the room a moment after she was dressed, but
+requiring at once solitude and continual change of place, made her
+wander about the house till breakfast time, avoiding the sight of
+every body.
+
+At breakfast she neither ate, nor attempted to eat any thing; and
+Elinor's attention was then all employed, not in urging her, not in
+pitying her, nor in appearing to regard her, but in endeavouring to
+engage Mrs. Jennings's notice entirely to herself.
+
+As this was a favourite meal with Mrs. Jennings, it lasted a
+considerable time, and they were just setting themselves, after it,
+round the common working table, when a letter was delivered to
+Marianne, which she eagerly caught from the servant, and, turning of a
+death-like paleness, instantly ran out of the room. Elinor, who saw as
+plainly by this, as if she had seen the direction, that it must come
+from Willoughby, felt immediately such a sickness at heart as made her
+hardly able to hold up her head, and sat in such a general tremor as
+made her fear it impossible to escape Mrs. Jennings's notice. That
+good lady, however, saw only that Marianne had received a letter from
+Willoughby, which appeared to her a very good joke, and which she
+treated accordingly, by hoping, with a laugh, that she would find it
+to her liking. Of Elinor's distress, she was too busily employed in
+measuring lengths of worsted for her rug, to see any thing at all; and
+calmly continuing her talk, as soon as Marianne disappeared, she
+said--
+
+"Upon my word, I never saw a young woman so desperately in love in my
+life! _My_ girls were nothing to her, and yet they used to be foolish
+enough; but as for Miss Marianne, she is quite an altered creature. I
+hope, from the bottom of my heart, he won't keep her waiting much
+longer, for it is quite grievous to see her look so ill and forlorn.
+Pray, when are they to be married?"
+
+Elinor, though never less disposed to speak than at that moment,
+obliged herself to answer such an attack as this, and, therefore,
+trying to smile, replied, "And have you really, Ma'am, talked yourself
+into a persuasion of my sister's being engaged to Mr. Willoughby? I
+thought it had been only a joke, but so serious a question seems to
+imply more; and I must beg, therefore, that you will not deceive
+yourself any longer. I do assure you that nothing would surprise me
+more than to hear of their being going to be married."
+
+"For shame, for shame, Miss Dashwood! how can you talk so? Don't we
+all know that it must be a match, that they were over head and ears in
+love with each other from the first moment they met? Did not I see
+them together in Devonshire every day, and all day long; and did not I
+know that your sister came to town with me on purpose to buy wedding
+clothes? Come, come, this won't do. Because you are so sly about it
+yourself, you think nobody else has any senses; but it is no such
+thing, I can tell you, for it has been known all over town this ever
+so long. I tell every body of it and so does Charlotte."
+
+"Indeed, Ma'am," said Elinor, very seriously, "you are mistaken.
+Indeed, you are doing a very unkind thing in spreading the report, and
+you will find that you have though you will not believe me now."
+
+Mrs. Jennings laughed again, but Elinor had not spirits to say more,
+and eager at all events to know what Willoughby had written, hurried
+away to their room, where, on opening the door, she saw Marianne
+stretched on the bed, almost choked by grief, one letter in her hand,
+and two or three others laying by her. Elinor drew near, but without
+saying a word; and seating herself on the bed, took her hand, kissed
+her affectionately several times, and then gave way to a burst of
+tears, which at first was scarcely less violent than Marianne's. The
+latter, though unable to speak, seemed to feel all the tenderness of
+this behaviour, and after some time thus spent in joint affliction,
+she put all the letters into Elinor's hands; and then covering her
+face with her handkerchief, almost screamed with agony. Elinor, who
+knew that such grief, shocking as it was to witness it, must have its
+course, watched by her till this excess of suffering had somewhat
+spent itself, and then turning eagerly to Willoughby's letter, read as
+follows:--
+
+"Bond Street, January.
+
+"MY DEAR MADAM,
+
+     "I have just had the honour of receiving your letter, for
+     which I beg to return my sincere acknowledgments. I am much
+     concerned to find there was anything in my behaviour last
+     night that did not meet your approbation; and though I am
+     quite at a loss to discover in what point I could be so
+     unfortunate as to offend you, I entreat your forgiveness of
+     what I can assure you to have been perfectly unintentional.
+     I shall never reflect on my former acquaintance with your
+     family in Devonshire without the most grateful pleasure, and
+     flatter myself it will not be broken by any mistake or
+     misapprehension of my actions. My esteem for your whole
+     family is very sincere; but if I have been so unfortunate as
+     to give rise to a belief of more than I felt, or meant to
+     express, I shall reproach myself for not having been more
+     guarded in my professions of that esteem. That I should ever
+     have meant more you will allow to be impossible, when you
+     understand that my affections have been long engaged
+     elsewhere, and it will not be many weeks, I believe, before
+     this engagement is fulfilled. It is with great regret that I
+     obey your commands in returning the letters with which I
+     have been honoured from you, and the lock of hair, which you
+     so obligingly bestowed on me.
+
+I am, dear Madam,
+
+Your most obedient humble servant,
+
+"JOHN WILLOUGHBY."
+
+With what indignation such a letter as this must be read by Miss
+Dashwood, may be imagined. Though aware, before she began it, that it
+must bring a confession of his inconstancy, and confirm their
+separation for ever, she was not aware that such language could be
+suffered to announce it; nor could she have supposed Willoughby
+capable of departing so far from the appearance of every honourable
+and delicate feeling--so far from the common decorum of a gentleman,
+as to send a letter so impudently cruel: a letter which, instead of
+bringing with his desire of a release any professions of regret,
+acknowledged no breach of faith, denied all peculiar affection
+whatever;--a letter of which every line was an insult, and which
+proclaimed its writer to be deep in hardened villainy.
+
+She paused over it for some time with indignant astonishment; then
+read it again and again; but every perusal only served to increase
+her abhorrence of the man, and so bitter were her feelings against
+him, that she dared not trust herself to speak, lest she might wound
+Marianne still deeper by treating their disengagement, not as a loss
+to her of any possible good but as an escape from the worst and most
+irremediable of all evils,--a connection, for life, with an
+unprincipled man, as a deliverance the most real, a blessing the most
+important.
+
+In her earnest meditations on the contents of the letter, on the
+depravity of that mind which could dictate it, and probably, on the
+very different mind of a very different person, who had no other
+connection whatever with the affair than what her heart gave him with
+every thing that passed, Elinor forgot the immediate distress of her
+sister, forgot that she had three letters on her lap yet unread, and
+so entirely forgot how long she had been in the room, that when on
+hearing a carriage drive up to the door, she went to the window to see
+who could be coming so unreasonably early, she was all astonishment to
+perceive Mrs. Jennings's chariot, which she knew had not been ordered
+till one. Determined not to quit Marianne, though hopeless of
+contributing, at present, to her ease, she hurried away to excuse
+herself from attending Mrs. Jennings, on account of her sister being
+indisposed. Mrs. Jennings, with a thoroughly good-humoured concern for
+its cause, admitted the excuse most readily, and Elinor, after seeing
+her safe off, returned to Marianne, whom she found attempting to rise
+from the bed, and whom she reached just in time to prevent her from
+falling on the floor, faint and giddy from a long want of proper rest
+and food; for it was many days since she had any appetite, and many
+nights since she had really slept; and now, when her mind was no
+longer supported by the fever of suspense, the consequence of all this
+was felt in an aching head, a weakened stomach, and a general nervous
+faintness. A glass of wine, which Elinor procured for her directly,
+made her more comfortable, and she was at last able to express some
+sense of her kindness, by saying, "Poor Elinor! how unhappy I make
+you!"
+
+"I only wish," replied her sister, "there were any thing I _could_ do,
+which might be of comfort to you."
+
+This, as every thing else would have been, was too much for Marianne,
+who could only exclaim, in the anguish of her heart, "Oh! Elinor, I
+am miserable, indeed," before her voice was entirely lost in sobs.
+
+Elinor could no longer witness this torrent of unresisted grief in
+silence.
+
+"Exert yourself, dear Marianne," she cried, "if you would not kill
+yourself and all who love you. Think of your mother; think of her
+misery while _you_ suffer: for her sake you must exert yourself."
+
+"I cannot, I cannot," cried Marianne; "leave me, leave me, if I
+distress you; leave me, hate me, forget me! but do not torture me so.
+Oh! how easy for those, who have no sorrow of their own to talk of
+exertion! Happy, happy Elinor, _you_ cannot have an idea of what I
+suffer."
+
+"Do you call _me_ happy, Marianne? Ah! if you knew! And can you
+believe me to be so, while I see you so wretched!"
+
+"Forgive me, forgive me," throwing her arms round her sister's neck;
+"I know you feel for me; I know what a heart you have; but yet you
+are--you must be happy; Edward loves you--what, oh what, can do away
+such happiness as that?"
+
+"Many, many circumstances," said Elinor, solemnly.
+
+"No, no, no," cried Marianne wildly, "he loves you, and only you. You
+_can_ have no grief."
+
+"I can have no pleasure while I see you in this state."
+
+"And you will never see me otherwise. Mine is a misery which nothing
+can do away."
+
+"You must not talk so, Marianne. Have you no comforts? no friends? Is
+your loss such as leaves no opening for consolation? Much as you
+suffer now, think of what you would have suffered if the discovery of
+his character had been delayed to a later period;--if your engagement
+had been carried on for months and months, as it might have been,
+before he chose to put an end to it. Every additional day of unhappy
+confidence, on your side, would have made the blow more dreadful."
+
+"Engagement!" cried Marianne, "there has been no engagement."
+
+"No engagement!"
+
+"No, he is not so unworthy as you believe him. He has broken no faith
+with me."
+
+"But he told you that he loved you."
+
+"Yes--no--never absolutely. It was every day implied, but never
+professedly declared. Sometimes I thought it had been--but it never
+was."
+
+"Yet you wrote to him?"
+
+"Yes: could that be wrong after all that had passed? But I cannot
+talk."
+
+Elinor said no more, and turning again to the three letters which now
+raised a much stronger curiosity than before, directly ran over the
+contents of all. The first, which was what her sister had sent him on
+their arrival in town, was to this effect:--
+
+"Berkeley Street, January.
+
+     "How surprised you will be, Willoughby, on receiving this;
+     and I think you will feel something more than surprise, when
+     you know that I am in town. An opportunity of coming hither,
+     though with Mrs. Jennings, was a temptation we could not
+     resist. I wish you may receive this in time to come here
+     tonight, but I will not depend on it. At any rate I shall
+     expect you to-morrow. For the present, adieu.
+
+M.D."
+
+Her second note, which had been written on the morning after the dance
+at the Middletons', was in these words:--
+
+     "I cannot express my disappointment in having missed you the
+     day before yesterday, nor my astonishment at not having
+     received any answer to a note which I sent you above a week
+     ago. I have been expecting to hear from you, and still more
+     to see you, every hour of the day. Pray call again as soon
+     as possible, and explain the reason of my having expected
+     this in vain. You had better come earlier another time,
+     because we are generally out by one. We were last night at
+     Lady Middleton's, where there was a dance. I have been told
+     that you were asked to be of the party. But could it be so?
+     You must be very much altered indeed since we parted, if
+     that could be the case, and you not there. But I will not
+     suppose this possible, and I hope very soon to receive your
+     personal assurance of its being otherwise.
+
+M.D."
+
+The contents of her last note to him were these:--
+
+     "What am I to imagine, Willoughby, by your behaviour last
+     night? Again I demand an explanation of it. I was prepared
+     to meet you with the pleasure which our separation naturally
+     produced,--with the familiarity which our intimacy at Barton
+     appeared to me to justify. I was repulsed indeed! I have
+     passed a wretched night in endeavouring to excuse a conduct
+     which can scarcely be called less than insulting; but though
+     I have not yet been able to form any reasonable apology for
+     your behaviour, I am perfectly ready to hear your
+     justification of it. You have perhaps been misinformed, or
+     purposely deceived, in something concerning me, which may
+     have lowered me in your opinion. Tell me what it is, explain
+     the grounds on which you acted, and I shall be satisfied, in
+     being able to satisfy you. It would grieve me indeed to be
+     obliged to think ill of you; but if I am to do it, if I am
+     to learn that you are not what we have hitherto believed
+     you, that your regard for us all was insincere, that your
+     behaviour to me was intended only to deceive, let it be told
+     as soon as possible. My feelings are at present in a state
+     of dreadful indecision; I wish to acquit you, but certainty
+     on either side will be ease to what I now suffer. If your
+     sentiments are no longer what they were, you will return my
+     notes, and the lock of my hair which is in your possession.
+
+M.D."
+
+That such letters, so full of affection and confidence, could have
+been so answered, Elinor, for Willoughby's sake, would have been
+unwilling to believe. But her condemnation of him did not blind her to
+the impropriety of their having been written at all; and she was
+silently grieving over the imprudence which had hazarded such
+unsolicited proofs of tenderness, not warranted by anything preceding,
+and most severely condemned by the event, when Marianne, perceiving
+that she had finished the letters, observed to her that they contained
+nothing but what any one would have written in the same situation.
+
+"I felt myself," she added, "to be as solemnly engaged to him, as if
+the strictest legal covenant had bound us to each other."
+
+"I can believe it," said Elinor; "but unfortunately he did not feel
+the same."
+
+"He _did_ feel the same, Elinor--for weeks and weeks he felt it. I
+know he did. Whatever may have changed him now, (and nothing but the
+blackest art employed against me can have done it), I was once as dear
+to him as my own soul could wish. This lock of hair, which now he can
+so readily give up, was begged of me with the most earnest
+supplication. Had you seen his look, his manner, had you heard his
+voice at that moment! Have you forgot the last evening of our being
+together at Barton? The morning that we parted too! When he told me
+that it might be many weeks before we met again--his distress--can I
+ever forget his distress?"
+
+For a moment or two she could say no more; but when this emotion had
+passed away, she added, in a firmer tone--
+
+"Elinor, I have been cruelly used; but not by Willoughby."
+
+"Dearest Marianne, who but himself? By whom can he have been
+instigated?"
+
+"By all the world, rather than by his own heart. I could rather
+believe every creature of my acquaintance leagued together to ruin me
+in his opinion, than believe his nature capable of such cruelty. This
+woman of whom he writes--whoever she be--or any one, in short, but
+your own dear self, mama, and Edward, may have been so barbarous to
+bely me. Beyond you three, is there a creature in the world whom I
+would not rather suspect of evil than Willoughby, whose heart I know
+so well?"
+
+Elinor would not contend, and only replied, "Whoever may have been so
+detestably your enemy, let them be cheated of their malignant triumph,
+my dear sister, by seeing how nobly the consciousness of your own
+innocence and good intentions supports your spirits. It is a
+reasonable and laudable pride which resists such malevolence."
+
+"No, no," cried Marianne, "misery such as mine has no pride. I care
+not who knows that I am wretched. The triumph of seeing me so may be
+open to all the world. Elinor, Elinor, they who suffer little may be
+proud and independent as they like--may resist insult, or return
+mortification--but I cannot. I must feel--I must be wretched--and they
+are welcome to enjoy the consciousness of it that can."
+
+"But for my mother's sake and mine--"
+
+"I would do more than for my own. But to appear happy when I am so
+miserable--oh! who can require it?"
+
+Again they were both silent. Elinor was employed in walking
+thoughtfully from the fire to the window, from the window to the fire,
+without knowing that she received warmth from one, or discerning
+objects through the other; and Marianne, seated at the foot of the
+bed, with her head leaning against one of its posts, again took up
+Willoughby's letter, and, after shuddering over every sentence,
+exclaimed--
+
+"It is too much! Oh, Willoughby, Willoughby, could this be yours!
+Cruel, cruel--nothing can acquit you. Elinor, nothing can. Whatever he
+might have heard against me, ought he not to have suspended his
+belief? ought he not to have told me of it, to have given me the power
+of clearing myself? 'The lock of hair, (repeating it from the letter,)
+which you so obligingly bestowed on me'--that is unpardonable.
+Willoughby, where was your heart when you wrote those words? Oh,
+barbarously insolent!--Elinor, can he be justified?"
+
+"No, Marianne, in no possible way."
+
+"And yet this woman--who knows what her art may have been?--how long
+it may have been premeditated, and how deeply contrived by her!--Who
+is she?--Who can she be?--Whom did I ever hear him talk of as young
+and attractive among his female acquaintance?--Oh! no one, no one:--he
+talked to me only of myself."
+
+Another pause ensued; Marianne was greatly agitated, and it ended
+thus:--
+
+"Elinor, I must go home. I must go and comfort mama. Can not we be
+gone to-morrow?"
+
+"To-morrow, Marianne!"
+
+"Yes, why should I stay here? I came only for Willoughby's sake--and
+now who cares for me? Who regards me?"
+
+"It would be impossible to go to-morrow. We owe Mrs. Jennings much
+more than civility; and civility of the commonest kind must prevent
+such a hasty removal as that."
+
+"Well then, another day or two, perhaps; but I cannot stay here long,
+I cannot stay to endure the questions and remarks of all these people.
+The Middletons and Palmers--how am I to bear their pity? The pity of
+such a woman as Lady Middleton! Oh, what would _he_ say to that!"
+
+Elinor advised her to lie down again, and for a moment she did so; but
+no attitude could give her ease; and in restless pain of mind and body
+she moved from one posture to another, till growing more and more
+hysterical, her sister could with difficulty keep her on the bed at
+all, and for some time was fearful of being constrained to call for
+assistance. Some lavender drops, however, which she was at length
+persuaded to take, were of use; and from that time till Mrs. Jennings
+returned, she continued on the bed quiet and motionless.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+Mrs. Jennings came immediately to their room on her return, and
+without waiting to have her request of admittance answered, opened the
+door and walked in with a look of real concern.
+
+"How do you do my dear?" said she in a voice of great compassion to
+Marianne, who turned away her face without attempting to answer.
+
+"How is she, Miss Dashwood? Poor thing! she looks very bad. No
+wonder. Ay, it is but too true. He is to be married very soon--a
+good-for-nothing fellow! I have no patience with him. Mrs. Taylor told
+me of it half an hour ago, and she was told it by a particular friend
+of Miss Grey herself, else I am sure I should not have believed it;
+and I was almost ready to sink as it was. Well, said I, all I can say
+is, that if this be true, he has used a young lady of my acquaintance
+abominably ill, and I wish with all my soul his wife may plague his
+heart out. And so I shall always say, my dear, you may depend on it. I
+have no notion of men's going on in this way; and if ever I meet him
+again, I will give him such a dressing as he has not had this many a
+day. But there is one comfort, my dear Miss Marianne--he is not the
+only young man in the world worth having; and with your pretty face
+you will never want admirers. Well, poor thing! I won't disturb her
+any longer, for she had better have her cry out at once and have done
+with. The Parrys and Sandersons luckily are coming tonight you know,
+and that will amuse her."
+
+She then went away, walking on tiptoe out of the room, as if she
+supposed her young friend's affliction could be increased by noise.
+
+Marianne, to the surprise of her sister, determined on dining with
+them. Elinor even advised her against it. But "no, she would go down;
+she could bear it very well, and the bustle about her would be less."
+Elinor, pleased to have her governed for a moment by such a motive,
+though believing it hardly possible that she could sit out the dinner,
+said no more; and adjusting her dress for her as well as she could,
+while Marianne still remained on the bed, was ready to assist her into
+the dining room as soon as they were summoned to it.
+
+When there, though looking most wretchedly, she ate more and was
+calmer than her sister had expected. Had she tried to speak, or had
+she been conscious of half Mrs. Jennings's well-meant but ill-judged
+attentions to her, this calmness could not have been maintained; but
+not a syllable escaped her lips; and the abstraction of her thoughts
+preserved her in ignorance of every thing that was passing before her.
+
+Elinor, who did justice to Mrs. Jennings's kindness, though its
+effusions were often distressing, and sometimes almost ridiculous,
+made her those acknowledgments, and returned her those civilities,
+which her sister could not make or return for herself. Their good
+friend saw that Marianne was unhappy, and felt that every thing was
+due to her which might make her at all less so. She treated her
+therefore, with all the indulgent fondness of a parent towards a
+favourite child on the last day of its holidays. Marianne was to have
+the best place by the fire, was to be tempted to eat by every delicacy
+in the house, and to be amused by the relation of all the news of the
+day. Had not Elinor, in the sad countenance of her sister, seen a
+check to all mirth, she could have been entertained by Mrs. Jennings's
+endeavours to cure a disappointment in love, by a variety of
+sweetmeats and olives, and a good fire. As soon, however, as the
+consciousness of all this was forced by continual repetition on
+Marianne, she could stay no longer. With a hasty exclamation of
+Misery, and a sign to her sister not to follow her, she directly got
+up and hurried out of the room.
+
+"Poor soul!" cried Mrs. Jennings, as soon as she was gone, "how it
+grieves me to see her! And I declare if she is not gone away without
+finishing her wine! And the dried cherries too! Lord! nothing seems to
+do her any good. I am sure if I knew of any thing she would like, I
+would send all over the town for it. Well, it is the oddest thing to
+me, that a man should use such a pretty girl so ill! But when there
+is plenty of money on one side, and next to none on the other, Lord
+bless you! they care no more about such things!"
+
+"The lady then,--Miss Grey I think you called her,--is very rich?"
+
+"Fifty thousand pounds, my dear. Did you ever see her? a smart,
+stylish girl they say, but not handsome. I remember her aunt very
+well, Biddy Henshawe; she married a very wealthy man. But the family
+are all rich together. Fifty thousand pounds! and by all accounts, it
+won't come before it's wanted; for they say he is all to pieces. No
+wonder! dashing about with his curricle and hunters! Well, it don't
+signify talking; but when a young man, be who he will, comes and makes
+love to a pretty girl, and promises marriage, he has no business to
+fly off from his word only because he grows poor, and a richer girl is
+ready to have him. Why don't he, in such a case, sell his horses, let
+his house, turn off his servants, and make a thorough reform at once?
+I warrant you, Miss Marianne would have been ready to wait till
+matters came round. But that won't do nowadays; nothing in the way
+of pleasure can ever be given up by the young men of this age."
+
+"Do you know what kind of a girl Miss Grey is? Is she said to be
+amiable?"
+
+"I never heard any harm of her; indeed I hardly ever heard her
+mentioned; except that Mrs. Taylor did say this morning, that one day
+Miss Walker hinted to her, that she believed Mr. and Mrs. Ellison
+would not be sorry to have Miss Grey married, for she and Mrs. Ellison
+could never agree."
+
+"And who are the Ellisons?"
+
+"Her guardians, my dear. But now she is of age and may choose for
+herself; and a pretty choice she has made!--What now," after pausing a
+moment, "your poor sister is gone to her own room, I suppose, to moan
+by herself. Is there nothing one can get to comfort her? Poor dear, it
+seems quite cruel to let her be alone. Well, by and by we shall have a
+few friends, and that will amuse her a little. What shall we play at?
+She hates whist I know; but is there no round game she cares for?"
+
+"Dear ma'am, this kindness is quite unnecessary. Marianne, I dare say,
+will not leave her room again this evening. I shall persuade her if I
+can to go early to bed, for I am sure she wants rest."
+
+"Aye, I believe that will be best for her. Let her name her own
+supper, and go to bed. Lord! no wonder she has been looking so bad and
+so cast down this last week or two, for this matter I suppose has been
+hanging over her head as long as that. And so the letter that came
+today finished it! Poor soul! I am sure if I had had a notion of it, I
+would not have joked her about it for all my money. But then you know,
+how should I guess such a thing? I made sure of its being nothing but
+a common love letter, and you know young people like to be laughed at
+about them. Lord! how concerned Sir John and my daughters will be when
+they hear it! If I had my senses about me I might have called in
+Conduit Street in my way home, and told them of it. But I shall see
+them to-morrow."
+
+"It would be unnecessary I am sure, for you to caution Mrs. Palmer and
+Sir John against ever naming Mr. Willoughby, or making the slightest
+allusion to what has passed, before my sister. Their own good-nature
+must point out to them the real cruelty of appearing to know any thing
+about it when she is present; and the less that may ever be said to
+myself on the subject, the more my feelings will be spared, as you my
+dear madam will easily believe."
+
+"Oh! Lord! yes, that I do indeed. It must be terrible for you to hear
+it talked of; and as for your sister, I am sure I would not mention a
+word about it to her for the world. You saw I did not all dinner time.
+No more would Sir John, nor my daughters, for they are all very
+thoughtful and considerate; especially if I give them a hint, as I
+certainly will. For my part, I think the less that is said about such
+things, the better, the sooner 'tis blown over and forgot. And what
+does talking ever do you know?"
+
+"In this affair it can only do harm; more so perhaps than in many
+cases of a similar kind, for it has been attended by circumstances
+which, for the sake of every one concerned in it, make it unfit to
+become the public conversation. I must do _this_ justice to Mr.
+Willoughby--he has broken no positive engagement with my sister."
+
+"Law, my dear! Don't pretend to defend him. No positive engagement
+indeed! after taking her all over Allenham House, and fixing on the
+very rooms they were to live in hereafter!"
+
+Elinor, for her sister's sake, could not press the subject farther,
+and she hoped it was not required of her for Willoughby's; since,
+though Marianne might lose much, he could gain very little by the
+enforcement of the real truth. After a short silence on both sides,
+Mrs. Jennings, with all her natural hilarity, burst forth again.
+
+"Well, my dear, 'tis a true saying about an ill wind, for it will be
+all the better for Colonel Brandon. He will have her at last; aye,
+that he will. Mind me, now, if they an't married by Mid-summer. Lord!
+how he'll chuckle over this news! I hope he will come tonight. It will
+be all to one a better match for your sister. Two thousand a year
+without debt or drawback--except the little love-child, indeed; aye, I
+had forgot her; but she may be 'prenticed out at a small cost, and
+then what does it signify? Delaford is a nice place, I can tell you;
+exactly what I call a nice old fashioned place, full of comforts and
+conveniences; quite shut in with great garden walls that are covered
+with the best fruit-trees in the country; and such a mulberry tree in
+one corner! Lord! how Charlotte and I did stuff the only time we were
+there! Then, there is a dovecote, some delightful stew-ponds, and a
+very pretty canal; and every thing, in short, that one could wish for;
+and, moreover, it is close to the church, and only a quarter of a mile
+from the turnpike-road, so 'tis never dull, for if you only go and sit
+up in an old yew arbour behind the house, you may see all the
+carriages that pass along. Oh! 'tis a nice place! A butcher hard by in
+the village, and the parsonage-house within a stone's throw. To my
+fancy, a thousand times prettier than Barton Park, where they are
+forced to send three miles for their meat, and have not a neighbour
+nearer than your mother. Well, I shall spirit up the Colonel as soon
+as I can. One shoulder of mutton, you know, drives another down. If we
+_can_ but put Willoughby out of her head!"
+
+"Ay, if we can do that, Ma'am," said Elinor, "we shall do very well
+with or without Colonel Brandon." And then rising, she went away to
+join Marianne, whom she found, as she expected, in her own room,
+leaning, in silent misery, over the small remains of a fire, which,
+till Elinor's entrance, had been her only light.
+
+"You had better leave me," was all the notice that her sister received
+from her.
+
+"I will leave you," said Elinor, "if you will go to bed." But this,
+from the momentary perverseness of impatient suffering, she at first
+refused to do. Her sister's earnest, though gentle persuasion,
+however, soon softened her to compliance, and Elinor saw her lay her
+aching head on the pillow, and as she hoped, in a way to get some
+quiet rest before she left her.
+
+In the drawing-room, whither she then repaired, she was soon joined by
+Mrs. Jennings, with a wine-glass, full of something, in her hand.
+
+"My dear," said she, entering, "I have just recollected that I have
+some of the finest old Constantia wine in the house that ever was
+tasted, so I have brought a glass of it for your sister. My poor
+husband! how fond he was of it! Whenever he had a touch of his old
+colicky gout, he said it did him more good than any thing else in the
+world. Do take it to your sister."
+
+"Dear Ma'am," replied Elinor, smiling at the difference of the
+complaints for which it was recommended, "how good you are! But I have
+just left Marianne in bed, and, I hope, almost asleep; and as I think
+nothing will be of so much service to her as rest, if you will give me
+leave, I will drink the wine myself."
+
+Mrs. Jennings, though regretting that she had not been five minutes
+earlier, was satisfied with the compromise; and Elinor, as she
+swallowed the chief of it, reflected, that though its effects on a
+colicky gout were, at present, of little importance to her, its
+healing powers, on a disappointed heart might be as reasonably tried
+on herself as on her sister.
+
+Colonel Brandon came in while the party were at tea, and by his manner
+of looking round the room for Marianne, Elinor immediately fancied
+that he neither expected nor wished to see her there, and, in short,
+that he was already aware of what occasioned her absence. Mrs.
+Jennings was not struck by the same thought; for soon after his
+entrance, she walked across the room to the tea-table where Elinor
+presided, and whispered, "The Colonel looks as grave as ever you see.
+He knows nothing of it; do tell him, my dear."
+
+[Illustration: "_How fond he was of it!_"]
+
+He shortly afterwards drew a chair close to her's, and, with a look
+which perfectly assured her of his good information, inquired after
+her sister.
+
+"Marianne is not well," said she. "She has been indisposed all day,
+and we have persuaded her to go to bed."
+
+"Perhaps, then," he hesitatingly replied, "what I heard this morning
+may be--there may be more truth in it than I could believe possible at
+first."
+
+"What did you hear?"
+
+"That a gentleman, whom I had reason to think--in short, that a man,
+whom I _knew_ to be engaged--but how shall I tell you? If you know it
+already, as surely you must, I may be spared."
+
+"You mean," answered Elinor, with forced calmness, "Mr. Willoughby's
+marriage with Miss Grey. Yes, we _do_ know it all. This seems to have
+been a day of general elucidation, for this very morning first
+unfolded it to us. Mr. Willoughby is unfathomable! Where did you hear
+it?"
+
+"In a stationer's shop in Pall Mall, where I had business. Two ladies
+were waiting for their carriage, and one of them was giving the other
+an account of the intended match, in a voice so little attempting
+concealment, that it was impossible for me not to hear all. The name
+of Willoughby, John Willoughby, frequently repeated, first caught my
+attention; and what followed was a positive assertion that every thing
+was now finally settled respecting his marriage with Miss Grey--it was
+no longer to be a secret--it would take place even within a few weeks,
+with many particulars of preparations and other matters. One thing,
+especially, I remember, because it served to identify the man still
+more:--as soon as the ceremony was over, they were to go to Combe
+Magna, his seat in Somersetshire. My astonishment!--but it would be
+impossible to describe what I felt. The communicative lady I learnt,
+on inquiry,--for I stayed in the shop till they were gone,--was a Mrs.
+Ellison, and that, as I have been since informed, is the name of Miss
+Grey's guardian."
+
+"It is. But have you likewise heard that Miss Grey has fifty thousand
+pounds? In that, if in any thing, we may find an explanation."
+
+"It may be so; but Willoughby is capable--at least I think--" He
+stopped a moment; then added in a voice which seemed to distrust
+itself, "And your sister,--how did she,--"
+
+"Her sufferings have been very severe. I have only to hope that they
+may be proportionately short. It has been, it is a most cruel
+affliction. Till yesterday, I believe, she never doubted his regard;
+and even now, perhaps--but _I_ am almost convinced that he never was
+really attached to her. He has been very deceitful! and, in some
+points, there seems a hardness of heart about him."
+
+"Ah!" said Colonel Brandon, "there is, indeed! But your sister does
+not--I think you said so--she does not consider quite as you do?"
+
+"You know her disposition, and may believe how eagerly she would still
+justify him if she could."
+
+He made no answer; and soon afterwards, by the removal of the
+tea-things, and the arrangement of the card parties, the subject was
+necessarily dropped. Mrs. Jennings, who had watched them with pleasure
+while they were talking, and who expected to see the effect of Miss
+Dashwood's communication, in such an instantaneous gaiety on Colonel
+Brandon's side, as might have become a man in the bloom of youth, of
+hope and happiness, saw him, with amazement, remain the whole evening
+more serious and thoughtful than usual.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+From a night of more sleep than she had expected, Marianne awoke the
+next morning to the same consciousness of misery in which she had
+closed her eyes.
+
+Elinor encouraged her as much as possible to talk of what she felt;
+and before breakfast was ready, they had gone through the subject
+again and again; and with the same steady conviction and affectionate
+counsel on Elinor's side, the same impetuous feelings and varying
+opinions on Marianne's, as before. Sometimes she could believe
+Willoughby to be as unfortunate and as innocent as herself, and at
+others, lost every consolation in the impossibility of acquitting him.
+At one moment she was absolutely indifferent to the observation of all
+the world, at another she would seclude herself from it for ever, and
+at a third could resist it with energy. In one thing, however, she
+was uniform, when it came to the point, in avoiding, where it was
+possible, the presence of Mrs. Jennings, and in a determined silence
+when obliged to endure it. Her heart was hardened against the belief
+of Mrs. Jennings's entering into her sorrows with any compassion.
+
+"No, no, no, it cannot be," she cried; "she cannot feel. Her kindness
+is not sympathy; her good-nature is not tenderness. All that she wants
+is gossip, and she only likes me now because I supply it."
+
+Elinor had not needed this to be assured of the injustice to which her
+sister was often led in her opinion of others, by the irritable
+refinement of her own mind, and the too great importance placed by her
+on the delicacies of a strong sensibility, and the graces of a
+polished manner. Like half the rest of the world, if more than half
+there be that are clever and good, Marianne, with excellent abilities
+and an excellent disposition, was neither reasonable nor candid. She
+expected from other people the same opinions and feelings as her own,
+and she judged of their motives by the immediate effect of their
+actions on herself. Thus a circumstance occurred, while the sisters
+were together in their own room after breakfast, which sunk the heart
+of Mrs. Jennings still lower in her estimation; because, through her
+own weakness, it chanced to prove a source of fresh pain to herself,
+though Mrs. Jennings was governed in it by an impulse of the utmost
+good-will.
+
+With a letter in her outstretched hand, and countenance gaily smiling,
+from the persuasion of bringing comfort, she entered their room,
+saying--
+
+"Now, my dear, I bring you something that I am sure will do you good."
+
+Marianne heard enough. In one moment her imagination placed before her
+a letter from Willoughby, full of tenderness and contrition,
+explanatory of all that had passed, satisfactory, convincing; and
+instantly followed by Willoughby himself, rushing eagerly into the
+room to enforce, at her feet, by the eloquence of his eyes, the
+assurances of his letter. The work of one moment was destroyed by the
+next. The hand writing of her mother, never till then unwelcome, was
+before her; and, in the acuteness of the disappointment which followed
+such an ecstasy of more than hope, she felt as if, till that instant,
+she had never suffered.
+
+The cruelty of Mrs. Jennings, no language, within her reach in her
+moments of happiest eloquence, could have expressed; and now she could
+reproach her only by the tears which streamed from her eyes with
+passionate violence;--a reproach, however, so entirely lost on its
+object, that after many expressions of pity, she withdrew, still
+referring her to the letter of comfort. But the letter, when she was
+calm enough to read it, brought little comfort. Willoughby filled
+every page. Her mother, still confident of their engagement, and
+relying as warmly as ever on his constancy, had only been roused by
+Elinor's application, to entreat from Marianne greater openness
+towards them both; and this, with such tenderness towards her, such
+affection for Willoughby, and such a conviction of their future
+happiness in each other, that she wept with agony through the whole of
+it.
+
+All her impatience to be at home again now returned; her mother was
+dearer to her than ever; dearer through the very excess of her
+mistaken confidence in Willoughby, and she was wildly urgent to be
+gone. Elinor, unable herself to determine whether it were better for
+Marianne to be in London or at Barton, offered no counsel of her own
+except of patience till their mother's wishes could be known; and at
+length she obtained her sister's consent to wait for that knowledge.
+
+Mrs. Jennings left them earlier than usual; for she could not be easy
+till the Middletons and Palmers were able to grieve as much as
+herself; and positively refusing Elinor's offered attendance, went out
+alone for the rest of the morning. Elinor, with a very heavy heart,
+aware of the pain she was going to communicate, and perceiving, by
+Marianne's letter, how ill she had succeeded in laying any foundation
+for it, then sat down to write her mother an account of what had
+passed, and entreat her directions for the future; while Marianne, who
+came into the drawing-room on Mrs. Jennings's going away, remained
+fixed at the table where Elinor wrote, watching the advancement of her
+pen, grieving over her for the hardship of such a task, and grieving
+still more fondly over its effect on her mother.
+
+In this manner they had continued about a quarter of an hour, when
+Marianne, whose nerves could not then bear any sudden noise, was
+startled by a rap at the door.
+
+"Who can this be?" cried Elinor. "So early too! I thought we _had_
+been safe."
+
+Marianne moved to the window--
+
+"It is Colonel Brandon!" said she, with vexation. "We are never safe
+from _him._"
+
+"He will not come in, as Mrs. Jennings is from home."
+
+"I will not trust to _that_," retreating to her own room. "A man who
+has nothing to do with his own time has no conscience in his intrusion
+on that of others."
+
+The event proved her conjecture right, though it was founded on
+injustice and error; for Colonel Brandon _did_ come in; and Elinor,
+who was convinced that solicitude for Marianne brought him thither,
+and who saw _that_ solicitude in his disturbed and melancholy look,
+and in his anxious though brief inquiry after her, could not forgive
+her sister for esteeming him so lightly.
+
+"I met Mrs. Jennings in Bond Street," said he, after the first
+salutation, "and she encouraged me to come on; and I was the more
+easily encouraged, because I thought it probable that I might find you
+alone, which I was very desirous of doing. My object--my wish--my sole
+wish in desiring it--I hope, I believe it is--is to be a means of
+giving comfort;--no, I must not say comfort--not present comfort--but
+conviction, lasting conviction to your sister's mind. My regard for
+her, for yourself, for your mother--will you allow me to prove it, by
+relating some circumstances which nothing but a _very_ sincere
+regard--nothing but an earnest desire of being useful--I think I am
+justified--though where so many hours have been spent in convincing
+myself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear I may be
+wrong?" He stopped.
+
+"I understand you," said Elinor. "You have something to tell me of Mr.
+Willoughby, that will open his character farther. Your telling it will
+be the greatest act of friendship that can be shown Marianne. _My_
+gratitude will be insured immediately by any information tending to
+that end, and _hers_ must be gained by it in time. Pray, pray let me
+hear it."
+
+"You shall; and, to be brief, when I quitted Barton last October,--but
+this will give you no idea--I must go farther back. You will find me a
+very awkward narrator, Miss Dashwood; I hardly know where to begin. A
+short account of myself, I believe, will be necessary, and it _shall_
+be a short one. On such a subject," sighing heavily, "can I have
+little temptation to be diffuse."
+
+He stopt a moment for recollection, and then, with another sigh, went
+on.
+
+"You have probably entirely forgotten a conversation--(it is not to be
+supposed that it could make any impression on you)--a conversation
+between us one evening at Barton Park--it was the evening of a
+dance--in which I alluded to a lady I had once known, as resembling,
+in some measure, your sister Marianne."
+
+"Indeed," answered Elinor, "I have _not_ forgotten it." He looked
+pleased by this remembrance, and added--
+
+"If I am not deceived by the uncertainty, the partiality of tender
+recollection, there is a very strong resemblance between them, as well
+in mind as person. The same warmth of heart, the same eagerness of
+fancy and spirits. This lady was one of my nearest relations, an
+orphan from her infancy, and under the guardianship of my father. Our
+ages were nearly the same, and from our earliest years we were
+playfellows and friends. I cannot remember the time when I did not
+love Eliza; and my affection for her, as we grew up, was such, as
+perhaps, judging from my present forlorn and cheerless gravity, you
+might think me incapable of having ever felt. Her's, for me, was, I
+believe, fervent as the attachment of your sister to Mr. Willoughby
+and it was, though from a different cause, no less unfortunate. At
+seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married--married
+against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our
+family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be
+said for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian.
+My brother did not deserve her; he did not even love her. I had hoped
+that her regard for me would support her under any difficulty, and for
+some time it did; but at last the misery of her situation, for she
+experienced great unkindness, overcame all her resolution, and though
+she had promised me that nothing--but how blindly I relate! I have
+never told you how this was brought on. We were within a few hours of
+eloping together for Scotland. The treachery, or the folly, of my
+cousin's maid betrayed us. I was banished to the house of a relation
+far distant, and she was allowed no liberty, no society, no amusement,
+till my father's point was gained. I had depended on her fortitude too
+far, and the blow was a severe one, but had her marriage been happy,
+so young as I then was, a few months must have reconciled me to it,
+or at least I should not have now to lament it. This however was not
+the case. My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not
+what they ought to have been, and from the first he treated her
+unkindly. The consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so
+inexperienced as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned
+herself at first to all the misery of her situation; and happy had it
+been if she had not lived to overcome those regrets which the
+remembrance of me occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a
+husband to provoke inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or
+restrain her (for my father lived only a few months after their
+marriage, and I was with my regiment in the East Indies) she should
+fall? Had I remained in England, perhaps--but I meant to promote the
+happiness of both by removing from her for years, and for that purpose
+had procured my exchange. The shock which her marriage had given me,"
+he continued, in a voice of great agitation, "was of trifling
+weight--was nothing to what I felt when I heard, about two years
+afterwards, of her divorce. It was _that_ which threw this
+gloom,--even now the recollection of what I suffered--"
+
+He could say no more, and rising hastily walked for a few minutes
+about the room. Elinor, affected by his relation, and still more by
+his distress, could not speak. He saw her concern, and coming to her,
+took her hand, pressed it, and kissed it with grateful respect. A few
+minutes more of silent exertion enabled him to proceed with composure.
+
+"It was nearly three years after this unhappy period before I returned
+to England. My first care, when I _did_ arrive, was of course to seek
+for her; but the search was as fruitless as it was melancholy. I could
+not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every reason to
+fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a life of
+sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
+sufficient for her comfortable maintenance, and I learnt from my
+brother that the power of receiving it had been made over some months
+before to another person. He imagined, and calmly could he imagine it,
+that her extravagance, and consequent distress, had obliged her to
+dispose of it for some immediate relief. At last, however, and after I
+had been six months in England, I _did_ find her. Regard for a former
+servant of my own, who had since fallen into misfortune, carried me
+to visit him in a spunging-house, where he was confined for debt; and
+there, in the same house, under a similar confinement, was my
+unfortunate sister. So altered--so faded--worn down by acute suffering
+of every kind! hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure
+before me, to be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl,
+on whom I had once doted. What I endured in so beholding her--but I
+have no right to wound your feelings by attempting to describe it--I
+have pained you too much already. That she was, to all appearance, in
+the last stage of a consumption, was--yes, in such a situation it was
+my greatest comfort. Life could do nothing for her, beyond giving time
+for a better preparation for death; and that was given. I saw her
+placed in comfortable lodgings, and under proper attendants; I visited
+her every day during the rest of her short life: I was with her in her
+last moments."
+
+Again he stopped to recover himself; and Elinor spoke her feelings in
+an exclamation of tender concern, at the fate of his unfortunate
+friend.
+
+"Your sister, I hope, cannot be offended," said he, "by the
+resemblance I have fancied between her and my poor disgraced relation.
+Their fates, their fortunes, cannot be the same; and had the natural
+sweet disposition of the one been guarded by a firmer mind, or a
+happier marriage, she might have been all that you will live to see
+the other be. But to what does all this lead? I seem to have been
+distressing you for nothing. Ah! Miss Dashwood--a subject such as
+this--untouched for fourteen years--it is dangerous to handle it at
+all! I _will_ be more collected--more concise. She left to my care her
+only child, a little girl, the offspring of her first guilty
+connection, who was then about three years old. She loved the child,
+and had always kept it with her. It was a valued, a precious trust to
+me; and gladly would I have discharged it in the strictest sense, by
+watching over her education myself, had the nature of our situations
+allowed it; but I had no family, no home; and my little Eliza was
+therefore placed at school. I saw her there whenever I could, and
+after the death of my brother, (which happened about five years ago,
+and which left to me the possession of the family property,) she
+visited me at Delaford. I called her a distant relation; but I am
+well aware that I have in general been suspected of a much nearer
+connection with her. It is now three years ago (she had just reached
+her fourteenth year,) that I removed her from school, to place her
+under the care of a very respectable woman, residing in Dorsetshire,
+who had the charge of four or five other girls of about the same time
+of life; and for two years I had every reason to be pleased with her
+situation. But last February, almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly
+disappeared. I had allowed her, (imprudently, as it has since turned
+out,) at her earnest desire, to go to Bath with one of her young
+friends, who was attending her father there for his health. I knew him
+to be a very good sort of man, and I thought well of his
+daughter--better than she deserved, for, with a most obstinate and
+ill-judged secrecy, she would tell nothing, would give no clue, though
+she certainly knew all. He, her father, a well-meaning, but not a
+quick-sighted man, could really, I believe, give no information; for
+he had been generally confined to the house, while the girls were
+ranging over the town and making what acquaintance they chose; and he
+tried to convince me, as thoroughly as he was convinced himself, of
+his daughter's being entirely unconcerned in the business. In short, I
+could learn nothing but that she was gone; all the rest, for eight
+long months, was left to conjecture. What I thought, what I feared,
+may be imagined; and what I suffered too."
+
+"Good heavens!" cried Elinor, "could it be--could Willoughby!"--
+
+"The first news that reached me of her," he continued, "came in a
+letter from herself, last October. It was forwarded to me from
+Delaford, and I received it on the very morning of our intended party
+to Whitwell; and this was the reason of my leaving Barton so suddenly,
+which I am sure must at the time have appeared strange to every body,
+and which I believe gave offence to some. Little did Mr. Willoughby
+imagine, I suppose, when his looks censured me for incivility in
+breaking up the party, that I was called away to the relief of one
+whom he had made poor and miserable; but _had_ he known it, what would
+it have availed? Would he have been less gay or less happy in the
+smiles of your sister? No, he had already done that, which no man who
+_can_ feel for another would do. He had left the girl whose youth and
+innocence he had seduced, in a situation of the utmost distress, with
+no creditable home, no help, no friends, ignorant of his address! He
+had left her, promising to return; he neither returned, nor wrote, nor
+relieved her."
+
+"This is beyond every thing!" exclaimed Elinor.
+
+"His character is now before you; expensive, dissipated, and worse
+than both. Knowing all this, as I have now known it many weeks, guess
+what I must have felt on seeing your sister as fond of him as ever,
+and on being assured that she was to marry him: guess what I must have
+felt for all your sakes. When I came to you last week and found you
+alone, I came determined to know the truth; though irresolute what to
+do when it _was_ known. My behaviour must have seemed strange to you
+then; but now you will comprehend it. To suffer you all to be so
+deceived; to see your sister--but what could I do? I had no hope of
+interfering with success; and sometimes I thought your sister's
+influence might yet reclaim him. But now, after such dishonorable
+usage, who can tell what were his designs on her. Whatever they may
+have been, however, she may now, and hereafter doubtless _will_, turn
+with gratitude towards her own condition, when she compares it with
+that of my poor Eliza, when she considers the wretched and hopeless
+situation of this poor girl, and pictures her to herself, with an
+affection for him so strong, still as strong as her own, and with a
+mind tormented by self-reproach, which must attend her through life.
+Surely this comparison must have its use with her. She will feel her
+own sufferings to be nothing. They proceed from no misconduct, and can
+bring no disgrace. On the contrary, every friend must be made still
+more her friend by them. Concern for her unhappiness, and respect for
+her fortitude under it, must strengthen every attachment. Use your own
+discretion, however, in communicating to her what I have told you. You
+must know best what will be its effect; but had I not seriously, and
+from my heart believed it might be of service, might lessen her
+regrets, I would not have suffered myself to trouble you with this
+account of my family afflictions, with a recital which may seem to
+have been intended to raise myself at the expense of others."
+
+Elinor's thanks followed this speech with grateful earnestness;
+attended too with the assurance of her expecting material advantage
+to Marianne, from the communication of what had passed.
+
+"I have been more pained," said she, "by her endeavors to acquit him
+than by all the rest; for it irritates her mind more than the most
+perfect conviction of his unworthiness can do. Now, though at first
+she will suffer much, I am sure she will soon become easier. Have
+you," she continued, after a short silence, "ever seen Mr. Willoughby
+since you left him at Barton?"
+
+"Yes," he replied gravely, "once I have. One meeting was unavoidable."
+
+Elinor, startled by his manner, looked at him anxiously, saying--
+
+"What? have you met him to--"
+
+"I could meet him no other way. Eliza had confessed to me, though most
+reluctantly, the name of her lover; and when he returned to town,
+which was within a fortnight after myself, we met by appointment, he
+to defend, I to punish his conduct. We returned unwounded, and the
+meeting, therefore, never got abroad."
+
+Elinor sighed over the fancied necessity of this; but to a man and a
+soldier she presumed not to censure it.
+
+"Such," said Colonel Brandon, after a pause, "has been the unhappy
+resemblance between the fate of mother and daughter! and so
+imperfectly have I discharged my trust!"
+
+"Is she still in town?"
+
+"No; as soon as she recovered from her lying-in, for I found her near
+her delivery, I removed her and her child into the country, and there
+she remains."
+
+Recollecting, soon afterwards, that he was probably dividing Elinor
+from her sister, he put an end to his visit, receiving from her again
+the same grateful acknowledgments, and leaving her full of compassion
+and esteem for him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+
+When the particulars of this conversation were repeated by Miss
+Dashwood to her sister, as they very soon were, the effect on her was
+not entirely such as the former had hoped to see. Not that Marianne
+appeared to distrust the truth of any part of it, for she listened to
+it all with the most steady and submissive attention, made neither
+objection nor remark, attempted no vindication of Willoughby, and
+seemed to show by her tears that she felt it to be impossible. But
+though this behaviour assured Elinor that the conviction of this guilt
+_was_ carried home to her mind, though she saw with satisfaction the
+effect of it, in her no longer avoiding Colonel Brandon when he
+called, in her speaking to him, even voluntarily speaking, with a kind
+of compassionate respect, and though she saw her spirits less
+violently irritated than before, she did not see her less wretched.
+Her mind did become settled, but it was settled in a gloomy dejection.
+She felt the loss of Willoughby's character yet more heavily than she
+had felt the loss of his heart; his seduction and desertion of Miss
+Williams, the misery of that poor girl, and the doubt of what his
+designs might _once_ have been on herself, preyed altogether so much
+on her spirits, that she could not bring herself to speak of what she
+felt even to Elinor; and, brooding over her sorrows in silence, gave
+more pain to her sister than could have been communicated by the most
+open and most frequent confession of them.
+
+To give the feelings or the language of Mrs. Dashwood on receiving and
+answering Elinor's letter would be only to give a repetition of what
+her daughters had already felt and said; of a disappointment hardly
+less painful than Marianne's, and an indignation even greater than
+Elinor's. Long letters from her, quickly succeeding each other,
+arrived to tell all that she suffered and thought; to express her
+anxious solicitude for Marianne, and entreat she would bear up with
+fortitude under this misfortune. Bad indeed must the nature of
+Marianne's affliction be, when her mother could talk of fortitude!
+mortifying and humiliating must be the origin of those regrets, which
+_she_ could wish her not to indulge!
+
+Against the interest of her own individual comfort, Mrs. Dashwood had
+determined that it would be better for Marianne to be any where, at
+that time, than at Barton, where every thing within her view would be
+bringing back the past in the strongest and most afflicting manner, by
+constantly placing Willoughby before her, such as she had always seen
+him there. She recommended it to her daughters, therefore, by all
+means not to shorten their visit to Mrs. Jennings; the length of
+which, though never exactly fixed, had been expected by all to
+comprise at least five or six weeks. A variety of occupations, of
+objects, and of company, which could not be procured at Barton, would
+be inevitable there, and might yet, she hoped, cheat Marianne, at
+times, into some interest beyond herself, and even into some
+amusement, much as the ideas of both might now be spurned by her.
+
+From all danger of seeing Willoughby again, her mother considered her
+to be at least equally safe in town as in the country, since his
+acquaintance must now be dropped by all who called themselves her
+friends. Design could never bring them in each other's way: negligence
+could never leave them exposed to a surprise; and chance had less in
+its favour in the crowd of London than even in the retirement of
+Barton, where it might force him before her while paying that visit at
+Allenham on his marriage, which Mrs. Dashwood, from foreseeing at
+first as a probable event, had brought herself to expect as a certain
+one.
+
+She had yet another reason for wishing her children to remain where
+they were; a letter from her son-in-law had told her that he and his
+wife were to be in town before the middle of February, and she judged
+it right that they should sometimes see their brother.
+
+Marianne had promised to be guided by her mother's opinion, and she
+submitted to it therefore without opposition, though it proved
+perfectly different from what she wished and expected, though she felt
+it to be entirely wrong, formed on mistaken grounds, and that by
+requiring her longer continuance in London it deprived her of the only
+possible alleviation of her wretchedness, the personal sympathy of her
+mother, and doomed her to such society and such scenes as must prevent
+her ever knowing a moment's rest.
+
+But it was a matter of great consolation to her, that what brought
+evil to herself would bring good to her sister; and Elinor, on the
+other hand, suspecting that it would not be in her power to avoid
+Edward entirely, comforted herself by thinking, that though their
+longer stay would therefore militate against her own happiness, it
+would be better for Marianne than an immediate return into Devonshire.
+
+Her carefulness in guarding her sister from ever hearing Willoughby's
+name mentioned, was not thrown away. Marianne, though without knowing
+it herself, reaped all its advantage; for neither Mrs. Jennings, nor
+Sir John, nor even Mrs. Palmer herself, ever spoke of him before her.
+Elinor wished that the same forbearance could have extended towards
+herself, but that was impossible, and she was obliged to listen day
+after day to the indignation of them all.
+
+Sir John, could not have thought it possible. "A man of whom he had
+always had such reason to think well! Such a good-natured fellow! He
+did not believe there was a bolder rider in England! It was an
+unaccountable business. He wished him at the devil with all his heart.
+He would not speak another word to him, meet him where he might, for
+all the world! No, not if it were to be by the side of Barton covert,
+and they were kept watching for two hours together. Such a scoundrel
+of a fellow! such a deceitful dog! It was only the last time they met
+that he had offered him one of Folly's puppies! and this was the end
+of it!"
+
+Mrs. Palmer, in her way, was equally angry. "She was determined to
+drop his acquaintance immediately, and she was very thankful that she
+had never been acquainted with him at all. She wished with all her
+heart Combe Magna was not so near Cleveland; but it did not signify,
+for it was a great deal too far off to visit; she hated him so much
+that she was resolved never to mention his name again, and she should
+tell everybody she saw, how good-for-nothing he was."
+
+The rest of Mrs. Palmer's sympathy was shown in procuring all the
+particulars in her power of the approaching marriage, and
+communicating them to Elinor. She could soon tell at what coachmaker's
+the new carriage was building, by what painter Mr. Willoughby's
+portrait was drawn, and at what warehouse Miss Grey's clothes might be
+seen.
+
+[Illustration: _Offered him one of Folly's puppies._]
+
+The calm and polite unconcern of Lady Middleton on the occasion was a
+happy relief to Elinor's spirits, oppressed as they often were by
+the clamorous kindness of the others. It was a great comfort to her to
+be sure of exciting no interest in _one_ person at least among their
+circle of friends: a great comfort to know that there was _one_ who
+would meet her without feeling any curiosity after particulars, or any
+anxiety for her sister's health.
+
+Every qualification is raised at times, by the circumstances of the
+moment, to more than its real value; and she was sometimes worried
+down by officious condolence to rate good-breeding as more
+indispensable to comfort than good-nature.
+
+Lady Middleton expressed her sense of the affair about once every day,
+or twice, if the subject occurred very often, by saying, "It is very
+shocking, indeed!" and by the means of this continual though gentle
+vent, was able not only to see the Miss Dashwoods from the first
+without the smallest emotion, but very soon to see them without
+recollecting a word of the matter; and having thus supported the
+dignity of her own sex, and spoken her decided censure of what was
+wrong in the other, she thought herself at liberty to attend to the
+interest of her own assemblies, and therefore determined (though
+rather against the opinion of Sir John) that as Mrs. Willoughby would
+at once be a woman of elegance and fortune, to leave her card with her
+as soon as she married.
+
+Colonel Brandon's delicate, unobtrusive enquiries were never unwelcome
+to Miss Dashwood. He had abundantly earned the privilege of intimate
+discussion of her sister's disappointment, by the friendly zeal with
+which he had endeavoured to soften it, and they always conversed with
+confidence. His chief reward for the painful exertion of disclosing
+past sorrows and present humiliations, was given in the pitying eye
+with which Marianne sometimes observed him, and the gentleness of her
+voice whenever (though it did not often happen) she was obliged, or
+could oblige herself to speak to him. _These_ assured him that his
+exertion had produced an increase of good-will towards himself, and
+_these_ gave Elinor hopes of its being farther augmented hereafter;
+but Mrs. Jennings, who knew nothing of all this, who knew only that
+the Colonel continued as grave as ever, and that she could neither
+prevail on him to make the offer himself, nor commission her to make
+it for him, began, at the end of two days, to think that, instead of
+Mid-summer, they would not be married till Michaelmas, and by the end
+of a week that it would not be a match at all. The good understanding
+between the Colonel and Miss Dashwood seemed rather to declare that
+the honours of the mulberry-tree, the canal, and the yew arbour, would
+all be made over to _her_; and Mrs. Jennings had, for some time ceased
+to think at all of Mrs. Ferrars.
+
+Early in February, within a fortnight from the receipt of Willoughby's
+letter, Elinor had the painful office of informing her sister that he
+was married. She had taken care to have the intelligence conveyed to
+herself, as soon as it was known that the ceremony was over, as she
+was desirous that Marianne should not receive the first notice of it
+from the public papers, which she saw her eagerly examining every
+morning.
+
+She received the news with resolute composure; made no observation on
+it, and at first shed no tears; but after a short time they would
+burst out, and for the rest of the day, she was in a state hardly less
+pitiable than when she first learnt to expect the event.
+
+The Willoughbys left town as soon as they were married; and Elinor now
+hoped, as there could be no danger of her seeing either of them, to
+prevail on her sister, who had never yet left the house since the blow
+first fell, to go out again by degrees as she had done before.
+
+About this time the two Miss Steeles, lately arrived at their cousin's
+house in Bartlett's Buildings, Holborn, presented themselves again
+before their more grand relations in Conduit and Berkeley Streets; and
+were welcomed by them all with great cordiality.
+
+Elinor only was sorry to see them. Their presence always gave her
+pain, and she hardly knew how to make a very gracious return to the
+overpowering delight of Lucy in finding her _still_ in town.
+
+"I should have been quite disappointed if I had not found you here
+_still_," said she repeatedly, with a strong emphasis on the word.
+"But I always thought I _should_ I was almost sure you would not leave
+London yet awhile; though you _told_ me, you know, at Barton, that you
+should not stay above a _month._ But I thought, at the time, that you
+would most likely change your mind when it came to the point. It would
+have been such a great pity to have went away before your brother and
+sister came. And now to be sure you will be in no _hurry_ to be gone.
+I am amazingly glad you did not keep to _your word._"
+
+Elinor perfectly understood her, and was forced to use all her
+self-command to make it appear that she did _not._
+
+"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Jennings, "and how did you travel?"
+
+"Not in the stage, I assure you," replied Miss Steele, with quick
+exultation; "we came post all the way, and had a very smart beau to
+attend us. Dr. Davies was coming to town, and so we thought we'd join
+him in a post-chaise; and he behaved very genteelly, and paid ten or
+twelve shillings more than we did."
+
+"Oh, oh!" cried Mrs. Jennings; "very pretty, indeed! and the Doctor is
+a single man, I warrant you."
+
+"There now," said Miss Steele, affectedly simpering, "everybody laughs
+at me so about the Doctor, and I cannot think why. My cousins say they
+are sure I have made a conquest; but for my part I declare I never
+think about him from one hour's end to another. 'Lord! here comes your
+beau, Nancy,' my cousin said t'other day, when she saw him crossing
+the street to the house. My beau, indeed! said I--I cannot think who
+you mean. The Doctor is no beau of mine."
+
+"Aye, aye, that is very pretty talking--but it won't do--the Doctor is
+the man, I see."
+
+"No, indeed!" replied her cousin, with affected earnestness, "and I
+beg you will contradict it, if you ever hear it talked of."
+
+Mrs. Jennings directly gave her the gratifying assurance that she
+certainly would _not_, and Miss Steele was made completely happy.
+
+"I suppose you will go and stay with your brother and sister, Miss
+Dashwood, when they come to town," said Lucy, returning, after a
+cessation of hostile hints, to the charge.
+
+"No, I do not think we shall."
+
+"Oh, yes, I dare say you will."
+
+Elinor would not humour her by farther opposition.
+
+"What a charming thing it is that Mrs. Dashwood can spare you both for
+so long a time together!"
+
+"Long a time, indeed!" interposed Mrs. Jennings. "Why, their visit is
+but just begun!"
+
+[Illustration: _A very smart beau._]
+
+Lucy was silenced.
+
+"I am sorry we cannot see your sister, Miss Dashwood," said Miss
+Steele. "I am sorry she is not well--" for Marianne had left the room
+on their arrival.
+
+"You are very good. My sister will be equally sorry to miss the
+pleasure of seeing you; but she has been very much plagued lately with
+nervous head-aches, which make her unfit for company or conversation."
+
+"Oh, dear, that is a great pity! but such old friends as Lucy and
+me!--I think she might see _us_; and I am sure we would not speak a
+word."
+
+Elinor, with great civility, declined the proposal. Her sister was
+perhaps laid down upon the bed, or in her dressing gown, and therefore
+not able to come to them.
+
+"Oh, if that's all," cried Miss Steele, "we can just as well go and
+see _her._"
+
+Elinor began to find this impertinence too much for her temper; but
+she was saved the trouble of checking it, by Lucy's sharp reprimand,
+which now, as on many occasions, though it did not give much sweetness
+to the manners of one sister, was of advantage in governing those of
+the other.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+After some opposition, Marianne yielded to her sister's entreaties,
+and consented to go out with her and Mrs. Jennings one morning for
+half an hour. She expressly conditioned, however, for paying no
+visits, and would do no more than accompany them to Gray's in
+Sackville Street, where Elinor was carrying on a negotiation for the
+exchange of a few old-fashioned jewels of her mother.
+
+When they stopped at the door, Mrs. Jennings recollected that there
+was a lady at the other end of the street on whom she ought to call;
+and as she had no business at Gray's, it was resolved, that while her
+young friends transacted their's, she should pay her visit and return
+for them.
+
+On ascending the stairs, the Miss Dashwoods found so many people
+before them in the room, that there was not a person at liberty to
+tend to their orders; and they were obliged to wait. All that could be
+done was, to sit down at that end of the counter which seemed to
+promise the quickest succession; one gentleman only was standing
+there, and it is probable that Elinor was not without hope of exciting
+his politeness to a quicker despatch. But the correctness of his eye,
+and the delicacy of his taste, proved to be beyond his politeness. He
+was giving orders for a toothpick-case for himself, and till its size,
+shape, and ornaments were determined, all of which, after examining
+and debating for a quarter of an hour over every toothpick-case in the
+shop, were finally arranged by his own inventive fancy, he had no
+leisure to bestow any other attention on the two ladies, than what was
+comprised in three or four very broad stares; a kind of notice which
+served to imprint on Elinor the remembrance of a person and face, of
+strong, natural, sterling insignificance, though adorned in the first
+style of fashion.
+
+Marianne was spared from the troublesome feelings of contempt and
+resentment, on this impertinent examination of their features, and on
+the puppyism of his manner in deciding on all the different horrors of
+the different toothpick-cases presented to his inspection, by
+remaining unconscious of it all; for she was as well able to collect
+her thoughts within herself, and be as ignorant of what was passing
+around her, in Mr. Gray's shop, as in her own bedroom.
+
+At last the affair was decided. The ivory, the gold, and the pearls,
+all received their appointment, and the gentleman having named the
+last day on which his existence could be continued without the
+possession of the toothpick-case, drew on his gloves with leisurely
+care, and bestowing another glance on the Miss Dashwoods, but such a
+one as seemed rather to demand than express admiration, walked off
+with a happy air of real conceit and affected indifference.
+
+Elinor lost no time in bringing her business forward, was on the point
+of concluding it, when another gentleman presented himself at her
+side. She turned her eyes towards his face, and found him with some
+surprise to be her brother.
+
+[Illustration: _Introduced to Mrs. Jennings._]
+
+Their affection and pleasure in meeting was just enough to make a very
+creditable appearance in Mr. Gray's shop. John Dashwood was really far
+from being sorry to see his sisters again; it rather gave them
+satisfaction; and his inquiries after their mother were respectful and
+attentive.
+
+Elinor found that he and Fanny had been in town two days.
+
+"I wished very much to call upon you yesterday," said he, "but it was
+impossible, for we were obliged to take Harry to see the wild beasts
+at Exeter Exchange; and we spent the rest of the day with Mrs.
+Ferrars. Harry was vastly pleased. _This_ morning I had fully intended
+to call on you, if I could possibly find a spare half hour, but one
+has always so much to do on first coming to town. I am come here to
+bespeak Fanny a seal. But tomorrow I think I shall certainly be able
+to call in Berkeley Street, and be introduced to your friend Mrs.
+Jennings. I understand she is a woman of very good fortune. And the
+Middletons too, you must introduce me to _them_. As my mother-in-law's
+relations, I shall be happy to show them every respect. They are
+excellent neighbours to you in the country, I understand."
+
+"Excellent indeed. Their attention to our comfort, their friendliness
+in every particular, is more than I can express."
+
+"I am extremely glad to hear it, upon my word; extremely glad indeed.
+But so it ought to be; they are people of large fortune, they are
+related to you, and every civility and accommodation that can serve to
+make your situation pleasant might be reasonably expected. And so you
+are most comfortably settled in your little cottage and want for
+nothing! Edward brought us a most charming account of the place: the
+most complete thing of its kind, he said, that ever was, and you all
+seemed to enjoy it beyond any thing. It was a great satisfaction to us
+to hear it, I assure you."
+
+Elinor did feel a little ashamed of her brother; and was not sorry to
+be spared the necessity of answering him, by the arrival of Mrs.
+Jennings's servant, who came to tell her that his mistress waited for
+them at the door.
+
+Mr. Dashwood attended them down stairs, was introduced to Mrs.
+Jennings at the door of her carriage, and repeating his hope of being
+able to call on them the next day, took leave.
+
+[Illustration: _Mrs. Jennings assured him directly that she should not
+stand upon ceremony._]
+
+His visit was duly paid. He came with a pretence at an apology from
+their sister-in-law, for not coming too; "but she was so much engaged
+with her mother, that really she had no leisure for going any where."
+Mrs. Jennings, however, assured him directly, that she should not
+stand upon ceremony, for they were all cousins, or something like
+it, and she should certainly wait on Mrs. John Dashwood very soon, and
+bring her sisters to see her. His manners to _them_, though calm, were
+perfectly kind; to Mrs. Jennings, most attentively civil; and on
+Colonel Brandon's coming in soon after himself, he eyed him with a
+curiosity which seemed to say, that he only wanted to know him to be
+rich, to be equally civil to _him._
+
+After staying with them half an hour, he asked Elinor to walk with him
+to Conduit Street, and introduce him to Sir John and Lady Middleton.
+The weather was remarkably fine, and she readily consented. As soon as
+they were out of the house, his enquiries began.
+
+"Who is Colonel Brandon? Is he a man of fortune?"
+
+"Yes; he has very good property in Dorsetshire."
+
+"I am glad of it. He seems a most gentlemanlike man; and I think,
+Elinor, I may congratulate you on the prospect of a very respectable
+establishment in life."
+
+"Me, brother! what do you mean?"
+
+"He likes you. I observed him narrowly, and am convinced of it. What
+is the amount of his fortune?"
+
+"I believe about two thousand a year."
+
+"Two thousand a-year;" and then working himself up to a pitch of
+enthusiastic generosity, he added, "Elinor, I wish with all my heart
+it were _twice_ as much, for your sake."
+
+"Indeed I believe you," replied Elinor; "but I am very sure that
+Colonel Brandon has not the smallest wish of marrying _me._
+
+"You are mistaken, Elinor; you are very much mistaken. A very little
+trouble on your side secures him. Perhaps just at present he may be
+undecided; the smallness of your fortune may make him hang back; his
+friends may all advise him against it. But some of those little
+attentions and encouragements which ladies can so easily give will fix
+him, in spite of himself. And there can be no reason why you should
+not try for him. It is not to be supposed that any prior attachment on
+your side--in short, you know as to an attachment of that kind, it is
+quite out of the question, the objections are insurmountable--you have
+too much sense not to see all that. Colonel Brandon must be the man;
+and no civility shall be wanting on my part to make him pleased with
+you and your family. It is a match that must give universal
+satisfaction. In short, it is a kind of thing that," lowering his
+voice to an important whisper, "will be exceedingly welcome to _all
+parties._" Recollecting himself, however, he added, "That is, I mean
+to say--your friends are all truly anxious to see you well settled;
+Fanny particularly, for she has your interest very much at heart, I
+assure you. And her mother too, Mrs. Ferrars, a very good-natured
+woman, I am sure it would give her great pleasure; she said as much
+the other day."
+
+Elinor would not vouchsafe any answer.
+
+"It would be something remarkable, now," he continued, "something
+droll, if Fanny should have a brother and I a sister settling at the
+same time. And yet it is not very unlikely."
+
+"Is Mr. Edward Ferrars," said Elinor, with resolution, "going to be
+married?"
+
+"It is not actually settled, but there is such a thing in agitation.
+He has a most excellent mother. Mrs. Ferrars, with the utmost
+liberality, will come forward, and settle on him a thousand a year, if
+the match takes place. The lady is the Hon. Miss Morton, only daughter
+of the late Lord Morton, with thirty thousand pounds. A very desirable
+connection on both sides, and I have not a doubt of its taking place
+in time. A thousand a-year is a great deal for a mother to give away,
+to make over for ever; but Mrs. Ferrars has a noble spirit. To give
+you another instance of her liberality:--The other day, as soon as we
+came to town, aware that money could not be very plenty with us just
+now, she put bank-notes into Fanny's hands to the amount of two
+hundred pounds. And extremely acceptable it is, for we must live at a
+great expense while we are here."
+
+He paused for her assent and compassion; and she forced herself to
+say--
+
+"Your expenses both in town and country must certainly be
+considerable; but your income is a large one."
+
+"Not so large, I dare say, as many people suppose. I do not mean to
+complain, however; it is undoubtedly a comfortable one, and I hope
+will in time be better. The enclosure of Norland Common, now carrying
+on, is a most serious drain. And then I have made a little purchase
+within this half year; East Kingham Farm, you must remember the place,
+where old Gibson used to live. The land was so very desirable for me
+in every respect, so immediately adjoining my own property, that I
+felt it my duty to buy it. I could not have answered it to my
+conscience to let it fall into any other hands. A man must pay for his
+convenience; and it _has_ cost me a vast deal of money."
+
+"More than you think it really and intrinsically worth."
+
+"Why, I hope not that. I might have sold it again, the next day, for
+more than I gave: but, with regard to the purchase-money, I might have
+been very unfortunate indeed; for the stocks were at that time so low,
+that if I had not happened to have the necessary sum in my banker's
+hands, I must have sold out to very great loss."
+
+Elinor could only smile.
+
+"Other great and inevitable expenses too we have had on first coming
+to Norland. Our respected father, as you well know, bequeathed all the
+Stanhill effects that remained at Norland (and very valuable they
+were) to your mother. Far be it from me to repine at his doing so; he
+had an undoubted right to dispose of his own property as he chose,
+but, in consequence of it, we have been obliged to make large
+purchases of linen, china, &c. to supply the place of what was taken
+away. You may guess, after all these expenses, how very far we must be
+from being rich, and how acceptable Mrs. Ferrars's kindness is."
+
+"Certainly," said Elinor; "and assisted by her liberality, I hope you
+may yet live to be in easy circumstances."
+
+"Another year or two may do much towards it," he gravely replied; "but
+however there is still a great deal to be done. There is not a stone
+laid of Fanny's green-house, and nothing but the plan of the
+flower-garden marked out."
+
+"Where is the green-house to be?"
+
+"Upon the knoll behind the house. The old walnut trees are all come
+down to make room for it. It will be a very fine object from many
+parts of the park, and the flower-garden will slope down just before
+it, and be exceedingly pretty. We have cleared away all the old thorns
+that grew in patches over the brow."
+
+Elinor kept her concern and her censure to herself; and was very
+thankful that Marianne was not present, to share the provocation.
+
+Having now said enough to make his poverty clear, and to do away the
+necessity of buying a pair of ear-rings for each of his sisters, in
+his next visit at Gray's, his thoughts took a cheerfuller turn, and he
+began to congratulate Elinor on having such a friend as Mrs. Jennings.
+
+"She seems a most valuable woman indeed--Her house, her style of
+living, all bespeak an exceeding good income; and it is an
+acquaintance that has not only been of great use to you hitherto, but
+in the end may prove materially advantageous. Her inviting you to town
+is certainly a vast thing in your favour; and indeed, it speaks
+altogether so great a regard for you, that in all probability when she
+dies you will not be forgotten. She must have a great deal to leave."
+
+"Nothing at all, I should rather suppose; for she has only her
+jointure, which will descend to her children."
+
+"But it is not to be imagined that she lives up to her income. Few
+people of common prudence will do _that_; and whatever she saves, she
+will be able to dispose of."
+
+"And do you not think it more likely that she should leave it to her
+daughters, than to us?"
+
+"Her daughters are both exceedingly well married, and therefore I
+cannot perceive the necessity of her remembering them farther.
+Whereas, in my opinion, by her taking so much notice of you, and
+treating you in this kind of way, she has given you a sort of claim on
+her future consideration, which a conscientious woman would not
+disregard. Nothing can be kinder than her behaviour; and she can
+hardly do all this, without being aware of the expectation it raises."
+
+"But she raises none in those most concerned. Indeed, brother, your
+anxiety for our welfare and prosperity carries you too far."
+
+"Why, to be sure," said he, seeming to recollect himself, "people have
+little, have very little in their power. But, my dear Elinor, what is
+the matter with Marianne?--she looks very unwell, has lost her colour,
+and is grown quite thin. Is she ill?"
+
+"She is not well, she has had a nervous complaint on her for several
+weeks."
+
+"I am sorry for that. At her time of life, any thing of an illness
+destroys the bloom for ever! Her's has been a very short one! She was
+as handsome a girl last September, as I ever saw; and as likely to
+attract the man. There was something in her style of beauty, to
+please them particularly. I remember Fanny used to say that she would
+marry sooner and better than you did; not but what she is exceedingly
+fond of _you_, but so it happened to strike her. She will be mistaken,
+however. I question whether Marianne _now_, will marry a man worth
+more than five or six hundred a-year, at the utmost, and I am very
+much deceived if _you_ do not do better. Dorsetshire! I know very
+little of Dorsetshire; but, my dear Elinor, I shall be exceedingly
+glad to know more of it; and I think I can answer for your having
+Fanny and myself among the earliest and best pleased of your
+visitors."
+
+Elinor tried very seriously to convince him that there was no
+likelihood of her marrying Colonel Brandon; but it was an expectation
+of too much pleasure to himself to be relinquished, and he was really
+resolved on seeking an intimacy with that gentleman, and promoting the
+marriage by every possible attention. He had just compunction enough
+for having done nothing for his sisters himself, to be exceedingly
+anxious that everybody else should do a great deal; and an offer from
+Colonel Brandon, or a legacy from Mrs. Jennings, was the easiest means
+of atoning for his own neglect.
+
+They were lucky enough to find Lady Middleton at home, and Sir John
+came in before their visit ended. Abundance of civilities passed on
+all sides. Sir John was ready to like anybody, and though Mr. Dashwood
+did not seem to know much about horses, he soon set him down as a very
+good-natured fellow: while Lady Middleton saw enough of fashion in his
+appearance to think his acquaintance worth having; and Mr. Dashwood
+went away delighted with both.
+
+"I shall have a charming account to carry to Fanny," said he, as he
+walked back with his sister. "Lady Middleton is really a most elegant
+woman! Such a woman as I am sure Fanny will be glad to know. And Mrs.
+Jennings too, an exceedingly well-behaved woman, though not so elegant
+as her daughter. Your sister need not have any scruple even of
+visiting _her_, which, to say the truth, has been a little the case,
+and very naturally; for we only knew that Mrs. Jennings was the widow
+of a man who had got all his money in a low way; and Fanny and Mrs.
+Ferrars were both strongly prepossessed, that neither she nor her
+daughters were such kind of women as Fanny would like to associate
+with. But now I can carry her a most satisfactory account of both."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+
+Mrs. John Dashwood had so much confidence in her husband's judgment,
+that she waited the very next day both on Mrs. Jennings and her
+daughter; and her confidence was rewarded by finding even the former,
+even the woman with whom her sisters were staying, by no means
+unworthy her notice; and as for Lady Middleton, she found her one of
+the most charming women in the world!
+
+Lady Middleton was equally pleased with Mrs. Dashwood. There was a
+kind of cold hearted selfishness on both sides, which mutually
+attracted them; and they sympathised with each other in an insipid
+propriety of demeanor, and a general want of understanding.
+
+The same manners, however, which recommended Mrs. John Dashwood to the
+good opinion of Lady Middleton did not suit the fancy of Mrs.
+Jennings, and to _her_ she appeared nothing more than a little
+proud-looking woman of uncordial address, who met her husband's
+sisters without any affection, and almost without having anything to
+say to them; for of the quarter of an hour bestowed on Berkeley
+Street, she sat at least seven minutes and a half in silence.
+
+Elinor wanted very much to know, though she did not choose to ask,
+whether Edward was then in town; but nothing would have induced Fanny
+voluntarily to mention his name before her, till able to tell her that
+his marriage with Miss Morton was resolved on, or till her husband's
+expectations on Colonel Brandon were answered; because she believed
+them still so very much attached to each other, that they could not be
+too sedulously divided in word and deed on every occasion. The
+intelligence however, which _she_ would not give, soon flowed from
+another quarter. Lucy came very shortly to claim Elinor's compassion
+on being unable to see Edward, though he had arrived in town with Mr.
+and Mrs. Dashwood. He dared not come to Bartlett's Buildings for fear
+of detection, and though their mutual impatience to meet, was not to
+be told, they could do nothing at present but write.
+
+Edward assured them himself of his being in town, within a very short
+time, by twice calling in Berkeley Street. Twice was his card found on
+the table, when they returned from their morning's engagements. Elinor
+was pleased that he had called; and still more pleased that she had
+missed him.
+
+The Dashwoods were so prodigiously delighted with the Middletons,
+that, though not much in the habit of giving anything, they determined
+to give them--a dinner; and soon after their acquaintance began,
+invited them to dine in Harley Street, where they had taken a very
+good house for three months. Their sisters and Mrs. Jennings were
+invited likewise, and John Dashwood was careful to secure Colonel
+Brandon, who, always glad to be where the Miss Dashwoods were,
+received his eager civilities with some surprise, but much more
+pleasure. They were to meet Mrs. Ferrars; but Elinor could not learn
+whether her sons were to be of the party. The expectation of seeing
+_her_, however, was enough to make her interested in the engagement;
+for though she could now meet Edward's mother without that strong
+anxiety which had once promised to attend such an introduction, though
+she could now see her with perfect indifference as to her opinion of
+herself, her desire of being in company with Mrs. Ferrars, her
+curiosity to know what she was like, was as lively as ever.
+
+The interest with which she thus anticipated the party, was soon
+afterwards increased, more powerfully than pleasantly, by her hearing
+that the Miss Steeles were also to be at it.
+
+So well had they recommended themselves to Lady Middleton, so
+agreeable had their assiduities made them to her, that though Lucy was
+certainly not so elegant, and her sister not even genteel, she was as
+ready as Sir John to ask them to spend a week or two in Conduit
+Street; and it happened to be particularly convenient to the Miss
+Steeles, as soon as the Dashwoods' invitation was known, that their
+visit should begin a few days before the party took place.
+
+Their claims to the notice of Mrs. John Dashwood, as the nieces of
+the gentleman who for many years had had the care of her brother,
+might not have done much, however, towards procuring them seats at her
+table; but as Lady Middleton's guests they must be welcome; and Lucy,
+who had long wanted to be personally known to the family, to have a
+nearer view of their characters and her own difficulties, and to have
+an opportunity of endeavouring to please them, had seldom been happier
+in her life, than she was on receiving Mrs. John Dashwood's card.
+
+On Elinor its effect was very different. She began immediately to
+determine, that Edward who lived with his mother, must be asked as his
+mother was, to a party given by his sister; and to see him for the
+first time, after all that passed, in the company of Lucy!--she hardly
+knew how she could bear it!
+
+These apprehensions, perhaps, were not founded entirely on reason, and
+certainly not at all on truth. They were relieved however, not by her
+own recollection, but by the good will of Lucy, who believed herself
+to be inflicting a severe disappointment when she told her that Edward
+certainly would not be in Harley Street on Tuesday, and even hoped to
+be carrying the pain still farther by persuading her that he was kept
+away by the extreme affection for herself, which he could not conceal
+when they were together.
+
+The important Tuesday came that was to introduce the two young ladies
+to this formidable mother-in-law.
+
+"Pity me, dear Miss Dashwood!" said Lucy, as they walked up the stairs
+together--for the Middletons arrived so directly after Mrs. Jennings,
+that they all followed the servant at the same time--"There is nobody
+here but you, that can feel for me. I declare I can hardly stand. Good
+gracious!--In a moment I shall see the person that all my happiness
+depends on--that is to be my mother!"--
+
+Elinor could have given her immediate relief by suggesting the
+possibility of its being Miss Morton's mother, rather than her own,
+whom they were about to behold; but instead of doing that, she assured
+her, and with great sincerity, that she did pity her--to the utter
+amazement of Lucy, who, though really uncomfortable herself, hoped at
+least to be an object of irrepressible envy to Elinor.
+
+Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in
+her figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her
+complexion was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and
+naturally without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had
+rescued her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it
+the strong characters of pride and ill nature. She was not a woman of
+many words; for, unlike people in general, she proportioned them to
+the number of her ideas; and of the few syllables that did escape her,
+not one fell to the share of Miss Dashwood, whom she eyed with the
+spirited determination of disliking her at all events.
+
+Elinor could not _now_ be made unhappy by this behaviour. A few months
+ago it would have hurt her exceedingly; but it was not in Mrs.
+Ferrars' power to distress her by it now; and the difference of her
+manners to the Miss Steeles, a difference which seemed purposely made
+to humble her more, only amused her. She could not but smile to see
+the graciousness of both mother and daughter towards the very
+person--for Lucy was particularly distinguished--whom of all others,
+had they known as much as she did, they would have been most anxious
+to mortify; while she herself, who had comparatively no power to wound
+them, sat pointedly slighted by both. But while she smiled at a
+graciousness so misapplied, she could not reflect on the mean-spirited
+folly from which it sprung, nor observe the studied attentions with
+which the Miss Steeles courted its continuance, without thoroughly
+despising them all four.
+
+Lucy was all exultation on being so honorably distinguished; and Miss
+Steele wanted only to be teased about Dr. Davies to be perfectly
+happy.
+
+The dinner was a grand one, the servants were numerous, and every
+thing bespoke the Mistress's inclination for show, and the Master's
+ability to support it. In spite of the improvements and additions
+which were making to the Norland estate, and in spite of its owner
+having once been within some thousand pounds of being obliged to sell
+out at a loss, nothing gave any symptom of that indigence which he had
+tried to infer from it; no poverty of any kind, except of
+conversation, appeared; but there, the deficiency was considerable.
+John Dashwood had not much to say for himself that was worth hearing,
+and his wife had still less. But there was no peculiar disgrace in
+this; for it was very much the case with the chief of their visitors,
+who almost all laboured under one or other of these disqualifications
+for being agreeable--Want of sense, either natural or improved--want
+of elegance--want of spirits--or want of temper.
+
+When the ladies withdrew to the drawing-room after dinner, this
+poverty was particularly evident, for the gentlemen _had_ supplied the
+discourse with some variety--the variety of politics, inclosing land,
+and breaking horses--but then it was all over; and one subject only
+engaged the ladies till coffee came in, which was the comparative
+heights of Harry Dashwood, and Lady Middleton's second son William,
+who were nearly of the same age.
+
+Had both the children been there, the affair might have been
+determined too easily by measuring them at once; but as Harry only was
+present, it was all conjectural assertion on both sides; and every
+body had a right to be equally positive in their opinion, and to
+repeat it over and over again as often as they liked.
+
+The parties stood thus:--
+
+The two mothers, though each really convinced that her own son was the
+tallest, politely decided in favour of the other. The two
+grandmothers, with not less partiality, but more sincerity, were
+equally earnest in support of their own descendant.
+
+Lucy, who was hardly less anxious to please one parent than the other,
+thought the boys were both remarkably tall for their age, and could
+not conceive that there could be the smallest difference in the world
+between them; and Miss Steele, with yet greater address gave it, as
+fast as she could, in favour of each.
+
+Elinor, having once delivered her opinion on William's side, by which
+she offended Mrs. Ferrars and Fanny still more, did not see the
+necessity of enforcing it by any farther assertion; and Marianne, when
+called on for her's, offended them all, by declaring that she had no
+opinion to give, as she had never thought about it.
+
+Before her removing from Norland, Elinor had painted a very pretty
+pair of screens for her sister-in-law, which being now just mounted
+and brought home, ornamented her present drawing room; and these
+screens, catching the eye of John Dashwood on his following the other
+gentlemen into the room, were officiously handed by him to Colonel
+Brandon for his admiration.
+
+"These are done by my eldest sister," said he; "and you, as a man of
+taste, will, I dare say, be pleased with them. I do not know whether
+you have ever happened to see any of her performances before, but she
+is in general reckoned to draw extremely well."
+
+The Colonel, though disclaiming all pretensions to connoisseurship,
+warmly admired the screens, as he would have done any thing painted by
+Miss Dashwood; and on the curiosity of the others being of course
+excited, they were handed round for general inspection. Mrs. Ferrars,
+not aware of their being Elinor's work, particularly requested to look
+at them; and after they had received gratifying testimony of Lady
+Middleton's approbation, Fanny presented them to her mother,
+considerately informing her, at the same time, that they were done by
+Miss Dashwood.
+
+"Hum"--said Mrs. Ferrars--"very pretty,"--and without regarding them
+at all, returned them to her daughter.
+
+Perhaps Fanny thought for a moment that her mother had been quite rude
+enough,--for, colouring a little, she immediately said--
+
+"They are very pretty, ma'am--an't they?" But then again, the dread of
+having been too civil, too encouraging herself, probably came over
+her, for she presently added, "Do you not think they are something in
+Miss Morton's style of painting, Ma'am?--She _does_ paint most
+delightfully!--How beautifully her last landscape is done!"
+
+"Beautifully indeed! But _she_ does every thing well."
+
+Marianne could not bear this. She was already greatly displeased with
+Mrs. Ferrars; and such ill-timed praise of another, at Elinor's
+expense, though she had not any notion of what was principally meant
+by it, provoked her immediately to say with warmth--
+
+"This is admiration of a very particular kind! what is Miss Morton to
+us? who knows, or who cares, for her?--it is Elinor of whom _we_ think
+and speak."
+
+And so saying, she took the screens out of her sister-in-law's hands,
+to admire them herself as they ought to be admired.
+
+[Illustration: _Mrs. Ferrars._]
+
+Mrs. Ferrars looked exceedingly angry, and drawing herself up more
+stiffly than ever, pronounced in retort this bitter philippic, "Miss
+Morton is Lord Morton's daughter."
+
+Fanny looked very angry too, and her husband was all in a fright at
+his sister's audacity. Elinor was much more hurt by Marianne's warmth
+than she had been by what produced it; but Colonel Brandon's eyes, as
+they were fixed on Marianne, declared that he noticed only what was
+amiable in it, the affectionate heart which could not bear to see a
+sister slighted in the smallest point.
+
+Marianne's feelings did not stop here. The cold insolence of Mrs.
+Ferrars's general behaviour to her sister, seemed, to her, to foretell
+such difficulties and distresses to Elinor, as her own wounded heart
+taught her to think of with horror; and urged by a strong impulse of
+affectionate sensibility, she moved after a moment, to her sister's
+chair, and putting one arm round her neck, and one cheek close to
+hers, said in a low, but eager, voice--
+
+"Dear, dear Elinor, don't mind them. Don't let them make _you_
+unhappy."
+
+She could say no more; her spirits were quite overcome, and hiding her
+face on Elinor's shoulder, she burst into tears. Every body's
+attention was called, and almost every body was concerned. Colonel
+Brandon rose up and went to them without knowing what he did. Mrs.
+Jennings, with a very intelligent "Ah! poor dear," immediately gave
+her her salts; and Sir John felt so desperately enraged against the
+author of this nervous distress, that he instantly changed his seat to
+one close by Lucy Steele, and gave her, in a whisper, a brief account
+of the whole shocking affair.
+
+In a few minutes, however, Marianne was recovered enough to put an end
+to the bustle, and sit down among the rest; though her spirits
+retained the impression of what had passed, the whole evening.
+
+"Poor Marianne!" said her brother to Colonel Brandon, in a low voice,
+as soon as he could secure his attention: "She has not such good
+health as her sister,--she is very nervous,--she has not Elinor's
+constitution;--and one must allow that there is something very trying
+to a young woman who _has been_ a beauty in the loss of her personal
+attractions. You would not think it perhaps, but Marianne _was_
+remarkably handsome a few months ago; quite as handsome as Elinor. Now
+you see it is all gone."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+
+Elinor's curiosity to see Mrs. Ferrars was satisfied. She had found in
+her every thing that could tend to make a farther connection between
+the families undesirable. She had seen enough of her pride, her
+meanness, and her determined prejudice against herself, to comprehend
+all the difficulties that must have perplexed the engagement, and
+retarded the marriage, of Edward and herself, had he been otherwise
+free;--and she had seen almost enough to be thankful for her _own_
+sake, that one greater obstacle preserved her from suffering under any
+other of Mrs. Ferrars's creation, preserved her from all dependence
+upon her caprice, or any solicitude for her good opinion. Or at least,
+if she did not bring herself quite to rejoice in Edward's being
+fettered to Lucy, she determined, that had Lucy been more amiable, she
+_ought_ to have rejoiced.
+
+She wondered that Lucy's spirits could be so very much elevated by the
+civility of Mrs. Ferrars;--that her interest and her vanity should so
+very much blind her as to make the attention which seemed only paid
+her because she was _not Elinor_ appear a compliment to herself--or to
+allow her to derive encouragement from a preference only given her,
+because her real situation was unknown. But that it was so, had not
+only been declared by Lucy's eyes at the time, but was declared over
+again the next morning more openly, for at her particular desire, Lady
+Middleton set her down in Berkeley Street on the chance of seeing
+Elinor alone, to tell her how happy she was.
+
+The chance proved a lucky one, for a message from Mrs. Palmer soon
+after she arrived, carried Mrs. Jennings away.
+
+"My dear friend," cried Lucy, as soon as they were by themselves, "I
+come to talk to you of my happiness. Could anything be so flattering
+as Mrs. Ferrars's way of treating me yesterday? So exceeding affable
+as she was! You know how I dreaded the thoughts of seeing her; but the
+very moment I was introduced, there was such an affability in her
+behaviour as really should seem to say, she had quite took a fancy to
+me. Now was not it so? You saw it all; and was not you quite struck
+with it?"
+
+"She was certainly very civil to you."
+
+"Civil!--Did you see nothing but only civility?--I saw a vast deal
+more. Such kindness as fell to the share of nobody but me!--No pride,
+no hauteur, and your sister just the same--all sweetness and
+affability!"
+
+Elinor wished to talk of something else, but Lucy still pressed her to
+own that she had reason for her happiness; and Elinor was obliged to
+go on.
+
+"Undoubtedly, if they had known your engagement," said she, "nothing
+could be more flattering than their treatment of you;--but as that was
+not the case--"
+
+"I guessed you would say so," replied Lucy quickly--"but there was no
+reason in the world why Mrs. Ferrars should seem to like me, if she
+did not, and her liking me is every thing. You shan't talk me out of
+my satisfaction. I am sure it will all end well, and there will be no
+difficulties at all, to what I used to think. Mrs. Ferrars is a
+charming woman, and so is your sister. They are both delightful women,
+indeed!--I wonder I should never hear you say how agreeable Mrs.
+Dashwood was!"
+
+To this Elinor had no answer to make, and did not attempt any.
+
+"Are you ill, Miss Dashwood?--you seem low--you don't speak;--sure you
+an't well."
+
+"I never was in better health."
+
+"I am glad of it with all my heart; but really you did not look it. I
+should be sorry to have _you_ ill; you, that have been the greatest
+comfort to me in the world!--Heaven knows what I should have done
+without your friendship."--
+
+Elinor tried to make a civil answer, though doubting her own success.
+But it seemed to satisfy Lucy, for she directly replied--
+
+"Indeed I am perfectly convinced of your regard for me, and next to
+Edward's love, it is the greatest comfort I have. Poor Edward!--But
+now there is one good thing, we shall be able to meet, and meet pretty
+often, for Lady Middleton's delighted with Mrs. Dashwood, so we shall
+be a good deal in Harley Street, I dare say, and Edward spends half
+his time with his sister--besides, Lady Middleton and Mrs. Ferrars
+will visit now;--and Mrs. Ferrars and your sister were both so good
+to say more than once, they should always be glad to see me. They are
+such charming women!--I am sure if ever you tell your sister what I
+think of her, you cannot speak too high."
+
+But Elinor would not give her any encouragement to hope that she
+_should_ tell her sister. Lucy continued.
+
+"I am sure I should have seen it in a moment, if Mrs. Ferrars had took
+a dislike to me. If she had only made me a formal courtesy, for
+instance, without saying a word, and never after had took any notice
+of me, and never looked at me in a pleasant way--you know what I
+mean--if I had been treated in that forbidding sort of way, I should
+have gave it all up in despair. I could not have stood it. For where
+she _does_ dislike, I know it is most violent."
+
+Elinor was prevented from making any reply to this civil triumph, by
+the door's being thrown open, the servant's announcing Mr. Ferrars,
+and Edward's immediately walking in.
+
+It was a very awkward moment; and the countenance of each showed that
+it was so. They all looked exceedingly foolish; and Edward seemed to
+have as great an inclination to walk out of the room again, as to
+advance farther into it. The very circumstance, in its unpleasantest
+form, which they would each have been most anxious to avoid, had
+fallen on them. They were not only all three together, but were
+together without the relief of any other person. The ladies recovered
+themselves first. It was not Lucy's business to put herself forward,
+and the appearance of secrecy must still be kept up. She could
+therefore only _look_ her tenderness, and after slightly addressing
+him, said no more.
+
+But Elinor had more to do; and so anxious was she, for his sake and
+her own, to do it well, that she forced herself, after a moment's
+recollection, to welcome him, with a look and manner that were almost
+easy, and almost open; and another struggle, another effort still
+improved them. She would not allow the presence of Lucy, nor the
+consciousness of some injustice towards herself, to deter her from
+saying that she was happy to see him, and that she had very much
+regretted being from home, when he called before in Berkeley Street.
+She would not be frightened from paying him those attentions which, as
+a friend and almost a relation, were his due, by the observant eyes
+of Lucy, though she soon perceived them to be narrowly watching her.
+
+Her manners gave some re-assurance to Edward, and he had courage
+enough to sit down; but his embarrassment still exceeded that of the
+ladies in a proportion, which the case rendered reasonable, though his
+sex might make it rare; for his heart had not the indifference of
+Lucy's, nor could his conscience have quite the ease of Elinor's.
+
+Lucy, with a demure and settled air, seemed determined to make no
+contribution to the comfort of the others, and would not say a word;
+and almost every thing that _was_ said, proceeded from Elinor, who was
+obliged to volunteer all the information about her mother's health,
+their coming to town, &c. which Edward ought to have inquired about,
+but never did.
+
+Her exertions did not stop here; for she soon afterwards felt herself
+so heroically disposed as to determine, under pretence of fetching
+Marianne, to leave the others by themselves; and she really did it,
+and _that_ in the handsomest manner, for she loitered away several
+minutes on the landing-place, with the most high-minded fortitude,
+before she went to her sister. When that was once done, however, it
+was time for the raptures of Edward to cease; for Marianne's joy
+hurried her into the drawing-room immediately. Her pleasure in seeing
+him was like every other of her feelings, strong in itself, and
+strongly spoken. She met him with a hand that would be taken, and a
+voice that expressed the affection of a sister.
+
+"Dear Edward!" she cried, "this is a moment of great happiness!--This
+would almost make amends for every thing!"
+
+Edward tried to return her kindness as it deserved, but before such
+witnesses he dared not say half what he really felt. Again they all
+sat down, and for a moment or two all were silent; while Marianne was
+looking with the most speaking tenderness, sometimes at Edward and
+sometimes at Elinor, regretting only that their delight in each other
+should be checked by Lucy's unwelcome presence. Edward was the first
+to speak, and it was to notice Marianne's altered looks, and express
+his fear of her not finding London agree with her.
+
+"Oh, don't think of me!" she replied with spirited earnestness, though
+her eyes were filled with tears as she spoke, "don't think of _my_
+health. Elinor is well, you see. That must be enough for us both."
+
+This remark was not calculated to make Edward or Elinor more easy, nor
+to conciliate the good will of Lucy, who looked up at Marianne with no
+very benignant expression.
+
+"Do you like London?" said Edward, willing to say any thing that might
+introduce another subject.
+
+"Not at all. I expected much pleasure in it, but I have found none.
+The sight of you, Edward, is the only comfort it has afforded; and
+thank Heaven! you are what you always were!"
+
+She paused--no one spoke.
+
+"I think, Elinor," she presently added, "we must employ Edward to take
+care of us in our return to Barton. In a week or two, I suppose, we
+shall be going; and, I trust, Edward will not be very unwilling to
+accept the charge."
+
+Poor Edward muttered something, but what it was, nobody knew, not even
+himself. But Marianne, who saw his agitation, and could easily trace
+it to whatever cause best pleased herself, was perfectly satisfied,
+and soon talked of something else.
+
+"We spent such a day, Edward, in Harley Street yesterday! So dull, so
+wretchedly dull!--But I have much to say to you on that head, which
+cannot be said now."
+
+And with this admirable discretion did she defer the assurance of her
+finding their mutual relatives more disagreeable than ever, and of her
+being particularly disgusted with his mother, till they were more in
+private.
+
+"But why were you not there, Edward?--Why did you not come?"
+
+"I was engaged elsewhere."
+
+"Engaged! But what was that, when such friends were to be met?"
+
+"Perhaps, Miss Marianne," cried Lucy, eager to take some revenge on
+her, "you think young men never stand upon engagements, if they have
+no mind to keep them, little as well as great."
+
+Elinor was very angry, but Marianne seemed entirely insensible of the
+sting; for she calmly replied--
+
+"Not so, indeed; for, seriously speaking, I am very sure that
+conscience only kept Edward from Harley Street. And I really believe
+he _has_ the most delicate conscience in the world; the most
+scrupulous in performing every engagement, however minute, and however
+it may make against his interest or pleasure. He is the most fearful
+of giving pain, of wounding expectation, and the most incapable of
+being selfish, of any body I ever saw. Edward, it is so, and I will
+say it. What! are you never to hear yourself praised!--Then you must
+be no friend of mine; for those who will accept of my love and esteem,
+must submit to my open commendation."
+
+The nature of her commendation, in the present case, however, happened
+to be particularly ill-suited to the feelings of two thirds of her
+auditors, and was so very unexhilarating to Edward, that he very soon
+got up to go away.
+
+"Going so soon!" said Marianne; "my dear Edward, this must not be."
+
+And drawing him a little aside, she whispered her persuasion that Lucy
+could not stay much longer. But even this encouragement failed, for he
+would go; and Lucy, who would have outstayed him, had his visit lasted
+two hours, soon afterwards went away.
+
+"What can bring her here so often?" said Marianne, on her leaving
+them. "Could not she see that we wanted her gone!--how teasing to
+Edward!"
+
+"Why so?--we were all his friends, and Lucy has been the longest known
+to him of any. It is but natural that he should like to see her as
+well as ourselves."
+
+Marianne looked at her steadily, and said, "You know, Elinor, that
+this is a kind of talking which I cannot bear. If you only hope to
+have your assertion contradicted, as I must suppose to be the case,
+you ought to recollect that I am the last person in the world to do
+it. I cannot descend to be tricked out of assurances, that are not
+really wanted."
+
+She then left the room; and Elinor dared not follow her to say more,
+for bound as she was by her promise of secrecy to Lucy, she could give
+no information that would convince Marianne; and painful as the
+consequences of her still continuing in an error might be, she was
+obliged to submit to it. All that she could hope, was that Edward
+would not often expose her or himself to the distress of hearing
+Marianne's mistaken warmth, nor to the repetition of any other part of
+the pain that had attended their recent meeting--and this she had
+every reason to expect.
+
+[Illustration: _Drawing him a little aside._]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+
+Within a few days after this meeting, the newspapers announced to the
+world, that the lady of Thomas Palmer, Esq. was safely delivered of a
+son and heir; a very interesting and satisfactory paragraph, at least
+to all those intimate connections who knew it before.
+
+This event, highly important to Mrs. Jennings's happiness, produced a
+temporary alteration in the disposal of her time, and influenced, in a
+like degree, the engagements of her young friends; for as she wished
+to be as much as possible with Charlotte, she went thither every
+morning as soon as she was dressed, and did not return till late in
+the evening; and the Miss Dashwoods, at the particular request of the
+Middletons, spent the whole of every day, in Conduit Street. For their
+own comfort they would much rather have remained, at least all the
+morning, in Mrs. Jennings's house; but it was not a thing to be urged
+against the wishes of everybody. Their hours were therefore made over
+to Lady Middleton and the two Miss Steeles, by whom their company, in
+fact was as little valued, as it was professedly sought.
+
+They had too much sense to be desirable companions to the former; and
+by the latter they were considered with a jealous eye, as intruding on
+_their_ ground, and sharing the kindness which they wanted to
+monopolize. Though nothing could be more polite than Lady Middleton's
+behaviour to Elinor and Marianne, she did not really like them at all.
+Because they neither flattered herself nor her children, she could not
+believe them good-natured; and because they were fond of reading, she
+fancied them satirical: perhaps without exactly knowing what it was to
+be satirical; but _that_ did not signify. It was censure in common
+use, and easily given.
+
+Their presence was a restraint both on her and on Lucy. It checked the
+idleness of one, and the business of the other. Lady Middleton was
+ashamed of doing nothing before them, and the flattery which Lucy was
+proud to think of and administer at other times, she feared they would
+despise her for offering. Miss Steele was the least discomposed of the
+three, by their presence; and it was in their power to reconcile her
+to it entirely. Would either of them only have given her a full and
+minute account of the whole affair between Marianne and Mr.
+Willoughby, she would have thought herself amply rewarded for the
+sacrifice of the best place by the fire after dinner, which their
+arrival occasioned. But this conciliation was not granted; for though
+she often threw out expressions of pity for her sister to Elinor, and
+more than once dropt a reflection on the inconstancy of beaux before
+Marianne, no effect was produced, but a look of indifference from the
+former, or of disgust in the latter. An effort even yet lighter might
+have made her their friend. Would they only have laughed at her about
+the Doctor! But so little were they, anymore than the others, inclined
+to oblige her, that if Sir John dined from home, she might spend a
+whole day without hearing any other raillery on the subject, than what
+she was kind enough to bestow on herself.
+
+All these jealousies and discontents, however, were so totally
+unsuspected by Mrs. Jennings, that she thought it a delightful thing
+for the girls to be together; and generally congratulated her young
+friends every night, on having escaped the company of a stupid old
+woman so long. She joined them sometimes at Sir John's, sometimes at
+her own house; but wherever it was, she always came in excellent
+spirits, full of delight and importance, attributing Charlotte's well
+doing to her own care, and ready to give so exact, so minute a detail
+of her situation, as only Miss Steele had curiosity enough to desire.
+One thing _did_ disturb her; and of that she made her daily complaint.
+Mr. Palmer maintained the common, but unfatherly opinion among his
+sex, of all infants being alike; and though she could plainly
+perceive, at different times, the most striking resemblance between
+this baby and every one of his relations on both sides, there was no
+convincing his father of it; no persuading him to believe that it was
+not exactly like every other baby of the same age; nor could he even
+be brought to acknowledge the simple proposition of its being the
+finest child in the world.
+
+I come now to the relation of a misfortune, which about this time
+befell Mrs. John Dashwood. It so happened that while her two sisters
+with Mrs. Jennings were first calling on her in Harley Street, another
+of her acquaintance had dropt in--a circumstance in itself not
+apparently likely to produce evil to her. But while the imaginations
+of other people will carry them away to form wrong judgments of our
+conduct, and to decide on it by slight appearances, one's happiness
+must in some measure be always at the mercy of chance. In the present
+instance, this last-arrived lady allowed her fancy to so far outrun
+truth and probability, that on merely hearing the name of the Miss
+Dashwoods, and understanding them to be Mr. Dashwood's sisters, she
+immediately concluded them to be staying in Harley Street; and this
+misconstruction produced within a day or two afterwards, cards of
+invitation for them as well as for their brother and sister, to a
+small musical party at her house. The consequence of which was, that
+Mrs. John Dashwood was obliged to submit not only to the exceedingly
+great inconvenience of sending her carriage for the Miss Dashwoods,
+but, what was still worse, must be subject to all the unpleasantness
+of appearing to treat them with attention: and who could tell that
+they might not expect to go out with her a second time? The power of
+disappointing them, it was true, must always be her's. But that was
+not enough; for when people are determined on a mode of conduct which
+they know to be wrong, they feel injured by the expectation of any
+thing better from them.
+
+Marianne had now been brought by degrees, so much into the habit of
+going out every day, that it was become a matter of indifference to
+her, whether she went or not: and she prepared quietly and
+mechanically for every evening's engagement, though without expecting
+the smallest amusement from any, and very often without knowing, till
+the last moment, where it was to take her.
+
+To her dress and appearance she was grown so perfectly indifferent, as
+not to bestow half the consideration on it, during the whole of her
+toilet, which it received from Miss Steele in the first five minutes
+of their being together, when it was finished. Nothing escaped _her_
+minute observation and general curiosity; she saw every thing, and
+asked every thing; was never easy till she knew the price of every
+part of Marianne's dress; could have guessed the number of her gowns
+altogether with better judgment than Marianne herself, and was not
+without hopes of finding out before they parted, how much her washing
+cost per week, and how much she had every year to spend upon herself.
+The impertinence of these kind of scrutinies, moreover, was generally
+concluded with a compliment, which though meant as its douceur, was
+considered by Marianne as the greatest impertinence of all; for after
+undergoing an examination into the value and make of her gown, the
+colour of her shoes, and the arrangement of her hair, she was almost
+sure of being told that upon "her word she looked vastly smart, and
+she dared to say she would make a great many conquests."
+
+With such encouragement as this, was she dismissed on the present
+occasion, to her brother's carriage; which they were ready to enter
+five minutes after it stopped at the door, a punctuality not very
+agreeable to their sister-in-law, who had preceded them to the house
+of her acquaintance, and was there hoping for some delay on their part
+that might inconvenience either herself or her coachman.
+
+The events of this evening were not very remarkable. The party, like
+other musical parties, comprehended a great many people who had real
+taste for the performance, and a great many more who had none at all;
+and the performers themselves were, as usual, in their own estimation,
+and that of their immediate friends, the first private performers in
+England.
+
+As Elinor was neither musical, nor affecting to be so, she made no
+scruple of turning her eyes from the grand pianoforte, whenever it
+suited her, and unrestrained even by the presence of a harp, and
+violoncello, would fix them at pleasure on any other object in the
+room. In one of these excursive glances she perceived among a group of
+young men, the very he, who had given them a lecture on
+toothpick-cases at Gray's. She perceived him soon afterwards looking
+at herself, and speaking familiarly to her brother; and had just
+determined to find out his name from the latter, when they both came
+towards her, and Mr. Dashwood introduced him to her as Mr. Robert
+Ferrars.
+
+He addressed her with easy civility, and twisted his head into a bow
+which assured her as plainly as words could have done, that he was
+exactly the coxcomb she had heard him described to be by Lucy. Happy
+had it been for her, if her regard for Edward had depended less on his
+own merit, than on the merit of his nearest relations! For then his
+brother's bow must have given the finishing stroke to what the
+ill-humour of his mother and sister would have begun. But while she
+wondered at the difference of the two young men, she did not find that
+the emptiness and conceit of the one, put her out of all charity with
+the modesty and worth of the other. Why they _were_ different, Robert
+explained to her himself in the course of a quarter of an hour's
+conversation; for, talking of his brother, and lamenting the extreme
+_gaucherie_ which he really believed kept him from mixing in proper
+society, he candidly and generously attributed it much less to any
+natural deficiency, than to the misfortune of a private education;
+while he himself, though probably without any particular, any material
+superiority by nature, merely from the advantage of a public school,
+was as well fitted to mix in the world as any other man.
+
+"Upon my soul," he added, "I believe it is nothing more; and so I
+often tell my mother, when she is grieving about it. 'My dear Madam,'
+I always say to her, 'you must make yourself easy. The evil is now
+irremediable, and it has been entirely your own doing. Why would you
+be persuaded by my uncle, Sir Robert, against your own judgment, to
+place Edward under private tuition, at the most critical time of his
+life? If you had only sent him to Westminster as well as myself,
+instead of sending him to Mr. Pratt's, all this would have been
+prevented.' This is the way in which I always consider the matter, and
+my mother is perfectly convinced of her error."
+
+Elinor would not oppose his opinion, because, whatever might be her
+general estimation of the advantage of a public school, she could not
+think of Edward's abode in Mr. Pratt's family, with any satisfaction.
+
+"You reside in Devonshire, I think,"--was his next observation, "in a
+cottage near Dawlish."
+
+Elinor set him right as to its situation; and it seemed rather
+surprising to him that anybody could live in Devonshire, without
+living near Dawlish. He bestowed his hearty approbation however on
+their species of house.
+
+"For my own part," said he, "I am excessively fond of a cottage; there
+is always so much comfort, so much elegance about them. And I protest,
+if I had any money to spare, I should buy a little land and build one
+myself, within a short distance of London, where I might drive myself
+down at any time, and collect a few friends about me, and be happy. I
+advise every body who is going to build, to build a cottage. My friend
+Lord Courtland came to me the other day on purpose to ask my advice,
+and laid before me three different plans of Bonomi's. I was to decide
+on the best of them. 'My dear Courtland,' said I, immediately throwing
+them all into the fire, 'do not adopt either of them, but by all means
+build a cottage.' And that I fancy, will be the end of it.
+
+"Some people imagine that there can be no accommodations, no space in
+a cottage; but this is all a mistake. I was last month at my friend
+Elliott's, near Dartford. Lady Elliott wished to give a dance. 'But
+how can it be done?' said she; 'my dear Ferrars, do tell me how it is
+to be managed. There is not a room in this cottage that will hold ten
+couple, and where can the supper be?' I immediately saw that there
+could be no difficulty in it, so I said, 'My dear Lady Elliott, do not
+be uneasy. The dining parlour will admit eighteen couple with ease;
+card-tables may be placed in the drawing-room; the library may be open
+for tea and other refreshments; and let the supper be set out in the
+saloon.' Lady Elliott was delighted with the thought. We measured the
+dining-room, and found it would hold exactly eighteen couple, and the
+affair was arranged precisely after my plan. So that, in fact, you
+see, if people do but know how to set about it, every comfort may be
+as well enjoyed in a cottage as in the most spacious dwelling."
+
+Elinor agreed to it all, for she did not think he deserved the
+compliment of rational opposition.
+
+As John Dashwood had no more pleasure in music than his eldest sister,
+his mind was equally at liberty to fix on any thing else; and a
+thought struck him during the evening, which he communicated to his
+wife, for her approbation, when they got home. The consideration of
+Mrs. Dennison's mistake, in supposing his sisters their guests, had
+suggested the propriety of their being really invited to become such,
+while Mrs. Jennings's engagements kept her from home. The expense
+would be nothing, the inconvenience not more; and it was altogether an
+attention which the delicacy of his conscience pointed out to be
+requisite to its complete enfranchisement from his promise to his
+father. Fanny was startled at the proposal.
+
+"I do not see how it can be done," said she, "without affronting Lady
+Middleton, for they spend every day with her; otherwise I should be
+exceedingly glad to do it. You know I am always ready to pay them any
+attention in my power, as my taking them out this evening shows. But
+they are Lady Middleton's visitors. How can I ask them away from her?"
+
+Her husband, but with great humility, did not see the force of her
+objection. "They had already spent a week in this manner in Conduit
+Street, and Lady Middleton could not be displeased at their giving the
+same number of days to such near relations."
+
+Fanny paused a moment, and then, with fresh vigor, said--
+
+"My love I would ask them with all my heart, if it was in my power.
+But I had just settled within myself to ask the Miss Steeles to spend
+a few days with us. They are very well behaved, good kind of girls;
+and I think the attention is due to them, as their uncle did so very
+well by Edward. We can ask your sisters some other year, you know; but
+the Miss Steeles may not be in town any more. I am sure you will like
+them; indeed, you _do_ like them, you know, very much already, and so
+does my mother; and they are such favourites with Harry!"
+
+Mr. Dashwood was convinced. He saw the necessity of inviting the Miss
+Steeles immediately, and his conscience was pacified by the resolution
+of inviting his sisters another year; at the same time, however, slyly
+suspecting that another year would make the invitation needless, by
+bringing Elinor to town as Colonel Brandon's wife, and Marianne as
+_their_ visitor.
+
+Fanny, rejoicing in her escape, and proud of the ready wit that had
+procured it, wrote the next morning to Lucy, to request her company
+and her sister's, for some days, in Harley Street, as soon as Lady
+Middleton could spare them. This was enough to make Lucy really and
+reasonably happy. Mrs. Dashwood seemed actually working for her,
+herself; cherishing all her hopes, and promoting all her views! Such
+an opportunity of being with Edward and his family was, above all
+things, the most material to her interest, and such an invitation the
+most gratifying to her feelings! It was an advantage that could not
+be too gratefully acknowledged, nor too speedily made use of; and the
+visit to Lady Middleton, which had not before had any precise limits,
+was instantly discovered to have been always meant to end in two days'
+time.
+
+When the note was shown to Elinor, as it was within ten minutes after
+its arrival, it gave her, for the first time, some share in the
+expectations of Lucy; for such a mark of uncommon kindness, vouchsafed
+on so short an acquaintance, seemed to declare that the good-will
+towards her arose from something more than merely malice against
+herself; and might be brought, by time and address, to do every thing
+that Lucy wished. Her flattery had already subdued the pride of Lady
+Middleton, and made an entry into the close heart of Mrs. John
+Dashwood; and these were effects that laid open the probability of
+greater.
+
+The Miss Steeles removed to Harley Street, and all that reached Elinor
+of their influence there, strengthened her expectation of the event.
+Sir John, who called on them more than once, brought home such
+accounts of the favour they were in, as must be universally striking.
+Mrs. Dashwood had never been so much pleased with any young women in
+her life, as she was with them; had given each of them a needle book
+made by some emigrant; called Lucy by her Christian name; and did not
+know whether she should ever be able to part with them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+
+Mrs. Palmer was so well at the end of a fortnight, that her mother
+felt it no longer necessary to give up the whole of her time to her;
+and, contenting herself with visiting her once or twice a day,
+returned from that period to her own home, and her own habits, in
+which she found the Miss Dashwoods very ready to resume their former
+share.
+
+About the third or fourth morning after their being thus resettled in
+Berkeley Street, Mrs. Jennings, on returning from her ordinary visit
+to Mrs. Palmer, entered the drawing-room, where Elinor was sitting by
+herself, with an air of such hurrying importance as prepared her to
+hear something wonderful; and giving her time only to form that idea,
+began directly to justify it, by saying--
+
+"Lord! my dear Miss Dashwood! have you heard the news?"
+
+"No, ma'am. What is it?"
+
+"Something so strange! But you shall hear it all. When I got to Mr.
+Palmer's, I found Charlotte quite in a fuss about the child. She was
+sure it was very ill--it cried, and fretted, and was all over pimples.
+So I looked at it directly, and, 'Lord! my dear,' says I, 'it is
+nothing in the world, but the red gum--' and nurse said just the same.
+But Charlotte, she would not be satisfied, so Mr. Donavan was sent
+for; and luckily he happened to just come in from Harley Street, so he
+stepped over directly, and as soon as ever he saw the child, he said
+just as we did, that it was nothing in the world but the red gum, and
+then Charlotte was easy. And so, just as he was going away again, it
+came into my head, I am sure I do not know how I happened to think of
+it, but it came into my head to ask him if there was any news. So upon
+that, he smirked, and simpered, and looked grave, and seemed to know
+something or other, and at last he said in a whisper, 'For fear any
+unpleasant report should reach the young ladies under your care as to
+their sister's indisposition, I think it advisable to say, that I
+believe there is no great reason for alarm; I hope Mrs. Dashwood will
+do very well.'"
+
+"What! is Fanny ill?"
+
+[Illustration: _In a whisper._]
+
+"That is exactly what I said, my dear. 'Lord!' says I, 'is Mrs.
+Dashwood ill?' So then it all came out; and the long and the short of
+the matter, by all I can learn, seems to be this. Mr. Edward Ferrars,
+the very young man I used to joke with you about (but however, as it
+turns out, I am monstrous glad there was never any thing in it), Mr.
+Edward Ferrars, it seems, has been engaged above this twelvemonth to
+my cousin Lucy! There's for you, my dear! And not a creature knowing a
+syllable of the matter, except Nancy! Could you have believed such a
+thing possible? There is no great wonder in their liking one another;
+but that matters should be brought so forward between them, and nobody
+suspect it! _That_ is strange! I never happened to see them together,
+or I am sure I should have found it out directly. Well, and so this
+was kept a great secret, for fear of Mrs. Ferrars, and neither she nor
+your brother or sister suspected a word of the matter: till this very
+morning, poor Nancy, who, you know, is a well-meaning creature, but no
+conjurer, popt it all out. 'Lord!' thinks she to herself, 'they are
+all so fond of Lucy, to be sure they will make no difficulty about
+it;' and so, away she went to your sister, who was sitting all alone
+at her carpet-work, little suspecting what was to come--for she had
+just been saying to your brother, only five minutes before, that she
+thought to make a match between Edward and some Lord's daughter or
+other, I forget who. So you may think what a blow it was to all her
+vanity and pride. She fell into violent hysterics immediately, with
+such screams as reached your brother's ears, as he was sitting in his
+own dressing-room down stairs, thinking about writing a letter to his
+steward in the country. So up he flew directly, and a terrible scene
+took place, for Lucy was come to them by that time, little dreaming
+what was going on. Poor soul! I pity _her._ And I must say, I think
+she was used very hardly; for your sister scolded like any fury, and
+soon drove her into a fainting fit. Nancy, she fell upon her knees,
+and cried bitterly; and your brother, he walked about the room, and
+said he did not know what to do. Mrs. Dashwood declared they should
+not stay a minute longer in the house, and your brother was forced to
+go down upon _his_ knees too, to persuade her to let them stay till
+they had packed up their clothes. _Then_ she fell into hysterics
+again, and he was so frightened that he would send for Mr. Donavan,
+and Mr. Donavan found the house in all this uproar. The carriage was
+at the door ready to take my poor cousins away, and they were just
+stepping in as he came off; poor Lucy in such a condition, he says,
+she could hardly walk; and Nancy, she was almost as bad. I declare, I
+have no patience with your sister; and I hope, with all my heart, it
+will be a match in spite of her. Lord! what a taking poor Mr. Edward
+will be in when he hears of it! To have his love used so scornfully!
+for they say he is monstrous fond of her, as well he may. I should not
+wonder, if he was to be in the greatest passion!--and Mr. Donavan
+thinks just the same. He and I had a great deal of talk about it; and
+the best of all is, that he is gone back again to Harley Street, that
+he may be within call when Mrs. Ferrars is told of it, for she was
+sent for as soon as ever my cousins left the house, for your sister
+was sure _she_ would be in hysterics too; and so she may, for what I
+care. I have no pity for either of them. I have no notion of people's
+making such a to-do about money and greatness. There is no reason on
+earth why Mr. Edward and Lucy should not marry; for I am sure Mrs.
+Ferrars may afford to do very well by her son, and though Lucy has
+next to nothing herself, she knows better than any body how to make
+the most of every thing; I dare say, if Mrs. Ferrars would only allow
+him five hundred a-year, she would make as good an appearance with it
+as any body else would with eight. Lord! how snug they might live in
+such another cottage as yours--or a little bigger--with two maids, and
+two men; and I believe I could help them to a housemaid, for my Betty
+has a sister out of place, that would fit them exactly."
+
+Here Mrs. Jennings ceased, and as Elinor had had time enough to
+collect her thoughts, she was able to give such an answer, and make
+such observations, as the subject might naturally be supposed to
+produce. Happy to find that she was not suspected of any extraordinary
+interest in it; that Mrs. Jennings (as she had of late often hoped
+might be the case) had ceased to imagine her at all attached to
+Edward; and happy above all the rest, in the absence of Marianne, she
+felt very well able to speak of the affair without embarrassment, and
+to give her judgment, as she believed, with impartiality on the
+conduct of every one concerned in it.
+
+She could hardly determine what her own expectation of its event
+really was; though she earnestly tried to drive away the notion of its
+being possible to end otherwise at last, than in the marriage of
+Edward and Lucy. What Mrs. Ferrars would say and do, though there
+could not be a doubt of its nature, she was anxious to hear; and still
+more anxious to know how Edward would conduct himself. For _him_ she
+felt much compassion;--for Lucy very little--and it cost her some
+pains to procure that little;--for the rest of the party none at all.
+
+As Mrs. Jennings could talk on no other subject, Elinor soon saw the
+necessity of preparing Marianne for its discussion. No time was to be
+lost in undeceiving her, in making her acquainted with the real truth,
+and in endeavouring to bring her to hear it talked of by others,
+without betraying that she felt any uneasiness for her sister, or any
+resentment against Edward.
+
+Elinor's office was a painful one. She was going to remove what she
+really believed to be her sister's chief consolation,--to give such
+particulars of Edward as she feared would ruin him for ever in her
+good opinion,-and to make Marianne, by a resemblance in their
+situations, which to _her_ fancy would seem strong, feel all her own
+disappointment over again. But unwelcome as such a task must be, it
+was necessary to be done, and Elinor therefore hastened to perform it.
+
+She was very far from wishing to dwell on her own feelings, or to
+represent herself as suffering much, any otherwise than as the
+self-command she had practised since her first knowledge of Edward's
+engagement, might suggest a hint of what was practicable to Marianne.
+Her narration was clear and simple; and though it could not be given
+without emotion, it was not accompanied by violent agitation, nor
+impetuous grief. _That_ belonged rather to the hearer, for Marianne
+listened with horror, and cried excessively. Elinor was to be the
+comforter of others in her own distresses, no less than in theirs; and
+all the comfort that could be given by assurances of her own composure
+of mind, and a very earnest vindication of Edward from every charge
+but of imprudence, was readily offered.
+
+But Marianne for some time would give credit to neither. Edward seemed
+a second Willoughby; and acknowledging as Elinor did, that she _had_
+loved him most sincerely, could she feel less than herself! As for
+Lucy Steele, she considered her so totally unamiable, so absolutely
+incapable of attaching a sensible man, that she could not be persuaded
+at first to believe, and afterwards to pardon, any former affection of
+Edward for her. She would not even admit it to have been natural; and
+Elinor left her to be convinced that it was so, by that which only
+could convince her, a better knowledge of mankind.
+
+Her first communication had reached no farther than to state the fact
+of the engagement, and the length of time it had existed. Marianne's
+feelings had then broken in, and put an end to all regularity of
+detail; and for some time all that could be done was to soothe her
+distress, lessen her alarms, and combat her resentment. The first
+question on her side, which led to farther particulars, was--
+
+"How long has this been known to you, Elinor? has he written to you?"
+
+"I have known it these four months. When Lucy first came to Barton
+Park last November, she told me in confidence of her engagement."
+
+At these words, Marianne's eyes expressed the astonishment which her
+lips could not utter. After a pause of wonder, she exclaimed--
+
+"Four months!--Have you known of this four months?"
+
+Elinor confirmed it.
+
+"What!--while attending me in all my misery, has this been on your
+heart?--And I have reproached you for being happy!"--
+
+"It was not fit that you should then know how much I was the reverse!"
+
+"Four months!" cried Marianne again. "So calm! so cheerful! how have
+you been supported?"
+
+"By feeling that I was doing my duty. My promise to Lucy, obliged me
+to be secret. I owed it to her, therefore, to avoid giving any hint of
+the truth; and I owed it to my family and friends, not to create in
+them a solicitude about me, which it could not be in my power to
+satisfy."
+
+Marianne seemed much struck.
+
+"I have very often wished to undeceive yourself and my mother," added
+Elinor; "and once or twice I have attempted it; but without betraying
+my trust, I never could have convinced you."
+
+"Four months! and yet you loved him!"
+
+"Yes. But I did not love only him;--and while the comfort of others
+was dear to me, I was glad to spare them from knowing how much I felt.
+Now, I can think and speak of it with little emotion. I would not have
+you suffer on my account; for I assure you I no longer suffer
+materially myself. I have many things to support me. I am not
+conscious of having provoked the disappointment by any imprudence of
+my own, I have borne it as much as possible without spreading it
+farther. I acquit Edward of essential misconduct. I wish him very
+happy; and I am so sure of his always doing his duty, that though now
+he may harbour some regret, in the end he must become so. Lucy does
+not want sense, and that is the foundation on which every thing good
+may be built. And after all, Marianne, after all that is bewitching in
+the idea of a single and constant attachment, and all that can be said
+of one's happiness depending entirely on any particular person, it is
+not meant--it is not fit--it is not possible that it should be so.
+Edward will marry Lucy; he will marry a woman superior in person and
+understanding to half her sex; and time and habit will teach him to
+forget that he ever thought another superior to _her._"
+
+"If such is your way of thinking," said Marianne, "if the loss of what
+is most valued is so easily to be made up by something else, your
+resolution, your self-command, are, perhaps, a little less to be
+wondered at. They are brought more within my comprehension."
+
+"I understand you. You do not suppose that I have ever felt much. For
+four months, Marianne, I have had all this hanging on my mind, without
+being at liberty to speak of it to a single creature; knowing that it
+would make you and my mother most unhappy whenever it were explained
+to you, yet unable to prepare you for it in the least. It was told
+me,--it was in a manner forced on me by the very person herself, whose
+prior engagement ruined all my prospects; and told me, as I thought,
+with triumph. This person's suspicions, therefore, I have had to
+oppose, by endeavouring to appear indifferent where I have been most
+deeply interested;--and it has not been only once;--I have had her
+hopes and exultation to listen to again and again. I have known myself
+to be divided from Edward for ever, without hearing one circumstance
+that could make me less desire the connection. Nothing has proved him
+unworthy; nor has anything declared him indifferent to me. I have had
+to contend against the unkindness of his sister, and the insolence of
+his mother; and have suffered the punishment of an attachment, without
+enjoying its advantages. And all this has been going on at a time,
+when, as you know too well, it has not been my only unhappiness. If
+you can think me capable of ever feeling, surely you may suppose that
+I have suffered _now._ The composure of mind with which I have brought
+myself at present to consider the matter, the consolation that I have
+been willing to admit, have been the effect of constant and painful
+exertion; they did not spring up of themselves; they did not occur to
+relieve my spirits at first. No, Marianne. _Then_, if I had not been
+bound to silence, perhaps nothing could have kept me entirely--not
+even what I owed to my dearest friends--from openly showing that I was
+_very_ unhappy."--
+
+Marianne was quite subdued.
+
+"Oh! Elinor," she cried, "you have made me hate myself for ever. How
+barbarous have I been to you!--you, who have been my only comfort, who
+have borne with me in all my misery, who have seemed to be only
+suffering for me! Is this my gratitude? Is this the only return I can
+make you? Because your merit cries out upon myself, I have been trying
+to do it away."
+
+The tenderest caresses followed this confession. In such a frame of
+mind as she was now in, Elinor had no difficulty in obtaining from her
+whatever promise she required; and at her request, Marianne engaged
+never to speak of the affair to any one with the least appearance of
+bitterness;--to meet Lucy without betraying the smallest increase of
+dislike to her;--and even to see Edward himself, if chance should
+bring them together, without any diminution of her usual cordiality.
+These were great concessions;--but where Marianne felt that she had
+injured, no reparation could be too much for her to make.
+
+She performed her promise of being discreet, to admiration. She
+attended to all that Mrs. Jennings had to say upon the subject, with
+an unchanging complexion, dissented from her in nothing, and was heard
+three times to say, "Yes, ma'am."--She listened to her praise of Lucy
+with only moving from one chair to another, and when Mrs. Jennings
+talked of Edward's affection, it cost her only a spasm in her throat.
+Such advances towards heroism in her sister, made Elinor feel equal to
+any thing herself.
+
+The next morning brought a farther trial of it, in a visit from their
+brother, who came with a most serious aspect to talk over the dreadful
+affair, and bring them news of his wife.
+
+"You have heard, I suppose," said he with great solemnity, as soon as
+he was seated, "of the very shocking discovery that took place under
+our roof yesterday."
+
+They all looked their assent; it seemed too awful a moment for speech.
+
+[Illustration: "_You have heard, I suppose._"]
+
+"Your sister," he continued, "has suffered dreadfully. Mrs. Ferrars
+too--in short it has been a scene of such complicated distress--but
+I will hope that the storm may be weathered without our being any of
+us quite overcome. Poor Fanny! she was in hysterics all yesterday. But
+I would not alarm you too much. Donavan says there is nothing
+materially to be apprehended; her constitution is a good one, and her
+resolution equal to any thing. She has borne it all, with the
+fortitude of an angel! She says she never shall think well of anybody
+again; and one cannot wonder at it, after being so deceived!--meeting
+with such ingratitude, where so much kindness had been shown, so much
+confidence had been placed! It was quite out of the benevolence of her
+heart, that she had asked these young women to her house; merely
+because she thought they deserved some attention, were harmless,
+well-behaved girls, and would be pleasant companions; for otherwise we
+both wished very much to have invited you and Marianne to be with us,
+while your kind friend there, was attending her daughter. And now to
+be so rewarded! 'I wish, with all my heart,' says poor Fanny in her
+affectionate way, 'that we had asked your sisters instead of them.'"
+
+Here he stopped to be thanked; which being done, he went on.
+
+"What poor Mrs. Ferrars suffered, when first Fanny broke it to her, is
+not to be described. While she with the truest affection had been
+planning a most eligible connection for him, was it to be supposed
+that he could be all the time secretly engaged to another
+person!--such a suspicion could never have entered her head! If she
+suspected _any_ prepossession elsewhere, it could not be in _that_
+quarter. '_There_ to be sure,' said she, 'I might have thought myself
+safe.' She was quite in an agony. We consulted together, however, as
+to what should be done, and at last she determined to send for Edward.
+He came. But I am sorry to relate what ensued. All that Mrs. Ferrars
+could say to make him put an end to the engagement, assisted too as
+you may well suppose by my arguments, and Fanny's entreaties, was of
+no avail. Duty, affection, every thing was disregarded. I never
+thought Edward so stubborn, so unfeeling before. His mother explained
+to him her liberal designs, in case of his marrying Miss Morton; told
+him she would settle on him the Norfolk estate, which, clear of
+land-tax, brings in a good thousand a-year; offered even, when matters
+grew desperate, to make it twelve hundred; and in opposition to this,
+if he still persisted in this low connection, represented to him the
+certain penury that must attend the match. His own two thousand pounds
+she protested should be his all; she would never see him again; and so
+far would she be from affording him the smallest assistance, that if
+he were to enter into any profession with a view of better support,
+she would do all in her power to prevent him advancing in it."
+
+Here Marianne, in an ecstasy of indignation, clapped her hands
+together, and cried, "Gracious God! can this be possible!"
+
+"Well may you wonder, Marianne," replied her brother, "at the
+obstinacy which could resist such arguments as these. Your exclamation
+is very natural."
+
+Marianne was going to retort, but she remembered her promises, and
+forbore.
+
+"All this, however," he continued, "was urged in vain. Edward said
+very little; but what he did say, was in the most determined manner.
+Nothing should prevail on him to give up his engagement. He would
+stand to it, cost him what it might."
+
+"Then," cried Mrs. Jennings with blunt sincerity, no longer able to be
+silent, "he has acted like an honest man! I beg your pardon, Mr.
+Dashwood, but if he had done otherwise, I should have thought him a
+rascal. I have some little concern in the business, as well as
+yourself, for Lucy Steele is my cousin, and I believe there is not a
+better kind of girl in the world, nor one who more deserves a good
+husband."
+
+John Dashwood was greatly astonished; but his nature was calm, not
+open to provocation, and he never wished to offend anybody, especially
+anybody of good fortune. He therefore replied, without any
+resentment--
+
+"I would by no means speak disrespectfully of any relation of yours,
+madam. Miss Lucy Steele is, I dare say, a very deserving young woman,
+but in the present case you know, the connection must be impossible.
+And to have entered into a secret engagement with a young man under
+her uncle's care, the son of a woman especially of such very large
+fortune as Mrs. Ferrars, is perhaps, altogether a little
+extraordinary. In short, I do not mean to reflect upon the behaviour
+of any person whom you have a regard for, Mrs. Jennings. We all wish
+her extremely happy; and Mrs. Ferrars's conduct throughout the whole,
+has been such as every conscientious, good mother, in like
+circumstances, would adopt. It has been dignified and liberal. Edward
+has drawn his own lot, and I fear it will be a bad one."
+
+Marianne sighed out her similar apprehension; and Elinor's heart wrung
+for the feelings of Edward, while braving his mother's threats, for a
+woman who could not reward him.
+
+"Well, sir," said Mrs. Jennings, "and how did it end?"
+
+"I am sorry to say, ma'am, in a most unhappy rupture:--Edward is
+dismissed for ever from his mother's notice. He left her house
+yesterday, but where he is gone, or whether he is still in town, I do
+not know; for _we_ of course can make no inquiry."
+
+"Poor young man!--and what is to become of him?"
+
+"What, indeed, ma'am! It is a melancholy consideration. Born to the
+prospect of such affluence! I cannot conceive a situation more
+deplorable. The interest of two thousand pounds--how can a man live on
+it?--and when to that is added the recollection, that he might, but
+for his own folly, within three months have been in the receipt of two
+thousand, five hundred a-year (for Miss Morton has thirty thousand
+pounds,) I cannot picture to myself a more wretched condition. We must
+all feel for him; and the more so, because it is totally out of our
+power to assist him."
+
+"Poor young man!" cried Mrs. Jennings, "I am sure he should be very
+welcome to bed and board at my house; and so I would tell him if I
+could see him. It is not fit that he should be living about at his own
+charge now, at lodgings and taverns."
+
+Elinor's heart thanked her for such kindness towards Edward, though
+she could not forbear smiling at the form of it.
+
+"If he would only have done as well by himself," said John Dashwood,
+"as all his friends were disposed to do by him, he might now have been
+in his proper situation, and would have wanted for nothing. But as it
+is, it must be out of anybody's power to assist him. And there is one
+thing more preparing against him, which must be worse than all--his
+mother has determined, with a very natural kind of spirit, to settle
+_that_ estate upon Robert immediately, which might have been Edward's,
+on proper conditions. I left her this morning with her lawyer,
+talking over the business."
+
+[Illustration: _Talking over the business._]
+
+"Well!" said Mrs. Jennings, "that is _her_ revenge. Everybody has a
+way of their own. But I don't think mine would be, to make one son
+independent, because another had plagued me."
+
+Marianne got up and walked about the room.
+
+"Can anything be more galling to the spirit of a man," continued John,
+"than to see his younger brother in possession of an estate which
+might have been his own? Poor Edward! I feel for him sincerely."
+
+A few minutes more spent in the same kind of effusion, concluded his
+visit; and with repeated assurances to his sisters that he really
+believed there was no material danger in Fanny's indisposition, and
+that they need not therefore be very uneasy about it, he went away;
+leaving the three ladies unanimous in their sentiments on the present
+occasion, as far at least as it regarded Mrs. Ferrars's conduct, the
+Dashwoods', and Edward's.
+
+Marianne's indignation burst forth as soon as he quitted the room; and
+as her vehemence made reserve impossible in Elinor, and unnecessary in
+Mrs. Jennings, they all joined in a very spirited critique upon the
+party.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+
+Mrs. Jennings was very warm in her praise of Edward's conduct, but
+only Elinor and Marianne understood its true merit. _They_ only knew
+how little he had had to tempt him to be disobedient, and how small
+was the consolation, beyond the consciousness of doing right, that
+could remain to him in the loss of friends and fortune. Elinor gloried
+in his integrity; and Marianne forgave all his offences in compassion
+for his punishment. But though confidence between them was, by this
+public discovery, restored to its proper state, it was not a subject
+on which either of them were fond of dwelling when alone. Elinor
+avoided it upon principle, as tending to fix still more upon her
+thoughts, by the too warm, too positive assurances of Marianne, that
+belief of Edward's continued affection for herself which she rather
+wished to do away; and Marianne's courage soon failed her, in trying
+to converse upon a topic which always left her more dissatisfied with
+herself than ever, by the comparison it necessarily produced between
+Elinor's conduct and her own.
+
+She felt all the force of that comparison; but not as her sister had
+hoped, to urge her to exertion now; she felt it with all the pain of
+continual self-reproach, regretted most bitterly that she had never
+exerted herself before; but it brought only the torture of penitence,
+without the hope of amendment. Her mind was so much weakened that she
+still fancied present exertion impossible, and therefore it only
+dispirited her more.
+
+Nothing new was heard by them, for a day or two afterwards, of affairs
+in Harley Street, or Bartlett's Buildings. But though so much of the
+matter was known to them already, that Mrs. Jennings might have had
+enough to do in spreading that knowledge farther, without seeking
+after more, she had resolved from the first to pay a visit of comfort
+and inquiry to her cousins as soon as she could; and nothing but the
+hindrance of more visitors than usual, had prevented her going to them
+within that time.
+
+The third day succeeding their knowledge of the particulars, was so
+fine, so beautiful a Sunday as to draw many to Kensington Gardens,
+though it was only the second week in March. Mrs. Jennings and Elinor
+were of the number; but Marianne, who knew that the Willoughbys were
+again in town, and had a constant dread of meeting them, chose rather
+to stay at home, than venture into so public a place.
+
+An intimate acquaintance of Mrs. Jennings joined them soon after they
+entered the Gardens, and Elinor was not sorry that by her continuing
+with them, and engaging all Mrs. Jennings's conversation, she was
+herself left to quiet reflection. She saw nothing of the Willoughbys,
+nothing of Edward, and for some time nothing of anybody who could by
+any chance whether grave or gay, be interesting to her. But at last
+she found herself with some surprise, accosted by Miss Steele, who,
+though looking rather shy, expressed great satisfaction in meeting
+them, and on receiving encouragement from the particular kindness of
+Mrs. Jennings, left her own party for a short time, to join their's.
+Mrs. Jennings immediately whispered to Elinor--
+
+"Get it all out of her, my dear. She will tell you any thing if you
+ask. You see I cannot leave Mrs. Clarke."
+
+It was lucky, however, for Mrs. Jennings's curiosity and Elinor's too,
+that she would tell any thing _without_ being asked; for nothing would
+otherwise have been learnt.
+
+"I am so glad to meet you;" said Miss Steele, taking her familiarly by
+the arm--"for I wanted to see you of all things in the world." And
+then lowering her voice, "I suppose Mrs. Jennings has heard all about
+it. Is she angry?"
+
+"Not at all, I believe, with you."
+
+"That is a good thing. And Lady Middleton, is _she_ angry?"
+
+"I cannot suppose it possible that she should."
+
+"I am monstrous glad of it. Good gracious! I have had such a time of
+it! I never saw Lucy in such a rage in my life. She vowed at first she
+would never trim me up a new bonnet, nor do any thing else for me
+again, so long as she lived; but now she is quite come to, and we are
+as good friends as ever. Look, she made me this bow to my hat, and put
+in the feather last night. There now, _you_ are going to laugh at me
+too. But why should not I wear pink ribbons? I do not care if it _is_
+the Doctor's favourite colour. I am sure, for my part, I should never
+have known he _did_ like it better than any other colour, if he had
+not happened to say so. My cousins have been so plaguing me! I declare
+sometimes I do not know which way to look before them."
+
+She had wandered away to a subject on which Elinor had nothing to say,
+and therefore soon judged it expedient to find her way back again to
+the first.
+
+"Well, but Miss Dashwood," speaking triumphantly, "people may say what
+they choose about Mr. Ferrars's declaring he would not have Lucy, for
+it is no such thing I can tell you; and it is quite a shame for such
+ill-natured reports to be spread abroad. Whatever Lucy might think
+about it herself, you know, it was no business of other people to set
+it down for certain."
+
+"I never heard any thing of the kind hinted at before, I assure you,"
+said Elinor.
+
+[Illustration: "_She put in the feather last night._"]
+
+"Oh, did not you? But it _was_ said, I know, very well, and by more
+than one; for Miss Godby told Miss Sparks, that nobody in their senses
+could expect Mr. Ferrars to give up a woman like Miss Morton, with
+thirty thousand pounds to her fortune, for Lucy Steele that had
+nothing at all; and I had it from Miss Sparks myself. And besides
+that, my cousin Richard said himself, that when it came to the point
+he was afraid Mr. Ferrars would be off; and when Edward did not come
+near us for three days, I could not tell what to think myself; and I
+believe in my heart Lucy gave it up all for lost; for we came away
+from your brother's Wednesday, and we saw nothing of him not all
+Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and did not know what was become of
+him. Once Lucy thought to write to him, but then her spirits rose
+against that. However this morning he came just as we came home from
+church; and then it all came out, how he had been sent for Wednesday
+to Harley Street, and been talked to by his mother and all of them,
+and how he had declared before them all that he loved nobody but Lucy,
+and nobody but Lucy would he have. And how he had been so worried by
+what passed, that as soon as he had went away from his mother's house,
+he had got upon his horse, and rid into the country, some where or
+other; and how he had stayed about at an inn all Thursday and Friday,
+on purpose to get the better of it. And after thinking it all over and
+over again, he said, it seemed to him as if, now he had no fortune,
+and no nothing at all, it would be quite unkind to keep her on to the
+engagement, because it must be for her loss, for he had nothing but
+two thousand pounds, and no hope of any thing else; and if he was to
+go into orders, as he had some thoughts, he could get nothing but a
+curacy, and how was they to live upon that?--He could not bear to
+think of her doing no better, and so he begged, if she had the least
+mind for it, to put an end to the matter directly, and leave him shift
+for himself. I heard him say all this as plain as could possibly be.
+And it was entirely for _her_ sake, and upon _her_ account, that he
+said a word about being off, and not upon his own. I will take my oath
+he never dropt a syllable of being tired of her, or of wishing to
+marry Miss Morton, or any thing like it. But, to be sure, Lucy would
+not give ear to such kind of talking; so she told him directly (with a
+great deal about sweet and love, you know, and all that--Oh, la! one
+can't repeat such kind of things you know)--she told him directly, she
+had not the least mind in the world to be off, for she could live with
+him upon a trifle, and how little so ever he might have, she should be
+very glad to have it all, you know, or something of the kind. So then
+he was monstrous happy, and talked on some time about what they should
+do, and they agreed he should take orders directly, and they must wait
+to be married till he got a living. And just then I could not hear any
+more, for my cousin called from below to tell me Mrs. Richardson was
+come in her coach, and would take one of us to Kensington Gardens; so
+I was forced to go into the room and interrupt them, to ask Lucy if
+she would like to go, but she did not care to leave Edward; so I just
+run up stairs and put on a pair of silk stockings and came off with
+the Richardsons."
+
+"I do not understand what you mean by interrupting them," said Elinor;
+"you were all in the same room together, were not you?"
+
+"No, indeed, not us. La! Miss Dashwood, do you think people make love
+when any body else is by? Oh, for shame!--To be sure you must know
+better than that. (Laughing affectedly.)--No, no; they were shut up in
+the drawing-room together, and all I heard was only by listening at
+the door."
+
+"How!" cried Elinor; "have you been repeating to me what you only
+learnt yourself by listening at the door? I am sorry I did not know it
+before; for I certainly would not have suffered you to give me
+particulars of a conversation which you ought not to have known
+yourself. How could you behave so unfairly by your sister?"
+
+"Oh, la! there is nothing in _that._ I only stood at the door, and
+heard what I could. And I am sure Lucy would have done just the same
+by me; for a year or two back, when Martha Sharpe and I had so many
+secrets together, she never made any bones of hiding in a closet, or
+behind a chimney-board, on purpose to hear what we said."
+
+Elinor tried to talk of something else; but Miss Steele could not be
+kept beyond a couple of minutes, from what was uppermost in her mind.
+
+[Illustration: _Listening at the door._]
+
+"Edward talks of going to Oxford soon," said she; "but now he is
+lodging at No. --, Pall Mall. What an ill-natured woman his mother is,
+an't she? And your brother and sister were not very kind! However, I
+shan't say anything against them to _you_; and to be sure they did
+send us home in their own chariot, which was more than I looked for.
+And for my part, I was all in a fright for fear your sister should ask
+us for the huswifes she had gave us a day or two before; but, however,
+nothing was said about them, and I took care to keep mine out of
+sight. Edward have got some business at Oxford, he says; so he must go
+there for a time; and after _that_, as soon as he can light upon a
+Bishop, he will be ordained. I wonder what curacy he will get! Good
+gracious! (giggling as she spoke) I'd lay my life I know what my
+cousins will say, when they hear of it. They will tell me I should
+write to the Doctor, to get Edward the curacy of his new living. I
+know they will; but I am sure I would not do such a thing for all the
+world. 'La!' I shall say directly, 'I wonder how you could think of
+such a thing? I write to the Doctor, indeed!'"
+
+"Well," said Elinor, "it is a comfort to be prepared against the
+worst. You have got your answer ready."
+
+Miss Steele was going to reply on the same subject, but the approach
+of her own party made another more necessary.
+
+"Oh, la! here come the Richardsons. I had a vast deal more to say to
+you, but I must not stay away from them not any longer. I assure you
+they are very genteel people. He makes a monstrous deal of money, and
+they keep their own coach. I have not time to speak to Mrs. Jennings
+about it myself, but pray tell her I am quite happy to hear she is not
+in anger against us, and Lady Middleton the same; and if anything
+should happen to take you and your sister away, and Mrs. Jennings
+should want company, I am sure we should be very glad to come and stay
+with her for as long a time as she likes. I suppose Lady Middleton
+won't ask us any more this bout. Good-bye; I am sorry Miss Marianne was
+not here. Remember me kindly to her. La! if you have not got your
+spotted muslin on!--I wonder you was not afraid of its being torn."
+
+Such was her parting concern; for after this, she had time only to pay
+her farewell compliments to Mrs. Jennings, before her company was
+claimed by Mrs. Richardson; and Elinor was left in possession of
+knowledge which might feed her powers of reflection some time, though
+she had learnt very little more than what had been already foreseen
+and foreplanned in her own mind. Edward's marriage with Lucy was as
+firmly determined on, and the time of its taking place remained as
+absolutely uncertain, as she had concluded it would be;--every thing
+depended, exactly after her expectation, on his getting that
+preferment, of which, at present, there seemed not the smallest
+chance.
+
+As soon as they returned to the carriage, Mrs. Jennings was eager for
+information; but as Elinor wished to spread as little as possible
+intelligence that had in the first place been so unfairly obtained,
+she confined herself to the brief repetition of such simple
+particulars, as she felt assured that Lucy, for the sake of her own
+consequence, would choose to have known. The continuance of their
+engagement, and the means that were able to be taken for promoting its
+end, was all her communication; and this produced from Mrs. Jennings
+the following natural remark:--
+
+"Wait for his having a living!--ay, we all know how _that_ will
+end:--they will wait a twelvemonth, and finding no good comes of it,
+will set down upon a curacy of fifty pounds a-year, with the interest
+of his two thousand pounds, and what little matter Mr. Steele and Mr.
+Pratt can give her. Then they will have a child every year! and Lord
+help 'em! how poor they will be!--I must see what I can give them
+towards furnishing their house. Two maids and two men, indeed!--as I
+talked of t'other day. No, no, they must get a stout girl of all
+works. Betty's sister would never do for them _now._"
+
+The next morning brought Elinor a letter by the two-penny post from
+Lucy herself. It was as follows:
+
+"Bartlett's Building, March.
+
+     "I hope my dear Miss Dashwood will excuse the liberty I take
+     of writing to her; but I know your friendship for me will
+     make you pleased to hear such a good account of myself and
+     my dear Edward, after all the troubles we have went through
+     lately, therefore will make no more apologies, but proceed
+     to say that, thank God! though we have suffered dreadfully,
+     we are both quite well now, and as happy as we must always
+     be in one another's love. We have had great trials, and
+     great persecutions, but however, at the same time,
+     gratefully acknowledge many friends, yourself not the least
+     among them, whose great kindness I shall always thankfully
+     remember, as will Edward too, who I have told of it. I am
+     sure you will be glad to hear, as likewise dear Mrs.
+     Jennings, I spent two happy hours with him yesterday
+     afternoon, he would not hear of our parting, though
+     earnestly did I, as I thought my duty required, urge him to
+     it for prudence sake, and would have parted for ever on the
+     spot, would he consent to it; but he said it should never
+     be, he did not regard his mother's anger, while he could
+     have my affections; our prospects are not very bright, to be
+     sure, but we must wait, and hope for the best; he will be
+     ordained shortly; and should it ever be in your power to
+     recommend him to any body that has a living to bestow, am
+     very sure you will not forget us, and dear Mrs. Jennings
+     too, trust she will speak a good word for us to Sir John, or
+     Mr. Palmer, or any friend that may be able to assist us.
+     Poor Anne was much to blame for what she did, but she did it
+     for the best, so I say nothing; hope Mrs. Jennings won't
+     think it too much trouble to give us a call, should she come
+     this way any morning, 'twould be a great kindness, and my
+     cousins would be proud to know her. My paper reminds me to
+     conclude; and begging to be most gratefully and respectfully
+     remembered to her, and to Sir John, and Lady Middleton, and
+     the dear children, when you chance to see them, and love to
+     Miss Marianne,
+
+"I am, etc., etc."
+
+As soon as Elinor had finished it, she performed what she concluded to
+be its writer's real design, by placing it in the hands of Mrs.
+Jennings, who read it aloud with many comments of satisfaction and
+praise.
+
+"Very well indeed!--how prettily she writes!--aye, that was quite
+proper to let him be off if he would. That was just like Lucy. Poor
+soul! I wish I _could_ get him a living, with all my heart. She calls
+me dear Mrs. Jennings, you see. She is a good-hearted girl as ever
+lived. Very well upon my word. That sentence is very prettily turned.
+Yes, yes, I will go and see her, sure enough. How attentive she is, to
+think of every body!--Thank you, my dear, for showing it me. It is as
+pretty a letter as ever I saw, and does Lucy's head and heart great
+credit."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+
+The Miss Dashwoods had now been rather more than two months in town,
+and Marianne's impatience to be gone increased every day. She sighed
+for the air, the liberty, the quiet of the country; and fancied that
+if any place could give her ease, Barton must do it. Elinor was hardly
+less anxious than herself for their removal, and only so much less
+bent on its being effected immediately, as that she was conscious of
+the difficulties of so long a journey, which Marianne could not be
+brought to acknowledge. She began, however, seriously to turn her
+thoughts towards its accomplishment, and had already mentioned their
+wishes to their kind hostess, who resisted them with all the eloquence
+of her good-will, when a plan was suggested, which, though detaining
+them from home yet a few weeks longer, appeared to Elinor altogether
+much more eligible than any other. The Palmers were to remove to
+Cleveland about the end of March, for the Easter holidays; and Mrs.
+Jennings, with both her friends, received a very warm invitation from
+Charlotte to go with them. This would not, in itself, have been
+sufficient for the delicacy of Miss Dashwood;--but it was enforced
+with so much real politeness by Mr. Palmer himself, as, joined to the
+very great amendment of his manners towards them since her sister had
+been known to be unhappy, induced her to accept it with pleasure.
+
+When she told Marianne what she had done, however, her first reply was
+not very auspicious.
+
+"Cleveland!"--she cried, with great agitation. "No, I cannot go to
+Cleveland."--
+
+"You forget," said Elinor gently, "that its situation is not--that it
+is not in the neighbourhood of--"
+
+"But it is in Somersetshire. I cannot go into Somersetshire. There,
+where I looked forward to going;--no, Elinor, you cannot expect me to
+go there."
+
+Elinor would not argue upon the propriety of overcoming such
+feelings;--she only endeavoured to counteract them by working on
+others;--represented it, therefore, as a measure which would fix the
+time of her returning to that dear mother, whom she so much wished to
+see, in a more eligible, more comfortable manner, than any other plan
+could do, and perhaps without any greater delay. From Cleveland, which
+was within a few miles of Bristol, the distance to Barton was not
+beyond one day, though a long day's journey; and their mother's
+servant might easily come there to attend them down; and as there
+could be no occasion of their staying above a week at Cleveland, they
+might now be at home in little more than three weeks' time. As
+Marianne's affection for her mother was sincere, it must triumph with
+little difficulty, over the imaginary evils she had started.
+
+Mrs. Jennings was so far from being weary of her guest, that she
+pressed them very earnestly to return with her again from Cleveland.
+Elinor was grateful for the attention, but it could not alter her
+design; and their mother's concurrence being readily gained, every
+thing relative to their return was arranged as far as it could
+be;--and Marianne found some relief in drawing up a statement of the
+hours that were yet to divide her from Barton.
+
+"Ah! Colonel, I do not know what you and I shall do without the Miss
+Dashwoods;"--was Mrs. Jennings's address to him when he first called
+on her, after their leaving her was settled--"for they are quite
+resolved upon going home from the Palmers;--and how forlorn we shall
+be, when I come back!--Lord! we shall sit and gape at one another as
+dull as two cats."
+
+Perhaps Mrs. Jennings was in hopes, by this vigorous sketch of their
+future ennui, to provoke him to make that offer, which might give
+himself an escape from it; and if so, she had soon afterwards good
+reason to think her object gained; for, on Elinor's moving to the
+window to take more expeditiously the dimensions of a print, which she
+was going to copy for her friend, he followed her to it with a look of
+particular meaning, and conversed with her there for several minutes.
+The effect of his discourse on the lady too, could not escape her
+observation, for though she was too honorable to listen, and had even
+changed her seat, on purpose that she might _not_ hear, to one close
+by the piano forte on which Marianne was playing, she could not keep
+herself from seeing that Elinor changed colour, attended with
+agitation, and was too intent on what he said to pursue her
+employment. Still farther in confirmation of her hopes, in the
+interval of Marianne's turning from one lesson to another, some words
+of the Colonel's inevitably reached her ear, in which he seemed to be
+apologising for the badness of his house. This set the matter beyond a
+doubt. She wondered, indeed, at his thinking it necessary to do so;
+but supposed it to be the proper etiquette. What Elinor said in reply
+she could not distinguish, but judged from the motion of her lips,
+that she did not think _that_ any material objection;--and Mrs.
+Jennings commended her in her heart for being so honest. They then
+talked on for a few minutes longer without her catching a syllable,
+when another lucky stop in Marianne's performance brought her these
+words in the Colonel's calm voice,--
+
+"I am afraid it cannot take place very soon."
+
+Astonished and shocked at so unlover-like a speech, she was almost
+ready to cry out, "Lord! what should hinder it?"--but checking her
+desire, confined herself to this silent ejaculation.
+
+"This is very strange!--sure he need not wait to be older."
+
+This delay on the Colonel's side, however, did not seem to offend or
+mortify his fair companion in the least, for on their breaking up the
+conference soon afterwards, and moving different ways, Mrs. Jennings
+very plainly heard Elinor say, and with a voice which showed her to
+feel what she said--
+
+"I shall always think myself very much obliged to you."
+
+Mrs. Jennings was delighted with her gratitude, and only wondered that
+after hearing such a sentence, the Colonel should be able to take
+leave of them, as he immediately did, with the utmost sang-froid, and
+go away without making her any reply!--She had not thought her old
+friend could have made so indifferent a suitor.
+
+What had really passed between them was to this effect.
+
+"I have heard," said he, with great compassion, "of the injustice your
+friend Mr. Ferrars has suffered from his family; for if I understand
+the matter right, he has been entirely cast off by them for
+persevering in his engagement with a very deserving young woman. Have
+I been rightly informed?--Is it so?--"
+
+Elinor told him that it was.
+
+"The cruelty, the impolitic cruelty,"--he replied, with great
+feeling,--"of dividing, or attempting to divide, two young people
+long attached to each other, is terrible. Mrs. Ferrars does not know
+what she may be doing--what she may drive her son to. I have seen Mr.
+Ferrars two or three times in Harley Street, and am much pleased with
+him. He is not a young man with whom one can be intimately acquainted
+in a short time, but I have seen enough of him to wish him well for
+his own sake, and as a friend of yours, I wish it still more. I
+understand that he intends to take orders. Will you be so good as to
+tell him that the living of Delaford, now just vacant, as I am
+informed by this day's post, is his, if he think it worth his
+acceptance--but _that_, perhaps, so unfortunately circumstanced as he
+is now, it may be nonsense to appear to doubt; I only wish it were
+more valuable. It is a rectory, but a small one; the late incumbent, I
+believe, did not make more than 200 L per annum, and though it is
+certainly capable of improvement, I fear, not to such an amount as to
+afford him a very comfortable income. Such as it is, however, my
+pleasure in presenting him to it, will be very great. Pray assure him
+of it."
+
+Elinor's astonishment at this commission could hardly have been
+greater, had the Colonel been really making her an offer of his hand.
+The preferment, which only two days before she had considered as
+hopeless for Edward, was already provided to enable him to marry;--and
+_she_, of all people in the world, was fixed on to bestow it!--Her
+emotion was such as Mrs. Jennings had attributed to a very different
+cause;--but whatever minor feelings less pure, less pleasing, might
+have a share in that emotion, her esteem for the general benevolence,
+and her gratitude for the particular friendship, which together
+prompted Colonel Brandon to this act, were strongly felt, and warmly
+expressed. She thanked him for it with all her heart, spoke of
+Edward's principles and disposition with that praise which she knew
+them to deserve; and promised to undertake the commission with
+pleasure, if it were really his wish to put off so agreeable an office
+to another. But at the same time, she could not help thinking that no
+one could so well perform it as himself. It was an office in short,
+from which, unwilling to give Edward the pain of receiving an
+obligation from _her_, she would have been very glad to be spared
+herself; but Colonel Brandon, on motives of equal delicacy, declining
+it likewise, still seemed so desirous of its being given through her
+means, that she would not on any account make farther opposition.
+Edward, she believed, was still in town, and fortunately she had heard
+his address from Miss Steele. She could undertake therefore to inform
+him of it, in the course of the day. After this had been settled,
+Colonel Brandon began to talk of his own advantage in securing so
+respectable and agreeable a neighbour, and _then_ it was that he
+mentioned with regret, that the house was small and indifferent; an
+evil which Elinor, as Mrs. Jennings had supposed her to do, made very
+light of, at least as far as regarded its size.
+
+"The smallness of the house," said she, "I cannot imagine any
+inconvenience to them, for it will be in proportion to their family
+and income."
+
+By which the Colonel was surprised to find that _she_ was considering
+Mr. Ferrars's marriage as the certain consequence of the presentation;
+for he did not suppose it possible that Delaford living could supply
+such an income, as anybody in his style of life would venture to
+settle on, and he said so.
+
+"This little rectory _can_ do no more than make Mr. Ferrars
+comfortable as a bachelor; it cannot enable him to marry. I am sorry
+to say that my patronage ends with this; and my interest is hardly
+more extensive. If, however, by an unforeseen chance it should be in
+my power to serve him farther, I must think very differently of him
+from what I now do, if I am not as ready to be useful to him then as I
+sincerely wish I could be at present. What I am now doing indeed,
+seems nothing at all, since it can advance him so little towards what
+must be his principal, his only object of happiness. His marriage must
+still be a distant good;--at least, I am afraid it cannot take place
+very soon."
+
+Such was the sentence which, when misunderstood, so justly offended
+the delicate feelings of Mrs. Jennings; but after this narration of
+what really passed between Colonel Brandon and Elinor, while they
+stood at the window, the gratitude expressed by the latter on their
+parting, may perhaps appear in general, not less reasonably excited,
+nor less properly worded than if it had arisen from an offer of
+marriage.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+
+"Well, Miss Dashwood," said Mrs. Jennings, sagaciously smiling, as
+soon as the gentleman had withdrawn, "I do not ask you what the
+Colonel has been saying to you; for though, upon my honour, I _tried_
+to keep out of hearing, I could not help catching enough to understand
+his business. And I assure you I never was better pleased in my life,
+and I wish you joy of it with all my heart."
+
+"Thank you, ma'am," said Elinor. "It is a matter of great joy to me;
+and I feel the goodness of Colonel Brandon most sensibly. There are
+not many men who would act as he has done. Few people who have so
+compassionate a heart! I never was more astonished in my life."
+
+"Lord! my dear, you are very modest. I an't the least astonished at it
+in the world, for I have often thought of late, there was nothing more
+likely to happen."
+
+"You judged from your knowledge of the Colonel's general benevolence;
+but at least you could not foresee that the opportunity would so very
+soon occur."
+
+"Opportunity!" repeated Mrs. Jennings--"Oh! as to that, when a man has
+once made up his mind to such a thing, somehow or other he will soon
+find an opportunity. Well, my dear, I wish you joy of it again and
+again; and if ever there was a happy couple in the world, I think I
+shall soon know where to look for them."
+
+"You mean to go to Delaford after them I suppose," said Elinor, with a
+faint smile.
+
+"Aye, my dear, that I do, indeed. And as to the house being a bad one,
+I do not know what the Colonel would be at, for it is as good a one as
+ever I saw."
+
+"He spoke of its being out of repair."
+
+"Well, and whose fault is that? why don't he repair it? who should do
+it but himself?"
+
+They were interrupted by the servant's coming in to announce the
+carriage being at the door; and Mrs. Jennings immediately preparing to
+go, said--
+
+"Well, my dear, I must be gone before I have had half my talk out.
+But, however, we may have it all over in the evening; for we shall be
+quite alone. I do not ask you to go with me, for I dare say your mind
+is too full of the matter to care for company; and besides, you must
+long to tell your sister all about it."
+
+Marianne had left the room before the conversation began.
+
+"Certainly, ma'am, I shall tell Marianne of it; but I shall not
+mention it at present to any body else."
+
+"Oh! very well," said Mrs. Jennings rather disappointed. "Then you
+would not have me tell it to Lucy, for I think of going as far as
+Holborn to-day."
+
+"No, ma'am, not even Lucy if you please. One day's delay will not be
+very material; and till I have written to Mr. Ferrars, I think it
+ought not to be mentioned to any body else. I shall do _that_
+directly. It is of importance that no time should be lost with him,
+for he will of course have much to do relative to his ordination."
+
+This speech at first puzzled Mrs. Jennings exceedingly. Why Mr.
+Ferrars was to have been written to about it in such a hurry, she
+could not immediately comprehend. A few moments' reflection, however,
+produced a very happy idea, and she exclaimed--
+
+"Oh, ho! I understand you. Mr. Ferrars is to be the man. Well, so much
+the better for him. Ay, to be sure, he must be ordained in readiness;
+and I am very glad to find things are so forward between you. But, my
+dear, is not this rather out of character? Should not the Colonel
+write himself? Sure, he is the proper person."
+
+Elinor did not quite understand the beginning of Mrs. Jennings's
+speech, neither did she think it worth inquiring into; and therefore
+only replied to its conclusion.
+
+"Colonel Brandon is so delicate a man, that he rather wished any one
+to announce his intentions to Mr. Ferrars than himself."
+
+"And so _you_ are forced to do it. Well _that_ is an odd kind of
+delicacy! However, I will not disturb you (seeing her preparing to
+write.) You know your own concerns best. So good-bye, my dear. I have
+not heard of any thing to please me so well since Charlotte was
+brought to bed."
+
+And away she went; but returning again in a moment--
+
+"I have just been thinking of Betty's sister, my dear. I should be
+very glad to get her so good a mistress. But whether she would do for
+a lady's maid, I am sure I can't tell. She is an excellent housemaid,
+and works very well at her needle. However, you will think of all that
+at your leisure."
+
+"Certainly, ma'am," replied Elinor, not hearing much of what she said,
+and more anxious to be alone, than to be mistress of the subject.
+
+How she should begin--how she should express herself in her note to
+Edward, was now all her concern. The particular circumstances between
+them made a difficulty of that which to any other person would have
+been the easiest thing in the world; but she equally feared to say too
+much or too little, and sat deliberating over her paper, with the pen
+in her hand, till broken in on by the entrance of Edward himself.
+
+He had met Mrs. Jennings at the door in her way to the carriage, as he
+came to leave his farewell card; and she, after apologising for not
+returning herself, had obliged him to enter, by saying that Miss
+Dashwood was above, and wanted to speak with him on very particular
+business.
+
+Elinor had just been congratulating herself, in the midst of her
+perplexity, that however difficult it might be to express herself
+properly by letter, it was at least preferable to giving the
+information by word of mouth, when her visitor entered, to force her
+upon this greatest exertion of all. Her astonishment and confusion
+were very great on his so sudden appearance. She had not seen him
+before since his engagement became public, and therefore not since his
+knowing her to be acquainted with it; which, with the consciousness of
+what she had been thinking of, and what she had to tell him, made her
+feel particularly uncomfortable for some minutes. He too was much
+distressed; and they sat down together in a most promising state of
+embarrassment. Whether he had asked her pardon for his intrusion on
+first coming into the room, he could not recollect; but determining to
+be on the safe side, he made his apology in form as soon as he could
+say any thing, after taking a chair.
+
+"Mrs. Jennings told me," said he, "that you wished to speak with me,
+at least I understood her so--or I certainly should not have intruded
+on you in such a manner; though at the same time, I should have been
+extremely sorry to leave London without seeing you and your sister;
+especially as it will most likely be some time--it is not probable
+that I should soon have the pleasure of meeting you again. I go to
+Oxford tomorrow."
+
+"You would not have gone, however," said Elinor, recovering herself,
+and determined to get over what she so much dreaded as soon as
+possible, "without receiving our good wishes, even if we had not been
+able to give them in person. Mrs. Jennings was quite right in what she
+said. I have something of consequence to inform you of, which I was on
+the point of communicating by paper. I am charged with a most
+agreeable office (breathing rather faster than usual as she spoke.)
+Colonel Brandon, who was here only ten minutes ago, has desired me to
+say, that understanding you mean to take orders, he has great pleasure
+in offering you the living of Delaford now just vacant, and only
+wishes it were more valuable. Allow me to congratulate you on having
+so respectable and well-judging a friend, and to join in his wish that
+the living--it is about two hundred a-year--were much more
+considerable, and such as might better enable you to--as might be more
+than a temporary accommodation to yourself--such, in short, as might
+establish all your views of happiness."
+
+What Edward felt, as he could not say it himself, it cannot be
+expected that any one else should say for him. He _looked_ all the
+astonishment which such unexpected, such unthought-of information
+could not fail of exciting; but he said only these two words--
+
+"Colonel Brandon!"
+
+"Yes," continued Elinor, gathering more resolution, as some of the
+worst was over, "Colonel Brandon means it as a testimony of his
+concern for what has lately passed--for the cruel situation in which
+the unjustifiable conduct of your family has placed you--a concern
+which I am sure Marianne, myself, and all your friends, must share;
+and likewise as a proof of his high esteem for your general character,
+and his particular approbation of your behaviour on the present
+occasion."
+
+"Colonel Brandon give _me_ a living!--Can it be possible?"
+
+"The unkindness of your own relations has made you astonished to find
+friendship any where."
+
+"No," replied be, with sudden consciousness, "not to find it in _you_;
+for I cannot be ignorant that to you, to your goodness, I owe it all.
+I feel it--I would express it if I could--but, as you well know, I am
+no orator."
+
+"You are very much mistaken. I do assure you that you owe it entirely,
+at least almost entirely, to your own merit, and Colonel Brandon's
+discernment of it. I have had no hand in it. I did not even know, till
+I understood his design, that the living was vacant; nor had it ever
+occurred to me that he might have had such a living in his gift. As a
+friend of mine, of my family, he may, perhaps--indeed I know he _has_,
+still greater pleasure in bestowing it; but, upon my word, you owe
+nothing to my solicitation."
+
+Truth obliged her to acknowledge some small share in the action, but
+she was at the same time so unwilling to appear as the benefactress of
+Edward, that she acknowledged it with hesitation; which probably
+contributed to fix that suspicion in his mind which had recently
+entered it. For a short time he sat deep in thought, after Elinor had
+ceased to speak;--at last, and as if it were rather an effort, he
+said--
+
+"Colonel Brandon seems a man of great worth and respectability. I have
+always heard him spoken of as such, and your brother I know esteems
+him highly. He is undoubtedly a sensible man, and in his manners
+perfectly the gentleman."
+
+"Indeed," replied Elinor, "I believe that you will find him, on
+farther acquaintance, all that you have heard him to be, and as you
+will be such very near neighbours (for I understand the parsonage is
+almost close to the mansion-house,) it is particularly important that
+he _should_ be all this."
+
+Edward made no answer; but when she had turned away her head, gave her
+a look so serious, so earnest, so uncheerful, as seemed to say, that
+he might hereafter wish the distance between the parsonage and the
+mansion-house much greater.
+
+"Colonel Brandon, I think, lodges in St. James Street," said he, soon
+afterwards, rising from his chair.
+
+Elinor told him the number of the house.
+
+"I must hurry away then, to give him those thanks which you will not
+allow me to give _you_; to assure him that he has made me a very--an
+exceedingly happy man."
+
+Elinor did not offer to detain him; and they parted, with a very
+earnest assurance on _her_ side of her unceasing good wishes for his
+happiness in every change of situation that might befall him; on
+_his_, with rather an attempt to return the same good will, than the
+power of expressing it.
+
+"When I see him again," said Elinor to herself, as the door shut him
+out, "I shall see him the husband of Lucy."
+
+And with this pleasing anticipation, she sat down to reconsider the
+past, recall the words and endeavour to comprehend all the feelings of
+Edward; and, of course, to reflect on her own with discontent.
+
+When Mrs. Jennings came home, though she returned from seeing people
+whom she had never seen before, and of whom therefore she must have a
+great deal to say, her mind was so much more occupied by the important
+secret in her possession, than by anything else, that she reverted to
+it again as soon as Elinor appeared.
+
+"Well, my dear," she cried, "I sent you up the young man. Did not I do
+right?--And I suppose you had no great difficulty--You did not find
+him very unwilling to accept your proposal?"
+
+"No, ma'am; _that_ was not very likely."
+
+"Well, and how soon will he be ready?--For it seems all to depend upon
+that."
+
+"Really," said Elinor, "I know so little of these kind of forms, that
+I can hardly even conjecture as to the time, or the preparation
+necessary; but I suppose two or three months will complete his
+ordination."
+
+"Two or three months!" cried Mrs. Jennings; "Lord! my dear, how calmly
+you talk of it; and can the Colonel wait two or three months! Lord
+bless me!--I am sure it would put _me_ quite out of patience!--And
+though one would be very glad to do a kindness by poor Mr. Ferrars, I
+do think it is not worth while to wait two or three months for him.
+Sure somebody else might be found that would do as well; somebody that
+is in orders already."
+
+"My dear ma'am," said Elinor, "what can you be thinking of? Why,
+Colonel Brandon's only object is to be of use to Mr. Ferrars."
+
+"Lord bless you, my dear! Sure you do not mean to persuade me that the
+Colonel only marries you for the sake of giving ten guineas to Mr.
+Ferrars!"
+
+[Illustration: _Both gained considerable amusement_]
+
+The deception could not continue after this; and an explanation
+immediately took place, by which both gained considerable amusement
+for the moment, without any material loss of happiness to either, for
+Mrs. Jennings only exchanged one form of delight for another, and
+still without forfeiting her expectation of the first.
+
+"Aye, aye, the parsonage is but a small one," said she, after the
+first ebullition of surprise and satisfaction was over, "and very
+likely _may_ be out of repair; but to hear a man apologising, as I
+thought, for a house that to my knowledge has five sitting rooms on
+the ground-floor, and I think the housekeeper told me could make up
+fifteen beds! and to you too, that had been used to live in Barton
+cottage! It seems quite ridiculous. But, my dear, we must touch up the
+Colonel to do some thing to the parsonage, and make it comfortable for
+them, before Lucy goes to it."
+
+"But Colonel Brandon does not seem to have any idea of the living's
+being enough to allow them to marry."
+
+"The Colonel is a ninny, my dear; because he has two thousand a-year
+himself, he thinks that nobody else can marry on less. Take my word
+for it, that, if I am alive, I shall be paying a visit at Delaford
+Parsonage before Michaelmas; and I am sure I shan't go if Lucy an't
+there."
+
+Elinor was quite of her opinion, as to the probability of their not
+waiting for any thing more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+
+Edward, having carried his thanks to Colonel Brandon, proceeded with
+his happiness to Lucy; and such was the excess of it by the time he
+reached Bartlett's Buildings, that she was able to assure Mrs.
+Jennings, who called on her again the next day with her
+congratulations, that she had never seen him in such spirits before in
+her life.
+
+Her own happiness, and her own spirits, were at least very certain;
+and she joined Mrs. Jennings most heartily in her expectation of their
+being all comfortably together in Delaford Parsonage before
+Michaelmas. So far was she, at the same time, from any backwardness to
+give Elinor that credit which Edward _would_ give her, that she spoke
+of her friendship for them both with the most grateful warmth, was
+ready to own all their obligation to her, and openly declared that no
+exertion for their good on Miss Dashwood's part, either present or
+future, would ever surprise her, for she believed her capable of doing
+any thing in the world for those she really valued. As for Colonel
+Brandon, she was not only ready to worship him as a saint, but was
+moreover truly anxious that he should be treated as one in all worldly
+concerns; anxious that his tithes should be raised to the utmost; and
+secretly resolved to avail herself, at Delaford, as far as she
+possibly could, of his servants, his carriage, his cows, and his
+poultry.
+
+It was now above a week since John Dashwood had called in Berkeley
+Street, and as since that time no notice had been taken by them of his
+wife's indisposition, beyond one verbal enquiry, Elinor began to feel
+it necessary to pay her a visit. This was an obligation, however,
+which not only opposed her own inclination, but which had not the
+assistance of any encouragement from her companions. Marianne, not
+contented with absolutely refusing to go herself, was very urgent to
+prevent her sister's going at all; and Mrs. Jennings, though her
+carriage was always at Elinor's service, so very much disliked Mrs.
+John Dashwood, that not even her curiosity to see how she looked after
+the late discovery, nor her strong desire to affront her by taking
+Edward's part, could overcome her unwillingness to be in her company
+again. The consequence was, that Elinor set out by herself to pay a
+visit, for which no one could really have less inclination, and to run
+the risk of a tÍte-‡-tÍte with a woman, whom neither of the others had
+so much reason to dislike.
+
+Mrs. Dashwood was denied; but before the carriage could turn from the
+house, her husband accidentally came out. He expressed great pleasure
+in meeting Elinor, told her that he had been just going to call in
+Berkeley Street, and, assuring her that Fanny would be very glad to
+see her, invited her to come in.
+
+They walked up stairs in to the drawing-room. Nobody was there.
+
+"Fanny is in her own room, I suppose," said he:--"I will go to her
+presently, for I am sure she will not have the least objection in the
+world to seeing _you._ Very far from it, indeed. _Now_ especially
+there cannot be--but however, you and Marianne were always great
+favourites. Why would not Marianne come?"--
+
+Elinor made what excuse she could for her.
+
+"I am not sorry to see you alone," he replied, "for I have a good deal
+to say to you. This living of Colonel Brandon's--can it be true?--has
+he really given it to Edward?--I heard it yesterday by chance, and was
+coming to you on purpose to enquire farther about it."
+
+"It is perfectly true. Colonel Brandon has given the living of
+Delaford to Edward."
+
+"Really!--Well, this is very astonishing!--no relationship!--no
+connection between them!--and now that livings fetch such a
+price!--what was the value of this?"
+
+"About two hundred a year."
+
+"Very well--and for the next presentation to a living of that
+value--supposing the late incumbent to have been old and sickly, and
+likely to vacate it soon--he might have got I dare say--fourteen
+hundred pounds. And how came he not to have settled that matter before
+this person's death? _Now_ indeed it would be too late to sell it, but
+a man of Colonel Brandon's sense!--I wonder he should be so
+improvident in a point of such common, such natural, concern!--Well, I
+am convinced that there is a vast deal of inconsistency in almost
+every human character. I suppose, however--on recollection--that the
+case may probably be _this._ Edward is only to hold the living till
+the person to whom the Colonel has really sold the presentation, is
+old enough to take it. Aye, aye, that is the fact, depend upon it."
+
+Elinor contradicted it, however, very positively; and by relating that
+she had herself been employed in conveying the offer from Colonel
+Brandon to Edward, and, therefore, must understand the terms on which
+it was given, obliged him to submit to her authority.
+
+"It is truly astonishing!"--he cried, after hearing what she
+said--"what could be the Colonel's motive?"
+
+"A very simple one--to be of use to Mr. Ferrars."
+
+"Well, well; whatever Colonel Brandon may be, Edward is a very lucky
+man. You will not mention the matter to Fanny, however, for though I
+have broke it to her, and she bears it vastly well,--she will not like
+to hear it much talked of."
+
+Elinor had some difficulty here to refrain from observing, that she
+thought Fanny might have borne with composure, an acquisition of
+wealth to her brother, by which neither she nor her child could be
+possibly impoverished.
+
+"Mrs. Ferrars," added he, lowering his voice to the tone becoming so
+important a subject, "knows nothing about it at present, and I believe
+it will be best to keep it entirely concealed from her as long as may
+be. When the marriage takes place, I fear she must hear of it all."
+
+"But why should such precaution be used? Though it is not to be
+supposed that Mrs. Ferrars can have the smallest satisfaction in
+knowing that her son has money enough to live upon,--for _that_ must
+be quite out of the question; yet why, upon her late behaviour, is she
+supposed to feel at all? She has done with her son, she cast him off
+for ever, and has made all those over whom she had any influence, cast
+him off likewise. Surely, after doing so, she cannot be imagined
+liable to any impression of sorrow or of joy on his account--she
+cannot be interested in any thing that befalls him. She would not be
+so weak as to throw away the comfort of a child, and yet retain the
+anxiety of a parent!"
+
+"Ah! Elinor," said John, "your reasoning is very good, but it is
+founded on ignorance of human nature. When Edward's unhappy match
+takes place, depend upon it his mother will feel as much as if she had
+never discarded him; and, therefore every circumstance that may
+accelerate that dreadful event, must be concealed from her as much as
+possible. Mrs. Ferrars can never forget that Edward is her son."
+
+"You surprise me; I should think it must nearly have escaped her
+memory by _this_ time."
+
+"You wrong her exceedingly. Mrs. Ferrars is one of the most
+affectionate mothers in the world."
+
+Elinor was silent.
+
+"We think _now_,"--said Mr. Dashwood, after a short pause, "of
+_Robert's_ marrying Miss Morton."
+
+Elinor, smiling at the grave and decisive importance of her brother's
+tone, calmly replied--
+
+"The lady, I suppose, has no choice in the affair."
+
+"Choice!--how do you mean?"
+
+"I only mean that I suppose, from your manner of speaking, it must be
+the same to Miss Morton whether she marry Edward or Robert."
+
+"Certainly, there can be no difference; for Robert will now to all
+intents and purposes be considered as the eldest son;--and as to any
+thing else, they are both very agreeable young men: I do not know that
+one is superior to the other."
+
+Elinor said no more, and John was also for a short time silent. His
+reflections ended thus.
+
+"Of _one_ thing, my dear sister," kindly taking her hand, and speaking
+in an awful whisper,--"I may assure you; and I _will_ do it, because I
+know it must gratify you. I have good reason to think--indeed I have
+it from the best authority, or I should not repeat it, for otherwise
+it would be very wrong to say any thing about it,--but I have it from
+the very best authority,--not that I ever precisely heard Mrs. Ferrars
+say it herself--but her daughter _did_, and I have it from her,--that
+in short, whatever objections there might be against a certain--a
+certain connection, you understand me,--it would have been far
+preferable to her, it would not have given her half the vexation that
+_this_ does. I was exceedingly pleased to hear that Mrs. Ferrars
+considered it in that light; a very gratifying circumstance you know
+to us all. 'It would have been beyond comparison,' she said, 'the
+least evil of the two, and she would be glad to compound _now_ for
+nothing worse.' But however, all that is quite out of the
+question,--not to be thought of or mentioned. As to any attachment you
+know, it never could be; all that is gone by. But I thought I would
+just tell you of this, because I knew how much it must please you. Not
+that you have any reason to regret, my dear Elinor. There is no doubt
+of your doing exceedingly well,--quite as well, or better, perhaps,
+all things considered. Has Colonel Brandon been with you lately?"
+
+Elinor had heard enough, if not to gratify her vanity, and raise her
+self-importance, to agitate her nerves and fill her mind;--and she was
+therefore glad to be spared from the necessity of saying much in reply
+herself, and from the danger of hearing any thing more from her
+brother, by the entrance of Mr. Robert Ferrars. After a few moments'
+chat, John Dashwood, recollecting that Fanny was yet uninformed of her
+sister's being there, quitted the room in quest of her; and Elinor was
+left to improve her acquaintance with Robert, who, by the gay
+unconcern, the happy self-complacency of his manner while enjoying so
+unfair a division of his mother's love and liberality, to the
+prejudice of his banished brother, earned only by his own dissipated
+course of life, and that brother's integrity, was confirming her most
+unfavourable opinion of his head and heart.
+
+[Illustration: "_Of one thing I may assure you._"]
+
+They had scarcely been two minutes by themselves, before he began to
+speak of Edward; for he, too, had heard of the living, and was very
+inquisitive on the subject. Elinor repeated the particulars of it, as
+she had given them to John; and their effect on Robert, though very
+different, was not less striking than it had been on _him._ He laughed
+most immoderately. The idea of Edward's being a clergyman, and living
+in a small parsonage-house, diverted him beyond measure;--and when to
+that was added the fanciful imagery of Edward reading prayers in a
+white surplice, and publishing the banns of marriage between John
+Smith and Mary Brown, he could conceive nothing more ridiculous.
+
+Elinor, while she waited in silence and immovable gravity, the
+conclusion of such folly, could not restrain her eyes from being fixed
+on him with a look that spoke all the contempt it excited. It was a
+look, however, very well bestowed, for it relieved her own feelings,
+and gave no intelligence to him. He was recalled from wit to wisdom,
+not by any reproof of her's, but by his own sensibility.
+
+"We may treat it as a joke," said he, at last, recovering from the
+affected laugh which had considerably lengthened out the genuine
+gaiety of the moment; "but, upon my soul, it is a most serious
+business. Poor Edward! he is ruined for ever. I am extremely sorry for
+it; for I know him to be a very good-hearted creature,--as
+well-meaning a fellow perhaps, as any in the world. You must not judge
+of him, Miss Dashwood, from _your_ slight acquaintance. Poor Edward!
+His manners are certainly not the happiest in nature. But we are not
+all born, you know, with the same powers,--the same address. Poor
+fellow! to see him in a circle of strangers! to be sure it was
+pitiable enough; but upon my soul, I believe he has as good a heart as
+any in the kingdom; and I declare and protest to you I never was so
+shocked in my life, as when it all burst forth. I could not believe
+it. My mother was the first person who told me of it; and I, feeling
+myself called on to act with resolution, immediately said to her,--'My
+dear madam, I do not know what you may intend to do on the occasion,
+but as for myself, I must say, that if Edward does marry this young
+woman, I never will see him again.' That was what I said immediately.
+I was most uncommonly shocked, indeed! Poor Edward! he has done for
+himself completely,--shut himself out for ever from all decent
+society! but, as I directly said to my mother, I am not in the least
+surprised at it; from his style of education, it was always to be
+expected. My poor mother was half frantic."
+
+"Have you ever seen the lady?"
+
+"Yes; once, while she was staying in this house, I happened to drop in
+for ten minutes; and I saw quite enough of her. The merest awkward
+country girl, without style, or elegance, and almost without beauty. I
+remember her perfectly. Just the kind of girl I should suppose likely
+to captivate poor Edward. I offered immediately, as soon as my mother
+related the affair to me, to talk to him myself, and dissuade him from
+the match; but it was too late _then_, I found, to do any thing, for
+unluckily, I was not in the way at first, and knew nothing of it till
+after the breach had taken place, when it was not for me, you know, to
+interfere. But had I been informed of it a few hours earlier, I think
+it is most probable that something might have been hit on. I certainly
+should have represented it to Edward in a very strong light. 'My dear
+fellow,' I should have said, 'consider what you are doing. You are
+making a most disgraceful connection, and such a one as your family
+are unanimous in disapproving.' I cannot help thinking, in short, that
+means might have been found. But now it is all too late. He must be
+starved, you know, that is certain; absolutely starved."
+
+He had just settled this point with great composure, when the entrance
+of Mrs. John Dashwood put an end to the subject. But though _she_
+never spoke of it out of her own family, Elinor could see its
+influence on her mind, in the something like confusion of countenance
+with which she entered, and an attempt at cordiality in her behaviour
+to herself. She even proceeded so far as to be concerned to find that
+Elinor and her sister were so soon to leave town, as she had hoped to
+see more of them;--an exertion in which her husband, who attended her
+into the room, and hung enamoured over her accents, seemed to
+distinguish every thing that was most affectionate and graceful.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+
+One other short call in Harley Street, in which Elinor received her
+brother's congratulations on their travelling so far towards Barton
+without any expense, and on Colonel Brandon's being to follow them to
+Cleveland in a day or two, completed the intercourse of the brother
+and sisters in town;--and a faint invitation from Fanny, to come to
+Norland whenever it should happen to be in their way, which of all
+things was the most unlikely to occur, with a more warm, though less
+public, assurance, from John to Elinor, of the promptitude with which
+he should come to see her at Delaford, was all that foretold any
+meeting in the country.
+
+It amused her to observe that all her friends seemed determined to
+send her to Delaford;--a place, in which, of all others, she would now
+least choose to visit, or wish to reside; for not only was it
+considered as her future home by her brother and Mrs. Jennings, but
+even Lucy, when they parted, gave her a pressing invitation to visit
+her there.
+
+Very early in April, and tolerably early in the day, the two parties
+from Hanover Square and Berkeley Street set out from their respective
+homes, to meet, by appointment, on the road. For the convenience of
+Charlotte and her child, they were to be more than two days on their
+journey, and Mr. Palmer, travelling more expeditiously with Colonel
+Brandon, was to join them at Cleveland soon after their arrival.
+
+Marianne, few as had been her hours of comfort in London, and eager as
+she had long been to quit it, could not, when it came to the point,
+bid adieu to the house in which she had for the last time enjoyed
+those hopes, and that confidence, in Willoughby, which were now
+extinguished for ever, without great pain. Nor could she leave the
+place in which Willoughby remained, busy in new engagements, and new
+schemes, in which _she_ could have no share, without shedding many
+tears.
+
+Elinor's satisfaction, at the moment of removal, was more positive.
+She had no such object for her lingering thoughts to fix on, she left
+no creature behind, from whom it would give her a moment's regret to
+be divided for ever, she was pleased to be free herself from the
+persecution of Lucy's friendship, she was grateful for bringing her
+sister away unseen by Willoughby since his marriage, and she looked
+forward with hope to what a few months of tranquility at Barton might
+do towards restoring Marianne's peace of mind, and confirming her own.
+
+Their journey was safely performed. The second day brought them into
+the cherished, or the prohibited, county of Somerset, for as such was
+it dwelt on by turns in Marianne's imagination; and in the forenoon of
+the third they drove up to Cleveland.
+
+Cleveland was a spacious, modern-built house, situated on a sloping
+lawn. It had no park, but the pleasure-grounds were tolerably
+extensive; and like every other place of the same degree of
+importance, it had its open shrubbery, and closer wood walk, a road of
+smooth gravel winding round a plantation, led to the front, the lawn
+was dotted over with timber, the house itself was under the
+guardianship of the fir, the mountain-ash, and the acacia, and a thick
+screen of them altogether, interspersed with tall Lombardy poplars,
+shut out the offices.
+
+Marianne entered the house with a heart swelling with emotion from the
+consciousness of being only eighty miles from Barton, and not thirty
+from Combe Magna; and before she had been five minutes within its
+walls, while the others were busily helping Charlotte to show her
+child to the housekeeper, she quitted it again, stealing away through
+the winding shrubberies, now just beginning to be in beauty, to gain a
+distant eminence; where, from its Grecian temple, her eye, wandering
+over a wide tract of country to the south-east, could fondly rest on
+the farthest ridge of hills in the horizon, and fancy that from their
+summits Combe Magna might be seen.
+
+In such moments of precious, invaluable misery, she rejoiced in tears
+of agony to be at Cleveland; and as she returned by a different
+circuit to the house, feeling all the happy privilege of country
+liberty, of wandering from place to place in free and luxurious
+solitude, she resolved to spend almost every hour of every day while
+she remained with the Palmers, in the indulgence of such solitary
+rambles.
+
+[Illustration: _Showing her child to the housekeeper._]
+
+She returned just in time to join the others as they quitted the
+house, on an excursion through its more immediate premises; and the
+rest of the morning was easily whiled away, in lounging round the
+kitchen garden, examining the bloom upon its walls, and listening to
+the gardener's lamentations upon blights, in dawdling through the
+green-house, where the loss of her favourite plants, unwarily exposed,
+and nipped by the lingering frost, raised the laughter of
+Charlotte,--and in visiting her poultry-yard, where, in the
+disappointed hopes of her dairy-maid, by hens forsaking their nests,
+or being stolen by a fox, or in the rapid decrease of a promising
+young brood, she found fresh sources of merriment.
+
+The morning was fine and dry, and Marianne, in her plan of employment
+abroad, had not calculated for any change of weather during their stay
+at Cleveland. With great surprise therefore, did she find herself
+prevented by a settled rain from going out again after dinner. She had
+depended on a twilight walk to the Grecian temple, and perhaps all
+over the grounds, and an evening merely cold or damp would not have
+deterred her from it; but a heavy and settled rain even _she_ could
+not fancy dry or pleasant weather for walking.
+
+Their party was small, and the hours passed quietly away. Mrs. Palmer
+had her child, and Mrs. Jennings her carpet-work; they talked of the
+friends they had left behind, arranged Lady Middleton's engagements,
+and wondered whether Mr. Palmer and Colonel Brandon would get farther
+than Reading that night. Elinor, however little concerned in it,
+joined in their discourse; and Marianne, who had the knack of finding
+her way in every house to the library, however it might be avoided by
+the family in general, soon procured herself a book.
+
+Nothing was wanting on Mrs. Palmer's side that constant and friendly
+good humour could do, to make them feel themselves welcome. The
+openness and heartiness of her manner more than atoned for that want
+of recollection and elegance which made her often deficient in the
+forms of politeness; her kindness, recommended by so pretty a face,
+was engaging; her folly, though evident was not disgusting, because it
+was not conceited; and Elinor could have forgiven every thing but her
+laugh.
+
+[Illustration: _The gardener's lamentations._]
+
+The two gentlemen arrived the next day to a very late dinner,
+affording a pleasant enlargement of the party, and a very welcome
+variety to their conversation, which a long morning of the same
+continued rain had reduced very low.
+
+Elinor had seen so little of Mr. Palmer, and in that little had seen
+so much variety in his address to her sister and herself, that she
+knew not what to expect to find him in his own family. She found him,
+however, perfectly the gentleman in his behaviour to all his visitors,
+and only occasionally rude to his wife and her mother; she found him
+very capable of being a pleasant companion, and only prevented from
+being so always, by too great an aptitude to fancy himself as much
+superior to people in general, as he must feel himself to be to Mrs.
+Jennings and Charlotte. For the rest of his character and habits, they
+were marked, as far as Elinor could perceive, with no traits at all
+unusual in his sex and time of life. He was nice in his eating,
+uncertain in his hours; fond of his child, though affecting to slight
+it; and idled away the mornings at billiards, which ought to have been
+devoted to business. She liked him, however, upon the whole, much
+better than she had expected, and in her heart was not sorry that she
+could like him no more; not sorry to be driven by the observation of
+his epicurism, his selfishness, and his conceit, to rest with
+complacency on the remembrance of Edward's generous temper, simple
+taste, and diffident feelings.
+
+Of Edward, or at least of some of his concerns, she now received
+intelligence from Colonel Brandon, who had been into Dorsetshire
+lately; and who, treating her at once as the disinterested friend of
+Mr. Ferrars, and the kind confidante of himself, talked to her a
+great deal of the parsonage at Delaford, described its deficiencies,
+and told her what he meant to do himself towards removing them. His
+behaviour to her in this, as well as in every other particular, his
+open pleasure in meeting her after an absence of only ten days, his
+readiness to converse with her, and his deference for her opinion,
+might very well justify Mrs. Jennings's persuasion of his attachment,
+and would have been enough, perhaps, had not Elinor still, as from the
+first, believed Marianne his real favourite, to make her suspect it
+herself. But as it was, such a notion had scarcely ever entered her
+head, except by Mrs. Jennings's suggestion; and she could not help
+believing herself the nicest observer of the two: she watched his
+eyes, while Mrs. Jennings thought only of his behaviour; and while his
+looks of anxious solicitude on Marianne's feeling, in her head and
+throat, the beginning of a heavy cold, because unexpressed by words,
+entirely escaped the latter lady's observation,--_she_ could discover
+in them the quick feelings, and needless alarm of a lover.
+
+Two delightful twilight walks on the third and fourth evenings of her
+being there, not merely on the dry gravel of the shrubbery, but all
+over the grounds, and especially in the most distant parts of them,
+where there was something more of wildness than in the rest, where the
+trees were the oldest, and the grass was the longest and wettest,
+had--assisted by the still greater imprudence of sitting in her wet
+shoes and stockings--given Marianne a cold so violent as, though for a
+day or two trifled with or denied, would force itself by increasing
+ailments on the concern of every body, and the notice of herself.
+Prescriptions poured in from all quarters, and as usual, were all
+declined. Though heavy and feverish, with a pain in her limbs, and a
+cough, and a sore throat, a good night's rest was to cure her
+entirely; and it was with difficulty that Elinor prevailed on her,
+when she went to bed, to try one or two of the simplest of the
+remedies.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+
+Marianne got up the next morning at her usual time; to every inquiry
+replied that she was better, and tried to prove herself so, by
+engaging in her accustomary employments. But a day spent in sitting
+shivering over the fire with a book in her hand, which she was unable
+to read, or in lying, weary and languid, on a sofa, did not speak much
+in favour of her amendment; and when, at last, she went early to bed,
+more and more indisposed, Colonel Brandon was only astonished at her
+sister's composure, who, though attending and nursing her the whole
+day, against Marianne's inclination, and forcing proper medicines on
+her at night, trusted, like Marianne, to the certainty and efficacy of
+sleep, and felt no real alarm.
+
+A very restless and feverish night, however, disappointed the
+expectation of both; and when Marianne, after persisting in rising,
+confessed herself unable to sit up, and returned voluntarily to her
+bed, Elinor was very ready to adopt Mrs. Jennings's advice, of sending
+for the Palmers' apothecary.
+
+He came, examined his patient, and though encouraging Miss Dashwood to
+expect that a very few days would restore her sister to health, yet,
+by pronouncing her disorder to have a putrid tendency, and allowing
+the word "infection" to pass his lips, gave instant alarm to Mrs.
+Palmer, on her baby's account. Mrs. Jennings, who had been inclined
+from the first to think Marianne's complaint more serious than Elinor,
+now looked very grave on Mr. Harris's report, and confirming
+Charlotte's fears and caution, urged the necessity of her immediate
+removal with her infant; and Mr. Palmer, though treating their
+apprehensions as idle, found the anxiety and importunity of his wife
+too great to be withstood. Her departure, therefore, was fixed on; and
+within an hour after Mr. Harris's arrival, she set off, with her
+little boy and his nurse, for the house of a near relation of Mr.
+Palmer's, who lived a few miles on the other side of Bath; whither her
+husband promised, at her earnest entreaty, to join her in a day or
+two; and whither she was almost equally urgent with her mother to
+accompany her. Mrs. Jennings, however, with a kindness of heart which
+made Elinor really love her, declared her resolution of not stirring
+from Cleveland as long as Marianne remained ill, and of endeavouring,
+by her own attentive care, to supply to her the place of the mother
+she had taken her from; and Elinor found her on every occasion a most
+willing and active helpmate, desirous to share in all her fatigues,
+and often by her better experience in nursing, of material use.
+
+Poor Marianne, languid and low from the nature of her malady, and
+feeling herself universally ill, could no longer hope that tomorrow
+would find her recovered; and the idea of what tomorrow would have
+produced, but for this unlucky illness, made every ailment severe; for
+on that day they were to have begun their journey home; and, attended
+the whole way by a servant of Mrs. Jennings, were to have taken their
+mother by surprise on the following forenoon. The little she said was
+all in lamentation of this inevitable delay; though Elinor tried to
+raise her spirits, and make her believe, as she _then_ really believed
+herself, that it would be a very short one.
+
+The next day produced little or no alteration in the state of the
+patient; she certainly was not better, and, except that there was no
+amendment, did not appear worse. Their party was now farther reduced;
+for Mr. Palmer, though very unwilling to go as well from real humanity
+and good-nature, as from a dislike of appearing to be frightened away
+by his wife, was persuaded at last by Colonel Brandon to perform his
+promise of following her; and while he was preparing to go, Colonel
+Brandon himself, with a much greater exertion, began to talk of going
+likewise. Here, however, the kindness of Mrs. Jennings interposed most
+acceptably; for to send the Colonel away while his love was in so much
+uneasiness on her sister's account, would be to deprive them both, she
+thought, of every comfort; and therefore telling him at once that his
+stay at Cleveland was necessary to herself, that she should want him
+to play at piquet of an evening, while Miss Dashwood was above with
+her sister, &c. she urged him so strongly to remain, that he, who was
+gratifying the first wish of his own heart by a compliance, could not
+long even affect to demur; especially as Mrs. Jennings's entreaty was
+warmly seconded by Mr. Palmer, who seemed to feel a relief to himself,
+in leaving behind him a person so well able to assist or advise Miss
+Dashwood in any emergence.
+
+Marianne was, of course, kept in ignorance of all these arrangements.
+She knew not that she had been the means of sending the owners of
+Cleveland away, in about seven days from the time of their arrival. It
+gave her no surprise that she saw nothing of Mrs. Palmer; and as it
+gave her likewise no concern, she never mentioned her name.
+
+Two days passed away from the time of Mr. Palmer's departure, and her
+situation continued, with little variation, the same. Mr. Harris, who
+attended her every day, still talked boldly of a speedy recovery, and
+Miss Dashwood was equally sanguine; but the expectation of the others
+was by no means so cheerful. Mrs. Jennings had determined very early
+in the seizure that Marianne would never get over it, and Colonel
+Brandon, who was chiefly of use in listening to Mrs. Jennings's
+forebodings, was not in a state of mind to resist their influence. He
+tried to reason himself out of fears, which the different judgment of
+the apothecary seemed to render absurd; but the many hours of each day
+in which he was left entirely alone, were but too favourable for the
+admission of every melancholy idea, and he could not expel from his
+mind the persuasion that he should see Marianne no more.
+
+On the morning of the third day however, the gloomy anticipations of
+both were almost done away; for when Mr. Harris arrived, he declared
+his patient materially better. Her pulse was much stronger, and every
+symptom more favourable than on the preceding visit. Elinor, confirmed
+in every pleasant hope, was all cheerfulness; rejoicing that in her
+letters to her mother, she had pursued her own judgment rather than
+her friend's, in making very light of the indisposition which delayed
+them at Cleveland; and almost fixing on the time when Marianne would
+be able to travel.
+
+But the day did not close so auspiciously as it began. Towards the
+evening Marianne became ill again, growing more heavy, restless, and
+uncomfortable than before. Her sister, however, still sanguine, was
+willing to attribute the change to nothing more than the fatigue of
+having sat up to have her bed made; and carefully administering the
+cordials prescribed, saw her, with satisfaction, sink at last into a
+slumber, from which she expected the most beneficial effects. Her
+sleep, though not so quiet as Elinor wished to see it, lasted a
+considerable time; and anxious to observe the result of it herself,
+she resolved to sit with her during the whole of it. Mrs. Jennings,
+knowing nothing of any change in the patient, went unusually early to
+bed; her maid, who was one of the principal nurses, was recreating
+herself in the housekeeper's room, and Elinor remained alone with
+Marianne.
+
+The repose of the latter became more and more disturbed; and her
+sister, who watched, with unremitting attention her continual change
+of posture, and heard the frequent but inarticulate sounds of
+complaint which passed her lips, was almost wishing to rouse her from
+so painful a slumber, when Marianne, suddenly awakened by some
+accidental noise in the house, started hastily up, and, with feverish
+wildness, cried out,--
+
+"Is mama coming?--"
+
+"Not yet," cried the other, concealing her terror, and assisting
+Marianne to lie down again, "but she will be here, I hope, before it
+is long. It is a great way, you know, from hence to Barton."
+
+"But she must not go round by London," cried Marianne, in the same
+hurried manner. "I shall never see her, if she goes by London."
+
+Elinor perceived with alarm that she was not quite herself, and, while
+attempting to soothe her, eagerly felt her pulse. It was lower and
+quicker than ever! and Marianne, still talking wildly of mama, her
+alarm increased so rapidly, as to determine her on sending instantly
+for Mr. Harris, and despatching a messenger to Barton for her mother.
+To consult with Colonel Brandon on the best means of effecting the
+latter, was a thought which immediately followed the resolution of its
+performance; and as soon she had rung up the maid to take her place by
+her sister, she hastened down to the drawing-room, where she knew he
+was generally to be found at a much later hour than the present.
+
+It was no time for hesitation. Her fears and her difficulties were
+immediately before him. Her fears, he had no courage, no confidence to
+attempt the removal of; he listened to them in silent despondence; but
+her difficulties were instantly obviated, for with a readiness that
+seemed to speak the occasion, and the service pre-arranged in his
+mind, he offered himself as the messenger who should fetch Mrs.
+Dashwood. Elinor made no resistance that was not easily overcome. She
+thanked him with brief, though fervent gratitude, and while he went to
+hurry off his servant with a message to Mr. Harris, and an order for
+post-horses directly, she wrote a few lines to her mother.
+
+The comfort of such a friend at that moment as Colonel Brandon--or
+such a companion for her mother,--how gratefully was it felt!--a
+companion whose judgment would guide, whose attendance must relieve,
+and whose friendship might soothe her!--as far as the shock of such a
+summons _could_ be lessened to her, his presence, his manners, his
+assistance, would lessen it.
+
+_He_, meanwhile, whatever he might feel, acted with all the firmness
+of a collected mind, made every necessary arrangement with the utmost
+despatch, and calculated with exactness the time in which she might
+look for his return. Not a moment was lost in delay of any kind. The
+horses arrived, even before they were expected, and Colonel Brandon
+only pressing her hand with a look of solemnity, and a few words
+spoken too low to reach her ear, hurried into the carriage. It was
+then about twelve o'clock, and she returned to her sister's apartment
+to wait for the arrival of the apothecary, and to watch by her the
+rest of the night. It was a night of almost equal suffering to both.
+Hour after hour passed away in sleepless pain and delirium on
+Marianne's side, and in the most cruel anxiety on Elinor's, before Mr.
+Harris appeared. Her apprehensions once raised, paid by their excess
+for all her former security; and the servant who sat up with her, for
+she would not allow Mrs. Jennings to be called, only tortured her
+more, by hints of what her mistress had always thought.
+
+Marianne's ideas were still, at intervals, fixed incoherently on her
+mother, and whenever she mentioned her name, it gave a pang to the
+heart of poor Elinor, who, reproaching herself for having trifled with
+so many days of illness, and wretched for some immediate relief,
+fancied that all relief might soon be in vain, that every thing had
+been delayed too long, and pictured to herself her suffering mother
+arriving too late to see this darling child, or to see her rational.
+
+She was on the point of sending again for Mr. Harris, or if _he_ could
+not come, for some other advice, when the former--but not till after
+five o'clock--arrived. His opinion, however, made some little amends
+for his delay, for though acknowledging a very unexpected and
+unpleasant alteration in his patient, he would not allow the danger to
+be material, and talked of the relief which a fresh mode of treatment
+must procure, with a confidence which, in a lesser degree, was
+communicated to Elinor. He promised to call again in the course of
+three or four hours, and left both the patient and her anxious
+attendant more composed than he had found them.
+
+With strong concern, and with many reproaches for not being called to
+their aid, did Mrs. Jennings hear in the morning of what had passed.
+Her former apprehensions, now with greater reason restored, left her
+no doubt of the event; and though trying to speak comfort to Elinor,
+her conviction of her sister's danger would not allow her to offer the
+comfort of hope. Her heart was really grieved. The rapid decay, the
+early death of a girl so young, so lovely as Marianne, must have
+struck a less interested person with concern. On Mrs. Jennings's
+compassion she had other claims. She had been for three months her
+companion, was still under her care, and she was known to have been
+greatly injured, and long unhappy. The distress of her sister too,
+particularly a favourite, was before her;--and as for their mother,
+when Mrs. Jennings considered that Marianne might probably be to _her_
+what Charlotte was to herself, her sympathy in _her_ sufferings was
+very sincere.
+
+Mr. Harris was punctual in his second visit; but he came to be
+disappointed in his hopes of what the last would produce. His
+medicines had failed; the fever was unabated; and Marianne only more
+quiet--not more herself--remained in a heavy stupor. Elinor, catching
+all, and more than all, his fears in a moment, proposed to call in
+further advice. But he judged it unnecessary: he had still something
+more to try, some more fresh application, of whose success he was as
+confident as the last, and his visit concluded with encouraging
+assurances which reached the ear, but could not enter the heart of
+Miss Dashwood. She was calm, except when she thought of her mother;
+but she was almost hopeless; and in this state she continued till
+noon, scarcely stirring from her sister's bed, her thoughts wandering
+from one image of grief, one suffering friend to another, and her
+spirits oppressed to the utmost by the conversation of Mrs. Jennings,
+who scrupled not to attribute the severity and danger of this attack
+to the many weeks of previous indisposition which Marianne's
+disappointment had brought on. Elinor felt all the reasonableness of
+the idea, and it gave fresh misery to her reflections.
+
+About noon, however, she began--but with a caution--a dread of
+disappointment which for some time kept her silent, even to her
+friend--to fancy, to hope she could perceive a slight amendment in her
+sister's pulse; she waited, watched, and examined it again and again;
+and at last, with an agitation more difficult to bury under exterior
+calmness, than all her foregoing distress, ventured to communicate her
+hopes. Mrs. Jennings, though forced, on examination, to acknowledge a
+temporary revival, tried to keep her young friend from indulging a
+thought of its continuance; and Elinor, conning over every injunction
+of distrust, told herself likewise not to hope. But it was too late.
+Hope had already entered; and feeling all its anxious flutter, she
+bent over her sister to watch--she hardly knew for what. Half an hour
+passed away, and the favourable symptom yet blessed her. Others even
+arose to confirm it. Her breath, her skin, her lips, all flattered
+Elinor with signs of amendment; and Marianne fixed her eyes on her
+with a rational, though languid, gaze. Anxiety and hope now oppressed
+her in equal degrees, and left her no moment of tranquillity till the
+arrival of Mr. Harris at four o'clock; when his assurances, his
+felicitations on a recovery in her sister even surpassing his
+expectation, gave her confidence, comfort, and tears of joy.
+
+Marianne was in every respect materially better, and he declared her
+entirely out of danger. Mrs. Jennings, perhaps satisfied with the
+partial justification of her forebodings which had been found in their
+late alarm, allowed herself to trust in his judgment, and admitted,
+with unfeigned joy, and soon with unequivocal cheerfulness, the
+probability of an entire recovery.
+
+Elinor could not be cheerful. Her joy was of a different kind, and led
+to any thing rather than to gaiety. Marianne restored to life, health,
+friends, and to her doting mother, was an idea to fill her heart with
+sensations of exquisite comfort, and expand it in fervent
+gratitude;--but it led to no outward demonstrations of joy, no words,
+no smiles. All within Elinor's breast was satisfaction, silent and
+strong.
+
+She continued by the side of her sister, with little intermission the
+whole afternoon, calming every fear, satisfying every inquiry of her
+enfeebled spirits, supplying every succour, and watching almost every
+look and every breath. The possibility of a relapse would of course,
+in some moments, occur to remind her of what anxiety was; but when she
+saw, on her frequent and minute examination, that every symptom of
+recovery continued, and saw Marianne at six o'clock sink into a quiet,
+steady, and to all appearance comfortable, sleep, she silenced every
+doubt.
+
+The time was now drawing on, when Colonel Brandon might be expected
+back. At ten o'clock, she trusted, or at least not much later her
+mother would be relieved from the dreadful suspense in which she must
+now be travelling towards them. The Colonel, too!--perhaps scarcely
+less an object of pity! Oh! how slow was the progress of time which
+yet kept them in ignorance!
+
+At seven o'clock, leaving Marianne still sweetly asleep, she joined
+Mrs. Jennings in the drawing-room to tea. Of breakfast she had been
+kept by her fears, and of dinner by their sudden reverse, from eating
+much; and the present refreshment, therefore, with such feelings of
+content as she brought to it, was particularly welcome. Mrs. Jennings
+would have persuaded her, at its conclusion, to take some rest before
+her mother's arrival, and allow _her_ to take her place by Marianne;
+but Elinor had no sense of fatigue, no capability of sleep at that
+moment about her, and she was not to be kept away from her sister an
+unnecessary instant. Mrs. Jennings therefore attending her up stairs
+into the sick chamber, to satisfy herself that all continued right,
+left her there again to her charge and her thoughts, and retired to
+her own room to write letters and sleep.
+
+The night was cold and stormy. The wind roared round the house, and
+the rain beat against the windows; but Elinor, all happiness within,
+regarded it not. Marianne slept through every blast; and the
+travellers, they had a rich reward in store, for every present
+inconvenience.
+
+The clock struck eight. Had it been ten, Elinor would have been
+convinced that at that moment she heard a carriage driving up to the
+house; and so strong was the persuasion that she _did_, in spite of
+the _almost_ impossibility of their being already come, that she moved
+into the adjoining dressing-closet and opened a window shutter, to be
+satisfied of the truth. She instantly saw that her ears had not
+deceived her. The flaring lamps of a carriage were immediately in
+view. By their uncertain light she thought she could discern it to be
+drawn by four horses; and this, while it told the excess of her poor
+mother's alarm, gave some explanation to such unexpected rapidity.
+
+Never in her life had Elinor found it so difficult to be calm, as at
+that moment. The knowledge of what her mother must be feeling as the
+carriage stopped the door,--of her doubt--her dread,--perhaps her
+despair!--and of what _she_ had to tell! with such knowledge it was
+impossible to be calm. All that remained to be done was to be speedy;
+and, therefore staying only till she could leave Mrs. Jennings's maid
+with her sister, she hurried down stairs.
+
+The bustle in the vestibule, as she passed along an inner lobby,
+assured her that they were already in the house. She rushed to the
+drawing-room,--she entered it,--and saw only Willoughby.
+
+[Illustration: _Opened a window-shutter._]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+
+Elinor, starting back with a look of horror at the sight of him,
+obeyed the first impulse of her heart in turning instantly to quit the
+room, and her hand was already on the lock, when its action was
+suspended by his hastily advancing, and saying, in a voice rather of
+command than supplication--
+
+"Miss Dashwood, for half an hour--for ten minutes--I entreat you to
+stay."
+
+"No, sir," she replied with firmness, "I shall _not_ stay. Your
+business cannot be with _me._ The servants, I suppose, forgot to tell
+you that Mr. Palmer was not in the house."
+
+"Had they told me," he cried with vehemence, "that Mr. Palmer and all
+his relations were at the devil, it would not have turned me from the
+door. My business is with you, and only you."
+
+"With me!"--in the utmost amazement;--"well, sir--be quick--and if you
+can--less violent."
+
+"Sit down, and I will be both."
+
+She hesitated; she knew not what to do. The possibility of Colonel
+Brandon's arriving and finding her there, came across her. But she had
+promised to hear him, and her curiosity no less than her honor was
+engaged. After a moment's recollection, therefore, concluding that
+prudence required dispatch, and that her acquiescence would best
+promote it, she walked silently towards the table, and sat down. He
+took the opposite chair, and for half a minute not a word was said by
+either.
+
+"Pray be quick, sir," said Elinor, impatiently; "I have no time to
+spare."
+
+He was sitting in an attitude of deep meditation, and seemed not to
+hear her.
+
+"Your sister," said he, with abruptness, a moment afterwards--"is out
+of danger. I heard it from the servant. God be praised!--But is it
+true? is it really true?"
+
+Elinor would not speak. He repeated the inquiry with yet greater
+eagerness.
+
+"For God's sake tell me, is she out of danger, or is she not?"
+
+[Illustration: "_I entreat you to stay._"]
+
+"We hope she is."
+
+He rose up, and walked across the room.
+
+"Had I known as much half an hour ago--But since I _am_
+here,"--speaking with a forced vivacity as he returned to his
+seat,--"what does it signify?--For once, Miss Dashwood--it will be the
+last time, perhaps--let us be cheerful together. I am in a fine mood
+for gaiety. Tell me honestly,"--a deeper glow overspreading his
+cheeks, "do you think me most a knave or a fool?"
+
+Elinor looked at him with greater astonishment than ever. She began to
+think that he must be in liquor;--the strangeness of such a visit, and
+of such manners, seemed no otherwise intelligible; and with this
+impression she immediately rose, saying--
+
+"Mr. Willoughby, I advise you at present to return to Combe--I am not
+at leisure to remain with you longer. Whatever your business may be
+with me, it will be better recollected and explained to-morrow."
+
+"I understand you," he replied, with an expressive smile, and a voice
+perfectly calm; "yes, I am very drunk. A pint of porter with my cold
+beef at Marlborough was enough to over-set me."
+
+"At Marlborough!"--cried Elinor, more and more at a loss to understand
+what he would be at.
+
+"Yes,--I left London this morning at eight o'clock, and the only ten
+minutes I have spent out of my chaise since that time procured me a
+nuncheon at Marlborough."
+
+The steadiness of his manner, and the intelligence of his eye as he
+spoke, convincing Elinor, that whatever other unpardonable folly might
+bring him to Cleveland, he was not brought there by intoxication, she
+said, after a moment's recollection--
+
+"Mr. Willoughby, you _ought_ to feel, and I certainly _do_, that after
+what has passed--your coming here in this manner, and forcing yourself
+upon my notice, requires a very particular excuse. What is it, that
+you mean by it?"--
+
+"I mean,"--said he, with serious energy--"if I can, to make you hate
+me one degree less than you do _now._ I mean to offer some kind of
+explanation, some kind of apology, for the past; to open my whole
+heart to you, and by convincing you, that though I have been always a
+blockhead, I have not been always a rascal, to obtain something like
+forgiveness from Ma----, from your sister."
+
+"Is this the real reason of your coming?"
+
+"Upon my soul it is," was his answer, with a warmth which brought all
+the former Willoughby to her remembrance, and in spite of herself made
+her think him sincere.
+
+"If that is all, you may be satisfied already; for Marianne _does_,
+she has _long_ forgiven you."
+
+"Has she?" he cried, in the same eager tone. "Then she has forgiven me
+before she ought to have done it. But she shall forgive me again, and
+on more reasonable grounds. _Now_ will you listen to me?"
+
+Elinor bowed her assent.
+
+"I do not know," said he, after a pause of expectation on her side,
+and thoughtfulness on his own, "how _you_ may have accounted for my
+behaviour to your sister, or what diabolical motive you may have
+imputed to me. Perhaps you will hardly think the better of me,--it is
+worth the trial however, and you shall hear every thing. When I first
+became intimate in your family, I had no other intention, no other
+view in the acquaintance than to pass my time pleasantly while I was
+obliged to remain in Devonshire, more pleasantly than I had ever done
+before. Your sister's lovely person and interesting manners could not
+but please me; and her behaviour to me almost from the first, was of a
+kind--It is astonishing, when I reflect on what it was, and what _she_
+was, that my heart should have been so insensible! But at first I must
+confess, my vanity only was elevated by it. Careless of her happiness,
+thinking only of my own amusement, giving way to feelings which I had
+always been too much in the habit of indulging, I endeavoured, by
+every means in my power, to make myself pleasing to her, without any
+design of returning her affection."
+
+Miss Dashwood, at this point, turning her eyes on him with the most
+angry contempt, stopped him, by saying--
+
+"It is hardly worth while, Mr. Willoughby, for you to relate, or for
+me to listen any longer. Such a beginning as this cannot be followed
+by any thing. Do not let me be pained by hearing any thing more on the
+subject."
+
+"I insist on you hearing the whole of it," he replied, "My fortune was
+never large, and I had always been expensive, always in the habit of
+associating with people of better income than myself. Every year
+since my coming of age, or even before, I believe, had added to my
+debts; and though the death of my old cousin, Mrs. Smith, was to set
+me free; yet that event being uncertain, and possibly far distant, it
+had been for some time my intention to re-establish my circumstances
+by marrying a woman of fortune. To attach myself to your sister,
+therefore, was not a thing to be thought of; and with a meanness,
+selfishness, cruelty, which no indignant, no contemptuous look, even
+of yours, Miss Dashwood, can ever reprobate too much,--I was acting in
+this manner, trying to engage her regard, without a thought of
+returning it. But one thing may be said for me: even in that horrid
+state of selfish vanity, I did not know the extent of the injury I
+meditated, because I did not _then_ know what it was to love. But have
+I ever known it? Well may it be doubted; for, had I really loved,
+could I have sacrificed my feelings to vanity, to avarice? or, what is
+more, could I have sacrificed hers? But I have done it. To avoid a
+comparative poverty, which her affection and her society would have
+deprived of all its horrors, I have, by raising myself to affluence,
+lost every thing that could make it a blessing."
+
+"You did then," said Elinor, a little softened, "believe yourself at
+one time attached to her?"
+
+"To have resisted such attractions, to have withstood such tenderness!
+Is there a man on earth who could have done it? Yes, I found myself,
+by insensible degrees, sincerely fond of her; and the happiest hours
+of my life were what I spent with her when I felt my intentions were
+strictly honourable, and my feelings blameless. Even _then_, however,
+when fully determined on paying my addresses to her, I allowed myself
+most improperly to put off, from day to day, the moment of doing it,
+from an unwillingness to enter into an engagement while my
+circumstances were so greatly embarrassed. I will not reason here--nor
+will I stop for _you_ to expatiate on the absurdity, and the worse
+than absurdity, of scrupling to engage my faith where my honour was
+already bound. The event has proved, that I was a cunning fool,
+providing with great circumspection for a possible opportunity of
+making myself contemptible and wretched for ever. At last, however, my
+resolution was taken, and I had determined, as soon as I could engage
+her alone, to justify the attentions I had so invariably paid her, and
+openly assure her of an affection which I had already taken such pains
+to display. But in the interim--in the interim of the very few hours
+that were to pass, before I could have an opportunity of speaking with
+her in private--a circumstance occurred--an unlucky circumstance--to
+ruin all my resolution, and with it all my comfort. A discovery took
+place,"--here he hesitated and looked down. "Mrs. Smith had somehow or
+other been informed, I imagine by some distant relation, whose
+interest it was to deprive me of her favour, of an affair, a
+connection--but I need not explain myself farther," he added, looking
+at her with an heightened colour and an enquiring eye,--"your
+particular intimacy--you have probably heard the whole story long
+ago."
+
+"I have," returned Elinor, colouring likewise, and hardening her heart
+anew against any compassion for him, "I have heard it all. And how you
+will explain away any part of your guilt in that dreadful business, I
+confess is beyond my comprehension."
+
+"Remember," cried Willoughby, "from whom you received the account.
+Could it be an impartial one? I acknowledge that her situation and her
+character ought to have been respected by me. I do not mean to justify
+myself, but at the same time cannot leave you to suppose that I have
+nothing to urge--that because she was injured she was irreproachable,
+and because _I_ was a libertine, _she_ must be a saint. If the
+violence of her passions, the weakness of her understanding--I do not
+mean, however, to defend myself. Her affection for me deserved better
+treatment, and I often, with great self-reproach, recall the
+tenderness which, for a very short time, had the power of creating any
+return. I wish--I heartily wish it had never been. But I have injured
+more than herself; and I have injured one, whose affection for
+me--(may I say it?) was scarcely less warm than hers; and whose
+mind--Oh! how infinitely superior!"
+
+"Your indifference, however, towards that unfortunate girl--I must say
+it, unpleasant to me as the discussion of such a subject may well
+be--your indifference is no apology for your cruel neglect of her. Do
+not think yourself excused by any weakness, any natural defect of
+understanding on her side, in the wanton cruelty so evident on yours.
+You must have known, that while you were enjoying yourself in
+Devonshire pursuing fresh schemes, always gay, always happy, she was
+reduced to the extremest indigence."
+
+"But, upon my soul, I did _not_ know it," he warmly replied; "I did
+not recollect that I had omitted to give her my direction; and common
+sense might have told her how to find it out."
+
+"Well, sir, and what said Mrs. Smith?"
+
+"She taxed me with the offence at once, and my confusion may be
+guessed. The purity of her life, the formality of her notions, her
+ignorance of the world,--every thing was against me. The matter itself
+I could not deny, and vain was every endeavour to soften it. She was
+previously disposed, I believe, to doubt the morality of my conduct in
+general, and was moreover discontented with the very little attention,
+the very little portion of my time that I had bestowed on her, in my
+present visit. In short, it ended in a total breach. By one measure I
+might have saved myself. In the height of her morality, good woman!
+she offered to forgive the past, if I would marry Eliza. That could
+not be; and I was formally dismissed from her favour and her house.
+The night following this affair--I was to go the next morning--was
+spent by me in deliberating on what my future conduct should be. The
+struggle was great, but it ended too soon. My affection for Marianne,
+my thorough conviction of her attachment to me--it was all
+insufficient to outweigh that dread of poverty, or get the better of
+those false ideas of the necessity of riches, which I was naturally
+inclined to feel, and expensive society had increased. I had reason to
+believe myself secure of my present wife, if I chose to address her,
+and I persuaded myself to think that nothing else in common prudence
+remained for me to do. A heavy scene however awaited me, before I
+could leave Devonshire: I was engaged to dine with you on that very
+day; some apology was therefore necessary for my breaking this
+engagement. But whether I should write this apology, or deliver it in
+person, was a point of long debate. To see Marianne, I felt, would be
+dreadful, and I even doubted whether I could see her again, and keep
+to my resolution. In that point, however, I undervalued my own
+magnanimity, as the event declared; for I went, I saw her, and saw her
+miserable, and left her miserable;--and left her hoping never to see
+her again."
+
+"Why did you call, Mr. Willoughby?" said Elinor, reproachfully; "a
+note would have answered every purpose. Why was it necessary to
+call?"
+
+[Illustration: "_I was formally dismissed._"]
+
+"It was necessary to my own pride. I could not bear to leave the
+country in a manner that might lead you, or the rest of the
+neighbourhood, to suspect any part of what had really passed between
+Mrs. Smith and myself, and I resolved therefore on calling at the
+cottage, in my way to Honiton. The sight of your dear sister, however,
+was really dreadful; and, to heighten the matter, I found her alone.
+You were all gone I do not know where. I had left her only the evening
+before, so fully, so firmly resolved within my self on doing right! A
+few hours were to have engaged her to me for ever; and I remember how
+happy, how gay were my spirits, as I walked from the cottage to
+Allenham, satisfied with myself, delighted with every body! But in
+this, our last interview of friendship, I approached her with a sense
+of guilt that almost took from me the power of dissembling. Her
+sorrow, her disappointment, her deep regret, when I told her that I
+was obliged to leave Devonshire so immediately--I never shall forget
+it--united too with such reliance, such confidence in me! Oh, God!
+what a hard-hearted rascal I was!"
+
+They were both silent for a few moments. Elinor first spoke.
+
+"Did you tell her that you should soon return?"
+
+"I do not know what I told her," he replied, impatiently; "less than
+was due to the past, beyond a doubt, and in all likelihood much more
+than was justified by the future. I cannot think of it. It won't do.
+Then came your dear mother to torture me farther, with all her
+kindness and confidence. Thank Heaven! it _did_ torture me. I was
+miserable. Miss Dashwood, you cannot have an idea of the comfort it
+gives me to look back on my own misery. I owe such a grudge to myself
+for the stupid, rascally folly of my own heart, that all my past
+sufferings under it are only triumph and exultation to me now. Well, I
+went, left all that I loved, and went to those to whom, at best, I was
+only indifferent. My journey to town--travelling with my own horses,
+and therefore so tediously--no creature to speak to--my own
+reflections so cheerful--when I looked forward every thing so
+inviting!--when I looked back at Barton, the picture so soothing!--oh,
+it was a blessed journey!"
+
+He stopped.
+
+"Well, sir," said Elinor, who, though pitying him, grew impatient for
+his departure, "and this is all?"
+
+"Ah!--no,--have you forgot what passed in town? That infamous letter?
+Did she show it you?"
+
+"Yes, I saw every note that passed."
+
+"When the first of hers reached me (as it immediately did, for I was
+in town the whole time,) what I felt is, in the common phrase, not to
+be expressed; in a more simple one--perhaps too simple to raise any
+emotion, my feelings were very, very painful. Every line, every word
+was--in the hackneyed metaphor which their dear writer, were she here,
+would forbid--a dagger to my heart. To know that Marianne was in town
+was, in the same language, a thunderbolt. Thunderbolts and daggers!
+what a reproof would she have given me! her taste, her opinions--I
+believe they are better known to me than my own, and I am sure they
+are dearer."
+
+Elinor's heart, which had undergone many changes in the course of this
+extraordinary conversation, was now softened again;--yet she felt it
+her duty to check such ideas in her companion as the last.
+
+"This is not right, Mr. Willoughby. Remember that you are married.
+Relate only what in your conscience you think necessary for me to
+hear."
+
+"Marianne's note, by assuring me that I was still as dear to her as in
+former days, that in spite of the many, many weeks we had been
+separated, she was as constant in her own feelings, and as full of
+faith in the constancy of mine as ever, awakened all my remorse. I say
+awakened, because time and London, business and dissipation, had in
+some measure quieted it, and I had been growing a fine hardened
+villain, fancying myself indifferent to her, and choosing to fancy
+that she too must have become indifferent to me; talking to myself of
+our past attachment as a mere idle, trifling business, shrugging up my
+shoulders in proof of its being so, and silencing every reproach,
+overcoming every scruple, by secretly saying now and then, 'I shall be
+heartily glad to hear she is well married.' But this note made me know
+myself better. I felt that she was infinitely dearer to me than any
+other woman in the world, and that I was using her infamously. But
+every thing was then just settled between Miss Grey and me. To retreat
+was impossible. All that I had to do, was to avoid you both. I sent no
+answer to Marianne, intending by that to preserve myself from her
+farther notice; and for some time I was even determined not to call
+in Berkeley Street; but at last, judging it wiser to affect the air of
+a cool, common acquaintance than anything else, I watched you all
+safely out of the house one morning, and left my name."
+
+"Watched us out of the house!"
+
+"Even so. You would be surprised to hear how often I watched you, how
+often I was on the point of falling in with you. I have entered many a
+shop to avoid your sight, as the carriage drove by. Lodging as I did
+in Bond Street, there was hardly a day in which I did not catch a
+glimpse of one or other of you; and nothing but the most constant
+watchfulness on my side, a most invariably prevailing desire to keep
+out of your sight, could have separated us so long. I avoided the
+Middletons as much as possible, as well as everybody else who was
+likely to prove an acquaintance in common. Not aware of their being in
+town, however, I blundered on Sir John, I believe, the first day of
+his coming, and the day after I had called at Mrs. Jennings's. He
+asked me to a party, a dance at his house in the evening. Had he _not_
+told me as an inducement that you and your sister were to be there, I
+should have felt it too certain a thing, to trust myself near him. The
+next morning brought another short note from Marianne--still
+affectionate, open, artless, confiding--everything that could make
+_my_ conduct most hateful. I could not answer it. I tried--but could
+not frame a sentence. But I thought of her, I believe, every moment of
+the day. If you _can_ pity me, Miss Dashwood, pity my situation as it
+was _then._ With my head and heart full of your sister, I was forced
+to play the happy lover to another woman! Those three or four weeks
+were worse than all. Well, at last, as I need not tell you, you were
+forced on me; and what a sweet figure I cut! what an evening of agony
+it was! Marianne, beautiful as an angel on one side, calling me
+Willoughby in such a tone! Oh, God! holding out her hand to me, asking
+me for an explanation, with those bewitching eyes fixed in such
+speaking solicitude on my face! and Sophia, jealous as the devil on
+the other hand, looking all that was--Well, it does not signify; it is
+over now. Such an evening! I ran away from you all as soon as I could;
+but not before I had seen Marianne's sweet face as white as death.
+_That_ was the last, last look I ever had of her; the last manner in
+which she appeared to me. It was a horrid sight! yet when I thought
+of her to-day as really dying, it was a kind of comfort to me to
+imagine that I knew exactly how she would appear to those, who saw her
+last in this world. She was before me, constantly before me, as I
+travelled, in the same look and hue."
+
+[Illustration: "_I have entered many a shop to avoid your sight._"]
+
+A short pause of mutual thoughtfulness succeeded. Willoughby first
+rousing himself, broke it thus:
+
+"Well, let me make haste and be gone. Your sister is certainly better,
+certainly out of danger?"
+
+"We are assured of it."
+
+"Your poor mother, too!--doting on Marianne."
+
+"But the letter, Mr. Willoughby, your own letter; have you any thing
+to say about that?"
+
+"Yes, yes, _that_ in particular. Your sister wrote to me again, you
+know, the very next morning. You saw what she said. I was breakfasting
+at the Ellisons,--and her letter, with some others, was brought to me
+there from my lodgings. It happened to catch Sophia's eye before it
+caught mine;--and its size, the elegance of the paper, the hand-writing
+altogether, immediately gave her a suspicion. Some vague report had
+reached her before of my attachment to some young lady in Devonshire,
+and what had passed within her observation the preceding evening had
+marked who the young lady was, and made her more jealous than ever.
+Affecting that air of playfulness, therefore, which is delightful in a
+woman one loves, she opened the letter directly, and read its contents.
+She was well paid for her impudence. She read what made her wretched.
+Her wretchedness I could have borne, but her passion--her malice--at all
+events it must be appeased. And, in short, what do you think of my
+wife's style of letter-writing?--delicate--tender--truly feminine--was
+it not?"
+
+"Your wife! The letter was in your own hand-writing."
+
+"Yes, but I had only the credit of servilely copying such sentences as
+I was ashamed to put my name to. The original was all her own--her own
+happy thoughts and gentle diction. But what could I do! we were
+engaged, every thing in preparation, the day almost fixed--but I am
+talking like a fool. Preparation! Day! In honest words, her money was
+necessary to me, and in a situation like mine, any thing was to be
+done to prevent a rupture. And after all, what did it signify to my
+character in the opinion of Marianne and her friends, in what
+language my answer was couched? It must have been only to one end. My
+business was to declare myself a scoundrel, and whether I did it with
+a bow or a bluster was of little importance. 'I am ruined for ever in
+their opinion,' said I to myself; 'I am shut out for ever from their
+society, they already think me an unprincipled fellow, this letter
+will only make them think me a blackguard one.' Such were my
+reasonings, as, in a sort of desperate carelessness, I copied my
+wife's words, and parted with the last relics of Marianne. Her three
+notes--unluckily they were all in my pocket-book, or I should have
+denied their existence, and hoarded them for ever--I was forced to put
+them up, and could not even kiss them. And the lock of hair--that too
+I had always carried about me in the same pocket-book, which was now
+searched by Madam with the most ingratiating virulence,--the dear
+lock--all, every memento was torn from me."
+
+"You are very wrong, Mr. Willoughby, very blamable," said Elinor,
+while her voice, in spite of herself, betrayed her compassionate
+emotion; "you ought not to speak in this way, either of Mrs.
+Willoughby or my sister. You had made your own choice. It was not
+forced on you. Your wife has a claim to your politeness, to your
+respect, at least. She must be attached to you, or she would not have
+married you. To treat her with unkindness, to speak of her slightingly
+is no atonement to Marianne--nor can I suppose it a relief to your own
+conscience."
+
+"Do not talk to me of my wife," said he with a heavy sigh. "She does
+not deserve your compassion. She knew I had no regard for her when we
+married. Well, married we were, and came down to Combe Magna to be
+happy, and afterwards returned to town to be gay. And now do you pity
+me, Miss Dashwood? or have I said all this to no purpose? Am I,--be
+it only one degree,--am I less guilty in your opinion than I was
+before? My intentions were not always wrong. Have I explained away any
+part of my guilt?"
+
+"Yes, you have certainly removed something--a little. You have proved
+yourself, on the whole, less faulty than I had believed you. You have
+proved your heart less wicked, much less wicked. But I hardly
+know--the misery that you have inflicted--I hardly know what could
+have made it worse."
+
+"Will you repeat to your sister when she is recovered, what I have
+been telling you?--Let me be a little lightened too in her opinion as
+well as in yours. You tell me that she has forgiven me already. Let me
+be able to fancy that a better knowledge of my heart, and of my
+present feelings, will draw from her a more spontaneous, more natural,
+more gentle, less dignified, forgiveness. Tell her of my misery and my
+penitence--tell her that my heart was never inconstant to her, and if
+you will, that at this moment she is dearer to me than ever."
+
+"I will tell her all that is necessary to what may comparatively be
+called, your justification. But you have not explained to me the
+particular reason of your coming now, nor how you heard of her
+illness."
+
+"Last night, in Drury Lane lobby, I ran against Sir John Middleton,
+and when he saw who I was, for the first time these two months--he
+spoke to me. That he had cut me ever since my marriage, I had seen
+without surprise or resentment. Now, however, his good-natured,
+honest, stupid soul, full of indignation against me, and concern for
+your sister, could not resist the temptation of telling me what he
+knew ought to, though probably he did not think it _would_, vex me
+horridly. As bluntly as he could speak it, therefore, he told me that
+Marianne Dashwood was dying of a putrid fever at Cleveland--a letter
+that morning received from Mrs. Jennings declared her danger most
+imminent--the Palmers are all gone off in a fright, &c. I was too much
+shocked to be able to pass myself off as insensible even to the
+undiscerning Sir John. His heart was softened in seeing mine suffer;
+and so much of his ill-will was done away, that when we parted, he
+almost shook me by the hand while he reminded me of an old promise
+about a pointer puppy. What I felt on hearing that your sister was
+dying, and dying too, believing me the greatest villain upon earth,
+scorning, hating me in her latest moments--for how could I tell what
+horrid projects might not have been imputed? _One_ person I was sure
+would represent me as capable of any thing. What I felt was dreadful!
+My resolution was soon made, and at eight o'clock this morning I was
+in my carriage. Now you know all."
+
+Elinor made no answer. Her thoughts were silently fixed on the
+irreparable injury which too early an independence and its consequent
+habits of idleness, dissipation, and luxury, had made in the mind, the
+character, the happiness, of a man who, to every advantage of person
+and talents, united a disposition naturally open and honest, and a
+feeling, affectionate temper. The world had made him extravagant and
+vain--Extravagance and vanity had made him cold-hearted and selfish.
+Vanity, while seeking its own guilty triumph at the expense of
+another, had involved him in a real attachment, which extravagance, or
+at least its offspring, necessity, had required to be sacrificed. Each
+faulty propensity in leading him to evil, had led him likewise to
+punishment. The attachment, from which against honour, against
+feeling, against every better interest he had outwardly torn himself,
+now, when no longer allowable, governed every thought; and the
+connection, for the sake of which he had, with little scruple, left
+her sister to misery, was likely to prove a source of unhappiness to
+himself of a far more incurable nature. From a reverie of this kind
+she was recalled at the end of some minutes by Willoughby, who,
+rousing himself from a reverie at least equally painful, started up in
+preparation for going, and said--
+
+"There is no use in staying here; I must be off."
+
+"Are you going back to town?"
+
+"No--to Combe Magna. I have business there; from thence to town in a
+day or two. Good bye."
+
+He held out his hand. She could not refuse to give him hers;--he
+pressed it with affection.
+
+"And you _do_ think something better of me than you did?"--said he,
+letting it fall, and leaning against the mantelpiece as if forgetting
+he was to go.
+
+Elinor assured him that she did;--that she forgave, pitied, wished him
+well--was even interested in his happiness--and added some gentle
+counsel as to the behaviour most likely to promote it. His answer was
+not very encouraging.
+
+"As to that," said he, "I must rub through the world as well as I can.
+Domestic happiness is out of the question. If, however, I am allowed
+to think that you and yours feel an interest in my fate and actions,
+it may be the means--it may put me on my guard--at least, it may be
+something to live for. Marianne to be sure is lost to me for ever.
+Were I even by any blessed chance at liberty again--"
+
+Elinor stopped him with a reproof.
+
+"Well,"--he replied--"once more good bye. I shall now go away and live
+in dread of one event."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Your sister's marriage."
+
+"You are very wrong. She can never be more lost to you than she is
+now."
+
+"But she will be gained by some one else. And if that some one should
+be the very he whom, of all others, I could least bear--but I will not
+stay to rob myself of all your compassionate good-will, by showing that
+where I have most injured I can least forgive. Good bye,--God bless
+you!"
+
+And with these words, he almost ran out of the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV
+
+
+Elinor, for some time after he left her, for some time even after the
+sound of his carriage had died away, remained too much oppressed by a
+crowd of ideas, widely differing in themselves, but of which sadness
+was the general result, to think even of her sister.
+
+Willoughby, he, whom only half an hour ago she had abhorred as the
+most worthless of men, Willoughby, in spite of all his faults, excited
+a degree of commiseration for the sufferings produced by them, which
+made her think of him as now separated for ever from her family, with
+a tenderness, a regret, rather in proportion, as she soon acknowledged
+within herself--to his wishes than to his merits. She felt that his
+influence over her mind was heightened by circumstances which ought
+not in reason to have weight; by that person of uncommon attraction,
+that open, affectionate, and lively manner which it was no merit to
+possess; and by that still ardent love for Marianne, which it was not
+even innocent to indulge. But she felt that it was so, long, long
+before she could feel his influence less.
+
+When at last she returned to the unconscious Marianne, she found her
+just awaking, refreshed by so long and sweet a sleep to the extent of
+her hopes. Elinor's heart was full. The past, the present, the future,
+Willoughby's visit, Marianne's safety, and her mother's expected
+arrival, threw her altogether into an agitation of spirits which kept
+off every indication of fatigue, and made her only fearful of
+betraying herself to her sister. Short was the time, however, in which
+that fear could affect her, for within half an hour after Willoughby's
+leaving the house, she was again called down stairs by the sound of
+another carriage. Eager to save her mother from every unnecessary
+moment's horrible suspense, she ran immediately into the hall, and
+reached the outward door just in time to receive and support her as
+she entered it.
+
+Mrs. Dashwood, whose terror as they drew near the house had produced
+almost the conviction of Marianne's being no more, had no voice to
+inquire after her, no voice even for Elinor; but _she_, waiting
+neither for salutation nor inquiry, instantly gave the joyful relief;
+and her mother, catching it with all her usual warmth, was in a moment
+as much overcome by her happiness, as she had been before by her
+fears. She was supported into the drawing-room between her daughter
+and her friend; and there, shedding tears of joy, though still unable
+to speak, embraced Elinor again and again, turning from her at
+intervals to press Colonel Brandon's hand, with a look which spoke at
+once her gratitude, and her conviction of his sharing with herself in
+the bliss of the moment. He shared it, however, in a silence even
+greater than her own.
+
+As soon as Mrs. Dashwood had recovered herself, to see Marianne was
+her first desire; and in two minutes she was with her beloved child,
+rendered dearer to her than ever by absence, unhappiness, and danger.
+Elinor's delight, as she saw what each felt in the meeting, was only
+checked by an apprehension of its robbing Marianne of farther
+sleep;--but Mrs. Dashwood could be calm, could be even prudent, when
+the life of a child was at stake, and Marianne, satisfied in knowing
+her mother was near her, and conscious of being too weak for
+conversation, submitted readily to the silence and quiet prescribed by
+every nurse around her. Mrs. Dashwood _would_ sit up with her all
+night; and Elinor, in compliance with her mother's entreaty, went to
+bed. But the rest, which one night entirely sleepless, and many hours
+of the most wearing anxiety seemed to make requisite, was kept off by
+irritation of spirits. Willoughby, "poor Willoughby," as she now
+allowed herself to call him, was constantly in her thoughts; she would
+not but have heard his vindication for the world, and now blamed, now
+acquitted herself for having judged him so harshly before. But her
+promise of relating it to her sister was invariably painful. She
+dreaded the performance of it, dreaded what its effect on Marianne
+might be; doubted whether after such an explanation she could ever be
+happy with another; and for a moment wished Willoughby a widower.
+Then, remembering Colonel Brandon, reproved herself, felt that to
+_his_ sufferings and _his_ constancy far more than to his rival's, the
+reward of her sister was due, and wished any thing rather than Mrs.
+Willoughby's death.
+
+The shock of Colonel Brandon's errand at Barton had been much softened
+to Mrs. Dashwood by her own previous alarm; for so great was her
+uneasiness about Marianne, that she had already determined to set out
+for Cleveland on that very day, without waiting for any further
+intelligence, and had so far settled her journey before his arrival,
+that the Careys were then expected every moment to fetch Margaret
+away, as her mother was unwilling to take her where there might be
+infection.
+
+Marianne continued to mend every day, and the brilliant cheerfulness
+of Mrs. Dashwood's looks and spirits proved her to be, as she
+repeatedly declared herself, one of the happiest women in the world.
+Elinor could not hear the declaration, nor witness its proofs without
+sometimes wondering whether her mother ever recollected Edward. But
+Mrs. Dashwood, trusting to the temperate account of her own
+disappointment which Elinor had sent her, was led away by the
+exuberance of her joy to think only of what would increase it.
+Marianne was restored to her from a danger in which, as she now began
+to feel, her own mistaken judgment in encouraging the unfortunate
+attachment to Willoughby, had contributed to place her; and in her
+recovery she had yet another source of joy unthought of by Elinor. It
+was thus imparted to her, as soon as any opportunity of private
+conference between them occurred.
+
+"At last we are alone. My Elinor, you do not yet know all my
+happiness. Colonel Brandon loves Marianne. He has told me so himself."
+
+Her daughter, feeling by turns both pleased and pained, surprised and
+not surprised, was all silent attention.
+
+"You are never like me, dear Elinor, or I should wonder at your
+composure now. Had I sat down to wish for any possible good to my
+family, I should have fixed on Colonel Brandon's marrying one of you
+as the object most desirable. And I believe Marianne will be the most
+happy with him of the two."
+
+Elinor was half inclined to ask her reason for thinking so, because
+satisfied that none founded on an impartial consideration of their
+age, characters, or feelings, could be given;--but her mother must
+always be carried away by her imagination on any interesting subject,
+and therefore instead of an inquiry, she passed it off with a smile.
+
+"He opened his whole heart to me yesterday as we travelled. It came
+out quite unawares, quite undesignedly. I, you may well believe, could
+talk of nothing but my child;--he could not conceal his distress; I
+saw that it equalled my own, and he perhaps, thinking that mere
+friendship, as the world now goes, would not justify so warm a
+sympathy--or rather, not thinking at all, I suppose--giving way to
+irresistible feelings, made me acquainted with his earnest, tender,
+constant, affection for Marianne. He has loved her, my Elinor, ever
+since the first moment of seeing her."
+
+Here, however, Elinor perceived,--not the language, not the
+professions of Colonel Brandon, but the natural embellishments of her
+mother's active fancy, which fashioned every thing delightful to her
+as it chose.
+
+"His regard for her, infinitely surpassing anything that Willoughby
+ever felt or feigned, as much more warm, as more sincere or constant,
+which ever we are to call it, has subsisted through all the knowledge
+of dear Marianne's unhappy prepossession for that worthless young man!
+and without selfishness, without encouraging a hope! could he have
+seen her happy with another. Such a noble mind! such openness, such
+sincerity! No one can be deceived in _him._"
+
+"Colonel Brandon's character," said Elinor, "as an excellent man, is
+well established."
+
+"I know it is," replied her mother seriously, "or after such a
+warning, I should be the last to encourage such affection, or even to
+be pleased by it. But his coming for me as he did, with such active,
+such ready friendship, is enough to prove him one of the worthiest of
+men."
+
+"His character, however," answered Elinor, "does not rest on _one_ act
+of kindness, to which his affection for Marianne, were humanity out of
+the case, would have prompted him. To Mrs. Jennings, to the
+Middletons, he has been long and intimately known; they equally love
+and respect him; and even my own knowledge of him, though lately
+acquired, is very considerable; and so highly do I value and esteem
+him, that if Marianne can be happy with him, I shall be as ready as
+yourself to think our connection the greatest blessing to us in the
+world. What answer did you give him? Did you allow him to hope?"
+
+"Oh! my love, I could not then talk of hope to him or to myself.
+Marianne might at that moment be dying. But he did not ask for hope or
+encouragement. His was an involuntary confidence, an irrepressible
+effusion to a soothing friend, not an application to a parent. Yet
+after a time I _did_ say, for at first I was quite overcome, that if
+she lived, as I trusted she might, my greatest happiness would lie in
+promoting their marriage; and since our arrival, since our delightful
+security, I have repeated it to him more fully, have given him every
+encouragement in my power. Time, a very little time, I tell him, will
+do everything; Marianne's heart is not to be wasted for ever on such a
+man as Willoughby. His own merits must soon secure it."
+
+"To judge from the Colonel's spirits, however, you have not yet made
+him equally sanguine."
+
+"No. He thinks Marianne's affection too deeply rooted for any change
+in it under a great length of time, and even supposing her heart again
+free, is too diffident of himself to believe, that with such a
+difference of age and disposition he could ever attach her. There,
+however, he is quite mistaken. His age is only so much beyond hers as
+to be an advantage, as to make his character and principles
+fixed;--and his disposition, I am well convinced, is exactly the very
+one to make your sister happy. And his person, his manners too, are
+all in his favour. My partiality does not blind me; he certainly is
+not so handsome as Willoughby--but at the same time, there is
+something much more pleasing in his countenance. There was always a
+something,--if you remember,--in Willoughby's eyes at times, which I
+did not like."
+
+Elinor could _not_ remember it;--but her mother, without waiting for
+her assent, continued--
+
+"And his manners, the Colonel's manners are not only more pleasing to
+me than Willoughby's ever were, but they are of a kind I well know to
+be more solidly attaching to Marianne. Their gentleness, their
+genuine attention to other people, and their manly unstudied
+simplicity is much more accordant with her real disposition, than the
+liveliness--often artificial, and often ill-timed of the other. I am
+very sure myself, that had Willoughby turned out as really amiable, as
+he has proved himself the contrary, Marianne would yet never have been
+so happy with _him_ as she will be with Colonel Brandon."
+
+She paused. Her daughter could not quite agree with her, but her
+dissent was not heard, and therefore gave no offence.
+
+"At Delaford, she will be within an easy distance of me," added Mrs.
+Dashwood, "even if I remain at Barton; and in all probability,--for I
+hear it is a large village,--indeed there certainly _must_ be some
+small house or cottage close by, that would suit us quite as well as
+our present situation."
+
+Poor Elinor!--here was a new scheme for getting her to Delaford!--but
+her spirit was stubborn.
+
+"His fortune too!--for at my time of life you know, everybody cares
+about _that_;--and though I neither know nor desire to know, what it
+really is, I am sure it must be a good one."
+
+Here they were interrupted by the entrance of a third person, and
+Elinor withdrew to think it all over in private, to wish success to
+her friend, and yet in wishing it, to feel a pang for Willoughby.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI
+
+
+Marianne's illness, though weakening in its kind, had not been long
+enough to make her recovery slow; and with youth, natural strength,
+and her mother's presence in aid, it proceeded so smoothly as to
+enable her to remove, within four days after the arrival of the
+latter, into Mrs. Palmer's dressing-room. When there, at her own
+particular request, for she was impatient to pour forth her thanks to
+him for fetching her mother, Colonel Brandon was invited to visit her.
+
+His emotion on entering the room, in seeing her altered looks, and in
+receiving the pale hand which she immediately held out to him, was
+such, as, in Elinor's conjecture, must arise from something more than
+his affection for Marianne, or the consciousness of its being known to
+others; and she soon discovered in his melancholy eye and varying
+complexion as he looked at her sister, the probable recurrence of many
+past scenes of misery to his mind, brought back by that resemblance
+between Marianne and Eliza already acknowledged, and now strengthened
+by the hollow eye, the sickly skin, the posture of reclining weakness,
+and the warm acknowledgment of peculiar obligation.
+
+Mrs. Dashwood, not less watchful of what passed than her daughter, but
+with a mind very differently influenced, and therefore watching to
+very different effect, saw nothing in the Colonel's behaviour but what
+arose from the most simple and self-evident sensations, while in the
+actions and words of Marianne she persuaded herself to think that
+something more than gratitude already dawned.
+
+At the end of another day or two, Marianne growing visibly stronger
+every twelve hours, Mrs. Dashwood, urged equally by her own and her
+daughter's wishes, began to talk of removing to Barton. On _her_
+measures depended those of her two friends; Mrs. Jennings could not
+quit Cleveland during the Dashwoods' stay; and Colonel Brandon was
+soon brought, by their united request, to consider his own abode there
+as equally determinate, if not equally indispensable. At his and Mrs.
+Jennings's united request in return, Mrs. Dashwood was prevailed on to
+accept the use of his carriage on her journey back, for the better
+accommodation of her sick child; and the Colonel, at the joint
+invitation of Mrs. Dashwood and Mrs. Jennings, whose active
+good-nature made her friendly and hospitable for other people as well
+as herself, engaged with pleasure to redeem it by a visit at the
+cottage, in the course of a few weeks.
+
+The day of separation and departure arrived; and Marianne, after
+taking so particular and lengthened a leave of Mrs. Jennings, one so
+earnestly grateful, so full of respect and kind wishes as seemed due
+to her own heart from a secret acknowledgment of past inattention, and
+bidding Colonel Brandon farewell with a cordiality of a friend, was
+carefully assisted by him into the carriage, of which he seemed
+anxious that she should engross at least half. Mrs. Dashwood and
+Elinor then followed, and the others were left by themselves, to talk
+of the travellers, and feel their own dullness, till Mrs. Jennings
+was summoned to her chaise to take comfort in the gossip of her maid
+for the loss of her two young companions; and Colonel Brandon
+immediately afterwards took his solitary way to Delaford.
+
+The Dashwoods were two days on the road, and Marianne bore her journey
+on both, without essential fatigue. Every thing that the most zealous
+affection, the most solicitous care could do to render her
+comfortable, was the office of each watchful companion, and each found
+their reward in her bodily ease, and her calmness of spirits. To
+Elinor, the observation of the latter was particularly grateful. She,
+who had seen her week after week so constantly suffering, oppressed by
+anguish of heart which she had neither courage to speak of, nor
+fortitude to conceal, now saw with a joy, which no other could equally
+share, an apparent composure of mind, which, in being the result as
+she trusted of serious reflection, must eventually lead her to
+contentment and cheerfulness.
+
+As they approached Barton, indeed, and entered on scenes of which
+every field and every tree brought some peculiar, some painful
+recollection, she grew silent and thoughtful, and turning away her
+face from their notice, sat earnestly gazing through the window. But
+here, Elinor could neither wonder nor blame; and when she saw, as she
+assisted Marianne from the carriage, that she had been crying, she saw
+only an emotion too natural in itself to raise any thing less tender
+than pity, and in its unobtrusiveness entitled to praise. In the whole
+of her subsequent manner, she traced the direction of a mind awakened
+to reasonable exertion; for no sooner had they entered their common
+sitting-room, than Marianne turned her eyes around it with a look of
+resolute firmness, as if determined at once to accustom herself to the
+sight of every object with which the remembrance of Willoughby could
+be connected. She said little, but every sentence aimed at
+cheerfulness, and though a sigh sometimes escaped her, it never passed
+away without the atonement of a smile. After dinner she would try her
+piano-forte. She went to it; but the music on which her eye first
+rested was an opera, procured for her by Willoughby, containing some
+of their favourite duets, and bearing on its outward leaf her own name
+in his hand-writing. That would not do. She shook her head, put the
+music aside, and after running over the keys for a minute, complained
+of feebleness in her fingers, and closed the instrument again;
+declaring however with firmness as she did so, that she should in
+future practice much.
+
+The next morning produced no abatement in these happy symptoms. On the
+contrary, with a mind and body alike strengthened by rest, she looked
+and spoke with more genuine spirit, anticipating the pleasure of
+Margaret's return, and talking of the dear family party which would
+then be restored, of their mutual pursuits and cheerful society, as
+the only happiness worth a wish.
+
+"When the weather is settled, and I have recovered my strength," said
+she, "we will take long walks together every day. We will walk to the
+farm at the edge of the down, and see how the children go on; we will
+walk to Sir John's new plantations at Barton Cross, and the Abbeyland;
+and we will often go the old ruins of the Priory, and try to trace its
+foundations as far as we are told they once reached. I know we shall
+be happy. I know the summer will pass happily away. I mean never to be
+later in rising than six, and from that time till dinner I shall
+divide every moment between music and reading. I have formed my plan,
+and am determined to enter on a course of serious study. Our own
+library is too well known to me, to be resorted to for any thing
+beyond mere amusement. But there are many works well worth reading at
+the Park; and there are others of more modern production which I know
+I can borrow of Colonel Brandon. By reading only six hours a-day, I
+shall gain in the course of a twelvemonth a great deal of instruction
+which I now feel myself to want."
+
+Elinor honoured her for a plan which originated so nobly as this;
+though smiling to see the same eager fancy which had been leading her
+to the extreme of languid indolence and selfish repining, now at work
+in introducing excess into a scheme of such rational employment and
+virtuous self-control. Her smile however changed to a sigh when she
+remembered that promise to Willoughby was yet unfulfilled, and feared
+she had that to communicate which might again unsettle the mind of
+Marianne, and ruin at least for a time this fair prospect of busy
+tranquillity. Willing therefore to delay the evil hour, she resolved
+to wait till her sister's health were more secure, before she
+appointed it. But the resolution was made only to be broken.
+
+[Illustration: "_And see how the children go on._"]
+
+Marianne had been two or three days at home, before the weather was
+fine enough for an invalid like herself to venture out. But at last a
+soft, genial morning appeared; such as might tempt the daughter's
+wishes and the mother's confidence; and Marianne, leaning on Elinor's
+arm, was authorised to walk as long as she could without fatigue, in
+the lane before the house.
+
+The sisters set out at a pace, slow as the feebleness of Marianne in
+an exercise hitherto untried since her illness required;--and they had
+advanced only so far beyond the house as to admit a full view of the
+hill, the important hill behind, when pausing with her eyes turned
+towards it, Marianne calmly said--
+
+"There, exactly there,"--pointing with one hand, "on that projecting
+mound,--there I fell; and there I first saw Willoughby."
+
+Her voice sunk with the word, but presently reviving she added,
+
+"I am thankful to find that I can look with so little pain on the
+spot! shall we ever talk on that subject, Elinor?" hesitatingly it was
+said. "Or will it be wrong? I can talk of it now, I hope, as I ought
+to do."
+
+Elinor tenderly invited her to be open.
+
+"As for regret," said Marianne, "I have done with that, as far as _he_
+is concerned. I do not mean to talk to you of what my feelings have
+been for him, but what they are _now._ At present, if I could be
+satisfied on one point, if I could be allowed to think that he was not
+_always_ acting a part, not _always_ deceiving me; but above all, if I
+could be assured that he never was so _very_ wicked as my fears have
+sometimes fancied him, since the story of that unfortunate girl--"
+
+She stopped. Elinor joyfully treasured her words as she answered--
+
+"If you could be assured of that, you think you should be easy."
+
+"Yes. My peace of mind is doubly involved in it; for not only is it
+horrible to suspect a person, who has been what _he_ has been to _me_,
+of such designs, but what must it make me appear to myself? What in a
+situation like mine, but a most shamefully unguarded affection could
+expose me to--"
+
+"How then," asked her sister, "would you account for his behaviour?"
+
+"I would suppose him--Oh, how gladly would I suppose him!--only
+fickle, very, very fickle."
+
+Elinor said no more. She was debating within herself on the
+eligibility of beginning her story directly, or postponing it till
+Marianne were in stronger health; and they crept on for a few minutes
+in silence.
+
+"I am not wishing him too much good," said Marianne at last with a
+sigh, "when I wish his secret reflections may be no more unpleasant
+than my own. He will suffer enough in them."
+
+"Do you compare your conduct with his?"
+
+"No. I compare it with what it ought to have been; I compare it with
+yours."
+
+"Our situations have borne little resemblance."
+
+"They have borne more than our conduct. Do not, my dearest Elinor, let
+your kindness defend what I know your judgment must censure. My illness
+has made me think. It has given me leisure and calmness for serious
+recollection. Long before I was enough recovered to talk, I was
+perfectly able to reflect. I considered the past: I saw in my own
+behaviour, since the beginning of our acquaintance with him last autumn,
+nothing but a series of imprudence towards myself, and want of kindness
+to others. I saw that my own feelings had prepared my sufferings, and
+that my want of fortitude under them had almost led me to the grave. My
+illness, I well knew, had been entirely brought on by myself by such
+negligence of my own health, as I had felt even at the time to be wrong.
+Had I died, it would have been self-destruction. I did not know my
+danger till the danger was removed; but with such feelings as these
+reflections gave me, I wonder at my recovery,--wonder that the very
+eagerness of my desire to live, to have time for atonement to my God,
+and to you all, did not kill me at once. Had I died, in what peculiar
+misery should I have left you, my nurse, my friend, my sister! You, who
+had seen all the fretful selfishness of my latter days; who had known
+all the murmurings of my heart! How should I have lived in _your_
+remembrance! My mother too! How could you have consoled her! I cannot
+express my own abhorrence of myself. Whenever I looked towards the past,
+I saw some duty neglected, or some failing indulged. Every body seemed
+injured by me. The kindness, the unceasing kindness of Mrs. Jennings, I
+had repaid with ungrateful contempt. To the Middletons, to the Palmers,
+the Steeles, to every common acquaintance even, I had been insolent and
+unjust; with a heart hardened against their merits, and a temper
+irritated by their very attention. To John, to Fanny, yes, even to them,
+little as they deserve, I had given less than their due. But you, you
+above all, above my mother, had been wronged by me. I, and only I, knew
+your heart and its sorrows; yet to what did it influence me?--not to any
+compassion that could benefit you or myself. Your example was before me;
+but to what avail? Was I more considerate of you and your comfort? Did I
+imitate your forbearance, or lessen your restraints, by taking any part
+in those offices of general complaisance or particular gratitude which
+you had hitherto been left to discharge alone? No; not less when I knew
+you to be unhappy, than when I had believed you at ease, did I turn away
+from every exertion of duty or friendship; scarcely allowing sorrow to
+exist but with me, regretting only _that_ heart which had deserted and
+wronged me, and leaving you, for whom I professed an unbounded
+affection, to be miserable for my sake."
+
+Here ceased the rapid flow of her self-reproving spirit; and Elinor,
+impatient to soothe, though too honest to flatter, gave her instantly
+that praise and support which her frankness and her contrition so well
+deserved. Marianne pressed her hand and replied--
+
+"You are very good. The future must be my proof. I have laid down my
+plan, and if I am capable of adhering to it--my feelings shall be
+governed and my temper improved. They shall no longer worry others,
+nor torture myself. I shall now live solely for my family. You, my
+mother, and Margaret, must henceforth be all the world to me; you will
+share my affections entirely between you. From you, from my home, I
+shall never again have the smallest incitement to move; and if I do
+mix in other society, it will be only to show that my spirit is
+humbled, my heart amended, and that I can practise the civilities, the
+lesser duties of life, with gentleness and forbearance. As for
+Willoughby--to say that I shall soon or that I shall ever forget him,
+would be idle. His remembrance can be overcome by no change of
+circumstances or opinions. But it shall be regulated, it shall be
+checked by religion, by reason, by constant employment."
+
+She paused--and added in a low voice, "If I could but know _his_
+heart, everything would become easy."
+
+Elinor, who had now been for some time reflecting on the propriety or
+impropriety of speedily hazarding her narration, without feeling at
+all nearer decision than at first, heard this; and perceiving that as
+reflection did nothing, resolution must do all, soon found herself
+leading to the fact.
+
+She managed the recital, as she hoped, with address; prepared her
+anxious listener with caution; related simply and honestly the chief
+points on which Willoughby grounded his apology; did justice to his
+repentance, and softened only his protestations of present regard.
+Marianne said not a word. She trembled, her eyes were fixed on the
+ground, and her lips became whiter than even sickness had left them. A
+thousand inquiries sprung up from her heart, but she dared not urge
+one. She caught every syllable with panting eagerness; her hand,
+unknowingly to herself, closely pressed her sister's, and tears
+covered her cheeks.
+
+Elinor, dreading her being tired, led her towards home; and till they
+reached the door of the cottage, easily conjecturing what her
+curiosity must be though no question was suffered to speak it, talked
+of nothing but Willoughby, and their conversation together; and was
+carefully minute in every particular of speech and look, where
+minuteness could be safely indulged. As soon as they entered the
+house, Marianne with a kiss of gratitude and these two words just
+articulate through her tears, "Tell mama," withdrew from her sister
+and walked slowly up stairs. Elinor would not attempt to disturb a
+solitude so reasonable as what she now sought; and with a mind
+anxiously pre-arranging its result, and a resolution of reviving the
+subject again, should Marianne fail to do it, she turned into the
+parlour to fulfill her parting injunction.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII
+
+
+Mrs. Dashwood did not hear unmoved the vindication of her former
+favourite. She rejoiced in his being cleared from some part of his
+imputed guilt;--she was sorry for him;--she wished him happy. But the
+feelings of the past could not be recalled. Nothing could restore him
+with a faith unbroken--a character unblemished, to Marianne. Nothing
+could do away the knowledge of what the latter had suffered through
+his means, nor remove the guilt of his conduct towards Eliza. Nothing
+could replace him, therefore, in her former esteem, nor injure the
+interests of Colonel Brandon.
+
+Had Mrs. Dashwood, like her daughter, heard Willoughby's story from
+himself,--had she witnessed his distress, and been under the influence
+of his countenance and his manner, it is probable that her compassion
+would have been greater. But it was neither in Elinor's power, nor in
+her wish, to rouse such feelings in another, by her retailed
+explanation, as had at first been called forth in herself. Reflection
+had given calmness to her judgment, and sobered her own opinion of
+Willoughby's deserts; she wished, therefore, to declare only the
+simple truth, and lay open such facts as were really due to his
+character, without any embellishment of tenderness to lead the fancy
+astray.
+
+In the evening, when they were all three together, Marianne began
+voluntarily to speak of him again; but that it was not without an
+effort, the restless, unquiet thoughtfulness in which she had been for
+some time previously sitting, her rising colour, as she spoke, and her
+unsteady voice, plainly showed.
+
+"I wish to assure you both," said she, "that I see every thing--as you
+can desire me to do."
+
+Mrs. Dashwood would have interrupted her instantly with soothing
+tenderness, had not Elinor, who really wished to hear her sister's
+unbiased opinion, by an eager sign, engaged her silence. Marianne
+slowly continued--
+
+"It is a great relief to me--what Elinor told me this morning--I have
+now heard exactly what I wished to hear."--For some moments her voice
+was lost; but recovering herself, she added, and with greater calmness
+than before--"I am now perfectly satisfied, I wish for no change. I
+never could have been happy with him, after knowing, as sooner or
+later I must have known, all this. I should have had no confidence, no
+esteem. Nothing could have done it away to my feelings."
+
+"I know it--I know it," cried her mother. "Happy with a man of
+libertine practices!--With one who so injured the peace of the dearest
+of our friends, and the best of men!--No--my Marianne has not a heart
+to be made happy with such a man!--Her conscience, her sensitive
+conscience, would have felt all that the conscience of her husband
+ought to have felt."
+
+Marianne sighed, and repeated, "I wish for no change."
+
+"You consider the matter," said Elinor, "exactly as a good mind and a
+sound understanding must consider it; and I dare say you perceive, as
+well as myself, not only in this, but in many other circumstances,
+reason enough to be convinced that your marriage must have involved
+you in many certain troubles and disappointments, in which you would
+have been poorly supported by an affection, on his side, much less
+certain. Had you married, you must have been always poor. His
+expensiveness is acknowledged even by himself, and his whole conduct
+declares that self-denial is a word hardly understood by him. His
+demands and your inexperience together, on a small, very small income,
+must have brought on distresses which would not be the _less_ grievous
+to you, from having been entirely unknown and unthought of before.
+_Your_ sense of honour and honesty would have led you, I know, when
+aware of your situation, to attempt all the economy that would appear
+to you possible: and, perhaps, as long as your frugality retrenched
+only on your own comfort, you might have been suffered to practice it,
+but beyond that--and how little could the utmost of your single
+management do to stop the ruin which had begun before your marriage?
+beyond _that_, had you endeavoured, however reasonably, to abridge
+_his_ enjoyments, is it not to be feared, that instead of prevailing
+on feelings so selfish to consent to it, you would have lessened your
+own influence on his heart, and made him regret the connection which
+had involved him in such difficulties?"
+
+Marianne's lips quivered, and she repeated the word "Selfish?" in a
+tone that implied, "do you really think him selfish?"
+
+"The whole of his behaviour," replied Elinor, "from the beginning to
+the end of the affair, has been grounded on selfishness. It was
+selfishness which first made him sport with your affections; which
+afterwards, when his own were engaged, made him delay the confession
+of it, and which finally carried him from Barton. His own enjoyment,
+or his own ease, was, in every particular, his ruling principle."
+
+"It is very true. _My_ happiness never was his object."
+
+"At present," continued Elinor, "he regrets what he has done. And why
+does he regret it?--Because he finds it has not answered towards
+himself. It has not made him happy. His circumstances are now
+unembarrassed--he suffers from no evil of that kind; and he thinks
+only that he has married a woman of a less amiable temper than
+yourself. But does it follow that had he married you, he would have
+been happy?--The inconveniences would have been different. He would
+then have suffered under the pecuniary distresses which, because they
+are removed, he now reckons as nothing. He would have had a wife of
+whose temper he could make no complaint, but he would have been always
+necessitous--always poor; and probably would soon have learned to rank
+the innumerable comforts of a clear estate and good income as of far
+more importance, even to domestic happiness, than the mere temper of a
+wife."
+
+"I have not a doubt of it," said Marianne; "and I have nothing to
+regret--nothing but my own folly."
+
+"Rather say your mother's imprudence, my child," said Mrs. Dashwood;
+"_she_ must be answerable."
+
+Marianne would not let her proceed;--and Elinor, satisfied that each
+felt their own error, wished to avoid any survey of the past that
+might weaken her sister's spirits; she, therefore, pursuing the first
+subject, immediately continued--
+
+"One observation may, I think, be fairly drawn from the whole of the
+story--that all Willoughby's difficulties have arisen from the first
+offence against virtue, in his behaviour to Eliza Williams. That crime
+has been the origin of every lesser one, and of all his present
+discontents."
+
+Marianne assented most feelingly to the remark; and her mother was led
+by it to an enumeration of Colonel Brandon's injuries and merits, warm
+as friendship and design could unitedly dictate. Her daughter did not
+look, however, as if much of it were heard by her.
+
+Elinor, according to her expectation, saw on the two or three
+following days, that Marianne did not continue to gain strength as she
+had done; but while her resolution was unsubdued, and she still tried
+to appear cheerful and easy, her sister could safely trust to the
+effect of time upon her health.
+
+Margaret returned, and the family were again all restored to each
+other, again quietly settled at the cottage; and if not pursuing their
+usual studies with quite so much vigour as when they first came to
+Barton, at least planning a vigorous prosecution of them in future.
+
+Elinor grew impatient for some tidings of Edward. She had heard
+nothing of him since her leaving London, nothing new of his plans,
+nothing certain even of his present abode. Some letters had passed
+between her and her brother, in consequence of Marianne's illness; and
+in the first of John's, there had been this sentence:--"We know
+nothing of our unfortunate Edward, and can make no enquiries on so
+prohibited a subject, but conclude him to be still at Oxford"; which
+was all the intelligence of Edward afforded her by the correspondence,
+for his name was not even mentioned in any of the succeeding letters.
+She was not doomed, however, to be long in ignorance of his measures.
+
+Their man-servant had been sent one morning to Exeter on business; and
+when, as he waited at table, he had satisfied the inquiries of his
+mistress as to the event of his errand, this was his voluntary
+communication--
+
+"I suppose you know, ma'am, that Mr. Ferrars is married."
+
+Marianne gave a violent start, fixed her eyes upon Elinor, saw her
+turning pale, and fell back in her chair in hysterics. Mrs. Dashwood,
+whose eyes, as she answered the servant's inquiry, had intuitively
+taken the same direction, was shocked to perceive by Elinor's
+countenance how much she really suffered, and a moment afterwards,
+alike distressed by Marianne's situation, knew not on which child to
+bestow her principal attention.
+
+The servant, who saw only that Miss Marianne was taken ill, had sense
+enough to call one of the maids, who, with Mrs. Dashwood's assistance,
+supported her into the other room. By that time, Marianne was rather
+better, and her mother leaving her to the care of Margaret and the
+maid, returned to Elinor, who, though still much disordered, had so
+far recovered the use of her reason and voice as to be just
+beginning an inquiry of Thomas, as to the source of his intelligence.
+Mrs. Dashwood immediately took all that trouble on herself; and Elinor
+had the benefit of the information without the exertion of seeking it.
+
+[Illustration: "_I suppose you know, ma'am, that Mr. Ferrars is
+married._"]
+
+"Who told you that Mr. Ferrars was married, Thomas?"
+
+"I see Mr. Ferrars myself, ma'am, this morning in Exeter, and his lady
+too, Miss Steele as was. They was stopping in a chaise at the door of
+the New London Inn, as I went there with a message from Sally at the
+Park to her brother, who is one of the post-boys. I happened to look
+up as I went by the chaise, and so I see directly it was the youngest
+Miss Steele; so I took off my hat, and she knew me and called to me,
+and inquired after you, ma'am, and the young ladies, especially Miss
+Marianne, and bid me I should give her compliments and Mr. Ferrars's,
+their best compliments and service, and how sorry they was they had
+not time to come on and see you, but they was in a great hurry to go
+forwards, for they was going further down for a little while, but
+however, when they come back, they'd make sure to come and see you."
+
+"But did she tell you she was married, Thomas?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am. She smiled, and said how she had changed her name since
+she was in these parts. She was always a very affable and free-spoken
+young lady, and very civil behaved. So, I made free to wish her joy."
+
+"Was Mr. Ferrars in the carriage with her?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am, I just see him leaning back in it, but he did not look
+up;--he never was a gentleman much for talking."
+
+Elinor's heart could easily account for his not putting himself
+forward; and Mrs. Dashwood probably found the same explanation.
+
+"Was there no one else in the carriage?"
+
+"No, ma'am, only they two."
+
+"Do you know where they came from?"
+
+"They come straight from town, as Miss Lucy--Mrs. Ferrars told me."
+
+"And are they going farther westward?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am--but not to bide long. They will soon be back again, and
+then they'd be sure and call here."
+
+Mrs. Dashwood now looked at her daughter; but Elinor knew better than
+to expect them. She recognised the whole of Lucy in the message, and
+was very confident that Edward would never come near them. She
+observed in a low voice, to her mother, that they were probably going
+down to Mr. Pratt's, near Plymouth.
+
+Thomas's intelligence seemed over. Elinor looked as if she wished to
+hear more.
+
+"Did you see them off, before you came away?"
+
+"No, ma'am--the horses were just coming out, but I could not bide any
+longer; I was afraid of being late."
+
+"Did Mrs. Ferrars look well?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am, she said how she was very well; and to my mind she was
+always a very handsome young lady--and she seemed vastly contented."
+
+Mrs. Dashwood could think of no other question, and Thomas and the
+tablecloth, now alike needless, were soon afterwards dismissed.
+Marianne had already sent to say, that she should eat nothing more.
+Mrs. Dashwood's and Elinor's appetites were equally lost, and Margaret
+might think herself very well off, that with so much uneasiness as
+both her sisters had lately experienced, so much reason as they had
+often had to be careless of their meals, she had never been obliged to
+go without her dinner before.
+
+When the dessert and the wine were arranged, and Mrs. Dashwood and
+Elinor were left by themselves, they remained long together in a
+similarity of thoughtfulness and silence. Mrs. Dashwood feared to
+hazard any remark, and ventured not to offer consolation. She now
+found that she had erred in relying on Elinor's representation of
+herself; and justly concluded that every thing had been expressly
+softened at the time, to spare her from an increase of unhappiness,
+suffering as she then had suffered for Marianne. She found that she
+had been misled by the careful, the considerate attention of her
+daughter, to think the attachment, which once she had so well
+understood, much slighter in reality, than she had been wont to
+believe, or than it was now proved to be. She feared that under this
+persuasion she had been unjust, inattentive, nay, almost unkind, to
+her Elinor; that Marianne's affliction, because more acknowledged,
+more immediately before her, had too much engrossed her tenderness,
+and led her away to forget that in Elinor she might have a daughter
+suffering almost as much, certainly with less self-provocation, and
+greater fortitude.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII
+
+
+Elinor now found the difference between the expectation of an
+unpleasant event, however certain the mind may be told to consider it,
+and certainty itself. She now found, that in spite of herself, she had
+always admitted a hope, while Edward remained single, that something
+would occur to prevent his marrying Lucy; that some resolution of his
+own, some mediation of friends, or some more eligible opportunity of
+establishment for the lady, would arise to assist the happiness of
+all. But he was now married; and she condemned her heart for the
+lurking flattery, which so much heightened the pain of the
+intelligence.
+
+That he should be married soon, before (as she imagined) he could be
+in orders, and consequently before he could be in possession of the
+living, surprised her a little at first. But she soon saw how likely
+it was that Lucy, in her self-provident care, in her haste to secure
+him, should overlook every thing but the risk of delay. They were
+married, married in town, and now hastening down to her uncle's. What
+had Edward felt on being within four miles from Barton, on seeing her
+mother's servant, on hearing Lucy's message!
+
+They would soon, she supposed, be settled at
+Delaford;--Delaford,--that place in which so much conspired to give
+her an interest; which she wished to be acquainted with, and yet
+desired to avoid. She saw them in an instant in their parsonage-house;
+saw in Lucy, the active, contriving manager, uniting at once a desire
+of smart appearance with the utmost frugality, and ashamed to be
+suspected of half her economical practices; pursuing her own interest
+in every thought, courting the favour of Colonel Brandon, of Mrs.
+Jennings, and of every wealthy friend. In Edward, she knew not what
+she saw, nor what she wished to see. Happy or unhappy, nothing pleased
+her; she turned away her head from every sketch of him.
+
+Elinor flattered herself that some one of their connections in London
+would write to them to announce the event, and give farther
+particulars,--but day after day passed off, and brought no letter, no
+tidings. Though uncertain that any one were to blame, she found fault
+with every absent friend. They were all thoughtless or indolent.
+
+"When do you write to Colonel Brandon, ma'am?" was an inquiry which
+sprung from the impatience of her mind to have something going on.
+
+"I wrote to him, my love, last week, and rather expect to see, than to
+hear from him again. I earnestly pressed his coming to us, and should
+not be surprised to see him walk in today or tomorrow, or any day."
+
+This was gaining something, something to look forward to. Colonel
+Brandon must have some information to give.
+
+Scarcely had she so determined it, when the figure of a man on
+horseback drew her eyes to the window. He stopped at their gate. It
+was a gentleman, it was Colonel Brandon himself. Now she could hear
+more; and she trembled in expectation of it. But--it was _not_ Colonel
+Brandon--neither his air--nor his height. Were it possible, she must
+say it must be Edward. She looked again. He had just dismounted;--she
+could not be mistaken,--it _was_ Edward. She moved away and sat down.
+"He comes from Mr. Pratt's purposely to see us. I _will_ be calm, I
+_will_ be mistress of myself."
+
+In a moment she perceived that the others were likewise aware of the
+mistake. She saw her mother and Marianne change colour; saw them look
+at herself, and whisper a few sentences to each other. She would have
+given the world to be able to speak--and to make them understand that
+she hoped no coolness, no slight, would appear in their behaviour to
+him;--but she had no utterance, and was obliged to leave all to their
+own discretion.
+
+Not a syllable passed aloud. They all waited in silence for the
+appearance of their visitor. His footsteps were heard along the gravel
+path; in a moment he was in the passage, and in another he was before
+them.
+
+His countenance, as he entered the room, was not too happy, even for
+Elinor. His complexion was white with agitation, and he looked as if
+fearful of his reception, and conscious that he merited no kind one.
+Mrs. Dashwood, however, conforming, as she trusted, to the wishes of
+that daughter, by whom she then meant in the warmth of her heart to be
+guided in every thing, met him with a look of forced complacency, gave
+him her hand, and wished him joy.
+
+[Illustration: _It was Edward._]
+
+He coloured, and stammered out an unintelligible reply. Elinor's lips
+had moved with her mother's, and, when the moment of action was over,
+she wished that she had shaken hands with him too. But it was then too
+late, and with a countenance meaning to be open, she sat down again
+and talked of the weather.
+
+Marianne had retreated as much as possible out of sight, to conceal
+her distress; and Margaret, understanding some part, but not the whole
+of the case, thought it incumbent on her to be dignified, and
+therefore took a seat as far from him as she could, and maintained a
+strict silence.
+
+When Elinor had ceased to rejoice in the dryness of the season, a very
+awful pause took place. It was put an end to by Mrs. Dashwood, who
+felt obliged to hope that he had left Mrs. Ferrars very well. In a
+hurried manner, he replied in the affirmative.
+
+Another pause.
+
+Elinor resolving to exert herself, though fearing the sound of her own
+voice, now said--
+
+"Is Mrs. Ferrars at Longstaple?"
+
+"At Longstaple!" he replied, with an air of surprise. "No, my mother
+is in town."
+
+"I meant," said Elinor, taking up some work from the table, "to
+inquire for Mrs. _Edward_ Ferrars."
+
+She dared not look up;--but her mother and Marianne both turned their
+eyes on him. He coloured, seemed perplexed, looked doubtingly, and,
+after some hesitation, said,--
+
+"Perhaps you mean--my brother--you mean Mrs.--Mrs. _Robert_ Ferrars."
+
+"Mrs. Robert Ferrars!"--was repeated by Marianne and her mother in an
+accent of the utmost amazement;--and though Elinor could not speak,
+even _her_ eyes were fixed on him with the same impatient wonder. He
+rose from his seat, and walked to the window, apparently from not
+knowing what to do; took up a pair of scissors that lay there, and
+while spoiling both them and their sheath by cutting the latter to
+pieces as he spoke, said, in a hurried voice--
+
+"Perhaps you do not know--you may not have heard that my brother is
+lately married to--to the youngest--to Miss Lucy Steele."
+
+His words were echoed with unspeakable astonishment by all but
+Elinor, who sat with her head leaning over her work, in a state of
+such agitation as made her hardly know where she was.
+
+"Yes," said he, "they were married last week, and are now at Dawlish."
+
+Elinor could sit it no longer. She almost ran out of the room, and as
+soon as the door was closed, burst into tears of joy, which at first
+she thought would never cease. Edward, who had till then looked any
+where, rather than at her, saw her hurry away, and perhaps saw, or
+even heard, her emotion; for immediately afterwards he fell into a
+reverie, which no remarks, no inquiries, no affectionate address of
+Mrs. Dashwood could penetrate, and at last, without saying a word,
+quitted the room, and walked out towards the village, leaving the
+others in the greatest astonishment and perplexity on a change in his
+situation, so wonderful and so sudden,--a perplexity which they had no
+means of lessening but by their own conjectures.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX
+
+
+Unaccountable, however, as the circumstances of his release might
+appear to the whole family, it was certain that Edward was free; and
+to what purpose that freedom would be employed was easily
+pre-determined by all;--for after experiencing the blessings of _one_
+imprudent engagement, contracted without his mother's consent, as he
+had already done for more than four years, nothing less could be
+expected of him in the failure of _that_, than the immediate
+contraction of another.
+
+His errand at Barton, in fact, was a simple one. It was only to ask
+Elinor to marry him;--and considering that he was not altogether
+inexperienced in such a question, it might be strange that he should
+feel so uncomfortable in the present case as he really did, so much in
+need of encouragement and fresh air.
+
+How soon he had walked himself into the proper resolution, however,
+how soon an opportunity of exercising it occurred, in what manner he
+expressed himself, and how he was received, need not be particularly
+told. This only need be said;--that when they all sat down to table at
+four o'clock, about three hours after his arrival, he had secured his
+lady, engaged her mother's consent, and was not only in the rapturous
+profession of the lover, but, in the reality of reason and truth, one
+of the happiest of men. His situation indeed was more than commonly
+joyful. He had more than the ordinary triumph of accepted love to
+swell his heart, and raise his spirits. He was released without any
+reproach to himself, from an entanglement which had long formed his
+misery, from a woman whom he had long ceased to love; and elevated at
+once to that security with another, which he must have thought of
+almost with despair, as soon as he had learnt to consider it with
+desire. He was brought, not from doubt or suspense, but from misery to
+happiness; and the change was openly spoken in such a genuine,
+flowing, grateful cheerfulness, as his friends had never witnessed in
+him before.
+
+His heart was now open to Elinor, all its weaknesses, all its errors
+confessed, and his first boyish attachment to Lucy treated with all
+the philosophic dignity of twenty-four.
+
+"It was a foolish, idle inclination on my side," said he, "the
+consequence of ignorance of the world and want of employment. Had my
+mother given me some active profession when I was removed at eighteen
+from the care of Mr. Pratt, I think, nay, I am sure, it would never
+have happened; for though I left Longstaple with what I thought, at
+the time, a most unconquerable preference for his niece, yet had I
+then had any pursuit, any object to engage my time and keep me at a
+distance from her for a few months, I should very soon have outgrown
+the fancied attachment, especially by mixing more with the world, as
+in such case I must have done. But instead of having any thing to do,
+instead of having any profession chosen for me, or being allowed to
+choose any myself, I returned home to be completely idle; and for the
+first twelvemonth afterwards I had not even the nominal employment,
+which belonging to the university would have given me; for I was not
+entered at Oxford till I was nineteen. I had therefore nothing in the
+world to do, but to fancy myself in love; and as my mother did not
+make my home in every respect comfortable, as I had no friend, no
+companion in my brother, and disliked new acquaintance, it was not
+unnatural for me to be very often at Longstaple, where I always felt
+myself at home, and was always sure of a welcome; and accordingly I
+spent the greatest part of my time there from eighteen to nineteen:
+Lucy appeared everything that was amiable and obliging. She was pretty
+too--at least I thought so _then_; and I had seen so little of other
+women, that I could make no comparisons, and see no defects.
+Considering everything, therefore, I hope, foolish as our engagement
+was, foolish as it has since in every way been proved, it was not at
+the time an unnatural or an inexcusable piece of folly."
+
+The change which a few hours had wrought in the minds and the
+happiness of the Dashwoods, was such--so great--as promised them all,
+the satisfaction of a sleepless night. Mrs. Dashwood, too happy to be
+comfortable, knew not how to love Edward, nor praise Elinor enough,
+how to be enough thankful for his release without wounding his
+delicacy, nor how at once to give them leisure for unrestrained
+conversation together, and yet enjoy, as she wished, the sight and
+society of both.
+
+Marianne could speak _her_ happiness only by tears. Comparisons would
+occur--regrets would arise;--and her joy, though sincere as her love
+for her sister, was of a kind to give her neither spirits nor
+language.
+
+But Elinor--how are _her_ feelings to be described? From the moment of
+learning that Lucy was married to another, that Edward was free, to
+the moment of his justifying the hopes which had so instantly
+followed, she was every thing by turns but tranquil. But when the
+second moment had passed, when she found every doubt, every solicitude
+removed, compared her situation with what so lately it had been,--saw
+him honourably released from his former engagement,--saw him instantly
+profiting by the release, to address herself and declare an affection
+as tender, as constant as she had ever supposed it to be,--she was
+oppressed, she was overcome by her own felicity; and happily disposed
+as is the human mind to be easily familiarized with any change for the
+better, it required several hours to give sedateness to her spirits,
+or any degree of tranquillity to her heart.
+
+Edward was now fixed at the cottage at least for a week;--for whatever
+other claims might be made on him, it was impossible that less than a
+week should be given up to the enjoyment of Elinor's company, or
+suffice to say half that was to be said of the past, the present, and
+the future;--for though a very few hours spent in the hard labor of
+incessant talking will despatch more subjects than can really be in
+common between any two rational creatures, yet with lovers it is
+different. Between _them_ no subject is finished, no communication is
+even made, till it has been made at least twenty times over.
+
+Lucy's marriage, the unceasing and reasonable wonder among them all,
+formed of course one of the earliest discussions of the lovers;--and
+Elinor's particular knowledge of each party made it appear to her in
+every view, as one of the most extraordinary and unaccountable
+circumstances she had ever heard. How they could be thrown together,
+and by what attraction Robert could be drawn on to marry a girl, of
+whose beauty she had herself heard him speak without any
+admiration,--a girl too already engaged to his brother, and on whose
+account that brother had been thrown off by his family--it was beyond
+her comprehension to make out. To her own heart it was a delightful
+affair, to her imagination it was even a ridiculous one, but to her
+reason, her judgment, it was completely a puzzle.
+
+Edward could only attempt an explanation by supposing, that, perhaps,
+at first accidentally meeting, the vanity of the one had been so
+worked on by the flattery of the other, as to lead by degrees to all
+the rest. Elinor remembered what Robert had told her in Harley Street,
+of his opinion of what his own mediation in his brother's affairs
+might have done, if applied to in time. She repeated it to Edward.
+
+"_That_ was exactly like Robert," was his immediate observation. "And
+_that_," he presently added, "might perhaps be in _his_ head when the
+acquaintance between them first began. And Lucy perhaps at first might
+think only of procuring his good offices in my favour. Other designs
+might afterward arise."
+
+How long it had been carrying on between them, however, he was equally
+at a loss with herself to make out; for at Oxford, where he had
+remained for choice ever since his quitting London, he had had no
+means of hearing of her but from herself, and her letters to the very
+last were neither less frequent, nor less affectionate than usual. Not
+the smallest suspicion, therefore, had ever occurred to prepare him
+for what followed;--and when at last it burst on him in a letter from
+Lucy herself, he had been for some time, he believed, half stupified
+between the wonder, the horror, and the joy of such a deliverance. He
+put the letter into Elinor's hands.
+
+"DEAR SIR,
+
+     "Being very sure I have long lost your affections, I have
+     thought myself at liberty to bestow my own on another, and
+     have no doubt of being as happy with him as I once used to
+     think I might be with you; but I scorn to accept a hand
+     while the heart was another's. Sincerely wish you happy in
+     your choice, and it shall not be my fault if we are not
+     always good friends, as our near relationship now makes
+     proper. I can safely say I owe you no ill-will, and am sure
+     you will be too generous to do us any ill offices. Your
+     brother has gained my affections entirely, and as we could
+     not live without one another, we are just returned from the
+     altar, and are now on our way to Dawlish for a few weeks,
+     which place your dear brother has great curiosity to see,
+     but thought I would first trouble you with these few lines,
+     and shall always remain--
+
+     "Your sincere well-wisher, friend, and sister,
+
+     "LUCY FERRARS."
+
+     "I have burnt all your letters, and will return your picture
+     the first opportunity. Please to destroy my scrawls--but the
+     ring with my hair you are very welcome to keep."
+
+Elinor read and returned it without any comment.
+
+"I will not ask your opinion of it as a composition," said Edward.
+"For worlds would not I have had a letter of hers seen by _you_ in
+former days. In a sister it is bad enough, but in a wife! how I have
+blushed over the pages of her writing! and I believe I may say that
+since the first half year of our foolish business this is the only
+letter I ever received from her, of which the substance made me any
+amends for the defect of the style."
+
+"However it may have come about," said Elinor, after a pause,--"they
+are certainly married. And your mother has brought on herself a most
+appropriate punishment. The independence she settled on Robert,
+through resentment against you, has put it in his power to make his
+own choice; and she has actually been bribing one son with a thousand
+a-year, to do the very deed which she disinherited the other for
+intending to do. She will hardly be less hurt, I suppose, by Robert's
+marrying Lucy, than she would have been by your marrying her."
+
+"She will be more hurt by it, for Robert always was her favourite. She
+will be more hurt by it, and on the same principle will forgive him
+much sooner."
+
+In what state the affair stood at present between them, Edward knew
+not, for no communication with any of his family had yet been
+attempted by him. He had quitted Oxford within four and twenty hours
+after Lucy's letter arrived, and with only one object before him, the
+nearest road to Barton, had had no leisure to form any scheme of
+conduct, with which that road did not hold the most intimate
+connection. He could do nothing till he were assured of his fate with
+Miss Dashwood; and by his rapidity in seeking _that_ fate, it is to be
+supposed, in spite of the jealousy with which he had once thought of
+Colonel Brandon, in spite of the modesty with which he rated his own
+deserts, and the politeness with which he talked of his doubts, he did
+not, upon the whole, expect a very cruel reception. It was his
+business, however, to say that he _did_, and he said it very prettily.
+What he might say on the subject a twelvemonth after, must be referred
+to the imagination of husbands and wives.
+
+That Lucy had certainly meant to deceive, to go off with a flourish of
+malice against him in her message by Thomas, was perfectly clear to
+Elinor; and Edward himself, now thoroughly enlightened on her
+character, had no scruple in believing her capable of the utmost
+meanness of wanton ill-nature. Though his eyes had been long opened,
+even before his acquaintance with Elinor began, to her ignorance and a
+want of liberality in some of her opinions, they had been equally
+imputed, by him, to her want of education; and till her last letter
+reached him, he had always believed her to be a well-disposed,
+good-hearted girl, and thoroughly attached to himself. Nothing but
+such a persuasion could have prevented his putting an end to an
+engagement, which, long before the discovery of it laid him open to
+his mother's anger, had been a continual source of disquiet and regret
+to him.
+
+"I thought it my duty," said he, "independent of my feelings, to give
+her the option of continuing the engagement or not, when I was
+renounced by my mother, and stood to all appearance without a friend
+in the world to assist me. In such a situation as that, where there
+seemed nothing to tempt the avarice or the vanity of any living
+creature, how could I suppose, when she so earnestly, so warmly
+insisted on sharing my fate, whatever it might be, that any thing but
+the most disinterested affection was her inducement? And even now, I
+cannot comprehend on what motive she acted, or what fancied advantage
+it could be to her, to be fettered to a man for whom she had not the
+smallest regard, and who had only two thousand pounds in the world.
+She could not foresee that Colonel Brandon would give me a living."
+
+"No; but she might suppose that something would occur in your favour;
+that your own family might in time relent. And at any rate, she lost
+nothing by continuing the engagement, for she has proved that it
+fettered neither her inclination nor her actions. The connection was
+certainly a respectable one, and probably gained her consideration
+among her friends; and, if nothing more advantageous occurred, it
+would be better for her to marry _you_ than be single."
+
+Edward was, of course, immediately convinced that nothing could have
+been more natural than Lucy's conduct, nor more self-evident than the
+motive of it.
+
+Elinor scolded him, harshly as ladies always scold the imprudence
+which compliments themselves, for having spent so much time with them
+at Norland, when he must have felt his own inconstancy.
+
+"Your behaviour was certainly very wrong," said she; "because--to say
+nothing of my own conviction, our relations were all led away by it to
+fancy and expect _what_, as you were _then_ situated, could never be."
+
+He could only plead an ignorance of his own heart, and a mistaken
+confidence in the force of his engagement.
+
+"I was simple enough to think, that because my _faith_ was plighted to
+another, there could be no danger in my being with you; and that the
+consciousness of my engagement was to keep my heart as safe and sacred
+as my honour. I felt that I admired you, but I told myself it was only
+friendship; and till I began to make comparisons between yourself and
+Lucy, I did not know how far I was got. After that, I suppose, I _was_
+wrong in remaining so much in Sussex, and the arguments with which I
+reconciled myself to the expediency of it, were no better than
+these:--The danger is my own; I am doing no injury to anybody but
+myself."
+
+Elinor smiled, and shook her head.
+
+Edward heard with pleasure of Colonel Brandon's being expected at the
+Cottage, as he really wished not only to be better acquainted with
+him, but to have an opportunity of convincing him that he no longer
+resented his giving him the living of Delaford--"Which, at present,"
+said he, "after thanks so ungraciously delivered as mine were on the
+occasion, he must think I have never forgiven him for offering."
+
+_Now_ he felt astonished himself that he had never yet been to the
+place. But so little interest had he taken in the matter, that he owed
+all his knowledge of the house, garden, and glebe, extent of the
+parish, condition of the land, and rate of the tithes, to Elinor
+herself, who had heard so much of it from Colonel Brandon, and heard
+it with so much attention, as to be entirely mistress of the subject.
+
+One question after this only remained undecided, between them, one
+difficulty only was to be overcome. They were brought together by
+mutual affection, with the warmest approbation of their real friends;
+their intimate knowledge of each other seemed to make their happiness
+certain--and they only wanted something to live upon. Edward had two
+thousand pounds, and Elinor one, which, with Delaford living, was all
+that they could call their own; for it was impossible that Mrs.
+Dashwood should advance anything; and they were neither of them quite
+enough in love to think that three hundred and fifty pounds a-year
+would supply them with the comforts of life.
+
+Edward was not entirely without hopes of some favourable change in his
+mother towards him; and on _that_ he rested for the residue of their
+income. But Elinor had no such dependence; for since Edward would
+still be unable to marry Miss Morton, and his choosing herself had
+been spoken of in Mrs. Ferrars's flattering language as only a lesser
+evil than his choosing Lucy Steele, she feared that Robert's offence
+would serve no other purpose than to enrich Fanny.
+
+About four days after Edward's arrival Colonel Brandon appeared, to
+complete Mrs. Dashwood's satisfaction, and to give her the dignity of
+having, for the first time since her living at Barton, more company
+with her than her house would hold. Edward was allowed to retain the
+privilege of first comer, and Colonel Brandon therefore walked every
+night to his old quarters at the Park; from whence he usually returned
+in the morning, early enough to interrupt the lovers' first
+tÍte-‡-tÍte before breakfast.
+
+A three weeks' residence at Delaford, where, in his evening hours at
+least, he had little to do but to calculate the disproportion between
+thirty-six and seventeen, brought him to Barton in a temper of mind
+which needed all the improvement in Marianne's looks, all the kindness
+of her welcome, and all the encouragement of her mother's language, to
+make it cheerful. Among such friends, however, and such flattery, he
+did revive. No rumour of Lucy's marriage had yet reached him:--he knew
+nothing of what had passed; and the first hours of his visit were
+consequently spent in hearing and in wondering. Every thing was
+explained to him by Mrs. Dashwood, and he found fresh reason to
+rejoice in what he had done for Mr. Ferrars, since eventually it
+promoted the interest of Elinor.
+
+It would be needless to say, that the gentlemen advanced in the good
+opinion of each other, as they advanced in each other's acquaintance,
+for it could not be otherwise. Their resemblance in good principles
+and good sense, in disposition and manner of thinking, would probably
+have been sufficient to unite them in friendship, without any other
+attraction; but their being in love with two sisters, and two sisters
+fond of each other, made that mutual regard inevitable and immediate,
+which might otherwise have waited the effect of time and judgment.
+
+The letters from town, which a few days before would have made every
+nerve in Elinor's body thrill with transport, now arrived to be read
+with less emotion than mirth. Mrs. Jennings wrote to tell the
+wonderful tale, to vent her honest indignation against the jilting
+girl, and pour forth her compassion towards poor Mr. Edward, who, she
+was sure, had quite doted upon the worthless hussy, and was now, by
+all accounts, almost broken-hearted, at Oxford. "I do think," she
+continued, "nothing was ever carried on so sly; for it was but two
+days before Lucy called and sat a couple of hours with me. Not a soul
+suspected anything of the matter, not even Nancy, who, poor soul! came
+crying to me the day after, in a great fright for fear of Mrs.
+Ferrars, as well as not knowing how to get to Plymouth; for Lucy it
+seems borrowed all her money before she went off to be married, on
+purpose we suppose to make a show with, and poor Nancy had not seven
+shillings in the world;--so I was very glad to give her five guineas
+to take her down to Exeter, where she thinks of staying three or four
+weeks with Mrs. Burgess, in hopes, as I tell her, to fall in with the
+Doctor again. And I must say that Lucy's crossness not to take them
+along with them in the chaise is worse than all. Poor Mr. Edward! I
+cannot get him out of my head, but you must send for him to Barton,
+and Miss Marianne must try to comfort him."
+
+Mr. Dashwood's strains were more solemn. Mrs. Ferrars was the most
+unfortunate of women--poor Fanny had suffered agonies of
+sensibility--and he considered the existence of each, under such a
+blow, with grateful wonder. Robert's offence was unpardonable, but
+Lucy's was infinitely worse. Neither of them were ever again to be
+mentioned to Mrs. Ferrars; and even, if she might hereafter be induced
+to forgive her son, his wife should never be acknowledged as her
+daughter, nor be permitted to appear in her presence. The secrecy with
+which everything had been carried on between them, was rationally
+treated as enormously heightening the crime, because, had any
+suspicion of it occurred to the others, proper measures would have
+been taken to prevent the marriage; and he called on Elinor to join
+with him in regretting that Lucy's engagement with Edward had not
+rather been fulfilled, than that she should thus be the means of
+spreading misery farther in the family. He thus continued:--
+
+"Mrs. Ferrars has never yet mentioned Edward's name, which does not
+surprise us; but, to our great astonishment, not a line has been
+received from him on the occasion. Perhaps, however, he is kept silent
+by his fear of offending, and I shall, therefore, give him a hint, by
+a line to Oxford, that his sister and I both think a letter of proper
+submission from him, addressed perhaps to Fanny, and by her shown to
+her mother, might not be taken amiss; for we all know the tenderness
+of Mrs. Ferrars's heart, and that she wishes for nothing so much as to
+be on good terms with her children."
+
+This paragraph was of some importance to the prospects and conduct of
+Edward. It determined him to attempt a reconciliation, though not
+exactly in the manner pointed out by their brother and sister.
+
+"A letter of proper submission!" repeated he; "would they have me beg
+my mother's pardon for Robert's ingratitude to _her_, and breach of
+honour to _me_? I can make no submission. I am grown neither humble
+nor penitent by what has passed. I am grown very happy; but that would
+not interest. I know of no submission that _is_ proper for me to
+make."
+
+"You may certainly ask to be forgiven," said Elinor, "because you have
+offended;--and I should think you might _now_ venture so far as to
+profess some concern for having ever formed the engagement which drew
+on you your mother's anger."
+
+He agreed that he might.
+
+"And when she has forgiven you, perhaps a little humility may be
+convenient while acknowledging a second engagement, almost as
+imprudent in _her_ eyes as the first."
+
+He had nothing to urge against it, but still resisted the idea of a
+letter of proper submission; and therefore, to make it easier to him,
+as he declared a much greater willingness to make mean concessions by
+word of mouth than on paper, it was resolved that, instead of writing
+to Fanny, he should go to London, and personally entreat her good
+offices in his favour. "And if they really _do_ interest themselves,"
+said Marianne, in her new character of candour, "in bringing about a
+reconciliation, I shall think that even John and Fanny are not
+entirely without merit."
+
+After a visit on Colonel Brandon's side of only three or four days,
+the two gentlemen quitted Barton together. They were to go immediately
+to Delaford, that Edward might have some personal knowledge of his
+future home, and assist his patron and friend in deciding on what
+improvements were needed to it; and from thence, after staying there a
+couple of nights, he was to proceed on his journey to town.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L
+
+
+After a proper resistance on the part of Mrs. Ferrars, just so violent
+and so steady as to preserve her from that reproach which she always
+seemed fearful of incurring, the reproach of being too amiable, Edward
+was admitted to her presence, and pronounced to be again her son.
+
+Her family had of late been exceedingly fluctuating. For many years of
+her life she had had two sons; but the crime and annihilation of
+Edward a few weeks ago, had robbed her of one; the similar
+annihilation of Robert had left her for a fortnight without any; and
+now, by the resuscitation of Edward, she had one again.
+
+In spite of his being allowed once more to live, however, he did not
+feel the continuance of his existence secure, till he had revealed his
+present engagement; for the publication of that circumstance, he
+feared, might give a sudden turn to his constitution, and carry him
+off as rapidly as before. With apprehensive caution therefore it was
+revealed, and he was listened to with unexpected calmness. Mrs.
+Ferrars at first reasonably endeavoured to dissuade him from marrying
+Miss Dashwood, by every argument in her power; told him, that in Miss
+Morton he would have a woman of higher rank and larger fortune; and
+enforced the assertion, by observing that Miss Morton was the daughter
+of a nobleman with thirty thousand pounds, while Miss Dashwood was
+only the daughter of a private gentleman with no more than _three_;
+but when she found that, though perfectly admitting the truth of her
+representation, he was by no means inclined to be guided by it, she
+judged it wisest, from the experience of the past, to submit; and
+therefore, after such an ungracious delay as she owed to her own
+dignity, and as served to prevent every suspicion of good-will, she
+issued her decree of consent to the marriage of Edward and Elinor.
+
+What she would engage to do towards augmenting their income was next
+to be considered; and here it plainly appeared, that though Edward was
+now her only son, he was by no means her eldest; for while Robert was
+inevitably endowed with a thousand pounds a-year, not the smallest
+objection was made against Edward's taking orders for the sake of two
+hundred and fifty at the utmost; nor was anything promised either for
+the present or in future, beyond the ten thousand pounds, which had
+been given with Fanny.
+
+It was as much, however, as was desired, and more than was expected,
+by Edward and Elinor; and Mrs. Ferrars herself, by her shuffling
+excuses, seemed the only person surprised at her not giving more.
+
+With an income quite sufficient to their wants thus secured to them,
+they had nothing to wait for after Edward was in possession of the
+living, but the readiness of the house, to which Colonel Brandon, with
+an eager desire for the accommodation of Elinor, was making
+considerable improvements; and after waiting some time for their
+completion, after experiencing, as usual, a thousand disappointments
+and delays from the unaccountable dilatoriness of the workmen, Elinor,
+as usual, broke through the first positive resolution of not marrying
+till every thing was ready, and the ceremony took place in Barton
+church early in the autumn.
+
+The first month after their marriage was spent with their friend at
+the Mansion-house; from whence they could superintend the progress of
+the Parsonage, and direct every thing as they liked on the
+spot;--could choose papers, project shrubberies, and invent a sweep.
+Mrs. Jennings's prophecies, though rather jumbled together, were
+chiefly fulfilled; for she was able to visit Edward and his wife in
+their Parsonage by Michaelmas, and she found in Elinor and her
+husband, as she really believed, one of the happiest couples in the
+world. They had in fact nothing to wish for, but the marriage of
+Colonel Brandon and Marianne, and rather better pasturage for their
+cows.
+
+They were visited on their first settling by almost all their
+relations and friends. Mrs. Ferrars came to inspect the happiness
+which she was almost ashamed of having authorised; and even the
+Dashwoods were at the expense of a journey from Sussex to do them
+honour.
+
+"I will not say that I am disappointed, my dear sister," said John, as
+they were walking together one morning before the gates of Delaford
+House, "_that_ would be saying too much, for certainly you have been
+one of the most fortunate young women in the world, as it is. But, I
+confess, it would give me great pleasure to call Colonel Brandon
+brother. His property here, his place, his house,--every thing is in
+such respectable and excellent condition! And his woods,--I have not
+seen such timber any where in Dorsetshire, as there is now standing in
+Delaford Hanger! And though, perhaps, Marianne may not seem exactly
+the person to attract him, yet I think it would altogether be
+advisable for you to have them now frequently staying with you, for as
+Colonel Brandon seems a great deal at home, nobody can tell what may
+happen; for, when people are much thrown together, and see little of
+anybody else,--and it will always be in your power to set her off to
+advantage, and so forth. In short, you may as well give her a chance;
+You understand me."
+
+But though Mrs. Ferrars _did_ come to see them, and always treated
+them with the make-believe of decent affection, they were never
+insulted by her real favour and preference. _That_ was due to the
+folly of Robert, and the cunning of his wife; and it was earned by
+them before many months had passed away. The selfish sagacity of the
+latter, which had at first drawn Robert into the scrape, was the
+principal instrument of his deliverance from it; for her respectful
+humility, assiduous attentions, and endless flatteries, as soon as the
+smallest opening was given for their exercise, reconciled Mrs. Ferrars
+to his choice, and re-established him completely in her favour.
+
+[Illustration: _Everything in such respectable condition_]
+
+The whole of Lucy's behaviour in the affair, and the prosperity which
+crowned it, therefore, may be held forth as a most encouraging
+instance of what an earnest, an unceasing attention to self-interest,
+however its progress may be apparently obstructed, will do in securing
+every advantage of fortune, with no other sacrifice than that of time
+and conscience. When Robert first sought her acquaintance, and
+privately visited her in Bartlett's Buildings, it was only with the
+view imputed to him by his brother. He merely meant to persuade her to
+give up the engagement; and as there could be nothing to overcome but
+the affection of both, he naturally expected that one or two
+interviews would settle the matter. In that point, however, and that
+only, he erred; for though Lucy soon gave him hopes that his eloquence
+would convince her in _time_, another visit, another conversation, was
+always wanted to produce this conviction. Some doubts always lingered
+in her mind when they parted, which could only be removed by another
+half hour's discourse with himself. His attendance was by this means
+secured, and the rest followed in course. Instead of talking of
+Edward, they came gradually to talk only of Robert,--a subject on
+which he had always more to say than on any other, and in which she
+soon betrayed an interest even equal to his own; and in short, it
+became speedily evident to both, that he had entirely supplanted his
+brother. He was proud of his conquest, proud of tricking Edward, and
+very proud of marrying privately without his mother's consent. What
+immediately followed is known. They passed some months in great
+happiness at Dawlish; for she had many relations and old acquaintances
+to cut--and he drew several plans for magnificent cottages; and from
+thence returning to town, procured the forgiveness of Mrs. Ferrars, by
+the simple expedient of asking it, which, at Lucy's instigation, was
+adopted. The forgiveness, at first, indeed, as was reasonable,
+comprehended only Robert; and Lucy, who had owed his mother no duty
+and therefore could have transgressed none, still remained some weeks
+longer unpardoned. But perseverance in humility of conduct and
+messages, in self-condemnation for Robert's offence, and gratitude for
+the unkindness she was treated with, procured her in time the haughty
+notice which overcame her by its graciousness, and led soon
+afterwards, by rapid degrees, to the highest state of affection and
+influence. Lucy became as necessary to Mrs. Ferrars, as either Robert
+or Fanny; and while Edward was never cordially forgiven for having
+once intended to marry her, and Elinor, though superior to her in
+fortune and birth, was spoken of as an intruder, _she_ was in every
+thing considered, and always openly acknowledged, to be a favourite
+child. They settled in town, received very liberal assistance from
+Mrs. Ferrars, were on the best terms imaginable with the Dashwoods;
+and setting aside the jealousies and ill-will continually subsisting
+between Fanny and Lucy, in which their husbands of course took a part,
+as well as the frequent domestic disagreements between Robert and Lucy
+themselves, nothing could exceed the harmony in which they all lived
+together.
+
+What Edward had done to forfeit the right of eldest son, might have
+puzzled many people to find out; and what Robert had done to succeed
+to it, might have puzzled them still more. It was an arrangement,
+however, justified in its effects, if not in its cause; for nothing
+ever appeared in Robert's style of living or of talking to give a
+suspicion of his regretting the extent of his income, as either
+leaving his brother too little, or bringing himself too much;--and if
+Edward might be judged from the ready discharge of his duties in every
+particular, from an increasing attachment to his wife and his home,
+and from the regular cheerfulness of his spirits, he might be supposed
+no less contented with his lot, no less free from every wish of an
+exchange.
+
+Elinor's marriage divided her as little from her family as could well
+be contrived, without rendering the cottage at Barton entirely
+useless, for her mother and sisters spent much more than half their
+time with her. Mrs. Dashwood was acting on motives of policy as well
+as pleasure in the frequency of her visits at Delaford; for her wish
+of bringing Marianne and Colonel Brandon together was hardly less
+earnest, though rather more liberal than what John had expressed. It
+was now her darling object. Precious as was the company of her
+daughter to her, she desired nothing so much as to give up its
+constant enjoyment to her valued friend; and to see Marianne settled
+at the mansion-house was equally the wish of Edward and Elinor. They
+each felt his sorrows, and their own obligations, and Marianne, by
+general consent, was to be the reward of all.
+
+With such a confederacy against her--with a knowledge so intimate of
+his goodness--with a conviction of his fond attachment to herself,
+which at last, though long after it was observable to everybody
+else--burst on her--what could she do?
+
+Marianne Dashwood was born to an extraordinary fate. She was born to
+discover the falsehood of her own opinions, and to counteract, by her
+conduct, her most favourite maxims. She was born to overcome an
+affection formed so late in life as at seventeen, and with no
+sentiment superior to strong esteem and lively friendship, voluntarily
+to give her hand to another!--and _that_ other, a man who had suffered
+no less than herself under the event of a former attachment, whom, two
+years before, she had considered too old to be married,--and who still
+sought the constitutional safeguard of a flannel waistcoat!
+
+But so it was. Instead of falling a sacrifice to an irresistible
+passion, as once she had fondly flattered herself with expecting,
+instead of remaining even for ever with her mother, and finding her
+only pleasures in retirement and study, as afterwards in her more calm
+and sober judgment she had determined on,--she found herself at
+nineteen, submitting to new attachments, entering on new duties,
+placed in a new home, a wife, the mistress of a family, and the
+patroness of a village.
+
+Colonel Brandon was now as happy, as all those who best loved him,
+believed he deserved to be;--in Marianne he was consoled for every
+past affliction;--her regard and her society restored his mind to
+animation, and his spirits to cheerfulness; and that Marianne found
+her own happiness in forming his, was equally the persuasion and
+delight of each observing friend. Marianne could never love by halves;
+and her whole heart became, in time, as much devoted to her husband,
+as it had once been to Willoughby.
+
+Willoughby could not hear of her marriage without a pang; and his
+punishment was soon afterwards complete in the voluntary forgiveness
+of Mrs. Smith, who, by stating his marriage with a woman of character,
+as the source of her clemency, gave him reason for believing that had
+he behaved with honour towards Marianne, he might at once have been
+happy and rich. That his repentance of misconduct, which thus brought
+its own punishment, was sincere, need not be doubted;--nor that he
+long thought of Colonel Brandon with envy, and of Marianne with
+regret. But that he was for ever inconsolable, that he fled from
+society, or contracted an habitual gloom of temper, or died of a
+broken heart, must not be depended on--for he did neither. He lived to
+exert, and frequently to enjoy himself. His wife was not always out of
+humour, nor his home always uncomfortable; and in his breed of horses
+and dogs, and in sporting of every kind, he found no inconsiderable
+degree of domestic felicity.
+
+For Marianne, however, in spite of his incivility in surviving her
+loss, he always retained that decided regard which interested him in
+every thing that befell her, and made her his secret standard of
+perfection in woman; and many a rising beauty would be slighted by him
+in after-days as bearing no comparison with Mrs. Brandon.
+
+Mrs. Dashwood was prudent enough to remain at the cottage, without
+attempting a removal to Delaford; and fortunately for Sir John and
+Mrs. Jennings, when Marianne was taken from them, Margaret had
+reached an age highly suitable for dancing, and not very ineligible
+for being supposed to have a lover.
+
+Between Barton and Delaford, there was that constant communication
+which strong family affection would naturally dictate;--and among the
+merits and the happiness of Elinor and Marianne, let it not be ranked
+as the least considerable, that though sisters, and living almost
+within sight of each other, they could live without disagreement
+between themselves, or producing coolness between their husbands.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
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diff --git a/data/train/austen_-_emma.txt b/data/train/austen_-_emma.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Emma, by Jane Austen
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Emma
+
+Author: Jane Austen
+
+Release Date: August, 1994  [Etext #158]
+Posting Date: January 21, 2010
+Last Updated: March 10, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EMMA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer
+
+
+
+
+
+EMMA
+
+By Jane Austen
+
+
+
+
+VOLUME I
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home
+and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of
+existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very
+little to distress or vex her.
+
+She was the youngest of the two daughters of a most affectionate,
+indulgent father; and had, in consequence of her sister's marriage, been
+mistress of his house from a very early period. Her mother had died
+too long ago for her to have more than an indistinct remembrance of
+her caresses; and her place had been supplied by an excellent woman as
+governess, who had fallen little short of a mother in affection.
+
+Sixteen years had Miss Taylor been in Mr. Woodhouse's family, less as a
+governess than a friend, very fond of both daughters, but particularly
+of Emma. Between _them_ it was more the intimacy of sisters. Even before
+Miss Taylor had ceased to hold the nominal office of governess, the
+mildness of her temper had hardly allowed her to impose any restraint;
+and the shadow of authority being now long passed away, they had been
+living together as friend and friend very mutually attached, and Emma
+doing just what she liked; highly esteeming Miss Taylor's judgment, but
+directed chiefly by her own.
+
+The real evils, indeed, of Emma's situation were the power of having
+rather too much her own way, and a disposition to think a little too
+well of herself; these were the disadvantages which threatened alloy to
+her many enjoyments. The danger, however, was at present so unperceived,
+that they did not by any means rank as misfortunes with her.
+
+Sorrow came--a gentle sorrow--but not at all in the shape of any
+disagreeable consciousness.--Miss Taylor married. It was Miss Taylor's
+loss which first brought grief. It was on the wedding-day of this
+beloved friend that Emma first sat in mournful thought of any
+continuance. The wedding over, and the bride-people gone, her father and
+herself were left to dine together, with no prospect of a third to cheer
+a long evening. Her father composed himself to sleep after dinner, as
+usual, and she had then only to sit and think of what she had lost.
+
+The event had every promise of happiness for her friend. Mr. Weston
+was a man of unexceptionable character, easy fortune, suitable age, and
+pleasant manners; and there was some satisfaction in considering
+with what self-denying, generous friendship she had always wished and
+promoted the match; but it was a black morning's work for her. The want
+of Miss Taylor would be felt every hour of every day. She recalled her
+past kindness--the kindness, the affection of sixteen years--how she had
+taught and how she had played with her from five years old--how she had
+devoted all her powers to attach and amuse her in health--and how
+nursed her through the various illnesses of childhood. A large debt of
+gratitude was owing here; but the intercourse of the last seven
+years, the equal footing and perfect unreserve which had soon followed
+Isabella's marriage, on their being left to each other, was yet a
+dearer, tenderer recollection. She had been a friend and companion such
+as few possessed: intelligent, well-informed, useful, gentle, knowing
+all the ways of the family, interested in all its concerns, and
+peculiarly interested in herself, in every pleasure, every scheme of
+hers--one to whom she could speak every thought as it arose, and who had
+such an affection for her as could never find fault.
+
+How was she to bear the change?--It was true that her friend was going
+only half a mile from them; but Emma was aware that great must be the
+difference between a Mrs. Weston, only half a mile from them, and a Miss
+Taylor in the house; and with all her advantages, natural and domestic,
+she was now in great danger of suffering from intellectual solitude. She
+dearly loved her father, but he was no companion for her. He could not
+meet her in conversation, rational or playful.
+
+The evil of the actual disparity in their ages (and Mr. Woodhouse had
+not married early) was much increased by his constitution and habits;
+for having been a valetudinarian all his life, without activity of
+mind or body, he was a much older man in ways than in years; and though
+everywhere beloved for the friendliness of his heart and his amiable
+temper, his talents could not have recommended him at any time.
+
+Her sister, though comparatively but little removed by matrimony, being
+settled in London, only sixteen miles off, was much beyond her daily
+reach; and many a long October and November evening must be struggled
+through at Hartfield, before Christmas brought the next visit from
+Isabella and her husband, and their little children, to fill the house,
+and give her pleasant society again.
+
+Highbury, the large and populous village, almost amounting to a town,
+to which Hartfield, in spite of its separate lawn, and shrubberies, and
+name, did really belong, afforded her no equals. The Woodhouses
+were first in consequence there. All looked up to them. She had many
+acquaintance in the place, for her father was universally civil, but
+not one among them who could be accepted in lieu of Miss Taylor for even
+half a day. It was a melancholy change; and Emma could not but sigh over
+it, and wish for impossible things, till her father awoke, and made it
+necessary to be cheerful. His spirits required support. He was a nervous
+man, easily depressed; fond of every body that he was used to, and
+hating to part with them; hating change of every kind. Matrimony, as the
+origin of change, was always disagreeable; and he was by no means yet
+reconciled to his own daughter's marrying, nor could ever speak of her
+but with compassion, though it had been entirely a match of affection,
+when he was now obliged to part with Miss Taylor too; and from his
+habits of gentle selfishness, and of being never able to suppose that
+other people could feel differently from himself, he was very much
+disposed to think Miss Taylor had done as sad a thing for herself as for
+them, and would have been a great deal happier if she had spent all the
+rest of her life at Hartfield. Emma smiled and chatted as cheerfully
+as she could, to keep him from such thoughts; but when tea came, it was
+impossible for him not to say exactly as he had said at dinner,
+
+“Poor Miss Taylor!--I wish she were here again. What a pity it is that
+Mr. Weston ever thought of her!”
+
+“I cannot agree with you, papa; you know I cannot. Mr. Weston is such
+a good-humoured, pleasant, excellent man, that he thoroughly deserves
+a good wife;--and you would not have had Miss Taylor live with us for
+ever, and bear all my odd humours, when she might have a house of her
+own?”
+
+“A house of her own!--But where is the advantage of a house of her own?
+This is three times as large.--And you have never any odd humours, my
+dear.”
+
+“How often we shall be going to see them, and they coming to see us!--We
+shall be always meeting! _We_ must begin; we must go and pay wedding
+visit very soon.”
+
+“My dear, how am I to get so far? Randalls is such a distance. I could
+not walk half so far.”
+
+“No, papa, nobody thought of your walking. We must go in the carriage,
+to be sure.”
+
+“The carriage! But James will not like to put the horses to for such a
+little way;--and where are the poor horses to be while we are paying our
+visit?”
+
+“They are to be put into Mr. Weston's stable, papa. You know we have
+settled all that already. We talked it all over with Mr. Weston last
+night. And as for James, you may be very sure he will always like going
+to Randalls, because of his daughter's being housemaid there. I only
+doubt whether he will ever take us anywhere else. That was your doing,
+papa. You got Hannah that good place. Nobody thought of Hannah till you
+mentioned her--James is so obliged to you!”
+
+“I am very glad I did think of her. It was very lucky, for I would not
+have had poor James think himself slighted upon any account; and I am
+sure she will make a very good servant: she is a civil, pretty-spoken
+girl; I have a great opinion of her. Whenever I see her, she always
+curtseys and asks me how I do, in a very pretty manner; and when you
+have had her here to do needlework, I observe she always turns the lock
+of the door the right way and never bangs it. I am sure she will be an
+excellent servant; and it will be a great comfort to poor Miss Taylor
+to have somebody about her that she is used to see. Whenever James goes
+over to see his daughter, you know, she will be hearing of us. He will
+be able to tell her how we all are.”
+
+Emma spared no exertions to maintain this happier flow of ideas, and
+hoped, by the help of backgammon, to get her father tolerably
+through the evening, and be attacked by no regrets but her own. The
+backgammon-table was placed; but a visitor immediately afterwards walked
+in and made it unnecessary.
+
+Mr. Knightley, a sensible man about seven or eight-and-thirty, was not
+only a very old and intimate friend of the family, but particularly
+connected with it, as the elder brother of Isabella's husband. He lived
+about a mile from Highbury, was a frequent visitor, and always welcome,
+and at this time more welcome than usual, as coming directly from their
+mutual connexions in London. He had returned to a late dinner, after
+some days' absence, and now walked up to Hartfield to say that all were
+well in Brunswick Square. It was a happy circumstance, and animated
+Mr. Woodhouse for some time. Mr. Knightley had a cheerful manner, which
+always did him good; and his many inquiries after “poor Isabella” and
+her children were answered most satisfactorily. When this was over, Mr.
+Woodhouse gratefully observed, “It is very kind of you, Mr. Knightley,
+to come out at this late hour to call upon us. I am afraid you must have
+had a shocking walk.”
+
+“Not at all, sir. It is a beautiful moonlight night; and so mild that I
+must draw back from your great fire.”
+
+“But you must have found it very damp and dirty. I wish you may not
+catch cold.”
+
+“Dirty, sir! Look at my shoes. Not a speck on them.”
+
+“Well! that is quite surprising, for we have had a vast deal of rain
+here. It rained dreadfully hard for half an hour while we were at
+breakfast. I wanted them to put off the wedding.”
+
+“By the bye--I have not wished you joy. Being pretty well aware of what
+sort of joy you must both be feeling, I have been in no hurry with my
+congratulations; but I hope it all went off tolerably well. How did you
+all behave? Who cried most?”
+
+“Ah! poor Miss Taylor! 'Tis a sad business.”
+
+“Poor Mr. and Miss Woodhouse, if you please; but I cannot possibly say
+'poor Miss Taylor.' I have a great regard for you and Emma; but when it
+comes to the question of dependence or independence!--At any rate, it
+must be better to have only one to please than two.”
+
+“Especially when _one_ of those two is such a fanciful, troublesome
+creature!” said Emma playfully. “That is what you have in your head, I
+know--and what you would certainly say if my father were not by.”
+
+“I believe it is very true, my dear, indeed,” said Mr. Woodhouse, with a
+sigh. “I am afraid I am sometimes very fanciful and troublesome.”
+
+“My dearest papa! You do not think I could mean _you_, or suppose Mr.
+Knightley to mean _you_. What a horrible idea! Oh no! I meant only
+myself. Mr. Knightley loves to find fault with me, you know--in a
+joke--it is all a joke. We always say what we like to one another.”
+
+Mr. Knightley, in fact, was one of the few people who could see faults
+in Emma Woodhouse, and the only one who ever told her of them: and
+though this was not particularly agreeable to Emma herself, she knew
+it would be so much less so to her father, that she would not have him
+really suspect such a circumstance as her not being thought perfect by
+every body.
+
+“Emma knows I never flatter her,” said Mr. Knightley, “but I meant no
+reflection on any body. Miss Taylor has been used to have two persons
+to please; she will now have but one. The chances are that she must be a
+gainer.”
+
+“Well,” said Emma, willing to let it pass--“you want to hear about
+the wedding; and I shall be happy to tell you, for we all behaved
+charmingly. Every body was punctual, every body in their best looks: not
+a tear, and hardly a long face to be seen. Oh no; we all felt that we
+were going to be only half a mile apart, and were sure of meeting every
+day.”
+
+“Dear Emma bears every thing so well,” said her father. “But, Mr.
+Knightley, she is really very sorry to lose poor Miss Taylor, and I am
+sure she _will_ miss her more than she thinks for.”
+
+Emma turned away her head, divided between tears and smiles. “It
+is impossible that Emma should not miss such a companion,” said Mr.
+Knightley. “We should not like her so well as we do, sir, if we could
+suppose it; but she knows how much the marriage is to Miss Taylor's
+advantage; she knows how very acceptable it must be, at Miss Taylor's
+time of life, to be settled in a home of her own, and how important to
+her to be secure of a comfortable provision, and therefore cannot allow
+herself to feel so much pain as pleasure. Every friend of Miss Taylor
+must be glad to have her so happily married.”
+
+“And you have forgotten one matter of joy to me,” said Emma, “and a very
+considerable one--that I made the match myself. I made the match, you
+know, four years ago; and to have it take place, and be proved in the
+right, when so many people said Mr. Weston would never marry again, may
+comfort me for any thing.”
+
+Mr. Knightley shook his head at her. Her father fondly replied, “Ah!
+my dear, I wish you would not make matches and foretell things, for
+whatever you say always comes to pass. Pray do not make any more
+matches.”
+
+“I promise you to make none for myself, papa; but I must, indeed, for
+other people. It is the greatest amusement in the world! And after such
+success, you know!--Every body said that Mr. Weston would never marry
+again. Oh dear, no! Mr. Weston, who had been a widower so long, and who
+seemed so perfectly comfortable without a wife, so constantly occupied
+either in his business in town or among his friends here, always
+acceptable wherever he went, always cheerful--Mr. Weston need not spend
+a single evening in the year alone if he did not like it. Oh no! Mr.
+Weston certainly would never marry again. Some people even talked of a
+promise to his wife on her deathbed, and others of the son and the
+uncle not letting him. All manner of solemn nonsense was talked on the
+subject, but I believed none of it.
+
+“Ever since the day--about four years ago--that Miss Taylor and I met
+with him in Broadway Lane, when, because it began to drizzle, he darted
+away with so much gallantry, and borrowed two umbrellas for us from
+Farmer Mitchell's, I made up my mind on the subject. I planned the match
+from that hour; and when such success has blessed me in this instance,
+dear papa, you cannot think that I shall leave off match-making.”
+
+“I do not understand what you mean by 'success,'” said Mr. Knightley.
+“Success supposes endeavour. Your time has been properly and delicately
+spent, if you have been endeavouring for the last four years to bring
+about this marriage. A worthy employment for a young lady's mind! But
+if, which I rather imagine, your making the match, as you call it, means
+only your planning it, your saying to yourself one idle day, 'I think it
+would be a very good thing for Miss Taylor if Mr. Weston were to marry
+her,' and saying it again to yourself every now and then afterwards, why
+do you talk of success? Where is your merit? What are you proud of? You
+made a lucky guess; and _that_ is all that can be said.”
+
+“And have you never known the pleasure and triumph of a lucky guess?--I
+pity you.--I thought you cleverer--for, depend upon it a lucky guess is
+never merely luck. There is always some talent in it. And as to my
+poor word 'success,' which you quarrel with, I do not know that I am so
+entirely without any claim to it. You have drawn two pretty pictures;
+but I think there may be a third--a something between the do-nothing and
+the do-all. If I had not promoted Mr. Weston's visits here, and given
+many little encouragements, and smoothed many little matters, it might
+not have come to any thing after all. I think you must know Hartfield
+enough to comprehend that.”
+
+“A straightforward, open-hearted man like Weston, and a rational,
+unaffected woman like Miss Taylor, may be safely left to manage their
+own concerns. You are more likely to have done harm to yourself, than
+good to them, by interference.”
+
+“Emma never thinks of herself, if she can do good to others,” rejoined
+Mr. Woodhouse, understanding but in part. “But, my dear, pray do not
+make any more matches; they are silly things, and break up one's family
+circle grievously.”
+
+“Only one more, papa; only for Mr. Elton. Poor Mr. Elton! You like Mr.
+Elton, papa,--I must look about for a wife for him. There is nobody in
+Highbury who deserves him--and he has been here a whole year, and has
+fitted up his house so comfortably, that it would be a shame to have him
+single any longer--and I thought when he was joining their hands to-day,
+he looked so very much as if he would like to have the same kind office
+done for him! I think very well of Mr. Elton, and this is the only way I
+have of doing him a service.”
+
+“Mr. Elton is a very pretty young man, to be sure, and a very good young
+man, and I have a great regard for him. But if you want to shew him any
+attention, my dear, ask him to come and dine with us some day. That will
+be a much better thing. I dare say Mr. Knightley will be so kind as to
+meet him.”
+
+“With a great deal of pleasure, sir, at any time,” said Mr. Knightley,
+laughing, “and I agree with you entirely, that it will be a much better
+thing. Invite him to dinner, Emma, and help him to the best of the fish
+and the chicken, but leave him to chuse his own wife. Depend upon it, a
+man of six or seven-and-twenty can take care of himself.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Mr. Weston was a native of Highbury, and born of a respectable family,
+which for the last two or three generations had been rising into
+gentility and property. He had received a good education, but, on
+succeeding early in life to a small independence, had become indisposed
+for any of the more homely pursuits in which his brothers were engaged,
+and had satisfied an active, cheerful mind and social temper by entering
+into the militia of his county, then embodied.
+
+Captain Weston was a general favourite; and when the chances of his
+military life had introduced him to Miss Churchill, of a great Yorkshire
+family, and Miss Churchill fell in love with him, nobody was surprized,
+except her brother and his wife, who had never seen him, and who were
+full of pride and importance, which the connexion would offend.
+
+Miss Churchill, however, being of age, and with the full command of her
+fortune--though her fortune bore no proportion to the family-estate--was
+not to be dissuaded from the marriage, and it took place, to the
+infinite mortification of Mr. and Mrs. Churchill, who threw her off with
+due decorum. It was an unsuitable connexion, and did not produce much
+happiness. Mrs. Weston ought to have found more in it, for she had a
+husband whose warm heart and sweet temper made him think every thing due
+to her in return for the great goodness of being in love with him;
+but though she had one sort of spirit, she had not the best. She had
+resolution enough to pursue her own will in spite of her brother,
+but not enough to refrain from unreasonable regrets at that brother's
+unreasonable anger, nor from missing the luxuries of her former home.
+They lived beyond their income, but still it was nothing in comparison
+of Enscombe: she did not cease to love her husband, but she wanted at
+once to be the wife of Captain Weston, and Miss Churchill of Enscombe.
+
+Captain Weston, who had been considered, especially by the Churchills,
+as making such an amazing match, was proved to have much the worst of
+the bargain; for when his wife died, after a three years' marriage, he
+was rather a poorer man than at first, and with a child to maintain.
+From the expense of the child, however, he was soon relieved. The boy
+had, with the additional softening claim of a lingering illness of his
+mother's, been the means of a sort of reconciliation; and Mr. and Mrs.
+Churchill, having no children of their own, nor any other young creature
+of equal kindred to care for, offered to take the whole charge of the
+little Frank soon after her decease. Some scruples and some reluctance
+the widower-father may be supposed to have felt; but as they were
+overcome by other considerations, the child was given up to the care and
+the wealth of the Churchills, and he had only his own comfort to seek,
+and his own situation to improve as he could.
+
+A complete change of life became desirable. He quitted the militia and
+engaged in trade, having brothers already established in a good way in
+London, which afforded him a favourable opening. It was a concern which
+brought just employment enough. He had still a small house in Highbury,
+where most of his leisure days were spent; and between useful occupation
+and the pleasures of society, the next eighteen or twenty years of his
+life passed cheerfully away. He had, by that time, realised an easy
+competence--enough to secure the purchase of a little estate adjoining
+Highbury, which he had always longed for--enough to marry a woman as
+portionless even as Miss Taylor, and to live according to the wishes of
+his own friendly and social disposition.
+
+It was now some time since Miss Taylor had begun to influence his
+schemes; but as it was not the tyrannic influence of youth on youth,
+it had not shaken his determination of never settling till he could
+purchase Randalls, and the sale of Randalls was long looked forward to;
+but he had gone steadily on, with these objects in view, till they were
+accomplished. He had made his fortune, bought his house, and obtained
+his wife; and was beginning a new period of existence, with every
+probability of greater happiness than in any yet passed through. He had
+never been an unhappy man; his own temper had secured him from that,
+even in his first marriage; but his second must shew him how delightful
+a well-judging and truly amiable woman could be, and must give him the
+pleasantest proof of its being a great deal better to choose than to be
+chosen, to excite gratitude than to feel it.
+
+He had only himself to please in his choice: his fortune was his own;
+for as to Frank, it was more than being tacitly brought up as his
+uncle's heir, it had become so avowed an adoption as to have him assume
+the name of Churchill on coming of age. It was most unlikely, therefore,
+that he should ever want his father's assistance. His father had no
+apprehension of it. The aunt was a capricious woman, and governed her
+husband entirely; but it was not in Mr. Weston's nature to imagine that
+any caprice could be strong enough to affect one so dear, and, as he
+believed, so deservedly dear. He saw his son every year in London, and
+was proud of him; and his fond report of him as a very fine young man
+had made Highbury feel a sort of pride in him too. He was looked on as
+sufficiently belonging to the place to make his merits and prospects a
+kind of common concern.
+
+Mr. Frank Churchill was one of the boasts of Highbury, and a lively
+curiosity to see him prevailed, though the compliment was so little
+returned that he had never been there in his life. His coming to visit
+his father had been often talked of but never achieved.
+
+Now, upon his father's marriage, it was very generally proposed, as a
+most proper attention, that the visit should take place. There was not a
+dissentient voice on the subject, either when Mrs. Perry drank tea with
+Mrs. and Miss Bates, or when Mrs. and Miss Bates returned the visit. Now
+was the time for Mr. Frank Churchill to come among them; and the hope
+strengthened when it was understood that he had written to his new
+mother on the occasion. For a few days, every morning visit in Highbury
+included some mention of the handsome letter Mrs. Weston had received.
+“I suppose you have heard of the handsome letter Mr. Frank Churchill
+has written to Mrs. Weston? I understand it was a very handsome letter,
+indeed. Mr. Woodhouse told me of it. Mr. Woodhouse saw the letter, and
+he says he never saw such a handsome letter in his life.”
+
+It was, indeed, a highly prized letter. Mrs. Weston had, of course,
+formed a very favourable idea of the young man; and such a pleasing
+attention was an irresistible proof of his great good sense, and a most
+welcome addition to every source and every expression of congratulation
+which her marriage had already secured. She felt herself a most
+fortunate woman; and she had lived long enough to know how fortunate
+she might well be thought, where the only regret was for a partial
+separation from friends whose friendship for her had never cooled, and
+who could ill bear to part with her.
+
+She knew that at times she must be missed; and could not think, without
+pain, of Emma's losing a single pleasure, or suffering an hour's ennui,
+from the want of her companionableness: but dear Emma was of no feeble
+character; she was more equal to her situation than most girls would
+have been, and had sense, and energy, and spirits that might be hoped
+would bear her well and happily through its little difficulties and
+privations. And then there was such comfort in the very easy distance of
+Randalls from Hartfield, so convenient for even solitary female walking,
+and in Mr. Weston's disposition and circumstances, which would make the
+approaching season no hindrance to their spending half the evenings in
+the week together.
+
+Her situation was altogether the subject of hours of gratitude to Mrs.
+Weston, and of moments only of regret; and her satisfaction--her more
+than satisfaction--her cheerful enjoyment, was so just and so apparent,
+that Emma, well as she knew her father, was sometimes taken by surprize
+at his being still able to pity 'poor Miss Taylor,' when they left her
+at Randalls in the centre of every domestic comfort, or saw her go away
+in the evening attended by her pleasant husband to a carriage of her
+own. But never did she go without Mr. Woodhouse's giving a gentle sigh,
+and saying, “Ah, poor Miss Taylor! She would be very glad to stay.”
+
+There was no recovering Miss Taylor--nor much likelihood of ceasing to
+pity her; but a few weeks brought some alleviation to Mr. Woodhouse.
+The compliments of his neighbours were over; he was no longer teased by
+being wished joy of so sorrowful an event; and the wedding-cake, which
+had been a great distress to him, was all eat up. His own stomach
+could bear nothing rich, and he could never believe other people to be
+different from himself. What was unwholesome to him he regarded as unfit
+for any body; and he had, therefore, earnestly tried to dissuade them
+from having any wedding-cake at all, and when that proved vain, as
+earnestly tried to prevent any body's eating it. He had been at the
+pains of consulting Mr. Perry, the apothecary, on the subject. Mr. Perry
+was an intelligent, gentlemanlike man, whose frequent visits were one
+of the comforts of Mr. Woodhouse's life; and upon being applied to, he
+could not but acknowledge (though it seemed rather against the bias
+of inclination) that wedding-cake might certainly disagree with
+many--perhaps with most people, unless taken moderately. With such an
+opinion, in confirmation of his own, Mr. Woodhouse hoped to influence
+every visitor of the newly married pair; but still the cake was eaten;
+and there was no rest for his benevolent nerves till it was all gone.
+
+There was a strange rumour in Highbury of all the little Perrys being
+seen with a slice of Mrs. Weston's wedding-cake in their hands: but Mr.
+Woodhouse would never believe it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Mr. Woodhouse was fond of society in his own way. He liked very much to
+have his friends come and see him; and from various united causes, from
+his long residence at Hartfield, and his good nature, from his fortune,
+his house, and his daughter, he could command the visits of his
+own little circle, in a great measure, as he liked. He had not much
+intercourse with any families beyond that circle; his horror of late
+hours, and large dinner-parties, made him unfit for any acquaintance but
+such as would visit him on his own terms. Fortunately for him, Highbury,
+including Randalls in the same parish, and Donwell Abbey in the parish
+adjoining, the seat of Mr. Knightley, comprehended many such. Not
+unfrequently, through Emma's persuasion, he had some of the chosen and
+the best to dine with him: but evening parties were what he preferred;
+and, unless he fancied himself at any time unequal to company, there
+was scarcely an evening in the week in which Emma could not make up a
+card-table for him.
+
+Real, long-standing regard brought the Westons and Mr. Knightley; and by
+Mr. Elton, a young man living alone without liking it, the privilege
+of exchanging any vacant evening of his own blank solitude for the
+elegancies and society of Mr. Woodhouse's drawing-room, and the smiles
+of his lovely daughter, was in no danger of being thrown away.
+
+After these came a second set; among the most come-at-able of whom were
+Mrs. and Miss Bates, and Mrs. Goddard, three ladies almost always at
+the service of an invitation from Hartfield, and who were fetched and
+carried home so often, that Mr. Woodhouse thought it no hardship for
+either James or the horses. Had it taken place only once a year, it
+would have been a grievance.
+
+Mrs. Bates, the widow of a former vicar of Highbury, was a very old
+lady, almost past every thing but tea and quadrille. She lived with her
+single daughter in a very small way, and was considered with all the
+regard and respect which a harmless old lady, under such untoward
+circumstances, can excite. Her daughter enjoyed a most uncommon degree
+of popularity for a woman neither young, handsome, rich, nor married.
+Miss Bates stood in the very worst predicament in the world for having
+much of the public favour; and she had no intellectual superiority to
+make atonement to herself, or frighten those who might hate her into
+outward respect. She had never boasted either beauty or cleverness. Her
+youth had passed without distinction, and her middle of life was devoted
+to the care of a failing mother, and the endeavour to make a small
+income go as far as possible. And yet she was a happy woman, and a woman
+whom no one named without good-will. It was her own universal good-will
+and contented temper which worked such wonders. She loved every body,
+was interested in every body's happiness, quicksighted to every body's
+merits; thought herself a most fortunate creature, and surrounded with
+blessings in such an excellent mother, and so many good neighbours
+and friends, and a home that wanted for nothing. The simplicity and
+cheerfulness of her nature, her contented and grateful spirit, were a
+recommendation to every body, and a mine of felicity to herself. She was
+a great talker upon little matters, which exactly suited Mr. Woodhouse,
+full of trivial communications and harmless gossip.
+
+Mrs. Goddard was the mistress of a School--not of a seminary, or an
+establishment, or any thing which professed, in long sentences of
+refined nonsense, to combine liberal acquirements with elegant morality,
+upon new principles and new systems--and where young ladies for enormous
+pay might be screwed out of health and into vanity--but a real,
+honest, old-fashioned Boarding-school, where a reasonable quantity of
+accomplishments were sold at a reasonable price, and where girls might
+be sent to be out of the way, and scramble themselves into a little
+education, without any danger of coming back prodigies. Mrs. Goddard's
+school was in high repute--and very deservedly; for Highbury was
+reckoned a particularly healthy spot: she had an ample house and garden,
+gave the children plenty of wholesome food, let them run about a great
+deal in the summer, and in winter dressed their chilblains with her own
+hands. It was no wonder that a train of twenty young couple now walked
+after her to church. She was a plain, motherly kind of woman, who
+had worked hard in her youth, and now thought herself entitled to the
+occasional holiday of a tea-visit; and having formerly owed much to Mr.
+Woodhouse's kindness, felt his particular claim on her to leave her neat
+parlour, hung round with fancy-work, whenever she could, and win or lose
+a few sixpences by his fireside.
+
+These were the ladies whom Emma found herself very frequently able to
+collect; and happy was she, for her father's sake, in the power; though,
+as far as she was herself concerned, it was no remedy for the absence of
+Mrs. Weston. She was delighted to see her father look comfortable, and
+very much pleased with herself for contriving things so well; but the
+quiet prosings of three such women made her feel that every evening so
+spent was indeed one of the long evenings she had fearfully anticipated.
+
+As she sat one morning, looking forward to exactly such a close of the
+present day, a note was brought from Mrs. Goddard, requesting, in most
+respectful terms, to be allowed to bring Miss Smith with her; a most
+welcome request: for Miss Smith was a girl of seventeen, whom Emma knew
+very well by sight, and had long felt an interest in, on account of
+her beauty. A very gracious invitation was returned, and the evening no
+longer dreaded by the fair mistress of the mansion.
+
+Harriet Smith was the natural daughter of somebody. Somebody had placed
+her, several years back, at Mrs. Goddard's school, and somebody
+had lately raised her from the condition of scholar to that of
+parlour-boarder. This was all that was generally known of her history.
+She had no visible friends but what had been acquired at Highbury, and
+was now just returned from a long visit in the country to some young
+ladies who had been at school there with her.
+
+She was a very pretty girl, and her beauty happened to be of a sort
+which Emma particularly admired. She was short, plump, and fair, with a
+fine bloom, blue eyes, light hair, regular features, and a look of great
+sweetness, and, before the end of the evening, Emma was as much pleased
+with her manners as her person, and quite determined to continue the
+acquaintance.
+
+She was not struck by any thing remarkably clever in Miss Smith's
+conversation, but she found her altogether very engaging--not
+inconveniently shy, not unwilling to talk--and yet so far from pushing,
+shewing so proper and becoming a deference, seeming so pleasantly
+grateful for being admitted to Hartfield, and so artlessly impressed
+by the appearance of every thing in so superior a style to what she had
+been used to, that she must have good sense, and deserve encouragement.
+Encouragement should be given. Those soft blue eyes, and all those
+natural graces, should not be wasted on the inferior society of Highbury
+and its connexions. The acquaintance she had already formed were
+unworthy of her. The friends from whom she had just parted, though very
+good sort of people, must be doing her harm. They were a family of the
+name of Martin, whom Emma well knew by character, as renting a large
+farm of Mr. Knightley, and residing in the parish of Donwell--very
+creditably, she believed--she knew Mr. Knightley thought highly of
+them--but they must be coarse and unpolished, and very unfit to be the
+intimates of a girl who wanted only a little more knowledge and elegance
+to be quite perfect. _She_ would notice her; she would improve her; she
+would detach her from her bad acquaintance, and introduce her into good
+society; she would form her opinions and her manners. It would be an
+interesting, and certainly a very kind undertaking; highly becoming her
+own situation in life, her leisure, and powers.
+
+She was so busy in admiring those soft blue eyes, in talking and
+listening, and forming all these schemes in the in-betweens, that the
+evening flew away at a very unusual rate; and the supper-table, which
+always closed such parties, and for which she had been used to sit and
+watch the due time, was all set out and ready, and moved forwards to the
+fire, before she was aware. With an alacrity beyond the common impulse
+of a spirit which yet was never indifferent to the credit of doing every
+thing well and attentively, with the real good-will of a mind delighted
+with its own ideas, did she then do all the honours of the meal, and
+help and recommend the minced chicken and scalloped oysters, with an
+urgency which she knew would be acceptable to the early hours and civil
+scruples of their guests.
+
+Upon such occasions poor Mr. Woodhouse's feelings were in sad warfare.
+He loved to have the cloth laid, because it had been the fashion of his
+youth, but his conviction of suppers being very unwholesome made him
+rather sorry to see any thing put on it; and while his hospitality would
+have welcomed his visitors to every thing, his care for their health
+made him grieve that they would eat.
+
+Such another small basin of thin gruel as his own was all that he could,
+with thorough self-approbation, recommend; though he might constrain
+himself, while the ladies were comfortably clearing the nicer things, to
+say:
+
+“Mrs. Bates, let me propose your venturing on one of these eggs. An egg
+boiled very soft is not unwholesome. Serle understands boiling an egg
+better than any body. I would not recommend an egg boiled by any body
+else; but you need not be afraid, they are very small, you see--one of
+our small eggs will not hurt you. Miss Bates, let Emma help you to a
+_little_ bit of tart--a _very_ little bit. Ours are all apple-tarts. You
+need not be afraid of unwholesome preserves here. I do not advise the
+custard. Mrs. Goddard, what say you to _half_ a glass of wine? A
+_small_ half-glass, put into a tumbler of water? I do not think it could
+disagree with you.”
+
+Emma allowed her father to talk--but supplied her visitors in a much
+more satisfactory style, and on the present evening had particular
+pleasure in sending them away happy. The happiness of Miss Smith was
+quite equal to her intentions. Miss Woodhouse was so great a personage
+in Highbury, that the prospect of the introduction had given as much
+panic as pleasure; but the humble, grateful little girl went off with
+highly gratified feelings, delighted with the affability with which Miss
+Woodhouse had treated her all the evening, and actually shaken hands
+with her at last!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Harriet Smith's intimacy at Hartfield was soon a settled thing. Quick
+and decided in her ways, Emma lost no time in inviting, encouraging, and
+telling her to come very often; and as their acquaintance increased, so
+did their satisfaction in each other. As a walking companion, Emma had
+very early foreseen how useful she might find her. In that respect
+Mrs. Weston's loss had been important. Her father never went beyond the
+shrubbery, where two divisions of the ground sufficed him for his long
+walk, or his short, as the year varied; and since Mrs. Weston's marriage
+her exercise had been too much confined. She had ventured once alone to
+Randalls, but it was not pleasant; and a Harriet Smith, therefore,
+one whom she could summon at any time to a walk, would be a valuable
+addition to her privileges. But in every respect, as she saw more of
+her, she approved her, and was confirmed in all her kind designs.
+
+Harriet certainly was not clever, but she had a sweet, docile, grateful
+disposition, was totally free from conceit, and only desiring to be
+guided by any one she looked up to. Her early attachment to herself
+was very amiable; and her inclination for good company, and power of
+appreciating what was elegant and clever, shewed that there was no
+want of taste, though strength of understanding must not be expected.
+Altogether she was quite convinced of Harriet Smith's being exactly the
+young friend she wanted--exactly the something which her home required.
+Such a friend as Mrs. Weston was out of the question. Two such could
+never be granted. Two such she did not want. It was quite a different
+sort of thing, a sentiment distinct and independent. Mrs. Weston was the
+object of a regard which had its basis in gratitude and esteem. Harriet
+would be loved as one to whom she could be useful. For Mrs. Weston there
+was nothing to be done; for Harriet every thing.
+
+Her first attempts at usefulness were in an endeavour to find out who
+were the parents, but Harriet could not tell. She was ready to tell
+every thing in her power, but on this subject questions were vain. Emma
+was obliged to fancy what she liked--but she could never believe that in
+the same situation _she_ should not have discovered the truth. Harriet
+had no penetration. She had been satisfied to hear and believe just what
+Mrs. Goddard chose to tell her; and looked no farther.
+
+Mrs. Goddard, and the teachers, and the girls and the affairs of
+the school in general, formed naturally a great part of the
+conversation--and but for her acquaintance with the Martins of
+Abbey-Mill Farm, it must have been the whole. But the Martins occupied
+her thoughts a good deal; she had spent two very happy months with them,
+and now loved to talk of the pleasures of her visit, and describe
+the many comforts and wonders of the place. Emma encouraged her
+talkativeness--amused by such a picture of another set of beings,
+and enjoying the youthful simplicity which could speak with so much
+exultation of Mrs. Martin's having “_two_ parlours, two very good
+parlours, indeed; one of them quite as large as Mrs. Goddard's
+drawing-room; and of her having an upper maid who had lived
+five-and-twenty years with her; and of their having eight cows, two of
+them Alderneys, and one a little Welch cow, a very pretty little Welch
+cow indeed; and of Mrs. Martin's saying as she was so fond of it,
+it should be called _her_ cow; and of their having a very handsome
+summer-house in their garden, where some day next year they were all to
+drink tea:--a very handsome summer-house, large enough to hold a dozen
+people.”
+
+For some time she was amused, without thinking beyond the immediate
+cause; but as she came to understand the family better, other feelings
+arose. She had taken up a wrong idea, fancying it was a mother and
+daughter, a son and son's wife, who all lived together; but when it
+appeared that the Mr. Martin, who bore a part in the narrative, and was
+always mentioned with approbation for his great good-nature in doing
+something or other, was a single man; that there was no young Mrs.
+Martin, no wife in the case; she did suspect danger to her poor little
+friend from all this hospitality and kindness, and that, if she were not
+taken care of, she might be required to sink herself forever.
+
+With this inspiriting notion, her questions increased in number and
+meaning; and she particularly led Harriet to talk more of Mr. Martin,
+and there was evidently no dislike to it. Harriet was very ready to
+speak of the share he had had in their moonlight walks and merry evening
+games; and dwelt a good deal upon his being so very good-humoured and
+obliging. He had gone three miles round one day in order to bring her
+some walnuts, because she had said how fond she was of them, and in
+every thing else he was so very obliging. He had his shepherd's son into
+the parlour one night on purpose to sing to her. She was very fond
+of singing. He could sing a little himself. She believed he was very
+clever, and understood every thing. He had a very fine flock, and, while
+she was with them, he had been bid more for his wool than any body in
+the country. She believed every body spoke well of him. His mother and
+sisters were very fond of him. Mrs. Martin had told her one day (and
+there was a blush as she said it,) that it was impossible for any body
+to be a better son, and therefore she was sure, whenever he married, he
+would make a good husband. Not that she _wanted_ him to marry. She was
+in no hurry at all.
+
+“Well done, Mrs. Martin!” thought Emma. “You know what you are about.”
+
+“And when she had come away, Mrs. Martin was so very kind as to send
+Mrs. Goddard a beautiful goose--the finest goose Mrs. Goddard had ever
+seen. Mrs. Goddard had dressed it on a Sunday, and asked all the three
+teachers, Miss Nash, and Miss Prince, and Miss Richardson, to sup with
+her.”
+
+“Mr. Martin, I suppose, is not a man of information beyond the line of
+his own business? He does not read?”
+
+“Oh yes!--that is, no--I do not know--but I believe he has read a
+good deal--but not what you would think any thing of. He reads the
+Agricultural Reports, and some other books that lay in one of the window
+seats--but he reads all _them_ to himself. But sometimes of an evening,
+before we went to cards, he would read something aloud out of the
+Elegant Extracts, very entertaining. And I know he has read the Vicar of
+Wakefield. He never read the Romance of the Forest, nor The Children of
+the Abbey. He had never heard of such books before I mentioned them, but
+he is determined to get them now as soon as ever he can.”
+
+The next question was--
+
+“What sort of looking man is Mr. Martin?”
+
+“Oh! not handsome--not at all handsome. I thought him very plain at
+first, but I do not think him so plain now. One does not, you know,
+after a time. But did you never see him? He is in Highbury every now and
+then, and he is sure to ride through every week in his way to Kingston.
+He has passed you very often.”
+
+“That may be, and I may have seen him fifty times, but without having
+any idea of his name. A young farmer, whether on horseback or on foot,
+is the very last sort of person to raise my curiosity. The yeomanry are
+precisely the order of people with whom I feel I can have nothing to do.
+A degree or two lower, and a creditable appearance might interest me;
+I might hope to be useful to their families in some way or other. But
+a farmer can need none of my help, and is, therefore, in one sense, as
+much above my notice as in every other he is below it.”
+
+“To be sure. Oh yes! It is not likely you should ever have observed him;
+but he knows you very well indeed--I mean by sight.”
+
+“I have no doubt of his being a very respectable young man. I know,
+indeed, that he is so, and, as such, wish him well. What do you imagine
+his age to be?”
+
+“He was four-and-twenty the 8th of last June, and my birthday is the
+23rd just a fortnight and a day's difference--which is very odd.”
+
+“Only four-and-twenty. That is too young to settle. His mother is
+perfectly right not to be in a hurry. They seem very comfortable as they
+are, and if she were to take any pains to marry him, she would probably
+repent it. Six years hence, if he could meet with a good sort of young
+woman in the same rank as his own, with a little money, it might be very
+desirable.”
+
+“Six years hence! Dear Miss Woodhouse, he would be thirty years old!”
+
+“Well, and that is as early as most men can afford to marry, who are not
+born to an independence. Mr. Martin, I imagine, has his fortune entirely
+to make--cannot be at all beforehand with the world. Whatever money he
+might come into when his father died, whatever his share of the family
+property, it is, I dare say, all afloat, all employed in his stock, and
+so forth; and though, with diligence and good luck, he may be rich in
+time, it is next to impossible that he should have realised any thing
+yet.”
+
+“To be sure, so it is. But they live very comfortably. They have no
+indoors man, else they do not want for any thing; and Mrs. Martin talks
+of taking a boy another year.”
+
+“I wish you may not get into a scrape, Harriet, whenever he does
+marry;--I mean, as to being acquainted with his wife--for though his
+sisters, from a superior education, are not to be altogether objected
+to, it does not follow that he might marry any body at all fit for you
+to notice. The misfortune of your birth ought to make you particularly
+careful as to your associates. There can be no doubt of your being a
+gentleman's daughter, and you must support your claim to that station by
+every thing within your own power, or there will be plenty of people who
+would take pleasure in degrading you.”
+
+“Yes, to be sure, I suppose there are. But while I visit at Hartfield,
+and you are so kind to me, Miss Woodhouse, I am not afraid of what any
+body can do.”
+
+“You understand the force of influence pretty well, Harriet; but I would
+have you so firmly established in good society, as to be independent
+even of Hartfield and Miss Woodhouse. I want to see you permanently
+well connected, and to that end it will be advisable to have as few odd
+acquaintance as may be; and, therefore, I say that if you should still
+be in this country when Mr. Martin marries, I wish you may not be drawn
+in by your intimacy with the sisters, to be acquainted with the wife,
+who will probably be some mere farmer's daughter, without education.”
+
+“To be sure. Yes. Not that I think Mr. Martin would ever marry any body
+but what had had some education--and been very well brought up. However,
+I do not mean to set up my opinion against yours--and I am sure I shall
+not wish for the acquaintance of his wife. I shall always have a great
+regard for the Miss Martins, especially Elizabeth, and should be very
+sorry to give them up, for they are quite as well educated as me. But
+if he marries a very ignorant, vulgar woman, certainly I had better not
+visit her, if I can help it.”
+
+Emma watched her through the fluctuations of this speech, and saw no
+alarming symptoms of love. The young man had been the first admirer, but
+she trusted there was no other hold, and that there would be no serious
+difficulty, on Harriet's side, to oppose any friendly arrangement of her
+own.
+
+They met Mr. Martin the very next day, as they were walking on the
+Donwell road. He was on foot, and after looking very respectfully at
+her, looked with most unfeigned satisfaction at her companion. Emma was
+not sorry to have such an opportunity of survey; and walking a few
+yards forward, while they talked together, soon made her quick eye
+sufficiently acquainted with Mr. Robert Martin. His appearance was very
+neat, and he looked like a sensible young man, but his person had no
+other advantage; and when he came to be contrasted with gentlemen,
+she thought he must lose all the ground he had gained in Harriet's
+inclination. Harriet was not insensible of manner; she had voluntarily
+noticed her father's gentleness with admiration as well as wonder. Mr.
+Martin looked as if he did not know what manner was.
+
+They remained but a few minutes together, as Miss Woodhouse must not be
+kept waiting; and Harriet then came running to her with a smiling face,
+and in a flutter of spirits, which Miss Woodhouse hoped very soon to
+compose.
+
+“Only think of our happening to meet him!--How very odd! It was quite
+a chance, he said, that he had not gone round by Randalls. He did not
+think we ever walked this road. He thought we walked towards Randalls
+most days. He has not been able to get the Romance of the Forest yet.
+He was so busy the last time he was at Kingston that he quite forgot it,
+but he goes again to-morrow. So very odd we should happen to meet! Well,
+Miss Woodhouse, is he like what you expected? What do you think of him?
+Do you think him so very plain?”
+
+“He is very plain, undoubtedly--remarkably plain:--but that is nothing
+compared with his entire want of gentility. I had no right to expect
+much, and I did not expect much; but I had no idea that he could be so
+very clownish, so totally without air. I had imagined him, I confess, a
+degree or two nearer gentility.”
+
+“To be sure,” said Harriet, in a mortified voice, “he is not so genteel
+as real gentlemen.”
+
+“I think, Harriet, since your acquaintance with us, you have been
+repeatedly in the company of some such very real gentlemen, that you
+must yourself be struck with the difference in Mr. Martin. At Hartfield,
+you have had very good specimens of well educated, well bred men. I
+should be surprized if, after seeing them, you could be in company
+with Mr. Martin again without perceiving him to be a very inferior
+creature--and rather wondering at yourself for having ever thought him
+at all agreeable before. Do not you begin to feel that now? Were not
+you struck? I am sure you must have been struck by his awkward look and
+abrupt manner, and the uncouthness of a voice which I heard to be wholly
+unmodulated as I stood here.”
+
+“Certainly, he is not like Mr. Knightley. He has not such a fine air and
+way of walking as Mr. Knightley. I see the difference plain enough. But
+Mr. Knightley is so very fine a man!”
+
+“Mr. Knightley's air is so remarkably good that it is not fair to
+compare Mr. Martin with _him_. You might not see one in a hundred with
+_gentleman_ so plainly written as in Mr. Knightley. But he is not the
+only gentleman you have been lately used to. What say you to Mr. Weston
+and Mr. Elton? Compare Mr. Martin with either of _them_. Compare their
+manner of carrying themselves; of walking; of speaking; of being silent.
+You must see the difference.”
+
+“Oh yes!--there is a great difference. But Mr. Weston is almost an old
+man. Mr. Weston must be between forty and fifty.”
+
+“Which makes his good manners the more valuable. The older a person
+grows, Harriet, the more important it is that their manners should not
+be bad; the more glaring and disgusting any loudness, or coarseness, or
+awkwardness becomes. What is passable in youth is detestable in later
+age. Mr. Martin is now awkward and abrupt; what will he be at Mr.
+Weston's time of life?”
+
+“There is no saying, indeed,” replied Harriet rather solemnly.
+
+“But there may be pretty good guessing. He will be a completely gross,
+vulgar farmer, totally inattentive to appearances, and thinking of
+nothing but profit and loss.”
+
+“Will he, indeed? That will be very bad.”
+
+“How much his business engrosses him already is very plain from the
+circumstance of his forgetting to inquire for the book you recommended.
+He was a great deal too full of the market to think of any thing
+else--which is just as it should be, for a thriving man. What has he to
+do with books? And I have no doubt that he _will_ thrive, and be a very
+rich man in time--and his being illiterate and coarse need not disturb
+_us_.”
+
+“I wonder he did not remember the book”--was all Harriet's answer, and
+spoken with a degree of grave displeasure which Emma thought might be
+safely left to itself. She, therefore, said no more for some time. Her
+next beginning was,
+
+“In one respect, perhaps, Mr. Elton's manners are superior to Mr.
+Knightley's or Mr. Weston's. They have more gentleness. They might be
+more safely held up as a pattern. There is an openness, a quickness,
+almost a bluntness in Mr. Weston, which every body likes in _him_,
+because there is so much good-humour with it--but that would not do to
+be copied. Neither would Mr. Knightley's downright, decided, commanding
+sort of manner, though it suits _him_ very well; his figure, and look,
+and situation in life seem to allow it; but if any young man were to set
+about copying him, he would not be sufferable. On the contrary, I think
+a young man might be very safely recommended to take Mr. Elton as a
+model. Mr. Elton is good-humoured, cheerful, obliging, and gentle.
+He seems to me to be grown particularly gentle of late. I do not know
+whether he has any design of ingratiating himself with either of us,
+Harriet, by additional softness, but it strikes me that his manners are
+softer than they used to be. If he means any thing, it must be to please
+you. Did not I tell you what he said of you the other day?”
+
+She then repeated some warm personal praise which she had drawn from Mr.
+Elton, and now did full justice to; and Harriet blushed and smiled, and
+said she had always thought Mr. Elton very agreeable.
+
+Mr. Elton was the very person fixed on by Emma for driving the young
+farmer out of Harriet's head. She thought it would be an excellent
+match; and only too palpably desirable, natural, and probable, for her
+to have much merit in planning it. She feared it was what every body
+else must think of and predict. It was not likely, however, that any
+body should have equalled her in the date of the plan, as it had
+entered her brain during the very first evening of Harriet's coming to
+Hartfield. The longer she considered it, the greater was her sense
+of its expediency. Mr. Elton's situation was most suitable, quite the
+gentleman himself, and without low connexions; at the same time, not of
+any family that could fairly object to the doubtful birth of Harriet.
+He had a comfortable home for her, and Emma imagined a very sufficient
+income; for though the vicarage of Highbury was not large, he was known
+to have some independent property; and she thought very highly of him
+as a good-humoured, well-meaning, respectable young man, without any
+deficiency of useful understanding or knowledge of the world.
+
+She had already satisfied herself that he thought Harriet a beautiful
+girl, which she trusted, with such frequent meetings at Hartfield, was
+foundation enough on his side; and on Harriet's there could be little
+doubt that the idea of being preferred by him would have all the usual
+weight and efficacy. And he was really a very pleasing young man, a
+young man whom any woman not fastidious might like. He was reckoned very
+handsome; his person much admired in general, though not by her,
+there being a want of elegance of feature which she could not dispense
+with:--but the girl who could be gratified by a Robert Martin's riding
+about the country to get walnuts for her might very well be conquered by
+Mr. Elton's admiration.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+“I do not know what your opinion may be, Mrs. Weston,” said Mr.
+Knightley, “of this great intimacy between Emma and Harriet Smith, but I
+think it a bad thing.”
+
+“A bad thing! Do you really think it a bad thing?--why so?”
+
+“I think they will neither of them do the other any good.”
+
+“You surprize me! Emma must do Harriet good: and by supplying her with a
+new object of interest, Harriet may be said to do Emma good. I have been
+seeing their intimacy with the greatest pleasure. How very differently
+we feel!--Not think they will do each other any good! This will
+certainly be the beginning of one of our quarrels about Emma, Mr.
+Knightley.”
+
+“Perhaps you think I am come on purpose to quarrel with you, knowing
+Weston to be out, and that you must still fight your own battle.”
+
+“Mr. Weston would undoubtedly support me, if he were here, for he thinks
+exactly as I do on the subject. We were speaking of it only yesterday,
+and agreeing how fortunate it was for Emma, that there should be such a
+girl in Highbury for her to associate with. Mr. Knightley, I shall not
+allow you to be a fair judge in this case. You are so much used to live
+alone, that you do not know the value of a companion; and, perhaps no
+man can be a good judge of the comfort a woman feels in the society of
+one of her own sex, after being used to it all her life. I can imagine
+your objection to Harriet Smith. She is not the superior young woman
+which Emma's friend ought to be. But on the other hand, as Emma wants
+to see her better informed, it will be an inducement to her to read more
+herself. They will read together. She means it, I know.”
+
+“Emma has been meaning to read more ever since she was twelve years old.
+I have seen a great many lists of her drawing-up at various times of
+books that she meant to read regularly through--and very good lists
+they were--very well chosen, and very neatly arranged--sometimes
+alphabetically, and sometimes by some other rule. The list she drew
+up when only fourteen--I remember thinking it did her judgment so much
+credit, that I preserved it some time; and I dare say she may have made
+out a very good list now. But I have done with expecting any course of
+steady reading from Emma. She will never submit to any thing
+requiring industry and patience, and a subjection of the fancy to the
+understanding. Where Miss Taylor failed to stimulate, I may safely
+affirm that Harriet Smith will do nothing.--You never could persuade her
+to read half so much as you wished.--You know you could not.”
+
+“I dare say,” replied Mrs. Weston, smiling, “that I thought so
+_then_;--but since we have parted, I can never remember Emma's omitting
+to do any thing I wished.”
+
+“There is hardly any desiring to refresh such a memory as _that_,”--said
+Mr. Knightley, feelingly; and for a moment or two he had done. “But I,”
+ he soon added, “who have had no such charm thrown over my senses, must
+still see, hear, and remember. Emma is spoiled by being the cleverest
+of her family. At ten years old, she had the misfortune of being able to
+answer questions which puzzled her sister at seventeen. She was always
+quick and assured: Isabella slow and diffident. And ever since she
+was twelve, Emma has been mistress of the house and of you all. In her
+mother she lost the only person able to cope with her. She inherits her
+mother's talents, and must have been under subjection to her.”
+
+“I should have been sorry, Mr. Knightley, to be dependent on _your_
+recommendation, had I quitted Mr. Woodhouse's family and wanted another
+situation; I do not think you would have spoken a good word for me to
+any body. I am sure you always thought me unfit for the office I held.”
+
+“Yes,” said he, smiling. “You are better placed _here_; very fit for a
+wife, but not at all for a governess. But you were preparing yourself to
+be an excellent wife all the time you were at Hartfield. You might
+not give Emma such a complete education as your powers would seem to
+promise; but you were receiving a very good education from _her_, on the
+very material matrimonial point of submitting your own will, and doing
+as you were bid; and if Weston had asked me to recommend him a wife, I
+should certainly have named Miss Taylor.”
+
+“Thank you. There will be very little merit in making a good wife to
+such a man as Mr. Weston.”
+
+“Why, to own the truth, I am afraid you are rather thrown away, and that
+with every disposition to bear, there will be nothing to be borne. We
+will not despair, however. Weston may grow cross from the wantonness of
+comfort, or his son may plague him.”
+
+“I hope not _that_.--It is not likely. No, Mr. Knightley, do not
+foretell vexation from that quarter.”
+
+“Not I, indeed. I only name possibilities. I do not pretend to Emma's
+genius for foretelling and guessing. I hope, with all my heart, the
+young man may be a Weston in merit, and a Churchill in fortune.--But
+Harriet Smith--I have not half done about Harriet Smith. I think her the
+very worst sort of companion that Emma could possibly have. She knows
+nothing herself, and looks upon Emma as knowing every thing. She is a
+flatterer in all her ways; and so much the worse, because undesigned.
+Her ignorance is hourly flattery. How can Emma imagine she has any
+thing to learn herself, while Harriet is presenting such a delightful
+inferiority? And as for Harriet, I will venture to say that _she_ cannot
+gain by the acquaintance. Hartfield will only put her out of conceit
+with all the other places she belongs to. She will grow just refined
+enough to be uncomfortable with those among whom birth and circumstances
+have placed her home. I am much mistaken if Emma's doctrines give any
+strength of mind, or tend at all to make a girl adapt herself rationally
+to the varieties of her situation in life.--They only give a little
+polish.”
+
+“I either depend more upon Emma's good sense than you do, or am more
+anxious for her present comfort; for I cannot lament the acquaintance.
+How well she looked last night!”
+
+“Oh! you would rather talk of her person than her mind, would you? Very
+well; I shall not attempt to deny Emma's being pretty.”
+
+“Pretty! say beautiful rather. Can you imagine any thing nearer perfect
+beauty than Emma altogether--face and figure?”
+
+“I do not know what I could imagine, but I confess that I have seldom
+seen a face or figure more pleasing to me than hers. But I am a partial
+old friend.”
+
+“Such an eye!--the true hazle eye--and so brilliant! regular features,
+open countenance, with a complexion! oh! what a bloom of full health,
+and such a pretty height and size; such a firm and upright figure!
+There is health, not merely in her bloom, but in her air, her head, her
+glance. One hears sometimes of a child being 'the picture of health;'
+now, Emma always gives me the idea of being the complete picture of
+grown-up health. She is loveliness itself. Mr. Knightley, is not she?”
+
+“I have not a fault to find with her person,” he replied. “I think her
+all you describe. I love to look at her; and I will add this praise,
+that I do not think her personally vain. Considering how very handsome
+she is, she appears to be little occupied with it; her vanity lies
+another way. Mrs. Weston, I am not to be talked out of my dislike of
+Harriet Smith, or my dread of its doing them both harm.”
+
+“And I, Mr. Knightley, am equally stout in my confidence of its not
+doing them any harm. With all dear Emma's little faults, she is an
+excellent creature. Where shall we see a better daughter, or a kinder
+sister, or a truer friend? No, no; she has qualities which may be
+trusted; she will never lead any one really wrong; she will make no
+lasting blunder; where Emma errs once, she is in the right a hundred
+times.”
+
+“Very well; I will not plague you any more. Emma shall be an angel, and
+I will keep my spleen to myself till Christmas brings John and Isabella.
+John loves Emma with a reasonable and therefore not a blind affection,
+and Isabella always thinks as he does; except when he is not quite
+frightened enough about the children. I am sure of having their opinions
+with me.”
+
+“I know that you all love her really too well to be unjust or unkind;
+but excuse me, Mr. Knightley, if I take the liberty (I consider myself,
+you know, as having somewhat of the privilege of speech that Emma's
+mother might have had) the liberty of hinting that I do not think any
+possible good can arise from Harriet Smith's intimacy being made a
+matter of much discussion among you. Pray excuse me; but supposing any
+little inconvenience may be apprehended from the intimacy, it cannot be
+expected that Emma, accountable to nobody but her father, who perfectly
+approves the acquaintance, should put an end to it, so long as it is a
+source of pleasure to herself. It has been so many years my province to
+give advice, that you cannot be surprized, Mr. Knightley, at this little
+remains of office.”
+
+“Not at all,” cried he; “I am much obliged to you for it. It is very
+good advice, and it shall have a better fate than your advice has often
+found; for it shall be attended to.”
+
+“Mrs. John Knightley is easily alarmed, and might be made unhappy about
+her sister.”
+
+“Be satisfied,” said he, “I will not raise any outcry. I will keep my
+ill-humour to myself. I have a very sincere interest in Emma. Isabella
+does not seem more my sister; has never excited a greater interest;
+perhaps hardly so great. There is an anxiety, a curiosity in what one
+feels for Emma. I wonder what will become of her!”
+
+“So do I,” said Mrs. Weston gently, “very much.”
+
+“She always declares she will never marry, which, of course, means just
+nothing at all. But I have no idea that she has yet ever seen a man she
+cared for. It would not be a bad thing for her to be very much in love
+with a proper object. I should like to see Emma in love, and in some
+doubt of a return; it would do her good. But there is nobody hereabouts
+to attach her; and she goes so seldom from home.”
+
+“There does, indeed, seem as little to tempt her to break her resolution
+at present,” said Mrs. Weston, “as can well be; and while she is so
+happy at Hartfield, I cannot wish her to be forming any attachment which
+would be creating such difficulties on poor Mr. Woodhouse's account. I
+do not recommend matrimony at present to Emma, though I mean no slight
+to the state, I assure you.”
+
+Part of her meaning was to conceal some favourite thoughts of her own
+and Mr. Weston's on the subject, as much as possible. There were wishes
+at Randalls respecting Emma's destiny, but it was not desirable to
+have them suspected; and the quiet transition which Mr. Knightley soon
+afterwards made to “What does Weston think of the weather; shall we have
+rain?” convinced her that he had nothing more to say or surmise about
+Hartfield.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Emma could not feel a doubt of having given Harriet's fancy a proper
+direction and raised the gratitude of her young vanity to a very good
+purpose, for she found her decidedly more sensible than before of Mr.
+Elton's being a remarkably handsome man, with most agreeable manners;
+and as she had no hesitation in following up the assurance of his
+admiration by agreeable hints, she was soon pretty confident of creating
+as much liking on Harriet's side, as there could be any occasion for.
+She was quite convinced of Mr. Elton's being in the fairest way of
+falling in love, if not in love already. She had no scruple with regard
+to him. He talked of Harriet, and praised her so warmly, that she could
+not suppose any thing wanting which a little time would not add. His
+perception of the striking improvement of Harriet's manner, since her
+introduction at Hartfield, was not one of the least agreeable proofs of
+his growing attachment.
+
+“You have given Miss Smith all that she required,” said he; “you have
+made her graceful and easy. She was a beautiful creature when she
+came to you, but, in my opinion, the attractions you have added are
+infinitely superior to what she received from nature.”
+
+“I am glad you think I have been useful to her; but Harriet only wanted
+drawing out, and receiving a few, very few hints. She had all the
+natural grace of sweetness of temper and artlessness in herself. I have
+done very little.”
+
+“If it were admissible to contradict a lady,” said the gallant Mr.
+Elton--
+
+“I have perhaps given her a little more decision of character, have
+taught her to think on points which had not fallen in her way before.”
+
+“Exactly so; that is what principally strikes me. So much superadded
+decision of character! Skilful has been the hand!”
+
+“Great has been the pleasure, I am sure. I never met with a disposition
+more truly amiable.”
+
+“I have no doubt of it.” And it was spoken with a sort of sighing
+animation, which had a vast deal of the lover. She was not less pleased
+another day with the manner in which he seconded a sudden wish of hers,
+to have Harriet's picture.
+
+“Did you ever have your likeness taken, Harriet?” said she: “did you
+ever sit for your picture?”
+
+Harriet was on the point of leaving the room, and only stopt to say,
+with a very interesting naivete,
+
+“Oh! dear, no, never.”
+
+No sooner was she out of sight, than Emma exclaimed,
+
+“What an exquisite possession a good picture of her would be! I would
+give any money for it. I almost long to attempt her likeness myself.
+You do not know it I dare say, but two or three years ago I had a great
+passion for taking likenesses, and attempted several of my friends, and
+was thought to have a tolerable eye in general. But from one cause or
+another, I gave it up in disgust. But really, I could almost venture,
+if Harriet would sit to me. It would be such a delight to have her
+picture!”
+
+“Let me entreat you,” cried Mr. Elton; “it would indeed be a delight!
+Let me entreat you, Miss Woodhouse, to exercise so charming a talent
+in favour of your friend. I know what your drawings are. How could
+you suppose me ignorant? Is not this room rich in specimens of your
+landscapes and flowers; and has not Mrs. Weston some inimitable
+figure-pieces in her drawing-room, at Randalls?”
+
+Yes, good man!--thought Emma--but what has all that to do with taking
+likenesses? You know nothing of drawing. Don't pretend to be in raptures
+about mine. Keep your raptures for Harriet's face. “Well, if you give me
+such kind encouragement, Mr. Elton, I believe I shall try what I can do.
+Harriet's features are very delicate, which makes a likeness difficult;
+and yet there is a peculiarity in the shape of the eye and the lines
+about the mouth which one ought to catch.”
+
+“Exactly so--The shape of the eye and the lines about the mouth--I have
+not a doubt of your success. Pray, pray attempt it. As you will do it,
+it will indeed, to use your own words, be an exquisite possession.”
+
+“But I am afraid, Mr. Elton, Harriet will not like to sit. She thinks
+so little of her own beauty. Did not you observe her manner of answering
+me? How completely it meant, 'why should my picture be drawn?'”
+
+“Oh! yes, I observed it, I assure you. It was not lost on me. But still
+I cannot imagine she would not be persuaded.”
+
+Harriet was soon back again, and the proposal almost immediately made;
+and she had no scruples which could stand many minutes against the
+earnest pressing of both the others. Emma wished to go to work directly,
+and therefore produced the portfolio containing her various attempts at
+portraits, for not one of them had ever been finished, that they might
+decide together on the best size for Harriet. Her many beginnings were
+displayed. Miniatures, half-lengths, whole-lengths, pencil, crayon, and
+water-colours had been all tried in turn. She had always wanted to do
+every thing, and had made more progress both in drawing and music than
+many might have done with so little labour as she would ever submit to.
+She played and sang;--and drew in almost every style; but steadiness
+had always been wanting; and in nothing had she approached the degree of
+excellence which she would have been glad to command, and ought not to
+have failed of. She was not much deceived as to her own skill either
+as an artist or a musician, but she was not unwilling to have others
+deceived, or sorry to know her reputation for accomplishment often
+higher than it deserved.
+
+There was merit in every drawing--in the least finished, perhaps the
+most; her style was spirited; but had there been much less, or had there
+been ten times more, the delight and admiration of her two companions
+would have been the same. They were both in ecstasies. A likeness
+pleases every body; and Miss Woodhouse's performances must be capital.
+
+“No great variety of faces for you,” said Emma. “I had only my own
+family to study from. There is my father--another of my father--but the
+idea of sitting for his picture made him so nervous, that I could only
+take him by stealth; neither of them very like therefore. Mrs. Weston
+again, and again, and again, you see. Dear Mrs. Weston! always my
+kindest friend on every occasion. She would sit whenever I asked her.
+There is my sister; and really quite her own little elegant figure!--and
+the face not unlike. I should have made a good likeness of her, if she
+would have sat longer, but she was in such a hurry to have me draw
+her four children that she would not be quiet. Then, here come all my
+attempts at three of those four children;--there they are, Henry and
+John and Bella, from one end of the sheet to the other, and any one of
+them might do for any one of the rest. She was so eager to have them
+drawn that I could not refuse; but there is no making children of three
+or four years old stand still you know; nor can it be very easy to take
+any likeness of them, beyond the air and complexion, unless they are
+coarser featured than any of mama's children ever were. Here is my
+sketch of the fourth, who was a baby. I took him as he was sleeping on
+the sofa, and it is as strong a likeness of his cockade as you would
+wish to see. He had nestled down his head most conveniently. That's very
+like. I am rather proud of little George. The corner of the sofa is very
+good. Then here is my last,”--unclosing a pretty sketch of a gentleman
+in small size, whole-length--“my last and my best--my brother, Mr. John
+Knightley.--This did not want much of being finished, when I put it away
+in a pet, and vowed I would never take another likeness. I could not
+help being provoked; for after all my pains, and when I had really made
+a very good likeness of it--(Mrs. Weston and I were quite agreed in
+thinking it _very_ like)--only too handsome--too flattering--but
+that was a fault on the right side”--after all this, came poor dear
+Isabella's cold approbation of--“Yes, it was a little like--but to be
+sure it did not do him justice. We had had a great deal of trouble
+in persuading him to sit at all. It was made a great favour of; and
+altogether it was more than I could bear; and so I never would finish
+it, to have it apologised over as an unfavourable likeness, to every
+morning visitor in Brunswick Square;--and, as I said, I did then
+forswear ever drawing any body again. But for Harriet's sake, or rather
+for my own, and as there are no husbands and wives in the case _at_
+_present_, I will break my resolution now.”
+
+Mr. Elton seemed very properly struck and delighted by the idea, and was
+repeating, “No husbands and wives in the case at present indeed, as
+you observe. Exactly so. No husbands and wives,” with so interesting a
+consciousness, that Emma began to consider whether she had not better
+leave them together at once. But as she wanted to be drawing, the
+declaration must wait a little longer.
+
+She had soon fixed on the size and sort of portrait. It was to be
+a whole-length in water-colours, like Mr. John Knightley's, and was
+destined, if she could please herself, to hold a very honourable station
+over the mantelpiece.
+
+The sitting began; and Harriet, smiling and blushing, and afraid of not
+keeping her attitude and countenance, presented a very sweet mixture of
+youthful expression to the steady eyes of the artist. But there was no
+doing any thing, with Mr. Elton fidgeting behind her and watching every
+touch. She gave him credit for stationing himself where he might gaze
+and gaze again without offence; but was really obliged to put an end to
+it, and request him to place himself elsewhere. It then occurred to her
+to employ him in reading.
+
+“If he would be so good as to read to them, it would be a kindness
+indeed! It would amuse away the difficulties of her part, and lessen the
+irksomeness of Miss Smith's.”
+
+Mr. Elton was only too happy. Harriet listened, and Emma drew in peace.
+She must allow him to be still frequently coming to look; any thing less
+would certainly have been too little in a lover; and he was ready at the
+smallest intermission of the pencil, to jump up and see the progress,
+and be charmed.--There was no being displeased with such an encourager,
+for his admiration made him discern a likeness almost before it
+was possible. She could not respect his eye, but his love and his
+complaisance were unexceptionable.
+
+The sitting was altogether very satisfactory; she was quite enough
+pleased with the first day's sketch to wish to go on. There was no want
+of likeness, she had been fortunate in the attitude, and as she meant
+to throw in a little improvement to the figure, to give a little more
+height, and considerably more elegance, she had great confidence of
+its being in every way a pretty drawing at last, and of its filling
+its destined place with credit to them both--a standing memorial of the
+beauty of one, the skill of the other, and the friendship of both;
+with as many other agreeable associations as Mr. Elton's very promising
+attachment was likely to add.
+
+Harriet was to sit again the next day; and Mr. Elton, just as he ought,
+entreated for the permission of attending and reading to them again.
+
+“By all means. We shall be most happy to consider you as one of the
+party.”
+
+The same civilities and courtesies, the same success and satisfaction,
+took place on the morrow, and accompanied the whole progress of the
+picture, which was rapid and happy. Every body who saw it was pleased,
+but Mr. Elton was in continual raptures, and defended it through every
+criticism.
+
+“Miss Woodhouse has given her friend the only beauty she
+wanted,”--observed Mrs. Weston to him--not in the least suspecting that
+she was addressing a lover.--“The expression of the eye is most correct,
+but Miss Smith has not those eyebrows and eyelashes. It is the fault of
+her face that she has them not.”
+
+“Do you think so?” replied he. “I cannot agree with you. It appears
+to me a most perfect resemblance in every feature. I never saw such a
+likeness in my life. We must allow for the effect of shade, you know.”
+
+“You have made her too tall, Emma,” said Mr. Knightley.
+
+Emma knew that she had, but would not own it; and Mr. Elton warmly
+added,
+
+“Oh no! certainly not too tall; not in the least too tall. Consider, she
+is sitting down--which naturally presents a different--which in short
+gives exactly the idea--and the proportions must be preserved, you know.
+Proportions, fore-shortening.--Oh no! it gives one exactly the idea of
+such a height as Miss Smith's. Exactly so indeed!”
+
+“It is very pretty,” said Mr. Woodhouse. “So prettily done! Just as your
+drawings always are, my dear. I do not know any body who draws so well
+as you do. The only thing I do not thoroughly like is, that she seems
+to be sitting out of doors, with only a little shawl over her
+shoulders--and it makes one think she must catch cold.”
+
+“But, my dear papa, it is supposed to be summer; a warm day in summer.
+Look at the tree.”
+
+“But it is never safe to sit out of doors, my dear.”
+
+“You, sir, may say any thing,” cried Mr. Elton, “but I must confess that
+I regard it as a most happy thought, the placing of Miss Smith out of
+doors; and the tree is touched with such inimitable spirit! Any other
+situation would have been much less in character. The naivete of Miss
+Smith's manners--and altogether--Oh, it is most admirable! I cannot keep
+my eyes from it. I never saw such a likeness.”
+
+The next thing wanted was to get the picture framed; and here were a few
+difficulties. It must be done directly; it must be done in London; the
+order must go through the hands of some intelligent person whose taste
+could be depended on; and Isabella, the usual doer of all commissions,
+must not be applied to, because it was December, and Mr. Woodhouse
+could not bear the idea of her stirring out of her house in the fogs of
+December. But no sooner was the distress known to Mr. Elton, than it
+was removed. His gallantry was always on the alert. “Might he be trusted
+with the commission, what infinite pleasure should he have in executing
+it! he could ride to London at any time. It was impossible to say how
+much he should be gratified by being employed on such an errand.”
+
+“He was too good!--she could not endure the thought!--she would not give
+him such a troublesome office for the world,”--brought on the desired
+repetition of entreaties and assurances,--and a very few minutes settled
+the business.
+
+Mr. Elton was to take the drawing to London, chuse the frame, and give
+the directions; and Emma thought she could so pack it as to ensure its
+safety without much incommoding him, while he seemed mostly fearful of
+not being incommoded enough.
+
+“What a precious deposit!” said he with a tender sigh, as he received
+it.
+
+“This man is almost too gallant to be in love,” thought Emma. “I should
+say so, but that I suppose there may be a hundred different ways of
+being in love. He is an excellent young man, and will suit Harriet
+exactly; it will be an 'Exactly so,' as he says himself; but he does
+sigh and languish, and study for compliments rather more than I could
+endure as a principal. I come in for a pretty good share as a second.
+But it is his gratitude on Harriet's account.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+The very day of Mr. Elton's going to London produced a fresh occasion
+for Emma's services towards her friend. Harriet had been at Hartfield,
+as usual, soon after breakfast; and, after a time, had gone home to
+return again to dinner: she returned, and sooner than had been
+talked of, and with an agitated, hurried look, announcing something
+extraordinary to have happened which she was longing to tell. Half a
+minute brought it all out. She had heard, as soon as she got back to
+Mrs. Goddard's, that Mr. Martin had been there an hour before, and
+finding she was not at home, nor particularly expected, had left a
+little parcel for her from one of his sisters, and gone away; and on
+opening this parcel, she had actually found, besides the two songs which
+she had lent Elizabeth to copy, a letter to herself; and this letter was
+from him, from Mr. Martin, and contained a direct proposal of marriage.
+“Who could have thought it? She was so surprized she did not know what
+to do. Yes, quite a proposal of marriage; and a very good letter,
+at least she thought so. And he wrote as if he really loved her very
+much--but she did not know--and so, she was come as fast as she could to
+ask Miss Woodhouse what she should do.--” Emma was half-ashamed of her
+friend for seeming so pleased and so doubtful.
+
+“Upon my word,” she cried, “the young man is determined not to lose any
+thing for want of asking. He will connect himself well if he can.”
+
+“Will you read the letter?” cried Harriet. “Pray do. I'd rather you
+would.”
+
+Emma was not sorry to be pressed. She read, and was surprized. The style
+of the letter was much above her expectation. There were not merely no
+grammatical errors, but as a composition it would not have disgraced a
+gentleman; the language, though plain, was strong and unaffected, and
+the sentiments it conveyed very much to the credit of the writer. It was
+short, but expressed good sense, warm attachment, liberality, propriety,
+even delicacy of feeling. She paused over it, while Harriet stood
+anxiously watching for her opinion, with a “Well, well,” and was at last
+forced to add, “Is it a good letter? or is it too short?”
+
+“Yes, indeed, a very good letter,” replied Emma rather slowly--“so
+good a letter, Harriet, that every thing considered, I think one of his
+sisters must have helped him. I can hardly imagine the young man whom
+I saw talking with you the other day could express himself so well, if
+left quite to his own powers, and yet it is not the style of a woman;
+no, certainly, it is too strong and concise; not diffuse enough for a
+woman. No doubt he is a sensible man, and I suppose may have a natural
+talent for--thinks strongly and clearly--and when he takes a pen in
+hand, his thoughts naturally find proper words. It is so with some men.
+Yes, I understand the sort of mind. Vigorous, decided, with sentiments
+to a certain point, not coarse. A better written letter, Harriet
+(returning it,) than I had expected.”
+
+“Well,” said the still waiting Harriet;--“well--and--and what shall I
+do?”
+
+“What shall you do! In what respect? Do you mean with regard to this
+letter?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“But what are you in doubt of? You must answer it of course--and
+speedily.”
+
+“Yes. But what shall I say? Dear Miss Woodhouse, do advise me.”
+
+“Oh no, no! the letter had much better be all your own. You will express
+yourself very properly, I am sure. There is no danger of your not
+being intelligible, which is the first thing. Your meaning must be
+unequivocal; no doubts or demurs: and such expressions of gratitude
+and concern for the pain you are inflicting as propriety requires, will
+present themselves unbidden to _your_ mind, I am persuaded. You need
+not be prompted to write with the appearance of sorrow for his
+disappointment.”
+
+“You think I ought to refuse him then,” said Harriet, looking down.
+
+“Ought to refuse him! My dear Harriet, what do you mean? Are you in any
+doubt as to that? I thought--but I beg your pardon, perhaps I have been
+under a mistake. I certainly have been misunderstanding you, if you feel
+in doubt as to the _purport_ of your answer. I had imagined you were
+consulting me only as to the wording of it.”
+
+Harriet was silent. With a little reserve of manner, Emma continued:
+
+“You mean to return a favourable answer, I collect.”
+
+“No, I do not; that is, I do not mean--What shall I do? What would you
+advise me to do? Pray, dear Miss Woodhouse, tell me what I ought to do.”
+
+“I shall not give you any advice, Harriet. I will have nothing to do
+with it. This is a point which you must settle with your feelings.”
+
+“I had no notion that he liked me so very much,” said Harriet,
+contemplating the letter. For a little while Emma persevered in her
+silence; but beginning to apprehend the bewitching flattery of that
+letter might be too powerful, she thought it best to say,
+
+“I lay it down as a general rule, Harriet, that if a woman _doubts_ as
+to whether she should accept a man or not, she certainly ought to refuse
+him. If she can hesitate as to 'Yes,' she ought to say 'No' directly.
+It is not a state to be safely entered into with doubtful feelings, with
+half a heart. I thought it my duty as a friend, and older than yourself,
+to say thus much to you. But do not imagine that I want to influence
+you.”
+
+“Oh! no, I am sure you are a great deal too kind to--but if you would
+just advise me what I had best do--No, no, I do not mean that--As
+you say, one's mind ought to be quite made up--One should not be
+hesitating--It is a very serious thing.--It will be safer to say 'No,'
+perhaps.--Do you think I had better say 'No?'”
+
+“Not for the world,” said Emma, smiling graciously, “would I advise you
+either way. You must be the best judge of your own happiness. If you
+prefer Mr. Martin to every other person; if you think him the most
+agreeable man you have ever been in company with, why should you
+hesitate? You blush, Harriet.--Does any body else occur to you at
+this moment under such a definition? Harriet, Harriet, do not deceive
+yourself; do not be run away with by gratitude and compassion. At this
+moment whom are you thinking of?”
+
+The symptoms were favourable.--Instead of answering, Harriet turned away
+confused, and stood thoughtfully by the fire; and though the letter was
+still in her hand, it was now mechanically twisted about without regard.
+Emma waited the result with impatience, but not without strong hopes. At
+last, with some hesitation, Harriet said--
+
+“Miss Woodhouse, as you will not give me your opinion, I must do as well
+as I can by myself; and I have now quite determined, and really almost
+made up my mind--to refuse Mr. Martin. Do you think I am right?”
+
+“Perfectly, perfectly right, my dearest Harriet; you are doing just
+what you ought. While you were at all in suspense I kept my feelings to
+myself, but now that you are so completely decided I have no hesitation
+in approving. Dear Harriet, I give myself joy of this. It would
+have grieved me to lose your acquaintance, which must have been the
+consequence of your marrying Mr. Martin. While you were in the smallest
+degree wavering, I said nothing about it, because I would not influence;
+but it would have been the loss of a friend to me. I could not have
+visited Mrs. Robert Martin, of Abbey-Mill Farm. Now I am secure of you
+for ever.”
+
+Harriet had not surmised her own danger, but the idea of it struck her
+forcibly.
+
+“You could not have visited me!” she cried, looking aghast. “No, to be
+sure you could not; but I never thought of that before. That would have
+been too dreadful!--What an escape!--Dear Miss Woodhouse, I would not
+give up the pleasure and honour of being intimate with you for any thing
+in the world.”
+
+“Indeed, Harriet, it would have been a severe pang to lose you; but it
+must have been. You would have thrown yourself out of all good society.
+I must have given you up.”
+
+“Dear me!--How should I ever have borne it! It would have killed me
+never to come to Hartfield any more!”
+
+“Dear affectionate creature!--_You_ banished to Abbey-Mill Farm!--_You_
+confined to the society of the illiterate and vulgar all your life! I
+wonder how the young man could have the assurance to ask it. He must
+have a pretty good opinion of himself.”
+
+“I do not think he is conceited either, in general,” said Harriet, her
+conscience opposing such censure; “at least, he is very good natured,
+and I shall always feel much obliged to him, and have a great regard
+for--but that is quite a different thing from--and you know, though
+he may like me, it does not follow that I should--and certainly I must
+confess that since my visiting here I have seen people--and if one comes
+to compare them, person and manners, there is no comparison at all,
+_one_ is so very handsome and agreeable. However, I do really think Mr.
+Martin a very amiable young man, and have a great opinion of him; and
+his being so much attached to me--and his writing such a letter--but as
+to leaving you, it is what I would not do upon any consideration.”
+
+“Thank you, thank you, my own sweet little friend. We will not be
+parted. A woman is not to marry a man merely because she is asked, or
+because he is attached to her, and can write a tolerable letter.”
+
+“Oh no;--and it is but a short letter too.”
+
+Emma felt the bad taste of her friend, but let it pass with a “very
+true; and it would be a small consolation to her, for the clownish
+manner which might be offending her every hour of the day, to know that
+her husband could write a good letter.”
+
+“Oh! yes, very. Nobody cares for a letter; the thing is, to be always
+happy with pleasant companions. I am quite determined to refuse him. But
+how shall I do? What shall I say?”
+
+Emma assured her there would be no difficulty in the answer, and advised
+its being written directly, which was agreed to, in the hope of her
+assistance; and though Emma continued to protest against any assistance
+being wanted, it was in fact given in the formation of every sentence.
+The looking over his letter again, in replying to it, had such a
+softening tendency, that it was particularly necessary to brace her up
+with a few decisive expressions; and she was so very much concerned at
+the idea of making him unhappy, and thought so much of what his mother
+and sisters would think and say, and was so anxious that they should not
+fancy her ungrateful, that Emma believed if the young man had come in
+her way at that moment, he would have been accepted after all.
+
+This letter, however, was written, and sealed, and sent. The business
+was finished, and Harriet safe. She was rather low all the evening, but
+Emma could allow for her amiable regrets, and sometimes relieved them by
+speaking of her own affection, sometimes by bringing forward the idea of
+Mr. Elton.
+
+“I shall never be invited to Abbey-Mill again,” was said in rather a
+sorrowful tone.
+
+“Nor, if you were, could I ever bear to part with you, my Harriet. You
+are a great deal too necessary at Hartfield to be spared to Abbey-Mill.”
+
+“And I am sure I should never want to go there; for I am never happy but
+at Hartfield.”
+
+Some time afterwards it was, “I think Mrs. Goddard would be very much
+surprized if she knew what had happened. I am sure Miss Nash would--for
+Miss Nash thinks her own sister very well married, and it is only a
+linen-draper.”
+
+“One should be sorry to see greater pride or refinement in the teacher
+of a school, Harriet. I dare say Miss Nash would envy you such an
+opportunity as this of being married. Even this conquest would appear
+valuable in her eyes. As to any thing superior for you, I suppose she
+is quite in the dark. The attentions of a certain person can hardly be
+among the tittle-tattle of Highbury yet. Hitherto I fancy you and I
+are the only people to whom his looks and manners have explained
+themselves.”
+
+Harriet blushed and smiled, and said something about wondering that
+people should like her so much. The idea of Mr. Elton was certainly
+cheering; but still, after a time, she was tender-hearted again towards
+the rejected Mr. Martin.
+
+“Now he has got my letter,” said she softly. “I wonder what they are all
+doing--whether his sisters know--if he is unhappy, they will be unhappy
+too. I hope he will not mind it so very much.”
+
+“Let us think of those among our absent friends who are more cheerfully
+employed,” cried Emma. “At this moment, perhaps, Mr. Elton is shewing
+your picture to his mother and sisters, telling how much more beautiful
+is the original, and after being asked for it five or six times,
+allowing them to hear your name, your own dear name.”
+
+“My picture!--But he has left my picture in Bond-street.”
+
+“Has he so!--Then I know nothing of Mr. Elton. No, my dear little modest
+Harriet, depend upon it the picture will not be in Bond-street till
+just before he mounts his horse to-morrow. It is his companion all this
+evening, his solace, his delight. It opens his designs to his family,
+it introduces you among them, it diffuses through the party those
+pleasantest feelings of our nature, eager curiosity and warm
+prepossession. How cheerful, how animated, how suspicious, how busy
+their imaginations all are!”
+
+Harriet smiled again, and her smiles grew stronger.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Harriet slept at Hartfield that night. For some weeks past she had been
+spending more than half her time there, and gradually getting to have
+a bed-room appropriated to herself; and Emma judged it best in every
+respect, safest and kindest, to keep her with them as much as possible
+just at present. She was obliged to go the next morning for an hour or
+two to Mrs. Goddard's, but it was then to be settled that she should
+return to Hartfield, to make a regular visit of some days.
+
+While she was gone, Mr. Knightley called, and sat some time with Mr.
+Woodhouse and Emma, till Mr. Woodhouse, who had previously made up his
+mind to walk out, was persuaded by his daughter not to defer it, and was
+induced by the entreaties of both, though against the scruples of his
+own civility, to leave Mr. Knightley for that purpose. Mr. Knightley,
+who had nothing of ceremony about him, was offering by his short,
+decided answers, an amusing contrast to the protracted apologies and
+civil hesitations of the other.
+
+“Well, I believe, if you will excuse me, Mr. Knightley, if you will not
+consider me as doing a very rude thing, I shall take Emma's advice and
+go out for a quarter of an hour. As the sun is out, I believe I had
+better take my three turns while I can. I treat you without ceremony,
+Mr. Knightley. We invalids think we are privileged people.”
+
+“My dear sir, do not make a stranger of me.”
+
+“I leave an excellent substitute in my daughter. Emma will be happy to
+entertain you. And therefore I think I will beg your excuse and take my
+three turns--my winter walk.”
+
+“You cannot do better, sir.”
+
+“I would ask for the pleasure of your company, Mr. Knightley, but I am a
+very slow walker, and my pace would be tedious to you; and, besides, you
+have another long walk before you, to Donwell Abbey.”
+
+“Thank you, sir, thank you; I am going this moment myself; and I think
+the sooner _you_ go the better. I will fetch your greatcoat and open the
+garden door for you.”
+
+Mr. Woodhouse at last was off; but Mr. Knightley, instead of being
+immediately off likewise, sat down again, seemingly inclined for more
+chat. He began speaking of Harriet, and speaking of her with more
+voluntary praise than Emma had ever heard before.
+
+“I cannot rate her beauty as you do,” said he; “but she is a
+pretty little creature, and I am inclined to think very well of her
+disposition. Her character depends upon those she is with; but in good
+hands she will turn out a valuable woman.”
+
+“I am glad you think so; and the good hands, I hope, may not be
+wanting.”
+
+“Come,” said he, “you are anxious for a compliment, so I will tell you
+that you have improved her. You have cured her of her school-girl's
+giggle; she really does you credit.”
+
+“Thank you. I should be mortified indeed if I did not believe I had been
+of some use; but it is not every body who will bestow praise where they
+may. _You_ do not often overpower me with it.”
+
+“You are expecting her again, you say, this morning?”
+
+“Almost every moment. She has been gone longer already than she
+intended.”
+
+“Something has happened to delay her; some visitors perhaps.”
+
+“Highbury gossips!--Tiresome wretches!”
+
+“Harriet may not consider every body tiresome that you would.”
+
+Emma knew this was too true for contradiction, and therefore said
+nothing. He presently added, with a smile,
+
+“I do not pretend to fix on times or places, but I must tell you that
+I have good reason to believe your little friend will soon hear of
+something to her advantage.”
+
+“Indeed! how so? of what sort?”
+
+“A very serious sort, I assure you;” still smiling.
+
+“Very serious! I can think of but one thing--Who is in love with her?
+Who makes you their confidant?”
+
+Emma was more than half in hopes of Mr. Elton's having dropt a hint.
+Mr. Knightley was a sort of general friend and adviser, and she knew Mr.
+Elton looked up to him.
+
+“I have reason to think,” he replied, “that Harriet Smith will soon have
+an offer of marriage, and from a most unexceptionable quarter:--Robert
+Martin is the man. Her visit to Abbey-Mill, this summer, seems to have
+done his business. He is desperately in love and means to marry her.”
+
+“He is very obliging,” said Emma; “but is he sure that Harriet means to
+marry him?”
+
+“Well, well, means to make her an offer then. Will that do? He came to
+the Abbey two evenings ago, on purpose to consult me about it. He knows
+I have a thorough regard for him and all his family, and, I believe,
+considers me as one of his best friends. He came to ask me whether
+I thought it would be imprudent in him to settle so early; whether
+I thought her too young: in short, whether I approved his choice
+altogether; having some apprehension perhaps of her being considered
+(especially since _your_ making so much of her) as in a line of society
+above him. I was very much pleased with all that he said. I never hear
+better sense from any one than Robert Martin. He always speaks to the
+purpose; open, straightforward, and very well judging. He told me every
+thing; his circumstances and plans, and what they all proposed doing in
+the event of his marriage. He is an excellent young man, both as son and
+brother. I had no hesitation in advising him to marry. He proved to me
+that he could afford it; and that being the case, I was convinced he
+could not do better. I praised the fair lady too, and altogether sent
+him away very happy. If he had never esteemed my opinion before, he
+would have thought highly of me then; and, I dare say, left the house
+thinking me the best friend and counsellor man ever had. This happened
+the night before last. Now, as we may fairly suppose, he would not allow
+much time to pass before he spoke to the lady, and as he does not appear
+to have spoken yesterday, it is not unlikely that he should be at Mrs.
+Goddard's to-day; and she may be detained by a visitor, without thinking
+him at all a tiresome wretch.”
+
+“Pray, Mr. Knightley,” said Emma, who had been smiling to herself
+through a great part of this speech, “how do you know that Mr. Martin
+did not speak yesterday?”
+
+“Certainly,” replied he, surprized, “I do not absolutely know it; but it
+may be inferred. Was not she the whole day with you?”
+
+“Come,” said she, “I will tell you something, in return for what
+you have told me. He did speak yesterday--that is, he wrote, and was
+refused.”
+
+This was obliged to be repeated before it could be believed; and Mr.
+Knightley actually looked red with surprize and displeasure, as he stood
+up, in tall indignation, and said,
+
+“Then she is a greater simpleton than I ever believed her. What is the
+foolish girl about?”
+
+“Oh! to be sure,” cried Emma, “it is always incomprehensible to a man
+that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage. A man always
+imagines a woman to be ready for any body who asks her.”
+
+“Nonsense! a man does not imagine any such thing. But what is the
+meaning of this? Harriet Smith refuse Robert Martin? madness, if it is
+so; but I hope you are mistaken.”
+
+“I saw her answer!--nothing could be clearer.”
+
+“You saw her answer!--you wrote her answer too. Emma, this is your
+doing. You persuaded her to refuse him.”
+
+“And if I did, (which, however, I am far from allowing) I should not
+feel that I had done wrong. Mr. Martin is a very respectable young man,
+but I cannot admit him to be Harriet's equal; and am rather surprized
+indeed that he should have ventured to address her. By your account, he
+does seem to have had some scruples. It is a pity that they were ever
+got over.”
+
+“Not Harriet's equal!” exclaimed Mr. Knightley loudly and warmly; and
+with calmer asperity, added, a few moments afterwards, “No, he is
+not her equal indeed, for he is as much her superior in sense as in
+situation. Emma, your infatuation about that girl blinds you. What are
+Harriet Smith's claims, either of birth, nature or education, to any
+connexion higher than Robert Martin? She is the natural daughter of
+nobody knows whom, with probably no settled provision at all, and
+certainly no respectable relations. She is known only as parlour-boarder
+at a common school. She is not a sensible girl, nor a girl of any
+information. She has been taught nothing useful, and is too young and
+too simple to have acquired any thing herself. At her age she can have
+no experience, and with her little wit, is not very likely ever to have
+any that can avail her. She is pretty, and she is good tempered, and
+that is all. My only scruple in advising the match was on his account,
+as being beneath his deserts, and a bad connexion for him. I felt that,
+as to fortune, in all probability he might do much better; and that as
+to a rational companion or useful helpmate, he could not do worse. But I
+could not reason so to a man in love, and was willing to trust to there
+being no harm in her, to her having that sort of disposition, which, in
+good hands, like his, might be easily led aright and turn out very well.
+The advantage of the match I felt to be all on her side; and had not the
+smallest doubt (nor have I now) that there would be a general cry-out
+upon her extreme good luck. Even _your_ satisfaction I made sure of.
+It crossed my mind immediately that you would not regret your friend's
+leaving Highbury, for the sake of her being settled so well. I remember
+saying to myself, 'Even Emma, with all her partiality for Harriet, will
+think this a good match.'”
+
+“I cannot help wondering at your knowing so little of Emma as to say any
+such thing. What! think a farmer, (and with all his sense and all his
+merit Mr. Martin is nothing more,) a good match for my intimate friend!
+Not regret her leaving Highbury for the sake of marrying a man whom
+I could never admit as an acquaintance of my own! I wonder you should
+think it possible for me to have such feelings. I assure you mine are
+very different. I must think your statement by no means fair. You are
+not just to Harriet's claims. They would be estimated very differently
+by others as well as myself; Mr. Martin may be the richest of the two,
+but he is undoubtedly her inferior as to rank in society.--The sphere in
+which she moves is much above his.--It would be a degradation.”
+
+“A degradation to illegitimacy and ignorance, to be married to a
+respectable, intelligent gentleman-farmer!”
+
+“As to the circumstances of her birth, though in a legal sense she may
+be called Nobody, it will not hold in common sense. She is not to pay
+for the offence of others, by being held below the level of those with
+whom she is brought up.--There can scarcely be a doubt that her father
+is a gentleman--and a gentleman of fortune.--Her allowance is
+very liberal; nothing has ever been grudged for her improvement or
+comfort.--That she is a gentleman's daughter, is indubitable to me; that
+she associates with gentlemen's daughters, no one, I apprehend, will
+deny.--She is superior to Mr. Robert Martin.”
+
+“Whoever might be her parents,” said Mr. Knightley, “whoever may have
+had the charge of her, it does not appear to have been any part of
+their plan to introduce her into what you would call good society. After
+receiving a very indifferent education she is left in Mrs. Goddard's
+hands to shift as she can;--to move, in short, in Mrs. Goddard's line,
+to have Mrs. Goddard's acquaintance. Her friends evidently thought
+this good enough for her; and it _was_ good enough. She desired nothing
+better herself. Till you chose to turn her into a friend, her mind had
+no distaste for her own set, nor any ambition beyond it. She was as
+happy as possible with the Martins in the summer. She had no sense of
+superiority then. If she has it now, you have given it. You have been no
+friend to Harriet Smith, Emma. Robert Martin would never have proceeded
+so far, if he had not felt persuaded of her not being disinclined to
+him. I know him well. He has too much real feeling to address any
+woman on the haphazard of selfish passion. And as to conceit, he is
+the farthest from it of any man I know. Depend upon it he had
+encouragement.”
+
+It was most convenient to Emma not to make a direct reply to this
+assertion; she chose rather to take up her own line of the subject
+again.
+
+“You are a very warm friend to Mr. Martin; but, as I said before,
+are unjust to Harriet. Harriet's claims to marry well are not so
+contemptible as you represent them. She is not a clever girl, but she
+has better sense than you are aware of, and does not deserve to have her
+understanding spoken of so slightingly. Waiving that point, however, and
+supposing her to be, as you describe her, only pretty and good-natured,
+let me tell you, that in the degree she possesses them, they are not
+trivial recommendations to the world in general, for she is, in fact, a
+beautiful girl, and must be thought so by ninety-nine people out of an
+hundred; and till it appears that men are much more philosophic on the
+subject of beauty than they are generally supposed; till they do fall
+in love with well-informed minds instead of handsome faces, a girl, with
+such loveliness as Harriet, has a certainty of being admired and sought
+after, of having the power of chusing from among many, consequently a
+claim to be nice. Her good-nature, too, is not so very slight a claim,
+comprehending, as it does, real, thorough sweetness of temper and
+manner, a very humble opinion of herself, and a great readiness to
+be pleased with other people. I am very much mistaken if your sex in
+general would not think such beauty, and such temper, the highest claims
+a woman could possess.”
+
+“Upon my word, Emma, to hear you abusing the reason you have, is almost
+enough to make me think so too. Better be without sense, than misapply
+it as you do.”
+
+“To be sure!” cried she playfully. “I know _that_ is the feeling of
+you all. I know that such a girl as Harriet is exactly what every
+man delights in--what at once bewitches his senses and satisfies his
+judgment. Oh! Harriet may pick and chuse. Were you, yourself, ever to
+marry, she is the very woman for you. And is she, at seventeen, just
+entering into life, just beginning to be known, to be wondered at
+because she does not accept the first offer she receives? No--pray let
+her have time to look about her.”
+
+“I have always thought it a very foolish intimacy,” said Mr. Knightley
+presently, “though I have kept my thoughts to myself; but I now perceive
+that it will be a very unfortunate one for Harriet. You will puff her up
+with such ideas of her own beauty, and of what she has a claim to, that,
+in a little while, nobody within her reach will be good enough for her.
+Vanity working on a weak head, produces every sort of mischief. Nothing
+so easy as for a young lady to raise her expectations too high. Miss
+Harriet Smith may not find offers of marriage flow in so fast, though
+she is a very pretty girl. Men of sense, whatever you may chuse to
+say, do not want silly wives. Men of family would not be very fond of
+connecting themselves with a girl of such obscurity--and most prudent
+men would be afraid of the inconvenience and disgrace they might be
+involved in, when the mystery of her parentage came to be revealed. Let
+her marry Robert Martin, and she is safe, respectable, and happy for
+ever; but if you encourage her to expect to marry greatly, and teach her
+to be satisfied with nothing less than a man of consequence and large
+fortune, she may be a parlour-boarder at Mrs. Goddard's all the rest
+of her life--or, at least, (for Harriet Smith is a girl who will marry
+somebody or other,) till she grow desperate, and is glad to catch at the
+old writing-master's son.”
+
+“We think so very differently on this point, Mr. Knightley, that there
+can be no use in canvassing it. We shall only be making each other more
+angry. But as to my _letting_ her marry Robert Martin, it is impossible;
+she has refused him, and so decidedly, I think, as must prevent any
+second application. She must abide by the evil of having refused him,
+whatever it may be; and as to the refusal itself, I will not pretend to
+say that I might not influence her a little; but I assure you there
+was very little for me or for any body to do. His appearance is so much
+against him, and his manner so bad, that if she ever were disposed to
+favour him, she is not now. I can imagine, that before she had seen
+any body superior, she might tolerate him. He was the brother of her
+friends, and he took pains to please her; and altogether, having seen
+nobody better (that must have been his great assistant) she might not,
+while she was at Abbey-Mill, find him disagreeable. But the case
+is altered now. She knows now what gentlemen are; and nothing but a
+gentleman in education and manner has any chance with Harriet.”
+
+“Nonsense, errant nonsense, as ever was talked!” cried Mr.
+Knightley.--“Robert Martin's manners have sense, sincerity, and
+good-humour to recommend them; and his mind has more true gentility than
+Harriet Smith could understand.”
+
+Emma made no answer, and tried to look cheerfully unconcerned, but was
+really feeling uncomfortable and wanting him very much to be gone. She
+did not repent what she had done; she still thought herself a better
+judge of such a point of female right and refinement than he could be;
+but yet she had a sort of habitual respect for his judgment in general,
+which made her dislike having it so loudly against her; and to have him
+sitting just opposite to her in angry state, was very disagreeable.
+Some minutes passed in this unpleasant silence, with only one attempt
+on Emma's side to talk of the weather, but he made no answer. He was
+thinking. The result of his thoughts appeared at last in these words.
+
+“Robert Martin has no great loss--if he can but think so; and I hope it
+will not be long before he does. Your views for Harriet are best known
+to yourself; but as you make no secret of your love of match-making, it
+is fair to suppose that views, and plans, and projects you have;--and as
+a friend I shall just hint to you that if Elton is the man, I think it
+will be all labour in vain.”
+
+Emma laughed and disclaimed. He continued,
+
+“Depend upon it, Elton will not do. Elton is a very good sort of man,
+and a very respectable vicar of Highbury, but not at all likely to make
+an imprudent match. He knows the value of a good income as well as any
+body. Elton may talk sentimentally, but he will act rationally. He is
+as well acquainted with his own claims, as you can be with Harriet's.
+He knows that he is a very handsome young man, and a great favourite
+wherever he goes; and from his general way of talking in unreserved
+moments, when there are only men present, I am convinced that he does
+not mean to throw himself away. I have heard him speak with great
+animation of a large family of young ladies that his sisters are
+intimate with, who have all twenty thousand pounds apiece.”
+
+“I am very much obliged to you,” said Emma, laughing again. “If I had
+set my heart on Mr. Elton's marrying Harriet, it would have been very
+kind to open my eyes; but at present I only want to keep Harriet to
+myself. I have done with match-making indeed. I could never hope to
+equal my own doings at Randalls. I shall leave off while I am well.”
+
+“Good morning to you,”--said he, rising and walking off abruptly. He was
+very much vexed. He felt the disappointment of the young man, and was
+mortified to have been the means of promoting it, by the sanction he had
+given; and the part which he was persuaded Emma had taken in the affair,
+was provoking him exceedingly.
+
+Emma remained in a state of vexation too; but there was more
+indistinctness in the causes of her's, than in his. She did not always
+feel so absolutely satisfied with herself, so entirely convinced that
+her opinions were right and her adversary's wrong, as Mr. Knightley. He
+walked off in more complete self-approbation than he left for her. She
+was not so materially cast down, however, but that a little time and
+the return of Harriet were very adequate restoratives. Harriet's staying
+away so long was beginning to make her uneasy. The possibility of the
+young man's coming to Mrs. Goddard's that morning, and meeting with
+Harriet and pleading his own cause, gave alarming ideas. The dread
+of such a failure after all became the prominent uneasiness; and when
+Harriet appeared, and in very good spirits, and without having any
+such reason to give for her long absence, she felt a satisfaction which
+settled her with her own mind, and convinced her, that let Mr.
+Knightley think or say what he would, she had done nothing which woman's
+friendship and woman's feelings would not justify.
+
+He had frightened her a little about Mr. Elton; but when she considered
+that Mr. Knightley could not have observed him as she had done, neither
+with the interest, nor (she must be allowed to tell herself, in spite of
+Mr. Knightley's pretensions) with the skill of such an observer on such
+a question as herself, that he had spoken it hastily and in anger, she
+was able to believe, that he had rather said what he wished resentfully
+to be true, than what he knew any thing about. He certainly might have
+heard Mr. Elton speak with more unreserve than she had ever done, and
+Mr. Elton might not be of an imprudent, inconsiderate disposition as to
+money matters; he might naturally be rather attentive than otherwise
+to them; but then, Mr. Knightley did not make due allowance for the
+influence of a strong passion at war with all interested motives. Mr.
+Knightley saw no such passion, and of course thought nothing of its
+effects; but she saw too much of it to feel a doubt of its overcoming
+any hesitations that a reasonable prudence might originally suggest; and
+more than a reasonable, becoming degree of prudence, she was very sure
+did not belong to Mr. Elton.
+
+Harriet's cheerful look and manner established hers: she came back, not
+to think of Mr. Martin, but to talk of Mr. Elton. Miss Nash had been
+telling her something, which she repeated immediately with great
+delight. Mr. Perry had been to Mrs. Goddard's to attend a sick child,
+and Miss Nash had seen him, and he had told Miss Nash, that as he was
+coming back yesterday from Clayton Park, he had met Mr. Elton, and
+found to his great surprize, that Mr. Elton was actually on his road
+to London, and not meaning to return till the morrow, though it was the
+whist-club night, which he had been never known to miss before; and Mr.
+Perry had remonstrated with him about it, and told him how shabby it
+was in him, their best player, to absent himself, and tried very much to
+persuade him to put off his journey only one day; but it would not
+do; Mr. Elton had been determined to go on, and had said in a _very_
+_particular_ way indeed, that he was going on business which he would
+not put off for any inducement in the world; and something about a
+very enviable commission, and being the bearer of something exceedingly
+precious. Mr. Perry could not quite understand him, but he was very sure
+there must be a _lady_ in the case, and he told him so; and Mr. Elton
+only looked very conscious and smiling, and rode off in great spirits.
+Miss Nash had told her all this, and had talked a great deal more about
+Mr. Elton; and said, looking so very significantly at her, “that she did
+not pretend to understand what his business might be, but she only
+knew that any woman whom Mr. Elton could prefer, she should think the
+luckiest woman in the world; for, beyond a doubt, Mr. Elton had not his
+equal for beauty or agreeableness.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Mr. Knightley might quarrel with her, but Emma could not quarrel with
+herself. He was so much displeased, that it was longer than usual before
+he came to Hartfield again; and when they did meet, his grave looks
+shewed that she was not forgiven. She was sorry, but could not repent.
+On the contrary, her plans and proceedings were more and more justified
+and endeared to her by the general appearances of the next few days.
+
+The Picture, elegantly framed, came safely to hand soon after Mr.
+Elton's return, and being hung over the mantelpiece of the common
+sitting-room, he got up to look at it, and sighed out his half sentences
+of admiration just as he ought; and as for Harriet's feelings, they were
+visibly forming themselves into as strong and steady an attachment as
+her youth and sort of mind admitted. Emma was soon perfectly satisfied
+of Mr. Martin's being no otherwise remembered, than as he furnished a
+contrast with Mr. Elton, of the utmost advantage to the latter.
+
+Her views of improving her little friend's mind, by a great deal of
+useful reading and conversation, had never yet led to more than a few
+first chapters, and the intention of going on to-morrow. It was much
+easier to chat than to study; much pleasanter to let her imagination
+range and work at Harriet's fortune, than to be labouring to enlarge
+her comprehension or exercise it on sober facts; and the only literary
+pursuit which engaged Harriet at present, the only mental provision she
+was making for the evening of life, was the collecting and transcribing
+all the riddles of every sort that she could meet with, into a thin
+quarto of hot-pressed paper, made up by her friend, and ornamented with
+ciphers and trophies.
+
+In this age of literature, such collections on a very grand scale are
+not uncommon. Miss Nash, head-teacher at Mrs. Goddard's, had written out
+at least three hundred; and Harriet, who had taken the first hint of it
+from her, hoped, with Miss Woodhouse's help, to get a great many more.
+Emma assisted with her invention, memory and taste; and as Harriet wrote
+a very pretty hand, it was likely to be an arrangement of the first
+order, in form as well as quantity.
+
+Mr. Woodhouse was almost as much interested in the business as the
+girls, and tried very often to recollect something worth their putting
+in. “So many clever riddles as there used to be when he was young--he
+wondered he could not remember them! but he hoped he should in time.”
+ And it always ended in “Kitty, a fair but frozen maid.”
+
+His good friend Perry, too, whom he had spoken to on the subject,
+did not at present recollect any thing of the riddle kind; but he
+had desired Perry to be upon the watch, and as he went about so much,
+something, he thought, might come from that quarter.
+
+It was by no means his daughter's wish that the intellects of Highbury
+in general should be put under requisition. Mr. Elton was the only one
+whose assistance she asked. He was invited to contribute any really good
+enigmas, charades, or conundrums that he might recollect; and she had
+the pleasure of seeing him most intently at work with his recollections;
+and at the same time, as she could perceive, most earnestly careful that
+nothing ungallant, nothing that did not breathe a compliment to the
+sex should pass his lips. They owed to him their two or three politest
+puzzles; and the joy and exultation with which at last he recalled, and
+rather sentimentally recited, that well-known charade,
+
+    My first doth affliction denote,
+      Which my second is destin'd to feel
+    And my whole is the best antidote
+      That affliction to soften and heal.--
+
+made her quite sorry to acknowledge that they had transcribed it some
+pages ago already.
+
+“Why will not you write one yourself for us, Mr. Elton?” said she; “that
+is the only security for its freshness; and nothing could be easier to
+you.”
+
+“Oh no! he had never written, hardly ever, any thing of the kind in his
+life. The stupidest fellow! He was afraid not even Miss Woodhouse”--he
+stopt a moment--“or Miss Smith could inspire him.”
+
+The very next day however produced some proof of inspiration. He
+called for a few moments, just to leave a piece of paper on the table
+containing, as he said, a charade, which a friend of his had addressed
+to a young lady, the object of his admiration, but which, from his
+manner, Emma was immediately convinced must be his own.
+
+“I do not offer it for Miss Smith's collection,” said he. “Being my
+friend's, I have no right to expose it in any degree to the public eye,
+but perhaps you may not dislike looking at it.”
+
+The speech was more to Emma than to Harriet, which Emma could
+understand. There was deep consciousness about him, and he found
+it easier to meet her eye than her friend's. He was gone the next
+moment:--after another moment's pause,
+
+“Take it,” said Emma, smiling, and pushing the paper towards
+Harriet--“it is for you. Take your own.”
+
+But Harriet was in a tremor, and could not touch it; and Emma, never
+loth to be first, was obliged to examine it herself.
+
+        To Miss--
+
+          CHARADE.
+
+    My first displays the wealth and pomp of kings,
+      Lords of the earth! their luxury and ease.
+    Another view of man, my second brings,
+      Behold him there, the monarch of the seas!
+
+    But ah! united, what reverse we have!
+      Man's boasted power and freedom, all are flown;
+    Lord of the earth and sea, he bends a slave,
+      And woman, lovely woman, reigns alone.
+
+      Thy ready wit the word will soon supply,
+      May its approval beam in that soft eye!
+
+She cast her eye over it, pondered, caught the meaning, read it through
+again to be quite certain, and quite mistress of the lines, and then
+passing it to Harriet, sat happily smiling, and saying to herself, while
+Harriet was puzzling over the paper in all the confusion of hope and
+dulness, “Very well, Mr. Elton, very well indeed. I have read worse
+charades. _Courtship_--a very good hint. I give you credit for it. This
+is feeling your way. This is saying very plainly--'Pray, Miss Smith,
+give me leave to pay my addresses to you. Approve my charade and my
+intentions in the same glance.'
+
+      May its approval beam in that soft eye!
+
+Harriet exactly. Soft is the very word for her eye--of all epithets, the
+justest that could be given.
+
+      Thy ready wit the word will soon supply.
+
+Humph--Harriet's ready wit! All the better. A man must be very much in
+love, indeed, to describe her so. Ah! Mr. Knightley, I wish you had the
+benefit of this; I think this would convince you. For once in your life
+you would be obliged to own yourself mistaken. An excellent charade
+indeed! and very much to the purpose. Things must come to a crisis soon
+now.”
+
+She was obliged to break off from these very pleasant observations,
+which were otherwise of a sort to run into great length, by the
+eagerness of Harriet's wondering questions.
+
+“What can it be, Miss Woodhouse?--what can it be? I have not an idea--I
+cannot guess it in the least. What can it possibly be? Do try to find
+it out, Miss Woodhouse. Do help me. I never saw any thing so hard. Is it
+kingdom? I wonder who the friend was--and who could be the young lady.
+Do you think it is a good one? Can it be woman?
+
+      And woman, lovely woman, reigns alone.
+
+Can it be Neptune?
+
+      Behold him there, the monarch of the seas!
+
+Or a trident? or a mermaid? or a shark? Oh, no! shark is only one
+syllable. It must be very clever, or he would not have brought it. Oh!
+Miss Woodhouse, do you think we shall ever find it out?”
+
+“Mermaids and sharks! Nonsense! My dear Harriet, what are you thinking
+of? Where would be the use of his bringing us a charade made by a friend
+upon a mermaid or a shark? Give me the paper and listen.
+
+For Miss ------, read Miss Smith.
+
+    My first displays the wealth and pomp of kings,
+      Lords of the earth! their luxury and ease.
+
+That is _court_.
+
+    Another view of man, my second brings;
+      Behold him there, the monarch of the seas!
+
+That is _ship_;--plain as it can be.--Now for the cream.
+
+    But ah! united, (_courtship_, you know,) what reverse we have!
+      Man's boasted power and freedom, all are flown.
+    Lord of the earth and sea, he bends a slave,
+      And woman, lovely woman, reigns alone.
+
+A very proper compliment!--and then follows the application, which
+I think, my dear Harriet, you cannot find much difficulty in
+comprehending. Read it in comfort to yourself. There can be no doubt of
+its being written for you and to you.”
+
+Harriet could not long resist so delightful a persuasion. She read
+the concluding lines, and was all flutter and happiness. She could not
+speak. But she was not wanted to speak. It was enough for her to feel.
+Emma spoke for her.
+
+“There is so pointed, and so particular a meaning in this compliment,”
+ said she, “that I cannot have a doubt as to Mr. Elton's intentions. You
+are his object--and you will soon receive the completest proof of it. I
+thought it must be so. I thought I could not be so deceived; but now, it
+is clear; the state of his mind is as clear and decided, as my wishes on
+the subject have been ever since I knew you. Yes, Harriet, just so long
+have I been wanting the very circumstance to happen that has happened.
+I could never tell whether an attachment between you and Mr. Elton were
+most desirable or most natural. Its probability and its eligibility have
+really so equalled each other! I am very happy. I congratulate you, my
+dear Harriet, with all my heart. This is an attachment which a woman may
+well feel pride in creating. This is a connexion which offers nothing
+but good. It will give you every thing that you want--consideration,
+independence, a proper home--it will fix you in the centre of all your
+real friends, close to Hartfield and to me, and confirm our intimacy
+for ever. This, Harriet, is an alliance which can never raise a blush in
+either of us.”
+
+“Dear Miss Woodhouse!”--and “Dear Miss Woodhouse,” was all that Harriet,
+with many tender embraces could articulate at first; but when they did
+arrive at something more like conversation, it was sufficiently clear to
+her friend that she saw, felt, anticipated, and remembered just as she
+ought. Mr. Elton's superiority had very ample acknowledgment.
+
+“Whatever you say is always right,” cried Harriet, “and therefore I
+suppose, and believe, and hope it must be so; but otherwise I could not
+have imagined it. It is so much beyond any thing I deserve. Mr. Elton,
+who might marry any body! There cannot be two opinions about _him_. He
+is so very superior. Only think of those sweet verses--'To Miss ------.'
+Dear me, how clever!--Could it really be meant for me?”
+
+“I cannot make a question, or listen to a question about that. It is a
+certainty. Receive it on my judgment. It is a sort of prologue to
+the play, a motto to the chapter; and will be soon followed by
+matter-of-fact prose.”
+
+“It is a sort of thing which nobody could have expected. I am sure,
+a month ago, I had no more idea myself!--The strangest things do take
+place!”
+
+“When Miss Smiths and Mr. Eltons get acquainted--they do indeed--and
+really it is strange; it is out of the common course that what is so
+evidently, so palpably desirable--what courts the pre-arrangement of
+other people, should so immediately shape itself into the proper form.
+You and Mr. Elton are by situation called together; you belong to one
+another by every circumstance of your respective homes. Your marrying
+will be equal to the match at Randalls. There does seem to be a
+something in the air of Hartfield which gives love exactly the right
+direction, and sends it into the very channel where it ought to flow.
+
+      The course of true love never did run smooth--
+
+A Hartfield edition of Shakespeare would have a long note on that
+passage.”
+
+“That Mr. Elton should really be in love with me,--me, of all people,
+who did not know him, to speak to him, at Michaelmas! And he, the very
+handsomest man that ever was, and a man that every body looks up to,
+quite like Mr. Knightley! His company so sought after, that every body
+says he need not eat a single meal by himself if he does not chuse it;
+that he has more invitations than there are days in the week. And so
+excellent in the Church! Miss Nash has put down all the texts he has
+ever preached from since he came to Highbury. Dear me! When I look back
+to the first time I saw him! How little did I think!--The two Abbots and
+I ran into the front room and peeped through the blind when we heard he
+was going by, and Miss Nash came and scolded us away, and staid to look
+through herself; however, she called me back presently, and let me
+look too, which was very good-natured. And how beautiful we thought he
+looked! He was arm-in-arm with Mr. Cole.”
+
+“This is an alliance which, whoever--whatever your friends may be, must
+be agreeable to them, provided at least they have common sense; and we
+are not to be addressing our conduct to fools. If they are anxious to
+see you _happily_ married, here is a man whose amiable character gives
+every assurance of it;--if they wish to have you settled in the same
+country and circle which they have chosen to place you in, here it will
+be accomplished; and if their only object is that you should, in the
+common phrase, be _well_ married, here is the comfortable fortune, the
+respectable establishment, the rise in the world which must satisfy
+them.”
+
+“Yes, very true. How nicely you talk; I love to hear you. You understand
+every thing. You and Mr. Elton are one as clever as the other. This
+charade!--If I had studied a twelvemonth, I could never have made any
+thing like it.”
+
+“I thought he meant to try his skill, by his manner of declining it
+yesterday.”
+
+“I do think it is, without exception, the best charade I ever read.”
+
+“I never read one more to the purpose, certainly.”
+
+“It is as long again as almost all we have had before.”
+
+“I do not consider its length as particularly in its favour. Such things
+in general cannot be too short.”
+
+Harriet was too intent on the lines to hear. The most satisfactory
+comparisons were rising in her mind.
+
+“It is one thing,” said she, presently--her cheeks in a glow--“to have
+very good sense in a common way, like every body else, and if there is
+any thing to say, to sit down and write a letter, and say just what you
+must, in a short way; and another, to write verses and charades like
+this.”
+
+Emma could not have desired a more spirited rejection of Mr. Martin's
+prose.
+
+“Such sweet lines!” continued Harriet--“these two last!--But how shall I
+ever be able to return the paper, or say I have found it out?--Oh! Miss
+Woodhouse, what can we do about that?”
+
+“Leave it to me. You do nothing. He will be here this evening, I dare
+say, and then I will give it him back, and some nonsense or other will
+pass between us, and you shall not be committed.--Your soft eyes shall
+chuse their own time for beaming. Trust to me.”
+
+“Oh! Miss Woodhouse, what a pity that I must not write this beautiful
+charade into my book! I am sure I have not got one half so good.”
+
+“Leave out the two last lines, and there is no reason why you should not
+write it into your book.”
+
+“Oh! but those two lines are”--
+
+--“The best of all. Granted;--for private enjoyment; and for private
+enjoyment keep them. They are not at all the less written you know,
+because you divide them. The couplet does not cease to be, nor does its
+meaning change. But take it away, and all _appropriation_ ceases, and a
+very pretty gallant charade remains, fit for any collection. Depend upon
+it, he would not like to have his charade slighted, much better than his
+passion. A poet in love must be encouraged in both capacities, or
+neither. Give me the book, I will write it down, and then there can be
+no possible reflection on you.”
+
+Harriet submitted, though her mind could hardly separate the parts,
+so as to feel quite sure that her friend were not writing down a
+declaration of love. It seemed too precious an offering for any degree
+of publicity.
+
+“I shall never let that book go out of my own hands,” said she.
+
+“Very well,” replied Emma; “a most natural feeling; and the longer it
+lasts, the better I shall be pleased. But here is my father coming: you
+will not object to my reading the charade to him. It will be giving him
+so much pleasure! He loves any thing of the sort, and especially any
+thing that pays woman a compliment. He has the tenderest spirit of
+gallantry towards us all!--You must let me read it to him.”
+
+Harriet looked grave.
+
+“My dear Harriet, you must not refine too much upon this charade.--You
+will betray your feelings improperly, if you are too conscious and too
+quick, and appear to affix more meaning, or even quite all the meaning
+which may be affixed to it. Do not be overpowered by such a little
+tribute of admiration. If he had been anxious for secrecy, he would not
+have left the paper while I was by; but he rather pushed it towards me
+than towards you. Do not let us be too solemn on the business. He has
+encouragement enough to proceed, without our sighing out our souls over
+this charade.”
+
+“Oh! no--I hope I shall not be ridiculous about it. Do as you please.”
+
+Mr. Woodhouse came in, and very soon led to the subject again, by the
+recurrence of his very frequent inquiry of “Well, my dears, how does
+your book go on?--Have you got any thing fresh?”
+
+“Yes, papa; we have something to read you, something quite fresh. A
+piece of paper was found on the table this morning--(dropt, we suppose,
+by a fairy)--containing a very pretty charade, and we have just copied
+it in.”
+
+She read it to him, just as he liked to have any thing read, slowly and
+distinctly, and two or three times over, with explanations of every
+part as she proceeded--and he was very much pleased, and, as she had
+foreseen, especially struck with the complimentary conclusion.
+
+“Aye, that's very just, indeed, that's very properly said. Very true.
+'Woman, lovely woman.' It is such a pretty charade, my dear, that I
+can easily guess what fairy brought it.--Nobody could have written so
+prettily, but you, Emma.”
+
+Emma only nodded, and smiled.--After a little thinking, and a very
+tender sigh, he added,
+
+“Ah! it is no difficulty to see who you take after! Your dear mother
+was so clever at all those things! If I had but her memory! But I can
+remember nothing;--not even that particular riddle which you have
+heard me mention; I can only recollect the first stanza; and there are
+several.
+
+    Kitty, a fair but frozen maid,
+      Kindled a flame I yet deplore,
+    The hood-wink'd boy I called to aid,
+    Though of his near approach afraid,
+      So fatal to my suit before.
+
+And that is all that I can recollect of it--but it is very clever all
+the way through. But I think, my dear, you said you had got it.”
+
+“Yes, papa, it is written out in our second page. We copied it from the
+Elegant Extracts. It was Garrick's, you know.”
+
+“Aye, very true.--I wish I could recollect more of it.
+
+    Kitty, a fair but frozen maid.
+
+The name makes me think of poor Isabella; for she was very near being
+christened Catherine after her grandmama. I hope we shall have her here
+next week. Have you thought, my dear, where you shall put her--and what
+room there will be for the children?”
+
+“Oh! yes--she will have her own room, of course; the room she always
+has;--and there is the nursery for the children,--just as usual, you
+know. Why should there be any change?”
+
+“I do not know, my dear--but it is so long since she was here!--not
+since last Easter, and then only for a few days.--Mr. John Knightley's
+being a lawyer is very inconvenient.--Poor Isabella!--she is sadly taken
+away from us all!--and how sorry she will be when she comes, not to see
+Miss Taylor here!”
+
+“She will not be surprized, papa, at least.”
+
+“I do not know, my dear. I am sure I was very much surprized when I
+first heard she was going to be married.”
+
+“We must ask Mr. and Mrs. Weston to dine with us, while Isabella is
+here.”
+
+“Yes, my dear, if there is time.--But--(in a very depressed tone)--she
+is coming for only one week. There will not be time for any thing.”
+
+“It is unfortunate that they cannot stay longer--but it seems a case of
+necessity. Mr. John Knightley must be in town again on the 28th, and we
+ought to be thankful, papa, that we are to have the whole of the time
+they can give to the country, that two or three days are not to be taken
+out for the Abbey. Mr. Knightley promises to give up his claim this
+Christmas--though you know it is longer since they were with him, than
+with us.”
+
+“It would be very hard, indeed, my dear, if poor Isabella were to be
+anywhere but at Hartfield.”
+
+Mr. Woodhouse could never allow for Mr. Knightley's claims on his
+brother, or any body's claims on Isabella, except his own. He sat musing
+a little while, and then said,
+
+“But I do not see why poor Isabella should be obliged to go back so
+soon, though he does. I think, Emma, I shall try and persuade her to
+stay longer with us. She and the children might stay very well.”
+
+“Ah! papa--that is what you never have been able to accomplish, and I
+do not think you ever will. Isabella cannot bear to stay behind her
+husband.”
+
+This was too true for contradiction. Unwelcome as it was, Mr. Woodhouse
+could only give a submissive sigh; and as Emma saw his spirits affected
+by the idea of his daughter's attachment to her husband, she immediately
+led to such a branch of the subject as must raise them.
+
+“Harriet must give us as much of her company as she can while my brother
+and sister are here. I am sure she will be pleased with the children.
+We are very proud of the children, are not we, papa? I wonder which she
+will think the handsomest, Henry or John?”
+
+“Aye, I wonder which she will. Poor little dears, how glad they will be
+to come. They are very fond of being at Hartfield, Harriet.”
+
+“I dare say they are, sir. I am sure I do not know who is not.”
+
+“Henry is a fine boy, but John is very like his mama. Henry is the
+eldest, he was named after me, not after his father. John, the second,
+is named after his father. Some people are surprized, I believe, that
+the eldest was not, but Isabella would have him called Henry, which I
+thought very pretty of her. And he is a very clever boy, indeed. They
+are all remarkably clever; and they have so many pretty ways. They will
+come and stand by my chair, and say, 'Grandpapa, can you give me a bit
+of string?' and once Henry asked me for a knife, but I told him knives
+were only made for grandpapas. I think their father is too rough with
+them very often.”
+
+“He appears rough to you,” said Emma, “because you are so very gentle
+yourself; but if you could compare him with other papas, you would not
+think him rough. He wishes his boys to be active and hardy; and if
+they misbehave, can give them a sharp word now and then; but he is an
+affectionate father--certainly Mr. John Knightley is an affectionate
+father. The children are all fond of him.”
+
+“And then their uncle comes in, and tosses them up to the ceiling in a
+very frightful way!”
+
+“But they like it, papa; there is nothing they like so much. It is such
+enjoyment to them, that if their uncle did not lay down the rule of
+their taking turns, whichever began would never give way to the other.”
+
+“Well, I cannot understand it.”
+
+“That is the case with us all, papa. One half of the world cannot
+understand the pleasures of the other.”
+
+Later in the morning, and just as the girls were going to separate
+in preparation for the regular four o'clock dinner, the hero of this
+inimitable charade walked in again. Harriet turned away; but Emma could
+receive him with the usual smile, and her quick eye soon discerned in
+his the consciousness of having made a push--of having thrown a die;
+and she imagined he was come to see how it might turn up. His ostensible
+reason, however, was to ask whether Mr. Woodhouse's party could be made
+up in the evening without him, or whether he should be in the smallest
+degree necessary at Hartfield. If he were, every thing else must give
+way; but otherwise his friend Cole had been saying so much about his
+dining with him--had made such a point of it, that he had promised him
+conditionally to come.
+
+Emma thanked him, but could not allow of his disappointing his friend
+on their account; her father was sure of his rubber. He re-urged--she
+re-declined; and he seemed then about to make his bow, when taking the
+paper from the table, she returned it--
+
+“Oh! here is the charade you were so obliging as to leave with us; thank
+you for the sight of it. We admired it so much, that I have ventured
+to write it into Miss Smith's collection. Your friend will not take it
+amiss I hope. Of course I have not transcribed beyond the first eight
+lines.”
+
+Mr. Elton certainly did not very well know what to say. He looked rather
+doubtingly--rather confused; said something about “honour,”--glanced at
+Emma and at Harriet, and then seeing the book open on the table, took
+it up, and examined it very attentively. With the view of passing off an
+awkward moment, Emma smilingly said,
+
+“You must make my apologies to your friend; but so good a charade
+must not be confined to one or two. He may be sure of every woman's
+approbation while he writes with such gallantry.”
+
+“I have no hesitation in saying,” replied Mr. Elton, though hesitating
+a good deal while he spoke; “I have no hesitation in saying--at least
+if my friend feels at all as _I_ do--I have not the smallest doubt that,
+could he see his little effusion honoured as _I_ see it, (looking at the
+book again, and replacing it on the table), he would consider it as the
+proudest moment of his life.”
+
+After this speech he was gone as soon as possible. Emma could not think
+it too soon; for with all his good and agreeable qualities, there was
+a sort of parade in his speeches which was very apt to incline her to
+laugh. She ran away to indulge the inclination, leaving the tender and
+the sublime of pleasure to Harriet's share.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+Though now the middle of December, there had yet been no weather to
+prevent the young ladies from tolerably regular exercise; and on the
+morrow, Emma had a charitable visit to pay to a poor sick family, who
+lived a little way out of Highbury.
+
+Their road to this detached cottage was down Vicarage Lane, a lane
+leading at right angles from the broad, though irregular, main street of
+the place; and, as may be inferred, containing the blessed abode of Mr.
+Elton. A few inferior dwellings were first to be passed, and then, about
+a quarter of a mile down the lane rose the Vicarage, an old and not
+very good house, almost as close to the road as it could be. It had
+no advantage of situation; but had been very much smartened up by the
+present proprietor; and, such as it was, there could be no possibility
+of the two friends passing it without a slackened pace and observing
+eyes.--Emma's remark was--
+
+“There it is. There go you and your riddle-book one of these
+days.”--Harriet's was--
+
+“Oh, what a sweet house!--How very beautiful!--There are the yellow
+curtains that Miss Nash admires so much.”
+
+“I do not often walk this way _now_,” said Emma, as they proceeded, “but
+_then_ there will be an inducement, and I shall gradually get intimately
+acquainted with all the hedges, gates, pools and pollards of this part
+of Highbury.”
+
+Harriet, she found, had never in her life been inside the Vicarage,
+and her curiosity to see it was so extreme, that, considering exteriors
+and probabilities, Emma could only class it, as a proof of love, with
+Mr. Elton's seeing ready wit in her.
+
+“I wish we could contrive it,” said she; “but I cannot think of any
+tolerable pretence for going in;--no servant that I want to inquire
+about of his housekeeper--no message from my father.”
+
+She pondered, but could think of nothing. After a mutual silence of some
+minutes, Harriet thus began again--
+
+“I do so wonder, Miss Woodhouse, that you should not be married, or
+going to be married! so charming as you are!”--
+
+Emma laughed, and replied,
+
+“My being charming, Harriet, is not quite enough to induce me to marry;
+I must find other people charming--one other person at least. And I
+am not only, not going to be married, at present, but have very little
+intention of ever marrying at all.”
+
+“Ah!--so you say; but I cannot believe it.”
+
+“I must see somebody very superior to any one I have seen yet, to be
+tempted; Mr. Elton, you know, (recollecting herself,) is out of the
+question: and I do _not_ wish to see any such person. I would rather not
+be tempted. I cannot really change for the better. If I were to marry, I
+must expect to repent it.”
+
+“Dear me!--it is so odd to hear a woman talk so!”--
+
+“I have none of the usual inducements of women to marry. Were I to fall
+in love, indeed, it would be a different thing! but I never have been in
+love; it is not my way, or my nature; and I do not think I ever shall.
+And, without love, I am sure I should be a fool to change such a
+situation as mine. Fortune I do not want; employment I do not want;
+consequence I do not want: I believe few married women are half as much
+mistress of their husband's house as I am of Hartfield; and never, never
+could I expect to be so truly beloved and important; so always first and
+always right in any man's eyes as I am in my father's.”
+
+“But then, to be an old maid at last, like Miss Bates!”
+
+“That is as formidable an image as you could present, Harriet; and if
+I thought I should ever be like Miss Bates! so silly--so satisfied--so
+smiling--so prosing--so undistinguishing and unfastidious--and so apt
+to tell every thing relative to every body about me, I would marry
+to-morrow. But between _us_, I am convinced there never can be any
+likeness, except in being unmarried.”
+
+“But still, you will be an old maid! and that's so dreadful!”
+
+“Never mind, Harriet, I shall not be a poor old maid; and it is poverty
+only which makes celibacy contemptible to a generous public! A single
+woman, with a very narrow income, must be a ridiculous, disagreeable old
+maid! the proper sport of boys and girls, but a single woman, of good
+fortune, is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant
+as any body else. And the distinction is not quite so much against the
+candour and common sense of the world as appears at first; for a very
+narrow income has a tendency to contract the mind, and sour the temper.
+Those who can barely live, and who live perforce in a very small, and
+generally very inferior, society, may well be illiberal and cross. This
+does not apply, however, to Miss Bates; she is only too good natured and
+too silly to suit me; but, in general, she is very much to the taste
+of every body, though single and though poor. Poverty certainly has not
+contracted her mind: I really believe, if she had only a shilling in the
+world, she would be very likely to give away sixpence of it; and nobody
+is afraid of her: that is a great charm.”
+
+“Dear me! but what shall you do? how shall you employ yourself when you
+grow old?”
+
+“If I know myself, Harriet, mine is an active, busy mind, with a great
+many independent resources; and I do not perceive why I should be more
+in want of employment at forty or fifty than one-and-twenty. Woman's
+usual occupations of hand and mind will be as open to me then as they
+are now; or with no important variation. If I draw less, I shall read
+more; if I give up music, I shall take to carpet-work. And as for
+objects of interest, objects for the affections, which is in truth the
+great point of inferiority, the want of which is really the great evil
+to be avoided in _not_ marrying, I shall be very well off, with all the
+children of a sister I love so much, to care about. There will be enough
+of them, in all probability, to supply every sort of sensation that
+declining life can need. There will be enough for every hope and every
+fear; and though my attachment to none can equal that of a parent, it
+suits my ideas of comfort better than what is warmer and blinder. My
+nephews and nieces!--I shall often have a niece with me.”
+
+“Do you know Miss Bates's niece? That is, I know you must have seen her
+a hundred times--but are you acquainted?”
+
+“Oh! yes; we are always forced to be acquainted whenever she comes to
+Highbury. By the bye, _that_ is almost enough to put one out of conceit
+with a niece. Heaven forbid! at least, that I should ever bore people
+half so much about all the Knightleys together, as she does about Jane
+Fairfax. One is sick of the very name of Jane Fairfax. Every letter from
+her is read forty times over; her compliments to all friends go round
+and round again; and if she does but send her aunt the pattern of a
+stomacher, or knit a pair of garters for her grandmother, one hears of
+nothing else for a month. I wish Jane Fairfax very well; but she tires
+me to death.”
+
+They were now approaching the cottage, and all idle topics were
+superseded. Emma was very compassionate; and the distresses of the poor
+were as sure of relief from her personal attention and kindness, her
+counsel and her patience, as from her purse. She understood their ways,
+could allow for their ignorance and their temptations, had no romantic
+expectations of extraordinary virtue from those for whom education had
+done so little; entered into their troubles with ready sympathy, and
+always gave her assistance with as much intelligence as good-will. In
+the present instance, it was sickness and poverty together which she
+came to visit; and after remaining there as long as she could give
+comfort or advice, she quitted the cottage with such an impression of
+the scene as made her say to Harriet, as they walked away,
+
+“These are the sights, Harriet, to do one good. How trifling they make
+every thing else appear!--I feel now as if I could think of nothing but
+these poor creatures all the rest of the day; and yet, who can say how
+soon it may all vanish from my mind?”
+
+“Very true,” said Harriet. “Poor creatures! one can think of nothing
+else.”
+
+“And really, I do not think the impression will soon be over,” said
+Emma, as she crossed the low hedge, and tottering footstep which ended
+the narrow, slippery path through the cottage garden, and brought them
+into the lane again. “I do not think it will,” stopping to look once
+more at all the outward wretchedness of the place, and recall the still
+greater within.
+
+“Oh! dear, no,” said her companion.
+
+They walked on. The lane made a slight bend; and when that bend was
+passed, Mr. Elton was immediately in sight; and so near as to give Emma
+time only to say farther,
+
+“Ah! Harriet, here comes a very sudden trial of our stability in good
+thoughts. Well, (smiling,) I hope it may be allowed that if compassion
+has produced exertion and relief to the sufferers, it has done all that
+is truly important. If we feel for the wretched, enough to do all we can
+for them, the rest is empty sympathy, only distressing to ourselves.”
+
+Harriet could just answer, “Oh! dear, yes,” before the gentleman joined
+them. The wants and sufferings of the poor family, however, were the
+first subject on meeting. He had been going to call on them. His visit
+he would now defer; but they had a very interesting parley about
+what could be done and should be done. Mr. Elton then turned back to
+accompany them.
+
+“To fall in with each other on such an errand as this,” thought Emma;
+“to meet in a charitable scheme; this will bring a great increase
+of love on each side. I should not wonder if it were to bring on the
+declaration. It must, if I were not here. I wish I were anywhere else.”
+
+Anxious to separate herself from them as far as she could, she soon
+afterwards took possession of a narrow footpath, a little raised on one
+side of the lane, leaving them together in the main road. But she had
+not been there two minutes when she found that Harriet's habits of
+dependence and imitation were bringing her up too, and that, in short,
+they would both be soon after her. This would not do; she immediately
+stopped, under pretence of having some alteration to make in the lacing
+of her half-boot, and stooping down in complete occupation of the
+footpath, begged them to have the goodness to walk on, and she would
+follow in half a minute. They did as they were desired; and by the time
+she judged it reasonable to have done with her boot, she had the comfort
+of farther delay in her power, being overtaken by a child from the
+cottage, setting out, according to orders, with her pitcher, to fetch
+broth from Hartfield. To walk by the side of this child, and talk to
+and question her, was the most natural thing in the world, or would have
+been the most natural, had she been acting just then without design;
+and by this means the others were still able to keep ahead, without
+any obligation of waiting for her. She gained on them, however,
+involuntarily: the child's pace was quick, and theirs rather slow;
+and she was the more concerned at it, from their being evidently in
+a conversation which interested them. Mr. Elton was speaking with
+animation, Harriet listening with a very pleased attention; and Emma,
+having sent the child on, was beginning to think how she might draw back
+a little more, when they both looked around, and she was obliged to join
+them.
+
+Mr. Elton was still talking, still engaged in some interesting detail;
+and Emma experienced some disappointment when she found that he was only
+giving his fair companion an account of the yesterday's party at his
+friend Cole's, and that she was come in herself for the Stilton cheese,
+the north Wiltshire, the butter, the celery, the beet-root, and all the
+dessert.
+
+“This would soon have led to something better, of course,” was her
+consoling reflection; “any thing interests between those who love; and
+any thing will serve as introduction to what is near the heart. If I
+could but have kept longer away!”
+
+They now walked on together quietly, till within view of the vicarage
+pales, when a sudden resolution, of at least getting Harriet into the
+house, made her again find something very much amiss about her boot, and
+fall behind to arrange it once more. She then broke the lace off short,
+and dexterously throwing it into a ditch, was presently obliged to
+entreat them to stop, and acknowledged her inability to put herself to
+rights so as to be able to walk home in tolerable comfort.
+
+“Part of my lace is gone,” said she, “and I do not know how I am to
+contrive. I really am a most troublesome companion to you both, but I
+hope I am not often so ill-equipped. Mr. Elton, I must beg leave to stop
+at your house, and ask your housekeeper for a bit of ribband or string,
+or any thing just to keep my boot on.”
+
+Mr. Elton looked all happiness at this proposition; and nothing could
+exceed his alertness and attention in conducting them into his house and
+endeavouring to make every thing appear to advantage. The room they were
+taken into was the one he chiefly occupied, and looking forwards; behind
+it was another with which it immediately communicated; the door between
+them was open, and Emma passed into it with the housekeeper to receive
+her assistance in the most comfortable manner. She was obliged to leave
+the door ajar as she found it; but she fully intended that Mr. Elton
+should close it. It was not closed, however, it still remained ajar; but
+by engaging the housekeeper in incessant conversation, she hoped to make
+it practicable for him to chuse his own subject in the adjoining
+room. For ten minutes she could hear nothing but herself. It could be
+protracted no longer. She was then obliged to be finished, and make her
+appearance.
+
+The lovers were standing together at one of the windows. It had a most
+favourable aspect; and, for half a minute, Emma felt the glory of having
+schemed successfully. But it would not do; he had not come to the point.
+He had been most agreeable, most delightful; he had told Harriet that
+he had seen them go by, and had purposely followed them; other little
+gallantries and allusions had been dropt, but nothing serious.
+
+“Cautious, very cautious,” thought Emma; “he advances inch by inch, and
+will hazard nothing till he believes himself secure.”
+
+Still, however, though every thing had not been accomplished by her
+ingenious device, she could not but flatter herself that it had been
+the occasion of much present enjoyment to both, and must be leading them
+forward to the great event.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Mr. Elton must now be left to himself. It was no longer in Emma's power
+to superintend his happiness or quicken his measures. The coming of her
+sister's family was so very near at hand, that first in anticipation,
+and then in reality, it became henceforth her prime object of interest;
+and during the ten days of their stay at Hartfield it was not to be
+expected--she did not herself expect--that any thing beyond occasional,
+fortuitous assistance could be afforded by her to the lovers. They might
+advance rapidly if they would, however; they must advance somehow or
+other whether they would or no. She hardly wished to have more leisure
+for them. There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they
+will do for themselves.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. John Knightley, from having been longer than usual absent
+from Surry, were exciting of course rather more than the usual interest.
+Till this year, every long vacation since their marriage had been
+divided between Hartfield and Donwell Abbey; but all the holidays of
+this autumn had been given to sea-bathing for the children, and it was
+therefore many months since they had been seen in a regular way by their
+Surry connexions, or seen at all by Mr. Woodhouse, who could not be
+induced to get so far as London, even for poor Isabella's sake; and
+who consequently was now most nervously and apprehensively happy in
+forestalling this too short visit.
+
+He thought much of the evils of the journey for her, and not a little
+of the fatigues of his own horses and coachman who were to bring some
+of the party the last half of the way; but his alarms were needless;
+the sixteen miles being happily accomplished, and Mr. and Mrs. John
+Knightley, their five children, and a competent number of nursery-maids,
+all reaching Hartfield in safety. The bustle and joy of such an arrival,
+the many to be talked to, welcomed, encouraged, and variously dispersed
+and disposed of, produced a noise and confusion which his nerves could
+not have borne under any other cause, nor have endured much longer even
+for this; but the ways of Hartfield and the feelings of her father
+were so respected by Mrs. John Knightley, that in spite of maternal
+solicitude for the immediate enjoyment of her little ones, and for their
+having instantly all the liberty and attendance, all the eating and
+drinking, and sleeping and playing, which they could possibly wish for,
+without the smallest delay, the children were never allowed to be long
+a disturbance to him, either in themselves or in any restless attendance
+on them.
+
+Mrs. John Knightley was a pretty, elegant little woman, of gentle, quiet
+manners, and a disposition remarkably amiable and affectionate; wrapt
+up in her family; a devoted wife, a doating mother, and so tenderly
+attached to her father and sister that, but for these higher ties, a
+warmer love might have seemed impossible. She could never see a fault
+in any of them. She was not a woman of strong understanding or any
+quickness; and with this resemblance of her father, she inherited also
+much of his constitution; was delicate in her own health, over-careful
+of that of her children, had many fears and many nerves, and was as fond
+of her own Mr. Wingfield in town as her father could be of Mr. Perry.
+They were alike too, in a general benevolence of temper, and a strong
+habit of regard for every old acquaintance.
+
+Mr. John Knightley was a tall, gentleman-like, and very clever man;
+rising in his profession, domestic, and respectable in his private
+character; but with reserved manners which prevented his being generally
+pleasing; and capable of being sometimes out of humour. He was not an
+ill-tempered man, not so often unreasonably cross as to deserve such a
+reproach; but his temper was not his great perfection; and, indeed, with
+such a worshipping wife, it was hardly possible that any natural defects
+in it should not be increased. The extreme sweetness of her temper
+must hurt his. He had all the clearness and quickness of mind which she
+wanted, and he could sometimes act an ungracious, or say a severe thing.
+
+He was not a great favourite with his fair sister-in-law. Nothing wrong
+in him escaped her. She was quick in feeling the little injuries to
+Isabella, which Isabella never felt herself. Perhaps she might have
+passed over more had his manners been flattering to Isabella's sister,
+but they were only those of a calmly kind brother and friend, without
+praise and without blindness; but hardly any degree of personal
+compliment could have made her regardless of that greatest fault of
+all in her eyes which he sometimes fell into, the want of respectful
+forbearance towards her father. There he had not always the patience
+that could have been wished. Mr. Woodhouse's peculiarities and
+fidgetiness were sometimes provoking him to a rational remonstrance or
+sharp retort equally ill-bestowed. It did not often happen; for Mr. John
+Knightley had really a great regard for his father-in-law, and generally
+a strong sense of what was due to him; but it was too often for Emma's
+charity, especially as there was all the pain of apprehension frequently
+to be endured, though the offence came not. The beginning, however, of
+every visit displayed none but the properest feelings, and this being of
+necessity so short might be hoped to pass away in unsullied cordiality.
+They had not been long seated and composed when Mr. Woodhouse, with a
+melancholy shake of the head and a sigh, called his daughter's attention
+to the sad change at Hartfield since she had been there last.
+
+“Ah, my dear,” said he, “poor Miss Taylor--It is a grievous business.”
+
+“Oh yes, sir,” cried she with ready sympathy, “how you must miss her!
+And dear Emma, too!--What a dreadful loss to you both!--I have been so
+grieved for you.--I could not imagine how you could possibly do without
+her.--It is a sad change indeed.--But I hope she is pretty well, sir.”
+
+“Pretty well, my dear--I hope--pretty well.--I do not know but that the
+place agrees with her tolerably.”
+
+Mr. John Knightley here asked Emma quietly whether there were any doubts
+of the air of Randalls.
+
+“Oh! no--none in the least. I never saw Mrs. Weston better in my
+life--never looking so well. Papa is only speaking his own regret.”
+
+“Very much to the honour of both,” was the handsome reply.
+
+“And do you see her, sir, tolerably often?” asked Isabella in the
+plaintive tone which just suited her father.
+
+Mr. Woodhouse hesitated.--“Not near so often, my dear, as I could wish.”
+
+“Oh! papa, we have missed seeing them but one entire day since they
+married. Either in the morning or evening of every day, excepting one,
+have we seen either Mr. Weston or Mrs. Weston, and generally both,
+either at Randalls or here--and as you may suppose, Isabella, most
+frequently here. They are very, very kind in their visits. Mr. Weston
+is really as kind as herself. Papa, if you speak in that melancholy way,
+you will be giving Isabella a false idea of us all. Every body must be
+aware that Miss Taylor must be missed, but every body ought also to be
+assured that Mr. and Mrs. Weston do really prevent our missing her by
+any means to the extent we ourselves anticipated--which is the exact
+truth.”
+
+“Just as it should be,” said Mr. John Knightley, “and just as I hoped
+it was from your letters. Her wish of shewing you attention could not be
+doubted, and his being a disengaged and social man makes it all easy. I
+have been always telling you, my love, that I had no idea of the change
+being so very material to Hartfield as you apprehended; and now you have
+Emma's account, I hope you will be satisfied.”
+
+“Why, to be sure,” said Mr. Woodhouse--“yes, certainly--I cannot
+deny that Mrs. Weston, poor Mrs. Weston, does come and see us pretty
+often--but then--she is always obliged to go away again.”
+
+“It would be very hard upon Mr. Weston if she did not, papa.--You quite
+forget poor Mr. Weston.”
+
+“I think, indeed,” said John Knightley pleasantly, “that Mr. Weston has
+some little claim. You and I, Emma, will venture to take the part of the
+poor husband. I, being a husband, and you not being a wife, the claims
+of the man may very likely strike us with equal force. As for Isabella,
+she has been married long enough to see the convenience of putting all
+the Mr. Westons aside as much as she can.”
+
+“Me, my love,” cried his wife, hearing and understanding only in part.--
+“Are you talking about me?--I am sure nobody ought to be, or can be, a
+greater advocate for matrimony than I am; and if it had not been for
+the misery of her leaving Hartfield, I should never have thought of Miss
+Taylor but as the most fortunate woman in the world; and as to slighting
+Mr. Weston, that excellent Mr. Weston, I think there is nothing he does
+not deserve. I believe he is one of the very best-tempered men that ever
+existed. Excepting yourself and your brother, I do not know his equal
+for temper. I shall never forget his flying Henry's kite for him that
+very windy day last Easter--and ever since his particular kindness last
+September twelvemonth in writing that note, at twelve o'clock at night,
+on purpose to assure me that there was no scarlet fever at Cobham, I
+have been convinced there could not be a more feeling heart nor a better
+man in existence.--If any body can deserve him, it must be Miss Taylor.”
+
+“Where is the young man?” said John Knightley. “Has he been here on this
+occasion--or has he not?”
+
+“He has not been here yet,” replied Emma. “There was a strong
+expectation of his coming soon after the marriage, but it ended in
+nothing; and I have not heard him mentioned lately.”
+
+“But you should tell them of the letter, my dear,” said her father.
+“He wrote a letter to poor Mrs. Weston, to congratulate her, and a very
+proper, handsome letter it was. She shewed it to me. I thought it very
+well done of him indeed. Whether it was his own idea you know, one
+cannot tell. He is but young, and his uncle, perhaps--”
+
+“My dear papa, he is three-and-twenty. You forget how time passes.”
+
+“Three-and-twenty!--is he indeed?--Well, I could not have thought
+it--and he was but two years old when he lost his poor mother! Well,
+time does fly indeed!--and my memory is very bad. However, it was an
+exceeding good, pretty letter, and gave Mr. and Mrs. Weston a great deal
+of pleasure. I remember it was written from Weymouth, and dated Sept.
+28th--and began, 'My dear Madam,' but I forget how it went on; and it
+was signed 'F. C. Weston Churchill.'--I remember that perfectly.”
+
+“How very pleasing and proper of him!” cried the good-hearted Mrs. John
+Knightley. “I have no doubt of his being a most amiable young man. But
+how sad it is that he should not live at home with his father! There is
+something so shocking in a child's being taken away from his parents and
+natural home! I never could comprehend how Mr. Weston could part with
+him. To give up one's child! I really never could think well of any body
+who proposed such a thing to any body else.”
+
+“Nobody ever did think well of the Churchills, I fancy,” observed Mr.
+John Knightley coolly. “But you need not imagine Mr. Weston to have felt
+what you would feel in giving up Henry or John. Mr. Weston is rather
+an easy, cheerful-tempered man, than a man of strong feelings; he takes
+things as he finds them, and makes enjoyment of them somehow or other,
+depending, I suspect, much more upon what is called society for his
+comforts, that is, upon the power of eating and drinking, and playing
+whist with his neighbours five times a week, than upon family affection,
+or any thing that home affords.”
+
+Emma could not like what bordered on a reflection on Mr. Weston, and had
+half a mind to take it up; but she struggled, and let it pass. She
+would keep the peace if possible; and there was something honourable and
+valuable in the strong domestic habits, the all-sufficiency of home to
+himself, whence resulted her brother's disposition to look down on
+the common rate of social intercourse, and those to whom it was
+important.--It had a high claim to forbearance.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+Mr. Knightley was to dine with them--rather against the inclination of
+Mr. Woodhouse, who did not like that any one should share with him in
+Isabella's first day. Emma's sense of right however had decided it;
+and besides the consideration of what was due to each brother, she had
+particular pleasure, from the circumstance of the late disagreement
+between Mr. Knightley and herself, in procuring him the proper
+invitation.
+
+She hoped they might now become friends again. She thought it was time
+to make up. Making-up indeed would not do. _She_ certainly had not been
+in the wrong, and _he_ would never own that he had. Concession must be
+out of the question; but it was time to appear to forget that they had
+ever quarrelled; and she hoped it might rather assist the restoration of
+friendship, that when he came into the room she had one of the children
+with her--the youngest, a nice little girl about eight months old, who
+was now making her first visit to Hartfield, and very happy to be danced
+about in her aunt's arms. It did assist; for though he began with grave
+looks and short questions, he was soon led on to talk of them all in
+the usual way, and to take the child out of her arms with all the
+unceremoniousness of perfect amity. Emma felt they were friends again;
+and the conviction giving her at first great satisfaction, and then
+a little sauciness, she could not help saying, as he was admiring the
+baby,
+
+“What a comfort it is, that we think alike about our nephews and nieces.
+As to men and women, our opinions are sometimes very different; but with
+regard to these children, I observe we never disagree.”
+
+“If you were as much guided by nature in your estimate of men and women,
+and as little under the power of fancy and whim in your dealings with
+them, as you are where these children are concerned, we might always
+think alike.”
+
+“To be sure--our discordancies must always arise from my being in the
+wrong.”
+
+“Yes,” said he, smiling--“and reason good. I was sixteen years old when
+you were born.”
+
+“A material difference then,” she replied--“and no doubt you were much
+my superior in judgment at that period of our lives; but does not the
+lapse of one-and-twenty years bring our understandings a good deal
+nearer?”
+
+“Yes--a good deal _nearer_.”
+
+“But still, not near enough to give me a chance of being right, if we
+think differently.”
+
+“I have still the advantage of you by sixteen years' experience, and by
+not being a pretty young woman and a spoiled child. Come, my dear Emma,
+let us be friends, and say no more about it. Tell your aunt, little
+Emma, that she ought to set you a better example than to be renewing old
+grievances, and that if she were not wrong before, she is now.”
+
+“That's true,” she cried--“very true. Little Emma, grow up a better
+woman than your aunt. Be infinitely cleverer and not half so conceited.
+Now, Mr. Knightley, a word or two more, and I have done. As far as good
+intentions went, we were _both_ right, and I must say that no effects on
+my side of the argument have yet proved wrong. I only want to know that
+Mr. Martin is not very, very bitterly disappointed.”
+
+“A man cannot be more so,” was his short, full answer.
+
+“Ah!--Indeed I am very sorry.--Come, shake hands with me.”
+
+This had just taken place and with great cordiality, when John Knightley
+made his appearance, and “How d'ye do, George?” and “John, how are
+you?” succeeded in the true English style, burying under a calmness that
+seemed all but indifference, the real attachment which would have led
+either of them, if requisite, to do every thing for the good of the
+other.
+
+The evening was quiet and conversable, as Mr. Woodhouse declined cards
+entirely for the sake of comfortable talk with his dear Isabella, and
+the little party made two natural divisions; on one side he and his
+daughter; on the other the two Mr. Knightleys; their subjects totally
+distinct, or very rarely mixing--and Emma only occasionally joining in
+one or the other.
+
+The brothers talked of their own concerns and pursuits, but principally
+of those of the elder, whose temper was by much the most communicative,
+and who was always the greater talker. As a magistrate, he had generally
+some point of law to consult John about, or, at least, some curious
+anecdote to give; and as a farmer, as keeping in hand the home-farm at
+Donwell, he had to tell what every field was to bear next year, and to
+give all such local information as could not fail of being interesting
+to a brother whose home it had equally been the longest part of his
+life, and whose attachments were strong. The plan of a drain, the change
+of a fence, the felling of a tree, and the destination of every acre for
+wheat, turnips, or spring corn, was entered into with as much equality
+of interest by John, as his cooler manners rendered possible; and if his
+willing brother ever left him any thing to inquire about, his inquiries
+even approached a tone of eagerness.
+
+While they were thus comfortably occupied, Mr. Woodhouse was enjoying a
+full flow of happy regrets and fearful affection with his daughter.
+
+“My poor dear Isabella,” said he, fondly taking her hand, and
+interrupting, for a few moments, her busy labours for some one of her
+five children--“How long it is, how terribly long since you were here!
+And how tired you must be after your journey! You must go to bed early,
+my dear--and I recommend a little gruel to you before you go.--You and
+I will have a nice basin of gruel together. My dear Emma, suppose we all
+have a little gruel.”
+
+Emma could not suppose any such thing, knowing as she did, that both the
+Mr. Knightleys were as unpersuadable on that article as herself;--and
+two basins only were ordered. After a little more discourse in praise of
+gruel, with some wondering at its not being taken every evening by every
+body, he proceeded to say, with an air of grave reflection,
+
+“It was an awkward business, my dear, your spending the autumn at South
+End instead of coming here. I never had much opinion of the sea air.”
+
+“Mr. Wingfield most strenuously recommended it, sir--or we should not
+have gone. He recommended it for all the children, but particularly for
+the weakness in little Bella's throat,--both sea air and bathing.”
+
+“Ah! my dear, but Perry had many doubts about the sea doing her any
+good; and as to myself, I have been long perfectly convinced, though
+perhaps I never told you so before, that the sea is very rarely of use
+to any body. I am sure it almost killed me once.”
+
+“Come, come,” cried Emma, feeling this to be an unsafe subject, “I must
+beg you not to talk of the sea. It makes me envious and miserable;--I
+who have never seen it! South End is prohibited, if you please. My dear
+Isabella, I have not heard you make one inquiry about Mr. Perry yet; and
+he never forgets you.”
+
+“Oh! good Mr. Perry--how is he, sir?”
+
+“Why, pretty well; but not quite well. Poor Perry is bilious, and he has
+not time to take care of himself--he tells me he has not time to take
+care of himself--which is very sad--but he is always wanted all round
+the country. I suppose there is not a man in such practice anywhere. But
+then there is not so clever a man any where.”
+
+“And Mrs. Perry and the children, how are they? do the children grow?
+I have a great regard for Mr. Perry. I hope he will be calling soon. He
+will be so pleased to see my little ones.”
+
+“I hope he will be here to-morrow, for I have a question or two to ask
+him about myself of some consequence. And, my dear, whenever he comes,
+you had better let him look at little Bella's throat.”
+
+“Oh! my dear sir, her throat is so much better that I have hardly any
+uneasiness about it. Either bathing has been of the greatest service to
+her, or else it is to be attributed to an excellent embrocation of Mr.
+Wingfield's, which we have been applying at times ever since August.”
+
+“It is not very likely, my dear, that bathing should have been of use
+to her--and if I had known you were wanting an embrocation, I would have
+spoken to--
+
+“You seem to me to have forgotten Mrs. and Miss Bates,” said Emma, “I
+have not heard one inquiry after them.”
+
+“Oh! the good Bateses--I am quite ashamed of myself--but you mention
+them in most of your letters. I hope they are quite well. Good old Mrs.
+Bates--I will call upon her to-morrow, and take my children.--They
+are always so pleased to see my children.--And that excellent Miss
+Bates!--such thorough worthy people!--How are they, sir?”
+
+“Why, pretty well, my dear, upon the whole. But poor Mrs. Bates had a
+bad cold about a month ago.”
+
+“How sorry I am! But colds were never so prevalent as they have been
+this autumn. Mr. Wingfield told me that he has never known them more
+general or heavy--except when it has been quite an influenza.”
+
+“That has been a good deal the case, my dear; but not to the degree you
+mention. Perry says that colds have been very general, but not so heavy
+as he has very often known them in November. Perry does not call it
+altogether a sickly season.”
+
+“No, I do not know that Mr. Wingfield considers it _very_ sickly
+except--
+
+“Ah! my poor dear child, the truth is, that in London it is always
+a sickly season. Nobody is healthy in London, nobody can be. It is a
+dreadful thing to have you forced to live there! so far off!--and the
+air so bad!”
+
+“No, indeed--_we_ are not at all in a bad air. Our part of London is
+very superior to most others!--You must not confound us with London
+in general, my dear sir. The neighbourhood of Brunswick Square is very
+different from almost all the rest. We are so very airy! I should be
+unwilling, I own, to live in any other part of the town;--there is
+hardly any other that I could be satisfied to have my children in:
+but _we_ are so remarkably airy!--Mr. Wingfield thinks the vicinity of
+Brunswick Square decidedly the most favourable as to air.”
+
+“Ah! my dear, it is not like Hartfield. You make the best of it--but
+after you have been a week at Hartfield, you are all of you different
+creatures; you do not look like the same. Now I cannot say, that I think
+you are any of you looking well at present.”
+
+“I am sorry to hear you say so, sir; but I assure you, excepting those
+little nervous head-aches and palpitations which I am never entirely
+free from anywhere, I am quite well myself; and if the children were
+rather pale before they went to bed, it was only because they were a
+little more tired than usual, from their journey and the happiness of
+coming. I hope you will think better of their looks to-morrow; for I
+assure you Mr. Wingfield told me, that he did not believe he had ever
+sent us off altogether, in such good case. I trust, at least, that
+you do not think Mr. Knightley looking ill,” turning her eyes with
+affectionate anxiety towards her husband.
+
+“Middling, my dear; I cannot compliment you. I think Mr. John Knightley
+very far from looking well.”
+
+“What is the matter, sir?--Did you speak to me?” cried Mr. John
+Knightley, hearing his own name.
+
+“I am sorry to find, my love, that my father does not think you looking
+well--but I hope it is only from being a little fatigued. I could have
+wished, however, as you know, that you had seen Mr. Wingfield before you
+left home.”
+
+“My dear Isabella,”--exclaimed he hastily--“pray do not concern yourself
+about my looks. Be satisfied with doctoring and coddling yourself and
+the children, and let me look as I chuse.”
+
+“I did not thoroughly understand what you were telling your brother,”
+ cried Emma, “about your friend Mr. Graham's intending to have a bailiff
+from Scotland, to look after his new estate. What will it answer? Will
+not the old prejudice be too strong?”
+
+And she talked in this way so long and successfully that, when forced to
+give her attention again to her father and sister, she had nothing
+worse to hear than Isabella's kind inquiry after Jane Fairfax; and Jane
+Fairfax, though no great favourite with her in general, she was at that
+moment very happy to assist in praising.
+
+“That sweet, amiable Jane Fairfax!” said Mrs. John Knightley.--“It
+is so long since I have seen her, except now and then for a moment
+accidentally in town! What happiness it must be to her good old
+grandmother and excellent aunt, when she comes to visit them! I always
+regret excessively on dear Emma's account that she cannot be more at
+Highbury; but now their daughter is married, I suppose Colonel and Mrs.
+Campbell will not be able to part with her at all. She would be such a
+delightful companion for Emma.”
+
+Mr. Woodhouse agreed to it all, but added,
+
+“Our little friend Harriet Smith, however, is just such another pretty
+kind of young person. You will like Harriet. Emma could not have a
+better companion than Harriet.”
+
+“I am most happy to hear it--but only Jane Fairfax one knows to be so
+very accomplished and superior!--and exactly Emma's age.”
+
+This topic was discussed very happily, and others succeeded of similar
+moment, and passed away with similar harmony; but the evening did not
+close without a little return of agitation. The gruel came and supplied
+a great deal to be said--much praise and many comments--undoubting
+decision of its wholesomeness for every constitution, and pretty
+severe Philippics upon the many houses where it was never met with
+tolerably;--but, unfortunately, among the failures which the daughter
+had to instance, the most recent, and therefore most prominent, was in
+her own cook at South End, a young woman hired for the time, who never
+had been able to understand what she meant by a basin of nice smooth
+gruel, thin, but not too thin. Often as she had wished for and ordered
+it, she had never been able to get any thing tolerable. Here was a
+dangerous opening.
+
+“Ah!” said Mr. Woodhouse, shaking his head and fixing his eyes on her
+with tender concern.--The ejaculation in Emma's ear expressed, “Ah!
+there is no end of the sad consequences of your going to South End. It
+does not bear talking of.” And for a little while she hoped he would not
+talk of it, and that a silent rumination might suffice to restore him to
+the relish of his own smooth gruel. After an interval of some minutes,
+however, he began with,
+
+“I shall always be very sorry that you went to the sea this autumn,
+instead of coming here.”
+
+“But why should you be sorry, sir?--I assure you, it did the children a
+great deal of good.”
+
+“And, moreover, if you must go to the sea, it had better not have been
+to South End. South End is an unhealthy place. Perry was surprized to
+hear you had fixed upon South End.”
+
+“I know there is such an idea with many people, but indeed it is quite
+a mistake, sir.--We all had our health perfectly well there, never
+found the least inconvenience from the mud; and Mr. Wingfield says it is
+entirely a mistake to suppose the place unhealthy; and I am sure he may
+be depended on, for he thoroughly understands the nature of the air, and
+his own brother and family have been there repeatedly.”
+
+“You should have gone to Cromer, my dear, if you went anywhere.--Perry
+was a week at Cromer once, and he holds it to be the best of all the
+sea-bathing places. A fine open sea, he says, and very pure air. And, by
+what I understand, you might have had lodgings there quite away from
+the sea--a quarter of a mile off--very comfortable. You should have
+consulted Perry.”
+
+“But, my dear sir, the difference of the journey;--only consider how
+great it would have been.--An hundred miles, perhaps, instead of forty.”
+
+“Ah! my dear, as Perry says, where health is at stake, nothing else
+should be considered; and if one is to travel, there is not much to
+chuse between forty miles and an hundred.--Better not move at all,
+better stay in London altogether than travel forty miles to get into
+a worse air. This is just what Perry said. It seemed to him a very
+ill-judged measure.”
+
+Emma's attempts to stop her father had been vain; and when he
+had reached such a point as this, she could not wonder at her
+brother-in-law's breaking out.
+
+“Mr. Perry,” said he, in a voice of very strong displeasure, “would do
+as well to keep his opinion till it is asked for. Why does he make it
+any business of his, to wonder at what I do?--at my taking my family to
+one part of the coast or another?--I may be allowed, I hope, the use of
+my judgment as well as Mr. Perry.--I want his directions no more than
+his drugs.” He paused--and growing cooler in a moment, added, with only
+sarcastic dryness, “If Mr. Perry can tell me how to convey a wife and
+five children a distance of an hundred and thirty miles with no greater
+expense or inconvenience than a distance of forty, I should be as
+willing to prefer Cromer to South End as he could himself.”
+
+“True, true,” cried Mr. Knightley, with most ready interposition--“very
+true. That's a consideration indeed.--But John, as to what I was telling
+you of my idea of moving the path to Langham, of turning it more to the
+right that it may not cut through the home meadows, I cannot conceive
+any difficulty. I should not attempt it, if it were to be the means of
+inconvenience to the Highbury people, but if you call to mind exactly
+the present line of the path.... The only way of proving it, however,
+will be to turn to our maps. I shall see you at the Abbey to-morrow
+morning I hope, and then we will look them over, and you shall give me
+your opinion.”
+
+Mr. Woodhouse was rather agitated by such harsh reflections on his
+friend Perry, to whom he had, in fact, though unconsciously, been
+attributing many of his own feelings and expressions;--but the soothing
+attentions of his daughters gradually removed the present evil, and
+the immediate alertness of one brother, and better recollections of the
+other, prevented any renewal of it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+There could hardly be a happier creature in the world than Mrs. John
+Knightley, in this short visit to Hartfield, going about every morning
+among her old acquaintance with her five children, and talking over what
+she had done every evening with her father and sister. She had nothing
+to wish otherwise, but that the days did not pass so swiftly. It was a
+delightful visit;--perfect, in being much too short.
+
+In general their evenings were less engaged with friends than their
+mornings; but one complete dinner engagement, and out of the house too,
+there was no avoiding, though at Christmas. Mr. Weston would take no
+denial; they must all dine at Randalls one day;--even Mr. Woodhouse was
+persuaded to think it a possible thing in preference to a division of
+the party.
+
+How they were all to be conveyed, he would have made a difficulty if he
+could, but as his son and daughter's carriage and horses were actually
+at Hartfield, he was not able to make more than a simple question on
+that head; it hardly amounted to a doubt; nor did it occupy Emma long
+to convince him that they might in one of the carriages find room for
+Harriet also.
+
+Harriet, Mr. Elton, and Mr. Knightley, their own especial set, were the
+only persons invited to meet them;--the hours were to be early, as
+well as the numbers few; Mr. Woodhouse's habits and inclination being
+consulted in every thing.
+
+The evening before this great event (for it was a very great event that
+Mr. Woodhouse should dine out, on the 24th of December) had been spent
+by Harriet at Hartfield, and she had gone home so much indisposed with
+a cold, that, but for her own earnest wish of being nursed by Mrs.
+Goddard, Emma could not have allowed her to leave the house. Emma called
+on her the next day, and found her doom already signed with regard to
+Randalls. She was very feverish and had a bad sore throat: Mrs. Goddard
+was full of care and affection, Mr. Perry was talked of, and Harriet
+herself was too ill and low to resist the authority which excluded her
+from this delightful engagement, though she could not speak of her loss
+without many tears.
+
+Emma sat with her as long as she could, to attend her in Mrs. Goddard's
+unavoidable absences, and raise her spirits by representing how much Mr.
+Elton's would be depressed when he knew her state; and left her at last
+tolerably comfortable, in the sweet dependence of his having a most
+comfortless visit, and of their all missing her very much. She had not
+advanced many yards from Mrs. Goddard's door, when she was met by Mr.
+Elton himself, evidently coming towards it, and as they walked on slowly
+together in conversation about the invalid--of whom he, on the rumour
+of considerable illness, had been going to inquire, that he might
+carry some report of her to Hartfield--they were overtaken by Mr. John
+Knightley returning from the daily visit to Donwell, with his two eldest
+boys, whose healthy, glowing faces shewed all the benefit of a country
+run, and seemed to ensure a quick despatch of the roast mutton and rice
+pudding they were hastening home for. They joined company and
+proceeded together. Emma was just describing the nature of her friend's
+complaint;--“a throat very much inflamed, with a great deal of heat
+about her, a quick, low pulse, &c. and she was sorry to find from Mrs.
+Goddard that Harriet was liable to very bad sore-throats, and had often
+alarmed her with them.” Mr. Elton looked all alarm on the occasion, as
+he exclaimed,
+
+“A sore-throat!--I hope not infectious. I hope not of a putrid
+infectious sort. Has Perry seen her? Indeed you should take care of
+yourself as well as of your friend. Let me entreat you to run no risks.
+Why does not Perry see her?”
+
+Emma, who was not really at all frightened herself, tranquillised this
+excess of apprehension by assurances of Mrs. Goddard's experience and
+care; but as there must still remain a degree of uneasiness which she
+could not wish to reason away, which she would rather feed and assist
+than not, she added soon afterwards--as if quite another subject,
+
+“It is so cold, so very cold--and looks and feels so very much like
+snow, that if it were to any other place or with any other party, I
+should really try not to go out to-day--and dissuade my father from
+venturing; but as he has made up his mind, and does not seem to feel the
+cold himself, I do not like to interfere, as I know it would be so great
+a disappointment to Mr. and Mrs. Weston. But, upon my word, Mr. Elton,
+in your case, I should certainly excuse myself. You appear to me a
+little hoarse already, and when you consider what demand of voice and
+what fatigues to-morrow will bring, I think it would be no more than
+common prudence to stay at home and take care of yourself to-night.”
+
+Mr. Elton looked as if he did not very well know what answer to make;
+which was exactly the case; for though very much gratified by the kind
+care of such a fair lady, and not liking to resist any advice of her's,
+he had not really the least inclination to give up the visit;--but Emma,
+too eager and busy in her own previous conceptions and views to hear him
+impartially, or see him with clear vision, was very well satisfied with
+his muttering acknowledgment of its being “very cold, certainly very
+cold,” and walked on, rejoicing in having extricated him from Randalls,
+and secured him the power of sending to inquire after Harriet every hour
+of the evening.
+
+“You do quite right,” said she;--“we will make your apologies to Mr. and
+Mrs. Weston.”
+
+But hardly had she so spoken, when she found her brother was civilly
+offering a seat in his carriage, if the weather were Mr. Elton's only
+objection, and Mr. Elton actually accepting the offer with much prompt
+satisfaction. It was a done thing; Mr. Elton was to go, and never had
+his broad handsome face expressed more pleasure than at this moment;
+never had his smile been stronger, nor his eyes more exulting than when
+he next looked at her.
+
+“Well,” said she to herself, “this is most strange!--After I had got
+him off so well, to chuse to go into company, and leave Harriet ill
+behind!--Most strange indeed!--But there is, I believe, in many men,
+especially single men, such an inclination--such a passion for dining
+out--a dinner engagement is so high in the class of their pleasures,
+their employments, their dignities, almost their duties, that any
+thing gives way to it--and this must be the case with Mr. Elton; a most
+valuable, amiable, pleasing young man undoubtedly, and very much in love
+with Harriet; but still, he cannot refuse an invitation, he must dine
+out wherever he is asked. What a strange thing love is! he can see ready
+wit in Harriet, but will not dine alone for her.”
+
+Soon afterwards Mr. Elton quitted them, and she could not but do him
+the justice of feeling that there was a great deal of sentiment in his
+manner of naming Harriet at parting; in the tone of his voice while
+assuring her that he should call at Mrs. Goddard's for news of her fair
+friend, the last thing before he prepared for the happiness of meeting
+her again, when he hoped to be able to give a better report; and
+he sighed and smiled himself off in a way that left the balance of
+approbation much in his favour.
+
+After a few minutes of entire silence between them, John Knightley began
+with--
+
+“I never in my life saw a man more intent on being agreeable than Mr.
+Elton. It is downright labour to him where ladies are concerned. With
+men he can be rational and unaffected, but when he has ladies to please,
+every feature works.”
+
+“Mr. Elton's manners are not perfect,” replied Emma; “but where there is
+a wish to please, one ought to overlook, and one does overlook a great
+deal. Where a man does his best with only moderate powers, he will
+have the advantage over negligent superiority. There is such perfect
+good-temper and good-will in Mr. Elton as one cannot but value.”
+
+“Yes,” said Mr. John Knightley presently, with some slyness, “he seems
+to have a great deal of good-will towards you.”
+
+“Me!” she replied with a smile of astonishment, “are you imagining me to
+be Mr. Elton's object?”
+
+“Such an imagination has crossed me, I own, Emma; and if it never
+occurred to you before, you may as well take it into consideration now.”
+
+“Mr. Elton in love with me!--What an idea!”
+
+“I do not say it is so; but you will do well to consider whether it
+is so or not, and to regulate your behaviour accordingly. I think your
+manners to him encouraging. I speak as a friend, Emma. You had better
+look about you, and ascertain what you do, and what you mean to do.”
+
+“I thank you; but I assure you you are quite mistaken. Mr. Elton and
+I are very good friends, and nothing more;” and she walked on, amusing
+herself in the consideration of the blunders which often arise from a
+partial knowledge of circumstances, of the mistakes which people of high
+pretensions to judgment are for ever falling into; and not very well
+pleased with her brother for imagining her blind and ignorant, and in
+want of counsel. He said no more.
+
+Mr. Woodhouse had so completely made up his mind to the visit, that in
+spite of the increasing coldness, he seemed to have no idea of shrinking
+from it, and set forward at last most punctually with his eldest
+daughter in his own carriage, with less apparent consciousness of the
+weather than either of the others; too full of the wonder of his own
+going, and the pleasure it was to afford at Randalls to see that it was
+cold, and too well wrapt up to feel it. The cold, however, was severe;
+and by the time the second carriage was in motion, a few flakes of snow
+were finding their way down, and the sky had the appearance of being so
+overcharged as to want only a milder air to produce a very white world
+in a very short time.
+
+Emma soon saw that her companion was not in the happiest humour. The
+preparing and the going abroad in such weather, with the sacrifice of
+his children after dinner, were evils, were disagreeables at least,
+which Mr. John Knightley did not by any means like; he anticipated
+nothing in the visit that could be at all worth the purchase; and the
+whole of their drive to the vicarage was spent by him in expressing his
+discontent.
+
+“A man,” said he, “must have a very good opinion of himself when he asks
+people to leave their own fireside, and encounter such a day as
+this, for the sake of coming to see him. He must think himself a most
+agreeable fellow; I could not do such a thing. It is the greatest
+absurdity--Actually snowing at this moment!--The folly of not allowing
+people to be comfortable at home--and the folly of people's not staying
+comfortably at home when they can! If we were obliged to go out such
+an evening as this, by any call of duty or business, what a hardship we
+should deem it;--and here are we, probably with rather thinner clothing
+than usual, setting forward voluntarily, without excuse, in defiance of
+the voice of nature, which tells man, in every thing given to his view
+or his feelings, to stay at home himself, and keep all under shelter
+that he can;--here are we setting forward to spend five dull hours in
+another man's house, with nothing to say or to hear that was not said
+and heard yesterday, and may not be said and heard again to-morrow.
+Going in dismal weather, to return probably in worse;--four horses and
+four servants taken out for nothing but to convey five idle, shivering
+creatures into colder rooms and worse company than they might have had
+at home.”
+
+Emma did not find herself equal to give the pleased assent, which no
+doubt he was in the habit of receiving, to emulate the “Very true,
+my love,” which must have been usually administered by his travelling
+companion; but she had resolution enough to refrain from making
+any answer at all. She could not be complying, she dreaded being
+quarrelsome; her heroism reached only to silence. She allowed him to
+talk, and arranged the glasses, and wrapped herself up, without opening
+her lips.
+
+They arrived, the carriage turned, the step was let down, and Mr. Elton,
+spruce, black, and smiling, was with them instantly. Emma thought with
+pleasure of some change of subject. Mr. Elton was all obligation and
+cheerfulness; he was so very cheerful in his civilities indeed, that she
+began to think he must have received a different account of Harriet from
+what had reached her. She had sent while dressing, and the answer had
+been, “Much the same--not better.”
+
+“_My_ report from Mrs. Goddard's,” said she presently, “was not so
+pleasant as I had hoped--'Not better' was _my_ answer.”
+
+His face lengthened immediately; and his voice was the voice of
+sentiment as he answered.
+
+“Oh! no--I am grieved to find--I was on the point of telling you that
+when I called at Mrs. Goddard's door, which I did the very last thing
+before I returned to dress, I was told that Miss Smith was not better,
+by no means better, rather worse. Very much grieved and concerned--I
+had flattered myself that she must be better after such a cordial as I
+knew had been given her in the morning.”
+
+Emma smiled and answered--“My visit was of use to the nervous part of
+her complaint, I hope; but not even I can charm away a sore throat;
+it is a most severe cold indeed. Mr. Perry has been with her, as you
+probably heard.”
+
+“Yes--I imagined--that is--I did not--”
+
+“He has been used to her in these complaints, and I hope to-morrow
+morning will bring us both a more comfortable report. But it is
+impossible not to feel uneasiness. Such a sad loss to our party to-day!”
+
+“Dreadful!--Exactly so, indeed.--She will be missed every moment.”
+
+This was very proper; the sigh which accompanied it was really
+estimable; but it should have lasted longer. Emma was rather in dismay
+when only half a minute afterwards he began to speak of other things,
+and in a voice of the greatest alacrity and enjoyment.
+
+“What an excellent device,” said he, “the use of a sheepskin for
+carriages. How very comfortable they make it;--impossible to feel cold
+with such precautions. The contrivances of modern days indeed have
+rendered a gentleman's carriage perfectly complete. One is so fenced
+and guarded from the weather, that not a breath of air can find its way
+unpermitted. Weather becomes absolutely of no consequence. It is a very
+cold afternoon--but in this carriage we know nothing of the matter.--Ha!
+snows a little I see.”
+
+“Yes,” said John Knightley, “and I think we shall have a good deal of
+it.”
+
+“Christmas weather,” observed Mr. Elton. “Quite seasonable; and
+extremely fortunate we may think ourselves that it did not begin
+yesterday, and prevent this day's party, which it might very possibly
+have done, for Mr. Woodhouse would hardly have ventured had there been
+much snow on the ground; but now it is of no consequence. This is quite
+the season indeed for friendly meetings. At Christmas every body invites
+their friends about them, and people think little of even the worst
+weather. I was snowed up at a friend's house once for a week. Nothing
+could be pleasanter. I went for only one night, and could not get away
+till that very day se'nnight.”
+
+Mr. John Knightley looked as if he did not comprehend the pleasure, but
+said only, coolly,
+
+“I cannot wish to be snowed up a week at Randalls.”
+
+At another time Emma might have been amused, but she was too much
+astonished now at Mr. Elton's spirits for other feelings. Harriet seemed
+quite forgotten in the expectation of a pleasant party.
+
+“We are sure of excellent fires,” continued he, “and every thing in the
+greatest comfort. Charming people, Mr. and Mrs. Weston;--Mrs. Weston
+indeed is much beyond praise, and he is exactly what one values, so
+hospitable, and so fond of society;--it will be a small party, but where
+small parties are select, they are perhaps the most agreeable of any.
+Mr. Weston's dining-room does not accommodate more than ten comfortably;
+and for my part, I would rather, under such circumstances, fall short by
+two than exceed by two. I think you will agree with me, (turning with
+a soft air to Emma,) I think I shall certainly have your approbation,
+though Mr. Knightley perhaps, from being used to the large parties of
+London, may not quite enter into our feelings.”
+
+“I know nothing of the large parties of London, sir--I never dine with
+any body.”
+
+“Indeed! (in a tone of wonder and pity,) I had no idea that the law had
+been so great a slavery. Well, sir, the time must come when you will
+be paid for all this, when you will have little labour and great
+enjoyment.”
+
+“My first enjoyment,” replied John Knightley, as they passed through the
+sweep-gate, “will be to find myself safe at Hartfield again.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+Some change of countenance was necessary for each gentleman as they
+walked into Mrs. Weston's drawing-room;--Mr. Elton must compose his
+joyous looks, and Mr. John Knightley disperse his ill-humour. Mr.
+Elton must smile less, and Mr. John Knightley more, to fit them for the
+place.--Emma only might be as nature prompted, and shew herself just as
+happy as she was. To her it was real enjoyment to be with the Westons.
+Mr. Weston was a great favourite, and there was not a creature in the
+world to whom she spoke with such unreserve, as to his wife; not any
+one, to whom she related with such conviction of being listened to and
+understood, of being always interesting and always intelligible, the
+little affairs, arrangements, perplexities, and pleasures of her father
+and herself. She could tell nothing of Hartfield, in which Mrs. Weston
+had not a lively concern; and half an hour's uninterrupted communication
+of all those little matters on which the daily happiness of private life
+depends, was one of the first gratifications of each.
+
+This was a pleasure which perhaps the whole day's visit might not
+afford, which certainly did not belong to the present half-hour; but the
+very sight of Mrs. Weston, her smile, her touch, her voice was grateful
+to Emma, and she determined to think as little as possible of Mr.
+Elton's oddities, or of any thing else unpleasant, and enjoy all that
+was enjoyable to the utmost.
+
+The misfortune of Harriet's cold had been pretty well gone through
+before her arrival. Mr. Woodhouse had been safely seated long enough
+to give the history of it, besides all the history of his own and
+Isabella's coming, and of Emma's being to follow, and had indeed just
+got to the end of his satisfaction that James should come and see his
+daughter, when the others appeared, and Mrs. Weston, who had been almost
+wholly engrossed by her attentions to him, was able to turn away and
+welcome her dear Emma.
+
+Emma's project of forgetting Mr. Elton for a while made her rather sorry
+to find, when they had all taken their places, that he was close to her.
+The difficulty was great of driving his strange insensibility towards
+Harriet, from her mind, while he not only sat at her elbow, but
+was continually obtruding his happy countenance on her notice, and
+solicitously addressing her upon every occasion. Instead of forgetting
+him, his behaviour was such that she could not avoid the internal
+suggestion of “Can it really be as my brother imagined? can it be
+possible for this man to be beginning to transfer his affections from
+Harriet to me?--Absurd and insufferable!”--Yet he would be so anxious
+for her being perfectly warm, would be so interested about her father,
+and so delighted with Mrs. Weston; and at last would begin admiring her
+drawings with so much zeal and so little knowledge as seemed terribly
+like a would-be lover, and made it some effort with her to preserve her
+good manners. For her own sake she could not be rude; and for Harriet's,
+in the hope that all would yet turn out right, she was even positively
+civil; but it was an effort; especially as something was going on
+amongst the others, in the most overpowering period of Mr. Elton's
+nonsense, which she particularly wished to listen to. She heard enough
+to know that Mr. Weston was giving some information about his son; she
+heard the words “my son,” and “Frank,” and “my son,” repeated several
+times over; and, from a few other half-syllables very much suspected
+that he was announcing an early visit from his son; but before she could
+quiet Mr. Elton, the subject was so completely past that any reviving
+question from her would have been awkward.
+
+Now, it so happened that in spite of Emma's resolution of never
+marrying, there was something in the name, in the idea of Mr.
+Frank Churchill, which always interested her. She had frequently
+thought--especially since his father's marriage with Miss Taylor--that
+if she _were_ to marry, he was the very person to suit her in age,
+character and condition. He seemed by this connexion between the
+families, quite to belong to her. She could not but suppose it to be
+a match that every body who knew them must think of. That Mr. and Mrs.
+Weston did think of it, she was very strongly persuaded; and though
+not meaning to be induced by him, or by any body else, to give up a
+situation which she believed more replete with good than any she could
+change it for, she had a great curiosity to see him, a decided intention
+of finding him pleasant, of being liked by him to a certain degree, and
+a sort of pleasure in the idea of their being coupled in their friends'
+imaginations.
+
+With such sensations, Mr. Elton's civilities were dreadfully ill-timed;
+but she had the comfort of appearing very polite, while feeling very
+cross--and of thinking that the rest of the visit could not possibly
+pass without bringing forward the same information again, or the
+substance of it, from the open-hearted Mr. Weston.--So it proved;--for
+when happily released from Mr. Elton, and seated by Mr. Weston,
+at dinner, he made use of the very first interval in the cares of
+hospitality, the very first leisure from the saddle of mutton, to say to
+her,
+
+“We want only two more to be just the right number. I should like to see
+two more here,--your pretty little friend, Miss Smith, and my son--and
+then I should say we were quite complete. I believe you did not hear me
+telling the others in the drawing-room that we are expecting Frank.
+I had a letter from him this morning, and he will be with us within a
+fortnight.”
+
+Emma spoke with a very proper degree of pleasure; and fully assented to
+his proposition of Mr. Frank Churchill and Miss Smith making their party
+quite complete.
+
+“He has been wanting to come to us,” continued Mr. Weston, “ever since
+September: every letter has been full of it; but he cannot command his
+own time. He has those to please who must be pleased, and who (between
+ourselves) are sometimes to be pleased only by a good many sacrifices.
+But now I have no doubt of seeing him here about the second week in
+January.”
+
+“What a very great pleasure it will be to you! and Mrs. Weston is so
+anxious to be acquainted with him, that she must be almost as happy as
+yourself.”
+
+“Yes, she would be, but that she thinks there will be another put-off.
+She does not depend upon his coming so much as I do: but she does not
+know the parties so well as I do. The case, you see, is--(but this is
+quite between ourselves: I did not mention a syllable of it in the other
+room. There are secrets in all families, you know)--The case is, that a
+party of friends are invited to pay a visit at Enscombe in January; and
+that Frank's coming depends upon their being put off. If they are not
+put off, he cannot stir. But I know they will, because it is a family
+that a certain lady, of some consequence, at Enscombe, has a particular
+dislike to: and though it is thought necessary to invite them once in
+two or three years, they always are put off when it comes to the point.
+I have not the smallest doubt of the issue. I am as confident of seeing
+Frank here before the middle of January, as I am of being here myself:
+but your good friend there (nodding towards the upper end of the table)
+has so few vagaries herself, and has been so little used to them at
+Hartfield, that she cannot calculate on their effects, as I have been
+long in the practice of doing.”
+
+“I am sorry there should be any thing like doubt in the case,” replied
+Emma; “but am disposed to side with you, Mr. Weston. If you think he
+will come, I shall think so too; for you know Enscombe.”
+
+“Yes--I have some right to that knowledge; though I have never been at
+the place in my life.--She is an odd woman!--But I never allow myself
+to speak ill of her, on Frank's account; for I do believe her to be very
+fond of him. I used to think she was not capable of being fond of
+any body, except herself: but she has always been kind to him (in her
+way--allowing for little whims and caprices, and expecting every thing
+to be as she likes). And it is no small credit, in my opinion, to him,
+that he should excite such an affection; for, though I would not say
+it to any body else, she has no more heart than a stone to people in
+general; and the devil of a temper.”
+
+Emma liked the subject so well, that she began upon it, to Mrs. Weston,
+very soon after their moving into the drawing-room: wishing her joy--yet
+observing, that she knew the first meeting must be rather alarming.--
+Mrs. Weston agreed to it; but added, that she should be very glad to be
+secure of undergoing the anxiety of a first meeting at the time talked
+of: “for I cannot depend upon his coming. I cannot be so sanguine as
+Mr. Weston. I am very much afraid that it will all end in nothing. Mr.
+Weston, I dare say, has been telling you exactly how the matter stands?”
+
+“Yes--it seems to depend upon nothing but the ill-humour of Mrs.
+Churchill, which I imagine to be the most certain thing in the world.”
+
+“My Emma!” replied Mrs. Weston, smiling, “what is the certainty
+of caprice?” Then turning to Isabella, who had not been attending
+before--“You must know, my dear Mrs. Knightley, that we are by no means
+so sure of seeing Mr. Frank Churchill, in my opinion, as his father
+thinks. It depends entirely upon his aunt's spirits and pleasure; in
+short, upon her temper. To you--to my two daughters--I may venture on
+the truth. Mrs. Churchill rules at Enscombe, and is a very odd-tempered
+woman; and his coming now, depends upon her being willing to spare him.”
+
+“Oh, Mrs. Churchill; every body knows Mrs. Churchill,” replied Isabella:
+“and I am sure I never think of that poor young man without the greatest
+compassion. To be constantly living with an ill-tempered person, must
+be dreadful. It is what we happily have never known any thing of; but
+it must be a life of misery. What a blessing, that she never had any
+children! Poor little creatures, how unhappy she would have made them!”
+
+Emma wished she had been alone with Mrs. Weston. She should then have
+heard more: Mrs. Weston would speak to her, with a degree of unreserve
+which she would not hazard with Isabella; and, she really believed,
+would scarcely try to conceal any thing relative to the Churchills
+from her, excepting those views on the young man, of which her own
+imagination had already given her such instinctive knowledge. But at
+present there was nothing more to be said. Mr. Woodhouse very soon
+followed them into the drawing-room. To be sitting long after
+dinner, was a confinement that he could not endure. Neither wine nor
+conversation was any thing to him; and gladly did he move to those with
+whom he was always comfortable.
+
+While he talked to Isabella, however, Emma found an opportunity of
+saying,
+
+“And so you do not consider this visit from your son as by any means
+certain. I am sorry for it. The introduction must be unpleasant,
+whenever it takes place; and the sooner it could be over, the better.”
+
+“Yes; and every delay makes one more apprehensive of other delays. Even
+if this family, the Braithwaites, are put off, I am still afraid that
+some excuse may be found for disappointing us. I cannot bear to imagine
+any reluctance on his side; but I am sure there is a great wish on
+the Churchills' to keep him to themselves. There is jealousy. They
+are jealous even of his regard for his father. In short, I can feel no
+dependence on his coming, and I wish Mr. Weston were less sanguine.”
+
+“He ought to come,” said Emma. “If he could stay only a couple of days,
+he ought to come; and one can hardly conceive a young man's not having
+it in his power to do as much as that. A young _woman_, if she fall into
+bad hands, may be teased, and kept at a distance from those she wants
+to be with; but one cannot comprehend a young _man_'s being under such
+restraint, as not to be able to spend a week with his father, if he
+likes it.”
+
+“One ought to be at Enscombe, and know the ways of the family, before
+one decides upon what he can do,” replied Mrs. Weston. “One ought to
+use the same caution, perhaps, in judging of the conduct of any one
+individual of any one family; but Enscombe, I believe, certainly must
+not be judged by general rules: _she_ is so very unreasonable; and every
+thing gives way to her.”
+
+“But she is so fond of the nephew: he is so very great a favourite. Now,
+according to my idea of Mrs. Churchill, it would be most natural, that
+while she makes no sacrifice for the comfort of the husband, to whom she
+owes every thing, while she exercises incessant caprice towards _him_,
+she should frequently be governed by the nephew, to whom she owes
+nothing at all.”
+
+“My dearest Emma, do not pretend, with your sweet temper, to understand
+a bad one, or to lay down rules for it: you must let it go its own way.
+I have no doubt of his having, at times, considerable influence; but it
+may be perfectly impossible for him to know beforehand _when_ it will
+be.”
+
+Emma listened, and then coolly said, “I shall not be satisfied, unless
+he comes.”
+
+“He may have a great deal of influence on some points,” continued Mrs.
+Weston, “and on others, very little: and among those, on which she is
+beyond his reach, it is but too likely, may be this very circumstance of
+his coming away from them to visit us.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+Mr. Woodhouse was soon ready for his tea; and when he had drank his
+tea he was quite ready to go home; and it was as much as his three
+companions could do, to entertain away his notice of the lateness of
+the hour, before the other gentlemen appeared. Mr. Weston was chatty and
+convivial, and no friend to early separations of any sort; but at last
+the drawing-room party did receive an augmentation. Mr. Elton, in very
+good spirits, was one of the first to walk in. Mrs. Weston and Emma
+were sitting together on a sofa. He joined them immediately, and, with
+scarcely an invitation, seated himself between them.
+
+Emma, in good spirits too, from the amusement afforded her mind by
+the expectation of Mr. Frank Churchill, was willing to forget his late
+improprieties, and be as well satisfied with him as before, and on his
+making Harriet his very first subject, was ready to listen with most
+friendly smiles.
+
+He professed himself extremely anxious about her fair friend--her fair,
+lovely, amiable friend. “Did she know?--had she heard any thing about
+her, since their being at Randalls?--he felt much anxiety--he must
+confess that the nature of her complaint alarmed him considerably.”
+ And in this style he talked on for some time very properly, not much
+attending to any answer, but altogether sufficiently awake to the terror
+of a bad sore throat; and Emma was quite in charity with him.
+
+But at last there seemed a perverse turn; it seemed all at once as if he
+were more afraid of its being a bad sore throat on her account, than on
+Harriet's--more anxious that she should escape the infection, than
+that there should be no infection in the complaint. He began with great
+earnestness to entreat her to refrain from visiting the sick-chamber
+again, for the present--to entreat her to _promise_ _him_ not to venture
+into such hazard till he had seen Mr. Perry and learnt his opinion; and
+though she tried to laugh it off and bring the subject back into its
+proper course, there was no putting an end to his extreme solicitude
+about her. She was vexed. It did appear--there was no concealing
+it--exactly like the pretence of being in love with her, instead of
+Harriet; an inconstancy, if real, the most contemptible and abominable!
+and she had difficulty in behaving with temper. He turned to Mrs. Weston
+to implore her assistance, “Would not she give him her support?--would
+not she add her persuasions to his, to induce Miss Woodhouse not to go
+to Mrs. Goddard's till it were certain that Miss Smith's disorder had
+no infection? He could not be satisfied without a promise--would not she
+give him her influence in procuring it?”
+
+“So scrupulous for others,” he continued, “and yet so careless for
+herself! She wanted me to nurse my cold by staying at home to-day, and
+yet will not promise to avoid the danger of catching an ulcerated sore
+throat herself. Is this fair, Mrs. Weston?--Judge between us. Have not I
+some right to complain? I am sure of your kind support and aid.”
+
+Emma saw Mrs. Weston's surprize, and felt that it must be great, at an
+address which, in words and manner, was assuming to himself the right of
+first interest in her; and as for herself, she was too much provoked and
+offended to have the power of directly saying any thing to the purpose.
+She could only give him a look; but it was such a look as she thought
+must restore him to his senses, and then left the sofa, removing to a
+seat by her sister, and giving her all her attention.
+
+She had not time to know how Mr. Elton took the reproof, so rapidly did
+another subject succeed; for Mr. John Knightley now came into the room
+from examining the weather, and opened on them all with the information
+of the ground being covered with snow, and of its still snowing
+fast, with a strong drifting wind; concluding with these words to Mr.
+Woodhouse:
+
+“This will prove a spirited beginning of your winter engagements,
+sir. Something new for your coachman and horses to be making their way
+through a storm of snow.”
+
+Poor Mr. Woodhouse was silent from consternation; but every body else
+had something to say; every body was either surprized or not surprized,
+and had some question to ask, or some comfort to offer. Mrs. Weston
+and Emma tried earnestly to cheer him and turn his attention from his
+son-in-law, who was pursuing his triumph rather unfeelingly.
+
+“I admired your resolution very much, sir,” said he, “in venturing out
+in such weather, for of course you saw there would be snow very soon.
+Every body must have seen the snow coming on. I admired your spirit; and
+I dare say we shall get home very well. Another hour or two's snow can
+hardly make the road impassable; and we are two carriages; if one is
+blown over in the bleak part of the common field there will be the other
+at hand. I dare say we shall be all safe at Hartfield before midnight.”
+
+Mr. Weston, with triumph of a different sort, was confessing that he
+had known it to be snowing some time, but had not said a word, lest
+it should make Mr. Woodhouse uncomfortable, and be an excuse for his
+hurrying away. As to there being any quantity of snow fallen or likely
+to fall to impede their return, that was a mere joke; he was afraid they
+would find no difficulty. He wished the road might be impassable, that
+he might be able to keep them all at Randalls; and with the utmost
+good-will was sure that accommodation might be found for every body,
+calling on his wife to agree with him, that with a little contrivance,
+every body might be lodged, which she hardly knew how to do, from the
+consciousness of there being but two spare rooms in the house.
+
+“What is to be done, my dear Emma?--what is to be done?” was Mr.
+Woodhouse's first exclamation, and all that he could say for some
+time. To her he looked for comfort; and her assurances of safety, her
+representation of the excellence of the horses, and of James, and of
+their having so many friends about them, revived him a little.
+
+His eldest daughter's alarm was equal to his own. The horror of being
+blocked up at Randalls, while her children were at Hartfield, was full
+in her imagination; and fancying the road to be now just passable for
+adventurous people, but in a state that admitted no delay, she was eager
+to have it settled, that her father and Emma should remain at Randalls,
+while she and her husband set forward instantly through all the possible
+accumulations of drifted snow that might impede them.
+
+“You had better order the carriage directly, my love,” said she; “I dare
+say we shall be able to get along, if we set off directly; and if we
+do come to any thing very bad, I can get out and walk. I am not at all
+afraid. I should not mind walking half the way. I could change my shoes,
+you know, the moment I got home; and it is not the sort of thing that
+gives me cold.”
+
+“Indeed!” replied he. “Then, my dear Isabella, it is the most
+extraordinary sort of thing in the world, for in general every thing
+does give you cold. Walk home!--you are prettily shod for walking home,
+I dare say. It will be bad enough for the horses.”
+
+Isabella turned to Mrs. Weston for her approbation of the plan. Mrs.
+Weston could only approve. Isabella then went to Emma; but Emma could
+not so entirely give up the hope of their being all able to get away;
+and they were still discussing the point, when Mr. Knightley, who had
+left the room immediately after his brother's first report of the snow,
+came back again, and told them that he had been out of doors to examine,
+and could answer for there not being the smallest difficulty in their
+getting home, whenever they liked it, either now or an hour hence. He
+had gone beyond the sweep--some way along the Highbury road--the snow
+was nowhere above half an inch deep--in many places hardly enough to
+whiten the ground; a very few flakes were falling at present, but the
+clouds were parting, and there was every appearance of its being soon
+over. He had seen the coachmen, and they both agreed with him in there
+being nothing to apprehend.
+
+To Isabella, the relief of such tidings was very great, and they were
+scarcely less acceptable to Emma on her father's account, who
+was immediately set as much at ease on the subject as his nervous
+constitution allowed; but the alarm that had been raised could not be
+appeased so as to admit of any comfort for him while he continued at
+Randalls. He was satisfied of there being no present danger in returning
+home, but no assurances could convince him that it was safe to stay; and
+while the others were variously urging and recommending, Mr. Knightley
+and Emma settled it in a few brief sentences: thus--
+
+“Your father will not be easy; why do not you go?”
+
+“I am ready, if the others are.”
+
+“Shall I ring the bell?”
+
+“Yes, do.”
+
+And the bell was rung, and the carriages spoken for. A few minutes more,
+and Emma hoped to see one troublesome companion deposited in his own
+house, to get sober and cool, and the other recover his temper and
+happiness when this visit of hardship were over.
+
+The carriage came: and Mr. Woodhouse, always the first object on such
+occasions, was carefully attended to his own by Mr. Knightley and Mr.
+Weston; but not all that either could say could prevent some renewal
+of alarm at the sight of the snow which had actually fallen, and the
+discovery of a much darker night than he had been prepared for. “He was
+afraid they should have a very bad drive. He was afraid poor Isabella
+would not like it. And there would be poor Emma in the carriage behind.
+He did not know what they had best do. They must keep as much together
+as they could;” and James was talked to, and given a charge to go very
+slow and wait for the other carriage.
+
+Isabella stept in after her father; John Knightley, forgetting that he
+did not belong to their party, stept in after his wife very naturally;
+so that Emma found, on being escorted and followed into the second
+carriage by Mr. Elton, that the door was to be lawfully shut on them,
+and that they were to have a tete-a-tete drive. It would not have been
+the awkwardness of a moment, it would have been rather a pleasure,
+previous to the suspicions of this very day; she could have talked to
+him of Harriet, and the three-quarters of a mile would have seemed but
+one. But now, she would rather it had not happened. She believed he had
+been drinking too much of Mr. Weston's good wine, and felt sure that he
+would want to be talking nonsense.
+
+To restrain him as much as might be, by her own manners, she was
+immediately preparing to speak with exquisite calmness and gravity of
+the weather and the night; but scarcely had she begun, scarcely had they
+passed the sweep-gate and joined the other carriage, than she found her
+subject cut up--her hand seized--her attention demanded, and Mr. Elton
+actually making violent love to her: availing himself of the precious
+opportunity, declaring sentiments which must be already well known,
+hoping--fearing--adoring--ready to die if she refused him; but
+flattering himself that his ardent attachment and unequalled love and
+unexampled passion could not fail of having some effect, and in short,
+very much resolved on being seriously accepted as soon as possible. It
+really was so. Without scruple--without apology--without much apparent
+diffidence, Mr. Elton, the lover of Harriet, was professing himself
+_her_ lover. She tried to stop him; but vainly; he would go on, and say
+it all. Angry as she was, the thought of the moment made her resolve to
+restrain herself when she did speak. She felt that half this folly must
+be drunkenness, and therefore could hope that it might belong only to
+the passing hour. Accordingly, with a mixture of the serious and the
+playful, which she hoped would best suit his half and half state, she
+replied,
+
+“I am very much astonished, Mr. Elton. This to _me_! you forget
+yourself--you take me for my friend--any message to Miss Smith I shall
+be happy to deliver; but no more of this to _me_, if you please.”
+
+“Miss Smith!--message to Miss Smith!--What could she possibly
+mean!”--And he repeated her words with such assurance of accent, such
+boastful pretence of amazement, that she could not help replying with
+quickness,
+
+“Mr. Elton, this is the most extraordinary conduct! and I can account
+for it only in one way; you are not yourself, or you could not speak
+either to me, or of Harriet, in such a manner. Command yourself enough
+to say no more, and I will endeavour to forget it.”
+
+But Mr. Elton had only drunk wine enough to elevate his spirits, not at
+all to confuse his intellects. He perfectly knew his own meaning; and
+having warmly protested against her suspicion as most injurious, and
+slightly touched upon his respect for Miss Smith as her friend,--but
+acknowledging his wonder that Miss Smith should be mentioned at all,--he
+resumed the subject of his own passion, and was very urgent for a
+favourable answer.
+
+As she thought less of his inebriety, she thought more of his
+inconstancy and presumption; and with fewer struggles for politeness,
+replied,
+
+“It is impossible for me to doubt any longer. You have made yourself
+too clear. Mr. Elton, my astonishment is much beyond any thing I can
+express. After such behaviour, as I have witnessed during the last
+month, to Miss Smith--such attentions as I have been in the daily
+habit of observing--to be addressing me in this manner--this is an
+unsteadiness of character, indeed, which I had not supposed possible!
+Believe me, sir, I am far, very far, from gratified in being the object
+of such professions.”
+
+“Good Heaven!” cried Mr. Elton, “what can be the meaning of this?--Miss
+Smith!--I never thought of Miss Smith in the whole course of my
+existence--never paid her any attentions, but as your friend: never
+cared whether she were dead or alive, but as your friend. If she
+has fancied otherwise, her own wishes have misled her, and I am very
+sorry--extremely sorry--But, Miss Smith, indeed!--Oh! Miss Woodhouse!
+who can think of Miss Smith, when Miss Woodhouse is near! No, upon my
+honour, there is no unsteadiness of character. I have thought only of
+you. I protest against having paid the smallest attention to any one
+else. Every thing that I have said or done, for many weeks past, has
+been with the sole view of marking my adoration of yourself. You
+cannot really, seriously, doubt it. No!--(in an accent meant to be
+insinuating)--I am sure you have seen and understood me.”
+
+It would be impossible to say what Emma felt, on hearing this--which
+of all her unpleasant sensations was uppermost. She was too completely
+overpowered to be immediately able to reply: and two moments of silence
+being ample encouragement for Mr. Elton's sanguine state of mind, he
+tried to take her hand again, as he joyously exclaimed--
+
+“Charming Miss Woodhouse! allow me to interpret this interesting
+silence. It confesses that you have long understood me.”
+
+“No, sir,” cried Emma, “it confesses no such thing. So far from having
+long understood you, I have been in a most complete error with respect
+to your views, till this moment. As to myself, I am very sorry that you
+should have been giving way to any feelings--Nothing could be farther
+from my wishes--your attachment to my friend Harriet--your pursuit of
+her, (pursuit, it appeared,) gave me great pleasure, and I have been
+very earnestly wishing you success: but had I supposed that she were not
+your attraction to Hartfield, I should certainly have thought you judged
+ill in making your visits so frequent. Am I to believe that you have
+never sought to recommend yourself particularly to Miss Smith?--that you
+have never thought seriously of her?”
+
+“Never, madam,” cried he, affronted in his turn: “never, I assure you.
+_I_ think seriously of Miss Smith!--Miss Smith is a very good sort of
+girl; and I should be happy to see her respectably settled. I wish
+her extremely well: and, no doubt, there are men who might not object
+to--Every body has their level: but as for myself, I am not, I think,
+quite so much at a loss. I need not so totally despair of an equal
+alliance, as to be addressing myself to Miss Smith!--No, madam, my
+visits to Hartfield have been for yourself only; and the encouragement I
+received--”
+
+“Encouragement!--I give you encouragement!--Sir, you have been entirely
+mistaken in supposing it. I have seen you only as the admirer of my
+friend. In no other light could you have been more to me than a common
+acquaintance. I am exceedingly sorry: but it is well that the mistake
+ends where it does. Had the same behaviour continued, Miss Smith might
+have been led into a misconception of your views; not being aware,
+probably, any more than myself, of the very great inequality which you
+are so sensible of. But, as it is, the disappointment is single, and, I
+trust, will not be lasting. I have no thoughts of matrimony at present.”
+
+He was too angry to say another word; her manner too decided to invite
+supplication; and in this state of swelling resentment, and mutually
+deep mortification, they had to continue together a few minutes longer,
+for the fears of Mr. Woodhouse had confined them to a foot-pace. If
+there had not been so much anger, there would have been desperate
+awkwardness; but their straightforward emotions left no room for the
+little zigzags of embarrassment. Without knowing when the carriage
+turned into Vicarage Lane, or when it stopped, they found themselves,
+all at once, at the door of his house; and he was out before another
+syllable passed.--Emma then felt it indispensable to wish him a good
+night. The compliment was just returned, coldly and proudly; and, under
+indescribable irritation of spirits, she was then conveyed to Hartfield.
+
+There she was welcomed, with the utmost delight, by her father, who
+had been trembling for the dangers of a solitary drive from Vicarage
+Lane--turning a corner which he could never bear to think of--and in
+strange hands--a mere common coachman--no James; and there it seemed as
+if her return only were wanted to make every thing go well: for Mr.
+John Knightley, ashamed of his ill-humour, was now all kindness and
+attention; and so particularly solicitous for the comfort of her
+father, as to seem--if not quite ready to join him in a basin of
+gruel--perfectly sensible of its being exceedingly wholesome; and the
+day was concluding in peace and comfort to all their little party,
+except herself.--But her mind had never been in such perturbation; and
+it needed a very strong effort to appear attentive and cheerful till the
+usual hour of separating allowed her the relief of quiet reflection.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+The hair was curled, and the maid sent away, and Emma sat down to think
+and be miserable.--It was a wretched business indeed!--Such an overthrow
+of every thing she had been wishing for!--Such a development of every
+thing most unwelcome!--Such a blow for Harriet!--that was the worst
+of all. Every part of it brought pain and humiliation, of some sort or
+other; but, compared with the evil to Harriet, all was light; and
+she would gladly have submitted to feel yet more mistaken--more in
+error--more disgraced by mis-judgment, than she actually was, could the
+effects of her blunders have been confined to herself.
+
+“If I had not persuaded Harriet into liking the man, I could have
+borne any thing. He might have doubled his presumption to me--but poor
+Harriet!”
+
+How she could have been so deceived!--He protested that he had never
+thought seriously of Harriet--never! She looked back as well as
+she could; but it was all confusion. She had taken up the idea, she
+supposed, and made every thing bend to it. His manners, however, must
+have been unmarked, wavering, dubious, or she could not have been so
+misled.
+
+The picture!--How eager he had been about the picture!--and the
+charade!--and an hundred other circumstances;--how clearly they had
+seemed to point at Harriet. To be sure, the charade, with its “ready
+wit”--but then the “soft eyes”--in fact it suited neither; it was
+a jumble without taste or truth. Who could have seen through such
+thick-headed nonsense?
+
+Certainly she had often, especially of late, thought his manners to
+herself unnecessarily gallant; but it had passed as his way, as a mere
+error of judgment, of knowledge, of taste, as one proof among others
+that he had not always lived in the best society, that with all the
+gentleness of his address, true elegance was sometimes wanting; but,
+till this very day, she had never, for an instant, suspected it to mean
+any thing but grateful respect to her as Harriet's friend.
+
+To Mr. John Knightley was she indebted for her first idea on the
+subject, for the first start of its possibility. There was no denying
+that those brothers had penetration. She remembered what Mr. Knightley
+had once said to her about Mr. Elton, the caution he had given,
+the conviction he had professed that Mr. Elton would never marry
+indiscreetly; and blushed to think how much truer a knowledge of his
+character had been there shewn than any she had reached herself. It
+was dreadfully mortifying; but Mr. Elton was proving himself, in many
+respects, the very reverse of what she had meant and believed him;
+proud, assuming, conceited; very full of his own claims, and little
+concerned about the feelings of others.
+
+Contrary to the usual course of things, Mr. Elton's wanting to pay his
+addresses to her had sunk him in her opinion. His professions and his
+proposals did him no service. She thought nothing of his attachment,
+and was insulted by his hopes. He wanted to marry well, and having the
+arrogance to raise his eyes to her, pretended to be in love; but she was
+perfectly easy as to his not suffering any disappointment that need be
+cared for. There had been no real affection either in his language or
+manners. Sighs and fine words had been given in abundance; but she could
+hardly devise any set of expressions, or fancy any tone of voice, less
+allied with real love. She need not trouble herself to pity him. He
+only wanted to aggrandise and enrich himself; and if Miss Woodhouse
+of Hartfield, the heiress of thirty thousand pounds, were not quite so
+easily obtained as he had fancied, he would soon try for Miss Somebody
+else with twenty, or with ten.
+
+But--that he should talk of encouragement, should consider her as aware
+of his views, accepting his attentions, meaning (in short), to marry
+him!--should suppose himself her equal in connexion or mind!--look down
+upon her friend, so well understanding the gradations of rank below
+him, and be so blind to what rose above, as to fancy himself shewing no
+presumption in addressing her!--It was most provoking.
+
+Perhaps it was not fair to expect him to feel how very much he was her
+inferior in talent, and all the elegancies of mind. The very want of
+such equality might prevent his perception of it; but he must know that
+in fortune and consequence she was greatly his superior. He must
+know that the Woodhouses had been settled for several generations at
+Hartfield, the younger branch of a very ancient family--and that the
+Eltons were nobody. The landed property of Hartfield certainly was
+inconsiderable, being but a sort of notch in the Donwell Abbey estate,
+to which all the rest of Highbury belonged; but their fortune, from
+other sources, was such as to make them scarcely secondary to Donwell
+Abbey itself, in every other kind of consequence; and the Woodhouses had
+long held a high place in the consideration of the neighbourhood which
+Mr. Elton had first entered not two years ago, to make his way as he
+could, without any alliances but in trade, or any thing to recommend him
+to notice but his situation and his civility.--But he had fancied her
+in love with him; that evidently must have been his dependence; and
+after raving a little about the seeming incongruity of gentle manners
+and a conceited head, Emma was obliged in common honesty to stop
+and admit that her own behaviour to him had been so complaisant and
+obliging, so full of courtesy and attention, as (supposing her real
+motive unperceived) might warrant a man of ordinary observation and
+delicacy, like Mr. Elton, in fancying himself a very decided favourite.
+If _she_ had so misinterpreted his feelings, she had little right to
+wonder that _he_, with self-interest to blind him, should have mistaken
+hers.
+
+The first error and the worst lay at her door. It was foolish, it was
+wrong, to take so active a part in bringing any two people together. It
+was adventuring too far, assuming too much, making light of what
+ought to be serious, a trick of what ought to be simple. She was quite
+concerned and ashamed, and resolved to do such things no more.
+
+“Here have I,” said she, “actually talked poor Harriet into being very
+much attached to this man. She might never have thought of him but for
+me; and certainly never would have thought of him with hope, if I had
+not assured her of his attachment, for she is as modest and humble as I
+used to think him. Oh! that I had been satisfied with persuading her not
+to accept young Martin. There I was quite right. That was well done
+of me; but there I should have stopped, and left the rest to time and
+chance. I was introducing her into good company, and giving her the
+opportunity of pleasing some one worth having; I ought not to have
+attempted more. But now, poor girl, her peace is cut up for some time.
+I have been but half a friend to her; and if she were _not_ to feel this
+disappointment so very much, I am sure I have not an idea of any body
+else who would be at all desirable for her;--William Coxe--Oh! no, I
+could not endure William Coxe--a pert young lawyer.”
+
+She stopt to blush and laugh at her own relapse, and then resumed a more
+serious, more dispiriting cogitation upon what had been, and might be,
+and must be. The distressing explanation she had to make to Harriet, and
+all that poor Harriet would be suffering, with the awkwardness of
+future meetings, the difficulties of continuing or discontinuing the
+acquaintance, of subduing feelings, concealing resentment, and avoiding
+eclat, were enough to occupy her in most unmirthful reflections some
+time longer, and she went to bed at last with nothing settled but the
+conviction of her having blundered most dreadfully.
+
+To youth and natural cheerfulness like Emma's, though under temporary
+gloom at night, the return of day will hardly fail to bring return of
+spirits. The youth and cheerfulness of morning are in happy analogy,
+and of powerful operation; and if the distress be not poignant enough
+to keep the eyes unclosed, they will be sure to open to sensations of
+softened pain and brighter hope.
+
+Emma got up on the morrow more disposed for comfort than she had gone
+to bed, more ready to see alleviations of the evil before her, and to
+depend on getting tolerably out of it.
+
+It was a great consolation that Mr. Elton should not be really in
+love with her, or so particularly amiable as to make it shocking to
+disappoint him--that Harriet's nature should not be of that superior
+sort in which the feelings are most acute and retentive--and that there
+could be no necessity for any body's knowing what had passed except the
+three principals, and especially for her father's being given a moment's
+uneasiness about it.
+
+These were very cheering thoughts; and the sight of a great deal of snow
+on the ground did her further service, for any thing was welcome that
+might justify their all three being quite asunder at present.
+
+The weather was most favourable for her; though Christmas Day, she
+could not go to church. Mr. Woodhouse would have been miserable had his
+daughter attempted it, and she was therefore safe from either exciting
+or receiving unpleasant and most unsuitable ideas. The ground covered
+with snow, and the atmosphere in that unsettled state between frost and
+thaw, which is of all others the most unfriendly for exercise, every
+morning beginning in rain or snow, and every evening setting in to
+freeze, she was for many days a most honourable prisoner. No intercourse
+with Harriet possible but by note; no church for her on Sunday any
+more than on Christmas Day; and no need to find excuses for Mr. Elton's
+absenting himself.
+
+It was weather which might fairly confine every body at home; and though
+she hoped and believed him to be really taking comfort in some society
+or other, it was very pleasant to have her father so well satisfied with
+his being all alone in his own house, too wise to stir out; and to
+hear him say to Mr. Knightley, whom no weather could keep entirely from
+them,--
+
+“Ah! Mr. Knightley, why do not you stay at home like poor Mr. Elton?”
+
+These days of confinement would have been, but for her private
+perplexities, remarkably comfortable, as such seclusion exactly suited
+her brother, whose feelings must always be of great importance to
+his companions; and he had, besides, so thoroughly cleared off his
+ill-humour at Randalls, that his amiableness never failed him during the
+rest of his stay at Hartfield. He was always agreeable and obliging,
+and speaking pleasantly of every body. But with all the hopes of
+cheerfulness, and all the present comfort of delay, there was still such
+an evil hanging over her in the hour of explanation with Harriet, as
+made it impossible for Emma to be ever perfectly at ease.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+Mr. and Mrs. John Knightley were not detained long at Hartfield. The
+weather soon improved enough for those to move who must move; and Mr.
+Woodhouse having, as usual, tried to persuade his daughter to stay
+behind with all her children, was obliged to see the whole party
+set off, and return to his lamentations over the destiny of poor
+Isabella;--which poor Isabella, passing her life with those she doated
+on, full of their merits, blind to their faults, and always innocently
+busy, might have been a model of right feminine happiness.
+
+The evening of the very day on which they went brought a note from Mr.
+Elton to Mr. Woodhouse, a long, civil, ceremonious note, to say, with
+Mr. Elton's best compliments, “that he was proposing to leave Highbury
+the following morning in his way to Bath; where, in compliance with
+the pressing entreaties of some friends, he had engaged to spend a few
+weeks, and very much regretted the impossibility he was under, from
+various circumstances of weather and business, of taking a personal
+leave of Mr. Woodhouse, of whose friendly civilities he should ever
+retain a grateful sense--and had Mr. Woodhouse any commands, should be
+happy to attend to them.”
+
+Emma was most agreeably surprized.--Mr. Elton's absence just at this
+time was the very thing to be desired. She admired him for contriving
+it, though not able to give him much credit for the manner in which it
+was announced. Resentment could not have been more plainly spoken than
+in a civility to her father, from which she was so pointedly excluded.
+She had not even a share in his opening compliments.--Her name was not
+mentioned;--and there was so striking a change in all this, and such an
+ill-judged solemnity of leave-taking in his graceful acknowledgments, as
+she thought, at first, could not escape her father's suspicion.
+
+It did, however.--Her father was quite taken up with the surprize of so
+sudden a journey, and his fears that Mr. Elton might never get safely to
+the end of it, and saw nothing extraordinary in his language. It was a
+very useful note, for it supplied them with fresh matter for thought
+and conversation during the rest of their lonely evening. Mr. Woodhouse
+talked over his alarms, and Emma was in spirits to persuade them away
+with all her usual promptitude.
+
+She now resolved to keep Harriet no longer in the dark. She had reason
+to believe her nearly recovered from her cold, and it was desirable that
+she should have as much time as possible for getting the better of
+her other complaint before the gentleman's return. She went to Mrs.
+Goddard's accordingly the very next day, to undergo the necessary
+penance of communication; and a severe one it was.--She had to destroy
+all the hopes which she had been so industriously feeding--to appear in
+the ungracious character of the one preferred--and acknowledge herself
+grossly mistaken and mis-judging in all her ideas on one subject, all
+her observations, all her convictions, all her prophecies for the last
+six weeks.
+
+The confession completely renewed her first shame--and the sight of
+Harriet's tears made her think that she should never be in charity with
+herself again.
+
+Harriet bore the intelligence very well--blaming nobody--and in every
+thing testifying such an ingenuousness of disposition and lowly opinion
+of herself, as must appear with particular advantage at that moment to
+her friend.
+
+Emma was in the humour to value simplicity and modesty to the utmost;
+and all that was amiable, all that ought to be attaching, seemed on
+Harriet's side, not her own. Harriet did not consider herself as having
+any thing to complain of. The affection of such a man as Mr. Elton
+would have been too great a distinction.--She never could have deserved
+him--and nobody but so partial and kind a friend as Miss Woodhouse would
+have thought it possible.
+
+Her tears fell abundantly--but her grief was so truly artless, that
+no dignity could have made it more respectable in Emma's eyes--and
+she listened to her and tried to console her with all her heart and
+understanding--really for the time convinced that Harriet was the
+superior creature of the two--and that to resemble her would be more for
+her own welfare and happiness than all that genius or intelligence could
+do.
+
+It was rather too late in the day to set about being simple-minded and
+ignorant; but she left her with every previous resolution confirmed of
+being humble and discreet, and repressing imagination all the rest of
+her life. Her second duty now, inferior only to her father's claims, was
+to promote Harriet's comfort, and endeavour to prove her own affection
+in some better method than by match-making. She got her to Hartfield,
+and shewed her the most unvarying kindness, striving to occupy and
+amuse her, and by books and conversation, to drive Mr. Elton from her
+thoughts.
+
+Time, she knew, must be allowed for this being thoroughly done; and
+she could suppose herself but an indifferent judge of such matters in
+general, and very inadequate to sympathise in an attachment to Mr. Elton
+in particular; but it seemed to her reasonable that at Harriet's age,
+and with the entire extinction of all hope, such a progress might be
+made towards a state of composure by the time of Mr. Elton's return, as
+to allow them all to meet again in the common routine of acquaintance,
+without any danger of betraying sentiments or increasing them.
+
+Harriet did think him all perfection, and maintained the non-existence
+of any body equal to him in person or goodness--and did, in truth,
+prove herself more resolutely in love than Emma had foreseen; but yet
+it appeared to her so natural, so inevitable to strive against an
+inclination of that sort _unrequited_, that she could not comprehend its
+continuing very long in equal force.
+
+If Mr. Elton, on his return, made his own indifference as evident and
+indubitable as she could not doubt he would anxiously do, she could not
+imagine Harriet's persisting to place her happiness in the sight or the
+recollection of him.
+
+Their being fixed, so absolutely fixed, in the same place, was bad for
+each, for all three. Not one of them had the power of removal, or of
+effecting any material change of society. They must encounter each
+other, and make the best of it.
+
+Harriet was farther unfortunate in the tone of her companions at Mrs.
+Goddard's; Mr. Elton being the adoration of all the teachers and great
+girls in the school; and it must be at Hartfield only that she could
+have any chance of hearing him spoken of with cooling moderation or
+repellent truth. Where the wound had been given, there must the cure be
+found if anywhere; and Emma felt that, till she saw her in the way of
+cure, there could be no true peace for herself.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+Mr. Frank Churchill did not come. When the time proposed drew near, Mrs.
+Weston's fears were justified in the arrival of a letter of excuse. For
+the present, he could not be spared, to his “very great mortification
+and regret; but still he looked forward with the hope of coming to
+Randalls at no distant period.”
+
+Mrs. Weston was exceedingly disappointed--much more disappointed, in
+fact, than her husband, though her dependence on seeing the young man
+had been so much more sober: but a sanguine temper, though for ever
+expecting more good than occurs, does not always pay for its hopes by
+any proportionate depression. It soon flies over the present failure,
+and begins to hope again. For half an hour Mr. Weston was surprized and
+sorry; but then he began to perceive that Frank's coming two or three
+months later would be a much better plan; better time of year;
+better weather; and that he would be able, without any doubt, to stay
+considerably longer with them than if he had come sooner.
+
+These feelings rapidly restored his comfort, while Mrs. Weston, of
+a more apprehensive disposition, foresaw nothing but a repetition of
+excuses and delays; and after all her concern for what her husband was
+to suffer, suffered a great deal more herself.
+
+Emma was not at this time in a state of spirits to care really about Mr.
+Frank Churchill's not coming, except as a disappointment at Randalls.
+The acquaintance at present had no charm for her. She wanted, rather, to
+be quiet, and out of temptation; but still, as it was desirable that she
+should appear, in general, like her usual self, she took care to express
+as much interest in the circumstance, and enter as warmly into Mr.
+and Mrs. Weston's disappointment, as might naturally belong to their
+friendship.
+
+She was the first to announce it to Mr. Knightley; and exclaimed quite
+as much as was necessary, (or, being acting a part, perhaps rather
+more,) at the conduct of the Churchills, in keeping him away. She then
+proceeded to say a good deal more than she felt, of the advantage of
+such an addition to their confined society in Surry; the pleasure of
+looking at somebody new; the gala-day to Highbury entire, which the
+sight of him would have made; and ending with reflections on the
+Churchills again, found herself directly involved in a disagreement
+with Mr. Knightley; and, to her great amusement, perceived that she was
+taking the other side of the question from her real opinion, and making
+use of Mrs. Weston's arguments against herself.
+
+“The Churchills are very likely in fault,” said Mr. Knightley, coolly;
+“but I dare say he might come if he would.”
+
+“I do not know why you should say so. He wishes exceedingly to come; but
+his uncle and aunt will not spare him.”
+
+“I cannot believe that he has not the power of coming, if he made a
+point of it. It is too unlikely, for me to believe it without proof.”
+
+“How odd you are! What has Mr. Frank Churchill done, to make you suppose
+him such an unnatural creature?”
+
+“I am not supposing him at all an unnatural creature, in suspecting that
+he may have learnt to be above his connexions, and to care very little
+for any thing but his own pleasure, from living with those who have
+always set him the example of it. It is a great deal more natural than
+one could wish, that a young man, brought up by those who are proud,
+luxurious, and selfish, should be proud, luxurious, and selfish too. If
+Frank Churchill had wanted to see his father, he would have contrived it
+between September and January. A man at his age--what is he?--three or
+four-and-twenty--cannot be without the means of doing as much as that.
+It is impossible.”
+
+“That's easily said, and easily felt by you, who have always been your
+own master. You are the worst judge in the world, Mr. Knightley, of the
+difficulties of dependence. You do not know what it is to have tempers
+to manage.”
+
+“It is not to be conceived that a man of three or four-and-twenty
+should not have liberty of mind or limb to that amount. He cannot want
+money--he cannot want leisure. We know, on the contrary, that he has so
+much of both, that he is glad to get rid of them at the idlest haunts in
+the kingdom. We hear of him for ever at some watering-place or other. A
+little while ago, he was at Weymouth. This proves that he can leave the
+Churchills.”
+
+“Yes, sometimes he can.”
+
+“And those times are whenever he thinks it worth his while; whenever
+there is any temptation of pleasure.”
+
+“It is very unfair to judge of any body's conduct, without an intimate
+knowledge of their situation. Nobody, who has not been in the interior
+of a family, can say what the difficulties of any individual of that
+family may be. We ought to be acquainted with Enscombe, and with Mrs.
+Churchill's temper, before we pretend to decide upon what her nephew
+can do. He may, at times, be able to do a great deal more than he can at
+others.”
+
+“There is one thing, Emma, which a man can always do, if he chuses, and
+that is, his duty; not by manoeuvring and finessing, but by vigour and
+resolution. It is Frank Churchill's duty to pay this attention to his
+father. He knows it to be so, by his promises and messages; but if he
+wished to do it, it might be done. A man who felt rightly would say at
+once, simply and resolutely, to Mrs. Churchill--'Every sacrifice of
+mere pleasure you will always find me ready to make to your convenience;
+but I must go and see my father immediately. I know he would be hurt by
+my failing in such a mark of respect to him on the present occasion.
+I shall, therefore, set off to-morrow.'--If he would say so to her
+at once, in the tone of decision becoming a man, there would be no
+opposition made to his going.”
+
+“No,” said Emma, laughing; “but perhaps there might be some made to his
+coming back again. Such language for a young man entirely dependent, to
+use!--Nobody but you, Mr. Knightley, would imagine it possible. But you
+have not an idea of what is requisite in situations directly opposite to
+your own. Mr. Frank Churchill to be making such a speech as that to
+the uncle and aunt, who have brought him up, and are to provide for
+him!--Standing up in the middle of the room, I suppose, and speaking as
+loud as he could!--How can you imagine such conduct practicable?”
+
+“Depend upon it, Emma, a sensible man would find no difficulty in it. He
+would feel himself in the right; and the declaration--made, of course,
+as a man of sense would make it, in a proper manner--would do him more
+good, raise him higher, fix his interest stronger with the people he
+depended on, than all that a line of shifts and expedients can ever do.
+Respect would be added to affection. They would feel that they could
+trust him; that the nephew who had done rightly by his father, would do
+rightly by them; for they know, as well as he does, as well as all the
+world must know, that he ought to pay this visit to his father; and
+while meanly exerting their power to delay it, are in their hearts not
+thinking the better of him for submitting to their whims. Respect for
+right conduct is felt by every body. If he would act in this sort of
+manner, on principle, consistently, regularly, their little minds would
+bend to his.”
+
+“I rather doubt that. You are very fond of bending little minds; but
+where little minds belong to rich people in authority, I think they have
+a knack of swelling out, till they are quite as unmanageable as great
+ones. I can imagine, that if you, as you are, Mr. Knightley, were to be
+transported and placed all at once in Mr. Frank Churchill's situation,
+you would be able to say and do just what you have been recommending for
+him; and it might have a very good effect. The Churchills might not have
+a word to say in return; but then, you would have no habits of early
+obedience and long observance to break through. To him who has, it might
+not be so easy to burst forth at once into perfect independence, and set
+all their claims on his gratitude and regard at nought. He may have as
+strong a sense of what would be right, as you can have, without being so
+equal, under particular circumstances, to act up to it.”
+
+“Then it would not be so strong a sense. If it failed to produce equal
+exertion, it could not be an equal conviction.”
+
+“Oh, the difference of situation and habit! I wish you would try to
+understand what an amiable young man may be likely to feel in directly
+opposing those, whom as child and boy he has been looking up to all his
+life.”
+
+“Our amiable young man is a very weak young man, if this be the first
+occasion of his carrying through a resolution to do right against the
+will of others. It ought to have been a habit with him by this time, of
+following his duty, instead of consulting expediency. I can allow for
+the fears of the child, but not of the man. As he became rational, he
+ought to have roused himself and shaken off all that was unworthy in
+their authority. He ought to have opposed the first attempt on their
+side to make him slight his father. Had he begun as he ought, there
+would have been no difficulty now.”
+
+“We shall never agree about him,” cried Emma; “but that is nothing
+extraordinary. I have not the least idea of his being a weak young man:
+I feel sure that he is not. Mr. Weston would not be blind to folly,
+though in his own son; but he is very likely to have a more yielding,
+complying, mild disposition than would suit your notions of man's
+perfection. I dare say he has; and though it may cut him off from some
+advantages, it will secure him many others.”
+
+“Yes; all the advantages of sitting still when he ought to move, and
+of leading a life of mere idle pleasure, and fancying himself extremely
+expert in finding excuses for it. He can sit down and write a fine
+flourishing letter, full of professions and falsehoods, and persuade
+himself that he has hit upon the very best method in the world of
+preserving peace at home and preventing his father's having any right to
+complain. His letters disgust me.”
+
+“Your feelings are singular. They seem to satisfy every body else.”
+
+“I suspect they do not satisfy Mrs. Weston. They hardly can satisfy
+a woman of her good sense and quick feelings: standing in a mother's
+place, but without a mother's affection to blind her. It is on her
+account that attention to Randalls is doubly due, and she must doubly
+feel the omission. Had she been a person of consequence herself, he
+would have come I dare say; and it would not have signified whether
+he did or no. Can you think your friend behindhand in these sort of
+considerations? Do you suppose she does not often say all this to
+herself? No, Emma, your amiable young man can be amiable only in French,
+not in English. He may be very 'amiable,' have very good manners, and be
+very agreeable; but he can have no English delicacy towards the feelings
+of other people: nothing really amiable about him.”
+
+“You seem determined to think ill of him.”
+
+“Me!--not at all,” replied Mr. Knightley, rather displeased; “I do not
+want to think ill of him. I should be as ready to acknowledge his merits
+as any other man; but I hear of none, except what are merely personal;
+that he is well-grown and good-looking, with smooth, plausible manners.”
+
+“Well, if he have nothing else to recommend him, he will be a treasure
+at Highbury. We do not often look upon fine young men, well-bred and
+agreeable. We must not be nice and ask for all the virtues into the
+bargain. Cannot you imagine, Mr. Knightley, what a _sensation_ his
+coming will produce? There will be but one subject throughout the
+parishes of Donwell and Highbury; but one interest--one object of
+curiosity; it will be all Mr. Frank Churchill; we shall think and speak
+of nobody else.”
+
+“You will excuse my being so much over-powered. If I find him
+conversable, I shall be glad of his acquaintance; but if he is only a
+chattering coxcomb, he will not occupy much of my time or thoughts.”
+
+“My idea of him is, that he can adapt his conversation to the taste of
+every body, and has the power as well as the wish of being universally
+agreeable. To you, he will talk of farming; to me, of drawing or music;
+and so on to every body, having that general information on all subjects
+which will enable him to follow the lead, or take the lead, just as
+propriety may require, and to speak extremely well on each; that is my
+idea of him.”
+
+“And mine,” said Mr. Knightley warmly, “is, that if he turn out any
+thing like it, he will be the most insufferable fellow breathing! What!
+at three-and-twenty to be the king of his company--the great man--the
+practised politician, who is to read every body's character, and make
+every body's talents conduce to the display of his own superiority; to
+be dispensing his flatteries around, that he may make all appear like
+fools compared with himself! My dear Emma, your own good sense could not
+endure such a puppy when it came to the point.”
+
+“I will say no more about him,” cried Emma, “you turn every thing to
+evil. We are both prejudiced; you against, I for him; and we have no
+chance of agreeing till he is really here.”
+
+“Prejudiced! I am not prejudiced.”
+
+“But I am very much, and without being at all ashamed of it. My love for
+Mr. and Mrs. Weston gives me a decided prejudice in his favour.”
+
+“He is a person I never think of from one month's end to another,” said
+Mr. Knightley, with a degree of vexation, which made Emma immediately
+talk of something else, though she could not comprehend why he should be
+angry.
+
+To take a dislike to a young man, only because he appeared to be of a
+different disposition from himself, was unworthy the real liberality of
+mind which she was always used to acknowledge in him; for with all the
+high opinion of himself, which she had often laid to his charge, she had
+never before for a moment supposed it could make him unjust to the merit
+of another.
+
+
+
+
+VOLUME II
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Emma and Harriet had been walking together one morning, and, in Emma's
+opinion, had been talking enough of Mr. Elton for that day. She could
+not think that Harriet's solace or her own sins required more; and
+she was therefore industriously getting rid of the subject as they
+returned;--but it burst out again when she thought she had succeeded,
+and after speaking some time of what the poor must suffer in winter, and
+receiving no other answer than a very plaintive--“Mr. Elton is so good
+to the poor!” she found something else must be done.
+
+They were just approaching the house where lived Mrs. and Miss Bates.
+She determined to call upon them and seek safety in numbers. There was
+always sufficient reason for such an attention; Mrs. and Miss Bates
+loved to be called on, and she knew she was considered by the very few
+who presumed ever to see imperfection in her, as rather negligent in
+that respect, and as not contributing what she ought to the stock of
+their scanty comforts.
+
+She had had many a hint from Mr. Knightley and some from her own heart,
+as to her deficiency--but none were equal to counteract the persuasion
+of its being very disagreeable,--a waste of time--tiresome women--and
+all the horror of being in danger of falling in with the second-rate and
+third-rate of Highbury, who were calling on them for ever, and therefore
+she seldom went near them. But now she made the sudden resolution of not
+passing their door without going in--observing, as she proposed it to
+Harriet, that, as well as she could calculate, they were just now quite
+safe from any letter from Jane Fairfax.
+
+The house belonged to people in business. Mrs. and Miss Bates occupied
+the drawing-room floor; and there, in the very moderate-sized apartment,
+which was every thing to them, the visitors were most cordially and even
+gratefully welcomed; the quiet neat old lady, who with her knitting was
+seated in the warmest corner, wanting even to give up her place to
+Miss Woodhouse, and her more active, talking daughter, almost ready
+to overpower them with care and kindness, thanks for their visit,
+solicitude for their shoes, anxious inquiries after Mr. Woodhouse's
+health, cheerful communications about her mother's, and sweet-cake from
+the beaufet--“Mrs. Cole had just been there, just called in for ten
+minutes, and had been so good as to sit an hour with them, and _she_ had
+taken a piece of cake and been so kind as to say she liked it very much;
+and, therefore, she hoped Miss Woodhouse and Miss Smith would do them
+the favour to eat a piece too.”
+
+The mention of the Coles was sure to be followed by that of Mr. Elton.
+There was intimacy between them, and Mr. Cole had heard from Mr. Elton
+since his going away. Emma knew what was coming; they must have the
+letter over again, and settle how long he had been gone, and how much
+he was engaged in company, and what a favourite he was wherever he went,
+and how full the Master of the Ceremonies' ball had been; and she went
+through it very well, with all the interest and all the commendation
+that could be requisite, and always putting forward to prevent Harriet's
+being obliged to say a word.
+
+This she had been prepared for when she entered the house; but meant,
+having once talked him handsomely over, to be no farther incommoded by
+any troublesome topic, and to wander at large amongst all the Mistresses
+and Misses of Highbury, and their card-parties. She had not been
+prepared to have Jane Fairfax succeed Mr. Elton; but he was actually
+hurried off by Miss Bates, she jumped away from him at last abruptly to
+the Coles, to usher in a letter from her niece.
+
+“Oh! yes--Mr. Elton, I understand--certainly as to dancing--Mrs. Cole
+was telling me that dancing at the rooms at Bath was--Mrs. Cole was so
+kind as to sit some time with us, talking of Jane; for as soon as
+she came in, she began inquiring after her, Jane is so very great a
+favourite there. Whenever she is with us, Mrs. Cole does not know how to
+shew her kindness enough; and I must say that Jane deserves it as much
+as any body can. And so she began inquiring after her directly, saying,
+'I know you cannot have heard from Jane lately, because it is not her
+time for writing;' and when I immediately said, 'But indeed we have, we
+had a letter this very morning,' I do not know that I ever saw any body
+more surprized. 'Have you, upon your honour?' said she; 'well, that is
+quite unexpected. Do let me hear what she says.'”
+
+Emma's politeness was at hand directly, to say, with smiling interest--
+
+“Have you heard from Miss Fairfax so lately? I am extremely happy. I
+hope she is well?”
+
+“Thank you. You are so kind!” replied the happily deceived aunt, while
+eagerly hunting for the letter.--“Oh! here it is. I was sure it could
+not be far off; but I had put my huswife upon it, you see, without being
+aware, and so it was quite hid, but I had it in my hand so very lately
+that I was almost sure it must be on the table. I was reading it to Mrs.
+Cole, and since she went away, I was reading it again to my mother, for
+it is such a pleasure to her--a letter from Jane--that she can never
+hear it often enough; so I knew it could not be far off, and here it is,
+only just under my huswife--and since you are so kind as to wish to hear
+what she says;--but, first of all, I really must, in justice to
+Jane, apologise for her writing so short a letter--only two pages you
+see--hardly two--and in general she fills the whole paper and crosses
+half. My mother often wonders that I can make it out so well. She often
+says, when the letter is first opened, 'Well, Hetty, now I think
+you will be put to it to make out all that checker-work'--don't you,
+ma'am?--And then I tell her, I am sure she would contrive to make it out
+herself, if she had nobody to do it for her--every word of it--I am sure
+she would pore over it till she had made out every word. And, indeed,
+though my mother's eyes are not so good as they were, she can see
+amazingly well still, thank God! with the help of spectacles. It is such
+a blessing! My mother's are really very good indeed. Jane often says,
+when she is here, 'I am sure, grandmama, you must have had very strong
+eyes to see as you do--and so much fine work as you have done too!--I
+only wish my eyes may last me as well.'”
+
+All this spoken extremely fast obliged Miss Bates to stop for breath;
+and Emma said something very civil about the excellence of Miss
+Fairfax's handwriting.
+
+“You are extremely kind,” replied Miss Bates, highly gratified; “you who
+are such a judge, and write so beautifully yourself. I am sure there is
+nobody's praise that could give us so much pleasure as Miss Woodhouse's.
+My mother does not hear; she is a little deaf you know. Ma'am,”
+ addressing her, “do you hear what Miss Woodhouse is so obliging to say
+about Jane's handwriting?”
+
+And Emma had the advantage of hearing her own silly compliment repeated
+twice over before the good old lady could comprehend it. She was
+pondering, in the meanwhile, upon the possibility, without seeming very
+rude, of making her escape from Jane Fairfax's letter, and had almost
+resolved on hurrying away directly under some slight excuse, when Miss
+Bates turned to her again and seized her attention.
+
+“My mother's deafness is very trifling you see--just nothing at all. By
+only raising my voice, and saying any thing two or three times over,
+she is sure to hear; but then she is used to my voice. But it is very
+remarkable that she should always hear Jane better than she does me.
+Jane speaks so distinct! However, she will not find her grandmama at all
+deafer than she was two years ago; which is saying a great deal at my
+mother's time of life--and it really is full two years, you know, since
+she was here. We never were so long without seeing her before, and as
+I was telling Mrs. Cole, we shall hardly know how to make enough of her
+now.”
+
+“Are you expecting Miss Fairfax here soon?”
+
+“Oh yes; next week.”
+
+“Indeed!--that must be a very great pleasure.”
+
+“Thank you. You are very kind. Yes, next week. Every body is so
+surprized; and every body says the same obliging things. I am sure she
+will be as happy to see her friends at Highbury, as they can be to see
+her. Yes, Friday or Saturday; she cannot say which, because Colonel
+Campbell will be wanting the carriage himself one of those days. So very
+good of them to send her the whole way! But they always do, you know. Oh
+yes, Friday or Saturday next. That is what she writes about. That is
+the reason of her writing out of rule, as we call it; for, in the
+common course, we should not have heard from her before next Tuesday or
+Wednesday.”
+
+“Yes, so I imagined. I was afraid there could be little chance of my
+hearing any thing of Miss Fairfax to-day.”
+
+“So obliging of you! No, we should not have heard, if it had not been
+for this particular circumstance, of her being to come here so soon. My
+mother is so delighted!--for she is to be three months with us at
+least. Three months, she says so, positively, as I am going to have the
+pleasure of reading to you. The case is, you see, that the Campbells are
+going to Ireland. Mrs. Dixon has persuaded her father and mother to come
+over and see her directly. They had not intended to go over till the
+summer, but she is so impatient to see them again--for till she married,
+last October, she was never away from them so much as a week, which must
+make it very strange to be in different kingdoms, I was going to say,
+but however different countries, and so she wrote a very urgent letter
+to her mother--or her father, I declare I do not know which it was, but
+we shall see presently in Jane's letter--wrote in Mr. Dixon's name as
+well as her own, to press their coming over directly, and they would
+give them the meeting in Dublin, and take them back to their country
+seat, Baly-craig, a beautiful place, I fancy. Jane has heard a great
+deal of its beauty; from Mr. Dixon, I mean--I do not know that she ever
+heard about it from any body else; but it was very natural, you know,
+that he should like to speak of his own place while he was paying his
+addresses--and as Jane used to be very often walking out with them--for
+Colonel and Mrs. Campbell were very particular about their daughter's
+not walking out often with only Mr. Dixon, for which I do not at all
+blame them; of course she heard every thing he might be telling Miss
+Campbell about his own home in Ireland; and I think she wrote us word
+that he had shewn them some drawings of the place, views that he had
+taken himself. He is a most amiable, charming young man, I believe. Jane
+was quite longing to go to Ireland, from his account of things.”
+
+At this moment, an ingenious and animating suspicion entering Emma's
+brain with regard to Jane Fairfax, this charming Mr. Dixon, and the
+not going to Ireland, she said, with the insidious design of farther
+discovery,
+
+“You must feel it very fortunate that Miss Fairfax should be allowed to
+come to you at such a time. Considering the very particular friendship
+between her and Mrs. Dixon, you could hardly have expected her to be
+excused from accompanying Colonel and Mrs. Campbell.”
+
+“Very true, very true, indeed. The very thing that we have always been
+rather afraid of; for we should not have liked to have her at such a
+distance from us, for months together--not able to come if any thing was
+to happen. But you see, every thing turns out for the best. They want
+her (Mr. and Mrs. Dixon) excessively to come over with Colonel and Mrs.
+Campbell; quite depend upon it; nothing can be more kind or pressing
+than their _joint_ invitation, Jane says, as you will hear presently;
+Mr. Dixon does not seem in the least backward in any attention. He is
+a most charming young man. Ever since the service he rendered Jane at
+Weymouth, when they were out in that party on the water, and she, by the
+sudden whirling round of something or other among the sails, would have
+been dashed into the sea at once, and actually was all but gone, if he
+had not, with the greatest presence of mind, caught hold of her habit--
+(I can never think of it without trembling!)--But ever since we had the
+history of that day, I have been so fond of Mr. Dixon!”
+
+“But, in spite of all her friends' urgency, and her own wish of seeing
+Ireland, Miss Fairfax prefers devoting the time to you and Mrs. Bates?”
+
+“Yes--entirely her own doing, entirely her own choice; and Colonel
+and Mrs. Campbell think she does quite right, just what they should
+recommend; and indeed they particularly _wish_ her to try her native
+air, as she has not been quite so well as usual lately.”
+
+“I am concerned to hear of it. I think they judge wisely. But Mrs.
+Dixon must be very much disappointed. Mrs. Dixon, I understand, has
+no remarkable degree of personal beauty; is not, by any means, to be
+compared with Miss Fairfax.”
+
+“Oh! no. You are very obliging to say such things--but certainly not.
+There is no comparison between them. Miss Campbell always was absolutely
+plain--but extremely elegant and amiable.”
+
+“Yes, that of course.”
+
+“Jane caught a bad cold, poor thing! so long ago as the 7th of November,
+(as I am going to read to you,) and has never been well since. A long
+time, is not it, for a cold to hang upon her? She never mentioned
+it before, because she would not alarm us. Just like her! so
+considerate!--But however, she is so far from well, that her kind
+friends the Campbells think she had better come home, and try an air
+that always agrees with her; and they have no doubt that three or four
+months at Highbury will entirely cure her--and it is certainly a great
+deal better that she should come here, than go to Ireland, if she is
+unwell. Nobody could nurse her, as we should do.”
+
+“It appears to me the most desirable arrangement in the world.”
+
+“And so she is to come to us next Friday or Saturday, and the Campbells
+leave town in their way to Holyhead the Monday following--as you will
+find from Jane's letter. So sudden!--You may guess, dear Miss Woodhouse,
+what a flurry it has thrown me in! If it was not for the drawback of
+her illness--but I am afraid we must expect to see her grown thin, and
+looking very poorly. I must tell you what an unlucky thing happened to
+me, as to that. I always make a point of reading Jane's letters through
+to myself first, before I read them aloud to my mother, you know, for
+fear of there being any thing in them to distress her. Jane desired me
+to do it, so I always do: and so I began to-day with my usual caution;
+but no sooner did I come to the mention of her being unwell, than I
+burst out, quite frightened, with 'Bless me! poor Jane is ill!'--which
+my mother, being on the watch, heard distinctly, and was sadly alarmed
+at. However, when I read on, I found it was not near so bad as I had
+fancied at first; and I make so light of it now to her, that she does
+not think much about it. But I cannot imagine how I could be so off my
+guard. If Jane does not get well soon, we will call in Mr. Perry. The
+expense shall not be thought of; and though he is so liberal, and so
+fond of Jane that I dare say he would not mean to charge any thing for
+attendance, we could not suffer it to be so, you know. He has a wife and
+family to maintain, and is not to be giving away his time. Well, now I
+have just given you a hint of what Jane writes about, we will turn to
+her letter, and I am sure she tells her own story a great deal better
+than I can tell it for her.”
+
+“I am afraid we must be running away,” said Emma, glancing at Harriet,
+and beginning to rise--“My father will be expecting us. I had no
+intention, I thought I had no power of staying more than five minutes,
+when I first entered the house. I merely called, because I would not
+pass the door without inquiring after Mrs. Bates; but I have been so
+pleasantly detained! Now, however, we must wish you and Mrs. Bates good
+morning.”
+
+And not all that could be urged to detain her succeeded. She regained
+the street--happy in this, that though much had been forced on her
+against her will, though she had in fact heard the whole substance of
+Jane Fairfax's letter, she had been able to escape the letter itself.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Jane Fairfax was an orphan, the only child of Mrs. Bates's youngest
+daughter.
+
+The marriage of Lieut. Fairfax of the ----regiment of infantry,
+and Miss Jane Bates, had had its day of fame and pleasure, hope
+and interest; but nothing now remained of it, save the melancholy
+remembrance of him dying in action abroad--of his widow sinking under
+consumption and grief soon afterwards--and this girl.
+
+By birth she belonged to Highbury: and when at three years old, on
+losing her mother, she became the property, the charge, the consolation,
+the foundling of her grandmother and aunt, there had seemed every
+probability of her being permanently fixed there; of her being taught
+only what very limited means could command, and growing up with no
+advantages of connexion or improvement, to be engrafted on what
+nature had given her in a pleasing person, good understanding, and
+warm-hearted, well-meaning relations.
+
+But the compassionate feelings of a friend of her father gave a change
+to her destiny. This was Colonel Campbell, who had very highly regarded
+Fairfax, as an excellent officer and most deserving young man; and
+farther, had been indebted to him for such attentions, during a severe
+camp-fever, as he believed had saved his life. These were claims which
+he did not learn to overlook, though some years passed away from the
+death of poor Fairfax, before his own return to England put any thing in
+his power. When he did return, he sought out the child and took notice
+of her. He was a married man, with only one living child, a girl, about
+Jane's age: and Jane became their guest, paying them long visits and
+growing a favourite with all; and before she was nine years old, his
+daughter's great fondness for her, and his own wish of being a real
+friend, united to produce an offer from Colonel Campbell of undertaking
+the whole charge of her education. It was accepted; and from that period
+Jane had belonged to Colonel Campbell's family, and had lived with them
+entirely, only visiting her grandmother from time to time.
+
+The plan was that she should be brought up for educating others; the
+very few hundred pounds which she inherited from her father making
+independence impossible. To provide for her otherwise was out of Colonel
+Campbell's power; for though his income, by pay and appointments, was
+handsome, his fortune was moderate and must be all his daughter's;
+but, by giving her an education, he hoped to be supplying the means of
+respectable subsistence hereafter.
+
+Such was Jane Fairfax's history. She had fallen into good hands, known
+nothing but kindness from the Campbells, and been given an excellent
+education. Living constantly with right-minded and well-informed people,
+her heart and understanding had received every advantage of discipline
+and culture; and Colonel Campbell's residence being in London, every
+lighter talent had been done full justice to, by the attendance of
+first-rate masters. Her disposition and abilities were equally worthy
+of all that friendship could do; and at eighteen or nineteen she was,
+as far as such an early age can be qualified for the care of children,
+fully competent to the office of instruction herself; but she was too
+much beloved to be parted with. Neither father nor mother could promote,
+and the daughter could not endure it. The evil day was put off. It was
+easy to decide that she was still too young; and Jane remained with
+them, sharing, as another daughter, in all the rational pleasures of
+an elegant society, and a judicious mixture of home and amusement, with
+only the drawback of the future, the sobering suggestions of her own
+good understanding to remind her that all this might soon be over.
+
+The affection of the whole family, the warm attachment of Miss
+Campbell in particular, was the more honourable to each party from
+the circumstance of Jane's decided superiority both in beauty and
+acquirements. That nature had given it in feature could not be unseen
+by the young woman, nor could her higher powers of mind be unfelt by the
+parents. They continued together with unabated regard however, till the
+marriage of Miss Campbell, who by that chance, that luck which so often
+defies anticipation in matrimonial affairs, giving attraction to what is
+moderate rather than to what is superior, engaged the affections of
+Mr. Dixon, a young man, rich and agreeable, almost as soon as they were
+acquainted; and was eligibly and happily settled, while Jane Fairfax had
+yet her bread to earn.
+
+This event had very lately taken place; too lately for any thing to be
+yet attempted by her less fortunate friend towards entering on her path
+of duty; though she had now reached the age which her own judgment had
+fixed on for beginning. She had long resolved that one-and-twenty
+should be the period. With the fortitude of a devoted novitiate, she had
+resolved at one-and-twenty to complete the sacrifice, and retire from
+all the pleasures of life, of rational intercourse, equal society, peace
+and hope, to penance and mortification for ever.
+
+The good sense of Colonel and Mrs. Campbell could not oppose such
+a resolution, though their feelings did. As long as they lived, no
+exertions would be necessary, their home might be hers for ever; and for
+their own comfort they would have retained her wholly; but this would
+be selfishness:--what must be at last, had better be soon. Perhaps they
+began to feel it might have been kinder and wiser to have resisted the
+temptation of any delay, and spared her from a taste of such enjoyments
+of ease and leisure as must now be relinquished. Still, however,
+affection was glad to catch at any reasonable excuse for not hurrying
+on the wretched moment. She had never been quite well since the time of
+their daughter's marriage; and till she should have completely recovered
+her usual strength, they must forbid her engaging in duties, which, so
+far from being compatible with a weakened frame and varying spirits,
+seemed, under the most favourable circumstances, to require something
+more than human perfection of body and mind to be discharged with
+tolerable comfort.
+
+With regard to her not accompanying them to Ireland, her account to her
+aunt contained nothing but truth, though there might be some truths
+not told. It was her own choice to give the time of their absence to
+Highbury; to spend, perhaps, her last months of perfect liberty with
+those kind relations to whom she was so very dear: and the Campbells,
+whatever might be their motive or motives, whether single, or double, or
+treble, gave the arrangement their ready sanction, and said, that they
+depended more on a few months spent in her native air, for the recovery
+of her health, than on any thing else. Certain it was that she was to
+come; and that Highbury, instead of welcoming that perfect novelty which
+had been so long promised it--Mr. Frank Churchill--must put up for the
+present with Jane Fairfax, who could bring only the freshness of a two
+years' absence.
+
+Emma was sorry;--to have to pay civilities to a person she did not like
+through three long months!--to be always doing more than she wished,
+and less than she ought! Why she did not like Jane Fairfax might be a
+difficult question to answer; Mr. Knightley had once told her it was
+because she saw in her the really accomplished young woman, which she
+wanted to be thought herself; and though the accusation had been eagerly
+refuted at the time, there were moments of self-examination in which
+her conscience could not quite acquit her. But “she could never get
+acquainted with her: she did not know how it was, but there was such
+coldness and reserve--such apparent indifference whether she pleased or
+not--and then, her aunt was such an eternal talker!--and she was made
+such a fuss with by every body!--and it had been always imagined that
+they were to be so intimate--because their ages were the same, every
+body had supposed they must be so fond of each other.” These were her
+reasons--she had no better.
+
+It was a dislike so little just--every imputed fault was so magnified
+by fancy, that she never saw Jane Fairfax the first time after any
+considerable absence, without feeling that she had injured her; and
+now, when the due visit was paid, on her arrival, after a two years'
+interval, she was particularly struck with the very appearance and
+manners, which for those two whole years she had been depreciating. Jane
+Fairfax was very elegant, remarkably elegant; and she had herself the
+highest value for elegance. Her height was pretty, just such as almost
+every body would think tall, and nobody could think very tall; her
+figure particularly graceful; her size a most becoming medium, between
+fat and thin, though a slight appearance of ill-health seemed to point
+out the likeliest evil of the two. Emma could not but feel all this; and
+then, her face--her features--there was more beauty in them altogether
+than she had remembered; it was not regular, but it was very pleasing
+beauty. Her eyes, a deep grey, with dark eye-lashes and eyebrows, had
+never been denied their praise; but the skin, which she had been used to
+cavil at, as wanting colour, had a clearness and delicacy which really
+needed no fuller bloom. It was a style of beauty, of which elegance was
+the reigning character, and as such, she must, in honour, by all her
+principles, admire it:--elegance, which, whether of person or of mind,
+she saw so little in Highbury. There, not to be vulgar, was distinction,
+and merit.
+
+In short, she sat, during the first visit, looking at Jane Fairfax with
+twofold complacency; the sense of pleasure and the sense of rendering
+justice, and was determining that she would dislike her no longer. When
+she took in her history, indeed, her situation, as well as her beauty;
+when she considered what all this elegance was destined to, what she was
+going to sink from, how she was going to live, it seemed impossible
+to feel any thing but compassion and respect; especially, if to every
+well-known particular entitling her to interest, were added the highly
+probable circumstance of an attachment to Mr. Dixon, which she had
+so naturally started to herself. In that case, nothing could be more
+pitiable or more honourable than the sacrifices she had resolved on.
+Emma was very willing now to acquit her of having seduced Mr. Dixon's
+actions from his wife, or of any thing mischievous which her imagination
+had suggested at first. If it were love, it might be simple, single,
+successless love on her side alone. She might have been unconsciously
+sucking in the sad poison, while a sharer of his conversation with her
+friend; and from the best, the purest of motives, might now be
+denying herself this visit to Ireland, and resolving to divide herself
+effectually from him and his connexions by soon beginning her career of
+laborious duty.
+
+Upon the whole, Emma left her with such softened, charitable feelings,
+as made her look around in walking home, and lament that Highbury
+afforded no young man worthy of giving her independence; nobody that she
+could wish to scheme about for her.
+
+These were charming feelings--but not lasting. Before she had committed
+herself by any public profession of eternal friendship for Jane Fairfax,
+or done more towards a recantation of past prejudices and errors, than
+saying to Mr. Knightley, “She certainly is handsome; she is better than
+handsome!” Jane had spent an evening at Hartfield with her grandmother
+and aunt, and every thing was relapsing much into its usual state.
+Former provocations reappeared. The aunt was as tiresome as ever; more
+tiresome, because anxiety for her health was now added to admiration
+of her powers; and they had to listen to the description of exactly how
+little bread and butter she ate for breakfast, and how small a slice
+of mutton for dinner, as well as to see exhibitions of new caps and new
+workbags for her mother and herself; and Jane's offences rose again.
+They had music; Emma was obliged to play; and the thanks and praise
+which necessarily followed appeared to her an affectation of candour, an
+air of greatness, meaning only to shew off in higher style her own very
+superior performance. She was, besides, which was the worst of all, so
+cold, so cautious! There was no getting at her real opinion. Wrapt up in
+a cloak of politeness, she seemed determined to hazard nothing. She was
+disgustingly, was suspiciously reserved.
+
+If any thing could be more, where all was most, she was more reserved on
+the subject of Weymouth and the Dixons than any thing. She seemed bent
+on giving no real insight into Mr. Dixon's character, or her own value
+for his company, or opinion of the suitableness of the match. It was all
+general approbation and smoothness; nothing delineated or distinguished.
+It did her no service however. Her caution was thrown away. Emma saw
+its artifice, and returned to her first surmises. There probably _was_
+something more to conceal than her own preference; Mr. Dixon, perhaps,
+had been very near changing one friend for the other, or been fixed only
+to Miss Campbell, for the sake of the future twelve thousand pounds.
+
+The like reserve prevailed on other topics. She and Mr. Frank Churchill
+had been at Weymouth at the same time. It was known that they were a
+little acquainted; but not a syllable of real information could Emma
+procure as to what he truly was. “Was he handsome?”--“She believed
+he was reckoned a very fine young man.” “Was he agreeable?”--“He was
+generally thought so.” “Did he appear a sensible young man; a young
+man of information?”--“At a watering-place, or in a common London
+acquaintance, it was difficult to decide on such points. Manners were
+all that could be safely judged of, under a much longer knowledge than
+they had yet had of Mr. Churchill. She believed every body found his
+manners pleasing.” Emma could not forgive her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Emma could not forgive her;--but as neither provocation nor resentment
+were discerned by Mr. Knightley, who had been of the party, and had
+seen only proper attention and pleasing behaviour on each side, he was
+expressing the next morning, being at Hartfield again on business with
+Mr. Woodhouse, his approbation of the whole; not so openly as he might
+have done had her father been out of the room, but speaking plain enough
+to be very intelligible to Emma. He had been used to think her unjust to
+Jane, and had now great pleasure in marking an improvement.
+
+“A very pleasant evening,” he began, as soon as Mr. Woodhouse had been
+talked into what was necessary, told that he understood, and the papers
+swept away;--“particularly pleasant. You and Miss Fairfax gave us some
+very good music. I do not know a more luxurious state, sir, than sitting
+at one's ease to be entertained a whole evening by two such young women;
+sometimes with music and sometimes with conversation. I am sure Miss
+Fairfax must have found the evening pleasant, Emma. You left nothing
+undone. I was glad you made her play so much, for having no instrument
+at her grandmother's, it must have been a real indulgence.”
+
+“I am happy you approved,” said Emma, smiling; “but I hope I am not
+often deficient in what is due to guests at Hartfield.”
+
+“No, my dear,” said her father instantly; “_that_ I am sure you are not.
+There is nobody half so attentive and civil as you are. If any thing,
+you are too attentive. The muffin last night--if it had been handed
+round once, I think it would have been enough.”
+
+“No,” said Mr. Knightley, nearly at the same time; “you are not often
+deficient; not often deficient either in manner or comprehension. I
+think you understand me, therefore.”
+
+An arch look expressed--“I understand you well enough;” but she said
+only, “Miss Fairfax is reserved.”
+
+“I always told you she was--a little; but you will soon overcome all
+that part of her reserve which ought to be overcome, all that has its
+foundation in diffidence. What arises from discretion must be honoured.”
+
+“You think her diffident. I do not see it.”
+
+“My dear Emma,” said he, moving from his chair into one close by her,
+“you are not going to tell me, I hope, that you had not a pleasant
+evening.”
+
+“Oh! no; I was pleased with my own perseverance in asking questions; and
+amused to think how little information I obtained.”
+
+“I am disappointed,” was his only answer.
+
+“I hope every body had a pleasant evening,” said Mr. Woodhouse, in his
+quiet way. “I had. Once, I felt the fire rather too much; but then I
+moved back my chair a little, a very little, and it did not disturb me.
+Miss Bates was very chatty and good-humoured, as she always is, though
+she speaks rather too quick. However, she is very agreeable, and Mrs.
+Bates too, in a different way. I like old friends; and Miss Jane
+Fairfax is a very pretty sort of young lady, a very pretty and a
+very well-behaved young lady indeed. She must have found the evening
+agreeable, Mr. Knightley, because she had Emma.”
+
+“True, sir; and Emma, because she had Miss Fairfax.”
+
+Emma saw his anxiety, and wishing to appease it, at least for the
+present, said, and with a sincerity which no one could question--
+
+“She is a sort of elegant creature that one cannot keep one's eyes from.
+I am always watching her to admire; and I do pity her from my heart.”
+
+Mr. Knightley looked as if he were more gratified than he cared to
+express; and before he could make any reply, Mr. Woodhouse, whose
+thoughts were on the Bates's, said--
+
+“It is a great pity that their circumstances should be so confined! a
+great pity indeed! and I have often wished--but it is so little one can
+venture to do--small, trifling presents, of any thing uncommon--Now we
+have killed a porker, and Emma thinks of sending them a loin or a leg;
+it is very small and delicate--Hartfield pork is not like any other
+pork--but still it is pork--and, my dear Emma, unless one could be sure
+of their making it into steaks, nicely fried, as ours are fried, without
+the smallest grease, and not roast it, for no stomach can bear roast
+pork--I think we had better send the leg--do not you think so, my dear?”
+
+“My dear papa, I sent the whole hind-quarter. I knew you would wish it.
+There will be the leg to be salted, you know, which is so very nice, and
+the loin to be dressed directly in any manner they like.”
+
+“That's right, my dear, very right. I had not thought of it before, but
+that is the best way. They must not over-salt the leg; and then, if it
+is not over-salted, and if it is very thoroughly boiled, just as Serle
+boils ours, and eaten very moderately of, with a boiled turnip, and a
+little carrot or parsnip, I do not consider it unwholesome.”
+
+“Emma,” said Mr. Knightley presently, “I have a piece of news for you.
+You like news--and I heard an article in my way hither that I think will
+interest you.”
+
+“News! Oh! yes, I always like news. What is it?--why do you smile
+so?--where did you hear it?--at Randalls?”
+
+He had time only to say,
+
+“No, not at Randalls; I have not been near Randalls,” when the door was
+thrown open, and Miss Bates and Miss Fairfax walked into the room. Full
+of thanks, and full of news, Miss Bates knew not which to give quickest.
+Mr. Knightley soon saw that he had lost his moment, and that not another
+syllable of communication could rest with him.
+
+“Oh! my dear sir, how are you this morning? My dear Miss Woodhouse--I
+come quite over-powered. Such a beautiful hind-quarter of pork! You
+are too bountiful! Have you heard the news? Mr. Elton is going to be
+married.”
+
+Emma had not had time even to think of Mr. Elton, and she was so
+completely surprized that she could not avoid a little start, and a
+little blush, at the sound.
+
+“There is my news:--I thought it would interest you,” said Mr.
+Knightley, with a smile which implied a conviction of some part of what
+had passed between them.
+
+“But where could _you_ hear it?” cried Miss Bates. “Where could you
+possibly hear it, Mr. Knightley? For it is not five minutes since I
+received Mrs. Cole's note--no, it cannot be more than five--or at least
+ten--for I had got my bonnet and spencer on, just ready to come out--I
+was only gone down to speak to Patty again about the pork--Jane was
+standing in the passage--were not you, Jane?--for my mother was so
+afraid that we had not any salting-pan large enough. So I said I would
+go down and see, and Jane said, 'Shall I go down instead? for I think
+you have a little cold, and Patty has been washing the kitchen.'--'Oh!
+my dear,' said I--well, and just then came the note. A Miss
+Hawkins--that's all I know. A Miss Hawkins of Bath. But, Mr. Knightley,
+how could you possibly have heard it? for the very moment Mr. Cole told
+Mrs. Cole of it, she sat down and wrote to me. A Miss Hawkins--”
+
+“I was with Mr. Cole on business an hour and a half ago. He had just
+read Elton's letter as I was shewn in, and handed it to me directly.”
+
+“Well! that is quite--I suppose there never was a piece of news more
+generally interesting. My dear sir, you really are too bountiful. My
+mother desires her very best compliments and regards, and a thousand
+thanks, and says you really quite oppress her.”
+
+“We consider our Hartfield pork,” replied Mr. Woodhouse--“indeed it
+certainly is, so very superior to all other pork, that Emma and I cannot
+have a greater pleasure than--”
+
+“Oh! my dear sir, as my mother says, our friends are only too good
+to us. If ever there were people who, without having great wealth
+themselves, had every thing they could wish for, I am sure it is us.
+We may well say that 'our lot is cast in a goodly heritage.' Well, Mr.
+Knightley, and so you actually saw the letter; well--”
+
+“It was short--merely to announce--but cheerful, exulting, of course.”--
+Here was a sly glance at Emma. “He had been so fortunate as to--I forget
+the precise words--one has no business to remember them. The information
+was, as you state, that he was going to be married to a Miss Hawkins. By
+his style, I should imagine it just settled.”
+
+“Mr. Elton going to be married!” said Emma, as soon as she could speak.
+“He will have every body's wishes for his happiness.”
+
+“He is very young to settle,” was Mr. Woodhouse's observation. “He had
+better not be in a hurry. He seemed to me very well off as he was. We
+were always glad to see him at Hartfield.”
+
+“A new neighbour for us all, Miss Woodhouse!” said Miss Bates, joyfully;
+“my mother is so pleased!--she says she cannot bear to have the poor old
+Vicarage without a mistress. This is great news, indeed. Jane, you have
+never seen Mr. Elton!--no wonder that you have such a curiosity to see
+him.”
+
+Jane's curiosity did not appear of that absorbing nature as wholly to
+occupy her.
+
+“No--I have never seen Mr. Elton,” she replied, starting on this appeal;
+“is he--is he a tall man?”
+
+“Who shall answer that question?” cried Emma. “My father would say
+'yes,' Mr. Knightley 'no;' and Miss Bates and I that he is just the
+happy medium. When you have been here a little longer, Miss Fairfax,
+you will understand that Mr. Elton is the standard of perfection in
+Highbury, both in person and mind.”
+
+“Very true, Miss Woodhouse, so she will. He is the very best young
+man--But, my dear Jane, if you remember, I told you yesterday he
+was precisely the height of Mr. Perry. Miss Hawkins,--I dare say, an
+excellent young woman. His extreme attention to my mother--wanting
+her to sit in the vicarage pew, that she might hear the better, for my
+mother is a little deaf, you know--it is not much, but she does not
+hear quite quick. Jane says that Colonel Campbell is a little deaf. He
+fancied bathing might be good for it--the warm bath--but she says it did
+him no lasting benefit. Colonel Campbell, you know, is quite our angel.
+And Mr. Dixon seems a very charming young man, quite worthy of him. It
+is such a happiness when good people get together--and they always do.
+Now, here will be Mr. Elton and Miss Hawkins; and there are the Coles,
+such very good people; and the Perrys--I suppose there never was a
+happier or a better couple than Mr. and Mrs. Perry. I say, sir,” turning
+to Mr. Woodhouse, “I think there are few places with such society as
+Highbury. I always say, we are quite blessed in our neighbours.--My dear
+sir, if there is one thing my mother loves better than another, it is
+pork--a roast loin of pork--”
+
+“As to who, or what Miss Hawkins is, or how long he has been acquainted
+with her,” said Emma, “nothing I suppose can be known. One feels that it
+cannot be a very long acquaintance. He has been gone only four weeks.”
+
+Nobody had any information to give; and, after a few more wonderings,
+Emma said,
+
+“You are silent, Miss Fairfax--but I hope you mean to take an interest
+in this news. You, who have been hearing and seeing so much of late
+on these subjects, who must have been so deep in the business on Miss
+Campbell's account--we shall not excuse your being indifferent about Mr.
+Elton and Miss Hawkins.”
+
+“When I have seen Mr. Elton,” replied Jane, “I dare say I shall be
+interested--but I believe it requires _that_ with me. And as it is some
+months since Miss Campbell married, the impression may be a little worn
+off.”
+
+“Yes, he has been gone just four weeks, as you observe, Miss Woodhouse,”
+ said Miss Bates, “four weeks yesterday.--A Miss Hawkins!--Well, I had
+always rather fancied it would be some young lady hereabouts; not that
+I ever--Mrs. Cole once whispered to me--but I immediately said, 'No, Mr.
+Elton is a most worthy young man--but'--In short, I do not think I am
+particularly quick at those sort of discoveries. I do not pretend to it.
+What is before me, I see. At the same time, nobody could wonder if
+Mr. Elton should have aspired--Miss Woodhouse lets me chatter on, so
+good-humouredly. She knows I would not offend for the world. How does
+Miss Smith do? She seems quite recovered now. Have you heard from Mrs.
+John Knightley lately? Oh! those dear little children. Jane, do you
+know I always fancy Mr. Dixon like Mr. John Knightley. I mean in
+person--tall, and with that sort of look--and not very talkative.”
+
+“Quite wrong, my dear aunt; there is no likeness at all.”
+
+“Very odd! but one never does form a just idea of any body beforehand.
+One takes up a notion, and runs away with it. Mr. Dixon, you say, is
+not, strictly speaking, handsome?”
+
+“Handsome! Oh! no--far from it--certainly plain. I told you he was
+plain.”
+
+“My dear, you said that Miss Campbell would not allow him to be plain,
+and that you yourself--”
+
+“Oh! as for me, my judgment is worth nothing. Where I have a regard,
+I always think a person well-looking. But I gave what I believed the
+general opinion, when I called him plain.”
+
+“Well, my dear Jane, I believe we must be running away. The weather does
+not look well, and grandmama will be uneasy. You are too obliging, my
+dear Miss Woodhouse; but we really must take leave. This has been a most
+agreeable piece of news indeed. I shall just go round by Mrs. Cole's;
+but I shall not stop three minutes: and, Jane, you had better go home
+directly--I would not have you out in a shower!--We think she is the
+better for Highbury already. Thank you, we do indeed. I shall not
+attempt calling on Mrs. Goddard, for I really do not think she cares for
+any thing but _boiled_ pork: when we dress the leg it will be another
+thing. Good morning to you, my dear sir. Oh! Mr. Knightley is coming
+too. Well, that is so very!--I am sure if Jane is tired, you will be
+so kind as to give her your arm.--Mr. Elton, and Miss Hawkins!--Good
+morning to you.”
+
+Emma, alone with her father, had half her attention wanted by him while
+he lamented that young people would be in such a hurry to marry--and to
+marry strangers too--and the other half she could give to her own view
+of the subject. It was to herself an amusing and a very welcome piece
+of news, as proving that Mr. Elton could not have suffered long; but she
+was sorry for Harriet: Harriet must feel it--and all that she could hope
+was, by giving the first information herself, to save her from hearing
+it abruptly from others. It was now about the time that she was likely
+to call. If she were to meet Miss Bates in her way!--and upon its
+beginning to rain, Emma was obliged to expect that the weather would
+be detaining her at Mrs. Goddard's, and that the intelligence would
+undoubtedly rush upon her without preparation.
+
+The shower was heavy, but short; and it had not been over five minutes,
+when in came Harriet, with just the heated, agitated look which
+hurrying thither with a full heart was likely to give; and the “Oh! Miss
+Woodhouse, what do you think has happened!” which instantly burst forth,
+had all the evidence of corresponding perturbation. As the blow was
+given, Emma felt that she could not now shew greater kindness than in
+listening; and Harriet, unchecked, ran eagerly through what she had to
+tell. “She had set out from Mrs. Goddard's half an hour ago--she had
+been afraid it would rain--she had been afraid it would pour down
+every moment--but she thought she might get to Hartfield first--she
+had hurried on as fast as possible; but then, as she was passing by the
+house where a young woman was making up a gown for her, she thought she
+would just step in and see how it went on; and though she did not seem
+to stay half a moment there, soon after she came out it began to rain,
+and she did not know what to do; so she ran on directly, as fast as
+she could, and took shelter at Ford's.”--Ford's was the principal
+woollen-draper, linen-draper, and haberdasher's shop united; the shop
+first in size and fashion in the place.--“And so, there she had
+set, without an idea of any thing in the world, full ten minutes,
+perhaps--when, all of a sudden, who should come in--to be sure it was
+so very odd!--but they always dealt at Ford's--who should come in, but
+Elizabeth Martin and her brother!--Dear Miss Woodhouse! only think. I
+thought I should have fainted. I did not know what to do. I was sitting
+near the door--Elizabeth saw me directly; but he did not; he was busy
+with the umbrella. I am sure she saw me, but she looked away directly,
+and took no notice; and they both went to quite the farther end of the
+shop; and I kept sitting near the door!--Oh! dear; I was so miserable!
+I am sure I must have been as white as my gown. I could not go away
+you know, because of the rain; but I did so wish myself anywhere in the
+world but there.--Oh! dear, Miss Woodhouse--well, at last, I fancy, he
+looked round and saw me; for instead of going on with her buyings, they
+began whispering to one another. I am sure they were talking of me; and
+I could not help thinking that he was persuading her to speak to me--(do
+you think he was, Miss Woodhouse?)--for presently she came forward--came
+quite up to me, and asked me how I did, and seemed ready to shake hands,
+if I would. She did not do any of it in the same way that she used; I
+could see she was altered; but, however, she seemed to _try_ to be very
+friendly, and we shook hands, and stood talking some time; but I know no
+more what I said--I was in such a tremble!--I remember she said she
+was sorry we never met now; which I thought almost too kind! Dear, Miss
+Woodhouse, I was absolutely miserable! By that time, it was beginning to
+hold up, and I was determined that nothing should stop me from getting
+away--and then--only think!--I found he was coming up towards me
+too--slowly you know, and as if he did not quite know what to do; and
+so he came and spoke, and I answered--and I stood for a minute, feeling
+dreadfully, you know, one can't tell how; and then I took courage, and
+said it did not rain, and I must go; and so off I set; and I had not got
+three yards from the door, when he came after me, only to say, if I was
+going to Hartfield, he thought I had much better go round by Mr. Cole's
+stables, for I should find the near way quite floated by this rain. Oh!
+dear, I thought it would have been the death of me! So I said, I was
+very much obliged to him: you know I could not do less; and then he went
+back to Elizabeth, and I came round by the stables--I believe I did--but
+I hardly knew where I was, or any thing about it. Oh! Miss Woodhouse,
+I would rather done any thing than have it happen: and yet, you know,
+there was a sort of satisfaction in seeing him behave so pleasantly and
+so kindly. And Elizabeth, too. Oh! Miss Woodhouse, do talk to me and
+make me comfortable again.”
+
+Very sincerely did Emma wish to do so; but it was not immediately in
+her power. She was obliged to stop and think. She was not thoroughly
+comfortable herself. The young man's conduct, and his sister's, seemed
+the result of real feeling, and she could not but pity them. As Harriet
+described it, there had been an interesting mixture of wounded affection
+and genuine delicacy in their behaviour. But she had believed them to be
+well-meaning, worthy people before; and what difference did this make
+in the evils of the connexion? It was folly to be disturbed by it. Of
+course, he must be sorry to lose her--they must be all sorry. Ambition,
+as well as love, had probably been mortified. They might all have hoped
+to rise by Harriet's acquaintance: and besides, what was the value of
+Harriet's description?--So easily pleased--so little discerning;--what
+signified her praise?
+
+She exerted herself, and did try to make her comfortable, by considering
+all that had passed as a mere trifle, and quite unworthy of being dwelt
+on,
+
+“It might be distressing, for the moment,” said she; “but you seem to
+have behaved extremely well; and it is over--and may never--can never,
+as a first meeting, occur again, and therefore you need not think about
+it.”
+
+Harriet said, “very true,” and she “would not think about it;” but still
+she talked of it--still she could talk of nothing else; and Emma, at
+last, in order to put the Martins out of her head, was obliged to hurry
+on the news, which she had meant to give with so much tender caution;
+hardly knowing herself whether to rejoice or be angry, ashamed or only
+amused, at such a state of mind in poor Harriet--such a conclusion of
+Mr. Elton's importance with her!
+
+Mr. Elton's rights, however, gradually revived. Though she did not feel
+the first intelligence as she might have done the day before, or an hour
+before, its interest soon increased; and before their first conversation
+was over, she had talked herself into all the sensations of curiosity,
+wonder and regret, pain and pleasure, as to this fortunate Miss Hawkins,
+which could conduce to place the Martins under proper subordination in
+her fancy.
+
+Emma learned to be rather glad that there had been such a meeting. It
+had been serviceable in deadening the first shock, without retaining any
+influence to alarm. As Harriet now lived, the Martins could not get
+at her, without seeking her, where hitherto they had wanted either the
+courage or the condescension to seek her; for since her refusal of the
+brother, the sisters never had been at Mrs. Goddard's; and a twelvemonth
+might pass without their being thrown together again, with any
+necessity, or even any power of speech.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting
+situations, that a young person, who either marries or dies, is sure of
+being kindly spoken of.
+
+A week had not passed since Miss Hawkins's name was first mentioned in
+Highbury, before she was, by some means or other, discovered to have
+every recommendation of person and mind; to be handsome, elegant, highly
+accomplished, and perfectly amiable: and when Mr. Elton himself arrived
+to triumph in his happy prospects, and circulate the fame of her merits,
+there was very little more for him to do, than to tell her Christian
+name, and say whose music she principally played.
+
+Mr. Elton returned, a very happy man. He had gone away rejected and
+mortified--disappointed in a very sanguine hope, after a series of what
+appeared to him strong encouragement; and not only losing the right
+lady, but finding himself debased to the level of a very wrong one. He
+had gone away deeply offended--he came back engaged to another--and
+to another as superior, of course, to the first, as under such
+circumstances what is gained always is to what is lost. He came back gay
+and self-satisfied, eager and busy, caring nothing for Miss Woodhouse,
+and defying Miss Smith.
+
+The charming Augusta Hawkins, in addition to all the usual advantages of
+perfect beauty and merit, was in possession of an independent fortune,
+of so many thousands as would always be called ten; a point of some
+dignity, as well as some convenience: the story told well; he had not
+thrown himself away--he had gained a woman of 10,000 l. or thereabouts;
+and he had gained her with such delightful rapidity--the first hour of
+introduction had been so very soon followed by distinguishing notice;
+the history which he had to give Mrs. Cole of the rise and progress
+of the affair was so glorious--the steps so quick, from the accidental
+rencontre, to the dinner at Mr. Green's, and the party at Mrs.
+Brown's--smiles and blushes rising in importance--with consciousness and
+agitation richly scattered--the lady had been so easily impressed--so
+sweetly disposed--had in short, to use a most intelligible phrase,
+been so very ready to have him, that vanity and prudence were equally
+contented.
+
+He had caught both substance and shadow--both fortune and affection, and
+was just the happy man he ought to be; talking only of himself and
+his own concerns--expecting to be congratulated--ready to be laughed
+at--and, with cordial, fearless smiles, now addressing all the young
+ladies of the place, to whom, a few weeks ago, he would have been more
+cautiously gallant.
+
+The wedding was no distant event, as the parties had only themselves to
+please, and nothing but the necessary preparations to wait for; and
+when he set out for Bath again, there was a general expectation, which
+a certain glance of Mrs. Cole's did not seem to contradict, that when he
+next entered Highbury he would bring his bride.
+
+During his present short stay, Emma had barely seen him; but just enough
+to feel that the first meeting was over, and to give her the impression
+of his not being improved by the mixture of pique and pretension, now
+spread over his air. She was, in fact, beginning very much to wonder
+that she had ever thought him pleasing at all; and his sight was so
+inseparably connected with some very disagreeable feelings, that,
+except in a moral light, as a penance, a lesson, a source of profitable
+humiliation to her own mind, she would have been thankful to be assured
+of never seeing him again. She wished him very well; but he gave
+her pain, and his welfare twenty miles off would administer most
+satisfaction.
+
+The pain of his continued residence in Highbury, however, must
+certainly be lessened by his marriage. Many vain solicitudes would be
+prevented--many awkwardnesses smoothed by it. A _Mrs._ _Elton_ would
+be an excuse for any change of intercourse; former intimacy might sink
+without remark. It would be almost beginning their life of civility
+again.
+
+Of the lady, individually, Emma thought very little. She was good enough
+for Mr. Elton, no doubt; accomplished enough for Highbury--handsome
+enough--to look plain, probably, by Harriet's side. As to connexion,
+there Emma was perfectly easy; persuaded, that after all his own vaunted
+claims and disdain of Harriet, he had done nothing. On that article,
+truth seemed attainable. _What_ she was, must be uncertain; but _who_
+she was, might be found out; and setting aside the 10,000 l., it did not
+appear that she was at all Harriet's superior. She brought no name, no
+blood, no alliance. Miss Hawkins was the youngest of the two daughters
+of a Bristol--merchant, of course, he must be called; but, as the whole
+of the profits of his mercantile life appeared so very moderate, it
+was not unfair to guess the dignity of his line of trade had been very
+moderate also. Part of every winter she had been used to spend in Bath;
+but Bristol was her home, the very heart of Bristol; for though the
+father and mother had died some years ago, an uncle remained--in the law
+line--nothing more distinctly honourable was hazarded of him, than
+that he was in the law line; and with him the daughter had lived. Emma
+guessed him to be the drudge of some attorney, and too stupid to rise.
+And all the grandeur of the connexion seemed dependent on the elder
+sister, who was _very_ _well_ _married_, to a gentleman in a _great_
+_way_, near Bristol, who kept two carriages! That was the wind-up of the
+history; that was the glory of Miss Hawkins.
+
+Could she but have given Harriet her feelings about it all! She had
+talked her into love; but, alas! she was not so easily to be talked out
+of it. The charm of an object to occupy the many vacancies of Harriet's
+mind was not to be talked away. He might be superseded by another; he
+certainly would indeed; nothing could be clearer; even a Robert Martin
+would have been sufficient; but nothing else, she feared, would cure
+her. Harriet was one of those, who, having once begun, would be always
+in love. And now, poor girl! she was considerably worse from this
+reappearance of Mr. Elton. She was always having a glimpse of him
+somewhere or other. Emma saw him only once; but two or three times every
+day Harriet was sure _just_ to meet with him, or _just_ to miss him,
+_just_ to hear his voice, or see his shoulder, _just_ to have something
+occur to preserve him in her fancy, in all the favouring warmth of
+surprize and conjecture. She was, moreover, perpetually hearing about
+him; for, excepting when at Hartfield, she was always among those who
+saw no fault in Mr. Elton, and found nothing so interesting as
+the discussion of his concerns; and every report, therefore, every
+guess--all that had already occurred, all that might occur in the
+arrangement of his affairs, comprehending income, servants, and
+furniture, was continually in agitation around her. Her regard was
+receiving strength by invariable praise of him, and her regrets kept
+alive, and feelings irritated by ceaseless repetitions of Miss
+Hawkins's happiness, and continual observation of, how much he seemed
+attached!--his air as he walked by the house--the very sitting of his
+hat, being all in proof of how much he was in love!
+
+Had it been allowable entertainment, had there been no pain to her
+friend, or reproach to herself, in the waverings of Harriet's mind,
+Emma would have been amused by its variations. Sometimes Mr. Elton
+predominated, sometimes the Martins; and each was occasionally useful
+as a check to the other. Mr. Elton's engagement had been the cure of
+the agitation of meeting Mr. Martin. The unhappiness produced by the
+knowledge of that engagement had been a little put aside by Elizabeth
+Martin's calling at Mrs. Goddard's a few days afterwards. Harriet had
+not been at home; but a note had been prepared and left for her, written
+in the very style to touch; a small mixture of reproach, with a great
+deal of kindness; and till Mr. Elton himself appeared, she had been much
+occupied by it, continually pondering over what could be done in return,
+and wishing to do more than she dared to confess. But Mr. Elton, in
+person, had driven away all such cares. While he staid, the Martins were
+forgotten; and on the very morning of his setting off for Bath again,
+Emma, to dissipate some of the distress it occasioned, judged it best
+for her to return Elizabeth Martin's visit.
+
+How that visit was to be acknowledged--what would be necessary--and
+what might be safest, had been a point of some doubtful consideration.
+Absolute neglect of the mother and sisters, when invited to come, would
+be ingratitude. It must not be: and yet the danger of a renewal of the
+acquaintance--!
+
+After much thinking, she could determine on nothing better, than
+Harriet's returning the visit; but in a way that, if they had
+understanding, should convince them that it was to be only a formal
+acquaintance. She meant to take her in the carriage, leave her at the
+Abbey Mill, while she drove a little farther, and call for her again
+so soon, as to allow no time for insidious applications or dangerous
+recurrences to the past, and give the most decided proof of what degree
+of intimacy was chosen for the future.
+
+She could think of nothing better: and though there was something in it
+which her own heart could not approve--something of ingratitude, merely
+glossed over--it must be done, or what would become of Harriet?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Small heart had Harriet for visiting. Only half an hour before her
+friend called for her at Mrs. Goddard's, her evil stars had led her
+to the very spot where, at that moment, a trunk, directed to _The Rev.
+Philip Elton, White-Hart, Bath_, was to be seen under the operation of
+being lifted into the butcher's cart, which was to convey it to where
+the coaches past; and every thing in this world, excepting that trunk
+and the direction, was consequently a blank.
+
+She went, however; and when they reached the farm, and she was to be
+put down, at the end of the broad, neat gravel walk, which led between
+espalier apple-trees to the front door, the sight of every thing which
+had given her so much pleasure the autumn before, was beginning to
+revive a little local agitation; and when they parted, Emma observed her
+to be looking around with a sort of fearful curiosity, which determined
+her not to allow the visit to exceed the proposed quarter of an hour.
+She went on herself, to give that portion of time to an old servant who
+was married, and settled in Donwell.
+
+The quarter of an hour brought her punctually to the white gate again;
+and Miss Smith receiving her summons, was with her without delay, and
+unattended by any alarming young man. She came solitarily down the
+gravel walk--a Miss Martin just appearing at the door, and parting with
+her seemingly with ceremonious civility.
+
+Harriet could not very soon give an intelligible account. She was
+feeling too much; but at last Emma collected from her enough to
+understand the sort of meeting, and the sort of pain it was creating.
+She had seen only Mrs. Martin and the two girls. They had received her
+doubtingly, if not coolly; and nothing beyond the merest commonplace had
+been talked almost all the time--till just at last, when Mrs. Martin's
+saying, all of a sudden, that she thought Miss Smith was grown, had
+brought on a more interesting subject, and a warmer manner. In that very
+room she had been measured last September, with her two friends. There
+were the pencilled marks and memorandums on the wainscot by the window.
+_He_ had done it. They all seemed to remember the day, the hour,
+the party, the occasion--to feel the same consciousness, the same
+regrets--to be ready to return to the same good understanding; and they
+were just growing again like themselves, (Harriet, as Emma must suspect,
+as ready as the best of them to be cordial and happy,) when the carriage
+reappeared, and all was over. The style of the visit, and the shortness
+of it, were then felt to be decisive. Fourteen minutes to be given
+to those with whom she had thankfully passed six weeks not six months
+ago!--Emma could not but picture it all, and feel how justly they might
+resent, how naturally Harriet must suffer. It was a bad business. She
+would have given a great deal, or endured a great deal, to have had
+the Martins in a higher rank of life. They were so deserving, that a
+_little_ higher should have been enough: but as it was, how could she
+have done otherwise?--Impossible!--She could not repent. They must be
+separated; but there was a great deal of pain in the process--so much
+to herself at this time, that she soon felt the necessity of a little
+consolation, and resolved on going home by way of Randalls to
+procure it. Her mind was quite sick of Mr. Elton and the Martins. The
+refreshment of Randalls was absolutely necessary.
+
+It was a good scheme; but on driving to the door they heard that neither
+“master nor mistress was at home;” they had both been out some time; the
+man believed they were gone to Hartfield.
+
+“This is too bad,” cried Emma, as they turned away. “And now we shall
+just miss them; too provoking!--I do not know when I have been so
+disappointed.” And she leaned back in the corner, to indulge her
+murmurs, or to reason them away; probably a little of both--such being
+the commonest process of a not ill-disposed mind. Presently the carriage
+stopt; she looked up; it was stopt by Mr. and Mrs. Weston, who were
+standing to speak to her. There was instant pleasure in the sight of
+them, and still greater pleasure was conveyed in sound--for Mr. Weston
+immediately accosted her with,
+
+“How d'ye do?--how d'ye do?--We have been sitting with your father--glad
+to see him so well. Frank comes to-morrow--I had a letter this
+morning--we see him to-morrow by dinner-time to a certainty--he is at
+Oxford to-day, and he comes for a whole fortnight; I knew it would be
+so. If he had come at Christmas he could not have staid three days; I
+was always glad he did not come at Christmas; now we are going to have
+just the right weather for him, fine, dry, settled weather. We shall
+enjoy him completely; every thing has turned out exactly as we could
+wish.”
+
+There was no resisting such news, no possibility of avoiding the
+influence of such a happy face as Mr. Weston's, confirmed as it all was
+by the words and the countenance of his wife, fewer and quieter, but not
+less to the purpose. To know that _she_ thought his coming certain was
+enough to make Emma consider it so, and sincerely did she rejoice in
+their joy. It was a most delightful reanimation of exhausted spirits.
+The worn-out past was sunk in the freshness of what was coming; and in
+the rapidity of half a moment's thought, she hoped Mr. Elton would now
+be talked of no more.
+
+Mr. Weston gave her the history of the engagements at Enscombe, which
+allowed his son to answer for having an entire fortnight at his command,
+as well as the route and the method of his journey; and she listened,
+and smiled, and congratulated.
+
+“I shall soon bring him over to Hartfield,” said he, at the conclusion.
+
+Emma could imagine she saw a touch of the arm at this speech, from his
+wife.
+
+“We had better move on, Mr. Weston,” said she, “we are detaining the
+girls.”
+
+“Well, well, I am ready;”--and turning again to Emma, “but you must
+not be expecting such a _very_ fine young man; you have only
+had _my_ account you know; I dare say he is really nothing
+extraordinary:”--though his own sparkling eyes at the moment were
+speaking a very different conviction.
+
+Emma could look perfectly unconscious and innocent, and answer in a
+manner that appropriated nothing.
+
+“Think of me to-morrow, my dear Emma, about four o'clock,” was Mrs.
+Weston's parting injunction; spoken with some anxiety, and meant only
+for her.
+
+“Four o'clock!--depend upon it he will be here by three,” was Mr.
+Weston's quick amendment; and so ended a most satisfactory meeting.
+Emma's spirits were mounted quite up to happiness; every thing wore
+a different air; James and his horses seemed not half so sluggish as
+before. When she looked at the hedges, she thought the elder at least
+must soon be coming out; and when she turned round to Harriet, she saw
+something like a look of spring, a tender smile even there.
+
+“Will Mr. Frank Churchill pass through Bath as well as Oxford?”--was a
+question, however, which did not augur much.
+
+But neither geography nor tranquillity could come all at once, and Emma
+was now in a humour to resolve that they should both come in time.
+
+The morning of the interesting day arrived, and Mrs. Weston's faithful
+pupil did not forget either at ten, or eleven, or twelve o'clock, that
+she was to think of her at four.
+
+“My dear, dear anxious friend,”--said she, in mental soliloquy, while
+walking downstairs from her own room, “always overcareful for every
+body's comfort but your own; I see you now in all your little fidgets,
+going again and again into his room, to be sure that all is right.”
+ The clock struck twelve as she passed through the hall. “'Tis twelve;
+I shall not forget to think of you four hours hence; and by this
+time to-morrow, perhaps, or a little later, I may be thinking of the
+possibility of their all calling here. I am sure they will bring him
+soon.”
+
+She opened the parlour door, and saw two gentlemen sitting with her
+father--Mr. Weston and his son. They had been arrived only a few
+minutes, and Mr. Weston had scarcely finished his explanation of Frank's
+being a day before his time, and her father was yet in the midst of his
+very civil welcome and congratulations, when she appeared, to have her
+share of surprize, introduction, and pleasure.
+
+The Frank Churchill so long talked of, so high in interest, was actually
+before her--he was presented to her, and she did not think too much had
+been said in his praise; he was a _very_ good looking young man; height,
+air, address, all were unexceptionable, and his countenance had a great
+deal of the spirit and liveliness of his father's; he looked quick and
+sensible. She felt immediately that she should like him; and there was
+a well-bred ease of manner, and a readiness to talk, which convinced her
+that he came intending to be acquainted with her, and that acquainted
+they soon must be.
+
+He had reached Randalls the evening before. She was pleased with the
+eagerness to arrive which had made him alter his plan, and travel
+earlier, later, and quicker, that he might gain half a day.
+
+“I told you yesterday,” cried Mr. Weston with exultation, “I told you
+all that he would be here before the time named. I remembered what I
+used to do myself. One cannot creep upon a journey; one cannot help
+getting on faster than one has planned; and the pleasure of coming in
+upon one's friends before the look-out begins, is worth a great deal
+more than any little exertion it needs.”
+
+“It is a great pleasure where one can indulge in it,” said the young
+man, “though there are not many houses that I should presume on so far;
+but in coming _home_ I felt I might do any thing.”
+
+The word _home_ made his father look on him with fresh complacency.
+Emma was directly sure that he knew how to make himself agreeable; the
+conviction was strengthened by what followed. He was very much pleased
+with Randalls, thought it a most admirably arranged house, would hardly
+allow it even to be very small, admired the situation, the walk to
+Highbury, Highbury itself, Hartfield still more, and professed himself
+to have always felt the sort of interest in the country which none but
+one's _own_ country gives, and the greatest curiosity to visit it. That
+he should never have been able to indulge so amiable a feeling before,
+passed suspiciously through Emma's brain; but still, if it were a
+falsehood, it was a pleasant one, and pleasantly handled. His manner had
+no air of study or exaggeration. He did really look and speak as if in a
+state of no common enjoyment.
+
+Their subjects in general were such as belong to an opening
+acquaintance. On his side were the inquiries,--“Was she a
+horsewoman?--Pleasant rides?--Pleasant walks?--Had they a large
+neighbourhood?--Highbury, perhaps, afforded society enough?--There were
+several very pretty houses in and about it.--Balls--had they balls?--Was
+it a musical society?”
+
+But when satisfied on all these points, and their acquaintance
+proportionably advanced, he contrived to find an opportunity, while
+their two fathers were engaged with each other, of introducing his
+mother-in-law, and speaking of her with so much handsome praise, so much
+warm admiration, so much gratitude for the happiness she secured to his
+father, and her very kind reception of himself, as was an additional
+proof of his knowing how to please--and of his certainly thinking it
+worth while to try to please her. He did not advance a word of praise
+beyond what she knew to be thoroughly deserved by Mrs. Weston; but,
+undoubtedly he could know very little of the matter. He understood
+what would be welcome; he could be sure of little else. “His father's
+marriage,” he said, “had been the wisest measure, every friend must
+rejoice in it; and the family from whom he had received such a blessing
+must be ever considered as having conferred the highest obligation on
+him.”
+
+He got as near as he could to thanking her for Miss Taylor's merits,
+without seeming quite to forget that in the common course of things it
+was to be rather supposed that Miss Taylor had formed Miss Woodhouse's
+character, than Miss Woodhouse Miss Taylor's. And at last, as if
+resolved to qualify his opinion completely for travelling round to its
+object, he wound it all up with astonishment at the youth and beauty of
+her person.
+
+“Elegant, agreeable manners, I was prepared for,” said he; “but I
+confess that, considering every thing, I had not expected more than a
+very tolerably well-looking woman of a certain age; I did not know that
+I was to find a pretty young woman in Mrs. Weston.”
+
+“You cannot see too much perfection in Mrs. Weston for my feelings,”
+ said Emma; “were you to guess her to be _eighteen_, I should listen with
+pleasure; but _she_ would be ready to quarrel with you for using such
+words. Don't let her imagine that you have spoken of her as a pretty
+young woman.”
+
+“I hope I should know better,” he replied; “no, depend upon it, (with a
+gallant bow,) that in addressing Mrs. Weston I should understand whom
+I might praise without any danger of being thought extravagant in my
+terms.”
+
+Emma wondered whether the same suspicion of what might be expected from
+their knowing each other, which had taken strong possession of her mind,
+had ever crossed his; and whether his compliments were to be considered
+as marks of acquiescence, or proofs of defiance. She must see more
+of him to understand his ways; at present she only felt they were
+agreeable.
+
+She had no doubt of what Mr. Weston was often thinking about. His quick
+eye she detected again and again glancing towards them with a happy
+expression; and even, when he might have determined not to look, she was
+confident that he was often listening.
+
+Her own father's perfect exemption from any thought of the kind, the
+entire deficiency in him of all such sort of penetration or suspicion,
+was a most comfortable circumstance. Happily he was not farther from
+approving matrimony than from foreseeing it.--Though always objecting
+to every marriage that was arranged, he never suffered beforehand from
+the apprehension of any; it seemed as if he could not think so ill of
+any two persons' understanding as to suppose they meant to marry till it
+were proved against them. She blessed the favouring blindness. He could
+now, without the drawback of a single unpleasant surmise, without a
+glance forward at any possible treachery in his guest, give way to all
+his natural kind-hearted civility in solicitous inquiries after Mr.
+Frank Churchill's accommodation on his journey, through the sad evils
+of sleeping two nights on the road, and express very genuine unmixed
+anxiety to know that he had certainly escaped catching cold--which,
+however, he could not allow him to feel quite assured of himself till
+after another night.
+
+A reasonable visit paid, Mr. Weston began to move.--“He must be going.
+He had business at the Crown about his hay, and a great many errands for
+Mrs. Weston at Ford's, but he need not hurry any body else.” His son,
+too well bred to hear the hint, rose immediately also, saying,
+
+“As you are going farther on business, sir, I will take the opportunity
+of paying a visit, which must be paid some day or other, and therefore
+may as well be paid now. I have the honour of being acquainted with
+a neighbour of yours, (turning to Emma,) a lady residing in or near
+Highbury; a family of the name of Fairfax. I shall have no difficulty,
+I suppose, in finding the house; though Fairfax, I believe, is not
+the proper name--I should rather say Barnes, or Bates. Do you know any
+family of that name?”
+
+“To be sure we do,” cried his father; “Mrs. Bates--we passed her
+house--I saw Miss Bates at the window. True, true, you are acquainted
+with Miss Fairfax; I remember you knew her at Weymouth, and a fine girl
+she is. Call upon her, by all means.”
+
+“There is no necessity for my calling this morning,” said the young man;
+“another day would do as well; but there was that degree of acquaintance
+at Weymouth which--”
+
+“Oh! go to-day, go to-day. Do not defer it. What is right to be done
+cannot be done too soon. And, besides, I must give you a hint, Frank;
+any want of attention to her _here_ should be carefully avoided. You saw
+her with the Campbells, when she was the equal of every body she mixed
+with, but here she is with a poor old grandmother, who has barely enough
+to live on. If you do not call early it will be a slight.”
+
+The son looked convinced.
+
+“I have heard her speak of the acquaintance,” said Emma; “she is a very
+elegant young woman.”
+
+He agreed to it, but with so quiet a “Yes,” as inclined her almost to
+doubt his real concurrence; and yet there must be a very distinct sort
+of elegance for the fashionable world, if Jane Fairfax could be thought
+only ordinarily gifted with it.
+
+“If you were never particularly struck by her manners before,” said she,
+“I think you will to-day. You will see her to advantage; see her and
+hear her--no, I am afraid you will not hear her at all, for she has an
+aunt who never holds her tongue.”
+
+“You are acquainted with Miss Jane Fairfax, sir, are you?” said Mr.
+Woodhouse, always the last to make his way in conversation; “then give
+me leave to assure you that you will find her a very agreeable young
+lady. She is staying here on a visit to her grandmama and aunt, very
+worthy people; I have known them all my life. They will be extremely
+glad to see you, I am sure; and one of my servants shall go with you to
+shew you the way.”
+
+“My dear sir, upon no account in the world; my father can direct me.”
+
+“But your father is not going so far; he is only going to the Crown,
+quite on the other side of the street, and there are a great many
+houses; you might be very much at a loss, and it is a very dirty walk,
+unless you keep on the footpath; but my coachman can tell you where you
+had best cross the street.”
+
+Mr. Frank Churchill still declined it, looking as serious as he could,
+and his father gave his hearty support by calling out, “My good friend,
+this is quite unnecessary; Frank knows a puddle of water when he sees
+it, and as to Mrs. Bates's, he may get there from the Crown in a hop,
+step, and jump.”
+
+They were permitted to go alone; and with a cordial nod from one, and a
+graceful bow from the other, the two gentlemen took leave. Emma remained
+very well pleased with this beginning of the acquaintance, and could now
+engage to think of them all at Randalls any hour of the day, with full
+confidence in their comfort.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+The next morning brought Mr. Frank Churchill again. He came with Mrs.
+Weston, to whom and to Highbury he seemed to take very cordially. He had
+been sitting with her, it appeared, most companionably at home, till
+her usual hour of exercise; and on being desired to chuse their walk,
+immediately fixed on Highbury.--“He did not doubt there being very
+pleasant walks in every direction, but if left to him, he should always
+chuse the same. Highbury, that airy, cheerful, happy-looking Highbury,
+would be his constant attraction.”--Highbury, with Mrs. Weston, stood
+for Hartfield; and she trusted to its bearing the same construction with
+him. They walked thither directly.
+
+Emma had hardly expected them: for Mr. Weston, who had called in for
+half a minute, in order to hear that his son was very handsome, knew
+nothing of their plans; and it was an agreeable surprize to her,
+therefore, to perceive them walking up to the house together, arm in
+arm. She was wanting to see him again, and especially to see him in
+company with Mrs. Weston, upon his behaviour to whom her opinion of him
+was to depend. If he were deficient there, nothing should make amends
+for it. But on seeing them together, she became perfectly satisfied. It
+was not merely in fine words or hyperbolical compliment that he paid his
+duty; nothing could be more proper or pleasing than his whole manner to
+her--nothing could more agreeably denote his wish of considering her as
+a friend and securing her affection. And there was time enough for Emma
+to form a reasonable judgment, as their visit included all the rest of
+the morning. They were all three walking about together for an hour
+or two--first round the shrubberies of Hartfield, and afterwards
+in Highbury. He was delighted with every thing; admired Hartfield
+sufficiently for Mr. Woodhouse's ear; and when their going farther was
+resolved on, confessed his wish to be made acquainted with the whole
+village, and found matter of commendation and interest much oftener than
+Emma could have supposed.
+
+Some of the objects of his curiosity spoke very amiable feelings. He
+begged to be shewn the house which his father had lived in so long, and
+which had been the home of his father's father; and on recollecting that
+an old woman who had nursed him was still living, walked in quest of
+her cottage from one end of the street to the other; and though in
+some points of pursuit or observation there was no positive merit, they
+shewed, altogether, a good-will towards Highbury in general, which must
+be very like a merit to those he was with.
+
+Emma watched and decided, that with such feelings as were now shewn, it
+could not be fairly supposed that he had been ever voluntarily absenting
+himself; that he had not been acting a part, or making a parade of
+insincere professions; and that Mr. Knightley certainly had not done him
+justice.
+
+Their first pause was at the Crown Inn, an inconsiderable house, though
+the principal one of the sort, where a couple of pair of post-horses
+were kept, more for the convenience of the neighbourhood than from any
+run on the road; and his companions had not expected to be detained by
+any interest excited there; but in passing it they gave the history of
+the large room visibly added; it had been built many years ago for
+a ball-room, and while the neighbourhood had been in a particularly
+populous, dancing state, had been occasionally used as such;--but such
+brilliant days had long passed away, and now the highest purpose for
+which it was ever wanted was to accommodate a whist club established
+among the gentlemen and half-gentlemen of the place. He was immediately
+interested. Its character as a ball-room caught him; and instead of
+passing on, he stopt for several minutes at the two superior sashed
+windows which were open, to look in and contemplate its capabilities,
+and lament that its original purpose should have ceased. He saw no fault
+in the room, he would acknowledge none which they suggested. No, it
+was long enough, broad enough, handsome enough. It would hold the
+very number for comfort. They ought to have balls there at least every
+fortnight through the winter. Why had not Miss Woodhouse revived
+the former good old days of the room?--She who could do any thing in
+Highbury! The want of proper families in the place, and the conviction
+that none beyond the place and its immediate environs could be tempted
+to attend, were mentioned; but he was not satisfied. He could not be
+persuaded that so many good-looking houses as he saw around him, could
+not furnish numbers enough for such a meeting; and even when particulars
+were given and families described, he was still unwilling to admit that
+the inconvenience of such a mixture would be any thing, or that there
+would be the smallest difficulty in every body's returning into their
+proper place the next morning. He argued like a young man very much bent
+on dancing; and Emma was rather surprized to see the constitution of
+the Weston prevail so decidedly against the habits of the Churchills.
+He seemed to have all the life and spirit, cheerful feelings, and social
+inclinations of his father, and nothing of the pride or reserve of
+Enscombe. Of pride, indeed, there was, perhaps, scarcely enough; his
+indifference to a confusion of rank, bordered too much on inelegance of
+mind. He could be no judge, however, of the evil he was holding cheap.
+It was but an effusion of lively spirits.
+
+At last he was persuaded to move on from the front of the Crown;
+and being now almost facing the house where the Bateses lodged, Emma
+recollected his intended visit the day before, and asked him if he had
+paid it.
+
+“Yes, oh! yes”--he replied; “I was just going to mention it. A very
+successful visit:--I saw all the three ladies; and felt very much
+obliged to you for your preparatory hint. If the talking aunt had taken
+me quite by surprize, it must have been the death of me. As it was, I
+was only betrayed into paying a most unreasonable visit. Ten minutes
+would have been all that was necessary, perhaps all that was proper; and
+I had told my father I should certainly be at home before him--but there
+was no getting away, no pause; and, to my utter astonishment, I found,
+when he (finding me nowhere else) joined me there at last, that I had
+been actually sitting with them very nearly three-quarters of an hour.
+The good lady had not given me the possibility of escape before.”
+
+“And how did you think Miss Fairfax looking?”
+
+“Ill, very ill--that is, if a young lady can ever be allowed to look
+ill. But the expression is hardly admissible, Mrs. Weston, is it? Ladies
+can never look ill. And, seriously, Miss Fairfax is naturally so
+pale, as almost always to give the appearance of ill health.--A most
+deplorable want of complexion.”
+
+Emma would not agree to this, and began a warm defence of Miss Fairfax's
+complexion. “It was certainly never brilliant, but she would not
+allow it to have a sickly hue in general; and there was a softness and
+delicacy in her skin which gave peculiar elegance to the character of
+her face.” He listened with all due deference; acknowledged that he had
+heard many people say the same--but yet he must confess, that to him
+nothing could make amends for the want of the fine glow of health. Where
+features were indifferent, a fine complexion gave beauty to them all;
+and where they were good, the effect was--fortunately he need not
+attempt to describe what the effect was.
+
+“Well,” said Emma, “there is no disputing about taste.--At least you
+admire her except her complexion.”
+
+He shook his head and laughed.--“I cannot separate Miss Fairfax and her
+complexion.”
+
+“Did you see her often at Weymouth? Were you often in the same society?”
+
+At this moment they were approaching Ford's, and he hastily exclaimed,
+“Ha! this must be the very shop that every body attends every day of
+their lives, as my father informs me. He comes to Highbury himself, he
+says, six days out of the seven, and has always business at Ford's.
+If it be not inconvenient to you, pray let us go in, that I may prove
+myself to belong to the place, to be a true citizen of Highbury. I must
+buy something at Ford's. It will be taking out my freedom.--I dare say
+they sell gloves.”
+
+“Oh! yes, gloves and every thing. I do admire your patriotism. You will
+be adored in Highbury. You were very popular before you came, because
+you were Mr. Weston's son--but lay out half a guinea at Ford's, and your
+popularity will stand upon your own virtues.”
+
+They went in; and while the sleek, well-tied parcels of “Men's Beavers”
+ and “York Tan” were bringing down and displaying on the counter, he
+said--“But I beg your pardon, Miss Woodhouse, you were speaking to me,
+you were saying something at the very moment of this burst of my _amor_
+_patriae_. Do not let me lose it. I assure you the utmost stretch of
+public fame would not make me amends for the loss of any happiness in
+private life.”
+
+“I merely asked, whether you had known much of Miss Fairfax and her
+party at Weymouth.”
+
+“And now that I understand your question, I must pronounce it to be a
+very unfair one. It is always the lady's right to decide on the degree
+of acquaintance. Miss Fairfax must already have given her account.--I
+shall not commit myself by claiming more than she may chuse to allow.”
+
+“Upon my word! you answer as discreetly as she could do herself. But
+her account of every thing leaves so much to be guessed, she is so very
+reserved, so very unwilling to give the least information about any
+body, that I really think you may say what you like of your acquaintance
+with her.”
+
+“May I, indeed?--Then I will speak the truth, and nothing suits me so
+well. I met her frequently at Weymouth. I had known the Campbells a
+little in town; and at Weymouth we were very much in the same set.
+Colonel Campbell is a very agreeable man, and Mrs. Campbell a friendly,
+warm-hearted woman. I like them all.”
+
+“You know Miss Fairfax's situation in life, I conclude; what she is
+destined to be?”
+
+“Yes--(rather hesitatingly)--I believe I do.”
+
+“You get upon delicate subjects, Emma,” said Mrs. Weston smiling;
+“remember that I am here.--Mr. Frank Churchill hardly knows what to say
+when you speak of Miss Fairfax's situation in life. I will move a little
+farther off.”
+
+“I certainly do forget to think of _her_,” said Emma, “as having ever
+been any thing but my friend and my dearest friend.”
+
+He looked as if he fully understood and honoured such a sentiment.
+
+When the gloves were bought, and they had quitted the shop again, “Did
+you ever hear the young lady we were speaking of, play?” said Frank
+Churchill.
+
+“Ever hear her!” repeated Emma. “You forget how much she belongs to
+Highbury. I have heard her every year of our lives since we both began.
+She plays charmingly.”
+
+“You think so, do you?--I wanted the opinion of some one who
+could really judge. She appeared to me to play well, that is, with
+considerable taste, but I know nothing of the matter myself.--I am
+excessively fond of music, but without the smallest skill or right
+of judging of any body's performance.--I have been used to hear her's
+admired; and I remember one proof of her being thought to play well:--a
+man, a very musical man, and in love with another woman--engaged to
+her--on the point of marriage--would yet never ask that other woman
+to sit down to the instrument, if the lady in question could sit down
+instead--never seemed to like to hear one if he could hear the other.
+That, I thought, in a man of known musical talent, was some proof.”
+
+“Proof indeed!” said Emma, highly amused.--“Mr. Dixon is very musical,
+is he? We shall know more about them all, in half an hour, from you,
+than Miss Fairfax would have vouchsafed in half a year.”
+
+“Yes, Mr. Dixon and Miss Campbell were the persons; and I thought it a
+very strong proof.”
+
+“Certainly--very strong it was; to own the truth, a great deal stronger
+than, if _I_ had been Miss Campbell, would have been at all agreeable
+to me. I could not excuse a man's having more music than love--more ear
+than eye--a more acute sensibility to fine sounds than to my feelings.
+How did Miss Campbell appear to like it?”
+
+“It was her very particular friend, you know.”
+
+“Poor comfort!” said Emma, laughing. “One would rather have a stranger
+preferred than one's very particular friend--with a stranger it might
+not recur again--but the misery of having a very particular friend
+always at hand, to do every thing better than one does oneself!--Poor
+Mrs. Dixon! Well, I am glad she is gone to settle in Ireland.”
+
+“You are right. It was not very flattering to Miss Campbell; but she
+really did not seem to feel it.”
+
+“So much the better--or so much the worse:--I do not know which. But
+be it sweetness or be it stupidity in her--quickness of friendship, or
+dulness of feeling--there was one person, I think, who must have felt
+it: Miss Fairfax herself. She must have felt the improper and dangerous
+distinction.”
+
+“As to that--I do not--”
+
+“Oh! do not imagine that I expect an account of Miss Fairfax's
+sensations from you, or from any body else. They are known to no human
+being, I guess, but herself. But if she continued to play whenever she
+was asked by Mr. Dixon, one may guess what one chuses.”
+
+“There appeared such a perfectly good understanding among them all--”
+ he began rather quickly, but checking himself, added, “however, it is
+impossible for me to say on what terms they really were--how it might
+all be behind the scenes. I can only say that there was smoothness
+outwardly. But you, who have known Miss Fairfax from a child, must be
+a better judge of her character, and of how she is likely to conduct
+herself in critical situations, than I can be.”
+
+“I have known her from a child, undoubtedly; we have been children
+and women together; and it is natural to suppose that we should be
+intimate,--that we should have taken to each other whenever she visited
+her friends. But we never did. I hardly know how it has happened; a
+little, perhaps, from that wickedness on my side which was prone to take
+disgust towards a girl so idolized and so cried up as she always was,
+by her aunt and grandmother, and all their set. And then, her reserve--I
+never could attach myself to any one so completely reserved.”
+
+“It is a most repulsive quality, indeed,” said he. “Oftentimes very
+convenient, no doubt, but never pleasing. There is safety in reserve,
+but no attraction. One cannot love a reserved person.”
+
+“Not till the reserve ceases towards oneself; and then the attraction
+may be the greater. But I must be more in want of a friend, or an
+agreeable companion, than I have yet been, to take the trouble of
+conquering any body's reserve to procure one. Intimacy between Miss
+Fairfax and me is quite out of the question. I have no reason to think
+ill of her--not the least--except that such extreme and perpetual
+cautiousness of word and manner, such a dread of giving a distinct idea
+about any body, is apt to suggest suspicions of there being something to
+conceal.”
+
+He perfectly agreed with her: and after walking together so long, and
+thinking so much alike, Emma felt herself so well acquainted with him,
+that she could hardly believe it to be only their second meeting. He was
+not exactly what she had expected; less of the man of the world in some
+of his notions, less of the spoiled child of fortune, therefore better
+than she had expected. His ideas seemed more moderate--his feelings
+warmer. She was particularly struck by his manner of considering Mr.
+Elton's house, which, as well as the church, he would go and look at,
+and would not join them in finding much fault with. No, he could not
+believe it a bad house; not such a house as a man was to be pitied for
+having. If it were to be shared with the woman he loved, he could not
+think any man to be pitied for having that house. There must be ample
+room in it for every real comfort. The man must be a blockhead who
+wanted more.
+
+Mrs. Weston laughed, and said he did not know what he was talking about.
+Used only to a large house himself, and without ever thinking how many
+advantages and accommodations were attached to its size, he could be no
+judge of the privations inevitably belonging to a small one. But Emma,
+in her own mind, determined that he _did_ know what he was talking
+about, and that he shewed a very amiable inclination to settle early in
+life, and to marry, from worthy motives. He might not be aware of the
+inroads on domestic peace to be occasioned by no housekeeper's room, or
+a bad butler's pantry, but no doubt he did perfectly feel that Enscombe
+could not make him happy, and that whenever he were attached, he would
+willingly give up much of wealth to be allowed an early establishment.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Emma's very good opinion of Frank Churchill was a little shaken the
+following day, by hearing that he was gone off to London, merely to have
+his hair cut. A sudden freak seemed to have seized him at breakfast, and
+he had sent for a chaise and set off, intending to return to dinner,
+but with no more important view that appeared than having his hair cut.
+There was certainly no harm in his travelling sixteen miles twice over
+on such an errand; but there was an air of foppery and nonsense in it
+which she could not approve. It did not accord with the rationality of
+plan, the moderation in expense, or even the unselfish warmth of heart,
+which she had believed herself to discern in him yesterday. Vanity,
+extravagance, love of change, restlessness of temper, which must be
+doing something, good or bad; heedlessness as to the pleasure of his
+father and Mrs. Weston, indifferent as to how his conduct might appear
+in general; he became liable to all these charges. His father only
+called him a coxcomb, and thought it a very good story; but that Mrs.
+Weston did not like it, was clear enough, by her passing it over as
+quickly as possible, and making no other comment than that “all young
+people would have their little whims.”
+
+With the exception of this little blot, Emma found that his visit
+hitherto had given her friend only good ideas of him. Mrs. Weston
+was very ready to say how attentive and pleasant a companion he made
+himself--how much she saw to like in his disposition altogether. He
+appeared to have a very open temper--certainly a very cheerful and
+lively one; she could observe nothing wrong in his notions, a great deal
+decidedly right; he spoke of his uncle with warm regard, was fond of
+talking of him--said he would be the best man in the world if he were
+left to himself; and though there was no being attached to the aunt, he
+acknowledged her kindness with gratitude, and seemed to mean always to
+speak of her with respect. This was all very promising; and, but for
+such an unfortunate fancy for having his hair cut, there was nothing to
+denote him unworthy of the distinguished honour which her imagination
+had given him; the honour, if not of being really in love with her,
+of being at least very near it, and saved only by her own
+indifference--(for still her resolution held of never marrying)--the
+honour, in short, of being marked out for her by all their joint
+acquaintance.
+
+Mr. Weston, on his side, added a virtue to the account which must
+have some weight. He gave her to understand that Frank admired her
+extremely--thought her very beautiful and very charming; and with so
+much to be said for him altogether, she found she must not judge him
+harshly. As Mrs. Weston observed, “all young people would have their
+little whims.”
+
+There was one person among his new acquaintance in Surry, not so
+leniently disposed. In general he was judged, throughout the parishes of
+Donwell and Highbury, with great candour; liberal allowances were made
+for the little excesses of such a handsome young man--one who smiled so
+often and bowed so well; but there was one spirit among them not to be
+softened, from its power of censure, by bows or smiles--Mr. Knightley.
+The circumstance was told him at Hartfield; for the moment, he was
+silent; but Emma heard him almost immediately afterwards say to himself,
+over a newspaper he held in his hand, “Hum! just the trifling, silly
+fellow I took him for.” She had half a mind to resent; but an instant's
+observation convinced her that it was really said only to relieve his
+own feelings, and not meant to provoke; and therefore she let it pass.
+
+Although in one instance the bearers of not good tidings, Mr. and
+Mrs. Weston's visit this morning was in another respect particularly
+opportune. Something occurred while they were at Hartfield, to make Emma
+want their advice; and, which was still more lucky, she wanted exactly
+the advice they gave.
+
+This was the occurrence:--The Coles had been settled some years in
+Highbury, and were very good sort of people--friendly, liberal, and
+unpretending; but, on the other hand, they were of low origin, in trade,
+and only moderately genteel. On their first coming into the country,
+they had lived in proportion to their income, quietly, keeping little
+company, and that little unexpensively; but the last year or two had
+brought them a considerable increase of means--the house in town had
+yielded greater profits, and fortune in general had smiled on them. With
+their wealth, their views increased; their want of a larger house, their
+inclination for more company. They added to their house, to their number
+of servants, to their expenses of every sort; and by this time were,
+in fortune and style of living, second only to the family at Hartfield.
+Their love of society, and their new dining-room, prepared every body
+for their keeping dinner-company; and a few parties, chiefly among the
+single men, had already taken place. The regular and best families Emma
+could hardly suppose they would presume to invite--neither Donwell, nor
+Hartfield, nor Randalls. Nothing should tempt _her_ to go, if they did;
+and she regretted that her father's known habits would be giving
+her refusal less meaning than she could wish. The Coles were very
+respectable in their way, but they ought to be taught that it was not
+for them to arrange the terms on which the superior families would visit
+them. This lesson, she very much feared, they would receive only from
+herself; she had little hope of Mr. Knightley, none of Mr. Weston.
+
+But she had made up her mind how to meet this presumption so many weeks
+before it appeared, that when the insult came at last, it found her
+very differently affected. Donwell and Randalls had received their
+invitation, and none had come for her father and herself; and Mrs.
+Weston's accounting for it with “I suppose they will not take the
+liberty with you; they know you do not dine out,” was not quite
+sufficient. She felt that she should like to have had the power of
+refusal; and afterwards, as the idea of the party to be assembled there,
+consisting precisely of those whose society was dearest to her, occurred
+again and again, she did not know that she might not have been tempted
+to accept. Harriet was to be there in the evening, and the Bateses. They
+had been speaking of it as they walked about Highbury the day before,
+and Frank Churchill had most earnestly lamented her absence. Might
+not the evening end in a dance? had been a question of his. The bare
+possibility of it acted as a farther irritation on her spirits; and
+her being left in solitary grandeur, even supposing the omission to be
+intended as a compliment, was but poor comfort.
+
+It was the arrival of this very invitation while the Westons were at
+Hartfield, which made their presence so acceptable; for though her first
+remark, on reading it, was that “of course it must be declined,” she so
+very soon proceeded to ask them what they advised her to do, that their
+advice for her going was most prompt and successful.
+
+She owned that, considering every thing, she was not absolutely
+without inclination for the party. The Coles expressed themselves so
+properly--there was so much real attention in the manner of it--so much
+consideration for her father. “They would have solicited the honour
+earlier, but had been waiting the arrival of a folding-screen from
+London, which they hoped might keep Mr. Woodhouse from any draught of
+air, and therefore induce him the more readily to give them the honour
+of his company.” Upon the whole, she was very persuadable; and it being
+briefly settled among themselves how it might be done without neglecting
+his comfort--how certainly Mrs. Goddard, if not Mrs. Bates, might be
+depended on for bearing him company--Mr. Woodhouse was to be talked
+into an acquiescence of his daughter's going out to dinner on a day now
+near at hand, and spending the whole evening away from him. As for _his_
+going, Emma did not wish him to think it possible, the hours would be
+too late, and the party too numerous. He was soon pretty well resigned.
+
+“I am not fond of dinner-visiting,” said he--“I never was. No more is
+Emma. Late hours do not agree with us. I am sorry Mr. and Mrs. Cole
+should have done it. I think it would be much better if they would come
+in one afternoon next summer, and take their tea with us--take us
+in their afternoon walk; which they might do, as our hours are so
+reasonable, and yet get home without being out in the damp of the
+evening. The dews of a summer evening are what I would not expose any
+body to. However, as they are so very desirous to have dear Emma dine
+with them, and as you will both be there, and Mr. Knightley too, to take
+care of her, I cannot wish to prevent it, provided the weather be what
+it ought, neither damp, nor cold, nor windy.” Then turning to Mrs.
+Weston, with a look of gentle reproach--“Ah! Miss Taylor, if you had not
+married, you would have staid at home with me.”
+
+“Well, sir,” cried Mr. Weston, “as I took Miss Taylor away, it is
+incumbent on me to supply her place, if I can; and I will step to Mrs.
+Goddard in a moment, if you wish it.”
+
+But the idea of any thing to be done in a _moment_, was increasing,
+not lessening, Mr. Woodhouse's agitation. The ladies knew better how
+to allay it. Mr. Weston must be quiet, and every thing deliberately
+arranged.
+
+With this treatment, Mr. Woodhouse was soon composed enough for talking
+as usual. “He should be happy to see Mrs. Goddard. He had a great regard
+for Mrs. Goddard; and Emma should write a line, and invite her. James
+could take the note. But first of all, there must be an answer written
+to Mrs. Cole.”
+
+“You will make my excuses, my dear, as civilly as possible. You will say
+that I am quite an invalid, and go no where, and therefore must decline
+their obliging invitation; beginning with my _compliments_, of course.
+But you will do every thing right. I need not tell you what is to be
+done. We must remember to let James know that the carriage will be
+wanted on Tuesday. I shall have no fears for you with him. We have never
+been there above once since the new approach was made; but still I have
+no doubt that James will take you very safely. And when you get there,
+you must tell him at what time you would have him come for you again;
+and you had better name an early hour. You will not like staying late.
+You will get very tired when tea is over.”
+
+“But you would not wish me to come away before I am tired, papa?”
+
+“Oh! no, my love; but you will soon be tired. There will be a great many
+people talking at once. You will not like the noise.”
+
+“But, my dear sir,” cried Mr. Weston, “if Emma comes away early, it will
+be breaking up the party.”
+
+“And no great harm if it does,” said Mr. Woodhouse. “The sooner every
+party breaks up, the better.”
+
+“But you do not consider how it may appear to the Coles. Emma's going
+away directly after tea might be giving offence. They are good-natured
+people, and think little of their own claims; but still they must
+feel that any body's hurrying away is no great compliment; and Miss
+Woodhouse's doing it would be more thought of than any other person's in
+the room. You would not wish to disappoint and mortify the Coles, I am
+sure, sir; friendly, good sort of people as ever lived, and who have
+been your neighbours these _ten_ years.”
+
+“No, upon no account in the world, Mr. Weston; I am much obliged to
+you for reminding me. I should be extremely sorry to be giving them any
+pain. I know what worthy people they are. Perry tells me that Mr. Cole
+never touches malt liquor. You would not think it to look at him, but
+he is bilious--Mr. Cole is very bilious. No, I would not be the means
+of giving them any pain. My dear Emma, we must consider this. I am sure,
+rather than run the risk of hurting Mr. and Mrs. Cole, you would stay a
+little longer than you might wish. You will not regard being tired. You
+will be perfectly safe, you know, among your friends.”
+
+“Oh yes, papa. I have no fears at all for myself; and I should have no
+scruples of staying as late as Mrs. Weston, but on your account. I am
+only afraid of your sitting up for me. I am not afraid of your not being
+exceedingly comfortable with Mrs. Goddard. She loves piquet, you
+know; but when she is gone home, I am afraid you will be sitting up by
+yourself, instead of going to bed at your usual time--and the idea of
+that would entirely destroy my comfort. You must promise me not to sit
+up.”
+
+He did, on the condition of some promises on her side: such as that,
+if she came home cold, she would be sure to warm herself thoroughly; if
+hungry, that she would take something to eat; that her own maid should
+sit up for her; and that Serle and the butler should see that every
+thing were safe in the house, as usual.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Frank Churchill came back again; and if he kept his father's dinner
+waiting, it was not known at Hartfield; for Mrs. Weston was too anxious
+for his being a favourite with Mr. Woodhouse, to betray any imperfection
+which could be concealed.
+
+He came back, had had his hair cut, and laughed at himself with a very
+good grace, but without seeming really at all ashamed of what he had
+done. He had no reason to wish his hair longer, to conceal any confusion
+of face; no reason to wish the money unspent, to improve his spirits.
+He was quite as undaunted and as lively as ever; and, after seeing him,
+Emma thus moralised to herself:--
+
+“I do not know whether it ought to be so, but certainly silly things
+do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent
+way. Wickedness is always wickedness, but folly is not always folly.--It
+depends upon the character of those who handle it. Mr. Knightley, he is
+_not_ a trifling, silly young man. If he were, he would have done this
+differently. He would either have gloried in the achievement, or
+been ashamed of it. There would have been either the ostentation of
+a coxcomb, or the evasions of a mind too weak to defend its own
+vanities.--No, I am perfectly sure that he is not trifling or silly.”
+
+With Tuesday came the agreeable prospect of seeing him again, and for
+a longer time than hitherto; of judging of his general manners, and by
+inference, of the meaning of his manners towards herself; of guessing
+how soon it might be necessary for her to throw coldness into her air;
+and of fancying what the observations of all those might be, who were
+now seeing them together for the first time.
+
+She meant to be very happy, in spite of the scene being laid at Mr.
+Cole's; and without being able to forget that among the failings of Mr.
+Elton, even in the days of his favour, none had disturbed her more than
+his propensity to dine with Mr. Cole.
+
+Her father's comfort was amply secured, Mrs. Bates as well as Mrs.
+Goddard being able to come; and her last pleasing duty, before she left
+the house, was to pay her respects to them as they sat together after
+dinner; and while her father was fondly noticing the beauty of her
+dress, to make the two ladies all the amends in her power, by helping
+them to large slices of cake and full glasses of wine, for whatever
+unwilling self-denial his care of their constitution might have obliged
+them to practise during the meal.--She had provided a plentiful dinner
+for them; she wished she could know that they had been allowed to eat
+it.
+
+She followed another carriage to Mr. Cole's door; and was pleased to see
+that it was Mr. Knightley's; for Mr. Knightley keeping no horses,
+having little spare money and a great deal of health, activity, and
+independence, was too apt, in Emma's opinion, to get about as he could,
+and not use his carriage so often as became the owner of Donwell Abbey.
+She had an opportunity now of speaking her approbation while warm from
+her heart, for he stopped to hand her out.
+
+“This is coming as you should do,” said she; “like a gentleman.--I am
+quite glad to see you.”
+
+He thanked her, observing, “How lucky that we should arrive at the same
+moment! for, if we had met first in the drawing-room, I doubt whether
+you would have discerned me to be more of a gentleman than usual.--You
+might not have distinguished how I came, by my look or manner.”
+
+“Yes I should, I am sure I should. There is always a look of
+consciousness or bustle when people come in a way which they know to be
+beneath them. You think you carry it off very well, I dare say, but
+with you it is a sort of bravado, an air of affected unconcern; I always
+observe it whenever I meet you under those circumstances. _Now_ you have
+nothing to try for. You are not afraid of being supposed ashamed. You
+are not striving to look taller than any body else. _Now_ I shall really
+be very happy to walk into the same room with you.”
+
+“Nonsensical girl!” was his reply, but not at all in anger.
+
+Emma had as much reason to be satisfied with the rest of the party as
+with Mr. Knightley. She was received with a cordial respect which could
+not but please, and given all the consequence she could wish for.
+When the Westons arrived, the kindest looks of love, the strongest of
+admiration were for her, from both husband and wife; the son approached
+her with a cheerful eagerness which marked her as his peculiar object,
+and at dinner she found him seated by her--and, as she firmly believed,
+not without some dexterity on his side.
+
+The party was rather large, as it included one other family, a proper
+unobjectionable country family, whom the Coles had the advantage of
+naming among their acquaintance, and the male part of Mr. Cox's family,
+the lawyer of Highbury. The less worthy females were to come in the
+evening, with Miss Bates, Miss Fairfax, and Miss Smith; but already,
+at dinner, they were too numerous for any subject of conversation to be
+general; and, while politics and Mr. Elton were talked over, Emma could
+fairly surrender all her attention to the pleasantness of her neighbour.
+The first remote sound to which she felt herself obliged to attend, was
+the name of Jane Fairfax. Mrs. Cole seemed to be relating something of
+her that was expected to be very interesting. She listened, and found
+it well worth listening to. That very dear part of Emma, her fancy,
+received an amusing supply. Mrs. Cole was telling that she had been
+calling on Miss Bates, and as soon as she entered the room had
+been struck by the sight of a pianoforte--a very elegant looking
+instrument--not a grand, but a large-sized square pianoforte; and the
+substance of the story, the end of all the dialogue which ensued of
+surprize, and inquiry, and congratulations on her side, and explanations
+on Miss Bates's, was, that this pianoforte had arrived from
+Broadwood's the day before, to the great astonishment of both aunt and
+niece--entirely unexpected; that at first, by Miss Bates's account,
+Jane herself was quite at a loss, quite bewildered to think who could
+possibly have ordered it--but now, they were both perfectly satisfied
+that it could be from only one quarter;--of course it must be from
+Colonel Campbell.
+
+“One can suppose nothing else,” added Mrs. Cole, “and I was only
+surprized that there could ever have been a doubt. But Jane, it seems,
+had a letter from them very lately, and not a word was said about it.
+She knows their ways best; but I should not consider their silence as
+any reason for their not meaning to make the present. They might chuse
+to surprize her.”
+
+Mrs. Cole had many to agree with her; every body who spoke on the
+subject was equally convinced that it must come from Colonel Campbell,
+and equally rejoiced that such a present had been made; and there were
+enough ready to speak to allow Emma to think her own way, and still
+listen to Mrs. Cole.
+
+“I declare, I do not know when I have heard any thing that has given me
+more satisfaction!--It always has quite hurt me that Jane Fairfax, who
+plays so delightfully, should not have an instrument. It seemed quite
+a shame, especially considering how many houses there are where fine
+instruments are absolutely thrown away. This is like giving ourselves
+a slap, to be sure! and it was but yesterday I was telling Mr. Cole,
+I really was ashamed to look at our new grand pianoforte in the
+drawing-room, while I do not know one note from another, and our little
+girls, who are but just beginning, perhaps may never make any thing of
+it; and there is poor Jane Fairfax, who is mistress of music, has not
+any thing of the nature of an instrument, not even the pitifullest old
+spinet in the world, to amuse herself with.--I was saying this to
+Mr. Cole but yesterday, and he quite agreed with me; only he is so
+particularly fond of music that he could not help indulging himself
+in the purchase, hoping that some of our good neighbours might be so
+obliging occasionally to put it to a better use than we can; and that
+really is the reason why the instrument was bought--or else I am sure
+we ought to be ashamed of it.--We are in great hopes that Miss Woodhouse
+may be prevailed with to try it this evening.”
+
+Miss Woodhouse made the proper acquiescence; and finding that nothing
+more was to be entrapped from any communication of Mrs. Cole's, turned
+to Frank Churchill.
+
+“Why do you smile?” said she.
+
+“Nay, why do you?”
+
+“Me!--I suppose I smile for pleasure at Colonel Campbell's being so rich
+and so liberal.--It is a handsome present.”
+
+“Very.”
+
+“I rather wonder that it was never made before.”
+
+“Perhaps Miss Fairfax has never been staying here so long before.”
+
+“Or that he did not give her the use of their own instrument--which must
+now be shut up in London, untouched by any body.”
+
+“That is a grand pianoforte, and he might think it too large for Mrs.
+Bates's house.”
+
+“You may _say_ what you chuse--but your countenance testifies that your
+_thoughts_ on this subject are very much like mine.”
+
+“I do not know. I rather believe you are giving me more credit for
+acuteness than I deserve. I smile because you smile, and shall probably
+suspect whatever I find you suspect; but at present I do not see what
+there is to question. If Colonel Campbell is not the person, who can
+be?”
+
+“What do you say to Mrs. Dixon?”
+
+“Mrs. Dixon! very true indeed. I had not thought of Mrs. Dixon. She must
+know as well as her father, how acceptable an instrument would be; and
+perhaps the mode of it, the mystery, the surprize, is more like a young
+woman's scheme than an elderly man's. It is Mrs. Dixon, I dare say. I
+told you that your suspicions would guide mine.”
+
+“If so, you must extend your suspicions and comprehend _Mr_. Dixon in
+them.”
+
+“Mr. Dixon.--Very well. Yes, I immediately perceive that it must be the
+joint present of Mr. and Mrs. Dixon. We were speaking the other day, you
+know, of his being so warm an admirer of her performance.”
+
+“Yes, and what you told me on that head, confirmed an idea which I had
+entertained before.--I do not mean to reflect upon the good intentions
+of either Mr. Dixon or Miss Fairfax, but I cannot help suspecting either
+that, after making his proposals to her friend, he had the misfortune
+to fall in love with _her_, or that he became conscious of a little
+attachment on her side. One might guess twenty things without guessing
+exactly the right; but I am sure there must be a particular cause for
+her chusing to come to Highbury instead of going with the Campbells
+to Ireland. Here, she must be leading a life of privation and penance;
+there it would have been all enjoyment. As to the pretence of trying her
+native air, I look upon that as a mere excuse.--In the summer it might
+have passed; but what can any body's native air do for them in the
+months of January, February, and March? Good fires and carriages would
+be much more to the purpose in most cases of delicate health, and I dare
+say in her's. I do not require you to adopt all my suspicions, though
+you make so noble a profession of doing it, but I honestly tell you what
+they are.”
+
+“And, upon my word, they have an air of great probability. Mr. Dixon's
+preference of her music to her friend's, I can answer for being very
+decided.”
+
+“And then, he saved her life. Did you ever hear of that?--A water
+party; and by some accident she was falling overboard. He caught her.”
+
+“He did. I was there--one of the party.”
+
+“Were you really?--Well!--But you observed nothing of course, for it
+seems to be a new idea to you.--If I had been there, I think I should
+have made some discoveries.”
+
+“I dare say you would; but I, simple I, saw nothing but the fact, that
+Miss Fairfax was nearly dashed from the vessel and that Mr. Dixon caught
+her.--It was the work of a moment. And though the consequent shock and
+alarm was very great and much more durable--indeed I believe it was
+half an hour before any of us were comfortable again--yet that was too
+general a sensation for any thing of peculiar anxiety to be
+observable. I do not mean to say, however, that you might not have made
+discoveries.”
+
+The conversation was here interrupted. They were called on to share
+in the awkwardness of a rather long interval between the courses, and
+obliged to be as formal and as orderly as the others; but when the table
+was again safely covered, when every corner dish was placed exactly
+right, and occupation and ease were generally restored, Emma said,
+
+“The arrival of this pianoforte is decisive with me. I wanted to know
+a little more, and this tells me quite enough. Depend upon it, we shall
+soon hear that it is a present from Mr. and Mrs. Dixon.”
+
+“And if the Dixons should absolutely deny all knowledge of it we must
+conclude it to come from the Campbells.”
+
+“No, I am sure it is not from the Campbells. Miss Fairfax knows it is
+not from the Campbells, or they would have been guessed at first. She
+would not have been puzzled, had she dared fix on them. I may not have
+convinced you perhaps, but I am perfectly convinced myself that Mr.
+Dixon is a principal in the business.”
+
+“Indeed you injure me if you suppose me unconvinced. Your reasonings
+carry my judgment along with them entirely. At first, while I supposed
+you satisfied that Colonel Campbell was the giver, I saw it only as
+paternal kindness, and thought it the most natural thing in the world.
+But when you mentioned Mrs. Dixon, I felt how much more probable that it
+should be the tribute of warm female friendship. And now I can see it in
+no other light than as an offering of love.”
+
+There was no occasion to press the matter farther. The conviction seemed
+real; he looked as if he felt it. She said no more, other subjects
+took their turn; and the rest of the dinner passed away; the dessert
+succeeded, the children came in, and were talked to and admired amid the
+usual rate of conversation; a few clever things said, a few downright
+silly, but by much the larger proportion neither the one nor the
+other--nothing worse than everyday remarks, dull repetitions, old news,
+and heavy jokes.
+
+The ladies had not been long in the drawing-room, before the other
+ladies, in their different divisions, arrived. Emma watched the entree
+of her own particular little friend; and if she could not exult in her
+dignity and grace, she could not only love the blooming sweetness and
+the artless manner, but could most heartily rejoice in that light,
+cheerful, unsentimental disposition which allowed her so many
+alleviations of pleasure, in the midst of the pangs of disappointed
+affection. There she sat--and who would have guessed how many tears she
+had been lately shedding? To be in company, nicely dressed herself and
+seeing others nicely dressed, to sit and smile and look pretty, and say
+nothing, was enough for the happiness of the present hour. Jane Fairfax
+did look and move superior; but Emma suspected she might have been
+glad to change feelings with Harriet, very glad to have purchased the
+mortification of having loved--yes, of having loved even Mr. Elton in
+vain--by the surrender of all the dangerous pleasure of knowing herself
+beloved by the husband of her friend.
+
+In so large a party it was not necessary that Emma should approach her.
+She did not wish to speak of the pianoforte, she felt too much in the
+secret herself, to think the appearance of curiosity or interest fair,
+and therefore purposely kept at a distance; but by the others, the
+subject was almost immediately introduced, and she saw the blush of
+consciousness with which congratulations were received, the blush
+of guilt which accompanied the name of “my excellent friend Colonel
+Campbell.”
+
+Mrs. Weston, kind-hearted and musical, was particularly interested
+by the circumstance, and Emma could not help being amused at her
+perseverance in dwelling on the subject; and having so much to ask and
+to say as to tone, touch, and pedal, totally unsuspicious of that wish
+of saying as little about it as possible, which she plainly read in the
+fair heroine's countenance.
+
+They were soon joined by some of the gentlemen; and the very first
+of the early was Frank Churchill. In he walked, the first and the
+handsomest; and after paying his compliments en passant to Miss Bates
+and her niece, made his way directly to the opposite side of the circle,
+where sat Miss Woodhouse; and till he could find a seat by her, would
+not sit at all. Emma divined what every body present must be thinking.
+She was his object, and every body must perceive it. She introduced him
+to her friend, Miss Smith, and, at convenient moments afterwards, heard
+what each thought of the other. “He had never seen so lovely a face, and
+was delighted with her naivete.” And she, “Only to be sure it was paying
+him too great a compliment, but she did think there were some looks a
+little like Mr. Elton.” Emma restrained her indignation, and only turned
+from her in silence.
+
+Smiles of intelligence passed between her and the gentleman on first
+glancing towards Miss Fairfax; but it was most prudent to avoid speech.
+He told her that he had been impatient to leave the dining-room--hated
+sitting long--was always the first to move when he could--that his
+father, Mr. Knightley, Mr. Cox, and Mr. Cole, were left very busy over
+parish business--that as long as he had staid, however, it had been
+pleasant enough, as he had found them in general a set of gentlemanlike,
+sensible men; and spoke so handsomely of Highbury altogether--thought it
+so abundant in agreeable families--that Emma began to feel she had been
+used to despise the place rather too much. She questioned him as to the
+society in Yorkshire--the extent of the neighbourhood about Enscombe,
+and the sort; and could make out from his answers that, as far as
+Enscombe was concerned, there was very little going on, that their
+visitings were among a range of great families, none very near; and
+that even when days were fixed, and invitations accepted, it was an even
+chance that Mrs. Churchill were not in health and spirits for going;
+that they made a point of visiting no fresh person; and that, though
+he had his separate engagements, it was not without difficulty, without
+considerable address _at_ _times_, that he could get away, or introduce
+an acquaintance for a night.
+
+She saw that Enscombe could not satisfy, and that Highbury, taken at
+its best, might reasonably please a young man who had more retirement at
+home than he liked. His importance at Enscombe was very evident. He did
+not boast, but it naturally betrayed itself, that he had persuaded his
+aunt where his uncle could do nothing, and on her laughing and noticing
+it, he owned that he believed (excepting one or two points) he could
+_with_ _time_ persuade her to any thing. One of those points on which
+his influence failed, he then mentioned. He had wanted very much to
+go abroad--had been very eager indeed to be allowed to travel--but she
+would not hear of it. This had happened the year before. _Now_, he said,
+he was beginning to have no longer the same wish.
+
+The unpersuadable point, which he did not mention, Emma guessed to be
+good behaviour to his father.
+
+“I have made a most wretched discovery,” said he, after a short pause.--
+“I have been here a week to-morrow--half my time. I never knew days fly
+so fast. A week to-morrow!--And I have hardly begun to enjoy myself.
+But just got acquainted with Mrs. Weston, and others!--I hate the
+recollection.”
+
+“Perhaps you may now begin to regret that you spent one whole day, out
+of so few, in having your hair cut.”
+
+“No,” said he, smiling, “that is no subject of regret at all. I have
+no pleasure in seeing my friends, unless I can believe myself fit to be
+seen.”
+
+The rest of the gentlemen being now in the room, Emma found herself
+obliged to turn from him for a few minutes, and listen to Mr. Cole. When
+Mr. Cole had moved away, and her attention could be restored as before,
+she saw Frank Churchill looking intently across the room at Miss
+Fairfax, who was sitting exactly opposite.
+
+“What is the matter?” said she.
+
+He started. “Thank you for rousing me,” he replied. “I believe I have
+been very rude; but really Miss Fairfax has done her hair in so odd a
+way--so very odd a way--that I cannot keep my eyes from her. I never saw
+any thing so outree!--Those curls!--This must be a fancy of her own. I
+see nobody else looking like her!--I must go and ask her whether it
+is an Irish fashion. Shall I?--Yes, I will--I declare I will--and you
+shall see how she takes it;--whether she colours.”
+
+He was gone immediately; and Emma soon saw him standing before Miss
+Fairfax, and talking to her; but as to its effect on the young lady,
+as he had improvidently placed himself exactly between them, exactly in
+front of Miss Fairfax, she could absolutely distinguish nothing.
+
+Before he could return to his chair, it was taken by Mrs. Weston.
+
+“This is the luxury of a large party,” said she:--“one can get near
+every body, and say every thing. My dear Emma, I am longing to talk
+to you. I have been making discoveries and forming plans, just like
+yourself, and I must tell them while the idea is fresh. Do you know how
+Miss Bates and her niece came here?”
+
+“How?--They were invited, were not they?”
+
+“Oh! yes--but how they were conveyed hither?--the manner of their
+coming?”
+
+“They walked, I conclude. How else could they come?”
+
+“Very true.--Well, a little while ago it occurred to me how very sad
+it would be to have Jane Fairfax walking home again, late at night, and
+cold as the nights are now. And as I looked at her, though I never saw
+her appear to more advantage, it struck me that she was heated, and
+would therefore be particularly liable to take cold. Poor girl! I could
+not bear the idea of it; so, as soon as Mr. Weston came into the room,
+and I could get at him, I spoke to him about the carriage. You may guess
+how readily he came into my wishes; and having his approbation, I made
+my way directly to Miss Bates, to assure her that the carriage would be
+at her service before it took us home; for I thought it would be making
+her comfortable at once. Good soul! she was as grateful as possible, you
+may be sure. 'Nobody was ever so fortunate as herself!'--but with many,
+many thanks--'there was no occasion to trouble us, for Mr. Knightley's
+carriage had brought, and was to take them home again.' I was quite
+surprized;--very glad, I am sure; but really quite surprized. Such a
+very kind attention--and so thoughtful an attention!--the sort of thing
+that so few men would think of. And, in short, from knowing his
+usual ways, I am very much inclined to think that it was for their
+accommodation the carriage was used at all. I do suspect he would not
+have had a pair of horses for himself, and that it was only as an excuse
+for assisting them.”
+
+“Very likely,” said Emma--“nothing more likely. I know no man more
+likely than Mr. Knightley to do the sort of thing--to do any thing
+really good-natured, useful, considerate, or benevolent. He is not a
+gallant man, but he is a very humane one; and this, considering Jane
+Fairfax's ill-health, would appear a case of humanity to him;--and for
+an act of unostentatious kindness, there is nobody whom I would fix on
+more than on Mr. Knightley. I know he had horses to-day--for we arrived
+together; and I laughed at him about it, but he said not a word that
+could betray.”
+
+“Well,” said Mrs. Weston, smiling, “you give him credit for more simple,
+disinterested benevolence in this instance than I do; for while Miss
+Bates was speaking, a suspicion darted into my head, and I have never
+been able to get it out again. The more I think of it, the more probable
+it appears. In short, I have made a match between Mr. Knightley and Jane
+Fairfax. See the consequence of keeping you company!--What do you say to
+it?”
+
+“Mr. Knightley and Jane Fairfax!” exclaimed Emma. “Dear Mrs. Weston, how
+could you think of such a thing?--Mr. Knightley!--Mr. Knightley must not
+marry!--You would not have little Henry cut out from Donwell?--Oh! no,
+no, Henry must have Donwell. I cannot at all consent to Mr. Knightley's
+marrying; and I am sure it is not at all likely. I am amazed that you
+should think of such a thing.”
+
+“My dear Emma, I have told you what led me to think of it. I do not want
+the match--I do not want to injure dear little Henry--but the idea has
+been given me by circumstances; and if Mr. Knightley really wished to
+marry, you would not have him refrain on Henry's account, a boy of six
+years old, who knows nothing of the matter?”
+
+“Yes, I would. I could not bear to have Henry supplanted.--Mr.
+Knightley marry!--No, I have never had such an idea, and I cannot adopt
+it now. And Jane Fairfax, too, of all women!”
+
+“Nay, she has always been a first favourite with him, as you very well
+know.”
+
+“But the imprudence of such a match!”
+
+“I am not speaking of its prudence; merely its probability.”
+
+“I see no probability in it, unless you have any better foundation than
+what you mention. His good-nature, his humanity, as I tell you, would
+be quite enough to account for the horses. He has a great regard for the
+Bateses, you know, independent of Jane Fairfax--and is always glad to
+shew them attention. My dear Mrs. Weston, do not take to match-making.
+You do it very ill. Jane Fairfax mistress of the Abbey!--Oh! no,
+no;--every feeling revolts. For his own sake, I would not have him do so
+mad a thing.”
+
+“Imprudent, if you please--but not mad. Excepting inequality of fortune,
+and perhaps a little disparity of age, I can see nothing unsuitable.”
+
+“But Mr. Knightley does not want to marry. I am sure he has not the
+least idea of it. Do not put it into his head. Why should he marry?--He
+is as happy as possible by himself; with his farm, and his sheep, and
+his library, and all the parish to manage; and he is extremely fond of
+his brother's children. He has no occasion to marry, either to fill up
+his time or his heart.”
+
+“My dear Emma, as long as he thinks so, it is so; but if he really loves
+Jane Fairfax--”
+
+“Nonsense! He does not care about Jane Fairfax. In the way of love, I am
+sure he does not. He would do any good to her, or her family; but--”
+
+“Well,” said Mrs. Weston, laughing, “perhaps the greatest good he could
+do them, would be to give Jane such a respectable home.”
+
+“If it would be good to her, I am sure it would be evil to himself; a
+very shameful and degrading connexion. How would he bear to have Miss
+Bates belonging to him?--To have her haunting the Abbey, and thanking
+him all day long for his great kindness in marrying Jane?--'So very
+kind and obliging!--But he always had been such a very kind neighbour!'
+And then fly off, through half a sentence, to her mother's old
+petticoat. 'Not that it was such a very old petticoat either--for still
+it would last a great while--and, indeed, she must thankfully say that
+their petticoats were all very strong.'”
+
+“For shame, Emma! Do not mimic her. You divert me against my conscience.
+And, upon my word, I do not think Mr. Knightley would be much disturbed
+by Miss Bates. Little things do not irritate him. She might talk on; and
+if he wanted to say any thing himself, he would only talk louder, and
+drown her voice. But the question is not, whether it would be a bad
+connexion for him, but whether he wishes it; and I think he does. I have
+heard him speak, and so must you, so very highly of Jane Fairfax! The
+interest he takes in her--his anxiety about her health--his concern that
+she should have no happier prospect! I have heard him express himself
+so warmly on those points!--Such an admirer of her performance on the
+pianoforte, and of her voice! I have heard him say that he could listen
+to her for ever. Oh! and I had almost forgotten one idea that occurred
+to me--this pianoforte that has been sent here by somebody--though
+we have all been so well satisfied to consider it a present from the
+Campbells, may it not be from Mr. Knightley? I cannot help suspecting
+him. I think he is just the person to do it, even without being in
+love.”
+
+“Then it can be no argument to prove that he is in love. But I do not
+think it is at all a likely thing for him to do. Mr. Knightley does
+nothing mysteriously.”
+
+“I have heard him lamenting her having no instrument repeatedly; oftener
+than I should suppose such a circumstance would, in the common course of
+things, occur to him.”
+
+“Very well; and if he had intended to give her one, he would have told
+her so.”
+
+“There might be scruples of delicacy, my dear Emma. I have a very strong
+notion that it comes from him. I am sure he was particularly silent when
+Mrs. Cole told us of it at dinner.”
+
+“You take up an idea, Mrs. Weston, and run away with it; as you have
+many a time reproached me with doing. I see no sign of attachment--I
+believe nothing of the pianoforte--and proof only shall convince me that
+Mr. Knightley has any thought of marrying Jane Fairfax.”
+
+They combated the point some time longer in the same way; Emma rather
+gaining ground over the mind of her friend; for Mrs. Weston was the most
+used of the two to yield; till a little bustle in the room shewed them
+that tea was over, and the instrument in preparation;--and at the same
+moment Mr. Cole approaching to entreat Miss Woodhouse would do them the
+honour of trying it. Frank Churchill, of whom, in the eagerness of her
+conversation with Mrs. Weston, she had been seeing nothing, except that
+he had found a seat by Miss Fairfax, followed Mr. Cole, to add his very
+pressing entreaties; and as, in every respect, it suited Emma best to
+lead, she gave a very proper compliance.
+
+She knew the limitations of her own powers too well to attempt more than
+she could perform with credit; she wanted neither taste nor spirit in
+the little things which are generally acceptable, and could accompany
+her own voice well. One accompaniment to her song took her agreeably by
+surprize--a second, slightly but correctly taken by Frank Churchill. Her
+pardon was duly begged at the close of the song, and every thing usual
+followed. He was accused of having a delightful voice, and a perfect
+knowledge of music; which was properly denied; and that he knew nothing
+of the matter, and had no voice at all, roundly asserted. They sang
+together once more; and Emma would then resign her place to Miss
+Fairfax, whose performance, both vocal and instrumental, she never could
+attempt to conceal from herself, was infinitely superior to her own.
+
+With mixed feelings, she seated herself at a little distance from the
+numbers round the instrument, to listen. Frank Churchill sang again.
+They had sung together once or twice, it appeared, at Weymouth. But the
+sight of Mr. Knightley among the most attentive, soon drew away half
+Emma's mind; and she fell into a train of thinking on the subject of
+Mrs. Weston's suspicions, to which the sweet sounds of the united voices
+gave only momentary interruptions. Her objections to Mr. Knightley's
+marrying did not in the least subside. She could see nothing but evil
+in it. It would be a great disappointment to Mr. John Knightley;
+consequently to Isabella. A real injury to the children--a most
+mortifying change, and material loss to them all;--a very great
+deduction from her father's daily comfort--and, as to herself, she could
+not at all endure the idea of Jane Fairfax at Donwell Abbey. A Mrs.
+Knightley for them all to give way to!--No--Mr. Knightley must never
+marry. Little Henry must remain the heir of Donwell.
+
+Presently Mr. Knightley looked back, and came and sat down by her. They
+talked at first only of the performance. His admiration was certainly
+very warm; yet she thought, but for Mrs. Weston, it would not have
+struck her. As a sort of touchstone, however, she began to speak of his
+kindness in conveying the aunt and niece; and though his answer was in
+the spirit of cutting the matter short, she believed it to indicate only
+his disinclination to dwell on any kindness of his own.
+
+“I often feel concern,” said she, “that I dare not make our carriage
+more useful on such occasions. It is not that I am without the wish; but
+you know how impossible my father would deem it that James should put-to
+for such a purpose.”
+
+“Quite out of the question, quite out of the question,” he
+replied;--“but you must often wish it, I am sure.” And he smiled with
+such seeming pleasure at the conviction, that she must proceed another
+step.
+
+“This present from the Campbells,” said she--“this pianoforte is very
+kindly given.”
+
+“Yes,” he replied, and without the smallest apparent
+embarrassment.--“But they would have done better had they given
+her notice of it. Surprizes are foolish things. The pleasure is not
+enhanced, and the inconvenience is often considerable. I should have
+expected better judgment in Colonel Campbell.”
+
+From that moment, Emma could have taken her oath that Mr. Knightley had
+had no concern in giving the instrument. But whether he were
+entirely free from peculiar attachment--whether there were no actual
+preference--remained a little longer doubtful. Towards the end of Jane's
+second song, her voice grew thick.
+
+“That will do,” said he, when it was finished, thinking aloud--“you have
+sung quite enough for one evening--now be quiet.”
+
+Another song, however, was soon begged for. “One more;--they would not
+fatigue Miss Fairfax on any account, and would only ask for one more.”
+ And Frank Churchill was heard to say, “I think you could manage this
+without effort; the first part is so very trifling. The strength of the
+song falls on the second.”
+
+Mr. Knightley grew angry.
+
+“That fellow,” said he, indignantly, “thinks of nothing but shewing off
+his own voice. This must not be.” And touching Miss Bates, who at that
+moment passed near--“Miss Bates, are you mad, to let your niece sing
+herself hoarse in this manner? Go, and interfere. They have no mercy on
+her.”
+
+Miss Bates, in her real anxiety for Jane, could hardly stay even to
+be grateful, before she stept forward and put an end to all farther
+singing. Here ceased the concert part of the evening, for Miss Woodhouse
+and Miss Fairfax were the only young lady performers; but soon (within
+five minutes) the proposal of dancing--originating nobody exactly knew
+where--was so effectually promoted by Mr. and Mrs. Cole, that every
+thing was rapidly clearing away, to give proper space. Mrs. Weston,
+capital in her country-dances, was seated, and beginning an irresistible
+waltz; and Frank Churchill, coming up with most becoming gallantry to
+Emma, had secured her hand, and led her up to the top.
+
+While waiting till the other young people could pair themselves off,
+Emma found time, in spite of the compliments she was receiving on
+her voice and her taste, to look about, and see what became of Mr.
+Knightley. This would be a trial. He was no dancer in general. If he
+were to be very alert in engaging Jane Fairfax now, it might augur
+something. There was no immediate appearance. No; he was talking to Mrs.
+Cole--he was looking on unconcerned; Jane was asked by somebody else,
+and he was still talking to Mrs. Cole.
+
+Emma had no longer an alarm for Henry; his interest was yet safe; and
+she led off the dance with genuine spirit and enjoyment. Not more than
+five couple could be mustered; but the rarity and the suddenness of
+it made it very delightful, and she found herself well matched in a
+partner. They were a couple worth looking at.
+
+Two dances, unfortunately, were all that could be allowed. It was
+growing late, and Miss Bates became anxious to get home, on her mother's
+account. After some attempts, therefore, to be permitted to begin again,
+they were obliged to thank Mrs. Weston, look sorrowful, and have done.
+
+“Perhaps it is as well,” said Frank Churchill, as he attended Emma to
+her carriage. “I must have asked Miss Fairfax, and her languid dancing
+would not have agreed with me, after yours.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Emma did not repent her condescension in going to the Coles. The visit
+afforded her many pleasant recollections the next day; and all that she
+might be supposed to have lost on the side of dignified seclusion, must
+be amply repaid in the splendour of popularity. She must have delighted
+the Coles--worthy people, who deserved to be made happy!--And left a
+name behind her that would not soon die away.
+
+Perfect happiness, even in memory, is not common; and there were two
+points on which she was not quite easy. She doubted whether she had not
+transgressed the duty of woman by woman, in betraying her suspicions of
+Jane Fairfax's feelings to Frank Churchill. It was hardly right; but it
+had been so strong an idea, that it would escape her, and his submission
+to all that she told, was a compliment to her penetration, which made
+it difficult for her to be quite certain that she ought to have held her
+tongue.
+
+The other circumstance of regret related also to Jane Fairfax; and
+there she had no doubt. She did unfeignedly and unequivocally regret the
+inferiority of her own playing and singing. She did most heartily
+grieve over the idleness of her childhood--and sat down and practised
+vigorously an hour and a half.
+
+She was then interrupted by Harriet's coming in; and if Harriet's praise
+could have satisfied her, she might soon have been comforted.
+
+“Oh! if I could but play as well as you and Miss Fairfax!”
+
+“Don't class us together, Harriet. My playing is no more like her's,
+than a lamp is like sunshine.”
+
+“Oh! dear--I think you play the best of the two. I think you play quite
+as well as she does. I am sure I had much rather hear you. Every body
+last night said how well you played.”
+
+“Those who knew any thing about it, must have felt the difference. The
+truth is, Harriet, that my playing is just good enough to be praised,
+but Jane Fairfax's is much beyond it.”
+
+“Well, I always shall think that you play quite as well as she does, or
+that if there is any difference nobody would ever find it out. Mr. Cole
+said how much taste you had; and Mr. Frank Churchill talked a great deal
+about your taste, and that he valued taste much more than execution.”
+
+“Ah! but Jane Fairfax has them both, Harriet.”
+
+“Are you sure? I saw she had execution, but I did not know she had any
+taste. Nobody talked about it. And I hate Italian singing.--There is no
+understanding a word of it. Besides, if she does play so very well, you
+know, it is no more than she is obliged to do, because she will have to
+teach. The Coxes were wondering last night whether she would get into
+any great family. How did you think the Coxes looked?”
+
+“Just as they always do--very vulgar.”
+
+“They told me something,” said Harriet rather hesitatingly; “but it is
+nothing of any consequence.”
+
+Emma was obliged to ask what they had told her, though fearful of its
+producing Mr. Elton.
+
+“They told me--that Mr. Martin dined with them last Saturday.”
+
+“Oh!”
+
+“He came to their father upon some business, and he asked him to stay to
+dinner.”
+
+“Oh!”
+
+“They talked a great deal about him, especially Anne Cox. I do not know
+what she meant, but she asked me if I thought I should go and stay there
+again next summer.”
+
+“She meant to be impertinently curious, just as such an Anne Cox should
+be.”
+
+“She said he was very agreeable the day he dined there. He sat by her at
+dinner. Miss Nash thinks either of the Coxes would be very glad to marry
+him.”
+
+“Very likely.--I think they are, without exception, the most vulgar
+girls in Highbury.”
+
+Harriet had business at Ford's.--Emma thought it most prudent to go with
+her. Another accidental meeting with the Martins was possible, and in
+her present state, would be dangerous.
+
+Harriet, tempted by every thing and swayed by half a word, was always
+very long at a purchase; and while she was still hanging over muslins
+and changing her mind, Emma went to the door for amusement.--Much could
+not be hoped from the traffic of even the busiest part of Highbury;--Mr.
+Perry walking hastily by, Mr. William Cox letting himself in at the
+office-door, Mr. Cole's carriage-horses returning from exercise, or a
+stray letter-boy on an obstinate mule, were the liveliest objects she
+could presume to expect; and when her eyes fell only on the butcher with
+his tray, a tidy old woman travelling homewards from shop with her full
+basket, two curs quarrelling over a dirty bone, and a string of dawdling
+children round the baker's little bow-window eyeing the gingerbread, she
+knew she had no reason to complain, and was amused enough; quite enough
+still to stand at the door. A mind lively and at ease, can do with
+seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer.
+
+She looked down the Randalls road. The scene enlarged; two persons
+appeared; Mrs. Weston and her son-in-law; they were walking into
+Highbury;--to Hartfield of course. They were stopping, however, in the
+first place at Mrs. Bates's; whose house was a little nearer
+Randalls than Ford's; and had all but knocked, when Emma caught their
+eye.--Immediately they crossed the road and came forward to her; and the
+agreeableness of yesterday's engagement seemed to give fresh pleasure to
+the present meeting. Mrs. Weston informed her that she was going to call
+on the Bateses, in order to hear the new instrument.
+
+“For my companion tells me,” said she, “that I absolutely promised Miss
+Bates last night, that I would come this morning. I was not aware of it
+myself. I did not know that I had fixed a day, but as he says I did, I
+am going now.”
+
+“And while Mrs. Weston pays her visit, I may be allowed, I hope,” said
+Frank Churchill, “to join your party and wait for her at Hartfield--if
+you are going home.”
+
+Mrs. Weston was disappointed.
+
+“I thought you meant to go with me. They would be very much pleased.”
+
+“Me! I should be quite in the way. But, perhaps--I may be equally in the
+way here. Miss Woodhouse looks as if she did not want me. My aunt always
+sends me off when she is shopping. She says I fidget her to death; and
+Miss Woodhouse looks as if she could almost say the same. What am I to
+do?”
+
+“I am here on no business of my own,” said Emma; “I am only waiting for
+my friend. She will probably have soon done, and then we shall go home.
+But you had better go with Mrs. Weston and hear the instrument.”
+
+“Well--if you advise it.--But (with a smile) if Colonel Campbell should
+have employed a careless friend, and if it should prove to have an
+indifferent tone--what shall I say? I shall be no support to Mrs.
+Weston. She might do very well by herself. A disagreeable truth would be
+palatable through her lips, but I am the wretchedest being in the world
+at a civil falsehood.”
+
+“I do not believe any such thing,” replied Emma.--“I am persuaded that
+you can be as insincere as your neighbours, when it is necessary; but
+there is no reason to suppose the instrument is indifferent. Quite
+otherwise indeed, if I understood Miss Fairfax's opinion last night.”
+
+“Do come with me,” said Mrs. Weston, “if it be not very disagreeable to
+you. It need not detain us long. We will go to Hartfield afterwards.
+We will follow them to Hartfield. I really wish you to call with me. It
+will be felt so great an attention! and I always thought you meant it.”
+
+He could say no more; and with the hope of Hartfield to reward him,
+returned with Mrs. Weston to Mrs. Bates's door. Emma watched them in,
+and then joined Harriet at the interesting counter,--trying, with all
+the force of her own mind, to convince her that if she wanted plain
+muslin it was of no use to look at figured; and that a blue ribbon, be
+it ever so beautiful, would still never match her yellow pattern. At
+last it was all settled, even to the destination of the parcel.
+
+“Should I send it to Mrs. Goddard's, ma'am?” asked Mrs.
+Ford.--“Yes--no--yes, to Mrs. Goddard's. Only my pattern gown is at
+Hartfield. No, you shall send it to Hartfield, if you please. But then,
+Mrs. Goddard will want to see it.--And I could take the pattern gown
+home any day. But I shall want the ribbon directly--so it had better go
+to Hartfield--at least the ribbon. You could make it into two parcels,
+Mrs. Ford, could not you?”
+
+“It is not worth while, Harriet, to give Mrs. Ford the trouble of two
+parcels.”
+
+“No more it is.”
+
+“No trouble in the world, ma'am,” said the obliging Mrs. Ford.
+
+“Oh! but indeed I would much rather have it only in one. Then, if you
+please, you shall send it all to Mrs. Goddard's--I do not know--No, I
+think, Miss Woodhouse, I may just as well have it sent to Hartfield, and
+take it home with me at night. What do you advise?”
+
+“That you do not give another half-second to the subject. To Hartfield,
+if you please, Mrs. Ford.”
+
+“Aye, that will be much best,” said Harriet, quite satisfied, “I should
+not at all like to have it sent to Mrs. Goddard's.”
+
+Voices approached the shop--or rather one voice and two ladies: Mrs.
+Weston and Miss Bates met them at the door.
+
+“My dear Miss Woodhouse,” said the latter, “I am just run across to
+entreat the favour of you to come and sit down with us a little while,
+and give us your opinion of our new instrument; you and Miss Smith. How
+do you do, Miss Smith?--Very well I thank you.--And I begged Mrs. Weston
+to come with me, that I might be sure of succeeding.”
+
+“I hope Mrs. Bates and Miss Fairfax are--”
+
+“Very well, I am much obliged to you. My mother is delightfully well;
+and Jane caught no cold last night. How is Mr. Woodhouse?--I am so glad
+to hear such a good account. Mrs. Weston told me you were here.--Oh!
+then, said I, I must run across, I am sure Miss Woodhouse will allow me
+just to run across and entreat her to come in; my mother will be so
+very happy to see her--and now we are such a nice party, she cannot
+refuse.--'Aye, pray do,' said Mr. Frank Churchill, 'Miss Woodhouse's
+opinion of the instrument will be worth having.'--But, said I, I shall
+be more sure of succeeding if one of you will go with me.--'Oh,' said
+he, 'wait half a minute, till I have finished my job;'--For, would you
+believe it, Miss Woodhouse, there he is, in the most obliging manner in
+the world, fastening in the rivet of my mother's spectacles.--The rivet
+came out, you know, this morning.--So very obliging!--For my mother had
+no use of her spectacles--could not put them on. And, by the bye, every
+body ought to have two pair of spectacles; they should indeed. Jane said
+so. I meant to take them over to John Saunders the first thing I did,
+but something or other hindered me all the morning; first one thing,
+then another, there is no saying what, you know. At one time Patty came
+to say she thought the kitchen chimney wanted sweeping. Oh, said I,
+Patty do not come with your bad news to me. Here is the rivet of your
+mistress's spectacles out. Then the baked apples came home, Mrs. Wallis
+sent them by her boy; they are extremely civil and obliging to us, the
+Wallises, always--I have heard some people say that Mrs. Wallis can be
+uncivil and give a very rude answer, but we have never known any thing
+but the greatest attention from them. And it cannot be for the value
+of our custom now, for what is our consumption of bread, you know?
+Only three of us.--besides dear Jane at present--and she really eats
+nothing--makes such a shocking breakfast, you would be quite frightened
+if you saw it. I dare not let my mother know how little she eats--so I
+say one thing and then I say another, and it passes off. But about the
+middle of the day she gets hungry, and there is nothing she likes so
+well as these baked apples, and they are extremely wholesome, for I took
+the opportunity the other day of asking Mr. Perry; I happened to meet
+him in the street. Not that I had any doubt before--I have so often
+heard Mr. Woodhouse recommend a baked apple. I believe it is the only
+way that Mr. Woodhouse thinks the fruit thoroughly wholesome. We
+have apple-dumplings, however, very often. Patty makes an excellent
+apple-dumpling. Well, Mrs. Weston, you have prevailed, I hope, and these
+ladies will oblige us.”
+
+Emma would be “very happy to wait on Mrs. Bates, &c.,” and they did at
+last move out of the shop, with no farther delay from Miss Bates than,
+
+“How do you do, Mrs. Ford? I beg your pardon. I did not see you before.
+I hear you have a charming collection of new ribbons from town. Jane
+came back delighted yesterday. Thank ye, the gloves do very well--only a
+little too large about the wrist; but Jane is taking them in.”
+
+“What was I talking of?” said she, beginning again when they were all in
+the street.
+
+Emma wondered on what, of all the medley, she would fix.
+
+“I declare I cannot recollect what I was talking of.--Oh! my mother's
+spectacles. So very obliging of Mr. Frank Churchill! 'Oh!' said he,
+'I do think I can fasten the rivet; I like a job of this kind
+excessively.'--Which you know shewed him to be so very.... Indeed I must
+say that, much as I had heard of him before and much as I had expected,
+he very far exceeds any thing.... I do congratulate you, Mrs. Weston,
+most warmly. He seems every thing the fondest parent could....
+'Oh!' said he, 'I can fasten the rivet. I like a job of that sort
+excessively.' I never shall forget his manner. And when I brought out
+the baked apples from the closet, and hoped our friends would be so very
+obliging as to take some, 'Oh!' said he directly, 'there is nothing
+in the way of fruit half so good, and these are the finest-looking
+home-baked apples I ever saw in my life.' That, you know, was so
+very.... And I am sure, by his manner, it was no compliment. Indeed they
+are very delightful apples, and Mrs. Wallis does them full justice--only
+we do not have them baked more than twice, and Mr. Woodhouse made us
+promise to have them done three times--but Miss Woodhouse will be so
+good as not to mention it. The apples themselves are the very finest
+sort for baking, beyond a doubt; all from Donwell--some of Mr.
+Knightley's most liberal supply. He sends us a sack every year; and
+certainly there never was such a keeping apple anywhere as one of his
+trees--I believe there is two of them. My mother says the orchard was
+always famous in her younger days. But I was really quite shocked the
+other day--for Mr. Knightley called one morning, and Jane was eating
+these apples, and we talked about them and said how much she enjoyed
+them, and he asked whether we were not got to the end of our stock. 'I
+am sure you must be,' said he, 'and I will send you another supply; for
+I have a great many more than I can ever use. William Larkins let me
+keep a larger quantity than usual this year. I will send you some more,
+before they get good for nothing.' So I begged he would not--for really
+as to ours being gone, I could not absolutely say that we had a great
+many left--it was but half a dozen indeed; but they should be all kept
+for Jane; and I could not at all bear that he should be sending us more,
+so liberal as he had been already; and Jane said the same. And when
+he was gone, she almost quarrelled with me--No, I should not say
+quarrelled, for we never had a quarrel in our lives; but she was quite
+distressed that I had owned the apples were so nearly gone; she wished
+I had made him believe we had a great many left. Oh, said I, my dear,
+I did say as much as I could. However, the very same evening William
+Larkins came over with a large basket of apples, the same sort of
+apples, a bushel at least, and I was very much obliged, and went down
+and spoke to William Larkins and said every thing, as you may suppose.
+William Larkins is such an old acquaintance! I am always glad to see
+him. But, however, I found afterwards from Patty, that William said it
+was all the apples of _that_ sort his master had; he had brought them
+all--and now his master had not one left to bake or boil. William did
+not seem to mind it himself, he was so pleased to think his master had
+sold so many; for William, you know, thinks more of his master's profit
+than any thing; but Mrs. Hodges, he said, was quite displeased at their
+being all sent away. She could not bear that her master should not be
+able to have another apple-tart this spring. He told Patty this, but bid
+her not mind it, and be sure not to say any thing to us about it, for
+Mrs. Hodges _would_ be cross sometimes, and as long as so many sacks
+were sold, it did not signify who ate the remainder. And so Patty told
+me, and I was excessively shocked indeed! I would not have Mr. Knightley
+know any thing about it for the world! He would be so very.... I wanted
+to keep it from Jane's knowledge; but, unluckily, I had mentioned it
+before I was aware.”
+
+Miss Bates had just done as Patty opened the door; and her visitors
+walked upstairs without having any regular narration to attend to,
+pursued only by the sounds of her desultory good-will.
+
+“Pray take care, Mrs. Weston, there is a step at the turning. Pray take
+care, Miss Woodhouse, ours is rather a dark staircase--rather darker
+and narrower than one could wish. Miss Smith, pray take care. Miss
+Woodhouse, I am quite concerned, I am sure you hit your foot. Miss
+Smith, the step at the turning.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+The appearance of the little sitting-room as they entered, was
+tranquillity itself; Mrs. Bates, deprived of her usual employment,
+slumbering on one side of the fire, Frank Churchill, at a table near
+her, most deedily occupied about her spectacles, and Jane Fairfax,
+standing with her back to them, intent on her pianoforte.
+
+Busy as he was, however, the young man was yet able to shew a most happy
+countenance on seeing Emma again.
+
+“This is a pleasure,” said he, in rather a low voice, “coming at least
+ten minutes earlier than I had calculated. You find me trying to be
+useful; tell me if you think I shall succeed.”
+
+“What!” said Mrs. Weston, “have not you finished it yet? you would not
+earn a very good livelihood as a working silversmith at this rate.”
+
+“I have not been working uninterruptedly,” he replied, “I have been
+assisting Miss Fairfax in trying to make her instrument stand steadily,
+it was not quite firm; an unevenness in the floor, I believe. You see
+we have been wedging one leg with paper. This was very kind of you to be
+persuaded to come. I was almost afraid you would be hurrying home.”
+
+He contrived that she should be seated by him; and was sufficiently
+employed in looking out the best baked apple for her, and trying to make
+her help or advise him in his work, till Jane Fairfax was quite ready
+to sit down to the pianoforte again. That she was not immediately ready,
+Emma did suspect to arise from the state of her nerves; she had not yet
+possessed the instrument long enough to touch it without emotion; she
+must reason herself into the power of performance; and Emma could not
+but pity such feelings, whatever their origin, and could not but resolve
+never to expose them to her neighbour again.
+
+At last Jane began, and though the first bars were feebly given, the
+powers of the instrument were gradually done full justice to. Mrs.
+Weston had been delighted before, and was delighted again; Emma
+joined her in all her praise; and the pianoforte, with every proper
+discrimination, was pronounced to be altogether of the highest promise.
+
+“Whoever Colonel Campbell might employ,” said Frank Churchill, with a
+smile at Emma, “the person has not chosen ill. I heard a good deal of
+Colonel Campbell's taste at Weymouth; and the softness of the upper
+notes I am sure is exactly what he and _all_ _that_ _party_ would
+particularly prize. I dare say, Miss Fairfax, that he either gave his
+friend very minute directions, or wrote to Broadwood himself. Do not you
+think so?”
+
+Jane did not look round. She was not obliged to hear. Mrs. Weston had
+been speaking to her at the same moment.
+
+“It is not fair,” said Emma, in a whisper; “mine was a random guess. Do
+not distress her.”
+
+He shook his head with a smile, and looked as if he had very little
+doubt and very little mercy. Soon afterwards he began again,
+
+“How much your friends in Ireland must be enjoying your pleasure on this
+occasion, Miss Fairfax. I dare say they often think of you, and wonder
+which will be the day, the precise day of the instrument's coming to
+hand. Do you imagine Colonel Campbell knows the business to be going
+forward just at this time?--Do you imagine it to be the consequence
+of an immediate commission from him, or that he may have sent only
+a general direction, an order indefinite as to time, to depend upon
+contingencies and conveniences?”
+
+He paused. She could not but hear; she could not avoid answering,
+
+“Till I have a letter from Colonel Campbell,” said she, in a voice of
+forced calmness, “I can imagine nothing with any confidence. It must be
+all conjecture.”
+
+“Conjecture--aye, sometimes one conjectures right, and sometimes one
+conjectures wrong. I wish I could conjecture how soon I shall make this
+rivet quite firm. What nonsense one talks, Miss Woodhouse, when hard
+at work, if one talks at all;--your real workmen, I suppose, hold their
+tongues; but we gentlemen labourers if we get hold of a word--Miss
+Fairfax said something about conjecturing. There, it is done. I have the
+pleasure, madam, (to Mrs. Bates,) of restoring your spectacles, healed
+for the present.”
+
+He was very warmly thanked both by mother and daughter; to escape a
+little from the latter, he went to the pianoforte, and begged Miss
+Fairfax, who was still sitting at it, to play something more.
+
+“If you are very kind,” said he, “it will be one of the waltzes we
+danced last night;--let me live them over again. You did not enjoy them
+as I did; you appeared tired the whole time. I believe you were glad we
+danced no longer; but I would have given worlds--all the worlds one ever
+has to give--for another half-hour.”
+
+She played.
+
+“What felicity it is to hear a tune again which _has_ made one
+happy!--If I mistake not that was danced at Weymouth.”
+
+She looked up at him for a moment, coloured deeply, and played something
+else. He took some music from a chair near the pianoforte, and turning
+to Emma, said,
+
+“Here is something quite new to me. Do you know it?--Cramer.--And here
+are a new set of Irish melodies. That, from such a quarter, one might
+expect. This was all sent with the instrument. Very thoughtful of
+Colonel Campbell, was not it?--He knew Miss Fairfax could have no music
+here. I honour that part of the attention particularly; it shews it to
+have been so thoroughly from the heart. Nothing hastily done; nothing
+incomplete. True affection only could have prompted it.”
+
+Emma wished he would be less pointed, yet could not help being amused;
+and when on glancing her eye towards Jane Fairfax she caught the remains
+of a smile, when she saw that with all the deep blush of consciousness,
+there had been a smile of secret delight, she had less scruple in the
+amusement, and much less compunction with respect to her.--This
+amiable, upright, perfect Jane Fairfax was apparently cherishing very
+reprehensible feelings.
+
+He brought all the music to her, and they looked it over together.--Emma
+took the opportunity of whispering,
+
+“You speak too plain. She must understand you.”
+
+“I hope she does. I would have her understand me. I am not in the least
+ashamed of my meaning.”
+
+“But really, I am half ashamed, and wish I had never taken up the idea.”
+
+“I am very glad you did, and that you communicated it to me. I have now
+a key to all her odd looks and ways. Leave shame to her. If she does
+wrong, she ought to feel it.”
+
+“She is not entirely without it, I think.”
+
+“I do not see much sign of it. She is playing _Robin_ _Adair_ at this
+moment--_his_ favourite.”
+
+Shortly afterwards Miss Bates, passing near the window, descried Mr.
+Knightley on horse-back not far off.
+
+“Mr. Knightley I declare!--I must speak to him if possible, just to
+thank him. I will not open the window here; it would give you all cold;
+but I can go into my mother's room you know. I dare say he will come
+in when he knows who is here. Quite delightful to have you all meet
+so!--Our little room so honoured!”
+
+She was in the adjoining chamber while she still spoke, and opening the
+casement there, immediately called Mr. Knightley's attention, and every
+syllable of their conversation was as distinctly heard by the others, as
+if it had passed within the same apartment.
+
+“How d' ye do?--how d'ye do?--Very well, I thank you. So obliged to you
+for the carriage last night. We were just in time; my mother just ready
+for us. Pray come in; do come in. You will find some friends here.”
+
+So began Miss Bates; and Mr. Knightley seemed determined to be heard in
+his turn, for most resolutely and commandingly did he say,
+
+“How is your niece, Miss Bates?--I want to inquire after you all, but
+particularly your niece. How is Miss Fairfax?--I hope she caught no cold
+last night. How is she to-day? Tell me how Miss Fairfax is.”
+
+And Miss Bates was obliged to give a direct answer before he would hear
+her in any thing else. The listeners were amused; and Mrs. Weston gave
+Emma a look of particular meaning. But Emma still shook her head in
+steady scepticism.
+
+“So obliged to you!--so very much obliged to you for the carriage,”
+ resumed Miss Bates.
+
+He cut her short with,
+
+“I am going to Kingston. Can I do any thing for you?”
+
+“Oh! dear, Kingston--are you?--Mrs. Cole was saying the other day she
+wanted something from Kingston.”
+
+“Mrs. Cole has servants to send. Can I do any thing for _you_?”
+
+“No, I thank you. But do come in. Who do you think is here?--Miss
+Woodhouse and Miss Smith; so kind as to call to hear the new pianoforte.
+Do put up your horse at the Crown, and come in.”
+
+“Well,” said he, in a deliberating manner, “for five minutes, perhaps.”
+
+“And here is Mrs. Weston and Mr. Frank Churchill too!--Quite delightful;
+so many friends!”
+
+“No, not now, I thank you. I could not stay two minutes. I must get on
+to Kingston as fast as I can.”
+
+“Oh! do come in. They will be so very happy to see you.”
+
+“No, no; your room is full enough. I will call another day, and hear the
+pianoforte.”
+
+“Well, I am so sorry!--Oh! Mr. Knightley, what a delightful party last
+night; how extremely pleasant.--Did you ever see such dancing?--Was not
+it delightful?--Miss Woodhouse and Mr. Frank Churchill; I never saw any
+thing equal to it.”
+
+“Oh! very delightful indeed; I can say nothing less, for I suppose Miss
+Woodhouse and Mr. Frank Churchill are hearing every thing that passes.
+And (raising his voice still more) I do not see why Miss Fairfax should
+not be mentioned too. I think Miss Fairfax dances very well; and Mrs.
+Weston is the very best country-dance player, without exception,
+in England. Now, if your friends have any gratitude, they will say
+something pretty loud about you and me in return; but I cannot stay to
+hear it.”
+
+“Oh! Mr. Knightley, one moment more; something of consequence--so
+shocked!--Jane and I are both so shocked about the apples!”
+
+“What is the matter now?”
+
+“To think of your sending us all your store apples. You said you had
+a great many, and now you have not one left. We really are so shocked!
+Mrs. Hodges may well be angry. William Larkins mentioned it here. You
+should not have done it, indeed you should not. Ah! he is off. He never
+can bear to be thanked. But I thought he would have staid now, and it
+would have been a pity not to have mentioned.... Well, (returning to the
+room,) I have not been able to succeed. Mr. Knightley cannot stop. He is
+going to Kingston. He asked me if he could do any thing....”
+
+“Yes,” said Jane, “we heard his kind offers, we heard every thing.”
+
+“Oh! yes, my dear, I dare say you might, because you know, the door was
+open, and the window was open, and Mr. Knightley spoke loud. You must
+have heard every thing to be sure. 'Can I do any thing for you at
+Kingston?' said he; so I just mentioned.... Oh! Miss Woodhouse, must you
+be going?--You seem but just come--so very obliging of you.”
+
+Emma found it really time to be at home; the visit had already lasted
+long; and on examining watches, so much of the morning was perceived
+to be gone, that Mrs. Weston and her companion taking leave also, could
+allow themselves only to walk with the two young ladies to Hartfield
+gates, before they set off for Randalls.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+It may be possible to do without dancing entirely. Instances have been
+known of young people passing many, many months successively, without
+being at any ball of any description, and no material injury accrue
+either to body or mind;--but when a beginning is made--when the
+felicities of rapid motion have once been, though slightly, felt--it
+must be a very heavy set that does not ask for more.
+
+Frank Churchill had danced once at Highbury, and longed to dance again;
+and the last half-hour of an evening which Mr. Woodhouse was persuaded
+to spend with his daughter at Randalls, was passed by the two young
+people in schemes on the subject. Frank's was the first idea; and his
+the greatest zeal in pursuing it; for the lady was the best judge of the
+difficulties, and the most solicitous for accommodation and appearance.
+But still she had inclination enough for shewing people again how
+delightfully Mr. Frank Churchill and Miss Woodhouse danced--for
+doing that in which she need not blush to compare herself with Jane
+Fairfax--and even for simple dancing itself, without any of the wicked
+aids of vanity--to assist him first in pacing out the room they were in
+to see what it could be made to hold--and then in taking the dimensions
+of the other parlour, in the hope of discovering, in spite of all that
+Mr. Weston could say of their exactly equal size, that it was a little
+the largest.
+
+His first proposition and request, that the dance begun at Mr. Cole's
+should be finished there--that the same party should be collected,
+and the same musician engaged, met with the readiest acquiescence. Mr.
+Weston entered into the idea with thorough enjoyment, and Mrs. Weston
+most willingly undertook to play as long as they could wish to dance;
+and the interesting employment had followed, of reckoning up exactly who
+there would be, and portioning out the indispensable division of space
+to every couple.
+
+“You and Miss Smith, and Miss Fairfax, will be three, and the two Miss
+Coxes five,” had been repeated many times over. “And there will be the
+two Gilberts, young Cox, my father, and myself, besides Mr. Knightley.
+Yes, that will be quite enough for pleasure. You and Miss Smith, and
+Miss Fairfax, will be three, and the two Miss Coxes five; and for five
+couple there will be plenty of room.”
+
+But soon it came to be on one side,
+
+“But will there be good room for five couple?--I really do not think
+there will.”
+
+On another,
+
+“And after all, five couple are not enough to make it worth while to
+stand up. Five couple are nothing, when one thinks seriously about it.
+It will not do to _invite_ five couple. It can be allowable only as the
+thought of the moment.”
+
+Somebody said that _Miss_ Gilbert was expected at her brother's, and
+must be invited with the rest. Somebody else believed _Mrs_. Gilbert
+would have danced the other evening, if she had been asked. A word was
+put in for a second young Cox; and at last, Mr. Weston naming one family
+of cousins who must be included, and another of very old acquaintance
+who could not be left out, it became a certainty that the five couple
+would be at least ten, and a very interesting speculation in what
+possible manner they could be disposed of.
+
+The doors of the two rooms were just opposite each other. “Might not
+they use both rooms, and dance across the passage?” It seemed the
+best scheme; and yet it was not so good but that many of them wanted a
+better. Emma said it would be awkward; Mrs. Weston was in distress about
+the supper; and Mr. Woodhouse opposed it earnestly, on the score of
+health. It made him so very unhappy, indeed, that it could not be
+persevered in.
+
+“Oh! no,” said he; “it would be the extreme of imprudence. I could not
+bear it for Emma!--Emma is not strong. She would catch a dreadful cold.
+So would poor little Harriet. So you would all. Mrs. Weston, you would
+be quite laid up; do not let them talk of such a wild thing. Pray do
+not let them talk of it. That young man (speaking lower) is very
+thoughtless. Do not tell his father, but that young man is not quite
+the thing. He has been opening the doors very often this evening,
+and keeping them open very inconsiderately. He does not think of the
+draught. I do not mean to set you against him, but indeed he is not
+quite the thing!”
+
+Mrs. Weston was sorry for such a charge. She knew the importance of
+it, and said every thing in her power to do it away. Every door was now
+closed, the passage plan given up, and the first scheme of dancing only
+in the room they were in resorted to again; and with such good-will on
+Frank Churchill's part, that the space which a quarter of an hour before
+had been deemed barely sufficient for five couple, was now endeavoured
+to be made out quite enough for ten.
+
+“We were too magnificent,” said he. “We allowed unnecessary room. Ten
+couple may stand here very well.”
+
+Emma demurred. “It would be a crowd--a sad crowd; and what could be
+worse than dancing without space to turn in?”
+
+“Very true,” he gravely replied; “it was very bad.” But still he went on
+measuring, and still he ended with,
+
+“I think there will be very tolerable room for ten couple.”
+
+“No, no,” said she, “you are quite unreasonable. It would be dreadful
+to be standing so close! Nothing can be farther from pleasure than to be
+dancing in a crowd--and a crowd in a little room!”
+
+“There is no denying it,” he replied. “I agree with you exactly. A crowd
+in a little room--Miss Woodhouse, you have the art of giving pictures
+in a few words. Exquisite, quite exquisite!--Still, however, having
+proceeded so far, one is unwilling to give the matter up. It would be
+a disappointment to my father--and altogether--I do not know that--I am
+rather of opinion that ten couple might stand here very well.”
+
+Emma perceived that the nature of his gallantry was a little
+self-willed, and that he would rather oppose than lose the pleasure of
+dancing with her; but she took the compliment, and forgave the rest.
+Had she intended ever to _marry_ him, it might have been worth while to
+pause and consider, and try to understand the value of his preference,
+and the character of his temper; but for all the purposes of their
+acquaintance, he was quite amiable enough.
+
+Before the middle of the next day, he was at Hartfield; and he entered
+the room with such an agreeable smile as certified the continuance of
+the scheme. It soon appeared that he came to announce an improvement.
+
+“Well, Miss Woodhouse,” he almost immediately began, “your inclination
+for dancing has not been quite frightened away, I hope, by the terrors
+of my father's little rooms. I bring a new proposal on the subject:--a
+thought of my father's, which waits only your approbation to be acted
+upon. May I hope for the honour of your hand for the two first dances
+of this little projected ball, to be given, not at Randalls, but at the
+Crown Inn?”
+
+“The Crown!”
+
+“Yes; if you and Mr. Woodhouse see no objection, and I trust you cannot,
+my father hopes his friends will be so kind as to visit him there.
+Better accommodations, he can promise them, and not a less grateful
+welcome than at Randalls. It is his own idea. Mrs. Weston sees no
+objection to it, provided you are satisfied. This is what we all feel.
+Oh! you were perfectly right! Ten couple, in either of the Randalls
+rooms, would have been insufferable!--Dreadful!--I felt how right you
+were the whole time, but was too anxious for securing _any_ _thing_
+to like to yield. Is not it a good exchange?--You consent--I hope you
+consent?”
+
+“It appears to me a plan that nobody can object to, if Mr. and Mrs.
+Weston do not. I think it admirable; and, as far as I can answer for
+myself, shall be most happy--It seems the only improvement that could
+be. Papa, do you not think it an excellent improvement?”
+
+She was obliged to repeat and explain it, before it was fully
+comprehended; and then, being quite new, farther representations were
+necessary to make it acceptable.
+
+“No; he thought it very far from an improvement--a very bad plan--much
+worse than the other. A room at an inn was always damp and dangerous;
+never properly aired, or fit to be inhabited. If they must dance, they
+had better dance at Randalls. He had never been in the room at the Crown
+in his life--did not know the people who kept it by sight.--Oh! no--a
+very bad plan. They would catch worse colds at the Crown than anywhere.”
+
+“I was going to observe, sir,” said Frank Churchill, “that one of the
+great recommendations of this change would be the very little danger
+of any body's catching cold--so much less danger at the Crown than at
+Randalls! Mr. Perry might have reason to regret the alteration, but
+nobody else could.”
+
+“Sir,” said Mr. Woodhouse, rather warmly, “you are very much mistaken
+if you suppose Mr. Perry to be that sort of character. Mr. Perry is
+extremely concerned when any of us are ill. But I do not understand how
+the room at the Crown can be safer for you than your father's house.”
+
+“From the very circumstance of its being larger, sir. We shall have no
+occasion to open the windows at all--not once the whole evening; and it
+is that dreadful habit of opening the windows, letting in cold air upon
+heated bodies, which (as you well know, sir) does the mischief.”
+
+“Open the windows!--but surely, Mr. Churchill, nobody would think of
+opening the windows at Randalls. Nobody could be so imprudent! I never
+heard of such a thing. Dancing with open windows!--I am sure, neither
+your father nor Mrs. Weston (poor Miss Taylor that was) would suffer
+it.”
+
+“Ah! sir--but a thoughtless young person will sometimes step behind a
+window-curtain, and throw up a sash, without its being suspected. I have
+often known it done myself.”
+
+“Have you indeed, sir?--Bless me! I never could have supposed it. But I
+live out of the world, and am often astonished at what I hear. However,
+this does make a difference; and, perhaps, when we come to talk it
+over--but these sort of things require a good deal of consideration. One
+cannot resolve upon them in a hurry. If Mr. and Mrs. Weston will be so
+obliging as to call here one morning, we may talk it over, and see what
+can be done.”
+
+“But, unfortunately, sir, my time is so limited--”
+
+“Oh!” interrupted Emma, “there will be plenty of time for talking every
+thing over. There is no hurry at all. If it can be contrived to be at
+the Crown, papa, it will be very convenient for the horses. They will be
+so near their own stable.”
+
+“So they will, my dear. That is a great thing. Not that James ever
+complains; but it is right to spare our horses when we can. If I could
+be sure of the rooms being thoroughly aired--but is Mrs. Stokes to be
+trusted? I doubt it. I do not know her, even by sight.”
+
+“I can answer for every thing of that nature, sir, because it will be
+under Mrs. Weston's care. Mrs. Weston undertakes to direct the whole.”
+
+“There, papa!--Now you must be satisfied--Our own dear Mrs. Weston, who
+is carefulness itself. Do not you remember what Mr. Perry said, so many
+years ago, when I had the measles? 'If _Miss_ _Taylor_ undertakes to
+wrap Miss Emma up, you need not have any fears, sir.' How often have I
+heard you speak of it as such a compliment to her!”
+
+“Aye, very true. Mr. Perry did say so. I shall never forget it. Poor
+little Emma! You were very bad with the measles; that is, you would have
+been very bad, but for Perry's great attention. He came four times a day
+for a week. He said, from the first, it was a very good sort--which
+was our great comfort; but the measles are a dreadful complaint. I hope
+whenever poor Isabella's little ones have the measles, she will send for
+Perry.”
+
+“My father and Mrs. Weston are at the Crown at this moment,” said Frank
+Churchill, “examining the capabilities of the house. I left them there
+and came on to Hartfield, impatient for your opinion, and hoping you
+might be persuaded to join them and give your advice on the spot. I was
+desired to say so from both. It would be the greatest pleasure to
+them, if you could allow me to attend you there. They can do nothing
+satisfactorily without you.”
+
+Emma was most happy to be called to such a council; and her father,
+engaging to think it all over while she was gone, the two young people
+set off together without delay for the Crown. There were Mr. and Mrs.
+Weston; delighted to see her and receive her approbation, very busy and
+very happy in their different way; she, in some little distress; and he,
+finding every thing perfect.
+
+“Emma,” said she, “this paper is worse than I expected. Look! in places
+you see it is dreadfully dirty; and the wainscot is more yellow and
+forlorn than any thing I could have imagined.”
+
+“My dear, you are too particular,” said her husband. “What does all that
+signify? You will see nothing of it by candlelight. It will be as
+clean as Randalls by candlelight. We never see any thing of it on our
+club-nights.”
+
+The ladies here probably exchanged looks which meant, “Men never know
+when things are dirty or not;” and the gentlemen perhaps thought each to
+himself, “Women will have their little nonsenses and needless cares.”
+
+One perplexity, however, arose, which the gentlemen did not disdain.
+It regarded a supper-room. At the time of the ballroom's being built,
+suppers had not been in question; and a small card-room adjoining, was
+the only addition. What was to be done? This card-room would be wanted
+as a card-room now; or, if cards were conveniently voted unnecessary
+by their four selves, still was it not too small for any comfortable
+supper? Another room of much better size might be secured for the
+purpose; but it was at the other end of the house, and a long awkward
+passage must be gone through to get at it. This made a difficulty. Mrs.
+Weston was afraid of draughts for the young people in that passage;
+and neither Emma nor the gentlemen could tolerate the prospect of being
+miserably crowded at supper.
+
+Mrs. Weston proposed having no regular supper; merely sandwiches,
+&c., set out in the little room; but that was scouted as a wretched
+suggestion. A private dance, without sitting down to supper, was
+pronounced an infamous fraud upon the rights of men and women; and
+Mrs. Weston must not speak of it again. She then took another line of
+expediency, and looking into the doubtful room, observed,
+
+“I do not think it _is_ so very small. We shall not be many, you know.”
+
+And Mr. Weston at the same time, walking briskly with long steps through
+the passage, was calling out,
+
+“You talk a great deal of the length of this passage, my dear. It is a
+mere nothing after all; and not the least draught from the stairs.”
+
+“I wish,” said Mrs. Weston, “one could know which arrangement our guests
+in general would like best. To do what would be most generally pleasing
+must be our object--if one could but tell what that would be.”
+
+“Yes, very true,” cried Frank, “very true. You want your neighbours'
+opinions. I do not wonder at you. If one could ascertain what the chief
+of them--the Coles, for instance. They are not far off. Shall I call
+upon them? Or Miss Bates? She is still nearer.--And I do not know
+whether Miss Bates is not as likely to understand the inclinations of
+the rest of the people as any body. I think we do want a larger council.
+Suppose I go and invite Miss Bates to join us?”
+
+“Well--if you please,” said Mrs. Weston rather hesitating, “if you think
+she will be of any use.”
+
+“You will get nothing to the purpose from Miss Bates,” said Emma. “She
+will be all delight and gratitude, but she will tell you nothing. She
+will not even listen to your questions. I see no advantage in consulting
+Miss Bates.”
+
+“But she is so amusing, so extremely amusing! I am very fond of hearing
+Miss Bates talk. And I need not bring the whole family, you know.”
+
+Here Mr. Weston joined them, and on hearing what was proposed, gave it
+his decided approbation.
+
+“Aye, do, Frank.--Go and fetch Miss Bates, and let us end the matter at
+once. She will enjoy the scheme, I am sure; and I do not know a properer
+person for shewing us how to do away difficulties. Fetch Miss Bates.
+We are growing a little too nice. She is a standing lesson of how to be
+happy. But fetch them both. Invite them both.”
+
+“Both sir! Can the old lady?”...
+
+“The old lady! No, the young lady, to be sure. I shall think you a great
+blockhead, Frank, if you bring the aunt without the niece.”
+
+“Oh! I beg your pardon, sir. I did not immediately recollect.
+Undoubtedly if you wish it, I will endeavour to persuade them both.” And
+away he ran.
+
+Long before he reappeared, attending the short, neat, brisk-moving aunt,
+and her elegant niece,--Mrs. Weston, like a sweet-tempered woman and
+a good wife, had examined the passage again, and found the evils of it
+much less than she had supposed before--indeed very trifling; and here
+ended the difficulties of decision. All the rest, in speculation at
+least, was perfectly smooth. All the minor arrangements of table and
+chair, lights and music, tea and supper, made themselves; or were left
+as mere trifles to be settled at any time between Mrs. Weston and Mrs.
+Stokes.--Every body invited, was certainly to come; Frank had already
+written to Enscombe to propose staying a few days beyond his fortnight,
+which could not possibly be refused. And a delightful dance it was to
+be.
+
+Most cordially, when Miss Bates arrived, did she agree that it must.
+As a counsellor she was not wanted; but as an approver, (a much safer
+character,) she was truly welcome. Her approbation, at once general
+and minute, warm and incessant, could not but please; and for another
+half-hour they were all walking to and fro, between the different rooms,
+some suggesting, some attending, and all in happy enjoyment of the
+future. The party did not break up without Emma's being positively
+secured for the two first dances by the hero of the evening, nor without
+her overhearing Mr. Weston whisper to his wife, “He has asked her, my
+dear. That's right. I knew he would!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+One thing only was wanting to make the prospect of the ball completely
+satisfactory to Emma--its being fixed for a day within the granted
+term of Frank Churchill's stay in Surry; for, in spite of Mr. Weston's
+confidence, she could not think it so very impossible that the
+Churchills might not allow their nephew to remain a day beyond his
+fortnight. But this was not judged feasible. The preparations must take
+their time, nothing could be properly ready till the third week were
+entered on, and for a few days they must be planning, proceeding and
+hoping in uncertainty--at the risk--in her opinion, the great risk, of
+its being all in vain.
+
+Enscombe however was gracious, gracious in fact, if not in word. His
+wish of staying longer evidently did not please; but it was not opposed.
+All was safe and prosperous; and as the removal of one solicitude
+generally makes way for another, Emma, being now certain of her
+ball, began to adopt as the next vexation Mr. Knightley's provoking
+indifference about it. Either because he did not dance himself, or
+because the plan had been formed without his being consulted, he
+seemed resolved that it should not interest him, determined against its
+exciting any present curiosity, or affording him any future amusement.
+To her voluntary communications Emma could get no more approving reply,
+than,
+
+“Very well. If the Westons think it worth while to be at all this
+trouble for a few hours of noisy entertainment, I have nothing to say
+against it, but that they shall not chuse pleasures for me.--Oh! yes,
+I must be there; I could not refuse; and I will keep as much awake as
+I can; but I would rather be at home, looking over William Larkins's
+week's account; much rather, I confess.--Pleasure in seeing
+dancing!--not I, indeed--I never look at it--I do not know who
+does.--Fine dancing, I believe, like virtue, must be its own reward.
+Those who are standing by are usually thinking of something very
+different.”
+
+This Emma felt was aimed at her; and it made her quite angry. It was not
+in compliment to Jane Fairfax however that he was so indifferent, or so
+indignant; he was not guided by _her_ feelings in reprobating the ball,
+for _she_ enjoyed the thought of it to an extraordinary degree. It made
+her animated--open hearted--she voluntarily said;--
+
+“Oh! Miss Woodhouse, I hope nothing may happen to prevent the ball.
+What a disappointment it would be! I do look forward to it, I own, with
+_very_ great pleasure.”
+
+It was not to oblige Jane Fairfax therefore that he would have preferred
+the society of William Larkins. No!--she was more and more convinced
+that Mrs. Weston was quite mistaken in that surmise. There was a great
+deal of friendly and of compassionate attachment on his side--but no
+love.
+
+Alas! there was soon no leisure for quarrelling with Mr. Knightley. Two
+days of joyful security were immediately followed by the over-throw of
+every thing. A letter arrived from Mr. Churchill to urge his nephew's
+instant return. Mrs. Churchill was unwell--far too unwell to do without
+him; she had been in a very suffering state (so said her husband)
+when writing to her nephew two days before, though from her usual
+unwillingness to give pain, and constant habit of never thinking of
+herself, she had not mentioned it; but now she was too ill to trifle,
+and must entreat him to set off for Enscombe without delay.
+
+The substance of this letter was forwarded to Emma, in a note from Mrs.
+Weston, instantly. As to his going, it was inevitable. He must be gone
+within a few hours, though without feeling any real alarm for his aunt,
+to lessen his repugnance. He knew her illnesses; they never occurred but
+for her own convenience.
+
+Mrs. Weston added, “that he could only allow himself time to hurry to
+Highbury, after breakfast, and take leave of the few friends there
+whom he could suppose to feel any interest in him; and that he might be
+expected at Hartfield very soon.”
+
+This wretched note was the finale of Emma's breakfast. When once it had
+been read, there was no doing any thing, but lament and exclaim. The
+loss of the ball--the loss of the young man--and all that the young man
+might be feeling!--It was too wretched!--Such a delightful evening as
+it would have been!--Every body so happy! and she and her partner the
+happiest!--“I said it would be so,” was the only consolation.
+
+Her father's feelings were quite distinct. He thought principally of
+Mrs. Churchill's illness, and wanted to know how she was treated; and as
+for the ball, it was shocking to have dear Emma disappointed; but they
+would all be safer at home.
+
+Emma was ready for her visitor some time before he appeared; but if this
+reflected at all upon his impatience, his sorrowful look and total want
+of spirits when he did come might redeem him. He felt the going away
+almost too much to speak of it. His dejection was most evident. He
+sat really lost in thought for the first few minutes; and when rousing
+himself, it was only to say,
+
+“Of all horrid things, leave-taking is the worst.”
+
+“But you will come again,” said Emma. “This will not be your only visit
+to Randalls.”
+
+“Ah!--(shaking his head)--the uncertainty of when I may be able to
+return!--I shall try for it with a zeal!--It will be the object of
+all my thoughts and cares!--and if my uncle and aunt go to town this
+spring--but I am afraid--they did not stir last spring--I am afraid it
+is a custom gone for ever.”
+
+“Our poor ball must be quite given up.”
+
+“Ah! that ball!--why did we wait for any thing?--why not seize the
+pleasure at once?--How often is happiness destroyed by preparation,
+foolish preparation!--You told us it would be so.--Oh! Miss Woodhouse,
+why are you always so right?”
+
+“Indeed, I am very sorry to be right in this instance. I would much
+rather have been merry than wise.”
+
+“If I can come again, we are still to have our ball. My father depends
+on it. Do not forget your engagement.”
+
+Emma looked graciously.
+
+“Such a fortnight as it has been!” he continued; “every day more
+precious and more delightful than the day before!--every day making
+me less fit to bear any other place. Happy those, who can remain at
+Highbury!”
+
+“As you do us such ample justice now,” said Emma, laughing, “I will
+venture to ask, whether you did not come a little doubtfully at first?
+Do not we rather surpass your expectations? I am sure we do. I am sure
+you did not much expect to like us. You would not have been so long in
+coming, if you had had a pleasant idea of Highbury.”
+
+He laughed rather consciously; and though denying the sentiment, Emma
+was convinced that it had been so.
+
+“And you must be off this very morning?”
+
+“Yes; my father is to join me here: we shall walk back together, and I
+must be off immediately. I am almost afraid that every moment will bring
+him.”
+
+“Not five minutes to spare even for your friends Miss Fairfax and Miss
+Bates? How unlucky! Miss Bates's powerful, argumentative mind might have
+strengthened yours.”
+
+“Yes--I _have_ called there; passing the door, I thought it better. It
+was a right thing to do. I went in for three minutes, and was detained
+by Miss Bates's being absent. She was out; and I felt it impossible not
+to wait till she came in. She is a woman that one may, that one _must_
+laugh at; but that one would not wish to slight. It was better to pay my
+visit, then”--
+
+He hesitated, got up, walked to a window.
+
+“In short,” said he, “perhaps, Miss Woodhouse--I think you can hardly be
+quite without suspicion”--
+
+He looked at her, as if wanting to read her thoughts. She hardly knew
+what to say. It seemed like the forerunner of something absolutely
+serious, which she did not wish. Forcing herself to speak, therefore, in
+the hope of putting it by, she calmly said,
+
+“You are quite in the right; it was most natural to pay your visit,
+then”--
+
+He was silent. She believed he was looking at her; probably reflecting
+on what she had said, and trying to understand the manner. She heard
+him sigh. It was natural for him to feel that he had _cause_ to sigh.
+He could not believe her to be encouraging him. A few awkward moments
+passed, and he sat down again; and in a more determined manner said,
+
+“It was something to feel that all the rest of my time might be given to
+Hartfield. My regard for Hartfield is most warm”--
+
+He stopt again, rose again, and seemed quite embarrassed.--He was more
+in love with her than Emma had supposed; and who can say how it might
+have ended, if his father had not made his appearance? Mr. Woodhouse
+soon followed; and the necessity of exertion made him composed.
+
+A very few minutes more, however, completed the present trial. Mr.
+Weston, always alert when business was to be done, and as incapable of
+procrastinating any evil that was inevitable, as of foreseeing any that
+was doubtful, said, “It was time to go;” and the young man, though he
+might and did sigh, could not but agree, to take leave.
+
+“I shall hear about you all,” said he; “that is my chief consolation.
+I shall hear of every thing that is going on among you. I have engaged
+Mrs. Weston to correspond with me. She has been so kind as to promise
+it. Oh! the blessing of a female correspondent, when one is really
+interested in the absent!--she will tell me every thing. In her letters
+I shall be at dear Highbury again.”
+
+A very friendly shake of the hand, a very earnest “Good-bye,” closed the
+speech, and the door had soon shut out Frank Churchill. Short had been
+the notice--short their meeting; he was gone; and Emma felt so sorry
+to part, and foresaw so great a loss to their little society from his
+absence as to begin to be afraid of being too sorry, and feeling it too
+much.
+
+It was a sad change. They had been meeting almost every day since his
+arrival. Certainly his being at Randalls had given great spirit to
+the last two weeks--indescribable spirit; the idea, the expectation
+of seeing him which every morning had brought, the assurance of his
+attentions, his liveliness, his manners! It had been a very happy
+fortnight, and forlorn must be the sinking from it into the common
+course of Hartfield days. To complete every other recommendation, he had
+_almost_ told her that he loved her. What strength, or what constancy of
+affection he might be subject to, was another point; but at present
+she could not doubt his having a decidedly warm admiration, a conscious
+preference of herself; and this persuasion, joined to all the rest,
+made her think that she _must_ be a little in love with him, in spite of
+every previous determination against it.
+
+“I certainly must,” said she. “This sensation of listlessness,
+weariness, stupidity, this disinclination to sit down and employ myself,
+this feeling of every thing's being dull and insipid about the house!--
+I must be in love; I should be the oddest creature in the world if I
+were not--for a few weeks at least. Well! evil to some is always good to
+others. I shall have many fellow-mourners for the ball, if not for Frank
+Churchill; but Mr. Knightley will be happy. He may spend the evening
+with his dear William Larkins now if he likes.”
+
+Mr. Knightley, however, shewed no triumphant happiness. He could not say
+that he was sorry on his own account; his very cheerful look would have
+contradicted him if he had; but he said, and very steadily, that he
+was sorry for the disappointment of the others, and with considerable
+kindness added,
+
+“You, Emma, who have so few opportunities of dancing, you are really out
+of luck; you are very much out of luck!”
+
+It was some days before she saw Jane Fairfax, to judge of her honest
+regret in this woeful change; but when they did meet, her composure
+was odious. She had been particularly unwell, however, suffering from
+headache to a degree, which made her aunt declare, that had the ball
+taken place, she did not think Jane could have attended it; and it was
+charity to impute some of her unbecoming indifference to the languor of
+ill-health.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+Emma continued to entertain no doubt of her being in love. Her ideas
+only varied as to the how much. At first, she thought it was a good
+deal; and afterwards, but little. She had great pleasure in hearing
+Frank Churchill talked of; and, for his sake, greater pleasure than ever
+in seeing Mr. and Mrs. Weston; she was very often thinking of him, and
+quite impatient for a letter, that she might know how he was, how were
+his spirits, how was his aunt, and what was the chance of his coming to
+Randalls again this spring. But, on the other hand, she could not admit
+herself to be unhappy, nor, after the first morning, to be less disposed
+for employment than usual; she was still busy and cheerful; and,
+pleasing as he was, she could yet imagine him to have faults; and
+farther, though thinking of him so much, and, as she sat drawing or
+working, forming a thousand amusing schemes for the progress and close
+of their attachment, fancying interesting dialogues, and inventing
+elegant letters; the conclusion of every imaginary declaration on his
+side was that she _refused_ _him_. Their affection was always to subside
+into friendship. Every thing tender and charming was to mark their
+parting; but still they were to part. When she became sensible of this,
+it struck her that she could not be very much in love; for in spite of
+her previous and fixed determination never to quit her father, never
+to marry, a strong attachment certainly must produce more of a struggle
+than she could foresee in her own feelings.
+
+“I do not find myself making any use of the word _sacrifice_,” said
+she.--“In not one of all my clever replies, my delicate negatives, is
+there any allusion to making a sacrifice. I do suspect that he is not
+really necessary to my happiness. So much the better. I certainly will
+not persuade myself to feel more than I do. I am quite enough in love. I
+should be sorry to be more.”
+
+Upon the whole, she was equally contented with her view of his feelings.
+
+“_He_ is undoubtedly very much in love--every thing denotes it--very
+much in love indeed!--and when he comes again, if his affection
+continue, I must be on my guard not to encourage it.--It would be most
+inexcusable to do otherwise, as my own mind is quite made up. Not that I
+imagine he can think I have been encouraging him hitherto. No, if he
+had believed me at all to share his feelings, he would not have been
+so wretched. Could he have thought himself encouraged, his looks and
+language at parting would have been different.--Still, however, I must
+be on my guard. This is in the supposition of his attachment continuing
+what it now is; but I do not know that I expect it will; I do not look
+upon him to be quite the sort of man--I do not altogether build upon
+his steadiness or constancy.--His feelings are warm, but I can imagine
+them rather changeable.--Every consideration of the subject, in short,
+makes me thankful that my happiness is not more deeply involved.--I
+shall do very well again after a little while--and then, it will be a
+good thing over; for they say every body is in love once in their lives,
+and I shall have been let off easily.”
+
+When his letter to Mrs. Weston arrived, Emma had the perusal of it; and
+she read it with a degree of pleasure and admiration which made her
+at first shake her head over her own sensations, and think she had
+undervalued their strength. It was a long, well-written letter, giving
+the particulars of his journey and of his feelings, expressing all the
+affection, gratitude, and respect which was natural and honourable,
+and describing every thing exterior and local that could be supposed
+attractive, with spirit and precision. No suspicious flourishes now of
+apology or concern; it was the language of real feeling towards Mrs.
+Weston; and the transition from Highbury to Enscombe, the contrast
+between the places in some of the first blessings of social life was
+just enough touched on to shew how keenly it was felt, and how much more
+might have been said but for the restraints of propriety.--The charm
+of her own name was not wanting. _Miss_ _Woodhouse_ appeared more than
+once, and never without a something of pleasing connexion, either a
+compliment to her taste, or a remembrance of what she had said; and in
+the very last time of its meeting her eye, unadorned as it was by any
+such broad wreath of gallantry, she yet could discern the effect of
+her influence and acknowledge the greatest compliment perhaps of all
+conveyed. Compressed into the very lowest vacant corner were these
+words--“I had not a spare moment on Tuesday, as you know, for Miss
+Woodhouse's beautiful little friend. Pray make my excuses and adieus
+to her.” This, Emma could not doubt, was all for herself. Harriet was
+remembered only from being _her_ friend. His information and prospects
+as to Enscombe were neither worse nor better than had been anticipated;
+Mrs. Churchill was recovering, and he dared not yet, even in his own
+imagination, fix a time for coming to Randalls again.
+
+Gratifying, however, and stimulative as was the letter in the material
+part, its sentiments, she yet found, when it was folded up and returned
+to Mrs. Weston, that it had not added any lasting warmth, that she could
+still do without the writer, and that he must learn to do without her.
+Her intentions were unchanged. Her resolution of refusal only grew more
+interesting by the addition of a scheme for his subsequent consolation
+and happiness. His recollection of Harriet, and the words which
+clothed it, the “beautiful little friend,” suggested to her the
+idea of Harriet's succeeding her in his affections. Was it
+impossible?--No.--Harriet undoubtedly was greatly his inferior in
+understanding; but he had been very much struck with the loveliness
+of her face and the warm simplicity of her manner; and all the
+probabilities of circumstance and connexion were in her favour.--For
+Harriet, it would be advantageous and delightful indeed.
+
+“I must not dwell upon it,” said she.--“I must not think of it. I know
+the danger of indulging such speculations. But stranger things have
+happened; and when we cease to care for each other as we do now, it
+will be the means of confirming us in that sort of true disinterested
+friendship which I can already look forward to with pleasure.”
+
+It was well to have a comfort in store on Harriet's behalf, though it
+might be wise to let the fancy touch it seldom; for evil in that quarter
+was at hand. As Frank Churchill's arrival had succeeded Mr. Elton's
+engagement in the conversation of Highbury, as the latest interest
+had entirely borne down the first, so now upon Frank Churchill's
+disappearance, Mr. Elton's concerns were assuming the most irresistible
+form.--His wedding-day was named. He would soon be among them again; Mr.
+Elton and his bride. There was hardly time to talk over the first letter
+from Enscombe before “Mr. Elton and his bride” was in every body's
+mouth, and Frank Churchill was forgotten. Emma grew sick at the sound.
+She had had three weeks of happy exemption from Mr. Elton; and Harriet's
+mind, she had been willing to hope, had been lately gaining strength.
+With Mr. Weston's ball in view at least, there had been a great deal of
+insensibility to other things; but it was now too evident that she had
+not attained such a state of composure as could stand against the actual
+approach--new carriage, bell-ringing, and all.
+
+Poor Harriet was in a flutter of spirits which required all the
+reasonings and soothings and attentions of every kind that Emma could
+give. Emma felt that she could not do too much for her, that Harriet had
+a right to all her ingenuity and all her patience; but it was heavy work
+to be for ever convincing without producing any effect, for ever agreed
+to, without being able to make their opinions the same. Harriet listened
+submissively, and said “it was very true--it was just as Miss Woodhouse
+described--it was not worth while to think about them--and she would not
+think about them any longer” but no change of subject could avail, and
+the next half-hour saw her as anxious and restless about the Eltons as
+before. At last Emma attacked her on another ground.
+
+“Your allowing yourself to be so occupied and so unhappy about Mr.
+Elton's marrying, Harriet, is the strongest reproach you can make _me_.
+You could not give me a greater reproof for the mistake I fell into.
+It was all my doing, I know. I have not forgotten it, I assure
+you.--Deceived myself, I did very miserably deceive you--and it will
+be a painful reflection to me for ever. Do not imagine me in danger of
+forgetting it.”
+
+Harriet felt this too much to utter more than a few words of eager
+exclamation. Emma continued,
+
+“I have not said, exert yourself Harriet for my sake; think less, talk
+less of Mr. Elton for my sake; because for your own sake rather, I
+would wish it to be done, for the sake of what is more important than my
+comfort, a habit of self-command in you, a consideration of what is your
+duty, an attention to propriety, an endeavour to avoid the suspicions of
+others, to save your health and credit, and restore your tranquillity.
+These are the motives which I have been pressing on you. They are very
+important--and sorry I am that you cannot feel them sufficiently to act
+upon them. My being saved from pain is a very secondary consideration.
+I want you to save yourself from greater pain. Perhaps I may sometimes
+have felt that Harriet would not forget what was due--or rather what
+would be kind by me.”
+
+This appeal to her affections did more than all the rest. The idea of
+wanting gratitude and consideration for Miss Woodhouse, whom she really
+loved extremely, made her wretched for a while, and when the violence
+of grief was comforted away, still remained powerful enough to prompt to
+what was right and support her in it very tolerably.
+
+“You, who have been the best friend I ever had in my life--Want
+gratitude to you!--Nobody is equal to you!--I care for nobody as I do
+for you!--Oh! Miss Woodhouse, how ungrateful I have been!”
+
+Such expressions, assisted as they were by every thing that look and
+manner could do, made Emma feel that she had never loved Harriet so
+well, nor valued her affection so highly before.
+
+“There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart,” said she afterwards to
+herself. “There is nothing to be compared to it. Warmth and tenderness
+of heart, with an affectionate, open manner, will beat all the
+clearness of head in the world, for attraction, I am sure it will. It
+is tenderness of heart which makes my dear father so generally
+beloved--which gives Isabella all her popularity.--I have it not--but
+I know how to prize and respect it.--Harriet is my superior in all the
+charm and all the felicity it gives. Dear Harriet!--I would not change
+you for the clearest-headed, longest-sighted, best-judging female
+breathing. Oh! the coldness of a Jane Fairfax!--Harriet is worth a
+hundred such--And for a wife--a sensible man's wife--it is invaluable. I
+mention no names; but happy the man who changes Emma for Harriet!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+Mrs. Elton was first seen at church: but though devotion might be
+interrupted, curiosity could not be satisfied by a bride in a pew, and
+it must be left for the visits in form which were then to be paid, to
+settle whether she were very pretty indeed, or only rather pretty, or
+not pretty at all.
+
+Emma had feelings, less of curiosity than of pride or propriety, to make
+her resolve on not being the last to pay her respects; and she made a
+point of Harriet's going with her, that the worst of the business might
+be gone through as soon as possible.
+
+She could not enter the house again, could not be in the same room to
+which she had with such vain artifice retreated three months ago, to
+lace up her boot, without _recollecting_. A thousand vexatious thoughts
+would recur. Compliments, charades, and horrible blunders; and it was
+not to be supposed that poor Harriet should not be recollecting too; but
+she behaved very well, and was only rather pale and silent. The visit
+was of course short; and there was so much embarrassment and occupation
+of mind to shorten it, that Emma would not allow herself entirely to
+form an opinion of the lady, and on no account to give one, beyond the
+nothing-meaning terms of being “elegantly dressed, and very pleasing.”
+
+She did not really like her. She would not be in a hurry to find fault,
+but she suspected that there was no elegance;--ease, but not elegance.--
+She was almost sure that for a young woman, a stranger, a bride, there
+was too much ease. Her person was rather good; her face not unpretty;
+but neither feature, nor air, nor voice, nor manner, were elegant. Emma
+thought at least it would turn out so.
+
+As for Mr. Elton, his manners did not appear--but no, she would not
+permit a hasty or a witty word from herself about his manners. It was an
+awkward ceremony at any time to be receiving wedding visits, and a man
+had need be all grace to acquit himself well through it. The woman
+was better off; she might have the assistance of fine clothes, and the
+privilege of bashfulness, but the man had only his own good sense to
+depend on; and when she considered how peculiarly unlucky poor Mr.
+Elton was in being in the same room at once with the woman he had just
+married, the woman he had wanted to marry, and the woman whom he had
+been expected to marry, she must allow him to have the right to look as
+little wise, and to be as much affectedly, and as little really easy as
+could be.
+
+“Well, Miss Woodhouse,” said Harriet, when they had quitted the
+house, and after waiting in vain for her friend to begin; “Well, Miss
+Woodhouse, (with a gentle sigh,) what do you think of her?--Is not she
+very charming?”
+
+There was a little hesitation in Emma's answer.
+
+“Oh! yes--very--a very pleasing young woman.”
+
+“I think her beautiful, quite beautiful.”
+
+“Very nicely dressed, indeed; a remarkably elegant gown.”
+
+“I am not at all surprized that he should have fallen in love.”
+
+“Oh! no--there is nothing to surprize one at all.--A pretty fortune; and
+she came in his way.”
+
+“I dare say,” returned Harriet, sighing again, “I dare say she was very
+much attached to him.”
+
+“Perhaps she might; but it is not every man's fate to marry the woman
+who loves him best. Miss Hawkins perhaps wanted a home, and thought this
+the best offer she was likely to have.”
+
+“Yes,” said Harriet earnestly, “and well she might, nobody could ever
+have a better. Well, I wish them happy with all my heart. And now, Miss
+Woodhouse, I do not think I shall mind seeing them again. He is just as
+superior as ever;--but being married, you know, it is quite a different
+thing. No, indeed, Miss Woodhouse, you need not be afraid; I can sit and
+admire him now without any great misery. To know that he has not thrown
+himself away, is such a comfort!--She does seem a charming young woman,
+just what he deserves. Happy creature! He called her 'Augusta.' How
+delightful!”
+
+When the visit was returned, Emma made up her mind. She could then see
+more and judge better. From Harriet's happening not to be at Hartfield,
+and her father's being present to engage Mr. Elton, she had a quarter
+of an hour of the lady's conversation to herself, and could composedly
+attend to her; and the quarter of an hour quite convinced her that
+Mrs. Elton was a vain woman, extremely well satisfied with herself, and
+thinking much of her own importance; that she meant to shine and be very
+superior, but with manners which had been formed in a bad school, pert
+and familiar; that all her notions were drawn from one set of people,
+and one style of living; that if not foolish she was ignorant, and that
+her society would certainly do Mr. Elton no good.
+
+Harriet would have been a better match. If not wise or refined herself,
+she would have connected him with those who were; but Miss Hawkins, it
+might be fairly supposed from her easy conceit, had been the best of
+her own set. The rich brother-in-law near Bristol was the pride of the
+alliance, and his place and his carriages were the pride of him.
+
+The very first subject after being seated was Maple Grove, “My brother
+Mr. Suckling's seat;”--a comparison of Hartfield to Maple Grove. The
+grounds of Hartfield were small, but neat and pretty; and the house was
+modern and well-built. Mrs. Elton seemed most favourably impressed
+by the size of the room, the entrance, and all that she could see or
+imagine. “Very like Maple Grove indeed!--She was quite struck by the
+likeness!--That room was the very shape and size of the morning-room
+at Maple Grove; her sister's favourite room.”--Mr. Elton was appealed
+to.--“Was not it astonishingly like?--She could really almost fancy
+herself at Maple Grove.”
+
+“And the staircase--You know, as I came in, I observed how very like the
+staircase was; placed exactly in the same part of the house. I really
+could not help exclaiming! I assure you, Miss Woodhouse, it is very
+delightful to me, to be reminded of a place I am so extremely partial to
+as Maple Grove. I have spent so many happy months there! (with a little
+sigh of sentiment). A charming place, undoubtedly. Every body who
+sees it is struck by its beauty; but to me, it has been quite a home.
+Whenever you are transplanted, like me, Miss Woodhouse, you will
+understand how very delightful it is to meet with any thing at all like
+what one has left behind. I always say this is quite one of the evils of
+matrimony.”
+
+Emma made as slight a reply as she could; but it was fully sufficient
+for Mrs. Elton, who only wanted to be talking herself.
+
+“So extremely like Maple Grove! And it is not merely the house--the
+grounds, I assure you, as far as I could observe, are strikingly like.
+The laurels at Maple Grove are in the same profusion as here, and stand
+very much in the same way--just across the lawn; and I had a glimpse
+of a fine large tree, with a bench round it, which put me so exactly in
+mind! My brother and sister will be enchanted with this place. People
+who have extensive grounds themselves are always pleased with any thing
+in the same style.”
+
+Emma doubted the truth of this sentiment. She had a great idea that
+people who had extensive grounds themselves cared very little for the
+extensive grounds of any body else; but it was not worth while to attack
+an error so double-dyed, and therefore only said in reply,
+
+“When you have seen more of this country, I am afraid you will think you
+have overrated Hartfield. Surry is full of beauties.”
+
+“Oh! yes, I am quite aware of that. It is the garden of England, you
+know. Surry is the garden of England.”
+
+“Yes; but we must not rest our claims on that distinction. Many
+counties, I believe, are called the garden of England, as well as
+Surry.”
+
+“No, I fancy not,” replied Mrs. Elton, with a most satisfied smile.
+“I never heard any county but Surry called so.”
+
+Emma was silenced.
+
+“My brother and sister have promised us a visit in the spring, or summer
+at farthest,” continued Mrs. Elton; “and that will be our time for
+exploring. While they are with us, we shall explore a great deal, I dare
+say. They will have their barouche-landau, of course, which holds four
+perfectly; and therefore, without saying any thing of _our_ carriage,
+we should be able to explore the different beauties extremely well. They
+would hardly come in their chaise, I think, at that season of the
+year. Indeed, when the time draws on, I shall decidedly recommend their
+bringing the barouche-landau; it will be so very much preferable.
+When people come into a beautiful country of this sort, you know, Miss
+Woodhouse, one naturally wishes them to see as much as possible; and Mr.
+Suckling is extremely fond of exploring. We explored to King's-Weston
+twice last summer, in that way, most delightfully, just after their
+first having the barouche-landau. You have many parties of that kind
+here, I suppose, Miss Woodhouse, every summer?”
+
+“No; not immediately here. We are rather out of distance of the very
+striking beauties which attract the sort of parties you speak of; and we
+are a very quiet set of people, I believe; more disposed to stay at home
+than engage in schemes of pleasure.”
+
+“Ah! there is nothing like staying at home for real comfort. Nobody can
+be more devoted to home than I am. I was quite a proverb for it at Maple
+Grove. Many a time has Selina said, when she has been going to Bristol,
+'I really cannot get this girl to move from the house. I absolutely must
+go in by myself, though I hate being stuck up in the barouche-landau
+without a companion; but Augusta, I believe, with her own good-will,
+would never stir beyond the park paling.' Many a time has she said so;
+and yet I am no advocate for entire seclusion. I think, on the contrary,
+when people shut themselves up entirely from society, it is a very
+bad thing; and that it is much more advisable to mix in the world in
+a proper degree, without living in it either too much or too little. I
+perfectly understand your situation, however, Miss Woodhouse--(looking
+towards Mr. Woodhouse), Your father's state of health must be a great
+drawback. Why does not he try Bath?--Indeed he should. Let me recommend
+Bath to you. I assure you I have no doubt of its doing Mr. Woodhouse
+good.”
+
+“My father tried it more than once, formerly; but without receiving any
+benefit; and Mr. Perry, whose name, I dare say, is not unknown to you,
+does not conceive it would be at all more likely to be useful now.”
+
+“Ah! that's a great pity; for I assure you, Miss Woodhouse, where the
+waters do agree, it is quite wonderful the relief they give. In my Bath
+life, I have seen such instances of it! And it is so cheerful a place,
+that it could not fail of being of use to Mr. Woodhouse's spirits,
+which, I understand, are sometimes much depressed. And as to its
+recommendations to _you_, I fancy I need not take much pains to dwell
+on them. The advantages of Bath to the young are pretty generally
+understood. It would be a charming introduction for you, who have lived
+so secluded a life; and I could immediately secure you some of the best
+society in the place. A line from me would bring you a little host of
+acquaintance; and my particular friend, Mrs. Partridge, the lady I have
+always resided with when in Bath, would be most happy to shew you any
+attentions, and would be the very person for you to go into public
+with.”
+
+It was as much as Emma could bear, without being impolite. The idea
+of her being indebted to Mrs. Elton for what was called an
+_introduction_--of her going into public under the auspices of a friend
+of Mrs. Elton's--probably some vulgar, dashing widow, who, with the
+help of a boarder, just made a shift to live!--The dignity of Miss
+Woodhouse, of Hartfield, was sunk indeed!
+
+She restrained herself, however, from any of the reproofs she could have
+given, and only thanked Mrs. Elton coolly; “but their going to Bath was
+quite out of the question; and she was not perfectly convinced that
+the place might suit her better than her father.” And then, to prevent
+farther outrage and indignation, changed the subject directly.
+
+“I do not ask whether you are musical, Mrs. Elton. Upon these occasions,
+a lady's character generally precedes her; and Highbury has long known
+that you are a superior performer.”
+
+“Oh! no, indeed; I must protest against any such idea. A superior
+performer!--very far from it, I assure you. Consider from how partial
+a quarter your information came. I am doatingly fond of
+music--passionately fond;--and my friends say I am not entirely devoid
+of taste; but as to any thing else, upon my honour my performance is
+_mediocre_ to the last degree. You, Miss Woodhouse, I well know, play
+delightfully. I assure you it has been the greatest satisfaction,
+comfort, and delight to me, to hear what a musical society I am got
+into. I absolutely cannot do without music. It is a necessary of life to
+me; and having always been used to a very musical society, both at
+Maple Grove and in Bath, it would have been a most serious sacrifice. I
+honestly said as much to Mr. E. when he was speaking of my future
+home, and expressing his fears lest the retirement of it should be
+disagreeable; and the inferiority of the house too--knowing what I had
+been accustomed to--of course he was not wholly without apprehension.
+When he was speaking of it in that way, I honestly said that _the_
+_world_ I could give up--parties, balls, plays--for I had no fear of
+retirement. Blessed with so many resources within myself, the world was
+not necessary to _me_. I could do very well without it. To those who had
+no resources it was a different thing; but my resources made me quite
+independent. And as to smaller-sized rooms than I had been used to, I
+really could not give it a thought. I hoped I was perfectly equal to any
+sacrifice of that description. Certainly I had been accustomed to every
+luxury at Maple Grove; but I did assure him that two carriages were not
+necessary to my happiness, nor were spacious apartments. 'But,' said I,
+'to be quite honest, I do not think I can live without something of a
+musical society. I condition for nothing else; but without music, life
+would be a blank to me.'”
+
+“We cannot suppose,” said Emma, smiling, “that Mr. Elton would hesitate
+to assure you of there being a _very_ musical society in Highbury; and
+I hope you will not find he has outstepped the truth more than may be
+pardoned, in consideration of the motive.”
+
+“No, indeed, I have no doubts at all on that head. I am delighted to
+find myself in such a circle. I hope we shall have many sweet little
+concerts together. I think, Miss Woodhouse, you and I must establish a
+musical club, and have regular weekly meetings at your house, or ours.
+Will not it be a good plan? If _we_ exert ourselves, I think we shall
+not be long in want of allies. Something of that nature would be
+particularly desirable for _me_, as an inducement to keep me in
+practice; for married women, you know--there is a sad story against
+them, in general. They are but too apt to give up music.”
+
+“But you, who are so extremely fond of it--there can be no danger,
+surely?”
+
+“I should hope not; but really when I look around among my acquaintance,
+I tremble. Selina has entirely given up music--never touches the
+instrument--though she played sweetly. And the same may be said of Mrs.
+Jeffereys--Clara Partridge, that was--and of the two Milmans, now Mrs.
+Bird and Mrs. James Cooper; and of more than I can enumerate. Upon my
+word it is enough to put one in a fright. I used to be quite angry with
+Selina; but really I begin now to comprehend that a married woman has
+many things to call her attention. I believe I was half an hour this
+morning shut up with my housekeeper.”
+
+“But every thing of that kind,” said Emma, “will soon be in so regular a
+train--”
+
+“Well,” said Mrs. Elton, laughing, “we shall see.”
+
+Emma, finding her so determined upon neglecting her music, had nothing
+more to say; and, after a moment's pause, Mrs. Elton chose another
+subject.
+
+“We have been calling at Randalls,” said she, “and found them both at
+home; and very pleasant people they seem to be. I like them extremely.
+Mr. Weston seems an excellent creature--quite a first-rate favourite
+with me already, I assure you. And _she_ appears so truly good--there is
+something so motherly and kind-hearted about her, that it wins upon one
+directly. She was your governess, I think?”
+
+Emma was almost too much astonished to answer; but Mrs. Elton hardly
+waited for the affirmative before she went on.
+
+“Having understood as much, I was rather astonished to find her so very
+lady-like! But she is really quite the gentlewoman.”
+
+“Mrs. Weston's manners,” said Emma, “were always particularly good.
+Their propriety, simplicity, and elegance, would make them the safest
+model for any young woman.”
+
+“And who do you think came in while we were there?”
+
+Emma was quite at a loss. The tone implied some old acquaintance--and
+how could she possibly guess?
+
+“Knightley!” continued Mrs. Elton; “Knightley himself!--Was not it
+lucky?--for, not being within when he called the other day, I had never
+seen him before; and of course, as so particular a friend of Mr. E.'s,
+I had a great curiosity. 'My friend Knightley' had been so often
+mentioned, that I was really impatient to see him; and I must do my
+caro sposo the justice to say that he need not be ashamed of his friend.
+Knightley is quite the gentleman. I like him very much. Decidedly, I
+think, a very gentleman-like man.”
+
+Happily, it was now time to be gone. They were off; and Emma could
+breathe.
+
+“Insufferable woman!” was her immediate exclamation. “Worse than I had
+supposed. Absolutely insufferable! Knightley!--I could not have
+believed it. Knightley!--never seen him in her life before, and call
+him Knightley!--and discover that he is a gentleman! A little upstart,
+vulgar being, with her Mr. E., and her _caro_ _sposo_, and her
+resources, and all her airs of pert pretension and underbred finery.
+Actually to discover that Mr. Knightley is a gentleman! I doubt whether
+he will return the compliment, and discover her to be a lady. I could
+not have believed it! And to propose that she and I should unite to
+form a musical club! One would fancy we were bosom friends! And Mrs.
+Weston!--Astonished that the person who had brought me up should be a
+gentlewoman! Worse and worse. I never met with her equal. Much beyond
+my hopes. Harriet is disgraced by any comparison. Oh! what would Frank
+Churchill say to her, if he were here? How angry and how diverted he
+would be! Ah! there I am--thinking of him directly. Always the first
+person to be thought of! How I catch myself out! Frank Churchill comes
+as regularly into my mind!”--
+
+All this ran so glibly through her thoughts, that by the time her father
+had arranged himself, after the bustle of the Eltons' departure, and was
+ready to speak, she was very tolerably capable of attending.
+
+“Well, my dear,” he deliberately began, “considering we never saw her
+before, she seems a very pretty sort of young lady; and I dare say she
+was very much pleased with you. She speaks a little too quick. A little
+quickness of voice there is which rather hurts the ear. But I believe
+I am nice; I do not like strange voices; and nobody speaks like you and
+poor Miss Taylor. However, she seems a very obliging, pretty-behaved
+young lady, and no doubt will make him a very good wife. Though I think
+he had better not have married. I made the best excuses I could for not
+having been able to wait on him and Mrs. Elton on this happy occasion; I
+said that I hoped I _should_ in the course of the summer. But I ought to
+have gone before. Not to wait upon a bride is very remiss. Ah! it shews
+what a sad invalid I am! But I do not like the corner into Vicarage
+Lane.”
+
+“I dare say your apologies were accepted, sir. Mr. Elton knows you.”
+
+“Yes: but a young lady--a bride--I ought to have paid my respects to her
+if possible. It was being very deficient.”
+
+“But, my dear papa, you are no friend to matrimony; and therefore why
+should you be so anxious to pay your respects to a _bride_? It ought to
+be no recommendation to _you_. It is encouraging people to marry if you
+make so much of them.”
+
+“No, my dear, I never encouraged any body to marry, but I would always
+wish to pay every proper attention to a lady--and a bride, especially,
+is never to be neglected. More is avowedly due to _her_. A bride, you
+know, my dear, is always the first in company, let the others be who
+they may.”
+
+“Well, papa, if this is not encouragement to marry, I do not know what
+is. And I should never have expected you to be lending your sanction to
+such vanity-baits for poor young ladies.”
+
+“My dear, you do not understand me. This is a matter of mere
+common politeness and good-breeding, and has nothing to do with any
+encouragement to people to marry.”
+
+Emma had done. Her father was growing nervous, and could not understand
+_her_. Her mind returned to Mrs. Elton's offences, and long, very long,
+did they occupy her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+Emma was not required, by any subsequent discovery, to retract her ill
+opinion of Mrs. Elton. Her observation had been pretty correct. Such as
+Mrs. Elton appeared to her on this second interview, such she appeared
+whenever they met again,--self-important, presuming, familiar, ignorant,
+and ill-bred. She had a little beauty and a little accomplishment,
+but so little judgment that she thought herself coming with superior
+knowledge of the world, to enliven and improve a country neighbourhood;
+and conceived Miss Hawkins to have held such a place in society as Mrs.
+Elton's consequence only could surpass.
+
+There was no reason to suppose Mr. Elton thought at all differently from
+his wife. He seemed not merely happy with her, but proud. He had the air
+of congratulating himself on having brought such a woman to Highbury,
+as not even Miss Woodhouse could equal; and the greater part of her
+new acquaintance, disposed to commend, or not in the habit of judging,
+following the lead of Miss Bates's good-will, or taking it for granted
+that the bride must be as clever and as agreeable as she professed
+herself, were very well satisfied; so that Mrs. Elton's praise
+passed from one mouth to another as it ought to do, unimpeded by Miss
+Woodhouse, who readily continued her first contribution and talked with
+a good grace of her being “very pleasant and very elegantly dressed.”
+
+In one respect Mrs. Elton grew even worse than she had appeared at
+first. Her feelings altered towards Emma.--Offended, probably, by the
+little encouragement which her proposals of intimacy met with, she drew
+back in her turn and gradually became much more cold and distant; and
+though the effect was agreeable, the ill-will which produced it was
+necessarily increasing Emma's dislike. Her manners, too--and Mr.
+Elton's, were unpleasant towards Harriet. They were sneering and
+negligent. Emma hoped it must rapidly work Harriet's cure; but the
+sensations which could prompt such behaviour sunk them both very
+much.--It was not to be doubted that poor Harriet's attachment had been
+an offering to conjugal unreserve, and her own share in the story, under
+a colouring the least favourable to her and the most soothing to him,
+had in all likelihood been given also. She was, of course, the object
+of their joint dislike.--When they had nothing else to say, it must be
+always easy to begin abusing Miss Woodhouse; and the enmity which
+they dared not shew in open disrespect to her, found a broader vent in
+contemptuous treatment of Harriet.
+
+Mrs. Elton took a great fancy to Jane Fairfax; and from the first. Not
+merely when a state of warfare with one young lady might be supposed to
+recommend the other, but from the very first; and she was not satisfied
+with expressing a natural and reasonable admiration--but without
+solicitation, or plea, or privilege, she must be wanting to assist and
+befriend her.--Before Emma had forfeited her confidence, and about the
+third time of their meeting, she heard all Mrs. Elton's knight-errantry
+on the subject.--
+
+“Jane Fairfax is absolutely charming, Miss Woodhouse.--I quite rave
+about Jane Fairfax.--A sweet, interesting creature. So mild and
+ladylike--and with such talents!--I assure you I think she has very
+extraordinary talents. I do not scruple to say that she plays extremely
+well. I know enough of music to speak decidedly on that point. Oh! she
+is absolutely charming! You will laugh at my warmth--but, upon my word,
+I talk of nothing but Jane Fairfax.--And her situation is so calculated
+to affect one!--Miss Woodhouse, we must exert ourselves and endeavour
+to do something for her. We must bring her forward. Such talent as hers
+must not be suffered to remain unknown.--I dare say you have heard those
+charming lines of the poet,
+
+        'Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
+          'And waste its fragrance on the desert air.'
+
+We must not allow them to be verified in sweet Jane Fairfax.”
+
+“I cannot think there is any danger of it,” was Emma's calm answer--“and
+when you are better acquainted with Miss Fairfax's situation and
+understand what her home has been, with Colonel and Mrs. Campbell, I
+have no idea that you will suppose her talents can be unknown.”
+
+“Oh! but dear Miss Woodhouse, she is now in such retirement, such
+obscurity, so thrown away.--Whatever advantages she may have enjoyed
+with the Campbells are so palpably at an end! And I think she feels it.
+I am sure she does. She is very timid and silent. One can see that she
+feels the want of encouragement. I like her the better for it. I
+must confess it is a recommendation to me. I am a great advocate for
+timidity--and I am sure one does not often meet with it.--But in those
+who are at all inferior, it is extremely prepossessing. Oh! I assure
+you, Jane Fairfax is a very delightful character, and interests me more
+than I can express.”
+
+“You appear to feel a great deal--but I am not aware how you or any of
+Miss Fairfax's acquaintance here, any of those who have known her longer
+than yourself, can shew her any other attention than”--
+
+“My dear Miss Woodhouse, a vast deal may be done by those who dare to
+act. You and I need not be afraid. If _we_ set the example, many will
+follow it as far as they can; though all have not our situations. _We_
+have carriages to fetch and convey her home, and _we_ live in a style
+which could not make the addition of Jane Fairfax, at any time, the
+least inconvenient.--I should be extremely displeased if Wright were to
+send us up such a dinner, as could make me regret having asked _more_
+than Jane Fairfax to partake of it. I have no idea of that sort of
+thing. It is not likely that I _should_, considering what I have been
+used to. My greatest danger, perhaps, in housekeeping, may be quite the
+other way, in doing too much, and being too careless of expense. Maple
+Grove will probably be my model more than it ought to be--for we do not
+at all affect to equal my brother, Mr. Suckling, in income.--However, my
+resolution is taken as to noticing Jane Fairfax.--I shall certainly have
+her very often at my house, shall introduce her wherever I can, shall
+have musical parties to draw out her talents, and shall be constantly
+on the watch for an eligible situation. My acquaintance is so very
+extensive, that I have little doubt of hearing of something to suit
+her shortly.--I shall introduce her, of course, very particularly to my
+brother and sister when they come to us. I am sure they will like her
+extremely; and when she gets a little acquainted with them, her fears
+will completely wear off, for there really is nothing in the manners
+of either but what is highly conciliating.--I shall have her very often
+indeed while they are with me, and I dare say we shall sometimes find a
+seat for her in the barouche-landau in some of our exploring parties.”
+
+“Poor Jane Fairfax!”--thought Emma.--“You have not deserved this. You
+may have done wrong with regard to Mr. Dixon, but this is a punishment
+beyond what you can have merited!--The kindness and protection of Mrs.
+Elton!--'Jane Fairfax and Jane Fairfax.' Heavens! Let me not suppose
+that she dares go about, Emma Woodhouse-ing me!--But upon my honour,
+there seems no limits to the licentiousness of that woman's tongue!”
+
+Emma had not to listen to such paradings again--to any so exclusively
+addressed to herself--so disgustingly decorated with a “dear Miss
+Woodhouse.” The change on Mrs. Elton's side soon afterwards appeared,
+and she was left in peace--neither forced to be the very particular
+friend of Mrs. Elton, nor, under Mrs. Elton's guidance, the very active
+patroness of Jane Fairfax, and only sharing with others in a general
+way, in knowing what was felt, what was meditated, what was done.
+
+She looked on with some amusement.--Miss Bates's gratitude for
+Mrs. Elton's attentions to Jane was in the first style of guileless
+simplicity and warmth. She was quite one of her worthies--the
+most amiable, affable, delightful woman--just as accomplished and
+condescending as Mrs. Elton meant to be considered. Emma's only surprize
+was that Jane Fairfax should accept those attentions and tolerate Mrs.
+Elton as she seemed to do. She heard of her walking with the Eltons,
+sitting with the Eltons, spending a day with the Eltons! This was
+astonishing!--She could not have believed it possible that the taste or
+the pride of Miss Fairfax could endure such society and friendship as
+the Vicarage had to offer.
+
+“She is a riddle, quite a riddle!” said she.--“To chuse to remain here
+month after month, under privations of every sort! And now to chuse the
+mortification of Mrs. Elton's notice and the penury of her conversation,
+rather than return to the superior companions who have always loved her
+with such real, generous affection.”
+
+Jane had come to Highbury professedly for three months; the Campbells
+were gone to Ireland for three months; but now the Campbells had
+promised their daughter to stay at least till Midsummer, and fresh
+invitations had arrived for her to join them there. According to Miss
+Bates--it all came from her--Mrs. Dixon had written most pressingly.
+Would Jane but go, means were to be found, servants sent, friends
+contrived--no travelling difficulty allowed to exist; but still she had
+declined it!
+
+“She must have some motive, more powerful than appears, for refusing
+this invitation,” was Emma's conclusion. “She must be under some sort
+of penance, inflicted either by the Campbells or herself. There is great
+fear, great caution, great resolution somewhere.--She is _not_ to be
+with the _Dixons_. The decree is issued by somebody. But why must she
+consent to be with the Eltons?--Here is quite a separate puzzle.”
+
+Upon her speaking her wonder aloud on that part of the subject, before
+the few who knew her opinion of Mrs. Elton, Mrs. Weston ventured this
+apology for Jane.
+
+“We cannot suppose that she has any great enjoyment at the Vicarage,
+my dear Emma--but it is better than being always at home. Her aunt is a
+good creature, but, as a constant companion, must be very tiresome. We
+must consider what Miss Fairfax quits, before we condemn her taste for
+what she goes to.”
+
+“You are right, Mrs. Weston,” said Mr. Knightley warmly, “Miss Fairfax
+is as capable as any of us of forming a just opinion of Mrs. Elton.
+Could she have chosen with whom to associate, she would not have chosen
+her. But (with a reproachful smile at Emma) she receives attentions from
+Mrs. Elton, which nobody else pays her.”
+
+Emma felt that Mrs. Weston was giving her a momentary glance; and she
+was herself struck by his warmth. With a faint blush, she presently
+replied,
+
+“Such attentions as Mrs. Elton's, I should have imagined, would rather
+disgust than gratify Miss Fairfax. Mrs. Elton's invitations I should
+have imagined any thing but inviting.”
+
+“I should not wonder,” said Mrs. Weston, “if Miss Fairfax were to have
+been drawn on beyond her own inclination, by her aunt's eagerness in
+accepting Mrs. Elton's civilities for her. Poor Miss Bates may
+very likely have committed her niece and hurried her into a greater
+appearance of intimacy than her own good sense would have dictated, in
+spite of the very natural wish of a little change.”
+
+Both felt rather anxious to hear him speak again; and after a few
+minutes silence, he said,
+
+“Another thing must be taken into consideration too--Mrs. Elton does
+not talk _to_ Miss Fairfax as she speaks _of_ her. We all know the
+difference between the pronouns he or she and thou, the plainest spoken
+amongst us; we all feel the influence of a something beyond common
+civility in our personal intercourse with each other--a something more
+early implanted. We cannot give any body the disagreeable hints that we
+may have been very full of the hour before. We feel things differently.
+And besides the operation of this, as a general principle, you may be
+sure that Miss Fairfax awes Mrs. Elton by her superiority both of mind
+and manner; and that, face to face, Mrs. Elton treats her with all the
+respect which she has a claim to. Such a woman as Jane Fairfax probably
+never fell in Mrs. Elton's way before--and no degree of vanity can
+prevent her acknowledging her own comparative littleness in action, if
+not in consciousness.”
+
+“I know how highly you think of Jane Fairfax,” said Emma. Little Henry
+was in her thoughts, and a mixture of alarm and delicacy made her
+irresolute what else to say.
+
+“Yes,” he replied, “any body may know how highly I think of her.”
+
+“And yet,” said Emma, beginning hastily and with an arch look, but soon
+stopping--it was better, however, to know the worst at once--she hurried
+on--“And yet, perhaps, you may hardly be aware yourself how highly it
+is. The extent of your admiration may take you by surprize some day or
+other.”
+
+Mr. Knightley was hard at work upon the lower buttons of his thick
+leather gaiters, and either the exertion of getting them together, or
+some other cause, brought the colour into his face, as he answered,
+
+“Oh! are you there?--But you are miserably behindhand. Mr. Cole gave me
+a hint of it six weeks ago.”
+
+He stopped.--Emma felt her foot pressed by Mrs. Weston, and did not
+herself know what to think. In a moment he went on--
+
+“That will never be, however, I can assure you. Miss Fairfax, I dare
+say, would not have me if I were to ask her--and I am very sure I shall
+never ask her.”
+
+Emma returned her friend's pressure with interest; and was pleased
+enough to exclaim,
+
+“You are not vain, Mr. Knightley. I will say that for you.”
+
+He seemed hardly to hear her; he was thoughtful--and in a manner which
+shewed him not pleased, soon afterwards said,
+
+“So you have been settling that I should marry Jane Fairfax?”
+
+“No indeed I have not. You have scolded me too much for match-making,
+for me to presume to take such a liberty with you. What I said just now,
+meant nothing. One says those sort of things, of course, without any
+idea of a serious meaning. Oh! no, upon my word I have not the smallest
+wish for your marrying Jane Fairfax or Jane any body. You would not come
+in and sit with us in this comfortable way, if you were married.”
+
+Mr. Knightley was thoughtful again. The result of his reverie was, “No,
+Emma, I do not think the extent of my admiration for her will ever take
+me by surprize.--I never had a thought of her in that way, I assure
+you.” And soon afterwards, “Jane Fairfax is a very charming young
+woman--but not even Jane Fairfax is perfect. She has a fault. She has
+not the open temper which a man would wish for in a wife.”
+
+Emma could not but rejoice to hear that she had a fault. “Well,” said
+she, “and you soon silenced Mr. Cole, I suppose?”
+
+“Yes, very soon. He gave me a quiet hint; I told him he was mistaken;
+he asked my pardon and said no more. Cole does not want to be wiser or
+wittier than his neighbours.”
+
+“In that respect how unlike dear Mrs. Elton, who wants to be wiser and
+wittier than all the world! I wonder how she speaks of the Coles--what
+she calls them! How can she find any appellation for them, deep enough
+in familiar vulgarity? She calls you, Knightley--what can she do for
+Mr. Cole? And so I am not to be surprized that Jane Fairfax accepts
+her civilities and consents to be with her. Mrs. Weston, your argument
+weighs most with me. I can much more readily enter into the temptation
+of getting away from Miss Bates, than I can believe in the triumph of
+Miss Fairfax's mind over Mrs. Elton. I have no faith in Mrs. Elton's
+acknowledging herself the inferior in thought, word, or deed; or in her
+being under any restraint beyond her own scanty rule of good-breeding.
+I cannot imagine that she will not be continually insulting her visitor
+with praise, encouragement, and offers of service; that she will not be
+continually detailing her magnificent intentions, from the procuring her
+a permanent situation to the including her in those delightful exploring
+parties which are to take place in the barouche-landau.”
+
+“Jane Fairfax has feeling,” said Mr. Knightley--“I do not accuse her
+of want of feeling. Her sensibilities, I suspect, are strong--and her
+temper excellent in its power of forbearance, patience, self-control;
+but it wants openness. She is reserved, more reserved, I think, than
+she used to be--And I love an open temper. No--till Cole alluded to my
+supposed attachment, it had never entered my head. I saw Jane Fairfax
+and conversed with her, with admiration and pleasure always--but with no
+thought beyond.”
+
+“Well, Mrs. Weston,” said Emma triumphantly when he left them, “what do
+you say now to Mr. Knightley's marrying Jane Fairfax?”
+
+“Why, really, dear Emma, I say that he is so very much occupied by the
+idea of _not_ being in love with her, that I should not wonder if it
+were to end in his being so at last. Do not beat me.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+Every body in and about Highbury who had ever visited Mr. Elton, was
+disposed to pay him attention on his marriage. Dinner-parties and
+evening-parties were made for him and his lady; and invitations flowed
+in so fast that she had soon the pleasure of apprehending they were
+never to have a disengaged day.
+
+“I see how it is,” said she. “I see what a life I am to lead among you.
+Upon my word we shall be absolutely dissipated. We really seem quite
+the fashion. If this is living in the country, it is nothing very
+formidable. From Monday next to Saturday, I assure you we have not a
+disengaged day!--A woman with fewer resources than I have, need not have
+been at a loss.”
+
+No invitation came amiss to her. Her Bath habits made evening-parties
+perfectly natural to her, and Maple Grove had given her a taste for
+dinners. She was a little shocked at the want of two drawing rooms, at
+the poor attempt at rout-cakes, and there being no ice in the Highbury
+card-parties. Mrs. Bates, Mrs. Perry, Mrs. Goddard and others, were a
+good deal behind-hand in knowledge of the world, but she would soon shew
+them how every thing ought to be arranged. In the course of the spring
+she must return their civilities by one very superior party--in which
+her card-tables should be set out with their separate candles and
+unbroken packs in the true style--and more waiters engaged for the
+evening than their own establishment could furnish, to carry round the
+refreshments at exactly the proper hour, and in the proper order.
+
+Emma, in the meanwhile, could not be satisfied without a dinner at
+Hartfield for the Eltons. They must not do less than others, or she
+should be exposed to odious suspicions, and imagined capable of pitiful
+resentment. A dinner there must be. After Emma had talked about it for
+ten minutes, Mr. Woodhouse felt no unwillingness, and only made the
+usual stipulation of not sitting at the bottom of the table himself,
+with the usual regular difficulty of deciding who should do it for him.
+
+The persons to be invited, required little thought. Besides the
+Eltons, it must be the Westons and Mr. Knightley; so far it was all of
+course--and it was hardly less inevitable that poor little Harriet must
+be asked to make the eighth:--but this invitation was not given with
+equal satisfaction, and on many accounts Emma was particularly pleased
+by Harriet's begging to be allowed to decline it. “She would rather not
+be in his company more than she could help. She was not yet quite
+able to see him and his charming happy wife together, without feeling
+uncomfortable. If Miss Woodhouse would not be displeased, she would
+rather stay at home.” It was precisely what Emma would have wished, had
+she deemed it possible enough for wishing. She was delighted with the
+fortitude of her little friend--for fortitude she knew it was in her to
+give up being in company and stay at home; and she could now invite the
+very person whom she really wanted to make the eighth, Jane Fairfax.--
+Since her last conversation with Mrs. Weston and Mr. Knightley, she
+was more conscience-stricken about Jane Fairfax than she had often
+been.--Mr. Knightley's words dwelt with her. He had said that Jane
+Fairfax received attentions from Mrs. Elton which nobody else paid her.
+
+“This is very true,” said she, “at least as far as relates to me, which
+was all that was meant--and it is very shameful.--Of the same age--and
+always knowing her--I ought to have been more her friend.--She will
+never like me now. I have neglected her too long. But I will shew her
+greater attention than I have done.”
+
+Every invitation was successful. They were all disengaged and all
+happy.--The preparatory interest of this dinner, however, was not yet
+over. A circumstance rather unlucky occurred. The two eldest little
+Knightleys were engaged to pay their grandpapa and aunt a visit of some
+weeks in the spring, and their papa now proposed bringing them, and
+staying one whole day at Hartfield--which one day would be the very day
+of this party.--His professional engagements did not allow of his being
+put off, but both father and daughter were disturbed by its happening
+so. Mr. Woodhouse considered eight persons at dinner together as the
+utmost that his nerves could bear--and here would be a ninth--and Emma
+apprehended that it would be a ninth very much out of humour at not
+being able to come even to Hartfield for forty-eight hours without
+falling in with a dinner-party.
+
+She comforted her father better than she could comfort herself, by
+representing that though he certainly would make them nine, yet
+he always said so little, that the increase of noise would be very
+immaterial. She thought it in reality a sad exchange for herself, to
+have him with his grave looks and reluctant conversation opposed to her
+instead of his brother.
+
+The event was more favourable to Mr. Woodhouse than to Emma. John
+Knightley came; but Mr. Weston was unexpectedly summoned to town and
+must be absent on the very day. He might be able to join them in the
+evening, but certainly not to dinner. Mr. Woodhouse was quite at ease;
+and the seeing him so, with the arrival of the little boys and the
+philosophic composure of her brother on hearing his fate, removed the
+chief of even Emma's vexation.
+
+The day came, the party were punctually assembled, and Mr. John
+Knightley seemed early to devote himself to the business of being
+agreeable. Instead of drawing his brother off to a window while they
+waited for dinner, he was talking to Miss Fairfax. Mrs. Elton,
+as elegant as lace and pearls could make her, he looked at in
+silence--wanting only to observe enough for Isabella's information--but
+Miss Fairfax was an old acquaintance and a quiet girl, and he could talk
+to her. He had met her before breakfast as he was returning from a walk
+with his little boys, when it had been just beginning to rain. It was
+natural to have some civil hopes on the subject, and he said,
+
+“I hope you did not venture far, Miss Fairfax, this morning, or I am
+sure you must have been wet.--We scarcely got home in time. I hope you
+turned directly.”
+
+“I went only to the post-office,” said she, “and reached home before the
+rain was much. It is my daily errand. I always fetch the letters when
+I am here. It saves trouble, and is a something to get me out. A walk
+before breakfast does me good.”
+
+“Not a walk in the rain, I should imagine.”
+
+“No, but it did not absolutely rain when I set out.”
+
+Mr. John Knightley smiled, and replied,
+
+“That is to say, you chose to have your walk, for you were not six yards
+from your own door when I had the pleasure of meeting you; and Henry
+and John had seen more drops than they could count long before. The
+post-office has a great charm at one period of our lives. When you have
+lived to my age, you will begin to think letters are never worth going
+through the rain for.”
+
+There was a little blush, and then this answer,
+
+“I must not hope to be ever situated as you are, in the midst of every
+dearest connexion, and therefore I cannot expect that simply growing
+older should make me indifferent about letters.”
+
+“Indifferent! Oh! no--I never conceived you could become indifferent.
+Letters are no matter of indifference; they are generally a very
+positive curse.”
+
+“You are speaking of letters of business; mine are letters of
+friendship.”
+
+“I have often thought them the worst of the two,” replied he coolly.
+“Business, you know, may bring money, but friendship hardly ever does.”
+
+“Ah! you are not serious now. I know Mr. John Knightley too well--I am
+very sure he understands the value of friendship as well as any body. I
+can easily believe that letters are very little to you, much less than
+to me, but it is not your being ten years older than myself which
+makes the difference, it is not age, but situation. You have every
+body dearest to you always at hand, I, probably, never shall again;
+and therefore till I have outlived all my affections, a post-office,
+I think, must always have power to draw me out, in worse weather than
+to-day.”
+
+“When I talked of your being altered by time, by the progress of years,”
+ said John Knightley, “I meant to imply the change of situation which
+time usually brings. I consider one as including the other. Time will
+generally lessen the interest of every attachment not within the daily
+circle--but that is not the change I had in view for you. As an old
+friend, you will allow me to hope, Miss Fairfax, that ten years hence
+you may have as many concentrated objects as I have.”
+
+It was kindly said, and very far from giving offence. A pleasant “thank
+you” seemed meant to laugh it off, but a blush, a quivering lip, a tear
+in the eye, shewed that it was felt beyond a laugh. Her attention was
+now claimed by Mr. Woodhouse, who being, according to his custom on such
+occasions, making the circle of his guests, and paying his particular
+compliments to the ladies, was ending with her--and with all his mildest
+urbanity, said,
+
+“I am very sorry to hear, Miss Fairfax, of your being out this morning
+in the rain. Young ladies should take care of themselves.--Young ladies
+are delicate plants. They should take care of their health and their
+complexion. My dear, did you change your stockings?”
+
+“Yes, sir, I did indeed; and I am very much obliged by your kind
+solicitude about me.”
+
+“My dear Miss Fairfax, young ladies are very sure to be cared for.--I
+hope your good grand-mama and aunt are well. They are some of my very
+old friends. I wish my health allowed me to be a better neighbour. You
+do us a great deal of honour to-day, I am sure. My daughter and I
+are both highly sensible of your goodness, and have the greatest
+satisfaction in seeing you at Hartfield.”
+
+The kind-hearted, polite old man might then sit down and feel that he
+had done his duty, and made every fair lady welcome and easy.
+
+By this time, the walk in the rain had reached Mrs. Elton, and her
+remonstrances now opened upon Jane.
+
+“My dear Jane, what is this I hear?--Going to the post-office in the
+rain!--This must not be, I assure you.--You sad girl, how could you do
+such a thing?--It is a sign I was not there to take care of you.”
+
+Jane very patiently assured her that she had not caught any cold.
+
+“Oh! do not tell _me_. You really are a very sad girl, and do not know
+how to take care of yourself.--To the post-office indeed! Mrs. Weston,
+did you ever hear the like? You and I must positively exert our
+authority.”
+
+“My advice,” said Mrs. Weston kindly and persuasively, “I certainly do
+feel tempted to give. Miss Fairfax, you must not run such risks.--Liable
+as you have been to severe colds, indeed you ought to be particularly
+careful, especially at this time of year. The spring I always think
+requires more than common care. Better wait an hour or two, or even
+half a day for your letters, than run the risk of bringing on your cough
+again. Now do not you feel that you had? Yes, I am sure you are much too
+reasonable. You look as if you would not do such a thing again.”
+
+“Oh! she _shall_ _not_ do such a thing again,” eagerly rejoined Mrs.
+Elton. “We will not allow her to do such a thing again:”--and nodding
+significantly--“there must be some arrangement made, there must indeed.
+I shall speak to Mr. E. The man who fetches our letters every morning
+(one of our men, I forget his name) shall inquire for yours too and
+bring them to you. That will obviate all difficulties you know; and from
+_us_ I really think, my dear Jane, you can have no scruple to accept
+such an accommodation.”
+
+“You are extremely kind,” said Jane; “but I cannot give up my early
+walk. I am advised to be out of doors as much as I can, I must walk
+somewhere, and the post-office is an object; and upon my word, I have
+scarcely ever had a bad morning before.”
+
+“My dear Jane, say no more about it. The thing is determined, that is
+(laughing affectedly) as far as I can presume to determine any thing
+without the concurrence of my lord and master. You know, Mrs. Weston,
+you and I must be cautious how we express ourselves. But I do flatter
+myself, my dear Jane, that my influence is not entirely worn out. If I
+meet with no insuperable difficulties therefore, consider that point as
+settled.”
+
+“Excuse me,” said Jane earnestly, “I cannot by any means consent to such
+an arrangement, so needlessly troublesome to your servant. If the errand
+were not a pleasure to me, it could be done, as it always is when I am
+not here, by my grandmama's.”
+
+“Oh! my dear; but so much as Patty has to do!--And it is a kindness to
+employ our men.”
+
+Jane looked as if she did not mean to be conquered; but instead of
+answering, she began speaking again to Mr. John Knightley.
+
+“The post-office is a wonderful establishment!” said she.--“The
+regularity and despatch of it! If one thinks of all that it has to do,
+and all that it does so well, it is really astonishing!”
+
+“It is certainly very well regulated.”
+
+“So seldom that any negligence or blunder appears! So seldom that
+a letter, among the thousands that are constantly passing about the
+kingdom, is even carried wrong--and not one in a million, I suppose,
+actually lost! And when one considers the variety of hands, and of bad
+hands too, that are to be deciphered, it increases the wonder.”
+
+“The clerks grow expert from habit.--They must begin with some quickness
+of sight and hand, and exercise improves them. If you want any farther
+explanation,” continued he, smiling, “they are paid for it. That is
+the key to a great deal of capacity. The public pays and must be served
+well.”
+
+The varieties of handwriting were farther talked of, and the usual
+observations made.
+
+“I have heard it asserted,” said John Knightley, “that the same sort
+of handwriting often prevails in a family; and where the same master
+teaches, it is natural enough. But for that reason, I should imagine
+the likeness must be chiefly confined to the females, for boys have very
+little teaching after an early age, and scramble into any hand they can
+get. Isabella and Emma, I think, do write very much alike. I have not
+always known their writing apart.”
+
+“Yes,” said his brother hesitatingly, “there is a likeness. I know what
+you mean--but Emma's hand is the strongest.”
+
+“Isabella and Emma both write beautifully,” said Mr. Woodhouse; “and
+always did. And so does poor Mrs. Weston”--with half a sigh and half a
+smile at her.
+
+“I never saw any gentleman's handwriting”--Emma began, looking also at
+Mrs. Weston; but stopped, on perceiving that Mrs. Weston was attending
+to some one else--and the pause gave her time to reflect, “Now, how am
+I going to introduce him?--Am I unequal to speaking his name at once
+before all these people? Is it necessary for me to use any roundabout
+phrase?--Your Yorkshire friend--your correspondent in Yorkshire;--that
+would be the way, I suppose, if I were very bad.--No, I can pronounce
+his name without the smallest distress. I certainly get better and
+better.--Now for it.”
+
+Mrs. Weston was disengaged and Emma began again--“Mr. Frank Churchill
+writes one of the best gentleman's hands I ever saw.”
+
+“I do not admire it,” said Mr. Knightley. “It is too small--wants
+strength. It is like a woman's writing.”
+
+This was not submitted to by either lady. They vindicated him against
+the base aspersion. “No, it by no means wanted strength--it was not a
+large hand, but very clear and certainly strong. Had not Mrs. Weston any
+letter about her to produce?” No, she had heard from him very lately,
+but having answered the letter, had put it away.
+
+“If we were in the other room,” said Emma, “if I had my writing-desk, I
+am sure I could produce a specimen. I have a note of his.--Do not you
+remember, Mrs. Weston, employing him to write for you one day?”
+
+“He chose to say he was employed”--
+
+“Well, well, I have that note; and can shew it after dinner to convince
+Mr. Knightley.”
+
+“Oh! when a gallant young man, like Mr. Frank Churchill,” said Mr.
+Knightley dryly, “writes to a fair lady like Miss Woodhouse, he will, of
+course, put forth his best.”
+
+Dinner was on table.--Mrs. Elton, before she could be spoken to, was
+ready; and before Mr. Woodhouse had reached her with his request to be
+allowed to hand her into the dining-parlour, was saying--
+
+“Must I go first? I really am ashamed of always leading the way.”
+
+Jane's solicitude about fetching her own letters had not escaped Emma.
+She had heard and seen it all; and felt some curiosity to know whether
+the wet walk of this morning had produced any. She suspected that it
+_had_; that it would not have been so resolutely encountered but in full
+expectation of hearing from some one very dear, and that it had not been
+in vain. She thought there was an air of greater happiness than usual--a
+glow both of complexion and spirits.
+
+She could have made an inquiry or two, as to the expedition and the
+expense of the Irish mails;--it was at her tongue's end--but she
+abstained. She was quite determined not to utter a word that should hurt
+Jane Fairfax's feelings; and they followed the other ladies out of the
+room, arm in arm, with an appearance of good-will highly becoming to the
+beauty and grace of each.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+When the ladies returned to the drawing-room after dinner, Emma found it
+hardly possible to prevent their making two distinct parties;--with so
+much perseverance in judging and behaving ill did Mrs. Elton engross
+Jane Fairfax and slight herself. She and Mrs. Weston were obliged to
+be almost always either talking together or silent together. Mrs. Elton
+left them no choice. If Jane repressed her for a little time, she
+soon began again; and though much that passed between them was in a
+half-whisper, especially on Mrs. Elton's side, there was no avoiding
+a knowledge of their principal subjects: The post-office--catching
+cold--fetching letters--and friendship, were long under discussion;
+and to them succeeded one, which must be at least equally unpleasant
+to Jane--inquiries whether she had yet heard of any situation likely to
+suit her, and professions of Mrs. Elton's meditated activity.
+
+“Here is April come!” said she, “I get quite anxious about you. June
+will soon be here.”
+
+“But I have never fixed on June or any other month--merely looked
+forward to the summer in general.”
+
+“But have you really heard of nothing?”
+
+“I have not even made any inquiry; I do not wish to make any yet.”
+
+“Oh! my dear, we cannot begin too early; you are not aware of the
+difficulty of procuring exactly the desirable thing.”
+
+“I not aware!” said Jane, shaking her head; “dear Mrs. Elton, who can
+have thought of it as I have done?”
+
+“But you have not seen so much of the world as I have. You do not know
+how many candidates there always are for the _first_ situations. I saw
+a vast deal of that in the neighbourhood round Maple Grove. A cousin of
+Mr. Suckling, Mrs. Bragge, had such an infinity of applications; every
+body was anxious to be in her family, for she moves in the first circle.
+Wax-candles in the schoolroom! You may imagine how desirable! Of all
+houses in the kingdom Mrs. Bragge's is the one I would most wish to see
+you in.”
+
+“Colonel and Mrs. Campbell are to be in town again by midsummer,”
+ said Jane. “I must spend some time with them; I am sure they will want
+it;--afterwards I may probably be glad to dispose of myself. But I would
+not wish you to take the trouble of making any inquiries at present.”
+
+“Trouble! aye, I know your scruples. You are afraid of giving me
+trouble; but I assure you, my dear Jane, the Campbells can hardly be
+more interested about you than I am. I shall write to Mrs. Partridge in
+a day or two, and shall give her a strict charge to be on the look-out
+for any thing eligible.”
+
+“Thank you, but I would rather you did not mention the subject to
+her; till the time draws nearer, I do not wish to be giving any body
+trouble.”
+
+“But, my dear child, the time is drawing near; here is April, and June,
+or say even July, is very near, with such business to accomplish before
+us. Your inexperience really amuses me! A situation such as you deserve,
+and your friends would require for you, is no everyday occurrence,
+is not obtained at a moment's notice; indeed, indeed, we must begin
+inquiring directly.”
+
+“Excuse me, ma'am, but this is by no means my intention; I make no
+inquiry myself, and should be sorry to have any made by my friends. When
+I am quite determined as to the time, I am not at all afraid of being
+long unemployed. There are places in town, offices, where inquiry
+would soon produce something--Offices for the sale--not quite of human
+flesh--but of human intellect.”
+
+“Oh! my dear, human flesh! You quite shock me; if you mean a fling at
+the slave-trade, I assure you Mr. Suckling was always rather a friend to
+the abolition.”
+
+“I did not mean, I was not thinking of the slave-trade,” replied Jane;
+“governess-trade, I assure you, was all that I had in view; widely
+different certainly as to the guilt of those who carry it on; but as to
+the greater misery of the victims, I do not know where it lies. But
+I only mean to say that there are advertising offices, and that by
+applying to them I should have no doubt of very soon meeting with
+something that would do.”
+
+“Something that would do!” repeated Mrs. Elton. “Aye, _that_ may suit
+your humble ideas of yourself;--I know what a modest creature you are;
+but it will not satisfy your friends to have you taking up with any
+thing that may offer, any inferior, commonplace situation, in a family
+not moving in a certain circle, or able to command the elegancies of
+life.”
+
+“You are very obliging; but as to all that, I am very indifferent;
+it would be no object to me to be with the rich; my mortifications, I
+think, would only be the greater; I should suffer more from comparison.
+A gentleman's family is all that I should condition for.”
+
+“I know you, I know you; you would take up with any thing; but I shall
+be a little more nice, and I am sure the good Campbells will be quite
+on my side; with your superior talents, you have a right to move in the
+first circle. Your musical knowledge alone would entitle you to name
+your own terms, have as many rooms as you like, and mix in the family
+as much as you chose;--that is--I do not know--if you knew the harp, you
+might do all that, I am very sure; but you sing as well as play;--yes, I
+really believe you might, even without the harp, stipulate for what
+you chose;--and you must and shall be delightfully, honourably and
+comfortably settled before the Campbells or I have any rest.”
+
+“You may well class the delight, the honour, and the comfort of such
+a situation together,” said Jane, “they are pretty sure to be equal;
+however, I am very serious in not wishing any thing to be attempted
+at present for me. I am exceedingly obliged to you, Mrs. Elton, I am
+obliged to any body who feels for me, but I am quite serious in wishing
+nothing to be done till the summer. For two or three months longer I
+shall remain where I am, and as I am.”
+
+“And I am quite serious too, I assure you,” replied Mrs. Elton gaily,
+“in resolving to be always on the watch, and employing my friends to
+watch also, that nothing really unexceptionable may pass us.”
+
+In this style she ran on; never thoroughly stopped by any thing till Mr.
+Woodhouse came into the room; her vanity had then a change of object,
+and Emma heard her saying in the same half-whisper to Jane,
+
+“Here comes this dear old beau of mine, I protest!--Only think of his
+gallantry in coming away before the other men!--what a dear creature
+he is;--I assure you I like him excessively. I admire all that quaint,
+old-fashioned politeness; it is much more to my taste than modern ease;
+modern ease often disgusts me. But this good old Mr. Woodhouse, I wish
+you had heard his gallant speeches to me at dinner. Oh! I assure you I
+began to think my caro sposo would be absolutely jealous. I fancy I
+am rather a favourite; he took notice of my gown. How do you like
+it?--Selina's choice--handsome, I think, but I do not know whether it
+is not over-trimmed; I have the greatest dislike to the idea of being
+over-trimmed--quite a horror of finery. I must put on a few ornaments
+now, because it is expected of me. A bride, you know, must appear like
+a bride, but my natural taste is all for simplicity; a simple style
+of dress is so infinitely preferable to finery. But I am quite in the
+minority, I believe; few people seem to value simplicity of dress,--show
+and finery are every thing. I have some notion of putting such a
+trimming as this to my white and silver poplin. Do you think it will
+look well?”
+
+The whole party were but just reassembled in the drawing-room when Mr.
+Weston made his appearance among them. He had returned to a late dinner,
+and walked to Hartfield as soon as it was over. He had been too much
+expected by the best judges, for surprize--but there was great joy. Mr.
+Woodhouse was almost as glad to see him now, as he would have been sorry
+to see him before. John Knightley only was in mute astonishment.--That
+a man who might have spent his evening quietly at home after a day
+of business in London, should set off again, and walk half a mile
+to another man's house, for the sake of being in mixed company till
+bed-time, of finishing his day in the efforts of civility and the noise
+of numbers, was a circumstance to strike him deeply. A man who had been
+in motion since eight o'clock in the morning, and might now have been
+still, who had been long talking, and might have been silent, who had
+been in more than one crowd, and might have been alone!--Such a man, to
+quit the tranquillity and independence of his own fireside, and on the
+evening of a cold sleety April day rush out again into the world!--Could
+he by a touch of his finger have instantly taken back his wife, there
+would have been a motive; but his coming would probably prolong rather
+than break up the party. John Knightley looked at him with amazement,
+then shrugged his shoulders, and said, “I could not have believed it
+even of _him_.”
+
+Mr. Weston meanwhile, perfectly unsuspicious of the indignation he was
+exciting, happy and cheerful as usual, and with all the right of being
+principal talker, which a day spent anywhere from home confers, was
+making himself agreeable among the rest; and having satisfied the
+inquiries of his wife as to his dinner, convincing her that none of all
+her careful directions to the servants had been forgotten, and spread
+abroad what public news he had heard, was proceeding to a family
+communication, which, though principally addressed to Mrs. Weston, he
+had not the smallest doubt of being highly interesting to every body in
+the room. He gave her a letter, it was from Frank, and to herself; he
+had met with it in his way, and had taken the liberty of opening it.
+
+“Read it, read it,” said he, “it will give you pleasure; only a few
+lines--will not take you long; read it to Emma.”
+
+The two ladies looked over it together; and he sat smiling and talking
+to them the whole time, in a voice a little subdued, but very audible to
+every body.
+
+“Well, he is coming, you see; good news, I think. Well, what do you say
+to it?--I always told you he would be here again soon, did not I?--Anne,
+my dear, did not I always tell you so, and you would not believe me?--In
+town next week, you see--at the latest, I dare say; for _she_ is as
+impatient as the black gentleman when any thing is to be done; most
+likely they will be there to-morrow or Saturday. As to her illness, all
+nothing of course. But it is an excellent thing to have Frank among us
+again, so near as town. They will stay a good while when they do come,
+and he will be half his time with us. This is precisely what I wanted.
+Well, pretty good news, is not it? Have you finished it? Has Emma read
+it all? Put it up, put it up; we will have a good talk about it some
+other time, but it will not do now. I shall only just mention the
+circumstance to the others in a common way.”
+
+Mrs. Weston was most comfortably pleased on the occasion. Her looks
+and words had nothing to restrain them. She was happy, she knew she was
+happy, and knew she ought to be happy. Her congratulations were warm and
+open; but Emma could not speak so fluently. _She_ was a little occupied
+in weighing her own feelings, and trying to understand the degree of her
+agitation, which she rather thought was considerable.
+
+Mr. Weston, however, too eager to be very observant, too communicative
+to want others to talk, was very well satisfied with what she did say,
+and soon moved away to make the rest of his friends happy by a partial
+communication of what the whole room must have overheard already.
+
+It was well that he took every body's joy for granted, or he might
+not have thought either Mr. Woodhouse or Mr. Knightley particularly
+delighted. They were the first entitled, after Mrs. Weston and Emma, to
+be made happy;--from them he would have proceeded to Miss Fairfax, but
+she was so deep in conversation with John Knightley, that it would have
+been too positive an interruption; and finding himself close to Mrs.
+Elton, and her attention disengaged, he necessarily began on the subject
+with her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+“I hope I shall soon have the pleasure of introducing my son to you,”
+ said Mr. Weston.
+
+Mrs. Elton, very willing to suppose a particular compliment intended her
+by such a hope, smiled most graciously.
+
+“You have heard of a certain Frank Churchill, I presume,” he
+continued--“and know him to be my son, though he does not bear my name.”
+
+“Oh! yes, and I shall be very happy in his acquaintance. I am sure Mr.
+Elton will lose no time in calling on him; and we shall both have great
+pleasure in seeing him at the Vicarage.”
+
+“You are very obliging.--Frank will be extremely happy, I am sure.--
+He is to be in town next week, if not sooner. We have notice of it in a
+letter to-day. I met the letters in my way this morning, and seeing my
+son's hand, presumed to open it--though it was not directed to me--it
+was to Mrs. Weston. She is his principal correspondent, I assure you. I
+hardly ever get a letter.”
+
+“And so you absolutely opened what was directed to her! Oh! Mr.
+Weston--(laughing affectedly) I must protest against that.--A most
+dangerous precedent indeed!--I beg you will not let your neighbours
+follow your example.--Upon my word, if this is what I am to expect, we
+married women must begin to exert ourselves!--Oh! Mr. Weston, I could
+not have believed it of you!”
+
+“Aye, we men are sad fellows. You must take care of yourself, Mrs.
+Elton.--This letter tells us--it is a short letter--written in a hurry,
+merely to give us notice--it tells us that they are all coming up to
+town directly, on Mrs. Churchill's account--she has not been well the
+whole winter, and thinks Enscombe too cold for her--so they are all to
+move southward without loss of time.”
+
+“Indeed!--from Yorkshire, I think. Enscombe is in Yorkshire?”
+
+“Yes, they are about one hundred and ninety miles from London, a
+considerable journey.”
+
+“Yes, upon my word, very considerable. Sixty-five miles farther than
+from Maple Grove to London. But what is distance, Mr. Weston, to people
+of large fortune?--You would be amazed to hear how my brother, Mr.
+Suckling, sometimes flies about. You will hardly believe me--but twice
+in one week he and Mr. Bragge went to London and back again with four
+horses.”
+
+“The evil of the distance from Enscombe,” said Mr. Weston, “is, that
+Mrs. Churchill, _as_ _we_ _understand_, has not been able to leave the
+sofa for a week together. In Frank's last letter she complained, he
+said, of being too weak to get into her conservatory without having
+both his arm and his uncle's! This, you know, speaks a great degree of
+weakness--but now she is so impatient to be in town, that she means to
+sleep only two nights on the road.--So Frank writes word. Certainly,
+delicate ladies have very extraordinary constitutions, Mrs. Elton. You
+must grant me that.”
+
+“No, indeed, I shall grant you nothing. I always take the part of my
+own sex. I do indeed. I give you notice--You will find me a formidable
+antagonist on that point. I always stand up for women--and I assure you,
+if you knew how Selina feels with respect to sleeping at an inn, you
+would not wonder at Mrs. Churchill's making incredible exertions to
+avoid it. Selina says it is quite horror to her--and I believe I have
+caught a little of her nicety. She always travels with her own sheets;
+an excellent precaution. Does Mrs. Churchill do the same?”
+
+“Depend upon it, Mrs. Churchill does every thing that any other fine
+lady ever did. Mrs. Churchill will not be second to any lady in the land
+for”--
+
+Mrs. Elton eagerly interposed with,
+
+“Oh! Mr. Weston, do not mistake me. Selina is no fine lady, I assure
+you. Do not run away with such an idea.”
+
+“Is not she? Then she is no rule for Mrs. Churchill, who is as thorough
+a fine lady as any body ever beheld.”
+
+Mrs. Elton began to think she had been wrong in disclaiming so warmly.
+It was by no means her object to have it believed that her sister was
+_not_ a fine lady; perhaps there was want of spirit in the pretence of
+it;--and she was considering in what way she had best retract, when Mr.
+Weston went on.
+
+“Mrs. Churchill is not much in my good graces, as you may suspect--but
+this is quite between ourselves. She is very fond of Frank, and
+therefore I would not speak ill of her. Besides, she is out of health
+now; but _that_ indeed, by her own account, she has always been. I would
+not say so to every body, Mrs. Elton, but I have not much faith in Mrs.
+Churchill's illness.”
+
+“If she is really ill, why not go to Bath, Mr. Weston?--To Bath, or to
+Clifton?” “She has taken it into her head that Enscombe is too cold for
+her. The fact is, I suppose, that she is tired of Enscombe. She has now
+been a longer time stationary there, than she ever was before, and she
+begins to want change. It is a retired place. A fine place, but very
+retired.”
+
+“Aye--like Maple Grove, I dare say. Nothing can stand more retired from
+the road than Maple Grove. Such an immense plantation all round it! You
+seem shut out from every thing--in the most complete retirement.--And
+Mrs. Churchill probably has not health or spirits like Selina to enjoy
+that sort of seclusion. Or, perhaps she may not have resources enough in
+herself to be qualified for a country life. I always say a woman cannot
+have too many resources--and I feel very thankful that I have so many
+myself as to be quite independent of society.”
+
+“Frank was here in February for a fortnight.”
+
+“So I remember to have heard. He will find an _addition_ to the society
+of Highbury when he comes again; that is, if I may presume to call
+myself an addition. But perhaps he may never have heard of there being
+such a creature in the world.”
+
+This was too loud a call for a compliment to be passed by, and Mr.
+Weston, with a very good grace, immediately exclaimed,
+
+“My dear madam! Nobody but yourself could imagine such a thing possible.
+Not heard of you!--I believe Mrs. Weston's letters lately have been full
+of very little else than Mrs. Elton.”
+
+He had done his duty and could return to his son.
+
+“When Frank left us,” continued he, “it was quite uncertain when we
+might see him again, which makes this day's news doubly welcome. It has
+been completely unexpected. That is, _I_ always had a strong persuasion
+he would be here again soon, I was sure something favourable would turn
+up--but nobody believed me. He and Mrs. Weston were both dreadfully
+desponding. 'How could he contrive to come? And how could it be supposed
+that his uncle and aunt would spare him again?' and so forth--I always
+felt that something would happen in our favour; and so it has, you see.
+I have observed, Mrs. Elton, in the course of my life, that if things
+are going untowardly one month, they are sure to mend the next.”
+
+“Very true, Mr. Weston, perfectly true. It is just what I used to say to
+a certain gentleman in company in the days of courtship, when, because
+things did not go quite right, did not proceed with all the rapidity
+which suited his feelings, he was apt to be in despair, and exclaim that
+he was sure at this rate it would be _May_ before Hymen's saffron robe
+would be put on for us. Oh! the pains I have been at to dispel those
+gloomy ideas and give him cheerfuller views! The carriage--we had
+disappointments about the carriage;--one morning, I remember, he came to
+me quite in despair.”
+
+She was stopped by a slight fit of coughing, and Mr. Weston instantly
+seized the opportunity of going on.
+
+“You were mentioning May. May is the very month which Mrs. Churchill
+is ordered, or has ordered herself, to spend in some warmer place than
+Enscombe--in short, to spend in London; so that we have the agreeable
+prospect of frequent visits from Frank the whole spring--precisely the
+season of the year which one should have chosen for it: days almost at
+the longest; weather genial and pleasant, always inviting one out, and
+never too hot for exercise. When he was here before, we made the best
+of it; but there was a good deal of wet, damp, cheerless weather;
+there always is in February, you know, and we could not do half that we
+intended. Now will be the time. This will be complete enjoyment; and I
+do not know, Mrs. Elton, whether the uncertainty of our meetings, the
+sort of constant expectation there will be of his coming in to-day or
+to-morrow, and at any hour, may not be more friendly to happiness than
+having him actually in the house. I think it is so. I think it is the
+state of mind which gives most spirit and delight. I hope you will be
+pleased with my son; but you must not expect a prodigy. He is generally
+thought a fine young man, but do not expect a prodigy. Mrs. Weston's
+partiality for him is very great, and, as you may suppose, most
+gratifying to me. She thinks nobody equal to him.”
+
+“And I assure you, Mr. Weston, I have very little doubt that my opinion
+will be decidedly in his favour. I have heard so much in praise of Mr.
+Frank Churchill.--At the same time it is fair to observe, that I am one
+of those who always judge for themselves, and are by no means implicitly
+guided by others. I give you notice that as I find your son, so I shall
+judge of him.--I am no flatterer.”
+
+Mr. Weston was musing.
+
+“I hope,” said he presently, “I have not been severe upon poor Mrs.
+Churchill. If she is ill I should be sorry to do her injustice; but
+there are some traits in her character which make it difficult for me to
+speak of her with the forbearance I could wish. You cannot be ignorant,
+Mrs. Elton, of my connexion with the family, nor of the treatment I have
+met with; and, between ourselves, the whole blame of it is to be laid
+to her. She was the instigator. Frank's mother would never have been
+slighted as she was but for her. Mr. Churchill has pride; but his pride
+is nothing to his wife's: his is a quiet, indolent, gentlemanlike sort
+of pride that would harm nobody, and only make himself a little helpless
+and tiresome; but her pride is arrogance and insolence! And what
+inclines one less to bear, she has no fair pretence of family or blood.
+She was nobody when he married her, barely the daughter of a gentleman;
+but ever since her being turned into a Churchill she has out-Churchill'd
+them all in high and mighty claims: but in herself, I assure you, she is
+an upstart.”
+
+“Only think! well, that must be infinitely provoking! I have quite
+a horror of upstarts. Maple Grove has given me a thorough disgust to
+people of that sort; for there is a family in that neighbourhood who
+are such an annoyance to my brother and sister from the airs they give
+themselves! Your description of Mrs. Churchill made me think of them
+directly. People of the name of Tupman, very lately settled there, and
+encumbered with many low connexions, but giving themselves immense airs,
+and expecting to be on a footing with the old established families.
+A year and a half is the very utmost that they can have lived at West
+Hall; and how they got their fortune nobody knows. They came from
+Birmingham, which is not a place to promise much, you know, Mr. Weston.
+One has not great hopes from Birmingham. I always say there is something
+direful in the sound: but nothing more is positively known of the
+Tupmans, though a good many things I assure you are suspected; and
+yet by their manners they evidently think themselves equal even to
+my brother, Mr. Suckling, who happens to be one of their nearest
+neighbours. It is infinitely too bad. Mr. Suckling, who has been eleven
+years a resident at Maple Grove, and whose father had it before him--I
+believe, at least--I am almost sure that old Mr. Suckling had completed
+the purchase before his death.”
+
+They were interrupted. Tea was carrying round, and Mr. Weston, having
+said all that he wanted, soon took the opportunity of walking away.
+
+After tea, Mr. and Mrs. Weston, and Mr. Elton sat down with Mr.
+Woodhouse to cards. The remaining five were left to their own powers,
+and Emma doubted their getting on very well; for Mr. Knightley seemed
+little disposed for conversation; Mrs. Elton was wanting notice, which
+nobody had inclination to pay, and she was herself in a worry of spirits
+which would have made her prefer being silent.
+
+Mr. John Knightley proved more talkative than his brother. He was to
+leave them early the next day; and he soon began with--
+
+“Well, Emma, I do not believe I have any thing more to say about the
+boys; but you have your sister's letter, and every thing is down at full
+length there we may be sure. My charge would be much more concise than
+her's, and probably not much in the same spirit; all that I have to
+recommend being comprised in, do not spoil them, and do not physic
+them.”
+
+“I rather hope to satisfy you both,” said Emma, “for I shall do all
+in my power to make them happy, which will be enough for Isabella; and
+happiness must preclude false indulgence and physic.”
+
+“And if you find them troublesome, you must send them home again.”
+
+“That is very likely. You think so, do not you?”
+
+“I hope I am aware that they may be too noisy for your father--or even
+may be some encumbrance to you, if your visiting engagements continue to
+increase as much as they have done lately.”
+
+“Increase!”
+
+“Certainly; you must be sensible that the last half-year has made a
+great difference in your way of life.”
+
+“Difference! No indeed I am not.”
+
+“There can be no doubt of your being much more engaged with company than
+you used to be. Witness this very time. Here am I come down for only
+one day, and you are engaged with a dinner-party!--When did it happen
+before, or any thing like it? Your neighbourhood is increasing, and you
+mix more with it. A little while ago, every letter to Isabella brought
+an account of fresh gaieties; dinners at Mr. Cole's, or balls at the
+Crown. The difference which Randalls, Randalls alone makes in your
+goings-on, is very great.”
+
+“Yes,” said his brother quickly, “it is Randalls that does it all.”
+
+“Very well--and as Randalls, I suppose, is not likely to have less
+influence than heretofore, it strikes me as a possible thing, Emma, that
+Henry and John may be sometimes in the way. And if they are, I only beg
+you to send them home.”
+
+“No,” cried Mr. Knightley, “that need not be the consequence. Let them
+be sent to Donwell. I shall certainly be at leisure.”
+
+“Upon my word,” exclaimed Emma, “you amuse me! I should like to know how
+many of all my numerous engagements take place without your being of
+the party; and why I am to be supposed in danger of wanting leisure to
+attend to the little boys. These amazing engagements of mine--what have
+they been? Dining once with the Coles--and having a ball talked of,
+which never took place. I can understand you--(nodding at Mr. John
+Knightley)--your good fortune in meeting with so many of your friends at
+once here, delights you too much to pass unnoticed. But you, (turning to
+Mr. Knightley,) who know how very, very seldom I am ever two hours from
+Hartfield, why you should foresee such a series of dissipation for me, I
+cannot imagine. And as to my dear little boys, I must say, that if Aunt
+Emma has not time for them, I do not think they would fare much better
+with Uncle Knightley, who is absent from home about five hours where she
+is absent one--and who, when he is at home, is either reading to himself
+or settling his accounts.”
+
+Mr. Knightley seemed to be trying not to smile; and succeeded without
+difficulty, upon Mrs. Elton's beginning to talk to him.
+
+
+
+
+VOLUME III
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+A very little quiet reflection was enough to satisfy Emma as to the
+nature of her agitation on hearing this news of Frank Churchill. She
+was soon convinced that it was not for herself she was feeling at all
+apprehensive or embarrassed; it was for him. Her own attachment had
+really subsided into a mere nothing; it was not worth thinking of;--but
+if he, who had undoubtedly been always so much the most in love of the
+two, were to be returning with the same warmth of sentiment which he had
+taken away, it would be very distressing. If a separation of two
+months should not have cooled him, there were dangers and evils before
+her:--caution for him and for herself would be necessary. She did
+not mean to have her own affections entangled again, and it would be
+incumbent on her to avoid any encouragement of his.
+
+She wished she might be able to keep him from an absolute declaration.
+That would be so very painful a conclusion of their present
+acquaintance! and yet, she could not help rather anticipating something
+decisive. She felt as if the spring would not pass without bringing a
+crisis, an event, a something to alter her present composed and tranquil
+state.
+
+It was not very long, though rather longer than Mr. Weston had foreseen,
+before she had the power of forming some opinion of Frank Churchill's
+feelings. The Enscombe family were not in town quite so soon as had been
+imagined, but he was at Highbury very soon afterwards. He rode down
+for a couple of hours; he could not yet do more; but as he came from
+Randalls immediately to Hartfield, she could then exercise all her quick
+observation, and speedily determine how he was influenced, and how she
+must act. They met with the utmost friendliness. There could be no doubt
+of his great pleasure in seeing her. But she had an almost instant doubt
+of his caring for her as he had done, of his feeling the same tenderness
+in the same degree. She watched him well. It was a clear thing he was
+less in love than he had been. Absence, with the conviction probably
+of her indifference, had produced this very natural and very desirable
+effect.
+
+He was in high spirits; as ready to talk and laugh as ever, and seemed
+delighted to speak of his former visit, and recur to old stories: and he
+was not without agitation. It was not in his calmness that she read
+his comparative difference. He was not calm; his spirits were evidently
+fluttered; there was restlessness about him. Lively as he was, it seemed
+a liveliness that did not satisfy himself; but what decided her belief
+on the subject, was his staying only a quarter of an hour, and hurrying
+away to make other calls in Highbury. “He had seen a group of old
+acquaintance in the street as he passed--he had not stopped, he would
+not stop for more than a word--but he had the vanity to think they would
+be disappointed if he did not call, and much as he wished to stay longer
+at Hartfield, he must hurry off.” She had no doubt as to his being less
+in love--but neither his agitated spirits, nor his hurrying away, seemed
+like a perfect cure; and she was rather inclined to think it implied a
+dread of her returning power, and a discreet resolution of not trusting
+himself with her long.
+
+This was the only visit from Frank Churchill in the course of ten days.
+He was often hoping, intending to come--but was always prevented. His
+aunt could not bear to have him leave her. Such was his own account at
+Randall's. If he were quite sincere, if he really tried to come, it was
+to be inferred that Mrs. Churchill's removal to London had been of no
+service to the wilful or nervous part of her disorder. That she was
+really ill was very certain; he had declared himself convinced of it, at
+Randalls. Though much might be fancy, he could not doubt, when he looked
+back, that she was in a weaker state of health than she had been half a
+year ago. He did not believe it to proceed from any thing that care
+and medicine might not remove, or at least that she might not have many
+years of existence before her; but he could not be prevailed on, by all
+his father's doubts, to say that her complaints were merely imaginary,
+or that she was as strong as ever.
+
+It soon appeared that London was not the place for her. She could
+not endure its noise. Her nerves were under continual irritation and
+suffering; and by the ten days' end, her nephew's letter to Randalls
+communicated a change of plan. They were going to remove immediately to
+Richmond. Mrs. Churchill had been recommended to the medical skill of
+an eminent person there, and had otherwise a fancy for the place. A
+ready-furnished house in a favourite spot was engaged, and much benefit
+expected from the change.
+
+Emma heard that Frank wrote in the highest spirits of this arrangement,
+and seemed most fully to appreciate the blessing of having two months
+before him of such near neighbourhood to many dear friends--for the
+house was taken for May and June. She was told that now he wrote with
+the greatest confidence of being often with them, almost as often as he
+could even wish.
+
+Emma saw how Mr. Weston understood these joyous prospects. He was
+considering her as the source of all the happiness they offered. She
+hoped it was not so. Two months must bring it to the proof.
+
+Mr. Weston's own happiness was indisputable. He was quite delighted.
+It was the very circumstance he could have wished for. Now, it would be
+really having Frank in their neighbourhood. What were nine miles to
+a young man?--An hour's ride. He would be always coming over. The
+difference in that respect of Richmond and London was enough to make
+the whole difference of seeing him always and seeing him never. Sixteen
+miles--nay, eighteen--it must be full eighteen to Manchester-street--was
+a serious obstacle. Were he ever able to get away, the day would be
+spent in coming and returning. There was no comfort in having him in
+London; he might as well be at Enscombe; but Richmond was the very
+distance for easy intercourse. Better than nearer!
+
+One good thing was immediately brought to a certainty by this
+removal,--the ball at the Crown. It had not been forgotten before,
+but it had been soon acknowledged vain to attempt to fix a day. Now,
+however, it was absolutely to be; every preparation was resumed, and
+very soon after the Churchills had removed to Richmond, a few lines from
+Frank, to say that his aunt felt already much better for the change, and
+that he had no doubt of being able to join them for twenty-four hours at
+any given time, induced them to name as early a day as possible.
+
+Mr. Weston's ball was to be a real thing. A very few to-morrows stood
+between the young people of Highbury and happiness.
+
+Mr. Woodhouse was resigned. The time of year lightened the evil to him.
+May was better for every thing than February. Mrs. Bates was engaged to
+spend the evening at Hartfield, James had due notice, and he sanguinely
+hoped that neither dear little Henry nor dear little John would have any
+thing the matter with them, while dear Emma were gone.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+No misfortune occurred, again to prevent the ball. The day approached,
+the day arrived; and after a morning of some anxious watching, Frank
+Churchill, in all the certainty of his own self, reached Randalls before
+dinner, and every thing was safe.
+
+No second meeting had there yet been between him and Emma. The room
+at the Crown was to witness it;--but it would be better than a
+common meeting in a crowd. Mr. Weston had been so very earnest in his
+entreaties for her arriving there as soon as possible after themselves,
+for the purpose of taking her opinion as to the propriety and comfort of
+the rooms before any other persons came, that she could not refuse him,
+and must therefore spend some quiet interval in the young man's company.
+She was to convey Harriet, and they drove to the Crown in good time, the
+Randalls party just sufficiently before them.
+
+Frank Churchill seemed to have been on the watch; and though he did not
+say much, his eyes declared that he meant to have a delightful evening.
+They all walked about together, to see that every thing was as it should
+be; and within a few minutes were joined by the contents of another
+carriage, which Emma could not hear the sound of at first, without great
+surprize. “So unreasonably early!” she was going to exclaim; but she
+presently found that it was a family of old friends, who were coming,
+like herself, by particular desire, to help Mr. Weston's judgment; and
+they were so very closely followed by another carriage of cousins,
+who had been entreated to come early with the same distinguishing
+earnestness, on the same errand, that it seemed as if half the company
+might soon be collected together for the purpose of preparatory
+inspection.
+
+Emma perceived that her taste was not the only taste on which Mr. Weston
+depended, and felt, that to be the favourite and intimate of a man
+who had so many intimates and confidantes, was not the very first
+distinction in the scale of vanity. She liked his open manners, but
+a little less of open-heartedness would have made him a higher
+character.--General benevolence, but not general friendship, made a
+man what he ought to be.--She could fancy such a man. The whole party
+walked about, and looked, and praised again; and then, having nothing
+else to do, formed a sort of half-circle round the fire, to observe
+in their various modes, till other subjects were started, that, though
+_May_, a fire in the evening was still very pleasant.
+
+Emma found that it was not Mr. Weston's fault that the number of privy
+councillors was not yet larger. They had stopped at Mrs. Bates's door
+to offer the use of their carriage, but the aunt and niece were to be
+brought by the Eltons.
+
+Frank was standing by her, but not steadily; there was a restlessness,
+which shewed a mind not at ease. He was looking about, he was going to
+the door, he was watching for the sound of other carriages,--impatient
+to begin, or afraid of being always near her.
+
+Mrs. Elton was spoken of. “I think she must be here soon,” said he. “I
+have a great curiosity to see Mrs. Elton, I have heard so much of her.
+It cannot be long, I think, before she comes.”
+
+A carriage was heard. He was on the move immediately; but coming back,
+said,
+
+“I am forgetting that I am not acquainted with her. I have never seen
+either Mr. or Mrs. Elton. I have no business to put myself forward.”
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Elton appeared; and all the smiles and the proprieties
+passed.
+
+“But Miss Bates and Miss Fairfax!” said Mr. Weston, looking about. “We
+thought you were to bring them.”
+
+The mistake had been slight. The carriage was sent for them now. Emma
+longed to know what Frank's first opinion of Mrs. Elton might be; how
+he was affected by the studied elegance of her dress, and her smiles of
+graciousness. He was immediately qualifying himself to form an opinion,
+by giving her very proper attention, after the introduction had passed.
+
+In a few minutes the carriage returned.--Somebody talked of rain.--“I
+will see that there are umbrellas, sir,” said Frank to his father:
+“Miss Bates must not be forgotten:” and away he went. Mr. Weston was
+following; but Mrs. Elton detained him, to gratify him by her opinion
+of his son; and so briskly did she begin, that the young man himself,
+though by no means moving slowly, could hardly be out of hearing.
+
+“A very fine young man indeed, Mr. Weston. You know I candidly told you
+I should form my own opinion; and I am happy to say that I am extremely
+pleased with him.--You may believe me. I never compliment. I think him
+a very handsome young man, and his manners are precisely what I like and
+approve--so truly the gentleman, without the least conceit or puppyism.
+You must know I have a vast dislike to puppies--quite a horror of them.
+They were never tolerated at Maple Grove. Neither Mr. Suckling nor
+me had ever any patience with them; and we used sometimes to say very
+cutting things! Selina, who is mild almost to a fault, bore with them
+much better.”
+
+While she talked of his son, Mr. Weston's attention was chained; but
+when she got to Maple Grove, he could recollect that there were ladies
+just arriving to be attended to, and with happy smiles must hurry away.
+
+Mrs. Elton turned to Mrs. Weston. “I have no doubt of its being our
+carriage with Miss Bates and Jane. Our coachman and horses are so
+extremely expeditious!--I believe we drive faster than any body.--What
+a pleasure it is to send one's carriage for a friend!--I understand you
+were so kind as to offer, but another time it will be quite unnecessary.
+You may be very sure I shall always take care of _them_.”
+
+Miss Bates and Miss Fairfax, escorted by the two gentlemen, walked into
+the room; and Mrs. Elton seemed to think it as much her duty as Mrs.
+Weston's to receive them. Her gestures and movements might be understood
+by any one who looked on like Emma; but her words, every body's words,
+were soon lost under the incessant flow of Miss Bates, who came in
+talking, and had not finished her speech under many minutes after her
+being admitted into the circle at the fire. As the door opened she was
+heard,
+
+“So very obliging of you!--No rain at all. Nothing to signify. I do not
+care for myself. Quite thick shoes. And Jane declares--Well!--(as soon
+as she was within the door) Well! This is brilliant indeed!--This is
+admirable!--Excellently contrived, upon my word. Nothing wanting. Could
+not have imagined it.--So well lighted up!--Jane, Jane, look!--did you
+ever see any thing? Oh! Mr. Weston, you must really have had Aladdin's
+lamp. Good Mrs. Stokes would not know her own room again. I saw her as
+I came in; she was standing in the entrance. 'Oh! Mrs. Stokes,' said
+I--but I had not time for more.” She was now met by Mrs. Weston.--“Very
+well, I thank you, ma'am. I hope you are quite well. Very happy to hear
+it. So afraid you might have a headache!--seeing you pass by so often,
+and knowing how much trouble you must have. Delighted to hear it indeed.
+Ah! dear Mrs. Elton, so obliged to you for the carriage!--excellent
+time. Jane and I quite ready. Did not keep the horses a moment. Most
+comfortable carriage.--Oh! and I am sure our thanks are due to you,
+Mrs. Weston, on that score. Mrs. Elton had most kindly sent Jane a note,
+or we should have been.--But two such offers in one day!--Never were
+such neighbours. I said to my mother, 'Upon my word, ma'am--.' Thank
+you, my mother is remarkably well. Gone to Mr. Woodhouse's. I made her
+take her shawl--for the evenings are not warm--her large new shawl--
+Mrs. Dixon's wedding-present.--So kind of her to think of my mother!
+Bought at Weymouth, you know--Mr. Dixon's choice. There were three
+others, Jane says, which they hesitated about some time. Colonel
+Campbell rather preferred an olive. My dear Jane, are you sure you did
+not wet your feet?--It was but a drop or two, but I am so afraid:--but
+Mr. Frank Churchill was so extremely--and there was a mat to step
+upon--I shall never forget his extreme politeness.--Oh! Mr. Frank
+Churchill, I must tell you my mother's spectacles have never been in
+fault since; the rivet never came out again. My mother often talks of
+your good-nature. Does not she, Jane?--Do not we often talk of Mr. Frank
+Churchill?--Ah! here's Miss Woodhouse.--Dear Miss Woodhouse, how do
+you do?--Very well I thank you, quite well. This is meeting quite
+in fairy-land!--Such a transformation!--Must not compliment, I know
+(eyeing Emma most complacently)--that would be rude--but upon my word,
+Miss Woodhouse, you do look--how do you like Jane's hair?--You are
+a judge.--She did it all herself. Quite wonderful how she does her
+hair!--No hairdresser from London I think could.--Ah! Dr. Hughes I
+declare--and Mrs. Hughes. Must go and speak to Dr. and Mrs. Hughes for a
+moment.--How do you do? How do you do?--Very well, I thank you. This
+is delightful, is not it?--Where's dear Mr. Richard?--Oh! there he is.
+Don't disturb him. Much better employed talking to the young ladies. How
+do you do, Mr. Richard?--I saw you the other day as you rode through
+the town--Mrs. Otway, I protest!--and good Mr. Otway, and Miss Otway
+and Miss Caroline.--Such a host of friends!--and Mr. George and Mr.
+Arthur!--How do you do? How do you all do?--Quite well, I am much
+obliged to you. Never better.--Don't I hear another carriage?--Who can
+this be?--very likely the worthy Coles.--Upon my word, this is charming
+to be standing about among such friends! And such a noble fire!--I am
+quite roasted. No coffee, I thank you, for me--never take coffee.--A
+little tea if you please, sir, by and bye,--no hurry--Oh! here it comes.
+Every thing so good!”
+
+Frank Churchill returned to his station by Emma; and as soon as Miss
+Bates was quiet, she found herself necessarily overhearing the discourse
+of Mrs. Elton and Miss Fairfax, who were standing a little way behind
+her.--He was thoughtful. Whether he were overhearing too, she could not
+determine. After a good many compliments to Jane on her dress and look,
+compliments very quietly and properly taken, Mrs. Elton was evidently
+wanting to be complimented herself--and it was, “How do you like
+my gown?--How do you like my trimming?--How has Wright done my
+hair?”--with many other relative questions, all answered with patient
+politeness. Mrs. Elton then said, “Nobody can think less of dress in
+general than I do--but upon such an occasion as this, when every body's
+eyes are so much upon me, and in compliment to the Westons--who I have
+no doubt are giving this ball chiefly to do me honour--I would not wish
+to be inferior to others. And I see very few pearls in the room except
+mine.--So Frank Churchill is a capital dancer, I understand.--We shall
+see if our styles suit.--A fine young man certainly is Frank Churchill.
+I like him very well.”
+
+At this moment Frank began talking so vigorously, that Emma could not
+but imagine he had overheard his own praises, and did not want to hear
+more;--and the voices of the ladies were drowned for a while, till
+another suspension brought Mrs. Elton's tones again distinctly
+forward.--Mr. Elton had just joined them, and his wife was exclaiming,
+
+“Oh! you have found us out at last, have you, in our seclusion?--I was
+this moment telling Jane, I thought you would begin to be impatient for
+tidings of us.”
+
+“Jane!”--repeated Frank Churchill, with a look of surprize and
+displeasure.--“That is easy--but Miss Fairfax does not disapprove it, I
+suppose.”
+
+“How do you like Mrs. Elton?” said Emma in a whisper.
+
+“Not at all.”
+
+“You are ungrateful.”
+
+“Ungrateful!--What do you mean?” Then changing from a frown to a
+smile--“No, do not tell me--I do not want to know what you mean.--Where
+is my father?--When are we to begin dancing?”
+
+Emma could hardly understand him; he seemed in an odd humour. He walked
+off to find his father, but was quickly back again with both Mr. and
+Mrs. Weston. He had met with them in a little perplexity, which must be
+laid before Emma. It had just occurred to Mrs. Weston that Mrs. Elton
+must be asked to begin the ball; that she would expect it; which
+interfered with all their wishes of giving Emma that distinction.--Emma
+heard the sad truth with fortitude.
+
+“And what are we to do for a proper partner for her?” said Mr. Weston.
+“She will think Frank ought to ask her.”
+
+Frank turned instantly to Emma, to claim her former promise; and
+boasted himself an engaged man, which his father looked his most perfect
+approbation of--and it then appeared that Mrs. Weston was wanting _him_
+to dance with Mrs. Elton himself, and that their business was to help to
+persuade him into it, which was done pretty soon.--Mr. Weston and Mrs.
+Elton led the way, Mr. Frank Churchill and Miss Woodhouse followed.
+Emma must submit to stand second to Mrs. Elton, though she had always
+considered the ball as peculiarly for her. It was almost enough to make
+her think of marrying. Mrs. Elton had undoubtedly the advantage, at this
+time, in vanity completely gratified; for though she had intended to
+begin with Frank Churchill, she could not lose by the change. Mr. Weston
+might be his son's superior.--In spite of this little rub, however,
+Emma was smiling with enjoyment, delighted to see the respectable length
+of the set as it was forming, and to feel that she had so many hours
+of unusual festivity before her.--She was more disturbed by Mr.
+Knightley's not dancing than by any thing else.--There he was, among
+the standers-by, where he ought not to be; he ought to be dancing,--not
+classing himself with the husbands, and fathers, and whist-players, who
+were pretending to feel an interest in the dance till their rubbers were
+made up,--so young as he looked!--He could not have appeared to greater
+advantage perhaps anywhere, than where he had placed himself. His tall,
+firm, upright figure, among the bulky forms and stooping shoulders of
+the elderly men, was such as Emma felt must draw every body's eyes;
+and, excepting her own partner, there was not one among the whole row of
+young men who could be compared with him.--He moved a few steps nearer,
+and those few steps were enough to prove in how gentlemanlike a manner,
+with what natural grace, he must have danced, would he but take the
+trouble.--Whenever she caught his eye, she forced him to smile; but
+in general he was looking grave. She wished he could love a ballroom
+better, and could like Frank Churchill better.--He seemed often
+observing her. She must not flatter herself that he thought of her
+dancing, but if he were criticising her behaviour, she did not feel
+afraid. There was nothing like flirtation between her and her partner.
+They seemed more like cheerful, easy friends, than lovers. That Frank
+Churchill thought less of her than he had done, was indubitable.
+
+The ball proceeded pleasantly. The anxious cares, the incessant
+attentions of Mrs. Weston, were not thrown away. Every body seemed
+happy; and the praise of being a delightful ball, which is seldom
+bestowed till after a ball has ceased to be, was repeatedly given in
+the very beginning of the existence of this. Of very important, very
+recordable events, it was not more productive than such meetings usually
+are. There was one, however, which Emma thought something of.--The two
+last dances before supper were begun, and Harriet had no partner;--the
+only young lady sitting down;--and so equal had been hitherto the
+number of dancers, that how there could be any one disengaged was the
+wonder!--But Emma's wonder lessened soon afterwards, on seeing Mr. Elton
+sauntering about. He would not ask Harriet to dance if it were possible
+to be avoided: she was sure he would not--and she was expecting him
+every moment to escape into the card-room.
+
+Escape, however, was not his plan. He came to the part of the room where
+the sitters-by were collected, spoke to some, and walked about in front
+of them, as if to shew his liberty, and his resolution of maintaining
+it. He did not omit being sometimes directly before Miss Smith, or
+speaking to those who were close to her.--Emma saw it. She was not yet
+dancing; she was working her way up from the bottom, and had therefore
+leisure to look around, and by only turning her head a little she saw
+it all. When she was half-way up the set, the whole group were exactly
+behind her, and she would no longer allow her eyes to watch; but Mr.
+Elton was so near, that she heard every syllable of a dialogue which
+just then took place between him and Mrs. Weston; and she perceived that
+his wife, who was standing immediately above her, was not only
+listening also, but even encouraging him by significant glances.--The
+kind-hearted, gentle Mrs. Weston had left her seat to join him and say,
+“Do not you dance, Mr. Elton?” to which his prompt reply was, “Most
+readily, Mrs. Weston, if you will dance with me.”
+
+“Me!--oh! no--I would get you a better partner than myself. I am no
+dancer.”
+
+“If Mrs. Gilbert wishes to dance,” said he, “I shall have great
+pleasure, I am sure--for, though beginning to feel myself rather an old
+married man, and that my dancing days are over, it would give me very
+great pleasure at any time to stand up with an old friend like Mrs.
+Gilbert.”
+
+“Mrs. Gilbert does not mean to dance, but there is a young lady
+disengaged whom I should be very glad to see dancing--Miss Smith.” “Miss
+Smith!--oh!--I had not observed.--You are extremely obliging--and if I
+were not an old married man.--But my dancing days are over, Mrs. Weston.
+You will excuse me. Any thing else I should be most happy to do, at your
+command--but my dancing days are over.”
+
+Mrs. Weston said no more; and Emma could imagine with what surprize and
+mortification she must be returning to her seat. This was Mr. Elton! the
+amiable, obliging, gentle Mr. Elton.--She looked round for a moment; he
+had joined Mr. Knightley at a little distance, and was arranging himself
+for settled conversation, while smiles of high glee passed between him
+and his wife.
+
+She would not look again. Her heart was in a glow, and she feared her
+face might be as hot.
+
+In another moment a happier sight caught her;--Mr. Knightley leading
+Harriet to the set!--Never had she been more surprized, seldom more
+delighted, than at that instant. She was all pleasure and gratitude,
+both for Harriet and herself, and longed to be thanking him; and though
+too distant for speech, her countenance said much, as soon as she could
+catch his eye again.
+
+His dancing proved to be just what she had believed it, extremely good;
+and Harriet would have seemed almost too lucky, if it had not been for
+the cruel state of things before, and for the very complete enjoyment
+and very high sense of the distinction which her happy features
+announced. It was not thrown away on her, she bounded higher than ever,
+flew farther down the middle, and was in a continual course of smiles.
+
+Mr. Elton had retreated into the card-room, looking (Emma trusted) very
+foolish. She did not think he was quite so hardened as his wife, though
+growing very like her;--_she_ spoke some of her feelings, by observing
+audibly to her partner,
+
+“Knightley has taken pity on poor little Miss Smith!--Very good-natured,
+I declare.”
+
+Supper was announced. The move began; and Miss Bates might be heard from
+that moment, without interruption, till her being seated at table and
+taking up her spoon.
+
+“Jane, Jane, my dear Jane, where are you?--Here is your tippet. Mrs.
+Weston begs you to put on your tippet. She says she is afraid there will
+be draughts in the passage, though every thing has been done--One door
+nailed up--Quantities of matting--My dear Jane, indeed you must.
+Mr. Churchill, oh! you are too obliging! How well you put it on!--so
+gratified! Excellent dancing indeed!--Yes, my dear, I ran home, as I
+said I should, to help grandmama to bed, and got back again, and
+nobody missed me.--I set off without saying a word, just as I told you.
+Grandmama was quite well, had a charming evening with Mr. Woodhouse, a
+vast deal of chat, and backgammon.--Tea was made downstairs, biscuits
+and baked apples and wine before she came away: amazing luck in some
+of her throws: and she inquired a great deal about you, how you were
+amused, and who were your partners. 'Oh!' said I, 'I shall not forestall
+Jane; I left her dancing with Mr. George Otway; she will love to tell
+you all about it herself to-morrow: her first partner was Mr. Elton,
+I do not know who will ask her next, perhaps Mr. William Cox.' My dear
+sir, you are too obliging.--Is there nobody you would not rather?--I am
+not helpless. Sir, you are most kind. Upon my word, Jane on one arm, and
+me on the other!--Stop, stop, let us stand a little back, Mrs. Elton is
+going; dear Mrs. Elton, how elegant she looks!--Beautiful lace!--Now we
+all follow in her train. Quite the queen of the evening!--Well, here we
+are at the passage. Two steps, Jane, take care of the two steps. Oh! no,
+there is but one. Well, I was persuaded there were two. How very odd!
+I was convinced there were two, and there is but one. I never saw any
+thing equal to the comfort and style--Candles everywhere.--I was telling
+you of your grandmama, Jane,--There was a little disappointment.--The
+baked apples and biscuits, excellent in their way, you know; but there
+was a delicate fricassee of sweetbread and some asparagus brought in at
+first, and good Mr. Woodhouse, not thinking the asparagus quite boiled
+enough, sent it all out again. Now there is nothing grandmama loves
+better than sweetbread and asparagus--so she was rather disappointed,
+but we agreed we would not speak of it to any body, for fear of
+its getting round to dear Miss Woodhouse, who would be so very much
+concerned!--Well, this is brilliant! I am all amazement! could not have
+supposed any thing!--Such elegance and profusion!--I have seen nothing
+like it since--Well, where shall we sit? where shall we sit? Anywhere,
+so that Jane is not in a draught. Where _I_ sit is of no consequence.
+Oh! do you recommend this side?--Well, I am sure, Mr. Churchill--only
+it seems too good--but just as you please. What you direct in this house
+cannot be wrong. Dear Jane, how shall we ever recollect half the dishes
+for grandmama? Soup too! Bless me! I should not be helped so soon, but
+it smells most excellent, and I cannot help beginning.”
+
+Emma had no opportunity of speaking to Mr. Knightley till after supper;
+but, when they were all in the ballroom again, her eyes invited
+him irresistibly to come to her and be thanked. He was warm in his
+reprobation of Mr. Elton's conduct; it had been unpardonable rudeness;
+and Mrs. Elton's looks also received the due share of censure.
+
+“They aimed at wounding more than Harriet,” said he. “Emma, why is it
+that they are your enemies?”
+
+He looked with smiling penetration; and, on receiving no answer, added,
+“_She_ ought not to be angry with you, I suspect, whatever he may
+be.--To that surmise, you say nothing, of course; but confess, Emma,
+that you did want him to marry Harriet.”
+
+“I did,” replied Emma, “and they cannot forgive me.”
+
+He shook his head; but there was a smile of indulgence with it, and he
+only said,
+
+“I shall not scold you. I leave you to your own reflections.”
+
+“Can you trust me with such flatterers?--Does my vain spirit ever tell
+me I am wrong?”
+
+“Not your vain spirit, but your serious spirit.--If one leads you wrong,
+I am sure the other tells you of it.”
+
+“I do own myself to have been completely mistaken in Mr. Elton. There is
+a littleness about him which you discovered, and which I did not: and I
+was fully convinced of his being in love with Harriet. It was through a
+series of strange blunders!”
+
+“And, in return for your acknowledging so much, I will do you the
+justice to say, that you would have chosen for him better than he has
+chosen for himself.--Harriet Smith has some first-rate qualities, which
+Mrs. Elton is totally without. An unpretending, single-minded, artless
+girl--infinitely to be preferred by any man of sense and taste to such a
+woman as Mrs. Elton. I found Harriet more conversable than I expected.”
+
+Emma was extremely gratified.--They were interrupted by the bustle of
+Mr. Weston calling on every body to begin dancing again.
+
+“Come Miss Woodhouse, Miss Otway, Miss Fairfax, what are you all
+doing?--Come Emma, set your companions the example. Every body is lazy!
+Every body is asleep!”
+
+“I am ready,” said Emma, “whenever I am wanted.”
+
+“Whom are you going to dance with?” asked Mr. Knightley.
+
+She hesitated a moment, and then replied, “With you, if you will ask
+me.”
+
+“Will you?” said he, offering his hand.
+
+“Indeed I will. You have shewn that you can dance, and you know we are
+not really so much brother and sister as to make it at all improper.”
+
+“Brother and sister! no, indeed.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+This little explanation with Mr. Knightley gave Emma considerable
+pleasure. It was one of the agreeable recollections of the ball, which
+she walked about the lawn the next morning to enjoy.--She was extremely
+glad that they had come to so good an understanding respecting the
+Eltons, and that their opinions of both husband and wife were so much
+alike; and his praise of Harriet, his concession in her favour, was
+peculiarly gratifying. The impertinence of the Eltons, which for a few
+minutes had threatened to ruin the rest of her evening, had been the
+occasion of some of its highest satisfactions; and she looked forward
+to another happy result--the cure of Harriet's infatuation.--From
+Harriet's manner of speaking of the circumstance before they quitted the
+ballroom, she had strong hopes. It seemed as if her eyes were suddenly
+opened, and she were enabled to see that Mr. Elton was not the superior
+creature she had believed him. The fever was over, and Emma could
+harbour little fear of the pulse being quickened again by injurious
+courtesy. She depended on the evil feelings of the Eltons for
+supplying all the discipline of pointed neglect that could be farther
+requisite.--Harriet rational, Frank Churchill not too much in love, and
+Mr. Knightley not wanting to quarrel with her, how very happy a summer
+must be before her!
+
+She was not to see Frank Churchill this morning. He had told her that he
+could not allow himself the pleasure of stopping at Hartfield, as he was
+to be at home by the middle of the day. She did not regret it.
+
+Having arranged all these matters, looked them through, and put them all
+to rights, she was just turning to the house with spirits freshened up
+for the demands of the two little boys, as well as of their grandpapa,
+when the great iron sweep-gate opened, and two persons entered whom she
+had never less expected to see together--Frank Churchill, with Harriet
+leaning on his arm--actually Harriet!--A moment sufficed to convince
+her that something extraordinary had happened. Harriet looked white
+and frightened, and he was trying to cheer her.--The iron gates and the
+front-door were not twenty yards asunder;--they were all three soon in
+the hall, and Harriet immediately sinking into a chair fainted away.
+
+A young lady who faints, must be recovered; questions must be answered,
+and surprizes be explained. Such events are very interesting, but the
+suspense of them cannot last long. A few minutes made Emma acquainted
+with the whole.
+
+Miss Smith, and Miss Bickerton, another parlour boarder at Mrs.
+Goddard's, who had been also at the ball, had walked out together, and
+taken a road, the Richmond road, which, though apparently public enough
+for safety, had led them into alarm.--About half a mile beyond Highbury,
+making a sudden turn, and deeply shaded by elms on each side, it became
+for a considerable stretch very retired; and when the young ladies
+had advanced some way into it, they had suddenly perceived at a small
+distance before them, on a broader patch of greensward by the side, a
+party of gipsies. A child on the watch, came towards them to beg; and
+Miss Bickerton, excessively frightened, gave a great scream, and calling
+on Harriet to follow her, ran up a steep bank, cleared a slight hedge at
+the top, and made the best of her way by a short cut back to Highbury.
+But poor Harriet could not follow. She had suffered very much from cramp
+after dancing, and her first attempt to mount the bank brought on such
+a return of it as made her absolutely powerless--and in this state, and
+exceedingly terrified, she had been obliged to remain.
+
+How the trampers might have behaved, had the young ladies been more
+courageous, must be doubtful; but such an invitation for attack could
+not be resisted; and Harriet was soon assailed by half a dozen children,
+headed by a stout woman and a great boy, all clamorous, and impertinent
+in look, though not absolutely in word.--More and more frightened, she
+immediately promised them money, and taking out her purse, gave them a
+shilling, and begged them not to want more, or to use her ill.--She
+was then able to walk, though but slowly, and was moving away--but her
+terror and her purse were too tempting, and she was followed, or rather
+surrounded, by the whole gang, demanding more.
+
+In this state Frank Churchill had found her, she trembling and
+conditioning, they loud and insolent. By a most fortunate chance his
+leaving Highbury had been delayed so as to bring him to her assistance
+at this critical moment. The pleasantness of the morning had induced
+him to walk forward, and leave his horses to meet him by another road,
+a mile or two beyond Highbury--and happening to have borrowed a pair
+of scissors the night before of Miss Bates, and to have forgotten to
+restore them, he had been obliged to stop at her door, and go in for a
+few minutes: he was therefore later than he had intended; and being
+on foot, was unseen by the whole party till almost close to them. The
+terror which the woman and boy had been creating in Harriet was then
+their own portion. He had left them completely frightened; and Harriet
+eagerly clinging to him, and hardly able to speak, had just strength
+enough to reach Hartfield, before her spirits were quite overcome.
+It was his idea to bring her to Hartfield: he had thought of no other
+place.
+
+This was the amount of the whole story,--of his communication and of
+Harriet's as soon as she had recovered her senses and speech.--He dared
+not stay longer than to see her well; these several delays left him
+not another minute to lose; and Emma engaging to give assurance of her
+safety to Mrs. Goddard, and notice of there being such a set of people
+in the neighbourhood to Mr. Knightley, he set off, with all the grateful
+blessings that she could utter for her friend and herself.
+
+Such an adventure as this,--a fine young man and a lovely young woman
+thrown together in such a way, could hardly fail of suggesting certain
+ideas to the coldest heart and the steadiest brain. So Emma thought, at
+least. Could a linguist, could a grammarian, could even a mathematician
+have seen what she did, have witnessed their appearance together, and
+heard their history of it, without feeling that circumstances had been
+at work to make them peculiarly interesting to each other?--How much
+more must an imaginist, like herself, be on fire with speculation and
+foresight!--especially with such a groundwork of anticipation as her
+mind had already made.
+
+It was a very extraordinary thing! Nothing of the sort had ever
+occurred before to any young ladies in the place, within her memory; no
+rencontre, no alarm of the kind;--and now it had happened to the very
+person, and at the very hour, when the other very person was chancing
+to pass by to rescue her!--It certainly was very extraordinary!--And
+knowing, as she did, the favourable state of mind of each at this
+period, it struck her the more. He was wishing to get the better of his
+attachment to herself, she just recovering from her mania for Mr. Elton.
+It seemed as if every thing united to promise the most interesting
+consequences. It was not possible that the occurrence should not be
+strongly recommending each to the other.
+
+In the few minutes' conversation which she had yet had with him, while
+Harriet had been partially insensible, he had spoken of her terror,
+her naivete, her fervour as she seized and clung to his arm, with a
+sensibility amused and delighted; and just at last, after Harriet's
+own account had been given, he had expressed his indignation at the
+abominable folly of Miss Bickerton in the warmest terms. Every thing was
+to take its natural course, however, neither impelled nor assisted.
+She would not stir a step, nor drop a hint. No, she had had enough of
+interference. There could be no harm in a scheme, a mere passive scheme.
+It was no more than a wish. Beyond it she would on no account proceed.
+
+Emma's first resolution was to keep her father from the knowledge of
+what had passed,--aware of the anxiety and alarm it would occasion: but
+she soon felt that concealment must be impossible. Within half an hour
+it was known all over Highbury. It was the very event to engage those
+who talk most, the young and the low; and all the youth and servants in
+the place were soon in the happiness of frightful news. The last night's
+ball seemed lost in the gipsies. Poor Mr. Woodhouse trembled as he sat,
+and, as Emma had foreseen, would scarcely be satisfied without their
+promising never to go beyond the shrubbery again. It was some comfort
+to him that many inquiries after himself and Miss Woodhouse (for his
+neighbours knew that he loved to be inquired after), as well as Miss
+Smith, were coming in during the rest of the day; and he had
+the pleasure of returning for answer, that they were all very
+indifferent--which, though not exactly true, for she was perfectly well,
+and Harriet not much otherwise, Emma would not interfere with. She had
+an unhappy state of health in general for the child of such a man,
+for she hardly knew what indisposition was; and if he did not invent
+illnesses for her, she could make no figure in a message.
+
+The gipsies did not wait for the operations of justice; they took
+themselves off in a hurry. The young ladies of Highbury might have
+walked again in safety before their panic began, and the whole history
+dwindled soon into a matter of little importance but to Emma and her
+nephews:--in her imagination it maintained its ground, and Henry and
+John were still asking every day for the story of Harriet and the
+gipsies, and still tenaciously setting her right if she varied in the
+slightest particular from the original recital.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+A very few days had passed after this adventure, when Harriet came one
+morning to Emma with a small parcel in her hand, and after sitting down
+and hesitating, thus began:
+
+“Miss Woodhouse--if you are at leisure--I have something that I should
+like to tell you--a sort of confession to make--and then, you know, it
+will be over.”
+
+Emma was a good deal surprized; but begged her to speak. There was a
+seriousness in Harriet's manner which prepared her, quite as much as her
+words, for something more than ordinary.
+
+“It is my duty, and I am sure it is my wish,” she continued, “to have
+no reserves with you on this subject. As I am happily quite an altered
+creature in _one_ _respect_, it is very fit that you should have
+the satisfaction of knowing it. I do not want to say more than is
+necessary--I am too much ashamed of having given way as I have done, and
+I dare say you understand me.”
+
+“Yes,” said Emma, “I hope I do.”
+
+“How I could so long a time be fancying myself!...” cried Harriet,
+warmly. “It seems like madness! I can see nothing at all extraordinary
+in him now.--I do not care whether I meet him or not--except that of the
+two I had rather not see him--and indeed I would go any distance round
+to avoid him--but I do not envy his wife in the least; I neither admire
+her nor envy her, as I have done: she is very charming, I dare say, and
+all that, but I think her very ill-tempered and disagreeable--I shall
+never forget her look the other night!--However, I assure you, Miss
+Woodhouse, I wish her no evil.--No, let them be ever so happy together,
+it will not give me another moment's pang: and to convince you that I
+have been speaking truth, I am now going to destroy--what I ought to
+have destroyed long ago--what I ought never to have kept--I know that
+very well (blushing as she spoke).--However, now I will destroy it
+all--and it is my particular wish to do it in your presence, that you
+may see how rational I am grown. Cannot you guess what this parcel
+holds?” said she, with a conscious look.
+
+“Not the least in the world.--Did he ever give you any thing?”
+
+“No--I cannot call them gifts; but they are things that I have valued
+very much.”
+
+She held the parcel towards her, and Emma read the words _Most_
+_precious_ _treasures_ on the top. Her curiosity was greatly excited.
+Harriet unfolded the parcel, and she looked on with impatience. Within
+abundance of silver paper was a pretty little Tunbridge-ware box,
+which Harriet opened: it was well lined with the softest cotton; but,
+excepting the cotton, Emma saw only a small piece of court-plaister.
+
+“Now,” said Harriet, “you _must_ recollect.”
+
+“No, indeed I do not.”
+
+“Dear me! I should not have thought it possible you could forget what
+passed in this very room about court-plaister, one of the very last
+times we ever met in it!--It was but a very few days before I had my
+sore throat--just before Mr. and Mrs. John Knightley came--I think the
+very evening.--Do not you remember his cutting his finger with your new
+penknife, and your recommending court-plaister?--But, as you had none
+about you, and knew I had, you desired me to supply him; and so I took
+mine out and cut him a piece; but it was a great deal too large, and he
+cut it smaller, and kept playing some time with what was left, before he
+gave it back to me. And so then, in my nonsense, I could not help making
+a treasure of it--so I put it by never to be used, and looked at it now
+and then as a great treat.”
+
+“My dearest Harriet!” cried Emma, putting her hand before her face,
+and jumping up, “you make me more ashamed of myself than I can bear.
+Remember it? Aye, I remember it all now; all, except your saving this
+relic--I knew nothing of that till this moment--but the cutting the
+finger, and my recommending court-plaister, and saying I had none
+about me!--Oh! my sins, my sins!--And I had plenty all the while in my
+pocket!--One of my senseless tricks!--I deserve to be under a continual
+blush all the rest of my life.--Well--(sitting down again)--go on--what
+else?”
+
+“And had you really some at hand yourself? I am sure I never suspected
+it, you did it so naturally.”
+
+“And so you actually put this piece of court-plaister by for his sake!”
+ said Emma, recovering from her state of shame and feeling divided
+between wonder and amusement. And secretly she added to herself, “Lord
+bless me! when should I ever have thought of putting by in cotton a
+piece of court-plaister that Frank Churchill had been pulling about! I
+never was equal to this.”
+
+“Here,” resumed Harriet, turning to her box again, “here is something
+still more valuable, I mean that _has_ _been_ more valuable, because
+this is what did really once belong to him, which the court-plaister
+never did.”
+
+Emma was quite eager to see this superior treasure. It was the end of an
+old pencil,--the part without any lead.
+
+“This was really his,” said Harriet.--“Do not you remember one
+morning?--no, I dare say you do not. But one morning--I forget exactly
+the day--but perhaps it was the Tuesday or Wednesday before _that_
+_evening_, he wanted to make a memorandum in his pocket-book; it was
+about spruce-beer. Mr. Knightley had been telling him something about
+brewing spruce-beer, and he wanted to put it down; but when he took out
+his pencil, there was so little lead that he soon cut it all away, and
+it would not do, so you lent him another, and this was left upon the
+table as good for nothing. But I kept my eye on it; and, as soon as I
+dared, caught it up, and never parted with it again from that moment.”
+
+“I do remember it,” cried Emma; “I perfectly remember it.--Talking
+about spruce-beer.--Oh! yes--Mr. Knightley and I both saying we
+liked it, and Mr. Elton's seeming resolved to learn to like it too. I
+perfectly remember it.--Stop; Mr. Knightley was standing just here, was
+not he? I have an idea he was standing just here.”
+
+“Ah! I do not know. I cannot recollect.--It is very odd, but I cannot
+recollect.--Mr. Elton was sitting here, I remember, much about where I
+am now.”--
+
+“Well, go on.”
+
+“Oh! that's all. I have nothing more to shew you, or to say--except that
+I am now going to throw them both behind the fire, and I wish you to see
+me do it.”
+
+“My poor dear Harriet! and have you actually found happiness in
+treasuring up these things?”
+
+“Yes, simpleton as I was!--but I am quite ashamed of it now, and wish I
+could forget as easily as I can burn them. It was very wrong of me, you
+know, to keep any remembrances, after he was married. I knew it was--but
+had not resolution enough to part with them.”
+
+“But, Harriet, is it necessary to burn the court-plaister?--I have not
+a word to say for the bit of old pencil, but the court-plaister might be
+useful.”
+
+“I shall be happier to burn it,” replied Harriet. “It has a disagreeable
+look to me. I must get rid of every thing.--There it goes, and there is
+an end, thank Heaven! of Mr. Elton.”
+
+“And when,” thought Emma, “will there be a beginning of Mr. Churchill?”
+
+She had soon afterwards reason to believe that the beginning was already
+made, and could not but hope that the gipsy, though she had _told_ no
+fortune, might be proved to have made Harriet's.--About a fortnight
+after the alarm, they came to a sufficient explanation, and quite
+undesignedly. Emma was not thinking of it at the moment, which made the
+information she received more valuable. She merely said, in the course
+of some trivial chat, “Well, Harriet, whenever you marry I would advise
+you to do so and so”--and thought no more of it, till after a minute's
+silence she heard Harriet say in a very serious tone, “I shall never
+marry.”
+
+Emma then looked up, and immediately saw how it was; and after a
+moment's debate, as to whether it should pass unnoticed or not, replied,
+
+“Never marry!--This is a new resolution.”
+
+“It is one that I shall never change, however.”
+
+After another short hesitation, “I hope it does not proceed from--I hope
+it is not in compliment to Mr. Elton?”
+
+“Mr. Elton indeed!” cried Harriet indignantly.--“Oh! no”--and Emma could
+just catch the words, “so superior to Mr. Elton!”
+
+She then took a longer time for consideration. Should she proceed no
+farther?--should she let it pass, and seem to suspect nothing?--Perhaps
+Harriet might think her cold or angry if she did; or perhaps if she were
+totally silent, it might only drive Harriet into asking her to hear too
+much; and against any thing like such an unreserve as had been, such
+an open and frequent discussion of hopes and chances, she was perfectly
+resolved.--She believed it would be wiser for her to say and know at
+once, all that she meant to say and know. Plain dealing was always
+best. She had previously determined how far she would proceed, on any
+application of the sort; and it would be safer for both, to have the
+judicious law of her own brain laid down with speed.--She was decided,
+and thus spoke--
+
+“Harriet, I will not affect to be in doubt of your meaning. Your
+resolution, or rather your expectation of never marrying, results from
+an idea that the person whom you might prefer, would be too greatly your
+superior in situation to think of you. Is not it so?”
+
+“Oh! Miss Woodhouse, believe me I have not the presumption to suppose--
+Indeed I am not so mad.--But it is a pleasure to me to admire him at a
+distance--and to think of his infinite superiority to all the rest of
+the world, with the gratitude, wonder, and veneration, which are so
+proper, in me especially.”
+
+“I am not at all surprized at you, Harriet. The service he rendered you
+was enough to warm your heart.”
+
+“Service! oh! it was such an inexpressible obligation!--The very
+recollection of it, and all that I felt at the time--when I saw him
+coming--his noble look--and my wretchedness before. Such a change! In
+one moment such a change! From perfect misery to perfect happiness!”
+
+“It is very natural. It is natural, and it is honourable.--Yes,
+honourable, I think, to chuse so well and so gratefully.--But that
+it will be a fortunate preference is more than I can promise. I do not
+advise you to give way to it, Harriet. I do not by any means engage
+for its being returned. Consider what you are about. Perhaps it will be
+wisest in you to check your feelings while you can: at any rate do not
+let them carry you far, unless you are persuaded of his liking you. Be
+observant of him. Let his behaviour be the guide of your sensations. I
+give you this caution now, because I shall never speak to you again on
+the subject. I am determined against all interference. Henceforward I
+know nothing of the matter. Let no name ever pass our lips. We were very
+wrong before; we will be cautious now.--He is your superior, no doubt,
+and there do seem objections and obstacles of a very serious nature; but
+yet, Harriet, more wonderful things have taken place, there have been
+matches of greater disparity. But take care of yourself. I would not
+have you too sanguine; though, however it may end, be assured your
+raising your thoughts to _him_, is a mark of good taste which I shall
+always know how to value.”
+
+Harriet kissed her hand in silent and submissive gratitude. Emma was
+very decided in thinking such an attachment no bad thing for her friend.
+Its tendency would be to raise and refine her mind--and it must be
+saving her from the danger of degradation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+In this state of schemes, and hopes, and connivance, June opened upon
+Hartfield. To Highbury in general it brought no material change. The
+Eltons were still talking of a visit from the Sucklings, and of the use
+to be made of their barouche-landau; and Jane Fairfax was still at her
+grandmother's; and as the return of the Campbells from Ireland was again
+delayed, and August, instead of Midsummer, fixed for it, she was likely
+to remain there full two months longer, provided at least she were able
+to defeat Mrs. Elton's activity in her service, and save herself from
+being hurried into a delightful situation against her will.
+
+Mr. Knightley, who, for some reason best known to himself, had certainly
+taken an early dislike to Frank Churchill, was only growing to dislike
+him more. He began to suspect him of some double dealing in his pursuit
+of Emma. That Emma was his object appeared indisputable. Every thing
+declared it; his own attentions, his father's hints, his mother-in-law's
+guarded silence; it was all in unison; words, conduct, discretion, and
+indiscretion, told the same story. But while so many were devoting him
+to Emma, and Emma herself making him over to Harriet, Mr. Knightley
+began to suspect him of some inclination to trifle with Jane Fairfax. He
+could not understand it; but there were symptoms of intelligence between
+them--he thought so at least--symptoms of admiration on his side, which,
+having once observed, he could not persuade himself to think entirely
+void of meaning, however he might wish to escape any of Emma's errors
+of imagination. _She_ was not present when the suspicion first arose.
+He was dining with the Randalls family, and Jane, at the Eltons'; and he
+had seen a look, more than a single look, at Miss Fairfax, which, from
+the admirer of Miss Woodhouse, seemed somewhat out of place. When he was
+again in their company, he could not help remembering what he had seen;
+nor could he avoid observations which, unless it were like Cowper and
+his fire at twilight,
+
+“Myself creating what I saw,”
+
+brought him yet stronger suspicion of there being a something of private
+liking, of private understanding even, between Frank Churchill and Jane.
+
+He had walked up one day after dinner, as he very often did, to spend
+his evening at Hartfield. Emma and Harriet were going to walk; he joined
+them; and, on returning, they fell in with a larger party, who, like
+themselves, judged it wisest to take their exercise early, as the
+weather threatened rain; Mr. and Mrs. Weston and their son, Miss Bates
+and her niece, who had accidentally met. They all united; and, on
+reaching Hartfield gates, Emma, who knew it was exactly the sort of
+visiting that would be welcome to her father, pressed them all to go in
+and drink tea with him. The Randalls party agreed to it immediately; and
+after a pretty long speech from Miss Bates, which few persons listened
+to, she also found it possible to accept dear Miss Woodhouse's most
+obliging invitation.
+
+As they were turning into the grounds, Mr. Perry passed by on horseback.
+The gentlemen spoke of his horse.
+
+“By the bye,” said Frank Churchill to Mrs. Weston presently, “what
+became of Mr. Perry's plan of setting up his carriage?”
+
+Mrs. Weston looked surprized, and said, “I did not know that he ever had
+any such plan.”
+
+“Nay, I had it from you. You wrote me word of it three months ago.”
+
+“Me! impossible!”
+
+“Indeed you did. I remember it perfectly. You mentioned it as what
+was certainly to be very soon. Mrs. Perry had told somebody, and was
+extremely happy about it. It was owing to _her_ persuasion, as she
+thought his being out in bad weather did him a great deal of harm. You
+must remember it now?”
+
+“Upon my word I never heard of it till this moment.”
+
+“Never! really, never!--Bless me! how could it be?--Then I must have
+dreamt it--but I was completely persuaded--Miss Smith, you walk as if
+you were tired. You will not be sorry to find yourself at home.”
+
+“What is this?--What is this?” cried Mr. Weston, “about Perry and a
+carriage? Is Perry going to set up his carriage, Frank? I am glad he can
+afford it. You had it from himself, had you?”
+
+“No, sir,” replied his son, laughing, “I seem to have had it from
+nobody.--Very odd!--I really was persuaded of Mrs. Weston's having
+mentioned it in one of her letters to Enscombe, many weeks ago, with all
+these particulars--but as she declares she never heard a syllable of
+it before, of course it must have been a dream. I am a great dreamer.
+I dream of every body at Highbury when I am away--and when I have gone
+through my particular friends, then I begin dreaming of Mr. and Mrs.
+Perry.”
+
+“It is odd though,” observed his father, “that you should have had such
+a regular connected dream about people whom it was not very likely you
+should be thinking of at Enscombe. Perry's setting up his carriage! and
+his wife's persuading him to it, out of care for his health--just
+what will happen, I have no doubt, some time or other; only a little
+premature. What an air of probability sometimes runs through a dream!
+And at others, what a heap of absurdities it is! Well, Frank, your dream
+certainly shews that Highbury is in your thoughts when you are absent.
+Emma, you are a great dreamer, I think?”
+
+Emma was out of hearing. She had hurried on before her guests to
+prepare her father for their appearance, and was beyond the reach of Mr.
+Weston's hint.
+
+“Why, to own the truth,” cried Miss Bates, who had been trying in vain
+to be heard the last two minutes, “if I must speak on this subject,
+there is no denying that Mr. Frank Churchill might have--I do not mean
+to say that he did not dream it--I am sure I have sometimes the oddest
+dreams in the world--but if I am questioned about it, I must acknowledge
+that there was such an idea last spring; for Mrs. Perry herself
+mentioned it to my mother, and the Coles knew of it as well as
+ourselves--but it was quite a secret, known to nobody else, and only
+thought of about three days. Mrs. Perry was very anxious that he should
+have a carriage, and came to my mother in great spirits one morning
+because she thought she had prevailed. Jane, don't you remember
+grandmama's telling us of it when we got home? I forget where we
+had been walking to--very likely to Randalls; yes, I think it was to
+Randalls. Mrs. Perry was always particularly fond of my mother--indeed
+I do not know who is not--and she had mentioned it to her in confidence;
+she had no objection to her telling us, of course, but it was not to go
+beyond: and, from that day to this, I never mentioned it to a soul that
+I know of. At the same time, I will not positively answer for my having
+never dropt a hint, because I know I do sometimes pop out a thing before
+I am aware. I am a talker, you know; I am rather a talker; and now and
+then I have let a thing escape me which I should not. I am not like
+Jane; I wish I were. I will answer for it _she_ never betrayed the least
+thing in the world. Where is she?--Oh! just behind. Perfectly remember
+Mrs. Perry's coming.--Extraordinary dream, indeed!”
+
+They were entering the hall. Mr. Knightley's eyes had preceded Miss
+Bates's in a glance at Jane. From Frank Churchill's face, where
+he thought he saw confusion suppressed or laughed away, he had
+involuntarily turned to hers; but she was indeed behind, and too busy
+with her shawl. Mr. Weston had walked in. The two other gentlemen waited
+at the door to let her pass. Mr. Knightley suspected in Frank
+Churchill the determination of catching her eye--he seemed watching her
+intently--in vain, however, if it were so--Jane passed between them
+into the hall, and looked at neither.
+
+There was no time for farther remark or explanation. The dream must be
+borne with, and Mr. Knightley must take his seat with the rest round the
+large modern circular table which Emma had introduced at Hartfield, and
+which none but Emma could have had power to place there and persuade her
+father to use, instead of the small-sized Pembroke, on which two of his
+daily meals had, for forty years been crowded. Tea passed pleasantly,
+and nobody seemed in a hurry to move.
+
+“Miss Woodhouse,” said Frank Churchill, after examining a table behind
+him, which he could reach as he sat, “have your nephews taken away their
+alphabets--their box of letters? It used to stand here. Where is it?
+This is a sort of dull-looking evening, that ought to be treated rather
+as winter than summer. We had great amusement with those letters one
+morning. I want to puzzle you again.”
+
+Emma was pleased with the thought; and producing the box, the table
+was quickly scattered over with alphabets, which no one seemed so much
+disposed to employ as their two selves. They were rapidly forming words
+for each other, or for any body else who would be puzzled. The quietness
+of the game made it particularly eligible for Mr. Woodhouse, who had
+often been distressed by the more animated sort, which Mr. Weston had
+occasionally introduced, and who now sat happily occupied in lamenting,
+with tender melancholy, over the departure of the “poor little boys,”
+ or in fondly pointing out, as he took up any stray letter near him, how
+beautifully Emma had written it.
+
+Frank Churchill placed a word before Miss Fairfax. She gave a slight
+glance round the table, and applied herself to it. Frank was next to
+Emma, Jane opposite to them--and Mr. Knightley so placed as to see them
+all; and it was his object to see as much as he could, with as little
+apparent observation. The word was discovered, and with a faint smile
+pushed away. If meant to be immediately mixed with the others, and
+buried from sight, she should have looked on the table instead of
+looking just across, for it was not mixed; and Harriet, eager after
+every fresh word, and finding out none, directly took it up, and fell to
+work. She was sitting by Mr. Knightley, and turned to him for help. The
+word was _blunder_; and as Harriet exultingly proclaimed it, there was a
+blush on Jane's cheek which gave it a meaning not otherwise ostensible.
+Mr. Knightley connected it with the dream; but how it could all be,
+was beyond his comprehension. How the delicacy, the discretion of his
+favourite could have been so lain asleep! He feared there must be some
+decided involvement. Disingenuousness and double dealing seemed to meet
+him at every turn. These letters were but the vehicle for gallantry and
+trick. It was a child's play, chosen to conceal a deeper game on Frank
+Churchill's part.
+
+With great indignation did he continue to observe him; with great alarm
+and distrust, to observe also his two blinded companions. He saw a short
+word prepared for Emma, and given to her with a look sly and demure. He
+saw that Emma had soon made it out, and found it highly entertaining,
+though it was something which she judged it proper to appear to censure;
+for she said, “Nonsense! for shame!” He heard Frank Churchill next say,
+with a glance towards Jane, “I will give it to her--shall I?”--and as
+clearly heard Emma opposing it with eager laughing warmth. “No, no, you
+must not; you shall not, indeed.”
+
+It was done however. This gallant young man, who seemed to love without
+feeling, and to recommend himself without complaisance, directly handed
+over the word to Miss Fairfax, and with a particular degree of sedate
+civility entreated her to study it. Mr. Knightley's excessive curiosity
+to know what this word might be, made him seize every possible moment
+for darting his eye towards it, and it was not long before he saw it
+to be _Dixon_. Jane Fairfax's perception seemed to accompany his;
+her comprehension was certainly more equal to the covert meaning,
+the superior intelligence, of those five letters so arranged. She was
+evidently displeased; looked up, and seeing herself watched, blushed
+more deeply than he had ever perceived her, and saying only, “I did not
+know that proper names were allowed,” pushed away the letters with even
+an angry spirit, and looked resolved to be engaged by no other word
+that could be offered. Her face was averted from those who had made the
+attack, and turned towards her aunt.
+
+“Aye, very true, my dear,” cried the latter, though Jane had not spoken
+a word--“I was just going to say the same thing. It is time for us to be
+going indeed. The evening is closing in, and grandmama will be looking
+for us. My dear sir, you are too obliging. We really must wish you good
+night.”
+
+Jane's alertness in moving, proved her as ready as her aunt had
+preconceived. She was immediately up, and wanting to quit the table; but
+so many were also moving, that she could not get away; and Mr. Knightley
+thought he saw another collection of letters anxiously pushed towards
+her, and resolutely swept away by her unexamined. She was afterwards
+looking for her shawl--Frank Churchill was looking also--it was growing
+dusk, and the room was in confusion; and how they parted, Mr. Knightley
+could not tell.
+
+He remained at Hartfield after all the rest, his thoughts full of
+what he had seen; so full, that when the candles came to assist his
+observations, he must--yes, he certainly must, as a friend--an anxious
+friend--give Emma some hint, ask her some question. He could not see her
+in a situation of such danger, without trying to preserve her. It was
+his duty.
+
+“Pray, Emma,” said he, “may I ask in what lay the great amusement, the
+poignant sting of the last word given to you and Miss Fairfax? I saw the
+word, and am curious to know how it could be so very entertaining to the
+one, and so very distressing to the other.”
+
+Emma was extremely confused. She could not endure to give him the true
+explanation; for though her suspicions were by no means removed, she was
+really ashamed of having ever imparted them.
+
+“Oh!” she cried in evident embarrassment, “it all meant nothing; a mere
+joke among ourselves.”
+
+“The joke,” he replied gravely, “seemed confined to you and Mr.
+Churchill.”
+
+He had hoped she would speak again, but she did not. She would rather
+busy herself about any thing than speak. He sat a little while in
+doubt. A variety of evils crossed his mind. Interference--fruitless
+interference. Emma's confusion, and the acknowledged intimacy, seemed to
+declare her affection engaged. Yet he would speak. He owed it to her,
+to risk any thing that might be involved in an unwelcome interference,
+rather than her welfare; to encounter any thing, rather than the
+remembrance of neglect in such a cause.
+
+“My dear Emma,” said he at last, with earnest kindness, “do you
+think you perfectly understand the degree of acquaintance between the
+gentleman and lady we have been speaking of?”
+
+“Between Mr. Frank Churchill and Miss Fairfax? Oh! yes, perfectly.--Why
+do you make a doubt of it?”
+
+“Have you never at any time had reason to think that he admired her, or
+that she admired him?”
+
+“Never, never!” she cried with a most open eagerness--“Never, for the
+twentieth part of a moment, did such an idea occur to me. And how could
+it possibly come into your head?”
+
+“I have lately imagined that I saw symptoms of attachment between
+them--certain expressive looks, which I did not believe meant to be
+public.”
+
+“Oh! you amuse me excessively. I am delighted to find that you can
+vouchsafe to let your imagination wander--but it will not do--very sorry
+to check you in your first essay--but indeed it will not do. There is no
+admiration between them, I do assure you; and the appearances which
+have caught you, have arisen from some peculiar circumstances--feelings
+rather of a totally different nature--it is impossible exactly to
+explain:--there is a good deal of nonsense in it--but the part which is
+capable of being communicated, which is sense, is, that they are as far
+from any attachment or admiration for one another, as any two beings in
+the world can be. That is, I _presume_ it to be so on her side, and I
+can _answer_ for its being so on his. I will answer for the gentleman's
+indifference.”
+
+She spoke with a confidence which staggered, with a satisfaction
+which silenced, Mr. Knightley. She was in gay spirits, and would have
+prolonged the conversation, wanting to hear the particulars of his
+suspicions, every look described, and all the wheres and hows of a
+circumstance which highly entertained her: but his gaiety did not meet
+hers. He found he could not be useful, and his feelings were too much
+irritated for talking. That he might not be irritated into an absolute
+fever, by the fire which Mr. Woodhouse's tender habits required almost
+every evening throughout the year, he soon afterwards took a hasty
+leave, and walked home to the coolness and solitude of Donwell Abbey.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+After being long fed with hopes of a speedy visit from Mr. and Mrs.
+Suckling, the Highbury world were obliged to endure the mortification
+of hearing that they could not possibly come till the autumn. No such
+importation of novelties could enrich their intellectual stores at
+present. In the daily interchange of news, they must be again restricted
+to the other topics with which for a while the Sucklings' coming had
+been united, such as the last accounts of Mrs. Churchill, whose health
+seemed every day to supply a different report, and the situation of Mrs.
+Weston, whose happiness it was to be hoped might eventually be as much
+increased by the arrival of a child, as that of all her neighbours was
+by the approach of it.
+
+Mrs. Elton was very much disappointed. It was the delay of a great deal
+of pleasure and parade. Her introductions and recommendations must all
+wait, and every projected party be still only talked of. So she thought
+at first;--but a little consideration convinced her that every thing
+need not be put off. Why should not they explore to Box Hill though
+the Sucklings did not come? They could go there again with them in the
+autumn. It was settled that they should go to Box Hill. That there was
+to be such a party had been long generally known: it had even given the
+idea of another. Emma had never been to Box Hill; she wished to see what
+every body found so well worth seeing, and she and Mr. Weston had agreed
+to chuse some fine morning and drive thither. Two or three more of the
+chosen only were to be admitted to join them, and it was to be done in a
+quiet, unpretending, elegant way, infinitely superior to the bustle and
+preparation, the regular eating and drinking, and picnic parade of the
+Eltons and the Sucklings.
+
+This was so very well understood between them, that Emma could not but
+feel some surprise, and a little displeasure, on hearing from Mr. Weston
+that he had been proposing to Mrs. Elton, as her brother and sister had
+failed her, that the two parties should unite, and go together; and that
+as Mrs. Elton had very readily acceded to it, so it was to be, if she
+had no objection. Now, as her objection was nothing but her very great
+dislike of Mrs. Elton, of which Mr. Weston must already be perfectly
+aware, it was not worth bringing forward again:--it could not be done
+without a reproof to him, which would be giving pain to his wife; and
+she found herself therefore obliged to consent to an arrangement which
+she would have done a great deal to avoid; an arrangement which would
+probably expose her even to the degradation of being said to be of Mrs.
+Elton's party! Every feeling was offended; and the forbearance of her
+outward submission left a heavy arrear due of secret severity in her
+reflections on the unmanageable goodwill of Mr. Weston's temper.
+
+“I am glad you approve of what I have done,” said he very comfortably.
+“But I thought you would. Such schemes as these are nothing without
+numbers. One cannot have too large a party. A large party secures its
+own amusement. And she is a good-natured woman after all. One could not
+leave her out.”
+
+Emma denied none of it aloud, and agreed to none of it in private.
+
+It was now the middle of June, and the weather fine; and Mrs. Elton
+was growing impatient to name the day, and settle with Mr. Weston as to
+pigeon-pies and cold lamb, when a lame carriage-horse threw every thing
+into sad uncertainty. It might be weeks, it might be only a few days,
+before the horse were useable; but no preparations could be ventured
+on, and it was all melancholy stagnation. Mrs. Elton's resources were
+inadequate to such an attack.
+
+“Is not this most vexatious, Knightley?” she cried.--“And such weather
+for exploring!--These delays and disappointments are quite odious. What
+are we to do?--The year will wear away at this rate, and nothing
+done. Before this time last year I assure you we had had a delightful
+exploring party from Maple Grove to Kings Weston.”
+
+“You had better explore to Donwell,” replied Mr. Knightley. “That may
+be done without horses. Come, and eat my strawberries. They are ripening
+fast.”
+
+If Mr. Knightley did not begin seriously, he was obliged to proceed so,
+for his proposal was caught at with delight; and the “Oh! I should like
+it of all things,” was not plainer in words than manner. Donwell was
+famous for its strawberry-beds, which seemed a plea for the invitation:
+but no plea was necessary; cabbage-beds would have been enough to tempt
+the lady, who only wanted to be going somewhere. She promised him again
+and again to come--much oftener than he doubted--and was extremely
+gratified by such a proof of intimacy, such a distinguishing compliment
+as she chose to consider it.
+
+“You may depend upon me,” said she. “I certainly will come. Name your
+day, and I will come. You will allow me to bring Jane Fairfax?”
+
+“I cannot name a day,” said he, “till I have spoken to some others whom
+I would wish to meet you.”
+
+“Oh! leave all that to me. Only give me a carte-blanche.--I am Lady
+Patroness, you know. It is my party. I will bring friends with me.”
+
+“I hope you will bring Elton,” said he: “but I will not trouble you to
+give any other invitations.”
+
+“Oh! now you are looking very sly. But consider--you need not be afraid
+of delegating power to _me_. I am no young lady on her preferment.
+Married women, you know, may be safely authorised. It is my party. Leave
+it all to me. I will invite your guests.”
+
+“No,”--he calmly replied,--“there is but one married woman in the world
+whom I can ever allow to invite what guests she pleases to Donwell, and
+that one is--”
+
+“--Mrs. Weston, I suppose,” interrupted Mrs. Elton, rather mortified.
+
+“No--Mrs. Knightley;--and till she is in being, I will manage such
+matters myself.”
+
+“Ah! you are an odd creature!” she cried, satisfied to have no one
+preferred to herself.--“You are a humourist, and may say what you
+like. Quite a humourist. Well, I shall bring Jane with me--Jane and her
+aunt.--The rest I leave to you. I have no objections at all to meeting
+the Hartfield family. Don't scruple. I know you are attached to them.”
+
+“You certainly will meet them if I can prevail; and I shall call on Miss
+Bates in my way home.”
+
+“That's quite unnecessary; I see Jane every day:--but as you like. It
+is to be a morning scheme, you know, Knightley; quite a simple thing. I
+shall wear a large bonnet, and bring one of my little baskets hanging
+on my arm. Here,--probably this basket with pink ribbon. Nothing can be
+more simple, you see. And Jane will have such another. There is to be
+no form or parade--a sort of gipsy party. We are to walk about
+your gardens, and gather the strawberries ourselves, and sit under
+trees;--and whatever else you may like to provide, it is to be all out
+of doors--a table spread in the shade, you know. Every thing as natural
+and simple as possible. Is not that your idea?”
+
+“Not quite. My idea of the simple and the natural will be to have
+the table spread in the dining-room. The nature and the simplicity of
+gentlemen and ladies, with their servants and furniture, I think is
+best observed by meals within doors. When you are tired of eating
+strawberries in the garden, there shall be cold meat in the house.”
+
+“Well--as you please; only don't have a great set out. And, by the bye,
+can I or my housekeeper be of any use to you with our opinion?--Pray be
+sincere, Knightley. If you wish me to talk to Mrs. Hodges, or to inspect
+anything--”
+
+“I have not the least wish for it, I thank you.”
+
+“Well--but if any difficulties should arise, my housekeeper is extremely
+clever.”
+
+“I will answer for it, that mine thinks herself full as clever, and
+would spurn any body's assistance.”
+
+“I wish we had a donkey. The thing would be for us all to come on
+donkeys, Jane, Miss Bates, and me--and my caro sposo walking by. I
+really must talk to him about purchasing a donkey. In a country life
+I conceive it to be a sort of necessary; for, let a woman have ever
+so many resources, it is not possible for her to be always shut up at
+home;--and very long walks, you know--in summer there is dust, and in
+winter there is dirt.”
+
+“You will not find either, between Donwell and Highbury. Donwell Lane is
+never dusty, and now it is perfectly dry. Come on a donkey, however, if
+you prefer it. You can borrow Mrs. Cole's. I would wish every thing to
+be as much to your taste as possible.”
+
+“That I am sure you would. Indeed I do you justice, my good friend.
+Under that peculiar sort of dry, blunt manner, I know you have the
+warmest heart. As I tell Mr. E., you are a thorough humourist.--Yes,
+believe me, Knightley, I am fully sensible of your attention to me in
+the whole of this scheme. You have hit upon the very thing to please
+me.”
+
+Mr. Knightley had another reason for avoiding a table in the shade. He
+wished to persuade Mr. Woodhouse, as well as Emma, to join the party;
+and he knew that to have any of them sitting down out of doors to
+eat would inevitably make him ill. Mr. Woodhouse must not, under the
+specious pretence of a morning drive, and an hour or two spent at
+Donwell, be tempted away to his misery.
+
+He was invited on good faith. No lurking horrors were to upbraid him for
+his easy credulity. He did consent. He had not been at Donwell for two
+years. “Some very fine morning, he, and Emma, and Harriet, could go
+very well; and he could sit still with Mrs. Weston, while the dear girls
+walked about the gardens. He did not suppose they could be damp now,
+in the middle of the day. He should like to see the old house again
+exceedingly, and should be very happy to meet Mr. and Mrs. Elton, and
+any other of his neighbours.--He could not see any objection at all to
+his, and Emma's, and Harriet's going there some very fine morning. He
+thought it very well done of Mr. Knightley to invite them--very kind
+and sensible--much cleverer than dining out.--He was not fond of dining
+out.”
+
+Mr. Knightley was fortunate in every body's most ready concurrence. The
+invitation was everywhere so well received, that it seemed as if, like
+Mrs. Elton, they were all taking the scheme as a particular compliment
+to themselves.--Emma and Harriet professed very high expectations of
+pleasure from it; and Mr. Weston, unasked, promised to get Frank over to
+join them, if possible; a proof of approbation and gratitude which could
+have been dispensed with.--Mr. Knightley was then obliged to say that
+he should be glad to see him; and Mr. Weston engaged to lose no time in
+writing, and spare no arguments to induce him to come.
+
+In the meanwhile the lame horse recovered so fast, that the party to
+Box Hill was again under happy consideration; and at last Donwell was
+settled for one day, and Box Hill for the next,--the weather appearing
+exactly right.
+
+Under a bright mid-day sun, at almost Midsummer, Mr. Woodhouse was
+safely conveyed in his carriage, with one window down, to partake of
+this al-fresco party; and in one of the most comfortable rooms in the
+Abbey, especially prepared for him by a fire all the morning, he was
+happily placed, quite at his ease, ready to talk with pleasure of what
+had been achieved, and advise every body to come and sit down, and not
+to heat themselves.--Mrs. Weston, who seemed to have walked there on
+purpose to be tired, and sit all the time with him, remained, when
+all the others were invited or persuaded out, his patient listener and
+sympathiser.
+
+It was so long since Emma had been at the Abbey, that as soon as she was
+satisfied of her father's comfort, she was glad to leave him, and look
+around her; eager to refresh and correct her memory with more particular
+observation, more exact understanding of a house and grounds which must
+ever be so interesting to her and all her family.
+
+She felt all the honest pride and complacency which her alliance with
+the present and future proprietor could fairly warrant, as she viewed
+the respectable size and style of the building, its suitable, becoming,
+characteristic situation, low and sheltered--its ample gardens
+stretching down to meadows washed by a stream, of which the Abbey, with
+all the old neglect of prospect, had scarcely a sight--and its abundance
+of timber in rows and avenues, which neither fashion nor extravagance
+had rooted up.--The house was larger than Hartfield, and totally unlike
+it, covering a good deal of ground, rambling and irregular, with many
+comfortable, and one or two handsome rooms.--It was just what it ought
+to be, and it looked what it was--and Emma felt an increasing respect
+for it, as the residence of a family of such true gentility, untainted
+in blood and understanding.--Some faults of temper John Knightley had;
+but Isabella had connected herself unexceptionably. She had given them
+neither men, nor names, nor places, that could raise a blush. These were
+pleasant feelings, and she walked about and indulged them till it
+was necessary to do as the others did, and collect round the
+strawberry-beds.--The whole party were assembled, excepting Frank
+Churchill, who was expected every moment from Richmond; and Mrs. Elton,
+in all her apparatus of happiness, her large bonnet and her basket,
+was very ready to lead the way in gathering, accepting, or
+talking--strawberries, and only strawberries, could now be thought or
+spoken of.--“The best fruit in England--every body's favourite--always
+wholesome.--These the finest beds and finest sorts.--Delightful to
+gather for one's self--the only way of really enjoying them.--Morning
+decidedly the best time--never tired--every sort good--hautboy
+infinitely superior--no comparison--the others hardly eatable--hautboys
+very scarce--Chili preferred--white wood finest flavour of all--price
+of strawberries in London--abundance about Bristol--Maple
+Grove--cultivation--beds when to be renewed--gardeners thinking exactly
+different--no general rule--gardeners never to be put out of their
+way--delicious fruit--only too rich to be eaten much of--inferior
+to cherries--currants more refreshing--only objection to gathering
+strawberries the stooping--glaring sun--tired to death--could bear it no
+longer--must go and sit in the shade.”
+
+Such, for half an hour, was the conversation--interrupted only once by
+Mrs. Weston, who came out, in her solicitude after her son-in-law, to
+inquire if he were come--and she was a little uneasy.--She had some
+fears of his horse.
+
+Seats tolerably in the shade were found; and now Emma was obliged
+to overhear what Mrs. Elton and Jane Fairfax were talking of.--A
+situation, a most desirable situation, was in question. Mrs. Elton had
+received notice of it that morning, and was in raptures. It was not
+with Mrs. Suckling, it was not with Mrs. Bragge, but in felicity and
+splendour it fell short only of them: it was with a cousin of Mrs.
+Bragge, an acquaintance of Mrs. Suckling, a lady known at Maple Grove.
+Delightful, charming, superior, first circles, spheres, lines, ranks,
+every thing--and Mrs. Elton was wild to have the offer closed with
+immediately.--On her side, all was warmth, energy, and triumph--and she
+positively refused to take her friend's negative, though Miss Fairfax
+continued to assure her that she would not at present engage in any
+thing, repeating the same motives which she had been heard to urge
+before.--Still Mrs. Elton insisted on being authorised to write an
+acquiescence by the morrow's post.--How Jane could bear it at all, was
+astonishing to Emma.--She did look vexed, she did speak pointedly--and
+at last, with a decision of action unusual to her, proposed a
+removal.--“Should not they walk? Would not Mr. Knightley shew them the
+gardens--all the gardens?--She wished to see the whole extent.”--The
+pertinacity of her friend seemed more than she could bear.
+
+It was hot; and after walking some time over the gardens in a scattered,
+dispersed way, scarcely any three together, they insensibly followed one
+another to the delicious shade of a broad short avenue of limes, which
+stretching beyond the garden at an equal distance from the river, seemed
+the finish of the pleasure grounds.--It led to nothing; nothing but a
+view at the end over a low stone wall with high pillars, which seemed
+intended, in their erection, to give the appearance of an approach to
+the house, which never had been there. Disputable, however, as might be
+the taste of such a termination, it was in itself a charming walk, and
+the view which closed it extremely pretty.--The considerable slope, at
+nearly the foot of which the Abbey stood, gradually acquired a steeper
+form beyond its grounds; and at half a mile distant was a bank of
+considerable abruptness and grandeur, well clothed with wood;--and at
+the bottom of this bank, favourably placed and sheltered, rose the
+Abbey Mill Farm, with meadows in front, and the river making a close and
+handsome curve around it.
+
+It was a sweet view--sweet to the eye and the mind. English verdure,
+English culture, English comfort, seen under a sun bright, without being
+oppressive.
+
+In this walk Emma and Mr. Weston found all the others assembled; and
+towards this view she immediately perceived Mr. Knightley and Harriet
+distinct from the rest, quietly leading the way. Mr. Knightley and
+Harriet!--It was an odd tete-a-tete; but she was glad to see it.--There
+had been a time when he would have scorned her as a companion, and
+turned from her with little ceremony. Now they seemed in pleasant
+conversation. There had been a time also when Emma would have been sorry
+to see Harriet in a spot so favourable for the Abbey Mill Farm; but now
+she feared it not. It might be safely viewed with all its appendages of
+prosperity and beauty, its rich pastures, spreading flocks, orchard in
+blossom, and light column of smoke ascending.--She joined them at the
+wall, and found them more engaged in talking than in looking around. He
+was giving Harriet information as to modes of agriculture, etc. and Emma
+received a smile which seemed to say, “These are my own concerns. I have
+a right to talk on such subjects, without being suspected of
+introducing Robert Martin.”--She did not suspect him. It was too old
+a story.--Robert Martin had probably ceased to think of Harriet.--They
+took a few turns together along the walk.--The shade was most
+refreshing, and Emma found it the pleasantest part of the day.
+
+The next remove was to the house; they must all go in and eat;--and they
+were all seated and busy, and still Frank Churchill did not come. Mrs.
+Weston looked, and looked in vain. His father would not own himself
+uneasy, and laughed at her fears; but she could not be cured of wishing
+that he would part with his black mare. He had expressed himself as to
+coming, with more than common certainty. “His aunt was so much better,
+that he had not a doubt of getting over to them.”--Mrs. Churchill's
+state, however, as many were ready to remind her, was liable to such
+sudden variation as might disappoint her nephew in the most reasonable
+dependence--and Mrs. Weston was at last persuaded to believe, or to say,
+that it must be by some attack of Mrs. Churchill that he was
+prevented coming.--Emma looked at Harriet while the point was under
+consideration; she behaved very well, and betrayed no emotion.
+
+The cold repast was over, and the party were to go out once more to see
+what had not yet been seen, the old Abbey fish-ponds; perhaps get as far
+as the clover, which was to be begun cutting on the morrow, or, at
+any rate, have the pleasure of being hot, and growing cool again.--Mr.
+Woodhouse, who had already taken his little round in the highest part
+of the gardens, where no damps from the river were imagined even by him,
+stirred no more; and his daughter resolved to remain with him, that
+Mrs. Weston might be persuaded away by her husband to the exercise and
+variety which her spirits seemed to need.
+
+Mr. Knightley had done all in his power for Mr. Woodhouse's
+entertainment. Books of engravings, drawers of medals, cameos, corals,
+shells, and every other family collection within his cabinets, had been
+prepared for his old friend, to while away the morning; and the kindness
+had perfectly answered. Mr. Woodhouse had been exceedingly well amused.
+Mrs. Weston had been shewing them all to him, and now he would shew them
+all to Emma;--fortunate in having no other resemblance to a child, than
+in a total want of taste for what he saw, for he was slow, constant, and
+methodical.--Before this second looking over was begun, however, Emma
+walked into the hall for the sake of a few moments' free observation of
+the entrance and ground-plot of the house--and was hardly there, when
+Jane Fairfax appeared, coming quickly in from the garden, and with a
+look of escape.--Little expecting to meet Miss Woodhouse so soon, there
+was a start at first; but Miss Woodhouse was the very person she was in
+quest of.
+
+“Will you be so kind,” said she, “when I am missed, as to say that I am
+gone home?--I am going this moment.--My aunt is not aware how late it
+is, nor how long we have been absent--but I am sure we shall be wanted,
+and I am determined to go directly.--I have said nothing about it to any
+body. It would only be giving trouble and distress. Some are gone to the
+ponds, and some to the lime walk. Till they all come in I shall not be
+missed; and when they do, will you have the goodness to say that I am
+gone?”
+
+“Certainly, if you wish it;--but you are not going to walk to Highbury
+alone?”
+
+“Yes--what should hurt me?--I walk fast. I shall be at home in twenty
+minutes.”
+
+“But it is too far, indeed it is, to be walking quite alone. Let my
+father's servant go with you.--Let me order the carriage. It can be
+round in five minutes.”
+
+“Thank you, thank you--but on no account.--I would rather walk.--And
+for _me_ to be afraid of walking alone!--I, who may so soon have to
+guard others!”
+
+She spoke with great agitation; and Emma very feelingly replied, “That
+can be no reason for your being exposed to danger now. I must order the
+carriage. The heat even would be danger.--You are fatigued already.”
+
+“I am,”--she answered--“I am fatigued; but it is not the sort of
+fatigue--quick walking will refresh me.--Miss Woodhouse, we all know
+at times what it is to be wearied in spirits. Mine, I confess, are
+exhausted. The greatest kindness you can shew me, will be to let me have
+my own way, and only say that I am gone when it is necessary.”
+
+Emma had not another word to oppose. She saw it all; and entering into
+her feelings, promoted her quitting the house immediately, and
+watched her safely off with the zeal of a friend. Her parting look was
+grateful--and her parting words, “Oh! Miss Woodhouse, the comfort of
+being sometimes alone!”--seemed to burst from an overcharged heart, and
+to describe somewhat of the continual endurance to be practised by her,
+even towards some of those who loved her best.
+
+“Such a home, indeed! such an aunt!” said Emma, as she turned back into
+the hall again. “I do pity you. And the more sensibility you betray of
+their just horrors, the more I shall like you.”
+
+Jane had not been gone a quarter of an hour, and they had only
+accomplished some views of St. Mark's Place, Venice, when Frank
+Churchill entered the room. Emma had not been thinking of him, she had
+forgotten to think of him--but she was very glad to see him. Mrs. Weston
+would be at ease. The black mare was blameless; _they_ were right
+who had named Mrs. Churchill as the cause. He had been detained by
+a temporary increase of illness in her; a nervous seizure, which had
+lasted some hours--and he had quite given up every thought of coming,
+till very late;--and had he known how hot a ride he should have, and
+how late, with all his hurry, he must be, he believed he should not have
+come at all. The heat was excessive; he had never suffered any thing
+like it--almost wished he had staid at home--nothing killed him
+like heat--he could bear any degree of cold, etc., but heat was
+intolerable--and he sat down, at the greatest possible distance from the
+slight remains of Mr. Woodhouse's fire, looking very deplorable.
+
+“You will soon be cooler, if you sit still,” said Emma.
+
+“As soon as I am cooler I shall go back again. I could very ill be
+spared--but such a point had been made of my coming! You will all be
+going soon I suppose; the whole party breaking up. I met _one_ as I
+came--Madness in such weather!--absolute madness!”
+
+Emma listened, and looked, and soon perceived that Frank Churchill's
+state might be best defined by the expressive phrase of being out of
+humour. Some people were always cross when they were hot. Such might be
+his constitution; and as she knew that eating and drinking were often
+the cure of such incidental complaints, she recommended his taking
+some refreshment; he would find abundance of every thing in the
+dining-room--and she humanely pointed out the door.
+
+“No--he should not eat. He was not hungry; it would only make him
+hotter.” In two minutes, however, he relented in his own favour; and
+muttering something about spruce-beer, walked off. Emma returned all her
+attention to her father, saying in secret--
+
+“I am glad I have done being in love with him. I should not like a man
+who is so soon discomposed by a hot morning. Harriet's sweet easy temper
+will not mind it.”
+
+He was gone long enough to have had a very comfortable meal, and came
+back all the better--grown quite cool--and, with good manners, like
+himself--able to draw a chair close to them, take an interest in their
+employment; and regret, in a reasonable way, that he should be so late.
+He was not in his best spirits, but seemed trying to improve them; and,
+at last, made himself talk nonsense very agreeably. They were looking
+over views in Swisserland.
+
+“As soon as my aunt gets well, I shall go abroad,” said he. “I shall
+never be easy till I have seen some of these places. You will have my
+sketches, some time or other, to look at--or my tour to read--or my
+poem. I shall do something to expose myself.”
+
+“That may be--but not by sketches in Swisserland. You will never go to
+Swisserland. Your uncle and aunt will never allow you to leave England.”
+
+“They may be induced to go too. A warm climate may be prescribed for
+her. I have more than half an expectation of our all going abroad. I
+assure you I have. I feel a strong persuasion, this morning, that I
+shall soon be abroad. I ought to travel. I am tired of doing nothing. I
+want a change. I am serious, Miss Woodhouse, whatever your penetrating
+eyes may fancy--I am sick of England--and would leave it to-morrow, if
+I could.”
+
+“You are sick of prosperity and indulgence. Cannot you invent a few
+hardships for yourself, and be contented to stay?”
+
+“_I_ sick of prosperity and indulgence! You are quite mistaken. I do
+not look upon myself as either prosperous or indulged. I am thwarted
+in every thing material. I do not consider myself at all a fortunate
+person.”
+
+“You are not quite so miserable, though, as when you first came. Go and
+eat and drink a little more, and you will do very well. Another slice of
+cold meat, another draught of Madeira and water, will make you nearly on
+a par with the rest of us.”
+
+“No--I shall not stir. I shall sit by you. You are my best cure.”
+
+“We are going to Box Hill to-morrow;--you will join us. It is not
+Swisserland, but it will be something for a young man so much in want of
+a change. You will stay, and go with us?”
+
+“No, certainly not; I shall go home in the cool of the evening.”
+
+“But you may come again in the cool of to-morrow morning.”
+
+“No--It will not be worth while. If I come, I shall be cross.”
+
+“Then pray stay at Richmond.”
+
+“But if I do, I shall be crosser still. I can never bear to think of you
+all there without me.”
+
+“These are difficulties which you must settle for yourself. Chuse your
+own degree of crossness. I shall press you no more.”
+
+The rest of the party were now returning, and all were soon collected.
+With some there was great joy at the sight of Frank Churchill; others
+took it very composedly; but there was a very general distress and
+disturbance on Miss Fairfax's disappearance being explained. That it was
+time for every body to go, concluded the subject; and with a short final
+arrangement for the next day's scheme, they parted. Frank Churchill's
+little inclination to exclude himself increased so much, that his last
+words to Emma were,
+
+“Well;--if _you_ wish me to stay and join the party, I will.”
+
+She smiled her acceptance; and nothing less than a summons from Richmond
+was to take him back before the following evening.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+They had a very fine day for Box Hill; and all the other outward
+circumstances of arrangement, accommodation, and punctuality, were in
+favour of a pleasant party. Mr. Weston directed the whole, officiating
+safely between Hartfield and the Vicarage, and every body was in good
+time. Emma and Harriet went together; Miss Bates and her niece, with
+the Eltons; the gentlemen on horseback. Mrs. Weston remained with Mr.
+Woodhouse. Nothing was wanting but to be happy when they got there.
+Seven miles were travelled in expectation of enjoyment, and every body
+had a burst of admiration on first arriving; but in the general amount
+of the day there was deficiency. There was a languor, a want of spirits,
+a want of union, which could not be got over. They separated too much
+into parties. The Eltons walked together; Mr. Knightley took charge of
+Miss Bates and Jane; and Emma and Harriet belonged to Frank Churchill.
+And Mr. Weston tried, in vain, to make them harmonise better. It seemed
+at first an accidental division, but it never materially varied. Mr. and
+Mrs. Elton, indeed, shewed no unwillingness to mix, and be as agreeable
+as they could; but during the two whole hours that were spent on the
+hill, there seemed a principle of separation, between the other parties,
+too strong for any fine prospects, or any cold collation, or any
+cheerful Mr. Weston, to remove.
+
+At first it was downright dulness to Emma. She had never seen Frank
+Churchill so silent and stupid. He said nothing worth hearing--looked
+without seeing--admired without intelligence--listened without knowing
+what she said. While he was so dull, it was no wonder that Harriet
+should be dull likewise; and they were both insufferable.
+
+When they all sat down it was better; to her taste a great deal better,
+for Frank Churchill grew talkative and gay, making her his first object.
+Every distinguishing attention that could be paid, was paid to her.
+To amuse her, and be agreeable in her eyes, seemed all that he cared
+for--and Emma, glad to be enlivened, not sorry to be flattered, was gay
+and easy too, and gave him all the friendly encouragement, the admission
+to be gallant, which she had ever given in the first and most animating
+period of their acquaintance; but which now, in her own estimation,
+meant nothing, though in the judgment of most people looking on it must
+have had such an appearance as no English word but flirtation could very
+well describe. “Mr. Frank Churchill and Miss Woodhouse flirted together
+excessively.” They were laying themselves open to that very phrase--and
+to having it sent off in a letter to Maple Grove by one lady, to
+Ireland by another. Not that Emma was gay and thoughtless from any
+real felicity; it was rather because she felt less happy than she had
+expected. She laughed because she was disappointed; and though she liked
+him for his attentions, and thought them all, whether in friendship,
+admiration, or playfulness, extremely judicious, they were not winning
+back her heart. She still intended him for her friend.
+
+“How much I am obliged to you,” said he, “for telling me to come
+to-day!--If it had not been for you, I should certainly have lost all
+the happiness of this party. I had quite determined to go away again.”
+
+“Yes, you were very cross; and I do not know what about, except that you
+were too late for the best strawberries. I was a kinder friend than you
+deserved. But you were humble. You begged hard to be commanded to come.”
+
+“Don't say I was cross. I was fatigued. The heat overcame me.”
+
+“It is hotter to-day.”
+
+“Not to my feelings. I am perfectly comfortable to-day.”
+
+“You are comfortable because you are under command.”
+
+“Your command?--Yes.”
+
+“Perhaps I intended you to say so, but I meant self-command. You had,
+somehow or other, broken bounds yesterday, and run away from your own
+management; but to-day you are got back again--and as I cannot be always
+with you, it is best to believe your temper under your own command
+rather than mine.”
+
+“It comes to the same thing. I can have no self-command without a
+motive. You order me, whether you speak or not. And you can be always
+with me. You are always with me.”
+
+“Dating from three o'clock yesterday. My perpetual influence could not
+begin earlier, or you would not have been so much out of humour before.”
+
+“Three o'clock yesterday! That is your date. I thought I had seen you
+first in February.”
+
+“Your gallantry is really unanswerable. But (lowering her voice)--nobody
+speaks except ourselves, and it is rather too much to be talking
+nonsense for the entertainment of seven silent people.”
+
+“I say nothing of which I am ashamed,” replied he, with lively
+impudence. “I saw you first in February. Let every body on the Hill
+hear me if they can. Let my accents swell to Mickleham on one side,
+and Dorking on the other. I saw you first in February.” And then
+whispering--“Our companions are excessively stupid. What shall we do
+to rouse them? Any nonsense will serve. They _shall_ talk. Ladies
+and gentlemen, I am ordered by Miss Woodhouse (who, wherever she is,
+presides) to say, that she desires to know what you are all thinking
+of?”
+
+Some laughed, and answered good-humouredly. Miss Bates said a great
+deal; Mrs. Elton swelled at the idea of Miss Woodhouse's presiding; Mr.
+Knightley's answer was the most distinct.
+
+“Is Miss Woodhouse sure that she would like to hear what we are all
+thinking of?”
+
+“Oh! no, no”--cried Emma, laughing as carelessly as she could--“Upon no
+account in the world. It is the very last thing I would stand the brunt
+of just now. Let me hear any thing rather than what you are all thinking
+of. I will not say quite all. There are one or two, perhaps, (glancing
+at Mr. Weston and Harriet,) whose thoughts I might not be afraid of
+knowing.”
+
+“It is a sort of thing,” cried Mrs. Elton emphatically, “which _I_
+should not have thought myself privileged to inquire into. Though,
+perhaps, as the _Chaperon_ of the party--_I_ never was in any
+circle--exploring parties--young ladies--married women--”
+
+Her mutterings were chiefly to her husband; and he murmured, in reply,
+
+“Very true, my love, very true. Exactly so, indeed--quite unheard
+of--but some ladies say any thing. Better pass it off as a joke. Every
+body knows what is due to _you_.”
+
+“It will not do,” whispered Frank to Emma; “they are most of them
+affronted. I will attack them with more address. Ladies and gentlemen--I
+am ordered by Miss Woodhouse to say, that she waives her right of
+knowing exactly what you may all be thinking of, and only requires
+something very entertaining from each of you, in a general way. Here
+are seven of you, besides myself, (who, she is pleased to say, am very
+entertaining already,) and she only demands from each of you either one
+thing very clever, be it prose or verse, original or repeated--or two
+things moderately clever--or three things very dull indeed, and she
+engages to laugh heartily at them all.”
+
+“Oh! very well,” exclaimed Miss Bates, “then I need not be uneasy.
+'Three things very dull indeed.' That will just do for me, you know. I
+shall be sure to say three dull things as soon as ever I open my mouth,
+shan't I? (looking round with the most good-humoured dependence on every
+body's assent)--Do not you all think I shall?”
+
+Emma could not resist.
+
+“Ah! ma'am, but there may be a difficulty. Pardon me--but you will be
+limited as to number--only three at once.”
+
+Miss Bates, deceived by the mock ceremony of her manner, did not
+immediately catch her meaning; but, when it burst on her, it could not
+anger, though a slight blush shewed that it could pain her.
+
+“Ah!--well--to be sure. Yes, I see what she means, (turning to Mr.
+Knightley,) and I will try to hold my tongue. I must make myself very
+disagreeable, or she would not have said such a thing to an old friend.”
+
+“I like your plan,” cried Mr. Weston. “Agreed, agreed. I will do my
+best. I am making a conundrum. How will a conundrum reckon?”
+
+“Low, I am afraid, sir, very low,” answered his son;--“but we shall be
+indulgent--especially to any one who leads the way.”
+
+“No, no,” said Emma, “it will not reckon low. A conundrum of Mr.
+Weston's shall clear him and his next neighbour. Come, sir, pray let me
+hear it.”
+
+“I doubt its being very clever myself,” said Mr. Weston. “It is too much
+a matter of fact, but here it is.--What two letters of the alphabet are
+there, that express perfection?”
+
+“What two letters!--express perfection! I am sure I do not know.”
+
+“Ah! you will never guess. You, (to Emma), I am certain, will never
+guess.--I will tell you.--M. and A.--Em-ma.--Do you understand?”
+
+Understanding and gratification came together. It might be a very
+indifferent piece of wit, but Emma found a great deal to laugh at and
+enjoy in it--and so did Frank and Harriet.--It did not seem to touch
+the rest of the party equally; some looked very stupid about it, and Mr.
+Knightley gravely said,
+
+“This explains the sort of clever thing that is wanted, and Mr. Weston
+has done very well for himself; but he must have knocked up every body
+else. _Perfection_ should not have come quite so soon.”
+
+“Oh! for myself, I protest I must be excused,” said Mrs. Elton; “_I_
+really cannot attempt--I am not at all fond of the sort of thing. I had
+an acrostic once sent to me upon my own name, which I was not at all
+pleased with. I knew who it came from. An abominable puppy!--You know
+who I mean (nodding to her husband). These kind of things are very
+well at Christmas, when one is sitting round the fire; but quite out of
+place, in my opinion, when one is exploring about the country in summer.
+Miss Woodhouse must excuse me. I am not one of those who have witty
+things at every body's service. I do not pretend to be a wit. I have a
+great deal of vivacity in my own way, but I really must be allowed to
+judge when to speak and when to hold my tongue. Pass us, if you please,
+Mr. Churchill. Pass Mr. E., Knightley, Jane, and myself. We have nothing
+clever to say--not one of us.
+
+“Yes, yes, pray pass _me_,” added her husband, with a sort of sneering
+consciousness; “_I_ have nothing to say that can entertain Miss
+Woodhouse, or any other young lady. An old married man--quite good for
+nothing. Shall we walk, Augusta?”
+
+“With all my heart. I am really tired of exploring so long on one spot.
+Come, Jane, take my other arm.”
+
+Jane declined it, however, and the husband and wife walked off.
+“Happy couple!” said Frank Churchill, as soon as they were out of
+hearing:--“How well they suit one another!--Very lucky--marrying as they
+did, upon an acquaintance formed only in a public place!--They only knew
+each other, I think, a few weeks in Bath! Peculiarly lucky!--for as to
+any real knowledge of a person's disposition that Bath, or any public
+place, can give--it is all nothing; there can be no knowledge. It is
+only by seeing women in their own homes, among their own set, just as
+they always are, that you can form any just judgment. Short of that, it
+is all guess and luck--and will generally be ill-luck. How many a man
+has committed himself on a short acquaintance, and rued it all the rest
+of his life!”
+
+Miss Fairfax, who had seldom spoken before, except among her own
+confederates, spoke now.
+
+“Such things do occur, undoubtedly.”--She was stopped by a cough. Frank
+Churchill turned towards her to listen.
+
+“You were speaking,” said he, gravely. She recovered her voice.
+
+“I was only going to observe, that though such unfortunate circumstances
+do sometimes occur both to men and women, I cannot imagine them to be
+very frequent. A hasty and imprudent attachment may arise--but there is
+generally time to recover from it afterwards. I would be understood to
+mean, that it can be only weak, irresolute characters, (whose happiness
+must be always at the mercy of chance,) who will suffer an unfortunate
+acquaintance to be an inconvenience, an oppression for ever.”
+
+He made no answer; merely looked, and bowed in submission; and soon
+afterwards said, in a lively tone,
+
+“Well, I have so little confidence in my own judgment, that whenever I
+marry, I hope some body will chuse my wife for me. Will you? (turning to
+Emma.) Will you chuse a wife for me?--I am sure I should like any body
+fixed on by you. You provide for the family, you know, (with a smile at
+his father). Find some body for me. I am in no hurry. Adopt her, educate
+her.”
+
+“And make her like myself.”
+
+“By all means, if you can.”
+
+“Very well. I undertake the commission. You shall have a charming wife.”
+
+“She must be very lively, and have hazle eyes. I care for nothing else.
+I shall go abroad for a couple of years--and when I return, I shall come
+to you for my wife. Remember.”
+
+Emma was in no danger of forgetting. It was a commission to touch every
+favourite feeling. Would not Harriet be the very creature described?
+Hazle eyes excepted, two years more might make her all that he wished.
+He might even have Harriet in his thoughts at the moment; who could say?
+Referring the education to her seemed to imply it.
+
+“Now, ma'am,” said Jane to her aunt, “shall we join Mrs. Elton?”
+
+“If you please, my dear. With all my heart. I am quite ready. I was
+ready to have gone with her, but this will do just as well. We shall
+soon overtake her. There she is--no, that's somebody else. That's one
+of the ladies in the Irish car party, not at all like her.--Well, I
+declare--”
+
+They walked off, followed in half a minute by Mr. Knightley. Mr. Weston,
+his son, Emma, and Harriet, only remained; and the young man's spirits
+now rose to a pitch almost unpleasant. Even Emma grew tired at last of
+flattery and merriment, and wished herself rather walking quietly about
+with any of the others, or sitting almost alone, and quite unattended
+to, in tranquil observation of the beautiful views beneath her. The
+appearance of the servants looking out for them to give notice of the
+carriages was a joyful sight; and even the bustle of collecting and
+preparing to depart, and the solicitude of Mrs. Elton to have _her_
+carriage first, were gladly endured, in the prospect of the quiet drive
+home which was to close the very questionable enjoyments of this day of
+pleasure. Such another scheme, composed of so many ill-assorted people,
+she hoped never to be betrayed into again.
+
+While waiting for the carriage, she found Mr. Knightley by her side. He
+looked around, as if to see that no one were near, and then said,
+
+“Emma, I must once more speak to you as I have been used to do: a
+privilege rather endured than allowed, perhaps, but I must still use it.
+I cannot see you acting wrong, without a remonstrance. How could you be
+so unfeeling to Miss Bates? How could you be so insolent in your wit to
+a woman of her character, age, and situation?--Emma, I had not thought
+it possible.”
+
+Emma recollected, blushed, was sorry, but tried to laugh it off.
+
+“Nay, how could I help saying what I did?--Nobody could have helped it.
+It was not so very bad. I dare say she did not understand me.”
+
+“I assure you she did. She felt your full meaning. She has talked of
+it since. I wish you could have heard how she talked of it--with what
+candour and generosity. I wish you could have heard her honouring your
+forbearance, in being able to pay her such attentions, as she was for
+ever receiving from yourself and your father, when her society must be
+so irksome.”
+
+“Oh!” cried Emma, “I know there is not a better creature in the world:
+but you must allow, that what is good and what is ridiculous are most
+unfortunately blended in her.”
+
+“They are blended,” said he, “I acknowledge; and, were she prosperous,
+I could allow much for the occasional prevalence of the ridiculous over
+the good. Were she a woman of fortune, I would leave every harmless
+absurdity to take its chance, I would not quarrel with you for any
+liberties of manner. Were she your equal in situation--but, Emma,
+consider how far this is from being the case. She is poor; she has sunk
+from the comforts she was born to; and, if she live to old age, must
+probably sink more. Her situation should secure your compassion. It was
+badly done, indeed! You, whom she had known from an infant, whom she had
+seen grow up from a period when her notice was an honour, to have you
+now, in thoughtless spirits, and the pride of the moment, laugh at her,
+humble her--and before her niece, too--and before others, many of whom
+(certainly _some_,) would be entirely guided by _your_ treatment
+of her.--This is not pleasant to you, Emma--and it is very far from
+pleasant to me; but I must, I will,--I will tell you truths while I can;
+satisfied with proving myself your friend by very faithful counsel, and
+trusting that you will some time or other do me greater justice than you
+can do now.”
+
+While they talked, they were advancing towards the carriage; it was
+ready; and, before she could speak again, he had handed her in. He had
+misinterpreted the feelings which had kept her face averted, and her
+tongue motionless. They were combined only of anger against herself,
+mortification, and deep concern. She had not been able to speak; and, on
+entering the carriage, sunk back for a moment overcome--then reproaching
+herself for having taken no leave, making no acknowledgment, parting in
+apparent sullenness, she looked out with voice and hand eager to shew a
+difference; but it was just too late. He had turned away, and the horses
+were in motion. She continued to look back, but in vain; and soon, with
+what appeared unusual speed, they were half way down the hill, and
+every thing left far behind. She was vexed beyond what could have been
+expressed--almost beyond what she could conceal. Never had she felt so
+agitated, mortified, grieved, at any circumstance in her life. She was
+most forcibly struck. The truth of this representation there was no
+denying. She felt it at her heart. How could she have been so brutal,
+so cruel to Miss Bates! How could she have exposed herself to such ill
+opinion in any one she valued! And how suffer him to leave her without
+saying one word of gratitude, of concurrence, of common kindness!
+
+Time did not compose her. As she reflected more, she seemed but to feel
+it more. She never had been so depressed. Happily it was not necessary
+to speak. There was only Harriet, who seemed not in spirits herself,
+fagged, and very willing to be silent; and Emma felt the tears running
+down her cheeks almost all the way home, without being at any trouble to
+check them, extraordinary as they were.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+The wretchedness of a scheme to Box Hill was in Emma's thoughts all the
+evening. How it might be considered by the rest of the party, she could
+not tell. They, in their different homes, and their different ways,
+might be looking back on it with pleasure; but in her view it was
+a morning more completely misspent, more totally bare of rational
+satisfaction at the time, and more to be abhorred in recollection, than
+any she had ever passed. A whole evening of back-gammon with her father,
+was felicity to it. _There_, indeed, lay real pleasure, for there she
+was giving up the sweetest hours of the twenty-four to his comfort; and
+feeling that, unmerited as might be the degree of his fond affection and
+confiding esteem, she could not, in her general conduct, be open to any
+severe reproach. As a daughter, she hoped she was not without a heart.
+She hoped no one could have said to her, “How could you be so unfeeling
+to your father?--I must, I will tell you truths while I can.” Miss
+Bates should never again--no, never! If attention, in future, could do
+away the past, she might hope to be forgiven. She had been often remiss,
+her conscience told her so; remiss, perhaps, more in thought than fact;
+scornful, ungracious. But it should be so no more. In the warmth of true
+contrition, she would call upon her the very next morning, and it should
+be the beginning, on her side, of a regular, equal, kindly intercourse.
+
+She was just as determined when the morrow came, and went early, that
+nothing might prevent her. It was not unlikely, she thought, that she
+might see Mr. Knightley in her way; or, perhaps, he might come in
+while she were paying her visit. She had no objection. She would not be
+ashamed of the appearance of the penitence, so justly and truly hers.
+Her eyes were towards Donwell as she walked, but she saw him not.
+
+“The ladies were all at home.” She had never rejoiced at the sound
+before, nor ever before entered the passage, nor walked up the stairs,
+with any wish of giving pleasure, but in conferring obligation, or of
+deriving it, except in subsequent ridicule.
+
+There was a bustle on her approach; a good deal of moving and talking.
+She heard Miss Bates's voice, something was to be done in a hurry; the
+maid looked frightened and awkward; hoped she would be pleased to wait a
+moment, and then ushered her in too soon. The aunt and niece seemed both
+escaping into the adjoining room. Jane she had a distinct glimpse of,
+looking extremely ill; and, before the door had shut them out, she heard
+Miss Bates saying, “Well, my dear, I shall _say_ you are laid down upon
+the bed, and I am sure you are ill enough.”
+
+Poor old Mrs. Bates, civil and humble as usual, looked as if she did not
+quite understand what was going on.
+
+“I am afraid Jane is not very well,” said she, “but I do not know; they
+_tell_ me she is well. I dare say my daughter will be here presently,
+Miss Woodhouse. I hope you find a chair. I wish Hetty had not gone. I am
+very little able--Have you a chair, ma'am? Do you sit where you like? I
+am sure she will be here presently.”
+
+Emma seriously hoped she would. She had a moment's fear of Miss Bates
+keeping away from her. But Miss Bates soon came--“Very happy and
+obliged”--but Emma's conscience told her that there was not the same
+cheerful volubility as before--less ease of look and manner. A very
+friendly inquiry after Miss Fairfax, she hoped, might lead the way to a
+return of old feelings. The touch seemed immediate.
+
+“Ah! Miss Woodhouse, how kind you are!--I suppose you have heard--and
+are come to give us joy. This does not seem much like joy, indeed, in
+me--(twinkling away a tear or two)--but it will be very trying for us
+to part with her, after having had her so long, and she has a dreadful
+headache just now, writing all the morning:--such long letters, you
+know, to be written to Colonel Campbell, and Mrs. Dixon. 'My dear,' said
+I, 'you will blind yourself'--for tears were in her eyes perpetually.
+One cannot wonder, one cannot wonder. It is a great change; and though
+she is amazingly fortunate--such a situation, I suppose, as no
+young woman before ever met with on first going out--do not think us
+ungrateful, Miss Woodhouse, for such surprising good fortune--(again
+dispersing her tears)--but, poor dear soul! if you were to see what a
+headache she has. When one is in great pain, you know one cannot feel
+any blessing quite as it may deserve. She is as low as possible. To
+look at her, nobody would think how delighted and happy she is to have
+secured such a situation. You will excuse her not coming to you--she is
+not able--she is gone into her own room--I want her to lie down upon the
+bed. 'My dear,' said I, 'I shall say you are laid down upon the bed:'
+but, however, she is not; she is walking about the room. But, now that
+she has written her letters, she says she shall soon be well. She will
+be extremely sorry to miss seeing you, Miss Woodhouse, but your
+kindness will excuse her. You were kept waiting at the door--I was quite
+ashamed--but somehow there was a little bustle--for it so happened that
+we had not heard the knock, and till you were on the stairs, we did not
+know any body was coming. 'It is only Mrs. Cole,' said I, 'depend upon
+it. Nobody else would come so early.' 'Well,' said she, 'it must be
+borne some time or other, and it may as well be now.' But then Patty
+came in, and said it was you. 'Oh!' said I, 'it is Miss Woodhouse: I am
+sure you will like to see her.'--'I can see nobody,' said she; and
+up she got, and would go away; and that was what made us keep you
+waiting--and extremely sorry and ashamed we were. 'If you must go, my
+dear,' said I, 'you must, and I will say you are laid down upon the
+bed.'”
+
+Emma was most sincerely interested. Her heart had been long growing
+kinder towards Jane; and this picture of her present sufferings acted
+as a cure of every former ungenerous suspicion, and left her nothing but
+pity; and the remembrance of the less just and less gentle sensations of
+the past, obliged her to admit that Jane might very naturally resolve on
+seeing Mrs. Cole or any other steady friend, when she might not bear
+to see herself. She spoke as she felt, with earnest regret and
+solicitude--sincerely wishing that the circumstances which she collected
+from Miss Bates to be now actually determined on, might be as much for
+Miss Fairfax's advantage and comfort as possible. “It must be a severe
+trial to them all. She had understood it was to be delayed till Colonel
+Campbell's return.”
+
+“So very kind!” replied Miss Bates. “But you are always kind.”
+
+There was no bearing such an “always;” and to break through her dreadful
+gratitude, Emma made the direct inquiry of--
+
+“Where--may I ask?--is Miss Fairfax going?”
+
+“To a Mrs. Smallridge--charming woman--most superior--to have the charge
+of her three little girls--delightful children. Impossible that any
+situation could be more replete with comfort; if we except, perhaps,
+Mrs. Suckling's own family, and Mrs. Bragge's; but Mrs. Smallridge is
+intimate with both, and in the very same neighbourhood:--lives only four
+miles from Maple Grove. Jane will be only four miles from Maple Grove.”
+
+“Mrs. Elton, I suppose, has been the person to whom Miss Fairfax owes--”
+
+“Yes, our good Mrs. Elton. The most indefatigable, true friend. She
+would not take a denial. She would not let Jane say, 'No;' for when Jane
+first heard of it, (it was the day before yesterday, the very morning
+we were at Donwell,) when Jane first heard of it, she was quite decided
+against accepting the offer, and for the reasons you mention; exactly
+as you say, she had made up her mind to close with nothing till Colonel
+Campbell's return, and nothing should induce her to enter into any
+engagement at present--and so she told Mrs. Elton over and over
+again--and I am sure I had no more idea that she would change her
+mind!--but that good Mrs. Elton, whose judgment never fails her, saw
+farther than I did. It is not every body that would have stood out in
+such a kind way as she did, and refuse to take Jane's answer; but she
+positively declared she would _not_ write any such denial yesterday, as
+Jane wished her; she would wait--and, sure enough, yesterday evening it
+was all settled that Jane should go. Quite a surprize to me! I had not
+the least idea!--Jane took Mrs. Elton aside, and told her at once, that
+upon thinking over the advantages of Mrs. Smallridge's situation, she
+had come to the resolution of accepting it.--I did not know a word of it
+till it was all settled.”
+
+“You spent the evening with Mrs. Elton?”
+
+“Yes, all of us; Mrs. Elton would have us come. It was settled so, upon
+the hill, while we were walking about with Mr. Knightley. 'You _must_
+_all_ spend your evening with us,' said she--'I positively must have you
+_all_ come.'”
+
+“Mr. Knightley was there too, was he?”
+
+“No, not Mr. Knightley; he declined it from the first; and though I
+thought he would come, because Mrs. Elton declared she would not let him
+off, he did not;--but my mother, and Jane, and I, were all there, and
+a very agreeable evening we had. Such kind friends, you know, Miss
+Woodhouse, one must always find agreeable, though every body seemed
+rather fagged after the morning's party. Even pleasure, you know, is
+fatiguing--and I cannot say that any of them seemed very much to have
+enjoyed it. However, _I_ shall always think it a very pleasant party,
+and feel extremely obliged to the kind friends who included me in it.”
+
+“Miss Fairfax, I suppose, though you were not aware of it, had been
+making up her mind the whole day?”
+
+“I dare say she had.”
+
+“Whenever the time may come, it must be unwelcome to her and all her
+friends--but I hope her engagement will have every alleviation that is
+possible--I mean, as to the character and manners of the family.”
+
+“Thank you, dear Miss Woodhouse. Yes, indeed, there is every thing
+in the world that can make her happy in it. Except the Sucklings and
+Bragges, there is not such another nursery establishment, so liberal
+and elegant, in all Mrs. Elton's acquaintance. Mrs. Smallridge, a most
+delightful woman!--A style of living almost equal to Maple Grove--and as
+to the children, except the little Sucklings and little Bragges, there
+are not such elegant sweet children anywhere. Jane will be treated with
+such regard and kindness!--It will be nothing but pleasure, a life of
+pleasure.--And her salary!--I really cannot venture to name her salary
+to you, Miss Woodhouse. Even you, used as you are to great sums, would
+hardly believe that so much could be given to a young person like Jane.”
+
+“Ah! madam,” cried Emma, “if other children are at all like what I
+remember to have been myself, I should think five times the amount of
+what I have ever yet heard named as a salary on such occasions, dearly
+earned.”
+
+“You are so noble in your ideas!”
+
+“And when is Miss Fairfax to leave you?”
+
+“Very soon, very soon, indeed; that's the worst of it. Within a
+fortnight. Mrs. Smallridge is in a great hurry. My poor mother does not
+know how to bear it. So then, I try to put it out of her thoughts, and
+say, Come ma'am, do not let us think about it any more.”
+
+“Her friends must all be sorry to lose her; and will not Colonel and
+Mrs. Campbell be sorry to find that she has engaged herself before their
+return?”
+
+“Yes; Jane says she is sure they will; but yet, this is such a situation
+as she cannot feel herself justified in declining. I was so astonished
+when she first told me what she had been saying to Mrs. Elton, and when
+Mrs. Elton at the same moment came congratulating me upon it! It was
+before tea--stay--no, it could not be before tea, because we were
+just going to cards--and yet it was before tea, because I remember
+thinking--Oh! no, now I recollect, now I have it; something happened
+before tea, but not that. Mr. Elton was called out of the room before
+tea, old John Abdy's son wanted to speak with him. Poor old John, I
+have a great regard for him; he was clerk to my poor father twenty-seven
+years; and now, poor old man, he is bed-ridden, and very poorly with the
+rheumatic gout in his joints--I must go and see him to-day; and so will
+Jane, I am sure, if she gets out at all. And poor John's son came to
+talk to Mr. Elton about relief from the parish; he is very well to do
+himself, you know, being head man at the Crown, ostler, and every thing
+of that sort, but still he cannot keep his father without some help;
+and so, when Mr. Elton came back, he told us what John ostler had been
+telling him, and then it came out about the chaise having been sent to
+Randalls to take Mr. Frank Churchill to Richmond. That was what happened
+before tea. It was after tea that Jane spoke to Mrs. Elton.”
+
+Miss Bates would hardly give Emma time to say how perfectly new this
+circumstance was to her; but as without supposing it possible that she
+could be ignorant of any of the particulars of Mr. Frank Churchill's
+going, she proceeded to give them all, it was of no consequence.
+
+What Mr. Elton had learned from the ostler on the subject, being the
+accumulation of the ostler's own knowledge, and the knowledge of the
+servants at Randalls, was, that a messenger had come over from Richmond
+soon after the return of the party from Box Hill--which messenger,
+however, had been no more than was expected; and that Mr. Churchill had
+sent his nephew a few lines, containing, upon the whole, a tolerable
+account of Mrs. Churchill, and only wishing him not to delay coming
+back beyond the next morning early; but that Mr. Frank Churchill having
+resolved to go home directly, without waiting at all, and his horse
+seeming to have got a cold, Tom had been sent off immediately for the
+Crown chaise, and the ostler had stood out and seen it pass by, the boy
+going a good pace, and driving very steady.
+
+There was nothing in all this either to astonish or interest, and it
+caught Emma's attention only as it united with the subject which already
+engaged her mind. The contrast between Mrs. Churchill's importance in
+the world, and Jane Fairfax's, struck her; one was every thing, the
+other nothing--and she sat musing on the difference of woman's destiny,
+and quite unconscious on what her eyes were fixed, till roused by Miss
+Bates's saying,
+
+“Aye, I see what you are thinking of, the pianoforte. What is to become
+of that?--Very true. Poor dear Jane was talking of it just now.--'You
+must go,' said she. 'You and I must part. You will have no business
+here.--Let it stay, however,' said she; 'give it houseroom till Colonel
+Campbell comes back. I shall talk about it to him; he will settle for
+me; he will help me out of all my difficulties.'--And to this day, I do
+believe, she knows not whether it was his present or his daughter's.”
+
+Now Emma was obliged to think of the pianoforte; and the remembrance of
+all her former fanciful and unfair conjectures was so little pleasing,
+that she soon allowed herself to believe her visit had been long enough;
+and, with a repetition of every thing that she could venture to say of
+the good wishes which she really felt, took leave.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Emma's pensive meditations, as she walked home, were not interrupted;
+but on entering the parlour, she found those who must rouse her. Mr.
+Knightley and Harriet had arrived during her absence, and were sitting
+with her father.--Mr. Knightley immediately got up, and in a manner
+decidedly graver than usual, said,
+
+“I would not go away without seeing you, but I have no time to spare,
+and therefore must now be gone directly. I am going to London, to spend
+a few days with John and Isabella. Have you any thing to send or say,
+besides the 'love,' which nobody carries?”
+
+“Nothing at all. But is not this a sudden scheme?”
+
+“Yes--rather--I have been thinking of it some little time.”
+
+Emma was sure he had not forgiven her; he looked unlike himself. Time,
+however, she thought, would tell him that they ought to be friends
+again. While he stood, as if meaning to go, but not going--her father
+began his inquiries.
+
+“Well, my dear, and did you get there safely?--And how did you find my
+worthy old friend and her daughter?--I dare say they must have been very
+much obliged to you for coming. Dear Emma has been to call on Mrs.
+and Miss Bates, Mr. Knightley, as I told you before. She is always so
+attentive to them!”
+
+Emma's colour was heightened by this unjust praise; and with a
+smile, and shake of the head, which spoke much, she looked at Mr.
+Knightley.--It seemed as if there were an instantaneous impression in
+her favour, as if his eyes received the truth from hers, and all that
+had passed of good in her feelings were at once caught and honoured.--
+He looked at her with a glow of regard. She was warmly gratified--and in
+another moment still more so, by a little movement of more than common
+friendliness on his part.--He took her hand;--whether she had not
+herself made the first motion, she could not say--she might, perhaps,
+have rather offered it--but he took her hand, pressed it, and certainly
+was on the point of carrying it to his lips--when, from some fancy or
+other, he suddenly let it go.--Why he should feel such a scruple, why
+he should change his mind when it was all but done, she could not
+perceive.--He would have judged better, she thought, if he had not
+stopped.--The intention, however, was indubitable; and whether it was
+that his manners had in general so little gallantry, or however else it
+happened, but she thought nothing became him more.--It was with him,
+of so simple, yet so dignified a nature.--She could not but recall the
+attempt with great satisfaction. It spoke such perfect amity.--He left
+them immediately afterwards--gone in a moment. He always moved with the
+alertness of a mind which could neither be undecided nor dilatory, but
+now he seemed more sudden than usual in his disappearance.
+
+Emma could not regret her having gone to Miss Bates, but she wished she
+had left her ten minutes earlier;--it would have been a great pleasure
+to talk over Jane Fairfax's situation with Mr. Knightley.--Neither
+would she regret that he should be going to Brunswick Square, for she
+knew how much his visit would be enjoyed--but it might have happened
+at a better time--and to have had longer notice of it, would have been
+pleasanter.--They parted thorough friends, however; she could not
+be deceived as to the meaning of his countenance, and his unfinished
+gallantry;--it was all done to assure her that she had fully recovered
+his good opinion.--He had been sitting with them half an hour, she
+found. It was a pity that she had not come back earlier!
+
+In the hope of diverting her father's thoughts from the disagreeableness
+of Mr. Knightley's going to London; and going so suddenly; and going on
+horseback, which she knew would be all very bad; Emma communicated her
+news of Jane Fairfax, and her dependence on the effect was justified;
+it supplied a very useful check,--interested, without disturbing him. He
+had long made up his mind to Jane Fairfax's going out as governess, and
+could talk of it cheerfully, but Mr. Knightley's going to London had
+been an unexpected blow.
+
+“I am very glad, indeed, my dear, to hear she is to be so comfortably
+settled. Mrs. Elton is very good-natured and agreeable, and I dare say
+her acquaintance are just what they ought to be. I hope it is a dry
+situation, and that her health will be taken good care of. It ought to
+be a first object, as I am sure poor Miss Taylor's always was with me.
+You know, my dear, she is going to be to this new lady what Miss Taylor
+was to us. And I hope she will be better off in one respect, and not be
+induced to go away after it has been her home so long.”
+
+The following day brought news from Richmond to throw every thing else
+into the background. An express arrived at Randalls to announce the
+death of Mrs. Churchill! Though her nephew had had no particular reason
+to hasten back on her account, she had not lived above six-and-thirty
+hours after his return. A sudden seizure of a different nature from any
+thing foreboded by her general state, had carried her off after a short
+struggle. The great Mrs. Churchill was no more.
+
+It was felt as such things must be felt. Every body had a degree of
+gravity and sorrow; tenderness towards the departed, solicitude for the
+surviving friends; and, in a reasonable time, curiosity to know where
+she would be buried. Goldsmith tells us, that when lovely woman stoops
+to folly, she has nothing to do but to die; and when she stoops to be
+disagreeable, it is equally to be recommended as a clearer of ill-fame.
+Mrs. Churchill, after being disliked at least twenty-five years, was
+now spoken of with compassionate allowances. In one point she was fully
+justified. She had never been admitted before to be seriously ill. The
+event acquitted her of all the fancifulness, and all the selfishness of
+imaginary complaints.
+
+“Poor Mrs. Churchill! no doubt she had been suffering a great deal:
+more than any body had ever supposed--and continual pain would try the
+temper. It was a sad event--a great shock--with all her faults, what
+would Mr. Churchill do without her? Mr. Churchill's loss would be
+dreadful indeed. Mr. Churchill would never get over it.”--Even Mr.
+Weston shook his head, and looked solemn, and said, “Ah! poor woman,
+who would have thought it!” and resolved, that his mourning should be as
+handsome as possible; and his wife sat sighing and moralising over her
+broad hems with a commiseration and good sense, true and steady. How it
+would affect Frank was among the earliest thoughts of both. It was also
+a very early speculation with Emma. The character of Mrs. Churchill,
+the grief of her husband--her mind glanced over them both with awe and
+compassion--and then rested with lightened feelings on how Frank might
+be affected by the event, how benefited, how freed. She saw in a moment
+all the possible good. Now, an attachment to Harriet Smith would have
+nothing to encounter. Mr. Churchill, independent of his wife, was feared
+by nobody; an easy, guidable man, to be persuaded into any thing by his
+nephew. All that remained to be wished was, that the nephew should form
+the attachment, as, with all her goodwill in the cause, Emma could feel
+no certainty of its being already formed.
+
+Harriet behaved extremely well on the occasion, with great self-command.
+What ever she might feel of brighter hope, she betrayed nothing. Emma
+was gratified, to observe such a proof in her of strengthened character,
+and refrained from any allusion that might endanger its maintenance.
+They spoke, therefore, of Mrs. Churchill's death with mutual
+forbearance.
+
+Short letters from Frank were received at Randalls, communicating all
+that was immediately important of their state and plans. Mr. Churchill
+was better than could be expected; and their first removal, on the
+departure of the funeral for Yorkshire, was to be to the house of a very
+old friend in Windsor, to whom Mr. Churchill had been promising a
+visit the last ten years. At present, there was nothing to be done for
+Harriet; good wishes for the future were all that could yet be possible
+on Emma's side.
+
+It was a more pressing concern to shew attention to Jane Fairfax, whose
+prospects were closing, while Harriet's opened, and whose engagements
+now allowed of no delay in any one at Highbury, who wished to shew her
+kindness--and with Emma it was grown into a first wish. She had scarcely
+a stronger regret than for her past coldness; and the person, whom she
+had been so many months neglecting, was now the very one on whom she
+would have lavished every distinction of regard or sympathy. She wanted
+to be of use to her; wanted to shew a value for her society, and testify
+respect and consideration. She resolved to prevail on her to spend a day
+at Hartfield. A note was written to urge it. The invitation was refused,
+and by a verbal message. “Miss Fairfax was not well enough to write;”
+ and when Mr. Perry called at Hartfield, the same morning, it appeared
+that she was so much indisposed as to have been visited, though against
+her own consent, by himself, and that she was suffering under severe
+headaches, and a nervous fever to a degree, which made him doubt the
+possibility of her going to Mrs. Smallridge's at the time proposed.
+Her health seemed for the moment completely deranged--appetite quite
+gone--and though there were no absolutely alarming symptoms, nothing
+touching the pulmonary complaint, which was the standing apprehension
+of the family, Mr. Perry was uneasy about her. He thought she had
+undertaken more than she was equal to, and that she felt it so herself,
+though she would not own it. Her spirits seemed overcome. Her
+present home, he could not but observe, was unfavourable to a nervous
+disorder:--confined always to one room;--he could have wished it
+otherwise--and her good aunt, though his very old friend, he must
+acknowledge to be not the best companion for an invalid of that
+description. Her care and attention could not be questioned; they were,
+in fact, only too great. He very much feared that Miss Fairfax derived
+more evil than good from them. Emma listened with the warmest concern;
+grieved for her more and more, and looked around eager to discover some
+way of being useful. To take her--be it only an hour or two--from
+her aunt, to give her change of air and scene, and quiet rational
+conversation, even for an hour or two, might do her good; and the
+following morning she wrote again to say, in the most feeling language
+she could command, that she would call for her in the carriage at any
+hour that Jane would name--mentioning that she had Mr. Perry's decided
+opinion, in favour of such exercise for his patient. The answer was only
+in this short note:
+
+“Miss Fairfax's compliments and thanks, but is quite unequal to any
+exercise.”
+
+Emma felt that her own note had deserved something better; but it was
+impossible to quarrel with words, whose tremulous inequality shewed
+indisposition so plainly, and she thought only of how she might best
+counteract this unwillingness to be seen or assisted. In spite of the
+answer, therefore, she ordered the carriage, and drove to Mrs. Bates's,
+in the hope that Jane would be induced to join her--but it would not
+do;--Miss Bates came to the carriage door, all gratitude, and agreeing
+with her most earnestly in thinking an airing might be of the greatest
+service--and every thing that message could do was tried--but all in
+vain. Miss Bates was obliged to return without success; Jane was
+quite unpersuadable; the mere proposal of going out seemed to make her
+worse.--Emma wished she could have seen her, and tried her own powers;
+but, almost before she could hint the wish, Miss Bates made it appear
+that she had promised her niece on no account to let Miss Woodhouse in.
+“Indeed, the truth was, that poor dear Jane could not bear to see any
+body--any body at all--Mrs. Elton, indeed, could not be denied--and
+Mrs. Cole had made such a point--and Mrs. Perry had said so much--but,
+except them, Jane would really see nobody.”
+
+Emma did not want to be classed with the Mrs. Eltons, the Mrs. Perrys,
+and the Mrs. Coles, who would force themselves anywhere; neither could
+she feel any right of preference herself--she submitted, therefore, and
+only questioned Miss Bates farther as to her niece's appetite and diet,
+which she longed to be able to assist. On that subject poor Miss Bates
+was very unhappy, and very communicative; Jane would hardly eat any
+thing:--Mr. Perry recommended nourishing food; but every thing
+they could command (and never had any body such good neighbours) was
+distasteful.
+
+Emma, on reaching home, called the housekeeper directly, to an
+examination of her stores; and some arrowroot of very superior quality
+was speedily despatched to Miss Bates with a most friendly note. In half
+an hour the arrowroot was returned, with a thousand thanks from Miss
+Bates, but “dear Jane would not be satisfied without its being sent
+back; it was a thing she could not take--and, moreover, she insisted on
+her saying, that she was not at all in want of any thing.”
+
+When Emma afterwards heard that Jane Fairfax had been seen wandering
+about the meadows, at some distance from Highbury, on the afternoon of
+the very day on which she had, under the plea of being unequal to any
+exercise, so peremptorily refused to go out with her in the carriage,
+she could have no doubt--putting every thing together--that Jane was
+resolved to receive no kindness from _her_. She was sorry, very sorry.
+Her heart was grieved for a state which seemed but the more pitiable
+from this sort of irritation of spirits, inconsistency of action, and
+inequality of powers; and it mortified her that she was given so little
+credit for proper feeling, or esteemed so little worthy as a friend: but
+she had the consolation of knowing that her intentions were good, and of
+being able to say to herself, that could Mr. Knightley have been privy
+to all her attempts of assisting Jane Fairfax, could he even have seen
+into her heart, he would not, on this occasion, have found any thing to
+reprove.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+One morning, about ten days after Mrs. Churchill's decease, Emma was
+called downstairs to Mr. Weston, who “could not stay five minutes,
+and wanted particularly to speak with her.”--He met her at the
+parlour-door, and hardly asking her how she did, in the natural key of
+his voice, sunk it immediately, to say, unheard by her father,
+
+“Can you come to Randalls at any time this morning?--Do, if it be
+possible. Mrs. Weston wants to see you. She must see you.”
+
+“Is she unwell?”
+
+“No, no, not at all--only a little agitated. She would have ordered the
+carriage, and come to you, but she must see you _alone_, and that you
+know--(nodding towards her father)--Humph!--Can you come?”
+
+“Certainly. This moment, if you please. It is impossible to refuse what
+you ask in such a way. But what can be the matter?--Is she really not
+ill?”
+
+“Depend upon me--but ask no more questions. You will know it all in
+time. The most unaccountable business! But hush, hush!”
+
+To guess what all this meant, was impossible even for Emma. Something
+really important seemed announced by his looks; but, as her friend was
+well, she endeavoured not to be uneasy, and settling it with her father,
+that she would take her walk now, she and Mr. Weston were soon out of
+the house together and on their way at a quick pace for Randalls.
+
+“Now,”--said Emma, when they were fairly beyond the sweep gates,--“now
+Mr. Weston, do let me know what has happened.”
+
+“No, no,”--he gravely replied.--“Don't ask me. I promised my wife to
+leave it all to her. She will break it to you better than I can. Do not
+be impatient, Emma; it will all come out too soon.”
+
+“Break it to me,” cried Emma, standing still with terror.--“Good
+God!--Mr. Weston, tell me at once.--Something has happened in Brunswick
+Square. I know it has. Tell me, I charge you tell me this moment what it
+is.”
+
+“No, indeed you are mistaken.”--
+
+“Mr. Weston do not trifle with me.--Consider how many of my dearest
+friends are now in Brunswick Square. Which of them is it?--I charge you
+by all that is sacred, not to attempt concealment.”
+
+“Upon my word, Emma.”--
+
+“Your word!--why not your honour!--why not say upon your honour, that
+it has nothing to do with any of them? Good Heavens!--What can be to be
+_broke_ to me, that does not relate to one of that family?”
+
+“Upon my honour,” said he very seriously, “it does not. It is not in
+the smallest degree connected with any human being of the name of
+Knightley.”
+
+Emma's courage returned, and she walked on.
+
+“I was wrong,” he continued, “in talking of its being _broke_ to you.
+I should not have used the expression. In fact, it does not concern
+you--it concerns only myself,--that is, we hope.--Humph!--In short, my
+dear Emma, there is no occasion to be so uneasy about it. I don't
+say that it is not a disagreeable business--but things might be much
+worse.--If we walk fast, we shall soon be at Randalls.”
+
+Emma found that she must wait; and now it required little effort. She
+asked no more questions therefore, merely employed her own fancy, and
+that soon pointed out to her the probability of its being some money
+concern--something just come to light, of a disagreeable nature in the
+circumstances of the family,--something which the late event at Richmond
+had brought forward. Her fancy was very active. Half a dozen natural
+children, perhaps--and poor Frank cut off!--This, though very
+undesirable, would be no matter of agony to her. It inspired little more
+than an animating curiosity.
+
+“Who is that gentleman on horseback?” said she, as they
+proceeded--speaking more to assist Mr. Weston in keeping his secret,
+than with any other view.
+
+“I do not know.--One of the Otways.--Not Frank;--it is not Frank, I
+assure you. You will not see him. He is half way to Windsor by this
+time.”
+
+“Has your son been with you, then?”
+
+“Oh! yes--did not you know?--Well, well, never mind.”
+
+For a moment he was silent; and then added, in a tone much more guarded
+and demure,
+
+“Yes, Frank came over this morning, just to ask us how we did.”
+
+They hurried on, and were speedily at Randalls.--“Well, my dear,” said
+he, as they entered the room--“I have brought her, and now I hope you
+will soon be better. I shall leave you together. There is no use in
+delay. I shall not be far off, if you want me.”--And Emma distinctly
+heard him add, in a lower tone, before he quitted the room,--“I have
+been as good as my word. She has not the least idea.”
+
+Mrs. Weston was looking so ill, and had an air of so much perturbation,
+that Emma's uneasiness increased; and the moment they were alone, she
+eagerly said,
+
+“What is it my dear friend? Something of a very unpleasant nature, I
+find, has occurred;--do let me know directly what it is. I have been
+walking all this way in complete suspense. We both abhor suspense.
+Do not let mine continue longer. It will do you good to speak of your
+distress, whatever it may be.”
+
+“Have you indeed no idea?” said Mrs. Weston in a trembling voice.
+“Cannot you, my dear Emma--cannot you form a guess as to what you are to
+hear?”
+
+“So far as that it relates to Mr. Frank Churchill, I do guess.”
+
+“You are right. It does relate to him, and I will tell you directly;”
+ (resuming her work, and seeming resolved against looking up.) “He has
+been here this very morning, on a most extraordinary errand. It is
+impossible to express our surprize. He came to speak to his father on a
+subject,--to announce an attachment--”
+
+She stopped to breathe. Emma thought first of herself, and then of
+Harriet.
+
+“More than an attachment, indeed,” resumed Mrs. Weston; “an
+engagement--a positive engagement.--What will you say, Emma--what will
+any body say, when it is known that Frank Churchill and Miss Fairfax are
+engaged;--nay, that they have been long engaged!”
+
+Emma even jumped with surprize;--and, horror-struck, exclaimed,
+
+“Jane Fairfax!--Good God! You are not serious? You do not mean it?”
+
+“You may well be amazed,” returned Mrs. Weston, still averting her eyes,
+and talking on with eagerness, that Emma might have time to recover--
+“You may well be amazed. But it is even so. There has been a solemn
+engagement between them ever since October--formed at Weymouth, and
+kept a secret from every body. Not a creature knowing it but
+themselves--neither the Campbells, nor her family, nor his.--It is so
+wonderful, that though perfectly convinced of the fact, it is yet almost
+incredible to myself. I can hardly believe it.--I thought I knew him.”
+
+Emma scarcely heard what was said.--Her mind was divided between two
+ideas--her own former conversations with him about Miss Fairfax; and
+poor Harriet;--and for some time she could only exclaim, and require
+confirmation, repeated confirmation.
+
+“Well,” said she at last, trying to recover herself; “this is a
+circumstance which I must think of at least half a day, before I can at
+all comprehend it. What!--engaged to her all the winter--before either
+of them came to Highbury?”
+
+“Engaged since October,--secretly engaged.--It has hurt me, Emma, very
+much. It has hurt his father equally. _Some_ _part_ of his conduct we
+cannot excuse.”
+
+Emma pondered a moment, and then replied, “I will not pretend _not_ to
+understand you; and to give you all the relief in my power, be assured
+that no such effect has followed his attentions to me, as you are
+apprehensive of.”
+
+Mrs. Weston looked up, afraid to believe; but Emma's countenance was as
+steady as her words.
+
+“That you may have less difficulty in believing this boast, of my
+present perfect indifference,” she continued, “I will farther tell you,
+that there was a period in the early part of our acquaintance, when I
+did like him, when I was very much disposed to be attached to him--nay,
+was attached--and how it came to cease, is perhaps the wonder.
+Fortunately, however, it did cease. I have really for some time past,
+for at least these three months, cared nothing about him. You may
+believe me, Mrs. Weston. This is the simple truth.”
+
+Mrs. Weston kissed her with tears of joy; and when she could find
+utterance, assured her, that this protestation had done her more good
+than any thing else in the world could do.
+
+“Mr. Weston will be almost as much relieved as myself,” said she. “On
+this point we have been wretched. It was our darling wish that you
+might be attached to each other--and we were persuaded that it was so.--
+Imagine what we have been feeling on your account.”
+
+“I have escaped; and that I should escape, may be a matter of grateful
+wonder to you and myself. But this does not acquit _him_, Mrs. Weston;
+and I must say, that I think him greatly to blame. What right had he
+to come among us with affection and faith engaged, and with manners
+so _very_ disengaged? What right had he to endeavour to please, as
+he certainly did--to distinguish any one young woman with persevering
+attention, as he certainly did--while he really belonged to
+another?--How could he tell what mischief he might be doing?--How could
+he tell that he might not be making me in love with him?--very wrong,
+very wrong indeed.”
+
+“From something that he said, my dear Emma, I rather imagine--”
+
+“And how could _she_ bear such behaviour! Composure with a witness!
+to look on, while repeated attentions were offering to another woman,
+before her face, and not resent it.--That is a degree of placidity,
+which I can neither comprehend nor respect.”
+
+“There were misunderstandings between them, Emma; he said so expressly.
+He had not time to enter into much explanation. He was here only a
+quarter of an hour, and in a state of agitation which did not allow
+the full use even of the time he could stay--but that there had been
+misunderstandings he decidedly said. The present crisis, indeed,
+seemed to be brought on by them; and those misunderstandings might very
+possibly arise from the impropriety of his conduct.”
+
+“Impropriety! Oh! Mrs. Weston--it is too calm a censure. Much, much
+beyond impropriety!--It has sunk him, I cannot say how it has sunk him
+in my opinion. So unlike what a man should be!--None of that upright
+integrity, that strict adherence to truth and principle, that disdain of
+trick and littleness, which a man should display in every transaction of
+his life.”
+
+“Nay, dear Emma, now I must take his part; for though he has been wrong
+in this instance, I have known him long enough to answer for his having
+many, very many, good qualities; and--”
+
+“Good God!” cried Emma, not attending to her.--“Mrs. Smallridge, too!
+Jane actually on the point of going as governess! What could he mean by
+such horrible indelicacy? To suffer her to engage herself--to suffer her
+even to think of such a measure!”
+
+“He knew nothing about it, Emma. On this article I can fully acquit
+him. It was a private resolution of hers, not communicated to him--or at
+least not communicated in a way to carry conviction.--Till yesterday, I
+know he said he was in the dark as to her plans. They burst on him, I do
+not know how, but by some letter or message--and it was the discovery of
+what she was doing, of this very project of hers, which determined him
+to come forward at once, own it all to his uncle, throw himself on
+his kindness, and, in short, put an end to the miserable state of
+concealment that had been carrying on so long.”
+
+Emma began to listen better.
+
+“I am to hear from him soon,” continued Mrs. Weston. “He told me at
+parting, that he should soon write; and he spoke in a manner which
+seemed to promise me many particulars that could not be given now. Let
+us wait, therefore, for this letter. It may bring many extenuations. It
+may make many things intelligible and excusable which now are not to
+be understood. Don't let us be severe, don't let us be in a hurry to
+condemn him. Let us have patience. I must love him; and now that I am
+satisfied on one point, the one material point, I am sincerely anxious
+for its all turning out well, and ready to hope that it may. They must
+both have suffered a great deal under such a system of secresy and
+concealment.”
+
+“_His_ sufferings,” replied Emma dryly, “do not appear to have done him
+much harm. Well, and how did Mr. Churchill take it?”
+
+“Most favourably for his nephew--gave his consent with scarcely a
+difficulty. Conceive what the events of a week have done in that family!
+While poor Mrs. Churchill lived, I suppose there could not have been a
+hope, a chance, a possibility;--but scarcely are her remains at rest in
+the family vault, than her husband is persuaded to act exactly opposite
+to what she would have required. What a blessing it is, when undue
+influence does not survive the grave!--He gave his consent with very
+little persuasion.”
+
+“Ah!” thought Emma, “he would have done as much for Harriet.”
+
+“This was settled last night, and Frank was off with the light this
+morning. He stopped at Highbury, at the Bates's, I fancy, some time--and
+then came on hither; but was in such a hurry to get back to his uncle,
+to whom he is just now more necessary than ever, that, as I tell you,
+he could stay with us but a quarter of an hour.--He was very much
+agitated--very much, indeed--to a degree that made him appear quite
+a different creature from any thing I had ever seen him before.--In
+addition to all the rest, there had been the shock of finding her so
+very unwell, which he had had no previous suspicion of--and there was
+every appearance of his having been feeling a great deal.”
+
+“And do you really believe the affair to have been carrying on with such
+perfect secresy?--The Campbells, the Dixons, did none of them know of
+the engagement?”
+
+Emma could not speak the name of Dixon without a little blush.
+
+“None; not one. He positively said that it had been known to no being in
+the world but their two selves.”
+
+“Well,” said Emma, “I suppose we shall gradually grow reconciled to the
+idea, and I wish them very happy. But I shall always think it a
+very abominable sort of proceeding. What has it been but a system of
+hypocrisy and deceit,--espionage, and treachery?--To come among us with
+professions of openness and simplicity; and such a league in secret
+to judge us all!--Here have we been, the whole winter and spring,
+completely duped, fancying ourselves all on an equal footing of truth
+and honour, with two people in the midst of us who may have been
+carrying round, comparing and sitting in judgment on sentiments and
+words that were never meant for both to hear.--They must take the
+consequence, if they have heard each other spoken of in a way not
+perfectly agreeable!”
+
+“I am quite easy on that head,” replied Mrs. Weston. “I am very sure
+that I never said any thing of either to the other, which both might not
+have heard.”
+
+“You are in luck.--Your only blunder was confined to my ear, when you
+imagined a certain friend of ours in love with the lady.”
+
+“True. But as I have always had a thoroughly good opinion of Miss
+Fairfax, I never could, under any blunder, have spoken ill of her; and
+as to speaking ill of him, there I must have been safe.”
+
+At this moment Mr. Weston appeared at a little distance from the window,
+evidently on the watch. His wife gave him a look which invited him
+in; and, while he was coming round, added, “Now, dearest Emma, let me
+intreat you to say and look every thing that may set his heart at ease,
+and incline him to be satisfied with the match. Let us make the best of
+it--and, indeed, almost every thing may be fairly said in her favour. It
+is not a connexion to gratify; but if Mr. Churchill does not feel that,
+why should we? and it may be a very fortunate circumstance for him, for
+Frank, I mean, that he should have attached himself to a girl of such
+steadiness of character and good judgment as I have always given her
+credit for--and still am disposed to give her credit for, in spite of
+this one great deviation from the strict rule of right. And how much may
+be said in her situation for even that error!”
+
+“Much, indeed!” cried Emma feelingly. “If a woman can ever be
+excused for thinking only of herself, it is in a situation like Jane
+Fairfax's.--Of such, one may almost say, that 'the world is not their's,
+nor the world's law.'”
+
+She met Mr. Weston on his entrance, with a smiling countenance,
+exclaiming,
+
+“A very pretty trick you have been playing me, upon my word! This was a
+device, I suppose, to sport with my curiosity, and exercise my talent of
+guessing. But you really frightened me. I thought you had lost half
+your property, at least. And here, instead of its being a matter of
+condolence, it turns out to be one of congratulation.--I congratulate
+you, Mr. Weston, with all my heart, on the prospect of having one of the
+most lovely and accomplished young women in England for your daughter.”
+
+A glance or two between him and his wife, convinced him that all was as
+right as this speech proclaimed; and its happy effect on his spirits was
+immediate. His air and voice recovered their usual briskness: he shook
+her heartily and gratefully by the hand, and entered on the subject in
+a manner to prove, that he now only wanted time and persuasion to think
+the engagement no very bad thing. His companions suggested only what
+could palliate imprudence, or smooth objections; and by the time they
+had talked it all over together, and he had talked it all over again
+with Emma, in their walk back to Hartfield, he was become perfectly
+reconciled, and not far from thinking it the very best thing that Frank
+could possibly have done.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+“Harriet, poor Harriet!”--Those were the words; in them lay the
+tormenting ideas which Emma could not get rid of, and which constituted
+the real misery of the business to her. Frank Churchill had behaved very
+ill by herself--very ill in many ways,--but it was not so much _his_
+behaviour as her _own_, which made her so angry with him. It was the
+scrape which he had drawn her into on Harriet's account, that gave the
+deepest hue to his offence.--Poor Harriet! to be a second time the
+dupe of her misconceptions and flattery. Mr. Knightley had spoken
+prophetically, when he once said, “Emma, you have been no friend
+to Harriet Smith.”--She was afraid she had done her nothing but
+disservice.--It was true that she had not to charge herself, in this
+instance as in the former, with being the sole and original author of
+the mischief; with having suggested such feelings as might otherwise
+never have entered Harriet's imagination; for Harriet had acknowledged
+her admiration and preference of Frank Churchill before she had ever
+given her a hint on the subject; but she felt completely guilty
+of having encouraged what she might have repressed. She might have
+prevented the indulgence and increase of such sentiments. Her influence
+would have been enough. And now she was very conscious that she ought
+to have prevented them.--She felt that she had been risking her friend's
+happiness on most insufficient grounds. Common sense would have directed
+her to tell Harriet, that she must not allow herself to think of him,
+and that there were five hundred chances to one against his ever caring
+for her.--“But, with common sense,” she added, “I am afraid I have had
+little to do.”
+
+She was extremely angry with herself. If she could not have been angry
+with Frank Churchill too, it would have been dreadful.--As for Jane
+Fairfax, she might at least relieve her feelings from any present
+solicitude on her account. Harriet would be anxiety enough; she need
+no longer be unhappy about Jane, whose troubles and whose ill-health
+having, of course, the same origin, must be equally under cure.--Her
+days of insignificance and evil were over.--She would soon be well, and
+happy, and prosperous.--Emma could now imagine why her own attentions
+had been slighted. This discovery laid many smaller matters open. No
+doubt it had been from jealousy.--In Jane's eyes she had been a rival;
+and well might any thing she could offer of assistance or regard be
+repulsed. An airing in the Hartfield carriage would have been the rack,
+and arrowroot from the Hartfield storeroom must have been poison. She
+understood it all; and as far as her mind could disengage itself from
+the injustice and selfishness of angry feelings, she acknowledged that
+Jane Fairfax would have neither elevation nor happiness beyond her
+desert. But poor Harriet was such an engrossing charge! There was little
+sympathy to be spared for any body else. Emma was sadly fearful
+that this second disappointment would be more severe than the first.
+Considering the very superior claims of the object, it ought; and
+judging by its apparently stronger effect on Harriet's mind, producing
+reserve and self-command, it would.--She must communicate the painful
+truth, however, and as soon as possible. An injunction of secresy had
+been among Mr. Weston's parting words. “For the present, the whole
+affair was to be completely a secret. Mr. Churchill had made a point of
+it, as a token of respect to the wife he had so very recently lost;
+and every body admitted it to be no more than due decorum.”--Emma had
+promised; but still Harriet must be excepted. It was her superior duty.
+
+In spite of her vexation, she could not help feeling it almost
+ridiculous, that she should have the very same distressing and delicate
+office to perform by Harriet, which Mrs. Weston had just gone through by
+herself. The intelligence, which had been so anxiously announced to her,
+she was now to be anxiously announcing to another. Her heart beat quick
+on hearing Harriet's footstep and voice; so, she supposed, had poor Mrs.
+Weston felt when _she_ was approaching Randalls. Could the event of
+the disclosure bear an equal resemblance!--But of that, unfortunately,
+there could be no chance.
+
+“Well, Miss Woodhouse!” cried Harriet, coming eagerly into the room--“is
+not this the oddest news that ever was?”
+
+“What news do you mean?” replied Emma, unable to guess, by look or
+voice, whether Harriet could indeed have received any hint.
+
+“About Jane Fairfax. Did you ever hear any thing so strange? Oh!--you
+need not be afraid of owning it to me, for Mr. Weston has told me
+himself. I met him just now. He told me it was to be a great secret;
+and, therefore, I should not think of mentioning it to any body but you,
+but he said you knew it.”
+
+“What did Mr. Weston tell you?”--said Emma, still perplexed.
+
+“Oh! he told me all about it; that Jane Fairfax and Mr. Frank Churchill
+are to be married, and that they have been privately engaged to one
+another this long while. How very odd!”
+
+It was, indeed, so odd; Harriet's behaviour was so extremely odd,
+that Emma did not know how to understand it. Her character appeared
+absolutely changed. She seemed to propose shewing no agitation, or
+disappointment, or peculiar concern in the discovery. Emma looked at
+her, quite unable to speak.
+
+“Had you any idea,” cried Harriet, “of his being in love with her?--You,
+perhaps, might.--You (blushing as she spoke) who can see into every
+body's heart; but nobody else--”
+
+“Upon my word,” said Emma, “I begin to doubt my having any such talent.
+Can you seriously ask me, Harriet, whether I imagined him attached
+to another woman at the very time that I was--tacitly, if not
+openly--encouraging you to give way to your own feelings?--I never
+had the slightest suspicion, till within the last hour, of Mr. Frank
+Churchill's having the least regard for Jane Fairfax. You may be very
+sure that if I had, I should have cautioned you accordingly.”
+
+“Me!” cried Harriet, colouring, and astonished. “Why should you caution
+me?--You do not think I care about Mr. Frank Churchill.”
+
+“I am delighted to hear you speak so stoutly on the subject,” replied
+Emma, smiling; “but you do not mean to deny that there was a time--and
+not very distant either--when you gave me reason to understand that you
+did care about him?”
+
+“Him!--never, never. Dear Miss Woodhouse, how could you so mistake me?”
+ turning away distressed.
+
+“Harriet!” cried Emma, after a moment's pause--“What do you mean?--Good
+Heaven! what do you mean?--Mistake you!--Am I to suppose then?--”
+
+She could not speak another word.--Her voice was lost; and she sat down,
+waiting in great terror till Harriet should answer.
+
+Harriet, who was standing at some distance, and with face turned from
+her, did not immediately say any thing; and when she did speak, it was
+in a voice nearly as agitated as Emma's.
+
+“I should not have thought it possible,” she began, “that you could have
+misunderstood me! I know we agreed never to name him--but considering
+how infinitely superior he is to every body else, I should not have
+thought it possible that I could be supposed to mean any other person.
+Mr. Frank Churchill, indeed! I do not know who would ever look at him in
+the company of the other. I hope I have a better taste than to think of
+Mr. Frank Churchill, who is like nobody by his side. And that you should
+have been so mistaken, is amazing!--I am sure, but for believing that
+you entirely approved and meant to encourage me in my attachment, I
+should have considered it at first too great a presumption almost,
+to dare to think of him. At first, if you had not told me that more
+wonderful things had happened; that there had been matches of greater
+disparity (those were your very words);--I should not have dared to
+give way to--I should not have thought it possible--But if _you_, who
+had been always acquainted with him--”
+
+“Harriet!” cried Emma, collecting herself resolutely--“Let us understand
+each other now, without the possibility of farther mistake. Are you
+speaking of--Mr. Knightley?”
+
+“To be sure I am. I never could have an idea of any body else--and so
+I thought you knew. When we talked about him, it was as clear as
+possible.”
+
+“Not quite,” returned Emma, with forced calmness, “for all that you then
+said, appeared to me to relate to a different person. I could almost
+assert that you had _named_ Mr. Frank Churchill. I am sure the service
+Mr. Frank Churchill had rendered you, in protecting you from the
+gipsies, was spoken of.”
+
+“Oh! Miss Woodhouse, how you do forget!”
+
+“My dear Harriet, I perfectly remember the substance of what I said on
+the occasion. I told you that I did not wonder at your attachment;
+that considering the service he had rendered you, it was extremely
+natural:--and you agreed to it, expressing yourself very warmly as to
+your sense of that service, and mentioning even what your sensations had
+been in seeing him come forward to your rescue.--The impression of it is
+strong on my memory.”
+
+“Oh, dear,” cried Harriet, “now I recollect what you mean; but I
+was thinking of something very different at the time. It was not the
+gipsies--it was not Mr. Frank Churchill that I meant. No! (with some
+elevation) I was thinking of a much more precious circumstance--of Mr.
+Knightley's coming and asking me to dance, when Mr. Elton would not
+stand up with me; and when there was no other partner in the room. That
+was the kind action; that was the noble benevolence and generosity; that
+was the service which made me begin to feel how superior he was to every
+other being upon earth.”
+
+“Good God!” cried Emma, “this has been a most unfortunate--most
+deplorable mistake!--What is to be done?”
+
+“You would not have encouraged me, then, if you had understood me? At
+least, however, I cannot be worse off than I should have been, if the
+other had been the person; and now--it _is_ possible--”
+
+She paused a few moments. Emma could not speak.
+
+“I do not wonder, Miss Woodhouse,” she resumed, “that you should feel a
+great difference between the two, as to me or as to any body. You must
+think one five hundred million times more above me than the other. But
+I hope, Miss Woodhouse, that supposing--that if--strange as it may
+appear--. But you know they were your own words, that _more_ wonderful
+things had happened, matches of _greater_ disparity had taken place than
+between Mr. Frank Churchill and me; and, therefore, it seems as if such
+a thing even as this, may have occurred before--and if I should be so
+fortunate, beyond expression, as to--if Mr. Knightley should really--if
+_he_ does not mind the disparity, I hope, dear Miss Woodhouse, you will
+not set yourself against it, and try to put difficulties in the way. But
+you are too good for that, I am sure.”
+
+Harriet was standing at one of the windows. Emma turned round to look at
+her in consternation, and hastily said,
+
+“Have you any idea of Mr. Knightley's returning your affection?”
+
+“Yes,” replied Harriet modestly, but not fearfully--“I must say that I
+have.”
+
+Emma's eyes were instantly withdrawn; and she sat silently meditating,
+in a fixed attitude, for a few minutes. A few minutes were sufficient
+for making her acquainted with her own heart. A mind like hers,
+once opening to suspicion, made rapid progress. She touched--she
+admitted--she acknowledged the whole truth. Why was it so much worse
+that Harriet should be in love with Mr. Knightley, than with Frank
+Churchill? Why was the evil so dreadfully increased by Harriet's having
+some hope of a return? It darted through her, with the speed of an
+arrow, that Mr. Knightley must marry no one but herself!
+
+Her own conduct, as well as her own heart, was before her in the same
+few minutes. She saw it all with a clearness which had never blessed
+her before. How improperly had she been acting by Harriet! How
+inconsiderate, how indelicate, how irrational, how unfeeling had been
+her conduct! What blindness, what madness, had led her on! It struck her
+with dreadful force, and she was ready to give it every bad name in the
+world. Some portion of respect for herself, however, in spite of all
+these demerits--some concern for her own appearance, and a strong sense
+of justice by Harriet--(there would be no need of _compassion_ to the
+girl who believed herself loved by Mr. Knightley--but justice required
+that she should not be made unhappy by any coldness now,) gave Emma the
+resolution to sit and endure farther with calmness, with even apparent
+kindness.--For her own advantage indeed, it was fit that the utmost
+extent of Harriet's hopes should be enquired into; and Harriet had done
+nothing to forfeit the regard and interest which had been so voluntarily
+formed and maintained--or to deserve to be slighted by the person, whose
+counsels had never led her right.--Rousing from reflection, therefore,
+and subduing her emotion, she turned to Harriet again, and, in a more
+inviting accent, renewed the conversation; for as to the subject which
+had first introduced it, the wonderful story of Jane Fairfax, that was
+quite sunk and lost.--Neither of them thought but of Mr. Knightley and
+themselves.
+
+Harriet, who had been standing in no unhappy reverie, was yet very glad
+to be called from it, by the now encouraging manner of such a judge, and
+such a friend as Miss Woodhouse, and only wanted invitation, to give
+the history of her hopes with great, though trembling delight.--Emma's
+tremblings as she asked, and as she listened, were better concealed than
+Harriet's, but they were not less. Her voice was not unsteady; but her
+mind was in all the perturbation that such a development of self, such
+a burst of threatening evil, such a confusion of sudden and perplexing
+emotions, must create.--She listened with much inward suffering, but
+with great outward patience, to Harriet's detail.--Methodical, or well
+arranged, or very well delivered, it could not be expected to be; but it
+contained, when separated from all the feebleness and tautology of
+the narration, a substance to sink her spirit--especially with the
+corroborating circumstances, which her own memory brought in favour of
+Mr. Knightley's most improved opinion of Harriet.
+
+Harriet had been conscious of a difference in his behaviour ever since
+those two decisive dances.--Emma knew that he had, on that occasion,
+found her much superior to his expectation. From that evening, or at
+least from the time of Miss Woodhouse's encouraging her to think of him,
+Harriet had begun to be sensible of his talking to her much more than he
+had been used to do, and of his having indeed quite a different manner
+towards her; a manner of kindness and sweetness!--Latterly she had been
+more and more aware of it. When they had been all walking together,
+he had so often come and walked by her, and talked so very
+delightfully!--He seemed to want to be acquainted with her. Emma knew it
+to have been very much the case. She had often observed the change, to
+almost the same extent.--Harriet repeated expressions of approbation
+and praise from him--and Emma felt them to be in the closest agreement
+with what she had known of his opinion of Harriet. He praised her for
+being without art or affectation, for having simple, honest, generous,
+feelings.--She knew that he saw such recommendations in Harriet; he
+had dwelt on them to her more than once.--Much that lived in Harriet's
+memory, many little particulars of the notice she had received from
+him, a look, a speech, a removal from one chair to another, a compliment
+implied, a preference inferred, had been unnoticed, because unsuspected,
+by Emma. Circumstances that might swell to half an hour's relation,
+and contained multiplied proofs to her who had seen them, had passed
+undiscerned by her who now heard them; but the two latest occurrences to
+be mentioned, the two of strongest promise to Harriet, were not without
+some degree of witness from Emma herself.--The first, was his walking
+with her apart from the others, in the lime-walk at Donwell, where they
+had been walking some time before Emma came, and he had taken pains (as
+she was convinced) to draw her from the rest to himself--and at first,
+he had talked to her in a more particular way than he had ever done
+before, in a very particular way indeed!--(Harriet could not recall
+it without a blush.) He seemed to be almost asking her, whether her
+affections were engaged.--But as soon as she (Miss Woodhouse) appeared
+likely to join them, he changed the subject, and began talking about
+farming:--The second, was his having sat talking with her nearly half
+an hour before Emma came back from her visit, the very last morning of
+his being at Hartfield--though, when he first came in, he had said that
+he could not stay five minutes--and his having told her, during their
+conversation, that though he must go to London, it was very much against
+his inclination that he left home at all, which was much more (as
+Emma felt) than he had acknowledged to _her_. The superior degree of
+confidence towards Harriet, which this one article marked, gave her
+severe pain.
+
+On the subject of the first of the two circumstances, she did, after a
+little reflection, venture the following question. “Might he not?--Is
+not it possible, that when enquiring, as you thought, into the state of
+your affections, he might be alluding to Mr. Martin--he might have
+Mr. Martin's interest in view? But Harriet rejected the suspicion with
+spirit.
+
+“Mr. Martin! No indeed!--There was not a hint of Mr. Martin. I hope I
+know better now, than to care for Mr. Martin, or to be suspected of it.”
+
+When Harriet had closed her evidence, she appealed to her dear Miss
+Woodhouse, to say whether she had not good ground for hope.
+
+“I never should have presumed to think of it at first,” said she, “but
+for you. You told me to observe him carefully, and let his behaviour
+be the rule of mine--and so I have. But now I seem to feel that I may
+deserve him; and that if he does chuse me, it will not be any thing so
+very wonderful.”
+
+The bitter feelings occasioned by this speech, the many bitter feelings,
+made the utmost exertion necessary on Emma's side, to enable her to say
+on reply,
+
+“Harriet, I will only venture to declare, that Mr. Knightley is the last
+man in the world, who would intentionally give any woman the idea of his
+feeling for her more than he really does.”
+
+Harriet seemed ready to worship her friend for a sentence so
+satisfactory; and Emma was only saved from raptures and fondness, which
+at that moment would have been dreadful penance, by the sound of her
+father's footsteps. He was coming through the hall. Harriet was too
+much agitated to encounter him. “She could not compose herself--
+Mr. Woodhouse would be alarmed--she had better go;”--with most ready
+encouragement from her friend, therefore, she passed off through another
+door--and the moment she was gone, this was the spontaneous burst of
+Emma's feelings: “Oh God! that I had never seen her!”
+
+The rest of the day, the following night, were hardly enough for her
+thoughts.--She was bewildered amidst the confusion of all that had
+rushed on her within the last few hours. Every moment had brought a
+fresh surprize; and every surprize must be matter of humiliation to
+her.--How to understand it all! How to understand the deceptions she had
+been thus practising on herself, and living under!--The blunders, the
+blindness of her own head and heart!--she sat still, she walked about,
+she tried her own room, she tried the shrubbery--in every place, every
+posture, she perceived that she had acted most weakly; that she had
+been imposed on by others in a most mortifying degree; that she had
+been imposing on herself in a degree yet more mortifying; that she
+was wretched, and should probably find this day but the beginning of
+wretchedness.
+
+To understand, thoroughly understand her own heart, was the first
+endeavour. To that point went every leisure moment which her father's
+claims on her allowed, and every moment of involuntary absence of mind.
+
+How long had Mr. Knightley been so dear to her, as every feeling
+declared him now to be? When had his influence, such influence begun?--
+When had he succeeded to that place in her affection, which Frank
+Churchill had once, for a short period, occupied?--She looked back;
+she compared the two--compared them, as they had always stood in her
+estimation, from the time of the latter's becoming known to her--and as
+they must at any time have been compared by her, had it--oh! had it, by
+any blessed felicity, occurred to her, to institute the comparison.--She
+saw that there never had been a time when she did not consider Mr.
+Knightley as infinitely the superior, or when his regard for her had not
+been infinitely the most dear. She saw, that in persuading herself,
+in fancying, in acting to the contrary, she had been entirely under a
+delusion, totally ignorant of her own heart--and, in short, that she had
+never really cared for Frank Churchill at all!
+
+This was the conclusion of the first series of reflection. This was
+the knowledge of herself, on the first question of inquiry, which
+she reached; and without being long in reaching it.--She was most
+sorrowfully indignant; ashamed of every sensation but the one revealed
+to her--her affection for Mr. Knightley.--Every other part of her mind
+was disgusting.
+
+With insufferable vanity had she believed herself in the secret of every
+body's feelings; with unpardonable arrogance proposed to arrange every
+body's destiny. She was proved to have been universally mistaken; and
+she had not quite done nothing--for she had done mischief. She had
+brought evil on Harriet, on herself, and she too much feared, on Mr.
+Knightley.--Were this most unequal of all connexions to take place, on
+her must rest all the reproach of having given it a beginning; for his
+attachment, she must believe to be produced only by a consciousness of
+Harriet's;--and even were this not the case, he would never have known
+Harriet at all but for her folly.
+
+Mr. Knightley and Harriet Smith!--It was a union to distance every
+wonder of the kind.--The attachment of Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax
+became commonplace, threadbare, stale in the comparison, exciting no
+surprize, presenting no disparity, affording nothing to be said or
+thought.--Mr. Knightley and Harriet Smith!--Such an elevation on her
+side! Such a debasement on his! It was horrible to Emma to think how it
+must sink him in the general opinion, to foresee the smiles, the sneers,
+the merriment it would prompt at his expense; the mortification and
+disdain of his brother, the thousand inconveniences to himself.--Could
+it be?--No; it was impossible. And yet it was far, very far, from
+impossible.--Was it a new circumstance for a man of first-rate abilities
+to be captivated by very inferior powers? Was it new for one, perhaps
+too busy to seek, to be the prize of a girl who would seek him?--Was
+it new for any thing in this world to be unequal, inconsistent,
+incongruous--or for chance and circumstance (as second causes) to direct
+the human fate?
+
+Oh! had she never brought Harriet forward! Had she left her where she
+ought, and where he had told her she ought!--Had she not, with a
+folly which no tongue could express, prevented her marrying the
+unexceptionable young man who would have made her happy and respectable
+in the line of life to which she ought to belong--all would have been
+safe; none of this dreadful sequel would have been.
+
+How Harriet could ever have had the presumption to raise her thoughts to
+Mr. Knightley!--How she could dare to fancy herself the chosen of such
+a man till actually assured of it!--But Harriet was less humble, had
+fewer scruples than formerly.--Her inferiority, whether of mind or
+situation, seemed little felt.--She had seemed more sensible of Mr.
+Elton's being to stoop in marrying her, than she now seemed of Mr.
+Knightley's.--Alas! was not that her own doing too? Who had been at
+pains to give Harriet notions of self-consequence but herself?--Who but
+herself had taught her, that she was to elevate herself if possible,
+and that her claims were great to a high worldly establishment?--If
+Harriet, from being humble, were grown vain, it was her doing too.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+Till now that she was threatened with its loss, Emma had never known
+how much of her happiness depended on being _first_ with Mr. Knightley,
+first in interest and affection.--Satisfied that it was so, and feeling
+it her due, she had enjoyed it without reflection; and only in the
+dread of being supplanted, found how inexpressibly important it had
+been.--Long, very long, she felt she had been first; for, having no
+female connexions of his own, there had been only Isabella whose claims
+could be compared with hers, and she had always known exactly how far
+he loved and esteemed Isabella. She had herself been first with him for
+many years past. She had not deserved it; she had often been negligent
+or perverse, slighting his advice, or even wilfully opposing him,
+insensible of half his merits, and quarrelling with him because he would
+not acknowledge her false and insolent estimate of her own--but still,
+from family attachment and habit, and thorough excellence of mind, he
+had loved her, and watched over her from a girl, with an endeavour to
+improve her, and an anxiety for her doing right, which no other creature
+had at all shared. In spite of all her faults, she knew she was dear
+to him; might she not say, very dear?--When the suggestions of hope,
+however, which must follow here, presented themselves, she could not
+presume to indulge them. Harriet Smith might think herself not unworthy
+of being peculiarly, exclusively, passionately loved by Mr. Knightley.
+_She_ could not. She could not flatter herself with any idea of
+blindness in his attachment to _her_. She had received a very recent
+proof of its impartiality.--How shocked had he been by her behaviour to
+Miss Bates! How directly, how strongly had he expressed himself to her
+on the subject!--Not too strongly for the offence--but far, far too
+strongly to issue from any feeling softer than upright justice and
+clear-sighted goodwill.--She had no hope, nothing to deserve the name
+of hope, that he could have that sort of affection for herself which was
+now in question; but there was a hope (at times a slight one, at
+times much stronger,) that Harriet might have deceived herself, and be
+overrating his regard for _her_.--Wish it she must, for his sake--be the
+consequence nothing to herself, but his remaining single all his life.
+Could she be secure of that, indeed, of his never marrying at all, she
+believed she should be perfectly satisfied.--Let him but continue the
+same Mr. Knightley to her and her father, the same Mr. Knightley to
+all the world; let Donwell and Hartfield lose none of their precious
+intercourse of friendship and confidence, and her peace would be
+fully secured.--Marriage, in fact, would not do for her. It would be
+incompatible with what she owed to her father, and with what she felt
+for him. Nothing should separate her from her father. She would not
+marry, even if she were asked by Mr. Knightley.
+
+It must be her ardent wish that Harriet might be disappointed; and she
+hoped, that when able to see them together again, she might at least
+be able to ascertain what the chances for it were.--She should see them
+henceforward with the closest observance; and wretchedly as she had
+hitherto misunderstood even those she was watching, she did not know how
+to admit that she could be blinded here.--He was expected back every
+day. The power of observation would be soon given--frightfully soon it
+appeared when her thoughts were in one course. In the meanwhile, she
+resolved against seeing Harriet.--It would do neither of them good,
+it would do the subject no good, to be talking of it farther.--She was
+resolved not to be convinced, as long as she could doubt, and yet had
+no authority for opposing Harriet's confidence. To talk would be only to
+irritate.--She wrote to her, therefore, kindly, but decisively, to beg
+that she would not, at present, come to Hartfield; acknowledging it to
+be her conviction, that all farther confidential discussion of _one_
+topic had better be avoided; and hoping, that if a few days were allowed
+to pass before they met again, except in the company of others--she
+objected only to a tete-a-tete--they might be able to act as if they
+had forgotten the conversation of yesterday.--Harriet submitted, and
+approved, and was grateful.
+
+This point was just arranged, when a visitor arrived to tear Emma's
+thoughts a little from the one subject which had engrossed them,
+sleeping or waking, the last twenty-four hours--Mrs. Weston, who had
+been calling on her daughter-in-law elect, and took Hartfield in her
+way home, almost as much in duty to Emma as in pleasure to herself, to
+relate all the particulars of so interesting an interview.
+
+Mr. Weston had accompanied her to Mrs. Bates's, and gone through his
+share of this essential attention most handsomely; but she having then
+induced Miss Fairfax to join her in an airing, was now returned with
+much more to say, and much more to say with satisfaction, than a quarter
+of an hour spent in Mrs. Bates's parlour, with all the encumbrance of
+awkward feelings, could have afforded.
+
+A little curiosity Emma had; and she made the most of it while her
+friend related. Mrs. Weston had set off to pay the visit in a good deal
+of agitation herself; and in the first place had wished not to go at all
+at present, to be allowed merely to write to Miss Fairfax instead, and
+to defer this ceremonious call till a little time had passed, and Mr.
+Churchill could be reconciled to the engagement's becoming known; as,
+considering every thing, she thought such a visit could not be paid
+without leading to reports:--but Mr. Weston had thought differently; he
+was extremely anxious to shew his approbation to Miss Fairfax and her
+family, and did not conceive that any suspicion could be excited by it;
+or if it were, that it would be of any consequence; for “such things,”
+ he observed, “always got about.” Emma smiled, and felt that Mr. Weston
+had very good reason for saying so. They had gone, in short--and very
+great had been the evident distress and confusion of the lady. She had
+hardly been able to speak a word, and every look and action had shewn
+how deeply she was suffering from consciousness. The quiet, heart-felt
+satisfaction of the old lady, and the rapturous delight of her
+daughter--who proved even too joyous to talk as usual, had been a
+gratifying, yet almost an affecting, scene. They were both so truly
+respectable in their happiness, so disinterested in every sensation;
+thought so much of Jane; so much of every body, and so little of
+themselves, that every kindly feeling was at work for them. Miss
+Fairfax's recent illness had offered a fair plea for Mrs. Weston to
+invite her to an airing; she had drawn back and declined at first, but,
+on being pressed had yielded; and, in the course of their drive,
+Mrs. Weston had, by gentle encouragement, overcome so much of her
+embarrassment, as to bring her to converse on the important subject.
+Apologies for her seemingly ungracious silence in their first reception,
+and the warmest expressions of the gratitude she was always feeling
+towards herself and Mr. Weston, must necessarily open the cause; but
+when these effusions were put by, they had talked a good deal of the
+present and of the future state of the engagement. Mrs. Weston was
+convinced that such conversation must be the greatest relief to her
+companion, pent up within her own mind as every thing had so long been,
+and was very much pleased with all that she had said on the subject.
+
+“On the misery of what she had suffered, during the concealment of so
+many months,” continued Mrs. Weston, “she was energetic. This was one
+of her expressions. 'I will not say, that since I entered into the
+engagement I have not had some happy moments; but I can say, that I have
+never known the blessing of one tranquil hour:'--and the quivering lip,
+Emma, which uttered it, was an attestation that I felt at my heart.”
+
+“Poor girl!” said Emma. “She thinks herself wrong, then, for having
+consented to a private engagement?”
+
+“Wrong! No one, I believe, can blame her more than she is disposed
+to blame herself. 'The consequence,' said she, 'has been a state of
+perpetual suffering to me; and so it ought. But after all the punishment
+that misconduct can bring, it is still not less misconduct. Pain is no
+expiation. I never can be blameless. I have been acting contrary to all
+my sense of right; and the fortunate turn that every thing has taken,
+and the kindness I am now receiving, is what my conscience tells me
+ought not to be.' 'Do not imagine, madam,' she continued, 'that I was
+taught wrong. Do not let any reflection fall on the principles or the
+care of the friends who brought me up. The error has been all my own;
+and I do assure you that, with all the excuse that present circumstances
+may appear to give, I shall yet dread making the story known to Colonel
+Campbell.'”
+
+“Poor girl!” said Emma again. “She loves him then excessively, I
+suppose. It must have been from attachment only, that she could be
+led to form the engagement. Her affection must have overpowered her
+judgment.”
+
+“Yes, I have no doubt of her being extremely attached to him.”
+
+“I am afraid,” returned Emma, sighing, “that I must often have
+contributed to make her unhappy.”
+
+“On your side, my love, it was very innocently done. But she
+probably had something of that in her thoughts, when alluding to the
+misunderstandings which he had given us hints of before. One natural
+consequence of the evil she had involved herself in,” she said, “was
+that of making her _unreasonable_. The consciousness of having done
+amiss, had exposed her to a thousand inquietudes, and made her captious
+and irritable to a degree that must have been--that had been--hard for
+him to bear. 'I did not make the allowances,' said she, 'which I ought
+to have done, for his temper and spirits--his delightful spirits, and
+that gaiety, that playfulness of disposition, which, under any other
+circumstances, would, I am sure, have been as constantly bewitching to
+me, as they were at first.' She then began to speak of you, and of the
+great kindness you had shewn her during her illness; and with a blush
+which shewed me how it was all connected, desired me, whenever I had
+an opportunity, to thank you--I could not thank you too much--for every
+wish and every endeavour to do her good. She was sensible that you had
+never received any proper acknowledgment from herself.”
+
+“If I did not know her to be happy now,” said Emma, seriously, “which,
+in spite of every little drawback from her scrupulous conscience, she
+must be, I could not bear these thanks;--for, oh! Mrs. Weston, if there
+were an account drawn up of the evil and the good I have done Miss
+Fairfax!--Well (checking herself, and trying to be more lively), this
+is all to be forgotten. You are very kind to bring me these interesting
+particulars. They shew her to the greatest advantage. I am sure she is
+very good--I hope she will be very happy. It is fit that the fortune
+should be on his side, for I think the merit will be all on hers.”
+
+Such a conclusion could not pass unanswered by Mrs. Weston. She thought
+well of Frank in almost every respect; and, what was more, she loved him
+very much, and her defence was, therefore, earnest. She talked with a
+great deal of reason, and at least equal affection--but she had too much
+to urge for Emma's attention; it was soon gone to Brunswick Square or
+to Donwell; she forgot to attempt to listen; and when Mrs. Weston ended
+with, “We have not yet had the letter we are so anxious for, you know,
+but I hope it will soon come,” she was obliged to pause before she
+answered, and at last obliged to answer at random, before she could at
+all recollect what letter it was which they were so anxious for.
+
+“Are you well, my Emma?” was Mrs. Weston's parting question.
+
+“Oh! perfectly. I am always well, you know. Be sure to give me
+intelligence of the letter as soon as possible.”
+
+Mrs. Weston's communications furnished Emma with more food for
+unpleasant reflection, by increasing her esteem and compassion, and her
+sense of past injustice towards Miss Fairfax. She bitterly regretted
+not having sought a closer acquaintance with her, and blushed for the
+envious feelings which had certainly been, in some measure, the cause.
+Had she followed Mr. Knightley's known wishes, in paying that attention
+to Miss Fairfax, which was every way her due; had she tried to know her
+better; had she done her part towards intimacy; had she endeavoured
+to find a friend there instead of in Harriet Smith; she must, in all
+probability, have been spared from every pain which pressed on her
+now.--Birth, abilities, and education, had been equally marking one as
+an associate for her, to be received with gratitude; and the other--what
+was she?--Supposing even that they had never become intimate friends;
+that she had never been admitted into Miss Fairfax's confidence on this
+important matter--which was most probable--still, in knowing her as
+she ought, and as she might, she must have been preserved from the
+abominable suspicions of an improper attachment to Mr. Dixon, which she
+had not only so foolishly fashioned and harboured herself, but had so
+unpardonably imparted; an idea which she greatly feared had been made a
+subject of material distress to the delicacy of Jane's feelings, by the
+levity or carelessness of Frank Churchill's. Of all the sources of evil
+surrounding the former, since her coming to Highbury, she was persuaded
+that she must herself have been the worst. She must have been a
+perpetual enemy. They never could have been all three together, without
+her having stabbed Jane Fairfax's peace in a thousand instances; and on
+Box Hill, perhaps, it had been the agony of a mind that would bear no
+more.
+
+The evening of this day was very long, and melancholy, at Hartfield.
+The weather added what it could of gloom. A cold stormy rain set in, and
+nothing of July appeared but in the trees and shrubs, which the wind was
+despoiling, and the length of the day, which only made such cruel sights
+the longer visible.
+
+The weather affected Mr. Woodhouse, and he could only be kept tolerably
+comfortable by almost ceaseless attention on his daughter's side, and by
+exertions which had never cost her half so much before. It reminded
+her of their first forlorn tete-a-tete, on the evening of Mrs. Weston's
+wedding-day; but Mr. Knightley had walked in then, soon after tea,
+and dissipated every melancholy fancy. Alas! such delightful proofs of
+Hartfield's attraction, as those sort of visits conveyed, might shortly
+be over. The picture which she had then drawn of the privations of the
+approaching winter, had proved erroneous; no friends had deserted them,
+no pleasures had been lost.--But her present forebodings she feared
+would experience no similar contradiction. The prospect before her now,
+was threatening to a degree that could not be entirely dispelled--that
+might not be even partially brightened. If all took place that
+might take place among the circle of her friends, Hartfield must be
+comparatively deserted; and she left to cheer her father with the
+spirits only of ruined happiness.
+
+The child to be born at Randalls must be a tie there even dearer than
+herself; and Mrs. Weston's heart and time would be occupied by it.
+They should lose her; and, probably, in great measure, her husband
+also.--Frank Churchill would return among them no more; and Miss
+Fairfax, it was reasonable to suppose, would soon cease to belong to
+Highbury. They would be married, and settled either at or near Enscombe.
+All that were good would be withdrawn; and if to these losses, the
+loss of Donwell were to be added, what would remain of cheerful or
+of rational society within their reach? Mr. Knightley to be no longer
+coming there for his evening comfort!--No longer walking in at all
+hours, as if ever willing to change his own home for their's!--How was
+it to be endured? And if he were to be lost to them for Harriet's sake;
+if he were to be thought of hereafter, as finding in Harriet's society
+all that he wanted; if Harriet were to be the chosen, the first,
+the dearest, the friend, the wife to whom he looked for all the best
+blessings of existence; what could be increasing Emma's wretchedness but
+the reflection never far distant from her mind, that it had been all her
+own work?
+
+When it came to such a pitch as this, she was not able to refrain from
+a start, or a heavy sigh, or even from walking about the room for a
+few seconds--and the only source whence any thing like consolation
+or composure could be drawn, was in the resolution of her own better
+conduct, and the hope that, however inferior in spirit and gaiety might
+be the following and every future winter of her life to the past, it
+would yet find her more rational, more acquainted with herself, and
+leave her less to regret when it were gone.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+The weather continued much the same all the following morning; and
+the same loneliness, and the same melancholy, seemed to reign at
+Hartfield--but in the afternoon it cleared; the wind changed into a
+softer quarter; the clouds were carried off; the sun appeared; it was
+summer again. With all the eagerness which such a transition gives, Emma
+resolved to be out of doors as soon as possible. Never had the exquisite
+sight, smell, sensation of nature, tranquil, warm, and brilliant after
+a storm, been more attractive to her. She longed for the serenity they
+might gradually introduce; and on Mr. Perry's coming in soon after
+dinner, with a disengaged hour to give her father, she lost no time
+in hurrying into the shrubbery.--There, with spirits freshened, and
+thoughts a little relieved, she had taken a few turns, when she saw Mr.
+Knightley passing through the garden door, and coming towards her.--It
+was the first intimation of his being returned from London. She had
+been thinking of him the moment before, as unquestionably sixteen miles
+distant.--There was time only for the quickest arrangement of mind. She
+must be collected and calm. In half a minute they were together. The
+“How d'ye do's” were quiet and constrained on each side. She asked after
+their mutual friends; they were all well.--When had he left them?--Only
+that morning. He must have had a wet ride.--Yes.--He meant to walk with
+her, she found. “He had just looked into the dining-room, and as he was
+not wanted there, preferred being out of doors.”--She thought he neither
+looked nor spoke cheerfully; and the first possible cause for it,
+suggested by her fears, was, that he had perhaps been communicating his
+plans to his brother, and was pained by the manner in which they had
+been received.
+
+They walked together. He was silent. She thought he was often looking
+at her, and trying for a fuller view of her face than it suited her to
+give. And this belief produced another dread. Perhaps he wanted to
+speak to her, of his attachment to Harriet; he might be watching for
+encouragement to begin.--She did not, could not, feel equal to lead the
+way to any such subject. He must do it all himself. Yet she could
+not bear this silence. With him it was most unnatural. She
+considered--resolved--and, trying to smile, began--
+
+“You have some news to hear, now you are come back, that will rather
+surprize you.”
+
+“Have I?” said he quietly, and looking at her; “of what nature?”
+
+“Oh! the best nature in the world--a wedding.”
+
+After waiting a moment, as if to be sure she intended to say no more, he
+replied,
+
+“If you mean Miss Fairfax and Frank Churchill, I have heard that
+already.”
+
+“How is it possible?” cried Emma, turning her glowing cheeks towards
+him; for, while she spoke, it occurred to her that he might have called
+at Mrs. Goddard's in his way.
+
+“I had a few lines on parish business from Mr. Weston this morning, and
+at the end of them he gave me a brief account of what had happened.”
+
+Emma was quite relieved, and could presently say, with a little more
+composure,
+
+“_You_ probably have been less surprized than any of us, for you have
+had your suspicions.--I have not forgotten that you once tried to give
+me a caution.--I wish I had attended to it--but--(with a sinking voice
+and a heavy sigh) I seem to have been doomed to blindness.”
+
+For a moment or two nothing was said, and she was unsuspicious of having
+excited any particular interest, till she found her arm drawn within
+his, and pressed against his heart, and heard him thus saying, in a tone
+of great sensibility, speaking low,
+
+“Time, my dearest Emma, time will heal the wound.--Your own excellent
+sense--your exertions for your father's sake--I know you will not allow
+yourself--.” Her arm was pressed again, as he added, in a more
+broken and subdued accent, “The feelings of the warmest
+friendship--Indignation--Abominable scoundrel!”--And in a louder,
+steadier tone, he concluded with, “He will soon be gone. They will soon
+be in Yorkshire. I am sorry for _her_. She deserves a better fate.”
+
+Emma understood him; and as soon as she could recover from the flutter
+of pleasure, excited by such tender consideration, replied,
+
+“You are very kind--but you are mistaken--and I must set you right.--
+I am not in want of that sort of compassion. My blindness to what was
+going on, led me to act by them in a way that I must always be ashamed
+of, and I was very foolishly tempted to say and do many things which may
+well lay me open to unpleasant conjectures, but I have no other reason
+to regret that I was not in the secret earlier.”
+
+“Emma!” cried he, looking eagerly at her, “are you, indeed?”--but
+checking himself--“No, no, I understand you--forgive me--I am pleased
+that you can say even so much.--He is no object of regret, indeed! and
+it will not be very long, I hope, before that becomes the acknowledgment
+of more than your reason.--Fortunate that your affections were not
+farther entangled!--I could never, I confess, from your manners, assure
+myself as to the degree of what you felt--I could only be certain that
+there was a preference--and a preference which I never believed him to
+deserve.--He is a disgrace to the name of man.--And is he to be rewarded
+with that sweet young woman?--Jane, Jane, you will be a miserable
+creature.”
+
+“Mr. Knightley,” said Emma, trying to be lively, but really confused--“I
+am in a very extraordinary situation. I cannot let you continue in your
+error; and yet, perhaps, since my manners gave such an impression, I
+have as much reason to be ashamed of confessing that I never have been
+at all attached to the person we are speaking of, as it might be natural
+for a woman to feel in confessing exactly the reverse.--But I never
+have.”
+
+He listened in perfect silence. She wished him to speak, but he would
+not. She supposed she must say more before she were entitled to his
+clemency; but it was a hard case to be obliged still to lower herself in
+his opinion. She went on, however.
+
+“I have very little to say for my own conduct.--I was tempted by his
+attentions, and allowed myself to appear pleased.--An old story,
+probably--a common case--and no more than has happened to hundreds of my
+sex before; and yet it may not be the more excusable in one who sets up
+as I do for Understanding. Many circumstances assisted the temptation.
+He was the son of Mr. Weston--he was continually here--I always found
+him very pleasant--and, in short, for (with a sigh) let me swell out the
+causes ever so ingeniously, they all centre in this at last--my vanity
+was flattered, and I allowed his attentions. Latterly, however--for some
+time, indeed--I have had no idea of their meaning any thing.--I thought
+them a habit, a trick, nothing that called for seriousness on my side.
+He has imposed on me, but he has not injured me. I have never been
+attached to him. And now I can tolerably comprehend his behaviour. He
+never wished to attach me. It was merely a blind to conceal his real
+situation with another.--It was his object to blind all about him; and
+no one, I am sure, could be more effectually blinded than myself--except
+that I was _not_ blinded--that it was my good fortune--that, in short, I
+was somehow or other safe from him.”
+
+She had hoped for an answer here--for a few words to say that her
+conduct was at least intelligible; but he was silent; and, as far as she
+could judge, deep in thought. At last, and tolerably in his usual tone,
+he said,
+
+“I have never had a high opinion of Frank Churchill.--I can suppose,
+however, that I may have underrated him. My acquaintance with him has
+been but trifling.--And even if I have not underrated him hitherto, he
+may yet turn out well.--With such a woman he has a chance.--I have no
+motive for wishing him ill--and for her sake, whose happiness will be
+involved in his good character and conduct, I shall certainly wish him
+well.”
+
+“I have no doubt of their being happy together,” said Emma; “I believe
+them to be very mutually and very sincerely attached.”
+
+“He is a most fortunate man!” returned Mr. Knightley, with energy. “So
+early in life--at three-and-twenty--a period when, if a man chuses a
+wife, he generally chuses ill. At three-and-twenty to have drawn such
+a prize! What years of felicity that man, in all human calculation,
+has before him!--Assured of the love of such a woman--the disinterested
+love, for Jane Fairfax's character vouches for her disinterestedness;
+every thing in his favour,--equality of situation--I mean, as far as
+regards society, and all the habits and manners that are important;
+equality in every point but one--and that one, since the purity of her
+heart is not to be doubted, such as must increase his felicity, for it
+will be his to bestow the only advantages she wants.--A man would always
+wish to give a woman a better home than the one he takes her from;
+and he who can do it, where there is no doubt of _her_ regard, must,
+I think, be the happiest of mortals.--Frank Churchill is, indeed, the
+favourite of fortune. Every thing turns out for his good.--He meets
+with a young woman at a watering-place, gains her affection, cannot even
+weary her by negligent treatment--and had he and all his family sought
+round the world for a perfect wife for him, they could not have found
+her superior.--His aunt is in the way.--His aunt dies.--He has only to
+speak.--His friends are eager to promote his happiness.--He had used
+every body ill--and they are all delighted to forgive him.--He is a
+fortunate man indeed!”
+
+“You speak as if you envied him.”
+
+“And I do envy him, Emma. In one respect he is the object of my envy.”
+
+Emma could say no more. They seemed to be within half a sentence
+of Harriet, and her immediate feeling was to avert the subject, if
+possible. She made her plan; she would speak of something totally
+different--the children in Brunswick Square; and she only waited for
+breath to begin, when Mr. Knightley startled her, by saying,
+
+“You will not ask me what is the point of envy.--You are determined, I
+see, to have no curiosity.--You are wise--but _I_ cannot be wise. Emma,
+I must tell you what you will not ask, though I may wish it unsaid the
+next moment.”
+
+“Oh! then, don't speak it, don't speak it,” she eagerly cried. “Take a
+little time, consider, do not commit yourself.”
+
+“Thank you,” said he, in an accent of deep mortification, and not
+another syllable followed.
+
+Emma could not bear to give him pain. He was wishing to confide in
+her--perhaps to consult her;--cost her what it would, she would listen.
+She might assist his resolution, or reconcile him to it; she might give
+just praise to Harriet, or, by representing to him his own independence,
+relieve him from that state of indecision, which must be more
+intolerable than any alternative to such a mind as his.--They had
+reached the house.
+
+“You are going in, I suppose?” said he.
+
+“No,”--replied Emma--quite confirmed by the depressed manner in which
+he still spoke--“I should like to take another turn. Mr. Perry is not
+gone.” And, after proceeding a few steps, she added--“I stopped you
+ungraciously, just now, Mr. Knightley, and, I am afraid, gave you
+pain.--But if you have any wish to speak openly to me as a friend, or
+to ask my opinion of any thing that you may have in contemplation--as
+a friend, indeed, you may command me.--I will hear whatever you like. I
+will tell you exactly what I think.”
+
+“As a friend!”--repeated Mr. Knightley.--“Emma, that I fear is a
+word--No, I have no wish--Stay, yes, why should I hesitate?--I
+have gone too far already for concealment.--Emma, I accept your
+offer--Extraordinary as it may seem, I accept it, and refer myself to
+you as a friend.--Tell me, then, have I no chance of ever succeeding?”
+
+He stopped in his earnestness to look the question, and the expression
+of his eyes overpowered her.
+
+“My dearest Emma,” said he, “for dearest you will always be, whatever
+the event of this hour's conversation, my dearest, most beloved
+Emma--tell me at once. Say 'No,' if it is to be said.”--She could
+really say nothing.--“You are silent,” he cried, with great animation;
+“absolutely silent! at present I ask no more.”
+
+Emma was almost ready to sink under the agitation of this moment. The
+dread of being awakened from the happiest dream, was perhaps the most
+prominent feeling.
+
+“I cannot make speeches, Emma:” he soon resumed; and in a tone of
+such sincere, decided, intelligible tenderness as was tolerably
+convincing.--“If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it
+more. But you know what I am.--You hear nothing but truth from me.--I
+have blamed you, and lectured you, and you have borne it as no other
+woman in England would have borne it.--Bear with the truths I would
+tell you now, dearest Emma, as well as you have borne with them. The
+manner, perhaps, may have as little to recommend them. God knows, I have
+been a very indifferent lover.--But you understand me.--Yes, you see,
+you understand my feelings--and will return them if you can. At present,
+I ask only to hear, once to hear your voice.”
+
+While he spoke, Emma's mind was most busy, and, with all the wonderful
+velocity of thought, had been able--and yet without losing a word--to
+catch and comprehend the exact truth of the whole; to see that Harriet's
+hopes had been entirely groundless, a mistake, a delusion, as complete a
+delusion as any of her own--that Harriet was nothing; that she was every
+thing herself; that what she had been saying relative to Harriet
+had been all taken as the language of her own feelings; and that her
+agitation, her doubts, her reluctance, her discouragement, had been all
+received as discouragement from herself.--And not only was there time
+for these convictions, with all their glow of attendant happiness; there
+was time also to rejoice that Harriet's secret had not escaped her, and
+to resolve that it need not, and should not.--It was all the service
+she could now render her poor friend; for as to any of that heroism of
+sentiment which might have prompted her to entreat him to transfer his
+affection from herself to Harriet, as infinitely the most worthy of the
+two--or even the more simple sublimity of resolving to refuse him at
+once and for ever, without vouchsafing any motive, because he could not
+marry them both, Emma had it not. She felt for Harriet, with pain and
+with contrition; but no flight of generosity run mad, opposing all that
+could be probable or reasonable, entered her brain. She had led her
+friend astray, and it would be a reproach to her for ever; but her
+judgment was as strong as her feelings, and as strong as it had ever
+been before, in reprobating any such alliance for him, as most unequal
+and degrading. Her way was clear, though not quite smooth.--She spoke
+then, on being so entreated.--What did she say?--Just what she ought,
+of course. A lady always does.--She said enough to shew there need not
+be despair--and to invite him to say more himself. He _had_ despaired at
+one period; he had received such an injunction to caution and silence,
+as for the time crushed every hope;--she had begun by refusing to hear
+him.--The change had perhaps been somewhat sudden;--her proposal of
+taking another turn, her renewing the conversation which she had
+just put an end to, might be a little extraordinary!--She felt its
+inconsistency; but Mr. Knightley was so obliging as to put up with it,
+and seek no farther explanation.
+
+Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure;
+seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a
+little mistaken; but where, as in this case, though the conduct is
+mistaken, the feelings are not, it may not be very material.--Mr.
+Knightley could not impute to Emma a more relenting heart than she
+possessed, or a heart more disposed to accept of his.
+
+He had, in fact, been wholly unsuspicious of his own influence. He had
+followed her into the shrubbery with no idea of trying it. He had come,
+in his anxiety to see how she bore Frank Churchill's engagement, with no
+selfish view, no view at all, but of endeavouring, if she allowed him an
+opening, to soothe or to counsel her.--The rest had been the work of
+the moment, the immediate effect of what he heard, on his feelings. The
+delightful assurance of her total indifference towards Frank Churchill,
+of her having a heart completely disengaged from him, had given birth
+to the hope, that, in time, he might gain her affection himself;--but
+it had been no present hope--he had only, in the momentary conquest of
+eagerness over judgment, aspired to be told that she did not forbid his
+attempt to attach her.--The superior hopes which gradually opened were
+so much the more enchanting.--The affection, which he had been asking
+to be allowed to create, if he could, was already his!--Within half
+an hour, he had passed from a thoroughly distressed state of mind, to
+something so like perfect happiness, that it could bear no other name.
+
+_Her_ change was equal.--This one half-hour had given to each the same
+precious certainty of being beloved, had cleared from each the same
+degree of ignorance, jealousy, or distrust.--On his side, there had been
+a long-standing jealousy, old as the arrival, or even the expectation,
+of Frank Churchill.--He had been in love with Emma, and jealous of Frank
+Churchill, from about the same period, one sentiment having probably
+enlightened him as to the other. It was his jealousy of Frank Churchill
+that had taken him from the country.--The Box Hill party had decided
+him on going away. He would save himself from witnessing again
+such permitted, encouraged attentions.--He had gone to learn to be
+indifferent.--But he had gone to a wrong place. There was too much
+domestic happiness in his brother's house; woman wore too amiable a form
+in it; Isabella was too much like Emma--differing only in those striking
+inferiorities, which always brought the other in brilliancy before
+him, for much to have been done, even had his time been longer.--He had
+stayed on, however, vigorously, day after day--till this very morning's
+post had conveyed the history of Jane Fairfax.--Then, with the gladness
+which must be felt, nay, which he did not scruple to feel, having never
+believed Frank Churchill to be at all deserving Emma, was there so much
+fond solicitude, so much keen anxiety for her, that he could stay no
+longer. He had ridden home through the rain; and had walked up directly
+after dinner, to see how this sweetest and best of all creatures,
+faultless in spite of all her faults, bore the discovery.
+
+He had found her agitated and low.--Frank Churchill was a villain.--
+He heard her declare that she had never loved him. Frank Churchill's
+character was not desperate.--She was his own Emma, by hand and word,
+when they returned into the house; and if he could have thought of Frank
+Churchill then, he might have deemed him a very good sort of fellow.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+What totally different feelings did Emma take back into the house from
+what she had brought out!--she had then been only daring to hope for
+a little respite of suffering;--she was now in an exquisite flutter of
+happiness, and such happiness moreover as she believed must still be
+greater when the flutter should have passed away.
+
+They sat down to tea--the same party round the same table--how often
+it had been collected!--and how often had her eyes fallen on the same
+shrubs in the lawn, and observed the same beautiful effect of the
+western sun!--But never in such a state of spirits, never in any thing
+like it; and it was with difficulty that she could summon enough of her
+usual self to be the attentive lady of the house, or even the attentive
+daughter.
+
+Poor Mr. Woodhouse little suspected what was plotting against him in the
+breast of that man whom he was so cordially welcoming, and so anxiously
+hoping might not have taken cold from his ride.--Could he have seen the
+heart, he would have cared very little for the lungs; but without the
+most distant imagination of the impending evil, without the slightest
+perception of any thing extraordinary in the looks or ways of either,
+he repeated to them very comfortably all the articles of news he had
+received from Mr. Perry, and talked on with much self-contentment,
+totally unsuspicious of what they could have told him in return.
+
+As long as Mr. Knightley remained with them, Emma's fever continued;
+but when he was gone, she began to be a little tranquillised and
+subdued--and in the course of the sleepless night, which was the tax
+for such an evening, she found one or two such very serious points
+to consider, as made her feel, that even her happiness must have some
+alloy. Her father--and Harriet. She could not be alone without feeling
+the full weight of their separate claims; and how to guard the comfort
+of both to the utmost, was the question. With respect to her father,
+it was a question soon answered. She hardly knew yet what Mr. Knightley
+would ask; but a very short parley with her own heart produced the most
+solemn resolution of never quitting her father.--She even wept over
+the idea of it, as a sin of thought. While he lived, it must be only an
+engagement; but she flattered herself, that if divested of the danger of
+drawing her away, it might become an increase of comfort to him.--How
+to do her best by Harriet, was of more difficult decision;--how to spare
+her from any unnecessary pain; how to make her any possible atonement;
+how to appear least her enemy?--On these subjects, her perplexity
+and distress were very great--and her mind had to pass again and
+again through every bitter reproach and sorrowful regret that had ever
+surrounded it.--She could only resolve at last, that she would still
+avoid a meeting with her, and communicate all that need be told by
+letter; that it would be inexpressibly desirable to have her removed
+just now for a time from Highbury, and--indulging in one scheme
+more--nearly resolve, that it might be practicable to get an invitation
+for her to Brunswick Square.--Isabella had been pleased with Harriet;
+and a few weeks spent in London must give her some amusement.--She did
+not think it in Harriet's nature to escape being benefited by novelty
+and variety, by the streets, the shops, and the children.--At any rate,
+it would be a proof of attention and kindness in herself, from whom
+every thing was due; a separation for the present; an averting of the
+evil day, when they must all be together again.
+
+She rose early, and wrote her letter to Harriet; an employment which
+left her so very serious, so nearly sad, that Mr. Knightley, in walking
+up to Hartfield to breakfast, did not arrive at all too soon; and half
+an hour stolen afterwards to go over the same ground again with him,
+literally and figuratively, was quite necessary to reinstate her in a
+proper share of the happiness of the evening before.
+
+He had not left her long, by no means long enough for her to have the
+slightest inclination for thinking of any body else, when a letter was
+brought her from Randalls--a very thick letter;--she guessed what it
+must contain, and deprecated the necessity of reading it.--She was now
+in perfect charity with Frank Churchill; she wanted no explanations, she
+wanted only to have her thoughts to herself--and as for understanding
+any thing he wrote, she was sure she was incapable of it.--It must be
+waded through, however. She opened the packet; it was too surely so;--a
+note from Mrs. Weston to herself, ushered in the letter from Frank to
+Mrs. Weston.
+
+“I have the greatest pleasure, my dear Emma, in forwarding to you the
+enclosed. I know what thorough justice you will do it, and have scarcely
+a doubt of its happy effect.--I think we shall never materially disagree
+about the writer again; but I will not delay you by a long preface.--We
+are quite well.--This letter has been the cure of all the little
+nervousness I have been feeling lately.--I did not quite like your looks
+on Tuesday, but it was an ungenial morning; and though you will never
+own being affected by weather, I think every body feels a north-east
+wind.--I felt for your dear father very much in the storm of Tuesday
+afternoon and yesterday morning, but had the comfort of hearing last
+night, by Mr. Perry, that it had not made him ill.
+
+                              “Yours ever,
+                                                       “A. W.”
+
+                       [To Mrs. Weston.]
+
+
+                                                       WINDSOR-JULY.
+MY DEAR MADAM,
+
+“If I made myself intelligible yesterday, this letter will be
+expected; but expected or not, I know it will be read with candour and
+indulgence.--You are all goodness, and I believe there will be need of
+even all your goodness to allow for some parts of my past conduct.--But
+I have been forgiven by one who had still more to resent. My courage
+rises while I write. It is very difficult for the prosperous to be
+humble. I have already met with such success in two applications for
+pardon, that I may be in danger of thinking myself too sure of yours,
+and of those among your friends who have had any ground of offence.--You
+must all endeavour to comprehend the exact nature of my situation when I
+first arrived at Randalls; you must consider me as having a secret which
+was to be kept at all hazards. This was the fact. My right to place
+myself in a situation requiring such concealment, is another question.
+I shall not discuss it here. For my temptation to _think_ it a right,
+I refer every caviller to a brick house, sashed windows below, and
+casements above, in Highbury. I dared not address her openly; my
+difficulties in the then state of Enscombe must be too well known to
+require definition; and I was fortunate enough to prevail, before we
+parted at Weymouth, and to induce the most upright female mind in the
+creation to stoop in charity to a secret engagement.--Had she refused, I
+should have gone mad.--But you will be ready to say, what was your
+hope in doing this?--What did you look forward to?--To any thing, every
+thing--to time, chance, circumstance, slow effects, sudden bursts,
+perseverance and weariness, health and sickness. Every possibility of
+good was before me, and the first of blessings secured, in obtaining her
+promises of faith and correspondence. If you need farther explanation,
+I have the honour, my dear madam, of being your husband's son, and
+the advantage of inheriting a disposition to hope for good, which no
+inheritance of houses or lands can ever equal the value of.--See
+me, then, under these circumstances, arriving on my first visit to
+Randalls;--and here I am conscious of wrong, for that visit might have
+been sooner paid. You will look back and see that I did not come till
+Miss Fairfax was in Highbury; and as _you_ were the person slighted, you
+will forgive me instantly; but I must work on my father's compassion, by
+reminding him, that so long as I absented myself from his house, so long
+I lost the blessing of knowing you. My behaviour, during the very
+happy fortnight which I spent with you, did not, I hope, lay me open to
+reprehension, excepting on one point. And now I come to the principal,
+the only important part of my conduct while belonging to you, which
+excites my own anxiety, or requires very solicitous explanation. With
+the greatest respect, and the warmest friendship, do I mention Miss
+Woodhouse; my father perhaps will think I ought to add, with the deepest
+humiliation.--A few words which dropped from him yesterday spoke his
+opinion, and some censure I acknowledge myself liable to.--My behaviour
+to Miss Woodhouse indicated, I believe, more than it ought.--In order to
+assist a concealment so essential to me, I was led on to make more than
+an allowable use of the sort of intimacy into which we were immediately
+thrown.--I cannot deny that Miss Woodhouse was my ostensible object--but
+I am sure you will believe the declaration, that had I not been
+convinced of her indifference, I would not have been induced by any
+selfish views to go on.--Amiable and delightful as Miss Woodhouse is,
+she never gave me the idea of a young woman likely to be attached; and
+that she was perfectly free from any tendency to being attached to me,
+was as much my conviction as my wish.--She received my attentions with
+an easy, friendly, goodhumoured playfulness, which exactly suited me.
+We seemed to understand each other. From our relative situation, those
+attentions were her due, and were felt to be so.--Whether Miss Woodhouse
+began really to understand me before the expiration of that fortnight,
+I cannot say;--when I called to take leave of her, I remember that I was
+within a moment of confessing the truth, and I then fancied she was not
+without suspicion; but I have no doubt of her having since detected me,
+at least in some degree.--She may not have surmised the whole, but her
+quickness must have penetrated a part. I cannot doubt it. You will find,
+whenever the subject becomes freed from its present restraints, that it
+did not take her wholly by surprize. She frequently gave me hints of it.
+I remember her telling me at the ball, that I owed Mrs. Elton gratitude
+for her attentions to Miss Fairfax.--I hope this history of my conduct
+towards her will be admitted by you and my father as great extenuation
+of what you saw amiss. While you considered me as having sinned against
+Emma Woodhouse, I could deserve nothing from either. Acquit me here, and
+procure for me, when it is allowable, the acquittal and good wishes
+of that said Emma Woodhouse, whom I regard with so much brotherly
+affection, as to long to have her as deeply and as happily in love as
+myself.--Whatever strange things I said or did during that fortnight,
+you have now a key to. My heart was in Highbury, and my business was to
+get my body thither as often as might be, and with the least suspicion.
+If you remember any queernesses, set them all to the right account.--Of
+the pianoforte so much talked of, I feel it only necessary to say, that
+its being ordered was absolutely unknown to Miss F--, who would never
+have allowed me to send it, had any choice been given her.--The
+delicacy of her mind throughout the whole engagement, my dear madam,
+is much beyond my power of doing justice to. You will soon, I earnestly
+hope, know her thoroughly yourself.--No description can describe her.
+She must tell you herself what she is--yet not by word, for never
+was there a human creature who would so designedly suppress her own
+merit.--Since I began this letter, which will be longer than I foresaw,
+I have heard from her.--She gives a good account of her own health; but
+as she never complains, I dare not depend. I want to have your opinion
+of her looks. I know you will soon call on her; she is living in dread
+of the visit. Perhaps it is paid already. Let me hear from you without
+delay; I am impatient for a thousand particulars. Remember how few
+minutes I was at Randalls, and in how bewildered, how mad a state: and
+I am not much better yet; still insane either from happiness or
+misery. When I think of the kindness and favour I have met with, of her
+excellence and patience, and my uncle's generosity, I am mad with joy:
+but when I recollect all the uneasiness I occasioned her, and how little
+I deserve to be forgiven, I am mad with anger. If I could but see her
+again!--But I must not propose it yet. My uncle has been too good for me
+to encroach.--I must still add to this long letter. You have not heard
+all that you ought to hear. I could not give any connected detail
+yesterday; but the suddenness, and, in one light, the unseasonableness
+with which the affair burst out, needs explanation; for though the event
+of the 26th ult., as you will conclude, immediately opened to me the
+happiest prospects, I should not have presumed on such early measures,
+but from the very particular circumstances, which left me not an hour to
+lose. I should myself have shrunk from any thing so hasty, and she
+would have felt every scruple of mine with multiplied strength and
+refinement.--But I had no choice. The hasty engagement she had entered
+into with that woman--Here, my dear madam, I was obliged to leave off
+abruptly, to recollect and compose myself.--I have been walking over
+the country, and am now, I hope, rational enough to make the rest of
+my letter what it ought to be.--It is, in fact, a most mortifying
+retrospect for me. I behaved shamefully. And here I can admit, that
+my manners to Miss W., in being unpleasant to Miss F., were highly
+blameable. _She_ disapproved them, which ought to have been enough.--My
+plea of concealing the truth she did not think sufficient.--She was
+displeased; I thought unreasonably so: I thought her, on a thousand
+occasions, unnecessarily scrupulous and cautious: I thought her even
+cold. But she was always right. If I had followed her judgment, and
+subdued my spirits to the level of what she deemed proper, I should have
+escaped the greatest unhappiness I have ever known.--We quarrelled.--
+Do you remember the morning spent at Donwell?--_There_ every little
+dissatisfaction that had occurred before came to a crisis. I was late;
+I met her walking home by herself, and wanted to walk with her, but she
+would not suffer it. She absolutely refused to allow me, which I then
+thought most unreasonable. Now, however, I see nothing in it but a very
+natural and consistent degree of discretion. While I, to blind the
+world to our engagement, was behaving one hour with objectionable
+particularity to another woman, was she to be consenting the next to a
+proposal which might have made every previous caution useless?--Had we
+been met walking together between Donwell and Highbury, the truth must
+have been suspected.--I was mad enough, however, to resent.--I doubted
+her affection. I doubted it more the next day on Box Hill; when,
+provoked by such conduct on my side, such shameful, insolent neglect
+of her, and such apparent devotion to Miss W., as it would have been
+impossible for any woman of sense to endure, she spoke her resentment in
+a form of words perfectly intelligible to me.--In short, my dear
+madam, it was a quarrel blameless on her side, abominable on mine; and
+I returned the same evening to Richmond, though I might have staid with
+you till the next morning, merely because I would be as angry with
+her as possible. Even then, I was not such a fool as not to mean to
+be reconciled in time; but I was the injured person, injured by her
+coldness, and I went away determined that she should make the first
+advances.--I shall always congratulate myself that you were not of
+the Box Hill party. Had you witnessed my behaviour there, I can hardly
+suppose you would ever have thought well of me again. Its effect upon
+her appears in the immediate resolution it produced: as soon as she
+found I was really gone from Randalls, she closed with the offer of that
+officious Mrs. Elton; the whole system of whose treatment of her, by the
+bye, has ever filled me with indignation and hatred. I must not quarrel
+with a spirit of forbearance which has been so richly extended towards
+myself; but, otherwise, I should loudly protest against the share of it
+which that woman has known.--'Jane,' indeed!--You will observe that I
+have not yet indulged myself in calling her by that name, even to you.
+Think, then, what I must have endured in hearing it bandied between
+the Eltons with all the vulgarity of needless repetition, and all the
+insolence of imaginary superiority. Have patience with me, I shall soon
+have done.--She closed with this offer, resolving to break with me
+entirely, and wrote the next day to tell me that we never were to meet
+again.--_She_ _felt_ _the_ _engagement_ _to_ _be_ _a_ _source_ _of_
+_repentance_ _and_ _misery_ _to_ _each_: _she_ _dissolved_ _it_.--This
+letter reached me on the very morning of my poor aunt's death. I
+answered it within an hour; but from the confusion of my mind, and the
+multiplicity of business falling on me at once, my answer, instead of
+being sent with all the many other letters of that day, was locked up in
+my writing-desk; and I, trusting that I had written enough, though but
+a few lines, to satisfy her, remained without any uneasiness.--I was
+rather disappointed that I did not hear from her again speedily; but I
+made excuses for her, and was too busy, and--may I add?--too cheerful
+in my views to be captious.--We removed to Windsor; and two
+days afterwards I received a parcel from her, my own letters all
+returned!--and a few lines at the same time by the post, stating her
+extreme surprize at not having had the smallest reply to her last; and
+adding, that as silence on such a point could not be misconstrued,
+and as it must be equally desirable to both to have every subordinate
+arrangement concluded as soon as possible, she now sent me, by a safe
+conveyance, all my letters, and requested, that if I could not directly
+command hers, so as to send them to Highbury within a week, I would
+forward them after that period to her at--: in short, the full direction
+to Mr. Smallridge's, near Bristol, stared me in the face. I knew the
+name, the place, I knew all about it, and instantly saw what she had
+been doing. It was perfectly accordant with that resolution of character
+which I knew her to possess; and the secrecy she had maintained, as to
+any such design in her former letter, was equally descriptive of its
+anxious delicacy. For the world would not she have seemed to threaten
+me.--Imagine the shock; imagine how, till I had actually detected my
+own blunder, I raved at the blunders of the post.--What was to be
+done?--One thing only.--I must speak to my uncle. Without his sanction I
+could not hope to be listened to again.--I spoke; circumstances were
+in my favour; the late event had softened away his pride, and he was,
+earlier than I could have anticipated, wholly reconciled and complying;
+and could say at last, poor man! with a deep sigh, that he wished I
+might find as much happiness in the marriage state as he had done.--I
+felt that it would be of a different sort.--Are you disposed to pity
+me for what I must have suffered in opening the cause to him, for my
+suspense while all was at stake?--No; do not pity me till I reached
+Highbury, and saw how ill I had made her. Do not pity me till I saw her
+wan, sick looks.--I reached Highbury at the time of day when, from my
+knowledge of their late breakfast hour, I was certain of a good chance
+of finding her alone.--I was not disappointed; and at last I was not
+disappointed either in the object of my journey. A great deal of very
+reasonable, very just displeasure I had to persuade away. But it is
+done; we are reconciled, dearer, much dearer, than ever, and no moment's
+uneasiness can ever occur between us again. Now, my dear madam, I will
+release you; but I could not conclude before. A thousand and a thousand
+thanks for all the kindness you have ever shewn me, and ten thousand for
+the attentions your heart will dictate towards her.--If you think me in
+a way to be happier than I deserve, I am quite of your opinion.--Miss
+W. calls me the child of good fortune. I hope she is right.--In one
+respect, my good fortune is undoubted, that of being able to subscribe
+myself,
+
+                    Your obliged and affectionate Son,
+
+                                          F. C. WESTON CHURCHILL.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+This letter must make its way to Emma's feelings. She was obliged, in
+spite of her previous determination to the contrary, to do it all the
+justice that Mrs. Weston foretold. As soon as she came to her own name,
+it was irresistible; every line relating to herself was interesting,
+and almost every line agreeable; and when this charm ceased, the subject
+could still maintain itself, by the natural return of her former regard
+for the writer, and the very strong attraction which any picture of
+love must have for her at that moment. She never stopt till she had gone
+through the whole; and though it was impossible not to feel that he had
+been wrong, yet he had been less wrong than she had supposed--and he had
+suffered, and was very sorry--and he was so grateful to Mrs. Weston, and
+so much in love with Miss Fairfax, and she was so happy herself, that
+there was no being severe; and could he have entered the room, she must
+have shaken hands with him as heartily as ever.
+
+She thought so well of the letter, that when Mr. Knightley came again,
+she desired him to read it. She was sure of Mrs. Weston's wishing it to
+be communicated; especially to one, who, like Mr. Knightley, had seen so
+much to blame in his conduct.
+
+“I shall be very glad to look it over,” said he; “but it seems long. I
+will take it home with me at night.”
+
+But that would not do. Mr. Weston was to call in the evening, and she
+must return it by him.
+
+“I would rather be talking to you,” he replied; “but as it seems a
+matter of justice, it shall be done.”
+
+He began--stopping, however, almost directly to say, “Had I been offered
+the sight of one of this gentleman's letters to his mother-in-law a few
+months ago, Emma, it would not have been taken with such indifference.”
+
+He proceeded a little farther, reading to himself; and then, with a
+smile, observed, “Humph! a fine complimentary opening: But it is his
+way. One man's style must not be the rule of another's. We will not be
+severe.”
+
+“It will be natural for me,” he added shortly afterwards, “to speak my
+opinion aloud as I read. By doing it, I shall feel that I am near you.
+It will not be so great a loss of time: but if you dislike it--”
+
+“Not at all. I should wish it.”
+
+Mr. Knightley returned to his reading with greater alacrity.
+
+“He trifles here,” said he, “as to the temptation. He knows he is wrong,
+and has nothing rational to urge.--Bad.--He ought not to have formed the
+engagement.--'His father's disposition:'--he is unjust, however, to his
+father. Mr. Weston's sanguine temper was a blessing on all his upright
+and honourable exertions; but Mr. Weston earned every present comfort
+before he endeavoured to gain it.--Very true; he did not come till Miss
+Fairfax was here.”
+
+“And I have not forgotten,” said Emma, “how sure you were that he might
+have come sooner if he would. You pass it over very handsomely--but you
+were perfectly right.”
+
+“I was not quite impartial in my judgment, Emma:--but yet, I think--had
+_you_ not been in the case--I should still have distrusted him.”
+
+When he came to Miss Woodhouse, he was obliged to read the whole of it
+aloud--all that related to her, with a smile; a look; a shake of the
+head; a word or two of assent, or disapprobation; or merely of love, as
+the subject required; concluding, however, seriously, and, after steady
+reflection, thus--
+
+“Very bad--though it might have been worse.--Playing a most dangerous
+game. Too much indebted to the event for his acquittal.--No judge of
+his own manners by you.--Always deceived in fact by his own wishes, and
+regardless of little besides his own convenience.--Fancying you to have
+fathomed his secret. Natural enough!--his own mind full of intrigue,
+that he should suspect it in others.--Mystery; Finesse--how they pervert
+the understanding! My Emma, does not every thing serve to prove more
+and more the beauty of truth and sincerity in all our dealings with each
+other?”
+
+Emma agreed to it, and with a blush of sensibility on Harriet's account,
+which she could not give any sincere explanation of.
+
+“You had better go on,” said she.
+
+He did so, but very soon stopt again to say, “the pianoforte! Ah! That
+was the act of a very, very young man, one too young to consider whether
+the inconvenience of it might not very much exceed the pleasure. A
+boyish scheme, indeed!--I cannot comprehend a man's wishing to give a
+woman any proof of affection which he knows she would rather dispense
+with; and he did know that she would have prevented the instrument's
+coming if she could.”
+
+After this, he made some progress without any pause. Frank Churchill's
+confession of having behaved shamefully was the first thing to call for
+more than a word in passing.
+
+“I perfectly agree with you, sir,”--was then his remark. “You did behave
+very shamefully. You never wrote a truer line.” And having gone through
+what immediately followed of the basis of their disagreement, and his
+persisting to act in direct opposition to Jane Fairfax's sense of right,
+he made a fuller pause to say, “This is very bad.--He had induced her
+to place herself, for his sake, in a situation of extreme difficulty and
+uneasiness, and it should have been his first object to prevent her from
+suffering unnecessarily.--She must have had much more to contend
+with, in carrying on the correspondence, than he could. He should have
+respected even unreasonable scruples, had there been such; but hers were
+all reasonable. We must look to her one fault, and remember that she
+had done a wrong thing in consenting to the engagement, to bear that she
+should have been in such a state of punishment.”
+
+Emma knew that he was now getting to the Box Hill party, and grew
+uncomfortable. Her own behaviour had been so very improper! She was
+deeply ashamed, and a little afraid of his next look. It was all read,
+however, steadily, attentively, and without the smallest remark; and,
+excepting one momentary glance at her, instantly withdrawn, in the fear
+of giving pain--no remembrance of Box Hill seemed to exist.
+
+“There is no saying much for the delicacy of our good friends, the
+Eltons,” was his next observation.--“His feelings are natural.--What!
+actually resolve to break with him entirely!--She felt the engagement to
+be a source of repentance and misery to each--she dissolved it.--What a
+view this gives of her sense of his behaviour!--Well, he must be a most
+extraordinary--”
+
+“Nay, nay, read on.--You will find how very much he suffers.”
+
+“I hope he does,” replied Mr. Knightley coolly, and resuming the letter.
+“'Smallridge!'--What does this mean? What is all this?”
+
+“She had engaged to go as governess to Mrs. Smallridge's children--a
+dear friend of Mrs. Elton's--a neighbour of Maple Grove; and, by the
+bye, I wonder how Mrs. Elton bears the disappointment?”
+
+“Say nothing, my dear Emma, while you oblige me to read--not even of
+Mrs. Elton. Only one page more. I shall soon have done. What a letter
+the man writes!”
+
+“I wish you would read it with a kinder spirit towards him.”
+
+“Well, there _is_ feeling here.--He does seem to have suffered in
+finding her ill.--Certainly, I can have no doubt of his being fond of
+her. 'Dearer, much dearer than ever.' I hope he may long continue to
+feel all the value of such a reconciliation.--He is a very liberal
+thanker, with his thousands and tens of thousands.--'Happier than I
+deserve.' Come, he knows himself there. 'Miss Woodhouse calls me the
+child of good fortune.'--Those were Miss Woodhouse's words, were they?--
+And a fine ending--and there is the letter. The child of good fortune!
+That was your name for him, was it?”
+
+“You do not appear so well satisfied with his letter as I am; but still
+you must, at least I hope you must, think the better of him for it. I
+hope it does him some service with you.”
+
+“Yes, certainly it does. He has had great faults, faults of
+inconsideration and thoughtlessness; and I am very much of his opinion
+in thinking him likely to be happier than he deserves: but still as he
+is, beyond a doubt, really attached to Miss Fairfax, and will soon, it
+may be hoped, have the advantage of being constantly with her, I am very
+ready to believe his character will improve, and acquire from hers the
+steadiness and delicacy of principle that it wants. And now, let me talk
+to you of something else. I have another person's interest at present
+so much at heart, that I cannot think any longer about Frank Churchill.
+Ever since I left you this morning, Emma, my mind has been hard at work
+on one subject.”
+
+The subject followed; it was in plain, unaffected, gentlemanlike
+English, such as Mr. Knightley used even to the woman he was in love
+with, how to be able to ask her to marry him, without attacking the
+happiness of her father. Emma's answer was ready at the first word.
+“While her dear father lived, any change of condition must be impossible
+for her. She could never quit him.” Part only of this answer, however,
+was admitted. The impossibility of her quitting her father, Mr.
+Knightley felt as strongly as herself; but the inadmissibility of any
+other change, he could not agree to. He had been thinking it over most
+deeply, most intently; he had at first hoped to induce Mr. Woodhouse to
+remove with her to Donwell; he had wanted to believe it feasible, but
+his knowledge of Mr. Woodhouse would not suffer him to deceive himself
+long; and now he confessed his persuasion, that such a transplantation
+would be a risk of her father's comfort, perhaps even of his life, which
+must not be hazarded. Mr. Woodhouse taken from Hartfield!--No, he felt
+that it ought not to be attempted. But the plan which had arisen on the
+sacrifice of this, he trusted his dearest Emma would not find in any
+respect objectionable; it was, that he should be received at Hartfield;
+that so long as her father's happiness--in other words, his life--required
+Hartfield to continue her home, it should be his likewise.
+
+Of their all removing to Donwell, Emma had already had her own passing
+thoughts. Like him, she had tried the scheme and rejected it; but such
+an alternative as this had not occurred to her. She was sensible of all
+the affection it evinced. She felt that, in quitting Donwell, he must
+be sacrificing a great deal of independence of hours and habits; that
+in living constantly with her father, and in no house of his own, there
+would be much, very much, to be borne with. She promised to think of it,
+and advised him to think of it more; but he was fully convinced, that no
+reflection could alter his wishes or his opinion on the subject. He had
+given it, he could assure her, very long and calm consideration; he had
+been walking away from William Larkins the whole morning, to have his
+thoughts to himself.
+
+“Ah! there is one difficulty unprovided for,” cried Emma. “I am sure
+William Larkins will not like it. You must get his consent before you
+ask mine.”
+
+She promised, however, to think of it; and pretty nearly promised,
+moreover, to think of it, with the intention of finding it a very good
+scheme.
+
+It is remarkable, that Emma, in the many, very many, points of view in
+which she was now beginning to consider Donwell Abbey, was never
+struck with any sense of injury to her nephew Henry, whose rights as
+heir-expectant had formerly been so tenaciously regarded. Think she must
+of the possible difference to the poor little boy; and yet she only
+gave herself a saucy conscious smile about it, and found amusement in
+detecting the real cause of that violent dislike of Mr. Knightley's
+marrying Jane Fairfax, or any body else, which at the time she had
+wholly imputed to the amiable solicitude of the sister and the aunt.
+
+This proposal of his, this plan of marrying and continuing at
+Hartfield--the more she contemplated it, the more pleasing it became.
+His evils seemed to lessen, her own advantages to increase, their mutual
+good to outweigh every drawback. Such a companion for herself in the
+periods of anxiety and cheerlessness before her!--Such a partner in
+all those duties and cares to which time must be giving increase of
+melancholy!
+
+She would have been too happy but for poor Harriet; but every blessing
+of her own seemed to involve and advance the sufferings of her friend,
+who must now be even excluded from Hartfield. The delightful family
+party which Emma was securing for herself, poor Harriet must, in mere
+charitable caution, be kept at a distance from. She would be a loser in
+every way. Emma could not deplore her future absence as any deduction
+from her own enjoyment. In such a party, Harriet would be rather a
+dead weight than otherwise; but for the poor girl herself, it seemed a
+peculiarly cruel necessity that was to be placing her in such a state of
+unmerited punishment.
+
+In time, of course, Mr. Knightley would be forgotten, that is,
+supplanted; but this could not be expected to happen very early. Mr.
+Knightley himself would be doing nothing to assist the cure;--not
+like Mr. Elton. Mr. Knightley, always so kind, so feeling, so truly
+considerate for every body, would never deserve to be less worshipped
+than now; and it really was too much to hope even of Harriet, that she
+could be in love with more than _three_ men in one year.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+It was a very great relief to Emma to find Harriet as desirous as
+herself to avoid a meeting. Their intercourse was painful enough by
+letter. How much worse, had they been obliged to meet!
+
+Harriet expressed herself very much as might be supposed, without
+reproaches, or apparent sense of ill-usage; and yet Emma fancied there
+was a something of resentment, a something bordering on it in her style,
+which increased the desirableness of their being separate.--It might be
+only her own consciousness; but it seemed as if an angel only could have
+been quite without resentment under such a stroke.
+
+She had no difficulty in procuring Isabella's invitation; and she was
+fortunate in having a sufficient reason for asking it, without resorting
+to invention.--There was a tooth amiss. Harriet really wished, and
+had wished some time, to consult a dentist. Mrs. John Knightley was
+delighted to be of use; any thing of ill health was a recommendation to
+her--and though not so fond of a dentist as of a Mr. Wingfield, she was
+quite eager to have Harriet under her care.--When it was thus settled
+on her sister's side, Emma proposed it to her friend, and found her
+very persuadable.--Harriet was to go; she was invited for at least a
+fortnight; she was to be conveyed in Mr. Woodhouse's carriage.--It was
+all arranged, it was all completed, and Harriet was safe in Brunswick
+Square.
+
+Now Emma could, indeed, enjoy Mr. Knightley's visits; now she could
+talk, and she could listen with true happiness, unchecked by that sense
+of injustice, of guilt, of something most painful, which had haunted her
+when remembering how disappointed a heart was near her, how much might
+at that moment, and at a little distance, be enduring by the feelings
+which she had led astray herself.
+
+The difference of Harriet at Mrs. Goddard's, or in London, made perhaps
+an unreasonable difference in Emma's sensations; but she could not think
+of her in London without objects of curiosity and employment, which must
+be averting the past, and carrying her out of herself.
+
+She would not allow any other anxiety to succeed directly to the place
+in her mind which Harriet had occupied. There was a communication before
+her, one which _she_ only could be competent to make--the confession of
+her engagement to her father; but she would have nothing to do with it
+at present.--She had resolved to defer the disclosure till Mrs. Weston
+were safe and well. No additional agitation should be thrown at this
+period among those she loved--and the evil should not act on herself
+by anticipation before the appointed time.--A fortnight, at least, of
+leisure and peace of mind, to crown every warmer, but more agitating,
+delight, should be hers.
+
+She soon resolved, equally as a duty and a pleasure, to employ half an
+hour of this holiday of spirits in calling on Miss Fairfax.--She ought
+to go--and she was longing to see her; the resemblance of their present
+situations increasing every other motive of goodwill. It would be a
+_secret_ satisfaction; but the consciousness of a similarity of prospect
+would certainly add to the interest with which she should attend to any
+thing Jane might communicate.
+
+She went--she had driven once unsuccessfully to the door, but had not
+been into the house since the morning after Box Hill, when poor Jane had
+been in such distress as had filled her with compassion, though all the
+worst of her sufferings had been unsuspected.--The fear of being still
+unwelcome, determined her, though assured of their being at home, to
+wait in the passage, and send up her name.--She heard Patty announcing
+it; but no such bustle succeeded as poor Miss Bates had before made so
+happily intelligible.--No; she heard nothing but the instant reply of,
+“Beg her to walk up;”--and a moment afterwards she was met on the stairs
+by Jane herself, coming eagerly forward, as if no other reception of her
+were felt sufficient.--Emma had never seen her look so well, so lovely,
+so engaging. There was consciousness, animation, and warmth; there was
+every thing which her countenance or manner could ever have wanted.--
+She came forward with an offered hand; and said, in a low, but very
+feeling tone,
+
+“This is most kind, indeed!--Miss Woodhouse, it is impossible for me
+to express--I hope you will believe--Excuse me for being so entirely
+without words.”
+
+Emma was gratified, and would soon have shewn no want of words, if the
+sound of Mrs. Elton's voice from the sitting-room had not checked
+her, and made it expedient to compress all her friendly and all her
+congratulatory sensations into a very, very earnest shake of the hand.
+
+Mrs. Bates and Mrs. Elton were together. Miss Bates was out, which
+accounted for the previous tranquillity. Emma could have wished Mrs.
+Elton elsewhere; but she was in a humour to have patience with every
+body; and as Mrs. Elton met her with unusual graciousness, she hoped the
+rencontre would do them no harm.
+
+She soon believed herself to penetrate Mrs. Elton's thoughts, and
+understand why she was, like herself, in happy spirits; it was being in
+Miss Fairfax's confidence, and fancying herself acquainted with what was
+still a secret to other people. Emma saw symptoms of it immediately in
+the expression of her face; and while paying her own compliments to Mrs.
+Bates, and appearing to attend to the good old lady's replies, she saw
+her with a sort of anxious parade of mystery fold up a letter which she
+had apparently been reading aloud to Miss Fairfax, and return it into
+the purple and gold reticule by her side, saying, with significant nods,
+
+“We can finish this some other time, you know. You and I shall not want
+opportunities. And, in fact, you have heard all the essential already. I
+only wanted to prove to you that Mrs. S. admits our apology, and is
+not offended. You see how delightfully she writes. Oh! she is a sweet
+creature! You would have doated on her, had you gone.--But not a word
+more. Let us be discreet--quite on our good behaviour.--Hush!--You
+remember those lines--I forget the poem at this moment:
+
+        “For when a lady's in the case,
+        “You know all other things give place.”
+
+Now I say, my dear, in _our_ case, for _lady_, read----mum! a word to
+the wise.--I am in a fine flow of spirits, an't I? But I want to set
+your heart at ease as to Mrs. S.--_My_ representation, you see, has
+quite appeased her.”
+
+And again, on Emma's merely turning her head to look at Mrs. Bates's
+knitting, she added, in a half whisper,
+
+“I mentioned no _names_, you will observe.--Oh! no; cautious as a
+minister of state. I managed it extremely well.”
+
+Emma could not doubt. It was a palpable display, repeated on every
+possible occasion. When they had all talked a little while in harmony of
+the weather and Mrs. Weston, she found herself abruptly addressed with,
+
+“Do not you think, Miss Woodhouse, our saucy little friend here is
+charmingly recovered?--Do not you think her cure does Perry the highest
+credit?--(here was a side-glance of great meaning at Jane.) Upon my
+word, Perry has restored her in a wonderful short time!--Oh! if you had
+seen her, as I did, when she was at the worst!”--And when Mrs. Bates
+was saying something to Emma, whispered farther, “We do not say a word
+of any _assistance_ that Perry might have; not a word of a certain young
+physician from Windsor.--Oh! no; Perry shall have all the credit.”
+
+“I have scarce had the pleasure of seeing you, Miss Woodhouse,” she
+shortly afterwards began, “since the party to Box Hill. Very pleasant
+party. But yet I think there was something wanting. Things did not
+seem--that is, there seemed a little cloud upon the spirits of some.--So
+it appeared to me at least, but I might be mistaken. However, I think
+it answered so far as to tempt one to go again. What say you both to our
+collecting the same party, and exploring to Box Hill again, while the
+fine weather lasts?--It must be the same party, you know, quite the
+same party, not _one_ exception.”
+
+Soon after this Miss Bates came in, and Emma could not help being
+diverted by the perplexity of her first answer to herself, resulting,
+she supposed, from doubt of what might be said, and impatience to say
+every thing.
+
+“Thank you, dear Miss Woodhouse, you are all kindness.--It is impossible
+to say--Yes, indeed, I quite understand--dearest Jane's prospects--that
+is, I do not mean.--But she is charmingly recovered.--How is Mr.
+Woodhouse?--I am so glad.--Quite out of my power.--Such a happy little
+circle as you find us here.--Yes, indeed.--Charming young man!--that
+is--so very friendly; I mean good Mr. Perry!--such attention to
+Jane!”--And from her great, her more than commonly thankful delight
+towards Mrs. Elton for being there, Emma guessed that there had been a
+little show of resentment towards Jane, from the vicarage quarter,
+which was now graciously overcome.--After a few whispers, indeed, which
+placed it beyond a guess, Mrs. Elton, speaking louder, said,
+
+“Yes, here I am, my good friend; and here I have been so long, that
+anywhere else I should think it necessary to apologise; but, the truth
+is, that I am waiting for my lord and master. He promised to join me
+here, and pay his respects to you.”
+
+“What! are we to have the pleasure of a call from Mr. Elton?--That will
+be a favour indeed! for I know gentlemen do not like morning visits, and
+Mr. Elton's time is so engaged.”
+
+“Upon my word it is, Miss Bates.--He really is engaged from morning to
+night.--There is no end of people's coming to him, on some pretence or
+other.--The magistrates, and overseers, and churchwardens, are always
+wanting his opinion. They seem not able to do any thing without
+him.--'Upon my word, Mr. E.,' I often say, 'rather you than I.--I do
+not know what would become of my crayons and my instrument, if I had
+half so many applicants.'--Bad enough as it is, for I absolutely neglect
+them both to an unpardonable degree.--I believe I have not played a bar
+this fortnight.--However, he is coming, I assure you: yes, indeed, on
+purpose to wait on you all.” And putting up her hand to screen her
+words from Emma--“A congratulatory visit, you know.--Oh! yes, quite
+indispensable.”
+
+Miss Bates looked about her, so happily--!
+
+“He promised to come to me as soon as he could disengage himself
+from Knightley; but he and Knightley are shut up together in deep
+consultation.--Mr. E. is Knightley's right hand.”
+
+Emma would not have smiled for the world, and only said, “Is Mr. Elton
+gone on foot to Donwell?--He will have a hot walk.”
+
+“Oh! no, it is a meeting at the Crown, a regular meeting. Weston and
+Cole will be there too; but one is apt to speak only of those who
+lead.--I fancy Mr. E. and Knightley have every thing their own way.”
+
+“Have not you mistaken the day?” said Emma. “I am almost certain that
+the meeting at the Crown is not till to-morrow.--Mr. Knightley was at
+Hartfield yesterday, and spoke of it as for Saturday.”
+
+“Oh! no, the meeting is certainly to-day,” was the abrupt answer, which
+denoted the impossibility of any blunder on Mrs. Elton's side.--“I do
+believe,” she continued, “this is the most troublesome parish that ever
+was. We never heard of such things at Maple Grove.”
+
+“Your parish there was small,” said Jane.
+
+“Upon my word, my dear, I do not know, for I never heard the subject
+talked of.”
+
+“But it is proved by the smallness of the school, which I have heard
+you speak of, as under the patronage of your sister and Mrs. Bragge; the
+only school, and not more than five-and-twenty children.”
+
+“Ah! you clever creature, that's very true. What a thinking brain you
+have! I say, Jane, what a perfect character you and I should make, if we
+could be shaken together. My liveliness and your solidity would produce
+perfection.--Not that I presume to insinuate, however, that _some_
+people may not think _you_ perfection already.--But hush!--not a word,
+if you please.”
+
+It seemed an unnecessary caution; Jane was wanting to give her words,
+not to Mrs. Elton, but to Miss Woodhouse, as the latter plainly saw.
+The wish of distinguishing her, as far as civility permitted, was very
+evident, though it could not often proceed beyond a look.
+
+Mr. Elton made his appearance. His lady greeted him with some of her
+sparkling vivacity.
+
+“Very pretty, sir, upon my word; to send me on here, to be an
+encumbrance to my friends, so long before you vouchsafe to come!--But
+you knew what a dutiful creature you had to deal with. You knew I should
+not stir till my lord and master appeared.--Here have I been sitting
+this hour, giving these young ladies a sample of true conjugal
+obedience--for who can say, you know, how soon it may be wanted?”
+
+Mr. Elton was so hot and tired, that all this wit seemed thrown away.
+His civilities to the other ladies must be paid; but his subsequent
+object was to lament over himself for the heat he was suffering, and the
+walk he had had for nothing.
+
+“When I got to Donwell,” said he, “Knightley could not be found. Very
+odd! very unaccountable! after the note I sent him this morning, and the
+message he returned, that he should certainly be at home till one.”
+
+“Donwell!” cried his wife.--“My dear Mr. E., you have not been to
+Donwell!--You mean the Crown; you come from the meeting at the Crown.”
+
+“No, no, that's to-morrow; and I particularly wanted to see Knightley
+to-day on that very account.--Such a dreadful broiling morning!--I went
+over the fields too--(speaking in a tone of great ill-usage,) which made
+it so much the worse. And then not to find him at home! I assure you
+I am not at all pleased. And no apology left, no message for me. The
+housekeeper declared she knew nothing of my being expected.--Very
+extraordinary!--And nobody knew at all which way he was gone. Perhaps
+to Hartfield, perhaps to the Abbey Mill, perhaps into his woods.--Miss
+Woodhouse, this is not like our friend Knightley!--Can you explain it?”
+
+Emma amused herself by protesting that it was very extraordinary,
+indeed, and that she had not a syllable to say for him.
+
+“I cannot imagine,” said Mrs. Elton, (feeling the indignity as a wife
+ought to do,) “I cannot imagine how he could do such a thing by you, of
+all people in the world! The very last person whom one should expect to
+be forgotten!--My dear Mr. E., he must have left a message for you, I am
+sure he must.--Not even Knightley could be so very eccentric;--and his
+servants forgot it. Depend upon it, that was the case: and very likely
+to happen with the Donwell servants, who are all, I have often observed,
+extremely awkward and remiss.--I am sure I would not have such a
+creature as his Harry stand at our sideboard for any consideration. And
+as for Mrs. Hodges, Wright holds her very cheap indeed.--She promised
+Wright a receipt, and never sent it.”
+
+“I met William Larkins,” continued Mr. Elton, “as I got near the house,
+and he told me I should not find his master at home, but I did not
+believe him.--William seemed rather out of humour. He did not know what
+was come to his master lately, he said, but he could hardly ever get the
+speech of him. I have nothing to do with William's wants, but it really
+is of very great importance that _I_ should see Knightley to-day; and it
+becomes a matter, therefore, of very serious inconvenience that I should
+have had this hot walk to no purpose.”
+
+Emma felt that she could not do better than go home directly. In
+all probability she was at this very time waited for there; and Mr.
+Knightley might be preserved from sinking deeper in aggression towards
+Mr. Elton, if not towards William Larkins.
+
+She was pleased, on taking leave, to find Miss Fairfax determined to
+attend her out of the room, to go with her even downstairs; it gave her
+an opportunity which she immediately made use of, to say,
+
+“It is as well, perhaps, that I have not had the possibility. Had you
+not been surrounded by other friends, I might have been tempted to
+introduce a subject, to ask questions, to speak more openly than might
+have been strictly correct.--I feel that I should certainly have been
+impertinent.”
+
+“Oh!” cried Jane, with a blush and an hesitation which Emma thought
+infinitely more becoming to her than all the elegance of all her usual
+composure--“there would have been no danger. The danger would have
+been of my wearying you. You could not have gratified me more than
+by expressing an interest--. Indeed, Miss Woodhouse, (speaking more
+collectedly,) with the consciousness which I have of misconduct, very
+great misconduct, it is particularly consoling to me to know that those
+of my friends, whose good opinion is most worth preserving, are not
+disgusted to such a degree as to--I have not time for half that I could
+wish to say. I long to make apologies, excuses, to urge something for
+myself. I feel it so very due. But, unfortunately--in short, if your
+compassion does not stand my friend--”
+
+“Oh! you are too scrupulous, indeed you are,” cried Emma warmly, and
+taking her hand. “You owe me no apologies; and every body to whom you
+might be supposed to owe them, is so perfectly satisfied, so delighted
+even--”
+
+“You are very kind, but I know what my manners were to you.--So
+cold and artificial!--I had always a part to act.--It was a life of
+deceit!--I know that I must have disgusted you.”
+
+“Pray say no more. I feel that all the apologies should be on my side.
+Let us forgive each other at once. We must do whatever is to be done
+quickest, and I think our feelings will lose no time there. I hope you
+have pleasant accounts from Windsor?”
+
+“Very.”
+
+“And the next news, I suppose, will be, that we are to lose you--just as
+I begin to know you.”
+
+“Oh! as to all that, of course nothing can be thought of yet. I am here
+till claimed by Colonel and Mrs. Campbell.”
+
+“Nothing can be actually settled yet, perhaps,” replied Emma,
+smiling--“but, excuse me, it must be thought of.”
+
+The smile was returned as Jane answered,
+
+“You are very right; it has been thought of. And I will own to you, (I
+am sure it will be safe), that so far as our living with Mr. Churchill
+at Enscombe, it is settled. There must be three months, at least, of
+deep mourning; but when they are over, I imagine there will be nothing
+more to wait for.”
+
+“Thank you, thank you.--This is just what I wanted to be assured
+of.--Oh! if you knew how much I love every thing that is decided and
+open!--Good-bye, good-bye.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+Mrs. Weston's friends were all made happy by her safety; and if the
+satisfaction of her well-doing could be increased to Emma, it was by
+knowing her to be the mother of a little girl. She had been decided in
+wishing for a Miss Weston. She would not acknowledge that it was with
+any view of making a match for her, hereafter, with either of Isabella's
+sons; but she was convinced that a daughter would suit both father
+and mother best. It would be a great comfort to Mr. Weston, as he grew
+older--and even Mr. Weston might be growing older ten years hence--to
+have his fireside enlivened by the sports and the nonsense, the freaks
+and the fancies of a child never banished from home; and Mrs. Weston--no
+one could doubt that a daughter would be most to her; and it would be
+quite a pity that any one who so well knew how to teach, should not have
+their powers in exercise again.
+
+“She has had the advantage, you know, of practising on me,” she
+continued--“like La Baronne d'Almane on La Comtesse d'Ostalis, in Madame
+de Genlis' Adelaide and Theodore, and we shall now see her own little
+Adelaide educated on a more perfect plan.”
+
+“That is,” replied Mr. Knightley, “she will indulge her even more than
+she did you, and believe that she does not indulge her at all. It will
+be the only difference.”
+
+“Poor child!” cried Emma; “at that rate, what will become of her?”
+
+“Nothing very bad.--The fate of thousands. She will be disagreeable
+in infancy, and correct herself as she grows older. I am losing all my
+bitterness against spoilt children, my dearest Emma. I, who am owing all
+my happiness to _you_, would not it be horrible ingratitude in me to be
+severe on them?”
+
+Emma laughed, and replied: “But I had the assistance of all your
+endeavours to counteract the indulgence of other people. I doubt whether
+my own sense would have corrected me without it.”
+
+“Do you?--I have no doubt. Nature gave you understanding:--Miss Taylor
+gave you principles. You must have done well. My interference was quite
+as likely to do harm as good. It was very natural for you to say, what
+right has he to lecture me?--and I am afraid very natural for you to
+feel that it was done in a disagreeable manner. I do not believe I did
+you any good. The good was all to myself, by making you an object of the
+tenderest affection to me. I could not think about you so much without
+doating on you, faults and all; and by dint of fancying so many errors,
+have been in love with you ever since you were thirteen at least.”
+
+“I am sure you were of use to me,” cried Emma. “I was very often
+influenced rightly by you--oftener than I would own at the time. I
+am very sure you did me good. And if poor little Anna Weston is to be
+spoiled, it will be the greatest humanity in you to do as much for her
+as you have done for me, except falling in love with her when she is
+thirteen.”
+
+“How often, when you were a girl, have you said to me, with one of your
+saucy looks--'Mr. Knightley, I am going to do so-and-so; papa says I
+may, or I have Miss Taylor's leave'--something which, you knew, I
+did not approve. In such cases my interference was giving you two bad
+feelings instead of one.”
+
+“What an amiable creature I was!--No wonder you should hold my speeches
+in such affectionate remembrance.”
+
+“'Mr. Knightley.'--You always called me, 'Mr. Knightley;' and, from
+habit, it has not so very formal a sound.--And yet it is formal. I want
+you to call me something else, but I do not know what.”
+
+“I remember once calling you 'George,' in one of my amiable fits, about
+ten years ago. I did it because I thought it would offend you; but, as
+you made no objection, I never did it again.”
+
+“And cannot you call me 'George' now?”
+
+“Impossible!--I never can call you any thing but 'Mr. Knightley.' I
+will not promise even to equal the elegant terseness of Mrs. Elton, by
+calling you Mr. K.--But I will promise,” she added presently, laughing
+and blushing--“I will promise to call you once by your Christian name.
+I do not say when, but perhaps you may guess where;--in the building in
+which N. takes M. for better, for worse.”
+
+Emma grieved that she could not be more openly just to one important
+service which his better sense would have rendered her, to the
+advice which would have saved her from the worst of all her womanly
+follies--her wilful intimacy with Harriet Smith; but it was too tender a
+subject.--She could not enter on it.--Harriet was very seldom mentioned
+between them. This, on his side, might merely proceed from her not being
+thought of; but Emma was rather inclined to attribute it to delicacy,
+and a suspicion, from some appearances, that their friendship were
+declining. She was aware herself, that, parting under any other
+circumstances, they certainly should have corresponded more, and that
+her intelligence would not have rested, as it now almost wholly did, on
+Isabella's letters. He might observe that it was so. The pain of being
+obliged to practise concealment towards him, was very little inferior to
+the pain of having made Harriet unhappy.
+
+Isabella sent quite as good an account of her visitor as could be
+expected; on her first arrival she had thought her out of spirits, which
+appeared perfectly natural, as there was a dentist to be consulted; but,
+since that business had been over, she did not appear to find Harriet
+different from what she had known her before.--Isabella, to be sure,
+was no very quick observer; yet if Harriet had not been equal to playing
+with the children, it would not have escaped her. Emma's comforts and
+hopes were most agreeably carried on, by Harriet's being to stay longer;
+her fortnight was likely to be a month at least. Mr. and Mrs. John
+Knightley were to come down in August, and she was invited to remain
+till they could bring her back.
+
+“John does not even mention your friend,” said Mr. Knightley. “Here is
+his answer, if you like to see it.”
+
+It was the answer to the communication of his intended marriage. Emma
+accepted it with a very eager hand, with an impatience all alive to know
+what he would say about it, and not at all checked by hearing that her
+friend was unmentioned.
+
+“John enters like a brother into my happiness,” continued Mr. Knightley,
+“but he is no complimenter; and though I well know him to have,
+likewise, a most brotherly affection for you, he is so far from making
+flourishes, that any other young woman might think him rather cool in
+her praise. But I am not afraid of your seeing what he writes.”
+
+“He writes like a sensible man,” replied Emma, when she had read the
+letter. “I honour his sincerity. It is very plain that he considers the
+good fortune of the engagement as all on my side, but that he is not
+without hope of my growing, in time, as worthy of your affection, as
+you think me already. Had he said any thing to bear a different
+construction, I should not have believed him.”
+
+“My Emma, he means no such thing. He only means--”
+
+“He and I should differ very little in our estimation of the two,”
+ interrupted she, with a sort of serious smile--“much less, perhaps, than
+he is aware of, if we could enter without ceremony or reserve on the
+subject.”
+
+“Emma, my dear Emma--”
+
+“Oh!” she cried with more thorough gaiety, “if you fancy your brother
+does not do me justice, only wait till my dear father is in the secret,
+and hear his opinion. Depend upon it, he will be much farther from doing
+_you_ justice. He will think all the happiness, all the advantage, on
+your side of the question; all the merit on mine. I wish I may not
+sink into 'poor Emma' with him at once.--His tender compassion towards
+oppressed worth can go no farther.”
+
+“Ah!” he cried, “I wish your father might be half as easily convinced as
+John will be, of our having every right that equal worth can give, to be
+happy together. I am amused by one part of John's letter--did you notice
+it?--where he says, that my information did not take him wholly by
+surprize, that he was rather in expectation of hearing something of the
+kind.”
+
+“If I understand your brother, he only means so far as your having
+some thoughts of marrying. He had no idea of me. He seems perfectly
+unprepared for that.”
+
+“Yes, yes--but I am amused that he should have seen so far into my
+feelings. What has he been judging by?--I am not conscious of any
+difference in my spirits or conversation that could prepare him at
+this time for my marrying any more than at another.--But it was so, I
+suppose. I dare say there was a difference when I was staying with them
+the other day. I believe I did not play with the children quite so much
+as usual. I remember one evening the poor boys saying, 'Uncle seems
+always tired now.'”
+
+The time was coming when the news must spread farther, and other
+persons' reception of it tried. As soon as Mrs. Weston was sufficiently
+recovered to admit Mr. Woodhouse's visits, Emma having it in view that
+her gentle reasonings should be employed in the cause, resolved first to
+announce it at home, and then at Randalls.--But how to break it to her
+father at last!--She had bound herself to do it, in such an hour of Mr.
+Knightley's absence, or when it came to the point her heart would have
+failed her, and she must have put it off; but Mr. Knightley was to come
+at such a time, and follow up the beginning she was to make.--She was
+forced to speak, and to speak cheerfully too. She must not make it a
+more decided subject of misery to him, by a melancholy tone herself.
+She must not appear to think it a misfortune.--With all the spirits she
+could command, she prepared him first for something strange, and then,
+in a few words, said, that if his consent and approbation could be
+obtained--which, she trusted, would be attended with no difficulty,
+since it was a plan to promote the happiness of all--she and Mr.
+Knightley meant to marry; by which means Hartfield would receive the
+constant addition of that person's company whom she knew he loved, next
+to his daughters and Mrs. Weston, best in the world.
+
+Poor man!--it was at first a considerable shock to him, and he tried
+earnestly to dissuade her from it. She was reminded, more than once, of
+having always said she would never marry, and assured that it would be
+a great deal better for her to remain single; and told of poor Isabella,
+and poor Miss Taylor.--But it would not do. Emma hung about him
+affectionately, and smiled, and said it must be so; and that he must
+not class her with Isabella and Mrs. Weston, whose marriages taking them
+from Hartfield, had, indeed, made a melancholy change: but she was not
+going from Hartfield; she should be always there; she was introducing
+no change in their numbers or their comforts but for the better; and she
+was very sure that he would be a great deal the happier for having Mr.
+Knightley always at hand, when he were once got used to the idea.--Did
+he not love Mr. Knightley very much?--He would not deny that he did,
+she was sure.--Whom did he ever want to consult on business but Mr.
+Knightley?--Who was so useful to him, who so ready to write his letters,
+who so glad to assist him?--Who so cheerful, so attentive, so attached
+to him?--Would not he like to have him always on the spot?--Yes. That
+was all very true. Mr. Knightley could not be there too often; he should
+be glad to see him every day;--but they did see him every day as it
+was.--Why could not they go on as they had done?
+
+Mr. Woodhouse could not be soon reconciled; but the worst was overcome,
+the idea was given; time and continual repetition must do the rest.--To
+Emma's entreaties and assurances succeeded Mr. Knightley's, whose fond
+praise of her gave the subject even a kind of welcome; and he was soon
+used to be talked to by each, on every fair occasion.--They had all
+the assistance which Isabella could give, by letters of the strongest
+approbation; and Mrs. Weston was ready, on the first meeting, to
+consider the subject in the most serviceable light--first, as a settled,
+and, secondly, as a good one--well aware of the nearly equal importance
+of the two recommendations to Mr. Woodhouse's mind.--It was agreed
+upon, as what was to be; and every body by whom he was used to be
+guided assuring him that it would be for his happiness; and having some
+feelings himself which almost admitted it, he began to think that some
+time or other--in another year or two, perhaps--it might not be so very
+bad if the marriage did take place.
+
+Mrs. Weston was acting no part, feigning no feelings in all that she
+said to him in favour of the event.--She had been extremely surprized,
+never more so, than when Emma first opened the affair to her; but she
+saw in it only increase of happiness to all, and had no scruple in
+urging him to the utmost.--She had such a regard for Mr. Knightley, as
+to think he deserved even her dearest Emma; and it was in every respect
+so proper, suitable, and unexceptionable a connexion, and in one
+respect, one point of the highest importance, so peculiarly eligible,
+so singularly fortunate, that now it seemed as if Emma could not safely
+have attached herself to any other creature, and that she had herself
+been the stupidest of beings in not having thought of it, and wished it
+long ago.--How very few of those men in a rank of life to address Emma
+would have renounced their own home for Hartfield! And who but Mr.
+Knightley could know and bear with Mr. Woodhouse, so as to make such
+an arrangement desirable!--The difficulty of disposing of poor Mr.
+Woodhouse had been always felt in her husband's plans and her own, for
+a marriage between Frank and Emma. How to settle the claims of Enscombe
+and Hartfield had been a continual impediment--less acknowledged by Mr.
+Weston than by herself--but even he had never been able to finish
+the subject better than by saying--“Those matters will take care of
+themselves; the young people will find a way.” But here there was
+nothing to be shifted off in a wild speculation on the future. It was
+all right, all open, all equal. No sacrifice on any side worth the name.
+It was a union of the highest promise of felicity in itself, and without
+one real, rational difficulty to oppose or delay it.
+
+Mrs. Weston, with her baby on her knee, indulging in such reflections
+as these, was one of the happiest women in the world. If any thing could
+increase her delight, it was perceiving that the baby would soon have
+outgrown its first set of caps.
+
+The news was universally a surprize wherever it spread; and Mr. Weston
+had his five minutes share of it; but five minutes were enough to
+familiarise the idea to his quickness of mind.--He saw the advantages
+of the match, and rejoiced in them with all the constancy of his wife;
+but the wonder of it was very soon nothing; and by the end of an hour he
+was not far from believing that he had always foreseen it.
+
+“It is to be a secret, I conclude,” said he. “These matters are always a
+secret, till it is found out that every body knows them. Only let me be
+told when I may speak out.--I wonder whether Jane has any suspicion.”
+
+He went to Highbury the next morning, and satisfied himself on that
+point. He told her the news. Was not she like a daughter, his eldest
+daughter?--he must tell her; and Miss Bates being present, it passed,
+of course, to Mrs. Cole, Mrs. Perry, and Mrs. Elton, immediately
+afterwards. It was no more than the principals were prepared for; they
+had calculated from the time of its being known at Randalls, how soon it
+would be over Highbury; and were thinking of themselves, as the evening
+wonder in many a family circle, with great sagacity.
+
+In general, it was a very well approved match. Some might think him, and
+others might think her, the most in luck. One set might recommend their
+all removing to Donwell, and leaving Hartfield for the John Knightleys;
+and another might predict disagreements among their servants; but yet,
+upon the whole, there was no serious objection raised, except in one
+habitation, the Vicarage.--There, the surprize was not softened by any
+satisfaction. Mr. Elton cared little about it, compared with his wife;
+he only hoped “the young lady's pride would now be contented;” and
+supposed “she had always meant to catch Knightley if she could;” and,
+on the point of living at Hartfield, could daringly exclaim, “Rather
+he than I!”--But Mrs. Elton was very much discomposed indeed.--“Poor
+Knightley! poor fellow!--sad business for him.”--She was extremely
+concerned; for, though very eccentric, he had a thousand good
+qualities.--How could he be so taken in?--Did not think him at all in
+love--not in the least.--Poor Knightley!--There would be an end of all
+pleasant intercourse with him.--How happy he had been to come and dine
+with them whenever they asked him! But that would be all over now.--Poor
+fellow!--No more exploring parties to Donwell made for _her_. Oh!
+no; there would be a Mrs. Knightley to throw cold water on every
+thing.--Extremely disagreeable! But she was not at all sorry that
+she had abused the housekeeper the other day.--Shocking plan, living
+together. It would never do. She knew a family near Maple Grove who
+had tried it, and been obliged to separate before the end of the first
+quarter.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+Time passed on. A few more to-morrows, and the party from London would
+be arriving. It was an alarming change; and Emma was thinking of it one
+morning, as what must bring a great deal to agitate and grieve her, when
+Mr. Knightley came in, and distressing thoughts were put by. After the
+first chat of pleasure he was silent; and then, in a graver tone, began
+with,
+
+“I have something to tell you, Emma; some news.”
+
+“Good or bad?” said she, quickly, looking up in his face.
+
+“I do not know which it ought to be called.”
+
+“Oh! good I am sure.--I see it in your countenance. You are trying not
+to smile.”
+
+“I am afraid,” said he, composing his features, “I am very much afraid,
+my dear Emma, that you will not smile when you hear it.”
+
+“Indeed! but why so?--I can hardly imagine that any thing which pleases
+or amuses you, should not please and amuse me too.”
+
+“There is one subject,” he replied, “I hope but one, on which we do not
+think alike.” He paused a moment, again smiling, with his eyes fixed on
+her face. “Does nothing occur to you?--Do not you recollect?--Harriet
+Smith.”
+
+Her cheeks flushed at the name, and she felt afraid of something, though
+she knew not what.
+
+“Have you heard from her yourself this morning?” cried he. “You have, I
+believe, and know the whole.”
+
+“No, I have not; I know nothing; pray tell me.”
+
+“You are prepared for the worst, I see--and very bad it is. Harriet
+Smith marries Robert Martin.”
+
+Emma gave a start, which did not seem like being prepared--and her eyes,
+in eager gaze, said, “No, this is impossible!” but her lips were closed.
+
+“It is so, indeed,” continued Mr. Knightley; “I have it from Robert
+Martin himself. He left me not half an hour ago.”
+
+She was still looking at him with the most speaking amazement.
+
+“You like it, my Emma, as little as I feared.--I wish our opinions were
+the same. But in time they will. Time, you may be sure, will make one
+or the other of us think differently; and, in the meanwhile, we need not
+talk much on the subject.”
+
+“You mistake me, you quite mistake me,” she replied, exerting herself.
+“It is not that such a circumstance would now make me unhappy, but I
+cannot believe it. It seems an impossibility!--You cannot mean to say,
+that Harriet Smith has accepted Robert Martin. You cannot mean that he
+has even proposed to her again--yet. You only mean, that he intends it.”
+
+“I mean that he has done it,” answered Mr. Knightley, with smiling but
+determined decision, “and been accepted.”
+
+“Good God!” she cried.--“Well!”--Then having recourse to her workbasket,
+in excuse for leaning down her face, and concealing all the exquisite
+feelings of delight and entertainment which she knew she must be
+expressing, she added, “Well, now tell me every thing; make this
+intelligible to me. How, where, when?--Let me know it all. I never was
+more surprized--but it does not make me unhappy, I assure you.--How--how
+has it been possible?”
+
+“It is a very simple story. He went to town on business three days ago,
+and I got him to take charge of some papers which I was wanting to send
+to John.--He delivered these papers to John, at his chambers, and was
+asked by him to join their party the same evening to Astley's. They were
+going to take the two eldest boys to Astley's. The party was to be our
+brother and sister, Henry, John--and Miss Smith. My friend Robert could
+not resist. They called for him in their way; were all extremely amused;
+and my brother asked him to dine with them the next day--which he
+did--and in the course of that visit (as I understand) he found an
+opportunity of speaking to Harriet; and certainly did not speak
+in vain.--She made him, by her acceptance, as happy even as he is
+deserving. He came down by yesterday's coach, and was with me this
+morning immediately after breakfast, to report his proceedings, first
+on my affairs, and then on his own. This is all that I can relate of
+the how, where, and when. Your friend Harriet will make a much
+longer history when you see her.--She will give you all the minute
+particulars, which only woman's language can make interesting.--In our
+communications we deal only in the great.--However, I must say, that
+Robert Martin's heart seemed for _him_, and to _me_, very overflowing;
+and that he did mention, without its being much to the purpose, that
+on quitting their box at Astley's, my brother took charge of Mrs. John
+Knightley and little John, and he followed with Miss Smith and Henry;
+and that at one time they were in such a crowd, as to make Miss Smith
+rather uneasy.”
+
+He stopped.--Emma dared not attempt any immediate reply. To speak, she
+was sure would be to betray a most unreasonable degree of happiness.
+She must wait a moment, or he would think her mad. Her silence disturbed
+him; and after observing her a little while, he added,
+
+“Emma, my love, you said that this circumstance would not now make you
+unhappy; but I am afraid it gives you more pain than you expected. His
+situation is an evil--but you must consider it as what satisfies your
+friend; and I will answer for your thinking better and better of him
+as you know him more. His good sense and good principles would delight
+you.--As far as the man is concerned, you could not wish your friend
+in better hands. His rank in society I would alter if I could, which is
+saying a great deal I assure you, Emma.--You laugh at me about William
+Larkins; but I could quite as ill spare Robert Martin.”
+
+He wanted her to look up and smile; and having now brought herself not
+to smile too broadly--she did--cheerfully answering,
+
+“You need not be at any pains to reconcile me to the match. I think
+Harriet is doing extremely well. _Her_ connexions may be worse than
+_his_. In respectability of character, there can be no doubt that they
+are. I have been silent from surprize merely, excessive surprize. You
+cannot imagine how suddenly it has come on me! how peculiarly unprepared
+I was!--for I had reason to believe her very lately more determined
+against him, much more, than she was before.”
+
+“You ought to know your friend best,” replied Mr. Knightley; “but I
+should say she was a good-tempered, soft-hearted girl, not likely to be
+very, very determined against any young man who told her he loved her.”
+
+Emma could not help laughing as she answered, “Upon my word, I believe
+you know her quite as well as I do.--But, Mr. Knightley, are you
+perfectly sure that she has absolutely and downright _accepted_ him.
+I could suppose she might in time--but can she already?--Did not you
+misunderstand him?--You were both talking of other things; of business,
+shows of cattle, or new drills--and might not you, in the confusion of
+so many subjects, mistake him?--It was not Harriet's hand that he was
+certain of--it was the dimensions of some famous ox.”
+
+The contrast between the countenance and air of Mr. Knightley and Robert
+Martin was, at this moment, so strong to Emma's feelings, and so strong
+was the recollection of all that had so recently passed on Harriet's
+side, so fresh the sound of those words, spoken with such emphasis,
+“No, I hope I know better than to think of Robert Martin,” that she was
+really expecting the intelligence to prove, in some measure, premature.
+It could not be otherwise.
+
+“Do you dare say this?” cried Mr. Knightley. “Do you dare to suppose me
+so great a blockhead, as not to know what a man is talking of?--What do
+you deserve?”
+
+“Oh! I always deserve the best treatment, because I never put up with
+any other; and, therefore, you must give me a plain, direct answer. Are
+you quite sure that you understand the terms on which Mr. Martin and
+Harriet now are?”
+
+“I am quite sure,” he replied, speaking very distinctly, “that he
+told me she had accepted him; and that there was no obscurity, nothing
+doubtful, in the words he used; and I think I can give you a proof that
+it must be so. He asked my opinion as to what he was now to do. He knew
+of no one but Mrs. Goddard to whom he could apply for information of
+her relations or friends. Could I mention any thing more fit to be done,
+than to go to Mrs. Goddard? I assured him that I could not. Then, he
+said, he would endeavour to see her in the course of this day.”
+
+“I am perfectly satisfied,” replied Emma, with the brightest smiles,
+“and most sincerely wish them happy.”
+
+“You are materially changed since we talked on this subject before.”
+
+“I hope so--for at that time I was a fool.”
+
+“And I am changed also; for I am now very willing to grant you all
+Harriet's good qualities. I have taken some pains for your sake, and for
+Robert Martin's sake, (whom I have always had reason to believe as much
+in love with her as ever,) to get acquainted with her. I have often
+talked to her a good deal. You must have seen that I did. Sometimes,
+indeed, I have thought you were half suspecting me of pleading poor
+Martin's cause, which was never the case; but, from all my observations,
+I am convinced of her being an artless, amiable girl, with very good
+notions, very seriously good principles, and placing her happiness in
+the affections and utility of domestic life.--Much of this, I have no
+doubt, she may thank you for.”
+
+“Me!” cried Emma, shaking her head.--“Ah! poor Harriet!”
+
+She checked herself, however, and submitted quietly to a little more
+praise than she deserved.
+
+Their conversation was soon afterwards closed by the entrance of her
+father. She was not sorry. She wanted to be alone. Her mind was in a
+state of flutter and wonder, which made it impossible for her to be
+collected. She was in dancing, singing, exclaiming spirits; and till she
+had moved about, and talked to herself, and laughed and reflected, she
+could be fit for nothing rational.
+
+Her father's business was to announce James's being gone out to put the
+horses to, preparatory to their now daily drive to Randalls; and she
+had, therefore, an immediate excuse for disappearing.
+
+The joy, the gratitude, the exquisite delight of her sensations may be
+imagined. The sole grievance and alloy thus removed in the prospect of
+Harriet's welfare, she was really in danger of becoming too happy for
+security.--What had she to wish for? Nothing, but to grow more worthy of
+him, whose intentions and judgment had been ever so superior to her own.
+Nothing, but that the lessons of her past folly might teach her humility
+and circumspection in future.
+
+Serious she was, very serious in her thankfulness, and in her
+resolutions; and yet there was no preventing a laugh, sometimes in the
+very midst of them. She must laugh at such a close! Such an end of the
+doleful disappointment of five weeks back! Such a heart--such a Harriet!
+
+Now there would be pleasure in her returning--Every thing would be a
+pleasure. It would be a great pleasure to know Robert Martin.
+
+High in the rank of her most serious and heartfelt felicities, was the
+reflection that all necessity of concealment from Mr. Knightley would
+soon be over. The disguise, equivocation, mystery, so hateful to her to
+practise, might soon be over. She could now look forward to giving him
+that full and perfect confidence which her disposition was most ready to
+welcome as a duty.
+
+In the gayest and happiest spirits she set forward with her father; not
+always listening, but always agreeing to what he said; and, whether in
+speech or silence, conniving at the comfortable persuasion of his
+being obliged to go to Randalls every day, or poor Mrs. Weston would be
+disappointed.
+
+They arrived.--Mrs. Weston was alone in the drawing-room:--but hardly
+had they been told of the baby, and Mr. Woodhouse received the thanks
+for coming, which he asked for, when a glimpse was caught through the
+blind, of two figures passing near the window.
+
+“It is Frank and Miss Fairfax,” said Mrs. Weston. “I was just going to
+tell you of our agreeable surprize in seeing him arrive this morning. He
+stays till to-morrow, and Miss Fairfax has been persuaded to spend the
+day with us.--They are coming in, I hope.”
+
+In half a minute they were in the room. Emma was extremely glad to
+see him--but there was a degree of confusion--a number of embarrassing
+recollections on each side. They met readily and smiling, but with a
+consciousness which at first allowed little to be said; and having all
+sat down again, there was for some time such a blank in the circle, that
+Emma began to doubt whether the wish now indulged, which she had long
+felt, of seeing Frank Churchill once more, and of seeing him with Jane,
+would yield its proportion of pleasure. When Mr. Weston joined the
+party, however, and when the baby was fetched, there was no longer a
+want of subject or animation--or of courage and opportunity for Frank
+Churchill to draw near her and say,
+
+“I have to thank you, Miss Woodhouse, for a very kind forgiving message
+in one of Mrs. Weston's letters. I hope time has not made you less
+willing to pardon. I hope you do not retract what you then said.”
+
+“No, indeed,” cried Emma, most happy to begin, “not in the least. I am
+particularly glad to see and shake hands with you--and to give you joy
+in person.”
+
+He thanked her with all his heart, and continued some time to speak with
+serious feeling of his gratitude and happiness.
+
+“Is not she looking well?” said he, turning his eyes towards Jane.
+“Better than she ever used to do?--You see how my father and Mrs. Weston
+doat upon her.”
+
+But his spirits were soon rising again, and with laughing eyes, after
+mentioning the expected return of the Campbells, he named the name of
+Dixon.--Emma blushed, and forbade its being pronounced in her hearing.
+
+“I can never think of it,” she cried, “without extreme shame.”
+
+“The shame,” he answered, “is all mine, or ought to be. But is it
+possible that you had no suspicion?--I mean of late. Early, I know, you
+had none.”
+
+“I never had the smallest, I assure you.”
+
+“That appears quite wonderful. I was once very near--and I wish I
+had--it would have been better. But though I was always doing wrong
+things, they were very bad wrong things, and such as did me no
+service.--It would have been a much better transgression had I broken
+the bond of secrecy and told you every thing.”
+
+“It is not now worth a regret,” said Emma.
+
+“I have some hope,” resumed he, “of my uncle's being persuaded to pay a
+visit at Randalls; he wants to be introduced to her. When the Campbells
+are returned, we shall meet them in London, and continue there, I trust,
+till we may carry her northward.--But now, I am at such a distance from
+her--is not it hard, Miss Woodhouse?--Till this morning, we have not
+once met since the day of reconciliation. Do not you pity me?”
+
+Emma spoke her pity so very kindly, that with a sudden accession of gay
+thought, he cried,
+
+“Ah! by the bye,” then sinking his voice, and looking demure for the
+moment--“I hope Mr. Knightley is well?” He paused.--She coloured and
+laughed.--“I know you saw my letter, and think you may remember my wish
+in your favour. Let me return your congratulations.--I assure you that
+I have heard the news with the warmest interest and satisfaction.--He is
+a man whom I cannot presume to praise.”
+
+Emma was delighted, and only wanted him to go on in the same style; but
+his mind was the next moment in his own concerns and with his own Jane,
+and his next words were,
+
+“Did you ever see such a skin?--such smoothness! such delicacy!--and
+yet without being actually fair.--One cannot call her fair. It is a
+most uncommon complexion, with her dark eye-lashes and hair--a most
+distinguishing complexion! So peculiarly the lady in it.--Just colour
+enough for beauty.”
+
+“I have always admired her complexion,” replied Emma, archly; “but
+do not I remember the time when you found fault with her for being so
+pale?--When we first began to talk of her.--Have you quite forgotten?”
+
+“Oh! no--what an impudent dog I was!--How could I dare--”
+
+But he laughed so heartily at the recollection, that Emma could not help
+saying,
+
+“I do suspect that in the midst of your perplexities at that time, you
+had very great amusement in tricking us all.--I am sure you had.--I am
+sure it was a consolation to you.”
+
+“Oh! no, no, no--how can you suspect me of such a thing? I was the most
+miserable wretch!”
+
+“Not quite so miserable as to be insensible to mirth. I am sure it was a
+source of high entertainment to you, to feel that you were taking us
+all in.--Perhaps I am the readier to suspect, because, to tell you the
+truth, I think it might have been some amusement to myself in the same
+situation. I think there is a little likeness between us.”
+
+He bowed.
+
+“If not in our dispositions,” she presently added, with a look of true
+sensibility, “there is a likeness in our destiny; the destiny which bids
+fair to connect us with two characters so much superior to our own.”
+
+“True, true,” he answered, warmly. “No, not true on your side. You can
+have no superior, but most true on mine.--She is a complete angel. Look
+at her. Is not she an angel in every gesture? Observe the turn of her
+throat. Observe her eyes, as she is looking up at my father.--You will
+be glad to hear (inclining his head, and whispering seriously) that my
+uncle means to give her all my aunt's jewels. They are to be new set.
+I am resolved to have some in an ornament for the head. Will not it be
+beautiful in her dark hair?”
+
+“Very beautiful, indeed,” replied Emma; and she spoke so kindly, that he
+gratefully burst out,
+
+“How delighted I am to see you again! and to see you in such excellent
+looks!--I would not have missed this meeting for the world. I should
+certainly have called at Hartfield, had you failed to come.”
+
+The others had been talking of the child, Mrs. Weston giving an account
+of a little alarm she had been under, the evening before, from the
+infant's appearing not quite well. She believed she had been foolish,
+but it had alarmed her, and she had been within half a minute of sending
+for Mr. Perry. Perhaps she ought to be ashamed, but Mr. Weston had been
+almost as uneasy as herself.--In ten minutes, however, the child had
+been perfectly well again. This was her history; and particularly
+interesting it was to Mr. Woodhouse, who commended her very much for
+thinking of sending for Perry, and only regretted that she had not done
+it. “She should always send for Perry, if the child appeared in the
+slightest degree disordered, were it only for a moment. She could not be
+too soon alarmed, nor send for Perry too often. It was a pity, perhaps,
+that he had not come last night; for, though the child seemed well now,
+very well considering, it would probably have been better if Perry had
+seen it.”
+
+Frank Churchill caught the name.
+
+“Perry!” said he to Emma, and trying, as he spoke, to catch Miss
+Fairfax's eye. “My friend Mr. Perry! What are they saying about Mr.
+Perry?--Has he been here this morning?--And how does he travel now?--Has
+he set up his carriage?”
+
+Emma soon recollected, and understood him; and while she joined in the
+laugh, it was evident from Jane's countenance that she too was really
+hearing him, though trying to seem deaf.
+
+“Such an extraordinary dream of mine!” he cried. “I can never think of
+it without laughing.--She hears us, she hears us, Miss Woodhouse. I see
+it in her cheek, her smile, her vain attempt to frown. Look at her. Do
+not you see that, at this instant, the very passage of her own letter,
+which sent me the report, is passing under her eye--that the whole
+blunder is spread before her--that she can attend to nothing else,
+though pretending to listen to the others?”
+
+Jane was forced to smile completely, for a moment; and the smile partly
+remained as she turned towards him, and said in a conscious, low, yet
+steady voice,
+
+“How you can bear such recollections, is astonishing to me!--They
+_will_ sometimes obtrude--but how you can court them!”
+
+He had a great deal to say in return, and very entertainingly; but
+Emma's feelings were chiefly with Jane, in the argument; and on leaving
+Randalls, and falling naturally into a comparison of the two men, she
+felt, that pleased as she had been to see Frank Churchill, and really
+regarding him as she did with friendship, she had never been more
+sensible of Mr. Knightley's high superiority of character. The happiness
+of this most happy day, received its completion, in the animated
+contemplation of his worth which this comparison produced.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+If Emma had still, at intervals, an anxious feeling for Harriet, a
+momentary doubt of its being possible for her to be really cured of her
+attachment to Mr. Knightley, and really able to accept another man from
+unbiased inclination, it was not long that she had to suffer from the
+recurrence of any such uncertainty. A very few days brought the party
+from London, and she had no sooner an opportunity of being one hour
+alone with Harriet, than she became perfectly satisfied--unaccountable
+as it was!--that Robert Martin had thoroughly supplanted Mr. Knightley,
+and was now forming all her views of happiness.
+
+Harriet was a little distressed--did look a little foolish at first:
+but having once owned that she had been presumptuous and silly, and
+self-deceived, before, her pain and confusion seemed to die away with
+the words, and leave her without a care for the past, and with the
+fullest exultation in the present and future; for, as to her friend's
+approbation, Emma had instantly removed every fear of that nature, by
+meeting her with the most unqualified congratulations.--Harriet was
+most happy to give every particular of the evening at Astley's, and the
+dinner the next day; she could dwell on it all with the utmost delight.
+But what did such particulars explain?--The fact was, as Emma could now
+acknowledge, that Harriet had always liked Robert Martin; and that his
+continuing to love her had been irresistible.--Beyond this, it must ever
+be unintelligible to Emma.
+
+The event, however, was most joyful; and every day was giving her fresh
+reason for thinking so.--Harriet's parentage became known. She proved
+to be the daughter of a tradesman, rich enough to afford her the
+comfortable maintenance which had ever been hers, and decent enough to
+have always wished for concealment.--Such was the blood of gentility
+which Emma had formerly been so ready to vouch for!--It was likely to
+be as untainted, perhaps, as the blood of many a gentleman: but what
+a connexion had she been preparing for Mr. Knightley--or for the
+Churchills--or even for Mr. Elton!--The stain of illegitimacy,
+unbleached by nobility or wealth, would have been a stain indeed.
+
+No objection was raised on the father's side; the young man was treated
+liberally; it was all as it should be: and as Emma became acquainted
+with Robert Martin, who was now introduced at Hartfield, she fully
+acknowledged in him all the appearance of sense and worth which could
+bid fairest for her little friend. She had no doubt of Harriet's
+happiness with any good-tempered man; but with him, and in the home he
+offered, there would be the hope of more, of security, stability, and
+improvement. She would be placed in the midst of those who loved her,
+and who had better sense than herself; retired enough for safety,
+and occupied enough for cheerfulness. She would be never led into
+temptation, nor left for it to find her out. She would be respectable
+and happy; and Emma admitted her to be the luckiest creature in the
+world, to have created so steady and persevering an affection in such a
+man;--or, if not quite the luckiest, to yield only to herself.
+
+Harriet, necessarily drawn away by her engagements with the Martins,
+was less and less at Hartfield; which was not to be regretted.--The
+intimacy between her and Emma must sink; their friendship must change
+into a calmer sort of goodwill; and, fortunately, what ought to be,
+and must be, seemed already beginning, and in the most gradual, natural
+manner.
+
+Before the end of September, Emma attended Harriet to church, and saw
+her hand bestowed on Robert Martin with so complete a satisfaction, as
+no remembrances, even connected with Mr. Elton as he stood before them,
+could impair.--Perhaps, indeed, at that time she scarcely saw Mr. Elton,
+but as the clergyman whose blessing at the altar might next fall on
+herself.--Robert Martin and Harriet Smith, the latest couple engaged of
+the three, were the first to be married.
+
+Jane Fairfax had already quitted Highbury, and was restored to the
+comforts of her beloved home with the Campbells.--The Mr. Churchills
+were also in town; and they were only waiting for November.
+
+The intermediate month was the one fixed on, as far as they dared, by
+Emma and Mr. Knightley.--They had determined that their marriage ought
+to be concluded while John and Isabella were still at Hartfield, to
+allow them the fortnight's absence in a tour to the seaside, which was
+the plan.--John and Isabella, and every other friend, were agreed in
+approving it. But Mr. Woodhouse--how was Mr. Woodhouse to be induced
+to consent?--he, who had never yet alluded to their marriage but as a
+distant event.
+
+When first sounded on the subject, he was so miserable, that they were
+almost hopeless.--A second allusion, indeed, gave less pain.--He
+began to think it was to be, and that he could not prevent it--a very
+promising step of the mind on its way to resignation. Still, however, he
+was not happy. Nay, he appeared so much otherwise, that his daughter's
+courage failed. She could not bear to see him suffering, to know
+him fancying himself neglected; and though her understanding almost
+acquiesced in the assurance of both the Mr. Knightleys, that when
+once the event were over, his distress would be soon over too, she
+hesitated--she could not proceed.
+
+In this state of suspense they were befriended, not by any sudden
+illumination of Mr. Woodhouse's mind, or any wonderful change of his
+nervous system, but by the operation of the same system in another
+way.--Mrs. Weston's poultry-house was robbed one night of all her
+turkeys--evidently by the ingenuity of man. Other poultry-yards in
+the neighbourhood also suffered.--Pilfering was _housebreaking_ to Mr.
+Woodhouse's fears.--He was very uneasy; and but for the sense of his
+son-in-law's protection, would have been under wretched alarm every
+night of his life. The strength, resolution, and presence of mind of the
+Mr. Knightleys, commanded his fullest dependence. While either of them
+protected him and his, Hartfield was safe.--But Mr. John Knightley must
+be in London again by the end of the first week in November.
+
+The result of this distress was, that, with a much more voluntary,
+cheerful consent than his daughter had ever presumed to hope for at the
+moment, she was able to fix her wedding-day--and Mr. Elton was called
+on, within a month from the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Martin, to
+join the hands of Mr. Knightley and Miss Woodhouse.
+
+The wedding was very much like other weddings, where the parties have
+no taste for finery or parade; and Mrs. Elton, from the particulars
+detailed by her husband, thought it all extremely shabby, and very
+inferior to her own.--“Very little white satin, very few lace veils; a
+most pitiful business!--Selina would stare when she heard of it.”--But,
+in spite of these deficiencies, the wishes, the hopes, the confidence,
+the predictions of the small band of true friends who witnessed the
+ceremony, were fully answered in the perfect happiness of the union.
+
+
+
+FINIS
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Emma, by Jane Austen
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diff --git a/data/train/austen_-_northanger_abbey.txt b/data/train/austen_-_northanger_abbey.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Northanger Abbey
+
+Author: Jane Austen
+
+Release Date: April, 1994 [eBook #121]
+[Most recently updated: January 22, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: An Anonymous Volunteer, and David Widger
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NORTHANGER ABBEY ***
+
+
+
+
+Northanger Abbey
+
+by Jane Austen
+
+(1803)
+
+
+Contents
+
+ ADVERTISEMENT BY THE AUTHORESS, TO NORTHANGER ABBEY
+
+ CHAPTER 1
+ CHAPTER 2
+ CHAPTER 3
+ CHAPTER 4
+ CHAPTER 5
+ CHAPTER 6
+ CHAPTER 7
+ CHAPTER 8
+ CHAPTER 9
+ CHAPTER 10
+ CHAPTER 11
+ CHAPTER 12
+ CHAPTER 13
+ CHAPTER 14
+ CHAPTER 15
+ CHAPTER 16
+ CHAPTER 17
+ CHAPTER 18
+ CHAPTER 19
+ CHAPTER 20
+ CHAPTER 21
+ CHAPTER 22
+ CHAPTER 23
+ CHAPTER 24
+ CHAPTER 25
+ CHAPTER 26
+ CHAPTER 27
+ CHAPTER 28
+ CHAPTER 29
+ CHAPTER 30
+ CHAPTER 31
+
+ A NOTE ON THE TEXT
+
+
+
+
+ADVERTISEMENT BY THE AUTHORESS, TO NORTHANGER ABBEY
+
+
+This little work was finished in the year 1803, and intended for
+immediate publication. It was disposed of to a bookseller, it was even
+advertised, and why the business proceeded no farther, the author has
+never been able to learn. That any bookseller should think it
+worth-while to purchase what he did not think it worth-while to publish
+seems extraordinary. But with this, neither the author nor the public
+have any other concern than as some observation is necessary upon those
+parts of the work which thirteen years have made comparatively
+obsolete. The public are entreated to bear in mind that thirteen years
+have passed since it was finished, many more since it was begun, and
+that during that period, places, manners, books, and opinions have
+undergone considerable changes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1
+
+
+No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have
+supposed her born to be an heroine. Her situation in life, the
+character of her father and mother, her own person and disposition,
+were all equally against her. Her father was a clergyman, without being
+neglected, or poor, and a very respectable man, though his name was
+Richard—and he had never been handsome. He had a considerable
+independence besides two good livings—and he was not in the least
+addicted to locking up his daughters. Her mother was a woman of useful
+plain sense, with a good temper, and, what is more remarkable, with a
+good constitution. She had three sons before Catherine was born; and
+instead of dying in bringing the latter into the world, as anybody
+might expect, she still lived on—lived to have six children more—to see
+them growing up around her, and to enjoy excellent health herself. A
+family of ten children will be always called a fine family, where there
+are heads and arms and legs enough for the number; but the Morlands had
+little other right to the word, for they were in general very plain,
+and Catherine, for many years of her life, as plain as any. She had a
+thin awkward figure, a sallow skin without colour, dark lank hair, and
+strong features—so much for her person; and not less unpropitious for
+heroism seemed her mind. She was fond of all boy’s plays, and greatly
+preferred cricket not merely to dolls, but to the more heroic
+enjoyments of infancy, nursing a dormouse, feeding a canary-bird, or
+watering a rose-bush. Indeed she had no taste for a garden; and if she
+gathered flowers at all, it was chiefly for the pleasure of mischief—at
+least so it was conjectured from her always preferring those which she
+was forbidden to take. Such were her propensities—her abilities were
+quite as extraordinary. She never could learn or understand anything
+before she was taught; and sometimes not even then, for she was often
+inattentive, and occasionally stupid. Her mother was three months in
+teaching her only to repeat the “Beggar’s Petition”; and after all, her
+next sister, Sally, could say it better than she did. Not that
+Catherine was always stupid—by no means; she learnt the fable of “The
+Hare and Many Friends” as quickly as any girl in England. Her mother
+wished her to learn music; and Catherine was sure she should like it,
+for she was very fond of tinkling the keys of the old forlorn spinnet;
+so, at eight years old she began. She learnt a year, and could not bear
+it; and Mrs. Morland, who did not insist on her daughters being
+accomplished in spite of incapacity or distaste, allowed her to leave
+off. The day which dismissed the music-master was one of the happiest
+of Catherine’s life. Her taste for drawing was not superior; though
+whenever she could obtain the outside of a letter from her mother or
+seize upon any other odd piece of paper, she did what she could in that
+way, by drawing houses and trees, hens and chickens, all very much like
+one another. Writing and accounts she was taught by her father; French
+by her mother: her proficiency in either was not remarkable, and she
+shirked her lessons in both whenever she could. What a strange,
+unaccountable character!—for with all these symptoms of profligacy at
+ten years old, she had neither a bad heart nor a bad temper, was seldom
+stubborn, scarcely ever quarrelsome, and very kind to the little ones,
+with few interruptions of tyranny; she was moreover noisy and wild,
+hated confinement and cleanliness, and loved nothing so well in the
+world as rolling down the green slope at the back of the house.
+
+Such was Catherine Morland at ten. At fifteen, appearances were
+mending; she began to curl her hair and long for balls; her complexion
+improved, her features were softened by plumpness and colour, her eyes
+gained more animation, and her figure more consequence. Her love of
+dirt gave way to an inclination for finery, and she grew clean as she
+grew smart; she had now the pleasure of sometimes hearing her father
+and mother remark on her personal improvement. “Catherine grows quite a
+good-looking girl—she is almost pretty today,” were words which caught
+her ears now and then; and how welcome were the sounds! To look
+_almost_ pretty is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has
+been looking plain the first fifteen years of her life than a beauty
+from her cradle can ever receive.
+
+Mrs. Morland was a very good woman, and wished to see her children
+everything they ought to be; but her time was so much occupied in
+lying-in and teaching the little ones, that her elder daughters were
+inevitably left to shift for themselves; and it was not very wonderful
+that Catherine, who had by nature nothing heroic about her, should
+prefer cricket, baseball, riding on horseback, and running about the
+country at the age of fourteen, to books—or at least books of
+information—for, provided that nothing like useful knowledge could be
+gained from them, provided they were all story and no reflection, she
+had never any objection to books at all. But from fifteen to seventeen
+she was in training for a heroine; she read all such works as heroines
+must read to supply their memories with those quotations which are so
+serviceable and so soothing in the vicissitudes of their eventful
+lives.
+
+From Pope, she learnt to censure those who
+
+“bear about the mockery of woe.”
+
+
+From Gray, that
+
+“Many a flower is born to blush unseen,
+“And waste its fragrance on the desert air.”
+
+
+From Thompson, that—
+
+“It is a delightful task
+“To teach the young idea how to shoot.”
+
+
+And from Shakespeare she gained a great store of information—amongst
+the rest, that—
+
+“Trifles light as air,
+“Are, to the jealous, confirmation strong,
+“As proofs of Holy Writ.”
+
+
+That
+
+“The poor beetle, which we tread upon,
+“In corporal sufferance feels a pang as great
+“As when a giant dies.”
+
+
+And that a young woman in love always looks—
+
+“like Patience on a monument
+“Smiling at Grief.”
+
+
+So far her improvement was sufficient—and in many other points she came
+on exceedingly well; for though she could not write sonnets, she
+brought herself to read them; and though there seemed no chance of her
+throwing a whole party into raptures by a prelude on the pianoforte, of
+her own composition, she could listen to other people’s performance
+with very little fatigue. Her greatest deficiency was in the pencil—she
+had no notion of drawing—not enough even to attempt a sketch of her
+lover’s profile, that she might be detected in the design. There she
+fell miserably short of the true heroic height. At present she did not
+know her own poverty, for she had no lover to portray. She had reached
+the age of seventeen, without having seen one amiable youth who could
+call forth her sensibility, without having inspired one real passion,
+and without having excited even any admiration but what was very
+moderate and very transient. This was strange indeed! But strange
+things may be generally accounted for if their cause be fairly searched
+out. There was not one lord in the neighbourhood; no—not even a
+baronet. There was not one family among their acquaintance who had
+reared and supported a boy accidentally found at their door—not one
+young man whose origin was unknown. Her father had no ward, and the
+squire of the parish no children.
+
+But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty
+surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen
+to throw a hero in her way.
+
+Mr. Allen, who owned the chief of the property about Fullerton, the
+village in Wiltshire where the Morlands lived, was ordered to Bath for
+the benefit of a gouty constitution—and his lady, a good-humoured
+woman, fond of Miss Morland, and probably aware that if adventures will
+not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad,
+invited her to go with them. Mr. and Mrs. Morland were all compliance,
+and Catherine all happiness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 2
+
+
+In addition to what has been already said of Catherine Morland’s
+personal and mental endowments, when about to be launched into all the
+difficulties and dangers of a six weeks’ residence in Bath, it may be
+stated, for the reader’s more certain information, lest the following
+pages should otherwise fail of giving any idea of what her character is
+meant to be, that her heart was affectionate; her disposition cheerful
+and open, without conceit or affectation of any kind—her manners just
+removed from the awkwardness and shyness of a girl; her person
+pleasing, and, when in good looks, pretty—and her mind about as
+ignorant and uninformed as the female mind at seventeen usually is.
+
+When the hour of departure drew near, the maternal anxiety of Mrs.
+Morland will be naturally supposed to be most severe. A thousand
+alarming presentiments of evil to her beloved Catherine from this
+terrific separation must oppress her heart with sadness, and drown her
+in tears for the last day or two of their being together; and advice of
+the most important and applicable nature must of course flow from her
+wise lips in their parting conference in her closet. Cautions against
+the violence of such noblemen and baronets as delight in forcing young
+ladies away to some remote farm-house, must, at such a moment, relieve
+the fulness of her heart. Who would not think so? But Mrs. Morland knew
+so little of lords and baronets, that she entertained no notion of
+their general mischievousness, and was wholly unsuspicious of danger to
+her daughter from their machinations. Her cautions were confined to the
+following points. “I beg, Catherine, you will always wrap yourself up
+very warm about the throat, when you come from the rooms at night; and
+I wish you would try to keep some account of the money you spend; I
+will give you this little book on purpose.”
+
+Sally, or rather Sarah (for what young lady of common gentility will
+reach the age of sixteen without altering her name as far as she can?),
+must from situation be at this time the intimate friend and confidante
+of her sister. It is remarkable, however, that she neither insisted on
+Catherine’s writing by every post, nor exacted her promise of
+transmitting the character of every new acquaintance, nor a detail of
+every interesting conversation that Bath might produce. Everything
+indeed relative to this important journey was done, on the part of the
+Morlands, with a degree of moderation and composure, which seemed
+rather consistent with the common feelings of common life, than with
+the refined susceptibilities, the tender emotions which the first
+separation of a heroine from her family ought always to excite. Her
+father, instead of giving her an unlimited order on his banker, or even
+putting an hundred pounds bank-bill into her hands, gave her only ten
+guineas, and promised her more when she wanted it.
+
+Under these unpromising auspices, the parting took place, and the
+journey began. It was performed with suitable quietness and uneventful
+safety. Neither robbers nor tempests befriended them, nor one lucky
+overturn to introduce them to the hero. Nothing more alarming occurred
+than a fear, on Mrs. Allen’s side, of having once left her clogs behind
+her at an inn, and that fortunately proved to be groundless.
+
+They arrived at Bath. Catherine was all eager delight—her eyes were
+here, there, everywhere, as they approached its fine and striking
+environs, and afterwards drove through those streets which conducted
+them to the hotel. She was come to be happy, and she felt happy
+already.
+
+They were soon settled in comfortable lodgings in Pulteney Street.
+
+It is now expedient to give some description of Mrs. Allen, that the
+reader may be able to judge in what manner her actions will hereafter
+tend to promote the general distress of the work, and how she will,
+probably, contribute to reduce poor Catherine to all the desperate
+wretchedness of which a last volume is capable—whether by her
+imprudence, vulgarity, or jealousy—whether by intercepting her letters,
+ruining her character, or turning her out of doors.
+
+Mrs. Allen was one of that numerous class of females, whose society can
+raise no other emotion than surprise at there being any men in the
+world who could like them well enough to marry them. She had neither
+beauty, genius, accomplishment, nor manner. The air of a gentlewoman, a
+great deal of quiet, inactive good temper, and a trifling turn of mind
+were all that could account for her being the choice of a sensible,
+intelligent man like Mr. Allen. In one respect she was admirably fitted
+to introduce a young lady into public, being as fond of going
+everywhere and seeing everything herself as any young lady could be.
+Dress was her passion. She had a most harmless delight in being fine;
+and our heroine’s entree into life could not take place till after
+three or four days had been spent in learning what was mostly worn, and
+her chaperone was provided with a dress of the newest fashion.
+Catherine too made some purchases herself, and when all these matters
+were arranged, the important evening came which was to usher her into
+the Upper Rooms. Her hair was cut and dressed by the best hand, her
+clothes put on with care, and both Mrs. Allen and her maid declared she
+looked quite as she should do. With such encouragement, Catherine hoped
+at least to pass uncensured through the crowd. As for admiration, it
+was always very welcome when it came, but she did not depend on it.
+
+Mrs. Allen was so long in dressing that they did not enter the ballroom
+till late. The season was full, the room crowded, and the two ladies
+squeezed in as well as they could. As for Mr. Allen, he repaired
+directly to the card-room, and left them to enjoy a mob by themselves.
+With more care for the safety of her new gown than for the comfort of
+her protegee, Mrs. Allen made her way through the throng of men by the
+door, as swiftly as the necessary caution would allow; Catherine,
+however, kept close at her side, and linked her arm too firmly within
+her friend’s to be torn asunder by any common effort of a struggling
+assembly. But to her utter amazement she found that to proceed along
+the room was by no means the way to disengage themselves from the
+crowd; it seemed rather to increase as they went on, whereas she had
+imagined that when once fairly within the door, they should easily find
+seats and be able to watch the dances with perfect convenience. But
+this was far from being the case, and though by unwearied diligence
+they gained even the top of the room, their situation was just the
+same; they saw nothing of the dancers but the high feathers of some of
+the ladies. Still they moved on—something better was yet in view; and
+by a continued exertion of strength and ingenuity they found themselves
+at last in the passage behind the highest bench. Here there was
+something less of crowd than below; and hence Miss Morland had a
+comprehensive view of all the company beneath her, and of all the
+dangers of her late passage through them. It was a splendid sight, and
+she began, for the first time that evening, to feel herself at a ball:
+she longed to dance, but she had not an acquaintance in the room. Mrs.
+Allen did all that she could do in such a case by saying very placidly,
+every now and then, “I wish you could dance, my dear—I wish you could
+get a partner.” For some time her young friend felt obliged to her for
+these wishes; but they were repeated so often, and proved so totally
+ineffectual, that Catherine grew tired at last, and would thank her no
+more.
+
+They were not long able, however, to enjoy the repose of the eminence
+they had so laboriously gained. Everybody was shortly in motion for
+tea, and they must squeeze out like the rest. Catherine began to feel
+something of disappointment—she was tired of being continually pressed
+against by people, the generality of whose faces possessed nothing to
+interest, and with all of whom she was so wholly unacquainted that she
+could not relieve the irksomeness of imprisonment by the exchange of a
+syllable with any of her fellow captives; and when at last arrived in
+the tea-room, she felt yet more the awkwardness of having no party to
+join, no acquaintance to claim, no gentleman to assist them. They saw
+nothing of Mr. Allen; and after looking about them in vain for a more
+eligible situation, were obliged to sit down at the end of a table, at
+which a large party were already placed, without having anything to do
+there, or anybody to speak to, except each other.
+
+Mrs. Allen congratulated herself, as soon as they were seated, on
+having preserved her gown from injury. “It would have been very
+shocking to have it torn,” said she, “would not it? It is such a
+delicate muslin. For my part I have not seen anything I like so well in
+the whole room, I assure you.”
+
+“How uncomfortable it is,” whispered Catherine, “not to have a single
+acquaintance here!”
+
+“Yes, my dear,” replied Mrs. Allen, with perfect serenity, “it is very
+uncomfortable indeed.”
+
+“What shall we do? The gentlemen and ladies at this table look as if
+they wondered why we came here—we seem forcing ourselves into their
+party.”
+
+“Aye, so we do. That is very disagreeable. I wish we had a large
+acquaintance here.”
+
+“I wish we had _any;_—it would be somebody to go to.”
+
+“Very true, my dear; and if we knew anybody we would join them
+directly. The Skinners were here last year—I wish they were here now.”
+
+“Had not we better go away as it is? Here are no tea-things for us, you
+see.”
+
+“No more there are, indeed. How very provoking! But I think we had
+better sit still, for one gets so tumbled in such a crowd! How is my
+head, my dear? Somebody gave me a push that has hurt it, I am afraid.”
+
+“No, indeed, it looks very nice. But, dear Mrs. Allen, are you sure
+there is nobody you know in all this multitude of people? I think you
+_must_ know somebody.”
+
+“I don’t, upon my word—I wish I did. I wish I had a large acquaintance
+here with all my heart, and then I should get you a partner. I should
+be so glad to have you dance. There goes a strange-looking woman! What
+an odd gown she has got on! How old-fashioned it is! Look at the back.”
+
+After some time they received an offer of tea from one of their
+neighbours; it was thankfully accepted, and this introduced a light
+conversation with the gentleman who offered it, which was the only time
+that anybody spoke to them during the evening, till they were
+discovered and joined by Mr. Allen when the dance was over.
+
+“Well, Miss Morland,” said he, directly, “I hope you have had an
+agreeable ball.”
+
+“Very agreeable indeed,” she replied, vainly endeavouring to hide a
+great yawn.
+
+“I wish she had been able to dance,” said his wife; “I wish we could
+have got a partner for her. I have been saying how glad I should be if
+the Skinners were here this winter instead of last; or if the Parrys
+had come, as they talked of once, she might have danced with George
+Parry. I am so sorry she has not had a partner!”
+
+“We shall do better another evening I hope,” was Mr. Allen’s
+consolation.
+
+The company began to disperse when the dancing was over—enough to leave
+space for the remainder to walk about in some comfort; and now was the
+time for a heroine, who had not yet played a very distinguished part in
+the events of the evening, to be noticed and admired. Every five
+minutes, by removing some of the crowd, gave greater openings for her
+charms. She was now seen by many young men who had not been near her
+before. Not one, however, started with rapturous wonder on beholding
+her, no whisper of eager inquiry ran round the room, nor was she once
+called a divinity by anybody. Yet Catherine was in very good looks, and
+had the company only seen her three years before, they would _now_ have
+thought her exceedingly handsome.
+
+She _was_ looked at, however, and with some admiration; for, in her own
+hearing, two gentlemen pronounced her to be a pretty girl. Such words
+had their due effect; she immediately thought the evening pleasanter
+than she had found it before—her humble vanity was contented—she felt
+more obliged to the two young men for this simple praise than a
+true-quality heroine would have been for fifteen sonnets in celebration
+of her charms, and went to her chair in good humour with everybody, and
+perfectly satisfied with her share of public attention.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3
+
+
+Every morning now brought its regular duties—shops were to be visited;
+some new part of the town to be looked at; and the pump-room to be
+attended, where they paraded up and down for an hour, looking at
+everybody and speaking to no one. The wish of a numerous acquaintance
+in Bath was still uppermost with Mrs. Allen, and she repeated it after
+every fresh proof, which every morning brought, of her knowing nobody
+at all.
+
+They made their appearance in the Lower Rooms; and here fortune was
+more favourable to our heroine. The master of the ceremonies introduced
+to her a very gentlemanlike young man as a partner; his name was
+Tilney. He seemed to be about four or five and twenty, was rather tall,
+had a pleasing countenance, a very intelligent and lively eye, and, if
+not quite handsome, was very near it. His address was good, and
+Catherine felt herself in high luck. There was little leisure for
+speaking while they danced; but when they were seated at tea, she found
+him as agreeable as she had already given him credit for being. He
+talked with fluency and spirit—and there was an archness and pleasantry
+in his manner which interested, though it was hardly understood by her.
+After chatting some time on such matters as naturally arose from the
+objects around them, he suddenly addressed her with—“I have hitherto
+been very remiss, madam, in the proper attentions of a partner here; I
+have not yet asked you how long you have been in Bath; whether you were
+ever here before; whether you have been at the Upper Rooms, the
+theatre, and the concert; and how you like the place altogether. I have
+been very negligent—but are you now at leisure to satisfy me in these
+particulars? If you are I will begin directly.”
+
+“You need not give yourself that trouble, sir.”
+
+“No trouble, I assure you, madam.” Then forming his features into a set
+smile, and affectedly softening his voice, he added, with a simpering
+air, “Have you been long in Bath, madam?”
+
+“About a week, sir,” replied Catherine, trying not to laugh.
+
+“Really!” with affected astonishment.
+
+“Why should you be surprised, sir?”
+
+“Why, indeed!” said he, in his natural tone. “But some emotion must
+appear to be raised by your reply, and surprise is more easily assumed,
+and not less reasonable than any other. Now let us go on. Were you
+never here before, madam?”
+
+“Never, sir.”
+
+“Indeed! Have you yet honoured the Upper Rooms?”
+
+“Yes, sir, I was there last Monday.”
+
+“Have you been to the theatre?”
+
+“Yes, sir, I was at the play on Tuesday.”
+
+“To the concert?”
+
+“Yes, sir, on Wednesday.”
+
+“And are you altogether pleased with Bath?”
+
+“Yes—I like it very well.”
+
+“Now I must give one smirk, and then we may be rational again.”
+Catherine turned away her head, not knowing whether she might venture
+to laugh. “I see what you think of me,” said he gravely—“I shall make
+but a poor figure in your journal tomorrow.”
+
+“My journal!”
+
+“Yes, I know exactly what you will say: Friday, went to the Lower
+Rooms; wore my sprigged muslin robe with blue trimmings—plain black
+shoes—appeared to much advantage; but was strangely harassed by a
+queer, half-witted man, who would make me dance with him, and
+distressed me by his nonsense.”
+
+“Indeed I shall say no such thing.”
+
+“Shall I tell you what you ought to say?”
+
+“If you please.”
+
+“I danced with a very agreeable young man, introduced by Mr. King; had
+a great deal of conversation with him—seems a most extraordinary
+genius—hope I may know more of him. _That_, madam, is what I _wish_ you
+to say.”
+
+“But, perhaps, I keep no journal.”
+
+“Perhaps you are not sitting in this room, and I am not sitting by you.
+These are points in which a doubt is equally possible. Not keep a
+journal! How are your absent cousins to understand the tenour of your
+life in Bath without one? How are the civilities and compliments of
+every day to be related as they ought to be, unless noted down every
+evening in a journal? How are your various dresses to be remembered,
+and the particular state of your complexion, and curl of your hair to
+be described in all their diversities, without having constant recourse
+to a journal? My dear madam, I am not so ignorant of young ladies’ ways
+as you wish to believe me; it is this delightful habit of journaling
+which largely contributes to form the easy style of writing for which
+ladies are so generally celebrated. Everybody allows that the talent of
+writing agreeable letters is peculiarly female. Nature may have done
+something, but I am sure it must be essentially assisted by the
+practice of keeping a journal.”
+
+“I have sometimes thought,” said Catherine, doubtingly, “whether ladies
+do write so much better letters than gentlemen! That is—I should not
+think the superiority was always on our side.”
+
+“As far as I have had opportunity of judging, it appears to me that the
+usual style of letter-writing among women is faultless, except in three
+particulars.”
+
+“And what are they?”
+
+“A general deficiency of subject, a total inattention to stops, and a
+very frequent ignorance of grammar.”
+
+“Upon my word! I need not have been afraid of disclaiming the
+compliment. You do not think too highly of us in that way.”
+
+“I should no more lay it down as a general rule that women write better
+letters than men, than that they sing better duets, or draw better
+landscapes. In every power, of which taste is the foundation,
+excellence is pretty fairly divided between the sexes.”
+
+They were interrupted by Mrs. Allen: “My dear Catherine,” said she, “do
+take this pin out of my sleeve; I am afraid it has torn a hole already;
+I shall be quite sorry if it has, for this is a favourite gown, though
+it cost but nine shillings a yard.”
+
+“That is exactly what I should have guessed it, madam,” said Mr.
+Tilney, looking at the muslin.
+
+“Do you understand muslins, sir?”
+
+“Particularly well; I always buy my own cravats, and am allowed to be
+an excellent judge; and my sister has often trusted me in the choice of
+a gown. I bought one for her the other day, and it was pronounced to be
+a prodigious bargain by every lady who saw it. I gave but five
+shillings a yard for it, and a true Indian muslin.”
+
+Mrs. Allen was quite struck by his genius. “Men commonly take so little
+notice of those things,” said she; “I can never get Mr. Allen to know
+one of my gowns from another. You must be a great comfort to your
+sister, sir.”
+
+“I hope I am, madam.”
+
+“And pray, sir, what do you think of Miss Morland’s gown?”
+
+“It is very pretty, madam,” said he, gravely examining it; “but I do
+not think it will wash well; I am afraid it will fray.”
+
+“How can you,” said Catherine, laughing, “be so—” She had almost said
+“strange.”
+
+“I am quite of your opinion, sir,” replied Mrs. Allen; “and so I told
+Miss Morland when she bought it.”
+
+“But then you know, madam, muslin always turns to some account or
+other; Miss Morland will get enough out of it for a handkerchief, or a
+cap, or a cloak. Muslin can never be said to be wasted. I have heard my
+sister say so forty times, when she has been extravagant in buying more
+than she wanted, or careless in cutting it to pieces.”
+
+“Bath is a charming place, sir; there are so many good shops here. We
+are sadly off in the country; not but what we have very good shops in
+Salisbury, but it is so far to go—eight miles is a long way; Mr. Allen
+says it is nine, measured nine; but I am sure it cannot be more than
+eight; and it is such a fag—I come back tired to death. Now, here one
+can step out of doors and get a thing in five minutes.”
+
+Mr. Tilney was polite enough to seem interested in what she said; and
+she kept him on the subject of muslins till the dancing recommenced.
+Catherine feared, as she listened to their discourse, that he indulged
+himself a little too much with the foibles of others. “What are you
+thinking of so earnestly?” said he, as they walked back to the
+ballroom; “not of your partner, I hope, for, by that shake of the head,
+your meditations are not satisfactory.”
+
+Catherine coloured, and said, “I was not thinking of anything.”
+
+“That is artful and deep, to be sure; but I had rather be told at once
+that you will not tell me.”
+
+“Well then, I will not.”
+
+“Thank you; for now we shall soon be acquainted, as I am authorized to
+tease you on this subject whenever we meet, and nothing in the world
+advances intimacy so much.”
+
+They danced again; and, when the assembly closed, parted, on the lady’s
+side at least, with a strong inclination for continuing the
+acquaintance. Whether she thought of him so much, while she drank her
+warm wine and water, and prepared herself for bed, as to dream of him
+when there, cannot be ascertained; but I hope it was no more than in a
+slight slumber, or a morning doze at most; for if it be true, as a
+celebrated writer has maintained, that no young lady can be justified
+in falling in love before the gentleman’s love is declared,[1] it must
+be very improper that a young lady should dream of a gentleman before
+the gentleman is first known to have dreamt of her. How proper Mr.
+Tilney might be as a dreamer or a lover had not yet perhaps entered Mr.
+Allen’s head, but that he was not objectionable as a common
+acquaintance for his young charge he was on inquiry satisfied; for he
+had early in the evening taken pains to know who her partner was, and
+had been assured of Mr. Tilney’s being a clergyman, and of a very
+respectable family in Gloucestershire.
+
+ [1] Vide a letter from Mr. Richardson, No. 97, Vol. ii, Rambler.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 4
+
+
+With more than usual eagerness did Catherine hasten to the pump-room
+the next day, secure within herself of seeing Mr. Tilney there before
+the morning were over, and ready to meet him with a smile; but no smile
+was demanded—Mr. Tilney did not appear. Every creature in Bath, except
+himself, was to be seen in the room at different periods of the
+fashionable hours; crowds of people were every moment passing in and
+out, up the steps and down; people whom nobody cared about, and nobody
+wanted to see; and he only was absent. “What a delightful place Bath
+is,” said Mrs. Allen as they sat down near the great clock, after
+parading the room till they were tired; “and how pleasant it would be
+if we had any acquaintance here.”
+
+This sentiment had been uttered so often in vain that Mrs. Allen had no
+particular reason to hope it would be followed with more advantage now;
+but we are told to “despair of nothing we would attain,” as “unwearied
+diligence our point would gain”; and the unwearied diligence with which
+she had every day wished for the same thing was at length to have its
+just reward, for hardly had she been seated ten minutes before a lady
+of about her own age, who was sitting by her, and had been looking at
+her attentively for several minutes, addressed her with great
+complaisance in these words: “I think, madam, I cannot be mistaken; it
+is a long time since I had the pleasure of seeing you, but is not your
+name Allen?” This question answered, as it readily was, the stranger
+pronounced hers to be Thorpe; and Mrs. Allen immediately recognized the
+features of a former schoolfellow and intimate, whom she had seen only
+once since their respective marriages, and that many years ago. Their
+joy on this meeting was very great, as well it might, since they had
+been contented to know nothing of each other for the last fifteen
+years. Compliments on good looks now passed; and, after observing how
+time had slipped away since they were last together, how little they
+had thought of meeting in Bath, and what a pleasure it was to see an
+old friend, they proceeded to make inquiries and give intelligence as
+to their families, sisters, and cousins, talking both together, far
+more ready to give than to receive information, and each hearing very
+little of what the other said. Mrs. Thorpe, however, had one great
+advantage as a talker, over Mrs. Allen, in a family of children; and
+when she expatiated on the talents of her sons, and the beauty of her
+daughters, when she related their different situations and views—that
+John was at Oxford, Edward at Merchant Taylors’, and William at sea—and
+all of them more beloved and respected in their different station than
+any other three beings ever were, Mrs. Allen had no similar information
+to give, no similar triumphs to press on the unwilling and unbelieving
+ear of her friend, and was forced to sit and appear to listen to all
+these maternal effusions, consoling herself, however, with the
+discovery, which her keen eye soon made, that the lace on Mrs. Thorpe’s
+pelisse was not half so handsome as that on her own.
+
+“Here come my dear girls,” cried Mrs. Thorpe, pointing at three
+smart-looking females who, arm in arm, were then moving towards her.
+“My dear Mrs. Allen, I long to introduce them; they will be so
+delighted to see you: the tallest is Isabella, my eldest; is not she a
+fine young woman? The others are very much admired too, but I believe
+Isabella is the handsomest.”
+
+The Miss Thorpes were introduced; and Miss Morland, who had been for a
+short time forgotten, was introduced likewise. The name seemed to
+strike them all; and, after speaking to her with great civility, the
+eldest young lady observed aloud to the rest, “How excessively like her
+brother Miss Morland is!”
+
+“The very picture of him indeed!” cried the mother—and “I should have
+known her anywhere for his sister!” was repeated by them all, two or
+three times over. For a moment Catherine was surprised; but Mrs. Thorpe
+and her daughters had scarcely begun the history of their acquaintance
+with Mr. James Morland, before she remembered that her eldest brother
+had lately formed an intimacy with a young man of his own college, of
+the name of Thorpe; and that he had spent the last week of the
+Christmas vacation with his family, near London.
+
+The whole being explained, many obliging things were said by the Miss
+Thorpes of their wish of being better acquainted with her; of being
+considered as already friends, through the friendship of their
+brothers, etc., which Catherine heard with pleasure, and answered with
+all the pretty expressions she could command; and, as the first proof
+of amity, she was soon invited to accept an arm of the eldest Miss
+Thorpe, and take a turn with her about the room. Catherine was
+delighted with this extension of her Bath acquaintance, and almost
+forgot Mr. Tilney while she talked to Miss Thorpe. Friendship is
+certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.
+
+Their conversation turned upon those subjects, of which the free
+discussion has generally much to do in perfecting a sudden intimacy
+between two young ladies: such as dress, balls, flirtations, and
+quizzes. Miss Thorpe, however, being four years older than Miss
+Morland, and at least four years better informed, had a very decided
+advantage in discussing such points; she could compare the balls of
+Bath with those of Tunbridge, its fashions with the fashions of London;
+could rectify the opinions of her new friend in many articles of
+tasteful attire; could discover a flirtation between any gentleman and
+lady who only smiled on each other; and point out a quiz through the
+thickness of a crowd. These powers received due admiration from
+Catherine, to whom they were entirely new; and the respect which they
+naturally inspired might have been too great for familiarity, had not
+the easy gaiety of Miss Thorpe’s manners, and her frequent expressions
+of delight on this acquaintance with her, softened down every feeling
+of awe, and left nothing but tender affection. Their increasing
+attachment was not to be satisfied with half a dozen turns in the
+pump-room, but required, when they all quitted it together, that Miss
+Thorpe should accompany Miss Morland to the very door of Mr. Allen’s
+house; and that they should there part with a most affectionate and
+lengthened shake of hands, after learning, to their mutual relief, that
+they should see each other across the theatre at night, and say their
+prayers in the same chapel the next morning. Catherine then ran
+directly upstairs, and watched Miss Thorpe’s progress down the street
+from the drawing-room window; admired the graceful spirit of her walk,
+the fashionable air of her figure and dress; and felt grateful, as well
+she might, for the chance which had procured her such a friend.
+
+Mrs. Thorpe was a widow, and not a very rich one; she was a
+good-humoured, well-meaning woman, and a very indulgent mother. Her
+eldest daughter had great personal beauty, and the younger ones, by
+pretending to be as handsome as their sister, imitating her air, and
+dressing in the same style, did very well.
+
+This brief account of the family is intended to supersede the necessity
+of a long and minute detail from Mrs. Thorpe herself, of her past
+adventures and sufferings, which might otherwise be expected to occupy
+the three or four following chapters; in which the worthlessness of
+lords and attorneys might be set forth, and conversations, which had
+passed twenty years before, be minutely repeated.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 5
+
+
+Catherine was not so much engaged at the theatre that evening, in
+returning the nods and smiles of Miss Thorpe, though they certainly
+claimed much of her leisure, as to forget to look with an inquiring eye
+for Mr. Tilney in every box which her eye could reach; but she looked
+in vain. Mr. Tilney was no fonder of the play than the pump-room. She
+hoped to be more fortunate the next day; and when her wishes for fine
+weather were answered by seeing a beautiful morning, she hardly felt a
+doubt of it; for a fine Sunday in Bath empties every house of its
+inhabitants, and all the world appears on such an occasion to walk
+about and tell their acquaintance what a charming day it is.
+
+As soon as divine service was over, the Thorpes and Allens eagerly
+joined each other; and after staying long enough in the pump-room to
+discover that the crowd was insupportable, and that there was not a
+genteel face to be seen, which everybody discovers every Sunday
+throughout the season, they hastened away to the Crescent, to breathe
+the fresh air of better company. Here Catherine and Isabella, arm in
+arm, again tasted the sweets of friendship in an unreserved
+conversation; they talked much, and with much enjoyment; but again was
+Catherine disappointed in her hope of reseeing her partner. He was
+nowhere to be met with; every search for him was equally unsuccessful,
+in morning lounges or evening assemblies; neither at the Upper nor
+Lower Rooms, at dressed or undressed balls, was he perceivable; nor
+among the walkers, the horsemen, or the curricle-drivers of the
+morning. His name was not in the pump-room book, and curiosity could do
+no more. He must be gone from Bath. Yet he had not mentioned that his
+stay would be so short! This sort of mysteriousness, which is always so
+becoming in a hero, threw a fresh grace in Catherine’s imagination
+around his person and manners, and increased her anxiety to know more
+of him. From the Thorpes she could learn nothing, for they had been
+only two days in Bath before they met with Mrs. Allen. It was a
+subject, however, in which she often indulged with her fair friend,
+from whom she received every possible encouragement to continue to
+think of him; and his impression on her fancy was not suffered
+therefore to weaken. Isabella was very sure that he must be a charming
+young man, and was equally sure that he must have been delighted with
+her dear Catherine, and would therefore shortly return. She liked him
+the better for being a clergyman, “for she must confess herself very
+partial to the profession”; and something like a sigh escaped her as
+she said it. Perhaps Catherine was wrong in not demanding the cause of
+that gentle emotion—but she was not experienced enough in the finesse
+of love, or the duties of friendship, to know when delicate raillery
+was properly called for, or when a confidence should be forced.
+
+Mrs. Allen was now quite happy—quite satisfied with Bath. She had found
+some acquaintance, had been so lucky too as to find in them the family
+of a most worthy old friend; and, as the completion of good fortune,
+had found these friends by no means so expensively dressed as herself.
+Her daily expressions were no longer, “I wish we had some acquaintance
+in Bath!” They were changed into, “How glad I am we have met with Mrs.
+Thorpe!” and she was as eager in promoting the intercourse of the two
+families, as her young charge and Isabella themselves could be; never
+satisfied with the day unless she spent the chief of it by the side of
+Mrs. Thorpe, in what they called conversation, but in which there was
+scarcely ever any exchange of opinion, and not often any resemblance of
+subject, for Mrs. Thorpe talked chiefly of her children, and Mrs. Allen
+of her gowns.
+
+The progress of the friendship between Catherine and Isabella was quick
+as its beginning had been warm, and they passed so rapidly through
+every gradation of increasing tenderness that there was shortly no
+fresh proof of it to be given to their friends or themselves. They
+called each other by their Christian name, were always arm in arm when
+they walked, pinned up each other’s train for the dance, and were not
+to be divided in the set; and if a rainy morning deprived them of other
+enjoyments, they were still resolute in meeting in defiance of wet and
+dirt, and shut themselves up, to read novels together. Yes, novels; for
+I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with
+novel-writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very
+performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding—joining
+with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such
+works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own
+heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over
+its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! If the heroine of one novel be
+not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect
+protection and regard? I cannot approve of it. Let us leave it to the
+reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over
+every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which
+the press now groans. Let us not desert one another; we are an injured
+body. Although our productions have afforded more extensive and
+unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the
+world, no species of composition has been so much decried. From pride,
+ignorance, or fashion, our foes are almost as many as our readers. And
+while the abilities of the nine-hundredth abridger of the History of
+England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some
+dozen lines of Milton, Pope, and Prior, with a paper from the
+Spectator, and a chapter from Sterne, are eulogized by a thousand
+pens—there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and
+undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the
+performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them.
+“I am no novel-reader—I seldom look into novels—Do not imagine that _I_
+often read novels—It is really very well for a novel.” Such is the
+common cant. “And what are you reading, Miss—?” “Oh! It is only a
+novel!” replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with
+affected indifference, or momentary shame. “It is only Cecilia, or
+Camilla, or Belinda”; or, in short, only some work in which the
+greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough
+knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties,
+the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in
+the best-chosen language. Now, had the same young lady been engaged
+with a volume of the Spectator, instead of such a work, how proudly
+would she have produced the book, and told its name; though the chances
+must be against her being occupied by any part of that voluminous
+publication, of which either the matter or manner would not disgust a
+young person of taste: the substance of its papers so often consisting
+in the statement of improbable circumstances, unnatural characters, and
+topics of conversation which no longer concern anyone living; and their
+language, too, frequently so coarse as to give no very favourable idea
+of the age that could endure it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 6
+
+
+The following conversation, which took place between the two friends in
+the pump-room one morning, after an acquaintance of eight or nine days,
+is given as a specimen of their very warm attachment, and of the
+delicacy, discretion, originality of thought, and literary taste which
+marked the reasonableness of that attachment.
+
+They met by appointment; and as Isabella had arrived nearly five
+minutes before her friend, her first address naturally was, “My dearest
+creature, what can have made you so late? I have been waiting for you
+at least this age!”
+
+“Have you, indeed! I am very sorry for it; but really I thought I was
+in very good time. It is but just one. I hope you have not been here
+long?”
+
+“Oh! These ten ages at least. I am sure I have been here this half
+hour. But now, let us go and sit down at the other end of the room, and
+enjoy ourselves. I have an hundred things to say to you. In the first
+place, I was so afraid it would rain this morning, just as I wanted to
+set off; it looked very showery, and that would have thrown me into
+agonies! Do you know, I saw the prettiest hat you can imagine, in a
+shop window in Milsom Street just now—very like yours, only with
+coquelicot ribbons instead of green; I quite longed for it. But, my
+dearest Catherine, what have you been doing with yourself all this
+morning? Have you gone on with Udolpho?”
+
+“Yes, I have been reading it ever since I woke; and I am got to the
+black veil.”
+
+“Are you, indeed? How delightful! Oh! I would not tell you what is
+behind the black veil for the world! Are not you wild to know?”
+
+“Oh! Yes, quite; what can it be? But do not tell me—I would not be told
+upon any account. I know it must be a skeleton, I am sure it is
+Laurentina’s skeleton. Oh! I am delighted with the book! I should like
+to spend my whole life in reading it. I assure you, if it had not been
+to meet you, I would not have come away from it for all the world.”
+
+“Dear creature! How much I am obliged to you; and when you have
+finished Udolpho, we will read the Italian together; and I have made
+out a list of ten or twelve more of the same kind for you.”
+
+“Have you, indeed! How glad I am! What are they all?”
+
+“I will read you their names directly; here they are, in my pocketbook.
+Castle of Wolfenbach, Clermont, Mysterious Warnings, Necromancer of the
+Black Forest, Midnight Bell, Orphan of the Rhine, and Horrid Mysteries.
+Those will last us some time.”
+
+“Yes, pretty well; but are they all horrid, are you sure they are all
+horrid?”
+
+“Yes, quite sure; for a particular friend of mine, a Miss Andrews, a
+sweet girl, one of the sweetest creatures in the world, has read every
+one of them. I wish you knew Miss Andrews, you would be delighted with
+her. She is netting herself the sweetest cloak you can conceive. I
+think her as beautiful as an angel, and I am so vexed with the men for
+not admiring her! I scold them all amazingly about it.”
+
+“Scold them! Do you scold them for not admiring her?”
+
+“Yes, that I do. There is nothing I would not do for those who are
+really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves; it is
+not my nature. My attachments are always excessively strong. I told
+Captain Hunt at one of our assemblies this winter that if he was to
+tease me all night, I would not dance with him, unless he would allow
+Miss Andrews to be as beautiful as an angel. The men think us incapable
+of real friendship, you know, and I am determined to show them the
+difference. Now, if I were to hear anybody speak slightingly of you, I
+should fire up in a moment: but that is not at all likely, for _you_
+are just the kind of girl to be a great favourite with the men.”
+
+“Oh, dear!” cried Catherine, colouring. “How can you say so?”
+
+“I know you very well; you have so much animation, which is exactly
+what Miss Andrews wants, for I must confess there is something
+amazingly insipid about her. Oh! I must tell you, that just after we
+parted yesterday, I saw a young man looking at you so earnestly—I am
+sure he is in love with you.” Catherine coloured, and disclaimed again.
+Isabella laughed. “It is very true, upon my honour, but I see how it
+is; you are indifferent to everybody’s admiration, except that of one
+gentleman, who shall be nameless. Nay, I cannot blame you”—speaking
+more seriously—“your feelings are easily understood. Where the heart is
+really attached, I know very well how little one can be pleased with
+the attention of anybody else. Everything is so insipid, so
+uninteresting, that does not relate to the beloved object! I can
+perfectly comprehend your feelings.”
+
+“But you should not persuade me that I think so very much about Mr.
+Tilney, for perhaps I may never see him again.”
+
+“Not see him again! My dearest creature, do not talk of it. I am sure
+you would be miserable if you thought so!”
+
+“No, indeed, I should not. I do not pretend to say that I was not very
+much pleased with him; but while I have Udolpho to read, I feel as if
+nobody could make me miserable. Oh! The dreadful black veil! My dear
+Isabella, I am sure there must be Laurentina’s skeleton behind it.”
+
+“It is so odd to me, that you should never have read Udolpho before;
+but I suppose Mrs. Morland objects to novels.”
+
+“No, she does not. She very often reads Sir Charles Grandison herself;
+but new books do not fall in our way.”
+
+“Sir Charles Grandison! That is an amazing horrid book, is it not? I
+remember Miss Andrews could not get through the first volume.”
+
+“It is not like Udolpho at all; but yet I think it is very
+entertaining.”
+
+“Do you indeed! You surprise me; I thought it had not been readable.
+But, my dearest Catherine, have you settled what to wear on your head
+tonight? I am determined at all events to be dressed exactly like you.
+The men take notice of _that_ sometimes, you know.”
+
+“But it does not signify if they do,” said Catherine, very innocently.
+
+“Signify! Oh, heavens! I make it a rule never to mind what they say.
+They are very often amazingly impertinent if you do not treat them with
+spirit, and make them keep their distance.”
+
+“Are they? Well, I never observed _that_. They always behave very well
+to me.”
+
+“Oh! They give themselves such airs. They are the most conceited
+creatures in the world, and think themselves of so much importance! By
+the by, though I have thought of it a hundred times, I have always
+forgot to ask you what is your favourite complexion in a man. Do you
+like them best dark or fair?”
+
+“I hardly know. I never much thought about it. Something between both,
+I think. Brown—not fair, and—and not very dark.”
+
+“Very well, Catherine. That is exactly he. I have not forgot your
+description of Mr. Tilney—‘a brown skin, with dark eyes, and rather
+dark hair.’ Well, my taste is different. I prefer light eyes, and as to
+complexion—do you know—I like a sallow better than any other. You must
+not betray me, if you should ever meet with one of your acquaintance
+answering that description.”
+
+“Betray you! What do you mean?”
+
+“Nay, do not distress me. I believe I have said too much. Let us drop
+the subject.”
+
+Catherine, in some amazement, complied, and after remaining a few
+moments silent, was on the point of reverting to what interested her at
+that time rather more than anything else in the world, Laurentina’s
+skeleton, when her friend prevented her, by saying, “For heaven’s sake!
+Let us move away from this end of the room. Do you know, there are two
+odious young men who have been staring at me this half hour. They
+really put me quite out of countenance. Let us go and look at the
+arrivals. They will hardly follow us there.”
+
+Away they walked to the book; and while Isabella examined the names, it
+was Catherine’s employment to watch the proceedings of these alarming
+young men.
+
+“They are not coming this way, are they? I hope they are not so
+impertinent as to follow us. Pray let me know if they are coming. I am
+determined I will not look up.”
+
+In a few moments Catherine, with unaffected pleasure, assured her that
+she need not be longer uneasy, as the gentlemen had just left the
+pump-room.
+
+“And which way are they gone?” said Isabella, turning hastily round.
+“One was a very good-looking young man.”
+
+“They went towards the church-yard.”
+
+“Well, I am amazingly glad I have got rid of them! And now, what say
+you to going to Edgar’s Buildings with me, and looking at my new hat?
+You said you should like to see it.”
+
+Catherine readily agreed. “Only,” she added, “perhaps we may overtake
+the two young men.”
+
+“Oh! Never mind that. If we make haste, we shall pass by them
+presently, and I am dying to show you my hat.”
+
+“But if we only wait a few minutes, there will be no danger of our
+seeing them at all.”
+
+“I shall not pay them any such compliment, I assure you. I have no
+notion of treating men with such respect. _That_ is the way to spoil
+them.”
+
+Catherine had nothing to oppose against such reasoning; and therefore,
+to show the independence of Miss Thorpe, and her resolution of humbling
+the sex, they set off immediately as fast as they could walk, in
+pursuit of the two young men.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7
+
+
+Half a minute conducted them through the pump-yard to the archway,
+opposite Union Passage; but here they were stopped. Everybody
+acquainted with Bath may remember the difficulties of crossing Cheap
+Street at this point; it is indeed a street of so impertinent a nature,
+so unfortunately connected with the great London and Oxford roads, and
+the principal inn of the city, that a day never passes in which parties
+of ladies, however important their business, whether in quest of
+pastry, millinery, or even (as in the present case) of young men, are
+not detained on one side or other by carriages, horsemen, or carts.
+This evil had been felt and lamented, at least three times a day, by
+Isabella since her residence in Bath; and she was now fated to feel and
+lament it once more, for at the very moment of coming opposite to Union
+Passage, and within view of the two gentlemen who were proceeding
+through the crowds, and threading the gutters of that interesting
+alley, they were prevented crossing by the approach of a gig, driven
+along on bad pavement by a most knowing-looking coachman with all the
+vehemence that could most fitly endanger the lives of himself, his
+companion, and his horse.
+
+“Oh, these odious gigs!” said Isabella, looking up. “How I detest
+them.” But this detestation, though so just, was of short duration, for
+she looked again and exclaimed, “Delightful! Mr. Morland and my
+brother!”
+
+“Good heaven! ’Tis James!” was uttered at the same moment by Catherine;
+and, on catching the young men’s eyes, the horse was immediately
+checked with a violence which almost threw him on his haunches, and the
+servant having now scampered up, the gentlemen jumped out, and the
+equipage was delivered to his care.
+
+Catherine, by whom this meeting was wholly unexpected, received her
+brother with the liveliest pleasure; and he, being of a very amiable
+disposition, and sincerely attached to her, gave every proof on his
+side of equal satisfaction, which he could have leisure to do, while
+the bright eyes of Miss Thorpe were incessantly challenging his notice;
+and to her his devoirs were speedily paid, with a mixture of joy and
+embarrassment which might have informed Catherine, had she been more
+expert in the development of other people’s feelings, and less simply
+engrossed by her own, that her brother thought her friend quite as
+pretty as she could do herself.
+
+John Thorpe, who in the meantime had been giving orders about the
+horses, soon joined them, and from him she directly received the amends
+which were her due; for while he slightly and carelessly touched the
+hand of Isabella, on her he bestowed a whole scrape and half a short
+bow. He was a stout young man of middling height, who, with a plain
+face and ungraceful form, seemed fearful of being too handsome unless
+he wore the dress of a groom, and too much like a gentleman unless he
+were easy where he ought to be civil, and impudent where he might be
+allowed to be easy. He took out his watch: “How long do you think we
+have been running it from Tetbury, Miss Morland?”
+
+“I do not know the distance.” Her brother told her that it was
+twenty-three miles.
+
+“_Three_-and-twenty!” cried Thorpe, “five-and-twenty if it is an inch.”
+Morland remonstrated, pleaded the authority of road-books, innkeepers,
+and milestones; but his friend disregarded them all; he had a surer
+test of distance. “I know it must be five-and-twenty,” said he, “by the
+time we have been doing it. It is now half after one; we drove out of
+the inn-yard at Tetbury as the town clock struck eleven; and I defy any
+man in England to make my horse go less than ten miles an hour in
+harness; that makes it exactly twenty-five.”
+
+“You have lost an hour,” said Morland; “it was only ten o’clock when we
+came from Tetbury.”
+
+“Ten o’clock! It was eleven, upon my soul! I counted every stroke. This
+brother of yours would persuade me out of my senses, Miss Morland; do
+but look at my horse; did you ever see an animal so made for speed in
+your life?” (The servant had just mounted the carriage and was driving
+off.) “Such true blood! Three hours and and a half indeed coming only
+three and twenty miles! Look at that creature, and suppose it possible
+if you can.”
+
+“He _does_ look very hot, to be sure.”
+
+“Hot! He had not turned a hair till we came to Walcot Church; but look
+at his forehand; look at his loins; only see how he moves; that horse
+_cannot_ go less than ten miles an hour: tie his legs and he will get
+on. What do you think of my gig, Miss Morland? A neat one, is not it?
+Well hung; town-built; I have not had it a month. It was built for a
+Christchurch man, a friend of mine, a very good sort of fellow; he ran
+it a few weeks, till, I believe, it was convenient to have done with
+it. I happened just then to be looking out for some light thing of the
+kind, though I had pretty well determined on a curricle too; but I
+chanced to meet him on Magdalen Bridge, as he was driving into Oxford,
+last term: ‘Ah! Thorpe,’ said he, ‘do you happen to want such a little
+thing as this? It is a capital one of the kind, but I am cursed tired
+of it.’ ‘Oh! D—,’ said I; ‘I am your man; what do you ask?’ And how
+much do you think he did, Miss Morland?”
+
+“I am sure I cannot guess at all.”
+
+“Curricle-hung, you see; seat, trunk, sword-case, splashing-board,
+lamps, silver moulding, all you see complete; the iron-work as good as
+new, or better. He asked fifty guineas; I closed with him directly,
+threw down the money, and the carriage was mine.”
+
+“And I am sure,” said Catherine, “I know so little of such things that
+I cannot judge whether it was cheap or dear.”
+
+“Neither one nor t’other; I might have got it for less, I dare say; but
+I hate haggling, and poor Freeman wanted cash.”
+
+“That was very good-natured of you,” said Catherine, quite pleased.
+
+“Oh! D—— it, when one has the means of doing a kind thing by a friend,
+I hate to be pitiful.”
+
+An inquiry now took place into the intended movements of the young
+ladies; and, on finding whither they were going, it was decided that
+the gentlemen should accompany them to Edgar’s Buildings, and pay their
+respects to Mrs. Thorpe. James and Isabella led the way; and so well
+satisfied was the latter with her lot, so contentedly was she
+endeavouring to ensure a pleasant walk to him who brought the double
+recommendation of being her brother’s friend, and her friend’s brother,
+so pure and uncoquettish were her feelings, that, though they overtook
+and passed the two offending young men in Milsom Street, she was so far
+from seeking to attract their notice, that she looked back at them only
+three times.
+
+John Thorpe kept of course with Catherine, and, after a few minutes’
+silence, renewed the conversation about his gig. “You will find,
+however, Miss Morland, it would be reckoned a cheap thing by some
+people, for I might have sold it for ten guineas more the next day;
+Jackson, of Oriel, bid me sixty at once; Morland was with me at the
+time.”
+
+“Yes,” said Morland, who overheard this; “but you forget that your
+horse was included.”
+
+“My horse! Oh, d—— it! I would not sell my horse for a hundred. Are you
+fond of an open carriage, Miss Morland?”
+
+“Yes, very; I have hardly ever an opportunity of being in one; but I am
+particularly fond of it.”
+
+“I am glad of it; I will drive you out in mine every day.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Catherine, in some distress, from a doubt of the
+propriety of accepting such an offer.
+
+“I will drive you up Lansdown Hill tomorrow.”
+
+“Thank you; but will not your horse want rest?”
+
+“Rest! He has only come three and twenty miles today; all nonsense;
+nothing ruins horses so much as rest; nothing knocks them up so soon.
+No, no; I shall exercise mine at the average of four hours every day
+while I am here.”
+
+“Shall you indeed!” said Catherine very seriously. “That will be forty
+miles a day.”
+
+“Forty! Aye, fifty, for what I care. Well, I will drive you up Lansdown
+tomorrow; mind, I am engaged.”
+
+“How delightful that will be!” cried Isabella, turning round. “My
+dearest Catherine, I quite envy you; but I am afraid, brother, you will
+not have room for a third.”
+
+“A third indeed! No, no; I did not come to Bath to drive my sisters
+about; that would be a good joke, faith! Morland must take care of
+you.”
+
+This brought on a dialogue of civilities between the other two; but
+Catherine heard neither the particulars nor the result. Her companion’s
+discourse now sunk from its hitherto animated pitch to nothing more
+than a short decisive sentence of praise or condemnation on the face of
+every woman they met; and Catherine, after listening and agreeing as
+long as she could, with all the civility and deference of the youthful
+female mind, fearful of hazarding an opinion of its own in opposition
+to that of a self-assured man, especially where the beauty of her own
+sex is concerned, ventured at length to vary the subject by a question
+which had been long uppermost in her thoughts; it was, “Have you ever
+read Udolpho, Mr. Thorpe?”
+
+“Udolpho! Oh, Lord! Not I; I never read novels; I have something else
+to do.”
+
+Catherine, humbled and ashamed, was going to apologize for her
+question, but he prevented her by saying, “Novels are all so full of
+nonsense and stuff; there has not been a tolerably decent one come out
+since Tom Jones, except The Monk; I read that t’other day; but as for
+all the others, they are the stupidest things in creation.”
+
+“I think you must like Udolpho, if you were to read it; it is so very
+interesting.”
+
+“Not I, faith! No, if I read any, it shall be Mrs. Radcliffe’s; her
+novels are amusing enough; they are worth reading; some fun and nature
+in _them_.”
+
+“Udolpho was written by Mrs. Radcliffe,” said Catherine, with some
+hesitation, from the fear of mortifying him.
+
+“No sure; was it? Aye, I remember, so it was; I was thinking of that
+other stupid book, written by that woman they make such a fuss about,
+she who married the French emigrant.”
+
+“I suppose you mean Camilla?”
+
+“Yes, that’s the book; such unnatural stuff! An old man playing at
+see-saw, I took up the first volume once and looked it over, but I soon
+found it would not do; indeed I guessed what sort of stuff it must be
+before I saw it: as soon as I heard she had married an emigrant, I was
+sure I should never be able to get through it.”
+
+“I have never read it.”
+
+“You had no loss, I assure you; it is the horridest nonsense you can
+imagine; there is nothing in the world in it but an old man’s playing
+at see-saw and learning Latin; upon my soul there is not.”
+
+This critique, the justness of which was unfortunately lost on poor
+Catherine, brought them to the door of Mrs. Thorpe’s lodgings, and the
+feelings of the discerning and unprejudiced reader of Camilla gave way
+to the feelings of the dutiful and affectionate son, as they met Mrs.
+Thorpe, who had descried them from above, in the passage. “Ah, Mother!
+How do you do?” said he, giving her a hearty shake of the hand. “Where
+did you get that quiz of a hat? It makes you look like an old witch.
+Here is Morland and I come to stay a few days with you, so you must
+look out for a couple of good beds somewhere near.” And this address
+seemed to satisfy all the fondest wishes of the mother’s heart, for she
+received him with the most delighted and exulting affection. On his two
+younger sisters he then bestowed an equal portion of his fraternal
+tenderness, for he asked each of them how they did, and observed that
+they both looked very ugly.
+
+These manners did not please Catherine; but he was James’s friend and
+Isabella’s brother; and her judgment was further bought off by
+Isabella’s assuring her, when they withdrew to see the new hat, that
+John thought her the most charming girl in the world, and by John’s
+engaging her before they parted to dance with him that evening. Had she
+been older or vainer, such attacks might have done little; but, where
+youth and diffidence are united, it requires uncommon steadiness of
+reason to resist the attraction of being called the most charming girl
+in the world, and of being so very early engaged as a partner; and the
+consequence was that, when the two Morlands, after sitting an hour with
+the Thorpes, set off to walk together to Mr. Allen’s, and James, as the
+door was closed on them, said, “Well, Catherine, how do you like my
+friend Thorpe?” instead of answering, as she probably would have done,
+had there been no friendship and no flattery in the case, “I do not
+like him at all,” she directly replied, “I like him very much; he seems
+very agreeable.”
+
+“He is as good-natured a fellow as ever lived; a little of a rattle;
+but that will recommend him to your sex, I believe: and how do you like
+the rest of the family?”
+
+“Very, very much indeed: Isabella particularly.”
+
+“I am very glad to hear you say so; she is just the kind of young woman
+I could wish to see you attached to; she has so much good sense, and is
+so thoroughly unaffected and amiable; I always wanted you to know her;
+and she seems very fond of you. She said the highest things in your
+praise that could possibly be; and the praise of such a girl as Miss
+Thorpe even you, Catherine,” taking her hand with affection, “may be
+proud of.”
+
+“Indeed I am,” she replied; “I love her exceedingly, and am delighted
+to find that you like her too. You hardly mentioned anything of her
+when you wrote to me after your visit there.”
+
+“Because I thought I should soon see you myself. I hope you will be a
+great deal together while you are in Bath. She is a most amiable girl;
+such a superior understanding! How fond all the family are of her; she
+is evidently the general favourite; and how much she must be admired in
+such a place as this—is not she?”
+
+“Yes, very much indeed, I fancy; Mr. Allen thinks her the prettiest
+girl in Bath.”
+
+“I dare say he does; and I do not know any man who is a better judge of
+beauty than Mr. Allen. I need not ask you whether you are happy here,
+my dear Catherine; with such a companion and friend as Isabella Thorpe,
+it would be impossible for you to be otherwise; and the Allens, I am
+sure, are very kind to you?”
+
+“Yes, very kind; I never was so happy before; and now you are come it
+will be more delightful than ever; how good it is of you to come so far
+on purpose to see _me_.”
+
+James accepted this tribute of gratitude, and qualified his conscience
+for accepting it too, by saying with perfect sincerity, “Indeed,
+Catherine, I love you dearly.”
+
+Inquiries and communications concerning brothers and sisters, the
+situation of some, the growth of the rest, and other family matters now
+passed between them, and continued, with only one small digression on
+James’s part, in praise of Miss Thorpe, till they reached Pulteney
+Street, where he was welcomed with great kindness by Mr. and Mrs.
+Allen, invited by the former to dine with them, and summoned by the
+latter to guess the price and weigh the merits of a new muff and
+tippet. A pre-engagement in Edgar’s Buildings prevented his accepting
+the invitation of one friend, and obliged him to hurry away as soon as
+he had satisfied the demands of the other. The time of the two parties
+uniting in the Octagon Room being correctly adjusted, Catherine was
+then left to the luxury of a raised, restless, and frightened
+imagination over the pages of Udolpho, lost from all worldly concerns
+of dressing and dinner, incapable of soothing Mrs. Allen’s fears on the
+delay of an expected dressmaker, and having only one minute in sixty to
+bestow even on the reflection of her own felicity, in being already
+engaged for the evening.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 8
+
+
+In spite of Udolpho and the dressmaker, however, the party from
+Pulteney Street reached the Upper Rooms in very good time. The Thorpes
+and James Morland were there only two minutes before them; and Isabella
+having gone through the usual ceremonial of meeting her friend with the
+most smiling and affectionate haste, of admiring the set of her gown,
+and envying the curl of her hair, they followed their chaperones, arm
+in arm, into the ballroom, whispering to each other whenever a thought
+occurred, and supplying the place of many ideas by a squeeze of the
+hand or a smile of affection.
+
+The dancing began within a few minutes after they were seated; and
+James, who had been engaged quite as long as his sister, was very
+importunate with Isabella to stand up; but John was gone into the
+card-room to speak to a friend, and nothing, she declared, should
+induce her to join the set before her dear Catherine could join it too.
+“I assure you,” said she, “I would not stand up without your dear
+sister for all the world; for if I did we should certainly be separated
+the whole evening.” Catherine accepted this kindness with gratitude,
+and they continued as they were for three minutes longer, when
+Isabella, who had been talking to James on the other side of her,
+turned again to his sister and whispered, “My dear creature, I am
+afraid I must leave you, your brother is so amazingly impatient to
+begin; I know you will not mind my going away, and I dare say John will
+be back in a moment, and then you may easily find me out.” Catherine,
+though a little disappointed, had too much good nature to make any
+opposition, and the others rising up, Isabella had only time to press
+her friend’s hand and say, “Good-bye, my dear love,” before they
+hurried off. The younger Miss Thorpes being also dancing, Catherine was
+left to the mercy of Mrs. Thorpe and Mrs. Allen, between whom she now
+remained. She could not help being vexed at the non-appearance of Mr.
+Thorpe, for she not only longed to be dancing, but was likewise aware
+that, as the real dignity of her situation could not be known, she was
+sharing with the scores of other young ladies still sitting down all
+the discredit of wanting a partner. To be disgraced in the eye of the
+world, to wear the appearance of infamy while her heart is all purity,
+her actions all innocence, and the misconduct of another the true
+source of her debasement, is one of those circumstances which
+peculiarly belong to the heroine’s life, and her fortitude under it
+what particularly dignifies her character. Catherine had fortitude too;
+she suffered, but no murmur passed her lips.
+
+From this state of humiliation, she was roused, at the end of ten
+minutes, to a pleasanter feeling, by seeing, not Mr. Thorpe, but Mr.
+Tilney, within three yards of the place where they sat; he seemed to be
+moving that way, but he did not see her, and therefore the smile and
+the blush, which his sudden reappearance raised in Catherine, passed
+away without sullying her heroic importance. He looked as handsome and
+as lively as ever, and was talking with interest to a fashionable and
+pleasing-looking young woman, who leant on his arm, and whom Catherine
+immediately guessed to be his sister; thus unthinkingly throwing away a
+fair opportunity of considering him lost to her forever, by being
+married already. But guided only by what was simple and probable, it
+had never entered her head that Mr. Tilney could be married; he had not
+behaved, he had not talked, like the married men to whom she had been
+used; he had never mentioned a wife, and he had acknowledged a sister.
+From these circumstances sprang the instant conclusion of his sister’s
+now being by his side; and therefore, instead of turning of a deathlike
+paleness and falling in a fit on Mrs. Allen’s bosom, Catherine sat
+erect, in the perfect use of her senses, and with cheeks only a little
+redder than usual.
+
+Mr. Tilney and his companion, who continued, though slowly, to
+approach, were immediately preceded by a lady, an acquaintance of Mrs.
+Thorpe; and this lady stopping to speak to her, they, as belonging to
+her, stopped likewise, and Catherine, catching Mr. Tilney’s eye,
+instantly received from him the smiling tribute of recognition. She
+returned it with pleasure, and then advancing still nearer, he spoke
+both to her and Mrs. Allen, by whom he was very civilly acknowledged.
+“I am very happy to see you again, sir, indeed; I was afraid you had
+left Bath.” He thanked her for her fears, and said that he had quitted
+it for a week, on the very morning after his having had the pleasure of
+seeing her.
+
+“Well, sir, and I dare say you are not sorry to be back again, for it
+is just the place for young people—and indeed for everybody else too. I
+tell Mr. Allen, when he talks of being sick of it, that I am sure he
+should not complain, for it is so very agreeable a place, that it is
+much better to be here than at home at this dull time of year. I tell
+him he is quite in luck to be sent here for his health.”
+
+“And I hope, madam, that Mr. Allen will be obliged to like the place,
+from finding it of service to him.”
+
+“Thank you, sir. I have no doubt that he will. A neighbour of ours, Dr.
+Skinner, was here for his health last winter, and came away quite
+stout.”
+
+“That circumstance must give great encouragement.”
+
+“Yes, sir—and Dr. Skinner and his family were here three months; so I
+tell Mr. Allen he must not be in a hurry to get away.”
+
+Here they were interrupted by a request from Mrs. Thorpe to Mrs. Allen,
+that she would move a little to accommodate Mrs. Hughes and Miss Tilney
+with seats, as they had agreed to join their party. This was
+accordingly done, Mr. Tilney still continuing standing before them; and
+after a few minutes’ consideration, he asked Catherine to dance with
+him. This compliment, delightful as it was, produced severe
+mortification to the lady; and in giving her denial, she expressed her
+sorrow on the occasion so very much as if she really felt it, that had
+Thorpe, who joined her just afterwards, been half a minute earlier, he
+might have thought her sufferings rather too acute. The very easy
+manner in which he then told her that he had kept her waiting did not
+by any means reconcile her more to her lot; nor did the particulars
+which he entered into while they were standing up, of the horses and
+dogs of the friend whom he had just left, and of a proposed exchange of
+terriers between them, interest her so much as to prevent her looking
+very often towards that part of the room where she had left Mr. Tilney.
+Of her dear Isabella, to whom she particularly longed to point out that
+gentleman, she could see nothing. They were in different sets. She was
+separated from all her party, and away from all her acquaintance; one
+mortification succeeded another, and from the whole she deduced this
+useful lesson, that to go previously engaged to a ball does not
+necessarily increase either the dignity or enjoyment of a young lady.
+From such a moralizing strain as this, she was suddenly roused by a
+touch on the shoulder, and turning round, perceived Mrs. Hughes
+directly behind her, attended by Miss Tilney and a gentleman. “I beg
+your pardon, Miss Morland,” said she, “for this liberty—but I cannot
+anyhow get to Miss Thorpe, and Mrs. Thorpe said she was sure you would
+not have the least objection to letting in this young lady by you.”
+Mrs. Hughes could not have applied to any creature in the room more
+happy to oblige her than Catherine. The young ladies were introduced to
+each other, Miss Tilney expressing a proper sense of such goodness,
+Miss Morland with the real delicacy of a generous mind making light of
+the obligation; and Mrs. Hughes, satisfied with having so respectably
+settled her young charge, returned to her party.
+
+Miss Tilney had a good figure, a pretty face, and a very agreeable
+countenance; and her air, though it had not all the decided pretension,
+the resolute stylishness of Miss Thorpe’s, had more real elegance. Her
+manners showed good sense and good breeding; they were neither shy nor
+affectedly open; and she seemed capable of being young, attractive, and
+at a ball without wanting to fix the attention of every man near her,
+and without exaggerated feelings of ecstatic delight or inconceivable
+vexation on every little trifling occurrence. Catherine, interested at
+once by her appearance and her relationship to Mr. Tilney, was desirous
+of being acquainted with her, and readily talked therefore whenever she
+could think of anything to say, and had courage and leisure for saying
+it. But the hindrance thrown in the way of a very speedy intimacy, by
+the frequent want of one or more of these requisites, prevented their
+doing more than going through the first rudiments of an acquaintance,
+by informing themselves how well the other liked Bath, how much she
+admired its buildings and surrounding country, whether she drew, or
+played, or sang, and whether she was fond of riding on horseback.
+
+The two dances were scarcely concluded before Catherine found her arm
+gently seized by her faithful Isabella, who in great spirits exclaimed,
+“At last I have got you. My dearest creature, I have been looking for
+you this hour. What could induce you to come into this set, when you
+knew I was in the other? I have been quite wretched without you.”
+
+“My dear Isabella, how was it possible for me to get at you? I could
+not even see where you were.”
+
+“So I told your brother all the time—but he would not believe me. Do go
+and see for her, Mr. Morland, said I—but all in vain—he would not stir
+an inch. Was not it so, Mr. Morland? But you men are all so
+immoderately lazy! I have been scolding him to such a degree, my dear
+Catherine, you would be quite amazed. You know I never stand upon
+ceremony with such people.”
+
+“Look at that young lady with the white beads round her head,”
+whispered Catherine, detaching her friend from James. “It is Mr.
+Tilney’s sister.”
+
+“Oh! Heavens! You don’t say so! Let me look at her this moment. What a
+delightful girl! I never saw anything half so beautiful! But where is
+her all-conquering brother? Is he in the room? Point him out to me this
+instant, if he is. I die to see him. Mr. Morland, you are not to
+listen. We are not talking about you.”
+
+“But what is all this whispering about? What is going on?”
+
+“There now, I knew how it would be. You men have such restless
+curiosity! Talk of the curiosity of women, indeed! ’Tis nothing. But be
+satisfied, for you are not to know anything at all of the matter.”
+
+“And is that likely to satisfy me, do you think?”
+
+“Well, I declare I never knew anything like you. What can it signify to
+you, what we are talking of. Perhaps we are talking about you;
+therefore I would advise you not to listen, or you may happen to hear
+something not very agreeable.”
+
+In this commonplace chatter, which lasted some time, the original
+subject seemed entirely forgotten; and though Catherine was very well
+pleased to have it dropped for a while, she could not avoid a little
+suspicion at the total suspension of all Isabella’s impatient desire to
+see Mr. Tilney. When the orchestra struck up a fresh dance, James would
+have led his fair partner away, but she resisted. “I tell you, Mr.
+Morland,” she cried, “I would not do such a thing for all the world.
+How can you be so teasing; only conceive, my dear Catherine, what your
+brother wants me to do. He wants me to dance with him again, though I
+tell him that it is a most improper thing, and entirely against the
+rules. It would make us the talk of the place, if we were not to change
+partners.”
+
+“Upon my honour,” said James, “in these public assemblies, it is as
+often done as not.”
+
+“Nonsense, how can you say so? But when you men have a point to carry,
+you never stick at anything. My sweet Catherine, do support me;
+persuade your brother how impossible it is. Tell him that it would
+quite shock you to see me do such a thing; now would not it?”
+
+“No, not at all; but if you think it wrong, you had much better
+change.”
+
+“There,” cried Isabella, “you hear what your sister says, and yet you
+will not mind her. Well, remember that it is not my fault, if we set
+all the old ladies in Bath in a bustle. Come along, my dearest
+Catherine, for heaven’s sake, and stand by me.” And off they went, to
+regain their former place. John Thorpe, in the meanwhile, had walked
+away; and Catherine, ever willing to give Mr. Tilney an opportunity of
+repeating the agreeable request which had already flattered her once,
+made her way to Mrs. Allen and Mrs. Thorpe as fast as she could, in the
+hope of finding him still with them—a hope which, when it proved to be
+fruitless, she felt to have been highly unreasonable. “Well, my dear,”
+said Mrs. Thorpe, impatient for praise of her son, “I hope you have had
+an agreeable partner.”
+
+“Very agreeable, madam.”
+
+“I am glad of it. John has charming spirits, has not he?”
+
+“Did you meet Mr. Tilney, my dear?” said Mrs. Allen.
+
+“No, where is he?”
+
+“He was with us just now, and said he was so tired of lounging about,
+that he was resolved to go and dance; so I thought perhaps he would ask
+you, if he met with you.”
+
+“Where can he be?” said Catherine, looking round; but she had not
+looked round long before she saw him leading a young lady to the dance.
+
+“Ah! He has got a partner; I wish he had asked _you_,” said Mrs. Allen;
+and after a short silence, she added, “he is a very agreeable young
+man.”
+
+“Indeed he is, Mrs. Allen,” said Mrs. Thorpe, smiling complacently; “I
+must say it, though I _am_ his mother, that there is not a more
+agreeable young man in the world.”
+
+This inapplicable answer might have been too much for the comprehension
+of many; but it did not puzzle Mrs. Allen, for after only a moment’s
+consideration, she said, in a whisper to Catherine, “I dare say she
+thought I was speaking of her son.”
+
+Catherine was disappointed and vexed. She seemed to have missed by so
+little the very object she had had in view; and this persuasion did not
+incline her to a very gracious reply, when John Thorpe came up to her
+soon afterwards and said, “Well, Miss Morland, I suppose you and I are
+to stand up and jig it together again.”
+
+“Oh, no; I am much obliged to you, our two dances are over; and,
+besides, I am tired, and do not mean to dance any more.”
+
+“Do not you? Then let us walk about and quiz people. Come along with
+me, and I will show you the four greatest quizzers in the room; my two
+younger sisters and their partners. I have been laughing at them this
+half hour.”
+
+Again Catherine excused herself; and at last he walked off to quiz his
+sisters by himself. The rest of the evening she found very dull; Mr.
+Tilney was drawn away from their party at tea, to attend that of his
+partner; Miss Tilney, though belonging to it, did not sit near her, and
+James and Isabella were so much engaged in conversing together that the
+latter had no leisure to bestow more on her friend than one smile, one
+squeeze, and one “dearest Catherine.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 9
+
+
+The progress of Catherine’s unhappiness from the events of the evening
+was as follows. It appeared first in a general dissatisfaction with
+everybody about her, while she remained in the rooms, which speedily
+brought on considerable weariness and a violent desire to go home.
+This, on arriving in Pulteney Street, took the direction of
+extraordinary hunger, and when that was appeased, changed into an
+earnest longing to be in bed; such was the extreme point of her
+distress; for when there she immediately fell into a sound sleep which
+lasted nine hours, and from which she awoke perfectly revived, in
+excellent spirits, with fresh hopes and fresh schemes. The first wish
+of her heart was to improve her acquaintance with Miss Tilney, and
+almost her first resolution, to seek her for that purpose, in the
+pump-room at noon. In the pump-room, one so newly arrived in Bath must
+be met with, and that building she had already found so favourable for
+the discovery of female excellence, and the completion of female
+intimacy, so admirably adapted for secret discourses and unlimited
+confidence, that she was most reasonably encouraged to expect another
+friend from within its walls. Her plan for the morning thus settled,
+she sat quietly down to her book after breakfast, resolving to remain
+in the same place and the same employment till the clock struck one;
+and from habitude very little incommoded by the remarks and
+ejaculations of Mrs. Allen, whose vacancy of mind and incapacity for
+thinking were such, that as she never talked a great deal, so she could
+never be entirely silent; and, therefore, while she sat at her work, if
+she lost her needle or broke her thread, if she heard a carriage in the
+street, or saw a speck upon her gown, she must observe it aloud,
+whether there were anyone at leisure to answer her or not. At about
+half past twelve, a remarkably loud rap drew her in haste to the
+window, and scarcely had she time to inform Catherine of there being
+two open carriages at the door, in the first only a servant, her
+brother driving Miss Thorpe in the second, before John Thorpe came
+running upstairs, calling out, “Well, Miss Morland, here I am. Have you
+been waiting long? We could not come before; the old devil of a
+coachmaker was such an eternity finding out a thing fit to be got into,
+and now it is ten thousand to one but they break down before we are out
+of the street. How do you do, Mrs. Allen? A famous ball last night, was
+not it? Come, Miss Morland, be quick, for the others are in a
+confounded hurry to be off. They want to get their tumble over.”
+
+“What do you mean?” said Catherine. “Where are you all going to?”
+
+“Going to? Why, you have not forgot our engagement! Did not we agree
+together to take a drive this morning? What a head you have! We are
+going up Claverton Down.”
+
+“Something was said about it, I remember,” said Catherine, looking at
+Mrs. Allen for her opinion; “but really I did not expect you.”
+
+“Not expect me! That’s a good one! And what a dust you would have made,
+if I had not come.”
+
+Catherine’s silent appeal to her friend, meanwhile, was entirely thrown
+away, for Mrs. Allen, not being at all in the habit of conveying any
+expression herself by a look, was not aware of its being ever intended
+by anybody else; and Catherine, whose desire of seeing Miss Tilney
+again could at that moment bear a short delay in favour of a drive, and
+who thought there could be no impropriety in her going with Mr. Thorpe,
+as Isabella was going at the same time with James, was therefore
+obliged to speak plainer. “Well, ma’am, what do you say to it? Can you
+spare me for an hour or two? Shall I go?”
+
+“Do just as you please, my dear,” replied Mrs. Allen, with the most
+placid indifference. Catherine took the advice, and ran off to get
+ready. In a very few minutes she reappeared, having scarcely allowed
+the two others time enough to get through a few short sentences in her
+praise, after Thorpe had procured Mrs. Allen’s admiration of his gig;
+and then receiving her friend’s parting good wishes, they both hurried
+downstairs. “My dearest creature,” cried Isabella, to whom the duty of
+friendship immediately called her before she could get into the
+carriage, “you have been at least three hours getting ready. I was
+afraid you were ill. What a delightful ball we had last night. I have a
+thousand things to say to you; but make haste and get in, for I long to
+be off.”
+
+Catherine followed her orders and turned away, but not too soon to hear
+her friend exclaim aloud to James, “What a sweet girl she is! I quite
+dote on her.”
+
+“You will not be frightened, Miss Morland,” said Thorpe, as he handed
+her in, “if my horse should dance about a little at first setting off.
+He will, most likely, give a plunge or two, and perhaps take the rest
+for a minute; but he will soon know his master. He is full of spirits,
+playful as can be, but there is no vice in him.”
+
+Catherine did not think the portrait a very inviting one, but it was
+too late to retreat, and she was too young to own herself frightened;
+so, resigning herself to her fate, and trusting to the animal’s boasted
+knowledge of its owner, she sat peaceably down, and saw Thorpe sit down
+by her. Everything being then arranged, the servant who stood at the
+horse’s head was bid in an important voice “to let him go,” and off
+they went in the quietest manner imaginable, without a plunge or a
+caper, or anything like one. Catherine, delighted at so happy an
+escape, spoke her pleasure aloud with grateful surprise; and her
+companion immediately made the matter perfectly simple by assuring her
+that it was entirely owing to the peculiarly judicious manner in which
+he had then held the reins, and the singular discernment and dexterity
+with which he had directed his whip. Catherine, though she could not
+help wondering that with such perfect command of his horse, he should
+think it necessary to alarm her with a relation of its tricks,
+congratulated herself sincerely on being under the care of so excellent
+a coachman; and perceiving that the animal continued to go on in the
+same quiet manner, without showing the smallest propensity towards any
+unpleasant vivacity, and (considering its inevitable pace was ten miles
+an hour) by no means alarmingly fast, gave herself up to all the
+enjoyment of air and exercise of the most invigorating kind, in a fine
+mild day of February, with the consciousness of safety. A silence of
+several minutes succeeded their first short dialogue; it was broken by
+Thorpe’s saying very abruptly, “Old Allen is as rich as a Jew—is not
+he?” Catherine did not understand him—and he repeated his question,
+adding in explanation, “Old Allen, the man you are with.”
+
+“Oh! Mr. Allen, you mean. Yes, I believe, he is very rich.”
+
+“And no children at all?”
+
+“No—not any.”
+
+“A famous thing for his next heirs. He is _your_ godfather, is not he?”
+
+“My godfather! No.”
+
+“But you are always very much with them.”
+
+“Yes, very much.”
+
+“Aye, that is what I meant. He seems a good kind of old fellow enough,
+and has lived very well in his time, I dare say; he is not gouty for
+nothing. Does he drink his bottle a day now?”
+
+“His bottle a day! No. Why should you think of such a thing? He is a
+very temperate man, and you could not fancy him in liquor last night?”
+
+“Lord help you! You women are always thinking of men’s being in liquor.
+Why, you do not suppose a man is overset by a bottle? I am sure of
+_this_—that if everybody was to drink their bottle a day, there would
+not be half the disorders in the world there are now. It would be a
+famous good thing for us all.”
+
+“I cannot believe it.”
+
+“Oh! Lord, it would be the saving of thousands. There is not the
+hundredth part of the wine consumed in this kingdom that there ought to
+be. Our foggy climate wants help.”
+
+“And yet I have heard that there is a great deal of wine drunk in
+Oxford.”
+
+“Oxford! There is no drinking at Oxford now, I assure you. Nobody
+drinks there. You would hardly meet with a man who goes beyond his four
+pints at the utmost. Now, for instance, it was reckoned a remarkable
+thing, at the last party in my rooms, that upon an average we cleared
+about five pints a head. It was looked upon as something out of the
+common way. _Mine_ is famous good stuff, to be sure. You would not
+often meet with anything like it in Oxford—and that may account for it.
+But this will just give you a notion of the general rate of drinking
+there.”
+
+“Yes, it does give a notion,” said Catherine warmly, “and that is, that
+you all drink a great deal more wine than I thought you did. However, I
+am sure James does not drink so much.”
+
+This declaration brought on a loud and overpowering reply, of which no
+part was very distinct, except the frequent exclamations, amounting
+almost to oaths, which adorned it, and Catherine was left, when it
+ended, with rather a strengthened belief of there being a great deal of
+wine drunk in Oxford, and the same happy conviction of her brother’s
+comparative sobriety.
+
+Thorpe’s ideas then all reverted to the merits of his own equipage, and
+she was called on to admire the spirit and freedom with which his horse
+moved along, and the ease which his paces, as well as the excellence of
+the springs, gave the motion of the carriage. She followed him in all
+his admiration as well as she could. To go before or beyond him was
+impossible. His knowledge and her ignorance of the subject, his
+rapidity of expression, and her diffidence of herself put that out of
+her power; she could strike out nothing new in commendation, but she
+readily echoed whatever he chose to assert, and it was finally settled
+between them without any difficulty that his equipage was altogether
+the most complete of its kind in England, his carriage the neatest, his
+horse the best goer, and himself the best coachman. “You do not really
+think, Mr. Thorpe,” said Catherine, venturing after some time to
+consider the matter as entirely decided, and to offer some little
+variation on the subject, “that James’s gig will break down?”
+
+“Break down! Oh! Lord! Did you ever see such a little tittuppy thing in
+your life? There is not a sound piece of iron about it. The wheels have
+been fairly worn out these ten years at least—and as for the body! Upon
+my soul, you might shake it to pieces yourself with a touch. It is the
+most devilish little rickety business I ever beheld! Thank God! we have
+got a better. I would not be bound to go two miles in it for fifty
+thousand pounds.”
+
+“Good heavens!” cried Catherine, quite frightened. “Then pray let us
+turn back; they will certainly meet with an accident if we go on. Do
+let us turn back, Mr. Thorpe; stop and speak to my brother, and tell
+him how very unsafe it is.”
+
+“Unsafe! Oh, lord! What is there in that? They will only get a roll if
+it does break down; and there is plenty of dirt; it will be excellent
+falling. Oh, curse it! The carriage is safe enough, if a man knows how
+to drive it; a thing of that sort in good hands will last above twenty
+years after it is fairly worn out. Lord bless you! I would undertake
+for five pounds to drive it to York and back again, without losing a
+nail.”
+
+Catherine listened with astonishment; she knew not how to reconcile two
+such very different accounts of the same thing; for she had not been
+brought up to understand the propensities of a rattle, nor to know to
+how many idle assertions and impudent falsehoods the excess of vanity
+will lead. Her own family were plain, matter-of-fact people who seldom
+aimed at wit of any kind; her father, at the utmost, being contented
+with a pun, and her mother with a proverb; they were not in the habit
+therefore of telling lies to increase their importance, or of asserting
+at one moment what they would contradict the next. She reflected on the
+affair for some time in much perplexity, and was more than once on the
+point of requesting from Mr. Thorpe a clearer insight into his real
+opinion on the subject; but she checked herself, because it appeared to
+her that he did not excel in giving those clearer insights, in making
+those things plain which he had before made ambiguous; and, joining to
+this, the consideration that he would not really suffer his sister and
+his friend to be exposed to a danger from which he might easily
+preserve them, she concluded at last that he must know the carriage to
+be in fact perfectly safe, and therefore would alarm herself no longer.
+By him the whole matter seemed entirely forgotten; and all the rest of
+his conversation, or rather talk, began and ended with himself and his
+own concerns. He told her of horses which he had bought for a trifle
+and sold for incredible sums; of racing matches, in which his judgment
+had infallibly foretold the winner; of shooting parties, in which he
+had killed more birds (though without having one good shot) than all
+his companions together; and described to her some famous day’s sport,
+with the fox-hounds, in which his foresight and skill in directing the
+dogs had repaired the mistakes of the most experienced huntsman, and in
+which the boldness of his riding, though it had never endangered his
+own life for a moment, had been constantly leading others into
+difficulties, which he calmly concluded had broken the necks of many.
+
+Little as Catherine was in the habit of judging for herself, and
+unfixed as were her general notions of what men ought to be, she could
+not entirely repress a doubt, while she bore with the effusions of his
+endless conceit, of his being altogether completely agreeable. It was a
+bold surmise, for he was Isabella’s brother; and she had been assured
+by James that his manners would recommend him to all her sex; but in
+spite of this, the extreme weariness of his company, which crept over
+her before they had been out an hour, and which continued unceasingly
+to increase till they stopped in Pulteney Street again, induced her, in
+some small degree, to resist such high authority, and to distrust his
+powers of giving universal pleasure.
+
+When they arrived at Mrs. Allen’s door, the astonishment of Isabella
+was hardly to be expressed, on finding that it was too late in the day
+for them to attend her friend into the house: “Past three o’clock!” It
+was inconceivable, incredible, impossible! And she would neither
+believe her own watch, nor her brother’s, nor the servant’s; she would
+believe no assurance of it founded on reason or reality, till Morland
+produced his watch, and ascertained the fact; to have doubted a moment
+longer _then_, would have been equally inconceivable, incredible, and
+impossible; and she could only protest, over and over again, that no
+two hours and a half had ever gone off so swiftly before, as Catherine
+was called on to confirm; Catherine could not tell a falsehood even to
+please Isabella; but the latter was spared the misery of her friend’s
+dissenting voice, by not waiting for her answer. Her own feelings
+entirely engrossed her; her wretchedness was most acute on finding
+herself obliged to go directly home. It was ages since she had had a
+moment’s conversation with her dearest Catherine; and, though she had
+such thousands of things to say to her, it appeared as if they were
+never to be together again; so, with smiles of most exquisite misery,
+and the laughing eye of utter despondency, she bade her friend adieu
+and went on.
+
+Catherine found Mrs. Allen just returned from all the busy idleness of
+the morning, and was immediately greeted with, “Well, my dear, here you
+are,” a truth which she had no greater inclination than power to
+dispute; “and I hope you have had a pleasant airing?”
+
+“Yes, ma’am, I thank you; we could not have had a nicer day.”
+
+“So Mrs. Thorpe said; she was vastly pleased at your all going.”
+
+“You have seen Mrs. Thorpe, then?”
+
+“Yes, I went to the pump-room as soon as you were gone, and there I met
+her, and we had a great deal of talk together. She says there was
+hardly any veal to be got at market this morning, it is so uncommonly
+scarce.”
+
+“Did you see anybody else of our acquaintance?”
+
+“Yes; we agreed to take a turn in the Crescent, and there we met Mrs.
+Hughes, and Mr. and Miss Tilney walking with her.”
+
+“Did you indeed? And did they speak to you?”
+
+“Yes, we walked along the Crescent together for half an hour. They seem
+very agreeable people. Miss Tilney was in a very pretty spotted muslin,
+and I fancy, by what I can learn, that she always dresses very
+handsomely. Mrs. Hughes talked to me a great deal about the family.”
+
+“And what did she tell you of them?”
+
+“Oh! A vast deal indeed; she hardly talked of anything else.”
+
+“Did she tell you what part of Gloucestershire they come from?”
+
+“Yes, she did; but I cannot recollect now. But they are very good kind
+of people, and very rich. Mrs. Tilney was a Miss Drummond, and she and
+Mrs. Hughes were schoolfellows; and Miss Drummond had a very large
+fortune; and, when she married, her father gave her twenty thousand
+pounds, and five hundred to buy wedding-clothes. Mrs. Hughes saw all
+the clothes after they came from the warehouse.”
+
+“And are Mr. and Mrs. Tilney in Bath?”
+
+“Yes, I fancy they are, but I am not quite certain. Upon recollection,
+however, I have a notion they are both dead; at least the mother is;
+yes, I am sure Mrs. Tilney is dead, because Mrs. Hughes told me there
+was a very beautiful set of pearls that Mr. Drummond gave his daughter
+on her wedding-day and that Miss Tilney has got now, for they were put
+by for her when her mother died.”
+
+“And is Mr. Tilney, my partner, the only son?”
+
+“I cannot be quite positive about that, my dear; I have some idea he
+is; but, however, he is a very fine young man, Mrs. Hughes says, and
+likely to do very well.”
+
+Catherine inquired no further; she had heard enough to feel that Mrs.
+Allen had no real intelligence to give, and that she was most
+particularly unfortunate herself in having missed such a meeting with
+both brother and sister. Could she have foreseen such a circumstance,
+nothing should have persuaded her to go out with the others; and, as it
+was, she could only lament her ill luck, and think over what she had
+lost, till it was clear to her that the drive had by no means been very
+pleasant and that John Thorpe himself was quite disagreeable.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 10
+
+
+The Allens, Thorpes, and Morlands all met in the evening at the
+theatre; and, as Catherine and Isabella sat together, there was then an
+opportunity for the latter to utter some few of the many thousand
+things which had been collecting within her for communication in the
+immeasurable length of time which had divided them. “Oh, heavens! My
+beloved Catherine, have I got you at last?” was her address on
+Catherine’s entering the box and sitting by her. “Now, Mr. Morland,”
+for he was close to her on the other side, “I shall not speak another
+word to you all the rest of the evening; so I charge you not to expect
+it. My sweetest Catherine, how have you been this long age? But I need
+not ask you, for you look delightfully. You really have done your hair
+in a more heavenly style than ever; you mischievous creature, do you
+want to attract everybody? I assure you, my brother is quite in love
+with you already; and as for Mr. Tilney—but _that_ is a settled
+thing—even _your_ modesty cannot doubt his attachment now; his coming
+back to Bath makes it too plain. Oh! What would not I give to see him!
+I really am quite wild with impatience. My mother says he is the most
+delightful young man in the world; she saw him this morning, you know;
+you must introduce him to me. Is he in the house now? Look about, for
+heaven’s sake! I assure you, I can hardly exist till I see him.”
+
+“No,” said Catherine, “he is not here; I cannot see him anywhere.”
+
+“Oh, horrid! Am I never to be acquainted with him? How do you like my
+gown? I think it does not look amiss; the sleeves were entirely my own
+thought. Do you know, I get so immoderately sick of Bath; your brother
+and I were agreeing this morning that, though it is vastly well to be
+here for a few weeks, we would not live here for millions. We soon
+found out that our tastes were exactly alike in preferring the country
+to every other place; really, our opinions were so exactly the same, it
+was quite ridiculous! There was not a single point in which we
+differed; I would not have had you by for the world; you are such a sly
+thing, I am sure you would have made some droll remark or other about
+it.”
+
+“No, indeed I should not.”
+
+“Oh, yes you would indeed; I know you better than you know yourself.
+You would have told us that we seemed born for each other, or some
+nonsense of that kind, which would have distressed me beyond
+conception; my cheeks would have been as red as your roses; I would not
+have had you by for the world.”
+
+“Indeed you do me injustice; I would not have made so improper a remark
+upon any account; and besides, I am sure it would never have entered my
+head.”
+
+Isabella smiled incredulously and talked the rest of the evening to
+James.
+
+Catherine’s resolution of endeavouring to meet Miss Tilney again
+continued in full force the next morning; and till the usual moment of
+going to the pump-room, she felt some alarm from the dread of a second
+prevention. But nothing of that kind occurred, no visitors appeared to
+delay them, and they all three set off in good time for the pump-room,
+where the ordinary course of events and conversation took place; Mr.
+Allen, after drinking his glass of water, joined some gentlemen to talk
+over the politics of the day and compare the accounts of their
+newspapers; and the ladies walked about together, noticing every new
+face, and almost every new bonnet in the room. The female part of the
+Thorpe family, attended by James Morland, appeared among the crowd in
+less than a quarter of an hour, and Catherine immediately took her
+usual place by the side of her friend. James, who was now in constant
+attendance, maintained a similar position, and separating themselves
+from the rest of their party, they walked in that manner for some time,
+till Catherine began to doubt the happiness of a situation which,
+confining her entirely to her friend and brother, gave her very little
+share in the notice of either. They were always engaged in some
+sentimental discussion or lively dispute, but their sentiment was
+conveyed in such whispering voices, and their vivacity attended with so
+much laughter, that though Catherine’s supporting opinion was not
+unfrequently called for by one or the other, she was never able to give
+any, from not having heard a word of the subject. At length however she
+was empowered to disengage herself from her friend, by the avowed
+necessity of speaking to Miss Tilney, whom she most joyfully saw just
+entering the room with Mrs. Hughes, and whom she instantly joined, with
+a firmer determination to be acquainted, than she might have had
+courage to command, had she not been urged by the disappointment of the
+day before. Miss Tilney met her with great civility, returned her
+advances with equal goodwill, and they continued talking together as
+long as both parties remained in the room; and though in all
+probability not an observation was made, nor an expression used by
+either which had not been made and used some thousands of times before,
+under that roof, in every Bath season, yet the merit of their being
+spoken with simplicity and truth, and without personal conceit, might
+be something uncommon.
+
+“How well your brother dances!” was an artless exclamation of
+Catherine’s towards the close of their conversation, which at once
+surprised and amused her companion.
+
+“Henry!” she replied with a smile. “Yes, he does dance very well.”
+
+“He must have thought it very odd to hear me say I was engaged the
+other evening, when he saw me sitting down. But I really had been
+engaged the whole day to Mr. Thorpe.” Miss Tilney could only bow. “You
+cannot think,” added Catherine after a moment’s silence, “how surprised
+I was to see him again. I felt so sure of his being quite gone away.”
+
+“When Henry had the pleasure of seeing you before, he was in Bath but
+for a couple of days. He came only to engage lodgings for us.”
+
+“_That_ never occurred to me; and of course, not seeing him anywhere, I
+thought he must be gone. Was not the young lady he danced with on
+Monday a Miss Smith?”
+
+“Yes, an acquaintance of Mrs. Hughes.”
+
+“I dare say she was very glad to dance. Do you think her pretty?”
+
+“Not very.”
+
+“He never comes to the pump-room, I suppose?”
+
+“Yes, sometimes; but he has rid out this morning with my father.”
+
+Mrs. Hughes now joined them, and asked Miss Tilney if she was ready to
+go. “I hope I shall have the pleasure of seeing you again soon,” said
+Catherine. “Shall you be at the cotillion ball tomorrow?”
+
+“Perhaps we—Yes, I think we certainly shall.”
+
+“I am glad of it, for we shall all be there.” This civility was duly
+returned; and they parted—on Miss Tilney’s side with some knowledge of
+her new acquaintance’s feelings, and on Catherine’s, without the
+smallest consciousness of having explained them.
+
+She went home very happy. The morning had answered all her hopes, and
+the evening of the following day was now the object of expectation, the
+future good. What gown and what head-dress she should wear on the
+occasion became her chief concern. She cannot be justified in it. Dress
+is at all times a frivolous distinction, and excessive solicitude about
+it often destroys its own aim. Catherine knew all this very well; her
+great aunt had read her a lecture on the subject only the Christmas
+before; and yet she lay awake ten minutes on Wednesday night debating
+between her spotted and her tamboured muslin, and nothing but the
+shortness of the time prevented her buying a new one for the evening.
+This would have been an error in judgment, great though not uncommon,
+from which one of the other sex rather than her own, a brother rather
+than a great aunt, might have warned her, for man only can be aware of
+the insensibility of man towards a new gown. It would be mortifying to
+the feelings of many ladies, could they be made to understand how
+little the heart of man is affected by what is costly or new in their
+attire; how little it is biased by the texture of their muslin, and how
+unsusceptible of peculiar tenderness towards the spotted, the sprigged,
+the mull, or the jackonet. Woman is fine for her own satisfaction
+alone. No man will admire her the more, no woman will like her the
+better for it. Neatness and fashion are enough for the former, and a
+something of shabbiness or impropriety will be most endearing to the
+latter. But not one of these grave reflections troubled the
+tranquillity of Catherine.
+
+She entered the rooms on Thursday evening with feelings very different
+from what had attended her thither the Monday before. She had then been
+exulting in her engagement to Thorpe, and was now chiefly anxious to
+avoid his sight, lest he should engage her again; for though she could
+not, dared not expect that Mr. Tilney should ask her a third time to
+dance, her wishes, hopes, and plans all centred in nothing less. Every
+young lady may feel for my heroine in this critical moment, for every
+young lady has at some time or other known the same agitation. All have
+been, or at least all have believed themselves to be, in danger from
+the pursuit of someone whom they wished to avoid; and all have been
+anxious for the attentions of someone whom they wished to please. As
+soon as they were joined by the Thorpes, Catherine’s agony began; she
+fidgeted about if John Thorpe came towards her, hid herself as much as
+possible from his view, and when he spoke to her pretended not to hear
+him. The cotillions were over, the country-dancing beginning, and she
+saw nothing of the Tilneys.
+
+“Do not be frightened, my dear Catherine,” whispered Isabella, “but I
+am really going to dance with your brother again. I declare positively
+it is quite shocking. I tell him he ought to be ashamed of himself, but
+you and John must keep us in countenance. Make haste, my dear creature,
+and come to us. John is just walked off, but he will be back in a
+moment.”
+
+Catherine had neither time nor inclination to answer. The others walked
+away, John Thorpe was still in view, and she gave herself up for lost.
+That she might not appear, however, to observe or expect him, she kept
+her eyes intently fixed on her fan; and a self-condemnation for her
+folly, in supposing that among such a crowd they should even meet with
+the Tilneys in any reasonable time, had just passed through her mind,
+when she suddenly found herself addressed and again solicited to dance,
+by Mr. Tilney himself. With what sparkling eyes and ready motion she
+granted his request, and with how pleasing a flutter of heart she went
+with him to the set, may be easily imagined. To escape, and, as she
+believed, so narrowly escape John Thorpe, and to be asked, so
+immediately on his joining her, asked by Mr. Tilney, as if he had
+sought her on purpose!—it did not appear to her that life could supply
+any greater felicity.
+
+Scarcely had they worked themselves into the quiet possession of a
+place, however, when her attention was claimed by John Thorpe, who
+stood behind her. “Heyday, Miss Morland!” said he. “What is the meaning
+of this? I thought you and I were to dance together.”
+
+“I wonder you should think so, for you never asked me.”
+
+“That is a good one, by Jove! I asked you as soon as I came into the
+room, and I was just going to ask you again, but when I turned round,
+you were gone! This is a cursed shabby trick! I only came for the sake
+of dancing with _you_, and I firmly believe you were engaged to me ever
+since Monday. Yes; I remember, I asked you while you were waiting in
+the lobby for your cloak. And here have I been telling all my
+acquaintance that I was going to dance with the prettiest girl in the
+room; and when they see you standing up with somebody else, they will
+quiz me famously.”
+
+“Oh, no; they will never think of _me_, after such a description as
+that.”
+
+“By heavens, if they do not, I will kick them out of the room for
+blockheads. What chap have you there?” Catherine satisfied his
+curiosity. “Tilney,” he repeated. “Hum—I do not know him. A good figure
+of a man; well put together. Does he want a horse? Here is a friend of
+mine, Sam Fletcher, has got one to sell that would suit anybody. A
+famous clever animal for the road—only forty guineas. I had fifty minds
+to buy it myself, for it is one of my maxims always to buy a good horse
+when I meet with one; but it would not answer my purpose, it would not
+do for the field. I would give any money for a real good hunter. I have
+three now, the best that ever were backed. I would not take eight
+hundred guineas for them. Fletcher and I mean to get a house in
+Leicestershire, against the next season. It is so d—uncomfortable,
+living at an inn.”
+
+This was the last sentence by which he could weary Catherine’s
+attention, for he was just then borne off by the resistless pressure of
+a long string of passing ladies. Her partner now drew near, and said,
+“That gentleman would have put me out of patience, had he stayed with
+you half a minute longer. He has no business to withdraw the attention
+of my partner from me. We have entered into a contract of mutual
+agreeableness for the space of an evening, and all our agreeableness
+belongs solely to each other for that time. Nobody can fasten
+themselves on the notice of one, without injuring the rights of the
+other. I consider a country-dance as an emblem of marriage. Fidelity
+and complaisance are the principal duties of both; and those men who do
+not choose to dance or marry themselves, have no business with the
+partners or wives of their neighbours.”
+
+“But they are such very different things!”
+
+“—That you think they cannot be compared together.”
+
+“To be sure not. People that marry can never part, but must go and keep
+house together. People that dance only stand opposite each other in a
+long room for half an hour.”
+
+“And such is your definition of matrimony and dancing. Taken in that
+light certainly, their resemblance is not striking; but I think I could
+place them in such a view. You will allow, that in both, man has the
+advantage of choice, woman only the power of refusal; that in both, it
+is an engagement between man and woman, formed for the advantage of
+each; and that when once entered into, they belong exclusively to each
+other till the moment of its dissolution; that it is their duty, each
+to endeavour to give the other no cause for wishing that he or she had
+bestowed themselves elsewhere, and their best interest to keep their
+own imaginations from wandering towards the perfections of their
+neighbours, or fancying that they should have been better off with
+anyone else. You will allow all this?”
+
+“Yes, to be sure, as you state it, all this sounds very well; but still
+they are so very different. I cannot look upon them at all in the same
+light, nor think the same duties belong to them.”
+
+“In one respect, there certainly is a difference. In marriage, the man
+is supposed to provide for the support of the woman, the woman to make
+the home agreeable to the man; he is to purvey, and she is to smile.
+But in dancing, their duties are exactly changed; the agreeableness,
+the compliance are expected from him, while she furnishes the fan and
+the lavender water. _That_, I suppose, was the difference of duties
+which struck you, as rendering the conditions incapable of comparison.”
+
+“No, indeed, I never thought of that.”
+
+“Then I am quite at a loss. One thing, however, I must observe. This
+disposition on your side is rather alarming. You totally disallow any
+similarity in the obligations; and may I not thence infer that your
+notions of the duties of the dancing state are not so strict as your
+partner might wish? Have I not reason to fear that if the gentleman who
+spoke to you just now were to return, or if any other gentleman were to
+address you, there would be nothing to restrain you from conversing
+with him as long as you chose?”
+
+“Mr. Thorpe is such a very particular friend of my brother’s, that if
+he talks to me, I must talk to him again; but there are hardly three
+young men in the room besides him that I have any acquaintance with.”
+
+“And is that to be my only security? Alas, alas!”
+
+“Nay, I am sure you cannot have a better; for if I do not know anybody,
+it is impossible for me to talk to them; and, besides, I do not _want_
+to talk to anybody.”
+
+“Now you have given me a security worth having; and I shall proceed
+with courage. Do you find Bath as agreeable as when I had the honour of
+making the inquiry before?”
+
+“Yes, quite—more so, indeed.”
+
+“More so! Take care, or you will forget to be tired of it at the proper
+time. You ought to be tired at the end of six weeks.”
+
+“I do not think I should be tired, if I were to stay here six months.”
+
+“Bath, compared with London, has little variety, and so everybody finds
+out every year. ‘For six weeks, I allow Bath is pleasant enough; but
+beyond _that_, it is the most tiresome place in the world.’ You would
+be told so by people of all descriptions, who come regularly every
+winter, lengthen their six weeks into ten or twelve, and go away at
+last because they can afford to stay no longer.”
+
+“Well, other people must judge for themselves, and those who go to
+London may think nothing of Bath. But I, who live in a small retired
+village in the country, can never find greater sameness in such a place
+as this than in my own home; for here are a variety of amusements, a
+variety of things to be seen and done all day long, which I can know
+nothing of there.”
+
+“You are not fond of the country.”
+
+“Yes, I am. I have always lived there, and always been very happy. But
+certainly there is much more sameness in a country life than in a Bath
+life. One day in the country is exactly like another.”
+
+“But then you spend your time so much more rationally in the country.”
+
+“Do I?”
+
+“Do you not?”
+
+“I do not believe there is much difference.”
+
+“Here you are in pursuit only of amusement all day long.”
+
+“And so I am at home—only I do not find so much of it. I walk about
+here, and so I do there; but here I see a variety of people in every
+street, and there I can only go and call on Mrs. Allen.”
+
+Mr. Tilney was very much amused.
+
+“Only go and call on Mrs. Allen!” he repeated. “What a picture of
+intellectual poverty! However, when you sink into this abyss again, you
+will have more to say. You will be able to talk of Bath, and of all
+that you did here.”
+
+“Oh! Yes. I shall never be in want of something to talk of again to
+Mrs. Allen, or anybody else. I really believe I shall always be talking
+of Bath, when I am at home again—I _do_ like it so very much. If I
+could but have Papa and Mamma, and the rest of them here, I suppose I
+should be too happy! James’s coming (my eldest brother) is quite
+delightful—and especially as it turns out that the very family we are
+just got so intimate with are his intimate friends already. Oh! Who can
+ever be tired of Bath?”
+
+“Not those who bring such fresh feelings of every sort to it as you do.
+But papas and mammas, and brothers, and intimate friends are a good
+deal gone by, to most of the frequenters of Bath—and the honest relish
+of balls and plays, and everyday sights, is past with them.” Here their
+conversation closed, the demands of the dance becoming now too
+importunate for a divided attention.
+
+Soon after their reaching the bottom of the set, Catherine perceived
+herself to be earnestly regarded by a gentleman who stood among the
+lookers-on, immediately behind her partner. He was a very handsome man,
+of a commanding aspect, past the bloom, but not past the vigour of
+life; and with his eye still directed towards her, she saw him
+presently address Mr. Tilney in a familiar whisper. Confused by his
+notice, and blushing from the fear of its being excited by something
+wrong in her appearance, she turned away her head. But while she did
+so, the gentleman retreated, and her partner, coming nearer, said, “I
+see that you guess what I have just been asked. That gentleman knows
+your name, and you have a right to know his. It is General Tilney, my
+father.”
+
+Catherine’s answer was only “Oh!”—but it was an “Oh!” expressing
+everything needful: attention to his words, and perfect reliance on
+their truth. With real interest and strong admiration did her eye now
+follow the general, as he moved through the crowd, and “How handsome a
+family they are!” was her secret remark.
+
+In chatting with Miss Tilney before the evening concluded, a new source
+of felicity arose to her. She had never taken a country walk since her
+arrival in Bath. Miss Tilney, to whom all the commonly frequented
+environs were familiar, spoke of them in terms which made her all
+eagerness to know them too; and on her openly fearing that she might
+find nobody to go with her, it was proposed by the brother and sister
+that they should join in a walk, some morning or other. “I shall like
+it,” she cried, “beyond anything in the world; and do not let us put it
+off—let us go tomorrow.” This was readily agreed to, with only a
+proviso of Miss Tilney’s, that it did not rain, which Catherine was
+sure it would not. At twelve o’clock, they were to call for her in
+Pulteney Street; and “Remember—twelve o’clock,” was her parting speech
+to her new friend. Of her other, her older, her more established
+friend, Isabella, of whose fidelity and worth she had enjoyed a
+fortnight’s experience, she scarcely saw anything during the evening.
+Yet, though longing to make her acquainted with her happiness, she
+cheerfully submitted to the wish of Mr. Allen, which took them rather
+early away, and her spirits danced within her, as she danced in her
+chair all the way home.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 11
+
+
+The morrow brought a very sober-looking morning, the sun making only a
+few efforts to appear, and Catherine augured from it everything most
+favourable to her wishes. A bright morning so early in the year, she
+allowed, would generally turn to rain, but a cloudy one foretold
+improvement as the day advanced. She applied to Mr. Allen for
+confirmation of her hopes, but Mr. Allen, not having his own skies and
+barometer about him, declined giving any absolute promise of sunshine.
+She applied to Mrs. Allen, and Mrs. Allen’s opinion was more positive.
+“She had no doubt in the world of its being a very fine day, if the
+clouds would only go off, and the sun keep out.”
+
+At about eleven o’clock, however, a few specks of small rain upon the
+windows caught Catherine’s watchful eye, and “Oh! dear, I do believe it
+will be wet,” broke from her in a most desponding tone.
+
+“I thought how it would be,” said Mrs. Allen.
+
+“No walk for me today,” sighed Catherine; “but perhaps it may come to
+nothing, or it may hold up before twelve.”
+
+“Perhaps it may, but then, my dear, it will be so dirty.”
+
+“Oh! That will not signify; I never mind dirt.”
+
+“No,” replied her friend very placidly, “I know you never mind dirt.”
+
+After a short pause, “It comes on faster and faster!” said Catherine,
+as she stood watching at a window.
+
+“So it does indeed. If it keeps raining, the streets will be very wet.”
+
+“There are four umbrellas up already. How I hate the sight of an
+umbrella!”
+
+“They are disagreeable things to carry. I would much rather take a
+chair at any time.”
+
+“It was such a nice-looking morning! I felt so convinced it would be
+dry!”
+
+“Anybody would have thought so indeed. There will be very few people in
+the pump-room, if it rains all the morning. I hope Mr. Allen will put
+on his greatcoat when he goes, but I dare say he will not, for he had
+rather do anything in the world than walk out in a greatcoat; I wonder
+he should dislike it, it must be so comfortable.”
+
+The rain continued—fast, though not heavy. Catherine went every five
+minutes to the clock, threatening on each return that, if it still kept
+on raining another five minutes, she would give up the matter as
+hopeless. The clock struck twelve, and it still rained. “You will not
+be able to go, my dear.”
+
+“I do not quite despair yet. I shall not give it up till a quarter
+after twelve. This is just the time of day for it to clear up, and I do
+think it looks a little lighter. There, it is twenty minutes after
+twelve, and now I _shall_ give it up entirely. Oh! That we had such
+weather here as they had at Udolpho, or at least in Tuscany and the
+south of France!—the night that poor St. Aubin died!—such beautiful
+weather!”
+
+At half past twelve, when Catherine’s anxious attention to the weather
+was over and she could no longer claim any merit from its amendment,
+the sky began voluntarily to clear. A gleam of sunshine took her quite
+by surprise; she looked round; the clouds were parting, and she
+instantly returned to the window to watch over and encourage the happy
+appearance. Ten minutes more made it certain that a bright afternoon
+would succeed, and justified the opinion of Mrs. Allen, who had “always
+thought it would clear up.” But whether Catherine might still expect
+her friends, whether there had not been too much rain for Miss Tilney
+to venture, must yet be a question.
+
+It was too dirty for Mrs. Allen to accompany her husband to the
+pump-room; he accordingly set off by himself, and Catherine had barely
+watched him down the street when her notice was claimed by the approach
+of the same two open carriages, containing the same three people that
+had surprised her so much a few mornings back.
+
+“Isabella, my brother, and Mr. Thorpe, I declare! They are coming for
+me perhaps—but I shall not go—I cannot go indeed, for you know Miss
+Tilney may still call.” Mrs. Allen agreed to it. John Thorpe was soon
+with them, and his voice was with them yet sooner, for on the stairs he
+was calling out to Miss Morland to be quick. “Make haste! Make haste!”
+as he threw open the door. “Put on your hat this moment—there is no
+time to be lost—we are going to Bristol. How d’ye do, Mrs. Allen?”
+
+“To Bristol! Is not that a great way off? But, however, I cannot go
+with you today, because I am engaged; I expect some friends every
+moment.” This was of course vehemently talked down as no reason at all;
+Mrs. Allen was called on to second him, and the two others walked in,
+to give their assistance. “My sweetest Catherine, is not this
+delightful? We shall have a most heavenly drive. You are to thank your
+brother and me for the scheme; it darted into our heads at
+breakfast-time, I verily believe at the same instant; and we should
+have been off two hours ago if it had not been for this detestable
+rain. But it does not signify, the nights are moonlight, and we shall
+do delightfully. Oh! I am in such ecstasies at the thoughts of a little
+country air and quiet! So much better than going to the Lower Rooms. We
+shall drive directly to Clifton and dine there; and, as soon as dinner
+is over, if there is time for it, go on to Kingsweston.”
+
+“I doubt our being able to do so much,” said Morland.
+
+“You croaking fellow!” cried Thorpe. “We shall be able to do ten times
+more. Kingsweston! Aye, and Blaize Castle too, and anything else we can
+hear of; but here is your sister says she will not go.”
+
+“Blaize Castle!” cried Catherine. “What is that?”
+
+“The finest place in England—worth going fifty miles at any time to
+see.”
+
+“What, is it really a castle, an old castle?”
+
+“The oldest in the kingdom.”
+
+“But is it like what one reads of?”
+
+“Exactly—the very same.”
+
+“But now really—are there towers and long galleries?”
+
+“By dozens.”
+
+“Then I should like to see it; but I cannot—I cannot go.”
+
+“Not go! My beloved creature, what do you mean?”
+
+“I cannot go, because”—looking down as she spoke, fearful of Isabella’s
+smile—“I expect Miss Tilney and her brother to call on me to take a
+country walk. They promised to come at twelve, only it rained; but now,
+as it is so fine, I dare say they will be here soon.”
+
+“Not they indeed,” cried Thorpe; “for, as we turned into Broad Street,
+I saw them—does he not drive a phaeton with bright chestnuts?”
+
+“I do not know indeed.”
+
+“Yes, I know he does; I saw him. You are talking of the man you danced
+with last night, are not you?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Well, I saw him at that moment turn up the Lansdown Road, driving a
+smart-looking girl.”
+
+“Did you indeed?”
+
+“Did upon my soul; knew him again directly, and he seemed to have got
+some very pretty cattle too.”
+
+“It is very odd! But I suppose they thought it would be too dirty for a
+walk.”
+
+“And well they might, for I never saw so much dirt in my life. Walk!
+You could no more walk than you could fly! It has not been so dirty the
+whole winter; it is ankle-deep everywhere.”
+
+Isabella corroborated it: “My dearest Catherine, you cannot form an
+idea of the dirt; come, you must go; you cannot refuse going now.”
+
+“I should like to see the castle; but may we go all over it? May we go
+up every staircase, and into every suite of rooms?”
+
+“Yes, yes, every hole and corner.”
+
+“But then, if they should only be gone out for an hour till it is
+dryer, and call by and by?”
+
+“Make yourself easy, there is no danger of that, for I heard Tilney
+hallooing to a man who was just passing by on horseback, that they were
+going as far as Wick Rocks.”
+
+“Then I will. Shall I go, Mrs. Allen?”
+
+“Just as you please, my dear.”
+
+“Mrs. Allen, you must persuade her to go,” was the general cry. Mrs.
+Allen was not inattentive to it: “Well, my dear,” said she, “suppose
+you go.” And in two minutes they were off.
+
+Catherine’s feelings, as she got into the carriage, were in a very
+unsettled state; divided between regret for the loss of one great
+pleasure, and the hope of soon enjoying another, almost its equal in
+degree, however unlike in kind. She could not think the Tilneys had
+acted quite well by her, in so readily giving up their engagement,
+without sending her any message of excuse. It was now but an hour later
+than the time fixed on for the beginning of their walk; and, in spite
+of what she had heard of the prodigious accumulation of dirt in the
+course of that hour, she could not from her own observation help
+thinking that they might have gone with very little inconvenience. To
+feel herself slighted by them was very painful. On the other hand, the
+delight of exploring an edifice like Udolpho, as her fancy represented
+Blaize Castle to be, was such a counterpoise of good as might console
+her for almost anything.
+
+They passed briskly down Pulteney Street, and through Laura Place,
+without the exchange of many words. Thorpe talked to his horse, and she
+meditated, by turns, on broken promises and broken arches, phaetons and
+false hangings, Tilneys and trap-doors. As they entered Argyle
+Buildings, however, she was roused by this address from her companion,
+“Who is that girl who looked at you so hard as she went by?”
+
+“Who? Where?”
+
+“On the right-hand pavement—she must be almost out of sight now.”
+Catherine looked round and saw Miss Tilney leaning on her brother’s
+arm, walking slowly down the street. She saw them both looking back at
+her. “Stop, stop, Mr. Thorpe,” she impatiently cried; “it is Miss
+Tilney; it is indeed. How could you tell me they were gone? Stop, stop,
+I will get out this moment and go to them.” But to what purpose did she
+speak? Thorpe only lashed his horse into a brisker trot; the Tilneys,
+who had soon ceased to look after her, were in a moment out of sight
+round the corner of Laura Place, and in another moment she was herself
+whisked into the marketplace. Still, however, and during the length of
+another street, she entreated him to stop. “Pray, pray stop, Mr.
+Thorpe. I cannot go on. I will not go on. I must go back to Miss
+Tilney.” But Mr. Thorpe only laughed, smacked his whip, encouraged his
+horse, made odd noises, and drove on; and Catherine, angry and vexed as
+she was, having no power of getting away, was obliged to give up the
+point and submit. Her reproaches, however, were not spared. “How could
+you deceive me so, Mr. Thorpe? How could you say that you saw them
+driving up the Lansdown Road? I would not have had it happen so for the
+world. They must think it so strange, so rude of me! To go by them,
+too, without saying a word! You do not know how vexed I am; I shall
+have no pleasure at Clifton, nor in anything else. I had rather, ten
+thousand times rather, get out now, and walk back to them. How could
+you say you saw them driving out in a phaeton?” Thorpe defended himself
+very stoutly, declared he had never seen two men so much alike in his
+life, and would hardly give up the point of its having been Tilney
+himself.
+
+Their drive, even when this subject was over, was not likely to be very
+agreeable. Catherine’s complaisance was no longer what it had been in
+their former airing. She listened reluctantly, and her replies were
+short. Blaize Castle remained her only comfort; towards _that_, she
+still looked at intervals with pleasure; though rather than be
+disappointed of the promised walk, and especially rather than be
+thought ill of by the Tilneys, she would willingly have given up all
+the happiness which its walls could supply—the happiness of a progress
+through a long suite of lofty rooms, exhibiting the remains of
+magnificent furniture, though now for many years deserted—the happiness
+of being stopped in their way along narrow, winding vaults, by a low,
+grated door; or even of having their lamp, their only lamp,
+extinguished by a sudden gust of wind, and of being left in total
+darkness. In the meanwhile, they proceeded on their journey without any
+mischance, and were within view of the town of Keynsham, when a halloo
+from Morland, who was behind them, made his friend pull up, to know
+what was the matter. The others then came close enough for
+conversation, and Morland said, “We had better go back, Thorpe; it is
+too late to go on today; your sister thinks so as well as I. We have
+been exactly an hour coming from Pulteney Street, very little more than
+seven miles; and, I suppose, we have at least eight more to go. It will
+never do. We set out a great deal too late. We had much better put it
+off till another day, and turn round.”
+
+“It is all one to me,” replied Thorpe rather angrily; and instantly
+turning his horse, they were on their way back to Bath.
+
+“If your brother had not got such a d—beast to drive,” said he soon
+afterwards, “we might have done it very well. My horse would have
+trotted to Clifton within the hour, if left to himself, and I have
+almost broke my arm with pulling him in to that cursed broken-winded
+jade’s pace. Morland is a fool for not keeping a horse and gig of his
+own.”
+
+“No, he is not,” said Catherine warmly, “for I am sure he could not
+afford it.”
+
+“And why cannot he afford it?”
+
+“Because he has not money enough.”
+
+“And whose fault is that?”
+
+“Nobody’s, that I know of.” Thorpe then said something in the loud,
+incoherent way to which he had often recourse, about its being a
+d—thing to be miserly; and that if people who rolled in money could not
+afford things, he did not know who could, which Catherine did not even
+endeavour to understand. Disappointed of what was to have been the
+consolation for her first disappointment, she was less and less
+disposed either to be agreeable herself or to find her companion so;
+and they returned to Pulteney Street without her speaking twenty words.
+
+As she entered the house, the footman told her that a gentleman and
+lady had called and inquired for her a few minutes after her setting
+off; that, when he told them she was gone out with Mr. Thorpe, the lady
+had asked whether any message had been left for her; and on his saying
+no, had felt for a card, but said she had none about her, and went
+away. Pondering over these heart-rending tidings, Catherine walked
+slowly upstairs. At the head of them she was met by Mr. Allen, who, on
+hearing the reason of their speedy return, said, “I am glad your
+brother had so much sense; I am glad you are come back. It was a
+strange, wild scheme.”
+
+They all spent the evening together at Thorpe’s. Catherine was
+disturbed and out of spirits; but Isabella seemed to find a pool of
+commerce, in the fate of which she shared, by private partnership with
+Morland, a very good equivalent for the quiet and country air of an inn
+at Clifton. Her satisfaction, too, in not being at the Lower Rooms was
+spoken more than once. “How I pity the poor creatures that are going
+there! How glad I am that I am not amongst them! I wonder whether it
+will be a full ball or not! They have not begun dancing yet. I would
+not be there for all the world. It is so delightful to have an evening
+now and then to oneself. I dare say it will not be a very good ball. I
+know the Mitchells will not be there. I am sure I pity everybody that
+is. But I dare say, Mr. Morland, you long to be at it, do not you? I am
+sure you do. Well, pray do not let anybody here be a restraint on you.
+I dare say we could do very well without you; but you men think
+yourselves of such consequence.”
+
+Catherine could almost have accused Isabella of being wanting in
+tenderness towards herself and her sorrows, so very little did they
+appear to dwell on her mind, and so very inadequate was the comfort she
+offered. “Do not be so dull, my dearest creature,” she whispered. “You
+will quite break my heart. It was amazingly shocking, to be sure; but
+the Tilneys were entirely to blame. Why were not they more punctual? It
+was dirty, indeed, but what did that signify? I am sure John and I
+should not have minded it. I never mind going through anything, where a
+friend is concerned; that is my disposition, and John is just the same;
+he has amazing strong feelings. Good heavens! What a delightful hand
+you have got! Kings, I vow! I never was so happy in my life! I would
+fifty times rather you should have them than myself.”
+
+And now I may dismiss my heroine to the sleepless couch, which is the
+true heroine’s portion; to a pillow strewed with thorns and wet with
+tears. And lucky may she think herself, if she get another good night’s
+rest in the course of the next three months.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 12
+
+
+“Mrs. Allen,” said Catherine the next morning, “will there be any harm
+in my calling on Miss Tilney today? I shall not be easy till I have
+explained everything.”
+
+“Go, by all means, my dear; only put on a white gown; Miss Tilney
+always wears white.”
+
+Catherine cheerfully complied, and being properly equipped, was more
+impatient than ever to be at the pump-room, that she might inform
+herself of General Tilney’s lodgings, for though she believed they were
+in Milsom Street, she was not certain of the house, and Mrs. Allen’s
+wavering convictions only made it more doubtful. To Milsom Street she
+was directed, and having made herself perfect in the number, hastened
+away with eager steps and a beating heart to pay her visit, explain her
+conduct, and be forgiven; tripping lightly through the church-yard, and
+resolutely turning away her eyes, that she might not be obliged to see
+her beloved Isabella and her dear family, who, she had reason to
+believe, were in a shop hard by. She reached the house without any
+impediment, looked at the number, knocked at the door, and inquired for
+Miss Tilney. The man believed Miss Tilney to be at home, but was not
+quite certain. Would she be pleased to send up her name? She gave her
+card. In a few minutes the servant returned, and with a look which did
+not quite confirm his words, said he had been mistaken, for that Miss
+Tilney was walked out. Catherine, with a blush of mortification, left
+the house. She felt almost persuaded that Miss Tilney _was_ at home,
+and too much offended to admit her; and as she retired down the street,
+could not withhold one glance at the drawing-room windows, in
+expectation of seeing her there, but no one appeared at them. At the
+bottom of the street, however, she looked back again, and then, not at
+a window, but issuing from the door, she saw Miss Tilney herself. She
+was followed by a gentleman, whom Catherine believed to be her father,
+and they turned up towards Edgar’s Buildings. Catherine, in deep
+mortification, proceeded on her way. She could almost be angry herself
+at such angry incivility; but she checked the resentful sensation; she
+remembered her own ignorance. She knew not how such an offence as hers
+might be classed by the laws of worldly politeness, to what a degree of
+unforgivingness it might with propriety lead, nor to what rigours of
+rudeness in return it might justly make her amenable.
+
+Dejected and humbled, she had even some thoughts of not going with the
+others to the theatre that night; but it must be confessed that they
+were not of long continuance, for she soon recollected, in the first
+place, that she was without any excuse for staying at home; and, in the
+second, that it was a play she wanted very much to see. To the theatre
+accordingly they all went; no Tilneys appeared to plague or please her;
+she feared that, amongst the many perfections of the family, a fondness
+for plays was not to be ranked; but perhaps it was because they were
+habituated to the finer performances of the London stage, which she
+knew, on Isabella’s authority, rendered everything else of the kind
+“quite horrid.” She was not deceived in her own expectation of
+pleasure; the comedy so well suspended her care that no one, observing
+her during the first four acts, would have supposed she had any
+wretchedness about her. On the beginning of the fifth, however, the
+sudden view of Mr. Henry Tilney and his father, joining a party in the
+opposite box, recalled her to anxiety and distress. The stage could no
+longer excite genuine merriment—no longer keep her whole attention.
+Every other look upon an average was directed towards the opposite box;
+and, for the space of two entire scenes, did she thus watch Henry
+Tilney, without being once able to catch his eye. No longer could he be
+suspected of indifference for a play; his notice was never withdrawn
+from the stage during two whole scenes. At length, however, he did look
+towards her, and he bowed—but such a bow! No smile, no continued
+observance attended it; his eyes were immediately returned to their
+former direction. Catherine was restlessly miserable; she could almost
+have run round to the box in which he sat and forced him to hear her
+explanation. Feelings rather natural than heroic possessed her; instead
+of considering her own dignity injured by this ready
+condemnation—instead of proudly resolving, in conscious innocence, to
+show her resentment towards him who could harbour a doubt of it, to
+leave to him all the trouble of seeking an explanation, and to
+enlighten him on the past only by avoiding his sight, or flirting with
+somebody else—she took to herself all the shame of misconduct, or at
+least of its appearance, and was only eager for an opportunity of
+explaining its cause.
+
+The play concluded—the curtain fell—Henry Tilney was no longer to be
+seen where he had hitherto sat, but his father remained, and perhaps he
+might be now coming round to their box. She was right; in a few minutes
+he appeared, and, making his way through the then thinning rows, spoke
+with like calm politeness to Mrs. Allen and her friend. Not with such
+calmness was he answered by the latter: “Oh! Mr. Tilney, I have been
+quite wild to speak to you, and make my apologies. You must have
+thought me so rude; but indeed it was not my own fault, was it, Mrs.
+Allen? Did not they tell me that Mr. Tilney and his sister were gone
+out in a phaeton together? And then what could I do? But I had ten
+thousand times rather have been with you; now had not I, Mrs. Allen?”
+
+“My dear, you tumble my gown,” was Mrs. Allen’s reply.
+
+Her assurance, however, standing sole as it did, was not thrown away;
+it brought a more cordial, more natural smile into his countenance, and
+he replied in a tone which retained only a little affected reserve: “We
+were much obliged to you at any rate for wishing us a pleasant walk
+after our passing you in Argyle Street: you were so kind as to look
+back on purpose.”
+
+“But indeed I did not wish you a pleasant walk; I never thought of such
+a thing; but I begged Mr. Thorpe so earnestly to stop; I called out to
+him as soon as ever I saw you; now, Mrs. Allen, did not—Oh! You were
+not there; but indeed I did; and, if Mr. Thorpe would only have
+stopped, I would have jumped out and run after you.”
+
+Is there a Henry in the world who could be insensible to such a
+declaration? Henry Tilney at least was not. With a yet sweeter smile,
+he said everything that need be said of his sister’s concern, regret,
+and dependence on Catherine’s honour. “Oh! Do not say Miss Tilney was
+not angry,” cried Catherine, “because I know she was; for she would not
+see me this morning when I called; I saw her walk out of the house the
+next minute after my leaving it; I was hurt, but I was not affronted.
+Perhaps you did not know I had been there.”
+
+“I was not within at the time; but I heard of it from Eleanor, and she
+has been wishing ever since to see you, to explain the reason of such
+incivility; but perhaps I can do it as well. It was nothing more than
+that my father—they were just preparing to walk out, and he being
+hurried for time, and not caring to have it put off—made a point of her
+being denied. That was all, I do assure you. She was very much vexed,
+and meant to make her apology as soon as possible.”
+
+Catherine’s mind was greatly eased by this information, yet a something
+of solicitude remained, from which sprang the following question,
+thoroughly artless in itself, though rather distressing to the
+gentleman: “But, Mr. Tilney, why were _you_ less generous than your
+sister? If she felt such confidence in my good intentions, and could
+suppose it to be only a mistake, why should _you_ be so ready to take
+offence?”
+
+“Me! I take offence!”
+
+“Nay, I am sure by your look, when you came into the box, you were
+angry.”
+
+“I angry! I could have no right.”
+
+“Well, nobody would have thought you had no right who saw your face.”
+He replied by asking her to make room for him, and talking of the play.
+
+He remained with them some time, and was only too agreeable for
+Catherine to be contented when he went away. Before they parted,
+however, it was agreed that the projected walk should be taken as soon
+as possible; and, setting aside the misery of his quitting their box,
+she was, upon the whole, left one of the happiest creatures in the
+world.
+
+While talking to each other, she had observed with some surprise that
+John Thorpe, who was never in the same part of the house for ten
+minutes together, was engaged in conversation with General Tilney; and
+she felt something more than surprise when she thought she could
+perceive herself the object of their attention and discourse. What
+could they have to say of her? She feared General Tilney did not like
+her appearance: she found it was implied in his preventing her
+admittance to his daughter, rather than postpone his own walk a few
+minutes. “How came Mr. Thorpe to know your father?” was her anxious
+inquiry, as she pointed them out to her companion. He knew nothing
+about it; but his father, like every military man, had a very large
+acquaintance.
+
+When the entertainment was over, Thorpe came to assist them in getting
+out. Catherine was the immediate object of his gallantry; and, while
+they waited in the lobby for a chair, he prevented the inquiry which
+had travelled from her heart almost to the tip of her tongue, by
+asking, in a consequential manner, whether she had seen him talking
+with General Tilney: “He is a fine old fellow, upon my soul! Stout,
+active—looks as young as his son. I have a great regard for him, I
+assure you: a gentleman-like, good sort of fellow as ever lived.”
+
+“But how came you to know him?”
+
+“Know him! There are few people much about town that I do not know. I
+have met him forever at the Bedford; and I knew his face again today
+the moment he came into the billiard-room. One of the best players we
+have, by the by; and we had a little touch together, though I was
+almost afraid of him at first: the odds were five to four against me;
+and, if I had not made one of the cleanest strokes that perhaps ever
+was made in this world—I took his ball exactly—but I could not make you
+understand it without a table; however, I _did_ beat him. A very fine
+fellow; as rich as a Jew. I should like to dine with him; I dare say he
+gives famous dinners. But what do you think we have been talking of?
+You. Yes, by heavens! And the general thinks you the finest girl in
+Bath.”
+
+“Oh! Nonsense! How can you say so?”
+
+“And what do you think I said?”—lowering his voice—“well done, general,
+said I; I am quite of your mind.”
+
+Here Catherine, who was much less gratified by his admiration than by
+General Tilney’s, was not sorry to be called away by Mr. Allen. Thorpe,
+however, would see her to her chair, and, till she entered it,
+continued the same kind of delicate flattery, in spite of her
+entreating him to have done.
+
+That General Tilney, instead of disliking, should admire her, was very
+delightful; and she joyfully thought that there was not one of the
+family whom she need now fear to meet. The evening had done more, much
+more, for her than could have been expected.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 13
+
+
+Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday have now
+passed in review before the reader; the events of each day, its hopes
+and fears, mortifications and pleasures, have been separately stated,
+and the pangs of Sunday only now remain to be described, and close the
+week. The Clifton scheme had been deferred, not relinquished, and on
+the afternoon’s Crescent of this day, it was brought forward again. In
+a private consultation between Isabella and James, the former of whom
+had particularly set her heart upon going, and the latter no less
+anxiously placed his upon pleasing her, it was agreed that, provided
+the weather were fair, the party should take place on the following
+morning; and they were to set off very early, in order to be at home in
+good time. The affair thus determined, and Thorpe’s approbation
+secured, Catherine only remained to be apprised of it. She had left
+them for a few minutes to speak to Miss Tilney. In that interval the
+plan was completed, and as soon as she came again, her agreement was
+demanded; but instead of the gay acquiescence expected by Isabella,
+Catherine looked grave, was very sorry, but could not go. The
+engagement which ought to have kept her from joining in the former
+attempt would make it impossible for her to accompany them now. She had
+that moment settled with Miss Tilney to take their proposed walk
+tomorrow; it was quite determined, and she would not, upon any account,
+retract. But that she _must_ and _should_ retract, was instantly the
+eager cry of both the Thorpes; they must go to Clifton tomorrow, they
+would not go without her, it would be nothing to put off a mere walk
+for one day longer, and they would not hear of a refusal. Catherine was
+distressed, but not subdued. “Do not urge me, Isabella. I am engaged to
+Miss Tilney. I cannot go.” This availed nothing. The same arguments
+assailed her again; she must go, she should go, and they would not hear
+of a refusal. “It would be so easy to tell Miss Tilney that you had
+just been reminded of a prior engagement, and must only beg to put off
+the walk till Tuesday.”
+
+“No, it would not be easy. I could not do it. There has been no prior
+engagement.” But Isabella became only more and more urgent, calling on
+her in the most affectionate manner, addressing her by the most
+endearing names. She was sure her dearest, sweetest Catherine would not
+seriously refuse such a trifling request to a friend who loved her so
+dearly. She knew her beloved Catherine to have so feeling a heart, so
+sweet a temper, to be so easily persuaded by those she loved. But all
+in vain; Catherine felt herself to be in the right, and though pained
+by such tender, such flattering supplication, could not allow it to
+influence her. Isabella then tried another method. She reproached her
+with having more affection for Miss Tilney, though she had known her so
+little a while, than for her best and oldest friends, with being grown
+cold and indifferent, in short, towards herself. “I cannot help being
+jealous, Catherine, when I see myself slighted for strangers, I, who
+love you so excessively! When once my affections are placed, it is not
+in the power of anything to change them. But I believe my feelings are
+stronger than anybody’s; I am sure they are too strong for my own
+peace; and to see myself supplanted in your friendship by strangers
+does cut me to the quick, I own. These Tilneys seem to swallow up
+everything else.”
+
+Catherine thought this reproach equally strange and unkind. Was it the
+part of a friend thus to expose her feelings to the notice of others?
+Isabella appeared to her ungenerous and selfish, regardless of
+everything but her own gratification. These painful ideas crossed her
+mind, though she said nothing. Isabella, in the meanwhile, had applied
+her handkerchief to her eyes; and Morland, miserable at such a sight,
+could not help saying, “Nay, Catherine. I think you cannot stand out
+any longer now. The sacrifice is not much; and to oblige such a
+friend—I shall think you quite unkind, if you still refuse.”
+
+This was the first time of her brother’s openly siding against her, and
+anxious to avoid his displeasure, she proposed a compromise. If they
+would only put off their scheme till Tuesday, which they might easily
+do, as it depended only on themselves, she could go with them, and
+everybody might then be satisfied. But “No, no, no!” was the immediate
+answer; “that could not be, for Thorpe did not know that he might not
+go to town on Tuesday.” Catherine was sorry, but could do no more; and
+a short silence ensued, which was broken by Isabella, who in a voice of
+cold resentment said, “Very well, then there is an end of the party. If
+Catherine does not go, I cannot. I cannot be the only woman. I would
+not, upon any account in the world, do so improper a thing.”
+
+“Catherine, you must go,” said James.
+
+“But why cannot Mr. Thorpe drive one of his other sisters? I dare say
+either of them would like to go.”
+
+“Thank ye,” cried Thorpe, “but I did not come to Bath to drive my
+sisters about, and look like a fool. No, if you do not go, d—— me if I
+do. I only go for the sake of driving you.”
+
+“That is a compliment which gives me no pleasure.” But her words were
+lost on Thorpe, who had turned abruptly away.
+
+The three others still continued together, walking in a most
+uncomfortable manner to poor Catherine; sometimes not a word was said,
+sometimes she was again attacked with supplications or reproaches, and
+her arm was still linked within Isabella’s, though their hearts were at
+war. At one moment she was softened, at another irritated; always
+distressed, but always steady.
+
+“I did not think you had been so obstinate, Catherine,” said James;
+“you were not used to be so hard to persuade; you once were the
+kindest, best-tempered of my sisters.”
+
+“I hope I am not less so now,” she replied, very feelingly; “but indeed
+I cannot go. If I am wrong, I am doing what I believe to be right.”
+
+“I suspect,” said Isabella, in a low voice, “there is no great
+struggle.”
+
+Catherine’s heart swelled; she drew away her arm, and Isabella made no
+opposition. Thus passed a long ten minutes, till they were again joined
+by Thorpe, who, coming to them with a gayer look, said, “Well, I have
+settled the matter, and now we may all go tomorrow with a safe
+conscience. I have been to Miss Tilney, and made your excuses.”
+
+“You have not!” cried Catherine.
+
+“I have, upon my soul. Left her this moment. Told her you had sent me
+to say that, having just recollected a prior engagement of going to
+Clifton with us tomorrow, you could not have the pleasure of walking
+with her till Tuesday. She said very well, Tuesday was just as
+convenient to her; so there is an end of all our difficulties. A pretty
+good thought of mine—hey?”
+
+Isabella’s countenance was once more all smiles and good humour, and
+James too looked happy again.
+
+“A most heavenly thought indeed! Now, my sweet Catherine, all our
+distresses are over; you are honourably acquitted, and we shall have a
+most delightful party.”
+
+“This will not do,” said Catherine; “I cannot submit to this. I must
+run after Miss Tilney directly and set her right.”
+
+Isabella, however, caught hold of one hand, Thorpe of the other, and
+remonstrances poured in from all three. Even James was quite angry.
+When everything was settled, when Miss Tilney herself said that Tuesday
+would suit her as well, it was quite ridiculous, quite absurd, to make
+any further objection.
+
+“I do not care. Mr. Thorpe had no business to invent any such message.
+If I had thought it right to put it off, I could have spoken to Miss
+Tilney myself. This is only doing it in a ruder way; and how do I know
+that Mr. Thorpe has—He may be mistaken again perhaps; he led me into
+one act of rudeness by his mistake on Friday. Let me go, Mr. Thorpe;
+Isabella, do not hold me.”
+
+Thorpe told her it would be in vain to go after the Tilneys; they were
+turning the corner into Brock Street, when he had overtaken them, and
+were at home by this time.
+
+“Then I will go after them,” said Catherine; “wherever they are I will
+go after them. It does not signify talking. If I could not be persuaded
+into doing what I thought wrong, I never will be tricked into it.” And
+with these words she broke away and hurried off. Thorpe would have
+darted after her, but Morland withheld him. “Let her go, let her go, if
+she will go.”
+
+“She is as obstinate as—”
+
+Thorpe never finished the simile, for it could hardly have been a
+proper one.
+
+Away walked Catherine in great agitation, as fast as the crowd would
+permit her, fearful of being pursued, yet determined to persevere. As
+she walked, she reflected on what had passed. It was painful to her to
+disappoint and displease them, particularly to displease her brother;
+but she could not repent her resistance. Setting her own inclination
+apart, to have failed a second time in her engagement to Miss Tilney,
+to have retracted a promise voluntarily made only five minutes before,
+and on a false pretence too, must have been wrong. She had not been
+withstanding them on selfish principles alone, she had not consulted
+merely her own gratification; _that_ might have been ensured in some
+degree by the excursion itself, by seeing Blaize Castle; no, she had
+attended to what was due to others, and to her own character in their
+opinion. Her conviction of being right, however, was not enough to
+restore her composure; till she had spoken to Miss Tilney she could not
+be at ease; and quickening her pace when she got clear of the Crescent,
+she almost ran over the remaining ground till she gained the top of
+Milsom Street. So rapid had been her movements that in spite of the
+Tilneys’ advantage in the outset, they were but just turning into their
+lodgings as she came within view of them; and the servant still
+remaining at the open door, she used only the ceremony of saying that
+she must speak with Miss Tilney that moment, and hurrying by him
+proceeded upstairs. Then, opening the first door before her, which
+happened to be the right, she immediately found herself in the
+drawing-room with General Tilney, his son, and daughter. Her
+explanation, defective only in being—from her irritation of nerves and
+shortness of breath—no explanation at all, was instantly given. “I am
+come in a great hurry—It was all a mistake—I never promised to go—I
+told them from the first I could not go.—I ran away in a great hurry to
+explain it.—I did not care what you thought of me.—I would not stay for
+the servant.”
+
+The business, however, though not perfectly elucidated by this speech,
+soon ceased to be a puzzle. Catherine found that John Thorpe _had_
+given the message; and Miss Tilney had no scruple in owning herself
+greatly surprised by it. But whether her brother had still exceeded her
+in resentment, Catherine, though she instinctively addressed herself as
+much to one as to the other in her vindication, had no means of
+knowing. Whatever might have been felt before her arrival, her eager
+declarations immediately made every look and sentence as friendly as
+she could desire.
+
+The affair thus happily settled, she was introduced by Miss Tilney to
+her father, and received by him with such ready, such solicitous
+politeness as recalled Thorpe’s information to her mind, and made her
+think with pleasure that he might be sometimes depended on. To such
+anxious attention was the general’s civility carried, that not aware of
+her extraordinary swiftness in entering the house, he was quite angry
+with the servant whose neglect had reduced her to open the door of the
+apartment herself. “What did William mean by it? He should make a point
+of inquiring into the matter.” And if Catherine had not most warmly
+asserted his innocence, it seemed likely that William would lose the
+favour of his master forever, if not his place, by her rapidity.
+
+After sitting with them a quarter of an hour, she rose to take leave,
+and was then most agreeably surprised by General Tilney’s asking her if
+she would do his daughter the honour of dining and spending the rest of
+the day with her. Miss Tilney added her own wishes. Catherine was
+greatly obliged; but it was quite out of her power. Mr. and Mrs. Allen
+would expect her back every moment. The general declared he could say
+no more; the claims of Mr. and Mrs. Allen were not to be superseded;
+but on some other day he trusted, when longer notice could be given,
+they would not refuse to spare her to her friend. “Oh, no; Catherine
+was sure they would not have the least objection, and she should have
+great pleasure in coming.” The general attended her himself to the
+street-door, saying everything gallant as they went downstairs,
+admiring the elasticity of her walk, which corresponded exactly with
+the spirit of her dancing, and making her one of the most graceful bows
+she had ever beheld, when they parted.
+
+Catherine, delighted by all that had passed, proceeded gaily to
+Pulteney Street, walking, as she concluded, with great elasticity,
+though she had never thought of it before. She reached home without
+seeing anything more of the offended party; and now that she had been
+triumphant throughout, had carried her point, and was secure of her
+walk, she began (as the flutter of her spirits subsided) to doubt
+whether she had been perfectly right. A sacrifice was always noble; and
+if she had given way to their entreaties, she should have been spared
+the distressing idea of a friend displeased, a brother angry, and a
+scheme of great happiness to both destroyed, perhaps through her means.
+To ease her mind, and ascertain by the opinion of an unprejudiced
+person what her own conduct had really been, she took occasion to
+mention before Mr. Allen the half-settled scheme of her brother and the
+Thorpes for the following day. Mr. Allen caught at it directly. “Well,”
+said he, “and do you think of going too?”
+
+“No; I had just engaged myself to walk with Miss Tilney before they
+told me of it; and therefore you know I could not go with them, could
+I?”
+
+“No, certainly not; and I am glad you do not think of it. These schemes
+are not at all the thing. Young men and women driving about the country
+in open carriages! Now and then it is very well; but going to inns and
+public places together! It is not right; and I wonder Mrs. Thorpe
+should allow it. I am glad you do not think of going; I am sure Mrs.
+Morland would not be pleased. Mrs. Allen, are not you of my way of
+thinking? Do not you think these kind of projects objectionable?”
+
+“Yes, very much so indeed. Open carriages are nasty things. A clean
+gown is not five minutes’ wear in them. You are splashed getting in and
+getting out; and the wind takes your hair and your bonnet in every
+direction. I hate an open carriage myself.”
+
+“I know you do; but that is not the question. Do not you think it has
+an odd appearance, if young ladies are frequently driven about in them
+by young men, to whom they are not even related?”
+
+“Yes, my dear, a very odd appearance indeed. I cannot bear to see it.”
+
+“Dear madam,” cried Catherine, “then why did not you tell me so before?
+I am sure if I had known it to be improper, I would not have gone with
+Mr. Thorpe at all; but I always hoped you would tell me, if you thought
+I was doing wrong.”
+
+“And so I should, my dear, you may depend on it; for as I told Mrs.
+Morland at parting, I would always do the best for you in my power. But
+one must not be over particular. Young people _will_ be young people,
+as your good mother says herself. You know I wanted you, when we first
+came, not to buy that sprigged muslin, but you would. Young people do
+not like to be always thwarted.”
+
+“But this was something of real consequence; and I do not think you
+would have found me hard to persuade.”
+
+“As far as it has gone hitherto, there is no harm done,” said Mr.
+Allen; “and I would only advise you, my dear, not to go out with Mr.
+Thorpe any more.”
+
+“That is just what I was going to say,” added his wife.
+
+Catherine, relieved for herself, felt uneasy for Isabella, and after a
+moment’s thought, asked Mr. Allen whether it would not be both proper
+and kind in her to write to Miss Thorpe, and explain the indecorum of
+which she must be as insensible as herself; for she considered that
+Isabella might otherwise perhaps be going to Clifton the next day, in
+spite of what had passed. Mr. Allen, however, discouraged her from
+doing any such thing. “You had better leave her alone, my dear; she is
+old enough to know what she is about, and if not, has a mother to
+advise her. Mrs. Thorpe is too indulgent beyond a doubt; but, however,
+you had better not interfere. She and your brother choose to go, and
+you will be only getting ill will.”
+
+Catherine submitted, and though sorry to think that Isabella should be
+doing wrong, felt greatly relieved by Mr. Allen’s approbation of her
+own conduct, and truly rejoiced to be preserved by his advice from the
+danger of falling into such an error herself. Her escape from being one
+of the party to Clifton was now an escape indeed; for what would the
+Tilneys have thought of her, if she had broken her promise to them in
+order to do what was wrong in itself, if she had been guilty of one
+breach of propriety, only to enable her to be guilty of another?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 14
+
+
+The next morning was fair, and Catherine almost expected another attack
+from the assembled party. With Mr. Allen to support her, she felt no
+dread of the event: but she would gladly be spared a contest, where
+victory itself was painful, and was heartily rejoiced therefore at
+neither seeing nor hearing anything of them. The Tilneys called for her
+at the appointed time; and no new difficulty arising, no sudden
+recollection, no unexpected summons, no impertinent intrusion to
+disconcert their measures, my heroine was most unnaturally able to
+fulfil her engagement, though it was made with the hero himself. They
+determined on walking round Beechen Cliff, that noble hill whose
+beautiful verdure and hanging coppice render it so striking an object
+from almost every opening in Bath.
+
+“I never look at it,” said Catherine, as they walked along the side of
+the river, “without thinking of the south of France.”
+
+“You have been abroad then?” said Henry, a little surprised.
+
+“Oh! No, I only mean what I have read about. It always puts me in mind
+of the country that Emily and her father travelled through, in The
+Mysteries of Udolpho. But you never read novels, I dare say?”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Because they are not clever enough for you—gentlemen read better
+books.”
+
+“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good
+novel, must be intolerably stupid. I have read all Mrs. Radcliffe’s
+works, and most of them with great pleasure. The Mysteries of Udolpho,
+when I had once begun it, I could not lay down again; I remember
+finishing it in two days—my hair standing on end the whole time.”
+
+“Yes,” added Miss Tilney, “and I remember that you undertook to read it
+aloud to me, and that when I was called away for only five minutes to
+answer a note, instead of waiting for me, you took the volume into the
+Hermitage Walk, and I was obliged to stay till you had finished it.”
+
+“Thank you, Eleanor—a most honourable testimony. You see, Miss Morland,
+the injustice of your suspicions. Here was I, in my eagerness to get
+on, refusing to wait only five minutes for my sister, breaking the
+promise I had made of reading it aloud, and keeping her in suspense at
+a most interesting part, by running away with the volume, which, you
+are to observe, was her own, particularly her own. I am proud when I
+reflect on it, and I think it must establish me in your good opinion.”
+
+“I am very glad to hear it indeed, and now I shall never be ashamed of
+liking Udolpho myself. But I really thought before, young men despised
+novels amazingly.”
+
+“It is _amazingly;_ it may well suggest _amazement_ if they do—for they
+read nearly as many as women. I myself have read hundreds and hundreds.
+Do not imagine that you can cope with me in a knowledge of Julias and
+Louisas. If we proceed to particulars, and engage in the never-ceasing
+inquiry of ‘Have you read this?’ and ‘Have you read that?’ I shall soon
+leave you as far behind me as—what shall I say?—I want an appropriate
+simile.—as far as your friend Emily herself left poor Valancourt when
+she went with her aunt into Italy. Consider how many years I have had
+the start of you. I had entered on my studies at Oxford, while you were
+a good little girl working your sampler at home!”
+
+“Not very good, I am afraid. But now really, do not you think Udolpho
+the nicest book in the world?”
+
+“The nicest—by which I suppose you mean the neatest. That must depend
+upon the binding.”
+
+“Henry,” said Miss Tilney, “you are very impertinent. Miss Morland, he
+is treating you exactly as he does his sister. He is forever finding
+fault with me, for some incorrectness of language, and now he is taking
+the same liberty with you. The word ‘nicest,’ as you used it, did not
+suit him; and you had better change it as soon as you can, or we shall
+be overpowered with Johnson and Blair all the rest of the way.”
+
+“I am sure,” cried Catherine, “I did not mean to say anything wrong;
+but it _is_ a nice book, and why should not I call it so?”
+
+“Very true,” said Henry, “and this is a very nice day, and we are
+taking a very nice walk, and you are two very nice young ladies. Oh! It
+is a very nice word indeed! It does for everything. Originally perhaps
+it was applied only to express neatness, propriety, delicacy, or
+refinement—people were nice in their dress, in their sentiments, or
+their choice. But now every commendation on every subject is comprised
+in that one word.”
+
+“While, in fact,” cried his sister, “it ought only to be applied to
+you, without any commendation at all. You are more nice than wise.
+Come, Miss Morland, let us leave him to meditate over our faults in the
+utmost propriety of diction, while we praise Udolpho in whatever terms
+we like best. It is a most interesting work. You are fond of that kind
+of reading?”
+
+“To say the truth, I do not much like any other.”
+
+“Indeed!”
+
+“That is, I can read poetry and plays, and things of that sort, and do
+not dislike travels. But history, real solemn history, I cannot be
+interested in. Can you?”
+
+“Yes, I am fond of history.”
+
+“I wish I were too. I read it a little as a duty, but it tells me
+nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and
+kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for
+nothing, and hardly any women at all—it is very tiresome: and yet I
+often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it
+must be invention. The speeches that are put into the heroes’ mouths,
+their thoughts and designs—the chief of all this must be invention, and
+invention is what delights me in other books.”
+
+“Historians, you think,” said Miss Tilney, “are not happy in their
+flights of fancy. They display imagination without raising interest. I
+am fond of history—and am very well contented to take the false with
+the true. In the principal facts they have sources of intelligence in
+former histories and records, which may be as much depended on, I
+conclude, as anything that does not actually pass under one’s own
+observation; and as for the little embellishments you speak of, they
+are embellishments, and I like them as such. If a speech be well drawn
+up, I read it with pleasure, by whomsoever it may be made—and probably
+with much greater, if the production of Mr. Hume or Mr. Robertson, than
+if the genuine words of Caractacus, Agricola, or Alfred the Great.”
+
+“You are fond of history! And so are Mr. Allen and my father; and I
+have two brothers who do not dislike it. So many instances within my
+small circle of friends is remarkable! At this rate, I shall not pity
+the writers of history any longer. If people like to read their books,
+it is all very well, but to be at so much trouble in filling great
+volumes, which, as I used to think, nobody would willingly ever look
+into, to be labouring only for the torment of little boys and girls,
+always struck me as a hard fate; and though I know it is all very right
+and necessary, I have often wondered at the person’s courage that could
+sit down on purpose to do it.”
+
+“That little boys and girls should be tormented,” said Henry, “is what
+no one at all acquainted with human nature in a civilized state can
+deny; but in behalf of our most distinguished historians, I must
+observe that they might well be offended at being supposed to have no
+higher aim, and that by their method and style, they are perfectly well
+qualified to torment readers of the most advanced reason and mature
+time of life. I use the verb ‘to torment,’ as I observed to be your own
+method, instead of ‘to instruct,’ supposing them to be now admitted as
+synonymous.”
+
+“You think me foolish to call instruction a torment, but if you had
+been as much used as myself to hear poor little children first learning
+their letters and then learning to spell, if you had ever seen how
+stupid they can be for a whole morning together, and how tired my poor
+mother is at the end of it, as I am in the habit of seeing almost every
+day of my life at home, you would allow that to _torment_ and to
+_instruct_ might sometimes be used as synonymous words.”
+
+“Very probably. But historians are not accountable for the difficulty
+of learning to read; and even you yourself, who do not altogether seem
+particularly friendly to very severe, very intense application, may
+perhaps be brought to acknowledge that it is very well worth-while to
+be tormented for two or three years of one’s life, for the sake of
+being able to read all the rest of it. Consider—if reading had not been
+taught, Mrs. Radcliffe would have written in vain—or perhaps might not
+have written at all.”
+
+Catherine assented—and a very warm panegyric from her on that lady’s
+merits closed the subject. The Tilneys were soon engaged in another on
+which she had nothing to say. They were viewing the country with the
+eyes of persons accustomed to drawing, and decided on its capability of
+being formed into pictures, with all the eagerness of real taste. Here
+Catherine was quite lost. She knew nothing of drawing—nothing of taste:
+and she listened to them with an attention which brought her little
+profit, for they talked in phrases which conveyed scarcely any idea to
+her. The little which she could understand, however, appeared to
+contradict the very few notions she had entertained on the matter
+before. It seemed as if a good view were no longer to be taken from the
+top of an high hill, and that a clear blue sky was no longer a proof of
+a fine day. She was heartily ashamed of her ignorance. A misplaced
+shame. Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To
+come with a well-informed mind is to come with an inability of
+administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would
+always wish to avoid. A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of
+knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.
+
+The advantages of natural folly in a beautiful girl have been already
+set forth by the capital pen of a sister author; and to her treatment
+of the subject I will only add, in justice to men, that though to the
+larger and more trifling part of the sex, imbecility in females is a
+great enhancement of their personal charms, there is a portion of them
+too reasonable and too well informed themselves to desire anything more
+in woman than ignorance. But Catherine did not know her own
+advantages—did not know that a good-looking girl, with an affectionate
+heart and a very ignorant mind, cannot fail of attracting a clever
+young man, unless circumstances are particularly untoward. In the
+present instance, she confessed and lamented her want of knowledge,
+declared that she would give anything in the world to be able to draw;
+and a lecture on the picturesque immediately followed, in which his
+instructions were so clear that she soon began to see beauty in
+everything admired by him, and her attention was so earnest that he
+became perfectly satisfied of her having a great deal of natural taste.
+He talked of foregrounds, distances, and second distances—side-screens
+and perspectives—lights and shades; and Catherine was so hopeful a
+scholar that when they gained the top of Beechen Cliff, she voluntarily
+rejected the whole city of Bath as unworthy to make part of a
+landscape. Delighted with her progress, and fearful of wearying her
+with too much wisdom at once, Henry suffered the subject to decline,
+and by an easy transition from a piece of rocky fragment and the
+withered oak which he had placed near its summit, to oaks in general,
+to forests, the enclosure of them, waste lands, crown lands and
+government, he shortly found himself arrived at politics; and from
+politics, it was an easy step to silence. The general pause which
+succeeded his short disquisition on the state of the nation was put an
+end to by Catherine, who, in rather a solemn tone of voice, uttered
+these words, “I have heard that something very shocking indeed will
+soon come out in London.”
+
+Miss Tilney, to whom this was chiefly addressed, was startled, and
+hastily replied, “Indeed! And of what nature?”
+
+“That I do not know, nor who is the author. I have only heard that it
+is to be more horrible than anything we have met with yet.”
+
+“Good heaven! Where could you hear of such a thing?”
+
+“A particular friend of mine had an account of it in a letter from
+London yesterday. It is to be uncommonly dreadful. I shall expect
+murder and everything of the kind.”
+
+“You speak with astonishing composure! But I hope your friend’s
+accounts have been exaggerated; and if such a design is known
+beforehand, proper measures will undoubtedly be taken by government to
+prevent its coming to effect.”
+
+“Government,” said Henry, endeavouring not to smile, “neither desires
+nor dares to interfere in such matters. There must be murder; and
+government cares not how much.”
+
+The ladies stared. He laughed, and added, “Come, shall I make you
+understand each other, or leave you to puzzle out an explanation as you
+can? No—I will be noble. I will prove myself a man, no less by the
+generosity of my soul than the clearness of my head. I have no patience
+with such of my sex as disdain to let themselves sometimes down to the
+comprehension of yours. Perhaps the abilities of women are neither
+sound nor acute—neither vigorous nor keen. Perhaps they may want
+observation, discernment, judgment, fire, genius, and wit.”
+
+“Miss Morland, do not mind what he says; but have the goodness to
+satisfy me as to this dreadful riot.”
+
+“Riot! What riot?”
+
+“My dear Eleanor, the riot is only in your own brain. The confusion
+there is scandalous. Miss Morland has been talking of nothing more
+dreadful than a new publication which is shortly to come out, in three
+duodecimo volumes, two hundred and seventy-six pages in each, with a
+frontispiece to the first, of two tombstones and a lantern—do you
+understand? And you, Miss Morland—my stupid sister has mistaken all
+your clearest expressions. You talked of expected horrors in London—and
+instead of instantly conceiving, as any rational creature would have
+done, that such words could relate only to a circulating library, she
+immediately pictured to herself a mob of three thousand men assembling
+in St. George’s Fields, the Bank attacked, the Tower threatened, the
+streets of London flowing with blood, a detachment of the Twelfth Light
+Dragoons (the hopes of the nation) called up from Northampton to quell
+the insurgents, and the gallant Captain Frederick Tilney, in the moment
+of charging at the head of his troop, knocked off his horse by a
+brickbat from an upper window. Forgive her stupidity. The fears of the
+sister have added to the weakness of the woman; but she is by no means
+a simpleton in general.”
+
+Catherine looked grave. “And now, Henry,” said Miss Tilney, “that you
+have made us understand each other, you may as well make Miss Morland
+understand yourself—unless you mean to have her think you intolerably
+rude to your sister, and a great brute in your opinion of women in
+general. Miss Morland is not used to your odd ways.”
+
+“I shall be most happy to make her better acquainted with them.”
+
+“No doubt; but that is no explanation of the present.”
+
+“What am I to do?”
+
+“You know what you ought to do. Clear your character handsomely before
+her. Tell her that you think very highly of the understanding of
+women.”
+
+“Miss Morland, I think very highly of the understanding of all the
+women in the world—especially of those—whoever they may be—with whom I
+happen to be in company.”
+
+“That is not enough. Be more serious.”
+
+“Miss Morland, no one can think more highly of the understanding of
+women than I do. In my opinion, nature has given them so much that they
+never find it necessary to use more than half.”
+
+“We shall get nothing more serious from him now, Miss Morland. He is
+not in a sober mood. But I do assure you that he must be entirely
+misunderstood, if he can ever appear to say an unjust thing of any
+woman at all, or an unkind one of me.”
+
+It was no effort to Catherine to believe that Henry Tilney could never
+be wrong. His manner might sometimes surprise, but his meaning must
+always be just: and what she did not understand, she was almost as
+ready to admire, as what she did. The whole walk was delightful, and
+though it ended too soon, its conclusion was delightful too; her
+friends attended her into the house, and Miss Tilney, before they
+parted, addressing herself with respectful form, as much to Mrs. Allen
+as to Catherine, petitioned for the pleasure of her company to dinner
+on the day after the next. No difficulty was made on Mrs. Allen’s side,
+and the only difficulty on Catherine’s was in concealing the excess of
+her pleasure.
+
+The morning had passed away so charmingly as to banish all her
+friendship and natural affection, for no thought of Isabella or James
+had crossed her during their walk. When the Tilneys were gone, she
+became amiable again, but she was amiable for some time to little
+effect; Mrs. Allen had no intelligence to give that could relieve her
+anxiety; she had heard nothing of any of them. Towards the end of the
+morning, however, Catherine, having occasion for some indispensable
+yard of ribbon which must be bought without a moment’s delay, walked
+out into the town, and in Bond Street overtook the second Miss Thorpe
+as she was loitering towards Edgar’s Buildings between two of the
+sweetest girls in the world, who had been her dear friends all the
+morning. From her, she soon learned that the party to Clifton had taken
+place. “They set off at eight this morning,” said Miss Anne, “and I am
+sure I do not envy them their drive. I think you and I are very well
+off to be out of the scrape. It must be the dullest thing in the world,
+for there is not a soul at Clifton at this time of year. Belle went
+with your brother, and John drove Maria.”
+
+Catherine spoke the pleasure she really felt on hearing this part of
+the arrangement.
+
+“Oh! yes,” rejoined the other, “Maria is gone. She was quite wild to
+go. She thought it would be something very fine. I cannot say I admire
+her taste; and for my part, I was determined from the first not to go,
+if they pressed me ever so much.”
+
+Catherine, a little doubtful of this, could not help answering, “I wish
+you could have gone too. It is a pity you could not all go.”
+
+“Thank you; but it is quite a matter of indifference to me. Indeed, I
+would not have gone on any account. I was saying so to Emily and Sophia
+when you overtook us.”
+
+Catherine was still unconvinced; but glad that Anne should have the
+friendship of an Emily and a Sophia to console her, she bade her adieu
+without much uneasiness, and returned home, pleased that the party had
+not been prevented by her refusing to join it, and very heartily
+wishing that it might be too pleasant to allow either James or Isabella
+to resent her resistance any longer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 15
+
+
+Early the next day, a note from Isabella, speaking peace and tenderness
+in every line, and entreating the immediate presence of her friend on a
+matter of the utmost importance, hastened Catherine, in the happiest
+state of confidence and curiosity, to Edgar’s Buildings. The two
+youngest Miss Thorpes were by themselves in the parlour; and, on Anne’s
+quitting it to call her sister, Catherine took the opportunity of
+asking the other for some particulars of their yesterday’s party. Maria
+desired no greater pleasure than to speak of it; and Catherine
+immediately learnt that it had been altogether the most delightful
+scheme in the world, that nobody could imagine how charming it had
+been, and that it had been more delightful than anybody could conceive.
+Such was the information of the first five minutes; the second unfolded
+thus much in detail—that they had driven directly to the York Hotel,
+ate some soup, and bespoke an early dinner, walked down to the
+pump-room, tasted the water, and laid out some shillings in purses and
+spars; thence adjourned to eat ice at a pastry-cook’s, and hurrying
+back to the hotel, swallowed their dinner in haste, to prevent being in
+the dark; and then had a delightful drive back, only the moon was not
+up, and it rained a little, and Mr. Morland’s horse was so tired he
+could hardly get it along.
+
+Catherine listened with heartfelt satisfaction. It appeared that Blaize
+Castle had never been thought of; and, as for all the rest, there was
+nothing to regret for half an instant. Maria’s intelligence concluded
+with a tender effusion of pity for her sister Anne, whom she
+represented as insupportably cross, from being excluded the party.
+
+“She will never forgive me, I am sure; but, you know, how could I help
+it? John would have me go, for he vowed he would not drive her, because
+she had such thick ankles. I dare say she will not be in good humour
+again this month; but I am determined I will not be cross; it is not a
+little matter that puts me out of temper.”
+
+Isabella now entered the room with so eager a step, and a look of such
+happy importance, as engaged all her friend’s notice. Maria was without
+ceremony sent away, and Isabella, embracing Catherine, thus began:
+“Yes, my dear Catherine, it is so indeed; your penetration has not
+deceived you. Oh! That arch eye of yours! It sees through everything.”
+
+Catherine replied only by a look of wondering ignorance.
+
+“Nay, my beloved, sweetest friend,” continued the other, “compose
+yourself. I am amazingly agitated, as you perceive. Let us sit down and
+talk in comfort. Well, and so you guessed it the moment you had my
+note? Sly creature! Oh! My dear Catherine, you alone, who know my
+heart, can judge of my present happiness. Your brother is the most
+charming of men. I only wish I were more worthy of him. But what will
+your excellent father and mother say? Oh! Heavens! When I think of them
+I am so agitated!”
+
+Catherine’s understanding began to awake: an idea of the truth suddenly
+darted into her mind; and, with the natural blush of so new an emotion,
+she cried out, “Good heaven! My dear Isabella, what do you mean? Can
+you—can you really be in love with James?”
+
+This bold surmise, however, she soon learnt comprehended but half the
+fact. The anxious affection, which she was accused of having
+continually watched in Isabella’s every look and action, had, in the
+course of their yesterday’s party, received the delightful confession
+of an equal love. Her heart and faith were alike engaged to James.
+Never had Catherine listened to anything so full of interest, wonder,
+and joy. Her brother and her friend engaged! New to such circumstances,
+the importance of it appeared unspeakably great, and she contemplated
+it as one of those grand events, of which the ordinary course of life
+can hardly afford a return. The strength of her feelings she could not
+express; the nature of them, however, contented her friend. The
+happiness of having such a sister was their first effusion, and the
+fair ladies mingled in embraces and tears of joy.
+
+Delighting, however, as Catherine sincerely did in the prospect of the
+connection, it must be acknowledged that Isabella far surpassed her in
+tender anticipations. “You will be so infinitely dearer to me, my
+Catherine, than either Anne or Maria: I feel that I shall be so much
+more attached to my dear Morland’s family than to my own.”
+
+This was a pitch of friendship beyond Catherine.
+
+“You are so like your dear brother,” continued Isabella, “that I quite
+doted on you the first moment I saw you. But so it always is with me;
+the first moment settles everything. The very first day that Morland
+came to us last Christmas—the very first moment I beheld him—my heart
+was irrecoverably gone. I remember I wore my yellow gown, with my hair
+done up in braids; and when I came into the drawing-room, and John
+introduced him, I thought I never saw anybody so handsome before.”
+
+Here Catherine secretly acknowledged the power of love; for, though
+exceedingly fond of her brother, and partial to all his endowments, she
+had never in her life thought him handsome.
+
+“I remember too, Miss Andrews drank tea with us that evening, and wore
+her puce-coloured sarsenet; and she looked so heavenly that I thought
+your brother must certainly fall in love with her; I could not sleep a
+wink all night for thinking of it. Oh! Catherine, the many sleepless
+nights I have had on your brother’s account! I would not have you
+suffer half what I have done! I am grown wretchedly thin, I know; but I
+will not pain you by describing my anxiety; you have seen enough of it.
+I feel that I have betrayed myself perpetually—so unguarded in speaking
+of my partiality for the church! But my secret I was always sure would
+be safe with _you_.”
+
+Catherine felt that nothing could have been safer; but ashamed of an
+ignorance little expected, she dared no longer contest the point, nor
+refuse to have been as full of arch penetration and affectionate
+sympathy as Isabella chose to consider her. Her brother, she found, was
+preparing to set off with all speed to Fullerton, to make known his
+situation and ask consent; and here was a source of some real agitation
+to the mind of Isabella. Catherine endeavoured to persuade her, as she
+was herself persuaded, that her father and mother would never oppose
+their son’s wishes. “It is impossible,” said she, “for parents to be
+more kind, or more desirous of their children’s happiness; I have no
+doubt of their consenting immediately.”
+
+“Morland says exactly the same,” replied Isabella; “and yet I dare not
+expect it; my fortune will be so small; they never can consent to it.
+Your brother, who might marry anybody!”
+
+Here Catherine again discerned the force of love.
+
+“Indeed, Isabella, you are too humble. The difference of fortune can be
+nothing to signify.”
+
+“Oh! My sweet Catherine, in _your_ generous heart I know it would
+signify nothing; but we must not expect such disinterestedness in many.
+As for myself, I am sure I only wish our situations were reversed. Had
+I the command of millions, were I mistress of the whole world, your
+brother would be my only choice.”
+
+This charming sentiment, recommended as much by sense as novelty, gave
+Catherine a most pleasing remembrance of all the heroines of her
+acquaintance; and she thought her friend never looked more lovely than
+in uttering the grand idea. “I am sure they will consent,” was her
+frequent declaration; “I am sure they will be delighted with you.”
+
+“For my own part,” said Isabella, “my wishes are so moderate that the
+smallest income in nature would be enough for me. Where people are
+really attached, poverty itself is wealth; grandeur I detest: I would
+not settle in London for the universe. A cottage in some retired
+village would be ecstasy. There are some charming little villas about
+Richmond.”
+
+“Richmond!” cried Catherine. “You must settle near Fullerton. You must
+be near us.”
+
+“I am sure I shall be miserable if we do not. If I can but be near
+_you_, I shall be satisfied. But this is idle talking! I will not allow
+myself to think of such things, till we have your father’s answer.
+Morland says that by sending it tonight to Salisbury, we may have it
+tomorrow. Tomorrow? I know I shall never have courage to open the
+letter. I know it will be the death of me.”
+
+A reverie succeeded this conviction—and when Isabella spoke again, it
+was to resolve on the quality of her wedding-gown.
+
+Their conference was put an end to by the anxious young lover himself,
+who came to breathe his parting sigh before he set off for Wiltshire.
+Catherine wished to congratulate him, but knew not what to say, and her
+eloquence was only in her eyes. From them, however, the eight parts of
+speech shone out most expressively, and James could combine them with
+ease. Impatient for the realization of all that he hoped at home, his
+adieus were not long; and they would have been yet shorter, had he not
+been frequently detained by the urgent entreaties of his fair one that
+he would go. Twice was he called almost from the door by her eagerness
+to have him gone. “Indeed, Morland, I must drive you away. Consider how
+far you have to ride. I cannot bear to see you linger so. For heaven’s
+sake, waste no more time. There, go, go—I insist on it.”
+
+The two friends, with hearts now more united than ever, were
+inseparable for the day; and in schemes of sisterly happiness the hours
+flew along. Mrs. Thorpe and her son, who were acquainted with
+everything, and who seemed only to want Mr. Morland’s consent, to
+consider Isabella’s engagement as the most fortunate circumstance
+imaginable for their family, were allowed to join their counsels, and
+add their quota of significant looks and mysterious expressions to fill
+up the measure of curiosity to be raised in the unprivileged younger
+sisters. To Catherine’s simple feelings, this odd sort of reserve
+seemed neither kindly meant, nor consistently supported; and its
+unkindness she would hardly have forborne pointing out, had its
+inconsistency been less their friend; but Anne and Maria soon set her
+heart at ease by the sagacity of their “I know what”; and the evening
+was spent in a sort of war of wit, a display of family ingenuity, on
+one side in the mystery of an affected secret, on the other of
+undefined discovery, all equally acute.
+
+Catherine was with her friend again the next day, endeavouring to
+support her spirits and while away the many tedious hours before the
+delivery of the letters; a needful exertion, for as the time of
+reasonable expectation drew near, Isabella became more and more
+desponding, and before the letter arrived, had worked herself into a
+state of real distress. But when it did come, where could distress be
+found? “I have had no difficulty in gaining the consent of my kind
+parents, and am promised that everything in their power shall be done
+to forward my happiness,” were the first three lines, and in one moment
+all was joyful security. The brightest glow was instantly spread over
+Isabella’s features, all care and anxiety seemed removed, her spirits
+became almost too high for control, and she called herself without
+scruple the happiest of mortals.
+
+Mrs. Thorpe, with tears of joy, embraced her daughter, her son, her
+visitor, and could have embraced half the inhabitants of Bath with
+satisfaction. Her heart was overflowing with tenderness. It was “dear
+John” and “dear Catherine” at every word; “dear Anne and dear Maria”
+must immediately be made sharers in their felicity; and two “dears” at
+once before the name of Isabella were not more than that beloved child
+had now well earned. John himself was no skulker in joy. He not only
+bestowed on Mr. Morland the high commendation of being one of the
+finest fellows in the world, but swore off many sentences in his
+praise.
+
+The letter, whence sprang all this felicity, was short, containing
+little more than this assurance of success; and every particular was
+deferred till James could write again. But for particulars Isabella
+could well afford to wait. The needful was comprised in Mr. Morland’s
+promise; his honour was pledged to make everything easy; and by what
+means their income was to be formed, whether landed property were to be
+resigned, or funded money made over, was a matter in which her
+disinterested spirit took no concern. She knew enough to feel secure of
+an honourable and speedy establishment, and her imagination took a
+rapid flight over its attendant felicities. She saw herself at the end
+of a few weeks, the gaze and admiration of every new acquaintance at
+Fullerton, the envy of every valued old friend in Putney, with a
+carriage at her command, a new name on her tickets, and a brilliant
+exhibition of hoop rings on her finger.
+
+When the contents of the letter were ascertained, John Thorpe, who had
+only waited its arrival to begin his journey to London, prepared to set
+off. “Well, Miss Morland,” said he, on finding her alone in the
+parlour, “I am come to bid you good-bye.” Catherine wished him a good
+journey. Without appearing to hear her, he walked to the window,
+fidgeted about, hummed a tune, and seemed wholly self-occupied.
+
+“Shall not you be late at Devizes?” said Catherine. He made no answer;
+but after a minute’s silence burst out with, “A famous good thing this
+marrying scheme, upon my soul! A clever fancy of Morland’s and Belle’s.
+What do you think of it, Miss Morland? _I_ say it is no bad notion.”
+
+“I am sure I think it a very good one.”
+
+“Do you? That’s honest, by heavens! I am glad you are no enemy to
+matrimony, however. Did you ever hear the old song ‘Going to One
+Wedding Brings on Another?’ I say, you will come to Belle’s wedding, I
+hope.”
+
+“Yes; I have promised your sister to be with her, if possible.”
+
+“And then you know”—twisting himself about and forcing a foolish
+laugh—“I say, then you know, we may try the truth of this same old
+song.”
+
+“May we? But I never sing. Well, I wish you a good journey. I dine with
+Miss Tilney today, and must now be going home.”
+
+“Nay, but there is no such confounded hurry. Who knows when we may be
+together again? Not but that I shall be down again by the end of a
+fortnight, and a devilish long fortnight it will appear to me.”
+
+“Then why do you stay away so long?” replied Catherine—finding that he
+waited for an answer.
+
+“That is kind of you, however—kind and good-natured. I shall not forget
+it in a hurry. But you have more good nature and all that, than anybody
+living, I believe. A monstrous deal of good nature, and it is not only
+good nature, but you have so much, so much of everything; and then you
+have such—upon my soul, I do not know anybody like you.”
+
+“Oh! dear, there are a great many people like me, I dare say, only a
+great deal better. Good morning to you.”
+
+“But I say, Miss Morland, I shall come and pay my respects at Fullerton
+before it is long, if not disagreeable.”
+
+“Pray do. My father and mother will be very glad to see you.”
+
+“And I hope—I hope, Miss Morland, _you_ will not be sorry to see me.”
+
+“Oh! dear, not at all. There are very few people I am sorry to see.
+Company is always cheerful.”
+
+“That is just my way of thinking. Give me but a little cheerful
+company, let me only have the company of the people I love, let me only
+be where I like and with whom I like, and the devil take the rest, say
+I. And I am heartily glad to hear you say the same. But I have a
+notion, Miss Morland, you and I think pretty much alike upon most
+matters.”
+
+“Perhaps we may; but it is more than I ever thought of. And as to _most
+matters_, to say the truth, there are not many that I know my own mind
+about.”
+
+“By Jove, no more do I. It is not my way to bother my brains with what
+does not concern me. My notion of things is simple enough. Let me only
+have the girl I like, say I, with a comfortable house over my head, and
+what care I for all the rest? Fortune is nothing. I am sure of a good
+income of my own; and if she had not a penny, why, so much the better.”
+
+“Very true. I think like you there. If there is a good fortune on one
+side, there can be no occasion for any on the other. No matter which
+has it, so that there is enough. I hate the idea of one great fortune
+looking out for another. And to marry for money I think the wickedest
+thing in existence. Good day. We shall be very glad to see you at
+Fullerton, whenever it is convenient.” And away she went. It was not in
+the power of all his gallantry to detain her longer. With such news to
+communicate, and such a visit to prepare for, her departure was not to
+be delayed by anything in his nature to urge; and she hurried away,
+leaving him to the undivided consciousness of his own happy address,
+and her explicit encouragement.
+
+The agitation which she had herself experienced on first learning her
+brother’s engagement made her expect to raise no inconsiderable emotion
+in Mr. and Mrs. Allen, by the communication of the wonderful event. How
+great was her disappointment! The important affair, which many words of
+preparation ushered in, had been foreseen by them both ever since her
+brother’s arrival; and all that they felt on the occasion was
+comprehended in a wish for the young people’s happiness, with a remark,
+on the gentleman’s side, in favour of Isabella’s beauty, and on the
+lady’s, of her great good luck. It was to Catherine the most surprising
+insensibility. The disclosure, however, of the great secret of James’s
+going to Fullerton the day before, did raise some emotion in Mrs.
+Allen. She could not listen to that with perfect calmness, but
+repeatedly regretted the necessity of its concealment, wished she could
+have known his intention, wished she could have seen him before he
+went, as she should certainly have troubled him with her best regards
+to his father and mother, and her kind compliments to all the Skinners.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 16
+
+
+Catherine’s expectations of pleasure from her visit in Milsom Street
+were so very high that disappointment was inevitable; and accordingly,
+though she was most politely received by General Tilney, and kindly
+welcomed by his daughter, though Henry was at home, and no one else of
+the party, she found, on her return, without spending many hours in the
+examination of her feelings, that she had gone to her appointment
+preparing for happiness which it had not afforded. Instead of finding
+herself improved in acquaintance with Miss Tilney, from the intercourse
+of the day, she seemed hardly so intimate with her as before; instead
+of seeing Henry Tilney to greater advantage than ever, in the ease of a
+family party, he had never said so little, nor been so little
+agreeable; and, in spite of their father’s great civilities to her—in
+spite of his thanks, invitations, and compliments—it had been a release
+to get away from him. It puzzled her to account for all this. It could
+not be General Tilney’s fault. That he was perfectly agreeable and
+good-natured, and altogether a very charming man, did not admit of a
+doubt, for he was tall and handsome, and Henry’s father. _He_ could not
+be accountable for his children’s want of spirits, or for her want of
+enjoyment in his company. The former she hoped at last might have been
+accidental, and the latter she could only attribute to her own
+stupidity. Isabella, on hearing the particulars of the visit, gave a
+different explanation: “It was all pride, pride, insufferable
+haughtiness and pride! She had long suspected the family to be very
+high, and this made it certain. Such insolence of behaviour as Miss
+Tilney’s she had never heard of in her life! Not to do the honours of
+her house with common good breeding! To behave to her guest with such
+superciliousness! Hardly even to speak to her!”
+
+“But it was not so bad as that, Isabella; there was no
+superciliousness; she was very civil.”
+
+“Oh! Don’t defend her! And then the brother, he, who had appeared so
+attached to you! Good heavens! Well, some people’s feelings are
+incomprehensible. And so he hardly looked once at you the whole day?”
+
+“I do not say so; but he did not seem in good spirits.”
+
+“How contemptible! Of all things in the world inconstancy is my
+aversion. Let me entreat you never to think of him again, my dear
+Catherine; indeed he is unworthy of you.”
+
+“Unworthy! I do not suppose he ever thinks of me.”
+
+“That is exactly what I say; he never thinks of you. Such fickleness!
+Oh! How different to your brother and to mine! I really believe John
+has the most constant heart.”
+
+“But as for General Tilney, I assure you it would be impossible for
+anybody to behave to me with greater civility and attention; it seemed
+to be his only care to entertain and make me happy.”
+
+“Oh! I know no harm of him; I do not suspect him of pride. I believe he
+is a very gentleman-like man. John thinks very well of him, and John’s
+judgment—”
+
+“Well, I shall see how they behave to me this evening; we shall meet
+them at the rooms.”
+
+“And must I go?”
+
+“Do not you intend it? I thought it was all settled.”
+
+“Nay, since you make such a point of it, I can refuse you nothing. But
+do not insist upon my being very agreeable, for my heart, you know,
+will be some forty miles off. And as for dancing, do not mention it, I
+beg; _that_ is quite out of the question. Charles Hodges will plague me
+to death, I dare say; but I shall cut him very short. Ten to one but he
+guesses the reason, and that is exactly what I want to avoid, so I
+shall insist on his keeping his conjecture to himself.”
+
+Isabella’s opinion of the Tilneys did not influence her friend; she was
+sure there had been no insolence in the manners either of brother or
+sister; and she did not credit there being any pride in their hearts.
+The evening rewarded her confidence; she was met by one with the same
+kindness, and by the other with the same attention, as heretofore: Miss
+Tilney took pains to be near her, and Henry asked her to dance.
+
+Having heard the day before in Milsom Street that their elder brother,
+Captain Tilney, was expected almost every hour, she was at no loss for
+the name of a very fashionable-looking, handsome young man, whom she
+had never seen before, and who now evidently belonged to their party.
+She looked at him with great admiration, and even supposed it possible
+that some people might think him handsomer than his brother, though, in
+her eyes, his air was more assuming, and his countenance less
+prepossessing. His taste and manners were beyond a doubt decidedly
+inferior; for, within her hearing, he not only protested against every
+thought of dancing himself, but even laughed openly at Henry for
+finding it possible. From the latter circumstance it may be presumed
+that, whatever might be our heroine’s opinion of him, his admiration of
+her was not of a very dangerous kind; not likely to produce animosities
+between the brothers, nor persecutions to the lady. _He_ cannot be the
+instigator of the three villains in horsemen’s greatcoats, by whom she
+will hereafter be forced into a traveling-chaise and four, which will
+drive off with incredible speed. Catherine, meanwhile, undisturbed by
+presentiments of such an evil, or of any evil at all, except that of
+having but a short set to dance down, enjoyed her usual happiness with
+Henry Tilney, listening with sparkling eyes to everything he said; and,
+in finding him irresistible, becoming so herself.
+
+At the end of the first dance, Captain Tilney came towards them again,
+and, much to Catherine’s dissatisfaction, pulled his brother away. They
+retired whispering together; and, though her delicate sensibility did
+not take immediate alarm, and lay it down as fact, that Captain Tilney
+must have heard some malevolent misrepresentation of her, which he now
+hastened to communicate to his brother, in the hope of separating them
+forever, she could not have her partner conveyed from her sight without
+very uneasy sensations. Her suspense was of full five minutes’
+duration; and she was beginning to think it a very long quarter of an
+hour, when they both returned, and an explanation was given, by Henry’s
+requesting to know if she thought her friend, Miss Thorpe, would have
+any objection to dancing, as his brother would be most happy to be
+introduced to her. Catherine, without hesitation, replied that she was
+very sure Miss Thorpe did not mean to dance at all. The cruel reply was
+passed on to the other, and he immediately walked away.
+
+“Your brother will not mind it, I know,” said she, “because I heard him
+say before that he hated dancing; but it was very good-natured in him
+to think of it. I suppose he saw Isabella sitting down, and fancied she
+might wish for a partner; but he is quite mistaken, for she would not
+dance upon any account in the world.”
+
+Henry smiled, and said, “How very little trouble it can give you to
+understand the motive of other people’s actions.”
+
+“Why? What do you mean?”
+
+“With you, it is not, How is such a one likely to be influenced, What
+is the inducement most likely to act upon such a person’s feelings,
+age, situation, and probable habits of life considered—but, How should
+_I_ be influenced, What would be _my_ inducement in acting so and so?”
+
+“I do not understand you.”
+
+“Then we are on very unequal terms, for I understand you perfectly
+well.”
+
+“Me? Yes; I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.”
+
+“Bravo! An excellent satire on modern language.”
+
+“But pray tell me what you mean.”
+
+“Shall I indeed? Do you really desire it? But you are not aware of the
+consequences; it will involve you in a very cruel embarrassment, and
+certainly bring on a disagreement between us.”
+
+“No, no; it shall not do either; I am not afraid.”
+
+“Well, then, I only meant that your attributing my brother’s wish of
+dancing with Miss Thorpe to good nature alone convinced me of your
+being superior in good nature yourself to all the rest of the world.”
+
+Catherine blushed and disclaimed, and the gentleman’s predictions were
+verified. There was a something, however, in his words which repaid her
+for the pain of confusion; and that something occupied her mind so much
+that she drew back for some time, forgetting to speak or to listen, and
+almost forgetting where she was; till, roused by the voice of Isabella,
+she looked up and saw her with Captain Tilney preparing to give them
+hands across.
+
+Isabella shrugged her shoulders and smiled, the only explanation of
+this extraordinary change which could at that time be given; but as it
+was not quite enough for Catherine’s comprehension, she spoke her
+astonishment in very plain terms to her partner.
+
+“I cannot think how it could happen! Isabella was so determined not to
+dance.”
+
+“And did Isabella never change her mind before?”
+
+“Oh! But, because—And your brother! After what you told him from me,
+how could he think of going to ask her?”
+
+“I cannot take surprise to myself on that head. You bid me be surprised
+on your friend’s account, and therefore I am; but as for my brother,
+his conduct in the business, I must own, has been no more than I
+believed him perfectly equal to. The fairness of your friend was an
+open attraction; her firmness, you know, could only be understood by
+yourself.”
+
+“You are laughing; but, I assure you, Isabella is very firm in
+general.”
+
+“It is as much as should be said of anyone. To be always firm must be
+to be often obstinate. When properly to relax is the trial of judgment;
+and, without reference to my brother, I really think Miss Thorpe has by
+no means chosen ill in fixing on the present hour.”
+
+The friends were not able to get together for any confidential
+discourse till all the dancing was over; but then, as they walked about
+the room arm in arm, Isabella thus explained herself: “I do not wonder
+at your surprise; and I am really fatigued to death. He is such a
+rattle! Amusing enough, if my mind had been disengaged; but I would
+have given the world to sit still.”
+
+“Then why did not you?”
+
+“Oh! My dear! It would have looked so particular; and you know how I
+abhor doing that. I refused him as long as I possibly could, but he
+would take no denial. You have no idea how he pressed me. I begged him
+to excuse me, and get some other partner—but no, not he; after aspiring
+to my hand, there was nobody else in the room he could bear to think
+of; and it was not that he wanted merely to dance, he wanted to be with
+me. Oh! Such nonsense! I told him he had taken a very unlikely way to
+prevail upon me; for, of all things in the world, I hated fine speeches
+and compliments; and so—and so then I found there would be no peace if
+I did not stand up. Besides, I thought Mrs. Hughes, who introduced him,
+might take it ill if I did not: and your dear brother, I am sure he
+would have been miserable if I had sat down the whole evening. I am so
+glad it is over! My spirits are quite jaded with listening to his
+nonsense: and then, being such a smart young fellow, I saw every eye
+was upon us.”
+
+“He is very handsome indeed.”
+
+“Handsome! Yes, I suppose he may. I dare say people would admire him in
+general; but he is not at all in my style of beauty. I hate a florid
+complexion and dark eyes in a man. However, he is very well. Amazingly
+conceited, I am sure. I took him down several times, you know, in my
+way.”
+
+When the young ladies next met, they had a far more interesting subject
+to discuss. James Morland’s second letter was then received, and the
+kind intentions of his father fully explained. A living, of which Mr.
+Morland was himself patron and incumbent, of about four hundred pounds
+yearly value, was to be resigned to his son as soon as he should be old
+enough to take it; no trifling deduction from the family income, no
+niggardly assignment to one of ten children. An estate of at least
+equal value, moreover, was assured as his future inheritance.
+
+James expressed himself on the occasion with becoming gratitude; and
+the necessity of waiting between two and three years before they could
+marry, being, however unwelcome, no more than he had expected, was
+borne by him without discontent. Catherine, whose expectations had been
+as unfixed as her ideas of her father’s income, and whose judgment was
+now entirely led by her brother, felt equally well satisfied, and
+heartily congratulated Isabella on having everything so pleasantly
+settled.
+
+“It is very charming indeed,” said Isabella, with a grave face. “Mr.
+Morland has behaved vastly handsome indeed,” said the gentle Mrs.
+Thorpe, looking anxiously at her daughter. “I only wish I could do as
+much. One could not expect more from him, you know. If he finds he
+_can_ do more by and by, I dare say he will, for I am sure he must be
+an excellent good-hearted man. Four hundred is but a small income to
+begin on indeed, but your wishes, my dear Isabella, are so moderate,
+you do not consider how little you ever want, my dear.”
+
+“It is not on my own account I wish for more; but I cannot bear to be
+the means of injuring my dear Morland, making him sit down upon an
+income hardly enough to find one in the common necessaries of life. For
+myself, it is nothing; I never think of myself.”
+
+“I know you never do, my dear; and you will always find your reward in
+the affection it makes everybody feel for you. There never was a young
+woman so beloved as you are by everybody that knows you; and I dare say
+when Mr. Morland sees you, my dear child—but do not let us distress our
+dear Catherine by talking of such things. Mr. Morland has behaved so
+very handsome, you know. I always heard he was a most excellent man;
+and you know, my dear, we are not to suppose but what, if you had had a
+suitable fortune, he would have come down with something more, for I am
+sure he must be a most liberal-minded man.”
+
+“Nobody can think better of Mr. Morland than I do, I am sure. But
+everybody has their failing, you know, and everybody has a right to do
+what they like with their own money.” Catherine was hurt by these
+insinuations. “I am very sure,” said she, “that my father has promised
+to do as much as he can afford.”
+
+Isabella recollected herself. “As to that, my sweet Catherine, there
+cannot be a doubt, and you know me well enough to be sure that a much
+smaller income would satisfy me. It is not the want of more money that
+makes me just at present a little out of spirits; I hate money; and if
+our union could take place now upon only fifty pounds a year, I should
+not have a wish unsatisfied. Ah! my Catherine, you have found me out.
+There’s the sting. The long, long, endless two years and half that are
+to pass before your brother can hold the living.”
+
+“Yes, yes, my darling Isabella,” said Mrs. Thorpe, “we perfectly see
+into your heart. You have no disguise. We perfectly understand the
+present vexation; and everybody must love you the better for such a
+noble honest affection.”
+
+Catherine’s uncomfortable feelings began to lessen. She endeavoured to
+believe that the delay of the marriage was the only source of
+Isabella’s regret; and when she saw her at their next interview as
+cheerful and amiable as ever, endeavoured to forget that she had for a
+minute thought otherwise. James soon followed his letter, and was
+received with the most gratifying kindness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 17
+
+
+The Allens had now entered on the sixth week of their stay in Bath; and
+whether it should be the last was for some time a question, to which
+Catherine listened with a beating heart. To have her acquaintance with
+the Tilneys end so soon was an evil which nothing could counterbalance.
+Her whole happiness seemed at stake, while the affair was in suspense,
+and everything secured when it was determined that the lodgings should
+be taken for another fortnight. What this additional fortnight was to
+produce to her beyond the pleasure of sometimes seeing Henry Tilney
+made but a small part of Catherine’s speculation. Once or twice indeed,
+since James’s engagement had taught her what _could_ be done, she had
+got so far as to indulge in a secret “perhaps,” but in general the
+felicity of being with him for the present bounded her views: the
+present was now comprised in another three weeks, and her happiness
+being certain for that period, the rest of her life was at such a
+distance as to excite but little interest. In the course of the morning
+which saw this business arranged, she visited Miss Tilney, and poured
+forth her joyful feelings. It was doomed to be a day of trial. No
+sooner had she expressed her delight in Mr. Allen’s lengthened stay
+than Miss Tilney told her of her father’s having just determined upon
+quitting Bath by the end of another week. Here was a blow! The past
+suspense of the morning had been ease and quiet to the present
+disappointment. Catherine’s countenance fell, and in a voice of most
+sincere concern she echoed Miss Tilney’s concluding words, “By the end
+of another week!”
+
+“Yes, my father can seldom be prevailed on to give the waters what I
+think a fair trial. He has been disappointed of some friends’ arrival
+whom he expected to meet here, and as he is now pretty well, is in a
+hurry to get home.”
+
+“I am very sorry for it,” said Catherine dejectedly; “if I had known
+this before—”
+
+“Perhaps,” said Miss Tilney in an embarrassed manner, “you would be so
+good—it would make me very happy if—”
+
+The entrance of her father put a stop to the civility, which Catherine
+was beginning to hope might introduce a desire of their corresponding.
+After addressing her with his usual politeness, he turned to his
+daughter and said, “Well, Eleanor, may I congratulate you on being
+successful in your application to your fair friend?”
+
+“I was just beginning to make the request, sir, as you came in.”
+
+“Well, proceed by all means. I know how much your heart is in it. My
+daughter, Miss Morland,” he continued, without leaving his daughter
+time to speak, “has been forming a very bold wish. We leave Bath, as
+she has perhaps told you, on Saturday se’nnight. A letter from my
+steward tells me that my presence is wanted at home; and being
+disappointed in my hope of seeing the Marquis of Longtown and General
+Courteney here, some of my very old friends, there is nothing to detain
+me longer in Bath. And could we carry our selfish point with you, we
+should leave it without a single regret. Can you, in short, be
+prevailed on to quit this scene of public triumph and oblige your
+friend Eleanor with your company in Gloucestershire? I am almost
+ashamed to make the request, though its presumption would certainly
+appear greater to every creature in Bath than yourself. Modesty such as
+yours—but not for the world would I pain it by open praise. If you can
+be induced to honour us with a visit, you will make us happy beyond
+expression. ’Tis true, we can offer you nothing like the gaieties of
+this lively place; we can tempt you neither by amusement nor splendour,
+for our mode of living, as you see, is plain and unpretending; yet no
+endeavours shall be wanting on our side to make Northanger Abbey not
+wholly disagreeable.”
+
+Northanger Abbey! These were thrilling words, and wound up Catherine’s
+feelings to the highest point of ecstasy. Her grateful and gratified
+heart could hardly restrain its expressions within the language of
+tolerable calmness. To receive so flattering an invitation! To have her
+company so warmly solicited! Everything honourable and soothing, every
+present enjoyment, and every future hope was contained in it; and her
+acceptance, with only the saving clause of Papa and Mamma’s
+approbation, was eagerly given. “I will write home directly,” said she,
+“and if they do not object, as I dare say they will not—”
+
+General Tilney was not less sanguine, having already waited on her
+excellent friends in Pulteney Street, and obtained their sanction of
+his wishes. “Since they can consent to part with you,” said he, “we may
+expect philosophy from all the world.”
+
+Miss Tilney was earnest, though gentle, in her secondary civilities,
+and the affair became in a few minutes as nearly settled as this
+necessary reference to Fullerton would allow.
+
+The circumstances of the morning had led Catherine’s feelings through
+the varieties of suspense, security, and disappointment; but they were
+now safely lodged in perfect bliss; and with spirits elated to rapture,
+with Henry at her heart, and Northanger Abbey on her lips, she hurried
+home to write her letter. Mr. and Mrs. Morland, relying on the
+discretion of the friends to whom they had already entrusted their
+daughter, felt no doubt of the propriety of an acquaintance which had
+been formed under their eye, and sent therefore by return of post their
+ready consent to her visit in Gloucestershire. This indulgence, though
+not more than Catherine had hoped for, completed her conviction of
+being favoured beyond every other human creature, in friends and
+fortune, circumstance and chance. Everything seemed to cooperate for
+her advantage. By the kindness of her first friends, the Allens, she
+had been introduced into scenes where pleasures of every kind had met
+her. Her feelings, her preferences, had each known the happiness of a
+return. Wherever she felt attachment, she had been able to create it.
+The affection of Isabella was to be secured to her in a sister. The
+Tilneys, they, by whom, above all, she desired to be favourably thought
+of, outstripped even her wishes in the flattering measures by which
+their intimacy was to be continued. She was to be their chosen visitor,
+she was to be for weeks under the same roof with the person whose
+society she mostly prized—and, in addition to all the rest, this roof
+was to be the roof of an abbey! Her passion for ancient edifices was
+next in degree to her passion for Henry Tilney—and castles and abbeys
+made usually the charm of those reveries which his image did not fill.
+To see and explore either the ramparts and keep of the one, or the
+cloisters of the other, had been for many weeks a darling wish, though
+to be more than the visitor of an hour had seemed too nearly impossible
+for desire. And yet, this was to happen. With all the chances against
+her of house, hall, place, park, court, and cottage, Northanger turned
+up an abbey, and she was to be its inhabitant. Its long, damp passages,
+its narrow cells and ruined chapel, were to be within her daily reach,
+and she could not entirely subdue the hope of some traditional legends,
+some awful memorials of an injured and ill-fated nun.
+
+It was wonderful that her friends should seem so little elated by the
+possession of such a home, that the consciousness of it should be so
+meekly borne. The power of early habit only could account for it. A
+distinction to which they had been born gave no pride. Their
+superiority of abode was no more to them than their superiority of
+person.
+
+Many were the inquiries she was eager to make of Miss Tilney; but so
+active were her thoughts, that when these inquiries were answered, she
+was hardly more assured than before, of Northanger Abbey having been a
+richly endowed convent at the time of the Reformation, of its having
+fallen into the hands of an ancestor of the Tilneys on its dissolution,
+of a large portion of the ancient building still making a part of the
+present dwelling although the rest was decayed, or of its standing low
+in a valley, sheltered from the north and east by rising woods of oak.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 18
+
+
+With a mind thus full of happiness, Catherine was hardly aware that two
+or three days had passed away, without her seeing Isabella for more
+than a few minutes together. She began first to be sensible of this,
+and to sigh for her conversation, as she walked along the pump-room one
+morning, by Mrs. Allen’s side, without anything to say or to hear; and
+scarcely had she felt a five minutes’ longing of friendship, before the
+object of it appeared, and inviting her to a secret conference, led the
+way to a seat. “This is my favourite place,” said she as they sat down
+on a bench between the doors, which commanded a tolerable view of
+everybody entering at either; “it is so out of the way.”
+
+Catherine, observing that Isabella’s eyes were continually bent towards
+one door or the other, as in eager expectation, and remembering how
+often she had been falsely accused of being arch, thought the present a
+fine opportunity for being really so; and therefore gaily said, “Do not
+be uneasy, Isabella, James will soon be here.”
+
+“Psha! My dear creature,” she replied, “do not think me such a
+simpleton as to be always wanting to confine him to my elbow. It would
+be hideous to be always together; we should be the jest of the place.
+And so you are going to Northanger! I am amazingly glad of it. It is
+one of the finest old places in England, I understand. I shall depend
+upon a most particular description of it.”
+
+“You shall certainly have the best in my power to give. But who are you
+looking for? Are your sisters coming?”
+
+“I am not looking for anybody. One’s eyes must be somewhere, and you
+know what a foolish trick I have of fixing mine, when my thoughts are
+an hundred miles off. I am amazingly absent; I believe I am the most
+absent creature in the world. Tilney says it is always the case with
+minds of a certain stamp.”
+
+“But I thought, Isabella, you had something in particular to tell me?”
+
+“Oh! Yes, and so I have. But here is a proof of what I was saying. My
+poor head, I had quite forgot it. Well, the thing is this: I have just
+had a letter from John; you can guess the contents.”
+
+“No, indeed, I cannot.”
+
+“My sweet love, do not be so abominably affected. What can he write
+about, but yourself? You know he is over head and ears in love with
+you.”
+
+“With _me_, dear Isabella!”
+
+“Nay, my sweetest Catherine, this is being quite absurd! Modesty, and
+all that, is very well in its way, but really a little common honesty
+is sometimes quite as becoming. I have no idea of being so
+overstrained! It is fishing for compliments. His attentions were such
+as a child must have noticed. And it was but half an hour before he
+left Bath that you gave him the most positive encouragement. He says so
+in this letter, says that he as good as made you an offer, and that you
+received his advances in the kindest way; and now he wants me to urge
+his suit, and say all manner of pretty things to you. So it is in vain
+to affect ignorance.”
+
+Catherine, with all the earnestness of truth, expressed her
+astonishment at such a charge, protesting her innocence of every
+thought of Mr. Thorpe’s being in love with her, and the consequent
+impossibility of her having ever intended to encourage him. “As to any
+attentions on his side, I do declare, upon my honour, I never was
+sensible of them for a moment—except just his asking me to dance the
+first day of his coming. And as to making me an offer, or anything like
+it, there must be some unaccountable mistake. I could not have
+misunderstood a thing of that kind, you know! And, as I ever wish to be
+believed, I solemnly protest that no syllable of such a nature ever
+passed between us. The last half hour before he went away! It must be
+all and completely a mistake—for I did not see him once that whole
+morning.”
+
+“But _that_ you certainly did, for you spent the whole morning in
+Edgar’s Buildings—it was the day your father’s consent came—and I am
+pretty sure that you and John were alone in the parlour some time
+before you left the house.”
+
+“Are you? Well, if you say it, it was so, I dare say—but for the life
+of me, I cannot recollect it. I _do_ remember now being with you, and
+seeing him as well as the rest—but that we were ever alone for five
+minutes—However, it is not worth arguing about, for whatever might pass
+on his side, you must be convinced, by my having no recollection of it,
+that I never thought, nor expected, nor wished for anything of the kind
+from him. I am excessively concerned that he should have any regard for
+me—but indeed it has been quite unintentional on my side; I never had
+the smallest idea of it. Pray undeceive him as soon as you can, and
+tell him I beg his pardon—that is—I do not know what I ought to say—but
+make him understand what I mean, in the properest way. I would not
+speak disrespectfully of a brother of yours, Isabella, I am sure; but
+you know very well that if I could think of one man more than
+another—_he_ is not the person.” Isabella was silent. “My dear friend,
+you must not be angry with me. I cannot suppose your brother cares so
+very much about me. And, you know, we shall still be sisters.”
+
+“Yes, yes” (with a blush), “there are more ways than one of our being
+sisters. But where am I wandering to? Well, my dear Catherine, the case
+seems to be that you are determined against poor John—is not it so?”
+
+“I certainly cannot return his affection, and as certainly never meant
+to encourage it.”
+
+“Since that is the case, I am sure I shall not tease you any further.
+John desired me to speak to you on the subject, and therefore I have.
+But I confess, as soon as I read his letter, I thought it a very
+foolish, imprudent business, and not likely to promote the good of
+either; for what were you to live upon, supposing you came together?
+You have both of you something, to be sure, but it is not a trifle that
+will support a family nowadays; and after all that romancers may say,
+there is no doing without money. I only wonder John could think of it;
+he could not have received my last.”
+
+“You _do_ acquit me, then, of anything wrong?—You are convinced that I
+never meant to deceive your brother, never suspected him of liking me
+till this moment?”
+
+“Oh! As to that,” answered Isabella laughingly, “I do not pretend to
+determine what your thoughts and designs in time past may have been.
+All that is best known to yourself. A little harmless flirtation or so
+will occur, and one is often drawn on to give more encouragement than
+one wishes to stand by. But you may be assured that I am the last
+person in the world to judge you severely. All those things should be
+allowed for in youth and high spirits. What one means one day, you
+know, one may not mean the next. Circumstances change, opinions alter.”
+
+“But my opinion of your brother never did alter; it was always the
+same. You are describing what never happened.”
+
+“My dearest Catherine,” continued the other without at all listening to
+her, “I would not for all the world be the means of hurrying you into
+an engagement before you knew what you were about. I do not think
+anything would justify me in wishing you to sacrifice all your
+happiness merely to oblige my brother, because he is my brother, and
+who perhaps after all, you know, might be just as happy without you,
+for people seldom know what they would be at, young men especially,
+they are so amazingly changeable and inconstant. What I say is, why
+should a brother’s happiness be dearer to me than a friend’s? You know
+I carry my notions of friendship pretty high. But, above all things, my
+dear Catherine, do not be in a hurry. Take my word for it, that if you
+are in too great a hurry, you will certainly live to repent it. Tilney
+says there is nothing people are so often deceived in as the state of
+their own affections, and I believe he is very right. Ah! Here he
+comes; never mind, he will not see us, I am sure.”
+
+Catherine, looking up, perceived Captain Tilney; and Isabella,
+earnestly fixing her eye on him as she spoke, soon caught his notice.
+He approached immediately, and took the seat to which her movements
+invited him. His first address made Catherine start. Though spoken low,
+she could distinguish, “What! Always to be watched, in person or by
+proxy!”
+
+“Psha, nonsense!” was Isabella’s answer in the same half whisper. “Why
+do you put such things into my head? If I could believe it—my spirit,
+you know, is pretty independent.”
+
+“I wish your heart were independent. That would be enough for me.”
+
+“My heart, indeed! What can you have to do with hearts? You men have
+none of you any hearts.”
+
+“If we have not hearts, we have eyes; and they give us torment enough.”
+
+“Do they? I am sorry for it; I am sorry they find anything so
+disagreeable in me. I will look another way. I hope this pleases you”
+(turning her back on him); “I hope your eyes are not tormented now.”
+
+“Never more so; for the edge of a blooming cheek is still in view—at
+once too much and too little.”
+
+Catherine heard all this, and quite out of countenance, could listen no
+longer. Amazed that Isabella could endure it, and jealous for her
+brother, she rose up, and saying she should join Mrs. Allen, proposed
+their walking. But for this Isabella showed no inclination. She was so
+amazingly tired, and it was so odious to parade about the pump-room;
+and if she moved from her seat she should miss her sisters; she was
+expecting her sisters every moment; so that her dearest Catherine must
+excuse her, and must sit quietly down again. But Catherine could be
+stubborn too; and Mrs. Allen just then coming up to propose their
+returning home, she joined her and walked out of the pump-room, leaving
+Isabella still sitting with Captain Tilney. With much uneasiness did
+she thus leave them. It seemed to her that Captain Tilney was falling
+in love with Isabella, and Isabella unconsciously encouraging him;
+unconsciously it must be, for Isabella’s attachment to James was as
+certain and well acknowledged as her engagement. To doubt her truth or
+good intentions was impossible; and yet, during the whole of their
+conversation her manner had been odd. She wished Isabella had talked
+more like her usual self, and not so much about money, and had not
+looked so well pleased at the sight of Captain Tilney. How strange that
+she should not perceive his admiration! Catherine longed to give her a
+hint of it, to put her on her guard, and prevent all the pain which her
+too lively behaviour might otherwise create both for him and her
+brother.
+
+The compliment of John Thorpe’s affection did not make amends for this
+thoughtlessness in his sister. She was almost as far from believing as
+from wishing it to be sincere; for she had not forgotten that he could
+mistake, and his assertion of the offer and of her encouragement
+convinced her that his mistakes could sometimes be very egregious. In
+vanity, therefore, she gained but little; her chief profit was in
+wonder. That he should think it worth his while to fancy himself in
+love with her was a matter of lively astonishment. Isabella talked of
+his attentions; _she_ had never been sensible of any; but Isabella had
+said many things which she hoped had been spoken in haste, and would
+never be said again; and upon this she was glad to rest altogether for
+present ease and comfort.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 19
+
+
+A few days passed away, and Catherine, though not allowing herself to
+suspect her friend, could not help watching her closely. The result of
+her observations was not agreeable. Isabella seemed an altered
+creature. When she saw her, indeed, surrounded only by their immediate
+friends in Edgar’s Buildings or Pulteney Street, her change of manners
+was so trifling that, had it gone no farther, it might have passed
+unnoticed. A something of languid indifference, or of that boasted
+absence of mind which Catherine had never heard of before, would
+occasionally come across her; but had nothing worse appeared, _that_
+might only have spread a new grace and inspired a warmer interest. But
+when Catherine saw her in public, admitting Captain Tilney’s attentions
+as readily as they were offered, and allowing him almost an equal share
+with James in her notice and smiles, the alteration became too positive
+to be passed over. What could be meant by such unsteady conduct, what
+her friend could be at, was beyond her comprehension. Isabella could
+not be aware of the pain she was inflicting; but it was a degree of
+wilful thoughtlessness which Catherine could not but resent. James was
+the sufferer. She saw him grave and uneasy; and however careless of his
+present comfort the woman might be who had given him her heart, to
+_her_ it was always an object. For poor Captain Tilney too she was
+greatly concerned. Though his looks did not please her, his name was a
+passport to her goodwill, and she thought with sincere compassion of
+his approaching disappointment; for, in spite of what she had believed
+herself to overhear in the pump-room, his behaviour was so incompatible
+with a knowledge of Isabella’s engagement that she could not, upon
+reflection, imagine him aware of it. He might be jealous of her brother
+as a rival, but if more had seemed implied, the fault must have been in
+her misapprehension. She wished, by a gentle remonstrance, to remind
+Isabella of her situation, and make her aware of this double
+unkindness; but for remonstrance, either opportunity or comprehension
+was always against her. If able to suggest a hint, Isabella could never
+understand it. In this distress, the intended departure of the Tilney
+family became her chief consolation; their journey into Gloucestershire
+was to take place within a few days, and Captain Tilney’s removal would
+at least restore peace to every heart but his own. But Captain Tilney
+had at present no intention of removing; he was not to be of the party
+to Northanger; he was to continue at Bath. When Catherine knew this,
+her resolution was directly made. She spoke to Henry Tilney on the
+subject, regretting his brother’s evident partiality for Miss Thorpe,
+and entreating him to make known her prior engagement.
+
+“My brother does know it,” was Henry’s answer.
+
+“Does he? Then why does he stay here?”
+
+He made no reply, and was beginning to talk of something else; but she
+eagerly continued, “Why do not you persuade him to go away? The longer
+he stays, the worse it will be for him at last. Pray advise him for his
+own sake, and for everybody’s sake, to leave Bath directly. Absence
+will in time make him comfortable again; but he can have no hope here,
+and it is only staying to be miserable.”
+
+Henry smiled and said, “I am sure my brother would not wish to do
+that.”
+
+“Then you will persuade him to go away?”
+
+“Persuasion is not at command; but pardon me, if I cannot even
+endeavour to persuade him. I have myself told him that Miss Thorpe is
+engaged. He knows what he is about, and must be his own master.”
+
+“No, he does not know what he is about,” cried Catherine; “he does not
+know the pain he is giving my brother. Not that James has ever told me
+so, but I am sure he is very uncomfortable.”
+
+“And are you sure it is my brother’s doing?”
+
+“Yes, very sure.”
+
+“Is it my brother’s attentions to Miss Thorpe, or Miss Thorpe’s
+admission of them, that gives the pain?”
+
+“Is not it the same thing?”
+
+“I think Mr. Morland would acknowledge a difference. No man is offended
+by another man’s admiration of the woman he loves; it is the woman only
+who can make it a torment.”
+
+Catherine blushed for her friend, and said, “Isabella is wrong. But I
+am sure she cannot mean to torment, for she is very much attached to my
+brother. She has been in love with him ever since they first met, and
+while my father’s consent was uncertain, she fretted herself almost
+into a fever. You know she must be attached to him.”
+
+“I understand: she is in love with James, and flirts with Frederick.”
+
+“Oh! no, not flirts. A woman in love with one man cannot flirt with
+another.”
+
+“It is probable that she will neither love so well, nor flirt so well,
+as she might do either singly. The gentlemen must each give up a
+little.”
+
+After a short pause, Catherine resumed with, “Then you do not believe
+Isabella so very much attached to my brother?”
+
+“I can have no opinion on that subject.”
+
+“But what can your brother mean? If he knows her engagement, what can
+he mean by his behaviour?”
+
+“You are a very close questioner.”
+
+“Am I? I only ask what I want to be told.”
+
+“But do you only ask what I can be expected to tell?”
+
+“Yes, I think so; for you must know your brother’s heart.”
+
+“My brother’s heart, as you term it, on the present occasion, I assure
+you I can only guess at.”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“Well! Nay, if it is to be guesswork, let us all guess for ourselves.
+To be guided by second-hand conjecture is pitiful. The premises are
+before you. My brother is a lively and perhaps sometimes a thoughtless
+young man; he has had about a week’s acquaintance with your friend, and
+he has known her engagement almost as long as he has known her.”
+
+“Well,” said Catherine, after some moments’ consideration, “_you_ may
+be able to guess at your brother’s intentions from all this; but I am
+sure I cannot. But is not your father uncomfortable about it? Does not
+he want Captain Tilney to go away? Sure, if your father were to speak
+to him, he would go.”
+
+“My dear Miss Morland,” said Henry, “in this amiable solicitude for
+your brother’s comfort, may you not be a little mistaken? Are you not
+carried a little too far? Would he thank you, either on his own account
+or Miss Thorpe’s, for supposing that her affection, or at least her
+good behaviour, is only to be secured by her seeing nothing of Captain
+Tilney? Is he safe only in solitude? Or is her heart constant to him
+only when unsolicited by anyone else? He cannot think this—and you may
+be sure that he would not have you think it. I will not say, ‘Do not be
+uneasy,’ because I know that you are so, at this moment; but be as
+little uneasy as you can. You have no doubt of the mutual attachment of
+your brother and your friend; depend upon it, therefore, that real
+jealousy never can exist between them; depend upon it that no
+disagreement between them can be of any duration. Their hearts are open
+to each other, as neither heart can be to you; they know exactly what
+is required and what can be borne; and you may be certain that one will
+never tease the other beyond what is known to be pleasant.”
+
+Perceiving her still to look doubtful and grave, he added, “Though
+Frederick does not leave Bath with us, he will probably remain but a
+very short time, perhaps only a few days behind us. His leave of
+absence will soon expire, and he must return to his regiment. And what
+will then be their acquaintance? The mess-room will drink Isabella
+Thorpe for a fortnight, and she will laugh with your brother over poor
+Tilney’s passion for a month.”
+
+Catherine would contend no longer against comfort. She had resisted its
+approaches during the whole length of a speech, but it now carried her
+captive. Henry Tilney must know best. She blamed herself for the extent
+of her fears, and resolved never to think so seriously on the subject
+again.
+
+Her resolution was supported by Isabella’s behaviour in their parting
+interview. The Thorpes spent the last evening of Catherine’s stay in
+Pulteney Street, and nothing passed between the lovers to excite her
+uneasiness, or make her quit them in apprehension. James was in
+excellent spirits, and Isabella most engagingly placid. Her tenderness
+for her friend seemed rather the first feeling of her heart; but that
+at such a moment was allowable; and once she gave her lover a flat
+contradiction, and once she drew back her hand; but Catherine
+remembered Henry’s instructions, and placed it all to judicious
+affection. The embraces, tears, and promises of the parting fair ones
+may be fancied.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 20
+
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Allen were sorry to lose their young friend, whose good
+humour and cheerfulness had made her a valuable companion, and in the
+promotion of whose enjoyment their own had been gently increased. Her
+happiness in going with Miss Tilney, however, prevented their wishing
+it otherwise; and, as they were to remain only one more week in Bath
+themselves, her quitting them now would not long be felt. Mr. Allen
+attended her to Milsom Street, where she was to breakfast, and saw her
+seated with the kindest welcome among her new friends; but so great was
+her agitation in finding herself as one of the family, and so fearful
+was she of not doing exactly what was right, and of not being able to
+preserve their good opinion, that, in the embarrassment of the first
+five minutes, she could almost have wished to return with him to
+Pulteney Street.
+
+Miss Tilney’s manners and Henry’s smile soon did away some of her
+unpleasant feelings; but still she was far from being at ease; nor
+could the incessant attentions of the general himself entirely reassure
+her. Nay, perverse as it seemed, she doubted whether she might not have
+felt less, had she been less attended to. His anxiety for her
+comfort—his continual solicitations that she would eat, and his
+often-expressed fears of her seeing nothing to her taste—though never
+in her life before had she beheld half such variety on a
+breakfast-table—made it impossible for her to forget for a moment that
+she was a visitor. She felt utterly unworthy of such respect, and knew
+not how to reply to it. Her tranquillity was not improved by the
+general’s impatience for the appearance of his eldest son, nor by the
+displeasure he expressed at his laziness when Captain Tilney at last
+came down. She was quite pained by the severity of his father’s
+reproof, which seemed disproportionate to the offence; and much was her
+concern increased when she found herself the principal cause of the
+lecture, and that his tardiness was chiefly resented from being
+disrespectful to her. This was placing her in a very uncomfortable
+situation, and she felt great compassion for Captain Tilney, without
+being able to hope for his goodwill.
+
+He listened to his father in silence, and attempted not any defence,
+which confirmed her in fearing that the inquietude of his mind, on
+Isabella’s account, might, by keeping him long sleepless, have been the
+real cause of his rising late. It was the first time of her being
+decidedly in his company, and she had hoped to be now able to form her
+opinion of him; but she scarcely heard his voice while his father
+remained in the room; and even afterwards, so much were his spirits
+affected, she could distinguish nothing but these words, in a whisper
+to Eleanor, “How glad I shall be when you are all off.”
+
+The bustle of going was not pleasant. The clock struck ten while the
+trunks were carrying down, and the general had fixed to be out of
+Milsom Street by that hour. His greatcoat, instead of being brought for
+him to put on directly, was spread out in the curricle in which he was
+to accompany his son. The middle seat of the chaise was not drawn out,
+though there were three people to go in it, and his daughter’s maid had
+so crowded it with parcels that Miss Morland would not have room to
+sit; and, so much was he influenced by this apprehension when he handed
+her in, that she had some difficulty in saving her own new writing-desk
+from being thrown out into the street. At last, however, the door was
+closed upon the three females, and they set off at the sober pace in
+which the handsome, highly fed four horses of a gentleman usually
+perform a journey of thirty miles: such was the distance of Northanger
+from Bath, to be now divided into two equal stages. Catherine’s spirits
+revived as they drove from the door; for with Miss Tilney she felt no
+restraint; and, with the interest of a road entirely new to her, of an
+abbey before, and a curricle behind, she caught the last view of Bath
+without any regret, and met with every milestone before she expected
+it. The tediousness of a two hours’ wait at Petty France, in which
+there was nothing to be done but to eat without being hungry, and
+loiter about without anything to see, next followed—and her admiration
+of the style in which they travelled, of the fashionable chaise and
+four—postilions handsomely liveried, rising so regularly in their
+stirrups, and numerous outriders properly mounted, sunk a little under
+this consequent inconvenience. Had their party been perfectly
+agreeable, the delay would have been nothing; but General Tilney,
+though so charming a man, seemed always a check upon his children’s
+spirits, and scarcely anything was said but by himself; the observation
+of which, with his discontent at whatever the inn afforded, and his
+angry impatience at the waiters, made Catherine grow every moment more
+in awe of him, and appeared to lengthen the two hours into four. At
+last, however, the order of release was given; and much was Catherine
+then surprised by the general’s proposal of her taking his place in his
+son’s curricle for the rest of the journey: “the day was fine, and he
+was anxious for her seeing as much of the country as possible.”
+
+The remembrance of Mr. Allen’s opinion, respecting young men’s open
+carriages, made her blush at the mention of such a plan, and her first
+thought was to decline it; but her second was of greater deference for
+General Tilney’s judgment; he could not propose anything improper for
+her; and, in the course of a few minutes, she found herself with Henry
+in the curricle, as happy a being as ever existed. A very short trial
+convinced her that a curricle was the prettiest equipage in the world;
+the chaise and four wheeled off with some grandeur, to be sure, but it
+was a heavy and troublesome business, and she could not easily forget
+its having stopped two hours at Petty France. Half the time would have
+been enough for the curricle, and so nimbly were the light horses
+disposed to move, that, had not the general chosen to have his own
+carriage lead the way, they could have passed it with ease in half a
+minute. But the merit of the curricle did not all belong to the horses;
+Henry drove so well—so quietly—without making any disturbance, without
+parading to her, or swearing at them: so different from the only
+gentleman-coachman whom it was in her power to compare him with! And
+then his hat sat so well, and the innumerable capes of his greatcoat
+looked so becomingly important! To be driven by him, next to being
+dancing with him, was certainly the greatest happiness in the world. In
+addition to every other delight, she had now that of listening to her
+own praise; of being thanked at least, on his sister’s account, for her
+kindness in thus becoming her visitor; of hearing it ranked as real
+friendship, and described as creating real gratitude. His sister, he
+said, was uncomfortably circumstanced—she had no female companion—and,
+in the frequent absence of her father, was sometimes without any
+companion at all.
+
+“But how can that be?” said Catherine. “Are not you with her?”
+
+“Northanger is not more than half my home; I have an establishment at
+my own house in Woodston, which is nearly twenty miles from my
+father’s, and some of my time is necessarily spent there.”
+
+“How sorry you must be for that!”
+
+“I am always sorry to leave Eleanor.”
+
+“Yes; but besides your affection for her, you must be so fond of the
+abbey! After being used to such a home as the abbey, an ordinary
+parsonage-house must be very disagreeable.”
+
+He smiled, and said, “You have formed a very favourable idea of the
+abbey.”
+
+“To be sure, I have. Is not it a fine old place, just like what one
+reads about?”
+
+“And are you prepared to encounter all the horrors that a building such
+as ‘what one reads about’ may produce? Have you a stout heart? Nerves
+fit for sliding panels and tapestry?”
+
+“Oh! yes—I do not think I should be easily frightened, because there
+would be so many people in the house—and besides, it has never been
+uninhabited and left deserted for years, and then the family come back
+to it unawares, without giving any notice, as generally happens.”
+
+“No, certainly. We shall not have to explore our way into a hall dimly
+lighted by the expiring embers of a wood fire—nor be obliged to spread
+our beds on the floor of a room without windows, doors, or furniture.
+But you must be aware that when a young lady is (by whatever means)
+introduced into a dwelling of this kind, she is always lodged apart
+from the rest of the family. While they snugly repair to their own end
+of the house, she is formally conducted by Dorothy, the ancient
+housekeeper, up a different staircase, and along many gloomy passages,
+into an apartment never used since some cousin or kin died in it about
+twenty years before. Can you stand such a ceremony as this? Will not
+your mind misgive you when you find yourself in this gloomy chamber—too
+lofty and extensive for you, with only the feeble rays of a single lamp
+to take in its size—its walls hung with tapestry exhibiting figures as
+large as life, and the bed, of dark green stuff or purple velvet,
+presenting even a funereal appearance? Will not your heart sink within
+you?”
+
+“Oh! But this will not happen to me, I am sure.”
+
+“How fearfully will you examine the furniture of your apartment! And
+what will you discern? Not tables, toilettes, wardrobes, or drawers,
+but on one side perhaps the remains of a broken lute, on the other a
+ponderous chest which no efforts can open, and over the fireplace the
+portrait of some handsome warrior, whose features will so
+incomprehensibly strike you, that you will not be able to withdraw your
+eyes from it. Dorothy, meanwhile, no less struck by your appearance,
+gazes on you in great agitation, and drops a few unintelligible hints.
+To raise your spirits, moreover, she gives you reason to suppose that
+the part of the abbey you inhabit is undoubtedly haunted, and informs
+you that you will not have a single domestic within call. With this
+parting cordial she curtsies off—you listen to the sound of her
+receding footsteps as long as the last echo can reach you—and when,
+with fainting spirits, you attempt to fasten your door, you discover,
+with increased alarm, that it has no lock.”
+
+“Oh! Mr. Tilney, how frightful! This is just like a book! But it cannot
+really happen to me. I am sure your housekeeper is not really Dorothy.
+Well, what then?”
+
+“Nothing further to alarm perhaps may occur the first night. After
+surmounting your _unconquerable_ horror of the bed, you will retire to
+rest, and get a few hours’ unquiet slumber. But on the second, or at
+farthest the _third_ night after your arrival, you will probably have a
+violent storm. Peals of thunder so loud as to seem to shake the edifice
+to its foundation will roll round the neighbouring mountains—and during
+the frightful gusts of wind which accompany it, you will probably think
+you discern (for your lamp is not extinguished) one part of the hanging
+more violently agitated than the rest. Unable of course to repress your
+curiosity in so favourable a moment for indulging it, you will
+instantly arise, and throwing your dressing-gown around you, proceed to
+examine this mystery. After a very short search, you will discover a
+division in the tapestry so artfully constructed as to defy the
+minutest inspection, and on opening it, a door will immediately
+appear—which door, being only secured by massy bars and a padlock, you
+will, after a few efforts, succeed in opening—and, with your lamp in
+your hand, will pass through it into a small vaulted room.”
+
+“No, indeed; I should be too much frightened to do any such thing.”
+
+“What! Not when Dorothy has given you to understand that there is a
+secret subterraneous communication between your apartment and the
+chapel of St. Anthony, scarcely two miles off? Could you shrink from so
+simple an adventure? No, no, you will proceed into this small vaulted
+room, and through this into several others, without perceiving anything
+very remarkable in either. In one perhaps there may be a dagger, in
+another a few drops of blood, and in a third the remains of some
+instrument of torture; but there being nothing in all this out of the
+common way, and your lamp being nearly exhausted, you will return
+towards your own apartment. In repassing through the small vaulted
+room, however, your eyes will be attracted towards a large,
+old-fashioned cabinet of ebony and gold, which, though narrowly
+examining the furniture before, you had passed unnoticed. Impelled by
+an irresistible presentiment, you will eagerly advance to it, unlock
+its folding doors, and search into every drawer—but for some time
+without discovering anything of importance—perhaps nothing but a
+considerable hoard of diamonds. At last, however, by touching a secret
+spring, an inner compartment will open—a roll of paper appears—you
+seize it—it contains many sheets of manuscript—you hasten with the
+precious treasure into your own chamber, but scarcely have you been
+able to decipher ‘Oh! Thou—whomsoever thou mayst be, into whose hands
+these memoirs of the wretched Matilda may fall’—when your lamp suddenly
+expires in the socket, and leaves you in total darkness.”
+
+“Oh! No, no—do not say so. Well, go on.”
+
+But Henry was too much amused by the interest he had raised to be able
+to carry it farther; he could no longer command solemnity either of
+subject or voice, and was obliged to entreat her to use her own fancy
+in the perusal of Matilda’s woes. Catherine, recollecting herself, grew
+ashamed of her eagerness, and began earnestly to assure him that her
+attention had been fixed without the smallest apprehension of really
+meeting with what he related. “Miss Tilney, she was sure, would never
+put her into such a chamber as he had described! She was not at all
+afraid.”
+
+As they drew near the end of their journey, her impatience for a sight
+of the abbey—for some time suspended by his conversation on subjects
+very different—returned in full force, and every bend in the road was
+expected with solemn awe to afford a glimpse of its massy walls of grey
+stone, rising amidst a grove of ancient oaks, with the last beams of
+the sun playing in beautiful splendour on its high Gothic windows. But
+so low did the building stand, that she found herself passing through
+the great gates of the lodge into the very grounds of Northanger,
+without having discerned even an antique chimney.
+
+She knew not that she had any right to be surprised, but there was a
+something in this mode of approach which she certainly had not
+expected. To pass between lodges of a modern appearance, to find
+herself with such ease in the very precincts of the abbey, and driven
+so rapidly along a smooth, level road of fine gravel, without obstacle,
+alarm, or solemnity of any kind, struck her as odd and inconsistent.
+She was not long at leisure, however, for such considerations. A sudden
+scud of rain, driving full in her face, made it impossible for her to
+observe anything further, and fixed all her thoughts on the welfare of
+her new straw bonnet; and she was actually under the abbey walls, was
+springing, with Henry’s assistance, from the carriage, was beneath the
+shelter of the old porch, and had even passed on to the hall, where her
+friend and the general were waiting to welcome her, without feeling one
+awful foreboding of future misery to herself, or one moment’s suspicion
+of any past scenes of horror being acted within the solemn edifice. The
+breeze had not seemed to waft the sighs of the murdered to her; it had
+wafted nothing worse than a thick mizzling rain; and having given a
+good shake to her habit, she was ready to be shown into the common
+drawing-room, and capable of considering where she was.
+
+An abbey! Yes, it was delightful to be really in an abbey! But she
+doubted, as she looked round the room, whether anything within her
+observation would have given her the consciousness. The furniture was
+in all the profusion and elegance of modern taste. The fireplace, where
+she had expected the ample width and ponderous carving of former times,
+was contracted to a Rumford, with slabs of plain though handsome
+marble, and ornaments over it of the prettiest English china. The
+windows, to which she looked with peculiar dependence, from having
+heard the general talk of his preserving them in their Gothic form with
+reverential care, were yet less what her fancy had portrayed. To be
+sure, the pointed arch was preserved—the form of them was Gothic—they
+might be even casements—but every pane was so large, so clear, so
+light! To an imagination which had hoped for the smallest divisions,
+and the heaviest stone-work, for painted glass, dirt, and cobwebs, the
+difference was very distressing.
+
+The general, perceiving how her eye was employed, began to talk of the
+smallness of the room and simplicity of the furniture, where
+everything, being for daily use, pretended only to comfort, etc.;
+flattering himself, however, that there were some apartments in the
+Abbey not unworthy her notice—and was proceeding to mention the costly
+gilding of one in particular, when, taking out his watch, he stopped
+short to pronounce it with surprise within twenty minutes of five! This
+seemed the word of separation, and Catherine found herself hurried away
+by Miss Tilney in such a manner as convinced her that the strictest
+punctuality to the family hours would be expected at Northanger.
+
+Returning through the large and lofty hall, they ascended a broad
+staircase of shining oak, which, after many flights and many
+landing-places, brought them upon a long, wide gallery. On one side it
+had a range of doors, and it was lighted on the other by windows which
+Catherine had only time to discover looked into a quadrangle, before
+Miss Tilney led the way into a chamber, and scarcely staying to hope
+she would find it comfortable, left her with an anxious entreaty that
+she would make as little alteration as possible in her dress.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 21
+
+
+A moment’s glance was enough to satisfy Catherine that her apartment
+was very unlike the one which Henry had endeavoured to alarm her by the
+description of. It was by no means unreasonably large, and contained
+neither tapestry nor velvet. The walls were papered, the floor was
+carpeted; the windows were neither less perfect nor more dim than those
+of the drawing-room below; the furniture, though not of the latest
+fashion, was handsome and comfortable, and the air of the room
+altogether far from uncheerful. Her heart instantaneously at ease on
+this point, she resolved to lose no time in particular examination of
+anything, as she greatly dreaded disobliging the general by any delay.
+Her habit therefore was thrown off with all possible haste, and she was
+preparing to unpin the linen package, which the chaise-seat had
+conveyed for her immediate accommodation, when her eye suddenly fell on
+a large high chest, standing back in a deep recess on one side of the
+fireplace. The sight of it made her start; and, forgetting everything
+else, she stood gazing on it in motionless wonder, while these thoughts
+crossed her:
+
+“This is strange indeed! I did not expect such a sight as this! An
+immense heavy chest! What can it hold? Why should it be placed here?
+Pushed back too, as if meant to be out of sight! I will look into
+it—cost me what it may, I will look into it—and directly too—by
+daylight. If I stay till evening my candle may go out.” She advanced
+and examined it closely: it was of cedar, curiously inlaid with some
+darker wood, and raised, about a foot from the ground, on a carved
+stand of the same. The lock was silver, though tarnished from age; at
+each end were the imperfect remains of handles also of silver, broken
+perhaps prematurely by some strange violence; and, on the centre of the
+lid, was a mysterious cipher, in the same metal. Catherine bent over it
+intently, but without being able to distinguish anything with
+certainty. She could not, in whatever direction she took it, believe
+the last letter to be a _T;_ and yet that it should be anything else in
+that house was a circumstance to raise no common degree of
+astonishment. If not originally theirs, by what strange events could it
+have fallen into the Tilney family?
+
+Her fearful curiosity was every moment growing greater; and seizing,
+with trembling hands, the hasp of the lock, she resolved at all hazards
+to satisfy herself at least as to its contents. With difficulty, for
+something seemed to resist her efforts, she raised the lid a few
+inches; but at that moment a sudden knocking at the door of the room
+made her, starting, quit her hold, and the lid closed with alarming
+violence. This ill-timed intruder was Miss Tilney’s maid, sent by her
+mistress to be of use to Miss Morland; and though Catherine immediately
+dismissed her, it recalled her to the sense of what she ought to be
+doing, and forced her, in spite of her anxious desire to penetrate this
+mystery, to proceed in her dressing without further delay. Her progress
+was not quick, for her thoughts and her eyes were still bent on the
+object so well calculated to interest and alarm; and though she dared
+not waste a moment upon a second attempt, she could not remain many
+paces from the chest. At length, however, having slipped one arm into
+her gown, her toilette seemed so nearly finished that the impatience of
+her curiosity might safely be indulged. One moment surely might be
+spared; and, so desperate should be the exertion of her strength, that,
+unless secured by supernatural means, the lid in one moment should be
+thrown back. With this spirit she sprang forward, and her confidence
+did not deceive her. Her resolute effort threw back the lid, and gave
+to her astonished eyes the view of a white cotton counterpane, properly
+folded, reposing at one end of the chest in undisputed possession!
+
+She was gazing on it with the first blush of surprise when Miss Tilney,
+anxious for her friend’s being ready, entered the room, and to the
+rising shame of having harboured for some minutes an absurd
+expectation, was then added the shame of being caught in so idle a
+search. “That is a curious old chest, is not it?” said Miss Tilney, as
+Catherine hastily closed it and turned away to the glass. “It is
+impossible to say how many generations it has been here. How it came to
+be first put in this room I know not, but I have not had it moved,
+because I thought it might sometimes be of use in holding hats and
+bonnets. The worst of it is that its weight makes it difficult to open.
+In that corner, however, it is at least out of the way.”
+
+Catherine had no leisure for speech, being at once blushing, tying her
+gown, and forming wise resolutions with the most violent dispatch. Miss
+Tilney gently hinted her fear of being late; and in half a minute they
+ran downstairs together, in an alarm not wholly unfounded, for General
+Tilney was pacing the drawing-room, his watch in his hand, and having,
+on the very instant of their entering, pulled the bell with violence,
+ordered “Dinner to be on table _directly!_”
+
+Catherine trembled at the emphasis with which he spoke, and sat pale
+and breathless, in a most humble mood, concerned for his children, and
+detesting old chests; and the general, recovering his politeness as he
+looked at her, spent the rest of his time in scolding his daughter for
+so foolishly hurrying her fair friend, who was absolutely out of breath
+from haste, when there was not the least occasion for hurry in the
+world: but Catherine could not at all get over the double distress of
+having involved her friend in a lecture and been a great simpleton
+herself, till they were happily seated at the dinner-table, when the
+general’s complacent smiles, and a good appetite of her own, restored
+her to peace. The dining-parlour was a noble room, suitable in its
+dimensions to a much larger drawing-room than the one in common use,
+and fitted up in a style of luxury and expense which was almost lost on
+the unpractised eye of Catherine, who saw little more than its
+spaciousness and the number of their attendants. Of the former, she
+spoke aloud her admiration; and the general, with a very gracious
+countenance, acknowledged that it was by no means an ill-sized room,
+and further confessed that, though as careless on such subjects as most
+people, he did look upon a tolerably large eating-room as one of the
+necessaries of life; he supposed, however, “that she must have been
+used to much better-sized apartments at Mr. Allen’s?”
+
+“No, indeed,” was Catherine’s honest assurance; “Mr. Allen’s
+dining-parlour was not more than half as large,” and she had never seen
+so large a room as this in her life. The general’s good humour
+increased. Why, as he _had_ such rooms, he thought it would be simple
+not to make use of them; but, upon his honour, he believed there might
+be more comfort in rooms of only half their size. Mr. Allen’s house, he
+was sure, must be exactly of the true size for rational happiness.
+
+The evening passed without any further disturbance, and, in the
+occasional absence of General Tilney, with much positive cheerfulness.
+It was only in his presence that Catherine felt the smallest fatigue
+from her journey; and even then, even in moments of languor or
+restraint, a sense of general happiness preponderated, and she could
+think of her friends in Bath without one wish of being with them.
+
+The night was stormy; the wind had been rising at intervals the whole
+afternoon; and by the time the party broke up, it blew and rained
+violently. Catherine, as she crossed the hall, listened to the tempest
+with sensations of awe; and, when she heard it rage round a corner of
+the ancient building and close with sudden fury a distant door, felt
+for the first time that she was really in an abbey. Yes, these were
+characteristic sounds; they brought to her recollection a countless
+variety of dreadful situations and horrid scenes, which such buildings
+had witnessed, and such storms ushered in; and most heartily did she
+rejoice in the happier circumstances attending her entrance within
+walls so solemn! _She_ had nothing to dread from midnight assassins or
+drunken gallants. Henry had certainly been only in jest in what he had
+told her that morning. In a house so furnished, and so guarded, she
+could have nothing to explore or to suffer, and might go to her bedroom
+as securely as if it had been her own chamber at Fullerton. Thus wisely
+fortifying her mind, as she proceeded upstairs, she was enabled,
+especially on perceiving that Miss Tilney slept only two doors from
+her, to enter her room with a tolerably stout heart; and her spirits
+were immediately assisted by the cheerful blaze of a wood fire. “How
+much better is this,” said she, as she walked to the fender—“how much
+better to find a fire ready lit, than to have to wait shivering in the
+cold till all the family are in bed, as so many poor girls have been
+obliged to do, and then to have a faithful old servant frightening one
+by coming in with a faggot! How glad I am that Northanger is what it
+is! If it had been like some other places, I do not know that, in such
+a night as this, I could have answered for my courage: but now, to be
+sure, there is nothing to alarm one.”
+
+She looked round the room. The window curtains seemed in motion. It
+could be nothing but the violence of the wind penetrating through the
+divisions of the shutters; and she stepped boldly forward, carelessly
+humming a tune, to assure herself of its being so, peeped courageously
+behind each curtain, saw nothing on either low window seat to scare
+her, and on placing a hand against the shutter, felt the strongest
+conviction of the wind’s force. A glance at the old chest, as she
+turned away from this examination, was not without its use; she scorned
+the causeless fears of an idle fancy, and began with a most happy
+indifference to prepare herself for bed. “She should take her time; she
+should not hurry herself; she did not care if she were the last person
+up in the house. But she would not make up her fire; _that_ would seem
+cowardly, as if she wished for the protection of light after she were
+in bed.” The fire therefore died away, and Catherine, having spent the
+best part of an hour in her arrangements, was beginning to think of
+stepping into bed, when, on giving a parting glance round the room, she
+was struck by the appearance of a high, old-fashioned black cabinet,
+which, though in a situation conspicuous enough, had never caught her
+notice before. Henry’s words, his description of the ebony cabinet
+which was to escape her observation at first, immediately rushed across
+her; and though there could be nothing really in it, there was
+something whimsical, it was certainly a very remarkable coincidence!
+She took her candle and looked closely at the cabinet. It was not
+absolutely ebony and gold; but it was japan, black and yellow japan of
+the handsomest kind; and as she held her candle, the yellow had very
+much the effect of gold. The key was in the door, and she had a strange
+fancy to look into it; not, however, with the smallest expectation of
+finding anything, but it was so very odd, after what Henry had said. In
+short, she could not sleep till she had examined it. So, placing the
+candle with great caution on a chair, she seized the key with a very
+tremulous hand and tried to turn it; but it resisted her utmost
+strength. Alarmed, but not discouraged, she tried it another way; a
+bolt flew, and she believed herself successful; but how strangely
+mysterious! The door was still immovable. She paused a moment in
+breathless wonder. The wind roared down the chimney, the rain beat in
+torrents against the windows, and everything seemed to speak the
+awfulness of her situation. To retire to bed, however, unsatisfied on
+such a point, would be vain, since sleep must be impossible with the
+consciousness of a cabinet so mysteriously closed in her immediate
+vicinity. Again, therefore, she applied herself to the key, and after
+moving it in every possible way for some instants with the determined
+celerity of hope’s last effort, the door suddenly yielded to her hand:
+her heart leaped with exultation at such a victory, and having thrown
+open each folding door, the second being secured only by bolts of less
+wonderful construction than the lock, though in that her eye could not
+discern anything unusual, a double range of small drawers appeared in
+view, with some larger drawers above and below them; and in the centre,
+a small door, closed also with a lock and key, secured in all
+probability a cavity of importance.
+
+Catherine’s heart beat quick, but her courage did not fail her. With a
+cheek flushed by hope, and an eye straining with curiosity, her fingers
+grasped the handle of a drawer and drew it forth. It was entirely
+empty. With less alarm and greater eagerness she seized a second, a
+third, a fourth; each was equally empty. Not one was left unsearched,
+and in not one was anything found. Well read in the art of concealing a
+treasure, the possibility of false linings to the drawers did not
+escape her, and she felt round each with anxious acuteness in vain. The
+place in the middle alone remained now unexplored; and though she had
+“never from the first had the smallest idea of finding anything in any
+part of the cabinet, and was not in the least disappointed at her ill
+success thus far, it would be foolish not to examine it thoroughly
+while she was about it.” It was some time however before she could
+unfasten the door, the same difficulty occurring in the management of
+this inner lock as of the outer; but at length it did open; and not
+vain, as hitherto, was her search; her quick eyes directly fell on a
+roll of paper pushed back into the further part of the cavity,
+apparently for concealment, and her feelings at that moment were
+indescribable. Her heart fluttered, her knees trembled, and her cheeks
+grew pale. She seized, with an unsteady hand, the precious manuscript,
+for half a glance sufficed to ascertain written characters; and while
+she acknowledged with awful sensations this striking exemplification of
+what Henry had foretold, resolved instantly to peruse every line before
+she attempted to rest.
+
+The dimness of the light her candle emitted made her turn to it with
+alarm; but there was no danger of its sudden extinction; it had yet
+some hours to burn; and that she might not have any greater difficulty
+in distinguishing the writing than what its ancient date might
+occasion, she hastily snuffed it. Alas! It was snuffed and extinguished
+in one. A lamp could not have expired with more awful effect.
+Catherine, for a few moments, was motionless with horror. It was done
+completely; not a remnant of light in the wick could give hope to the
+rekindling breath. Darkness impenetrable and immovable filled the room.
+A violent gust of wind, rising with sudden fury, added fresh horror to
+the moment. Catherine trembled from head to foot. In the pause which
+succeeded, a sound like receding footsteps and the closing of a distant
+door struck on her affrighted ear. Human nature could support no more.
+A cold sweat stood on her forehead, the manuscript fell from her hand,
+and groping her way to the bed, she jumped hastily in, and sought some
+suspension of agony by creeping far underneath the clothes. To close
+her eyes in sleep that night, she felt must be entirely out of the
+question. With a curiosity so justly awakened, and feelings in every
+way so agitated, repose must be absolutely impossible. The storm too
+abroad so dreadful! She had not been used to feel alarm from wind, but
+now every blast seemed fraught with awful intelligence. The manuscript
+so wonderfully found, so wonderfully accomplishing the morning’s
+prediction, how was it to be accounted for? What could it contain? To
+whom could it relate? By what means could it have been so long
+concealed? And how singularly strange that it should fall to her lot to
+discover it! Till she had made herself mistress of its contents,
+however, she could have neither repose nor comfort; and with the sun’s
+first rays she was determined to peruse it. But many were the tedious
+hours which must yet intervene. She shuddered, tossed about in her bed,
+and envied every quiet sleeper. The storm still raged, and various were
+the noises, more terrific even than the wind, which struck at intervals
+on her startled ear. The very curtains of her bed seemed at one moment
+in motion, and at another the lock of her door was agitated, as if by
+the attempt of somebody to enter. Hollow murmurs seemed to creep along
+the gallery, and more than once her blood was chilled by the sound of
+distant moans. Hour after hour passed away, and the wearied Catherine
+had heard three proclaimed by all the clocks in the house before the
+tempest subsided or she unknowingly fell fast asleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 22
+
+
+The housemaid’s folding back her window-shutters at eight o’clock the
+next day was the sound which first roused Catherine; and she opened her
+eyes, wondering that they could ever have been closed, on objects of
+cheerfulness; her fire was already burning, and a bright morning had
+succeeded the tempest of the night. Instantaneously, with the
+consciousness of existence, returned her recollection of the
+manuscript; and springing from the bed in the very moment of the maid’s
+going away, she eagerly collected every scattered sheet which had burst
+from the roll on its falling to the ground, and flew back to enjoy the
+luxury of their perusal on her pillow. She now plainly saw that she
+must not expect a manuscript of equal length with the generality of
+what she had shuddered over in books, for the roll, seeming to consist
+entirely of small disjointed sheets, was altogether but of trifling
+size, and much less than she had supposed it to be at first.
+
+Her greedy eye glanced rapidly over a page. She started at its import.
+Could it be possible, or did not her senses play her false? An
+inventory of linen, in coarse and modern characters, seemed all that
+was before her! If the evidence of sight might be trusted, she held a
+washing-bill in her hand. She seized another sheet, and saw the same
+articles with little variation; a third, a fourth, and a fifth
+presented nothing new. Shirts, stockings, cravats, and waistcoats faced
+her in each. Two others, penned by the same hand, marked an expenditure
+scarcely more interesting, in letters, hair-powder, shoe-string, and
+breeches-ball. And the larger sheet, which had enclosed the rest,
+seemed by its first cramp line, “To poultice chestnut mare”—a farrier’s
+bill! Such was the collection of papers (left perhaps, as she could
+then suppose, by the negligence of a servant in the place whence she
+had taken them) which had filled her with expectation and alarm, and
+robbed her of half her night’s rest! She felt humbled to the dust.
+Could not the adventure of the chest have taught her wisdom? A corner
+of it, catching her eye as she lay, seemed to rise up in judgment
+against her. Nothing could now be clearer than the absurdity of her
+recent fancies. To suppose that a manuscript of many generations back
+could have remained undiscovered in a room such as that, so modern, so
+habitable!—Or that she should be the first to possess the skill of
+unlocking a cabinet, the key of which was open to all!
+
+How could she have so imposed on herself? Heaven forbid that Henry
+Tilney should ever know her folly! And it was in a great measure his
+own doing, for had not the cabinet appeared so exactly to agree with
+his description of her adventures, she should never have felt the
+smallest curiosity about it. This was the only comfort that occurred.
+Impatient to get rid of those hateful evidences of her folly, those
+detestable papers then scattered over the bed, she rose directly, and
+folding them up as nearly as possible in the same shape as before,
+returned them to the same spot within the cabinet, with a very hearty
+wish that no untoward accident might ever bring them forward again, to
+disgrace her even with herself.
+
+Why the locks should have been so difficult to open, however, was still
+something remarkable, for she could now manage them with perfect ease.
+In this there was surely something mysterious, and she indulged in the
+flattering suggestion for half a minute, till the possibility of the
+door’s having been at first unlocked, and of being herself its
+fastener, darted into her head, and cost her another blush.
+
+She got away as soon as she could from a room in which her conduct
+produced such unpleasant reflections, and found her way with all speed
+to the breakfast-parlour, as it had been pointed out to her by Miss
+Tilney the evening before. Henry was alone in it; and his immediate
+hope of her having been undisturbed by the tempest, with an arch
+reference to the character of the building they inhabited, was rather
+distressing. For the world would she not have her weakness suspected,
+and yet, unequal to an absolute falsehood, was constrained to
+acknowledge that the wind had kept her awake a little. “But we have a
+charming morning after it,” she added, desiring to get rid of the
+subject; “and storms and sleeplessness are nothing when they are over.
+What beautiful hyacinths! I have just learnt to love a hyacinth.”
+
+“And how might you learn? By accident or argument?”
+
+“Your sister taught me; I cannot tell how. Mrs. Allen used to take
+pains, year after year, to make me like them; but I never could, till I
+saw them the other day in Milsom Street; I am naturally indifferent
+about flowers.”
+
+“But now you love a hyacinth. So much the better. You have gained a new
+source of enjoyment, and it is well to have as many holds upon
+happiness as possible. Besides, a taste for flowers is always desirable
+in your sex, as a means of getting you out of doors, and tempting you
+to more frequent exercise than you would otherwise take. And though the
+love of a hyacinth may be rather domestic, who can tell, the sentiment
+once raised, but you may in time come to love a rose?”
+
+“But I do not want any such pursuit to get me out of doors. The
+pleasure of walking and breathing fresh air is enough for me, and in
+fine weather I am out more than half my time. Mamma says I am never
+within.”
+
+“At any rate, however, I am pleased that you have learnt to love a
+hyacinth. The mere habit of learning to love is the thing; and a
+teachableness of disposition in a young lady is a great blessing. Has
+my sister a pleasant mode of instruction?”
+
+Catherine was saved the embarrassment of attempting an answer by the
+entrance of the general, whose smiling compliments announced a happy
+state of mind, but whose gentle hint of sympathetic early rising did
+not advance her composure.
+
+The elegance of the breakfast set forced itself on Catherine’s notice
+when they were seated at table; and, luckily, it had been the general’s
+choice. He was enchanted by her approbation of his taste, confessed it
+to be neat and simple, thought it right to encourage the manufacture of
+his country; and for his part, to his uncritical palate, the tea was as
+well flavoured from the clay of Staffordshire, as from that of Dresden
+or Sêve. But this was quite an old set, purchased two years ago. The
+manufacture was much improved since that time; he had seen some
+beautiful specimens when last in town, and had he not been perfectly
+without vanity of that kind, might have been tempted to order a new
+set. He trusted, however, that an opportunity might ere long occur of
+selecting one—though not for himself. Catherine was probably the only
+one of the party who did not understand him.
+
+Shortly after breakfast Henry left them for Woodston, where business
+required and would keep him two or three days. They all attended in the
+hall to see him mount his horse, and immediately on re-entering the
+breakfast-room, Catherine walked to a window in the hope of catching
+another glimpse of his figure. “This is a somewhat heavy call upon your
+brother’s fortitude,” observed the general to Eleanor. “Woodston will
+make but a sombre appearance today.”
+
+“Is it a pretty place?” asked Catherine.
+
+“What say you, Eleanor? Speak your opinion, for ladies can best tell
+the taste of ladies in regard to places as well as men. I think it
+would be acknowledged by the most impartial eye to have many
+recommendations. The house stands among fine meadows facing the
+south-east, with an excellent kitchen-garden in the same aspect; the
+walls surrounding which I built and stocked myself about ten years ago,
+for the benefit of my son. It is a family living, Miss Morland; and the
+property in the place being chiefly my own, you may believe I take care
+that it shall not be a bad one. Did Henry’s income depend solely on
+this living, he would not be ill-provided for. Perhaps it may seem odd,
+that with only two younger children, I should think any profession
+necessary for him; and certainly there are moments when we could all
+wish him disengaged from every tie of business. But though I may not
+exactly make converts of you young ladies, I am sure your father, Miss
+Morland, would agree with me in thinking it expedient to give every
+young man some employment. The money is nothing, it is not an object,
+but employment is the thing. Even Frederick, my eldest son, you see,
+who will perhaps inherit as considerable a landed property as any
+private man in the county, has his profession.”
+
+The imposing effect of this last argument was equal to his wishes. The
+silence of the lady proved it to be unanswerable.
+
+Something had been said the evening before of her being shown over the
+house, and he now offered himself as her conductor; and though
+Catherine had hoped to explore it accompanied only by his daughter, it
+was a proposal of too much happiness in itself, under any
+circumstances, not to be gladly accepted; for she had been already
+eighteen hours in the abbey, and had seen only a few of its rooms. The
+netting-box, just leisurely drawn forth, was closed with joyful haste,
+and she was ready to attend him in a moment. “And when they had gone
+over the house, he promised himself moreover the pleasure of
+accompanying her into the shrubberies and garden.” She curtsied her
+acquiescence. “But perhaps it might be more agreeable to her to make
+those her first object. The weather was at present favourable, and at
+this time of year the uncertainty was very great of its continuing so.
+Which would she prefer? He was equally at her service. Which did his
+daughter think would most accord with her fair friend’s wishes? But he
+thought he could discern. Yes, he certainly read in Miss Morland’s eyes
+a judicious desire of making use of the present smiling weather. But
+when did she judge amiss? The abbey would be always safe and dry. He
+yielded implicitly, and would fetch his hat and attend them in a
+moment.” He left the room, and Catherine, with a disappointed, anxious
+face, began to speak of her unwillingness that he should be taking them
+out of doors against his own inclination, under a mistaken idea of
+pleasing her; but she was stopped by Miss Tilney’s saying, with a
+little confusion, “I believe it will be wisest to take the morning
+while it is so fine; and do not be uneasy on my father’s account; he
+always walks out at this time of day.”
+
+Catherine did not exactly know how this was to be understood. Why was
+Miss Tilney embarrassed? Could there be any unwillingness on the
+general’s side to show her over the abbey? The proposal was his own.
+And was not it odd that he should _always_ take his walk so early?
+Neither her father nor Mr. Allen did so. It was certainly very
+provoking. She was all impatience to see the house, and had scarcely
+any curiosity about the grounds. If Henry had been with them indeed!
+But now she should not know what was picturesque when she saw it. Such
+were her thoughts, but she kept them to herself, and put on her bonnet
+in patient discontent.
+
+She was struck, however, beyond her expectation, by the grandeur of the
+abbey, as she saw it for the first time from the lawn. The whole
+building enclosed a large court; and two sides of the quadrangle, rich
+in Gothic ornaments, stood forward for admiration. The remainder was
+shut off by knolls of old trees, or luxuriant plantations, and the
+steep woody hills rising behind, to give it shelter, were beautiful
+even in the leafless month of March. Catherine had seen nothing to
+compare with it; and her feelings of delight were so strong, that
+without waiting for any better authority, she boldly burst forth in
+wonder and praise. The general listened with assenting gratitude; and
+it seemed as if his own estimation of Northanger had waited unfixed
+till that hour.
+
+The kitchen-garden was to be next admired, and he led the way to it
+across a small portion of the park.
+
+The number of acres contained in this garden was such as Catherine
+could not listen to without dismay, being more than double the extent
+of all Mr. Allen’s, as well as her father’s, including church-yard and
+orchard. The walls seemed countless in number, endless in length; a
+village of hot-houses seemed to arise among them, and a whole parish to
+be at work within the enclosure. The general was flattered by her looks
+of surprise, which told him almost as plainly, as he soon forced her to
+tell him in words, that she had never seen any gardens at all equal to
+them before; and he then modestly owned that, “without any ambition of
+that sort himself—without any solicitude about it—he did believe them
+to be unrivalled in the kingdom. If he had a hobby-horse, it was
+_that_. He loved a garden. Though careless enough in most matters of
+eating, he loved good fruit—or if he did not, his friends and children
+did. There were great vexations, however, attending such a garden as
+his. The utmost care could not always secure the most valuable fruits.
+The pinery had yielded only one hundred in the last year. Mr. Allen, he
+supposed, must feel these inconveniences as well as himself.”
+
+“No, not at all. Mr. Allen did not care about the garden, and never
+went into it.”
+
+With a triumphant smile of self-satisfaction, the general wished he
+could do the same, for he never entered his, without being vexed in
+some way or other, by its falling short of his plan.
+
+“How were Mr. Allen’s succession-houses worked?” describing the nature
+of his own as they entered them.
+
+“Mr. Allen had only one small hot-house, which Mrs. Allen had the use
+of for her plants in winter, and there was a fire in it now and then.”
+
+“He is a happy man!” said the general, with a look of very happy
+contempt.
+
+Having taken her into every division, and led her under every wall,
+till she was heartily weary of seeing and wondering, he suffered the
+girls at last to seize the advantage of an outer door, and then
+expressing his wish to examine the effect of some recent alterations
+about the tea-house, proposed it as no unpleasant extension of their
+walk, if Miss Morland were not tired. “But where are you going,
+Eleanor? Why do you choose that cold, damp path to it? Miss Morland
+will get wet. Our best way is across the park.”
+
+“This is so favourite a walk of mine,” said Miss Tilney, “that I always
+think it the best and nearest way. But perhaps it may be damp.”
+
+It was a narrow winding path through a thick grove of old Scotch firs;
+and Catherine, struck by its gloomy aspect, and eager to enter it,
+could not, even by the general’s disapprobation, be kept from stepping
+forward. He perceived her inclination, and having again urged the plea
+of health in vain, was too polite to make further opposition. He
+excused himself, however, from attending them: “The rays of the sun
+were not too cheerful for him, and he would meet them by another
+course.” He turned away; and Catherine was shocked to find how much her
+spirits were relieved by the separation. The shock, however, being less
+real than the relief, offered it no injury; and she began to talk with
+easy gaiety of the delightful melancholy which such a grove inspired.
+
+“I am particularly fond of this spot,” said her companion, with a sigh.
+“It was my mother’s favourite walk.”
+
+Catherine had never heard Mrs. Tilney mentioned in the family before,
+and the interest excited by this tender remembrance showed itself
+directly in her altered countenance, and in the attentive pause with
+which she waited for something more.
+
+“I used to walk here so often with her!” added Eleanor; “though I never
+loved it then, as I have loved it since. At that time indeed I used to
+wonder at her choice. But her memory endears it now.”
+
+“And ought it not,” reflected Catherine, “to endear it to her husband?
+Yet the general would not enter it.” Miss Tilney continuing silent, she
+ventured to say, “Her death must have been a great affliction!”
+
+“A great and increasing one,” replied the other, in a low voice. “I was
+only thirteen when it happened; and though I felt my loss perhaps as
+strongly as one so young could feel it, I did not, I could not, then
+know what a loss it was.” She stopped for a moment, and then added,
+with great firmness, “I have no sister, you know—and though
+Henry—though my brothers are very affectionate, and Henry is a great
+deal here, which I am most thankful for, it is impossible for me not to
+be often solitary.”
+
+“To be sure you must miss him very much.”
+
+“A mother would have been always present. A mother would have been a
+constant friend; her influence would have been beyond all other.”
+
+“Was she a very charming woman? Was she handsome? Was there any picture
+of her in the abbey? And why had she been so partial to that grove? Was
+it from dejection of spirits?”—were questions now eagerly poured forth;
+the first three received a ready affirmative, the two others were
+passed by; and Catherine’s interest in the deceased Mrs. Tilney
+augmented with every question, whether answered or not. Of her
+unhappiness in marriage, she felt persuaded. The general certainly had
+been an unkind husband. He did not love her walk: could he therefore
+have loved her? And besides, handsome as he was, there was a something
+in the turn of his features which spoke his not having behaved well to
+her.
+
+“Her picture, I suppose,” blushing at the consummate art of her own
+question, “hangs in your father’s room?”
+
+“No; it was intended for the drawing-room; but my father was
+dissatisfied with the painting, and for some time it had no place. Soon
+after her death I obtained it for my own, and hung it in my
+bed-chamber—where I shall be happy to show it you; it is very like.”
+Here was another proof. A portrait—very like—of a departed wife, not
+valued by the husband! He must have been dreadfully cruel to her!
+
+Catherine attempted no longer to hide from herself the nature of the
+feelings which, in spite of all his attentions, he had previously
+excited; and what had been terror and dislike before, was now absolute
+aversion. Yes, aversion! His cruelty to such a charming woman made him
+odious to her. She had often read of such characters, characters which
+Mr. Allen had been used to call unnatural and overdrawn; but here was
+proof positive of the contrary.
+
+She had just settled this point when the end of the path brought them
+directly upon the general; and in spite of all her virtuous
+indignation, she found herself again obliged to walk with him, listen
+to him, and even to smile when he smiled. Being no longer able,
+however, to receive pleasure from the surrounding objects, she soon
+began to walk with lassitude; the general perceived it, and with a
+concern for her health, which seemed to reproach her for her opinion of
+him, was most urgent for returning with his daughter to the house. He
+would follow them in a quarter of an hour. Again they parted—but
+Eleanor was called back in half a minute to receive a strict charge
+against taking her friend round the abbey till his return. This second
+instance of his anxiety to delay what she so much wished for struck
+Catherine as very remarkable.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 23
+
+
+An hour passed away before the general came in, spent, on the part of
+his young guest, in no very favourable consideration of his character.
+“This lengthened absence, these solitary rambles, did not speak a mind
+at ease, or a conscience void of reproach.” At length he appeared; and,
+whatever might have been the gloom of his meditations, he could still
+smile with _them_. Miss Tilney, understanding in part her friend’s
+curiosity to see the house, soon revived the subject; and her father
+being, contrary to Catherine’s expectations, unprovided with any
+pretence for further delay, beyond that of stopping five minutes to
+order refreshments to be in the room by their return, was at last ready
+to escort them.
+
+They set forward; and, with a grandeur of air, a dignified step, which
+caught the eye, but could not shake the doubts of the well-read
+Catherine, he led the way across the hall, through the common
+drawing-room and one useless antechamber, into a room magnificent both
+in size and furniture—the real drawing-room, used only with company of
+consequence. It was very noble—very grand—very charming!—was all that
+Catherine had to say, for her indiscriminating eye scarcely discerned
+the colour of the satin; and all minuteness of praise, all praise that
+had much meaning, was supplied by the general: the costliness or
+elegance of any room’s fitting-up could be nothing to her; she cared
+for no furniture of a more modern date than the fifteenth century. When
+the general had satisfied his own curiosity, in a close examination of
+every well-known ornament, they proceeded into the library, an
+apartment, in its way, of equal magnificence, exhibiting a collection
+of books, on which an humble man might have looked with pride.
+Catherine heard, admired, and wondered with more genuine feeling than
+before—gathered all that she could from this storehouse of knowledge,
+by running over the titles of half a shelf, and was ready to proceed.
+But suites of apartments did not spring up with her wishes. Large as
+was the building, she had already visited the greatest part; though, on
+being told that, with the addition of the kitchen, the six or seven
+rooms she had now seen surrounded three sides of the court, she could
+scarcely believe it, or overcome the suspicion of there being many
+chambers secreted. It was some relief, however, that they were to
+return to the rooms in common use, by passing through a few of less
+importance, looking into the court, which, with occasional passages,
+not wholly unintricate, connected the different sides; and she was
+further soothed in her progress by being told that she was treading
+what had once been a cloister, having traces of cells pointed out, and
+observing several doors that were neither opened nor explained to
+her—by finding herself successively in a billiard-room, and in the
+general’s private apartment, without comprehending their connection, or
+being able to turn aright when she left them; and lastly, by passing
+through a dark little room, owning Henry’s authority, and strewed with
+his litter of books, guns, and greatcoats.
+
+From the dining-room, of which, though already seen, and always to be
+seen at five o’clock, the general could not forgo the pleasure of
+pacing out the length, for the more certain information of Miss
+Morland, as to what she neither doubted nor cared for, they proceeded
+by quick communication to the kitchen—the ancient kitchen of the
+convent, rich in the massy walls and smoke of former days, and in the
+stoves and hot closets of the present. The general’s improving hand had
+not loitered here: every modern invention to facilitate the labour of
+the cooks had been adopted within this, their spacious theatre; and,
+when the genius of others had failed, his own had often produced the
+perfection wanted. His endowments of this spot alone might at any time
+have placed him high among the benefactors of the convent.
+
+With the walls of the kitchen ended all the antiquity of the abbey; the
+fourth side of the quadrangle having, on account of its decaying state,
+been removed by the general’s father, and the present erected in its
+place. All that was venerable ceased here. The new building was not
+only new, but declared itself to be so; intended only for offices, and
+enclosed behind by stable-yards, no uniformity of architecture had been
+thought necessary. Catherine could have raved at the hand which had
+swept away what must have been beyond the value of all the rest, for
+the purposes of mere domestic economy; and would willingly have been
+spared the mortification of a walk through scenes so fallen, had the
+general allowed it; but if he had a vanity, it was in the arrangement
+of his offices; and as he was convinced that, to a mind like Miss
+Morland’s, a view of the accommodations and comforts, by which the
+labours of her inferiors were softened, must always be gratifying, he
+should make no apology for leading her on. They took a slight survey of
+all; and Catherine was impressed, beyond her expectation, by their
+multiplicity and their convenience. The purposes for which a few
+shapeless pantries and a comfortless scullery were deemed sufficient at
+Fullerton, were here carried on in appropriate divisions, commodious
+and roomy. The number of servants continually appearing did not strike
+her less than the number of their offices. Wherever they went, some
+pattened girl stopped to curtsy, or some footman in dishabille sneaked
+off. Yet this was an abbey! How inexpressibly different in these
+domestic arrangements from such as she had read about—from abbeys and
+castles, in which, though certainly larger than Northanger, all the
+dirty work of the house was to be done by two pair of female hands at
+the utmost. How they could get through it all had often amazed Mrs.
+Allen; and, when Catherine saw what was necessary here, she began to be
+amazed herself.
+
+They returned to the hall, that the chief staircase might be ascended,
+and the beauty of its wood, and ornaments of rich carving might be
+pointed out: having gained the top, they turned in an opposite
+direction from the gallery in which her room lay, and shortly entered
+one on the same plan, but superior in length and breadth. She was here
+shown successively into three large bed-chambers, with their
+dressing-rooms, most completely and handsomely fitted up; everything
+that money and taste could do, to give comfort and elegance to
+apartments, had been bestowed on these; and, being furnished within the
+last five years, they were perfect in all that would be generally
+pleasing, and wanting in all that could give pleasure to Catherine. As
+they were surveying the last, the general, after slightly naming a few
+of the distinguished characters by whom they had at times been
+honoured, turned with a smiling countenance to Catherine, and ventured
+to hope that henceforward some of their earliest tenants might be “our
+friends from Fullerton.” She felt the unexpected compliment, and deeply
+regretted the impossibility of thinking well of a man so kindly
+disposed towards herself, and so full of civility to all her family.
+
+The gallery was terminated by folding doors, which Miss Tilney,
+advancing, had thrown open, and passed through, and seemed on the point
+of doing the same by the first door to the left, in another long reach
+of gallery, when the general, coming forwards, called her hastily, and,
+as Catherine thought, rather angrily back, demanding whether she were
+going?—And what was there more to be seen?—Had not Miss Morland already
+seen all that could be worth her notice?—And did she not suppose her
+friend might be glad of some refreshment after so much exercise? Miss
+Tilney drew back directly, and the heavy doors were closed upon the
+mortified Catherine, who, having seen, in a momentary glance beyond
+them, a narrower passage, more numerous openings, and symptoms of a
+winding staircase, believed herself at last within the reach of
+something worth her notice; and felt, as she unwillingly paced back the
+gallery, that she would rather be allowed to examine that end of the
+house than see all the finery of all the rest. The general’s evident
+desire of preventing such an examination was an additional stimulant.
+Something was certainly to be concealed; her fancy, though it had
+trespassed lately once or twice, could not mislead her here; and what
+that something was, a short sentence of Miss Tilney’s, as they followed
+the general at some distance downstairs, seemed to point out: “I was
+going to take you into what was my mother’s room—the room in which she
+died—” were all her words; but few as they were, they conveyed pages of
+intelligence to Catherine. It was no wonder that the general should
+shrink from the sight of such objects as that room must contain; a room
+in all probability never entered by him since the dreadful scene had
+passed, which released his suffering wife, and left him to the stings
+of conscience.
+
+She ventured, when next alone with Eleanor, to express her wish of
+being permitted to see it, as well as all the rest of that side of the
+house; and Eleanor promised to attend her there, whenever they should
+have a convenient hour. Catherine understood her: the general must be
+watched from home, before that room could be entered. “It remains as it
+was, I suppose?” said she, in a tone of feeling.
+
+“Yes, entirely.”
+
+“And how long ago may it be that your mother died?”
+
+“She has been dead these nine years.” And nine years, Catherine knew,
+was a trifle of time, compared with what generally elapsed after the
+death of an injured wife, before her room was put to rights.
+
+“You were with her, I suppose, to the last?”
+
+“No,” said Miss Tilney, sighing; “I was unfortunately from home. Her
+illness was sudden and short; and, before I arrived it was all over.”
+
+Catherine’s blood ran cold with the horrid suggestions which naturally
+sprang from these words. Could it be possible? Could Henry’s father—?
+And yet how many were the examples to justify even the blackest
+suspicions! And, when she saw him in the evening, while she worked with
+her friend, slowly pacing the drawing-room for an hour together in
+silent thoughtfulness, with downcast eyes and contracted brow, she felt
+secure from all possibility of wronging him. It was the air and
+attitude of a Montoni! What could more plainly speak the gloomy
+workings of a mind not wholly dead to every sense of humanity, in its
+fearful review of past scenes of guilt? Unhappy man! And the
+anxiousness of her spirits directed her eyes towards his figure so
+repeatedly, as to catch Miss Tilney’s notice. “My father,” she
+whispered, “often walks about the room in this way; it is nothing
+unusual.”
+
+“So much the worse!” thought Catherine; such ill-timed exercise was of
+a piece with the strange unseasonableness of his morning walks, and
+boded nothing good.
+
+After an evening, the little variety and seeming length of which made
+her peculiarly sensible of Henry’s importance among them, she was
+heartily glad to be dismissed; though it was a look from the general
+not designed for her observation which sent his daughter to the bell.
+When the butler would have lit his master’s candle, however, he was
+forbidden. The latter was not going to retire. “I have many pamphlets
+to finish,” said he to Catherine, “before I can close my eyes, and
+perhaps may be poring over the affairs of the nation for hours after
+you are asleep. Can either of us be more meetly employed? _My_ eyes
+will be blinding for the good of others, and _yours_ preparing by rest
+for future mischief.”
+
+But neither the business alleged, nor the magnificent compliment, could
+win Catherine from thinking that some very different object must
+occasion so serious a delay of proper repose. To be kept up for hours,
+after the family were in bed, by stupid pamphlets was not very likely.
+There must be some deeper cause: something was to be done which could
+be done only while the household slept; and the probability that Mrs.
+Tilney yet lived, shut up for causes unknown, and receiving from the
+pitiless hands of her husband a nightly supply of coarse food, was the
+conclusion which necessarily followed. Shocking as was the idea, it was
+at least better than a death unfairly hastened, as, in the natural
+course of things, she must ere long be released. The suddenness of her
+reputed illness, the absence of her daughter, and probably of her other
+children, at the time—all favoured the supposition of her imprisonment.
+Its origin—jealousy perhaps, or wanton cruelty—was yet to be
+unravelled.
+
+In revolving these matters, while she undressed, it suddenly struck her
+as not unlikely that she might that morning have passed near the very
+spot of this unfortunate woman’s confinement—might have been within a
+few paces of the cell in which she languished out her days; for what
+part of the abbey could be more fitted for the purpose than that which
+yet bore the traces of monastic division? In the high-arched passage,
+paved with stone, which already she had trodden with peculiar awe, she
+well remembered the doors of which the general had given no account. To
+what might not those doors lead? In support of the plausibility of this
+conjecture, it further occurred to her that the forbidden gallery, in
+which lay the apartments of the unfortunate Mrs. Tilney, must be, as
+certainly as her memory could guide her, exactly over this suspected
+range of cells, and the staircase by the side of those apartments of
+which she had caught a transient glimpse, communicating by some secret
+means with those cells, might well have favoured the barbarous
+proceedings of her husband. Down that staircase she had perhaps been
+conveyed in a state of well-prepared insensibility!
+
+Catherine sometimes started at the boldness of her own surmises, and
+sometimes hoped or feared that she had gone too far; but they were
+supported by such appearances as made their dismissal impossible.
+
+The side of the quadrangle, in which she supposed the guilty scene to
+be acting, being, according to her belief, just opposite her own, it
+struck her that, if judiciously watched, some rays of light from the
+general’s lamp might glimmer through the lower windows, as he passed to
+the prison of his wife; and, twice before she stepped into bed, she
+stole gently from her room to the corresponding window in the gallery,
+to see if it appeared; but all abroad was dark, and it must yet be too
+early. The various ascending noises convinced her that the servants
+must still be up. Till midnight, she supposed it would be in vain to
+watch; but then, when the clock had struck twelve, and all was quiet,
+she would, if not quite appalled by darkness, steal out and look once
+more. The clock struck twelve—and Catherine had been half an hour
+asleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 24
+
+
+The next day afforded no opportunity for the proposed examination of
+the mysterious apartments. It was Sunday, and the whole time between
+morning and afternoon service was required by the general in exercise
+abroad or eating cold meat at home; and great as was Catherine’s
+curiosity, her courage was not equal to a wish of exploring them after
+dinner, either by the fading light of the sky between six and seven
+o’clock, or by the yet more partial though stronger illumination of a
+treacherous lamp. The day was unmarked therefore by anything to
+interest her imagination beyond the sight of a very elegant monument to
+the memory of Mrs. Tilney, which immediately fronted the family pew. By
+that her eye was instantly caught and long retained; and the perusal of
+the highly strained epitaph, in which every virtue was ascribed to her
+by the inconsolable husband, who must have been in some way or other
+her destroyer, affected her even to tears.
+
+That the general, having erected such a monument, should be able to
+face it, was not perhaps very strange, and yet that he could sit so
+boldly collected within its view, maintain so elevated an air, look so
+fearlessly around, nay, that he should even enter the church, seemed
+wonderful to Catherine. Not, however, that many instances of beings
+equally hardened in guilt might not be produced. She could remember
+dozens who had persevered in every possible vice, going on from crime
+to crime, murdering whomsoever they chose, without any feeling of
+humanity or remorse; till a violent death or a religious retirement
+closed their black career. The erection of the monument itself could
+not in the smallest degree affect her doubts of Mrs. Tilney’s actual
+decease. Were she even to descend into the family vault where her ashes
+were supposed to slumber, were she to behold the coffin in which they
+were said to be enclosed—what could it avail in such a case? Catherine
+had read too much not to be perfectly aware of the ease with which a
+waxen figure might be introduced, and a supposititious funeral carried
+on.
+
+The succeeding morning promised something better. The general’s early
+walk, ill-timed as it was in every other view, was favourable here; and
+when she knew him to be out of the house, she directly proposed to Miss
+Tilney the accomplishment of her promise. Eleanor was ready to oblige
+her; and Catherine reminding her as they went of another promise, their
+first visit in consequence was to the portrait in her bed-chamber. It
+represented a very lovely woman, with a mild and pensive countenance,
+justifying, so far, the expectations of its new observer; but they were
+not in every respect answered, for Catherine had depended upon meeting
+with features, hair, complexion, that should be the very counterpart,
+the very image, if not of Henry’s, of Eleanor’s—the only portraits of
+which she had been in the habit of thinking, bearing always an equal
+resemblance of mother and child. A face once taken was taken for
+generations. But here she was obliged to look and consider and study
+for a likeness. She contemplated it, however, in spite of this
+drawback, with much emotion, and, but for a yet stronger interest,
+would have left it unwillingly.
+
+Her agitation as they entered the great gallery was too much for any
+endeavour at discourse; she could only look at her companion. Eleanor’s
+countenance was dejected, yet sedate; and its composure spoke her
+inured to all the gloomy objects to which they were advancing. Again
+she passed through the folding doors, again her hand was upon the
+important lock, and Catherine, hardly able to breathe, was turning to
+close the former with fearful caution, when the figure, the dreaded
+figure of the general himself at the further end of the gallery, stood
+before her! The name of “Eleanor” at the same moment, in his loudest
+tone, resounded through the building, giving to his daughter the first
+intimation of his presence, and to Catherine terror upon terror. An
+attempt at concealment had been her first instinctive movement on
+perceiving him, yet she could scarcely hope to have escaped his eye;
+and when her friend, who with an apologizing look darted hastily by
+her, had joined and disappeared with him, she ran for safety to her own
+room, and, locking herself in, believed that she should never have
+courage to go down again. She remained there at least an hour, in the
+greatest agitation, deeply commiserating the state of her poor friend,
+and expecting a summons herself from the angry general to attend him in
+his own apartment. No summons, however, arrived; and at last, on seeing
+a carriage drive up to the abbey, she was emboldened to descend and
+meet him under the protection of visitors. The breakfast-room was gay
+with company; and she was named to them by the general as the friend of
+his daughter, in a complimentary style, which so well concealed his
+resentful ire, as to make her feel secure at least of life for the
+present. And Eleanor, with a command of countenance which did honour to
+her concern for his character, taking an early occasion of saying to
+her, “My father only wanted me to answer a note,” she began to hope
+that she had either been unseen by the general, or that from some
+consideration of policy she should be allowed to suppose herself so.
+Upon this trust she dared still to remain in his presence, after the
+company left them, and nothing occurred to disturb it.
+
+In the course of this morning’s reflections, she came to a resolution
+of making her next attempt on the forbidden door alone. It would be
+much better in every respect that Eleanor should know nothing of the
+matter. To involve her in the danger of a second detection, to court
+her into an apartment which must wring her heart, could not be the
+office of a friend. The general’s utmost anger could not be to herself
+what it might be to a daughter; and, besides, she thought the
+examination itself would be more satisfactory if made without any
+companion. It would be impossible to explain to Eleanor the suspicions,
+from which the other had, in all likelihood, been hitherto happily
+exempt; nor could she therefore, in _her_ presence, search for those
+proofs of the general’s cruelty, which however they might yet have
+escaped discovery, she felt confident of somewhere drawing forth, in
+the shape of some fragmented journal, continued to the last gasp. Of
+the way to the apartment she was now perfectly mistress; and as she
+wished to get it over before Henry’s return, who was expected on the
+morrow, there was no time to be lost. The day was bright, her courage
+high; at four o’clock, the sun was now two hours above the horizon, and
+it would be only her retiring to dress half an hour earlier than usual.
+
+It was done; and Catherine found herself alone in the gallery before
+the clocks had ceased to strike. It was no time for thought; she
+hurried on, slipped with the least possible noise through the folding
+doors, and without stopping to look or breathe, rushed forward to the
+one in question. The lock yielded to her hand, and, luckily, with no
+sullen sound that could alarm a human being. On tiptoe she entered; the
+room was before her; but it was some minutes before she could advance
+another step. She beheld what fixed her to the spot and agitated every
+feature. She saw a large, well-proportioned apartment, an handsome
+dimity bed, arranged as unoccupied with an housemaid’s care, a bright
+Bath stove, mahogany wardrobes, and neatly painted chairs, on which the
+warm beams of a western sun gaily poured through two sash windows!
+Catherine had expected to have her feelings worked, and worked they
+were. Astonishment and doubt first seized them; and a shortly
+succeeding ray of common sense added some bitter emotions of shame. She
+could not be mistaken as to the room; but how grossly mistaken in
+everything else!—in Miss Tilney’s meaning, in her own calculation! This
+apartment, to which she had given a date so ancient, a position so
+awful, proved to be one end of what the general’s father had built.
+There were two other doors in the chamber, leading probably into
+dressing-closets; but she had no inclination to open either. Would the
+veil in which Mrs. Tilney had last walked, or the volume in which she
+had last read, remain to tell what nothing else was allowed to whisper?
+No: whatever might have been the general’s crimes, he had certainly too
+much wit to let them sue for detection. She was sick of exploring, and
+desired but to be safe in her own room, with her own heart only privy
+to its folly; and she was on the point of retreating as softly as she
+had entered, when the sound of footsteps, she could hardly tell where,
+made her pause and tremble. To be found there, even by a servant, would
+be unpleasant; but by the general (and he seemed always at hand when
+least wanted), much worse! She listened—the sound had ceased; and
+resolving not to lose a moment, she passed through and closed the door.
+At that instant a door underneath was hastily opened; someone seemed
+with swift steps to ascend the stairs, by the head of which she had yet
+to pass before she could gain the gallery. She had no power to move.
+With a feeling of terror not very definable, she fixed her eyes on the
+staircase, and in a few moments it gave Henry to her view. “Mr.
+Tilney!” she exclaimed in a voice of more than common astonishment. He
+looked astonished too. “Good God!” she continued, not attending to his
+address. “How came you here? How came you up that staircase?”
+
+“How came I up that staircase!” he replied, greatly surprised. “Because
+it is my nearest way from the stable-yard to my own chamber; and why
+should I not come up it?”
+
+Catherine recollected herself, blushed deeply, and could say no more.
+He seemed to be looking in her countenance for that explanation which
+her lips did not afford. She moved on towards the gallery. “And may I
+not, in my turn,” said he, as he pushed back the folding doors, “ask
+how _you_ came here? This passage is at least as extraordinary a road
+from the breakfast-parlour to your apartment, as that staircase can be
+from the stables to mine.”
+
+“I have been,” said Catherine, looking down, “to see your mother’s
+room.”
+
+“My mother’s room! Is there anything extraordinary to be seen there?”
+
+“No, nothing at all. I thought you did not mean to come back till
+tomorrow.”
+
+“I did not expect to be able to return sooner, when I went away; but
+three hours ago I had the pleasure of finding nothing to detain me. You
+look pale. I am afraid I alarmed you by running so fast up those
+stairs. Perhaps you did not know—you were not aware of their leading
+from the offices in common use?”
+
+“No, I was not. You have had a very fine day for your ride.”
+
+“Very; and does Eleanor leave you to find your way into all the rooms
+in the house by yourself?”
+
+“Oh! No; she showed me over the greatest part on Saturday—and we were
+coming here to these rooms—but only”—dropping her voice—“your father
+was with us.”
+
+“And that prevented you,” said Henry, earnestly regarding her. “Have
+you looked into all the rooms in that passage?”
+
+“No, I only wanted to see—Is not it very late? I must go and dress.”
+
+“It is only a quarter past four” showing his watch—“and you are not now
+in Bath. No theatre, no rooms to prepare for. Half an hour at
+Northanger must be enough.”
+
+She could not contradict it, and therefore suffered herself to be
+detained, though her dread of further questions made her, for the first
+time in their acquaintance, wish to leave him. They walked slowly up
+the gallery. “Have you had any letter from Bath since I saw you?”
+
+“No, and I am very much surprised. Isabella promised so faithfully to
+write directly.”
+
+“Promised so faithfully! A faithful promise! That puzzles me. I have
+heard of a faithful performance. But a faithful promise—the fidelity of
+promising! It is a power little worth knowing, however, since it can
+deceive and pain you. My mother’s room is very commodious, is it not?
+Large and cheerful-looking, and the dressing-closets so well disposed!
+It always strikes me as the most comfortable apartment in the house,
+and I rather wonder that Eleanor should not take it for her own. She
+sent you to look at it, I suppose?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“It has been your own doing entirely?” Catherine said nothing. After a
+short silence, during which he had closely observed her, he added, “As
+there is nothing in the room in itself to raise curiosity, this must
+have proceeded from a sentiment of respect for my mother’s character,
+as described by Eleanor, which does honour to her memory. The world, I
+believe, never saw a better woman. But it is not often that virtue can
+boast an interest such as this. The domestic, unpretending merits of a
+person never known do not often create that kind of fervent, venerating
+tenderness which would prompt a visit like yours. Eleanor, I suppose,
+has talked of her a great deal?”
+
+“Yes, a great deal. That is—no, not much, but what she did say was very
+interesting. Her dying so suddenly” (slowly, and with hesitation it was
+spoken), “and you—none of you being at home—and your father, I
+thought—perhaps had not been very fond of her.”
+
+“And from these circumstances,” he replied (his quick eye fixed on
+hers), “you infer perhaps the probability of some
+negligence—some”—(involuntarily she shook her head)—“or it may be—of
+something still less pardonable.” She raised her eyes towards him more
+fully than she had ever done before. “My mother’s illness,” he
+continued, “the seizure which ended in her death, _was_ sudden. The
+malady itself, one from which she had often suffered, a bilious
+fever—its cause therefore constitutional. On the third day, in short,
+as soon as she could be prevailed on, a physician attended her, a very
+respectable man, and one in whom she had always placed great
+confidence. Upon his opinion of her danger, two others were called in
+the next day, and remained in almost constant attendance for four and
+twenty hours. On the fifth day she died. During the progress of her
+disorder, Frederick and I (_we_ were both at home) saw her repeatedly;
+and from our own observation can bear witness to her having received
+every possible attention which could spring from the affection of those
+about her, or which her situation in life could command. Poor Eleanor
+was absent, and at such a distance as to return only to see her mother
+in her coffin.”
+
+“But your father,” said Catherine, “was _he_ afflicted?”
+
+“For a time, greatly so. You have erred in supposing him not attached
+to her. He loved her, I am persuaded, as well as it was possible for
+him to—we have not all, you know, the same tenderness of
+disposition—and I will not pretend to say that while she lived, she
+might not often have had much to bear, but though his temper injured
+her, his judgment never did. His value of her was sincere; and, if not
+permanently, he was truly afflicted by her death.”
+
+“I am very glad of it,” said Catherine; “it would have been very
+shocking!”
+
+“If I understand you rightly, you had formed a surmise of such horror
+as I have hardly words to—Dear Miss Morland, consider the dreadful
+nature of the suspicions you have entertained. What have you been
+judging from? Remember the country and the age in which we live.
+Remember that we are English, that we are Christians. Consult your own
+understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of
+what is passing around you. Does our education prepare us for such
+atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated
+without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary
+intercourse is on such a footing, where every man is surrounded by a
+neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay
+everything open? Dearest Miss Morland, what ideas have you been
+admitting?”
+
+They had reached the end of the gallery, and with tears of shame she
+ran off to her own room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 25
+
+
+The visions of romance were over. Catherine was completely awakened.
+Henry’s address, short as it had been, had more thoroughly opened her
+eyes to the extravagance of her late fancies than all their several
+disappointments had done. Most grievously was she humbled. Most
+bitterly did she cry. It was not only with herself that she was
+sunk—but with Henry. Her folly, which now seemed even criminal, was all
+exposed to him, and he must despise her forever. The liberty which her
+imagination had dared to take with the character of his father—could he
+ever forgive it? The absurdity of her curiosity and her fears—could
+they ever be forgotten? She hated herself more than she could express.
+He had—she thought he had, once or twice before this fatal morning,
+shown something like affection for her. But now—in short, she made
+herself as miserable as possible for about half an hour, went down when
+the clock struck five, with a broken heart, and could scarcely give an
+intelligible answer to Eleanor’s inquiry if she was well. The
+formidable Henry soon followed her into the room, and the only
+difference in his behaviour to her was that he paid her rather more
+attention than usual. Catherine had never wanted comfort more, and he
+looked as if he was aware of it.
+
+The evening wore away with no abatement of this soothing politeness;
+and her spirits were gradually raised to a modest tranquillity. She did
+not learn either to forget or defend the past; but she learned to hope
+that it would never transpire farther, and that it might not cost her
+Henry’s entire regard. Her thoughts being still chiefly fixed on what
+she had with such causeless terror felt and done, nothing could shortly
+be clearer than that it had been all a voluntary, self-created
+delusion, each trifling circumstance receiving importance from an
+imagination resolved on alarm, and everything forced to bend to one
+purpose by a mind which, before she entered the abbey, had been craving
+to be frightened. She remembered with what feelings she had prepared
+for a knowledge of Northanger. She saw that the infatuation had been
+created, the mischief settled, long before her quitting Bath, and it
+seemed as if the whole might be traced to the influence of that sort of
+reading which she had there indulged.
+
+Charming as were all Mrs. Radcliffe’s works, and charming even as were
+the works of all her imitators, it was not in them perhaps that human
+nature, at least in the Midland counties of England, was to be looked
+for. Of the Alps and Pyrenees, with their pine forests and their vices,
+they might give a faithful delineation; and Italy, Switzerland, and the
+south of France might be as fruitful in horrors as they were there
+represented. Catherine dared not doubt beyond her own country, and even
+of that, if hard pressed, would have yielded the northern and western
+extremities. But in the central part of England there was surely some
+security for the existence even of a wife not beloved, in the laws of
+the land, and the manners of the age. Murder was not tolerated,
+servants were not slaves, and neither poison nor sleeping potions to be
+procured, like rhubarb, from every druggist. Among the Alps and
+Pyrenees, perhaps, there were no mixed characters. There, such as were
+not as spotless as an angel might have the dispositions of a fiend. But
+in England it was not so; among the English, she believed, in their
+hearts and habits, there was a general though unequal mixture of good
+and bad. Upon this conviction, she would not be surprised if even in
+Henry and Eleanor Tilney, some slight imperfection might hereafter
+appear; and upon this conviction she need not fear to acknowledge some
+actual specks in the character of their father, who, though cleared
+from the grossly injurious suspicions which she must ever blush to have
+entertained, she did believe, upon serious consideration, to be not
+perfectly amiable.
+
+Her mind made up on these several points, and her resolution formed, of
+always judging and acting in future with the greatest good sense, she
+had nothing to do but to forgive herself and be happier than ever; and
+the lenient hand of time did much for her by insensible gradations in
+the course of another day. Henry’s astonishing generosity and nobleness
+of conduct, in never alluding in the slightest way to what had passed,
+was of the greatest assistance to her; and sooner than she could have
+supposed it possible in the beginning of her distress, her spirits
+became absolutely comfortable, and capable, as heretofore, of continual
+improvement by anything he said. There were still some subjects,
+indeed, under which she believed they must always tremble—the mention
+of a chest or a cabinet, for instance—and she did not love the sight of
+japan in any shape: but even _she_ could allow that an occasional
+memento of past folly, however painful, might not be without use.
+
+The anxieties of common life began soon to succeed to the alarms of
+romance. Her desire of hearing from Isabella grew every day greater.
+She was quite impatient to know how the Bath world went on, and how the
+rooms were attended; and especially was she anxious to be assured of
+Isabella’s having matched some fine netting-cotton, on which she had
+left her intent; and of her continuing on the best terms with James.
+Her only dependence for information of any kind was on Isabella. James
+had protested against writing to her till his return to Oxford; and
+Mrs. Allen had given her no hopes of a letter till she had got back to
+Fullerton. But Isabella had promised and promised again; and when she
+promised a thing, she was so scrupulous in performing it! This made it
+so particularly strange!
+
+For nine successive mornings, Catherine wondered over the repetition of
+a disappointment, which each morning became more severe: but, on the
+tenth, when she entered the breakfast-room, her first object was a
+letter, held out by Henry’s willing hand. She thanked him as heartily
+as if he had written it himself. “’Tis only from James, however,” as
+she looked at the direction. She opened it; it was from Oxford; and to
+this purpose:
+
+“Dear Catherine,
+    “Though, God knows, with little inclination for writing, I think it
+    my duty to tell you that everything is at an end between Miss
+    Thorpe and me. I left her and Bath yesterday, never to see either
+    again. I shall not enter into particulars—they would only pain you
+    more. You will soon hear enough from another quarter to know where
+    lies the blame; and I hope will acquit your brother of everything
+    but the folly of too easily thinking his affection returned. Thank
+    God! I am undeceived in time! But it is a heavy blow! After my
+    father’s consent had been so kindly given—but no more of this. She
+    has made me miserable forever! Let me soon hear from you, dear
+    Catherine; you are my only friend; _your_ love I do build upon. I
+    wish your visit at Northanger may be over before Captain Tilney
+    makes his engagement known, or you will be uncomfortably
+    circumstanced. Poor Thorpe is in town: I dread the sight of him;
+    his honest heart would feel so much. I have written to him and my
+    father. Her duplicity hurts me more than all; till the very last,
+    if I reasoned with her, she declared herself as much attached to me
+    as ever, and laughed at my fears. I am ashamed to think how long I
+    bore with it; but if ever man had reason to believe himself loved,
+    I was that man. I cannot understand even now what she would be at,
+    for there could be no need of my being played off to make her
+    secure of Tilney. We parted at last by mutual consent—happy for me
+    had we never met! I can never expect to know such another woman!
+    Dearest Catherine, beware how you give your heart.
+
+
+“Believe me,” &c.
+
+
+Catherine had not read three lines before her sudden change of
+countenance, and short exclamations of sorrowing wonder, declared her
+to be receiving unpleasant news; and Henry, earnestly watching her
+through the whole letter, saw plainly that it ended no better than it
+began. He was prevented, however, from even looking his surprise by his
+father’s entrance. They went to breakfast directly; but Catherine could
+hardly eat anything. Tears filled her eyes, and even ran down her
+cheeks as she sat. The letter was one moment in her hand, then in her
+lap, and then in her pocket; and she looked as if she knew not what she
+did. The general, between his cocoa and his newspaper, had luckily no
+leisure for noticing her; but to the other two her distress was equally
+visible. As soon as she dared leave the table she hurried away to her
+own room; but the housemaids were busy in it, and she was obliged to
+come down again. She turned into the drawing-room for privacy, but
+Henry and Eleanor had likewise retreated thither, and were at that
+moment deep in consultation about her. She drew back, trying to beg
+their pardon, but was, with gentle violence, forced to return; and the
+others withdrew, after Eleanor had affectionately expressed a wish of
+being of use or comfort to her.
+
+After half an hour’s free indulgence of grief and reflection, Catherine
+felt equal to encountering her friends; but whether she should make her
+distress known to them was another consideration. Perhaps, if
+particularly questioned, she might just give an idea—just distantly
+hint at it—but not more. To expose a friend, such a friend as Isabella
+had been to her—and then their own brother so closely concerned in it!
+She believed she must waive the subject altogether. Henry and Eleanor
+were by themselves in the breakfast-room; and each, as she entered it,
+looked at her anxiously. Catherine took her place at the table, and,
+after a short silence, Eleanor said, “No bad news from Fullerton, I
+hope? Mr. and Mrs. Morland—your brothers and sisters—I hope they are
+none of them ill?”
+
+“No, I thank you” (sighing as she spoke); “they are all very well. My
+letter was from my brother at Oxford.”
+
+Nothing further was said for a few minutes; and then speaking through
+her tears, she added, “I do not think I shall ever wish for a letter
+again!”
+
+“I am sorry,” said Henry, closing the book he had just opened; “if I
+had suspected the letter of containing anything unwelcome, I should
+have given it with very different feelings.”
+
+“It contained something worse than anybody could suppose! Poor James is
+so unhappy! You will soon know why.”
+
+“To have so kind-hearted, so affectionate a sister,” replied Henry
+warmly, “must be a comfort to him under any distress.”
+
+“I have one favour to beg,” said Catherine, shortly afterwards, in an
+agitated manner, “that, if your brother should be coming here, you will
+give me notice of it, that I may go away.”
+
+“Our brother! Frederick!”
+
+“Yes; I am sure I should be very sorry to leave you so soon, but
+something has happened that would make it very dreadful for me to be in
+the same house with Captain Tilney.”
+
+Eleanor’s work was suspended while she gazed with increasing
+astonishment; but Henry began to suspect the truth, and something, in
+which Miss Thorpe’s name was included, passed his lips.
+
+“How quick you are!” cried Catherine: “you have guessed it, I declare!
+And yet, when we talked about it in Bath, you little thought of its
+ending so. Isabella—no wonder _now_ I have not heard from her—Isabella
+has deserted my brother, and is to marry yours! Could you have believed
+there had been such inconstancy and fickleness, and everything that is
+bad in the world?”
+
+“I hope, so far as concerns my brother, you are misinformed. I hope he
+has not had any material share in bringing on Mr. Morland’s
+disappointment. His marrying Miss Thorpe is not probable. I think you
+must be deceived so far. I am very sorry for Mr. Morland—sorry that
+anyone you love should be unhappy; but my surprise would be greater at
+Frederick’s marrying her than at any other part of the story.”
+
+“It is very true, however; you shall read James’s letter yourself.
+Stay—There is one part—” recollecting with a blush the last line.
+
+“Will you take the trouble of reading to us the passages which concern
+my brother?”
+
+“No, read it yourself,” cried Catherine, whose second thoughts were
+clearer. “I do not know what I was thinking of” (blushing again that
+she had blushed before); “James only means to give me good advice.”
+
+He gladly received the letter, and, having read it through, with close
+attention, returned it saying, “Well, if it is to be so, I can only say
+that I am sorry for it. Frederick will not be the first man who has
+chosen a wife with less sense than his family expected. I do not envy
+his situation, either as a lover or a son.”
+
+Miss Tilney, at Catherine’s invitation, now read the letter likewise,
+and, having expressed also her concern and surprise, began to inquire
+into Miss Thorpe’s connections and fortune.
+
+“Her mother is a very good sort of woman,” was Catherine’s answer.
+
+“What was her father?”
+
+“A lawyer, I believe. They live at Putney.”
+
+“Are they a wealthy family?”
+
+“No, not very. I do not believe Isabella has any fortune at all: but
+that will not signify in your family. Your father is so very liberal!
+He told me the other day that he only valued money as it allowed him to
+promote the happiness of his children.” The brother and sister looked
+at each other. “But,” said Eleanor, after a short pause, “would it be
+to promote his happiness, to enable him to marry such a girl? She must
+be an unprincipled one, or she could not have used your brother so. And
+how strange an infatuation on Frederick’s side! A girl who, before his
+eyes, is violating an engagement voluntarily entered into with another
+man! Is not it inconceivable, Henry? Frederick too, who always wore his
+heart so proudly! Who found no woman good enough to be loved!”
+
+“That is the most unpromising circumstance, the strongest presumption
+against him. When I think of his past declarations, I give him up.
+Moreover, I have too good an opinion of Miss Thorpe’s prudence to
+suppose that she would part with one gentleman before the other was
+secured. It is all over with Frederick indeed! He is a deceased
+man—defunct in understanding. Prepare for your sister-in-law, Eleanor,
+and such a sister-in-law as you must delight in! Open, candid, artless,
+guileless, with affections strong but simple, forming no pretensions,
+and knowing no disguise.”
+
+“Such a sister-in-law, Henry, I should delight in,” said Eleanor with a
+smile.
+
+“But perhaps,” observed Catherine, “though she has behaved so ill by
+our family, she may behave better by yours. Now she has really got the
+man she likes, she may be constant.”
+
+“Indeed I am afraid she will,” replied Henry; “I am afraid she will be
+very constant, unless a baronet should come in her way; that is
+Frederick’s only chance. I will get the Bath paper, and look over the
+arrivals.”
+
+“You think it is all for ambition, then? And, upon my word, there are
+some things that seem very like it. I cannot forget that, when she
+first knew what my father would do for them, she seemed quite
+disappointed that it was not more. I never was so deceived in anyone’s
+character in my life before.”
+
+“Among all the great variety that you have known and studied.”
+
+“My own disappointment and loss in her is very great; but, as for poor
+James, I suppose he will hardly ever recover it.”
+
+“Your brother is certainly very much to be pitied at present; but we
+must not, in our concern for his sufferings, undervalue yours. You
+feel, I suppose, that in losing Isabella, you lose half yourself: you
+feel a void in your heart which nothing else can occupy. Society is
+becoming irksome; and as for the amusements in which you were wont to
+share at Bath, the very idea of them without her is abhorrent. You
+would not, for instance, now go to a ball for the world. You feel that
+you have no longer any friend to whom you can speak with unreserve, on
+whose regard you can place dependence, or whose counsel, in any
+difficulty, you could rely on. You feel all this?”
+
+“No,” said Catherine, after a few moments’ reflection, “I do not—ought
+I? To say the truth, though I am hurt and grieved, that I cannot still
+love her, that I am never to hear from her, perhaps never to see her
+again, I do not feel so very, very much afflicted as one would have
+thought.”
+
+“You feel, as you always do, what is most to the credit of human
+nature. Such feelings ought to be investigated, that they may know
+themselves.”
+
+Catherine, by some chance or other, found her spirits so very much
+relieved by this conversation that she could not regret her being led
+on, though so unaccountably, to mention the circumstance which had
+produced it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 26
+
+
+From this time, the subject was frequently canvassed by the three young
+people; and Catherine found, with some surprise, that her two young
+friends were perfectly agreed in considering Isabella’s want of
+consequence and fortune as likely to throw great difficulties in the
+way of her marrying their brother. Their persuasion that the general
+would, upon this ground alone, independent of the objection that might
+be raised against her character, oppose the connection, turned her
+feelings moreover with some alarm towards herself. She was as
+insignificant, and perhaps as portionless, as Isabella; and if the heir
+of the Tilney property had not grandeur and wealth enough in himself,
+at what point of interest were the demands of his younger brother to
+rest? The very painful reflections to which this thought led could only
+be dispersed by a dependence on the effect of that particular
+partiality, which, as she was given to understand by his words as well
+as his actions, she had from the first been so fortunate as to excite
+in the general; and by a recollection of some most generous and
+disinterested sentiments on the subject of money, which she had more
+than once heard him utter, and which tempted her to think his
+disposition in such matters misunderstood by his children.
+
+They were so fully convinced, however, that their brother would not
+have the courage to apply in person for his father’s consent, and so
+repeatedly assured her that he had never in his life been less likely
+to come to Northanger than at the present time, that she suffered her
+mind to be at ease as to the necessity of any sudden removal of her
+own. But as it was not to be supposed that Captain Tilney, whenever he
+made his application, would give his father any just idea of Isabella’s
+conduct, it occurred to her as highly expedient that Henry should lay
+the whole business before him as it really was, enabling the general by
+that means to form a cool and impartial opinion, and prepare his
+objections on a fairer ground than inequality of situations. She
+proposed it to him accordingly; but he did not catch at the measure so
+eagerly as she had expected. “No,” said he, “my father’s hands need not
+be strengthened, and Frederick’s confession of folly need not be
+forestalled. He must tell his own story.”
+
+“But he will tell only half of it.”
+
+“A quarter would be enough.”
+
+A day or two passed away and brought no tidings of Captain Tilney. His
+brother and sister knew not what to think. Sometimes it appeared to
+them as if his silence would be the natural result of the suspected
+engagement, and at others that it was wholly incompatible with it. The
+general, meanwhile, though offended every morning by Frederick’s
+remissness in writing, was free from any real anxiety about him, and
+had no more pressing solicitude than that of making Miss Morland’s time
+at Northanger pass pleasantly. He often expressed his uneasiness on
+this head, feared the sameness of every day’s society and employments
+would disgust her with the place, wished the Lady Frasers had been in
+the country, talked every now and then of having a large party to
+dinner, and once or twice began even to calculate the number of young
+dancing people in the neighbourhood. But then it was such a dead time
+of year, no wild-fowl, no game, and the Lady Frasers were not in the
+country. And it all ended, at last, in his telling Henry one morning
+that when he next went to Woodston, they would take him by surprise
+there some day or other, and eat their mutton with him. Henry was
+greatly honoured and very happy, and Catherine was quite delighted with
+the scheme. “And when do you think, sir, I may look forward to this
+pleasure? I must be at Woodston on Monday to attend the parish meeting,
+and shall probably be obliged to stay two or three days.”
+
+“Well, well, we will take our chance some one of those days. There is
+no need to fix. You are not to put yourself at all out of your way.
+Whatever you may happen to have in the house will be enough. I think I
+can answer for the young ladies making allowance for a bachelor’s
+table. Let me see; Monday will be a busy day with you, we will not come
+on Monday; and Tuesday will be a busy one with me. I expect my surveyor
+from Brockham with his report in the morning; and afterwards I cannot
+in decency fail attending the club. I really could not face my
+acquaintance if I stayed away now; for, as I am known to be in the
+country, it would be taken exceedingly amiss; and it is a rule with me,
+Miss Morland, never to give offence to any of my neighbours, if a small
+sacrifice of time and attention can prevent it. They are a set of very
+worthy men. They have half a buck from Northanger twice a year; and I
+dine with them whenever I can. Tuesday, therefore, we may say is out of
+the question. But on Wednesday, I think, Henry, you may expect us; and
+we shall be with you early, that we may have time to look about us. Two
+hours and three quarters will carry us to Woodston, I suppose; we shall
+be in the carriage by ten; so, about a quarter before one on Wednesday,
+you may look for us.”
+
+A ball itself could not have been more welcome to Catherine than this
+little excursion, so strong was her desire to be acquainted with
+Woodston; and her heart was still bounding with joy when Henry, about
+an hour afterwards, came booted and greatcoated into the room where she
+and Eleanor were sitting, and said, “I am come, young ladies, in a very
+moralizing strain, to observe that our pleasures in this world are
+always to be paid for, and that we often purchase them at a great
+disadvantage, giving ready-monied actual happiness for a draft on the
+future, that may not be honoured. Witness myself, at this present hour.
+Because I am to hope for the satisfaction of seeing you at Woodston on
+Wednesday, which bad weather, or twenty other causes, may prevent, I
+must go away directly, two days before I intended it.”
+
+“Go away!” said Catherine, with a very long face. “And why?”
+
+“Why! How can you ask the question? Because no time is to be lost in
+frightening my old housekeeper out of her wits, because I must go and
+prepare a dinner for you, to be sure.”
+
+“Oh! Not seriously!”
+
+“Aye, and sadly too—for I had much rather stay.”
+
+“But how can you think of such a thing, after what the general said?
+When he so particularly desired you not to give yourself any trouble,
+because _anything_ would do.”
+
+Henry only smiled. “I am sure it is quite unnecessary upon your
+sister’s account and mine. You must know it to be so; and the general
+made such a point of your providing nothing extraordinary: besides, if
+he had not said half so much as he did, he has always such an excellent
+dinner at home, that sitting down to a middling one for one day could
+not signify.”
+
+“I wish I could reason like you, for his sake and my own. Good-bye. As
+tomorrow is Sunday, Eleanor, I shall not return.”
+
+He went; and, it being at any time a much simpler operation to
+Catherine to doubt her own judgment than Henry’s, she was very soon
+obliged to give him credit for being right, however disagreeable to her
+his going. But the inexplicability of the general’s conduct dwelt much
+on her thoughts. That he was very particular in his eating, she had, by
+her own unassisted observation, already discovered; but why he should
+say one thing so positively, and mean another all the while, was most
+unaccountable! How were people, at that rate, to be understood? Who but
+Henry could have been aware of what his father was at?
+
+From Saturday to Wednesday, however, they were now to be without Henry.
+This was the sad finale of every reflection: and Captain Tilney’s
+letter would certainly come in his absence; and Wednesday she was very
+sure would be wet. The past, present, and future were all equally in
+gloom. Her brother so unhappy, and her loss in Isabella so great; and
+Eleanor’s spirits always affected by Henry’s absence! What was there to
+interest or amuse her? She was tired of the woods and the
+shrubberies—always so smooth and so dry; and the abbey in itself was no
+more to her now than any other house. The painful remembrance of the
+folly it had helped to nourish and perfect was the only emotion which
+could spring from a consideration of the building. What a revolution in
+her ideas! She, who had so longed to be in an abbey! Now, there was
+nothing so charming to her imagination as the unpretending comfort of a
+well-connected parsonage, something like Fullerton, but better:
+Fullerton had its faults, but Woodston probably had none. If Wednesday
+should ever come!
+
+It did come, and exactly when it might be reasonably looked for. It
+came—it was fine—and Catherine trod on air. By ten o’clock, the chaise
+and four conveyed the trio from the abbey; and, after an agreeable
+drive of almost twenty miles, they entered Woodston, a large and
+populous village, in a situation not unpleasant. Catherine was ashamed
+to say how pretty she thought it, as the general seemed to think an
+apology necessary for the flatness of the country, and the size of the
+village; but in her heart she preferred it to any place she had ever
+been at, and looked with great admiration at every neat house above the
+rank of a cottage, and at all the little chandler’s shops which they
+passed. At the further end of the village, and tolerably disengaged
+from the rest of it, stood the parsonage, a new-built substantial stone
+house, with its semicircular sweep and green gates; and, as they drove
+up to the door, Henry, with the friends of his solitude, a large
+Newfoundland puppy and two or three terriers, was ready to receive and
+make much of them.
+
+Catherine’s mind was too full, as she entered the house, for her either
+to observe or to say a great deal; and, till called on by the general
+for her opinion of it, she had very little idea of the room in which
+she was sitting. Upon looking round it then, she perceived in a moment
+that it was the most comfortable room in the world; but she was too
+guarded to say so, and the coldness of her praise disappointed him.
+
+“We are not calling it a good house,” said he. “We are not comparing it
+with Fullerton and Northanger—we are considering it as a mere
+parsonage, small and confined, we allow, but decent, perhaps, and
+habitable; and altogether not inferior to the generality; or, in other
+words, I believe there are few country parsonages in England half so
+good. It may admit of improvement, however. Far be it from me to say
+otherwise; and anything in reason—a bow thrown out, perhaps—though,
+between ourselves, if there is one thing more than another my aversion,
+it is a patched-on bow.”
+
+Catherine did not hear enough of this speech to understand or be pained
+by it; and other subjects being studiously brought forward and
+supported by Henry, at the same time that a tray full of refreshments
+was introduced by his servant, the general was shortly restored to his
+complacency, and Catherine to all her usual ease of spirits.
+
+The room in question was of a commodious, well-proportioned size, and
+handsomely fitted up as a dining-parlour; and on their quitting it to
+walk round the grounds, she was shown, first into a smaller apartment,
+belonging peculiarly to the master of the house, and made unusually
+tidy on the occasion; and afterwards into what was to be the
+drawing-room, with the appearance of which, though unfurnished,
+Catherine was delighted enough even to satisfy the general. It was a
+prettily shaped room, the windows reaching to the ground, and the view
+from them pleasant, though only over green meadows; and she expressed
+her admiration at the moment with all the honest simplicity with which
+she felt it. “Oh! Why do not you fit up this room, Mr. Tilney? What a
+pity not to have it fitted up! It is the prettiest room I ever saw; it
+is the prettiest room in the world!”
+
+“I trust,” said the general, with a most satisfied smile, “that it will
+very speedily be furnished: it waits only for a lady’s taste!”
+
+“Well, if it was my house, I should never sit anywhere else. Oh! What a
+sweet little cottage there is among the trees—apple trees, too! It is
+the prettiest cottage!”
+
+“You like it—you approve it as an object—it is enough. Henry, remember
+that Robinson is spoken to about it. The cottage remains.”
+
+Such a compliment recalled all Catherine’s consciousness, and silenced
+her directly; and, though pointedly applied to by the general for her
+choice of the prevailing colour of the paper and hangings, nothing like
+an opinion on the subject could be drawn from her. The influence of
+fresh objects and fresh air, however, was of great use in dissipating
+these embarrassing associations; and, having reached the ornamental
+part of the premises, consisting of a walk round two sides of a meadow,
+on which Henry’s genius had begun to act about half a year ago, she was
+sufficiently recovered to think it prettier than any pleasure-ground
+she had ever been in before, though there was not a shrub in it higher
+than the green bench in the corner.
+
+A saunter into other meadows, and through part of the village, with a
+visit to the stables to examine some improvements, and a charming game
+of play with a litter of puppies just able to roll about, brought them
+to four o’clock, when Catherine scarcely thought it could be three. At
+four they were to dine, and at six to set off on their return. Never
+had any day passed so quickly!
+
+She could not but observe that the abundance of the dinner did not seem
+to create the smallest astonishment in the general; nay, that he was
+even looking at the side-table for cold meat which was not there. His
+son and daughter’s observations were of a different kind. They had
+seldom seen him eat so heartily at any table but his own, and never
+before known him so little disconcerted by the melted butter’s being
+oiled.
+
+At six o’clock, the general having taken his coffee, the carriage again
+received them; and so gratifying had been the tenor of his conduct
+throughout the whole visit, so well assured was her mind on the subject
+of his expectations, that, could she have felt equally confident of the
+wishes of his son, Catherine would have quitted Woodston with little
+anxiety as to the How or the When she might return to it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 27
+
+
+The next morning brought the following very unexpected letter from
+Isabella:
+
+_Bath, April_
+
+
+My dearest Catherine,
+    I received your two kind letters with the greatest delight, and
+    have a thousand apologies to make for not answering them sooner. I
+    really am quite ashamed of my idleness; but in this horrid place
+    one can find time for nothing. I have had my pen in my hand to
+    begin a letter to you almost every day since you left Bath, but
+    have always been prevented by some silly trifler or other. Pray
+    write to me soon, and direct to my own home. Thank God, we leave
+    this vile place tomorrow. Since you went away, I have had no
+    pleasure in it—the dust is beyond anything; and everybody one cares
+    for is gone. I believe if I could see you I should not mind the
+    rest, for you are dearer to me than anybody can conceive. I am
+    quite uneasy about your dear brother, not having heard from him
+    since he went to Oxford; and am fearful of some misunderstanding.
+    Your kind offices will set all right: he is the only man I ever did
+    or could love, and I trust you will convince him of it. The spring
+    fashions are partly down; and the hats the most frightful you can
+    imagine. I hope you spend your time pleasantly, but am afraid you
+    never think of me. I will not say all that I could of the family
+    you are with, because I would not be ungenerous, or set you against
+    those you esteem; but it is very difficult to know whom to trust,
+    and young men never know their minds two days together. I rejoice
+    to say that the young man whom, of all others, I particularly
+    abhor, has left Bath. You will know, from this description, I must
+    mean Captain Tilney, who, as you may remember, was amazingly
+    disposed to follow and tease me, before you went away. Afterwards
+    he got worse, and became quite my shadow. Many girls might have
+    been taken in, for never were such attentions; but I knew the
+    fickle sex too well. He went away to his regiment two days ago, and
+    I trust I shall never be plagued with him again. He is the greatest
+    coxcomb I ever saw, and amazingly disagreeable. The last two days
+    he was always by the side of Charlotte Davis: I pitied his taste,
+    but took no notice of him. The last time we met was in Bath Street,
+    and I turned directly into a shop that he might not speak to me; I
+    would not even look at him. He went into the pump-room afterwards;
+    but I would not have followed him for all the world. Such a
+    contrast between him and your brother! Pray send me some news of
+    the latter—I am quite unhappy about him; he seemed so uncomfortable
+    when he went away, with a cold, or something that affected his
+    spirits. I would write to him myself, but have mislaid his
+    direction; and, as I hinted above, am afraid he took something in
+    my conduct amiss. Pray explain everything to his satisfaction; or,
+    if he still harbours any doubt, a line from himself to me, or a
+    call at Putney when next in town, might set all to rights. I have
+    not been to the rooms this age, nor to the play, except going in
+    last night with the Hodges, for a frolic, at half price: they
+    teased me into it; and I was determined they should not say I shut
+    myself up because Tilney was gone. We happened to sit by the
+    Mitchells, and they pretended to be quite surprised to see me out.
+    I knew their spite: at one time they could not be civil to me, but
+    now they are all friendship; but I am not such a fool as to be
+    taken in by them. You know I have a pretty good spirit of my own.
+    Anne Mitchell had tried to put on a turban like mine, as I wore it
+    the week before at the concert, but made wretched work of it—it
+    happened to become my odd face, I believe, at least Tilney told me
+    so at the time, and said every eye was upon me; but he is the last
+    man whose word I would take. I wear nothing but purple now: I know
+    I look hideous in it, but no matter—it is your dear brother’s
+    favourite colour. Lose no time, my dearest, sweetest Catherine, in
+    writing to him and to me,
+
+
+Who ever am, etc.
+
+
+Such a strain of shallow artifice could not impose even upon Catherine.
+Its inconsistencies, contradictions, and falsehood struck her from the
+very first. She was ashamed of Isabella, and ashamed of having ever
+loved her. Her professions of attachment were now as disgusting as her
+excuses were empty, and her demands impudent. “Write to James on her
+behalf! No, James should never hear Isabella’s name mentioned by her
+again.”
+
+On Henry’s arrival from Woodston, she made known to him and Eleanor
+their brother’s safety, congratulating them with sincerity on it, and
+reading aloud the most material passages of her letter with strong
+indignation. When she had finished it—“So much for Isabella,” she
+cried, “and for all our intimacy! She must think me an idiot, or she
+could not have written so; but perhaps this has served to make her
+character better known to me than mine is to her. I see what she has
+been about. She is a vain coquette, and her tricks have not answered. I
+do not believe she had ever any regard either for James or for me, and
+I wish I had never known her.”
+
+“It will soon be as if you never had,” said Henry.
+
+“There is but one thing that I cannot understand. I see that she has
+had designs on Captain Tilney, which have not succeeded; but I do not
+understand what Captain Tilney has been about all this time. Why should
+he pay her such attentions as to make her quarrel with my brother, and
+then fly off himself?”
+
+“I have very little to say for Frederick’s motives, such as I believe
+them to have been. He has his vanities as well as Miss Thorpe, and the
+chief difference is, that, having a stronger head, they have not yet
+injured himself. If the _effect_ of his behaviour does not justify him
+with you, we had better not seek after the cause.”
+
+“Then you do not suppose he ever really cared about her?”
+
+“I am persuaded that he never did.”
+
+“And only made believe to do so for mischief’s sake?”
+
+Henry bowed his assent.
+
+“Well, then, I must say that I do not like him at all. Though it has
+turned out so well for us, I do not like him at all. As it happens,
+there is no great harm done, because I do not think Isabella has any
+heart to lose. But, suppose he had made her very much in love with
+him?”
+
+“But we must first suppose Isabella to have had a heart to
+lose—consequently to have been a very different creature; and, in that
+case, she would have met with very different treatment.”
+
+“It is very right that you should stand by your brother.”
+
+“And if you would stand by _yours_, you would not be much distressed by
+the disappointment of Miss Thorpe. But your mind is warped by an innate
+principle of general integrity, and therefore not accessible to the
+cool reasonings of family partiality, or a desire of revenge.”
+
+Catherine was complimented out of further bitterness. Frederick could
+not be unpardonably guilty, while Henry made himself so agreeable. She
+resolved on not answering Isabella’s letter, and tried to think no more
+of it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 28
+
+
+Soon after this, the general found himself obliged to go to London for
+a week; and he left Northanger earnestly regretting that any necessity
+should rob him even for an hour of Miss Morland’s company, and
+anxiously recommending the study of her comfort and amusement to his
+children as their chief object in his absence. His departure gave
+Catherine the first experimental conviction that a loss may be
+sometimes a gain. The happiness with which their time now passed, every
+employment voluntary, every laugh indulged, every meal a scene of ease
+and good humour, walking where they liked and when they liked, their
+hours, pleasures, and fatigues at their own command, made her
+thoroughly sensible of the restraint which the general’s presence had
+imposed, and most thankfully feel their present release from it. Such
+ease and such delights made her love the place and the people more and
+more every day; and had it not been for a dread of its soon becoming
+expedient to leave the one, and an apprehension of not being equally
+beloved by the other, she would at each moment of each day have been
+perfectly happy; but she was now in the fourth week of her visit;
+before the general came home, the fourth week would be turned, and
+perhaps it might seem an intrusion if she stayed much longer. This was
+a painful consideration whenever it occurred; and eager to get rid of
+such a weight on her mind, she very soon resolved to speak to Eleanor
+about it at once, propose going away, and be guided in her conduct by
+the manner in which her proposal might be taken.
+
+Aware that if she gave herself much time, she might feel it difficult
+to bring forward so unpleasant a subject, she took the first
+opportunity of being suddenly alone with Eleanor, and of Eleanor’s
+being in the middle of a speech about something very different, to
+start forth her obligation of going away very soon. Eleanor looked and
+declared herself much concerned. She had “hoped for the pleasure of her
+company for a much longer time—had been misled (perhaps by her wishes)
+to suppose that a much longer visit had been promised—and could not but
+think that if Mr. and Mrs. Morland were aware of the pleasure it was to
+her to have her there, they would be too generous to hasten her
+return.” Catherine explained: “Oh! As to _that_, Papa and Mamma were in
+no hurry at all. As long as she was happy, they would always be
+satisfied.”
+
+“Then why, might she ask, in such a hurry herself to leave them?”
+
+“Oh! Because she had been there so long.”
+
+“Nay, if you can use such a word, I can urge you no farther. If you
+think it long—”
+
+“Oh! No, I do not indeed. For my own pleasure, I could stay with you as
+long again.” And it was directly settled that, till she had, her
+leaving them was not even to be thought of. In having this cause of
+uneasiness so pleasantly removed, the force of the other was likewise
+weakened. The kindness, the earnestness of Eleanor’s manner in pressing
+her to stay, and Henry’s gratified look on being told that her stay was
+determined, were such sweet proofs of her importance with them, as left
+her only just so much solicitude as the human mind can never do
+comfortably without. She did—almost always—believe that Henry loved
+her, and quite always that his father and sister loved and even wished
+her to belong to them; and believing so far, her doubts and anxieties
+were merely sportive irritations.
+
+Henry was not able to obey his father’s injunction of remaining wholly
+at Northanger in attendance on the ladies, during his absence in
+London, the engagements of his curate at Woodston obliging him to leave
+them on Saturday for a couple of nights. His loss was not now what it
+had been while the general was at home; it lessened their gaiety, but
+did not ruin their comfort; and the two girls agreeing in occupation,
+and improving in intimacy, found themselves so well sufficient for the
+time to themselves, that it was eleven o’clock, rather a late hour at
+the abbey, before they quitted the supper-room on the day of Henry’s
+departure. They had just reached the head of the stairs when it seemed,
+as far as the thickness of the walls would allow them to judge, that a
+carriage was driving up to the door, and the next moment confirmed the
+idea by the loud noise of the house-bell. After the first perturbation
+of surprise had passed away, in a “Good heaven! What can be the
+matter?” it was quickly decided by Eleanor to be her eldest brother,
+whose arrival was often as sudden, if not quite so unseasonable, and
+accordingly she hurried down to welcome him.
+
+Catherine walked on to her chamber, making up her mind as well as she
+could, to a further acquaintance with Captain Tilney, and comforting
+herself under the unpleasant impression his conduct had given her, and
+the persuasion of his being by far too fine a gentleman to approve of
+her, that at least they should not meet under such circumstances as
+would make their meeting materially painful. She trusted he would never
+speak of Miss Thorpe; and indeed, as he must by this time be ashamed of
+the part he had acted, there could be no danger of it; and as long as
+all mention of Bath scenes were avoided, she thought she could behave
+to him very civilly. In such considerations time passed away, and it
+was certainly in his favour that Eleanor should be so glad to see him,
+and have so much to say, for half an hour was almost gone since his
+arrival, and Eleanor did not come up.
+
+At that moment Catherine thought she heard her step in the gallery, and
+listened for its continuance; but all was silent. Scarcely, however,
+had she convicted her fancy of error, when the noise of something
+moving close to her door made her start; it seemed as if someone was
+touching the very doorway—and in another moment a slight motion of the
+lock proved that some hand must be on it. She trembled a little at the
+idea of anyone’s approaching so cautiously; but resolving not to be
+again overcome by trivial appearances of alarm, or misled by a raised
+imagination, she stepped quietly forward, and opened the door. Eleanor,
+and only Eleanor, stood there. Catherine’s spirits, however, were
+tranquillized but for an instant, for Eleanor’s cheeks were pale, and
+her manner greatly agitated. Though evidently intending to come in, it
+seemed an effort to enter the room, and a still greater to speak when
+there. Catherine, supposing some uneasiness on Captain Tilney’s
+account, could only express her concern by silent attention, obliged
+her to be seated, rubbed her temples with lavender-water, and hung over
+her with affectionate solicitude. “My dear Catherine, you must not—you
+must not indeed—” were Eleanor’s first connected words. “I am quite
+well. This kindness distracts me—I cannot bear it—I come to you on such
+an errand!”
+
+“Errand! To me!”
+
+“How shall I tell you! Oh! How shall I tell you!”
+
+A new idea now darted into Catherine’s mind, and turning as pale as her
+friend, she exclaimed, “’Tis a messenger from Woodston!”
+
+“You are mistaken, indeed,” returned Eleanor, looking at her most
+compassionately; “it is no one from Woodston. It is my father himself.”
+Her voice faltered, and her eyes were turned to the ground as she
+mentioned his name. His unlooked-for return was enough in itself to
+make Catherine’s heart sink, and for a few moments she hardly supposed
+there were anything worse to be told. She said nothing; and Eleanor,
+endeavouring to collect herself and speak with firmness, but with eyes
+still cast down, soon went on. “You are too good, I am sure, to think
+the worse of me for the part I am obliged to perform. I am indeed a
+most unwilling messenger. After what has so lately passed, so lately
+been settled between us—how joyfully, how thankfully on my side!—as to
+your continuing here as I hoped for many, many weeks longer, how can I
+tell you that your kindness is not to be accepted—and that the
+happiness your company has hitherto given us is to be repaid by—But I
+must not trust myself with words. My dear Catherine, we are to part. My
+father has recollected an engagement that takes our whole family away
+on Monday. We are going to Lord Longtown’s, near Hereford, for a
+fortnight. Explanation and apology are equally impossible. I cannot
+attempt either.”
+
+“My dear Eleanor,” cried Catherine, suppressing her feelings as well as
+she could, “do not be so distressed. A second engagement must give way
+to a first. I am very, very sorry we are to part—so soon, and so
+suddenly too; but I am not offended, indeed I am not. I can finish my
+visit here, you know, at any time; or I hope you will come to me. Can
+you, when you return from this lord’s, come to Fullerton?”
+
+“It will not be in my power, Catherine.”
+
+“Come when you can, then.”
+
+Eleanor made no answer; and Catherine’s thoughts recurring to something
+more directly interesting, she added, thinking aloud, “Monday—so soon
+as Monday; and you _all_ go. Well, I am certain of—I shall be able to
+take leave, however. I need not go till just before you do, you know.
+Do not be distressed, Eleanor, I can go on Monday very well. My father
+and mother’s having no notice of it is of very little consequence. The
+general will send a servant with me, I dare say, half the way—and then
+I shall soon be at Salisbury, and then I am only nine miles from home.”
+
+“Ah, Catherine! Were it settled so, it would be somewhat less
+intolerable, though in such common attentions you would have received
+but half what you ought. But—how can I tell you?—tomorrow morning is
+fixed for your leaving us, and not even the hour is left to your
+choice; the very carriage is ordered, and will be here at seven
+o’clock, and no servant will be offered you.”
+
+Catherine sat down, breathless and speechless. “I could hardly believe
+my senses, when I heard it; and no displeasure, no resentment that you
+can feel at this moment, however justly great, can be more than I
+myself—but I must not talk of what I felt. Oh! That I could suggest
+anything in extenuation! Good God! What will your father and mother
+say! After courting you from the protection of real friends to
+this—almost double distance from your home, to have you driven out of
+the house, without the considerations even of decent civility! Dear,
+dear Catherine, in being the bearer of such a message, I seem guilty
+myself of all its insult; yet, I trust you will acquit me, for you must
+have been long enough in this house to see that I am but a nominal
+mistress of it, that my real power is nothing.”
+
+“Have I offended the general?” said Catherine in a faltering voice.
+
+“Alas! For my feelings as a daughter, all that I know, all that I
+answer for, is that you can have given him no just cause of offence. He
+certainly is greatly, very greatly discomposed; I have seldom seen him
+more so. His temper is not happy, and something has now occurred to
+ruffle it in an uncommon degree; some disappointment, some vexation,
+which just at this moment seems important, but which I can hardly
+suppose you to have any concern in, for how is it possible?”
+
+It was with pain that Catherine could speak at all; and it was only for
+Eleanor’s sake that she attempted it. “I am sure,” said she, “I am very
+sorry if I have offended him. It was the last thing I would willingly
+have done. But do not be unhappy, Eleanor. An engagement, you know,
+must be kept. I am only sorry it was not recollected sooner, that I
+might have written home. But it is of very little consequence.”
+
+“I hope, I earnestly hope, that to your real safety it will be of none;
+but to everything else it is of the greatest consequence: to comfort,
+appearance, propriety, to your family, to the world. Were your friends,
+the Allens, still in Bath, you might go to them with comparative ease;
+a few hours would take you there; but a journey of seventy miles, to be
+taken post by you, at your age, alone, unattended!”
+
+“Oh, the journey is nothing. Do not think about that. And if we are to
+part, a few hours sooner or later, you know, makes no difference. I can
+be ready by seven. Let me be called in time.” Eleanor saw that she
+wished to be alone; and believing it better for each that they should
+avoid any further conversation, now left her with, “I shall see you in
+the morning.”
+
+Catherine’s swelling heart needed relief. In Eleanor’s presence
+friendship and pride had equally restrained her tears, but no sooner
+was she gone than they burst forth in torrents. Turned from the house,
+and in such a way! Without any reason that could justify, any apology
+that could atone for the abruptness, the rudeness, nay, the insolence
+of it. Henry at a distance—not able even to bid him farewell. Every
+hope, every expectation from him suspended, at least, and who could say
+how long? Who could say when they might meet again? And all this by
+such a man as General Tilney, so polite, so well bred, and heretofore
+so particularly fond of her! It was as incomprehensible as it was
+mortifying and grievous. From what it could arise, and where it would
+end, were considerations of equal perplexity and alarm. The manner in
+which it was done so grossly uncivil, hurrying her away without any
+reference to her own convenience, or allowing her even the appearance
+of choice as to the time or mode of her travelling; of two days, the
+earliest fixed on, and of that almost the earliest hour, as if resolved
+to have her gone before he was stirring in the morning, that he might
+not be obliged even to see her. What could all this mean but an
+intentional affront? By some means or other she must have had the
+misfortune to offend him. Eleanor had wished to spare her from so
+painful a notion, but Catherine could not believe it possible that any
+injury or any misfortune could provoke such ill will against a person
+not connected, or, at least, not supposed to be connected with it.
+
+Heavily passed the night. Sleep, or repose that deserved the name of
+sleep, was out of the question. That room, in which her disturbed
+imagination had tormented her on her first arrival, was again the scene
+of agitated spirits and unquiet slumbers. Yet how different now the
+source of her inquietude from what it had been then—how mournfully
+superior in reality and substance! Her anxiety had foundation in fact,
+her fears in probability; and with a mind so occupied in the
+contemplation of actual and natural evil, the solitude of her
+situation, the darkness of her chamber, the antiquity of the building,
+were felt and considered without the smallest emotion; and though the
+wind was high, and often produced strange and sudden noises throughout
+the house, she heard it all as she lay awake, hour after hour, without
+curiosity or terror.
+
+Soon after six Eleanor entered her room, eager to show attention or
+give assistance where it was possible; but very little remained to be
+done. Catherine had not loitered; she was almost dressed, and her
+packing almost finished. The possibility of some conciliatory message
+from the general occurred to her as his daughter appeared. What so
+natural, as that anger should pass away and repentance succeed it? And
+she only wanted to know how far, after what had passed, an apology
+might properly be received by her. But the knowledge would have been
+useless here; it was not called for; neither clemency nor dignity was
+put to the trial—Eleanor brought no message. Very little passed between
+them on meeting; each found her greatest safety in silence, and few and
+trivial were the sentences exchanged while they remained upstairs,
+Catherine in busy agitation completing her dress, and Eleanor with more
+goodwill than experience intent upon filling the trunk. When everything
+was done they left the room, Catherine lingering only half a minute
+behind her friend to throw a parting glance on every well-known,
+cherished object, and went down to the breakfast-parlour, where
+breakfast was prepared. She tried to eat, as well to save herself from
+the pain of being urged as to make her friend comfortable; but she had
+no appetite, and could not swallow many mouthfuls. The contrast between
+this and her last breakfast in that room gave her fresh misery, and
+strengthened her distaste for everything before her. It was not four
+and twenty hours ago since they had met there to the same repast, but
+in circumstances how different! With what cheerful ease, what happy,
+though false, security, had she then looked around her, enjoying
+everything present, and fearing little in future, beyond Henry’s going
+to Woodston for a day! Happy, happy breakfast! For Henry had been
+there; Henry had sat by her and helped her. These reflections were long
+indulged undisturbed by any address from her companion, who sat as deep
+in thought as herself; and the appearance of the carriage was the first
+thing to startle and recall them to the present moment. Catherine’s
+colour rose at the sight of it; and the indignity with which she was
+treated, striking at that instant on her mind with peculiar force, made
+her for a short time sensible only of resentment. Eleanor seemed now
+impelled into resolution and speech.
+
+“You _must_ write to me, Catherine,” she cried; “you _must_ let me hear
+from you as soon as possible. Till I know you to be safe at home, I
+shall not have an hour’s comfort. For _one_ letter, at all risks, all
+hazards, I must entreat. Let me have the satisfaction of knowing that
+you are safe at Fullerton, and have found your family well, and then,
+till I can ask for your correspondence as I ought to do, I will not
+expect more. Direct to me at Lord Longtown’s, and, I must ask it, under
+cover to Alice.”
+
+“No, Eleanor, if you are not allowed to receive a letter from me, I am
+sure I had better not write. There can be no doubt of my getting home
+safe.”
+
+Eleanor only replied, “I cannot wonder at your feelings. I will not
+importune you. I will trust to your own kindness of heart when I am at
+a distance from you.” But this, with the look of sorrow accompanying
+it, was enough to melt Catherine’s pride in a moment, and she instantly
+said, “Oh, Eleanor, I _will_ write to you indeed.”
+
+There was yet another point which Miss Tilney was anxious to settle,
+though somewhat embarrassed in speaking of. It had occurred to her that
+after so long an absence from home, Catherine might not be provided
+with money enough for the expenses of her journey, and, upon suggesting
+it to her with most affectionate offers of accommodation, it proved to
+be exactly the case. Catherine had never thought on the subject till
+that moment, but, upon examining her purse, was convinced that but for
+this kindness of her friend, she might have been turned from the house
+without even the means of getting home; and the distress in which she
+must have been thereby involved filling the minds of both, scarcely
+another word was said by either during the time of their remaining
+together. Short, however, was that time. The carriage was soon
+announced to be ready; and Catherine, instantly rising, a long and
+affectionate embrace supplied the place of language in bidding each
+other adieu; and, as they entered the hall, unable to leave the house
+without some mention of one whose name had not yet been spoken by
+either, she paused a moment, and with quivering lips just made it
+intelligible that she left “her kind remembrance for her absent
+friend.” But with this approach to his name ended all possibility of
+restraining her feelings; and, hiding her face as well as she could
+with her handkerchief, she darted across the hall, jumped into the
+chaise, and in a moment was driven from the door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 29
+
+
+Catherine was too wretched to be fearful. The journey in itself had no
+terrors for her; and she began it without either dreading its length or
+feeling its solitariness. Leaning back in one corner of the carriage,
+in a violent burst of tears, she was conveyed some miles beyond the
+walls of the abbey before she raised her head; and the highest point of
+ground within the park was almost closed from her view before she was
+capable of turning her eyes towards it. Unfortunately, the road she now
+travelled was the same which only ten days ago she had so happily
+passed along in going to and from Woodston; and, for fourteen miles,
+every bitter feeling was rendered more severe by the review of objects
+on which she had first looked under impressions so different. Every
+mile, as it brought her nearer Woodston, added to her sufferings, and
+when within the distance of five, she passed the turning which led to
+it, and thought of Henry, so near, yet so unconscious, her grief and
+agitation were excessive.
+
+The day which she had spent at that place had been one of the happiest
+of her life. It was there, it was on that day, that the general had
+made use of such expressions with regard to Henry and herself, had so
+spoken and so looked as to give her the most positive conviction of his
+actually wishing their marriage. Yes, only ten days ago had he elated
+her by his pointed regard—had he even confused her by his too
+significant reference! And now—what had she done, or what had she
+omitted to do, to merit such a change?
+
+The only offence against him of which she could accuse herself had been
+such as was scarcely possible to reach his knowledge. Henry and her own
+heart only were privy to the shocking suspicions which she had so idly
+entertained; and equally safe did she believe her secret with each.
+Designedly, at least, Henry could not have betrayed her. If, indeed, by
+any strange mischance his father should have gained intelligence of
+what she had dared to think and look for, of her causeless fancies and
+injurious examinations, she could not wonder at any degree of his
+indignation. If aware of her having viewed him as a murderer, she could
+not wonder at his even turning her from his house. But a justification
+so full of torture to herself, she trusted, would not be in his power.
+
+Anxious as were all her conjectures on this point, it was not, however,
+the one on which she dwelt most. There was a thought yet nearer, a more
+prevailing, more impetuous concern. How Henry would think, and feel,
+and look, when he returned on the morrow to Northanger and heard of her
+being gone, was a question of force and interest to rise over every
+other, to be never ceasing, alternately irritating and soothing; it
+sometimes suggested the dread of his calm acquiescence, and at others
+was answered by the sweetest confidence in his regret and resentment.
+To the general, of course, he would not dare to speak; but to
+Eleanor—what might he not say to Eleanor about her?
+
+In this unceasing recurrence of doubts and inquiries, on any one
+article of which her mind was incapable of more than momentary repose,
+the hours passed away, and her journey advanced much faster than she
+looked for. The pressing anxieties of thought, which prevented her from
+noticing anything before her, when once beyond the neighbourhood of
+Woodston, saved her at the same time from watching her progress; and
+though no object on the road could engage a moment’s attention, she
+found no stage of it tedious. From this, she was preserved too by
+another cause, by feeling no eagerness for her journey’s conclusion;
+for to return in such a manner to Fullerton was almost to destroy the
+pleasure of a meeting with those she loved best, even after an absence
+such as hers—an eleven weeks’ absence. What had she to say that would
+not humble herself and pain her family, that would not increase her own
+grief by the confession of it, extend an useless resentment, and
+perhaps involve the innocent with the guilty in undistinguishing ill
+will? She could never do justice to Henry and Eleanor’s merit; she felt
+it too strongly for expression; and should a dislike be taken against
+them, should they be thought of unfavourably, on their father’s
+account, it would cut her to the heart.
+
+With these feelings, she rather dreaded than sought for the first view
+of that well-known spire which would announce her within twenty miles
+of home. Salisbury she had known to be her point on leaving Northanger;
+but after the first stage she had been indebted to the post-masters for
+the names of the places which were then to conduct her to it; so great
+had been her ignorance of her route. She met with nothing, however, to
+distress or frighten her. Her youth, civil manners, and liberal pay
+procured her all the attention that a traveller like herself could
+require; and stopping only to change horses, she travelled on for about
+eleven hours without accident or alarm, and between six and seven
+o’clock in the evening found herself entering Fullerton.
+
+A heroine returning, at the close of her career, to her native village,
+in all the triumph of recovered reputation, and all the dignity of a
+countess, with a long train of noble relations in their several
+phaetons, and three waiting-maids in a travelling chaise and four,
+behind her, is an event on which the pen of the contriver may well
+delight to dwell; it gives credit to every conclusion, and the author
+must share in the glory she so liberally bestows. But my affair is
+widely different; I bring back my heroine to her home in solitude and
+disgrace; and no sweet elation of spirits can lead me into minuteness.
+A heroine in a hack post-chaise is such a blow upon sentiment, as no
+attempt at grandeur or pathos can withstand. Swiftly therefore shall
+her post-boy drive through the village, amid the gaze of Sunday groups,
+and speedy shall be her descent from it.
+
+But, whatever might be the distress of Catherine’s mind, as she thus
+advanced towards the parsonage, and whatever the humiliation of her
+biographer in relating it, she was preparing enjoyment of no everyday
+nature for those to whom she went; first, in the appearance of her
+carriage—and secondly, in herself. The chaise of a traveller being a
+rare sight in Fullerton, the whole family were immediately at the
+window; and to have it stop at the sweep-gate was a pleasure to
+brighten every eye and occupy every fancy—a pleasure quite unlooked for
+by all but the two youngest children, a boy and girl of six and four
+years old, who expected a brother or sister in every carriage. Happy
+the glance that first distinguished Catherine! Happy the voice that
+proclaimed the discovery! But whether such happiness were the lawful
+property of George or Harriet could never be exactly understood.
+
+Her father, mother, Sarah, George, and Harriet, all assembled at the
+door to welcome her with affectionate eagerness, was a sight to awaken
+the best feelings of Catherine’s heart; and in the embrace of each, as
+she stepped from the carriage, she found herself soothed beyond
+anything that she had believed possible. So surrounded, so caressed,
+she was even happy! In the joyfulness of family love everything for a
+short time was subdued, and the pleasure of seeing her, leaving them at
+first little leisure for calm curiosity, they were all seated round the
+tea-table, which Mrs. Morland had hurried for the comfort of the poor
+traveller, whose pale and jaded looks soon caught her notice, before
+any inquiry so direct as to demand a positive answer was addressed to
+her.
+
+Reluctantly, and with much hesitation, did she then begin what might
+perhaps, at the end of half an hour, be termed, by the courtesy of her
+hearers, an explanation; but scarcely, within that time, could they at
+all discover the cause, or collect the particulars, of her sudden
+return. They were far from being an irritable race; far from any
+quickness in catching, or bitterness in resenting, affronts: but here,
+when the whole was unfolded, was an insult not to be overlooked, nor,
+for the first half hour, to be easily pardoned. Without suffering any
+romantic alarm, in the consideration of their daughter’s long and
+lonely journey, Mr. and Mrs. Morland could not but feel that it might
+have been productive of much unpleasantness to her; that it was what
+they could never have voluntarily suffered; and that, in forcing her on
+such a measure, General Tilney had acted neither honourably nor
+feelingly—neither as a gentleman nor as a parent. Why he had done it,
+what could have provoked him to such a breach of hospitality, and so
+suddenly turned all his partial regard for their daughter into actual
+ill will, was a matter which they were at least as far from divining as
+Catherine herself; but it did not oppress them by any means so long;
+and, after a due course of useless conjecture, that “it was a strange
+business, and that he must be a very strange man,” grew enough for all
+their indignation and wonder; though Sarah indeed still indulged in the
+sweets of incomprehensibility, exclaiming and conjecturing with
+youthful ardour. “My dear, you give yourself a great deal of needless
+trouble,” said her mother at last; “depend upon it, it is something not
+at all worth understanding.”
+
+“I can allow for his wishing Catherine away, when he recollected this
+engagement,” said Sarah, “but why not do it civilly?”
+
+“I am sorry for the young people,” returned Mrs. Morland; “they must
+have a sad time of it; but as for anything else, it is no matter now;
+Catherine is safe at home, and our comfort does not depend upon General
+Tilney.” Catherine sighed. “Well,” continued her philosophic mother, “I
+am glad I did not know of your journey at the time; but now it is all
+over, perhaps there is no great harm done. It is always good for young
+people to be put upon exerting themselves; and you know, my dear
+Catherine, you always were a sad little scatter-brained creature; but
+now you must have been forced to have your wits about you, with so much
+changing of chaises and so forth; and I hope it will appear that you
+have not left anything behind you in any of the pockets.”
+
+Catherine hoped so too, and tried to feel an interest in her own
+amendment, but her spirits were quite worn down; and, to be silent and
+alone becoming soon her only wish, she readily agreed to her mother’s
+next counsel of going early to bed. Her parents, seeing nothing in her
+ill looks and agitation but the natural consequence of mortified
+feelings, and of the unusual exertion and fatigue of such a journey,
+parted from her without any doubt of their being soon slept away; and
+though, when they all met the next morning, her recovery was not equal
+to their hopes, they were still perfectly unsuspicious of there being
+any deeper evil. They never once thought of her heart, which, for the
+parents of a young lady of seventeen, just returned from her first
+excursion from home, was odd enough!
+
+As soon as breakfast was over, she sat down to fulfil her promise to
+Miss Tilney, whose trust in the effect of time and distance on her
+friend’s disposition was already justified, for already did Catherine
+reproach herself with having parted from Eleanor coldly, with having
+never enough valued her merits or kindness, and never enough
+commiserated her for what she had been yesterday left to endure. The
+strength of these feelings, however, was far from assisting her pen;
+and never had it been harder for her to write than in addressing
+Eleanor Tilney. To compose a letter which might at once do justice to
+her sentiments and her situation, convey gratitude without servile
+regret, be guarded without coldness, and honest without resentment—a
+letter which Eleanor might not be pained by the perusal of—and, above
+all, which she might not blush herself, if Henry should chance to see,
+was an undertaking to frighten away all her powers of performance; and,
+after long thought and much perplexity, to be very brief was all that
+she could determine on with any confidence of safety. The money
+therefore which Eleanor had advanced was enclosed with little more than
+grateful thanks, and the thousand good wishes of a most affectionate
+heart.
+
+“This has been a strange acquaintance,” observed Mrs. Morland, as the
+letter was finished; “soon made and soon ended. I am sorry it happens
+so, for Mrs. Allen thought them very pretty kind of young people; and
+you were sadly out of luck too in your Isabella. Ah! Poor James! Well,
+we must live and learn; and the next new friends you make I hope will
+be better worth keeping.”
+
+Catherine coloured as she warmly answered, “No friend can be better
+worth keeping than Eleanor.”
+
+“If so, my dear, I dare say you will meet again some time or other; do
+not be uneasy. It is ten to one but you are thrown together again in
+the course of a few years; and then what a pleasure it will be!”
+
+Mrs. Morland was not happy in her attempt at consolation. The hope of
+meeting again in the course of a few years could only put into
+Catherine’s head what might happen within that time to make a meeting
+dreadful to her. She could never forget Henry Tilney, or think of him
+with less tenderness than she did at that moment; but he might forget
+her; and in that case, to meet—! Her eyes filled with tears as she
+pictured her acquaintance so renewed; and her mother, perceiving her
+comfortable suggestions to have had no good effect, proposed, as
+another expedient for restoring her spirits, that they should call on
+Mrs. Allen.
+
+The two houses were only a quarter of a mile apart; and, as they
+walked, Mrs. Morland quickly dispatched all that she felt on the score
+of James’s disappointment. “We are sorry for him,” said she; “but
+otherwise there is no harm done in the match going off; for it could
+not be a desirable thing to have him engaged to a girl whom we had not
+the smallest acquaintance with, and who was so entirely without
+fortune; and now, after such behaviour, we cannot think at all well of
+her. Just at present it comes hard to poor James; but that will not
+last forever; and I dare say he will be a discreeter man all his life,
+for the foolishness of his first choice.”
+
+This was just such a summary view of the affair as Catherine could
+listen to; another sentence might have endangered her complaisance, and
+made her reply less rational; for soon were all her thinking powers
+swallowed up in the reflection of her own change of feelings and
+spirits since last she had trodden that well-known road. It was not
+three months ago since, wild with joyful expectation, she had there run
+backwards and forwards some ten times a day, with an heart light, gay,
+and independent; looking forward to pleasures untasted and unalloyed,
+and free from the apprehension of evil as from the knowledge of it.
+Three months ago had seen her all this; and now, how altered a being
+did she return!
+
+She was received by the Allens with all the kindness which her
+unlooked-for appearance, acting on a steady affection, would naturally
+call forth; and great was their surprise, and warm their displeasure,
+on hearing how she had been treated—though Mrs. Morland’s account of it
+was no inflated representation, no studied appeal to their passions.
+“Catherine took us quite by surprise yesterday evening,” said she. “She
+travelled all the way post by herself, and knew nothing of coming till
+Saturday night; for General Tilney, from some odd fancy or other, all
+of a sudden grew tired of having her there, and almost turned her out
+of the house. Very unfriendly, certainly; and he must be a very odd
+man; but we are so glad to have her amongst us again! And it is a great
+comfort to find that she is not a poor helpless creature, but can shift
+very well for herself.”
+
+Mr. Allen expressed himself on the occasion with the reasonable
+resentment of a sensible friend; and Mrs. Allen thought his expressions
+quite good enough to be immediately made use of again by herself. His
+wonder, his conjectures, and his explanations became in succession
+hers, with the addition of this single remark—“I really have not
+patience with the general”—to fill up every accidental pause. And, “I
+really have not patience with the general,” was uttered twice after Mr.
+Allen left the room, without any relaxation of anger, or any material
+digression of thought. A more considerable degree of wandering attended
+the third repetition; and, after completing the fourth, she immediately
+added, “Only think, my dear, of my having got that frightful great rent
+in my best Mechlin so charmingly mended, before I left Bath, that one
+can hardly see where it was. I must show it you some day or other. Bath
+is a nice place, Catherine, after all. I assure you I did not above
+half like coming away. Mrs. Thorpe’s being there was such a comfort to
+us, was not it? You know, you and I were quite forlorn at first.”
+
+“Yes, but _that_ did not last long,” said Catherine, her eyes
+brightening at the recollection of what had first given spirit to her
+existence there.
+
+“Very true: we soon met with Mrs. Thorpe, and then we wanted for
+nothing. My dear, do not you think these silk gloves wear very well? I
+put them on new the first time of our going to the Lower Rooms, you
+know, and I have worn them a great deal since. Do you remember that
+evening?”
+
+“Do I! Oh! Perfectly.”
+
+“It was very agreeable, was not it? Mr. Tilney drank tea with us, and I
+always thought him a great addition, he is so very agreeable. I have a
+notion you danced with him, but am not quite sure. I remember I had my
+favourite gown on.”
+
+Catherine could not answer; and, after a short trial of other subjects,
+Mrs. Allen again returned to—“I really have not patience with the
+general! Such an agreeable, worthy man as he seemed to be! I do not
+suppose, Mrs. Morland, you ever saw a better-bred man in your life. His
+lodgings were taken the very day after he left them, Catherine. But no
+wonder; Milsom Street, you know.”
+
+As they walked home again, Mrs. Morland endeavoured to impress on her
+daughter’s mind the happiness of having such steady well-wishers as Mr.
+and Mrs. Allen, and the very little consideration which the neglect or
+unkindness of slight acquaintance like the Tilneys ought to have with
+her, while she could preserve the good opinion and affection of her
+earliest friends. There was a great deal of good sense in all this; but
+there are some situations of the human mind in which good sense has
+very little power; and Catherine’s feelings contradicted almost every
+position her mother advanced. It was upon the behaviour of these very
+slight acquaintance that all her present happiness depended; and while
+Mrs. Morland was successfully confirming her own opinions by the
+justness of her own representations, Catherine was silently reflecting
+that _now_ Henry must have arrived at Northanger; _now_ he must have
+heard of her departure; and _now_, perhaps, they were all setting off
+for Hereford.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 30
+
+
+Catherine’s disposition was not naturally sedentary, nor had her habits
+been ever very industrious; but whatever might hitherto have been her
+defects of that sort, her mother could not but perceive them now to be
+greatly increased. She could neither sit still nor employ herself for
+ten minutes together, walking round the garden and orchard again and
+again, as if nothing but motion was voluntary; and it seemed as if she
+could even walk about the house rather than remain fixed for any time
+in the parlour. Her loss of spirits was a yet greater alteration. In
+her rambling and her idleness she might only be a caricature of
+herself; but in her silence and sadness she was the very reverse of all
+that she had been before.
+
+For two days Mrs. Morland allowed it to pass even without a hint; but
+when a third night’s rest had neither restored her cheerfulness,
+improved her in useful activity, nor given her a greater inclination
+for needlework, she could no longer refrain from the gentle reproof of,
+“My dear Catherine, I am afraid you are growing quite a fine lady. I do
+not know when poor Richard’s cravats would be done, if he had no friend
+but you. Your head runs too much upon Bath; but there is a time for
+everything—a time for balls and plays, and a time for work. You have
+had a long run of amusement, and now you must try to be useful.”
+
+Catherine took up her work directly, saying, in a dejected voice, that
+“her head did not run upon Bath—much.”
+
+“Then you are fretting about General Tilney, and that is very simple of
+you; for ten to one whether you ever see him again. You should never
+fret about trifles.” After a short silence—“I hope, my Catherine, you
+are not getting out of humour with home because it is not so grand as
+Northanger. That would be turning your visit into an evil indeed.
+Wherever you are you should always be contented, but especially at
+home, because there you must spend the most of your time. I did not
+quite like, at breakfast, to hear you talk so much about the French
+bread at Northanger.”
+
+“I am sure I do not care about the bread. It is all the same to me what
+I eat.”
+
+“There is a very clever essay in one of the books upstairs upon much
+such a subject, about young girls that have been spoilt for home by
+great acquaintance—The Mirror, I think. I will look it out for you some
+day or other, because I am sure it will do you good.”
+
+Catherine said no more, and, with an endeavour to do right, applied to
+her work; but, after a few minutes, sunk again, without knowing it
+herself, into languor and listlessness, moving herself in her chair,
+from the irritation of weariness, much oftener than she moved her
+needle. Mrs. Morland watched the progress of this relapse; and seeing,
+in her daughter’s absent and dissatisfied look, the full proof of that
+repining spirit to which she had now begun to attribute her want of
+cheerfulness, hastily left the room to fetch the book in question,
+anxious to lose no time in attacking so dreadful a malady. It was some
+time before she could find what she looked for; and other family
+matters occurring to detain her, a quarter of an hour had elapsed ere
+she returned downstairs with the volume from which so much was hoped.
+Her avocations above having shut out all noise but what she created
+herself, she knew not that a visitor had arrived within the last few
+minutes, till, on entering the room, the first object she beheld was a
+young man whom she had never seen before. With a look of much respect,
+he immediately rose, and being introduced to her by her conscious
+daughter as “Mr. Henry Tilney,” with the embarrassment of real
+sensibility began to apologize for his appearance there, acknowledging
+that after what had passed he had little right to expect a welcome at
+Fullerton, and stating his impatience to be assured of Miss Morland’s
+having reached her home in safety, as the cause of his intrusion. He
+did not address himself to an uncandid judge or a resentful heart. Far
+from comprehending him or his sister in their father’s misconduct, Mrs.
+Morland had been always kindly disposed towards each, and instantly,
+pleased by his appearance, received him with the simple professions of
+unaffected benevolence; thanking him for such an attention to her
+daughter, assuring him that the friends of her children were always
+welcome there, and entreating him to say not another word of the past.
+
+He was not ill-inclined to obey this request, for, though his heart was
+greatly relieved by such unlooked-for mildness, it was not just at that
+moment in his power to say anything to the purpose. Returning in
+silence to his seat, therefore, he remained for some minutes most
+civilly answering all Mrs. Morland’s common remarks about the weather
+and roads. Catherine meanwhile—the anxious, agitated, happy, feverish
+Catherine—said not a word; but her glowing cheek and brightened eye
+made her mother trust that this good-natured visit would at least set
+her heart at ease for a time, and gladly therefore did she lay aside
+the first volume of The Mirror for a future hour.
+
+Desirous of Mr. Morland’s assistance, as well in giving encouragement,
+as in finding conversation for her guest, whose embarrassment on his
+father’s account she earnestly pitied, Mrs. Morland had very early
+dispatched one of the children to summon him; but Mr. Morland was from
+home—and being thus without any support, at the end of a quarter of an
+hour she had nothing to say. After a couple of minutes’ unbroken
+silence, Henry, turning to Catherine for the first time since her
+mother’s entrance, asked her, with sudden alacrity, if Mr. and Mrs.
+Allen were now at Fullerton? And on developing, from amidst all her
+perplexity of words in reply, the meaning, which one short syllable
+would have given, immediately expressed his intention of paying his
+respects to them, and, with a rising colour, asked her if she would
+have the goodness to show him the way. “You may see the house from this
+window, sir,” was information on Sarah’s side, which produced only a
+bow of acknowledgment from the gentleman, and a silencing nod from her
+mother; for Mrs. Morland, thinking it probable, as a secondary
+consideration in his wish of waiting on their worthy neighbours, that
+he might have some explanation to give of his father’s behaviour, which
+it must be more pleasant for him to communicate only to Catherine,
+would not on any account prevent her accompanying him. They began their
+walk, and Mrs. Morland was not entirely mistaken in his object in
+wishing it. Some explanation on his father’s account he had to give;
+but his first purpose was to explain himself, and before they reached
+Mr. Allen’s grounds he had done it so well that Catherine did not think
+it could ever be repeated too often. She was assured of his affection;
+and that heart in return was solicited, which, perhaps, they pretty
+equally knew was already entirely his own; for, though Henry was now
+sincerely attached to her, though he felt and delighted in all the
+excellencies of her character and truly loved her society, I must
+confess that his affection originated in nothing better than gratitude,
+or, in other words, that a persuasion of her partiality for him had
+been the only cause of giving her a serious thought. It is a new
+circumstance in romance, I acknowledge, and dreadfully derogatory of an
+heroine’s dignity; but if it be as new in common life, the credit of a
+wild imagination will at least be all my own.
+
+A very short visit to Mrs. Allen, in which Henry talked at random,
+without sense or connection, and Catherine, rapt in the contemplation
+of her own unutterable happiness, scarcely opened her lips, dismissed
+them to the ecstasies of another tête-à-tête; and before it was
+suffered to close, she was enabled to judge how far he was sanctioned
+by parental authority in his present application. On his return from
+Woodston, two days before, he had been met near the abbey by his
+impatient father, hastily informed in angry terms of Miss Morland’s
+departure, and ordered to think of her no more.
+
+Such was the permission upon which he had now offered her his hand. The
+affrighted Catherine, amidst all the terrors of expectation, as she
+listened to this account, could not but rejoice in the kind caution
+with which Henry had saved her from the necessity of a conscientious
+rejection, by engaging her faith before he mentioned the subject; and
+as he proceeded to give the particulars, and explain the motives of his
+father’s conduct, her feelings soon hardened into even a triumphant
+delight. The general had had nothing to accuse her of, nothing to lay
+to her charge, but her being the involuntary, unconscious object of a
+deception which his pride could not pardon, and which a better pride
+would have been ashamed to own. She was guilty only of being less rich
+than he had supposed her to be. Under a mistaken persuasion of her
+possessions and claims, he had courted her acquaintance in Bath,
+solicited her company at Northanger, and designed her for his
+daughter-in-law. On discovering his error, to turn her from the house
+seemed the best, though to his feelings an inadequate proof of his
+resentment towards herself, and his contempt of her family.
+
+John Thorpe had first misled him. The general, perceiving his son one
+night at the theatre to be paying considerable attention to Miss
+Morland, had accidentally inquired of Thorpe if he knew more of her
+than her name. Thorpe, most happy to be on speaking terms with a man of
+General Tilney’s importance, had been joyfully and proudly
+communicative; and being at that time not only in daily expectation of
+Morland’s engaging Isabella, but likewise pretty well resolved upon
+marrying Catherine himself, his vanity induced him to represent the
+family as yet more wealthy than his vanity and avarice had made him
+believe them. With whomsoever he was, or was likely to be connected,
+his own consequence always required that theirs should be great, and as
+his intimacy with any acquaintance grew, so regularly grew their
+fortune. The expectations of his friend Morland, therefore, from the
+first overrated, had ever since his introduction to Isabella been
+gradually increasing; and by merely adding twice as much for the
+grandeur of the moment, by doubling what he chose to think the amount
+of Mr. Morland’s preferment, trebling his private fortune, bestowing a
+rich aunt, and sinking half the children, he was able to represent the
+whole family to the general in a most respectable light. For Catherine,
+however, the peculiar object of the general’s curiosity, and his own
+speculations, he had yet something more in reserve, and the ten or
+fifteen thousand pounds which her father could give her would be a
+pretty addition to Mr. Allen’s estate. Her intimacy there had made him
+seriously determine on her being handsomely legacied hereafter; and to
+speak of her therefore as the almost acknowledged future heiress of
+Fullerton naturally followed. Upon such intelligence the general had
+proceeded; for never had it occurred to him to doubt its authority.
+Thorpe’s interest in the family, by his sister’s approaching connection
+with one of its members, and his own views on another (circumstances of
+which he boasted with almost equal openness), seemed sufficient
+vouchers for his truth; and to these were added the absolute facts of
+the Allens being wealthy and childless, of Miss Morland’s being under
+their care, and—as soon as his acquaintance allowed him to judge—of
+their treating her with parental kindness. His resolution was soon
+formed. Already had he discerned a liking towards Miss Morland in the
+countenance of his son; and thankful for Mr. Thorpe’s communication, he
+almost instantly determined to spare no pains in weakening his boasted
+interest and ruining his dearest hopes. Catherine herself could not be
+more ignorant at the time of all this, than his own children. Henry and
+Eleanor, perceiving nothing in her situation likely to engage their
+father’s particular respect, had seen with astonishment the suddenness,
+continuance, and extent of his attention; and though latterly, from
+some hints which had accompanied an almost positive command to his son
+of doing everything in his power to attach her, Henry was convinced of
+his father’s believing it to be an advantageous connection, it was not
+till the late explanation at Northanger that they had the smallest idea
+of the false calculations which had hurried him on. That they were
+false, the general had learnt from the very person who had suggested
+them, from Thorpe himself, whom he had chanced to meet again in town,
+and who, under the influence of exactly opposite feelings, irritated by
+Catherine’s refusal, and yet more by the failure of a very recent
+endeavour to accomplish a reconciliation between Morland and Isabella,
+convinced that they were separated forever, and spurning a friendship
+which could be no longer serviceable, hastened to contradict all that
+he had said before to the advantage of the Morlands—confessed himself
+to have been totally mistaken in his opinion of their circumstances and
+character, misled by the rhodomontade of his friend to believe his
+father a man of substance and credit, whereas the transactions of the
+two or three last weeks proved him to be neither; for after coming
+eagerly forward on the first overture of a marriage between the
+families, with the most liberal proposals, he had, on being brought to
+the point by the shrewdness of the relator, been constrained to
+acknowledge himself incapable of giving the young people even a decent
+support. They were, in fact, a necessitous family; numerous, too,
+almost beyond example; by no means respected in their own
+neighbourhood, as he had lately had particular opportunities of
+discovering; aiming at a style of life which their fortune could not
+warrant; seeking to better themselves by wealthy connections; a
+forward, bragging, scheming race.
+
+The terrified general pronounced the name of Allen with an inquiring
+look; and here too Thorpe had learnt his error. The Allens, he
+believed, had lived near them too long, and he knew the young man on
+whom the Fullerton estate must devolve. The general needed no more.
+Enraged with almost everybody in the world but himself, he set out the
+next day for the abbey, where his performances have been seen.
+
+I leave it to my reader’s sagacity to determine how much of all this it
+was possible for Henry to communicate at this time to Catherine, how
+much of it he could have learnt from his father, in what points his own
+conjectures might assist him, and what portion must yet remain to be
+told in a letter from James. I have united for their ease what they
+must divide for mine. Catherine, at any rate, heard enough to feel that
+in suspecting General Tilney of either murdering or shutting up his
+wife, she had scarcely sinned against his character, or magnified his
+cruelty.
+
+Henry, in having such things to relate of his father, was almost as
+pitiable as in their first avowal to himself. He blushed for the
+narrow-minded counsel which he was obliged to expose. The conversation
+between them at Northanger had been of the most unfriendly kind.
+Henry’s indignation on hearing how Catherine had been treated, on
+comprehending his father’s views, and being ordered to acquiesce in
+them, had been open and bold. The general, accustomed on every ordinary
+occasion to give the law in his family, prepared for no reluctance but
+of feeling, no opposing desire that should dare to clothe itself in
+words, could ill brook the opposition of his son, steady as the
+sanction of reason and the dictate of conscience could make it. But, in
+such a cause, his anger, though it must shock, could not intimidate
+Henry, who was sustained in his purpose by a conviction of its justice.
+He felt himself bound as much in honour as in affection to Miss
+Morland, and believing that heart to be his own which he had been
+directed to gain, no unworthy retraction of a tacit consent, no
+reversing decree of unjustifiable anger, could shake his fidelity, or
+influence the resolutions it prompted.
+
+He steadily refused to accompany his father into Herefordshire, an
+engagement formed almost at the moment to promote the dismissal of
+Catherine, and as steadily declared his intention of offering her his
+hand. The general was furious in his anger, and they parted in dreadful
+disagreement. Henry, in an agitation of mind which many solitary hours
+were required to compose, had returned almost instantly to Woodston,
+and, on the afternoon of the following day, had begun his journey to
+Fullerton.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 31
+
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Morland’s surprise on being applied to by Mr. Tilney for
+their consent to his marrying their daughter was, for a few minutes,
+considerable, it having never entered their heads to suspect an
+attachment on either side; but as nothing, after all, could be more
+natural than Catherine’s being beloved, they soon learnt to consider it
+with only the happy agitation of gratified pride, and, as far as they
+alone were concerned, had not a single objection to start. His pleasing
+manners and good sense were self-evident recommendations; and having
+never heard evil of him, it was not their way to suppose any evil could
+be told. Goodwill supplying the place of experience, his character
+needed no attestation. “Catherine would make a sad, heedless young
+housekeeper to be sure,” was her mother’s foreboding remark; but quick
+was the consolation of there being nothing like practice.
+
+There was but one obstacle, in short, to be mentioned; but till that
+one was removed, it must be impossible for them to sanction the
+engagement. Their tempers were mild, but their principles were steady,
+and while his parent so expressly forbade the connection, they could
+not allow themselves to encourage it. That the general should come
+forward to solicit the alliance, or that he should even very heartily
+approve it, they were not refined enough to make any parading
+stipulation; but the decent appearance of consent must be yielded, and
+that once obtained—and their own hearts made them trust that it could
+not be very long denied—their willing approbation was instantly to
+follow. His _consent_ was all that they wished for. They were no more
+inclined than entitled to demand his _money_. Of a very considerable
+fortune, his son was, by marriage settlements, eventually secure; his
+present income was an income of independence and comfort, and under
+every pecuniary view, it was a match beyond the claims of their
+daughter.
+
+The young people could not be surprised at a decision like this. They
+felt and they deplored—but they could not resent it; and they parted,
+endeavouring to hope that such a change in the general, as each
+believed almost impossible, might speedily take place, to unite them
+again in the fullness of privileged affection. Henry returned to what
+was now his only home, to watch over his young plantations, and extend
+his improvements for her sake, to whose share in them he looked
+anxiously forward; and Catherine remained at Fullerton to cry. Whether
+the torments of absence were softened by a clandestine correspondence,
+let us not inquire. Mr. and Mrs. Morland never did—they had been too
+kind to exact any promise; and whenever Catherine received a letter,
+as, at that time, happened pretty often, they always looked another
+way.
+
+The anxiety, which in this state of their attachment must be the
+portion of Henry and Catherine, and of all who loved either, as to its
+final event, can hardly extend, I fear, to the bosom of my readers, who
+will see in the tell-tale compression of the pages before them, that we
+are all hastening together to perfect felicity. The means by which
+their early marriage was effected can be the only doubt: what probable
+circumstance could work upon a temper like the general’s? The
+circumstance which chiefly availed was the marriage of his daughter
+with a man of fortune and consequence, which took place in the course
+of the summer—an accession of dignity that threw him into a fit of good
+humour, from which he did not recover till after Eleanor had obtained
+his forgiveness of Henry, and his permission for him “to be a fool if
+he liked it!”
+
+The marriage of Eleanor Tilney, her removal from all the evils of such
+a home as Northanger had been made by Henry’s banishment, to the home
+of her choice and the man of her choice, is an event which I expect to
+give general satisfaction among all her acquaintance. My own joy on the
+occasion is very sincere. I know no one more entitled, by unpretending
+merit, or better prepared by habitual suffering, to receive and enjoy
+felicity. Her partiality for this gentleman was not of recent origin;
+and he had been long withheld only by inferiority of situation from
+addressing her. His unexpected accession to title and fortune had
+removed all his difficulties; and never had the general loved his
+daughter so well in all her hours of companionship, utility, and
+patient endurance as when he first hailed her “Your Ladyship!” Her
+husband was really deserving of her; independent of his peerage, his
+wealth, and his attachment, being to a precision the most charming
+young man in the world. Any further definition of his merits must be
+unnecessary; the most charming young man in the world is instantly
+before the imagination of us all. Concerning the one in question,
+therefore, I have only to add—aware that the rules of composition
+forbid the introduction of a character not connected with my fable—that
+this was the very gentleman whose negligent servant left behind him
+that collection of washing-bills, resulting from a long visit at
+Northanger, by which my heroine was involved in one of her most
+alarming adventures.
+
+The influence of the viscount and viscountess in their brother’s behalf
+was assisted by that right understanding of Mr. Morland’s circumstances
+which, as soon as the general would allow himself to be informed, they
+were qualified to give. It taught him that he had been scarcely more
+misled by Thorpe’s first boast of the family wealth than by his
+subsequent malicious overthrow of it; that in no sense of the word were
+they necessitous or poor, and that Catherine would have three thousand
+pounds. This was so material an amendment of his late expectations that
+it greatly contributed to smooth the descent of his pride; and by no
+means without its effect was the private intelligence, which he was at
+some pains to procure, that the Fullerton estate, being entirely at the
+disposal of its present proprietor, was consequently open to every
+greedy speculation.
+
+On the strength of this, the general, soon after Eleanor’s marriage,
+permitted his son to return to Northanger, and thence made him the
+bearer of his consent, very courteously worded in a page full of empty
+professions to Mr. Morland. The event which it authorized soon
+followed: Henry and Catherine were married, the bells rang, and
+everybody smiled; and, as this took place within a twelvemonth from the
+first day of their meeting, it will not appear, after all the dreadful
+delays occasioned by the general’s cruelty, that they were essentially
+hurt by it. To begin perfect happiness at the respective ages of
+twenty-six and eighteen is to do pretty well; and professing myself
+moreover convinced that the general’s unjust interference, so far from
+being really injurious to their felicity, was perhaps rather conducive
+to it, by improving their knowledge of each other, and adding strength
+to their attachment, I leave it to be settled, by whomsoever it may
+concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend
+parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience.
+
+
+
+
+ A NOTE ON THE TEXT
+
+
+Northanger Abbey was written in 1797-98 under a different title. The
+manuscript was revised around 1803 and sold to a London publisher,
+Crosbie & Co., who sold it back in 1816. The Signet Classic text is
+based on the first edition, published by John Murray, London, in
+1818—the year following Miss Austen’s death. Spelling and punctuation
+have been largely brought into conformity with modern British usage.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NORTHANGER ABBEY ***
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diff --git a/data/train/austen_-_persuasion.txt b/data/train/austen_-_persuasion.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..de14dba
--- /dev/null
+++ b/data/train/austen_-_persuasion.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,8734 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Persuasion, by Jane Austen
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Persuasion
+
+Author: Jane Austen
+
+Release Date: June 5, 2008 [EBook #105]
+Last Updated: February 15, 2015
+
+Language: English
+
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PERSUASION ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sharon Partridge and Martin Ward. HTML version
+by Al Haines.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Persuasion
+
+
+by
+
+Jane Austen
+
+(1818)
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 1
+
+
+Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who,
+for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there
+he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed
+one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by
+contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any
+unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs changed naturally
+into pity and contempt as he turned over the almost endless creations
+of the last century; and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he
+could read his own history with an interest which never failed.  This
+was the page at which the favourite volume always opened:
+
+           "ELLIOT OF KELLYNCH HALL.
+
+"Walter Elliot, born March 1, 1760, married, July 15, 1784, Elizabeth,
+daughter of James Stevenson, Esq. of South Park, in the county of
+Gloucester, by which lady (who died 1800) he has issue Elizabeth, born
+June 1, 1785; Anne, born August 9, 1787; a still-born son, November 5,
+1789; Mary, born November 20, 1791."
+
+Precisely such had the paragraph originally stood from the printer's
+hands; but Sir Walter had improved it by adding, for the information of
+himself and his family, these words, after the date of Mary's birth--
+"Married, December 16, 1810, Charles, son and heir of Charles Musgrove,
+Esq. of Uppercross, in the county of Somerset," and by inserting most
+accurately the day of the month on which he had lost his wife.
+
+Then followed the history and rise of the ancient and respectable
+family, in the usual terms; how it had been first settled in Cheshire;
+how mentioned in Dugdale, serving the office of high sheriff,
+representing a borough in three successive parliaments, exertions of
+loyalty, and dignity of baronet, in the first year of Charles II, with
+all the Marys and Elizabeths they had married; forming altogether two
+handsome duodecimo pages, and concluding with the arms and
+motto:--"Principal seat, Kellynch Hall, in the county of Somerset," and
+Sir Walter's handwriting again in this finale:--
+
+"Heir presumptive, William Walter Elliot, Esq., great grandson of the
+second Sir Walter."
+
+Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot's character;
+vanity of person and of situation.  He had been remarkably handsome in
+his youth; and, at fifty-four, was still a very fine man.  Few women
+could think more of their personal appearance than he did, nor could
+the valet of any new made lord be more delighted with the place he held
+in society.  He considered the blessing of beauty as inferior only to
+the blessing of a baronetcy; and the Sir Walter Elliot, who united
+these gifts, was the constant object of his warmest respect and
+devotion.
+
+His good looks and his rank had one fair claim on his attachment; since
+to them he must have owed a wife of very superior character to any
+thing deserved by his own.  Lady Elliot had been an excellent woman,
+sensible and amiable; whose judgement and conduct, if they might be
+pardoned the youthful infatuation which made her Lady Elliot, had never
+required indulgence afterwards.--She had humoured, or softened, or
+concealed his failings, and promoted his real respectability for
+seventeen years; and though not the very happiest being in the world
+herself, had found enough in her duties, her friends, and her children,
+to attach her to life, and make it no matter of indifference to her
+when she was called on to quit them.--Three girls, the two eldest
+sixteen and fourteen, was an awful legacy for a mother to bequeath, an
+awful charge rather, to confide to the authority and guidance of a
+conceited, silly father.  She had, however, one very intimate friend, a
+sensible, deserving woman, who had been brought, by strong attachment
+to herself, to settle close by her, in the village of Kellynch; and on
+her kindness and advice, Lady Elliot mainly relied for the best help
+and maintenance of the good principles and instruction which she had
+been anxiously giving her daughters.
+
+This friend, and Sir Walter, did not marry, whatever might have been
+anticipated on that head by their acquaintance.  Thirteen years had
+passed away since Lady Elliot's death, and they were still near
+neighbours and intimate friends, and one remained a widower, the other
+a widow.
+
+That Lady Russell, of steady age and character, and extremely well
+provided for, should have no thought of a second marriage, needs no
+apology to the public, which is rather apt to be unreasonably
+discontented when a woman does marry again, than when she does not; but
+Sir Walter's continuing in singleness requires explanation.  Be it
+known then, that Sir Walter, like a good father, (having met with one
+or two private disappointments in very unreasonable applications),
+prided himself on remaining single for his dear daughters' sake.  For
+one daughter, his eldest, he would really have given up any thing,
+which he had not been very much tempted to do.  Elizabeth had
+succeeded, at sixteen, to all that was possible, of her mother's rights
+and consequence; and being very handsome, and very like himself, her
+influence had always been great, and they had gone on together most
+happily.  His two other children were of very inferior value.  Mary had
+acquired a little artificial importance, by becoming Mrs Charles
+Musgrove; but Anne, with an elegance of mind and sweetness of
+character, which must have placed her high with any people of real
+understanding, was nobody with either father or sister; her word had no
+weight, her convenience was always to give way--she was only Anne.
+
+To Lady Russell, indeed, she was a most dear and highly valued
+god-daughter, favourite, and friend.  Lady Russell loved them all; but
+it was only in Anne that she could fancy the mother to revive again.
+
+A few years before, Anne Elliot had been a very pretty girl, but her
+bloom had vanished early; and as even in its height, her father had
+found little to admire in her, (so totally different were her delicate
+features and mild dark eyes from his own), there could be nothing in
+them, now that she was faded and thin, to excite his esteem. He had
+never indulged much hope, he had now none, of ever reading her name in
+any other page of his favourite work.  All equality of alliance must
+rest with Elizabeth, for Mary had merely connected herself with an old
+country family of respectability and large fortune, and had therefore
+given all the honour and received none: Elizabeth would, one day or
+other, marry suitably.
+
+It sometimes happens that a woman is handsomer at twenty-nine than she
+was ten years before; and, generally speaking, if there has been
+neither ill health nor anxiety, it is a time of life at which scarcely
+any charm is lost.  It was so with Elizabeth, still the same handsome
+Miss Elliot that she had begun to be thirteen years ago, and Sir Walter
+might be excused, therefore, in forgetting her age, or, at least, be
+deemed only half a fool, for thinking himself and Elizabeth as blooming
+as ever, amidst the wreck of the good looks of everybody else; for he
+could plainly see how old all the rest of his family and acquaintance
+were growing.  Anne haggard, Mary coarse, every face in the
+neighbourhood worsting, and the rapid increase of the crow's foot about
+Lady Russell's temples had long been a distress to him.
+
+Elizabeth did not quite equal her father in personal contentment.
+Thirteen years had seen her mistress of Kellynch Hall, presiding and
+directing with a self-possession and decision which could never have
+given the idea of her being younger than she was.  For thirteen years
+had she been doing the honours, and laying down the domestic law at
+home, and leading the way to the chaise and four, and walking
+immediately after Lady Russell out of all the drawing-rooms and
+dining-rooms in the country.  Thirteen winters' revolving frosts had
+seen her opening every ball of credit which a scanty neighbourhood
+afforded, and thirteen springs shewn their blossoms, as she travelled
+up to London with her father, for a few weeks' annual enjoyment of the
+great world.  She had the remembrance of all this, she had the
+consciousness of being nine-and-twenty to give her some regrets and
+some apprehensions; she was fully satisfied of being still quite as
+handsome as ever, but she felt her approach to the years of danger, and
+would have rejoiced to be certain of being properly solicited by
+baronet-blood within the next twelvemonth or two.  Then might she again
+take up the book of books with as much enjoyment as in her early youth,
+but now she liked it not.  Always to be presented with the date of her
+own birth and see no marriage follow but that of a youngest sister,
+made the book an evil; and more than once, when her father had left it
+open on the table near her, had she closed it, with averted eyes, and
+pushed it away.
+
+She had had a disappointment, moreover, which that book, and especially
+the history of her own family, must ever present the remembrance of.
+The heir presumptive, the very William Walter Elliot, Esq., whose
+rights had been so generously supported by her father, had disappointed
+her.
+
+She had, while a very young girl, as soon as she had known him to be,
+in the event of her having no brother, the future baronet, meant to
+marry him, and her father had always meant that she should.  He had not
+been known to them as a boy; but soon after Lady Elliot's death, Sir
+Walter had sought the acquaintance, and though his overtures had not
+been met with any warmth, he had persevered in seeking it, making
+allowance for the modest drawing-back of youth; and, in one of their
+spring excursions to London, when Elizabeth was in her first bloom, Mr
+Elliot had been forced into the introduction.
+
+He was at that time a very young man, just engaged in the study of the
+law; and Elizabeth found him extremely agreeable, and every plan in his
+favour was confirmed.  He was invited to Kellynch Hall; he was talked
+of and expected all the rest of the year; but he never came.  The
+following spring he was seen again in town, found equally agreeable,
+again encouraged, invited, and expected, and again he did not come; and
+the next tidings were that he was married.  Instead of pushing his
+fortune in the line marked out for the heir of the house of Elliot, he
+had purchased independence by uniting himself to a rich woman of
+inferior birth.
+
+Sir Walter had resented it.  As the head of the house, he felt that he
+ought to have been consulted, especially after taking the young man so
+publicly by the hand; "For they must have been seen together," he
+observed, "once at Tattersall's, and twice in the lobby of the House of
+Commons."  His disapprobation was expressed, but apparently very little
+regarded.  Mr Elliot had attempted no apology, and shewn himself as
+unsolicitous of being longer noticed by the family, as Sir Walter
+considered him unworthy of it:  all acquaintance between them had
+ceased.
+
+This very awkward history of Mr Elliot was still, after an interval of
+several years, felt with anger by Elizabeth, who had liked the man for
+himself, and still more for being her father's heir, and whose strong
+family pride could see only in him a proper match for Sir Walter
+Elliot's eldest daughter.  There was not a baronet from A to Z whom her
+feelings could have so willingly acknowledged as an equal.  Yet so
+miserably had he conducted himself, that though she was at this present
+time (the summer of 1814) wearing black ribbons for his wife, she could
+not admit him to be worth thinking of again.  The disgrace of his first
+marriage might, perhaps, as there was no reason to suppose it
+perpetuated by offspring, have been got over, had he not done worse;
+but he had, as by the accustomary intervention of kind friends, they
+had been informed, spoken most disrespectfully of them all, most
+slightingly and contemptuously of the very blood he belonged to, and
+the honours which were hereafter to be his own.  This could not be
+pardoned.
+
+Such were Elizabeth Elliot's sentiments and sensations; such the cares
+to alloy, the agitations to vary, the sameness and the elegance, the
+prosperity and the nothingness of her scene of life; such the feelings
+to give interest to a long, uneventful residence in one country circle,
+to fill the vacancies which there were no habits of utility abroad, no
+talents or accomplishments for home, to occupy.
+
+But now, another occupation and solicitude of mind was beginning to be
+added to these.  Her father was growing distressed for money.  She
+knew, that when he now took up the Baronetage, it was to drive the
+heavy bills of his tradespeople, and the unwelcome hints of Mr
+Shepherd, his agent, from his thoughts.  The Kellynch property was
+good, but not equal to Sir Walter's apprehension of the state required
+in its possessor.  While Lady Elliot lived, there had been method,
+moderation, and economy, which had just kept him within his income; but
+with her had died all such right-mindedness, and from that period he
+had been constantly exceeding it.  It had not been possible for him to
+spend less; he had done nothing but what Sir Walter Elliot was
+imperiously called on to do; but blameless as he was, he was not only
+growing dreadfully in debt, but was hearing of it so often, that it
+became vain to attempt concealing it longer, even partially, from his
+daughter.  He had given her some hints of it the last spring in town;
+he had gone so far even as to say, "Can we retrench?  Does it occur to
+you that there is any one article in which we can retrench?" and
+Elizabeth, to do her justice, had, in the first ardour of female alarm,
+set seriously to think what could be done, and had finally proposed
+these two branches of economy, to cut off some unnecessary charities,
+and to refrain from new furnishing the drawing-room; to which
+expedients she afterwards added the happy thought of their taking no
+present down to Anne, as had been the usual yearly custom.  But these
+measures, however good in themselves, were insufficient for the real
+extent of the evil, the whole of which Sir Walter found himself obliged
+to confess to her soon afterwards.  Elizabeth had nothing to propose of
+deeper efficacy.  She felt herself ill-used and unfortunate, as did her
+father; and they were neither of them able to devise any means of
+lessening their expenses without compromising their dignity, or
+relinquishing their comforts in a way not to be borne.
+
+There was only a small part of his estate that Sir Walter could dispose
+of; but had every acre been alienable, it would have made no
+difference.  He had condescended to mortgage as far as he had the
+power, but he would never condescend to sell.  No; he would never
+disgrace his name so far.  The Kellynch estate should be transmitted
+whole and entire, as he had received it.
+
+Their two confidential friends, Mr Shepherd, who lived in the
+neighbouring market town, and Lady Russell, were called to advise them;
+and both father and daughter seemed to expect that something should be
+struck out by one or the other to remove their embarrassments and
+reduce their expenditure, without involving the loss of any indulgence
+of taste or pride.
+
+
+
+Chapter 2
+
+
+Mr Shepherd, a civil, cautious lawyer, who, whatever might be his hold
+or his views on Sir Walter, would rather have the disagreeable prompted
+by anybody else, excused himself from offering the slightest hint, and
+only begged leave to recommend an implicit reference to the excellent
+judgement of Lady Russell, from whose known good sense he fully
+expected to have just such resolute measures advised as he meant to see
+finally adopted.
+
+Lady Russell was most anxiously zealous on the subject, and gave it
+much serious consideration.  She was a woman rather of sound than of
+quick abilities, whose difficulties in coming to any decision in this
+instance were great, from the opposition of two leading principles.
+She was of strict integrity herself, with a delicate sense of honour;
+but she was as desirous of saving Sir Walter's feelings, as solicitous
+for the credit of the family, as aristocratic in her ideas of what was
+due to them, as anybody of sense and honesty could well be.  She was a
+benevolent, charitable, good woman, and capable of strong attachments,
+most correct in her conduct, strict in her notions of decorum, and with
+manners that were held a standard of good-breeding.  She had a
+cultivated mind, and was, generally speaking, rational and consistent;
+but she had prejudices on the side of ancestry; she had a value for
+rank and consequence, which blinded her a little to the faults of those
+who possessed them.  Herself the widow of only a knight, she gave the
+dignity of a baronet all its due; and Sir Walter, independent of his
+claims as an old acquaintance, an attentive neighbour, an obliging
+landlord, the husband of her very dear friend, the father of Anne and
+her sisters, was, as being Sir Walter, in her apprehension, entitled to
+a great deal of compassion and consideration under his present
+difficulties.
+
+They must retrench; that did not admit of a doubt.  But she was very
+anxious to have it done with the least possible pain to him and
+Elizabeth. She drew up plans of economy, she made exact calculations,
+and she did what nobody else thought of doing:  she consulted Anne, who
+never seemed considered by the others as having any interest in the
+question. She consulted, and in a degree was influenced by her in
+marking out the scheme of retrenchment which was at last submitted to
+Sir Walter. Every emendation of Anne's had been on the side of honesty
+against importance.  She wanted more vigorous measures, a more complete
+reformation, a quicker release from debt, a much higher tone of
+indifference for everything but justice and equity.
+
+"If we can persuade your father to all this," said Lady Russell,
+looking over her paper, "much may be done.  If he will adopt these
+regulations, in seven years he will be clear; and I hope we may be able
+to convince him and Elizabeth, that Kellynch Hall has a respectability
+in itself which cannot be affected by these reductions; and that the
+true dignity of Sir Walter Elliot will be very far from lessened in the
+eyes of sensible people, by acting like a man of principle.  What will
+he be doing, in fact, but what very many of our first families have
+done, or ought to do?  There will be nothing singular in his case; and
+it is singularity which often makes the worst part of our suffering, as
+it always does of our conduct.  I have great hope of prevailing.  We
+must be serious and decided; for after all, the person who has
+contracted debts must pay them; and though a great deal is due to the
+feelings of the gentleman, and the head of a house, like your father,
+there is still more due to the character of an honest man."
+
+This was the principle on which Anne wanted her father to be
+proceeding, his friends to be urging him.  She considered it as an act
+of indispensable duty to clear away the claims of creditors with all
+the expedition which the most comprehensive retrenchments could secure,
+and saw no dignity in anything short of it.  She wanted it to be
+prescribed, and felt as a duty.  She rated Lady Russell's influence
+highly; and as to the severe degree of self-denial which her own
+conscience prompted, she believed there might be little more difficulty
+in persuading them to a complete, than to half a reformation.  Her
+knowledge of her father and Elizabeth inclined her to think that the
+sacrifice of one pair of horses would be hardly less painful than of
+both, and so on, through the whole list of Lady Russell's too gentle
+reductions.
+
+How Anne's more rigid requisitions might have been taken is of little
+consequence.  Lady Russell's had no success at all: could not be put up
+with, were not to be borne. "What! every comfort of life knocked off!
+Journeys, London, servants, horses, table--contractions and
+restrictions every where!  To live no longer with the decencies even of
+a private gentleman!  No, he would sooner quit Kellynch Hall at once,
+than remain in it on such disgraceful terms."
+
+"Quit Kellynch Hall."  The hint was immediately taken up by Mr
+Shepherd, whose interest was involved in the reality of Sir Walter's
+retrenching, and who was perfectly persuaded that nothing would be done
+without a change of abode.  "Since the idea had been started in the
+very quarter which ought to dictate, he had no scruple," he said, "in
+confessing his judgement to be entirely on that side.  It did not
+appear to him that Sir Walter could materially alter his style of
+living in a house which had such a character of hospitality and ancient
+dignity to support.  In any other place Sir Walter might judge for
+himself; and would be looked up to, as regulating the modes of life in
+whatever way he might choose to model his household."
+
+Sir Walter would quit Kellynch Hall; and after a very few days more of
+doubt and indecision, the great question of whither he should go was
+settled, and the first outline of this important change made out.
+
+There had been three alternatives, London, Bath, or another house in
+the country.  All Anne's wishes had been for the latter.  A small house
+in their own neighbourhood, where they might still have Lady Russell's
+society, still be near Mary, and still have the pleasure of sometimes
+seeing the lawns and groves of Kellynch, was the object of her
+ambition.  But the usual fate of Anne attended her, in having something
+very opposite from her inclination fixed on.  She disliked Bath, and
+did not think it agreed with her; and Bath was to be her home.
+
+Sir Walter had at first thought more of London; but Mr Shepherd felt
+that he could not be trusted in London, and had been skilful enough to
+dissuade him from it, and make Bath preferred.  It was a much safer
+place for a gentleman in his predicament:  he might there be important
+at comparatively little expense.  Two material advantages of Bath over
+London had of course been given all their weight:  its more convenient
+distance from Kellynch, only fifty miles, and Lady Russell's spending
+some part of every winter there; and to the very great satisfaction of
+Lady Russell, whose first views on the projected change had been for
+Bath, Sir Walter and Elizabeth were induced to believe that they should
+lose neither consequence nor enjoyment by settling there.
+
+Lady Russell felt obliged to oppose her dear Anne's known wishes.  It
+would be too much to expect Sir Walter to descend into a small house in
+his own neighbourhood.  Anne herself would have found the
+mortifications of it more than she foresaw, and to Sir Walter's
+feelings they must have been dreadful.  And with regard to Anne's
+dislike of Bath, she considered it as a prejudice and mistake arising,
+first, from the circumstance of her having been three years at school
+there, after her mother's death; and secondly, from her happening to be
+not in perfectly good spirits the only winter which she had afterwards
+spent there with herself.
+
+Lady Russell was fond of Bath, in short, and disposed to think it must
+suit them all; and as to her young friend's health, by passing all the
+warm months with her at Kellynch Lodge, every danger would be avoided;
+and it was in fact, a change which must do both health and spirits
+good.  Anne had been too little from home, too little seen. Her spirits
+were not high.  A larger society would improve them.  She wanted her to
+be more known.
+
+The undesirableness of any other house in the same neighbourhood for
+Sir Walter was certainly much strengthened by one part, and a very
+material part of the scheme, which had been happily engrafted on the
+beginning.  He was not only to quit his home, but to see it in the
+hands of others; a trial of fortitude, which stronger heads than Sir
+Walter's have found too much.  Kellynch Hall was to be let.  This,
+however, was a profound secret, not to be breathed beyond their own
+circle.
+
+Sir Walter could not have borne the degradation of being known to
+design letting his house.  Mr Shepherd had once mentioned the word
+"advertise," but never dared approach it again.  Sir Walter spurned the
+idea of its being offered in any manner; forbad the slightest hint
+being dropped of his having such an intention; and it was only on the
+supposition of his being spontaneously solicited by some most
+unexceptionable applicant, on his own terms, and as a great favour,
+that he would let it at all.
+
+How quick come the reasons for approving what we like!  Lady Russell
+had another excellent one at hand, for being extremely glad that Sir
+Walter and his family were to remove from the country.  Elizabeth had
+been lately forming an intimacy, which she wished to see interrupted.
+It was with the daughter of Mr Shepherd, who had returned, after an
+unprosperous marriage, to her father's house, with the additional
+burden of two children.  She was a clever young woman, who understood
+the art of pleasing--the art of pleasing, at least, at Kellynch Hall;
+and who had made herself so acceptable to Miss Elliot, as to have been
+already staying there more than once, in spite of all that Lady
+Russell, who thought it a friendship quite out of place, could hint of
+caution and reserve.
+
+Lady Russell, indeed, had scarcely any influence with Elizabeth, and
+seemed to love her, rather because she would love her, than because
+Elizabeth deserved it.  She had never received from her more than
+outward attention, nothing beyond the observances of complaisance; had
+never succeeded in any point which she wanted to carry, against
+previous inclination.  She had been repeatedly very earnest in trying
+to get Anne included in the visit to London, sensibly open to all the
+injustice and all the discredit of the selfish arrangements which shut
+her out, and on many lesser occasions had endeavoured to give Elizabeth
+the advantage of her own better judgement and experience; but always in
+vain:  Elizabeth would go her own way; and never had she pursued it in
+more decided opposition to Lady Russell than in this selection of Mrs
+Clay; turning from the society of so deserving a sister, to bestow her
+affection and confidence on one who ought to have been nothing to her
+but the object of distant civility.
+
+From situation, Mrs Clay was, in Lady Russell's estimate, a very
+unequal, and in her character she believed a very dangerous companion;
+and a removal that would leave Mrs Clay behind, and bring a choice of
+more suitable intimates within Miss Elliot's reach, was therefore an
+object of first-rate importance.
+
+
+
+Chapter 3
+
+
+"I must take leave to observe, Sir Walter," said Mr Shepherd one
+morning at Kellynch Hall, as he laid down the newspaper, "that the
+present juncture is much in our favour.  This peace will be turning all
+our rich naval officers ashore.  They will be all wanting a home.
+Could not be a better time, Sir Walter, for having a choice of tenants,
+very responsible tenants.  Many a noble fortune has been made during
+the war.  If a rich admiral were to come in our way, Sir Walter--"
+
+"He would be a very lucky man, Shepherd," replied Sir Walter; "that's
+all I have to remark.  A prize indeed would Kellynch Hall be to him;
+rather the greatest prize of all, let him have taken ever so many
+before; hey, Shepherd?"
+
+Mr Shepherd laughed, as he knew he must, at this wit, and then added--
+
+"I presume to observe, Sir Walter, that, in the way of business,
+gentlemen of the navy are well to deal with.  I have had a little
+knowledge of their methods of doing business; and I am free to confess
+that they have very liberal notions, and are as likely to make
+desirable tenants as any set of people one should meet with.
+Therefore, Sir Walter, what I would take leave to suggest is, that if
+in consequence of any rumours getting abroad of your intention; which
+must be contemplated as a possible thing, because we know how difficult
+it is to keep the actions and designs of one part of the world from the
+notice and curiosity of the other; consequence has its tax; I, John
+Shepherd, might conceal any family-matters that I chose, for nobody
+would think it worth their while to observe me; but Sir Walter Elliot
+has eyes upon him which it may be very difficult to elude; and
+therefore, thus much I venture upon, that it will not greatly surprise
+me if, with all our caution, some rumour of the truth should get
+abroad; in the supposition of which, as I was going to observe, since
+applications will unquestionably follow, I should think any from our
+wealthy naval commanders particularly worth attending to; and beg leave
+to add, that two hours will bring me over at any time, to save you the
+trouble of replying."
+
+Sir Walter only nodded.  But soon afterwards, rising and pacing the
+room, he observed sarcastically--
+
+"There are few among the gentlemen of the navy, I imagine, who would
+not be surprised to find themselves in a house of this description."
+
+"They would look around them, no doubt, and bless their good fortune,"
+said Mrs Clay, for Mrs Clay was present:  her father had driven her
+over, nothing being of so much use to Mrs Clay's health as a drive to
+Kellynch: "but I quite agree with my father in thinking a sailor might
+be a very desirable tenant.  I have known a good deal of the
+profession; and besides their liberality, they are so neat and careful
+in all their ways!  These valuable pictures of yours, Sir Walter, if
+you chose to leave them, would be perfectly safe.  Everything in and
+about the house would be taken such excellent care of!  The gardens and
+shrubberies would be kept in almost as high order as they are now.  You
+need not be afraid, Miss Elliot, of your own sweet flower gardens being
+neglected."
+
+"As to all that," rejoined Sir Walter coolly, "supposing I were induced
+to let my house, I have by no means made up my mind as to the
+privileges to be annexed to it.  I am not particularly disposed to
+favour a tenant.  The park would be open to him of course, and few navy
+officers, or men of any other description, can have had such a range;
+but what restrictions I might impose on the use of the
+pleasure-grounds, is another thing.  I am not fond of the idea of my
+shrubberies being always approachable; and I should recommend Miss
+Elliot to be on her guard with respect to her flower garden.  I am very
+little disposed to grant a tenant of Kellynch Hall any extraordinary
+favour, I assure you, be he sailor or soldier."
+
+After a short pause, Mr Shepherd presumed to say--
+
+"In all these cases, there are established usages which make everything
+plain and easy between landlord and tenant.  Your interest, Sir Walter,
+is in pretty safe hands.  Depend upon me for taking care that no tenant
+has more than his just rights.  I venture to hint, that Sir Walter
+Elliot cannot be half so jealous for his own, as John Shepherd will be
+for him."
+
+Here Anne spoke--
+
+"The navy, I think, who have done so much for us, have at least an
+equal claim with any other set of men, for all the comforts and all the
+privileges which any home can give.  Sailors work hard enough for their
+comforts, we must all allow."
+
+"Very true, very true.  What Miss Anne says, is very true," was Mr
+Shepherd's rejoinder, and "Oh! certainly," was his daughter's; but Sir
+Walter's remark was, soon afterwards--
+
+"The profession has its utility, but I should be sorry to see any
+friend of mine belonging to it."
+
+"Indeed!" was the reply, and with a look of surprise.
+
+"Yes; it is in two points offensive to me; I have two strong grounds of
+objection to it.  First, as being the means of bringing persons of
+obscure birth into undue distinction, and raising men to honours which
+their fathers and grandfathers never dreamt of; and secondly, as it
+cuts up a man's youth and vigour most horribly; a sailor grows old
+sooner than any other man.  I have observed it all my life.  A man is
+in greater danger in the navy of being insulted by the rise of one
+whose father, his father might have disdained to speak to, and of
+becoming prematurely an object of disgust himself, than in any other
+line.  One day last spring, in town, I was in company with two men,
+striking instances of what I am talking of; Lord St Ives, whose father
+we all know to have been a country curate, without bread to eat; I was
+to give place to Lord St Ives, and a certain Admiral Baldwin, the most
+deplorable-looking personage you can imagine; his face the colour of
+mahogany, rough and rugged to the last degree; all lines and wrinkles,
+nine grey hairs of a side, and nothing but a dab of powder at top.  'In
+the name of heaven, who is that old fellow?' said I to a friend of mine
+who was standing near, (Sir Basil Morley).  'Old fellow!' cried Sir
+Basil, 'it is Admiral Baldwin.  What do you take his age to be?'
+'Sixty,' said I, 'or perhaps sixty-two.' 'Forty,' replied Sir Basil,
+'forty, and no more.'  Picture to yourselves my amazement; I shall not
+easily forget Admiral Baldwin.  I never saw quite so wretched an
+example of what a sea-faring life can do; but to a degree, I know it is
+the same with them all:  they are all knocked about, and exposed to
+every climate, and every weather, till they are not fit to be seen.  It
+is a pity they are not knocked on the head at once, before they reach
+Admiral Baldwin's age."
+
+"Nay, Sir Walter," cried Mrs Clay, "this is being severe indeed.  Have
+a little mercy on the poor men.  We are not all born to be handsome.
+The sea is no beautifier, certainly; sailors do grow old betimes; I
+have observed it; they soon lose the look of youth.  But then, is not
+it the same with many other professions, perhaps most other?  Soldiers,
+in active service, are not at all better off:  and even in the quieter
+professions, there is a toil and a labour of the mind, if not of the
+body, which seldom leaves a man's looks to the natural effect of time.
+The lawyer plods, quite care-worn; the physician is up at all hours,
+and travelling in all weather; and even the clergyman--" she stopt a
+moment to consider what might do for the clergyman;--"and even the
+clergyman, you know is obliged to go into infected rooms, and expose
+his health and looks to all the injury of a poisonous atmosphere.  In
+fact, as I have long been convinced, though every profession is
+necessary and honourable in its turn, it is only the lot of those who
+are not obliged to follow any, who can live in a regular way, in the
+country, choosing their own hours, following their own pursuits, and
+living on their own property, without the torment of trying for more;
+it is only their lot, I say, to hold the blessings of health and a good
+appearance to the utmost: I know no other set of men but what lose
+something of their personableness when they cease to be quite young."
+
+It seemed as if Mr Shepherd, in this anxiety to bespeak Sir Walter's
+good will towards a naval officer as tenant, had been gifted with
+foresight; for the very first application for the house was from an
+Admiral Croft, with whom he shortly afterwards fell into company in
+attending the quarter sessions at Taunton; and indeed, he had received
+a hint of the Admiral from a London correspondent.  By the report which
+he hastened over to Kellynch to make, Admiral Croft was a native of
+Somersetshire, who having acquired a very handsome fortune, was wishing
+to settle in his own country, and had come down to Taunton in order to
+look at some advertised places in that immediate neighbourhood, which,
+however, had not suited him; that accidentally hearing--(it was just as
+he had foretold, Mr Shepherd observed, Sir Walter's concerns could not
+be kept a secret,)--accidentally hearing of the possibility of
+Kellynch Hall being to let, and understanding his (Mr Shepherd's)
+connection with the owner, he had introduced himself to him in order to
+make particular inquiries, and had, in the course of a pretty long
+conference, expressed as strong an inclination for the place as a man
+who knew it only by description could feel; and given Mr Shepherd, in
+his explicit account of himself, every proof of his being a most
+responsible, eligible tenant.
+
+"And who is Admiral Croft?" was Sir Walter's cold suspicious inquiry.
+
+Mr Shepherd answered for his being of a gentleman's family, and
+mentioned a place; and Anne, after the little pause which followed,
+added--
+
+"He is a rear admiral of the white.  He was in the Trafalgar action,
+and has been in the East Indies since; he was stationed there, I
+believe, several years."
+
+"Then I take it for granted," observed Sir Walter, "that his face is
+about as orange as the cuffs and capes of my livery."
+
+Mr Shepherd hastened to assure him, that Admiral Croft was a very hale,
+hearty, well-looking man, a little weather-beaten, to be sure, but not
+much, and quite the gentleman in all his notions and behaviour; not
+likely to make the smallest difficulty about terms, only wanted a
+comfortable home, and to get into it as soon as possible; knew he must
+pay for his convenience; knew what rent a ready-furnished house of that
+consequence might fetch; should not have been surprised if Sir Walter
+had asked more; had inquired about the manor; would be glad of the
+deputation, certainly, but made no great point of it; said he sometimes
+took out a gun, but never killed; quite the gentleman.
+
+Mr Shepherd was eloquent on the subject; pointing out all the
+circumstances of the Admiral's family, which made him peculiarly
+desirable as a tenant.  He was a married man, and without children; the
+very state to be wished for.  A house was never taken good care of, Mr
+Shepherd observed, without a lady: he did not know, whether furniture
+might not be in danger of suffering as much where there was no lady, as
+where there were many children.  A lady, without a family, was the very
+best preserver of furniture in the world.  He had seen Mrs Croft, too;
+she was at Taunton with the admiral, and had been present almost all
+the time they were talking the matter over.
+
+"And a very well-spoken, genteel, shrewd lady, she seemed to be,"
+continued he; "asked more questions about the house, and terms, and
+taxes, than the Admiral himself, and seemed more conversant with
+business; and moreover, Sir Walter, I found she was not quite
+unconnected in this country, any more than her husband; that is to say,
+she is sister to a gentleman who did live amongst us once; she told me
+so herself: sister to the gentleman who lived a few years back at
+Monkford. Bless me! what was his name? At this moment I cannot
+recollect his name, though I have heard it so lately. Penelope, my
+dear, can you help me to the name of the gentleman who lived at
+Monkford: Mrs Croft's brother?"
+
+But Mrs Clay was talking so eagerly with Miss Elliot, that she did not
+hear the appeal.
+
+"I have no conception whom you can mean, Shepherd; I remember no
+gentleman resident at Monkford since the time of old Governor Trent."
+
+"Bless me! how very odd!  I shall forget my own name soon, I suppose.
+A name that I am so very well acquainted with; knew the gentleman so
+well by sight; seen him a hundred times; came to consult me once, I
+remember, about a trespass of one of his neighbours; farmer's man
+breaking into his orchard; wall torn down; apples stolen; caught in the
+fact; and afterwards, contrary to my judgement, submitted to an
+amicable compromise.  Very odd indeed!"
+
+After waiting another moment--
+
+"You mean Mr Wentworth, I suppose?" said Anne.
+
+Mr Shepherd was all gratitude.
+
+"Wentworth was the very name!  Mr Wentworth was the very man.  He had
+the curacy of Monkford, you know, Sir Walter, some time back, for two
+or three years.  Came there about the year ---5, I take it.  You
+remember him, I am sure."
+
+"Wentworth?  Oh! ay,--Mr Wentworth, the curate of Monkford.  You misled
+me by the term gentleman.  I thought you were speaking of some man of
+property:  Mr Wentworth was nobody, I remember; quite unconnected;
+nothing to do with the Strafford family.  One wonders how the names of
+many of our nobility become so common."
+
+As Mr Shepherd perceived that this connexion of the Crofts did them no
+service with Sir Walter, he mentioned it no more; returning, with all
+his zeal, to dwell on the circumstances more indisputably in their
+favour; their age, and number, and fortune; the high idea they had
+formed of Kellynch Hall, and extreme solicitude for the advantage of
+renting it; making it appear as if they ranked nothing beyond the
+happiness of being the tenants of Sir Walter Elliot: an extraordinary
+taste, certainly, could they have been supposed in the secret of Sir
+Walter's estimate of the dues of a tenant.
+
+It succeeded, however; and though Sir Walter must ever look with an
+evil eye on anyone intending to inhabit that house, and think them
+infinitely too well off in being permitted to rent it on the highest
+terms, he was talked into allowing Mr Shepherd to proceed in the
+treaty, and authorising him to wait on Admiral Croft, who still
+remained at Taunton, and fix a day for the house being seen.
+
+Sir Walter was not very wise; but still he had experience enough of the
+world to feel, that a more unobjectionable tenant, in all essentials,
+than Admiral Croft bid fair to be, could hardly offer.  So far went his
+understanding; and his vanity supplied a little additional soothing, in
+the Admiral's situation in life, which was just high enough, and not
+too high.  "I have let my house to Admiral Croft," would sound
+extremely well; very much better than to any mere Mr--; a Mr (save,
+perhaps, some half dozen in the nation,) always needs a note of
+explanation.  An admiral speaks his own consequence, and, at the same
+time, can never make a baronet look small.  In all their dealings and
+intercourse, Sir Walter Elliot must ever have the precedence.
+
+Nothing could be done without a reference to Elizabeth: but her
+inclination was growing so strong for a removal, that she was happy to
+have it fixed and expedited by a tenant at hand; and not a word to
+suspend decision was uttered by her.
+
+Mr Shepherd was completely empowered to act; and no sooner had such an
+end been reached, than Anne, who had been a most attentive listener to
+the whole, left the room, to seek the comfort of cool air for her
+flushed cheeks; and as she walked along a favourite grove, said, with a
+gentle sigh, "A few months more, and he, perhaps, may be walking here."
+
+
+
+Chapter 4
+
+
+He was not Mr Wentworth, the former curate of Monkford, however
+suspicious appearances may be, but a Captain Frederick Wentworth, his
+brother, who being made commander in consequence of the action off St
+Domingo, and not immediately employed, had come into Somersetshire, in
+the summer of 1806; and having no parent living, found a home for half
+a year at Monkford.  He was, at that time, a remarkably fine young man,
+with a great deal of intelligence, spirit, and brilliancy; and Anne an
+extremely pretty girl, with gentleness, modesty, taste, and feeling.
+Half the sum of attraction, on either side, might have been enough, for
+he had nothing to do, and she had hardly anybody to love; but the
+encounter of such lavish recommendations could not fail.  They were
+gradually acquainted, and when acquainted, rapidly and deeply in love.
+It would be difficult to say which had seen highest perfection in the
+other, or which had been the happiest: she, in receiving his
+declarations and proposals, or he in having them accepted.
+
+A short period of exquisite felicity followed, and but a short one.
+Troubles soon arose.  Sir Walter, on being applied to, without actually
+withholding his consent, or saying it should never be, gave it all the
+negative of great astonishment, great coldness, great silence, and a
+professed resolution of doing nothing for his daughter.  He thought it
+a very degrading alliance; and Lady Russell, though with more tempered
+and pardonable pride, received it as a most unfortunate one.
+
+Anne Elliot, with all her claims of birth, beauty, and mind, to throw
+herself away at nineteen; involve herself at nineteen in an engagement
+with a young man, who had nothing but himself to recommend him, and no
+hopes of attaining affluence, but in the chances of a most uncertain
+profession, and no connexions to secure even his farther rise in the
+profession, would be, indeed, a throwing away, which she grieved to
+think of!  Anne Elliot, so young; known to so few, to be snatched off
+by a stranger without alliance or fortune; or rather sunk by him into a
+state of most wearing, anxious, youth-killing dependence!  It must not
+be, if by any fair interference of friendship, any representations from
+one who had almost a mother's love, and mother's rights, it would be
+prevented.
+
+Captain Wentworth had no fortune.  He had been lucky in his profession;
+but spending freely, what had come freely, had realized nothing.  But
+he was confident that he should soon be rich: full of life and ardour,
+he knew that he should soon have a ship, and soon be on a station that
+would lead to everything he wanted.  He had always been lucky; he knew
+he should be so still.  Such confidence, powerful in its own warmth,
+and bewitching in the wit which often expressed it, must have been
+enough for Anne; but Lady Russell saw it very differently.  His
+sanguine temper, and fearlessness of mind, operated very differently on
+her.  She saw in it but an aggravation of the evil.  It only added a
+dangerous character to himself.  He was brilliant, he was headstrong.
+Lady Russell had little taste for wit, and of anything approaching to
+imprudence a horror.  She deprecated the connexion in every light.
+
+Such opposition, as these feelings produced, was more than Anne could
+combat.  Young and gentle as she was, it might yet have been possible
+to withstand her father's ill-will, though unsoftened by one kind word
+or look on the part of her sister; but Lady Russell, whom she had
+always loved and relied on, could not, with such steadiness of opinion,
+and such tenderness of manner, be continually advising her in vain.
+She was persuaded to believe the engagement a wrong thing:  indiscreet,
+improper, hardly capable of success, and not deserving it.  But it was
+not a merely selfish caution, under which she acted, in putting an end
+to it.  Had she not imagined herself consulting his good, even more
+than her own, she could hardly have given him up.  The belief of being
+prudent, and self-denying, principally for his advantage, was her chief
+consolation, under the misery of a parting, a final parting; and every
+consolation was required, for she had to encounter all the additional
+pain of opinions, on his side, totally unconvinced and unbending, and
+of his feeling himself ill used by so forced a relinquishment.  He had
+left the country in consequence.
+
+A few months had seen the beginning and the end of their acquaintance;
+but not with a few months ended Anne's share of suffering from it.  Her
+attachment and regrets had, for a long time, clouded every enjoyment of
+youth, and an early loss of bloom and spirits had been their lasting
+effect.
+
+More than seven years were gone since this little history of sorrowful
+interest had reached its close; and time had softened down much,
+perhaps nearly all of peculiar attachment to him, but she had been too
+dependent on time alone; no aid had been given in change of place
+(except in one visit to Bath soon after the rupture), or in any novelty
+or enlargement of society.  No one had ever come within the Kellynch
+circle, who could bear a comparison with Frederick Wentworth, as he
+stood in her memory.  No second attachment, the only thoroughly
+natural, happy, and sufficient cure, at her time of life, had been
+possible to the nice tone of her mind, the fastidiousness of her taste,
+in the small limits of the society around them.  She had been
+solicited, when about two-and-twenty, to change her name, by the young
+man, who not long afterwards found a more willing mind in her younger
+sister; and Lady Russell had lamented her refusal; for Charles Musgrove
+was the eldest son of a man, whose landed property and general
+importance were second in that country, only to Sir Walter's, and of
+good character and appearance; and however Lady Russell might have
+asked yet for something more, while Anne was nineteen, she would have
+rejoiced to see her at twenty-two so respectably removed from the
+partialities and injustice of her father's house, and settled so
+permanently near herself.  But in this case, Anne had left nothing for
+advice to do; and though Lady Russell, as satisfied as ever with her
+own discretion, never wished the past undone, she began now to have the
+anxiety which borders on hopelessness for Anne's being tempted, by some
+man of talents and independence, to enter a state for which she held
+her to be peculiarly fitted by her warm affections and domestic habits.
+
+They knew not each other's opinion, either its constancy or its change,
+on the one leading point of Anne's conduct, for the subject was never
+alluded to; but Anne, at seven-and-twenty, thought very differently
+from what she had been made to think at nineteen.  She did not blame
+Lady Russell, she did not blame herself for having been guided by her;
+but she felt that were any young person, in similar circumstances, to
+apply to her for counsel, they would never receive any of such certain
+immediate wretchedness, such uncertain future good.  She was persuaded
+that under every disadvantage of disapprobation at home, and every
+anxiety attending his profession, all their probable fears, delays, and
+disappointments, she should yet have been a happier woman in
+maintaining the engagement, than she had been in the sacrifice of it;
+and this, she fully believed, had the usual share, had even more than
+the usual share of all such solicitudes and suspense been theirs,
+without reference to the actual results of their case, which, as it
+happened, would have bestowed earlier prosperity than could be
+reasonably calculated on.  All his sanguine expectations, all his
+confidence had been justified.  His genius and ardour had seemed to
+foresee and to command his prosperous path.  He had, very soon after
+their engagement ceased, got employ: and all that he had told her would
+follow, had taken place.  He had distinguished himself, and early
+gained the other step in rank, and must now, by successive captures,
+have made a handsome fortune.  She had only navy lists and newspapers
+for her authority, but she could not doubt his being rich; and, in
+favour of his constancy, she had no reason to believe him married.
+
+How eloquent could Anne Elliot have been! how eloquent, at least, were
+her wishes on the side of early warm attachment, and a cheerful
+confidence in futurity, against that over-anxious caution which seems
+to insult exertion and distrust Providence!  She had been forced into
+prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the
+natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.
+
+With all these circumstances, recollections and feelings, she could not
+hear that Captain Wentworth's sister was likely to live at Kellynch
+without a revival of former pain; and many a stroll, and many a sigh,
+were necessary to dispel the agitation of the idea.  She often told
+herself it was folly, before she could harden her nerves sufficiently
+to feel the continual discussion of the Crofts and their business no
+evil.  She was assisted, however, by that perfect indifference and
+apparent unconsciousness, among the only three of her own friends in
+the secret of the past, which seemed almost to deny any recollection of
+it.  She could do justice to the superiority of Lady Russell's motives
+in this, over those of her father and Elizabeth; she could honour all
+the better feelings of her calmness; but the general air of oblivion
+among them was highly important from whatever it sprung; and in the
+event of Admiral Croft's really taking Kellynch Hall, she rejoiced anew
+over the conviction which had always been most grateful to her, of the
+past being known to those three only among her connexions, by whom no
+syllable, she believed, would ever be whispered, and in the trust that
+among his, the brother only with whom he had been residing, had
+received any information of their short-lived engagement.  That brother
+had been long removed from the country and being a sensible man, and,
+moreover, a single man at the time, she had a fond dependence on no
+human creature's having heard of it from him.
+
+The sister, Mrs Croft, had then been out of England, accompanying her
+husband on a foreign station, and her own sister, Mary, had been at
+school while it all occurred; and never admitted by the pride of some,
+and the delicacy of others, to the smallest knowledge of it afterwards.
+
+With these supports, she hoped that the acquaintance between herself
+and the Crofts, which, with Lady Russell, still resident in Kellynch,
+and Mary fixed only three miles off, must be anticipated, need not
+involve any particular awkwardness.
+
+
+
+Chapter 5
+
+
+On the morning appointed for Admiral and Mrs Croft's seeing Kellynch
+Hall, Anne found it most natural to take her almost daily walk to Lady
+Russell's, and keep out of the way till all was over; when she found it
+most natural to be sorry that she had missed the opportunity of seeing
+them.
+
+This meeting of the two parties proved highly satisfactory, and decided
+the whole business at once.  Each lady was previously well disposed for
+an agreement, and saw nothing, therefore, but good manners in the
+other; and with regard to the gentlemen, there was such an hearty good
+humour, such an open, trusting liberality on the Admiral's side, as
+could not but influence Sir Walter, who had besides been flattered into
+his very best and most polished behaviour by Mr Shepherd's assurances
+of his being known, by report, to the Admiral, as a model of good
+breeding.
+
+The house and grounds, and furniture, were approved, the Crofts were
+approved, terms, time, every thing, and every body, was right; and Mr
+Shepherd's clerks were set to work, without there having been a single
+preliminary difference to modify of all that "This indenture sheweth."
+
+Sir Walter, without hesitation, declared the Admiral to be the
+best-looking sailor he had ever met with, and went so far as to say,
+that if his own man might have had the arranging of his hair, he should
+not be ashamed of being seen with him any where; and the Admiral, with
+sympathetic cordiality, observed to his wife as they drove back through
+the park, "I thought we should soon come to a deal, my dear, in spite
+of what they told us at Taunton.  The Baronet will never set the Thames
+on fire, but there seems to be no harm in him."--reciprocal
+compliments, which would have been esteemed about equal.
+
+The Crofts were to have possession at Michaelmas; and as Sir Walter
+proposed removing to Bath in the course of the preceding month, there
+was no time to be lost in making every dependent arrangement.
+
+Lady Russell, convinced that Anne would not be allowed to be of any
+use, or any importance, in the choice of the house which they were
+going to secure, was very unwilling to have her hurried away so soon,
+and wanted to make it possible for her to stay behind till she might
+convey her to Bath herself after Christmas; but having engagements of
+her own which must take her from Kellynch for several weeks, she was
+unable to give the full invitation she wished, and Anne though dreading
+the possible heats of September in all the white glare of Bath, and
+grieving to forego all the influence so sweet and so sad of the
+autumnal months in the country, did not think that, everything
+considered, she wished to remain.  It would be most right, and most
+wise, and, therefore must involve least suffering to go with the others.
+
+Something occurred, however, to give her a different duty.  Mary, often
+a little unwell, and always thinking a great deal of her own
+complaints, and always in the habit of claiming Anne when anything was
+the matter, was indisposed; and foreseeing that she should not have a
+day's health all the autumn, entreated, or rather required her, for it
+was hardly entreaty, to come to Uppercross Cottage, and bear her
+company as long as she should want her, instead of going to Bath.
+
+"I cannot possibly do without Anne," was Mary's reasoning; and
+Elizabeth's reply was, "Then I am sure Anne had better stay, for nobody
+will want her in Bath."
+
+To be claimed as a good, though in an improper style, is at least
+better than being rejected as no good at all; and Anne, glad to be
+thought of some use, glad to have anything marked out as a duty, and
+certainly not sorry to have the scene of it in the country, and her own
+dear country, readily agreed to stay.
+
+This invitation of Mary's removed all Lady Russell's difficulties, and
+it was consequently soon settled that Anne should not go to Bath till
+Lady Russell took her, and that all the intervening time should be
+divided between Uppercross Cottage and Kellynch Lodge.
+
+So far all was perfectly right; but Lady Russell was almost startled by
+the wrong of one part of the Kellynch Hall plan, when it burst on her,
+which was, Mrs Clay's being engaged to go to Bath with Sir Walter and
+Elizabeth, as a most important and valuable assistant to the latter in
+all the business before her.  Lady Russell was extremely sorry that
+such a measure should have been resorted to at all, wondered, grieved,
+and feared; and the affront it contained to Anne, in Mrs Clay's being
+of so much use, while Anne could be of none, was a very sore
+aggravation.
+
+Anne herself was become hardened to such affronts; but she felt the
+imprudence of the arrangement quite as keenly as Lady Russell.  With a
+great deal of quiet observation, and a knowledge, which she often
+wished less, of her father's character, she was sensible that results
+the most serious to his family from the intimacy were more than
+possible.  She did not imagine that her father had at present an idea
+of the kind.  Mrs Clay had freckles, and a projecting tooth, and a
+clumsy wrist, which he was continually making severe remarks upon, in
+her absence; but she was young, and certainly altogether well-looking,
+and possessed, in an acute mind and assiduous pleasing manners,
+infinitely more dangerous attractions than any merely personal might
+have been.  Anne was so impressed by the degree of their danger, that
+she could not excuse herself from trying to make it perceptible to her
+sister.  She had little hope of success; but Elizabeth, who in the
+event of such a reverse would be so much more to be pitied than
+herself, should never, she thought, have reason to reproach her for
+giving no warning.
+
+She spoke, and seemed only to offend.  Elizabeth could not conceive how
+such an absurd suspicion should occur to her, and indignantly answered
+for each party's perfectly knowing their situation.
+
+"Mrs Clay," said she, warmly, "never forgets who she is; and as I am
+rather better acquainted with her sentiments than you can be, I can
+assure you, that upon the subject of marriage they are particularly
+nice, and that she reprobates all inequality of condition and rank more
+strongly than most people.  And as to my father, I really should not
+have thought that he, who has kept himself single so long for our
+sakes, need be suspected now.  If Mrs Clay were a very beautiful woman,
+I grant you, it might be wrong to have her so much with me; not that
+anything in the world, I am sure, would induce my father to make a
+degrading match, but he might be rendered unhappy.  But poor Mrs Clay
+who, with all her merits, can never have been reckoned tolerably
+pretty, I really think poor Mrs Clay may be staying here in perfect
+safety.  One would imagine you had never heard my father speak of her
+personal misfortunes, though I know you must fifty times.  That tooth
+of her's and those freckles.  Freckles do not disgust me so very much
+as they do him.  I have known a face not materially disfigured by a
+few, but he abominates them.  You must have heard him notice Mrs Clay's
+freckles."
+
+"There is hardly any personal defect," replied Anne, "which an
+agreeable manner might not gradually reconcile one to."
+
+"I think very differently," answered Elizabeth, shortly; "an agreeable
+manner may set off handsome features, but can never alter plain ones.
+However, at any rate, as I have a great deal more at stake on this
+point than anybody else can have, I think it rather unnecessary in you
+to be advising me."
+
+Anne had done; glad that it was over, and not absolutely hopeless of
+doing good.  Elizabeth, though resenting the suspicion, might yet be
+made observant by it.
+
+The last office of the four carriage-horses was to draw Sir Walter,
+Miss Elliot, and Mrs Clay to Bath. The party drove off in very good
+spirits; Sir Walter prepared with condescending bows for all the
+afflicted tenantry and cottagers who might have had a hint to show
+themselves, and Anne walked up at the same time, in a sort of desolate
+tranquillity, to the Lodge, where she was to spend the first week.
+
+Her friend was not in better spirits than herself. Lady Russell felt
+this break-up of the family exceedingly.  Their respectability was as
+dear to her as her own, and a daily intercourse had become precious by
+habit.  It was painful to look upon their deserted grounds, and still
+worse to anticipate the new hands they were to fall into; and to escape
+the solitariness and the melancholy of so altered a village, and be out
+of the way when Admiral and Mrs Croft first arrived, she had determined
+to make her own absence from home begin when she must give up Anne.
+Accordingly their removal was made together, and Anne was set down at
+Uppercross Cottage, in the first stage of Lady Russell's journey.
+
+Uppercross was a moderate-sized village, which a few years back had
+been completely in the old English style, containing only two houses
+superior in appearance to those of the yeomen and labourers; the
+mansion of the squire, with its high walls, great gates, and old trees,
+substantial and unmodernized, and the compact, tight parsonage,
+enclosed in its own neat garden, with a vine and a pear-tree trained
+round its casements; but upon the marriage of the young 'squire, it had
+received the improvement of a farm-house elevated into a cottage, for
+his residence, and Uppercross Cottage, with its veranda, French
+windows, and other prettiness, was quite as likely to catch the
+traveller's eye as the more consistent and considerable aspect and
+premises of the Great House, about a quarter of a mile farther on.
+
+Here Anne had often been staying. She knew the ways of Uppercross as
+well as those of Kellynch. The two families were so continually
+meeting, so much in the habit of running in and out of each other's
+house at all hours, that it was rather a surprise to her to find Mary
+alone; but being alone, her being unwell and out of spirits was almost
+a matter of course. Though better endowed than the elder sister, Mary
+had not Anne's understanding nor temper. While well, and happy, and
+properly attended to, she had great good humour and excellent spirits;
+but any indisposition sunk her completely. She had no resources for
+solitude; and inheriting a considerable share of the Elliot
+self-importance, was very prone to add to every other distress that of
+fancying herself neglected and ill-used. In person, she was inferior to
+both sisters, and had, even in her bloom, only reached the dignity of
+being "a fine girl." She was now lying on the faded sofa of the pretty
+little drawing-room, the once elegant furniture of which had been
+gradually growing shabby, under the influence of four summers and two
+children; and, on Anne's appearing, greeted her with--
+
+"So, you are come at last!  I began to think I should never see you.  I
+am so ill I can hardly speak.  I have not seen a creature the whole
+morning!"
+
+"I am sorry to find you unwell," replied Anne.  "You sent me such a
+good account of yourself on Thursday!"
+
+"Yes, I made the best of it; I always do:  but I was very far from well
+at the time; and I do not think I ever was so ill in my life as I have
+been all this morning:  very unfit to be left alone, I am sure.
+Suppose I were to be seized of a sudden in some dreadful way, and not
+able to ring the bell!  So, Lady Russell would not get out.  I do not
+think she has been in this house three times this summer."
+
+Anne said what was proper, and enquired after her husband.  "Oh!
+Charles is out shooting.  I have not seen him since seven o'clock.  He
+would go, though I told him how ill I was.  He said he should not stay
+out long; but he has never come back, and now it is almost one.  I
+assure you, I have not seen a soul this whole long morning."
+
+"You have had your little boys with you?"
+
+"Yes, as long as I could bear their noise; but they are so unmanageable
+that they do me more harm than good.  Little Charles does not mind a
+word I say, and Walter is growing quite as bad."
+
+"Well, you will soon be better now," replied Anne, cheerfully.  "You
+know I always cure you when I come.  How are your neighbours at the
+Great House?"
+
+"I can give you no account of them.  I have not seen one of them
+to-day, except Mr Musgrove, who just stopped and spoke through the
+window, but without getting off his horse; and though I told him how
+ill I was, not one of them have been near me.  It did not happen to
+suit the Miss Musgroves, I suppose, and they never put themselves out
+of their way."
+
+"You will see them yet, perhaps, before the morning is gone.  It is
+early."
+
+"I never want them, I assure you.  They talk and laugh a great deal too
+much for me.  Oh! Anne, I am so very unwell!  It was quite unkind of
+you not to come on Thursday."
+
+"My dear Mary, recollect what a comfortable account you sent me of
+yourself!  You wrote in the cheerfullest manner, and said you were
+perfectly well, and in no hurry for me; and that being the case, you
+must be aware that my wish would be to remain with Lady Russell to the
+last: and besides what I felt on her account, I have really been so
+busy, have had so much to do, that I could not very conveniently have
+left Kellynch sooner."
+
+"Dear me! what can you possibly have to do?"
+
+"A great many things, I assure you.  More than I can recollect in a
+moment; but I can tell you some.  I have been making a duplicate of the
+catalogue of my father's books and pictures.  I have been several times
+in the garden with Mackenzie, trying to understand, and make him
+understand, which of Elizabeth's plants are for Lady Russell.  I have
+had all my own little concerns to arrange, books and music to divide,
+and all my trunks to repack, from not having understood in time what
+was intended as to the waggons: and one thing I have had to do, Mary,
+of a more trying nature: going to almost every house in the parish, as
+a sort of take-leave.  I was told that they wished it.  But all these
+things took up a great deal of time."
+
+"Oh! well!" and after a moment's pause, "but you have never asked me
+one word about our dinner at the Pooles yesterday."
+
+"Did you go then?  I have made no enquiries, because I concluded you
+must have been obliged to give up the party."
+
+"Oh yes! I went.  I was very well yesterday; nothing at all the matter
+with me till this morning.  It would have been strange if I had not
+gone."
+
+"I am very glad you were well enough, and I hope you had a pleasant
+party."
+
+"Nothing remarkable.  One always knows beforehand what the dinner will
+be, and who will be there; and it is so very uncomfortable not having a
+carriage of one's own.  Mr and Mrs Musgrove took me, and we were so
+crowded!  They are both so very large, and take up so much room; and Mr
+Musgrove always sits forward.  So, there was I, crowded into the back
+seat with Henrietta and Louisa; and I think it very likely that my
+illness to-day may be owing to it."
+
+A little further perseverance in patience and forced cheerfulness on
+Anne's side produced nearly a cure on Mary's.  She could soon sit
+upright on the sofa, and began to hope she might be able to leave it by
+dinner-time.  Then, forgetting to think of it, she was at the other end
+of the room, beautifying a nosegay; then, she ate her cold meat; and
+then she was well enough to propose a little walk.
+
+"Where shall we go?" said she, when they were ready.  "I suppose you
+will not like to call at the Great House before they have been to see
+you?"
+
+"I have not the smallest objection on that account," replied Anne.  "I
+should never think of standing on such ceremony with people I know so
+well as Mrs and the Miss Musgroves."
+
+"Oh! but they ought to call upon you as soon as possible.  They ought
+to feel what is due to you as my sister.  However, we may as well go
+and sit with them a little  while, and when we have that over, we can
+enjoy our walk."
+
+Anne had always thought such a style of intercourse highly imprudent;
+but she had ceased to endeavour to check it, from believing that,
+though there were on each side continual subjects of offence, neither
+family could now do without it.  To the Great House accordingly they
+went, to sit the full half hour in the old-fashioned square parlour,
+with a small carpet and shining floor, to which the present daughters
+of the house were gradually giving the proper air of confusion by a
+grand piano-forte and a harp, flower-stands and little tables placed in
+every direction.  Oh! could the originals of the portraits against the
+wainscot, could the gentlemen in brown velvet and the ladies in blue
+satin have seen what was going on, have been conscious of such an
+overthrow of all order and neatness!  The portraits themselves seemed
+to be staring in astonishment.
+
+The Musgroves, like their houses, were in a state of alteration,
+perhaps of improvement.  The father and mother were in the old English
+style, and the young people in the new.  Mr and Mrs Musgrove were a
+very good sort of people; friendly and hospitable, not much educated,
+and not at all elegant.  Their children had more modern minds and
+manners.  There was a numerous family; but the only two grown up,
+excepting Charles, were Henrietta and Louisa, young ladies of nineteen
+and twenty, who had brought from school at Exeter all the usual stock
+of accomplishments, and were now like thousands of other young ladies,
+living to be fashionable, happy, and merry.  Their dress had every
+advantage, their faces were rather pretty, their spirits extremely
+good, their manner unembarrassed and pleasant; they were of consequence
+at home, and favourites abroad.  Anne always contemplated them as some
+of the happiest creatures of her acquaintance; but still, saved as we
+all are, by some comfortable feeling of superiority from wishing for
+the possibility of exchange, she would not have given up her own more
+elegant and cultivated mind for all their enjoyments; and envied them
+nothing but that seemingly perfect good understanding and agreement
+together, that good-humoured mutual affection, of which she had known
+so little herself with either of her sisters.
+
+They were received with great cordiality.  Nothing seemed amiss on the
+side of the Great House family, which was generally, as Anne very well
+knew, the least to blame.  The half hour was chatted away pleasantly
+enough; and she was not at all surprised, at the end of it, to have
+their walking party joined by both the Miss Musgroves, at Mary's
+particular invitation.
+
+
+
+Chapter 6
+
+
+Anne had not wanted this visit to Uppercross, to learn that a removal
+from one set of people to another, though at a distance of only three
+miles, will often include a total change of conversation, opinion, and
+idea.  She had never been staying there before, without being struck by
+it, or without wishing that other Elliots could have her advantage in
+seeing how unknown, or unconsidered there, were the affairs which at
+Kellynch Hall were treated as of such general publicity and pervading
+interest; yet, with all this experience, she believed she must now
+submit to feel that another lesson, in the art of knowing our own
+nothingness beyond our own circle, was become necessary for her; for
+certainly, coming as she did, with a heart full of the subject which
+had been completely occupying both houses in Kellynch for many weeks,
+she had expected rather more curiosity and sympathy than she found in
+the separate but very similar remark of Mr and Mrs Musgrove: "So, Miss
+Anne, Sir Walter and your sister are gone; and what part of Bath do you
+think they will settle in?" and this, without much waiting for an
+answer; or in the young ladies' addition of, "I hope we shall be in
+Bath in the winter; but remember, papa, if we do go, we must be in a
+good situation:  none of your Queen Squares for us!" or in the anxious
+supplement from Mary, of--"Upon my word, I shall be pretty well off,
+when you are all gone away to be happy at Bath!"
+
+She could only resolve to avoid such self-delusion in future, and think
+with heightened gratitude of the extraordinary blessing of having one
+such truly sympathising friend as Lady Russell.
+
+The Mr Musgroves had their own game to guard, and to destroy, their own
+horses, dogs, and newspapers to engage them, and the females were fully
+occupied in all the other common subjects of housekeeping, neighbours,
+dress, dancing, and music.  She acknowledged it to be very fitting,
+that every little social commonwealth should dictate its own matters of
+discourse; and hoped, ere long, to become a not unworthy member of the
+one she was now transplanted into.  With the prospect of spending at
+least two months at Uppercross, it was highly incumbent on her to
+clothe her imagination, her memory, and all her ideas in as much of
+Uppercross as possible.
+
+She had no dread of these two months.  Mary was not so repulsive and
+unsisterly as Elizabeth, nor so inaccessible to all influence of hers;
+neither was there anything among the other component parts of the
+cottage inimical to comfort.  She was always on friendly terms with her
+brother-in-law; and in the children, who loved her nearly as well, and
+respected her a great deal more than their mother, she had an object of
+interest, amusement, and wholesome exertion.
+
+Charles Musgrove was civil and agreeable; in sense and temper he was
+undoubtedly superior to his wife, but not of powers, or conversation,
+or grace, to make the past, as they were connected together, at all a
+dangerous contemplation; though, at the same time, Anne could believe,
+with Lady Russell, that a more equal match might have greatly improved
+him; and that a woman of real understanding might have given more
+consequence to his character, and more usefulness, rationality, and
+elegance to his habits and pursuits.  As it was, he did nothing with
+much zeal, but sport; and his time was otherwise trifled away, without
+benefit from books or anything else.  He had very good spirits, which
+never seemed much affected by his wife's occasional lowness, bore with
+her unreasonableness sometimes to Anne's admiration, and upon the
+whole, though there was very often a little disagreement (in which she
+had sometimes more share than she wished, being appealed to by both
+parties), they might pass for a happy couple.  They were always
+perfectly agreed in the want of more money, and a strong inclination
+for a handsome present from his father; but here, as on most topics, he
+had the superiority, for while Mary thought it a great shame that such
+a present was not made, he always contended for his father's having
+many other uses for his money, and a right to spend it as he liked.
+
+As to the management of their children, his theory was much better than
+his wife's, and his practice not so bad.  "I could manage them very
+well, if it were not for Mary's interference," was what Anne often
+heard him say, and had a good deal of faith in; but when listening in
+turn to Mary's reproach of "Charles spoils the children so that I
+cannot get them into any order," she never had the smallest temptation
+to say, "Very true."
+
+One of the least agreeable circumstances of her residence there was her
+being treated with too much confidence by all parties, and being too
+much in the secret of the complaints of each house.  Known to have some
+influence with her sister, she was continually requested, or at least
+receiving hints to exert it, beyond what was practicable.  "I wish you
+could persuade Mary not to be always fancying herself ill," was
+Charles's language; and, in an unhappy mood, thus spoke Mary: "I do
+believe if Charles were to see me dying, he would not think there was
+anything the matter with me.  I am sure, Anne, if you would, you might
+persuade him that I really am very ill--a great deal worse than I ever
+own."
+
+Mary's declaration was, "I hate sending the children to the Great
+House, though their grandmamma is always wanting to see them, for she
+humours and indulges them to such a degree, and gives them so much
+trash and sweet things, that they are sure to come back sick and cross
+for the rest of the day."  And Mrs Musgrove took the first opportunity
+of being alone with Anne, to say, "Oh! Miss Anne, I cannot help wishing
+Mrs Charles had a little of your method with those children.  They are
+quite different creatures with you!  But to be sure, in general they
+are so spoilt!  It is a pity you cannot put your sister in the way of
+managing them.  They are as fine healthy children as ever were seen,
+poor little dears! without partiality; but Mrs Charles knows no more
+how they should be treated--!  Bless me! how troublesome they are
+sometimes.  I assure you, Miss Anne, it prevents my wishing to see them
+at our house so often as I otherwise should.  I believe Mrs Charles is
+not quite pleased with my not inviting them oftener; but you know it is
+very bad to have children with one that one is obligated to be checking
+every moment; "don't do this," and "don't do that;" or that one can
+only keep in tolerable order by more cake than is good for them."
+
+She had this communication, moreover, from Mary.  "Mrs Musgrove thinks
+all her servants so steady, that it would be high treason to call it in
+question; but I am sure, without exaggeration, that her upper
+house-maid and laundry-maid, instead of being in their business, are
+gadding about the village, all day long.  I meet them wherever I go;
+and I declare, I never go twice into my nursery without seeing
+something of them.  If Jemima were not the trustiest, steadiest
+creature in the world, it would be enough to spoil her; for she tells
+me, they are always tempting her to take a walk with them." And on Mrs
+Musgrove's side, it was, "I make a rule of never interfering in any of
+my daughter-in-law's concerns, for I know it would not do; but I shall
+tell you, Miss Anne, because you may be able to set things to rights,
+that I have no very good opinion of Mrs Charles's nursery-maid: I hear
+strange stories of her; she is always upon the gad; and from my own
+knowledge, I can declare, she is such a fine-dressing lady, that she is
+enough to ruin any servants she comes near.  Mrs Charles quite swears
+by her, I know; but I just give you this hint, that you may be upon the
+watch; because, if you see anything amiss, you need not be afraid of
+mentioning it."
+
+Again, it was Mary's complaint, that Mrs Musgrove was very apt not to
+give her the precedence that was her due, when they dined at the Great
+House with other families; and she did not see any reason why she was
+to be considered so much at home as to lose her place.  And one day
+when Anne was walking with only the Musgroves, one of them after
+talking of rank, people of rank, and jealousy of rank, said, "I have no
+scruple of observing to you, how nonsensical some persons are about
+their place, because all the world knows how easy and indifferent you
+are about it; but I wish anybody could give Mary a hint that it would
+be a great deal better if she were not so very tenacious, especially if
+she would not be always putting herself forward to take place of mamma.
+Nobody doubts her right to have precedence of mamma, but it would be
+more becoming in her not to be always insisting on it.  It is not that
+mamma cares about it the least in the world, but I know it is taken
+notice of by many persons."
+
+How was Anne to set all these matters to rights?  She could do little
+more than listen patiently, soften every grievance, and excuse each to
+the other; give them all hints of the forbearance necessary between
+such near neighbours, and make those hints broadest which were meant
+for her sister's benefit.
+
+In all other respects, her visit began and proceeded very well.  Her
+own spirits improved by change of place and subject, by being removed
+three miles from Kellynch; Mary's ailments lessened by having a
+constant companion, and their daily intercourse with the other family,
+since there was neither superior affection, confidence, nor employment
+in the cottage, to be interrupted by it, was rather an advantage.  It
+was certainly carried nearly as far as possible, for they met every
+morning, and hardly ever spent an evening asunder; but she believed
+they should not have done so well without the sight of Mr and Mrs
+Musgrove's respectable forms in the usual places, or without the
+talking, laughing, and singing of their daughters.
+
+She played a great deal better than either of the Miss Musgroves, but
+having no voice, no knowledge of the harp, and no fond parents, to sit
+by and fancy themselves delighted, her performance was little thought
+of, only out of civility, or to refresh the others, as she was well
+aware.  She knew that when she played she was giving pleasure only to
+herself; but this was no new sensation.  Excepting one short period of
+her life, she had never, since the age of fourteen, never since the
+loss of her dear mother, known the happiness of being listened to, or
+encouraged by any just appreciation or real taste.  In music she had
+been always used to feel alone in the world; and Mr and Mrs Musgrove's
+fond partiality for their own daughters' performance, and total
+indifference to any other person's, gave her much more pleasure for
+their sakes, than mortification for her own.
+
+The party at the Great House was sometimes increased by other company.
+The neighbourhood was not large, but the Musgroves were visited by
+everybody, and had more dinner-parties, and more callers, more visitors
+by invitation and by chance, than any other family.  They were more
+completely popular.
+
+The girls were wild for dancing; and the evenings ended, occasionally,
+in an unpremeditated little ball.  There was a family of cousins within
+a walk of Uppercross, in less affluent circumstances, who depended on
+the Musgroves for all their pleasures:  they would come at any time,
+and help play at anything, or dance anywhere; and Anne, very much
+preferring the office of musician to a more active post, played country
+dances to them by the hour together; a kindness which always
+recommended her musical powers to the notice of Mr and Mrs Musgrove
+more than anything else, and often drew this compliment;--"Well done,
+Miss Anne! very well done indeed!  Lord bless me!  how those little
+fingers of yours fly about!"
+
+So passed the first three weeks.  Michaelmas came; and now Anne's heart
+must be in Kellynch again.  A beloved home made over to others; all the
+precious rooms and furniture, groves, and prospects, beginning to own
+other eyes and other limbs!  She could not think of much else on the
+29th of September; and she had this sympathetic touch in the evening
+from Mary, who, on having occasion to note down the day of the month,
+exclaimed, "Dear me, is not this the day the Crofts were to come to
+Kellynch?  I am glad I did not think of it before.  How low it makes
+me!"
+
+The Crofts took possession with true naval alertness, and were to be
+visited.  Mary deplored the necessity for herself.  "Nobody knew how
+much she should suffer.  She should put it off as long as she could;"
+but was not easy till she had talked Charles into driving her over on
+an early day, and was in a very animated, comfortable state of
+imaginary agitation, when she came back.  Anne had very sincerely
+rejoiced in there being no means of her going.  She wished, however to
+see the Crofts, and was glad to be within when the visit was returned.
+They came:  the master of the house was not at home, but the two
+sisters were together; and as it chanced that Mrs Croft fell to the
+share of Anne, while the Admiral sat by Mary, and made himself very
+agreeable by his good-humoured notice of her little boys, she was well
+able to watch for a likeness, and if it failed her in the features, to
+catch it in the voice, or in the turn of sentiment and expression.
+
+Mrs Croft, though neither tall nor fat, had a squareness, uprightness,
+and vigour of form, which gave importance to her person.  She had
+bright dark eyes, good teeth, and altogether an agreeable face; though
+her reddened and weather-beaten complexion, the consequence of her
+having been almost as much at sea as her husband, made her seem to have
+lived some years longer in the world than her real eight-and-thirty.
+Her manners were open, easy, and decided, like one who had no distrust
+of herself, and no doubts of what to do; without any approach to
+coarseness, however, or any want of good humour.  Anne gave her credit,
+indeed, for feelings of great consideration towards herself, in all
+that related to Kellynch, and it pleased her: especially, as she had
+satisfied herself in the very first half minute, in the instant even of
+introduction, that there was not the smallest symptom of any knowledge
+or suspicion on Mrs Croft's side, to give a bias of any sort.  She was
+quite easy on that head, and consequently full of strength and courage,
+till for a moment electrified by Mrs Croft's suddenly saying,--
+
+"It was you, and not your sister, I find, that my brother had the
+pleasure of being acquainted with, when he was in this country."
+
+Anne hoped she had outlived the age of blushing; but the age of emotion
+she certainly had not.
+
+"Perhaps you may not have heard that he is married?" added Mrs Croft.
+
+She could now answer as she ought; and was happy to feel, when Mrs
+Croft's next words explained it to be Mr Wentworth of whom she spoke,
+that she had said nothing which might not do for either brother. She
+immediately felt how reasonable it was, that Mrs Croft should be
+thinking and speaking of Edward, and not of Frederick; and with shame
+at her own forgetfulness applied herself to the knowledge of their
+former neighbour's present state with proper interest.
+
+The rest was all tranquillity; till, just as they were moving, she
+heard the Admiral say to Mary--
+
+"We are expecting a brother of Mrs Croft's here soon; I dare say you
+know him by name."
+
+He was cut short by the eager attacks of the little boys, clinging to
+him like an old friend, and declaring he should not go; and being too
+much engrossed by proposals of carrying them away in his coat pockets,
+&c., to have another moment for finishing or recollecting what he had
+begun, Anne was left to persuade herself, as well as she could, that
+the same brother must still be in question.  She could not, however,
+reach such a degree of certainty, as not to be anxious to hear whether
+anything had been said on the subject at the other house, where the
+Crofts had previously been calling.
+
+The folks of the Great House were to spend the evening of this day at
+the Cottage; and it being now too late in the year for such visits to
+be made on foot, the coach was beginning to be listened for, when the
+youngest Miss Musgrove walked in.  That she was coming to apologize,
+and that they should have to spend the evening by themselves, was the
+first black idea; and Mary was quite ready to be affronted, when Louisa
+made all right by saying, that she only came on foot, to leave more
+room for the harp, which was bringing in the carriage.
+
+"And I will tell you our reason," she added, "and all about it.  I am
+come on to give you notice, that papa and mamma are out of spirits this
+evening, especially mamma; she is thinking so much of poor Richard!
+And we agreed it would be best to have the harp, for it seems to amuse
+her more than the piano-forte.  I will tell you why she is out of
+spirits.  When the Crofts called this morning, (they called here
+afterwards, did not they?), they happened to say, that her brother,
+Captain Wentworth, is just returned to England, or paid off, or
+something, and is coming to see them almost directly; and most
+unluckily it came into mamma's head, when they were gone, that
+Wentworth, or something very like it, was the name of poor Richard's
+captain at one time; I do not know when or where, but a great while
+before he died, poor fellow!  And upon looking over his letters and
+things, she found it was so, and is perfectly sure that this must be
+the very man, and her head is quite full of it, and of poor Richard!
+So we must be as merry as we can, that she may not be dwelling upon
+such gloomy things."
+
+The real circumstances of this pathetic piece of family history were,
+that the Musgroves had had the ill fortune of a very troublesome,
+hopeless son; and the good fortune to lose him before he reached his
+twentieth year; that he had been sent to sea because he was stupid and
+unmanageable on shore; that he had been very little cared for at any
+time by his family, though quite as much as he deserved; seldom heard
+of, and scarcely at all regretted, when the intelligence of his death
+abroad had worked its way to Uppercross, two years before.
+
+He had, in fact, though his sisters were now doing all they could for
+him, by calling him "poor Richard," been nothing better than a
+thick-headed, unfeeling, unprofitable Dick Musgrove, who had never done
+anything to entitle himself to more than the abbreviation of his name,
+living or dead.
+
+He had been several years at sea, and had, in the course of those
+removals to which all midshipmen are liable, and especially such
+midshipmen as every captain wishes to get rid of, been six months on
+board Captain Frederick Wentworth's frigate, the Laconia; and from the
+Laconia he had, under the influence of his captain, written the only
+two letters which his father and mother had ever received from him
+during the whole of his absence; that is to say, the only two
+disinterested letters; all the rest had been mere applications for
+money.
+
+In each letter he had spoken well of his captain; but yet, so little
+were they in the habit of attending to such matters, so unobservant and
+incurious were they as to the names of men or ships, that it had made
+scarcely any impression at the time; and that Mrs Musgrove should have
+been suddenly struck, this very day, with a recollection of the name of
+Wentworth, as connected with her son, seemed one of those extraordinary
+bursts of mind which do sometimes occur.
+
+She had gone to her letters, and found it all as she supposed; and the
+re-perusal of these letters, after so long an interval, her poor son
+gone for ever, and all the strength of his faults forgotten, had
+affected her spirits exceedingly, and thrown her into greater grief for
+him than she had known on first hearing of his death.  Mr Musgrove was,
+in a lesser degree, affected likewise; and when they reached the
+cottage, they were evidently in want, first, of being listened to anew
+on this subject, and afterwards, of all the relief which cheerful
+companions could give them.
+
+To hear them talking so much of Captain Wentworth, repeating his name
+so often, puzzling over past years, and at last ascertaining that it
+might, that it probably would, turn out to be the very same Captain
+Wentworth whom they recollected meeting, once or twice, after their
+coming back from Clifton--a very fine young man--but they could not say
+whether it was seven or eight years ago, was a new sort of trial to
+Anne's nerves.  She found, however, that it was one to which she must
+inure herself.  Since he actually was expected in the country, she must
+teach herself to be insensible on such points.  And not only did it
+appear that he was expected, and speedily, but the Musgroves, in their
+warm gratitude for the kindness he had shewn poor Dick, and very high
+respect for his character, stamped as it was by poor Dick's having been
+six months under his care, and mentioning him in strong, though not
+perfectly well-spelt praise, as "a fine dashing felow, only two
+perticular about the schoolmaster," were bent on introducing
+themselves, and seeking his acquaintance, as soon as they could hear of
+his arrival.
+
+The resolution of doing so helped to form the comfort of their evening.
+
+
+
+Chapter 7
+
+
+A very few days more, and Captain Wentworth was known to be at
+Kellynch, and Mr Musgrove had called on him, and come back warm in his
+praise, and he was engaged with the Crofts to dine at Uppercross, by
+the end of another week.  It had been a great disappointment to Mr
+Musgrove to find that no earlier day could be fixed, so impatient was
+he to shew his gratitude, by seeing Captain Wentworth under his own
+roof, and welcoming him to all that was strongest and best in his
+cellars.  But a week must pass; only a week, in Anne's reckoning, and
+then, she supposed, they must meet; and soon she began to wish that she
+could feel secure even for a week.
+
+Captain Wentworth made a very early return to Mr Musgrove's civility,
+and she was all but calling there in the same half hour.  She and Mary
+were actually setting forward for the Great House, where, as she
+afterwards learnt, they must inevitably have found him, when they were
+stopped by the eldest boy's being at that moment brought home in
+consequence of a bad fall.  The child's situation put the visit
+entirely aside; but she could not hear of her escape with indifference,
+even in the midst of the serious anxiety which they afterwards felt on
+his account.
+
+His collar-bone was found to be dislocated, and such injury received in
+the back, as roused the most alarming ideas.  It was an afternoon of
+distress, and Anne had every thing to do at once; the apothecary to
+send for, the father to have pursued and informed, the mother to
+support and keep from hysterics, the servants to control, the youngest
+child to banish, and the poor suffering one to attend and soothe;
+besides sending, as soon as she recollected it, proper notice to the
+other house, which brought her an accession rather of frightened,
+enquiring companions, than of very useful assistants.
+
+Her brother's return was the first comfort; he could take best care of
+his wife; and the second blessing was the arrival of the apothecary.
+Till he came and had examined the child, their apprehensions were the
+worse for being vague; they suspected great injury, but knew not where;
+but now the collar-bone was soon replaced, and though Mr Robinson felt
+and felt, and rubbed, and looked grave, and spoke low words both to the
+father and the aunt, still they were all to hope the best, and to be
+able to part and eat their dinner in tolerable ease of mind; and then
+it was, just before they parted, that the two young aunts were able so
+far to digress from their nephew's state, as to give the information of
+Captain Wentworth's visit; staying five minutes behind their father and
+mother, to endeavour to express how perfectly delighted they were with
+him, how much handsomer, how infinitely more agreeable they thought him
+than any individual among their male acquaintance, who had been at all
+a favourite before.  How glad they had been to hear papa invite him to
+stay dinner, how sorry when he said it was quite out of his power, and
+how glad again when he had promised in reply to papa and mamma's
+farther pressing invitations to come and dine with them on the
+morrow--actually on the morrow; and he had promised it in so pleasant a
+manner, as if he felt all the motive of their attention just as he
+ought.  And in short, he had looked and said everything with such
+exquisite grace, that they could assure them all, their heads were both
+turned by him; and off they ran, quite as full of glee as of love, and
+apparently more full of Captain Wentworth than of little Charles.
+
+The same story and the same raptures were repeated, when the two girls
+came with their father, through the gloom of the evening, to make
+enquiries; and Mr Musgrove, no longer under the first uneasiness about
+his heir, could add his confirmation and praise, and hope there would
+be now no occasion for putting Captain Wentworth off, and only be sorry
+to think that the cottage party, probably, would not like to leave the
+little boy, to give him the meeting.  "Oh no; as to leaving the little
+boy," both father and mother were in much too strong and recent alarm
+to bear the thought; and Anne, in the joy of the escape, could not help
+adding her warm protestations to theirs.
+
+Charles Musgrove, indeed, afterwards, shewed more of inclination; "the
+child was going on so well, and he wished so much to be introduced to
+Captain Wentworth, that, perhaps, he might join them in the evening; he
+would not dine from home, but he might walk in for half an hour." But
+in this he was eagerly opposed by his wife, with "Oh! no, indeed,
+Charles, I cannot bear to have you go away.  Only think if anything
+should happen?"
+
+The child had a good night, and was going on well the next day.  It
+must be a work of time to ascertain that no injury had been done to the
+spine; but Mr Robinson found nothing to increase alarm, and Charles
+Musgrove began, consequently, to feel no necessity for longer
+confinement.  The child was to be kept in bed and amused as quietly as
+possible; but what was there for a father to do?  This was quite a
+female case, and it would be highly absurd in him, who could be of no
+use at home, to shut himself up.  His father very much wished him to
+meet Captain Wentworth, and there being no sufficient reason against
+it, he ought to go; and it ended in his making a bold, public
+declaration, when he came in from shooting, of his meaning to dress
+directly, and dine at the other house.
+
+"Nothing can be going on better than the child," said he; "so I told my
+father, just now, that I would come, and he thought me quite right.
+Your sister being with you, my love, I have no scruple at all.  You
+would not like to leave him yourself, but you see I can be of no use.
+Anne will send for me if anything is the matter."
+
+Husbands and wives generally understand when opposition will be vain.
+Mary knew, from Charles's manner of speaking, that he was quite
+determined on going, and that it would be of no use to teaze him.  She
+said nothing, therefore, till he was out of the room, but as soon as
+there was only Anne to hear--
+
+"So you and I are to be left to shift by ourselves, with this poor sick
+child; and not a creature coming near us all the evening!  I knew how
+it would be.  This is always my luck.  If there is anything
+disagreeable going on men are always sure to get out of it, and Charles
+is as bad as any of them.  Very unfeeling!  I must say it is very
+unfeeling of him to be running away from his poor little boy.  Talks of
+his being going on so well!  How does he know that he is going on well,
+or that there may not be a sudden change half an hour hence?  I did not
+think Charles would have been so unfeeling.  So here he is to go away
+and enjoy himself, and because I am the poor mother, I am not to be
+allowed to stir; and yet, I am sure, I am more unfit than anybody else
+to be about the child.  My being the mother is the very reason why my
+feelings should not be tried.  I am not at all equal to it.  You saw
+how hysterical I was yesterday."
+
+"But that was only the effect of the suddenness of your alarm--of the
+shock.  You will not be hysterical again.  I dare say we shall have
+nothing to distress us.  I perfectly understand Mr Robinson's
+directions, and have no fears; and indeed, Mary, I cannot wonder at
+your husband.  Nursing does not belong to a man; it is not his
+province.  A sick child is always the mother's property:  her own
+feelings generally make it so."
+
+"I hope I am as fond of my child as any mother, but I do not know that
+I am of any more use in the sick-room than Charles, for I cannot be
+always scolding and teazing the poor child when it is ill; and you saw,
+this morning, that if I told him to keep quiet, he was sure to begin
+kicking about.  I have not nerves for the sort of thing."
+
+"But, could you be comfortable yourself, to be spending the whole
+evening away from the poor boy?"
+
+"Yes; you see his papa can, and why should not I?  Jemima is so
+careful; and she could send us word every hour how he was.  I really
+think Charles might as well have told his father we would all come.  I
+am not more alarmed about little Charles now than he is.  I was
+dreadfully alarmed yesterday, but the case is very different to-day."
+
+"Well, if you do not think it too late to give notice for yourself,
+suppose you were to go, as well as your husband.  Leave little Charles
+to my care.  Mr and Mrs Musgrove cannot think it wrong while I remain
+with him."
+
+"Are you serious?" cried Mary, her eyes brightening.  "Dear me!  that's
+a very good thought, very good, indeed.  To be sure, I may just as well
+go as not, for I am of no use at home--am I?  and it only harasses me.
+You, who have not a mother's feelings, are a great deal the properest
+person.  You can make little Charles do anything; he always minds you
+at a word.  It will be a great deal better than leaving him only with
+Jemima.  Oh! I shall certainly go; I am sure I ought if I can, quite as
+much as Charles, for they want me excessively to be acquainted with
+Captain Wentworth, and I know you do not mind being left alone.  An
+excellent thought of yours, indeed, Anne.  I will go and tell Charles,
+and get ready directly.  You can send for us, you know, at a moment's
+notice, if anything is the matter; but I dare say there will be nothing
+to alarm you.  I should not go, you may be sure, if I did not feel
+quite at ease about my dear child."
+
+The next moment she was tapping at her husband's dressing-room door,
+and as Anne followed her up stairs, she was in time for the whole
+conversation, which began with Mary's saying, in a tone of great
+exultation--
+
+"I mean to go with you, Charles, for I am of no more use at home than
+you are.  If I were to shut myself up for ever with the child, I should
+not be able to persuade him to do anything he did not like.  Anne will
+stay; Anne undertakes to stay at home and take care of him.  It is
+Anne's own proposal, and so I shall go with you, which will be a great
+deal better, for I have not dined at the other house since Tuesday."
+
+"This is very kind of Anne," was her husband's answer, "and I should be
+very glad to have you go; but it seems rather hard that she should be
+left at home by herself, to nurse our sick child."
+
+Anne was now at hand to take up her own cause, and the sincerity of her
+manner being soon sufficient to convince him, where conviction was at
+least very agreeable, he had no farther scruples as to her being left
+to dine alone, though he still wanted her to join them in the evening,
+when the child might be at rest for the night, and kindly urged her to
+let him come and fetch her, but she was quite unpersuadable; and this
+being the case, she had ere long the pleasure of seeing them set off
+together in high spirits.  They were gone, she hoped, to be happy,
+however oddly constructed such happiness might seem; as for herself,
+she was left with as many sensations of comfort, as were, perhaps, ever
+likely to be hers.  She knew herself to be of the first utility to the
+child; and what was it to her if Frederick Wentworth were only half a
+mile distant, making himself agreeable to others?
+
+She would have liked to know how he felt as to a meeting.  Perhaps
+indifferent, if indifference could exist under such circumstances.  He
+must be either indifferent or unwilling.  Had he wished ever to see her
+again, he need not have waited till this time; he would have done what
+she could not but believe that in his place she should have done long
+ago, when events had been early giving him the independence which alone
+had been wanting.
+
+Her brother and sister came back delighted with their new acquaintance,
+and their visit in general.  There had been music, singing, talking,
+laughing, all that was most agreeable; charming manners in Captain
+Wentworth, no shyness or reserve; they seemed all to know each other
+perfectly, and he was coming the very next morning to shoot with
+Charles.  He was to come to breakfast, but not at the Cottage, though
+that had been proposed at first; but then he had been pressed to come
+to the Great House instead, and he seemed afraid of being in Mrs
+Charles Musgrove's way, on account of the child, and therefore,
+somehow, they hardly knew how, it ended in Charles's being to meet him
+to breakfast at his father's.
+
+Anne understood it.  He wished to avoid seeing her.  He had inquired
+after her, she found, slightly, as might suit a former slight
+acquaintance, seeming to acknowledge such as she had acknowledged,
+actuated, perhaps, by the same view of escaping introduction when they
+were to meet.
+
+The morning hours of the Cottage were always later than those of the
+other house, and on the morrow the difference was so great that Mary
+and Anne were not more than beginning breakfast when Charles came in to
+say that they were just setting off, that he was come for his dogs,
+that his sisters were following with Captain Wentworth; his sisters
+meaning to visit Mary and the child, and Captain Wentworth proposing
+also to wait on her for a few minutes if not inconvenient; and though
+Charles had answered for the child's being in no such state as could
+make it inconvenient, Captain Wentworth would not be satisfied without
+his running on to give notice.
+
+Mary, very much gratified by this attention, was delighted to receive
+him, while a thousand feelings rushed on Anne, of which this was the
+most consoling, that it would soon be over.  And it was soon over.  In
+two minutes after Charles's preparation, the others appeared; they were
+in the drawing-room.  Her eye half met Captain Wentworth's, a bow, a
+curtsey passed; she heard his voice; he talked to Mary, said all that
+was right, said something to the Miss Musgroves, enough to mark an easy
+footing; the room seemed full, full of persons and voices, but a few
+minutes ended it.  Charles shewed himself at the window, all was ready,
+their visitor had bowed and was gone, the Miss Musgroves were gone too,
+suddenly resolving to walk to the end of the village with the
+sportsmen:  the room was cleared, and Anne might finish her breakfast
+as she could.
+
+"It is over! it is over!" she repeated to herself again and again, in
+nervous gratitude.  "The worst is over!"
+
+Mary talked, but she could not attend.  She had seen him.  They had
+met.  They had been once more in the same room.
+
+Soon, however, she began to reason with herself, and try to be feeling
+less.  Eight years, almost eight years had passed, since all had been
+given up.  How absurd to be resuming the agitation which such an
+interval had banished into distance and indistinctness!  What might not
+eight years do?  Events of every description, changes, alienations,
+removals--all, all must be comprised in it, and oblivion of the past--
+how natural, how certain too!  It included nearly a third part of her
+own life.
+
+Alas! with all her reasoning, she found, that to retentive feelings
+eight years may be little more than nothing.
+
+Now, how were his sentiments to be read?  Was this like wishing to
+avoid her?  And the next moment she was hating herself for the folly
+which asked the question.
+
+On one other question which perhaps her utmost wisdom might not have
+prevented, she was soon spared all suspense; for, after the Miss
+Musgroves had returned and finished their visit at the Cottage she had
+this spontaneous information from Mary:--
+
+"Captain Wentworth is not very gallant by you, Anne, though he was so
+attentive to me.  Henrietta asked him what he thought of you, when they
+went away, and he said, 'You were so altered he should not have known
+you again.'"
+
+Mary had no feelings to make her respect her sister's in a common way,
+but she was perfectly unsuspicious of being inflicting any peculiar
+wound.
+
+"Altered beyond his knowledge."  Anne fully submitted, in silent, deep
+mortification.  Doubtless it was so, and she could take no revenge, for
+he was not altered, or not for the worse.  She had already acknowledged
+it to herself, and she could not think differently, let him think of
+her as he would.  No:  the years which had destroyed her youth and
+bloom had only given him a more glowing, manly, open look, in no
+respect lessening his personal advantages.  She had seen the same
+Frederick Wentworth.
+
+"So altered that he should not have known her again!"  These were words
+which could not but dwell with her.  Yet she soon began to rejoice that
+she had heard them.  They were of sobering tendency; they allayed
+agitation; they composed, and consequently must make her happier.
+
+Frederick Wentworth had used such words, or something like them, but
+without an idea that they would be carried round to her.  He had
+thought her wretchedly altered, and in the first moment of appeal, had
+spoken as he felt.  He had not forgiven Anne Elliot.  She had used him
+ill, deserted and disappointed him; and worse, she had shewn a
+feebleness of character in doing so, which his own decided, confident
+temper could not endure.  She had given him up to oblige others.  It
+had been the effect of over-persuasion.  It had been weakness and
+timidity.
+
+He had been most warmly attached to her, and had never seen a woman
+since whom he thought her equal; but, except from some natural
+sensation of curiosity, he had no desire of meeting her again.  Her
+power with him was gone for ever.
+
+It was now his object to marry.  He was rich, and being turned on
+shore, fully intended to settle as soon as he could be properly
+tempted; actually looking round, ready to fall in love with all the
+speed which a clear head and a quick taste could allow.  He had a heart
+for either of the Miss Musgroves, if they could catch it; a heart, in
+short, for any pleasing young woman who came in his way, excepting Anne
+Elliot.  This was his only secret exception, when he said to his
+sister, in answer to her suppositions:--
+
+"Yes, here I am, Sophia, quite ready to make a foolish match.  Anybody
+between fifteen and thirty may have me for asking.  A little beauty,
+and a few smiles, and a few compliments to the navy, and I am a lost
+man.  Should not this be enough for a sailor, who has had no society
+among women to make him nice?"
+
+He said it, she knew, to be contradicted.  His bright proud eye spoke
+the conviction that he was nice; and Anne Elliot was not out of his
+thoughts, when he more seriously described the woman he should wish to
+meet with.  "A strong mind, with sweetness of manner," made the first
+and the last of the description.
+
+"That is the woman I want," said he.  "Something a little inferior I
+shall of course put up with, but it must not be much.  If I am a fool,
+I shall be a fool indeed, for I have thought on the subject more than
+most men."
+
+
+
+Chapter 8
+
+
+From this time Captain Wentworth and Anne Elliot were repeatedly in the
+same circle.  They were soon dining in company together at Mr
+Musgrove's, for the little boy's state could no longer supply his aunt
+with a pretence for absenting herself; and this was but the beginning
+of other dinings and other meetings.
+
+Whether former feelings were to be renewed must be brought to the
+proof; former times must undoubtedly be brought to the recollection of
+each; they could not but be reverted to; the year of their engagement
+could not but be named by him, in the little narratives or descriptions
+which conversation called forth.  His profession qualified him, his
+disposition lead him, to talk; and "That was in the year six;" "That
+happened before I went to sea in the year six," occurred in the course
+of the first evening they spent together: and though his voice did not
+falter, and though she had no reason to suppose his eye wandering
+towards her while he spoke, Anne felt the utter impossibility, from her
+knowledge of his mind, that he could be unvisited by remembrance any
+more than herself.  There must be the same immediate association of
+thought, though she was very far from conceiving it to be of equal pain.
+
+They had no conversation together, no intercourse but what the
+commonest civility required.  Once so much to each other!  Now nothing!
+There had been a time, when of all the large party now filling the
+drawing-room at Uppercross, they would have found it most difficult to
+cease to speak to one another.  With the exception, perhaps, of Admiral
+and Mrs Croft, who seemed particularly attached and happy, (Anne could
+allow no other exceptions even among the married couples), there could
+have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so
+in unison, no countenances so beloved.  Now they were as strangers;
+nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted.  It
+was a perpetual estrangement.
+
+When he talked, she heard the same voice, and discerned the same mind.
+There was a very general ignorance of all naval matters throughout the
+party; and he was very much questioned, and especially by the two Miss
+Musgroves, who seemed hardly to have any eyes but for him, as to the
+manner of living on board, daily regulations, food, hours, &c., and
+their surprise at his accounts, at learning the degree of accommodation
+and arrangement which was practicable, drew from him some pleasant
+ridicule, which reminded Anne of the early days when she too had been
+ignorant, and she too had been accused of supposing sailors to be
+living on board without anything to eat, or any cook to dress it if
+there were, or any servant to wait, or any knife and fork to use.
+
+From thus listening and thinking, she was roused by a whisper of Mrs
+Musgrove's who, overcome by fond regrets, could not help saying--
+
+"Ah! Miss Anne, if it had pleased Heaven to spare my poor son, I dare
+say he would have been just such another by this time."
+
+Anne suppressed a smile, and listened kindly, while Mrs Musgrove
+relieved her heart a little more; and for a few minutes, therefore,
+could not keep pace with the conversation of the others.
+
+When she could let her attention take its natural course again, she
+found the Miss Musgroves just fetching the Navy List (their own navy
+list, the first that had ever been at Uppercross), and sitting down
+together to pore over it, with the professed view of finding out the
+ships that Captain Wentworth had commanded.
+
+"Your first was the Asp, I remember; we will look for the Asp."
+
+"You will not find her there.  Quite worn out and broken up.  I was the
+last man who commanded her.  Hardly fit for service then.  Reported fit
+for home service for a year or two, and so I was sent off to the West
+Indies."
+
+The girls looked all amazement.
+
+"The Admiralty," he continued, "entertain themselves now and then, with
+sending a few hundred men to sea, in a ship not fit to be employed.
+But they have a great many to provide for; and among the thousands that
+may just as well go to the bottom as not, it is impossible for them to
+distinguish the very set who may be least missed."
+
+"Phoo! phoo!" cried the Admiral, "what stuff these young fellows talk!
+Never was a better sloop than the Asp in her day.  For an old built
+sloop, you would not see her equal.  Lucky fellow to get her!  He knows
+there must have been twenty better men than himself applying for her at
+the same time.  Lucky fellow to get anything so soon, with no more
+interest than his."
+
+"I felt my luck, Admiral, I assure you;" replied Captain Wentworth,
+seriously.  "I was as well satisfied with my appointment as you can
+desire.  It was a great object with me at that time to be at sea; a
+very great object, I wanted to be doing something."
+
+"To be sure you did.  What should a young fellow like you do ashore for
+half a year together?  If a man had not a wife, he soon wants to be
+afloat again."
+
+"But, Captain Wentworth," cried Louisa, "how vexed you must have been
+when you came to the Asp, to see what an old thing they had given you."
+
+"I knew pretty well what she was before that day;" said he, smiling.
+"I had no more discoveries to make than you would have as to the
+fashion and strength of any old pelisse, which you had seen lent about
+among half your acquaintance ever since you could remember, and which
+at last, on some very wet day, is lent to yourself.  Ah! she was a dear
+old Asp to me.  She did all that I wanted.  I knew she would.  I knew
+that we should either go to the bottom together, or that she would be
+the making of me; and I never had two days of foul weather all the time
+I was at sea in her; and after taking privateers enough to be very
+entertaining, I had the good luck in my passage home the next autumn,
+to fall in with the very French frigate I wanted.  I brought her into
+Plymouth; and here another instance of luck.  We had not been six hours
+in the Sound, when a gale came on, which lasted four days and nights,
+and which would have done for poor old Asp in half the time; our touch
+with the Great Nation not having much improved our condition.
+Four-and-twenty hours later, and I should only have been a gallant
+Captain Wentworth, in a small paragraph at one corner of the
+newspapers; and being lost in only a sloop, nobody would have thought
+about me." Anne's shudderings were to herself alone; but the Miss
+Musgroves could be as open as they were sincere, in their exclamations
+of pity and horror.
+
+"And so then, I suppose," said Mrs Musgrove, in a low voice, as if
+thinking aloud, "so then he went away to the Laconia, and there he met
+with our poor boy. Charles, my dear," (beckoning him to her), "do ask
+Captain Wentworth where it was he first met with your poor brother.  I
+always forgot."
+
+"It was at Gibraltar, mother, I know.  Dick had been left ill at
+Gibraltar, with a recommendation from his former captain to Captain
+Wentworth."
+
+"Oh! but, Charles, tell Captain Wentworth, he need not be afraid of
+mentioning poor Dick before me, for it would be rather a pleasure to
+hear him talked of by such a good friend."
+
+Charles, being somewhat more mindful of the probabilities of the case,
+only nodded in reply, and walked away.
+
+The girls were now hunting for the Laconia; and Captain Wentworth could
+not deny himself the pleasure of taking the precious volume into his
+own hands to save them the trouble, and once more read aloud the little
+statement of her name and rate, and present non-commissioned class,
+observing over it that she too had been one of the best friends man
+ever had.
+
+"Ah! those were pleasant days when I had the Laconia!  How fast I made
+money in her.  A friend of mine and I had such a lovely cruise together
+off the Western Islands.  Poor Harville, sister!  You know how much he
+wanted money:  worse than myself.  He had a wife.  Excellent fellow.  I
+shall never forget his happiness.  He felt it all, so much for her
+sake.  I wished for him again the next summer, when I had still the
+same luck in the Mediterranean."
+
+"And I am sure, Sir," said Mrs Musgrove, "it was a lucky day for us,
+when you were put captain into that ship.  We shall never forget what
+you did."
+
+Her feelings made her speak low; and Captain Wentworth, hearing only in
+part, and probably not having Dick Musgrove at all near his thoughts,
+looked rather in suspense, and as if waiting for more.
+
+"My brother," whispered one of the girls; "mamma is thinking of poor
+Richard."
+
+"Poor dear fellow!" continued Mrs Musgrove; "he was grown so steady,
+and such an excellent correspondent, while he was under your care!  Ah!
+it would have been a happy thing, if he had never left you.  I assure
+you, Captain Wentworth, we are very sorry he ever left you."
+
+There was a momentary expression in Captain Wentworth's face at this
+speech, a certain glance of his bright eye, and curl of his handsome
+mouth, which convinced Anne, that instead of sharing in Mrs Musgrove's
+kind wishes, as to her son, he had probably been at some pains to get
+rid of him; but it was too transient an indulgence of self-amusement to
+be detected by any who understood him less than herself; in another
+moment he was perfectly collected and serious, and almost instantly
+afterwards coming up to the sofa, on which she and Mrs Musgrove were
+sitting, took a place by the latter, and entered into conversation with
+her, in a low voice, about her son, doing it with so much sympathy and
+natural grace, as shewed the kindest consideration for all that was
+real and unabsurd in the parent's feelings.
+
+They were actually on the same sofa, for Mrs Musgrove had most readily
+made room for him; they were divided only by Mrs Musgrove.  It was no
+insignificant barrier, indeed.  Mrs Musgrove was of a comfortable,
+substantial size, infinitely more fitted by nature to express good
+cheer and good humour, than tenderness and sentiment; and while the
+agitations of Anne's slender form, and pensive face, may be considered
+as very completely screened, Captain Wentworth should be allowed some
+credit for the self-command with which he attended to her large fat
+sighings over the destiny of a son, whom alive nobody had cared for.
+
+Personal size and mental sorrow have certainly no necessary
+proportions.  A large bulky figure has as good a right to be in deep
+affliction, as the most graceful set of limbs in the world.  But, fair
+or not fair, there are unbecoming conjunctions, which reason will
+patronize in vain--which taste cannot tolerate--which ridicule will
+seize.
+
+The Admiral, after taking two or three refreshing turns about the room
+with his hands behind him, being called to order by his wife, now came
+up to Captain Wentworth, and without any observation of what he might
+be interrupting, thinking only of his own thoughts, began with--
+
+"If you had been a week later at Lisbon, last spring, Frederick, you
+would have been asked to give a passage to Lady Mary Grierson and her
+daughters."
+
+"Should I?  I am glad I was not a week later then."
+
+The Admiral abused him for his want of gallantry.  He defended himself;
+though professing that he would never willingly admit any ladies on
+board a ship of his, excepting for a ball, or a visit, which a few
+hours might comprehend.
+
+"But, if I know myself," said he, "this is from no want of gallantry
+towards them.  It is rather from feeling how impossible it is, with all
+one's efforts, and all one's sacrifices, to make the accommodations on
+board such as women ought to have.  There can be no want of gallantry,
+Admiral, in rating the claims of women to every personal comfort high,
+and this is what I do.  I hate to hear of women on board, or to see
+them on board; and no ship under my command shall ever convey a family
+of ladies anywhere, if I can help it."
+
+This brought his sister upon him.
+
+"Oh! Frederick!  But I cannot believe it of you.--All idle
+refinement!--Women may be as comfortable on board, as in the best house
+in England.  I believe I have lived as much on board as most women, and
+I know nothing superior to the accommodations of a man-of-war.  I
+declare I have not a comfort or an indulgence about me, even at
+Kellynch Hall," (with a kind bow to Anne), "beyond what I always had in
+most of the ships I have lived in; and they have been five altogether."
+
+"Nothing to the purpose," replied her brother.  "You were living with
+your husband, and were the only woman on board."
+
+"But you, yourself, brought Mrs Harville, her sister, her cousin, and
+three children, round from Portsmouth to Plymouth.  Where was this
+superfine, extraordinary sort of gallantry of yours then?"
+
+"All merged in my friendship, Sophia.  I would assist any brother
+officer's wife that I could, and I would bring anything of Harville's
+from the world's end, if he wanted it.  But do not imagine that I did
+not feel it an evil in itself."
+
+"Depend upon it, they were all perfectly comfortable."
+
+"I might not like them the better for that perhaps.  Such a number of
+women and children have no right to be comfortable on board."
+
+"My dear Frederick, you are talking quite idly.  Pray, what would
+become of us poor sailors' wives, who often want to be conveyed to one
+port or another, after our husbands, if everybody had your feelings?"
+
+"My feelings, you see, did not prevent my taking Mrs Harville and all
+her family to Plymouth."
+
+"But I hate to hear you talking so like a fine gentleman, and as if
+women were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures.  We none of
+us expect to be in smooth water all our days."
+
+"Ah! my dear," said the Admiral, "when he had got a wife, he will sing
+a different tune.  When he is married, if we have the good luck to live
+to another war, we shall see him do as you and I, and a great many
+others, have done.  We shall have him very thankful to anybody that
+will bring him his wife."
+
+"Ay, that we shall."
+
+"Now I have done," cried Captain Wentworth.  "When once married people
+begin to attack me with,--'Oh! you will think very differently, when
+you are married.'  I can only say, 'No, I shall not;' and then they say
+again, 'Yes, you will,' and there is an end of it."
+
+He got up and moved away.
+
+"What a great traveller you must have been, ma'am!" said Mrs Musgrove
+to Mrs Croft.
+
+"Pretty well, ma'am in the fifteen years of my marriage; though many
+women have done more.  I have crossed the Atlantic four times, and have
+been once to the East Indies, and back again, and only once; besides
+being in different places about home: Cork, and Lisbon, and Gibraltar.
+But I never went beyond the Streights, and never was in the West
+Indies.  We do not call Bermuda or Bahama, you know, the West Indies."
+
+Mrs Musgrove had not a word to say in dissent; she could not accuse
+herself of having ever called them anything in the whole course of her
+life.
+
+"And I do assure you, ma'am," pursued Mrs Croft, "that nothing can
+exceed the accommodations of a man-of-war; I speak, you know, of the
+higher rates.  When you come to a frigate, of course, you are more
+confined; though any reasonable woman may be perfectly happy in one of
+them; and I can safely say, that the happiest part of my life has been
+spent on board a ship.  While we were together, you know, there was
+nothing to be feared.  Thank God!  I have always been blessed with
+excellent health, and no climate disagrees with me.  A little
+disordered always the first twenty-four hours of going to sea, but
+never knew what sickness was afterwards.  The only time I ever really
+suffered in body or mind, the only time that I ever fancied myself
+unwell, or had any ideas of danger, was the winter that I passed by
+myself at Deal, when the Admiral (Captain Croft then) was in the North
+Seas.  I lived in perpetual fright at that time, and had all manner of
+imaginary complaints from not knowing what to do with myself, or when I
+should hear from him next; but as long as we could be together, nothing
+ever ailed me, and I never met with the smallest inconvenience."
+
+"Aye, to be sure.  Yes, indeed, oh yes!  I am quite of your opinion,
+Mrs Croft," was Mrs Musgrove's hearty answer.  "There is nothing so bad
+as a separation.  I am quite of your opinion.  I know what it is, for
+Mr Musgrove always attends the assizes, and I am so glad when they are
+over, and he is safe back again."
+
+The evening ended with dancing.  On its being proposed, Anne offered
+her services, as usual; and though her eyes would sometimes fill with
+tears as she sat at the instrument, she was extremely glad to be
+employed, and desired nothing in return but to be unobserved.
+
+It was a merry, joyous party, and no one seemed in higher spirits than
+Captain Wentworth.  She felt that he had every thing to elevate him
+which general attention and deference, and especially the attention of
+all the young women, could do.  The Miss Hayters, the females of the
+family of cousins already mentioned, were apparently admitted to the
+honour of being in love with him; and as for Henrietta and Louisa, they
+both seemed so entirely occupied by him, that nothing but the continued
+appearance of the most perfect good-will between themselves could have
+made it credible that they were not decided rivals.  If he were a
+little spoilt by such universal, such eager admiration, who could
+wonder?
+
+These were some of the thoughts which occupied Anne, while her fingers
+were mechanically at work, proceeding for half an hour together,
+equally without error, and without consciousness.  Once she felt that
+he was looking at herself,  observing her altered features, perhaps,
+trying to trace in them the ruins of the face which had once charmed
+him; and once she knew that he must have spoken of her; she was hardly
+aware of it, till she heard the answer; but then she was sure of his
+having asked his partner whether Miss Elliot never danced?  The answer
+was, "Oh, no; never; she has quite given up dancing.  She had rather
+play.  She is never tired of playing."  Once, too, he spoke to her.
+She had left the instrument on the dancing being over, and he had sat
+down to try to make out an air which he wished to give the Miss
+Musgroves an idea of.  Unintentionally she returned to that part of the
+room; he saw her, and, instantly rising, said, with studied politeness--
+
+"I beg your pardon, madam, this is your seat;" and though she
+immediately drew back with a decided negative, he was not to be induced
+to sit down again.
+
+Anne did not wish for more of such looks and speeches.  His cold
+politeness, his ceremonious grace, were worse than anything.
+
+
+
+Chapter 9
+
+
+Captain Wentworth was come to Kellynch as to a home, to stay as long as
+he liked, being as thoroughly the object of the Admiral's fraternal
+kindness as of his wife's.  He had intended, on first arriving, to
+proceed very soon into Shropshire, and visit the brother settled in
+that country, but the attractions of Uppercross induced him to put this
+off.  There was so much of friendliness, and of flattery, and of
+everything most bewitching in his reception there; the old were so
+hospitable, the young so agreeable, that he could not but resolve to
+remain where he was, and take all the charms and perfections of
+Edward's wife upon credit a little longer.
+
+It was soon Uppercross with him almost every day.  The Musgroves could
+hardly be more ready to invite than he to come, particularly in the
+morning, when he had no companion at home, for the Admiral and Mrs
+Croft were generally out of doors together, interesting themselves in
+their new possessions, their grass, and their sheep, and dawdling about
+in a way not endurable to a third person, or driving out in a gig,
+lately added to their establishment.
+
+Hitherto there had been but one opinion of Captain Wentworth among the
+Musgroves and their dependencies.  It was unvarying, warm admiration
+everywhere; but this intimate footing was not more than established,
+when a certain Charles Hayter returned among them, to be a good deal
+disturbed by it, and to think Captain Wentworth very much in the way.
+
+Charles Hayter was the eldest of all the cousins, and a very amiable,
+pleasing young man, between whom and Henrietta there had been a
+considerable appearance of attachment previous to Captain Wentworth's
+introduction.  He was in orders; and having a curacy in the
+neighbourhood, where residence was not required, lived at his father's
+house, only two miles from Uppercross.  A short absence from home had
+left his fair one unguarded by his attentions at this critical period,
+and when he came back he had the pain of finding very altered manners,
+and of seeing Captain Wentworth.
+
+Mrs Musgrove and Mrs Hayter were sisters.  They had each had money, but
+their marriages had made a material difference in their degree of
+consequence.  Mr Hayter had some property of his own, but it was
+insignificant compared with Mr Musgrove's; and while the Musgroves were
+in the first class of society in the country, the young Hayters would,
+from their parents' inferior, retired, and unpolished way of living,
+and their own defective education, have been hardly in any class at
+all, but for their connexion with Uppercross, this eldest son of course
+excepted, who had chosen to be a scholar and a gentleman, and who was
+very superior in cultivation and manners to all the rest.
+
+The two families had always been on excellent terms, there being no
+pride on one side, and no envy on the other, and only such a
+consciousness of superiority in the Miss Musgroves, as made them
+pleased to improve their cousins.  Charles's attentions to Henrietta
+had been observed by her father and mother without any disapprobation.
+"It would not be a great match for her; but if Henrietta liked him,"--
+and Henrietta did seem to like him.
+
+Henrietta fully thought so herself, before Captain Wentworth came; but
+from that time Cousin Charles had been very much forgotten.
+
+Which of the two sisters was preferred by Captain Wentworth was as yet
+quite doubtful, as far as Anne's observation reached.  Henrietta was
+perhaps the prettiest, Louisa had the higher spirits; and she knew not
+now, whether the more gentle or the more lively character were most
+likely to attract him.
+
+Mr and Mrs Musgrove, either from seeing little, or from an entire
+confidence in the discretion of both their daughters, and of all the
+young men who came near them, seemed to leave everything to take its
+chance.  There was not the smallest appearance of solicitude or remark
+about them in the Mansion-house; but it was different at the Cottage:
+the young couple there were more disposed to speculate and wonder; and
+Captain Wentworth had not been above four or five times in the Miss
+Musgroves' company, and Charles Hayter had but just reappeared, when
+Anne had to listen to the opinions of her brother and sister, as to
+which was the one liked best.  Charles gave it for Louisa, Mary for
+Henrietta, but quite agreeing that to have him marry either could be
+extremely delightful.
+
+Charles "had never seen a pleasanter man in his life; and from what he
+had once heard Captain Wentworth himself say, was very sure that he had
+not made less than twenty thousand pounds by the war.  Here was a
+fortune at once; besides which, there would be the chance of what might
+be done in any future war; and he was sure Captain Wentworth was as
+likely a man to distinguish himself as any officer in the navy.  Oh! it
+would be a capital match for either of his sisters."
+
+"Upon my word it would," replied Mary.  "Dear me!  If he should rise to
+any very great honours!  If he should ever be made a baronet!  'Lady
+Wentworth' sounds very well.  That would be a noble thing, indeed, for
+Henrietta!  She would take place of me then, and Henrietta would not
+dislike that.  Sir Frederick and Lady Wentworth!  It would be but a new
+creation, however, and I never think much of your new creations."
+
+It suited Mary best to think Henrietta the one preferred on the very
+account of Charles Hayter, whose pretensions she wished to see put an
+end to.  She looked down very decidedly upon the Hayters, and thought
+it would be quite a misfortune to have the existing connection between
+the families renewed--very sad for herself and her children.
+
+"You know," said she, "I cannot think him at all a fit match for
+Henrietta; and considering the alliances which the Musgroves have made,
+she has no right to throw herself away.  I do not think any young woman
+has a right to make a choice that may be disagreeable and inconvenient
+to the principal part of her family, and be giving bad connections to
+those who have not been used to them.  And, pray, who is Charles
+Hayter?  Nothing but a country curate.  A most improper match for Miss
+Musgrove of Uppercross."
+
+Her husband, however, would not agree with her here; for besides having
+a regard for his cousin, Charles Hayter was an eldest son, and he saw
+things as an eldest son himself.
+
+"Now you are talking nonsense, Mary," was therefore his answer.  "It
+would not be a great match for Henrietta, but Charles has a very fair
+chance, through the Spicers, of getting something from the Bishop in
+the course of a year or two; and you will please to remember, that he
+is the eldest son; whenever my uncle dies, he steps into very pretty
+property.  The estate at Winthrop is not less than two hundred and
+fifty acres, besides the farm near Taunton, which is some of the best
+land in the country.  I grant you, that any of them but Charles would
+be a very shocking match for Henrietta, and indeed it could not be; he
+is the only one that could be possible; but he is a very good-natured,
+good sort of a fellow; and whenever Winthrop comes into his hands, he
+will make a different sort of place of it, and live in a very different
+sort of way; and with that property, he will never be a contemptible
+man--good, freehold property.  No, no; Henrietta might do worse than
+marry Charles Hayter; and if she has him, and Louisa can get Captain
+Wentworth, I shall be very well satisfied."
+
+"Charles may say what he pleases," cried Mary to Anne, as soon as he
+was out of the room, "but it would be shocking to have Henrietta marry
+Charles Hayter; a very bad thing for her, and still worse for me; and
+therefore it is very much to be wished that Captain Wentworth may soon
+put him quite out of her head, and I have very little doubt that he
+has.  She took hardly any notice of Charles Hayter yesterday.  I wish
+you had been there to see her behaviour.  And as to Captain Wentworth's
+liking Louisa as well as Henrietta, it is nonsense to say so; for he
+certainly does like Henrietta a great deal the best.  But Charles is so
+positive!  I wish you had been with us yesterday, for then you might
+have decided between us; and I am sure you would have thought as I did,
+unless you had been determined to give it against me."
+
+A dinner at Mr Musgrove's had been the occasion when all these things
+should have been seen by Anne; but she had staid at home, under the
+mixed plea of a headache of her own, and some return of indisposition
+in little Charles.  She had thought only of avoiding Captain Wentworth;
+but an escape from being appealed to as umpire was now added to the
+advantages of a quiet evening.
+
+As to Captain Wentworth's views, she deemed it of more consequence that
+he should know his own mind early enough not to be endangering the
+happiness of either sister, or impeaching his own honour, than that he
+should prefer Henrietta to Louisa, or Louisa to Henrietta.  Either of
+them would, in all probability, make him an affectionate, good-humoured
+wife.  With regard to Charles Hayter, she had delicacy which must be
+pained by any lightness of conduct in a well-meaning young woman, and a
+heart to sympathize in any of the sufferings it occasioned; but if
+Henrietta found herself mistaken in the nature of her feelings, the
+alteration could not be understood too soon.
+
+Charles Hayter had met with much to disquiet and mortify him in his
+cousin's behaviour.  She had too old a regard for him to be so wholly
+estranged as might in two meetings extinguish every past hope, and
+leave him nothing to do but to keep away from Uppercross:  but there
+was such a change as became very alarming, when such a man as Captain
+Wentworth was to be regarded as the probable cause.  He had been absent
+only two Sundays, and when they parted, had left her interested, even
+to the height of his wishes, in his prospect of soon quitting his
+present curacy, and obtaining that of Uppercross instead.  It had then
+seemed the object nearest her heart, that Dr Shirley, the rector, who
+for more than forty years had been zealously discharging all the duties
+of his office, but was now growing too infirm for many of them, should
+be quite fixed on engaging a curate; should make his curacy quite as
+good as he could afford, and should give Charles Hayter the promise of
+it.  The advantage of his having to come only to Uppercross, instead of
+going six miles another way; of his having, in every respect, a better
+curacy; of his belonging to their dear Dr Shirley, and of dear, good Dr
+Shirley's being relieved from the duty which he could no longer get
+through without most injurious fatigue, had been a great deal, even to
+Louisa, but had been almost everything to Henrietta.  When he came
+back, alas!  the zeal of the business was gone by.  Louisa could not
+listen at all to his account of a conversation which he had just held
+with Dr Shirley: she was at a window, looking out for Captain
+Wentworth; and even Henrietta had at best only a divided attention to
+give, and seemed to have forgotten all the former doubt and solicitude
+of the negotiation.
+
+"Well, I am very glad indeed:  but I always thought you would have it;
+I always thought you sure.  It did not appear to me that--in short, you
+know, Dr Shirley must have a curate, and you had secured his promise.
+Is he coming, Louisa?"
+
+One morning, very soon after the dinner at the Musgroves, at which Anne
+had not been present, Captain Wentworth walked into the drawing-room at
+the Cottage, where were only herself and the little invalid Charles,
+who was lying on the sofa.
+
+The surprise of finding himself almost alone with Anne Elliot, deprived
+his manners of their usual composure:  he started, and could only say,
+"I thought the Miss Musgroves had been here: Mrs Musgrove told me I
+should find them here," before he walked to the window to recollect
+himself, and feel how he ought to behave.
+
+"They are up stairs with my sister:  they will be down in a few
+moments, I dare say," had been Anne's reply, in all the confusion that
+was natural; and if the child had not called her to come and do
+something for him, she would have been out of the room the next moment,
+and released Captain Wentworth as well as herself.
+
+He continued at the window; and after calmly and politely saying, "I
+hope the little boy is better," was silent.
+
+She was obliged to kneel down by the sofa, and remain there to satisfy
+her patient; and thus they continued a few minutes, when, to her very
+great satisfaction, she heard some other person crossing the little
+vestibule.  She hoped, on turning her head, to see the master of the
+house; but it proved to be one much less calculated for making matters
+easy--Charles Hayter, probably not at all better pleased by the sight
+of Captain Wentworth than Captain Wentworth had been by the sight of
+Anne.
+
+She only attempted to say, "How do you do?  Will you not sit down?  The
+others will be here presently."
+
+Captain Wentworth, however, came from his window, apparently not
+ill-disposed for conversation; but Charles Hayter soon put an end to
+his attempts by seating himself near the table, and taking up the
+newspaper; and Captain Wentworth returned to his window.
+
+Another minute brought another addition.  The younger boy, a remarkable
+stout, forward child, of two years old, having got the door opened for
+him by some one without, made his determined appearance among them, and
+went straight to the sofa to see what was going on, and put in his
+claim to anything good that might be giving away.
+
+There being nothing to eat, he could only have some play; and as his
+aunt would not let him tease his sick brother, he began to fasten
+himself upon her, as she knelt, in such a way that, busy as she was
+about Charles, she could not shake him off.  She spoke to him, ordered,
+entreated, and insisted in vain.  Once she did contrive to push him
+away, but the boy had the greater pleasure in getting upon her back
+again directly.
+
+"Walter," said she, "get down this moment.  You are extremely
+troublesome.  I am very angry with you."
+
+"Walter," cried Charles Hayter, "why do you not do as you are bid?  Do
+not you hear your aunt speak?  Come to me, Walter, come to cousin
+Charles."
+
+But not a bit did Walter stir.
+
+In another moment, however, she found herself in the state of being
+released from him; some one was taking him from her, though he had bent
+down her head so much, that his little sturdy hands were unfastened
+from around her neck, and he was resolutely borne away, before she knew
+that Captain Wentworth had done it.
+
+Her sensations on the discovery made her perfectly speechless.  She
+could not even thank him.  She could only hang over little Charles,
+with most disordered feelings.  His kindness in stepping forward to her
+relief, the manner, the silence in which it had passed, the little
+particulars of the circumstance, with the conviction soon forced on her
+by the noise he was studiously making with the child, that he meant to
+avoid hearing her thanks, and rather sought to testify that her
+conversation was the last of his wants, produced such a confusion of
+varying, but very painful agitation, as she could not recover from,
+till enabled by the entrance of Mary and the Miss Musgroves to make
+over her little patient to their cares, and leave the room.  She could
+not stay.  It might have been an opportunity of watching the loves and
+jealousies of the four--they were now altogether; but she could stay
+for none of it.  It was evident that Charles Hayter was not well
+inclined towards Captain Wentworth.  She had a strong impression of his
+having said, in a vext tone of voice, after Captain Wentworth's
+interference, "You ought to have minded me, Walter; I told you not to
+teaze your aunt;" and could comprehend his regretting that Captain
+Wentworth should do what he ought to have done himself.  But neither
+Charles Hayter's feelings, nor anybody's feelings, could interest her,
+till she had a little better arranged her own.  She was ashamed of
+herself, quite ashamed of being so nervous, so overcome by such a
+trifle; but so it was, and it required a long application of solitude
+and reflection to recover her.
+
+
+
+Chapter 10
+
+
+Other opportunities of making her observations could not fail to occur.
+Anne had soon been in company with all the four together often enough
+to have an opinion, though too wise to acknowledge as much at home,
+where she knew it would have satisfied neither husband nor wife; for
+while she considered Louisa to be rather the favourite, she could not
+but think, as far as she might dare to judge from memory and
+experience, that Captain Wentworth was not in love with either.  They
+were more in love with him; yet there it was not love.  It was a little
+fever of admiration; but it might, probably must, end in love with
+some.  Charles Hayter seemed aware of being slighted, and yet Henrietta
+had sometimes the air of being divided between them.  Anne longed for
+the power of representing to them all what they were about, and of
+pointing out some of the evils they were exposing themselves to.  She
+did not attribute guile to any.  It was the highest satisfaction to her
+to believe Captain Wentworth not in the least aware of the pain he was
+occasioning.  There was no triumph, no pitiful triumph in his manner.
+He had, probably, never heard, and never thought of any claims of
+Charles Hayter.  He was only wrong in accepting the attentions (for
+accepting must be the word) of two young women at once.
+
+After a short struggle, however, Charles Hayter seemed to quit the
+field.  Three days had passed without his coming once to Uppercross; a
+most decided change.  He had even refused one regular invitation to
+dinner; and having been found on the occasion by Mr Musgrove with some
+large books before him, Mr and Mrs Musgrove were sure all could not be
+right, and talked, with grave faces, of his studying himself to death.
+It was Mary's hope and belief that he had received a positive dismissal
+from Henrietta, and her husband lived under the constant dependence of
+seeing him to-morrow.  Anne could only feel that Charles Hayter was
+wise.
+
+One morning, about this time Charles Musgrove and Captain Wentworth
+being gone a-shooting together, as the sisters in the Cottage were
+sitting quietly at work, they were visited at the window by the sisters
+from the Mansion-house.
+
+It was a very fine November day, and the Miss Musgroves came through
+the little grounds, and stopped for no other purpose than to say, that
+they were going to take a long walk, and therefore concluded Mary could
+not like to go with them; and when Mary immediately replied, with some
+jealousy at not being supposed a good walker, "Oh, yes, I should like
+to join you very much, I am very fond of a long walk;" Anne felt
+persuaded, by the looks of the two girls, that it was precisely what
+they did not wish, and admired again the sort of necessity which the
+family habits seemed to produce, of everything being to be
+communicated, and everything being to be done together, however
+undesired and inconvenient.  She tried to dissuade Mary from going, but
+in vain; and that being the case, thought it best to accept the Miss
+Musgroves' much more cordial invitation to herself to go likewise, as
+she might be useful in turning back with her sister, and lessening the
+interference in any plan of their own.
+
+"I cannot imagine why they should suppose I should not like a long
+walk," said Mary, as she went up stairs.  "Everybody is always
+supposing that I am not a good walker; and yet they would not have been
+pleased, if we had refused to join them.  When people come in this
+manner on purpose to ask us, how can one say no?"
+
+Just as they were setting off, the gentlemen returned.  They had taken
+out a young dog, who had spoilt their sport, and sent them back early.
+Their time and strength, and spirits, were, therefore, exactly ready
+for this walk, and they entered into it with pleasure.  Could Anne have
+foreseen such a junction, she would have staid at home; but, from some
+feelings of interest and curiosity, she fancied now that it was too
+late to retract, and the whole six set forward together in the
+direction chosen by the Miss Musgroves, who evidently considered the
+walk as under their guidance.
+
+Anne's object was, not to be in the way of anybody; and where the
+narrow paths across the fields made many separations necessary, to keep
+with her brother and sister.  Her pleasure in the walk must arise from
+the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year
+upon the tawny leaves, and withered hedges, and from repeating to
+herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of
+autumn, that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind
+of taste and tenderness, that season which had drawn from every poet,
+worthy of being read, some attempt at description, or some lines of
+feeling.  She occupied her mind as much as possible in such like
+musings and quotations; but it was not possible, that when within reach
+of Captain Wentworth's conversation with either of the Miss Musgroves,
+she should not try to hear it; yet she caught little very remarkable.
+It was mere lively chat, such as any young persons, on an intimate
+footing, might fall into.  He was more engaged with Louisa than with
+Henrietta.  Louisa certainly put more forward for his notice than her
+sister.  This distinction appeared to increase, and there was one
+speech of Louisa's which struck her.  After one of the many praises of
+the day, which were continually bursting forth, Captain Wentworth
+added:--
+
+"What glorious weather for the Admiral and my sister!  They meant to
+take a long drive this morning; perhaps we may hail them from some of
+these hills.  They talked of coming into this side of the country.  I
+wonder whereabouts they will upset to-day.  Oh! it does happen very
+often, I assure you; but my sister makes nothing of it; she would as
+lieve be tossed out as not."
+
+"Ah! You make the most of it, I know," cried Louisa, "but if it were
+really so, I should do just the same in her place.  If I loved a man,
+as she loves the Admiral, I would always be with him, nothing should
+ever separate us, and I would rather be overturned by him, than driven
+safely by anybody else."
+
+It was spoken with enthusiasm.
+
+"Had you?" cried he, catching the same tone; "I honour you!" And there
+was silence between them for a little while.
+
+Anne could not immediately fall into a quotation again.  The sweet
+scenes of autumn were for a while put by, unless some tender sonnet,
+fraught with the apt analogy of the declining year, with declining
+happiness, and the images of youth and hope, and spring, all gone
+together, blessed her memory.  She roused herself to say, as they
+struck by order into another path, "Is not this one of the ways to
+Winthrop?" But nobody heard, or, at least, nobody answered her.
+
+Winthrop, however, or its environs--for young men are, sometimes to be
+met with, strolling about near home--was their destination; and after
+another half mile of gradual ascent through large enclosures, where the
+ploughs at work, and the fresh made path spoke the farmer counteracting
+the sweets of poetical despondence, and meaning to have spring again,
+they gained the summit of the most considerable hill, which parted
+Uppercross and Winthrop, and soon commanded a full view of the latter,
+at the foot of the hill on the other side.
+
+Winthrop, without beauty and without dignity, was stretched before them;
+an indifferent house, standing low, and hemmed in by the barns and
+buildings of a farm-yard.
+
+Mary exclaimed, "Bless me! here is Winthrop.  I declare I had no idea!
+Well now, I think we had better turn back; I am excessively tired."
+
+Henrietta, conscious and ashamed, and seeing no cousin Charles walking
+along any path, or leaning against any gate, was ready to do as Mary
+wished; but "No!" said Charles Musgrove, and "No, no!" cried Louisa
+more eagerly, and taking her sister aside, seemed to be arguing the
+matter warmly.
+
+Charles, in the meanwhile, was very decidedly declaring his resolution
+of calling on his aunt, now that he was so near; and very evidently,
+though more fearfully, trying to induce his wife to go too.  But this
+was one of the points on which the lady shewed her strength; and when
+he recommended the advantage of resting herself a quarter of an hour at
+Winthrop, as she felt so tired, she resolutely answered, "Oh! no,
+indeed! walking up that hill again would do her more harm than any
+sitting down could do her good;" and, in short, her look and manner
+declared, that go she would not.
+
+After a little succession of these sort of debates and consultations,
+it was settled between Charles and his two sisters, that he and
+Henrietta should just run down for a few minutes, to see their aunt and
+cousins, while the rest of the party waited for them at the top of the
+hill.  Louisa seemed the principal arranger of the plan; and, as she
+went a little way with them, down the hill, still talking to Henrietta,
+Mary took the opportunity of looking scornfully around her, and saying
+to Captain Wentworth--
+
+"It is very unpleasant, having such connexions!  But, I assure you, I
+have never been in the house above twice in my life."
+
+She received no other answer, than an artificial, assenting smile,
+followed by a contemptuous glance, as he turned away, which Anne
+perfectly knew the meaning of.
+
+The brow of the hill, where they remained, was a cheerful spot: Louisa
+returned; and Mary, finding a comfortable seat for herself on the step
+of a stile, was very well satisfied so long as the others all stood
+about her; but when Louisa drew Captain Wentworth away, to try for a
+gleaning of nuts in an adjoining hedge-row, and they were gone by
+degrees quite out of sight and sound, Mary was happy no longer; she
+quarrelled with her own seat, was sure Louisa had got a much better
+somewhere, and nothing could prevent her from going to look for a
+better also.  She turned through the same gate, but could not see them.
+Anne found a nice seat for her, on a dry sunny bank, under the
+hedge-row, in which she had no doubt of their still being, in some spot
+or other.  Mary sat down for a moment, but it would not do; she was
+sure Louisa had found a better seat somewhere else, and she would go on
+till she overtook her.
+
+Anne, really tired herself, was glad to sit down; and she very soon
+heard Captain Wentworth and Louisa in the hedge-row, behind her, as if
+making their way back along the rough, wild sort of channel, down the
+centre.  They were speaking as they drew near.  Louisa's voice was the
+first distinguished.  She seemed to be in the middle of some eager
+speech.  What Anne first heard was--
+
+"And so, I made her go.  I could not bear that she should be frightened
+from the visit by such nonsense.  What! would I be turned back from
+doing a thing that I had determined to do, and that I knew to be right,
+by the airs and interference of such a person, or of any person I may
+say?  No, I have no idea of being so easily persuaded.  When I have
+made up my mind, I have made it; and Henrietta seemed entirely to have
+made up hers to call at Winthrop to-day; and yet, she was as near
+giving it up, out of nonsensical complaisance!"
+
+"She would have turned back then, but for you?"
+
+"She would indeed.  I am almost ashamed to say it."
+
+"Happy for her, to have such a mind as yours at hand!  After the hints
+you gave just now, which did but confirm my own observations, the last
+time I was in company with him,  I need not affect to have no
+comprehension of what is going on.  I see that more than a mere dutiful
+morning visit to your aunt was in question; and woe betide him, and her
+too, when it comes to things of consequence, when they are placed in
+circumstances requiring fortitude and strength of mind, if she have not
+resolution enough to resist idle interference in such a trifle as this.
+Your sister is an amiable creature; but yours is the character of
+decision and firmness, I see.  If you value her conduct or happiness,
+infuse as much of your own spirit into her as you can.  But this, no
+doubt, you have been always doing.  It is the worst evil of too
+yielding and indecisive a character, that no influence over it can be
+depended on.  You are never sure of a good impression being durable;
+everybody may sway it.  Let those who would be happy be firm.  Here is
+a nut," said he, catching one down from an upper bough, "to exemplify:
+a beautiful glossy nut, which, blessed with original strength, has
+outlived all the storms of autumn.  Not a puncture, not a weak spot
+anywhere.  This nut," he continued, with playful solemnity, "while so
+many of his brethren have fallen and been trodden under foot, is still
+in possession of all the happiness that a hazel nut can be supposed
+capable of."  Then returning to his former earnest tone--"My first
+wish for all whom I am interested in, is that they should be firm.  If
+Louisa Musgrove would be beautiful and happy in her November of life,
+she will cherish all her present powers of mind."
+
+He had done, and was unanswered.  It would have surprised Anne if
+Louisa could have readily answered such a speech:  words of such
+interest, spoken with such serious warmth!  She could imagine what
+Louisa was feeling.  For herself, she feared to move, lest she should
+be seen.  While she remained, a bush of low rambling holly protected
+her, and they were moving on.  Before they were beyond her hearing,
+however, Louisa spoke again.
+
+"Mary is good-natured enough in many respects," said she; "but she does
+sometimes provoke me excessively, by her nonsense and pride--the Elliot
+pride.  She has a great deal too much of the Elliot pride.  We do so
+wish that Charles had married Anne instead.  I suppose you know he
+wanted to marry Anne?"
+
+After a moment's pause, Captain Wentworth said--
+
+"Do you mean that she refused him?"
+
+"Oh! yes; certainly."
+
+"When did that happen?"
+
+"I do not exactly know, for Henrietta and I were at school at the time;
+but I believe about a year before he married Mary.  I wish she had
+accepted him.  We should all have liked her a great deal better; and
+papa and mamma always think it was her great friend Lady Russell's
+doing, that she did not.  They think Charles might not be learned and
+bookish enough to please Lady Russell, and that therefore, she
+persuaded Anne to refuse him."
+
+The sounds were retreating, and Anne distinguished no more.  Her own
+emotions still kept her fixed.  She had much to recover from, before
+she could move.  The listener's proverbial fate was not absolutely
+hers; she had heard no evil of herself, but she had heard a great deal
+of very painful import.  She saw how her own character was considered
+by Captain Wentworth, and there had been just that degree of feeling
+and curiosity about her in his manner which must give her extreme
+agitation.
+
+As soon as she could, she went after Mary, and having found, and walked
+back with her to their former station, by the stile, felt some comfort
+in their whole party being immediately afterwards collected, and once
+more in motion together.  Her spirits wanted the solitude and silence
+which only numbers could give.
+
+Charles and Henrietta returned, bringing, as may be conjectured,
+Charles Hayter with them.  The minutiae of the business Anne could not
+attempt to understand; even Captain Wentworth did not seem admitted to
+perfect confidence here; but that there had been a withdrawing on the
+gentleman's side, and a relenting on the lady's, and that they were now
+very glad to be together again, did not admit a doubt.  Henrietta
+looked a little ashamed, but very well pleased;--Charles Hayter
+exceedingly happy:  and they were devoted to each other almost from the
+first instant of their all setting forward for Uppercross.
+
+Everything now marked out Louisa for Captain Wentworth; nothing could
+be plainer; and where many divisions were necessary, or even where they
+were not, they walked side by side nearly as much as the other two.  In
+a long strip of meadow land, where there was ample space for all, they
+were thus divided, forming three distinct parties; and to that party of
+the three which boasted least animation, and least complaisance, Anne
+necessarily belonged.  She joined Charles and Mary, and was tired
+enough to be very glad of Charles's other arm; but Charles, though in
+very good humour with her, was out of temper with his wife.  Mary had
+shewn herself disobliging to him, and was now to reap the consequence,
+which consequence was his dropping her arm almost every moment to cut
+off the heads of some nettles in the hedge with his switch; and when
+Mary began to complain of it, and lament her being ill-used, according
+to custom, in being on the hedge side, while Anne was never incommoded
+on the other, he dropped the arms of both to hunt after a weasel which
+he had a momentary glance of, and they could hardly get him along at
+all.
+
+This long meadow bordered a lane, which their footpath, at the end of
+it was to cross, and when the party had all reached the gate of exit,
+the carriage advancing in the same direction, which had been some time
+heard, was just coming up, and proved to be Admiral Croft's gig.  He
+and his wife had taken their intended drive, and were returning home.
+Upon hearing how long a walk the young people had engaged in, they
+kindly offered a seat to any lady who might be particularly tired; it
+would save her a full mile, and they were going through Uppercross.
+The invitation was general, and generally declined.  The Miss Musgroves
+were not at all tired, and Mary was either offended, by not being asked
+before any of the others, or what Louisa called the Elliot pride could
+not endure to make a third in a one horse chaise.
+
+The walking party had crossed the lane, and were surmounting an
+opposite stile, and the Admiral was putting his horse in motion again,
+when Captain Wentworth cleared the hedge in a moment to say something
+to his sister.  The something might be guessed by its effects.
+
+"Miss Elliot, I am sure you are tired," cried Mrs Croft.  "Do let us
+have the pleasure of taking you home.  Here is excellent room for
+three, I assure you.  If we were all like you, I believe we might sit
+four.  You must, indeed, you must."
+
+Anne was still in the lane; and though instinctively beginning to
+decline, she was not allowed to proceed.  The Admiral's kind urgency
+came in support of his wife's; they would not be refused; they
+compressed themselves into the smallest possible space to leave her a
+corner, and Captain Wentworth, without saying a word, turned to her,
+and quietly obliged her to be assisted into the carriage.
+
+Yes; he had done it.  She was in the carriage, and felt that he had
+placed her there, that his will and his hands had done it, that she
+owed it to his perception of her fatigue, and his resolution to give
+her rest.  She was very much affected by the view of his disposition
+towards her, which all these things made apparent.  This little
+circumstance seemed the completion of all that had gone before.  She
+understood him.  He could not forgive her, but he could not be
+unfeeling.  Though condemning her for the past, and considering it with
+high and unjust resentment, though perfectly careless of her, and
+though becoming attached to another, still he could not see her suffer,
+without the desire of giving her relief.  It was a remainder of former
+sentiment; it was an impulse of pure, though unacknowledged friendship;
+it was a proof of his own warm and amiable heart, which she could not
+contemplate without emotions so compounded of pleasure and pain, that
+she knew not which prevailed.
+
+Her answers to the kindness and the remarks of her companions were at
+first unconsciously given.  They had travelled half their way along the
+rough lane, before she was quite awake to what they said.  She then
+found them talking of "Frederick."
+
+"He certainly means to have one or other of those two girls, Sophy,"
+said the Admiral; "but there is no saying which.  He has been running
+after them, too, long enough, one would think, to make up his mind.
+Ay, this comes of the peace.  If it were war now, he would have settled
+it long ago.  We sailors, Miss Elliot, cannot afford to make long
+courtships in time of war.  How many days was it, my dear, between the
+first time of my seeing you and our sitting down together in our
+lodgings at North Yarmouth?"
+
+"We had better not talk about it, my dear," replied Mrs Croft,
+pleasantly; "for if Miss Elliot were to hear how soon we came to an
+understanding, she would never be persuaded that we could be happy
+together.  I had known you by character, however, long before."
+
+"Well, and I had heard of you as a very pretty girl, and what were we
+to wait for besides?  I do not like having such things so long in hand.
+I wish Frederick would spread a little more canvass, and bring us home
+one of these young ladies to Kellynch.  Then there would always be
+company for them.  And very nice young ladies they both are; I hardly
+know one from the other."
+
+"Very good humoured, unaffected girls, indeed," said Mrs Croft, in a
+tone of calmer praise, such as made Anne suspect that her keener powers
+might not consider either of them as quite worthy of her brother; "and
+a very respectable family.  One could not be connected with better
+people.  My dear Admiral, that post!  we shall certainly take that
+post."
+
+But by coolly giving the reins a better direction herself they happily
+passed the danger; and by once afterwards judiciously putting out her
+hand they neither fell into a rut, nor ran foul of a dung-cart; and
+Anne, with some amusement at their style of driving, which she imagined
+no bad representation of the general guidance of their affairs, found
+herself safely deposited by them at the Cottage.
+
+
+
+Chapter 11
+
+
+The time now approached for Lady Russell's return:  the day was even
+fixed; and Anne, being engaged to join her as soon as she was
+resettled, was looking forward to an early removal to Kellynch, and
+beginning to think how her own comfort was likely to be affected by it.
+
+It would place her in the same village with Captain Wentworth, within
+half a mile of him; they would have to frequent the same church, and
+there must be intercourse between the two families.  This was against
+her; but on the other hand, he spent so much of his time at Uppercross,
+that in removing thence she might be considered rather as leaving him
+behind, than as going towards him; and, upon the whole, she believed
+she must, on this interesting question, be the gainer, almost as
+certainly as in her change of domestic society, in leaving poor Mary
+for Lady Russell.
+
+She wished it might be possible for her to avoid ever seeing Captain
+Wentworth at the Hall:  those rooms had witnessed former meetings which
+would be brought too painfully before her; but she was yet more anxious
+for the possibility of Lady Russell and Captain Wentworth never meeting
+anywhere.  They did not like each other, and no renewal of acquaintance
+now could do any good; and were Lady Russell to see them together, she
+might think that he had too much self-possession, and she too little.
+
+These points formed her chief solicitude in anticipating her removal
+from Uppercross, where she felt she had been stationed quite long
+enough.  Her usefulness to little Charles would always give some
+sweetness to the memory of her two months' visit there, but he was
+gaining strength apace, and she had nothing else to stay for.
+
+The conclusion of her visit, however, was diversified in a way which
+she had not at all imagined.  Captain Wentworth, after being unseen and
+unheard of at Uppercross for two whole days, appeared again among them
+to justify himself by a relation of what had kept him away.
+
+A letter from his friend, Captain Harville, having found him out at
+last, had brought intelligence of Captain Harville's being settled with
+his family at Lyme for the winter; of their being therefore, quite
+unknowingly, within twenty miles of each other.  Captain Harville had
+never been in good health since a severe wound which he received two
+years before, and Captain Wentworth's anxiety to see him had determined
+him to go immediately to Lyme.  He had been there for four-and-twenty
+hours.  His acquittal was complete, his friendship warmly honoured, a
+lively interest excited for his friend, and his description of the fine
+country about Lyme so feelingly attended to by the party, that an
+earnest desire to see Lyme themselves, and a project for going thither
+was the consequence.
+
+The young people were all wild to see Lyme.  Captain Wentworth talked
+of going there again himself, it was only seventeen miles from
+Uppercross; though November, the weather was by no means bad; and, in
+short, Louisa, who was the most eager of the eager, having formed the
+resolution to go, and besides the pleasure of doing as she liked, being
+now armed with the idea of merit in maintaining her own way, bore down
+all the wishes of her father and mother for putting it off till summer;
+and to Lyme they were to go--Charles, Mary, Anne, Henrietta, Louisa,
+and Captain Wentworth.
+
+The first heedless scheme had been to go in the morning and return at
+night; but to this Mr Musgrove, for the sake of his horses, would not
+consent; and when it came to be rationally considered, a day in the
+middle of November would not leave much time for seeing a new place,
+after deducting seven hours, as the nature of the country required, for
+going and returning.  They were, consequently, to stay the night there,
+and not to be expected back till the next day's dinner.  This was felt
+to be a considerable amendment; and though they all met at the Great
+House at rather an early breakfast hour, and set off very punctually,
+it was so much past noon before the two carriages, Mr Musgrove's coach
+containing the four ladies, and Charles's curricle, in which he drove
+Captain Wentworth, were descending the long hill into Lyme, and
+entering upon the still steeper street of the town itself, that it was
+very evident they would not have more than time for looking about them,
+before the light and warmth of the day were gone.
+
+After securing accommodations, and ordering a dinner at one of the
+inns, the next thing to be done was unquestionably to walk directly
+down to the sea.  They were come too late in the year for any amusement
+or variety which Lyme, as a public place, might offer.  The rooms were
+shut up, the lodgers almost all gone, scarcely any family but of the
+residents left; and, as there is nothing to admire in the buildings
+themselves, the remarkable situation of the town, the principal street
+almost hurrying into the water, the walk to the Cobb, skirting round
+the pleasant little bay, which, in the season, is animated with bathing
+machines and company; the Cobb itself, its old wonders and new
+improvements, with the very beautiful line of cliffs stretching out to
+the east of the town, are what the stranger's eye will seek; and a very
+strange stranger it must be, who does not see charms in the immediate
+environs of Lyme, to make him wish to know it better.  The scenes in
+its neighbourhood, Charmouth, with its high grounds and extensive
+sweeps of country, and still more, its sweet, retired bay, backed by
+dark cliffs, where fragments of low rock among the sands, make it the
+happiest spot for watching the flow of the tide, for sitting in
+unwearied contemplation; the woody varieties of the cheerful village of
+Up Lyme; and, above all, Pinny, with its green chasms between romantic
+rocks, where the scattered forest trees and orchards of luxuriant
+growth, declare that many a generation must have passed away since the
+first partial falling of the cliff prepared the ground for such a
+state, where a scene so wonderful and so lovely is exhibited, as may
+more than equal any of the resembling scenes of the far-famed Isle of
+Wight:  these places must be visited, and visited again, to make the
+worth of Lyme understood.
+
+The party from Uppercross passing down by the now deserted and
+melancholy looking rooms, and still descending, soon found themselves
+on the sea-shore; and lingering only, as all must linger and gaze on a
+first return to the sea, who ever deserved to look on it at all,
+proceeded towards the Cobb, equally their object in itself and on
+Captain Wentworth's account:  for in a small house, near the foot of an
+old pier of unknown date, were the Harvilles settled.  Captain
+Wentworth turned in to call on his friend; the others walked on, and he
+was to join them on the Cobb.
+
+They were by no means tired of wondering and admiring; and not even
+Louisa seemed to feel that they had parted with Captain Wentworth long,
+when they saw him coming after them, with three companions, all well
+known already, by description, to be Captain and Mrs Harville, and a
+Captain Benwick, who was staying with them.
+
+Captain Benwick had some time ago been first lieutenant of the Laconia;
+and the account which Captain Wentworth had given of him, on his return
+from Lyme before, his warm praise of him as an excellent young man and
+an officer, whom he had always valued highly, which must have stamped
+him well in the esteem of every listener, had been followed by a little
+history of his private life, which rendered him perfectly interesting
+in the eyes of all the ladies.  He had been engaged to Captain
+Harville's sister, and was now mourning her loss.  They had been a year
+or two waiting for fortune and promotion.  Fortune came, his
+prize-money as lieutenant being great; promotion, too, came at last;
+but Fanny Harville did not live to know it.  She had died the preceding
+summer while he was at sea.  Captain Wentworth believed it impossible
+for man to be more attached to woman than poor Benwick had been to
+Fanny Harville, or to be more deeply afflicted under the dreadful
+change.  He considered his disposition as of the sort which must suffer
+heavily, uniting very strong feelings with quiet, serious, and retiring
+manners, and a decided taste for reading, and sedentary pursuits.  To
+finish the interest of the story, the friendship between him and the
+Harvilles seemed, if possible, augmented by the event which closed all
+their views of alliance, and Captain Benwick was now living with them
+entirely.  Captain Harville had taken his present house for half a
+year; his taste, and his health, and his fortune, all directing him to
+a residence inexpensive, and by the sea; and the grandeur of the
+country, and the retirement of Lyme in the winter, appeared exactly
+adapted to Captain Benwick's state of mind.  The sympathy and good-will
+excited towards Captain Benwick was very great.
+
+"And yet," said Anne to herself, as they now moved forward to meet the
+party, "he has not, perhaps, a more sorrowing heart than I have.  I
+cannot believe his prospects so blighted for ever.  He is younger than
+I am; younger in feeling, if not in fact; younger as a man.  He will
+rally again, and be happy with another."
+
+They all met, and were introduced.  Captain Harville was a tall, dark
+man, with a sensible, benevolent countenance; a little lame; and from
+strong features and want of health, looking much older than Captain
+Wentworth.  Captain Benwick looked, and was, the youngest of the three,
+and, compared with either of them, a little man.  He had a pleasing
+face and a melancholy air, just as he ought to have, and drew back from
+conversation.
+
+Captain Harville, though not equalling Captain Wentworth in manners,
+was a perfect gentleman, unaffected, warm, and obliging.  Mrs Harville,
+a degree less polished than her husband, seemed, however, to have the
+same good feelings; and nothing could be more pleasant than their
+desire of considering the whole party as friends of their own, because
+the friends of Captain Wentworth, or more kindly hospitable than their
+entreaties for their all promising to dine with them.  The dinner,
+already ordered at the inn, was at last, though unwillingly, accepted
+as a excuse; but they seemed almost hurt that Captain Wentworth should
+have brought any such party to Lyme, without considering it as a thing
+of course that they should dine with them.
+
+There was so much attachment to Captain Wentworth in all this, and such
+a bewitching charm in a degree of hospitality so uncommon, so unlike
+the usual style of give-and-take invitations, and dinners of formality
+and display, that Anne felt her spirits not likely to be benefited by
+an increasing acquaintance among his brother-officers.  "These would
+have been all my friends," was her thought; and she had to struggle
+against a great tendency to lowness.
+
+On quitting the Cobb, they all went in-doors with their new friends,
+and found rooms so small as none but those who invite from the heart
+could think capable of accommodating so many.  Anne had a moment's
+astonishment on the subject herself; but it was soon lost in the
+pleasanter feelings which sprang from the sight of all the ingenious
+contrivances and nice arrangements of Captain Harville, to turn the
+actual space to the best account, to supply the deficiencies of
+lodging-house furniture, and defend the windows and doors against the
+winter storms to be expected.  The varieties in the fitting-up of the
+rooms, where the common necessaries provided by the owner, in the
+common indifferent plight, were contrasted with some few articles of a
+rare species of wood, excellently worked up, and with something curious
+and valuable from all the distant countries Captain Harville had
+visited, were more than amusing to Anne; connected as it all was with
+his profession, the fruit of its labours, the effect of its influence
+on his habits, the picture of repose and domestic happiness it
+presented, made it to her a something more, or less, than gratification.
+
+Captain Harville was no reader; but he had contrived excellent
+accommodations, and fashioned very pretty shelves, for a tolerable
+collection of well-bound volumes, the property of Captain Benwick.  His
+lameness prevented him from taking much exercise; but a mind of
+usefulness and ingenuity seemed to furnish him with constant employment
+within.  He drew, he varnished, he carpentered, he glued; he made toys
+for the children; he fashioned new netting-needles and pins with
+improvements; and if everything else was done, sat down to his large
+fishing-net at one corner of the room.
+
+Anne thought she left great happiness behind her when they quitted the
+house; and Louisa, by whom she found herself walking, burst forth into
+raptures of admiration and delight on the character of the navy; their
+friendliness, their brotherliness, their openness, their uprightness;
+protesting that she was convinced of sailors having more worth and
+warmth than any other set of men in England; that they only knew how to
+live, and they only deserved to be respected and loved.
+
+They went back to dress and dine; and so well had the scheme answered
+already, that nothing was found amiss; though its being "so entirely
+out of season," and the "no thoroughfare of Lyme," and the "no
+expectation of company," had brought many apologies from the heads of
+the inn.
+
+Anne found herself by this time growing so much more hardened to being
+in Captain Wentworth's company than she had at first imagined could
+ever be, that the sitting down to the same table with him now, and the
+interchange of the common civilities attending on it (they never got
+beyond), was become a mere nothing.
+
+The nights were too dark for the ladies to meet again till the morrow,
+but Captain Harville had promised them a visit in the evening; and he
+came, bringing his friend also, which was more than had been expected,
+it having been agreed that Captain Benwick had all the appearance of
+being oppressed by the presence of so many strangers.  He ventured
+among them again, however, though his spirits certainly did not seem
+fit for the mirth of the party in general.
+
+While Captains Wentworth and Harville led the talk on one side of the
+room, and by recurring to former days, supplied anecdotes in abundance
+to occupy and entertain the others, it fell to Anne's lot to be placed
+rather apart with Captain Benwick; and a very good impulse of her
+nature obliged her to begin an acquaintance with him.  He was shy, and
+disposed to abstraction; but the engaging mildness of her countenance,
+and gentleness of her manners, soon had their effect; and Anne was well
+repaid the first trouble of exertion.  He was evidently a young man of
+considerable taste in reading, though principally in poetry; and
+besides the persuasion of having given him at least an evening's
+indulgence in the discussion of subjects, which his usual companions
+had probably no concern in, she had the hope of being of real use to
+him in some suggestions as to the duty and benefit of struggling
+against affliction, which had naturally grown out of their
+conversation.  For, though shy, he did not seem reserved; it had rather
+the appearance of feelings glad to burst their usual restraints; and
+having talked of poetry, the richness of the present age, and gone
+through a brief comparison of opinion as to the first-rate poets,
+trying to ascertain whether Marmion or The Lady of the Lake were to be
+preferred, and how ranked the Giaour and The Bride of Abydos; and
+moreover, how the Giaour was to be pronounced, he showed himself so
+intimately acquainted with all the tenderest songs of the one poet, and
+all the impassioned descriptions of hopeless agony of the other; he
+repeated, with such tremulous feeling, the various lines which imaged a
+broken heart, or a mind destroyed by wretchedness, and looked so
+entirely as if he meant to be understood, that she ventured to hope he
+did not always read only poetry, and to say, that she thought it was
+the misfortune of poetry to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who
+enjoyed it completely; and that the strong feelings which alone could
+estimate it truly were the very feelings which ought to taste it but
+sparingly.
+
+His looks shewing him not pained, but pleased with this allusion to his
+situation, she was emboldened to go on; and feeling in herself the
+right of seniority of mind, she ventured to recommend a larger
+allowance of prose in his daily study; and on being requested to
+particularize, mentioned such works of our best moralists, such
+collections of the finest letters, such memoirs of characters of worth
+and suffering, as occurred to her at the moment as calculated to rouse
+and fortify the mind by the highest precepts, and the strongest
+examples of moral and religious endurances.
+
+Captain Benwick listened attentively, and seemed grateful for the
+interest implied; and though with a shake of the head, and sighs which
+declared his little faith in the efficacy of any books on grief like
+his, noted down the names of those she recommended, and promised to
+procure and read them.
+
+When the evening was over, Anne could not but be amused at the idea of
+her coming to Lyme to preach patience and resignation to a young man
+whom she had never seen before; nor could she help fearing, on more
+serious reflection, that, like many other great moralists and
+preachers, she had been eloquent on a point in which her own conduct
+would ill bear examination.
+
+
+
+Chapter 12
+
+
+Anne and Henrietta, finding themselves the earliest of the party the
+next morning, agreed to stroll down to the sea before breakfast.  They
+went to the sands, to watch the flowing of the tide, which a fine
+south-easterly breeze was bringing in with all the grandeur which so
+flat a shore admitted.  They praised the morning; gloried in the sea;
+sympathized in the delight of the fresh-feeling breeze--and were
+silent; till Henrietta suddenly began again with--
+
+"Oh! yes,--I am quite convinced that, with very few exceptions, the
+sea-air always does good.  There can be no doubt of its having been of
+the greatest service to Dr Shirley, after his illness, last spring
+twelve-month.  He declares himself, that coming to Lyme for a month,
+did him more good than all the medicine he took; and, that being by the
+sea, always makes him feel young again.  Now, I cannot help thinking it
+a pity that he does not live entirely by the sea.  I do think he had
+better leave Uppercross entirely, and fix at Lyme.  Do not you, Anne?
+Do not you agree with me, that it is the best thing he could do, both
+for himself and Mrs Shirley?  She has cousins here, you know, and many
+acquaintance, which would make it cheerful for her, and I am sure she
+would be glad to get to a place where she could have medical attendance
+at hand, in case of his having another seizure.  Indeed I think it
+quite melancholy to have such excellent people as Dr and Mrs Shirley,
+who have been doing good all their lives, wearing out their last days
+in a place like Uppercross, where, excepting our family, they seem shut
+out from all the world.  I wish his friends would propose it to him.  I
+really think they ought.  And, as to procuring a dispensation, there
+could be no difficulty at his time of life, and with his character.  My
+only doubt is, whether anything could persuade him to leave his parish.
+He is so very strict and scrupulous in his notions; over-scrupulous I
+must say.  Do not you think, Anne, it is being over-scrupulous?  Do not
+you think it is quite a mistaken point of conscience, when a clergyman
+sacrifices his health for the sake of duties, which may be just as well
+performed by another person?  And at Lyme too, only seventeen miles
+off, he would be near enough to hear, if people thought there was
+anything to complain of."
+
+Anne smiled more than once to herself during this speech, and entered
+into the subject, as ready to do good by entering into the feelings of
+a young lady as of a young man, though here it was good of a lower
+standard, for what could be offered but general acquiescence?  She said
+all that was reasonable and proper on the business; felt the claims of
+Dr Shirley to repose as she ought; saw how very desirable it was that
+he should have some active, respectable young man, as a resident
+curate, and was even courteous enough to hint at the advantage of such
+resident curate's being married.
+
+"I wish," said Henrietta, very well pleased with her companion, "I wish
+Lady Russell lived at Uppercross, and were intimate with Dr Shirley.  I
+have always heard of Lady Russell as a woman of the greatest influence
+with everybody!  I always look upon her as able to persuade a person to
+anything!  I am afraid of her, as I have told you before, quite afraid
+of her, because she is so very clever; but I respect her amazingly, and
+wish we had such a neighbour at Uppercross."
+
+Anne was amused by Henrietta's manner of being grateful, and amused
+also that the course of events and the new interests of Henrietta's
+views should have placed her friend at all in favour with any of the
+Musgrove family; she had only time, however, for a general answer, and
+a wish that such another woman were at Uppercross, before all subjects
+suddenly ceased, on seeing Louisa and Captain Wentworth coming towards
+them.  They came also for a stroll till breakfast was likely to be
+ready; but Louisa recollecting, immediately afterwards that she had
+something to procure at a shop, invited them all to go back with her
+into the town.  They were all at her disposal.
+
+When they came to the steps, leading upwards from the beach, a
+gentleman, at the same moment preparing to come down, politely drew
+back, and stopped to give them way.  They ascended and passed him; and
+as they passed, Anne's face caught his eye, and he looked at her with a
+degree of earnest admiration, which she could not be insensible of.
+She was looking remarkably well; her very regular, very pretty
+features, having the bloom and freshness of youth restored by the fine
+wind which had been blowing on her complexion, and by the animation of
+eye which it had also produced.  It was evident that the gentleman,
+(completely a gentleman in manner) admired her exceedingly.  Captain
+Wentworth looked round at her instantly in a way which shewed his
+noticing of it.  He gave her a momentary glance, a glance of
+brightness, which seemed to say, "That man is struck with you, and even
+I, at this moment, see something like Anne Elliot again."
+
+After attending Louisa through her business, and loitering about a
+little longer, they returned to the inn; and Anne, in passing
+afterwards quickly from her own chamber to their dining-room, had
+nearly run against the very same gentleman, as he came out of an
+adjoining apartment.  She had before conjectured him to be a stranger
+like themselves, and determined that a well-looking groom, who was
+strolling about near the two inns as they came back, should be his
+servant.  Both master and man being in mourning assisted the idea.  It
+was now proved that he belonged to the same inn as themselves; and this
+second meeting, short as it was, also proved again by the gentleman's
+looks, that he thought hers very lovely, and by the readiness and
+propriety of his apologies, that he was a man of exceedingly good
+manners.  He seemed about thirty, and though not handsome, had an
+agreeable person.  Anne felt that she should like to know who he was.
+
+They had nearly done breakfast, when the sound of a carriage, (almost
+the first they had heard since entering Lyme) drew half the party to
+the window.  It was a gentleman's carriage, a curricle, but only coming
+round from the stable-yard to the front door; somebody must be going
+away.  It was driven by a servant in mourning.
+
+The word curricle made Charles Musgrove jump up that he might compare
+it with his own; the servant in mourning roused Anne's curiosity, and
+the whole six were collected to look, by the time the owner of the
+curricle was to be seen issuing from the door amidst the bows and
+civilities of the household, and taking his seat, to drive off.
+
+"Ah!" cried Captain Wentworth, instantly, and with half a glance at
+Anne, "it is the very man we passed."
+
+The Miss Musgroves agreed to it; and having all kindly watched him as
+far up the hill as they could, they returned to the breakfast table.
+The waiter came into the room soon afterwards.
+
+"Pray," said Captain Wentworth, immediately, "can you tell us the name
+of the gentleman who is just gone away?"
+
+"Yes, Sir, a Mr Elliot, a gentleman of large fortune, came in last
+night from Sidmouth.  Dare say you heard the carriage, sir, while you
+were at dinner; and going on now for Crewkherne, in his way to Bath and
+London."
+
+"Elliot!"  Many had looked on each other, and many had repeated the
+name, before all this had been got through, even by the smart rapidity
+of a waiter.
+
+"Bless me!" cried Mary; "it must be our cousin; it must be our Mr
+Elliot, it must, indeed!  Charles, Anne, must not it?  In mourning, you
+see, just as our Mr Elliot must be.  How very extraordinary!  In the
+very same inn with us!  Anne, must not it be our Mr Elliot?  my
+father's next heir?  Pray sir," turning to the waiter, "did not you
+hear, did not his servant say whether he belonged to the Kellynch
+family?"
+
+"No, ma'am, he did not mention no particular family; but he said his
+master was a very rich gentleman, and would be a baronight some day."
+
+"There! you see!" cried Mary in an ecstasy, "just as I said!  Heir to
+Sir Walter Elliot!  I was sure that would come out, if it was so.
+Depend upon it, that is a circumstance which his servants take care to
+publish, wherever he goes.  But, Anne, only conceive how extraordinary!
+I wish I had looked at him more.  I wish we had been aware in time, who
+it was, that he might have been introduced to us.  What a pity that we
+should not have been introduced to each other!  Do you think he had the
+Elliot countenance?  I hardly looked at him, I was looking at the
+horses; but I think he had something of the Elliot countenance, I
+wonder the arms did not strike me!  Oh! the great-coat was hanging over
+the panel, and hid the arms, so it did; otherwise, I am sure, I should
+have observed them, and the livery too; if the servant had not been in
+mourning, one should have known him by the livery."
+
+"Putting all these very extraordinary circumstances together," said
+Captain Wentworth, "we must consider it to be the arrangement of
+Providence, that you should not be introduced to your cousin."
+
+When she could command Mary's attention, Anne quietly tried to convince
+her that their father and Mr Elliot had not, for many years, been on
+such terms as to make the power of attempting an introduction at all
+desirable.
+
+At the same time, however, it was a secret gratification to herself to
+have seen her cousin, and to know that the future owner of Kellynch was
+undoubtedly a gentleman, and had an air of good sense.  She would not,
+upon any account, mention her having met with him the second time;
+luckily Mary did not much attend to their having passed close by him in
+their earlier walk, but she would have felt quite ill-used by Anne's
+having actually run against him in the passage, and received his very
+polite excuses, while she had never been near him at all; no, that
+cousinly little interview must remain a perfect secret.
+
+"Of course," said Mary, "you will mention our seeing Mr Elliot, the
+next time you write to Bath.  I think my father certainly ought to hear
+of it; do mention all about him."
+
+Anne avoided a direct reply, but it was just the circumstance which she
+considered as not merely unnecessary to be communicated, but as what
+ought to be suppressed.  The offence which had been given her father,
+many years back, she knew; Elizabeth's particular share in it she
+suspected; and that Mr Elliot's idea always produced irritation in both
+was beyond a doubt.  Mary never wrote to Bath herself; all the toil of
+keeping up a slow and unsatisfactory correspondence with Elizabeth fell
+on Anne.
+
+Breakfast had not been long over, when they were joined by Captain and
+Mrs Harville and Captain Benwick; with whom they had appointed to take
+their last walk about Lyme.  They ought to be setting off for
+Uppercross by one, and in the meanwhile were to be all together, and
+out of doors as long as they could.
+
+Anne found Captain Benwick getting near her, as soon as they were all
+fairly in the street.  Their conversation the preceding evening did not
+disincline him to seek her again; and they walked together some time,
+talking as before of Mr Scott and Lord Byron, and still as unable as
+before, and as unable as any other two readers, to think exactly alike
+of the merits of either, till something occasioned an almost general
+change amongst their party, and instead of Captain Benwick, she had
+Captain Harville by her side.
+
+"Miss Elliot," said he, speaking rather low, "you have done a good deed
+in making that poor fellow talk so much.  I wish he could have such
+company oftener.  It is bad for him, I know, to be shut up as he is;
+but what can we do?  We cannot part."
+
+"No," said Anne, "that I can easily believe to be impossible; but in
+time, perhaps--we know what time does in every case of affliction, and
+you must remember, Captain Harville, that your friend may yet be called
+a young mourner--only last summer, I understand."
+
+"Ay, true enough," (with a deep sigh) "only June."
+
+"And not known to him, perhaps, so soon."
+
+"Not till the first week of August, when he came home from the Cape,
+just made into the Grappler.  I was at Plymouth dreading to hear of
+him; he sent in letters, but the Grappler was under orders for
+Portsmouth.  There the news must follow him, but who was to tell it?
+not I.  I would as soon have been run up to the yard-arm.  Nobody could
+do it, but that good fellow" (pointing to Captain Wentworth.)  "The
+Laconia had come into Plymouth the week before; no danger of her being
+sent to sea again.  He stood his chance for the rest; wrote up for
+leave of absence, but without waiting the return, travelled night and
+day till he got to Portsmouth, rowed off to the Grappler that instant,
+and never left the poor fellow for a week.  That's what he did, and
+nobody else could have saved poor James.  You may think, Miss Elliot,
+whether he is dear to us!"
+
+Anne did think on the question with perfect decision, and said as much
+in reply as her own feeling could accomplish, or as his seemed able to
+bear, for he was too much affected to renew the subject, and when he
+spoke again, it was of something totally different.
+
+Mrs Harville's giving it as her opinion that her husband would have
+quite walking enough by the time he reached home, determined the
+direction of all the party in what was to be their last walk; they
+would accompany them to their door, and then return and set off
+themselves.  By all their calculations there was just time for this;
+but as they drew near the Cobb, there was such a general wish to walk
+along it once more, all were so inclined, and Louisa soon grew so
+determined, that the difference of a quarter of an hour, it was found,
+would be no difference at all; so with all the kind leave-taking, and
+all the kind interchange of invitations and promises which may be
+imagined, they parted from Captain and Mrs Harville at their own door,
+and still accompanied by Captain Benwick, who seemed to cling to them
+to the last, proceeded to make the proper adieus to the Cobb.
+
+Anne found Captain Benwick again drawing near her.  Lord Byron's "dark
+blue seas" could not fail of being brought forward by their present
+view, and she gladly gave him all her attention as long as attention
+was possible.  It was soon drawn, perforce another way.
+
+There was too much wind to make the high part of the new Cobb pleasant
+for the ladies, and they agreed to get down the steps to the lower, and
+all were contented to pass quietly and carefully down the steep flight,
+excepting Louisa; she must be jumped down them by Captain Wentworth.
+In all their walks, he had had to jump her from the stiles; the
+sensation was delightful to her.  The hardness of the pavement for her
+feet, made him less willing upon the present occasion; he did it,
+however.  She was safely down, and instantly, to show her enjoyment,
+ran up the steps to be jumped down again.  He advised her against it,
+thought the jar too great; but no, he reasoned and talked in vain, she
+smiled and said, "I am determined I will:" he put out his hands; she
+was too precipitate by half a second, she fell on the pavement on the
+Lower Cobb, and was taken up lifeless!  There was no wound, no blood,
+no visible bruise; but her eyes were closed, she breathed not, her face
+was like death.  The horror of the moment to all who stood around!
+
+Captain Wentworth, who had caught her up, knelt with her in his arms,
+looking on her with a face as pallid as her own, in an agony of
+silence.  "She is dead! she is dead!" screamed Mary, catching hold of
+her husband, and contributing with his own horror to make him
+immoveable; and in another moment, Henrietta, sinking under the
+conviction, lost her senses too, and would have fallen on the steps,
+but for Captain Benwick and Anne, who caught and supported her between
+them.
+
+"Is there no one to help me?" were the first words which burst from
+Captain Wentworth, in a tone of despair, and as if all his own strength
+were gone.
+
+"Go to him, go to him," cried Anne, "for heaven's sake go to him.  I
+can support her myself.  Leave me, and go to him.  Rub her hands, rub
+her temples; here are salts; take them, take them."
+
+Captain Benwick obeyed, and Charles at the same moment, disengaging
+himself from his wife, they were both with him; and Louisa was raised
+up and supported more firmly between them, and everything was done that
+Anne had prompted, but in vain; while Captain Wentworth, staggering
+against the wall for his support, exclaimed in the bitterest agony--
+
+"Oh God! her father and mother!"
+
+"A surgeon!" said Anne.
+
+He caught the word; it seemed to rouse him at once, and saying only--
+"True, true, a surgeon this instant," was darting away, when Anne
+eagerly suggested--
+
+"Captain Benwick, would not it be better for Captain Benwick?  He knows
+where a surgeon is to be found."
+
+Every one capable of thinking felt the advantage of the idea, and in a
+moment (it was all done in rapid moments) Captain Benwick had resigned
+the poor corpse-like  figure entirely to the brother's care, and was
+off for the town with the utmost rapidity.
+
+As to the wretched party left behind, it could scarcely be said which
+of the three, who were completely rational, was suffering most: Captain
+Wentworth, Anne, or Charles, who, really a very affectionate brother,
+hung over Louisa with sobs of grief, and could only turn his eyes from
+one sister, to see the other in a state as insensible, or to witness
+the hysterical agitations of his wife, calling on him for help which he
+could not give.
+
+Anne, attending with all the strength and zeal, and thought, which
+instinct supplied, to Henrietta, still tried, at intervals, to suggest
+comfort to the others, tried to quiet Mary, to animate Charles, to
+assuage the feelings of Captain Wentworth.  Both seemed to look to her
+for directions.
+
+"Anne, Anne," cried Charles, "What is to be done next?  What, in
+heaven's name, is to be done next?"
+
+Captain Wentworth's eyes were also turned towards her.
+
+"Had not she better be carried to the inn?  Yes, I am sure: carry her
+gently to the inn."
+
+"Yes, yes, to the inn," repeated Captain Wentworth, comparatively
+collected, and eager to be doing something.  "I will carry her myself.
+Musgrove, take care of the others."
+
+By this time the report of the accident had spread among the workmen
+and boatmen about the Cobb, and many were collected near them, to be
+useful if wanted, at any rate, to enjoy the sight of a dead young lady,
+nay, two dead young ladies, for it proved twice as fine as the first
+report.  To some of the best-looking of these good people Henrietta was
+consigned, for, though partially revived, she was quite helpless; and
+in this manner, Anne walking by her side, and Charles attending to his
+wife, they set forward, treading back with feelings unutterable, the
+ground, which so lately, so very lately, and so light of heart, they
+had passed along.
+
+They were not off the Cobb, before the Harvilles met them.  Captain
+Benwick had been seen flying by their house, with a countenance which
+showed something to be wrong; and they had set off immediately,
+informed and directed as they passed, towards the spot.  Shocked as
+Captain Harville was, he brought senses and nerves that could be
+instantly useful; and a look between him and his wife decided what was
+to be done.  She must be taken to their house; all must go to their
+house; and await the surgeon's arrival there.  They would not listen to
+scruples:  he was obeyed; they were all beneath his roof; and while
+Louisa, under Mrs Harville's direction, was conveyed up stairs, and
+given possession of her own bed, assistance, cordials, restoratives
+were supplied by her husband to all who needed them.
+
+Louisa had once opened her eyes, but soon closed them again, without
+apparent consciousness.  This had been a proof of life, however, of
+service to her sister; and Henrietta, though perfectly incapable of
+being in the same room with Louisa, was kept, by the agitation of hope
+and fear, from a return of her own insensibility.  Mary, too, was
+growing calmer.
+
+The surgeon was with them almost before it had seemed possible.  They
+were sick with horror, while he examined; but he was not hopeless.  The
+head had received a severe contusion, but he had seen greater injuries
+recovered from:  he was by no means hopeless; he spoke cheerfully.
+
+That he did not regard it as a desperate case, that he did not say a
+few hours must end it, was at first felt, beyond the hope of most; and
+the ecstasy of such a reprieve, the rejoicing, deep and silent, after a
+few fervent ejaculations of gratitude to Heaven had been offered, may
+be conceived.
+
+The tone, the look, with which "Thank God!" was uttered by Captain
+Wentworth, Anne was sure could never be forgotten by her; nor the sight
+of him afterwards, as he sat near a table, leaning over it with folded
+arms and face concealed, as if overpowered by the various feelings of
+his soul, and trying by prayer and reflection to calm them.
+
+Louisa's limbs had escaped.  There was no injury but to the head.
+
+It now became necessary for the party to consider what was best to be
+done, as to their general situation.  They were now able to speak to
+each other and consult.  That Louisa must remain where she was, however
+distressing to her friends to be involving the Harvilles in such
+trouble, did not admit a doubt.  Her removal was impossible.  The
+Harvilles silenced all scruples; and, as much as they could, all
+gratitude.  They had looked forward and arranged everything before the
+others began to reflect.  Captain Benwick must give up his room to
+them, and get another bed elsewhere; and the whole was settled.  They
+were only concerned that the house could accommodate no more; and yet
+perhaps, by "putting the children away in the maid's room, or swinging
+a cot somewhere," they could hardly bear to think of not finding room
+for two or three besides, supposing they might wish to stay; though,
+with regard to any attendance on Miss Musgrove, there need not be the
+least uneasiness in leaving her to Mrs Harville's care entirely.  Mrs
+Harville was a very experienced nurse, and her nursery-maid, who had
+lived with her long, and gone about with her everywhere, was just such
+another.  Between these two, she could want no possible attendance by
+day or night.  And all this was said with a truth and sincerity of
+feeling irresistible.
+
+Charles, Henrietta, and Captain Wentworth were the three in
+consultation, and for a little while it was only an interchange of
+perplexity and terror.  "Uppercross, the necessity of some one's going
+to Uppercross; the news to be conveyed; how it could be broken to Mr
+and Mrs Musgrove; the lateness of the morning; an hour already gone
+since they ought to have been off; the impossibility of being in
+tolerable time." At first, they were capable of nothing more to the
+purpose than such exclamations; but, after a while, Captain Wentworth,
+exerting himself, said--
+
+"We must be decided, and without the loss of another minute.  Every
+minute is valuable.  Some one must resolve on being off for Uppercross
+instantly.  Musgrove, either you or I must go."
+
+Charles agreed, but declared his resolution of not going away.  He
+would be as little incumbrance as possible to Captain and Mrs Harville;
+but as to leaving his sister in such a state, he neither ought, nor
+would.  So far it was decided; and Henrietta at first declared the
+same.  She, however, was soon persuaded to think differently.  The
+usefulness of her staying!  She who had not been able to remain in
+Louisa's room, or to look at her, without sufferings which made her
+worse than helpless!  She was forced to acknowledge that she could do
+no good, yet was still unwilling to be away, till, touched by the
+thought of her father and mother, she gave it up; she consented, she
+was anxious to be at home.
+
+The plan had reached this point, when Anne, coming quietly down from
+Louisa's room, could not but hear what followed, for the parlour door
+was open.
+
+"Then it is settled, Musgrove," cried Captain Wentworth, "that you
+stay, and that I take care of your sister home.  But as to the rest, as
+to the others, if one stays to assist Mrs Harville, I think it need be
+only one.  Mrs Charles Musgrove will, of course, wish to get back to
+her children; but if Anne will stay, no one so proper, so capable as
+Anne."
+
+She paused a moment to recover from the emotion of hearing herself so
+spoken of.  The other two warmly agreed with what he said, and she then
+appeared.
+
+"You will stay, I am sure; you will stay and nurse her;" cried he,
+turning to her and speaking with a glow, and yet a gentleness, which
+seemed almost restoring the past.  She coloured deeply, and he
+recollected himself and moved away.  She expressed herself most
+willing, ready, happy to remain.  "It was what she had been thinking
+of, and wishing to be allowed to do.  A bed on the floor in Louisa's
+room would be sufficient for her, if Mrs Harville would but think so."
+
+One thing more, and all seemed arranged.  Though it was rather
+desirable that Mr and Mrs Musgrove should be previously alarmed by some
+share of delay; yet the time required by the Uppercross horses to take
+them back, would be a dreadful extension of suspense; and Captain
+Wentworth proposed, and Charles Musgrove agreed, that it would be much
+better for him to take a chaise from the inn, and leave Mr Musgrove's
+carriage and horses to be sent home the next morning early, when there
+would be the farther advantage of sending an account of Louisa's night.
+
+Captain Wentworth now hurried off to get everything ready on his part,
+and to be soon followed by the two ladies.  When the plan was made
+known to Mary, however, there was an end of all peace in it.  She was
+so wretched and so vehement, complained so much of injustice in being
+expected to go away instead of Anne; Anne, who was nothing to Louisa,
+while she was her sister, and had the best right to stay in Henrietta's
+stead!  Why was not she to be as useful as Anne?  And to go home
+without Charles, too, without her husband!  No, it was too unkind.  And
+in short, she said more than her husband could long withstand, and as
+none of the others could oppose when he gave way, there was no help for
+it; the change of Mary for Anne was inevitable.
+
+Anne had never submitted more reluctantly to the jealous and
+ill-judging claims of Mary; but so it must be, and they set off for the
+town, Charles taking care of his sister, and Captain Benwick attending
+to her.  She gave a moment's recollection, as they hurried along, to
+the little circumstances which the same spots had witnessed earlier in
+the morning.  There she had listened to Henrietta's schemes for Dr
+Shirley's leaving Uppercross; farther on, she had first seen Mr Elliot;
+a moment seemed all that could now be given to any one but Louisa, or
+those who were wrapt up in her welfare.
+
+Captain Benwick was most considerately attentive to her; and, united as
+they all seemed by the distress of the day, she felt an increasing
+degree of good-will towards him, and a pleasure even in thinking that
+it might, perhaps, be the occasion of continuing their acquaintance.
+
+Captain Wentworth was on the watch for them, and a chaise and four in
+waiting, stationed for their convenience in the lowest part of the
+street; but his evident surprise and vexation at the substitution of
+one sister for the other, the change in his countenance, the
+astonishment, the expressions begun and suppressed, with which Charles
+was listened to, made but a mortifying reception of Anne; or must at
+least convince her that she was valued only as she could be useful to
+Louisa.
+
+She endeavoured to be composed, and to be just.  Without emulating the
+feelings of an Emma towards her Henry, she would have attended on
+Louisa with a zeal above the common claims of regard, for his sake; and
+she hoped he would not long be so unjust as to suppose she would shrink
+unnecessarily from the office of a friend.
+
+In the meanwhile she was in the carriage.  He had handed them both in,
+and placed himself between them; and in this manner, under these
+circumstances, full of astonishment and emotion to Anne, she quitted
+Lyme.  How the long stage would pass; how it was to affect their
+manners; what was to be their sort of intercourse, she could not
+foresee.  It was all quite natural, however.  He was devoted to
+Henrietta; always turning towards her; and when he spoke at all, always
+with the view of supporting her hopes and raising her spirits.  In
+general, his voice and manner were studiously calm.  To spare Henrietta
+from agitation seemed the governing principle.  Once only, when she had
+been grieving over the last ill-judged, ill-fated walk to the Cobb,
+bitterly lamenting that it ever had been thought of, he burst forth, as
+if wholly overcome--
+
+"Don't talk of it, don't talk of it," he cried.  "Oh God! that I had
+not given way to her at the fatal moment!  Had I done as I ought!  But
+so eager and so resolute! Dear, sweet Louisa!"
+
+Anne wondered whether it ever occurred to him now, to question the
+justness of his own previous opinion as to the universal felicity and
+advantage of firmness of character; and whether it might not strike him
+that, like all other qualities of the mind, it should have its
+proportions and limits.  She thought it could scarcely escape him to
+feel that a persuadable temper might sometimes be as much in favour of
+happiness as a very resolute character.
+
+They got on fast.  Anne was astonished to recognise the same hills and
+the same objects so soon.  Their actual speed, heightened by some dread
+of the conclusion, made the road appear but half as long as on the day
+before.  It was growing quite dusk, however, before they were in the
+neighbourhood of Uppercross, and there had been total silence among
+them for some time, Henrietta leaning back in the corner, with a shawl
+over her face, giving the hope of her having cried herself to sleep;
+when, as they were going up their last hill, Anne found herself all at
+once addressed by Captain Wentworth.  In a low, cautious voice, he
+said:--
+
+"I have been considering what we had best do.  She must not appear at
+first.  She could not stand it.  I have been thinking whether you had
+not better remain in the carriage with her, while I go in and break it
+to Mr and Mrs Musgrove.  Do you think this is a good plan?"
+
+She did:  he was satisfied, and said no more.  But the remembrance of
+the appeal remained a pleasure to her, as a proof of friendship, and of
+deference for her judgement, a great pleasure; and when it became a
+sort of parting proof, its value did not lessen.
+
+When the distressing communication at Uppercross was over, and he had
+seen the father and mother quite as composed as could be hoped, and the
+daughter all the better for being with them, he announced his intention
+of returning in the same carriage to Lyme; and when the horses were
+baited, he was off.
+
+(End of volume one.)
+
+
+
+Chapter 13
+
+
+The remainder of Anne's time at Uppercross, comprehending only two
+days, was spent entirely at the Mansion House; and she had the
+satisfaction of knowing herself extremely useful there, both as an
+immediate companion, and as assisting in all those arrangements for the
+future, which, in Mr and Mrs Musgrove's distressed state of spirits,
+would have been difficulties.
+
+They had an early account from Lyme the next morning.  Louisa was much
+the same.  No symptoms worse than before had appeared.  Charles came a
+few hours afterwards, to bring a later and more particular account.  He
+was tolerably cheerful.  A speedy cure must not be hoped, but
+everything was going on as well as the nature of the case admitted.  In
+speaking of the Harvilles, he seemed unable to satisfy his own sense of
+their kindness, especially of Mrs Harville's exertions as a nurse.
+"She really left nothing for Mary to do.  He and Mary had been
+persuaded to go early to their inn last night.  Mary had been
+hysterical again this morning.  When he came away, she was going to
+walk out with Captain Benwick, which, he hoped, would do her good.  He
+almost wished she had been prevailed on to come home the day before;
+but the truth was, that Mrs Harville left nothing for anybody to do."
+
+Charles was to return to Lyme the same afternoon, and his father had at
+first half a mind to go with him, but the ladies could not consent.  It
+would be going only to multiply trouble to the others, and increase his
+own distress; and a much better scheme followed and was acted upon.  A
+chaise was sent for from Crewkherne, and Charles conveyed back a far
+more useful person in the old nursery-maid of the family, one who
+having brought up all the children, and seen the very last, the
+lingering and long-petted Master Harry, sent to school after his
+brothers, was now living in her deserted nursery to mend stockings and
+dress all the blains and bruises she could get near her, and who,
+consequently, was only too happy in being allowed to go and help nurse
+dear Miss Louisa.  Vague wishes of getting Sarah thither, had occurred
+before to Mrs Musgrove and Henrietta; but without Anne, it would hardly
+have been resolved on, and found practicable so soon.
+
+They were indebted, the next day, to Charles Hayter, for all the minute
+knowledge of Louisa, which it was so essential to obtain every
+twenty-four hours.  He made it his business to go to Lyme, and his
+account was still encouraging.  The intervals of sense and
+consciousness were believed to be stronger.  Every report agreed in
+Captain Wentworth's appearing fixed in Lyme.
+
+Anne was to leave them on the morrow, an event which they all dreaded.
+"What should they do without her?  They were wretched comforters for
+one another."  And so much was said in this way, that Anne thought she
+could not do better than impart among them the general inclination to
+which she was privy, and persuaded them all to go to Lyme at once.  She
+had little difficulty; it was soon determined that they would go; go
+to-morrow, fix themselves at the inn, or get into lodgings, as it
+suited, and there remain till dear Louisa could be moved.  They must be
+taking off some trouble from the good people she was with; they might
+at least relieve Mrs Harville from the care of her own children; and in
+short, they were so happy in the decision, that Anne was delighted with
+what she had done, and felt that she could not spend her last morning
+at Uppercross better than in assisting their preparations, and sending
+them off at an early hour, though her being left to the solitary range
+of the house was the consequence.
+
+She was the last, excepting the little boys at the cottage, she was the
+very last, the only remaining one of all that had filled and animated
+both houses, of all that had given Uppercross its cheerful character.
+A few days had made a change indeed!
+
+If Louisa recovered, it would all be well again.  More than former
+happiness would be restored.  There could not be a doubt, to her mind
+there was none, of what would follow her recovery.  A few months hence,
+and the room now so deserted, occupied but by her silent, pensive self,
+might be filled again with all that was happy and gay, all that was
+glowing and bright in prosperous love, all that was most unlike Anne
+Elliot!
+
+An hour's complete leisure for such reflections as these, on a dark
+November day, a small thick rain almost blotting out the very few
+objects ever to be discerned from the windows, was enough to make the
+sound of Lady Russell's carriage exceedingly welcome; and yet, though
+desirous to be gone, she could not quit the Mansion House, or look an
+adieu to the Cottage, with its black, dripping and comfortless veranda,
+or even notice through the misty glasses the last humble tenements of
+the village, without a saddened heart.  Scenes had passed in Uppercross
+which made it precious.  It stood the record of many sensations of
+pain, once severe, but now softened; and of some instances of relenting
+feeling, some breathings of friendship and reconciliation, which could
+never be looked for again, and which could never cease to be dear.  She
+left it all behind her, all but the recollection that such things had
+been.
+
+Anne had never entered Kellynch since her quitting Lady Russell's house
+in September.  It had not been necessary, and the few occasions of its
+being possible for her to go to the Hall she had contrived to evade and
+escape from.  Her first return was to resume her place in the modern
+and elegant apartments of the Lodge, and to gladden the eyes of its
+mistress.
+
+There was some anxiety mixed with Lady Russell's joy in meeting her.
+She knew who had been frequenting Uppercross.  But happily, either Anne
+was improved in plumpness and looks, or Lady Russell fancied her so;
+and Anne, in receiving her compliments on the occasion, had the
+amusement of connecting them with the silent admiration of her cousin,
+and of hoping that she was to be blessed with a second spring of youth
+and beauty.
+
+When they came to converse, she was soon sensible of some mental
+change.  The subjects of which her heart had been full on leaving
+Kellynch, and which she had felt slighted, and been compelled to
+smother among the Musgroves, were now become but of secondary interest.
+She had lately lost sight even of her father and sister and Bath.
+Their concerns had been sunk under those of Uppercross; and when Lady
+Russell reverted to their former hopes and fears, and spoke her
+satisfaction in the house in Camden Place, which had been taken, and
+her regret that Mrs Clay should still be with them, Anne would have
+been ashamed to have it known how much more she was thinking of Lyme
+and Louisa Musgrove, and all her acquaintance there; how much more
+interesting to her was the home and the friendship of the Harvilles and
+Captain Benwick, than her own father's house in Camden Place, or her
+own sister's intimacy with Mrs Clay.  She was actually forced to exert
+herself to meet Lady Russell with anything like the appearance of equal
+solicitude, on topics which had by nature the first claim on her.
+
+There was a little awkwardness at first in their discourse on another
+subject.  They must speak of the accident at Lyme.  Lady Russell had
+not been arrived five minutes the day before, when a full account of
+the whole had burst on her; but still it must be talked of, she must
+make enquiries, she must regret the imprudence, lament the result, and
+Captain Wentworth's name must be mentioned by both.  Anne was conscious
+of not doing it so well as Lady Russell.  She could not speak the name,
+and look straight forward to Lady Russell's eye, till she had adopted
+the expedient of telling her briefly what she thought of the attachment
+between him and Louisa.  When this was told, his name distressed her no
+longer.
+
+Lady Russell had only to listen composedly, and wish them happy, but
+internally her heart revelled in angry pleasure, in pleased contempt,
+that the man who at twenty-three had seemed to understand somewhat of
+the value of an Anne Elliot, should, eight years afterwards, be charmed
+by a Louisa Musgrove.
+
+The first three or four days passed most quietly, with no circumstance
+to mark them excepting the receipt of a note or two from Lyme, which
+found their way to Anne, she could not tell how, and brought a rather
+improving account of Louisa.  At the end of that period, Lady Russell's
+politeness could repose no longer, and the fainter self-threatenings of
+the past became in a decided tone, "I must call on Mrs Croft; I really
+must call upon her soon.  Anne, have you courage to go with me, and pay
+a visit in that house?  It will be some trial to us both."
+
+Anne did not shrink from it; on the contrary, she truly felt as she
+said, in observing--
+
+"I think you are very likely to suffer the most of the two; your
+feelings are less reconciled to the change than mine.  By remaining in
+the neighbourhood, I am become inured to it."
+
+She could have said more on the subject; for she had in fact so high an
+opinion of the Crofts, and considered her father so very fortunate in
+his tenants, felt the parish to be so sure of a good example, and the
+poor of the best attention and relief, that however sorry and ashamed
+for the necessity of the removal, she could not but in conscience feel
+that they were gone who deserved not to stay, and that Kellynch Hall
+had passed into better hands than its owners'.  These convictions must
+unquestionably have their own pain, and severe was its kind; but they
+precluded that pain which Lady Russell would suffer in entering the
+house again, and returning through the well-known apartments.
+
+In such moments Anne had no power of saying to herself, "These rooms
+ought to belong only to us.  Oh, how fallen in their destination!  How
+unworthily occupied!  An ancient family to be so driven away!
+Strangers filling their place!" No, except when she thought of her
+mother, and remembered where she had been used to sit and preside, she
+had no sigh of that description to heave.
+
+Mrs Croft always met her with a kindness which gave her the pleasure of
+fancying herself a favourite, and on the present occasion, receiving
+her in that house, there was particular attention.
+
+The sad accident at Lyme was soon the prevailing topic, and on
+comparing their latest accounts of the invalid, it appeared that each
+lady dated her intelligence from the same hour of yestermorn; that
+Captain Wentworth had been in Kellynch yesterday (the first time since
+the accident), had brought Anne the last note, which she had not been
+able to trace the exact steps of; had staid a few hours and then
+returned again to Lyme, and without any present intention of quitting
+it any more.  He had enquired after her, she found, particularly; had
+expressed his hope of Miss Elliot's not being the worse for her
+exertions, and had spoken of those exertions as great.  This was
+handsome, and gave her more pleasure than almost anything else could
+have done.
+
+As to the sad catastrophe itself, it could be canvassed only in one
+style by a couple of steady, sensible women, whose judgements had to
+work on ascertained events; and it was perfectly decided that it had
+been the consequence of much thoughtlessness and much imprudence; that
+its effects were most alarming, and that it was frightful to think, how
+long Miss Musgrove's recovery might yet be doubtful, and how liable she
+would still remain to suffer from the concussion hereafter!  The
+Admiral wound it up summarily by exclaiming--
+
+"Ay, a very bad business indeed.  A new sort of way this, for a young
+fellow to be making love, by breaking his mistress's head, is not it,
+Miss Elliot?  This is breaking a head and giving a plaster, truly!"
+
+Admiral Croft's manners were not quite of the tone to suit Lady
+Russell, but they delighted Anne.  His goodness of heart and simplicity
+of character were irresistible.
+
+"Now, this must be very bad for you," said he, suddenly rousing from a
+little reverie, "to be coming and finding us here.  I had not
+recollected it before, I declare, but it must be very bad.  But now, do
+not stand upon ceremony.  Get up and go over all the rooms in the house
+if you like it."
+
+"Another time, Sir, I thank you, not now."
+
+"Well, whenever it suits you.  You can slip in from the shrubbery at
+any time; and there you will find we keep our umbrellas hanging up by
+that door.  A good place is not it?  But," (checking himself), "you
+will not think it a good place, for yours were always kept in the
+butler's room.  Ay, so it always is, I believe.  One man's ways may be
+as good as another's, but we all like our own best.  And so you must
+judge for yourself, whether it would be better for you to go about the
+house or not."
+
+Anne, finding she might decline it, did so, very gratefully.
+
+"We have made very few changes either," continued the Admiral, after
+thinking a moment.  "Very few.  We told you about the laundry-door, at
+Uppercross.  That has been a very great improvement.  The wonder was,
+how any family upon earth could bear with the inconvenience of its
+opening as it did, so long!  You will tell Sir Walter what we have
+done, and that Mr Shepherd thinks it the greatest improvement the house
+ever had.  Indeed, I must do ourselves the justice to say, that the few
+alterations we have made have been all very much for the better.  My
+wife should have the credit of them, however.  I have done very little
+besides sending away some of the large looking-glasses from my
+dressing-room, which was your father's.  A very good man, and very much
+the gentleman I am sure: but I should think, Miss Elliot," (looking
+with serious reflection), "I should think he must be rather a dressy
+man for his time of life.  Such a number of looking-glasses! oh Lord!
+there was no getting away from one's self.  So I got Sophy to lend me a
+hand, and we soon shifted their quarters; and now I am quite snug, with
+my little shaving glass in one corner, and another great thing that I
+never go near."
+
+Anne, amused in spite of herself, was rather distressed for an answer,
+and the Admiral, fearing he might not have been civil enough, took up
+the subject again, to say--
+
+"The next time you write to your good father, Miss Elliot, pray give
+him my compliments and Mrs Croft's, and say that we are settled here
+quite to our liking, and have no fault at all to find with the place.
+The breakfast-room chimney smokes a little, I grant you, but it is only
+when the wind is due north and blows hard, which may not happen three
+times a winter.  And take it altogether, now that we have been into
+most of the houses hereabouts and can judge, there is not one that we
+like better than this.  Pray say so, with my compliments.  He will be
+glad to hear it."
+
+Lady Russell and Mrs Croft were very well pleased with each other: but
+the acquaintance which this visit began was fated not to proceed far at
+present; for when it was returned, the Crofts announced themselves to
+be going away for a few weeks, to visit their connexions in the north
+of the county, and probably might not be at home again before Lady
+Russell would be removing to Bath.
+
+So ended all danger to Anne of meeting Captain Wentworth at Kellynch
+Hall, or of seeing him in company with her friend.  Everything was safe
+enough, and she smiled over the many anxious feelings she had wasted on
+the subject.
+
+
+
+Chapter 14
+
+
+Though Charles and Mary had remained at Lyme much longer after Mr and
+Mrs Musgrove's going than Anne conceived they could have been at all
+wanted, they were yet the first of the family to be at home again; and
+as soon as possible after their return to Uppercross they drove over to
+the Lodge.  They had left Louisa beginning to sit up; but her head,
+though clear, was exceedingly weak, and her nerves susceptible to the
+highest extreme of tenderness; and though she might be pronounced to be
+altogether doing very well, it was still impossible to say when she
+might be able to bear the removal home; and her father and mother, who
+must return in time to receive their younger children for the Christmas
+holidays, had hardly a hope of being allowed to bring her with them.
+
+They had been all in lodgings together.  Mrs Musgrove had got Mrs
+Harville's children away as much as she could, every possible supply
+from Uppercross had been furnished, to lighten the inconvenience to the
+Harvilles, while the Harvilles had been wanting them to come to dinner
+every day; and in short, it seemed to have been only a struggle on each
+side as to which should be most disinterested and hospitable.
+
+Mary had had her evils; but upon the whole, as was evident by her
+staying so long, she had found more to enjoy than to suffer.  Charles
+Hayter had been at Lyme oftener than suited her; and when they dined
+with the Harvilles there had been only a maid-servant to wait, and at
+first Mrs Harville had always given Mrs Musgrove precedence; but then,
+she had received so very handsome an apology from her on finding out
+whose daughter she was, and there had been so much going on every day,
+there had been so many walks between their lodgings and the Harvilles,
+and she had got books from the library, and changed them so often, that
+the balance had certainly been much in favour of Lyme.  She had been
+taken to Charmouth too, and she had bathed, and she had gone to church,
+and there were a great many more people to look at in the church at
+Lyme than at Uppercross; and all this, joined to the sense of being so
+very useful, had made really an agreeable fortnight.
+
+Anne enquired after Captain Benwick. Mary's face was clouded directly.
+Charles laughed.
+
+"Oh! Captain Benwick is very well, I believe, but he is a very odd
+young man.  I do not know what he would be at.  We asked him to come
+home with us for a day or two:  Charles undertook to give him some
+shooting, and he seemed quite delighted, and, for my part, I thought it
+was all settled; when behold! on Tuesday night, he made a very awkward
+sort of excuse; 'he never shot' and he had 'been quite misunderstood,'
+and he had promised this and he had promised that, and the end of it
+was, I found, that he did not mean to come.  I suppose he was afraid of
+finding it dull; but upon my word I should have thought we were lively
+enough at the Cottage for such a heart-broken man as Captain Benwick."
+
+Charles laughed again and said, "Now Mary, you know very well how it
+really was.  It was all your doing," (turning to Anne.) "He fancied
+that if he went with us, he should find you close by: he fancied
+everybody to be living in Uppercross; and when he discovered that Lady
+Russell lived three miles off, his heart failed him, and he had not
+courage to come.  That is the fact, upon my honour. Mary knows it is."
+
+But Mary did not give into it very graciously, whether from not
+considering Captain Benwick entitled by birth and situation to be in
+love with an Elliot, or from not wanting to believe Anne a greater
+attraction to Uppercross than herself, must be left to be guessed.
+Anne's good-will, however, was not to be lessened by what she heard.
+She boldly acknowledged herself flattered, and continued her enquiries.
+
+"Oh! he talks of you," cried Charles, "in such terms--" Mary
+interrupted him. "I declare, Charles, I never heard him mention Anne
+twice all the time I was there.  I declare, Anne, he never talks of you
+at all."
+
+"No," admitted Charles, "I do not know that he ever does, in a general
+way; but however, it is a very clear thing that he admires you
+exceedingly.  His head is full of some books that he is reading upon
+your recommendation, and he wants to talk to you about them; he has
+found out something or other in one of them which he thinks--oh! I
+cannot pretend to remember it, but it was something very fine--I
+overheard him telling Henrietta all about it; and then 'Miss Elliot'
+was spoken of in the highest terms!  Now Mary, I declare it was so, I
+heard it myself, and you were in the other room.  'Elegance, sweetness,
+beauty.' Oh! there was no end of Miss Elliot's charms."
+
+"And I am sure," cried Mary, warmly, "it was a very little to his
+credit, if he did.  Miss Harville only died last June.  Such a heart is
+very little worth having; is it, Lady Russell?  I am sure you will
+agree with me."
+
+"I must see Captain Benwick before I decide," said Lady Russell,
+smiling.
+
+"And that you are very likely to do very soon, I can tell you, ma'am,"
+said Charles.  "Though he had not nerves for coming away with us, and
+setting off again afterwards to pay a formal visit here, he will make
+his way over to Kellynch one day by himself, you may depend on it.  I
+told him the distance and the road, and I told him of the church's
+being so very well worth seeing; for as he has a taste for those sort
+of things, I thought that would be a good excuse, and he listened with
+all his understanding and soul; and I am sure from his manner that you
+will have him calling here soon.  So, I give you notice, Lady Russell."
+
+"Any acquaintance of Anne's will always be welcome to me," was Lady
+Russell's kind answer.
+
+"Oh! as to being Anne's acquaintance," said Mary, "I think he is rather
+my acquaintance, for I have been seeing him every day this last
+fortnight."
+
+"Well, as your joint acquaintance, then, I shall be very happy to see
+Captain Benwick."
+
+"You will not find anything very agreeable in him, I assure you, ma'am.
+He is one of the dullest young men that ever lived.  He has walked with
+me, sometimes, from one end of the sands to the other, without saying a
+word.  He is not at all a well-bred young man.  I am sure you will not
+like him."
+
+"There we differ, Mary," said Anne.  "I think Lady Russell would like
+him.  I think she would be so much pleased with his mind, that she
+would very soon see no deficiency in his manner."
+
+"So do I, Anne," said Charles.  "I am sure Lady Russell would like him.
+He is just Lady Russell's sort.  Give him a book, and he will read all
+day long."
+
+"Yes, that he will!" exclaimed Mary, tauntingly.  "He will sit poring
+over his book, and not know when a person speaks to him, or when one
+drops one's scissors, or anything that happens.  Do you think Lady
+Russell would like that?"
+
+Lady Russell could not help laughing.  "Upon my word," said she, "I
+should not have supposed that my opinion of any one could have admitted
+of such difference of conjecture, steady and matter of fact as I may
+call myself.  I have really a curiosity to see the person who can give
+occasion to such directly opposite notions.  I wish he may be induced
+to call here.  And when he does, Mary, you may depend upon hearing my
+opinion; but I am determined not to judge him beforehand."
+
+"You will not like him, I will answer for it."
+
+Lady Russell began talking of something else.  Mary spoke with
+animation of their meeting with, or rather missing, Mr Elliot so
+extraordinarily.
+
+"He is a man," said Lady Russell, "whom I have no wish to see.  His
+declining to be on cordial terms with the head of his family, has left
+a very strong impression in his disfavour with me."
+
+This decision checked Mary's eagerness, and stopped her short in the
+midst of the Elliot countenance.
+
+With regard to Captain Wentworth, though Anne hazarded no enquiries,
+there was voluntary communication sufficient.  His spirits had been
+greatly recovering lately as might be expected.  As Louisa improved, he
+had improved, and he was now quite a different creature from what he
+had been the first week.  He had not seen Louisa; and was so extremely
+fearful of any ill consequence to her from an interview, that he did
+not press for it at all; and, on the contrary, seemed to have a plan of
+going away for a week or ten days, till her head was stronger.  He had
+talked of going down to Plymouth for a week, and wanted to persuade
+Captain Benwick to go with him; but, as Charles maintained to the last,
+Captain Benwick seemed much more disposed to ride over to Kellynch.
+
+There can be no doubt that Lady Russell and Anne were both occasionally
+thinking of Captain Benwick, from this time.  Lady Russell could not
+hear the door-bell without feeling that it might be his herald; nor
+could Anne return from any stroll of solitary indulgence in her
+father's grounds, or any visit of charity in the village, without
+wondering whether she might see him or hear of him.  Captain Benwick
+came not, however.  He was either less disposed for it than Charles had
+imagined, or he was too shy; and after giving him a week's indulgence,
+Lady Russell determined him to be unworthy of the interest which he had
+been beginning to excite.
+
+The Musgroves came back to receive their happy boys and girls from
+school, bringing with them Mrs Harville's little children, to improve
+the noise of Uppercross, and lessen that of Lyme.  Henrietta remained
+with Louisa; but all the rest of the family were again in their usual
+quarters.
+
+Lady Russell and Anne paid their compliments to them once, when Anne
+could not but feel that Uppercross was already quite alive again.
+Though neither Henrietta, nor Louisa, nor Charles Hayter, nor Captain
+Wentworth were there, the room presented as strong a contrast as could
+be wished to the last state she had seen it in.
+
+Immediately surrounding Mrs Musgrove were the little Harvilles, whom
+she was sedulously guarding from the tyranny of the two children from
+the Cottage, expressly arrived to amuse them.  On one side was a table
+occupied by some chattering girls, cutting up silk and gold paper; and
+on the other were tressels and trays, bending under the weight of brawn
+and cold pies, where riotous boys were holding high revel; the whole
+completed by a roaring Christmas fire, which seemed determined to be
+heard, in spite of all the noise of the others.  Charles and Mary also
+came in, of course, during their visit, and Mr Musgrove made a point of
+paying his respects to Lady Russell, and sat down close to her for ten
+minutes, talking with a very raised voice, but from the clamour of the
+children on his knees, generally in vain.  It was a fine family-piece.
+
+Anne, judging from her own temperament, would have deemed such a
+domestic hurricane a bad restorative of the nerves, which Louisa's
+illness must have so greatly shaken.  But Mrs Musgrove, who got Anne
+near her on purpose to thank her most cordially, again and again, for
+all her attentions to them, concluded a short recapitulation of what
+she had suffered herself by observing, with a happy glance round the
+room, that after all she had gone through, nothing was so likely to do
+her good as a little quiet cheerfulness at home.
+
+Louisa was now recovering apace.  Her mother could even think of her
+being able to join their party at home, before her brothers and sisters
+went to school again.  The Harvilles had promised to come with her and
+stay at Uppercross, whenever she returned.  Captain Wentworth was gone,
+for the present, to see his brother in Shropshire.
+
+"I hope I shall remember, in future," said Lady Russell, as soon as
+they were reseated in the carriage, "not to call at Uppercross in the
+Christmas holidays."
+
+Everybody has their taste in noises as well as in other matters; and
+sounds are quite innoxious, or most distressing, by their sort rather
+than their quantity.  When Lady Russell not long afterwards, was
+entering Bath on a wet afternoon, and driving through the long course
+of streets from the Old Bridge to Camden Place, amidst the dash of
+other carriages, the heavy rumble of carts and drays, the bawling of
+newspapermen, muffin-men and milkmen, and the ceaseless clink of
+pattens, she made no complaint.  No, these were noises which belonged
+to the winter pleasures; her spirits rose under their influence; and
+like Mrs Musgrove, she was feeling, though not saying, that after being
+long in the country, nothing could be so good for her as a little quiet
+cheerfulness.
+
+Anne did not share these feelings.  She persisted in a very determined,
+though very silent disinclination for Bath; caught the first dim view
+of the extensive buildings, smoking in rain, without any wish of seeing
+them better; felt their progress through the streets to be, however
+disagreeable, yet too rapid; for who would be glad to see her when she
+arrived?  And looked back, with fond regret, to the bustles of
+Uppercross and the seclusion of Kellynch.
+
+Elizabeth's last letter had communicated a piece of news of some
+interest.  Mr Elliot was in Bath.  He had called in Camden Place; had
+called a second time, a third; had been pointedly attentive.  If
+Elizabeth and her father did not deceive themselves, had been taking
+much pains to seek the acquaintance, and proclaim the value of the
+connection, as he had formerly taken pains to shew neglect.  This was
+very wonderful if it were true; and Lady Russell was in a state of very
+agreeable curiosity and perplexity about Mr Elliot, already recanting
+the sentiment she had so lately expressed to Mary, of his being "a man
+whom she had no wish to see."  She had a great wish to see him.  If he
+really sought to reconcile himself like a dutiful branch, he must be
+forgiven for having dismembered himself from the paternal tree.
+
+Anne was not animated to an equal pitch by the circumstance, but she
+felt that she would rather see Mr Elliot again than not, which was more
+than she could say for many other persons in Bath.
+
+She was put down in Camden Place; and Lady Russell then drove to her
+own lodgings, in Rivers Street.
+
+
+
+Chapter 15
+
+
+Sir Walter had taken a very good house in Camden Place, a lofty
+dignified situation, such as becomes a man of consequence; and both he
+and Elizabeth were settled there, much to their satisfaction.
+
+Anne entered it with a sinking heart, anticipating an imprisonment of
+many months, and anxiously saying to herself, "Oh! when shall I leave
+you again?"  A degree of unexpected cordiality, however, in the welcome
+she received, did her good.  Her father and sister were glad to see
+her, for the sake of shewing her the house and furniture, and met her
+with kindness.  Her making a fourth, when they sat down to dinner, was
+noticed as an advantage.
+
+Mrs Clay was very pleasant, and very smiling, but her courtesies and
+smiles were more a matter of course.  Anne had always felt that she
+would pretend what was proper on her arrival, but the complaisance of
+the others was unlooked for.  They were evidently in excellent spirits,
+and she was soon to listen to the causes.  They had no inclination to
+listen to her.  After laying out for some compliments of being deeply
+regretted in their old neighbourhood, which Anne could not pay, they
+had only a few faint enquiries to make, before the talk must be all
+their own.  Uppercross excited no interest, Kellynch very little: it
+was all Bath.
+
+They had the pleasure of assuring her that Bath more than answered
+their expectations in every respect.  Their house was undoubtedly the
+best in Camden Place; their drawing-rooms had many decided advantages
+over all the others which they had either seen or heard of, and the
+superiority was not less in the style of the fitting-up, or the taste
+of the furniture.  Their acquaintance was exceedingly sought after.
+Everybody was wanting to visit them.  They had drawn back from many
+introductions, and still were perpetually having cards left by people
+of whom they knew nothing.
+
+Here were funds of enjoyment.  Could Anne wonder that her father and
+sister were happy?  She might not wonder, but she must sigh that her
+father should feel no degradation in his change, should see nothing to
+regret in the duties and dignity of the resident landholder, should
+find so much to be vain of in the littlenesses of a town; and she must
+sigh, and smile, and wonder too, as Elizabeth threw open the
+folding-doors and walked with exultation from one drawing-room to the
+other, boasting of their space; at the possibility of that woman, who
+had been mistress of Kellynch Hall, finding extent to be proud of
+between two walls, perhaps thirty feet asunder.
+
+But this was not all which they had to make them happy.  They had Mr
+Elliot too.  Anne had a great deal to hear of Mr Elliot.  He was not
+only pardoned, they were delighted with him.  He had been in Bath about
+a fortnight; (he had passed through Bath in November, in his way to
+London, when the intelligence of Sir Walter's being settled there had
+of course reached him, though only twenty-four hours in the place, but
+he had not been able to avail himself of it;) but he had now been a
+fortnight in Bath, and his first object on arriving, had been to leave
+his card in Camden Place, following it up by such assiduous endeavours
+to meet, and when they did meet, by such great openness of conduct,
+such readiness to apologize for the past, such solicitude to be
+received as a relation again, that their former good understanding was
+completely re-established.
+
+They had not a fault to find in him.  He had explained away all the
+appearance of neglect on his own side.  It had originated in
+misapprehension entirely.  He had never had an idea of throwing himself
+off; he had feared that he was thrown off, but knew not why, and
+delicacy had kept him silent.  Upon the hint of having spoken
+disrespectfully or carelessly of the family and the family honours, he
+was quite indignant.  He, who had ever boasted of being an Elliot, and
+whose feelings, as to connection, were only too strict to suit the
+unfeudal tone of the present day.  He was astonished, indeed, but his
+character and general conduct must refute it.  He could refer Sir
+Walter to all who knew him; and certainly, the pains he had been taking
+on this, the first opportunity of reconciliation, to be restored to the
+footing of a relation and heir-presumptive, was a strong proof of his
+opinions on the subject.
+
+The circumstances of his marriage, too, were found to admit of much
+extenuation.  This was an article not to be entered on by himself; but
+a very intimate friend of his, a Colonel Wallis, a highly respectable
+man, perfectly the gentleman, (and not an ill-looking man, Sir Walter
+added), who was living in very good style in Marlborough Buildings, and
+had, at his own particular request, been admitted to their acquaintance
+through Mr Elliot, had mentioned one or two things relative to the
+marriage, which made a material difference in the discredit of it.
+
+Colonel Wallis had known Mr Elliot long, had been well acquainted also
+with his wife, had perfectly understood the whole story.  She was
+certainly not a woman of family, but well educated, accomplished, rich,
+and excessively in love with his friend.  There had been the charm.
+She had sought him.  Without that attraction, not all her money would
+have tempted Elliot, and Sir Walter was, moreover, assured of her
+having been a very fine woman.  Here was a great deal to soften the
+business.  A very fine woman with a large fortune, in love with him!
+Sir Walter seemed to admit it as complete apology; and though Elizabeth
+could not see the circumstance in quite so favourable a light, she
+allowed it be a great extenuation.
+
+Mr Elliot had called repeatedly, had dined with them once, evidently
+delighted by the distinction of being asked, for they gave no dinners
+in general; delighted, in short, by every proof of cousinly notice, and
+placing his whole happiness in being on intimate terms in Camden Place.
+
+Anne listened, but without quite understanding it.  Allowances, large
+allowances, she knew, must be made for the ideas of those who spoke.
+She heard it all under embellishment.  All that sounded extravagant or
+irrational in the progress of the reconciliation might have no origin
+but in the language of the relators.  Still, however, she had the
+sensation of there being something more than immediately appeared, in
+Mr Elliot's wishing, after an interval of so many years, to be well
+received by them.  In a worldly view, he had nothing to gain by being
+on terms with Sir Walter; nothing to risk by a state of variance.  In
+all probability he was already the richer of the two, and the Kellynch
+estate would as surely be his hereafter as the title.  A sensible man,
+and he had looked like a very sensible man, why should it be an object
+to him?  She could only offer one solution; it was, perhaps, for
+Elizabeth's sake.  There might really have been a liking formerly,
+though convenience and accident had drawn him a different way; and now
+that he could afford to please himself, he might mean to pay his
+addresses to her.  Elizabeth was certainly very handsome, with
+well-bred, elegant manners, and her character might never have been
+penetrated by Mr Elliot, knowing her but in public, and when very young
+himself.  How her temper and understanding might bear the investigation
+of his present keener time of life was another concern and rather a
+fearful one.  Most earnestly did she wish that he might not be too
+nice, or too observant if Elizabeth were his object; and that Elizabeth
+was disposed to believe herself so, and that her friend Mrs Clay was
+encouraging the idea, seemed apparent by a glance or two between them,
+while Mr Elliot's frequent visits were talked of.
+
+Anne mentioned the glimpses she had had of him at Lyme, but without
+being much attended to.  "Oh! yes, perhaps, it had been Mr Elliot.
+They did not know.  It might be him, perhaps."  They could not listen
+to her description of him.  They were describing him themselves; Sir
+Walter especially.  He did justice to his very gentlemanlike
+appearance, his air of elegance and fashion, his good shaped face, his
+sensible eye; but, at the same time, "must lament his being very much
+under-hung, a defect which time seemed to have increased; nor could he
+pretend to say that ten years had not altered almost every feature for
+the worse.  Mr Elliot appeared to think that he (Sir Walter) was
+looking exactly as he had done when they last parted;" but Sir Walter
+had "not been able to return the compliment entirely, which had
+embarrassed him.  He did not mean to complain, however.  Mr Elliot was
+better to look at than most men, and he had no objection to being seen
+with him anywhere."
+
+Mr Elliot, and his friends in Marlborough Buildings, were talked of the
+whole evening.  "Colonel Wallis had been so impatient to be introduced
+to them! and Mr Elliot so anxious that he should!" and there was a Mrs
+Wallis, at present known only to them by description, as she was in
+daily expectation of her confinement; but Mr Elliot spoke of her as "a
+most charming woman, quite worthy of being known in Camden Place," and
+as soon as she recovered they were to be acquainted.  Sir Walter
+thought much of Mrs Wallis; she was said to be an excessively pretty
+woman, beautiful.  "He longed to see her.  He hoped she might make some
+amends for the many very plain faces he was continually passing in the
+streets.  The worst of Bath was the number of its plain women.  He did
+not mean to say that there were no pretty women, but the number of the
+plain was out of all proportion.  He had frequently observed, as he
+walked, that one handsome face would be followed by thirty, or
+five-and-thirty frights; and once, as he had stood in a shop on Bond
+Street, he had counted eighty-seven women go by, one after another,
+without there being a tolerable face among them.  It had been a frosty
+morning, to be sure, a sharp frost, which hardly one woman in a
+thousand could stand the test of.  But still, there certainly were a
+dreadful multitude of ugly women in Bath; and as for the men!  they
+were infinitely worse.  Such scarecrows as the streets were full of!
+It was evident how little the women were used to the sight of anything
+tolerable, by the effect which a man of decent appearance produced.  He
+had never walked anywhere arm-in-arm with Colonel Wallis (who was a
+fine military figure, though sandy-haired) without observing that every
+woman's eye was upon him; every woman's eye was sure to be upon Colonel
+Wallis."  Modest Sir Walter!  He was not allowed to escape, however.
+His daughter and Mrs Clay united in hinting that Colonel Wallis's
+companion might have as good a figure as Colonel Wallis, and certainly
+was not sandy-haired.
+
+"How is Mary looking?" said Sir Walter, in the height of his good
+humour.  "The last time I saw her she had a red nose, but I hope that
+may not happen every day."
+
+"Oh! no, that must have been quite accidental.  In general she has been
+in very good health and very good looks since Michaelmas."
+
+"If I thought it would not tempt her to go out in sharp winds, and grow
+coarse, I would send her a new hat and pelisse."
+
+Anne was considering whether she should venture to suggest that a gown,
+or a cap, would not be liable to any such misuse, when a knock at the
+door suspended everything.  "A knock at the door! and so late!  It was
+ten o'clock.  Could it be Mr Elliot?  They knew he was to dine in
+Lansdown Crescent.  It was possible that he might stop in his way home
+to ask them how they did.  They could think of no one else.  Mrs Clay
+decidedly thought it Mr Elliot's knock."  Mrs Clay was right.  With all
+the state which a butler and foot-boy could give, Mr Elliot was ushered
+into the room.
+
+It was the same, the very same man, with no difference but of dress.
+Anne drew a little back, while the others received his compliments, and
+her sister his apologies for calling at so unusual an hour, but "he
+could not be so near without wishing to know that neither she nor her
+friend had taken cold the day before," &c. &c; which was all as
+politely done, and as politely taken, as possible, but her part must
+follow then.  Sir Walter talked of his youngest daughter; "Mr Elliot
+must give him leave to present him to his youngest daughter" (there was
+no occasion for remembering Mary); and Anne, smiling and blushing, very
+becomingly shewed to Mr Elliot the pretty features which he had by no
+means forgotten, and instantly saw, with amusement at his little start
+of surprise, that he had not been at all aware of who she was.  He
+looked completely astonished, but not more astonished than pleased; his
+eyes brightened! and with the most perfect alacrity he welcomed the
+relationship, alluded to the past, and entreated to be received as an
+acquaintance already.  He was quite as good-looking as he had appeared
+at Lyme, his countenance improved by speaking, and his manners were so
+exactly what they ought to be, so polished, so easy, so particularly
+agreeable, that she could compare them in excellence to only one
+person's manners.  They were not the same, but they were, perhaps,
+equally good.
+
+He sat down with them, and improved their conversation very much.
+There could be no doubt of his being a sensible man.  Ten minutes were
+enough to certify that.  His tone, his expressions, his choice of
+subject, his knowing where to stop; it was all the operation of a
+sensible, discerning mind.  As soon as he could, he began to talk to
+her of Lyme, wanting to compare opinions respecting the place, but
+especially wanting to speak of the circumstance of their happening to
+be guests in the same inn at the same time; to give his own route,
+understand something of hers, and regret that he should have lost such
+an opportunity of paying his respects to her.  She gave him a short
+account of her party and business at Lyme.  His regret increased as he
+listened.  He had spent his whole solitary evening in the room
+adjoining theirs; had heard voices, mirth continually; thought they
+must be a most delightful set of people, longed to be with them, but
+certainly without the smallest suspicion of his possessing the shadow
+of a right to introduce himself.  If he had but asked who the party
+were!  The name of Musgrove would have told him enough.  "Well, it
+would serve to cure him of an absurd practice of never asking a
+question at an inn, which he had adopted, when quite a young man, on
+the principal of its being very ungenteel to be curious.
+
+"The notions of a young man of one or two and twenty," said he, "as to
+what is necessary in manners to make him quite the thing, are more
+absurd, I believe, than those of any other set of beings in the world.
+The folly of the means they often employ is only to be equalled by the
+folly of what they have in view."
+
+But he must not be addressing his reflections to Anne alone: he knew
+it; he was soon diffused again among the others, and it was only at
+intervals that he could return to Lyme.
+
+His enquiries, however, produced at length an account of the scene she
+had been engaged in there, soon after his leaving the place.  Having
+alluded to "an accident,"  he must hear the whole.  When he questioned,
+Sir Walter and Elizabeth began to question also, but the difference in
+their manner of doing it could not be unfelt.  She could only compare
+Mr Elliot to Lady Russell, in the wish of really comprehending what had
+passed, and in the degree of concern for what she must have suffered in
+witnessing it.
+
+He staid an hour with them.  The elegant little clock on the mantel-piece
+had struck "eleven with its silver sounds," and the watchman was
+beginning to be heard at a distance telling the same tale, before Mr
+Elliot or any of them seemed to feel that he had been there long.
+
+Anne could not have supposed it possible that her first evening in
+Camden Place could have passed so well!
+
+
+
+Chapter 16
+
+
+There was one point which Anne, on returning to her family, would have
+been more thankful to ascertain even than Mr Elliot's being in love
+with Elizabeth, which was, her father's not being in love with Mrs
+Clay; and she was very far from easy about it, when she had been at
+home a few hours.  On going down to breakfast the next morning, she
+found there had just been a decent pretence on the lady's side of
+meaning to leave them.  She could imagine Mrs Clay to have said, that
+"now Miss Anne was come, she could not suppose herself at all wanted;"
+for Elizabeth was replying in a sort of whisper, "That must not be any
+reason, indeed.  I assure you I feel it none.  She is nothing to me,
+compared with you;"  and she was in full time to hear her father say,
+"My dear madam, this must not be.  As yet, you have seen nothing of
+Bath.  You have been here only to be useful.  You must not run away
+from us now.  You must stay to be acquainted with Mrs Wallis, the
+beautiful Mrs Wallis.  To your fine mind, I well know the sight of
+beauty is a real gratification."
+
+He spoke and looked so much in earnest, that Anne was not surprised to
+see Mrs Clay stealing a glance at Elizabeth and herself.  Her
+countenance, perhaps, might express some watchfulness; but the praise
+of the fine mind did not appear to excite a thought in her sister.  The
+lady could not but yield to such joint entreaties, and promise to stay.
+
+In the course of the same morning, Anne and her father chancing to be
+alone together, he began to compliment her on her improved looks; he
+thought her "less thin in her person, in her cheeks; her skin, her
+complexion, greatly improved; clearer, fresher.  Had she been using any
+thing in particular?"  "No, nothing."  "Merely Gowland," he supposed.
+"No, nothing at all."  "Ha! he was surprised at that;" and added,
+"certainly you cannot do better than to continue as you are; you cannot
+be better than well; or I should recommend Gowland, the constant use of
+Gowland, during the spring months.  Mrs Clay has been using it at my
+recommendation, and you see what it has done for her.  You see how it
+has carried away her freckles."
+
+If Elizabeth could but have heard this!  Such personal praise might
+have struck her, especially as it did not appear to Anne that the
+freckles were at all lessened.  But everything must take its chance.
+The evil of a marriage would be much diminished, if Elizabeth were also
+to marry.  As for herself, she might always command a home with Lady
+Russell.
+
+Lady Russell's composed mind and polite manners were put to some trial
+on this point, in her intercourse in Camden Place.  The sight of Mrs
+Clay in such favour, and of Anne so overlooked, was a perpetual
+provocation to her there; and vexed her as much when she was away, as a
+person in Bath who drinks the water, gets all the new publications, and
+has a very large acquaintance, has time to be vexed.
+
+As Mr Elliot became known to her, she grew more charitable, or more
+indifferent, towards the others.  His manners were an immediate
+recommendation; and on conversing with him she found the solid so fully
+supporting the superficial, that she was at first, as she told Anne,
+almost ready to exclaim, "Can this be Mr Elliot?" and could not
+seriously picture to herself a more agreeable or estimable man.
+Everything united in him; good understanding, correct opinions,
+knowledge of the world, and a warm heart.  He had strong feelings of
+family attachment and family honour, without pride or weakness; he
+lived with the liberality of a man of fortune, without display; he
+judged for himself in everything essential, without defying public
+opinion in any point of worldly decorum.  He was steady, observant,
+moderate, candid; never run away with by spirits or by selfishness,
+which fancied itself strong feeling; and yet, with a sensibility to
+what was amiable and lovely, and a value for all the felicities of
+domestic life, which characters of fancied enthusiasm and violent
+agitation seldom really possess.  She was sure that he had not been
+happy in marriage.  Colonel Wallis said it, and Lady Russell saw it;
+but it had been no unhappiness to sour his mind, nor (she began pretty
+soon to suspect) to prevent his thinking of a second choice.  Her
+satisfaction in Mr Elliot outweighed all the plague of Mrs Clay.
+
+It was now some years since Anne had begun to learn that she and her
+excellent friend could sometimes think differently; and it did not
+surprise her, therefore, that Lady Russell should see nothing
+suspicious or inconsistent, nothing to require more motives than
+appeared, in Mr Elliot's great desire of a reconciliation.  In Lady
+Russell's view, it was perfectly natural that Mr Elliot, at a mature
+time of life, should feel it a most desirable object, and what would
+very generally recommend him among all sensible people, to be on good
+terms with the head of his family; the simplest process in the world of
+time upon a head naturally clear, and only erring in the heyday of
+youth.  Anne presumed, however, still to smile about it, and at last to
+mention "Elizabeth."  Lady Russell listened, and looked, and made only
+this cautious reply:--"Elizabeth! very well; time will explain."
+
+It was a reference to the future, which Anne, after a little
+observation, felt she must submit to.  She could determine nothing at
+present.  In that house Elizabeth must be first; and she was in the
+habit of such general observance as "Miss Elliot," that any
+particularity of attention seemed almost impossible.  Mr Elliot, too,
+it must be remembered, had not been a widower seven months.  A little
+delay on his side might be very excusable.  In fact, Anne could never
+see the crape round his hat, without fearing that she was the
+inexcusable one, in attributing to him such imaginations; for though
+his marriage had not been very happy, still it had existed so many
+years that she could not comprehend a very rapid recovery from the
+awful impression of its being dissolved.
+
+However it might end, he was without any question their pleasantest
+acquaintance in Bath:  she saw nobody equal to him; and it was a great
+indulgence now and then to talk to him about Lyme, which he seemed to
+have as lively a wish to see again, and to see more of, as herself.
+They went through the particulars of their first meeting a great many
+times.  He gave her to understand that he had looked at her with some
+earnestness.  She knew it well; and she remembered another person's
+look also.
+
+They did not always think alike.  His value for rank and connexion she
+perceived was greater than hers.  It was not merely complaisance, it
+must be a liking to the cause, which made him enter warmly into her
+father and sister's solicitudes on a subject which she thought unworthy
+to excite them.  The Bath paper one morning announced the arrival of
+the Dowager Viscountess Dalrymple, and her daughter, the Honourable
+Miss Carteret; and all the comfort of No. --, Camden Place, was swept
+away for many days; for the Dalrymples (in Anne's opinion, most
+unfortunately) were cousins of the Elliots; and the agony was how to
+introduce themselves properly.
+
+Anne had never seen her father and sister before in contact with
+nobility, and she must acknowledge herself disappointed.  She had hoped
+better things from their high ideas of their own situation in life, and
+was reduced to form a wish which she had never foreseen; a wish that
+they had more pride; for "our cousins Lady Dalrymple and Miss
+Carteret;" "our cousins, the Dalrymples," sounded in her ears all day
+long.
+
+Sir Walter had once been in company with the late viscount, but had
+never seen any of the rest of the family; and the difficulties of the
+case arose from there having been a suspension of all intercourse by
+letters of ceremony, ever since the death of that said late viscount,
+when, in consequence of a dangerous illness of Sir Walter's at the same
+time, there had been an unlucky omission at Kellynch.  No letter of
+condolence had been sent to Ireland.  The neglect had been visited on
+the head of the sinner; for when poor Lady Elliot died herself, no
+letter of condolence was received at Kellynch, and, consequently, there
+was but too much reason to apprehend that the Dalrymples considered the
+relationship as closed.  How to have this anxious business set to
+rights, and be admitted as cousins again, was the question:  and it was
+a question which, in a more rational manner, neither Lady Russell nor
+Mr Elliot thought unimportant.  "Family connexions were always worth
+preserving, good company always worth seeking; Lady Dalrymple had taken
+a house, for three months, in Laura Place, and would be living in
+style.  She had been at Bath the year before, and Lady Russell had
+heard her spoken of as a charming woman.  It was very desirable that
+the connexion should be renewed, if it could be done, without any
+compromise of propriety on the side of the Elliots."
+
+Sir Walter, however, would choose his own means, and at last wrote a
+very fine letter of ample explanation, regret, and entreaty, to his
+right honourable cousin.  Neither Lady Russell nor Mr Elliot could
+admire the letter; but it did all that was wanted, in bringing three
+lines of scrawl from the Dowager Viscountess.  "She was very much
+honoured, and should be happy in their acquaintance." The toils of the
+business were over, the sweets began.  They visited in Laura Place,
+they had the cards of Dowager Viscountess Dalrymple, and the Honourable
+Miss Carteret, to be arranged wherever they might be most visible:  and
+"Our cousins in Laura Place,"--"Our cousin, Lady Dalrymple and Miss
+Carteret," were talked of to everybody.
+
+Anne was ashamed.  Had Lady Dalrymple and her daughter even been very
+agreeable, she would still have been ashamed of the agitation they
+created, but they were nothing.  There was no superiority of manner,
+accomplishment, or understanding.  Lady Dalrymple had acquired the name
+of "a charming woman," because she had a smile and a civil answer for
+everybody.  Miss Carteret, with still less to say, was so plain and so
+awkward, that she would never have been tolerated in Camden Place but
+for her birth.
+
+Lady Russell confessed she had expected something better; but yet "it
+was an acquaintance worth having;" and when Anne ventured to speak her
+opinion of them to Mr Elliot, he agreed to their being nothing in
+themselves, but still maintained that, as a family connexion, as good
+company, as those who would collect good company around them, they had
+their value.  Anne smiled and said,
+
+"My idea of good company, Mr Elliot, is the company of clever,
+well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is
+what I call good company."
+
+"You are mistaken," said he gently, "that is not good company; that is
+the best.  Good company requires only birth, education, and manners,
+and with regard to education is not very nice.  Birth and good manners
+are essential; but a little learning is by no means a dangerous thing
+in good company; on the contrary, it will do very well.  My cousin Anne
+shakes her head.  She is not satisfied.  She is fastidious.  My dear
+cousin" (sitting down by her), "you have a better right to be
+fastidious than almost any other woman I know; but will it answer?
+Will it make you happy?  Will it not be wiser to accept the society of
+those good ladies in Laura Place, and enjoy all the advantages of the
+connexion as far as possible?  You may depend upon it, that they will
+move in the first set in Bath this winter, and as rank is rank, your
+being known to be related to them will have its use in fixing your
+family (our family let me say) in that degree of consideration which we
+must all wish for."
+
+"Yes," sighed Anne, "we shall, indeed, be known to be related to them!"
+then recollecting herself, and not wishing to be answered, she added,
+"I certainly do think there has been by far too much trouble taken to
+procure the acquaintance.  I suppose" (smiling) "I have more pride than
+any of you; but I confess it does vex me, that we should be so
+solicitous to have the relationship acknowledged, which we may be very
+sure is a matter of perfect indifference to them."
+
+"Pardon me, dear cousin, you are unjust in your own claims.  In London,
+perhaps, in your present quiet style of living, it might be as you say:
+but in Bath; Sir Walter Elliot and his family will always be worth
+knowing:  always acceptable as acquaintance."
+
+"Well," said Anne, "I certainly am proud, too proud to enjoy a welcome
+which depends so entirely upon place."
+
+"I love your indignation," said he; "it is very natural.  But here you
+are in Bath, and the object is to be established here with all the
+credit and dignity which ought to belong to Sir Walter Elliot.  You
+talk of being proud; I am called proud, I know, and I shall not wish to
+believe myself otherwise; for our pride, if investigated, would have
+the same object, I have no doubt, though the kind may seem a little
+different.  In one point, I am sure, my dear cousin," (he continued,
+speaking lower, though there was no one else in the room) "in one
+point, I am sure, we must feel alike.  We must feel that every addition
+to your father's society, among his equals or superiors, may be of use
+in diverting his thoughts from those who are beneath him."
+
+He looked, as he spoke, to the seat which Mrs Clay had been lately
+occupying:  a sufficient explanation of what he particularly meant; and
+though Anne could not believe in their having the same sort of pride,
+she was pleased with him for not liking Mrs Clay; and her conscience
+admitted that his wishing to promote her father's getting great
+acquaintance was more than excusable in the view of defeating her.
+
+
+
+Chapter 17
+
+
+While Sir Walter and Elizabeth were assiduously pushing their good
+fortune in Laura Place, Anne was renewing an acquaintance of a very
+different description.
+
+She had called on her former governess, and had heard from her of there
+being an old school-fellow in Bath, who had the two strong claims on
+her attention of past kindness and present suffering.  Miss Hamilton,
+now Mrs Smith, had shewn her kindness in one of those periods of her
+life when it had been most valuable.  Anne had gone unhappy to school,
+grieving for the loss of a mother whom she had dearly loved, feeling
+her separation from home, and suffering as a girl of fourteen, of
+strong sensibility and not high spirits, must suffer at such a time;
+and Miss Hamilton, three years older than herself, but still from the
+want of near relations and a settled home, remaining another year at
+school, had been useful and good to her in a way which had considerably
+lessened her misery, and could never be remembered with indifference.
+
+Miss Hamilton had left school, had married not long afterwards, was
+said to have married a man of fortune, and this was all that Anne had
+known of her, till now that their governess's account brought her
+situation forward in a more decided but very different form.
+
+She was a widow and poor.  Her husband had been extravagant; and at his
+death, about two years before, had left his affairs dreadfully
+involved.  She had had difficulties of every sort to contend with, and
+in addition to these distresses had been afflicted with a severe
+rheumatic fever, which, finally settling in her legs, had made her for
+the present a cripple.  She had come to Bath on that account, and was
+now in lodgings near the hot baths, living in a very humble way, unable
+even to afford herself the comfort of a servant, and of course almost
+excluded from society.
+
+Their mutual friend answered for the satisfaction which a visit from
+Miss Elliot would give Mrs Smith, and Anne therefore lost no time in
+going.  She mentioned nothing of what she had heard, or what she
+intended, at home.  It would excite no proper interest there.  She only
+consulted Lady Russell, who entered thoroughly into her sentiments, and
+was most happy to convey her as near to Mrs Smith's lodgings in
+Westgate Buildings, as Anne chose to be taken.
+
+The visit was paid, their acquaintance re-established, their interest
+in each other more than re-kindled.  The first ten minutes had its
+awkwardness and its emotion.  Twelve years were gone since they had
+parted, and each presented a somewhat different person from what the
+other had imagined.  Twelve years had changed Anne from the blooming,
+silent, unformed girl of fifteen, to the elegant little woman of
+seven-and-twenty, with every beauty except bloom, and with manners as
+consciously right as they were invariably gentle; and twelve years had
+transformed the fine-looking, well-grown Miss Hamilton, in all the glow
+of health and confidence of superiority, into a poor, infirm, helpless
+widow, receiving the visit of her former protegee as a favour; but all
+that was uncomfortable in the meeting had soon passed away, and left
+only the interesting charm of remembering former partialities and
+talking over old times.
+
+Anne found in Mrs Smith the good sense and agreeable manners which she
+had almost ventured to depend on, and a disposition to converse and be
+cheerful beyond her expectation.  Neither the dissipations of the
+past--and she had lived very much in the world--nor the restrictions of
+the present, neither sickness nor sorrow seemed to have closed her
+heart or ruined her spirits.
+
+In the course of a second visit she talked with great openness, and
+Anne's astonishment increased.  She could scarcely imagine a more
+cheerless situation in itself than Mrs Smith's.  She had been very fond
+of her husband:  she had buried him.  She had been used to affluence:
+it was gone.  She had no child to connect her with life and happiness
+again, no relations to assist in the arrangement of perplexed affairs,
+no health to make all the rest supportable.  Her accommodations were
+limited to a noisy parlour, and a dark bedroom behind, with no
+possibility of moving from one to the other without assistance, which
+there was only one servant in the house to afford, and she never
+quitted the house but to be conveyed into the warm bath.  Yet, in spite
+of all this, Anne had reason to believe that she had moments only of
+languor and depression, to hours of occupation and enjoyment.  How
+could it be?  She watched, observed, reflected, and finally determined
+that this was not a case of fortitude or of resignation only.  A
+submissive spirit might be patient, a strong understanding would supply
+resolution, but here was something more; here was that elasticity of
+mind, that disposition to be comforted, that power of turning readily
+from evil to good, and of finding employment which carried her out of
+herself, which was from nature alone.  It was the choicest gift of
+Heaven; and Anne viewed her friend as one of those instances in which,
+by a merciful appointment, it seems designed to counterbalance almost
+every other want.
+
+There had been a time, Mrs Smith told her, when her spirits had nearly
+failed.  She could not call herself an invalid now, compared with her
+state on first reaching Bath.  Then she had, indeed, been a pitiable
+object; for she had caught cold on the journey, and had hardly taken
+possession of her lodgings before she was again confined to her bed and
+suffering under severe and constant pain; and all this among strangers,
+with the absolute necessity of having a regular nurse, and finances at
+that moment particularly unfit to meet any extraordinary expense.  She
+had weathered it, however, and could truly say that it had done her
+good.  It had increased her comforts by making her feel herself to be
+in good hands.  She had seen too much of the world, to expect sudden or
+disinterested attachment anywhere, but her illness had proved to her
+that her landlady had a character to preserve, and would not use her
+ill; and she had been particularly fortunate in her nurse, as a sister
+of her landlady, a nurse by profession, and who had always a home in
+that house when unemployed, chanced to be at liberty just in time to
+attend her.  "And she," said Mrs Smith, "besides nursing me most
+admirably, has really proved an invaluable acquaintance.  As soon as I
+could use my hands she taught me to knit, which has been a great
+amusement; and she put me in the way of making these little
+thread-cases, pin-cushions and card-racks, which you always find me so
+busy about, and which supply me with the means of doing a little good
+to one or two very poor families in this neighbourhood.  She had a
+large acquaintance, of course professionally, among those who can
+afford to buy, and she disposes of my merchandise.  She always takes
+the right time for applying.  Everybody's heart is open, you know, when
+they have recently escaped from severe pain, or are recovering the
+blessing of health, and Nurse Rooke thoroughly understands when to
+speak.  She is a shrewd, intelligent, sensible woman.  Hers is a line
+for seeing human nature; and she has a fund of good sense and
+observation, which, as a companion, make her infinitely superior to
+thousands of those who having only received 'the best education in the
+world,' know nothing worth attending to.  Call it gossip, if you will,
+but when Nurse Rooke has half an hour's leisure to bestow on me, she is
+sure to have something to relate that is entertaining and profitable:
+something that makes one know one's species better.  One likes to hear
+what is going on, to be au fait as to the newest modes of being
+trifling and silly.  To me, who live so much alone, her conversation, I
+assure you, is a treat."
+
+Anne, far from wishing to cavil at the pleasure, replied, "I can easily
+believe it.  Women of that class have great opportunities, and if they
+are intelligent may be well worth listening to.  Such varieties of
+human nature as they are in the habit of witnessing!  And it is not
+merely in its follies, that they are well read; for they see it
+occasionally under every circumstance that can be most interesting or
+affecting.  What instances must pass before them of ardent,
+disinterested, self-denying attachment, of heroism, fortitude,
+patience, resignation:  of all the conflicts and all the sacrifices
+that ennoble us most.  A sick chamber may often furnish the worth of
+volumes."
+
+"Yes," said Mrs Smith more doubtingly, "sometimes it may, though I fear
+its lessons are not often in the elevated style you describe.  Here and
+there, human nature may be great in times of trial; but generally
+speaking, it is its weakness and not its strength that appears in a
+sick chamber:  it is selfishness and impatience rather than generosity
+and fortitude, that one hears of.  There is so little real friendship
+in the world! and unfortunately" (speaking low and tremulously) "there
+are so many who forget to think seriously till it is almost too late."
+
+Anne saw the misery of such feelings.  The husband had not been what he
+ought, and the wife had been led among that part of mankind which made
+her think worse of the world than she hoped it deserved.  It was but a
+passing emotion however with Mrs Smith; she shook it off, and soon
+added in a different tone--
+
+"I do not suppose the situation my friend Mrs Rooke is in at present,
+will furnish much either to interest or edify me.  She is only nursing
+Mrs Wallis of Marlborough Buildings; a mere pretty, silly, expensive,
+fashionable woman, I believe; and of course will have nothing to report
+but of lace and finery.  I mean to make my profit of Mrs Wallis,
+however.  She has plenty of money, and I intend she shall buy all the
+high-priced things I have in hand now."
+
+Anne had called several times on her friend, before the existence of
+such a person was known in Camden Place.  At last, it became necessary
+to speak of her. Sir Walter, Elizabeth and Mrs Clay, returned one
+morning from Laura Place, with a sudden invitation from Lady Dalrymple
+for the same evening, and Anne was already engaged, to spend that
+evening in Westgate Buildings.  She was not sorry for the excuse.  They
+were only asked, she was sure, because Lady Dalrymple being kept at
+home by a bad cold, was glad to make use of the relationship which had
+been so pressed on her; and she declined on her own account with great
+alacrity--"She was engaged to spend the evening with an old
+schoolfellow."  They were not much interested in anything relative to
+Anne; but still there were questions enough asked, to make it
+understood what this old schoolfellow was; and Elizabeth was
+disdainful, and Sir Walter severe.
+
+"Westgate Buildings!" said he, "and who is Miss Anne Elliot to be
+visiting in Westgate Buildings?  A Mrs Smith.  A widow Mrs Smith; and
+who was her husband?  One of five thousand Mr Smiths whose names are to
+be met with everywhere.  And what is her attraction?  That she is old
+and sickly.  Upon my word, Miss Anne Elliot, you have the most
+extraordinary taste!  Everything that revolts other people, low
+company, paltry rooms, foul air, disgusting associations are inviting
+to you.  But surely you may put off this old lady till to-morrow:  she
+is not so near her end, I presume, but that she may hope to see another
+day.  What is her age?  Forty?"
+
+"No, sir, she is not one-and-thirty; but I do not think I can put off
+my engagement, because it is the only evening for some time which will
+at once suit her and myself.  She goes into the warm bath to-morrow,
+and for the rest of the week, you know, we are engaged."
+
+"But what does Lady Russell think of this acquaintance?" asked
+Elizabeth.
+
+"She sees nothing to blame in it," replied Anne; "on the contrary, she
+approves it, and has generally taken me when I have called on Mrs
+Smith."
+
+"Westgate Buildings must have been rather surprised by the appearance
+of a carriage drawn up near its pavement," observed Sir Walter.  "Sir
+Henry Russell's widow, indeed, has no honours to distinguish her arms,
+but still it is a handsome equipage, and no doubt is well known to
+convey a Miss Elliot.  A widow Mrs Smith lodging in Westgate Buildings!
+A poor widow barely able to live, between thirty and forty; a mere Mrs
+Smith, an every-day Mrs Smith, of all people and all names in the
+world, to be the chosen friend of Miss Anne Elliot, and to be preferred
+by her to her own family connections among the nobility of England and
+Ireland!  Mrs Smith!  Such a name!"
+
+Mrs Clay, who had been present while all this passed, now thought it
+advisable to leave the room, and Anne could have said much, and did
+long to say a little in defence of her friend's not very dissimilar
+claims to theirs, but her sense of personal respect to her father
+prevented her.  She made no reply.  She left it to himself to
+recollect, that Mrs Smith was not the only widow in Bath between thirty
+and forty, with little to live on, and no surname of dignity.
+
+Anne kept her appointment; the others kept theirs, and of course she
+heard the next morning that they had had a delightful evening.  She had
+been the only one of the set absent, for Sir Walter and Elizabeth had
+not only been quite at her ladyship's service themselves, but had
+actually been happy to be employed by her in collecting others, and had
+been at the trouble of inviting both Lady Russell and Mr Elliot; and Mr
+Elliot had made a point of leaving Colonel Wallis early, and Lady
+Russell had fresh arranged all her evening engagements in order to wait
+on her.  Anne had the whole history of all that such an evening could
+supply from Lady Russell.  To her, its greatest interest must be, in
+having been very much talked of between her friend and Mr Elliot; in
+having been wished for, regretted, and at the same time honoured for
+staying away in such a cause.  Her kind, compassionate visits to this
+old schoolfellow, sick and reduced, seemed to have quite delighted Mr
+Elliot.  He thought her a most extraordinary young woman; in her
+temper, manners, mind, a model of female excellence.  He could meet
+even Lady Russell in a discussion of her merits; and Anne could not be
+given to understand so much by her friend, could not know herself to be
+so highly rated by a sensible man, without many of those agreeable
+sensations which her friend meant to create.
+
+Lady Russell was now perfectly decided in her opinion of Mr Elliot.
+She was as much convinced of his meaning to gain Anne in time as of his
+deserving her, and was beginning to calculate the number of weeks which
+would free him from all the remaining restraints of widowhood, and
+leave him at liberty to exert his most open powers of pleasing.  She
+would not speak to Anne with half the certainty she felt on the
+subject, she would venture on little more than hints of what might be
+hereafter, of a possible attachment on his side, of the desirableness
+of the alliance, supposing such attachment to be real and returned.
+Anne heard her, and made no violent exclamations; she only smiled,
+blushed, and gently shook her head.
+
+"I am no match-maker, as you well know," said Lady Russell, "being much
+too well aware of the uncertainty of all human events and calculations.
+I only mean that if Mr Elliot should some time hence pay his addresses
+to you, and if you should be disposed to accept him, I think there
+would be every possibility of your being happy together.  A most
+suitable connection everybody must consider it, but I think it might be
+a very happy one."
+
+"Mr Elliot is an exceedingly agreeable man, and in many respects I
+think highly of him," said Anne; "but we should not suit."
+
+Lady Russell let this pass, and only said in rejoinder, "I own that to
+be able to regard you as the future mistress of Kellynch, the future
+Lady Elliot, to look forward and see you occupying your dear mother's
+place, succeeding to all her rights, and all her popularity, as well as
+to all her virtues, would be the highest possible gratification to me.
+You are your mother's self in countenance and disposition; and if I
+might be allowed to fancy you such as she was, in situation and name,
+and home, presiding and blessing in the same spot, and only superior to
+her in being more highly valued!  My dearest Anne, it would give me
+more delight than is often felt at my time of life!"
+
+Anne was obliged to turn away, to rise, to walk to a distant table,
+and, leaning there in pretended employment, try to subdue the feelings
+this picture excited.  For a few moments her imagination and her heart
+were bewitched.  The idea of becoming what her mother had been; of
+having the precious name of "Lady Elliot" first revived in herself; of
+being restored to Kellynch, calling it her home again, her home for
+ever, was a charm which she could not immediately resist.  Lady Russell
+said not another word, willing to leave the matter to its own
+operation; and believing that, could Mr Elliot at that moment with
+propriety have spoken for himself!--she believed, in short, what Anne
+did not believe.  The same image of Mr Elliot speaking for himself
+brought Anne to composure again.  The charm of Kellynch and of "Lady
+Elliot" all faded away.  She never could accept him.  And it was not
+only that her feelings were still adverse to any man save one; her
+judgement, on a serious consideration of the possibilities of such a
+case was against Mr Elliot.
+
+Though they had now been acquainted a month, she could not be satisfied
+that she really knew his character.  That he was a sensible man, an
+agreeable man, that he talked well, professed good opinions, seemed to
+judge properly and as a man of principle, this was all clear enough.
+He certainly knew what was right, nor could she fix on any one article
+of moral duty evidently transgressed; but yet she would have been
+afraid to answer for his conduct.  She distrusted the past, if not the
+present.  The names which occasionally dropt of former associates, the
+allusions to former practices and pursuits, suggested suspicions not
+favourable of what he had been.  She saw that there had been bad
+habits; that Sunday travelling had been a common thing; that there had
+been a period of his life (and probably not a short one) when he had
+been, at least, careless in all serious matters; and, though he might
+now think very differently, who could answer for the true sentiments of
+a clever, cautious man, grown old enough to appreciate a fair
+character?  How could it ever be ascertained that his mind was truly
+cleansed?
+
+Mr Elliot was rational, discreet, polished, but he was not open.  There
+was never any burst of feeling, any warmth of indignation or delight,
+at the evil or good of others.  This, to Anne, was a decided
+imperfection.  Her early impressions were incurable.  She prized the
+frank, the open-hearted, the eager character beyond all others.  Warmth
+and enthusiasm did captivate her still.  She felt that she could so
+much more depend upon the sincerity of those who sometimes looked or
+said a careless or a hasty thing, than of those whose presence of mind
+never varied, whose tongue never slipped.
+
+Mr Elliot was too generally agreeable.  Various as were the tempers in
+her father's house, he pleased them all.  He endured too well, stood
+too well with every body.  He had spoken to her with some degree of
+openness of Mrs Clay; had appeared completely to see what Mrs Clay was
+about, and to hold her in contempt; and yet Mrs Clay found him as
+agreeable as any body.
+
+Lady Russell saw either less or more than her young friend, for she saw
+nothing to excite distrust.  She could not imagine a man more exactly
+what he ought to be than Mr Elliot; nor did she ever enjoy a sweeter
+feeling than the hope of seeing him receive the hand of her beloved
+Anne in Kellynch church, in the course of the following autumn.
+
+
+
+Chapter 18
+
+
+It was the beginning of February; and Anne, having been a month in
+Bath, was growing very eager for news from Uppercross and Lyme.  She
+wanted to hear much more than Mary had communicated.  It was three
+weeks since she had heard at all.  She only knew that Henrietta was at
+home again; and that Louisa, though considered to be recovering fast,
+was still in Lyme; and she was thinking of them all very intently one
+evening, when a thicker letter than usual from Mary was delivered to
+her; and, to quicken the pleasure and surprise, with Admiral and Mrs
+Croft's compliments.
+
+The Crofts must be in Bath!  A circumstance to interest her.  They were
+people whom her heart turned to very naturally.
+
+"What is this?" cried Sir Walter.  "The Crofts have arrived in Bath?
+The Crofts who rent Kellynch?  What have they brought you?"
+
+"A letter from Uppercross Cottage, Sir."
+
+"Oh! those letters are convenient passports.  They secure an
+introduction.  I should have visited Admiral Croft, however, at any
+rate.  I know what is due to my tenant."
+
+Anne could listen no longer; she could not even have told how the poor
+Admiral's complexion escaped; her letter engrossed her.  It had been
+begun several days back.
+
+
+"February 1st.
+
+"My dear Anne,--I make no apology for my silence, because I know how
+little people think of letters in such a place as Bath.  You must be a
+great deal too happy to care for Uppercross, which, as you well know,
+affords little to write about.  We have had a very dull Christmas; Mr
+and Mrs Musgrove have not had one dinner party all the holidays.  I do
+not reckon the Hayters as anybody.  The holidays, however, are over at
+last:  I believe no children ever had such long ones.  I am sure I had
+not.  The house was cleared yesterday, except of the little Harvilles;
+but you will be surprised to hear they have never gone home.  Mrs
+Harville must be an odd mother to part with them so long.  I do not
+understand it.  They are not at all nice children, in my opinion; but
+Mrs Musgrove seems to like them quite as well, if not better, than her
+grandchildren.  What dreadful weather we have had!  It may not be felt
+in Bath, with your nice pavements; but in the country it is of some
+consequence.  I have not had a creature call on me since the second
+week in January, except Charles Hayter, who had been calling much
+oftener than was welcome.  Between ourselves, I think it a great pity
+Henrietta did not remain at Lyme as long as Louisa; it would have kept
+her a little out of his way.  The carriage is gone to-day, to bring
+Louisa and the Harvilles to-morrow.  We are not asked to dine with
+them, however, till the day after, Mrs Musgrove is so afraid of her
+being fatigued by the journey, which is not very likely, considering
+the care that will be taken of her; and it would be much more
+convenient to me to dine there to-morrow.  I am glad you find Mr Elliot
+so agreeable, and wish I could be acquainted with him too; but I have
+my usual luck:  I am always out of the way when any thing desirable is
+going on; always the last of my family to be noticed.  What an immense
+time Mrs Clay has been staying with Elizabeth!  Does she never mean to
+go away?  But perhaps if she were to leave the room vacant, we might
+not be invited.  Let me know what you think of this.  I do not expect
+my children to be asked, you know.  I can leave them at the Great House
+very well, for a month or six weeks.  I have this moment heard that the
+Crofts are going to Bath almost immediately; they think the Admiral
+gouty.  Charles heard it quite by chance; they have not had the
+civility to give me any notice, or of offering to take anything.  I do
+not think they improve at all as neighbours.  We see nothing of them,
+and this is really an instance of gross inattention.  Charles joins me
+in love, and everything proper.  Yours affectionately,
+
+"Mary M---.
+
+"I am sorry to say that I am very far from well; and Jemima has just
+told me that the butcher says there is a bad sore-throat very much
+about.  I dare say I shall catch it; and my sore-throats, you know, are
+always worse than anybody's."
+
+
+So ended the first part, which had been afterwards put into an
+envelope, containing nearly as much more.
+
+
+"I kept my letter open, that I might send you word how Louisa bore her
+journey, and now I am extremely glad I did, having a great deal to add.
+In the first place, I had a note from Mrs Croft yesterday, offering to
+convey anything to you; a very kind, friendly note indeed, addressed to
+me, just as it ought; I shall therefore be able to make my letter as
+long as I like.  The Admiral does not seem very ill, and I sincerely
+hope Bath will do him all the good he wants.  I shall be truly glad to
+have them back again.  Our neighbourhood cannot spare such a pleasant
+family.  But now for Louisa.  I have something to communicate that will
+astonish you not a little.  She and the Harvilles came on Tuesday very
+safely, and in the evening we went to ask her how she did, when we were
+rather surprised not to find Captain Benwick of the party, for he had
+been invited as well as the Harvilles; and what do you think was the
+reason?  Neither more nor less than his being in love with Louisa, and
+not choosing to venture to Uppercross till he had had an answer from Mr
+Musgrove; for it was all settled between him and her before she came
+away, and he had written to her father by Captain Harville.  True, upon
+my honour!  Are not you astonished?  I shall be surprised at least if
+you ever received a hint of it, for I never did.  Mrs Musgrove protests
+solemnly that she knew nothing of the matter.  We are all very well
+pleased, however, for though it is not equal to her marrying Captain
+Wentworth, it is infinitely better than Charles Hayter; and Mr Musgrove
+has written his consent, and Captain Benwick is expected to-day.  Mrs
+Harville says her husband feels a good deal on his poor sister's
+account; but, however, Louisa is a great favourite with both.  Indeed,
+Mrs Harville and I quite agree that we love her the better for having
+nursed her.  Charles wonders what Captain Wentworth will say; but if
+you remember, I never thought him attached to Louisa; I never could see
+anything of it.  And this is the end, you see, of Captain Benwick's
+being supposed to be an admirer of yours.  How Charles could take such
+a thing into his head was always incomprehensible to me.  I hope he
+will be more agreeable now.  Certainly not a great match for Louisa
+Musgrove, but a million times better than marrying among the Hayters."
+
+
+Mary need not have feared her sister's being in any degree prepared for
+the news.  She had never in her life been more astonished.  Captain
+Benwick and Louisa Musgrove!  It was almost too wonderful for belief,
+and it was with the greatest effort that she could remain in the room,
+preserve an air of calmness, and answer the common questions of the
+moment.  Happily for her, they were not many.  Sir Walter wanted to
+know whether the Crofts travelled with four horses, and whether they
+were likely to be situated in such a part of Bath as it might suit Miss
+Elliot and himself to visit in; but had little curiosity beyond.
+
+"How is Mary?" said Elizabeth; and without waiting for an answer, "And
+pray what brings the Crofts to Bath?"
+
+"They come on the Admiral's account.  He is thought to be gouty."
+
+"Gout and decrepitude!" said Sir Walter.  "Poor old gentleman."
+
+"Have they any acquaintance here?" asked Elizabeth.
+
+"I do not know; but I can hardly suppose that, at Admiral Croft's time
+of life, and in his profession, he should not have many acquaintance in
+such a place as this."
+
+"I suspect," said Sir Walter coolly, "that Admiral Croft will be best
+known in Bath as the renter of Kellynch Hall.  Elizabeth, may we
+venture to present him and his wife in Laura Place?"
+
+"Oh, no! I think not.  Situated as we are with Lady Dalrymple, cousins,
+we ought to be very careful not to embarrass her with acquaintance she
+might not approve.  If we were not related, it would not signify; but
+as cousins, she would feel scrupulous as to any proposal of ours.  We
+had better leave the Crofts to find their own level.  There are several
+odd-looking men walking about here, who, I am told, are sailors.  The
+Crofts will associate with them."
+
+This was Sir Walter and Elizabeth's share of interest in the letter;
+when Mrs Clay had paid her tribute of more decent attention, in an
+enquiry after Mrs Charles Musgrove, and her fine little boys, Anne was
+at liberty.
+
+In her own room, she tried to comprehend it.  Well might Charles wonder
+how Captain Wentworth would feel!  Perhaps he had quitted the field,
+had given Louisa up, had ceased to love, had found he did not love her.
+She could not endure the idea of treachery or levity, or anything akin
+to ill usage between him and his friend.  She could not endure that
+such a friendship as theirs should be severed unfairly.
+
+Captain Benwick and Louisa Musgrove!  The high-spirited, joyous-talking
+Louisa Musgrove, and the dejected, thinking, feeling, reading, Captain
+Benwick, seemed each of them everything that would not suit the other.
+Their minds most dissimilar!  Where could have been the attraction?
+The answer soon presented itself.  It had been in situation.  They had
+been thrown together several weeks; they had been living in the same
+small family party:  since Henrietta's coming away, they must have been
+depending almost entirely on each other, and Louisa, just recovering
+from illness, had been in an interesting state, and Captain Benwick was
+not inconsolable.  That was a point which Anne had not been able to
+avoid suspecting before; and instead of drawing the same conclusion as
+Mary, from the present course of events, they served only to confirm
+the idea of his having felt some dawning of tenderness toward herself.
+She did not mean, however, to derive much more from it to gratify her
+vanity, than Mary might have allowed.  She was persuaded that any
+tolerably pleasing young woman who had listened and seemed to feel for
+him would have received the same compliment.  He had an affectionate
+heart.  He must love somebody.
+
+She saw no reason against their being happy.  Louisa had fine naval
+fervour to begin with, and they would soon grow more alike.  He would
+gain cheerfulness, and she would learn to be an enthusiast for Scott
+and Lord Byron; nay, that was probably learnt already; of course they
+had fallen in love over poetry.  The idea of Louisa Musgrove turned
+into a person of literary taste, and sentimental reflection was
+amusing, but she had no doubt of its being so.  The day at Lyme, the
+fall from the Cobb, might influence her health, her nerves, her
+courage, her character to the end of her life, as thoroughly as it
+appeared to have influenced her fate.
+
+The conclusion of the whole was, that if the woman who had been
+sensible of Captain Wentworth's merits could be allowed to prefer
+another man, there was nothing in the engagement to excite lasting
+wonder; and if Captain Wentworth lost no friend by it, certainly
+nothing to be regretted.  No, it was not regret which made Anne's heart
+beat in spite of herself, and brought the colour into her cheeks when
+she thought of Captain Wentworth unshackled and free.  She had some
+feelings which she was ashamed to investigate.  They were too much like
+joy, senseless joy!
+
+She longed to see the Crofts; but when the meeting took place, it was
+evident that no rumour of the news had yet reached them.  The visit of
+ceremony was paid and returned; and Louisa Musgrove was mentioned, and
+Captain Benwick, too, without even half a smile.
+
+The Crofts had placed themselves in lodgings in Gay Street, perfectly
+to Sir Walter's satisfaction.  He was not at all ashamed of the
+acquaintance, and did, in fact, think and talk a great deal more about
+the Admiral, than the Admiral ever thought or talked about him.
+
+The Crofts knew quite as many people in Bath as they wished for, and
+considered their intercourse with the Elliots as a mere matter of form,
+and not in the least likely to afford them any pleasure.  They brought
+with them their country habit of being almost always together.  He was
+ordered to walk to keep off the gout, and Mrs Croft seemed to go shares
+with him in everything, and to walk for her life to do him good.  Anne
+saw them wherever she went.  Lady Russell took her out in her carriage
+almost every morning, and she never failed to think of them, and never
+failed to see them.  Knowing their feelings as she did, it was a most
+attractive picture of happiness to her.  She always watched them as
+long as she could, delighted to fancy she understood what they might be
+talking of, as they walked along in happy independence, or equally
+delighted to see the Admiral's hearty shake of the hand when he
+encountered an old friend, and observe their eagerness of conversation
+when occasionally forming into a little knot of the navy, Mrs Croft
+looking as intelligent and keen as any of the officers around her.
+
+Anne was too much engaged with Lady Russell to be often walking
+herself; but it so happened that one morning, about a week or ten days
+after the Croft's arrival, it suited her best to leave her friend, or
+her friend's carriage, in the lower part of the town, and return alone
+to Camden Place, and in walking up Milsom Street she had the good
+fortune to meet with the Admiral.  He was standing by himself at a
+printshop window, with his hands behind him, in earnest contemplation
+of some print, and she not only might have passed him unseen, but was
+obliged to touch as well as address him before she could catch his
+notice.  When he did perceive and acknowledge her, however, it was done
+with all his usual frankness and good humour.  "Ha! is it you?  Thank
+you, thank you.  This is treating me like a friend.  Here I am, you
+see, staring at a picture.  I can never get by this shop without
+stopping.  But what a thing here is, by way of a boat!  Do look at it.
+Did you ever see the like?  What queer fellows your fine painters must
+be, to think that anybody would venture their lives in such a shapeless
+old cockleshell as that?  And yet here are two gentlemen stuck up in it
+mightily at their ease, and looking about them at the rocks and
+mountains, as if they were not to be upset the next moment, which they
+certainly must be.  I wonder where that boat was built!" (laughing
+heartily); "I would not venture over a horsepond in it.  Well,"
+(turning away), "now, where are you bound?  Can I go anywhere for you,
+or with you?  Can I be of any use?"
+
+"None, I thank you, unless you will give me the pleasure of your
+company the little way our road lies together.  I am going home."
+
+
+"That I will, with all my heart, and farther, too.  Yes, yes we will
+have a snug walk together, and I have something to tell you as we go
+along.  There, take my arm; that's right; I do not feel comfortable if
+I have not a woman there.  Lord! what a boat it is!" taking a last look
+at the picture, as they began to be in motion.
+
+"Did you say that you had something to tell me, sir?"
+
+"Yes, I have, presently.  But here comes a friend, Captain Brigden; I
+shall only say, 'How d'ye do?' as we pass, however.  I shall not stop.
+'How d'ye do?'  Brigden stares to see anybody with me but my wife.
+She, poor soul, is tied by the leg.  She has a blister on one of her
+heels, as large as a three-shilling piece.  If you look across the
+street, you will see Admiral Brand coming down and his brother.  Shabby
+fellows, both of them!  I am glad they are not on this side of the way.
+Sophy cannot bear them.  They played me a pitiful trick once: got away
+with some of my best men.  I will tell you the whole story another
+time.  There comes old Sir Archibald Drew and his grandson.  Look, he
+sees us; he kisses his hand to you; he takes you for my wife.  Ah! the
+peace has come too soon for that younker.  Poor old Sir Archibald!  How
+do you like Bath, Miss Elliot?  It suits us very well.  We are always
+meeting with some old friend or other; the streets full of them every
+morning; sure to have plenty of chat; and then we get away from them
+all, and shut ourselves in our lodgings, and draw in our chairs, and
+are as snug as if we were at Kellynch, ay, or as we used to be even at
+North Yarmouth and Deal.  We do not like our lodgings here the worse, I
+can tell you, for putting us in mind of those we first had at North
+Yarmouth.  The wind blows through one of the cupboards just in the same
+way."
+
+When they were got a little farther, Anne ventured to press again for
+what he had to communicate.  She hoped when clear of Milsom Street to
+have her curiosity gratified; but she was still obliged to wait, for
+the Admiral had made up his mind not to begin till they had gained the
+greater space and quiet of Belmont; and as she was not really Mrs
+Croft, she must let him have his own way.  As soon as they were fairly
+ascending Belmont, he began--
+
+"Well, now you shall hear something that will surprise you.  But first
+of all, you must tell me the name of the young lady I am going to talk
+about.  That young lady, you know, that we have all been so concerned
+for.  The Miss Musgrove, that all this has been happening to.  Her
+Christian name:  I always forget her Christian name."
+
+Anne had been ashamed to appear to comprehend so soon as she really
+did; but now she could safely suggest the name of "Louisa."
+
+"Ay, ay, Miss Louisa Musgrove, that is the name.  I wish young ladies
+had not such a number of fine Christian names.  I should never be out
+if they were all Sophys, or something of that sort.  Well, this Miss
+Louisa, we all thought, you know, was to marry Frederick.  He was
+courting her week after week.  The only wonder was, what they could be
+waiting for, till the business at Lyme came; then, indeed, it was clear
+enough that they must wait till her brain was set to right.  But even
+then there was something odd in their way of going on.  Instead of
+staying at Lyme, he went off to Plymouth, and then he went off to see
+Edward.  When we came back from Minehead he was gone down to Edward's,
+and there he has been ever since.  We have seen nothing of him since
+November.  Even Sophy could not understand it.  But now, the matter has
+taken the strangest turn of all; for this young lady, the same Miss
+Musgrove, instead of being to marry Frederick, is to marry James
+Benwick.  You know James Benwick."
+
+"A little.  I am a little acquainted with Captain Benwick."
+
+"Well, she is to marry him.  Nay, most likely they are married already,
+for I do not know what they should wait for."
+
+"I thought Captain Benwick a very pleasing young man," said Anne, "and
+I understand that he bears an excellent character."
+
+"Oh! yes, yes, there is not a word to be said against James Benwick.
+He is only a commander, it is true, made last summer, and these are bad
+times for getting on, but he has not another fault that I know of.  An
+excellent, good-hearted fellow, I assure you; a very active, zealous
+officer too, which is more than you would think for, perhaps, for that
+soft sort of manner does not do him justice."
+
+"Indeed you are mistaken there, sir; I should never augur want of
+spirit from Captain Benwick's manners.  I thought them particularly
+pleasing, and I will answer for it, they would generally please."
+
+"Well, well, ladies are the best judges; but James Benwick is rather
+too piano for me; and though very likely it is all our partiality,
+Sophy and I cannot help thinking Frederick's manners better than his.
+There is something about Frederick more to our taste."
+
+Anne was caught.  She had only meant to oppose the too common idea of
+spirit and gentleness being incompatible with each other, not at all to
+represent Captain Benwick's manners as the very best that could
+possibly be; and, after a little hesitation, she was beginning to say,
+"I was not entering into any comparison of the two friends," but the
+Admiral interrupted her with--
+
+"And the thing is certainly true.  It is not a mere bit of gossip.  We
+have it from Frederick himself.  His sister had a letter from him
+yesterday, in which he tells us of it, and he had just had it in a
+letter from Harville, written upon the spot, from Uppercross.  I fancy
+they are all at Uppercross."
+
+This was an opportunity which Anne could not resist; she said,
+therefore, "I hope, Admiral, I hope there is nothing in the style of
+Captain Wentworth's letter to make you and Mrs Croft particularly
+uneasy.  It did seem, last autumn, as if there were an attachment
+between him and Louisa Musgrove; but I hope it may be understood to
+have worn out on each side equally, and without violence.  I hope his
+letter does not breathe the spirit of an ill-used man."
+
+"Not at all, not at all; there is not an oath or a murmur from
+beginning to end."
+
+Anne looked down to hide her smile.
+
+"No, no; Frederick is not a man to whine and complain; he has too much
+spirit for that.  If the girl likes another man better, it is very fit
+she should have him."
+
+"Certainly.  But what I mean is, that I hope there is nothing in
+Captain Wentworth's manner of writing to make you suppose he thinks
+himself ill-used by his friend, which might appear, you know, without
+its being absolutely said.  I should be very sorry that such a
+friendship as has subsisted between him and Captain Benwick should be
+destroyed, or even wounded, by a circumstance of this sort."
+
+"Yes, yes, I understand you.  But there is nothing at all of that
+nature in the letter.  He does not give the least fling at Benwick;
+does not so much as say, 'I wonder at it, I have a reason of my own for
+wondering at it.'  No, you would not guess, from his way of writing,
+that he had ever thought of this Miss (what's her name?) for himself.
+He very handsomely hopes they will be happy together; and there is
+nothing very unforgiving in that, I think."
+
+Anne did not receive the perfect conviction which the Admiral meant to
+convey, but it would have been useless to press the enquiry farther.
+She therefore satisfied herself with common-place remarks or quiet
+attention, and the Admiral had it all his own way.
+
+"Poor Frederick!" said he at last.  "Now he must begin all over again
+with somebody else.  I think we must get him to Bath.  Sophy must
+write, and beg him to come to Bath.  Here are pretty girls enough, I am
+sure.  It would be of no use to go to Uppercross again, for that other
+Miss Musgrove, I find, is bespoke by her cousin, the young parson.  Do
+not you think, Miss Elliot, we had better try to get him to Bath?"
+
+
+
+Chapter 19
+
+
+While Admiral Croft was taking this walk with Anne, and expressing his
+wish of getting Captain Wentworth to Bath, Captain Wentworth was
+already on his way thither.  Before Mrs Croft had written, he was
+arrived, and the very next time Anne walked out, she saw him.
+
+Mr Elliot was attending his two cousins and Mrs Clay.  They were in
+Milsom Street.  It began to rain, not much, but enough to make shelter
+desirable for women, and quite enough to make it very desirable for
+Miss Elliot to have the advantage of being conveyed home in Lady
+Dalrymple's carriage, which was seen waiting at a little distance; she,
+Anne, and Mrs Clay, therefore, turned into Molland's, while Mr Elliot
+stepped to Lady Dalrymple, to request her assistance.  He soon joined
+them again, successful, of course; Lady Dalrymple would be most happy
+to take them home, and would call for them in a few minutes.
+
+Her ladyship's carriage was a barouche, and did not hold more than four
+with any comfort.  Miss Carteret was with her mother; consequently it
+was not reasonable to expect accommodation for all the three Camden
+Place ladies.  There could be no doubt as to Miss Elliot.  Whoever
+suffered inconvenience, she must suffer none, but it occupied a little
+time to settle the point of civility between the other two.  The rain
+was a mere trifle, and Anne was most sincere in preferring a walk with
+Mr Elliot.  But the rain was also a mere trifle to Mrs Clay; she would
+hardly allow it even to drop at all, and her boots were so thick! much
+thicker than Miss Anne's; and, in short, her civility rendered her
+quite as anxious to be left to walk with Mr Elliot as Anne could be,
+and it was discussed between them with a generosity so polite and so
+determined, that the others were obliged to settle it for them; Miss
+Elliot maintaining that Mrs Clay had a little cold already, and Mr
+Elliot deciding on appeal, that his cousin Anne's boots were rather the
+thickest.
+
+It was fixed accordingly, that Mrs Clay should be of the party in the
+carriage; and they had just reached this point, when Anne, as she sat
+near the window, descried, most decidedly and distinctly, Captain
+Wentworth walking down the street.
+
+Her start was perceptible only to herself; but she instantly felt that
+she was the greatest simpleton in the world, the most unaccountable and
+absurd!  For a few minutes she saw nothing before her; it was all
+confusion.  She was lost, and when she had scolded back her senses, she
+found the others still waiting for the carriage, and Mr Elliot (always
+obliging) just setting off for Union Street on a commission of Mrs
+Clay's.
+
+She now felt a great inclination to go to the outer door; she wanted to
+see if it rained.  Why was she to suspect herself of another motive?
+Captain Wentworth must be out of sight.  She left her seat, she would
+go; one half of her should not be always so much wiser than the other
+half, or always suspecting the other of being worse than it was.  She
+would see if it rained.  She was sent back, however, in a moment by the
+entrance of Captain Wentworth himself, among a party of gentlemen and
+ladies, evidently his acquaintance, and whom he must have joined a
+little below Milsom Street.  He was more obviously struck and confused
+by the sight of her than she had ever observed before; he looked quite
+red.  For the first time, since their renewed acquaintance, she felt
+that she was betraying the least sensibility of the two.  She had the
+advantage of him in the preparation of the last few moments.  All the
+overpowering, blinding, bewildering, first effects of strong surprise
+were over with her.  Still, however, she had enough to feel!  It was
+agitation, pain, pleasure, a something between delight and misery.
+
+He spoke to her, and then turned away.  The character of his manner was
+embarrassment.  She could not have called it either cold or friendly,
+or anything so certainly as embarrassed.
+
+After a short interval, however, he came towards her, and spoke again.
+Mutual enquiries on common subjects passed:  neither of them, probably,
+much the wiser for what they heard, and Anne continuing fully sensible
+of his being less at ease than formerly.  They had by dint of being so
+very much together, got to speak to each other with a considerable
+portion of apparent indifference and calmness; but he could not do it
+now.  Time had changed him, or Louisa had changed him.  There was
+consciousness of some sort or other.  He looked very well, not as if he
+had been suffering in health or spirits, and he talked of Uppercross,
+of the Musgroves, nay, even of Louisa, and had even a momentary look of
+his own arch significance as he named her; but yet it was Captain
+Wentworth not comfortable, not easy, not able to feign that he was.
+
+It did not surprise, but it grieved Anne to observe that Elizabeth
+would not know him.  She saw that he saw Elizabeth, that Elizabeth saw
+him, that there was complete internal recognition on each side; she was
+convinced that he was ready to be acknowledged as an acquaintance,
+expecting it, and she had the pain of seeing her sister turn away with
+unalterable coldness.
+
+Lady Dalrymple's carriage, for which Miss Elliot was growing very
+impatient, now drew up; the servant came in to announce it.  It was
+beginning to rain again, and altogether there was a delay, and a
+bustle, and a talking, which must make all the little crowd in the shop
+understand that Lady Dalrymple was calling to convey Miss Elliot.  At
+last Miss Elliot and her friend, unattended but by the servant, (for
+there was no cousin returned), were walking off; and Captain Wentworth,
+watching them, turned again to Anne, and by manner, rather than words,
+was offering his services to her.
+
+"I am much obliged to you," was her answer, "but I am not going with
+them.  The carriage would not accommodate so many.  I walk:  I prefer
+walking."
+
+"But it rains."
+
+"Oh! very little,  Nothing that I regard."
+
+After a moment's pause he said:  "Though I came only yesterday, I have
+equipped myself properly for Bath already, you see," (pointing to a new
+umbrella); "I wish you would make use of it, if you are determined to
+walk; though I think it would be more prudent to let me get you a
+chair."
+
+She was very much obliged to him, but declined it all, repeating her
+conviction, that the rain would come to nothing at present, and adding,
+"I am only waiting for Mr Elliot.  He will be here in a moment, I am
+sure."
+
+She had hardly spoken the words when Mr Elliot walked in.  Captain
+Wentworth recollected him perfectly.  There was no difference between
+him and the man who had stood on the steps at Lyme, admiring Anne as
+she passed, except in the air and look and manner of the privileged
+relation and friend.  He came in with eagerness, appeared to see and
+think only of her, apologised for his stay, was grieved to have kept
+her waiting, and anxious to get her away without further loss of time
+and before the rain increased; and in another moment they walked off
+together, her arm under his, a gentle and embarrassed glance, and a
+"Good morning to you!" being all that she had time for, as she passed
+away.
+
+As soon as they were out of sight, the ladies of Captain Wentworth's
+party began talking of them.
+
+"Mr Elliot does not dislike his cousin, I fancy?"
+
+"Oh! no, that is clear enough.  One can guess what will happen there.
+He is always with them; half lives in the family, I believe.  What a
+very good-looking man!"
+
+"Yes, and Miss Atkinson, who dined with him once at the Wallises, says
+he is the most agreeable man she ever was in company with."
+
+"She is pretty, I think; Anne Elliot; very pretty, when one comes to
+look at her.  It is not the fashion to say so, but I confess I admire
+her more than her sister."
+
+"Oh! so do I."
+
+"And so do I.  No comparison.  But the men are all wild after Miss
+Elliot.  Anne is too delicate for them."
+
+Anne would have been particularly obliged to her cousin, if he would
+have walked by her side all the way to Camden Place, without saying a
+word.  She had never found it so difficult to listen to him, though
+nothing could exceed his solicitude and care, and though his subjects
+were principally such as were wont to be always interesting: praise,
+warm, just, and discriminating, of Lady Russell, and insinuations
+highly rational against Mrs Clay.  But just now she could think only of
+Captain Wentworth.  She could not understand his present feelings,
+whether he were really suffering much from disappointment or not; and
+till that point were settled, she could not be quite herself.
+
+She hoped to be wise and reasonable in time; but alas! alas!  she must
+confess to herself that she was not wise yet.
+
+Another circumstance very essential for her to know, was how long he
+meant to be in Bath; he had not mentioned it, or she could not
+recollect it.  He might be only passing through.  But it was more
+probable that he should be come to stay.  In that case, so liable as
+every body was to meet every body in Bath, Lady Russell would in all
+likelihood see him somewhere.  Would she recollect him?  How would it
+all be?
+
+She had already been obliged to tell Lady Russell that Louisa Musgrove
+was to marry Captain Benwick.  It had cost her something to encounter
+Lady Russell's surprise; and now, if she were by any chance to be
+thrown into company with Captain Wentworth, her imperfect knowledge of
+the matter might add another shade of prejudice against him.
+
+The following morning Anne was out with her friend, and for the first
+hour, in an incessant and fearful sort of watch for him in vain; but at
+last, in returning down Pulteney Street, she distinguished him on the
+right hand pavement at such a distance as to have him in view the
+greater part of the street.  There were many other men about him, many
+groups walking the same way, but there was no mistaking him.  She
+looked instinctively at Lady Russell; but not from any mad idea of her
+recognising him so soon as she did herself.  No, it was not to be
+supposed that Lady Russell would perceive him till they were nearly
+opposite.  She looked at her however, from time to time, anxiously; and
+when the moment approached which must point him out, though not daring
+to look again (for her own countenance she knew was unfit to be seen),
+she was yet perfectly conscious of Lady Russell's eyes being turned
+exactly in the direction for him--of her being, in short, intently
+observing him.  She could thoroughly comprehend the sort of fascination
+he must possess over Lady Russell's mind, the difficulty it must be for
+her to withdraw her eyes, the astonishment she must be feeling that
+eight or nine years should have passed over him, and in foreign climes
+and in active service too, without robbing him of one personal grace!
+
+At last, Lady Russell drew back her head.  "Now, how would she speak of
+him?"
+
+"You will wonder," said she, "what has been fixing my eye so long; but
+I was looking after some window-curtains, which Lady Alicia and Mrs
+Frankland were telling me of last night.  They described the
+drawing-room window-curtains of one of the houses on this side of the
+way, and this part of the street, as being the handsomest and best hung
+of any in Bath, but could not recollect the exact number, and I have
+been trying to find out which it could be; but I confess I can see no
+curtains hereabouts that answer their description."
+
+Anne sighed and blushed and smiled, in pity and disdain, either at her
+friend or herself.  The part which provoked her most, was that in all
+this waste of foresight and caution, she should have lost the right
+moment for seeing whether he saw them.
+
+A day or two passed without producing anything.  The theatre or the
+rooms, where he was most likely to be, were not fashionable enough for
+the Elliots, whose evening amusements were solely in the elegant
+stupidity of private parties, in which they were getting more and more
+engaged; and Anne, wearied of such a state of stagnation, sick of
+knowing nothing, and fancying herself stronger because her strength was
+not tried, was quite impatient for the concert evening.  It was a
+concert for the benefit of a person patronised by Lady Dalrymple.  Of
+course they must attend.  It was really expected to be a good one, and
+Captain Wentworth was very fond of music.  If she could only have a few
+minutes conversation with him again, she fancied she should be
+satisfied; and as to the power of addressing him, she felt all over
+courage if the opportunity occurred.  Elizabeth had turned from him,
+Lady Russell overlooked him; her nerves were strengthened by these
+circumstances; she felt that she owed him attention.
+
+She had once partly promised Mrs Smith to spend the evening with her;
+but in a short hurried call she excused herself and put it off, with
+the more decided promise of a longer visit on the morrow.  Mrs Smith
+gave a most good-humoured acquiescence.
+
+"By all means," said she; "only tell me all about it, when you do come.
+Who is your party?"
+
+Anne named them all.  Mrs Smith made no reply; but when she was leaving
+her said, and with an expression half serious, half arch, "Well, I
+heartily wish your concert may answer; and do not fail me to-morrow if
+you can come; for I begin to have a foreboding that I may not have many
+more visits from you."
+
+Anne was startled and confused; but after standing in a moment's
+suspense, was obliged, and not sorry to be obliged, to hurry away.
+
+
+
+Chapter 20
+
+
+Sir Walter, his two daughters, and Mrs Clay, were the earliest of all
+their party at the rooms in the evening; and as Lady Dalrymple must be
+waited for, they took their station by one of the fires in the Octagon
+Room.  But hardly were they so settled, when the door opened again, and
+Captain Wentworth walked in alone.  Anne was the nearest to him, and
+making yet a little advance, she instantly spoke.  He was preparing
+only to bow and pass on, but her gentle "How do you do?" brought him
+out of the straight line to stand near her, and make enquiries in
+return, in spite of the formidable father and sister in the back
+ground.  Their being in the back ground was a support to Anne; she knew
+nothing of their looks, and felt equal to everything which she believed
+right to be done.
+
+While they were speaking, a whispering between her father and Elizabeth
+caught her ear.  She could not distinguish, but she must guess the
+subject; and on Captain Wentworth's making a distant bow, she
+comprehended that her father had judged so well as to give him that
+simple acknowledgement of acquaintance, and she was just in time by a
+side glance to see a slight curtsey from Elizabeth herself.  This,
+though late, and reluctant, and ungracious, was yet better than
+nothing, and her spirits improved.
+
+After talking, however, of the weather, and Bath, and the concert,
+their conversation began to flag, and so little was said at last, that
+she was expecting him to go every moment, but he did not; he seemed in
+no hurry to leave her; and presently with renewed spirit, with a little
+smile, a little glow, he said--
+
+"I have hardly seen you since our day at Lyme.  I am afraid you must
+have suffered from the shock, and the more from its not overpowering
+you at the time."
+
+She assured him that she had not.
+
+"It was a frightful hour," said he, "a frightful day!" and he passed
+his hand across his eyes, as if the remembrance were still too painful,
+but in a moment, half smiling again, added, "The day has produced some
+effects however; has had some consequences which must be considered as
+the very reverse of frightful.  When you had the presence of mind to
+suggest that Benwick would be the properest person to fetch a surgeon,
+you could have little idea of his being eventually one of those most
+concerned in her recovery."
+
+"Certainly I could have none.  But it appears--I should hope it would
+be a very happy match.  There are on both sides good principles and
+good temper."
+
+"Yes," said he, looking not exactly forward; "but there, I think, ends
+the resemblance.  With all my soul I wish them happy, and rejoice over
+every circumstance in favour of it.  They have no difficulties to
+contend with at home, no opposition, no caprice, no delays.  The
+Musgroves are behaving like themselves, most honourably and kindly,
+only anxious with true parental hearts to promote their daughter's
+comfort.  All this is much, very much in favour of their happiness;
+more than perhaps--"
+
+He stopped.  A sudden recollection seemed to occur, and to give him
+some taste of that emotion which was reddening Anne's cheeks and fixing
+her eyes on the ground.  After clearing his throat, however, he
+proceeded thus--
+
+"I confess that I do think there is a disparity, too great a disparity,
+and in a point no less essential than mind.  I regard Louisa Musgrove
+as a very amiable, sweet-tempered girl, and not deficient in
+understanding, but Benwick is something more.  He is a clever man, a
+reading man; and I confess, that I do consider his attaching himself to
+her with some surprise.  Had it been the effect of gratitude, had he
+learnt to love her, because he believed her to be preferring him, it
+would have been another thing.  But I have no reason to suppose it so.
+It seems, on the contrary, to have been a perfectly spontaneous,
+untaught feeling on his side, and this surprises me.  A man like him,
+in his situation! with a heart pierced, wounded, almost broken!  Fanny
+Harville was a very superior creature, and his attachment to her was
+indeed attachment.  A man does not recover from such a devotion of the
+heart to such a woman.  He ought not; he does not."
+
+Either from the consciousness, however, that his friend had recovered,
+or from other consciousness, he went no farther; and Anne who, in spite
+of the agitated voice in which the latter part had been uttered, and in
+spite of all the various noises of the room, the almost ceaseless slam
+of the door, and ceaseless buzz of persons walking through, had
+distinguished every word, was struck, gratified, confused, and
+beginning to breathe very quick, and feel an hundred things in a
+moment.  It was impossible for her to enter on such a subject; and yet,
+after a pause, feeling the necessity of speaking, and having not the
+smallest wish for a total change, she only deviated so far as to say--
+
+"You were a good while at Lyme, I think?"
+
+"About a fortnight.  I could not leave it till Louisa's doing well was
+quite ascertained.  I had been too deeply concerned in the mischief to
+be soon at peace.  It had been my doing, solely mine.  She would not
+have been obstinate if I had not been weak.  The country round Lyme is
+very fine.  I walked and rode a great deal; and the more I saw, the
+more I found to admire."
+
+"I should very much like to see Lyme again," said Anne.
+
+"Indeed!  I should not have supposed that you could have found anything
+in Lyme to inspire such a feeling.  The horror and distress you were
+involved in, the stretch of mind, the wear of spirits!  I should have
+thought your last impressions of Lyme must have been strong disgust."
+
+"The last hours were certainly very painful," replied Anne; "but when
+pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure.  One does
+not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been
+all suffering, nothing but suffering, which was by no means the case at
+Lyme.  We were only in anxiety and distress during the last two hours,
+and previously there had been a great deal of enjoyment.  So much
+novelty and beauty! I have travelled so little, that every fresh place
+would be interesting to me; but there is real beauty at Lyme; and in
+short" (with a faint blush at some recollections), "altogether my
+impressions of the place are very agreeable."
+
+As she ceased, the entrance door opened again, and the very party
+appeared for whom they were waiting.  "Lady Dalrymple, Lady Dalrymple,"
+was the rejoicing sound; and with all the eagerness compatible with
+anxious elegance, Sir Walter and his two ladies stepped forward to meet
+her.  Lady Dalrymple and Miss Carteret, escorted by Mr Elliot and
+Colonel Wallis, who had happened to arrive nearly at the same instant,
+advanced into the room.  The others joined them, and it was a group in
+which Anne found herself also necessarily included.  She was divided
+from Captain Wentworth.  Their interesting, almost too interesting
+conversation must be broken up for a time, but slight was the penance
+compared with the happiness which brought it on!  She had learnt, in
+the last ten minutes, more of his feelings towards Louisa, more of all
+his feelings than she dared to think of; and she gave herself up to the
+demands of the party, to the needful civilities of the moment, with
+exquisite, though agitated sensations.  She was in good humour with
+all.  She had received ideas which disposed her to be courteous and
+kind to all, and to pity every one, as being less happy than herself.
+
+The delightful emotions were a little subdued, when on stepping back
+from the group, to be joined again by Captain Wentworth, she saw that
+he was gone.  She was just in time to see him turn into the Concert
+Room.  He was gone; he had disappeared, she felt a moment's regret.
+But "they should meet again.  He would look for her, he would find her
+out before the evening were over, and at present, perhaps, it was as
+well to be asunder.  She was in need of a little interval for
+recollection."
+
+Upon Lady Russell's appearance soon afterwards, the whole party was
+collected, and all that remained was to marshal themselves, and proceed
+into the Concert Room; and be of all the consequence in their power,
+draw as many eyes, excite as many whispers, and disturb as many people
+as they could.
+
+Very, very happy were both Elizabeth and Anne Elliot as they walked in.
+Elizabeth arm in arm with Miss Carteret, and looking on the broad back
+of the dowager Viscountess Dalrymple before her, had nothing to wish
+for which did not seem within her reach; and Anne--but it would be an
+insult to the nature of Anne's felicity, to draw any comparison between
+it and her sister's; the origin of one all selfish vanity, of the other
+all generous attachment.
+
+Anne saw nothing, thought nothing of the brilliancy of the room.  Her
+happiness was from within.  Her eyes were bright and her cheeks glowed;
+but she knew nothing about it.  She was thinking only of the last half
+hour, and as they passed to their seats, her mind took a hasty range
+over it.  His choice of subjects, his expressions, and still more his
+manner and look, had been such as she could see in only one light.  His
+opinion of Louisa Musgrove's inferiority, an opinion which he had
+seemed solicitous to give, his wonder at Captain Benwick, his feelings
+as to a first, strong attachment; sentences begun which he could not
+finish, his half averted eyes and more than half expressive glance,
+all, all declared that he had a heart returning to her at least; that
+anger, resentment, avoidance, were no more; and that they were
+succeeded, not merely by friendship and regard, but by the tenderness
+of the past.  Yes, some share of the tenderness of the past.  She could
+not contemplate the change as implying less.  He must love her.
+
+These were thoughts, with their attendant visions, which occupied and
+flurried her too much to leave her any power of observation; and she
+passed along the room without having a glimpse of him, without even
+trying to discern him.  When their places were determined on, and they
+were all properly arranged, she looked round to see if he should happen
+to be in the same part of the room, but he was not; her eye could not
+reach him; and the concert being just opening, she must consent for a
+time to be happy in a humbler way.
+
+The party was divided and disposed of on two contiguous benches: Anne
+was among those on the foremost, and Mr Elliot had manoeuvred so well,
+with the assistance of his friend Colonel Wallis, as to have a seat by
+her.  Miss Elliot, surrounded by her cousins, and the principal object
+of Colonel Wallis's gallantry, was quite contented.
+
+Anne's mind was in a most favourable state for the entertainment of the
+evening; it was just occupation enough:  she had feelings for the
+tender, spirits for the gay, attention for the scientific, and patience
+for the wearisome; and had never liked a concert better, at least
+during the first act.  Towards the close of it, in the interval
+succeeding an Italian song, she explained the words of the song to Mr
+Elliot.  They had a concert bill between them.
+
+"This," said she, "is nearly the sense, or rather the meaning of the
+words, for certainly the sense of an Italian love-song must not be
+talked of, but it is as nearly the meaning as I can give; for I do not
+pretend to understand the language.  I am a very poor Italian scholar."
+
+"Yes, yes, I see you are.  I see you know nothing of the matter.  You
+have only knowledge enough of the language to translate at sight these
+inverted, transposed, curtailed Italian lines, into clear,
+comprehensible, elegant English.  You need not say anything more of
+your ignorance.  Here is complete proof."
+
+"I will not oppose such kind politeness; but I should be sorry to be
+examined by a real proficient."
+
+"I have not had the pleasure of visiting in Camden Place so long,"
+replied he, "without knowing something of Miss Anne Elliot; and I do
+regard her as one who is too modest for the world in general to be
+aware of half her accomplishments, and too highly accomplished for
+modesty to be natural in any other woman."
+
+"For shame! for shame! this is too much flattery.  I forget what we are
+to have next," turning to the bill.
+
+"Perhaps," said Mr Elliot, speaking low, "I have had a longer
+acquaintance with your character than you are aware of."
+
+"Indeed!  How so?  You can have been acquainted with it only since I
+came to Bath, excepting as you might hear me previously spoken of in my
+own family."
+
+"I knew you by report long before you came to Bath.  I had heard you
+described by those who knew you intimately.  I have been acquainted
+with you by character many years.  Your person, your disposition,
+accomplishments, manner; they were all present to me."
+
+Mr Elliot was not disappointed in the interest he hoped to raise.  No
+one can withstand the charm of such a mystery.  To have been described
+long ago to a recent acquaintance, by nameless people, is irresistible;
+and Anne was all curiosity.  She wondered, and questioned him eagerly;
+but in vain.  He delighted in being asked, but he would not tell.
+
+"No, no, some time or other, perhaps, but not now.  He would mention no
+names now; but such, he could assure her, had been the fact.  He had
+many years ago received such a description of Miss Anne Elliot as had
+inspired him with the highest idea of her merit, and excited the
+warmest curiosity to know her."
+
+Anne could think of no one so likely to have spoken with partiality of
+her many years ago as the Mr Wentworth of Monkford, Captain Wentworth's
+brother.  He might have been in Mr Elliot's company, but she had not
+courage to ask the question.
+
+"The name of Anne Elliot," said he, "has long had an interesting sound
+to me.  Very long has it possessed a charm over my fancy; and, if I
+dared, I would breathe my wishes that the name might never change."
+
+Such, she believed, were his words; but scarcely had she received their
+sound, than her attention was caught by other sounds immediately behind
+her, which rendered every thing else trivial.  Her father and Lady
+Dalrymple were speaking.
+
+"A well-looking man," said Sir Walter, "a very well-looking man."
+
+"A very fine young man indeed!" said Lady Dalrymple.  "More air than
+one often sees in Bath.  Irish, I dare say."
+
+"No, I just know his name.  A bowing acquaintance.  Wentworth; Captain
+Wentworth of the navy.  His sister married my tenant in Somersetshire,
+the Croft, who rents Kellynch."
+
+Before Sir Walter had reached this point, Anne's eyes had caught the
+right direction, and distinguished Captain Wentworth standing among a
+cluster of men at a little distance.  As her eyes fell on him, his
+seemed to be withdrawn from her.  It had that appearance.  It seemed as
+if she had been one moment too late; and as long as she dared observe,
+he did not look again:  but the performance was recommencing, and she
+was forced to seem to restore her attention to the orchestra and look
+straight forward.
+
+When she could give another glance, he had moved away.  He could not
+have come nearer to her if he would; she was so surrounded and shut in:
+but she would rather have caught his eye.
+
+Mr Elliot's speech, too, distressed her.  She had no longer any
+inclination to talk to him.  She wished him not so near her.
+
+The first act was over.  Now she hoped for some beneficial change; and,
+after a period of nothing-saying amongst the party, some of them did
+decide on going in quest of tea.  Anne was one of the few who did not
+choose to move.  She remained in her seat, and so did Lady Russell; but
+she had the pleasure of getting rid of Mr Elliot; and she did not mean,
+whatever she might feel on Lady Russell's account, to shrink from
+conversation with Captain Wentworth, if he gave her the opportunity.
+She was persuaded by Lady Russell's countenance that she had seen him.
+
+He did not come however.  Anne sometimes fancied she discerned him at a
+distance, but he never came.  The anxious interval wore away
+unproductively.  The others returned, the room filled again, benches
+were reclaimed and repossessed, and another hour of pleasure or of
+penance was to be sat out, another hour of music was to give delight or
+the gapes, as real or affected taste for it prevailed.  To Anne, it
+chiefly wore the prospect of an hour of agitation.  She could not quit
+that room in peace without seeing Captain Wentworth once more, without
+the interchange of one friendly look.
+
+In re-settling themselves there were now many changes, the result of
+which was favourable for her.  Colonel Wallis declined sitting down
+again, and Mr Elliot was invited by Elizabeth and Miss Carteret, in a
+manner not to be refused, to sit between them; and by some other
+removals, and a little scheming of her own,  Anne was enabled to place
+herself much nearer the end of the bench than she had been before, much
+more within reach of a passer-by.  She could not do so, without
+comparing herself with Miss Larolles, the inimitable Miss Larolles; but
+still she did it, and not with much happier effect; though by what
+seemed prosperity in the shape of an early abdication in her next
+neighbours, she found herself at the very end of the bench before the
+concert closed.
+
+Such was her situation, with a vacant space at hand, when Captain
+Wentworth was again in sight.  She saw him not far off.  He saw her
+too; yet he looked grave, and seemed irresolute, and only by very slow
+degrees came at last near enough to speak to her.  She felt that
+something must be the matter.  The change was indubitable.  The
+difference between his present air and what it had been in the Octagon
+Room was strikingly great.  Why was it?  She thought of her father, of
+Lady Russell.  Could there have been any unpleasant glances?  He began
+by speaking of the concert gravely, more like the Captain Wentworth of
+Uppercross; owned himself disappointed, had expected singing; and in
+short, must confess that he should not be sorry when it was over.  Anne
+replied, and spoke in defence of the performance so well, and yet in
+allowance for his feelings so pleasantly, that his countenance
+improved, and he replied again with almost a smile.  They talked for a
+few minutes more; the improvement held; he even looked down towards the
+bench, as if he saw a place on it well worth occupying; when at that
+moment a touch on her shoulder obliged Anne to turn round.  It came
+from Mr Elliot.  He begged her pardon, but she must be applied to, to
+explain Italian again.  Miss Carteret was very anxious to have a
+general idea of what was next to be sung.  Anne could not refuse; but
+never had she sacrificed to politeness with a more suffering spirit.
+
+A few minutes, though as few as possible, were inevitably consumed; and
+when her own mistress again, when able to turn and look as she had done
+before, she found herself accosted by Captain Wentworth, in a reserved
+yet hurried sort of farewell.  "He must wish her good night; he was
+going; he should get home as fast as he could."
+
+"Is not this song worth staying for?" said Anne, suddenly struck by an
+idea which made her yet more anxious to be encouraging.
+
+"No!" he replied impressively, "there is nothing worth my staying for;"
+and he was gone directly.
+
+Jealousy of Mr Elliot!  It was the only intelligible motive.  Captain
+Wentworth jealous of her affection!  Could she have believed it a week
+ago; three hours ago!  For a moment the gratification was exquisite.
+But, alas! there were very different thoughts to succeed.  How was such
+jealousy to be quieted?  How was the truth to reach him?  How, in all
+the peculiar disadvantages of their respective situations, would he
+ever learn of her real sentiments?  It was misery to think of Mr
+Elliot's attentions.  Their evil was incalculable.
+
+
+
+Chapter 21
+
+
+Anne recollected with pleasure the next morning her promise of going to
+Mrs Smith, meaning that it should engage her from home at the time when
+Mr Elliot would be most likely to call; for to avoid Mr Elliot was
+almost a first object.
+
+She felt a great deal of good-will towards him.  In spite of the
+mischief of his attentions, she owed him gratitude and regard, perhaps
+compassion.  She could not help thinking much of the extraordinary
+circumstances attending their acquaintance, of the right which he
+seemed to have to interest her, by everything in situation, by his own
+sentiments, by his early prepossession.  It was altogether very
+extraordinary; flattering, but painful.  There was much to regret.  How
+she might have felt had there been no Captain Wentworth in the case,
+was not worth enquiry; for there was a Captain Wentworth; and be the
+conclusion of the present suspense good or bad, her affection would be
+his for ever.  Their union, she believed, could not divide her more
+from other men, than their final separation.
+
+Prettier musings of high-wrought love and eternal constancy, could
+never have passed along the streets of Bath, than Anne was sporting
+with from Camden Place to Westgate Buildings.  It was almost enough to
+spread purification and perfume all the way.
+
+She was sure of a pleasant reception; and her friend seemed this
+morning particularly obliged to her for coming, seemed hardly to have
+expected her, though it had been an appointment.
+
+An account of the concert was immediately claimed; and Anne's
+recollections of the concert were quite happy enough to animate her
+features and make her rejoice to talk of it.  All that she could tell
+she told most gladly, but the all was little for one who had been
+there, and unsatisfactory for such an enquirer as Mrs Smith, who had
+already heard, through the short cut of a laundress and a waiter,
+rather more of the general success and produce of the evening than Anne
+could relate, and who now asked in vain for several particulars of the
+company.  Everybody of any consequence or notoriety in Bath was well
+know by name to Mrs Smith.
+
+"The little Durands were there, I conclude," said she, "with their
+mouths open to catch the music, like unfledged sparrows ready to be
+fed.  They never miss a concert."
+
+"Yes; I did not see them myself, but I heard Mr Elliot say they were in
+the room."
+
+"The Ibbotsons, were they there? and the two new beauties, with the
+tall Irish officer, who is talked of for one of them."
+
+"I do not know.  I do not think they were."
+
+"Old Lady Mary Maclean?  I need not ask after her.  She never misses, I
+know; and you must have seen her.  She must have been in your own
+circle; for as you went with Lady Dalrymple, you were in the seats of
+grandeur, round the orchestra, of course."
+
+"No, that was what I dreaded.  It would have been very unpleasant to me
+in every respect.  But happily Lady Dalrymple always chooses to be
+farther off; and we were exceedingly well placed, that is, for hearing;
+I must not say for seeing, because I appear to have seen very little."
+
+"Oh! you saw enough for your own amusement.  I can understand.  There
+is a sort of domestic enjoyment to be known even in a crowd, and this
+you had.  You were a large party in yourselves, and you wanted nothing
+beyond."
+
+"But I ought to have looked about me more," said Anne, conscious while
+she spoke that there had in fact been no want of looking about, that
+the object only had been deficient.
+
+"No, no; you were better employed.  You need not tell me that you had a
+pleasant evening.  I see it in your eye.  I perfectly see how the hours
+passed:  that you had always something agreeable to listen to.  In the
+intervals of the concert it was conversation."
+
+Anne half smiled and said, "Do you see that in my eye?"
+
+"Yes, I do.  Your countenance perfectly informs me that you were in
+company last night with the person whom you think the most agreeable in
+the world, the person who interests you at this present time more than
+all the rest of the world put together."
+
+A blush overspread Anne's cheeks.  She could say nothing.
+
+"And such being the case," continued Mrs Smith, after a short pause, "I
+hope you believe that I do know how to value your kindness in coming to
+me this morning.  It is really very good of you to come and sit with
+me, when you must have so many pleasanter demands upon your time."
+
+Anne heard nothing of this.  She was still in the astonishment and
+confusion excited by her friend's penetration, unable to imagine how
+any report of Captain Wentworth could have reached her.  After another
+short silence--
+
+"Pray," said Mrs Smith, "is Mr Elliot aware of your acquaintance with
+me?  Does he know that I am in Bath?"
+
+"Mr Elliot!" repeated Anne, looking up surprised.  A moment's
+reflection shewed her the mistake she had been under.  She caught it
+instantaneously; and recovering her courage with the feeling of safety,
+soon added, more composedly, "Are you acquainted with Mr Elliot?"
+
+"I have been a good deal acquainted with him," replied Mrs Smith,
+gravely, "but it seems worn out now.  It is a great while since we met."
+
+"I was not at all aware of this.  You never mentioned it before.  Had I
+known it, I would have had the pleasure of talking to him about you."
+
+"To confess the truth," said Mrs Smith, assuming her usual air of
+cheerfulness, "that is exactly the pleasure I want you to have.  I want
+you to talk about me to Mr Elliot.  I want your interest with him.  He
+can be of essential service to me; and if you would have the goodness,
+my dear Miss Elliot, to make it an object to yourself, of course it is
+done."
+
+"I should be extremely happy; I hope you cannot doubt my willingness to
+be of even the slightest use to you," replied Anne; "but I suspect that
+you are considering me as having a higher claim on Mr Elliot, a greater
+right to influence him, than is really the case.  I am sure you have,
+somehow or other, imbibed such a notion.  You must consider me only as
+Mr Elliot's relation.  If in that light there is anything which you
+suppose his cousin might fairly ask of him, I beg you would not
+hesitate to employ me."
+
+Mrs Smith gave her a penetrating glance, and then, smiling, said--
+
+"I have been a little premature, I perceive; I beg your pardon.  I
+ought to have waited for official information.  But now, my dear Miss
+Elliot, as an old friend, do give me a hint as to when I may speak.
+Next week?  To be sure by next week I may be allowed to think it all
+settled, and build my own selfish schemes on Mr Elliot's good fortune."
+
+"No," replied Anne, "nor next week, nor next, nor next.  I assure you
+that nothing of the sort you are thinking of will be settled any week.
+I am not going to marry Mr Elliot.  I should like to know why you
+imagine I am?"
+
+Mrs Smith looked at her again, looked earnestly, smiled, shook her
+head, and exclaimed--
+
+"Now, how I do wish I understood you!  How I do wish I knew what you
+were at!  I have a great idea that you do not design to be cruel, when
+the right moment occurs.  Till it does come, you know, we women never
+mean to have anybody.  It is a thing of course among us, that every man
+is refused, till he offers.  But why should you be cruel?  Let me plead
+for my--present friend I cannot call him, but for my former friend.
+Where can you look for a more suitable match?  Where could you expect a
+more gentlemanlike, agreeable man?  Let me recommend Mr Elliot.  I am
+sure you hear nothing but good of him from Colonel Wallis; and who can
+know him better than Colonel Wallis?"
+
+"My dear Mrs Smith, Mr Elliot's wife has not been dead much above half
+a year.  He ought not to be supposed to be paying his addresses to any
+one."
+
+"Oh! if these are your only objections," cried Mrs Smith, archly, "Mr
+Elliot is safe, and I shall give myself no more trouble about him.  Do
+not forget me when you are married, that's all.  Let him know me to be
+a friend of yours, and then he will think little of the trouble
+required, which it is very natural for him now, with so many affairs
+and engagements of his own, to avoid and get rid of as he can; very
+natural, perhaps.  Ninety-nine out of a hundred would do the same.  Of
+course, he cannot be aware of the importance to me.  Well, my dear Miss
+Elliot, I hope and trust you will be very happy.  Mr Elliot has sense
+to understand the value of such a woman.  Your peace will not be
+shipwrecked as mine has been.  You are safe in all worldly matters, and
+safe in his character.  He will not be led astray; he will not be
+misled by others to his ruin."
+
+"No," said Anne, "I can readily believe all that of my cousin.  He
+seems to have a calm decided temper, not at all open to dangerous
+impressions.  I consider him with great respect.  I have no reason,
+from any thing that has fallen within my observation, to do otherwise.
+But I have not known him long; and he is not a man, I think, to be
+known intimately soon.  Will not this manner of speaking of him, Mrs
+Smith, convince you that he is nothing to me?  Surely this must be calm
+enough.  And, upon my word, he is nothing to me.  Should he ever
+propose to me (which I have very little reason to imagine he has any
+thought of doing), I shall not accept him.  I assure you I shall not.
+I assure you, Mr Elliot had not the share which you have been
+supposing, in whatever pleasure the concert of last night might afford:
+not Mr Elliot; it is not Mr Elliot that--"
+
+She stopped, regretting with a deep blush that she had implied so much;
+but less would hardly have been sufficient.  Mrs Smith would hardly
+have believed so soon in Mr Elliot's failure, but from the perception
+of there being a somebody else.  As it was, she instantly submitted,
+and with all the semblance of seeing nothing beyond; and Anne, eager to
+escape farther notice, was impatient to know why Mrs Smith should have
+fancied she was to marry Mr Elliot; where she could have received the
+idea, or from whom she could have heard it.
+
+"Do tell me how it first came into your head."
+
+"It first came into my head," replied Mrs Smith, "upon finding how much
+you were together, and feeling it to be the most probable thing in the
+world to be wished for by everybody belonging to either of you; and you
+may depend upon it that all your acquaintance have disposed of you in
+the same way.  But I never heard it spoken of till two days ago."
+
+"And has it indeed been spoken of?"
+
+"Did you observe the woman who opened the door to you when you called
+yesterday?"
+
+"No.  Was not it Mrs Speed, as usual, or the maid?  I observed no one
+in particular."
+
+"It was my friend Mrs Rooke; Nurse Rooke; who, by-the-bye, had a great
+curiosity to see you, and was delighted to be in the way to let you in.
+She came away from Marlborough Buildings only on Sunday; and she it was
+who told me you were to marry Mr Elliot.  She had had it from Mrs
+Wallis herself, which did not seem bad authority.  She sat an hour with
+me on Monday evening, and gave me the whole history." "The whole
+history," repeated Anne, laughing.  "She could not make a very long
+history, I think, of one such little article of unfounded news."
+
+Mrs Smith said nothing.
+
+"But," continued Anne, presently, "though there is no truth in my
+having this claim on Mr Elliot, I should be extremely happy to be of
+use to you in any way that I could.  Shall I mention to him your being
+in Bath?  Shall I take any message?"
+
+"No, I thank you:  no, certainly not.  In the warmth of the moment, and
+under a mistaken impression, I might, perhaps, have endeavoured to
+interest you in some circumstances; but not now.  No, I thank you, I
+have nothing to trouble you with."
+
+"I think you spoke of having known Mr Elliot many years?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"Not before he was married, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes; he was not married when I knew him first."
+
+"And--were you much acquainted?"
+
+"Intimately."
+
+"Indeed!  Then do tell me what he was at that time of life.  I have a
+great curiosity to know what Mr Elliot was as a very young man.  Was he
+at all such as he appears now?"
+
+"I have not seen Mr Elliot these three years," was Mrs Smith's answer,
+given so gravely that it was impossible to pursue the subject farther;
+and Anne felt that she had gained nothing but an increase of curiosity.
+They were both silent:  Mrs Smith very thoughtful.  At last--
+
+"I beg your pardon, my dear Miss Elliot," she cried, in her natural
+tone of cordiality, "I beg your pardon for the short answers I have
+been giving you, but I have been uncertain what I ought to do.  I have
+been doubting and considering as to what I ought to tell you.  There
+were many things to be taken into the account.  One hates to be
+officious, to be giving bad impressions, making mischief.  Even the
+smooth surface of family-union seems worth preserving, though there may
+be nothing durable beneath.  However, I have determined; I think I am
+right; I think you ought to be made acquainted with Mr Elliot's real
+character.  Though I fully believe that, at present, you have not the
+smallest intention of accepting him, there is no saying what may
+happen.  You might, some time or other, be differently affected towards
+him.  Hear the truth, therefore, now, while you are unprejudiced.  Mr
+Elliot is a man without heart or conscience; a designing, wary,
+cold-blooded being, who thinks only of himself; whom for his own
+interest or ease, would be guilty of any cruelty, or any treachery,
+that could be perpetrated without risk of his general character.  He
+has no feeling for others.  Those whom he has been the chief cause of
+leading into ruin, he can neglect and desert without the smallest
+compunction.  He is totally beyond the reach of any sentiment of
+justice or compassion.  Oh! he is black at heart, hollow and black!"
+
+Anne's astonished air, and exclamation of wonder, made her pause, and
+in a calmer manner, she added,
+
+"My expressions startle you.  You must allow for an injured, angry
+woman.  But I will try to command myself.  I will not abuse him.  I
+will only tell you what I have found him.  Facts shall speak.  He was
+the intimate friend of my dear husband, who trusted and loved him, and
+thought him as good as himself.  The intimacy had been formed before
+our marriage.  I found them most intimate friends; and I, too, became
+excessively pleased with Mr Elliot, and entertained the highest opinion
+of him.  At nineteen, you know, one does not think very seriously; but
+Mr Elliot appeared to me quite as good as others, and much more
+agreeable than most others, and we were almost always together.  We
+were principally in town, living in very good style.  He was then the
+inferior in circumstances; he was then the poor one; he had chambers in
+the Temple, and it was as much as he could do to support the appearance
+of a gentleman.  He had always a home with us whenever he chose it; he
+was always welcome; he was like a brother.  My poor Charles, who had
+the finest, most generous spirit in the world, would have divided his
+last farthing with him; and I know that his purse was open to him; I
+know that he often assisted him."
+
+"This must have been about that very period of Mr Elliot's life," said
+Anne, "which has always excited my particular curiosity.  It must have
+been about the same time that he became known to my father and sister.
+I never knew him myself; I only heard of him; but there was a something
+in his conduct then, with regard to my father and sister, and
+afterwards in the circumstances of his marriage, which I never could
+quite reconcile with present times.  It seemed to announce a different
+sort of man."
+
+"I know it all, I know it all," cried Mrs Smith.  "He had been
+introduced to Sir Walter and your sister before I was acquainted with
+him, but I heard him speak of them for ever.  I know he was invited and
+encouraged, and I know he did not choose to go.  I can satisfy you,
+perhaps, on points which you would little expect; and as to his
+marriage, I knew all about it at the time.  I was privy to all the fors
+and againsts; I was the friend to whom he confided his hopes and plans;
+and though I did not know his wife previously, her inferior situation
+in society, indeed, rendered that impossible, yet I knew her all her
+life afterwards, or at least till within the last two years of her
+life, and can answer any question you may wish to put."
+
+"Nay," said Anne, "I have no particular enquiry to make about her.  I
+have always understood they were not a happy couple.  But I should like
+to know why, at that time of his life, he should slight my father's
+acquaintance as he did.  My father was certainly disposed to take very
+kind and proper notice of him.  Why did Mr Elliot draw back?"
+
+"Mr Elliot," replied Mrs Smith, "at that period of his life, had one
+object in view:  to make his fortune, and by a rather quicker process
+than the law.  He was determined to make it by marriage.  He was
+determined, at least, not to mar it by an imprudent marriage; and I
+know it was his belief (whether justly or not, of course I cannot
+decide), that your father and sister, in their civilities and
+invitations, were designing a match between the heir and the young
+lady, and it was impossible that such a match should have answered his
+ideas of wealth and independence.  That was his motive for drawing
+back, I can assure you.  He told me the whole story.  He had no
+concealments with me.  It was curious, that having just left you behind
+me in Bath, my first and principal acquaintance on marrying should be
+your cousin; and that, through him, I should be continually hearing of
+your father and sister.  He described one Miss Elliot, and I thought
+very affectionately of the other."
+
+"Perhaps," cried Anne, struck by a sudden idea, "you sometimes spoke of
+me to Mr Elliot?"
+
+"To be sure I did; very often.  I used to boast of my own Anne Elliot,
+and vouch for your being a very different creature from--"
+
+She checked herself just in time.
+
+"This accounts for something which Mr Elliot said last night," cried
+Anne.  "This explains it.  I found he had been used to hear of me.  I
+could not comprehend how.  What wild imaginations one forms where dear
+self is concerned!  How sure to be mistaken!  But I beg your pardon; I
+have interrupted you.  Mr Elliot married then completely for money?
+The circumstances, probably, which first opened your eyes to his
+character."
+
+Mrs Smith hesitated a little here.  "Oh! those things are too common.
+When one lives in the world, a man or woman's marrying for money is too
+common to strike one as it ought.  I was very young, and associated
+only with the young, and we were a thoughtless, gay set, without any
+strict rules of conduct.  We lived for enjoyment.  I think differently
+now; time and sickness and sorrow have given me other notions; but at
+that period I must own I saw nothing reprehensible in what Mr Elliot
+was doing.  'To do the best for himself,' passed as a duty."
+
+"But was not she a very low woman?"
+
+"Yes; which I objected to, but he would not regard.  Money, money, was
+all that he wanted.  Her father was a grazier, her grandfather had been
+a butcher, but that was all nothing.  She was a fine woman, had had a
+decent education, was brought forward by some cousins, thrown by chance
+into Mr Elliot's company, and fell in love with him; and not a
+difficulty or a scruple was there on his side, with respect to her
+birth.  All his caution was spent in being secured of the real amount
+of her fortune, before he committed himself.  Depend upon it, whatever
+esteem Mr Elliot may have for his own situation in life now, as a young
+man he had not the smallest value for it.  His chance for the Kellynch
+estate was something, but all the honour of the family he held as cheap
+as dirt.  I have often heard him declare, that if baronetcies were
+saleable, anybody should have his for fifty pounds, arms and motto,
+name and livery included; but I will not pretend to repeat half that I
+used to hear him say on that subject.  It would not be fair; and yet
+you ought to have proof, for what is all this but assertion, and you
+shall have proof."
+
+"Indeed, my dear Mrs Smith, I want none," cried Anne.  "You have
+asserted nothing contradictory to what Mr Elliot appeared to be some
+years ago.  This is all in confirmation, rather, of what we used to
+hear and believe.  I am more curious to know why he should be so
+different now."
+
+"But for my satisfaction, if you will have the goodness to ring for
+Mary; stay:  I am sure you will have the still greater goodness of
+going yourself into my bedroom, and bringing me the small inlaid box
+which you will find on the upper shelf of the closet."
+
+Anne, seeing her friend to be earnestly bent on it, did as she was
+desired.  The box was brought and placed before her, and Mrs Smith,
+sighing over it as she unlocked it, said--
+
+"This is full of papers belonging to him, to my husband; a small
+portion only of what I had to look over when I lost him.  The letter I
+am looking for was one written by Mr Elliot to him before our marriage,
+and happened to be saved; why, one can hardly imagine.  But he was
+careless and immethodical, like other men, about those things; and when
+I came to examine his papers, I found it with others still more
+trivial, from different people scattered here and there, while many
+letters and memorandums of real importance had been destroyed.  Here it
+is; I would not burn it, because being even then very little satisfied
+with Mr Elliot, I was determined to preserve every document of former
+intimacy.  I have now another motive for being glad that I can produce
+it."
+
+This was the letter, directed to "Charles Smith, Esq. Tunbridge Wells,"
+and dated from London, as far back as July, 1803:--
+
+"Dear Smith,--I have received yours.  Your kindness almost overpowers
+me.  I wish nature had made such hearts as yours more common, but I
+have lived three-and-twenty years in the world, and have seen none like
+it.  At present, believe me, I have no need of your services, being in
+cash again.  Give me joy:  I have got rid of Sir Walter and Miss.  They
+are gone back to Kellynch, and almost made me swear to visit them this
+summer; but my first visit to Kellynch will be with a surveyor, to tell
+me how to bring it with best advantage to the hammer.  The baronet,
+nevertheless, is not unlikely to marry again; he is quite fool enough.
+If he does, however, they will leave me in peace, which may be a decent
+equivalent  for the reversion.  He is worse than last year.
+
+"I wish I had any name but Elliot.  I am sick of it.  The name of
+Walter I can drop, thank God! and I desire you will never insult me
+with my second W. again, meaning, for the rest of my life, to be only
+yours truly,--Wm. Elliot."
+
+Such a letter could not be read without putting Anne in a glow; and Mrs
+Smith, observing the high colour in her face, said--
+
+"The language, I know, is highly disrespectful.  Though I have forgot
+the exact terms, I have a perfect impression of the general meaning.
+But it shows you the man.  Mark his professions to my poor husband.
+Can any thing be stronger?"
+
+Anne could not immediately get over the shock and mortification of
+finding such words applied to her father.  She was obliged to recollect
+that her seeing the letter was a violation of the laws of honour, that
+no one ought to be judged or to be known by such testimonies, that no
+private correspondence could bear the eye of others, before she could
+recover calmness enough to return the letter which she had been
+meditating over, and say--
+
+"Thank you.  This is full proof undoubtedly; proof of every thing you
+were saying.  But why be acquainted with us now?"
+
+"I can explain this too," cried Mrs Smith, smiling.
+
+"Can you really?"
+
+"Yes.  I have shewn you Mr Elliot as he was a dozen years ago, and I
+will shew him as he is now.  I cannot produce written proof again, but
+I can give as authentic oral testimony as you can desire, of what he is
+now wanting, and what he is now doing.  He is no hypocrite now.  He
+truly wants to marry you.  His present attentions to your family are
+very sincere:  quite from the heart.  I will give you my authority: his
+friend Colonel Wallis."
+
+"Colonel Wallis! you are acquainted with him?"
+
+"No.  It does not come to me in quite so direct a line as that; it
+takes a bend or two, but nothing of consequence.  The stream is as good
+as at first; the little rubbish it collects in the turnings is easily
+moved away.  Mr Elliot talks unreservedly to Colonel Wallis of his
+views on you, which said Colonel Wallis, I imagine to be, in himself, a
+sensible, careful, discerning sort of character; but Colonel Wallis has
+a very pretty silly wife, to whom he tells things which he had better
+not, and he repeats it all to her.  She in the overflowing spirits of
+her recovery, repeats it all to her nurse; and the nurse  knowing my
+acquaintance with you, very naturally brings it all to me.  On Monday
+evening, my good friend Mrs Rooke let me thus much into the secrets of
+Marlborough Buildings.  When I talked of a whole history, therefore,
+you see I was not romancing so much as you supposed."
+
+"My dear Mrs Smith, your authority is deficient.  This will not do.  Mr
+Elliot's having any views on me will not in the least account for the
+efforts he made towards a reconciliation with my father.  That was all
+prior to my coming to Bath.  I found them on the most friendly terms
+when I arrived."
+
+"I know you did; I know it all perfectly, but--"
+
+"Indeed, Mrs Smith, we must not expect to get real information in such
+a line.  Facts or opinions which are to pass through the hands of so
+many, to be misconceived by folly in one, and ignorance in another, can
+hardly have much truth left."
+
+"Only give me a hearing.  You will soon be able to judge of the general
+credit due, by listening to some particulars which you can yourself
+immediately contradict or confirm.  Nobody supposes that you were his
+first inducement.  He had seen you indeed, before he came to Bath, and
+admired you, but without knowing it to be you.  So says my historian,
+at least.  Is this true?  Did he see you last summer or autumn,
+'somewhere down in the west,' to use her own words, without knowing it
+to be you?"
+
+"He certainly did.  So far it is very true.  At Lyme.  I happened to be
+at Lyme."
+
+"Well," continued Mrs Smith, triumphantly, "grant my friend the credit
+due to the establishment of the first point asserted.  He saw you then
+at Lyme, and liked you so well as to be exceedingly pleased to meet
+with you again in Camden Place, as Miss Anne Elliot, and from that
+moment, I have no doubt, had a double motive in his visits there.  But
+there was another, and an earlier, which I will now explain.  If there
+is anything in my story which you know to be either false or
+improbable, stop me.  My account states, that your sister's friend, the
+lady now staying with you, whom I have heard you mention, came to Bath
+with Miss Elliot and Sir Walter as long ago as September (in short when
+they first came themselves), and has been staying there ever since;
+that she is a clever, insinuating, handsome woman, poor and plausible,
+and altogether such in situation and manner, as to give a general idea,
+among Sir Walter's acquaintance, of her meaning to be Lady Elliot, and
+as general a surprise that Miss Elliot should be apparently, blind to
+the danger."
+
+Here Mrs Smith paused a moment; but Anne had not a word to say, and she
+continued--
+
+"This was the light in which it appeared to those who knew the family,
+long before you returned to it; and Colonel Wallis had his eye upon
+your father enough to be sensible of it, though he did not then visit
+in Camden Place; but his regard for Mr Elliot gave him an interest in
+watching all that was going on there, and when Mr Elliot came to Bath
+for a day or two, as he happened to do a little before Christmas,
+Colonel Wallis made him acquainted with the appearance of things, and
+the reports beginning to prevail.  Now you are to understand, that time
+had worked a very material change in Mr Elliot's opinions as to the
+value of a baronetcy.  Upon all points of blood and connexion he is a
+completely altered man.  Having long had as much money as he could
+spend, nothing to wish for on the side of avarice or indulgence, he has
+been gradually learning to pin his happiness upon the consequence he is
+heir to.  I thought it coming on before our acquaintance ceased, but it
+is now a confirmed feeling.  He cannot bear the idea of not being Sir
+William.  You may guess, therefore, that the news he heard from his
+friend could not be very agreeable, and you may guess what it produced;
+the resolution of coming back to Bath as soon as possible, and of
+fixing himself here for a time, with the view of renewing his former
+acquaintance, and recovering such a footing in the family as might give
+him the means of ascertaining the degree of his danger, and of
+circumventing the lady if he found it material.  This was agreed upon
+between the two friends as the only thing to be done; and Colonel
+Wallis was to assist in every way that he could.  He was to be
+introduced, and Mrs Wallis was to be introduced, and everybody was to
+be introduced.  Mr Elliot came back accordingly; and on application was
+forgiven, as you know, and re-admitted into the family; and there it
+was his constant object, and his only object (till your arrival added
+another motive), to watch Sir Walter and Mrs Clay.  He omitted no
+opportunity of being with them, threw himself in their way, called at
+all hours; but I need not be particular on this subject.  You can
+imagine what an artful man would do; and with this guide, perhaps, may
+recollect what you have seen him do."
+
+"Yes," said Anne, "you tell me nothing which does not accord with what
+I have known, or could imagine.  There is always something offensive in
+the details of cunning.  The manoeuvres of selfishness and duplicity
+must ever be revolting, but I have heard nothing which really surprises
+me.  I know those who would be shocked by such a representation of Mr
+Elliot, who would have difficulty in believing it; but I have never
+been satisfied.  I have always wanted some other motive for his conduct
+than appeared.  I should like to know his present opinion, as to the
+probability of the event he has been in dread of; whether he considers
+the danger to be lessening or not."
+
+"Lessening, I understand," replied Mrs Smith.  "He thinks Mrs Clay
+afraid of him, aware that he sees through her, and not daring to
+proceed as she might do in his absence.  But since he must be absent
+some time or other, I do not perceive how he can ever be secure while
+she holds her present influence.  Mrs Wallis has an amusing idea, as
+nurse tells me, that it is to be put into the marriage articles when
+you and Mr Elliot marry, that your father is not to marry Mrs Clay.  A
+scheme, worthy of Mrs Wallis's understanding, by all accounts; but my
+sensible nurse Rooke sees the absurdity of it.  'Why, to be sure,
+ma'am,' said she, 'it would not prevent his marrying anybody else.'
+And, indeed, to own the truth, I do not think nurse, in her heart, is a
+very strenuous opposer of Sir Walter's making a second match.  She must
+be allowed to be a favourer of matrimony, you know; and (since self
+will intrude) who can say that she may not have some flying visions of
+attending the next Lady Elliot, through Mrs Wallis's recommendation?"
+
+"I am very glad to know all this," said Anne, after a little
+thoughtfulness.  "It will be more painful to me in some respects to be
+in company with him, but I shall know better what to do.  My line of
+conduct will be more direct.  Mr Elliot is evidently a disingenuous,
+artificial, worldly man, who has never had any better principle to
+guide him than selfishness."
+
+But Mr Elliot was not done with.  Mrs Smith had been carried away from
+her first direction, and Anne had forgotten, in the interest of her own
+family concerns, how much had been originally implied against him; but
+her attention was now called to the explanation of those first hints,
+and she listened to a recital which, if it did not perfectly justify
+the unqualified bitterness of Mrs Smith, proved him to have been very
+unfeeling in his conduct towards her; very deficient both in justice
+and compassion.
+
+She learned that (the intimacy between them continuing unimpaired by Mr
+Elliot's marriage) they had been as before always together, and Mr
+Elliot had led his friend into expenses much beyond his fortune.  Mrs
+Smith did not want to take blame to herself, and was most tender of
+throwing any on her husband; but Anne could collect that their income
+had never been equal to their style of living, and that from the first
+there had been a great deal of general and joint extravagance.  From
+his wife's account of him she could discern Mr Smith to have been a man
+of warm feelings, easy temper, careless habits, and not strong
+understanding, much more amiable than his friend, and very unlike him,
+led by him, and probably despised by him.  Mr Elliot, raised by his
+marriage to great affluence, and disposed to every gratification of
+pleasure and vanity which could be commanded without involving himself,
+(for with all his self-indulgence he had become a prudent man), and
+beginning to be rich, just as his friend ought to have found himself to
+be poor, seemed to have had no concern at all for that friend's
+probable finances, but, on the contrary, had been prompting and
+encouraging expenses which could end only in ruin; and the Smiths
+accordingly had been ruined.
+
+The husband had died just in time to be spared the full knowledge of
+it.  They had previously known embarrassments enough to try the
+friendship of their friends, and to prove that Mr Elliot's had better
+not be tried; but it was not till his death that the wretched state of
+his affairs was fully known.  With a confidence in Mr Elliot's regard,
+more creditable to his feelings than his judgement, Mr Smith had
+appointed him the executor of his will; but Mr Elliot would not act,
+and the difficulties and distress which this refusal had heaped on her,
+in addition to the inevitable sufferings of her situation, had been
+such as could not be related without anguish of spirit, or listened to
+without corresponding indignation.
+
+Anne was shewn some letters of his on the occasion, answers to urgent
+applications from Mrs Smith, which all breathed the same stern
+resolution of not engaging in a fruitless trouble, and, under a cold
+civility, the same hard-hearted indifference to any of the evils it
+might bring on her.  It was a dreadful picture of ingratitude and
+inhumanity; and Anne felt, at some moments, that no flagrant open crime
+could have been worse.  She had a great deal to listen to; all the
+particulars of past sad scenes, all the minutiae of distress upon
+distress, which in former conversations had been merely hinted at, were
+dwelt on now with a natural indulgence.  Anne could perfectly
+comprehend the exquisite relief, and was only the more inclined to
+wonder at the composure of her friend's usual state of mind.
+
+There was one circumstance in the history of her grievances of
+particular irritation.  She had good reason to believe that some
+property of her husband in the West Indies, which had been for many
+years under a sort of sequestration for the payment of its own
+incumbrances, might be recoverable by proper measures; and this
+property, though not large, would be enough to make her comparatively
+rich.  But there was nobody to stir in it.  Mr Elliot would do nothing,
+and she could do nothing herself, equally disabled from personal
+exertion by her state of bodily weakness, and from employing others by
+her want of money.  She had no natural connexions to assist her even
+with their counsel, and she could not afford to purchase the assistance
+of the law.  This was a cruel aggravation of actually straitened means.
+To feel that she ought to be in better circumstances, that a little
+trouble in the right place might do it, and to fear that delay might be
+even weakening her claims, was hard to bear.
+
+It was on this point that she had hoped to engage Anne's good offices
+with Mr Elliot.  She had previously, in the anticipation of their
+marriage, been very apprehensive of losing her friend by it; but on
+being assured that he could have made no attempt of that nature, since
+he did not even know her to be in Bath, it immediately occurred, that
+something might be done in her favour by the influence of the woman he
+loved, and she had been hastily preparing to interest Anne's feelings,
+as far as the observances due to Mr Elliot's character would allow,
+when Anne's refutation of the supposed engagement changed the face of
+everything; and while it took from her the new-formed hope of
+succeeding in the object of her first anxiety, left her at least the
+comfort of telling the whole story her own way.
+
+After listening to this full description of Mr Elliot, Anne could not
+but express some surprise at Mrs Smith's having spoken of him so
+favourably in the beginning of their conversation.  "She had seemed to
+recommend and praise him!"
+
+"My dear," was Mrs Smith's reply, "there was nothing else to be done.
+I considered your marrying him as certain, though he might not yet have
+made the offer, and I could no more speak the truth of him, than if he
+had been your husband.  My heart bled for you, as I talked of
+happiness; and yet he is sensible, he is agreeable, and with such a
+woman as you, it was not absolutely hopeless.  He was very unkind to
+his first wife.  They were wretched together.  But she was too ignorant
+and giddy for respect, and he had never loved her.  I was willing to
+hope that you must fare better."
+
+Anne could just acknowledge within herself such a possibility of having
+been induced to marry him, as made her shudder at the idea of the
+misery which must have followed.  It was just possible that she might
+have been persuaded by Lady Russell!  And under such a supposition,
+which would have been most miserable, when time had disclosed all, too
+late?
+
+It was very desirable that Lady Russell should be no longer deceived;
+and one of the concluding arrangements of this important conference,
+which carried them through the greater part of the morning, was, that
+Anne had full liberty to communicate to her friend everything relative
+to Mrs Smith, in which his conduct was involved.
+
+
+
+Chapter 22
+
+
+Anne went home to think over all that she had heard.  In one point, her
+feelings were relieved by this knowledge of Mr Elliot.  There was no
+longer anything of tenderness due to him.  He stood as opposed to
+Captain Wentworth, in all his own unwelcome obtrusiveness; and the evil
+of his attentions last night, the irremediable mischief he might have
+done, was considered with sensations unqualified, unperplexed.  Pity
+for him was all over.  But this was the only point of relief.  In every
+other respect, in looking around her, or penetrating forward, she saw
+more to distrust and to apprehend.  She was concerned for the
+disappointment and pain Lady Russell would be feeling; for the
+mortifications which must be hanging over her father and sister, and
+had all the distress of foreseeing many evils, without knowing how to
+avert any one of them.  She was most thankful for her own knowledge of
+him.  She had never considered herself as entitled to reward for not
+slighting an old friend like Mrs Smith, but here was a reward indeed
+springing from it!  Mrs Smith had been able to tell her what no one
+else could have done.  Could the knowledge have been extended through
+her family?  But this was a vain idea.  She must talk to Lady Russell,
+tell her, consult with her, and having done her best, wait the event
+with as much composure as possible; and after all, her greatest want of
+composure would be in that quarter of the mind which could not be
+opened to Lady Russell; in that flow of anxieties and fears which must
+be all to herself.
+
+
+She found, on reaching home, that she had, as she intended, escaped
+seeing Mr Elliot; that he had called and paid them a long morning
+visit; but hardly had she congratulated herself, and felt safe, when
+she heard that he was coming again in the evening.
+
+"I had not the smallest intention of asking him," said Elizabeth, with
+affected carelessness, "but he gave so many hints; so Mrs Clay says, at
+least."
+
+"Indeed, I do say it.  I never saw anybody in my life spell harder for
+an invitation.  Poor man!  I was really in pain for him; for your
+hard-hearted sister, Miss Anne, seems bent on cruelty."
+
+"Oh!" cried Elizabeth, "I have been rather too much used to the game to
+be soon overcome by a gentleman's hints.  However, when I found how
+excessively he was regretting that he should miss my father this
+morning, I gave way immediately, for I would never really omit an
+opportunity of bringing him and Sir Walter together.  They appear to so
+much advantage in company with each other.  Each behaving so
+pleasantly.  Mr Elliot looking up with so much respect."
+
+"Quite delightful!" cried Mrs Clay, not daring, however, to turn her
+eyes towards Anne.  "Exactly like father and son!  Dear Miss Elliot,
+may I not say father and son?"
+
+"Oh! I lay no embargo on any body's words.  If you will have such
+ideas!  But, upon my word, I am scarcely sensible of his attentions
+being beyond those of other men."
+
+"My dear Miss Elliot!" exclaimed Mrs Clay, lifting her hands and eyes,
+and sinking all the rest of her astonishment in a convenient silence.
+
+"Well, my dear Penelope, you need not be so alarmed about him.  I did
+invite him, you know.  I sent him away with smiles.  When I found he
+was really going to his friends at Thornberry Park for the whole day
+to-morrow, I had compassion on him."
+
+Anne admired the good acting of the friend, in being able to shew such
+pleasure as she did, in the expectation and in the actual arrival of
+the very person whose presence must really be interfering with her
+prime object.  It was impossible but that Mrs Clay must hate the sight
+of Mr Elliot; and yet she could assume a most obliging, placid look,
+and appear quite satisfied with the curtailed license of devoting
+herself only half as much to Sir Walter as she would have done
+otherwise.
+
+To Anne herself it was most distressing to see Mr Elliot enter the
+room; and quite painful to have him approach and speak to her.  She had
+been used before to feel that he could not be always quite sincere, but
+now she saw insincerity in everything.  His attentive deference to her
+father, contrasted with his former language, was odious; and when she
+thought of his cruel conduct towards Mrs Smith, she could hardly bear
+the sight of his present smiles and mildness, or the sound of his
+artificial good sentiments.
+
+She meant to avoid any such alteration of manners as might provoke a
+remonstrance on his side.  It was a great object to her to escape all
+enquiry or eclat; but it was her intention to be as decidedly cool to
+him as might be compatible with their relationship; and to retrace, as
+quietly as she could, the few steps of unnecessary intimacy she had
+been gradually led along.  She was accordingly more guarded, and more
+cool, than she had been the night before.
+
+He wanted to animate her curiosity again as to how and where he could
+have heard her formerly praised; wanted very much to be gratified by
+more solicitation; but the charm was broken: he found that the heat and
+animation of a public room was necessary to kindle his modest cousin's
+vanity; he found, at least, that it was not to be done now, by any of
+those attempts which he could hazard among the too-commanding claims of
+the others.  He little surmised that it was a subject acting now
+exactly against his interest, bringing immediately to her thoughts all
+those parts of his conduct which were least excusable.
+
+She had some satisfaction in finding that he was really going out of
+Bath the next morning, going early, and that he would be gone the
+greater part of two days.  He was invited again to Camden Place the
+very evening of his return; but from Thursday to Saturday evening his
+absence was certain.  It was bad enough that a Mrs Clay should be
+always before her; but that a deeper hypocrite should be added to their
+party, seemed the destruction of everything like peace and comfort.  It
+was so humiliating to reflect on the constant deception practised on
+her father and Elizabeth; to consider the various sources of
+mortification preparing for them!  Mrs Clay's selfishness was not so
+complicate nor so revolting as his; and Anne would have compounded for
+the marriage at once, with all its evils, to be clear of Mr Elliot's
+subtleties in endeavouring to prevent it.
+
+On Friday morning she meant to go very early to Lady Russell, and
+accomplish the necessary communication; and she would have gone
+directly after breakfast, but that Mrs Clay was also going out on some
+obliging purpose of saving her sister trouble, which determined her to
+wait till she might be safe from such a companion.  She saw Mrs Clay
+fairly off, therefore, before she began to talk of spending the morning
+in Rivers Street.
+
+"Very well," said Elizabeth, "I have nothing to send but my love.  Oh!
+you may as well take back that tiresome book she would lend me, and
+pretend I have read it through.  I really cannot be plaguing myself for
+ever with all the new poems and states of the nation that come out.
+Lady Russell quite bores one with her new publications.  You need not
+tell her so, but I thought her dress hideous the other night.  I used
+to think she had some taste in dress, but I was ashamed of her at the
+concert.  Something so formal and _arrangé_ in her air!  and she sits so
+upright!  My best love, of course."
+
+"And mine," added Sir Walter.  "Kindest regards.  And you may say, that
+I mean to call upon her soon.  Make a civil message; but I shall only
+leave my card.  Morning visits are never fair by women at her time of
+life, who make themselves up so little.  If she would only wear rouge
+she would not be afraid of being seen; but last time I called, I
+observed the blinds were let down immediately."
+
+While her father spoke, there was a knock at the door.  Who could it
+be?  Anne, remembering the preconcerted visits, at all hours, of Mr
+Elliot, would have expected him, but for his known engagement seven
+miles off.  After the usual period of suspense, the usual sounds of
+approach were heard, and "Mr and Mrs Charles Musgrove" were ushered
+into the room.
+
+Surprise was the strongest emotion raised by their appearance; but Anne
+was really glad to see them; and the others were not so sorry but that
+they could put on a decent air of welcome; and as soon as it became
+clear that these, their nearest relations, were not arrived with any
+views of accommodation in that house, Sir Walter and Elizabeth were
+able to rise in cordiality, and do the honours of it very well.  They
+were come to Bath for a few days with Mrs Musgrove, and were at the
+White Hart.  So much was pretty soon understood; but till Sir Walter
+and Elizabeth were walking Mary into the other drawing-room, and
+regaling themselves with her admiration, Anne could not draw upon
+Charles's brain for a regular history of their coming, or an
+explanation of some smiling hints of particular business, which had
+been ostentatiously dropped by Mary, as well as of some apparent
+confusion as to whom their party consisted of.
+
+She then found that it consisted of Mrs Musgrove, Henrietta, and
+Captain Harville, beside their two selves.  He gave her a very plain,
+intelligible account of the whole; a narration in which she saw a great
+deal of most characteristic proceeding.  The scheme had received its
+first impulse by Captain Harville's wanting to come to Bath on
+business.  He had begun to talk of it a week ago; and by way of doing
+something, as shooting was over, Charles had proposed coming with him,
+and Mrs Harville had seemed to like the idea of it very much, as an
+advantage to her husband; but Mary could not bear to be left, and had
+made herself so unhappy about it, that for a day or two everything
+seemed to be in suspense, or at an end.  But then, it had been taken up
+by his father and mother.  His mother had some old friends in Bath whom
+she wanted to see; it was thought a good opportunity for Henrietta to
+come and buy wedding-clothes for herself and her sister; and, in short,
+it ended in being his mother's party, that everything might be
+comfortable and easy to Captain Harville; and he and Mary were included
+in it by way of general convenience.  They had arrived late the night
+before.  Mrs Harville, her children, and Captain Benwick, remained with
+Mr Musgrove and Louisa at Uppercross.
+
+Anne's only surprise was, that affairs should be in forwardness enough
+for Henrietta's wedding-clothes to be talked of.  She had imagined such
+difficulties of fortune to exist there as must prevent the marriage
+from being near at hand; but she learned from Charles that, very
+recently, (since Mary's last letter to herself), Charles Hayter had
+been applied to by a friend to hold a living for a youth who could not
+possibly claim it under many years; and that on the strength of his
+present income, with almost a certainty of something more permanent
+long before the term in question, the two families had consented to the
+young people's wishes, and that their marriage was likely to take place
+in a few months, quite as soon as Louisa's.  "And a very good living it
+was," Charles added:  "only five-and-twenty miles from Uppercross, and
+in a very fine country: fine part of Dorsetshire.  In the centre of
+some of the best preserves in the kingdom, surrounded by three great
+proprietors, each more careful and jealous than the other; and to two
+of the three at least, Charles Hayter might get a special
+recommendation.  Not that he will value it as he ought," he observed,
+"Charles is too cool about sporting. That's the worst of him."
+
+"I am extremely glad, indeed," cried Anne, "particularly glad that this
+should happen; and that of two sisters, who both deserve equally well,
+and who have always been such good friends, the pleasant prospect of
+one should not be dimming those of the other--that they should be so
+equal in their prosperity and comfort.  I hope your father and mother
+are quite happy with regard to both."
+
+"Oh! yes.  My father would be well pleased if the gentlemen were
+richer, but he has no other fault to find.  Money, you know, coming
+down with money--two daughters at once--it cannot be a very agreeable
+operation, and it streightens him as to many things.  However, I do not
+mean to say they have not a right to it.  It is very fit they should
+have daughters' shares; and I am sure he has always been a very kind,
+liberal father to me.  Mary does not above half like Henrietta's match.
+She never did, you know.  But she does not do him justice, nor think
+enough about Winthrop.  I cannot make her attend to the value of the
+property.  It is a very fair match, as times go; and I have liked
+Charles Hayter all my life, and I shall not leave off now."
+
+"Such excellent parents as Mr and Mrs Musgrove," exclaimed Anne,
+"should be happy in their children's marriages.  They do everything to
+confer happiness, I am sure.  What a blessing to young people to be in
+such hands!  Your father and mother seem so totally free from all those
+ambitious feelings which have led to so much misconduct and misery,
+both in young and old.  I hope you think Louisa perfectly recovered
+now?"
+
+He answered rather hesitatingly, "Yes, I believe I do; very much
+recovered; but she is altered; there is no running or jumping about, no
+laughing or dancing; it is quite different.  If one happens only to
+shut the door a little hard, she starts and wriggles like a young
+dab-chick in the water; and Benwick sits at her elbow, reading verses,
+or whispering to her, all day long."
+
+Anne could not help laughing.  "That cannot be much to your taste, I
+know," said she; "but I do believe him to be an excellent young man."
+
+"To be sure he is.  Nobody doubts it; and I hope you do not think I am
+so illiberal as to want every man to have the same objects and
+pleasures as myself.  I have a great value for Benwick; and when one
+can but get him to talk, he has plenty to say.  His reading has done
+him no harm, for he has fought as well as read.  He is a brave fellow.
+I got more acquainted with him last Monday than ever I did before.  We
+had a famous set-to at rat-hunting all the morning in my father's great
+barns; and he played his part so well that I have liked him the better
+ever since."
+
+Here they were interrupted by the absolute necessity of Charles's
+following the others to admire mirrors and china; but Anne had heard
+enough to understand the present state of Uppercross, and rejoice in
+its happiness; and though she sighed as she rejoiced, her sigh had none
+of the ill-will of envy in it.  She would certainly have risen to their
+blessings if she could, but she did not want to lessen theirs.
+
+The visit passed off altogether in high good humour.  Mary was in
+excellent spirits, enjoying the gaiety and the change, and so well
+satisfied with the journey in her mother-in-law's carriage with four
+horses, and with her own complete independence of Camden Place, that
+she was exactly in a temper to admire everything as she ought, and
+enter most readily into all the superiorities of the house, as they
+were detailed to her.  She had no demands on her father or sister, and
+her consequence was just enough increased by their handsome
+drawing-rooms.
+
+Elizabeth was, for a short time, suffering a good deal.  She felt that
+Mrs Musgrove and all her party ought to be asked to dine with them; but
+she could not bear to have the difference of style, the reduction of
+servants, which a dinner must betray, witnessed by those who had been
+always so inferior to the Elliots of Kellynch.  It was a struggle
+between propriety and vanity; but vanity got the better, and then
+Elizabeth was happy again.  These were her internal persuasions: "Old
+fashioned notions; country hospitality; we do not profess to give
+dinners; few people in Bath do; Lady Alicia never does; did not even
+ask her own sister's family, though they were here a month: and I dare
+say it would be very inconvenient to Mrs Musgrove; put her quite out of
+her way.  I am sure she would rather not come; she cannot feel easy
+with us.  I will ask them all for an evening; that will be much better;
+that will be a novelty and a treat.  They have not seen two such
+drawing rooms before.  They will be delighted to come to-morrow
+evening.  It shall be a regular party, small, but most elegant."  And
+this satisfied Elizabeth:  and when the invitation was given to the two
+present, and promised for the absent, Mary was as completely satisfied.
+She was particularly asked to meet Mr Elliot, and be introduced to Lady
+Dalrymple and Miss Carteret, who were fortunately already engaged to
+come; and she could not have received a more gratifying attention.
+Miss Elliot was to have the honour of calling on Mrs Musgrove in the
+course of the morning; and Anne walked off with Charles and Mary, to go
+and see her and Henrietta directly.
+
+Her plan of sitting with Lady Russell must give way for the present.
+They all three called in Rivers Street for a couple of minutes; but
+Anne convinced herself that a day's delay of the intended communication
+could be of no consequence, and hastened forward to the White Hart, to
+see again the friends and companions of the last autumn, with an
+eagerness of good-will which many associations contributed to form.
+
+They found Mrs Musgrove and her daughter within, and by themselves, and
+Anne had the kindest welcome from each.  Henrietta was exactly in that
+state of recently-improved views, of fresh-formed happiness, which made
+her full of regard and interest for everybody she had ever liked before
+at all; and Mrs Musgrove's real affection had been won by her
+usefulness when they were in distress.  It was a heartiness, and a
+warmth, and a sincerity which Anne delighted in the more, from the sad
+want of such blessings at home.  She was entreated to give them as much
+of her time as possible, invited for every day and all day long, or
+rather claimed as part of the family; and, in return, she naturally
+fell into all her wonted ways of attention and assistance, and on
+Charles's leaving them together, was listening to Mrs Musgrove's
+history of Louisa, and to Henrietta's of herself, giving opinions on
+business, and recommendations to shops; with intervals of every help
+which Mary required, from altering her ribbon to settling her accounts;
+from finding her keys, and assorting her trinkets, to trying to
+convince her that she was not ill-used by anybody; which Mary, well
+amused as she generally was, in her station at a window overlooking the
+entrance to the Pump Room, could not but have her moments of imagining.
+
+A morning of thorough confusion was to be expected.  A large party in
+an hotel ensured a quick-changing, unsettled scene.  One five minutes
+brought a note, the next a parcel; and Anne had not been there half an
+hour, when their dining-room, spacious as it was, seemed more than half
+filled:  a party of steady old friends were seated around Mrs Musgrove,
+and Charles came back with Captains Harville and Wentworth.  The
+appearance of the latter could not be more than the surprise of the
+moment.  It was impossible for her to have forgotten to feel that this
+arrival of their common friends must be soon bringing them together
+again.  Their last meeting had been most important in opening his
+feelings; she had derived from it a delightful conviction; but she
+feared from his looks, that the same unfortunate persuasion, which had
+hastened him away from the Concert Room, still governed.  He did not
+seem to want to be near enough for conversation.
+
+She tried to be calm, and leave things to take their course, and tried
+to dwell much on this argument of rational dependence:--"Surely, if
+there be constant attachment on each side, our hearts must understand
+each other ere long.  We are not boy and girl, to be captiously
+irritable, misled by every moment's inadvertence, and wantonly playing
+with our own happiness."  And yet, a few minutes afterwards, she felt
+as if their being in company with each other, under their present
+circumstances, could only be exposing them to inadvertencies and
+misconstructions of the most mischievous kind.
+
+"Anne," cried Mary, still at her window, "there is Mrs Clay, I am sure,
+standing under the colonnade, and a gentleman with her.  I saw them
+turn the corner from Bath Street just now.  They seemed deep in talk.
+Who is it?  Come, and tell me.  Good heavens! I recollect.  It is Mr
+Elliot himself."
+
+"No," cried Anne, quickly, "it cannot be Mr Elliot, I assure you.  He
+was to leave Bath at nine this morning, and does not come back till
+to-morrow."
+
+As she spoke, she felt that Captain Wentworth was looking at her, the
+consciousness of which vexed and embarrassed her, and made her regret
+that she had said so much, simple as it was.
+
+Mary, resenting that she should be supposed not to know her own cousin,
+began talking very warmly about the family features, and protesting
+still more positively that it was Mr Elliot, calling again upon Anne to
+come and look for herself, but Anne did not mean to stir, and tried to
+be cool and unconcerned.  Her distress returned, however, on perceiving
+smiles and intelligent glances pass between two or three of the lady
+visitors, as if they believed themselves quite in the secret.  It was
+evident that the report concerning her had spread, and a short pause
+succeeded, which seemed to ensure that it would now spread farther.
+
+"Do come, Anne," cried Mary, "come and look yourself.  You will be too
+late if you do not make haste.  They are parting; they are shaking
+hands.  He is turning away.  Not know Mr Elliot, indeed!  You seem to
+have forgot all about Lyme."
+
+To pacify Mary, and perhaps screen her own embarrassment, Anne did move
+quietly to the window.  She was just in time to ascertain that it
+really was Mr Elliot, which she had never believed, before he
+disappeared on one side, as Mrs Clay walked quickly off on the other;
+and checking the surprise which she could not but feel at such an
+appearance of friendly conference between two persons of totally
+opposite interest, she calmly said, "Yes, it is Mr Elliot, certainly.
+He has changed his hour of going, I suppose, that is all, or I may be
+mistaken, I might not attend;" and walked back to her chair,
+recomposed, and with the comfortable hope of having acquitted herself
+well.
+
+The visitors took their leave; and Charles, having civilly seen them
+off, and then made a face at them, and abused them for coming, began
+with--
+
+"Well, mother, I have done something for you that you will like.  I
+have been to the theatre, and secured a box for to-morrow night.  A'n't
+I a good boy?  I know you love a play; and there is room for us all.
+It holds nine.  I have engaged Captain Wentworth.  Anne will not be
+sorry to join us, I am sure.  We all like a play.  Have not I done
+well, mother?"
+
+Mrs Musgrove was good humouredly beginning to express her perfect
+readiness for the play, if Henrietta and all the others liked it, when
+Mary eagerly interrupted her by exclaiming--
+
+"Good heavens, Charles! how can you think of such a thing?  Take a box
+for to-morrow night!  Have you forgot that we are engaged to Camden
+Place to-morrow night? and that we were most particularly asked to meet
+Lady Dalrymple and her daughter, and Mr Elliot, and all the principal
+family connexions, on purpose to be introduced to them?  How can you be
+so forgetful?"
+
+"Phoo! phoo!" replied Charles, "what's an evening party?  Never worth
+remembering.  Your father might have asked us to dinner, I think, if he
+had wanted to see us.  You may do as you like, but I shall go to the
+play."
+
+"Oh! Charles, I declare it will be too abominable if you do, when you
+promised to go."
+
+"No, I did not promise.  I only smirked and bowed, and said the word
+'happy.'  There was no promise."
+
+"But you must go, Charles.  It would be unpardonable to fail.  We were
+asked on purpose to be introduced.  There was always such a great
+connexion between the Dalrymples and ourselves.  Nothing ever happened
+on either side that was not announced immediately.  We are quite near
+relations, you know; and Mr Elliot too, whom you ought so particularly
+to be acquainted with!  Every attention is due to Mr Elliot.  Consider,
+my father's heir:  the future representative of the family."
+
+"Don't talk to me about heirs and representatives," cried Charles.  "I
+am not one of those who neglect the reigning power to bow to the rising
+sun.  If I would not go for the sake of your father, I should think it
+scandalous to go for the sake of his heir.  What is Mr Elliot to me?"
+The careless expression was life to Anne, who saw that Captain
+Wentworth was all attention, looking and listening with his whole soul;
+and that the last words brought his enquiring eyes from Charles to
+herself.
+
+Charles and Mary still talked on in the same style; he, half serious
+and half jesting, maintaining the scheme for the play, and she,
+invariably serious, most warmly opposing it, and not omitting to make
+it known that, however determined to go to Camden Place herself, she
+should not think herself very well used, if they went to the play
+without her.  Mrs Musgrove interposed.
+
+"We had better put it off.  Charles, you had much better go back and
+change the box for Tuesday.  It would be a pity to be divided, and we
+should be losing Miss Anne, too, if there is a party at her father's;
+and I am sure neither Henrietta nor I should care at all for the play,
+if Miss Anne could not be with us."
+
+Anne felt truly obliged to her for such kindness; and quite as much so
+for the opportunity it gave her of decidedly saying--
+
+"If it depended only on my inclination, ma'am, the party at home
+(excepting on Mary's account) would not be the smallest impediment.  I
+have no pleasure in the sort of meeting, and should be too happy to
+change it for a play, and with you.  But, it had better not be
+attempted, perhaps."  She had spoken it; but she trembled when it was
+done, conscious that her words were listened to, and daring not even to
+try to observe their effect.
+
+It was soon generally agreed that Tuesday should be the day; Charles
+only reserving the advantage of still teasing his wife, by persisting
+that he would go to the play to-morrow if nobody else would.
+
+Captain Wentworth left his seat, and walked to the fire-place; probably
+for the sake of walking away from it soon afterwards, and taking a
+station, with less bare-faced design, by Anne.
+
+"You have not been long enough in Bath," said he, "to enjoy the evening
+parties of the place."
+
+"Oh! no.  The usual character of them has nothing for me.  I am no
+card-player."
+
+"You were not formerly, I know.  You did not use to like cards; but
+time makes many changes."
+
+"I am not yet so much changed," cried Anne, and stopped, fearing she
+hardly knew what misconstruction.  After waiting a few moments he said,
+and as if it were the result of immediate feeling, "It is a period,
+indeed!  Eight years and a half is a period."
+
+Whether he would have proceeded farther was left to Anne's imagination
+to ponder over in a calmer hour; for while still hearing the sounds he
+had uttered, she was startled to other subjects by Henrietta, eager to
+make use of the present leisure for getting out, and calling on her
+companions to lose no time, lest somebody else should come in.
+
+They were obliged to move.  Anne talked of being perfectly ready, and
+tried to look it; but she felt that could Henrietta have known the
+regret and reluctance of her heart in quitting that chair, in preparing
+to quit the room, she would have found, in all her own sensations for
+her cousin, in the very security of his affection, wherewith to pity
+her.
+
+Their preparations, however, were stopped short.  Alarming sounds were
+heard; other visitors approached, and the door was thrown open for Sir
+Walter and Miss Elliot, whose entrance seemed to give a general chill.
+Anne felt an instant oppression, and wherever she looked saw symptoms
+of the same.  The comfort, the freedom, the gaiety of the room was
+over, hushed into cold composure, determined silence, or insipid talk,
+to meet the heartless elegance of her father and sister.  How
+mortifying to feel that it was so!
+
+Her jealous eye was satisfied in one particular.  Captain Wentworth was
+acknowledged again by each, by Elizabeth more graciously than before.
+She even addressed him once, and looked at him more than once.
+Elizabeth was, in fact, revolving a great measure.  The sequel
+explained it.  After the waste of a few minutes in saying the proper
+nothings, she began to give the invitation which was to comprise all
+the remaining dues of the Musgroves.  "To-morrow evening, to meet a few
+friends:  no formal party." It was all said very gracefully, and the
+cards with which she had provided herself, the "Miss Elliot at home,"
+were laid on the table, with a courteous, comprehensive smile to all,
+and one smile and one card more decidedly for Captain Wentworth.  The
+truth was, that Elizabeth had been long enough in Bath to understand
+the importance of a man of such an air and appearance as his.  The past
+was nothing.  The present was that Captain Wentworth would move about
+well in her drawing-room.  The card was pointedly given, and Sir Walter
+and Elizabeth arose and disappeared.
+
+The interruption had been short, though severe, and ease and animation
+returned to most of those they left as the door shut them out, but not
+to Anne.  She could think only of the invitation she had with such
+astonishment witnessed, and of the manner in which it had been
+received; a manner of doubtful meaning, of surprise rather than
+gratification, of polite acknowledgement rather than acceptance.  She
+knew him; she saw disdain in his eye, and could not venture to believe
+that he had determined to accept such an offering, as an atonement for
+all the insolence of the past.  Her spirits sank.  He held the card in
+his hand after they were gone, as if deeply considering it.
+
+"Only think of Elizabeth's including everybody!" whispered Mary very
+audibly.  "I do not wonder Captain Wentworth is delighted!  You see he
+cannot put the card out of his hand."
+
+Anne caught his eye, saw his cheeks glow, and his mouth form itself
+into a momentary expression of contempt, and turned away, that she
+might neither see nor hear more to vex her.
+
+The party separated.  The gentlemen had their own pursuits, the ladies
+proceeded on their own business, and they met no more while Anne
+belonged to them.  She was earnestly begged to return and dine, and
+give them all the rest of the day, but her spirits had been so long
+exerted that at present she felt unequal to more, and fit only for
+home, where she might be sure of being as silent as she chose.
+
+Promising to be with them the whole of the following morning,
+therefore, she closed the fatigues of the present by a toilsome walk to
+Camden Place, there to spend the evening chiefly in listening to the
+busy arrangements of Elizabeth and Mrs Clay for the morrow's party, the
+frequent enumeration of the persons invited, and the continually
+improving detail of all the embellishments which were to make it the
+most completely elegant of its kind in Bath, while harassing herself
+with the never-ending question, of whether Captain Wentworth would come
+or not?  They were reckoning him as certain, but with her it was a
+gnawing solicitude never appeased for five minutes together.  She
+generally thought he would come, because she generally thought he
+ought; but it was a case which she could not so shape into any positive
+act of duty or discretion, as inevitably to defy the suggestions of
+very opposite feelings.
+
+She only roused herself from the broodings of this restless agitation,
+to let Mrs Clay know that she had been seen with Mr Elliot three hours
+after his being supposed to be out of Bath, for having watched in vain
+for some intimation of the interview from the lady herself, she
+determined to mention it, and it seemed to her there was guilt in Mrs
+Clay's face as she listened.  It was transient: cleared away in an
+instant; but Anne could imagine she read there the consciousness of
+having, by some complication of mutual trick, or some overbearing
+authority of his, been obliged to attend (perhaps for half an hour) to
+his lectures and restrictions on her designs on Sir Walter.  She
+exclaimed, however, with a very tolerable imitation of nature:--
+
+"Oh! dear! very true.  Only think, Miss Elliot, to my great surprise I
+met with Mr Elliot in Bath Street.  I was never more astonished.  He
+turned back and walked with me to the Pump Yard.  He had been prevented
+setting off for Thornberry, but I really forget by what; for I was in a
+hurry, and could not much attend, and I can only answer for his being
+determined not to be delayed in his return.  He wanted to know how
+early he might be admitted to-morrow.  He was full of 'to-morrow,' and
+it is very evident that I have been full of it too, ever since I
+entered the house, and learnt the extension of your plan and all that
+had happened, or my seeing him could never have gone so entirely out of
+my head."
+
+
+
+Chapter 23
+
+
+One day only had passed since Anne's conversation with Mrs Smith; but a
+keener interest had succeeded, and she was now so little touched by Mr
+Elliot's conduct, except by its effects in one quarter, that it became
+a matter of course the next morning, still to defer her explanatory
+visit in Rivers Street.  She had promised to be with the Musgroves from
+breakfast to dinner.  Her faith was plighted, and Mr Elliot's
+character, like the Sultaness Scheherazade's head, must live another
+day.
+
+She could not keep her appointment punctually, however; the weather was
+unfavourable, and she had grieved over the rain on her friends'
+account, and felt it very much on her own, before she was able to
+attempt the walk.  When she reached the White Hart, and made her way to
+the proper apartment, she found herself neither arriving quite in time,
+nor the first to arrive.  The party before her were, Mrs Musgrove,
+talking to Mrs Croft, and Captain Harville to Captain Wentworth; and
+she immediately heard that Mary and Henrietta, too impatient to wait,
+had gone out the moment it had cleared, but would be back again soon,
+and that the strictest injunctions had been left with Mrs Musgrove to
+keep her there till they returned.  She had only to submit, sit down,
+be outwardly composed, and feel herself plunged at once in all the
+agitations which she had merely laid her account of tasting a little
+before the morning closed.  There was no delay, no waste of time.  She
+was deep in the happiness of such misery, or the misery of such
+happiness, instantly.  Two minutes after her entering the room, Captain
+Wentworth said--
+
+"We will write the letter we were talking of, Harville, now, if you
+will give me materials."
+
+Materials were at hand, on a separate table; he went to it, and nearly
+turning his back to them all, was engrossed by writing.
+
+Mrs Musgrove was giving Mrs Croft the history of her eldest daughter's
+engagement, and just in that inconvenient tone of voice which was
+perfectly audible while it pretended to be a whisper.  Anne felt that
+she did not belong to the conversation, and yet, as Captain Harville
+seemed thoughtful and not disposed to talk, she could not avoid hearing
+many undesirable particulars; such as, "how Mr Musgrove and my brother
+Hayter had met again and again to talk it over; what my brother Hayter
+had said one day, and what Mr Musgrove had proposed the next, and what
+had occurred to my sister Hayter, and what the young people had wished,
+and what I said at first I never could consent to, but was afterwards
+persuaded to think might do very well," and a great deal in the same
+style of open-hearted communication:  minutiae which, even with every
+advantage of taste and delicacy, which good Mrs Musgrove could not
+give, could be properly interesting only to the principals.  Mrs Croft
+was attending with great good-humour, and whenever she spoke at all, it
+was very sensibly.  Anne hoped the gentlemen might each be too much
+self-occupied to hear.
+
+"And so, ma'am, all these thing considered," said Mrs Musgrove, in her
+powerful whisper, "though we could have wished it different, yet,
+altogether, we did not think it fair to stand out any longer, for
+Charles Hayter was quite wild about it, and Henrietta was pretty near
+as bad; and so we thought they had better marry at once, and make the
+best of it, as many others have done before them.  At any rate, said I,
+it will be better than a long engagement."
+
+"That is precisely what I was going to observe," cried Mrs Croft.  "I
+would rather have young people settle on a small income at once, and
+have to struggle with a few difficulties together, than be involved in
+a long engagement.  I always think that no mutual--"
+
+"Oh! dear Mrs Croft," cried Mrs Musgrove, unable to let her finish her
+speech, "there is nothing I so abominate for young people as a long
+engagement.  It is what I always protested against for my children.  It
+is all very well, I used to say, for young people to be engaged, if
+there is a certainty of their being able to marry in six months, or
+even in twelve; but a long engagement--"
+
+"Yes, dear ma'am," said Mrs Croft, "or an uncertain engagement, an
+engagement which may be long.  To begin without knowing that at such a
+time there will be the means of marrying, I hold to be very unsafe and
+unwise, and what I think all parents should prevent as far as they can."
+
+Anne found an unexpected interest here.  She felt its application to
+herself, felt it in a nervous thrill all over her; and at the same
+moment that her eyes instinctively glanced towards the distant table,
+Captain Wentworth's pen ceased to move, his head was raised, pausing,
+listening, and he turned round the next instant to give a look, one
+quick, conscious look at her.
+
+The two ladies continued to talk, to re-urge the same admitted truths,
+and enforce them with such examples of the ill effect of a contrary
+practice as had fallen within their observation, but Anne heard nothing
+distinctly; it was only a buzz of words in her ear, her mind was in
+confusion.
+
+Captain Harville, who had in truth been hearing none of it, now left
+his seat, and moved to a window, and Anne seeming to watch him, though
+it was from thorough absence of mind, became gradually sensible that he
+was inviting her to join him where he stood.  He looked at her with a
+smile, and a little motion of the head, which expressed, "Come to me, I
+have something to say;" and the unaffected, easy kindness of manner
+which denoted the feelings of an older acquaintance than he really was,
+strongly enforced the invitation.  She roused herself and went to him.
+The window at which he stood was at the other end of the room from
+where the two ladies were sitting, and though nearer to Captain
+Wentworth's table, not very near.  As she joined him, Captain
+Harville's countenance re-assumed the serious, thoughtful expression
+which seemed its natural character.
+
+"Look here," said he, unfolding a parcel in his hand, and displaying a
+small miniature painting, "do you know who that is?"
+
+"Certainly:  Captain Benwick."
+
+"Yes, and you may guess who it is for.  But," (in a deep tone,) "it was
+not done for her.  Miss Elliot, do you remember our walking together at
+Lyme, and grieving for him?  I little thought then--but no matter.
+This was drawn at the Cape.  He met with a clever young German artist
+at the Cape, and in compliance with a promise to my poor sister, sat to
+him, and was bringing it home for her; and I have now the charge of
+getting it properly set for another!  It was a commission to me!  But
+who else was there to employ?  I hope I can allow for him.  I am not
+sorry, indeed, to make it over to another.  He undertakes it;" (looking
+towards Captain Wentworth,) "he is writing about it now."  And with a
+quivering lip he wound up the whole by adding, "Poor Fanny! she would
+not have forgotten him so soon!"
+
+"No," replied Anne, in a low, feeling voice. "That I can easily
+believe."
+
+"It was not in her nature.  She doted on him."
+
+"It would not be the nature of any woman who truly loved."
+
+Captain Harville smiled, as much as to say, "Do you claim that for your
+sex?" and she answered the question, smiling also, "Yes.  We certainly
+do not forget you as soon as you forget us.  It is, perhaps, our fate
+rather than our merit.  We cannot help ourselves.  We live at home,
+quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us.  You are forced on
+exertion.  You have always a profession, pursuits, business of some
+sort or other, to take you back into the world immediately, and
+continual occupation and change soon weaken impressions."
+
+"Granting your assertion that the world does all this so soon for men
+(which, however, I do not think I shall grant), it does not apply to
+Benwick.  He has not been forced upon any exertion.  The peace turned
+him on shore at the very moment, and he has been living with us, in our
+little family circle, ever since."
+
+"True," said Anne, "very true; I did not recollect; but what shall we
+say now, Captain Harville?  If the change be not from outward
+circumstances, it must be from within; it must be nature, man's nature,
+which has done the business for Captain Benwick."
+
+"No, no, it is not man's nature.  I will not allow it to be more man's
+nature than woman's to be inconstant and forget those they do love, or
+have loved.  I believe the reverse.  I believe in a true analogy
+between our bodily frames and our mental; and that as our bodies are
+the strongest, so are our feelings; capable of bearing most rough
+usage, and riding out the heaviest weather."
+
+"Your feelings may be the strongest," replied Anne, "but the same
+spirit of analogy will authorise me to assert that ours are the most
+tender.  Man is more robust than woman, but he is not longer lived;
+which exactly explains my view of the nature of their attachments.
+Nay, it would be too hard upon you, if it were otherwise.  You have
+difficulties, and privations, and dangers enough to struggle with.  You
+are always labouring and toiling, exposed to every risk and hardship.
+Your home, country, friends, all quitted.  Neither time, nor health,
+nor life, to be called your own.  It would be hard, indeed" (with a
+faltering voice), "if woman's feelings were to be added to all this."
+
+"We shall never agree upon this question," Captain Harville was
+beginning to say, when a slight noise called their attention to Captain
+Wentworth's hitherto perfectly quiet division of the room.  It was
+nothing more than that his pen had fallen down; but Anne was startled
+at finding him nearer than she had supposed, and half inclined to
+suspect that the pen had only fallen because he had been occupied by
+them, striving to catch sounds, which yet she did not think he could
+have caught.
+
+"Have you finished your letter?" said Captain Harville.
+
+"Not quite, a few lines more.  I shall have done in five minutes."
+
+"There is no hurry on my side.  I am only ready whenever you are.  I am
+in very good anchorage here," (smiling at Anne,) "well supplied, and
+want for nothing.  No hurry for a signal at all.  Well, Miss Elliot,"
+(lowering his voice,) "as I was saying we shall never agree, I suppose,
+upon this point.  No man and woman, would, probably.  But let me
+observe that all histories are against you--all stories, prose and
+verse.  If I had such a memory as Benwick, I could bring you fifty
+quotations in a moment on my side the argument, and I do not think I
+ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon
+woman's inconstancy.  Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's
+fickleness.  But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men."
+
+"Perhaps I shall.  Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in
+books.  Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story.
+Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been
+in their hands.  I will not allow books to prove anything."
+
+"But how shall we prove anything?"
+
+"We never shall.  We never can expect to prove any thing upon such a
+point.  It is a difference of opinion which does not admit of proof.
+We each begin, probably, with a little bias towards our own sex; and
+upon that bias build every circumstance in favour of it which has
+occurred within our own circle; many of which circumstances (perhaps
+those very cases which strike us the most) may be precisely such as
+cannot be brought forward without betraying a confidence, or in some
+respect saying what should not be said."
+
+"Ah!" cried Captain Harville, in a tone of strong feeling, "if I could
+but make you comprehend what a man suffers when he takes a last look at
+his wife and children, and watches the boat that he has sent them off
+in, as long as it is in sight, and then turns away and says, 'God knows
+whether we ever meet again!' And then, if I could convey to you the
+glow of his soul when he does see them again; when, coming back after a
+twelvemonth's absence, perhaps, and obliged to put into another port,
+he calculates how soon it be possible to get them there, pretending to
+deceive himself, and saying, 'They cannot be here till such a day,' but
+all the while hoping for them twelve hours sooner, and seeing them
+arrive at last, as if Heaven had given them wings, by many hours sooner
+still!  If I could explain to you all this, and all that a man can bear
+and do, and glories to do, for the sake of these treasures of his
+existence!  I speak, you know, only of such men as have hearts!"
+pressing his own with emotion.
+
+"Oh!" cried Anne eagerly, "I hope I do justice to all that is felt by
+you, and by those who resemble you.  God forbid that I should
+undervalue the warm and faithful feelings of any of my
+fellow-creatures!  I should deserve utter contempt if I dared to
+suppose that true attachment and constancy were known only by woman.
+No, I believe you capable of everything great and good in your married
+lives.  I believe you equal to every important exertion, and to every
+domestic forbearance, so long as--if I may be allowed the
+expression--so long as you have an object.  I mean while the woman you
+love lives, and lives for you.  All the privilege I claim for my own
+sex (it is not a very enviable one; you need not covet it), is that of
+loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone."
+
+She could not immediately have uttered another sentence; her heart was
+too full, her breath too much oppressed.
+
+"You are a good soul," cried Captain Harville, putting his hand on her
+arm, quite affectionately.  "There is no quarrelling with you.  And
+when I think of Benwick, my tongue is tied."
+
+Their attention was called towards the others.  Mrs Croft was taking
+leave.
+
+"Here, Frederick, you and I part company, I believe," said she.  "I am
+going home, and you have an engagement with your friend.  To-night we
+may have the pleasure of all meeting again at your party," (turning to
+Anne.)  "We had your sister's card yesterday, and I understood
+Frederick had a card too, though I did not see it; and you are
+disengaged, Frederick, are you not, as well as ourselves?"
+
+Captain Wentworth was folding up a letter in great haste, and either
+could not or would not answer fully.
+
+"Yes," said he, "very true; here we separate, but Harville and I shall
+soon be after you; that is, Harville, if you are ready, I am in half a
+minute.  I know you will not be sorry to be off.  I shall be at your
+service in half a minute."
+
+Mrs Croft left them, and Captain Wentworth, having sealed his letter
+with great rapidity, was indeed ready, and had even a hurried, agitated
+air, which shewed impatience to be gone.  Anne knew not how to
+understand it.  She had the kindest "Good morning, God bless you!" from
+Captain Harville, but from him not a word, nor a look!  He had passed
+out of the room without a look!
+
+She had only time, however, to move closer to the table where he had
+been writing, when footsteps were heard returning; the door opened, it
+was himself.  He begged their pardon, but he had forgotten his gloves,
+and instantly crossing the room to the writing table, he drew out a
+letter from under the scattered paper, placed it before Anne with eyes
+of glowing entreaty fixed on her for a time, and hastily collecting his
+gloves, was again out of the room, almost before Mrs Musgrove was aware
+of his being in it: the work of an instant!
+
+The revolution which one instant had made in Anne, was almost beyond
+expression.  The letter, with a direction hardly legible, to "Miss A.
+E.--," was evidently the one which he had been folding so hastily.
+While supposed to be writing only to Captain Benwick, he had been also
+addressing her!  On the contents of that letter depended all which this
+world could do for her.  Anything was possible, anything might be
+defied rather than suspense.  Mrs Musgrove had little arrangements of
+her own at her own table; to their protection she must trust, and
+sinking into the chair which he had occupied, succeeding to the very
+spot where he had leaned and written, her eyes devoured the following
+words:
+
+
+"I can listen no longer in silence.  I must speak to you by such means
+as are within my reach.  You pierce my soul.  I am half agony, half
+hope.  Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are
+gone for ever.  I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your
+own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago.  Dare
+not say that man forgets sooner than  woman, that his love has an
+earlier death.  I have loved none but you.  Unjust I may have been,
+weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant.  You alone have
+brought me to Bath.  For you alone, I think and plan.  Have you not
+seen this?  Can you fail to have understood my wishes?  I had not
+waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think
+you must have penetrated mine.  I can hardly write.  I am every instant
+hearing something which overpowers me.  You sink your voice, but I can
+distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others.
+Too good, too excellent creature!  You do us justice, indeed.  You do
+believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men.  Believe
+it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in F. W.
+
+"I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow
+your party, as soon as possible.  A word, a look, will be enough to
+decide whether I enter your father's house this evening or never."
+
+
+Such a letter was not to be soon recovered from.  Half an hour's
+solitude and reflection might have tranquillized her; but the ten
+minutes only which now passed before she was interrupted, with all the
+restraints of her situation, could do nothing towards tranquillity.
+Every moment rather brought fresh agitation.  It was overpowering
+happiness.  And before she was beyond the first stage of full
+sensation, Charles, Mary, and Henrietta all came in.
+
+The absolute necessity of seeming like herself produced then an
+immediate struggle; but after a while she could do no more.  She began
+not to understand a word they said, and was obliged to plead
+indisposition and excuse herself.  They could then see that she looked
+very ill, were shocked and concerned, and would not stir without her
+for the world.  This was dreadful.  Would they only have gone away, and
+left her in the quiet possession of that room it would have been her
+cure; but to have them all standing or waiting around her was
+distracting, and in desperation, she said she would go home.
+
+"By all means, my dear," cried Mrs Musgrove, "go home directly, and
+take care of yourself, that you may be fit for the evening.  I wish
+Sarah was here to doctor you, but I am no doctor myself.  Charles, ring
+and order a chair.  She must not walk."
+
+But the chair would never do.  Worse than all!  To lose the possibility
+of speaking two words to Captain Wentworth in the course of her quiet,
+solitary progress up the town (and she felt almost certain of meeting
+him) could not be borne.  The chair was earnestly protested against,
+and Mrs Musgrove, who thought only of one sort of illness, having
+assured herself with some anxiety, that there had been no fall in the
+case; that Anne had not at any time lately slipped down, and got a blow
+on her head; that she was perfectly convinced of having had no fall;
+could part with her cheerfully, and depend on finding her better at
+night.
+
+Anxious to omit no possible precaution, Anne struggled, and said--
+
+"I am afraid, ma'am, that it is not perfectly understood.  Pray be so
+good as to mention to the other gentlemen that we hope to see your
+whole party this evening.  I am afraid there had been some mistake; and
+I wish you particularly to assure Captain Harville and Captain
+Wentworth, that we hope to see them both."
+
+"Oh! my dear, it is quite understood, I give you my word.  Captain
+Harville has no thought but of going."
+
+"Do you think so?  But I am afraid; and I should be so very sorry.
+Will you promise me to mention it, when you see them again?  You will
+see them both this morning, I dare say.  Do promise me."
+
+"To be sure I will, if you wish it.  Charles, if you see Captain
+Harville anywhere, remember to give Miss Anne's message.  But indeed,
+my dear, you need not be uneasy.  Captain Harville holds himself quite
+engaged, I'll answer for it; and Captain Wentworth the same, I dare
+say."
+
+Anne could do no more; but her heart prophesied some mischance to damp
+the perfection of her felicity.  It could not be very lasting, however.
+Even if he did not come to Camden Place himself, it would be in her
+power to send an intelligible sentence by Captain Harville.  Another
+momentary vexation occurred.  Charles, in his real concern and good
+nature, would go home with her; there was no preventing him.  This was
+almost cruel.  But she could not be long ungrateful; he was sacrificing
+an engagement at a gunsmith's, to be of use to her; and she set off
+with him, with no feeling but gratitude apparent.
+
+They were on Union Street, when a quicker step behind, a something of
+familiar sound, gave her two moments' preparation for the sight of
+Captain Wentworth.  He joined them; but, as if irresolute whether to
+join or to pass on, said nothing, only looked.  Anne could command
+herself enough to receive that look, and not repulsively.  The cheeks
+which had been pale now glowed, and the movements which had hesitated
+were decided.  He walked by her side.  Presently, struck by a sudden
+thought, Charles said--
+
+"Captain Wentworth, which way are you going?  Only to Gay Street, or
+farther up the town?"
+
+"I hardly know," replied Captain Wentworth, surprised.
+
+"Are you going as high as Belmont?  Are you going near Camden Place?
+Because, if you are, I shall have no scruple in asking you to take my
+place, and give Anne your arm to her father's door.  She is rather done
+for this morning, and must not go so far without help, and I ought to
+be at that fellow's in the Market Place.  He promised me the sight of a
+capital gun he is just going to send off; said he would keep it
+unpacked to the last possible moment, that I might see it; and if I do
+not turn back now, I have no chance.  By his description, a good deal
+like the second size double-barrel of mine, which you shot with one day
+round Winthrop."
+
+There could not be an objection.  There could be only the most proper
+alacrity, a most obliging compliance for public view; and smiles reined
+in and spirits dancing in private rapture.  In half a minute Charles
+was at the bottom of Union Street again, and the other two proceeding
+together:  and soon words enough had passed between them to decide
+their direction towards the comparatively quiet and retired gravel
+walk, where the power of conversation would make the present hour a
+blessing indeed, and prepare it for all the immortality which the
+happiest recollections of their own future lives could bestow.  There
+they exchanged again those feelings and those promises which had once
+before seemed to secure everything, but which had been followed by so
+many, many years of division and estrangement.  There they returned
+again into the past, more exquisitely happy, perhaps, in their
+re-union, than when it had been first projected; more tender, more
+tried, more fixed in a knowledge of each other's character, truth, and
+attachment; more equal to act, more justified in acting.  And there, as
+they slowly paced the gradual ascent, heedless of every group around
+them, seeing neither sauntering politicians, bustling housekeepers,
+flirting girls, nor nursery-maids and children, they could indulge in
+those retrospections and acknowledgements, and especially in those
+explanations of what had directly preceded the present moment, which
+were so poignant and so ceaseless in interest.  All the little
+variations of the last week were gone through; and of yesterday and
+today there could scarcely be an end.
+
+She had not mistaken him.  Jealousy of Mr Elliot had been the retarding
+weight, the doubt, the torment.  That had begun to operate in the very
+hour of first meeting her in Bath; that had returned, after a short
+suspension, to ruin the concert; and that had influenced him in
+everything he had said and done, or omitted to say and do, in the last
+four-and-twenty hours.  It had been gradually yielding to the better
+hopes which her looks, or words, or actions occasionally encouraged; it
+had been vanquished at last by those sentiments and those tones which
+had reached him while she talked with Captain Harville; and under the
+irresistible governance of which he had seized a sheet of paper, and
+poured out his feelings.
+
+Of what he had then written, nothing was to be retracted or qualified.
+He persisted in having loved none but her.  She had never been
+supplanted.  He never even believed himself to see her equal.  Thus
+much indeed he was obliged to acknowledge:  that he had been constant
+unconsciously, nay unintentionally; that he had meant to forget her,
+and believed it to be done.  He had imagined himself indifferent, when
+he had only been angry; and he had been unjust to her merits, because
+he had been a sufferer from them.  Her character was now fixed on his
+mind as perfection itself, maintaining the loveliest medium of
+fortitude and gentleness; but he was obliged to acknowledge that only
+at Uppercross had he learnt to do her justice, and only at Lyme had he
+begun to understand himself.  At Lyme, he had received lessons of more
+than one sort.  The passing admiration of Mr Elliot had at least roused
+him, and the scenes on the Cobb and at Captain Harville's had fixed her
+superiority.
+
+In his preceding attempts to attach himself to Louisa Musgrove (the
+attempts of angry pride), he protested that he had for ever felt it to
+be impossible; that he had not cared, could not care, for Louisa;
+though till that day, till the leisure for reflection which followed
+it, he had not understood the perfect excellence of the mind with which
+Louisa's could so ill bear a comparison, or the perfect unrivalled hold
+it possessed over his own.  There, he had learnt to distinguish between
+the steadiness of principle and the obstinacy of self-will, between the
+darings of heedlessness and the resolution of a collected mind.  There
+he had seen everything to exalt in his estimation the woman he had
+lost; and there begun to deplore the pride, the folly, the madness of
+resentment, which had kept him from trying to regain her when thrown in
+his way.
+
+From that period his penance had become severe.  He had no sooner been
+free from the horror and remorse attending the first few days of
+Louisa's accident, no sooner begun to feel himself alive again, than he
+had begun to feel himself, though alive, not at liberty.
+
+"I found," said he, "that I was considered by Harville an engaged man!
+That neither Harville nor his wife entertained a doubt of our mutual
+attachment.  I was startled and shocked.  To a degree, I could
+contradict this instantly; but, when I began to reflect that others
+might have felt the same--her own family, nay, perhaps herself--I was
+no longer at my own disposal.  I was hers in honour if she wished it.
+I had been unguarded.  I had not thought seriously on this subject
+before.  I had not considered that my excessive intimacy must have its
+danger of ill consequence in many ways; and that I had no right to be
+trying whether I could attach myself to either of the girls, at the
+risk of raising even an unpleasant report, were there no other ill
+effects.  I had been grossly wrong, and must abide the consequences."
+
+He found too late, in short, that he had entangled himself; and that
+precisely as he became fully satisfied of his not caring for Louisa at
+all, he must regard himself as bound to her, if her sentiments for him
+were what the Harvilles supposed.  It determined him to leave Lyme, and
+await her complete recovery elsewhere.  He would gladly weaken, by any
+fair means, whatever feelings or speculations concerning him might
+exist; and he went, therefore, to his brother's, meaning after a while
+to return to Kellynch, and act as circumstances might require.
+
+"I was six weeks with Edward," said he, "and saw him happy.  I could
+have no other pleasure.  I deserved none.  He enquired after you very
+particularly; asked even if you were personally altered, little
+suspecting that to my eye you could never alter."
+
+Anne smiled, and let it pass.  It was too pleasing a blunder for a
+reproach.  It is something for a woman to be assured, in her
+eight-and-twentieth year, that she has not lost one charm of earlier
+youth; but the value of such homage was inexpressibly increased to
+Anne, by comparing it with former words, and feeling it to be the
+result, not the cause of a revival of his warm attachment.
+
+He had remained in Shropshire, lamenting the blindness of his own
+pride, and the blunders of his own calculations, till at once released
+from Louisa by the astonishing and felicitous intelligence of her
+engagement with Benwick.
+
+"Here," said he, "ended the worst of my state; for now I could at least
+put myself in the way of happiness; I could exert myself; I could do
+something.  But to be waiting so long in inaction, and waiting only for
+evil, had been dreadful.  Within the first five minutes I said, 'I will
+be at Bath on Wednesday,' and I was.  Was it unpardonable to think it
+worth my while to come? and to arrive with some degree of hope?  You
+were single.  It was possible that you might retain the feelings of the
+past, as I did; and one encouragement happened to be mine.  I could
+never doubt that you would be loved and sought by others, but I knew to
+a certainty that you had refused one man, at least, of better
+pretensions than myself; and I could not help often saying, 'Was this
+for me?'"
+
+Their first meeting in Milsom Street afforded much to be said, but the
+concert still more.  That evening seemed to be made up of exquisite
+moments.  The moment of her stepping forward in the Octagon Room to
+speak to him:  the moment of Mr Elliot's appearing and tearing her
+away, and one or two subsequent moments, marked by returning hope or
+increasing despondency, were dwelt on with energy.
+
+"To see you," cried he, "in the midst of those who could not be my
+well-wishers; to see your cousin close by you, conversing and smiling,
+and feel all the horrible eligibilities and proprieties of the match!
+To consider it as the certain wish of every being who could hope to
+influence you!  Even if your own feelings were reluctant or
+indifferent, to consider what powerful supports would be his!  Was it
+not enough to make the fool of me which I appeared?  How could I look
+on without agony?  Was not the very sight of the friend who sat behind
+you, was not the recollection of what had been, the knowledge of her
+influence, the indelible, immoveable impression of what persuasion had
+once done--was it not all against me?"
+
+"You should have distinguished," replied Anne.  "You should not have
+suspected me now; the case is so different, and my age is so different.
+If I was wrong in yielding to persuasion once, remember that it was to
+persuasion exerted on the side of safety, not of risk.  When I yielded,
+I thought it was to duty, but no duty could be called in aid here.  In
+marrying a man indifferent to me, all risk would have been incurred,
+and all duty violated."
+
+"Perhaps I ought to have reasoned thus," he replied, "but I could not.
+I could not derive benefit from the late knowledge I had acquired of
+your character.  I could not bring it into play; it was overwhelmed,
+buried, lost in those earlier feelings which I had been smarting under
+year after year.  I could think of you only as one who had yielded, who
+had given me up, who had been influenced by any one rather than by me.
+I saw you with the very person who had guided you in that year of
+misery.  I had no reason to believe her of less authority now.  The
+force of habit was to be added."
+
+"I should have thought," said Anne, "that my manner to yourself might
+have spared you much or all of this."
+
+"No, no! your manner might be only the ease which your engagement to
+another man would give.  I left you in this belief; and yet, I was
+determined to see you again.  My spirits rallied with the morning, and
+I felt that I had still a motive for remaining here."
+
+At last Anne was at home again, and happier than any one in that house
+could have conceived.  All the surprise and suspense, and every other
+painful part of the morning dissipated by this conversation, she
+re-entered the house so happy as to be obliged to find an alloy in some
+momentary apprehensions of its being impossible to last.  An interval
+of meditation, serious and grateful, was the best corrective of
+everything dangerous in such high-wrought felicity; and she went to her
+room, and grew steadfast and fearless in the thankfulness of her
+enjoyment.
+
+The evening came, the drawing-rooms were lighted up, the company
+assembled.  It was but a card party, it was but a mixture of those who
+had never met before, and those who met too often; a commonplace
+business, too numerous for intimacy, too small for variety; but Anne
+had never found an evening shorter.  Glowing and lovely in sensibility
+and happiness, and more generally admired than she thought about or
+cared for, she had cheerful or forbearing feelings for every creature
+around her.  Mr Elliot was there; she avoided, but she could pity him.
+The Wallises, she had amusement in understanding them.  Lady Dalrymple
+and Miss Carteret--they would soon be innoxious cousins to her.  She
+cared not for Mrs Clay, and had nothing to blush for in the public
+manners of her father and sister.  With the Musgroves, there was the
+happy chat of perfect ease; with Captain Harville, the kind-hearted
+intercourse of brother and sister; with Lady Russell, attempts at
+conversation, which a delicious consciousness cut short; with Admiral
+and Mrs Croft, everything of peculiar cordiality and fervent interest,
+which the same consciousness sought to conceal; and with Captain
+Wentworth, some moments of communications continually occurring, and
+always the hope of more, and always the knowledge of his being there.
+
+It was in one of these short meetings, each apparently occupied in
+admiring a fine display of greenhouse plants, that she said--
+
+"I have been thinking over the past, and trying impartially to judge of
+the right and wrong, I mean with regard to myself; and I must believe
+that I was right, much as I suffered from it, that I was perfectly
+right in being guided by the friend whom you will love better than you
+do now.  To me, she was in the place of a parent.  Do not mistake me,
+however.  I am not saying that she did not err in her advice.  It was,
+perhaps, one of those cases in which advice is good or bad only as the
+event decides; and for myself, I certainly never should, in any
+circumstance of tolerable similarity, give such advice.  But I mean,
+that I was right in submitting to her, and that if I had done
+otherwise, I should have suffered more in continuing the engagement
+than I did even in giving it up, because I should have suffered in my
+conscience.  I have now, as far as such a sentiment is allowable in
+human nature, nothing to reproach myself with; and if I mistake not, a
+strong sense of duty is no bad part of a woman's portion."
+
+He looked at her, looked at Lady Russell, and looking again at her,
+replied, as if in cool deliberation--
+
+"Not yet.  But there are hopes of her being forgiven in time.  I trust
+to being in charity with her soon.  But I too have been thinking over
+the past, and a  question has suggested itself, whether there may not
+have been one person more my enemy even than that lady?  My own self.
+Tell me if, when I returned to England in the year eight, with a few
+thousand pounds, and was posted into the Laconia, if I had then written
+to you, would you have answered my letter?  Would you, in short, have
+renewed the engagement then?"
+
+"Would I!" was all her answer; but the accent was decisive enough.
+
+"Good God!" he cried, "you would!  It is not that I did not think of
+it, or desire it, as what could alone crown all my other success; but I
+was proud, too proud to ask again.  I did not understand you.  I shut
+my eyes, and would not understand you, or do you justice.  This is a
+recollection which ought to make me forgive every one sooner than
+myself.  Six years of separation and suffering might have been spared.
+It is a sort of pain, too, which is new to me.  I have been used to the
+gratification of believing myself to earn every blessing that I
+enjoyed.  I have valued myself on honourable toils and just rewards.
+Like other great men under reverses," he added, with a smile. "I must
+endeavour to subdue my mind to my fortune.  I must learn to brook being
+happier than I deserve."
+
+
+
+Chapter 24
+
+
+Who can be in doubt of what followed?  When any two young people take
+it into their heads to marry, they are pretty sure by perseverance to
+carry their point, be they ever so poor, or ever so imprudent, or ever
+so little likely to be necessary to each other's ultimate comfort.
+This may be bad morality to conclude with, but I believe it to be
+truth; and if such parties succeed, how should a Captain Wentworth and
+an Anne Elliot, with the advantage of maturity of mind, consciousness
+of right, and one independent fortune between them, fail of bearing
+down every opposition?  They might in fact, have borne down a great
+deal more than they met with, for there was little to distress them
+beyond the want of graciousness and warmth.  Sir Walter made no
+objection, and Elizabeth did nothing worse than look cold and
+unconcerned.  Captain Wentworth, with five-and-twenty thousand pounds,
+and as high in his profession as merit and activity could place him,
+was no longer nobody.  He was now esteemed quite worthy to address the
+daughter of a foolish, spendthrift baronet, who had not had principle
+or sense enough to maintain himself in the situation in which
+Providence had placed him, and who could give his daughter at present
+but a small part of the share of ten thousand pounds which must be hers
+hereafter.
+
+Sir Walter, indeed, though he had no affection for Anne, and no vanity
+flattered, to make him really happy on the occasion, was very far from
+thinking it a bad match for her.  On the contrary, when he saw more of
+Captain Wentworth, saw him repeatedly by daylight, and eyed him well,
+he was very much struck by his personal claims, and felt that his
+superiority of appearance might be not unfairly balanced against her
+superiority of rank; and all this, assisted by his well-sounding name,
+enabled Sir Walter at last to prepare his pen, with a very good grace,
+for the insertion of the marriage in the volume of honour.
+
+The only one among them, whose opposition of feeling could excite any
+serious anxiety was Lady Russell.  Anne knew that Lady Russell must be
+suffering some pain in understanding and relinquishing Mr Elliot, and
+be making some struggles to become truly acquainted with, and do
+justice to Captain Wentworth.  This however was what Lady Russell had
+now to do.  She must learn to feel that she had been mistaken with
+regard to both; that she had been unfairly influenced by appearances in
+each; that because Captain Wentworth's manners had not suited her own
+ideas, she had been too quick in suspecting them to indicate a
+character of dangerous impetuosity; and that because Mr Elliot's
+manners had precisely pleased her in their propriety and correctness,
+their general politeness and suavity, she had been too quick in
+receiving them as the certain result of the most correct opinions and
+well-regulated mind.  There was nothing less for Lady Russell to do,
+than to admit that she had been pretty completely wrong, and to take up
+a new set of opinions and of hopes.
+
+There is a quickness of perception in some, a nicety in the discernment
+of character, a natural penetration, in short, which no experience in
+others can equal, and Lady Russell had been less gifted in this part of
+understanding than her young friend.  But she was a very good woman,
+and if her second object was to be sensible and well-judging, her first
+was to see Anne happy.  She loved Anne better than she loved her own
+abilities; and when the awkwardness of the beginning was over, found
+little hardship in attaching herself as a mother to the man who was
+securing the happiness of her other child.
+
+Of all the family, Mary was probably the one most immediately gratified
+by the circumstance.  It was creditable to have a sister married, and
+she might flatter herself with having been greatly instrumental to the
+connexion, by keeping Anne with her in the autumn; and as her own
+sister must be better than her husband's sisters, it was very agreeable
+that Captain Wentworth should be a richer man than either Captain
+Benwick or Charles Hayter.  She had something to suffer, perhaps, when
+they came into contact again, in seeing Anne restored to the rights of
+seniority, and the mistress of a very pretty landaulette; but she had a
+future to look forward to, of powerful consolation.  Anne had no
+Uppercross Hall before her, no landed estate, no headship of a family;
+and if they could but keep Captain Wentworth from being made a baronet,
+she would not change situations with Anne.
+
+It would be well for the eldest sister if she were equally satisfied
+with her situation, for a change is not very probable there.  She had
+soon the mortification of seeing Mr Elliot withdraw, and no one of
+proper condition has since presented himself to raise even the
+unfounded hopes which sunk with him.
+
+The news of his cousin Anne's engagement burst on Mr Elliot most
+unexpectedly.  It deranged his best plan of domestic happiness, his
+best hope of keeping Sir Walter single by the watchfulness which a
+son-in-law's rights would have given.  But, though discomfited and
+disappointed, he could still do something for his own interest and his
+own enjoyment.  He soon quitted Bath; and on Mrs Clay's quitting it
+soon afterwards, and being next heard of as established under his
+protection in London, it was evident how double a game he had been
+playing, and how determined he was to save himself from being cut out
+by one artful woman, at least.
+
+Mrs Clay's affections had overpowered her interest, and she had
+sacrificed, for the young man's sake, the possibility of scheming
+longer for Sir Walter.  She has abilities, however, as well as
+affections; and it is now a doubtful point whether his cunning, or
+hers, may finally carry the day; whether, after preventing her from
+being the wife of Sir Walter, he may not be wheedled and caressed at
+last into making her the wife of Sir William.
+
+It cannot be doubted that Sir Walter and Elizabeth were shocked and
+mortified by the loss of their companion, and the discovery of their
+deception in her.  They had their great cousins, to be sure, to resort
+to for comfort; but they must long feel that to flatter and follow
+others, without being flattered and followed in turn, is but a state of
+half enjoyment.
+
+Anne, satisfied at a very early period of Lady Russell's meaning to
+love Captain Wentworth as she ought, had no other alloy to the
+happiness of her prospects than what arose from the consciousness of
+having no relations to bestow on him which a man of sense could value.
+There she felt her own inferiority very keenly.  The disproportion in
+their fortune was nothing; it did not give her a moment's regret; but
+to have no family to receive and estimate him properly, nothing of
+respectability, of harmony, of good will to offer in return for all the
+worth and all the prompt welcome which met her in his brothers and
+sisters, was a source of as lively pain as her mind could well be
+sensible of under circumstances of otherwise strong felicity.  She had
+but two friends in the world to add to his list, Lady Russell and Mrs
+Smith.  To those, however, he was very well disposed to attach himself.
+Lady Russell, in spite of all her former transgressions, he could now
+value from his heart.  While he was not obliged to say that he believed
+her to have been right in originally dividing them, he was ready to say
+almost everything else in her favour, and as for Mrs Smith, she had
+claims of various kinds to recommend her quickly and permanently.
+
+Her recent good offices by Anne had been enough in themselves, and
+their marriage, instead of depriving her of one friend, secured her
+two.  She was their earliest visitor in their settled life; and Captain
+Wentworth, by putting her in the way of recovering her husband's
+property in the West Indies, by writing for her, acting for her, and
+seeing her through all the petty difficulties of the case with the
+activity and exertion of a fearless man and a determined friend, fully
+requited the services which she had rendered, or ever meant to render,
+to his wife.
+
+Mrs Smith's enjoyments were not spoiled by this improvement of income,
+with some improvement of health, and the acquisition of such friends to
+be often with, for her cheerfulness and mental alacrity did not fail
+her; and while these prime supplies of good remained, she might have
+bid defiance even to greater accessions of worldly prosperity.  She
+might have been absolutely rich and perfectly healthy, and yet be
+happy.  Her spring of felicity was in the glow of her spirits, as her
+friend Anne's was in the warmth of her heart.  Anne was tenderness
+itself, and she had the full worth of it in Captain Wentworth's
+affection.  His profession was all that could ever make her friends
+wish that tenderness less, the dread of a future war all that could dim
+her sunshine.  She gloried in being a sailor's wife, but she must pay
+the tax of quick alarm for belonging to that profession which is, if
+possible, more distinguished in its domestic virtues than in its
+national importance.
+
+
+
+Finis
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Persuasion, by Jane Austen
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diff --git a/data/train/austen_-_pride_and_prejudice.txt b/data/train/austen_-_pride_and_prejudice.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7720abd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/data/train/austen_-_pride_and_prejudice.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,14594 @@
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Pride and Prejudice
+
+Author: Jane Austen
+
+Release Date: August 26, 2008 [EBook #1342]
+Last Updated: November 12, 2019
+
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRIDE AND PREJUDICE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Anonymous Volunteers, and David Widger
+
+THERE IS AN ILLUSTRATED EDITION OF THIS TITLE WHICH MAY VIEWED AT EBOOK
+[# 42671 ]
+
+cover
+
+
+
+
+      Pride and Prejudice
+
+      By Jane Austen
+
+        CONTENTS
+
+         Chapter 1
+
+         Chapter 2
+
+         Chapter 3
+
+         Chapter 4
+
+         Chapter 5
+
+         Chapter 6
+
+         Chapter 7
+
+         Chapter 8
+
+         Chapter 9
+
+         Chapter 10
+
+         Chapter 11
+
+         Chapter 12
+
+         Chapter 13
+
+         Chapter 14
+
+         Chapter 15
+
+         Chapter 16
+
+         Chapter 17
+
+         Chapter 18
+
+         Chapter 19
+
+         Chapter 20
+
+         Chapter 21
+
+         Chapter 22
+
+         Chapter 23
+
+         Chapter 24
+
+         Chapter 25
+
+         Chapter 26
+
+         Chapter 27
+
+         Chapter 28
+
+         Chapter 29
+
+         Chapter 30
+
+         Chapter 31
+
+         Chapter 32
+
+         Chapter 33
+
+         Chapter 34
+
+         Chapter 35
+
+         Chapter 36
+
+         Chapter 37
+
+         Chapter 38
+
+         Chapter 39
+
+         Chapter 40
+
+         Chapter 41
+
+         Chapter 42
+
+         Chapter 43
+
+         Chapter 44
+
+         Chapter 45
+
+         Chapter 46
+
+         Chapter 47
+
+         Chapter 48
+
+         Chapter 49
+
+         Chapter 50
+
+         Chapter 51
+
+         Chapter 52
+
+         Chapter 53
+
+         Chapter 54
+
+         Chapter 55
+
+         Chapter 56
+
+         Chapter 57
+
+         Chapter 58
+
+         Chapter 59
+
+         Chapter 60
+
+         Chapter 61
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 1
+
+      It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in
+      possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
+
+      However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be
+      on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well
+      fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is
+      considered the rightful property of some one or other of their
+      daughters.
+
+      “My dear Mr. Bennet,” said his lady to him one day, “have you
+      heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?”
+
+      Mr. Bennet replied that he had not.
+
+      “But it is,” returned she; “for Mrs. Long has just been here, and
+      she told me all about it.”
+
+      Mr. Bennet made no answer.
+
+      “Do you not want to know who has taken it?” cried his wife
+      impatiently.
+
+      “_You_ want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it.”
+
+      This was invitation enough.
+
+      “Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs. Long says that Netherfield is
+      taken by a young man of large fortune from the north of England;
+      that he came down on Monday in a chaise and four to see the
+      place, and was so much delighted with it, that he agreed with Mr.
+      Morris immediately; that he is to take possession before
+      Michaelmas, and some of his servants are to be in the house by
+      the end of next week.”
+
+      “What is his name?”
+
+      “Bingley.”
+
+      “Is he married or single?”
+
+      “Oh! Single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune;
+      four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!”
+
+      “How so? How can it affect them?”
+
+      “My dear Mr. Bennet,” replied his wife, “how can you be so
+      tiresome! You must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of
+      them.”
+
+      “Is that his design in settling here?”
+
+      “Design! Nonsense, how can you talk so! But it is very likely
+      that he _may_ fall in love with one of them, and therefore you
+      must visit him as soon as he comes.”
+
+      “I see no occasion for that. You and the girls may go, or you may
+      send them by themselves, which perhaps will be still better, for
+      as you are as handsome as any of them, Mr. Bingley may like you
+      the best of the party.”
+
+      “My dear, you flatter me. I certainly _have_ had my share of
+      beauty, but I do not pretend to be anything extraordinary now.
+      When a woman has five grown-up daughters, she ought to give over
+      thinking of her own beauty.”
+
+      “In such cases, a woman has not often much beauty to think of.”
+
+      “But, my dear, you must indeed go and see Mr. Bingley when he
+      comes into the neighbourhood.”
+
+      “It is more than I engage for, I assure you.”
+
+      “But consider your daughters. Only think what an establishment it
+      would be for one of them. Sir William and Lady Lucas are
+      determined to go, merely on that account, for in general, you
+      know, they visit no newcomers. Indeed you must go, for it will be
+      impossible for _us_ to visit him if you do not.”
+
+      “You are over-scrupulous, surely. I dare say Mr. Bingley will be
+      very glad to see you; and I will send a few lines by you to
+      assure him of my hearty consent to his marrying whichever he
+      chooses of the girls; though I must throw in a good word for my
+      little Lizzy.”
+
+      “I desire you will do no such thing. Lizzy is not a bit better
+      than the others; and I am sure she is not half so handsome as
+      Jane, nor half so good-humoured as Lydia. But you are always
+      giving _her_ the preference.”
+
+      “They have none of them much to recommend them,” replied he;
+      “they are all silly and ignorant like other girls; but Lizzy has
+      something more of quickness than her sisters.”
+
+      “Mr. Bennet, how can you abuse your own children in such a way?
+      You take delight in vexing me. You have no compassion for my poor
+      nerves.”
+
+      “You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves.
+      They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with
+      consideration these last twenty years at least.”
+
+      “Ah, you do not know what I suffer.”
+
+      “But I hope you will get over it, and live to see many young men
+      of four thousand a year come into the neighbourhood.”
+
+      “It will be no use to us, if twenty such should come, since you
+      will not visit them.”
+
+      “Depend upon it, my dear, that when there are twenty, I will
+      visit them all.”
+
+      Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour,
+      reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three-and-twenty
+      years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his
+      character. _Her_ mind was less difficult to develop. She was a
+      woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain
+      temper. When she was discontented, she fancied herself nervous.
+      The business of her life was to get her daughters married; its
+      solace was visiting and news.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 2
+
+      Mr. Bennet was among the earliest of those who waited on Mr.
+      Bingley. He had always intended to visit him, though to the last
+      always assuring his wife that he should not go; and till the
+      evening after the visit was paid she had no knowledge of it. It
+      was then disclosed in the following manner. Observing his second
+      daughter employed in trimming a hat, he suddenly addressed her
+      with:
+
+      “I hope Mr. Bingley will like it, Lizzy.”
+
+      “We are not in a way to know _what_ Mr. Bingley likes,” said her
+      mother resentfully, “since we are not to visit.”
+
+      “But you forget, mamma,” said Elizabeth, “that we shall meet him
+      at the assemblies, and that Mrs. Long promised to introduce him.”
+
+      “I do not believe Mrs. Long will do any such thing. She has two
+      nieces of her own. She is a selfish, hypocritical woman, and I
+      have no opinion of her.”
+
+      “No more have I,” said Mr. Bennet; “and I am glad to find that
+      you do not depend on her serving you.”
+
+      Mrs. Bennet deigned not to make any reply, but, unable to contain
+      herself, began scolding one of her daughters.
+
+      “Don’t keep coughing so, Kitty, for Heaven’s sake! Have a little
+      compassion on my nerves. You tear them to pieces.”
+
+      “Kitty has no discretion in her coughs,” said her father; “she
+      times them ill.”
+
+      “I do not cough for my own amusement,” replied Kitty fretfully.
+      “When is your next ball to be, Lizzy?”
+
+      “To-morrow fortnight.”
+
+      “Aye, so it is,” cried her mother, “and Mrs. Long does not come
+      back till the day before; so it will be impossible for her to
+      introduce him, for she will not know him herself.”
+
+      “Then, my dear, you may have the advantage of your friend, and
+      introduce Mr. Bingley to _her_.”
+
+      “Impossible, Mr. Bennet, impossible, when I am not acquainted
+      with him myself; how can you be so teasing?”
+
+      “I honour your circumspection. A fortnight’s acquaintance is
+      certainly very little. One cannot know what a man really is by
+      the end of a fortnight. But if _we_ do not venture somebody else
+      will; and after all, Mrs. Long and her nieces must stand their
+      chance; and, therefore, as she will think it an act of kindness,
+      if you decline the office, I will take it on myself.”
+
+      The girls stared at their father. Mrs. Bennet said only,
+      “Nonsense, nonsense!”
+
+      “What can be the meaning of that emphatic exclamation?” cried he.
+      “Do you consider the forms of introduction, and the stress that
+      is laid on them, as nonsense? I cannot quite agree with you
+      _there_. What say you, Mary? For you are a young lady of deep
+      reflection, I know, and read great books and make extracts.”
+
+      Mary wished to say something sensible, but knew not how.
+
+      “While Mary is adjusting her ideas,” he continued, “let us return
+      to Mr. Bingley.”
+
+      “I am sick of Mr. Bingley,” cried his wife.
+
+      “I am sorry to hear _that_; but why did not you tell me that
+      before? If I had known as much this morning I certainly would not
+      have called on him. It is very unlucky; but as I have actually
+      paid the visit, we cannot escape the acquaintance now.”
+
+      The astonishment of the ladies was just what he wished; that of
+      Mrs. Bennet perhaps surpassing the rest; though, when the first
+      tumult of joy was over, she began to declare that it was what she
+      had expected all the while.
+
+      “How good it was in you, my dear Mr. Bennet! But I knew I should
+      persuade you at last. I was sure you loved your girls too well to
+      neglect such an acquaintance. Well, how pleased I am! and it is
+      such a good joke, too, that you should have gone this morning and
+      never said a word about it till now.”
+
+      “Now, Kitty, you may cough as much as you choose,” said Mr.
+      Bennet; and, as he spoke, he left the room, fatigued with the
+      raptures of his wife.
+
+      “What an excellent father you have, girls!” said she, when the
+      door was shut. “I do not know how you will ever make him amends
+      for his kindness; or me, either, for that matter. At our time of
+      life it is not so pleasant, I can tell you, to be making new
+      acquaintances every day; but for your sakes, we would do
+      anything. Lydia, my love, though you _are_ the youngest, I dare
+      say Mr. Bingley will dance with you at the next ball.”
+
+      “Oh!” said Lydia stoutly, “I am not afraid; for though I _am_ the
+      youngest, I’m the tallest.”
+
+      The rest of the evening was spent in conjecturing how soon he
+      would return Mr. Bennet’s visit, and determining when they should
+      ask him to dinner.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 3
+
+      Not all that Mrs. Bennet, however, with the assistance of her
+      five daughters, could ask on the subject, was sufficient to draw
+      from her husband any satisfactory description of Mr. Bingley.
+      They attacked him in various ways—with barefaced questions,
+      ingenious suppositions, and distant surmises; but he eluded the
+      skill of them all, and they were at last obliged to accept the
+      second-hand intelligence of their neighbour, Lady Lucas. Her
+      report was highly favourable. Sir William had been delighted with
+      him. He was quite young, wonderfully handsome, extremely
+      agreeable, and, to crown the whole, he meant to be at the next
+      assembly with a large party. Nothing could be more delightful! To
+      be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love;
+      and very lively hopes of Mr. Bingley’s heart were entertained.
+
+      “If I can but see one of my daughters happily settled at
+      Netherfield,” said Mrs. Bennet to her husband, “and all the
+      others equally well married, I shall have nothing to wish for.”
+
+      In a few days Mr. Bingley returned Mr. Bennet’s visit, and sat
+      about ten minutes with him in his library. He had entertained
+      hopes of being admitted to a sight of the young ladies, of whose
+      beauty he had heard much; but he saw only the father. The ladies
+      were somewhat more fortunate, for they had the advantage of
+      ascertaining from an upper window that he wore a blue coat, and
+      rode a black horse.
+
+      An invitation to dinner was soon afterwards dispatched; and
+      already had Mrs. Bennet planned the courses that were to do
+      credit to her housekeeping, when an answer arrived which deferred
+      it all. Mr. Bingley was obliged to be in town the following day,
+      and, consequently, unable to accept the honour of their
+      invitation, etc. Mrs. Bennet was quite disconcerted. She could
+      not imagine what business he could have in town so soon after his
+      arrival in Hertfordshire; and she began to fear that he might be
+      always flying about from one place to another, and never settled
+      at Netherfield as he ought to be. Lady Lucas quieted her fears a
+      little by starting the idea of his being gone to London only to
+      get a large party for the ball; and a report soon followed that
+      Mr. Bingley was to bring twelve ladies and seven gentlemen with
+      him to the assembly. The girls grieved over such a number of
+      ladies, but were comforted the day before the ball by hearing,
+      that instead of twelve he brought only six with him from
+      London—his five sisters and a cousin. And when the party entered
+      the assembly room it consisted of only five altogether—Mr.
+      Bingley, his two sisters, the husband of the eldest, and another
+      young man.
+
+      Mr. Bingley was good-looking and gentlemanlike; he had a pleasant
+      countenance, and easy, unaffected manners. His sisters were fine
+      women, with an air of decided fashion. His brother-in-law, Mr.
+      Hurst, merely looked the gentleman; but his friend Mr. Darcy soon
+      drew the attention of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome
+      features, noble mien, and the report which was in general
+      circulation within five minutes after his entrance, of his having
+      ten thousand a year. The gentlemen pronounced him to be a fine
+      figure of a man, the ladies declared he was much handsomer than
+      Mr. Bingley, and he was looked at with great admiration for about
+      half the evening, till his manners gave a disgust which turned
+      the tide of his popularity; for he was discovered to be proud; to
+      be above his company, and above being pleased; and not all his
+      large estate in Derbyshire could then save him from having a most
+      forbidding, disagreeable countenance, and being unworthy to be
+      compared with his friend.
+
+      Mr. Bingley had soon made himself acquainted with all the
+      principal people in the room; he was lively and unreserved,
+      danced every dance, was angry that the ball closed so early, and
+      talked of giving one himself at Netherfield. Such amiable
+      qualities must speak for themselves. What a contrast between him
+      and his friend! Mr. Darcy danced only once with Mrs. Hurst and
+      once with Miss Bingley, declined being introduced to any other
+      lady, and spent the rest of the evening in walking about the
+      room, speaking occasionally to one of his own party. His
+      character was decided. He was the proudest, most disagreeable man
+      in the world, and everybody hoped that he would never come there
+      again. Amongst the most violent against him was Mrs. Bennet,
+      whose dislike of his general behaviour was sharpened into
+      particular resentment by his having slighted one of her
+      daughters.
+
+      Elizabeth Bennet had been obliged, by the scarcity of gentlemen,
+      to sit down for two dances; and during part of that time, Mr.
+      Darcy had been standing near enough for her to hear a
+      conversation between him and Mr. Bingley, who came from the dance
+      for a few minutes, to press his friend to join it.
+
+      “Come, Darcy,” said he, “I must have you dance. I hate to see you
+      standing about by yourself in this stupid manner. You had much
+      better dance.”
+
+      “I certainly shall not. You know how I detest it, unless I am
+      particularly acquainted with my partner. At such an assembly as
+      this it would be insupportable. Your sisters are engaged, and
+      there is not another woman in the room whom it would not be a
+      punishment to me to stand up with.”
+
+      “I would not be so fastidious as you are,” cried Mr. Bingley,
+      “for a kingdom! Upon my honour, I never met with so many pleasant
+      girls in my life as I have this evening; and there are several of
+      them you see uncommonly pretty.”
+
+      “_You_ are dancing with the only handsome girl in the room,” said
+      Mr. Darcy, looking at the eldest Miss Bennet.
+
+      “Oh! She is the most beautiful creature I ever beheld! But there
+      is one of her sisters sitting down just behind you, who is very
+      pretty, and I dare say very agreeable. Do let me ask my partner
+      to introduce you.”
+
+      “Which do you mean?” and turning round he looked for a moment at
+      Elizabeth, till catching her eye, he withdrew his own and coldly
+      said: “She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt _me_; I
+      am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies
+      who are slighted by other men. You had better return to your
+      partner and enjoy her smiles, for you are wasting your time with
+      me.”
+
+      Mr. Bingley followed his advice. Mr. Darcy walked off; and
+      Elizabeth remained with no very cordial feelings toward him. She
+      told the story, however, with great spirit among her friends; for
+      she had a lively, playful disposition, which delighted in
+      anything ridiculous.
+
+      The evening altogether passed off pleasantly to the whole family.
+      Mrs. Bennet had seen her eldest daughter much admired by the
+      Netherfield party. Mr. Bingley had danced with her twice, and she
+      had been distinguished by his sisters. Jane was as much gratified
+      by this as her mother could be, though in a quieter way.
+      Elizabeth felt Jane’s pleasure. Mary had heard herself mentioned
+      to Miss Bingley as the most accomplished girl in the
+      neighbourhood; and Catherine and Lydia had been fortunate enough
+      never to be without partners, which was all that they had yet
+      learnt to care for at a ball. They returned, therefore, in good
+      spirits to Longbourn, the village where they lived, and of which
+      they were the principal inhabitants. They found Mr. Bennet still
+      up. With a book he was regardless of time; and on the present
+      occasion he had a good deal of curiosity as to the event of an
+      evening which had raised such splendid expectations. He had
+      rather hoped that his wife’s views on the stranger would be
+      disappointed; but he soon found out that he had a different story
+      to hear.
+
+      “Oh, my dear Mr. Bennet,” as she entered the room, “we have had a
+      most delightful evening, a most excellent ball. I wish you had
+      been there. Jane was so admired, nothing could be like it.
+      Everybody said how well she looked; and Mr. Bingley thought her
+      quite beautiful, and danced with her twice! Only think of _that_,
+      my dear; he actually danced with her twice! and she was the only
+      creature in the room that he asked a second time. First of all,
+      he asked Miss Lucas. I was so vexed to see him stand up with her!
+      But, however, he did not admire her at all; indeed, nobody can,
+      you know; and he seemed quite struck with Jane as she was going
+      down the dance. So he inquired who she was, and got introduced,
+      and asked her for the two next. Then the two third he danced with
+      Miss King, and the two fourth with Maria Lucas, and the two fifth
+      with Jane again, and the two sixth with Lizzy, and the
+      _Boulanger_—”
+
+      “If he had had any compassion for _me_,” cried her husband
+      impatiently, “he would not have danced half so much! For God’s
+      sake, say no more of his partners. Oh that he had sprained his
+      ankle in the first dance!”
+
+      “Oh! my dear, I am quite delighted with him. He is so excessively
+      handsome! And his sisters are charming women. I never in my life
+      saw anything more elegant than their dresses. I dare say the lace
+      upon Mrs. Hurst’s gown—”
+
+      Here she was interrupted again. Mr. Bennet protested against any
+      description of finery. She was therefore obliged to seek another
+      branch of the subject, and related, with much bitterness of
+      spirit and some exaggeration, the shocking rudeness of Mr. Darcy.
+
+      “But I can assure you,” she added, “that Lizzy does not lose much
+      by not suiting _his_ fancy; for he is a most disagreeable, horrid
+      man, not at all worth pleasing. So high and so conceited that
+      there was no enduring him! He walked here, and he walked there,
+      fancying himself so very great! Not handsome enough to dance
+      with! I wish you had been there, my dear, to have given him one
+      of your set-downs. I quite detest the man.”
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 4
+
+      When Jane and Elizabeth were alone, the former, who had been
+      cautious in her praise of Mr. Bingley before, expressed to her
+      sister just how very much she admired him.
+
+      “He is just what a young man ought to be,” said she, “sensible,
+      good-humoured, lively; and I never saw such happy manners!—so
+      much ease, with such perfect good breeding!”
+
+      “He is also handsome,” replied Elizabeth, “which a young man
+      ought likewise to be, if he possibly can. His character is
+      thereby complete.”
+
+      “I was very much flattered by his asking me to dance a second
+      time. I did not expect such a compliment.”
+
+      “Did not you? _I_ did for you. But that is one great difference
+      between us. Compliments always take _you_ by surprise, and _me_
+      never. What could be more natural than his asking you again? He
+      could not help seeing that you were about five times as pretty as
+      every other woman in the room. No thanks to his gallantry for
+      that. Well, he certainly is very agreeable, and I give you leave
+      to like him. You have liked many a stupider person.”
+
+      “Dear Lizzy!”
+
+      “Oh! you are a great deal too apt, you know, to like people in
+      general. You never see a fault in anybody. All the world are good
+      and agreeable in your eyes. I never heard you speak ill of a
+      human being in your life.”
+
+      “I would not wish to be hasty in censuring anyone; but I always
+      speak what I think.”
+
+      “I know you do; and it is _that_ which makes the wonder. With
+      _your_ good sense, to be so honestly blind to the follies and
+      nonsense of others! Affectation of candour is common enough—one
+      meets with it everywhere. But to be candid without ostentation or
+      design—to take the good of everybody’s character and make it
+      still better, and say nothing of the bad—belongs to you alone.
+      And so you like this man’s sisters, too, do you? Their manners
+      are not equal to his.”
+
+      “Certainly not—at first. But they are very pleasing women when
+      you converse with them. Miss Bingley is to live with her brother,
+      and keep his house; and I am much mistaken if we shall not find a
+      very charming neighbour in her.”
+
+      Elizabeth listened in silence, but was not convinced; their
+      behaviour at the assembly had not been calculated to please in
+      general; and with more quickness of observation and less pliancy
+      of temper than her sister, and with a judgement too unassailed by
+      any attention to herself, she was very little disposed to approve
+      them. They were in fact very fine ladies; not deficient in good
+      humour when they were pleased, nor in the power of making
+      themselves agreeable when they chose it, but proud and conceited.
+      They were rather handsome, had been educated in one of the first
+      private seminaries in town, had a fortune of twenty thousand
+      pounds, were in the habit of spending more than they ought, and
+      of associating with people of rank, and were therefore in every
+      respect entitled to think well of themselves, and meanly of
+      others. They were of a respectable family in the north of
+      England; a circumstance more deeply impressed on their memories
+      than that their brother’s fortune and their own had been acquired
+      by trade.
+
+      Mr. Bingley inherited property to the amount of nearly a hundred
+      thousand pounds from his father, who had intended to purchase an
+      estate, but did not live to do it. Mr. Bingley intended it
+      likewise, and sometimes made choice of his county; but as he was
+      now provided with a good house and the liberty of a manor, it was
+      doubtful to many of those who best knew the easiness of his
+      temper, whether he might not spend the remainder of his days at
+      Netherfield, and leave the next generation to purchase.
+
+      His sisters were anxious for his having an estate of his own;
+      but, though he was now only established as a tenant, Miss Bingley
+      was by no means unwilling to preside at his table—nor was Mrs.
+      Hurst, who had married a man of more fashion than fortune, less
+      disposed to consider his house as her home when it suited her.
+      Mr. Bingley had not been of age two years, when he was tempted by
+      an accidental recommendation to look at Netherfield House. He did
+      look at it, and into it for half-an-hour—was pleased with the
+      situation and the principal rooms, satisfied with what the owner
+      said in its praise, and took it immediately.
+
+      Between him and Darcy there was a very steady friendship, in
+      spite of great opposition of character. Bingley was endeared to
+      Darcy by the easiness, openness, and ductility of his temper,
+      though no disposition could offer a greater contrast to his own,
+      and though with his own he never appeared dissatisfied. On the
+      strength of Darcy’s regard, Bingley had the firmest reliance, and
+      of his judgement the highest opinion. In understanding, Darcy was
+      the superior. Bingley was by no means deficient, but Darcy was
+      clever. He was at the same time haughty, reserved, and
+      fastidious, and his manners, though well-bred, were not inviting.
+      In that respect his friend had greatly the advantage. Bingley was
+      sure of being liked wherever he appeared, Darcy was continually
+      giving offense.
+
+      The manner in which they spoke of the Meryton assembly was
+      sufficiently characteristic. Bingley had never met with more
+      pleasant people or prettier girls in his life; everybody had been
+      most kind and attentive to him; there had been no formality, no
+      stiffness; he had soon felt acquainted with all the room; and, as
+      to Miss Bennet, he could not conceive an angel more beautiful.
+      Darcy, on the contrary, had seen a collection of people in whom
+      there was little beauty and no fashion, for none of whom he had
+      felt the smallest interest, and from none received either
+      attention or pleasure. Miss Bennet he acknowledged to be pretty,
+      but she smiled too much.
+
+      Mrs. Hurst and her sister allowed it to be so—but still they
+      admired her and liked her, and pronounced her to be a sweet girl,
+      and one whom they would not object to know more of. Miss Bennet
+      was therefore established as a sweet girl, and their brother felt
+      authorized by such commendation to think of her as he chose.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 5
+
+      Within a short walk of Longbourn lived a family with whom the
+      Bennets were particularly intimate. Sir William Lucas had been
+      formerly in trade in Meryton, where he had made a tolerable
+      fortune, and risen to the honour of knighthood by an address to
+      the king during his mayoralty. The distinction had perhaps been
+      felt too strongly. It had given him a disgust to his business,
+      and to his residence in a small market town; and, in quitting
+      them both, he had removed with his family to a house about a mile
+      from Meryton, denominated from that period Lucas Lodge, where he
+      could think with pleasure of his own importance, and, unshackled
+      by business, occupy himself solely in being civil to all the
+      world. For, though elated by his rank, it did not render him
+      supercilious; on the contrary, he was all attention to everybody.
+      By nature inoffensive, friendly, and obliging, his presentation
+      at St. James’s had made him courteous.
+
+      Lady Lucas was a very good kind of woman, not too clever to be a
+      valuable neighbour to Mrs. Bennet. They had several children. The
+      eldest of them, a sensible, intelligent young woman, about
+      twenty-seven, was Elizabeth’s intimate friend.
+
+      That the Miss Lucases and the Miss Bennets should meet to talk
+      over a ball was absolutely necessary; and the morning after the
+      assembly brought the former to Longbourn to hear and to
+      communicate.
+
+      “_You_ began the evening well, Charlotte,” said Mrs. Bennet with
+      civil self-command to Miss Lucas. “_You_ were Mr. Bingley’s first
+      choice.”
+
+      “Yes; but he seemed to like his second better.”
+
+      “Oh! you mean Jane, I suppose, because he danced with her twice.
+      To be sure that _did_ seem as if he admired her—indeed I rather
+      believe he _did_—I heard something about it—but I hardly know
+      what—something about Mr. Robinson.”
+
+      “Perhaps you mean what I overheard between him and Mr. Robinson;
+      did not I mention it to you? Mr. Robinson’s asking him how he
+      liked our Meryton assemblies, and whether he did not think there
+      were a great many pretty women in the room, and _which_ he
+      thought the prettiest? and his answering immediately to the last
+      question: ‘Oh! the eldest Miss Bennet, beyond a doubt; there
+      cannot be two opinions on that point.’”
+
+      “Upon my word! Well, that is very decided indeed—that does seem
+      as if—but, however, it may all come to nothing, you know.”
+
+      “_My_ overhearings were more to the purpose than _yours_, Eliza,”
+      said Charlotte. “Mr. Darcy is not so well worth listening to as
+      his friend, is he?—poor Eliza!—to be only just _tolerable_.”
+
+      “I beg you would not put it into Lizzy’s head to be vexed by his
+      ill-treatment, for he is such a disagreeable man, that it would
+      be quite a misfortune to be liked by him. Mrs. Long told me last
+      night that he sat close to her for half-an-hour without once
+      opening his lips.”
+
+      “Are you quite sure, ma’am?—is not there a little mistake?” said
+      Jane. “I certainly saw Mr. Darcy speaking to her.”
+
+      “Aye—because she asked him at last how he liked Netherfield, and
+      he could not help answering her; but she said he seemed quite
+      angry at being spoke to.”
+
+      “Miss Bingley told me,” said Jane, “that he never speaks much,
+      unless among his intimate acquaintances. With _them_ he is
+      remarkably agreeable.”
+
+      “I do not believe a word of it, my dear. If he had been so very
+      agreeable, he would have talked to Mrs. Long. But I can guess how
+      it was; everybody says that he is eat up with pride, and I dare
+      say he had heard somehow that Mrs. Long does not keep a carriage,
+      and had come to the ball in a hack chaise.”
+
+      “I do not mind his not talking to Mrs. Long,” said Miss Lucas,
+      “but I wish he had danced with Eliza.”
+
+      “Another time, Lizzy,” said her mother, “I would not dance with
+      _him_, if I were you.”
+
+      “I believe, ma’am, I may safely promise you _never_ to dance with
+      him.”
+
+      “His pride,” said Miss Lucas, “does not offend _me_ so much as
+      pride often does, because there is an excuse for it. One cannot
+      wonder that so very fine a young man, with family, fortune,
+      everything in his favour, should think highly of himself. If I
+      may so express it, he has a _right_ to be proud.”
+
+      “That is very true,” replied Elizabeth, “and I could easily
+      forgive _his_ pride, if he had not mortified _mine_.”
+
+      “Pride,” observed Mary, who piqued herself upon the solidity of
+      her reflections, “is a very common failing, I believe. By all
+      that I have ever read, I am convinced that it is very common
+      indeed; that human nature is particularly prone to it, and that
+      there are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of
+      self-complacency on the score of some quality or other, real or
+      imaginary. Vanity and pride are different things, though the
+      words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without
+      being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves,
+      vanity to what we would have others think of us.”
+
+      “If I were as rich as Mr. Darcy,” cried a young Lucas, who came
+      with his sisters, “I should not care how proud I was. I would
+      keep a pack of foxhounds, and drink a bottle of wine a day.”
+
+      “Then you would drink a great deal more than you ought,” said
+      Mrs. Bennet; “and if I were to see you at it, I should take away
+      your bottle directly.”
+
+      The boy protested that she should not; she continued to declare
+      that she would, and the argument ended only with the visit.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 6
+
+      The ladies of Longbourn soon waited on those of Netherfield. The
+      visit was soon returned in due form. Miss Bennet’s pleasing
+      manners grew on the goodwill of Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley; and
+      though the mother was found to be intolerable, and the younger
+      sisters not worth speaking to, a wish of being better acquainted
+      with _them_ was expressed towards the two eldest. By Jane, this
+      attention was received with the greatest pleasure, but Elizabeth
+      still saw superciliousness in their treatment of everybody,
+      hardly excepting even her sister, and could not like them; though
+      their kindness to Jane, such as it was, had a value as arising in
+      all probability from the influence of their brother’s admiration.
+      It was generally evident whenever they met, that he _did_ admire
+      her and to _her_ it was equally evident that Jane was yielding to
+      the preference which she had begun to entertain for him from the
+      first, and was in a way to be very much in love; but she
+      considered with pleasure that it was not likely to be discovered
+      by the world in general, since Jane united, with great strength
+      of feeling, a composure of temper and a uniform cheerfulness of
+      manner which would guard her from the suspicions of the
+      impertinent. She mentioned this to her friend Miss Lucas.
+
+      “It may perhaps be pleasant,” replied Charlotte, “to be able to
+      impose on the public in such a case; but it is sometimes a
+      disadvantage to be so very guarded. If a woman conceals her
+      affection with the same skill from the object of it, she may lose
+      the opportunity of fixing him; and it will then be but poor
+      consolation to believe the world equally in the dark. There is so
+      much of gratitude or vanity in almost every attachment, that it
+      is not safe to leave any to itself. We can all _begin_ freely—a
+      slight preference is natural enough; but there are very few of us
+      who have heart enough to be really in love without encouragement.
+      In nine cases out of ten a woman had better show _more_ affection
+      than she feels. Bingley likes your sister undoubtedly; but he may
+      never do more than like her, if she does not help him on.”
+
+      “But she does help him on, as much as her nature will allow. If
+      _I_ can perceive her regard for him, he must be a simpleton,
+      indeed, not to discover it too.”
+
+      “Remember, Eliza, that he does not know Jane’s disposition as you
+      do.”
+
+      “But if a woman is partial to a man, and does not endeavour to
+      conceal it, he must find it out.”
+
+      “Perhaps he must, if he sees enough of her. But, though Bingley
+      and Jane meet tolerably often, it is never for many hours
+      together; and, as they always see each other in large mixed
+      parties, it is impossible that every moment should be employed in
+      conversing together. Jane should therefore make the most of every
+      half-hour in which she can command his attention. When she is
+      secure of him, there will be more leisure for falling in love as
+      much as she chooses.”
+
+      “Your plan is a good one,” replied Elizabeth, “where nothing is
+      in question but the desire of being well married, and if I were
+      determined to get a rich husband, or any husband, I dare say I
+      should adopt it. But these are not Jane’s feelings; she is not
+      acting by design. As yet, she cannot even be certain of the
+      degree of her own regard nor of its reasonableness. She has known
+      him only a fortnight. She danced four dances with him at Meryton;
+      she saw him one morning at his own house, and has since dined
+      with him in company four times. This is not quite enough to make
+      her understand his character.”
+
+      “Not as you represent it. Had she merely _dined_ with him, she
+      might only have discovered whether he had a good appetite; but
+      you must remember that four evenings have also been spent
+      together—and four evenings may do a great deal.”
+
+      “Yes; these four evenings have enabled them to ascertain that
+      they both like Vingt-un better than Commerce; but with respect to
+      any other leading characteristic, I do not imagine that much has
+      been unfolded.”
+
+      “Well,” said Charlotte, “I wish Jane success with all my heart;
+      and if she were married to him to-morrow, I should think she had
+      as good a chance of happiness as if she were to be studying his
+      character for a twelvemonth. Happiness in marriage is entirely a
+      matter of chance. If the dispositions of the parties are ever so
+      well known to each other or ever so similar beforehand, it does
+      not advance their felicity in the least. They always continue to
+      grow sufficiently unlike afterwards to have their share of
+      vexation; and it is better to know as little as possible of the
+      defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life.”
+
+      “You make me laugh, Charlotte; but it is not sound. You know it
+      is not sound, and that you would never act in this way yourself.”
+
+      Occupied in observing Mr. Bingley’s attentions to her sister,
+      Elizabeth was far from suspecting that she was herself becoming
+      an object of some interest in the eyes of his friend. Mr. Darcy
+      had at first scarcely allowed her to be pretty; he had looked at
+      her without admiration at the ball; and when they next met, he
+      looked at her only to criticise. But no sooner had he made it
+      clear to himself and his friends that she hardly had a good
+      feature in her face, than he began to find it was rendered
+      uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark
+      eyes. To this discovery succeeded some others equally mortifying.
+      Though he had detected with a critical eye more than one failure
+      of perfect symmetry in her form, he was forced to acknowledge her
+      figure to be light and pleasing; and in spite of his asserting
+      that her manners were not those of the fashionable world, he was
+      caught by their easy playfulness. Of this she was perfectly
+      unaware; to her he was only the man who made himself agreeable
+      nowhere, and who had not thought her handsome enough to dance
+      with.
+
+      He began to wish to know more of her, and as a step towards
+      conversing with her himself, attended to her conversation with
+      others. His doing so drew her notice. It was at Sir William
+      Lucas’s, where a large party were assembled.
+
+      “What does Mr. Darcy mean,” said she to Charlotte, “by listening
+      to my conversation with Colonel Forster?”
+
+      “That is a question which Mr. Darcy only can answer.”
+
+      “But if he does it any more I shall certainly let him know that I
+      see what he is about. He has a very satirical eye, and if I do
+      not begin by being impertinent myself, I shall soon grow afraid
+      of him.”
+
+      On his approaching them soon afterwards, though without seeming
+      to have any intention of speaking, Miss Lucas defied her friend
+      to mention such a subject to him; which immediately provoking
+      Elizabeth to do it, she turned to him and said:
+
+      “Did you not think, Mr. Darcy, that I expressed myself uncommonly
+      well just now, when I was teasing Colonel Forster to give us a
+      ball at Meryton?”
+
+      “With great energy; but it is always a subject which makes a lady
+      energetic.”
+
+      “You are severe on us.”
+
+      “It will be _her_ turn soon to be teased,” said Miss Lucas. “I am
+      going to open the instrument, Eliza, and you know what follows.”
+
+      “You are a very strange creature by way of a friend!—always
+      wanting me to play and sing before anybody and everybody! If my
+      vanity had taken a musical turn, you would have been invaluable;
+      but as it is, I would really rather not sit down before those who
+      must be in the habit of hearing the very best performers.” On
+      Miss Lucas’s persevering, however, she added, “Very well, if it
+      must be so, it must.” And gravely glancing at Mr. Darcy, “There
+      is a fine old saying, which everybody here is of course familiar
+      with: ‘Keep your breath to cool your porridge’; and I shall keep
+      mine to swell my song.”
+
+      Her performance was pleasing, though by no means capital. After a
+      song or two, and before she could reply to the entreaties of
+      several that she would sing again, she was eagerly succeeded at
+      the instrument by her sister Mary, who having, in consequence of
+      being the only plain one in the family, worked hard for knowledge
+      and accomplishments, was always impatient for display.
+
+      Mary had neither genius nor taste; and though vanity had given
+      her application, it had given her likewise a pedantic air and
+      conceited manner, which would have injured a higher degree of
+      excellence than she had reached. Elizabeth, easy and unaffected,
+      had been listened to with much more pleasure, though not playing
+      half so well; and Mary, at the end of a long concerto, was glad
+      to purchase praise and gratitude by Scotch and Irish airs, at the
+      request of her younger sisters, who, with some of the Lucases,
+      and two or three officers, joined eagerly in dancing at one end
+      of the room.
+
+      Mr. Darcy stood near them in silent indignation at such a mode of
+      passing the evening, to the exclusion of all conversation, and
+      was too much engrossed by his thoughts to perceive that Sir
+      William Lucas was his neighbour, till Sir William thus began:
+
+      “What a charming amusement for young people this is, Mr. Darcy!
+      There is nothing like dancing after all. I consider it as one of
+      the first refinements of polished society.”
+
+      “Certainly, sir; and it has the advantage also of being in vogue
+      amongst the less polished societies of the world. Every savage
+      can dance.”
+
+      Sir William only smiled. “Your friend performs delightfully,” he
+      continued after a pause, on seeing Bingley join the group; “and I
+      doubt not that you are an adept in the science yourself, Mr.
+      Darcy.”
+
+      “You saw me dance at Meryton, I believe, sir.”
+
+      “Yes, indeed, and received no inconsiderable pleasure from the
+      sight. Do you often dance at St. James’s?”
+
+      “Never, sir.”
+
+      “Do you not think it would be a proper compliment to the place?”
+
+      “It is a compliment which I never pay to any place if I can avoid
+      it.”
+
+      “You have a house in town, I conclude?”
+
+      Mr. Darcy bowed.
+
+      “I had once had some thought of fixing in town myself—for I am
+      fond of superior society; but I did not feel quite certain that
+      the air of London would agree with Lady Lucas.”
+
+      He paused in hopes of an answer; but his companion was not
+      disposed to make any; and Elizabeth at that instant moving
+      towards them, he was struck with the action of doing a very
+      gallant thing, and called out to her:
+
+      “My dear Miss Eliza, why are you not dancing? Mr. Darcy, you must
+      allow me to present this young lady to you as a very desirable
+      partner. You cannot refuse to dance, I am sure when so much
+      beauty is before you.” And, taking her hand, he would have given
+      it to Mr. Darcy who, though extremely surprised, was not
+      unwilling to receive it, when she instantly drew back, and said
+      with some discomposure to Sir William:
+
+      “Indeed, sir, I have not the least intention of dancing. I
+      entreat you not to suppose that I moved this way in order to beg
+      for a partner.”
+
+      Mr. Darcy, with grave propriety, requested to be allowed the
+      honour of her hand, but in vain. Elizabeth was determined; nor
+      did Sir William at all shake her purpose by his attempt at
+      persuasion.
+
+      “You excel so much in the dance, Miss Eliza, that it is cruel to
+      deny me the happiness of seeing you; and though this gentleman
+      dislikes the amusement in general, he can have no objection, I am
+      sure, to oblige us for one half-hour.”
+
+      “Mr. Darcy is all politeness,” said Elizabeth, smiling.
+
+      “He is, indeed; but, considering the inducement, my dear Miss
+      Eliza, we cannot wonder at his complaisance—for who would object
+      to such a partner?”
+
+      Elizabeth looked archly, and turned away. Her resistance had not
+      injured her with the gentleman, and he was thinking of her with
+      some complacency, when thus accosted by Miss Bingley:
+
+      “I can guess the subject of your reverie.”
+
+      “I should imagine not.”
+
+      “You are considering how insupportable it would be to pass many
+      evenings in this manner—in such society; and indeed I am quite of
+      your opinion. I was never more annoyed! The insipidity, and yet
+      the noise—the nothingness, and yet the self-importance of all
+      those people! What would I give to hear your strictures on them!”
+
+      “Your conjecture is totally wrong, I assure you. My mind was more
+      agreeably engaged. I have been meditating on the very great
+      pleasure which a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty woman
+      can bestow.”
+
+      Miss Bingley immediately fixed her eyes on his face, and desired
+      he would tell her what lady had the credit of inspiring such
+      reflections. Mr. Darcy replied with great intrepidity:
+
+      “Miss Elizabeth Bennet.”
+
+      “Miss Elizabeth Bennet!” repeated Miss Bingley. “I am all
+      astonishment. How long has she been such a favourite?—and pray,
+      when am I to wish you joy?”
+
+      “That is exactly the question which I expected you to ask. A
+      lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to
+      love, from love to matrimony, in a moment. I knew you would be
+      wishing me joy.”
+
+      “Nay, if you are serious about it, I shall consider the matter is
+      absolutely settled. You will be having a charming mother-in-law,
+      indeed; and, of course, she will always be at Pemberley with
+      you.”
+
+      He listened to her with perfect indifference while she chose to
+      entertain herself in this manner; and as his composure convinced
+      her that all was safe, her wit flowed long.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 7
+
+      Mr. Bennet’s property consisted almost entirely in an estate of
+      two thousand a year, which, unfortunately for his daughters, was
+      entailed, in default of heirs male, on a distant relation; and
+      their mother’s fortune, though ample for her situation in life,
+      could but ill supply the deficiency of his. Her father had been
+      an attorney in Meryton, and had left her four thousand pounds.
+
+      She had a sister married to a Mr. Phillips, who had been a clerk
+      to their father and succeeded him in the business, and a brother
+      settled in London in a respectable line of trade.
+
+      The village of Longbourn was only one mile from Meryton; a most
+      convenient distance for the young ladies, who were usually
+      tempted thither three or four times a week, to pay their duty to
+      their aunt and to a milliner’s shop just over the way. The two
+      youngest of the family, Catherine and Lydia, were particularly
+      frequent in these attentions; their minds were more vacant than
+      their sisters’, and when nothing better offered, a walk to
+      Meryton was necessary to amuse their morning hours and furnish
+      conversation for the evening; and however bare of news the
+      country in general might be, they always contrived to learn some
+      from their aunt. At present, indeed, they were well supplied both
+      with news and happiness by the recent arrival of a militia
+      regiment in the neighbourhood; it was to remain the whole winter,
+      and Meryton was the headquarters.
+
+      Their visits to Mrs. Phillips were now productive of the most
+      interesting intelligence. Every day added something to their
+      knowledge of the officers’ names and connections. Their lodgings
+      were not long a secret, and at length they began to know the
+      officers themselves. Mr. Phillips visited them all, and this
+      opened to his nieces a store of felicity unknown before. They
+      could talk of nothing but officers; and Mr. Bingley’s large
+      fortune, the mention of which gave animation to their mother, was
+      worthless in their eyes when opposed to the regimentals of an
+      ensign.
+
+      After listening one morning to their effusions on this subject,
+      Mr. Bennet coolly observed:
+
+      “From all that I can collect by your manner of talking, you must
+      be two of the silliest girls in the country. I have suspected it
+      some time, but I am now convinced.”
+
+      Catherine was disconcerted, and made no answer; but Lydia, with
+      perfect indifference, continued to express her admiration of
+      Captain Carter, and her hope of seeing him in the course of the
+      day, as he was going the next morning to London.
+
+      “I am astonished, my dear,” said Mrs. Bennet, “that you should be
+      so ready to think your own children silly. If I wished to think
+      slightingly of anybody’s children, it should not be of my own,
+      however.”
+
+      “If my children are silly, I must hope to be always sensible of
+      it.”
+
+      “Yes—but as it happens, they are all of them very clever.”
+
+      “This is the only point, I flatter myself, on which we do not
+      agree. I had hoped that our sentiments coincided in every
+      particular, but I must so far differ from you as to think our two
+      youngest daughters uncommonly foolish.”
+
+      “My dear Mr. Bennet, you must not expect such girls to have the
+      sense of their father and mother. When they get to our age, I
+      dare say they will not think about officers any more than we do.
+      I remember the time when I liked a red coat myself very well—and,
+      indeed, so I do still at my heart; and if a smart young colonel,
+      with five or six thousand a year, should want one of my girls I
+      shall not say nay to him; and I thought Colonel Forster looked
+      very becoming the other night at Sir William’s in his
+      regimentals.”
+
+      “Mamma,” cried Lydia, “my aunt says that Colonel Forster and
+      Captain Carter do not go so often to Miss Watson’s as they did
+      when they first came; she sees them now very often standing in
+      Clarke’s library.”
+
+      Mrs. Bennet was prevented replying by the entrance of the footman
+      with a note for Miss Bennet; it came from Netherfield, and the
+      servant waited for an answer. Mrs. Bennet’s eyes sparkled with
+      pleasure, and she was eagerly calling out, while her daughter
+      read,
+
+      “Well, Jane, who is it from? What is it about? What does he say?
+      Well, Jane, make haste and tell us; make haste, my love.”
+
+      “It is from Miss Bingley,” said Jane, and then read it aloud.
+
+      “MY DEAR FRIEND,—
+      “If you are not so compassionate as to dine to-day with Louisa
+      and me, we shall be in danger of hating each other for the rest
+      of our lives, for a whole day’s _tête-à-tête_ between two women
+      can never end without a quarrel. Come as soon as you can on
+      receipt of this. My brother and the gentlemen are to dine with
+      the officers.—Yours ever,
+
+      “CAROLINE BINGLEY”
+
+      “With the officers!” cried Lydia. “I wonder my aunt did not tell
+      us of _that_.”
+
+      “Dining out,” said Mrs. Bennet, “that is very unlucky.”
+
+      “Can I have the carriage?” said Jane.
+
+      “No, my dear, you had better go on horseback, because it seems
+      likely to rain; and then you must stay all night.”
+
+      “That would be a good scheme,” said Elizabeth, “if you were sure
+      that they would not offer to send her home.”
+
+      “Oh! but the gentlemen will have Mr. Bingley’s chaise to go to
+      Meryton, and the Hursts have no horses to theirs.”
+
+      “I had much rather go in the coach.”
+
+      “But, my dear, your father cannot spare the horses, I am sure.
+      They are wanted in the farm, Mr. Bennet, are they not?”
+
+      “They are wanted in the farm much oftener than I can get them.”
+
+      “But if you have got them to-day,” said Elizabeth, “my mother’s
+      purpose will be answered.”
+
+      She did at last extort from her father an acknowledgment that the
+      horses were engaged. Jane was therefore obliged to go on
+      horseback, and her mother attended her to the door with many
+      cheerful prognostics of a bad day. Her hopes were answered; Jane
+      had not been gone long before it rained hard. Her sisters were
+      uneasy for her, but her mother was delighted. The rain continued
+      the whole evening without intermission; Jane certainly could not
+      come back.
+
+      “This was a lucky idea of mine, indeed!” said Mrs. Bennet more
+      than once, as if the credit of making it rain were all her own.
+      Till the next morning, however, she was not aware of all the
+      felicity of her contrivance. Breakfast was scarcely over when a
+      servant from Netherfield brought the following note for
+      Elizabeth:
+
+      “MY DEAREST LIZZY,—
+      “I find myself very unwell this morning, which, I suppose, is to
+      be imputed to my getting wet through yesterday. My kind friends
+      will not hear of my returning till I am better. They insist also
+      on my seeing Mr. Jones—therefore do not be alarmed if you should
+      hear of his having been to me—and, excepting a sore throat and
+      headache, there is not much the matter with me.—Yours, etc.”
+
+      “Well, my dear,” said Mr. Bennet, when Elizabeth had read the
+      note aloud, “if your daughter should have a dangerous fit of
+      illness—if she should die, it would be a comfort to know that it
+      was all in pursuit of Mr. Bingley, and under your orders.”
+
+      “Oh! I am not afraid of her dying. People do not die of little
+      trifling colds. She will be taken good care of. As long as she
+      stays there, it is all very well. I would go and see her if I
+      could have the carriage.”
+
+      Elizabeth, feeling really anxious, was determined to go to her,
+      though the carriage was not to be had; and as she was no
+      horsewoman, walking was her only alternative. She declared her
+      resolution.
+
+      “How can you be so silly,” cried her mother, “as to think of such
+      a thing, in all this dirt! You will not be fit to be seen when
+      you get there.”
+
+      “I shall be very fit to see Jane—which is all I want.”
+
+      “Is this a hint to me, Lizzy,” said her father, “to send for the
+      horses?”
+
+      “No, indeed, I do not wish to avoid the walk. The distance is
+      nothing when one has a motive; only three miles. I shall be back
+      by dinner.”
+
+      “I admire the activity of your benevolence,” observed Mary, “but
+      every impulse of feeling should be guided by reason; and, in my
+      opinion, exertion should always be in proportion to what is
+      required.”
+
+      “We will go as far as Meryton with you,” said Catherine and
+      Lydia. Elizabeth accepted their company, and the three young
+      ladies set off together.
+
+      “If we make haste,” said Lydia, as they walked along, “perhaps we
+      may see something of Captain Carter before he goes.”
+
+      In Meryton they parted; the two youngest repaired to the lodgings
+      of one of the officers’ wives, and Elizabeth continued her walk
+      alone, crossing field after field at a quick pace, jumping over
+      stiles and springing over puddles with impatient activity, and
+      finding herself at last within view of the house, with weary
+      ankles, dirty stockings, and a face glowing with the warmth of
+      exercise.
+
+      She was shown into the breakfast-parlour, where all but Jane were
+      assembled, and where her appearance created a great deal of
+      surprise. That she should have walked three miles so early in the
+      day, in such dirty weather, and by herself, was almost incredible
+      to Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley; and Elizabeth was convinced that
+      they held her in contempt for it. She was received, however, very
+      politely by them; and in their brother’s manners there was
+      something better than politeness; there was good humour and
+      kindness. Mr. Darcy said very little, and Mr. Hurst nothing at
+      all. The former was divided between admiration of the brilliancy
+      which exercise had given to her complexion, and doubt as to the
+      occasion’s justifying her coming so far alone. The latter was
+      thinking only of his breakfast.
+
+      Her inquiries after her sister were not very favourably answered.
+      Miss Bennet had slept ill, and though up, was very feverish, and
+      not well enough to leave her room. Elizabeth was glad to be taken
+      to her immediately; and Jane, who had only been withheld by the
+      fear of giving alarm or inconvenience from expressing in her note
+      how much she longed for such a visit, was delighted at her
+      entrance. She was not equal, however, to much conversation, and
+      when Miss Bingley left them together, could attempt little
+      besides expressions of gratitude for the extraordinary kindness
+      she was treated with. Elizabeth silently attended her.
+
+      When breakfast was over they were joined by the sisters; and
+      Elizabeth began to like them herself, when she saw how much
+      affection and solicitude they showed for Jane. The apothecary
+      came, and having examined his patient, said, as might be
+      supposed, that she had caught a violent cold, and that they must
+      endeavour to get the better of it; advised her to return to bed,
+      and promised her some draughts. The advice was followed readily,
+      for the feverish symptoms increased, and her head ached acutely.
+      Elizabeth did not quit her room for a moment; nor were the other
+      ladies often absent; the gentlemen being out, they had, in fact,
+      nothing to do elsewhere.
+
+      When the clock struck three, Elizabeth felt that she must go, and
+      very unwillingly said so. Miss Bingley offered her the carriage,
+      and she only wanted a little pressing to accept it, when Jane
+      testified such concern in parting with her, that Miss Bingley was
+      obliged to convert the offer of the chaise to an invitation to
+      remain at Netherfield for the present. Elizabeth most thankfully
+      consented, and a servant was dispatched to Longbourn to acquaint
+      the family with her stay and bring back a supply of clothes.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 8
+
+      At five o’clock the two ladies retired to dress, and at half-past
+      six Elizabeth was summoned to dinner. To the civil inquiries
+      which then poured in, and amongst which she had the pleasure of
+      distinguishing the much superior solicitude of Mr. Bingley’s, she
+      could not make a very favourable answer. Jane was by no means
+      better. The sisters, on hearing this, repeated three or four
+      times how much they were grieved, how shocking it was to have a
+      bad cold, and how excessively they disliked being ill themselves;
+      and then thought no more of the matter: and their indifference
+      towards Jane when not immediately before them restored Elizabeth
+      to the enjoyment of all her former dislike.
+
+      Their brother, indeed, was the only one of the party whom she
+      could regard with any complacency. His anxiety for Jane was
+      evident, and his attentions to herself most pleasing, and they
+      prevented her feeling herself so much an intruder as she believed
+      she was considered by the others. She had very little notice from
+      any but him. Miss Bingley was engrossed by Mr. Darcy, her sister
+      scarcely less so; and as for Mr. Hurst, by whom Elizabeth sat, he
+      was an indolent man, who lived only to eat, drink, and play at
+      cards; who, when he found her to prefer a plain dish to a ragout,
+      had nothing to say to her.
+
+      When dinner was over, she returned directly to Jane, and Miss
+      Bingley began abusing her as soon as she was out of the room. Her
+      manners were pronounced to be very bad indeed, a mixture of pride
+      and impertinence; she had no conversation, no style, no beauty.
+      Mrs. Hurst thought the same, and added:
+
+      “She has nothing, in short, to recommend her, but being an
+      excellent walker. I shall never forget her appearance this
+      morning. She really looked almost wild.”
+
+      “She did, indeed, Louisa. I could hardly keep my countenance.
+      Very nonsensical to come at all! Why must _she_ be scampering
+      about the country, because her sister had a cold? Her hair, so
+      untidy, so blowsy!”
+
+      “Yes, and her petticoat; I hope you saw her petticoat, six inches
+      deep in mud, I am absolutely certain; and the gown which had been
+      let down to hide it not doing its office.”
+
+      “Your picture may be very exact, Louisa,” said Bingley; “but this
+      was all lost upon me. I thought Miss Elizabeth Bennet looked
+      remarkably well when she came into the room this morning. Her
+      dirty petticoat quite escaped my notice.”
+
+      “_You_ observed it, Mr. Darcy, I am sure,” said Miss Bingley;
+      “and I am inclined to think that you would not wish to see _your
+      sister_ make such an exhibition.”
+
+      “Certainly not.”
+
+      “To walk three miles, or four miles, or five miles, or whatever
+      it is, above her ankles in dirt, and alone, quite alone! What
+      could she mean by it? It seems to me to show an abominable sort
+      of conceited independence, a most country-town indifference to
+      decorum.”
+
+      “It shows an affection for her sister that is very pleasing,”
+      said Bingley.
+
+      “I am afraid, Mr. Darcy,” observed Miss Bingley in a half
+      whisper, “that this adventure has rather affected your admiration
+      of her fine eyes.”
+
+      “Not at all,” he replied; “they were brightened by the exercise.”
+      A short pause followed this speech, and Mrs. Hurst began again:
+
+      “I have an excessive regard for Miss Jane Bennet, she is really a
+      very sweet girl, and I wish with all my heart she were well
+      settled. But with such a father and mother, and such low
+      connections, I am afraid there is no chance of it.”
+
+      “I think I have heard you say that their uncle is an attorney in
+      Meryton.”
+
+      “Yes; and they have another, who lives somewhere near Cheapside.”
+
+      “That is capital,” added her sister, and they both laughed
+      heartily.
+
+      “If they had uncles enough to fill _all_ Cheapside,” cried
+      Bingley, “it would not make them one jot less agreeable.”
+
+      “But it must very materially lessen their chance of marrying men
+      of any consideration in the world,” replied Darcy.
+
+      To this speech Bingley made no answer; but his sisters gave it
+      their hearty assent, and indulged their mirth for some time at
+      the expense of their dear friend’s vulgar relations.
+
+      With a renewal of tenderness, however, they returned to her room
+      on leaving the dining-parlour, and sat with her till summoned to
+      coffee. She was still very poorly, and Elizabeth would not quit
+      her at all, till late in the evening, when she had the comfort of
+      seeing her sleep, and when it seemed to her rather right than
+      pleasant that she should go downstairs herself. On entering the
+      drawing-room she found the whole party at loo, and was
+      immediately invited to join them; but suspecting them to be
+      playing high she declined it, and making her sister the excuse,
+      said she would amuse herself for the short time she could stay
+      below, with a book. Mr. Hurst looked at her with astonishment.
+
+      “Do you prefer reading to cards?” said he; “that is rather
+      singular.”
+
+      “Miss Eliza Bennet,” said Miss Bingley, “despises cards. She is a
+      great reader, and has no pleasure in anything else.”
+
+      “I deserve neither such praise nor such censure,” cried
+      Elizabeth; “I am _not_ a great reader, and I have pleasure in
+      many things.”
+
+      “In nursing your sister I am sure you have pleasure,” said
+      Bingley; “and I hope it will be soon increased by seeing her
+      quite well.”
+
+      Elizabeth thanked him from her heart, and then walked towards the
+      table where a few books were lying. He immediately offered to
+      fetch her others—all that his library afforded.
+
+      “And I wish my collection were larger for your benefit and my own
+      credit; but I am an idle fellow, and though I have not many, I
+      have more than I ever looked into.”
+
+      Elizabeth assured him that she could suit herself perfectly with
+      those in the room.
+
+      “I am astonished,” said Miss Bingley, “that my father should have
+      left so small a collection of books. What a delightful library
+      you have at Pemberley, Mr. Darcy!”
+
+      “It ought to be good,” he replied, “it has been the work of many
+      generations.”
+
+      “And then you have added so much to it yourself, you are always
+      buying books.”
+
+      “I cannot comprehend the neglect of a family library in such days
+      as these.”
+
+      “Neglect! I am sure you neglect nothing that can add to the
+      beauties of that noble place. Charles, when you build _your_
+      house, I wish it may be half as delightful as Pemberley.”
+
+      “I wish it may.”
+
+      “But I would really advise you to make your purchase in that
+      neighbourhood, and take Pemberley for a kind of model. There is
+      not a finer county in England than Derbyshire.”
+
+      “With all my heart; I will buy Pemberley itself if Darcy will
+      sell it.”
+
+      “I am talking of possibilities, Charles.”
+
+      “Upon my word, Caroline, I should think it more possible to get
+      Pemberley by purchase than by imitation.”
+
+      Elizabeth was so much caught with what passed, as to leave her
+      very little attention for her book; and soon laying it wholly
+      aside, she drew near the card-table, and stationed herself
+      between Mr. Bingley and his eldest sister, to observe the game.
+
+      “Is Miss Darcy much grown since the spring?” said Miss Bingley;
+      “will she be as tall as I am?”
+
+      “I think she will. She is now about Miss Elizabeth Bennet’s
+      height, or rather taller.”
+
+      “How I long to see her again! I never met with anybody who
+      delighted me so much. Such a countenance, such manners! And so
+      extremely accomplished for her age! Her performance on the
+      pianoforte is exquisite.”
+
+      “It is amazing to me,” said Bingley, “how young ladies can have
+      patience to be so very accomplished as they all are.”
+
+      “All young ladies accomplished! My dear Charles, what do you
+      mean?”
+
+      “Yes, all of them, I think. They all paint tables, cover screens,
+      and net purses. I scarcely know anyone who cannot do all this,
+      and I am sure I never heard a young lady spoken of for the first
+      time, without being informed that she was very accomplished.”
+
+      “Your list of the common extent of accomplishments,” said Darcy,
+      “has too much truth. The word is applied to many a woman who
+      deserves it no otherwise than by netting a purse or covering a
+      screen. But I am very far from agreeing with you in your
+      estimation of ladies in general. I cannot boast of knowing more
+      than half-a-dozen, in the whole range of my acquaintance, that
+      are really accomplished.”
+
+      “Nor I, I am sure,” said Miss Bingley.
+
+      “Then,” observed Elizabeth, “you must comprehend a great deal in
+      your idea of an accomplished woman.”
+
+      “Yes, I do comprehend a great deal in it.”
+
+      “Oh! certainly,” cried his faithful assistant, “no one can be
+      really esteemed accomplished who does not greatly surpass what is
+      usually met with. A woman must have a thorough knowledge of
+      music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to
+      deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a
+      certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of
+      her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but
+      half-deserved.”
+
+      “All this she must possess,” added Darcy, “and to all this she
+      must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of
+      her mind by extensive reading.”
+
+      “I am no longer surprised at your knowing _only_ six accomplished
+      women. I rather wonder now at your knowing _any_.”
+
+      “Are you so severe upon your own sex as to doubt the possibility
+      of all this?”
+
+      “_I_ never saw such a woman. _I_ never saw such capacity, and
+      taste, and application, and elegance, as you describe united.”
+
+      Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley both cried out against the injustice
+      of her implied doubt, and were both protesting that they knew
+      many women who answered this description, when Mr. Hurst called
+      them to order, with bitter complaints of their inattention to
+      what was going forward. As all conversation was thereby at an
+      end, Elizabeth soon afterwards left the room.
+
+      “Elizabeth Bennet,” said Miss Bingley, when the door was closed
+      on her, “is one of those young ladies who seek to recommend
+      themselves to the other sex by undervaluing their own; and with
+      many men, I dare say, it succeeds. But, in my opinion, it is a
+      paltry device, a very mean art.”
+
+      “Undoubtedly,” replied Darcy, to whom this remark was chiefly
+      addressed, “there is a meanness in _all_ the arts which ladies
+      sometimes condescend to employ for captivation. Whatever bears
+      affinity to cunning is despicable.”
+
+      Miss Bingley was not so entirely satisfied with this reply as to
+      continue the subject.
+
+      Elizabeth joined them again only to say that her sister was
+      worse, and that she could not leave her. Bingley urged Mr. Jones
+      being sent for immediately; while his sisters, convinced that no
+      country advice could be of any service, recommended an express to
+      town for one of the most eminent physicians. This she would not
+      hear of; but she was not so unwilling to comply with their
+      brother’s proposal; and it was settled that Mr. Jones should be
+      sent for early in the morning, if Miss Bennet were not decidedly
+      better. Bingley was quite uncomfortable; his sisters declared
+      that they were miserable. They solaced their wretchedness,
+      however, by duets after supper, while he could find no better
+      relief to his feelings than by giving his housekeeper directions
+      that every attention might be paid to the sick lady and her
+      sister.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 9
+
+      Elizabeth passed the chief of the night in her sister’s room, and
+      in the morning had the pleasure of being able to send a tolerable
+      answer to the inquiries which she very early received from Mr.
+      Bingley by a housemaid, and some time afterwards from the two
+      elegant ladies who waited on his sisters. In spite of this
+      amendment, however, she requested to have a note sent to
+      Longbourn, desiring her mother to visit Jane, and form her own
+      judgement of her situation. The note was immediately dispatched,
+      and its contents as quickly complied with. Mrs. Bennet,
+      accompanied by her two youngest girls, reached Netherfield soon
+      after the family breakfast.
+
+      Had she found Jane in any apparent danger, Mrs. Bennet would have
+      been very miserable; but being satisfied on seeing her that her
+      illness was not alarming, she had no wish of her recovering
+      immediately, as her restoration to health would probably remove
+      her from Netherfield. She would not listen, therefore, to her
+      daughter’s proposal of being carried home; neither did the
+      apothecary, who arrived about the same time, think it at all
+      advisable. After sitting a little while with Jane, on Miss
+      Bingley’s appearance and invitation, the mother and three
+      daughters all attended her into the breakfast parlour. Bingley
+      met them with hopes that Mrs. Bennet had not found Miss Bennet
+      worse than she expected.
+
+      “Indeed I have, sir,” was her answer. “She is a great deal too
+      ill to be moved. Mr. Jones says we must not think of moving her.
+      We must trespass a little longer on your kindness.”
+
+      “Removed!” cried Bingley. “It must not be thought of. My sister,
+      I am sure, will not hear of her removal.”
+
+      “You may depend upon it, Madam,” said Miss Bingley, with cold
+      civility, “that Miss Bennet will receive every possible attention
+      while she remains with us.”
+
+      Mrs. Bennet was profuse in her acknowledgments.
+
+      “I am sure,” she added, “if it was not for such good friends I do
+      not know what would become of her, for she is very ill indeed,
+      and suffers a vast deal, though with the greatest patience in the
+      world, which is always the way with her, for she has, without
+      exception, the sweetest temper I have ever met with. I often tell
+      my other girls they are nothing to _her_. You have a sweet room
+      here, Mr. Bingley, and a charming prospect over the gravel walk.
+      I do not know a place in the country that is equal to
+      Netherfield. You will not think of quitting it in a hurry, I
+      hope, though you have but a short lease.”
+
+      “Whatever I do is done in a hurry,” replied he; “and therefore if
+      I should resolve to quit Netherfield, I should probably be off in
+      five minutes. At present, however, I consider myself as quite
+      fixed here.”
+
+      “That is exactly what I should have supposed of you,” said
+      Elizabeth.
+
+      “You begin to comprehend me, do you?” cried he, turning towards
+      her.
+
+      “Oh! yes—I understand you perfectly.”
+
+      “I wish I might take this for a compliment; but to be so easily
+      seen through I am afraid is pitiful.”
+
+      “That is as it happens. It does not follow that a deep, intricate
+      character is more or less estimable than such a one as yours.”
+
+      “Lizzy,” cried her mother, “remember where you are, and do not
+      run on in the wild manner that you are suffered to do at home.”
+
+      “I did not know before,” continued Bingley immediately, “that you
+      were a studier of character. It must be an amusing study.”
+
+      “Yes, but intricate characters are the _most_ amusing. They have
+      at least that advantage.”
+
+      “The country,” said Darcy, “can in general supply but a few
+      subjects for such a study. In a country neighbourhood you move in
+      a very confined and unvarying society.”
+
+      “But people themselves alter so much, that there is something new
+      to be observed in them for ever.”
+
+      “Yes, indeed,” cried Mrs. Bennet, offended by his manner of
+      mentioning a country neighbourhood. “I assure you there is quite
+      as much of _that_ going on in the country as in town.”
+
+      Everybody was surprised, and Darcy, after looking at her for a
+      moment, turned silently away. Mrs. Bennet, who fancied she had
+      gained a complete victory over him, continued her triumph.
+
+      “I cannot see that London has any great advantage over the
+      country, for my part, except the shops and public places. The
+      country is a vast deal pleasanter, is it not, Mr. Bingley?”
+
+      “When I am in the country,” he replied, “I never wish to leave
+      it; and when I am in town it is pretty much the same. They have
+      each their advantages, and I can be equally happy in either.”
+
+      “Aye—that is because you have the right disposition. But that
+      gentleman,” looking at Darcy, “seemed to think the country was
+      nothing at all.”
+
+      “Indeed, Mamma, you are mistaken,” said Elizabeth, blushing for
+      her mother. “You quite mistook Mr. Darcy. He only meant that
+      there was not such a variety of people to be met with in the
+      country as in the town, which you must acknowledge to be true.”
+
+      “Certainly, my dear, nobody said there were; but as to not
+      meeting with many people in this neighbourhood, I believe there
+      are few neighbourhoods larger. I know we dine with
+      four-and-twenty families.”
+
+      Nothing but concern for Elizabeth could enable Bingley to keep
+      his countenance. His sister was less delicate, and directed her
+      eyes towards Mr. Darcy with a very expressive smile. Elizabeth,
+      for the sake of saying something that might turn her mother’s
+      thoughts, now asked her if Charlotte Lucas had been at Longbourn
+      since _her_ coming away.
+
+      “Yes, she called yesterday with her father. What an agreeable man
+      Sir William is, Mr. Bingley, is not he? So much the man of
+      fashion! So genteel and easy! He has always something to say to
+      everybody. _That_ is my idea of good breeding; and those persons
+      who fancy themselves very important, and never open their mouths,
+      quite mistake the matter.”
+
+      “Did Charlotte dine with you?”
+
+      “No, she would go home. I fancy she was wanted about the
+      mince-pies. For my part, Mr. Bingley, _I_ always keep servants
+      that can do their own work; _my_ daughters are brought up very
+      differently. But everybody is to judge for themselves, and the
+      Lucases are a very good sort of girls, I assure you. It is a pity
+      they are not handsome! Not that _I_ think Charlotte so _very_
+      plain—but then she is our particular friend.”
+
+      “She seems a very pleasant young woman.”
+
+      “Oh! dear, yes; but you must own she is very plain. Lady Lucas
+      herself has often said so, and envied me Jane’s beauty. I do not
+      like to boast of my own child, but to be sure, Jane—one does not
+      often see anybody better looking. It is what everybody says. I do
+      not trust my own partiality. When she was only fifteen, there was
+      a man at my brother Gardiner’s in town so much in love with her
+      that my sister-in-law was sure he would make her an offer before
+      we came away. But, however, he did not. Perhaps he thought her
+      too young. However, he wrote some verses on her, and very pretty
+      they were.”
+
+      “And so ended his affection,” said Elizabeth impatiently. “There
+      has been many a one, I fancy, overcome in the same way. I wonder
+      who first discovered the efficacy of poetry in driving away
+      love!”
+
+      “I have been used to consider poetry as the _food_ of love,” said
+      Darcy.
+
+      “Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Everything nourishes what
+      is strong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of
+      inclination, I am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it
+      entirely away.”
+
+      Darcy only smiled; and the general pause which ensued made
+      Elizabeth tremble lest her mother should be exposing herself
+      again. She longed to speak, but could think of nothing to say;
+      and after a short silence Mrs. Bennet began repeating her thanks
+      to Mr. Bingley for his kindness to Jane, with an apology for
+      troubling him also with Lizzy. Mr. Bingley was unaffectedly civil
+      in his answer, and forced his younger sister to be civil also,
+      and say what the occasion required. She performed her part indeed
+      without much graciousness, but Mrs. Bennet was satisfied, and
+      soon afterwards ordered her carriage. Upon this signal, the
+      youngest of her daughters put herself forward. The two girls had
+      been whispering to each other during the whole visit, and the
+      result of it was, that the youngest should tax Mr. Bingley with
+      having promised on his first coming into the country to give a
+      ball at Netherfield.
+
+      Lydia was a stout, well-grown girl of fifteen, with a fine
+      complexion and good-humoured countenance; a favourite with her
+      mother, whose affection had brought her into public at an early
+      age. She had high animal spirits, and a sort of natural
+      self-consequence, which the attention of the officers, to whom
+      her uncle’s good dinners, and her own easy manners recommended
+      her, had increased into assurance. She was very equal, therefore,
+      to address Mr. Bingley on the subject of the ball, and abruptly
+      reminded him of his promise; adding, that it would be the most
+      shameful thing in the world if he did not keep it. His answer to
+      this sudden attack was delightful to their mother’s ear:
+
+      “I am perfectly ready, I assure you, to keep my engagement; and
+      when your sister is recovered, you shall, if you please, name the
+      very day of the ball. But you would not wish to be dancing when
+      she is ill.”
+
+      Lydia declared herself satisfied. “Oh! yes—it would be much
+      better to wait till Jane was well, and by that time most likely
+      Captain Carter would be at Meryton again. And when you have given
+      _your_ ball,” she added, “I shall insist on their giving one
+      also. I shall tell Colonel Forster it will be quite a shame if he
+      does not.”
+
+      Mrs. Bennet and her daughters then departed, and Elizabeth
+      returned instantly to Jane, leaving her own and her relations’
+      behaviour to the remarks of the two ladies and Mr. Darcy; the
+      latter of whom, however, could not be prevailed on to join in
+      their censure of _her_, in spite of all Miss Bingley’s witticisms
+      on _fine eyes_.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 10
+
+      The day passed much as the day before had done. Mrs. Hurst and
+      Miss Bingley had spent some hours of the morning with the
+      invalid, who continued, though slowly, to mend; and in the
+      evening Elizabeth joined their party in the drawing-room. The
+      loo-table, however, did not appear. Mr. Darcy was writing, and
+      Miss Bingley, seated near him, was watching the progress of his
+      letter and repeatedly calling off his attention by messages to
+      his sister. Mr. Hurst and Mr. Bingley were at piquet, and Mrs.
+      Hurst was observing their game.
+
+      Elizabeth took up some needlework, and was sufficiently amused in
+      attending to what passed between Darcy and his companion. The
+      perpetual commendations of the lady, either on his handwriting,
+      or on the evenness of his lines, or on the length of his letter,
+      with the perfect unconcern with which her praises were received,
+      formed a curious dialogue, and was exactly in union with her
+      opinion of each.
+
+      “How delighted Miss Darcy will be to receive such a letter!”
+
+      He made no answer.
+
+      “You write uncommonly fast.”
+
+      “You are mistaken. I write rather slowly.”
+
+      “How many letters you must have occasion to write in the course
+      of a year! Letters of business, too! How odious I should think
+      them!”
+
+      “It is fortunate, then, that they fall to my lot instead of
+      yours.”
+
+      “Pray tell your sister that I long to see her.”
+
+      “I have already told her so once, by your desire.”
+
+      “I am afraid you do not like your pen. Let me mend it for you. I
+      mend pens remarkably well.”
+
+      “Thank you—but I always mend my own.”
+
+      “How can you contrive to write so even?”
+
+      He was silent.
+
+      “Tell your sister I am delighted to hear of her improvement on
+      the harp; and pray let her know that I am quite in raptures with
+      her beautiful little design for a table, and I think it
+      infinitely superior to Miss Grantley’s.”
+
+      “Will you give me leave to defer your raptures till I write
+      again? At present I have not room to do them justice.”
+
+      “Oh! it is of no consequence. I shall see her in January. But do
+      you always write such charming long letters to her, Mr. Darcy?”
+
+      “They are generally long; but whether always charming it is not
+      for me to determine.”
+
+      “It is a rule with me, that a person who can write a long letter
+      with ease, cannot write ill.”
+
+      “That will not do for a compliment to Darcy, Caroline,” cried her
+      brother, “because he does _not_ write with ease. He studies too
+      much for words of four syllables. Do not you, Darcy?”
+
+      “My style of writing is very different from yours.”
+
+      “Oh!” cried Miss Bingley, “Charles writes in the most careless
+      way imaginable. He leaves out half his words, and blots the
+      rest.”
+
+      “My ideas flow so rapidly that I have not time to express them—by
+      which means my letters sometimes convey no ideas at all to my
+      correspondents.”
+
+      “Your humility, Mr. Bingley,” said Elizabeth, “must disarm
+      reproof.”
+
+      “Nothing is more deceitful,” said Darcy, “than the appearance of
+      humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes
+      an indirect boast.”
+
+      “And which of the two do you call _my_ little recent piece of
+      modesty?”
+
+      “The indirect boast; for you are really proud of your defects in
+      writing, because you consider them as proceeding from a rapidity
+      of thought and carelessness of execution, which, if not
+      estimable, you think at least highly interesting. The power of
+      doing anything with quickness is always prized much by the
+      possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of
+      the performance. When you told Mrs. Bennet this morning that if
+      you ever resolved upon quitting Netherfield you should be gone in
+      five minutes, you meant it to be a sort of panegyric, of
+      compliment to yourself—and yet what is there so very laudable in
+      a precipitance which must leave very necessary business undone,
+      and can be of no real advantage to yourself or anyone else?”
+
+      “Nay,” cried Bingley, “this is too much, to remember at night all
+      the foolish things that were said in the morning. And yet, upon
+      my honour, I believe what I said of myself to be true, and I
+      believe it at this moment. At least, therefore, I did not assume
+      the character of needless precipitance merely to show off before
+      the ladies.”
+
+      “I dare say you believed it; but I am by no means convinced that
+      you would be gone with such celerity. Your conduct would be quite
+      as dependent on chance as that of any man I know; and if, as you
+      were mounting your horse, a friend were to say, ‘Bingley, you had
+      better stay till next week,’ you would probably do it, you would
+      probably not go—and at another word, might stay a month.”
+
+      “You have only proved by this,” cried Elizabeth, “that Mr.
+      Bingley did not do justice to his own disposition. You have shown
+      him off now much more than he did himself.”
+
+      “I am exceedingly gratified,” said Bingley, “by your converting
+      what my friend says into a compliment on the sweetness of my
+      temper. But I am afraid you are giving it a turn which that
+      gentleman did by no means intend; for he would certainly think
+      better of me, if under such a circumstance I were to give a flat
+      denial, and ride off as fast as I could.”
+
+      “Would Mr. Darcy then consider the rashness of your original
+      intentions as atoned for by your obstinacy in adhering to it?”
+
+      “Upon my word, I cannot exactly explain the matter; Darcy must
+      speak for himself.”
+
+      “You expect me to account for opinions which you choose to call
+      mine, but which I have never acknowledged. Allowing the case,
+      however, to stand according to your representation, you must
+      remember, Miss Bennet, that the friend who is supposed to desire
+      his return to the house, and the delay of his plan, has merely
+      desired it, asked it without offering one argument in favour of
+      its propriety.”
+
+      “To yield readily—easily—to the _persuasion_ of a friend is no
+      merit with you.”
+
+      “To yield without conviction is no compliment to the
+      understanding of either.”
+
+      “You appear to me, Mr. Darcy, to allow nothing for the influence
+      of friendship and affection. A regard for the requester would
+      often make one readily yield to a request, without waiting for
+      arguments to reason one into it. I am not particularly speaking
+      of such a case as you have supposed about Mr. Bingley. We may as
+      well wait, perhaps, till the circumstance occurs before we
+      discuss the discretion of his behaviour thereupon. But in general
+      and ordinary cases between friend and friend, where one of them
+      is desired by the other to change a resolution of no very great
+      moment, should you think ill of that person for complying with
+      the desire, without waiting to be argued into it?”
+
+      “Will it not be advisable, before we proceed on this subject, to
+      arrange with rather more precision the degree of importance which
+      is to appertain to this request, as well as the degree of
+      intimacy subsisting between the parties?”
+
+      “By all means,” cried Bingley; “let us hear all the particulars,
+      not forgetting their comparative height and size; for that will
+      have more weight in the argument, Miss Bennet, than you may be
+      aware of. I assure you, that if Darcy were not such a great tall
+      fellow, in comparison with myself, I should not pay him half so
+      much deference. I declare I do not know a more awful object than
+      Darcy, on particular occasions, and in particular places; at his
+      own house especially, and of a Sunday evening, when he has
+      nothing to do.”
+
+      Mr. Darcy smiled; but Elizabeth thought she could perceive that
+      he was rather offended, and therefore checked her laugh. Miss
+      Bingley warmly resented the indignity he had received, in an
+      expostulation with her brother for talking such nonsense.
+
+      “I see your design, Bingley,” said his friend. “You dislike an
+      argument, and want to silence this.”
+
+      “Perhaps I do. Arguments are too much like disputes. If you and
+      Miss Bennet will defer yours till I am out of the room, I shall
+      be very thankful; and then you may say whatever you like of me.”
+
+      “What you ask,” said Elizabeth, “is no sacrifice on my side; and
+      Mr. Darcy had much better finish his letter.”
+
+      Mr. Darcy took her advice, and did finish his letter.
+
+      When that business was over, he applied to Miss Bingley and
+      Elizabeth for an indulgence of some music. Miss Bingley moved
+      with some alacrity to the pianoforte; and, after a polite request
+      that Elizabeth would lead the way which the other as politely and
+      more earnestly negatived, she seated herself.
+
+      Mrs. Hurst sang with her sister, and while they were thus
+      employed, Elizabeth could not help observing, as she turned over
+      some music-books that lay on the instrument, how frequently Mr.
+      Darcy’s eyes were fixed on her. She hardly knew how to suppose
+      that she could be an object of admiration to so great a man; and
+      yet that he should look at her because he disliked her, was still
+      more strange. She could only imagine, however, at last that she
+      drew his notice because there was something more wrong and
+      reprehensible, according to his ideas of right, than in any other
+      person present. The supposition did not pain her. She liked him
+      too little to care for his approbation.
+
+      After playing some Italian songs, Miss Bingley varied the charm
+      by a lively Scotch air; and soon afterwards Mr. Darcy, drawing
+      near Elizabeth, said to her:
+
+      “Do not you feel a great inclination, Miss Bennet, to seize such
+      an opportunity of dancing a reel?”
+
+      She smiled, but made no answer. He repeated the question, with
+      some surprise at her silence.
+
+      “Oh!” said she, “I heard you before, but I could not immediately
+      determine what to say in reply. You wanted me, I know, to say
+      ‘Yes,’ that you might have the pleasure of despising my taste;
+      but I always delight in overthrowing those kind of schemes, and
+      cheating a person of their premeditated contempt. I have,
+      therefore, made up my mind to tell you, that I do not want to
+      dance a reel at all—and now despise me if you dare.”
+
+      “Indeed I do not dare.”
+
+      Elizabeth, having rather expected to affront him, was amazed at
+      his gallantry; but there was a mixture of sweetness and archness
+      in her manner which made it difficult for her to affront anybody;
+      and Darcy had never been so bewitched by any woman as he was by
+      her. He really believed, that were it not for the inferiority of
+      her connections, he should be in some danger.
+
+      Miss Bingley saw, or suspected enough to be jealous; and her
+      great anxiety for the recovery of her dear friend Jane received
+      some assistance from her desire of getting rid of Elizabeth.
+
+      She often tried to provoke Darcy into disliking her guest, by
+      talking of their supposed marriage, and planning his happiness in
+      such an alliance.
+
+      “I hope,” said she, as they were walking together in the
+      shrubbery the next day, “you will give your mother-in-law a few
+      hints, when this desirable event takes place, as to the advantage
+      of holding her tongue; and if you can compass it, do cure the
+      younger girls of running after officers. And, if I may mention so
+      delicate a subject, endeavour to check that little something,
+      bordering on conceit and impertinence, which your lady
+      possesses.”
+
+      “Have you anything else to propose for my domestic felicity?”
+
+      “Oh! yes. Do let the portraits of your uncle and aunt Phillips be
+      placed in the gallery at Pemberley. Put them next to your
+      great-uncle the judge. They are in the same profession, you know,
+      only in different lines. As for your Elizabeth’s picture, you
+      must not have it taken, for what painter could do justice to
+      those beautiful eyes?”
+
+      “It would not be easy, indeed, to catch their expression, but
+      their colour and shape, and the eyelashes, so remarkably fine,
+      might be copied.”
+
+      At that moment they were met from another walk by Mrs. Hurst and
+      Elizabeth herself.
+
+      “I did not know that you intended to walk,” said Miss Bingley, in
+      some confusion, lest they had been overheard.
+
+      “You used us abominably ill,” answered Mrs. Hurst, “running away
+      without telling us that you were coming out.”
+
+      Then taking the disengaged arm of Mr. Darcy, she left Elizabeth
+      to walk by herself. The path just admitted three. Mr. Darcy felt
+      their rudeness, and immediately said:
+
+      “This walk is not wide enough for our party. We had better go
+      into the avenue.”
+
+      But Elizabeth, who had not the least inclination to remain with
+      them, laughingly answered:
+
+      “No, no; stay where you are. You are charmingly grouped, and
+      appear to uncommon advantage. The picturesque would be spoilt by
+      admitting a fourth. Good-bye.”
+
+      She then ran gaily off, rejoicing as she rambled about, in the
+      hope of being at home again in a day or two. Jane was already so
+      much recovered as to intend leaving her room for a couple of
+      hours that evening.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 11
+
+      When the ladies removed after dinner, Elizabeth ran up to her
+      sister, and seeing her well guarded from cold, attended her into
+      the drawing-room, where she was welcomed by her two friends with
+      many professions of pleasure; and Elizabeth had never seen them
+      so agreeable as they were during the hour which passed before the
+      gentlemen appeared. Their powers of conversation were
+      considerable. They could describe an entertainment with accuracy,
+      relate an anecdote with humour, and laugh at their acquaintance
+      with spirit.
+
+      But when the gentlemen entered, Jane was no longer the first
+      object; Miss Bingley’s eyes were instantly turned toward Darcy,
+      and she had something to say to him before he had advanced many
+      steps. He addressed himself to Miss Bennet, with a polite
+      congratulation; Mr. Hurst also made her a slight bow, and said he
+      was “very glad;” but diffuseness and warmth remained for
+      Bingley’s salutation. He was full of joy and attention. The first
+      half-hour was spent in piling up the fire, lest she should suffer
+      from the change of room; and she removed at his desire to the
+      other side of the fireplace, that she might be further from the
+      door. He then sat down by her, and talked scarcely to anyone
+      else. Elizabeth, at work in the opposite corner, saw it all with
+      great delight.
+
+      When tea was over, Mr. Hurst reminded his sister-in-law of the
+      card-table—but in vain. She had obtained private intelligence
+      that Mr. Darcy did not wish for cards; and Mr. Hurst soon found
+      even his open petition rejected. She assured him that no one
+      intended to play, and the silence of the whole party on the
+      subject seemed to justify her. Mr. Hurst had therefore nothing to
+      do, but to stretch himself on one of the sofas and go to sleep.
+      Darcy took up a book; Miss Bingley did the same; and Mrs. Hurst,
+      principally occupied in playing with her bracelets and rings,
+      joined now and then in her brother’s conversation with Miss
+      Bennet.
+
+      Miss Bingley’s attention was quite as much engaged in watching
+      Mr. Darcy’s progress through _his_ book, as in reading her own;
+      and she was perpetually either making some inquiry, or looking at
+      his page. She could not win him, however, to any conversation; he
+      merely answered her question, and read on. At length, quite
+      exhausted by the attempt to be amused with her own book, which
+      she had only chosen because it was the second volume of his, she
+      gave a great yawn and said, “How pleasant it is to spend an
+      evening in this way! I declare after all there is no enjoyment
+      like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a
+      book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I
+      have not an excellent library.”
+
+      No one made any reply. She then yawned again, threw aside her
+      book, and cast her eyes round the room in quest for some
+      amusement; when hearing her brother mentioning a ball to Miss
+      Bennet, she turned suddenly towards him and said:
+
+      “By the bye, Charles, are you really serious in meditating a
+      dance at Netherfield? I would advise you, before you determine on
+      it, to consult the wishes of the present party; I am much
+      mistaken if there are not some among us to whom a ball would be
+      rather a punishment than a pleasure.”
+
+      “If you mean Darcy,” cried her brother, “he may go to bed, if he
+      chooses, before it begins—but as for the ball, it is quite a
+      settled thing; and as soon as Nicholls has made white soup
+      enough, I shall send round my cards.”
+
+      “I should like balls infinitely better,” she replied, “if they
+      were carried on in a different manner; but there is something
+      insufferably tedious in the usual process of such a meeting. It
+      would surely be much more rational if conversation instead of
+      dancing were made the order of the day.”
+
+      “Much more rational, my dear Caroline, I dare say, but it would
+      not be near so much like a ball.”
+
+      Miss Bingley made no answer, and soon afterwards she got up and
+      walked about the room. Her figure was elegant, and she walked
+      well; but Darcy, at whom it was all aimed, was still inflexibly
+      studious. In the desperation of her feelings, she resolved on one
+      effort more, and, turning to Elizabeth, said:
+
+      “Miss Eliza Bennet, let me persuade you to follow my example, and
+      take a turn about the room. I assure you it is very refreshing
+      after sitting so long in one attitude.”
+
+      Elizabeth was surprised, but agreed to it immediately. Miss
+      Bingley succeeded no less in the real object of her civility; Mr.
+      Darcy looked up. He was as much awake to the novelty of attention
+      in that quarter as Elizabeth herself could be, and unconsciously
+      closed his book. He was directly invited to join their party, but
+      he declined it, observing that he could imagine but two motives
+      for their choosing to walk up and down the room together, with
+      either of which motives his joining them would interfere. “What
+      could he mean? She was dying to know what could be his
+      meaning?”—and asked Elizabeth whether she could at all understand
+      him?
+
+      “Not at all,” was her answer; “but depend upon it, he means to be
+      severe on us, and our surest way of disappointing him will be to
+      ask nothing about it.”
+
+      Miss Bingley, however, was incapable of disappointing Mr. Darcy
+      in anything, and persevered therefore in requiring an explanation
+      of his two motives.
+
+      “I have not the smallest objection to explaining them,” said he,
+      as soon as she allowed him to speak. “You either choose this
+      method of passing the evening because you are in each other’s
+      confidence, and have secret affairs to discuss, or because you
+      are conscious that your figures appear to the greatest advantage
+      in walking; if the first, I would be completely in your way, and
+      if the second, I can admire you much better as I sit by the
+      fire.”
+
+      “Oh! shocking!” cried Miss Bingley. “I never heard anything so
+      abominable. How shall we punish him for such a speech?”
+
+      “Nothing so easy, if you have but the inclination,” said
+      Elizabeth. “We can all plague and punish one another. Tease
+      him—laugh at him. Intimate as you are, you must know how it is to
+      be done.”
+
+      “But upon my honour, I do _not_. I do assure you that my intimacy
+      has not yet taught me _that_. Tease calmness of manner and
+      presence of mind! No, no; I feel he may defy us there. And as to
+      laughter, we will not expose ourselves, if you please, by
+      attempting to laugh without a subject. Mr. Darcy may hug
+      himself.”
+
+      “Mr. Darcy is not to be laughed at!” cried Elizabeth. “That is an
+      uncommon advantage, and uncommon I hope it will continue, for it
+      would be a great loss to _me_ to have many such acquaintances. I
+      dearly love a laugh.”
+
+      “Miss Bingley,” said he, “has given me more credit than can be.
+      The wisest and the best of men—nay, the wisest and best of their
+      actions—may be rendered ridiculous by a person whose first object
+      in life is a joke.”
+
+      “Certainly,” replied Elizabeth—“there are such people, but I hope
+      I am not one of _them_. I hope I never ridicule what is wise and
+      good. Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies, _do_
+      divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can. But these,
+      I suppose, are precisely what you are without.”
+
+      “Perhaps that is not possible for anyone. But it has been the
+      study of my life to avoid those weaknesses which often expose a
+      strong understanding to ridicule.”
+
+      “Such as vanity and pride.”
+
+      “Yes, vanity is a weakness indeed. But pride—where there is a
+      real superiority of mind, pride will be always under good
+      regulation.”
+
+      Elizabeth turned away to hide a smile.
+
+      “Your examination of Mr. Darcy is over, I presume,” said Miss
+      Bingley; “and pray what is the result?”
+
+      “I am perfectly convinced by it that Mr. Darcy has no defect. He
+      owns it himself without disguise.”
+
+      “No,” said Darcy, “I have made no such pretension. I have faults
+      enough, but they are not, I hope, of understanding. My temper I
+      dare not vouch for. It is, I believe, too little
+      yielding—certainly too little for the convenience of the world. I
+      cannot forget the follies and vices of others so soon as I ought,
+      nor their offenses against myself. My feelings are not puffed
+      about with every attempt to move them. My temper would perhaps be
+      called resentful. My good opinion once lost, is lost forever.”
+
+      “_That_ is a failing indeed!” cried Elizabeth. “Implacable
+      resentment _is_ a shade in a character. But you have chosen your
+      fault well. I really cannot _laugh_ at it. You are safe from me.”
+
+      “There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some
+      particular evil—a natural defect, which not even the best
+      education can overcome.”
+
+      “And _your_ defect is to hate everybody.”
+
+      “And yours,” he replied with a smile, “is willfully to
+      misunderstand them.”
+
+      “Do let us have a little music,” cried Miss Bingley, tired of a
+      conversation in which she had no share. “Louisa, you will not
+      mind my waking Mr. Hurst?”
+
+      Her sister had not the smallest objection, and the pianoforte was
+      opened; and Darcy, after a few moments’ recollection, was not
+      sorry for it. He began to feel the danger of paying Elizabeth too
+      much attention.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 12
+
+      In consequence of an agreement between the sisters, Elizabeth
+      wrote the next morning to their mother, to beg that the carriage
+      might be sent for them in the course of the day. But Mrs. Bennet,
+      who had calculated on her daughters remaining at Netherfield till
+      the following Tuesday, which would exactly finish Jane’s week,
+      could not bring herself to receive them with pleasure before. Her
+      answer, therefore, was not propitious, at least not to
+      Elizabeth’s wishes, for she was impatient to get home. Mrs.
+      Bennet sent them word that they could not possibly have the
+      carriage before Tuesday; and in her postscript it was added, that
+      if Mr. Bingley and his sister pressed them to stay longer, she
+      could spare them very well. Against staying longer, however,
+      Elizabeth was positively resolved—nor did she much expect it
+      would be asked; and fearful, on the contrary, as being considered
+      as intruding themselves needlessly long, she urged Jane to borrow
+      Mr. Bingley’s carriage immediately, and at length it was settled
+      that their original design of leaving Netherfield that morning
+      should be mentioned, and the request made.
+
+      The communication excited many professions of concern; and enough
+      was said of wishing them to stay at least till the following day
+      to work on Jane; and till the morrow their going was deferred.
+      Miss Bingley was then sorry that she had proposed the delay, for
+      her jealousy and dislike of one sister much exceeded her
+      affection for the other.
+
+      The master of the house heard with real sorrow that they were to
+      go so soon, and repeatedly tried to persuade Miss Bennet that it
+      would not be safe for her—that she was not enough recovered; but
+      Jane was firm where she felt herself to be right.
+
+      To Mr. Darcy it was welcome intelligence—Elizabeth had been at
+      Netherfield long enough. She attracted him more than he liked—and
+      Miss Bingley was uncivil to _her_, and more teasing than usual to
+      himself. He wisely resolved to be particularly careful that no
+      sign of admiration should _now_ escape him, nothing that could
+      elevate her with the hope of influencing his felicity; sensible
+      that if such an idea had been suggested, his behaviour during the
+      last day must have material weight in confirming or crushing it.
+      Steady to his purpose, he scarcely spoke ten words to her through
+      the whole of Saturday, and though they were at one time left by
+      themselves for half-an-hour, he adhered most conscientiously to
+      his book, and would not even look at her.
+
+      On Sunday, after morning service, the separation, so agreeable to
+      almost all, took place. Miss Bingley’s civility to Elizabeth
+      increased at last very rapidly, as well as her affection for
+      Jane; and when they parted, after assuring the latter of the
+      pleasure it would always give her to see her either at Longbourn
+      or Netherfield, and embracing her most tenderly, she even shook
+      hands with the former. Elizabeth took leave of the whole party in
+      the liveliest of spirits.
+
+      They were not welcomed home very cordially by their mother. Mrs.
+      Bennet wondered at their coming, and thought them very wrong to
+      give so much trouble, and was sure Jane would have caught cold
+      again. But their father, though very laconic in his expressions
+      of pleasure, was really glad to see them; he had felt their
+      importance in the family circle. The evening conversation, when
+      they were all assembled, had lost much of its animation, and
+      almost all its sense by the absence of Jane and Elizabeth.
+
+      They found Mary, as usual, deep in the study of thorough-bass and
+      human nature; and had some extracts to admire, and some new
+      observations of threadbare morality to listen to. Catherine and
+      Lydia had information for them of a different sort. Much had been
+      done and much had been said in the regiment since the preceding
+      Wednesday; several of the officers had dined lately with their
+      uncle, a private had been flogged, and it had actually been
+      hinted that Colonel Forster was going to be married.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 13
+
+      “I hope, my dear,” said Mr. Bennet to his wife, as they were at
+      breakfast the next morning, “that you have ordered a good dinner
+      to-day, because I have reason to expect an addition to our family
+      party.”
+
+      “Who do you mean, my dear? I know of nobody that is coming, I am
+      sure, unless Charlotte Lucas should happen to call in—and I hope
+      _my_ dinners are good enough for her. I do not believe she often
+      sees such at home.”
+
+      “The person of whom I speak is a gentleman, and a stranger.”
+
+      Mrs. Bennet’s eyes sparkled. “A gentleman and a stranger! It is
+      Mr. Bingley, I am sure! Well, I am sure I shall be extremely glad
+      to see Mr. Bingley. But—good Lord! how unlucky! There is not a
+      bit of fish to be got to-day. Lydia, my love, ring the bell—I
+      must speak to Hill this moment.”
+
+      “It is _not_ Mr. Bingley,” said her husband; “it is a person whom
+      I never saw in the whole course of my life.”
+
+      This roused a general astonishment; and he had the pleasure of
+      being eagerly questioned by his wife and his five daughters at
+      once.
+
+      After amusing himself some time with their curiosity, he thus
+      explained:
+
+      “About a month ago I received this letter; and about a fortnight
+      ago I answered it, for I thought it a case of some delicacy, and
+      requiring early attention. It is from my cousin, Mr. Collins,
+      who, when I am dead, may turn you all out of this house as soon
+      as he pleases.”
+
+      “Oh! my dear,” cried his wife, “I cannot bear to hear that
+      mentioned. Pray do not talk of that odious man. I do think it is
+      the hardest thing in the world, that your estate should be
+      entailed away from your own children; and I am sure, if I had
+      been you, I should have tried long ago to do something or other
+      about it.”
+
+      Jane and Elizabeth tried to explain to her the nature of an
+      entail. They had often attempted to do it before, but it was a
+      subject on which Mrs. Bennet was beyond the reach of reason, and
+      she continued to rail bitterly against the cruelty of settling an
+      estate away from a family of five daughters, in favour of a man
+      whom nobody cared anything about.
+
+      “It certainly is a most iniquitous affair,” said Mr. Bennet, “and
+      nothing can clear Mr. Collins from the guilt of inheriting
+      Longbourn. But if you will listen to his letter, you may perhaps
+      be a little softened by his manner of expressing himself.”
+
+      “No, that I am sure I shall not; and I think it is very
+      impertinent of him to write to you at all, and very hypocritical.
+      I hate such false friends. Why could he not keep on quarreling
+      with you, as his father did before him?”
+
+      “Why, indeed; he does seem to have had some filial scruples on
+      that head, as you will hear.”
+
+      “Hunsford, near Westerham, Kent, 15_th October_.
+
+      “Dear Sir,—
+      “The disagreement subsisting between yourself and my late
+      honoured father always gave me much uneasiness, and since I have
+      had the misfortune to lose him, I have frequently wished to heal
+      the breach; but for some time I was kept back by my own doubts,
+      fearing lest it might seem disrespectful to his memory for me to
+      be on good terms with anyone with whom it had always pleased him
+      to be at variance.—‘There, Mrs. Bennet.’—My mind, however, is now
+      made up on the subject, for having received ordination at Easter,
+      I have been so fortunate as to be distinguished by the patronage
+      of the Right Honourable Lady Catherine de Bourgh, widow of Sir
+      Lewis de Bourgh, whose bounty and beneficence has preferred me to
+      the valuable rectory of this parish, where it shall be my earnest
+      endeavour to demean myself with grateful respect towards her
+      ladyship, and be ever ready to perform those rites and ceremonies
+      which are instituted by the Church of England. As a clergyman,
+      moreover, I feel it my duty to promote and establish the blessing
+      of peace in all families within the reach of my influence; and on
+      these grounds I flatter myself that my present overtures are
+      highly commendable, and that the circumstance of my being next in
+      the entail of Longbourn estate will be kindly overlooked on your
+      side, and not lead you to reject the offered olive-branch. I
+      cannot be otherwise than concerned at being the means of injuring
+      your amiable daughters, and beg leave to apologise for it, as
+      well as to assure you of my readiness to make them every possible
+      amends—but of this hereafter. If you should have no objection to
+      receive me into your house, I propose myself the satisfaction of
+      waiting on you and your family, Monday, November 18th, by four
+      o’clock, and shall probably trespass on your hospitality till the
+      Saturday se’ennight following, which I can do without any
+      inconvenience, as Lady Catherine is far from objecting to my
+      occasional absence on a Sunday, provided that some other
+      clergyman is engaged to do the duty of the day.—I remain, dear
+      sir, with respectful compliments to your lady and daughters, your
+      well-wisher and friend,
+
+      “WILLIAM COLLINS”
+
+      “At four o’clock, therefore, we may expect this peace-making
+      gentleman,” said Mr. Bennet, as he folded up the letter. “He
+      seems to be a most conscientious and polite young man, upon my
+      word, and I doubt not will prove a valuable acquaintance,
+      especially if Lady Catherine should be so indulgent as to let him
+      come to us again.”
+
+      “There is some sense in what he says about the girls, however,
+      and if he is disposed to make them any amends, I shall not be the
+      person to discourage him.”
+
+      “Though it is difficult,” said Jane, “to guess in what way he can
+      mean to make us the atonement he thinks our due, the wish is
+      certainly to his credit.”
+
+      Elizabeth was chiefly struck by his extraordinary deference for
+      Lady Catherine, and his kind intention of christening, marrying,
+      and burying his parishioners whenever it were required.
+
+      “He must be an oddity, I think,” said she. “I cannot make him
+      out.—There is something very pompous in his style.—And what can
+      he mean by apologising for being next in the entail?—We cannot
+      suppose he would help it if he could.—Could he be a sensible man,
+      sir?”
+
+      “No, my dear, I think not. I have great hopes of finding him
+      quite the reverse. There is a mixture of servility and
+      self-importance in his letter, which promises well. I am
+      impatient to see him.”
+
+      “In point of composition,” said Mary, “the letter does not seem
+      defective. The idea of the olive-branch perhaps is not wholly
+      new, yet I think it is well expressed.”
+
+      To Catherine and Lydia, neither the letter nor its writer were in
+      any degree interesting. It was next to impossible that their
+      cousin should come in a scarlet coat, and it was now some weeks
+      since they had received pleasure from the society of a man in any
+      other colour. As for their mother, Mr. Collins’s letter had done
+      away much of her ill-will, and she was preparing to see him with
+      a degree of composure which astonished her husband and daughters.
+
+      Mr. Collins was punctual to his time, and was received with great
+      politeness by the whole family. Mr. Bennet indeed said little;
+      but the ladies were ready enough to talk, and Mr. Collins seemed
+      neither in need of encouragement, nor inclined to be silent
+      himself. He was a tall, heavy-looking young man of
+      five-and-twenty. His air was grave and stately, and his manners
+      were very formal. He had not been long seated before he
+      complimented Mrs. Bennet on having so fine a family of daughters;
+      said he had heard much of their beauty, but that in this instance
+      fame had fallen short of the truth; and added, that he did not
+      doubt her seeing them all in due time disposed of in marriage.
+      This gallantry was not much to the taste of some of his hearers;
+      but Mrs. Bennet, who quarreled with no compliments, answered most
+      readily.
+
+      “You are very kind, I am sure; and I wish with all my heart it
+      may prove so, for else they will be destitute enough. Things are
+      settled so oddly.”
+
+      “You allude, perhaps, to the entail of this estate.”
+
+      “Ah! sir, I do indeed. It is a grievous affair to my poor girls,
+      you must confess. Not that I mean to find fault with _you_, for
+      such things I know are all chance in this world. There is no
+      knowing how estates will go when once they come to be entailed.”
+
+      “I am very sensible, madam, of the hardship to my fair cousins,
+      and could say much on the subject, but that I am cautious of
+      appearing forward and precipitate. But I can assure the young
+      ladies that I come prepared to admire them. At present I will not
+      say more; but, perhaps, when we are better acquainted—”
+
+      He was interrupted by a summons to dinner; and the girls smiled
+      on each other. They were not the only objects of Mr. Collins’s
+      admiration. The hall, the dining-room, and all its furniture,
+      were examined and praised; and his commendation of everything
+      would have touched Mrs. Bennet’s heart, but for the mortifying
+      supposition of his viewing it all as his own future property. The
+      dinner too in its turn was highly admired; and he begged to know
+      to which of his fair cousins the excellency of its cooking was
+      owing. But he was set right there by Mrs. Bennet, who assured him
+      with some asperity that they were very well able to keep a good
+      cook, and that her daughters had nothing to do in the kitchen. He
+      begged pardon for having displeased her. In a softened tone she
+      declared herself not at all offended; but he continued to
+      apologise for about a quarter of an hour.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 14
+
+      During dinner, Mr. Bennet scarcely spoke at all; but when the
+      servants were withdrawn, he thought it time to have some
+      conversation with his guest, and therefore started a subject in
+      which he expected him to shine, by observing that he seemed very
+      fortunate in his patroness. Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s attention
+      to his wishes, and consideration for his comfort, appeared very
+      remarkable. Mr. Bennet could not have chosen better. Mr. Collins
+      was eloquent in her praise. The subject elevated him to more than
+      usual solemnity of manner, and with a most important aspect he
+      protested that “he had never in his life witnessed such behaviour
+      in a person of rank—such affability and condescension, as he had
+      himself experienced from Lady Catherine. She had been graciously
+      pleased to approve of both of the discourses which he had already
+      had the honour of preaching before her. She had also asked him
+      twice to dine at Rosings, and had sent for him only the Saturday
+      before, to make up her pool of quadrille in the evening. Lady
+      Catherine was reckoned proud by many people he knew, but _he_ had
+      never seen anything but affability in her. She had always spoken
+      to him as she would to any other gentleman; she made not the
+      smallest objection to his joining in the society of the
+      neighbourhood nor to his leaving the parish occasionally for a
+      week or two, to visit his relations. She had even condescended to
+      advise him to marry as soon as he could, provided he chose with
+      discretion; and had once paid him a visit in his humble
+      parsonage, where she had perfectly approved all the alterations
+      he had been making, and had even vouchsafed to suggest some
+      herself—some shelves in the closet up stairs.”
+
+      “That is all very proper and civil, I am sure,” said Mrs. Bennet,
+      “and I dare say she is a very agreeable woman. It is a pity that
+      great ladies in general are not more like her. Does she live near
+      you, sir?”
+
+      “The garden in which stands my humble abode is separated only by
+      a lane from Rosings Park, her ladyship’s residence.”
+
+      “I think you said she was a widow, sir? Has she any family?”
+
+      “She has only one daughter, the heiress of Rosings, and of very
+      extensive property.”
+
+      “Ah!” said Mrs. Bennet, shaking her head, “then she is better off
+      than many girls. And what sort of young lady is she? Is she
+      handsome?”
+
+      “She is a most charming young lady indeed. Lady Catherine herself
+      says that, in point of true beauty, Miss de Bourgh is far
+      superior to the handsomest of her sex, because there is that in
+      her features which marks the young lady of distinguished birth.
+      She is unfortunately of a sickly constitution, which has
+      prevented her from making that progress in many accomplishments
+      which she could not have otherwise failed of, as I am informed by
+      the lady who superintended her education, and who still resides
+      with them. But she is perfectly amiable, and often condescends to
+      drive by my humble abode in her little phaeton and ponies.”
+
+      “Has she been presented? I do not remember her name among the
+      ladies at court.”
+
+      “Her indifferent state of health unhappily prevents her being in
+      town; and by that means, as I told Lady Catherine one day, has
+      deprived the British court of its brightest ornament. Her
+      ladyship seemed pleased with the idea; and you may imagine that I
+      am happy on every occasion to offer those little delicate
+      compliments which are always acceptable to ladies. I have more
+      than once observed to Lady Catherine, that her charming daughter
+      seemed born to be a duchess, and that the most elevated rank,
+      instead of giving her consequence, would be adorned by her. These
+      are the kind of little things which please her ladyship, and it
+      is a sort of attention which I conceive myself peculiarly bound
+      to pay.”
+
+      “You judge very properly,” said Mr. Bennet, “and it is happy for
+      you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May
+      I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse
+      of the moment, or are the result of previous study?”
+
+      “They arise chiefly from what is passing at the time, and though
+      I sometimes amuse myself with suggesting and arranging such
+      little elegant compliments as may be adapted to ordinary
+      occasions, I always wish to give them as unstudied an air as
+      possible.”
+
+      Mr. Bennet’s expectations were fully answered. His cousin was as
+      absurd as he had hoped, and he listened to him with the keenest
+      enjoyment, maintaining at the same time the most resolute
+      composure of countenance, and, except in an occasional glance at
+      Elizabeth, requiring no partner in his pleasure.
+
+      By tea-time, however, the dose had been enough, and Mr. Bennet
+      was glad to take his guest into the drawing-room again, and, when
+      tea was over, glad to invite him to read aloud to the ladies. Mr.
+      Collins readily assented, and a book was produced; but, on
+      beholding it (for everything announced it to be from a
+      circulating library), he started back, and begging pardon,
+      protested that he never read novels. Kitty stared at him, and
+      Lydia exclaimed. Other books were produced, and after some
+      deliberation he chose Fordyce’s Sermons. Lydia gaped as he opened
+      the volume, and before he had, with very monotonous solemnity,
+      read three pages, she interrupted him with:
+
+      “Do you know, mamma, that my uncle Phillips talks of turning away
+      Richard; and if he does, Colonel Forster will hire him. My aunt
+      told me so herself on Saturday. I shall walk to Meryton to-morrow
+      to hear more about it, and to ask when Mr. Denny comes back from
+      town.”
+
+      Lydia was bid by her two eldest sisters to hold her tongue; but
+      Mr. Collins, much offended, laid aside his book, and said:
+
+      “I have often observed how little young ladies are interested by
+      books of a serious stamp, though written solely for their
+      benefit. It amazes me, I confess; for, certainly, there can be
+      nothing so advantageous to them as instruction. But I will no
+      longer importune my young cousin.”
+
+      Then turning to Mr. Bennet, he offered himself as his antagonist
+      at backgammon. Mr. Bennet accepted the challenge, observing that
+      he acted very wisely in leaving the girls to their own trifling
+      amusements. Mrs. Bennet and her daughters apologised most civilly
+      for Lydia’s interruption, and promised that it should not occur
+      again, if he would resume his book; but Mr. Collins, after
+      assuring them that he bore his young cousin no ill-will, and
+      should never resent her behaviour as any affront, seated himself
+      at another table with Mr. Bennet, and prepared for backgammon.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 15
+
+      Mr. Collins was not a sensible man, and the deficiency of nature
+      had been but little assisted by education or society; the
+      greatest part of his life having been spent under the guidance of
+      an illiterate and miserly father; and though he belonged to one
+      of the universities, he had merely kept the necessary terms,
+      without forming at it any useful acquaintance. The subjection in
+      which his father had brought him up had given him originally
+      great humility of manner; but it was now a good deal counteracted
+      by the self-conceit of a weak head, living in retirement, and the
+      consequential feelings of early and unexpected prosperity. A
+      fortunate chance had recommended him to Lady Catherine de Bourgh
+      when the living of Hunsford was vacant; and the respect which he
+      felt for her high rank, and his veneration for her as his
+      patroness, mingling with a very good opinion of himself, of his
+      authority as a clergyman, and his right as a rector, made him
+      altogether a mixture of pride and obsequiousness, self-importance
+      and humility.
+
+      Having now a good house and a very sufficient income, he intended
+      to marry; and in seeking a reconciliation with the Longbourn
+      family he had a wife in view, as he meant to choose one of the
+      daughters, if he found them as handsome and amiable as they were
+      represented by common report. This was his plan of amends—of
+      atonement—for inheriting their father’s estate; and he thought it
+      an excellent one, full of eligibility and suitableness, and
+      excessively generous and disinterested on his own part.
+
+      His plan did not vary on seeing them. Miss Bennet’s lovely face
+      confirmed his views, and established all his strictest notions of
+      what was due to seniority; and for the first evening _she_ was
+      his settled choice. The next morning, however, made an
+      alteration; for in a quarter of an hour’s _tête-à-tête_ with Mrs.
+      Bennet before breakfast, a conversation beginning with his
+      parsonage-house, and leading naturally to the avowal of his
+      hopes, that a mistress might be found for it at Longbourn,
+      produced from her, amid very complaisant smiles and general
+      encouragement, a caution against the very Jane he had fixed on.
+      “As to her _younger_ daughters, she could not take upon her to
+      say—she could not positively answer—but she did not _know_ of any
+      prepossession; her _eldest_ daughter, she must just mention—she
+      felt it incumbent on her to hint, was likely to be very soon
+      engaged.”
+
+      Mr. Collins had only to change from Jane to Elizabeth—and it was
+      soon done—done while Mrs. Bennet was stirring the fire.
+      Elizabeth, equally next to Jane in birth and beauty, succeeded
+      her of course.
+
+      Mrs. Bennet treasured up the hint, and trusted that she might
+      soon have two daughters married; and the man whom she could not
+      bear to speak of the day before was now high in her good graces.
+
+      Lydia’s intention of walking to Meryton was not forgotten; every
+      sister except Mary agreed to go with her; and Mr. Collins was to
+      attend them, at the request of Mr. Bennet, who was most anxious
+      to get rid of him, and have his library to himself; for thither
+      Mr. Collins had followed him after breakfast; and there he would
+      continue, nominally engaged with one of the largest folios in the
+      collection, but really talking to Mr. Bennet, with little
+      cessation, of his house and garden at Hunsford. Such doings
+      discomposed Mr. Bennet exceedingly. In his library he had been
+      always sure of leisure and tranquillity; and though prepared, as
+      he told Elizabeth, to meet with folly and conceit in every other
+      room of the house, he was used to be free from them there; his
+      civility, therefore, was most prompt in inviting Mr. Collins to
+      join his daughters in their walk; and Mr. Collins, being in fact
+      much better fitted for a walker than a reader, was extremely
+      pleased to close his large book, and go.
+
+      In pompous nothings on his side, and civil assents on that of his
+      cousins, their time passed till they entered Meryton. The
+      attention of the younger ones was then no longer to be gained by
+      _him_. Their eyes were immediately wandering up in the street in
+      quest of the officers, and nothing less than a very smart bonnet
+      indeed, or a really new muslin in a shop window, could recall
+      them.
+
+      But the attention of every lady was soon caught by a young man,
+      whom they had never seen before, of most gentlemanlike
+      appearance, walking with another officer on the other side of the
+      way. The officer was the very Mr. Denny concerning whose return
+      from London Lydia came to inquire, and he bowed as they passed.
+      All were struck with the stranger’s air, all wondered who he
+      could be; and Kitty and Lydia, determined if possible to find
+      out, led the way across the street, under pretense of wanting
+      something in an opposite shop, and fortunately had just gained
+      the pavement when the two gentlemen, turning back, had reached
+      the same spot. Mr. Denny addressed them directly, and entreated
+      permission to introduce his friend, Mr. Wickham, who had returned
+      with him the day before from town, and he was happy to say had
+      accepted a commission in their corps. This was exactly as it
+      should be; for the young man wanted only regimentals to make him
+      completely charming. His appearance was greatly in his favour; he
+      had all the best part of beauty, a fine countenance, a good
+      figure, and very pleasing address. The introduction was followed
+      up on his side by a happy readiness of conversation—a readiness
+      at the same time perfectly correct and unassuming; and the whole
+      party were still standing and talking together very agreeably,
+      when the sound of horses drew their notice, and Darcy and Bingley
+      were seen riding down the street. On distinguishing the ladies of
+      the group, the two gentlemen came directly towards them, and
+      began the usual civilities. Bingley was the principal spokesman,
+      and Miss Bennet the principal object. He was then, he said, on
+      his way to Longbourn on purpose to inquire after her. Mr. Darcy
+      corroborated it with a bow, and was beginning to determine not to
+      fix his eyes on Elizabeth, when they were suddenly arrested by
+      the sight of the stranger, and Elizabeth happening to see the
+      countenance of both as they looked at each other, was all
+      astonishment at the effect of the meeting. Both changed colour,
+      one looked white, the other red. Mr. Wickham, after a few
+      moments, touched his hat—a salutation which Mr. Darcy just
+      deigned to return. What could be the meaning of it? It was
+      impossible to imagine; it was impossible not to long to know.
+
+      In another minute, Mr. Bingley, but without seeming to have
+      noticed what passed, took leave and rode on with his friend.
+
+      Mr. Denny and Mr. Wickham walked with the young ladies to the
+      door of Mr. Phillip’s house, and then made their bows, in spite
+      of Miss Lydia’s pressing entreaties that they should come in, and
+      even in spite of Mrs. Phillips’s throwing up the parlour window
+      and loudly seconding the invitation.
+
+      Mrs. Phillips was always glad to see her nieces; and the two
+      eldest, from their recent absence, were particularly welcome, and
+      she was eagerly expressing her surprise at their sudden return
+      home, which, as their own carriage had not fetched them, she
+      should have known nothing about, if she had not happened to see
+      Mr. Jones’s shop-boy in the street, who had told her that they
+      were not to send any more draughts to Netherfield because the
+      Miss Bennets were come away, when her civility was claimed
+      towards Mr. Collins by Jane’s introduction of him. She received
+      him with her very best politeness, which he returned with as much
+      more, apologising for his intrusion, without any previous
+      acquaintance with her, which he could not help flattering
+      himself, however, might be justified by his relationship to the
+      young ladies who introduced him to her notice. Mrs. Phillips was
+      quite awed by such an excess of good breeding; but her
+      contemplation of one stranger was soon put to an end by
+      exclamations and inquiries about the other; of whom, however, she
+      could only tell her nieces what they already knew, that Mr. Denny
+      had brought him from London, and that he was to have a
+      lieutenant’s commission in the ——shire. She had been watching him
+      the last hour, she said, as he walked up and down the street, and
+      had Mr. Wickham appeared, Kitty and Lydia would certainly have
+      continued the occupation, but unluckily no one passed windows now
+      except a few of the officers, who, in comparison with the
+      stranger, were become “stupid, disagreeable fellows.” Some of
+      them were to dine with the Phillipses the next day, and their
+      aunt promised to make her husband call on Mr. Wickham, and give
+      him an invitation also, if the family from Longbourn would come
+      in the evening. This was agreed to, and Mrs. Phillips protested
+      that they would have a nice comfortable noisy game of lottery
+      tickets, and a little bit of hot supper afterwards. The prospect
+      of such delights was very cheering, and they parted in mutual
+      good spirits. Mr. Collins repeated his apologies in quitting the
+      room, and was assured with unwearying civility that they were
+      perfectly needless.
+
+      As they walked home, Elizabeth related to Jane what she had seen
+      pass between the two gentlemen; but though Jane would have
+      defended either or both, had they appeared to be in the wrong,
+      she could no more explain such behaviour than her sister.
+
+      Mr. Collins on his return highly gratified Mrs. Bennet by
+      admiring Mrs. Phillips’s manners and politeness. He protested
+      that, except Lady Catherine and her daughter, he had never seen a
+      more elegant woman; for she had not only received him with the
+      utmost civility, but even pointedly included him in her
+      invitation for the next evening, although utterly unknown to her
+      before. Something, he supposed, might be attributed to his
+      connection with them, but yet he had never met with so much
+      attention in the whole course of his life.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 16
+
+      As no objection was made to the young people’s engagement with
+      their aunt, and all Mr. Collins’s scruples of leaving Mr. and
+      Mrs. Bennet for a single evening during his visit were most
+      steadily resisted, the coach conveyed him and his five cousins at
+      a suitable hour to Meryton; and the girls had the pleasure of
+      hearing, as they entered the drawing-room, that Mr. Wickham had
+      accepted their uncle’s invitation, and was then in the house.
+
+      When this information was given, and they had all taken their
+      seats, Mr. Collins was at leisure to look around him and admire,
+      and he was so much struck with the size and furniture of the
+      apartment, that he declared he might almost have supposed himself
+      in the small summer breakfast parlour at Rosings; a comparison
+      that did not at first convey much gratification; but when Mrs.
+      Phillips understood from him what Rosings was, and who was its
+      proprietor—when she had listened to the description of only one
+      of Lady Catherine’s drawing-rooms, and found that the
+      chimney-piece alone had cost eight hundred pounds, she felt all
+      the force of the compliment, and would hardly have resented a
+      comparison with the housekeeper’s room.
+
+      In describing to her all the grandeur of Lady Catherine and her
+      mansion, with occasional digressions in praise of his own humble
+      abode, and the improvements it was receiving, he was happily
+      employed until the gentlemen joined them; and he found in Mrs.
+      Phillips a very attentive listener, whose opinion of his
+      consequence increased with what she heard, and who was resolving
+      to retail it all among her neighbours as soon as she could. To
+      the girls, who could not listen to their cousin, and who had
+      nothing to do but to wish for an instrument, and examine their
+      own indifferent imitations of china on the mantelpiece, the
+      interval of waiting appeared very long. It was over at last,
+      however. The gentlemen did approach, and when Mr. Wickham walked
+      into the room, Elizabeth felt that she had neither been seeing
+      him before, nor thinking of him since, with the smallest degree
+      of unreasonable admiration. The officers of the ——shire were in
+      general a very creditable, gentlemanlike set, and the best of
+      them were of the present party; but Mr. Wickham was as far beyond
+      them all in person, countenance, air, and walk, as _they_ were
+      superior to the broad-faced, stuffy uncle Phillips, breathing
+      port wine, who followed them into the room.
+
+      Mr. Wickham was the happy man towards whom almost every female
+      eye was turned, and Elizabeth was the happy woman by whom he
+      finally seated himself; and the agreeable manner in which he
+      immediately fell into conversation, though it was only on its
+      being a wet night, made her feel that the commonest, dullest,
+      most threadbare topic might be rendered interesting by the skill
+      of the speaker.
+
+      With such rivals for the notice of the fair as Mr. Wickham and
+      the officers, Mr. Collins seemed to sink into insignificance; to
+      the young ladies he certainly was nothing; but he had still at
+      intervals a kind listener in Mrs. Phillips, and was by her
+      watchfulness, most abundantly supplied with coffee and muffin.
+      When the card-tables were placed, he had the opportunity of
+      obliging her in turn, by sitting down to whist.
+
+      “I know little of the game at present,” said he, “but I shall be
+      glad to improve myself, for in my situation in life—” Mrs.
+      Phillips was very glad for his compliance, but could not wait for
+      his reason.
+
+      Mr. Wickham did not play at whist, and with ready delight was he
+      received at the other table between Elizabeth and Lydia. At first
+      there seemed danger of Lydia’s engrossing him entirely, for she
+      was a most determined talker; but being likewise extremely fond
+      of lottery tickets, she soon grew too much interested in the
+      game, too eager in making bets and exclaiming after prizes to
+      have attention for anyone in particular. Allowing for the common
+      demands of the game, Mr. Wickham was therefore at leisure to talk
+      to Elizabeth, and she was very willing to hear him, though what
+      she chiefly wished to hear she could not hope to be told—the
+      history of his acquaintance with Mr. Darcy. She dared not even
+      mention that gentleman. Her curiosity, however, was unexpectedly
+      relieved. Mr. Wickham began the subject himself. He inquired how
+      far Netherfield was from Meryton; and, after receiving her
+      answer, asked in a hesitating manner how long Mr. Darcy had been
+      staying there.
+
+      “About a month,” said Elizabeth; and then, unwilling to let the
+      subject drop, added, “He is a man of very large property in
+      Derbyshire, I understand.”
+
+      “Yes,” replied Mr. Wickham; “his estate there is a noble one. A
+      clear ten thousand per annum. You could not have met with a
+      person more capable of giving you certain information on that
+      head than myself, for I have been connected with his family in a
+      particular manner from my infancy.”
+
+      Elizabeth could not but look surprised.
+
+      “You may well be surprised, Miss Bennet, at such an assertion,
+      after seeing, as you probably might, the very cold manner of our
+      meeting yesterday. Are you much acquainted with Mr. Darcy?”
+
+      “As much as I ever wish to be,” cried Elizabeth very warmly. “I
+      have spent four days in the same house with him, and I think him
+      very disagreeable.”
+
+      “I have no right to give _my_ opinion,” said Wickham, “as to his
+      being agreeable or otherwise. I am not qualified to form one. I
+      have known him too long and too well to be a fair judge. It is
+      impossible for _me_ to be impartial. But I believe your opinion
+      of him would in general astonish—and perhaps you would not
+      express it quite so strongly anywhere else. Here you are in your
+      own family.”
+
+      “Upon my word, I say no more _here_ than I might say in any house
+      in the neighbourhood, except Netherfield. He is not at all liked
+      in Hertfordshire. Everybody is disgusted with his pride. You will
+      not find him more favourably spoken of by anyone.”
+
+      “I cannot pretend to be sorry,” said Wickham, after a short
+      interruption, “that he or that any man should not be estimated
+      beyond their deserts; but with _him_ I believe it does not often
+      happen. The world is blinded by his fortune and consequence, or
+      frightened by his high and imposing manners, and sees him only as
+      he chooses to be seen.”
+
+      “I should take him, even on _my_ slight acquaintance, to be an
+      ill-tempered man.” Wickham only shook his head.
+
+      “I wonder,” said he, at the next opportunity of speaking,
+      “whether he is likely to be in this country much longer.”
+
+      “I do not at all know; but I _heard_ nothing of his going away
+      when I was at Netherfield. I hope your plans in favour of the
+      ——shire will not be affected by his being in the neighbourhood.”
+
+      “Oh! no—it is not for _me_ to be driven away by Mr. Darcy. If
+      _he_ wishes to avoid seeing _me_, he must go. We are not on
+      friendly terms, and it always gives me pain to meet him, but I
+      have no reason for avoiding _him_ but what I might proclaim
+      before all the world, a sense of very great ill-usage, and most
+      painful regrets at his being what he is. His father, Miss Bennet,
+      the late Mr. Darcy, was one of the best men that ever breathed,
+      and the truest friend I ever had; and I can never be in company
+      with this Mr. Darcy without being grieved to the soul by a
+      thousand tender recollections. His behaviour to myself has been
+      scandalous; but I verily believe I could forgive him anything and
+      everything, rather than his disappointing the hopes and
+      disgracing the memory of his father.”
+
+      Elizabeth found the interest of the subject increase, and
+      listened with all her heart; but the delicacy of it prevented
+      further inquiry.
+
+      Mr. Wickham began to speak on more general topics, Meryton, the
+      neighbourhood, the society, appearing highly pleased with all
+      that he had yet seen, and speaking of the latter with gentle but
+      very intelligible gallantry.
+
+      “It was the prospect of constant society, and good society,” he
+      added, “which was my chief inducement to enter the ——shire. I
+      knew it to be a most respectable, agreeable corps, and my friend
+      Denny tempted me further by his account of their present
+      quarters, and the very great attentions and excellent
+      acquaintances Meryton had procured them. Society, I own, is
+      necessary to me. I have been a disappointed man, and my spirits
+      will not bear solitude. I _must_ have employment and society. A
+      military life is not what I was intended for, but circumstances
+      have now made it eligible. The church _ought_ to have been my
+      profession—I was brought up for the church, and I should at this
+      time have been in possession of a most valuable living, had it
+      pleased the gentleman we were speaking of just now.”
+
+      “Indeed!”
+
+      “Yes—the late Mr. Darcy bequeathed me the next presentation of
+      the best living in his gift. He was my godfather, and excessively
+      attached to me. I cannot do justice to his kindness. He meant to
+      provide for me amply, and thought he had done it; but when the
+      living fell, it was given elsewhere.”
+
+      “Good heavens!” cried Elizabeth; “but how could _that_ be? How
+      could his will be disregarded? Why did you not seek legal
+      redress?”
+
+      “There was just such an informality in the terms of the bequest
+      as to give me no hope from law. A man of honour could not have
+      doubted the intention, but Mr. Darcy chose to doubt it—or to
+      treat it as a merely conditional recommendation, and to assert
+      that I had forfeited all claim to it by extravagance,
+      imprudence—in short anything or nothing. Certain it is, that the
+      living became vacant two years ago, exactly as I was of an age to
+      hold it, and that it was given to another man; and no less
+      certain is it, that I cannot accuse myself of having really done
+      anything to deserve to lose it. I have a warm, unguarded temper,
+      and I may have spoken my opinion _of_ him, and _to_ him, too
+      freely. I can recall nothing worse. But the fact is, that we are
+      very different sort of men, and that he hates me.”
+
+      “This is quite shocking! He deserves to be publicly disgraced.”
+
+      “Some time or other he _will_ be—but it shall not be by _me_.
+      Till I can forget his father, I can never defy or expose _him_.”
+
+      Elizabeth honoured him for such feelings, and thought him
+      handsomer than ever as he expressed them.
+
+      “But what,” said she, after a pause, “can have been his motive?
+      What can have induced him to behave so cruelly?”
+
+      “A thorough, determined dislike of me—a dislike which I cannot
+      but attribute in some measure to jealousy. Had the late Mr. Darcy
+      liked me less, his son might have borne with me better; but his
+      father’s uncommon attachment to me irritated him, I believe, very
+      early in life. He had not a temper to bear the sort of
+      competition in which we stood—the sort of preference which was
+      often given me.”
+
+      “I had not thought Mr. Darcy so bad as this—though I have never
+      liked him. I had not thought so very ill of him. I had supposed
+      him to be despising his fellow-creatures in general, but did not
+      suspect him of descending to such malicious revenge, such
+      injustice, such inhumanity as this.”
+
+      After a few minutes’ reflection, however, she continued, “I _do_
+      remember his boasting one day, at Netherfield, of the
+      implacability of his resentments, of his having an unforgiving
+      temper. His disposition must be dreadful.”
+
+      “I will not trust myself on the subject,” replied Wickham; “_I_
+      can hardly be just to him.”
+
+      Elizabeth was again deep in thought, and after a time exclaimed,
+      “To treat in such a manner the godson, the friend, the favourite
+      of his father!” She could have added, “A young man, too, like
+      _you_, whose very countenance may vouch for your being
+      amiable”—but she contented herself with, “and one, too, who had
+      probably been his companion from childhood, connected together,
+      as I think you said, in the closest manner!”
+
+      “We were born in the same parish, within the same park; the
+      greatest part of our youth was passed together; inmates of the
+      same house, sharing the same amusements, objects of the same
+      parental care. _My_ father began life in the profession which
+      your uncle, Mr. Phillips, appears to do so much credit to—but he
+      gave up everything to be of use to the late Mr. Darcy and devoted
+      all his time to the care of the Pemberley property. He was most
+      highly esteemed by Mr. Darcy, a most intimate, confidential
+      friend. Mr. Darcy often acknowledged himself to be under the
+      greatest obligations to my father’s active superintendence, and
+      when, immediately before my father’s death, Mr. Darcy gave him a
+      voluntary promise of providing for me, I am convinced that he
+      felt it to be as much a debt of gratitude to _him_, as of his
+      affection to myself.”
+
+      “How strange!” cried Elizabeth. “How abominable! I wonder that
+      the very pride of this Mr. Darcy has not made him just to you! If
+      from no better motive, that he should not have been too proud to
+      be dishonest—for dishonesty I must call it.”
+
+      “It _is_ wonderful,” replied Wickham, “for almost all his actions
+      may be traced to pride; and pride had often been his best friend.
+      It has connected him nearer with virtue than with any other
+      feeling. But we are none of us consistent, and in his behaviour
+      to me there were stronger impulses even than pride.”
+
+      “Can such abominable pride as his have ever done him good?”
+
+      “Yes. It has often led him to be liberal and generous, to give
+      his money freely, to display hospitality, to assist his tenants,
+      and relieve the poor. Family pride, and _filial_ pride—for he is
+      very proud of what his father was—have done this. Not to appear
+      to disgrace his family, to degenerate from the popular qualities,
+      or lose the influence of the Pemberley House, is a powerful
+      motive. He has also _brotherly_ pride, which, with _some_
+      brotherly affection, makes him a very kind and careful guardian
+      of his sister, and you will hear him generally cried up as the
+      most attentive and best of brothers.”
+
+      “What sort of girl is Miss Darcy?”
+
+      He shook his head. “I wish I could call her amiable. It gives me
+      pain to speak ill of a Darcy. But she is too much like her
+      brother—very, very proud. As a child, she was affectionate and
+      pleasing, and extremely fond of me; and I have devoted hours and
+      hours to her amusement. But she is nothing to me now. She is a
+      handsome girl, about fifteen or sixteen, and, I understand,
+      highly accomplished. Since her father’s death, her home has been
+      London, where a lady lives with her, and superintends her
+      education.”
+
+      After many pauses and many trials of other subjects, Elizabeth
+      could not help reverting once more to the first, and saying:
+
+      “I am astonished at his intimacy with Mr. Bingley! How can Mr.
+      Bingley, who seems good humour itself, and is, I really believe,
+      truly amiable, be in friendship with such a man? How can they
+      suit each other? Do you know Mr. Bingley?”
+
+      “Not at all.”
+
+      “He is a sweet-tempered, amiable, charming man. He cannot know
+      what Mr. Darcy is.”
+
+      “Probably not; but Mr. Darcy can please where he chooses. He does
+      not want abilities. He can be a conversible companion if he
+      thinks it worth his while. Among those who are at all his equals
+      in consequence, he is a very different man from what he is to the
+      less prosperous. His pride never deserts him; but with the rich
+      he is liberal-minded, just, sincere, rational, honourable, and
+      perhaps agreeable—allowing something for fortune and figure.”
+
+      The whist party soon afterwards breaking up, the players gathered
+      round the other table and Mr. Collins took his station between
+      his cousin Elizabeth and Mrs. Phillips. The usual inquiries as to
+      his success were made by the latter. It had not been very great;
+      he had lost every point; but when Mrs. Phillips began to express
+      her concern thereupon, he assured her with much earnest gravity
+      that it was not of the least importance, that he considered the
+      money as a mere trifle, and begged that she would not make
+      herself uneasy.
+
+      “I know very well, madam,” said he, “that when persons sit down
+      to a card-table, they must take their chances of these things,
+      and happily I am not in such circumstances as to make five
+      shillings any object. There are undoubtedly many who could not
+      say the same, but thanks to Lady Catherine de Bourgh, I am
+      removed far beyond the necessity of regarding little matters.”
+
+      Mr. Wickham’s attention was caught; and after observing Mr.
+      Collins for a few moments, he asked Elizabeth in a low voice
+      whether her relation was very intimately acquainted with the
+      family of de Bourgh.
+
+      “Lady Catherine de Bourgh,” she replied, “has very lately given
+      him a living. I hardly know how Mr. Collins was first introduced
+      to her notice, but he certainly has not known her long.”
+
+      “You know of course that Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Lady Anne
+      Darcy were sisters; consequently that she is aunt to the present
+      Mr. Darcy.”
+
+      “No, indeed, I did not. I knew nothing at all of Lady Catherine’s
+      connections. I never heard of her existence till the day before
+      yesterday.”
+
+      “Her daughter, Miss de Bourgh, will have a very large fortune,
+      and it is believed that she and her cousin will unite the two
+      estates.”
+
+      This information made Elizabeth smile, as she thought of poor
+      Miss Bingley. Vain indeed must be all her attentions, vain and
+      useless her affection for his sister and her praise of himself,
+      if he were already self-destined for another.
+
+      “Mr. Collins,” said she, “speaks highly both of Lady Catherine
+      and her daughter; but from some particulars that he has related
+      of her ladyship, I suspect his gratitude misleads him, and that
+      in spite of her being his patroness, she is an arrogant,
+      conceited woman.”
+
+      “I believe her to be both in a great degree,” replied Wickham; “I
+      have not seen her for many years, but I very well remember that I
+      never liked her, and that her manners were dictatorial and
+      insolent. She has the reputation of being remarkably sensible and
+      clever; but I rather believe she derives part of her abilities
+      from her rank and fortune, part from her authoritative manner,
+      and the rest from the pride for her nephew, who chooses that
+      everyone connected with him should have an understanding of the
+      first class.”
+
+      Elizabeth allowed that he had given a very rational account of
+      it, and they continued talking together, with mutual satisfaction
+      till supper put an end to cards, and gave the rest of the ladies
+      their share of Mr. Wickham’s attentions. There could be no
+      conversation in the noise of Mrs. Phillips’s supper party, but
+      his manners recommended him to everybody. Whatever he said, was
+      said well; and whatever he did, done gracefully. Elizabeth went
+      away with her head full of him. She could think of nothing but of
+      Mr. Wickham, and of what he had told her, all the way home; but
+      there was not time for her even to mention his name as they went,
+      for neither Lydia nor Mr. Collins were once silent. Lydia talked
+      incessantly of lottery tickets, of the fish she had lost and the
+      fish she had won; and Mr. Collins in describing the civility of
+      Mr. and Mrs. Phillips, protesting that he did not in the least
+      regard his losses at whist, enumerating all the dishes at supper,
+      and repeatedly fearing that he crowded his cousins, had more to
+      say than he could well manage before the carriage stopped at
+      Longbourn House.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 17
+
+      Elizabeth related to Jane the next day what had passed between
+      Mr. Wickham and herself. Jane listened with astonishment and
+      concern; she knew not how to believe that Mr. Darcy could be so
+      unworthy of Mr. Bingley’s regard; and yet, it was not in her
+      nature to question the veracity of a young man of such amiable
+      appearance as Wickham. The possibility of his having endured such
+      unkindness, was enough to interest all her tender feelings; and
+      nothing remained therefore to be done, but to think well of them
+      both, to defend the conduct of each, and throw into the account
+      of accident or mistake whatever could not be otherwise explained.
+
+      “They have both,” said she, “been deceived, I dare say, in some
+      way or other, of which we can form no idea. Interested people
+      have perhaps misrepresented each to the other. It is, in short,
+      impossible for us to conjecture the causes or circumstances which
+      may have alienated them, without actual blame on either side.”
+
+      “Very true, indeed; and now, my dear Jane, what have you got to
+      say on behalf of the interested people who have probably been
+      concerned in the business? Do clear _them_ too, or we shall be
+      obliged to think ill of somebody.”
+
+      “Laugh as much as you choose, but you will not laugh me out of my
+      opinion. My dearest Lizzy, do but consider in what a disgraceful
+      light it places Mr. Darcy, to be treating his father’s favourite
+      in such a manner, one whom his father had promised to provide
+      for. It is impossible. No man of common humanity, no man who had
+      any value for his character, could be capable of it. Can his most
+      intimate friends be so excessively deceived in him? Oh! no.”
+
+      “I can much more easily believe Mr. Bingley’s being imposed on,
+      than that Mr. Wickham should invent such a history of himself as
+      he gave me last night; names, facts, everything mentioned without
+      ceremony. If it be not so, let Mr. Darcy contradict it. Besides,
+      there was truth in his looks.”
+
+      “It is difficult indeed—it is distressing. One does not know what
+      to think.”
+
+      “I beg your pardon; one knows exactly what to think.”
+
+      But Jane could think with certainty on only one point—that Mr.
+      Bingley, if he _had been_ imposed on, would have much to suffer
+      when the affair became public.
+
+      The two young ladies were summoned from the shrubbery, where this
+      conversation passed, by the arrival of the very persons of whom
+      they had been speaking; Mr. Bingley and his sisters came to give
+      their personal invitation for the long-expected ball at
+      Netherfield, which was fixed for the following Tuesday. The two
+      ladies were delighted to see their dear friend again, called it
+      an age since they had met, and repeatedly asked what she had been
+      doing with herself since their separation. To the rest of the
+      family they paid little attention; avoiding Mrs. Bennet as much
+      as possible, saying not much to Elizabeth, and nothing at all to
+      the others. They were soon gone again, rising from their seats
+      with an activity which took their brother by surprise, and
+      hurrying off as if eager to escape from Mrs. Bennet’s civilities.
+
+      The prospect of the Netherfield ball was extremely agreeable to
+      every female of the family. Mrs. Bennet chose to consider it as
+      given in compliment to her eldest daughter, and was particularly
+      flattered by receiving the invitation from Mr. Bingley himself,
+      instead of a ceremonious card. Jane pictured to herself a happy
+      evening in the society of her two friends, and the attentions of
+      their brother; and Elizabeth thought with pleasure of dancing a
+      great deal with Mr. Wickham, and of seeing a confirmation of
+      everything in Mr. Darcy’s look and behaviour. The happiness
+      anticipated by Catherine and Lydia depended less on any single
+      event, or any particular person, for though they each, like
+      Elizabeth, meant to dance half the evening with Mr. Wickham, he
+      was by no means the only partner who could satisfy them, and a
+      ball was, at any rate, a ball. And even Mary could assure her
+      family that she had no disinclination for it.
+
+      “While I can have my mornings to myself,” said she, “it is
+      enough—I think it is no sacrifice to join occasionally in evening
+      engagements. Society has claims on us all; and I profess myself
+      one of those who consider intervals of recreation and amusement
+      as desirable for everybody.”
+
+      Elizabeth’s spirits were so high on this occasion, that though
+      she did not often speak unnecessarily to Mr. Collins, she could
+      not help asking him whether he intended to accept Mr. Bingley’s
+      invitation, and if he did, whether he would think it proper to
+      join in the evening’s amusement; and she was rather surprised to
+      find that he entertained no scruple whatever on that head, and
+      was very far from dreading a rebuke either from the Archbishop,
+      or Lady Catherine de Bourgh, by venturing to dance.
+
+      “I am by no means of the opinion, I assure you,” said he, “that a
+      ball of this kind, given by a young man of character, to
+      respectable people, can have any evil tendency; and I am so far
+      from objecting to dancing myself, that I shall hope to be
+      honoured with the hands of all my fair cousins in the course of
+      the evening; and I take this opportunity of soliciting yours,
+      Miss Elizabeth, for the two first dances especially, a preference
+      which I trust my cousin Jane will attribute to the right cause,
+      and not to any disrespect for her.”
+
+      Elizabeth felt herself completely taken in. She had fully
+      proposed being engaged by Mr. Wickham for those very dances; and
+      to have Mr. Collins instead! her liveliness had never been worse
+      timed. There was no help for it, however. Mr. Wickham’s happiness
+      and her own were perforce delayed a little longer, and Mr.
+      Collins’s proposal accepted with as good a grace as she could.
+      She was not the better pleased with his gallantry from the idea
+      it suggested of something more. It now first struck her, that
+      _she_ was selected from among her sisters as worthy of being
+      mistress of Hunsford Parsonage, and of assisting to form a
+      quadrille table at Rosings, in the absence of more eligible
+      visitors. The idea soon reached to conviction, as she observed
+      his increasing civilities toward herself, and heard his frequent
+      attempt at a compliment on her wit and vivacity; and though more
+      astonished than gratified herself by this effect of her charms,
+      it was not long before her mother gave her to understand that the
+      probability of their marriage was extremely agreeable to _her_.
+      Elizabeth, however, did not choose to take the hint, being well
+      aware that a serious dispute must be the consequence of any
+      reply. Mr. Collins might never make the offer, and till he did,
+      it was useless to quarrel about him.
+
+      If there had not been a Netherfield ball to prepare for and talk
+      of, the younger Miss Bennets would have been in a very pitiable
+      state at this time, for from the day of the invitation, to the
+      day of the ball, there was such a succession of rain as prevented
+      their walking to Meryton once. No aunt, no officers, no news
+      could be sought after—the very shoe-roses for Netherfield were
+      got by proxy. Even Elizabeth might have found some trial of her
+      patience in weather which totally suspended the improvement of
+      her acquaintance with Mr. Wickham; and nothing less than a dance
+      on Tuesday, could have made such a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and
+      Monday endurable to Kitty and Lydia.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 18
+
+      Till Elizabeth entered the drawing-room at Netherfield, and
+      looked in vain for Mr. Wickham among the cluster of red coats
+      there assembled, a doubt of his being present had never occurred
+      to her. The certainty of meeting him had not been checked by any
+      of those recollections that might not unreasonably have alarmed
+      her. She had dressed with more than usual care, and prepared in
+      the highest spirits for the conquest of all that remained
+      unsubdued of his heart, trusting that it was not more than might
+      be won in the course of the evening. But in an instant arose the
+      dreadful suspicion of his being purposely omitted for Mr. Darcy’s
+      pleasure in the Bingleys’ invitation to the officers; and though
+      this was not exactly the case, the absolute fact of his absence
+      was pronounced by his friend Denny, to whom Lydia eagerly
+      applied, and who told them that Wickham had been obliged to go to
+      town on business the day before, and was not yet returned;
+      adding, with a significant smile, “I do not imagine his business
+      would have called him away just now, if he had not wanted to
+      avoid a certain gentleman here.”
+
+      This part of his intelligence, though unheard by Lydia, was
+      caught by Elizabeth, and, as it assured her that Darcy was not
+      less answerable for Wickham’s absence than if her first surmise
+      had been just, every feeling of displeasure against the former
+      was so sharpened by immediate disappointment, that she could
+      hardly reply with tolerable civility to the polite inquiries
+      which he directly afterwards approached to make. Attendance,
+      forbearance, patience with Darcy, was injury to Wickham. She was
+      resolved against any sort of conversation with him, and turned
+      away with a degree of ill-humour which she could not wholly
+      surmount even in speaking to Mr. Bingley, whose blind partiality
+      provoked her.
+
+      But Elizabeth was not formed for ill-humour; and though every
+      prospect of her own was destroyed for the evening, it could not
+      dwell long on her spirits; and having told all her griefs to
+      Charlotte Lucas, whom she had not seen for a week, she was soon
+      able to make a voluntary transition to the oddities of her
+      cousin, and to point him out to her particular notice. The first
+      two dances, however, brought a return of distress; they were
+      dances of mortification. Mr. Collins, awkward and solemn,
+      apologising instead of attending, and often moving wrong without
+      being aware of it, gave her all the shame and misery which a
+      disagreeable partner for a couple of dances can give. The moment
+      of her release from him was ecstasy.
+
+      She danced next with an officer, and had the refreshment of
+      talking of Wickham, and of hearing that he was universally liked.
+      When those dances were over, she returned to Charlotte Lucas, and
+      was in conversation with her, when she found herself suddenly
+      addressed by Mr. Darcy who took her so much by surprise in his
+      application for her hand, that, without knowing what she did, she
+      accepted him. He walked away again immediately, and she was left
+      to fret over her own want of presence of mind; Charlotte tried to
+      console her:
+
+      “I dare say you will find him very agreeable.”
+
+      “Heaven forbid! _That_ would be the greatest misfortune of all!
+      To find a man agreeable whom one is determined to hate! Do not
+      wish me such an evil.”
+
+      When the dancing recommenced, however, and Darcy approached to
+      claim her hand, Charlotte could not help cautioning her in a
+      whisper, not to be a simpleton, and allow her fancy for Wickham
+      to make her appear unpleasant in the eyes of a man ten times his
+      consequence. Elizabeth made no answer, and took her place in the
+      set, amazed at the dignity to which she was arrived in being
+      allowed to stand opposite to Mr. Darcy, and reading in her
+      neighbours’ looks, their equal amazement in beholding it. They
+      stood for some time without speaking a word; and she began to
+      imagine that their silence was to last through the two dances,
+      and at first was resolved not to break it; till suddenly fancying
+      that it would be the greater punishment to her partner to oblige
+      him to talk, she made some slight observation on the dance. He
+      replied, and was again silent. After a pause of some minutes, she
+      addressed him a second time with:—“It is _your_ turn to say
+      something now, Mr. Darcy. _I_ talked about the dance, and _you_
+      ought to make some sort of remark on the size of the room, or the
+      number of couples.”
+
+      He smiled, and assured her that whatever she wished him to say
+      should be said.
+
+      “Very well. That reply will do for the present. Perhaps by and by
+      I may observe that private balls are much pleasanter than public
+      ones. But _now_ we may be silent.”
+
+      “Do you talk by rule, then, while you are dancing?”
+
+      “Sometimes. One must speak a little, you know. It would look odd
+      to be entirely silent for half an hour together; and yet for the
+      advantage of _some_, conversation ought to be so arranged, as
+      that they may have the trouble of saying as little as possible.”
+
+      “Are you consulting your own feelings in the present case, or do
+      you imagine that you are gratifying mine?”
+
+      “Both,” replied Elizabeth archly; “for I have always seen a great
+      similarity in the turn of our minds. We are each of an unsocial,
+      taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say
+      something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to
+      posterity with all the _éclat_ of a proverb.”
+
+      “This is no very striking resemblance of your own character, I am
+      sure,” said he. “How near it may be to _mine_, I cannot pretend
+      to say. _You_ think it a faithful portrait undoubtedly.”
+
+      “I must not decide on my own performance.”
+
+      He made no answer, and they were again silent till they had gone
+      down the dance, when he asked her if she and her sisters did not
+      very often walk to Meryton. She answered in the affirmative, and,
+      unable to resist the temptation, added, “When you met us there
+      the other day, we had just been forming a new acquaintance.”
+
+      The effect was immediate. A deeper shade of _hauteur_ overspread
+      his features, but he said not a word, and Elizabeth, though
+      blaming herself for her own weakness, could not go on. At length
+      Darcy spoke, and in a constrained manner said, “Mr. Wickham is
+      blessed with such happy manners as may ensure his _making_
+      friends—whether he may be equally capable of _retaining_ them, is
+      less certain.”
+
+      “He has been so unlucky as to lose your friendship,” replied
+      Elizabeth with emphasis, “and in a manner which he is likely to
+      suffer from all his life.”
+
+      Darcy made no answer, and seemed desirous of changing the
+      subject. At that moment, Sir William Lucas appeared close to
+      them, meaning to pass through the set to the other side of the
+      room; but on perceiving Mr. Darcy, he stopped with a bow of
+      superior courtesy to compliment him on his dancing and his
+      partner.
+
+      “I have been most highly gratified indeed, my dear sir. Such very
+      superior dancing is not often seen. It is evident that you belong
+      to the first circles. Allow me to say, however, that your fair
+      partner does not disgrace you, and that I must hope to have this
+      pleasure often repeated, especially when a certain desirable
+      event, my dear Eliza (glancing at her sister and Bingley) shall
+      take place. What congratulations will then flow in! I appeal to
+      Mr. Darcy:—but let me not interrupt you, sir. You will not thank
+      me for detaining you from the bewitching converse of that young
+      lady, whose bright eyes are also upbraiding me.”
+
+      The latter part of this address was scarcely heard by Darcy; but
+      Sir William’s allusion to his friend seemed to strike him
+      forcibly, and his eyes were directed with a very serious
+      expression towards Bingley and Jane, who were dancing together.
+      Recovering himself, however, shortly, he turned to his partner,
+      and said, “Sir William’s interruption has made me forget what we
+      were talking of.”
+
+      “I do not think we were speaking at all. Sir William could not
+      have interrupted two people in the room who had less to say for
+      themselves. We have tried two or three subjects already without
+      success, and what we are to talk of next I cannot imagine.”
+
+      “What think you of books?” said he, smiling.
+
+      “Books—oh! no. I am sure we never read the same, or not with the
+      same feelings.”
+
+      “I am sorry you think so; but if that be the case, there can at
+      least be no want of subject. We may compare our different
+      opinions.”
+
+      “No—I cannot talk of books in a ball-room; my head is always full
+      of something else.”
+
+      “The _present_ always occupies you in such scenes—does it?” said
+      he, with a look of doubt.
+
+      “Yes, always,” she replied, without knowing what she said, for
+      her thoughts had wandered far from the subject, as soon
+      afterwards appeared by her suddenly exclaiming, “I remember
+      hearing you once say, Mr. Darcy, that you hardly ever forgave,
+      that your resentment once created was unappeasable. You are very
+      cautious, I suppose, as to its _being created?_”
+
+      “I am,” said he, with a firm voice.
+
+      “And never allow yourself to be blinded by prejudice?”
+
+      “I hope not.”
+
+      “It is particularly incumbent on those who never change their
+      opinion, to be secure of judging properly at first.”
+
+      “May I ask to what these questions tend?”
+
+      “Merely to the illustration of _your_ character,” said she,
+      endeavouring to shake off her gravity. “I am trying to make it
+      out.”
+
+      “And what is your success?”
+
+      She shook her head. “I do not get on at all. I hear such
+      different accounts of you as puzzle me exceedingly.”
+
+      “I can readily believe,” answered he gravely, “that reports may
+      vary greatly with respect to me; and I could wish, Miss Bennet,
+      that you were not to sketch my character at the present moment,
+      as there is reason to fear that the performance would reflect no
+      credit on either.”
+
+      “But if I do not take your likeness now, I may never have another
+      opportunity.”
+
+      “I would by no means suspend any pleasure of yours,” he coldly
+      replied. She said no more, and they went down the other dance and
+      parted in silence; and on each side dissatisfied, though not to
+      an equal degree, for in Darcy’s breast there was a tolerably
+      powerful feeling towards her, which soon procured her pardon, and
+      directed all his anger against another.
+
+      They had not long separated, when Miss Bingley came towards her,
+      and with an expression of civil disdain accosted her:
+
+      “So, Miss Eliza, I hear you are quite delighted with George
+      Wickham! Your sister has been talking to me about him, and asking
+      me a thousand questions; and I find that the young man quite
+      forgot to tell you, among his other communication, that he was
+      the son of old Wickham, the late Mr. Darcy’s steward. Let me
+      recommend you, however, as a friend, not to give implicit
+      confidence to all his assertions; for as to Mr. Darcy’s using him
+      ill, it is perfectly false; for, on the contrary, he has always
+      been remarkably kind to him, though George Wickham has treated
+      Mr. Darcy in a most infamous manner. I do not know the
+      particulars, but I know very well that Mr. Darcy is not in the
+      least to blame, that he cannot bear to hear George Wickham
+      mentioned, and that though my brother thought that he could not
+      well avoid including him in his invitation to the officers, he
+      was excessively glad to find that he had taken himself out of the
+      way. His coming into the country at all is a most insolent thing,
+      indeed, and I wonder how he could presume to do it. I pity you,
+      Miss Eliza, for this discovery of your favourite’s guilt; but
+      really, considering his descent, one could not expect much
+      better.”
+
+      “His guilt and his descent appear by your account to be the
+      same,” said Elizabeth angrily; “for I have heard you accuse him
+      of nothing worse than of being the son of Mr. Darcy’s steward,
+      and of _that_, I can assure you, he informed me himself.”
+
+      “I beg your pardon,” replied Miss Bingley, turning away with a
+      sneer. “Excuse my interference—it was kindly meant.”
+
+      “Insolent girl!” said Elizabeth to herself. “You are much
+      mistaken if you expect to influence me by such a paltry attack as
+      this. I see nothing in it but your own wilful ignorance and the
+      malice of Mr. Darcy.” She then sought her eldest sister, who had
+      undertaken to make inquiries on the same subject of Bingley. Jane
+      met her with a smile of such sweet complacency, a glow of such
+      happy expression, as sufficiently marked how well she was
+      satisfied with the occurrences of the evening. Elizabeth
+      instantly read her feelings, and at that moment solicitude for
+      Wickham, resentment against his enemies, and everything else,
+      gave way before the hope of Jane’s being in the fairest way for
+      happiness.
+
+      “I want to know,” said she, with a countenance no less smiling
+      than her sister’s, “what you have learnt about Mr. Wickham. But
+      perhaps you have been too pleasantly engaged to think of any
+      third person; in which case you may be sure of my pardon.”
+
+      “No,” replied Jane, “I have not forgotten him; but I have nothing
+      satisfactory to tell you. Mr. Bingley does not know the whole of
+      his history, and is quite ignorant of the circumstances which
+      have principally offended Mr. Darcy; but he will vouch for the
+      good conduct, the probity, and honour of his friend, and is
+      perfectly convinced that Mr. Wickham has deserved much less
+      attention from Mr. Darcy than he has received; and I am sorry to
+      say by his account as well as his sister’s, Mr. Wickham is by no
+      means a respectable young man. I am afraid he has been very
+      imprudent, and has deserved to lose Mr. Darcy’s regard.”
+
+      “Mr. Bingley does not know Mr. Wickham himself?”
+
+      “No; he never saw him till the other morning at Meryton.”
+
+      “This account then is what he has received from Mr. Darcy. I am
+      satisfied. But what does he say of the living?”
+
+      “He does not exactly recollect the circumstances, though he has
+      heard them from Mr. Darcy more than once, but he believes that it
+      was left to him _conditionally_ only.”
+
+      “I have not a doubt of Mr. Bingley’s sincerity,” said Elizabeth
+      warmly; “but you must excuse my not being convinced by assurances
+      only. Mr. Bingley’s defense of his friend was a very able one, I
+      dare say; but since he is unacquainted with several parts of the
+      story, and has learnt the rest from that friend himself, I shall
+      venture to still think of both gentlemen as I did before.”
+
+      She then changed the discourse to one more gratifying to each,
+      and on which there could be no difference of sentiment. Elizabeth
+      listened with delight to the happy, though modest hopes which
+      Jane entertained of Mr. Bingley’s regard, and said all in her
+      power to heighten her confidence in it. On their being joined by
+      Mr. Bingley himself, Elizabeth withdrew to Miss Lucas; to whose
+      inquiry after the pleasantness of her last partner she had
+      scarcely replied, before Mr. Collins came up to them, and told
+      her with great exultation that he had just been so fortunate as
+      to make a most important discovery.
+
+      “I have found out,” said he, “by a singular accident, that there
+      is now in the room a near relation of my patroness. I happened to
+      overhear the gentleman himself mentioning to the young lady who
+      does the honours of the house the names of his cousin Miss de
+      Bourgh, and of her mother Lady Catherine. How wonderfully these
+      sort of things occur! Who would have thought of my meeting with,
+      perhaps, a nephew of Lady Catherine de Bourgh in this assembly! I
+      am most thankful that the discovery is made in time for me to pay
+      my respects to him, which I am now going to do, and trust he will
+      excuse my not having done it before. My total ignorance of the
+      connection must plead my apology.”
+
+      “You are not going to introduce yourself to Mr. Darcy!”
+
+      “Indeed I am. I shall entreat his pardon for not having done it
+      earlier. I believe him to be Lady Catherine’s _nephew_. It will
+      be in my power to assure him that her ladyship was quite well
+      yesterday se’nnight.”
+
+      Elizabeth tried hard to dissuade him from such a scheme, assuring
+      him that Mr. Darcy would consider his addressing him without
+      introduction as an impertinent freedom, rather than a compliment
+      to his aunt; that it was not in the least necessary there should
+      be any notice on either side; and that if it were, it must belong
+      to Mr. Darcy, the superior in consequence, to begin the
+      acquaintance. Mr. Collins listened to her with the determined air
+      of following his own inclination, and, when she ceased speaking,
+      replied thus:
+
+      “My dear Miss Elizabeth, I have the highest opinion in the world
+      in your excellent judgement in all matters within the scope of
+      your understanding; but permit me to say, that there must be a
+      wide difference between the established forms of ceremony amongst
+      the laity, and those which regulate the clergy; for, give me
+      leave to observe that I consider the clerical office as equal in
+      point of dignity with the highest rank in the kingdom—provided
+      that a proper humility of behaviour is at the same time
+      maintained. You must therefore allow me to follow the dictates of
+      my conscience on this occasion, which leads me to perform what I
+      look on as a point of duty. Pardon me for neglecting to profit by
+      your advice, which on every other subject shall be my constant
+      guide, though in the case before us I consider myself more fitted
+      by education and habitual study to decide on what is right than a
+      young lady like yourself.” And with a low bow he left her to
+      attack Mr. Darcy, whose reception of his advances she eagerly
+      watched, and whose astonishment at being so addressed was very
+      evident. Her cousin prefaced his speech with a solemn bow and
+      though she could not hear a word of it, she felt as if hearing it
+      all, and saw in the motion of his lips the words “apology,”
+      “Hunsford,” and “Lady Catherine de Bourgh.” It vexed her to see
+      him expose himself to such a man. Mr. Darcy was eyeing him with
+      unrestrained wonder, and when at last Mr. Collins allowed him
+      time to speak, replied with an air of distant civility. Mr.
+      Collins, however, was not discouraged from speaking again, and
+      Mr. Darcy’s contempt seemed abundantly increasing with the length
+      of his second speech, and at the end of it he only made him a
+      slight bow, and moved another way. Mr. Collins then returned to
+      Elizabeth.
+
+      “I have no reason, I assure you,” said he, “to be dissatisfied
+      with my reception. Mr. Darcy seemed much pleased with the
+      attention. He answered me with the utmost civility, and even paid
+      me the compliment of saying that he was so well convinced of Lady
+      Catherine’s discernment as to be certain she could never bestow a
+      favour unworthily. It was really a very handsome thought. Upon
+      the whole, I am much pleased with him.”
+
+      As Elizabeth had no longer any interest of her own to pursue, she
+      turned her attention almost entirely on her sister and Mr.
+      Bingley; and the train of agreeable reflections which her
+      observations gave birth to, made her perhaps almost as happy as
+      Jane. She saw her in idea settled in that very house, in all the
+      felicity which a marriage of true affection could bestow; and she
+      felt capable, under such circumstances, of endeavouring even to
+      like Bingley’s two sisters. Her mother’s thoughts she plainly saw
+      were bent the same way, and she determined not to venture near
+      her, lest she might hear too much. When they sat down to supper,
+      therefore, she considered it a most unlucky perverseness which
+      placed them within one of each other; and deeply was she vexed to
+      find that her mother was talking to that one person (Lady Lucas)
+      freely, openly, and of nothing else but her expectation that Jane
+      would soon be married to Mr. Bingley. It was an animating
+      subject, and Mrs. Bennet seemed incapable of fatigue while
+      enumerating the advantages of the match. His being such a
+      charming young man, and so rich, and living but three miles from
+      them, were the first points of self-gratulation; and then it was
+      such a comfort to think how fond the two sisters were of Jane,
+      and to be certain that they must desire the connection as much as
+      she could do. It was, moreover, such a promising thing for her
+      younger daughters, as Jane’s marrying so greatly must throw them
+      in the way of other rich men; and lastly, it was so pleasant at
+      her time of life to be able to consign her single daughters to
+      the care of their sister, that she might not be obliged to go
+      into company more than she liked. It was necessary to make this
+      circumstance a matter of pleasure, because on such occasions it
+      is the etiquette; but no one was less likely than Mrs. Bennet to
+      find comfort in staying home at any period of her life. She
+      concluded with many good wishes that Lady Lucas might soon be
+      equally fortunate, though evidently and triumphantly believing
+      there was no chance of it.
+
+      In vain did Elizabeth endeavour to check the rapidity of her
+      mother’s words, or persuade her to describe her felicity in a
+      less audible whisper; for, to her inexpressible vexation, she
+      could perceive that the chief of it was overheard by Mr. Darcy,
+      who sat opposite to them. Her mother only scolded her for being
+      nonsensical.
+
+      “What is Mr. Darcy to me, pray, that I should be afraid of him? I
+      am sure we owe him no such particular civility as to be obliged
+      to say nothing _he_ may not like to hear.”
+
+      “For heaven’s sake, madam, speak lower. What advantage can it be
+      for you to offend Mr. Darcy? You will never recommend yourself to
+      his friend by so doing!”
+
+      Nothing that she could say, however, had any influence. Her
+      mother would talk of her views in the same intelligible tone.
+      Elizabeth blushed and blushed again with shame and vexation. She
+      could not help frequently glancing her eye at Mr. Darcy, though
+      every glance convinced her of what she dreaded; for though he was
+      not always looking at her mother, she was convinced that his
+      attention was invariably fixed by her. The expression of his face
+      changed gradually from indignant contempt to a composed and
+      steady gravity.
+
+      At length, however, Mrs. Bennet had no more to say; and Lady
+      Lucas, who had been long yawning at the repetition of delights
+      which she saw no likelihood of sharing, was left to the comforts
+      of cold ham and chicken. Elizabeth now began to revive. But not
+      long was the interval of tranquillity; for, when supper was over,
+      singing was talked of, and she had the mortification of seeing
+      Mary, after very little entreaty, preparing to oblige the
+      company. By many significant looks and silent entreaties, did she
+      endeavour to prevent such a proof of complaisance, but in vain;
+      Mary would not understand them; such an opportunity of exhibiting
+      was delightful to her, and she began her song. Elizabeth’s eyes
+      were fixed on her with most painful sensations, and she watched
+      her progress through the several stanzas with an impatience which
+      was very ill rewarded at their close; for Mary, on receiving,
+      amongst the thanks of the table, the hint of a hope that she
+      might be prevailed on to favour them again, after the pause of
+      half a minute began another. Mary’s powers were by no means
+      fitted for such a display; her voice was weak, and her manner
+      affected. Elizabeth was in agonies. She looked at Jane, to see
+      how she bore it; but Jane was very composedly talking to Bingley.
+      She looked at his two sisters, and saw them making signs of
+      derision at each other, and at Darcy, who continued, however,
+      imperturbably grave. She looked at her father to entreat his
+      interference, lest Mary should be singing all night. He took the
+      hint, and when Mary had finished her second song, said aloud,
+      “That will do extremely well, child. You have delighted us long
+      enough. Let the other young ladies have time to exhibit.”
+
+      Mary, though pretending not to hear, was somewhat disconcerted;
+      and Elizabeth, sorry for her, and sorry for her father’s speech,
+      was afraid her anxiety had done no good. Others of the party were
+      now applied to.
+
+      “If I,” said Mr. Collins, “were so fortunate as to be able to
+      sing, I should have great pleasure, I am sure, in obliging the
+      company with an air; for I consider music as a very innocent
+      diversion, and perfectly compatible with the profession of a
+      clergyman. I do not mean, however, to assert that we can be
+      justified in devoting too much of our time to music, for there
+      are certainly other things to be attended to. The rector of a
+      parish has much to do. In the first place, he must make such an
+      agreement for tithes as may be beneficial to himself and not
+      offensive to his patron. He must write his own sermons; and the
+      time that remains will not be too much for his parish duties, and
+      the care and improvement of his dwelling, which he cannot be
+      excused from making as comfortable as possible. And I do not
+      think it of light importance that he should have attentive and
+      conciliatory manners towards everybody, especially towards those
+      to whom he owes his preferment. I cannot acquit him of that duty;
+      nor could I think well of the man who should omit an occasion of
+      testifying his respect towards anybody connected with the
+      family.” And with a bow to Mr. Darcy, he concluded his speech,
+      which had been spoken so loud as to be heard by half the room.
+      Many stared—many smiled; but no one looked more amused than Mr.
+      Bennet himself, while his wife seriously commended Mr. Collins
+      for having spoken so sensibly, and observed in a half-whisper to
+      Lady Lucas, that he was a remarkably clever, good kind of young
+      man.
+
+      To Elizabeth it appeared that, had her family made an agreement
+      to expose themselves as much as they could during the evening, it
+      would have been impossible for them to play their parts with more
+      spirit or finer success; and happy did she think it for Bingley
+      and her sister that some of the exhibition had escaped his
+      notice, and that his feelings were not of a sort to be much
+      distressed by the folly which he must have witnessed. That his
+      two sisters and Mr. Darcy, however, should have such an
+      opportunity of ridiculing her relations, was bad enough, and she
+      could not determine whether the silent contempt of the gentleman,
+      or the insolent smiles of the ladies, were more intolerable.
+
+      The rest of the evening brought her little amusement. She was
+      teased by Mr. Collins, who continued most perseveringly by her
+      side, and though he could not prevail on her to dance with him
+      again, put it out of her power to dance with others. In vain did
+      she entreat him to stand up with somebody else, and offer to
+      introduce him to any young lady in the room. He assured her, that
+      as to dancing, he was perfectly indifferent to it; that his chief
+      object was by delicate attentions to recommend himself to her and
+      that he should therefore make a point of remaining close to her
+      the whole evening. There was no arguing upon such a project. She
+      owed her greatest relief to her friend Miss Lucas, who often
+      joined them, and good-naturedly engaged Mr. Collins’s
+      conversation to herself.
+
+      She was at least free from the offense of Mr. Darcy’s further
+      notice; though often standing within a very short distance of
+      her, quite disengaged, he never came near enough to speak. She
+      felt it to be the probable consequence of her allusions to Mr.
+      Wickham, and rejoiced in it.
+
+      The Longbourn party were the last of all the company to depart,
+      and, by a manoeuvre of Mrs. Bennet, had to wait for their
+      carriage a quarter of an hour after everybody else was gone,
+      which gave them time to see how heartily they were wished away by
+      some of the family. Mrs. Hurst and her sister scarcely opened
+      their mouths, except to complain of fatigue, and were evidently
+      impatient to have the house to themselves. They repulsed every
+      attempt of Mrs. Bennet at conversation, and by so doing threw a
+      languor over the whole party, which was very little relieved by
+      the long speeches of Mr. Collins, who was complimenting Mr.
+      Bingley and his sisters on the elegance of their entertainment,
+      and the hospitality and politeness which had marked their
+      behaviour to their guests. Darcy said nothing at all. Mr. Bennet,
+      in equal silence, was enjoying the scene. Mr. Bingley and Jane
+      were standing together, a little detached from the rest, and
+      talked only to each other. Elizabeth preserved as steady a
+      silence as either Mrs. Hurst or Miss Bingley; and even Lydia was
+      too much fatigued to utter more than the occasional exclamation
+      of “Lord, how tired I am!” accompanied by a violent yawn.
+
+      When at length they arose to take leave, Mrs. Bennet was most
+      pressingly civil in her hope of seeing the whole family soon at
+      Longbourn, and addressed herself especially to Mr. Bingley, to
+      assure him how happy he would make them by eating a family dinner
+      with them at any time, without the ceremony of a formal
+      invitation. Bingley was all grateful pleasure, and he readily
+      engaged for taking the earliest opportunity of waiting on her,
+      after his return from London, whither he was obliged to go the
+      next day for a short time.
+
+      Mrs. Bennet was perfectly satisfied, and quitted the house under
+      the delightful persuasion that, allowing for the necessary
+      preparations of settlements, new carriages, and wedding clothes,
+      she should undoubtedly see her daughter settled at Netherfield in
+      the course of three or four months. Of having another daughter
+      married to Mr. Collins, she thought with equal certainty, and
+      with considerable, though not equal, pleasure. Elizabeth was the
+      least dear to her of all her children; and though the man and the
+      match were quite good enough for _her_, the worth of each was
+      eclipsed by Mr. Bingley and Netherfield.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 19
+
+      The next day opened a new scene at Longbourn. Mr. Collins made
+      his declaration in form. Having resolved to do it without loss of
+      time, as his leave of absence extended only to the following
+      Saturday, and having no feelings of diffidence to make it
+      distressing to himself even at the moment, he set about it in a
+      very orderly manner, with all the observances, which he supposed
+      a regular part of the business. On finding Mrs. Bennet,
+      Elizabeth, and one of the younger girls together, soon after
+      breakfast, he addressed the mother in these words:
+
+      “May I hope, madam, for your interest with your fair daughter
+      Elizabeth, when I solicit for the honour of a private audience
+      with her in the course of this morning?”
+
+      Before Elizabeth had time for anything but a blush of surprise,
+      Mrs. Bennet answered instantly, “Oh dear!—yes—certainly. I am
+      sure Lizzy will be very happy—I am sure she can have no
+      objection. Come, Kitty, I want you up stairs.” And, gathering her
+      work together, she was hastening away, when Elizabeth called out:
+
+      “Dear madam, do not go. I beg you will not go. Mr. Collins must
+      excuse me. He can have nothing to say to me that anybody need not
+      hear. I am going away myself.”
+
+      “No, no, nonsense, Lizzy. I desire you to stay where you are.”
+      And upon Elizabeth’s seeming really, with vexed and embarrassed
+      looks, about to escape, she added: “Lizzy, I _insist_ upon your
+      staying and hearing Mr. Collins.”
+
+      Elizabeth would not oppose such an injunction—and a moment’s
+      consideration making her also sensible that it would be wisest to
+      get it over as soon and as quietly as possible, she sat down
+      again and tried to conceal, by incessant employment the feelings
+      which were divided between distress and diversion. Mrs. Bennet
+      and Kitty walked off, and as soon as they were gone, Mr. Collins
+      began.
+
+      “Believe me, my dear Miss Elizabeth, that your modesty, so far
+      from doing you any disservice, rather adds to your other
+      perfections. You would have been less amiable in my eyes had
+      there _not_ been this little unwillingness; but allow me to
+      assure you, that I have your respected mother’s permission for
+      this address. You can hardly doubt the purport of my discourse,
+      however your natural delicacy may lead you to dissemble; my
+      attentions have been too marked to be mistaken. Almost as soon as
+      I entered the house, I singled you out as the companion of my
+      future life. But before I am run away with by my feelings on this
+      subject, perhaps it would be advisable for me to state my reasons
+      for marrying—and, moreover, for coming into Hertfordshire with
+      the design of selecting a wife, as I certainly did.”
+
+      The idea of Mr. Collins, with all his solemn composure, being run
+      away with by his feelings, made Elizabeth so near laughing, that
+      she could not use the short pause he allowed in any attempt to
+      stop him further, and he continued:
+
+      “My reasons for marrying are, first, that I think it a right
+      thing for every clergyman in easy circumstances (like myself) to
+      set the example of matrimony in his parish; secondly, that I am
+      convinced that it will add very greatly to my happiness; and
+      thirdly—which perhaps I ought to have mentioned earlier, that it
+      is the particular advice and recommendation of the very noble
+      lady whom I have the honour of calling patroness. Twice has she
+      condescended to give me her opinion (unasked too!) on this
+      subject; and it was but the very Saturday night before I left
+      Hunsford—between our pools at quadrille, while Mrs. Jenkinson was
+      arranging Miss de Bourgh’s footstool, that she said, ‘Mr.
+      Collins, you must marry. A clergyman like you must marry. Choose
+      properly, choose a gentlewoman for _my_ sake; and for your _own_,
+      let her be an active, useful sort of person, not brought up high,
+      but able to make a small income go a good way. This is my advice.
+      Find such a woman as soon as you can, bring her to Hunsford, and
+      I will visit her.’ Allow me, by the way, to observe, my fair
+      cousin, that I do not reckon the notice and kindness of Lady
+      Catherine de Bourgh as among the least of the advantages in my
+      power to offer. You will find her manners beyond anything I can
+      describe; and your wit and vivacity, I think, must be acceptable
+      to her, especially when tempered with the silence and respect
+      which her rank will inevitably excite. Thus much for my general
+      intention in favour of matrimony; it remains to be told why my
+      views were directed towards Longbourn instead of my own
+      neighbourhood, where I can assure you there are many amiable
+      young women. But the fact is, that being, as I am, to inherit
+      this estate after the death of your honoured father (who,
+      however, may live many years longer), I could not satisfy myself
+      without resolving to choose a wife from among his daughters, that
+      the loss to them might be as little as possible, when the
+      melancholy event takes place—which, however, as I have already
+      said, may not be for several years. This has been my motive, my
+      fair cousin, and I flatter myself it will not sink me in your
+      esteem. And now nothing remains for me but to assure you in the
+      most animated language of the violence of my affection. To
+      fortune I am perfectly indifferent, and shall make no demand of
+      that nature on your father, since I am well aware that it could
+      not be complied with; and that one thousand pounds in the four
+      per cents, which will not be yours till after your mother’s
+      decease, is all that you may ever be entitled to. On that head,
+      therefore, I shall be uniformly silent; and you may assure
+      yourself that no ungenerous reproach shall ever pass my lips when
+      we are married.”
+
+      It was absolutely necessary to interrupt him now.
+
+      “You are too hasty, sir,” she cried. “You forget that I have made
+      no answer. Let me do it without further loss of time. Accept my
+      thanks for the compliment you are paying me. I am very sensible
+      of the honour of your proposals, but it is impossible for me to
+      do otherwise than to decline them.”
+
+      “I am not now to learn,” replied Mr. Collins, with a formal wave
+      of the hand, “that it is usual with young ladies to reject the
+      addresses of the man whom they secretly mean to accept, when he
+      first applies for their favour; and that sometimes the refusal is
+      repeated a second, or even a third time. I am therefore by no
+      means discouraged by what you have just said, and shall hope to
+      lead you to the altar ere long.”
+
+      “Upon my word, sir,” cried Elizabeth, “your hope is a rather
+      extraordinary one after my declaration. I do assure you that I am
+      not one of those young ladies (if such young ladies there are)
+      who are so daring as to risk their happiness on the chance of
+      being asked a second time. I am perfectly serious in my refusal.
+      You could not make _me_ happy, and I am convinced that I am the
+      last woman in the world who could make you so. Nay, were your
+      friend Lady Catherine to know me, I am persuaded she would find
+      me in every respect ill qualified for the situation.”
+
+      “Were it certain that Lady Catherine would think so,” said Mr.
+      Collins very gravely—“but I cannot imagine that her ladyship
+      would at all disapprove of you. And you may be certain when I
+      have the honour of seeing her again, I shall speak in the very
+      highest terms of your modesty, economy, and other amiable
+      qualification.”
+
+      “Indeed, Mr. Collins, all praise of me will be unnecessary. You
+      must give me leave to judge for myself, and pay me the compliment
+      of believing what I say. I wish you very happy and very rich, and
+      by refusing your hand, do all in my power to prevent your being
+      otherwise. In making me the offer, you must have satisfied the
+      delicacy of your feelings with regard to my family, and may take
+      possession of Longbourn estate whenever it falls, without any
+      self-reproach. This matter may be considered, therefore, as
+      finally settled.” And rising as she thus spoke, she would have
+      quitted the room, had Mr. Collins not thus addressed her:
+
+      “When I do myself the honour of speaking to you next on the
+      subject, I shall hope to receive a more favourable answer than
+      you have now given me; though I am far from accusing you of
+      cruelty at present, because I know it to be the established
+      custom of your sex to reject a man on the first application, and
+      perhaps you have even now said as much to encourage my suit as
+      would be consistent with the true delicacy of the female
+      character.”
+
+      “Really, Mr. Collins,” cried Elizabeth with some warmth, “you
+      puzzle me exceedingly. If what I have hitherto said can appear to
+      you in the form of encouragement, I know not how to express my
+      refusal in such a way as to convince you of its being one.”
+
+      “You must give me leave to flatter myself, my dear cousin, that
+      your refusal of my addresses is merely words of course. My
+      reasons for believing it are briefly these: It does not appear to
+      me that my hand is unworthy of your acceptance, or that the
+      establishment I can offer would be any other than highly
+      desirable. My situation in life, my connections with the family
+      of de Bourgh, and my relationship to your own, are circumstances
+      highly in my favour; and you should take it into further
+      consideration, that in spite of your manifold attractions, it is
+      by no means certain that another offer of marriage may ever be
+      made you. Your portion is unhappily so small that it will in all
+      likelihood undo the effects of your loveliness and amiable
+      qualifications. As I must therefore conclude that you are not
+      serious in your rejection of me, I shall choose to attribute it
+      to your wish of increasing my love by suspense, according to the
+      usual practice of elegant females.”
+
+      “I do assure you, sir, that I have no pretensions whatever to
+      that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable
+      man. I would rather be paid the compliment of being believed
+      sincere. I thank you again and again for the honour you have done
+      me in your proposals, but to accept them is absolutely
+      impossible. My feelings in every respect forbid it. Can I speak
+      plainer? Do not consider me now as an elegant female, intending
+      to plague you, but as a rational creature, speaking the truth
+      from her heart.”
+
+      “You are uniformly charming!” cried he, with an air of awkward
+      gallantry; “and I am persuaded that when sanctioned by the
+      express authority of both your excellent parents, my proposals
+      will not fail of being acceptable.”
+
+      To such perseverance in wilful self-deception Elizabeth would
+      make no reply, and immediately and in silence withdrew;
+      determined, if he persisted in considering her repeated refusals
+      as flattering encouragement, to apply to her father, whose
+      negative might be uttered in such a manner as to be decisive, and
+      whose behaviour at least could not be mistaken for the
+      affectation and coquetry of an elegant female.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 20
+
+      Mr. Collins was not left long to the silent contemplation of his
+      successful love; for Mrs. Bennet, having dawdled about in the
+      vestibule to watch for the end of the conference, no sooner saw
+      Elizabeth open the door and with quick step pass her towards the
+      staircase, than she entered the breakfast-room, and congratulated
+      both him and herself in warm terms on the happy prospect of their
+      nearer connection. Mr. Collins received and returned these
+      felicitations with equal pleasure, and then proceeded to relate
+      the particulars of their interview, with the result of which he
+      trusted he had every reason to be satisfied, since the refusal
+      which his cousin had steadfastly given him would naturally flow
+      from her bashful modesty and the genuine delicacy of her
+      character.
+
+      This information, however, startled Mrs. Bennet; she would have
+      been glad to be equally satisfied that her daughter had meant to
+      encourage him by protesting against his proposals, but she dared
+      not believe it, and could not help saying so.
+
+      “But, depend upon it, Mr. Collins,” she added, “that Lizzy shall
+      be brought to reason. I will speak to her about it directly. She
+      is a very headstrong, foolish girl, and does not know her own
+      interest but I will _make_ her know it.”
+
+      “Pardon me for interrupting you, madam,” cried Mr. Collins; “but
+      if she is really headstrong and foolish, I know not whether she
+      would altogether be a very desirable wife to a man in my
+      situation, who naturally looks for happiness in the marriage
+      state. If therefore she actually persists in rejecting my suit,
+      perhaps it were better not to force her into accepting me,
+      because if liable to such defects of temper, she could not
+      contribute much to my felicity.”
+
+      “Sir, you quite misunderstand me,” said Mrs. Bennet, alarmed.
+      “Lizzy is only headstrong in such matters as these. In everything
+      else she is as good-natured a girl as ever lived. I will go
+      directly to Mr. Bennet, and we shall very soon settle it with
+      her, I am sure.”
+
+      She would not give him time to reply, but hurrying instantly to
+      her husband, called out as she entered the library, “Oh! Mr.
+      Bennet, you are wanted immediately; we are all in an uproar. You
+      must come and make Lizzy marry Mr. Collins, for she vows she will
+      not have him, and if you do not make haste he will change his
+      mind and not have _her_.”
+
+      Mr. Bennet raised his eyes from his book as she entered, and
+      fixed them on her face with a calm unconcern which was not in the
+      least altered by her communication.
+
+      “I have not the pleasure of understanding you,” said he, when she
+      had finished her speech. “Of what are you talking?”
+
+      “Of Mr. Collins and Lizzy. Lizzy declares she will not have Mr.
+      Collins, and Mr. Collins begins to say that he will not have
+      Lizzy.”
+
+      “And what am I to do on the occasion? It seems an hopeless
+      business.”
+
+      “Speak to Lizzy about it yourself. Tell her that you insist upon
+      her marrying him.”
+
+      “Let her be called down. She shall hear my opinion.”
+
+      Mrs. Bennet rang the bell, and Miss Elizabeth was summoned to the
+      library.
+
+      “Come here, child,” cried her father as she appeared. “I have
+      sent for you on an affair of importance. I understand that Mr.
+      Collins has made you an offer of marriage. Is it true?” Elizabeth
+      replied that it was. “Very well—and this offer of marriage you
+      have refused?”
+
+      “I have, sir.”
+
+      “Very well. We now come to the point. Your mother insists upon
+      your accepting it. Is it not so, Mrs. Bennet?”
+
+      “Yes, or I will never see her again.”
+
+      “An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day
+      you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will
+      never see you again if you do _not_ marry Mr. Collins, and I will
+      never see you again if you _do_.”
+
+      Elizabeth could not but smile at such a conclusion of such a
+      beginning, but Mrs. Bennet, who had persuaded herself that her
+      husband regarded the affair as she wished, was excessively
+      disappointed.
+
+      “What do you mean, Mr. Bennet, in talking this way? You promised
+      me to _insist_ upon her marrying him.”
+
+      “My dear,” replied her husband, “I have two small favours to
+      request. First, that you will allow me the free use of my
+      understanding on the present occasion; and secondly, of my room.
+      I shall be glad to have the library to myself as soon as may be.”
+
+      Not yet, however, in spite of her disappointment in her husband,
+      did Mrs. Bennet give up the point. She talked to Elizabeth again
+      and again; coaxed and threatened her by turns. She endeavoured to
+      secure Jane in her interest; but Jane, with all possible
+      mildness, declined interfering; and Elizabeth, sometimes with
+      real earnestness, and sometimes with playful gaiety, replied to
+      her attacks. Though her manner varied, however, her determination
+      never did.
+
+      Mr. Collins, meanwhile, was meditating in solitude on what had
+      passed. He thought too well of himself to comprehend on what
+      motives his cousin could refuse him; and though his pride was
+      hurt, he suffered in no other way. His regard for her was quite
+      imaginary; and the possibility of her deserving her mother’s
+      reproach prevented his feeling any regret.
+
+      While the family were in this confusion, Charlotte Lucas came to
+      spend the day with them. She was met in the vestibule by Lydia,
+      who, flying to her, cried in a half whisper, “I am glad you are
+      come, for there is such fun here! What do you think has happened
+      this morning? Mr. Collins has made an offer to Lizzy, and she
+      will not have him.”
+
+      Charlotte hardly had time to answer, before they were joined by
+      Kitty, who came to tell the same news; and no sooner had they
+      entered the breakfast-room, where Mrs. Bennet was alone, than she
+      likewise began on the subject, calling on Miss Lucas for her
+      compassion, and entreating her to persuade her friend Lizzy to
+      comply with the wishes of all her family. “Pray do, my dear Miss
+      Lucas,” she added in a melancholy tone, “for nobody is on my
+      side, nobody takes part with me. I am cruelly used, nobody feels
+      for my poor nerves.”
+
+      Charlotte’s reply was spared by the entrance of Jane and
+      Elizabeth.
+
+      “Aye, there she comes,” continued Mrs. Bennet, “looking as
+      unconcerned as may be, and caring no more for us than if we were
+      at York, provided she can have her own way. But I tell you, Miss
+      Lizzy—if you take it into your head to go on refusing every offer
+      of marriage in this way, you will never get a husband at all—and
+      I am sure I do not know who is to maintain you when your father
+      is dead. _I_ shall not be able to keep you—and so I warn you. I
+      have done with you from this very day. I told you in the library,
+      you know, that I should never speak to you again, and you will
+      find me as good as my word. I have no pleasure in talking to
+      undutiful children. Not that I have much pleasure, indeed, in
+      talking to anybody. People who suffer as I do from nervous
+      complaints can have no great inclination for talking. Nobody can
+      tell what I suffer! But it is always so. Those who do not
+      complain are never pitied.”
+
+      Her daughters listened in silence to this effusion, sensible that
+      any attempt to reason with her or soothe her would only increase
+      the irritation. She talked on, therefore, without interruption
+      from any of them, till they were joined by Mr. Collins, who
+      entered the room with an air more stately than usual, and on
+      perceiving whom, she said to the girls, “Now, I do insist upon
+      it, that you, all of you, hold your tongues, and let me and Mr.
+      Collins have a little conversation together.”
+
+      Elizabeth passed quietly out of the room, Jane and Kitty
+      followed, but Lydia stood her ground, determined to hear all she
+      could; and Charlotte, detained first by the civility of Mr.
+      Collins, whose inquiries after herself and all her family were
+      very minute, and then by a little curiosity, satisfied herself
+      with walking to the window and pretending not to hear. In a
+      doleful voice Mrs. Bennet began the projected conversation: “Oh!
+      Mr. Collins!”
+
+      “My dear madam,” replied he, “let us be for ever silent on this
+      point. Far be it from me,” he presently continued, in a voice
+      that marked his displeasure, “to resent the behaviour of your
+      daughter. Resignation to inevitable evils is the duty of us all;
+      the peculiar duty of a young man who has been so fortunate as I
+      have been in early preferment; and I trust I am resigned. Perhaps
+      not the less so from feeling a doubt of my positive happiness had
+      my fair cousin honoured me with her hand; for I have often
+      observed that resignation is never so perfect as when the
+      blessing denied begins to lose somewhat of its value in our
+      estimation. You will not, I hope, consider me as showing any
+      disrespect to your family, my dear madam, by thus withdrawing my
+      pretensions to your daughter’s favour, without having paid
+      yourself and Mr. Bennet the compliment of requesting you to
+      interpose your authority in my behalf. My conduct may, I fear, be
+      objectionable in having accepted my dismission from your
+      daughter’s lips instead of your own. But we are all liable to
+      error. I have certainly meant well through the whole affair. My
+      object has been to secure an amiable companion for myself, with
+      due consideration for the advantage of all your family, and if my
+      _manner_ has been at all reprehensible, I here beg leave to
+      apologise.”
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 21
+
+      The discussion of Mr. Collins’s offer was now nearly at an end,
+      and Elizabeth had only to suffer from the uncomfortable feelings
+      necessarily attending it, and occasionally from some peevish
+      allusions of her mother. As for the gentleman himself, _his_
+      feelings were chiefly expressed, not by embarrassment or
+      dejection, or by trying to avoid her, but by stiffness of manner
+      and resentful silence. He scarcely ever spoke to her, and the
+      assiduous attentions which he had been so sensible of himself
+      were transferred for the rest of the day to Miss Lucas, whose
+      civility in listening to him was a seasonable relief to them all,
+      and especially to her friend.
+
+      The morrow produced no abatement of Mrs. Bennet’s ill-humour or
+      ill health. Mr. Collins was also in the same state of angry
+      pride. Elizabeth had hoped that his resentment might shorten his
+      visit, but his plan did not appear in the least affected by it.
+      He was always to have gone on Saturday, and to Saturday he meant
+      to stay.
+
+      After breakfast, the girls walked to Meryton to inquire if Mr.
+      Wickham were returned, and to lament over his absence from the
+      Netherfield ball. He joined them on their entering the town, and
+      attended them to their aunt’s where his regret and vexation, and
+      the concern of everybody, was well talked over. To Elizabeth,
+      however, he voluntarily acknowledged that the necessity of his
+      absence _had_ been self-imposed.
+
+      “I found,” said he, “as the time drew near that I had better not
+      meet Mr. Darcy; that to be in the same room, the same party with
+      him for so many hours together, might be more than I could bear,
+      and that scenes might arise unpleasant to more than myself.”
+
+      She highly approved his forbearance, and they had leisure for a
+      full discussion of it, and for all the commendation which they
+      civilly bestowed on each other, as Wickham and another officer
+      walked back with them to Longbourn, and during the walk he
+      particularly attended to her. His accompanying them was a double
+      advantage; she felt all the compliment it offered to herself, and
+      it was most acceptable as an occasion of introducing him to her
+      father and mother.
+
+      Soon after their return, a letter was delivered to Miss Bennet;
+      it came from Netherfield. The envelope contained a sheet of
+      elegant, little, hot-pressed paper, well covered with a lady’s
+      fair, flowing hand; and Elizabeth saw her sister’s countenance
+      change as she read it, and saw her dwelling intently on some
+      particular passages. Jane recollected herself soon, and putting
+      the letter away, tried to join with her usual cheerfulness in the
+      general conversation; but Elizabeth felt an anxiety on the
+      subject which drew off her attention even from Wickham; and no
+      sooner had he and his companion taken leave, than a glance from
+      Jane invited her to follow her up stairs. When they had gained
+      their own room, Jane, taking out the letter, said:
+
+      “This is from Caroline Bingley; what it contains has surprised me
+      a good deal. The whole party have left Netherfield by this time,
+      and are on their way to town—and without any intention of coming
+      back again. You shall hear what she says.”
+
+      She then read the first sentence aloud, which comprised the
+      information of their having just resolved to follow their brother
+      to town directly, and of their meaning to dine in Grosvenor
+      Street, where Mr. Hurst had a house. The next was in these words:
+      “I do not pretend to regret anything I shall leave in
+      Hertfordshire, except your society, my dearest friend; but we
+      will hope, at some future period, to enjoy many returns of that
+      delightful intercourse we have known, and in the meanwhile may
+      lessen the pain of separation by a very frequent and most
+      unreserved correspondence. I depend on you for that.” To these
+      highflown expressions Elizabeth listened with all the
+      insensibility of distrust; and though the suddenness of their
+      removal surprised her, she saw nothing in it really to lament; it
+      was not to be supposed that their absence from Netherfield would
+      prevent Mr. Bingley’s being there; and as to the loss of their
+      society, she was persuaded that Jane must cease to regard it, in
+      the enjoyment of his.
+
+      “It is unlucky,” said she, after a short pause, “that you should
+      not be able to see your friends before they leave the country.
+      But may we not hope that the period of future happiness to which
+      Miss Bingley looks forward may arrive earlier than she is aware,
+      and that the delightful intercourse you have known as friends
+      will be renewed with yet greater satisfaction as sisters? Mr.
+      Bingley will not be detained in London by them.”
+
+      “Caroline decidedly says that none of the party will return into
+      Hertfordshire this winter. I will read it to you:”
+
+      “When my brother left us yesterday, he imagined that the business
+      which took him to London might be concluded in three or four
+      days; but as we are certain it cannot be so, and at the same time
+      convinced that when Charles gets to town he will be in no hurry
+      to leave it again, we have determined on following him thither,
+      that he may not be obliged to spend his vacant hours in a
+      comfortless hotel. Many of my acquaintances are already there for
+      the winter; I wish that I could hear that you, my dearest friend,
+      had any intention of making one of the crowd—but of that I
+      despair. I sincerely hope your Christmas in Hertfordshire may
+      abound in the gaieties which that season generally brings, and
+      that your beaux will be so numerous as to prevent your feeling
+      the loss of the three of whom we shall deprive you.”
+
+      “It is evident by this,” added Jane, “that he comes back no more
+      this winter.”
+
+      “It is only evident that Miss Bingley does not mean that he
+      _should_.”
+
+      “Why will you think so? It must be his own doing. He is his own
+      master. But you do not know _all_. I _will_ read you the passage
+      which particularly hurts me. I will have no reserves from _you_.”
+
+      “Mr. Darcy is impatient to see his sister; and, to confess the
+      truth, _we_ are scarcely less eager to meet her again. I really
+      do not think Georgiana Darcy has her equal for beauty, elegance,
+      and accomplishments; and the affection she inspires in Louisa and
+      myself is heightened into something still more interesting, from
+      the hope we dare entertain of her being hereafter our sister. I
+      do not know whether I ever before mentioned to you my feelings on
+      this subject; but I will not leave the country without confiding
+      them, and I trust you will not esteem them unreasonable. My
+      brother admires her greatly already; he will have frequent
+      opportunity now of seeing her on the most intimate footing; her
+      relations all wish the connection as much as his own; and a
+      sister’s partiality is not misleading me, I think, when I call
+      Charles most capable of engaging any woman’s heart. With all
+      these circumstances to favour an attachment, and nothing to
+      prevent it, am I wrong, my dearest Jane, in indulging the hope of
+      an event which will secure the happiness of so many?”
+
+      “What do you think of _this_ sentence, my dear Lizzy?” said Jane
+      as she finished it. “Is it not clear enough? Does it not
+      expressly declare that Caroline neither expects nor wishes me to
+      be her sister; that she is perfectly convinced of her brother’s
+      indifference; and that if she suspects the nature of my feelings
+      for him, she means (most kindly!) to put me on my guard? Can
+      there be any other opinion on the subject?”
+
+      “Yes, there can; for mine is totally different. Will you hear
+      it?”
+
+      “Most willingly.”
+
+      “You shall have it in a few words. Miss Bingley sees that her
+      brother is in love with you, and wants him to marry Miss Darcy.
+      She follows him to town in hope of keeping him there, and tries
+      to persuade you that he does not care about you.”
+
+      Jane shook her head.
+
+      “Indeed, Jane, you ought to believe me. No one who has ever seen
+      you together can doubt his affection. Miss Bingley, I am sure,
+      cannot. She is not such a simpleton. Could she have seen half as
+      much love in Mr. Darcy for herself, she would have ordered her
+      wedding clothes. But the case is this: We are not rich enough or
+      grand enough for them; and she is the more anxious to get Miss
+      Darcy for her brother, from the notion that when there has been
+      _one_ intermarriage, she may have less trouble in achieving a
+      second; in which there is certainly some ingenuity, and I dare
+      say it would succeed, if Miss de Bourgh were out of the way. But,
+      my dearest Jane, you cannot seriously imagine that because Miss
+      Bingley tells you her brother greatly admires Miss Darcy, he is
+      in the smallest degree less sensible of _your_ merit than when he
+      took leave of you on Tuesday, or that it will be in her power to
+      persuade him that, instead of being in love with you, he is very
+      much in love with her friend.”
+
+      “If we thought alike of Miss Bingley,” replied Jane, “your
+      representation of all this might make me quite easy. But I know
+      the foundation is unjust. Caroline is incapable of wilfully
+      deceiving anyone; and all that I can hope in this case is that
+      she is deceiving herself.”
+
+      “That is right. You could not have started a more happy idea,
+      since you will not take comfort in mine. Believe her to be
+      deceived, by all means. You have now done your duty by her, and
+      must fret no longer.”
+
+      “But, my dear sister, can I be happy, even supposing the best, in
+      accepting a man whose sisters and friends are all wishing him to
+      marry elsewhere?”
+
+      “You must decide for yourself,” said Elizabeth; “and if, upon
+      mature deliberation, you find that the misery of disobliging his
+      two sisters is more than equivalent to the happiness of being his
+      wife, I advise you by all means to refuse him.”
+
+      “How can you talk so?” said Jane, faintly smiling. “You must know
+      that though I should be exceedingly grieved at their
+      disapprobation, I could not hesitate.”
+
+      “I did not think you would; and that being the case, I cannot
+      consider your situation with much compassion.”
+
+      “But if he returns no more this winter, my choice will never be
+      required. A thousand things may arise in six months!”
+
+      The idea of his returning no more Elizabeth treated with the
+      utmost contempt. It appeared to her merely the suggestion of
+      Caroline’s interested wishes, and she could not for a moment
+      suppose that those wishes, however openly or artfully spoken,
+      could influence a young man so totally independent of everyone.
+
+      She represented to her sister as forcibly as possible what she
+      felt on the subject, and had soon the pleasure of seeing its
+      happy effect. Jane’s temper was not desponding, and she was
+      gradually led to hope, though the diffidence of affection
+      sometimes overcame the hope, that Bingley would return to
+      Netherfield and answer every wish of her heart.
+
+      They agreed that Mrs. Bennet should only hear of the departure of
+      the family, without being alarmed on the score of the gentleman’s
+      conduct; but even this partial communication gave her a great
+      deal of concern, and she bewailed it as exceedingly unlucky that
+      the ladies should happen to go away just as they were all getting
+      so intimate together. After lamenting it, however, at some
+      length, she had the consolation that Mr. Bingley would be soon
+      down again and soon dining at Longbourn, and the conclusion of
+      all was the comfortable declaration, that though he had been
+      invited only to a family dinner, she would take care to have two
+      full courses.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 22
+
+      The Bennets were engaged to dine with the Lucases and again
+      during the chief of the day was Miss Lucas so kind as to listen
+      to Mr. Collins. Elizabeth took an opportunity of thanking her.
+      “It keeps him in good humour,” said she, “and I am more obliged
+      to you than I can express.” Charlotte assured her friend of her
+      satisfaction in being useful, and that it amply repaid her for
+      the little sacrifice of her time. This was very amiable, but
+      Charlotte’s kindness extended farther than Elizabeth had any
+      conception of; its object was nothing else than to secure her
+      from any return of Mr. Collins’s addresses, by engaging them
+      towards herself. Such was Miss Lucas’s scheme; and appearances
+      were so favourable, that when they parted at night, she would
+      have felt almost secure of success if he had not been to leave
+      Hertfordshire so very soon. But here she did injustice to the
+      fire and independence of his character, for it led him to escape
+      out of Longbourn House the next morning with admirable slyness,
+      and hasten to Lucas Lodge to throw himself at her feet. He was
+      anxious to avoid the notice of his cousins, from a conviction
+      that if they saw him depart, they could not fail to conjecture
+      his design, and he was not willing to have the attempt known till
+      its success might be known likewise; for though feeling almost
+      secure, and with reason, for Charlotte had been tolerably
+      encouraging, he was comparatively diffident since the adventure
+      of Wednesday. His reception, however, was of the most flattering
+      kind. Miss Lucas perceived him from an upper window as he walked
+      towards the house, and instantly set out to meet him accidentally
+      in the lane. But little had she dared to hope that so much love
+      and eloquence awaited her there.
+
+      In as short a time as Mr. Collins’s long speeches would allow,
+      everything was settled between them to the satisfaction of both;
+      and as they entered the house he earnestly entreated her to name
+      the day that was to make him the happiest of men; and though such
+      a solicitation must be waived for the present, the lady felt no
+      inclination to trifle with his happiness. The stupidity with
+      which he was favoured by nature must guard his courtship from any
+      charm that could make a woman wish for its continuance; and Miss
+      Lucas, who accepted him solely from the pure and disinterested
+      desire of an establishment, cared not how soon that establishment
+      were gained.
+
+      Sir William and Lady Lucas were speedily applied to for their
+      consent; and it was bestowed with a most joyful alacrity. Mr.
+      Collins’s present circumstances made it a most eligible match for
+      their daughter, to whom they could give little fortune; and his
+      prospects of future wealth were exceedingly fair. Lady Lucas
+      began directly to calculate, with more interest than the matter
+      had ever excited before, how many years longer Mr. Bennet was
+      likely to live; and Sir William gave it as his decided opinion,
+      that whenever Mr. Collins should be in possession of the
+      Longbourn estate, it would be highly expedient that both he and
+      his wife should make their appearance at St. James’s. The whole
+      family, in short, were properly overjoyed on the occasion. The
+      younger girls formed hopes of _coming out_ a year or two sooner
+      than they might otherwise have done; and the boys were relieved
+      from their apprehension of Charlotte’s dying an old maid.
+      Charlotte herself was tolerably composed. She had gained her
+      point, and had time to consider of it. Her reflections were in
+      general satisfactory. Mr. Collins, to be sure, was neither
+      sensible nor agreeable; his society was irksome, and his
+      attachment to her must be imaginary. But still he would be her
+      husband. Without thinking highly either of men or matrimony,
+      marriage had always been her object; it was the only provision
+      for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however
+      uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest
+      preservative from want. This preservative she had now obtained;
+      and at the age of twenty-seven, without having ever been
+      handsome, she felt all the good luck of it. The least agreeable
+      circumstance in the business was the surprise it must occasion to
+      Elizabeth Bennet, whose friendship she valued beyond that of any
+      other person. Elizabeth would wonder, and probably would blame
+      her; and though her resolution was not to be shaken, her feelings
+      must be hurt by such a disapprobation. She resolved to give her
+      the information herself, and therefore charged Mr. Collins, when
+      he returned to Longbourn to dinner, to drop no hint of what had
+      passed before any of the family. A promise of secrecy was of
+      course very dutifully given, but it could not be kept without
+      difficulty; for the curiosity excited by his long absence burst
+      forth in such very direct questions on his return as required
+      some ingenuity to evade, and he was at the same time exercising
+      great self-denial, for he was longing to publish his prosperous
+      love.
+
+      As he was to begin his journey too early on the morrow to see any
+      of the family, the ceremony of leave-taking was performed when
+      the ladies moved for the night; and Mrs. Bennet, with great
+      politeness and cordiality, said how happy they should be to see
+      him at Longbourn again, whenever his engagements might allow him
+      to visit them.
+
+      “My dear madam,” he replied, “this invitation is particularly
+      gratifying, because it is what I have been hoping to receive; and
+      you may be very certain that I shall avail myself of it as soon
+      as possible.”
+
+      They were all astonished; and Mr. Bennet, who could by no means
+      wish for so speedy a return, immediately said:
+
+      “But is there not danger of Lady Catherine’s disapprobation here,
+      my good sir? You had better neglect your relations than run the
+      risk of offending your patroness.”
+
+      “My dear sir,” replied Mr. Collins, “I am particularly obliged to
+      you for this friendly caution, and you may depend upon my not
+      taking so material a step without her ladyship’s concurrence.”
+
+      “You cannot be too much upon your guard. Risk anything rather
+      than her displeasure; and if you find it likely to be raised by
+      your coming to us again, which I should think exceedingly
+      probable, stay quietly at home, and be satisfied that _we_ shall
+      take no offence.”
+
+      “Believe me, my dear sir, my gratitude is warmly excited by such
+      affectionate attention; and depend upon it, you will speedily
+      receive from me a letter of thanks for this, and for every other
+      mark of your regard during my stay in Hertfordshire. As for my
+      fair cousins, though my absence may not be long enough to render
+      it necessary, I shall now take the liberty of wishing them health
+      and happiness, not excepting my cousin Elizabeth.”
+
+      With proper civilities the ladies then withdrew; all of them
+      equally surprised that he meditated a quick return. Mrs. Bennet
+      wished to understand by it that he thought of paying his
+      addresses to one of her younger girls, and Mary might have been
+      prevailed on to accept him. She rated his abilities much higher
+      than any of the others; there was a solidity in his reflections
+      which often struck her, and though by no means so clever as
+      herself, she thought that if encouraged to read and improve
+      himself by such an example as hers, he might become a very
+      agreeable companion. But on the following morning, every hope of
+      this kind was done away. Miss Lucas called soon after breakfast,
+      and in a private conference with Elizabeth related the event of
+      the day before.
+
+      The possibility of Mr. Collins’s fancying himself in love with
+      her friend had once occurred to Elizabeth within the last day or
+      two; but that Charlotte could encourage him seemed almost as far
+      from possibility as she could encourage him herself, and her
+      astonishment was consequently so great as to overcome at first
+      the bounds of decorum, and she could not help crying out:
+
+      “Engaged to Mr. Collins! My dear Charlotte—impossible!”
+
+      The steady countenance which Miss Lucas had commanded in telling
+      her story, gave way to a momentary confusion here on receiving so
+      direct a reproach; though, as it was no more than she expected,
+      she soon regained her composure, and calmly replied:
+
+      “Why should you be surprised, my dear Eliza? Do you think it
+      incredible that Mr. Collins should be able to procure any woman’s
+      good opinion, because he was not so happy as to succeed with
+      you?”
+
+      But Elizabeth had now recollected herself, and making a strong
+      effort for it, was able to assure with tolerable firmness that
+      the prospect of their relationship was highly grateful to her,
+      and that she wished her all imaginable happiness.
+
+      “I see what you are feeling,” replied Charlotte. “You must be
+      surprised, very much surprised—so lately as Mr. Collins was
+      wishing to marry you. But when you have had time to think it
+      over, I hope you will be satisfied with what I have done. I am
+      not romantic, you know; I never was. I ask only a comfortable
+      home; and considering Mr. Collins’s character, connection, and
+      situation in life, I am convinced that my chance of happiness
+      with him is as fair as most people can boast on entering the
+      marriage state.”
+
+      Elizabeth quietly answered “Undoubtedly;” and after an awkward
+      pause, they returned to the rest of the family. Charlotte did not
+      stay much longer, and Elizabeth was then left to reflect on what
+      she had heard. It was a long time before she became at all
+      reconciled to the idea of so unsuitable a match. The strangeness
+      of Mr. Collins’s making two offers of marriage within three days
+      was nothing in comparison of his being now accepted. She had
+      always felt that Charlotte’s opinion of matrimony was not exactly
+      like her own, but she had not supposed it to be possible that,
+      when called into action, she would have sacrificed every better
+      feeling to worldly advantage. Charlotte the wife of Mr. Collins
+      was a most humiliating picture! And to the pang of a friend
+      disgracing herself and sunk in her esteem, was added the
+      distressing conviction that it was impossible for that friend to
+      be tolerably happy in the lot she had chosen.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 23
+
+      Elizabeth was sitting with her mother and sisters, reflecting on
+      what she had heard, and doubting whether she was authorised to
+      mention it, when Sir William Lucas himself appeared, sent by his
+      daughter, to announce her engagement to the family. With many
+      compliments to them, and much self-gratulation on the prospect of
+      a connection between the houses, he unfolded the matter—to an
+      audience not merely wondering, but incredulous; for Mrs. Bennet,
+      with more perseverance than politeness, protested he must be
+      entirely mistaken; and Lydia, always unguarded and often uncivil,
+      boisterously exclaimed:
+
+      “Good Lord! Sir William, how can you tell such a story? Do not
+      you know that Mr. Collins wants to marry Lizzy?”
+
+      Nothing less than the complaisance of a courtier could have borne
+      without anger such treatment; but Sir William’s good breeding
+      carried him through it all; and though he begged leave to be
+      positive as to the truth of his information, he listened to all
+      their impertinence with the most forbearing courtesy.
+
+      Elizabeth, feeling it incumbent on her to relieve him from so
+      unpleasant a situation, now put herself forward to confirm his
+      account, by mentioning her prior knowledge of it from Charlotte
+      herself; and endeavoured to put a stop to the exclamations of her
+      mother and sisters by the earnestness of her congratulations to
+      Sir William, in which she was readily joined by Jane, and by
+      making a variety of remarks on the happiness that might be
+      expected from the match, the excellent character of Mr. Collins,
+      and the convenient distance of Hunsford from London.
+
+      Mrs. Bennet was in fact too much overpowered to say a great deal
+      while Sir William remained; but no sooner had he left them than
+      her feelings found a rapid vent. In the first place, she
+      persisted in disbelieving the whole of the matter; secondly, she
+      was very sure that Mr. Collins had been taken in; thirdly, she
+      trusted that they would never be happy together; and fourthly,
+      that the match might be broken off. Two inferences, however, were
+      plainly deduced from the whole: one, that Elizabeth was the real
+      cause of the mischief; and the other that she herself had been
+      barbarously misused by them all; and on these two points she
+      principally dwelt during the rest of the day. Nothing could
+      console and nothing could appease her. Nor did that day wear out
+      her resentment. A week elapsed before she could see Elizabeth
+      without scolding her, a month passed away before she could speak
+      to Sir William or Lady Lucas without being rude, and many months
+      were gone before she could at all forgive their daughter.
+
+      Mr. Bennet’s emotions were much more tranquil on the occasion,
+      and such as he did experience he pronounced to be of a most
+      agreeable sort; for it gratified him, he said, to discover that
+      Charlotte Lucas, whom he had been used to think tolerably
+      sensible, was as foolish as his wife, and more foolish than his
+      daughter!
+
+      Jane confessed herself a little surprised at the match; but she
+      said less of her astonishment than of her earnest desire for
+      their happiness; nor could Elizabeth persuade her to consider it
+      as improbable. Kitty and Lydia were far from envying Miss Lucas,
+      for Mr. Collins was only a clergyman; and it affected them in no
+      other way than as a piece of news to spread at Meryton.
+
+      Lady Lucas could not be insensible of triumph on being able to
+      retort on Mrs. Bennet the comfort of having a daughter well
+      married; and she called at Longbourn rather oftener than usual to
+      say how happy she was, though Mrs. Bennet’s sour looks and
+      ill-natured remarks might have been enough to drive happiness
+      away.
+
+      Between Elizabeth and Charlotte there was a restraint which kept
+      them mutually silent on the subject; and Elizabeth felt persuaded
+      that no real confidence could ever subsist between them again.
+      Her disappointment in Charlotte made her turn with fonder regard
+      to her sister, of whose rectitude and delicacy she was sure her
+      opinion could never be shaken, and for whose happiness she grew
+      daily more anxious, as Bingley had now been gone a week and
+      nothing more was heard of his return.
+
+      Jane had sent Caroline an early answer to her letter, and was
+      counting the days till she might reasonably hope to hear again.
+      The promised letter of thanks from Mr. Collins arrived on
+      Tuesday, addressed to their father, and written with all the
+      solemnity of gratitude which a twelvemonth’s abode in the family
+      might have prompted. After discharging his conscience on that
+      head, he proceeded to inform them, with many rapturous
+      expressions, of his happiness in having obtained the affection of
+      their amiable neighbour, Miss Lucas, and then explained that it
+      was merely with the view of enjoying her society that he had been
+      so ready to close with their kind wish of seeing him again at
+      Longbourn, whither he hoped to be able to return on Monday
+      fortnight; for Lady Catherine, he added, so heartily approved his
+      marriage, that she wished it to take place as soon as possible,
+      which he trusted would be an unanswerable argument with his
+      amiable Charlotte to name an early day for making him the
+      happiest of men.
+
+      Mr. Collins’s return into Hertfordshire was no longer a matter of
+      pleasure to Mrs. Bennet. On the contrary, she was as much
+      disposed to complain of it as her husband. It was very strange
+      that he should come to Longbourn instead of to Lucas Lodge; it
+      was also very inconvenient and exceedingly troublesome. She hated
+      having visitors in the house while her health was so indifferent,
+      and lovers were of all people the most disagreeable. Such were
+      the gentle murmurs of Mrs. Bennet, and they gave way only to the
+      greater distress of Mr. Bingley’s continued absence.
+
+      Neither Jane nor Elizabeth were comfortable on this subject. Day
+      after day passed away without bringing any other tidings of him
+      than the report which shortly prevailed in Meryton of his coming
+      no more to Netherfield the whole winter; a report which highly
+      incensed Mrs. Bennet, and which she never failed to contradict as
+      a most scandalous falsehood.
+
+      Even Elizabeth began to fear—not that Bingley was indifferent—but
+      that his sisters would be successful in keeping him away.
+      Unwilling as she was to admit an idea so destructive of Jane’s
+      happiness, and so dishonorable to the stability of her lover, she
+      could not prevent its frequently occurring. The united efforts of
+      his two unfeeling sisters and of his overpowering friend,
+      assisted by the attractions of Miss Darcy and the amusements of
+      London might be too much, she feared, for the strength of his
+      attachment.
+
+      As for Jane, _her_ anxiety under this suspense was, of course,
+      more painful than Elizabeth’s, but whatever she felt she was
+      desirous of concealing, and between herself and Elizabeth,
+      therefore, the subject was never alluded to. But as no such
+      delicacy restrained her mother, an hour seldom passed in which
+      she did not talk of Bingley, express her impatience for his
+      arrival, or even require Jane to confess that if he did not come
+      back she would think herself very ill used. It needed all Jane’s
+      steady mildness to bear these attacks with tolerable
+      tranquillity.
+
+      Mr. Collins returned most punctually on Monday fortnight, but his
+      reception at Longbourn was not quite so gracious as it had been
+      on his first introduction. He was too happy, however, to need
+      much attention; and luckily for the others, the business of
+      love-making relieved them from a great deal of his company. The
+      chief of every day was spent by him at Lucas Lodge, and he
+      sometimes returned to Longbourn only in time to make an apology
+      for his absence before the family went to bed.
+
+      Mrs. Bennet was really in a most pitiable state. The very mention
+      of anything concerning the match threw her into an agony of
+      ill-humour, and wherever she went she was sure of hearing it
+      talked of. The sight of Miss Lucas was odious to her. As her
+      successor in that house, she regarded her with jealous
+      abhorrence. Whenever Charlotte came to see them, she concluded
+      her to be anticipating the hour of possession; and whenever she
+      spoke in a low voice to Mr. Collins, was convinced that they were
+      talking of the Longbourn estate, and resolving to turn herself
+      and her daughters out of the house, as soon as Mr. Bennet were
+      dead. She complained bitterly of all this to her husband.
+
+      “Indeed, Mr. Bennet,” said she, “it is very hard to think that
+      Charlotte Lucas should ever be mistress of this house, that _I_
+      should be forced to make way for _her_, and live to see her take
+      her place in it!”
+
+      “My dear, do not give way to such gloomy thoughts. Let us hope
+      for better things. Let us flatter ourselves that _I_ may be the
+      survivor.”
+
+      This was not very consoling to Mrs. Bennet, and therefore,
+      instead of making any answer, she went on as before.
+
+      “I cannot bear to think that they should have all this estate. If
+      it was not for the entail, I should not mind it.”
+
+      “What should not you mind?”
+
+      “I should not mind anything at all.”
+
+      “Let us be thankful that you are preserved from a state of such
+      insensibility.”
+
+      “I never can be thankful, Mr. Bennet, for anything about the
+      entail. How anyone could have the conscience to entail away an
+      estate from one’s own daughters, I cannot understand; and all for
+      the sake of Mr. Collins too! Why should _he_ have it more than
+      anybody else?”
+
+      “I leave it to yourself to determine,” said Mr. Bennet.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 24
+
+      Miss Bingley’s letter arrived, and put an end to doubt. The very
+      first sentence conveyed the assurance of their being all settled
+      in London for the winter, and concluded with her brother’s regret
+      at not having had time to pay his respects to his friends in
+      Hertfordshire before he left the country.
+
+      Hope was over, entirely over; and when Jane could attend to the
+      rest of the letter, she found little, except the professed
+      affection of the writer, that could give her any comfort. Miss
+      Darcy’s praise occupied the chief of it. Her many attractions
+      were again dwelt on, and Caroline boasted joyfully of their
+      increasing intimacy, and ventured to predict the accomplishment
+      of the wishes which had been unfolded in her former letter. She
+      wrote also with great pleasure of her brother’s being an inmate
+      of Mr. Darcy’s house, and mentioned with raptures some plans of
+      the latter with regard to new furniture.
+
+      Elizabeth, to whom Jane very soon communicated the chief of all
+      this, heard it in silent indignation. Her heart was divided
+      between concern for her sister, and resentment against all
+      others. To Caroline’s assertion of her brother’s being partial to
+      Miss Darcy she paid no credit. That he was really fond of Jane,
+      she doubted no more than she had ever done; and much as she had
+      always been disposed to like him, she could not think without
+      anger, hardly without contempt, on that easiness of temper, that
+      want of proper resolution, which now made him the slave of his
+      designing friends, and led him to sacrifice of his own happiness
+      to the caprice of their inclination. Had his own happiness,
+      however, been the only sacrifice, he might have been allowed to
+      sport with it in whatever manner he thought best, but her
+      sister’s was involved in it, as she thought he must be sensible
+      himself. It was a subject, in short, on which reflection would be
+      long indulged, and must be unavailing. She could think of nothing
+      else; and yet whether Bingley’s regard had really died away, or
+      were suppressed by his friends’ interference; whether he had been
+      aware of Jane’s attachment, or whether it had escaped his
+      observation; whatever were the case, though her opinion of him
+      must be materially affected by the difference, her sister’s
+      situation remained the same, her peace equally wounded.
+
+      A day or two passed before Jane had courage to speak of her
+      feelings to Elizabeth; but at last, on Mrs. Bennet’s leaving them
+      together, after a longer irritation than usual about Netherfield
+      and its master, she could not help saying:
+
+      “Oh, that my dear mother had more command over herself! She can
+      have no idea of the pain she gives me by her continual
+      reflections on him. But I will not repine. It cannot last long.
+      He will be forgot, and we shall all be as we were before.”
+
+      Elizabeth looked at her sister with incredulous solicitude, but
+      said nothing.
+
+      “You doubt me,” cried Jane, slightly colouring; “indeed, you have
+      no reason. He may live in my memory as the most amiable man of my
+      acquaintance, but that is all. I have nothing either to hope or
+      fear, and nothing to reproach him with. Thank God! I have not
+      _that_ pain. A little time, therefore—I shall certainly try to
+      get the better.”
+
+      With a stronger voice she soon added, “I have this comfort
+      immediately, that it has not been more than an error of fancy on
+      my side, and that it has done no harm to anyone but myself.”
+
+      “My dear Jane!” exclaimed Elizabeth, “you are too good. Your
+      sweetness and disinterestedness are really angelic; I do not know
+      what to say to you. I feel as if I had never done you justice, or
+      loved you as you deserve.”
+
+      Miss Bennet eagerly disclaimed all extraordinary merit, and threw
+      back the praise on her sister’s warm affection.
+
+      “Nay,” said Elizabeth, “this is not fair. _You_ wish to think all
+      the world respectable, and are hurt if I speak ill of anybody.
+      _I_ only want to think _you_ perfect, and you set yourself
+      against it. Do not be afraid of my running into any excess, of my
+      encroaching on your privilege of universal good-will. You need
+      not. There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of
+      whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I
+      dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the
+      inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little
+      dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or
+      sense. I have met with two instances lately, one I will not
+      mention; the other is Charlotte’s marriage. It is unaccountable!
+      In every view it is unaccountable!”
+
+      “My dear Lizzy, do not give way to such feelings as these. They
+      will ruin your happiness. You do not make allowance enough for
+      difference of situation and temper. Consider Mr. Collins’s
+      respectability, and Charlotte’s steady, prudent character.
+      Remember that she is one of a large family; that as to fortune,
+      it is a most eligible match; and be ready to believe, for
+      everybody’s sake, that she may feel something like regard and
+      esteem for our cousin.”
+
+      “To oblige you, I would try to believe almost anything, but no
+      one else could be benefited by such a belief as this; for were I
+      persuaded that Charlotte had any regard for him, I should only
+      think worse of her understanding than I now do of her heart. My
+      dear Jane, Mr. Collins is a conceited, pompous, narrow-minded,
+      silly man; you know he is, as well as I do; and you must feel, as
+      well as I do, that the woman who married him cannot have a proper
+      way of thinking. You shall not defend her, though it is Charlotte
+      Lucas. You shall not, for the sake of one individual, change the
+      meaning of principle and integrity, nor endeavour to persuade
+      yourself or me, that selfishness is prudence, and insensibility
+      of danger security for happiness.”
+
+      “I must think your language too strong in speaking of both,”
+      replied Jane; “and I hope you will be convinced of it by seeing
+      them happy together. But enough of this. You alluded to something
+      else. You mentioned _two_ instances. I cannot misunderstand you,
+      but I entreat you, dear Lizzy, not to pain me by thinking _that
+      person_ to blame, and saying your opinion of him is sunk. We must
+      not be so ready to fancy ourselves intentionally injured. We must
+      not expect a lively young man to be always so guarded and
+      circumspect. It is very often nothing but our own vanity that
+      deceives us. Women fancy admiration means more than it does.”
+
+      “And men take care that they should.”
+
+      “If it is designedly done, they cannot be justified; but I have
+      no idea of there being so much design in the world as some
+      persons imagine.”
+
+      “I am far from attributing any part of Mr. Bingley’s conduct to
+      design,” said Elizabeth; “but without scheming to do wrong, or to
+      make others unhappy, there may be error, and there may be misery.
+      Thoughtlessness, want of attention to other people’s feelings,
+      and want of resolution, will do the business.”
+
+      “And do you impute it to either of those?”
+
+      “Yes; to the last. But if I go on, I shall displease you by
+      saying what I think of persons you esteem. Stop me whilst you
+      can.”
+
+      “You persist, then, in supposing his sisters influence him?”
+
+      “Yes, in conjunction with his friend.”
+
+      “I cannot believe it. Why should they try to influence him? They
+      can only wish his happiness; and if he is attached to me, no
+      other woman can secure it.”
+
+      “Your first position is false. They may wish many things besides
+      his happiness; they may wish his increase of wealth and
+      consequence; they may wish him to marry a girl who has all the
+      importance of money, great connections, and pride.”
+
+      “Beyond a doubt, they do wish him to choose Miss Darcy,” replied
+      Jane; “but this may be from better feelings than you are
+      supposing. They have known her much longer than they have known
+      me; no wonder if they love her better. But, whatever may be their
+      own wishes, it is very unlikely they should have opposed their
+      brother’s. What sister would think herself at liberty to do it,
+      unless there were something very objectionable? If they believed
+      him attached to me, they would not try to part us; if he were so,
+      they could not succeed. By supposing such an affection, you make
+      everybody acting unnaturally and wrong, and me most unhappy. Do
+      not distress me by the idea. I am not ashamed of having been
+      mistaken—or, at least, it is light, it is nothing in comparison
+      of what I should feel in thinking ill of him or his sisters. Let
+      me take it in the best light, in the light in which it may be
+      understood.”
+
+      Elizabeth could not oppose such a wish; and from this time Mr.
+      Bingley’s name was scarcely ever mentioned between them.
+
+      Mrs. Bennet still continued to wonder and repine at his returning
+      no more, and though a day seldom passed in which Elizabeth did
+      not account for it clearly, there was little chance of her ever
+      considering it with less perplexity. Her daughter endeavoured to
+      convince her of what she did not believe herself, that his
+      attentions to Jane had been merely the effect of a common and
+      transient liking, which ceased when he saw her no more; but
+      though the probability of the statement was admitted at the time,
+      she had the same story to repeat every day. Mrs. Bennet’s best
+      comfort was that Mr. Bingley must be down again in the summer.
+
+      Mr. Bennet treated the matter differently. “So, Lizzy,” said he
+      one day, “your sister is crossed in love, I find. I congratulate
+      her. Next to being married, a girl likes to be crossed a little
+      in love now and then. It is something to think of, and it gives
+      her a sort of distinction among her companions. When is your turn
+      to come? You will hardly bear to be long outdone by Jane. Now is
+      your time. Here are officers enough in Meryton to disappoint all
+      the young ladies in the country. Let Wickham be your man. He is a
+      pleasant fellow, and would jilt you creditably.”
+
+      “Thank you, sir, but a less agreeable man would satisfy me. We
+      must not all expect Jane’s good fortune.”
+
+      “True,” said Mr. Bennet, “but it is a comfort to think that
+      whatever of that kind may befall you, you have an affectionate
+      mother who will make the most of it.”
+
+      Mr. Wickham’s society was of material service in dispelling the
+      gloom which the late perverse occurrences had thrown on many of
+      the Longbourn family. They saw him often, and to his other
+      recommendations was now added that of general unreserve. The
+      whole of what Elizabeth had already heard, his claims on Mr.
+      Darcy, and all that he had suffered from him, was now openly
+      acknowledged and publicly canvassed; and everybody was pleased to
+      know how much they had always disliked Mr. Darcy before they had
+      known anything of the matter.
+
+      Miss Bennet was the only creature who could suppose there might
+      be any extenuating circumstances in the case, unknown to the
+      society of Hertfordshire; her mild and steady candour always
+      pleaded for allowances, and urged the possibility of mistakes—but
+      by everybody else Mr. Darcy was condemned as the worst of men.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 25
+
+      After a week spent in professions of love and schemes of
+      felicity, Mr. Collins was called from his amiable Charlotte by
+      the arrival of Saturday. The pain of separation, however, might
+      be alleviated on his side, by preparations for the reception of
+      his bride; as he had reason to hope, that shortly after his
+      return into Hertfordshire, the day would be fixed that was to
+      make him the happiest of men. He took leave of his relations at
+      Longbourn with as much solemnity as before; wished his fair
+      cousins health and happiness again, and promised their father
+      another letter of thanks.
+
+      On the following Monday, Mrs. Bennet had the pleasure of
+      receiving her brother and his wife, who came as usual to spend
+      the Christmas at Longbourn. Mr. Gardiner was a sensible,
+      gentlemanlike man, greatly superior to his sister, as well by
+      nature as education. The Netherfield ladies would have had
+      difficulty in believing that a man who lived by trade, and within
+      view of his own warehouses, could have been so well-bred and
+      agreeable. Mrs. Gardiner, who was several years younger than Mrs.
+      Bennet and Mrs. Phillips, was an amiable, intelligent, elegant
+      woman, and a great favourite with all her Longbourn nieces.
+      Between the two eldest and herself especially, there subsisted a
+      particular regard. They had frequently been staying with her in
+      town.
+
+      The first part of Mrs. Gardiner’s business on her arrival was to
+      distribute her presents and describe the newest fashions. When
+      this was done she had a less active part to play. It became her
+      turn to listen. Mrs. Bennet had many grievances to relate, and
+      much to complain of. They had all been very ill-used since she
+      last saw her sister. Two of her girls had been upon the point of
+      marriage, and after all there was nothing in it.
+
+      “I do not blame Jane,” she continued, “for Jane would have got
+      Mr. Bingley if she could. But Lizzy! Oh, sister! It is very hard
+      to think that she might have been Mr. Collins’s wife by this
+      time, had it not been for her own perverseness. He made her an
+      offer in this very room, and she refused him. The consequence of
+      it is, that Lady Lucas will have a daughter married before I
+      have, and that the Longbourn estate is just as much entailed as
+      ever. The Lucases are very artful people indeed, sister. They are
+      all for what they can get. I am sorry to say it of them, but so
+      it is. It makes me very nervous and poorly, to be thwarted so in
+      my own family, and to have neighbours who think of themselves
+      before anybody else. However, your coming just at this time is
+      the greatest of comforts, and I am very glad to hear what you
+      tell us, of long sleeves.”
+
+      Mrs. Gardiner, to whom the chief of this news had been given
+      before, in the course of Jane and Elizabeth’s correspondence with
+      her, made her sister a slight answer, and, in compassion to her
+      nieces, turned the conversation.
+
+      When alone with Elizabeth afterwards, she spoke more on the
+      subject. “It seems likely to have been a desirable match for
+      Jane,” said she. “I am sorry it went off. But these things happen
+      so often! A young man, such as you describe Mr. Bingley, so
+      easily falls in love with a pretty girl for a few weeks, and when
+      accident separates them, so easily forgets her, that these sort
+      of inconsistencies are very frequent.”
+
+      “An excellent consolation in its way,” said Elizabeth, “but it
+      will not do for _us_. We do not suffer by accident. It does not
+      often happen that the interference of friends will persuade a
+      young man of independent fortune to think no more of a girl whom
+      he was violently in love with only a few days before.”
+
+      “But that expression of ‘violently in love’ is so hackneyed, so
+      doubtful, so indefinite, that it gives me very little idea. It is
+      as often applied to feelings which arise from a half-hour’s
+      acquaintance, as to a real, strong attachment. Pray, how _violent
+      was_ Mr. Bingley’s love?”
+
+      “I never saw a more promising inclination; he was growing quite
+      inattentive to other people, and wholly engrossed by her. Every
+      time they met, it was more decided and remarkable. At his own
+      ball he offended two or three young ladies, by not asking them to
+      dance; and I spoke to him twice myself, without receiving an
+      answer. Could there be finer symptoms? Is not general incivility
+      the very essence of love?”
+
+      “Oh, yes!—of that kind of love which I suppose him to have felt.
+      Poor Jane! I am sorry for her, because, with her disposition, she
+      may not get over it immediately. It had better have happened to
+      _you_, Lizzy; you would have laughed yourself out of it sooner.
+      But do you think she would be prevailed upon to go back with us?
+      Change of scene might be of service—and perhaps a little relief
+      from home may be as useful as anything.”
+
+      Elizabeth was exceedingly pleased with this proposal, and felt
+      persuaded of her sister’s ready acquiescence.
+
+      “I hope,” added Mrs. Gardiner, “that no consideration with regard
+      to this young man will influence her. We live in so different a
+      part of town, all our connections are so different, and, as you
+      well know, we go out so little, that it is very improbable that
+      they should meet at all, unless he really comes to see her.”
+
+      “And _that_ is quite impossible; for he is now in the custody of
+      his friend, and Mr. Darcy would no more suffer him to call on
+      Jane in such a part of London! My dear aunt, how could you think
+      of it? Mr. Darcy may perhaps have _heard_ of such a place as
+      Gracechurch Street, but he would hardly think a month’s ablution
+      enough to cleanse him from its impurities, were he once to enter
+      it; and depend upon it, Mr. Bingley never stirs without him.”
+
+      “So much the better. I hope they will not meet at all. But does
+      not Jane correspond with his sister? _She_ will not be able to
+      help calling.”
+
+      “She will drop the acquaintance entirely.”
+
+      But in spite of the certainty in which Elizabeth affected to
+      place this point, as well as the still more interesting one of
+      Bingley’s being withheld from seeing Jane, she felt a solicitude
+      on the subject which convinced her, on examination, that she did
+      not consider it entirely hopeless. It was possible, and sometimes
+      she thought it probable, that his affection might be reanimated,
+      and the influence of his friends successfully combated by the
+      more natural influence of Jane’s attractions.
+
+      Miss Bennet accepted her aunt’s invitation with pleasure; and the
+      Bingleys were no otherwise in her thoughts at the same time, than
+      as she hoped by Caroline’s not living in the same house with her
+      brother, she might occasionally spend a morning with her, without
+      any danger of seeing him.
+
+      The Gardiners stayed a week at Longbourn; and what with the
+      Phillipses, the Lucases, and the officers, there was not a day
+      without its engagement. Mrs. Bennet had so carefully provided for
+      the entertainment of her brother and sister, that they did not
+      once sit down to a family dinner. When the engagement was for
+      home, some of the officers always made part of it—of which
+      officers Mr. Wickham was sure to be one; and on these occasions,
+      Mrs. Gardiner, rendered suspicious by Elizabeth’s warm
+      commendation, narrowly observed them both. Without supposing
+      them, from what she saw, to be very seriously in love, their
+      preference of each other was plain enough to make her a little
+      uneasy; and she resolved to speak to Elizabeth on the subject
+      before she left Hertfordshire, and represent to her the
+      imprudence of encouraging such an attachment.
+
+      To Mrs. Gardiner, Wickham had one means of affording pleasure,
+      unconnected with his general powers. About ten or a dozen years
+      ago, before her marriage, she had spent a considerable time in
+      that very part of Derbyshire to which he belonged. They had,
+      therefore, many acquaintances in common; and though Wickham had
+      been little there since the death of Darcy’s father, it was yet
+      in his power to give her fresher intelligence of her former
+      friends than she had been in the way of procuring.
+
+      Mrs. Gardiner had seen Pemberley, and known the late Mr. Darcy by
+      character perfectly well. Here consequently was an inexhaustible
+      subject of discourse. In comparing her recollection of Pemberley
+      with the minute description which Wickham could give, and in
+      bestowing her tribute of praise on the character of its late
+      possessor, she was delighting both him and herself. On being made
+      acquainted with the present Mr. Darcy’s treatment of him, she
+      tried to remember some of that gentleman’s reputed disposition
+      when quite a lad which might agree with it, and was confident at
+      last that she recollected having heard Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy
+      formerly spoken of as a very proud, ill-natured boy.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 26
+
+      Mrs. Gardiner’s caution to Elizabeth was punctually and kindly
+      given on the first favourable opportunity of speaking to her
+      alone; after honestly telling her what she thought, she thus went
+      on:
+
+      “You are too sensible a girl, Lizzy, to fall in love merely
+      because you are warned against it; and, therefore, I am not
+      afraid of speaking openly. Seriously, I would have you be on your
+      guard. Do not involve yourself or endeavour to involve him in an
+      affection which the want of fortune would make so very imprudent.
+      I have nothing to say against _him_; he is a most interesting
+      young man; and if he had the fortune he ought to have, I should
+      think you could not do better. But as it is, you must not let
+      your fancy run away with you. You have sense, and we all expect
+      you to use it. Your father would depend on _your_ resolution and
+      good conduct, I am sure. You must not disappoint your father.”
+
+      “My dear aunt, this is being serious indeed.”
+
+      “Yes, and I hope to engage you to be serious likewise.”
+
+      “Well, then, you need not be under any alarm. I will take care of
+      myself, and of Mr. Wickham too. He shall not be in love with me,
+      if I can prevent it.”
+
+      “Elizabeth, you are not serious now.”
+
+      “I beg your pardon, I will try again. At present I am not in love
+      with Mr. Wickham; no, I certainly am not. But he is, beyond all
+      comparison, the most agreeable man I ever saw—and if he becomes
+      really attached to me—I believe it will be better that he should
+      not. I see the imprudence of it. Oh! _that_ abominable Mr. Darcy!
+      My father’s opinion of me does me the greatest honour, and I
+      should be miserable to forfeit it. My father, however, is partial
+      to Mr. Wickham. In short, my dear aunt, I should be very sorry to
+      be the means of making any of you unhappy; but since we see every
+      day that where there is affection, young people are seldom
+      withheld by immediate want of fortune from entering into
+      engagements with each other, how can I promise to be wiser than
+      so many of my fellow-creatures if I am tempted, or how am I even
+      to know that it would be wisdom to resist? All that I can promise
+      you, therefore, is not to be in a hurry. I will not be in a hurry
+      to believe myself his first object. When I am in company with
+      him, I will not be wishing. In short, I will do my best.”
+
+      “Perhaps it will be as well if you discourage his coming here so
+      very often. At least, you should not _remind_ your mother of
+      inviting him.”
+
+      “As I did the other day,” said Elizabeth with a conscious smile:
+      “very true, it will be wise in me to refrain from _that_. But do
+      not imagine that he is always here so often. It is on your
+      account that he has been so frequently invited this week. You
+      know my mother’s ideas as to the necessity of constant company
+      for her friends. But really, and upon my honour, I will try to do
+      what I think to be the wisest; and now I hope you are satisfied.”
+
+      Her aunt assured her that she was, and Elizabeth having thanked
+      her for the kindness of her hints, they parted; a wonderful
+      instance of advice being given on such a point, without being
+      resented.
+
+      Mr. Collins returned into Hertfordshire soon after it had been
+      quitted by the Gardiners and Jane; but as he took up his abode
+      with the Lucases, his arrival was no great inconvenience to Mrs.
+      Bennet. His marriage was now fast approaching, and she was at
+      length so far resigned as to think it inevitable, and even
+      repeatedly to say, in an ill-natured tone, that she “_wished_
+      they might be happy.” Thursday was to be the wedding day, and on
+      Wednesday Miss Lucas paid her farewell visit; and when she rose
+      to take leave, Elizabeth, ashamed of her mother’s ungracious and
+      reluctant good wishes, and sincerely affected herself,
+      accompanied her out of the room. As they went downstairs
+      together, Charlotte said:
+
+      “I shall depend on hearing from you very often, Eliza.”
+
+      “_That_ you certainly shall.”
+
+      “And I have another favour to ask you. Will you come and see me?”
+
+      “We shall often meet, I hope, in Hertfordshire.”
+
+      “I am not likely to leave Kent for some time. Promise me,
+      therefore, to come to Hunsford.”
+
+      Elizabeth could not refuse, though she foresaw little pleasure in
+      the visit.
+
+      “My father and Maria are coming to me in March,” added Charlotte,
+      “and I hope you will consent to be of the party. Indeed, Eliza,
+      you will be as welcome as either of them.”
+
+      The wedding took place; the bride and bridegroom set off for Kent
+      from the church door, and everybody had as much to say, or to
+      hear, on the subject as usual. Elizabeth soon heard from her
+      friend; and their correspondence was as regular and frequent as
+      it had ever been; that it should be equally unreserved was
+      impossible. Elizabeth could never address her without feeling
+      that all the comfort of intimacy was over, and though determined
+      not to slacken as a correspondent, it was for the sake of what
+      had been, rather than what was. Charlotte’s first letters were
+      received with a good deal of eagerness; there could not but be
+      curiosity to know how she would speak of her new home, how she
+      would like Lady Catherine, and how happy she would dare pronounce
+      herself to be; though, when the letters were read, Elizabeth felt
+      that Charlotte expressed herself on every point exactly as she
+      might have foreseen. She wrote cheerfully, seemed surrounded with
+      comforts, and mentioned nothing which she could not praise. The
+      house, furniture, neighbourhood, and roads, were all to her
+      taste, and Lady Catherine’s behaviour was most friendly and
+      obliging. It was Mr. Collins’s picture of Hunsford and Rosings
+      rationally softened; and Elizabeth perceived that she must wait
+      for her own visit there to know the rest.
+
+      Jane had already written a few lines to her sister to announce
+      their safe arrival in London; and when she wrote again, Elizabeth
+      hoped it would be in her power to say something of the Bingleys.
+
+      Her impatience for this second letter was as well rewarded as
+      impatience generally is. Jane had been a week in town without
+      either seeing or hearing from Caroline. She accounted for it,
+      however, by supposing that her last letter to her friend from
+      Longbourn had by some accident been lost.
+
+      “My aunt,” she continued, “is going to-morrow into that part of
+      the town, and I shall take the opportunity of calling in
+      Grosvenor Street.”
+
+      She wrote again when the visit was paid, and she had seen Miss
+      Bingley. “I did not think Caroline in spirits,” were her words,
+      “but she was very glad to see me, and reproached me for giving
+      her no notice of my coming to London. I was right, therefore, my
+      last letter had never reached her. I inquired after their
+      brother, of course. He was well, but so much engaged with Mr.
+      Darcy that they scarcely ever saw him. I found that Miss Darcy
+      was expected to dinner. I wish I could see her. My visit was not
+      long, as Caroline and Mrs. Hurst were going out. I dare say I
+      shall see them soon here.”
+
+      Elizabeth shook her head over this letter. It convinced her that
+      accident only could discover to Mr. Bingley her sister’s being in
+      town.
+
+      Four weeks passed away, and Jane saw nothing of him. She
+      endeavoured to persuade herself that she did not regret it; but
+      she could no longer be blind to Miss Bingley’s inattention. After
+      waiting at home every morning for a fortnight, and inventing
+      every evening a fresh excuse for her, the visitor did at last
+      appear; but the shortness of her stay, and yet more, the
+      alteration of her manner would allow Jane to deceive herself no
+      longer. The letter which she wrote on this occasion to her sister
+      will prove what she felt.
+
+      “My dearest Lizzy will, I am sure, be incapable of triumphing in
+      her better judgement, at my expense, when I confess myself to
+      have been entirely deceived in Miss Bingley’s regard for me. But,
+      my dear sister, though the event has proved you right, do not
+      think me obstinate if I still assert that, considering what her
+      behaviour was, my confidence was as natural as your suspicion. I
+      do not at all comprehend her reason for wishing to be intimate
+      with me; but if the same circumstances were to happen again, I am
+      sure I should be deceived again. Caroline did not return my visit
+      till yesterday; and not a note, not a line, did I receive in the
+      meantime. When she did come, it was very evident that she had no
+      pleasure in it; she made a slight, formal apology, for not
+      calling before, said not a word of wishing to see me again, and
+      was in every respect so altered a creature, that when she went
+      away I was perfectly resolved to continue the acquaintance no
+      longer. I pity, though I cannot help blaming her. She was very
+      wrong in singling me out as she did; I can safely say that every
+      advance to intimacy began on her side. But I pity her, because
+      she must feel that she has been acting wrong, and because I am
+      very sure that anxiety for her brother is the cause of it. I need
+      not explain myself farther; and though _we_ know this anxiety to
+      be quite needless, yet if she feels it, it will easily account
+      for her behaviour to me; and so deservedly dear as he is to his
+      sister, whatever anxiety she must feel on his behalf is natural
+      and amiable. I cannot but wonder, however, at her having any such
+      fears now, because, if he had at all cared about me, we must have
+      met, long ago. He knows of my being in town, I am certain, from
+      something she said herself; and yet it would seem, by her manner
+      of talking, as if she wanted to persuade herself that he is
+      really partial to Miss Darcy. I cannot understand it. If I were
+      not afraid of judging harshly, I should be almost tempted to say
+      that there is a strong appearance of duplicity in all this. But I
+      will endeavour to banish every painful thought, and think only of
+      what will make me happy—your affection, and the invariable
+      kindness of my dear uncle and aunt. Let me hear from you very
+      soon. Miss Bingley said something of his never returning to
+      Netherfield again, of giving up the house, but not with any
+      certainty. We had better not mention it. I am extremely glad that
+      you have such pleasant accounts from our friends at Hunsford.
+      Pray go to see them, with Sir William and Maria. I am sure you
+      will be very comfortable there.—Yours, etc.”
+
+      This letter gave Elizabeth some pain; but her spirits returned as
+      she considered that Jane would no longer be duped, by the sister
+      at least. All expectation from the brother was now absolutely
+      over. She would not even wish for a renewal of his attentions.
+      His character sunk on every review of it; and as a punishment for
+      him, as well as a possible advantage to Jane, she seriously hoped
+      he might really soon marry Mr. Darcy’s sister, as by Wickham’s
+      account, she would make him abundantly regret what he had thrown
+      away.
+
+      Mrs. Gardiner about this time reminded Elizabeth of her promise
+      concerning that gentleman, and required information; and
+      Elizabeth had such to send as might rather give contentment to
+      her aunt than to herself. His apparent partiality had subsided,
+      his attentions were over, he was the admirer of some one else.
+      Elizabeth was watchful enough to see it all, but she could see it
+      and write of it without material pain. Her heart had been but
+      slightly touched, and her vanity was satisfied with believing
+      that _she_ would have been his only choice, had fortune permitted
+      it. The sudden acquisition of ten thousand pounds was the most
+      remarkable charm of the young lady to whom he was now rendering
+      himself agreeable; but Elizabeth, less clear-sighted perhaps in
+      this case than in Charlotte’s, did not quarrel with him for his
+      wish of independence. Nothing, on the contrary, could be more
+      natural; and while able to suppose that it cost him a few
+      struggles to relinquish her, she was ready to allow it a wise and
+      desirable measure for both, and could very sincerely wish him
+      happy.
+
+      All this was acknowledged to Mrs. Gardiner; and after relating
+      the circumstances, she thus went on: “I am now convinced, my dear
+      aunt, that I have never been much in love; for had I really
+      experienced that pure and elevating passion, I should at present
+      detest his very name, and wish him all manner of evil. But my
+      feelings are not only cordial towards _him_; they are even
+      impartial towards Miss King. I cannot find out that I hate her at
+      all, or that I am in the least unwilling to think her a very good
+      sort of girl. There can be no love in all this. My watchfulness
+      has been effectual; and though I certainly should be a more
+      interesting object to all my acquaintances were I distractedly in
+      love with him, I cannot say that I regret my comparative
+      insignificance. Importance may sometimes be purchased too dearly.
+      Kitty and Lydia take his defection much more to heart than I do.
+      They are young in the ways of the world, and not yet open to the
+      mortifying conviction that handsome young men must have something
+      to live on as well as the plain.”
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 27
+
+      With no greater events than these in the Longbourn family, and
+      otherwise diversified by little beyond the walks to Meryton,
+      sometimes dirty and sometimes cold, did January and February pass
+      away. March was to take Elizabeth to Hunsford. She had not at
+      first thought very seriously of going thither; but Charlotte, she
+      soon found, was depending on the plan and she gradually learned
+      to consider it herself with greater pleasure as well as greater
+      certainty. Absence had increased her desire of seeing Charlotte
+      again, and weakened her disgust of Mr. Collins. There was novelty
+      in the scheme, and as, with such a mother and such
+      uncompanionable sisters, home could not be faultless, a little
+      change was not unwelcome for its own sake. The journey would
+      moreover give her a peep at Jane; and, in short, as the time drew
+      near, she would have been very sorry for any delay. Everything,
+      however, went on smoothly, and was finally settled according to
+      Charlotte’s first sketch. She was to accompany Sir William and
+      his second daughter. The improvement of spending a night in
+      London was added in time, and the plan became perfect as plan
+      could be.
+
+      The only pain was in leaving her father, who would certainly miss
+      her, and who, when it came to the point, so little liked her
+      going, that he told her to write to him, and almost promised to
+      answer her letter.
+
+      The farewell between herself and Mr. Wickham was perfectly
+      friendly; on his side even more. His present pursuit could not
+      make him forget that Elizabeth had been the first to excite and
+      to deserve his attention, the first to listen and to pity, the
+      first to be admired; and in his manner of bidding her adieu,
+      wishing her every enjoyment, reminding her of what she was to
+      expect in Lady Catherine de Bourgh, and trusting their opinion of
+      her—their opinion of everybody—would always coincide, there was a
+      solicitude, an interest which she felt must ever attach her to
+      him with a most sincere regard; and she parted from him convinced
+      that, whether married or single, he must always be her model of
+      the amiable and pleasing.
+
+      Her fellow-travellers the next day were not of a kind to make her
+      think him less agreeable. Sir William Lucas, and his daughter
+      Maria, a good-humoured girl, but as empty-headed as himself, had
+      nothing to say that could be worth hearing, and were listened to
+      with about as much delight as the rattle of the chaise. Elizabeth
+      loved absurdities, but she had known Sir William’s too long. He
+      could tell her nothing new of the wonders of his presentation and
+      knighthood; and his civilities were worn out, like his
+      information.
+
+      It was a journey of only twenty-four miles, and they began it so
+      early as to be in Gracechurch Street by noon. As they drove to
+      Mr. Gardiner’s door, Jane was at a drawing-room window watching
+      their arrival; when they entered the passage she was there to
+      welcome them, and Elizabeth, looking earnestly in her face, was
+      pleased to see it healthful and lovely as ever. On the stairs
+      were a troop of little boys and girls, whose eagerness for their
+      cousin’s appearance would not allow them to wait in the
+      drawing-room, and whose shyness, as they had not seen her for a
+      twelvemonth, prevented their coming lower. All was joy and
+      kindness. The day passed most pleasantly away; the morning in
+      bustle and shopping, and the evening at one of the theatres.
+
+      Elizabeth then contrived to sit by her aunt. Their first object
+      was her sister; and she was more grieved than astonished to hear,
+      in reply to her minute inquiries, that though Jane always
+      struggled to support her spirits, there were periods of
+      dejection. It was reasonable, however, to hope that they would
+      not continue long. Mrs. Gardiner gave her the particulars also of
+      Miss Bingley’s visit in Gracechurch Street, and repeated
+      conversations occurring at different times between Jane and
+      herself, which proved that the former had, from her heart, given
+      up the acquaintance.
+
+      Mrs. Gardiner then rallied her niece on Wickham’s desertion, and
+      complimented her on bearing it so well.
+
+      “But my dear Elizabeth,” she added, “what sort of girl is Miss
+      King? I should be sorry to think our friend mercenary.”
+
+      “Pray, my dear aunt, what is the difference in matrimonial
+      affairs, between the mercenary and the prudent motive? Where does
+      discretion end, and avarice begin? Last Christmas you were afraid
+      of his marrying me, because it would be imprudent; and now,
+      because he is trying to get a girl with only ten thousand pounds,
+      you want to find out that he is mercenary.”
+
+      “If you will only tell me what sort of girl Miss King is, I shall
+      know what to think.”
+
+      “She is a very good kind of girl, I believe. I know no harm of
+      her.”
+
+      “But he paid her not the smallest attention till her
+      grandfather’s death made her mistress of this fortune.”
+
+      “No—why should he? If it were not allowable for him to gain _my_
+      affections because I had no money, what occasion could there be
+      for making love to a girl whom he did not care about, and who was
+      equally poor?”
+
+      “But there seems an indelicacy in directing his attentions
+      towards her so soon after this event.”
+
+      “A man in distressed circumstances has not time for all those
+      elegant decorums which other people may observe. If _she_ does
+      not object to it, why should _we_?”
+
+      “_Her_ not objecting does not justify _him_. It only shows her
+      being deficient in something herself—sense or feeling.”
+
+      “Well,” cried Elizabeth, “have it as you choose. _He_ shall be
+      mercenary, and _she_ shall be foolish.”
+
+      “No, Lizzy, that is what I do _not_ choose. I should be sorry,
+      you know, to think ill of a young man who has lived so long in
+      Derbyshire.”
+
+      “Oh! if that is all, I have a very poor opinion of young men who
+      live in Derbyshire; and their intimate friends who live in
+      Hertfordshire are not much better. I am sick of them all. Thank
+      Heaven! I am going to-morrow where I shall find a man who has not
+      one agreeable quality, who has neither manner nor sense to
+      recommend him. Stupid men are the only ones worth knowing, after
+      all.”
+
+      “Take care, Lizzy; that speech savours strongly of
+      disappointment.”
+
+      Before they were separated by the conclusion of the play, she had
+      the unexpected happiness of an invitation to accompany her uncle
+      and aunt in a tour of pleasure which they proposed taking in the
+      summer.
+
+      “We have not determined how far it shall carry us,” said Mrs.
+      Gardiner, “but, perhaps, to the Lakes.”
+
+      No scheme could have been more agreeable to Elizabeth, and her
+      acceptance of the invitation was most ready and grateful. “Oh, my
+      dear, dear aunt,” she rapturously cried, “what delight! what
+      felicity! You give me fresh life and vigour. Adieu to
+      disappointment and spleen. What are young men to rocks and
+      mountains? Oh! what hours of transport we shall spend! And when
+      we _do_ return, it shall not be like other travellers, without
+      being able to give one accurate idea of anything. We _will_ know
+      where we have gone—we _will_ recollect what we have seen. Lakes,
+      mountains, and rivers shall not be jumbled together in our
+      imaginations; nor when we attempt to describe any particular
+      scene, will we begin quarreling about its relative situation. Let
+      _our_ first effusions be less insupportable than those of the
+      generality of travellers.”
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 28
+
+      Every object in the next day’s journey was new and interesting to
+      Elizabeth; and her spirits were in a state of enjoyment; for she
+      had seen her sister looking so well as to banish all fear for her
+      health, and the prospect of her northern tour was a constant
+      source of delight.
+
+      When they left the high road for the lane to Hunsford, every eye
+      was in search of the Parsonage, and every turning expected to
+      bring it in view. The palings of Rosings Park was their boundary
+      on one side. Elizabeth smiled at the recollection of all that she
+      had heard of its inhabitants.
+
+      At length the Parsonage was discernible. The garden sloping to
+      the road, the house standing in it, the green pales, and the
+      laurel hedge, everything declared they were arriving. Mr. Collins
+      and Charlotte appeared at the door, and the carriage stopped at
+      the small gate which led by a short gravel walk to the house,
+      amidst the nods and smiles of the whole party. In a moment they
+      were all out of the chaise, rejoicing at the sight of each other.
+      Mrs. Collins welcomed her friend with the liveliest pleasure, and
+      Elizabeth was more and more satisfied with coming when she found
+      herself so affectionately received. She saw instantly that her
+      cousin’s manners were not altered by his marriage; his formal
+      civility was just what it had been, and he detained her some
+      minutes at the gate to hear and satisfy his inquiries after all
+      her family. They were then, with no other delay than his pointing
+      out the neatness of the entrance, taken into the house; and as
+      soon as they were in the parlour, he welcomed them a second time,
+      with ostentatious formality to his humble abode, and punctually
+      repeated all his wife’s offers of refreshment.
+
+      Elizabeth was prepared to see him in his glory; and she could not
+      help in fancying that in displaying the good proportion of the
+      room, its aspect and its furniture, he addressed himself
+      particularly to her, as if wishing to make her feel what she had
+      lost in refusing him. But though everything seemed neat and
+      comfortable, she was not able to gratify him by any sigh of
+      repentance, and rather looked with wonder at her friend that she
+      could have so cheerful an air with such a companion. When Mr.
+      Collins said anything of which his wife might reasonably be
+      ashamed, which certainly was not unseldom, she involuntarily
+      turned her eye on Charlotte. Once or twice she could discern a
+      faint blush; but in general Charlotte wisely did not hear. After
+      sitting long enough to admire every article of furniture in the
+      room, from the sideboard to the fender, to give an account of
+      their journey, and of all that had happened in London, Mr.
+      Collins invited them to take a stroll in the garden, which was
+      large and well laid out, and to the cultivation of which he
+      attended himself. To work in this garden was one of his most
+      respectable pleasures; and Elizabeth admired the command of
+      countenance with which Charlotte talked of the healthfulness of
+      the exercise, and owned she encouraged it as much as possible.
+      Here, leading the way through every walk and cross walk, and
+      scarcely allowing them an interval to utter the praises he asked
+      for, every view was pointed out with a minuteness which left
+      beauty entirely behind. He could number the fields in every
+      direction, and could tell how many trees there were in the most
+      distant clump. But of all the views which his garden, or which
+      the country or kingdom could boast, none were to be compared with
+      the prospect of Rosings, afforded by an opening in the trees that
+      bordered the park nearly opposite the front of his house. It was
+      a handsome modern building, well situated on rising ground.
+
+      From his garden, Mr. Collins would have led them round his two
+      meadows; but the ladies, not having shoes to encounter the
+      remains of a white frost, turned back; and while Sir William
+      accompanied him, Charlotte took her sister and friend over the
+      house, extremely well pleased, probably, to have the opportunity
+      of showing it without her husband’s help. It was rather small,
+      but well built and convenient; and everything was fitted up and
+      arranged with a neatness and consistency of which Elizabeth gave
+      Charlotte all the credit. When Mr. Collins could be forgotten,
+      there was really an air of great comfort throughout, and by
+      Charlotte’s evident enjoyment of it, Elizabeth supposed he must
+      be often forgotten.
+
+      She had already learnt that Lady Catherine was still in the
+      country. It was spoken of again while they were at dinner, when
+      Mr. Collins joining in, observed:
+
+      “Yes, Miss Elizabeth, you will have the honour of seeing Lady
+      Catherine de Bourgh on the ensuing Sunday at church, and I need
+      not say you will be delighted with her. She is all affability and
+      condescension, and I doubt not but you will be honoured with some
+      portion of her notice when service is over. I have scarcely any
+      hesitation in saying she will include you and my sister Maria in
+      every invitation with which she honours us during your stay here.
+      Her behaviour to my dear Charlotte is charming. We dine at
+      Rosings twice every week, and are never allowed to walk home. Her
+      ladyship’s carriage is regularly ordered for us. I _should_ say,
+      one of her ladyship’s carriages, for she has several.”
+
+      “Lady Catherine is a very respectable, sensible woman indeed,”
+      added Charlotte, “and a most attentive neighbour.”
+
+      “Very true, my dear, that is exactly what I say. She is the sort
+      of woman whom one cannot regard with too much deference.”
+
+      The evening was spent chiefly in talking over Hertfordshire news,
+      and telling again what had already been written; and when it
+      closed, Elizabeth, in the solitude of her chamber, had to
+      meditate upon Charlotte’s degree of contentment, to understand
+      her address in guiding, and composure in bearing with, her
+      husband, and to acknowledge that it was all done very well. She
+      had also to anticipate how her visit would pass, the quiet tenor
+      of their usual employments, the vexatious interruptions of Mr.
+      Collins, and the gaieties of their intercourse with Rosings. A
+      lively imagination soon settled it all.
+
+      About the middle of the next day, as she was in her room getting
+      ready for a walk, a sudden noise below seemed to speak the whole
+      house in confusion; and, after listening a moment, she heard
+      somebody running up stairs in a violent hurry, and calling loudly
+      after her. She opened the door and met Maria in the landing
+      place, who, breathless with agitation, cried out—
+
+      “Oh, my dear Eliza! pray make haste and come into the
+      dining-room, for there is such a sight to be seen! I will not
+      tell you what it is. Make haste, and come down this moment.”
+
+      Elizabeth asked questions in vain; Maria would tell her nothing
+      more, and down they ran into the dining-room, which fronted the
+      lane, in quest of this wonder; It was two ladies stopping in a
+      low phaeton at the garden gate.
+
+      “And is this all?” cried Elizabeth. “I expected at least that the
+      pigs were got into the garden, and here is nothing but Lady
+      Catherine and her daughter.”
+
+      “La! my dear,” said Maria, quite shocked at the mistake, “it is
+      not Lady Catherine. The old lady is Mrs. Jenkinson, who lives
+      with them; the other is Miss de Bourgh. Only look at her. She is
+      quite a little creature. Who would have thought that she could be
+      so thin and small?”
+
+      “She is abominably rude to keep Charlotte out of doors in all
+      this wind. Why does she not come in?”
+
+      “Oh, Charlotte says she hardly ever does. It is the greatest of
+      favours when Miss de Bourgh comes in.”
+
+      “I like her appearance,” said Elizabeth, struck with other ideas.
+      “She looks sickly and cross. Yes, she will do for him very well.
+      She will make him a very proper wife.”
+
+      Mr. Collins and Charlotte were both standing at the gate in
+      conversation with the ladies; and Sir William, to Elizabeth’s
+      high diversion, was stationed in the doorway, in earnest
+      contemplation of the greatness before him, and constantly bowing
+      whenever Miss de Bourgh looked that way.
+
+      At length there was nothing more to be said; the ladies drove on,
+      and the others returned into the house. Mr. Collins no sooner saw
+      the two girls than he began to congratulate them on their good
+      fortune, which Charlotte explained by letting them know that the
+      whole party was asked to dine at Rosings the next day.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 29
+
+      Mr. Collins’s triumph, in consequence of this invitation, was
+      complete. The power of displaying the grandeur of his patroness
+      to his wondering visitors, and of letting them see her civility
+      towards himself and his wife, was exactly what he had wished for;
+      and that an opportunity of doing it should be given so soon, was
+      such an instance of Lady Catherine’s condescension, as he knew
+      not how to admire enough.
+
+      “I confess,” said he, “that I should not have been at all
+      surprised by her ladyship’s asking us on Sunday to drink tea and
+      spend the evening at Rosings. I rather expected, from my
+      knowledge of her affability, that it would happen. But who could
+      have foreseen such an attention as this? Who could have imagined
+      that we should receive an invitation to dine there (an
+      invitation, moreover, including the whole party) so immediately
+      after your arrival!”
+
+      “I am the less surprised at what has happened,” replied Sir
+      William, “from that knowledge of what the manners of the great
+      really are, which my situation in life has allowed me to acquire.
+      About the court, such instances of elegant breeding are not
+      uncommon.”
+
+      Scarcely anything was talked of the whole day or next morning but
+      their visit to Rosings. Mr. Collins was carefully instructing
+      them in what they were to expect, that the sight of such rooms,
+      so many servants, and so splendid a dinner, might not wholly
+      overpower them.
+
+      When the ladies were separating for the toilette, he said to
+      Elizabeth—
+
+      “Do not make yourself uneasy, my dear cousin, about your apparel.
+      Lady Catherine is far from requiring that elegance of dress in us
+      which becomes herself and her daughter. I would advise you merely
+      to put on whatever of your clothes is superior to the rest—there
+      is no occasion for anything more. Lady Catherine will not think
+      the worse of you for being simply dressed. She likes to have the
+      distinction of rank preserved.”
+
+      While they were dressing, he came two or three times to their
+      different doors, to recommend their being quick, as Lady
+      Catherine very much objected to be kept waiting for her dinner.
+      Such formidable accounts of her ladyship, and her manner of
+      living, quite frightened Maria Lucas who had been little used to
+      company, and she looked forward to her introduction at Rosings
+      with as much apprehension as her father had done to his
+      presentation at St. James’s.
+
+      As the weather was fine, they had a pleasant walk of about half a
+      mile across the park. Every park has its beauty and its
+      prospects; and Elizabeth saw much to be pleased with, though she
+      could not be in such raptures as Mr. Collins expected the scene
+      to inspire, and was but slightly affected by his enumeration of
+      the windows in front of the house, and his relation of what the
+      glazing altogether had originally cost Sir Lewis de Bourgh.
+
+      When they ascended the steps to the hall, Maria’s alarm was every
+      moment increasing, and even Sir William did not look perfectly
+      calm. Elizabeth’s courage did not fail her. She had heard nothing
+      of Lady Catherine that spoke her awful from any extraordinary
+      talents or miraculous virtue, and the mere stateliness of money
+      or rank she thought she could witness without trepidation.
+
+      From the entrance-hall, of which Mr. Collins pointed out, with a
+      rapturous air, the fine proportion and the finished ornaments,
+      they followed the servants through an ante-chamber, to the room
+      where Lady Catherine, her daughter, and Mrs. Jenkinson were
+      sitting. Her ladyship, with great condescension, arose to receive
+      them; and as Mrs. Collins had settled it with her husband that
+      the office of introduction should be hers, it was performed in a
+      proper manner, without any of those apologies and thanks which he
+      would have thought necessary.
+
+      In spite of having been at St. James’s, Sir William was so
+      completely awed by the grandeur surrounding him, that he had but
+      just courage enough to make a very low bow, and take his seat
+      without saying a word; and his daughter, frightened almost out of
+      her senses, sat on the edge of her chair, not knowing which way
+      to look. Elizabeth found herself quite equal to the scene, and
+      could observe the three ladies before her composedly. Lady
+      Catherine was a tall, large woman, with strongly-marked features,
+      which might once have been handsome. Her air was not
+      conciliating, nor was her manner of receiving them such as to
+      make her visitors forget their inferior rank. She was not
+      rendered formidable by silence; but whatever she said was spoken
+      in so authoritative a tone, as marked her self-importance, and
+      brought Mr. Wickham immediately to Elizabeth’s mind; and from the
+      observation of the day altogether, she believed Lady Catherine to
+      be exactly what he represented.
+
+      When, after examining the mother, in whose countenance and
+      deportment she soon found some resemblance of Mr. Darcy, she
+      turned her eyes on the daughter, she could almost have joined in
+      Maria’s astonishment at her being so thin and so small. There was
+      neither in figure nor face any likeness between the ladies. Miss
+      de Bourgh was pale and sickly; her features, though not plain,
+      were insignificant; and she spoke very little, except in a low
+      voice, to Mrs. Jenkinson, in whose appearance there was nothing
+      remarkable, and who was entirely engaged in listening to what she
+      said, and placing a screen in the proper direction before her
+      eyes.
+
+      After sitting a few minutes, they were all sent to one of the
+      windows to admire the view, Mr. Collins attending them to point
+      out its beauties, and Lady Catherine kindly informing them that
+      it was much better worth looking at in the summer.
+
+      The dinner was exceedingly handsome, and there were all the
+      servants and all the articles of plate which Mr. Collins had
+      promised; and, as he had likewise foretold, he took his seat at
+      the bottom of the table, by her ladyship’s desire, and looked as
+      if he felt that life could furnish nothing greater. He carved,
+      and ate, and praised with delighted alacrity; and every dish was
+      commended, first by him and then by Sir William, who was now
+      enough recovered to echo whatever his son-in-law said, in a
+      manner which Elizabeth wondered Lady Catherine could bear. But
+      Lady Catherine seemed gratified by their excessive admiration,
+      and gave most gracious smiles, especially when any dish on the
+      table proved a novelty to them. The party did not supply much
+      conversation. Elizabeth was ready to speak whenever there was an
+      opening, but she was seated between Charlotte and Miss de
+      Bourgh—the former of whom was engaged in listening to Lady
+      Catherine, and the latter said not a word to her all dinner-time.
+      Mrs. Jenkinson was chiefly employed in watching how little Miss
+      de Bourgh ate, pressing her to try some other dish, and fearing
+      she was indisposed. Maria thought speaking out of the question,
+      and the gentlemen did nothing but eat and admire.
+
+      When the ladies returned to the drawing-room, there was little to
+      be done but to hear Lady Catherine talk, which she did without
+      any intermission till coffee came in, delivering her opinion on
+      every subject in so decisive a manner, as proved that she was not
+      used to have her judgement controverted. She inquired into
+      Charlotte’s domestic concerns familiarly and minutely, gave her a
+      great deal of advice as to the management of them all; told her
+      how everything ought to be regulated in so small a family as
+      hers, and instructed her as to the care of her cows and her
+      poultry. Elizabeth found that nothing was beneath this great
+      lady’s attention, which could furnish her with an occasion of
+      dictating to others. In the intervals of her discourse with Mrs.
+      Collins, she addressed a variety of questions to Maria and
+      Elizabeth, but especially to the latter, of whose connections she
+      knew the least, and who she observed to Mrs. Collins was a very
+      genteel, pretty kind of girl. She asked her, at different times,
+      how many sisters she had, whether they were older or younger than
+      herself, whether any of them were likely to be married, whether
+      they were handsome, where they had been educated, what carriage
+      her father kept, and what had been her mother’s maiden name?
+      Elizabeth felt all the impertinence of her questions but answered
+      them very composedly. Lady Catherine then observed,
+
+      “Your father’s estate is entailed on Mr. Collins, I think. For
+      your sake,” turning to Charlotte, “I am glad of it; but otherwise
+      I see no occasion for entailing estates from the female line. It
+      was not thought necessary in Sir Lewis de Bourgh’s family. Do you
+      play and sing, Miss Bennet?”
+
+      “A little.”
+
+      “Oh! then—some time or other we shall be happy to hear you. Our
+      instrument is a capital one, probably superior to——You shall try
+      it some day. Do your sisters play and sing?”
+
+      “One of them does.”
+
+      “Why did not you all learn? You ought all to have learned. The
+      Miss Webbs all play, and their father has not so good an income
+      as yours. Do you draw?”
+
+      “No, not at all.”
+
+      “What, none of you?”
+
+      “Not one.”
+
+      “That is very strange. But I suppose you had no opportunity. Your
+      mother should have taken you to town every spring for the benefit
+      of masters.”
+
+      “My mother would have had no objection, but my father hates
+      London.”
+
+      “Has your governess left you?”
+
+      “We never had any governess.”
+
+      “No governess! How was that possible? Five daughters brought up
+      at home without a governess! I never heard of such a thing. Your
+      mother must have been quite a slave to your education.”
+
+      Elizabeth could hardly help smiling as she assured her that had
+      not been the case.
+
+      “Then, who taught you? who attended to you? Without a governess,
+      you must have been neglected.”
+
+      “Compared with some families, I believe we were; but such of us
+      as wished to learn never wanted the means. We were always
+      encouraged to read, and had all the masters that were necessary.
+      Those who chose to be idle, certainly might.”
+
+      “Aye, no doubt; but that is what a governess will prevent, and if
+      I had known your mother, I should have advised her most
+      strenuously to engage one. I always say that nothing is to be
+      done in education without steady and regular instruction, and
+      nobody but a governess can give it. It is wonderful how many
+      families I have been the means of supplying in that way. I am
+      always glad to get a young person well placed out. Four nieces of
+      Mrs. Jenkinson are most delightfully situated through my means;
+      and it was but the other day that I recommended another young
+      person, who was merely accidentally mentioned to me, and the
+      family are quite delighted with her. Mrs. Collins, did I tell you
+      of Lady Metcalf’s calling yesterday to thank me? She finds Miss
+      Pope a treasure. ‘Lady Catherine,’ said she, ‘you have given me a
+      treasure.’ Are any of your younger sisters out, Miss Bennet?”
+
+      “Yes, ma’am, all.”
+
+      “All! What, all five out at once? Very odd! And you only the
+      second. The younger ones out before the elder ones are married!
+      Your younger sisters must be very young?”
+
+      “Yes, my youngest is not sixteen. Perhaps _she_ is full young to
+      be much in company. But really, ma’am, I think it would be very
+      hard upon younger sisters, that they should not have their share
+      of society and amusement, because the elder may not have the
+      means or inclination to marry early. The last-born has as good a
+      right to the pleasures of youth as the first. And to be kept back
+      on _such_ a motive! I think it would not be very likely to
+      promote sisterly affection or delicacy of mind.”
+
+      “Upon my word,” said her ladyship, “you give your opinion very
+      decidedly for so young a person. Pray, what is your age?”
+
+      “With three younger sisters grown up,” replied Elizabeth,
+      smiling, “your ladyship can hardly expect me to own it.”
+
+      Lady Catherine seemed quite astonished at not receiving a direct
+      answer; and Elizabeth suspected herself to be the first creature
+      who had ever dared to trifle with so much dignified impertinence.
+
+      “You cannot be more than twenty, I am sure, therefore you need
+      not conceal your age.”
+
+      “I am not one-and-twenty.”
+
+      When the gentlemen had joined them, and tea was over, the
+      card-tables were placed. Lady Catherine, Sir William, and Mr. and
+      Mrs. Collins sat down to quadrille; and as Miss de Bourgh chose
+      to play at cassino, the two girls had the honour of assisting
+      Mrs. Jenkinson to make up her party. Their table was
+      superlatively stupid. Scarcely a syllable was uttered that did
+      not relate to the game, except when Mrs. Jenkinson expressed her
+      fears of Miss de Bourgh’s being too hot or too cold, or having
+      too much or too little light. A great deal more passed at the
+      other table. Lady Catherine was generally speaking—stating the
+      mistakes of the three others, or relating some anecdote of
+      herself. Mr. Collins was employed in agreeing to everything her
+      ladyship said, thanking her for every fish he won, and
+      apologising if he thought he won too many. Sir William did not
+      say much. He was storing his memory with anecdotes and noble
+      names.
+
+      When Lady Catherine and her daughter had played as long as they
+      chose, the tables were broken up, the carriage was offered to
+      Mrs. Collins, gratefully accepted and immediately ordered. The
+      party then gathered round the fire to hear Lady Catherine
+      determine what weather they were to have on the morrow. From
+      these instructions they were summoned by the arrival of the
+      coach; and with many speeches of thankfulness on Mr. Collins’s
+      side and as many bows on Sir William’s they departed. As soon as
+      they had driven from the door, Elizabeth was called on by her
+      cousin to give her opinion of all that she had seen at Rosings,
+      which, for Charlotte’s sake, she made more favourable than it
+      really was. But her commendation, though costing her some
+      trouble, could by no means satisfy Mr. Collins, and he was very
+      soon obliged to take her ladyship’s praise into his own hands.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 30
+
+      Sir William stayed only a week at Hunsford, but his visit was
+      long enough to convince him of his daughter’s being most
+      comfortably settled, and of her possessing such a husband and
+      such a neighbour as were not often met with. While Sir William
+      was with them, Mr. Collins devoted his morning to driving him out
+      in his gig, and showing him the country; but when he went away,
+      the whole family returned to their usual employments, and
+      Elizabeth was thankful to find that they did not see more of her
+      cousin by the alteration, for the chief of the time between
+      breakfast and dinner was now passed by him either at work in the
+      garden or in reading and writing, and looking out of the window
+      in his own book-room, which fronted the road. The room in which
+      the ladies sat was backwards. Elizabeth had at first rather
+      wondered that Charlotte should not prefer the dining-parlour for
+      common use; it was a better sized room, and had a more pleasant
+      aspect; but she soon saw that her friend had an excellent reason
+      for what she did, for Mr. Collins would undoubtedly have been
+      much less in his own apartment, had they sat in one equally
+      lively; and she gave Charlotte credit for the arrangement.
+
+      From the drawing-room they could distinguish nothing in the lane,
+      and were indebted to Mr. Collins for the knowledge of what
+      carriages went along, and how often especially Miss de Bourgh
+      drove by in her phaeton, which he never failed coming to inform
+      them of, though it happened almost every day. She not
+      unfrequently stopped at the Parsonage, and had a few minutes’
+      conversation with Charlotte, but was scarcely ever prevailed upon
+      to get out.
+
+      Very few days passed in which Mr. Collins did not walk to
+      Rosings, and not many in which his wife did not think it
+      necessary to go likewise; and till Elizabeth recollected that
+      there might be other family livings to be disposed of, she could
+      not understand the sacrifice of so many hours. Now and then they
+      were honoured with a call from her ladyship, and nothing escaped
+      her observation that was passing in the room during these visits.
+      She examined into their employments, looked at their work, and
+      advised them to do it differently; found fault with the
+      arrangement of the furniture; or detected the housemaid in
+      negligence; and if she accepted any refreshment, seemed to do it
+      only for the sake of finding out that Mrs. Collins’s joints of
+      meat were too large for her family.
+
+      Elizabeth soon perceived, that though this great lady was not in
+      commission of the peace of the county, she was a most active
+      magistrate in her own parish, the minutest concerns of which were
+      carried to her by Mr. Collins; and whenever any of the cottagers
+      were disposed to be quarrelsome, discontented, or too poor, she
+      sallied forth into the village to settle their differences,
+      silence their complaints, and scold them into harmony and plenty.
+
+      The entertainment of dining at Rosings was repeated about twice a
+      week; and, allowing for the loss of Sir William, and there being
+      only one card-table in the evening, every such entertainment was
+      the counterpart of the first. Their other engagements were few,
+      as the style of living in the neighbourhood in general was beyond
+      Mr. Collins’s reach. This, however, was no evil to Elizabeth, and
+      upon the whole she spent her time comfortably enough; there were
+      half-hours of pleasant conversation with Charlotte, and the
+      weather was so fine for the time of year that she had often great
+      enjoyment out of doors. Her favourite walk, and where she
+      frequently went while the others were calling on Lady Catherine,
+      was along the open grove which edged that side of the park, where
+      there was a nice sheltered path, which no one seemed to value but
+      herself, and where she felt beyond the reach of Lady Catherine’s
+      curiosity.
+
+      In this quiet way, the first fortnight of her visit soon passed
+      away. Easter was approaching, and the week preceding it was to
+      bring an addition to the family at Rosings, which in so small a
+      circle must be important. Elizabeth had heard soon after her
+      arrival that Mr. Darcy was expected there in the course of a few
+      weeks, and though there were not many of her acquaintances whom
+      she did not prefer, his coming would furnish one comparatively
+      new to look at in their Rosings parties, and she might be amused
+      in seeing how hopeless Miss Bingley’s designs on him were, by his
+      behaviour to his cousin, for whom he was evidently destined by
+      Lady Catherine, who talked of his coming with the greatest
+      satisfaction, spoke of him in terms of the highest admiration,
+      and seemed almost angry to find that he had already been
+      frequently seen by Miss Lucas and herself.
+
+      His arrival was soon known at the Parsonage; for Mr. Collins was
+      walking the whole morning within view of the lodges opening into
+      Hunsford Lane, in order to have the earliest assurance of it, and
+      after making his bow as the carriage turned into the Park,
+      hurried home with the great intelligence. On the following
+      morning he hastened to Rosings to pay his respects. There were
+      two nephews of Lady Catherine to require them, for Mr. Darcy had
+      brought with him a Colonel Fitzwilliam, the younger son of his
+      uncle Lord ——, and, to the great surprise of all the party, when
+      Mr. Collins returned, the gentlemen accompanied him. Charlotte
+      had seen them from her husband’s room, crossing the road, and
+      immediately running into the other, told the girls what an honour
+      they might expect, adding:
+
+      “I may thank you, Eliza, for this piece of civility. Mr. Darcy
+      would never have come so soon to wait upon me.”
+
+      Elizabeth had scarcely time to disclaim all right to the
+      compliment, before their approach was announced by the door-bell,
+      and shortly afterwards the three gentlemen entered the room.
+      Colonel Fitzwilliam, who led the way, was about thirty, not
+      handsome, but in person and address most truly the gentleman. Mr.
+      Darcy looked just as he had been used to look in
+      Hertfordshire—paid his compliments, with his usual reserve, to
+      Mrs. Collins, and whatever might be his feelings toward her
+      friend, met her with every appearance of composure. Elizabeth
+      merely curtseyed to him without saying a word.
+
+      Colonel Fitzwilliam entered into conversation directly with the
+      readiness and ease of a well-bred man, and talked very
+      pleasantly; but his cousin, after having addressed a slight
+      observation on the house and garden to Mrs. Collins, sat for some
+      time without speaking to anybody. At length, however, his
+      civility was so far awakened as to inquire of Elizabeth after the
+      health of her family. She answered him in the usual way, and
+      after a moment’s pause, added:
+
+      “My eldest sister has been in town these three months. Have you
+      never happened to see her there?”
+
+      She was perfectly sensible that he never had; but she wished to
+      see whether he would betray any consciousness of what had passed
+      between the Bingleys and Jane, and she thought he looked a little
+      confused as he answered that he had never been so fortunate as to
+      meet Miss Bennet. The subject was pursued no farther, and the
+      gentlemen soon afterwards went away.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 31
+
+      Colonel Fitzwilliam’s manners were very much admired at the
+      Parsonage, and the ladies all felt that he must add considerably
+      to the pleasures of their engagements at Rosings. It was some
+      days, however, before they received any invitation thither—for
+      while there were visitors in the house, they could not be
+      necessary; and it was not till Easter-day, almost a week after
+      the gentlemen’s arrival, that they were honoured by such an
+      attention, and then they were merely asked on leaving church to
+      come there in the evening. For the last week they had seen very
+      little of Lady Catherine or her daughter. Colonel Fitzwilliam had
+      called at the Parsonage more than once during the time, but Mr.
+      Darcy they had seen only at church.
+
+      The invitation was accepted of course, and at a proper hour they
+      joined the party in Lady Catherine’s drawing-room. Her ladyship
+      received them civilly, but it was plain that their company was by
+      no means so acceptable as when she could get nobody else; and she
+      was, in fact, almost engrossed by her nephews, speaking to them,
+      especially to Darcy, much more than to any other person in the
+      room.
+
+      Colonel Fitzwilliam seemed really glad to see them; anything was
+      a welcome relief to him at Rosings; and Mrs. Collins’s pretty
+      friend had moreover caught his fancy very much. He now seated
+      himself by her, and talked so agreeably of Kent and
+      Hertfordshire, of travelling and staying at home, of new books
+      and music, that Elizabeth had never been half so well entertained
+      in that room before; and they conversed with so much spirit and
+      flow, as to draw the attention of Lady Catherine herself, as well
+      as of Mr. Darcy. _His_ eyes had been soon and repeatedly turned
+      towards them with a look of curiosity; and that her ladyship,
+      after a while, shared the feeling, was more openly acknowledged,
+      for she did not scruple to call out:
+
+      “What is that you are saying, Fitzwilliam? What is it you are
+      talking of? What are you telling Miss Bennet? Let me hear what it
+      is.”
+
+      “We are speaking of music, madam,” said he, when no longer able
+      to avoid a reply.
+
+      “Of music! Then pray speak aloud. It is of all subjects my
+      delight. I must have my share in the conversation if you are
+      speaking of music. There are few people in England, I suppose,
+      who have more true enjoyment of music than myself, or a better
+      natural taste. If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great
+      proficient. And so would Anne, if her health had allowed her to
+      apply. I am confident that she would have performed delightfully.
+      How does Georgiana get on, Darcy?”
+
+      Mr. Darcy spoke with affectionate praise of his sister’s
+      proficiency.
+
+      “I am very glad to hear such a good account of her,” said Lady
+      Catherine; “and pray tell her from me, that she cannot expect to
+      excel if she does not practice a good deal.”
+
+      “I assure you, madam,” he replied, “that she does not need such
+      advice. She practises very constantly.”
+
+      “So much the better. It cannot be done too much; and when I next
+      write to her, I shall charge her not to neglect it on any
+      account. I often tell young ladies that no excellence in music is
+      to be acquired without constant practice. I have told Miss Bennet
+      several times, that she will never play really well unless she
+      practises more; and though Mrs. Collins has no instrument, she is
+      very welcome, as I have often told her, to come to Rosings every
+      day, and play on the pianoforte in Mrs. Jenkinson’s room. She
+      would be in nobody’s way, you know, in that part of the house.”
+
+      Mr. Darcy looked a little ashamed of his aunt’s ill-breeding, and
+      made no answer.
+
+      When coffee was over, Colonel Fitzwilliam reminded Elizabeth of
+      having promised to play to him; and she sat down directly to the
+      instrument. He drew a chair near her. Lady Catherine listened to
+      half a song, and then talked, as before, to her other nephew;
+      till the latter walked away from her, and making with his usual
+      deliberation towards the pianoforte stationed himself so as to
+      command a full view of the fair performer’s countenance.
+      Elizabeth saw what he was doing, and at the first convenient
+      pause, turned to him with an arch smile, and said:
+
+      “You mean to frighten me, Mr. Darcy, by coming in all this state
+      to hear me? I will not be alarmed though your sister _does_ play
+      so well. There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to
+      be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at
+      every attempt to intimidate me.”
+
+      “I shall not say you are mistaken,” he replied, “because you
+      could not really believe me to entertain any design of alarming
+      you; and I have had the pleasure of your acquaintance long enough
+      to know that you find great enjoyment in occasionally professing
+      opinions which in fact are not your own.”
+
+      Elizabeth laughed heartily at this picture of herself, and said
+      to Colonel Fitzwilliam, “Your cousin will give you a very pretty
+      notion of me, and teach you not to believe a word I say. I am
+      particularly unlucky in meeting with a person so able to expose
+      my real character, in a part of the world where I had hoped to
+      pass myself off with some degree of credit. Indeed, Mr. Darcy, it
+      is very ungenerous in you to mention all that you knew to my
+      disadvantage in Hertfordshire—and, give me leave to say, very
+      impolitic too—for it is provoking me to retaliate, and such
+      things may come out as will shock your relations to hear.”
+
+      “I am not afraid of you,” said he, smilingly.
+
+      “Pray let me hear what you have to accuse him of,” cried Colonel
+      Fitzwilliam. “I should like to know how he behaves among
+      strangers.”
+
+      “You shall hear then—but prepare yourself for something very
+      dreadful. The first time of my ever seeing him in Hertfordshire,
+      you must know, was at a ball—and at this ball, what do you think
+      he did? He danced only four dances, though gentlemen were scarce;
+      and, to my certain knowledge, more than one young lady was
+      sitting down in want of a partner. Mr. Darcy, you cannot deny the
+      fact.”
+
+      “I had not at that time the honour of knowing any lady in the
+      assembly beyond my own party.”
+
+      “True; and nobody can ever be introduced in a ball-room. Well,
+      Colonel Fitzwilliam, what do I play next? My fingers wait your
+      orders.”
+
+      “Perhaps,” said Darcy, “I should have judged better, had I sought
+      an introduction; but I am ill-qualified to recommend myself to
+      strangers.”
+
+      “Shall we ask your cousin the reason of this?” said Elizabeth,
+      still addressing Colonel Fitzwilliam. “Shall we ask him why a man
+      of sense and education, and who has lived in the world, is ill
+      qualified to recommend himself to strangers?”
+
+      “I can answer your question,” said Fitzwilliam, “without applying
+      to him. It is because he will not give himself the trouble.”
+
+      “I certainly have not the talent which some people possess,” said
+      Darcy, “of conversing easily with those I have never seen before.
+      I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested
+      in their concerns, as I often see done.”
+
+      “My fingers,” said Elizabeth, “do not move over this instrument
+      in the masterly manner which I see so many women’s do. They have
+      not the same force or rapidity, and do not produce the same
+      expression. But then I have always supposed it to be my own
+      fault—because I will not take the trouble of practising. It is
+      not that I do not believe _my_ fingers as capable as any other
+      woman’s of superior execution.”
+
+      Darcy smiled and said, “You are perfectly right. You have
+      employed your time much better. No one admitted to the privilege
+      of hearing you can think anything wanting. We neither of us
+      perform to strangers.”
+
+      Here they were interrupted by Lady Catherine, who called out to
+      know what they were talking of. Elizabeth immediately began
+      playing again. Lady Catherine approached, and, after listening
+      for a few minutes, said to Darcy:
+
+      “Miss Bennet would not play at all amiss if she practised more,
+      and could have the advantage of a London master. She has a very
+      good notion of fingering, though her taste is not equal to
+      Anne’s. Anne would have been a delightful performer, had her
+      health allowed her to learn.”
+
+      Elizabeth looked at Darcy to see how cordially he assented to his
+      cousin’s praise; but neither at that moment nor at any other
+      could she discern any symptom of love; and from the whole of his
+      behaviour to Miss de Bourgh she derived this comfort for Miss
+      Bingley, that he might have been just as likely to marry _her_,
+      had she been his relation.
+
+      Lady Catherine continued her remarks on Elizabeth’s performance,
+      mixing with them many instructions on execution and taste.
+      Elizabeth received them with all the forbearance of civility,
+      and, at the request of the gentlemen, remained at the instrument
+      till her ladyship’s carriage was ready to take them all home.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 32
+
+      Elizabeth was sitting by herself the next morning, and writing to
+      Jane while Mrs. Collins and Maria were gone on business into the
+      village, when she was startled by a ring at the door, the certain
+      signal of a visitor. As she had heard no carriage, she thought it
+      not unlikely to be Lady Catherine, and under that apprehension
+      was putting away her half-finished letter that she might escape
+      all impertinent questions, when the door opened, and, to her very
+      great surprise, Mr. Darcy, and Mr. Darcy only, entered the room.
+
+      He seemed astonished too on finding her alone, and apologised for
+      his intrusion by letting her know that he had understood all the
+      ladies were to be within.
+
+      They then sat down, and when her inquiries after Rosings were
+      made, seemed in danger of sinking into total silence. It was
+      absolutely necessary, therefore, to think of something, and in
+      this emergence recollecting _when_ she had seen him last in
+      Hertfordshire, and feeling curious to know what he would say on
+      the subject of their hasty departure, she observed:
+
+      “How very suddenly you all quitted Netherfield last November, Mr.
+      Darcy! It must have been a most agreeable surprise to Mr. Bingley
+      to see you all after him so soon; for, if I recollect right, he
+      went but the day before. He and his sisters were well, I hope,
+      when you left London?”
+
+      “Perfectly so, I thank you.”
+
+      She found that she was to receive no other answer, and, after a
+      short pause added:
+
+      “I think I have understood that Mr. Bingley has not much idea of
+      ever returning to Netherfield again?”
+
+      “I have never heard him say so; but it is probable that he may
+      spend very little of his time there in the future. He has many
+      friends, and is at a time of life when friends and engagements
+      are continually increasing.”
+
+      “If he means to be but little at Netherfield, it would be better
+      for the neighbourhood that he should give up the place entirely,
+      for then we might possibly get a settled family there. But,
+      perhaps, Mr. Bingley did not take the house so much for the
+      convenience of the neighbourhood as for his own, and we must
+      expect him to keep it or quit it on the same principle.”
+
+      “I should not be surprised,” said Darcy, “if he were to give it
+      up as soon as any eligible purchase offers.”
+
+      Elizabeth made no answer. She was afraid of talking longer of his
+      friend; and, having nothing else to say, was now determined to
+      leave the trouble of finding a subject to him.
+
+      He took the hint, and soon began with, “This seems a very
+      comfortable house. Lady Catherine, I believe, did a great deal to
+      it when Mr. Collins first came to Hunsford.”
+
+      “I believe she did—and I am sure she could not have bestowed her
+      kindness on a more grateful object.”
+
+      “Mr. Collins appears to be very fortunate in his choice of a
+      wife.”
+
+      “Yes, indeed, his friends may well rejoice in his having met with
+      one of the very few sensible women who would have accepted him,
+      or have made him happy if they had. My friend has an excellent
+      understanding—though I am not certain that I consider her
+      marrying Mr. Collins as the wisest thing she ever did. She seems
+      perfectly happy, however, and in a prudential light it is
+      certainly a very good match for her.”
+
+      “It must be very agreeable for her to be settled within so easy a
+      distance of her own family and friends.”
+
+      “An easy distance, do you call it? It is nearly fifty miles.”
+
+      “And what is fifty miles of good road? Little more than half a
+      day’s journey. Yes, I call it a very easy distance.”
+
+      “I should never have considered the distance as one of the
+      _advantages_ of the match,” cried Elizabeth. “I should never have
+      said Mrs. Collins was settled _near_ her family.”
+
+      “It is a proof of your own attachment to Hertfordshire. Anything
+      beyond the very neighbourhood of Longbourn, I suppose, would
+      appear far.”
+
+      As he spoke there was a sort of smile which Elizabeth fancied she
+      understood; he must be supposing her to be thinking of Jane and
+      Netherfield, and she blushed as she answered:
+
+      “I do not mean to say that a woman may not be settled too near
+      her family. The far and the near must be relative, and depend on
+      many varying circumstances. Where there is fortune to make the
+      expenses of travelling unimportant, distance becomes no evil. But
+      that is not the case _here_. Mr. and Mrs. Collins have a
+      comfortable income, but not such a one as will allow of frequent
+      journeys—and I am persuaded my friend would not call herself
+      _near_ her family under less than _half_ the present distance.”
+
+      Mr. Darcy drew his chair a little towards her, and said, “_You_
+      cannot have a right to such very strong local attachment. _You_
+      cannot have been always at Longbourn.”
+
+      Elizabeth looked surprised. The gentleman experienced some change
+      of feeling; he drew back his chair, took a newspaper from the
+      table, and glancing over it, said, in a colder voice:
+
+      “Are you pleased with Kent?”
+
+      A short dialogue on the subject of the country ensued, on either
+      side calm and concise—and soon put an end to by the entrance of
+      Charlotte and her sister, just returned from her walk. The
+      _tête-à-tête_ surprised them. Mr. Darcy related the mistake which
+      had occasioned his intruding on Miss Bennet, and after sitting a
+      few minutes longer without saying much to anybody, went away.
+
+      “What can be the meaning of this?” said Charlotte, as soon as he
+      was gone. “My dear, Eliza, he must be in love with you, or he
+      would never have called us in this familiar way.”
+
+      But when Elizabeth told of his silence, it did not seem very
+      likely, even to Charlotte’s wishes, to be the case; and after
+      various conjectures, they could at last only suppose his visit to
+      proceed from the difficulty of finding anything to do, which was
+      the more probable from the time of year. All field sports were
+      over. Within doors there was Lady Catherine, books, and a
+      billiard-table, but gentlemen cannot always be within doors; and
+      in the nearness of the Parsonage, or the pleasantness of the walk
+      to it, or of the people who lived in it, the two cousins found a
+      temptation from this period of walking thither almost every day.
+      They called at various times of the morning, sometimes
+      separately, sometimes together, and now and then accompanied by
+      their aunt. It was plain to them all that Colonel Fitzwilliam
+      came because he had pleasure in their society, a persuasion which
+      of course recommended him still more; and Elizabeth was reminded
+      by her own satisfaction in being with him, as well as by his
+      evident admiration of her, of her former favourite George
+      Wickham; and though, in comparing them, she saw there was less
+      captivating softness in Colonel Fitzwilliam’s manners, she
+      believed he might have the best informed mind.
+
+      But why Mr. Darcy came so often to the Parsonage, it was more
+      difficult to understand. It could not be for society, as he
+      frequently sat there ten minutes together without opening his
+      lips; and when he did speak, it seemed the effect of necessity
+      rather than of choice—a sacrifice to propriety, not a pleasure to
+      himself. He seldom appeared really animated. Mrs. Collins knew
+      not what to make of him. Colonel Fitzwilliam’s occasionally
+      laughing at his stupidity, proved that he was generally
+      different, which her own knowledge of him could not have told
+      her; and as she would liked to have believed this change the
+      effect of love, and the object of that love her friend Eliza, she
+      set herself seriously to work to find it out. She watched him
+      whenever they were at Rosings, and whenever he came to Hunsford;
+      but without much success. He certainly looked at her friend a
+      great deal, but the expression of that look was disputable. It
+      was an earnest, steadfast gaze, but she often doubted whether
+      there were much admiration in it, and sometimes it seemed nothing
+      but absence of mind.
+
+      She had once or twice suggested to Elizabeth the possibility of
+      his being partial to her, but Elizabeth always laughed at the
+      idea; and Mrs. Collins did not think it right to press the
+      subject, from the danger of raising expectations which might only
+      end in disappointment; for in her opinion it admitted not of a
+      doubt, that all her friend’s dislike would vanish, if she could
+      suppose him to be in her power.
+
+      In her kind schemes for Elizabeth, she sometimes planned her
+      marrying Colonel Fitzwilliam. He was beyond comparison the most
+      pleasant man; he certainly admired her, and his situation in life
+      was most eligible; but, to counterbalance these advantages, Mr.
+      Darcy had considerable patronage in the church, and his cousin
+      could have none at all.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 33
+
+      More than once did Elizabeth, in her ramble within the park,
+      unexpectedly meet Mr. Darcy. She felt all the perverseness of the
+      mischance that should bring him where no one else was brought,
+      and, to prevent its ever happening again, took care to inform him
+      at first that it was a favourite haunt of hers. How it could
+      occur a second time, therefore, was very odd! Yet it did, and
+      even a third. It seemed like wilful ill-nature, or a voluntary
+      penance, for on these occasions it was not merely a few formal
+      inquiries and an awkward pause and then away, but he actually
+      thought it necessary to turn back and walk with her. He never
+      said a great deal, nor did she give herself the trouble of
+      talking or of listening much; but it struck her in the course of
+      their third rencontre that he was asking some odd unconnected
+      questions—about her pleasure in being at Hunsford, her love of
+      solitary walks, and her opinion of Mr. and Mrs. Collins’s
+      happiness; and that in speaking of Rosings and her not perfectly
+      understanding the house, he seemed to expect that whenever she
+      came into Kent again she would be staying _there_ too. His words
+      seemed to imply it. Could he have Colonel Fitzwilliam in his
+      thoughts? She supposed, if he meant anything, he must mean an
+      allusion to what might arise in that quarter. It distressed her a
+      little, and she was quite glad to find herself at the gate in the
+      pales opposite the Parsonage.
+
+      She was engaged one day as she walked, in perusing Jane’s last
+      letter, and dwelling on some passages which proved that Jane had
+      not written in spirits, when, instead of being again surprised by
+      Mr. Darcy, she saw on looking up that Colonel Fitzwilliam was
+      meeting her. Putting away the letter immediately and forcing a
+      smile, she said:
+
+      “I did not know before that you ever walked this way.”
+
+      “I have been making the tour of the park,” he replied, “as I
+      generally do every year, and intend to close it with a call at
+      the Parsonage. Are you going much farther?”
+
+      “No, I should have turned in a moment.”
+
+      And accordingly she did turn, and they walked towards the
+      Parsonage together.
+
+      “Do you certainly leave Kent on Saturday?” said she.
+
+      “Yes—if Darcy does not put it off again. But I am at his
+      disposal. He arranges the business just as he pleases.”
+
+      “And if not able to please himself in the arrangement, he has at
+      least pleasure in the great power of choice. I do not know
+      anybody who seems more to enjoy the power of doing what he likes
+      than Mr. Darcy.”
+
+      “He likes to have his own way very well,” replied Colonel
+      Fitzwilliam. “But so we all do. It is only that he has better
+      means of having it than many others, because he is rich, and many
+      others are poor. I speak feelingly. A younger son, you know, must
+      be inured to self-denial and dependence.”
+
+      “In my opinion, the younger son of an earl can know very little
+      of either. Now seriously, what have you ever known of self-denial
+      and dependence? When have you been prevented by want of money
+      from going wherever you chose, or procuring anything you had a
+      fancy for?”
+
+      “These are home questions—and perhaps I cannot say that I have
+      experienced many hardships of that nature. But in matters of
+      greater weight, I may suffer from want of money. Younger sons
+      cannot marry where they like.”
+
+      “Unless where they like women of fortune, which I think they very
+      often do.”
+
+      “Our habits of expense make us too dependent, and there are not
+      many in my rank of life who can afford to marry without some
+      attention to money.”
+
+      “Is this,” thought Elizabeth, “meant for me?” and she coloured at
+      the idea; but, recovering herself, said in a lively tone, “And
+      pray, what is the usual price of an earl’s younger son? Unless
+      the elder brother is very sickly, I suppose you would not ask
+      above fifty thousand pounds.”
+
+      He answered her in the same style, and the subject dropped. To
+      interrupt a silence which might make him fancy her affected with
+      what had passed, she soon afterwards said:
+
+      “I imagine your cousin brought you down with him chiefly for the
+      sake of having someone at his disposal. I wonder he does not
+      marry, to secure a lasting convenience of that kind. But,
+      perhaps, his sister does as well for the present, and, as she is
+      under his sole care, he may do what he likes with her.”
+
+      “No,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, “that is an advantage which he
+      must divide with me. I am joined with him in the guardianship of
+      Miss Darcy.”
+
+      “Are you indeed? And pray what sort of guardians do you make?
+      Does your charge give you much trouble? Young ladies of her age
+      are sometimes a little difficult to manage, and if she has the
+      true Darcy spirit, she may like to have her own way.”
+
+      As she spoke she observed him looking at her earnestly; and the
+      manner in which he immediately asked her why she supposed Miss
+      Darcy likely to give them any uneasiness, convinced her that she
+      had somehow or other got pretty near the truth. She directly
+      replied:
+
+      “You need not be frightened. I never heard any harm of her; and I
+      dare say she is one of the most tractable creatures in the world.
+      She is a very great favourite with some ladies of my
+      acquaintance, Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley. I think I have heard
+      you say that you know them.”
+
+      “I know them a little. Their brother is a pleasant gentlemanlike
+      man—he is a great friend of Darcy’s.”
+
+      “Oh! yes,” said Elizabeth drily; “Mr. Darcy is uncommonly kind to
+      Mr. Bingley, and takes a prodigious deal of care of him.”
+
+      “Care of him! Yes, I really believe Darcy _does_ take care of him
+      in those points where he most wants care. From something that he
+      told me in our journey hither, I have reason to think Bingley
+      very much indebted to him. But I ought to beg his pardon, for I
+      have no right to suppose that Bingley was the person meant. It
+      was all conjecture.”
+
+      “What is it you mean?”
+
+      “It is a circumstance which Darcy could not wish to be generally
+      known, because if it were to get round to the lady’s family, it
+      would be an unpleasant thing.”
+
+      “You may depend upon my not mentioning it.”
+
+      “And remember that I have not much reason for supposing it to be
+      Bingley. What he told me was merely this: that he congratulated
+      himself on having lately saved a friend from the inconveniences
+      of a most imprudent marriage, but without mentioning names or any
+      other particulars, and I only suspected it to be Bingley from
+      believing him the kind of young man to get into a scrape of that
+      sort, and from knowing them to have been together the whole of
+      last summer.”
+
+      “Did Mr. Darcy give you reasons for this interference?”
+
+      “I understood that there were some very strong objections against
+      the lady.”
+
+      “And what arts did he use to separate them?”
+
+      “He did not talk to me of his own arts,” said Fitzwilliam,
+      smiling. “He only told me what I have now told you.”
+
+      Elizabeth made no answer, and walked on, her heart swelling with
+      indignation. After watching her a little, Fitzwilliam asked her
+      why she was so thoughtful.
+
+      “I am thinking of what you have been telling me,” said she. “Your
+      cousin’s conduct does not suit my feelings. Why was he to be the
+      judge?”
+
+      “You are rather disposed to call his interference officious?”
+
+      “I do not see what right Mr. Darcy had to decide on the propriety
+      of his friend’s inclination, or why, upon his own judgement
+      alone, he was to determine and direct in what manner his friend
+      was to be happy. But,” she continued, recollecting herself, “as
+      we know none of the particulars, it is not fair to condemn him.
+      It is not to be supposed that there was much affection in the
+      case.”
+
+      “That is not an unnatural surmise,” said Fitzwilliam, “but it is
+      a lessening of the honour of my cousin’s triumph very sadly.”
+
+      This was spoken jestingly; but it appeared to her so just a
+      picture of Mr. Darcy, that she would not trust herself with an
+      answer, and therefore, abruptly changing the conversation talked
+      on indifferent matters until they reached the Parsonage. There,
+      shut into her own room, as soon as their visitor left them, she
+      could think without interruption of all that she had heard. It
+      was not to be supposed that any other people could be meant than
+      those with whom she was connected. There could not exist in the
+      world _two_ men over whom Mr. Darcy could have such boundless
+      influence. That he had been concerned in the measures taken to
+      separate Bingley and Jane she had never doubted; but she had
+      always attributed to Miss Bingley the principal design and
+      arrangement of them. If his own vanity, however, did not mislead
+      him, _he_ was the cause, his pride and caprice were the cause, of
+      all that Jane had suffered, and still continued to suffer. He had
+      ruined for a while every hope of happiness for the most
+      affectionate, generous heart in the world; and no one could say
+      how lasting an evil he might have inflicted.
+
+      “There were some very strong objections against the lady,” were
+      Colonel Fitzwilliam’s words; and those strong objections probably
+      were, her having one uncle who was a country attorney, and
+      another who was in business in London.
+
+      “To Jane herself,” she exclaimed, “there could be no possibility
+      of objection; all loveliness and goodness as she is!—her
+      understanding excellent, her mind improved, and her manners
+      captivating. Neither could anything be urged against my father,
+      who, though with some peculiarities, has abilities Mr. Darcy
+      himself need not disdain, and respectability which he will
+      probably never reach.” When she thought of her mother, her
+      confidence gave way a little; but she would not allow that any
+      objections _there_ had material weight with Mr. Darcy, whose
+      pride, she was convinced, would receive a deeper wound from the
+      want of importance in his friend’s connections, than from their
+      want of sense; and she was quite decided, at last, that he had
+      been partly governed by this worst kind of pride, and partly by
+      the wish of retaining Mr. Bingley for his sister.
+
+      The agitation and tears which the subject occasioned, brought on
+      a headache; and it grew so much worse towards the evening, that,
+      added to her unwillingness to see Mr. Darcy, it determined her
+      not to attend her cousins to Rosings, where they were engaged to
+      drink tea. Mrs. Collins, seeing that she was really unwell, did
+      not press her to go and as much as possible prevented her husband
+      from pressing her; but Mr. Collins could not conceal his
+      apprehension of Lady Catherine’s being rather displeased by her
+      staying at home.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 34
+
+      When they were gone, Elizabeth, as if intending to exasperate
+      herself as much as possible against Mr. Darcy, chose for her
+      employment the examination of all the letters which Jane had
+      written to her since her being in Kent. They contained no actual
+      complaint, nor was there any revival of past occurrences, or any
+      communication of present suffering. But in all, and in almost
+      every line of each, there was a want of that cheerfulness which
+      had been used to characterise her style, and which, proceeding
+      from the serenity of a mind at ease with itself and kindly
+      disposed towards everyone, had been scarcely ever clouded.
+      Elizabeth noticed every sentence conveying the idea of
+      uneasiness, with an attention which it had hardly received on the
+      first perusal. Mr. Darcy’s shameful boast of what misery he had
+      been able to inflict, gave her a keener sense of her sister’s
+      sufferings. It was some consolation to think that his visit to
+      Rosings was to end on the day after the next—and, a still
+      greater, that in less than a fortnight she should herself be with
+      Jane again, and enabled to contribute to the recovery of her
+      spirits, by all that affection could do.
+
+      She could not think of Darcy’s leaving Kent without remembering
+      that his cousin was to go with him; but Colonel Fitzwilliam had
+      made it clear that he had no intentions at all, and agreeable as
+      he was, she did not mean to be unhappy about him.
+
+      While settling this point, she was suddenly roused by the sound
+      of the door-bell, and her spirits were a little fluttered by the
+      idea of its being Colonel Fitzwilliam himself, who had once
+      before called late in the evening, and might now come to inquire
+      particularly after her. But this idea was soon banished, and her
+      spirits were very differently affected, when, to her utter
+      amazement, she saw Mr. Darcy walk into the room. In an hurried
+      manner he immediately began an inquiry after her health, imputing
+      his visit to a wish of hearing that she were better. She answered
+      him with cold civility. He sat down for a few moments, and then
+      getting up, walked about the room. Elizabeth was surprised, but
+      said not a word. After a silence of several minutes, he came
+      towards her in an agitated manner, and thus began:
+
+      “In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not
+      be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire
+      and love you.”
+
+      Elizabeth’s astonishment was beyond expression. She stared,
+      coloured, doubted, and was silent. This he considered sufficient
+      encouragement; and the avowal of all that he felt, and had long
+      felt for her, immediately followed. He spoke well; but there were
+      feelings besides those of the heart to be detailed; and he was
+      not more eloquent on the subject of tenderness than of pride. His
+      sense of her inferiority—of its being a degradation—of the family
+      obstacles which had always opposed to inclination, were dwelt on
+      with a warmth which seemed due to the consequence he was
+      wounding, but was very unlikely to recommend his suit.
+
+      In spite of her deeply-rooted dislike, she could not be
+      insensible to the compliment of such a man’s affection, and
+      though her intentions did not vary for an instant, she was at
+      first sorry for the pain he was to receive; till, roused to
+      resentment by his subsequent language, she lost all compassion in
+      anger. She tried, however, to compose herself to answer him with
+      patience, when he should have done. He concluded with
+      representing to her the strength of that attachment which, in
+      spite of all his endeavours, he had found impossible to conquer;
+      and with expressing his hope that it would now be rewarded by her
+      acceptance of his hand. As he said this, she could easily see
+      that he had no doubt of a favourable answer. He _spoke_ of
+      apprehension and anxiety, but his countenance expressed real
+      security. Such a circumstance could only exasperate farther, and,
+      when he ceased, the colour rose into her cheeks, and she said:
+
+      “In such cases as this, it is, I believe, the established mode to
+      express a sense of obligation for the sentiments avowed, however
+      unequally they may be returned. It is natural that obligation
+      should be felt, and if I could _feel_ gratitude, I would now
+      thank you. But I cannot—I have never desired your good opinion,
+      and you have certainly bestowed it most unwillingly. I am sorry
+      to have occasioned pain to anyone. It has been most unconsciously
+      done, however, and I hope will be of short duration. The feelings
+      which, you tell me, have long prevented the acknowledgment of
+      your regard, can have little difficulty in overcoming it after
+      this explanation.”
+
+      Mr. Darcy, who was leaning against the mantelpiece with his eyes
+      fixed on her face, seemed to catch her words with no less
+      resentment than surprise. His complexion became pale with anger,
+      and the disturbance of his mind was visible in every feature. He
+      was struggling for the appearance of composure, and would not
+      open his lips till he believed himself to have attained it. The
+      pause was to Elizabeth’s feelings dreadful. At length, with a
+      voice of forced calmness, he said:
+
+      “And this is all the reply which I am to have the honour of
+      expecting! I might, perhaps, wish to be informed why, with so
+      little _endeavour_ at civility, I am thus rejected. But it is of
+      small importance.”
+
+      “I might as well inquire,” replied she, “why with so evident a
+      desire of offending and insulting me, you chose to tell me that
+      you liked me against your will, against your reason, and even
+      against your character? Was not this some excuse for incivility,
+      if I _was_ uncivil? But I have other provocations. You know I
+      have. Had not my feelings decided against you—had they been
+      indifferent, or had they even been favourable, do you think that
+      any consideration would tempt me to accept the man who has been
+      the means of ruining, perhaps for ever, the happiness of a most
+      beloved sister?”
+
+      As she pronounced these words, Mr. Darcy changed colour; but the
+      emotion was short, and he listened without attempting to
+      interrupt her while she continued:
+
+      “I have every reason in the world to think ill of you. No motive
+      can excuse the unjust and ungenerous part you acted _there_. You
+      dare not, you cannot deny, that you have been the principal, if
+      not the only means of dividing them from each other—of exposing
+      one to the censure of the world for caprice and instability, and
+      the other to its derision for disappointed hopes, and involving
+      them both in misery of the acutest kind.”
+
+      She paused, and saw with no slight indignation that he was
+      listening with an air which proved him wholly unmoved by any
+      feeling of remorse. He even looked at her with a smile of
+      affected incredulity.
+
+      “Can you deny that you have done it?” she repeated.
+
+      With assumed tranquillity he then replied: “I have no wish of
+      denying that I did everything in my power to separate my friend
+      from your sister, or that I rejoice in my success. Towards _him_
+      I have been kinder than towards myself.”
+
+      Elizabeth disdained the appearance of noticing this civil
+      reflection, but its meaning did not escape, nor was it likely to
+      conciliate her.
+
+      “But it is not merely this affair,” she continued, “on which my
+      dislike is founded. Long before it had taken place my opinion of
+      you was decided. Your character was unfolded in the recital which
+      I received many months ago from Mr. Wickham. On this subject,
+      what can you have to say? In what imaginary act of friendship can
+      you here defend yourself? or under what misrepresentation can you
+      here impose upon others?”
+
+      “You take an eager interest in that gentleman’s concerns,” said
+      Darcy, in a less tranquil tone, and with a heightened colour.
+
+      “Who that knows what his misfortunes have been, can help feeling
+      an interest in him?”
+
+      “His misfortunes!” repeated Darcy contemptuously; “yes, his
+      misfortunes have been great indeed.”
+
+      “And of your infliction,” cried Elizabeth with energy. “You have
+      reduced him to his present state of poverty—comparative poverty.
+      You have withheld the advantages which you must know to have been
+      designed for him. You have deprived the best years of his life of
+      that independence which was no less his due than his desert. You
+      have done all this! and yet you can treat the mention of his
+      misfortune with contempt and ridicule.”
+
+      “And this,” cried Darcy, as he walked with quick steps across the
+      room, “is your opinion of me! This is the estimation in which you
+      hold me! I thank you for explaining it so fully. My faults,
+      according to this calculation, are heavy indeed! But perhaps,”
+      added he, stopping in his walk, and turning towards her, “these
+      offenses might have been overlooked, had not your pride been hurt
+      by my honest confession of the scruples that had long prevented
+      my forming any serious design. These bitter accusations might
+      have been suppressed, had I, with greater policy, concealed my
+      struggles, and flattered you into the belief of my being impelled
+      by unqualified, unalloyed inclination; by reason, by reflection,
+      by everything. But disguise of every sort is my abhorrence. Nor
+      am I ashamed of the feelings I related. They were natural and
+      just. Could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your
+      connections?—to congratulate myself on the hope of relations,
+      whose condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own?”
+
+      Elizabeth felt herself growing more angry every moment; yet she
+      tried to the utmost to speak with composure when she said:
+
+      “You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of
+      your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared
+      me the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you
+      behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner.”
+
+      She saw him start at this, but he said nothing, and she
+      continued:
+
+      “You could not have made the offer of your hand in any possible
+      way that would have tempted me to accept it.”
+
+      Again his astonishment was obvious; and he looked at her with an
+      expression of mingled incredulity and mortification. She went on:
+
+      “From the very beginning—from the first moment, I may almost
+      say—of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with
+      the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your
+      selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form
+      the groundwork of disapprobation on which succeeding events have
+      built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known you a month
+      before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I
+      could ever be prevailed on to marry.”
+
+      “You have said quite enough, madam. I perfectly comprehend your
+      feelings, and have now only to be ashamed of what my own have
+      been. Forgive me for having taken up so much of your time, and
+      accept my best wishes for your health and happiness.”
+
+      And with these words he hastily left the room, and Elizabeth
+      heard him the next moment open the front door and quit the house.
+
+      The tumult of her mind, was now painfully great. She knew not how
+      to support herself, and from actual weakness sat down and cried
+      for half-an-hour. Her astonishment, as she reflected on what had
+      passed, was increased by every review of it. That she should
+      receive an offer of marriage from Mr. Darcy! That he should have
+      been in love with her for so many months! So much in love as to
+      wish to marry her in spite of all the objections which had made
+      him prevent his friend’s marrying her sister, and which must
+      appear at least with equal force in his own case—was almost
+      incredible! It was gratifying to have inspired unconsciously so
+      strong an affection. But his pride, his abominable pride—his
+      shameless avowal of what he had done with respect to Jane—his
+      unpardonable assurance in acknowledging, though he could not
+      justify it, and the unfeeling manner in which he had mentioned
+      Mr. Wickham, his cruelty towards whom he had not attempted to
+      deny, soon overcame the pity which the consideration of his
+      attachment had for a moment excited. She continued in very
+      agitated reflections till the sound of Lady Catherine’s carriage
+      made her feel how unequal she was to encounter Charlotte’s
+      observation, and hurried her away to her room.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 35
+
+      Elizabeth awoke the next morning to the same thoughts and
+      meditations which had at length closed her eyes. She could not
+      yet recover from the surprise of what had happened; it was
+      impossible to think of anything else; and, totally indisposed for
+      employment, she resolved, soon after breakfast, to indulge
+      herself in air and exercise. She was proceeding directly to her
+      favourite walk, when the recollection of Mr. Darcy’s sometimes
+      coming there stopped her, and instead of entering the park, she
+      turned up the lane, which led farther from the turnpike-road. The
+      park paling was still the boundary on one side, and she soon
+      passed one of the gates into the ground.
+
+      After walking two or three times along that part of the lane, she
+      was tempted, by the pleasantness of the morning, to stop at the
+      gates and look into the park. The five weeks which she had now
+      passed in Kent had made a great difference in the country, and
+      every day was adding to the verdure of the early trees. She was
+      on the point of continuing her walk, when she caught a glimpse of
+      a gentleman within the sort of grove which edged the park; he was
+      moving that way; and, fearful of its being Mr. Darcy, she was
+      directly retreating. But the person who advanced was now near
+      enough to see her, and stepping forward with eagerness,
+      pronounced her name. She had turned away; but on hearing herself
+      called, though in a voice which proved it to be Mr. Darcy, she
+      moved again towards the gate. He had by that time reached it
+      also, and, holding out a letter, which she instinctively took,
+      said, with a look of haughty composure, “I have been walking in
+      the grove some time in the hope of meeting you. Will you do me
+      the honour of reading that letter?” And then, with a slight bow,
+      turned again into the plantation, and was soon out of sight.
+
+      With no expectation of pleasure, but with the strongest
+      curiosity, Elizabeth opened the letter, and, to her still
+      increasing wonder, perceived an envelope containing two sheets of
+      letter-paper, written quite through, in a very close hand. The
+      envelope itself was likewise full. Pursuing her way along the
+      lane, she then began it. It was dated from Rosings, at eight
+      o’clock in the morning, and was as follows:—
+
+      “Be not alarmed, madam, on receiving this letter, by the
+      apprehension of its containing any repetition of those sentiments
+      or renewal of those offers which were last night so disgusting to
+      you. I write without any intention of paining you, or humbling
+      myself, by dwelling on wishes which, for the happiness of both,
+      cannot be too soon forgotten; and the effort which the formation
+      and the perusal of this letter must occasion, should have been
+      spared, had not my character required it to be written and read.
+      You must, therefore, pardon the freedom with which I demand your
+      attention; your feelings, I know, will bestow it unwillingly, but
+      I demand it of your justice.
+
+      “Two offenses of a very different nature, and by no means of
+      equal magnitude, you last night laid to my charge. The first
+      mentioned was, that, regardless of the sentiments of either, I
+      had detached Mr. Bingley from your sister, and the other, that I
+      had, in defiance of various claims, in defiance of honour and
+      humanity, ruined the immediate prosperity and blasted the
+      prospects of Mr. Wickham. Wilfully and wantonly to have thrown
+      off the companion of my youth, the acknowledged favourite of my
+      father, a young man who had scarcely any other dependence than on
+      our patronage, and who had been brought up to expect its
+      exertion, would be a depravity, to which the separation of two
+      young persons, whose affection could be the growth of only a few
+      weeks, could bear no comparison. But from the severity of that
+      blame which was last night so liberally bestowed, respecting each
+      circumstance, I shall hope to be in the future secured, when the
+      following account of my actions and their motives has been read.
+      If, in the explanation of them, which is due to myself, I am
+      under the necessity of relating feelings which may be offensive
+      to yours, I can only say that I am sorry. The necessity must be
+      obeyed, and further apology would be absurd.
+
+      “I had not been long in Hertfordshire, before I saw, in common
+      with others, that Bingley preferred your elder sister to any
+      other young woman in the country. But it was not till the evening
+      of the dance at Netherfield that I had any apprehension of his
+      feeling a serious attachment. I had often seen him in love
+      before. At that ball, while I had the honour of dancing with you,
+      I was first made acquainted, by Sir William Lucas’s accidental
+      information, that Bingley’s attentions to your sister had given
+      rise to a general expectation of their marriage. He spoke of it
+      as a certain event, of which the time alone could be undecided.
+      From that moment I observed my friend’s behaviour attentively;
+      and I could then perceive that his partiality for Miss Bennet was
+      beyond what I had ever witnessed in him. Your sister I also
+      watched. Her look and manners were open, cheerful, and engaging
+      as ever, but without any symptom of peculiar regard, and I
+      remained convinced from the evening’s scrutiny, that though she
+      received his attentions with pleasure, she did not invite them by
+      any participation of sentiment. If _you_ have not been mistaken
+      here, _I_ must have been in error. Your superior knowledge of
+      your sister must make the latter probable. If it be so, if I have
+      been misled by such error to inflict pain on her, your resentment
+      has not been unreasonable. But I shall not scruple to assert,
+      that the serenity of your sister’s countenance and air was such
+      as might have given the most acute observer a conviction that,
+      however amiable her temper, her heart was not likely to be easily
+      touched. That I was desirous of believing her indifferent is
+      certain—but I will venture to say that my investigation and
+      decisions are not usually influenced by my hopes or fears. I did
+      not believe her to be indifferent because I wished it; I believed
+      it on impartial conviction, as truly as I wished it in reason. My
+      objections to the marriage were not merely those which I last
+      night acknowledged to have the utmost force of passion to put
+      aside, in my own case; the want of connection could not be so
+      great an evil to my friend as to me. But there were other causes
+      of repugnance; causes which, though still existing, and existing
+      to an equal degree in both instances, I had myself endeavoured to
+      forget, because they were not immediately before me. These causes
+      must be stated, though briefly. The situation of your mother’s
+      family, though objectionable, was nothing in comparison to that
+      total want of propriety so frequently, so almost uniformly
+      betrayed by herself, by your three younger sisters, and
+      occasionally even by your father. Pardon me. It pains me to
+      offend you. But amidst your concern for the defects of your
+      nearest relations, and your displeasure at this representation of
+      them, let it give you consolation to consider that, to have
+      conducted yourselves so as to avoid any share of the like
+      censure, is praise no less generally bestowed on you and your
+      elder sister, than it is honourable to the sense and disposition
+      of both. I will only say farther that from what passed that
+      evening, my opinion of all parties was confirmed, and every
+      inducement heightened which could have led me before, to preserve
+      my friend from what I esteemed a most unhappy connection. He left
+      Netherfield for London, on the day following, as you, I am
+      certain, remember, with the design of soon returning.
+
+      “The part which I acted is now to be explained. His sisters’
+      uneasiness had been equally excited with my own; our coincidence
+      of feeling was soon discovered, and, alike sensible that no time
+      was to be lost in detaching their brother, we shortly resolved on
+      joining him directly in London. We accordingly went—and there I
+      readily engaged in the office of pointing out to my friend the
+      certain evils of such a choice. I described, and enforced them
+      earnestly. But, however this remonstrance might have staggered or
+      delayed his determination, I do not suppose that it would
+      ultimately have prevented the marriage, had it not been seconded
+      by the assurance that I hesitated not in giving, of your sister’s
+      indifference. He had before believed her to return his affection
+      with sincere, if not with equal regard. But Bingley has great
+      natural modesty, with a stronger dependence on my judgement than
+      on his own. To convince him, therefore, that he had deceived
+      himself, was no very difficult point. To persuade him against
+      returning into Hertfordshire, when that conviction had been
+      given, was scarcely the work of a moment. I cannot blame myself
+      for having done thus much. There is but one part of my conduct in
+      the whole affair on which I do not reflect with satisfaction; it
+      is that I condescended to adopt the measures of art so far as to
+      conceal from him your sister’s being in town. I knew it myself,
+      as it was known to Miss Bingley; but her brother is even yet
+      ignorant of it. That they might have met without ill consequence
+      is perhaps probable; but his regard did not appear to me enough
+      extinguished for him to see her without some danger. Perhaps this
+      concealment, this disguise was beneath me; it is done, however,
+      and it was done for the best. On this subject I have nothing more
+      to say, no other apology to offer. If I have wounded your
+      sister’s feelings, it was unknowingly done and though the motives
+      which governed me may to you very naturally appear insufficient,
+      I have not yet learnt to condemn them.
+
+      “With respect to that other, more weighty accusation, of having
+      injured Mr. Wickham, I can only refute it by laying before you
+      the whole of his connection with my family. Of what he has
+      _particularly_ accused me I am ignorant; but of the truth of what
+      I shall relate, I can summon more than one witness of undoubted
+      veracity.
+
+      “Mr. Wickham is the son of a very respectable man, who had for
+      many years the management of all the Pemberley estates, and whose
+      good conduct in the discharge of his trust naturally inclined my
+      father to be of service to him; and on George Wickham, who was
+      his godson, his kindness was therefore liberally bestowed. My
+      father supported him at school, and afterwards at Cambridge—most
+      important assistance, as his own father, always poor from the
+      extravagance of his wife, would have been unable to give him a
+      gentleman’s education. My father was not only fond of this young
+      man’s society, whose manners were always engaging; he had also
+      the highest opinion of him, and hoping the church would be his
+      profession, intended to provide for him in it. As for myself, it
+      is many, many years since I first began to think of him in a very
+      different manner. The vicious propensities—the want of principle,
+      which he was careful to guard from the knowledge of his best
+      friend, could not escape the observation of a young man of nearly
+      the same age with himself, and who had opportunities of seeing
+      him in unguarded moments, which Mr. Darcy could not have. Here
+      again I shall give you pain—to what degree you only can tell. But
+      whatever may be the sentiments which Mr. Wickham has created, a
+      suspicion of their nature shall not prevent me from unfolding his
+      real character—it adds even another motive.
+
+      “My excellent father died about five years ago; and his
+      attachment to Mr. Wickham was to the last so steady, that in his
+      will he particularly recommended it to me, to promote his
+      advancement in the best manner that his profession might
+      allow—and if he took orders, desired that a valuable family
+      living might be his as soon as it became vacant. There was also a
+      legacy of one thousand pounds. His own father did not long
+      survive mine, and within half a year from these events, Mr.
+      Wickham wrote to inform me that, having finally resolved against
+      taking orders, he hoped I should not think it unreasonable for
+      him to expect some more immediate pecuniary advantage, in lieu of
+      the preferment, by which he could not be benefited. He had some
+      intention, he added, of studying law, and I must be aware that
+      the interest of one thousand pounds would be a very insufficient
+      support therein. I rather wished, than believed him to be
+      sincere; but, at any rate, was perfectly ready to accede to his
+      proposal. I knew that Mr. Wickham ought not to be a clergyman;
+      the business was therefore soon settled—he resigned all claim to
+      assistance in the church, were it possible that he could ever be
+      in a situation to receive it, and accepted in return three
+      thousand pounds. All connection between us seemed now dissolved.
+      I thought too ill of him to invite him to Pemberley, or admit his
+      society in town. In town I believe he chiefly lived, but his
+      studying the law was a mere pretence, and being now free from all
+      restraint, his life was a life of idleness and dissipation. For
+      about three years I heard little of him; but on the decease of
+      the incumbent of the living which had been designed for him, he
+      applied to me again by letter for the presentation. His
+      circumstances, he assured me, and I had no difficulty in
+      believing it, were exceedingly bad. He had found the law a most
+      unprofitable study, and was now absolutely resolved on being
+      ordained, if I would present him to the living in question—of
+      which he trusted there could be little doubt, as he was well
+      assured that I had no other person to provide for, and I could
+      not have forgotten my revered father’s intentions. You will
+      hardly blame me for refusing to comply with this entreaty, or for
+      resisting every repetition to it. His resentment was in
+      proportion to the distress of his circumstances—and he was
+      doubtless as violent in his abuse of me to others as in his
+      reproaches to myself. After this period every appearance of
+      acquaintance was dropped. How he lived I know not. But last
+      summer he was again most painfully obtruded on my notice.
+
+      “I must now mention a circumstance which I would wish to forget
+      myself, and which no obligation less than the present should
+      induce me to unfold to any human being. Having said thus much, I
+      feel no doubt of your secrecy. My sister, who is more than ten
+      years my junior, was left to the guardianship of my mother’s
+      nephew, Colonel Fitzwilliam, and myself. About a year ago, she
+      was taken from school, and an establishment formed for her in
+      London; and last summer she went with the lady who presided over
+      it, to Ramsgate; and thither also went Mr. Wickham, undoubtedly
+      by design; for there proved to have been a prior acquaintance
+      between him and Mrs. Younge, in whose character we were most
+      unhappily deceived; and by her connivance and aid, he so far
+      recommended himself to Georgiana, whose affectionate heart
+      retained a strong impression of his kindness to her as a child,
+      that she was persuaded to believe herself in love, and to consent
+      to an elopement. She was then but fifteen, which must be her
+      excuse; and after stating her imprudence, I am happy to add, that
+      I owed the knowledge of it to herself. I joined them unexpectedly
+      a day or two before the intended elopement, and then Georgiana,
+      unable to support the idea of grieving and offending a brother
+      whom she almost looked up to as a father, acknowledged the whole
+      to me. You may imagine what I felt and how I acted. Regard for my
+      sister’s credit and feelings prevented any public exposure; but I
+      wrote to Mr. Wickham, who left the place immediately, and Mrs.
+      Younge was of course removed from her charge. Mr. Wickham’s chief
+      object was unquestionably my sister’s fortune, which is thirty
+      thousand pounds; but I cannot help supposing that the hope of
+      revenging himself on me was a strong inducement. His revenge
+      would have been complete indeed.
+
+      “This, madam, is a faithful narrative of every event in which we
+      have been concerned together; and if you do not absolutely reject
+      it as false, you will, I hope, acquit me henceforth of cruelty
+      towards Mr. Wickham. I know not in what manner, under what form
+      of falsehood he had imposed on you; but his success is not
+      perhaps to be wondered at. Ignorant as you previously were of
+      everything concerning either, detection could not be in your
+      power, and suspicion certainly not in your inclination.
+
+      “You may possibly wonder why all this was not told you last
+      night; but I was not then master enough of myself to know what
+      could or ought to be revealed. For the truth of everything here
+      related, I can appeal more particularly to the testimony of
+      Colonel Fitzwilliam, who, from our near relationship and constant
+      intimacy, and, still more, as one of the executors of my father’s
+      will, has been unavoidably acquainted with every particular of
+      these transactions. If your abhorrence of _me_ should make _my_
+      assertions valueless, you cannot be prevented by the same cause
+      from confiding in my cousin; and that there may be the
+      possibility of consulting him, I shall endeavour to find some
+      opportunity of putting this letter in your hands in the course of
+      the morning. I will only add, God bless you.
+
+      “FITZWILLIAM DARCY”
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 36
+
+      If Elizabeth, when Mr. Darcy gave her the letter, did not expect
+      it to contain a renewal of his offers, she had formed no
+      expectation at all of its contents. But such as they were, it may
+      well be supposed how eagerly she went through them, and what a
+      contrariety of emotion they excited. Her feelings as she read
+      were scarcely to be defined. With amazement did she first
+      understand that he believed any apology to be in his power; and
+      steadfastly was she persuaded, that he could have no explanation
+      to give, which a just sense of shame would not conceal. With a
+      strong prejudice against everything he might say, she began his
+      account of what had happened at Netherfield. She read with an
+      eagerness which hardly left her power of comprehension, and from
+      impatience of knowing what the next sentence might bring, was
+      incapable of attending to the sense of the one before her eyes.
+      His belief of her sister’s insensibility she instantly resolved
+      to be false; and his account of the real, the worst objections to
+      the match, made her too angry to have any wish of doing him
+      justice. He expressed no regret for what he had done which
+      satisfied her; his style was not penitent, but haughty. It was
+      all pride and insolence.
+
+      But when this subject was succeeded by his account of Mr.
+      Wickham—when she read with somewhat clearer attention a relation
+      of events which, if true, must overthrow every cherished opinion
+      of his worth, and which bore so alarming an affinity to his own
+      history of himself—her feelings were yet more acutely painful and
+      more difficult of definition. Astonishment, apprehension, and
+      even horror, oppressed her. She wished to discredit it entirely,
+      repeatedly exclaiming, “This must be false! This cannot be! This
+      must be the grossest falsehood!”—and when she had gone through
+      the whole letter, though scarcely knowing anything of the last
+      page or two, put it hastily away, protesting that she would not
+      regard it, that she would never look in it again.
+
+      In this perturbed state of mind, with thoughts that could rest on
+      nothing, she walked on; but it would not do; in half a minute the
+      letter was unfolded again, and collecting herself as well as she
+      could, she again began the mortifying perusal of all that related
+      to Wickham, and commanded herself so far as to examine the
+      meaning of every sentence. The account of his connection with the
+      Pemberley family was exactly what he had related himself; and the
+      kindness of the late Mr. Darcy, though she had not before known
+      its extent, agreed equally well with his own words. So far each
+      recital confirmed the other; but when she came to the will, the
+      difference was great. What Wickham had said of the living was
+      fresh in her memory, and as she recalled his very words, it was
+      impossible not to feel that there was gross duplicity on one side
+      or the other; and, for a few moments, she flattered herself that
+      her wishes did not err. But when she read and re-read with the
+      closest attention, the particulars immediately following of
+      Wickham’s resigning all pretensions to the living, of his
+      receiving in lieu so considerable a sum as three thousand pounds,
+      again was she forced to hesitate. She put down the letter,
+      weighed every circumstance with what she meant to be
+      impartiality—deliberated on the probability of each statement—but
+      with little success. On both sides it was only assertion. Again
+      she read on; but every line proved more clearly that the affair,
+      which she had believed it impossible that any contrivance could
+      so represent as to render Mr. Darcy’s conduct in it less than
+      infamous, was capable of a turn which must make him entirely
+      blameless throughout the whole.
+
+      The extravagance and general profligacy which he scrupled not to
+      lay at Mr. Wickham’s charge, exceedingly shocked her; the more
+      so, as she could bring no proof of its injustice. She had never
+      heard of him before his entrance into the ——shire Militia, in
+      which he had engaged at the persuasion of the young man who, on
+      meeting him accidentally in town, had there renewed a slight
+      acquaintance. Of his former way of life nothing had been known in
+      Hertfordshire but what he told himself. As to his real character,
+      had information been in her power, she had never felt a wish of
+      inquiring. His countenance, voice, and manner had established him
+      at once in the possession of every virtue. She tried to recollect
+      some instance of goodness, some distinguished trait of integrity
+      or benevolence, that might rescue him from the attacks of Mr.
+      Darcy; or at least, by the predominance of virtue, atone for
+      those casual errors under which she would endeavour to class what
+      Mr. Darcy had described as the idleness and vice of many years’
+      continuance. But no such recollection befriended her. She could
+      see him instantly before her, in every charm of air and address;
+      but she could remember no more substantial good than the general
+      approbation of the neighbourhood, and the regard which his social
+      powers had gained him in the mess. After pausing on this point a
+      considerable while, she once more continued to read. But, alas!
+      the story which followed, of his designs on Miss Darcy, received
+      some confirmation from what had passed between Colonel
+      Fitzwilliam and herself only the morning before; and at last she
+      was referred for the truth of every particular to Colonel
+      Fitzwilliam himself—from whom she had previously received the
+      information of his near concern in all his cousin’s affairs, and
+      whose character she had no reason to question. At one time she
+      had almost resolved on applying to him, but the idea was checked
+      by the awkwardness of the application, and at length wholly
+      banished by the conviction that Mr. Darcy would never have
+      hazarded such a proposal, if he had not been well assured of his
+      cousin’s corroboration.
+
+      She perfectly remembered everything that had passed in
+      conversation between Wickham and herself, in their first evening
+      at Mr. Phillips’s. Many of his expressions were still fresh in
+      her memory. She was _now_ struck with the impropriety of such
+      communications to a stranger, and wondered it had escaped her
+      before. She saw the indelicacy of putting himself forward as he
+      had done, and the inconsistency of his professions with his
+      conduct. She remembered that he had boasted of having no fear of
+      seeing Mr. Darcy—that Mr. Darcy might leave the country, but that
+      _he_ should stand his ground; yet he had avoided the Netherfield
+      ball the very next week. She remembered also that, till the
+      Netherfield family had quitted the country, he had told his story
+      to no one but herself; but that after their removal it had been
+      everywhere discussed; that he had then no reserves, no scruples
+      in sinking Mr. Darcy’s character, though he had assured her that
+      respect for the father would always prevent his exposing the son.
+
+      How differently did everything now appear in which he was
+      concerned! His attentions to Miss King were now the consequence
+      of views solely and hatefully mercenary; and the mediocrity of
+      her fortune proved no longer the moderation of his wishes, but
+      his eagerness to grasp at anything. His behaviour to herself
+      could now have had no tolerable motive; he had either been
+      deceived with regard to her fortune, or had been gratifying his
+      vanity by encouraging the preference which she believed she had
+      most incautiously shown. Every lingering struggle in his favour
+      grew fainter and fainter; and in farther justification of Mr.
+      Darcy, she could not but allow that Mr. Bingley, when questioned
+      by Jane, had long ago asserted his blamelessness in the affair;
+      that proud and repulsive as were his manners, she had never, in
+      the whole course of their acquaintance—an acquaintance which had
+      latterly brought them much together, and given her a sort of
+      intimacy with his ways—seen anything that betrayed him to be
+      unprincipled or unjust—anything that spoke him of irreligious or
+      immoral habits; that among his own connections he was esteemed
+      and valued—that even Wickham had allowed him merit as a brother,
+      and that she had often heard him speak so affectionately of his
+      sister as to prove him capable of some amiable feeling; that had
+      his actions been what Mr. Wickham represented them, so gross a
+      violation of everything right could hardly have been concealed
+      from the world; and that friendship between a person capable of
+      it, and such an amiable man as Mr. Bingley, was incomprehensible.
+
+      She grew absolutely ashamed of herself. Of neither Darcy nor
+      Wickham could she think without feeling she had been blind,
+      partial, prejudiced, absurd.
+
+      “How despicably I have acted!” she cried; “I, who have prided
+      myself on my discernment! I, who have valued myself on my
+      abilities! who have often disdained the generous candour of my
+      sister, and gratified my vanity in useless or blameable mistrust!
+      How humiliating is this discovery! Yet, how just a humiliation!
+      Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind!
+      But vanity, not love, has been my folly. Pleased with the
+      preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on
+      the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted
+      prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either
+      were concerned. Till this moment I never knew myself.”
+
+      From herself to Jane—from Jane to Bingley, her thoughts were in a
+      line which soon brought to her recollection that Mr. Darcy’s
+      explanation _there_ had appeared very insufficient, and she read
+      it again. Widely different was the effect of a second perusal.
+      How could she deny that credit to his assertions in one instance,
+      which she had been obliged to give in the other? He declared
+      himself to be totally unsuspicious of her sister’s attachment;
+      and she could not help remembering what Charlotte’s opinion had
+      always been. Neither could she deny the justice of his
+      description of Jane. She felt that Jane’s feelings, though
+      fervent, were little displayed, and that there was a constant
+      complacency in her air and manner not often united with great
+      sensibility.
+
+      When she came to that part of the letter in which her family were
+      mentioned in terms of such mortifying, yet merited reproach, her
+      sense of shame was severe. The justice of the charge struck her
+      too forcibly for denial, and the circumstances to which he
+      particularly alluded as having passed at the Netherfield ball,
+      and as confirming all his first disapprobation, could not have
+      made a stronger impression on his mind than on hers.
+
+      The compliment to herself and her sister was not unfelt. It
+      soothed, but it could not console her for the contempt which had
+      thus been self-attracted by the rest of her family; and as she
+      considered that Jane’s disappointment had in fact been the work
+      of her nearest relations, and reflected how materially the credit
+      of both must be hurt by such impropriety of conduct, she felt
+      depressed beyond anything she had ever known before.
+
+      After wandering along the lane for two hours, giving way to every
+      variety of thought—re-considering events, determining
+      probabilities, and reconciling herself, as well as she could, to
+      a change so sudden and so important, fatigue, and a recollection
+      of her long absence, made her at length return home; and she
+      entered the house with the wish of appearing cheerful as usual,
+      and the resolution of repressing such reflections as must make
+      her unfit for conversation.
+
+      She was immediately told that the two gentlemen from Rosings had
+      each called during her absence; Mr. Darcy, only for a few
+      minutes, to take leave—but that Colonel Fitzwilliam had been
+      sitting with them at least an hour, hoping for her return, and
+      almost resolving to walk after her till she could be found.
+      Elizabeth could but just _affect_ concern in missing him; she
+      really rejoiced at it. Colonel Fitzwilliam was no longer an
+      object; she could think only of her letter.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 37
+
+      The two gentlemen left Rosings the next morning, and Mr. Collins
+      having been in waiting near the lodges, to make them his parting
+      obeisance, was able to bring home the pleasing intelligence, of
+      their appearing in very good health, and in as tolerable spirits
+      as could be expected, after the melancholy scene so lately gone
+      through at Rosings. To Rosings he then hastened, to console Lady
+      Catherine and her daughter; and on his return brought back, with
+      great satisfaction, a message from her ladyship, importing that
+      she felt herself so dull as to make her very desirous of having
+      them all to dine with her.
+
+      Elizabeth could not see Lady Catherine without recollecting that,
+      had she chosen it, she might by this time have been presented to
+      her as her future niece; nor could she think, without a smile, of
+      what her ladyship’s indignation would have been. “What would she
+      have said? how would she have behaved?” were questions with which
+      she amused herself.
+
+      Their first subject was the diminution of the Rosings party. “I
+      assure you, I feel it exceedingly,” said Lady Catherine; “I
+      believe no one feels the loss of friends so much as I do. But I
+      am particularly attached to these young men, and know them to be
+      so much attached to me! They were excessively sorry to go! But so
+      they always are. The dear Colonel rallied his spirits tolerably
+      till just at last; but Darcy seemed to feel it most acutely,
+      more, I think, than last year. His attachment to Rosings
+      certainly increases.”
+
+      Mr. Collins had a compliment, and an allusion to throw in here,
+      which were kindly smiled on by the mother and daughter.
+
+      Lady Catherine observed, after dinner, that Miss Bennet seemed
+      out of spirits, and immediately accounting for it by herself, by
+      supposing that she did not like to go home again so soon, she
+      added:
+
+      “But if that is the case, you must write to your mother and beg
+      that you may stay a little longer. Mrs. Collins will be very glad
+      of your company, I am sure.”
+
+      “I am much obliged to your ladyship for your kind invitation,”
+      replied Elizabeth, “but it is not in my power to accept it. I
+      must be in town next Saturday.”
+
+      “Why, at that rate, you will have been here only six weeks. I
+      expected you to stay two months. I told Mrs. Collins so before
+      you came. There can be no occasion for your going so soon. Mrs.
+      Bennet could certainly spare you for another fortnight.”
+
+      “But my father cannot. He wrote last week to hurry my return.”
+
+      “Oh! your father of course may spare you, if your mother can.
+      Daughters are never of so much consequence to a father. And if
+      you will stay another _month_ complete, it will be in my power to
+      take one of you as far as London, for I am going there early in
+      June, for a week; and as Dawson does not object to the
+      barouche-box, there will be very good room for one of you—and
+      indeed, if the weather should happen to be cool, I should not
+      object to taking you both, as you are neither of you large.”
+
+      “You are all kindness, madam; but I believe we must abide by our
+      original plan.”
+
+      Lady Catherine seemed resigned. “Mrs. Collins, you must send a
+      servant with them. You know I always speak my mind, and I cannot
+      bear the idea of two young women travelling post by themselves.
+      It is highly improper. You must contrive to send somebody. I have
+      the greatest dislike in the world to that sort of thing. Young
+      women should always be properly guarded and attended, according
+      to their situation in life. When my niece Georgiana went to
+      Ramsgate last summer, I made a point of her having two
+      men-servants go with her. Miss Darcy, the daughter of Mr. Darcy,
+      of Pemberley, and Lady Anne, could not have appeared with
+      propriety in a different manner. I am excessively attentive to
+      all those things. You must send John with the young ladies, Mrs.
+      Collins. I am glad it occurred to me to mention it; for it would
+      really be discreditable to _you_ to let them go alone.”
+
+      “My uncle is to send a servant for us.”
+
+      “Oh! Your uncle! He keeps a man-servant, does he? I am very glad
+      you have somebody who thinks of these things. Where shall you
+      change horses? Oh! Bromley, of course. If you mention my name at
+      the Bell, you will be attended to.”
+
+      Lady Catherine had many other questions to ask respecting their
+      journey, and as she did not answer them all herself, attention
+      was necessary, which Elizabeth believed to be lucky for her; or,
+      with a mind so occupied, she might have forgotten where she was.
+      Reflection must be reserved for solitary hours; whenever she was
+      alone, she gave way to it as the greatest relief; and not a day
+      went by without a solitary walk, in which she might indulge in
+      all the delight of unpleasant recollections.
+
+      Mr. Darcy’s letter she was in a fair way of soon knowing by
+      heart. She studied every sentence; and her feelings towards its
+      writer were at times widely different. When she remembered the
+      style of his address, she was still full of indignation; but when
+      she considered how unjustly she had condemned and upbraided him,
+      her anger was turned against herself; and his disappointed
+      feelings became the object of compassion. His attachment excited
+      gratitude, his general character respect; but she could not
+      approve him; nor could she for a moment repent her refusal, or
+      feel the slightest inclination ever to see him again. In her own
+      past behaviour, there was a constant source of vexation and
+      regret; and in the unhappy defects of her family, a subject of
+      yet heavier chagrin. They were hopeless of remedy. Her father,
+      contented with laughing at them, would never exert himself to
+      restrain the wild giddiness of his youngest daughters; and her
+      mother, with manners so far from right herself, was entirely
+      insensible of the evil. Elizabeth had frequently united with Jane
+      in an endeavour to check the imprudence of Catherine and Lydia;
+      but while they were supported by their mother’s indulgence, what
+      chance could there be of improvement? Catherine, weak-spirited,
+      irritable, and completely under Lydia’s guidance, had been always
+      affronted by their advice; and Lydia, self-willed and careless,
+      would scarcely give them a hearing. They were ignorant, idle, and
+      vain. While there was an officer in Meryton, they would flirt
+      with him; and while Meryton was within a walk of Longbourn, they
+      would be going there forever.
+
+      Anxiety on Jane’s behalf was another prevailing concern; and Mr.
+      Darcy’s explanation, by restoring Bingley to all her former good
+      opinion, heightened the sense of what Jane had lost. His
+      affection was proved to have been sincere, and his conduct
+      cleared of all blame, unless any could attach to the implicitness
+      of his confidence in his friend. How grievous then was the
+      thought that, of a situation so desirable in every respect, so
+      replete with advantage, so promising for happiness, Jane had been
+      deprived, by the folly and indecorum of her own family!
+
+      When to these recollections was added the development of
+      Wickham’s character, it may be easily believed that the happy
+      spirits which had seldom been depressed before, were now so much
+      affected as to make it almost impossible for her to appear
+      tolerably cheerful.
+
+      Their engagements at Rosings were as frequent during the last
+      week of her stay as they had been at first. The very last evening
+      was spent there; and her ladyship again inquired minutely into
+      the particulars of their journey, gave them directions as to the
+      best method of packing, and was so urgent on the necessity of
+      placing gowns in the only right way, that Maria thought herself
+      obliged, on her return, to undo all the work of the morning, and
+      pack her trunk afresh.
+
+      When they parted, Lady Catherine, with great condescension,
+      wished them a good journey, and invited them to come to Hunsford
+      again next year; and Miss de Bourgh exerted herself so far as to
+      curtsey and hold out her hand to both.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 38
+
+      On Saturday morning Elizabeth and Mr. Collins met for breakfast a
+      few minutes before the others appeared; and he took the
+      opportunity of paying the parting civilities which he deemed
+      indispensably necessary.
+
+      “I know not, Miss Elizabeth,” said he, “whether Mrs. Collins has
+      yet expressed her sense of your kindness in coming to us; but I
+      am very certain you will not leave the house without receiving
+      her thanks for it. The favour of your company has been much felt,
+      I assure you. We know how little there is to tempt anyone to our
+      humble abode. Our plain manner of living, our small rooms and few
+      domestics, and the little we see of the world, must make Hunsford
+      extremely dull to a young lady like yourself; but I hope you will
+      believe us grateful for the condescension, and that we have done
+      everything in our power to prevent your spending your time
+      unpleasantly.”
+
+      Elizabeth was eager with her thanks and assurances of happiness.
+      She had spent six weeks with great enjoyment; and the pleasure of
+      being with Charlotte, and the kind attentions she had received,
+      must make _her_ feel the obliged. Mr. Collins was gratified, and
+      with a more smiling solemnity replied:
+
+      “It gives me great pleasure to hear that you have passed your
+      time not disagreeably. We have certainly done our best; and most
+      fortunately having it in our power to introduce you to very
+      superior society, and, from our connection with Rosings, the
+      frequent means of varying the humble home scene, I think we may
+      flatter ourselves that your Hunsford visit cannot have been
+      entirely irksome. Our situation with regard to Lady Catherine’s
+      family is indeed the sort of extraordinary advantage and blessing
+      which few can boast. You see on what a footing we are. You see
+      how continually we are engaged there. In truth I must acknowledge
+      that, with all the disadvantages of this humble parsonage, I
+      should not think anyone abiding in it an object of compassion,
+      while they are sharers of our intimacy at Rosings.”
+
+      Words were insufficient for the elevation of his feelings; and he
+      was obliged to walk about the room, while Elizabeth tried to
+      unite civility and truth in a few short sentences.
+
+      “You may, in fact, carry a very favourable report of us into
+      Hertfordshire, my dear cousin. I flatter myself at least that you
+      will be able to do so. Lady Catherine’s great attentions to Mrs.
+      Collins you have been a daily witness of; and altogether I trust
+      it does not appear that your friend has drawn an unfortunate—but
+      on this point it will be as well to be silent. Only let me assure
+      you, my dear Miss Elizabeth, that I can from my heart most
+      cordially wish you equal felicity in marriage. My dear Charlotte
+      and I have but one mind and one way of thinking. There is in
+      everything a most remarkable resemblance of character and ideas
+      between us. We seem to have been designed for each other.”
+
+      Elizabeth could safely say that it was a great happiness where
+      that was the case, and with equal sincerity could add, that she
+      firmly believed and rejoiced in his domestic comforts. She was
+      not sorry, however, to have the recital of them interrupted by
+      the lady from whom they sprang. Poor Charlotte! it was melancholy
+      to leave her to such society! But she had chosen it with her eyes
+      open; and though evidently regretting that her visitors were to
+      go, she did not seem to ask for compassion. Her home and her
+      housekeeping, her parish and her poultry, and all their dependent
+      concerns, had not yet lost their charms.
+
+      At length the chaise arrived, the trunks were fastened on, the
+      parcels placed within, and it was pronounced to be ready. After
+      an affectionate parting between the friends, Elizabeth was
+      attended to the carriage by Mr. Collins, and as they walked down
+      the garden he was commissioning her with his best respects to all
+      her family, not forgetting his thanks for the kindness he had
+      received at Longbourn in the winter, and his compliments to Mr.
+      and Mrs. Gardiner, though unknown. He then handed her in, Maria
+      followed, and the door was on the point of being closed, when he
+      suddenly reminded them, with some consternation, that they had
+      hitherto forgotten to leave any message for the ladies at
+      Rosings.
+
+      “But,” he added, “you will of course wish to have your humble
+      respects delivered to them, with your grateful thanks for their
+      kindness to you while you have been here.”
+
+      Elizabeth made no objection; the door was then allowed to be
+      shut, and the carriage drove off.
+
+      “Good gracious!” cried Maria, after a few minutes’ silence, “it
+      seems but a day or two since we first came! and yet how many
+      things have happened!”
+
+      “A great many indeed,” said her companion with a sigh.
+
+      “We have dined nine times at Rosings, besides drinking tea there
+      twice! How much I shall have to tell!”
+
+      Elizabeth added privately, “And how much I shall have to
+      conceal!”
+
+      Their journey was performed without much conversation, or any
+      alarm; and within four hours of their leaving Hunsford they
+      reached Mr. Gardiner’s house, where they were to remain a few
+      days.
+
+      Jane looked well, and Elizabeth had little opportunity of
+      studying her spirits, amidst the various engagements which the
+      kindness of her aunt had reserved for them. But Jane was to go
+      home with her, and at Longbourn there would be leisure enough for
+      observation.
+
+      It was not without an effort, meanwhile, that she could wait even
+      for Longbourn, before she told her sister of Mr. Darcy’s
+      proposals. To know that she had the power of revealing what would
+      so exceedingly astonish Jane, and must, at the same time, so
+      highly gratify whatever of her own vanity she had not yet been
+      able to reason away, was such a temptation to openness as nothing
+      could have conquered but the state of indecision in which she
+      remained as to the extent of what she should communicate; and her
+      fear, if she once entered on the subject, of being hurried into
+      repeating something of Bingley which might only grieve her sister
+      further.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 39
+
+      It was the second week in May, in which the three young ladies
+      set out together from Gracechurch Street for the town of ——, in
+      Hertfordshire; and, as they drew near the appointed inn where Mr.
+      Bennet’s carriage was to meet them, they quickly perceived, in
+      token of the coachman’s punctuality, both Kitty and Lydia looking
+      out of a dining-room up stairs. These two girls had been above an
+      hour in the place, happily employed in visiting an opposite
+      milliner, watching the sentinel on guard, and dressing a salad
+      and cucumber.
+
+      After welcoming their sisters, they triumphantly displayed a
+      table set out with such cold meat as an inn larder usually
+      affords, exclaiming, “Is not this nice? Is not this an agreeable
+      surprise?”
+
+      “And we mean to treat you all,” added Lydia, “but you must lend
+      us the money, for we have just spent ours at the shop out there.”
+      Then, showing her purchases—“Look here, I have bought this
+      bonnet. I do not think it is very pretty; but I thought I might
+      as well buy it as not. I shall pull it to pieces as soon as I get
+      home, and see if I can make it up any better.”
+
+      And when her sisters abused it as ugly, she added, with perfect
+      unconcern, “Oh! but there were two or three much uglier in the
+      shop; and when I have bought some prettier-coloured satin to trim
+      it with fresh, I think it will be very tolerable. Besides, it
+      will not much signify what one wears this summer, after the
+      ——shire have left Meryton, and they are going in a fortnight.”
+
+      “Are they indeed!” cried Elizabeth, with the greatest
+      satisfaction.
+
+      “They are going to be encamped near Brighton; and I do so want
+      papa to take us all there for the summer! It would be such a
+      delicious scheme; and I dare say would hardly cost anything at
+      all. Mamma would like to go too of all things! Only think what a
+      miserable summer else we shall have!”
+
+      “Yes,” thought Elizabeth, “_that_ would be a delightful scheme
+      indeed, and completely do for us at once. Good Heaven! Brighton,
+      and a whole campful of soldiers, to us, who have been overset
+      already by one poor regiment of militia, and the monthly balls of
+      Meryton!”
+
+      “Now I have got some news for you,” said Lydia, as they sat down
+      at table. “What do you think? It is excellent news—capital
+      news—and about a certain person we all like!”
+
+      Jane and Elizabeth looked at each other, and the waiter was told
+      he need not stay. Lydia laughed, and said:
+
+      “Aye, that is just like your formality and discretion. You
+      thought the waiter must not hear, as if he cared! I dare say he
+      often hears worse things said than I am going to say. But he is
+      an ugly fellow! I am glad he is gone. I never saw such a long
+      chin in my life. Well, but now for my news; it is about dear
+      Wickham; too good for the waiter, is it not? There is no danger
+      of Wickham’s marrying Mary King. There’s for you! She is gone
+      down to her uncle at Liverpool: gone to stay. Wickham is safe.”
+
+      “And Mary King is safe!” added Elizabeth; “safe from a connection
+      imprudent as to fortune.”
+
+      “She is a great fool for going away, if she liked him.”
+
+      “But I hope there is no strong attachment on either side,” said
+      Jane.
+
+      “I am sure there is not on _his_. I will answer for it, he never
+      cared three straws about her—who _could_ about such a nasty
+      little freckled thing?”
+
+      Elizabeth was shocked to think that, however incapable of such
+      coarseness of _expression_ herself, the coarseness of the
+      _sentiment_ was little other than her own breast had harboured
+      and fancied liberal!
+
+      As soon as all had ate, and the elder ones paid, the carriage was
+      ordered; and after some contrivance, the whole party, with all
+      their boxes, work-bags, and parcels, and the unwelcome addition
+      of Kitty’s and Lydia’s purchases, were seated in it.
+
+      “How nicely we are all crammed in,” cried Lydia. “I am glad I
+      bought my bonnet, if it is only for the fun of having another
+      bandbox! Well, now let us be quite comfortable and snug, and talk
+      and laugh all the way home. And in the first place, let us hear
+      what has happened to you all since you went away. Have you seen
+      any pleasant men? Have you had any flirting? I was in great hopes
+      that one of you would have got a husband before you came back.
+      Jane will be quite an old maid soon, I declare. She is almost
+      three-and-twenty! Lord, how ashamed I should be of not being
+      married before three-and-twenty! My aunt Phillips wants you so to
+      get husbands, you can’t think. She says Lizzy had better have
+      taken Mr. Collins; but _I_ do not think there would have been any
+      fun in it. Lord! how I should like to be married before any of
+      you; and then I would _chaperon_ you about to all the balls. Dear
+      me! we had such a good piece of fun the other day at Colonel
+      Forster’s. Kitty and me were to spend the day there, and Mrs.
+      Forster promised to have a little dance in the evening; (by the
+      bye, Mrs. Forster and me are _such_ friends!) and so she asked
+      the two Harringtons to come, but Harriet was ill, and so Pen was
+      forced to come by herself; and then, what do you think we did? We
+      dressed up Chamberlayne in woman’s clothes on purpose to pass for
+      a lady, only think what fun! Not a soul knew of it, but Colonel
+      and Mrs. Forster, and Kitty and me, except my aunt, for we were
+      forced to borrow one of her gowns; and you cannot imagine how
+      well he looked! When Denny, and Wickham, and Pratt, and two or
+      three more of the men came in, they did not know him in the
+      least. Lord! how I laughed! and so did Mrs. Forster. I thought I
+      should have died. And _that_ made the men suspect something, and
+      then they soon found out what was the matter.”
+
+      With such kinds of histories of their parties and good jokes, did
+      Lydia, assisted by Kitty’s hints and additions, endeavour to
+      amuse her companions all the way to Longbourn. Elizabeth listened
+      as little as she could, but there was no escaping the frequent
+      mention of Wickham’s name.
+
+      Their reception at home was most kind. Mrs. Bennet rejoiced to
+      see Jane in undiminished beauty; and more than once during dinner
+      did Mr. Bennet say voluntarily to Elizabeth:
+
+      “I am glad you are come back, Lizzy.”
+
+      Their party in the dining-room was large, for almost all the
+      Lucases came to meet Maria and hear the news; and various were
+      the subjects that occupied them: Lady Lucas was inquiring of
+      Maria, after the welfare and poultry of her eldest daughter; Mrs.
+      Bennet was doubly engaged, on one hand collecting an account of
+      the present fashions from Jane, who sat some way below her, and,
+      on the other, retailing them all to the younger Lucases; and
+      Lydia, in a voice rather louder than any other person’s, was
+      enumerating the various pleasures of the morning to anybody who
+      would hear her.
+
+      “Oh! Mary,” said she, “I wish you had gone with us, for we had
+      such fun! As we went along, Kitty and I drew up the blinds, and
+      pretended there was nobody in the coach; and I should have gone
+      so all the way, if Kitty had not been sick; and when we got to
+      the George, I do think we behaved very handsomely, for we treated
+      the other three with the nicest cold luncheon in the world, and
+      if you would have gone, we would have treated you too. And then
+      when we came away it was such fun! I thought we never should have
+      got into the coach. I was ready to die of laughter. And then we
+      were so merry all the way home! we talked and laughed so loud,
+      that anybody might have heard us ten miles off!”
+
+      To this Mary very gravely replied, “Far be it from me, my dear
+      sister, to depreciate such pleasures! They would doubtless be
+      congenial with the generality of female minds. But I confess they
+      would have no charms for _me_—I should infinitely prefer a book.”
+
+      But of this answer Lydia heard not a word. She seldom listened to
+      anybody for more than half a minute, and never attended to Mary
+      at all.
+
+      In the afternoon Lydia was urgent with the rest of the girls to
+      walk to Meryton, and to see how everybody went on; but Elizabeth
+      steadily opposed the scheme. It should not be said that the Miss
+      Bennets could not be at home half a day before they were in
+      pursuit of the officers. There was another reason too for her
+      opposition. She dreaded seeing Mr. Wickham again, and was
+      resolved to avoid it as long as possible. The comfort to _her_ of
+      the regiment’s approaching removal was indeed beyond expression.
+      In a fortnight they were to go—and once gone, she hoped there
+      could be nothing more to plague her on his account.
+
+      She had not been many hours at home before she found that the
+      Brighton scheme, of which Lydia had given them a hint at the inn,
+      was under frequent discussion between her parents. Elizabeth saw
+      directly that her father had not the smallest intention of
+      yielding; but his answers were at the same time so vague and
+      equivocal, that her mother, though often disheartened, had never
+      yet despaired of succeeding at last.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 40
+
+      Elizabeth’s impatience to acquaint Jane with what had happened
+      could no longer be overcome; and at length, resolving to suppress
+      every particular in which her sister was concerned, and preparing
+      her to be surprised, she related to her the next morning the
+      chief of the scene between Mr. Darcy and herself.
+
+      Miss Bennet’s astonishment was soon lessened by the strong
+      sisterly partiality which made any admiration of Elizabeth appear
+      perfectly natural; and all surprise was shortly lost in other
+      feelings. She was sorry that Mr. Darcy should have delivered his
+      sentiments in a manner so little suited to recommend them; but
+      still more was she grieved for the unhappiness which her sister’s
+      refusal must have given him.
+
+      “His being so sure of succeeding was wrong,” said she, “and
+      certainly ought not to have appeared; but consider how much it
+      must increase his disappointment!”
+
+      “Indeed,” replied Elizabeth, “I am heartily sorry for him; but he
+      has other feelings, which will probably soon drive away his
+      regard for me. You do not blame me, however, for refusing him?”
+
+      “Blame you! Oh, no.”
+
+      “But you blame me for having spoken so warmly of Wickham?”
+
+      “No—I do not know that you were wrong in saying what you did.”
+
+      “But you _will_ know it, when I tell you what happened the very
+      next day.”
+
+      She then spoke of the letter, repeating the whole of its contents
+      as far as they concerned George Wickham. What a stroke was this
+      for poor Jane! who would willingly have gone through the world
+      without believing that so much wickedness existed in the whole
+      race of mankind, as was here collected in one individual. Nor was
+      Darcy’s vindication, though grateful to her feelings, capable of
+      consoling her for such discovery. Most earnestly did she labour
+      to prove the probability of error, and seek to clear the one
+      without involving the other.
+
+      “This will not do,” said Elizabeth; “you never will be able to
+      make both of them good for anything. Take your choice, but you
+      must be satisfied with only one. There is but such a quantity of
+      merit between them; just enough to make one good sort of man; and
+      of late it has been shifting about pretty much. For my part, I am
+      inclined to believe it all Darcy’s; but you shall do as you
+      choose.”
+
+      It was some time, however, before a smile could be extorted from
+      Jane.
+
+      “I do not know when I have been more shocked,” said she. “Wickham
+      so very bad! It is almost past belief. And poor Mr. Darcy! Dear
+      Lizzy, only consider what he must have suffered. Such a
+      disappointment! and with the knowledge of your ill opinion, too!
+      and having to relate such a thing of his sister! It is really too
+      distressing. I am sure you must feel it so.”
+
+      “Oh! no, my regret and compassion are all done away by seeing you
+      so full of both. I know you will do him such ample justice, that
+      I am growing every moment more unconcerned and indifferent. Your
+      profusion makes me saving; and if you lament over him much
+      longer, my heart will be as light as a feather.”
+
+      “Poor Wickham! there is such an expression of goodness in his
+      countenance! such an openness and gentleness in his manner!”
+
+      “There certainly was some great mismanagement in the education of
+      those two young men. One has got all the goodness, and the other
+      all the appearance of it.”
+
+      “I never thought Mr. Darcy so deficient in the _appearance_ of it
+      as you used to do.”
+
+      “And yet I meant to be uncommonly clever in taking so decided a
+      dislike to him, without any reason. It is such a spur to one’s
+      genius, such an opening for wit, to have a dislike of that kind.
+      One may be continually abusive without saying anything just; but
+      one cannot always be laughing at a man without now and then
+      stumbling on something witty.”
+
+      “Lizzy, when you first read that letter, I am sure you could not
+      treat the matter as you do now.”
+
+      “Indeed, I could not. I was uncomfortable enough, I may say
+      unhappy. And with no one to speak to about what I felt, no Jane
+      to comfort me and say that I had not been so very weak and vain
+      and nonsensical as I knew I had! Oh! how I wanted you!”
+
+      “How unfortunate that you should have used such very strong
+      expressions in speaking of Wickham to Mr. Darcy, for now they
+      _do_ appear wholly undeserved.”
+
+      “Certainly. But the misfortune of speaking with bitterness is a
+      most natural consequence of the prejudices I had been
+      encouraging. There is one point on which I want your advice. I
+      want to be told whether I ought, or ought not, to make our
+      acquaintances in general understand Wickham’s character.”
+
+      Miss Bennet paused a little, and then replied, “Surely there can
+      be no occasion for exposing him so dreadfully. What is your
+      opinion?”
+
+      “That it ought not to be attempted. Mr. Darcy has not authorised
+      me to make his communication public. On the contrary, every
+      particular relative to his sister was meant to be kept as much as
+      possible to myself; and if I endeavour to undeceive people as to
+      the rest of his conduct, who will believe me? The general
+      prejudice against Mr. Darcy is so violent, that it would be the
+      death of half the good people in Meryton to attempt to place him
+      in an amiable light. I am not equal to it. Wickham will soon be
+      gone; and therefore it will not signify to anyone here what he
+      really is. Some time hence it will be all found out, and then we
+      may laugh at their stupidity in not knowing it before. At present
+      I will say nothing about it.”
+
+      “You are quite right. To have his errors made public might ruin
+      him for ever. He is now, perhaps, sorry for what he has done, and
+      anxious to re-establish a character. We must not make him
+      desperate.”
+
+      The tumult of Elizabeth’s mind was allayed by this conversation.
+      She had got rid of two of the secrets which had weighed on her
+      for a fortnight, and was certain of a willing listener in Jane,
+      whenever she might wish to talk again of either. But there was
+      still something lurking behind, of which prudence forbade the
+      disclosure. She dared not relate the other half of Mr. Darcy’s
+      letter, nor explain to her sister how sincerely she had been
+      valued by her friend. Here was knowledge in which no one could
+      partake; and she was sensible that nothing less than a perfect
+      understanding between the parties could justify her in throwing
+      off this last encumbrance of mystery. “And then,” said she, “if
+      that very improbable event should ever take place, I shall merely
+      be able to tell what Bingley may tell in a much more agreeable
+      manner himself. The liberty of communication cannot be mine till
+      it has lost all its value!”
+
+      She was now, on being settled at home, at leisure to observe the
+      real state of her sister’s spirits. Jane was not happy. She still
+      cherished a very tender affection for Bingley. Having never even
+      fancied herself in love before, her regard had all the warmth of
+      first attachment, and, from her age and disposition, greater
+      steadiness than most first attachments often boast; and so
+      fervently did she value his remembrance, and prefer him to every
+      other man, that all her good sense, and all her attention to the
+      feelings of her friends, were requisite to check the indulgence
+      of those regrets which must have been injurious to her own health
+      and their tranquillity.
+
+      “Well, Lizzy,” said Mrs. Bennet one day, “what is your opinion
+      _now_ of this sad business of Jane’s? For my part, I am
+      determined never to speak of it again to anybody. I told my
+      sister Phillips so the other day. But I cannot find out that Jane
+      saw anything of him in London. Well, he is a very undeserving
+      young man—and I do not suppose there’s the least chance in the
+      world of her ever getting him now. There is no talk of his coming
+      to Netherfield again in the summer; and I have inquired of
+      everybody, too, who is likely to know.”
+
+      “I do not believe he will ever live at Netherfield any more.”
+
+      “Oh well! it is just as he chooses. Nobody wants him to come.
+      Though I shall always say he used my daughter extremely ill; and
+      if I was her, I would not have put up with it. Well, my comfort
+      is, I am sure Jane will die of a broken heart; and then he will
+      be sorry for what he has done.”
+
+      But as Elizabeth could not receive comfort from any such
+      expectation, she made no answer.
+
+      “Well, Lizzy,” continued her mother, soon afterwards, “and so the
+      Collinses live very comfortable, do they? Well, well, I only hope
+      it will last. And what sort of table do they keep? Charlotte is
+      an excellent manager, I dare say. If she is half as sharp as her
+      mother, she is saving enough. There is nothing extravagant in
+      _their_ housekeeping, I dare say.”
+
+      “No, nothing at all.”
+
+      “A great deal of good management, depend upon it. Yes, yes.
+      _They_ will take care not to outrun their income. _They_ will
+      never be distressed for money. Well, much good may it do them!
+      And so, I suppose, they often talk of having Longbourn when your
+      father is dead. They look upon it as quite their own, I dare say,
+      whenever that happens.”
+
+      “It was a subject which they could not mention before me.”
+
+      “No; it would have been strange if they had; but I make no doubt
+      they often talk of it between themselves. Well, if they can be
+      easy with an estate that is not lawfully their own, so much the
+      better. _I_ should be ashamed of having one that was only
+      entailed on me.”
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 41
+
+      The first week of their return was soon gone. The second began.
+      It was the last of the regiment’s stay in Meryton, and all the
+      young ladies in the neighbourhood were drooping apace. The
+      dejection was almost universal. The elder Miss Bennets alone were
+      still able to eat, drink, and sleep, and pursue the usual course
+      of their employments. Very frequently were they reproached for
+      this insensibility by Kitty and Lydia, whose own misery was
+      extreme, and who could not comprehend such hard-heartedness in
+      any of the family.
+
+      “Good Heaven! what is to become of us? What are we to do?” would
+      they often exclaim in the bitterness of woe. “How can you be
+      smiling so, Lizzy?”
+
+      Their affectionate mother shared all their grief; she remembered
+      what she had herself endured on a similar occasion,
+      five-and-twenty years ago.
+
+      “I am sure,” said she, “I cried for two days together when
+      Colonel Miller’s regiment went away. I thought I should have
+      broken my heart.”
+
+      “I am sure I shall break _mine_,” said Lydia.
+
+      “If one could but go to Brighton!” observed Mrs. Bennet.
+
+      “Oh, yes!—if one could but go to Brighton! But papa is so
+      disagreeable.”
+
+      “A little sea-bathing would set me up forever.”
+
+      “And my aunt Phillips is sure it would do _me_ a great deal of
+      good,” added Kitty.
+
+      Such were the kind of lamentations resounding perpetually through
+      Longbourn House. Elizabeth tried to be diverted by them; but all
+      sense of pleasure was lost in shame. She felt anew the justice of
+      Mr. Darcy’s objections; and never had she been so much disposed
+      to pardon his interference in the views of his friend.
+
+      But the gloom of Lydia’s prospect was shortly cleared away; for
+      she received an invitation from Mrs. Forster, the wife of the
+      colonel of the regiment, to accompany her to Brighton. This
+      invaluable friend was a very young woman, and very lately
+      married. A resemblance in good humour and good spirits had
+      recommended her and Lydia to each other, and out of their _three_
+      months’ acquaintance they had been intimate _two_.
+
+      The rapture of Lydia on this occasion, her adoration of Mrs.
+      Forster, the delight of Mrs. Bennet, and the mortification of
+      Kitty, are scarcely to be described. Wholly inattentive to her
+      sister’s feelings, Lydia flew about the house in restless
+      ecstasy, calling for everyone’s congratulations, and laughing and
+      talking with more violence than ever; whilst the luckless Kitty
+      continued in the parlour repined at her fate in terms as
+      unreasonable as her accent was peevish.
+
+      “I cannot see why Mrs. Forster should not ask _me_ as well as
+      Lydia,” said she, “Though I am _not_ her particular friend. I
+      have just as much right to be asked as she has, and more too, for
+      I am two years older.”
+
+      In vain did Elizabeth attempt to make her reasonable, and Jane to
+      make her resigned. As for Elizabeth herself, this invitation was
+      so far from exciting in her the same feelings as in her mother
+      and Lydia, that she considered it as the death warrant of all
+      possibility of common sense for the latter; and detestable as
+      such a step must make her were it known, she could not help
+      secretly advising her father not to let her go. She represented
+      to him all the improprieties of Lydia’s general behaviour, the
+      little advantage she could derive from the friendship of such a
+      woman as Mrs. Forster, and the probability of her being yet more
+      imprudent with such a companion at Brighton, where the
+      temptations must be greater than at home. He heard her
+      attentively, and then said:
+
+      “Lydia will never be easy until she has exposed herself in some
+      public place or other, and we can never expect her to do it with
+      so little expense or inconvenience to her family as under the
+      present circumstances.”
+
+      “If you were aware,” said Elizabeth, “of the very great
+      disadvantage to us all which must arise from the public notice of
+      Lydia’s unguarded and imprudent manner—nay, which has already
+      arisen from it, I am sure you would judge differently in the
+      affair.”
+
+      “Already arisen?” repeated Mr. Bennet. “What, has she frightened
+      away some of your lovers? Poor little Lizzy! But do not be cast
+      down. Such squeamish youths as cannot bear to be connected with a
+      little absurdity are not worth a regret. Come, let me see the
+      list of pitiful fellows who have been kept aloof by Lydia’s
+      folly.”
+
+      “Indeed you are mistaken. I have no such injuries to resent. It
+      is not of particular, but of general evils, which I am now
+      complaining. Our importance, our respectability in the world must
+      be affected by the wild volatility, the assurance and disdain of
+      all restraint which mark Lydia’s character. Excuse me, for I must
+      speak plainly. If you, my dear father, will not take the trouble
+      of checking her exuberant spirits, and of teaching her that her
+      present pursuits are not to be the business of her life, she will
+      soon be beyond the reach of amendment. Her character will be
+      fixed, and she will, at sixteen, be the most determined flirt
+      that ever made herself or her family ridiculous; a flirt, too, in
+      the worst and meanest degree of flirtation; without any
+      attraction beyond youth and a tolerable person; and, from the
+      ignorance and emptiness of her mind, wholly unable to ward off
+      any portion of that universal contempt which her rage for
+      admiration will excite. In this danger Kitty also is
+      comprehended. She will follow wherever Lydia leads. Vain,
+      ignorant, idle, and absolutely uncontrolled! Oh! my dear father,
+      can you suppose it possible that they will not be censured and
+      despised wherever they are known, and that their sisters will not
+      be often involved in the disgrace?”
+
+      Mr. Bennet saw that her whole heart was in the subject, and
+      affectionately taking her hand said in reply:
+
+      “Do not make yourself uneasy, my love. Wherever you and Jane are
+      known you must be respected and valued; and you will not appear
+      to less advantage for having a couple of—or I may say, three—very
+      silly sisters. We shall have no peace at Longbourn if Lydia does
+      not go to Brighton. Let her go, then. Colonel Forster is a
+      sensible man, and will keep her out of any real mischief; and she
+      is luckily too poor to be an object of prey to anybody. At
+      Brighton she will be of less importance even as a common flirt
+      than she has been here. The officers will find women better worth
+      their notice. Let us hope, therefore, that her being there may
+      teach her her own insignificance. At any rate, she cannot grow
+      many degrees worse, without authorising us to lock her up for the
+      rest of her life.”
+
+      With this answer Elizabeth was forced to be content; but her own
+      opinion continued the same, and she left him disappointed and
+      sorry. It was not in her nature, however, to increase her
+      vexations by dwelling on them. She was confident of having
+      performed her duty, and to fret over unavoidable evils, or
+      augment them by anxiety, was no part of her disposition.
+
+      Had Lydia and her mother known the substance of her conference
+      with her father, their indignation would hardly have found
+      expression in their united volubility. In Lydia’s imagination, a
+      visit to Brighton comprised every possibility of earthly
+      happiness. She saw, with the creative eye of fancy, the streets
+      of that gay bathing-place covered with officers. She saw herself
+      the object of attention, to tens and to scores of them at present
+      unknown. She saw all the glories of the camp—its tents stretched
+      forth in beauteous uniformity of lines, crowded with the young
+      and the gay, and dazzling with scarlet; and, to complete the
+      view, she saw herself seated beneath a tent, tenderly flirting
+      with at least six officers at once.
+
+      Had she known her sister sought to tear her from such prospects
+      and such realities as these, what would have been her sensations?
+      They could have been understood only by her mother, who might
+      have felt nearly the same. Lydia’s going to Brighton was all that
+      consoled her for her melancholy conviction of her husband’s never
+      intending to go there himself.
+
+      But they were entirely ignorant of what had passed; and their
+      raptures continued, with little intermission, to the very day of
+      Lydia’s leaving home.
+
+      Elizabeth was now to see Mr. Wickham for the last time. Having
+      been frequently in company with him since her return, agitation
+      was pretty well over; the agitations of former partiality
+      entirely so. She had even learnt to detect, in the very
+      gentleness which had first delighted her, an affectation and a
+      sameness to disgust and weary. In his present behaviour to
+      herself, moreover, she had a fresh source of displeasure, for the
+      inclination he soon testified of renewing those intentions which
+      had marked the early part of their acquaintance could only serve,
+      after what had since passed, to provoke her. She lost all concern
+      for him in finding herself thus selected as the object of such
+      idle and frivolous gallantry; and while she steadily repressed
+      it, could not but feel the reproof contained in his believing,
+      that however long, and for whatever cause, his attentions had
+      been withdrawn, her vanity would be gratified, and her preference
+      secured at any time by their renewal.
+
+      On the very last day of the regiment’s remaining at Meryton, he
+      dined, with other of the officers, at Longbourn; and so little
+      was Elizabeth disposed to part from him in good humour, that on
+      his making some inquiry as to the manner in which her time had
+      passed at Hunsford, she mentioned Colonel Fitzwilliam’s and Mr.
+      Darcy’s having both spent three weeks at Rosings, and asked him,
+      if he was acquainted with the former.
+
+      He looked surprised, displeased, alarmed; but with a moment’s
+      recollection and a returning smile, replied, that he had formerly
+      seen him often; and, after observing that he was a very
+      gentlemanlike man, asked her how she had liked him. Her answer
+      was warmly in his favour. With an air of indifference he soon
+      afterwards added:
+
+      “How long did you say he was at Rosings?”
+
+      “Nearly three weeks.”
+
+      “And you saw him frequently?”
+
+      “Yes, almost every day.”
+
+      “His manners are very different from his cousin’s.”
+
+      “Yes, very different. But I think Mr. Darcy improves upon
+      acquaintance.”
+
+      “Indeed!” cried Mr. Wickham with a look which did not escape her.
+      “And pray, may I ask?—” But checking himself, he added, in a
+      gayer tone, “Is it in address that he improves? Has he deigned to
+      add aught of civility to his ordinary style?—for I dare not
+      hope,” he continued in a lower and more serious tone, “that he is
+      improved in essentials.”
+
+      “Oh, no!” said Elizabeth. “In essentials, I believe, he is very
+      much what he ever was.”
+
+      While she spoke, Wickham looked as if scarcely knowing whether to
+      rejoice over her words, or to distrust their meaning. There was a
+      something in her countenance which made him listen with an
+      apprehensive and anxious attention, while she added:
+
+      “When I said that he improved on acquaintance, I did not mean
+      that his mind or his manners were in a state of improvement, but
+      that, from knowing him better, his disposition was better
+      understood.”
+
+      Wickham’s alarm now appeared in a heightened complexion and
+      agitated look; for a few minutes he was silent, till, shaking off
+      his embarrassment, he turned to her again, and said in the
+      gentlest of accents:
+
+      “You, who so well know my feeling towards Mr. Darcy, will readily
+      comprehend how sincerely I must rejoice that he is wise enough to
+      assume even the _appearance_ of what is right. His pride, in that
+      direction, may be of service, if not to himself, to many others,
+      for it must only deter him from such foul misconduct as I have
+      suffered by. I only fear that the sort of cautiousness to which
+      you, I imagine, have been alluding, is merely adopted on his
+      visits to his aunt, of whose good opinion and judgement he stands
+      much in awe. His fear of her has always operated, I know, when
+      they were together; and a good deal is to be imputed to his wish
+      of forwarding the match with Miss de Bourgh, which I am certain
+      he has very much at heart.”
+
+      Elizabeth could not repress a smile at this, but she answered
+      only by a slight inclination of the head. She saw that he wanted
+      to engage her on the old subject of his grievances, and she was
+      in no humour to indulge him. The rest of the evening passed with
+      the _appearance_, on his side, of usual cheerfulness, but with no
+      further attempt to distinguish Elizabeth; and they parted at last
+      with mutual civility, and possibly a mutual desire of never
+      meeting again.
+
+      When the party broke up, Lydia returned with Mrs. Forster to
+      Meryton, from whence they were to set out early the next morning.
+      The separation between her and her family was rather noisy than
+      pathetic. Kitty was the only one who shed tears; but she did weep
+      from vexation and envy. Mrs. Bennet was diffuse in her good
+      wishes for the felicity of her daughter, and impressive in her
+      injunctions that she should not miss the opportunity of enjoying
+      herself as much as possible—advice which there was every reason
+      to believe would be well attended to; and in the clamorous
+      happiness of Lydia herself in bidding farewell, the more gentle
+      adieus of her sisters were uttered without being heard.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 42
+
+      Had Elizabeth’s opinion been all drawn from her own family, she
+      could not have formed a very pleasing opinion of conjugal
+      felicity or domestic comfort. Her father, captivated by youth and
+      beauty, and that appearance of good humour which youth and beauty
+      generally give, had married a woman whose weak understanding and
+      illiberal mind had very early in their marriage put an end to all
+      real affection for her. Respect, esteem, and confidence had
+      vanished for ever; and all his views of domestic happiness were
+      overthrown. But Mr. Bennet was not of a disposition to seek
+      comfort for the disappointment which his own imprudence had
+      brought on, in any of those pleasures which too often console the
+      unfortunate for their folly or their vice. He was fond of the
+      country and of books; and from these tastes had arisen his
+      principal enjoyments. To his wife he was very little otherwise
+      indebted, than as her ignorance and folly had contributed to his
+      amusement. This is not the sort of happiness which a man would in
+      general wish to owe to his wife; but where other powers of
+      entertainment are wanting, the true philosopher will derive
+      benefit from such as are given.
+
+      Elizabeth, however, had never been blind to the impropriety of
+      her father’s behaviour as a husband. She had always seen it with
+      pain; but respecting his abilities, and grateful for his
+      affectionate treatment of herself, she endeavoured to forget what
+      she could not overlook, and to banish from her thoughts that
+      continual breach of conjugal obligation and decorum which, in
+      exposing his wife to the contempt of her own children, was so
+      highly reprehensible. But she had never felt so strongly as now
+      the disadvantages which must attend the children of so unsuitable
+      a marriage, nor ever been so fully aware of the evils arising
+      from so ill-judged a direction of talents; talents, which,
+      rightly used, might at least have preserved the respectability of
+      his daughters, even if incapable of enlarging the mind of his
+      wife.
+
+      When Elizabeth had rejoiced over Wickham’s departure she found
+      little other cause for satisfaction in the loss of the regiment.
+      Their parties abroad were less varied than before, and at home
+      she had a mother and sister whose constant repinings at the
+      dullness of everything around them threw a real gloom over their
+      domestic circle; and, though Kitty might in time regain her
+      natural degree of sense, since the disturbers of her brain were
+      removed, her other sister, from whose disposition greater evil
+      might be apprehended, was likely to be hardened in all her folly
+      and assurance by a situation of such double danger as a
+      watering-place and a camp. Upon the whole, therefore, she found,
+      what has been sometimes found before, that an event to which she
+      had been looking with impatient desire did not, in taking place,
+      bring all the satisfaction she had promised herself. It was
+      consequently necessary to name some other period for the
+      commencement of actual felicity—to have some other point on which
+      her wishes and hopes might be fixed, and by again enjoying the
+      pleasure of anticipation, console herself for the present, and
+      prepare for another disappointment. Her tour to the Lakes was now
+      the object of her happiest thoughts; it was her best consolation
+      for all the uncomfortable hours which the discontentedness of her
+      mother and Kitty made inevitable; and could she have included
+      Jane in the scheme, every part of it would have been perfect.
+
+      “But it is fortunate,” thought she, “that I have something to
+      wish for. Were the whole arrangement complete, my disappointment
+      would be certain. But here, by carrying with me one ceaseless
+      source of regret in my sister’s absence, I may reasonably hope to
+      have all my expectations of pleasure realised. A scheme of which
+      every part promises delight can never be successful; and general
+      disappointment is only warded off by the defence of some little
+      peculiar vexation.”
+
+      When Lydia went away she promised to write very often and very
+      minutely to her mother and Kitty; but her letters were always
+      long expected, and always very short. Those to her mother
+      contained little else than that they were just returned from the
+      library, where such and such officers had attended them, and
+      where she had seen such beautiful ornaments as made her quite
+      wild; that she had a new gown, or a new parasol, which she would
+      have described more fully, but was obliged to leave off in a
+      violent hurry, as Mrs. Forster called her, and they were going
+      off to the camp; and from her correspondence with her sister,
+      there was still less to be learnt—for her letters to Kitty,
+      though rather longer, were much too full of lines under the words
+      to be made public.
+
+      After the first fortnight or three weeks of her absence, health,
+      good humour, and cheerfulness began to reappear at Longbourn.
+      Everything wore a happier aspect. The families who had been in
+      town for the winter came back again, and summer finery and summer
+      engagements arose. Mrs. Bennet was restored to her usual
+      querulous serenity; and, by the middle of June, Kitty was so much
+      recovered as to be able to enter Meryton without tears; an event
+      of such happy promise as to make Elizabeth hope that by the
+      following Christmas she might be so tolerably reasonable as not
+      to mention an officer above once a day, unless, by some cruel and
+      malicious arrangement at the War Office, another regiment should
+      be quartered in Meryton.
+
+      The time fixed for the beginning of their northern tour was now
+      fast approaching, and a fortnight only was wanting of it, when a
+      letter arrived from Mrs. Gardiner, which at once delayed its
+      commencement and curtailed its extent. Mr. Gardiner would be
+      prevented by business from setting out till a fortnight later in
+      July, and must be in London again within a month, and as that
+      left too short a period for them to go so far, and see so much as
+      they had proposed, or at least to see it with the leisure and
+      comfort they had built on, they were obliged to give up the
+      Lakes, and substitute a more contracted tour, and, according to
+      the present plan, were to go no farther northwards than
+      Derbyshire. In that county there was enough to be seen to occupy
+      the chief of their three weeks; and to Mrs. Gardiner it had a
+      peculiarly strong attraction. The town where she had formerly
+      passed some years of her life, and where they were now to spend a
+      few days, was probably as great an object of her curiosity as all
+      the celebrated beauties of Matlock, Chatsworth, Dovedale, or the
+      Peak.
+
+      Elizabeth was excessively disappointed; she had set her heart on
+      seeing the Lakes, and still thought there might have been time
+      enough. But it was her business to be satisfied—and certainly her
+      temper to be happy; and all was soon right again.
+
+      With the mention of Derbyshire there were many ideas connected.
+      It was impossible for her to see the word without thinking of
+      Pemberley and its owner. “But surely,” said she, “I may enter his
+      county with impunity, and rob it of a few petrified spars without
+      his perceiving me.”
+
+      The period of expectation was now doubled. Four weeks were to
+      pass away before her uncle and aunt’s arrival. But they did pass
+      away, and Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, with their four children, did at
+      length appear at Longbourn. The children, two girls of six and
+      eight years old, and two younger boys, were to be left under the
+      particular care of their cousin Jane, who was the general
+      favourite, and whose steady sense and sweetness of temper exactly
+      adapted her for attending to them in every way—teaching them,
+      playing with them, and loving them.
+
+      The Gardiners stayed only one night at Longbourn, and set off the
+      next morning with Elizabeth in pursuit of novelty and amusement.
+      One enjoyment was certain—that of suitableness of companions; a
+      suitableness which comprehended health and temper to bear
+      inconveniences—cheerfulness to enhance every pleasure—and
+      affection and intelligence, which might supply it among
+      themselves if there were disappointments abroad.
+
+      It is not the object of this work to give a description of
+      Derbyshire, nor of any of the remarkable places through which
+      their route thither lay; Oxford, Blenheim, Warwick, Kenilworth,
+      Birmingham, etc. are sufficiently known. A small part of
+      Derbyshire is all the present concern. To the little town of
+      Lambton, the scene of Mrs. Gardiner’s former residence, and where
+      she had lately learned some acquaintance still remained, they
+      bent their steps, after having seen all the principal wonders of
+      the country; and within five miles of Lambton, Elizabeth found
+      from her aunt that Pemberley was situated. It was not in their
+      direct road, nor more than a mile or two out of it. In talking
+      over their route the evening before, Mrs. Gardiner expressed an
+      inclination to see the place again. Mr. Gardiner declared his
+      willingness, and Elizabeth was applied to for her approbation.
+
+      “My love, should not you like to see a place of which you have
+      heard so much?” said her aunt; “a place, too, with which so many
+      of your acquaintances are connected. Wickham passed all his youth
+      there, you know.”
+
+      Elizabeth was distressed. She felt that she had no business at
+      Pemberley, and was obliged to assume a disinclination for seeing
+      it. She must own that she was tired of seeing great houses; after
+      going over so many, she really had no pleasure in fine carpets or
+      satin curtains.
+
+      Mrs. Gardiner abused her stupidity. “If it were merely a fine
+      house richly furnished,” said she, “I should not care about it
+      myself; but the grounds are delightful. They have some of the
+      finest woods in the country.”
+
+      Elizabeth said no more—but her mind could not acquiesce. The
+      possibility of meeting Mr. Darcy, while viewing the place,
+      instantly occurred. It would be dreadful! She blushed at the very
+      idea, and thought it would be better to speak openly to her aunt
+      than to run such a risk. But against this there were objections;
+      and she finally resolved that it could be the last resource, if
+      her private inquiries to the absence of the family were
+      unfavourably answered.
+
+      Accordingly, when she retired at night, she asked the chambermaid
+      whether Pemberley were not a very fine place? what was the name
+      of its proprietor? and, with no little alarm, whether the family
+      were down for the summer? A most welcome negative followed the
+      last question—and her alarms now being removed, she was at
+      leisure to feel a great deal of curiosity to see the house
+      herself; and when the subject was revived the next morning, and
+      she was again applied to, could readily answer, and with a proper
+      air of indifference, that she had not really any dislike to the
+      scheme. To Pemberley, therefore, they were to go.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 43
+
+      Elizabeth, as they drove along, watched for the first appearance
+      of Pemberley Woods with some perturbation; and when at length
+      they turned in at the lodge, her spirits were in a high flutter.
+
+      The park was very large, and contained great variety of ground.
+      They entered it in one of its lowest points, and drove for some
+      time through a beautiful wood stretching over a wide extent.
+
+      Elizabeth’s mind was too full for conversation, but she saw and
+      admired every remarkable spot and point of view. They gradually
+      ascended for half-a-mile, and then found themselves at the top of
+      a considerable eminence, where the wood ceased, and the eye was
+      instantly caught by Pemberley House, situated on the opposite
+      side of a valley, into which the road with some abruptness wound.
+      It was a large, handsome stone building, standing well on rising
+      ground, and backed by a ridge of high woody hills; and in front,
+      a stream of some natural importance was swelled into greater, but
+      without any artificial appearance. Its banks were neither formal
+      nor falsely adorned. Elizabeth was delighted. She had never seen
+      a place for which nature had done more, or where natural beauty
+      had been so little counteracted by an awkward taste. They were
+      all of them warm in their admiration; and at that moment she felt
+      that to be mistress of Pemberley might be something!
+
+      They descended the hill, crossed the bridge, and drove to the
+      door; and, while examining the nearer aspect of the house, all
+      her apprehension of meeting its owner returned. She dreaded lest
+      the chambermaid had been mistaken. On applying to see the place,
+      they were admitted into the hall; and Elizabeth, as they waited
+      for the housekeeper, had leisure to wonder at her being where she
+      was.
+
+      The housekeeper came; a respectable-looking elderly woman, much
+      less fine, and more civil, than she had any notion of finding
+      her. They followed her into the dining-parlour. It was a large,
+      well proportioned room, handsomely fitted up. Elizabeth, after
+      slightly surveying it, went to a window to enjoy its prospect.
+      The hill, crowned with wood, which they had descended, receiving
+      increased abruptness from the distance, was a beautiful object.
+      Every disposition of the ground was good; and she looked on the
+      whole scene, the river, the trees scattered on its banks and the
+      winding of the valley, as far as she could trace it, with
+      delight. As they passed into other rooms these objects were
+      taking different positions; but from every window there were
+      beauties to be seen. The rooms were lofty and handsome, and their
+      furniture suitable to the fortune of its proprietor; but
+      Elizabeth saw, with admiration of his taste, that it was neither
+      gaudy nor uselessly fine; with less of splendour, and more real
+      elegance, than the furniture of Rosings.
+
+      “And of this place,” thought she, “I might have been mistress!
+      With these rooms I might now have been familiarly acquainted!
+      Instead of viewing them as a stranger, I might have rejoiced in
+      them as my own, and welcomed to them as visitors my uncle and
+      aunt. But no,”—recollecting herself—“that could never be; my
+      uncle and aunt would have been lost to me; I should not have been
+      allowed to invite them.”
+
+      This was a lucky recollection—it saved her from something very
+      like regret.
+
+      She longed to inquire of the housekeeper whether her master was
+      really absent, but had not the courage for it. At length however,
+      the question was asked by her uncle; and she turned away with
+      alarm, while Mrs. Reynolds replied that he was, adding, “But we
+      expect him to-morrow, with a large party of friends.” How
+      rejoiced was Elizabeth that their own journey had not by any
+      circumstance been delayed a day!
+
+      Her aunt now called her to look at a picture. She approached and
+      saw the likeness of Mr. Wickham, suspended, amongst several other
+      miniatures, over the mantelpiece. Her aunt asked her, smilingly,
+      how she liked it. The housekeeper came forward, and told them it
+      was a picture of a young gentleman, the son of her late master’s
+      steward, who had been brought up by him at his own expense. “He
+      is now gone into the army,” she added; “but I am afraid he has
+      turned out very wild.”
+
+      Mrs. Gardiner looked at her niece with a smile, but Elizabeth
+      could not return it.
+
+      “And that,” said Mrs. Reynolds, pointing to another of the
+      miniatures, “is my master—and very like him. It was drawn at the
+      same time as the other—about eight years ago.”
+
+      “I have heard much of your master’s fine person,” said Mrs.
+      Gardiner, looking at the picture; “it is a handsome face. But,
+      Lizzy, you can tell us whether it is like or not.”
+
+      Mrs. Reynolds respect for Elizabeth seemed to increase on this
+      intimation of her knowing her master.
+
+      “Does that young lady know Mr. Darcy?”
+
+      Elizabeth coloured, and said: “A little.”
+
+      “And do not you think him a very handsome gentleman, ma’am?”
+
+      “Yes, very handsome.”
+
+      “I am sure _I_ know none so handsome; but in the gallery up
+      stairs you will see a finer, larger picture of him than this.
+      This room was my late master’s favourite room, and these
+      miniatures are just as they used to be then. He was very fond of
+      them.”
+
+      This accounted to Elizabeth for Mr. Wickham’s being among them.
+
+      Mrs. Reynolds then directed their attention to one of Miss Darcy,
+      drawn when she was only eight years old.
+
+      “And is Miss Darcy as handsome as her brother?” said Mrs.
+      Gardiner.
+
+      “Oh! yes—the handsomest young lady that ever was seen; and so
+      accomplished!—She plays and sings all day long. In the next room
+      is a new instrument just come down for her—a present from my
+      master; she comes here to-morrow with him.”
+
+      Mr. Gardiner, whose manners were very easy and pleasant,
+      encouraged her communicativeness by his questions and remarks;
+      Mrs. Reynolds, either by pride or attachment, had evidently great
+      pleasure in talking of her master and his sister.
+
+      “Is your master much at Pemberley in the course of the year?”
+
+      “Not so much as I could wish, sir; but I dare say he may spend
+      half his time here; and Miss Darcy is always down for the summer
+      months.”
+
+      “Except,” thought Elizabeth, “when she goes to Ramsgate.”
+
+      “If your master would marry, you might see more of him.”
+
+      “Yes, sir; but I do not know when _that_ will be. I do not know
+      who is good enough for him.”
+
+      Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner smiled. Elizabeth could not help saying,
+      “It is very much to his credit, I am sure, that you should think
+      so.”
+
+      “I say no more than the truth, and everybody will say that knows
+      him,” replied the other. Elizabeth thought this was going pretty
+      far; and she listened with increasing astonishment as the
+      housekeeper added, “I have never known a cross word from him in
+      my life, and I have known him ever since he was four years old.”
+
+      This was praise, of all others most extraordinary, most opposite
+      to her ideas. That he was not a good-tempered man had been her
+      firmest opinion. Her keenest attention was awakened; she longed
+      to hear more, and was grateful to her uncle for saying:
+
+      “There are very few people of whom so much can be said. You are
+      lucky in having such a master.”
+
+      “Yes, sir, I know I am. If I were to go through the world, I
+      could not meet with a better. But I have always observed, that
+      they who are good-natured when children, are good-natured when
+      they grow up; and he was always the sweetest-tempered, most
+      generous-hearted boy in the world.”
+
+      Elizabeth almost stared at her. “Can this be Mr. Darcy?” thought
+      she.
+
+      “His father was an excellent man,” said Mrs. Gardiner.
+
+      “Yes, ma’am, that he was indeed; and his son will be just like
+      him—just as affable to the poor.”
+
+      Elizabeth listened, wondered, doubted, and was impatient for
+      more. Mrs. Reynolds could interest her on no other point. She
+      related the subjects of the pictures, the dimensions of the
+      rooms, and the price of the furniture, in vain. Mr. Gardiner,
+      highly amused by the kind of family prejudice to which he
+      attributed her excessive commendation of her master, soon led
+      again to the subject; and she dwelt with energy on his many
+      merits as they proceeded together up the great staircase.
+
+      “He is the best landlord, and the best master,” said she, “that
+      ever lived; not like the wild young men nowadays, who think of
+      nothing but themselves. There is not one of his tenants or
+      servants but will give him a good name. Some people call him
+      proud; but I am sure I never saw anything of it. To my fancy, it
+      is only because he does not rattle away like other young men.”
+
+      “In what an amiable light does this place him!” thought
+      Elizabeth.
+
+      “This fine account of him,” whispered her aunt as they walked,
+      “is not quite consistent with his behaviour to our poor friend.”
+
+      “Perhaps we might be deceived.”
+
+      “That is not very likely; our authority was too good.”
+
+      On reaching the spacious lobby above they were shown into a very
+      pretty sitting-room, lately fitted up with greater elegance and
+      lightness than the apartments below; and were informed that it
+      was but just done to give pleasure to Miss Darcy, who had taken a
+      liking to the room when last at Pemberley.
+
+      “He is certainly a good brother,” said Elizabeth, as she walked
+      towards one of the windows.
+
+      Mrs. Reynolds anticipated Miss Darcy’s delight, when she should
+      enter the room. “And this is always the way with him,” she added.
+      “Whatever can give his sister any pleasure is sure to be done in
+      a moment. There is nothing he would not do for her.”
+
+      The picture-gallery, and two or three of the principal bedrooms,
+      were all that remained to be shown. In the former were many good
+      paintings; but Elizabeth knew nothing of the art; and from such
+      as had been already visible below, she had willingly turned to
+      look at some drawings of Miss Darcy’s, in crayons, whose subjects
+      were usually more interesting, and also more intelligible.
+
+      In the gallery there were many family portraits, but they could
+      have little to fix the attention of a stranger. Elizabeth walked
+      in quest of the only face whose features would be known to her.
+      At last it arrested her—and she beheld a striking resemblance to
+      Mr. Darcy, with such a smile over the face as she remembered to
+      have sometimes seen when he looked at her. She stood several
+      minutes before the picture, in earnest contemplation, and
+      returned to it again before they quitted the gallery. Mrs.
+      Reynolds informed them that it had been taken in his father’s
+      lifetime.
+
+      There was certainly at this moment, in Elizabeth’s mind, a more
+      gentle sensation towards the original than she had ever felt at
+      the height of their acquaintance. The commendation bestowed on
+      him by Mrs. Reynolds was of no trifling nature. What praise is
+      more valuable than the praise of an intelligent servant? As a
+      brother, a landlord, a master, she considered how many people’s
+      happiness were in his guardianship!—how much of pleasure or pain
+      was it in his power to bestow!—how much of good or evil must be
+      done by him! Every idea that had been brought forward by the
+      housekeeper was favourable to his character, and as she stood
+      before the canvas on which he was represented, and fixed his eyes
+      upon herself, she thought of his regard with a deeper sentiment
+      of gratitude than it had ever raised before; she remembered its
+      warmth, and softened its impropriety of expression.
+
+      When all of the house that was open to general inspection had
+      been seen, they returned downstairs, and, taking leave of the
+      housekeeper, were consigned over to the gardener, who met them at
+      the hall-door.
+
+      As they walked across the hall towards the river, Elizabeth
+      turned back to look again; her uncle and aunt stopped also, and
+      while the former was conjecturing as to the date of the building,
+      the owner of it himself suddenly came forward from the road,
+      which led behind it to the stables.
+
+      They were within twenty yards of each other, and so abrupt was
+      his appearance, that it was impossible to avoid his sight. Their
+      eyes instantly met, and the cheeks of both were overspread with
+      the deepest blush. He absolutely started, and for a moment seemed
+      immovable from surprise; but shortly recovering himself, advanced
+      towards the party, and spoke to Elizabeth, if not in terms of
+      perfect composure, at least of perfect civility.
+
+      She had instinctively turned away; but stopping on his approach,
+      received his compliments with an embarrassment impossible to be
+      overcome. Had his first appearance, or his resemblance to the
+      picture they had just been examining, been insufficient to assure
+      the other two that they now saw Mr. Darcy, the gardener’s
+      expression of surprise, on beholding his master, must immediately
+      have told it. They stood a little aloof while he was talking to
+      their niece, who, astonished and confused, scarcely dared lift
+      her eyes to his face, and knew not what answer she returned to
+      his civil inquiries after her family. Amazed at the alteration of
+      his manner since they last parted, every sentence that he uttered
+      was increasing her embarrassment; and every idea of the
+      impropriety of her being found there recurring to her mind, the
+      few minutes in which they continued were some of the most
+      uncomfortable in her life. Nor did he seem much more at ease;
+      when he spoke, his accent had none of its usual sedateness; and
+      he repeated his inquiries as to the time of her having left
+      Longbourn, and of her having stayed in Derbyshire, so often, and
+      in so hurried a way, as plainly spoke the distraction of his
+      thoughts.
+
+      At length every idea seemed to fail him; and, after standing a
+      few moments without saying a word, he suddenly recollected
+      himself, and took leave.
+
+      The others then joined her, and expressed admiration of his
+      figure; but Elizabeth heard not a word, and wholly engrossed by
+      her own feelings, followed them in silence. She was overpowered
+      by shame and vexation. Her coming there was the most unfortunate,
+      the most ill-judged thing in the world! How strange it must
+      appear to him! In what a disgraceful light might it not strike so
+      vain a man! It might seem as if she had purposely thrown herself
+      in his way again! Oh! why did she come? Or, why did he thus come
+      a day before he was expected? Had they been only ten minutes
+      sooner, they should have been beyond the reach of his
+      discrimination; for it was plain that he was that moment
+      arrived—that moment alighted from his horse or his carriage. She
+      blushed again and again over the perverseness of the meeting. And
+      his behaviour, so strikingly altered—what could it mean? That he
+      should even speak to her was amazing!—but to speak with such
+      civility, to inquire after her family! Never in her life had she
+      seen his manners so little dignified, never had he spoken with
+      such gentleness as on this unexpected meeting. What a contrast
+      did it offer to his last address in Rosings Park, when he put his
+      letter into her hand! She knew not what to think, or how to
+      account for it.
+
+      They had now entered a beautiful walk by the side of the water,
+      and every step was bringing forward a nobler fall of ground, or a
+      finer reach of the woods to which they were approaching; but it
+      was some time before Elizabeth was sensible of any of it; and,
+      though she answered mechanically to the repeated appeals of her
+      uncle and aunt, and seemed to direct her eyes to such objects as
+      they pointed out, she distinguished no part of the scene. Her
+      thoughts were all fixed on that one spot of Pemberley House,
+      whichever it might be, where Mr. Darcy then was. She longed to
+      know what at the moment was passing in his mind—in what manner he
+      thought of her, and whether, in defiance of everything, she was
+      still dear to him. Perhaps he had been civil only because he felt
+      himself at ease; yet there had been _that_ in his voice which was
+      not like ease. Whether he had felt more of pain or of pleasure in
+      seeing her she could not tell, but he certainly had not seen her
+      with composure.
+
+      At length, however, the remarks of her companions on her absence
+      of mind aroused her, and she felt the necessity of appearing more
+      like herself.
+
+      They entered the woods, and bidding adieu to the river for a
+      while, ascended some of the higher grounds; when, in spots where
+      the opening of the trees gave the eye power to wander, were many
+      charming views of the valley, the opposite hills, with the long
+      range of woods overspreading many, and occasionally part of the
+      stream. Mr. Gardiner expressed a wish of going round the whole
+      park, but feared it might be beyond a walk. With a triumphant
+      smile they were told that it was ten miles round. It settled the
+      matter; and they pursued the accustomed circuit; which brought
+      them again, after some time, in a descent among hanging woods, to
+      the edge of the water, and one of its narrowest parts. They
+      crossed it by a simple bridge, in character with the general air
+      of the scene; it was a spot less adorned than any they had yet
+      visited; and the valley, here contracted into a glen, allowed
+      room only for the stream, and a narrow walk amidst the rough
+      coppice-wood which bordered it. Elizabeth longed to explore its
+      windings; but when they had crossed the bridge, and perceived
+      their distance from the house, Mrs. Gardiner, who was not a great
+      walker, could go no farther, and thought only of returning to the
+      carriage as quickly as possible. Her niece was, therefore,
+      obliged to submit, and they took their way towards the house on
+      the opposite side of the river, in the nearest direction; but
+      their progress was slow, for Mr. Gardiner, though seldom able to
+      indulge the taste, was very fond of fishing, and was so much
+      engaged in watching the occasional appearance of some trout in
+      the water, and talking to the man about them, that he advanced
+      but little. Whilst wandering on in this slow manner, they were
+      again surprised, and Elizabeth’s astonishment was quite equal to
+      what it had been at first, by the sight of Mr. Darcy approaching
+      them, and at no great distance. The walk here being here less
+      sheltered than on the other side, allowed them to see him before
+      they met. Elizabeth, however astonished, was at least more
+      prepared for an interview than before, and resolved to appear and
+      to speak with calmness, if he really intended to meet them. For a
+      few moments, indeed, she felt that he would probably strike into
+      some other path. The idea lasted while a turning in the walk
+      concealed him from their view; the turning past, he was
+      immediately before them. With a glance, she saw that he had lost
+      none of his recent civility; and, to imitate his politeness, she
+      began, as they met, to admire the beauty of the place; but she
+      had not got beyond the words “delightful,” and “charming,” when
+      some unlucky recollections obtruded, and she fancied that praise
+      of Pemberley from her might be mischievously construed. Her
+      colour changed, and she said no more.
+
+      Mrs. Gardiner was standing a little behind; and on her pausing,
+      he asked her if she would do him the honour of introducing him to
+      her friends. This was a stroke of civility for which she was
+      quite unprepared; and she could hardly suppress a smile at his
+      being now seeking the acquaintance of some of those very people
+      against whom his pride had revolted in his offer to herself.
+      “What will be his surprise,” thought she, “when he knows who they
+      are? He takes them now for people of fashion.”
+
+      The introduction, however, was immediately made; and as she named
+      their relationship to herself, she stole a sly look at him, to
+      see how he bore it, and was not without the expectation of his
+      decamping as fast as he could from such disgraceful companions.
+      That he was _surprised_ by the connection was evident; he
+      sustained it, however, with fortitude, and so far from going
+      away, turned back with them, and entered into conversation with
+      Mr. Gardiner. Elizabeth could not but be pleased, could not but
+      triumph. It was consoling that he should know she had some
+      relations for whom there was no need to blush. She listened most
+      attentively to all that passed between them, and gloried in every
+      expression, every sentence of her uncle, which marked his
+      intelligence, his taste, or his good manners.
+
+      The conversation soon turned upon fishing; and she heard Mr.
+      Darcy invite him, with the greatest civility, to fish there as
+      often as he chose while he continued in the neighbourhood,
+      offering at the same time to supply him with fishing tackle, and
+      pointing out those parts of the stream where there was usually
+      most sport. Mrs. Gardiner, who was walking arm-in-arm with
+      Elizabeth, gave her a look expressive of wonder. Elizabeth said
+      nothing, but it gratified her exceedingly; the compliment must be
+      all for herself. Her astonishment, however, was extreme, and
+      continually was she repeating, “Why is he so altered? From what
+      can it proceed? It cannot be for _me_—it cannot be for _my_ sake
+      that his manners are thus softened. My reproofs at Hunsford could
+      not work such a change as this. It is impossible that he should
+      still love me.”
+
+      After walking some time in this way, the two ladies in front, the
+      two gentlemen behind, on resuming their places, after descending
+      to the brink of the river for the better inspection of some
+      curious water-plant, there chanced to be a little alteration. It
+      originated in Mrs. Gardiner, who, fatigued by the exercise of the
+      morning, found Elizabeth’s arm inadequate to her support, and
+      consequently preferred her husband’s. Mr. Darcy took her place by
+      her niece, and they walked on together. After a short silence,
+      the lady first spoke. She wished him to know that she had been
+      assured of his absence before she came to the place, and
+      accordingly began by observing, that his arrival had been very
+      unexpected—“for your housekeeper,” she added, “informed us that
+      you would certainly not be here till to-morrow; and indeed,
+      before we left Bakewell, we understood that you were not
+      immediately expected in the country.” He acknowledged the truth
+      of it all, and said that business with his steward had occasioned
+      his coming forward a few hours before the rest of the party with
+      whom he had been travelling. “They will join me early to-morrow,”
+      he continued, “and among them are some who will claim an
+      acquaintance with you—Mr. Bingley and his sisters.”
+
+      Elizabeth answered only by a slight bow. Her thoughts were
+      instantly driven back to the time when Mr. Bingley’s name had
+      been the last mentioned between them; and, if she might judge by
+      his complexion, _his_ mind was not very differently engaged.
+
+      “There is also one other person in the party,” he continued after
+      a pause, “who more particularly wishes to be known to you. Will
+      you allow me, or do I ask too much, to introduce my sister to
+      your acquaintance during your stay at Lambton?”
+
+      The surprise of such an application was great indeed; it was too
+      great for her to know in what manner she acceded to it. She
+      immediately felt that whatever desire Miss Darcy might have of
+      being acquainted with her must be the work of her brother, and,
+      without looking farther, it was satisfactory; it was gratifying
+      to know that his resentment had not made him think really ill of
+      her.
+
+      They now walked on in silence, each of them deep in thought.
+      Elizabeth was not comfortable; that was impossible; but she was
+      flattered and pleased. His wish of introducing his sister to her
+      was a compliment of the highest kind. They soon outstripped the
+      others, and when they had reached the carriage, Mr. and Mrs.
+      Gardiner were half a quarter of a mile behind.
+
+      He then asked her to walk into the house—but she declared herself
+      not tired, and they stood together on the lawn. At such a time
+      much might have been said, and silence was very awkward. She
+      wanted to talk, but there seemed to be an embargo on every
+      subject. At last she recollected that she had been travelling,
+      and they talked of Matlock and Dove Dale with great perseverance.
+      Yet time and her aunt moved slowly—and her patience and her ideas
+      were nearly worn out before the _tête-à-tête_ was over.
+
+      On Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner’s coming up they were all pressed to go
+      into the house and take some refreshment; but this was declined,
+      and they parted on each side with utmost politeness. Mr. Darcy
+      handed the ladies into the carriage; and when it drove off,
+      Elizabeth saw him walking slowly towards the house.
+
+      The observations of her uncle and aunt now began; and each of
+      them pronounced him to be infinitely superior to anything they
+      had expected. “He is perfectly well behaved, polite, and
+      unassuming,” said her uncle.
+
+      “There _is_ something a little stately in him, to be sure,”
+      replied her aunt, “but it is confined to his air, and is not
+      unbecoming. I can now say with the housekeeper, that though some
+      people may call him proud, _I_ have seen nothing of it.”
+
+      “I was never more surprised than by his behaviour to us. It was
+      more than civil; it was really attentive; and there was no
+      necessity for such attention. His acquaintance with Elizabeth was
+      very trifling.”
+
+      “To be sure, Lizzy,” said her aunt, “he is not so handsome as
+      Wickham; or, rather, he has not Wickham’s countenance, for his
+      features are perfectly good. But how came you to tell me that he
+      was so disagreeable?”
+
+      Elizabeth excused herself as well as she could; said that she had
+      liked him better when they had met in Kent than before, and that
+      she had never seen him so pleasant as this morning.
+
+      “But perhaps he may be a little whimsical in his civilities,”
+      replied her uncle. “Your great men often are; and therefore I
+      shall not take him at his word, as he might change his mind
+      another day, and warn me off his grounds.”
+
+      Elizabeth felt that they had entirely misunderstood his
+      character, but said nothing.
+
+      “From what we have seen of him,” continued Mrs. Gardiner, “I
+      really should not have thought that he could have behaved in so
+      cruel a way by anybody as he has done by poor Wickham. He has not
+      an ill-natured look. On the contrary, there is something pleasing
+      about his mouth when he speaks. And there is something of dignity
+      in his countenance that would not give one an unfavourable idea
+      of his heart. But, to be sure, the good lady who showed us his
+      house did give him a most flaming character! I could hardly help
+      laughing aloud sometimes. But he is a liberal master, I suppose,
+      and _that_ in the eye of a servant comprehends every virtue.”
+
+      Elizabeth here felt herself called on to say something in
+      vindication of his behaviour to Wickham; and therefore gave them
+      to understand, in as guarded a manner as she could, that by what
+      she had heard from his relations in Kent, his actions were
+      capable of a very different construction; and that his character
+      was by no means so faulty, nor Wickham’s so amiable, as they had
+      been considered in Hertfordshire. In confirmation of this, she
+      related the particulars of all the pecuniary transactions in
+      which they had been connected, without actually naming her
+      authority, but stating it to be such as might be relied on.
+
+      Mrs. Gardiner was surprised and concerned; but as they were now
+      approaching the scene of her former pleasures, every idea gave
+      way to the charm of recollection; and she was too much engaged in
+      pointing out to her husband all the interesting spots in its
+      environs to think of anything else. Fatigued as she had been by
+      the morning’s walk they had no sooner dined than she set off
+      again in quest of her former acquaintance, and the evening was
+      spent in the satisfactions of an intercourse renewed after many
+      years’ discontinuance.
+
+      The occurrences of the day were too full of interest to leave
+      Elizabeth much attention for any of these new friends; and she
+      could do nothing but think, and think with wonder, of Mr. Darcy’s
+      civility, and, above all, of his wishing her to be acquainted
+      with his sister.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 44
+
+      Elizabeth had settled it that Mr. Darcy would bring his sister to
+      visit her the very day after her reaching Pemberley; and was
+      consequently resolved not to be out of sight of the inn the whole
+      of that morning. But her conclusion was false; for on the very
+      morning after their arrival at Lambton, these visitors came. They
+      had been walking about the place with some of their new friends,
+      and were just returning to the inn to dress themselves for dining
+      with the same family, when the sound of a carriage drew them to a
+      window, and they saw a gentleman and a lady in a curricle driving
+      up the street. Elizabeth immediately recognizing the livery,
+      guessed what it meant, and imparted no small degree of her
+      surprise to her relations by acquainting them with the honour
+      which she expected. Her uncle and aunt were all amazement; and
+      the embarrassment of her manner as she spoke, joined to the
+      circumstance itself, and many of the circumstances of the
+      preceding day, opened to them a new idea on the business. Nothing
+      had ever suggested it before, but they felt that there was no
+      other way of accounting for such attentions from such a quarter
+      than by supposing a partiality for their niece. While these
+      newly-born notions were passing in their heads, the perturbation
+      of Elizabeth’s feelings was at every moment increasing. She was
+      quite amazed at her own discomposure; but amongst other causes of
+      disquiet, she dreaded lest the partiality of the brother should
+      have said too much in her favour; and, more than commonly anxious
+      to please, she naturally suspected that every power of pleasing
+      would fail her.
+
+      She retreated from the window, fearful of being seen; and as she
+      walked up and down the room, endeavouring to compose herself, saw
+      such looks of inquiring surprise in her uncle and aunt as made
+      everything worse.
+
+      Miss Darcy and her brother appeared, and this formidable
+      introduction took place. With astonishment did Elizabeth see that
+      her new acquaintance was at least as much embarrassed as herself.
+      Since her being at Lambton, she had heard that Miss Darcy was
+      exceedingly proud; but the observation of a very few minutes
+      convinced her that she was only exceedingly shy. She found it
+      difficult to obtain even a word from her beyond a monosyllable.
+
+      Miss Darcy was tall, and on a larger scale than Elizabeth; and,
+      though little more than sixteen, her figure was formed, and her
+      appearance womanly and graceful. She was less handsome than her
+      brother; but there was sense and good humour in her face, and her
+      manners were perfectly unassuming and gentle. Elizabeth, who had
+      expected to find in her as acute and unembarrassed an observer as
+      ever Mr. Darcy had been, was much relieved by discerning such
+      different feelings.
+
+      They had not long been together before Mr. Darcy told her that
+      Bingley was also coming to wait on her; and she had barely time
+      to express her satisfaction, and prepare for such a visitor, when
+      Bingley’s quick step was heard on the stairs, and in a moment he
+      entered the room. All Elizabeth’s anger against him had been long
+      done away; but had she still felt any, it could hardly have stood
+      its ground against the unaffected cordiality with which he
+      expressed himself on seeing her again. He inquired in a friendly,
+      though general way, after her family, and looked and spoke with
+      the same good-humoured ease that he had ever done.
+
+      To Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner he was scarcely a less interesting
+      personage than to herself. They had long wished to see him. The
+      whole party before them, indeed, excited a lively attention. The
+      suspicions which had just arisen of Mr. Darcy and their niece
+      directed their observation towards each with an earnest though
+      guarded inquiry; and they soon drew from those inquiries the full
+      conviction that one of them at least knew what it was to love. Of
+      the lady’s sensations they remained a little in doubt; but that
+      the gentleman was overflowing with admiration was evident enough.
+
+      Elizabeth, on her side, had much to do. She wanted to ascertain
+      the feelings of each of her visitors; she wanted to compose her
+      own, and to make herself agreeable to all; and in the latter
+      object, where she feared most to fail, she was most sure of
+      success, for those to whom she endeavoured to give pleasure were
+      prepossessed in her favour. Bingley was ready, Georgiana was
+      eager, and Darcy determined, to be pleased.
+
+      In seeing Bingley, her thoughts naturally flew to her sister;
+      and, oh! how ardently did she long to know whether any of his
+      were directed in a like manner. Sometimes she could fancy that he
+      talked less than on former occasions, and once or twice pleased
+      herself with the notion that, as he looked at her, he was trying
+      to trace a resemblance. But, though this might be imaginary, she
+      could not be deceived as to his behaviour to Miss Darcy, who had
+      been set up as a rival to Jane. No look appeared on either side
+      that spoke particular regard. Nothing occurred between them that
+      could justify the hopes of his sister. On this point she was soon
+      satisfied; and two or three little circumstances occurred ere
+      they parted, which, in her anxious interpretation, denoted a
+      recollection of Jane not untinctured by tenderness, and a wish of
+      saying more that might lead to the mention of her, had he dared.
+      He observed to her, at a moment when the others were talking
+      together, and in a tone which had something of real regret, that
+      it “was a very long time since he had had the pleasure of seeing
+      her;” and, before she could reply, he added, “It is above eight
+      months. We have not met since the 26th of November, when we were
+      all dancing together at Netherfield.”
+
+      Elizabeth was pleased to find his memory so exact; and he
+      afterwards took occasion to ask her, when unattended to by any of
+      the rest, whether _all_ her sisters were at Longbourn. There was
+      not much in the question, nor in the preceding remark; but there
+      was a look and a manner which gave them meaning.
+
+      It was not often that she could turn her eyes on Mr. Darcy
+      himself; but, whenever she did catch a glimpse, she saw an
+      expression of general complaisance, and in all that he said she
+      heard an accent so removed from _hauteur_ or disdain of his
+      companions, as convinced her that the improvement of manners
+      which she had yesterday witnessed however temporary its existence
+      might prove, had at least outlived one day. When she saw him thus
+      seeking the acquaintance and courting the good opinion of people
+      with whom any intercourse a few months ago would have been a
+      disgrace—when she saw him thus civil, not only to herself, but to
+      the very relations whom he had openly disdained, and recollected
+      their last lively scene in Hunsford Parsonage—the difference, the
+      change was so great, and struck so forcibly on her mind, that she
+      could hardly restrain her astonishment from being visible. Never,
+      even in the company of his dear friends at Netherfield, or his
+      dignified relations at Rosings, had she seen him so desirous to
+      please, so free from self-consequence or unbending reserve, as
+      now, when no importance could result from the success of his
+      endeavours, and when even the acquaintance of those to whom his
+      attentions were addressed would draw down the ridicule and
+      censure of the ladies both of Netherfield and Rosings.
+
+      Their visitors stayed with them above half-an-hour; and when they
+      arose to depart, Mr. Darcy called on his sister to join him in
+      expressing their wish of seeing Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, and Miss
+      Bennet, to dinner at Pemberley, before they left the country.
+      Miss Darcy, though with a diffidence which marked her little in
+      the habit of giving invitations, readily obeyed. Mrs. Gardiner
+      looked at her niece, desirous of knowing how _she_, whom the
+      invitation most concerned, felt disposed as to its acceptance,
+      but Elizabeth had turned away her head. Presuming however, that
+      this studied avoidance spoke rather a momentary embarrassment
+      than any dislike of the proposal, and seeing in her husband, who
+      was fond of society, a perfect willingness to accept it, she
+      ventured to engage for her attendance, and the day after the next
+      was fixed on.
+
+      Bingley expressed great pleasure in the certainty of seeing
+      Elizabeth again, having still a great deal to say to her, and
+      many inquiries to make after all their Hertfordshire friends.
+      Elizabeth, construing all this into a wish of hearing her speak
+      of her sister, was pleased, and on this account, as well as some
+      others, found herself, when their visitors left them, capable of
+      considering the last half-hour with some satisfaction, though
+      while it was passing, the enjoyment of it had been little. Eager
+      to be alone, and fearful of inquiries or hints from her uncle and
+      aunt, she stayed with them only long enough to hear their
+      favourable opinion of Bingley, and then hurried away to dress.
+
+      But she had no reason to fear Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner’s curiosity;
+      it was not their wish to force her communication. It was evident
+      that she was much better acquainted with Mr. Darcy than they had
+      before any idea of; it was evident that he was very much in love
+      with her. They saw much to interest, but nothing to justify
+      inquiry.
+
+      Of Mr. Darcy it was now a matter of anxiety to think well; and,
+      as far as their acquaintance reached, there was no fault to find.
+      They could not be untouched by his politeness; and had they drawn
+      his character from their own feelings and his servant’s report,
+      without any reference to any other account, the circle in
+      Hertfordshire to which he was known would not have recognized it
+      for Mr. Darcy. There was now an interest, however, in believing
+      the housekeeper; and they soon became sensible that the authority
+      of a servant who had known him since he was four years old, and
+      whose own manners indicated respectability, was not to be hastily
+      rejected. Neither had anything occurred in the intelligence of
+      their Lambton friends that could materially lessen its weight.
+      They had nothing to accuse him of but pride; pride he probably
+      had, and if not, it would certainly be imputed by the inhabitants
+      of a small market-town where the family did not visit. It was
+      acknowledged, however, that he was a liberal man, and did much
+      good among the poor.
+
+      With respect to Wickham, the travellers soon found that he was
+      not held there in much estimation; for though the chief of his
+      concerns with the son of his patron were imperfectly understood,
+      it was yet a well-known fact that, on his quitting Derbyshire, he
+      had left many debts behind him, which Mr. Darcy afterwards
+      discharged.
+
+      As for Elizabeth, her thoughts were at Pemberley this evening
+      more than the last; and the evening, though as it passed it
+      seemed long, was not long enough to determine her feelings
+      towards _one_ in that mansion; and she lay awake two whole hours
+      endeavouring to make them out. She certainly did not hate him.
+      No; hatred had vanished long ago, and she had almost as long been
+      ashamed of ever feeling a dislike against him, that could be so
+      called. The respect created by the conviction of his valuable
+      qualities, though at first unwillingly admitted, had for some
+      time ceased to be repugnant to her feeling; and it was now
+      heightened into somewhat of a friendlier nature, by the testimony
+      so highly in his favour, and bringing forward his disposition in
+      so amiable a light, which yesterday had produced. But above all,
+      above respect and esteem, there was a motive within her of
+      goodwill which could not be overlooked. It was gratitude;
+      gratitude, not merely for having once loved her, but for loving
+      her still well enough to forgive all the petulance and acrimony
+      of her manner in rejecting him, and all the unjust accusations
+      accompanying her rejection. He who, she had been persuaded, would
+      avoid her as his greatest enemy, seemed, on this accidental
+      meeting, most eager to preserve the acquaintance, and without any
+      indelicate display of regard, or any peculiarity of manner, where
+      their two selves only were concerned, was soliciting the good
+      opinion of her friends, and bent on making her known to his
+      sister. Such a change in a man of so much pride exciting not only
+      astonishment but gratitude—for to love, ardent love, it must be
+      attributed; and as such its impression on her was of a sort to be
+      encouraged, as by no means unpleasing, though it could not be
+      exactly defined. She respected, she esteemed, she was grateful to
+      him, she felt a real interest in his welfare; and she only wanted
+      to know how far she wished that welfare to depend upon herself,
+      and how far it would be for the happiness of both that she should
+      employ the power, which her fancy told her she still possessed,
+      of bringing on her the renewal of his addresses.
+
+      It had been settled in the evening between the aunt and the
+      niece, that such a striking civility as Miss Darcy’s in coming to
+      see them on the very day of her arrival at Pemberley, for she had
+      reached it only to a late breakfast, ought to be imitated, though
+      it could not be equalled, by some exertion of politeness on their
+      side; and, consequently, that it would be highly expedient to
+      wait on her at Pemberley the following morning. They were,
+      therefore, to go. Elizabeth was pleased; though when she asked
+      herself the reason, she had very little to say in reply.
+
+      Mr. Gardiner left them soon after breakfast. The fishing scheme
+      had been renewed the day before, and a positive engagement made
+      of his meeting some of the gentlemen at Pemberley before noon.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 45
+
+      Convinced as Elizabeth now was that Miss Bingley’s dislike of her
+      had originated in jealousy, she could not help feeling how
+      unwelcome her appearance at Pemberley must be to her, and was
+      curious to know with how much civility on that lady’s side the
+      acquaintance would now be renewed.
+
+      On reaching the house, they were shown through the hall into the
+      saloon, whose northern aspect rendered it delightful for summer.
+      Its windows opening to the ground, admitted a most refreshing
+      view of the high woody hills behind the house, and of the
+      beautiful oaks and Spanish chestnuts which were scattered over
+      the intermediate lawn.
+
+      In this house they were received by Miss Darcy, who was sitting
+      there with Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley, and the lady with whom
+      she lived in London. Georgiana’s reception of them was very
+      civil, but attended with all the embarrassment which, though
+      proceeding from shyness and the fear of doing wrong, would easily
+      give to those who felt themselves inferior the belief of her
+      being proud and reserved. Mrs. Gardiner and her niece, however,
+      did her justice, and pitied her.
+
+      By Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley they were noticed only by a
+      curtsey; and, on their being seated, a pause, awkward as such
+      pauses must always be, succeeded for a few moments. It was first
+      broken by Mrs. Annesley, a genteel, agreeable-looking woman,
+      whose endeavour to introduce some kind of discourse proved her to
+      be more truly well-bred than either of the others; and between
+      her and Mrs. Gardiner, with occasional help from Elizabeth, the
+      conversation was carried on. Miss Darcy looked as if she wished
+      for courage enough to join in it; and sometimes did venture a
+      short sentence when there was least danger of its being heard.
+
+      Elizabeth soon saw that she was herself closely watched by Miss
+      Bingley, and that she could not speak a word, especially to Miss
+      Darcy, without calling her attention. This observation would not
+      have prevented her from trying to talk to the latter, had they
+      not been seated at an inconvenient distance; but she was not
+      sorry to be spared the necessity of saying much. Her own thoughts
+      were employing her. She expected every moment that some of the
+      gentlemen would enter the room. She wished, she feared that the
+      master of the house might be amongst them; and whether she wished
+      or feared it most, she could scarcely determine. After sitting in
+      this manner a quarter of an hour without hearing Miss Bingley’s
+      voice, Elizabeth was roused by receiving from her a cold inquiry
+      after the health of her family. She answered with equal
+      indifference and brevity, and the other said no more.
+
+      The next variation which their visit afforded was produced by the
+      entrance of servants with cold meat, cake, and a variety of all
+      the finest fruits in season; but this did not take place till
+      after many a significant look and smile from Mrs. Annesley to
+      Miss Darcy had been given, to remind her of her post. There was
+      now employment for the whole party—for though they could not all
+      talk, they could all eat; and the beautiful pyramids of grapes,
+      nectarines, and peaches soon collected them round the table.
+
+      While thus engaged, Elizabeth had a fair opportunity of deciding
+      whether she most feared or wished for the appearance of Mr.
+      Darcy, by the feelings which prevailed on his entering the room;
+      and then, though but a moment before she had believed her wishes
+      to predominate, she began to regret that he came.
+
+      He had been some time with Mr. Gardiner, who, with two or three
+      other gentlemen from the house, was engaged by the river, and had
+      left him only on learning that the ladies of the family intended
+      a visit to Georgiana that morning. No sooner did he appear than
+      Elizabeth wisely resolved to be perfectly easy and unembarrassed;
+      a resolution the more necessary to be made, but perhaps not the
+      more easily kept, because she saw that the suspicions of the
+      whole party were awakened against them, and that there was
+      scarcely an eye which did not watch his behaviour when he first
+      came into the room. In no countenance was attentive curiosity so
+      strongly marked as in Miss Bingley’s, in spite of the smiles
+      which overspread her face whenever she spoke to one of its
+      objects; for jealousy had not yet made her desperate, and her
+      attentions to Mr. Darcy were by no means over. Miss Darcy, on her
+      brother’s entrance, exerted herself much more to talk, and
+      Elizabeth saw that he was anxious for his sister and herself to
+      get acquainted, and forwarded as much as possible, every attempt
+      at conversation on either side. Miss Bingley saw all this
+      likewise; and, in the imprudence of anger, took the first
+      opportunity of saying, with sneering civility:
+
+      “Pray, Miss Eliza, are not the ——shire Militia removed from
+      Meryton? They must be a great loss to _your_ family.”
+
+      In Darcy’s presence she dared not mention Wickham’s name; but
+      Elizabeth instantly comprehended that he was uppermost in her
+      thoughts; and the various recollections connected with him gave
+      her a moment’s distress; but exerting herself vigorously to repel
+      the ill-natured attack, she presently answered the question in a
+      tolerably detached tone. While she spoke, an involuntary glance
+      showed her Darcy, with a heightened complexion, earnestly looking
+      at her, and his sister overcome with confusion, and unable to
+      lift up her eyes. Had Miss Bingley known what pain she was then
+      giving her beloved friend, she undoubtedly would have refrained
+      from the hint; but she had merely intended to discompose
+      Elizabeth by bringing forward the idea of a man to whom she
+      believed her partial, to make her betray a sensibility which
+      might injure her in Darcy’s opinion, and, perhaps, to remind the
+      latter of all the follies and absurdities by which some part of
+      her family were connected with that corps. Not a syllable had
+      ever reached her of Miss Darcy’s meditated elopement. To no
+      creature had it been revealed, where secrecy was possible, except
+      to Elizabeth; and from all Bingley’s connections her brother was
+      particularly anxious to conceal it, from the very wish which
+      Elizabeth had long ago attributed to him, of their becoming
+      hereafter her own. He had certainly formed such a plan, and
+      without meaning that it should affect his endeavour to separate
+      him from Miss Bennet, it is probable that it might add something
+      to his lively concern for the welfare of his friend.
+
+      Elizabeth’s collected behaviour, however, soon quieted his
+      emotion; and as Miss Bingley, vexed and disappointed, dared not
+      approach nearer to Wickham, Georgiana also recovered in time,
+      though not enough to be able to speak any more. Her brother,
+      whose eye she feared to meet, scarcely recollected her interest
+      in the affair, and the very circumstance which had been designed
+      to turn his thoughts from Elizabeth seemed to have fixed them on
+      her more and more cheerfully.
+
+      Their visit did not continue long after the question and answer
+      above mentioned; and while Mr. Darcy was attending them to their
+      carriage Miss Bingley was venting her feelings in criticisms on
+      Elizabeth’s person, behaviour, and dress. But Georgiana would not
+      join her. Her brother’s recommendation was enough to ensure her
+      favour; his judgement could not err. And he had spoken in such
+      terms of Elizabeth as to leave Georgiana without the power of
+      finding her otherwise than lovely and amiable. When Darcy
+      returned to the saloon, Miss Bingley could not help repeating to
+      him some part of what she had been saying to his sister.
+
+      “How very ill Miss Eliza Bennet looks this morning, Mr. Darcy,”
+      she cried; “I never in my life saw anyone so much altered as she
+      is since the winter. She is grown so brown and coarse! Louisa and
+      I were agreeing that we should not have known her again.”
+
+      However little Mr. Darcy might have liked such an address, he
+      contented himself with coolly replying that he perceived no other
+      alteration than her being rather tanned, no miraculous
+      consequence of travelling in the summer.
+
+      “For my own part,” she rejoined, “I must confess that I never
+      could see any beauty in her. Her face is too thin; her complexion
+      has no brilliancy; and her features are not at all handsome. Her
+      nose wants character—there is nothing marked in its lines. Her
+      teeth are tolerable, but not out of the common way; and as for
+      her eyes, which have sometimes been called so fine, I could never
+      see anything extraordinary in them. They have a sharp, shrewish
+      look, which I do not like at all; and in her air altogether there
+      is a self-sufficiency without fashion, which is intolerable.”
+
+      Persuaded as Miss Bingley was that Darcy admired Elizabeth, this
+      was not the best method of recommending herself; but angry people
+      are not always wise; and in seeing him at last look somewhat
+      nettled, she had all the success she expected. He was resolutely
+      silent, however, and, from a determination of making him speak,
+      she continued:
+
+      “I remember, when we first knew her in Hertfordshire, how amazed
+      we all were to find that she was a reputed beauty; and I
+      particularly recollect your saying one night, after they had been
+      dining at Netherfield, ‘_She_ a beauty!—I should as soon call her
+      mother a wit.’ But afterwards she seemed to improve on you, and I
+      believe you thought her rather pretty at one time.”
+
+      “Yes,” replied Darcy, who could contain himself no longer, “but
+      _that_ was only when I first saw her, for it is many months since
+      I have considered her as one of the handsomest women of my
+      acquaintance.”
+
+      He then went away, and Miss Bingley was left to all the
+      satisfaction of having forced him to say what gave no one any
+      pain but herself.
+
+      Mrs. Gardiner and Elizabeth talked of all that had occurred
+      during their visit, as they returned, except what had
+      particularly interested them both. The look and behaviour of
+      everybody they had seen were discussed, except of the person who
+      had mostly engaged their attention. They talked of his sister,
+      his friends, his house, his fruit—of everything but himself; yet
+      Elizabeth was longing to know what Mrs. Gardiner thought of him,
+      and Mrs. Gardiner would have been highly gratified by her niece’s
+      beginning the subject.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 46
+
+      Elizabeth had been a good deal disappointed in not finding a
+      letter from Jane on their first arrival at Lambton; and this
+      disappointment had been renewed on each of the mornings that had
+      now been spent there; but on the third her repining was over, and
+      her sister justified, by the receipt of two letters from her at
+      once, on one of which was marked that it had been missent
+      elsewhere. Elizabeth was not surprised at it, as Jane had written
+      the direction remarkably ill.
+
+      They had just been preparing to walk as the letters came in; and
+      her uncle and aunt, leaving her to enjoy them in quiet, set off
+      by themselves. The one missent must first be attended to; it had
+      been written five days ago. The beginning contained an account of
+      all their little parties and engagements, with such news as the
+      country afforded; but the latter half, which was dated a day
+      later, and written in evident agitation, gave more important
+      intelligence. It was to this effect:
+
+      “Since writing the above, dearest Lizzy, something has occurred
+      of a most unexpected and serious nature; but I am afraid of
+      alarming you—be assured that we are all well. What I have to say
+      relates to poor Lydia. An express came at twelve last night, just
+      as we were all gone to bed, from Colonel Forster, to inform us
+      that she was gone off to Scotland with one of his officers; to
+      own the truth, with Wickham! Imagine our surprise. To Kitty,
+      however, it does not seem so wholly unexpected. I am very, very
+      sorry. So imprudent a match on both sides! But I am willing to
+      hope the best, and that his character has been misunderstood.
+      Thoughtless and indiscreet I can easily believe him, but this
+      step (and let us rejoice over it) marks nothing bad at heart. His
+      choice is disinterested at least, for he must know my father can
+      give her nothing. Our poor mother is sadly grieved. My father
+      bears it better. How thankful am I that we never let them know
+      what has been said against him; we must forget it ourselves. They
+      were off Saturday night about twelve, as is conjectured, but were
+      not missed till yesterday morning at eight. The express was sent
+      off directly. My dear Lizzy, they must have passed within ten
+      miles of us. Colonel Forster gives us reason to expect him here
+      soon. Lydia left a few lines for his wife, informing her of their
+      intention. I must conclude, for I cannot be long from my poor
+      mother. I am afraid you will not be able to make it out, but I
+      hardly know what I have written.”
+
+      Without allowing herself time for consideration, and scarcely
+      knowing what she felt, Elizabeth on finishing this letter
+      instantly seized the other, and opening it with the utmost
+      impatience, read as follows: it had been written a day later than
+      the conclusion of the first.
+
+      “By this time, my dearest sister, you have received my hurried
+      letter; I wish this may be more intelligible, but though not
+      confined for time, my head is so bewildered that I cannot answer
+      for being coherent. Dearest Lizzy, I hardly know what I would
+      write, but I have bad news for you, and it cannot be delayed.
+      Imprudent as the marriage between Mr. Wickham and our poor Lydia
+      would be, we are now anxious to be assured it has taken place,
+      for there is but too much reason to fear they are not gone to
+      Scotland. Colonel Forster came yesterday, having left Brighton
+      the day before, not many hours after the express. Though Lydia’s
+      short letter to Mrs. F. gave them to understand that they were
+      going to Gretna Green, something was dropped by Denny expressing
+      his belief that W. never intended to go there, or to marry Lydia
+      at all, which was repeated to Colonel F., who, instantly taking
+      the alarm, set off from B. intending to trace their route. He did
+      trace them easily to Clapham, but no further; for on entering
+      that place, they removed into a hackney coach, and dismissed the
+      chaise that brought them from Epsom. All that is known after this
+      is, that they were seen to continue the London road. I know not
+      what to think. After making every possible inquiry on that side
+      London, Colonel F. came on into Hertfordshire, anxiously renewing
+      them at all the turnpikes, and at the inns in Barnet and
+      Hatfield, but without any success—no such people had been seen to
+      pass through. With the kindest concern he came on to Longbourn,
+      and broke his apprehensions to us in a manner most creditable to
+      his heart. I am sincerely grieved for him and Mrs. F., but no one
+      can throw any blame on them. Our distress, my dear Lizzy, is very
+      great. My father and mother believe the worst, but I cannot think
+      so ill of him. Many circumstances might make it more eligible for
+      them to be married privately in town than to pursue their first
+      plan; and even if _he_ could form such a design against a young
+      woman of Lydia’s connections, which is not likely, can I suppose
+      her so lost to everything? Impossible! I grieve to find, however,
+      that Colonel F. is not disposed to depend upon their marriage; he
+      shook his head when I expressed my hopes, and said he feared W.
+      was not a man to be trusted. My poor mother is really ill, and
+      keeps her room. Could she exert herself, it would be better; but
+      this is not to be expected. And as to my father, I never in my
+      life saw him so affected. Poor Kitty has anger for having
+      concealed their attachment; but as it was a matter of confidence,
+      one cannot wonder. I am truly glad, dearest Lizzy, that you have
+      been spared something of these distressing scenes; but now, as
+      the first shock is over, shall I own that I long for your return?
+      I am not so selfish, however, as to press for it, if
+      inconvenient. Adieu! I take up my pen again to do what I have
+      just told you I would not; but circumstances are such that I
+      cannot help earnestly begging you all to come here as soon as
+      possible. I know my dear uncle and aunt so well, that I am not
+      afraid of requesting it, though I have still something more to
+      ask of the former. My father is going to London with Colonel
+      Forster instantly, to try to discover her. What he means to do I
+      am sure I know not; but his excessive distress will not allow him
+      to pursue any measure in the best and safest way, and Colonel
+      Forster is obliged to be at Brighton again to-morrow evening. In
+      such an exigence, my uncle’s advice and assistance would be
+      everything in the world; he will immediately comprehend what I
+      must feel, and I rely upon his goodness.”
+
+      “Oh! where, where is my uncle?” cried Elizabeth, darting from her
+      seat as she finished the letter, in eagerness to follow him,
+      without losing a moment of the time so precious; but as she
+      reached the door it was opened by a servant, and Mr. Darcy
+      appeared. Her pale face and impetuous manner made him start, and
+      before he could recover himself to speak, she, in whose mind
+      every idea was superseded by Lydia’s situation, hastily
+      exclaimed, “I beg your pardon, but I must leave you. I must find
+      Mr. Gardiner this moment, on business that cannot be delayed; I
+      have not an instant to lose.”
+
+      “Good God! what is the matter?” cried he, with more feeling than
+      politeness; then recollecting himself, “I will not detain you a
+      minute; but let me, or let the servant go after Mr. and Mrs.
+      Gardiner. You are not well enough; you cannot go yourself.”
+
+      Elizabeth hesitated, but her knees trembled under her and she
+      felt how little would be gained by her attempting to pursue them.
+      Calling back the servant, therefore, she commissioned him, though
+      in so breathless an accent as made her almost unintelligible, to
+      fetch his master and mistress home instantly.
+
+      On his quitting the room she sat down, unable to support herself,
+      and looking so miserably ill, that it was impossible for Darcy to
+      leave her, or to refrain from saying, in a tone of gentleness and
+      commiseration, “Let me call your maid. Is there nothing you could
+      take to give you present relief? A glass of wine; shall I get you
+      one? You are very ill.”
+
+      “No, I thank you,” she replied, endeavouring to recover herself.
+      “There is nothing the matter with me. I am quite well; I am only
+      distressed by some dreadful news which I have just received from
+      Longbourn.”
+
+      She burst into tears as she alluded to it, and for a few minutes
+      could not speak another word. Darcy, in wretched suspense, could
+      only say something indistinctly of his concern, and observe her
+      in compassionate silence. At length she spoke again. “I have just
+      had a letter from Jane, with such dreadful news. It cannot be
+      concealed from anyone. My younger sister has left all her
+      friends—has eloped; has thrown herself into the power of—of Mr.
+      Wickham. They are gone off together from Brighton. _You_ know him
+      too well to doubt the rest. She has no money, no connections,
+      nothing that can tempt him to—she is lost for ever.”
+
+      Darcy was fixed in astonishment. “When I consider,” she added in
+      a yet more agitated voice, “that _I_ might have prevented it! _I_
+      who knew what he was. Had I but explained some part of it
+      only—some part of what I learnt, to my own family! Had his
+      character been known, this could not have happened. But it is
+      all—all too late now.”
+
+      “I am grieved indeed,” cried Darcy; “grieved—shocked. But is it
+      certain—absolutely certain?”
+
+      “Oh, yes! They left Brighton together on Sunday night, and were
+      traced almost to London, but not beyond; they are certainly not
+      gone to Scotland.”
+
+      “And what has been done, what has been attempted, to recover
+      her?”
+
+      “My father is gone to London, and Jane has written to beg my
+      uncle’s immediate assistance; and we shall be off, I hope, in
+      half-an-hour. But nothing can be done—I know very well that
+      nothing can be done. How is such a man to be worked on? How are
+      they even to be discovered? I have not the smallest hope. It is
+      every way horrible!”
+
+      Darcy shook his head in silent acquiescence.
+
+      “When _my_ eyes were opened to his real character—Oh! had I known
+      what I ought, what I dared to do! But I knew not—I was afraid of
+      doing too much. Wretched, wretched mistake!”
+
+      Darcy made no answer. He seemed scarcely to hear her, and was
+      walking up and down the room in earnest meditation, his brow
+      contracted, his air gloomy. Elizabeth soon observed, and
+      instantly understood it. Her power was sinking; everything _must_
+      sink under such a proof of family weakness, such an assurance of
+      the deepest disgrace. She could neither wonder nor condemn, but
+      the belief of his self-conquest brought nothing consolatory to
+      her bosom, afforded no palliation of her distress. It was, on the
+      contrary, exactly calculated to make her understand her own
+      wishes; and never had she so honestly felt that she could have
+      loved him, as now, when all love must be vain.
+
+      But self, though it would intrude, could not engross her.
+      Lydia—the humiliation, the misery she was bringing on them all,
+      soon swallowed up every private care; and covering her face with
+      her handkerchief, Elizabeth was soon lost to everything else;
+      and, after a pause of several minutes, was only recalled to a
+      sense of her situation by the voice of her companion, who, in a
+      manner which, though it spoke compassion, spoke likewise
+      restraint, said, “I am afraid you have been long desiring my
+      absence, nor have I anything to plead in excuse of my stay, but
+      real, though unavailing concern. Would to Heaven that anything
+      could be either said or done on my part that might offer
+      consolation to such distress! But I will not torment you with
+      vain wishes, which may seem purposely to ask for your thanks.
+      This unfortunate affair will, I fear, prevent my sister’s having
+      the pleasure of seeing you at Pemberley to-day.”
+
+      “Oh, yes. Be so kind as to apologise for us to Miss Darcy. Say
+      that urgent business calls us home immediately. Conceal the
+      unhappy truth as long as it is possible, I know it cannot be
+      long.”
+
+      He readily assured her of his secrecy; again expressed his sorrow
+      for her distress, wished it a happier conclusion than there was
+      at present reason to hope, and leaving his compliments for her
+      relations, with only one serious, parting look, went away.
+
+      As he quitted the room, Elizabeth felt how improbable it was that
+      they should ever see each other again on such terms of cordiality
+      as had marked their several meetings in Derbyshire; and as she
+      threw a retrospective glance over the whole of their
+      acquaintance, so full of contradictions and varieties, sighed at
+      the perverseness of those feelings which would now have promoted
+      its continuance, and would formerly have rejoiced in its
+      termination.
+
+      If gratitude and esteem are good foundations of affection,
+      Elizabeth’s change of sentiment will be neither improbable nor
+      faulty. But if otherwise—if regard springing from such sources is
+      unreasonable or unnatural, in comparison of what is so often
+      described as arising on a first interview with its object, and
+      even before two words have been exchanged, nothing can be said in
+      her defence, except that she had given somewhat of a trial to the
+      latter method in her partiality for Wickham, and that its ill
+      success might, perhaps, authorise her to seek the other less
+      interesting mode of attachment. Be that as it may, she saw him go
+      with regret; and in this early example of what Lydia’s infamy
+      must produce, found additional anguish as she reflected on that
+      wretched business. Never, since reading Jane’s second letter, had
+      she entertained a hope of Wickham’s meaning to marry her. No one
+      but Jane, she thought, could flatter herself with such an
+      expectation. Surprise was the least of her feelings on this
+      development. While the contents of the first letter remained in
+      her mind, she was all surprise—all astonishment that Wickham
+      should marry a girl whom it was impossible he could marry for
+      money; and how Lydia could ever have attached him had appeared
+      incomprehensible. But now it was all too natural. For such an
+      attachment as this she might have sufficient charms; and though
+      she did not suppose Lydia to be deliberately engaging in an
+      elopement without the intention of marriage, she had no
+      difficulty in believing that neither her virtue nor her
+      understanding would preserve her from falling an easy prey.
+
+      She had never perceived, while the regiment was in Hertfordshire,
+      that Lydia had any partiality for him; but she was convinced that
+      Lydia wanted only encouragement to attach herself to anybody.
+      Sometimes one officer, sometimes another, had been her favourite,
+      as their attentions raised them in her opinion. Her affections
+      had continually been fluctuating but never without an object. The
+      mischief of neglect and mistaken indulgence towards such a
+      girl—oh! how acutely did she now feel it!
+
+      She was wild to be at home—to hear, to see, to be upon the spot
+      to share with Jane in the cares that must now fall wholly upon
+      her, in a family so deranged, a father absent, a mother incapable
+      of exertion, and requiring constant attendance; and though almost
+      persuaded that nothing could be done for Lydia, her uncle’s
+      interference seemed of the utmost importance, and till he entered
+      the room her impatience was severe. Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner had
+      hurried back in alarm, supposing by the servant’s account that
+      their niece was taken suddenly ill; but satisfying them instantly
+      on that head, she eagerly communicated the cause of their
+      summons, reading the two letters aloud, and dwelling on the
+      postscript of the last with trembling energy.— Though Lydia had
+      never been a favourite with them, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner could not
+      but be deeply afflicted. Not Lydia only, but all were concerned
+      in it; and after the first exclamations of surprise and horror,
+      Mr. Gardiner promised every assistance in his power. Elizabeth,
+      though expecting no less, thanked him with tears of gratitude;
+      and all three being actuated by one spirit, everything relating
+      to their journey was speedily settled. They were to be off as
+      soon as possible. “But what is to be done about Pemberley?” cried
+      Mrs. Gardiner. “John told us Mr. Darcy was here when you sent for
+      us; was it so?”
+
+      “Yes; and I told him we should not be able to keep our
+      engagement. _That_ is all settled.”
+
+      “What is all settled?” repeated the other, as she ran into her
+      room to prepare. “And are they upon such terms as for her to
+      disclose the real truth? Oh, that I knew how it was!”
+
+      But wishes were vain, or at least could only serve to amuse her
+      in the hurry and confusion of the following hour. Had Elizabeth
+      been at leisure to be idle, she would have remained certain that
+      all employment was impossible to one so wretched as herself; but
+      she had her share of business as well as her aunt, and amongst
+      the rest there were notes to be written to all their friends at
+      Lambton, with false excuses for their sudden departure. An hour,
+      however, saw the whole completed; and Mr. Gardiner meanwhile
+      having settled his account at the inn, nothing remained to be
+      done but to go; and Elizabeth, after all the misery of the
+      morning, found herself, in a shorter space of time than she could
+      have supposed, seated in the carriage, and on the road to
+      Longbourn.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 47
+
+      “I have been thinking it over again, Elizabeth,” said her uncle,
+      as they drove from the town; “and really, upon serious
+      consideration, I am much more inclined than I was to judge as
+      your eldest sister does on the matter. It appears to me so very
+      unlikely that any young man should form such a design against a
+      girl who is by no means unprotected or friendless, and who was
+      actually staying in his colonel’s family, that I am strongly
+      inclined to hope the best. Could he expect that her friends would
+      not step forward? Could he expect to be noticed again by the
+      regiment, after such an affront to Colonel Forster? His
+      temptation is not adequate to the risk!”
+
+      “Do you really think so?” cried Elizabeth, brightening up for a
+      moment.
+
+      “Upon my word,” said Mrs. Gardiner, “I begin to be of your
+      uncle’s opinion. It is really too great a violation of decency,
+      honour, and interest, for him to be guilty of. I cannot think so
+      very ill of Wickham. Can you yourself, Lizzy, so wholly give him
+      up, as to believe him capable of it?”
+
+      “Not, perhaps, of neglecting his own interest; but of every other
+      neglect I can believe him capable. If, indeed, it should be so!
+      But I dare not hope it. Why should they not go on to Scotland if
+      that had been the case?”
+
+      “In the first place,” replied Mr. Gardiner, “there is no absolute
+      proof that they are not gone to Scotland.”
+
+      “Oh! but their removing from the chaise into a hackney coach is
+      such a presumption! And, besides, no traces of them were to be
+      found on the Barnet road.”
+
+      “Well, then—supposing them to be in London. They may be there,
+      though for the purpose of concealment, for no more exceptional
+      purpose. It is not likely that money should be very abundant on
+      either side; and it might strike them that they could be more
+      economically, though less expeditiously, married in London than
+      in Scotland.”
+
+      “But why all this secrecy? Why any fear of detection? Why must
+      their marriage be private? Oh, no, no—this is not likely. His
+      most particular friend, you see by Jane’s account, was persuaded
+      of his never intending to marry her. Wickham will never marry a
+      woman without some money. He cannot afford it. And what claims
+      has Lydia—what attraction has she beyond youth, health, and good
+      humour that could make him, for her sake, forego every chance of
+      benefiting himself by marrying well? As to what restraint the
+      apprehensions of disgrace in the corps might throw on a
+      dishonourable elopement with her, I am not able to judge; for I
+      know nothing of the effects that such a step might produce. But
+      as to your other objection, I am afraid it will hardly hold good.
+      Lydia has no brothers to step forward; and he might imagine, from
+      my father’s behaviour, from his indolence and the little
+      attention he has ever seemed to give to what was going forward in
+      his family, that _he_ would do as little, and think as little
+      about it, as any father could do, in such a matter.”
+
+      “But can you think that Lydia is so lost to everything but love
+      of him as to consent to live with him on any terms other than
+      marriage?”
+
+      “It does seem, and it is most shocking indeed,” replied
+      Elizabeth, with tears in her eyes, “that a sister’s sense of
+      decency and virtue in such a point should admit of doubt. But,
+      really, I know not what to say. Perhaps I am not doing her
+      justice. But she is very young; she has never been taught to
+      think on serious subjects; and for the last half-year, nay, for a
+      twelvemonth—she has been given up to nothing but amusement and
+      vanity. She has been allowed to dispose of her time in the most
+      idle and frivolous manner, and to adopt any opinions that came in
+      her way. Since the ——shire were first quartered in Meryton,
+      nothing but love, flirtation, and officers have been in her head.
+      She has been doing everything in her power by thinking and
+      talking on the subject, to give greater—what shall I call it?
+      susceptibility to her feelings; which are naturally lively
+      enough. And we all know that Wickham has every charm of person
+      and address that can captivate a woman.”
+
+      “But you see that Jane,” said her aunt, “does not think so very
+      ill of Wickham as to believe him capable of the attempt.”
+
+      “Of whom does Jane ever think ill? And who is there, whatever
+      might be their former conduct, that she would think capable of
+      such an attempt, till it were proved against them? But Jane
+      knows, as well as I do, what Wickham really is. We both know that
+      he has been profligate in every sense of the word; that he has
+      neither integrity nor honour; that he is as false and deceitful
+      as he is insinuating.”
+
+      “And do you really know all this?” cried Mrs. Gardiner, whose
+      curiosity as to the mode of her intelligence was all alive.
+
+      “I do indeed,” replied Elizabeth, colouring. “I told you, the
+      other day, of his infamous behaviour to Mr. Darcy; and you
+      yourself, when last at Longbourn, heard in what manner he spoke
+      of the man who had behaved with such forbearance and liberality
+      towards him. And there are other circumstances which I am not at
+      liberty—which it is not worth while to relate; but his lies about
+      the whole Pemberley family are endless. From what he said of Miss
+      Darcy I was thoroughly prepared to see a proud, reserved,
+      disagreeable girl. Yet he knew to the contrary himself. He must
+      know that she was as amiable and unpretending as we have found
+      her.”
+
+      “But does Lydia know nothing of this? can she be ignorant of what
+      you and Jane seem so well to understand?”
+
+      “Oh, yes!—that, that is the worst of all. Till I was in Kent, and
+      saw so much both of Mr. Darcy and his relation Colonel
+      Fitzwilliam, I was ignorant of the truth myself. And when I
+      returned home, the ——shire was to leave Meryton in a week or
+      fortnight’s time. As that was the case, neither Jane, to whom I
+      related the whole, nor I, thought it necessary to make our
+      knowledge public; for of what use could it apparently be to any
+      one, that the good opinion which all the neighbourhood had of him
+      should then be overthrown? And even when it was settled that
+      Lydia should go with Mrs. Forster, the necessity of opening her
+      eyes to his character never occurred to me. That _she_ could be
+      in any danger from the deception never entered my head. That such
+      a consequence as _this_ could ensue, you may easily believe, was
+      far enough from my thoughts.”
+
+      “When they all removed to Brighton, therefore, you had no reason,
+      I suppose, to believe them fond of each other?”
+
+      “Not the slightest. I can remember no symptom of affection on
+      either side; and had anything of the kind been perceptible, you
+      must be aware that ours is not a family on which it could be
+      thrown away. When first he entered the corps, she was ready
+      enough to admire him; but so we all were. Every girl in or near
+      Meryton was out of her senses about him for the first two months;
+      but he never distinguished _her_ by any particular attention;
+      and, consequently, after a moderate period of extravagant and
+      wild admiration, her fancy for him gave way, and others of the
+      regiment, who treated her with more distinction, again became her
+      favourites.”
+
+      It may be easily believed, that however little of novelty could
+      be added to their fears, hopes, and conjectures, on this
+      interesting subject, by its repeated discussion, no other could
+      detain them from it long, during the whole of the journey. From
+      Elizabeth’s thoughts it was never absent. Fixed there by the
+      keenest of all anguish, self-reproach, she could find no interval
+      of ease or forgetfulness.
+
+      They travelled as expeditiously as possible, and, sleeping one
+      night on the road, reached Longbourn by dinner time the next day.
+      It was a comfort to Elizabeth to consider that Jane could not
+      have been wearied by long expectations.
+
+      The little Gardiners, attracted by the sight of a chaise, were
+      standing on the steps of the house as they entered the paddock;
+      and, when the carriage drove up to the door, the joyful surprise
+      that lighted up their faces, and displayed itself over their
+      whole bodies, in a variety of capers and frisks, was the first
+      pleasing earnest of their welcome.
+
+      Elizabeth jumped out; and, after giving each of them a hasty
+      kiss, hurried into the vestibule, where Jane, who came running
+      down from her mother’s apartment, immediately met her.
+
+      Elizabeth, as she affectionately embraced her, whilst tears
+      filled the eyes of both, lost not a moment in asking whether
+      anything had been heard of the fugitives.
+
+      “Not yet,” replied Jane. “But now that my dear uncle is come, I
+      hope everything will be well.”
+
+      “Is my father in town?”
+
+      “Yes, he went on Tuesday, as I wrote you word.”
+
+      “And have you heard from him often?”
+
+      “We have heard only twice. He wrote me a few lines on Wednesday
+      to say that he had arrived in safety, and to give me his
+      directions, which I particularly begged him to do. He merely
+      added that he should not write again till he had something of
+      importance to mention.”
+
+      “And my mother—how is she? How are you all?”
+
+      “My mother is tolerably well, I trust; though her spirits are
+      greatly shaken. She is up stairs and will have great satisfaction
+      in seeing you all. She does not yet leave her dressing-room. Mary
+      and Kitty, thank Heaven, are quite well.”
+
+      “But you—how are you?” cried Elizabeth. “You look pale. How much
+      you must have gone through!”
+
+      Her sister, however, assured her of her being perfectly well; and
+      their conversation, which had been passing while Mr. and Mrs.
+      Gardiner were engaged with their children, was now put an end to
+      by the approach of the whole party. Jane ran to her uncle and
+      aunt, and welcomed and thanked them both, with alternate smiles
+      and tears.
+
+      When they were all in the drawing-room, the questions which
+      Elizabeth had already asked were of course repeated by the
+      others, and they soon found that Jane had no intelligence to
+      give. The sanguine hope of good, however, which the benevolence
+      of her heart suggested had not yet deserted her; she still
+      expected that it would all end well, and that every morning would
+      bring some letter, either from Lydia or her father, to explain
+      their proceedings, and, perhaps, announce their marriage.
+
+      Mrs. Bennet, to whose apartment they all repaired, after a few
+      minutes’ conversation together, received them exactly as might be
+      expected; with tears and lamentations of regret, invectives
+      against the villainous conduct of Wickham, and complaints of her
+      own sufferings and ill-usage; blaming everybody but the person to
+      whose ill-judging indulgence the errors of her daughter must
+      principally be owing.
+
+      “If I had been able,” said she, “to carry my point in going to
+      Brighton, with all my family, _this_ would not have happened; but
+      poor dear Lydia had nobody to take care of her. Why did the
+      Forsters ever let her go out of their sight? I am sure there was
+      some great neglect or other on their side, for she is not the
+      kind of girl to do such a thing if she had been well looked
+      after. I always thought they were very unfit to have the charge
+      of her; but I was overruled, as I always am. Poor dear child! And
+      now here’s Mr. Bennet gone away, and I know he will fight
+      Wickham, wherever he meets him and then he will be killed, and
+      what is to become of us all? The Collinses will turn us out
+      before he is cold in his grave, and if you are not kind to us,
+      brother, I do not know what we shall do.”
+
+      They all exclaimed against such terrific ideas; and Mr. Gardiner,
+      after general assurances of his affection for her and all her
+      family, told her that he meant to be in London the very next day,
+      and would assist Mr. Bennet in every endeavour for recovering
+      Lydia.
+
+      “Do not give way to useless alarm,” added he; “though it is right
+      to be prepared for the worst, there is no occasion to look on it
+      as certain. It is not quite a week since they left Brighton. In a
+      few days more we may gain some news of them; and till we know
+      that they are not married, and have no design of marrying, do not
+      let us give the matter over as lost. As soon as I get to town I
+      shall go to my brother, and make him come home with me to
+      Gracechurch Street; and then we may consult together as to what
+      is to be done.”
+
+      “Oh! my dear brother,” replied Mrs. Bennet, “that is exactly what
+      I could most wish for. And now do, when you get to town, find
+      them out, wherever they may be; and if they are not married
+      already, _make_ them marry. And as for wedding clothes, do not
+      let them wait for that, but tell Lydia she shall have as much
+      money as she chooses to buy them, after they are married. And,
+      above all, keep Mr. Bennet from fighting. Tell him what a
+      dreadful state I am in, that I am frighted out of my wits—and
+      have such tremblings, such flutterings, all over me—such spasms
+      in my side and pains in my head, and such beatings at heart, that
+      I can get no rest by night nor by day. And tell my dear Lydia not
+      to give any directions about her clothes till she has seen me,
+      for she does not know which are the best warehouses. Oh, brother,
+      how kind you are! I know you will contrive it all.”
+
+      But Mr. Gardiner, though he assured her again of his earnest
+      endeavours in the cause, could not avoid recommending moderation
+      to her, as well in her hopes as her fear; and after talking with
+      her in this manner till dinner was on the table, they all left
+      her to vent all her feelings on the housekeeper, who attended in
+      the absence of her daughters.
+
+      Though her brother and sister were persuaded that there was no
+      real occasion for such a seclusion from the family, they did not
+      attempt to oppose it, for they knew that she had not prudence
+      enough to hold her tongue before the servants, while they waited
+      at table, and judged it better that _one_ only of the household,
+      and the one whom they could most trust should comprehend all her
+      fears and solicitude on the subject.
+
+      In the dining-room they were soon joined by Mary and Kitty, who
+      had been too busily engaged in their separate apartments to make
+      their appearance before. One came from her books, and the other
+      from her toilette. The faces of both, however, were tolerably
+      calm; and no change was visible in either, except that the loss
+      of her favourite sister, or the anger which she had herself
+      incurred in this business, had given more of fretfulness than
+      usual to the accents of Kitty. As for Mary, she was mistress
+      enough of herself to whisper to Elizabeth, with a countenance of
+      grave reflection, soon after they were seated at table:
+
+      “This is a most unfortunate affair, and will probably be much
+      talked of. But we must stem the tide of malice, and pour into the
+      wounded bosoms of each other the balm of sisterly consolation.”
+
+      Then, perceiving in Elizabeth no inclination of replying, she
+      added, “Unhappy as the event must be for Lydia, we may draw from
+      it this useful lesson: that loss of virtue in a female is
+      irretrievable; that one false step involves her in endless ruin;
+      that her reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful; and
+      that she cannot be too much guarded in her behaviour towards the
+      undeserving of the other sex.”
+
+      Elizabeth lifted up her eyes in amazement, but was too much
+      oppressed to make any reply. Mary, however, continued to console
+      herself with such kind of moral extractions from the evil before
+      them.
+
+      In the afternoon, the two elder Miss Bennets were able to be for
+      half-an-hour by themselves; and Elizabeth instantly availed
+      herself of the opportunity of making any inquiries, which Jane
+      was equally eager to satisfy. After joining in general
+      lamentations over the dreadful sequel of this event, which
+      Elizabeth considered as all but certain, and Miss Bennet could
+      not assert to be wholly impossible, the former continued the
+      subject, by saying, “But tell me all and everything about it
+      which I have not already heard. Give me further particulars. What
+      did Colonel Forster say? Had they no apprehension of anything
+      before the elopement took place? They must have seen them
+      together for ever.”
+
+      “Colonel Forster did own that he had often suspected some
+      partiality, especially on Lydia’s side, but nothing to give him
+      any alarm. I am so grieved for him! His behaviour was attentive
+      and kind to the utmost. He _was_ coming to us, in order to assure
+      us of his concern, before he had any idea of their not being gone
+      to Scotland: when that apprehension first got abroad, it hastened
+      his journey.”
+
+      “And was Denny convinced that Wickham would not marry? Did he
+      know of their intending to go off? Had Colonel Forster seen Denny
+      himself?”
+
+      “Yes; but, when questioned by _him_, Denny denied knowing
+      anything of their plans, and would not give his real opinion
+      about it. He did not repeat his persuasion of their not
+      marrying—and from _that_, I am inclined to hope, he might have
+      been misunderstood before.”
+
+      “And till Colonel Forster came himself, not one of you
+      entertained a doubt, I suppose, of their being really married?”
+
+      “How was it possible that such an idea should enter our brains? I
+      felt a little uneasy—a little fearful of my sister’s happiness
+      with him in marriage, because I knew that his conduct had not
+      been always quite right. My father and mother knew nothing of
+      that; they only felt how imprudent a match it must be. Kitty then
+      owned, with a very natural triumph on knowing more than the rest
+      of us, that in Lydia’s last letter she had prepared her for such
+      a step. She had known, it seems, of their being in love with each
+      other, many weeks.”
+
+      “But not before they went to Brighton?”
+
+      “No, I believe not.”
+
+      “And did Colonel Forster appear to think well of Wickham himself?
+      Does he know his real character?”
+
+      “I must confess that he did not speak so well of Wickham as he
+      formerly did. He believed him to be imprudent and extravagant.
+      And since this sad affair has taken place, it is said that he
+      left Meryton greatly in debt; but I hope this may be false.”
+
+      “Oh, Jane, had we been less secret, had we told what we knew of
+      him, this could not have happened!”
+
+      “Perhaps it would have been better,” replied her sister. “But to
+      expose the former faults of any person without knowing what their
+      present feelings were, seemed unjustifiable. We acted with the
+      best intentions.”
+
+      “Could Colonel Forster repeat the particulars of Lydia’s note to
+      his wife?”
+
+      “He brought it with him for us to see.”
+
+      Jane then took it from her pocket-book, and gave it to Elizabeth.
+      These were the contents:
+
+      “My dear Harriet,
+      “You will laugh when you know where I am gone, and I cannot help
+      laughing myself at your surprise to-morrow morning, as soon as I
+      am missed. I am going to Gretna Green, and if you cannot guess
+      with who, I shall think you a simpleton, for there is but one man
+      in the world I love, and he is an angel. I should never be happy
+      without him, so think it no harm to be off. You need not send
+      them word at Longbourn of my going, if you do not like it, for it
+      will make the surprise the greater, when I write to them and sign
+      my name ‘Lydia Wickham.’ What a good joke it will be! I can
+      hardly write for laughing. Pray make my excuses to Pratt for not
+      keeping my engagement, and dancing with him to-night. Tell him I
+      hope he will excuse me when he knows all; and tell him I will
+      dance with him at the next ball we meet, with great pleasure. I
+      shall send for my clothes when I get to Longbourn; but I wish you
+      would tell Sally to mend a great slit in my worked muslin gown
+      before they are packed up. Good-bye. Give my love to Colonel
+      Forster. I hope you will drink to our good journey.
+
+      “Your affectionate friend,
+      “LYDIA BENNET.”
+
+      “Oh! thoughtless, thoughtless Lydia!” cried Elizabeth when she
+      had finished it. “What a letter is this, to be written at such a
+      moment! But at least it shows that _she_ was serious on the
+      subject of their journey. Whatever he might afterwards persuade
+      her to, it was not on her side a _scheme_ of infamy. My poor
+      father! how he must have felt it!”
+
+      “I never saw anyone so shocked. He could not speak a word for
+      full ten minutes. My mother was taken ill immediately, and the
+      whole house in such confusion!”
+
+      “Oh! Jane,” cried Elizabeth, “was there a servant belonging to it
+      who did not know the whole story before the end of the day?”
+
+      “I do not know. I hope there was. But to be guarded at such a
+      time is very difficult. My mother was in hysterics, and though I
+      endeavoured to give her every assistance in my power, I am afraid
+      I did not do so much as I might have done! But the horror of what
+      might possibly happen almost took from me my faculties.”
+
+      “Your attendance upon her has been too much for you. You do not
+      look well. Oh that I had been with you! you have had every care
+      and anxiety upon yourself alone.”
+
+      “Mary and Kitty have been very kind, and would have shared in
+      every fatigue, I am sure; but I did not think it right for either
+      of them. Kitty is slight and delicate; and Mary studies so much,
+      that her hours of repose should not be broken in on. My aunt
+      Phillips came to Longbourn on Tuesday, after my father went away;
+      and was so good as to stay till Thursday with me. She was of
+      great use and comfort to us all. And Lady Lucas has been very
+      kind; she walked here on Wednesday morning to condole with us,
+      and offered her services, or any of her daughters’, if they
+      should be of use to us.”
+
+      “She had better have stayed at home,” cried Elizabeth; “perhaps
+      she _meant_ well, but, under such a misfortune as this, one
+      cannot see too little of one’s neighbours. Assistance is
+      impossible; condolence insufferable. Let them triumph over us at
+      a distance, and be satisfied.”
+
+      She then proceeded to inquire into the measures which her father
+      had intended to pursue, while in town, for the recovery of his
+      daughter.
+
+      “He meant I believe,” replied Jane, “to go to Epsom, the place
+      where they last changed horses, see the postilions and try if
+      anything could be made out from them. His principal object must
+      be to discover the number of the hackney coach which took them
+      from Clapham. It had come with a fare from London; and as he
+      thought that the circumstance of a gentleman and lady’s removing
+      from one carriage into another might be remarked he meant to make
+      inquiries at Clapham. If he could anyhow discover at what house
+      the coachman had before set down his fare, he determined to make
+      inquiries there, and hoped it might not be impossible to find out
+      the stand and number of the coach. I do not know of any other
+      designs that he had formed; but he was in such a hurry to be
+      gone, and his spirits so greatly discomposed, that I had
+      difficulty in finding out even so much as this.”
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 48
+
+      The whole party were in hopes of a letter from Mr. Bennet the
+      next morning, but the post came in without bringing a single line
+      from him. His family knew him to be, on all common occasions, a
+      most negligent and dilatory correspondent; but at such a time
+      they had hoped for exertion. They were forced to conclude that he
+      had no pleasing intelligence to send; but even of _that_ they
+      would have been glad to be certain. Mr. Gardiner had waited only
+      for the letters before he set off.
+
+      When he was gone, they were certain at least of receiving
+      constant information of what was going on, and their uncle
+      promised, at parting, to prevail on Mr. Bennet to return to
+      Longbourn, as soon as he could, to the great consolation of his
+      sister, who considered it as the only security for her husband’s
+      not being killed in a duel.
+
+      Mrs. Gardiner and the children were to remain in Hertfordshire a
+      few days longer, as the former thought her presence might be
+      serviceable to her nieces. She shared in their attendance on Mrs.
+      Bennet, and was a great comfort to them in their hours of
+      freedom. Their other aunt also visited them frequently, and
+      always, as she said, with the design of cheering and heartening
+      them up—though, as she never came without reporting some fresh
+      instance of Wickham’s extravagance or irregularity, she seldom
+      went away without leaving them more dispirited than she found
+      them.
+
+      All Meryton seemed striving to blacken the man who, but three
+      months before, had been almost an angel of light. He was declared
+      to be in debt to every tradesman in the place, and his intrigues,
+      all honoured with the title of seduction, had been extended into
+      every tradesman’s family. Everybody declared that he was the
+      wickedest young man in the world; and everybody began to find out
+      that they had always distrusted the appearance of his goodness.
+      Elizabeth, though she did not credit above half of what was said,
+      believed enough to make her former assurance of her sister’s ruin
+      more certain; and even Jane, who believed still less of it,
+      became almost hopeless, more especially as the time was now come
+      when, if they had gone to Scotland, which she had never before
+      entirely despaired of, they must in all probability have gained
+      some news of them.
+
+      Mr. Gardiner left Longbourn on Sunday; on Tuesday his wife
+      received a letter from him; it told them that, on his arrival, he
+      had immediately found out his brother, and persuaded him to come
+      to Gracechurch Street; that Mr. Bennet had been to Epsom and
+      Clapham, before his arrival, but without gaining any satisfactory
+      information; and that he was now determined to inquire at all the
+      principal hotels in town, as Mr. Bennet thought it possible they
+      might have gone to one of them, on their first coming to London,
+      before they procured lodgings. Mr. Gardiner himself did not
+      expect any success from this measure, but as his brother was
+      eager in it, he meant to assist him in pursuing it. He added that
+      Mr. Bennet seemed wholly disinclined at present to leave London
+      and promised to write again very soon. There was also a
+      postscript to this effect:
+
+      “I have written to Colonel Forster to desire him to find out, if
+      possible, from some of the young man’s intimates in the regiment,
+      whether Wickham has any relations or connections who would be
+      likely to know in what part of town he has now concealed himself.
+      If there were anyone that one could apply to with a probability
+      of gaining such a clue as that, it might be of essential
+      consequence. At present we have nothing to guide us. Colonel
+      Forster will, I dare say, do everything in his power to satisfy
+      us on this head. But, on second thoughts, perhaps, Lizzy could
+      tell us what relations he has now living, better than any other
+      person.”
+
+      Elizabeth was at no loss to understand from whence this deference
+      to her authority proceeded; but it was not in her power to give
+      any information of so satisfactory a nature as the compliment
+      deserved. She had never heard of his having had any relations,
+      except a father and mother, both of whom had been dead many
+      years. It was possible, however, that some of his companions in
+      the ——shire might be able to give more information; and though
+      she was not very sanguine in expecting it, the application was a
+      something to look forward to.
+
+      Every day at Longbourn was now a day of anxiety; but the most
+      anxious part of each was when the post was expected. The arrival
+      of letters was the grand object of every morning’s impatience.
+      Through letters, whatever of good or bad was to be told would be
+      communicated, and every succeeding day was expected to bring some
+      news of importance.
+
+      But before they heard again from Mr. Gardiner, a letter arrived
+      for their father, from a different quarter, from Mr. Collins;
+      which, as Jane had received directions to open all that came for
+      him in his absence, she accordingly read; and Elizabeth, who knew
+      what curiosities his letters always were, looked over her, and
+      read it likewise. It was as follows:
+
+      “My dear Sir,
+      “I feel myself called upon, by our relationship, and my situation
+      in life, to condole with you on the grievous affliction you are
+      now suffering under, of which we were yesterday informed by a
+      letter from Hertfordshire. Be assured, my dear sir, that Mrs.
+      Collins and myself sincerely sympathise with you and all your
+      respectable family, in your present distress, which must be of
+      the bitterest kind, because proceeding from a cause which no time
+      can remove. No arguments shall be wanting on my part that can
+      alleviate so severe a misfortune—or that may comfort you, under a
+      circumstance that must be of all others the most afflicting to a
+      parent’s mind. The death of your daughter would have been a
+      blessing in comparison of this. And it is the more to be
+      lamented, because there is reason to suppose as my dear Charlotte
+      informs me, that this licentiousness of behaviour in your
+      daughter has proceeded from a faulty degree of indulgence;
+      though, at the same time, for the consolation of yourself and
+      Mrs. Bennet, I am inclined to think that her own disposition must
+      be naturally bad, or she could not be guilty of such an enormity,
+      at so early an age. Howsoever that may be, you are grievously to
+      be pitied; in which opinion I am not only joined by Mrs. Collins,
+      but likewise by Lady Catherine and her daughter, to whom I have
+      related the affair. They agree with me in apprehending that this
+      false step in one daughter will be injurious to the fortunes of
+      all the others; for who, as Lady Catherine herself
+      condescendingly says, will connect themselves with such a family?
+      And this consideration leads me moreover to reflect, with
+      augmented satisfaction, on a certain event of last November; for
+      had it been otherwise, I must have been involved in all your
+      sorrow and disgrace. Let me then advise you, dear sir, to console
+      yourself as much as possible, to throw off your unworthy child
+      from your affection for ever, and leave her to reap the fruits of
+      her own heinous offense.
+
+      “I am, dear sir, etc., etc.”
+
+      Mr. Gardiner did not write again till he had received an answer
+      from Colonel Forster; and then he had nothing of a pleasant
+      nature to send. It was not known that Wickham had a single
+      relationship with whom he kept up any connection, and it was
+      certain that he had no near one living. His former acquaintances
+      had been numerous; but since he had been in the militia, it did
+      not appear that he was on terms of particular friendship with any
+      of them. There was no one, therefore, who could be pointed out as
+      likely to give any news of him. And in the wretched state of his
+      own finances, there was a very powerful motive for secrecy, in
+      addition to his fear of discovery by Lydia’s relations, for it
+      had just transpired that he had left gaming debts behind him to a
+      very considerable amount. Colonel Forster believed that more than
+      a thousand pounds would be necessary to clear his expenses at
+      Brighton. He owed a good deal in town, but his debts of honour
+      were still more formidable. Mr. Gardiner did not attempt to
+      conceal these particulars from the Longbourn family. Jane heard
+      them with horror. “A gamester!” she cried. “This is wholly
+      unexpected. I had not an idea of it.”
+
+      Mr. Gardiner added in his letter, that they might expect to see
+      their father at home on the following day, which was Saturday.
+      Rendered spiritless by the ill-success of all their endeavours,
+      he had yielded to his brother-in-law’s entreaty that he would
+      return to his family, and leave it to him to do whatever occasion
+      might suggest to be advisable for continuing their pursuit. When
+      Mrs. Bennet was told of this, she did not express so much
+      satisfaction as her children expected, considering what her
+      anxiety for his life had been before.
+
+      “What, is he coming home, and without poor Lydia?” she cried.
+      “Sure he will not leave London before he has found them. Who is
+      to fight Wickham, and make him marry her, if he comes away?”
+
+      As Mrs. Gardiner began to wish to be at home, it was settled that
+      she and the children should go to London, at the same time that
+      Mr. Bennet came from it. The coach, therefore, took them the
+      first stage of their journey, and brought its master back to
+      Longbourn.
+
+      Mrs. Gardiner went away in all the perplexity about Elizabeth and
+      her Derbyshire friend that had attended her from that part of the
+      world. His name had never been voluntarily mentioned before them
+      by her niece; and the kind of half-expectation which Mrs.
+      Gardiner had formed, of their being followed by a letter from
+      him, had ended in nothing. Elizabeth had received none since her
+      return that could come from Pemberley.
+
+      The present unhappy state of the family rendered any other excuse
+      for the lowness of her spirits unnecessary; nothing, therefore,
+      could be fairly conjectured from _that_, though Elizabeth, who
+      was by this time tolerably well acquainted with her own feelings,
+      was perfectly aware that, had she known nothing of Darcy, she
+      could have borne the dread of Lydia’s infamy somewhat better. It
+      would have spared her, she thought, one sleepless night out of
+      two.
+
+      When Mr. Bennet arrived, he had all the appearance of his usual
+      philosophic composure. He said as little as he had ever been in
+      the habit of saying; made no mention of the business that had
+      taken him away, and it was some time before his daughters had
+      courage to speak of it.
+
+      It was not till the afternoon, when he had joined them at tea,
+      that Elizabeth ventured to introduce the subject; and then, on
+      her briefly expressing her sorrow for what he must have endured,
+      he replied, “Say nothing of that. Who should suffer but myself?
+      It has been my own doing, and I ought to feel it.”
+
+      “You must not be too severe upon yourself,” replied Elizabeth.
+
+      “You may well warn me against such an evil. Human nature is so
+      prone to fall into it! No, Lizzy, let me once in my life feel how
+      much I have been to blame. I am not afraid of being overpowered
+      by the impression. It will pass away soon enough.”
+
+      “Do you suppose them to be in London?”
+
+      “Yes; where else can they be so well concealed?”
+
+      “And Lydia used to want to go to London,” added Kitty.
+
+      “She is happy then,” said her father drily; “and her residence
+      there will probably be of some duration.”
+
+      Then after a short silence he continued:
+
+      “Lizzy, I bear you no ill-will for being justified in your advice
+      to me last May, which, considering the event, shows some
+      greatness of mind.”
+
+      They were interrupted by Miss Bennet, who came to fetch her
+      mother’s tea.
+
+      “This is a parade,” he cried, “which does one good; it gives such
+      an elegance to misfortune! Another day I will do the same; I will
+      sit in my library, in my nightcap and powdering gown, and give as
+      much trouble as I can; or, perhaps, I may defer it till Kitty
+      runs away.”
+
+      “I am not going to run away, papa,” said Kitty fretfully. “If _I_
+      should ever go to Brighton, I would behave better than Lydia.”
+
+      “_You_ go to Brighton. I would not trust you so near it as
+      Eastbourne for fifty pounds! No, Kitty, I have at last learnt to
+      be cautious, and you will feel the effects of it. No officer is
+      ever to enter into my house again, nor even to pass through the
+      village. Balls will be absolutely prohibited, unless you stand up
+      with one of your sisters. And you are never to stir out of doors
+      till you can prove that you have spent ten minutes of every day
+      in a rational manner.”
+
+      Kitty, who took all these threats in a serious light, began to
+      cry.
+
+      “Well, well,” said he, “do not make yourself unhappy. If you are
+      a good girl for the next ten years, I will take you to a review
+      at the end of them.”
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 49
+
+      Two days after Mr. Bennet’s return, as Jane and Elizabeth were
+      walking together in the shrubbery behind the house, they saw the
+      housekeeper coming towards them, and, concluding that she came to
+      call them to their mother, went forward to meet her; but, instead
+      of the expected summons, when they approached her, she said to
+      Miss Bennet, “I beg your pardon, madam, for interrupting you, but
+      I was in hopes you might have got some good news from town, so I
+      took the liberty of coming to ask.”
+
+      “What do you mean, Hill? We have heard nothing from town.”
+
+      “Dear madam,” cried Mrs. Hill, in great astonishment, “don’t you
+      know there is an express come for master from Mr. Gardiner? He
+      has been here this half-hour, and master has had a letter.”
+
+      Away ran the girls, too eager to get in to have time for speech.
+      They ran through the vestibule into the breakfast-room; from
+      thence to the library; their father was in neither; and they were
+      on the point of seeking him up stairs with their mother, when
+      they were met by the butler, who said:
+
+      “If you are looking for my master, ma’am, he is walking towards
+      the little copse.”
+
+      Upon this information, they instantly passed through the hall
+      once more, and ran across the lawn after their father, who was
+      deliberately pursuing his way towards a small wood on one side of
+      the paddock.
+
+      Jane, who was not so light nor so much in the habit of running as
+      Elizabeth, soon lagged behind, while her sister, panting for
+      breath, came up with him, and eagerly cried out:
+
+      “Oh, papa, what news—what news? Have you heard from my uncle?”
+
+      “Yes I have had a letter from him by express.”
+
+      “Well, and what news does it bring—good or bad?”
+
+      “What is there of good to be expected?” said he, taking the
+      letter from his pocket. “But perhaps you would like to read it.”
+
+      Elizabeth impatiently caught it from his hand. Jane now came up.
+
+      “Read it aloud,” said their father, “for I hardly know myself
+      what it is about.”
+
+      “Gracechurch Street, _Monday, August_ 2.
+
+      “My dear Brother,
+      “At last I am able to send you some tidings of my niece, and such
+      as, upon the whole, I hope it will give you satisfaction. Soon
+      after you left me on Saturday, I was fortunate enough to find out
+      in what part of London they were. The particulars I reserve till
+      we meet; it is enough to know they are discovered. I have seen
+      them both—”
+          “Then it is as I always hoped,” cried Jane; “they are
+          married!”
+
+      Elizabeth read on:
+
+      “I have seen them both. They are not married, nor can I find
+      there was any intention of being so; but if you are willing to
+      perform the engagements which I have ventured to make on your
+      side, I hope it will not be long before they are. All that is
+      required of you is, to assure to your daughter, by settlement,
+      her equal share of the five thousand pounds secured among your
+      children after the decease of yourself and my sister; and,
+      moreover, to enter into an engagement of allowing her, during
+      your life, one hundred pounds per annum. These are conditions
+      which, considering everything, I had no hesitation in complying
+      with, as far as I thought myself privileged, for you. I shall
+      send this by express, that no time may be lost in bringing me
+      your answer. You will easily comprehend, from these particulars,
+      that Mr. Wickham’s circumstances are not so hopeless as they are
+      generally believed to be. The world has been deceived in that
+      respect; and I am happy to say there will be some little money,
+      even when all his debts are discharged, to settle on my niece, in
+      addition to her own fortune. If, as I conclude will be the case,
+      you send me full powers to act in your name throughout the whole
+      of this business, I will immediately give directions to
+      Haggerston for preparing a proper settlement. There will not be
+      the smallest occasion for your coming to town again; therefore
+      stay quiet at Longbourn, and depend on my diligence and care.
+      Send back your answer as fast as you can, and be careful to write
+      explicitly. We have judged it best that my niece should be
+      married from this house, of which I hope you will approve. She
+      comes to us to-day. I shall write again as soon as anything more
+      is determined on. Yours, etc.,
+
+      “EDW. GARDINER.”
+
+      “Is it possible?” cried Elizabeth, when she had finished. “Can it
+      be possible that he will marry her?”
+
+      “Wickham is not so undeserving, then, as we thought him,” said
+      her sister. “My dear father, I congratulate you.”
+
+      “And have you answered the letter?” cried Elizabeth.
+
+      “No; but it must be done soon.”
+
+      Most earnestly did she then entreat him to lose no more time
+      before he wrote.
+
+      “Oh! my dear father,” she cried, “come back and write
+      immediately. Consider how important every moment is in such a
+      case.”
+
+      “Let me write for you,” said Jane, “if you dislike the trouble
+      yourself.”
+
+      “I dislike it very much,” he replied; “but it must be done.”
+
+      And so saying, he turned back with them, and walked towards the
+      house.
+
+      “And may I ask—” said Elizabeth; “but the terms, I suppose, must
+      be complied with.”
+
+      “Complied with! I am only ashamed of his asking so little.”
+
+      “And they _must_ marry! Yet he is _such_ a man!”
+
+      “Yes, yes, they must marry. There is nothing else to be done. But
+      there are two things that I want very much to know; one is, how
+      much money your uncle has laid down to bring it about; and the
+      other, how am I ever to pay him.”
+
+      “Money! My uncle!” cried Jane, “what do you mean, sir?”
+
+      “I mean, that no man in his senses would marry Lydia on so slight
+      a temptation as one hundred a year during my life, and fifty
+      after I am gone.”
+
+      “That is very true,” said Elizabeth; “though it had not occurred
+      to me before. His debts to be discharged, and something still to
+      remain! Oh! it must be my uncle’s doings! Generous, good man, I
+      am afraid he has distressed himself. A small sum could not do all
+      this.”
+
+      “No,” said her father; “Wickham’s a fool if he takes her with a
+      farthing less than ten thousand pounds. I should be sorry to
+      think so ill of him, in the very beginning of our relationship.”
+
+      “Ten thousand pounds! Heaven forbid! How is half such a sum to be
+      repaid?”
+
+      Mr. Bennet made no answer, and each of them, deep in thought,
+      continued silent till they reached the house. Their father then
+      went on to the library to write, and the girls walked into the
+      breakfast-room.
+
+      “And they are really to be married!” cried Elizabeth, as soon as
+      they were by themselves. “How strange this is! And for _this_ we
+      are to be thankful. That they should marry, small as is their
+      chance of happiness, and wretched as is his character, we are
+      forced to rejoice. Oh, Lydia!”
+
+      “I comfort myself with thinking,” replied Jane, “that he
+      certainly would not marry Lydia if he had not a real regard for
+      her. Though our kind uncle has done something towards clearing
+      him, I cannot believe that ten thousand pounds, or anything like
+      it, has been advanced. He has children of his own, and may have
+      more. How could he spare half ten thousand pounds?”
+
+      “If he were ever able to learn what Wickham’s debts have been,”
+      said Elizabeth, “and how much is settled on his side on our
+      sister, we shall exactly know what Mr. Gardiner has done for
+      them, because Wickham has not sixpence of his own. The kindness
+      of my uncle and aunt can never be requited. Their taking her
+      home, and affording her their personal protection and
+      countenance, is such a sacrifice to her advantage as years of
+      gratitude cannot enough acknowledge. By this time she is actually
+      with them! If such goodness does not make her miserable now, she
+      will never deserve to be happy! What a meeting for her, when she
+      first sees my aunt!”
+
+      “We must endeavour to forget all that has passed on either side,”
+      said Jane: “I hope and trust they will yet be happy. His
+      consenting to marry her is a proof, I will believe, that he is
+      come to a right way of thinking. Their mutual affection will
+      steady them; and I flatter myself they will settle so quietly,
+      and live in so rational a manner, as may in time make their past
+      imprudence forgotten.”
+
+      “Their conduct has been such,” replied Elizabeth, “as neither
+      you, nor I, nor anybody can ever forget. It is useless to talk of
+      it.”
+
+      It now occurred to the girls that their mother was in all
+      likelihood perfectly ignorant of what had happened. They went to
+      the library, therefore, and asked their father whether he would
+      not wish them to make it known to her. He was writing and,
+      without raising his head, coolly replied:
+
+      “Just as you please.”
+
+      “May we take my uncle’s letter to read to her?”
+
+      “Take whatever you like, and get away.”
+
+      Elizabeth took the letter from his writing-table, and they went
+      up stairs together. Mary and Kitty were both with Mrs. Bennet:
+      one communication would, therefore, do for all. After a slight
+      preparation for good news, the letter was read aloud. Mrs. Bennet
+      could hardly contain herself. As soon as Jane had read Mr.
+      Gardiner’s hope of Lydia’s being soon married, her joy burst
+      forth, and every following sentence added to its exuberance. She
+      was now in an irritation as violent from delight, as she had ever
+      been fidgety from alarm and vexation. To know that her daughter
+      would be married was enough. She was disturbed by no fear for her
+      felicity, nor humbled by any remembrance of her misconduct.
+
+      “My dear, dear Lydia!” she cried. “This is delightful indeed! She
+      will be married! I shall see her again! She will be married at
+      sixteen! My good, kind brother! I knew how it would be. I knew he
+      would manage everything! How I long to see her! and to see dear
+      Wickham too! But the clothes, the wedding clothes! I will write
+      to my sister Gardiner about them directly. Lizzy, my dear, run
+      down to your father, and ask him how much he will give her. Stay,
+      stay, I will go myself. Ring the bell, Kitty, for Hill. I will
+      put on my things in a moment. My dear, dear Lydia! How merry we
+      shall be together when we meet!”
+
+      Her eldest daughter endeavoured to give some relief to the
+      violence of these transports, by leading her thoughts to the
+      obligations which Mr. Gardiner’s behaviour laid them all under.
+
+      “For we must attribute this happy conclusion,” she added, “in a
+      great measure to his kindness. We are persuaded that he has
+      pledged himself to assist Mr. Wickham with money.”
+
+      “Well,” cried her mother, “it is all very right; who should do it
+      but her own uncle? If he had not had a family of his own, I and
+      my children must have had all his money, you know; and it is the
+      first time we have ever had anything from him, except a few
+      presents. Well! I am so happy! In a short time I shall have a
+      daughter married. Mrs. Wickham! How well it sounds! And she was
+      only sixteen last June. My dear Jane, I am in such a flutter,
+      that I am sure I can’t write; so I will dictate, and you write
+      for me. We will settle with your father about the money
+      afterwards; but the things should be ordered immediately.”
+
+      She was then proceeding to all the particulars of calico, muslin,
+      and cambric, and would shortly have dictated some very plentiful
+      orders, had not Jane, though with some difficulty, persuaded her
+      to wait till her father was at leisure to be consulted. One day’s
+      delay, she observed, would be of small importance; and her mother
+      was too happy to be quite so obstinate as usual. Other schemes,
+      too, came into her head.
+
+      “I will go to Meryton,” said she, “as soon as I am dressed, and
+      tell the good, good news to my sister Philips. And as I come
+      back, I can call on Lady Lucas and Mrs. Long. Kitty, run down and
+      order the carriage. An airing would do me a great deal of good, I
+      am sure. Girls, can I do anything for you in Meryton? Oh! Here
+      comes Hill! My dear Hill, have you heard the good news? Miss
+      Lydia is going to be married; and you shall all have a bowl of
+      punch to make merry at her wedding.”
+
+      Mrs. Hill began instantly to express her joy. Elizabeth received
+      her congratulations amongst the rest, and then, sick of this
+      folly, took refuge in her own room, that she might think with
+      freedom.
+
+      Poor Lydia’s situation must, at best, be bad enough; but that it
+      was no worse, she had need to be thankful. She felt it so; and
+      though, in looking forward, neither rational happiness nor
+      worldly prosperity could be justly expected for her sister, in
+      looking back to what they had feared, only two hours ago, she
+      felt all the advantages of what they had gained.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 50
+
+      Mr. Bennet had very often wished before this period of his life
+      that, instead of spending his whole income, he had laid by an
+      annual sum for the better provision of his children, and of his
+      wife, if she survived him. He now wished it more than ever. Had
+      he done his duty in that respect, Lydia need not have been
+      indebted to her uncle for whatever of honour or credit could now
+      be purchased for her. The satisfaction of prevailing on one of
+      the most worthless young men in Great Britain to be her husband
+      might then have rested in its proper place.
+
+      He was seriously concerned that a cause of so little advantage to
+      anyone should be forwarded at the sole expense of his
+      brother-in-law, and he was determined, if possible, to find out
+      the extent of his assistance, and to discharge the obligation as
+      soon as he could.
+
+      When first Mr. Bennet had married, economy was held to be
+      perfectly useless, for, of course, they were to have a son. The
+      son was to join in cutting off the entail, as soon as he should
+      be of age, and the widow and younger children would by that means
+      be provided for. Five daughters successively entered the world,
+      but yet the son was to come; and Mrs. Bennet, for many years
+      after Lydia’s birth, had been certain that he would. This event
+      had at last been despaired of, but it was then too late to be
+      saving. Mrs. Bennet had no turn for economy, and her husband’s
+      love of independence had alone prevented their exceeding their
+      income.
+
+      Five thousand pounds was settled by marriage articles on Mrs.
+      Bennet and the children. But in what proportions it should be
+      divided amongst the latter depended on the will of the parents.
+      This was one point, with regard to Lydia, at least, which was now
+      to be settled, and Mr. Bennet could have no hesitation in
+      acceding to the proposal before him. In terms of grateful
+      acknowledgment for the kindness of his brother, though expressed
+      most concisely, he then delivered on paper his perfect
+      approbation of all that was done, and his willingness to fulfil
+      the engagements that had been made for him. He had never before
+      supposed that, could Wickham be prevailed on to marry his
+      daughter, it would be done with so little inconvenience to
+      himself as by the present arrangement. He would scarcely be ten
+      pounds a year the loser by the hundred that was to be paid them;
+      for, what with her board and pocket allowance, and the continual
+      presents in money which passed to her through her mother’s hands,
+      Lydia’s expenses had been very little within that sum.
+
+      That it would be done with such trifling exertion on his side,
+      too, was another very welcome surprise; for his wish at present
+      was to have as little trouble in the business as possible. When
+      the first transports of rage which had produced his activity in
+      seeking her were over, he naturally returned to all his former
+      indolence. His letter was soon dispatched; for, though dilatory
+      in undertaking business, he was quick in its execution. He begged
+      to know further particulars of what he was indebted to his
+      brother, but was too angry with Lydia to send any message to her.
+
+      The good news spread quickly through the house, and with
+      proportionate speed through the neighbourhood. It was borne in
+      the latter with decent philosophy. To be sure, it would have been
+      more for the advantage of conversation had Miss Lydia Bennet come
+      upon the town; or, as the happiest alternative, been secluded
+      from the world, in some distant farmhouse. But there was much to
+      be talked of in marrying her; and the good-natured wishes for her
+      well-doing which had proceeded before from all the spiteful old
+      ladies in Meryton lost but a little of their spirit in this
+      change of circumstances, because with such an husband her misery
+      was considered certain.
+
+      It was a fortnight since Mrs. Bennet had been downstairs; but on
+      this happy day she again took her seat at the head of her table,
+      and in spirits oppressively high. No sentiment of shame gave a
+      damp to her triumph. The marriage of a daughter, which had been
+      the first object of her wishes since Jane was sixteen, was now on
+      the point of accomplishment, and her thoughts and her words ran
+      wholly on those attendants of elegant nuptials, fine muslins, new
+      carriages, and servants. She was busily searching through the
+      neighbourhood for a proper situation for her daughter, and,
+      without knowing or considering what their income might be,
+      rejected many as deficient in size and importance.
+
+      “Haye Park might do,” said she, “if the Gouldings could quit
+      it—or the great house at Stoke, if the drawing-room were larger;
+      but Ashworth is too far off! I could not bear to have her ten
+      miles from me; and as for Pulvis Lodge, the attics are dreadful.”
+
+      Her husband allowed her to talk on without interruption while the
+      servants remained. But when they had withdrawn, he said to her:
+      “Mrs. Bennet, before you take any or all of these houses for your
+      son and daughter, let us come to a right understanding. Into
+      _one_ house in this neighbourhood they shall never have
+      admittance. I will not encourage the impudence of either, by
+      receiving them at Longbourn.”
+
+      A long dispute followed this declaration; but Mr. Bennet was
+      firm. It soon led to another; and Mrs. Bennet found, with
+      amazement and horror, that her husband would not advance a guinea
+      to buy clothes for his daughter. He protested that she should
+      receive from him no mark of affection whatever on the occasion.
+      Mrs. Bennet could hardly comprehend it. That his anger could be
+      carried to such a point of inconceivable resentment as to refuse
+      his daughter a privilege without which her marriage would
+      scarcely seem valid, exceeded all she could believe possible. She
+      was more alive to the disgrace which her want of new clothes must
+      reflect on her daughter’s nuptials, than to any sense of shame at
+      her eloping and living with Wickham a fortnight before they took
+      place.
+
+      Elizabeth was now most heartily sorry that she had, from the
+      distress of the moment, been led to make Mr. Darcy acquainted
+      with their fears for her sister; for since her marriage would so
+      shortly give the proper termination to the elopement, they might
+      hope to conceal its unfavourable beginning from all those who
+      were not immediately on the spot.
+
+      She had no fear of its spreading farther through his means. There
+      were few people on whose secrecy she would have more confidently
+      depended; but, at the same time, there was no one whose knowledge
+      of a sister’s frailty would have mortified her so much—not,
+      however, from any fear of disadvantage from it individually to
+      herself, for, at any rate, there seemed a gulf impassable between
+      them. Had Lydia’s marriage been concluded on the most honourable
+      terms, it was not to be supposed that Mr. Darcy would connect
+      himself with a family where, to every other objection, would now
+      be added an alliance and relationship of the nearest kind with a
+      man whom he so justly scorned.
+
+      From such a connection she could not wonder that he would shrink.
+      The wish of procuring her regard, which she had assured herself
+      of his feeling in Derbyshire, could not in rational expectation
+      survive such a blow as this. She was humbled, she was grieved;
+      she repented, though she hardly knew of what. She became jealous
+      of his esteem, when she could no longer hope to be benefited by
+      it. She wanted to hear of him, when there seemed the least chance
+      of gaining intelligence. She was convinced that she could have
+      been happy with him, when it was no longer likely they should
+      meet.
+
+      What a triumph for him, as she often thought, could he know that
+      the proposals which she had proudly spurned only four months ago,
+      would now have been most gladly and gratefully received! He was
+      as generous, she doubted not, as the most generous of his sex;
+      but while he was mortal, there must be a triumph.
+
+      She began now to comprehend that he was exactly the man who, in
+      disposition and talents, would most suit her. His understanding
+      and temper, though unlike her own, would have answered all her
+      wishes. It was an union that must have been to the advantage of
+      both; by her ease and liveliness, his mind might have been
+      softened, his manners improved; and from his judgement,
+      information, and knowledge of the world, she must have received
+      benefit of greater importance.
+
+      But no such happy marriage could now teach the admiring multitude
+      what connubial felicity really was. An union of a different
+      tendency, and precluding the possibility of the other, was soon
+      to be formed in their family.
+
+      How Wickham and Lydia were to be supported in tolerable
+      independence, she could not imagine. But how little of permanent
+      happiness could belong to a couple who were only brought together
+      because their passions were stronger than their virtue, she could
+      easily conjecture.
+
+      Mr. Gardiner soon wrote again to his brother. To Mr. Bennet’s
+      acknowledgments he briefly replied, with assurance of his
+      eagerness to promote the welfare of any of his family; and
+      concluded with entreaties that the subject might never be
+      mentioned to him again. The principal purport of his letter was
+      to inform them that Mr. Wickham had resolved on quitting the
+      militia.
+
+      “It was greatly my wish that he should do so,” he added, “as soon
+      as his marriage was fixed on. And I think you will agree with me,
+      in considering the removal from that corps as highly advisable,
+      both on his account and my niece’s. It is Mr. Wickham’s intention
+      to go into the regulars; and among his former friends, there are
+      still some who are able and willing to assist him in the army. He
+      has the promise of an ensigncy in General ——’s regiment, now
+      quartered in the North. It is an advantage to have it so far from
+      this part of the kingdom. He promises fairly; and I hope among
+      different people, where they may each have a character to
+      preserve, they will both be more prudent. I have written to
+      Colonel Forster, to inform him of our present arrangements, and
+      to request that he will satisfy the various creditors of Mr.
+      Wickham in and near Brighton, with assurances of speedy payment,
+      for which I have pledged myself. And will you give yourself the
+      trouble of carrying similar assurances to his creditors in
+      Meryton, of whom I shall subjoin a list according to his
+      information? He has given in all his debts; I hope at least he
+      has not deceived us. Haggerston has our directions, and all will
+      be completed in a week. They will then join his regiment, unless
+      they are first invited to Longbourn; and I understand from Mrs.
+      Gardiner, that my niece is very desirous of seeing you all before
+      she leaves the South. She is well, and begs to be dutifully
+      remembered to you and her mother.—Yours, etc.,
+
+      “E. GARDINER.”
+
+      Mr. Bennet and his daughters saw all the advantages of Wickham’s
+      removal from the ——shire as clearly as Mr. Gardiner could do. But
+      Mrs. Bennet was not so well pleased with it. Lydia’s being
+      settled in the North, just when she had expected most pleasure
+      and pride in her company, for she had by no means given up her
+      plan of their residing in Hertfordshire, was a severe
+      disappointment; and, besides, it was such a pity that Lydia
+      should be taken from a regiment where she was acquainted with
+      everybody, and had so many favourites.
+
+      “She is so fond of Mrs. Forster,” said she, “it will be quite
+      shocking to send her away! And there are several of the young
+      men, too, that she likes very much. The officers may not be so
+      pleasant in General ——’s regiment.”
+
+      His daughter’s request, for such it might be considered, of being
+      admitted into her family again before she set off for the North,
+      received at first an absolute negative. But Jane and Elizabeth,
+      who agreed in wishing, for the sake of their sister’s feelings
+      and consequence, that she should be noticed on her marriage by
+      her parents, urged him so earnestly yet so rationally and so
+      mildly, to receive her and her husband at Longbourn, as soon as
+      they were married, that he was prevailed on to think as they
+      thought, and act as they wished. And their mother had the
+      satisfaction of knowing that she would be able to show her
+      married daughter in the neighbourhood before she was banished to
+      the North. When Mr. Bennet wrote again to his brother, therefore,
+      he sent his permission for them to come; and it was settled, that
+      as soon as the ceremony was over, they should proceed to
+      Longbourn. Elizabeth was surprised, however, that Wickham should
+      consent to such a scheme, and had she consulted only her own
+      inclination, any meeting with him would have been the last object
+      of her wishes.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 51
+
+      Their sister’s wedding day arrived; and Jane and Elizabeth felt
+      for her probably more than she felt for herself. The carriage was
+      sent to meet them at ——, and they were to return in it by
+      dinner-time. Their arrival was dreaded by the elder Miss Bennets,
+      and Jane more especially, who gave Lydia the feelings which would
+      have attended herself, had _she_ been the culprit, and was
+      wretched in the thought of what her sister must endure.
+
+      They came. The family were assembled in the breakfast room to
+      receive them. Smiles decked the face of Mrs. Bennet as the
+      carriage drove up to the door; her husband looked impenetrably
+      grave; her daughters, alarmed, anxious, uneasy.
+
+      Lydia’s voice was heard in the vestibule; the door was thrown
+      open, and she ran into the room. Her mother stepped forwards,
+      embraced her, and welcomed her with rapture; gave her hand, with
+      an affectionate smile, to Wickham, who followed his lady; and
+      wished them both joy with an alacrity which shewed no doubt of
+      their happiness.
+
+      Their reception from Mr. Bennet, to whom they then turned, was
+      not quite so cordial. His countenance rather gained in austerity;
+      and he scarcely opened his lips. The easy assurance of the young
+      couple, indeed, was enough to provoke him. Elizabeth was
+      disgusted, and even Miss Bennet was shocked. Lydia was Lydia
+      still; untamed, unabashed, wild, noisy, and fearless. She turned
+      from sister to sister, demanding their congratulations; and when
+      at length they all sat down, looked eagerly round the room, took
+      notice of some little alteration in it, and observed, with a
+      laugh, that it was a great while since she had been there.
+
+      Wickham was not at all more distressed than herself, but his
+      manners were always so pleasing, that had his character and his
+      marriage been exactly what they ought, his smiles and his easy
+      address, while he claimed their relationship, would have
+      delighted them all. Elizabeth had not before believed him quite
+      equal to such assurance; but she sat down, resolving within
+      herself to draw no limits in future to the impudence of an
+      impudent man. _She_ blushed, and Jane blushed; but the cheeks of
+      the two who caused their confusion suffered no variation of
+      colour.
+
+      There was no want of discourse. The bride and her mother could
+      neither of them talk fast enough; and Wickham, who happened to
+      sit near Elizabeth, began inquiring after his acquaintance in
+      that neighbourhood, with a good humoured ease which she felt very
+      unable to equal in her replies. They seemed each of them to have
+      the happiest memories in the world. Nothing of the past was
+      recollected with pain; and Lydia led voluntarily to subjects
+      which her sisters would not have alluded to for the world.
+
+      “Only think of its being three months,” she cried, “since I went
+      away; it seems but a fortnight I declare; and yet there have been
+      things enough happened in the time. Good gracious! when I went
+      away, I am sure I had no more idea of being married till I came
+      back again! though I thought it would be very good fun if I was.”
+
+      Her father lifted up his eyes. Jane was distressed. Elizabeth
+      looked expressively at Lydia; but she, who never heard nor saw
+      anything of which she chose to be insensible, gaily continued,
+      “Oh! mamma, do the people hereabouts know I am married to-day? I
+      was afraid they might not; and we overtook William Goulding in
+      his curricle, so I was determined he should know it, and so I let
+      down the side-glass next to him, and took off my glove, and let
+      my hand just rest upon the window frame, so that he might see the
+      ring, and then I bowed and smiled like anything.”
+
+      Elizabeth could bear it no longer. She got up, and ran out of the
+      room; and returned no more, till she heard them passing through
+      the hall to the dining parlour. She then joined them soon enough
+      to see Lydia, with anxious parade, walk up to her mother’s right
+      hand, and hear her say to her eldest sister, “Ah! Jane, I take
+      your place now, and you must go lower, because I am a married
+      woman.”
+
+      It was not to be supposed that time would give Lydia that
+      embarrassment from which she had been so wholly free at first.
+      Her ease and good spirits increased. She longed to see Mrs.
+      Phillips, the Lucases, and all their other neighbours, and to
+      hear herself called “Mrs. Wickham” by each of them; and in the
+      mean time, she went after dinner to show her ring, and boast of
+      being married, to Mrs. Hill and the two housemaids.
+
+      “Well, mamma,” said she, when they were all returned to the
+      breakfast room, “and what do you think of my husband? Is not he a
+      charming man? I am sure my sisters must all envy me. I only hope
+      they may have half my good luck. They must all go to Brighton.
+      That is the place to get husbands. What a pity it is, mamma, we
+      did not all go.”
+
+      “Very true; and if I had my will, we should. But my dear Lydia, I
+      don’t at all like your going such a way off. Must it be so?”
+
+      “Oh, lord! yes;—there is nothing in that. I shall like it of all
+      things. You and papa, and my sisters, must come down and see us.
+      We shall be at Newcastle all the winter, and I dare say there
+      will be some balls, and I will take care to get good partners for
+      them all.”
+
+      “I should like it beyond anything!” said her mother.
+
+      “And then when you go away, you may leave one or two of my
+      sisters behind you; and I dare say I shall get husbands for them
+      before the winter is over.”
+
+      “I thank you for my share of the favour,” said Elizabeth; “but I
+      do not particularly like your way of getting husbands.”
+
+      Their visitors were not to remain above ten days with them. Mr.
+      Wickham had received his commission before he left London, and he
+      was to join his regiment at the end of a fortnight.
+
+      No one but Mrs. Bennet regretted that their stay would be so
+      short; and she made the most of the time by visiting about with
+      her daughter, and having very frequent parties at home. These
+      parties were acceptable to all; to avoid a family circle was even
+      more desirable to such as did think, than such as did not.
+
+      Wickham’s affection for Lydia was just what Elizabeth had
+      expected to find it; not equal to Lydia’s for him. She had
+      scarcely needed her present observation to be satisfied, from the
+      reason of things, that their elopement had been brought on by the
+      strength of her love, rather than by his; and she would have
+      wondered why, without violently caring for her, he chose to elope
+      with her at all, had she not felt certain that his flight was
+      rendered necessary by distress of circumstances; and if that were
+      the case, he was not the young man to resist an opportunity of
+      having a companion.
+
+      Lydia was exceedingly fond of him. He was her dear Wickham on
+      every occasion; no one was to be put in competition with him. He
+      did every thing best in the world; and she was sure he would kill
+      more birds on the first of September, than any body else in the
+      country.
+
+      One morning, soon after their arrival, as she was sitting with
+      her two elder sisters, she said to Elizabeth:
+
+      “Lizzy, I never gave _you_ an account of my wedding, I believe.
+      You were not by, when I told mamma and the others all about it.
+      Are not you curious to hear how it was managed?”
+
+      “No really,” replied Elizabeth; “I think there cannot be too
+      little said on the subject.”
+
+      “La! You are so strange! But I must tell you how it went off. We
+      were married, you know, at St. Clement’s, because Wickham’s
+      lodgings were in that parish. And it was settled that we should
+      all be there by eleven o’clock. My uncle and aunt and I were to
+      go together; and the others were to meet us at the church. Well,
+      Monday morning came, and I was in such a fuss! I was so afraid,
+      you know, that something would happen to put it off, and then I
+      should have gone quite distracted. And there was my aunt, all the
+      time I was dressing, preaching and talking away just as if she
+      was reading a sermon. However, I did not hear above one word in
+      ten, for I was thinking, you may suppose, of my dear Wickham. I
+      longed to know whether he would be married in his blue coat.”
+
+      “Well, and so we breakfasted at ten as usual; I thought it would
+      never be over; for, by the bye, you are to understand, that my
+      uncle and aunt were horrid unpleasant all the time I was with
+      them. If you’ll believe me, I did not once put my foot out of
+      doors, though I was there a fortnight. Not one party, or scheme,
+      or anything. To be sure London was rather thin, but, however, the
+      Little Theatre was open. Well, and so just as the carriage came
+      to the door, my uncle was called away upon business to that
+      horrid man Mr. Stone. And then, you know, when once they get
+      together, there is no end of it. Well, I was so frightened I did
+      not know what to do, for my uncle was to give me away; and if we
+      were beyond the hour, we could not be married all day. But,
+      luckily, he came back again in ten minutes’ time, and then we all
+      set out. However, I recollected afterwards that if he _had_ been
+      prevented going, the wedding need not be put off, for Mr. Darcy
+      might have done as well.”
+
+      “Mr. Darcy!” repeated Elizabeth, in utter amazement.
+
+      “Oh, yes!—he was to come there with Wickham, you know. But
+      gracious me! I quite forgot! I ought not to have said a word
+      about it. I promised them so faithfully! What will Wickham say?
+      It was to be such a secret!”
+
+      “If it was to be secret,” said Jane, “say not another word on the
+      subject. You may depend upon my seeking no further.”
+
+      “Oh! certainly,” said Elizabeth, though burning with curiosity;
+      “we will ask you no questions.”
+
+      “Thank you,” said Lydia, “for if you did, I should certainly tell
+      you all, and then Wickham would be angry.”
+
+      On such encouragement to ask, Elizabeth was forced to put it out
+      of her power, by running away.
+
+      But to live in ignorance on such a point was impossible; or at
+      least it was impossible not to try for information. Mr. Darcy had
+      been at her sister’s wedding. It was exactly a scene, and exactly
+      among people, where he had apparently least to do, and least
+      temptation to go. Conjectures as to the meaning of it, rapid and
+      wild, hurried into her brain; but she was satisfied with none.
+      Those that best pleased her, as placing his conduct in the
+      noblest light, seemed most improbable. She could not bear such
+      suspense; and hastily seizing a sheet of paper, wrote a short
+      letter to her aunt, to request an explanation of what Lydia had
+      dropt, if it were compatible with the secrecy which had been
+      intended.
+
+      “You may readily comprehend,” she added, “what my curiosity must
+      be to know how a person unconnected with any of us, and
+      (comparatively speaking) a stranger to our family, should have
+      been amongst you at such a time. Pray write instantly, and let me
+      understand it—unless it is, for very cogent reasons, to remain in
+      the secrecy which Lydia seems to think necessary; and then I must
+      endeavour to be satisfied with ignorance.”
+
+      “Not that I _shall_, though,” she added to herself, as she
+      finished the letter; “and my dear aunt, if you do not tell me in
+      an honourable manner, I shall certainly be reduced to tricks and
+      stratagems to find it out.”
+
+      Jane’s delicate sense of honour would not allow her to speak to
+      Elizabeth privately of what Lydia had let fall; Elizabeth was
+      glad of it;—till it appeared whether her inquiries would receive
+      any satisfaction, she had rather be without a confidante.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 52
+
+      Elizabeth had the satisfaction of receiving an answer to her
+      letter as soon as she possibly could. She was no sooner in
+      possession of it than, hurrying into the little copse, where she
+      was least likely to be interrupted, she sat down on one of the
+      benches and prepared to be happy; for the length of the letter
+      convinced her that it did not contain a denial.
+
+      “Gracechurch Street, _Sept_. 6.
+
+      “My dear Niece,
+
+      “I have just received your letter, and shall devote this whole
+      morning to answering it, as I foresee that a _little_ writing
+      will not comprise what I have to tell you. I must confess myself
+      surprised by your application; I did not expect it from _you_.
+      Don’t think me angry, however, for I only mean to let you know
+      that I had not imagined such inquiries to be necessary on _your_
+      side. If you do not choose to understand me, forgive my
+      impertinence. Your uncle is as much surprised as I am—and nothing
+      but the belief of your being a party concerned would have allowed
+      him to act as he has done. But if you are really innocent and
+      ignorant, I must be more explicit.
+
+      “On the very day of my coming home from Longbourn, your uncle had
+      a most unexpected visitor. Mr. Darcy called, and was shut up with
+      him several hours. It was all over before I arrived; so my
+      curiosity was not so dreadfully racked as _yours_ seems to have
+      been. He came to tell Mr. Gardiner that he had found out where
+      your sister and Mr. Wickham were, and that he had seen and talked
+      with them both; Wickham repeatedly, Lydia once. From what I can
+      collect, he left Derbyshire only one day after ourselves, and
+      came to town with the resolution of hunting for them. The motive
+      professed was his conviction of its being owing to himself that
+      Wickham’s worthlessness had not been so well known as to make it
+      impossible for any young woman of character to love or confide in
+      him. He generously imputed the whole to his mistaken pride, and
+      confessed that he had before thought it beneath him to lay his
+      private actions open to the world. His character was to speak for
+      itself. He called it, therefore, his duty to step forward, and
+      endeavour to remedy an evil which had been brought on by himself.
+      If he _had another_ motive, I am sure it would never disgrace
+      him. He had been some days in town, before he was able to
+      discover them; but he had something to direct his search, which
+      was more than _we_ had; and the consciousness of this was another
+      reason for his resolving to follow us.
+
+      “There is a lady, it seems, a Mrs. Younge, who was some time ago
+      governess to Miss Darcy, and was dismissed from her charge on
+      some cause of disapprobation, though he did not say what. She
+      then took a large house in Edward-street, and has since
+      maintained herself by letting lodgings. This Mrs. Younge was, he
+      knew, intimately acquainted with Wickham; and he went to her for
+      intelligence of him as soon as he got to town. But it was two or
+      three days before he could get from her what he wanted. She would
+      not betray her trust, I suppose, without bribery and corruption,
+      for she really did know where her friend was to be found. Wickham
+      indeed had gone to her on their first arrival in London, and had
+      she been able to receive them into her house, they would have
+      taken up their abode with her. At length, however, our kind
+      friend procured the wished-for direction. They were in —— street.
+      He saw Wickham, and afterwards insisted on seeing Lydia. His
+      first object with her, he acknowledged, had been to persuade her
+      to quit her present disgraceful situation, and return to her
+      friends as soon as they could be prevailed on to receive her,
+      offering his assistance, as far as it would go. But he found
+      Lydia absolutely resolved on remaining where she was. She cared
+      for none of her friends; she wanted no help of his; she would not
+      hear of leaving Wickham. She was sure they should be married some
+      time or other, and it did not much signify when. Since such were
+      her feelings, it only remained, he thought, to secure and
+      expedite a marriage, which, in his very first conversation with
+      Wickham, he easily learnt had never been _his_ design. He
+      confessed himself obliged to leave the regiment, on account of
+      some debts of honour, which were very pressing; and scrupled not
+      to lay all the ill-consequences of Lydia’s flight on her own
+      folly alone. He meant to resign his commission immediately; and
+      as to his future situation, he could conjecture very little about
+      it. He must go somewhere, but he did not know where, and he knew
+      he should have nothing to live on.
+
+      “Mr. Darcy asked him why he had not married your sister at once.
+      Though Mr. Bennet was not imagined to be very rich, he would have
+      been able to do something for him, and his situation must have
+      been benefited by marriage. But he found, in reply to this
+      question, that Wickham still cherished the hope of more
+      effectually making his fortune by marriage in some other country.
+      Under such circumstances, however, he was not likely to be proof
+      against the temptation of immediate relief.
+
+      “They met several times, for there was much to be discussed.
+      Wickham of course wanted more than he could get; but at length
+      was reduced to be reasonable.
+
+      “Everything being settled between _them_, Mr. Darcy’s next step
+      was to make your uncle acquainted with it, and he first called in
+      Gracechurch street the evening before I came home. But Mr.
+      Gardiner could not be seen, and Mr. Darcy found, on further
+      inquiry, that your father was still with him, but would quit town
+      the next morning. He did not judge your father to be a person
+      whom he could so properly consult as your uncle, and therefore
+      readily postponed seeing him till after the departure of the
+      former. He did not leave his name, and till the next day it was
+      only known that a gentleman had called on business.
+
+      “On Saturday he came again. Your father was gone, your uncle at
+      home, and, as I said before, they had a great deal of talk
+      together.
+
+      “They met again on Sunday, and then _I_ saw him too. It was not
+      all settled before Monday: as soon as it was, the express was
+      sent off to Longbourn. But our visitor was very obstinate. I
+      fancy, Lizzy, that obstinacy is the real defect of his character,
+      after all. He has been accused of many faults at different times,
+      but _this_ is the true one. Nothing was to be done that he did
+      not do himself; though I am sure (and I do not speak it to be
+      thanked, therefore say nothing about it), your uncle would most
+      readily have settled the whole.
+
+      “They battled it together for a long time, which was more than
+      either the gentleman or lady concerned in it deserved. But at
+      last your uncle was forced to yield, and instead of being allowed
+      to be of use to his niece, was forced to put up with only having
+      the probable credit of it, which went sorely against the grain;
+      and I really believe your letter this morning gave him great
+      pleasure, because it required an explanation that would rob him
+      of his borrowed feathers, and give the praise where it was due.
+      But, Lizzy, this must go no farther than yourself, or Jane at
+      most.
+
+      “You know pretty well, I suppose, what has been done for the
+      young people. His debts are to be paid, amounting, I believe, to
+      considerably more than a thousand pounds, another thousand in
+      addition to her own settled upon _her_, and his commission
+      purchased. The reason why all this was to be done by him alone,
+      was such as I have given above. It was owing to him, to his
+      reserve and want of proper consideration, that Wickham’s
+      character had been so misunderstood, and consequently that he had
+      been received and noticed as he was. Perhaps there was some truth
+      in _this_; though I doubt whether _his_ reserve, or _anybody’s_
+      reserve, can be answerable for the event. But in spite of all
+      this fine talking, my dear Lizzy, you may rest perfectly assured
+      that your uncle would never have yielded, if we had not given him
+      credit for _another interest_ in the affair.
+
+      “When all this was resolved on, he returned again to his friends,
+      who were still staying at Pemberley; but it was agreed that he
+      should be in London once more when the wedding took place, and
+      all money matters were then to receive the last finish.
+
+      “I believe I have now told you every thing. It is a relation
+      which you tell me is to give you great surprise; I hope at least
+      it will not afford you any displeasure. Lydia came to us; and
+      Wickham had constant admission to the house. _He_ was exactly
+      what he had been, when I knew him in Hertfordshire; but I would
+      not tell you how little I was satisfied with _her_ behaviour
+      while she staid with us, if I had not perceived, by Jane’s letter
+      last Wednesday, that her conduct on coming home was exactly of a
+      piece with it, and therefore what I now tell you can give you no
+      fresh pain. I talked to her repeatedly in the most serious
+      manner, representing to her all the wickedness of what she had
+      done, and all the unhappiness she had brought on her family. If
+      she heard me, it was by good luck, for I am sure she did not
+      listen. I was sometimes quite provoked, but then I recollected my
+      dear Elizabeth and Jane, and for their sakes had patience with
+      her.
+
+      “Mr. Darcy was punctual in his return, and as Lydia informed you,
+      attended the wedding. He dined with us the next day, and was to
+      leave town again on Wednesday or Thursday. Will you be very angry
+      with me, my dear Lizzy, if I take this opportunity of saying
+      (what I was never bold enough to say before) how much I like him.
+      His behaviour to us has, in every respect, been as pleasing as
+      when we were in Derbyshire. His understanding and opinions all
+      please me; he wants nothing but a little more liveliness, and
+      _that_, if he marry _prudently_, his wife may teach him. I
+      thought him very sly;—he hardly ever mentioned your name. But
+      slyness seems the fashion.
+
+      “Pray forgive me if I have been very presuming, or at least do
+      not punish me so far as to exclude me from P. I shall never be
+      quite happy till I have been all round the park. A low phaeton,
+      with a nice little pair of ponies, would be the very thing.
+
+      “But I must write no more. The children have been wanting me this
+      half hour.
+
+      “Yours, very sincerely,
+      “M. GARDINER.”
+
+      The contents of this letter threw Elizabeth into a flutter of
+      spirits, in which it was difficult to determine whether pleasure
+      or pain bore the greatest share. The vague and unsettled
+      suspicions which uncertainty had produced of what Mr. Darcy might
+      have been doing to forward her sister’s match, which she had
+      feared to encourage as an exertion of goodness too great to be
+      probable, and at the same time dreaded to be just, from the pain
+      of obligation, were proved beyond their greatest extent to be
+      true! He had followed them purposely to town, he had taken on
+      himself all the trouble and mortification attendant on such a
+      research; in which supplication had been necessary to a woman
+      whom he must abominate and despise, and where he was reduced to
+      meet, frequently meet, reason with, persuade, and finally bribe,
+      the man whom he always most wished to avoid, and whose very name
+      it was punishment to him to pronounce. He had done all this for a
+      girl whom he could neither regard nor esteem. Her heart did
+      whisper that he had done it for her. But it was a hope shortly
+      checked by other considerations, and she soon felt that even her
+      vanity was insufficient, when required to depend on his affection
+      for her—for a woman who had already refused him—as able to
+      overcome a sentiment so natural as abhorrence against
+      relationship with Wickham. Brother-in-law of Wickham! Every kind
+      of pride must revolt from the connection. He had, to be sure,
+      done much. She was ashamed to think how much. But he had given a
+      reason for his interference, which asked no extraordinary stretch
+      of belief. It was reasonable that he should feel he had been
+      wrong; he had liberality, and he had the means of exercising it;
+      and though she would not place herself as his principal
+      inducement, she could, perhaps, believe that remaining partiality
+      for her might assist his endeavours in a cause where her peace of
+      mind must be materially concerned. It was painful, exceedingly
+      painful, to know that they were under obligations to a person who
+      could never receive a return. They owed the restoration of Lydia,
+      her character, every thing, to him. Oh! how heartily did she
+      grieve over every ungracious sensation she had ever encouraged,
+      every saucy speech she had ever directed towards him. For herself
+      she was humbled; but she was proud of him. Proud that in a cause
+      of compassion and honour, he had been able to get the better of
+      himself. She read over her aunt’s commendation of him again and
+      again. It was hardly enough; but it pleased her. She was even
+      sensible of some pleasure, though mixed with regret, on finding
+      how steadfastly both she and her uncle had been persuaded that
+      affection and confidence subsisted between Mr. Darcy and herself.
+
+      She was roused from her seat, and her reflections, by some one’s
+      approach; and before she could strike into another path, she was
+      overtaken by Wickham.
+
+      “I am afraid I interrupt your solitary ramble, my dear sister?”
+      said he, as he joined her.
+
+      “You certainly do,” she replied with a smile; “but it does not
+      follow that the interruption must be unwelcome.”
+
+      “I should be sorry indeed, if it were. _We_ were always good
+      friends; and now we are better.”
+
+      “True. Are the others coming out?”
+
+      “I do not know. Mrs. Bennet and Lydia are going in the carriage
+      to Meryton. And so, my dear sister, I find, from our uncle and
+      aunt, that you have actually seen Pemberley.”
+
+      She replied in the affirmative.
+
+      “I almost envy you the pleasure, and yet I believe it would be
+      too much for me, or else I could take it in my way to Newcastle.
+      And you saw the old housekeeper, I suppose? Poor Reynolds, she
+      was always very fond of me. But of course she did not mention my
+      name to you.”
+
+      “Yes, she did.”
+
+      “And what did she say?”
+
+      “That you were gone into the army, and she was afraid had—not
+      turned out well. At such a distance as _that_, you know, things
+      are strangely misrepresented.”
+
+      “Certainly,” he replied, biting his lips. Elizabeth hoped she had
+      silenced him; but he soon afterwards said:
+
+      “I was surprised to see Darcy in town last month. We passed each
+      other several times. I wonder what he can be doing there.”
+
+      “Perhaps preparing for his marriage with Miss de Bourgh,” said
+      Elizabeth. “It must be something particular, to take him there at
+      this time of year.”
+
+      “Undoubtedly. Did you see him while you were at Lambton? I
+      thought I understood from the Gardiners that you had.”
+
+      “Yes; he introduced us to his sister.”
+
+      “And do you like her?”
+
+      “Very much.”
+
+      “I have heard, indeed, that she is uncommonly improved within
+      this year or two. When I last saw her, she was not very
+      promising. I am very glad you liked her. I hope she will turn out
+      well.”
+
+      “I dare say she will; she has got over the most trying age.”
+
+      “Did you go by the village of Kympton?”
+
+      “I do not recollect that we did.”
+
+      “I mention it, because it is the living which I ought to have
+      had. A most delightful place!—Excellent Parsonage House! It would
+      have suited me in every respect.”
+
+      “How should you have liked making sermons?”
+
+      “Exceedingly well. I should have considered it as part of my
+      duty, and the exertion would soon have been nothing. One ought
+      not to repine;—but, to be sure, it would have been such a thing
+      for me! The quiet, the retirement of such a life would have
+      answered all my ideas of happiness! But it was not to be. Did you
+      ever hear Darcy mention the circumstance, when you were in Kent?”
+
+      “I _have_ heard from authority, which I thought _as good_, that
+      it was left you conditionally only, and at the will of the
+      present patron.”
+
+      “You have. Yes, there was something in _that_; I told you so from
+      the first, you may remember.”
+
+      “I _did_ hear, too, that there was a time, when sermon-making was
+      not so palatable to you as it seems to be at present; that you
+      actually declared your resolution of never taking orders, and
+      that the business had been compromised accordingly.”
+
+      “You did! and it was not wholly without foundation. You may
+      remember what I told you on that point, when first we talked of
+      it.”
+
+      They were now almost at the door of the house, for she had walked
+      fast to get rid of him; and unwilling, for her sister’s sake, to
+      provoke him, she only said in reply, with a good-humoured smile:
+
+      “Come, Mr. Wickham, we are brother and sister, you know. Do not
+      let us quarrel about the past. In future, I hope we shall be
+      always of one mind.”
+
+      She held out her hand; he kissed it with affectionate gallantry,
+      though he hardly knew how to look, and they entered the house.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 53
+
+      Mr. Wickham was so perfectly satisfied with this conversation
+      that he never again distressed himself, or provoked his dear
+      sister Elizabeth, by introducing the subject of it; and she was
+      pleased to find that she had said enough to keep him quiet.
+
+      The day of his and Lydia’s departure soon came, and Mrs. Bennet
+      was forced to submit to a separation, which, as her husband by no
+      means entered into her scheme of their all going to Newcastle,
+      was likely to continue at least a twelvemonth.
+
+      “Oh! my dear Lydia,” she cried, “when shall we meet again?”
+
+      “Oh, lord! I don’t know. Not these two or three years, perhaps.”
+
+      “Write to me very often, my dear.”
+
+      “As often as I can. But you know married women have never much
+      time for writing. My sisters may write to _me_. They will have
+      nothing else to do.”
+
+      Mr. Wickham’s adieus were much more affectionate than his wife’s.
+      He smiled, looked handsome, and said many pretty things.
+
+      “He is as fine a fellow,” said Mr. Bennet, as soon as they were
+      out of the house, “as ever I saw. He simpers, and smirks, and
+      makes love to us all. I am prodigiously proud of him. I defy even
+      Sir William Lucas himself to produce a more valuable son-in-law.”
+
+      The loss of her daughter made Mrs. Bennet very dull for several
+      days.
+
+      “I often think,” said she, “that there is nothing so bad as
+      parting with one’s friends. One seems so forlorn without them.”
+
+      “This is the consequence, you see, Madam, of marrying a
+      daughter,” said Elizabeth. “It must make you better satisfied
+      that your other four are single.”
+
+      “It is no such thing. Lydia does not leave me because she is
+      married, but only because her husband’s regiment happens to be so
+      far off. If that had been nearer, she would not have gone so
+      soon.”
+
+      But the spiritless condition which this event threw her into was
+      shortly relieved, and her mind opened again to the agitation of
+      hope, by an article of news which then began to be in
+      circulation. The housekeeper at Netherfield had received orders
+      to prepare for the arrival of her master, who was coming down in
+      a day or two, to shoot there for several weeks. Mrs. Bennet was
+      quite in the fidgets. She looked at Jane, and smiled and shook
+      her head by turns.
+
+      “Well, well, and so Mr. Bingley is coming down, sister,” (for
+      Mrs. Phillips first brought her the news). “Well, so much the
+      better. Not that I care about it, though. He is nothing to us,
+      you know, and I am sure I never want to see him again. But,
+      however, he is very welcome to come to Netherfield, if he likes
+      it. And who knows what _may_ happen? But that is nothing to us.
+      You know, sister, we agreed long ago never to mention a word
+      about it. And so, is it quite certain he is coming?”
+
+      “You may depend on it,” replied the other, “for Mrs. Nicholls was
+      in Meryton last night; I saw her passing by, and went out myself
+      on purpose to know the truth of it; and she told me that it was
+      certain true. He comes down on Thursday at the latest, very
+      likely on Wednesday. She was going to the butcher’s, she told me,
+      on purpose to order in some meat on Wednesday, and she has got
+      three couple of ducks just fit to be killed.”
+
+      Miss Bennet had not been able to hear of his coming without
+      changing colour. It was many months since she had mentioned his
+      name to Elizabeth; but now, as soon as they were alone together,
+      she said:
+
+      “I saw you look at me to-day, Lizzy, when my aunt told us of the
+      present report; and I know I appeared distressed. But don’t
+      imagine it was from any silly cause. I was only confused for the
+      moment, because I felt that I _should_ be looked at. I do assure
+      you that the news does not affect me either with pleasure or
+      pain. I am glad of one thing, that he comes alone; because we
+      shall see the less of him. Not that I am afraid of _myself_, but
+      I dread other people’s remarks.”
+
+      Elizabeth did not know what to make of it. Had she not seen him
+      in Derbyshire, she might have supposed him capable of coming
+      there with no other view than what was acknowledged; but she
+      still thought him partial to Jane, and she wavered as to the
+      greater probability of his coming there _with_ his friend’s
+      permission, or being bold enough to come without it.
+
+      “Yet it is hard,” she sometimes thought, “that this poor man
+      cannot come to a house which he has legally hired, without
+      raising all this speculation! I _will_ leave him to himself.”
+
+      In spite of what her sister declared, and really believed to be
+      her feelings in the expectation of his arrival, Elizabeth could
+      easily perceive that her spirits were affected by it. They were
+      more disturbed, more unequal, than she had often seen them.
+
+      The subject which had been so warmly canvassed between their
+      parents, about a twelvemonth ago, was now brought forward again.
+
+      “As soon as ever Mr. Bingley comes, my dear,” said Mrs. Bennet,
+      “you will wait on him of course.”
+
+      “No, no. You forced me into visiting him last year, and promised,
+      if I went to see him, he should marry one of my daughters. But it
+      ended in nothing, and I will not be sent on a fool’s errand
+      again.”
+
+      His wife represented to him how absolutely necessary such an
+      attention would be from all the neighbouring gentlemen, on his
+      returning to Netherfield.
+
+      “’Tis an _etiquette_ I despise,” said he. “If he wants our
+      society, let him seek it. He knows where we live. I will not
+      spend _my_ hours in running after my neighbours every time they
+      go away and come back again.”
+
+      “Well, all I know is, that it will be abominably rude if you do
+      not wait on him. But, however, that shan’t prevent my asking him
+      to dine here, I am determined. We must have Mrs. Long and the
+      Gouldings soon. That will make thirteen with ourselves, so there
+      will be just room at table for him.”
+
+      Consoled by this resolution, she was the better able to bear her
+      husband’s incivility; though it was very mortifying to know that
+      her neighbours might all see Mr. Bingley, in consequence of it,
+      before _they_ did. As the day of his arrival drew near,—
+
+      “I begin to be sorry that he comes at all,” said Jane to her
+      sister. “It would be nothing; I could see him with perfect
+      indifference, but I can hardly bear to hear it thus perpetually
+      talked of. My mother means well; but she does not know, no one
+      can know, how much I suffer from what she says. Happy shall I be,
+      when his stay at Netherfield is over!”
+
+      “I wish I could say anything to comfort you,” replied Elizabeth;
+      “but it is wholly out of my power. You must feel it; and the
+      usual satisfaction of preaching patience to a sufferer is denied
+      me, because you have always so much.”
+
+      Mr. Bingley arrived. Mrs. Bennet, through the assistance of
+      servants, contrived to have the earliest tidings of it, that the
+      period of anxiety and fretfulness on her side might be as long as
+      it could. She counted the days that must intervene before their
+      invitation could be sent; hopeless of seeing him before. But on
+      the third morning after his arrival in Hertfordshire, she saw
+      him, from her dressing-room window, enter the paddock and ride
+      towards the house.
+
+      Her daughters were eagerly called to partake of her joy. Jane
+      resolutely kept her place at the table; but Elizabeth, to satisfy
+      her mother, went to the window—she looked,—she saw Mr. Darcy with
+      him, and sat down again by her sister.
+
+      “There is a gentleman with him, mamma,” said Kitty; “who can it
+      be?”
+
+      “Some acquaintance or other, my dear, I suppose; I am sure I do
+      not know.”
+
+      “La!” replied Kitty, “it looks just like that man that used to be
+      with him before. Mr. what’s-his-name. That tall, proud man.”
+
+      “Good gracious! Mr. Darcy!—and so it does, I vow. Well, any
+      friend of Mr. Bingley’s will always be welcome here, to be sure;
+      but else I must say that I hate the very sight of him.”
+
+      Jane looked at Elizabeth with surprise and concern. She knew but
+      little of their meeting in Derbyshire, and therefore felt for the
+      awkwardness which must attend her sister, in seeing him almost
+      for the first time after receiving his explanatory letter. Both
+      sisters were uncomfortable enough. Each felt for the other, and
+      of course for themselves; and their mother talked on, of her
+      dislike of Mr. Darcy, and her resolution to be civil to him only
+      as Mr. Bingley’s friend, without being heard by either of them.
+      But Elizabeth had sources of uneasiness which could not be
+      suspected by Jane, to whom she had never yet had courage to shew
+      Mrs. Gardiner’s letter, or to relate her own change of sentiment
+      towards him. To Jane, he could be only a man whose proposals she
+      had refused, and whose merit she had undervalued; but to her own
+      more extensive information, he was the person to whom the whole
+      family were indebted for the first of benefits, and whom she
+      regarded herself with an interest, if not quite so tender, at
+      least as reasonable and just as what Jane felt for Bingley. Her
+      astonishment at his coming—at his coming to Netherfield, to
+      Longbourn, and voluntarily seeking her again, was almost equal to
+      what she had known on first witnessing his altered behaviour in
+      Derbyshire.
+
+      The colour which had been driven from her face, returned for half
+      a minute with an additional glow, and a smile of delight added
+      lustre to her eyes, as she thought for that space of time that
+      his affection and wishes must still be unshaken. But she would
+      not be secure.
+
+      “Let me first see how he behaves,” said she; “it will then be
+      early enough for expectation.”
+
+      She sat intently at work, striving to be composed, and without
+      daring to lift up her eyes, till anxious curiosity carried them
+      to the face of her sister as the servant was approaching the
+      door. Jane looked a little paler than usual, but more sedate than
+      Elizabeth had expected. On the gentlemen’s appearing, her colour
+      increased; yet she received them with tolerable ease, and with a
+      propriety of behaviour equally free from any symptom of
+      resentment or any unnecessary complaisance.
+
+      Elizabeth said as little to either as civility would allow, and
+      sat down again to her work, with an eagerness which it did not
+      often command. She had ventured only one glance at Darcy. He
+      looked serious, as usual; and, she thought, more as he had been
+      used to look in Hertfordshire, than as she had seen him at
+      Pemberley. But, perhaps he could not in her mother’s presence be
+      what he was before her uncle and aunt. It was a painful, but not
+      an improbable, conjecture.
+
+      Bingley, she had likewise seen for an instant, and in that short
+      period saw him looking both pleased and embarrassed. He was
+      received by Mrs. Bennet with a degree of civility which made her
+      two daughters ashamed, especially when contrasted with the cold
+      and ceremonious politeness of her curtsey and address to his
+      friend.
+
+      Elizabeth, particularly, who knew that her mother owed to the
+      latter the preservation of her favourite daughter from
+      irremediable infamy, was hurt and distressed to a most painful
+      degree by a distinction so ill applied.
+
+      Darcy, after inquiring of her how Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner did, a
+      question which she could not answer without confusion, said
+      scarcely anything. He was not seated by her; perhaps that was the
+      reason of his silence; but it had not been so in Derbyshire.
+      There he had talked to her friends, when he could not to herself.
+      But now several minutes elapsed without bringing the sound of his
+      voice; and when occasionally, unable to resist the impulse of
+      curiosity, she raised her eyes to his face, she as often found
+      him looking at Jane as at herself, and frequently on no object
+      but the ground. More thoughtfulness and less anxiety to please,
+      than when they last met, were plainly expressed. She was
+      disappointed, and angry with herself for being so.
+
+      “Could I expect it to be otherwise!” said she. “Yet why did he
+      come?”
+
+      She was in no humour for conversation with anyone but himself;
+      and to him she had hardly courage to speak.
+
+      She inquired after his sister, but could do no more.
+
+      “It is a long time, Mr. Bingley, since you went away,” said Mrs.
+      Bennet.
+
+      He readily agreed to it.
+
+      “I began to be afraid you would never come back again. People
+      _did_ say you meant to quit the place entirely at Michaelmas;
+      but, however, I hope it is not true. A great many changes have
+      happened in the neighbourhood, since you went away. Miss Lucas is
+      married and settled. And one of my own daughters. I suppose you
+      have heard of it; indeed, you must have seen it in the papers. It
+      was in The Times and The Courier, I know; though it was not put
+      in as it ought to be. It was only said, ‘Lately, George Wickham,
+      Esq. to Miss Lydia Bennet,’ without there being a syllable said
+      of her father, or the place where she lived, or anything. It was
+      my brother Gardiner’s drawing up too, and I wonder how he came to
+      make such an awkward business of it. Did you see it?”
+
+      Bingley replied that he did, and made his congratulations.
+      Elizabeth dared not lift up her eyes. How Mr. Darcy looked,
+      therefore, she could not tell.
+
+      “It is a delightful thing, to be sure, to have a daughter well
+      married,” continued her mother, “but at the same time, Mr.
+      Bingley, it is very hard to have her taken such a way from me.
+      They are gone down to Newcastle, a place quite northward, it
+      seems, and there they are to stay I do not know how long. His
+      regiment is there; for I suppose you have heard of his leaving
+      the ——shire, and of his being gone into the regulars. Thank
+      Heaven! he has _some_ friends, though perhaps not so many as he
+      deserves.”
+
+      Elizabeth, who knew this to be levelled at Mr. Darcy, was in such
+      misery of shame, that she could hardly keep her seat. It drew
+      from her, however, the exertion of speaking, which nothing else
+      had so effectually done before; and she asked Bingley whether he
+      meant to make any stay in the country at present. A few weeks, he
+      believed.
+
+      “When you have killed all your own birds, Mr. Bingley,” said her
+      mother, “I beg you will come here, and shoot as many as you
+      please on Mr. Bennet’s manor. I am sure he will be vastly happy
+      to oblige you, and will save all the best of the covies for you.”
+
+      Elizabeth’s misery increased, at such unnecessary, such officious
+      attention! Were the same fair prospect to arise at present as had
+      flattered them a year ago, every thing, she was persuaded, would
+      be hastening to the same vexatious conclusion. At that instant,
+      she felt that years of happiness could not make Jane or herself
+      amends for moments of such painful confusion.
+
+      “The first wish of my heart,” said she to herself, “is never more
+      to be in company with either of them. Their society can afford no
+      pleasure that will atone for such wretchedness as this! Let me
+      never see either one or the other again!”
+
+      Yet the misery, for which years of happiness were to offer no
+      compensation, received soon afterwards material relief, from
+      observing how much the beauty of her sister re-kindled the
+      admiration of her former lover. When first he came in, he had
+      spoken to her but little; but every five minutes seemed to be
+      giving her more of his attention. He found her as handsome as she
+      had been last year; as good natured, and as unaffected, though
+      not quite so chatty. Jane was anxious that no difference should
+      be perceived in her at all, and was really persuaded that she
+      talked as much as ever. But her mind was so busily engaged, that
+      she did not always know when she was silent.
+
+      When the gentlemen rose to go away, Mrs. Bennet was mindful of
+      her intended civility, and they were invited and engaged to dine
+      at Longbourn in a few days time.
+
+      “You are quite a visit in my debt, Mr. Bingley,” she added, “for
+      when you went to town last winter, you promised to take a family
+      dinner with us, as soon as you returned. I have not forgot, you
+      see; and I assure you, I was very much disappointed that you did
+      not come back and keep your engagement.”
+
+      Bingley looked a little silly at this reflection, and said
+      something of his concern at having been prevented by business.
+      They then went away.
+
+      Mrs. Bennet had been strongly inclined to ask them to stay and
+      dine there that day; but, though she always kept a very good
+      table, she did not think anything less than two courses could be
+      good enough for a man on whom she had such anxious designs, or
+      satisfy the appetite and pride of one who had ten thousand a
+      year.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 54
+
+      As soon as they were gone, Elizabeth walked out to recover her
+      spirits; or in other words, to dwell without interruption on
+      those subjects that must deaden them more. Mr. Darcy’s behaviour
+      astonished and vexed her.
+
+      “Why, if he came only to be silent, grave, and indifferent,” said
+      she, “did he come at all?”
+
+      She could settle it in no way that gave her pleasure.
+
+      “He could be still amiable, still pleasing, to my uncle and aunt,
+      when he was in town; and why not to me? If he fears me, why come
+      hither? If he no longer cares for me, why silent? Teasing,
+      teasing, man! I will think no more about him.”
+
+      Her resolution was for a short time involuntarily kept by the
+      approach of her sister, who joined her with a cheerful look,
+      which showed her better satisfied with their visitors, than
+      Elizabeth.
+
+      “Now,” said she, “that this first meeting is over, I feel
+      perfectly easy. I know my own strength, and I shall never be
+      embarrassed again by his coming. I am glad he dines here on
+      Tuesday. It will then be publicly seen that, on both sides, we
+      meet only as common and indifferent acquaintance.”
+
+      “Yes, very indifferent indeed,” said Elizabeth, laughingly. “Oh,
+      Jane, take care.”
+
+      “My dear Lizzy, you cannot think me so weak, as to be in danger
+      now?”
+
+      “I think you are in very great danger of making him as much in
+      love with you as ever.”
+
+      They did not see the gentlemen again till Tuesday; and Mrs.
+      Bennet, in the meanwhile, was giving way to all the happy
+      schemes, which the good humour and common politeness of Bingley,
+      in half an hour’s visit, had revived.
+
+      On Tuesday there was a large party assembled at Longbourn; and
+      the two who were most anxiously expected, to the credit of their
+      punctuality as sportsmen, were in very good time. When they
+      repaired to the dining-room, Elizabeth eagerly watched to see
+      whether Bingley would take the place, which, in all their former
+      parties, had belonged to him, by her sister. Her prudent mother,
+      occupied by the same ideas, forbore to invite him to sit by
+      herself. On entering the room, he seemed to hesitate; but Jane
+      happened to look round, and happened to smile: it was decided. He
+      placed himself by her.
+
+      Elizabeth, with a triumphant sensation, looked towards his
+      friend. He bore it with noble indifference, and she would have
+      imagined that Bingley had received his sanction to be happy, had
+      she not seen his eyes likewise turned towards Mr. Darcy, with an
+      expression of half-laughing alarm.
+
+      His behaviour to her sister was such, during dinner time, as
+      showed an admiration of her, which, though more guarded than
+      formerly, persuaded Elizabeth, that if left wholly to himself,
+      Jane’s happiness, and his own, would be speedily secured. Though
+      she dared not depend upon the consequence, she yet received
+      pleasure from observing his behaviour. It gave her all the
+      animation that her spirits could boast; for she was in no
+      cheerful humour. Mr. Darcy was almost as far from her as the
+      table could divide them. He was on one side of her mother. She
+      knew how little such a situation would give pleasure to either,
+      or make either appear to advantage. She was not near enough to
+      hear any of their discourse, but she could see how seldom they
+      spoke to each other, and how formal and cold was their manner
+      whenever they did. Her mother’s ungraciousness, made the sense of
+      what they owed him more painful to Elizabeth’s mind; and she
+      would, at times, have given anything to be privileged to tell him
+      that his kindness was neither unknown nor unfelt by the whole of
+      the family.
+
+      She was in hopes that the evening would afford some opportunity
+      of bringing them together; that the whole of the visit would not
+      pass away without enabling them to enter into something more of
+      conversation than the mere ceremonious salutation attending his
+      entrance. Anxious and uneasy, the period which passed in the
+      drawing-room, before the gentlemen came, was wearisome and dull
+      to a degree that almost made her uncivil. She looked forward to
+      their entrance as the point on which all her chance of pleasure
+      for the evening must depend.
+
+      “If he does not come to me, _then_,” said she, “I shall give him
+      up for ever.”
+
+      The gentlemen came; and she thought he looked as if he would have
+      answered her hopes; but, alas! the ladies had crowded round the
+      table, where Miss Bennet was making tea, and Elizabeth pouring
+      out the coffee, in so close a confederacy that there was not a
+      single vacancy near her which would admit of a chair. And on the
+      gentlemen’s approaching, one of the girls moved closer to her
+      than ever, and said, in a whisper:
+
+      “The men shan’t come and part us, I am determined. We want none
+      of them; do we?”
+
+      Darcy had walked away to another part of the room. She followed
+      him with her eyes, envied everyone to whom he spoke, had scarcely
+      patience enough to help anybody to coffee; and then was enraged
+      against herself for being so silly!
+
+      “A man who has once been refused! How could I ever be foolish
+      enough to expect a renewal of his love? Is there one among the
+      sex, who would not protest against such a weakness as a second
+      proposal to the same woman? There is no indignity so abhorrent to
+      their feelings!”
+
+      She was a little revived, however, by his bringing back his
+      coffee cup himself; and she seized the opportunity of saying:
+
+      “Is your sister at Pemberley still?”
+
+      “Yes, she will remain there till Christmas.”
+
+      “And quite alone? Have all her friends left her?”
+
+      “Mrs. Annesley is with her. The others have been gone on to
+      Scarborough, these three weeks.”
+
+      She could think of nothing more to say; but if he wished to
+      converse with her, he might have better success. He stood by her,
+      however, for some minutes, in silence; and, at last, on the young
+      lady’s whispering to Elizabeth again, he walked away.
+
+      When the tea-things were removed, and the card-tables placed, the
+      ladies all rose, and Elizabeth was then hoping to be soon joined
+      by him, when all her views were overthrown by seeing him fall a
+      victim to her mother’s rapacity for whist players, and in a few
+      moments after seated with the rest of the party. She now lost
+      every expectation of pleasure. They were confined for the evening
+      at different tables, and she had nothing to hope, but that his
+      eyes were so often turned towards her side of the room, as to
+      make him play as unsuccessfully as herself.
+
+      Mrs. Bennet had designed to keep the two Netherfield gentlemen to
+      supper; but their carriage was unluckily ordered before any of
+      the others, and she had no opportunity of detaining them.
+
+      “Well girls,” said she, as soon as they were left to themselves,
+      “What say you to the day? I think every thing has passed off
+      uncommonly well, I assure you. The dinner was as well dressed as
+      any I ever saw. The venison was roasted to a turn—and everybody
+      said they never saw so fat a haunch. The soup was fifty times
+      better than what we had at the Lucases’ last week; and even Mr.
+      Darcy acknowledged, that the partridges were remarkably well
+      done; and I suppose he has two or three French cooks at least.
+      And, my dear Jane, I never saw you look in greater beauty. Mrs.
+      Long said so too, for I asked her whether you did not. And what
+      do you think she said besides? ‘Ah! Mrs. Bennet, we shall have
+      her at Netherfield at last.’ She did indeed. I do think Mrs. Long
+      is as good a creature as ever lived—and her nieces are very
+      pretty behaved girls, and not at all handsome: I like them
+      prodigiously.”
+
+      Mrs. Bennet, in short, was in very great spirits; she had seen
+      enough of Bingley’s behaviour to Jane, to be convinced that she
+      would get him at last; and her expectations of advantage to her
+      family, when in a happy humour, were so far beyond reason, that
+      she was quite disappointed at not seeing him there again the next
+      day, to make his proposals.
+
+      “It has been a very agreeable day,” said Miss Bennet to
+      Elizabeth. “The party seemed so well selected, so suitable one
+      with the other. I hope we may often meet again.”
+
+      Elizabeth smiled.
+
+      “Lizzy, you must not do so. You must not suspect me. It mortifies
+      me. I assure you that I have now learnt to enjoy his conversation
+      as an agreeable and sensible young man, without having a wish
+      beyond it. I am perfectly satisfied, from what his manners now
+      are, that he never had any design of engaging my affection. It is
+      only that he is blessed with greater sweetness of address, and a
+      stronger desire of generally pleasing, than any other man.”
+
+      “You are very cruel,” said her sister, “you will not let me
+      smile, and are provoking me to it every moment.”
+
+      “How hard it is in some cases to be believed!”
+
+      “And how impossible in others!”
+
+      “But why should you wish to persuade me that I feel more than I
+      acknowledge?”
+
+      “That is a question which I hardly know how to answer. We all
+      love to instruct, though we can teach only what is not worth
+      knowing. Forgive me; and if you persist in indifference, do not
+      make _me_ your confidante.”
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 55
+
+      A few days after this visit, Mr. Bingley called again, and alone.
+      His friend had left him that morning for London, but was to
+      return home in ten days time. He sat with them above an hour, and
+      was in remarkably good spirits. Mrs. Bennet invited him to dine
+      with them; but, with many expressions of concern, he confessed
+      himself engaged elsewhere.
+
+      “Next time you call,” said she, “I hope we shall be more lucky.”
+
+      He should be particularly happy at any time, etc. etc.; and if
+      she would give him leave, would take an early opportunity of
+      waiting on them.
+
+      “Can you come to-morrow?”
+
+      Yes, he had no engagement at all for to-morrow; and her
+      invitation was accepted with alacrity.
+
+      He came, and in such very good time that the ladies were none of
+      them dressed. In ran Mrs. Bennet to her daughter’s room, in her
+      dressing gown, and with her hair half finished, crying out:
+
+      “My dear Jane, make haste and hurry down. He is come—Mr. Bingley
+      is come. He is, indeed. Make haste, make haste. Here, Sarah, come
+      to Miss Bennet this moment, and help her on with her gown. Never
+      mind Miss Lizzy’s hair.”
+
+      “We will be down as soon as we can,” said Jane; “but I dare say
+      Kitty is forwarder than either of us, for she went up stairs half
+      an hour ago.”
+
+      “Oh! hang Kitty! what has she to do with it? Come be quick, be
+      quick! Where is your sash, my dear?”
+
+      But when her mother was gone, Jane would not be prevailed on to
+      go down without one of her sisters.
+
+      The same anxiety to get them by themselves was visible again in
+      the evening. After tea, Mr. Bennet retired to the library, as was
+      his custom, and Mary went up stairs to her instrument. Two
+      obstacles of the five being thus removed, Mrs. Bennet sat looking
+      and winking at Elizabeth and Catherine for a considerable time,
+      without making any impression on them. Elizabeth would not
+      observe her; and when at last Kitty did, she very innocently
+      said, “What is the matter mamma? What do you keep winking at me
+      for? What am I to do?”
+
+      “Nothing child, nothing. I did not wink at you.” She then sat
+      still five minutes longer; but unable to waste such a precious
+      occasion, she suddenly got up, and saying to Kitty, “Come here,
+      my love, I want to speak to you,” took her out of the room. Jane
+      instantly gave a look at Elizabeth which spoke her distress at
+      such premeditation, and her entreaty that _she_ would not give in
+      to it. In a few minutes, Mrs. Bennet half-opened the door and
+      called out:
+
+      “Lizzy, my dear, I want to speak with you.”
+
+      Elizabeth was forced to go.
+
+      “We may as well leave them by themselves you know;” said her
+      mother, as soon as she was in the hall. “Kitty and I are going up
+      stairs to sit in my dressing-room.”
+
+      Elizabeth made no attempt to reason with her mother, but remained
+      quietly in the hall, till she and Kitty were out of sight, then
+      returned into the drawing-room.
+
+      Mrs. Bennet’s schemes for this day were ineffectual. Bingley was
+      every thing that was charming, except the professed lover of her
+      daughter. His ease and cheerfulness rendered him a most agreeable
+      addition to their evening party; and he bore with the ill-judged
+      officiousness of the mother, and heard all her silly remarks with
+      a forbearance and command of countenance particularly grateful to
+      the daughter.
+
+      He scarcely needed an invitation to stay supper; and before he
+      went away, an engagement was formed, chiefly through his own and
+      Mrs. Bennet’s means, for his coming next morning to shoot with
+      her husband.
+
+      After this day, Jane said no more of her indifference. Not a word
+      passed between the sisters concerning Bingley; but Elizabeth went
+      to bed in the happy belief that all must speedily be concluded,
+      unless Mr. Darcy returned within the stated time. Seriously,
+      however, she felt tolerably persuaded that all this must have
+      taken place with that gentleman’s concurrence.
+
+      Bingley was punctual to his appointment; and he and Mr. Bennet
+      spent the morning together, as had been agreed on. The latter was
+      much more agreeable than his companion expected. There was
+      nothing of presumption or folly in Bingley that could provoke his
+      ridicule, or disgust him into silence; and he was more
+      communicative, and less eccentric, than the other had ever seen
+      him. Bingley of course returned with him to dinner; and in the
+      evening Mrs. Bennet’s invention was again at work to get every
+      body away from him and her daughter. Elizabeth, who had a letter
+      to write, went into the breakfast room for that purpose soon
+      after tea; for as the others were all going to sit down to cards,
+      she could not be wanted to counteract her mother’s schemes.
+
+      But on returning to the drawing-room, when her letter was
+      finished, she saw, to her infinite surprise, there was reason to
+      fear that her mother had been too ingenious for her. On opening
+      the door, she perceived her sister and Bingley standing together
+      over the hearth, as if engaged in earnest conversation; and had
+      this led to no suspicion, the faces of both, as they hastily
+      turned round and moved away from each other, would have told it
+      all. _Their_ situation was awkward enough; but _hers_ she thought
+      was still worse. Not a syllable was uttered by either; and
+      Elizabeth was on the point of going away again, when Bingley, who
+      as well as the other had sat down, suddenly rose, and whispering
+      a few words to her sister, ran out of the room.
+
+      Jane could have no reserves from Elizabeth, where confidence
+      would give pleasure; and instantly embracing her, acknowledged,
+      with the liveliest emotion, that she was the happiest creature in
+      the world.
+
+      “’Tis too much!” she added, “by far too much. I do not deserve
+      it. Oh! why is not everybody as happy?”
+
+      Elizabeth’s congratulations were given with a sincerity, a
+      warmth, a delight, which words could but poorly express. Every
+      sentence of kindness was a fresh source of happiness to Jane. But
+      she would not allow herself to stay with her sister, or say half
+      that remained to be said for the present.
+
+      “I must go instantly to my mother;” she cried. “I would not on
+      any account trifle with her affectionate solicitude; or allow her
+      to hear it from anyone but myself. He is gone to my father
+      already. Oh! Lizzy, to know that what I have to relate will give
+      such pleasure to all my dear family! how shall I bear so much
+      happiness!”
+
+      She then hastened away to her mother, who had purposely broken up
+      the card party, and was sitting up stairs with Kitty.
+
+      Elizabeth, who was left by herself, now smiled at the rapidity
+      and ease with which an affair was finally settled, that had given
+      them so many previous months of suspense and vexation.
+
+      “And this,” said she, “is the end of all his friend’s anxious
+      circumspection! of all his sister’s falsehood and contrivance!
+      the happiest, wisest, most reasonable end!”
+
+      In a few minutes she was joined by Bingley, whose conference with
+      her father had been short and to the purpose.
+
+      “Where is your sister?” said he hastily, as he opened the door.
+
+      “With my mother up stairs. She will be down in a moment, I dare
+      say.”
+
+      He then shut the door, and, coming up to her, claimed the good
+      wishes and affection of a sister. Elizabeth honestly and heartily
+      expressed her delight in the prospect of their relationship. They
+      shook hands with great cordiality; and then, till her sister came
+      down, she had to listen to all he had to say of his own
+      happiness, and of Jane’s perfections; and in spite of his being a
+      lover, Elizabeth really believed all his expectations of felicity
+      to be rationally founded, because they had for basis the
+      excellent understanding, and super-excellent disposition of Jane,
+      and a general similarity of feeling and taste between her and
+      himself.
+
+      It was an evening of no common delight to them all; the
+      satisfaction of Miss Bennet’s mind gave a glow of such sweet
+      animation to her face, as made her look handsomer than ever.
+      Kitty simpered and smiled, and hoped her turn was coming soon.
+      Mrs. Bennet could not give her consent or speak her approbation
+      in terms warm enough to satisfy her feelings, though she talked
+      to Bingley of nothing else for half an hour; and when Mr. Bennet
+      joined them at supper, his voice and manner plainly showed how
+      really happy he was.
+
+      Not a word, however, passed his lips in allusion to it, till
+      their visitor took his leave for the night; but as soon as he was
+      gone, he turned to his daughter, and said:
+
+      “Jane, I congratulate you. You will be a very happy woman.”
+
+      Jane went to him instantly, kissed him, and thanked him for his
+      goodness.
+
+      “You are a good girl;” he replied, “and I have great pleasure in
+      thinking you will be so happily settled. I have not a doubt of
+      your doing very well together. Your tempers are by no means
+      unlike. You are each of you so complying, that nothing will ever
+      be resolved on; so easy, that every servant will cheat you; and
+      so generous, that you will always exceed your income.”
+
+      “I hope not so. Imprudence or thoughtlessness in money matters
+      would be unpardonable in _me_.”
+
+      “Exceed their income! My dear Mr. Bennet,” cried his wife, “what
+      are you talking of? Why, he has four or five thousand a year, and
+      very likely more.” Then addressing her daughter, “Oh! my dear,
+      dear Jane, I am so happy! I am sure I shan’t get a wink of sleep
+      all night. I knew how it would be. I always said it must be so,
+      at last. I was sure you could not be so beautiful for nothing! I
+      remember, as soon as ever I saw him, when he first came into
+      Hertfordshire last year, I thought how likely it was that you
+      should come together. Oh! he is the handsomest young man that
+      ever was seen!”
+
+      Wickham, Lydia, were all forgotten. Jane was beyond competition
+      her favourite child. At that moment, she cared for no other. Her
+      younger sisters soon began to make interest with her for objects
+      of happiness which she might in future be able to dispense.
+
+      Mary petitioned for the use of the library at Netherfield; and
+      Kitty begged very hard for a few balls there every winter.
+
+      Bingley, from this time, was of course a daily visitor at
+      Longbourn; coming frequently before breakfast, and always
+      remaining till after supper; unless when some barbarous
+      neighbour, who could not be enough detested, had given him an
+      invitation to dinner which he thought himself obliged to accept.
+
+      Elizabeth had now but little time for conversation with her
+      sister; for while he was present, Jane had no attention to bestow
+      on anyone else; but she found herself considerably useful to both
+      of them in those hours of separation that must sometimes occur.
+      In the absence of Jane, he always attached himself to Elizabeth,
+      for the pleasure of talking of her; and when Bingley was gone,
+      Jane constantly sought the same means of relief.
+
+      “He has made me so happy,” said she, one evening, “by telling me
+      that he was totally ignorant of my being in town last spring! I
+      had not believed it possible.”
+
+      “I suspected as much,” replied Elizabeth. “But how did he account
+      for it?”
+
+      “It must have been his sister’s doing. They were certainly no
+      friends to his acquaintance with me, which I cannot wonder at,
+      since he might have chosen so much more advantageously in many
+      respects. But when they see, as I trust they will, that their
+      brother is happy with me, they will learn to be contented, and we
+      shall be on good terms again; though we can never be what we once
+      were to each other.”
+
+      “That is the most unforgiving speech,” said Elizabeth, “that I
+      ever heard you utter. Good girl! It would vex me, indeed, to see
+      you again the dupe of Miss Bingley’s pretended regard.”
+
+      “Would you believe it, Lizzy, that when he went to town last
+      November, he really loved me, and nothing but a persuasion of
+      _my_ being indifferent would have prevented his coming down
+      again!”
+
+      “He made a little mistake to be sure; but it is to the credit of
+      his modesty.”
+
+      This naturally introduced a panegyric from Jane on his
+      diffidence, and the little value he put on his own good
+      qualities. Elizabeth was pleased to find that he had not betrayed
+      the interference of his friend; for, though Jane had the most
+      generous and forgiving heart in the world, she knew it was a
+      circumstance which must prejudice her against him.
+
+      “I am certainly the most fortunate creature that ever existed!”
+      cried Jane. “Oh! Lizzy, why am I thus singled from my family, and
+      blessed above them all! If I could but see you as happy! If there
+      were but such another man for you!”
+
+      “If you were to give me forty such men, I never could be so happy
+      as you. Till I have your disposition, your goodness, I never can
+      have your happiness. No, no, let me shift for myself; and,
+      perhaps, if I have very good luck, I may meet with another Mr.
+      Collins in time.”
+
+      The situation of affairs in the Longbourn family could not be
+      long a secret. Mrs. Bennet was privileged to whisper it to Mrs.
+      Phillips, and she ventured, without any permission, to do the
+      same by all her neighbours in Meryton.
+
+      The Bennets were speedily pronounced to be the luckiest family in
+      the world, though only a few weeks before, when Lydia had first
+      run away, they had been generally proved to be marked out for
+      misfortune.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 56
+
+      One morning, about a week after Bingley’s engagement with Jane
+      had been formed, as he and the females of the family were sitting
+      together in the dining-room, their attention was suddenly drawn
+      to the window, by the sound of a carriage; and they perceived a
+      chaise and four driving up the lawn. It was too early in the
+      morning for visitors, and besides, the equipage did not answer to
+      that of any of their neighbours. The horses were post; and
+      neither the carriage, nor the livery of the servant who preceded
+      it, were familiar to them. As it was certain, however, that
+      somebody was coming, Bingley instantly prevailed on Miss Bennet
+      to avoid the confinement of such an intrusion, and walk away with
+      him into the shrubbery. They both set off, and the conjectures of
+      the remaining three continued, though with little satisfaction,
+      till the door was thrown open and their visitor entered. It was
+      Lady Catherine de Bourgh.
+
+      They were of course all intending to be surprised; but their
+      astonishment was beyond their expectation; and on the part of
+      Mrs. Bennet and Kitty, though she was perfectly unknown to them,
+      even inferior to what Elizabeth felt.
+
+      She entered the room with an air more than usually ungracious,
+      made no other reply to Elizabeth’s salutation than a slight
+      inclination of the head, and sat down without saying a word.
+      Elizabeth had mentioned her name to her mother on her ladyship’s
+      entrance, though no request of introduction had been made.
+
+      Mrs. Bennet, all amazement, though flattered by having a guest of
+      such high importance, received her with the utmost politeness.
+      After sitting for a moment in silence, she said very stiffly to
+      Elizabeth,
+
+      “I hope you are well, Miss Bennet. That lady, I suppose, is your
+      mother.”
+
+      Elizabeth replied very concisely that she was.
+
+      “And _that_ I suppose is one of your sisters.”
+
+      “Yes, madam,” said Mrs. Bennet, delighted to speak to Lady
+      Catherine. “She is my youngest girl but one. My youngest of all
+      is lately married, and my eldest is somewhere about the grounds,
+      walking with a young man who, I believe, will soon become a part
+      of the family.”
+
+      “You have a very small park here,” returned Lady Catherine after
+      a short silence.
+
+      “It is nothing in comparison of Rosings, my lady, I dare say; but
+      I assure you it is much larger than Sir William Lucas’s.”
+
+      “This must be a most inconvenient sitting room for the evening,
+      in summer; the windows are full west.”
+
+      Mrs. Bennet assured her that they never sat there after dinner,
+      and then added:
+
+      “May I take the liberty of asking your ladyship whether you left
+      Mr. and Mrs. Collins well.”
+
+      “Yes, very well. I saw them the night before last.”
+
+      Elizabeth now expected that she would produce a letter for her
+      from Charlotte, as it seemed the only probable motive for her
+      calling. But no letter appeared, and she was completely puzzled.
+
+      Mrs. Bennet, with great civility, begged her ladyship to take
+      some refreshment; but Lady Catherine very resolutely, and not
+      very politely, declined eating anything; and then, rising up,
+      said to Elizabeth,
+
+      “Miss Bennet, there seemed to be a prettyish kind of a little
+      wilderness on one side of your lawn. I should be glad to take a
+      turn in it, if you will favour me with your company.”
+
+      “Go, my dear,” cried her mother, “and show her ladyship about the
+      different walks. I think she will be pleased with the hermitage.”
+
+      Elizabeth obeyed, and running into her own room for her parasol,
+      attended her noble guest downstairs. As they passed through the
+      hall, Lady Catherine opened the doors into the dining-parlour and
+      drawing-room, and pronouncing them, after a short survey, to be
+      decent looking rooms, walked on.
+
+      Her carriage remained at the door, and Elizabeth saw that her
+      waiting-woman was in it. They proceeded in silence along the
+      gravel walk that led to the copse; Elizabeth was determined to
+      make no effort for conversation with a woman who was now more
+      than usually insolent and disagreeable.
+
+      “How could I ever think her like her nephew?” said she, as she
+      looked in her face.
+
+      As soon as they entered the copse, Lady Catherine began in the
+      following manner:—
+
+      “You can be at no loss, Miss Bennet, to understand the reason of
+      my journey hither. Your own heart, your own conscience, must tell
+      you why I come.”
+
+      Elizabeth looked with unaffected astonishment.
+
+      “Indeed, you are mistaken, Madam. I have not been at all able to
+      account for the honour of seeing you here.”
+
+      “Miss Bennet,” replied her ladyship, in an angry tone, “you ought
+      to know, that I am not to be trifled with. But however insincere
+      _you_ may choose to be, you shall not find _me_ so. My character
+      has ever been celebrated for its sincerity and frankness, and in
+      a cause of such moment as this, I shall certainly not depart from
+      it. A report of a most alarming nature reached me two days ago. I
+      was told that not only your sister was on the point of being most
+      advantageously married, but that you, that Miss Elizabeth Bennet,
+      would, in all likelihood, be soon afterwards united to my nephew,
+      my own nephew, Mr. Darcy. Though I _know_ it must be a scandalous
+      falsehood, though I would not injure him so much as to suppose
+      the truth of it possible, I instantly resolved on setting off for
+      this place, that I might make my sentiments known to you.”
+
+      “If you believed it impossible to be true,” said Elizabeth,
+      colouring with astonishment and disdain, “I wonder you took the
+      trouble of coming so far. What could your ladyship propose by
+      it?”
+
+      “At once to insist upon having such a report universally
+      contradicted.”
+
+      “Your coming to Longbourn, to see me and my family,” said
+      Elizabeth coolly, “will be rather a confirmation of it; if,
+      indeed, such a report is in existence.”
+
+      “If! Do you then pretend to be ignorant of it? Has it not been
+      industriously circulated by yourselves? Do you not know that such
+      a report is spread abroad?”
+
+      “I never heard that it was.”
+
+      “And can you likewise declare, that there is no _foundation_ for
+      it?”
+
+      “I do not pretend to possess equal frankness with your ladyship.
+      _You_ may ask questions which _I_ shall not choose to answer.”
+
+      “This is not to be borne. Miss Bennet, I insist on being
+      satisfied. Has he, has my nephew, made you an offer of marriage?”
+
+      “Your ladyship has declared it to be impossible.”
+
+      “It ought to be so; it must be so, while he retains the use of
+      his reason. But _your_ arts and allurements may, in a moment of
+      infatuation, have made him forget what he owes to himself and to
+      all his family. You may have drawn him in.”
+
+      “If I have, I shall be the last person to confess it.”
+
+      “Miss Bennet, do you know who I am? I have not been accustomed to
+      such language as this. I am almost the nearest relation he has in
+      the world, and am entitled to know all his dearest concerns.”
+
+      “But you are not entitled to know _mine;_ nor will such behaviour
+      as this, ever induce me to be explicit.”
+
+      “Let me be rightly understood. This match, to which you have the
+      presumption to aspire, can never take place. No, never. Mr. Darcy
+      is engaged to _my daughter_. Now what have you to say?”
+
+      “Only this; that if he is so, you can have no reason to suppose
+      he will make an offer to me.”
+
+      Lady Catherine hesitated for a moment, and then replied:
+
+      “The engagement between them is of a peculiar kind. From their
+      infancy, they have been intended for each other. It was the
+      favourite wish of _his_ mother, as well as of hers. While in
+      their cradles, we planned the union: and now, at the moment when
+      the wishes of both sisters would be accomplished in their
+      marriage, to be prevented by a young woman of inferior birth, of
+      no importance in the world, and wholly unallied to the family! Do
+      you pay no regard to the wishes of his friends? To his tacit
+      engagement with Miss de Bourgh? Are you lost to every feeling of
+      propriety and delicacy? Have you not heard me say that from his
+      earliest hours he was destined for his cousin?”
+
+      “Yes, and I had heard it before. But what is that to me? If there
+      is no other objection to my marrying your nephew, I shall
+      certainly not be kept from it by knowing that his mother and aunt
+      wished him to marry Miss de Bourgh. You both did as much as you
+      could in planning the marriage. Its completion depended on
+      others. If Mr. Darcy is neither by honour nor inclination
+      confined to his cousin, why is not he to make another choice? And
+      if I am that choice, why may not I accept him?”
+
+      “Because honour, decorum, prudence, nay, interest, forbid it.
+      Yes, Miss Bennet, interest; for do not expect to be noticed by
+      his family or friends, if you wilfully act against the
+      inclinations of all. You will be censured, slighted, and
+      despised, by everyone connected with him. Your alliance will be a
+      disgrace; your name will never even be mentioned by any of us.”
+
+      “These are heavy misfortunes,” replied Elizabeth. “But the wife
+      of Mr. Darcy must have such extraordinary sources of happiness
+      necessarily attached to her situation, that she could, upon the
+      whole, have no cause to repine.”
+
+      “Obstinate, headstrong girl! I am ashamed of you! Is this your
+      gratitude for my attentions to you last spring? Is nothing due to
+      me on that score? Let us sit down. You are to understand, Miss
+      Bennet, that I came here with the determined resolution of
+      carrying my purpose; nor will I be dissuaded from it. I have not
+      been used to submit to any person’s whims. I have not been in the
+      habit of brooking disappointment.”
+
+      “_That_ will make your ladyship’s situation at present more
+      pitiable; but it will have no effect on _me_.”
+
+      “I will not be interrupted. Hear me in silence. My daughter and
+      my nephew are formed for each other. They are descended, on the
+      maternal side, from the same noble line; and, on the father’s,
+      from respectable, honourable, and ancient—though
+      untitled—families. Their fortune on both sides is splendid. They
+      are destined for each other by the voice of every member of their
+      respective houses; and what is to divide them? The upstart
+      pretensions of a young woman without family, connections, or
+      fortune. Is this to be endured! But it must not, shall not be. If
+      you were sensible of your own good, you would not wish to quit
+      the sphere in which you have been brought up.”
+
+      “In marrying your nephew, I should not consider myself as
+      quitting that sphere. He is a gentleman; I am a gentleman’s
+      daughter; so far we are equal.”
+
+      “True. You _are_ a gentleman’s daughter. But who was your mother?
+      Who are your uncles and aunts? Do not imagine me ignorant of
+      their condition.”
+
+      “Whatever my connections may be,” said Elizabeth, “if your nephew
+      does not object to them, they can be nothing to _you_.”
+
+      “Tell me once for all, are you engaged to him?”
+
+      Though Elizabeth would not, for the mere purpose of obliging Lady
+      Catherine, have answered this question, she could not but say,
+      after a moment’s deliberation:
+
+      “I am not.”
+
+      Lady Catherine seemed pleased.
+
+      “And will you promise me, never to enter into such an
+      engagement?”
+
+      “I will make no promise of the kind.”
+
+      “Miss Bennet I am shocked and astonished. I expected to find a
+      more reasonable young woman. But do not deceive yourself into a
+      belief that I will ever recede. I shall not go away till you have
+      given me the assurance I require.”
+
+      “And I certainly _never_ shall give it. I am not to be
+      intimidated into anything so wholly unreasonable. Your ladyship
+      wants Mr. Darcy to marry your daughter; but would my giving you
+      the wished-for promise make _their_ marriage at all more
+      probable? Supposing him to be attached to me, would _my_ refusing
+      to accept his hand make him wish to bestow it on his cousin?
+      Allow me to say, Lady Catherine, that the arguments with which
+      you have supported this extraordinary application have been as
+      frivolous as the application was ill-judged. You have widely
+      mistaken my character, if you think I can be worked on by such
+      persuasions as these. How far your nephew might approve of your
+      interference in _his_ affairs, I cannot tell; but you have
+      certainly no right to concern yourself in mine. I must beg,
+      therefore, to be importuned no farther on the subject.”
+
+      “Not so hasty, if you please. I have by no means done. To all the
+      objections I have already urged, I have still another to add. I
+      am no stranger to the particulars of your youngest sister’s
+      infamous elopement. I know it all; that the young man’s marrying
+      her was a patched-up business, at the expence of your father and
+      uncles. And is _such_ a girl to be my nephew’s sister? Is _her_
+      husband, who is the son of his late father’s steward, to be his
+      brother? Heaven and earth!—of what are you thinking? Are the
+      shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?”
+
+      “You can _now_ have nothing further to say,” she resentfully
+      answered. “You have insulted me in every possible method. I must
+      beg to return to the house.”
+
+      And she rose as she spoke. Lady Catherine rose also, and they
+      turned back. Her ladyship was highly incensed.
+
+      “You have no regard, then, for the honour and credit of my
+      nephew! Unfeeling, selfish girl! Do you not consider that a
+      connection with you must disgrace him in the eyes of everybody?”
+
+      “Lady Catherine, I have nothing further to say. You know my
+      sentiments.”
+
+      “You are then resolved to have him?”
+
+      “I have said no such thing. I am only resolved to act in that
+      manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness,
+      without reference to _you_, or to any person so wholly
+      unconnected with me.”
+
+      “It is well. You refuse, then, to oblige me. You refuse to obey
+      the claims of duty, honour, and gratitude. You are determined to
+      ruin him in the opinion of all his friends, and make him the
+      contempt of the world.”
+
+      “Neither duty, nor honour, nor gratitude,” replied Elizabeth,
+      “have any possible claim on me, in the present instance. No
+      principle of either would be violated by my marriage with Mr.
+      Darcy. And with regard to the resentment of his family, or the
+      indignation of the world, if the former _were_ excited by his
+      marrying me, it would not give me one moment’s concern—and the
+      world in general would have too much sense to join in the scorn.”
+
+      “And this is your real opinion! This is your final resolve! Very
+      well. I shall now know how to act. Do not imagine, Miss Bennet,
+      that your ambition will ever be gratified. I came to try you. I
+      hoped to find you reasonable; but, depend upon it, I will carry
+      my point.”
+
+      In this manner Lady Catherine talked on, till they were at the
+      door of the carriage, when, turning hastily round, she added, “I
+      take no leave of you, Miss Bennet. I send no compliments to your
+      mother. You deserve no such attention. I am most seriously
+      displeased.”
+
+      Elizabeth made no answer; and without attempting to persuade her
+      ladyship to return into the house, walked quietly into it
+      herself. She heard the carriage drive away as she proceeded up
+      stairs. Her mother impatiently met her at the door of the
+      dressing-room, to ask why Lady Catherine would not come in again
+      and rest herself.
+
+      “She did not choose it,” said her daughter, “she would go.”
+
+      “She is a very fine-looking woman! and her calling here was
+      prodigiously civil! for she only came, I suppose, to tell us the
+      Collinses were well. She is on her road somewhere, I dare say,
+      and so, passing through Meryton, thought she might as well call
+      on you. I suppose she had nothing particular to say to you,
+      Lizzy?”
+
+      Elizabeth was forced to give into a little falsehood here; for to
+      acknowledge the substance of their conversation was impossible.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 57
+
+      The discomposure of spirits which this extraordinary visit threw
+      Elizabeth into, could not be easily overcome; nor could she, for
+      many hours, learn to think of it less than incessantly. Lady
+      Catherine, it appeared, had actually taken the trouble of this
+      journey from Rosings, for the sole purpose of breaking off her
+      supposed engagement with Mr. Darcy. It was a rational scheme, to
+      be sure! but from what the report of their engagement could
+      originate, Elizabeth was at a loss to imagine; till she
+      recollected that _his_ being the intimate friend of Bingley, and
+      _her_ being the sister of Jane, was enough, at a time when the
+      expectation of one wedding made everybody eager for another, to
+      supply the idea. She had not herself forgotten to feel that the
+      marriage of her sister must bring them more frequently together.
+      And her neighbours at Lucas Lodge, therefore (for through their
+      communication with the Collinses, the report, she concluded, had
+      reached Lady Catherine), had only set _that_ down as almost
+      certain and immediate, which _she_ had looked forward to as
+      possible at some future time.
+
+      In revolving Lady Catherine’s expressions, however, she could not
+      help feeling some uneasiness as to the possible consequence of
+      her persisting in this interference. From what she had said of
+      her resolution to prevent their marriage, it occurred to
+      Elizabeth that she must meditate an application to her nephew;
+      and how he might take a similar representation of the evils
+      attached to a connection with her, she dared not pronounce. She
+      knew not the exact degree of his affection for his aunt, or his
+      dependence on her judgment, but it was natural to suppose that he
+      thought much higher of her ladyship than _she_ could do; and it
+      was certain that, in enumerating the miseries of a marriage with
+      _one_, whose immediate connections were so unequal to his own,
+      his aunt would address him on his weakest side. With his notions
+      of dignity, he would probably feel that the arguments, which to
+      Elizabeth had appeared weak and ridiculous, contained much good
+      sense and solid reasoning.
+
+      If he had been wavering before as to what he should do, which had
+      often seemed likely, the advice and entreaty of so near a
+      relation might settle every doubt, and determine him at once to
+      be as happy as dignity unblemished could make him. In that case
+      he would return no more. Lady Catherine might see him in her way
+      through town; and his engagement to Bingley of coming again to
+      Netherfield must give way.
+
+      “If, therefore, an excuse for not keeping his promise should come
+      to his friend within a few days,” she added, “I shall know how to
+      understand it. I shall then give over every expectation, every
+      wish of his constancy. If he is satisfied with only regretting
+      me, when he might have obtained my affections and hand, I shall
+      soon cease to regret him at all.”
+
+      The surprise of the rest of the family, on hearing who their
+      visitor had been, was very great; but they obligingly satisfied
+      it, with the same kind of supposition which had appeased Mrs.
+      Bennet’s curiosity; and Elizabeth was spared from much teasing on
+      the subject.
+
+      The next morning, as she was going downstairs, she was met by her
+      father, who came out of his library with a letter in his hand.
+
+      “Lizzy,” said he, “I was going to look for you; come into my
+      room.”
+
+      She followed him thither; and her curiosity to know what he had
+      to tell her was heightened by the supposition of its being in
+      some manner connected with the letter he held. It suddenly struck
+      her that it might be from Lady Catherine; and she anticipated
+      with dismay all the consequent explanations.
+
+      She followed her father to the fire place, and they both sat
+      down. He then said,
+
+      “I have received a letter this morning that has astonished me
+      exceedingly. As it principally concerns yourself, you ought to
+      know its contents. I did not know before, that I had _two_
+      daughters on the brink of matrimony. Let me congratulate you on a
+      very important conquest.”
+
+      The colour now rushed into Elizabeth’s cheeks in the
+      instantaneous conviction of its being a letter from the nephew,
+      instead of the aunt; and she was undetermined whether most to be
+      pleased that he explained himself at all, or offended that his
+      letter was not rather addressed to herself; when her father
+      continued:
+
+      “You look conscious. Young ladies have great penetration in such
+      matters as these; but I think I may defy even _your_ sagacity, to
+      discover the name of your admirer. This letter is from Mr.
+      Collins.”
+
+      “From Mr. Collins! and what can _he_ have to say?”
+
+      “Something very much to the purpose of course. He begins with
+      congratulations on the approaching nuptials of my eldest
+      daughter, of which, it seems, he has been told by some of the
+      good-natured, gossiping Lucases. I shall not sport with your
+      impatience, by reading what he says on that point. What relates
+      to yourself, is as follows: ‘Having thus offered you the sincere
+      congratulations of Mrs. Collins and myself on this happy event,
+      let me now add a short hint on the subject of another; of which
+      we have been advertised by the same authority. Your daughter
+      Elizabeth, it is presumed, will not long bear the name of Bennet,
+      after her elder sister has resigned it, and the chosen partner of
+      her fate may be reasonably looked up to as one of the most
+      illustrious personages in this land.’
+
+      “Can you possibly guess, Lizzy, who is meant by this? ‘This young
+      gentleman is blessed, in a peculiar way, with every thing the
+      heart of mortal can most desire,—splendid property, noble
+      kindred, and extensive patronage. Yet in spite of all these
+      temptations, let me warn my cousin Elizabeth, and yourself, of
+      what evils you may incur by a precipitate closure with this
+      gentleman’s proposals, which, of course, you will be inclined to
+      take immediate advantage of.’
+
+      “Have you any idea, Lizzy, who this gentleman is? But now it
+      comes out:
+
+      “‘My motive for cautioning you is as follows. We have reason to
+      imagine that his aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, does not look on
+      the match with a friendly eye.’
+
+      “_Mr. Darcy_, you see, is the man! Now, Lizzy, I think I _have_
+      surprised you. Could he, or the Lucases, have pitched on any man
+      within the circle of our acquaintance, whose name would have
+      given the lie more effectually to what they related? Mr. Darcy,
+      who never looks at any woman but to see a blemish, and who
+      probably never looked at _you_ in his life! It is admirable!”
+
+      Elizabeth tried to join in her father’s pleasantry, but could
+      only force one most reluctant smile. Never had his wit been
+      directed in a manner so little agreeable to her.
+
+      “Are you not diverted?”
+
+      “Oh! yes. Pray read on.”
+
+      “‘After mentioning the likelihood of this marriage to her
+      ladyship last night, she immediately, with her usual
+      condescension, expressed what she felt on the occasion; when it
+      became apparent, that on the score of some family objections on
+      the part of my cousin, she would never give her consent to what
+      she termed so disgraceful a match. I thought it my duty to give
+      the speediest intelligence of this to my cousin, that she and her
+      noble admirer may be aware of what they are about, and not run
+      hastily into a marriage which has not been properly sanctioned.’
+      Mr. Collins moreover adds, ‘I am truly rejoiced that my cousin
+      Lydia’s sad business has been so well hushed up, and am only
+      concerned that their living together before the marriage took
+      place should be so generally known. I must not, however, neglect
+      the duties of my station, or refrain from declaring my amazement
+      at hearing that you received the young couple into your house as
+      soon as they were married. It was an encouragement of vice; and
+      had I been the rector of Longbourn, I should very strenuously
+      have opposed it. You ought certainly to forgive them, as a
+      Christian, but never to admit them in your sight, or allow their
+      names to be mentioned in your hearing.’ _That_ is his notion of
+      Christian forgiveness! The rest of his letter is only about his
+      dear Charlotte’s situation, and his expectation of a young
+      olive-branch. But, Lizzy, you look as if you did not enjoy it.
+      You are not going to be _missish_, I hope, and pretend to be
+      affronted at an idle report. For what do we live, but to make
+      sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?”
+
+      “Oh!” cried Elizabeth, “I am excessively diverted. But it is so
+      strange!”
+
+      “Yes—_that_ is what makes it amusing. Had they fixed on any other
+      man it would have been nothing; but _his_ perfect indifference,
+      and _your_ pointed dislike, make it so delightfully absurd! Much
+      as I abominate writing, I would not give up Mr. Collins’s
+      correspondence for any consideration. Nay, when I read a letter
+      of his, I cannot help giving him the preference even over
+      Wickham, much as I value the impudence and hypocrisy of my
+      son-in-law. And pray, Lizzy, what said Lady Catherine about this
+      report? Did she call to refuse her consent?”
+
+      To this question his daughter replied only with a laugh; and as
+      it had been asked without the least suspicion, she was not
+      distressed by his repeating it. Elizabeth had never been more at
+      a loss to make her feelings appear what they were not. It was
+      necessary to laugh, when she would rather have cried. Her father
+      had most cruelly mortified her, by what he said of Mr. Darcy’s
+      indifference, and she could do nothing but wonder at such a want
+      of penetration, or fear that perhaps, instead of his seeing too
+      _little_, she might have fancied too _much_.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 58
+
+      Instead of receiving any such letter of excuse from his friend,
+      as Elizabeth half expected Mr. Bingley to do, he was able to
+      bring Darcy with him to Longbourn before many days had passed
+      after Lady Catherine’s visit. The gentlemen arrived early; and,
+      before Mrs. Bennet had time to tell him of their having seen his
+      aunt, of which her daughter sat in momentary dread, Bingley, who
+      wanted to be alone with Jane, proposed their all walking out. It
+      was agreed to. Mrs. Bennet was not in the habit of walking; Mary
+      could never spare time; but the remaining five set off together.
+      Bingley and Jane, however, soon allowed the others to outstrip
+      them. They lagged behind, while Elizabeth, Kitty, and Darcy were
+      to entertain each other. Very little was said by either; Kitty
+      was too much afraid of him to talk; Elizabeth was secretly
+      forming a desperate resolution; and perhaps he might be doing the
+      same.
+
+      They walked towards the Lucases, because Kitty wished to call
+      upon Maria; and as Elizabeth saw no occasion for making it a
+      general concern, when Kitty left them she went boldly on with him
+      alone. Now was the moment for her resolution to be executed, and,
+      while her courage was high, she immediately said:
+
+      “Mr. Darcy, I am a very selfish creature; and, for the sake of
+      giving relief to my own feelings, care not how much I may be
+      wounding yours. I can no longer help thanking you for your
+      unexampled kindness to my poor sister. Ever since I have known
+      it, I have been most anxious to acknowledge to you how gratefully
+      I feel it. Were it known to the rest of my family, I should not
+      have merely my own gratitude to express.”
+
+      “I am sorry, exceedingly sorry,” replied Darcy, in a tone of
+      surprise and emotion, “that you have ever been informed of what
+      may, in a mistaken light, have given you uneasiness. I did not
+      think Mrs. Gardiner was so little to be trusted.”
+
+      “You must not blame my aunt. Lydia’s thoughtlessness first
+      betrayed to me that you had been concerned in the matter; and, of
+      course, I could not rest till I knew the particulars. Let me
+      thank you again and again, in the name of all my family, for that
+      generous compassion which induced you to take so much trouble,
+      and bear so many mortifications, for the sake of discovering
+      them.”
+
+      “If you _will_ thank me,” he replied, “let it be for yourself
+      alone. That the wish of giving happiness to you might add force
+      to the other inducements which led me on, I shall not attempt to
+      deny. But your _family_ owe me nothing. Much as I respect them, I
+      believe I thought only of _you_.”
+
+      Elizabeth was too much embarrassed to say a word. After a short
+      pause, her companion added, “You are too generous to trifle with
+      me. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me
+      so at once. _My_ affections and wishes are unchanged, but one
+      word from you will silence me on this subject for ever.”
+
+      Elizabeth, feeling all the more than common awkwardness and
+      anxiety of his situation, now forced herself to speak; and
+      immediately, though not very fluently, gave him to understand
+      that her sentiments had undergone so material a change, since the
+      period to which he alluded, as to make her receive with gratitude
+      and pleasure his present assurances. The happiness which this
+      reply produced, was such as he had probably never felt before;
+      and he expressed himself on the occasion as sensibly and as
+      warmly as a man violently in love can be supposed to do. Had
+      Elizabeth been able to encounter his eye, she might have seen how
+      well the expression of heartfelt delight, diffused over his face,
+      became him; but, though she could not look, she could listen, and
+      he told her of feelings, which, in proving of what importance she
+      was to him, made his affection every moment more valuable.
+
+      They walked on, without knowing in what direction. There was too
+      much to be thought, and felt, and said, for attention to any
+      other objects. She soon learnt that they were indebted for their
+      present good understanding to the efforts of his aunt, who _did_
+      call on him in her return through London, and there relate her
+      journey to Longbourn, its motive, and the substance of her
+      conversation with Elizabeth; dwelling emphatically on every
+      expression of the latter which, in her ladyship’s apprehension,
+      peculiarly denoted her perverseness and assurance; in the belief
+      that such a relation must assist her endeavours to obtain that
+      promise from her nephew which _she_ had refused to give. But,
+      unluckily for her ladyship, its effect had been exactly
+      contrariwise.
+
+      “It taught me to hope,” said he, “as I had scarcely ever allowed
+      myself to hope before. I knew enough of your disposition to be
+      certain that, had you been absolutely, irrevocably decided
+      against me, you would have acknowledged it to Lady Catherine,
+      frankly and openly.”
+
+      Elizabeth coloured and laughed as she replied, “Yes, you know
+      enough of my _frankness_ to believe me capable of _that_. After
+      abusing you so abominably to your face, I could have no scruple
+      in abusing you to all your relations.”
+
+      “What did you say of me, that I did not deserve? For, though your
+      accusations were ill-founded, formed on mistaken premises, my
+      behaviour to you at the time had merited the severest reproof. It
+      was unpardonable. I cannot think of it without abhorrence.”
+
+      “We will not quarrel for the greater share of blame annexed to
+      that evening,” said Elizabeth. “The conduct of neither, if
+      strictly examined, will be irreproachable; but since then, we
+      have both, I hope, improved in civility.”
+
+      “I cannot be so easily reconciled to myself. The recollection of
+      what I then said, of my conduct, my manners, my expressions
+      during the whole of it, is now, and has been many months,
+      inexpressibly painful to me. Your reproof, so well applied, I
+      shall never forget: ‘had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike
+      manner.’ Those were your words. You know not, you can scarcely
+      conceive, how they have tortured me;—though it was some time, I
+      confess, before I was reasonable enough to allow their justice.”
+
+      “I was certainly very far from expecting them to make so strong
+      an impression. I had not the smallest idea of their being ever
+      felt in such a way.”
+
+      “I can easily believe it. You thought me then devoid of every
+      proper feeling, I am sure you did. The turn of your countenance I
+      shall never forget, as you said that I could not have addressed
+      you in any possible way that would induce you to accept me.”
+
+      “Oh! do not repeat what I then said. These recollections will not
+      do at all. I assure you that I have long been most heartily
+      ashamed of it.”
+
+      Darcy mentioned his letter. “Did it,” said he, “did it soon make
+      you think better of me? Did you, on reading it, give any credit
+      to its contents?”
+
+      She explained what its effect on her had been, and how gradually
+      all her former prejudices had been removed.
+
+      “I knew,” said he, “that what I wrote must give you pain, but it
+      was necessary. I hope you have destroyed the letter. There was
+      one part especially, the opening of it, which I should dread your
+      having the power of reading again. I can remember some
+      expressions which might justly make you hate me.”
+
+      “The letter shall certainly be burnt, if you believe it essential
+      to the preservation of my regard; but, though we have both reason
+      to think my opinions not entirely unalterable, they are not, I
+      hope, quite so easily changed as that implies.”
+
+      “When I wrote that letter,” replied Darcy, “I believed myself
+      perfectly calm and cool, but I am since convinced that it was
+      written in a dreadful bitterness of spirit.”
+
+      “The letter, perhaps, began in bitterness, but it did not end so.
+      The adieu is charity itself. But think no more of the letter. The
+      feelings of the person who wrote, and the person who received it,
+      are now so widely different from what they were then, that every
+      unpleasant circumstance attending it ought to be forgotten. You
+      must learn some of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its
+      remembrance gives you pleasure.”
+
+      “I cannot give you credit for any philosophy of the kind. _Your_
+      retrospections must be so totally void of reproach, that the
+      contentment arising from them is not of philosophy, but, what is
+      much better, of innocence. But with _me_, it is not so. Painful
+      recollections will intrude which cannot, which ought not, to be
+      repelled. I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice,
+      though not in principle. As a child I was taught what was
+      _right_, but I was not taught to correct my temper. I was given
+      good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit.
+      Unfortunately an only son (for many years an only _child_), I was
+      spoilt by my parents, who, though good themselves (my father,
+      particularly, all that was benevolent and amiable), allowed,
+      encouraged, almost taught me to be selfish and overbearing; to
+      care for none beyond my own family circle; to think meanly of all
+      the rest of the world; to _wish_ at least to think meanly of
+      their sense and worth compared with my own. Such I was, from
+      eight to eight and twenty; and such I might still have been but
+      for you, dearest, loveliest Elizabeth! What do I not owe you! You
+      taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous.
+      By you, I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of
+      my reception. You showed me how insufficient were all my
+      pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.”
+
+      “Had you then persuaded yourself that I should?”
+
+      “Indeed I had. What will you think of my vanity? I believed you
+      to be wishing, expecting my addresses.”
+
+      “My manners must have been in fault, but not intentionally, I
+      assure you. I never meant to deceive you, but my spirits might
+      often lead me wrong. How you must have hated me after _that_
+      evening?”
+
+      “Hate you! I was angry perhaps at first, but my anger soon began
+      to take a proper direction.”
+
+      “I am almost afraid of asking what you thought of me, when we met
+      at Pemberley. You blamed me for coming?”
+
+      “No indeed; I felt nothing but surprise.”
+
+      “Your surprise could not be greater than _mine_ in being noticed
+      by you. My conscience told me that I deserved no extraordinary
+      politeness, and I confess that I did not expect to receive _more_
+      than my due.”
+
+      “My object _then_,” replied Darcy, “was to show you, by every
+      civility in my power, that I was not so mean as to resent the
+      past; and I hoped to obtain your forgiveness, to lessen your ill
+      opinion, by letting you see that your reproofs had been attended
+      to. How soon any other wishes introduced themselves I can hardly
+      tell, but I believe in about half an hour after I had seen you.”
+
+      He then told her of Georgiana’s delight in her acquaintance, and
+      of her disappointment at its sudden interruption; which naturally
+      leading to the cause of that interruption, she soon learnt that
+      his resolution of following her from Derbyshire in quest of her
+      sister had been formed before he quitted the inn, and that his
+      gravity and thoughtfulness there had arisen from no other
+      struggles than what such a purpose must comprehend.
+
+      She expressed her gratitude again, but it was too painful a
+      subject to each, to be dwelt on farther.
+
+      After walking several miles in a leisurely manner, and too busy
+      to know anything about it, they found at last, on examining their
+      watches, that it was time to be at home.
+
+      “What could become of Mr. Bingley and Jane!” was a wonder which
+      introduced the discussion of _their_ affairs. Darcy was delighted
+      with their engagement; his friend had given him the earliest
+      information of it.
+
+      “I must ask whether you were surprised?” said Elizabeth.
+
+      “Not at all. When I went away, I felt that it would soon happen.”
+
+      “That is to say, you had given your permission. I guessed as
+      much.” And though he exclaimed at the term, she found that it had
+      been pretty much the case.
+
+      “On the evening before my going to London,” said he, “I made a
+      confession to him, which I believe I ought to have made long ago.
+      I told him of all that had occurred to make my former
+      interference in his affairs absurd and impertinent. His surprise
+      was great. He had never had the slightest suspicion. I told him,
+      moreover, that I believed myself mistaken in supposing, as I had
+      done, that your sister was indifferent to him; and as I could
+      easily perceive that his attachment to her was unabated, I felt
+      no doubt of their happiness together.”
+
+      Elizabeth could not help smiling at his easy manner of directing
+      his friend.
+
+      “Did you speak from your own observation,” said she, “when you
+      told him that my sister loved him, or merely from my information
+      last spring?”
+
+      “From the former. I had narrowly observed her during the two
+      visits which I had lately made here; and I was convinced of her
+      affection.”
+
+      “And your assurance of it, I suppose, carried immediate
+      conviction to him.”
+
+      “It did. Bingley is most unaffectedly modest. His diffidence had
+      prevented his depending on his own judgment in so anxious a case,
+      but his reliance on mine made every thing easy. I was obliged to
+      confess one thing, which for a time, and not unjustly, offended
+      him. I could not allow myself to conceal that your sister had
+      been in town three months last winter, that I had known it, and
+      purposely kept it from him. He was angry. But his anger, I am
+      persuaded, lasted no longer than he remained in any doubt of your
+      sister’s sentiments. He has heartily forgiven me now.”
+
+      Elizabeth longed to observe that Mr. Bingley had been a most
+      delightful friend; so easily guided that his worth was
+      invaluable; but she checked herself. She remembered that he had
+      yet to learn to be laughed at, and it was rather too early to
+      begin. In anticipating the happiness of Bingley, which of course
+      was to be inferior only to his own, he continued the conversation
+      till they reached the house. In the hall they parted.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 59
+
+      “My dear Lizzy, where can you have been walking to?” was a
+      question which Elizabeth received from Jane as soon as she
+      entered their room, and from all the others when they sat down to
+      table. She had only to say in reply, that they had wandered
+      about, till she was beyond her own knowledge. She coloured as she
+      spoke; but neither that, nor anything else, awakened a suspicion
+      of the truth.
+
+      The evening passed quietly, unmarked by anything extraordinary.
+      The acknowledged lovers talked and laughed, the unacknowledged
+      were silent. Darcy was not of a disposition in which happiness
+      overflows in mirth; and Elizabeth, agitated and confused, rather
+      _knew_ that she was happy than _felt_ herself to be so; for,
+      besides the immediate embarrassment, there were other evils
+      before her. She anticipated what would be felt in the family when
+      her situation became known; she was aware that no one liked him
+      but Jane; and even feared that with the others it was a _dislike_
+      which not all his fortune and consequence might do away.
+
+      At night she opened her heart to Jane. Though suspicion was very
+      far from Miss Bennet’s general habits, she was absolutely
+      incredulous here.
+
+      “You are joking, Lizzy. This cannot be!—engaged to Mr. Darcy! No,
+      no, you shall not deceive me. I know it to be impossible.”
+
+      “This is a wretched beginning indeed! My sole dependence was on
+      you; and I am sure nobody else will believe me, if you do not.
+      Yet, indeed, I am in earnest. I speak nothing but the truth. He
+      still loves me, and we are engaged.”
+
+      Jane looked at her doubtingly. “Oh, Lizzy! it cannot be. I know
+      how much you dislike him.”
+
+      “You know nothing of the matter. _That_ is all to be forgot.
+      Perhaps I did not always love him so well as I do now. But in
+      such cases as these, a good memory is unpardonable. This is the
+      last time I shall ever remember it myself.”
+
+      Miss Bennet still looked all amazement. Elizabeth again, and more
+      seriously assured her of its truth.
+
+      “Good Heaven! can it be really so! Yet now I must believe you,”
+      cried Jane. “My dear, dear Lizzy, I would—I do congratulate
+      you—but are you certain? forgive the question—are you quite
+      certain that you can be happy with him?”
+
+      “There can be no doubt of that. It is settled between us already,
+      that we are to be the happiest couple in the world. But are you
+      pleased, Jane? Shall you like to have such a brother?”
+
+      “Very, very much. Nothing could give either Bingley or myself
+      more delight. But we considered it, we talked of it as
+      impossible. And do you really love him quite well enough? Oh,
+      Lizzy! do anything rather than marry without affection. Are you
+      quite sure that you feel what you ought to do?”
+
+      “Oh, yes! You will only think I feel _more_ than I ought to do,
+      when I tell you all.”
+
+      “What do you mean?”
+
+      “Why, I must confess that I love him better than I do Bingley. I
+      am afraid you will be angry.”
+
+      “My dearest sister, now _be_ serious. I want to talk very
+      seriously. Let me know every thing that I am to know, without
+      delay. Will you tell me how long you have loved him?”
+
+      “It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it
+      began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his
+      beautiful grounds at Pemberley.”
+
+      Another entreaty that she would be serious, however, produced the
+      desired effect; and she soon satisfied Jane by her solemn
+      assurances of attachment. When convinced on that article, Miss
+      Bennet had nothing further to wish.
+
+      “Now I am quite happy,” said she, “for you will be as happy as
+      myself. I always had a value for him. Were it for nothing but his
+      love of you, I must always have esteemed him; but now, as
+      Bingley’s friend and your husband, there can be only Bingley and
+      yourself more dear to me. But Lizzy, you have been very sly, very
+      reserved with me. How little did you tell me of what passed at
+      Pemberley and Lambton! I owe all that I know of it to another,
+      not to you.”
+
+      Elizabeth told her the motives of her secrecy. She had been
+      unwilling to mention Bingley; and the unsettled state of her own
+      feelings had made her equally avoid the name of his friend. But
+      now she would no longer conceal from her his share in Lydia’s
+      marriage. All was acknowledged, and half the night spent in
+      conversation.
+
+      “Good gracious!” cried Mrs. Bennet, as she stood at a window the
+      next morning, “if that disagreeable Mr. Darcy is not coming here
+      again with our dear Bingley! What can he mean by being so
+      tiresome as to be always coming here? I had no notion but he
+      would go a-shooting, or something or other, and not disturb us
+      with his company. What shall we do with him? Lizzy, you must walk
+      out with him again, that he may not be in Bingley’s way.”
+
+      Elizabeth could hardly help laughing at so convenient a proposal;
+      yet was really vexed that her mother should be always giving him
+      such an epithet.
+
+      As soon as they entered, Bingley looked at her so expressively,
+      and shook hands with such warmth, as left no doubt of his good
+      information; and he soon afterwards said aloud, “Mrs. Bennet,
+      have you no more lanes hereabouts in which Lizzy may lose her way
+      again to-day?”
+
+      “I advise Mr. Darcy, and Lizzy, and Kitty,” said Mrs. Bennet, “to
+      walk to Oakham Mount this morning. It is a nice long walk, and
+      Mr. Darcy has never seen the view.”
+
+      “It may do very well for the others,” replied Mr. Bingley; “but I
+      am sure it will be too much for Kitty. Won’t it, Kitty?” Kitty
+      owned that she had rather stay at home. Darcy professed a great
+      curiosity to see the view from the Mount, and Elizabeth silently
+      consented. As she went up stairs to get ready, Mrs. Bennet
+      followed her, saying:
+
+      “I am quite sorry, Lizzy, that you should be forced to have that
+      disagreeable man all to yourself. But I hope you will not mind
+      it: it is all for Jane’s sake, you know; and there is no occasion
+      for talking to him, except just now and then. So, do not put
+      yourself to inconvenience.”
+
+      During their walk, it was resolved that Mr. Bennet’s consent
+      should be asked in the course of the evening. Elizabeth reserved
+      to herself the application for her mother’s. She could not
+      determine how her mother would take it; sometimes doubting
+      whether all his wealth and grandeur would be enough to overcome
+      her abhorrence of the man. But whether she were violently set
+      against the match, or violently delighted with it, it was certain
+      that her manner would be equally ill adapted to do credit to her
+      sense; and she could no more bear that Mr. Darcy should hear the
+      first raptures of her joy, than the first vehemence of her
+      disapprobation.
+
+      In the evening, soon after Mr. Bennet withdrew to the library,
+      she saw Mr. Darcy rise also and follow him, and her agitation on
+      seeing it was extreme. She did not fear her father’s opposition,
+      but he was going to be made unhappy; and that it should be
+      through her means—that _she_, his favourite child, should be
+      distressing him by her choice, should be filling him with fears
+      and regrets in disposing of her—was a wretched reflection, and
+      she sat in misery till Mr. Darcy appeared again, when, looking at
+      him, she was a little relieved by his smile. In a few minutes he
+      approached the table where she was sitting with Kitty; and, while
+      pretending to admire her work said in a whisper, “Go to your
+      father, he wants you in the library.” She was gone directly.
+
+      Her father was walking about the room, looking grave and anxious.
+      “Lizzy,” said he, “what are you doing? Are you out of your
+      senses, to be accepting this man? Have not you always hated him?”
+
+      How earnestly did she then wish that her former opinions had been
+      more reasonable, her expressions more moderate! It would have
+      spared her from explanations and professions which it was
+      exceedingly awkward to give; but they were now necessary, and she
+      assured him, with some confusion, of her attachment to Mr. Darcy.
+
+      “Or, in other words, you are determined to have him. He is rich,
+      to be sure, and you may have more fine clothes and fine carriages
+      than Jane. But will they make you happy?”
+
+      “Have you any other objection,” said Elizabeth, “than your belief
+      of my indifference?”
+
+      “None at all. We all know him to be a proud, unpleasant sort of
+      man; but this would be nothing if you really liked him.”
+
+      “I do, I do like him,” she replied, with tears in her eyes, “I
+      love him. Indeed he has no improper pride. He is perfectly
+      amiable. You do not know what he really is; then pray do not pain
+      me by speaking of him in such terms.”
+
+      “Lizzy,” said her father, “I have given him my consent. He is the
+      kind of man, indeed, to whom I should never dare refuse anything,
+      which he condescended to ask. I now give it to _you_, if you are
+      resolved on having him. But let me advise you to think better of
+      it. I know your disposition, Lizzy. I know that you could be
+      neither happy nor respectable, unless you truly esteemed your
+      husband; unless you looked up to him as a superior. Your lively
+      talents would place you in the greatest danger in an unequal
+      marriage. You could scarcely escape discredit and misery. My
+      child, let me not have the grief of seeing _you_ unable to
+      respect your partner in life. You know not what you are about.”
+
+      Elizabeth, still more affected, was earnest and solemn in her
+      reply; and at length, by repeated assurances that Mr. Darcy was
+      really the object of her choice, by explaining the gradual change
+      which her estimation of him had undergone, relating her absolute
+      certainty that his affection was not the work of a day, but had
+      stood the test of many months’ suspense, and enumerating with
+      energy all his good qualities, she did conquer her father’s
+      incredulity, and reconcile him to the match.
+
+      “Well, my dear,” said he, when she ceased speaking, “I have no
+      more to say. If this be the case, he deserves you. I could not
+      have parted with you, my Lizzy, to anyone less worthy.”
+
+      To complete the favourable impression, she then told him what Mr.
+      Darcy had voluntarily done for Lydia. He heard her with
+      astonishment.
+
+      “This is an evening of wonders, indeed! And so, Darcy did every
+      thing; made up the match, gave the money, paid the fellow’s
+      debts, and got him his commission! So much the better. It will
+      save me a world of trouble and economy. Had it been your uncle’s
+      doing, I must and _would_ have paid him; but these violent young
+      lovers carry every thing their own way. I shall offer to pay him
+      to-morrow; he will rant and storm about his love for you, and
+      there will be an end of the matter.”
+
+      He then recollected her embarrassment a few days before, on his
+      reading Mr. Collins’s letter; and after laughing at her some
+      time, allowed her at last to go—saying, as she quitted the room,
+      “If any young men come for Mary or Kitty, send them in, for I am
+      quite at leisure.”
+
+      Elizabeth’s mind was now relieved from a very heavy weight; and,
+      after half an hour’s quiet reflection in her own room, she was
+      able to join the others with tolerable composure. Every thing was
+      too recent for gaiety, but the evening passed tranquilly away;
+      there was no longer anything material to be dreaded, and the
+      comfort of ease and familiarity would come in time.
+
+      When her mother went up to her dressing-room at night, she
+      followed her, and made the important communication. Its effect
+      was most extraordinary; for on first hearing it, Mrs. Bennet sat
+      quite still, and unable to utter a syllable. Nor was it under
+      many, many minutes that she could comprehend what she heard;
+      though not in general backward to credit what was for the
+      advantage of her family, or that came in the shape of a lover to
+      any of them. She began at length to recover, to fidget about in
+      her chair, get up, sit down again, wonder, and bless herself.
+
+      “Good gracious! Lord bless me! only think! dear me! Mr. Darcy!
+      Who would have thought it! And is it really true? Oh! my sweetest
+      Lizzy! how rich and how great you will be! What pin-money, what
+      jewels, what carriages you will have! Jane’s is nothing to
+      it—nothing at all. I am so pleased—so happy. Such a charming
+      man!—so handsome! so tall!—Oh, my dear Lizzy! pray apologise for
+      my having disliked him so much before. I hope he will overlook
+      it. Dear, dear Lizzy. A house in town! Every thing that is
+      charming! Three daughters married! Ten thousand a year! Oh, Lord!
+      What will become of me. I shall go distracted.”
+
+      This was enough to prove that her approbation need not be
+      doubted: and Elizabeth, rejoicing that such an effusion was heard
+      only by herself, soon went away. But before she had been three
+      minutes in her own room, her mother followed her.
+
+      “My dearest child,” she cried, “I can think of nothing else! Ten
+      thousand a year, and very likely more! ’Tis as good as a Lord!
+      And a special licence. You must and shall be married by a special
+      licence. But my dearest love, tell me what dish Mr. Darcy is
+      particularly fond of, that I may have it to-morrow.”
+
+      This was a sad omen of what her mother’s behaviour to the
+      gentleman himself might be; and Elizabeth found that, though in
+      the certain possession of his warmest affection, and secure of
+      her relations’ consent, there was still something to be wished
+      for. But the morrow passed off much better than she expected; for
+      Mrs. Bennet luckily stood in such awe of her intended son-in-law
+      that she ventured not to speak to him, unless it was in her power
+      to offer him any attention, or mark her deference for his
+      opinion.
+
+      Elizabeth had the satisfaction of seeing her father taking pains
+      to get acquainted with him; and Mr. Bennet soon assured her that
+      he was rising every hour in his esteem.
+
+      “I admire all my three sons-in-law highly,” said he. “Wickham,
+      perhaps, is my favourite; but I think I shall like _your_ husband
+      quite as well as Jane’s.”
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 60
+
+      Elizabeth’s spirits soon rising to playfulness again, she wanted
+      Mr. Darcy to account for his having ever fallen in love with her.
+      “How could you begin?” said she. “I can comprehend your going on
+      charmingly, when you had once made a beginning; but what could
+      set you off in the first place?”
+
+      “I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the
+      words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in
+      the middle before I knew that I _had_ begun.”
+
+      “My beauty you had early withstood, and as for my manners—my
+      behaviour to _you_ was at least always bordering on the uncivil,
+      and I never spoke to you without rather wishing to give you pain
+      than not. Now be sincere; did you admire me for my impertinence?”
+
+      “For the liveliness of your mind, I did.”
+
+      “You may as well call it impertinence at once. It was very little
+      less. The fact is, that you were sick of civility, of deference,
+      of officious attention. You were disgusted with the women who
+      were always speaking, and looking, and thinking for _your_
+      approbation alone. I roused, and interested you, because I was so
+      unlike _them_. Had you not been really amiable, you would have
+      hated me for it; but in spite of the pains you took to disguise
+      yourself, your feelings were always noble and just; and in your
+      heart, you thoroughly despised the persons who so assiduously
+      courted you. There—I have saved you the trouble of accounting for
+      it; and really, all things considered, I begin to think it
+      perfectly reasonable. To be sure, you knew no actual good of
+      me—but nobody thinks of _that_ when they fall in love.”
+
+      “Was there no good in your affectionate behaviour to Jane while
+      she was ill at Netherfield?”
+
+      “Dearest Jane! who could have done less for her? But make a
+      virtue of it by all means. My good qualities are under your
+      protection, and you are to exaggerate them as much as possible;
+      and, in return, it belongs to me to find occasions for teasing
+      and quarrelling with you as often as may be; and I shall begin
+      directly by asking you what made you so unwilling to come to the
+      point at last. What made you so shy of me, when you first called,
+      and afterwards dined here? Why, especially, when you called, did
+      you look as if you did not care about me?”
+
+      “Because you were grave and silent, and gave me no
+      encouragement.”
+
+      “But I was embarrassed.”
+
+      “And so was I.”
+
+      “You might have talked to me more when you came to dinner.”
+
+      “A man who had felt less, might.”
+
+      “How unlucky that you should have a reasonable answer to give,
+      and that I should be so reasonable as to admit it! But I wonder
+      how long you _would_ have gone on, if you had been left to
+      yourself. I wonder when you _would_ have spoken, if I had not
+      asked you! My resolution of thanking you for your kindness to
+      Lydia had certainly great effect. _Too much_, I am afraid; for
+      what becomes of the moral, if our comfort springs from a breach
+      of promise? for I ought not to have mentioned the subject. This
+      will never do.”
+
+      “You need not distress yourself. The moral will be perfectly
+      fair. Lady Catherine’s unjustifiable endeavours to separate us
+      were the means of removing all my doubts. I am not indebted for
+      my present happiness to your eager desire of expressing your
+      gratitude. I was not in a humour to wait for any opening of
+      yours. My aunt’s intelligence had given me hope, and I was
+      determined at once to know every thing.”
+
+      “Lady Catherine has been of infinite use, which ought to make her
+      happy, for she loves to be of use. But tell me, what did you come
+      down to Netherfield for? Was it merely to ride to Longbourn and
+      be embarrassed? or had you intended any more serious
+      consequence?”
+
+      “My real purpose was to see _you_, and to judge, if I could,
+      whether I might ever hope to make you love me. My avowed one, or
+      what I avowed to myself, was to see whether your sister were
+      still partial to Bingley, and if she were, to make the confession
+      to him which I have since made.”
+
+      “Shall you ever have courage to announce to Lady Catherine what
+      is to befall her?”
+
+      “I am more likely to want more time than courage, Elizabeth. But
+      it ought to be done, and if you will give me a sheet of paper, it
+      shall be done directly.”
+
+      “And if I had not a letter to write myself, I might sit by you
+      and admire the evenness of your writing, as another young lady
+      once did. But I have an aunt, too, who must not be longer
+      neglected.”
+
+      From an unwillingness to confess how much her intimacy with Mr.
+      Darcy had been over-rated, Elizabeth had never yet answered Mrs.
+      Gardiner’s long letter; but now, having _that_ to communicate
+      which she knew would be most welcome, she was almost ashamed to
+      find that her uncle and aunt had already lost three days of
+      happiness, and immediately wrote as follows:
+
+      “I would have thanked you before, my dear aunt, as I ought to
+      have done, for your long, kind, satisfactory, detail of
+      particulars; but to say the truth, I was too cross to write. You
+      supposed more than really existed. But _now_ suppose as much as
+      you choose; give a loose rein to your fancy, indulge your
+      imagination in every possible flight which the subject will
+      afford, and unless you believe me actually married, you cannot
+      greatly err. You must write again very soon, and praise him a
+      great deal more than you did in your last. I thank you, again and
+      again, for not going to the Lakes. How could I be so silly as to
+      wish it! Your idea of the ponies is delightful. We will go round
+      the Park every day. I am the happiest creature in the world.
+      Perhaps other people have said so before, but not one with such
+      justice. I am happier even than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh.
+      Mr. Darcy sends you all the love in the world that he can spare
+      from me. You are all to come to Pemberley at Christmas. Yours,
+      etc.”
+
+      Mr. Darcy’s letter to Lady Catherine was in a different style;
+      and still different from either was what Mr. Bennet sent to Mr.
+      Collins, in reply to his last.
+
+      “Dear Sir,
+      “I must trouble you once more for congratulations. Elizabeth will
+      soon be the wife of Mr. Darcy. Console Lady Catherine as well as
+      you can. But, if I were you, I would stand by the nephew. He has
+      more to give.
+
+      “Yours sincerely, etc.”
+
+      Miss Bingley’s congratulations to her brother, on his approaching
+      marriage, were all that was affectionate and insincere. She wrote
+      even to Jane on the occasion, to express her delight, and repeat
+      all her former professions of regard. Jane was not deceived, but
+      she was affected; and though feeling no reliance on her, could
+      not help writing her a much kinder answer than she knew was
+      deserved.
+
+      The joy which Miss Darcy expressed on receiving similar
+      information, was as sincere as her brother’s in sending it. Four
+      sides of paper were insufficient to contain all her delight, and
+      all her earnest desire of being loved by her sister.
+
+      Before any answer could arrive from Mr. Collins, or any
+      congratulations to Elizabeth from his wife, the Longbourn family
+      heard that the Collinses were come themselves to Lucas Lodge. The
+      reason of this sudden removal was soon evident. Lady Catherine
+      had been rendered so exceedingly angry by the contents of her
+      nephew’s letter, that Charlotte, really rejoicing in the match,
+      was anxious to get away till the storm was blown over. At such a
+      moment, the arrival of her friend was a sincere pleasure to
+      Elizabeth, though in the course of their meetings she must
+      sometimes think the pleasure dearly bought, when she saw Mr.
+      Darcy exposed to all the parading and obsequious civility of her
+      husband. He bore it, however, with admirable calmness. He could
+      even listen to Sir William Lucas, when he complimented him on
+      carrying away the brightest jewel of the country, and expressed
+      his hopes of their all meeting frequently at St. James’s, with
+      very decent composure. If he did shrug his shoulders, it was not
+      till Sir William was out of sight.
+
+      Mrs. Phillips’s vulgarity was another, and perhaps a greater, tax
+      on his forbearance; and though Mrs. Phillips, as well as her
+      sister, stood in too much awe of him to speak with the
+      familiarity which Bingley’s good humour encouraged, yet, whenever
+      she _did_ speak, she must be vulgar. Nor was her respect for him,
+      though it made her more quiet, at all likely to make her more
+      elegant. Elizabeth did all she could to shield him from the
+      frequent notice of either, and was ever anxious to keep him to
+      herself, and to those of her family with whom he might converse
+      without mortification; and though the uncomfortable feelings
+      arising from all this took from the season of courtship much of
+      its pleasure, it added to the hope of the future; and she looked
+      forward with delight to the time when they should be removed from
+      society so little pleasing to either, to all the comfort and
+      elegance of their family party at Pemberley.
+
+
+
+
+      Chapter 61
+
+      Happy for all her maternal feelings was the day on which Mrs.
+      Bennet got rid of her two most deserving daughters. With what
+      delighted pride she afterwards visited Mrs. Bingley, and talked
+      of Mrs. Darcy, may be guessed. I wish I could say, for the sake
+      of her family, that the accomplishment of her earnest desire in
+      the establishment of so many of her children produced so happy an
+      effect as to make her a sensible, amiable, well-informed woman
+      for the rest of her life; though perhaps it was lucky for her
+      husband, who might not have relished domestic felicity in so
+      unusual a form, that she still was occasionally nervous and
+      invariably silly.
+
+      Mr. Bennet missed his second daughter exceedingly; his affection
+      for her drew him oftener from home than anything else could do.
+      He delighted in going to Pemberley, especially when he was least
+      expected.
+
+      Mr. Bingley and Jane remained at Netherfield only a twelvemonth.
+      So near a vicinity to her mother and Meryton relations was not
+      desirable even to _his_ easy temper, or _her_ affectionate heart.
+      The darling wish of his sisters was then gratified; he bought an
+      estate in a neighbouring county to Derbyshire, and Jane and
+      Elizabeth, in addition to every other source of happiness, were
+      within thirty miles of each other.
+
+      Kitty, to her very material advantage, spent the chief of her
+      time with her two elder sisters. In society so superior to what
+      she had generally known, her improvement was great. She was not
+      of so ungovernable a temper as Lydia; and, removed from the
+      influence of Lydia’s example, she became, by proper attention and
+      management, less irritable, less ignorant, and less insipid. From
+      the further disadvantage of Lydia’s society she was of course
+      carefully kept, and though Mrs. Wickham frequently invited her to
+      come and stay with her, with the promise of balls and young men,
+      her father would never consent to her going.
+
+      Mary was the only daughter who remained at home; and she was
+      necessarily drawn from the pursuit of accomplishments by Mrs.
+      Bennet’s being quite unable to sit alone. Mary was obliged to mix
+      more with the world, but she could still moralize over every
+      morning visit; and as she was no longer mortified by comparisons
+      between her sisters’ beauty and her own, it was suspected by her
+      father that she submitted to the change without much reluctance.
+
+      As for Wickham and Lydia, their characters suffered no revolution
+      from the marriage of her sisters. He bore with philosophy the
+      conviction that Elizabeth must now become acquainted with
+      whatever of his ingratitude and falsehood had before been unknown
+      to her; and in spite of every thing, was not wholly without hope
+      that Darcy might yet be prevailed on to make his fortune. The
+      congratulatory letter which Elizabeth received from Lydia on her
+      marriage, explained to her that, by his wife at least, if not by
+      himself, such a hope was cherished. The letter was to this
+      effect:
+
+      “My dear Lizzy,
+      “I wish you joy. If you love Mr. Darcy half as well as I do my
+      dear Wickham, you must be very happy. It is a great comfort to
+      have you so rich, and when you have nothing else to do, I hope
+      you will think of us. I am sure Wickham would like a place at
+      court very much, and I do not think we shall have quite money
+      enough to live upon without some help. Any place would do, of
+      about three or four hundred a year; but however, do not speak to
+      Mr. Darcy about it, if you had rather not.
+
+      “Yours, etc.”
+
+      As it happened that Elizabeth had much rather not, she
+      endeavoured in her answer to put an end to every entreaty and
+      expectation of the kind. Such relief, however, as it was in her
+      power to afford, by the practice of what might be called economy
+      in her own private expences, she frequently sent them. It had
+      always been evident to her that such an income as theirs, under
+      the direction of two persons so extravagant in their wants, and
+      heedless of the future, must be very insufficient to their
+      support; and whenever they changed their quarters, either Jane or
+      herself were sure of being applied to for some little assistance
+      towards discharging their bills. Their manner of living, even
+      when the restoration of peace dismissed them to a home, was
+      unsettled in the extreme. They were always moving from place to
+      place in quest of a cheap situation, and always spending more
+      than they ought. His affection for her soon sunk into
+      indifference; hers lasted a little longer; and in spite of her
+      youth and her manners, she retained all the claims to reputation
+      which her marriage had given her.
+
+      Though Darcy could never receive _him_ at Pemberley, yet, for
+      Elizabeth’s sake, he assisted him further in his profession.
+      Lydia was occasionally a visitor there, when her husband was gone
+      to enjoy himself in London or Bath; and with the Bingleys they
+      both of them frequently staid so long, that even Bingley’s good
+      humour was overcome, and he proceeded so far as to _talk_ of
+      giving them a hint to be gone.
+
+      Miss Bingley was very deeply mortified by Darcy’s marriage; but
+      as she thought it advisable to retain the right of visiting at
+      Pemberley, she dropt all her resentment; was fonder than ever of
+      Georgiana, almost as attentive to Darcy as heretofore, and paid
+      off every arrear of civility to Elizabeth.
+
+      Pemberley was now Georgiana’s home; and the attachment of the
+      sisters was exactly what Darcy had hoped to see. They were able
+      to love each other even as well as they intended. Georgiana had
+      the highest opinion in the world of Elizabeth; though at first
+      she often listened with an astonishment bordering on alarm at her
+      lively, sportive, manner of talking to her brother. He, who had
+      always inspired in herself a respect which almost overcame her
+      affection, she now saw the object of open pleasantry. Her mind
+      received knowledge which had never before fallen in her way. By
+      Elizabeth’s instructions, she began to comprehend that a woman
+      may take liberties with her husband which a brother will not
+      always allow in a sister more than ten years younger than
+      himself.
+
+      Lady Catherine was extremely indignant on the marriage of her
+      nephew; and as she gave way to all the genuine frankness of her
+      character in her reply to the letter which announced its
+      arrangement, she sent him language so very abusive, especially of
+      Elizabeth, that for some time all intercourse was at an end. But
+      at length, by Elizabeth’s persuasion, he was prevailed on to
+      overlook the offence, and seek a reconciliation; and, after a
+      little further resistance on the part of his aunt, her resentment
+      gave way, either to her affection for him, or her curiosity to
+      see how his wife conducted herself; and she condescended to wait
+      on them at Pemberley, in spite of that pollution which its woods
+      had received, not merely from the presence of such a mistress,
+      but the visits of her uncle and aunt from the city.
+
+      With the Gardiners, they were always on the most intimate terms.
+      Darcy, as well as Elizabeth, really loved them; and they were
+      both ever sensible of the warmest gratitude towards the persons
+      who, by bringing her into Derbyshire, had been the means of
+      uniting them.
+    
+
+
+    
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diff --git a/data/train/bronte_-_jane_eyre.txt b/data/train/bronte_-_jane_eyre.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e7e434b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/data/train/bronte_-_jane_eyre.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,21400 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+Title: Jane Eyre
+       an Autobiography
+
+Author: Charlotte Brontë
+
+Release Date: March, 1998 [EBook #1260]
+[Most recently updated: December 1, 2020]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JANE EYRE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Price
+
+
+
+
+JANE EYRE
+AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
+
+by Charlotte Brontë
+
+_ILLUSTRATED BY F. H. TOWNSEND_
+
+London
+SERVICE & PATON
+5 HENRIETTA STREET
+1897
+
+_The Illustrations_
+_in this Volume are the copyright of_
+SERVICE & PATON, _London_
+
+TO
+W. M. THACKERAY, ESQ.,
+
+This Work
+IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED
+
+BY
+THE AUTHOR
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+A preface to the first edition of “Jane Eyre” being unnecessary, I gave
+none: this second edition demands a few words both of acknowledgment
+and miscellaneous remark.
+
+My thanks are due in three quarters.
+
+To the Public, for the indulgent ear it has inclined to a plain tale
+with few pretensions.
+
+To the Press, for the fair field its honest suffrage has opened to an
+obscure aspirant.
+
+To my Publishers, for the aid their tact, their energy, their practical
+sense and frank liberality have afforded an unknown and unrecommended
+Author.
+
+The Press and the Public are but vague personifications for me, and I
+must thank them in vague terms; but my Publishers are definite: so are
+certain generous critics who have encouraged me as only large-hearted
+and high-minded men know how to encourage a struggling stranger; to
+them, _i.e._, to my Publishers and the select Reviewers, I say
+cordially, Gentlemen, I thank you from my heart.
+
+Having thus acknowledged what I owe those who have aided and approved
+me, I turn to another class; a small one, so far as I know, but not,
+therefore, to be overlooked. I mean the timorous or carping few who
+doubt the tendency of such books as “Jane Eyre:” in whose eyes whatever
+is unusual is wrong; whose ears detect in each protest against
+bigotry—that parent of crime—an insult to piety, that regent of God on
+earth. I would suggest to such doubters certain obvious distinctions; I
+would remind them of certain simple truths.
+
+Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To
+attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the
+face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of
+Thorns.
+
+These things and deeds are diametrically opposed: they are as distinct
+as is vice from virtue. Men too often confound them: they should not be
+confounded: appearance should not be mistaken for truth; narrow human
+doctrines, that only tend to elate and magnify a few, should not be
+substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ. There is—I repeat
+it—a difference; and it is a good, and not a bad action to mark broadly
+and clearly the line of separation between them.
+
+The world may not like to see these ideas dissevered, for it has been
+accustomed to blend them; finding it convenient to make external show
+pass for sterling worth—to let white-washed walls vouch for clean
+shrines. It may hate him who dares to scrutinise and expose—to rase the
+gilding, and show base metal under it—to penetrate the sepulchre, and
+reveal charnel relics: but hate as it will, it is indebted to him.
+
+Ahab did not like Micaiah, because he never prophesied good concerning
+him, but evil; probably he liked the sycophant son of Chenaanah
+better; yet might Ahab have escaped a bloody death, had he but stopped
+his ears to flattery, and opened them to faithful counsel.
+
+There is a man in our own days whose words are not framed to tickle
+delicate ears: who, to my thinking, comes before the great ones of
+society, much as the son of Imlah came before the throned Kings of
+Judah and Israel; and who speaks truth as deep, with a power as
+prophet-like and as vital—a mien as dauntless and as daring. Is the
+satirist of “Vanity Fair” admired in high places? I cannot tell; but I
+think if some of those amongst whom he hurls the Greek fire of his
+sarcasm, and over whom he flashes the levin-brand of his denunciation,
+were to take his warnings in time—they or their seed might yet escape a
+fatal Rimoth-Gilead.
+
+Why have I alluded to this man? I have alluded to him, Reader, because
+I think I see in him an intellect profounder and more unique than his
+contemporaries have yet recognised; because I regard him as the first
+social regenerator of the day—as the very master of that working corps
+who would restore to rectitude the warped system of things; because I
+think no commentator on his writings has yet found the comparison that
+suits him, the terms which rightly characterise his talent. They say he
+is like Fielding: they talk of his wit, humour, comic powers. He
+resembles Fielding as an eagle does a vulture: Fielding could stoop on
+carrion, but Thackeray never does. His wit is bright, his humour
+attractive, but both bear the same relation to his serious genius that
+the mere lambent sheet-lightning playing under the edge of the
+summer-cloud does to the electric death-spark hid in its womb. Finally,
+I have alluded to Mr. Thackeray, because to him—if he will accept the
+tribute of a total stranger—I have dedicated this second edition of
+“JANE EYRE.”
+
+CURRER BELL.
+
+_December_ 21_st_, 1847.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE TO THE THIRD EDITION
+
+
+I avail myself of the opportunity which a third edition of “Jane Eyre”
+affords me, of again addressing a word to the Public, to explain that
+my claim to the title of novelist rests on this one work alone. If,
+therefore, the authorship of other works of fiction has been attributed
+to me, an honour is awarded where it is not merited; and consequently,
+denied where it is justly due.
+
+This explanation will serve to rectify mistakes which may already have
+been made, and to prevent future errors.
+
+CURRER BELL.
+
+_April_ 13_th_, 1848.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been
+wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning;
+but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early)
+the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain
+so penetrating, that further outdoor exercise was now out of the
+question.
+
+I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly
+afternoons: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight,
+with nipped fingers and toes, and a heart saddened by the chidings of
+Bessie, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my physical
+inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.
+
+The said Eliza, John, and Georgiana were now clustered round their mama
+in the drawing-room: she lay reclined on a sofa by the fireside, and
+with her darlings about her (for the time neither quarrelling nor
+crying) looked perfectly happy. Me, she had dispensed from joining the
+group; saying, “She regretted to be under the necessity of keeping me
+at a distance; but that until she heard from Bessie, and could discover
+by her own observation, that I was endeavouring in good earnest to
+acquire a more sociable and childlike disposition, a more attractive
+and sprightly manner—something lighter, franker, more natural, as it
+were—she really must exclude me from privileges intended only for
+contented, happy, little children.”
+
+“What does Bessie say I have done?” I asked.
+
+“Jane, I don’t like cavillers or questioners; besides, there is
+something truly forbidding in a child taking up her elders in that
+manner. Be seated somewhere; and until you can speak pleasantly, remain
+silent.”
+
+A breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room, I slipped in there. It
+contained a bookcase: I soon possessed myself of a volume, taking care
+that it should be one stored with pictures. I mounted into the
+window-seat: gathering up my feet, I sat cross-legged, like a Turk;
+and, having drawn the red moreen curtain nearly close, I was shrined in
+double retirement.
+
+Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left
+were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from
+the drear November day. At intervals, while turning over the leaves of
+my book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon. Afar, it
+offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of wet lawn and
+storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a
+long and lamentable blast.
+
+I returned to my book—Bewick’s History of British Birds: the
+letterpress thereof I cared little for, generally speaking; and yet
+there were certain introductory pages that, child as I was, I could not
+pass quite as a blank. They were those which treat of the haunts of
+sea-fowl; of “the solitary rocks and promontories” by them only
+inhabited; of the coast of Norway, studded with isles from its southern
+extremity, the Lindeness, or Naze, to the North Cape—
+
+“Where the Northern Ocean, in vast whirls,
+Boils round the naked, melancholy isles
+Of farthest Thule; and the Atlantic surge
+Pours in among the stormy Hebrides.”
+
+
+Nor could I pass unnoticed the suggestion of the bleak shores of
+Lapland, Siberia, Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla, Iceland, Greenland, with
+“the vast sweep of the Arctic Zone, and those forlorn regions of dreary
+space,—that reservoir of frost and snow, where firm fields of ice, the
+accumulation of centuries of winters, glazed in Alpine heights above
+heights, surround the pole, and concentre the multiplied rigours of
+extreme cold.” Of these death-white realms I formed an idea of my own:
+shadowy, like all the half-comprehended notions that float dim through
+children’s brains, but strangely impressive. The words in these
+introductory pages connected themselves with the succeeding vignettes,
+and gave significance to the rock standing up alone in a sea of billow
+and spray; to the broken boat stranded on a desolate coast; to the cold
+and ghastly moon glancing through bars of cloud at a wreck just
+sinking.
+
+I cannot tell what sentiment haunted the quite solitary churchyard,
+with its inscribed headstone; its gate, its two trees, its low horizon,
+girdled by a broken wall, and its newly-risen crescent, attesting the
+hour of eventide.
+
+The two ships becalmed on a torpid sea, I believed to be marine
+phantoms.
+
+The fiend pinning down the thief’s pack behind him, I passed over
+quickly: it was an object of terror.
+
+So was the black horned thing seated aloof on a rock, surveying a
+distant crowd surrounding a gallows.
+
+Each picture told a story; mysterious often to my undeveloped
+understanding and imperfect feelings, yet ever profoundly interesting:
+as interesting as the tales Bessie sometimes narrated on winter
+evenings, when she chanced to be in good humour; and when, having
+brought her ironing-table to the nursery hearth, she allowed us to sit
+about it, and while she got up Mrs. Reed’s lace frills, and crimped her
+nightcap borders, fed our eager attention with passages of love and
+adventure taken from old fairy tales and other ballads; or (as at a
+later period I discovered) from the pages of Pamela, and Henry, Earl of
+Moreland.
+
+With Bewick on my knee, I was then happy: happy at least in my way. I
+feared nothing but interruption, and that came too soon. The
+breakfast-room door opened.
+
+“Boh! Madam Mope!” cried the voice of John Reed; then he paused: he
+found the room apparently empty.
+
+“Where the dickens is she!” he continued. “Lizzy! Georgy! (calling to
+his sisters) Joan is not here: tell mama she is run out into the
+rain—bad animal!”
+
+“It is well I drew the curtain,” thought I; and I wished fervently he
+might not discover my hiding-place: nor would John Reed have found it
+out himself; he was not quick either of vision or conception; but Eliza
+just put her head in at the door, and said at once—
+
+“She is in the window-seat, to be sure, Jack.”
+
+And I came out immediately, for I trembled at the idea of being dragged
+forth by the said Jack.
+
+“What do you want?” I asked, with awkward diffidence.
+
+“Say, ‘What do you want, Master Reed?’” was the answer. “I want you to
+come here;” and seating himself in an arm-chair, he intimated by a
+gesture that I was to approach and stand before him.
+
+John Reed was a schoolboy of fourteen years old; four years older than
+I, for I was but ten: large and stout for his age, with a dingy and
+unwholesome skin; thick lineaments in a spacious visage, heavy limbs
+and large extremities. He gorged himself habitually at table, which
+made him bilious, and gave him a dim and bleared eye and flabby cheeks.
+He ought now to have been at school; but his mama had taken him home
+for a month or two, “on account of his delicate health.” Mr. Miles, the
+master, affirmed that he would do very well if he had fewer cakes and
+sweetmeats sent him from home; but the mother’s heart turned from an
+opinion so harsh, and inclined rather to the more refined idea that
+John’s sallowness was owing to over-application and, perhaps, to pining
+after home.
+
+John had not much affection for his mother and sisters, and an
+antipathy to me. He bullied and punished me; not two or three times in
+the week, nor once or twice in the day, but continually: every nerve I
+had feared him, and every morsel of flesh in my bones shrank when he
+came near. There were moments when I was bewildered by the terror he
+inspired, because I had no appeal whatever against either his menaces
+or his inflictions; the servants did not like to offend their young
+master by taking my part against him, and Mrs. Reed was blind and deaf
+on the subject: she never saw him strike or heard him abuse me, though
+he did both now and then in her very presence, more frequently,
+however, behind her back.
+
+Habitually obedient to John, I came up to his chair: he spent some
+three minutes in thrusting out his tongue at me as far as he could
+without damaging the roots: I knew he would soon strike, and while
+dreading the blow, I mused on the disgusting and ugly appearance of him
+who would presently deal it. I wonder if he read that notion in my
+face; for, all at once, without speaking, he struck suddenly and
+strongly. I tottered, and on regaining my equilibrium retired back a
+step or two from his chair.
+
+“That is for your impudence in answering mama awhile since,” said he,
+“and for your sneaking way of getting behind curtains, and for the look
+you had in your eyes two minutes since, you rat!”
+
+Accustomed to John Reed’s abuse, I never had an idea of replying to it;
+my care was how to endure the blow which would certainly follow the
+insult.
+
+“What were you doing behind the curtain?” he asked.
+
+“I was reading.”
+
+“Show the book.”
+
+I returned to the window and fetched it thence.
+
+“You have no business to take our books; you are a dependent, mama
+says; you have no money; your father left you none; you ought to beg,
+and not to live here with gentlemen’s children like us, and eat the
+same meals we do, and wear clothes at our mama’s expense. Now, I’ll
+teach you to rummage my bookshelves: for they _are_ mine; all the house
+belongs to me, or will do in a few years. Go and stand by the door, out
+of the way of the mirror and the windows.”
+
+I did so, not at first aware what was his intention; but when I saw him
+lift and poise the book and stand in act to hurl it, I instinctively
+started aside with a cry of alarm: not soon enough, however; the volume
+was flung, it hit me, and I fell, striking my head against the door and
+cutting it. The cut bled, the pain was sharp: my terror had passed its
+climax; other feelings succeeded.
+
+“Wicked and cruel boy!” I said. “You are like a murderer—you are like a
+slave-driver—you are like the Roman emperors!”
+
+I had read Goldsmith’s History of Rome, and had formed my opinion of
+Nero, Caligula, &c. Also I had drawn parallels in silence, which I
+never thought thus to have declared aloud.
+
+“What! what!” he cried. “Did she say that to me? Did you hear her,
+Eliza and Georgiana? Won’t I tell mama? but first—”
+
+He ran headlong at me: I felt him grasp my hair and my shoulder: he had
+closed with a desperate thing. I really saw in him a tyrant, a
+murderer. I felt a drop or two of blood from my head trickle down my
+neck, and was sensible of somewhat pungent suffering: these sensations
+for the time predominated over fear, and I received him in frantic
+sort. I don’t very well know what I did with my hands, but he called me
+“Rat! Rat!” and bellowed out aloud. Aid was near him: Eliza and
+Georgiana had run for Mrs. Reed, who was gone upstairs: she now came
+upon the scene, followed by Bessie and her maid Abbot. We were parted:
+I heard the words—
+
+“Dear! dear! What a fury to fly at Master John!”
+
+“Did ever anybody see such a picture of passion!”
+
+Then Mrs. Reed subjoined—
+
+“Take her away to the red-room, and lock her in there.” Four hands were
+immediately laid upon me, and I was borne upstairs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+I resisted all the way: a new thing for me, and a circumstance which
+greatly strengthened the bad opinion Bessie and Miss Abbot were
+disposed to entertain of me. The fact is, I was a trifle beside myself;
+or rather _out_ of myself, as the French would say: I was conscious
+that a moment’s mutiny had already rendered me liable to strange
+penalties, and, like any other rebel slave, I felt resolved, in my
+desperation, to go all lengths.
+
+“Hold her arms, Miss Abbot: she’s like a mad cat.”
+
+“For shame! for shame!” cried the lady’s-maid. “What shocking conduct,
+Miss Eyre, to strike a young gentleman, your benefactress’s son! Your
+young master.”
+
+“Master! How is he my master? Am I a servant?”
+
+“No; you are less than a servant, for you do nothing for your keep.
+There, sit down, and think over your wickedness.”
+
+They had got me by this time into the apartment indicated by Mrs. Reed,
+and had thrust me upon a stool: my impulse was to rise from it like a
+spring; their two pair of hands arrested me instantly.
+
+“If you don’t sit still, you must be tied down,” said Bessie. “Miss
+Abbot, lend me your garters; she would break mine directly.”
+
+Miss Abbot turned to divest a stout leg of the necessary ligature. This
+preparation for bonds, and the additional ignominy it inferred, took a
+little of the excitement out of me.
+
+“Don’t take them off,” I cried; “I will not stir.”
+
+In guarantee whereof, I attached myself to my seat by my hands.
+
+“Mind you don’t,” said Bessie; and when she had ascertained that I was
+really subsiding, she loosened her hold of me; then she and Miss Abbot
+stood with folded arms, looking darkly and doubtfully on my face, as
+incredulous of my sanity.
+
+“She never did so before,” at last said Bessie, turning to the Abigail.
+
+“But it was always in her,” was the reply. “I’ve told Missis often my
+opinion about the child, and Missis agreed with me. She’s an underhand
+little thing: I never saw a girl of her age with so much cover.”
+
+Bessie answered not; but ere long, addressing me, she said—
+
+“You ought to be aware, Miss, that you are under obligations to Mrs.
+Reed: she keeps you: if she were to turn you off, you would have to go
+to the poorhouse.”
+
+I had nothing to say to these words: they were not new to me: my very
+first recollections of existence included hints of the same kind. This
+reproach of my dependence had become a vague sing-song in my ear: very
+painful and crushing, but only half intelligible. Miss Abbot joined in—
+
+“And you ought not to think yourself on an equality with the Misses
+Reed and Master Reed, because Missis kindly allows you to be brought up
+with them. They will have a great deal of money, and you will have
+none: it is your place to be humble, and to try to make yourself
+agreeable to them.”
+
+“What we tell you is for your good,” added Bessie, in no harsh voice,
+“you should try to be useful and pleasant, then, perhaps, you would
+have a home here; but if you become passionate and rude, Missis will
+send you away, I am sure.”
+
+“Besides,” said Miss Abbot, “God will punish her: He might strike her
+dead in the midst of her tantrums, and then where would she go? Come,
+Bessie, we will leave her: I wouldn’t have her heart for anything. Say
+your prayers, Miss Eyre, when you are by yourself; for if you don’t
+repent, something bad might be permitted to come down the chimney and
+fetch you away.”
+
+They went, shutting the door, and locking it behind them.
+
+The red-room was a square chamber, very seldom slept in, I might say
+never, indeed, unless when a chance influx of visitors at Gateshead
+Hall rendered it necessary to turn to account all the accommodation it
+contained: yet it was one of the largest and stateliest chambers in the
+mansion. A bed supported on massive pillars of mahogany, hung with
+curtains of deep red damask, stood out like a tabernacle in the centre;
+the two large windows, with their blinds always drawn down, were half
+shrouded in festoons and falls of similar drapery; the carpet was red;
+the table at the foot of the bed was covered with a crimson cloth; the
+walls were a soft fawn colour with a blush of pink in it; the wardrobe,
+the toilet-table, the chairs were of darkly polished old mahogany. Out
+of these deep surrounding shades rose high, and glared white, the
+piled-up mattresses and pillows of the bed, spread with a snowy
+Marseilles counterpane. Scarcely less prominent was an ample cushioned
+easy-chair near the head of the bed, also white, with a footstool
+before it; and looking, as I thought, like a pale throne.
+
+This room was chill, because it seldom had a fire; it was silent,
+because remote from the nursery and kitchen; solemn, because it was
+known to be so seldom entered. The house-maid alone came here on
+Saturdays, to wipe from the mirrors and the furniture a week’s quiet
+dust: and Mrs. Reed herself, at far intervals, visited it to review the
+contents of a certain secret drawer in the wardrobe, where were stored
+divers parchments, her jewel-casket, and a miniature of her deceased
+husband; and in those last words lies the secret of the red-room—the
+spell which kept it so lonely in spite of its grandeur.
+
+Mr. Reed had been dead nine years: it was in this chamber he breathed
+his last; here he lay in state; hence his coffin was borne by the
+undertaker’s men; and, since that day, a sense of dreary consecration
+had guarded it from frequent intrusion.
+
+My seat, to which Bessie and the bitter Miss Abbot had left me riveted,
+was a low ottoman near the marble chimney-piece; the bed rose before
+me; to my right hand there was the high, dark wardrobe, with subdued,
+broken reflections varying the gloss of its panels; to my left were the
+muffled windows; a great looking-glass between them repeated the vacant
+majesty of the bed and room. I was not quite sure whether they had
+locked the door; and when I dared move, I got up and went to see. Alas!
+yes: no jail was ever more secure. Returning, I had to cross before the
+looking-glass; my fascinated glance involuntarily explored the depth it
+revealed. All looked colder and darker in that visionary hollow than in
+reality: and the strange little figure there gazing at me, with a white
+face and arms specking the gloom, and glittering eyes of fear moving
+where all else was still, had the effect of a real spirit: I thought it
+like one of the tiny phantoms, half fairy, half imp, Bessie’s evening
+stories represented as coming out of lone, ferny dells in moors, and
+appearing before the eyes of belated travellers. I returned to my
+stool.
+
+Superstition was with me at that moment; but it was not yet her hour
+for complete victory: my blood was still warm; the mood of the revolted
+slave was still bracing me with its bitter vigour; I had to stem a
+rapid rush of retrospective thought before I quailed to the dismal
+present.
+
+All John Reed’s violent tyrannies, all his sisters’ proud indifference,
+all his mother’s aversion, all the servants’ partiality, turned up in
+my disturbed mind like a dark deposit in a turbid well. Why was I
+always suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, for ever
+condemned? Why could I never please? Why was it useless to try to win
+any one’s favour? Eliza, who was headstrong and selfish, was respected.
+Georgiana, who had a spoiled temper, a very acrid spite, a captious and
+insolent carriage, was universally indulged. Her beauty, her pink
+cheeks and golden curls, seemed to give delight to all who looked at
+her, and to purchase indemnity for every fault. John no one thwarted,
+much less punished; though he twisted the necks of the pigeons, killed
+the little pea-chicks, set the dogs at the sheep, stripped the hothouse
+vines of their fruit, and broke the buds off the choicest plants in the
+conservatory: he called his mother “old girl,” too; sometimes reviled
+her for her dark skin, similar to his own; bluntly disregarded her
+wishes; not unfrequently tore and spoiled her silk attire; and he was
+still “her own darling.” I dared commit no fault: I strove to fulfil
+every duty; and I was termed naughty and tiresome, sullen and sneaking,
+from morning to noon, and from noon to night.
+
+My head still ached and bled with the blow and fall I had received: no
+one had reproved John for wantonly striking me; and because I had
+turned against him to avert farther irrational violence, I was loaded
+with general opprobrium.
+
+“Unjust!—unjust!” said my reason, forced by the agonising stimulus into
+precocious though transitory power: and Resolve, equally wrought up,
+instigated some strange expedient to achieve escape from insupportable
+oppression—as running away, or, if that could not be effected, never
+eating or drinking more, and letting myself die.
+
+What a consternation of soul was mine that dreary afternoon! How all my
+brain was in tumult, and all my heart in insurrection! Yet in what
+darkness, what dense ignorance, was the mental battle fought! I could
+not answer the ceaseless inward question—_why_ I thus suffered; now, at
+the distance of—I will not say how many years, I see it clearly.
+
+I was a discord in Gateshead Hall: I was like nobody there; I had
+nothing in harmony with Mrs. Reed or her children, or her chosen
+vassalage. If they did not love me, in fact, as little did I love them.
+They were not bound to regard with affection a thing that could not
+sympathise with one amongst them; a heterogeneous thing, opposed to
+them in temperament, in capacity, in propensities; a useless thing,
+incapable of serving their interest, or adding to their pleasure; a
+noxious thing, cherishing the germs of indignation at their treatment,
+of contempt of their judgment. I know that had I been a sanguine,
+brilliant, careless, exacting, handsome, romping child—though equally
+dependent and friendless—Mrs. Reed would have endured my presence more
+complacently; her children would have entertained for me more of the
+cordiality of fellow-feeling; the servants would have been less prone
+to make me the scapegoat of the nursery.
+
+Daylight began to forsake the red-room; it was past four o’clock, and
+the beclouded afternoon was tending to drear twilight. I heard the rain
+still beating continuously on the staircase window, and the wind
+howling in the grove behind the hall; I grew by degrees cold as a
+stone, and then my courage sank. My habitual mood of humiliation,
+self-doubt, forlorn depression, fell damp on the embers of my decaying
+ire. All said I was wicked, and perhaps I might be so; what thought had
+I been but just conceiving of starving myself to death? That certainly
+was a crime: and was I fit to die? Or was the vault under the chancel
+of Gateshead Church an inviting bourne? In such vault I had been told
+did Mr. Reed lie buried; and led by this thought to recall his idea, I
+dwelt on it with gathering dread. I could not remember him; but I knew
+that he was my own uncle—my mother’s brother—that he had taken me when
+a parentless infant to his house; and that in his last moments he had
+required a promise of Mrs. Reed that she would rear and maintain me as
+one of her own children. Mrs. Reed probably considered she had kept
+this promise; and so she had, I dare say, as well as her nature would
+permit her; but how could she really like an interloper not of her
+race, and unconnected with her, after her husband’s death, by any tie?
+It must have been most irksome to find herself bound by a hard-wrung
+pledge to stand in the stead of a parent to a strange child she could
+not love, and to see an uncongenial alien permanently intruded on her
+own family group.
+
+A singular notion dawned upon me. I doubted not—never doubted—that if
+Mr. Reed had been alive he would have treated me kindly; and now, as I
+sat looking at the white bed and overshadowed walls—occasionally also
+turning a fascinated eye towards the dimly gleaming mirror—I began to
+recall what I had heard of dead men, troubled in their graves by the
+violation of their last wishes, revisiting the earth to punish the
+perjured and avenge the oppressed; and I thought Mr. Reed’s spirit,
+harassed by the wrongs of his sister’s child, might quit its
+abode—whether in the church vault or in the unknown world of the
+departed—and rise before me in this chamber. I wiped my tears and
+hushed my sobs, fearful lest any sign of violent grief might waken a
+preternatural voice to comfort me, or elicit from the gloom some haloed
+face, bending over me with strange pity. This idea, consolatory in
+theory, I felt would be terrible if realised: with all my might I
+endeavoured to stifle it—I endeavoured to be firm. Shaking my hair from
+my eyes, I lifted my head and tried to look boldly round the dark room;
+at this moment a light gleamed on the wall. Was it, I asked myself, a
+ray from the moon penetrating some aperture in the blind? No; moonlight
+was still, and this stirred; while I gazed, it glided up to the ceiling
+and quivered over my head. I can now conjecture readily that this
+streak of light was, in all likelihood, a gleam from a lantern carried
+by some one across the lawn: but then, prepared as my mind was for
+horror, shaken as my nerves were by agitation, I thought the swift
+darting beam was a herald of some coming vision from another world. My
+heart beat thick, my head grew hot; a sound filled my ears, which I
+deemed the rushing of wings; something seemed near me; I was oppressed,
+suffocated: endurance broke down; I rushed to the door and shook the
+lock in desperate effort. Steps came running along the outer passage;
+the key turned, Bessie and Abbot entered.
+
+“Miss Eyre, are you ill?” said Bessie.
+
+“What a dreadful noise! it went quite through me!” exclaimed Abbot.
+
+“Take me out! Let me go into the nursery!” was my cry.
+
+“What for? Are you hurt? Have you seen something?” again demanded
+Bessie.
+
+“Oh! I saw a light, and I thought a ghost would come.” I had now got
+hold of Bessie’s hand, and she did not snatch it from me.
+
+“She has screamed out on purpose,” declared Abbot, in some disgust.
+“And what a scream! If she had been in great pain one would have
+excused it, but she only wanted to bring us all here: I know her
+naughty tricks.”
+
+“What is all this?” demanded another voice peremptorily; and Mrs. Reed
+came along the corridor, her cap flying wide, her gown rustling
+stormily. “Abbot and Bessie, I believe I gave orders that Jane Eyre
+should be left in the red-room till I came to her myself.”
+
+“Miss Jane screamed so loud, ma’am,” pleaded Bessie.
+
+“Let her go,” was the only answer. “Loose Bessie’s hand, child: you
+cannot succeed in getting out by these means, be assured. I abhor
+artifice, particularly in children; it is my duty to show you that
+tricks will not answer: you will now stay here an hour longer, and it
+is only on condition of perfect submission and stillness that I shall
+liberate you then.”
+
+“O aunt! have pity! Forgive me! I cannot endure it—let me be punished
+some other way! I shall be killed if—”
+
+“Silence! This violence is all most repulsive:” and so, no doubt, she
+felt it. I was a precocious actress in her eyes; she sincerely looked
+on me as a compound of virulent passions, mean spirit, and dangerous
+duplicity.
+
+Bessie and Abbot having retreated, Mrs. Reed, impatient of my now
+frantic anguish and wild sobs, abruptly thrust me back and locked me
+in, without farther parley. I heard her sweeping away; and soon after
+she was gone, I suppose I had a species of fit: unconsciousness closed
+the scene.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+The next thing I remember is, waking up with a feeling as if I had had
+a frightful nightmare, and seeing before me a terrible red glare,
+crossed with thick black bars. I heard voices, too, speaking with a
+hollow sound, and as if muffled by a rush of wind or water: agitation,
+uncertainty, and an all-predominating sense of terror confused my
+faculties. Ere long, I became aware that some one was handling me;
+lifting me up and supporting me in a sitting posture, and that more
+tenderly than I had ever been raised or upheld before. I rested my head
+against a pillow or an arm, and felt easy.
+
+In five minutes more the cloud of bewilderment dissolved: I knew quite
+well that I was in my own bed, and that the red glare was the nursery
+fire. It was night: a candle burnt on the table; Bessie stood at the
+bed-foot with a basin in her hand, and a gentleman sat in a chair near
+my pillow, leaning over me.
+
+I felt an inexpressible relief, a soothing conviction of protection and
+security, when I knew that there was a stranger in the room, an
+individual not belonging to Gateshead, and not related to Mrs. Reed.
+Turning from Bessie (though her presence was far less obnoxious to me
+than that of Abbot, for instance, would have been), I scrutinised the
+face of the gentleman: I knew him; it was Mr. Lloyd, an apothecary,
+sometimes called in by Mrs. Reed when the servants were ailing: for
+herself and the children she employed a physician.
+
+“Well, who am I?” he asked.
+
+I pronounced his name, offering him at the same time my hand: he took
+it, smiling and saying, “We shall do very well by-and-by.” Then he laid
+me down, and addressing Bessie, charged her to be very careful that I
+was not disturbed during the night. Having given some further
+directions, and intimated that he should call again the next day, he
+departed; to my grief: I felt so sheltered and befriended while he sat
+in the chair near my pillow; and as he closed the door after him, all
+the room darkened and my heart again sank: inexpressible sadness
+weighed it down.
+
+“Do you feel as if you should sleep, Miss?” asked Bessie, rather
+softly.
+
+Scarcely dared I answer her; for I feared the next sentence might be
+rough. “I will try.”
+
+“Would you like to drink, or could you eat anything?”
+
+“No, thank you, Bessie.”
+
+“Then I think I shall go to bed, for it is past twelve o’clock; but you
+may call me if you want anything in the night.”
+
+Wonderful civility this! It emboldened me to ask a question.
+
+“Bessie, what is the matter with me? Am I ill?”
+
+“You fell sick, I suppose, in the red-room with crying; you’ll be
+better soon, no doubt.”
+
+Bessie went into the housemaid’s apartment, which was near. I heard her
+say—
+
+“Sarah, come and sleep with me in the nursery; I daren’t for my life be
+alone with that poor child to-night: she might die; it’s such a strange
+thing she should have that fit: I wonder if she saw anything. Missis
+was rather too hard.”
+
+Sarah came back with her; they both went to bed; they were whispering
+together for half-an-hour before they fell asleep. I caught scraps of
+their conversation, from which I was able only too distinctly to infer
+the main subject discussed.
+
+“Something passed her, all dressed in white, and vanished”—“A great
+black dog behind him”—“Three loud raps on the chamber door”—“A light in
+the churchyard just over his grave,” &c., &c.
+
+At last both slept: the fire and the candle went out. For me, the
+watches of that long night passed in ghastly wakefulness; ear, eye, and
+mind were alike strained by dread: such dread as children only can
+feel.
+
+No severe or prolonged bodily illness followed this incident of the
+red-room; it only gave my nerves a shock of which I feel the
+reverberation to this day. Yes, Mrs. Reed, to you I owe some fearful
+pangs of mental suffering, but I ought to forgive you, for you knew not
+what you did: while rending my heart-strings, you thought you were only
+uprooting my bad propensities.
+
+Next day, by noon, I was up and dressed, and sat wrapped in a shawl by
+the nursery hearth. I felt physically weak and broken down: but my
+worse ailment was an unutterable wretchedness of mind: a wretchedness
+which kept drawing from me silent tears; no sooner had I wiped one salt
+drop from my cheek than another followed. Yet, I thought, I ought to
+have been happy, for none of the Reeds were there, they were all gone
+out in the carriage with their mama. Abbot, too, was sewing in another
+room, and Bessie, as she moved hither and thither, putting away toys
+and arranging drawers, addressed to me every now and then a word of
+unwonted kindness. This state of things should have been to me a
+paradise of peace, accustomed as I was to a life of ceaseless reprimand
+and thankless fagging; but, in fact, my racked nerves were now in such
+a state that no calm could soothe, and no pleasure excite them
+agreeably.
+
+Bessie had been down into the kitchen, and she brought up with her a
+tart on a certain brightly painted china plate, whose bird of paradise,
+nestling in a wreath of convolvuli and rosebuds, had been wont to stir
+in me a most enthusiastic sense of admiration; and which plate I had
+often petitioned to be allowed to take in my hand in order to examine
+it more closely, but had always hitherto been deemed unworthy of such a
+privilege. This precious vessel was now placed on my knee, and I was
+cordially invited to eat the circlet of delicate pastry upon it. Vain
+favour! coming, like most other favours long deferred and often wished
+for, too late! I could not eat the tart; and the plumage of the bird,
+the tints of the flowers, seemed strangely faded: I put both plate and
+tart away. Bessie asked if I would have a book: the word _book_ acted
+as a transient stimulus, and I begged her to fetch Gulliver’s Travels
+from the library. This book I had again and again perused with delight.
+I considered it a narrative of facts, and discovered in it a vein of
+interest deeper than what I found in fairy tales: for as to the elves,
+having sought them in vain among foxglove leaves and bells, under
+mushrooms and beneath the ground-ivy mantling old wall-nooks, I had at
+length made up my mind to the sad truth, that they were all gone out of
+England to some savage country where the woods were wilder and thicker,
+and the population more scant; whereas, Lilliput and Brobdignag being,
+in my creed, solid parts of the earth’s surface, I doubted not that I
+might one day, by taking a long voyage, see with my own eyes the little
+fields, houses, and trees, the diminutive people, the tiny cows, sheep,
+and birds of the one realm; and the corn-fields forest-high, the mighty
+mastiffs, the monster cats, the tower-like men and women, of the other.
+Yet, when this cherished volume was now placed in my hand—when I turned
+over its leaves, and sought in its marvellous pictures the charm I had,
+till now, never failed to find—all was eerie and dreary; the giants
+were gaunt goblins, the pigmies malevolent and fearful imps, Gulliver a
+most desolate wanderer in most dread and dangerous regions. I closed
+the book, which I dared no longer peruse, and put it on the table,
+beside the untasted tart.
+
+Bessie had now finished dusting and tidying the room, and having washed
+her hands, she opened a certain little drawer, full of splendid shreds
+of silk and satin, and began making a new bonnet for Georgiana’s doll.
+Meantime she sang: her song was—
+
+“In the days when we went gipsying,
+    A long time ago.”
+
+
+I had often heard the song before, and always with lively delight; for
+Bessie had a sweet voice,—at least, I thought so. But now, though her
+voice was still sweet, I found in its melody an indescribable sadness.
+Sometimes, preoccupied with her work, she sang the refrain very low,
+very lingeringly; “A long time ago” came out like the saddest cadence
+of a funeral hymn. She passed into another ballad, this time a really
+doleful one.
+
+“My feet they are sore, and my limbs they are weary;
+    Long is the way, and the mountains are wild;
+Soon will the twilight close moonless and dreary
+    Over the path of the poor orphan child.
+
+Why did they send me so far and so lonely,
+    Up where the moors spread and grey rocks are piled?
+Men are hard-hearted, and kind angels only
+    Watch o’er the steps of a poor orphan child.
+
+Yet distant and soft the night breeze is blowing,
+    Clouds there are none, and clear stars beam mild,
+God, in His mercy, protection is showing,
+    Comfort and hope to the poor orphan child.
+
+Ev’n should I fall o’er the broken bridge passing,
+    Or stray in the marshes, by false lights beguiled,
+Still will my Father, with promise and blessing,
+    Take to His bosom the poor orphan child.
+
+There is a thought that for strength should avail me,
+    Though both of shelter and kindred despoiled;
+Heaven is a home, and a rest will not fail me;
+    God is a friend to the poor orphan child.”
+
+
+“Come, Miss Jane, don’t cry,” said Bessie as she finished. She might as
+well have said to the fire, “don’t burn!” but how could she divine the
+morbid suffering to which I was a prey? In the course of the morning
+Mr. Lloyd came again.
+
+“What, already up!” said he, as he entered the nursery. “Well, nurse,
+how is she?”
+
+Bessie answered that I was doing very well.
+
+“Then she ought to look more cheerful. Come here, Miss Jane: your name
+is Jane, is it not?”
+
+“Yes, sir, Jane Eyre.”
+
+“Well, you have been crying, Miss Jane Eyre; can you tell me what
+about? Have you any pain?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“Oh! I daresay she is crying because she could not go out with Missis
+in the carriage,” interposed Bessie.
+
+“Surely not! why, she is too old for such pettishness.”
+
+I thought so too; and my self-esteem being wounded by the false charge,
+I answered promptly, “I never cried for such a thing in my life: I hate
+going out in the carriage. I cry because I am miserable.”
+
+“Oh fie, Miss!” said Bessie.
+
+The good apothecary appeared a little puzzled. I was standing before
+him; he fixed his eyes on me very steadily: his eyes were small and
+grey; not very bright, but I dare say I should think them shrewd now:
+he had a hard-featured yet good-natured looking face. Having considered
+me at leisure, he said—
+
+“What made you ill yesterday?”
+
+“She had a fall,” said Bessie, again putting in her word.
+
+“Fall! why, that is like a baby again! Can’t she manage to walk at her
+age? She must be eight or nine years old.”
+
+“I was knocked down,” was the blunt explanation, jerked out of me by
+another pang of mortified pride; “but that did not make me ill,” I
+added; while Mr. Lloyd helped himself to a pinch of snuff.
+
+As he was returning the box to his waistcoat pocket, a loud bell rang
+for the servants’ dinner; he knew what it was. “That’s for you, nurse,”
+said he; “you can go down; I’ll give Miss Jane a lecture till you come
+back.”
+
+Bessie would rather have stayed, but she was obliged to go, because
+punctuality at meals was rigidly enforced at Gateshead Hall.
+
+“The fall did not make you ill; what did, then?” pursued Mr. Lloyd when
+Bessie was gone.
+
+“I was shut up in a room where there is a ghost till after dark.”
+
+I saw Mr. Lloyd smile and frown at the same time.
+
+“Ghost! What, you are a baby after all! You are afraid of ghosts?”
+
+“Of Mr. Reed’s ghost I am: he died in that room, and was laid out
+there. Neither Bessie nor any one else will go into it at night, if
+they can help it; and it was cruel to shut me up alone without a
+candle,—so cruel that I think I shall never forget it.”
+
+“Nonsense! And is it that makes you so miserable? Are you afraid now in
+daylight?”
+
+“No: but night will come again before long: and besides,—I am
+unhappy,—very unhappy, for other things.”
+
+“What other things? Can you tell me some of them?”
+
+How much I wished to reply fully to this question! How difficult it was
+to frame any answer! Children can feel, but they cannot analyse their
+feelings; and if the analysis is partially effected in thought, they
+know not how to express the result of the process in words. Fearful,
+however, of losing this first and only opportunity of relieving my
+grief by imparting it, I, after a disturbed pause, contrived to frame a
+meagre, though, as far as it went, true response.
+
+“For one thing, I have no father or mother, brothers or sisters.”
+
+“You have a kind aunt and cousins.”
+
+Again I paused; then bunglingly enounced—
+
+“But John Reed knocked me down, and my aunt shut me up in the
+red-room.”
+
+Mr. Lloyd a second time produced his snuff-box.
+
+“Don’t you think Gateshead Hall a very beautiful house?” asked he. “Are
+you not very thankful to have such a fine place to live at?”
+
+“It is not my house, sir; and Abbot says I have less right to be here
+than a servant.”
+
+“Pooh! you can’t be silly enough to wish to leave such a splendid
+place?”
+
+“If I had anywhere else to go, I should be glad to leave it; but I can
+never get away from Gateshead till I am a woman.”
+
+“Perhaps you may—who knows? Have you any relations besides Mrs. Reed?”
+
+“I think not, sir.”
+
+“None belonging to your father?”
+
+“I don’t know: I asked Aunt Reed once, and she said possibly I might
+have some poor, low relations called Eyre, but she knew nothing about
+them.”
+
+“If you had such, would you like to go to them?”
+
+I reflected. Poverty looks grim to grown people; still more so to
+children: they have not much idea of industrious, working, respectable
+poverty; they think of the word only as connected with ragged clothes,
+scanty food, fireless grates, rude manners, and debasing vices: poverty
+for me was synonymous with degradation.
+
+“No; I should not like to belong to poor people,” was my reply.
+
+“Not even if they were kind to you?”
+
+I shook my head: I could not see how poor people had the means of being
+kind; and then to learn to speak like them, to adopt their manners, to
+be uneducated, to grow up like one of the poor women I saw sometimes
+nursing their children or washing their clothes at the cottage doors of
+the village of Gateshead: no, I was not heroic enough to purchase
+liberty at the price of caste.
+
+“But are your relatives so very poor? Are they working people?”
+
+“I cannot tell; Aunt Reed says if I have any, they must be a beggarly
+set: I should not like to go a begging.”
+
+“Would you like to go to school?”
+
+Again I reflected: I scarcely knew what school was: Bessie sometimes
+spoke of it as a place where young ladies sat in the stocks, wore
+backboards, and were expected to be exceedingly genteel and precise:
+John Reed hated his school, and abused his master; but John Reed’s
+tastes were no rule for mine, and if Bessie’s accounts of
+school-discipline (gathered from the young ladies of a family where she
+had lived before coming to Gateshead) were somewhat appalling, her
+details of certain accomplishments attained by these same young ladies
+were, I thought, equally attractive. She boasted of beautiful paintings
+of landscapes and flowers by them executed; of songs they could sing
+and pieces they could play, of purses they could net, of French books
+they could translate; till my spirit was moved to emulation as I
+listened. Besides, school would be a complete change: it implied a long
+journey, an entire separation from Gateshead, an entrance into a new
+life.
+
+“I should indeed like to go to school,” was the audible conclusion of
+my musings.
+
+“Well, well! who knows what may happen?” said Mr. Lloyd, as he got up.
+“The child ought to have change of air and scene,” he added, speaking
+to himself; “nerves not in a good state.”
+
+Bessie now returned; at the same moment the carriage was heard rolling
+up the gravel-walk.
+
+“Is that your mistress, nurse?” asked Mr. Lloyd. “I should like to
+speak to her before I go.”
+
+Bessie invited him to walk into the breakfast-room, and led the way
+out. In the interview which followed between him and Mrs. Reed, I
+presume, from after-occurrences, that the apothecary ventured to
+recommend my being sent to school; and the recommendation was no doubt
+readily enough adopted; for as Abbot said, in discussing the subject
+with Bessie when both sat sewing in the nursery one night, after I was
+in bed, and, as they thought, asleep, “Missis was, she dared say, glad
+enough to get rid of such a tiresome, ill-conditioned child, who always
+looked as if she were watching everybody, and scheming plots
+underhand.” Abbot, I think, gave me credit for being a sort of
+infantine Guy Fawkes.
+
+On that same occasion I learned, for the first time, from Miss Abbot’s
+communications to Bessie, that my father had been a poor clergyman;
+that my mother had married him against the wishes of her friends, who
+considered the match beneath her; that my grandfather Reed was so
+irritated at her disobedience, he cut her off without a shilling; that
+after my mother and father had been married a year, the latter caught
+the typhus fever while visiting among the poor of a large manufacturing
+town where his curacy was situated, and where that disease was then
+prevalent: that my mother took the infection from him, and both died
+within a month of each other.
+
+Bessie, when she heard this narrative, sighed and said, “Poor Miss Jane
+is to be pitied, too, Abbot.”
+
+“Yes,” responded Abbot; “if she were a nice, pretty child, one might
+compassionate her forlornness; but one really cannot care for such a
+little toad as that.”
+
+“Not a great deal, to be sure,” agreed Bessie: “at any rate, a beauty
+like Miss Georgiana would be more moving in the same condition.”
+
+“Yes, I doat on Miss Georgiana!” cried the fervent Abbot. “Little
+darling!—with her long curls and her blue eyes, and such a sweet colour
+as she has; just as if she were painted!—Bessie, I could fancy a Welsh
+rabbit for supper.”
+
+“So could I—with a roast onion. Come, we’ll go down.” They went.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+From my discourse with Mr. Lloyd, and from the above reported
+conference between Bessie and Abbot, I gathered enough of hope to
+suffice as a motive for wishing to get well: a change seemed near,—I
+desired and waited it in silence. It tarried, however: days and weeks
+passed: I had regained my normal state of health, but no new allusion
+was made to the subject over which I brooded. Mrs. Reed surveyed me at
+times with a severe eye, but seldom addressed me: since my illness, she
+had drawn a more marked line of separation than ever between me and her
+own children; appointing me a small closet to sleep in by myself,
+condemning me to take my meals alone, and pass all my time in the
+nursery, while my cousins were constantly in the drawing-room. Not a
+hint, however, did she drop about sending me to school: still I felt an
+instinctive certainty that she would not long endure me under the same
+roof with her; for her glance, now more than ever, when turned on me,
+expressed an insuperable and rooted aversion.
+
+Eliza and Georgiana, evidently acting according to orders, spoke to me
+as little as possible: John thrust his tongue in his cheek whenever he
+saw me, and once attempted chastisement; but as I instantly turned
+against him, roused by the same sentiment of deep ire and desperate
+revolt which had stirred my corruption before, he thought it better to
+desist, and ran from me uttering execrations, and vowing I had burst
+his nose. I had indeed levelled at that prominent feature as hard a
+blow as my knuckles could inflict; and when I saw that either that or
+my look daunted him, I had the greatest inclination to follow up my
+advantage to purpose; but he was already with his mama. I heard him in
+a blubbering tone commence the tale of how “that nasty Jane Eyre” had
+flown at him like a mad cat: he was stopped rather harshly—
+
+“Don’t talk to me about her, John: I told you not to go near her; she
+is not worthy of notice; I do not choose that either you or your
+sisters should associate with her.”
+
+Here, leaning over the banister, I cried out suddenly, and without at
+all deliberating on my words—
+
+“They are not fit to associate with me.”
+
+Mrs. Reed was rather a stout woman; but, on hearing this strange and
+audacious declaration, she ran nimbly up the stair, swept me like a
+whirlwind into the nursery, and crushing me down on the edge of my
+crib, dared me in an emphatic voice to rise from that place, or utter
+one syllable during the remainder of the day.
+
+“What would Uncle Reed say to you, if he were alive?” was my scarcely
+voluntary demand. I say scarcely voluntary, for it seemed as if my
+tongue pronounced words without my will consenting to their utterance:
+something spoke out of me over which I had no control.
+
+“What?” said Mrs. Reed under her breath: her usually cold composed grey
+eye became troubled with a look like fear; she took her hand from my
+arm, and gazed at me as if she really did not know whether I were child
+or fiend. I was now in for it.
+
+“My Uncle Reed is in heaven, and can see all you do and think; and so
+can papa and mama: they know how you shut me up all day long, and how
+you wish me dead.”
+
+Mrs. Reed soon rallied her spirits: she shook me most soundly, she
+boxed both my ears, and then left me without a word. Bessie supplied
+the hiatus by a homily of an hour’s length, in which she proved beyond
+a doubt that I was the most wicked and abandoned child ever reared
+under a roof. I half believed her; for I felt indeed only bad feelings
+surging in my breast.
+
+November, December, and half of January passed away. Christmas and the
+New Year had been celebrated at Gateshead with the usual festive cheer;
+presents had been interchanged, dinners and evening parties given. From
+every enjoyment I was, of course, excluded: my share of the gaiety
+consisted in witnessing the daily apparelling of Eliza and Georgiana,
+and seeing them descend to the drawing-room, dressed out in thin muslin
+frocks and scarlet sashes, with hair elaborately ringletted; and
+afterwards, in listening to the sound of the piano or the harp played
+below, to the passing to and fro of the butler and footman, to the
+jingling of glass and china as refreshments were handed, to the broken
+hum of conversation as the drawing-room door opened and closed. When
+tired of this occupation, I would retire from the stairhead to the
+solitary and silent nursery: there, though somewhat sad, I was not
+miserable. To speak truth, I had not the least wish to go into company,
+for in company I was very rarely noticed; and if Bessie had but been
+kind and companionable, I should have deemed it a treat to spend the
+evenings quietly with her, instead of passing them under the formidable
+eye of Mrs. Reed, in a room full of ladies and gentlemen. But Bessie,
+as soon as she had dressed her young ladies, used to take herself off
+to the lively regions of the kitchen and housekeeper’s room, generally
+bearing the candle along with her. I then sat with my doll on my knee
+till the fire got low, glancing round occasionally to make sure that
+nothing worse than myself haunted the shadowy room; and when the embers
+sank to a dull red, I undressed hastily, tugging at knots and strings
+as I best might, and sought shelter from cold and darkness in my crib.
+To this crib I always took my doll; human beings must love something,
+and, in the dearth of worthier objects of affection, I contrived to
+find a pleasure in loving and cherishing a faded graven image, shabby
+as a miniature scarecrow. It puzzles me now to remember with what
+absurd sincerity I doated on this little toy, half fancying it alive
+and capable of sensation. I could not sleep unless it was folded in my
+night-gown; and when it lay there safe and warm, I was comparatively
+happy, believing it to be happy likewise.
+
+Long did the hours seem while I waited the departure of the company,
+and listened for the sound of Bessie’s step on the stairs: sometimes
+she would come up in the interval to seek her thimble or her scissors,
+or perhaps to bring me something by way of supper—a bun or a
+cheese-cake—then she would sit on the bed while I ate it, and when I
+had finished, she would tuck the clothes round me, and twice she kissed
+me, and said, “Good night, Miss Jane.” When thus gentle, Bessie seemed
+to me the best, prettiest, kindest being in the world; and I wished
+most intensely that she would always be so pleasant and amiable, and
+never push me about, or scold, or task me unreasonably, as she was too
+often wont to do. Bessie Lee must, I think, have been a girl of good
+natural capacity, for she was smart in all she did, and had a
+remarkable knack of narrative; so, at least, I judge from the
+impression made on me by her nursery tales. She was pretty too, if my
+recollections of her face and person are correct. I remember her as a
+slim young woman, with black hair, dark eyes, very nice features, and
+good, clear complexion; but she had a capricious and hasty temper, and
+indifferent ideas of principle or justice: still, such as she was, I
+preferred her to any one else at Gateshead Hall.
+
+It was the fifteenth of January, about nine o’clock in the morning:
+Bessie was gone down to breakfast; my cousins had not yet been summoned
+to their mama; Eliza was putting on her bonnet and warm garden-coat to
+go and feed her poultry, an occupation of which she was fond: and not
+less so of selling the eggs to the housekeeper and hoarding up the
+money she thus obtained. She had a turn for traffic, and a marked
+propensity for saving; shown not only in the vending of eggs and
+chickens, but also in driving hard bargains with the gardener about
+flower-roots, seeds, and slips of plants; that functionary having
+orders from Mrs. Reed to buy of his young lady all the products of her
+parterre she wished to sell: and Eliza would have sold the hair off her
+head if she could have made a handsome profit thereby. As to her money,
+she first secreted it in odd corners, wrapped in a rag or an old
+curl-paper; but some of these hoards having been discovered by the
+housemaid, Eliza, fearful of one day losing her valued treasure,
+consented to intrust it to her mother, at a usurious rate of
+interest—fifty or sixty per cent.; which interest she exacted every
+quarter, keeping her accounts in a little book with anxious accuracy.
+
+Georgiana sat on a high stool, dressing her hair at the glass, and
+interweaving her curls with artificial flowers and faded feathers, of
+which she had found a store in a drawer in the attic. I was making my
+bed, having received strict orders from Bessie to get it arranged
+before she returned (for Bessie now frequently employed me as a sort of
+under-nurserymaid, to tidy the room, dust the chairs, &c.). Having
+spread the quilt and folded my night-dress, I went to the window-seat
+to put in order some picture-books and doll’s house furniture scattered
+there; an abrupt command from Georgiana to let her playthings alone
+(for the tiny chairs and mirrors, the fairy plates and cups, were her
+property) stopped my proceedings; and then, for lack of other
+occupation, I fell to breathing on the frost-flowers with which the
+window was fretted, and thus clearing a space in the glass through
+which I might look out on the grounds, where all was still and
+petrified under the influence of a hard frost.
+
+From this window were visible the porter’s lodge and the carriage-road,
+and just as I had dissolved so much of the silver-white foliage veiling
+the panes as left room to look out, I saw the gates thrown open and a
+carriage roll through. I watched it ascending the drive with
+indifference; carriages often came to Gateshead, but none ever brought
+visitors in whom I was interested; it stopped in front of the house,
+the door-bell rang loudly, the new-comer was admitted. All this being
+nothing to me, my vacant attention soon found livelier attraction in
+the spectacle of a little hungry robin, which came and chirruped on the
+twigs of the leafless cherry-tree nailed against the wall near the
+casement. The remains of my breakfast of bread and milk stood on the
+table, and having crumbled a morsel of roll, I was tugging at the sash
+to put out the crumbs on the window-sill, when Bessie came running
+upstairs into the nursery.
+
+“Miss Jane, take off your pinafore; what are you doing there? Have you
+washed your hands and face this morning?” I gave another tug before I
+answered, for I wanted the bird to be secure of its bread: the sash
+yielded; I scattered the crumbs, some on the stone sill, some on the
+cherry-tree bough, then, closing the window, I replied—
+
+“No, Bessie; I have only just finished dusting.”
+
+“Troublesome, careless child! and what are you doing now? You look
+quite red, as if you had been about some mischief: what were you
+opening the window for?”
+
+I was spared the trouble of answering, for Bessie seemed in too great a
+hurry to listen to explanations; she hauled me to the washstand,
+inflicted a merciless, but happily brief scrub on my face and hands
+with soap, water, and a coarse towel; disciplined my head with a
+bristly brush, denuded me of my pinafore, and then hurrying me to the
+top of the stairs, bid me go down directly, as I was wanted in the
+breakfast-room.
+
+I would have asked who wanted me: I would have demanded if Mrs. Reed
+was there; but Bessie was already gone, and had closed the nursery-door
+upon me. I slowly descended. For nearly three months, I had never been
+called to Mrs. Reed’s presence; restricted so long to the nursery, the
+breakfast, dining, and drawing-rooms were become for me awful regions,
+on which it dismayed me to intrude.
+
+I now stood in the empty hall; before me was the breakfast-room door,
+and I stopped, intimidated and trembling. What a miserable little
+poltroon had fear, engendered of unjust punishment, made of me in those
+days! I feared to return to the nursery, and feared to go forward to
+the parlour; ten minutes I stood in agitated hesitation; the vehement
+ringing of the breakfast-room bell decided me; I _must_ enter.
+
+“Who could want me?” I asked inwardly, as with both hands I turned the
+stiff door-handle, which, for a second or two, resisted my efforts.
+“What should I see besides Aunt Reed in the apartment?—a man or a
+woman?” The handle turned, the door unclosed, and passing through and
+curtseying low, I looked up at—a black pillar!—such, at least, appeared
+to me, at first sight, the straight, narrow, sable-clad shape standing
+erect on the rug: the grim face at the top was like a carved mask,
+placed above the shaft by way of capital.
+
+Mrs. Reed occupied her usual seat by the fireside; she made a signal to
+me to approach; I did so, and she introduced me to the stony stranger
+with the words: “This is the little girl respecting whom I applied to
+you.”
+
+_He_, for it was a man, turned his head slowly towards where I stood,
+and having examined me with the two inquisitive-looking grey eyes which
+twinkled under a pair of bushy brows, said solemnly, and in a bass
+voice, “Her size is small: what is her age?”
+
+“Ten years.”
+
+“So much?” was the doubtful answer; and he prolonged his scrutiny for
+some minutes. Presently he addressed me—“Your name, little girl?”
+
+“Jane Eyre, sir.”
+
+In uttering these words I looked up: he seemed to me a tall gentleman;
+but then I was very little; his features were large, and they and all
+the lines of his frame were equally harsh and prim.
+
+“Well, Jane Eyre, and are you a good child?”
+
+Impossible to reply to this in the affirmative: my little world held a
+contrary opinion: I was silent. Mrs. Reed answered for me by an
+expressive shake of the head, adding soon, “Perhaps the less said on
+that subject the better, Mr. Brocklehurst.”
+
+“Sorry indeed to hear it! she and I must have some talk;” and bending
+from the perpendicular, he installed his person in the arm-chair
+opposite Mrs. Reed’s. “Come here,” he said.
+
+I stepped across the rug; he placed me square and straight before him.
+What a face he had, now that it was almost on a level with mine! what a
+great nose! and what a mouth! and what large prominent teeth!
+
+“No sight so sad as that of a naughty child,” he began, “especially a
+naughty little girl. Do you know where the wicked go after death?”
+
+“They go to hell,” was my ready and orthodox answer.
+
+“And what is hell? Can you tell me that?”
+
+“A pit full of fire.”
+
+“And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there for
+ever?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“What must you do to avoid it?”
+
+I deliberated a moment; my answer, when it did come, was objectionable:
+“I must keep in good health, and not die.”
+
+“How can you keep in good health? Children younger than you die daily.
+I buried a little child of five years old only a day or two since,—a
+good little child, whose soul is now in heaven. It is to be feared the
+same could not be said of you were you to be called hence.”
+
+Not being in a condition to remove his doubt, I only cast my eyes down
+on the two large feet planted on the rug, and sighed, wishing myself
+far enough away.
+
+“I hope that sigh is from the heart, and that you repent of ever having
+been the occasion of discomfort to your excellent benefactress.”
+
+“Benefactress! benefactress!” said I inwardly: “they all call Mrs. Reed
+my benefactress; if so, a benefactress is a disagreeable thing.”
+
+“Do you say your prayers night and morning?” continued my interrogator.
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Do you read your Bible?”
+
+“Sometimes.”
+
+“With pleasure? Are you fond of it?”
+
+“I like Revelations, and the book of Daniel, and Genesis and Samuel,
+and a little bit of Exodus, and some parts of Kings and Chronicles, and
+Job and Jonah.”
+
+“And the Psalms? I hope you like them?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“No? oh, shocking! I have a little boy, younger than you, who knows six
+Psalms by heart: and when you ask him which he would rather have, a
+gingerbread-nut to eat or a verse of a Psalm to learn, he says: ‘Oh!
+the verse of a Psalm! angels sing Psalms;’ says he, ‘I wish to be a
+little angel here below;’ he then gets two nuts in recompense for his
+infant piety.”
+
+“Psalms are not interesting,” I remarked.
+
+“That proves you have a wicked heart; and you must pray to God to
+change it: to give you a new and clean one: to take away your heart of
+stone and give you a heart of flesh.”
+
+I was about to propound a question, touching the manner in which that
+operation of changing my heart was to be performed, when Mrs. Reed
+interposed, telling me to sit down; she then proceeded to carry on the
+conversation herself.
+
+“Mr. Brocklehurst, I believe I intimated in the letter which I wrote to
+you three weeks ago, that this little girl has not quite the character
+and disposition I could wish: should you admit her into Lowood school,
+I should be glad if the superintendent and teachers were requested to
+keep a strict eye on her, and, above all, to guard against her worst
+fault, a tendency to deceit. I mention this in your hearing, Jane, that
+you may not attempt to impose on Mr. Brocklehurst.”
+
+Well might I dread, well might I dislike Mrs. Reed; for it was her
+nature to wound me cruelly; never was I happy in her presence; however
+carefully I obeyed, however strenuously I strove to please her, my
+efforts were still repulsed and repaid by such sentences as the above.
+Now, uttered before a stranger, the accusation cut me to the heart; I
+dimly perceived that she was already obliterating hope from the new
+phase of existence which she destined me to enter; I felt, though I
+could not have expressed the feeling, that she was sowing aversion and
+unkindness along my future path; I saw myself transformed under Mr.
+Brocklehurst’s eye into an artful, noxious child, and what could I do
+to remedy the injury?
+
+“Nothing, indeed,” thought I, as I struggled to repress a sob, and
+hastily wiped away some tears, the impotent evidences of my anguish.
+
+“Deceit is, indeed, a sad fault in a child,” said Mr. Brocklehurst; “it
+is akin to falsehood, and all liars will have their portion in the lake
+burning with fire and brimstone; she shall, however, be watched, Mrs.
+Reed. I will speak to Miss Temple and the teachers.”
+
+“I should wish her to be brought up in a manner suiting her prospects,”
+continued my benefactress; “to be made useful, to be kept humble: as
+for the vacations, she will, with your permission, spend them always at
+Lowood.”
+
+“Your decisions are perfectly judicious, madam,” returned Mr.
+Brocklehurst. “Humility is a Christian grace, and one peculiarly
+appropriate to the pupils of Lowood; I, therefore, direct that especial
+care shall be bestowed on its cultivation amongst them. I have studied
+how best to mortify in them the worldly sentiment of pride; and, only
+the other day, I had a pleasing proof of my success. My second
+daughter, Augusta, went with her mama to visit the school, and on her
+return she exclaimed: ‘Oh, dear papa, how quiet and plain all the girls
+at Lowood look, with their hair combed behind their ears, and their
+long pinafores, and those little holland pockets outside their
+frocks—they are almost like poor people’s children! and,’ said she,
+‘they looked at my dress and mama’s, as if they had never seen a silk
+gown before.’”
+
+“This is the state of things I quite approve,” returned Mrs. Reed; “had
+I sought all England over, I could scarcely have found a system more
+exactly fitting a child like Jane Eyre. Consistency, my dear Mr.
+Brocklehurst; I advocate consistency in all things.”
+
+“Consistency, madam, is the first of Christian duties; and it has been
+observed in every arrangement connected with the establishment of
+Lowood: plain fare, simple attire, unsophisticated accommodations,
+hardy and active habits; such is the order of the day in the house and
+its inhabitants.”
+
+“Quite right, sir. I may then depend upon this child being received as
+a pupil at Lowood, and there being trained in conformity to her
+position and prospects?”
+
+“Madam, you may: she shall be placed in that nursery of chosen plants,
+and I trust she will show herself grateful for the inestimable
+privilege of her election.”
+
+“I will send her, then, as soon as possible, Mr. Brocklehurst; for, I
+assure you, I feel anxious to be relieved of a responsibility that was
+becoming too irksome.”
+
+“No doubt, no doubt, madam; and now I wish you good morning. I shall
+return to Brocklehurst Hall in the course of a week or two: my good
+friend, the Archdeacon, will not permit me to leave him sooner. I shall
+send Miss Temple notice that she is to expect a new girl, so that there
+will be no difficulty about receiving her. Good-bye.”
+
+“Good-bye, Mr. Brocklehurst; remember me to Mrs. and Miss Brocklehurst,
+and to Augusta and Theodore, and Master Broughton Brocklehurst.”
+
+“I will, madam. Little girl, here is a book entitled the ‘Child’s
+Guide’; read it with prayer, especially that part containing ‘An
+account of the awfully sudden death of Martha G——, a naughty child
+addicted to falsehood and deceit.’”
+
+With these words Mr. Brocklehurst put into my hand a thin pamphlet sewn
+in a cover, and having rung for his carriage, he departed.
+
+Mrs. Reed and I were left alone: some minutes passed in silence; she
+was sewing, I was watching her. Mrs. Reed might be at that time some
+six or seven and thirty; she was a woman of robust frame,
+square-shouldered and strong-limbed, not tall, and, though stout, not
+obese: she had a somewhat large face, the under jaw being much
+developed and very solid; her brow was low, her chin large and
+prominent, mouth and nose sufficiently regular; under her light
+eyebrows glimmered an eye devoid of ruth; her skin was dark and opaque,
+her hair nearly flaxen; her constitution was sound as a bell—illness
+never came near her; she was an exact, clever manager; her household
+and tenantry were thoroughly under her control; her children only at
+times defied her authority and laughed it to scorn; she dressed well,
+and had a presence and port calculated to set off handsome attire.
+
+Sitting on a low stool, a few yards from her arm-chair, I examined her
+figure; I perused her features. In my hand I held the tract containing
+the sudden death of the Liar, to which narrative my attention had been
+pointed as to an appropriate warning. What had just passed; what Mrs.
+Reed had said concerning me to Mr. Brocklehurst; the whole tenor of
+their conversation, was recent, raw, and stinging in my mind; I had
+felt every word as acutely as I had heard it plainly, and a passion of
+resentment fomented now within me.
+
+Mrs. Reed looked up from her work; her eye settled on mine, her fingers
+at the same time suspended their nimble movements.
+
+“Go out of the room; return to the nursery,” was her mandate. My look
+or something else must have struck her as offensive, for she spoke with
+extreme though suppressed irritation. I got up, I went to the door; I
+came back again; I walked to the window, across the room, then close up
+to her.
+
+_Speak_ I must: I had been trodden on severely, and _must_ turn: but
+how? What strength had I to dart retaliation at my antagonist? I
+gathered my energies and launched them in this blunt sentence—
+
+“I am not deceitful: if I were, I should say I loved _you;_ but I
+declare I do not love you: I dislike you the worst of anybody in the
+world except John Reed; and this book about the liar, you may give to
+your girl, Georgiana, for it is she who tells lies, and not I.”
+
+Mrs. Reed’s hands still lay on her work inactive: her eye of ice
+continued to dwell freezingly on mine.
+
+“What more have you to say?” she asked, rather in the tone in which a
+person might address an opponent of adult age than such as is
+ordinarily used to a child.
+
+That eye of hers, that voice stirred every antipathy I had. Shaking
+from head to foot, thrilled with ungovernable excitement, I continued—
+
+“I am glad you are no relation of mine: I will never call you aunt
+again as long as I live. I will never come to see you when I am grown
+up; and if any one asks me how I liked you, and how you treated me, I
+will say the very thought of you makes me sick, and that you treated me
+with miserable cruelty.”
+
+“How dare you affirm that, Jane Eyre?”
+
+“How dare I, Mrs. Reed? How dare I? Because it is the _truth_. You
+think I have no feelings, and that I can do without one bit of love or
+kindness; but I cannot live so: and you have no pity. I shall remember
+how you thrust me back—roughly and violently thrust me back—into the
+red-room, and locked me up there, to my dying day; though I was in
+agony; though I cried out, while suffocating with distress, ‘Have
+mercy! Have mercy, Aunt Reed!’ And that punishment you made me suffer
+because your wicked boy struck me—knocked me down for nothing. I will
+tell anybody who asks me questions, this exact tale. People think you a
+good woman, but you are bad, hard-hearted. _You_ are deceitful!”
+
+
+How dare I, Mrs. Reed? How dare I? Because it is the truth
+
+Ere I had finished this reply, my soul began to expand, to exult, with
+the strangest sense of freedom, of triumph, I ever felt. It seemed as
+if an invisible bond had burst, and that I had struggled out into
+unhoped-for liberty. Not without cause was this sentiment: Mrs. Reed
+looked frightened; her work had slipped from her knee; she was lifting
+up her hands, rocking herself to and fro, and even twisting her face as
+if she would cry.
+
+“Jane, you are under a mistake: what is the matter with you? Why do you
+tremble so violently? Would you like to drink some water?”
+
+“No, Mrs. Reed.”
+
+“Is there anything else you wish for, Jane? I assure you, I desire to
+be your friend.”
+
+“Not you. You told Mr. Brocklehurst I had a bad character, a deceitful
+disposition; and I’ll let everybody at Lowood know what you are, and
+what you have done.”
+
+“Jane, you don’t understand these things: children must be corrected
+for their faults.”
+
+“Deceit is not my fault!” I cried out in a savage, high voice.
+
+“But you are passionate, Jane, that you must allow: and now return to
+the nursery—there’s a dear—and lie down a little.”
+
+“I am not your dear; I cannot lie down: send me to school soon, Mrs.
+Reed, for I hate to live here.”
+
+“I will indeed send her to school soon,” murmured Mrs. Reed _sotto
+voce_; and gathering up her work, she abruptly quitted the apartment.
+
+I was left there alone—winner of the field. It was the hardest battle I
+had fought, and the first victory I had gained: I stood awhile on the
+rug, where Mr. Brocklehurst had stood, and I enjoyed my conqueror’s
+solitude. First, I smiled to myself and felt elate; but this fierce
+pleasure subsided in me as fast as did the accelerated throb of my
+pulses. A child cannot quarrel with its elders, as I had done; cannot
+give its furious feelings uncontrolled play, as I had given mine,
+without experiencing afterwards the pang of remorse and the chill of
+reaction. A ridge of lighted heath, alive, glancing, devouring, would
+have been a meet emblem of my mind when I accused and menaced Mrs.
+Reed: the same ridge, black and blasted after the flames are dead,
+would have represented as meetly my subsequent condition, when
+half-an-hour’s silence and reflection had shown me the madness of my
+conduct, and the dreariness of my hated and hating position.
+
+Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic
+wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy: its after-flavour,
+metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned.
+Willingly would I now have gone and asked Mrs. Reed’s pardon; but I
+knew, partly from experience and partly from instinct, that was the way
+to make her repulse me with double scorn, thereby re-exciting every
+turbulent impulse of my nature.
+
+I would fain exercise some better faculty than that of fierce speaking;
+fain find nourishment for some less fiendish feeling than that of
+sombre indignation. I took a book—some Arabian tales; I sat down and
+endeavoured to read. I could make no sense of the subject; my own
+thoughts swam always between me and the page I had usually found
+fascinating. I opened the glass-door in the breakfast-room: the
+shrubbery was quite still: the black frost reigned, unbroken by sun or
+breeze, through the grounds. I covered my head and arms with the skirt
+of my frock, and went out to walk in a part of the plantation which was
+quite sequestrated; but I found no pleasure in the silent trees, the
+falling fir-cones, the congealed relics of autumn, russet leaves, swept
+by past winds in heaps, and now stiffened together. I leaned against a
+gate, and looked into an empty field where no sheep were feeding, where
+the short grass was nipped and blanched. It was a very grey day; a most
+opaque sky, “onding on snaw,” canopied all; thence flakes fell at
+intervals, which settled on the hard path and on the hoary lea without
+melting. I stood, a wretched child enough, whispering to myself over
+and over again, “What shall I do?—what shall I do?”
+
+All at once I heard a clear voice call, “Miss Jane! where are you? Come
+to lunch!”
+
+It was Bessie, I knew well enough; but I did not stir; her light step
+came tripping down the path.
+
+“You naughty little thing!” she said. “Why don’t you come when you are
+called?”
+
+Bessie’s presence, compared with the thoughts over which I had been
+brooding, seemed cheerful; even though, as usual, she was somewhat
+cross. The fact is, after my conflict with and victory over Mrs. Reed,
+I was not disposed to care much for the nursemaid’s transitory anger;
+and I _was_ disposed to bask in her youthful lightness of heart. I just
+put my two arms round her and said, “Come, Bessie! don’t scold.”
+
+The action was more frank and fearless than any I was habituated to
+indulge in: somehow it pleased her.
+
+“You are a strange child, Miss Jane,” she said, as she looked down at
+me; “a little roving, solitary thing: and you are going to school, I
+suppose?”
+
+I nodded.
+
+“And won’t you be sorry to leave poor Bessie?”
+
+“What does Bessie care for me? She is always scolding me.”
+
+“Because you’re such a queer, frightened, shy little thing. You should
+be bolder.”
+
+“What! to get more knocks?”
+
+“Nonsense! But you are rather put upon, that’s certain. My mother said,
+when she came to see me last week, that she would not like a little one
+of her own to be in your place.—Now, come in, and I’ve some good news
+for you.”
+
+“I don’t think you have, Bessie.”
+
+“Child! what do you mean? What sorrowful eyes you fix on me! Well, but
+Missis and the young ladies and Master John are going out to tea this
+afternoon, and you shall have tea with me. I’ll ask cook to bake you a
+little cake, and then you shall help me to look over your drawers; for
+I am soon to pack your trunk. Missis intends you to leave Gateshead in
+a day or two, and you shall choose what toys you like to take with
+you.”
+
+“Bessie, you must promise not to scold me any more till I go.”
+
+“Well, I will; but mind you are a very good girl, and don’t be afraid
+of me. Don’t start when I chance to speak rather sharply; it’s so
+provoking.”
+
+“I don’t think I shall ever be afraid of you again, Bessie, because I
+have got used to you, and I shall soon have another set of people to
+dread.”
+
+“If you dread them they’ll dislike you.”
+
+“As you do, Bessie?”
+
+“I don’t dislike you, Miss; I believe I am fonder of you than of all
+the others.”
+
+“You don’t show it.”
+
+“You little sharp thing! you’ve got quite a new way of talking. What
+makes you so venturesome and hardy?”
+
+“Why, I shall soon be away from you, and besides”—I was going to say
+something about what had passed between me and Mrs. Reed, but on second
+thoughts I considered it better to remain silent on that head.
+
+“And so you’re glad to leave me?”
+
+“Not at all, Bessie; indeed, just now I’m rather sorry.”
+
+“Just now! and rather! How coolly my little lady says it! I dare say
+now if I were to ask you for a kiss you wouldn’t give it me: you’d say
+you’d _rather_ not.”
+
+“I’ll kiss you and welcome: bend your head down.” Bessie stooped; we
+mutually embraced, and I followed her into the house quite comforted.
+That afternoon lapsed in peace and harmony; and in the evening Bessie
+told me some of her most enchanting stories, and sang me some of her
+sweetest songs. Even for me life had its gleams of sunshine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Five o’clock had hardly struck on the morning of the 19th of January,
+when Bessie brought a candle into my closet and found me already up and
+nearly dressed. I had risen half-an-hour before her entrance, and had
+washed my face, and put on my clothes by the light of a half-moon just
+setting, whose rays streamed through the narrow window near my crib. I
+was to leave Gateshead that day by a coach which passed the lodge gates
+at six A.M. Bessie was the only person yet risen; she had lit a fire in
+the nursery, where she now proceeded to make my breakfast. Few children
+can eat when excited with the thoughts of a journey; nor could I.
+Bessie, having pressed me in vain to take a few spoonfuls of the boiled
+milk and bread she had prepared for me, wrapped up some biscuits in a
+paper and put them into my bag; then she helped me on with my pelisse
+and bonnet, and wrapping herself in a shawl, she and I left the
+nursery. As we passed Mrs. Reed’s bedroom, she said, “Will you go in
+and bid Missis good-bye?”
+
+“No, Bessie: she came to my crib last night when you were gone down to
+supper, and said I need not disturb her in the morning, or my cousins
+either; and she told me to remember that she had always been my best
+friend, and to speak of her and be grateful to her accordingly.”
+
+“What did you say, Miss?”
+
+“Nothing: I covered my face with the bedclothes, and turned from her to
+the wall.”
+
+“That was wrong, Miss Jane.”
+
+“It was quite right, Bessie. Your Missis has not been my friend: she
+has been my foe.”
+
+“O Miss Jane! don’t say so!”
+
+“Good-bye to Gateshead!” cried I, as we passed through the hall and
+went out at the front door.
+
+The moon was set, and it was very dark; Bessie carried a lantern, whose
+light glanced on wet steps and gravel road sodden by a recent thaw. Raw
+and chill was the winter morning: my teeth chattered as I hastened down
+the drive. There was a light in the porter’s lodge: when we reached it,
+we found the porter’s wife just kindling her fire: my trunk, which had
+been carried down the evening before, stood corded at the door. It
+wanted but a few minutes of six, and shortly after that hour had
+struck, the distant roll of wheels announced the coming coach; I went
+to the door and watched its lamps approach rapidly through the gloom.
+
+“Is she going by herself?” asked the porter’s wife.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“And how far is it?”
+
+“Fifty miles.”
+
+“What a long way! I wonder Mrs. Reed is not afraid to trust her so far
+alone.”
+
+The coach drew up; there it was at the gates with its four horses and
+its top laden with passengers: the guard and coachman loudly urged
+haste; my trunk was hoisted up; I was taken from Bessie’s neck, to
+which I clung with kisses.
+
+“Be sure and take good care of her,” cried she to the guard, as he
+lifted me into the inside.
+
+“Ay, ay!” was the answer: the door was slapped to, a voice exclaimed
+“All right,” and on we drove. Thus was I severed from Bessie and
+Gateshead; thus whirled away to unknown, and, as I then deemed, remote
+and mysterious regions.
+
+I remember but little of the journey; I only know that the day seemed
+to me of a preternatural length, and that we appeared to travel over
+hundreds of miles of road. We passed through several towns, and in one,
+a very large one, the coach stopped; the horses were taken out, and the
+passengers alighted to dine. I was carried into an inn, where the guard
+wanted me to have some dinner; but, as I had no appetite, he left me in
+an immense room with a fireplace at each end, a chandelier pendent from
+the ceiling, and a little red gallery high up against the wall filled
+with musical instruments. Here I walked about for a long time, feeling
+very strange, and mortally apprehensive of some one coming in and
+kidnapping me; for I believed in kidnappers, their exploits having
+frequently figured in Bessie’s fireside chronicles. At last the guard
+returned; once more I was stowed away in the coach, my protector
+mounted his own seat, sounded his hollow horn, and away we rattled over
+the “stony street” of L——.
+
+The afternoon came on wet and somewhat misty: as it waned into dusk, I
+began to feel that we were getting very far indeed from Gateshead: we
+ceased to pass through towns; the country changed; great grey hills
+heaved up round the horizon: as twilight deepened, we descended a
+valley, dark with wood, and long after night had overclouded the
+prospect, I heard a wild wind rushing amongst trees.
+
+Lulled by the sound, I at last dropped asleep; I had not long slumbered
+when the sudden cessation of motion awoke me; the coach-door was open,
+and a person like a servant was standing at it: I saw her face and
+dress by the light of the lamps.
+
+“Is there a little girl called Jane Eyre here?” she asked. I answered
+“Yes,” and was then lifted out; my trunk was handed down, and the coach
+instantly drove away.
+
+I was stiff with long sitting, and bewildered with the noise and motion
+of the coach: gathering my faculties, I looked about me. Rain, wind,
+and darkness filled the air; nevertheless, I dimly discerned a wall
+before me and a door open in it; through this door I passed with my new
+guide: she shut and locked it behind her. There was now visible a house
+or houses—for the building spread far—with many windows, and lights
+burning in some; we went up a broad pebbly path, splashing wet, and
+were admitted at a door; then the servant led me through a passage into
+a room with a fire, where she left me alone.
+
+I stood and warmed my numbed fingers over the blaze, then I looked
+round; there was no candle, but the uncertain light from the hearth
+showed, by intervals, papered walls, carpet, curtains, shining mahogany
+furniture: it was a parlour, not so spacious or splendid as the
+drawing-room at Gateshead, but comfortable enough. I was puzzling to
+make out the subject of a picture on the wall, when the door opened,
+and an individual carrying a light entered; another followed close
+behind.
+
+The first was a tall lady with dark hair, dark eyes, and a pale and
+large forehead; her figure was partly enveloped in a shawl, her
+countenance was grave, her bearing erect.
+
+“The child is very young to be sent alone,” said she, putting her
+candle down on the table. She considered me attentively for a minute or
+two, then further added—
+
+“She had better be put to bed soon; she looks tired: are you tired?”
+she asked, placing her hand on my shoulder.
+
+“A little, ma’am.”
+
+“And hungry too, no doubt: let her have some supper before she goes to
+bed, Miss Miller. Is this the first time you have left your parents to
+come to school, my little girl?”
+
+I explained to her that I had no parents. She inquired how long they
+had been dead: then how old I was, what was my name, whether I could
+read, write, and sew a little: then she touched my cheek gently with
+her forefinger, and saying, “She hoped I should be a good child,”
+dismissed me along with Miss Miller.
+
+The lady I had left might be about twenty-nine; the one who went with
+me appeared some years younger: the first impressed me by her voice,
+look, and air. Miss Miller was more ordinary; ruddy in complexion,
+though of a careworn countenance; hurried in gait and action, like one
+who had always a multiplicity of tasks on hand: she looked, indeed,
+what I afterwards found she really was, an under-teacher. Led by her, I
+passed from compartment to compartment, from passage to passage, of a
+large and irregular building; till, emerging from the total and
+somewhat dreary silence pervading that portion of the house we had
+traversed, we came upon the hum of many voices, and presently entered a
+wide, long room, with great deal tables, two at each end, on each of
+which burnt a pair of candles, and seated all round on benches, a
+congregation of girls of every age, from nine or ten to twenty. Seen by
+the dim light of the dips, their number to me appeared countless,
+though not in reality exceeding eighty; they were uniformly dressed in
+brown stuff frocks of quaint fashion, and long holland pinafores. It
+was the hour of study; they were engaged in conning over their
+to-morrow’s task, and the hum I had heard was the combined result of
+their whispered repetitions.
+
+Miss Miller signed to me to sit on a bench near the door, then walking
+up to the top of the long room she cried out—
+
+“Monitors, collect the lesson-books and put them away!”
+
+Four tall girls arose from different tables, and going round, gathered
+the books and removed them. Miss Miller again gave the word of command—
+
+“Monitors, fetch the supper-trays!”
+
+The tall girls went out and returned presently, each bearing a tray,
+with portions of something, I knew not what, arranged thereon, and a
+pitcher of water and mug in the middle of each tray. The portions were
+handed round; those who liked took a draught of the water, the mug
+being common to all. When it came to my turn, I drank, for I was
+thirsty, but did not touch the food, excitement and fatigue rendering
+me incapable of eating: I now saw, however, that it was a thin oaten
+cake shared into fragments.
+
+The meal over, prayers were read by Miss Miller, and the classes filed
+off, two and two, upstairs. Overpowered by this time with weariness, I
+scarcely noticed what sort of a place the bedroom was, except that,
+like the schoolroom, I saw it was very long. To-night I was to be Miss
+Miller’s bed-fellow; she helped me to undress: when laid down I glanced
+at the long rows of beds, each of which was quickly filled with two
+occupants; in ten minutes the single light was extinguished, and amidst
+silence and complete darkness I fell asleep.
+
+The night passed rapidly: I was too tired even to dream; I only once
+awoke to hear the wind rave in furious gusts, and the rain fall in
+torrents, and to be sensible that Miss Miller had taken her place by my
+side. When I again unclosed my eyes, a loud bell was ringing; the girls
+were up and dressing; day had not yet begun to dawn, and a rushlight or
+two burned in the room. I too rose reluctantly; it was bitter cold, and
+I dressed as well as I could for shivering, and washed when there was a
+basin at liberty, which did not occur soon, as there was but one basin
+to six girls, on the stands down the middle of the room. Again the bell
+rang: all formed in file, two and two, and in that order descended the
+stairs and entered the cold and dimly lit schoolroom: here prayers were
+read by Miss Miller; afterwards she called out—
+
+“Form classes!”
+
+A great tumult succeeded for some minutes, during which Miss Miller
+repeatedly exclaimed, “Silence!” and “Order!” When it subsided, I saw
+them all drawn up in four semicircles, before four chairs, placed at
+the four tables; all held books in their hands, and a great book, like
+a Bible, lay on each table, before the vacant seat. A pause of some
+seconds succeeded, filled up by the low, vague hum of numbers; Miss
+Miller walked from class to class, hushing this indefinite sound.
+
+A distant bell tinkled: immediately three ladies entered the room, each
+walked to a table and took her seat; Miss Miller assumed the fourth
+vacant chair, which was that nearest the door, and around which the
+smallest of the children were assembled: to this inferior class I was
+called, and placed at the bottom of it.
+
+Business now began: the day’s Collect was repeated, then certain texts
+of Scripture were said, and to these succeeded a protracted reading of
+chapters in the Bible, which lasted an hour. By the time that exercise
+was terminated, day had fully dawned. The indefatigable bell now
+sounded for the fourth time: the classes were marshalled and marched
+into another room to breakfast: how glad I was to behold a prospect of
+getting something to eat! I was now nearly sick from inanition, having
+taken so little the day before.
+
+The refectory was a great, low-ceiled, gloomy room; on two long tables
+smoked basins of something hot, which, however, to my dismay, sent
+forth an odour far from inviting. I saw a universal manifestation of
+discontent when the fumes of the repast met the nostrils of those
+destined to swallow it; from the van of the procession, the tall girls
+of the first class, rose the whispered words—
+
+“Disgusting! The porridge is burnt again!”
+
+“Silence!” ejaculated a voice; not that of Miss Miller, but one of the
+upper teachers, a little and dark personage, smartly dressed, but of
+somewhat morose aspect, who installed herself at the top of one table,
+while a more buxom lady presided at the other. I looked in vain for her
+I had first seen the night before; she was not visible: Miss Miller
+occupied the foot of the table where I sat, and a strange,
+foreign-looking, elderly lady, the French teacher, as I afterwards
+found, took the corresponding seat at the other board. A long grace was
+said and a hymn sung; then a servant brought in some tea for the
+teachers, and the meal began.
+
+Ravenous, and now very faint, I devoured a spoonful or two of my
+portion without thinking of its taste; but the first edge of hunger
+blunted, I perceived I had got in hand a nauseous mess; burnt porridge
+is almost as bad as rotten potatoes; famine itself soon sickens over
+it. The spoons were moved slowly: I saw each girl taste her food and
+try to swallow it; but in most cases the effort was soon relinquished.
+Breakfast was over, and none had breakfasted. Thanks being returned for
+what we had not got, and a second hymn chanted, the refectory was
+evacuated for the schoolroom. I was one of the last to go out, and in
+passing the tables, I saw one teacher take a basin of the porridge and
+taste it; she looked at the others; all their countenances expressed
+displeasure, and one of them, the stout one, whispered—
+
+“Abominable stuff! How shameful!”
+
+A quarter of an hour passed before lessons again began, during which
+the schoolroom was in a glorious tumult; for that space of time it
+seemed to be permitted to talk loud and more freely, and they used
+their privilege. The whole conversation ran on the breakfast, which one
+and all abused roundly. Poor things! it was the sole consolation they
+had. Miss Miller was now the only teacher in the room: a group of great
+girls standing about her spoke with serious and sullen gestures. I
+heard the name of Mr. Brocklehurst pronounced by some lips; at which
+Miss Miller shook her head disapprovingly; but she made no great effort
+to check the general wrath; doubtless she shared in it.
+
+A clock in the schoolroom struck nine; Miss Miller left her circle, and
+standing in the middle of the room, cried—
+
+“Silence! To your seats!”
+
+Discipline prevailed: in five minutes the confused throng was resolved
+into order, and comparative silence quelled the Babel clamour of
+tongues. The upper teachers now punctually resumed their posts: but
+still, all seemed to wait. Ranged on benches down the sides of the
+room, the eighty girls sat motionless and erect; a quaint assemblage
+they appeared, all with plain locks combed from their faces, not a curl
+visible; in brown dresses, made high and surrounded by a narrow tucker
+about the throat, with little pockets of holland (shaped something like
+a Highlander’s purse) tied in front of their frocks, and destined to
+serve the purpose of a work-bag: all, too, wearing woollen stockings
+and country-made shoes, fastened with brass buckles. Above twenty of
+those clad in this costume were full-grown girls, or rather young
+women; it suited them ill, and gave an air of oddity even to the
+prettiest.
+
+I was still looking at them, and also at intervals examining the
+teachers—none of whom precisely pleased me; for the stout one was a
+little coarse, the dark one not a little fierce, the foreigner harsh
+and grotesque, and Miss Miller, poor thing! looked purple,
+weather-beaten, and over-worked—when, as my eye wandered from face to
+face, the whole school rose simultaneously, as if moved by a common
+spring.
+
+What was the matter? I had heard no order given: I was puzzled. Ere I
+had gathered my wits, the classes were again seated: but as all eyes
+were now turned to one point, mine followed the general direction, and
+encountered the personage who had received me last night. She stood at
+the bottom of the long room, on the hearth; for there was a fire at
+each end; she surveyed the two rows of girls silently and gravely. Miss
+Miller approaching, seemed to ask her a question, and having received
+her answer, went back to her place, and said aloud—
+
+“Monitor of the first class, fetch the globes!”
+
+While the direction was being executed, the lady consulted moved slowly
+up the room. I suppose I have a considerable organ of veneration, for I
+retain yet the sense of admiring awe with which my eyes traced her
+steps. Seen now, in broad daylight, she looked tall, fair, and shapely;
+brown eyes with a benignant light in their irids, and a fine pencilling
+of long lashes round, relieved the whiteness of her large front; on
+each of her temples her hair, of a very dark brown, was clustered in
+round curls, according to the fashion of those times, when neither
+smooth bands nor long ringlets were in vogue; her dress, also in the
+mode of the day, was of purple cloth, relieved by a sort of Spanish
+trimming of black velvet; a gold watch (watches were not so common then
+as now) shone at her girdle. Let the reader add, to complete the
+picture, refined features; a complexion, if pale, clear; and a stately
+air and carriage, and he will have, at least, as clearly as words can
+give it, a correct idea of the exterior of Miss Temple—Maria Temple, as
+I afterwards saw the name written in a prayer-book intrusted to me to
+carry to church.
+
+The superintendent of Lowood (for such was this lady) having taken her
+seat before a pair of globes placed on one of the tables, summoned the
+first class round her, and commenced giving a lesson on geography; the
+lower classes were called by the teachers: repetitions in history,
+grammar, &c., went on for an hour; writing and arithmetic succeeded,
+and music lessons were given by Miss Temple to some of the elder girls.
+The duration of each lesson was measured by the clock, which at last
+struck twelve. The superintendent rose—
+
+“I have a word to address to the pupils,” said she.
+
+The tumult of cessation from lessons was already breaking forth, but it
+sank at her voice. She went on—
+
+“You had this morning a breakfast which you could not eat; you must be
+hungry:—I have ordered that a lunch of bread and cheese shall be served
+to all.”
+
+The teachers looked at her with a sort of surprise.
+
+“It is to be done on my responsibility,” she added, in an explanatory
+tone to them, and immediately afterwards left the room.
+
+The bread and cheese was presently brought in and distributed, to the
+high delight and refreshment of the whole school. The order was now
+given “To the garden!” Each put on a coarse straw bonnet, with strings
+of coloured calico, and a cloak of grey frieze. I was similarly
+equipped, and, following the stream, I made my way into the open air.
+
+The garden was a wide inclosure, surrounded with walls so high as to
+exclude every glimpse of prospect; a covered verandah ran down one
+side, and broad walks bordered a middle space divided into scores of
+little beds: these beds were assigned as gardens for the pupils to
+cultivate, and each bed had an owner. When full of flowers they would
+doubtless look pretty; but now, at the latter end of January, all was
+wintry blight and brown decay. I shuddered as I stood and looked round
+me: it was an inclement day for outdoor exercise; not positively rainy,
+but darkened by a drizzling yellow fog; all under foot was still
+soaking wet with the floods of yesterday. The stronger among the girls
+ran about and engaged in active games, but sundry pale and thin ones
+herded together for shelter and warmth in the verandah; and amongst
+these, as the dense mist penetrated to their shivering frames, I heard
+frequently the sound of a hollow cough.
+
+As yet I had spoken to no one, nor did anybody seem to take notice of
+me; I stood lonely enough: but to that feeling of isolation I was
+accustomed; it did not oppress me much. I leant against a pillar of the
+verandah, drew my grey mantle close about me, and, trying to forget the
+cold which nipped me without, and the unsatisfied hunger which gnawed
+me within, delivered myself up to the employment of watching and
+thinking. My reflections were too undefined and fragmentary to merit
+record: I hardly yet knew where I was; Gateshead and my past life
+seemed floated away to an immeasurable distance; the present was vague
+and strange, and of the future I could form no conjecture. I looked
+round the convent-like garden, and then up at the house—a large
+building, half of which seemed grey and old, the other half quite new.
+The new part, containing the schoolroom and dormitory, was lit by
+mullioned and latticed windows, which gave it a church-like aspect; a
+stone tablet over the door bore this inscription:—
+
+LOWOOD INSTITUTION.
+
+This portion was rebuilt A.D. ——, by Naomi Brocklehurst,
+of Brocklehurst Hall, in this county.
+
+“Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works,
+and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”—St. Matt. v. 16.
+
+
+I read these words over and over again: I felt that an explanation
+belonged to them, and was unable fully to penetrate their import. I was
+still pondering the signification of “Institution,” and endeavouring to
+make out a connection between the first words and the verse of
+Scripture, when the sound of a cough close behind me made me turn my
+head. I saw a girl sitting on a stone bench near; she was bent over a
+book, on the perusal of which she seemed intent: from where I stood I
+could see the title—it was “Rasselas;” a name that struck me as
+strange, and consequently attractive. In turning a leaf she happened to
+look up, and I said to her directly—
+
+“Is your book interesting?” I had already formed the intention of
+asking her to lend it to me some day.
+
+“I like it,” she answered, after a pause of a second or two, during
+which she examined me.
+
+“What is it about?” I continued. I hardly know where I found the
+hardihood thus to open a conversation with a stranger; the step was
+contrary to my nature and habits: but I think her occupation touched a
+chord of sympathy somewhere; for I too liked reading, though of a
+frivolous and childish kind; I could not digest or comprehend the
+serious or substantial.
+
+“You may look at it,” replied the girl, offering me the book.
+
+I did so; a brief examination convinced me that the contents were less
+taking than the title: “Rasselas” looked dull to my trifling taste; I
+saw nothing about fairies, nothing about genii; no bright variety
+seemed spread over the closely-printed pages. I returned it to her; she
+received it quietly, and without saying anything she was about to
+relapse into her former studious mood: again I ventured to disturb her—
+
+“Can you tell me what the writing on that stone over the door means?
+What is Lowood Institution?”
+
+“This house where you are come to live.”
+
+“And why do they call it Institution? Is it in any way different from
+other schools?”
+
+“It is partly a charity-school: you and I, and all the rest of us, are
+charity-children. I suppose you are an orphan: are not either your
+father or your mother dead?”
+
+“Both died before I can remember.”
+
+“Well, all the girls here have lost either one or both parents, and
+this is called an institution for educating orphans.”
+
+“Do we pay no money? Do they keep us for nothing?”
+
+“We pay, or our friends pay, fifteen pounds a year for each.”
+
+“Then why do they call us charity-children?”
+
+“Because fifteen pounds is not enough for board and teaching, and the
+deficiency is supplied by subscription.”
+
+“Who subscribes?”
+
+“Different benevolent-minded ladies and gentlemen in this neighbourhood
+and in London.”
+
+“Who was Naomi Brocklehurst?”
+
+“The lady who built the new part of this house as that tablet records,
+and whose son overlooks and directs everything here.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Because he is treasurer and manager of the establishment.”
+
+“Then this house does not belong to that tall lady who wears a watch,
+and who said we were to have some bread and cheese?”
+
+“To Miss Temple? Oh, no! I wish it did: she has to answer to Mr.
+Brocklehurst for all she does. Mr. Brocklehurst buys all our food and
+all our clothes.”
+
+“Does he live here?”
+
+“No—two miles off, at a large hall.”
+
+“Is he a good man?”
+
+“He is a clergyman, and is said to do a great deal of good.”
+
+“Did you say that tall lady was called Miss Temple?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“And what are the other teachers called?”
+
+“The one with red cheeks is called Miss Smith; she attends to the work,
+and cuts out—for we make our own clothes, our frocks, and pelisses, and
+everything; the little one with black hair is Miss Scatcherd; she
+teaches history and grammar, and hears the second class repetitions;
+and the one who wears a shawl, and has a pocket-handkerchief tied to
+her side with a yellow ribband, is Madame Pierrot: she comes from
+Lisle, in France, and teaches French.”
+
+“Do you like the teachers?”
+
+“Well enough.”
+
+“Do you like the little black one, and the Madame ——?—I cannot
+pronounce her name as you do.”
+
+“Miss Scatcherd is hasty—you must take care not to offend her; Madame
+Pierrot is not a bad sort of person.”
+
+“But Miss Temple is the best—isn’t she?”
+
+“Miss Temple is very good and very clever; she is above the rest,
+because she knows far more than they do.”
+
+“Have you been long here?”
+
+“Two years.”
+
+“Are you an orphan?”
+
+“My mother is dead.”
+
+“Are you happy here?”
+
+“You ask rather too many questions. I have given you answers enough for
+the present: now I want to read.”
+
+But at that moment the summons sounded for dinner; all re-entered the
+house. The odour which now filled the refectory was scarcely more
+appetising than that which had regaled our nostrils at breakfast: the
+dinner was served in two huge tin-plated vessels, whence rose a strong
+steam redolent of rancid fat. I found the mess to consist of
+indifferent potatoes and strange shreds of rusty meat, mixed and cooked
+together. Of this preparation a tolerably abundant plateful was
+apportioned to each pupil. I ate what I could, and wondered within
+myself whether every day’s fare would be like this.
+
+After dinner, we immediately adjourned to the schoolroom: lessons
+recommenced, and were continued till five o’clock.
+
+The only marked event of the afternoon was, that I saw the girl with
+whom I had conversed in the verandah dismissed in disgrace by Miss
+Scatcherd from a history class, and sent to stand in the middle of the
+large schoolroom. The punishment seemed to me in a high degree
+ignominious, especially for so great a girl—she looked thirteen or
+upwards. I expected she would show signs of great distress and shame;
+but to my surprise she neither wept nor blushed: composed, though
+grave, she stood, the central mark of all eyes. “How can she bear it so
+quietly—so firmly?” I asked of myself. “Were I in her place, it seems
+to me I should wish the earth to open and swallow me up. She looks as
+if she were thinking of something beyond her punishment—beyond her
+situation: of something not round her nor before her. I have heard of
+day-dreams—is she in a day-dream now? Her eyes are fixed on the floor,
+but I am sure they do not see it—her sight seems turned in, gone down
+into her heart: she is looking at what she can remember, I believe; not
+at what is really present. I wonder what sort of a girl she is—whether
+good or naughty.”
+
+Soon after five P.M. we had another meal, consisting of a small mug of
+coffee, and half-a-slice of brown bread. I devoured my bread and drank
+my coffee with relish; but I should have been glad of as much more—I
+was still hungry. Half-an-hour’s recreation succeeded, then study; then
+the glass of water and the piece of oat-cake, prayers, and bed. Such
+was my first day at Lowood.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+The next day commenced as before, getting up and dressing by rushlight;
+but this morning we were obliged to dispense with the ceremony of
+washing; the water in the pitchers was frozen. A change had taken place
+in the weather the preceding evening, and a keen north-east wind,
+whistling through the crevices of our bedroom windows all night long,
+had made us shiver in our beds, and turned the contents of the ewers to
+ice.
+
+Before the long hour and a half of prayers and Bible-reading was over,
+I felt ready to perish with cold. Breakfast-time came at last, and this
+morning the porridge was not burnt; the quality was eatable, the
+quantity small. How small my portion seemed! I wished it had been
+doubled.
+
+In the course of the day I was enrolled a member of the fourth class,
+and regular tasks and occupations were assigned me: hitherto, I had
+only been a spectator of the proceedings at Lowood; I was now to become
+an actor therein. At first, being little accustomed to learn by heart,
+the lessons appeared to me both long and difficult; the frequent change
+from task to task, too, bewildered me; and I was glad when, about three
+o’clock in the afternoon, Miss Smith put into my hands a border of
+muslin two yards long, together with needle, thimble, &c., and sent me
+to sit in a quiet corner of the schoolroom, with directions to hem the
+same. At that hour most of the others were sewing likewise; but one
+class still stood round Miss Scatcherd’s chair reading, and as all was
+quiet, the subject of their lessons could be heard, together with the
+manner in which each girl acquitted herself, and the animadversions or
+commendations of Miss Scatcherd on the performance. It was English
+history: among the readers I observed my acquaintance of the verandah:
+at the commencement of the lesson, her place had been at the top of the
+class, but for some error of pronunciation, or some inattention to
+stops, she was suddenly sent to the very bottom. Even in that obscure
+position, Miss Scatcherd continued to make her an object of constant
+notice: she was continually addressing to her such phrases as the
+following:—
+
+“Burns” (such it seems was her name: the girls here were all called by
+their surnames, as boys are elsewhere), “Burns, you are standing on the
+side of your shoe; turn your toes out immediately.” “Burns, you poke
+your chin most unpleasantly; draw it in.” “Burns, I insist on your
+holding your head up; I will not have you before me in that attitude,”
+&c. &c.
+
+A chapter having been read through twice, the books were closed and the
+girls examined. The lesson had comprised part of the reign of Charles
+I., and there were sundry questions about tonnage and poundage and
+ship-money, which most of them appeared unable to answer; still, every
+little difficulty was solved instantly when it reached Burns: her
+memory seemed to have retained the substance of the whole lesson, and
+she was ready with answers on every point. I kept expecting that Miss
+Scatcherd would praise her attention; but, instead of that, she
+suddenly cried out—
+
+“You dirty, disagreeable girl! you have never cleaned your nails this
+morning!”
+
+Burns made no answer: I wondered at her silence.
+
+“Why,” thought I, “does she not explain that she could neither clean
+her nails nor wash her face, as the water was frozen?”
+
+My attention was now called off by Miss Smith desiring me to hold a
+skein of thread: while she was winding it, she talked to me from time
+to time, asking whether I had ever been at school before, whether I
+could mark, stitch, knit, &c.; till she dismissed me, I could not
+pursue my observations on Miss Scatcherd’s movements. When I returned
+to my seat, that lady was just delivering an order of which I did not
+catch the import; but Burns immediately left the class, and going into
+the small inner room where the books were kept, returned in half a
+minute, carrying in her hand a bundle of twigs tied together at one
+end. This ominous tool she presented to Miss Scatcherd with a
+respectful curtesy; then she quietly, and without being told, unloosed
+her pinafore, and the teacher instantly and sharply inflicted on her
+neck a dozen strokes with the bunch of twigs. Not a tear rose to Burns’
+eye; and, while I paused from my sewing, because my fingers quivered at
+this spectacle with a sentiment of unavailing and impotent anger, not a
+feature of her pensive face altered its ordinary expression.
+
+“Hardened girl!” exclaimed Miss Scatcherd; “nothing can correct you of
+your slatternly habits: carry the rod away.”
+
+Burns obeyed: I looked at her narrowly as she emerged from the
+book-closet; she was just putting back her handkerchief into her
+pocket, and the trace of a tear glistened on her thin cheek.
+
+The play-hour in the evening I thought the pleasantest fraction of the
+day at Lowood: the bit of bread, the draught of coffee swallowed at
+five o’clock had revived vitality, if it had not satisfied hunger: the
+long restraint of the day was slackened; the schoolroom felt warmer
+than in the morning—its fires being allowed to burn a little more
+brightly, to supply, in some measure, the place of candles, not yet
+introduced: the ruddy gloaming, the licensed uproar, the confusion of
+many voices gave one a welcome sense of liberty.
+
+On the evening of the day on which I had seen Miss Scatcherd flog her
+pupil, Burns, I wandered as usual among the forms and tables and
+laughing groups without a companion, yet not feeling lonely: when I
+passed the windows, I now and then lifted a blind, and looked out; it
+snowed fast, a drift was already forming against the lower panes;
+putting my ear close to the window, I could distinguish from the
+gleeful tumult within, the disconsolate moan of the wind outside.
+
+Probably, if I had lately left a good home and kind parents, this would
+have been the hour when I should most keenly have regretted the
+separation; that wind would then have saddened my heart; this obscure
+chaos would have disturbed my peace! as it was, I derived from both a
+strange excitement, and reckless and feverish, I wished the wind to
+howl more wildly, the gloom to deepen to darkness, and the confusion to
+rise to clamour.
+
+Jumping over forms, and creeping under tables, I made my way to one of
+the fire-places; there, kneeling by the high wire fender, I found
+Burns, absorbed, silent, abstracted from all round her by the
+companionship of a book, which she read by the dim glare of the embers.
+
+“Is it still ‘Rasselas’?” I asked, coming behind her.
+
+“Yes,” she said, “and I have just finished it.”
+
+And in five minutes more she shut it up. I was glad of this.
+
+“Now,” thought I, “I can perhaps get her to talk.” I sat down by her on
+the floor.
+
+“What is your name besides Burns?”
+
+“Helen.”
+
+“Do you come a long way from here?”
+
+“I come from a place farther north, quite on the borders of Scotland.”
+
+“Will you ever go back?”
+
+“I hope so; but nobody can be sure of the future.”
+
+“You must wish to leave Lowood?”
+
+“No! why should I? I was sent to Lowood to get an education; and it
+would be of no use going away until I have attained that object.”
+
+“But that teacher, Miss Scatcherd, is so cruel to you?”
+
+“Cruel? Not at all! She is severe: she dislikes my faults.”
+
+“And if I were in your place I should dislike her; I should resist her.
+If she struck me with that rod, I should get it from her hand; I should
+break it under her nose.”
+
+“Probably you would do nothing of the sort: but if you did, Mr.
+Brocklehurst would expel you from the school; that would be a great
+grief to your relations. It is far better to endure patiently a smart
+which nobody feels but yourself, than to commit a hasty action whose
+evil consequences will extend to all connected with you; and besides,
+the Bible bids us return good for evil.”
+
+“But then it seems disgraceful to be flogged, and to be sent to stand
+in the middle of a room full of people; and you are such a great girl:
+I am far younger than you, and I could not bear it.”
+
+“Yet it would be your duty to bear it, if you could not avoid it: it is
+weak and silly to say you _cannot bear_ what it is your fate to be
+required to bear.”
+
+I heard her with wonder: I could not comprehend this doctrine of
+endurance; and still less could I understand or sympathise with the
+forbearance she expressed for her chastiser. Still I felt that Helen
+Burns considered things by a light invisible to my eyes. I suspected
+she might be right and I wrong; but I would not ponder the matter
+deeply; like Felix, I put it off to a more convenient season.
+
+“You say you have faults, Helen: what are they? To me you seem very
+good.”
+
+“Then learn from me, not to judge by appearances: I am, as Miss
+Scatcherd said, slatternly; I seldom put, and never keep, things in
+order; I am careless; I forget rules; I read when I should learn my
+lessons; I have no method; and sometimes I say, like you, I cannot
+_bear_ to be subjected to systematic arrangements. This is all very
+provoking to Miss Scatcherd, who is naturally neat, punctual, and
+particular.”
+
+“And cross and cruel,” I added; but Helen Burns would not admit my
+addition: she kept silence.
+
+“Is Miss Temple as severe to you as Miss Scatcherd?”
+
+At the utterance of Miss Temple’s name, a soft smile flitted over her
+grave face.
+
+“Miss Temple is full of goodness; it pains her to be severe to any one,
+even the worst in the school: she sees my errors, and tells me of them
+gently; and, if I do anything worthy of praise, she gives me my meed
+liberally. One strong proof of my wretchedly defective nature is, that
+even her expostulations, so mild, so rational, have not influence to
+cure me of my faults; and even her praise, though I value it most
+highly, cannot stimulate me to continued care and foresight.”
+
+“That is curious,” said I, “it is so easy to be careful.”
+
+“For _you_ I have no doubt it is. I observed you in your class this
+morning, and saw you were closely attentive: your thoughts never seemed
+to wander while Miss Miller explained the lesson and questioned you.
+Now, mine continually rove away; when I should be listening to Miss
+Scatcherd, and collecting all she says with assiduity, often I lose the
+very sound of her voice; I fall into a sort of dream. Sometimes I think
+I am in Northumberland, and that the noises I hear round me are the
+bubbling of a little brook which runs through Deepden, near our
+house;—then, when it comes to my turn to reply, I have to be awakened;
+and having heard nothing of what was read for listening to the
+visionary brook, I have no answer ready.”
+
+“Yet how well you replied this afternoon.”
+
+“It was mere chance; the subject on which we had been reading had
+interested me. This afternoon, instead of dreaming of Deepden, I was
+wondering how a man who wished to do right could act so unjustly and
+unwisely as Charles the First sometimes did; and I thought what a pity
+it was that, with his integrity and conscientiousness, he could see no
+farther than the prerogatives of the crown. If he had but been able to
+look to a distance, and see how what they call the spirit of the age
+was tending! Still, I like Charles—I respect him—I pity him, poor
+murdered king! Yes, his enemies were the worst: they shed blood they
+had no right to shed. How dared they kill him!”
+
+Helen was talking to herself now: she had forgotten I could not very
+well understand her—that I was ignorant, or nearly so, of the subject
+she discussed. I recalled her to my level.
+
+“And when Miss Temple teaches you, do your thoughts wander then?”
+
+“No, certainly, not often; because Miss Temple has generally something
+to say which is newer than my own reflections; her language is
+singularly agreeable to me, and the information she communicates is
+often just what I wished to gain.”
+
+“Well, then, with Miss Temple you are good?”
+
+“Yes, in a passive way: I make no effort; I follow as inclination
+guides me. There is no merit in such goodness.”
+
+“A great deal: you are good to those who are good to you. It is all I
+ever desire to be. If people were always kind and obedient to those who
+are cruel and unjust, the wicked people would have it all their own
+way: they would never feel afraid, and so they would never alter, but
+would grow worse and worse. When we are struck at without a reason, we
+should strike back again very hard; I am sure we should—so hard as to
+teach the person who struck us never to do it again.”
+
+“You will change your mind, I hope, when you grow older: as yet you are
+but a little untaught girl.”
+
+“But I feel this, Helen; I must dislike those who, whatever I do to
+please them, persist in disliking me; I must resist those who punish me
+unjustly. It is as natural as that I should love those who show me
+affection, or submit to punishment when I feel it is deserved.”
+
+“Heathens and savage tribes hold that doctrine, but Christians and
+civilised nations disown it.”
+
+“How? I don’t understand.”
+
+“It is not violence that best overcomes hate—nor vengeance that most
+certainly heals injury.”
+
+“What then?”
+
+“Read the New Testament, and observe what Christ says, and how He acts;
+make His word your rule, and His conduct your example.”
+
+“What does He say?”
+
+“Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to them that
+hate you and despitefully use you.”
+
+“Then I should love Mrs. Reed, which I cannot do; I should bless her
+son John, which is impossible.”
+
+In her turn, Helen Burns asked me to explain, and I proceeded forthwith
+to pour out, in my own way, the tale of my sufferings and resentments.
+Bitter and truculent when excited, I spoke as I felt, without reserve
+or softening.
+
+Helen heard me patiently to the end: I expected she would then make a
+remark, but she said nothing.
+
+“Well,” I asked impatiently, “is not Mrs. Reed a hard-hearted, bad
+woman?”
+
+“She has been unkind to you, no doubt; because you see, she dislikes
+your cast of character, as Miss Scatcherd does mine; but how minutely
+you remember all she has done and said to you! What a singularly deep
+impression her injustice seems to have made on your heart! No ill-usage
+so brands its record on my feelings. Would you not be happier if you
+tried to forget her severity, together with the passionate emotions it
+excited? Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity
+or registering wrongs. We are, and must be, one and all, burdened with
+faults in this world: but the time will soon come when, I trust, we
+shall put them off in putting off our corruptible bodies; when
+debasement and sin will fall from us with this cumbrous frame of flesh,
+and only the spark of the spirit will remain,—the impalpable principle
+of light and thought, pure as when it left the Creator to inspire the
+creature: whence it came it will return; perhaps again to be
+communicated to some being higher than man—perhaps to pass through
+gradations of glory, from the pale human soul to brighten to the
+seraph! Surely it will never, on the contrary, be suffered to
+degenerate from man to fiend? No; I cannot believe that: I hold another
+creed: which no one ever taught me, and which I seldom mention; but in
+which I delight, and to which I cling: for it extends hope to all: it
+makes Eternity a rest—a mighty home, not a terror and an abyss.
+Besides, with this creed, I can so clearly distinguish between the
+criminal and his crime; I can so sincerely forgive the first while I
+abhor the last: with this creed revenge never worries my heart,
+degradation never too deeply disgusts me, injustice never crushes me
+too low: I live in calm, looking to the end.”
+
+Helen’s head, always drooping, sank a little lower as she finished this
+sentence. I saw by her look she wished no longer to talk to me, but
+rather to converse with her own thoughts. She was not allowed much time
+for meditation: a monitor, a great rough girl, presently came up,
+exclaiming in a strong Cumberland accent—
+
+“Helen Burns, if you don’t go and put your drawer in order, and fold up
+your work this minute, I’ll tell Miss Scatcherd to come and look at
+it!”
+
+Helen sighed as her reverie fled, and getting up, obeyed the monitor
+without reply as without delay.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+My first quarter at Lowood seemed an age; and not the golden age
+either; it comprised an irksome struggle with difficulties in
+habituating myself to new rules and unwonted tasks. The fear of failure
+in these points harassed me worse than the physical hardships of my
+lot; though these were no trifles.
+
+During January, February, and part of March, the deep snows, and, after
+their melting, the almost impassable roads, prevented our stirring
+beyond the garden walls, except to go to church; but within these
+limits we had to pass an hour every day in the open air. Our clothing
+was insufficient to protect us from the severe cold: we had no boots,
+the snow got into our shoes and melted there: our ungloved hands became
+numbed and covered with chilblains, as were our feet: I remember well
+the distracting irritation I endured from this cause every evening,
+when my feet inflamed; and the torture of thrusting the swelled, raw,
+and stiff toes into my shoes in the morning. Then the scanty supply of
+food was distressing: with the keen appetites of growing children, we
+had scarcely sufficient to keep alive a delicate invalid. From this
+deficiency of nourishment resulted an abuse, which pressed hardly on
+the younger pupils: whenever the famished great girls had an
+opportunity, they would coax or menace the little ones out of their
+portion. Many a time I have shared between two claimants the precious
+morsel of brown bread distributed at tea-time; and after relinquishing
+to a third half the contents of my mug of coffee, I have swallowed the
+remainder with an accompaniment of secret tears, forced from me by the
+exigency of hunger.
+
+Sundays were dreary days in that wintry season. We had to walk two
+miles to Brocklebridge Church, where our patron officiated. We set out
+cold, we arrived at church colder: during the morning service we became
+almost paralysed. It was too far to return to dinner, and an allowance
+of cold meat and bread, in the same penurious proportion observed in
+our ordinary meals, was served round between the services.
+
+At the close of the afternoon service we returned by an exposed and
+hilly road, where the bitter winter wind, blowing over a range of snowy
+summits to the north, almost flayed the skin from our faces.
+
+I can remember Miss Temple walking lightly and rapidly along our
+drooping line, her plaid cloak, which the frosty wind fluttered,
+gathered close about her, and encouraging us, by precept and example,
+to keep up our spirits, and march forward, as she said, “like stalwart
+soldiers.” The other teachers, poor things, were generally themselves
+too much dejected to attempt the task of cheering others.
+
+How we longed for the light and heat of a blazing fire when we got
+back! But, to the little ones at least, this was denied: each hearth in
+the schoolroom was immediately surrounded by a double row of great
+girls, and behind them the younger children crouched in groups,
+wrapping their starved arms in their pinafores.
+
+A little solace came at tea-time, in the shape of a double ration of
+bread—a whole, instead of a half, slice—with the delicious addition of
+a thin scrape of butter: it was the hebdomadal treat to which we all
+looked forward from Sabbath to Sabbath. I generally contrived to
+reserve a moiety of this bounteous repast for myself; but the remainder
+I was invariably obliged to part with.
+
+The Sunday evening was spent in repeating, by heart, the Church
+Catechism, and the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters of St. Matthew;
+and in listening to a long sermon, read by Miss Miller, whose
+irrepressible yawns attested her weariness. A frequent interlude of
+these performances was the enactment of the part of Eutychus by some
+half-dozen of little girls, who, overpowered with sleep, would fall
+down, if not out of the third loft, yet off the fourth form, and be
+taken up half dead. The remedy was, to thrust them forward into the
+centre of the schoolroom, and oblige them to stand there till the
+sermon was finished. Sometimes their feet failed them, and they sank
+together in a heap; they were then propped up with the monitors’ high
+stools.
+
+I have not yet alluded to the visits of Mr. Brocklehurst; and indeed
+that gentleman was from home during the greater part of the first month
+after my arrival; perhaps prolonging his stay with his friend the
+archdeacon: his absence was a relief to me. I need not say that I had
+my own reasons for dreading his coming: but come he did at last.
+
+One afternoon (I had then been three weeks at Lowood), as I was sitting
+with a slate in my hand, puzzling over a sum in long division, my eyes,
+raised in abstraction to the window, caught sight of a figure just
+passing: I recognised almost instinctively that gaunt outline; and
+when, two minutes after, all the school, teachers included, rose _en
+masse_, it was not necessary for me to look up in order to ascertain
+whose entrance they thus greeted. A long stride measured the
+schoolroom, and presently beside Miss Temple, who herself had risen,
+stood the same black column which had frowned on me so ominously from
+the hearthrug of Gateshead. I now glanced sideways at this piece of
+architecture. Yes, I was right: it was Mr. Brocklehurst, buttoned up in
+a surtout, and looking longer, narrower, and more rigid than ever.
+
+I had my own reasons for being dismayed at this apparition; too well I
+remembered the perfidious hints given by Mrs. Reed about my
+disposition, &c.; the promise pledged by Mr. Brocklehurst to apprise
+Miss Temple and the teachers of my vicious nature. All along I had been
+dreading the fulfilment of this promise,—I had been looking out daily
+for the “Coming Man,” whose information respecting my past life and
+conversation was to brand me as a bad child for ever: now there he was.
+
+He stood at Miss Temple’s side; he was speaking low in her ear: I did
+not doubt he was making disclosures of my villainy; and I watched her
+eye with painful anxiety, expecting every moment to see its dark orb
+turn on me a glance of repugnance and contempt. I listened too; and as
+I happened to be seated quite at the top of the room, I caught most of
+what he said: its import relieved me from immediate apprehension.
+
+“I suppose, Miss Temple, the thread I bought at Lowton will do; it
+struck me that it would be just of the quality for the calico chemises,
+and I sorted the needles to match. You may tell Miss Smith that I
+forgot to make a memorandum of the darning needles, but she shall have
+some papers sent in next week; and she is not, on any account, to give
+out more than one at a time to each pupil: if they have more, they are
+apt to be careless and lose them. And, O ma’am! I wish the woollen
+stockings were better looked to!—when I was here last, I went into the
+kitchen-garden and examined the clothes drying on the line; there was a
+quantity of black hose in a very bad state of repair: from the size of
+the holes in them I was sure they had not been well mended from time to
+time.”
+
+He paused.
+
+“Your directions shall be attended to, sir,” said Miss Temple.
+
+“And, ma’am,” he continued, “the laundress tells me some of the girls
+have two clean tuckers in the week: it is too much; the rules limit
+them to one.”
+
+“I think I can explain that circumstance, sir. Agnes and Catherine
+Johnstone were invited to take tea with some friends at Lowton last
+Thursday, and I gave them leave to put on clean tuckers for the
+occasion.”
+
+Mr. Brocklehurst nodded.
+
+“Well, for once it may pass; but please not to let the circumstance
+occur too often. And there is another thing which surprised me; I find,
+in settling accounts with the housekeeper, that a lunch, consisting of
+bread and cheese, has twice been served out to the girls during the
+past fortnight. How is this? I looked over the regulations, and I find
+no such meal as lunch mentioned. Who introduced this innovation? and by
+what authority?”
+
+“I must be responsible for the circumstance, sir,” replied Miss Temple:
+“the breakfast was so ill prepared that the pupils could not possibly
+eat it; and I dared not allow them to remain fasting till dinner-time.”
+
+“Madam, allow me an instant. You are aware that my plan in bringing up
+these girls is, not to accustom them to habits of luxury and
+indulgence, but to render them hardy, patient, self-denying. Should any
+little accidental disappointment of the appetite occur, such as the
+spoiling of a meal, the under or the over dressing of a dish, the
+incident ought not to be neutralised by replacing with something more
+delicate the comfort lost, thus pampering the body and obviating the
+aim of this institution; it ought to be improved to the spiritual
+edification of the pupils, by encouraging them to evince fortitude
+under the temporary privation. A brief address on those occasions would
+not be mistimed, wherein a judicious instructor would take the
+opportunity of referring to the sufferings of the primitive Christians;
+to the torments of martyrs; to the exhortations of our blessed Lord
+Himself, calling upon His disciples to take up their cross and follow
+Him; to His warnings that man shall not live by bread alone, but by
+every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God; to His divine
+consolations, ‘If ye suffer hunger or thirst for My sake, happy are
+ye.’ Oh, madam, when you put bread and cheese, instead of burnt
+porridge, into these children’s mouths, you may indeed feed their vile
+bodies, but you little think how you starve their immortal souls!”
+
+Mr. Brocklehurst again paused—perhaps overcome by his feelings. Miss
+Temple had looked down when he first began to speak to her; but she now
+gazed straight before her, and her face, naturally pale as marble,
+appeared to be assuming also the coldness and fixity of that material;
+especially her mouth, closed as if it would have required a sculptor’s
+chisel to open it, and her brow settled gradually into petrified
+severity.
+
+Meantime, Mr. Brocklehurst, standing on the hearth with his hands
+behind his back, majestically surveyed the whole school. Suddenly his
+eye gave a blink, as if it had met something that either dazzled or
+shocked its pupil; turning, he said in more rapid accents than he had
+hitherto used—
+
+“Miss Temple, Miss Temple, what—_what_ is that girl with curled hair?
+Red hair, ma’am, curled—curled all over?” And extending his cane he
+pointed to the awful object, his hand shaking as he did so.
+
+“It is Julia Severn,” replied Miss Temple, very quietly.
+
+“Julia Severn, ma’am! And why has she, or any other, curled hair? Why,
+in defiance of every precept and principle of this house, does she
+conform to the world so openly—here in an evangelical, charitable
+establishment—as to wear her hair one mass of curls?”
+
+“Julia’s hair curls naturally,” returned Miss Temple, still more
+quietly.
+
+“Naturally! Yes, but we are not to conform to nature; I wish these
+girls to be the children of Grace: and why that abundance? I have again
+and again intimated that I desire the hair to be arranged closely,
+modestly, plainly. Miss Temple, that girl’s hair must be cut off
+entirely; I will send a barber to-morrow: and I see others who have far
+too much of the excrescence—that tall girl, tell her to turn round.
+Tell all the first form to rise up and direct their faces to the wall.”
+
+Miss Temple passed her handkerchief over her lips, as if to smooth away
+the involuntary smile that curled them; she gave the order, however,
+and when the first class could take in what was required of them, they
+obeyed. Leaning a little back on my bench, I could see the looks and
+grimaces with which they commented on this manoeuvre: it was a pity Mr.
+Brocklehurst could not see them too; he would perhaps have felt that,
+whatever he might do with the outside of the cup and platter, the
+inside was further beyond his interference than he imagined.
+
+He scrutinised the reverse of these living medals some five minutes,
+then pronounced sentence. These words fell like the knell of doom—
+
+“All those top-knots must be cut off.”
+
+Miss Temple seemed to remonstrate.
+
+“Madam,” he pursued, “I have a Master to serve whose kingdom is not of
+this world: my mission is to mortify in these girls the lusts of the
+flesh; to teach them to clothe themselves with shame-facedness and
+sobriety, not with braided hair and costly apparel; and each of the
+young persons before us has a string of hair twisted in plaits which
+vanity itself might have woven; these, I repeat, must be cut off; think
+of the time wasted, of—”
+
+Mr. Brocklehurst was here interrupted: three other visitors, ladies,
+now entered the room. They ought to have come a little sooner to have
+heard his lecture on dress, for they were splendidly attired in velvet,
+silk, and furs. The two younger of the trio (fine girls of sixteen and
+seventeen) had grey beaver hats, then in fashion, shaded with ostrich
+plumes, and from under the brim of this graceful head-dress fell a
+profusion of light tresses, elaborately curled; the elder lady was
+enveloped in a costly velvet shawl, trimmed with ermine, and she wore a
+false front of French curls.
+
+These ladies were deferentially received by Miss Temple, as Mrs. and
+the Misses Brocklehurst, and conducted to seats of honour at the top of
+the room. It seems they had come in the carriage with their reverend
+relative, and had been conducting a rummaging scrutiny of the room
+upstairs, while he transacted business with the housekeeper, questioned
+the laundress, and lectured the superintendent. They now proceeded to
+address divers remarks and reproofs to Miss Smith, who was charged with
+the care of the linen and the inspection of the dormitories: but I had
+no time to listen to what they said; other matters called off and
+enchanted my attention.
+
+Hitherto, while gathering up the discourse of Mr. Brocklehurst and Miss
+Temple, I had not, at the same time, neglected precautions to secure my
+personal safety; which I thought would be effected, if I could only
+elude observation. To this end, I had sat well back on the form, and
+while seeming to be busy with my sum, had held my slate in such a
+manner as to conceal my face: I might have escaped notice, had not my
+treacherous slate somehow happened to slip from my hand, and falling
+with an obtrusive crash, directly drawn every eye upon me; I knew it
+was all over now, and, as I stooped to pick up the two fragments of
+slate, I rallied my forces for the worst. It came.
+
+“A careless girl!” said Mr. Brocklehurst, and immediately after—“It is
+the new pupil, I perceive.” And before I could draw breath, “I must not
+forget I have a word to say respecting her.” Then aloud: how loud it
+seemed to me! “Let the child who broke her slate come forward!”
+
+Of my own accord I could not have stirred; I was paralysed: but the two
+great girls who sat on each side of me, set me on my legs and pushed me
+towards the dread judge, and then Miss Temple gently assisted me to his
+very feet, and I caught her whispered counsel—
+
+“Don’t be afraid, Jane, I saw it was an accident; you shall not be
+punished.”
+
+The kind whisper went to my heart like a dagger.
+
+“Another minute, and she will despise me for a hypocrite,” thought I;
+and an impulse of fury against Reed, Brocklehurst, and Co. bounded in
+my pulses at the conviction. I was no Helen Burns.
+
+“Fetch that stool,” said Mr. Brocklehurst, pointing to a very high one
+from which a monitor had just risen: it was brought.
+
+“Place the child upon it.”
+
+And I was placed there, by whom I don’t know: I was in no condition to
+note particulars; I was only aware that they had hoisted me up to the
+height of Mr. Brocklehurst’s nose, that he was within a yard of me, and
+that a spread of shot orange and purple silk pelisses and a cloud of
+silvery plumage extended and waved below me.
+
+Mr. Brocklehurst hemmed.
+
+“Ladies,” said he, turning to his family, “Miss Temple, teachers, and
+children, you all see this girl?”
+
+Of course they did; for I felt their eyes directed like burning-glasses
+against my scorched skin.
+
+“You see she is yet young; you observe she possesses the ordinary form
+of childhood; God has graciously given her the shape that He has given
+to all of us; no signal deformity points her out as a marked character.
+Who would think that the Evil One had already found a servant and agent
+in her? Yet such, I grieve to say, is the case.”
+
+A pause—in which I began to steady the palsy of my nerves, and to feel
+that the Rubicon was passed; and that the trial, no longer to be
+shirked, must be firmly sustained.
+
+“My dear children,” pursued the black marble clergyman, with pathos,
+“this is a sad, a melancholy occasion; for it becomes my duty to warn
+you, that this girl, who might be one of God’s own lambs, is a little
+castaway: not a member of the true flock, but evidently an interloper
+and an alien. You must be on your guard against her; you must shun her
+example; if necessary, avoid her company, exclude her from your sports,
+and shut her out from your converse. Teachers, you must watch her: keep
+your eyes on her movements, weigh well her words, scrutinise her
+actions, punish her body to save her soul: if, indeed, such salvation
+be possible, for (my tongue falters while I tell it) this girl, this
+child, the native of a Christian land, worse than many a little heathen
+who says its prayers to Brahma and kneels before Juggernaut—this girl
+is—a liar!”
+
+Now came a pause of ten minutes, during which I, by this time in
+perfect possession of my wits, observed all the female Brocklehursts
+produce their pocket-handkerchiefs and apply them to their optics,
+while the elderly lady swayed herself to and fro, and the two younger
+ones whispered, “How shocking!”
+
+Mr. Brocklehurst resumed.
+
+“This I learned from her benefactress; from the pious and charitable
+lady who adopted her in her orphan state, reared her as her own
+daughter, and whose kindness, whose generosity the unhappy girl repaid
+by an ingratitude so bad, so dreadful, that at last her excellent
+patroness was obliged to separate her from her own young ones, fearful
+lest her vicious example should contaminate their purity: she has sent
+her here to be healed, even as the Jews of old sent their diseased to
+the troubled pool of Bethesda; and, teachers, superintendent, I beg of
+you not to allow the waters to stagnate round her.”
+
+With this sublime conclusion, Mr. Brocklehurst adjusted the top button
+of his surtout, muttered something to his family, who rose, bowed to
+Miss Temple, and then all the great people sailed in state from the
+room. Turning at the door, my judge said—
+
+“Let her stand half-an-hour longer on that stool, and let no one speak
+to her during the remainder of the day.”
+
+There was I, then, mounted aloft; I, who had said I could not bear the
+shame of standing on my natural feet in the middle of the room, was now
+exposed to general view on a pedestal of infamy. What my sensations
+were, no language can describe; but just as they all rose, stifling my
+breath and constricting my throat, a girl came up and passed me: in
+passing, she lifted her eyes. What a strange light inspired them! What
+an extraordinary sensation that ray sent through me! How the new
+feeling bore me up! It was as if a martyr, a hero, had passed a slave
+or victim, and imparted strength in the transit. I mastered the rising
+hysteria, lifted up my head, and took a firm stand on the stool. Helen
+Burns asked some slight question about her work of Miss Smith, was
+chidden for the triviality of the inquiry, returned to her place, and
+smiled at me as she again went by. What a smile! I remember it now, and
+I know that it was the effluence of fine intellect, of true courage; it
+lit up her marked lineaments, her thin face, her sunken grey eye, like
+a reflection from the aspect of an angel. Yet at that moment Helen
+Burns wore on her arm “the untidy badge;” scarcely an hour ago I had
+heard her condemned by Miss Scatcherd to a dinner of bread and water on
+the morrow because she had blotted an exercise in copying it out. Such
+is the imperfect nature of man! such spots are there on the disc of the
+clearest planet; and eyes like Miss Scatcherd’s can only see those
+minute defects, and are blind to the full brightness of the orb.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Ere the half-hour ended, five o’clock struck; school was dismissed, and
+all were gone into the refectory to tea. I now ventured to descend: it
+was deep dusk; I retired into a corner and sat down on the floor. The
+spell by which I had been so far supported began to dissolve; reaction
+took place, and soon, so overwhelming was the grief that seized me, I
+sank prostrate with my face to the ground. Now I wept: Helen Burns was
+not here; nothing sustained me; left to myself I abandoned myself, and
+my tears watered the boards. I had meant to be so good, and to do so
+much at Lowood: to make so many friends, to earn respect and win
+affection. Already I had made visible progress: that very morning I had
+reached the head of my class; Miss Miller had praised me warmly; Miss
+Temple had smiled approbation; she had promised to teach me drawing,
+and to let me learn French, if I continued to make similar improvement
+two months longer: and then I was well received by my fellow-pupils;
+treated as an equal by those of my own age, and not molested by any;
+now, here I lay again crushed and trodden on; and could I ever rise
+more?
+
+“Never,” I thought; and ardently I wished to die. While sobbing out
+this wish in broken accents, some one approached: I started up—again
+Helen Burns was near me; the fading fires just showed her coming up the
+long, vacant room; she brought my coffee and bread.
+
+“Come, eat something,” she said; but I put both away from me, feeling
+as if a drop or a crumb would have choked me in my present condition.
+Helen regarded me, probably with surprise: I could not now abate my
+agitation, though I tried hard; I continued to weep aloud. She sat down
+on the ground near me, embraced her knees with her arms, and rested her
+head upon them; in that attitude she remained silent as an Indian. I
+was the first who spoke—
+
+“Helen, why do you stay with a girl whom everybody believes to be a
+liar?”
+
+“Everybody, Jane? Why, there are only eighty people who have heard you
+called so, and the world contains hundreds of millions.”
+
+“But what have I to do with millions? The eighty, I know, despise me.”
+
+“Jane, you are mistaken: probably not one in the school either despises
+or dislikes you: many, I am sure, pity you much.”
+
+“How can they pity me after what Mr. Brocklehurst has said?”
+
+“Mr. Brocklehurst is not a god: nor is he even a great and admired man:
+he is little liked here; he never took steps to make himself liked. Had
+he treated you as an especial favourite, you would have found enemies,
+declared or covert, all around you; as it is, the greater number would
+offer you sympathy if they dared. Teachers and pupils may look coldly
+on you for a day or two, but friendly feelings are concealed in their
+hearts; and if you persevere in doing well, these feelings will ere
+long appear so much the more evidently for their temporary suppression.
+Besides, Jane”—she paused.
+
+“Well, Helen?” said I, putting my hand into hers: she chafed my fingers
+gently to warm them, and went on—
+
+“If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own
+conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be
+without friends.”
+
+“No; I know I should think well of myself; but that is not enough: if
+others don’t love me I would rather die than live—I cannot bear to be
+solitary and hated, Helen. Look here; to gain some real affection from
+you, or Miss Temple, or any other whom I truly love, I would willingly
+submit to have the bone of my arm broken, or to let a bull toss me, or
+to stand behind a kicking horse, and let it dash its hoof at my chest—”
+
+“Hush, Jane! you think too much of the love of human beings; you are
+too impulsive, too vehement; the sovereign hand that created your
+frame, and put life into it, has provided you with other resources than
+your feeble self, or than creatures feeble as you. Besides this earth,
+and besides the race of men, there is an invisible world and a kingdom
+of spirits: that world is round us, for it is everywhere; and those
+spirits watch us, for they are commissioned to guard us; and if we were
+dying in pain and shame, if scorn smote us on all sides, and hatred
+crushed us, angels see our tortures, recognise our innocence (if
+innocent we be: as I know you are of this charge which Mr. Brocklehurst
+has weakly and pompously repeated at second-hand from Mrs. Reed; for I
+read a sincere nature in your ardent eyes and on your clear front), and
+God waits only the separation of spirit from flesh to crown us with a
+full reward. Why, then, should we ever sink overwhelmed with distress,
+when life is so soon over, and death is so certain an entrance to
+happiness—to glory?”
+
+I was silent; Helen had calmed me; but in the tranquillity she imparted
+there was an alloy of inexpressible sadness. I felt the impression of
+woe as she spoke, but I could not tell whence it came; and when, having
+done speaking, she breathed a little fast and coughed a short cough, I
+momentarily forgot my own sorrows to yield to a vague concern for her.
+
+Resting my head on Helen’s shoulder, I put my arms round her waist; she
+drew me to her, and we reposed in silence. We had not sat long thus,
+when another person came in. Some heavy clouds, swept from the sky by a
+rising wind, had left the moon bare; and her light, streaming in
+through a window near, shone full both on us and on the approaching
+figure, which we at once recognised as Miss Temple.
+
+“I came on purpose to find you, Jane Eyre,” said she; “I want you in my
+room; and as Helen Burns is with you, she may come too.”
+
+We went; following the superintendent’s guidance, we had to thread some
+intricate passages, and mount a staircase before we reached her
+apartment; it contained a good fire, and looked cheerful. Miss Temple
+told Helen Burns to be seated in a low arm-chair on one side of the
+hearth, and herself taking another, she called me to her side.
+
+“Is it all over?” she asked, looking down at my face. “Have you cried
+your grief away?”
+
+“I am afraid I never shall do that.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Because I have been wrongly accused; and you, ma’am, and everybody
+else, will now think me wicked.”
+
+“We shall think you what you prove yourself to be, my child. Continue
+to act as a good girl, and you will satisfy us.”
+
+“Shall I, Miss Temple?”
+
+“You will,” said she, passing her arm round me. “And now tell me who is
+the lady whom Mr. Brocklehurst called your benefactress?”
+
+“Mrs. Reed, my uncle’s wife. My uncle is dead, and he left me to her
+care.”
+
+“Did she not, then, adopt you of her own accord?”
+
+“No, ma’am; she was sorry to have to do it: but my uncle, as I have
+often heard the servants say, got her to promise before he died that
+she would always keep me.”
+
+“Well now, Jane, you know, or at least I will tell you, that when a
+criminal is accused, he is always allowed to speak in his own defence.
+You have been charged with falsehood; defend yourself to me as well as
+you can. Say whatever your memory suggests is true; but add nothing and
+exaggerate nothing.”
+
+I resolved, in the depth of my heart, that I would be most
+moderate—most correct; and, having reflected a few minutes in order to
+arrange coherently what I had to say, I told her all the story of my
+sad childhood. Exhausted by emotion, my language was more subdued than
+it generally was when it developed that sad theme; and mindful of
+Helen’s warnings against the indulgence of resentment, I infused into
+the narrative far less of gall and wormwood than ordinary. Thus
+restrained and simplified, it sounded more credible: I felt as I went
+on that Miss Temple fully believed me.
+
+In the course of the tale I had mentioned Mr. Lloyd as having come to
+see me after the fit: for I never forgot the, to me, frightful episode
+of the red-room: in detailing which, my excitement was sure, in some
+degree, to break bounds; for nothing could soften in my recollection
+the spasm of agony which clutched my heart when Mrs. Reed spurned my
+wild supplication for pardon, and locked me a second time in the dark
+and haunted chamber.
+
+I had finished: Miss Temple regarded me a few minutes in silence; she
+then said—
+
+“I know something of Mr. Lloyd; I shall write to him; if his reply
+agrees with your statement, you shall be publicly cleared from every
+imputation; to me, Jane, you are clear now.”
+
+She kissed me, and still keeping me at her side (where I was well
+contented to stand, for I derived a child’s pleasure from the
+contemplation of her face, her dress, her one or two ornaments, her
+white forehead, her clustered and shining curls, and beaming dark
+eyes), she proceeded to address Helen Burns.
+
+“How are you to-night, Helen? Have you coughed much to-day?”
+
+“Not quite so much, I think, ma’am.”
+
+“And the pain in your chest?”
+
+“It is a little better.”
+
+Miss Temple got up, took her hand and examined her pulse; then she
+returned to her own seat: as she resumed it, I heard her sigh low. She
+was pensive a few minutes, then rousing herself, she said cheerfully—
+
+“But you two are my visitors to-night; I must treat you as such.” She
+rang her bell.
+
+“Barbara,” she said to the servant who answered it, “I have not yet had
+tea; bring the tray and place cups for these two young ladies.”
+
+And a tray was soon brought. How pretty, to my eyes, did the china cups
+and bright teapot look, placed on the little round table near the fire!
+How fragrant was the steam of the beverage, and the scent of the toast!
+of which, however, I, to my dismay (for I was beginning to be hungry)
+discerned only a very small portion: Miss Temple discerned it too.
+
+“Barbara,” said she, “can you not bring a little more bread and butter?
+There is not enough for three.”
+
+Barbara went out: she returned soon—
+
+“Madam, Mrs. Harden says she has sent up the usual quantity.”
+
+Mrs. Harden, be it observed, was the housekeeper: a woman after Mr.
+Brocklehurst’s own heart, made up of equal parts of whalebone and iron.
+
+“Oh, very well!” returned Miss Temple; “we must make it do, Barbara, I
+suppose.” And as the girl withdrew she added, smiling, “Fortunately, I
+have it in my power to supply deficiencies for this once.”
+
+Having invited Helen and me to approach the table, and placed before
+each of us a cup of tea with one delicious but thin morsel of toast,
+she got up, unlocked a drawer, and taking from it a parcel wrapped in
+paper, disclosed presently to our eyes a good-sized seed-cake.
+
+“I meant to give each of you some of this to take with you,” said she,
+“but as there is so little toast, you must have it now,” and she
+proceeded to cut slices with a generous hand.
+
+We feasted that evening as on nectar and ambrosia; and not the least
+delight of the entertainment was the smile of gratification with which
+our hostess regarded us, as we satisfied our famished appetites on the
+delicate fare she liberally supplied.
+
+Tea over and the tray removed, she again summoned us to the fire; we
+sat one on each side of her, and now a conversation followed between
+her and Helen, which it was indeed a privilege to be admitted to hear.
+
+Miss Temple had always something of serenity in her air, of state in
+her mien, of refined propriety in her language, which precluded
+deviation into the ardent, the excited, the eager: something which
+chastened the pleasure of those who looked on her and listened to her,
+by a controlling sense of awe; and such was my feeling now: but as to
+Helen Burns, I was struck with wonder.
+
+The refreshing meal, the brilliant fire, the presence and kindness of
+her beloved instructress, or, perhaps, more than all these, something
+in her own unique mind, had roused her powers within her. They woke,
+they kindled: first, they glowed in the bright tint of her cheek, which
+till this hour I had never seen but pale and bloodless; then they shone
+in the liquid lustre of her eyes, which had suddenly acquired a beauty
+more singular than that of Miss Temple’s—a beauty neither of fine
+colour nor long eyelash, nor pencilled brow, but of meaning, of
+movement, of radiance. Then her soul sat on her lips, and language
+flowed, from what source I cannot tell. Has a girl of fourteen a heart
+large enough, vigorous enough, to hold the swelling spring of pure,
+full, fervid eloquence? Such was the characteristic of Helen’s
+discourse on that, to me, memorable evening; her spirit seemed
+hastening to live within a very brief span as much as many live during
+a protracted existence.
+
+They conversed of things I had never heard of; of nations and times
+past; of countries far away; of secrets of nature discovered or guessed
+at: they spoke of books: how many they had read! What stores of
+knowledge they possessed! Then they seemed so familiar with French
+names and French authors: but my amazement reached its climax when Miss
+Temple asked Helen if she sometimes snatched a moment to recall the
+Latin her father had taught her, and taking a book from a shelf, bade
+her read and construe a page of Virgil; and Helen obeyed, my organ of
+veneration expanding at every sounding line. She had scarcely finished
+ere the bell announced bedtime! no delay could be admitted; Miss Temple
+embraced us both, saying, as she drew us to her heart—
+
+“God bless you, my children!”
+
+Helen she held a little longer than me: she let her go more
+reluctantly; it was Helen her eye followed to the door; it was for her
+she a second time breathed a sad sigh; for her she wiped a tear from
+her cheek.
+
+On reaching the bedroom, we heard the voice of Miss Scatcherd: she was
+examining drawers; she had just pulled out Helen Burns’s, and when we
+entered Helen was greeted with a sharp reprimand, and told that
+to-morrow she should have half-a-dozen of untidily folded articles
+pinned to her shoulder.
+
+“My things were indeed in shameful disorder,” murmured Helen to me, in
+a low voice: “I intended to have arranged them, but I forgot.”
+
+Next morning, Miss Scatcherd wrote in conspicuous characters on a piece
+of pasteboard the word “Slattern,” and bound it like a phylactery round
+Helen’s large, mild, intelligent, and benign-looking forehead. She wore
+it till evening, patient, unresentful, regarding it as a deserved
+punishment. The moment Miss Scatcherd withdrew after afternoon school,
+I ran to Helen, tore it off, and thrust it into the fire: the fury of
+which she was incapable had been burning in my soul all day, and tears,
+hot and large, had continually been scalding my cheek; for the
+spectacle of her sad resignation gave me an intolerable pain at the
+heart.
+
+About a week subsequently to the incidents above narrated, Miss Temple,
+who had written to Mr. Lloyd, received his answer: it appeared that
+what he said went to corroborate my account. Miss Temple, having
+assembled the whole school, announced that inquiry had been made into
+the charges alleged against Jane Eyre, and that she was most happy to
+be able to pronounce her completely cleared from every imputation. The
+teachers then shook hands with me and kissed me, and a murmur of
+pleasure ran through the ranks of my companions.
+
+Thus relieved of a grievous load, I from that hour set to work afresh,
+resolved to pioneer my way through every difficulty: I toiled hard, and
+my success was proportionate to my efforts; my memory, not naturally
+tenacious, improved with practice; exercise sharpened my wits; in a few
+weeks I was promoted to a higher class; in less than two months I was
+allowed to commence French and drawing. I learned the first two tenses
+of the verb _Etre_, and sketched my first cottage (whose walls,
+by-the-bye, outrivalled in slope those of the leaning tower of Pisa),
+on the same day. That night, on going to bed, I forgot to prepare in
+imagination the Barmecide supper of hot roast potatoes, or white bread
+and new milk, with which I was wont to amuse my inward cravings: I
+feasted instead on the spectacle of ideal drawings, which I saw in the
+dark; all the work of my own hands: freely pencilled houses and trees,
+picturesque rocks and ruins, Cuyp-like groups of cattle, sweet
+paintings of butterflies hovering over unblown roses, of birds picking
+at ripe cherries, of wren’s nests enclosing pearl-like eggs, wreathed
+about with young ivy sprays. I examined, too, in thought, the
+possibility of my ever being able to translate currently a certain
+little French story which Madame Pierrot had that day shown me; nor was
+that problem solved to my satisfaction ere I fell sweetly asleep.
+
+Well has Solomon said—“Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than
+a stalled ox and hatred therewith.”
+
+I would not now have exchanged Lowood with all its privations for
+Gateshead and its daily luxuries.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+But the privations, or rather the hardships, of Lowood lessened. Spring
+drew on: she was indeed already come; the frosts of winter had ceased;
+its snows were melted, its cutting winds ameliorated. My wretched feet,
+flayed and swollen to lameness by the sharp air of January, began to
+heal and subside under the gentler breathings of April; the nights and
+mornings no longer by their Canadian temperature froze the very blood
+in our veins; we could now endure the play-hour passed in the garden:
+sometimes on a sunny day it began even to be pleasant and genial, and a
+greenness grew over those brown beds, which, freshening daily,
+suggested the thought that Hope traversed them at night, and left each
+morning brighter traces of her steps. Flowers peeped out amongst the
+leaves; snow-drops, crocuses, purple auriculas, and golden-eyed
+pansies. On Thursday afternoons (half-holidays) we now took walks, and
+found still sweeter flowers opening by the wayside, under the hedges.
+
+I discovered, too, that a great pleasure, an enjoyment which the
+horizon only bounded, lay all outside the high and spike-guarded walls
+of our garden: this pleasure consisted in prospect of noble summits
+girdling a great hill-hollow, rich in verdure and shadow; in a bright
+beck, full of dark stones and sparkling eddies. How different had this
+scene looked when I viewed it laid out beneath the iron sky of winter,
+stiffened in frost, shrouded with snow!—when mists as chill as death
+wandered to the impulse of east winds along those purple peaks, and
+rolled down “ing” and holm till they blended with the frozen fog of the
+beck! That beck itself was then a torrent, turbid and curbless: it tore
+asunder the wood, and sent a raving sound through the air, often
+thickened with wild rain or whirling sleet; and for the forest on its
+banks, _that_ showed only ranks of skeletons.
+
+April advanced to May: a bright serene May it was; days of blue sky,
+placid sunshine, and soft western or southern gales filled up its
+duration. And now vegetation matured with vigour; Lowood shook loose
+its tresses; it became all green, all flowery; its great elm, ash, and
+oak skeletons were restored to majestic life; woodland plants sprang up
+profusely in its recesses; unnumbered varieties of moss filled its
+hollows, and it made a strange ground-sunshine out of the wealth of its
+wild primrose plants: I have seen their pale gold gleam in overshadowed
+spots like scatterings of the sweetest lustre. All this I enjoyed often
+and fully, free, unwatched, and almost alone: for this unwonted liberty
+and pleasure there was a cause, to which it now becomes my task to
+advert.
+
+Have I not described a pleasant site for a dwelling, when I speak of it
+as bosomed in hill and wood, and rising from the verge of a stream?
+Assuredly, pleasant enough: but whether healthy or not is another
+question.
+
+That forest-dell, where Lowood lay, was the cradle of fog and fog-bred
+pestilence; which, quickening with the quickening spring, crept into
+the Orphan Asylum, breathed typhus through its crowded schoolroom and
+dormitory, and, ere May arrived, transformed the seminary into an
+hospital.
+
+Semi-starvation and neglected colds had predisposed most of the pupils
+to receive infection: forty-five out of the eighty girls lay ill at one
+time. Classes were broken up, rules relaxed. The few who continued well
+were allowed almost unlimited license; because the medical attendant
+insisted on the necessity of frequent exercise to keep them in health:
+and had it been otherwise, no one had leisure to watch or restrain
+them. Miss Temple’s whole attention was absorbed by the patients: she
+lived in the sick-room, never quitting it except to snatch a few hours’
+rest at night. The teachers were fully occupied with packing up and
+making other necessary preparations for the departure of those girls
+who were fortunate enough to have friends and relations able and
+willing to remove them from the seat of contagion. Many, already
+smitten, went home only to die: some died at the school, and were
+buried quietly and quickly, the nature of the malady forbidding delay.
+
+While disease had thus become an inhabitant of Lowood, and death its
+frequent visitor; while there was gloom and fear within its walls;
+while its rooms and passages steamed with hospital smells, the drug and
+the pastille striving vainly to overcome the effluvia of mortality,
+that bright May shone unclouded over the bold hills and beautiful
+woodland out of doors. Its garden, too, glowed with flowers: hollyhocks
+had sprung up tall as trees, lilies had opened, tulips and roses were
+in bloom; the borders of the little beds were gay with pink thrift and
+crimson double daisies; the sweetbriars gave out, morning and evening,
+their scent of spice and apples; and these fragrant treasures were all
+useless for most of the inmates of Lowood, except to furnish now and
+then a handful of herbs and blossoms to put in a coffin.
+
+But I, and the rest who continued well, enjoyed fully the beauties of
+the scene and season; they let us ramble in the wood, like gipsies,
+from morning till night; we did what we liked, went where we liked: we
+lived better too. Mr. Brocklehurst and his family never came near
+Lowood now: household matters were not scrutinised into; the cross
+housekeeper was gone, driven away by the fear of infection; her
+successor, who had been matron at the Lowton Dispensary, unused to the
+ways of her new abode, provided with comparative liberality. Besides,
+there were fewer to feed; the sick could eat little; our
+breakfast-basins were better filled; when there was no time to prepare
+a regular dinner, which often happened, she would give us a large piece
+of cold pie, or a thick slice of bread and cheese, and this we carried
+away with us to the wood, where we each chose the spot we liked best,
+and dined sumptuously.
+
+My favourite seat was a smooth and broad stone, rising white and dry
+from the very middle of the beck, and only to be got at by wading
+through the water; a feat I accomplished barefoot. The stone was just
+broad enough to accommodate, comfortably, another girl and me, at that
+time my chosen comrade—one Mary Ann Wilson; a shrewd, observant
+personage, whose society I took pleasure in, partly because she was
+witty and original, and partly because she had a manner which set me at
+my ease. Some years older than I, she knew more of the world, and could
+tell me many things I liked to hear: with her my curiosity found
+gratification: to my faults also she gave ample indulgence, never
+imposing curb or rein on anything I said. She had a turn for narrative,
+I for analysis; she liked to inform, I to question; so we got on
+swimmingly together, deriving much entertainment, if not much
+improvement, from our mutual intercourse.
+
+And where, meantime, was Helen Burns? Why did I not spend these sweet
+days of liberty with her? Had I forgotten her? or was I so worthless as
+to have grown tired of her pure society? Surely the Mary Ann Wilson I
+have mentioned was inferior to my first acquaintance: she could only
+tell me amusing stories, and reciprocate any racy and pungent gossip I
+chose to indulge in; while, if I have spoken truth of Helen, she was
+qualified to give those who enjoyed the privilege of her converse a
+taste of far higher things.
+
+True, reader; and I knew and felt this: and though I am a defective
+being, with many faults and few redeeming points, yet I never tired of
+Helen Burns; nor ever ceased to cherish for her a sentiment of
+attachment, as strong, tender, and respectful as any that ever animated
+my heart. How could it be otherwise, when Helen, at all times and under
+all circumstances, evinced for me a quiet and faithful friendship,
+which ill-humour never soured, nor irritation never troubled? But Helen
+was ill at present: for some weeks she had been removed from my sight
+to I knew not what room upstairs. She was not, I was told, in the
+hospital portion of the house with the fever patients; for her
+complaint was consumption, not typhus: and by consumption I, in my
+ignorance, understood something mild, which time and care would be sure
+to alleviate.
+
+I was confirmed in this idea by the fact of her once or twice coming
+downstairs on very warm sunny afternoons, and being taken by Miss
+Temple into the garden; but, on these occasions, I was not allowed to
+go and speak to her; I only saw her from the schoolroom window, and
+then not distinctly; for she was much wrapped up, and sat at a distance
+under the verandah.
+
+One evening, in the beginning of June, I had stayed out very late with
+Mary Ann in the wood; we had, as usual, separated ourselves from the
+others, and had wandered far; so far that we lost our way, and had to
+ask it at a lonely cottage, where a man and woman lived, who looked
+after a herd of half-wild swine that fed on the mast in the wood. When
+we got back, it was after moonrise: a pony, which we knew to be the
+surgeon’s, was standing at the garden door. Mary Ann remarked that she
+supposed some one must be very ill, as Mr. Bates had been sent for at
+that time of the evening. She went into the house; I stayed behind a
+few minutes to plant in my garden a handful of roots I had dug up in
+the forest, and which I feared would wither if I left them till the
+morning. This done, I lingered yet a little longer: the flowers smelt
+so sweet as the dew fell; it was such a pleasant evening, so serene, so
+warm; the still glowing west promised so fairly another fine day on the
+morrow; the moon rose with such majesty in the grave east. I was noting
+these things and enjoying them as a child might, when it entered my
+mind as it had never done before:—
+
+“How sad to be lying now on a sick bed, and to be in danger of dying!
+This world is pleasant—it would be dreary to be called from it, and to
+have to go who knows where?”
+
+And then my mind made its first earnest effort to comprehend what had
+been infused into it concerning heaven and hell; and for the first time
+it recoiled, baffled; and for the first time glancing behind, on each
+side, and before it, it saw all round an unfathomed gulf: it felt the
+one point where it stood—the present; all the rest was formless cloud
+and vacant depth; and it shuddered at the thought of tottering, and
+plunging amid that chaos. While pondering this new idea, I heard the
+front door open; Mr. Bates came out, and with him was a nurse. After
+she had seen him mount his horse and depart, she was about to close the
+door, but I ran up to her.
+
+“How is Helen Burns?”
+
+“Very poorly,” was the answer.
+
+“Is it her Mr. Bates has been to see?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“And what does he say about her?”
+
+“He says she’ll not be here long.”
+
+This phrase, uttered in my hearing yesterday, would have only conveyed
+the notion that she was about to be removed to Northumberland, to her
+own home. I should not have suspected that it meant she was dying; but
+I knew instantly now! It opened clear on my comprehension that Helen
+Burns was numbering her last days in this world, and that she was going
+to be taken to the region of spirits, if such region there were. I
+experienced a shock of horror, then a strong thrill of grief, then a
+desire—a necessity to see her; and I asked in what room she lay.
+
+“She is in Miss Temple’s room,” said the nurse.
+
+“May I go up and speak to her?”
+
+“Oh no, child! It is not likely; and now it is time for you to come in;
+you’ll catch the fever if you stop out when the dew is falling.”
+
+The nurse closed the front door; I went in by the side entrance which
+led to the schoolroom: I was just in time; it was nine o’clock, and
+Miss Miller was calling the pupils to go to bed.
+
+It might be two hours later, probably near eleven, when I—not having
+been able to fall asleep, and deeming, from the perfect silence of the
+dormitory, that my companions were all wrapt in profound repose—rose
+softly, put on my frock over my night-dress, and, without shoes, crept
+from the apartment, and set off in quest of Miss Temple’s room. It was
+quite at the other end of the house; but I knew my way; and the light
+of the unclouded summer moon, entering here and there at passage
+windows, enabled me to find it without difficulty. An odour of camphor
+and burnt vinegar warned me when I came near the fever room: and I
+passed its door quickly, fearful lest the nurse who sat up all night
+should hear me. I dreaded being discovered and sent back; for I _must_
+see Helen,—I must embrace her before she died,—I must give her one last
+kiss, exchange with her one last word.
+
+Having descended a staircase, traversed a portion of the house below,
+and succeeded in opening and shutting, without noise, two doors, I
+reached another flight of steps; these I mounted, and then just
+opposite to me was Miss Temple’s room. A light shone through the
+keyhole and from under the door; a profound stillness pervaded the
+vicinity. Coming near, I found the door slightly ajar; probably to
+admit some fresh air into the close abode of sickness. Indisposed to
+hesitate, and full of impatient impulses—soul and senses quivering with
+keen throes—I put it back and looked in. My eye sought Helen, and
+feared to find death.
+
+Close by Miss Temple’s bed, and half covered with its white curtains,
+there stood a little crib. I saw the outline of a form under the
+clothes, but the face was hid by the hangings: the nurse I had spoken
+to in the garden sat in an easy-chair asleep; an unsnuffed candle burnt
+dimly on the table. Miss Temple was not to be seen: I knew afterwards
+that she had been called to a delirious patient in the fever-room. I
+advanced; then paused by the crib side: my hand was on the curtain, but
+I preferred speaking before I withdrew it. I still recoiled at the
+dread of seeing a corpse.
+
+“Helen!” I whispered softly, “are you awake?”
+
+She stirred herself, put back the curtain, and I saw her face, pale,
+wasted, but quite composed: she looked so little changed that my fear
+was instantly dissipated.
+
+“Can it be you, Jane?” she asked, in her own gentle voice.
+
+“Oh!” I thought, “she is not going to die; they are mistaken: she could
+not speak and look so calmly if she were.”
+
+I got on to her crib and kissed her: her forehead was cold, and her
+cheek both cold and thin, and so were her hand and wrist; but she
+smiled as of old.
+
+“Why are you come here, Jane? It is past eleven o’clock: I heard it
+strike some minutes since.”
+
+“I came to see you, Helen: I heard you were very ill, and I could not
+sleep till I had spoken to you.”
+
+“You came to bid me good-bye, then: you are just in time probably.”
+
+“Are you going somewhere, Helen? Are you going home?”
+
+“Yes; to my long home—my last home.”
+
+“No, no, Helen!” I stopped, distressed. While I tried to devour my
+tears, a fit of coughing seized Helen; it did not, however, wake the
+nurse; when it was over, she lay some minutes exhausted; then she
+whispered—
+
+“Jane, your little feet are bare; lie down and cover yourself with my
+quilt.”
+
+I did so: she put her arm over me, and I nestled close to her. After a
+long silence, she resumed, still whispering—
+
+“I am very happy, Jane; and when you hear that I am dead, you must be
+sure and not grieve: there is nothing to grieve about. We all must die
+one day, and the illness which is removing me is not painful; it is
+gentle and gradual: my mind is at rest. I leave no one to regret me
+much: I have only a father; and he is lately married, and will not miss
+me. By dying young, I shall escape great sufferings. I had not
+qualities or talents to make my way very well in the world: I should
+have been continually at fault.”
+
+“But where are you going to, Helen? Can you see? Do you know?”
+
+“I believe; I have faith: I am going to God.”
+
+“Where is God? What is God?”
+
+“My Maker and yours, who will never destroy what He created. I rely
+implicitly on His power, and confide wholly in His goodness: I count
+the hours till that eventful one arrives which shall restore me to Him,
+reveal Him to me.”
+
+“You are sure, then, Helen, that there is such a place as heaven, and
+that our souls can get to it when we die?”
+
+“I am sure there is a future state; I believe God is good; I can resign
+my immortal part to Him without any misgiving. God is my father; God is
+my friend: I love Him; I believe He loves me.”
+
+“And shall I see you again, Helen, when I die?”
+
+“You will come to the same region of happiness: be received by the same
+mighty, universal Parent, no doubt, dear Jane.”
+
+Again I questioned, but this time only in thought. “Where is that
+region? Does it exist?” And I clasped my arms closer round Helen; she
+seemed dearer to me than ever; I felt as if I could not let her go; I
+lay with my face hidden on her neck. Presently she said, in the
+sweetest tone—
+
+“How comfortable I am! That last fit of coughing has tired me a little;
+I feel as if I could sleep: but don’t leave me, Jane; I like to have
+you near me.”
+
+“I’ll stay with you, _dear_ Helen: no one shall take me away.”
+
+“Are you warm, darling?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Good-night, Jane.”
+
+“Good-night, Helen.”
+
+She kissed me, and I her, and we both soon slumbered.
+
+When I awoke it was day: an unusual movement roused me; I looked up; I
+was in somebody’s arms; the nurse held me; she was carrying me through
+the passage back to the dormitory. I was not reprimanded for leaving my
+bed; people had something else to think about; no explanation was
+afforded then to my many questions; but a day or two afterwards I
+learned that Miss Temple, on returning to her own room at dawn, had
+found me laid in the little crib; my face against Helen Burns’s
+shoulder, my arms round her neck. I was asleep, and Helen was—dead.
+
+Her grave is in Brocklebridge churchyard: for fifteen years after her
+death it was only covered by a grassy mound; but now a grey marble
+tablet marks the spot, inscribed with her name, and the word
+“Resurgam.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+Hitherto I have recorded in detail the events of my insignificant
+existence: to the first ten years of my life I have given almost as
+many chapters. But this is not to be a regular autobiography: I am only
+bound to invoke Memory where I know her responses will possess some
+degree of interest; therefore I now pass a space of eight years almost
+in silence: a few lines only are necessary to keep up the links of
+connection.
+
+When the typhus fever had fulfilled its mission of devastation at
+Lowood, it gradually disappeared from thence; but not till its
+virulence and the number of its victims had drawn public attention on
+the school. Inquiry was made into the origin of the scourge, and by
+degrees various facts came out which excited public indignation in a
+high degree. The unhealthy nature of the site; the quantity and quality
+of the children’s food; the brackish, fetid water used in its
+preparation; the pupils’ wretched clothing and accommodations—all these
+things were discovered, and the discovery produced a result mortifying
+to Mr. Brocklehurst, but beneficial to the institution.
+
+Several wealthy and benevolent individuals in the county subscribed
+largely for the erection of a more convenient building in a better
+situation; new regulations were made; improvements in diet and clothing
+introduced; the funds of the school were intrusted to the management of
+a committee. Mr. Brocklehurst, who, from his wealth and family
+connections, could not be overlooked, still retained the post of
+treasurer; but he was aided in the discharge of his duties by gentlemen
+of rather more enlarged and sympathising minds: his office of
+inspector, too, was shared by those who knew how to combine reason with
+strictness, comfort with economy, compassion with uprightness. The
+school, thus improved, became in time a truly useful and noble
+institution. I remained an inmate of its walls, after its regeneration,
+for eight years: six as pupil, and two as teacher; and in both
+capacities I bear my testimony to its value and importance.
+
+During these eight years my life was uniform: but not unhappy, because
+it was not inactive. I had the means of an excellent education placed
+within my reach; a fondness for some of my studies, and a desire to
+excel in all, together with a great delight in pleasing my teachers,
+especially such as I loved, urged me on: I availed myself fully of the
+advantages offered me. In time I rose to be the first girl of the first
+class; then I was invested with the office of teacher; which I
+discharged with zeal for two years: but at the end of that time I
+altered.
+
+Miss Temple, through all changes, had thus far continued superintendent
+of the seminary: to her instruction I owed the best part of my
+acquirements; her friendship and society had been my continual solace;
+she had stood me in the stead of mother, governess, and, latterly,
+companion. At this period she married, removed with her husband (a
+clergyman, an excellent man, almost worthy of such a wife) to a distant
+county, and consequently was lost to me.
+
+From the day she left I was no longer the same: with her was gone every
+settled feeling, every association that had made Lowood in some degree
+a home to me. I had imbibed from her something of her nature and much
+of her habits: more harmonious thoughts: what seemed better regulated
+feelings had become the inmates of my mind. I had given in allegiance
+to duty and order; I was quiet; I believed I was content: to the eyes
+of others, usually even to my own, I appeared a disciplined and subdued
+character.
+
+But destiny, in the shape of the Rev. Mr. Nasmyth, came between me and
+Miss Temple: I saw her in her travelling dress step into a post-chaise,
+shortly after the marriage ceremony; I watched the chaise mount the
+hill and disappear beyond its brow; and then retired to my own room,
+and there spent in solitude the greatest part of the half-holiday
+granted in honour of the occasion.
+
+I walked about the chamber most of the time. I imagined myself only to
+be regretting my loss, and thinking how to repair it; but when my
+reflections were concluded, and I looked up and found that the
+afternoon was gone, and evening far advanced, another discovery dawned
+on me, namely, that in the interval I had undergone a transforming
+process; that my mind had put off all it had borrowed of Miss Temple—or
+rather that she had taken with her the serene atmosphere I had been
+breathing in her vicinity—and that now I was left in my natural
+element, and beginning to feel the stirring of old emotions. It did not
+seem as if a prop were withdrawn, but rather as if a motive were gone:
+it was not the power to be tranquil which had failed me, but the reason
+for tranquillity was no more. My world had for some years been in
+Lowood: my experience had been of its rules and systems; now I
+remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of
+hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had
+courage to go forth into its expanse, to seek real knowledge of life
+amidst its perils.
+
+I went to my window, opened it, and looked out. There were the two
+wings of the building; there was the garden; there were the skirts of
+Lowood; there was the hilly horizon. My eye passed all other objects to
+rest on those most remote, the blue peaks; it was those I longed to
+surmount; all within their boundary of rock and heath seemed
+prison-ground, exile limits. I traced the white road winding round the
+base of one mountain, and vanishing in a gorge between two; how I
+longed to follow it farther! I recalled the time when I had travelled
+that very road in a coach; I remembered descending that hill at
+twilight; an age seemed to have elapsed since the day which brought me
+first to Lowood, and I had never quitted it since. My vacations had all
+been spent at school: Mrs. Reed had never sent for me to Gateshead;
+neither she nor any of her family had ever been to visit me. I had had
+no communication by letter or message with the outer world:
+school-rules, school-duties, school-habits and notions, and voices, and
+faces, and phrases, and costumes, and preferences, and antipathies—such
+was what I knew of existence. And now I felt that it was not enough; I
+tired of the routine of eight years in one afternoon. I desired
+liberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer; it
+seemed scattered on the wind then faintly blowing. I abandoned it and
+framed a humbler supplication; for change, stimulus: that petition,
+too, seemed swept off into vague space: “Then,” I cried, half
+desperate, “grant me at least a new servitude!”
+
+Here a bell, ringing the hour of supper, called me downstairs.
+
+I was not free to resume the interrupted chain of my reflections till
+bedtime: even then a teacher who occupied the same room with me kept me
+from the subject to which I longed to recur, by a prolonged effusion of
+small talk. How I wished sleep would silence her. It seemed as if,
+could I but go back to the idea which had last entered my mind as I
+stood at the window, some inventive suggestion would rise for my
+relief.
+
+Miss Gryce snored at last; she was a heavy Welshwoman, and till now her
+habitual nasal strains had never been regarded by me in any other light
+than as a nuisance; to-night I hailed the first deep notes with
+satisfaction; I was debarrassed of interruption; my half-effaced
+thought instantly revived.
+
+“A new servitude! There is something in that,” I soliloquised
+(mentally, be it understood; I did not talk aloud), “I know there is,
+because it does not sound too sweet; it is not like such words as
+Liberty, Excitement, Enjoyment: delightful sounds truly; but no more
+than sounds for me; and so hollow and fleeting that it is mere waste of
+time to listen to them. But Servitude! That must be matter of fact. Any
+one may serve: I have served here eight years; now all I want is to
+serve elsewhere. Can I not get so much of my own will? Is not the thing
+feasible? Yes—yes—the end is not so difficult; if I had only a brain
+active enough to ferret out the means of attaining it.”
+
+I sat up in bed by way of arousing this said brain: it was a chilly
+night; I covered my shoulders with a shawl, and then I proceeded _to
+think_ again with all my might.
+
+“What do I want? A new place, in a new house, amongst new faces, under
+new circumstances: I want this because it is of no use wanting anything
+better. How do people do to get a new place? They apply to friends, I
+suppose: I have no friends. There are many others who have no friends,
+who must look about for themselves and be their own helpers; and what
+is their resource?”
+
+I could not tell: nothing answered me; I then ordered my brain to find
+a response, and quickly. It worked and worked faster: I felt the pulses
+throb in my head and temples; but for nearly an hour it worked in
+chaos; and no result came of its efforts. Feverish with vain labour, I
+got up and took a turn in the room; undrew the curtain, noted a star or
+two, shivered with cold, and again crept to bed.
+
+A kind fairy, in my absence, had surely dropped the required suggestion
+on my pillow; for as I lay down, it came quietly and naturally to my
+mind:—“Those who want situations advertise; you must advertise in the
+_——shire Herald_.”
+
+“How? I know nothing about advertising.”
+
+Replies rose smooth and prompt now:—
+
+“You must enclose the advertisement and the money to pay for it under a
+cover directed to the editor of the _Herald_; you must put it, the
+first opportunity you have, into the post at Lowton; answers must be
+addressed to J.E., at the post-office there; you can go and inquire in
+about a week after you send your letter, if any are come, and act
+accordingly.”
+
+This scheme I went over twice, thrice; it was then digested in my mind;
+I had it in a clear practical form: I felt satisfied, and fell asleep.
+
+With earliest day, I was up: I had my advertisement written, enclosed,
+and directed before the bell rang to rouse the school; it ran thus:—
+
+“A young lady accustomed to tuition” (had I not been a teacher two
+years?) “is desirous of meeting with a situation in a private family
+where the children are under fourteen” (I thought that as I was barely
+eighteen, it would not do to undertake the guidance of pupils nearer my
+own age). “She is qualified to teach the usual branches of a good
+English education, together with French, Drawing, and Music” (in those
+days, reader, this now narrow catalogue of accomplishments, would have
+been held tolerably comprehensive). “Address, J.E., Post-office,
+Lowton, ——shire.”
+
+This document remained locked in my drawer all day: after tea, I asked
+leave of the new superintendent to go to Lowton, in order to perform
+some small commissions for myself and one or two of my fellow-teachers;
+permission was readily granted; I went. It was a walk of two miles, and
+the evening was wet, but the days were still long; I visited a shop or
+two, slipped the letter into the post-office, and came back through
+heavy rain, with streaming garments, but with a relieved heart.
+
+The succeeding week seemed long: it came to an end at last, however,
+like all sublunary things, and once more, towards the close of a
+pleasant autumn day, I found myself afoot on the road to Lowton. A
+picturesque track it was, by the way; lying along the side of the beck
+and through the sweetest curves of the dale: but that day I thought
+more of the letters, that might or might not be awaiting me at the
+little burgh whither I was bound, than of the charms of lea and water.
+
+My ostensible errand on this occasion was to get measured for a pair of
+shoes; so I discharged that business first, and when it was done, I
+stepped across the clean and quiet little street from the shoemaker’s
+to the post-office: it was kept by an old dame, who wore horn
+spectacles on her nose, and black mittens on her hands.
+
+“Are there any letters for J.E.?” I asked.
+
+She peered at me over her spectacles, and then she opened a drawer and
+fumbled among its contents for a long time, so long that my hopes began
+to falter. At last, having held a document before her glasses for
+nearly five minutes, she presented it across the counter, accompanying
+the act by another inquisitive and mistrustful glance—it was for J.E.
+
+“Is there only one?” I demanded.
+
+“There are no more,” said she; and I put it in my pocket and turned my
+face homeward: I could not open it then; rules obliged me to be back by
+eight, and it was already half-past seven.
+
+Various duties awaited me on my arrival: I had to sit with the girls
+during their hour of study; then it was my turn to read prayers; to see
+them to bed: afterwards I supped with the other teachers. Even when we
+finally retired for the night, the inevitable Miss Gryce was still my
+companion: we had only a short end of candle in our candlestick, and I
+dreaded lest she should talk till it was all burnt out; fortunately,
+however, the heavy supper she had eaten produced a soporific effect:
+she was already snoring before I had finished undressing. There still
+remained an inch of candle: I now took out my letter; the seal was an
+initial F.; I broke it; the contents were brief.
+
+“If J.E., who advertised in the _——shire Herald_ of last Thursday,
+possesses the acquirements mentioned, and if she is in a position to
+give satisfactory references as to character and competency, a
+situation can be offered her where there is but one pupil, a little
+girl, under ten years of age; and where the salary is thirty pounds per
+annum. J.E. is requested to send references, name, address, and all
+particulars to the direction:—
+
+“Mrs. Fairfax, Thornfield, near Millcote, ——shire.”
+
+I examined the document long: the writing was old-fashioned and rather
+uncertain, like that of an elderly lady. This circumstance was
+satisfactory: a private fear had haunted me, that in thus acting for
+myself, and by my own guidance, I ran the risk of getting into some
+scrape; and, above all things, I wished the result of my endeavours to
+be respectable, proper, _en règle_. I now felt that an elderly lady was
+no bad ingredient in the business I had on hand. Mrs. Fairfax! I saw
+her in a black gown and widow’s cap; frigid, perhaps, but not uncivil:
+a model of elderly English respectability. Thornfield! that, doubtless,
+was the name of her house: a neat orderly spot, I was sure; though I
+failed in my efforts to conceive a correct plan of the premises.
+Millcote, ——shire; I brushed up my recollections of the map of England;
+yes, I saw it; both the shire and the town. ——shire was seventy miles
+nearer London than the remote county where I now resided: that was a
+recommendation to me. I longed to go where there was life and movement:
+Millcote was a large manufacturing town on the banks of the A——: a busy
+place enough, doubtless: so much the better; it would be a complete
+change at least. Not that my fancy was much captivated by the idea of
+long chimneys and clouds of smoke—“but,” I argued, “Thornfield will,
+probably, be a good way from the town.”
+
+Here the socket of the candle dropped, and the wick went out.
+
+Next day new steps were to be taken; my plans could no longer be
+confined to my own breast; I must impart them in order to achieve their
+success. Having sought and obtained an audience of the superintendent
+during the noontide recreation, I told her I had a prospect of getting
+a new situation where the salary would be double what I now received
+(for at Lowood I only got £15 per annum); and requested she would break
+the matter for me to Mr. Brocklehurst, or some of the committee, and
+ascertain whether they would permit me to mention them as references.
+She obligingly consented to act as mediatrix in the matter. The next
+day she laid the affair before Mr. Brocklehurst, who said that Mrs.
+Reed must be written to, as she was my natural guardian. A note was
+accordingly addressed to that lady, who returned for answer, that “I
+might do as I pleased: she had long relinquished all interference in my
+affairs.” This note went the round of the committee, and at last, after
+what appeared to me most tedious delay, formal leave was given me to
+better my condition if I could; and an assurance added, that as I had
+always conducted myself well, both as teacher and pupil, at Lowood, a
+testimonial of character and capacity, signed by the inspectors of that
+institution, should forthwith be furnished me.
+
+This testimonial I accordingly received in about a month, forwarded a
+copy of it to Mrs. Fairfax, and got that lady’s reply, stating that she
+was satisfied, and fixing that day fortnight as the period for my
+assuming the post of governess in her house.
+
+I now busied myself in preparations: the fortnight passed rapidly. I
+had not a very large wardrobe, though it was adequate to my wants; and
+the last day sufficed to pack my trunk,—the same I had brought with me
+eight years ago from Gateshead.
+
+The box was corded, the card nailed on. In half-an-hour the carrier was
+to call for it to take it to Lowton, whither I myself was to repair at
+an early hour the next morning to meet the coach. I had brushed my
+black stuff travelling-dress, prepared my bonnet, gloves, and muff;
+sought in all my drawers to see that no article was left behind; and
+now having nothing more to do, I sat down and tried to rest. I could
+not; though I had been on foot all day, I could not now repose an
+instant; I was too much excited. A phase of my life was closing
+to-night, a new one opening to-morrow: impossible to slumber in the
+interval; I must watch feverishly while the change was being
+accomplished.
+
+“Miss,” said a servant who met me in the lobby, where I was wandering
+like a troubled spirit, “a person below wishes to see you.”
+
+“The carrier, no doubt,” I thought, and ran downstairs without inquiry.
+I was passing the back-parlour or teachers’ sitting-room, the door of
+which was half open, to go to the kitchen, when some one ran out—
+
+“It’s her, I am sure!—I could have told her anywhere!” cried the
+individual who stopped my progress and took my hand.
+
+I looked: I saw a woman attired like a well-dressed servant, matronly,
+yet still young; very good-looking, with black hair and eyes, and
+lively complexion.
+
+“Well, who is it?” she asked, in a voice and with a smile I half
+recognised; “you’ve not quite forgotten me, I think, Miss Jane?”
+
+In another second I was embracing and kissing her rapturously: “Bessie!
+Bessie! Bessie!” that was all I said; whereat she half laughed, half
+cried, and we both went into the parlour. By the fire stood a little
+fellow of three years old, in plaid frock and trousers.
+
+“That is my little boy,” said Bessie directly.
+
+“Then you are married, Bessie?”
+
+“Yes; nearly five years since to Robert Leaven, the coachman; and I’ve
+a little girl besides Bobby there, that I’ve christened Jane.”
+
+“And you don’t live at Gateshead?”
+
+“I live at the lodge: the old porter has left.”
+
+“Well, and how do they all get on? Tell me everything about them,
+Bessie: but sit down first; and, Bobby, come and sit on my knee, will
+you?” but Bobby preferred sidling over to his mother.
+
+“You’re not grown so very tall, Miss Jane, nor so very stout,”
+continued Mrs. Leaven. “I dare say they’ve not kept you too well at
+school: Miss Reed is the head and shoulders taller than you are; and
+Miss Georgiana would make two of you in breadth.”
+
+“Georgiana is handsome, I suppose, Bessie?”
+
+“Very. She went up to London last winter with her mama, and there
+everybody admired her, and a young lord fell in love with her: but his
+relations were against the match; and—what do you think?—he and Miss
+Georgiana made it up to run away; but they were found out and stopped.
+It was Miss Reed that found them out: I believe she was envious; and
+now she and her sister lead a cat and dog life together; they are
+always quarrelling—”
+
+“Well, and what of John Reed?”
+
+“Oh, he is not doing so well as his mama could wish. He went to
+college, and he got—plucked, I think they call it: and then his uncles
+wanted him to be a barrister, and study the law: but he is such a
+dissipated young man, they will never make much of him, I think.”
+
+“What does he look like?”
+
+“He is very tall: some people call him a fine-looking young man; but he
+has such thick lips.”
+
+“And Mrs. Reed?”
+
+“Missis looks stout and well enough in the face, but I think she’s not
+quite easy in her mind: Mr. John’s conduct does not please her—he
+spends a deal of money.”
+
+“Did she send you here, Bessie?”
+
+“No, indeed: but I have long wanted to see you, and when I heard that
+there had been a letter from you, and that you were going to another
+part of the country, I thought I’d just set off, and get a look at you
+before you were quite out of my reach.”
+
+“I am afraid you are disappointed in me, Bessie.” I said this laughing:
+I perceived that Bessie’s glance, though it expressed regard, did in no
+shape denote admiration.
+
+“No, Miss Jane, not exactly: you are genteel enough; you look like a
+lady, and it is as much as ever I expected of you: you were no beauty
+as a child.”
+
+I smiled at Bessie’s frank answer: I felt that it was correct, but I
+confess I was not quite indifferent to its import: at eighteen most
+people wish to please, and the conviction that they have not an
+exterior likely to second that desire brings anything but
+gratification.
+
+“I dare say you are clever, though,” continued Bessie, by way of
+solace. “What can you do? Can you play on the piano?”
+
+“A little.”
+
+There was one in the room; Bessie went and opened it, and then asked me
+to sit down and give her a tune: I played a waltz or two, and she was
+charmed.
+
+“The Miss Reeds could not play as well!” said she exultingly. “I always
+said you would surpass them in learning: and can you draw?”
+
+“That is one of my paintings over the chimney-piece.” It was a
+landscape in water colours, of which I had made a present to the
+superintendent, in acknowledgment of her obliging mediation with the
+committee on my behalf, and which she had framed and glazed.
+
+“Well, that is beautiful, Miss Jane! It is as fine a picture as any
+Miss Reed’s drawing-master could paint, let alone the young ladies
+themselves, who could not come near it: and have you learnt French?”
+
+“Yes, Bessie, I can both read it and speak it.”
+
+“And you can work on muslin and canvas?”
+
+“I can.”
+
+“Oh, you are quite a lady, Miss Jane! I knew you would be: you will get
+on whether your relations notice you or not. There was something I
+wanted to ask you. Have you ever heard anything from your father’s
+kinsfolk, the Eyres?”
+
+“Never in my life.”
+
+“Well, you know Missis always said they were poor and quite despicable:
+and they may be poor; but I believe they are as much gentry as the
+Reeds are; for one day, nearly seven years ago, a Mr. Eyre came to
+Gateshead and wanted to see you; Missis said you were at school fifty
+miles off; he seemed so much disappointed, for he could not stay: he
+was going on a voyage to a foreign country, and the ship was to sail
+from London in a day or two. He looked quite a gentleman, and I believe
+he was your father’s brother.”
+
+“What foreign country was he going to, Bessie?”
+
+“An island thousands of miles off, where they make wine—the butler did
+tell me—”
+
+“Madeira?” I suggested.
+
+“Yes, that is it—that is the very word.”
+
+“So he went?”
+
+“Yes; he did not stay many minutes in the house: Missis was very high
+with him; she called him afterwards a ‘sneaking tradesman.’ My Robert
+believes he was a wine-merchant.”
+
+“Very likely,” I returned; “or perhaps clerk or agent to a
+wine-merchant.”
+
+Bessie and I conversed about old times an hour longer, and then she was
+obliged to leave me: I saw her again for a few minutes the next morning
+at Lowton, while I was waiting for the coach. We parted finally at the
+door of the Brocklehurst Arms there: each went her separate way; she
+set off for the brow of Lowood Fell to meet the conveyance which was to
+take her back to Gateshead, I mounted the vehicle which was to bear me
+to new duties and a new life in the unknown environs of Millcote.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+A new chapter in a novel is something like a new scene in a play; and
+when I draw up the curtain this time, reader, you must fancy you see a
+room in the George Inn at Millcote, with such large figured papering on
+the walls as inn rooms have; such a carpet, such furniture, such
+ornaments on the mantelpiece, such prints, including a portrait of
+George the Third, and another of the Prince of Wales, and a
+representation of the death of Wolfe. All this is visible to you by the
+light of an oil lamp hanging from the ceiling, and by that of an
+excellent fire, near which I sit in my cloak and bonnet; my muff and
+umbrella lie on the table, and I am warming away the numbness and chill
+contracted by sixteen hours’ exposure to the rawness of an October day:
+I left Lowton at four o’clock A.M., and the Millcote town clock is now
+just striking eight.
+
+Reader, though I look comfortably accommodated, I am not very tranquil
+in my mind. I thought when the coach stopped here there would be some
+one to meet me; I looked anxiously round as I descended the wooden
+steps the “boots” placed for my convenience, expecting to hear my name
+pronounced, and to see some description of carriage waiting to convey
+me to Thornfield. Nothing of the sort was visible; and when I asked a
+waiter if any one had been to inquire after a Miss Eyre, I was answered
+in the negative: so I had no resource but to request to be shown into a
+private room: and here I am waiting, while all sorts of doubts and
+fears are troubling my thoughts.
+
+It is a very strange sensation to inexperienced youth to feel itself
+quite alone in the world, cut adrift from every connection, uncertain
+whether the port to which it is bound can be reached, and prevented by
+many impediments from returning to that it has quitted. The charm of
+adventure sweetens that sensation, the glow of pride warms it; but then
+the throb of fear disturbs it; and fear with me became predominant when
+half-an-hour elapsed and still I was alone. I bethought myself to ring
+the bell.
+
+“Is there a place in this neighbourhood called Thornfield?” I asked of
+the waiter who answered the summons.
+
+“Thornfield? I don’t know, ma’am; I’ll inquire at the bar.” He
+vanished, but reappeared instantly—
+
+“Is your name Eyre, Miss?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Person here waiting for you.”
+
+I jumped up, took my muff and umbrella, and hastened into the
+inn-passage: a man was standing by the open door, and in the lamp-lit
+street I dimly saw a one-horse conveyance.
+
+“This will be your luggage, I suppose?” said the man rather abruptly
+when he saw me, pointing to my trunk in the passage.
+
+“Yes.” He hoisted it on to the vehicle, which was a sort of car, and
+then I got in; before he shut me up, I asked him how far it was to
+Thornfield.
+
+“A matter of six miles.”
+
+“How long shall we be before we get there?”
+
+“Happen an hour and a half.”
+
+He fastened the car door, climbed to his own seat outside, and we set
+off. Our progress was leisurely, and gave me ample time to reflect; I
+was content to be at length so near the end of my journey; and as I
+leaned back in the comfortable though not elegant conveyance, I
+meditated much at my ease.
+
+“I suppose,” thought I, “judging from the plainness of the servant and
+carriage, Mrs. Fairfax is not a very dashing person: so much the
+better; I never lived amongst fine people but once, and I was very
+miserable with them. I wonder if she lives alone except this little
+girl; if so, and if she is in any degree amiable, I shall surely be
+able to get on with her; I will do my best; it is a pity that doing
+one’s best does not always answer. At Lowood, indeed, I took that
+resolution, kept it, and succeeded in pleasing; but with Mrs. Reed, I
+remember my best was always spurned with scorn. I pray God Mrs. Fairfax
+may not turn out a second Mrs. Reed; but if she does, I am not bound to
+stay with her! let the worst come to the worst, I can advertise again.
+How far are we on our road now, I wonder?”
+
+I let down the window and looked out; Millcote was behind us; judging
+by the number of its lights, it seemed a place of considerable
+magnitude, much larger than Lowton. We were now, as far as I could see,
+on a sort of common; but there were houses scattered all over the
+district; I felt we were in a different region to Lowood, more
+populous, less picturesque; more stirring, less romantic.
+
+The roads were heavy, the night misty; my conductor let his horse walk
+all the way, and the hour and a half extended, I verily believe, to two
+hours; at last he turned in his seat and said—
+
+“You’re noan so far fro’ Thornfield now.”
+
+Again I looked out: we were passing a church; I saw its low broad tower
+against the sky, and its bell was tolling a quarter; I saw a narrow
+galaxy of lights too, on a hillside, marking a village or hamlet. About
+ten minutes after, the driver got down and opened a pair of gates: we
+passed through, and they clashed to behind us. We now slowly ascended a
+drive, and came upon the long front of a house: candlelight gleamed
+from one curtained bow-window; all the rest were dark. The car stopped
+at the front door; it was opened by a maid-servant; I alighted and went
+in.
+
+“Will you walk this way, ma’am?” said the girl; and I followed her
+across a square hall with high doors all round: she ushered me into a
+room whose double illumination of fire and candle at first dazzled me,
+contrasting as it did with the darkness to which my eyes had been for
+two hours inured; when I could see, however, a cosy and agreeable
+picture presented itself to my view.
+
+A snug small room; a round table by a cheerful fire; an arm-chair
+high-backed and old-fashioned, wherein sat the neatest imaginable
+little elderly lady, in widow’s cap, black silk gown, and snowy muslin
+apron; exactly like what I had fancied Mrs. Fairfax, only less stately
+and milder looking. She was occupied in knitting; a large cat sat
+demurely at her feet; nothing in short was wanting to complete the
+beau-ideal of domestic comfort. A more reassuring introduction for a
+new governess could scarcely be conceived; there was no grandeur to
+overwhelm, no stateliness to embarrass; and then, as I entered, the old
+lady got up and promptly and kindly came forward to meet me.
+
+“How do you do, my dear? I am afraid you have had a tedious ride; John
+drives so slowly; you must be cold, come to the fire.”
+
+“Mrs. Fairfax, I suppose?” said I.
+
+“Yes, you are right: do sit down.”
+
+She conducted me to her own chair, and then began to remove my shawl
+and untie my bonnet-strings; I begged she would not give herself so
+much trouble.
+
+“Oh, it is no trouble; I dare say your own hands are almost numbed with
+cold. Leah, make a little hot negus and cut a sandwich or two: here are
+the keys of the storeroom.”
+
+And she produced from her pocket a most housewifely bunch of keys, and
+delivered them to the servant.
+
+“Now, then, draw nearer to the fire,” she continued. “You’ve brought
+your luggage with you, haven’t you, my dear?”
+
+“Yes, ma’am.”
+
+“I’ll see it carried into your room,” she said, and bustled out.
+
+“She treats me like a visitor,” thought I. “I little expected such a
+reception; I anticipated only coldness and stiffness: this is not like
+what I have heard of the treatment of governesses; but I must not exult
+too soon.”
+
+She returned; with her own hands cleared her knitting apparatus and a
+book or two from the table, to make room for the tray which Leah now
+brought, and then herself handed me the refreshments. I felt rather
+confused at being the object of more attention than I had ever before
+received, and, that too, shown by my employer and superior; but as she
+did not herself seem to consider she was doing anything out of her
+place, I thought it better to take her civilities quietly.
+
+“Shall I have the pleasure of seeing Miss Fairfax to-night?” I asked,
+when I had partaken of what she offered me.
+
+“What did you say, my dear? I am a little deaf,” returned the good
+lady, approaching her ear to my mouth.
+
+I repeated the question more distinctly.
+
+“Miss Fairfax? Oh, you mean Miss Varens! Varens is the name of your
+future pupil.”
+
+“Indeed! Then she is not your daughter?”
+
+“No,—I have no family.”
+
+I should have followed up my first inquiry, by asking in what way Miss
+Varens was connected with her; but I recollected it was not polite to
+ask too many questions: besides, I was sure to hear in time.
+
+“I am so glad,” she continued, as she sat down opposite to me, and took
+the cat on her knee; “I am so glad you are come; it will be quite
+pleasant living here now with a companion. To be sure it is pleasant at
+any time; for Thornfield is a fine old hall, rather neglected of late
+years perhaps, but still it is a respectable place; yet you know in
+winter-time one feels dreary quite alone in the best quarters. I say
+alone—Leah is a nice girl to be sure, and John and his wife are very
+decent people; but then you see they are only servants, and one can’t
+converse with them on terms of equality: one must keep them at due
+distance, for fear of losing one’s authority. I’m sure last winter (it
+was a very severe one, if you recollect, and when it did not snow, it
+rained and blew), not a creature but the butcher and postman came to
+the house, from November till February; and I really got quite
+melancholy with sitting night after night alone; I had Leah in to read
+to me sometimes; but I don’t think the poor girl liked the task much:
+she felt it confining. In spring and summer one got on better: sunshine
+and long days make such a difference; and then, just at the
+commencement of this autumn, little Adela Varens came and her nurse: a
+child makes a house alive all at once; and now you are here I shall be
+quite gay.”
+
+My heart really warmed to the worthy lady as I heard her talk; and I
+drew my chair a little nearer to her, and expressed my sincere wish
+that she might find my company as agreeable as she anticipated.
+
+“But I’ll not keep you sitting up late to-night,” said she; “it is on
+the stroke of twelve now, and you have been travelling all day: you
+must feel tired. If you have got your feet well warmed, I’ll show you
+your bedroom. I’ve had the room next to mine prepared for you; it is
+only a small apartment, but I thought you would like it better than one
+of the large front chambers: to be sure they have finer furniture, but
+they are so dreary and solitary, I never sleep in them myself.”
+
+I thanked her for her considerate choice, and as I really felt fatigued
+with my long journey, expressed my readiness to retire. She took her
+candle, and I followed her from the room. First she went to see if the
+hall-door was fastened; having taken the key from the lock, she led the
+way upstairs. The steps and banisters were of oak; the staircase window
+was high and latticed; both it and the long gallery into which the
+bedroom doors opened looked as if they belonged to a church rather than
+a house. A very chill and vault-like air pervaded the stairs and
+gallery, suggesting cheerless ideas of space and solitude; and I was
+glad, when finally ushered into my chamber, to find it of small
+dimensions, and furnished in ordinary, modern style.
+
+When Mrs. Fairfax had bidden me a kind good-night, and I had fastened
+my door, gazed leisurely round, and in some measure effaced the eerie
+impression made by that wide hall, that dark and spacious staircase,
+and that long, cold gallery, by the livelier aspect of my little room,
+I remembered that, after a day of bodily fatigue and mental anxiety, I
+was now at last in safe haven. The impulse of gratitude swelled my
+heart, and I knelt down at the bedside, and offered up thanks where
+thanks were due; not forgetting, ere I rose, to implore aid on my
+further path, and the power of meriting the kindness which seemed so
+frankly offered me before it was earned. My couch had no thorns in it
+that night; my solitary room no fears. At once weary and content, I
+slept soon and soundly: when I awoke it was broad day.
+
+The chamber looked such a bright little place to me as the sun shone in
+between the gay blue chintz window curtains, showing papered walls and
+a carpeted floor, so unlike the bare planks and stained plaster of
+Lowood, that my spirits rose at the view. Externals have a great effect
+on the young: I thought that a fairer era of life was beginning for me,
+one that was to have its flowers and pleasures, as well as its thorns
+and toils. My faculties, roused by the change of scene, the new field
+offered to hope, seemed all astir. I cannot precisely define what they
+expected, but it was something pleasant: not perhaps that day or that
+month, but at an indefinite future period.
+
+I rose; I dressed myself with care: obliged to be plain—for I had no
+article of attire that was not made with extreme simplicity—I was still
+by nature solicitous to be neat. It was not my habit to be disregardful
+of appearance or careless of the impression I made: on the contrary, I
+ever wished to look as well as I could, and to please as much as my
+want of beauty would permit. I sometimes regretted that I was not
+handsomer; I sometimes wished to have rosy cheeks, a straight nose, and
+small cherry mouth; I desired to be tall, stately, and finely developed
+in figure; I felt it a misfortune that I was so little, so pale, and
+had features so irregular and so marked. And why had I these
+aspirations and these regrets? It would be difficult to say: I could
+not then distinctly say it to myself; yet I had a reason, and a
+logical, natural reason too. However, when I had brushed my hair very
+smooth, and put on my black frock—which, Quakerlike as it was, at least
+had the merit of fitting to a nicety—and adjusted my clean white
+tucker, I thought I should do respectably enough to appear before Mrs.
+Fairfax, and that my new pupil would not at least recoil from me with
+antipathy. Having opened my chamber window, and seen that I left all
+things straight and neat on the toilet table, I ventured forth.
+
+Traversing the long and matted gallery, I descended the slippery steps
+of oak; then I gained the hall: I halted there a minute; I looked at
+some pictures on the walls (one, I remember, represented a grim man in
+a cuirass, and one a lady with powdered hair and a pearl necklace), at
+a bronze lamp pendent from the ceiling, at a great clock whose case was
+of oak curiously carved, and ebon black with time and rubbing.
+Everything appeared very stately and imposing to me; but then I was so
+little accustomed to grandeur. The hall-door, which was half of glass,
+stood open; I stepped over the threshold. It was a fine autumn morning;
+the early sun shone serenely on embrowned groves and still green
+fields; advancing on to the lawn, I looked up and surveyed the front of
+the mansion. It was three storeys high, of proportions not vast, though
+considerable: a gentleman’s manor-house, not a nobleman’s seat:
+battlements round the top gave it a picturesque look. Its grey front
+stood out well from the background of a rookery, whose cawing tenants
+were now on the wing: they flew over the lawn and grounds to alight in
+a great meadow, from which these were separated by a sunk fence, and
+where an array of mighty old thorn trees, strong, knotty, and broad as
+oaks, at once explained the etymology of the mansion’s designation.
+Farther off were hills: not so lofty as those round Lowood, nor so
+craggy, nor so like barriers of separation from the living world; but
+yet quiet and lonely hills enough, and seeming to embrace Thornfield
+with a seclusion I had not expected to find existent so near the
+stirring locality of Millcote. A little hamlet, whose roofs were blent
+with trees, straggled up the side of one of these hills; the church of
+the district stood nearer Thornfield: its old tower-top looked over a
+knoll between the house and gates.
+
+I was yet enjoying the calm prospect and pleasant fresh air, yet
+listening with delight to the cawing of the rooks, yet surveying the
+wide, hoary front of the hall, and thinking what a great place it was
+for one lonely little dame like Mrs. Fairfax to inhabit, when that lady
+appeared at the door.
+
+“What! out already?” said she. “I see you are an early riser.” I went
+up to her, and was received with an affable kiss and shake of the hand.
+
+“How do you like Thornfield?” she asked. I told her I liked it very
+much.
+
+“Yes,” she said, “it is a pretty place; but I fear it will be getting
+out of order, unless Mr. Rochester should take it into his head to come
+and reside here permanently; or, at least, visit it rather oftener:
+great houses and fine grounds require the presence of the proprietor.”
+
+“Mr. Rochester!” I exclaimed. “Who is he?”
+
+“The owner of Thornfield,” she responded quietly. “Did you not know he
+was called Rochester?”
+
+Of course I did not—I had never heard of him before; but the old lady
+seemed to regard his existence as a universally understood fact, with
+which everybody must be acquainted by instinct.
+
+“I thought,” I continued, “Thornfield belonged to you.”
+
+“To me? Bless you, child; what an idea! To me! I am only the
+housekeeper—the manager. To be sure I am distantly related to the
+Rochesters by the mother’s side, or at least my husband was; he was a
+clergyman, incumbent of Hay—that little village yonder on the hill—and
+that church near the gates was his. The present Mr. Rochester’s mother
+was a Fairfax, and second cousin to my husband: but I never presume on
+the connection—in fact, it is nothing to me; I consider myself quite in
+the light of an ordinary housekeeper: my employer is always civil, and
+I expect nothing more.”
+
+“And the little girl—my pupil!”
+
+“She is Mr. Rochester’s ward; he commissioned me to find a governess
+for her. He intended to have her brought up in ——shire, I believe. Here
+she comes, with her ‘bonne,’ as she calls her nurse.” The enigma then
+was explained: this affable and kind little widow was no great dame;
+but a dependent like myself. I did not like her the worse for that; on
+the contrary, I felt better pleased than ever. The equality between her
+and me was real; not the mere result of condescension on her part: so
+much the better—my position was all the freer.
+
+As I was meditating on this discovery, a little girl, followed by her
+attendant, came running up the lawn. I looked at my pupil, who did not
+at first appear to notice me: she was quite a child, perhaps seven or
+eight years old, slightly built, with a pale, small-featured face, and
+a redundancy of hair falling in curls to her waist.
+
+“Good morning, Miss Adela,” said Mrs. Fairfax. “Come and speak to the
+lady who is to teach you, and to make you a clever woman some day.” She
+approached.
+
+“C’est là ma gouvernante!” said she, pointing to me, and addressing her
+nurse; who answered—
+
+“Mais oui, certainement.”
+
+“Are they foreigners?” I inquired, amazed at hearing the French
+language.
+
+“The nurse is a foreigner, and Adela was born on the Continent; and, I
+believe, never left it till within six months ago. When she first came
+here she could speak no English; now she can make shift to talk it a
+little: I don’t understand her, she mixes it so with French; but you
+will make out her meaning very well, I dare say.”
+
+Fortunately I had had the advantage of being taught French by a French
+lady; and as I had always made a point of conversing with Madame
+Pierrot as often as I could, and had besides, during the last seven
+years, learnt a portion of French by heart daily—applying myself to
+take pains with my accent, and imitating as closely as possible the
+pronunciation of my teacher, I had acquired a certain degree of
+readiness and correctness in the language, and was not likely to be
+much at a loss with Mademoiselle Adela. She came and shook hands with
+me when she heard that I was her governess; and as I led her in to
+breakfast, I addressed some phrases to her in her own tongue: she
+replied briefly at first, but after we were seated at the table, and
+she had examined me some ten minutes with her large hazel eyes, she
+suddenly commenced chattering fluently.
+
+“Ah!” cried she, in French, “you speak my language as well as Mr.
+Rochester does: I can talk to you as I can to him, and so can Sophie.
+She will be glad: nobody here understands her: Madame Fairfax is all
+English. Sophie is my nurse; she came with me over the sea in a great
+ship with a chimney that smoked—how it did smoke!—and I was sick, and
+so was Sophie, and so was Mr. Rochester. Mr. Rochester lay down on a
+sofa in a pretty room called the salon, and Sophie and I had little
+beds in another place. I nearly fell out of mine; it was like a shelf.
+And Mademoiselle—what is your name?”
+
+“Eyre—Jane Eyre.”
+
+“Aire? Bah! I cannot say it. Well, our ship stopped in the morning,
+before it was quite daylight, at a great city—a huge city, with very
+dark houses and all smoky; not at all like the pretty clean town I came
+from; and Mr. Rochester carried me in his arms over a plank to the
+land, and Sophie came after, and we all got into a coach, which took us
+to a beautiful large house, larger than this and finer, called an
+hotel. We stayed there nearly a week: I and Sophie used to walk every
+day in a great green place full of trees, called the Park; and there
+were many children there besides me, and a pond with beautiful birds in
+it, that I fed with crumbs.”
+
+“Can you understand her when she runs on so fast?” asked Mrs. Fairfax.
+
+I understood her very well, for I had been accustomed to the fluent
+tongue of Madame Pierrot.
+
+“I wish,” continued the good lady, “you would ask her a question or two
+about her parents: I wonder if she remembers them?”
+
+“Adèle,” I inquired, “with whom did you live when you were in that
+pretty clean town you spoke of?”
+
+“I lived long ago with mama; but she is gone to the Holy Virgin. Mama
+used to teach me to dance and sing, and to say verses. A great many
+gentlemen and ladies came to see mama, and I used to dance before them,
+or to sit on their knees and sing to them: I liked it. Shall I let you
+hear me sing now?”
+
+She had finished her breakfast, so I permitted her to give a specimen
+of her accomplishments. Descending from her chair, she came and placed
+herself on my knee; then, folding her little hands demurely before her,
+shaking back her curls and lifting her eyes to the ceiling, she
+commenced singing a song from some opera. It was the strain of a
+forsaken lady, who, after bewailing the perfidy of her lover, calls
+pride to her aid; desires her attendant to deck her in her brightest
+jewels and richest robes, and resolves to meet the false one that night
+at a ball, and prove to him, by the gaiety of her demeanour, how little
+his desertion has affected her.
+
+The subject seemed strangely chosen for an infant singer; but I suppose
+the point of the exhibition lay in hearing the notes of love and
+jealousy warbled with the lisp of childhood; and in very bad taste that
+point was: at least I thought so.
+
+Adèle sang the canzonette tunefully enough, and with the _naïveté_ of
+her age. This achieved, she jumped from my knee and said, “Now,
+Mademoiselle, I will repeat you some poetry.”
+
+Assuming an attitude, she began, “La Ligue des Rats: fable de La
+Fontaine.” She then declaimed the little piece with an attention to
+punctuation and emphasis, a flexibility of voice and an appropriateness
+of gesture, very unusual indeed at her age, and which proved she had
+been carefully trained.
+
+“Was it your mama who taught you that piece?” I asked.
+
+“Yes, and she just used to say it in this way: ‘Qu’avez vous donc? lui
+dit un de ces rats; parlez!’ She made me lift my hand—so—to remind me
+to raise my voice at the question. Now shall I dance for you?”
+
+“No, that will do: but after your mama went to the Holy Virgin, as you
+say, with whom did you live then?”
+
+“With Madame Frédéric and her husband: she took care of me, but she is
+nothing related to me. I think she is poor, for she had not so fine a
+house as mama. I was not long there. Mr. Rochester asked me if I would
+like to go and live with him in England, and I said yes; for I knew Mr.
+Rochester before I knew Madame Frédéric, and he was always kind to me
+and gave me pretty dresses and toys: but you see he has not kept his
+word, for he has brought me to England, and now he is gone back again
+himself, and I never see him.”
+
+After breakfast, Adèle and I withdrew to the library, which room, it
+appears, Mr. Rochester had directed should be used as the schoolroom.
+Most of the books were locked up behind glass doors; but there was one
+bookcase left open containing everything that could be needed in the
+way of elementary works, and several volumes of light literature,
+poetry, biography, travels, a few romances, &c. I suppose he had
+considered that these were all the governess would require for her
+private perusal; and, indeed, they contented me amply for the present;
+compared with the scanty pickings I had now and then been able to glean
+at Lowood, they seemed to offer an abundant harvest of entertainment
+and information. In this room, too, there was a cabinet piano, quite
+new and of superior tone; also an easel for painting and a pair of
+globes.
+
+I found my pupil sufficiently docile, though disinclined to apply: she
+had not been used to regular occupation of any kind. I felt it would be
+injudicious to confine her too much at first; so, when I had talked to
+her a great deal, and got her to learn a little, and when the morning
+had advanced to noon, I allowed her to return to her nurse. I then
+proposed to occupy myself till dinner-time in drawing some little
+sketches for her use.
+
+As I was going upstairs to fetch my portfolio and pencils, Mrs. Fairfax
+called to me: “Your morning school-hours are over now, I suppose,” said
+she. She was in a room the folding-doors of which stood open: I went in
+when she addressed me. It was a large, stately apartment, with purple
+chairs and curtains, a Turkey carpet, walnut-panelled walls, one vast
+window rich in stained glass, and a lofty ceiling, nobly moulded. Mrs.
+Fairfax was dusting some vases of fine purple spar, which stood on a
+sideboard.
+
+“What a beautiful room!” I exclaimed, as I looked round; for I had
+never before seen any half so imposing.
+
+“Yes; this is the dining-room. I have just opened the window, to let in
+a little air and sunshine; for everything gets so damp in apartments
+that are seldom inhabited; the drawing-room yonder feels like a vault.”
+
+She pointed to a wide arch corresponding to the window, and hung like
+it with a Tyrian-dyed curtain, now looped up. Mounting to it by two
+broad steps, and looking through, I thought I caught a glimpse of a
+fairy place, so bright to my novice-eyes appeared the view beyond. Yet
+it was merely a very pretty drawing-room, and within it a boudoir, both
+spread with white carpets, on which seemed laid brilliant garlands of
+flowers; both ceiled with snowy mouldings of white grapes and
+vine-leaves, beneath which glowed in rich contrast crimson couches and
+ottomans; while the ornaments on the pale Parian mantelpiece were of
+sparkling Bohemian glass, ruby red; and between the windows large
+mirrors repeated the general blending of snow and fire.
+
+“In what order you keep these rooms, Mrs. Fairfax!” said I. “No dust,
+no canvas coverings: except that the air feels chilly, one would think
+they were inhabited daily.”
+
+“Why, Miss Eyre, though Mr. Rochester’s visits here are rare, they are
+always sudden and unexpected; and as I observed that it put him out to
+find everything swathed up, and to have a bustle of arrangement on his
+arrival, I thought it best to keep the rooms in readiness.”
+
+“Is Mr. Rochester an exacting, fastidious sort of man?”
+
+“Not particularly so; but he has a gentleman’s tastes and habits, and
+he expects to have things managed in conformity to them.”
+
+“Do you like him? Is he generally liked?”
+
+“Oh, yes; the family have always been respected here. Almost all the
+land in this neighbourhood, as far as you can see, has belonged to the
+Rochesters time out of mind.”
+
+“Well, but, leaving his land out of the question, do you like him? Is
+he liked for himself?”
+
+“_I_ have no cause to do otherwise than like him; and I believe he is
+considered a just and liberal landlord by his tenants: but he has never
+lived much amongst them.”
+
+“But has he no peculiarities? What, in short, is his character?”
+
+“Oh! his character is unimpeachable, I suppose. He is rather peculiar,
+perhaps: he has travelled a great deal, and seen a great deal of the
+world, I should think. I dare say he is clever, but I never had much
+conversation with him.”
+
+“In what way is he peculiar?”
+
+“I don’t know—it is not easy to describe—nothing striking, but you feel
+it when he speaks to you; you cannot be always sure whether he is in
+jest or earnest, whether he is pleased or the contrary; you don’t
+thoroughly understand him, in short—at least, I don’t: but it is of no
+consequence, he is a very good master.”
+
+This was all the account I got from Mrs. Fairfax of her employer and
+mine. There are people who seem to have no notion of sketching a
+character, or observing and describing salient points, either in
+persons or things: the good lady evidently belonged to this class; my
+queries puzzled, but did not draw her out. Mr. Rochester was Mr.
+Rochester in her eyes; a gentleman, a landed proprietor—nothing more:
+she inquired and searched no further, and evidently wondered at my wish
+to gain a more definite notion of his identity.
+
+When we left the dining-room, she proposed to show me over the rest of
+the house; and I followed her upstairs and downstairs, admiring as I
+went; for all was well arranged and handsome. The large front chambers
+I thought especially grand: and some of the third-storey rooms, though
+dark and low, were interesting from their air of antiquity. The
+furniture once appropriated to the lower apartments had from time to
+time been removed here, as fashions changed: and the imperfect light
+entering by their narrow casement showed bedsteads of a hundred years
+old; chests in oak or walnut, looking, with their strange carvings of
+palm branches and cherubs’ heads, like types of the Hebrew ark; rows of
+venerable chairs, high-backed and narrow; stools still more antiquated,
+on whose cushioned tops were yet apparent traces of half-effaced
+embroideries, wrought by fingers that for two generations had been
+coffin-dust. All these relics gave to the third storey of Thornfield
+Hall the aspect of a home of the past: a shrine of memory. I liked the
+hush, the gloom, the quaintness of these retreats in the day; but I by
+no means coveted a night’s repose on one of those wide and heavy beds:
+shut in, some of them, with doors of oak; shaded, others, with wrought
+old English hangings crusted with thick work, portraying effigies of
+strange flowers, and stranger birds, and strangest human beings,—all
+which would have looked strange, indeed, by the pallid gleam of
+moonlight.
+
+“Do the servants sleep in these rooms?” I asked.
+
+“No; they occupy a range of smaller apartments to the back; no one ever
+sleeps here: one would almost say that, if there were a ghost at
+Thornfield Hall, this would be its haunt.”
+
+“So I think: you have no ghost, then?”
+
+“None that I ever heard of,” returned Mrs. Fairfax, smiling.
+
+“Nor any traditions of one? no legends or ghost stories?”
+
+“I believe not. And yet it is said the Rochesters have been rather a
+violent than a quiet race in their time: perhaps, though, that is the
+reason they rest tranquilly in their graves now.”
+
+“Yes—‘after life’s fitful fever they sleep well,’” I muttered. “Where
+are you going now, Mrs. Fairfax?” for she was moving away.
+
+“On to the leads; will you come and see the view from thence?” I
+followed still, up a very narrow staircase to the attics, and thence by
+a ladder and through a trap-door to the roof of the hall. I was now on
+a level with the crow colony, and could see into their nests. Leaning
+over the battlements and looking far down, I surveyed the grounds laid
+out like a map: the bright and velvet lawn closely girdling the grey
+base of the mansion; the field, wide as a park, dotted with its ancient
+timber; the wood, dun and sere, divided by a path visibly overgrown,
+greener with moss than the trees were with foliage; the church at the
+gates, the road, the tranquil hills, all reposing in the autumn day’s
+sun; the horizon bounded by a propitious sky, azure, marbled with
+pearly white. No feature in the scene was extraordinary, but all was
+pleasing. When I turned from it and repassed the trap-door, I could
+scarcely see my way down the ladder; the attic seemed black as a vault
+compared with that arch of blue air to which I had been looking up, and
+to that sunlit scene of grove, pasture, and green hill, of which the
+hall was the centre, and over which I had been gazing with delight.
+
+Mrs. Fairfax stayed behind a moment to fasten the trap-door; I, by dint
+of groping, found the outlet from the attic, and proceeded to descend
+the narrow garret staircase. I lingered in the long passage to which
+this led, separating the front and back rooms of the third storey:
+narrow, low, and dim, with only one little window at the far end, and
+looking, with its two rows of small black doors all shut, like a
+corridor in some Bluebeard’s castle.
+
+While I paced softly on, the last sound I expected to hear in so still
+a region, a laugh, struck my ear. It was a curious laugh; distinct,
+formal, mirthless. I stopped: the sound ceased, only for an instant; it
+began again, louder: for at first, though distinct, it was very low. It
+passed off in a clamorous peal that seemed to wake an echo in every
+lonely chamber; though it originated but in one, and I could have
+pointed out the door whence the accents issued.
+
+“Mrs. Fairfax!” I called out: for I now heard her descending the great
+stairs. “Did you hear that loud laugh? Who is it?”
+
+“Some of the servants, very likely,” she answered: “perhaps Grace
+Poole.”
+
+“Did you hear it?” I again inquired.
+
+“Yes, plainly: I often hear her: she sews in one of these rooms.
+Sometimes Leah is with her; they are frequently noisy together.”
+
+The laugh was repeated in its low, syllabic tone, and terminated in an
+odd murmur.
+
+“Grace!” exclaimed Mrs. Fairfax.
+
+I really did not expect any Grace to answer; for the laugh was as
+tragic, as preternatural a laugh as any I ever heard; and, but that it
+was high noon, and that no circumstance of ghostliness accompanied the
+curious cachinnation; but that neither scene nor season favoured fear,
+I should have been superstitiously afraid. However, the event showed me
+I was a fool for entertaining a sense even of surprise.
+
+The door nearest me opened, and a servant came out,—a woman of between
+thirty and forty; a set, square-made figure, red-haired, and with a
+hard, plain face: any apparition less romantic or less ghostly could
+scarcely be conceived.
+
+“Too much noise, Grace,” said Mrs. Fairfax. “Remember directions!”
+Grace curtseyed silently and went in.
+
+“She is a person we have to sew and assist Leah in her housemaid’s
+work,” continued the widow; “not altogether unobjectionable in some
+points, but she does well enough. By-the-bye, how have you got on with
+your new pupil this morning?”
+
+The conversation, thus turned on Adèle, continued till we reached the
+light and cheerful region below. Adèle came running to meet us in the
+hall, exclaiming—
+
+“Mesdames, vous êtes servies!” adding, “J’ai bien faim, moi!”
+
+We found dinner ready, and waiting for us in Mrs. Fairfax’s room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+The promise of a smooth career, which my first calm introduction to
+Thornfield Hall seemed to pledge, was not belied on a longer
+acquaintance with the place and its inmates. Mrs. Fairfax turned out to
+be what she appeared, a placid-tempered, kind-natured woman, of
+competent education and average intelligence. My pupil was a lively
+child, who had been spoilt and indulged, and therefore was sometimes
+wayward; but as she was committed entirely to my care, and no
+injudicious interference from any quarter ever thwarted my plans for
+her improvement, she soon forgot her little freaks, and became obedient
+and teachable. She had no great talents, no marked traits of character,
+no peculiar development of feeling or taste which raised her one inch
+above the ordinary level of childhood; but neither had she any
+deficiency or vice which sunk her below it. She made reasonable
+progress, entertained for me a vivacious, though perhaps not very
+profound, affection; and by her simplicity, gay prattle, and efforts to
+please, inspired me, in return, with a degree of attachment sufficient
+to make us both content in each other’s society.
+
+This, _par parenthèse_, will be thought cool language by persons who
+entertain solemn doctrines about the angelic nature of children, and
+the duty of those charged with their education to conceive for them an
+idolatrous devotion: but I am not writing to flatter parental egotism,
+to echo cant, or prop up humbug; I am merely telling the truth. I felt
+a conscientious solicitude for Adèle’s welfare and progress, and a
+quiet liking for her little self: just as I cherished towards Mrs.
+Fairfax a thankfulness for her kindness, and a pleasure in her society
+proportionate to the tranquil regard she had for me, and the moderation
+of her mind and character.
+
+Anybody may blame me who likes, when I add further, that, now and then,
+when I took a walk by myself in the grounds; when I went down to the
+gates and looked through them along the road; or when, while Adèle
+played with her nurse, and Mrs. Fairfax made jellies in the storeroom,
+I climbed the three staircases, raised the trap-door of the attic, and
+having reached the leads, looked out afar over sequestered field and
+hill, and along dim sky-line—that then I longed for a power of vision
+which might overpass that limit; which might reach the busy world,
+towns, regions full of life I had heard of but never seen—that then I
+desired more of practical experience than I possessed; more of
+intercourse with my kind, of acquaintance with variety of character,
+than was here within my reach. I valued what was good in Mrs. Fairfax,
+and what was good in Adèle; but I believed in the existence of other
+and more vivid kinds of goodness, and what I believed in I wished to
+behold.
+
+Who blames me? Many, no doubt; and I shall be called discontented. I
+could not help it: the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to
+pain sometimes. Then my sole relief was to walk along the corridor of
+the third storey, backwards and forwards, safe in the silence and
+solitude of the spot, and allow my mind’s eye to dwell on whatever
+bright visions rose before it—and, certainly, they were many and
+glowing; to let my heart be heaved by the exultant movement, which,
+while it swelled it in trouble, expanded it with life; and, best of
+all, to open my inward ear to a tale that was never ended—a tale my
+imagination created, and narrated continuously; quickened with all of
+incident, life, fire, feeling, that I desired and had not in my actual
+existence.
+
+It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with
+tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they
+cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and
+millions are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how many
+rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life
+which people earth. Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but
+women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties,
+and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they
+suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely
+as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged
+fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making
+puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and
+embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them,
+if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced
+necessary for their sex.
+
+When thus alone, I not unfrequently heard Grace Poole’s laugh: the same
+peal, the same low, slow ha! ha! which, when first heard, had thrilled
+me: I heard, too, her eccentric murmurs; stranger than her laugh. There
+were days when she was quite silent; but there were others when I could
+not account for the sounds she made. Sometimes I saw her: she would
+come out of her room with a basin, or a plate, or a tray in her hand,
+go down to the kitchen and shortly return, generally (oh, romantic
+reader, forgive me for telling the plain truth!) bearing a pot of
+porter. Her appearance always acted as a damper to the curiosity raised
+by her oral oddities: hard-featured and staid, she had no point to
+which interest could attach. I made some attempts to draw her into
+conversation, but she seemed a person of few words: a monosyllabic
+reply usually cut short every effort of that sort.
+
+The other members of the household, viz., John and his wife, Leah the
+housemaid, and Sophie the French nurse, were decent people; but in no
+respect remarkable; with Sophie I used to talk French, and sometimes I
+asked her questions about her native country; but she was not of a
+descriptive or narrative turn, and generally gave such vapid and
+confused answers as were calculated rather to check than encourage
+inquiry.
+
+October, November, December passed away. One afternoon in January, Mrs.
+Fairfax had begged a holiday for Adèle, because she had a cold; and, as
+Adèle seconded the request with an ardour that reminded me how precious
+occasional holidays had been to me in my own childhood, I accorded it,
+deeming that I did well in showing pliability on the point. It was a
+fine, calm day, though very cold; I was tired of sitting still in the
+library through a whole long morning: Mrs. Fairfax had just written a
+letter which was waiting to be posted, so I put on my bonnet and cloak
+and volunteered to carry it to Hay; the distance, two miles, would be a
+pleasant winter afternoon walk. Having seen Adèle comfortably seated in
+her little chair by Mrs. Fairfax’s parlour fireside, and given her her
+best wax doll (which I usually kept enveloped in silver paper in a
+drawer) to play with, and a story-book for change of amusement; and
+having replied to her “Revenez bientôt, ma bonne amie, ma chère Mdlle.
+Jeannette,” with a kiss I set out.
+
+The ground was hard, the air was still, my road was lonely; I walked
+fast till I got warm, and then I walked slowly to enjoy and analyse the
+species of pleasure brooding for me in the hour and situation. It was
+three o’clock; the church bell tolled as I passed under the belfry: the
+charm of the hour lay in its approaching dimness, in the low-gliding
+and pale-beaming sun. I was a mile from Thornfield, in a lane noted for
+wild roses in summer, for nuts and blackberries in autumn, and even now
+possessing a few coral treasures in hips and haws, but whose best
+winter delight lay in its utter solitude and leafless repose. If a
+breath of air stirred, it made no sound here; for there was not a
+holly, not an evergreen to rustle, and the stripped hawthorn and hazel
+bushes were as still as the white, worn stones which causewayed the
+middle of the path. Far and wide, on each side, there were only fields,
+where no cattle now browsed; and the little brown birds, which stirred
+occasionally in the hedge, looked like single russet leaves that had
+forgotten to drop.
+
+This lane inclined up-hill all the way to Hay; having reached the
+middle, I sat down on a stile which led thence into a field. Gathering
+my mantle about me, and sheltering my hands in my muff, I did not feel
+the cold, though it froze keenly; as was attested by a sheet of ice
+covering the causeway, where a little brooklet, now congealed, had
+overflowed after a rapid thaw some days since. From my seat I could
+look down on Thornfield: the grey and battlemented hall was the
+principal object in the vale below me; its woods and dark rookery rose
+against the west. I lingered till the sun went down amongst the trees,
+and sank crimson and clear behind them. I then turned eastward.
+
+On the hill-top above me sat the rising moon; pale yet as a cloud, but
+brightening momentarily, she looked over Hay, which, half lost in
+trees, sent up a blue smoke from its few chimneys: it was yet a mile
+distant, but in the absolute hush I could hear plainly its thin murmurs
+of life. My ear, too, felt the flow of currents; in what dales and
+depths I could not tell: but there were many hills beyond Hay, and
+doubtless many becks threading their passes. That evening calm betrayed
+alike the tinkle of the nearest streams, the sough of the most remote.
+
+A rude noise broke on these fine ripplings and whisperings, at once so
+far away and so clear: a positive tramp, tramp, a metallic clatter,
+which effaced the soft wave-wanderings; as, in a picture, the solid
+mass of a crag, or the rough boles of a great oak, drawn in dark and
+strong on the foreground, efface the aërial distance of azure hill,
+sunny horizon, and blended clouds where tint melts into tint.
+
+The din was on the causeway: a horse was coming; the windings of the
+lane yet hid it, but it approached. I was just leaving the stile; yet,
+as the path was narrow, I sat still to let it go by. In those days I
+was young, and all sorts of fancies bright and dark tenanted my mind:
+the memories of nursery stories were there amongst other rubbish; and
+when they recurred, maturing youth added to them a vigour and vividness
+beyond what childhood could give. As this horse approached, and as I
+watched for it to appear through the dusk, I remembered certain of
+Bessie’s tales, wherein figured a North-of-England spirit called a
+“Gytrash,” which, in the form of horse, mule, or large dog, haunted
+solitary ways, and sometimes came upon belated travellers, as this
+horse was now coming upon me.
+
+It was very near, but not yet in sight; when, in addition to the tramp,
+tramp, I heard a rush under the hedge, and close down by the hazel
+stems glided a great dog, whose black and white colour made him a
+distinct object against the trees. It was exactly one form of Bessie’s
+Gytrash—a lion-like creature with long hair and a huge head: it passed
+me, however, quietly enough; not staying to look up, with strange
+pretercanine eyes, in my face, as I half expected it would. The horse
+followed,—a tall steed, and on its back a rider. The man, the human
+being, broke the spell at once. Nothing ever rode the Gytrash: it was
+always alone; and goblins, to my notions, though they might tenant the
+dumb carcasses of beasts, could scarce covet shelter in the commonplace
+human form. No Gytrash was this,—only a traveller taking the short cut
+to Millcote. He passed, and I went on; a few steps, and I turned: a
+sliding sound and an exclamation of “What the deuce is to do now?” and
+a clattering tumble, arrested my attention. Man and horse were down;
+they had slipped on the sheet of ice which glazed the causeway. The dog
+came bounding back, and seeing his master in a predicament, and hearing
+the horse groan, barked till the evening hills echoed the sound, which
+was deep in proportion to his magnitude. He snuffed round the prostrate
+group, and then he ran up to me; it was all he could do,—there was no
+other help at hand to summon. I obeyed him, and walked down to the
+traveller, by this time struggling himself free of his steed. His
+efforts were so vigorous, I thought he could not be much hurt; but I
+asked him the question—
+
+“Are you injured, sir?”
+
+I think he was swearing, but am not certain; however, he was
+pronouncing some formula which prevented him from replying to me
+directly.
+
+“Can I do anything?” I asked again.
+
+“You must just stand on one side,” he answered as he rose, first to his
+knees, and then to his feet. I did; whereupon began a heaving,
+stamping, clattering process, accompanied by a barking and baying which
+removed me effectually some yards’ distance; but I would not be driven
+quite away till I saw the event. This was finally fortunate; the horse
+was re-established, and the dog was silenced with a “Down, Pilot!” The
+traveller now, stooping, felt his foot and leg, as if trying whether
+they were sound; apparently something ailed them, for he halted to the
+stile whence I had just risen, and sat down.
+
+I was in the mood for being useful, or at least officious, I think, for
+I now drew near him again.
+
+“If you are hurt, and want help, sir, I can fetch some one either from
+Thornfield Hall or from Hay.”
+
+“Thank you: I shall do: I have no broken bones,—only a sprain;” and
+again he stood up and tried his foot, but the result extorted an
+involuntary “Ugh!”
+
+Something of daylight still lingered, and the moon was waxing bright: I
+could see him plainly. His figure was enveloped in a riding cloak, fur
+collared and steel clasped; its details were not apparent, but I traced
+the general points of middle height and considerable breadth of chest.
+He had a dark face, with stern features and a heavy brow; his eyes and
+gathered eyebrows looked ireful and thwarted just now; he was past
+youth, but had not reached middle-age; perhaps he might be thirty-five.
+I felt no fear of him, and but little shyness. Had he been a handsome,
+heroic-looking young gentleman, I should not have dared to stand thus
+questioning him against his will, and offering my services unasked. I
+had hardly ever seen a handsome youth; never in my life spoken to one.
+I had a theoretical reverence and homage for beauty, elegance,
+gallantry, fascination; but had I met those qualities incarnate in
+masculine shape, I should have known instinctively that they neither
+had nor could have sympathy with anything in me, and should have
+shunned them as one would fire, lightning, or anything else that is
+bright but antipathetic.
+
+If even this stranger had smiled and been good-humoured to me when I
+addressed him; if he had put off my offer of assistance gaily and with
+thanks, I should have gone on my way and not felt any vocation to renew
+inquiries: but the frown, the roughness of the traveller, set me at my
+ease: I retained my station when he waved to me to go, and announced—
+
+“I cannot think of leaving you, sir, at so late an hour, in this
+solitary lane, till I see you are fit to mount your horse.”
+
+He looked at me when I said this; he had hardly turned his eyes in my
+direction before.
+
+“I should think you ought to be at home yourself,” said he, “if you
+have a home in this neighbourhood: where do you come from?”
+
+“From just below; and I am not at all afraid of being out late when it
+is moonlight: I will run over to Hay for you with pleasure, if you wish
+it: indeed, I am going there to post a letter.”
+
+“You live just below—do you mean at that house with the battlements?”
+pointing to Thornfield Hall, on which the moon cast a hoary gleam,
+bringing it out distinct and pale from the woods that, by contrast with
+the western sky, now seemed one mass of shadow.
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Whose house is it?”
+
+“Mr. Rochester’s.”
+
+“Do you know Mr. Rochester?”
+
+“No, I have never seen him.”
+
+“He is not resident, then?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Can you tell me where he is?”
+
+“I cannot.”
+
+“You are not a servant at the hall, of course. You are—” He stopped,
+ran his eye over my dress, which, as usual, was quite simple: a black
+merino cloak, a black beaver bonnet; neither of them half fine enough
+for a lady’s-maid. He seemed puzzled to decide what I was; I helped
+him.
+
+“I am the governess.”
+
+“Ah, the governess!” he repeated; “deuce take me, if I had not
+forgotten! The governess!” and again my raiment underwent scrutiny. In
+two minutes he rose from the stile: his face expressed pain when he
+tried to move.
+
+“I cannot commission you to fetch help,” he said; “but you may help me
+a little yourself, if you will be so kind.”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“You have not an umbrella that I can use as a stick?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Try to get hold of my horse’s bridle and lead him to me: you are not
+afraid?”
+
+I should have been afraid to touch a horse when alone, but when told to
+do it, I was disposed to obey. I put down my muff on the stile, and
+went up to the tall steed; I endeavoured to catch the bridle, but it
+was a spirited thing, and would not let me come near its head; I made
+effort on effort, though in vain: meantime, I was mortally afraid of
+its trampling fore-feet. The traveller waited and watched for some
+time, and at last he laughed.
+
+
+I was mortally afraid of its trampling forefeet
+
+“I see,” he said, “the mountain will never be brought to Mahomet, so
+all you can do is to aid Mahomet to go to the mountain; I must beg of
+you to come here.”
+
+I came. “Excuse me,” he continued: “necessity compels me to make you
+useful.” He laid a heavy hand on my shoulder, and leaning on me with
+some stress, limped to his horse. Having once caught the bridle, he
+mastered it directly and sprang to his saddle; grimacing grimly as he
+made the effort, for it wrenched his sprain.
+
+“Now,” said he, releasing his under lip from a hard bite, “just hand me
+my whip; it lies there under the hedge.”
+
+I sought it and found it.
+
+“Thank you; now make haste with the letter to Hay, and return as fast
+as you can.”
+
+A touch of a spurred heel made his horse first start and rear, and then
+bound away; the dog rushed in his traces; all three vanished,
+
+“Like heath that, in the wilderness,
+    The wild wind whirls away.”
+
+
+I took up my muff and walked on. The incident had occurred and was gone
+for me: it _was_ an incident of no moment, no romance, no interest in a
+sense; yet it marked with change one single hour of a monotonous life.
+My help had been needed and claimed; I had given it: I was pleased to
+have done something; trivial, transitory though the deed was, it was
+yet an active thing, and I was weary of an existence all passive. The
+new face, too, was like a new picture introduced to the gallery of
+memory; and it was dissimilar to all the others hanging there: firstly,
+because it was masculine; and, secondly, because it was dark, strong,
+and stern. I had it still before me when I entered Hay, and slipped the
+letter into the post-office; I saw it as I walked fast down-hill all
+the way home. When I came to the stile, I stopped a minute, looked
+round and listened, with an idea that a horse’s hoofs might ring on the
+causeway again, and that a rider in a cloak, and a Gytrash-like
+Newfoundland dog, might be again apparent: I saw only the hedge and a
+pollard willow before me, rising up still and straight to meet the
+moonbeams; I heard only the faintest waft of wind roaming fitful among
+the trees round Thornfield, a mile distant; and when I glanced down in
+the direction of the murmur, my eye, traversing the hall-front, caught
+a light kindling in a window: it reminded me that I was late, and I
+hurried on.
+
+I did not like re-entering Thornfield. To pass its threshold was to
+return to stagnation; to cross the silent hall, to ascend the darksome
+staircase, to seek my own lonely little room, and then to meet tranquil
+Mrs. Fairfax, and spend the long winter evening with her, and her only,
+was to quell wholly the faint excitement wakened by my walk,—to slip
+again over my faculties the viewless fetters of an uniform and too
+still existence; of an existence whose very privileges of security and
+ease I was becoming incapable of appreciating. What good it would have
+done me at that time to have been tossed in the storms of an uncertain
+struggling life, and to have been taught by rough and bitter experience
+to long for the calm amidst which I now repined! Yes, just as much good
+as it would do a man tired of sitting still in a “too easy chair” to
+take a long walk: and just as natural was the wish to stir, under my
+circumstances, as it would be under his.
+
+I lingered at the gates; I lingered on the lawn; I paced backwards and
+forwards on the pavement; the shutters of the glass door were closed; I
+could not see into the interior; and both my eyes and spirit seemed
+drawn from the gloomy house—from the grey hollow filled with rayless
+cells, as it appeared to me—to that sky expanded before me,—a blue sea
+absolved from taint of cloud; the moon ascending it in solemn march;
+her orb seeming to look up as she left the hill-tops, from behind which
+she had come, far and farther below her, and aspired to the zenith,
+midnight dark in its fathomless depth and measureless distance; and for
+those trembling stars that followed her course; they made my heart
+tremble, my veins glow when I viewed them. Little things recall us to
+earth; the clock struck in the hall; that sufficed; I turned from moon
+and stars, opened a side-door, and went in.
+
+The hall was not dark, nor yet was it lit, only by the high-hung bronze
+lamp; a warm glow suffused both it and the lower steps of the oak
+staircase. This ruddy shine issued from the great dining-room, whose
+two-leaved door stood open, and showed a genial fire in the grate,
+glancing on marble hearth and brass fire-irons, and revealing purple
+draperies and polished furniture, in the most pleasant radiance. It
+revealed, too, a group near the mantelpiece: I had scarcely caught it,
+and scarcely become aware of a cheerful mingling of voices, amongst
+which I seemed to distinguish the tones of Adèle, when the door closed.
+
+I hastened to Mrs. Fairfax’s room; there was a fire there too, but no
+candle, and no Mrs. Fairfax. Instead, all alone, sitting upright on the
+rug, and gazing with gravity at the blaze, I beheld a great black and
+white long-haired dog, just like the Gytrash of the lane. It was so
+like it that I went forward and said—“Pilot,” and the thing got up and
+came to me and snuffed me. I caressed him, and he wagged his great
+tail; but he looked an eerie creature to be alone with, and I could not
+tell whence he had come. I rang the bell, for I wanted a candle; and I
+wanted, too, to get an account of this visitant. Leah entered.
+
+“What dog is this?”
+
+“He came with master.”
+
+“With whom?”
+
+“With master—Mr. Rochester—he is just arrived.”
+
+“Indeed! and is Mrs. Fairfax with him?”
+
+“Yes, and Miss Adèle; they are in the dining-room, and John is gone for
+a surgeon; for master has had an accident; his horse fell and his ankle
+is sprained.”
+
+“Did the horse fall in Hay Lane?”
+
+“Yes, coming down-hill; it slipped on some ice.”
+
+“Ah! Bring me a candle will you Leah?”
+
+Leah brought it; she entered, followed by Mrs. Fairfax, who repeated
+the news; adding that Mr. Carter the surgeon was come, and was now with
+Mr. Rochester: then she hurried out to give orders about tea, and I
+went upstairs to take off my things.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+Mr. Rochester, it seems, by the surgeon’s orders, went to bed early
+that night; nor did he rise soon next morning. When he did come down,
+it was to attend to business: his agent and some of his tenants were
+arrived, and waiting to speak with him.
+
+Adèle and I had now to vacate the library: it would be in daily
+requisition as a reception-room for callers. A fire was lit in an
+apartment upstairs, and there I carried our books, and arranged it for
+the future schoolroom. I discerned in the course of the morning that
+Thornfield Hall was a changed place: no longer silent as a church, it
+echoed every hour or two to a knock at the door, or a clang of the
+bell; steps, too, often traversed the hall, and new voices spoke in
+different keys below; a rill from the outer world was flowing through
+it; it had a master: for my part, I liked it better.
+
+Adèle was not easy to teach that day; she could not apply: she kept
+running to the door and looking over the banisters to see if she could
+get a glimpse of Mr. Rochester; then she coined pretexts to go
+downstairs, in order, as I shrewdly suspected, to visit the library,
+where I knew she was not wanted; then, when I got a little angry, and
+made her sit still, she continued to talk incessantly of her “ami,
+Monsieur Edouard Fairfax _de_ Rochester,” as she dubbed him (I had not
+before heard his prenomens), and to conjecture what presents he had
+brought her: for it appears he had intimated the night before, that
+when his luggage came from Millcote, there would be found amongst it a
+little box in whose contents she had an interest.
+
+“Et cela doit signifier,” said she, “qu’il y aura là dedans un cadeau
+pour moi, et peut-être pour vous aussi, mademoiselle. Monsieur a parlé
+de vous: il m’a demandé le nom de ma gouvernante, et si elle n’était
+pas une petite personne, assez mince et un peu pâle. J’ai dit qu’oui:
+car c’est vrai, n’est-ce pas, mademoiselle?”
+
+I and my pupil dined as usual in Mrs. Fairfax’s parlour; the afternoon
+was wild and snowy, and we passed it in the schoolroom. At dark I
+allowed Adèle to put away books and work, and to run downstairs; for,
+from the comparative silence below, and from the cessation of appeals
+to the door-bell, I conjectured that Mr. Rochester was now at liberty.
+Left alone, I walked to the window; but nothing was to be seen thence:
+twilight and snowflakes together thickened the air, and hid the very
+shrubs on the lawn. I let down the curtain and went back to the
+fireside.
+
+In the clear embers I was tracing a view, not unlike a picture I
+remembered to have seen of the castle of Heidelberg, on the Rhine, when
+Mrs. Fairfax came in, breaking up by her entrance the fiery mosaic I
+had been piercing together, and scattering too some heavy unwelcome
+thoughts that were beginning to throng on my solitude.
+
+“Mr. Rochester would be glad if you and your pupil would take tea with
+him in the drawing-room this evening,” said she: “he has been so much
+engaged all day that he could not ask to see you before.”
+
+“When is his tea-time?” I inquired.
+
+“Oh, at six o’clock: he keeps early hours in the country. You had
+better change your frock now; I will go with you and fasten it. Here is
+a candle.”
+
+“Is it necessary to change my frock?”
+
+“Yes, you had better: I always dress for the evening when Mr. Rochester
+is here.”
+
+This additional ceremony seemed somewhat stately; however, I repaired
+to my room, and, with Mrs. Fairfax’s aid, replaced my black stuff dress
+by one of black silk; the best and the only additional one I had,
+except one of light grey, which, in my Lowood notions of the toilette,
+I thought too fine to be worn, except on first-rate occasions.
+
+“You want a brooch,” said Mrs. Fairfax. I had a single little pearl
+ornament which Miss Temple gave me as a parting keepsake: I put it on,
+and then we went downstairs. Unused as I was to strangers, it was
+rather a trial to appear thus formally summoned in Mr. Rochester’s
+presence. I let Mrs. Fairfax precede me into the dining-room, and kept
+in her shade as we crossed that apartment; and, passing the arch, whose
+curtain was now dropped, entered the elegant recess beyond.
+
+Two wax candles stood lighted on the table, and two on the mantelpiece;
+basking in the light and heat of a superb fire, lay Pilot—Adèle knelt
+near him. Half reclined on a couch appeared Mr. Rochester, his foot
+supported by the cushion; he was looking at Adèle and the dog: the fire
+shone full on his face. I knew my traveller with his broad and jetty
+eyebrows; his square forehead, made squarer by the horizontal sweep of
+his black hair. I recognised his decisive nose, more remarkable for
+character than beauty; his full nostrils, denoting, I thought, choler;
+his grim mouth, chin, and jaw—yes, all three were very grim, and no
+mistake. His shape, now divested of cloak, I perceived harmonised in
+squareness with his physiognomy: I suppose it was a good figure in the
+athletic sense of the term—broad chested and thin flanked, though
+neither tall nor graceful.
+
+Mr. Rochester must have been aware of the entrance of Mrs. Fairfax and
+myself; but it appeared he was not in the mood to notice us, for he
+never lifted his head as we approached.
+
+“Here is Miss Eyre, sir,” said Mrs. Fairfax, in her quiet way. He
+bowed, still not taking his eyes from the group of the dog and child.
+
+“Let Miss Eyre be seated,” said he: and there was something in the
+forced stiff bow, in the impatient yet formal tone, which seemed
+further to express, “What the deuce is it to me whether Miss Eyre be
+there or not? At this moment I am not disposed to accost her.”
+
+I sat down quite disembarrassed. A reception of finished politeness
+would probably have confused me: I could not have returned or repaid it
+by answering grace and elegance on my part; but harsh caprice laid me
+under no obligation; on the contrary, a decent quiescence, under the
+freak of manner, gave me the advantage. Besides, the eccentricity of
+the proceeding was piquant: I felt interested to see how he would go
+on.
+
+He went on as a statue would, that is, he neither spoke nor moved. Mrs.
+Fairfax seemed to think it necessary that some one should be amiable,
+and she began to talk. Kindly, as usual—and, as usual, rather trite—she
+condoled with him on the pressure of business he had had all day; on
+the annoyance it must have been to him with that painful sprain: then
+she commended his patience and perseverance in going through with it.
+
+“Madam, I should like some tea,” was the sole rejoinder she got. She
+hastened to ring the bell; and when the tray came, she proceeded to
+arrange the cups, spoons, &c., with assiduous celerity. I and Adèle
+went to the table; but the master did not leave his couch.
+
+“Will you hand Mr. Rochester’s cup?” said Mrs. Fairfax to me; “Adèle
+might perhaps spill it.”
+
+I did as requested. As he took the cup from my hand, Adèle, thinking
+the moment propitious for making a request in my favour, cried out—
+
+“N’est-ce pas, monsieur, qu’il y a un cadeau pour Mademoiselle Eyre
+dans votre petit coffre?”
+
+“Who talks of cadeaux?” said he gruffly. “Did you expect a present,
+Miss Eyre? Are you fond of presents?” and he searched my face with eyes
+that I saw were dark, irate, and piercing.
+
+“I hardly know, sir; I have little experience of them: they are
+generally thought pleasant things.”
+
+“Generally thought? But what do _you_ think?”
+
+“I should be obliged to take time, sir, before I could give you an
+answer worthy of your acceptance: a present has many faces to it, has
+it not? and one should consider all, before pronouncing an opinion as
+to its nature.”
+
+“Miss Eyre, you are not so unsophisticated as Adèle: she demands a
+‘cadeau,’ clamorously, the moment she sees me: you beat about the
+bush.”
+
+“Because I have less confidence in my deserts than Adèle has: she can
+prefer the claim of old acquaintance, and the right too of custom; for
+she says you have always been in the habit of giving her playthings;
+but if I had to make out a case I should be puzzled, since I am a
+stranger, and have done nothing to entitle me to an acknowledgment.”
+
+“Oh, don’t fall back on over-modesty! I have examined Adèle, and find
+you have taken great pains with her: she is not bright, she has no
+talents; yet in a short time she has made much improvement.”
+
+“Sir, you have now given me my ‘cadeau;’ I am obliged to you: it is the
+meed teachers most covet—praise of their pupils’ progress.”
+
+“Humph!” said Mr. Rochester, and he took his tea in silence.
+
+“Come to the fire,” said the master, when the tray was taken away, and
+Mrs. Fairfax had settled into a corner with her knitting; while Adèle
+was leading me by the hand round the room, showing me the beautiful
+books and ornaments on the consoles and chiffonnières. We obeyed, as in
+duty bound; Adèle wanted to take a seat on my knee, but she was ordered
+to amuse herself with Pilot.
+
+“You have been resident in my house three months?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“And you came from—?”
+
+“From Lowood school, in ——shire.”
+
+“Ah! a charitable concern. How long were you there?”
+
+“Eight years.”
+
+“Eight years! you must be tenacious of life. I thought half the time in
+such a place would have done up any constitution! No wonder you have
+rather the look of another world. I marvelled where you had got that
+sort of face. When you came on me in Hay Lane last night, I thought
+unaccountably of fairy tales, and had half a mind to demand whether you
+had bewitched my horse: I am not sure yet. Who are your parents?”
+
+“I have none.”
+
+“Nor ever had, I suppose: do you remember them?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“I thought not. And so you were waiting for your people when you sat on
+that stile?”
+
+“For whom, sir?”
+
+“For the men in green: it was a proper moonlight evening for them. Did
+I break through one of your rings, that you spread that damned ice on
+the causeway?”
+
+I shook my head. “The men in green all forsook England a hundred years
+ago,” said I, speaking as seriously as he had done. “And not even in
+Hay Lane, or the fields about it, could you find a trace of them. I
+don’t think either summer or harvest, or winter moon, will ever shine
+on their revels more.”
+
+Mrs. Fairfax had dropped her knitting, and, with raised eyebrows,
+seemed wondering what sort of talk this was.
+
+“Well,” resumed Mr. Rochester, “if you disown parents, you must have
+some sort of kinsfolk: uncles and aunts?”
+
+“No; none that I ever saw.”
+
+“And your home?”
+
+“I have none.”
+
+“Where do your brothers and sisters live?”
+
+“I have no brothers or sisters.”
+
+“Who recommended you to come here?”
+
+“I advertised, and Mrs. Fairfax answered my advertisement.”
+
+“Yes,” said the good lady, who now knew what ground we were upon, “and
+I am daily thankful for the choice Providence led me to make. Miss Eyre
+has been an invaluable companion to me, and a kind and careful teacher
+to Adèle.”
+
+“Don’t trouble yourself to give her a character,” returned Mr.
+Rochester: “eulogiums will not bias me; I shall judge for myself. She
+began by felling my horse.”
+
+“Sir?” said Mrs. Fairfax.
+
+“I have to thank her for this sprain.”
+
+The widow looked bewildered.
+
+“Miss Eyre, have you ever lived in a town?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“Have you seen much society?”
+
+“None but the pupils and teachers of Lowood, and now the inmates of
+Thornfield.”
+
+“Have you read much?”
+
+“Only such books as came in my way; and they have not been numerous or
+very learned.”
+
+“You have lived the life of a nun: no doubt you are well drilled in
+religious forms;—Brocklehurst, who I understand directs Lowood, is a
+parson, is he not?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“And you girls probably worshipped him, as a convent full of
+religieuses would worship their director.”
+
+“Oh, no.”
+
+“You are very cool! No! What! a novice not worship her priest! That
+sounds blasphemous.”
+
+“I disliked Mr. Brocklehurst; and I was not alone in the feeling. He is
+a harsh man; at once pompous and meddling; he cut off our hair; and for
+economy’s sake bought us bad needles and thread, with which we could
+hardly sew.”
+
+“That was very false economy,” remarked Mrs. Fairfax, who now again
+caught the drift of the dialogue.
+
+“And was that the head and front of his offending?” demanded Mr.
+Rochester.
+
+“He starved us when he had the sole superintendence of the provision
+department, before the committee was appointed; and he bored us with
+long lectures once a week, and with evening readings from books of his
+own inditing, about sudden deaths and judgments, which made us afraid
+to go to bed.”
+
+“What age were you when you went to Lowood?”
+
+“About ten.”
+
+“And you stayed there eight years: you are now, then, eighteen?”
+
+I assented.
+
+“Arithmetic, you see, is useful; without its aid, I should hardly have
+been able to guess your age. It is a point difficult to fix where the
+features and countenance are so much at variance as in your case. And
+now what did you learn at Lowood? Can you play?”
+
+“A little.”
+
+“Of course: that is the established answer. Go into the library—I mean,
+if you please.—(Excuse my tone of command; I am used to say, ‘Do this,’
+and it is done: I cannot alter my customary habits for one new
+inmate.)—Go, then, into the library; take a candle with you; leave the
+door open; sit down to the piano, and play a tune.”
+
+I departed, obeying his directions.
+
+“Enough!” he called out in a few minutes. “You play _a little_, I see;
+like any other English school-girl; perhaps rather better than some,
+but not well.”
+
+I closed the piano and returned. Mr. Rochester continued—
+
+“Adèle showed me some sketches this morning, which she said were yours.
+I don’t know whether they were entirely of your doing; probably a
+master aided you?”
+
+“No, indeed!” I interjected.
+
+“Ah! that pricks pride. Well, fetch me your portfolio, if you can vouch
+for its contents being original; but don’t pass your word unless you
+are certain: I can recognise patchwork.”
+
+“Then I will say nothing, and you shall judge for yourself, sir.”
+
+I brought the portfolio from the library.
+
+“Approach the table,” said he; and I wheeled it to his couch. Adèle and
+Mrs. Fairfax drew near to see the pictures.
+
+“No crowding,” said Mr. Rochester: “take the drawings from my hand as I
+finish with them; but don’t push your faces up to mine.”
+
+He deliberately scrutinised each sketch and painting. Three he laid
+aside; the others, when he had examined them, he swept from him.
+
+“Take them off to the other table, Mrs. Fairfax,” said he, “and look at
+them with Adèle;—you” (glancing at me) “resume your seat, and answer my
+questions. I perceive those pictures were done by one hand: was that
+hand yours?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“And when did you find time to do them? They have taken much time, and
+some thought.”
+
+“I did them in the last two vacations I spent at Lowood, when I had no
+other occupation.”
+
+“Where did you get your copies?”
+
+“Out of my head.”
+
+“That head I see now on your shoulders?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Has it other furniture of the same kind within?”
+
+“I should think it may have: I should hope—better.”
+
+He spread the pictures before him, and again surveyed them alternately.
+
+While he is so occupied, I will tell you, reader, what they are: and
+first, I must premise that they are nothing wonderful. The subjects
+had, indeed, risen vividly on my mind. As I saw them with the spiritual
+eye, before I attempted to embody them, they were striking; but my hand
+would not second my fancy, and in each case it had wrought out but a
+pale portrait of the thing I had conceived.
+
+These pictures were in water-colours. The first represented clouds low
+and livid, rolling over a swollen sea: all the distance was in eclipse;
+so, too, was the foreground; or rather, the nearest billows, for there
+was no land. One gleam of light lifted into relief a half-submerged
+mast, on which sat a cormorant, dark and large, with wings flecked with
+foam; its beak held a gold bracelet set with gems, that I had touched
+with as brilliant tints as my palette could yield, and as glittering
+distinctness as my pencil could impart. Sinking below the bird and
+mast, a drowned corpse glanced through the green water; a fair arm was
+the only limb clearly visible, whence the bracelet had been washed or
+torn.
+
+The second picture contained for foreground only the dim peak of a
+hill, with grass and some leaves slanting as if by a breeze. Beyond and
+above spread an expanse of sky, dark blue as at twilight: rising into
+the sky was a woman’s shape to the bust, portrayed in tints as dusk and
+soft as I could combine. The dim forehead was crowned with a star; the
+lineaments below were seen as through the suffusion of vapour; the eyes
+shone dark and wild; the hair streamed shadowy, like a beamless cloud
+torn by storm or by electric travail. On the neck lay a pale reflection
+like moonlight; the same faint lustre touched the train of thin clouds
+from which rose and bowed this vision of the Evening Star.
+
+The third showed the pinnacle of an iceberg piercing a polar winter
+sky: a muster of northern lights reared their dim lances, close
+serried, along the horizon. Throwing these into distance, rose, in the
+foreground, a head,—a colossal head, inclined towards the iceberg, and
+resting against it. Two thin hands, joined under the forehead, and
+supporting it, drew up before the lower features a sable veil; a brow
+quite bloodless, white as bone, and an eye hollow and fixed, blank of
+meaning but for the glassiness of despair, alone were visible. Above
+the temples, amidst wreathed turban folds of black drapery, vague in
+its character and consistency as cloud, gleamed a ring of white flame,
+gemmed with sparkles of a more lurid tinge. This pale crescent was “the
+likeness of a kingly crown;” what it diademed was “the shape which
+shape had none.”
+
+“Were you happy when you painted these pictures?” asked Mr. Rochester
+presently.
+
+“I was absorbed, sir: yes, and I was happy. To paint them, in short,
+was to enjoy one of the keenest pleasures I have ever known.”
+
+“That is not saying much. Your pleasures, by your own account, have
+been few; but I daresay you did exist in a kind of artist’s dreamland
+while you blent and arranged these strange tints. Did you sit at them
+long each day?”
+
+“I had nothing else to do, because it was the vacation, and I sat at
+them from morning till noon, and from noon till night: the length of
+the midsummer days favoured my inclination to apply.”
+
+“And you felt self-satisfied with the result of your ardent labours?”
+
+“Far from it. I was tormented by the contrast between my idea and my
+handiwork: in each case I had imagined something which I was quite
+powerless to realise.”
+
+“Not quite: you have secured the shadow of your thought; but no more,
+probably. You had not enough of the artist’s skill and science to give
+it full being: yet the drawings are, for a school-girl, peculiar. As to
+the thoughts, they are elfish. These eyes in the Evening Star you must
+have seen in a dream. How could you make them look so clear, and yet
+not at all brilliant? for the planet above quells their rays. And what
+meaning is that in their solemn depth? And who taught you to paint
+wind? There is a high gale in that sky, and on this hill-top. Where did
+you see Latmos? For that is Latmos. There! put the drawings away!”
+
+I had scarce tied the strings of the portfolio, when, looking at his
+watch, he said abruptly—
+
+“It is nine o’clock: what are you about, Miss Eyre, to let Adèle sit up
+so long? Take her to bed.”
+
+Adèle went to kiss him before quitting the room: he endured the caress,
+but scarcely seemed to relish it more than Pilot would have done, nor
+so much.
+
+“I wish you all good-night, now,” said he, making a movement of the
+hand towards the door, in token that he was tired of our company, and
+wished to dismiss us. Mrs. Fairfax folded up her knitting: I took my
+portfolio: we curtseyed to him, received a frigid bow in return, and so
+withdrew.
+
+“You said Mr. Rochester was not strikingly peculiar, Mrs. Fairfax,” I
+observed, when I rejoined her in her room, after putting Adèle to bed.
+
+“Well, is he?”
+
+“I think so: he is very changeful and abrupt.”
+
+“True: no doubt he may appear so to a stranger, but I am so accustomed
+to his manner, I never think of it; and then, if he has peculiarities
+of temper, allowance should be made.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Partly because it is his nature—and we can none of us help our nature;
+and partly because he has painful thoughts, no doubt, to harass him,
+and make his spirits unequal.”
+
+“What about?”
+
+“Family troubles, for one thing.”
+
+“But he has no family.”
+
+“Not now, but he has had—or, at least, relatives. He lost his elder
+brother a few years since.”
+
+“His _elder_ brother?”
+
+“Yes. The present Mr. Rochester has not been very long in possession of
+the property; only about nine years.”
+
+“Nine years is a tolerable time. Was he so very fond of his brother as
+to be still inconsolable for his loss?”
+
+“Why, no—perhaps not. I believe there were some misunderstandings
+between them. Mr. Rowland Rochester was not quite just to Mr. Edward;
+and perhaps he prejudiced his father against him. The old gentleman was
+fond of money, and anxious to keep the family estate together. He did
+not like to diminish the property by division, and yet he was anxious
+that Mr. Edward should have wealth, too, to keep up the consequence of
+the name; and, soon after he was of age, some steps were taken that
+were not quite fair, and made a great deal of mischief. Old Mr.
+Rochester and Mr. Rowland combined to bring Mr. Edward into what he
+considered a painful position, for the sake of making his fortune: what
+the precise nature of that position was I never clearly knew, but his
+spirit could not brook what he had to suffer in it. He is not very
+forgiving: he broke with his family, and now for many years he has led
+an unsettled kind of life. I don’t think he has ever been resident at
+Thornfield for a fortnight together, since the death of his brother
+without a will left him master of the estate; and, indeed, no wonder he
+shuns the old place.”
+
+“Why should he shun it?”
+
+“Perhaps he thinks it gloomy.”
+
+The answer was evasive. I should have liked something clearer; but Mrs.
+Fairfax either could not, or would not, give me more explicit
+information of the origin and nature of Mr. Rochester’s trials. She
+averred they were a mystery to herself, and that what she knew was
+chiefly from conjecture. It was evident, indeed, that she wished me to
+drop the subject, which I did accordingly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+For several subsequent days I saw little of Mr. Rochester. In the
+mornings he seemed much engaged with business, and, in the afternoon,
+gentlemen from Millcote or the neighbourhood called, and sometimes
+stayed to dine with him. When his sprain was well enough to admit of
+horse exercise, he rode out a good deal; probably to return these
+visits, as he generally did not come back till late at night.
+
+During this interval, even Adèle was seldom sent for to his presence,
+and all my acquaintance with him was confined to an occasional
+rencontre in the hall, on the stairs, or in the gallery, when he would
+sometimes pass me haughtily and coldly, just acknowledging my presence
+by a distant nod or a cool glance, and sometimes bow and smile with
+gentlemanlike affability. His changes of mood did not offend me,
+because I saw that I had nothing to do with their alternation; the ebb
+and flow depended on causes quite disconnected with me.
+
+One day he had had company to dinner, and had sent for my portfolio; in
+order, doubtless, to exhibit its contents: the gentlemen went away
+early, to attend a public meeting at Millcote, as Mrs. Fairfax informed
+me; but the night being wet and inclement, Mr. Rochester did not
+accompany them. Soon after they were gone he rang the bell: a message
+came that I and Adèle were to go downstairs. I brushed Adèle’s hair and
+made her neat, and having ascertained that I was myself in my usual
+Quaker trim, where there was nothing to retouch—all being too close and
+plain, braided locks included, to admit of disarrangement—we descended,
+Adèle wondering whether the _petit coffre_ was at length come; for,
+owing to some mistake, its arrival had hitherto been delayed. She was
+gratified: there it stood, a little carton, on the table when we
+entered the dining-room. She appeared to know it by instinct.
+
+“Ma boite! ma boite!” exclaimed she, running towards it.
+
+“Yes, there is your ‘boite’ at last: take it into a corner, you genuine
+daughter of Paris, and amuse yourself with disembowelling it,” said the
+deep and rather sarcastic voice of Mr. Rochester, proceeding from the
+depths of an immense easy-chair at the fireside. “And mind,” he
+continued, “don’t bother me with any details of the anatomical process,
+or any notice of the condition of the entrails: let your operation be
+conducted in silence: tiens-toi tranquille, enfant; comprends-tu?”
+
+Adèle seemed scarcely to need the warning; she had already retired to a
+sofa with her treasure, and was busy untying the cord which secured the
+lid. Having removed this impediment, and lifted certain silvery
+envelopes of tissue paper, she merely exclaimed—
+
+“Oh ciel! Que c’est beau!” and then remained absorbed in ecstatic
+contemplation.
+
+“Is Miss Eyre there?” now demanded the master, half rising from his
+seat to look round to the door, near which I still stood.
+
+“Ah! well, come forward; be seated here.” He drew a chair near his own.
+“I am not fond of the prattle of children,” he continued; “for, old
+bachelor as I am, I have no pleasant associations connected with their
+lisp. It would be intolerable to me to pass a whole evening
+_tête-à-tête_ with a brat. Don’t draw that chair farther off, Miss
+Eyre; sit down exactly where I placed it—if you please, that is.
+Confound these civilities! I continually forget them. Nor do I
+particularly affect simple-minded old ladies. By-the-bye, I must have
+mine in mind; it won’t do to neglect her; she is a Fairfax, or wed to
+one; and blood is said to be thicker than water.”
+
+He rang, and despatched an invitation to Mrs. Fairfax, who soon
+arrived, knitting-basket in hand.
+
+“Good evening, madam; I sent to you for a charitable purpose. I have
+forbidden Adèle to talk to me about her presents, and she is bursting
+with repletion; have the goodness to serve her as auditress and
+interlocutrice; it will be one of the most benevolent acts you ever
+performed.”
+
+Adèle, indeed, no sooner saw Mrs. Fairfax, than she summoned her to her
+sofa, and there quickly filled her lap with the porcelain, the ivory,
+the waxen contents of her “boite;” pouring out, meantime, explanations
+and raptures in such broken English as she was mistress of.
+
+“Now I have performed the part of a good host,” pursued Mr. Rochester,
+“put my guests into the way of amusing each other, I ought to be at
+liberty to attend to my own pleasure. Miss Eyre, draw your chair still
+a little farther forward: you are yet too far back; I cannot see you
+without disturbing my position in this comfortable chair, which I have
+no mind to do.”
+
+I did as I was bid, though I would much rather have remained somewhat
+in the shade; but Mr. Rochester had such a direct way of giving orders,
+it seemed a matter of course to obey him promptly.
+
+We were, as I have said, in the dining-room: the lustre, which had been
+lit for dinner, filled the room with a festal breadth of light; the
+large fire was all red and clear; the purple curtains hung rich and
+ample before the lofty window and loftier arch; everything was still,
+save the subdued chat of Adèle (she dared not speak loud), and, filling
+up each pause, the beating of winter rain against the panes.
+
+Mr. Rochester, as he sat in his damask-covered chair, looked different
+to what I had seen him look before; not quite so stern—much less
+gloomy. There was a smile on his lips, and his eyes sparkled, whether
+with wine or not, I am not sure; but I think it very probable. He was,
+in short, in his after-dinner mood; more expanded and genial, and also
+more self-indulgent than the frigid and rigid temper of the morning;
+still he looked preciously grim, cushioning his massive head against
+the swelling back of his chair, and receiving the light of the fire on
+his granite-hewn features, and in his great, dark eyes; for he had
+great, dark eyes, and very fine eyes, too—not without a certain change
+in their depths sometimes, which, if it was not softness, reminded you,
+at least, of that feeling.
+
+He had been looking two minutes at the fire, and I had been looking the
+same length of time at him, when, turning suddenly, he caught my gaze
+fastened on his physiognomy.
+
+“You examine me, Miss Eyre,” said he: “do you think me handsome?”
+
+I should, if I had deliberated, have replied to this question by
+something conventionally vague and polite; but the answer somehow
+slipped from my tongue before I was aware—“No, sir.”
+
+“Ah! By my word! there is something singular about you,” said he: “you
+have the air of a little _nonnette_; quaint, quiet, grave, and simple,
+as you sit with your hands before you, and your eyes generally bent on
+the carpet (except, by-the-bye, when they are directed piercingly to my
+face; as just now, for instance); and when one asks you a question, or
+makes a remark to which you are obliged to reply, you rap out a round
+rejoinder, which, if not blunt, is at least brusque. What do you mean
+by it?”
+
+“Sir, I was too plain; I beg your pardon. I ought to have replied that
+it was not easy to give an impromptu answer to a question about
+appearances; that tastes mostly differ; and that beauty is of little
+consequence, or something of that sort.”
+
+“You ought to have replied no such thing. Beauty of little consequence,
+indeed! And so, under pretence of softening the previous outrage, of
+stroking and soothing me into placidity, you stick a sly penknife under
+my ear! Go on: what fault do you find with me, pray? I suppose I have
+all my limbs and all my features like any other man?”
+
+“Mr. Rochester, allow me to disown my first answer: I intended no
+pointed repartee: it was only a blunder.”
+
+“Just so: I think so: and you shall be answerable for it. Criticise me:
+does my forehead not please you?”
+
+He lifted up the sable waves of hair which lay horizontally over his
+brow, and showed a solid enough mass of intellectual organs, but an
+abrupt deficiency where the suave sign of benevolence should have
+risen.
+
+“Now, ma’am, am I a fool?”
+
+“Far from it, sir. You would, perhaps, think me rude if I inquired in
+return whether you are a philanthropist?”
+
+“There again! Another stick of the penknife, when she pretended to pat
+my head: and that is because I said I did not like the society of
+children and old women (low be it spoken!). No, young lady, I am not a
+general philanthropist; but I bear a conscience;” and he pointed to the
+prominences which are said to indicate that faculty, and which,
+fortunately for him, were sufficiently conspicuous; giving, indeed, a
+marked breadth to the upper part of his head: “and, besides, I once had
+a kind of rude tenderness of heart. When I was as old as you, I was a
+feeling fellow enough; partial to the unfledged, unfostered, and
+unlucky; but Fortune has knocked me about since: she has even kneaded
+me with her knuckles, and now I flatter myself I am hard and tough as
+an India-rubber ball; pervious, though, through a chink or two still,
+and with one sentient point in the middle of the lump. Yes: does that
+leave hope for me?”
+
+“Hope of what, sir?”
+
+“Of my final re-transformation from India-rubber back to flesh?”
+
+“Decidedly he has had too much wine,” I thought; and I did not know
+what answer to make to his queer question: how could I tell whether he
+was capable of being re-transformed?
+
+“You looked very much puzzled, Miss Eyre; and though you are not pretty
+any more than I am handsome, yet a puzzled air becomes you; besides, it
+is convenient, for it keeps those searching eyes of yours away from my
+physiognomy, and busies them with the worsted flowers of the rug; so
+puzzle on. Young lady, I am disposed to be gregarious and communicative
+to-night.”
+
+With this announcement he rose from his chair, and stood, leaning his
+arm on the marble mantelpiece: in that attitude his shape was seen
+plainly as well as his face; his unusual breadth of chest,
+disproportionate almost to his length of limb. I am sure most people
+would have thought him an ugly man; yet there was so much unconscious
+pride in his port; so much ease in his demeanour; such a look of
+complete indifference to his own external appearance; so haughty a
+reliance on the power of other qualities, intrinsic or adventitious, to
+atone for the lack of mere personal attractiveness, that, in looking at
+him, one inevitably shared the indifference, and, even in a blind,
+imperfect sense, put faith in the confidence.
+
+“I am disposed to be gregarious and communicative to-night,” he
+repeated, “and that is why I sent for you: the fire and the chandelier
+were not sufficient company for me; nor would Pilot have been, for none
+of these can talk. Adèle is a degree better, but still far below the
+mark; Mrs. Fairfax ditto; you, I am persuaded, can suit me if you will:
+you puzzled me the first evening I invited you down here. I have almost
+forgotten you since: other ideas have driven yours from my head; but
+to-night I am resolved to be at ease; to dismiss what importunes, and
+recall what pleases. It would please me now to draw you out—to learn
+more of you—therefore speak.”
+
+Instead of speaking, I smiled; and not a very complacent or submissive
+smile either.
+
+“Speak,” he urged.
+
+“What about, sir?”
+
+“Whatever you like. I leave both the choice of subject and the manner
+of treating it entirely to yourself.”
+
+Accordingly I sat and said nothing: “If he expects me to talk for the
+mere sake of talking and showing off, he will find he has addressed
+himself to the wrong person,” I thought.
+
+“You are dumb, Miss Eyre.”
+
+I was dumb still. He bent his head a little towards me, and with a
+single hasty glance seemed to dive into my eyes.
+
+“Stubborn?” he said, “and annoyed. Ah! it is consistent. I put my
+request in an absurd, almost insolent form. Miss Eyre, I beg your
+pardon. The fact is, once for all, I don’t wish to treat you like an
+inferior: that is” (correcting himself), “I claim only such superiority
+as must result from twenty years’ difference in age and a century’s
+advance in experience. This is legitimate, _et j’y tiens_, as Adèle
+would say; and it is by virtue of this superiority, and this alone,
+that I desire you to have the goodness to talk to me a little now, and
+divert my thoughts, which are galled with dwelling on one
+point—cankering as a rusty nail.”
+
+He had deigned an explanation, almost an apology, and I did not feel
+insensible to his condescension, and would not seem so.
+
+“I am willing to amuse you, if I can, sir—quite willing; but I cannot
+introduce a topic, because how do I know what will interest you? Ask me
+questions, and I will do my best to answer them.”
+
+“Then, in the first place, do you agree with me that I have a right to
+be a little masterful, abrupt, perhaps exacting, sometimes, on the
+grounds I stated, namely, that I am old enough to be your father, and
+that I have battled through a varied experience with many men of many
+nations, and roamed over half the globe, while you have lived quietly
+with one set of people in one house?”
+
+“Do as you please, sir.”
+
+“That is no answer; or rather it is a very irritating, because a very
+evasive one. Reply clearly.”
+
+“I don’t think, sir, you have a right to command me, merely because you
+are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I
+have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of
+your time and experience.”
+
+“Humph! Promptly spoken. But I won’t allow that, seeing that it would
+never suit my case, as I have made an indifferent, not to say a bad,
+use of both advantages. Leaving superiority out of the question, then,
+you must still agree to receive my orders now and then, without being
+piqued or hurt by the tone of command. Will you?”
+
+I smiled: I thought to myself Mr. Rochester _is_ peculiar—he seems to
+forget that he pays me £30 per annum for receiving his orders.
+
+“The smile is very well,” said he, catching instantly the passing
+expression; “but speak too.”
+
+“I was thinking, sir, that very few masters would trouble themselves to
+inquire whether or not their paid subordinates were piqued and hurt by
+their orders.”
+
+“Paid subordinates! What! you are my paid subordinate, are you? Oh yes,
+I had forgotten the salary! Well then, on that mercenary ground, will
+you agree to let me hector a little?”
+
+“No, sir, not on that ground; but, on the ground that you did forget
+it, and that you care whether or not a dependent is comfortable in his
+dependency, I agree heartily.”
+
+“And will you consent to dispense with a great many conventional forms
+and phrases, without thinking that the omission arises from insolence?”
+
+“I am sure, sir, I should never mistake informality for insolence: one
+I rather like, the other nothing free-born would submit to, even for a
+salary.”
+
+“Humbug! Most things free-born will submit to anything for a salary;
+therefore, keep to yourself, and don’t venture on generalities of which
+you are intensely ignorant. However, I mentally shake hands with you
+for your answer, despite its inaccuracy; and as much for the manner in
+which it was said, as for the substance of the speech; the manner was
+frank and sincere; one does not often see such a manner: no, on the
+contrary, affectation, or coldness, or stupid, coarse-minded
+misapprehension of one’s meaning are the usual rewards of candour. Not
+three in three thousand raw school-girl-governesses would have answered
+me as you have just done. But I don’t mean to flatter you: if you are
+cast in a different mould to the majority, it is no merit of yours:
+Nature did it. And then, after all, I go too fast in my conclusions:
+for what I yet know, you may be no better than the rest; you may have
+intolerable defects to counterbalance your few good points.”
+
+“And so may you,” I thought. My eye met his as the idea crossed my
+mind: he seemed to read the glance, answering as if its import had been
+spoken as well as imagined—
+
+“Yes, yes, you are right,” said he; “I have plenty of faults of my own:
+I know it, and I don’t wish to palliate them, I assure you. God wot I
+need not be too severe about others; I have a past existence, a series
+of deeds, a colour of life to contemplate within my own breast, which
+might well call my sneers and censures from my neighbours to myself. I
+started, or rather (for like other defaulters, I like to lay half the
+blame on ill fortune and adverse circumstances) was thrust on to a
+wrong tack at the age of one-and-twenty, and have never recovered the
+right course since: but I might have been very different; I might have
+been as good as you—wiser—almost as stainless. I envy you your peace of
+mind, your clean conscience, your unpolluted memory. Little girl, a
+memory without blot or contamination must be an exquisite treasure—an
+inexhaustible source of pure refreshment: is it not?”
+
+“How was your memory when you were eighteen, sir?”
+
+“All right then; limpid, salubrious: no gush of bilge water had turned
+it to fetid puddle. I was your equal at eighteen—quite your equal.
+Nature meant me to be, on the whole, a good man, Miss Eyre; one of the
+better kind, and you see I am not so. You would say you don’t see it;
+at least I flatter myself I read as much in your eye (beware,
+by-the-bye, what you express with that organ; I am quick at
+interpreting its language). Then take my word for it,—I am not a
+villain: you are not to suppose that—not to attribute to me any such
+bad eminence; but, owing, I verily believe, rather to circumstances
+than to my natural bent, I am a trite commonplace sinner, hackneyed in
+all the poor petty dissipations with which the rich and worthless try
+to put on life. Do you wonder that I avow this to you? Know, that in
+the course of your future life you will often find yourself elected the
+involuntary confidant of your acquaintances’ secrets: people will
+instinctively find out, as I have done, that it is not your forte to
+tell of yourself, but to listen while others talk of themselves; they
+will feel, too, that you listen with no malevolent scorn of their
+indiscretion, but with a kind of innate sympathy; not the less
+comforting and encouraging because it is very unobtrusive in its
+manifestations.”
+
+“How do you know?—how can you guess all this, sir?”
+
+“I know it well; therefore I proceed almost as freely as if I were
+writing my thoughts in a diary. You would say, I should have been
+superior to circumstances; so I should—so I should; but you see I was
+not. When fate wronged me, I had not the wisdom to remain cool: I
+turned desperate; then I degenerated. Now, when any vicious simpleton
+excites my disgust by his paltry ribaldry, I cannot flatter myself that
+I am better than he: I am forced to confess that he and I are on a
+level. I wish I had stood firm—God knows I do! Dread remorse when you
+are tempted to err, Miss Eyre; remorse is the poison of life.”
+
+“Repentance is said to be its cure, sir.”
+
+“It is not its cure. Reformation may be its cure; and I could reform—I
+have strength yet for that—if—but where is the use of thinking of it,
+hampered, burdened, cursed as I am? Besides, since happiness is
+irrevocably denied me, I have a right to get pleasure out of life: and
+I _will_ get it, cost what it may.”
+
+“Then you will degenerate still more, sir.”
+
+“Possibly: yet why should I, if I can get sweet, fresh pleasure? And I
+may get it as sweet and fresh as the wild honey the bee gathers on the
+moor.”
+
+“It will sting—it will taste bitter, sir.”
+
+“How do you know?—you never tried it. How very serious—how very solemn
+you look: and you are as ignorant of the matter as this cameo head”
+(taking one from the mantelpiece). “You have no right to preach to me,
+you neophyte, that have not passed the porch of life, and are
+absolutely unacquainted with its mysteries.”
+
+“I only remind you of your own words, sir: you said error brought
+remorse, and you pronounced remorse the poison of existence.”
+
+“And who talks of error now? I scarcely think the notion that flittered
+across my brain was an error. I believe it was an inspiration rather
+than a temptation: it was very genial, very soothing—I know that. Here
+it comes again! It is no devil, I assure you; or if it be, it has put
+on the robes of an angel of light. I think I must admit so fair a guest
+when it asks entrance to my heart.”
+
+“Distrust it, sir; it is not a true angel.”
+
+“Once more, how do you know? By what instinct do you pretend to
+distinguish between a fallen seraph of the abyss and a messenger from
+the eternal throne—between a guide and a seducer?”
+
+“I judged by your countenance, sir, which was troubled when you said
+the suggestion had returned upon you. I feel sure it will work you more
+misery if you listen to it.”
+
+“Not at all—it bears the most gracious message in the world: for the
+rest, you are not my conscience-keeper, so don’t make yourself uneasy.
+Here, come in, bonny wanderer!”
+
+He said this as if he spoke to a vision, viewless to any eye but his
+own; then, folding his arms, which he had half extended, on his chest,
+he seemed to enclose in their embrace the invisible being.
+
+“Now,” he continued, again addressing me, “I have received the
+pilgrim—a disguised deity, as I verily believe. Already it has done me
+good: my heart was a sort of charnel; it will now be a shrine.”
+
+“To speak truth, sir, I don’t understand you at all: I cannot keep up
+the conversation, because it has got out of my depth. Only one thing, I
+know: you said you were not as good as you should like to be, and that
+you regretted your own imperfection;—one thing I can comprehend: you
+intimated that to have a sullied memory was a perpetual bane. It seems
+to me, that if you tried hard, you would in time find it possible to
+become what you yourself would approve; and that if from this day you
+began with resolution to correct your thoughts and actions, you would
+in a few years have laid up a new and stainless store of recollections,
+to which you might revert with pleasure.”
+
+“Justly thought; rightly said, Miss Eyre; and, at this moment, I am
+paving hell with energy.”
+
+“Sir?”
+
+“I am laying down good intentions, which I believe durable as flint.
+Certainly, my associates and pursuits shall be other than they have
+been.”
+
+“And better?”
+
+“And better—so much better as pure ore is than foul dross. You seem to
+doubt me; I don’t doubt myself: I know what my aim is, what my motives
+are; and at this moment I pass a law, unalterable as that of the Medes
+and Persians, that both are right.”
+
+“They cannot be, sir, if they require a new statute to legalise them.”
+
+“They are, Miss Eyre, though they absolutely require a new statute:
+unheard-of combinations of circumstances demand unheard-of rules.”
+
+“That sounds a dangerous maxim, sir; because one can see at once that
+it is liable to abuse.”
+
+“Sententious sage! so it is: but I swear by my household gods not to
+abuse it.”
+
+“You are human and fallible.”
+
+“I am: so are you—what then?”
+
+“The human and fallible should not arrogate a power with which the
+divine and perfect alone can be safely intrusted.”
+
+“What power?”
+
+“That of saying of any strange, unsanctioned line of action,—‘Let it be
+right.’”
+
+“‘Let it be right’—the very words: you have pronounced them.”
+
+“_May_ it be right then,” I said, as I rose, deeming it useless to
+continue a discourse which was all darkness to me; and, besides,
+sensible that the character of my interlocutor was beyond my
+penetration; at least, beyond its present reach; and feeling the
+uncertainty, the vague sense of insecurity, which accompanies a
+conviction of ignorance.
+
+“Where are you going?”
+
+“To put Adèle to bed: it is past her bedtime.”
+
+“You are afraid of me, because I talk like a Sphynx.”
+
+“Your language is enigmatical, sir: but though I am bewildered, I am
+certainly not afraid.”
+
+“You _are_ afraid—your self-love dreads a blunder.”
+
+“In that sense I do feel apprehensive—I have no wish to talk nonsense.”
+
+“If you did, it would be in such a grave, quiet manner, I should
+mistake it for sense. Do you never laugh, Miss Eyre? Don’t trouble
+yourself to answer—I see you laugh rarely; but you can laugh very
+merrily: believe me, you are not naturally austere, any more than I am
+naturally vicious. The Lowood constraint still clings to you somewhat;
+controlling your features, muffling your voice, and restricting your
+limbs; and you fear in the presence of a man and a brother—or father,
+or master, or what you will—to smile too gaily, speak too freely, or
+move too quickly: but, in time, I think you will learn to be natural
+with me, as I find it impossible to be conventional with you; and then
+your looks and movements will have more vivacity and variety than they
+dare offer now. I see at intervals the glance of a curious sort of bird
+through the close-set bars of a cage: a vivid, restless, resolute
+captive is there; were it but free, it would soar cloud-high. You are
+still bent on going?”
+
+“It has struck nine, sir.”
+
+“Never mind,—wait a minute: Adèle is not ready to go to bed yet. My
+position, Miss Eyre, with my back to the fire, and my face to the room,
+favours observation. While talking to you, I have also occasionally
+watched Adèle (I have my own reasons for thinking her a curious
+study,—reasons that I may, nay, that I shall, impart to you some day).
+She pulled out of her box, about ten minutes ago, a little pink silk
+frock; rapture lit her face as she unfolded it; coquetry runs in her
+blood, blends with her brains, and seasons the marrow of her bones. ‘Il
+faut que je l’essaie!’ cried she, ‘et à l’instant même!’ and she rushed
+out of the room. She is now with Sophie, undergoing a robing process:
+in a few minutes she will re-enter; and I know what I shall see,—a
+miniature of Céline Varens, as she used to appear on the boards at the
+rising of—But never mind that. However, my tenderest feelings are about
+to receive a shock: such is my presentiment; stay now, to see whether
+it will be realised.”
+
+Ere long, Adèle’s little foot was heard tripping across the hall. She
+entered, transformed as her guardian had predicted. A dress of
+rose-coloured satin, very short, and as full in the skirt as it could
+be gathered, replaced the brown frock she had previously worn; a wreath
+of rosebuds circled her forehead; her feet were dressed in silk
+stockings and small white satin sandals.
+
+“Est-ce que ma robe va bien?” cried she, bounding forwards; “et mes
+souliers? et mes bas? Tenez, je crois que je vais danser!”
+
+And spreading out her dress, she chasséed across the room till, having
+reached Mr. Rochester, she wheeled lightly round before him on tip-toe,
+then dropped on one knee at his feet, exclaiming—
+
+“Monsieur, je vous remercie mille fois de votre bonté;” then rising,
+she added, “C’est comme cela que maman faisait, n’est-ce pas,
+monsieur?”
+
+“Pre-cise-ly!” was the answer; “and, ‘comme cela,’ she charmed my
+English gold out of my British breeches’ pocket. I have been green,
+too, Miss Eyre,—ay, grass green: not a more vernal tint freshens you
+now than once freshened me. My Spring is gone, however, but it has left
+me that French floweret on my hands, which, in some moods, I would fain
+be rid of. Not valuing now the root whence it sprang; having found that
+it was of a sort which nothing but gold dust could manure, I have but
+half a liking to the blossom, especially when it looks so artificial as
+just now. I keep it and rear it rather on the Roman Catholic principle
+of expiating numerous sins, great or small, by one good work. I’ll
+explain all this some day. Good-night.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+Mr. Rochester did, on a future occasion, explain it. It was one
+afternoon, when he chanced to meet me and Adèle in the grounds: and
+while she played with Pilot and her shuttlecock, he asked me to walk up
+and down a long beech avenue within sight of her.
+
+He then said that she was the daughter of a French opera-dancer, Céline
+Varens, towards whom he had once cherished what he called a “_grande
+passion_.” This passion Céline had professed to return with even
+superior ardour. He thought himself her idol, ugly as he was: he
+believed, as he said, that she preferred his “_taille d’athlète_” to
+the elegance of the Apollo Belvidere.
+
+“And, Miss Eyre, so much was I flattered by this preference of the
+Gallic sylph for her British gnome, that I installed her in an hotel;
+gave her a complete establishment of servants, a carriage, cashmeres,
+diamonds, dentelles, &c. In short, I began the process of ruining
+myself in the received style, like any other spoony. I had not, it
+seems, the originality to chalk out a new road to shame and
+destruction, but trode the old track with stupid exactness not to
+deviate an inch from the beaten centre. I had—as I deserved to have—the
+fate of all other spoonies. Happening to call one evening when Céline
+did not expect me, I found her out; but it was a warm night, and I was
+tired with strolling through Paris, so I sat down in her boudoir; happy
+to breathe the air consecrated so lately by her presence. No,—I
+exaggerate; I never thought there was any consecrating virtue about
+her: it was rather a sort of pastille perfume she had left; a scent of
+musk and amber, than an odour of sanctity. I was just beginning to
+stifle with the fumes of conservatory flowers and sprinkled essences,
+when I bethought myself to open the window and step out on to the
+balcony. It was moonlight and gaslight besides, and very still and
+serene. The balcony was furnished with a chair or two; I sat down, and
+took out a cigar,—I will take one now, if you will excuse me.”
+
+Here ensued a pause, filled up by the producing and lighting of a
+cigar; having placed it to his lips and breathed a trail of Havannah
+incense on the freezing and sunless air, he went on—
+
+“I liked bonbons too in those days, Miss Eyre, and I was
+_croquant_—(overlook the barbarism)—_croquant_ chocolate comfits, and
+smoking alternately, watching meantime the equipages that rolled along
+the fashionable streets towards the neighbouring opera-house, when in
+an elegant close carriage drawn by a beautiful pair of English horses,
+and distinctly seen in the brilliant city-night, I recognised the
+‘voiture’ I had given Céline. She was returning: of course my heart
+thumped with impatience against the iron rails I leant upon. The
+carriage stopped, as I had expected, at the hotel door; my flame (that
+is the very word for an opera inamorata) alighted: though muffed in a
+cloak—an unnecessary encumbrance, by-the-bye, on so warm a June
+evening—I knew her instantly by her little foot, seen peeping from the
+skirt of her dress, as she skipped from the carriage-step. Bending over
+the balcony, I was about to murmur ‘Mon ange’—in a tone, of course,
+which should be audible to the ear of love alone—when a figure jumped
+from the carriage after her; cloaked also; but that was a spurred heel
+which had rung on the pavement, and that was a hatted head which now
+passed under the arched _porte cochère_ of the hotel.
+
+“You never felt jealousy, did you, Miss Eyre? Of course not: I need not
+ask you; because you never felt love. You have both sentiments yet to
+experience: your soul sleeps; the shock is yet to be given which shall
+waken it. You think all existence lapses in as quiet a flow as that in
+which your youth has hitherto slid away. Floating on with closed eyes
+and muffled ears, you neither see the rocks bristling not far off in
+the bed of the flood, nor hear the breakers boil at their base. But I
+tell you—and you may mark my words—you will come some day to a craggy
+pass in the channel, where the whole of life’s stream will be broken up
+into whirl and tumult, foam and noise: either you will be dashed to
+atoms on crag points, or lifted up and borne on by some master-wave
+into a calmer current—as I am now.
+
+“I like this day; I like that sky of steel; I like the sternness and
+stillness of the world under this frost. I like Thornfield, its
+antiquity, its retirement, its old crow-trees and thorn-trees, its grey
+façade, and lines of dark windows reflecting that metal welkin: and yet
+how long have I abhorred the very thought of it, shunned it like a
+great plague-house? How I do still abhor—”
+
+He ground his teeth and was silent: he arrested his step and struck his
+boot against the hard ground. Some hated thought seemed to have him in
+its grip, and to hold him so tightly that he could not advance.
+
+We were ascending the avenue when he thus paused; the hall was before
+us. Lifting his eye to its battlements, he cast over them a glare such
+as I never saw before or since. Pain, shame, ire, impatience, disgust,
+detestation, seemed momentarily to hold a quivering conflict in the
+large pupil dilating under his ebon eyebrow. Wild was the wrestle which
+should be paramount; but another feeling rose and triumphed: something
+hard and cynical: self-willed and resolute: it settled his passion and
+petrified his countenance: he went on—
+
+“During the moment I was silent, Miss Eyre, I was arranging a point
+with my destiny. She stood there, by that beech-trunk—a hag like one of
+those who appeared to Macbeth on the heath of Forres. ‘You like
+Thornfield?’ she said, lifting her finger; and then she wrote in the
+air a memento, which ran in lurid hieroglyphics all along the
+house-front, between the upper and lower row of windows, ‘Like it if
+you can! Like it if you dare!’
+
+“‘I will like it,’ said I; ‘I dare like it;’ and” (he subjoined
+moodily) “I will keep my word; I will break obstacles to happiness, to
+goodness—yes, goodness. I wish to be a better man than I have been,
+than I am; as Job’s leviathan broke the spear, the dart, and the
+habergeon, hindrances which others count as iron and brass, I will
+esteem but straw and rotten wood.”
+
+Adèle here ran before him with her shuttlecock. “Away!” he cried
+harshly; “keep at a distance, child; or go in to Sophie!” Continuing
+then to pursue his walk in silence, I ventured to recall him to the
+point whence he had abruptly diverged—
+
+“Did you leave the balcony, sir,” I asked, “when Mdlle. Varens
+entered?”
+
+I almost expected a rebuff for this hardly well-timed question, but, on
+the contrary, waking out of his scowling abstraction, he turned his
+eyes towards me, and the shade seemed to clear off his brow. “Oh, I had
+forgotten Céline! Well, to resume. When I saw my charmer thus come in
+accompanied by a cavalier, I seemed to hear a hiss, and the green snake
+of jealousy, rising on undulating coils from the moonlit balcony,
+glided within my waistcoat, and ate its way in two minutes to my
+heart’s core. Strange!” he exclaimed, suddenly starting again from the
+point. “Strange that I should choose you for the confidant of all this,
+young lady; passing strange that you should listen to me quietly, as if
+it were the most usual thing in the world for a man like me to tell
+stories of his opera-mistresses to a quaint, inexperienced girl like
+you! But the last singularity explains the first, as I intimated once
+before: you, with your gravity, considerateness, and caution were made
+to be the recipient of secrets. Besides, I know what sort of a mind I
+have placed in communication with my own: I know it is one not liable
+to take infection: it is a peculiar mind: it is a unique one. Happily I
+do not mean to harm it: but, if I did, it would not take harm from me.
+The more you and I converse, the better; for while I cannot blight you,
+you may refresh me.” After this digression he proceeded—
+
+“I remained in the balcony. ‘They will come to her boudoir, no doubt,’
+thought I: ‘let me prepare an ambush.’ So putting my hand in through
+the open window, I drew the curtain over it, leaving only an opening
+through which I could take observations; then I closed the casement,
+all but a chink just wide enough to furnish an outlet to lovers’
+whispered vows: then I stole back to my chair; and as I resumed it the
+pair came in. My eye was quickly at the aperture. Céline’s chamber-maid
+entered, lit a lamp, left it on the table, and withdrew. The couple
+were thus revealed to me clearly: both removed their cloaks, and there
+was ‘the Varens,’ shining in satin and jewels,—my gifts of course,—and
+there was her companion in an officer’s uniform; and I knew him for a
+young roué of a vicomte—a brainless and vicious youth whom I had
+sometimes met in society, and had never thought of hating because I
+despised him so absolutely. On recognising him, the fang of the snake
+Jealousy was instantly broken; because at the same moment my love for
+Céline sank under an extinguisher. A woman who could betray me for such
+a rival was not worth contending for; she deserved only scorn; less,
+however, than I, who had been her dupe.
+
+“They began to talk; their conversation eased me completely: frivolous,
+mercenary, heartless, and senseless, it was rather calculated to weary
+than enrage a listener. A card of mine lay on the table; this being
+perceived, brought my name under discussion. Neither of them possessed
+energy or wit to belabour me soundly, but they insulted me as coarsely
+as they could in their little way: especially Céline, who even waxed
+rather brilliant on my personal defects—deformities she termed them.
+Now it had been her custom to launch out into fervent admiration of
+what she called my ‘_beauté mâle_:’ wherein she differed diametrically
+from you, who told me point-blank, at the second interview, that you
+did not think me handsome. The contrast struck me at the time and—”
+
+Adèle here came running up again.
+
+“Monsieur, John has just been to say that your agent has called and
+wishes to see you.”
+
+“Ah! in that case I must abridge. Opening the window, I walked in upon
+them; liberated Céline from my protection; gave her notice to vacate
+her hotel; offered her a purse for immediate exigencies; disregarded
+screams, hysterics, prayers, protestations, convulsions; made an
+appointment with the vicomte for a meeting at the Bois de Boulogne.
+Next morning I had the pleasure of encountering him; left a bullet in
+one of his poor etiolated arms, feeble as the wing of a chicken in the
+pip, and then thought I had done with the whole crew. But unluckily the
+Varens, six months before, had given me this filette Adèle, who, she
+affirmed, was my daughter; and perhaps she may be, though I see no
+proofs of such grim paternity written in her countenance: Pilot is more
+like me than she. Some years after I had broken with the mother, she
+abandoned her child, and ran away to Italy with a musician or singer. I
+acknowledged no natural claim on Adèle’s part to be supported by me,
+nor do I now acknowledge any, for I am not her father; but hearing that
+she was quite destitute, I e’en took the poor thing out of the slime
+and mud of Paris, and transplanted it here, to grow up clean in the
+wholesome soil of an English country garden. Mrs. Fairfax found you to
+train it; but now you know that it is the illegitimate offspring of a
+French opera-girl, you will perhaps think differently of your post and
+protégée: you will be coming to me some day with notice that you have
+found another place—that you beg me to look out for a new governess,
+&c.—Eh?”
+
+“No: Adèle is not answerable for either her mother’s faults or yours: I
+have a regard for her; and now that I know she is, in a sense,
+parentless—forsaken by her mother and disowned by you, sir—I shall
+cling closer to her than before. How could I possibly prefer the spoilt
+pet of a wealthy family, who would hate her governess as a nuisance, to
+a lonely little orphan, who leans towards her as a friend?”
+
+“Oh, that is the light in which you view it! Well, I must go in now;
+and you too: it darkens.”
+
+But I stayed out a few minutes longer with Adèle and Pilot—ran a race
+with her, and played a game of battledore and shuttlecock. When we went
+in, and I had removed her bonnet and coat, I took her on my knee; kept
+her there an hour, allowing her to prattle as she liked: not rebuking
+even some little freedoms and trivialities into which she was apt to
+stray when much noticed, and which betrayed in her a superficiality of
+character, inherited probably from her mother, hardly congenial to an
+English mind. Still she had her merits; and I was disposed to
+appreciate all that was good in her to the utmost. I sought in her
+countenance and features a likeness to Mr. Rochester, but found none:
+no trait, no turn of expression announced relationship. It was a pity:
+if she could but have been proved to resemble him, he would have
+thought more of her.
+
+It was not till after I had withdrawn to my own chamber for the night,
+that I steadily reviewed the tale Mr. Rochester had told me. As he had
+said, there was probably nothing at all extraordinary in the substance
+of the narrative itself: a wealthy Englishman’s passion for a French
+dancer, and her treachery to him, were every-day matters enough, no
+doubt, in society; but there was something decidedly strange in the
+paroxysm of emotion which had suddenly seized him when he was in the
+act of expressing the present contentment of his mood, and his newly
+revived pleasure in the old hall and its environs. I meditated
+wonderingly on this incident; but gradually quitting it, as I found it
+for the present inexplicable, I turned to the consideration of my
+master’s manner to myself. The confidence he had thought fit to repose
+in me seemed a tribute to my discretion: I regarded and accepted it as
+such. His deportment had now for some weeks been more uniform towards
+me than at the first. I never seemed in his way; he did not take fits
+of chilling hauteur: when he met me unexpectedly, the encounter seemed
+welcome; he had always a word and sometimes a smile for me: when
+summoned by formal invitation to his presence, I was honoured by a
+cordiality of reception that made me feel I really possessed the power
+to amuse him, and that these evening conferences were sought as much
+for his pleasure as for my benefit.
+
+I, indeed, talked comparatively little, but I heard him talk with
+relish. It was his nature to be communicative; he liked to open to a
+mind unacquainted with the world glimpses of its scenes and ways (I do
+not mean its corrupt scenes and wicked ways, but such as derived their
+interest from the great scale on which they were acted, the strange
+novelty by which they were characterised); and I had a keen delight in
+receiving the new ideas he offered, in imagining the new pictures he
+portrayed, and following him in thought through the new regions he
+disclosed, never startled or troubled by one noxious allusion.
+
+The ease of his manner freed me from painful restraint: the friendly
+frankness, as correct as cordial, with which he treated me, drew me to
+him. I felt at times as if he were my relation rather than my master:
+yet he was imperious sometimes still; but I did not mind that; I saw it
+was his way. So happy, so gratified did I become with this new interest
+added to life, that I ceased to pine after kindred: my thin
+crescent-destiny seemed to enlarge; the blanks of existence were filled
+up; my bodily health improved; I gathered flesh and strength.
+
+And was Mr. Rochester now ugly in my eyes? No, reader: gratitude, and
+many associations, all pleasurable and genial, made his face the object
+I best liked to see; his presence in a room was more cheering than the
+brightest fire. Yet I had not forgotten his faults; indeed, I could
+not, for he brought them frequently before me. He was proud, sardonic,
+harsh to inferiority of every description: in my secret soul I knew
+that his great kindness to me was balanced by unjust severity to many
+others. He was moody, too; unaccountably so; I more than once, when
+sent for to read to him, found him sitting in his library alone, with
+his head bent on his folded arms; and, when he looked up, a morose,
+almost a malignant, scowl blackened his features. But I believed that
+his moodiness, his harshness, and his former faults of morality (I say
+_former_, for now he seemed corrected of them) had their source in some
+cruel cross of fate. I believed he was naturally a man of better
+tendencies, higher principles, and purer tastes than such as
+circumstances had developed, education instilled, or destiny
+encouraged. I thought there were excellent materials in him; though for
+the present they hung together somewhat spoiled and tangled. I cannot
+deny that I grieved for his grief, whatever that was, and would have
+given much to assuage it.
+
+Though I had now extinguished my candle and was laid down in bed, I
+could not sleep for thinking of his look when he paused in the avenue,
+and told how his destiny had risen up before him, and dared him to be
+happy at Thornfield.
+
+“Why not?” I asked myself. “What alienates him from the house? Will he
+leave it again soon? Mrs. Fairfax said he seldom stayed here longer
+than a fortnight at a time; and he has now been resident eight weeks.
+If he does go, the change will be doleful. Suppose he should be absent
+spring, summer, and autumn: how joyless sunshine and fine days will
+seem!”
+
+I hardly know whether I had slept or not after this musing; at any
+rate, I started wide awake on hearing a vague murmur, peculiar and
+lugubrious, which sounded, I thought, just above me. I wished I had
+kept my candle burning: the night was drearily dark; my spirits were
+depressed. I rose and sat up in bed, listening. The sound was hushed.
+
+I tried again to sleep; but my heart beat anxiously: my inward
+tranquillity was broken. The clock, far down in the hall, struck two.
+Just then it seemed my chamber-door was touched; as if fingers had
+swept the panels in groping a way along the dark gallery outside. I
+said, “Who is there?” Nothing answered. I was chilled with fear.
+
+All at once I remembered that it might be Pilot, who, when the
+kitchen-door chanced to be left open, not unfrequently found his way up
+to the threshold of Mr. Rochester’s chamber: I had seen him lying there
+myself in the mornings. The idea calmed me somewhat: I lay down.
+Silence composes the nerves; and as an unbroken hush now reigned again
+through the whole house, I began to feel the return of slumber. But it
+was not fated that I should sleep that night. A dream had scarcely
+approached my ear, when it fled affrighted, scared by a marrow-freezing
+incident enough.
+
+This was a demoniac laugh—low, suppressed, and deep—uttered, as it
+seemed, at the very keyhole of my chamber door. The head of my bed was
+near the door, and I thought at first the goblin-laugher stood at my
+bedside—or rather, crouched by my pillow: but I rose, looked round, and
+could see nothing; while, as I still gazed, the unnatural sound was
+reiterated: and I knew it came from behind the panels. My first impulse
+was to rise and fasten the bolt; my next, again to cry out, “Who is
+there?”
+
+Something gurgled and moaned. Ere long, steps retreated up the gallery
+towards the third-storey staircase: a door had lately been made to shut
+in that staircase; I heard it open and close, and all was still.
+
+“Was that Grace Poole? and is she possessed with a devil?” thought I.
+Impossible now to remain longer by myself: I must go to Mrs. Fairfax. I
+hurried on my frock and a shawl; I withdrew the bolt and opened the
+door with a trembling hand. There was a candle burning just outside,
+and on the matting in the gallery. I was surprised at this
+circumstance: but still more was I amazed to perceive the air quite
+dim, as if filled with smoke; and, while looking to the right hand and
+left, to find whence these blue wreaths issued, I became further aware
+of a strong smell of burning.
+
+Something creaked: it was a door ajar; and that door was Mr.
+Rochester’s, and the smoke rushed in a cloud from thence. I thought no
+more of Mrs. Fairfax; I thought no more of Grace Poole, or the laugh:
+in an instant, I was within the chamber. Tongues of flame darted round
+the bed: the curtains were on fire. In the midst of blaze and vapour,
+Mr. Rochester lay stretched motionless, in deep sleep.
+
+“Wake! wake!” I cried. I shook him, but he only murmured and turned:
+the smoke had stupefied him. Not a moment could be lost: the very
+sheets were kindling, I rushed to his basin and ewer; fortunately, one
+was wide and the other deep, and both were filled with water. I heaved
+them up, deluged the bed and its occupant, flew back to my own room,
+brought my own water-jug, baptized the couch afresh, and, by God’s aid,
+succeeded in extinguishing the flames which were devouring it.
+
+The hiss of the quenched element, the breakage of a pitcher which I
+flung from my hand when I had emptied it, and, above all, the splash of
+the shower-bath I had liberally bestowed, roused Mr. Rochester at last.
+Though it was now dark, I knew he was awake; because I heard him
+fulminating strange anathemas at finding himself lying in a pool of
+water.
+
+“Is there a flood?” he cried.
+
+“No, sir,” I answered; “but there has been a fire: get up, do; you are
+quenched now; I will fetch you a candle.”
+
+“In the name of all the elves in Christendom, is that Jane Eyre?” he
+demanded. “What have you done with me, witch, sorceress? Who is in the
+room besides you? Have you plotted to drown me?”
+
+“I will fetch you a candle, sir; and, in Heaven’s name, get up.
+Somebody has plotted something: you cannot too soon find out who and
+what it is.”
+
+“There! I am up now; but at your peril you fetch a candle yet: wait two
+minutes till I get into some dry garments, if any dry there be—yes,
+here is my dressing-gown. Now run!”
+
+I did run; I brought the candle which still remained in the gallery. He
+took it from my hand, held it up, and surveyed the bed, all blackened
+and scorched, the sheets drenched, the carpet round swimming in water.
+
+“What is it? and who did it?” he asked.
+
+I briefly related to him what had transpired: the strange laugh I had
+heard in the gallery: the step ascending to the third storey; the
+smoke,—the smell of fire which had conducted me to his room; in what
+state I had found matters there, and how I had deluged him with all the
+water I could lay hands on.
+
+
+“What is it and who did it?” he asked
+
+He listened very gravely; his face, as I went on, expressed more
+concern than astonishment; he did not immediately speak when I had
+concluded.
+
+“Shall I call Mrs. Fairfax?” I asked.
+
+“Mrs. Fairfax? No; what the deuce would you call her for? What can she
+do? Let her sleep unmolested.”
+
+“Then I will fetch Leah, and wake John and his wife.”
+
+“Not at all: just be still. You have a shawl on. If you are not warm
+enough, you may take my cloak yonder; wrap it about you, and sit down
+in the arm-chair: there,—I will put it on. Now place your feet on the
+stool, to keep them out of the wet. I am going to leave you a few
+minutes. I shall take the candle. Remain where you are till I return;
+be as still as a mouse. I must pay a visit to the second storey. Don’t
+move, remember, or call any one.”
+
+He went: I watched the light withdraw. He passed up the gallery very
+softly, unclosed the staircase door with as little noise as possible,
+shut it after him, and the last ray vanished. I was left in total
+darkness. I listened for some noise, but heard nothing. A very long
+time elapsed. I grew weary: it was cold, in spite of the cloak; and
+then I did not see the use of staying, as I was not to rouse the house.
+I was on the point of risking Mr. Rochester’s displeasure by disobeying
+his orders, when the light once more gleamed dimly on the gallery wall,
+and I heard his unshod feet tread the matting. “I hope it is he,”
+thought I, “and not something worse.”
+
+He re-entered, pale and very gloomy. “I have found it all out,” said
+he, setting his candle down on the washstand; “it is as I thought.”
+
+“How, sir?”
+
+He made no reply, but stood with his arms folded, looking on the
+ground. At the end of a few minutes he inquired in rather a peculiar
+tone—
+
+“I forget whether you said you saw anything when you opened your
+chamber door.”
+
+“No, sir, only the candlestick on the ground.”
+
+“But you heard an odd laugh? You have heard that laugh before, I should
+think, or something like it?”
+
+“Yes, sir: there is a woman who sews here, called Grace Poole,—she
+laughs in that way. She is a singular person.”
+
+“Just so. Grace Poole—you have guessed it. She is, as you say,
+singular—very. Well, I shall reflect on the subject. Meantime, I am
+glad that you are the only person, besides myself, acquainted with the
+precise details of to-night’s incident. You are no talking fool: say
+nothing about it. I will account for this state of affairs” (pointing
+to the bed): “and now return to your own room. I shall do very well on
+the sofa in the library for the rest of the night. It is near four:—in
+two hours the servants will be up.”
+
+“Good-night, then, sir,” said I, departing.
+
+He seemed surprised—very inconsistently so, as he had just told me to
+go.
+
+“What!” he exclaimed, “are you quitting me already, and in that way?”
+
+“You said I might go, sir.”
+
+“But not without taking leave; not without a word or two of
+acknowledgment and good-will: not, in short, in that brief, dry
+fashion. Why, you have saved my life!—snatched me from a horrible and
+excruciating death! and you walk past me as if we were mutual
+strangers! At least shake hands.”
+
+He held out his hand; I gave him mine: he took it first in one, then in
+both his own.
+
+“You have saved my life: I have a pleasure in owing you so immense a
+debt. I cannot say more. Nothing else that has being would have been
+tolerable to me in the character of creditor for such an obligation:
+but you: it is different;—I feel your benefits no burden, Jane.”
+
+He paused; gazed at me: words almost visible trembled on his lips,—but
+his voice was checked.
+
+“Good-night again, sir. There is no debt, benefit, burden, obligation,
+in the case.”
+
+“I knew,” he continued, “you would do me good in some way, at some
+time;—I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you: their expression
+and smile did not”—(again he stopped)—“did not” (he proceeded hastily)
+“strike delight to my very inmost heart so for nothing. People talk of
+natural sympathies; I have heard of good genii: there are grains of
+truth in the wildest fable. My cherished preserver, good-night!”
+
+Strange energy was in his voice, strange fire in his look.
+
+“I am glad I happened to be awake,” I said: and then I was going.
+
+“What! you _will_ go?”
+
+“I am cold, sir.”
+
+“Cold? Yes,—and standing in a pool! Go, then, Jane; go!” But he still
+retained my hand, and I could not free it. I bethought myself of an
+expedient.
+
+“I think I hear Mrs. Fairfax move, sir,” said I.
+
+“Well, leave me:” he relaxed his fingers, and I was gone.
+
+I regained my couch, but never thought of sleep. Till morning dawned I
+was tossed on a buoyant but unquiet sea, where billows of trouble
+rolled under surges of joy. I thought sometimes I saw beyond its wild
+waters a shore, sweet as the hills of Beulah; and now and then a
+freshening gale, wakened by hope, bore my spirit triumphantly towards
+the bourne: but I could not reach it, even in fancy—a counteracting
+breeze blew off land, and continually drove me back. Sense would resist
+delirium: judgment would warn passion. Too feverish to rest, I rose as
+soon as day dawned.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+I both wished and feared to see Mr. Rochester on the day which followed
+this sleepless night: I wanted to hear his voice again, yet feared to
+meet his eye. During the early part of the morning, I momentarily
+expected his coming; he was not in the frequent habit of entering the
+schoolroom, but he did step in for a few minutes sometimes, and I had
+the impression that he was sure to visit it that day.
+
+But the morning passed just as usual: nothing happened to interrupt the
+quiet course of Adèle’s studies; only soon after breakfast, I heard
+some bustle in the neighbourhood of Mr. Rochester’s chamber, Mrs.
+Fairfax’s voice, and Leah’s, and the cook’s—that is, John’s wife—and
+even John’s own gruff tones. There were exclamations of “What a mercy
+master was not burnt in his bed!” “It is always dangerous to keep a
+candle lit at night.” “How providential that he had presence of mind to
+think of the water-jug!” “I wonder he waked nobody!” “It is to be hoped
+he will not take cold with sleeping on the library sofa,” &c.
+
+To much confabulation succeeded a sound of scrubbing and setting to
+rights; and when I passed the room, in going downstairs to dinner, I
+saw through the open door that all was again restored to complete
+order; only the bed was stripped of its hangings. Leah stood up in the
+window-seat, rubbing the panes of glass dimmed with smoke. I was about
+to address her, for I wished to know what account had been given of the
+affair: but, on advancing, I saw a second person in the chamber—a woman
+sitting on a chair by the bedside, and sewing rings to new curtains.
+That woman was no other than Grace Poole.
+
+There she sat, staid and taciturn-looking, as usual, in her brown stuff
+gown, her check apron, white handkerchief, and cap. She was intent on
+her work, in which her whole thoughts seemed absorbed: on her hard
+forehead, and in her commonplace features, was nothing either of the
+paleness or desperation one would have expected to see marking the
+countenance of a woman who had attempted murder, and whose intended
+victim had followed her last night to her lair, and (as I believed),
+charged her with the crime she wished to perpetrate. I was
+amazed—confounded. She looked up, while I still gazed at her: no start,
+no increase or failure of colour betrayed emotion, consciousness of
+guilt, or fear of detection. She said “Good morning, Miss,” in her
+usual phlegmatic and brief manner; and taking up another ring and more
+tape, went on with her sewing.
+
+“I will put her to some test,” thought I: “such absolute
+impenetrability is past comprehension.”
+
+“Good morning, Grace,” I said. “Has anything happened here? I thought I
+heard the servants all talking together a while ago.”
+
+“Only master had been reading in his bed last night; he fell asleep
+with his candle lit, and the curtains got on fire; but, fortunately, he
+awoke before the bed-clothes or the wood-work caught, and contrived to
+quench the flames with the water in the ewer.”
+
+“A strange affair!” I said, in a low voice: then, looking at her
+fixedly—“Did Mr. Rochester wake nobody? Did no one hear him move?”
+
+She again raised her eyes to me, and this time there was something of
+consciousness in their expression. She seemed to examine me warily;
+then she answered—
+
+“The servants sleep so far off, you know, Miss, they would not be
+likely to hear. Mrs. Fairfax’s room and yours are the nearest to
+master’s; but Mrs. Fairfax said she heard nothing: when people get
+elderly, they often sleep heavy.” She paused, and then added, with a
+sort of assumed indifference, but still in a marked and significant
+tone—“But you are young, Miss; and I should say a light sleeper:
+perhaps you may have heard a noise?”
+
+“I did,” said I, dropping my voice, so that Leah, who was still
+polishing the panes, could not hear me, “and at first I thought it was
+Pilot: but Pilot cannot laugh; and I am certain I heard a laugh, and a
+strange one.”
+
+She took a new needleful of thread, waxed it carefully, threaded her
+needle with a steady hand, and then observed, with perfect composure—
+
+“It is hardly likely master would laugh, I should think, Miss, when he
+was in such danger: You must have been dreaming.”
+
+“I was not dreaming,” I said, with some warmth, for her brazen coolness
+provoked me. Again she looked at me; and with the same scrutinising and
+conscious eye.
+
+“Have you told master that you heard a laugh?” she inquired.
+
+“I have not had the opportunity of speaking to him this morning.”
+
+“You did not think of opening your door and looking out into the
+gallery?” she further asked.
+
+She appeared to be cross-questioning me, attempting to draw from me
+information unawares. The idea struck me that if she discovered I knew
+or suspected her guilt, she would be playing of some of her malignant
+pranks on me; I thought it advisable to be on my guard.
+
+“On the contrary,” said I, “I bolted my door.”
+
+“Then you are not in the habit of bolting your door every night before
+you get into bed?”
+
+“Fiend! she wants to know my habits, that she may lay her plans
+accordingly!” Indignation again prevailed over prudence: I replied
+sharply, “Hitherto I have often omitted to fasten the bolt: I did not
+think it necessary. I was not aware any danger or annoyance was to be
+dreaded at Thornfield Hall: but in future” (and I laid marked stress on
+the words) “I shall take good care to make all secure before I venture
+to lie down.”
+
+“It will be wise so to do,” was her answer: “this neighbourhood is as
+quiet as any I know, and I never heard of the hall being attempted by
+robbers since it was a house; though there are hundreds of pounds’
+worth of plate in the plate-closet, as is well known. And you see, for
+such a large house, there are very few servants, because master has
+never lived here much; and when he does come, being a bachelor, he
+needs little waiting on: but I always think it best to err on the safe
+side; a door is soon fastened, and it is as well to have a drawn bolt
+between one and any mischief that may be about. A deal of people, Miss,
+are for trusting all to Providence; but I say Providence will not
+dispense with the means, though He often blesses them when they are
+used discreetly.” And here she closed her harangue: a long one for her,
+and uttered with the demureness of a Quakeress.
+
+I still stood absolutely dumfoundered at what appeared to me her
+miraculous self-possession and most inscrutable hypocrisy, when the
+cook entered.
+
+“Mrs. Poole,” said she, addressing Grace, “the servants’ dinner will
+soon be ready: will you come down?”
+
+“No; just put my pint of porter and bit of pudding on a tray, and I’ll
+carry it upstairs.”
+
+“You’ll have some meat?”
+
+“Just a morsel, and a taste of cheese, that’s all.”
+
+“And the sago?”
+
+“Never mind it at present: I shall be coming down before teatime: I’ll
+make it myself.”
+
+The cook here turned to me, saying that Mrs. Fairfax was waiting for
+me: so I departed.
+
+I hardly heard Mrs. Fairfax’s account of the curtain conflagration
+during dinner, so much was I occupied in puzzling my brains over the
+enigmatical character of Grace Poole, and still more in pondering the
+problem of her position at Thornfield and questioning why she had not
+been given into custody that morning, or, at the very least, dismissed
+from her master’s service. He had almost as much as declared his
+conviction of her criminality last night: what mysterious cause
+withheld him from accusing her? Why had he enjoined me, too, to
+secrecy? It was strange: a bold, vindictive, and haughty gentleman
+seemed somehow in the power of one of the meanest of his dependents; so
+much in her power, that even when she lifted her hand against his life,
+he dared not openly charge her with the attempt, much less punish her
+for it.
+
+Had Grace been young and handsome, I should have been tempted to think
+that tenderer feelings than prudence or fear influenced Mr. Rochester
+in her behalf; but, hard-favoured and matronly as she was, the idea
+could not be admitted. “Yet,” I reflected, “she has been young once;
+her youth would be contemporary with her master’s: Mrs. Fairfax told me
+once, she had lived here many years. I don’t think she can ever have
+been pretty; but, for aught I know, she may possess originality and
+strength of character to compensate for the want of personal
+advantages. Mr. Rochester is an amateur of the decided and eccentric:
+Grace is eccentric at least. What if a former caprice (a freak very
+possible to a nature so sudden and headstrong as his) has delivered him
+into her power, and she now exercises over his actions a secret
+influence, the result of his own indiscretion, which he cannot shake
+off, and dare not disregard?” But, having reached this point of
+conjecture, Mrs. Poole’s square, flat figure, and uncomely, dry, even
+coarse face, recurred so distinctly to my mind’s eye, that I thought,
+“No; impossible! my supposition cannot be correct. Yet,” suggested the
+secret voice which talks to us in our own hearts, “_you_ are not
+beautiful either, and perhaps Mr. Rochester approves you: at any rate,
+you have often felt as if he did; and last night—remember his words;
+remember his look; remember his voice!”
+
+I well remembered all; language, glance, and tone seemed at the moment
+vividly renewed. I was now in the schoolroom; Adèle was drawing; I bent
+over her and directed her pencil. She looked up with a sort of start.
+
+“Qu’avez-vous, mademoiselle?” said she. “Vos doigts tremblent comme la
+feuille, et vos joues sont rouges: mais, rouges comme des cerises!”
+
+“I am hot, Adèle, with stooping!” She went on sketching; I went on
+thinking.
+
+I hastened to drive from my mind the hateful notion I had been
+conceiving respecting Grace Poole; it disgusted me. I compared myself
+with her, and found we were different. Bessie Leaven had said I was
+quite a lady; and she spoke truth—I was a lady. And now I looked much
+better than I did when Bessie saw me; I had more colour and more flesh,
+more life, more vivacity, because I had brighter hopes and keener
+enjoyments.
+
+“Evening approaches,” said I, as I looked towards the window. “I have
+never heard Mr. Rochester’s voice or step in the house to-day; but
+surely I shall see him before night: I feared the meeting in the
+morning; now I desire it, because expectation has been so long baffled
+that it is grown impatient.”
+
+When dusk actually closed, and when Adèle left me to go and play in the
+nursery with Sophie, I did most keenly desire it. I listened for the
+bell to ring below; I listened for Leah coming up with a message; I
+fancied sometimes I heard Mr. Rochester’s own tread, and I turned to
+the door, expecting it to open and admit him. The door remained shut;
+darkness only came in through the window. Still it was not late; he
+often sent for me at seven and eight o’clock, and it was yet but six.
+Surely I should not be wholly disappointed to-night, when I had so many
+things to say to him! I wanted again to introduce the subject of Grace
+Poole, and to hear what he would answer; I wanted to ask him plainly if
+he really believed it was she who had made last night’s hideous
+attempt; and if so, why he kept her wickedness a secret. It little
+mattered whether my curiosity irritated him; I knew the pleasure of
+vexing and soothing him by turns; it was one I chiefly delighted in,
+and a sure instinct always prevented me from going too far; beyond the
+verge of provocation I never ventured; on the extreme brink I liked
+well to try my skill. Retaining every minute form of respect, every
+propriety of my station, I could still meet him in argument without
+fear or uneasy restraint; this suited both him and me.
+
+A tread creaked on the stairs at last. Leah made her appearance; but it
+was only to intimate that tea was ready in Mrs. Fairfax’s room. Thither
+I repaired, glad at least to go downstairs; for that brought me, I
+imagined, nearer to Mr. Rochester’s presence.
+
+“You must want your tea,” said the good lady, as I joined her; “you ate
+so little at dinner. I am afraid,” she continued, “you are not well
+to-day: you look flushed and feverish.”
+
+“Oh, quite well! I never felt better.”
+
+“Then you must prove it by evincing a good appetite; will you fill the
+teapot while I knit off this needle?” Having completed her task, she
+rose to draw down the blind, which she had hitherto kept up, by way, I
+suppose, of making the most of daylight, though dusk was now fast
+deepening into total obscurity.
+
+“It is fair to-night,” said she, as she looked through the panes,
+“though not starlight; Mr. Rochester has, on the whole, had a
+favourable day for his journey.”
+
+“Journey!—Is Mr. Rochester gone anywhere? I did not know he was out.”
+
+“Oh, he set off the moment he had breakfasted! He is gone to the Leas,
+Mr. Eshton’s place, ten miles on the other side Millcote. I believe
+there is quite a party assembled there; Lord Ingram, Sir George Lynn,
+Colonel Dent, and others.”
+
+“Do you expect him back to-night?”
+
+“No—nor to-morrow either; I should think he is very likely to stay a
+week or more: when these fine, fashionable people get together, they
+are so surrounded by elegance and gaiety, so well provided with all
+that can please and entertain, they are in no hurry to separate.
+Gentlemen especially are often in request on such occasions; and Mr.
+Rochester is so talented and so lively in society, that I believe he is
+a general favourite: the ladies are very fond of him; though you would
+not think his appearance calculated to recommend him particularly in
+their eyes: but I suppose his acquirements and abilities, perhaps his
+wealth and good blood, make amends for any little fault of look.”
+
+“Are there ladies at the Leas?”
+
+“There are Mrs. Eshton and her three daughters—very elegant young
+ladies indeed; and there are the Honourable Blanche and Mary Ingram,
+most beautiful women, I suppose: indeed I have seen Blanche, six or
+seven years since, when she was a girl of eighteen. She came here to a
+Christmas ball and party Mr. Rochester gave. You should have seen the
+dining-room that day—how richly it was decorated, how brilliantly lit
+up! I should think there were fifty ladies and gentlemen present—all of
+the first county families; and Miss Ingram was considered the belle of
+the evening.”
+
+“You saw her, you say, Mrs. Fairfax: what was she like?”
+
+“Yes, I saw her. The dining-room doors were thrown open; and, as it was
+Christmas-time, the servants were allowed to assemble in the hall, to
+hear some of the ladies sing and play. Mr. Rochester would have me to
+come in, and I sat down in a quiet corner and watched them. I never saw
+a more splendid scene: the ladies were magnificently dressed; most of
+them—at least most of the younger ones—looked handsome; but Miss Ingram
+was certainly the queen.”
+
+“And what was she like?”
+
+“Tall, fine bust, sloping shoulders; long, graceful neck: olive
+complexion, dark and clear; noble features; eyes rather like Mr.
+Rochester’s: large and black, and as brilliant as her jewels. And then
+she had such a fine head of hair; raven-black and so becomingly
+arranged: a crown of thick plaits behind, and in front the longest, the
+glossiest curls I ever saw. She was dressed in pure white; an
+amber-coloured scarf was passed over her shoulder and across her
+breast, tied at the side, and descending in long, fringed ends below
+her knee. She wore an amber-coloured flower, too, in her hair: it
+contrasted well with the jetty mass of her curls.”
+
+“She was greatly admired, of course?”
+
+“Yes, indeed: and not only for her beauty, but for her accomplishments.
+She was one of the ladies who sang: a gentleman accompanied her on the
+piano. She and Mr. Rochester sang a duet.”
+
+“Mr. Rochester? I was not aware he could sing.”
+
+“Oh! he has a fine bass voice, and an excellent taste for music.”
+
+“And Miss Ingram: what sort of a voice had she?”
+
+“A very rich and powerful one: she sang delightfully; it was a treat to
+listen to her;—and she played afterwards. I am no judge of music, but
+Mr. Rochester is; and I heard him say her execution was remarkably
+good.”
+
+“And this beautiful and accomplished lady, she is not yet married?”
+
+“It appears not: I fancy neither she nor her sister have very large
+fortunes. Old Lord Ingram’s estates were chiefly entailed, and the
+eldest son came in for everything almost.”
+
+“But I wonder no wealthy nobleman or gentleman has taken a fancy to
+her: Mr. Rochester, for instance. He is rich, is he not?”
+
+“Oh! yes. But you see there is a considerable difference in age: Mr.
+Rochester is nearly forty; she is but twenty-five.”
+
+“What of that? More unequal matches are made every day.”
+
+“True: yet I should scarcely fancy Mr. Rochester would entertain an
+idea of the sort. But you eat nothing: you have scarcely tasted since
+you began tea.”
+
+“No: I am too thirsty to eat. Will you let me have another cup?”
+
+I was about again to revert to the probability of a union between Mr.
+Rochester and the beautiful Blanche; but Adèle came in, and the
+conversation was turned into another channel.
+
+When once more alone, I reviewed the information I had got; looked into
+my heart, examined its thoughts and feelings, and endeavoured to bring
+back with a strict hand such as had been straying through imagination’s
+boundless and trackless waste, into the safe fold of common sense.
+
+Arraigned at my own bar, Memory having given her evidence of the hopes,
+wishes, sentiments I had been cherishing since last night—of the
+general state of mind in which I had indulged for nearly a fortnight
+past; Reason having come forward and told, in her own quiet way, a
+plain, unvarnished tale, showing how I had rejected the real, and
+rabidly devoured the ideal;—I pronounced judgment to this effect:—
+
+That a greater fool than Jane Eyre had never breathed the breath of
+life; that a more fantastic idiot had never surfeited herself on sweet
+lies, and swallowed poison as if it were nectar.
+
+“_You_,” I said, “a favourite with Mr. Rochester? _You_ gifted with the
+power of pleasing him? _You_ of importance to him in any way? Go! your
+folly sickens me. And you have derived pleasure from occasional tokens
+of preference—equivocal tokens shown by a gentleman of family and a man
+of the world to a dependent and a novice. How dared you? Poor stupid
+dupe!—Could not even self-interest make you wiser? You repeated to
+yourself this morning the brief scene of last night?—Cover your face
+and be ashamed! He said something in praise of your eyes, did he? Blind
+puppy! Open their bleared lids and look on your own accursed
+senselessness! It does good to no woman to be flattered by her
+superior, who cannot possibly intend to marry her; and it is madness in
+all women to let a secret love kindle within them, which, if unreturned
+and unknown, must devour the life that feeds it; and, if discovered and
+responded to, must lead, _ignis-fatuus_-like, into miry wilds whence
+there is no extrication.
+
+“Listen, then, Jane Eyre, to your sentence: to-morrow, place the glass
+before you, and draw in chalk your own picture, faithfully, without
+softening one defect; omit no harsh line, smooth away no displeasing
+irregularity; write under it, ‘Portrait of a Governess, disconnected,
+poor, and plain.’
+
+“Afterwards, take a piece of smooth ivory—you have one prepared in your
+drawing-box: take your palette, mix your freshest, finest, clearest
+tints; choose your most delicate camel-hair pencils; delineate
+carefully the loveliest face you can imagine; paint it in your softest
+shades and sweetest lines, according to the description given by Mrs.
+Fairfax of Blanche Ingram; remember the raven ringlets, the oriental
+eye;—What! you revert to Mr. Rochester as a model! Order! No snivel!—no
+sentiment!—no regret! I will endure only sense and resolution. Recall
+the august yet harmonious lineaments, the Grecian neck and bust; let
+the round and dazzling arm be visible, and the delicate hand; omit
+neither diamond ring nor gold bracelet; portray faithfully the attire,
+aërial lace and glistening satin, graceful scarf and golden rose; call
+it ‘Blanche, an accomplished lady of rank.’
+
+“Whenever, in future, you should chance to fancy Mr. Rochester thinks
+well of you, take out these two pictures and compare them: say, ‘Mr.
+Rochester might probably win that noble lady’s love, if he chose to
+strive for it; is it likely he would waste a serious thought on this
+indigent and insignificant plebeian?’”
+
+“I’ll do it,” I resolved: and having framed this determination, I grew
+calm, and fell asleep.
+
+I kept my word. An hour or two sufficed to sketch my own portrait in
+crayons; and in less than a fortnight I had completed an ivory
+miniature of an imaginary Blanche Ingram. It looked a lovely face
+enough, and when compared with the real head in chalk, the contrast was
+as great as self-control could desire. I derived benefit from the task:
+it had kept my head and hands employed, and had given force and
+fixedness to the new impressions I wished to stamp indelibly on my
+heart.
+
+Ere long, I had reason to congratulate myself on the course of
+wholesome discipline to which I had thus forced my feelings to submit.
+Thanks to it, I was able to meet subsequent occurrences with a decent
+calm, which, had they found me unprepared, I should probably have been
+unequal to maintain, even externally.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+A week passed, and no news arrived of Mr. Rochester: ten days, and
+still he did not come. Mrs. Fairfax said she should not be surprised if
+he were to go straight from the Leas to London, and thence to the
+Continent, and not show his face again at Thornfield for a year to
+come; he had not unfrequently quitted it in a manner quite as abrupt
+and unexpected. When I heard this, I was beginning to feel a strange
+chill and failing at the heart. I was actually permitting myself to
+experience a sickening sense of disappointment; but rallying my wits,
+and recollecting my principles, I at once called my sensations to
+order; and it was wonderful how I got over the temporary blunder—how I
+cleared up the mistake of supposing Mr. Rochester’s movements a matter
+in which I had any cause to take a vital interest. Not that I humbled
+myself by a slavish notion of inferiority: on the contrary, I just
+said—
+
+“You have nothing to do with the master of Thornfield, further than to
+receive the salary he gives you for teaching his protégée, and to be
+grateful for such respectful and kind treatment as, if you do your
+duty, you have a right to expect at his hands. Be sure that is the only
+tie he seriously acknowledges between you and him; so don’t make him
+the object of your fine feelings, your raptures, agonies, and so forth.
+He is not of your order: keep to your caste, and be too self-respecting
+to lavish the love of the whole heart, soul, and strength, where such a
+gift is not wanted and would be despised.”
+
+I went on with my day’s business tranquilly; but ever and anon vague
+suggestions kept wandering across my brain of reasons why I should quit
+Thornfield; and I kept involuntarily framing advertisements and
+pondering conjectures about new situations: these thoughts I did not
+think to check; they might germinate and bear fruit if they could.
+
+Mr. Rochester had been absent upwards of a fortnight, when the post
+brought Mrs. Fairfax a letter.
+
+“It is from the master,” said she, as she looked at the direction. “Now
+I suppose we shall know whether we are to expect his return or not.”
+
+And while she broke the seal and perused the document, I went on taking
+my coffee (we were at breakfast): it was hot, and I attributed to that
+circumstance a fiery glow which suddenly rose to my face. Why my hand
+shook, and why I involuntarily spilt half the contents of my cup into
+my saucer, I did not choose to consider.
+
+“Well, I sometimes think we are too quiet; but we run a chance of being
+busy enough now: for a little while at least,” said Mrs. Fairfax, still
+holding the note before her spectacles.
+
+Ere I permitted myself to request an explanation, I tied the string of
+Adèle’s pinafore, which happened to be loose: having helped her also to
+another bun and refilled her mug with milk, I said, nonchalantly—
+
+“Mr. Rochester is not likely to return soon, I suppose?”
+
+“Indeed he is—in three days, he says: that will be next Thursday; and
+not alone either. I don’t know how many of the fine people at the Leas
+are coming with him: he sends directions for all the best bedrooms to
+be prepared; and the library and drawing-rooms are to be cleaned out; I
+am to get more kitchen hands from the George Inn, at Millcote, and from
+wherever else I can; and the ladies will bring their maids and the
+gentlemen their valets: so we shall have a full house of it.” And Mrs.
+Fairfax swallowed her breakfast and hastened away to commence
+operations.
+
+The three days were, as she had foretold, busy enough. I had thought
+all the rooms at Thornfield beautifully clean and well arranged; but it
+appears I was mistaken. Three women were got to help; and such
+scrubbing, such brushing, such washing of paint and beating of carpets,
+such taking down and putting up of pictures, such polishing of mirrors
+and lustres, such lighting of fires in bedrooms, such airing of sheets
+and feather-beds on hearths, I never beheld, either before or since.
+Adèle ran quite wild in the midst of it: the preparations for company
+and the prospect of their arrival, seemed to throw her into ecstasies.
+She would have Sophie to look over all her “toilettes,” as she called
+frocks; to furbish up any that were “_passées_,” and to air and arrange
+the new. For herself, she did nothing but caper about in the front
+chambers, jump on and off the bedsteads, and lie on the mattresses and
+piled-up bolsters and pillows before the enormous fires roaring in the
+chimneys. From school duties she was exonerated: Mrs. Fairfax had
+pressed me into her service, and I was all day in the storeroom,
+helping (or hindering) her and the cook; learning to make custards and
+cheese-cakes and French pastry, to truss game and garnish
+desert-dishes.
+
+The party were expected to arrive on Thursday afternoon, in time for
+dinner at six. During the intervening period I had no time to nurse
+chimeras; and I believe I was as active and gay as anybody—Adèle
+excepted. Still, now and then, I received a damping check to my
+cheerfulness; and was, in spite of myself, thrown back on the region of
+doubts and portents, and dark conjectures. This was when I chanced to
+see the third-storey staircase door (which of late had always been kept
+locked) open slowly, and give passage to the form of Grace Poole, in
+prim cap, white apron, and handkerchief; when I watched her glide along
+the gallery, her quiet tread muffled in a list slipper; when I saw her
+look into the bustling, topsy-turvy bedrooms,—just say a word, perhaps,
+to the charwoman about the proper way to polish a grate, or clean a
+marble mantelpiece, or take stains from papered walls, and then pass
+on. She would thus descend to the kitchen once a day, eat her dinner,
+smoke a moderate pipe on the hearth, and go back, carrying her pot of
+porter with her, for her private solace, in her own gloomy, upper
+haunt. Only one hour in the twenty-four did she pass with her
+fellow-servants below; all the rest of her time was spent in some
+low-ceiled, oaken chamber of the second storey: there she sat and
+sewed—and probably laughed drearily to herself,—as companionless as a
+prisoner in his dungeon.
+
+The strangest thing of all was, that not a soul in the house, except
+me, noticed her habits, or seemed to marvel at them: no one discussed
+her position or employment; no one pitied her solitude or isolation. I
+once, indeed, overheard part of a dialogue between Leah and one of the
+charwomen, of which Grace formed the subject. Leah had been saying
+something I had not caught, and the charwoman remarked—
+
+“She gets good wages, I guess?”
+
+“Yes,” said Leah; “I wish I had as good; not that mine are to complain
+of,—there’s no stinginess at Thornfield; but they’re not one fifth of
+the sum Mrs. Poole receives. And she is laying by: she goes every
+quarter to the bank at Millcote. I should not wonder but she has saved
+enough to keep her independent if she liked to leave; but I suppose
+she’s got used to the place; and then she’s not forty yet, and strong
+and able for anything. It is too soon for her to give up business.”
+
+“She is a good hand, I daresay,” said the charwoman.
+
+“Ah!—she understands what she has to do,—nobody better,” rejoined Leah
+significantly; “and it is not every one could fill her shoes—not for
+all the money she gets.”
+
+“That it is not!” was the reply. “I wonder whether the master—”
+
+The charwoman was going on; but here Leah turned and perceived me, and
+she instantly gave her companion a nudge.
+
+“Doesn’t she know?” I heard the woman whisper.
+
+Leah shook her head, and the conversation was of course dropped. All I
+had gathered from it amounted to this,—that there was a mystery at
+Thornfield; and that from participation in that mystery I was purposely
+excluded.
+
+Thursday came: all work had been completed the previous evening;
+carpets were laid down, bed-hangings festooned, radiant white
+counterpanes spread, toilet tables arranged, furniture rubbed, flowers
+piled in vases: both chambers and saloons looked as fresh and bright as
+hands could make them. The hall, too, was scoured; and the great carved
+clock, as well as the steps and banisters of the staircase, were
+polished to the brightness of glass; in the dining-room, the sideboard
+flashed resplendent with plate; in the drawing-room and boudoir, vases
+of exotics bloomed on all sides.
+
+Afternoon arrived: Mrs. Fairfax assumed her best black satin gown, her
+gloves, and her gold watch; for it was her part to receive the
+company,—to conduct the ladies to their rooms, &c. Adèle, too, would be
+dressed: though I thought she had little chance of being introduced to
+the party that day at least. However, to please her, I allowed Sophie
+to apparel her in one of her short, full muslin frocks. For myself, I
+had no need to make any change; I should not be called upon to quit my
+sanctum of the schoolroom; for a sanctum it was now become to me,—“a
+very pleasant refuge in time of trouble.”
+
+It had been a mild, serene spring day—one of those days which, towards
+the end of March or the beginning of April, rise shining over the earth
+as heralds of summer. It was drawing to an end now; but the evening was
+even warm, and I sat at work in the schoolroom with the window open.
+
+“It gets late,” said Mrs. Fairfax, entering in rustling state. “I am
+glad I ordered dinner an hour after the time Mr. Rochester mentioned;
+for it is past six now. I have sent John down to the gates to see if
+there is anything on the road: one can see a long way from thence in
+the direction of Millcote.” She went to the window. “Here he is!” said
+she. “Well, John” (leaning out), “any news?”
+
+“They’re coming, ma’am,” was the answer. “They’ll be here in ten
+minutes.”
+
+Adèle flew to the window. I followed, taking care to stand on one side,
+so that, screened by the curtain, I could see without being seen.
+
+The ten minutes John had given seemed very long, but at last wheels
+were heard; four equestrians galloped up the drive, and after them came
+two open carriages. Fluttering veils and waving plumes filled the
+vehicles; two of the cavaliers were young, dashing-looking gentlemen;
+the third was Mr. Rochester, on his black horse, Mesrour, Pilot
+bounding before him; at his side rode a lady, and he and she were the
+first of the party. Her purple riding-habit almost swept the ground,
+her veil streamed long on the breeze; mingling with its transparent
+folds, and gleaming through them, shone rich raven ringlets.
+
+“Miss Ingram!” exclaimed Mrs. Fairfax, and away she hurried to her post
+below.
+
+The cavalcade, following the sweep of the drive, quickly turned the
+angle of the house, and I lost sight of it. Adèle now petitioned to go
+down; but I took her on my knee, and gave her to understand that she
+must not on any account think of venturing in sight of the ladies,
+either now or at any other time, unless expressly sent for: that Mr.
+Rochester would be very angry, &c. “Some natural tears she shed” on
+being told this; but as I began to look very grave, she consented at
+last to wipe them.
+
+A joyous stir was now audible in the hall: gentlemen’s deep tones and
+ladies’ silvery accents blent harmoniously together, and
+distinguishable above all, though not loud, was the sonorous voice of
+the master of Thornfield Hall, welcoming his fair and gallant guests
+under its roof. Then light steps ascended the stairs; and there was a
+tripping through the gallery, and soft cheerful laughs, and opening and
+closing doors, and, for a time, a hush.
+
+“Elles changent de toilettes,” said Adèle; who, listening attentively,
+had followed every movement; and she sighed.
+
+“Chez maman,” said she, “quand il y avait du monde, je le suivais
+partout, au salon et à leurs chambres; souvent je regardais les femmes
+de chambre coiffer et habiller les dames, et c’était si amusant: comme
+cela on apprend.”
+
+“Don’t you feel hungry, Adèle?”
+
+“Mais oui, mademoiselle: voilà cinq ou six heures que nous n’avons pas
+mangé.”
+
+“Well now, while the ladies are in their rooms, I will venture down and
+get you something to eat.”
+
+And issuing from my asylum with precaution, I sought a back-stairs
+which conducted directly to the kitchen. All in that region was fire
+and commotion; the soup and fish were in the last stage of projection,
+and the cook hung over her crucibles in a frame of mind and body
+threatening spontaneous combustion. In the servants’ hall two coachmen
+and three gentlemen’s gentlemen stood or sat round the fire; the
+abigails, I suppose, were upstairs with their mistresses; the new
+servants, that had been hired from Millcote, were bustling about
+everywhere. Threading this chaos, I at last reached the larder; there I
+took possession of a cold chicken, a roll of bread, some tarts, a plate
+or two and a knife and fork: with this booty I made a hasty retreat. I
+had regained the gallery, and was just shutting the back-door behind
+me, when an accelerated hum warned me that the ladies were about to
+issue from their chambers. I could not proceed to the schoolroom
+without passing some of their doors, and running the risk of being
+surprised with my cargo of victualage; so I stood still at this end,
+which, being windowless, was dark: quite dark now, for the sun was set
+and twilight gathering.
+
+Presently the chambers gave up their fair tenants one after another:
+each came out gaily and airily, with dress that gleamed lustrous
+through the dusk. For a moment they stood grouped together at the other
+extremity of the gallery, conversing in a key of sweet subdued
+vivacity: they then descended the staircase almost as noiselessly as a
+bright mist rolls down a hill. Their collective appearance had left on
+me an impression of high-born elegance, such as I had never before
+received.
+
+I found Adèle peeping through the schoolroom door, which she held ajar.
+“What beautiful ladies!” cried she in English. “Oh, I wish I might go
+to them! Do you think Mr. Rochester will send for us by-and-bye, after
+dinner?”
+
+“No, indeed, I don’t; Mr. Rochester has something else to think about.
+Never mind the ladies to-night; perhaps you will see them to-morrow:
+here is your dinner.”
+
+She was really hungry, so the chicken and tarts served to divert her
+attention for a time. It was well I secured this forage, or both she,
+I, and Sophie, to whom I conveyed a share of our repast, would have run
+a chance of getting no dinner at all: every one downstairs was too much
+engaged to think of us. The dessert was not carried out till after
+nine; and at ten footmen were still running to and fro with trays and
+coffee-cups. I allowed Adèle to sit up much later than usual; for she
+declared she could not possibly go to sleep while the doors kept
+opening and shutting below, and people bustling about. Besides, she
+added, a message might possibly come from Mr. Rochester when she was
+undressed; “et alors quel dommage!”
+
+I told her stories as long as she would listen to them; and then for a
+change I took her out into the gallery. The hall lamp was now lit, and
+it amused her to look over the balustrade and watch the servants
+passing backwards and forwards. When the evening was far advanced, a
+sound of music issued from the drawing-room, whither the piano had been
+removed; Adèle and I sat down on the top step of the stairs to listen.
+Presently a voice blent with the rich tones of the instrument; it was a
+lady who sang, and very sweet her notes were. The solo over, a duet
+followed, and then a glee: a joyous conversational murmur filled up the
+intervals. I listened long: suddenly I discovered that my ear was
+wholly intent on analysing the mingled sounds, and trying to
+discriminate amidst the confusion of accents those of Mr. Rochester;
+and when it caught them, which it soon did, it found a further task in
+framing the tones, rendered by distance inarticulate, into words.
+
+The clock struck eleven. I looked at Adèle, whose head leant against my
+shoulder; her eyes were waxing heavy, so I took her up in my arms and
+carried her off to bed. It was near one before the gentlemen and ladies
+sought their chambers.
+
+The next day was as fine as its predecessor: it was devoted by the
+party to an excursion to some site in the neighbourhood. They set out
+early in the forenoon, some on horseback, the rest in carriages; I
+witnessed both the departure and the return. Miss Ingram, as before,
+was the only lady equestrian; and, as before, Mr. Rochester galloped at
+her side; the two rode a little apart from the rest. I pointed out this
+circumstance to Mrs. Fairfax, who was standing at the window with me—
+
+“You said it was not likely they should think of being married,” said
+I, “but you see Mr. Rochester evidently prefers her to any of the other
+ladies.”
+
+“Yes, I daresay: no doubt he admires her.”
+
+“And she him,” I added; “look how she leans her head towards him as if
+she were conversing confidentially; I wish I could see her face; I have
+never had a glimpse of it yet.”
+
+“You will see her this evening,” answered Mrs. Fairfax. “I happened to
+remark to Mr. Rochester how much Adèle wished to be introduced to the
+ladies, and he said: ‘Oh! let her come into the drawing-room after
+dinner; and request Miss Eyre to accompany her.’”
+
+“Yes; he said that from mere politeness: I need not go, I am sure,” I
+answered.
+
+“Well, I observed to him that as you were unused to company, I did not
+think you would like appearing before so gay a party—all strangers; and
+he replied, in his quick way—‘Nonsense! If she objects, tell her it is
+my particular wish; and if she resists, say I shall come and fetch her
+in case of contumacy.’”
+
+“I will not give him that trouble,” I answered. “I will go, if no
+better may be; but I don’t like it. Shall you be there, Mrs. Fairfax?”
+
+“No; I pleaded off, and he admitted my plea. I’ll tell you how to
+manage so as to avoid the embarrassment of making a formal entrance,
+which is the most disagreeable part of the business. You must go into
+the drawing-room while it is empty, before the ladies leave the
+dinner-table; choose your seat in any quiet nook you like; you need not
+stay long after the gentlemen come in, unless you please: just let Mr.
+Rochester see you are there and then slip away—nobody will notice you.”
+
+“Will these people remain long, do you think?”
+
+“Perhaps two or three weeks, certainly not more. After the Easter
+recess, Sir George Lynn, who was lately elected member for Millcote,
+will have to go up to town and take his seat; I daresay Mr. Rochester
+will accompany him: it surprises me that he has already made so
+protracted a stay at Thornfield.”
+
+It was with some trepidation that I perceived the hour approach when I
+was to repair with my charge to the drawing-room. Adèle had been in a
+state of ecstasy all day, after hearing she was to be presented to the
+ladies in the evening; and it was not till Sophie commenced the
+operation of dressing her that she sobered down. Then the importance of
+the process quickly steadied her, and by the time she had her curls
+arranged in well-smoothed, drooping clusters, her pink satin frock put
+on, her long sash tied, and her lace mittens adjusted, she looked as
+grave as any judge. No need to warn her not to disarrange her attire:
+when she was dressed, she sat demurely down in her little chair, taking
+care previously to lift up the satin skirt for fear she should crease
+it, and assured me she would not stir thence till I was ready. This I
+quickly was: my best dress (the silver-grey one, purchased for Miss
+Temple’s wedding, and never worn since) was soon put on; my hair was
+soon smoothed; my sole ornament, the pearl brooch, soon assumed. We
+descended.
+
+Fortunately there was another entrance to the drawing-room than that
+through the saloon where they were all seated at dinner. We found the
+apartment vacant; a large fire burning silently on the marble hearth,
+and wax candles shining in bright solitude, amid the exquisite flowers
+with which the tables were adorned. The crimson curtain hung before the
+arch: slight as was the separation this drapery formed from the party
+in the adjoining saloon, they spoke in so low a key that nothing of
+their conversation could be distinguished beyond a soothing murmur.
+
+Adèle, who appeared to be still under the influence of a most
+solemnising impression, sat down, without a word, on the footstool I
+pointed out to her. I retired to a window-seat, and taking a book from
+a table near, endeavoured to read. Adèle brought her stool to my feet;
+ere long she touched my knee.
+
+“What is it, Adèle?”
+
+“Est-ce que je ne puis pas prendre une seule de ces fleurs magnifiques,
+mademoiselle? Seulement pour completer ma toilette.”
+
+“You think too much of your ‘toilette,’ Adèle: but you may have a
+flower.” And I took a rose from a vase and fastened it in her sash. She
+sighed a sigh of ineffable satisfaction, as if her cup of happiness
+were now full. I turned my face away to conceal a smile I could not
+suppress: there was something ludicrous as well as painful in the
+little Parisienne’s earnest and innate devotion to matters of dress.
+
+A soft sound of rising now became audible; the curtain was swept back
+from the arch; through it appeared the dining-room, with its lit lustre
+pouring down light on the silver and glass of a magnificent
+dessert-service covering a long table; a band of ladies stood in the
+opening; they entered, and the curtain fell behind them.
+
+There were but eight; yet, somehow, as they flocked in, they gave the
+impression of a much larger number. Some of them were very tall; many
+were dressed in white; and all had a sweeping amplitude of array that
+seemed to magnify their persons as a mist magnifies the moon. I rose
+and curtseyed to them: one or two bent their heads in return, the
+others only stared at me.
+
+They dispersed about the room, reminding me, by the lightness and
+buoyancy of their movements, of a flock of white plumy birds. Some of
+them threw themselves in half-reclining positions on the sofas and
+ottomans: some bent over the tables and examined the flowers and books:
+the rest gathered in a group round the fire: all talked in a low but
+clear tone which seemed habitual to them. I knew their names
+afterwards, and may as well mention them now.
+
+First, there was Mrs. Eshton and two of her daughters. She had
+evidently been a handsome woman, and was well preserved still. Of her
+daughters, the eldest, Amy, was rather little: naïve, and child-like in
+face and manner, and piquant in form; her white muslin dress and blue
+sash became her well. The second, Louisa, was taller and more elegant
+in figure; with a very pretty face, of that order the French term
+_minois chiffoné_: both sisters were fair as lilies.
+
+Lady Lynn was a large and stout personage of about forty, very erect,
+very haughty-looking, richly dressed in a satin robe of changeful
+sheen: her dark hair shone glossily under the shade of an azure plume,
+and within the circlet of a band of gems.
+
+Mrs. Colonel Dent was less showy; but, I thought, more lady-like. She
+had a slight figure, a pale, gentle face, and fair hair. Her black
+satin dress, her scarf of rich foreign lace, and her pearl ornaments,
+pleased me better than the rainbow radiance of the titled dame.
+
+But the three most distinguished—partly, perhaps, because the tallest
+figures of the band—were the Dowager Lady Ingram and her daughters,
+Blanche and Mary. They were all three of the loftiest stature of women.
+The Dowager might be between forty and fifty: her shape was still fine;
+her hair (by candle-light at least) still black; her teeth, too, were
+still apparently perfect. Most people would have termed her a splendid
+woman of her age: and so she was, no doubt, physically speaking; but
+then there was an expression of almost insupportable haughtiness in her
+bearing and countenance. She had Roman features and a double chin,
+disappearing into a throat like a pillar: these features appeared to me
+not only inflated and darkened, but even furrowed with pride; and the
+chin was sustained by the same principle, in a position of almost
+preternatural erectness. She had, likewise, a fierce and a hard eye: it
+reminded me of Mrs. Reed’s; she mouthed her words in speaking; her
+voice was deep, its inflections very pompous, very dogmatical,—very
+intolerable, in short. A crimson velvet robe, and a shawl turban of
+some gold-wrought Indian fabric, invested her (I suppose she thought)
+with a truly imperial dignity.
+
+Blanche and Mary were of equal stature,—straight and tall as poplars.
+Mary was too slim for her height, but Blanche was moulded like a Dian.
+I regarded her, of course, with special interest. First, I wished to
+see whether her appearance accorded with Mrs. Fairfax’s description;
+secondly, whether it at all resembled the fancy miniature I had painted
+of her; and thirdly—it will out!—whether it were such as I should fancy
+likely to suit Mr. Rochester’s taste.
+
+As far as person went, she answered point for point, both to my picture
+and Mrs. Fairfax’s description. The noble bust, the sloping shoulders,
+the graceful neck, the dark eyes and black ringlets were all there;—but
+her face? Her face was like her mother’s; a youthful unfurrowed
+likeness: the same low brow, the same high features, the same pride. It
+was not, however, so saturnine a pride! she laughed continually; her
+laugh was satirical, and so was the habitual expression of her arched
+and haughty lip.
+
+Genius is said to be self-conscious. I cannot tell whether Miss Ingram
+was a genius, but she was self-conscious—remarkably self-conscious
+indeed. She entered into a discourse on botany with the gentle Mrs.
+Dent. It seemed Mrs. Dent had not studied that science: though, as she
+said, she liked flowers, “especially wild ones;” Miss Ingram had, and
+she ran over its vocabulary with an air. I presently perceived she was
+(what is vernacularly termed) _trailing_ Mrs. Dent; that is, playing on
+her ignorance; her _trail_ might be clever, but it was decidedly not
+good-natured. She played: her execution was brilliant; she sang: her
+voice was fine; she talked French apart to her mamma; and she talked it
+well, with fluency and with a good accent.
+
+Mary had a milder and more open countenance than Blanche; softer
+features too, and a skin some shades fairer (Miss Ingram was dark as a
+Spaniard)—but Mary was deficient in life: her face lacked expression,
+her eye lustre; she had nothing to say, and having once taken her seat,
+remained fixed like a statue in its niche. The sisters were both
+attired in spotless white.
+
+And did I now think Miss Ingram such a choice as Mr. Rochester would be
+likely to make? I could not tell—I did not know his taste in female
+beauty. If he liked the majestic, she was the very type of majesty:
+then she was accomplished, sprightly. Most gentlemen would admire her,
+I thought; and that he _did_ admire her, I already seemed to have
+obtained proof: to remove the last shade of doubt, it remained but to
+see them together.
+
+You are not to suppose, reader, that Adèle has all this time been
+sitting motionless on the stool at my feet: no; when the ladies
+entered, she rose, advanced to meet them, made a stately reverence, and
+said with gravity—
+
+“Bon jour, mesdames.”
+
+And Miss Ingram had looked down at her with a mocking air, and
+exclaimed, “Oh, what a little puppet!”
+
+Lady Lynn had remarked, “It is Mr. Rochester’s ward, I suppose—the
+little French girl he was speaking of.”
+
+Mrs. Dent had kindly taken her hand, and given her a kiss. Amy and
+Louisa Eshton had cried out simultaneously—
+
+“What a love of a child!”
+
+And then they had called her to a sofa, where she now sat, ensconced
+between them, chattering alternately in French and broken English;
+absorbing not only the young ladies’ attention, but that of Mrs. Eshton
+and Lady Lynn, and getting spoilt to her heart’s content.
+
+At last coffee is brought in, and the gentlemen are summoned. I sit in
+the shade—if any shade there be in this brilliantly-lit apartment; the
+window-curtain half hides me. Again the arch yawns; they come. The
+collective appearance of the gentlemen, like that of the ladies, is
+very imposing: they are all costumed in black; most of them are tall,
+some young. Henry and Frederick Lynn are very dashing sparks indeed;
+and Colonel Dent is a fine soldierly man. Mr. Eshton, the magistrate of
+the district, is gentleman-like: his hair is quite white, his eyebrows
+and whiskers still dark, which gives him something of the appearance of
+a “père noble de théâtre.” Lord Ingram, like his sisters, is very tall;
+like them, also, he is handsome; but he shares Mary’s apathetic and
+listless look: he seems to have more length of limb than vivacity of
+blood or vigour of brain.
+
+And where is Mr. Rochester?
+
+He comes in last: I am not looking at the arch, yet I see him enter. I
+try to concentrate my attention on those netting-needles, on the meshes
+of the purse I am forming—I wish to think only of the work I have in my
+hands, to see only the silver beads and silk threads that lie in my
+lap; whereas, I distinctly behold his figure, and I inevitably recall
+the moment when I last saw it; just after I had rendered him, what he
+deemed, an essential service, and he, holding my hand, and looking down
+on my face, surveyed me with eyes that revealed a heart full and eager
+to overflow; in whose emotions I had a part. How near had I approached
+him at that moment! What had occurred since, calculated to change his
+and my relative positions? Yet now, how distant, how far estranged we
+were! So far estranged, that I did not expect him to come and speak to
+me. I did not wonder, when, without looking at me, he took a seat at
+the other side of the room, and began conversing with some of the
+ladies.
+
+No sooner did I see that his attention was riveted on them, and that I
+might gaze without being observed, than my eyes were drawn
+involuntarily to his face; I could not keep their lids under control:
+they would rise, and the irids would fix on him. I looked, and had an
+acute pleasure in looking,—a precious yet poignant pleasure; pure gold,
+with a steely point of agony: a pleasure like what the thirst-perishing
+man might feel who knows the well to which he has crept is poisoned,
+yet stoops and drinks divine draughts nevertheless.
+
+Most true is it that “beauty is in the eye of the gazer.” My master’s
+colourless, olive face, square, massive brow, broad and jetty eyebrows,
+deep eyes, strong features, firm, grim mouth,—all energy, decision,
+will,—were not beautiful, according to rule; but they were more than
+beautiful to me; they were full of an interest, an influence that quite
+mastered me,—that took my feelings from my own power and fettered them
+in his. I had not intended to love him; the reader knows I had wrought
+hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and
+now, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously arrived,
+green and strong! He made me love him without looking at me.
+
+I compared him with his guests. What was the gallant grace of the
+Lynns, the languid elegance of Lord Ingram,—even the military
+distinction of Colonel Dent, contrasted with his look of native pith
+and genuine power? I had no sympathy in their appearance, their
+expression: yet I could imagine that most observers would call them
+attractive, handsome, imposing; while they would pronounce Mr.
+Rochester at once harsh-featured and melancholy-looking. I saw them
+smile, laugh—it was nothing; the light of the candles had as much soul
+in it as their smile; the tinkle of the bell as much significance as
+their laugh. I saw Mr. Rochester smile:—his stern features softened;
+his eye grew both brilliant and gentle, its ray both searching and
+sweet. He was talking, at the moment, to Louisa and Amy Eshton. I
+wondered to see them receive with calm that look which seemed to me so
+penetrating: I expected their eyes to fall, their colour to rise under
+it; yet I was glad when I found they were in no sense moved. “He is not
+to them what he is to me,” I thought: “he is not of their kind. I
+believe he is of mine;—I am sure he is—I feel akin to him—I understand
+the language of his countenance and movements: though rank and wealth
+sever us widely, I have something in my brain and heart, in my blood
+and nerves, that assimilates me mentally to him. Did I say, a few days
+since, that I had nothing to do with him but to receive my salary at
+his hands? Did I forbid myself to think of him in any other light than
+as a paymaster? Blasphemy against nature! Every good, true, vigorous
+feeling I have gathers impulsively round him. I know I must conceal my
+sentiments: I must smother hope; I must remember that he cannot care
+much for me. For when I say that I am of his kind, I do not mean that I
+have his force to influence, and his spell to attract; I mean only that
+I have certain tastes and feelings in common with him. I must, then,
+repeat continually that we are for ever sundered:—and yet, while I
+breathe and think, I must love him.”
+
+Coffee is handed. The ladies, since the gentlemen entered, have become
+lively as larks; conversation waxes brisk and merry. Colonel Dent and
+Mr. Eshton argue on politics; their wives listen. The two proud
+dowagers, Lady Lynn and Lady Ingram, confabulate together. Sir
+George—whom, by-the-bye, I have forgotten to describe,—a very big, and
+very fresh-looking country gentleman, stands before their sofa,
+coffee-cup in hand, and occasionally puts in a word. Mr. Frederick Lynn
+has taken a seat beside Mary Ingram, and is showing her the engravings
+of a splendid volume: she looks, smiles now and then, but apparently
+says little. The tall and phlegmatic Lord Ingram leans with folded arms
+on the chair-back of the little and lively Amy Eshton; she glances up
+at him, and chatters like a wren: she likes him better than she does
+Mr. Rochester. Henry Lynn has taken possession of an ottoman at the
+feet of Louisa: Adèle shares it with him: he is trying to talk French
+with her, and Louisa laughs at his blunders. With whom will Blanche
+Ingram pair? She is standing alone at the table, bending gracefully
+over an album. She seems waiting to be sought; but she will not wait
+too long: she herself selects a mate.
+
+Mr. Rochester, having quitted the Eshtons, stands on the hearth as
+solitary as she stands by the table: she confronts him, taking her
+station on the opposite side of the mantelpiece.
+
+“Mr. Rochester, I thought you were not fond of children?”
+
+“Nor am I.”
+
+“Then, what induced you to take charge of such a little doll as that?”
+(pointing to Adèle). “Where did you pick her up?”
+
+“I did not pick her up; she was left on my hands.”
+
+“You should have sent her to school.”
+
+“I could not afford it: schools are so dear.”
+
+“Why, I suppose you have a governess for her: I saw a person with her
+just now—is she gone? Oh, no! there she is still, behind the
+window-curtain. You pay her, of course; I should think it quite as
+expensive,—more so; for you have them both to keep in addition.”
+
+I feared—or should I say, hoped?—the allusion to me would make Mr.
+Rochester glance my way; and I involuntarily shrank farther into the
+shade: but he never turned his eyes.
+
+“I have not considered the subject,” said he indifferently, looking
+straight before him.
+
+“No, you men never do consider economy and common sense. You should
+hear mama on the chapter of governesses: Mary and I have had, I should
+think, a dozen at least in our day; half of them detestable and the
+rest ridiculous, and all incubi—were they not, mama?”
+
+“Did you speak, my own?”
+
+The young lady thus claimed as the dowager’s special property,
+reiterated her question with an explanation.
+
+“My dearest, don’t mention governesses; the word makes me nervous. I
+have suffered a martyrdom from their incompetency and caprice. I thank
+Heaven I have now done with them!”
+
+Mrs. Dent here bent over to the pious lady and whispered something in
+her ear; I suppose, from the answer elicited, it was a reminder that
+one of the anathematised race was present.
+
+“Tant pis!” said her Ladyship, “I hope it may do her good!” Then, in a
+lower tone, but still loud enough for me to hear, “I noticed her; I am
+a judge of physiognomy, and in hers I see all the faults of her class.”
+
+“What are they, madam?” inquired Mr. Rochester aloud.
+
+“I will tell you in your private ear,” replied she, wagging her turban
+three times with portentous significancy.
+
+“But my curiosity will be past its appetite; it craves food now.”
+
+“Ask Blanche; she is nearer you than I.”
+
+“Oh, don’t refer him to me, mama! I have just one word to say of the
+whole tribe; they are a nuisance. Not that I ever suffered much from
+them; I took care to turn the tables. What tricks Theodore and I used
+to play on our Miss Wilsons, and Mrs. Greys, and Madame Jouberts! Mary
+was always too sleepy to join in a plot with spirit. The best fun was
+with Madame Joubert: Miss Wilson was a poor sickly thing, lachrymose
+and low-spirited, not worth the trouble of vanquishing, in short; and
+Mrs. Grey was coarse and insensible; no blow took effect on her. But
+poor Madame Joubert! I see her yet in her raging passions, when we had
+driven her to extremities—spilt our tea, crumbled our bread and butter,
+tossed our books up to the ceiling, and played a charivari with the
+ruler and desk, the fender and fire-irons. Theodore, do you remember
+those merry days?”
+
+“Yaas, to be sure I do,” drawled Lord Ingram; “and the poor old stick
+used to cry out ‘Oh you villains childs!’—and then we sermonised her on
+the presumption of attempting to teach such clever blades as we were,
+when she was herself so ignorant.”
+
+“We did; and, Tedo, you know, I helped you in prosecuting (or
+persecuting) your tutor, whey-faced Mr. Vining—the parson in the pip,
+as we used to call him. He and Miss Wilson took the liberty of falling
+in love with each other—at least Tedo and I thought so; we surprised
+sundry tender glances and sighs which we interpreted as tokens of ‘la
+belle passion,’ and I promise you the public soon had the benefit of
+our discovery; we employed it as a sort of lever to hoist our
+dead-weights from the house. Dear mama, there, as soon as she got an
+inkling of the business, found out that it was of an immoral tendency.
+Did you not, my lady-mother?”
+
+“Certainly, my best. And I was quite right: depend on that: there are a
+thousand reasons why liaisons between governesses and tutors should
+never be tolerated a moment in any well-regulated house; firstly—”
+
+“Oh, gracious, mama! Spare us the enumeration! _Au reste_, we all know
+them: danger of bad example to innocence of childhood; distractions and
+consequent neglect of duty on the part of the attached—mutual alliance
+and reliance; confidence thence resulting—insolence accompanying—mutiny
+and general blow-up. Am I right, Baroness Ingram, of Ingram Park?”
+
+“My lily-flower, you are right now, as always.”
+
+“Then no more need be said: change the subject.”
+
+Amy Eshton, not hearing or not heeding this dictum, joined in with her
+soft, infantine tone: “Louisa and I used to quiz our governess too; but
+she was such a good creature, she would bear anything: nothing put her
+out. She was never cross with us; was she, Louisa?”
+
+“No, never: we might do what we pleased; ransack her desk and her
+workbox, and turn her drawers inside out; and she was so good-natured,
+she would give us anything we asked for.”
+
+“I suppose, now,” said Miss Ingram, curling her lip sarcastically, “we
+shall have an abstract of the memoirs of all the governesses extant: in
+order to avert such a visitation, I again move the introduction of a
+new topic. Mr. Rochester, do you second my motion?”
+
+“Madam, I support you on this point, as on every other.”
+
+“Then on me be the onus of bringing it forward. Signior Eduardo, are
+you in voice to-night?”
+
+“Donna Bianca, if you command it, I will be.”
+
+“Then, signior, I lay on you my sovereign behest to furbish up your
+lungs and other vocal organs, as they will be wanted on my royal
+service.”
+
+“Who would not be the Rizzio of so divine a Mary?”
+
+“A fig for Rizzio!” cried she, tossing her head with all its curls, as
+she moved to the piano. “It is my opinion the fiddler David must have
+been an insipid sort of fellow; I like black Bothwell better: to my
+mind a man is nothing without a spice of the devil in him; and history
+may say what it will of James Hepburn, but I have a notion, he was just
+the sort of wild, fierce, bandit hero whom I could have consented to
+gift with my hand.”
+
+“Gentlemen, you hear! Now which of you most resembles Bothwell?” cried
+Mr. Rochester.
+
+“I should say the preference lies with you,” responded Colonel Dent.
+
+“On my honour, I am much obliged to you,” was the reply.
+
+Miss Ingram, who had now seated herself with proud grace at the piano,
+spreading out her snowy robes in queenly amplitude, commenced a
+brilliant prelude; talking meantime. She appeared to be on her high
+horse to-night; both her words and her air seemed intended to excite
+not only the admiration, but the amazement of her auditors: she was
+evidently bent on striking them as something very dashing and daring
+indeed.
+
+“Oh, I am so sick of the young men of the present day!” exclaimed she,
+rattling away at the instrument. “Poor, puny things, not fit to stir a
+step beyond papa’s park gates: nor to go even so far without mama’s
+permission and guardianship! Creatures so absorbed in care about their
+pretty faces, and their white hands, and their small feet; as if a man
+had anything to do with beauty! As if loveliness were not the special
+prerogative of woman—her legitimate appanage and heritage! I grant an
+ugly _woman_ is a blot on the fair face of creation; but as to the
+_gentlemen_, let them be solicitous to possess only strength and
+valour: let their motto be:—Hunt, shoot, and fight: the rest is not
+worth a fillip. Such should be my device, were I a man.”
+
+“Whenever I marry,” she continued after a pause which none interrupted,
+“I am resolved my husband shall not be a rival, but a foil to me. I
+will suffer no competitor near the throne; I shall exact an undivided
+homage: his devotions shall not be shared between me and the shape he
+sees in his mirror. Mr. Rochester, now sing, and I will play for you.”
+
+“I am all obedience,” was the response.
+
+“Here then is a Corsair-song. Know that I doat on Corsairs; and for
+that reason, sing it _con spirito_.”
+
+“Commands from Miss Ingram’s lips would put spirit into a mug of milk
+and water.”
+
+“Take care, then: if you don’t please me, I will shame you by showing
+how such things _should_ be done.”
+
+“That is offering a premium on incapacity: I shall now endeavour to
+fail.”
+
+“Gardez-vous en bien! If you err wilfully, I shall devise a
+proportionate punishment.”
+
+“Miss Ingram ought to be clement, for she has it in her power to
+inflict a chastisement beyond mortal endurance.”
+
+“Ha! explain!” commanded the lady.
+
+“Pardon me, madam: no need of explanation; your own fine sense must
+inform you that one of your frowns would be a sufficient substitute for
+capital punishment.”
+
+“Sing!” said she, and again touching the piano, she commenced an
+accompaniment in spirited style.
+
+“Now is my time to slip away,” thought I: but the tones that then
+severed the air arrested me. Mrs. Fairfax had said Mr. Rochester
+possessed a fine voice: he did—a mellow, powerful bass, into which he
+threw his own feeling, his own force; finding a way through the ear to
+the heart, and there waking sensation strangely. I waited till the last
+deep and full vibration had expired—till the tide of talk, checked an
+instant, had resumed its flow; I then quitted my sheltered corner and
+made my exit by the side-door, which was fortunately near. Thence a
+narrow passage led into the hall: in crossing it, I perceived my sandal
+was loose; I stopped to tie it, kneeling down for that purpose on the
+mat at the foot of the staircase. I heard the dining-room door unclose;
+a gentleman came out; rising hastily, I stood face to face with him: it
+was Mr. Rochester.
+
+“How do you do?” he asked.
+
+“I am very well, sir.”
+
+“Why did you not come and speak to me in the room?”
+
+I thought I might have retorted the question on him who put it: but I
+would not take that freedom. I answered—
+
+“I did not wish to disturb you, as you seemed engaged, sir.”
+
+“What have you been doing during my absence?”
+
+“Nothing particular; teaching Adèle as usual.”
+
+“And getting a good deal paler than you were—as I saw at first sight.
+What is the matter?”
+
+“Nothing at all, sir.”
+
+“Did you take any cold that night you half drowned me?”
+
+“Not the least.”
+
+“Return to the drawing-room: you are deserting too early.”
+
+“I am tired, sir.”
+
+He looked at me for a minute.
+
+“And a little depressed,” he said. “What about? Tell me.”
+
+“Nothing—nothing, sir. I am not depressed.”
+
+“But I affirm that you are: so much depressed that a few more words
+would bring tears to your eyes—indeed, they are there now, shining and
+swimming; and a bead has slipped from the lash and fallen on to the
+flag. If I had time, and was not in mortal dread of some prating prig
+of a servant passing, I would know what all this means. Well, to-night
+I excuse you; but understand that so long as my visitors stay, I expect
+you to appear in the drawing-room every evening; it is my wish; don’t
+neglect it. Now go, and send Sophie for Adèle. Good-night, my—” He
+stopped, bit his lip, and abruptly left me.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+Merry days were these at Thornfield Hall; and busy days too: how
+different from the first three months of stillness, monotony, and
+solitude I had passed beneath its roof! All sad feelings seemed now
+driven from the house, all gloomy associations forgotten: there was
+life everywhere, movement all day long. You could not now traverse the
+gallery, once so hushed, nor enter the front chambers, once so
+tenantless, without encountering a smart lady’s-maid or a dandy valet.
+
+The kitchen, the butler’s pantry, the servants’ hall, the entrance
+hall, were equally alive; and the saloons were only left void and still
+when the blue sky and halcyon sunshine of the genial spring weather
+called their occupants out into the grounds. Even when that weather was
+broken, and continuous rain set in for some days, no damp seemed cast
+over enjoyment: indoor amusements only became more lively and varied,
+in consequence of the stop put to outdoor gaiety.
+
+I wondered what they were going to do the first evening a change of
+entertainment was proposed: they spoke of “playing charades,” but in my
+ignorance I did not understand the term. The servants were called in,
+the dining-room tables wheeled away, the lights otherwise disposed, the
+chairs placed in a semicircle opposite the arch. While Mr. Rochester
+and the other gentlemen directed these alterations, the ladies were
+running up and down stairs ringing for their maids. Mrs. Fairfax was
+summoned to give information respecting the resources of the house in
+shawls, dresses, draperies of any kind; and certain wardrobes of the
+third storey were ransacked, and their contents, in the shape of
+brocaded and hooped petticoats, satin sacques, black modes, lace
+lappets, &c., were brought down in armfuls by the abigails; then a
+selection was made, and such things as were chosen were carried to the
+boudoir within the drawing-room.
+
+Meantime, Mr. Rochester had again summoned the ladies round him, and
+was selecting certain of their number to be of his party. “Miss Ingram
+is mine, of course,” said he: afterwards he named the two Misses
+Eshton, and Mrs. Dent. He looked at me: I happened to be near him, as I
+had been fastening the clasp of Mrs. Dent’s bracelet, which had got
+loose.
+
+“Will you play?” he asked. I shook my head. He did not insist, which I
+rather feared he would have done; he allowed me to return quietly to my
+usual seat.
+
+He and his aids now withdrew behind the curtain: the other party, which
+was headed by Colonel Dent, sat down on the crescent of chairs. One of
+the gentlemen, Mr. Eshton, observing me, seemed to propose that I
+should be asked to join them; but Lady Ingram instantly negatived the
+notion.
+
+“No,” I heard her say: “she looks too stupid for any game of the sort.”
+
+Ere long a bell tinkled, and the curtain drew up. Within the arch, the
+bulky figure of Sir George Lynn, whom Mr. Rochester had likewise
+chosen, was seen enveloped in a white sheet: before him, on a table,
+lay open a large book; and at his side stood Amy Eshton, draped in Mr.
+Rochester’s cloak, and holding a book in her hand. Somebody, unseen,
+rang the bell merrily; then Adèle (who had insisted on being one of her
+guardian’s party), bounded forward, scattering round her the contents
+of a basket of flowers she carried on her arm. Then appeared the
+magnificent figure of Miss Ingram, clad in white, a long veil on her
+head, and a wreath of roses round her brow; by her side walked Mr.
+Rochester, and together they drew near the table. They knelt; while
+Mrs. Dent and Louisa Eshton, dressed also in white, took up their
+stations behind them. A ceremony followed, in dumb show, in which it
+was easy to recognise the pantomime of a marriage. At its termination,
+Colonel Dent and his party consulted in whispers for two minutes, then
+the Colonel called out—
+
+“Bride!” Mr. Rochester bowed, and the curtain fell.
+
+A considerable interval elapsed before it again rose. Its second rising
+displayed a more elaborately prepared scene than the last. The
+drawing-room, as I have before observed, was raised two steps above the
+dining-room, and on the top of the upper step, placed a yard or two
+back within the room, appeared a large marble basin, which I recognised
+as an ornament of the conservatory—where it usually stood, surrounded
+by exotics, and tenanted by gold fish—and whence it must have been
+transported with some trouble, on account of its size and weight.
+
+Seated on the carpet, by the side of this basin, was seen Mr.
+Rochester, costumed in shawls, with a turban on his head. His dark eyes
+and swarthy skin and Paynim features suited the costume exactly: he
+looked the very model of an Eastern emir, an agent or a victim of the
+bowstring. Presently advanced into view Miss Ingram. She, too, was
+attired in oriental fashion: a crimson scarf tied sash-like round the
+waist: an embroidered handkerchief knotted about her temples; her
+beautifully-moulded arms bare, one of them upraised in the act of
+supporting a pitcher, poised gracefully on her head. Both her cast of
+form and feature, her complexion and her general air, suggested the
+idea of some Israelitish princess of the patriarchal days; and such was
+doubtless the character she intended to represent.
+
+She approached the basin, and bent over it as if to fill her pitcher;
+she again lifted it to her head. The personage on the well-brink now
+seemed to accost her; to make some request:—“She hasted, let down her
+pitcher on her hand, and gave him to drink.” From the bosom of his robe
+he then produced a casket, opened it and showed magnificent bracelets
+and earrings; she acted astonishment and admiration; kneeling, he laid
+the treasure at her feet; incredulity and delight were expressed by her
+looks and gestures; the stranger fastened the bracelets on her arms and
+the rings in her ears. It was Eliezer and Rebecca: the camels only were
+wanting.
+
+The divining party again laid their heads together: apparently they
+could not agree about the word or syllable the scene illustrated.
+Colonel Dent, their spokesman, demanded “the tableau of the whole;”
+whereupon the curtain again descended.
+
+On its third rising only a portion of the drawing-room was disclosed;
+the rest being concealed by a screen, hung with some sort of dark and
+coarse drapery. The marble basin was removed; in its place, stood a
+deal table and a kitchen chair: these objects were visible by a very
+dim light proceeding from a horn lantern, the wax candles being all
+extinguished.
+
+Amidst this sordid scene, sat a man with his clenched hands resting on
+his knees, and his eyes bent on the ground. I knew Mr. Rochester;
+though the begrimed face, the disordered dress (his coat hanging loose
+from one arm, as if it had been almost torn from his back in a
+scuffle), the desperate and scowling countenance, the rough, bristling
+hair might well have disguised him. As he moved, a chain clanked; to
+his wrists were attached fetters.
+
+“Bridewell!” exclaimed Colonel Dent, and the charade was solved.
+
+A sufficient interval having elapsed for the performers to resume their
+ordinary costume, they re-entered the dining-room. Mr. Rochester led in
+Miss Ingram; she was complimenting him on his acting.
+
+“Do you know,” said she, “that, of the three characters, I liked you in
+the last best? Oh, had you but lived a few years earlier, what a
+gallant gentleman-highwayman you would have made!”
+
+“Is all the soot washed from my face?” he asked, turning it towards
+her.
+
+“Alas! yes: the more’s the pity! Nothing could be more becoming to your
+complexion than that ruffian’s rouge.”
+
+“You would like a hero of the road then?”
+
+“An English hero of the road would be the next best thing to an Italian
+bandit; and that could only be surpassed by a Levantine pirate.”
+
+“Well, whatever I am, remember you are my wife; we were married an hour
+since, in the presence of all these witnesses.” She giggled, and her
+colour rose.
+
+“Now, Dent,” continued Mr. Rochester, “it is your turn.” And as the
+other party withdrew, he and his band took the vacated seats. Miss
+Ingram placed herself at her leader’s right hand; the other diviners
+filled the chairs on each side of him and her. I did not now watch the
+actors; I no longer waited with interest for the curtain to rise; my
+attention was absorbed by the spectators; my eyes, erewhile fixed on
+the arch, were now irresistibly attracted to the semicircle of chairs.
+What charade Colonel Dent and his party played, what word they chose,
+how they acquitted themselves, I no longer remember; but I still see
+the consultation which followed each scene: I see Mr. Rochester turn to
+Miss Ingram, and Miss Ingram to him; I see her incline her head towards
+him, till the jetty curls almost touch his shoulder and wave against
+his cheek; I hear their mutual whisperings; I recall their interchanged
+glances; and something even of the feeling roused by the spectacle
+returns in memory at this moment.
+
+I have told you, reader, that I had learnt to love Mr. Rochester: I
+could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to
+notice me—because I might pass hours in his presence, and he would
+never once turn his eyes in my direction—because I saw all his
+attentions appropriated by a great lady, who scorned to touch me with
+the hem of her robes as she passed; who, if ever her dark and imperious
+eye fell on me by chance, would withdraw it instantly as from an object
+too mean to merit observation. I could not unlove him, because I felt
+sure he would soon marry this very lady—because I read daily in her a
+proud security in his intentions respecting her—because I witnessed
+hourly in him a style of courtship which, if careless and choosing
+rather to be sought than to seek, was yet, in its very carelessness,
+captivating, and in its very pride, irresistible.
+
+There was nothing to cool or banish love in these circumstances, though
+much to create despair. Much too, you will think, reader, to engender
+jealousy: if a woman, in my position, could presume to be jealous of a
+woman in Miss Ingram’s. But I was not jealous: or very rarely;—the
+nature of the pain I suffered could not be explained by that word. Miss
+Ingram was a mark beneath jealousy: she was too inferior to excite the
+feeling. Pardon the seeming paradox; I mean what I say. She was very
+showy, but she was not genuine: she had a fine person, many brilliant
+attainments; but her mind was poor, her heart barren by nature: nothing
+bloomed spontaneously on that soil; no unforced natural fruit delighted
+by its freshness. She was not good; she was not original: she used to
+repeat sounding phrases from books: she never offered, nor had, an
+opinion of her own. She advocated a high tone of sentiment; but she did
+not know the sensations of sympathy and pity; tenderness and truth were
+not in her. Too often she betrayed this, by the undue vent she gave to
+a spiteful antipathy she had conceived against little Adèle: pushing
+her away with some contumelious epithet if she happened to approach
+her; sometimes ordering her from the room, and always treating her with
+coldness and acrimony. Other eyes besides mine watched these
+manifestations of character—watched them closely, keenly, shrewdly.
+Yes; the future bridegroom, Mr. Rochester himself, exercised over his
+intended a ceaseless surveillance; and it was from this sagacity—this
+guardedness of his—this perfect, clear consciousness of his fair one’s
+defects—this obvious absence of passion in his sentiments towards her,
+that my ever-torturing pain arose.
+
+I saw he was going to marry her, for family, perhaps political reasons,
+because her rank and connections suited him; I felt he had not given
+her his love, and that her qualifications were ill adapted to win from
+him that treasure. This was the point—this was where the nerve was
+touched and teased—this was where the fever was sustained and fed: _she
+could not charm him_.
+
+If she had managed the victory at once, and he had yielded and
+sincerely laid his heart at her feet, I should have covered my face,
+turned to the wall, and (figuratively) have died to them. If Miss
+Ingram had been a good and noble woman, endowed with force, fervour,
+kindness, sense, I should have had one vital struggle with two
+tigers—jealousy and despair: then, my heart torn out and devoured, I
+should have admired her—acknowledged her excellence, and been quiet for
+the rest of my days: and the more absolute her superiority, the deeper
+would have been my admiration—the more truly tranquil my quiescence.
+But as matters really stood, to watch Miss Ingram’s efforts at
+fascinating Mr. Rochester, to witness their repeated failure—herself
+unconscious that they did fail; vainly fancying that each shaft
+launched hit the mark, and infatuatedly pluming herself on success,
+when her pride and self-complacency repelled further and further what
+she wished to allure—to witness _this_, was to be at once under
+ceaseless excitation and ruthless restraint.
+
+Because, when she failed, I saw how she might have succeeded. Arrows
+that continually glanced off from Mr. Rochester’s breast and fell
+harmless at his feet, might, I knew, if shot by a surer hand, have
+quivered keen in his proud heart—have called love into his stern eye,
+and softness into his sardonic face; or, better still, without weapons
+a silent conquest might have been won.
+
+“Why can she not influence him more, when she is privileged to draw so
+near to him?” I asked myself. “Surely she cannot truly like him, or not
+like him with true affection! If she did, she need not coin her smiles
+so lavishly, flash her glances so unremittingly, manufacture airs so
+elaborate, graces so multitudinous. It seems to me that she might, by
+merely sitting quietly at his side, saying little and looking less, get
+nigher his heart. I have seen in his face a far different expression
+from that which hardens it now while she is so vivaciously accosting
+him; but then it came of itself: it was not elicited by meretricious
+arts and calculated manoeuvres; and one had but to accept it—to answer
+what he asked without pretension, to address him when needful without
+grimace—and it increased and grew kinder and more genial, and warmed
+one like a fostering sunbeam. How will she manage to please him when
+they are married? I do not think she will manage it; and yet it might
+be managed; and his wife might, I verily believe, be the very happiest
+woman the sun shines on.”
+
+I have not yet said anything condemnatory of Mr. Rochester’s project of
+marrying for interest and connections. It surprised me when I first
+discovered that such was his intention: I had thought him a man
+unlikely to be influenced by motives so commonplace in his choice of a
+wife; but the longer I considered the position, education, &c., of the
+parties, the less I felt justified in judging and blaming either him or
+Miss Ingram for acting in conformity to ideas and principles instilled
+into them, doubtless, from their childhood. All their class held these
+principles: I supposed, then, they had reasons for holding them such as
+I could not fathom. It seemed to me that, were I a gentleman like him,
+I would take to my bosom only such a wife as I could love; but the very
+obviousness of the advantages to the husband’s own happiness offered by
+this plan convinced me that there must be arguments against its general
+adoption of which I was quite ignorant: otherwise I felt sure all the
+world would act as I wished to act.
+
+But in other points, as well as this, I was growing very lenient to my
+master: I was forgetting all his faults, for which I had once kept a
+sharp look-out. It had formerly been my endeavour to study all sides of
+his character: to take the bad with the good; and from the just
+weighing of both, to form an equitable judgment. Now I saw no bad. The
+sarcasm that had repelled, the harshness that had startled me once,
+were only like keen condiments in a choice dish: their presence was
+pungent, but their absence would be felt as comparatively insipid. And
+as for the vague something—was it a sinister or a sorrowful, a
+designing or a desponding expression?—that opened upon a careful
+observer, now and then, in his eye, and closed again before one could
+fathom the strange depth partially disclosed; that something which used
+to make me fear and shrink, as if I had been wandering amongst
+volcanic-looking hills, and had suddenly felt the ground quiver and
+seen it gape: that something, I, at intervals, beheld still; and with
+throbbing heart, but not with palsied nerves. Instead of wishing to
+shun, I longed only to dare—to divine it; and I thought Miss Ingram
+happy, because one day she might look into the abyss at her leisure,
+explore its secrets and analyse their nature.
+
+Meantime, while I thought only of my master and his future bride—saw
+only them, heard only their discourse, and considered only their
+movements of importance—the rest of the party were occupied with their
+own separate interests and pleasures. The Ladies Lynn and Ingram
+continued to consort in solemn conferences, where they nodded their two
+turbans at each other, and held up their four hands in confronting
+gestures of surprise, or mystery, or horror, according to the theme on
+which their gossip ran, like a pair of magnified puppets. Mild Mrs.
+Dent talked with good-natured Mrs. Eshton; and the two sometimes
+bestowed a courteous word or smile on me. Sir George Lynn, Colonel
+Dent, and Mr. Eshton discussed politics, or county affairs, or justice
+business. Lord Ingram flirted with Amy Eshton; Louisa played and sang
+to and with one of the Messrs. Lynn; and Mary Ingram listened languidly
+to the gallant speeches of the other. Sometimes all, as with one
+consent, suspended their by-play to observe and listen to the principal
+actors: for, after all, Mr. Rochester and—because closely connected
+with him—Miss Ingram were the life and soul of the party. If he was
+absent from the room an hour, a perceptible dulness seemed to steal
+over the spirits of his guests; and his re-entrance was sure to give a
+fresh impulse to the vivacity of conversation.
+
+The want of his animating influence appeared to be peculiarly felt one
+day that he had been summoned to Millcote on business, and was not
+likely to return till late. The afternoon was wet: a walk the party had
+proposed to take to see a gipsy camp, lately pitched on a common beyond
+Hay, was consequently deferred. Some of the gentlemen were gone to the
+stables: the younger ones, together with the younger ladies, were
+playing billiards in the billiard-room. The dowagers Ingram and Lynn
+sought solace in a quiet game at cards. Blanche Ingram, after having
+repelled, by supercilious taciturnity, some efforts of Mrs. Dent and
+Mrs. Eshton to draw her into conversation, had first murmured over some
+sentimental tunes and airs on the piano, and then, having fetched a
+novel from the library, had flung herself in haughty listlessness on a
+sofa, and prepared to beguile, by the spell of fiction, the tedious
+hours of absence. The room and the house were silent: only now and then
+the merriment of the billiard-players was heard from above.
+
+It was verging on dusk, and the clock had already given warning of the
+hour to dress for dinner, when little Adèle, who knelt by me in the
+drawing-room window-seat, suddenly exclaimed—
+
+“Voilà Monsieur Rochester, qui revient!”
+
+I turned, and Miss Ingram darted forwards from her sofa: the others,
+too, looked up from their several occupations; for at the same time a
+crunching of wheels and a splashing tramp of horse-hoofs became audible
+on the wet gravel. A post-chaise was approaching.
+
+“What can possess him to come home in that style?” said Miss Ingram.
+“He rode Mesrour (the black horse), did he not, when he went out? and
+Pilot was with him:—what has he done with the animals?”
+
+As she said this, she approached her tall person and ample garments so
+near the window, that I was obliged to bend back almost to the breaking
+of my spine: in her eagerness she did not observe me at first, but when
+she did, she curled her lip and moved to another casement. The
+post-chaise stopped; the driver rang the door-bell, and a gentleman
+alighted attired in travelling garb; but it was not Mr. Rochester; it
+was a tall, fashionable-looking man, a stranger.
+
+“How provoking!” exclaimed Miss Ingram: “you tiresome monkey!”
+(apostrophising Adèle), “who perched you up in the window to give false
+intelligence?” and she cast on me an angry glance, as if I were in
+fault.
+
+Some parleying was audible in the hall, and soon the new-comer entered.
+He bowed to Lady Ingram, as deeming her the eldest lady present.
+
+“It appears I come at an inopportune time, madam,” said he, “when my
+friend, Mr. Rochester, is from home; but I arrive from a very long
+journey, and I think I may presume so far on old and intimate
+acquaintance as to instal myself here till he returns.”
+
+His manner was polite; his accent, in speaking, struck me as being
+somewhat unusual,—not precisely foreign, but still not altogether
+English: his age might be about Mr. Rochester’s,—between thirty and
+forty; his complexion was singularly sallow: otherwise he was a
+fine-looking man, at first sight especially. On closer examination, you
+detected something in his face that displeased, or rather that failed
+to please. His features were regular, but too relaxed: his eye was
+large and well cut, but the life looking out of it was a tame, vacant
+life—at least so I thought.
+
+The sound of the dressing-bell dispersed the party. It was not till
+after dinner that I saw him again: he then seemed quite at his ease.
+But I liked his physiognomy even less than before: it struck me as
+being at the same time unsettled and inanimate. His eye wandered, and
+had no meaning in its wandering: this gave him an odd look, such as I
+never remembered to have seen. For a handsome and not an
+unamiable-looking man, he repelled me exceedingly: there was no power
+in that smooth-skinned face of a full oval shape: no firmness in that
+aquiline nose and small cherry mouth; there was no thought on the low,
+even forehead; no command in that blank, brown eye.
+
+As I sat in my usual nook, and looked at him with the light of the
+girandoles on the mantelpiece beaming full over him—for he occupied an
+arm-chair drawn close to the fire, and kept shrinking still nearer, as
+if he were cold, I compared him with Mr. Rochester. I think (with
+deference be it spoken) the contrast could not be much greater between
+a sleek gander and a fierce falcon: between a meek sheep and the
+rough-coated keen-eyed dog, its guardian.
+
+He had spoken of Mr. Rochester as an old friend. A curious friendship
+theirs must have been: a pointed illustration, indeed, of the old adage
+that “extremes meet.”
+
+Two or three of the gentlemen sat near him, and I caught at times
+scraps of their conversation across the room. At first I could not make
+much sense of what I heard; for the discourse of Louisa Eshton and Mary
+Ingram, who sat nearer to me, confused the fragmentary sentences that
+reached me at intervals. These last were discussing the stranger; they
+both called him “a beautiful man.” Louisa said he was “a love of a
+creature,” and she “adored him;” and Mary instanced his “pretty little
+mouth, and nice nose,” as her ideal of the charming.
+
+“And what a sweet-tempered forehead he has!” cried Louisa,—“so
+smooth—none of those frowning irregularities I dislike so much; and
+such a placid eye and smile!”
+
+And then, to my great relief, Mr. Henry Lynn summoned them to the other
+side of the room, to settle some point about the deferred excursion to
+Hay Common.
+
+I was now able to concentrate my attention on the group by the fire,
+and I presently gathered that the new-comer was called Mr. Mason; then
+I learned that he was but just arrived in England, and that he came
+from some hot country: which was the reason, doubtless, his face was so
+sallow, and that he sat so near the hearth, and wore a surtout in the
+house. Presently the words Jamaica, Kingston, Spanish Town, indicated
+the West Indies as his residence; and it was with no little surprise I
+gathered, ere long, that he had there first seen and become acquainted
+with Mr. Rochester. He spoke of his friend’s dislike of the burning
+heats, the hurricanes, and rainy seasons of that region. I knew Mr.
+Rochester had been a traveller: Mrs. Fairfax had said so; but I thought
+the continent of Europe had bounded his wanderings; till now I had
+never heard a hint given of visits to more distant shores.
+
+I was pondering these things, when an incident, and a somewhat
+unexpected one, broke the thread of my musings. Mr. Mason, shivering as
+some one chanced to open the door, asked for more coal to be put on the
+fire, which had burnt out its flame, though its mass of cinder still
+shone hot and red. The footman who brought the coal, in going out,
+stopped near Mr. Eshton’s chair, and said something to him in a low
+voice, of which I heard only the words, “old woman,”—“quite
+troublesome.”
+
+“Tell her she shall be put in the stocks if she does not take herself
+off,” replied the magistrate.
+
+“No—stop!” interrupted Colonel Dent. “Don’t send her away, Eshton; we
+might turn the thing to account; better consult the ladies.” And
+speaking aloud, he continued—“Ladies, you talked of going to Hay Common
+to visit the gipsy camp; Sam here says that one of the old Mother
+Bunches is in the servants’ hall at this moment, and insists upon being
+brought in before ‘the quality,’ to tell them their fortunes. Would you
+like to see her?”
+
+“Surely, colonel,” cried Lady Ingram, “you would not encourage such a
+low impostor? Dismiss her, by all means, at once!”
+
+“But I cannot persuade her to go away, my lady,” said the footman; “nor
+can any of the servants: Mrs. Fairfax is with her just now, entreating
+her to be gone; but she has taken a chair in the chimney-corner, and
+says nothing shall stir her from it till she gets leave to come in
+here.”
+
+“What does she want?” asked Mrs. Eshton.
+
+“‘To tell the gentry their fortunes,’ she says, ma’am; and she swears
+she must and will do it.”
+
+“What is she like?” inquired the Misses Eshton, in a breath.
+
+“A shockingly ugly old creature, miss; almost as black as a crock.”
+
+“Why, she’s a real sorceress!” cried Frederick Lynn. “Let us have her
+in, of course.”
+
+“To be sure,” rejoined his brother; “it would be a thousand pities to
+throw away such a chance of fun.”
+
+“My dear boys, what are you thinking about?” exclaimed Mrs. Lynn.
+
+“I cannot possibly countenance any such inconsistent proceeding,”
+chimed in the Dowager Ingram.
+
+“Indeed, mama, but you can—and will,” pronounced the haughty voice of
+Blanche, as she turned round on the piano-stool; where till now she had
+sat silent, apparently examining sundry sheets of music. “I have a
+curiosity to hear my fortune told: therefore, Sam, order the beldame
+forward.”
+
+“My darling Blanche! recollect—”
+
+“I do—I recollect all you can suggest; and I must have my will—quick,
+Sam!”
+
+“Yes—yes—yes!” cried all the juveniles, both ladies and gentlemen. “Let
+her come—it will be excellent sport!”
+
+The footman still lingered. “She looks such a rough one,” said he.
+
+“Go!” ejaculated Miss Ingram, and the man went.
+
+Excitement instantly seized the whole party: a running fire of raillery
+and jests was proceeding when Sam returned.
+
+“She won’t come now,” said he. “She says it’s not her mission to appear
+before the ‘vulgar herd’ (them’s her words). I must show her into a
+room by herself, and then those who wish to consult her must go to her
+one by one.”
+
+“You see now, my queenly Blanche,” began Lady Ingram, “she encroaches.
+Be advised, my angel girl—and—”
+
+“Show her into the library, of course,” cut in the “angel girl.” “It is
+not my mission to listen to her before the vulgar herd either: I mean
+to have her all to myself. Is there a fire in the library?”
+
+“Yes, ma’am—but she looks such a tinkler.”
+
+“Cease that chatter, blockhead! and do my bidding.”
+
+Again Sam vanished; and mystery, animation, expectation rose to full
+flow once more.
+
+“She’s ready now,” said the footman, as he reappeared. “She wishes to
+know who will be her first visitor.”
+
+“I think I had better just look in upon her before any of the ladies
+go,” said Colonel Dent.
+
+“Tell her, Sam, a gentleman is coming.”
+
+Sam went and returned.
+
+“She says, sir, that she’ll have no gentlemen; they need not trouble
+themselves to come near her; nor,” he added, with difficulty
+suppressing a titter, “any ladies either, except the young, and
+single.”
+
+“By Jove, she has taste!” exclaimed Henry Lynn.
+
+Miss Ingram rose solemnly: “I go first,” she said, in a tone which
+might have befitted the leader of a forlorn hope, mounting a breach in
+the van of his men.
+
+“Oh, my best! oh, my dearest! pause—reflect!” was her mama’s cry; but
+she swept past her in stately silence, passed through the door which
+Colonel Dent held open, and we heard her enter the library.
+
+A comparative silence ensued. Lady Ingram thought it “le cas” to wring
+her hands: which she did accordingly. Miss Mary declared she felt, for
+her part, she never dared venture. Amy and Louisa Eshton tittered under
+their breath, and looked a little frightened.
+
+The minutes passed very slowly: fifteen were counted before the
+library-door again opened. Miss Ingram returned to us through the arch.
+
+Would she laugh? Would she take it as a joke? All eyes met her with a
+glance of eager curiosity, and she met all eyes with one of rebuff and
+coldness; she looked neither flurried nor merry: she walked stiffly to
+her seat, and took it in silence.
+
+“Well, Blanche?” said Lord Ingram.
+
+“What did she say, sister?” asked Mary.
+
+“What did you think? How do you feel? Is she a real fortune-teller?”
+demanded the Misses Eshton.
+
+“Now, now, good people,” returned Miss Ingram, “don’t press upon me.
+Really your organs of wonder and credulity are easily excited: you
+seem, by the importance of you all—my good mama included—ascribe to
+this matter, absolutely to believe we have a genuine witch in the
+house, who is in close alliance with the old gentleman. I have seen a
+gipsy vagabond; she has practised in hackneyed fashion the science of
+palmistry and told me what such people usually tell. My whim is
+gratified; and now I think Mr. Eshton will do well to put the hag in
+the stocks to-morrow morning, as he threatened.”
+
+Miss Ingram took a book, leant back in her chair, and so declined
+further conversation. I watched her for nearly half-an-hour: during all
+that time she never turned a page, and her face grew momently darker,
+more dissatisfied, and more sourly expressive of disappointment. She
+had obviously not heard anything to her advantage: and it seemed to me,
+from her prolonged fit of gloom and taciturnity, that she herself,
+notwithstanding her professed indifference, attached undue importance
+to whatever revelations had been made her.
+
+
+During all that time she never turned a page
+
+Meantime, Mary Ingram, Amy and Louisa Eshton, declared they dared not
+go alone; and yet they all wished to go. A negotiation was opened
+through the medium of the ambassador, Sam; and after much pacing to and
+fro, till, I think, the said Sam’s calves must have ached with the
+exercise, permission was at last, with great difficulty, extorted from
+the rigorous Sibyl, for the three to wait upon her in a body.
+
+Their visit was not so still as Miss Ingram’s had been: we heard
+hysterical giggling and little shrieks proceeding from the library; and
+at the end of about twenty minutes they burst the door open, and came
+running across the hall, as if they were half-scared out of their wits.
+
+“I am sure she is something not right!” they cried, one and all. “She
+told us such things! She knows all about us!” and they sank breathless
+into the various seats the gentlemen hastened to bring them.
+
+Pressed for further explanation, they declared she had told them of
+things they had said and done when they were mere children; described
+books and ornaments they had in their boudoirs at home: keepsakes that
+different relations had presented to them. They affirmed that she had
+even divined their thoughts, and had whispered in the ear of each the
+name of the person she liked best in the world, and informed them of
+what they most wished for.
+
+Here the gentlemen interposed with earnest petitions to be further
+enlightened on these two last-named points; but they got only blushes,
+ejaculations, tremors, and titters, in return for their importunity.
+The matrons, meantime, offered vinaigrettes and wielded fans; and again
+and again reiterated the expression of their concern that their warning
+had not been taken in time; and the elder gentlemen laughed, and the
+younger urged their services on the agitated fair ones.
+
+In the midst of the tumult, and while my eyes and ears were fully
+engaged in the scene before me, I heard a hem close at my elbow: I
+turned, and saw Sam.
+
+“If you please, miss, the gipsy declares that there is another young
+single lady in the room who has not been to her yet, and she swears she
+will not go till she has seen all. I thought it must be you: there is
+no one else for it. What shall I tell her?”
+
+“Oh, I will go by all means,” I answered: and I was glad of the
+unexpected opportunity to gratify my much-excited curiosity. I slipped
+out of the room, unobserved by any eye—for the company were gathered in
+one mass about the trembling trio just returned—and I closed the door
+quietly behind me.
+
+“If you like, miss,” said Sam, “I’ll wait in the hall for you; and if
+she frightens you, just call and I’ll come in.”
+
+“No, Sam, return to the kitchen: I am not in the least afraid.” Nor was
+I; but I was a good deal interested and excited.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+The library looked tranquil enough as I entered it, and the Sibyl—if
+Sibyl she were—was seated snugly enough in an easy-chair at the
+chimney-corner. She had on a red cloak and a black bonnet: or rather, a
+broad-brimmed gipsy hat, tied down with a striped handkerchief under
+her chin. An extinguished candle stood on the table; she was bending
+over the fire, and seemed reading in a little black book, like a
+prayer-book, by the light of the blaze: she muttered the words to
+herself, as most old women do, while she read; she did not desist
+immediately on my entrance: it appeared she wished to finish a
+paragraph.
+
+I stood on the rug and warmed my hands, which were rather cold with
+sitting at a distance from the drawing-room fire. I felt now as
+composed as ever I did in my life: there was nothing indeed in the
+gipsy’s appearance to trouble one’s calm. She shut her book and slowly
+looked up; her hat-brim partially shaded her face, yet I could see, as
+she raised it, that it was a strange one. It looked all brown and
+black: elf-locks bristled out from beneath a white band which passed
+under her chin, and came half over her cheeks, or rather jaws: her eye
+confronted me at once, with a bold and direct gaze.
+
+“Well, and you want your fortune told?” she said, in a voice as decided
+as her glance, as harsh as her features.
+
+“I don’t care about it, mother; you may please yourself: but I ought to
+warn you, I have no faith.”
+
+“It’s like your impudence to say so: I expected it of you; I heard it
+in your step as you crossed the threshold.”
+
+“Did you? You’ve a quick ear.”
+
+“I have; and a quick eye and a quick brain.”
+
+“You need them all in your trade.”
+
+“I do; especially when I’ve customers like you to deal with. Why don’t
+you tremble?”
+
+“I’m not cold.”
+
+“Why don’t you turn pale?”
+
+“I am not sick.”
+
+“Why don’t you consult my art?”
+
+“I’m not silly.”
+
+The old crone “nichered” a laugh under her bonnet and bandage; she then
+drew out a short black pipe, and lighting it began to smoke. Having
+indulged a while in this sedative, she raised her bent body, took the
+pipe from her lips, and while gazing steadily at the fire, said very
+deliberately—
+
+“You are cold; you are sick; and you are silly.”
+
+“Prove it,” I rejoined.
+
+“I will, in few words. You are cold, because you are alone: no contact
+strikes the fire from you that is in you. You are sick; because the
+best of feelings, the highest and the sweetest given to man, keeps far
+away from you. You are silly, because, suffer as you may, you will not
+beckon it to approach, nor will you stir one step to meet it where it
+waits you.”
+
+She again put her short black pipe to her lips, and renewed her smoking
+with vigour.
+
+“You might say all that to almost any one who you knew lived as a
+solitary dependent in a great house.”
+
+“I might say it to almost any one: but would it be true of almost any
+one?”
+
+“In my circumstances.”
+
+“Yes; just so, in _your_ circumstances: but find me another precisely
+placed as you are.”
+
+“It would be easy to find you thousands.”
+
+“You could scarcely find me one. If you knew it, you are peculiarly
+situated: very near happiness; yes, within reach of it. The materials
+are all prepared; there only wants a movement to combine them. Chance
+laid them somewhat apart; let them be once approached and bliss
+results.”
+
+“I don’t understand enigmas. I never could guess a riddle in my life.”
+
+“If you wish me to speak more plainly, show me your palm.”
+
+“And I must cross it with silver, I suppose?”
+
+“To be sure.”
+
+I gave her a shilling: she put it into an old stocking-foot which she
+took out of her pocket, and having tied it round and returned it, she
+told me to hold out my hand. I did. She approached her face to the
+palm, and pored over it without touching it.
+
+“It is too fine,” said she. “I can make nothing of such a hand as that;
+almost without lines: besides, what is in a palm? Destiny is not
+written there.”
+
+“I believe you,” said I.
+
+“No,” she continued, “it is in the face: on the forehead, about the
+eyes, in the lines of the mouth. Kneel, and lift up your head.”
+
+“Ah! now you are coming to reality,” I said, as I obeyed her. “I shall
+begin to put some faith in you presently.”
+
+I knelt within half a yard of her. She stirred the fire, so that a
+ripple of light broke from the disturbed coal: the glare, however, as
+she sat, only threw her face into deeper shadow: mine, it illumined.
+
+“I wonder with what feelings you came to me to-night,” she said, when
+she had examined me a while. “I wonder what thoughts are busy in your
+heart during all the hours you sit in yonder room with the fine people
+flitting before you like shapes in a magic-lantern: just as little
+sympathetic communion passing between you and them as if they were
+really mere shadows of human forms, and not the actual substance.”
+
+“I feel tired often, sleepy sometimes, but seldom sad.”
+
+“Then you have some secret hope to buoy you up and please you with
+whispers of the future?”
+
+“Not I. The utmost I hope is, to save money enough out of my earnings
+to set up a school some day in a little house rented by myself.”
+
+“A mean nutriment for the spirit to exist on: and sitting in that
+window-seat (you see I know your habits)—”
+
+“You have learned them from the servants.”
+
+“Ah! you think yourself sharp. Well, perhaps I have: to speak truth, I
+have an acquaintance with one of them, Mrs. Poole—”
+
+I started to my feet when I heard the name.
+
+“You have—have you?” thought I; “there is diablerie in the business
+after all, then!”
+
+“Don’t be alarmed,” continued the strange being; “she’s a safe hand is
+Mrs. Poole: close and quiet; any one may repose confidence in her. But,
+as I was saying: sitting in that window-seat, do you think of nothing
+but your future school? Have you no present interest in any of the
+company who occupy the sofas and chairs before you? Is there not one
+face you study? one figure whose movements you follow with at least
+curiosity?”
+
+“I like to observe all the faces and all the figures.”
+
+“But do you never single one from the rest—or it may be, two?”
+
+“I do frequently; when the gestures or looks of a pair seem telling a
+tale: it amuses me to watch them.”
+
+“What tale do you like best to hear?”
+
+“Oh, I have not much choice! They generally run on the same
+theme—courtship; and promise to end in the same catastrophe—marriage.”
+
+“And do you like that monotonous theme?”
+
+“Positively, I don’t care about it: it is nothing to me.”
+
+“Nothing to you? When a lady, young and full of life and health,
+charming with beauty and endowed with the gifts of rank and fortune,
+sits and smiles in the eyes of a gentleman you—”
+
+“I what?”
+
+“You know—and perhaps think well of.”
+
+“I don’t know the gentlemen here. I have scarcely interchanged a
+syllable with one of them; and as to thinking well of them, I consider
+some respectable, and stately, and middle-aged, and others young,
+dashing, handsome, and lively: but certainly they are all at liberty to
+be the recipients of whose smiles they please, without my feeling
+disposed to consider the transaction of any moment to me.”
+
+“You don’t know the gentlemen here? You have not exchanged a syllable
+with one of them? Will you say that of the master of the house!”
+
+“He is not at home.”
+
+“A profound remark! A most ingenious quibble! He went to Millcote this
+morning, and will be back here to-night or to-morrow: does that
+circumstance exclude him from the list of your acquaintance—blot him,
+as it were, out of existence?”
+
+“No; but I can scarcely see what Mr. Rochester has to do with the theme
+you had introduced.”
+
+“I was talking of ladies smiling in the eyes of gentlemen; and of late
+so many smiles have been shed into Mr. Rochester’s eyes that they
+overflow like two cups filled above the brim: have you never remarked
+that?”
+
+“Mr. Rochester has a right to enjoy the society of his guests.”
+
+“No question about his right: but have you never observed that, of all
+the tales told here about matrimony, Mr. Rochester has been favoured
+with the most lively and the most continuous?”
+
+“The eagerness of a listener quickens the tongue of a narrator.” I said
+this rather to myself than to the gipsy, whose strange talk, voice,
+manner, had by this time wrapped me in a kind of dream. One unexpected
+sentence came from her lips after another, till I got involved in a web
+of mystification; and wondered what unseen spirit had been sitting for
+weeks by my heart watching its workings and taking record of every
+pulse.
+
+“Eagerness of a listener!” repeated she: “yes; Mr. Rochester has sat by
+the hour, his ear inclined to the fascinating lips that took such
+delight in their task of communicating; and Mr. Rochester was so
+willing to receive and looked so grateful for the pastime given him;
+you have noticed this?”
+
+“Grateful! I cannot remember detecting gratitude in his face.”
+
+“Detecting! You have analysed, then. And what did you detect, if not
+gratitude?”
+
+I said nothing.
+
+“You have seen love: have you not?—and, looking forward, you have seen
+him married, and beheld his bride happy?”
+
+“Humph! Not exactly. Your witch’s skill is rather at fault sometimes.”
+
+“What the devil have you seen, then?”
+
+“Never mind: I came here to inquire, not to confess. Is it known that
+Mr. Rochester is to be married?”
+
+“Yes; and to the beautiful Miss Ingram.”
+
+“Shortly?”
+
+“Appearances would warrant that conclusion: and, no doubt (though, with
+an audacity that wants chastising out of you, you seem to question it),
+they will be a superlatively happy pair. He must love such a handsome,
+noble, witty, accomplished lady; and probably she loves him, or, if not
+his person, at least his purse. I know she considers the Rochester
+estate eligible to the last degree; though (God pardon me!) I told her
+something on that point about an hour ago which made her look wondrous
+grave: the corners of her mouth fell half an inch. I would advise her
+blackaviced suitor to look out: if another comes, with a longer or
+clearer rent-roll,—he’s dished—”
+
+“But, mother, I did not come to hear Mr. Rochester’s fortune: I came to
+hear my own; and you have told me nothing of it.”
+
+“Your fortune is yet doubtful: when I examined your face, one trait
+contradicted another. Chance has meted you a measure of happiness: that
+I know. I knew it before I came here this evening. She has laid it
+carefully on one side for you. I saw her do it. It depends on yourself
+to stretch out your hand, and take it up: but whether you will do so,
+is the problem I study. Kneel again on the rug.”
+
+“Don’t keep me long; the fire scorches me.”
+
+
+She did not stoop towards me, but only gazed, leaning back in her chair
+
+I knelt. She did not stoop towards me, but only gazed, leaning back in
+her chair. She began muttering,—
+
+“The flame flickers in the eye; the eye shines like dew; it looks soft
+and full of feeling; it smiles at my jargon: it is susceptible;
+impression follows impression through its clear sphere; where it ceases
+to smile, it is sad; an unconscious lassitude weighs on the lid: that
+signifies melancholy resulting from loneliness. It turns from me; it
+will not suffer further scrutiny; it seems to deny, by a mocking
+glance, the truth of the discoveries I have already made,—to disown the
+charge both of sensibility and chagrin: its pride and reserve only
+confirm me in my opinion. The eye is favourable.
+
+“As to the mouth, it delights at times in laughter; it is disposed to
+impart all that the brain conceives; though I daresay it would be
+silent on much the heart experiences. Mobile and flexible, it was never
+intended to be compressed in the eternal silence of solitude: it is a
+mouth which should speak much and smile often, and have human affection
+for its interlocutor. That feature too is propitious.
+
+“I see no enemy to a fortunate issue but in the brow; and that brow
+professes to say,—‘I can live alone, if self-respect, and circumstances
+require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an
+inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous
+delights should be withheld, or offered only at a price I cannot afford
+to give.’ The forehead declares, ‘Reason sits firm and holds the reins,
+and she will not let the feelings burst away and hurry her to wild
+chasms. The passions may rage furiously, like true heathens, as they
+are; and the desires may imagine all sorts of vain things: but judgment
+shall still have the last word in every argument, and the casting vote
+in every decision. Strong wind, earthquake-shock, and fire may pass by:
+but I shall follow the guiding of that still small voice which
+interprets the dictates of conscience.’
+
+“Well said, forehead; your declaration shall be respected. I have
+formed my plans—right plans I deem them—and in them I have attended to
+the claims of conscience, the counsels of reason. I know how soon youth
+would fade and bloom perish, if, in the cup of bliss offered, but one
+dreg of shame, or one flavour of remorse were detected; and I do not
+want sacrifice, sorrow, dissolution—such is not my taste. I wish to
+foster, not to blight—to earn gratitude, not to wring tears of
+blood—no, nor of brine: my harvest must be in smiles, in endearments,
+in sweet—That will do. I think I rave in a kind of exquisite delirium.
+I should wish now to protract this moment _ad infinitum_; but I dare
+not. So far I have governed myself thoroughly. I have acted as I
+inwardly swore I would act; but further might try me beyond my
+strength. Rise, Miss Eyre: leave me; the play is played out’.”
+
+Where was I? Did I wake or sleep? Had I been dreaming? Did I dream
+still? The old woman’s voice had changed: her accent, her gesture, and
+all were familiar to me as my own face in a glass—as the speech of my
+own tongue. I got up, but did not go. I looked; I stirred the fire, and
+I looked again: but she drew her bonnet and her bandage closer about
+her face, and again beckoned me to depart. The flame illuminated her
+hand stretched out: roused now, and on the alert for discoveries, I at
+once noticed that hand. It was no more the withered limb of eld than my
+own; it was a rounded supple member, with smooth fingers, symmetrically
+turned; a broad ring flashed on the little finger, and stooping
+forward, I looked at it, and saw a gem I had seen a hundred times
+before. Again I looked at the face; which was no longer turned from
+me—on the contrary, the bonnet was doffed, the bandage displaced, the
+head advanced.
+
+“Well, Jane, do you know me?” asked the familiar voice.
+
+“Only take off the red cloak, sir, and then—”
+
+“But the string is in a knot—help me.”
+
+“Break it, sir.”
+
+“There, then—‘Off, ye lendings!’” And Mr. Rochester stepped out of his
+disguise.
+
+“Now, sir, what a strange idea!”
+
+“But well carried out, eh? Don’t you think so?”
+
+“With the ladies you must have managed well.”
+
+“But not with you?”
+
+“You did not act the character of a gipsy with me.”
+
+“What character did I act? My own?”
+
+“No; some unaccountable one. In short, I believe you have been trying
+to draw me out—or in; you have been talking nonsense to make me talk
+nonsense. It is scarcely fair, sir.”
+
+“Do you forgive me, Jane?”
+
+“I cannot tell till I have thought it all over. If, on reflection, I
+find I have fallen into no great absurdity, I shall try to forgive you;
+but it was not right.”
+
+“Oh, you have been very correct—very careful, very sensible.”
+
+I reflected, and thought, on the whole, I had. It was a comfort; but,
+indeed, I had been on my guard almost from the beginning of the
+interview. Something of masquerade I suspected. I knew gipsies and
+fortune-tellers did not express themselves as this seeming old woman
+had expressed herself; besides I had noted her feigned voice, her
+anxiety to conceal her features. But my mind had been running on Grace
+Poole—that living enigma, that mystery of mysteries, as I considered
+her. I had never thought of Mr. Rochester.
+
+“Well,” said he, “what are you musing about? What does that grave smile
+signify?”
+
+“Wonder and self-congratulation, sir. I have your permission to retire
+now, I suppose?”
+
+“No; stay a moment; and tell me what the people in the drawing-room
+yonder are doing.”
+
+“Discussing the gipsy, I daresay.”
+
+“Sit down!—Let me hear what they said about me.”
+
+“I had better not stay long, sir; it must be near eleven o’clock. Oh,
+are you aware, Mr. Rochester, that a stranger has arrived here since
+you left this morning?”
+
+“A stranger!—no; who can it be? I expected no one; is he gone?”
+
+“No; he said he had known you long, and that he could take the liberty
+of installing himself here till you returned.”
+
+“The devil he did! Did he give his name?”
+
+“His name is Mason, sir; and he comes from the West Indies; from
+Spanish Town, in Jamaica, I think.”
+
+Mr. Rochester was standing near me; he had taken my hand, as if to lead
+me to a chair. As I spoke he gave my wrist a convulsive grip; the smile
+on his lips froze: apparently a spasm caught his breath.
+
+“Mason!—the West Indies!” he said, in the tone one might fancy a
+speaking automaton to enounce its single words; “Mason!—the West
+Indies!” he reiterated; and he went over the syllables three times,
+growing, in the intervals of speaking, whiter than ashes: he hardly
+seemed to know what he was doing.
+
+“Do you feel ill, sir?” I inquired.
+
+“Jane, I’ve got a blow; I’ve got a blow, Jane!” He staggered.
+
+“Oh, lean on me, sir.”
+
+“Jane, you offered me your shoulder once before; let me have it now.”
+
+“Yes, sir, yes; and my arm.”
+
+He sat down, and made me sit beside him. Holding my hand in both his
+own, he chafed it; gazing on me, at the same time, with the most
+troubled and dreary look.
+
+“My little friend!” said he, “I wish I were in a quiet island with only
+you; and trouble, and danger, and hideous recollections removed from
+me.”
+
+“Can I help you, sir?—I’d give my life to serve you.”
+
+“Jane, if aid is wanted, I’ll seek it at your hands; I promise you
+that.”
+
+“Thank you, sir. Tell me what to do,—I’ll try, at least, to do it.”
+
+“Fetch me now, Jane, a glass of wine from the dining-room: they will be
+at supper there; and tell me if Mason is with them, and what he is
+doing.”
+
+I went. I found all the party in the dining-room at supper, as Mr.
+Rochester had said; they were not seated at table,—the supper was
+arranged on the sideboard; each had taken what he chose, and they stood
+about here and there in groups, their plates and glasses in their
+hands. Every one seemed in high glee; laughter and conversation were
+general and animated. Mr. Mason stood near the fire, talking to Colonel
+and Mrs. Dent, and appeared as merry as any of them. I filled a
+wine-glass (I saw Miss Ingram watch me frowningly as I did so: she
+thought I was taking a liberty, I daresay), and I returned to the
+library.
+
+Mr. Rochester’s extreme pallor had disappeared, and he looked once more
+firm and stern. He took the glass from my hand.
+
+“Here is to your health, ministrant spirit!” he said. He swallowed the
+contents and returned it to me. “What are they doing, Jane?”
+
+“Laughing and talking, sir.”
+
+“They don’t look grave and mysterious, as if they had heard something
+strange?”
+
+“Not at all: they are full of jests and gaiety.”
+
+“And Mason?”
+
+“He was laughing too.”
+
+“If all these people came in a body and spat at me, what would you do,
+Jane?”
+
+“Turn them out of the room, sir, if I could.”
+
+He half smiled. “But if I were to go to them, and they only looked at
+me coldly, and whispered sneeringly amongst each other, and then
+dropped off and left me one by one, what then? Would you go with them?”
+
+“I rather think not, sir: I should have more pleasure in staying with
+you.”
+
+“To comfort me?”
+
+“Yes, sir, to comfort you, as well as I could.”
+
+“And if they laid you under a ban for adhering to me?”
+
+“I, probably, should know nothing about their ban; and if I did, I
+should care nothing about it.”
+
+“Then, you could dare censure for my sake?”
+
+“I could dare it for the sake of any friend who deserved my adherence;
+as you, I am sure, do.”
+
+“Go back now into the room; step quietly up to Mason, and whisper in
+his ear that Mr. Rochester is come and wishes to see him: show him in
+here and then leave me.”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+I did his behest. The company all stared at me as I passed straight
+among them. I sought Mr. Mason, delivered the message, and preceded him
+from the room: I ushered him into the library, and then I went
+upstairs.
+
+At a late hour, after I had been in bed some time, I heard the visitors
+repair to their chambers: I distinguished Mr. Rochester’s voice, and
+heard him say, “This way, Mason; this is your room.”
+
+He spoke cheerfully: the gay tones set my heart at ease. I was soon
+asleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+I had forgotten to draw my curtain, which I usually did, and also to
+let down my window-blind. The consequence was, that when the moon,
+which was full and bright (for the night was fine), came in her course
+to that space in the sky opposite my casement, and looked in at me
+through the unveiled panes, her glorious gaze roused me. Awaking in the
+dead of night, I opened my eyes on her disk—silver-white and crystal
+clear. It was beautiful, but too solemn: I half rose, and stretched my
+arm to draw the curtain.
+
+Good God! What a cry!
+
+The night—its silence—its rest, was rent in twain by a savage, a sharp,
+a shrilly sound that ran from end to end of Thornfield Hall.
+
+My pulse stopped: my heart stood still; my stretched arm was paralysed.
+The cry died, and was not renewed. Indeed, whatever being uttered that
+fearful shriek could not soon repeat it: not the widest-winged condor
+on the Andes could, twice in succession, send out such a yell from the
+cloud shrouding his eyrie. The thing delivering such utterance must
+rest ere it could repeat the effort.
+
+It came out of the third storey; for it passed overhead. And
+overhead—yes, in the room just above my chamber-ceiling—I now heard a
+struggle: a deadly one it seemed from the noise; and a half-smothered
+voice shouted—
+
+“Help! help! help!” three times rapidly.
+
+“Will no one come?” it cried; and then, while the staggering and
+stamping went on wildly, I distinguished through plank and plaster:—
+
+“Rochester! Rochester! for God’s sake, come!”
+
+A chamber-door opened: some one ran, or rushed, along the gallery.
+Another step stamped on the flooring above and something fell; and
+there was silence.
+
+I had put on some clothes, though horror shook all my limbs; I issued
+from my apartment. The sleepers were all aroused: ejaculations,
+terrified murmurs sounded in every room; door after door unclosed; one
+looked out and another looked out; the gallery filled. Gentlemen and
+ladies alike had quitted their beds; and “Oh! what is it?”—“Who is
+hurt?”—“What has happened?”—“Fetch a light!”—“Is it fire?”—“Are there
+robbers?”—“Where shall we run?” was demanded confusedly on all hands.
+But for the moonlight they would have been in complete darkness. They
+ran to and fro; they crowded together: some sobbed, some stumbled: the
+confusion was inextricable.
+
+“Where the devil is Rochester?” cried Colonel Dent. “I cannot find him
+in his bed.”
+
+“Here! here!” was shouted in return. “Be composed, all of you: I’m
+coming.”
+
+And the door at the end of the gallery opened, and Mr. Rochester
+advanced with a candle: he had just descended from the upper storey.
+One of the ladies ran to him directly; she seized his arm: it was Miss
+Ingram.
+
+“What awful event has taken place?” said she. “Speak! let us know the
+worst at once!”
+
+“But don’t pull me down or strangle me,” he replied: for the Misses
+Eshton were clinging about him now; and the two dowagers, in vast white
+wrappers, were bearing down on him like ships in full sail.
+
+“All’s right!—all’s right!” he cried. “It’s a mere rehearsal of Much
+Ado about Nothing. Ladies, keep off, or I shall wax dangerous.”
+
+And dangerous he looked: his black eyes darted sparks. Calming himself
+by an effort, he added—
+
+“A servant has had the nightmare; that is all. She’s an excitable,
+nervous person: she construed her dream into an apparition, or
+something of that sort, no doubt; and has taken a fit with fright. Now,
+then, I must see you all back into your rooms; for, till the house is
+settled, she cannot be looked after. Gentlemen, have the goodness to
+set the ladies the example. Miss Ingram, I am sure you will not fail in
+evincing superiority to idle terrors. Amy and Louisa, return to your
+nests like a pair of doves, as you are. Mesdames” (to the dowagers),
+“you will take cold to a dead certainty, if you stay in this chill
+gallery any longer.”
+
+And so, by dint of alternate coaxing and commanding, he contrived to
+get them all once more enclosed in their separate dormitories. I did
+not wait to be ordered back to mine, but retreated unnoticed, as
+unnoticed I had left it.
+
+Not, however, to go to bed: on the contrary, I began and dressed myself
+carefully. The sounds I had heard after the scream, and the words that
+had been uttered, had probably been heard only by me; for they had
+proceeded from the room above mine: but they assured me that it was not
+a servant’s dream which had thus struck horror through the house; and
+that the explanation Mr. Rochester had given was merely an invention
+framed to pacify his guests. I dressed, then, to be ready for
+emergencies. When dressed, I sat a long time by the window looking out
+over the silent grounds and silvered fields and waiting for I knew not
+what. It seemed to me that some event must follow the strange cry,
+struggle, and call.
+
+No: stillness returned: each murmur and movement ceased gradually, and
+in about an hour Thornfield Hall was again as hushed as a desert. It
+seemed that sleep and night had resumed their empire. Meantime the moon
+declined: she was about to set. Not liking to sit in the cold and
+darkness, I thought I would lie down on my bed, dressed as I was. I
+left the window, and moved with little noise across the carpet; as I
+stooped to take off my shoes, a cautious hand tapped low at the door.
+
+“Am I wanted?” I asked.
+
+“Are you up?” asked the voice I expected to hear, viz., my master’s.
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“And dressed?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Come out, then, quietly.”
+
+I obeyed. Mr. Rochester stood in the gallery holding a light.
+
+“I want you,” he said: “come this way: take your time, and make no
+noise.”
+
+My slippers were thin: I could walk the matted floor as softly as a
+cat. He glided up the gallery and up the stairs, and stopped in the
+dark, low corridor of the fateful third storey: I had followed and
+stood at his side.
+
+“Have you a sponge in your room?” he asked in a whisper.
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Have you any salts—volatile salts?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Go back and fetch both.”
+
+I returned, sought the sponge on the washstand, the salts in my drawer,
+and once more retraced my steps. He still waited; he held a key in his
+hand: approaching one of the small, black doors, he put it in the lock;
+he paused, and addressed me again.
+
+“You don’t turn sick at the sight of blood?”
+
+“I think I shall not: I have never been tried yet.”
+
+I felt a thrill while I answered him; but no coldness, and no
+faintness.
+
+“Just give me your hand,” he said: “it will not do to risk a fainting
+fit.”
+
+I put my fingers into his. “Warm and steady,” was his remark: he turned
+the key and opened the door.
+
+I saw a room I remembered to have seen before, the day Mrs. Fairfax
+showed me over the house: it was hung with tapestry; but the tapestry
+was now looped up in one part, and there was a door apparent, which had
+then been concealed. This door was open; a light shone out of the room
+within: I heard thence a snarling, snatching sound, almost like a dog
+quarrelling. Mr. Rochester, putting down his candle, said to me, “Wait
+a minute,” and he went forward to the inner apartment. A shout of
+laughter greeted his entrance; noisy at first, and terminating in Grace
+Poole’s own goblin ha! ha! _She_ then was there. He made some sort of
+arrangement without speaking, though I heard a low voice address him:
+he came out and closed the door behind him.
+
+“Here, Jane!” he said; and I walked round to the other side of a large
+bed, which with its drawn curtains concealed a considerable portion of
+the chamber. An easy-chair was near the bed-head: a man sat in it,
+dressed with the exception of his coat; he was still; his head leant
+back; his eyes were closed. Mr. Rochester held the candle over him; I
+recognised in his pale and seemingly lifeless face—the stranger, Mason:
+I saw too that his linen on one side, and one arm, was almost soaked in
+blood.
+
+“Hold the candle,” said Mr. Rochester, and I took it: he fetched a
+basin of water from the washstand: “Hold that,” said he. I obeyed. He
+took the sponge, dipped it in, and moistened the corpse-like face; he
+asked for my smelling-bottle, and applied it to the nostrils. Mr. Mason
+shortly unclosed his eyes; he groaned. Mr. Rochester opened the shirt
+of the wounded man, whose arm and shoulder were bandaged: he sponged
+away blood, trickling fast down.
+
+“Is there immediate danger?” murmured Mr. Mason.
+
+“Pooh! No—a mere scratch. Don’t be so overcome, man: bear up! I’ll
+fetch a surgeon for you now, myself: you’ll be able to be removed by
+morning, I hope. Jane,” he continued.
+
+“Sir?”
+
+“I shall have to leave you in this room with this gentleman, for an
+hour, or perhaps two hours: you will sponge the blood as I do when it
+returns: if he feels faint, you will put the glass of water on that
+stand to his lips, and your salts to his nose. You will not speak to
+him on any pretext—and—Richard, it will be at the peril of your life if
+you speak to her: open your lips—agitate yourself—and I’ll not answer
+for the consequences.”
+
+Again the poor man groaned; he looked as if he dared not move; fear,
+either of death or of something else, appeared almost to paralyse him.
+Mr. Rochester put the now bloody sponge into my hand, and I proceeded
+to use it as he had done. He watched me a second, then saying,
+“Remember!—No conversation,” he left the room. I experienced a strange
+feeling as the key grated in the lock, and the sound of his retreating
+step ceased to be heard.
+
+Here then I was in the third storey, fastened into one of its mystic
+cells; night around me; a pale and bloody spectacle under my eyes and
+hands; a murderess hardly separated from me by a single door: yes—that
+was appalling—the rest I could bear; but I shuddered at the thought of
+Grace Poole bursting out upon me.
+
+I must keep to my post, however. I must watch this ghastly
+countenance—these blue, still lips forbidden to unclose—these eyes now
+shut, now opening, now wandering through the room, now fixing on me,
+and ever glazed with the dulness of horror. I must dip my hand again
+and again in the basin of blood and water, and wipe away the trickling
+gore. I must see the light of the unsnuffed candle wane on my
+employment; the shadows darken on the wrought, antique tapestry round
+me, and grow black under the hangings of the vast old bed, and quiver
+strangely over the doors of a great cabinet opposite—whose front,
+divided into twelve panels, bore, in grim design, the heads of the
+twelve apostles, each enclosed in its separate panel as in a frame;
+while above them at the top rose an ebon crucifix and a dying Christ.
+
+According as the shifting obscurity and flickering gleam hovered here
+or glanced there, it was now the bearded physician, Luke, that bent his
+brow; now St. John’s long hair that waved; and anon the devilish face
+of Judas, that grew out of the panel, and seemed gathering life and
+threatening a revelation of the arch-traitor—of Satan himself—in his
+subordinate’s form.
+
+Amidst all this, I had to listen as well as watch: to listen for the
+movements of the wild beast or the fiend in yonder side den. But since
+Mr. Rochester’s visit it seemed spellbound: all the night I heard but
+three sounds at three long intervals,—a step creak, a momentary renewal
+of the snarling, canine noise, and a deep human groan.
+
+Then my own thoughts worried me. What crime was this, that lived
+incarnate in this sequestered mansion, and could neither be expelled
+nor subdued by the owner?—what mystery, that broke out now in fire and
+now in blood, at the deadest hours of night? What creature was it,
+that, masked in an ordinary woman’s face and shape, uttered the voice,
+now of a mocking demon, and anon of a carrion-seeking bird of prey?
+
+And this man I bent over—this commonplace, quiet stranger—how had he
+become involved in the web of horror? and why had the Fury flown at
+him? What made him seek this quarter of the house at an untimely
+season, when he should have been asleep in bed? I had heard Mr.
+Rochester assign him an apartment below—what brought him here! And why,
+now, was he so tame under the violence or treachery done him? Why did
+he so quietly submit to the concealment Mr. Rochester enforced? Why
+_did_ Mr. Rochester enforce this concealment? His guest had been
+outraged, his own life on a former occasion had been hideously plotted
+against; and both attempts he smothered in secrecy and sank in
+oblivion! Lastly, I saw Mr. Mason was submissive to Mr. Rochester; that
+the impetuous will of the latter held complete sway over the inertness
+of the former: the few words which had passed between them assured me
+of this. It was evident that in their former intercourse, the passive
+disposition of the one had been habitually influenced by the active
+energy of the other: whence then had arisen Mr. Rochester’s dismay when
+he heard of Mr. Mason’s arrival? Why had the mere name of this
+unresisting individual—whom his word now sufficed to control like a
+child—fallen on him, a few hours since, as a thunderbolt might fall on
+an oak?
+
+Oh! I could not forget his look and his paleness when he whispered:
+“Jane, I have got a blow—I have got a blow, Jane.” I could not forget
+how the arm had trembled which he rested on my shoulder: and it was no
+light matter which could thus bow the resolute spirit and thrill the
+vigorous frame of Fairfax Rochester.
+
+“When will he come? When will he come?” I cried inwardly, as the night
+lingered and lingered—as my bleeding patient drooped, moaned, sickened:
+and neither day nor aid arrived. I had, again and again, held the water
+to Mason’s white lips; again and again offered him the stimulating
+salts: my efforts seemed ineffectual: either bodily or mental
+suffering, or loss of blood, or all three combined, were fast
+prostrating his strength. He moaned so, and looked so weak, wild, and
+lost, I feared he was dying; and I might not even speak to him.
+
+The candle, wasted at last, went out; as it expired, I perceived
+streaks of grey light edging the window curtains: dawn was then
+approaching. Presently I heard Pilot bark far below, out of his distant
+kennel in the courtyard: hope revived. Nor was it unwarranted: in five
+minutes more the grating key, the yielding lock, warned me my watch was
+relieved. It could not have lasted more than two hours: many a week has
+seemed shorter.
+
+Mr. Rochester entered, and with him the surgeon he had been to fetch.
+
+“Now, Carter, be on the alert,” he said to this last: “I give you but
+half-an-hour for dressing the wound, fastening the bandages, getting
+the patient downstairs and all.”
+
+“But is he fit to move, sir?”
+
+“No doubt of it; it is nothing serious; he is nervous, his spirits must
+be kept up. Come, set to work.”
+
+Mr. Rochester drew back the thick curtain, drew up the holland blind,
+let in all the daylight he could; and I was surprised and cheered to
+see how far dawn was advanced: what rosy streaks were beginning to
+brighten the east. Then he approached Mason, whom the surgeon was
+already handling.
+
+“Now, my good fellow, how are you?” he asked.
+
+“She’s done for me, I fear,” was the faint reply.
+
+“Not a whit!—courage! This day fortnight you’ll hardly be a pin the
+worse of it: you’ve lost a little blood; that’s all. Carter, assure him
+there’s no danger.”
+
+“I can do that conscientiously,” said Carter, who had now undone the
+bandages; “only I wish I could have got here sooner: he would not have
+bled so much—but how is this? The flesh on the shoulder is torn as well
+as cut. This wound was not done with a knife: there have been teeth
+here!”
+
+“She bit me,” he murmured. “She worried me like a tigress, when
+Rochester got the knife from her.”
+
+“You should not have yielded: you should have grappled with her at
+once,” said Mr. Rochester.
+
+“But under such circumstances, what could one do?” returned Mason. “Oh,
+it was frightful!” he added, shuddering. “And I did not expect it: she
+looked so quiet at first.”
+
+“I warned you,” was his friend’s answer; “I said—be on your guard when
+you go near her. Besides, you might have waited till to-morrow, and had
+me with you: it was mere folly to attempt the interview to-night, and
+alone.”
+
+“I thought I could have done some good.”
+
+“You thought! you thought! Yes, it makes me impatient to hear you: but,
+however, you have suffered, and are likely to suffer enough for not
+taking my advice; so I’ll say no more. Carter—hurry!—hurry! The sun
+will soon rise, and I must have him off.”
+
+“Directly, sir; the shoulder is just bandaged. I must look to this
+other wound in the arm: she has had her teeth here too, I think.”
+
+“She sucked the blood: she said she’d drain my heart,” said Mason.
+
+I saw Mr. Rochester shudder: a singularly marked expression of disgust,
+horror, hatred, warped his countenance almost to distortion; but he
+only said—
+
+“Come, be silent, Richard, and never mind her gibberish: don’t repeat
+it.”
+
+“I wish I could forget it,” was the answer.
+
+“You will when you are out of the country: when you get back to Spanish
+Town, you may think of her as dead and buried—or rather, you need not
+think of her at all.”
+
+“Impossible to forget this night!”
+
+“It is not impossible: have some energy, man. You thought you were as
+dead as a herring two hours since, and you are all alive and talking
+now. There!—Carter has done with you or nearly so; I’ll make you decent
+in a trice. Jane” (he turned to me for the first time since his
+re-entrance), “take this key: go down into my bedroom, and walk
+straight forward into my dressing-room: open the top drawer of the
+wardrobe and take out a clean shirt and neck-handkerchief: bring them
+here; and be nimble.”
+
+I went; sought the repository he had mentioned, found the articles
+named, and returned with them.
+
+“Now,” said he, “go to the other side of the bed while I order his
+toilet; but don’t leave the room: you may be wanted again.”
+
+I retired as directed.
+
+“Was anybody stirring below when you went down, Jane?” inquired Mr.
+Rochester presently.
+
+“No, sir; all was very still.”
+
+“We shall get you off cannily, Dick: and it will be better, both for
+your sake, and for that of the poor creature in yonder. I have striven
+long to avoid exposure, and I should not like it to come at last. Here,
+Carter, help him on with his waist-coat. Where did you leave your
+furred cloak? You can’t travel a mile without that, I know, in this
+damned cold climate. In your room?—Jane, run down to Mr. Mason’s
+room,—the one next mine,—and fetch a cloak you will see there.”
+
+Again I ran, and again returned, bearing an immense mantle lined and
+edged with fur.
+
+“Now, I’ve another errand for you,” said my untiring master; “you must
+away to my room again. What a mercy you are shod with velvet, Jane!—a
+clod-hopping messenger would never do at this juncture. You must open
+the middle drawer of my toilet-table and take out a little phial and a
+little glass you will find there,—quick!”
+
+I flew thither and back, bringing the desired vessels.
+
+“That’s well! Now, doctor, I shall take the liberty of administering a
+dose myself, on my own responsibility. I got this cordial at Rome, of
+an Italian charlatan—a fellow you would have kicked, Carter. It is not
+a thing to be used indiscriminately, but it is good upon occasion: as
+now, for instance. Jane, a little water.”
+
+He held out the tiny glass, and I half filled it from the water-bottle
+on the washstand.
+
+“That will do;—now wet the lip of the phial.”
+
+I did so; he measured twelve drops of a crimson liquid, and presented
+it to Mason.
+
+“Drink, Richard: it will give you the heart you lack, for an hour or
+so.”
+
+“But will it hurt me?—is it inflammatory?”
+
+“Drink! drink! drink!”
+
+Mr. Mason obeyed, because it was evidently useless to resist. He was
+dressed now: he still looked pale, but he was no longer gory and
+sullied. Mr. Rochester let him sit three minutes after he had swallowed
+the liquid; he then took his arm—
+
+“Now I am sure you can get on your feet,” he said—“try.”
+
+The patient rose.
+
+“Carter, take him under the other shoulder. Be of good cheer, Richard;
+step out—that’s it!”
+
+“I do feel better,” remarked Mr. Mason.
+
+“I am sure you do. Now, Jane, trip on before us away to the backstairs;
+unbolt the side-passage door, and tell the driver of the post-chaise
+you will see in the yard—or just outside, for I told him not to drive
+his rattling wheels over the pavement—to be ready; we are coming: and,
+Jane, if any one is about, come to the foot of the stairs and hem.”
+
+It was by this time half-past five, and the sun was on the point of
+rising; but I found the kitchen still dark and silent. The side-passage
+door was fastened; I opened it with as little noise as possible: all
+the yard was quiet; but the gates stood wide open, and there was a
+post-chaise, with horses ready harnessed, and driver seated on the box,
+stationed outside. I approached him, and said the gentlemen were
+coming; he nodded: then I looked carefully round and listened. The
+stillness of early morning slumbered everywhere; the curtains were yet
+drawn over the servants’ chamber windows; little birds were just
+twittering in the blossom-blanched orchard trees, whose boughs drooped
+like white garlands over the wall enclosing one side of the yard; the
+carriage horses stamped from time to time in their closed stables: all
+else was still.
+
+The gentlemen now appeared. Mason, supported by Mr. Rochester and the
+surgeon, seemed to walk with tolerable ease: they assisted him into the
+chaise; Carter followed.
+
+“Take care of him,” said Mr. Rochester to the latter, “and keep him at
+your house till he is quite well: I shall ride over in a day or two to
+see how he gets on. Richard, how is it with you?”
+
+“The fresh air revives me, Fairfax.”
+
+“Leave the window open on his side, Carter; there is no wind—good-bye,
+Dick.”
+
+“Fairfax—”
+
+“Well what is it?”
+
+“Let her be taken care of; let her be treated as tenderly as may be:
+let her—” he stopped and burst into tears.
+
+“I do my best; and have done it, and will do it,” was the answer: he
+shut up the chaise door, and the vehicle drove away.
+
+“Yet would to God there was an end of all this!” added Mr. Rochester,
+as he closed and barred the heavy yard-gates.
+
+This done, he moved with slow step and abstracted air towards a door in
+the wall bordering the orchard. I, supposing he had done with me,
+prepared to return to the house; again, however, I heard him call
+“Jane!” He had opened the portal and stood at it, waiting for me.
+
+“Come where there is some freshness, for a few moments,” he said; “that
+house is a mere dungeon: don’t you feel it so?”
+
+“It seems to me a splendid mansion, sir.”
+
+“The glamour of inexperience is over your eyes,” he answered; “and you
+see it through a charmed medium: you cannot discern that the gilding is
+slime and the silk draperies cobwebs; that the marble is sordid slate,
+and the polished woods mere refuse chips and scaly bark. Now _here_”
+(he pointed to the leafy enclosure we had entered) “all is real, sweet,
+and pure.”
+
+He strayed down a walk edged with box, with apple trees, pear trees,
+and cherry trees on one side, and a border on the other full of all
+sorts of old-fashioned flowers, stocks, sweet-williams, primroses,
+pansies, mingled with southernwood, sweet-briar, and various fragrant
+herbs. They were fresh now as a succession of April showers and gleams,
+followed by a lovely spring morning, could make them: the sun was just
+entering the dappled east, and his light illumined the wreathed and
+dewy orchard trees and shone down the quiet walks under them.
+
+“Jane, will you have a flower?”
+
+He gathered a half-blown rose, the first on the bush, and offered it to
+me.
+
+“Thank you, sir.”
+
+“Do you like this sunrise, Jane? That sky with its high and light
+clouds which are sure to melt away as the day waxes warm—this placid
+and balmly atmosphere?”
+
+“I do, very much.”
+
+“You have passed a strange night, Jane.”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“And it has made you look pale—were you afraid when I left you alone
+with Mason?”
+
+“I was afraid of some one coming out of the inner room.”
+
+“But I had fastened the door—I had the key in my pocket: I should have
+been a careless shepherd if I had left a lamb—my pet lamb—so near a
+wolf’s den, unguarded: you were safe.”
+
+“Will Grace Poole live here still, sir?”
+
+“Oh yes! don’t trouble your head about her—put the thing out of your
+thoughts.”
+
+“Yet it seems to me your life is hardly secure while she stays.”
+
+“Never fear—I will take care of myself.”
+
+“Is the danger you apprehended last night gone by now, sir?”
+
+“I cannot vouch for that till Mason is out of England: nor even then.
+To live, for me, Jane, is to stand on a crater-crust which may crack
+and spue fire any day.”
+
+“But Mr. Mason seems a man easily led. Your influence, sir, is
+evidently potent with him: he will never set you at defiance or
+wilfully injure you.”
+
+“Oh, no! Mason will not defy me; nor, knowing it, will he hurt me—but,
+unintentionally, he might in a moment, by one careless word, deprive
+me, if not of life, yet for ever of happiness.”
+
+“Tell him to be cautious, sir: let him know what you fear, and show him
+how to avert the danger.”
+
+He laughed sardonically, hastily took my hand, and as hastily threw it
+from him.
+
+“If I could do that, simpleton, where would the danger be? Annihilated
+in a moment. Ever since I have known Mason, I have only had to say to
+him ‘Do that,’ and the thing has been done. But I cannot give him
+orders in this case: I cannot say ‘Beware of harming me, Richard;’ for
+it is imperative that I should keep him ignorant that harm to me is
+possible. Now you look puzzled; and I will puzzle you further. You are
+my little friend, are you not?”
+
+“I like to serve you, sir, and to obey you in all that is right.”
+
+“Precisely: I see you do. I see genuine contentment in your gait and
+mien, your eye and face, when you are helping me and pleasing
+me—working for me, and with me, in, as you characteristically say,
+‘_all that is right_:’ for if I bid you do what you thought wrong,
+there would be no light-footed running, no neat-handed alacrity, no
+lively glance and animated complexion. My friend would then turn to me,
+quiet and pale, and would say, ‘No, sir; that is impossible: I cannot
+do it, because it is wrong;’ and would become immutable as a fixed
+star. Well, you too have power over me, and may injure me: yet I dare
+not show you where I am vulnerable, lest, faithful and friendly as you
+are, you should transfix me at once.”
+
+“If you have no more to fear from Mr. Mason than you have from me, sir,
+you are very safe.”
+
+“God grant it may be so! Here, Jane, is an arbour; sit down.”
+
+The arbour was an arch in the wall, lined with ivy; it contained a
+rustic seat. Mr. Rochester took it, leaving room, however, for me: but
+I stood before him.
+
+“Sit,” he said; “the bench is long enough for two. You don’t hesitate
+to take a place at my side, do you? Is that wrong, Jane?”
+
+I answered him by assuming it: to refuse would, I felt, have been
+unwise.
+
+“Now, my little friend, while the sun drinks the dew—while all the
+flowers in this old garden awake and expand, and the birds fetch their
+young ones’ breakfast out of the Thornfield, and the early bees do
+their first spell of work—I’ll put a case to you, which you must
+endeavour to suppose your own: but first, look at me, and tell me you
+are at ease, and not fearing that I err in detaining you, or that you
+err in staying.”
+
+“No, sir; I am content.”
+
+“Well then, Jane, call to aid your fancy:—suppose you were no longer a
+girl well reared and disciplined, but a wild boy indulged from
+childhood upwards; imagine yourself in a remote foreign land; conceive
+that you there commit a capital error, no matter of what nature or from
+what motives, but one whose consequences must follow you through life
+and taint all your existence. Mind, I don’t say a _crime_; I am not
+speaking of shedding of blood or any other guilty act, which might make
+the perpetrator amenable to the law: my word is _error_. The results of
+what you have done become in time to you utterly insupportable; you
+take measures to obtain relief: unusual measures, but neither unlawful
+nor culpable. Still you are miserable; for hope has quitted you on the
+very confines of life: your sun at noon darkens in an eclipse, which
+you feel will not leave it till the time of setting. Bitter and base
+associations have become the sole food of your memory: you wander here
+and there, seeking rest in exile: happiness in pleasure—I mean in
+heartless, sensual pleasure—such as dulls intellect and blights
+feeling. Heart-weary and soul-withered, you come home after years of
+voluntary banishment: you make a new acquaintance—how or where no
+matter: you find in this stranger much of the good and bright qualities
+which you have sought for twenty years, and never before encountered;
+and they are all fresh, healthy, without soil and without taint. Such
+society revives, regenerates: you feel better days come back—higher
+wishes, purer feelings; you desire to recommence your life, and to
+spend what remains to you of days in a way more worthy of an immortal
+being. To attain this end, are you justified in overleaping an obstacle
+of custom—a mere conventional impediment which neither your conscience
+sanctifies nor your judgment approves?”
+
+He paused for an answer: and what was I to say? Oh, for some good
+spirit to suggest a judicious and satisfactory response! Vain
+aspiration! The west wind whispered in the ivy round me; but no gentle
+Ariel borrowed its breath as a medium of speech: the birds sang in the
+tree-tops; but their song, however sweet, was inarticulate.
+
+Again Mr. Rochester propounded his query:
+
+“Is the wandering and sinful, but now rest-seeking and repentant, man
+justified in daring the world’s opinion, in order to attach to him for
+ever this gentle, gracious, genial stranger, thereby securing his own
+peace of mind and regeneration of life?”
+
+“Sir,” I answered, “a wanderer’s repose or a sinner’s reformation
+should never depend on a fellow-creature. Men and women die;
+philosophers falter in wisdom, and Christians in goodness: if any one
+you know has suffered and erred, let him look higher than his equals
+for strength to amend and solace to heal.”
+
+“But the instrument—the instrument! God, who does the work, ordains the
+instrument. I have myself—I tell it you without parable—been a worldly,
+dissipated, restless man; and I believe I have found the instrument for
+my cure in—”
+
+He paused: the birds went on carolling, the leaves lightly rustling. I
+almost wondered they did not check their songs and whispers to catch
+the suspended revelation; but they would have had to wait many
+minutes—so long was the silence protracted. At last I looked up at the
+tardy speaker: he was looking eagerly at me.
+
+“Little friend,” said he, in quite a changed tone—while his face
+changed too, losing all its softness and gravity, and becoming harsh
+and sarcastic—“you have noticed my tender penchant for Miss Ingram:
+don’t you think if I married her she would regenerate me with a
+vengeance?”
+
+He got up instantly, went quite to the other end of the walk, and when
+he came back he was humming a tune.
+
+“Jane, Jane,” said he, stopping before me, “you are quite pale with
+your vigils: don’t you curse me for disturbing your rest?”
+
+“Curse you? No, sir.”
+
+“Shake hands in confirmation of the word. What cold fingers! They were
+warmer last night when I touched them at the door of the mysterious
+chamber. Jane, when will you watch with me again?”
+
+“Whenever I can be useful, sir.”
+
+“For instance, the night before I am married! I am sure I shall not be
+able to sleep. Will you promise to sit up with me to bear me company?
+To you I can talk of my lovely one: for now you have seen her and know
+her.”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“She’s a rare one, is she not, Jane?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“A strapper—a real strapper, Jane: big, brown, and buxom; with hair
+just such as the ladies of Carthage must have had. Bless me! there’s
+Dent and Lynn in the stables! Go in by the shrubbery, through that
+wicket.”
+
+As I went one way, he went another, and I heard him in the yard, saying
+cheerfully—
+
+“Mason got the start of you all this morning; he was gone before
+sunrise: I rose at four to see him off.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+Presentiments are strange things! and so are sympathies; and so are
+signs; and the three combined make one mystery to which humanity has
+not yet found the key. I never laughed at presentiments in my life,
+because I have had strange ones of my own. Sympathies, I believe, exist
+(for instance, between far-distant, long-absent, wholly estranged
+relatives asserting, notwithstanding their alienation, the unity of the
+source to which each traces his origin) whose workings baffle mortal
+comprehension. And signs, for aught we know, may be but the sympathies
+of Nature with man.
+
+When I was a little girl, only six years old, I one night heard Bessie
+Leaven say to Martha Abbot that she had been dreaming about a little
+child; and that to dream of children was a sure sign of trouble, either
+to one’s self or one’s kin. The saying might have worn out of my
+memory, had not a circumstance immediately followed which served
+indelibly to fix it there. The next day Bessie was sent for home to the
+deathbed of her little sister.
+
+Of late I had often recalled this saying and this incident; for during
+the past week scarcely a night had gone over my couch that had not
+brought with it a dream of an infant, which I sometimes hushed in my
+arms, sometimes dandled on my knee, sometimes watched playing with
+daisies on a lawn, or again, dabbling its hands in running water. It
+was a wailing child this night, and a laughing one the next: now it
+nestled close to me, and now it ran from me; but whatever mood the
+apparition evinced, whatever aspect it wore, it failed not for seven
+successive nights to meet me the moment I entered the land of slumber.
+
+I did not like this iteration of one idea—this strange recurrence of
+one image, and I grew nervous as bedtime approached and the hour of the
+vision drew near. It was from companionship with this baby-phantom I
+had been roused on that moonlight night when I heard the cry; and it
+was on the afternoon of the day following I was summoned downstairs by
+a message that some one wanted me in Mrs. Fairfax’s room. On repairing
+thither, I found a man waiting for me, having the appearance of a
+gentleman’s servant: he was dressed in deep mourning, and the hat he
+held in his hand was surrounded with a crape band.
+
+“I daresay you hardly remember me, Miss,” he said, rising as I entered;
+“but my name is Leaven: I lived coachman with Mrs. Reed when you were
+at Gateshead, eight or nine years since, and I live there still.”
+
+“Oh, Robert! how do you do? I remember you very well: you used to give
+me a ride sometimes on Miss Georgiana’s bay pony. And how is Bessie?
+You are married to Bessie?”
+
+“Yes, Miss: my wife is very hearty, thank you; she brought me another
+little one about two months since—we have three now—and both mother and
+child are thriving.”
+
+“And are the family well at the house, Robert?”
+
+“I am sorry I can’t give you better news of them, Miss: they are very
+badly at present—in great trouble.”
+
+“I hope no one is dead,” I said, glancing at his black dress. He too
+looked down at the crape round his hat and replied—
+
+“Mr. John died yesterday was a week, at his chambers in London.”
+
+“Mr. John?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“And how does his mother bear it?”
+
+“Why, you see, Miss Eyre, it is not a common mishap: his life has been
+very wild: these last three years he gave himself up to strange ways,
+and his death was shocking.”
+
+“I heard from Bessie he was not doing well.”
+
+“Doing well! He could not do worse: he ruined his health and his estate
+amongst the worst men and the worst women. He got into debt and into
+jail: his mother helped him out twice, but as soon as he was free he
+returned to his old companions and habits. His head was not strong: the
+knaves he lived amongst fooled him beyond anything I ever heard. He
+came down to Gateshead about three weeks ago and wanted missis to give
+up all to him. Missis refused: her means have long been much reduced by
+his extravagance; so he went back again, and the next news was that he
+was dead. How he died, God knows!—they say he killed himself.”
+
+I was silent: the tidings were frightful. Robert Leaven resumed—
+
+“Missis had been out of health herself for some time: she had got very
+stout, but was not strong with it; and the loss of money and fear of
+poverty were quite breaking her down. The information about Mr. John’s
+death and the manner of it came too suddenly: it brought on a stroke.
+She was three days without speaking; but last Tuesday she seemed rather
+better: she appeared as if she wanted to say something, and kept making
+signs to my wife and mumbling. It was only yesterday morning, however,
+that Bessie understood she was pronouncing your name; and at last she
+made out the words, ‘Bring Jane—fetch Jane Eyre: I want to speak to
+her.’ Bessie is not sure whether she is in her right mind, or means
+anything by the words; but she told Miss Reed and Miss Georgiana, and
+advised them to send for you. The young ladies put it off at first; but
+their mother grew so restless, and said, ‘Jane, Jane,’ so many times,
+that at last they consented. I left Gateshead yesterday: and if you can
+get ready, Miss, I should like to take you back with me early to-morrow
+morning.”
+
+“Yes, Robert, I shall be ready: it seems to me that I ought to go.”
+
+“I think so too, Miss. Bessie said she was sure you would not refuse:
+but I suppose you will have to ask leave before you can get off?”
+
+“Yes; and I will do it now;” and having directed him to the servants’
+hall, and recommended him to the care of John’s wife, and the
+attentions of John himself, I went in search of Mr. Rochester.
+
+He was not in any of the lower rooms; he was not in the yard, the
+stables, or the grounds. I asked Mrs. Fairfax if she had seen him;—yes:
+she believed he was playing billiards with Miss Ingram. To the
+billiard-room I hastened: the click of balls and the hum of voices
+resounded thence; Mr. Rochester, Miss Ingram, the two Misses Eshton,
+and their admirers, were all busied in the game. It required some
+courage to disturb so interesting a party; my errand, however, was one
+I could not defer, so I approached the master where he stood at Miss
+Ingram’s side. She turned as I drew near, and looked at me haughtily:
+her eyes seemed to demand, “What can the creeping creature want now?”
+and when I said, in a low voice, “Mr. Rochester,” she made a movement
+as if tempted to order me away. I remember her appearance at the
+moment—it was very graceful and very striking: she wore a morning robe
+of sky-blue crape; a gauzy azure scarf was twisted in her hair. She had
+been all animation with the game, and irritated pride did not lower the
+expression of her haughty lineaments.
+
+“Does that person want you?” she inquired of Mr. Rochester; and Mr.
+Rochester turned to see who the “person” was. He made a curious
+grimace—one of his strange and equivocal demonstrations—threw down his
+cue and followed me from the room.
+
+“Well, Jane?” he said, as he rested his back against the schoolroom
+door, which he had shut.
+
+“If you please, sir, I want leave of absence for a week or two.”
+
+“What to do?—where to go?”
+
+“To see a sick lady who has sent for me.”
+
+“What sick lady?—where does she live?”
+
+“At Gateshead; in ——shire.”
+
+“-shire? That is a hundred miles off! Who may she be that sends for
+people to see her that distance?”
+
+“Her name is Reed, sir—Mrs. Reed.”
+
+“Reed of Gateshead? There was a Reed of Gateshead, a magistrate.”
+
+“It is his widow, sir.”
+
+“And what have you to do with her? How do you know her?”
+
+“Mr. Reed was my uncle—my mother’s brother.”
+
+“The deuce he was! You never told me that before: you always said you
+had no relations.”
+
+“None that would own me, sir. Mr. Reed is dead, and his wife cast me
+off.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Because I was poor, and burdensome, and she disliked me.”
+
+“But Reed left children?—you must have cousins? Sir George Lynn was
+talking of a Reed of Gateshead yesterday, who, he said, was one of the
+veriest rascals on town; and Ingram was mentioning a Georgiana Reed of
+the same place, who was much admired for her beauty a season or two ago
+in London.”
+
+“John Reed is dead, too, sir: he ruined himself and half-ruined his
+family, and is supposed to have committed suicide. The news so shocked
+his mother that it brought on an apoplectic attack.”
+
+“And what good can you do her? Nonsense, Jane! I would never think of
+running a hundred miles to see an old lady who will, perhaps, be dead
+before you reach her: besides, you say she cast you off.”
+
+“Yes, sir, but that is long ago; and when her circumstances were very
+different: I could not be easy to neglect her wishes now.”
+
+“How long will you stay?”
+
+“As short a time as possible, sir.”
+
+“Promise me only to stay a week—”
+
+“I had better not pass my word: I might be obliged to break it.”
+
+“At all events you _will_ come back: you will not be induced under any
+pretext to take up a permanent residence with her?”
+
+“Oh, no! I shall certainly return if all be well.”
+
+“And who goes with you? You don’t travel a hundred miles alone.”
+
+“No, sir, she has sent her coachman.”
+
+“A person to be trusted?”
+
+“Yes, sir, he has lived ten years in the family.”
+
+Mr. Rochester meditated. “When do you wish to go?”
+
+“Early to-morrow morning, sir.”
+
+“Well, you must have some money; you can’t travel without money, and I
+daresay you have not much: I have given you no salary yet. How much
+have you in the world, Jane?” he asked, smiling.
+
+I drew out my purse; a meagre thing it was. “Five shillings, sir.” He
+took the purse, poured the hoard into his palm, and chuckled over it as
+if its scantiness amused him. Soon he produced his pocket-book: “Here,”
+said he, offering me a note; it was fifty pounds, and he owed me but
+fifteen. I told him I had no change.
+
+“I don’t want change; you know that. Take your wages.”
+
+I declined accepting more than was my due. He scowled at first; then,
+as if recollecting something, he said—
+
+“Right, right! Better not give you all now: you would, perhaps, stay
+away three months if you had fifty pounds. There are ten; is it not
+plenty?”
+
+“Yes, sir, but now you owe me five.”
+
+“Come back for it, then; I am your banker for forty pounds.”
+
+“Mr. Rochester, I may as well mention another matter of business to you
+while I have the opportunity.”
+
+“Matter of business? I am curious to hear it.”
+
+“You have as good as informed me, sir, that you are going shortly to be
+married?”
+
+“Yes; what then?”
+
+“In that case, sir, Adèle ought to go to school: I am sure you will
+perceive the necessity of it.”
+
+“To get her out of my bride’s way, who might otherwise walk over her
+rather too emphatically? There’s sense in the suggestion; not a doubt
+of it. Adèle, as you say, must go to school; and you, of course, must
+march straight to—the devil?”
+
+“I hope not, sir; but I must seek another situation somewhere.”
+
+“In course!” he exclaimed, with a twang of voice and a distortion of
+features equally fantastic and ludicrous. He looked at me some minutes.
+
+“And old Madam Reed, or the Misses, her daughters, will be solicited by
+you to seek a place, I suppose?”
+
+“No, sir; I am not on such terms with my relatives as would justify me
+in asking favours of them—but I shall advertise.”
+
+“You shall walk up the pyramids of Egypt!” he growled. “At your peril
+you advertise! I wish I had only offered you a sovereign instead of ten
+pounds. Give me back nine pounds, Jane; I’ve a use for it.”
+
+“And so have I, sir,” I returned, putting my hands and my purse behind
+me. “I could not spare the money on any account.”
+
+“Little niggard!” said he, “refusing me a pecuniary request! Give me
+five pounds, Jane.”
+
+“Not five shillings, sir; nor five pence.”
+
+“Just let me look at the cash.”
+
+“No, sir; you are not to be trusted.”
+
+“Jane!”
+
+“Sir?”
+
+“Promise me one thing.”
+
+“I’ll promise you anything, sir, that I think I am likely to perform.”
+
+“Not to advertise: and to trust this quest of a situation to me. I’ll
+find you one in time.”
+
+“I shall be glad so to do, sir, if you, in your turn, will promise that
+I and Adèle shall be both safe out of the house before your bride
+enters it.”
+
+“Very well! very well! I’ll pledge my word on it. You go to-morrow,
+then?”
+
+“Yes, sir; early.”
+
+“Shall you come down to the drawing-room after dinner?”
+
+“No, sir, I must prepare for the journey.”
+
+“Then you and I must bid good-bye for a little while?”
+
+“I suppose so, sir.”
+
+“And how do people perform that ceremony of parting, Jane? Teach me;
+I’m not quite up to it.”
+
+“They say, Farewell, or any other form they prefer.”
+
+“Then say it.”
+
+“Farewell, Mr. Rochester, for the present.”
+
+“What must I say?”
+
+“The same, if you like, sir.”
+
+“Farewell, Miss Eyre, for the present; is that all?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“It seems stingy, to my notions, and dry, and unfriendly. I should like
+something else: a little addition to the rite. If one shook hands, for
+instance; but no—that would not content me either. So you’ll do no more
+than say Farewell, Jane?”
+
+“It is enough, sir: as much good-will may be conveyed in one hearty
+word as in many.”
+
+“Very likely; but it is blank and cool—‘Farewell.’”
+
+“How long is he going to stand with his back against that door?” I
+asked myself; “I want to commence my packing.” The dinner-bell rang,
+and suddenly away he bolted, without another syllable: I saw him no
+more during the day, and was off before he had risen in the morning.
+
+I reached the lodge at Gateshead about five o’clock in the afternoon of
+the first of May: I stepped in there before going up to the hall. It
+was very clean and neat: the ornamental windows were hung with little
+white curtains; the floor was spotless; the grate and fire-irons were
+burnished bright, and the fire burnt clear. Bessie sat on the hearth,
+nursing her last-born, and Robert and his sister played quietly in a
+corner.
+
+“Bless you!—I knew you would come!” exclaimed Mrs. Leaven, as I
+entered.
+
+“Yes, Bessie,” said I, after I had kissed her; “and I trust I am not
+too late. How is Mrs. Reed?—Alive still, I hope.”
+
+“Yes, she is alive; and more sensible and collected than she was. The
+doctor says she may linger a week or two yet; but he hardly thinks she
+will finally recover.”
+
+“Has she mentioned me lately?”
+
+“She was talking of you only this morning, and wishing you would come,
+but she is sleeping now, or was ten minutes ago, when I was up at the
+house. She generally lies in a kind of lethargy all the afternoon, and
+wakes up about six or seven. Will you rest yourself here an hour, Miss,
+and then I will go up with you?”
+
+Robert here entered, and Bessie laid her sleeping child in the cradle
+and went to welcome him: afterwards she insisted on my taking off my
+bonnet and having some tea; for she said I looked pale and tired. I was
+glad to accept her hospitality; and I submitted to be relieved of my
+travelling garb just as passively as I used to let her undress me when
+a child.
+
+Old times crowded fast back on me as I watched her bustling
+about—setting out the tea-tray with her best china, cutting bread and
+butter, toasting a tea-cake, and, between whiles, giving little Robert
+or Jane an occasional tap or push, just as she used to give me in
+former days. Bessie had retained her quick temper as well as her light
+foot and good looks.
+
+Tea ready, I was going to approach the table; but she desired me to sit
+still, quite in her old peremptory tones. I must be served at the
+fireside, she said; and she placed before me a little round stand with
+my cup and a plate of toast, absolutely as she used to accommodate me
+with some privately purloined dainty on a nursery chair: and I smiled
+and obeyed her as in bygone days.
+
+She wanted to know if I was happy at Thornfield Hall, and what sort of
+a person the mistress was; and when I told her there was only a master,
+whether he was a nice gentleman, and if I liked him. I told her he was
+rather an ugly man, but quite a gentleman; and that he treated me
+kindly, and I was content. Then I went on to describe to her the gay
+company that had lately been staying at the house; and to these details
+Bessie listened with interest: they were precisely of the kind she
+relished.
+
+In such conversation an hour was soon gone: Bessie restored to me my
+bonnet, &c., and, accompanied by her, I quitted the lodge for the hall.
+It was also accompanied by her that I had, nearly nine years ago,
+walked down the path I was now ascending. On a dark, misty, raw morning
+in January, I had left a hostile roof with a desperate and embittered
+heart—a sense of outlawry and almost of reprobation—to seek the chilly
+harbourage of Lowood: that bourne so far away and unexplored. The same
+hostile roof now again rose before me: my prospects were doubtful yet;
+and I had yet an aching heart. I still felt as a wanderer on the face
+of the earth; but I experienced firmer trust in myself and my own
+powers, and less withering dread of oppression. The gaping wound of my
+wrongs, too, was now quite healed; and the flame of resentment
+extinguished.
+
+“You shall go into the breakfast-room first,” said Bessie, as she
+preceded me through the hall; “the young ladies will be there.”
+
+In another moment I was within that apartment. There was every article
+of furniture looking just as it did on the morning I was first
+introduced to Mr. Brocklehurst: the very rug he had stood upon still
+covered the hearth. Glancing at the bookcases, I thought I could
+distinguish the two volumes of Bewick’s British Birds occupying their
+old place on the third shelf, and Gulliver’s Travels and the Arabian
+Nights ranged just above. The inanimate objects were not changed; but
+the living things had altered past recognition.
+
+Two young ladies appeared before me; one very tall, almost as tall as
+Miss Ingram—very thin too, with a sallow face and severe mien. There
+was something ascetic in her look, which was augmented by the extreme
+plainness of a straight-skirted, black, stuff dress, a starched linen
+collar, hair combed away from the temples, and the nun-like ornament of
+a string of ebony beads and a crucifix. This I felt sure was Eliza,
+though I could trace little resemblance to her former self in that
+elongated and colourless visage.
+
+The other was as certainly Georgiana: but not the Georgiana I
+remembered—the slim and fairy-like girl of eleven. This was a
+full-blown, very plump damsel, fair as waxwork, with handsome and
+regular features, languishing blue eyes, and ringleted yellow hair. The
+hue of her dress was black too; but its fashion was so different from
+her sister’s—so much more flowing and becoming—it looked as stylish as
+the other’s looked puritanical.
+
+In each of the sisters there was one trait of the mother—and only one;
+the thin and pallid elder daughter had her parent’s Cairngorm eye: the
+blooming and luxuriant younger girl had her contour of jaw and
+chin—perhaps a little softened, but still imparting an indescribable
+hardness to the countenance otherwise so voluptuous and buxom.
+
+Both ladies, as I advanced, rose to welcome me, and both addressed me
+by the name of “Miss Eyre.” Eliza’s greeting was delivered in a short,
+abrupt voice, without a smile; and then she sat down again, fixed her
+eyes on the fire, and seemed to forget me. Georgiana added to her “How
+d’ye do?” several commonplaces about my journey, the weather, and so
+on, uttered in rather a drawling tone: and accompanied by sundry
+side-glances that measured me from head to foot—now traversing the
+folds of my drab merino pelisse, and now lingering on the plain
+trimming of my cottage bonnet. Young ladies have a remarkable way of
+letting you know that they think you a “quiz” without actually saying
+the words. A certain superciliousness of look, coolness of manner,
+nonchalance of tone, express fully their sentiments on the point,
+without committing them by any positive rudeness in word or deed.
+
+A sneer, however, whether covert or open, had now no longer that power
+over me it once possessed: as I sat between my cousins, I was surprised
+to find how easy I felt under the total neglect of the one and the
+semi-sarcastic attentions of the other—Eliza did not mortify, nor
+Georgiana ruffle me. The fact was, I had other things to think about;
+within the last few months feelings had been stirred in me so much more
+potent than any they could raise—pains and pleasures so much more acute
+and exquisite had been excited than any it was in their power to
+inflict or bestow—that their airs gave me no concern either for good or
+bad.
+
+“How is Mrs. Reed?” I asked soon, looking calmly at Georgiana, who
+thought fit to bridle at the direct address, as if it were an
+unexpected liberty.
+
+“Mrs. Reed? Ah! mama, you mean; she is extremely poorly: I doubt if you
+can see her to-night.”
+
+“If,” said I, “you would just step upstairs and tell her I am come, I
+should be much obliged to you.”
+
+Georgiana almost started, and she opened her blue eyes wild and wide.
+“I know she had a particular wish to see me,” I added, “and I would not
+defer attending to her desire longer than is absolutely necessary.”
+
+“Mama dislikes being disturbed in an evening,” remarked Eliza. I soon
+rose, quietly took off my bonnet and gloves, uninvited, and said I
+would just step out to Bessie—who was, I dared say, in the kitchen—and
+ask her to ascertain whether Mrs. Reed was disposed to receive me or
+not to-night. I went, and having found Bessie and despatched her on my
+errand, I proceeded to take further measures. It had heretofore been my
+habit always to shrink from arrogance: received as I had been to-day, I
+should, a year ago, have resolved to quit Gateshead the very next
+morning; now, it was disclosed to me all at once that that would be a
+foolish plan. I had taken a journey of a hundred miles to see my aunt,
+and I must stay with her till she was better—or dead: as to her
+daughters’ pride or folly, I must put it on one side, make myself
+independent of it. So I addressed the housekeeper; asked her to show me
+a room, told her I should probably be a visitor here for a week or two,
+had my trunk conveyed to my chamber, and followed it thither myself: I
+met Bessie on the landing.
+
+“Missis is awake,” said she; “I have told her you are here: come and
+let us see if she will know you.”
+
+I did not need to be guided to the well-known room, to which I had so
+often been summoned for chastisement or reprimand in former days. I
+hastened before Bessie; I softly opened the door: a shaded light stood
+on the table, for it was now getting dark. There was the great
+four-post bed with amber hangings as of old; there the toilet-table,
+the armchair, and the footstool, at which I had a hundred times been
+sentenced to kneel, to ask pardon for offences by me uncommitted. I
+looked into a certain corner near, half-expecting to see the slim
+outline of a once dreaded switch which used to lurk there, waiting to
+leap out imp-like and lace my quivering palm or shrinking neck. I
+approached the bed; I opened the curtains and leant over the high-piled
+pillows.
+
+Well did I remember Mrs. Reed’s face, and I eagerly sought the familiar
+image. It is a happy thing that time quells the longings of vengeance
+and hushes the promptings of rage and aversion. I had left this woman
+in bitterness and hate, and I came back to her now with no other
+emotion than a sort of ruth for her great sufferings, and a strong
+yearning to forget and forgive all injuries—to be reconciled and clasp
+hands in amity.
+
+The well-known face was there: stern, relentless as ever—there was that
+peculiar eye which nothing could melt, and the somewhat raised,
+imperious, despotic eyebrow. How often had it lowered on me menace and
+hate! and how the recollection of childhood’s terrors and sorrows
+revived as I traced its harsh line now! And yet I stooped down and
+kissed her: she looked at me.
+
+“Is this Jane Eyre?” she said.
+
+“Yes, Aunt Reed. How are you, dear aunt?”
+
+I had once vowed that I would never call her aunt again: I thought it
+no sin to forget and break that vow now. My fingers had fastened on her
+hand which lay outside the sheet: had she pressed mine kindly, I should
+at that moment have experienced true pleasure. But unimpressionable
+natures are not so soon softened, nor are natural antipathies so
+readily eradicated. Mrs. Reed took her hand away, and, turning her face
+rather from me, she remarked that the night was warm. Again she
+regarded me so icily, I felt at once that her opinion of me—her feeling
+towards me—was unchanged and unchangeable. I knew by her stony
+eye—opaque to tenderness, indissoluble to tears—that she was resolved
+to consider me bad to the last; because to believe me good would give
+her no generous pleasure: only a sense of mortification.
+
+I felt pain, and then I felt ire; and then I felt a determination to
+subdue her—to be her mistress in spite both of her nature and her will.
+My tears had risen, just as in childhood: I ordered them back to their
+source. I brought a chair to the bed-head: I sat down and leaned over
+the pillow.
+
+“You sent for me,” I said, “and I am here; and it is my intention to
+stay till I see how you get on.”
+
+“Oh, of course! You have seen my daughters?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Well, you may tell them I wish you to stay till I can talk some things
+over with you I have on my mind: to-night it is too late, and I have a
+difficulty in recalling them. But there was something I wished to
+say—let me see—”
+
+The wandering look and changed utterance told what wreck had taken
+place in her once vigorous frame. Turning restlessly, she drew the
+bedclothes round her; my elbow, resting on a corner of the quilt, fixed
+it down: she was at once irritated.
+
+“Sit up!” said she; “don’t annoy me with holding the clothes fast. Are
+you Jane Eyre?”
+
+“I am Jane Eyre.”
+
+“I have had more trouble with that child than any one would believe.
+Such a burden to be left on my hands—and so much annoyance as she
+caused me, daily and hourly, with her incomprehensible disposition, and
+her sudden starts of temper, and her continual, unnatural watchings of
+one’s movements! I declare she talked to me once like something mad, or
+like a fiend—no child ever spoke or looked as she did; I was glad to
+get her away from the house. What did they do with her at Lowood? The
+fever broke out there, and many of the pupils died. She, however, did
+not die: but I said she did—I wish she had died!”
+
+“A strange wish, Mrs. Reed; why do you hate her so?”
+
+“I had a dislike to her mother always; for she was my husband’s only
+sister, and a great favourite with him: he opposed the family’s
+disowning her when she made her low marriage; and when news came of her
+death, he wept like a simpleton. He would send for the baby; though I
+entreated him rather to put it out to nurse and pay for its
+maintenance. I hated it the first time I set my eyes on it—a sickly,
+whining, pining thing! It would wail in its cradle all night long—not
+screaming heartily like any other child, but whimpering and moaning.
+Reed pitied it; and he used to nurse it and notice it as if it had been
+his own: more, indeed, than he ever noticed his own at that age. He
+would try to make my children friendly to the little beggar: the
+darlings could not bear it, and he was angry with them when they showed
+their dislike. In his last illness, he had it brought continually to
+his bedside; and but an hour before he died, he bound me by vow to keep
+the creature. I would as soon have been charged with a pauper brat out
+of a workhouse: but he was weak, naturally weak. John does not at all
+resemble his father, and I am glad of it: John is like me and like my
+brothers—he is quite a Gibson. Oh, I wish he would cease tormenting me
+with letters for money! I have no more money to give him: we are
+getting poor. I must send away half the servants and shut up part of
+the house; or let it off. I can never submit to do that—yet how are we
+to get on? Two-thirds of my income goes in paying the interest of
+mortgages. John gambles dreadfully, and always loses—poor boy! He is
+beset by sharpers: John is sunk and degraded—his look is frightful—I
+feel ashamed for him when I see him.”
+
+She was getting much excited. “I think I had better leave her now,”
+said I to Bessie, who stood on the other side of the bed.
+
+“Perhaps you had, Miss: but she often talks in this way towards
+night—in the morning she is calmer.”
+
+I rose. “Stop!” exclaimed Mrs. Reed, “there is another thing I wished
+to say. He threatens me—he continually threatens me with his own death,
+or mine: and I dream sometimes that I see him laid out with a great
+wound in his throat, or with a swollen and blackened face. I am come to
+a strange pass: I have heavy troubles. What is to be done? How is the
+money to be had?”
+
+Bessie now endeavoured to persuade her to take a sedative draught: she
+succeeded with difficulty. Soon after, Mrs. Reed grew more composed,
+and sank into a dozing state. I then left her.
+
+More than ten days elapsed before I had again any conversation with
+her. She continued either delirious or lethargic; and the doctor
+forbade everything which could painfully excite her. Meantime, I got on
+as well as I could with Georgiana and Eliza. They were very cold,
+indeed, at first. Eliza would sit half the day sewing, reading, or
+writing, and scarcely utter a word either to me or her sister.
+Georgiana would chatter nonsense to her canary bird by the hour, and
+take no notice of me. But I was determined not to seem at a loss for
+occupation or amusement: I had brought my drawing materials with me,
+and they served me for both.
+
+Provided with a case of pencils, and some sheets of paper, I used to
+take a seat apart from them, near the window, and busy myself in
+sketching fancy vignettes, representing any scene that happened
+momentarily to shape itself in the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of
+imagination: a glimpse of sea between two rocks; the rising moon, and a
+ship crossing its disk; a group of reeds and water-flags, and a naiad’s
+head, crowned with lotus-flowers, rising out of them; an elf sitting in
+a hedge-sparrow’s nest, under a wreath of hawthorn-bloom.
+
+One morning I fell to sketching a face: what sort of a face it was to
+be, I did not care or know. I took a soft black pencil, gave it a broad
+point, and worked away. Soon I had traced on the paper a broad and
+prominent forehead and a square lower outline of visage: that contour
+gave me pleasure; my fingers proceeded actively to fill it with
+features. Strongly-marked horizontal eyebrows must be traced under that
+brow; then followed, naturally, a well-defined nose, with a straight
+ridge and full nostrils; then a flexible-looking mouth, by no means
+narrow; then a firm chin, with a decided cleft down the middle of it:
+of course, some black whiskers were wanted, and some jetty hair, tufted
+on the temples, and waved above the forehead. Now for the eyes: I had
+left them to the last, because they required the most careful working.
+I drew them large; I shaped them well: the eyelashes I traced long and
+sombre; the irids lustrous and large. “Good! but not quite the thing,”
+I thought, as I surveyed the effect: “they want more force and spirit;”
+and I wrought the shades blacker, that the lights might flash more
+brilliantly—a happy touch or two secured success. There, I had a
+friend’s face under my gaze; and what did it signify that those young
+ladies turned their backs on me? I looked at it; I smiled at the
+speaking likeness: I was absorbed and content.
+
+“Is that a portrait of some one you know?” asked Eliza, who had
+approached me unnoticed. I responded that it was merely a fancy head,
+and hurried it beneath the other sheets. Of course, I lied: it was, in
+fact, a very faithful representation of Mr. Rochester. But what was
+that to her, or to any one but myself? Georgiana also advanced to look.
+The other drawings pleased her much, but she called that “an ugly man.”
+They both seemed surprised at my skill. I offered to sketch their
+portraits; and each, in turn, sat for a pencil outline. Then Georgiana
+produced her album. I promised to contribute a water-colour drawing:
+this put her at once into good humour. She proposed a walk in the
+grounds. Before we had been out two hours, we were deep in a
+confidential conversation: she had favoured me with a description of
+the brilliant winter she had spent in London two seasons ago—of the
+admiration she had there excited—the attention she had received; and I
+even got hints of the titled conquest she had made. In the course of
+the afternoon and evening these hints were enlarged on: various soft
+conversations were reported, and sentimental scenes represented; and,
+in short, a volume of a novel of fashionable life was that day
+improvised by her for my benefit. The communications were renewed from
+day to day: they always ran on the same theme—herself, her loves, and
+woes. It was strange she never once adverted either to her mother’s
+illness, or her brother’s death, or the present gloomy state of the
+family prospects. Her mind seemed wholly taken up with reminiscences of
+past gaiety, and aspirations after dissipations to come. She passed
+about five minutes each day in her mother’s sick-room, and no more.
+
+Eliza still spoke little: she had evidently no time to talk. I never
+saw a busier person than she seemed to be; yet it was difficult to say
+what she did: or rather, to discover any result of her diligence. She
+had an alarm to call her up early. I know not how she occupied herself
+before breakfast, but after that meal she divided her time into regular
+portions, and each hour had its allotted task. Three times a day she
+studied a little book, which I found, on inspection, was a Common
+Prayer Book. I asked her once what was the great attraction of that
+volume, and she said, “the Rubric.” Three hours she gave to stitching,
+with gold thread, the border of a square crimson cloth, almost large
+enough for a carpet. In answer to my inquiries after the use of this
+article, she informed me it was a covering for the altar of a new
+church lately erected near Gateshead. Two hours she devoted to her
+diary; two to working by herself in the kitchen-garden; and one to the
+regulation of her accounts. She seemed to want no company; no
+conversation. I believe she was happy in her way: this routine sufficed
+for her; and nothing annoyed her so much as the occurrence of any
+incident which forced her to vary its clockwork regularity.
+
+She told me one evening, when more disposed to be communicative than
+usual, that John’s conduct, and the threatened ruin of the family, had
+been a source of profound affliction to her: but she had now, she said,
+settled her mind, and formed her resolution. Her own fortune she had
+taken care to secure; and when her mother died—and it was wholly
+improbable, she tranquilly remarked, that she should either recover or
+linger long—she would execute a long-cherished project: seek a
+retirement where punctual habits would be permanently secured from
+disturbance, and place safe barriers between herself and a frivolous
+world. I asked if Georgiana would accompany her.
+
+“Of course not. Georgiana and she had nothing in common: they never had
+had. She would not be burdened with her society for any consideration.
+Georgiana should take her own course; and she, Eliza, would take hers.”
+
+Georgiana, when not unburdening her heart to me, spent most of her time
+in lying on the sofa, fretting about the dulness of the house, and
+wishing over and over again that her aunt Gibson would send her an
+invitation up to town. “It would be so much better,” she said, “if she
+could only get out of the way for a month or two, till all was over.” I
+did not ask what she meant by “all being over,” but I suppose she
+referred to the expected decease of her mother and the gloomy sequel of
+funeral rites. Eliza generally took no more notice of her sister’s
+indolence and complaints than if no such murmuring, lounging object had
+been before her. One day, however, as she put away her account-book and
+unfolded her embroidery, she suddenly took her up thus—
+
+“Georgiana, a more vain and absurd animal than you was certainly never
+allowed to cumber the earth. You had no right to be born, for you make
+no use of life. Instead of living for, in, and with yourself, as a
+reasonable being ought, you seek only to fasten your feebleness on some
+other person’s strength: if no one can be found willing to burden her
+or himself with such a fat, weak, puffy, useless thing, you cry out
+that you are ill-treated, neglected, miserable. Then, too, existence
+for you must be a scene of continual change and excitement, or else the
+world is a dungeon: you must be admired, you must be courted, you must
+be flattered—you must have music, dancing, and society—or you languish,
+you die away. Have you no sense to devise a system which will make you
+independent of all efforts, and all wills, but your own? Take one day;
+share it into sections; to each section apportion its task: leave no
+stray unemployed quarters of an hour, ten minutes, five minutes—include
+all; do each piece of business in its turn with method, with rigid
+regularity. The day will close almost before you are aware it has
+begun; and you are indebted to no one for helping you to get rid of one
+vacant moment: you have had to seek no one’s company, conversation,
+sympathy, forbearance; you have lived, in short, as an independent
+being ought to do. Take this advice: the first and last I shall offer
+you; then you will not want me or any one else, happen what may.
+Neglect it—go on as heretofore, craving, whining, and idling—and suffer
+the results of your idiocy, however bad and insufferable they may be. I
+tell you this plainly; and listen: for though I shall no more repeat
+what I am now about to say, I shall steadily act on it. After my
+mother’s death, I wash my hands of you: from the day her coffin is
+carried to the vault in Gateshead Church, you and I will be as separate
+as if we had never known each other. You need not think that because we
+chanced to be born of the same parents, I shall suffer you to fasten me
+down by even the feeblest claim: I can tell you this—if the whole human
+race, ourselves excepted, were swept away, and we two stood alone on
+the earth, I would leave you in the old world, and betake myself to the
+new.”
+
+She closed her lips.
+
+“You might have spared yourself the trouble of delivering that tirade,”
+answered Georgiana. “Everybody knows you are the most selfish,
+heartless creature in existence: and _I_ know your spiteful hatred
+towards me: I have had a specimen of it before in the trick you played
+me about Lord Edwin Vere: you could not bear me to be raised above you,
+to have a title, to be received into circles where you dare not show
+your face, and so you acted the spy and informer, and ruined my
+prospects for ever.” Georgiana took out her handkerchief and blew her
+nose for an hour afterwards; Eliza sat cold, impassable, and
+assiduously industrious.
+
+True, generous feeling is made small account of by some, but here were
+two natures rendered, the one intolerably acrid, the other despicably
+savourless for the want of it. Feeling without judgment is a washy
+draught indeed; but judgment untempered by feeling is too bitter and
+husky a morsel for human deglutition.
+
+It was a wet and windy afternoon: Georgiana had fallen asleep on the
+sofa over the perusal of a novel; Eliza was gone to attend a
+saint’s-day service at the new church—for in matters of religion she
+was a rigid formalist: no weather ever prevented the punctual discharge
+of what she considered her devotional duties; fair or foul, she went to
+church thrice every Sunday, and as often on week-days as there were
+prayers.
+
+I bethought myself to go upstairs and see how the dying woman sped, who
+lay there almost unheeded: the very servants paid her but a remittent
+attention: the hired nurse, being little looked after, would slip out
+of the room whenever she could. Bessie was faithful; but she had her
+own family to mind, and could only come occasionally to the hall. I
+found the sick-room unwatched, as I had expected: no nurse was there;
+the patient lay still, and seemingly lethargic; her livid face sunk in
+the pillows: the fire was dying in the grate. I renewed the fuel,
+re-arranged the bedclothes, gazed awhile on her who could not now gaze
+on me, and then I moved away to the window.
+
+The rain beat strongly against the panes, the wind blew tempestuously:
+“One lies there,” I thought, “who will soon be beyond the war of
+earthly elements. Whither will that spirit—now struggling to quit its
+material tenement—flit when at length released?”
+
+In pondering the great mystery, I thought of Helen Burns, recalled her
+dying words—her faith—her doctrine of the equality of disembodied
+souls. I was still listening in thought to her well-remembered
+tones—still picturing her pale and spiritual aspect, her wasted face
+and sublime gaze, as she lay on her placid deathbed, and whispered her
+longing to be restored to her divine Father’s bosom—when a feeble voice
+murmured from the couch behind: “Who is that?”
+
+I knew Mrs. Reed had not spoken for days: was she reviving? I went up
+to her.
+
+“It is I, Aunt Reed.”
+
+“Who—I?” was her answer. “Who are you?” looking at me with surprise and
+a sort of alarm, but still not wildly. “You are quite a stranger to
+me—where is Bessie?”
+
+“She is at the lodge, aunt.”
+
+“Aunt,” she repeated. “Who calls me aunt? You are not one of the
+Gibsons; and yet I know you—that face, and the eyes and forehead, are
+quiet familiar to me: you are like—why, you are like Jane Eyre!”
+
+I said nothing: I was afraid of occasioning some shock by declaring my
+identity.
+
+“Yet,” said she, “I am afraid it is a mistake: my thoughts deceive me.
+I wished to see Jane Eyre, and I fancy a likeness where none exists:
+besides, in eight years she must be so changed.” I now gently assured
+her that I was the person she supposed and desired me to be: and seeing
+that I was understood, and that her senses were quite collected, I
+explained how Bessie had sent her husband to fetch me from Thornfield.
+
+“I am very ill, I know,” she said ere long. “I was trying to turn
+myself a few minutes since, and find I cannot move a limb. It is as
+well I should ease my mind before I die: what we think little of in
+health, burdens us at such an hour as the present is to me. Is the
+nurse here? or is there no one in the room but you?”
+
+I assured her we were alone.
+
+“Well, I have twice done you a wrong which I regret now. One was in
+breaking the promise which I gave my husband to bring you up as my own
+child; the other—” she stopped. “After all, it is of no great
+importance, perhaps,” she murmured to herself: “and then I may get
+better; and to humble myself so to her is painful.”
+
+She made an effort to alter her position, but failed: her face changed;
+she seemed to experience some inward sensation—the precursor, perhaps,
+of the last pang.
+
+“Well, I must get it over. Eternity is before me: I had better tell
+her.—Go to my dressing-case, open it, and take out a letter you will
+see there.”
+
+I obeyed her directions. “Read the letter,” she said.
+
+It was short, and thus conceived:—
+
+“MADAM,—
+“Will you have the goodness to send me the address of my niece, Jane
+Eyre, and to tell me how she is? It is my intention to write shortly
+and desire her to come to me at Madeira. Providence has blessed my
+endeavours to secure a competency; and as I am unmarried and childless,
+I wish to adopt her during my life, and bequeath her at my death
+whatever I may have to leave.
+
+
+I am, Madam, &c., &c.,
+“JOHN EYRE, Madeira.”
+
+
+It was dated three years back.
+
+“Why did I never hear of this?” I asked.
+
+“Because I disliked you too fixedly and thoroughly ever to lend a hand
+in lifting you to prosperity. I could not forget your conduct to me,
+Jane—the fury with which you once turned on me; the tone in which you
+declared you abhorred me the worst of anybody in the world; the
+unchildlike look and voice with which you affirmed that the very
+thought of me made you sick, and asserted that I had treated you with
+miserable cruelty. I could not forget my own sensations when you thus
+started up and poured out the venom of your mind: I felt fear as if an
+animal that I had struck or pushed had looked up at me with human eyes
+and cursed me in a man’s voice.—Bring me some water! Oh, make haste!”
+
+“Dear Mrs. Reed,” said I, as I offered her the draught she required,
+“think no more of all this, let it pass away from your mind. Forgive me
+for my passionate language: I was a child then; eight, nine years have
+passed since that day.”
+
+She heeded nothing of what I said; but when she had tasted the water
+and drawn breath, she went on thus—
+
+“I tell you I could not forget it; and I took my revenge: for you to be
+adopted by your uncle, and placed in a state of ease and comfort, was
+what I could not endure. I wrote to him; I said I was sorry for his
+disappointment, but Jane Eyre was dead: she had died of typhus fever at
+Lowood. Now act as you please: write and contradict my assertion—expose
+my falsehood as soon as you like. You were born, I think, to be my
+torment: my last hour is racked by the recollection of a deed which,
+but for you, I should never have been tempted to commit.”
+
+“If you could but be persuaded to think no more of it, aunt, and to
+regard me with kindness and forgiveness——”
+
+“You have a very bad disposition,” said she, “and one to this day I
+feel it impossible to understand: how for nine years you could be
+patient and quiescent under any treatment, and in the tenth break out
+all fire and violence, I can never comprehend.”
+
+“My disposition is not so bad as you think: I am passionate, but not
+vindictive. Many a time, as a little child, I should have been glad to
+love you if you would have let me; and I long earnestly to be
+reconciled to you now: kiss me, aunt.”
+
+I approached my cheek to her lips: she would not touch it. She said I
+oppressed her by leaning over the bed, and again demanded water. As I
+laid her down—for I raised her and supported her on my arm while she
+drank—I covered her ice-cold and clammy hand with mine: the feeble
+fingers shrank from my touch—the glazing eyes shunned my gaze.
+
+“Love me, then, or hate me, as you will,” I said at last, “you have my
+full and free forgiveness: ask now for God’s, and be at peace.”
+
+Poor, suffering woman! it was too late for her to make now the effort
+to change her habitual frame of mind: living, she had ever hated
+me—dying, she must hate me still.
+
+The nurse now entered, and Bessie followed. I yet lingered half-an-hour
+longer, hoping to see some sign of amity: but she gave none. She was
+fast relapsing into stupor; nor did her mind again rally: at twelve
+o’clock that night she died. I was not present to close her eyes, nor
+were either of her daughters. They came to tell us the next morning
+that all was over. She was by that time laid out. Eliza and I went to
+look at her: Georgiana, who had burst out into loud weeping, said she
+dared not go. There was stretched Sarah Reed’s once robust and active
+frame, rigid and still: her eye of flint was covered with its cold lid;
+her brow and strong traits wore yet the impress of her inexorable soul.
+A strange and solemn object was that corpse to me. I gazed on it with
+gloom and pain: nothing soft, nothing sweet, nothing pitying, or
+hopeful, or subduing did it inspire; only a grating anguish for _her_
+woes—not _my_ loss—and a sombre tearless dismay at the fearfulness of
+death in such a form.
+
+Eliza surveyed her parent calmly. After a silence of some minutes she
+observed—
+
+“With her constitution she should have lived to a good old age: her
+life was shortened by trouble.” And then a spasm constricted her mouth
+for an instant: as it passed away she turned and left the room, and so
+did I. Neither of us had dropt a tear.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+Mr. Rochester had given me but one week’s leave of absence: yet a month
+elapsed before I quitted Gateshead. I wished to leave immediately after
+the funeral, but Georgiana entreated me to stay till she could get off
+to London, whither she was now at last invited by her uncle, Mr.
+Gibson, who had come down to direct his sister’s interment and settle
+the family affairs. Georgiana said she dreaded being left alone with
+Eliza; from her she got neither sympathy in her dejection, support in
+her fears, nor aid in her preparations; so I bore with her
+feeble-minded wailings and selfish lamentations as well as I could, and
+did my best in sewing for her and packing her dresses. It is true, that
+while I worked, she would idle; and I thought to myself, “If you and I
+were destined to live always together, cousin, we would commence
+matters on a different footing. I should not settle tamely down into
+being the forbearing party; I should assign you your share of labour,
+and compel you to accomplish it, or else it should be left undone: I
+should insist, also, on your keeping some of those drawling,
+half-insincere complaints hushed in your own breast. It is only because
+our connection happens to be very transitory, and comes at a peculiarly
+mournful season, that I consent thus to render it so patient and
+compliant on my part.”
+
+At last I saw Georgiana off; but now it was Eliza’s turn to request me
+to stay another week. Her plans required all her time and attention,
+she said; she was about to depart for some unknown bourne; and all day
+long she stayed in her own room, her door bolted within, filling
+trunks, emptying drawers, burning papers, and holding no communication
+with any one. She wished me to look after the house, to see callers,
+and answer notes of condolence.
+
+One morning she told me I was at liberty. “And,” she added, “I am
+obliged to you for your valuable services and discreet conduct! There
+is some difference between living with such an one as you and with
+Georgiana: you perform your own part in life and burden no one.
+To-morrow,” she continued, “I set out for the Continent. I shall take
+up my abode in a religious house near Lisle—a nunnery you would call
+it; there I shall be quiet and unmolested. I shall devote myself for a
+time to the examination of the Roman Catholic dogmas, and to a careful
+study of the workings of their system: if I find it to be, as I half
+suspect it is, the one best calculated to ensure the doing of all
+things decently and in order, I shall embrace the tenets of Rome and
+probably take the veil.”
+
+I neither expressed surprise at this resolution nor attempted to
+dissuade her from it. “The vocation will fit you to a hair,” I thought:
+“much good may it do you!”
+
+When we parted, she said: “Good-bye, cousin Jane Eyre; I wish you well:
+you have some sense.”
+
+I then returned: “You are not without sense, cousin Eliza; but what you
+have, I suppose, in another year will be walled up alive in a French
+convent. However, it is not my business, and so it suits you, I don’t
+much care.”
+
+“You are in the right,” said she; and with these words we each went our
+separate way. As I shall not have occasion to refer either to her or
+her sister again, I may as well mention here, that Georgiana made an
+advantageous match with a wealthy worn-out man of fashion, and that
+Eliza actually took the veil, and is at this day superior of the
+convent where she passed the period of her novitiate, and which she
+endowed with her fortune.
+
+How people feel when they are returning home from an absence, long or
+short, I did not know: I had never experienced the sensation. I had
+known what it was to come back to Gateshead when a child after a long
+walk, to be scolded for looking cold or gloomy; and later, what it was
+to come back from church to Lowood, to long for a plenteous meal and a
+good fire, and to be unable to get either. Neither of these returnings
+was very pleasant or desirable: no magnet drew me to a given point,
+increasing in its strength of attraction the nearer I came. The return
+to Thornfield was yet to be tried.
+
+My journey seemed tedious—very tedious: fifty miles one day, a night
+spent at an inn; fifty miles the next day. During the first twelve
+hours I thought of Mrs. Reed in her last moments; I saw her disfigured
+and discoloured face, and heard her strangely altered voice. I mused on
+the funeral day, the coffin, the hearse, the black train of tenants and
+servants—few was the number of relatives—the gaping vault, the silent
+church, the solemn service. Then I thought of Eliza and Georgiana; I
+beheld one the cynosure of a ball-room, the other the inmate of a
+convent cell; and I dwelt on and analysed their separate peculiarities
+of person and character. The evening arrival at the great town of ——
+scattered these thoughts; night gave them quite another turn: laid down
+on my traveller’s bed, I left reminiscence for anticipation.
+
+I was going back to Thornfield: but how long was I to stay there? Not
+long; of that I was sure. I had heard from Mrs. Fairfax in the interim
+of my absence: the party at the hall was dispersed; Mr. Rochester had
+left for London three weeks ago, but he was then expected to return in
+a fortnight. Mrs. Fairfax surmised that he was gone to make
+arrangements for his wedding, as he had talked of purchasing a new
+carriage: she said the idea of his marrying Miss Ingram still seemed
+strange to her; but from what everybody said, and from what she had
+herself seen, she could no longer doubt that the event would shortly
+take place. “You would be strangely incredulous if you did doubt it,”
+was my mental comment. “I don’t doubt it.”
+
+The question followed, “Where was I to go?” I dreamt of Miss Ingram all
+the night: in a vivid morning dream I saw her closing the gates of
+Thornfield against me and pointing me out another road; and Mr.
+Rochester looked on with his arms folded—smiling sardonically, as it
+seemed, at both her and me.
+
+I had not notified to Mrs. Fairfax the exact day of my return; for I
+did not wish either car or carriage to meet me at Millcote. I proposed
+to walk the distance quietly by myself; and very quietly, after leaving
+my box in the ostler’s care, did I slip away from the George Inn, about
+six o’clock of a June evening, and take the old road to Thornfield: a
+road which lay chiefly through fields, and was now little frequented.
+
+It was not a bright or splendid summer evening, though fair and soft:
+the haymakers were at work all along the road; and the sky, though far
+from cloudless, was such as promised well for the future: its
+blue—where blue was visible—was mild and settled, and its cloud strata
+high and thin. The west, too, was warm: no watery gleam chilled it—it
+seemed as if there was a fire lit, an altar burning behind its screen
+of marbled vapour, and out of apertures shone a golden redness.
+
+I felt glad as the road shortened before me: so glad that I stopped
+once to ask myself what that joy meant: and to remind reason that it
+was not to my home I was going, or to a permanent resting-place, or to
+a place where fond friends looked out for me and waited my arrival.
+“Mrs. Fairfax will smile you a calm welcome, to be sure,” said I; “and
+little Adèle will clap her hands and jump to see you: but you know very
+well you are thinking of another than they, and that he is not thinking
+of you.”
+
+But what is so headstrong as youth? What so blind as inexperience?
+These affirmed that it was pleasure enough to have the privilege of
+again looking on Mr. Rochester, whether he looked on me or not; and
+they added—“Hasten! hasten! be with him while you may: but a few more
+days or weeks, at most, and you are parted from him for ever!” And then
+I strangled a new-born agony—a deformed thing which I could not
+persuade myself to own and rear—and ran on.
+
+They are making hay, too, in Thornfield meadows: or rather, the
+labourers are just quitting their work, and returning home with their
+rakes on their shoulders, now, at the hour I arrive. I have but a field
+or two to traverse, and then I shall cross the road and reach the
+gates. How full the hedges are of roses! But I have no time to gather
+any; I want to be at the house. I passed a tall briar, shooting leafy
+and flowery branches across the path; I see the narrow stile with stone
+steps; and I see—Mr. Rochester sitting there, a book and a pencil in
+his hand; he is writing.
+
+Well, he is not a ghost; yet every nerve I have is unstrung: for a
+moment I am beyond my own mastery. What does it mean? I did not think I
+should tremble in this way when I saw him, or lose my voice or the
+power of motion in his presence. I will go back as soon as I can stir:
+I need not make an absolute fool of myself. I know another way to the
+house. It does not signify if I knew twenty ways; for he has seen me.
+
+“Hillo!” he cries; and he puts up his book and his pencil. “There you
+are! Come on, if you please.”
+
+I suppose I do come on; though in what fashion I know not; being
+scarcely cognisant of my movements, and solicitous only to appear calm;
+and, above all, to control the working muscles of my face—which I feel
+rebel insolently against my will, and struggle to express what I had
+resolved to conceal. But I have a veil—it is down: I may make shift yet
+to behave with decent composure.
+
+“And this is Jane Eyre? Are you coming from Millcote, and on foot?
+Yes—just one of your tricks: not to send for a carriage, and come
+clattering over street and road like a common mortal, but to steal into
+the vicinage of your home along with twilight, just as if you were a
+dream or a shade. What the deuce have you done with yourself this last
+month?”
+
+“I have been with my aunt, sir, who is dead.”
+
+“A true Janian reply! Good angels be my guard! She comes from the other
+world—from the abode of people who are dead; and tells me so when she
+meets me alone here in the gloaming! If I dared, I’d touch you, to see
+if you are substance or shadow, you elf!—but I’d as soon offer to take
+hold of a blue _ignis fatuus_ light in a marsh. Truant! truant!” he
+added, when he had paused an instant. “Absent from me a whole month,
+and forgetting me quite, I’ll be sworn!”
+
+I knew there would be pleasure in meeting my master again, even though
+broken by the fear that he was so soon to cease to be my master, and by
+the knowledge that I was nothing to him: but there was ever in Mr.
+Rochester (so at least I thought) such a wealth of the power of
+communicating happiness, that to taste but of the crumbs he scattered
+to stray and stranger birds like me, was to feast genially. His last
+words were balm: they seemed to imply that it imported something to him
+whether I forgot him or not. And he had spoken of Thornfield as my
+home—would that it were my home!
+
+He did not leave the stile, and I hardly liked to ask to go by. I
+inquired soon if he had not been to London.
+
+“Yes; I suppose you found that out by second-sight.”
+
+“Mrs. Fairfax told me in a letter.”
+
+“And did she inform you what I went to do?”
+
+“Oh, yes, sir! Everybody knew your errand.”
+
+“You must see the carriage, Jane, and tell me if you don’t think it
+will suit Mrs. Rochester exactly; and whether she won’t look like Queen
+Boadicea, leaning back against those purple cushions. I wish, Jane, I
+were a trifle better adapted to match with her externally. Tell me now,
+fairy as you are—can’t you give me a charm, or a philter, or something
+of that sort, to make me a handsome man?”
+
+“It would be past the power of magic, sir;” and, in thought, I added,
+“A loving eye is all the charm needed: to such you are handsome enough;
+or rather your sternness has a power beyond beauty.”
+
+Mr. Rochester had sometimes read my unspoken thoughts with an acumen to
+me incomprehensible: in the present instance he took no notice of my
+abrupt vocal response; but he smiled at me with a certain smile he had
+of his own, and which he used but on rare occasions. He seemed to think
+it too good for common purposes: it was the real sunshine of feeling—he
+shed it over me now.
+
+“Pass, Janet,” said he, making room for me to cross the stile: “go up
+home, and stay your weary little wandering feet at a friend’s
+threshold.”
+
+All I had now to do was to obey him in silence: no need for me to
+colloquise further. I got over the stile without a word, and meant to
+leave him calmly. An impulse held me fast—a force turned me round. I
+said—or something in me said for me, and in spite of me—
+
+“Thank you, Mr. Rochester, for your great kindness. I am strangely glad
+to get back again to you: and wherever you are is my home—my only
+home.”
+
+I walked on so fast that even he could hardly have overtaken me had he
+tried. Little Adèle was half wild with delight when she saw me. Mrs.
+Fairfax received me with her usual plain friendliness. Leah smiled, and
+even Sophie bid me “bon soir” with glee. This was very pleasant; there
+is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow-creatures, and
+feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.
+
+I that evening shut my eyes resolutely against the future: I stopped my
+ears against the voice that kept warning me of near separation and
+coming grief. When tea was over and Mrs. Fairfax had taken her
+knitting, and I had assumed a low seat near her, and Adèle, kneeling on
+the carpet, had nestled close up to me, and a sense of mutual affection
+seemed to surround us with a ring of golden peace, I uttered a silent
+prayer that we might not be parted far or soon; but when, as we thus
+sat, Mr. Rochester entered, unannounced, and looking at us, seemed to
+take pleasure in the spectacle of a group so amicable—when he said he
+supposed the old lady was all right now that she had got her adopted
+daughter back again, and added that he saw Adèle was “prête à croquer
+sa petite maman Anglaise”—I half ventured to hope that he would, even
+after his marriage, keep us together somewhere under the shelter of his
+protection, and not quite exiled from the sunshine of his presence.
+
+A fortnight of dubious calm succeeded my return to Thornfield Hall.
+Nothing was said of the master’s marriage, and I saw no preparation
+going on for such an event. Almost every day I asked Mrs. Fairfax if
+she had yet heard anything decided: her answer was always in the
+negative. Once she said she had actually put the question to Mr.
+Rochester as to when he was going to bring his bride home; but he had
+answered her only by a joke and one of his queer looks, and she could
+not tell what to make of him.
+
+One thing specially surprised me, and that was, there were no
+journeyings backward and forward, no visits to Ingram Park: to be sure
+it was twenty miles off, on the borders of another county; but what was
+that distance to an ardent lover? To so practised and indefatigable a
+horseman as Mr. Rochester, it would be but a morning’s ride. I began to
+cherish hopes I had no right to conceive: that the match was broken
+off; that rumour had been mistaken; that one or both parties had
+changed their minds. I used to look at my master’s face to see if it
+were sad or fierce; but I could not remember the time when it had been
+so uniformly clear of clouds or evil feelings. If, in the moments I and
+my pupil spent with him, I lacked spirits and sank into inevitable
+dejection, he became even gay. Never had he called me more frequently
+to his presence; never been kinder to me when there—and, alas! never
+had I loved him so well.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+A splendid Midsummer shone over England: skies so pure, suns so radiant
+as were then seen in long succession, seldom favour even singly, our
+wave-girt land. It was as if a band of Italian days had come from the
+South, like a flock of glorious passenger birds, and lighted to rest
+them on the cliffs of Albion. The hay was all got in; the fields round
+Thornfield were green and shorn; the roads white and baked; the trees
+were in their dark prime; hedge and wood, full-leaved and deeply
+tinted, contrasted well with the sunny hue of the cleared meadows
+between.
+
+On Midsummer-eve, Adèle, weary with gathering wild strawberries in Hay
+Lane half the day, had gone to bed with the sun. I watched her drop
+asleep, and when I left her, I sought the garden.
+
+It was now the sweetest hour of the twenty-four:—“Day its fervid fires
+had wasted,” and dew fell cool on panting plain and scorched summit.
+Where the sun had gone down in simple state—pure of the pomp of
+clouds—spread a solemn purple, burning with the light of red jewel and
+furnace flame at one point, on one hill-peak, and extending high and
+wide, soft and still softer, over half heaven. The east had its own
+charm or fine deep blue, and its own modest gem, a rising and solitary
+star: soon it would boast the moon; but she was yet beneath the
+horizon.
+
+I walked a while on the pavement; but a subtle, well-known scent—that
+of a cigar—stole from some window; I saw the library casement open a
+handbreadth; I knew I might be watched thence; so I went apart into the
+orchard. No nook in the grounds more sheltered and more Eden-like; it
+was full of trees, it bloomed with flowers: a very high wall shut it
+out from the court, on one side; on the other, a beech avenue screened
+it from the lawn. At the bottom was a sunk fence; its sole separation
+from lonely fields: a winding walk, bordered with laurels and
+terminating in a giant horse-chestnut, circled at the base by a seat,
+led down to the fence. Here one could wander unseen. While such
+honey-dew fell, such silence reigned, such gloaming gathered, I felt as
+if I could haunt such shade for ever; but in threading the flower and
+fruit parterres at the upper part of the enclosure, enticed there by
+the light the now rising moon cast on this more open quarter, my step
+is stayed—not by sound, not by sight, but once more by a warning
+fragrance.
+
+Sweet-briar and southernwood, jasmine, pink, and rose have long been
+yielding their evening sacrifice of incense: this new scent is neither
+of shrub nor flower; it is—I know it well—it is Mr. Rochester’s cigar.
+I look round and I listen. I see trees laden with ripening fruit. I
+hear a nightingale warbling in a wood half a mile off; no moving form
+is visible, no coming step audible; but that perfume increases: I must
+flee. I make for the wicket leading to the shrubbery, and I see Mr.
+Rochester entering. I step aside into the ivy recess; he will not stay
+long: he will soon return whence he came, and if I sit still he will
+never see me.
+
+But no—eventide is as pleasant to him as to me, and this antique garden
+as attractive; and he strolls on, now lifting the gooseberry-tree
+branches to look at the fruit, large as plums, with which they are
+laden; now taking a ripe cherry from the wall; now stooping towards a
+knot of flowers, either to inhale their fragrance or to admire the
+dew-beads on their petals. A great moth goes humming by me; it alights
+on a plant at Mr. Rochester’s foot: he sees it, and bends to examine
+it.
+
+“Now, he has his back towards me,” thought I, “and he is occupied too;
+perhaps, if I walk softly, I can slip away unnoticed.”
+
+I trode on an edging of turf that the crackle of the pebbly gravel
+might not betray me: he was standing among the beds at a yard or two
+distant from where I had to pass; the moth apparently engaged him. “I
+shall get by very well,” I meditated. As I crossed his shadow, thrown
+long over the garden by the moon, not yet risen high, he said quietly,
+without turning—
+
+“Jane, come and look at this fellow.”
+
+I had made no noise: he had not eyes behind—could his shadow feel? I
+started at first, and then I approached him.
+
+“Look at his wings,” said he, “he reminds me rather of a West Indian
+insect; one does not often see so large and gay a night-rover in
+England; there! he is flown.”
+
+The moth roamed away. I was sheepishly retreating also; but Mr.
+Rochester followed me, and when we reached the wicket, he said—
+
+“Turn back: on so lovely a night it is a shame to sit in the house; and
+surely no one can wish to go to bed while sunset is thus at meeting
+with moonrise.”
+
+It is one of my faults, that though my tongue is sometimes prompt
+enough at an answer, there are times when it sadly fails me in framing
+an excuse; and always the lapse occurs at some crisis, when a facile
+word or plausible pretext is specially wanted to get me out of painful
+embarrassment. I did not like to walk at this hour alone with Mr.
+Rochester in the shadowy orchard; but I could not find a reason to
+allege for leaving him. I followed with lagging step, and thoughts
+busily bent on discovering a means of extrication; but he himself
+looked so composed and so grave also, I became ashamed of feeling any
+confusion: the evil—if evil existent or prospective there was—seemed to
+lie with me only; his mind was unconscious and quiet.
+
+“Jane,” he recommenced, as we entered the laurel walk, and slowly
+strayed down in the direction of the sunk fence and the horse-chestnut,
+“Thornfield is a pleasant place in summer, is it not?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“You must have become in some degree attached to the house,—you, who
+have an eye for natural beauties, and a good deal of the organ of
+Adhesiveness?”
+
+“I am attached to it, indeed.”
+
+“And though I don’t comprehend how it is, I perceive you have acquired
+a degree of regard for that foolish little child Adèle, too; and even
+for simple dame Fairfax?”
+
+“Yes, sir; in different ways, I have an affection for both.”
+
+“And would be sorry to part with them?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Pity!” he said, and sighed and paused. “It is always the way of events
+in this life,” he continued presently: “no sooner have you got settled
+in a pleasant resting-place, than a voice calls out to you to rise and
+move on, for the hour of repose is expired.”
+
+“Must I move on, sir?” I asked. “Must I leave Thornfield?”
+
+“I believe you must, Jane. I am sorry, Janet, but I believe indeed you
+must.”
+
+This was a blow: but I did not let it prostrate me.
+
+“Well, sir, I shall be ready when the order to march comes.”
+
+“It is come now—I must give it to-night.”
+
+“Then you _are_ going to be married, sir?”
+
+“Ex-act-ly—pre-cise-ly: with your usual acuteness, you have hit the
+nail straight on the head.”
+
+“Soon, sir?”
+
+“Very soon, my—that is, Miss Eyre: and you’ll remember, Jane, the first
+time I, or Rumour, plainly intimated to you that it was my intention to
+put my old bachelor’s neck into the sacred noose, to enter into the
+holy estate of matrimony—to take Miss Ingram to my bosom, in short
+(she’s an extensive armful: but that’s not to the point—one can’t have
+too much of such a very excellent thing as my beautiful Blanche): well,
+as I was saying—listen to me, Jane! You’re not turning your head to
+look after more moths, are you? That was only a lady-clock, child,
+‘flying away home.’ I wish to remind you that it was you who first said
+to me, with that discretion I respect in you—with that foresight,
+prudence, and humility which befit your responsible and dependent
+position—that in case I married Miss Ingram, both you and little Adèle
+had better trot forthwith. I pass over the sort of slur conveyed in
+this suggestion on the character of my beloved; indeed, when you are
+far away, Janet, I’ll try to forget it: I shall notice only its wisdom;
+which is such that I have made it my law of action. Adèle must go to
+school; and you, Miss Eyre, must get a new situation.”
+
+“Yes, sir, I will advertise immediately: and meantime, I suppose—” I
+was going to say, “I suppose I may stay here, till I find another
+shelter to betake myself to:” but I stopped, feeling it would not do to
+risk a long sentence, for my voice was not quite under command.
+
+“In about a month I hope to be a bridegroom,” continued Mr. Rochester;
+“and in the interim, I shall myself look out for employment and an
+asylum for you.”
+
+“Thank you, sir; I am sorry to give—”
+
+“Oh, no need to apologise! I consider that when a dependent does her
+duty as well as you have done yours, she has a sort of claim upon her
+employer for any little assistance he can conveniently render her;
+indeed I have already, through my future mother-in-law, heard of a
+place that I think will suit: it is to undertake the education of the
+five daughters of Mrs. Dionysius O’Gall of Bitternutt Lodge, Connaught,
+Ireland. You’ll like Ireland, I think: they’re such warm-hearted people
+there, they say.”
+
+“It is a long way off, sir.”
+
+“No matter—a girl of your sense will not object to the voyage or the
+distance.”
+
+“Not the voyage, but the distance: and then the sea is a barrier—”
+
+“From what, Jane?”
+
+“From England and from Thornfield: and—”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“From _you_, sir.”
+
+I said this almost involuntarily, and, with as little sanction of free
+will, my tears gushed out. I did not cry so as to be heard, however; I
+avoided sobbing. The thought of Mrs. O’Gall and Bitternutt Lodge struck
+cold to my heart; and colder the thought of all the brine and foam,
+destined, as it seemed, to rush between me and the master at whose side
+I now walked, and coldest the remembrance of the wider ocean—wealth,
+caste, custom intervened between me and what I naturally and inevitably
+loved.
+
+“It is a long way,” I again said.
+
+“It is, to be sure; and when you get to Bitternutt Lodge, Connaught,
+Ireland, I shall never see you again, Jane: that’s morally certain. I
+never go over to Ireland, not having myself much of a fancy for the
+country. We have been good friends, Jane; have we not?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“And when friends are on the eve of separation, they like to spend the
+little time that remains to them close to each other. Come! we’ll talk
+over the voyage and the parting quietly half-an-hour or so, while the
+stars enter into their shining life up in heaven yonder: here is the
+chestnut tree: here is the bench at its old roots. Come, we will sit
+there in peace to-night, though we should never more be destined to sit
+there together.” He seated me and himself.
+
+“It is a long way to Ireland, Janet, and I am sorry to send my little
+friend on such weary travels: but if I can’t do better, how is it to be
+helped? Are you anything akin to me, do you think, Jane?”
+
+I could risk no sort of answer by this time: my heart was still.
+
+“Because,” he said, “I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to
+you—especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string
+somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a
+similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little
+frame. And if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of
+land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be
+snapt; and then I’ve a nervous notion I should take to bleeding
+inwardly. As for you,—you’d forget me.”
+
+“That I _never_ should, sir: you know—” Impossible to proceed.
+
+“Jane, do you hear that nightingale singing in the wood? Listen!”
+
+In listening, I sobbed convulsively; for I could repress what I endured
+no longer; I was obliged to yield, and I was shaken from head to foot
+with acute distress. When I did speak, it was only to express an
+impetuous wish that I had never been born, or never come to Thornfield.
+
+“Because you are sorry to leave it?”
+
+The vehemence of emotion, stirred by grief and love within me, was
+claiming mastery, and struggling for full sway, and asserting a right
+to predominate, to overcome, to live, rise, and reign at last: yes,—and
+to speak.
+
+“I grieve to leave Thornfield: I love Thornfield:—I love it, because I
+have lived in it a full and delightful life,—momentarily at least. I
+have not been trampled on. I have not been petrified. I have not been
+buried with inferior minds, and excluded from every glimpse of
+communion with what is bright and energetic and high. I have talked,
+face to face, with what I reverence, with what I delight in,—with an
+original, a vigorous, an expanded mind. I have known you, Mr.
+Rochester; and it strikes me with terror and anguish to feel I
+absolutely must be torn from you for ever. I see the necessity of
+departure; and it is like looking on the necessity of death.”
+
+“Where do you see the necessity?” he asked suddenly.
+
+“Where? You, sir, have placed it before me.”
+
+“In what shape?”
+
+“In the shape of Miss Ingram; a noble and beautiful woman,—your bride.”
+
+“My bride! What bride? I have no bride!”
+
+“But you will have.”
+
+“Yes;—I will!—I will!” He set his teeth.
+
+“Then I must go:—you have said it yourself.”
+
+“No: you must stay! I swear it—and the oath shall be kept.”
+
+“I tell you I must go!” I retorted, roused to something like passion.
+“Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an
+automaton?—a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel
+of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from
+my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I
+am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!—I have as much soul as
+you,—and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty
+and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as
+it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the
+medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh;—it is my
+spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through
+the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal,—as we are!”
+
+“As we are!” repeated Mr. Rochester—“so,” he added, enclosing me in his
+arms, gathering me to his breast, pressing his lips on my lips: “so,
+Jane!”
+
+“Yes, so, sir,” I rejoined: “and yet not so; for you are a married
+man—or as good as a married man, and wed to one inferior to you—to one
+with whom you have no sympathy—whom I do not believe you truly love;
+for I have seen and heard you sneer at her. I would scorn such a union:
+therefore I am better than you—let me go!”
+
+“Where, Jane? To Ireland?”
+
+“Yes—to Ireland. I have spoken my mind, and can go anywhere now.”
+
+“Jane, be still; don’t struggle so, like a wild frantic bird that is
+rending its own plumage in its desperation.”
+
+“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an
+independent will, which I now exert to leave you.”
+
+Another effort set me at liberty, and I stood erect before him.
+
+“And your will shall decide your destiny,” he said: “I offer you my
+hand, my heart, and a share of all my possessions.”
+
+“You play a farce, which I merely laugh at.”
+
+“I ask you to pass through life at my side—to be my second self, and
+best earthly companion.”
+
+“For that fate you have already made your choice, and must abide by
+it.”
+
+“Jane, be still a few moments: you are over-excited: I will be still
+too.”
+
+A waft of wind came sweeping down the laurel-walk, and trembled through
+the boughs of the chestnut: it wandered away—away—to an indefinite
+distance—it died. The nightingale’s song was then the only voice of the
+hour: in listening to it, I again wept. Mr. Rochester sat quiet,
+looking at me gently and seriously. Some time passed before he spoke;
+he at last said—
+
+“Come to my side, Jane, and let us explain and understand one another.”
+
+“I will never again come to your side: I am torn away now, and cannot
+return.”
+
+“But, Jane, I summon you as my wife: it is you only I intend to marry.”
+
+I was silent: I thought he mocked me.
+
+“Come, Jane—come hither.”
+
+“Your bride stands between us.”
+
+He rose, and with a stride reached me.
+
+“My bride is here,” he said, again drawing me to him, “because my equal
+is here, and my likeness. Jane, will you marry me?”
+
+Still I did not answer, and still I writhed myself from his grasp: for
+I was still incredulous.
+
+“Do you doubt me, Jane?”
+
+“Entirely.”
+
+“You have no faith in me?”
+
+“Not a whit.”
+
+“Am I a liar in your eyes?” he asked passionately. “Little sceptic, you
+_shall_ be convinced. What love have I for Miss Ingram? None: and that
+you know. What love has she for me? None: as I have taken pains to
+prove: I caused a rumour to reach her that my fortune was not a third
+of what was supposed, and after that I presented myself to see the
+result; it was coldness both from her and her mother. I would not—I
+could not—marry Miss Ingram. You—you strange, you almost unearthly
+thing!—I love as my own flesh. You—poor and obscure, and small and
+plain as you are—I entreat to accept me as a husband.”
+
+“What, me!” I ejaculated, beginning in his earnestness—and especially
+in his incivility—to credit his sincerity: “me who have not a friend in
+the world but you—if you are my friend: not a shilling but what you
+have given me?”
+
+“You, Jane, I must have you for my own—entirely my own. Will you be
+mine? Say yes, quickly.”
+
+“Mr. Rochester, let me look at your face: turn to the moonlight.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Because I want to read your countenance—turn!”
+
+“There! you will find it scarcely more legible than a crumpled,
+scratched page. Read on: only make haste, for I suffer.”
+
+His face was very much agitated and very much flushed, and there were
+strong workings in the features, and strange gleams in the eyes.
+
+“Oh, Jane, you torture me!” he exclaimed. “With that searching and yet
+faithful and generous look, you torture me!”
+
+“How can I do that? If you are true, and your offer real, my only
+feelings to you must be gratitude and devotion—they cannot torture.”
+
+“Gratitude!” he ejaculated; and added wildly—“Jane accept me quickly.
+Say, Edward—give me my name—Edward—I will marry you.”
+
+“Are you in earnest? Do you truly love me? Do you sincerely wish me to
+be your wife?”
+
+“I do; and if an oath is necessary to satisfy you, I swear it.”
+
+“Then, sir, I will marry you.”
+
+“Edward—my little wife!”
+
+“Dear Edward!”
+
+“Come to me—come to me entirely now,” said he; and added, in his
+deepest tone, speaking in my ear as his cheek was laid on mine, “Make
+my happiness—I will make yours.”
+
+“God pardon me!” he subjoined ere long; “and man meddle not with me: I
+have her, and will hold her.”
+
+“There is no one to meddle, sir. I have no kindred to interfere.”
+
+“No—that is the best of it,” he said. And if I had loved him less I
+should have thought his accent and look of exultation savage; but,
+sitting by him, roused from the nightmare of parting—called to the
+paradise of union—I thought only of the bliss given me to drink in so
+abundant a flow. Again and again he said, “Are you happy, Jane?” And
+again and again I answered, “Yes.” After which he murmured, “It will
+atone—it will atone. Have I not found her friendless, and cold, and
+comfortless? Will I not guard, and cherish, and solace her? Is there
+not love in my heart, and constancy in my resolves? It will expiate at
+God’s tribunal. I know my Maker sanctions what I do. For the world’s
+judgment—I wash my hands thereof. For man’s opinion—I defy it.”
+
+But what had befallen the night? The moon was not yet set, and we were
+all in shadow: I could scarcely see my master’s face, near as I was.
+And what ailed the chestnut tree? it writhed and groaned; while wind
+roared in the laurel walk, and came sweeping over us.
+
+“We must go in,” said Mr. Rochester: “the weather changes. I could have
+sat with thee till morning, Jane.”
+
+“And so,” thought I, “could I with you.” I should have said so,
+perhaps, but a livid, vivid spark leapt out of a cloud at which I was
+looking, and there was a crack, a crash, and a close rattling peal; and
+I thought only of hiding my dazzled eyes against Mr. Rochester’s
+shoulder.
+
+The rain rushed down. He hurried me up the walk, through the grounds,
+and into the house; but we were quite wet before we could pass the
+threshold. He was taking off my shawl in the hall, and shaking the
+water out of my loosened hair, when Mrs. Fairfax emerged from her room.
+I did not observe her at first, nor did Mr. Rochester. The lamp was
+lit. The clock was on the stroke of twelve.
+
+“Hasten to take off your wet things,” said he; “and before you go,
+good-night—good-night, my darling!”
+
+He kissed me repeatedly. When I looked up, on leaving his arms, there
+stood the widow, pale, grave, and amazed. I only smiled at her, and ran
+upstairs. “Explanation will do for another time,” thought I. Still,
+when I reached my chamber, I felt a pang at the idea she should even
+temporarily misconstrue what she had seen. But joy soon effaced every
+other feeling; and loud as the wind blew, near and deep as the thunder
+crashed, fierce and frequent as the lightning gleamed, cataract-like as
+the rain fell during a storm of two hours’ duration, I experienced no
+fear and little awe. Mr. Rochester came thrice to my door in the course
+of it, to ask if I was safe and tranquil: and that was comfort, that
+was strength for anything.
+
+Before I left my bed in the morning, little Adèle came running in to
+tell me that the great horse-chestnut at the bottom of the orchard had
+been struck by lightning in the night, and half of it split away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+As I rose and dressed, I thought over what had happened, and wondered
+if it were a dream. I could not be certain of the reality till I had
+seen Mr. Rochester again, and heard him renew his words of love and
+promise.
+
+While arranging my hair, I looked at my face in the glass, and felt it
+was no longer plain: there was hope in its aspect and life in its
+colour; and my eyes seemed as if they had beheld the fount of fruition,
+and borrowed beams from the lustrous ripple. I had often been unwilling
+to look at my master, because I feared he could not be pleased at my
+look; but I was sure I might lift my face to his now, and not cool his
+affection by its expression. I took a plain but clean and light summer
+dress from my drawer and put it on: it seemed no attire had ever so
+well become me, because none had I ever worn in so blissful a mood.
+
+I was not surprised, when I ran down into the hall, to see that a
+brilliant June morning had succeeded to the tempest of the night; and
+to feel, through the open glass door, the breathing of a fresh and
+fragrant breeze. Nature must be gladsome when I was so happy. A
+beggar-woman and her little boy—pale, ragged objects both—were coming
+up the walk, and I ran down and gave them all the money I happened to
+have in my purse—some three or four shillings: good or bad, they must
+partake of my jubilee. The rooks cawed, and blither birds sang; but
+nothing was so merry or so musical as my own rejoicing heart.
+
+Mrs. Fairfax surprised me by looking out of the window with a sad
+countenance, and saying gravely—“Miss Eyre, will you come to
+breakfast?” During the meal she was quiet and cool: but I could not
+undeceive her then. I must wait for my master to give explanations; and
+so must she. I ate what I could, and then I hastened upstairs. I met
+Adèle leaving the schoolroom.
+
+“Where are you going? It is time for lessons.”
+
+“Mr. Rochester has sent me away to the nursery.”
+
+“Where is he?”
+
+“In there,” pointing to the apartment she had left; and I went in, and
+there he stood.
+
+“Come and bid me good-morning,” said he. I gladly advanced; and it was
+not merely a cold word now, or even a shake of the hand that I
+received, but an embrace and a kiss. It seemed natural: it seemed
+genial to be so well loved, so caressed by him.
+
+“Jane, you look blooming, and smiling, and pretty,” said he: “truly
+pretty this morning. Is this my pale, little elf? Is this my
+mustard-seed? This little sunny-faced girl with the dimpled cheek and
+rosy lips; the satin-smooth hazel hair, and the radiant hazel eyes?” (I
+had green eyes, reader; but you must excuse the mistake: for him they
+were new-dyed, I suppose.)
+
+“It is Jane Eyre, sir.”
+
+“Soon to be Jane Rochester,” he added: “in four weeks, Janet; not a day
+more. Do you hear that?”
+
+I did, and I could not quite comprehend it: it made me giddy. The
+feeling, the announcement sent through me, was something stronger than
+was consistent with joy—something that smote and stunned: it was, I
+think almost fear.
+
+“You blushed, and now you are white, Jane: what is that for?”
+
+“Because you gave me a new name—Jane Rochester; and it seems so
+strange.”
+
+“Yes, Mrs. Rochester,” said he; “young Mrs. Rochester—Fairfax
+Rochester’s girl-bride.”
+
+“It can never be, sir; it does not sound likely. Human beings never
+enjoy complete happiness in this world. I was not born for a different
+destiny to the rest of my species: to imagine such a lot befalling me
+is a fairy tale—a day-dream.”
+
+“Which I can and will realise. I shall begin to-day. This morning I
+wrote to my banker in London to send me certain jewels he has in his
+keeping,—heirlooms for the ladies of Thornfield. In a day or two I hope
+to pour them into your lap: for every privilege, every attention shall
+be yours that I would accord a peer’s daughter, if about to marry her.”
+
+“Oh, sir!—never rain jewels! I don’t like to hear them spoken of.
+Jewels for Jane Eyre sounds unnatural and strange: I would rather not
+have them.”
+
+“I will myself put the diamond chain round your neck, and the circlet
+on your forehead,—which it will become: for nature, at least, has
+stamped her patent of nobility on this brow, Jane; and I will clasp the
+bracelets on these fine wrists, and load these fairy-like fingers with
+rings.”
+
+“No, no, sir! think of other subjects, and speak of other things, and
+in another strain. Don’t address me as if I were a beauty; I am your
+plain, Quakerish governess.”
+
+“You are a beauty in my eyes, and a beauty just after the desire of my
+heart,—delicate and aërial.”
+
+“Puny and insignificant, you mean. You are dreaming, sir,—or you are
+sneering. For God’s sake, don’t be ironical!”
+
+“I will make the world acknowledge you a beauty, too,” he went on,
+while I really became uneasy at the strain he had adopted, because I
+felt he was either deluding himself or trying to delude me. “I will
+attire my Jane in satin and lace, and she shall have roses in her hair;
+and I will cover the head I love best with a priceless veil.”
+
+“And then you won’t know me, sir; and I shall not be your Jane Eyre any
+longer, but an ape in a harlequin’s jacket—a jay in borrowed plumes. I
+would as soon see you, Mr. Rochester, tricked out in stage-trappings,
+as myself clad in a court-lady’s robe; and I don’t call you handsome,
+sir, though I love you most dearly: far too dearly to flatter you.
+Don’t flatter me.”
+
+He pursued his theme, however, without noticing my deprecation. “This
+very day I shall take you in the carriage to Millcote, and you must
+choose some dresses for yourself. I told you we shall be married in
+four weeks. The wedding is to take place quietly, in the church down
+below yonder; and then I shall waft you away at once to town. After a
+brief stay there, I shall bear my treasure to regions nearer the sun:
+to French vineyards and Italian plains; and she shall see whatever is
+famous in old story and in modern record: she shall taste, too, of the
+life of cities; and she shall learn to value herself by just comparison
+with others.”
+
+“Shall I travel?—and with you, sir?”
+
+“You shall sojourn at Paris, Rome, and Naples: at Florence, Venice, and
+Vienna: all the ground I have wandered over shall be re-trodden by you:
+wherever I stamped my hoof, your sylph’s foot shall step also. Ten
+years since, I flew through Europe half mad; with disgust, hate, and
+rage as my companions: now I shall revisit it healed and cleansed, with
+a very angel as my comforter.”
+
+I laughed at him as he said this. “I am not an angel,” I asserted; “and
+I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must
+neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me—for you will not get
+it, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all
+anticipate.”
+
+“What do you anticipate of me?”
+
+“For a little while you will perhaps be as you are now,—a very little
+while; and then you will turn cool; and then you will be capricious;
+and then you will be stern, and I shall have much ado to please you:
+but when you get well used to me, you will perhaps like me
+again,—_like_ me, I say, not _love_ me. I suppose your love will
+effervesce in six months, or less. I have observed in books written by
+men, that period assigned as the farthest to which a husband’s ardour
+extends. Yet, after all, as a friend and companion, I hope never to
+become quite distasteful to my dear master.”
+
+“Distasteful! and like you again! I think I shall like you again, and
+yet again: and I will make you confess I do not only _like_, but _love_
+you—with truth, fervour, constancy.”
+
+“Yet are you not capricious, sir?”
+
+“To women who please me only by their faces, I am the very devil when I
+find out they have neither souls nor hearts—when they open to me a
+perspective of flatness, triviality, and perhaps imbecility,
+coarseness, and ill-temper: but to the clear eye and eloquent tongue,
+to the soul made of fire, and the character that bends but does not
+break—at once supple and stable, tractable and consistent—I am ever
+tender and true.”
+
+“Had you ever experience of such a character, sir? Did you ever love
+such an one?”
+
+“I love it now.”
+
+“But before me: if I, indeed, in any respect come up to your difficult
+standard?”
+
+“I never met your likeness. Jane, you please me, and you master me—you
+seem to submit, and I like the sense of pliancy you impart; and while I
+am twining the soft, silken skein round my finger, it sends a thrill up
+my arm to my heart. I am influenced—conquered; and the influence is
+sweeter than I can express; and the conquest I undergo has a witchery
+beyond any triumph I can win. Why do you smile, Jane? What does that
+inexplicable, that uncanny turn of countenance mean?”
+
+“I was thinking, sir (you will excuse the idea; it was involuntary), I
+was thinking of Hercules and Samson with their charmers—”
+
+“You were, you little elfish—”
+
+“Hush, sir! You don’t talk very wisely just now; any more than those
+gentlemen acted very wisely. However, had they been married, they would
+no doubt by their severity as husbands have made up for their softness
+as suitors; and so will you, I fear. I wonder how you will answer me a
+year hence, should I ask a favour it does not suit your convenience or
+pleasure to grant.”
+
+“Ask me something now, Janet,—the least thing: I desire to be
+entreated—”
+
+“Indeed I will, sir; I have my petition all ready.”
+
+“Speak! But if you look up and smile with that countenance, I shall
+swear concession before I know to what, and that will make a fool of
+me.”
+
+“Not at all, sir; I ask only this: don’t send for the jewels, and don’t
+crown me with roses: you might as well put a border of gold lace round
+that plain pocket handkerchief you have there.”
+
+“I might as well ‘gild refined gold.’ I know it: your request is
+granted then—for the time. I will remand the order I despatched to my
+banker. But you have not yet asked for anything; you have prayed a gift
+to be withdrawn: try again.”
+
+“Well then, sir, have the goodness to gratify my curiosity, which is
+much piqued on one point.”
+
+He looked disturbed. “What? what?” he said hastily. “Curiosity is a
+dangerous petition: it is well I have not taken a vow to accord every
+request—”
+
+“But there can be no danger in complying with this, sir.”
+
+“Utter it, Jane: but I wish that instead of a mere inquiry into,
+perhaps, a secret, it was a wish for half my estate.”
+
+“Now, King Ahasuerus! What do I want with half your estate? Do you
+think I am a Jew-usurer, seeking good investment in land? I would much
+rather have all your confidence. You will not exclude me from your
+confidence if you admit me to your heart?”
+
+“You are welcome to all my confidence that is worth having, Jane; but
+for God’s sake, don’t desire a useless burden! Don’t long for
+poison—don’t turn out a downright Eve on my hands!”
+
+“Why not, sir? You have just been telling me how much you liked to be
+conquered, and how pleasant over-persuasion is to you. Don’t you think
+I had better take advantage of the confession, and begin and coax and
+entreat—even cry and be sulky if necessary—for the sake of a mere essay
+of my power?”
+
+“I dare you to any such experiment. Encroach, presume, and the game is
+up.”
+
+“Is it, sir? You soon give in. How stern you look now! Your eyebrows
+have become as thick as my finger, and your forehead resembles what, in
+some very astonishing poetry, I once saw styled, ‘a blue-piled
+thunderloft.’ That will be your married look, sir, I suppose?”
+
+“If that will be _your_ married look, I, as a Christian, will soon give
+up the notion of consorting with a mere sprite or salamander. But what
+had you to ask, thing,—out with it?”
+
+“There, you are less than civil now; and I like rudeness a great deal
+better than flattery. I had rather be a _thing_ than an angel. This is
+what I have to ask,—Why did you take such pains to make me believe you
+wished to marry Miss Ingram?”
+
+“Is that all? Thank God it is no worse!” And now he unknit his black
+brows; looked down, smiling at me, and stroked my hair, as if well
+pleased at seeing a danger averted. “I think I may confess,” he
+continued, “even although I should make you a little indignant,
+Jane—and I have seen what a fire-spirit you can be when you are
+indignant. You glowed in the cool moonlight last night, when you
+mutinied against fate, and claimed your rank as my equal. Janet,
+by-the-bye, it was you who made me the offer.”
+
+“Of course I did. But to the point if you please, sir—Miss Ingram?”
+
+“Well, I feigned courtship of Miss Ingram, because I wished to render
+you as madly in love with me as I was with you; and I knew jealousy
+would be the best ally I could call in for the furtherance of that
+end.”
+
+“Excellent! Now you are small—not one whit bigger than the end of my
+little finger. It was a burning shame and a scandalous disgrace to act
+in that way. Did you think nothing of Miss Ingram’s feelings, sir?”
+
+“Her feelings are concentrated in one—pride; and that needs humbling.
+Were you jealous, Jane?”
+
+“Never mind, Mr. Rochester: it is in no way interesting to you to know
+that. Answer me truly once more. Do you think Miss Ingram will not
+suffer from your dishonest coquetry? Won’t she feel forsaken and
+deserted?”
+
+“Impossible!—when I told you how she, on the contrary, deserted me: the
+idea of my insolvency cooled, or rather extinguished, her flame in a
+moment.”
+
+“You have a curious, designing mind, Mr. Rochester. I am afraid your
+principles on some points are eccentric.”
+
+“My principles were never trained, Jane: they may have grown a little
+awry for want of attention.”
+
+“Once again, seriously; may I enjoy the great good that has been
+vouchsafed to me, without fearing that any one else is suffering the
+bitter pain I myself felt a while ago?”
+
+“That you may, my good little girl: there is not another being in the
+world has the same pure love for me as yourself—for I lay that pleasant
+unction to my soul, Jane, a belief in your affection.”
+
+I turned my lips to the hand that lay on my shoulder. I loved him very
+much—more than I could trust myself to say—more than words had power to
+express.
+
+“Ask something more,” he said presently; “it is my delight to be
+entreated, and to yield.”
+
+I was again ready with my request. “Communicate your intentions to Mrs.
+Fairfax, sir: she saw me with you last night in the hall, and she was
+shocked. Give her some explanation before I see her again. It pains me
+to be misjudged by so good a woman.”
+
+“Go to your room, and put on your bonnet,” he replied. “I mean you to
+accompany me to Millcote this morning; and while you prepare for the
+drive, I will enlighten the old lady’s understanding. Did she think,
+Janet, you had given the world for love, and considered it well lost?”
+
+“I believe she thought I had forgotten my station, and yours, sir.”
+
+“Station! station!—your station is in my heart, and on the necks of
+those who would insult you, now or hereafter.—Go.”
+
+I was soon dressed; and when I heard Mr. Rochester quit Mrs. Fairfax’s
+parlour, I hurried down to it. The old lady had been reading her
+morning portion of Scripture—the Lesson for the day; her Bible lay open
+before her, and her spectacles were upon it. Her occupation, suspended
+by Mr. Rochester’s announcement, seemed now forgotten: her eyes, fixed
+on the blank wall opposite, expressed the surprise of a quiet mind
+stirred by unwonted tidings. Seeing me, she roused herself: she made a
+sort of effort to smile, and framed a few words of congratulation; but
+the smile expired, and the sentence was abandoned unfinished. She put
+up her spectacles, shut the Bible, and pushed her chair back from the
+table.
+
+“I feel so astonished,” she began, “I hardly know what to say to you,
+Miss Eyre. I have surely not been dreaming, have I? Sometimes I half
+fall asleep when I am sitting alone and fancy things that have never
+happened. It has seemed to me more than once when I have been in a
+doze, that my dear husband, who died fifteen years since, has come in
+and sat down beside me; and that I have even heard him call me by my
+name, Alice, as he used to do. Now, can you tell me whether it is
+actually true that Mr. Rochester has asked you to marry him? Don’t
+laugh at me. But I really thought he came in here five minutes ago, and
+said that in a month you would be his wife.”
+
+“He has said the same thing to me,” I replied.
+
+“He has! Do you believe him? Have you accepted him?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+She looked at me bewildered.
+
+“I could never have thought it. He is a proud man: all the Rochesters
+were proud: and his father, at least, liked money. He, too, has always
+been called careful. He means to marry you?”
+
+“He tells me so.”
+
+She surveyed my whole person: in her eyes I read that they had there
+found no charm powerful enough to solve the enigma.
+
+“It passes me!” she continued; “but no doubt it is true since you say
+so. How it will answer, I cannot tell: I really don’t know. Equality of
+position and fortune is often advisable in such cases; and there are
+twenty years of difference in your ages. He might almost be your
+father.”
+
+“No, indeed, Mrs. Fairfax!” exclaimed I, nettled; “he is nothing like
+my father! No one, who saw us together, would suppose it for an
+instant. Mr. Rochester looks as young, and is as young, as some men at
+five-and-twenty.”
+
+“Is it really for love he is going to marry you?” she asked.
+
+I was so hurt by her coldness and scepticism, that the tears rose to my
+eyes.
+
+“I am sorry to grieve you,” pursued the widow; “but you are so young,
+and so little acquainted with men, I wished to put you on your guard.
+It is an old saying that ‘all is not gold that glitters;’ and in this
+case I do fear there will be something found to be different to what
+either you or I expect.”
+
+“Why?—am I a monster?” I said: “is it impossible that Mr. Rochester
+should have a sincere affection for me?”
+
+“No: you are very well; and much improved of late; and Mr. Rochester, I
+daresay, is fond of you. I have always noticed that you were a sort of
+pet of his. There are times when, for your sake, I have been a little
+uneasy at his marked preference, and have wished to put you on your
+guard: but I did not like to suggest even the possibility of wrong. I
+knew such an idea would shock, perhaps offend you; and you were so
+discreet, and so thoroughly modest and sensible, I hoped you might be
+trusted to protect yourself. Last night I cannot tell you what I
+suffered when I sought all over the house, and could find you nowhere,
+nor the master either; and then, at twelve o’clock, saw you come in
+with him.”
+
+“Well, never mind that now,” I interrupted impatiently; “it is enough
+that all was right.”
+
+“I hope all will be right in the end,” she said: “but believe me, you
+cannot be too careful. Try and keep Mr. Rochester at a distance:
+distrust yourself as well as him. Gentlemen in his station are not
+accustomed to marry their governesses.”
+
+I was growing truly irritated: happily, Adèle ran in.
+
+“Let me go,—let me go to Millcote too!” she cried. “Mr. Rochester
+won’t: though there is so much room in the new carriage. Beg him to let
+me go, mademoiselle.”
+
+“That I will, Adèle;” and I hastened away with her, glad to quit my
+gloomy monitress. The carriage was ready: they were bringing it round
+to the front, and my master was pacing the pavement, Pilot following
+him backwards and forwards.
+
+“Adèle may accompany us, may she not, sir?”
+
+“I told her no. I’ll have no brats!—I’ll have only you.”
+
+“Do let her go, Mr. Rochester, if you please: it would be better.”
+
+“Not it: she will be a restraint.”
+
+He was quite peremptory, both in look and voice. The chill of Mrs.
+Fairfax’s warnings, and the damp of her doubts were upon me: something
+of unsubstantiality and uncertainty had beset my hopes. I half lost the
+sense of power over him. I was about mechanically to obey him, without
+further remonstrance; but as he helped me into the carriage, he looked
+at my face.
+
+“What is the matter?” he asked; “all the sunshine is gone. Do you
+really wish the bairn to go? Will it annoy you if she is left behind?”
+
+“I would far rather she went, sir.”
+
+“Then off for your bonnet, and back like a flash of lightning!” cried
+he to Adèle.
+
+She obeyed him with what speed she might.
+
+“After all, a single morning’s interruption will not matter much,” said
+he, “when I mean shortly to claim you—your thoughts, conversation, and
+company—for life.”
+
+Adèle, when lifted in, commenced kissing me, by way of expressing her
+gratitude for my intercession: she was instantly stowed away into a
+corner on the other side of him. She then peeped round to where I sat;
+so stern a neighbour was too restrictive: to him, in his present
+fractious mood, she dared whisper no observations, nor ask of him any
+information.
+
+“Let her come to me,” I entreated: “she will, perhaps, trouble you,
+sir: there is plenty of room on this side.”
+
+He handed her over as if she had been a lapdog. “I’ll send her to
+school yet,” he said, but now he was smiling.
+
+Adèle heard him, and asked if she was to go to school “sans
+mademoiselle?”
+
+“Yes,” he replied, “absolutely sans mademoiselle; for I am to take
+mademoiselle to the moon, and there I shall seek a cave in one of the
+white valleys among the volcano-tops, and mademoiselle shall live with
+me there, and only me.”
+
+“She will have nothing to eat: you will starve her,” observed Adèle.
+
+“I shall gather manna for her morning and night: the plains and
+hillsides in the moon are bleached with manna, Adèle.”
+
+“She will want to warm herself: what will she do for a fire?”
+
+“Fire rises out of the lunar mountains: when she is cold, I’ll carry
+her up to a peak, and lay her down on the edge of a crater.”
+
+“Oh, qu’elle y sera mal—peu comfortable! And her clothes, they will
+wear out: how can she get new ones?”
+
+Mr. Rochester professed to be puzzled. “Hem!” said he. “What would you
+do, Adèle? Cudgel your brains for an expedient. How would a white or a
+pink cloud answer for a gown, do you think? And one could cut a pretty
+enough scarf out of a rainbow.”
+
+“She is far better as she is,” concluded Adèle, after musing some time:
+“besides, she would get tired of living with only you in the moon. If I
+were mademoiselle, I would never consent to go with you.”
+
+“She has consented: she has pledged her word.”
+
+“But you can’t get her there; there is no road to the moon: it is all
+air; and neither you nor she can fly.”
+
+“Adèle, look at that field.” We were now outside Thornfield gates, and
+bowling lightly along the smooth road to Millcote, where the dust was
+well laid by the thunderstorm, and, where the low hedges and lofty
+timber trees on each side glistened green and rain-refreshed.
+
+“In that field, Adèle, I was walking late one evening about a fortnight
+since—the evening of the day you helped me to make hay in the orchard
+meadows; and, as I was tired with raking swaths, I sat down to rest me
+on a stile; and there I took out a little book and a pencil, and began
+to write about a misfortune that befell me long ago, and a wish I had
+for happy days to come: I was writing away very fast, though daylight
+was fading from the leaf, when something came up the path and stopped
+two yards off me. I looked at it. It was a little thing with a veil of
+gossamer on its head. I beckoned it to come near me; it stood soon at
+my knee. I never spoke to it, and it never spoke to me, in words; but I
+read its eyes, and it read mine; and our speechless colloquy was to
+this effect—
+
+“It was a fairy, and come from Elf-land, it said; and its errand was to
+make me happy: I must go with it out of the common world to a lonely
+place—such as the moon, for instance—and it nodded its head towards her
+horn, rising over Hay-hill: it told me of the alabaster cave and silver
+vale where we might live. I said I should like to go; but reminded it,
+as you did me, that I had no wings to fly.
+
+“‘Oh,’ returned the fairy, ‘that does not signify! Here is a talisman
+will remove all difficulties;’ and she held out a pretty gold ring.
+‘Put it,’ she said, ‘on the fourth finger of my left hand, and I am
+yours, and you are mine; and we shall leave earth, and make our own
+heaven yonder.’ She nodded again at the moon. The ring, Adèle, is in my
+breeches-pocket, under the disguise of a sovereign: but I mean soon to
+change it to a ring again.”
+
+“But what has mademoiselle to do with it? I don’t care for the fairy:
+you said it was mademoiselle you would take to the moon?”
+
+“Mademoiselle is a fairy,” he said, whispering mysteriously. Whereupon
+I told her not to mind his badinage; and she, on her part, evinced a
+fund of genuine French scepticism: denominating Mr. Rochester “un vrai
+menteur,” and assuring him that she made no account whatever of his
+“contes de fée,” and that “du reste, il n’y avait pas de fées, et quand
+même il y en avait:” she was sure they would never appear to him, nor
+ever give him rings, or offer to live with him in the moon.
+
+The hour spent at Millcote was a somewhat harassing one to me. Mr.
+Rochester obliged me to go to a certain silk warehouse: there I was
+ordered to choose half-a-dozen dresses. I hated the business, I begged
+leave to defer it: no—it should be gone through with now. By dint of
+entreaties expressed in energetic whispers, I reduced the half-dozen to
+two: these however, he vowed he would select himself. With anxiety I
+watched his eye rove over the gay stores: he fixed on a rich silk of
+the most brilliant amethyst dye, and a superb pink satin. I told him in
+a new series of whispers, that he might as well buy me a gold gown and
+a silver bonnet at once: I should certainly never venture to wear his
+choice. With infinite difficulty, for he was stubborn as a stone, I
+persuaded him to make an exchange in favour of a sober black satin and
+pearl-grey silk. “It might pass for the present,” he said; “but he
+would yet see me glittering like a parterre.”
+
+Glad was I to get him out of the silk warehouse, and then out of a
+jeweller’s shop: the more he bought me, the more my cheek burned with a
+sense of annoyance and degradation. As we re-entered the carriage, and
+I sat back feverish and fagged, I remembered what, in the hurry of
+events, dark and bright, I had wholly forgotten—the letter of my uncle,
+John Eyre, to Mrs. Reed: his intention to adopt me and make me his
+legatee. “It would, indeed, be a relief,” I thought, “if I had ever so
+small an independency; I never can bear being dressed like a doll by
+Mr. Rochester, or sitting like a second Danae with the golden shower
+falling daily round me. I will write to Madeira the moment I get home,
+and tell my uncle John I am going to be married, and to whom: if I had
+but a prospect of one day bringing Mr. Rochester an accession of
+fortune, I could better endure to be kept by him now.” And somewhat
+relieved by this idea (which I failed not to execute that day), I
+ventured once more to meet my master’s and lover’s eye, which most
+pertinaciously sought mine, though I averted both face and gaze. He
+smiled; and I thought his smile was such as a sultan might, in a
+blissful and fond moment, bestow on a slave his gold and gems had
+enriched: I crushed his hand, which was ever hunting mine, vigorously,
+and thrust it back to him red with the passionate pressure.
+
+“You need not look in that way,” I said; “if you do, I’ll wear nothing
+but my old Lowood frocks to the end of the chapter. I’ll be married in
+this lilac gingham: you may make a dressing-gown for yourself out of
+the pearl-grey silk, and an infinite series of waistcoats out of the
+black satin.”
+
+He chuckled; he rubbed his hands. “Oh, it is rich to see and hear her!”
+he exclaimed. “Is she original? Is she piquant? I would not exchange
+this one little English girl for the Grand Turk’s whole seraglio,
+gazelle-eyes, houri forms, and all!”
+
+The Eastern allusion bit me again. “I’ll not stand you an inch in the
+stead of a seraglio,” I said; “so don’t consider me an equivalent for
+one. If you have a fancy for anything in that line, away with you, sir,
+to the bazaars of Stamboul without delay, and lay out in extensive
+slave-purchases some of that spare cash you seem at a loss to spend
+satisfactorily here.”
+
+“And what will you do, Janet, while I am bargaining for so many tons of
+flesh and such an assortment of black eyes?”
+
+“I’ll be preparing myself to go out as a missionary to preach liberty
+to them that are enslaved—your harem inmates amongst the rest. I’ll get
+admitted there, and I’ll stir up mutiny; and you, three-tailed bashaw
+as you are, sir, shall in a trice find yourself fettered amongst our
+hands: nor will I, for one, consent to cut your bonds till you have
+signed a charter, the most liberal that despot ever yet conferred.”
+
+“I would consent to be at your mercy, Jane.”
+
+“I would have no mercy, Mr. Rochester, if you supplicated for it with
+an eye like that. While you looked so, I should be certain that
+whatever charter you might grant under coercion, your first act, when
+released, would be to violate its conditions.”
+
+“Why, Jane, what would you have? I fear you will compel me to go
+through a private marriage ceremony, besides that performed at the
+altar. You will stipulate, I see, for peculiar terms—what will they
+be?”
+
+“I only want an easy mind, sir; not crushed by crowded obligations. Do
+you remember what you said of Céline Varens?—of the diamonds, the
+cashmeres you gave her? I will not be your English Céline Varens. I
+shall continue to act as Adèle’s governess; by that I shall earn my
+board and lodging, and thirty pounds a year besides. I’ll furnish my
+own wardrobe out of that money, and you shall give me nothing but—”
+
+“Well, but what?”
+
+“Your regard; and if I give you mine in return, that debt will be
+quit.”
+
+“Well, for cool native impudence and pure innate pride, you haven’t
+your equal,” said he. We were now approaching Thornfield. “Will it
+please you to dine with me to-day?” he asked, as we re-entered the
+gates.
+
+“No, thank you, sir.”
+
+“And what for, ‘no, thank you?’ if one may inquire.”
+
+“I never have dined with you, sir: and I see no reason why I should
+now: till—”
+
+“Till what? You delight in half-phrases.”
+
+“Till I can’t help it.”
+
+“Do you suppose I eat like an ogre or a ghoul, that you dread being the
+companion of my repast?”
+
+“I have formed no supposition on the subject, sir; but I want to go on
+as usual for another month.”
+
+“You will give up your governessing slavery at once.”
+
+“Indeed, begging your pardon, sir, I shall not. I shall just go on with
+it as usual. I shall keep out of your way all day, as I have been
+accustomed to do: you may send for me in the evening, when you feel
+disposed to see me, and I’ll come then; but at no other time.”
+
+“I want a smoke, Jane, or a pinch of snuff, to comfort me under all
+this, ‘pour me donner une contenance,’ as Adèle would say; and
+unfortunately I have neither my cigar-case, nor my snuff-box. But
+listen—whisper. It is your time now, little tyrant, but it will be mine
+presently; and when once I have fairly seized you, to have and to hold,
+I’ll just—figuratively speaking—attach you to a chain like this”
+(touching his watch-guard). “Yes, bonny wee thing, I’ll wear you in my
+bosom, lest my jewel I should tyne.”
+
+He said this as he helped me to alight from the carriage, and while he
+afterwards lifted out Adèle, I entered the house, and made good my
+retreat upstairs.
+
+He duly summoned me to his presence in the evening. I had prepared an
+occupation for him; for I was determined not to spend the whole time in
+a _tête-à-tête_ conversation. I remembered his fine voice; I knew he
+liked to sing—good singers generally do. I was no vocalist myself, and,
+in his fastidious judgment, no musician, either; but I delighted in
+listening when the performance was good. No sooner had twilight, that
+hour of romance, began to lower her blue and starry banner over the
+lattice, than I rose, opened the piano, and entreated him, for the love
+of heaven, to give me a song. He said I was a capricious witch, and
+that he would rather sing another time; but I averred that no time was
+like the present.
+
+“Did I like his voice?” he asked.
+
+“Very much.” I was not fond of pampering that susceptible vanity of
+his; but for once, and from motives of expediency, I would e’en soothe
+and stimulate it.
+
+“Then, Jane, you must play the accompaniment.”
+
+“Very well, sir, I will try.”
+
+I did try, but was presently swept off the stool and denominated “a
+little bungler.” Being pushed unceremoniously to one side—which was
+precisely what I wished—he usurped my place, and proceeded to accompany
+himself: for he could play as well as sing. I hied me to the
+window-recess. And while I sat there and looked out on the still trees
+and dim lawn, to a sweet air was sung in mellow tones the following
+strain:—
+
+“The truest love that ever heart
+Felt at its kindled core,
+Did through each vein, in quickened start,
+The tide of being pour.
+
+Her coming was my hope each day,
+Her parting was my pain;
+The chance that did her steps delay
+Was ice in every vein.
+
+I dreamed it would be nameless bliss,
+As I loved, loved to be;
+And to this object did I press
+As blind as eagerly.
+
+But wide as pathless was the space
+That lay our lives between,
+And dangerous as the foamy race
+Of ocean-surges green.
+
+And haunted as a robber-path
+Through wilderness or wood;
+For Might and Right, and Woe and Wrath,
+Between our spirits stood.
+
+I dangers dared; I hindrance scorned;
+I omens did defy:
+Whatever menaced, harassed, warned,
+I passed impetuous by.
+
+On sped my rainbow, fast as light;
+I flew as in a dream;
+For glorious rose upon my sight
+That child of Shower and Gleam.
+
+Still bright on clouds of suffering dim
+Shines that soft, solemn joy;
+Nor care I now, how dense and grim
+Disasters gather nigh.
+
+I care not in this moment sweet,
+Though all I have rushed o’er
+Should come on pinion, strong and fleet,
+Proclaiming vengeance sore:
+
+Though haughty Hate should strike me down,
+Right, bar approach to me,
+And grinding Might, with furious frown,
+Swear endless enmity.
+
+My love has placed her little hand
+With noble faith in mine,
+And vowed that wedlock’s sacred band
+Our nature shall entwine.
+
+My love has sworn, with sealing kiss,
+With me to live—to die;
+I have at last my nameless bliss.
+As I love—loved am I!”
+
+
+He rose and came towards me, and I saw his face all kindled, and his
+full falcon-eye flashing, and tenderness and passion in every
+lineament. I quailed momentarily—then I rallied. Soft scene, daring
+demonstration, I would not have; and I stood in peril of both: a weapon
+of defence must be prepared—I whetted my tongue: as he reached me, I
+asked with asperity, “whom he was going to marry now?”
+
+“That was a strange question to be put by his darling Jane.”
+
+“Indeed! I considered it a very natural and necessary one: he had
+talked of his future wife dying with him. What did he mean by such a
+pagan idea? _I_ had no intention of dying with him—he might depend on
+that.”
+
+“Oh, all he longed, all he prayed for, was that I might live with him!
+Death was not for such as I.”
+
+“Indeed it was: I had as good a right to die when my time came as he
+had: but I should bide that time, and not be hurried away in a suttee.”
+
+“Would I forgive him for the selfish idea, and prove my pardon by a
+reconciling kiss?”
+
+“No: I would rather be excused.”
+
+Here I heard myself apostrophised as a “hard little thing;” and it was
+added, “any other woman would have been melted to marrow at hearing
+such stanzas crooned in her praise.”
+
+I assured him I was naturally hard—very flinty, and that he would often
+find me so; and that, moreover, I was determined to show him divers
+rugged points in my character before the ensuing four weeks elapsed: he
+should know fully what sort of a bargain he had made, while there was
+yet time to rescind it.
+
+“Would I be quiet and talk rationally?”
+
+“I would be quiet if he liked, and as to talking rationally, I
+flattered myself I was doing that now.”
+
+He fretted, pished, and pshawed. “Very good,” I thought; “you may fume
+and fidget as you please: but this is the best plan to pursue with you,
+I am certain. I like you more than I can say; but I’ll not sink into a
+bathos of sentiment: and with this needle of repartee I’ll keep you
+from the edge of the gulf too; and, moreover, maintain by its pungent
+aid that distance between you and myself most conducive to our real
+mutual advantage.”
+
+From less to more, I worked him up to considerable irritation; then,
+after he had retired, in dudgeon, quite to the other end of the room, I
+got up, and saying, “I wish you good-night, sir,” in my natural and
+wonted respectful manner, I slipped out by the side-door and got away.
+
+The system thus entered on, I pursued during the whole season of
+probation; and with the best success. He was kept, to be sure, rather
+cross and crusty; but on the whole I could see he was excellently
+entertained, and that a lamb-like submission and turtle-dove
+sensibility, while fostering his despotism more, would have pleased his
+judgment, satisfied his common-sense, and even suited his taste less.
+
+In other people’s presence I was, as formerly, deferential and quiet;
+any other line of conduct being uncalled for: it was only in the
+evening conferences I thus thwarted and afflicted him. He continued to
+send for me punctually the moment the clock struck seven; though when I
+appeared before him now, he had no such honeyed terms as “love” and
+“darling” on his lips: the best words at my service were “provoking
+puppet,” “malicious elf,” “sprite,” “changeling,” &c. For caresses,
+too, I now got grimaces; for a pressure of the hand, a pinch on the
+arm; for a kiss on the cheek, a severe tweak of the ear. It was all
+right: at present I decidedly preferred these fierce favours to
+anything more tender. Mrs. Fairfax, I saw, approved me: her anxiety on
+my account vanished; therefore I was certain I did well. Meantime, Mr.
+Rochester affirmed I was wearing him to skin and bone, and threatened
+awful vengeance for my present conduct at some period fast coming. I
+laughed in my sleeve at his menaces. “I can keep you in reasonable
+check now,” I reflected; “and I don’t doubt to be able to do it
+hereafter: if one expedient loses its virtue, another must be devised.”
+
+Yet after all my task was not an easy one; often I would rather have
+pleased than teased him. My future husband was becoming to me my whole
+world; and more than the world: almost my hope of heaven. He stood
+between me and every thought of religion, as an eclipse intervenes
+between man and the broad sun. I could not, in those days, see God for
+His creature: of whom I had made an idol.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+The month of courtship had wasted: its very last hours were being
+numbered. There was no putting off the day that advanced—the bridal
+day; and all preparations for its arrival were complete. _I_, at least,
+had nothing more to do: there were my trunks, packed, locked, corded,
+ranged in a row along the wall of my little chamber; to-morrow, at this
+time, they would be far on their road to London: and so should I
+(D.V.),—or rather, not I, but one Jane Rochester, a person whom as yet
+I knew not. The cards of address alone remained to nail on: they lay,
+four little squares, in the drawer. Mr. Rochester had himself written
+the direction, “Mrs. Rochester, —— Hotel, London,” on each: I could not
+persuade myself to affix them, or to have them affixed. Mrs. Rochester!
+She did not exist: she would not be born till to-morrow, some time
+after eight o’clock A.M.; and I would wait to be assured she had come
+into the world alive before I assigned to her all that property. It was
+enough that in yonder closet, opposite my dressing-table, garments said
+to be hers had already displaced my black stuff Lowood frock and straw
+bonnet: for not to me appertained that suit of wedding raiment; the
+pearl-coloured robe, the vapoury veil pendent from the usurped
+portmanteau. I shut the closet to conceal the strange, wraith-like
+apparel it contained; which, at this evening hour—nine o’clock—gave out
+certainly a most ghostly shimmer through the shadow of my apartment. “I
+will leave you by yourself, white dream,” I said. “I am feverish: I
+hear the wind blowing: I will go out of doors and feel it.”
+
+It was not only the hurry of preparation that made me feverish; not
+only the anticipation of the great change—the new life which was to
+commence to-morrow: both these circumstances had their share,
+doubtless, in producing that restless, excited mood which hurried me
+forth at this late hour into the darkening grounds: but a third cause
+influenced my mind more than they.
+
+I had at heart a strange and anxious thought. Something had happened
+which I could not comprehend; no one knew of or had seen the event but
+myself: it had taken place the preceding night. Mr. Rochester that
+night was absent from home; nor was he yet returned: business had
+called him to a small estate of two or three farms he possessed thirty
+miles off—business it was requisite he should settle in person,
+previous to his meditated departure from England. I waited now his
+return; eager to disburthen my mind, and to seek of him the solution of
+the enigma that perplexed me. Stay till he comes, reader; and, when I
+disclose my secret to him, you shall share the confidence.
+
+I sought the orchard, driven to its shelter by the wind, which all day
+had blown strong and full from the south, without, however, bringing a
+speck of rain. Instead of subsiding as night drew on, it seemed to
+augment its rush and deepen its roar: the trees blew steadfastly one
+way, never writhing round, and scarcely tossing back their boughs once
+in an hour; so continuous was the strain bending their branchy heads
+northward—the clouds drifted from pole to pole, fast following, mass on
+mass: no glimpse of blue sky had been visible that July day.
+
+It was not without a certain wild pleasure I ran before the wind,
+delivering my trouble of mind to the measureless air-torrent thundering
+through space. Descending the laurel walk, I faced the wreck of the
+chestnut-tree; it stood up black and riven: the trunk, split down the
+centre, gasped ghastly. The cloven halves were not broken from each
+other, for the firm base and strong roots kept them unsundered below;
+though community of vitality was destroyed—the sap could flow no more:
+their great boughs on each side were dead, and next winter’s tempests
+would be sure to fell one or both to earth: as yet, however, they might
+be said to form one tree—a ruin, but an entire ruin.
+
+“You did right to hold fast to each other,” I said: as if the
+monster-splinters were living things, and could hear me. “I think,
+scathed as you look, and charred and scorched, there must be a little
+sense of life in you yet, rising out of that adhesion at the faithful,
+honest roots: you will never have green leaves more—never more see
+birds making nests and singing idyls in your boughs; the time of
+pleasure and love is over with you: but you are not desolate: each of
+you has a comrade to sympathise with him in his decay.” As I looked up
+at them, the moon appeared momentarily in that part of the sky which
+filled their fissure; her disk was blood-red and half overcast; she
+seemed to throw on me one bewildered, dreary glance, and buried herself
+again instantly in the deep drift of cloud. The wind fell, for a
+second, round Thornfield; but far away over wood and water, poured a
+wild, melancholy wail: it was sad to listen to, and I ran off again.
+
+Here and there I strayed through the orchard, gathered up the apples
+with which the grass round the tree roots was thickly strewn; then I
+employed myself in dividing the ripe from the unripe; I carried them
+into the house and put them away in the store-room. Then I repaired to
+the library to ascertain whether the fire was lit, for, though summer,
+I knew on such a gloomy evening Mr. Rochester would like to see a
+cheerful hearth when he came in: yes, the fire had been kindled some
+time, and burnt well. I placed his arm-chair by the chimney-corner: I
+wheeled the table near it: I let down the curtain, and had the candles
+brought in ready for lighting. More restless than ever, when I had
+completed these arrangements I could not sit still, nor even remain in
+the house: a little time-piece in the room and the old clock in the
+hall simultaneously struck ten.
+
+“How late it grows!” I said. “I will run down to the gates: it is
+moonlight at intervals; I can see a good way on the road. He may be
+coming now, and to meet him will save some minutes of suspense.”
+
+The wind roared high in the great trees which embowered the gates; but
+the road as far as I could see, to the right hand and the left, was all
+still and solitary: save for the shadows of clouds crossing it at
+intervals as the moon looked out, it was but a long pale line, unvaried
+by one moving speck.
+
+A puerile tear dimmed my eye while I looked—a tear of disappointment
+and impatience; ashamed of it, I wiped it away. I lingered; the moon
+shut herself wholly within her chamber, and drew close her curtain of
+dense cloud: the night grew dark; rain came driving fast on the gale.
+
+“I wish he would come! I wish he would come!” I exclaimed, seized with
+hypochondriac foreboding. I had expected his arrival before tea; now it
+was dark: what could keep him? Had an accident happened? The event of
+last night again recurred to me. I interpreted it as a warning of
+disaster. I feared my hopes were too bright to be realised; and I had
+enjoyed so much bliss lately that I imagined my fortune had passed its
+meridian, and must now decline.
+
+“Well, I cannot return to the house,” I thought; “I cannot sit by the
+fireside, while he is abroad in inclement weather: better tire my limbs
+than strain my heart; I will go forward and meet him.”
+
+I set out; I walked fast, but not far: ere I had measured a quarter of
+a mile, I heard the tramp of hoofs; a horseman came on, full gallop; a
+dog ran by his side. Away with evil presentiment! It was he: here he
+was, mounted on Mesrour, followed by Pilot. He saw me; for the moon had
+opened a blue field in the sky, and rode in it watery bright: he took
+his hat off, and waved it round his head. I now ran to meet him.
+
+“There!” he exclaimed, as he stretched out his hand and bent from the
+saddle: “You can’t do without me, that is evident. Step on my boot-toe;
+give me both hands: mount!”
+
+I obeyed: joy made me agile: I sprang up before him. A hearty kissing I
+got for a welcome, and some boastful triumph, which I swallowed as well
+as I could. He checked himself in his exultation to demand, “But is
+there anything the matter, Janet, that you come to meet me at such an
+hour? Is there anything wrong?”
+
+“No, but I thought you would never come. I could not bear to wait in
+the house for you, especially with this rain and wind.”
+
+“Rain and wind, indeed! Yes, you are dripping like a mermaid; pull my
+cloak round you: but I think you are feverish, Jane: both your cheek
+and hand are burning hot. I ask again, is there anything the matter?”
+
+“Nothing now; I am neither afraid nor unhappy.”
+
+“Then you have been both?”
+
+“Rather: but I’ll tell you all about it by-and-bye, sir; and I daresay
+you will only laugh at me for my pains.”
+
+“I’ll laugh at you heartily when to-morrow is past; till then I dare
+not: my prize is not certain. This is you, who have been as slippery as
+an eel this last month, and as thorny as a briar-rose? I could not lay
+a finger anywhere but I was pricked; and now I seem to have gathered up
+a stray lamb in my arms. You wandered out of the fold to seek your
+shepherd, did you, Jane?”
+
+“I wanted you: but don’t boast. Here we are at Thornfield: now let me
+get down.”
+
+He landed me on the pavement. As John took his horse, and he followed
+me into the hall, he told me to make haste and put something dry on,
+and then return to him in the library; and he stopped me, as I made for
+the staircase, to extort a promise that I would not be long: nor was I
+long; in five minutes I rejoined him. I found him at supper.
+
+“Take a seat and bear me company, Jane: please God, it is the last meal
+but one you will eat at Thornfield Hall for a long time.”
+
+I sat down near him, but told him I could not eat.
+
+“Is it because you have the prospect of a journey before you, Jane? Is
+it the thoughts of going to London that takes away your appetite?”
+
+“I cannot see my prospects clearly to-night, sir; and I hardly know
+what thoughts I have in my head. Everything in life seems unreal.”
+
+“Except me: I am substantial enough—touch me.”
+
+“You, sir, are the most phantom-like of all: you are a mere dream.”
+
+He held out his hand, laughing. “Is that a dream?” said he, placing it
+close to my eyes. He had a rounded, muscular, and vigorous hand, as
+well as a long, strong arm.
+
+“Yes; though I touch it, it is a dream,” said I, as I put it down from
+before my face. “Sir, have you finished supper?”
+
+“Yes, Jane.”
+
+I rang the bell and ordered away the tray. When we were again alone, I
+stirred the fire, and then took a low seat at my master’s knee.
+
+“It is near midnight,” I said.
+
+“Yes: but remember, Jane, you promised to wake with me the night before
+my wedding.”
+
+“I did; and I will keep my promise, for an hour or two at least: I have
+no wish to go to bed.”
+
+“Are all your arrangements complete?”
+
+“All, sir.”
+
+“And on my part likewise,” he returned, “I have settled everything; and
+we shall leave Thornfield to-morrow, within half-an-hour after our
+return from church.”
+
+“Very well, sir.”
+
+“With what an extraordinary smile you uttered that word—‘very well,’
+Jane! What a bright spot of colour you have on each cheek! and how
+strangely your eyes glitter! Are you well?”
+
+“I believe I am.”
+
+“Believe! What is the matter? Tell me what you feel.”
+
+“I could not, sir: no words could tell you what I feel. I wish this
+present hour would never end: who knows with what fate the next may
+come charged?”
+
+“This is hypochondria, Jane. You have been over-excited, or
+over-fatigued.”
+
+“Do you, sir, feel calm and happy?”
+
+“Calm?—no: but happy—to the heart’s core.”
+
+I looked up at him to read the signs of bliss in his face: it was
+ardent and flushed.
+
+“Give me your confidence, Jane,” he said: “relieve your mind of any
+weight that oppresses it, by imparting it to me. What do you fear?—that
+I shall not prove a good husband?”
+
+“It is the idea farthest from my thoughts.”
+
+“Are you apprehensive of the new sphere you are about to enter?—of the
+new life into which you are passing?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“You puzzle me, Jane: your look and tone of sorrowful audacity perplex
+and pain me. I want an explanation.”
+
+“Then, sir, listen. You were from home last night?”
+
+“I was: I know that; and you hinted a while ago at something which had
+happened in my absence:—nothing, probably, of consequence; but, in
+short, it has disturbed you. Let me hear it. Mrs. Fairfax has said
+something, perhaps? or you have overheard the servants talk?—your
+sensitive self-respect has been wounded?”
+
+“No, sir.” It struck twelve—I waited till the time-piece had concluded
+its silver chime, and the clock its hoarse, vibrating stroke, and then
+I proceeded.
+
+“All day yesterday I was very busy, and very happy in my ceaseless
+bustle; for I am not, as you seem to think, troubled by any haunting
+fears about the new sphere, et cetera: I think it a glorious thing to
+have the hope of living with you, because I love you. No, sir, don’t
+caress me now—let me talk undisturbed. Yesterday I trusted well in
+Providence, and believed that events were working together for your
+good and mine: it was a fine day, if you recollect—the calmness of the
+air and sky forbade apprehensions respecting your safety or comfort on
+your journey. I walked a little while on the pavement after tea,
+thinking of you; and I beheld you in imagination so near me, I scarcely
+missed your actual presence. I thought of the life that lay before
+me—_your_ life, sir—an existence more expansive and stirring than my
+own: as much more so as the depths of the sea to which the brook runs
+are than the shallows of its own strait channel. I wondered why
+moralists call this world a dreary wilderness: for me it blossomed like
+a rose. Just at sunset, the air turned cold and the sky cloudy: I went
+in, Sophie called me upstairs to look at my wedding-dress, which they
+had just brought; and under it in the box I found your present—the veil
+which, in your princely extravagance, you sent for from London:
+resolved, I suppose, since I would not have jewels, to cheat me into
+accepting something as costly. I smiled as I unfolded it, and devised
+how I would tease you about your aristocratic tastes, and your efforts
+to masque your plebeian bride in the attributes of a peeress. I thought
+how I would carry down to you the square of unembroidered blond I had
+myself prepared as a covering for my low-born head, and ask if that was
+not good enough for a woman who could bring her husband neither
+fortune, beauty, nor connections. I saw plainly how you would look; and
+heard your impetuous republican answers, and your haughty disavowal of
+any necessity on your part to augment your wealth, or elevate your
+standing, by marrying either a purse or a coronet.”
+
+“How well you read me, you witch!” interposed Mr. Rochester: “but what
+did you find in the veil besides its embroidery? Did you find poison,
+or a dagger, that you look so mournful now?”
+
+“No, no, sir; besides the delicacy and richness of the fabric, I found
+nothing save Fairfax Rochester’s pride; and that did not scare me,
+because I am used to the sight of the demon. But, sir, as it grew dark,
+the wind rose: it blew yesterday evening, not as it blows now—wild and
+high—but ‘with a sullen, moaning sound’ far more eerie. I wished you
+were at home. I came into this room, and the sight of the empty chair
+and fireless hearth chilled me. For some time after I went to bed, I
+could not sleep—a sense of anxious excitement distressed me. The gale
+still rising, seemed to my ear to muffle a mournful under-sound;
+whether in the house or abroad I could not at first tell, but it
+recurred, doubtful yet doleful at every lull; at last I made out it
+must be some dog howling at a distance. I was glad when it ceased. On
+sleeping, I continued in dreams the idea of a dark and gusty night. I
+continued also the wish to be with you, and experienced a strange,
+regretful consciousness of some barrier dividing us. During all my
+first sleep, I was following the windings of an unknown road; total
+obscurity environed me; rain pelted me; I was burdened with the charge
+of a little child: a very small creature, too young and feeble to walk,
+and which shivered in my cold arms, and wailed piteously in my ear. I
+thought, sir, that you were on the road a long way before me; and I
+strained every nerve to overtake you, and made effort on effort to
+utter your name and entreat you to stop—but my movements were fettered,
+and my voice still died away inarticulate; while you, I felt, withdrew
+farther and farther every moment.”
+
+“And these dreams weigh on your spirits now, Jane, when I am close to
+you? Little nervous subject! Forget visionary woe, and think only of
+real happiness! You say you love me, Janet: yes—I will not forget that;
+and you cannot deny it. _Those_ words did not die inarticulate on your
+lips. I heard them clear and soft: a thought too solemn perhaps, but
+sweet as music—‘I think it is a glorious thing to have the hope of
+living with you, Edward, because I love you.’ Do you love me,
+Jane?—repeat it.”
+
+“I do, sir—I do, with my whole heart.”
+
+“Well,” he said, after some minutes’ silence, “it is strange; but that
+sentence has penetrated my breast painfully. Why? I think because you
+said it with such an earnest, religious energy, and because your upward
+gaze at me now is the very sublime of faith, truth, and devotion: it is
+too much as if some spirit were near me. Look wicked, Jane: as you know
+well how to look: coin one of your wild, shy, provoking smiles; tell me
+you hate me—tease me, vex me; do anything but move me: I would rather
+be incensed than saddened.”
+
+“I will tease you and vex you to your heart’s content, when I have
+finished my tale: but hear me to the end.”
+
+“I thought, Jane, you had told me all. I thought I had found the source
+of your melancholy in a dream.”
+
+I shook my head. “What! is there more? But I will not believe it to be
+anything important. I warn you of incredulity beforehand. Go on.”
+
+The disquietude of his air, the somewhat apprehensive impatience of his
+manner, surprised me: but I proceeded.
+
+“I dreamt another dream, sir: that Thornfield Hall was a dreary ruin,
+the retreat of bats and owls. I thought that of all the stately front
+nothing remained but a shell-like wall, very high and very
+fragile-looking. I wandered, on a moonlight night, through the
+grass-grown enclosure within: here I stumbled over a marble hearth, and
+there over a fallen fragment of cornice. Wrapped up in a shawl, I still
+carried the unknown little child: I might not lay it down anywhere,
+however tired were my arms—however much its weight impeded my progress,
+I must retain it. I heard the gallop of a horse at a distance on the
+road; I was sure it was you; and you were departing for many years and
+for a distant country. I climbed the thin wall with frantic perilous
+haste, eager to catch one glimpse of you from the top: the stones
+rolled from under my feet, the ivy branches I grasped gave way, the
+child clung round my neck in terror, and almost strangled me; at last I
+gained the summit. I saw you like a speck on a white track, lessening
+every moment. The blast blew so strong I could not stand. I sat down on
+the narrow ledge; I hushed the scared infant in my lap: you turned an
+angle of the road: I bent forward to take a last look; the wall
+crumbled; I was shaken; the child rolled from my knee, I lost my
+balance, fell, and woke.”
+
+“Now, Jane, that is all.”
+
+“All the preface, sir; the tale is yet to come. On waking, a gleam
+dazzled my eyes; I thought—Oh, it is daylight! But I was mistaken; it
+was only candlelight. Sophie, I supposed, had come in. There was a
+light in the dressing-table, and the door of the closet, where, before
+going to bed, I had hung my wedding-dress and veil, stood open; I heard
+a rustling there. I asked, ‘Sophie, what are you doing?’ No one
+answered; but a form emerged from the closet; it took the light, held
+it aloft, and surveyed the garments pendent from the portmanteau.
+‘Sophie! Sophie!’ I again cried: and still it was silent. I had risen
+up in bed, I bent forward: first surprise, then bewilderment, came over
+me; and then my blood crept cold through my veins. Mr. Rochester, this
+was not Sophie, it was not Leah, it was not Mrs. Fairfax: it was
+not—no, I was sure of it, and am still—it was not even that strange
+woman, Grace Poole.”
+
+“It must have been one of them,” interrupted my master.
+
+“No, sir, I solemnly assure you to the contrary. The shape standing
+before me had never crossed my eyes within the precincts of Thornfield
+Hall before; the height, the contour were new to me.”
+
+“Describe it, Jane.”
+
+“It seemed, sir, a woman, tall and large, with thick and dark hair
+hanging long down her back. I know not what dress she had on: it was
+white and straight; but whether gown, sheet, or shroud, I cannot tell.”
+
+“Did you see her face?”
+
+“Not at first. But presently she took my veil from its place; she held
+it up, gazed at it long, and then she threw it over her own head, and
+turned to the mirror. At that moment I saw the reflection of the visage
+and features quite distinctly in the dark oblong glass.”
+
+“And how were they?”
+
+“Fearful and ghastly to me—oh, sir, I never saw a face like it! It was
+a discoloured face—it was a savage face. I wish I could forget the roll
+of the red eyes and the fearful blackened inflation of the lineaments!”
+
+“Ghosts are usually pale, Jane.”
+
+“This, sir, was purple: the lips were swelled and dark; the brow
+furrowed: the black eyebrows widely raised over the bloodshot eyes.
+Shall I tell you of what it reminded me?”
+
+“You may.”
+
+“Of the foul German spectre—the Vampyre.”
+
+“Ah!—what did it do?”
+
+“Sir, it removed my veil from its gaunt head, rent it in two parts, and
+flinging both on the floor, trampled on them.”
+
+
+It removed my veil from its gaunt head, rent it in two parts, and
+flinging both on the floor, trampled on them
+
+“Afterwards?”
+
+“It drew aside the window-curtain and looked out; perhaps it saw dawn
+approaching, for, taking the candle, it retreated to the door. Just at
+my bedside, the figure stopped: the fiery eyes glared upon me—she
+thrust up her candle close to my face, and extinguished it under my
+eyes. I was aware her lurid visage flamed over mine, and I lost
+consciousness: for the second time in my life—only the second time—I
+became insensible from terror.”
+
+“Who was with you when you revived?”
+
+“No one, sir, but the broad day. I rose, bathed my head and face in
+water, drank a long draught; felt that though enfeebled I was not ill,
+and determined that to none but you would I impart this vision. Now,
+sir, tell me who and what that woman was?”
+
+“The creature of an over-stimulated brain; that is certain. I must be
+careful of you, my treasure: nerves like yours were not made for rough
+handling.”
+
+“Sir, depend on it, my nerves were not in fault; the thing was real:
+the transaction actually took place.”
+
+“And your previous dreams, were they real too? Is Thornfield Hall a
+ruin? Am I severed from you by insuperable obstacles? Am I leaving you
+without a tear—without a kiss—without a word?”
+
+“Not yet.”
+
+“Am I about to do it? Why, the day is already commenced which is to
+bind us indissolubly; and when we are once united, there shall be no
+recurrence of these mental terrors: I guarantee that.”
+
+“Mental terrors, sir! I wish I could believe them to be only such: I
+wish it more now than ever; since even you cannot explain to me the
+mystery of that awful visitant.”
+
+“And since I cannot do it, Jane, it must have been unreal.”
+
+“But, sir, when I said so to myself on rising this morning, and when I
+looked round the room to gather courage and comfort from the cheerful
+aspect of each familiar object in full daylight, there—on the carpet—I
+saw what gave the distinct lie to my hypothesis,—the veil, torn from
+top to bottom in two halves!”
+
+I felt Mr. Rochester start and shudder; he hastily flung his arms round
+me. “Thank God!” he exclaimed, “that if anything malignant did come
+near you last night, it was only the veil that was harmed. Oh, to think
+what might have happened!”
+
+He drew his breath short, and strained me so close to him, I could
+scarcely pant. After some minutes’ silence, he continued, cheerily—
+
+“Now, Janet, I’ll explain to you all about it. It was half dream, half
+reality. A woman did, I doubt not, enter your room: and that woman
+was—must have been—Grace Poole. You call her a strange being yourself:
+from all you know, you have reason so to call her—what did she do to
+me? what to Mason? In a state between sleeping and waking, you noticed
+her entrance and her actions; but feverish, almost delirious as you
+were, you ascribed to her a goblin appearance different from her own:
+the long dishevelled hair, the swelled black face, the exaggerated
+stature, were figments of imagination; results of nightmare: the
+spiteful tearing of the veil was real: and it is like her. I see you
+would ask why I keep such a woman in my house: when we have been
+married a year and a day, I will tell you; but not now. Are you
+satisfied, Jane? Do you accept my solution of the mystery?”
+
+I reflected, and in truth it appeared to me the only possible one:
+satisfied I was not, but to please him I endeavoured to appear
+so—relieved, I certainly did feel; so I answered him with a contented
+smile. And now, as it was long past one, I prepared to leave him.
+
+“Does not Sophie sleep with Adèle in the nursery?” he asked, as I lit
+my candle.
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“And there is room enough in Adèle’s little bed for you. You must share
+it with her to-night, Jane: it is no wonder that the incident you have
+related should make you nervous, and I would rather you did not sleep
+alone: promise me to go to the nursery.”
+
+“I shall be very glad to do so, sir.”
+
+“And fasten the door securely on the inside. Wake Sophie when you go
+upstairs, under pretence of requesting her to rouse you in good time
+to-morrow; for you must be dressed and have finished breakfast before
+eight. And now, no more sombre thoughts: chase dull care away, Janet.
+Don’t you hear to what soft whispers the wind has fallen? and there is
+no more beating of rain against the window-panes: look here” (he lifted
+up the curtain)—“it is a lovely night!”
+
+It was. Half heaven was pure and stainless: the clouds, now trooping
+before the wind, which had shifted to the west, were filing off
+eastward in long, silvered columns. The moon shone peacefully.
+
+“Well,” said Mr. Rochester, gazing inquiringly into my eyes, “how is my
+Janet now?”
+
+“The night is serene, sir; and so am I.”
+
+“And you will not dream of separation and sorrow to-night; but of happy
+love and blissful union.”
+
+This prediction was but half fulfilled: I did not indeed dream of
+sorrow, but as little did I dream of joy; for I never slept at all.
+With little Adèle in my arms, I watched the slumber of childhood—so
+tranquil, so passionless, so innocent—and waited for the coming day:
+all my life was awake and astir in my frame: and as soon as the sun
+rose I rose too. I remember Adèle clung to me as I left her: I remember
+I kissed her as I loosened her little hands from my neck; and I cried
+over her with strange emotion, and quitted her because I feared my sobs
+would break her still sound repose. She seemed the emblem of my past
+life; and he, I was now to array myself to meet, the dread, but adored,
+type of my unknown future day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+Sophie came at seven to dress me: she was very long indeed in
+accomplishing her task; so long that Mr. Rochester, grown, I suppose,
+impatient of my delay, sent up to ask why I did not come. She was just
+fastening my veil (the plain square of blond after all) to my hair with
+a brooch; I hurried from under her hands as soon as I could.
+
+“Stop!” she cried in French. “Look at yourself in the mirror: you have
+not taken one peep.”
+
+So I turned at the door: I saw a robed and veiled figure, so unlike my
+usual self that it seemed almost the image of a stranger. “Jane!”
+called a voice, and I hastened down. I was received at the foot of the
+stairs by Mr. Rochester.
+
+“Lingerer!” he said, “my brain is on fire with impatience, and you
+tarry so long!”
+
+He took me into the dining-room, surveyed me keenly all over,
+pronounced me “fair as a lily, and not only the pride of his life, but
+the desire of his eyes,” and then telling me he would give me but ten
+minutes to eat some breakfast, he rang the bell. One of his lately
+hired servants, a footman, answered it.
+
+“Is John getting the carriage ready?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Is the luggage brought down?”
+
+“They are bringing it down, sir.”
+
+“Go you to the church: see if Mr. Wood (the clergyman) and the clerk
+are there: return and tell me.”
+
+The church, as the reader knows, was but just beyond the gates; the
+footman soon returned.
+
+“Mr. Wood is in the vestry, sir, putting on his surplice.”
+
+“And the carriage?”
+
+“The horses are harnessing.”
+
+“We shall not want it to go to church; but it must be ready the moment
+we return: all the boxes and luggage arranged and strapped on, and the
+coachman in his seat.”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Jane, are you ready?”
+
+I rose. There were no groomsmen, no bridesmaids, no relatives to wait
+for or marshal: none but Mr. Rochester and I. Mrs. Fairfax stood in the
+hall as we passed. I would fain have spoken to her, but my hand was
+held by a grasp of iron: I was hurried along by a stride I could hardly
+follow; and to look at Mr. Rochester’s face was to feel that not a
+second of delay would be tolerated for any purpose. I wonder what other
+bridegroom ever looked as he did—so bent up to a purpose, so grimly
+resolute: or who, under such steadfast brows, ever revealed such
+flaming and flashing eyes.
+
+I know not whether the day was fair or foul; in descending the drive, I
+gazed neither on sky nor earth: my heart was with my eyes; and both
+seemed migrated into Mr. Rochester’s frame. I wanted to see the
+invisible thing on which, as we went along, he appeared to fasten a
+glance fierce and fell. I wanted to feel the thoughts whose force he
+seemed breasting and resisting.
+
+At the churchyard wicket he stopped: he discovered I was quite out of
+breath. “Am I cruel in my love?” he said. “Delay an instant: lean on
+me, Jane.”
+
+And now I can recall the picture of the grey old house of God rising
+calm before me, of a rook wheeling round the steeple, of a ruddy
+morning sky beyond. I remember something, too, of the green
+grave-mounds; and I have not forgotten, either, two figures of
+strangers straying amongst the low hillocks and reading the mementoes
+graven on the few mossy head-stones. I noticed them, because, as they
+saw us, they passed round to the back of the church; and I doubted not
+they were going to enter by the side-aisle door and witness the
+ceremony. By Mr. Rochester they were not observed; he was earnestly
+looking at my face, from which the blood had, I daresay, momentarily
+fled: for I felt my forehead dewy, and my cheeks and lips cold. When I
+rallied, which I soon did, he walked gently with me up the path to the
+porch.
+
+We entered the quiet and humble temple; the priest waited in his white
+surplice at the lowly altar, the clerk beside him. All was still: two
+shadows only moved in a remote corner. My conjecture had been correct:
+the strangers had slipped in before us, and they now stood by the vault
+of the Rochesters, their backs towards us, viewing through the rails
+the old time-stained marble tomb, where a kneeling angel guarded the
+remains of Damer de Rochester, slain at Marston Moor in the time of the
+civil wars, and of Elizabeth, his wife.
+
+Our place was taken at the communion rails. Hearing a cautious step
+behind me, I glanced over my shoulder: one of the strangers—a
+gentleman, evidently—was advancing up the chancel. The service began.
+The explanation of the intent of matrimony was gone through; and then
+the clergyman came a step further forward, and, bending slightly
+towards Mr. Rochester, went on.
+
+“I require and charge you both (as ye will answer at the dreadful day
+of judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed), that
+if either of you know any impediment why ye may not lawfully be joined
+together in matrimony, ye do now confess it; for be ye well assured
+that so many as are coupled together otherwise than God’s Word doth
+allow, are not joined together by God, neither is their matrimony
+lawful.”
+
+He paused, as the custom is. When is the pause after that sentence ever
+broken by reply? Not, perhaps, once in a hundred years. And the
+clergyman, who had not lifted his eyes from his book, and had held his
+breath but for a moment, was proceeding: his hand was already stretched
+towards Mr. Rochester, as his lips unclosed to ask, “Wilt thou have
+this woman for thy wedded wife?”—when a distinct and near voice said—
+
+“The marriage cannot go on: I declare the existence of an impediment.”
+
+The clergyman looked up at the speaker and stood mute; the clerk did
+the same; Mr. Rochester moved slightly, as if an earthquake had rolled
+under his feet: taking a firmer footing, and not turning his head or
+eyes, he said, “Proceed.”
+
+Profound silence fell when he had uttered that word, with deep but low
+intonation. Presently Mr. Wood said—
+
+“I cannot proceed without some investigation into what has been
+asserted, and evidence of its truth or falsehood.”
+
+“The ceremony is quite broken off,” subjoined the voice behind us. “I
+am in a condition to prove my allegation: an insuperable impediment to
+this marriage exists.”
+
+Mr. Rochester heard, but heeded not: he stood stubborn and rigid,
+making no movement but to possess himself of my hand. What a hot and
+strong grasp he had! and how like quarried marble was his pale, firm,
+massive front at this moment! How his eye shone, still watchful, and
+yet wild beneath!
+
+Mr. Wood seemed at a loss. “What is the nature of the impediment?” he
+asked. “Perhaps it may be got over—explained away?”
+
+“Hardly,” was the answer. “I have called it insuperable, and I speak
+advisedly.”
+
+The speaker came forward and leaned on the rails. He continued,
+uttering each word distinctly, calmly, steadily, but not loudly—
+
+“It simply consists in the existence of a previous marriage. Mr.
+Rochester has a wife now living.”
+
+My nerves vibrated to those low-spoken words as they had never vibrated
+to thunder—my blood felt their subtle violence as it had never felt
+frost or fire; but I was collected, and in no danger of swooning. I
+looked at Mr. Rochester: I made him look at me. His whole face was
+colourless rock: his eye was both spark and flint. He disavowed
+nothing: he seemed as if he would defy all things. Without speaking,
+without smiling, without seeming to recognise in me a human being, he
+only twined my waist with his arm and riveted me to his side.
+
+“Who are you?” he asked of the intruder.
+
+“My name is Briggs, a solicitor of —— Street, London.”
+
+“And you would thrust on me a wife?”
+
+“I would remind you of your lady’s existence, sir, which the law
+recognises, if you do not.”
+
+“Favour me with an account of her—with her name, her parentage, her
+place of abode.”
+
+“Certainly.” Mr. Briggs calmly took a paper from his pocket, and read
+out in a sort of official, nasal voice:—
+
+“‘I affirm and can prove that on the 20th of October A.D. —— (a date of
+fifteen years back), Edward Fairfax Rochester, of Thornfield Hall, in
+the county of ——, and of Ferndean Manor, in ——shire, England, was
+married to my sister, Bertha Antoinetta Mason, daughter of Jonas Mason,
+merchant, and of Antoinetta his wife, a Creole, at —— church, Spanish
+Town, Jamaica. The record of the marriage will be found in the register
+of that church—a copy of it is now in my possession. Signed, Richard
+Mason.’”
+
+“That—if a genuine document—may prove I have been married, but it does
+not prove that the woman mentioned therein as my wife is still living.”
+
+“She was living three months ago,” returned the lawyer.
+
+“How do you know?”
+
+“I have a witness to the fact, whose testimony even you, sir, will
+scarcely controvert.”
+
+“Produce him—or go to hell.”
+
+“I will produce him first—he is on the spot. Mr. Mason, have the
+goodness to step forward.”
+
+Mr. Rochester, on hearing the name, set his teeth; he experienced, too,
+a sort of strong convulsive quiver; near to him as I was, I felt the
+spasmodic movement of fury or despair run through his frame. The second
+stranger, who had hitherto lingered in the background, now drew near; a
+pale face looked over the solicitor’s shoulder—yes, it was Mason
+himself. Mr. Rochester turned and glared at him. His eye, as I have
+often said, was a black eye: it had now a tawny, nay, a bloody light in
+its gloom; and his face flushed—olive cheek and hueless forehead
+received a glow as from spreading, ascending heart-fire: and he
+stirred, lifted his strong arm—he could have struck Mason, dashed him
+on the church-floor, shocked by ruthless blow the breath from his
+body—but Mason shrank away, and cried faintly, “Good God!” Contempt
+fell cool on Mr. Rochester—his passion died as if a blight had
+shrivelled it up: he only asked—“What have _you_ to say?”
+
+An inaudible reply escaped Mason’s white lips.
+
+“The devil is in it if you cannot answer distinctly. I again demand,
+what have _you_ to say?”
+
+“Sir—sir,” interrupted the clergyman, “do not forget you are in a
+sacred place.” Then addressing Mason, he inquired gently, “Are you
+aware, sir, whether or not this gentleman’s wife is still living?”
+
+“Courage,” urged the lawyer,—“speak out.”
+
+“She is now living at Thornfield Hall,” said Mason, in more articulate
+tones: “I saw her there last April. I am her brother.”
+
+“At Thornfield Hall!” ejaculated the clergyman. “Impossible! I am an
+old resident in this neighbourhood, sir, and I never heard of a Mrs.
+Rochester at Thornfield Hall.”
+
+I saw a grim smile contort Mr. Rochester’s lips, and he muttered—
+
+“No, by God! I took care that none should hear of it—or of her under
+that name.” He mused—for ten minutes he held counsel with himself: he
+formed his resolve, and announced it—
+
+“Enough! all shall bolt out at once, like the bullet from the barrel.
+Wood, close your book and take off your surplice; John Green (to the
+clerk), leave the church: there will be no wedding to-day.” The man
+obeyed.
+
+Mr. Rochester continued, hardily and recklessly: “Bigamy is an ugly
+word!—I meant, however, to be a bigamist; but fate has out-manoeuvred
+me, or Providence has checked me,—perhaps the last. I am little better
+than a devil at this moment; and, as my pastor there would tell me,
+deserve no doubt the sternest judgments of God, even to the quenchless
+fire and deathless worm. Gentlemen, my plan is broken up:—what this
+lawyer and his client say is true: I have been married, and the woman
+to whom I was married lives! You say you never heard of a Mrs.
+Rochester at the house up yonder, Wood; but I daresay you have many a
+time inclined your ear to gossip about the mysterious lunatic kept
+there under watch and ward. Some have whispered to you that she is my
+bastard half-sister: some, my cast-off mistress. I now inform you that
+she is my wife, whom I married fifteen years ago,—Bertha Mason by name;
+sister of this resolute personage, who is now, with his quivering limbs
+and white cheeks, showing you what a stout heart men may bear. Cheer
+up, Dick!—never fear me!—I’d almost as soon strike a woman as you.
+Bertha Mason is mad; and she came of a mad family; idiots and maniacs
+through three generations! Her mother, the Creole, was both a madwoman
+and a drunkard!—as I found out after I had wed the daughter: for they
+were silent on family secrets before. Bertha, like a dutiful child,
+copied her parent in both points. I had a charming partner—pure, wise,
+modest: you can fancy I was a happy man. I went through rich scenes!
+Oh! my experience has been heavenly, if you only knew it! But I owe you
+no further explanation. Briggs, Wood, Mason, I invite you all to come
+up to the house and visit Mrs. Poole’s patient, and _my wife_! You
+shall see what sort of a being I was cheated into espousing, and judge
+whether or not I had a right to break the compact, and seek sympathy
+with something at least human. This girl,” he continued, looking at me,
+“knew no more than you, Wood, of the disgusting secret: she thought all
+was fair and legal; and never dreamt she was going to be entrapped into
+a feigned union with a defrauded wretch, already bound to a bad, mad,
+and embruted partner! Come all of you—follow!”
+
+Still holding me fast, he left the church: the three gentlemen came
+after. At the front door of the hall we found the carriage.
+
+“Take it back to the coach-house, John,” said Mr. Rochester coolly; “it
+will not be wanted to-day.”
+
+At our entrance, Mrs. Fairfax, Adèle, Sophie, Leah, advanced to meet
+and greet us.
+
+“To the right-about—every soul!” cried the master; “away with your
+congratulations! Who wants them? Not I!—they are fifteen years too
+late!”
+
+He passed on and ascended the stairs, still holding my hand, and still
+beckoning the gentlemen to follow him, which they did. We mounted the
+first staircase, passed up the gallery, proceeded to the third storey:
+the low, black door, opened by Mr. Rochester’s master-key, admitted us
+to the tapestried room, with its great bed and its pictorial cabinet.
+
+“You know this place, Mason,” said our guide; “she bit and stabbed you
+here.”
+
+He lifted the hangings from the wall, uncovering the second door: this,
+too, he opened. In a room without a window, there burnt a fire guarded
+by a high and strong fender, and a lamp suspended from the ceiling by a
+chain. Grace Poole bent over the fire, apparently cooking something in
+a saucepan. In the deep shade, at the farther end of the room, a figure
+ran backwards and forwards. What it was, whether beast or human being,
+one could not, at first sight, tell: it grovelled, seemingly, on all
+fours; it snatched and growled like some strange wild animal: but it
+was covered with clothing, and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild
+as a mane, hid its head and face.
+
+“Good-morrow, Mrs. Poole!” said Mr. Rochester. “How are you? and how is
+your charge to-day?”
+
+“We’re tolerable, sir, I thank you,” replied Grace, lifting the boiling
+mess carefully on to the hob: “rather snappish, but not ’rageous.”
+
+A fierce cry seemed to give the lie to her favourable report: the
+clothed hyena rose up, and stood tall on its hind-feet.
+
+“Ah! sir, she sees you!” exclaimed Grace: “you’d better not stay.”
+
+“Only a few moments, Grace: you must allow me a few moments.”
+
+“Take care then, sir!—for God’s sake, take care!”
+
+The maniac bellowed: she parted her shaggy locks from her visage, and
+gazed wildly at her visitors. I recognised well that purple face,—those
+bloated features. Mrs. Poole advanced.
+
+“Keep out of the way,” said Mr. Rochester, thrusting her aside: “she
+has no knife now, I suppose, and I’m on my guard.”
+
+“One never knows what she has, sir: she is so cunning: it is not in
+mortal discretion to fathom her craft.”
+
+“We had better leave her,” whispered Mason.
+
+“Go to the devil!” was his brother-in-law’s recommendation.
+
+“’Ware!” cried Grace. The three gentlemen retreated simultaneously. Mr.
+Rochester flung me behind him: the lunatic sprang and grappled his
+throat viciously, and laid her teeth to his cheek: they struggled. She
+was a big woman, in stature almost equalling her husband, and corpulent
+besides: she showed virile force in the contest—more than once she
+almost throttled him, athletic as he was. He could have settled her
+with a well-planted blow; but he would not strike: he would only
+wrestle. At last he mastered her arms; Grace Poole gave him a cord, and
+he pinioned them behind her: with more rope, which was at hand, he
+bound her to a chair. The operation was performed amidst the fiercest
+yells and the most convulsive plunges. Mr. Rochester then turned to the
+spectators: he looked at them with a smile both acrid and desolate.
+
+“That is _my wife_,” said he. “Such is the sole conjugal embrace I am
+ever to know—such are the endearments which are to solace my leisure
+hours! And _this_ is what I wished to have” (laying his hand on my
+shoulder): “this young girl, who stands so grave and quiet at the mouth
+of hell, looking collectedly at the gambols of a demon, I wanted her
+just as a change after that fierce ragout. Wood and Briggs, look at the
+difference! Compare these clear eyes with the red balls yonder—this
+face with that mask—this form with that bulk; then judge me, priest of
+the gospel and man of the law, and remember with what judgment ye judge
+ye shall be judged! Off with you now. I must shut up my prize.”
+
+We all withdrew. Mr. Rochester stayed a moment behind us, to give some
+further order to Grace Poole. The solicitor addressed me as he
+descended the stair.
+
+“You, madam,” said he, “are cleared from all blame: your uncle will be
+glad to hear it—if, indeed, he should be still living—when Mr. Mason
+returns to Madeira.”
+
+“My uncle! What of him? Do you know him?”
+
+“Mr. Mason does. Mr. Eyre has been the Funchal correspondent of his
+house for some years. When your uncle received your letter intimating
+the contemplated union between yourself and Mr. Rochester, Mr. Mason,
+who was staying at Madeira to recruit his health, on his way back to
+Jamaica, happened to be with him. Mr. Eyre mentioned the intelligence;
+for he knew that my client here was acquainted with a gentleman of the
+name of Rochester. Mr. Mason, astonished and distressed as you may
+suppose, revealed the real state of matters. Your uncle, I am sorry to
+say, is now on a sick bed; from which, considering the nature of his
+disease—decline—and the stage it has reached, it is unlikely he will
+ever rise. He could not then hasten to England himself, to extricate
+you from the snare into which you had fallen, but he implored Mr. Mason
+to lose no time in taking steps to prevent the false marriage. He
+referred him to me for assistance. I used all despatch, and am thankful
+I was not too late: as you, doubtless, must be also. Were I not morally
+certain that your uncle will be dead ere you reach Madeira, I would
+advise you to accompany Mr. Mason back; but as it is, I think you had
+better remain in England till you can hear further, either from or of
+Mr. Eyre. Have we anything else to stay for?” he inquired of Mr. Mason.
+
+“No, no—let us be gone,” was the anxious reply; and without waiting to
+take leave of Mr. Rochester, they made their exit at the hall door. The
+clergyman stayed to exchange a few sentences, either of admonition or
+reproof, with his haughty parishioner; this duty done, he too departed.
+
+I heard him go as I stood at the half-open door of my own room, to
+which I had now withdrawn. The house cleared, I shut myself in,
+fastened the bolt that none might intrude, and proceeded—not to weep,
+not to mourn, I was yet too calm for that, but—mechanically to take off
+the wedding dress, and replace it by the stuff gown I had worn
+yesterday, as I thought, for the last time. I then sat down: I felt
+weak and tired. I leaned my arms on a table, and my head dropped on
+them. And now I thought: till now I had only heard, seen,
+moved—followed up and down where I was led or dragged—watched event
+rush on event, disclosure open beyond disclosure: but _now_, _I
+thought_.
+
+The morning had been a quiet morning enough—all except the brief scene
+with the lunatic: the transaction in the church had not been noisy;
+there was no explosion of passion, no loud altercation, no dispute, no
+defiance or challenge, no tears, no sobs: a few words had been spoken,
+a calmly pronounced objection to the marriage made; some stern, short
+questions put by Mr. Rochester; answers, explanations given, evidence
+adduced; an open admission of the truth had been uttered by my master;
+then the living proof had been seen; the intruders were gone, and all
+was over.
+
+I was in my own room as usual—just myself, without obvious change:
+nothing had smitten me, or scathed me, or maimed me. And yet where was
+the Jane Eyre of yesterday?—where was her life?—where were her
+prospects?
+
+Jane Eyre, who had been an ardent, expectant woman—almost a bride, was
+a cold, solitary girl again: her life was pale; her prospects were
+desolate. A Christmas frost had come at midsummer; a white December
+storm had whirled over June; ice glazed the ripe apples, drifts crushed
+the blowing roses; on hayfield and cornfield lay a frozen shroud: lanes
+which last night blushed full of flowers, to-day were pathless with
+untrodden snow; and the woods, which twelve hours since waved leafy and
+fragrant as groves between the tropics, now spread, waste, wild, and
+white as pine-forests in wintry Norway. My hopes were all dead—struck
+with a subtle doom, such as, in one night, fell on all the first-born
+in the land of Egypt. I looked on my cherished wishes, yesterday so
+blooming and glowing; they lay stark, chill, livid corpses that could
+never revive. I looked at my love: that feeling which was my
+master’s—which he had created; it shivered in my heart, like a
+suffering child in a cold cradle; sickness and anguish had seized it;
+it could not seek Mr. Rochester’s arms—it could not derive warmth from
+his breast. Oh, never more could it turn to him; for faith was
+blighted—confidence destroyed! Mr. Rochester was not to me what he had
+been; for he was not what I had thought him. I would not ascribe vice
+to him; I would not say he had betrayed me; but the attribute of
+stainless truth was gone from his idea, and from his presence I must
+go: _that_ I perceived well. When—how—whither, I could not yet discern;
+but he himself, I doubted not, would hurry me from Thornfield. Real
+affection, it seemed, he could not have for me; it had been only fitful
+passion: that was balked; he would want me no more. I should fear even
+to cross his path now: my view must be hateful to him. Oh, how blind
+had been my eyes! How weak my conduct!
+
+My eyes were covered and closed: eddying darkness seemed to swim round
+me, and reflection came in as black and confused a flow.
+Self-abandoned, relaxed, and effortless, I seemed to have laid me down
+in the dried-up bed of a great river; I heard a flood loosened in
+remote mountains, and felt the torrent come: to rise I had no will, to
+flee I had no strength. I lay faint, longing to be dead. One idea only
+still throbbed life-like within me—a remembrance of God: it begot an
+unuttered prayer: these words went wandering up and down in my rayless
+mind, as something that should be whispered, but no energy was found to
+express them—
+
+“Be not far from me, for trouble is near: there is none to help.”
+
+It was near: and as I had lifted no petition to Heaven to avert it—as I
+had neither joined my hands, nor bent my knees, nor moved my lips—it
+came: in full heavy swing the torrent poured over me. The whole
+consciousness of my life lorn, my love lost, my hope quenched, my faith
+death-struck, swayed full and mighty above me in one sullen mass. That
+bitter hour cannot be described: in truth, “the waters came into my
+soul; I sank in deep mire: I felt no standing; I came into deep waters;
+the floods overflowed me.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+Some time in the afternoon I raised my head, and looking round and
+seeing the western sun gilding the sign of its decline on the wall, I
+asked, “What am I to do?”
+
+But the answer my mind gave—“Leave Thornfield at once”—was so prompt,
+so dread, that I stopped my ears. I said I could not bear such words
+now. “That I am not Edward Rochester’s bride is the least part of my
+woe,” I alleged: “that I have wakened out of most glorious dreams, and
+found them all void and vain, is a horror I could bear and master; but
+that I must leave him decidedly, instantly, entirely, is intolerable. I
+cannot do it.”
+
+But, then, a voice within me averred that I could do it and foretold
+that I should do it. I wrestled with my own resolution: I wanted to be
+weak that I might avoid the awful passage of further suffering I saw
+laid out for me; and Conscience, turned tyrant, held Passion by the
+throat, told her tauntingly, she had yet but dipped her dainty foot in
+the slough, and swore that with that arm of iron he would thrust her
+down to unsounded depths of agony.
+
+“Let me be torn away, then” I cried. “Let another help me!”
+
+“No; you shall tear yourself away, none shall help you: you shall
+yourself pluck out your right eye; yourself cut off your right hand:
+your heart shall be the victim, and you the priest to transfix it.”
+
+I rose up suddenly, terror-struck at the solitude which so ruthless a
+judge haunted,—at the silence which so awful a voice filled. My head
+swam as I stood erect. I perceived that I was sickening from excitement
+and inanition; neither meat nor drink had passed my lips that day, for
+I had taken no breakfast. And, with a strange pang, I now reflected
+that, long as I had been shut up here, no message had been sent to ask
+how I was, or to invite me to come down: not even little Adèle had
+tapped at the door; not even Mrs. Fairfax had sought me. “Friends
+always forget those whom fortune forsakes,” I murmured, as I undrew the
+bolt and passed out. I stumbled over an obstacle: my head was still
+dizzy, my sight was dim, and my limbs were feeble. I could not soon
+recover myself. I fell, but not on to the ground: an outstretched arm
+caught me. I looked up—I was supported by Mr. Rochester, who sat in a
+chair across my chamber threshold.
+
+“You come out at last,” he said. “Well, I have been waiting for you
+long, and listening: yet not one movement have I heard, nor one sob:
+five minutes more of that death-like hush, and I should have forced the
+lock like a burglar. So you shun me?—you shut yourself up and grieve
+alone! I would rather you had come and upbraided me with vehemence. You
+are passionate: I expected a scene of some kind. I was prepared for the
+hot rain of tears; only I wanted them to be shed on my breast: now a
+senseless floor has received them, or your drenched handkerchief. But I
+err: you have not wept at all! I see a white cheek and a faded eye, but
+no trace of tears. I suppose, then, your heart has been weeping blood?”
+
+“Well, Jane! not a word of reproach? Nothing bitter—nothing poignant?
+Nothing to cut a feeling or sting a passion? You sit quietly where I
+have placed you, and regard me with a weary, passive look.
+
+“Jane, I never meant to wound you thus. If the man who had but one
+little ewe lamb that was dear to him as a daughter, that ate of his
+bread and drank of his cup, and lay in his bosom, had by some mistake
+slaughtered it at the shambles, he would not have rued his bloody
+blunder more than I now rue mine. Will you ever forgive me?”
+
+Reader, I forgave him at the moment and on the spot. There was such
+deep remorse in his eye, such true pity in his tone, such manly energy
+in his manner; and besides, there was such unchanged love in his whole
+look and mien—I forgave him all: yet not in words, not outwardly; only
+at my heart’s core.
+
+“You know I am a scoundrel, Jane?” ere long he inquired
+wistfully—wondering, I suppose, at my continued silence and tameness,
+the result rather of weakness than of will.
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Then tell me so roundly and sharply—don’t spare me.”
+
+“I cannot: I am tired and sick. I want some water.” He heaved a sort of
+shuddering sigh, and taking me in his arms, carried me downstairs. At
+first I did not know to what room he had borne me; all was cloudy to my
+glazed sight: presently I felt the reviving warmth of a fire; for,
+summer as it was, I had become icy cold in my chamber. He put wine to
+my lips; I tasted it and revived; then I ate something he offered me,
+and was soon myself. I was in the library—sitting in his chair—he was
+quite near. “If I could go out of life now, without too sharp a pang,
+it would be well for me,” I thought; “then I should not have to make
+the effort of cracking my heart-strings in rending them from among Mr.
+Rochester’s. I must leave him, it appears. I do not want to leave him—I
+cannot leave him.”
+
+“How are you now, Jane?”
+
+“Much better, sir; I shall be well soon.”
+
+“Taste the wine again, Jane.”
+
+I obeyed him; then he put the glass on the table, stood before me, and
+looked at me attentively. Suddenly he turned away, with an inarticulate
+exclamation, full of passionate emotion of some kind; he walked fast
+through the room and came back; he stooped towards me as if to kiss me;
+but I remembered caresses were now forbidden. I turned my face away and
+put his aside.
+
+“What!—How is this?” he exclaimed hastily. “Oh, I know! you won’t kiss
+the husband of Bertha Mason? You consider my arms filled and my
+embraces appropriated?”
+
+“At any rate, there is neither room nor claim for me, sir.”
+
+“Why, Jane? I will spare you the trouble of much talking; I will answer
+for you—Because I have a wife already, you would reply.—I guess
+rightly?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“If you think so, you must have a strange opinion of me; you must
+regard me as a plotting profligate—a base and low rake who has been
+simulating disinterested love in order to draw you into a snare
+deliberately laid, and strip you of honour and rob you of self-respect.
+What do you say to that? I see you can say nothing: in the first place,
+you are faint still, and have enough to do to draw your breath; in the
+second place, you cannot yet accustom yourself to accuse and revile me,
+and besides, the flood-gates of tears are opened, and they would rush
+out if you spoke much; and you have no desire to expostulate, to
+upbraid, to make a scene: you are thinking how _to act_—_talking_ you
+consider is of no use. I know you—I am on my guard.”
+
+“Sir, I do not wish to act against you,” I said; and my unsteady voice
+warned me to curtail my sentence.
+
+“Not in _your_ sense of the word, but in _mine_ you are scheming to
+destroy me. You have as good as said that I am a married man—as a
+married man you will shun me, keep out of my way: just now you have
+refused to kiss me. You intend to make yourself a complete stranger to
+me: to live under this roof only as Adèle’s governess; if ever I say a
+friendly word to you, if ever a friendly feeling inclines you again to
+me, you will say,—‘That man had nearly made me his mistress: I must be
+ice and rock to him;’ and ice and rock you will accordingly become.”
+
+I cleared and steadied my voice to reply: “All is changed about me,
+sir; I must change too—there is no doubt of that; and to avoid
+fluctuations of feeling, and continual combats with recollections and
+associations, there is only one way—Adèle must have a new governess,
+sir.”
+
+“Oh, Adèle will go to school—I have settled that already; nor do I mean
+to torment you with the hideous associations and recollections of
+Thornfield Hall—this accursed place—this tent of Achan—this insolent
+vault, offering the ghastliness of living death to the light of the
+open sky—this narrow stone hell, with its one real fiend, worse than a
+legion of such as we imagine. Jane, you shall not stay here, nor will
+I. I was wrong ever to bring you to Thornfield Hall, knowing as I did
+how it was haunted. I charged them to conceal from you, before I ever
+saw you, all knowledge of the curse of the place; merely because I
+feared Adèle never would have a governess to stay if she knew with what
+inmate she was housed, and my plans would not permit me to remove the
+maniac elsewhere—though I possess an old house, Ferndean Manor, even
+more retired and hidden than this, where I could have lodged her safely
+enough, had not a scruple about the unhealthiness of the situation, in
+the heart of a wood, made my conscience recoil from the arrangement.
+Probably those damp walls would soon have eased me of her charge: but
+to each villain his own vice; and mine is not a tendency to indirect
+assassination, even of what I most hate.
+
+“Concealing the mad-woman’s neighbourhood from you, however, was
+something like covering a child with a cloak and laying it down near a
+upas-tree: that demon’s vicinage is poisoned, and always was. But I’ll
+shut up Thornfield Hall: I’ll nail up the front door and board the
+lower windows: I’ll give Mrs. Poole two hundred a year to live here
+with _my wife_, as you term that fearful hag: Grace will do much for
+money, and she shall have her son, the keeper at Grimsby Retreat, to
+bear her company and be at hand to give her aid in the paroxysms, when
+_my wife_ is prompted by her familiar to burn people in their beds at
+night, to stab them, to bite their flesh from their bones, and so on—”
+
+“Sir,” I interrupted him, “you are inexorable for that unfortunate
+lady: you speak of her with hate—with vindictive antipathy. It is
+cruel—she cannot help being mad.”
+
+“Jane, my little darling (so I will call you, for so you are), you
+don’t know what you are talking about; you misjudge me again: it is not
+because she is mad I hate her. If you were mad, do you think I should
+hate you?”
+
+“I do indeed, sir.”
+
+“Then you are mistaken, and you know nothing about me, and nothing
+about the sort of love of which I am capable. Every atom of your flesh
+is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be
+dear. Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it would be my
+treasure still: if you raved, my arms should confine you, and not a
+strait waistcoat—your grasp, even in fury, would have a charm for me:
+if you flew at me as wildly as that woman did this morning, I should
+receive you in an embrace, at least as fond as it would be restrictive.
+I should not shrink from you with disgust as I did from her: in your
+quiet moments you should have no watcher and no nurse but me; and I
+could hang over you with untiring tenderness, though you gave me no
+smile in return; and never weary of gazing into your eyes, though they
+had no longer a ray of recognition for me.—But why do I follow that
+train of ideas? I was talking of removing you from Thornfield. All, you
+know, is prepared for prompt departure: to-morrow you shall go. I only
+ask you to endure one more night under this roof, Jane; and then,
+farewell to its miseries and terrors for ever! I have a place to repair
+to, which will be a secure sanctuary from hateful reminiscences, from
+unwelcome intrusion—even from falsehood and slander.”
+
+“And take Adèle with you, sir,” I interrupted; “she will be a companion
+for you.”
+
+“What do you mean, Jane? I told you I would send Adèle to school; and
+what do I want with a child for a companion, and not my own child,—a
+French dancer’s bastard? Why do you importune me about her! I say, why
+do you assign Adèle to me for a companion?”
+
+“You spoke of a retirement, sir; and retirement and solitude are dull:
+too dull for you.”
+
+“Solitude! solitude!” he reiterated with irritation. “I see I must come
+to an explanation. I don’t know what sphynx-like expression is forming
+in your countenance. _You_ are to share my solitude. Do you
+understand?”
+
+I shook my head: it required a degree of courage, excited as he was
+becoming, even to risk that mute sign of dissent. He had been walking
+fast about the room, and he stopped, as if suddenly rooted to one spot.
+He looked at me long and hard: I turned my eyes from him, fixed them on
+the fire, and tried to assume and maintain a quiet, collected aspect.
+
+“Now for the hitch in Jane’s character,” he said at last, speaking more
+calmly than from his look I had expected him to speak. “The reel of
+silk has run smoothly enough so far; but I always knew there would come
+a knot and a puzzle: here it is. Now for vexation, and exasperation,
+and endless trouble! By God! I long to exert a fraction of Samson’s
+strength, and break the entanglement like tow!”
+
+He recommenced his walk, but soon again stopped, and this time just
+before me.
+
+“Jane! will you hear reason?” (he stooped and approached his lips to my
+ear); “because, if you won’t, I’ll try violence.” His voice was hoarse;
+his look that of a man who is just about to burst an insufferable bond
+and plunge headlong into wild license. I saw that in another moment,
+and with one impetus of frenzy more, I should be able to do nothing
+with him. The present—the passing second of time—was all I had in which
+to control and restrain him: a movement of repulsion, flight, fear
+would have sealed my doom,—and his. But I was not afraid: not in the
+least. I felt an inward power; a sense of influence, which supported
+me. The crisis was perilous; but not without its charm: such as the
+Indian, perhaps, feels when he slips over the rapid in his canoe. I
+took hold of his clenched hand, loosened the contorted fingers, and
+said to him, soothingly—
+
+“Sit down; I’ll talk to you as long as you like, and hear all you have
+to say, whether reasonable or unreasonable.”
+
+He sat down: but he did not get leave to speak directly. I had been
+struggling with tears for some time: I had taken great pains to repress
+them, because I knew he would not like to see me weep. Now, however, I
+considered it well to let them flow as freely and as long as they
+liked. If the flood annoyed him, so much the better. So I gave way and
+cried heartily.
+
+Soon I heard him earnestly entreating me to be composed. I said I could
+not while he was in such a passion.
+
+“But I am not angry, Jane: I only love you too well; and you had
+steeled your little pale face with such a resolute, frozen look, I
+could not endure it. Hush, now, and wipe your eyes.”
+
+His softened voice announced that he was subdued; so I, in my turn,
+became calm. Now he made an effort to rest his head on my shoulder, but
+I would not permit it. Then he would draw me to him: no.
+
+“Jane! Jane!” he said, in such an accent of bitter sadness it thrilled
+along every nerve I had; “you don’t love me, then? It was only my
+station, and the rank of my wife, that you valued? Now that you think
+me disqualified to become your husband, you recoil from my touch as if
+I were some toad or ape.”
+
+These words cut me: yet what could I do or I say? I ought probably to
+have done or said nothing; but I was so tortured by a sense of remorse
+at thus hurting his feelings, I could not control the wish to drop balm
+where I had wounded.
+
+“I _do_ love you,” I said, “more than ever: but I must not show or
+indulge the feeling: and this is the last time I must express it.”
+
+“The last time, Jane! What! do you think you can live with me, and see
+me daily, and yet, if you still love me, be always cold and distant?”
+
+“No, sir; that I am certain I could not; and therefore I see there is
+but one way: but you will be furious if I mention it.”
+
+“Oh, mention it! If I storm, you have the art of weeping.”
+
+“Mr. Rochester, I must leave you.”
+
+“For how long, Jane? For a few minutes, while you smooth your
+hair—which is somewhat dishevelled; and bathe your face—which looks
+feverish?”
+
+“I must leave Adèle and Thornfield. I must part with you for my whole
+life: I must begin a new existence among strange faces and strange
+scenes.”
+
+“Of course: I told you you should. I pass over the madness about
+parting from me. You mean you must become a part of me. As to the new
+existence, it is all right: you shall yet be my wife: I am not married.
+You shall be Mrs. Rochester—both virtually and nominally. I shall keep
+only to you so long as you and I live. You shall go to a place I have
+in the south of France: a whitewashed villa on the shores of the
+Mediterranean. There you shall live a happy, and guarded, and most
+innocent life. Never fear that I wish to lure you into error—to make
+you my mistress. Why did you shake your head? Jane, you must be
+reasonable, or in truth I shall again become frantic.”
+
+His voice and hand quivered: his large nostrils dilated; his eye
+blazed: still I dared to speak.
+
+“Sir, your wife is living: that is a fact acknowledged this morning by
+yourself. If I lived with you as you desire, I should then be your
+mistress: to say otherwise is sophistical—is false.”
+
+“Jane, I am not a gentle-tempered man—you forget that: I am not
+long-enduring; I am not cool and dispassionate. Out of pity to me and
+yourself, put your finger on my pulse, feel how it throbs, and—beware!”
+
+He bared his wrist, and offered it to me: the blood was forsaking his
+cheek and lips, they were growing livid; I was distressed on all hands.
+To agitate him thus deeply, by a resistance he so abhorred, was cruel:
+to yield was out of the question. I did what human beings do
+instinctively when they are driven to utter extremity—looked for aid to
+one higher than man: the words “God help me!” burst involuntarily from
+my lips.
+
+“I am a fool!” cried Mr. Rochester suddenly. “I keep telling her I am
+not married, and do not explain to her why. I forget she knows nothing
+of the character of that woman, or of the circumstances attending my
+infernal union with her. Oh, I am certain Jane will agree with me in
+opinion, when she knows all that I know! Just put your hand in mine,
+Janet—that I may have the evidence of touch as well as sight, to prove
+you are near me—and I will in a few words show you the real state of
+the case. Can you listen to me?”
+
+“Yes, sir; for hours if you will.”
+
+“I ask only minutes. Jane, did you ever hear or know that I was not the
+eldest son of my house: that I had once a brother older than I?”
+
+“I remember Mrs. Fairfax told me so once.”
+
+“And did you ever hear that my father was an avaricious, grasping man?”
+
+“I have understood something to that effect.”
+
+“Well, Jane, being so, it was his resolution to keep the property
+together; he could not bear the idea of dividing his estate and leaving
+me a fair portion: all, he resolved, should go to my brother, Rowland.
+Yet as little could he endure that a son of his should be a poor man. I
+must be provided for by a wealthy marriage. He sought me a partner
+betimes. Mr. Mason, a West India planter and merchant, was his old
+acquaintance. He was certain his possessions were real and vast: he
+made inquiries. Mr. Mason, he found, had a son and daughter; and he
+learned from him that he could and would give the latter a fortune of
+thirty thousand pounds: that sufficed. When I left college, I was sent
+out to Jamaica, to espouse a bride already courted for me. My father
+said nothing about her money; but he told me Miss Mason was the boast
+of Spanish Town for her beauty: and this was no lie. I found her a fine
+woman, in the style of Blanche Ingram: tall, dark, and majestic. Her
+family wished to secure me because I was of a good race; and so did
+she. They showed her to me in parties, splendidly dressed. I seldom saw
+her alone, and had very little private conversation with her. She
+flattered me, and lavishly displayed for my pleasure her charms and
+accomplishments. All the men in her circle seemed to admire her and
+envy me. I was dazzled, stimulated: my senses were excited; and being
+ignorant, raw, and inexperienced, I thought I loved her. There is no
+folly so besotted that the idiotic rivalries of society, the prurience,
+the rashness, the blindness of youth, will not hurry a man to its
+commission. Her relatives encouraged me; competitors piqued me; she
+allured me: a marriage was achieved almost before I knew where I was.
+Oh, I have no respect for myself when I think of that act!—an agony of
+inward contempt masters me. I never loved, I never esteemed, I did not
+even know her. I was not sure of the existence of one virtue in her
+nature: I had marked neither modesty, nor benevolence, nor candour, nor
+refinement in her mind or manners—and, I married her:—gross,
+grovelling, mole-eyed blockhead that I was! With less sin I might
+have—But let me remember to whom I am speaking.
+
+“My bride’s mother I had never seen: I understood she was dead. The
+honeymoon over, I learned my mistake; she was only mad, and shut up in
+a lunatic asylum. There was a younger brother, too—a complete dumb
+idiot. The elder one, whom you have seen (and whom I cannot hate,
+whilst I abhor all his kindred, because he has some grains of affection
+in his feeble mind, shown in the continued interest he takes in his
+wretched sister, and also in a dog-like attachment he once bore me),
+will probably be in the same state one day. My father and my brother
+Rowland knew all this; but they thought only of the thirty thousand
+pounds, and joined in the plot against me.
+
+“These were vile discoveries; but except for the treachery of
+concealment, I should have made them no subject of reproach to my wife,
+even when I found her nature wholly alien to mine, her tastes obnoxious
+to me, her cast of mind common, low, narrow, and singularly incapable
+of being led to anything higher, expanded to anything larger—when I
+found that I could not pass a single evening, nor even a single hour of
+the day with her in comfort; that kindly conversation could not be
+sustained between us, because whatever topic I started, immediately
+received from her a turn at once coarse and trite, perverse and
+imbecile—when I perceived that I should never have a quiet or settled
+household, because no servant would bear the continued outbreaks of her
+violent and unreasonable temper, or the vexations of her absurd,
+contradictory, exacting orders—even then I restrained myself: I
+eschewed upbraiding, I curtailed remonstrance; I tried to devour my
+repentance and disgust in secret; I repressed the deep antipathy I
+felt.
+
+“Jane, I will not trouble you with abominable details: some strong
+words shall express what I have to say. I lived with that woman
+upstairs four years, and before that time she had tried me indeed: her
+character ripened and developed with frightful rapidity; her vices
+sprang up fast and rank: they were so strong, only cruelty could check
+them, and I would not use cruelty. What a pigmy intellect she had, and
+what giant propensities! How fearful were the curses those propensities
+entailed on me! Bertha Mason, the true daughter of an infamous mother,
+dragged me through all the hideous and degrading agonies which must
+attend a man bound to a wife at once intemperate and unchaste.
+
+“My brother in the interval was dead, and at the end of the four years
+my father died too. I was rich enough now—yet poor to hideous
+indigence: a nature the most gross, impure, depraved I ever saw, was
+associated with mine, and called by the law and by society a part of
+me. And I could not rid myself of it by any legal proceedings: for the
+doctors now discovered that _my wife_ was mad—her excesses had
+prematurely developed the germs of insanity. Jane, you don’t like my
+narrative; you look almost sick—shall I defer the rest to another day?”
+
+“No, sir, finish it now; I pity you—I do earnestly pity you.”
+
+“Pity, Jane, from some people is a noxious and insulting sort of
+tribute, which one is justified in hurling back in the teeth of those
+who offer it; but that is the sort of pity native to callous, selfish
+hearts; it is a hybrid, egotistical pain at hearing of woes, crossed
+with ignorant contempt for those who have endured them. But that is not
+your pity, Jane; it is not the feeling of which your whole face is full
+at this moment—with which your eyes are now almost overflowing—with
+which your heart is heaving—with which your hand is trembling in mine.
+Your pity, my darling, is the suffering mother of love: its anguish is
+the very natal pang of the divine passion. I accept it, Jane; let the
+daughter have free advent—my arms wait to receive her.”
+
+“Now, sir, proceed; what did you do when you found she was mad?”
+
+“Jane, I approached the verge of despair; a remnant of self-respect was
+all that intervened between me and the gulf. In the eyes of the world,
+I was doubtless covered with grimy dishonour; but I resolved to be
+clean in my own sight—and to the last I repudiated the contamination of
+her crimes, and wrenched myself from connection with her mental
+defects. Still, society associated my name and person with hers; I yet
+saw her and heard her daily: something of her breath (faugh!) mixed
+with the air I breathed; and besides, I remembered I had once been her
+husband—that recollection was then, and is now, inexpressibly odious to
+me; moreover, I knew that while she lived I could never be the husband
+of another and better wife; and, though five years my senior (her
+family and her father had lied to me even in the particular of her
+age), she was likely to live as long as I, being as robust in frame as
+she was infirm in mind. Thus, at the age of twenty-six, I was hopeless.
+
+“One night I had been awakened by her yells—(since the medical men had
+pronounced her mad, she had, of course, been shut up)—it was a fiery
+West Indian night; one of the description that frequently precede the
+hurricanes of those climates. Being unable to sleep in bed, I got up
+and opened the window. The air was like sulphur-steams—I could find no
+refreshment anywhere. Mosquitoes came buzzing in and hummed sullenly
+round the room; the sea, which I could hear from thence, rumbled dull
+like an earthquake—black clouds were casting up over it; the moon was
+setting in the waves, broad and red, like a hot cannon-ball—she threw
+her last bloody glance over a world quivering with the ferment of
+tempest. I was physically influenced by the atmosphere and scene, and
+my ears were filled with the curses the maniac still shrieked out;
+wherein she momentarily mingled my name with such a tone of demon-hate,
+with such language!—no professed harlot ever had a fouler vocabulary
+than she: though two rooms off, I heard every word—the thin partitions
+of the West India house opposing but slight obstruction to her wolfish
+cries.
+
+“‘This life,’ said I at last, ‘is hell: this is the air—those are the
+sounds of the bottomless pit! I have a right to deliver myself from it
+if I can. The sufferings of this mortal state will leave me with the
+heavy flesh that now cumbers my soul. Of the fanatic’s burning eternity
+I have no fear: there is not a future state worse than this present
+one—let me break away, and go home to God!’
+
+“I said this whilst I knelt down at, and unlocked a trunk which
+contained a brace of loaded pistols: I meant to shoot myself. I only
+entertained the intention for a moment; for, not being insane, the
+crisis of exquisite and unalloyed despair, which had originated the
+wish and design of self-destruction, was past in a second.
+
+“A wind fresh from Europe blew over the ocean and rushed through the
+open casement: the storm broke, streamed, thundered, blazed, and the
+air grew pure. I then framed and fixed a resolution. While I walked
+under the dripping orange-trees of my wet garden, and amongst its
+drenched pomegranates and pine-apples, and while the refulgent dawn of
+the tropics kindled round me—I reasoned thus, Jane—and now listen; for
+it was true Wisdom that consoled me in that hour, and showed me the
+right path to follow.
+
+“The sweet wind from Europe was still whispering in the refreshed
+leaves, and the Atlantic was thundering in glorious liberty; my heart,
+dried up and scorched for a long time, swelled to the tone, and filled
+with living blood—my being longed for renewal—my soul thirsted for a
+pure draught. I saw hope revive—and felt regeneration possible. From a
+flowery arch at the bottom of my garden I gazed over the sea—bluer than
+the sky: the old world was beyond; clear prospects opened thus:—
+
+“‘Go,’ said Hope, ‘and live again in Europe: there it is not known what
+a sullied name you bear, nor what a filthy burden is bound to you. You
+may take the maniac with you to England; confine her with due
+attendance and precautions at Thornfield: then travel yourself to what
+clime you will, and form what new tie you like. That woman, who has so
+abused your long-suffering, so sullied your name, so outraged your
+honour, so blighted your youth, is not your wife, nor are you her
+husband. See that she is cared for as her condition demands, and you
+have done all that God and humanity require of you. Let her identity,
+her connection with yourself, be buried in oblivion: you are bound to
+impart them to no living being. Place her in safety and comfort:
+shelter her degradation with secrecy, and leave her.’
+
+“I acted precisely on this suggestion. My father and brother had not
+made my marriage known to their acquaintance; because, in the very
+first letter I wrote to apprise them of the union—having already begun
+to experience extreme disgust of its consequences, and, from the family
+character and constitution, seeing a hideous future opening to me—I
+added an urgent charge to keep it secret: and very soon the infamous
+conduct of the wife my father had selected for me was such as to make
+him blush to own her as his daughter-in-law. Far from desiring to
+publish the connection, he became as anxious to conceal it as myself.
+
+“To England, then, I conveyed her; a fearful voyage I had with such a
+monster in the vessel. Glad was I when I at last got her to Thornfield,
+and saw her safely lodged in that third-storey room, of whose secret
+inner cabinet she has now for ten years made a wild beast’s den—a
+goblin’s cell. I had some trouble in finding an attendant for her, as
+it was necessary to select one on whose fidelity dependence could be
+placed; for her ravings would inevitably betray my secret: besides, she
+had lucid intervals of days—sometimes weeks—which she filled up with
+abuse of me. At last I hired Grace Poole from the Grimbsy Retreat. She
+and the surgeon, Carter (who dressed Mason’s wounds that night he was
+stabbed and worried), are the only two I have ever admitted to my
+confidence. Mrs. Fairfax may indeed have suspected something, but she
+could have gained no precise knowledge as to facts. Grace has, on the
+whole, proved a good keeper; though, owing partly to a fault of her
+own, of which it appears nothing can cure her, and which is incident to
+her harassing profession, her vigilance has been more than once lulled
+and baffled. The lunatic is both cunning and malignant; she has never
+failed to take advantage of her guardian’s temporary lapses; once to
+secrete the knife with which she stabbed her brother, and twice to
+possess herself of the key of her cell, and issue therefrom in the
+night-time. On the first of these occasions, she perpetrated the
+attempt to burn me in my bed; on the second, she paid that ghastly
+visit to you. I thank Providence, who watched over you, that she then
+spent her fury on your wedding apparel, which perhaps brought back
+vague reminiscences of her own bridal days: but on what might have
+happened, I cannot endure to reflect. When I think of the thing which
+flew at my throat this morning, hanging its black and scarlet visage
+over the nest of my dove, my blood curdles—”
+
+“And what, sir,” I asked, while he paused, “did you do when you had
+settled her here? Where did you go?”
+
+“What did I do, Jane? I transformed myself into a will-o’-the-wisp.
+Where did I go? I pursued wanderings as wild as those of the
+March-spirit. I sought the Continent, and went devious through all its
+lands. My fixed desire was to seek and find a good and intelligent
+woman, whom I could love: a contrast to the fury I left at Thornfield—”
+
+“But you could not marry, sir.”
+
+“I had determined and was convinced that I could and ought. It was not
+my original intention to deceive, as I have deceived you. I meant to
+tell my tale plainly, and make my proposals openly: and it appeared to
+me so absolutely rational that I should be considered free to love and
+be loved, I never doubted some woman might be found willing and able to
+understand my case and accept me, in spite of the curse with which I
+was burdened.”
+
+“Well, sir?”
+
+“When you are inquisitive, Jane, you always make me smile. You open
+your eyes like an eager bird, and make every now and then a restless
+movement, as if answers in speech did not flow fast enough for you, and
+you wanted to read the tablet of one’s heart. But before I go on, tell
+me what you mean by your ‘Well, sir?’ It is a small phrase very
+frequent with you; and which many a time has drawn me on and on through
+interminable talk: I don’t very well know why.”
+
+“I mean,—What next? How did you proceed? What came of such an event?”
+
+“Precisely! and what do you wish to know now?”
+
+“Whether you found any one you liked: whether you asked her to marry
+you; and what she said.”
+
+“I can tell you whether I found any one I liked, and whether I asked
+her to marry me: but what she said is yet to be recorded in the book of
+Fate. For ten long years I roved about, living first in one capital,
+then another: sometimes in St. Petersburg; oftener in Paris;
+occasionally in Rome, Naples, and Florence. Provided with plenty of
+money and the passport of an old name, I could choose my own society:
+no circles were closed against me. I sought my ideal of a woman amongst
+English ladies, French countesses, Italian signoras, and German
+gräfinnen. I could not find her. Sometimes, for a fleeting moment, I
+thought I caught a glance, heard a tone, beheld a form, which announced
+the realisation of my dream: but I was presently undeceived. You are
+not to suppose that I desired perfection, either of mind or person. I
+longed only for what suited me—for the antipodes of the Creole: and I
+longed vainly. Amongst them all I found not one whom, had I been ever
+so free, I—warned as I was of the risks, the horrors, the loathings of
+incongruous unions—would have asked to marry me. Disappointment made me
+reckless. I tried dissipation—never debauchery: that I hated, and hate.
+That was my Indian Messalina’s attribute: rooted disgust at it and her
+restrained me much, even in pleasure. Any enjoyment that bordered on
+riot seemed to approach me to her and her vices, and I eschewed it.
+
+“Yet I could not live alone; so I tried the companionship of
+mistresses. The first I chose was Céline Varens—another of those steps
+which make a man spurn himself when he recalls them. You already know
+what she was, and how my liaison with her terminated. She had two
+successors: an Italian, Giacinta, and a German, Clara; both considered
+singularly handsome. What was their beauty to me in a few weeks?
+Giacinta was unprincipled and violent: I tired of her in three months.
+Clara was honest and quiet; but heavy, mindless, and unimpressible: not
+one whit to my taste. I was glad to give her a sufficient sum to set
+her up in a good line of business, and so get decently rid of her. But,
+Jane, I see by your face you are not forming a very favourable opinion
+of me just now. You think me an unfeeling, loose-principled rake: don’t
+you?”
+
+“I don’t like you so well as I have done sometimes, indeed, sir. Did it
+not seem to you in the least wrong to live in that way, first with one
+mistress and then another? You talk of it as a mere matter of course.”
+
+“It was with me; and I did not like it. It was a grovelling fashion of
+existence: I should never like to return to it. Hiring a mistress is
+the next worse thing to buying a slave: both are often by nature, and
+always by position, inferior: and to live familiarly with inferiors is
+degrading. I now hate the recollection of the time I passed with
+Céline, Giacinta, and Clara.”
+
+I felt the truth of these words; and I drew from them the certain
+inference, that if I were so far to forget myself and all the teaching
+that had ever been instilled into me, as—under any pretext—with any
+justification—through any temptation—to become the successor of these
+poor girls, he would one day regard me with the same feeling which now
+in his mind desecrated their memory. I did not give utterance to this
+conviction: it was enough to feel it. I impressed it on my heart, that
+it might remain there to serve me as aid in the time of trial.
+
+“Now, Jane, why don’t you say ‘Well, sir?’ I have not done. You are
+looking grave. You disapprove of me still, I see. But let me come to
+the point. Last January, rid of all mistresses—in a harsh, bitter frame
+of mind, the result of a useless, roving, lonely life—corroded with
+disappointment, sourly disposed against all men, and especially against
+all _woman_kind (for I began to regard the notion of an intellectual,
+faithful, loving woman as a mere dream), recalled by business, I came
+back to England.
+
+“On a frosty winter afternoon, I rode in sight of Thornfield Hall.
+Abhorred spot! I expected no peace—no pleasure there. On a stile in Hay
+Lane I saw a quiet little figure sitting by itself. I passed it as
+negligently as I did the pollard willow opposite to it: I had no
+presentiment of what it would be to me; no inward warning that the
+arbitress of my life—my genius for good or evil—waited there in humble
+guise. I did not know it, even when, on the occasion of Mesrour’s
+accident, it came up and gravely offered me help. Childish and slender
+creature! It seemed as if a linnet had hopped to my foot and proposed
+to bear me on its tiny wing. I was surly; but the thing would not go:
+it stood by me with strange perseverance, and looked and spoke with a
+sort of authority. I must be aided, and by that hand: and aided I was.
+
+“When once I had pressed the frail shoulder, something new—a fresh sap
+and sense—stole into my frame. It was well I had learnt that this elf
+must return to me—that it belonged to my house down below—or I could
+not have felt it pass away from under my hand, and seen it vanish
+behind the dim hedge, without singular regret. I heard you come home
+that night, Jane, though probably you were not aware that I thought of
+you or watched for you. The next day I observed you—myself unseen—for
+half-an-hour, while you played with Adèle in the gallery. It was a
+snowy day, I recollect, and you could not go out of doors. I was in my
+room; the door was ajar: I could both listen and watch. Adèle claimed
+your outward attention for a while; yet I fancied your thoughts were
+elsewhere: but you were very patient with her, my little Jane; you
+talked to her and amused her a long time. When at last she left you,
+you lapsed at once into deep reverie: you betook yourself slowly to
+pace the gallery. Now and then, in passing a casement, you glanced out
+at the thick-falling snow; you listened to the sobbing wind, and again
+you paced gently on and dreamed. I think those day visions were not
+dark: there was a pleasurable illumination in your eye occasionally, a
+soft excitement in your aspect, which told of no bitter, bilious,
+hypochondriac brooding: your look revealed rather the sweet musings of
+youth when its spirit follows on willing wings the flight of Hope up
+and on to an ideal heaven. The voice of Mrs. Fairfax, speaking to a
+servant in the hall, wakened you: and how curiously you smiled to and
+at yourself, Janet! There was much sense in your smile: it was very
+shrewd, and seemed to make light of your own abstraction. It seemed to
+say—‘My fine visions are all very well, but I must not forget they are
+absolutely unreal. I have a rosy sky and a green flowery Eden in my
+brain; but without, I am perfectly aware, lies at my feet a rough tract
+to travel, and around me gather black tempests to encounter.’ You ran
+downstairs and demanded of Mrs. Fairfax some occupation: the weekly
+house accounts to make up, or something of that sort, I think it was. I
+was vexed with you for getting out of my sight.
+
+“Impatiently I waited for evening, when I might summon you to my
+presence. An unusual—to me—a perfectly new character I suspected was
+yours: I desired to search it deeper and know it better. You entered
+the room with a look and air at once shy and independent: you were
+quaintly dressed—much as you are now. I made you talk: ere long I found
+you full of strange contrasts. Your garb and manner were restricted by
+rule; your air was often diffident, and altogether that of one refined
+by nature, but absolutely unused to society, and a good deal afraid of
+making herself disadvantageously conspicuous by some solecism or
+blunder; yet when addressed, you lifted a keen, a daring, and a glowing
+eye to your interlocutor’s face: there was penetration and power in
+each glance you gave; when plied by close questions, you found ready
+and round answers. Very soon you seemed to get used to me: I believe
+you felt the existence of sympathy between you and your grim and cross
+master, Jane; for it was astonishing to see how quickly a certain
+pleasant ease tranquillised your manner: snarl as I would, you showed
+no surprise, fear, annoyance, or displeasure at my moroseness; you
+watched me, and now and then smiled at me with a simple yet sagacious
+grace I cannot describe. I was at once content and stimulated with what
+I saw: I liked what I had seen, and wished to see more. Yet, for a long
+time, I treated you distantly, and sought your company rarely. I was an
+intellectual epicure, and wished to prolong the gratification of making
+this novel and piquant acquaintance: besides, I was for a while
+troubled with a haunting fear that if I handled the flower freely its
+bloom would fade—the sweet charm of freshness would leave it. I did not
+then know that it was no transitory blossom, but rather the radiant
+resemblance of one, cut in an indestructible gem. Moreover, I wished to
+see whether you would seek me if I shunned you—but you did not; you
+kept in the schoolroom as still as your own desk and easel; if by
+chance I met you, you passed me as soon, and with as little token of
+recognition, as was consistent with respect. Your habitual expression
+in those days, Jane, was a thoughtful look; not despondent, for you
+were not sickly; but not buoyant, for you had little hope, and no
+actual pleasure. I wondered what you thought of me, or if you ever
+thought of me, and resolved to find this out.
+
+“I resumed my notice of you. There was something glad in your glance,
+and genial in your manner, when you conversed: I saw you had a social
+heart; it was the silent schoolroom—it was the tedium of your life—that
+made you mournful. I permitted myself the delight of being kind to you;
+kindness stirred emotion soon: your face became soft in expression,
+your tones gentle; I liked my name pronounced by your lips in a
+grateful happy accent. I used to enjoy a chance meeting with you, Jane,
+at this time: there was a curious hesitation in your manner: you
+glanced at me with a slight trouble—a hovering doubt: you did not know
+what my caprice might be—whether I was going to play the master and be
+stern, or the friend and be benignant. I was now too fond of you often
+to simulate the first whim; and, when I stretched my hand out
+cordially, such bloom and light and bliss rose to your young, wistful
+features, I had much ado often to avoid straining you then and there to
+my heart.”
+
+“Don’t talk any more of those days, sir,” I interrupted, furtively
+dashing away some tears from my eyes; his language was torture to me;
+for I knew what I must do—and do soon—and all these reminiscences, and
+these revelations of his feelings only made my work more difficult.
+
+“No, Jane,” he returned: “what necessity is there to dwell on the Past,
+when the Present is so much surer—the Future so much brighter?”
+
+I shuddered to hear the infatuated assertion.
+
+“You see now how the case stands—do you not?” he continued. “After a
+youth and manhood passed half in unutterable misery and half in dreary
+solitude, I have for the first time found what I can truly love—I have
+found _you_. You are my sympathy—my better self—my good angel. I am
+bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted,
+lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans
+to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wraps my existence
+about you, and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in
+one.
+
+“It was because I felt and knew this, that I resolved to marry you. To
+tell me that I had already a wife is empty mockery: you know now that I
+had but a hideous demon. I was wrong to attempt to deceive you; but I
+feared a stubbornness that exists in your character. I feared early
+instilled prejudice: I wanted to have you safe before hazarding
+confidences. This was cowardly: I should have appealed to your
+nobleness and magnanimity at first, as I do now—opened to you plainly
+my life of agony—described to you my hunger and thirst after a higher
+and worthier existence—shown to you, not my _resolution_ (that word is
+weak), but my resistless _bent_ to love faithfully and well, where I am
+faithfully and well loved in return. Then I should have asked you to
+accept my pledge of fidelity and to give me yours. Jane—give it me
+now.”
+
+A pause.
+
+“Why are you silent, Jane?”
+
+I was experiencing an ordeal: a hand of fiery iron grasped my vitals.
+Terrible moment: full of struggle, blackness, burning! Not a human
+being that ever lived could wish to be loved better than I was loved;
+and him who thus loved me I absolutely worshipped: and I must renounce
+love and idol. One drear word comprised my intolerable duty—“Depart!”
+
+“Jane, you understand what I want of you? Just this promise—‘I will be
+yours, Mr. Rochester.’”
+
+“Mr. Rochester, I will _not_ be yours.”
+
+Another long silence.
+
+“Jane!” recommenced he, with a gentleness that broke me down with
+grief, and turned me stone-cold with ominous terror—for this still
+voice was the pant of a lion rising—“Jane, do you mean to go one way in
+the world, and to let me go another?”
+
+“I do.”
+
+“Jane” (bending towards and embracing me), “do you mean it now?”
+
+“I do.”
+
+“And now?” softly kissing my forehead and cheek.
+
+“I do,” extricating myself from restraint rapidly and completely.
+
+“Oh, Jane, this is bitter! This—this is wicked. It would not be wicked
+to love me.”
+
+“It would to obey you.”
+
+A wild look raised his brows—crossed his features: he rose; but he
+forebore yet. I laid my hand on the back of a chair for support: I
+shook, I feared—but I resolved.
+
+“One instant, Jane. Give one glance to my horrible life when you are
+gone. All happiness will be torn away with you. What then is left? For
+a wife I have but the maniac upstairs: as well might you refer me to
+some corpse in yonder churchyard. What shall I do, Jane? Where turn for
+a companion and for some hope?”
+
+“Do as I do: trust in God and yourself. Believe in heaven. Hope to meet
+again there.”
+
+“Then you will not yield?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Then you condemn me to live wretched and to die accursed?” His voice
+rose.
+
+“I advise you to live sinless, and I wish you to die tranquil.”
+
+“Then you snatch love and innocence from me? You fling me back on lust
+for a passion—vice for an occupation?”
+
+“Mr. Rochester, I no more assign this fate to you than I grasp at it
+for myself. We were born to strive and endure—you as well as I: do so.
+You will forget me before I forget you.”
+
+“You make me a liar by such language: you sully my honour. I declared I
+could not change: you tell me to my face I shall change soon. And what
+a distortion in your judgment, what a perversity in your ideas, is
+proved by your conduct! Is it better to drive a fellow-creature to
+despair than to transgress a mere human law, no man being injured by
+the breach? for you have neither relatives nor acquaintances whom you
+need fear to offend by living with me?”
+
+This was true: and while he spoke my very conscience and reason turned
+traitors against me, and charged me with crime in resisting him. They
+spoke almost as loud as Feeling: and that clamoured wildly. “Oh,
+comply!” it said. “Think of his misery; think of his danger—look at his
+state when left alone; remember his headlong nature; consider the
+recklessness following on despair—soothe him; save him; love him; tell
+him you love him and will be his. Who in the world cares for _you_? or
+who will be injured by what you do?”
+
+Still indomitable was the reply—“_I_ care for myself. The more
+solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I
+will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by
+man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and
+not mad—as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when
+there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body
+and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they;
+inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break
+them, what would be their worth? They have a worth—so I have always
+believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am
+insane—quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating
+faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone
+determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by: there I plant
+my foot.”
+
+I did. Mr. Rochester, reading my countenance, saw I had done so. His
+fury was wrought to the highest: he must yield to it for a moment,
+whatever followed; he crossed the floor and seized my arm and grasped
+my waist. He seemed to devour me with his flaming glance: physically, I
+felt, at the moment, powerless as stubble exposed to the draught and
+glow of a furnace: mentally, I still possessed my soul, and with it the
+certainty of ultimate safety. The soul, fortunately, has an
+interpreter—often an unconscious, but still a truthful interpreter—in
+the eye. My eye rose to his; and while I looked in his fierce face I
+gave an involuntary sigh; his gripe was painful, and my over-taxed
+strength almost exhausted.
+
+“Never,” said he, as he ground his teeth, “never was anything at once
+so frail and so indomitable. A mere reed she feels in my hand!” (And he
+shook me with the force of his hold.) “I could bend her with my finger
+and thumb: and what good would it do if I bent, if I uptore, if I
+crushed her? Consider that eye: consider the resolute, wild, free thing
+looking out of it, defying me, with more than courage—with a stern
+triumph. Whatever I do with its cage, I cannot get at it—the savage,
+beautiful creature! If I tear, if I rend the slight prison, my outrage
+will only let the captive loose. Conqueror I might be of the house; but
+the inmate would escape to heaven before I could call myself possessor
+of its clay dwelling-place. And it is you, spirit—with will and energy,
+and virtue and purity—that I want: not alone your brittle frame. Of
+yourself you could come with soft flight and nestle against my heart,
+if you would: seized against your will, you will elude the grasp like
+an essence—you will vanish ere I inhale your fragrance. Oh! come, Jane,
+come!”
+
+As he said this, he released me from his clutch, and only looked at me.
+The look was far worse to resist than the frantic strain: only an
+idiot, however, would have succumbed now. I had dared and baffled his
+fury; I must elude his sorrow: I retired to the door.
+
+“You are going, Jane?”
+
+“I am going, sir.”
+
+“You are leaving me?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“You will not come? You will not be my comforter, my rescuer? My deep
+love, my wild woe, my frantic prayer, are all nothing to you?”
+
+What unutterable pathos was in his voice! How hard it was to reiterate
+firmly, “I am going.”
+
+“Jane!”
+
+“Mr. Rochester!”
+
+“Withdraw, then,—I consent; but remember, you leave me here in anguish.
+Go up to your own room; think over all I have said, and, Jane, cast a
+glance on my sufferings—think of me.”
+
+He turned away; he threw himself on his face on the sofa. “Oh, Jane! my
+hope—my love—my life!” broke in anguish from his lips. Then came a
+deep, strong sob.
+
+I had already gained the door; but, reader, I walked back—walked back
+as determinedly as I had retreated. I knelt down by him; I turned his
+face from the cushion to me; I kissed his cheek; I smoothed his hair
+with my hand.
+
+“God bless you, my dear master!” I said. “God keep you from harm and
+wrong—direct you, solace you—reward you well for your past kindness to
+me.”
+
+“Little Jane’s love would have been my best reward,” he answered;
+“without it, my heart is broken. But Jane will give me her love:
+yes—nobly, generously.”
+
+Up the blood rushed to his face; forth flashed the fire from his eyes;
+erect he sprang; he held his arms out; but I evaded the embrace, and at
+once quitted the room.
+
+“Farewell!” was the cry of my heart as I left him. Despair added,
+“Farewell for ever!”
+
+
+That night I never thought to sleep; but a slumber fell on me as soon
+as I lay down in bed. I was transported in thought to the scenes of
+childhood: I dreamt I lay in the red-room at Gateshead; that the night
+was dark, and my mind impressed with strange fears. The light that long
+ago had struck me into syncope, recalled in this vision, seemed
+glidingly to mount the wall, and tremblingly to pause in the centre of
+the obscured ceiling. I lifted up my head to look: the roof resolved to
+clouds, high and dim; the gleam was such as the moon imparts to vapours
+she is about to sever. I watched her come—watched with the strangest
+anticipation; as though some word of doom were to be written on her
+disk. She broke forth as never moon yet burst from cloud: a hand first
+penetrated the sable folds and waved them away; then, not a moon, but a
+white human form shone in the azure, inclining a glorious brow
+earthward. It gazed and gazed on me. It spoke to my spirit:
+immeasurably distant was the tone, yet so near, it whispered in my
+heart—
+
+“My daughter, flee temptation.”
+
+“Mother, I will.”
+
+So I answered after I had waked from the trance-like dream. It was yet
+night, but July nights are short: soon after midnight, dawn comes. “It
+cannot be too early to commence the task I have to fulfil,” thought I.
+I rose: I was dressed; for I had taken off nothing but my shoes. I knew
+where to find in my drawers some linen, a locket, a ring. In seeking
+these articles, I encountered the beads of a pearl necklace Mr.
+Rochester had forced me to accept a few days ago. I left that; it was
+not mine: it was the visionary bride’s who had melted in air. The other
+articles I made up in a parcel; my purse, containing twenty shillings
+(it was all I had), I put in my pocket: I tied on my straw bonnet,
+pinned my shawl, took the parcel and my slippers, which I would not put
+on yet, and stole from my room.
+
+“Farewell, kind Mrs. Fairfax!” I whispered, as I glided past her door.
+“Farewell, my darling Adèle!” I said, as I glanced towards the nursery.
+No thought could be admitted of entering to embrace her. I had to
+deceive a fine ear: for aught I knew it might now be listening.
+
+I would have got past Mr. Rochester’s chamber without a pause; but my
+heart momentarily stopping its beat at that threshold, my foot was
+forced to stop also. No sleep was there: the inmate was walking
+restlessly from wall to wall; and again and again he sighed while I
+listened. There was a heaven—a temporary heaven—in this room for me, if
+I chose: I had but to go in and to say—
+
+“Mr. Rochester, I will love you and live with you through life till
+death,” and a fount of rapture would spring to my lips. I thought of
+this.
+
+That kind master, who could not sleep now, was waiting with impatience
+for day. He would send for me in the morning; I should be gone. He
+would have me sought for: vainly. He would feel himself forsaken; his
+love rejected: he would suffer; perhaps grow desperate. I thought of
+this too. My hand moved towards the lock: I caught it back, and glided
+on.
+
+Drearily I wound my way downstairs: I knew what I had to do, and I did
+it mechanically. I sought the key of the side-door in the kitchen; I
+sought, too, a phial of oil and a feather; I oiled the key and the
+lock. I got some water, I got some bread: for perhaps I should have to
+walk far; and my strength, sorely shaken of late, must not break down.
+All this I did without one sound. I opened the door, passed out, shut
+it softly. Dim dawn glimmered in the yard. The great gates were closed
+and locked; but a wicket in one of them was only latched. Through that
+I departed: it, too, I shut; and now I was out of Thornfield.
+
+A mile off, beyond the fields, lay a road which stretched in the
+contrary direction to Millcote; a road I had never travelled, but often
+noticed, and wondered where it led: thither I bent my steps. No
+reflection was to be allowed now: not one glance was to be cast back;
+not even one forward. Not one thought was to be given either to the
+past or the future. The first was a page so heavenly sweet—so deadly
+sad—that to read one line of it would dissolve my courage and break
+down my energy. The last was an awful blank: something like the world
+when the deluge was gone by.
+
+I skirted fields, and hedges, and lanes till after sunrise. I believe
+it was a lovely summer morning: I know my shoes, which I had put on
+when I left the house, were soon wet with dew. But I looked neither to
+rising sun, nor smiling sky, nor wakening nature. He who is taken out
+to pass through a fair scene to the scaffold, thinks not of the flowers
+that smile on his road, but of the block and axe-edge; of the
+disseverment of bone and vein; of the grave gaping at the end: and I
+thought of drear flight and homeless wandering—and oh! with agony I
+thought of what I left. I could not help it. I thought of him now—in
+his room—watching the sunrise; hoping I should soon come to say I would
+stay with him and be his. I longed to be his; I panted to return: it
+was not too late; I could yet spare him the bitter pang of bereavement.
+As yet my flight, I was sure, was undiscovered. I could go back and be
+his comforter—his pride; his redeemer from misery, perhaps from ruin.
+Oh, that fear of his self-abandonment—far worse than my abandonment—how
+it goaded me! It was a barbed arrow-head in my breast; it tore me when
+I tried to extract it; it sickened me when remembrance thrust it
+farther in. Birds began singing in brake and copse: birds were faithful
+to their mates; birds were emblems of love. What was I? In the midst of
+my pain of heart and frantic effort of principle, I abhorred myself. I
+had no solace from self-approbation: none even from self-respect. I had
+injured—wounded—left my master. I was hateful in my own eyes. Still I
+could not turn, nor retrace one step. God must have led me on. As to my
+own will or conscience, impassioned grief had trampled one and stifled
+the other. I was weeping wildly as I walked along my solitary way:
+fast, fast I went like one delirious. A weakness, beginning inwardly,
+extending to the limbs, seized me, and I fell: I lay on the ground some
+minutes, pressing my face to the wet turf. I had some fear—or hope—that
+here I should die: but I was soon up; crawling forwards on my hands and
+knees, and then again raised to my feet—as eager and as determined as
+ever to reach the road.
+
+When I got there, I was forced to sit to rest me under the hedge; and
+while I sat, I heard wheels, and saw a coach come on. I stood up and
+lifted my hand; it stopped. I asked where it was going: the driver
+named a place a long way off, and where I was sure Mr. Rochester had no
+connections. I asked for what sum he would take me there; he said
+thirty shillings; I answered I had but twenty; well, he would try to
+make it do. He further gave me leave to get into the inside, as the
+vehicle was empty: I entered, was shut in, and it rolled on its way.
+
+Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt! May your eyes never
+shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May
+you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agonised as in
+that hour left my lips; for never may you, like me, dread to be the
+instrument of evil to what you wholly love.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+Two days are passed. It is a summer evening; the coachman has set me
+down at a place called Whitcross; he could take me no farther for the
+sum I had given, and I was not possessed of another shilling in the
+world. The coach is a mile off by this time; I am alone. At this moment
+I discover that I forgot to take my parcel out of the pocket of the
+coach, where I had placed it for safety; there it remains, there it
+must remain; and now, I am absolutely destitute.
+
+Whitcross is no town, nor even a hamlet; it is but a stone pillar set
+up where four roads meet: whitewashed, I suppose, to be more obvious at
+a distance and in darkness. Four arms spring from its summit: the
+nearest town to which these point is, according to the inscription,
+distant ten miles; the farthest, above twenty. From the well-known
+names of these towns I learn in what county I have lighted; a
+north-midland shire, dusk with moorland, ridged with mountain: this I
+see. There are great moors behind and on each hand of me; there are
+waves of mountains far beyond that deep valley at my feet. The
+population here must be thin, and I see no passengers on these roads:
+they stretch out east, west, north, and south—white, broad, lonely;
+they are all cut in the moor, and the heather grows deep and wild to
+their very verge. Yet a chance traveller might pass by; and I wish no
+eye to see me now: strangers would wonder what I am doing, lingering
+here at the sign-post, evidently objectless and lost. I might be
+questioned: I could give no answer but what would sound incredible and
+excite suspicion. Not a tie holds me to human society at this
+moment—not a charm or hope calls me where my fellow-creatures are—none
+that saw me would have a kind thought or a good wish for me. I have no
+relative but the universal mother, Nature: I will seek her breast and
+ask repose.
+
+I struck straight into the heath; I held on to a hollow I saw deeply
+furrowing the brown moorside; I waded knee-deep in its dark growth; I
+turned with its turnings, and finding a moss-blackened granite crag in
+a hidden angle, I sat down under it. High banks of moor were about me;
+the crag protected my head: the sky was over that.
+
+Some time passed before I felt tranquil even here: I had a vague dread
+that wild cattle might be near, or that some sportsman or poacher might
+discover me. If a gust of wind swept the waste, I looked up, fearing it
+was the rush of a bull; if a plover whistled, I imagined it a man.
+Finding my apprehensions unfounded, however, and calmed by the deep
+silence that reigned as evening declined at nightfall, I took
+confidence. As yet I had not thought; I had only listened, watched,
+dreaded; now I regained the faculty of reflection.
+
+What was I to do? Where to go? Oh, intolerable questions, when I could
+do nothing and go nowhere!—when a long way must yet be measured by my
+weary, trembling limbs before I could reach human habitation—when cold
+charity must be entreated before I could get a lodging: reluctant
+sympathy importuned, almost certain repulse incurred, before my tale
+could be listened to, or one of my wants relieved!
+
+I touched the heath: it was dry, and yet warm with the heat of the
+summer day. I looked at the sky; it was pure: a kindly star twinkled
+just above the chasm ridge. The dew fell, but with propitious softness;
+no breeze whispered. Nature seemed to me benign and good; I thought she
+loved me, outcast as I was; and I, who from man could anticipate only
+mistrust, rejection, insult, clung to her with filial fondness.
+To-night, at least, I would be her guest, as I was her child: my mother
+would lodge me without money and without price. I had one morsel of
+bread yet: the remnant of a roll I had bought in a town we passed
+through at noon with a stray penny—my last coin. I saw ripe bilberries
+gleaming here and there, like jet beads in the heath: I gathered a
+handful and ate them with the bread. My hunger, sharp before, was, if
+not satisfied, appeased by this hermit’s meal. I said my evening
+prayers at its conclusion, and then chose my couch.
+
+
+I said my evening prayers
+
+Beside the crag the heath was very deep: when I lay down my feet were
+buried in it; rising high on each side, it left only a narrow space for
+the night-air to invade. I folded my shawl double, and spread it over
+me for a coverlet; a low, mossy swell was my pillow. Thus lodged, I was
+not, at least at the commencement of the night, cold.
+
+My rest might have been blissful enough, only a sad heart broke it. It
+plained of its gaping wounds, its inward bleeding, its riven chords. It
+trembled for Mr. Rochester and his doom; it bemoaned him with bitter
+pity; it demanded him with ceaseless longing; and, impotent as a bird
+with both wings broken, it still quivered its shattered pinions in vain
+attempts to seek him.
+
+Worn out with this torture of thought, I rose to my knees. Night was
+come, and her planets were risen: a safe, still night: too serene for
+the companionship of fear. We know that God is everywhere; but
+certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest
+scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His
+worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude,
+His omnipotence, His omnipresence. I had risen to my knees to pray for
+Mr. Rochester. Looking up, I, with tear-dimmed eyes, saw the mighty
+Milky-way. Remembering what it was—what countless systems there swept
+space like a soft trace of light—I felt the might and strength of God.
+Sure was I of His efficiency to save what He had made: convinced I grew
+that neither earth should perish, nor one of the souls it treasured. I
+turned my prayer to thanksgiving: the Source of Life was also the
+Saviour of spirits. Mr. Rochester was safe: he was God’s, and by God
+would he be guarded. I again nestled to the breast of the hill; and ere
+long in sleep forgot sorrow.
+
+But next day, Want came to me pale and bare. Long after the little
+birds had left their nests; long after bees had come in the sweet prime
+of day to gather the heath honey before the dew was dried—when the long
+morning shadows were curtailed, and the sun filled earth and sky—I got
+up, and I looked round me.
+
+What a still, hot, perfect day! What a golden desert this spreading
+moor! Everywhere sunshine. I wished I could live in it and on it. I saw
+a lizard run over the crag; I saw a bee busy among the sweet
+bilberries. I would fain at the moment have become bee or lizard, that
+I might have found fitting nutriment, permanent shelter here. But I was
+a human being, and had a human being’s wants: I must not linger where
+there was nothing to supply them. I rose; I looked back at the bed I
+had left. Hopeless of the future, I wished but this—that my Maker had
+that night thought good to require my soul of me while I slept; and
+that this weary frame, absolved by death from further conflict with
+fate, had now but to decay quietly, and mingle in peace with the soil
+of this wilderness. Life, however, was yet in my possession, with all
+its requirements, and pains, and responsibilities. The burden must be
+carried; the want provided for; the suffering endured; the
+responsibility fulfilled. I set out.
+
+Whitcross regained, I followed a road which led from the sun, now
+fervent and high. By no other circumstance had I will to decide my
+choice. I walked a long time, and when I thought I had nearly done
+enough, and might conscientiously yield to the fatigue that almost
+overpowered me—might relax this forced action, and, sitting down on a
+stone I saw near, submit resistlessly to the apathy that clogged heart
+and limb—I heard a bell chime—a church bell.
+
+I turned in the direction of the sound, and there, amongst the romantic
+hills, whose changes and aspect I had ceased to note an hour ago, I saw
+a hamlet and a spire. All the valley at my right hand was full of
+pasture-fields, and cornfields, and wood; and a glittering stream ran
+zig-zag through the varied shades of green, the mellowing grain, the
+sombre woodland, the clear and sunny lea. Recalled by the rumbling of
+wheels to the road before me, I saw a heavily-laden waggon labouring up
+the hill, and not far beyond were two cows and their drover. Human life
+and human labour were near. I must struggle on: strive to live and bend
+to toil like the rest.
+
+About two o’clock P.M. I entered the village. At the bottom of its one
+street there was a little shop with some cakes of bread in the window.
+I coveted a cake of bread. With that refreshment I could perhaps regain
+a degree of energy: without it, it would be difficult to proceed. The
+wish to have some strength and some vigour returned to me as soon as I
+was amongst my fellow-beings. I felt it would be degrading to faint
+with hunger on the causeway of a hamlet. Had I nothing about me I could
+offer in exchange for one of these rolls? I considered. I had a small
+silk handkerchief tied round my throat; I had my gloves. I could hardly
+tell how men and women in extremities of destitution proceeded. I did
+not know whether either of these articles would be accepted: probably
+they would not; but I must try.
+
+I entered the shop: a woman was there. Seeing a respectably-dressed
+person, a lady as she supposed, she came forward with civility. How
+could she serve me? I was seized with shame: my tongue would not utter
+the request I had prepared. I dared not offer her the half-worn gloves,
+the creased handkerchief: besides, I felt it would be absurd. I only
+begged permission to sit down a moment, as I was tired. Disappointed in
+the expectation of a customer, she coolly acceded to my request. She
+pointed to a seat; I sank into it. I felt sorely urged to weep; but
+conscious how unseasonable such a manifestation would be, I restrained
+it. Soon I asked her “if there were any dressmaker or plain-workwoman
+in the village?”
+
+“Yes; two or three. Quite as many as there was employment for.”
+
+I reflected. I was driven to the point now. I was brought face to face
+with Necessity. I stood in the position of one without a resource,
+without a friend, without a coin. I must do something. What? I must
+apply somewhere. Where?
+
+“Did she know of any place in the neighbourhood where a servant was
+wanted?”
+
+“Nay; she couldn’t say.”
+
+“What was the chief trade in this place? What did most of the people
+do?”
+
+“Some were farm labourers; a good deal worked at Mr. Oliver’s
+needle-factory, and at the foundry.”
+
+“Did Mr. Oliver employ women?”
+
+“Nay; it was men’s work.”
+
+“And what do the women do?”
+
+“I knawn’t,” was the answer. “Some does one thing, and some another.
+Poor folk mun get on as they can.”
+
+She seemed to be tired of my questions: and, indeed, what claim had I
+to importune her? A neighbour or two came in; my chair was evidently
+wanted. I took leave.
+
+I passed up the street, looking as I went at all the houses to the
+right hand and to the left; but I could discover no pretext, nor see an
+inducement to enter any. I rambled round the hamlet, going sometimes to
+a little distance and returning again, for an hour or more. Much
+exhausted, and suffering greatly now for want of food, I turned aside
+into a lane and sat down under the hedge. Ere many minutes had elapsed,
+I was again on my feet, however, and again searching something—a
+resource, or at least an informant. A pretty little house stood at the
+top of the lane, with a garden before it, exquisitely neat and
+brilliantly blooming. I stopped at it. What business had I to approach
+the white door or touch the glittering knocker? In what way could it
+possibly be the interest of the inhabitants of that dwelling to serve
+me? Yet I drew near and knocked. A mild-looking, cleanly-attired young
+woman opened the door. In such a voice as might be expected from a
+hopeless heart and fainting frame—a voice wretchedly low and
+faltering—I asked if a servant was wanted here?
+
+“No,” said she; “we do not keep a servant.”
+
+“Can you tell me where I could get employment of any kind?” I
+continued. “I am a stranger, without acquaintance in this place. I want
+some work: no matter what.”
+
+But it was not her business to think for me, or to seek a place for me:
+besides, in her eyes, how doubtful must have appeared my character,
+position, tale. She shook her head, she “was sorry she could give me no
+information,” and the white door closed, quite gently and civilly: but
+it shut me out. If she had held it open a little longer, I believe I
+should have begged a piece of bread; for I was now brought low.
+
+I could not bear to return to the sordid village, where, besides, no
+prospect of aid was visible. I should have longed rather to deviate to
+a wood I saw not far off, which appeared in its thick shade to offer
+inviting shelter; but I was so sick, so weak, so gnawed with nature’s
+cravings, instinct kept me roaming round abodes where there was a
+chance of food. Solitude would be no solitude—rest no rest—while the
+vulture, hunger, thus sank beak and talons in my side.
+
+I drew near houses; I left them, and came back again, and again I
+wandered away: always repelled by the consciousness of having no claim
+to ask—no right to expect interest in my isolated lot. Meantime, the
+afternoon advanced, while I thus wandered about like a lost and
+starving dog. In crossing a field, I saw the church spire before me: I
+hastened towards it. Near the churchyard, and in the middle of a
+garden, stood a well-built though small house, which I had no doubt was
+the parsonage. I remembered that strangers who arrive at a place where
+they have no friends, and who want employment, sometimes apply to the
+clergyman for introduction and aid. It is the clergyman’s function to
+help—at least with advice—those who wished to help themselves. I seemed
+to have something like a right to seek counsel here. Renewing then my
+courage, and gathering my feeble remains of strength, I pushed on. I
+reached the house, and knocked at the kitchen-door. An old woman
+opened: I asked was this the parsonage?
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Was the clergyman in?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Would he be in soon?”
+
+“No, he was gone from home.”
+
+“To a distance?”
+
+“Not so far—happen three mile. He had been called away by the sudden
+death of his father: he was at Marsh End now, and would very likely
+stay there a fortnight longer.”
+
+“Was there any lady of the house?”
+
+“Nay, there was naught but her, and she was housekeeper;” and of her,
+reader, I could not bear to ask the relief for want of which I was
+sinking; I could not yet beg; and again I crawled away.
+
+Once more I took off my handkerchief—once more I thought of the cakes
+of bread in the little shop. Oh, for but a crust! for but one mouthful
+to allay the pang of famine! Instinctively I turned my face again to
+the village; I found the shop again, and I went in; and though others
+were there besides the woman I ventured the request—“Would she give me
+a roll for this handkerchief?”
+
+She looked at me with evident suspicion: “Nay, she never sold stuff i’
+that way.”
+
+Almost desperate, I asked for half a cake; she again refused. “How
+could she tell where I had got the handkerchief?” she said.
+
+“Would she take my gloves?”
+
+“No! what could she do with them?”
+
+Reader, it is not pleasant to dwell on these details. Some say there is
+enjoyment in looking back to painful experience past; but at this day I
+can scarcely bear to review the times to which I allude: the moral
+degradation, blent with the physical suffering, form too distressing a
+recollection ever to be willingly dwelt on. I blamed none of those who
+repulsed me. I felt it was what was to be expected, and what could not
+be helped: an ordinary beggar is frequently an object of suspicion; a
+well-dressed beggar inevitably so. To be sure, what I begged was
+employment; but whose business was it to provide me with employment?
+Not, certainly, that of persons who saw me then for the first time, and
+who knew nothing about my character. And as to the woman who would not
+take my handkerchief in exchange for her bread, why, she was right, if
+the offer appeared to her sinister or the exchange unprofitable. Let me
+condense now. I am sick of the subject.
+
+A little before dark I passed a farm-house, at the open door of which
+the farmer was sitting, eating his supper of bread and cheese. I
+stopped and said—
+
+“Will you give me a piece of bread? for I am very hungry.” He cast on
+me a glance of surprise; but without answering, he cut a thick slice
+from his loaf, and gave it to me. I imagine he did not think I was a
+beggar, but only an eccentric sort of lady, who had taken a fancy to
+his brown loaf. As soon as I was out of sight of his house, I sat down
+and ate it.
+
+I could not hope to get a lodging under a roof, and sought it in the
+wood I have before alluded to. But my night was wretched, my rest
+broken: the ground was damp, the air cold: besides, intruders passed
+near me more than once, and I had again and again to change my
+quarters: no sense of safety or tranquillity befriended me. Towards
+morning it rained; the whole of the following day was wet. Do not ask
+me, reader, to give a minute account of that day; as before, I sought
+work; as before, I was repulsed; as before, I starved; but once did
+food pass my lips. At the door of a cottage I saw a little girl about
+to throw a mess of cold porridge into a pig trough. “Will you give me
+that?” I asked.
+
+
+“Will you give me that?” I asked
+
+She stared at me. “Mother!” she exclaimed, “there is a woman wants me
+to give her these porridge.”
+
+“Well lass,” replied a voice within, “give it her if she’s a beggar. T’
+pig doesn’t want it.”
+
+The girl emptied the stiffened mould into my hand, and I devoured it
+ravenously.
+
+As the wet twilight deepened, I stopped in a solitary bridle-path,
+which I had been pursuing an hour or more.
+
+“My strength is quite failing me,” I said in a soliloquy. “I feel I
+cannot go much farther. Shall I be an outcast again this night? While
+the rain descends so, must I lay my head on the cold, drenched ground?
+I fear I cannot do otherwise: for who will receive me? But it will be
+very dreadful, with this feeling of hunger, faintness, chill, and this
+sense of desolation—this total prostration of hope. In all likelihood,
+though, I should die before morning. And why cannot I reconcile myself
+to the prospect of death? Why do I struggle to retain a valueless life?
+Because I know, or believe, Mr. Rochester is living: and then, to die
+of want and cold is a fate to which nature cannot submit passively. Oh,
+Providence! sustain me a little longer! Aid!—direct me!”
+
+My glazed eye wandered over the dim and misty landscape. I saw I had
+strayed far from the village: it was quite out of sight. The very
+cultivation surrounding it had disappeared. I had, by cross-ways and
+by-paths, once more drawn near the tract of moorland; and now, only a
+few fields, almost as wild and unproductive as the heath from which
+they were scarcely reclaimed, lay between me and the dusky hill.
+
+“Well, I would rather die yonder than in a street or on a frequented
+road,” I reflected. “And far better that crows and ravens—if any ravens
+there be in these regions—should pick my flesh from my bones, than that
+they should be prisoned in a workhouse coffin and moulder in a pauper’s
+grave.”
+
+To the hill, then, I turned. I reached it. It remained now only to find
+a hollow where I could lie down, and feel at least hidden, if not
+secure. But all the surface of the waste looked level. It showed no
+variation but of tint: green, where rush and moss overgrew the marshes;
+black, where the dry soil bore only heath. Dark as it was getting, I
+could still see these changes, though but as mere alternations of light
+and shade; for colour had faded with the daylight.
+
+My eye still roved over the sullen swell and along the moor-edge,
+vanishing amidst the wildest scenery, when at one dim point, far in
+among the marshes and the ridges, a light sprang up. “That is an _ignis
+fatuus_,” was my first thought; and I expected it would soon vanish. It
+burnt on, however, quite steadily, neither receding nor advancing. “Is
+it, then, a bonfire just kindled?” I questioned. I watched to see
+whether it would spread: but no; as it did not diminish, so it did not
+enlarge. “It may be a candle in a house,” I then conjectured; “but if
+so, I can never reach it. It is much too far away: and were it within a
+yard of me, what would it avail? I should but knock at the door to have
+it shut in my face.”
+
+And I sank down where I stood, and hid my face against the ground. I
+lay still a while: the night-wind swept over the hill and over me, and
+died moaning in the distance; the rain fell fast, wetting me afresh to
+the skin. Could I but have stiffened to the still frost—the friendly
+numbness of death—it might have pelted on; I should not have felt it;
+but my yet living flesh shuddered at its chilling influence. I rose ere
+long.
+
+The light was yet there, shining dim but constant through the rain. I
+tried to walk again: I dragged my exhausted limbs slowly towards it. It
+led me aslant over the hill, through a wide bog, which would have been
+impassable in winter, and was splashy and shaking even now, in the
+height of summer. Here I fell twice; but as often I rose and rallied my
+faculties. This light was my forlorn hope: I must gain it.
+
+Having crossed the marsh, I saw a trace of white over the moor. I
+approached it; it was a road or a track: it led straight up to the
+light, which now beamed from a sort of knoll, amidst a clump of
+trees—firs, apparently, from what I could distinguish of the character
+of their forms and foliage through the gloom. My star vanished as I
+drew near: some obstacle had intervened between me and it. I put out my
+hand to feel the dark mass before me: I discriminated the rough stones
+of a low wall—above it, something like palisades, and within, a high
+and prickly hedge. I groped on. Again a whitish object gleamed before
+me: it was a gate—a wicket; it moved on its hinges as I touched it. On
+each side stood a sable bush—holly or yew.
+
+Entering the gate and passing the shrubs, the silhouette of a house
+rose to view, black, low, and rather long; but the guiding light shone
+nowhere. All was obscurity. Were the inmates retired to rest? I feared
+it must be so. In seeking the door, I turned an angle: there shot out
+the friendly gleam again, from the lozenged panes of a very small
+latticed window, within a foot of the ground, made still smaller by the
+growth of ivy or some other creeping plant, whose leaves clustered
+thick over the portion of the house wall in which it was set. The
+aperture was so screened and narrow, that curtain or shutter had been
+deemed unnecessary; and when I stooped down and put aside the spray of
+foliage shooting over it, I could see all within. I could see clearly a
+room with a sanded floor, clean scoured; a dresser of walnut, with
+pewter plates ranged in rows, reflecting the redness and radiance of a
+glowing peat-fire. I could see a clock, a white deal table, some
+chairs. The candle, whose ray had been my beacon, burnt on the table;
+and by its light an elderly woman, somewhat rough-looking, but
+scrupulously clean, like all about her, was knitting a stocking.
+
+I noticed these objects cursorily only—in them there was nothing
+extraordinary. A group of more interest appeared near the hearth,
+sitting still amidst the rosy peace and warmth suffusing it. Two young,
+graceful women—ladies in every point—sat, one in a low rocking-chair,
+the other on a lower stool; both wore deep mourning of crape and
+bombazeen, which sombre garb singularly set off very fair necks and
+faces: a large old pointer dog rested its massive head on the knee of
+one girl—in the lap of the other was cushioned a black cat.
+
+A strange place was this humble kitchen for such occupants! Who were
+they? They could not be the daughters of the elderly person at the
+table; for she looked like a rustic, and they were all delicacy and
+cultivation. I had nowhere seen such faces as theirs: and yet, as I
+gazed on them, I seemed intimate with every lineament. I cannot call
+them handsome—they were too pale and grave for the word: as they each
+bent over a book, they looked thoughtful almost to severity. A stand
+between them supported a second candle and two great volumes, to which
+they frequently referred, comparing them, seemingly, with the smaller
+books they held in their hands, like people consulting a dictionary to
+aid them in the task of translation. This scene was as silent as if all
+the figures had been shadows and the firelit apartment a picture: so
+hushed was it, I could hear the cinders fall from the grate, the clock
+tick in its obscure corner; and I even fancied I could distinguish the
+click-click of the woman’s knitting-needles. When, therefore, a voice
+broke the strange stillness at last, it was audible enough to me.
+
+“Listen, Diana,” said one of the absorbed students; “Franz and old
+Daniel are together in the night-time, and Franz is telling a dream
+from which he has awakened in terror—listen!” And in a low voice she
+read something, of which not one word was intelligible to me; for it
+was in an unknown tongue—neither French nor Latin. Whether it were
+Greek or German I could not tell.
+
+“That is strong,” she said, when she had finished: “I relish it.” The
+other girl, who had lifted her head to listen to her sister, repeated,
+while she gazed at the fire, a line of what had been read. At a later
+day, I knew the language and the book; therefore, I will here quote the
+line: though, when I first heard it, it was only like a stroke on
+sounding brass to me—conveying no meaning:—
+
+“‘Da trat hervor Einer, anzusehen wie die Sternen Nacht.’ Good! good!”
+she exclaimed, while her dark and deep eye sparkled. “There you have a
+dim and mighty archangel fitly set before you! The line is worth a
+hundred pages of fustian. ‘Ich wäge die Gedanken in der Schale meines
+Zornes und die Werke mit dem Gewichte meines Grimms.’ I like it!”
+
+Both were again silent.
+
+“Is there ony country where they talk i’ that way?” asked the old
+woman, looking up from her knitting.
+
+“Yes, Hannah—a far larger country than England, where they talk in no
+other way.”
+
+“Well, for sure case, I knawn’t how they can understand t’ one t’other:
+and if either o’ ye went there, ye could tell what they said, I guess?”
+
+“We could probably tell something of what they said, but not all—for we
+are not as clever as you think us, Hannah. We don’t speak German, and
+we cannot read it without a dictionary to help us.”
+
+“And what good does it do you?”
+
+“We mean to teach it some time—or at least the elements, as they say;
+and then we shall get more money than we do now.”
+
+“Varry like: but give ower studying; ye’ve done enough for to-night.”
+
+“I think we have: at least I’m tired. Mary, are you?”
+
+“Mortally: after all, it’s tough work fagging away at a language with
+no master but a lexicon.”
+
+“It is, especially such a language as this crabbed but glorious
+Deutsch. I wonder when St. John will come home.”
+
+“Surely he will not be long now: it is just ten (looking at a little
+gold watch she drew from her girdle). It rains fast, Hannah: will you
+have the goodness to look at the fire in the parlour?”
+
+The woman rose: she opened a door, through which I dimly saw a passage:
+soon I heard her stir a fire in an inner room; she presently came back.
+
+“Ah, childer!” said she, “it fair troubles me to go into yond’ room
+now: it looks so lonesome wi’ the chair empty and set back in a
+corner.”
+
+She wiped her eyes with her apron: the two girls, grave before, looked
+sad now.
+
+“But he is in a better place,” continued Hannah: “we shouldn’t wish him
+here again. And then, nobody need to have a quieter death nor he had.”
+
+“You say he never mentioned us?” inquired one of the ladies.
+
+“He hadn’t time, bairn: he was gone in a minute, was your father. He
+had been a bit ailing like the day before, but naught to signify; and
+when Mr. St. John asked if he would like either o’ ye to be sent for,
+he fair laughed at him. He began again with a bit of a heaviness in his
+head the next day—that is, a fortnight sin’—and he went to sleep and
+niver wakened: he wor a’most stark when your brother went into t’
+chamber and fand him. Ah, childer! that’s t’ last o’ t’ old stock—for
+ye and Mr. St. John is like of different soart to them ’at’s gone; for
+all your mother wor mich i’ your way, and a’most as book-learned. She
+wor the pictur’ o’ ye, Mary: Diana is more like your father.”
+
+I thought them so similar I could not tell where the old servant (for
+such I now concluded her to be) saw the difference. Both were fair
+complexioned and slenderly made; both possessed faces full of
+distinction and intelligence. One, to be sure, had hair a shade darker
+than the other, and there was a difference in their style of wearing
+it; Mary’s pale brown locks were parted and braided smooth: Diana’s
+duskier tresses covered her neck with thick curls. The clock struck
+ten.
+
+“Ye’ll want your supper, I am sure,” observed Hannah; “and so will Mr.
+St. John when he comes in.”
+
+And she proceeded to prepare the meal. The ladies rose; they seemed
+about to withdraw to the parlour. Till this moment, I had been so
+intent on watching them, their appearance and conversation had excited
+in me so keen an interest, I had half-forgotten my own wretched
+position: now it recurred to me. More desolate, more desperate than
+ever, it seemed from contrast. And how impossible did it appear to
+touch the inmates of this house with concern on my behalf; to make them
+believe in the truth of my wants and woes—to induce them to vouchsafe a
+rest for my wanderings! As I groped out the door, and knocked at it
+hesitatingly, I felt that last idea to be a mere chimera. Hannah
+opened.
+
+“What do you want?” she inquired, in a voice of surprise, as she
+surveyed me by the light of the candle she held.
+
+“May I speak to your mistresses?” I said.
+
+“You had better tell me what you have to say to them. Where do you come
+from?”
+
+“I am a stranger.”
+
+“What is your business here at this hour?”
+
+“I want a night’s shelter in an out-house or anywhere, and a morsel of
+bread to eat.”
+
+Distrust, the very feeling I dreaded, appeared in Hannah’s face. “I’ll
+give you a piece of bread,” she said, after a pause; “but we can’t take
+in a vagrant to lodge. It isn’t likely.”
+
+“Do let me speak to your mistresses.”
+
+“No, not I. What can they do for you? You should not be roving about
+now; it looks very ill.”
+
+“But where shall I go if you drive me away? What shall I do?”
+
+“Oh, I’ll warrant you know where to go and what to do. Mind you don’t
+do wrong, that’s all. Here is a penny; now go—”
+
+“A penny cannot feed me, and I have no strength to go farther. Don’t
+shut the door:—oh, don’t, for God’s sake!”
+
+“I must; the rain is driving in—”
+
+“Tell the young ladies. Let me see them—”
+
+“Indeed, I will not. You are not what you ought to be, or you wouldn’t
+make such a noise. Move off.”
+
+“But I must die if I am turned away.”
+
+“Not you. I’m fear’d you have some ill plans agate, that bring you
+about folk’s houses at this time o’ night. If you’ve any
+followers—housebreakers or such like—anywhere near, you may tell them
+we are not by ourselves in the house; we have a gentleman, and dogs,
+and guns.” Here the honest but inflexible servant clapped the door to
+and bolted it within.
+
+This was the climax. A pang of exquisite suffering—a throe of true
+despair—rent and heaved my heart. Worn out, indeed, I was; not another
+step could I stir. I sank on the wet doorstep: I groaned—I wrung my
+hands—I wept in utter anguish. Oh, this spectre of death! Oh, this last
+hour, approaching in such horror! Alas, this isolation—this banishment
+from my kind! Not only the anchor of hope, but the footing of fortitude
+was gone—at least for a moment; but the last I soon endeavoured to
+regain.
+
+“I can but die,” I said, “and I believe in God. Let me try to wait His
+will in silence.”
+
+These words I not only thought, but uttered; and thrusting back all my
+misery into my heart, I made an effort to compel it to remain
+there—dumb and still.
+
+“All men must die,” said a voice quite close at hand; “but all are not
+condemned to meet a lingering and premature doom, such as yours would
+be if you perished here of want.”
+
+“Who or what speaks?” I asked, terrified at the unexpected sound, and
+incapable now of deriving from any occurrence a hope of aid. A form was
+near—what form, the pitch-dark night and my enfeebled vision prevented
+me from distinguishing. With a loud long knock, the new-comer appealed
+to the door.
+
+“Is it you, Mr. St. John?” cried Hannah.
+
+“Yes—yes; open quickly.”
+
+“Well, how wet and cold you must be, such a wild night as it is! Come
+in—your sisters are quite uneasy about you, and I believe there are bad
+folks about. There has been a beggar-woman—I declare she is not gone
+yet!—laid down there. Get up! for shame! Move off, I say!”
+
+“Hush, Hannah! I have a word to say to the woman. You have done your
+duty in excluding, now let me do mine in admitting her. I was near, and
+listened to both you and her. I think this is a peculiar case—I must at
+least examine into it. Young woman, rise, and pass before me into the
+house.”
+
+
+Hush, Hannah; I have a word to say to the woman
+
+With difficulty I obeyed him. Presently I stood within that clean,
+bright kitchen—on the very hearth—trembling, sickening; conscious of an
+aspect in the last degree ghastly, wild, and weather-beaten. The two
+ladies, their brother, Mr. St. John, the old servant, were all gazing
+at me.
+
+“St. John, who is it?” I heard one ask.
+
+“I cannot tell: I found her at the door,” was the reply.
+
+“She does look white,” said Hannah.
+
+“As white as clay or death,” was responded. “She will fall: let her
+sit.”
+
+And indeed my head swam: I dropped, but a chair received me. I still
+possessed my senses, though just now I could not speak.
+
+“Perhaps a little water would restore her. Hannah, fetch some. But she
+is worn to nothing. How very thin, and how very bloodless!”
+
+“A mere spectre!”
+
+“Is she ill, or only famished?”
+
+“Famished, I think. Hannah, is that milk? Give it me, and a piece of
+bread.”
+
+Diana (I knew her by the long curls which I saw drooping between me and
+the fire as she bent over me) broke some bread, dipped it in milk, and
+put it to my lips. Her face was near mine: I saw there was pity in it,
+and I felt sympathy in her hurried breathing. In her simple words, too,
+the same balm-like emotion spoke: “Try to eat.”
+
+“Yes—try,” repeated Mary gently; and Mary’s hand removed my sodden
+bonnet and lifted my head. I tasted what they offered me: feebly at
+first, eagerly soon.
+
+“Not too much at first—restrain her,” said the brother; “she has had
+enough.” And he withdrew the cup of milk and the plate of bread.
+
+“A little more, St. John—look at the avidity in her eyes.”
+
+“No more at present, sister. Try if she can speak now—ask her her
+name.”
+
+I felt I could speak, and I answered—“My name is Jane Elliott.” Anxious
+as ever to avoid discovery, I had before resolved to assume an _alias_.
+
+“And where do you live? Where are your friends?”
+
+I was silent.
+
+“Can we send for any one you know?”
+
+I shook my head.
+
+“What account can you give of yourself?”
+
+Somehow, now that I had once crossed the threshold of this house, and
+once was brought face to face with its owners, I felt no longer
+outcast, vagrant, and disowned by the wide world. I dared to put off
+the mendicant—to resume my natural manner and character. I began once
+more to know myself; and when Mr. St. John demanded an account—which at
+present I was far too weak to render—I said after a brief pause—
+
+“Sir, I can give you no details to-night.”
+
+“But what, then,” said he, “do you expect me to do for you?”
+
+“Nothing,” I replied. My strength sufficed for but short answers. Diana
+took the word—
+
+“Do you mean,” she asked, “that we have now given you what aid you
+require? and that we may dismiss you to the moor and the rainy night?”
+
+I looked at her. She had, I thought, a remarkable countenance, instinct
+both with power and goodness. I took sudden courage. Answering her
+compassionate gaze with a smile, I said—“I will trust you. If I were a
+masterless and stray dog, I know that you would not turn me from your
+hearth to-night: as it is, I really have no fear. Do with me and for me
+as you like; but excuse me from much discourse—my breath is short—I
+feel a spasm when I speak.” All three surveyed me, and all three were
+silent.
+
+“Hannah,” said Mr. St. John, at last, “let her sit there at present,
+and ask her no questions; in ten minutes more, give her the remainder
+of that milk and bread. Mary and Diana, let us go into the parlour and
+talk the matter over.”
+
+They withdrew. Very soon one of the ladies returned—I could not tell
+which. A kind of pleasant stupor was stealing over me as I sat by the
+genial fire. In an undertone she gave some directions to Hannah. Ere
+long, with the servant’s aid, I contrived to mount a staircase; my
+dripping clothes were removed; soon a warm, dry bed received me. I
+thanked God—experienced amidst unutterable exhaustion a glow of
+grateful joy—and slept.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+The recollection of about three days and nights succeeding this is very
+dim in my mind. I can recall some sensations felt in that interval; but
+few thoughts framed, and no actions performed. I knew I was in a small
+room and in a narrow bed. To that bed I seemed to have grown; I lay on
+it motionless as a stone; and to have torn me from it would have been
+almost to kill me. I took no note of the lapse of time—of the change
+from morning to noon, from noon to evening. I observed when any one
+entered or left the apartment: I could even tell who they were; I could
+understand what was said when the speaker stood near to me; but I could
+not answer; to open my lips or move my limbs was equally impossible.
+Hannah, the servant, was my most frequent visitor. Her coming disturbed
+me. I had a feeling that she wished me away: that she did not
+understand me or my circumstances; that she was prejudiced against me.
+Diana and Mary appeared in the chamber once or twice a day. They would
+whisper sentences of this sort at my bedside—
+
+“It is very well we took her in.”
+
+“Yes; she would certainly have been found dead at the door in the
+morning had she been left out all night. I wonder what she has gone
+through?”
+
+“Strange hardships, I imagine—poor, emaciated, pallid wanderer!”
+
+“She is not an uneducated person, I should think, by her manner of
+speaking; her accent was quite pure; and the clothes she took off,
+though splashed and wet, were little worn and fine.”
+
+“She has a peculiar face; fleshless and haggard as it is, I rather like
+it; and when in good health and animated, I can fancy her physiognomy
+would be agreeable.”
+
+Never once in their dialogues did I hear a syllable of regret at the
+hospitality they had extended to me, or of suspicion of, or aversion
+to, myself. I was comforted.
+
+Mr. St. John came but once: he looked at me, and said my state of
+lethargy was the result of reaction from excessive and protracted
+fatigue. He pronounced it needless to send for a doctor: nature, he was
+sure, would manage best, left to herself. He said every nerve had been
+overstrained in some way, and the whole system must sleep torpid a
+while. There was no disease. He imagined my recovery would be rapid
+enough when once commenced. These opinions he delivered in a few words,
+in a quiet, low voice; and added, after a pause, in the tone of a man
+little accustomed to expansive comment, “Rather an unusual physiognomy;
+certainly, not indicative of vulgarity or degradation.”
+
+“Far otherwise,” responded Diana. “To speak truth, St. John, my heart
+rather warms to the poor little soul. I wish we may be able to benefit
+her permanently.”
+
+“That is hardly likely,” was the reply. “You will find she is some
+young lady who has had a misunderstanding with her friends, and has
+probably injudiciously left them. We may, perhaps, succeed in restoring
+her to them, if she is not obstinate: but I trace lines of force in her
+face which make me sceptical of her tractability.” He stood considering
+me some minutes; then added, “She looks sensible, but not at all
+handsome.”
+
+“She is so ill, St. John.”
+
+“Ill or well, she would always be plain. The grace and harmony of
+beauty are quite wanting in those features.”
+
+On the third day I was better; on the fourth, I could speak, move, rise
+in bed, and turn. Hannah had brought me some gruel and dry toast,
+about, as I supposed, the dinner-hour. I had eaten with relish: the
+food was good—void of the feverish flavour which had hitherto poisoned
+what I had swallowed. When she left me, I felt comparatively strong and
+revived: ere long satiety of repose and desire for action stirred me. I
+wished to rise; but what could I put on? Only my damp and bemired
+apparel; in which I had slept on the ground and fallen in the marsh. I
+felt ashamed to appear before my benefactors so clad. I was spared the
+humiliation.
+
+On a chair by the bedside were all my own things, clean and dry. My
+black silk frock hung against the wall. The traces of the bog were
+removed from it; the creases left by the wet smoothed out: it was quite
+decent. My very shoes and stockings were purified and rendered
+presentable. There were the means of washing in the room, and a comb
+and brush to smooth my hair. After a weary process, and resting every
+five minutes, I succeeded in dressing myself. My clothes hung loose on
+me; for I was much wasted, but I covered deficiencies with a shawl, and
+once more, clean and respectable looking—no speck of the dirt, no trace
+of the disorder I so hated, and which seemed so to degrade me, left—I
+crept down a stone staircase with the aid of the banisters, to a narrow
+low passage, and found my way presently to the kitchen.
+
+It was full of the fragrance of new bread and the warmth of a generous
+fire. Hannah was baking. Prejudices, it is well known, are most
+difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been
+loosened or fertilised by education: they grow there, firm as weeds
+among stones. Hannah had been cold and stiff, indeed, at the first:
+latterly she had begun to relent a little; and when she saw me come in
+tidy and well-dressed, she even smiled.
+
+“What, you have got up!” she said. “You are better, then. You may sit
+you down in my chair on the hearthstone, if you will.”
+
+She pointed to the rocking-chair: I took it. She bustled about,
+examining me every now and then with the corner of her eye. Turning to
+me, as she took some loaves from the oven, she asked bluntly—
+
+“Did you ever go a-begging afore you came here?”
+
+I was indignant for a moment; but remembering that anger was out of the
+question, and that I had indeed appeared as a beggar to her, I answered
+quietly, but still not without a certain marked firmness—
+
+“You are mistaken in supposing me a beggar. I am no beggar; any more
+than yourself or your young ladies.”
+
+After a pause she said, “I dunnut understand that: you’ve like no
+house, nor no brass, I guess?”
+
+“The want of house or brass (by which I suppose you mean money) does
+not make a beggar in your sense of the word.”
+
+“Are you book-learned?” she inquired presently.
+
+“Yes, very.”
+
+“But you’ve never been to a boarding-school?”
+
+“I was at a boarding-school eight years.”
+
+She opened her eyes wide. “Whatever cannot ye keep yourself for, then?”
+
+“I have kept myself; and, I trust, shall keep myself again. What are
+you going to do with these gooseberries?” I inquired, as she brought
+out a basket of the fruit.
+
+“Mak’ ’em into pies.”
+
+“Give them to me and I’ll pick them.”
+
+“Nay; I dunnut want ye to do nought.”
+
+“But I must do something. Let me have them.”
+
+She consented; and she even brought me a clean towel to spread over my
+dress, “lest,” as she said, “I should mucky it.”
+
+“Ye’ve not been used to sarvant’s wark, I see by your hands,” she
+remarked. “Happen ye’ve been a dressmaker?”
+
+“No, you are wrong. And now, never mind what I have been: don’t trouble
+your head further about me; but tell me the name of the house where we
+are.”
+
+“Some calls it Marsh End, and some calls it Moor House.”
+
+“And the gentleman who lives here is called Mr. St. John?”
+
+“Nay; he doesn’t live here: he is only staying a while. When he is at
+home, he is in his own parish at Morton.”
+
+“That village a few miles off?
+
+“Aye.”
+
+“And what is he?”
+
+“He is a parson.”
+
+I remembered the answer of the old housekeeper at the parsonage, when I
+had asked to see the clergyman. “This, then, was his father’s
+residence?”
+
+“Aye; old Mr. Rivers lived here, and his father, and grandfather, and
+gurt (great) grandfather afore him.”
+
+“The name, then, of that gentleman, is Mr. St. John Rivers?”
+
+“Aye; St. John is like his kirstened name.”
+
+“And his sisters are called Diana and Mary Rivers?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Their father is dead?”
+
+“Dead three weeks sin’ of a stroke.”
+
+“They have no mother?”
+
+“The mistress has been dead this mony a year.”
+
+“Have you lived with the family long?”
+
+“I’ve lived here thirty year. I nursed them all three.”
+
+“That proves you must have been an honest and faithful servant. I will
+say so much for you, though you have had the incivility to call me a
+beggar.”
+
+She again regarded me with a surprised stare. “I believe,” she said, “I
+was quite mista’en in my thoughts of you: but there is so mony cheats
+goes about, you mun forgie me.”
+
+“And though,” I continued, rather severely, “you wished to turn me from
+the door, on a night when you should not have shut out a dog.”
+
+“Well, it was hard: but what can a body do? I thought more o’ th’
+childer nor of mysel: poor things! They’ve like nobody to tak’ care on
+’em but me. I’m like to look sharpish.”
+
+I maintained a grave silence for some minutes.
+
+“You munnut think too hardly of me,” she again remarked.
+
+“But I do think hardly of you,” I said; “and I’ll tell you why—not so
+much because you refused to give me shelter, or regarded me as an
+impostor, as because you just now made it a species of reproach that I
+had no ‘brass’ and no house. Some of the best people that ever lived
+have been as destitute as I am; and if you are a Christian, you ought
+not to consider poverty a crime.”
+
+“No more I ought,” said she: “Mr. St. John tells me so too; and I see I
+wor wrang—but I’ve clear a different notion on you now to what I had.
+You look a raight down dacent little crater.”
+
+“That will do—I forgive you now. Shake hands.”
+
+She put her floury and horny hand into mine; another and heartier smile
+illumined her rough face, and from that moment we were friends.
+
+Hannah was evidently fond of talking. While I picked the fruit, and she
+made the paste for the pies, she proceeded to give me sundry details
+about her deceased master and mistress, and “the childer,” as she
+called the young people.
+
+Old Mr. Rivers, she said, was a plain man enough, but a gentleman, and
+of as ancient a family as could be found. Marsh End had belonged to the
+Rivers ever since it was a house: and it was, she affirmed, “aboon two
+hundred year old—for all it looked but a small, humble place, naught to
+compare wi’ Mr. Oliver’s grand hall down i’ Morton Vale. But she could
+remember Bill Oliver’s father a journeyman needlemaker; and th’ Rivers
+wor gentry i’ th’ owd days o’ th’ Henrys, as onybody might see by
+looking into th’ registers i’ Morton Church vestry.” Still, she
+allowed, “the owd maister was like other folk—naught mich out o’ t’
+common way: stark mad o’ shooting, and farming, and sich like.” The
+mistress was different. She was a great reader, and studied a deal; and
+the “bairns” had taken after her. There was nothing like them in these
+parts, nor ever had been; they had liked learning, all three, almost
+from the time they could speak; and they had always been “of a mak’ of
+their own.” Mr. St. John, when he grew up, would go to college and be a
+parson; and the girls, as soon as they left school, would seek places
+as governesses: for they had told her their father had some years ago
+lost a great deal of money by a man he had trusted turning bankrupt;
+and as he was now not rich enough to give them fortunes, they must
+provide for themselves. They had lived very little at home for a long
+while, and were only come now to stay a few weeks on account of their
+father’s death; but they did so like Marsh End and Morton, and all
+these moors and hills about. They had been in London, and many other
+grand towns; but they always said there was no place like home; and
+then they were so agreeable with each other—never fell out nor
+“threaped.” She did not know where there was such a family for being
+united.
+
+Having finished my task of gooseberry picking, I asked where the two
+ladies and their brother were now.
+
+“Gone over to Morton for a walk; but they would be back in half-an-hour
+to tea.”
+
+They returned within the time Hannah had allotted them: they entered by
+the kitchen door. Mr. St. John, when he saw me, merely bowed and passed
+through; the two ladies stopped: Mary, in a few words, kindly and
+calmly expressed the pleasure she felt in seeing me well enough to be
+able to come down; Diana took my hand: she shook her head at me.
+
+“You should have waited for my leave to descend,” she said. “You still
+look very pale—and so thin! Poor child!—poor girl!”
+
+Diana had a voice toned, to my ear, like the cooing of a dove. She
+possessed eyes whose gaze I delighted to encounter. Her whole face
+seemed to me full of charm. Mary’s countenance was equally
+intelligent—her features equally pretty; but her expression was more
+reserved, and her manners, though gentle, more distant. Diana looked
+and spoke with a certain authority: she had a will, evidently. It was
+my nature to feel pleasure in yielding to an authority supported like
+hers, and to bend, where my conscience and self-respect permitted, to
+an active will.
+
+“And what business have you here?” she continued. “It is not your
+place. Mary and I sit in the kitchen sometimes, because at home we like
+to be free, even to license—but you are a visitor, and must go into the
+parlour.”
+
+“I am very well here.”
+
+“Not at all, with Hannah bustling about and covering you with flour.”
+
+“Besides, the fire is too hot for you,” interposed Mary.
+
+“To be sure,” added her sister. “Come, you must be obedient.” And still
+holding my hand she made me rise, and led me into the inner room.
+
+“Sit there,” she said, placing me on the sofa, “while we take our
+things off and get the tea ready; it is another privilege we exercise
+in our little moorland home—to prepare our own meals when we are so
+inclined, or when Hannah is baking, brewing, washing, or ironing.”
+
+She closed the door, leaving me solus with Mr. St. John, who sat
+opposite, a book or newspaper in his hand. I examined first, the
+parlour, and then its occupant.
+
+The parlour was rather a small room, very plainly furnished, yet
+comfortable, because clean and neat. The old-fashioned chairs were very
+bright, and the walnut-wood table was like a looking-glass. A few
+strange, antique portraits of the men and women of other days decorated
+the stained walls; a cupboard with glass doors contained some books and
+an ancient set of china. There was no superfluous ornament in the
+room—not one modern piece of furniture, save a brace of workboxes and a
+lady’s desk in rosewood, which stood on a side-table:
+everything—including the carpet and curtains—looked at once well worn
+and well saved.
+
+Mr. St. John—sitting as still as one of the dusty pictures on the
+walls, keeping his eyes fixed on the page he perused, and his lips
+mutely sealed—was easy enough to examine. Had he been a statue instead
+of a man, he could not have been easier. He was young—perhaps from
+twenty-eight to thirty—tall, slender; his face riveted the eye; it was
+like a Greek face, very pure in outline: quite a straight, classic
+nose; quite an Athenian mouth and chin. It is seldom, indeed, an
+English face comes so near the antique models as did his. He might well
+be a little shocked at the irregularity of my lineaments, his own being
+so harmonious. His eyes were large and blue, with brown lashes; his
+high forehead, colourless as ivory, was partially streaked over by
+careless locks of fair hair.
+
+This is a gentle delineation, is it not, reader? Yet he whom it
+describes scarcely impressed one with the idea of a gentle, a yielding,
+an impressible, or even of a placid nature. Quiescent as he now sat,
+there was something about his nostril, his mouth, his brow, which, to
+my perceptions, indicated elements within either restless, or hard, or
+eager. He did not speak to me one word, nor even direct to me one
+glance, till his sisters returned. Diana, as she passed in and out, in
+the course of preparing tea, brought me a little cake, baked on the top
+of the oven.
+
+“Eat that now,” she said: “you must be hungry. Hannah says you have had
+nothing but some gruel since breakfast.”
+
+I did not refuse it, for my appetite was awakened and keen. Mr. Rivers
+now closed his book, approached the table, and, as he took a seat,
+fixed his blue pictorial-looking eyes full on me. There was an
+unceremonious directness, a searching, decided steadfastness in his
+gaze now, which told that intention, and not diffidence, had hitherto
+kept it averted from the stranger.
+
+“You are very hungry,” he said.
+
+“I am, sir.” It is my way—it always was my way, by instinct—ever to
+meet the brief with brevity, the direct with plainness.
+
+“It is well for you that a low fever has forced you to abstain for the
+last three days: there would have been danger in yielding to the
+cravings of your appetite at first. Now you may eat, though still not
+immoderately.”
+
+“I trust I shall not eat long at your expense, sir,” was my very
+clumsily-contrived, unpolished answer.
+
+“No,” he said coolly: “when you have indicated to us the residence of
+your friends, we can write to them, and you may be restored to home.”
+
+“That, I must plainly tell you, is out of my power to do; being
+absolutely without home and friends.”
+
+The three looked at me, but not distrustfully; I felt there was no
+suspicion in their glances: there was more of curiosity. I speak
+particularly of the young ladies. St. John’s eyes, though clear enough
+in a literal sense, in a figurative one were difficult to fathom. He
+seemed to use them rather as instruments to search other people’s
+thoughts, than as agents to reveal his own: the which combination of
+keenness and reserve was considerably more calculated to embarrass than
+to encourage.
+
+“Do you mean to say,” he asked, “that you are completely isolated from
+every connection?”
+
+“I do. Not a tie links me to any living thing: not a claim do I possess
+to admittance under any roof in England.”
+
+“A most singular position at your age!”
+
+Here I saw his glance directed to my hands, which were folded on the
+table before me. I wondered what he sought there: his words soon
+explained the quest.
+
+“You have never been married? You are a spinster?”
+
+Diana laughed. “Why, she can’t be above seventeen or eighteen years
+old, St. John,” said she.
+
+“I am near nineteen: but I am not married. No.”
+
+I felt a burning glow mount to my face; for bitter and agitating
+recollections were awakened by the allusion to marriage. They all saw
+the embarrassment and the emotion. Diana and Mary relieved me by
+turning their eyes elsewhere than to my crimsoned visage; but the
+colder and sterner brother continued to gaze, till the trouble he had
+excited forced out tears as well as colour.
+
+“Where did you last reside?” he now asked.
+
+“You are too inquisitive, St. John,” murmured Mary in a low voice; but
+he leaned over the table and required an answer by a second firm and
+piercing look.
+
+“The name of the place where, and of the person with whom I lived, is
+my secret,” I replied concisely.
+
+“Which, if you like, you have, in my opinion, a right to keep, both
+from St. John and every other questioner,” remarked Diana.
+
+“Yet if I know nothing about you or your history, I cannot help you,”
+he said. “And you need help, do you not?”
+
+“I need it, and I seek it so far, sir, that some true philanthropist
+will put me in the way of getting work which I can do, and the
+remuneration for which will keep me, if but in the barest necessaries
+of life.”
+
+“I know not whether I am a true philanthropist; yet I am willing to aid
+you to the utmost of my power in a purpose so honest. First, then, tell
+me what you have been accustomed to do, and what you _can_ do.”
+
+I had now swallowed my tea. I was mightily refreshed by the beverage;
+as much so as a giant with wine: it gave new tone to my unstrung
+nerves, and enabled me to address this penetrating young judge
+steadily.
+
+“Mr. Rivers,” I said, turning to him, and looking at him, as he looked
+at me, openly and without diffidence, “you and your sisters have done
+me a great service—the greatest man can do his fellow-being; you have
+rescued me, by your noble hospitality, from death. This benefit
+conferred gives you an unlimited claim on my gratitude, and a claim, to
+a certain extent, on my confidence. I will tell you as much of the
+history of the wanderer you have harboured, as I can tell without
+compromising my own peace of mind—my own security, moral and physical,
+and that of others.
+
+“I am an orphan, the daughter of a clergyman. My parents died before I
+could know them. I was brought up a dependent; educated in a charitable
+institution. I will even tell you the name of the establishment, where
+I passed six years as a pupil, and two as a teacher—Lowood Orphan
+Asylum, ——shire: you will have heard of it, Mr. Rivers?—the Rev. Robert
+Brocklehurst is the treasurer.”
+
+“I have heard of Mr. Brocklehurst, and I have seen the school.”
+
+“I left Lowood nearly a year since to become a private governess. I
+obtained a good situation, and was happy. This place I was obliged to
+leave four days before I came here. The reason of my departure I cannot
+and ought not to explain: it would be useless, dangerous, and would
+sound incredible. No blame attached to me: I am as free from
+culpability as any one of you three. Miserable I am, and must be for a
+time; for the catastrophe which drove me from a house I had found a
+paradise was of a strange and direful nature. I observed but two points
+in planning my departure—speed, secrecy: to secure these, I had to
+leave behind me everything I possessed except a small parcel; which, in
+my hurry and trouble of mind, I forgot to take out of the coach that
+brought me to Whitcross. To this neighbourhood, then, I came, quite
+destitute. I slept two nights in the open air, and wandered about two
+days without crossing a threshold: but twice in that space of time did
+I taste food; and it was when brought by hunger, exhaustion, and
+despair almost to the last gasp, that you, Mr. Rivers, forbade me to
+perish of want at your door, and took me under the shelter of your
+roof. I know all your sisters have done for me since—for I have not
+been insensible during my seeming torpor—and I owe to their
+spontaneous, genuine, genial compassion as large a debt as to your
+evangelical charity.”
+
+“Don’t make her talk any more now, St. John,” said Diana, as I paused;
+“she is evidently not yet fit for excitement. Come to the sofa and sit
+down now, Miss Elliott.”
+
+I gave an involuntary half start at hearing the _alias_: I had
+forgotten my new name. Mr. Rivers, whom nothing seemed to escape,
+noticed it at once.
+
+“You said your name was Jane Elliott?” he observed.
+
+“I did say so; and it is the name by which I think it expedient to be
+called at present, but it is not my real name, and when I hear it, it
+sounds strange to me.”
+
+“Your real name you will not give?”
+
+“No: I fear discovery above all things; and whatever disclosure would
+lead to it, I avoid.”
+
+“You are quite right, I am sure,” said Diana. “Now do, brother, let her
+be at peace a while.”
+
+But when St. John had mused a few moments he recommenced as
+imperturbably and with as much acumen as ever.
+
+“You would not like to be long dependent on our hospitality—you would
+wish, I see, to dispense as soon as may be with my sisters’ compassion,
+and, above all, with my _charity_ (I am quite sensible of the
+distinction drawn, nor do I resent it—it is just): you desire to be
+independent of us?”
+
+“I do: I have already said so. Show me how to work, or how to seek
+work: that is all I now ask; then let me go, if it be but to the
+meanest cottage; but till then, allow me to stay here: I dread another
+essay of the horrors of homeless destitution.”
+
+“Indeed you _shall_ stay here,” said Diana, putting her white hand on
+my head. “You _shall_,” repeated Mary, in the tone of undemonstrative
+sincerity which seemed natural to her.
+
+“My sisters, you see, have a pleasure in keeping you,” said Mr. St.
+John, “as they would have a pleasure in keeping and cherishing a
+half-frozen bird, some wintry wind might have driven through their
+casement. _I_ feel more inclination to put you in the way of keeping
+yourself, and shall endeavour to do so; but observe, my sphere is
+narrow. I am but the incumbent of a poor country parish: my aid must be
+of the humblest sort. And if you are inclined to despise the day of
+small things, seek some more efficient succour than such as I can
+offer.”
+
+“She has already said that she is willing to do anything honest she
+_can_ do,” answered Diana for me; “and you know, St. John, she has no
+choice of helpers: she is forced to put up with such crusty people as
+you.”
+
+“I will be a dressmaker; I will be a plain-workwoman; I will be a
+servant, a nurse-girl, if I can be no better,” I answered.
+
+“Right,” said Mr. St. John, quite coolly. “If such is your spirit, I
+promise to aid you, in my own time and way.”
+
+He now resumed the book with which he had been occupied before tea. I
+soon withdrew, for I had talked as much, and sat up as long, as my
+present strength would permit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+The more I knew of the inmates of Moor House, the better I liked them.
+In a few days I had so far recovered my health that I could sit up all
+day, and walk out sometimes. I could join with Diana and Mary in all
+their occupations; converse with them as much as they wished, and aid
+them when and where they would allow me. There was a reviving pleasure
+in this intercourse, of a kind now tasted by me for the first time—the
+pleasure arising from perfect congeniality of tastes, sentiments, and
+principles.
+
+I liked to read what they liked to read: what they enjoyed, delighted
+me; what they approved, I reverenced. They loved their sequestered
+home. I, too, in the grey, small, antique structure, with its low roof,
+its latticed casements, its mouldering walls, its avenue of aged
+firs—all grown aslant under the stress of mountain winds; its garden,
+dark with yew and holly—and where no flowers but of the hardiest
+species would bloom—found a charm both potent and permanent. They clung
+to the purple moors behind and around their dwelling—to the hollow vale
+into which the pebbly bridle-path leading from their gate descended,
+and which wound between fern-banks first, and then amongst a few of the
+wildest little pasture-fields that ever bordered a wilderness of heath,
+or gave sustenance to a flock of grey moorland sheep, with their little
+mossy-faced lambs:—they clung to this scene, I say, with a perfect
+enthusiasm of attachment. I could comprehend the feeling, and share
+both its strength and truth. I saw the fascination of the locality. I
+felt the consecration of its loneliness: my eye feasted on the outline
+of swell and sweep—on the wild colouring communicated to ridge and dell
+by moss, by heath-bell, by flower-sprinkled turf, by brilliant bracken,
+and mellow granite crag. These details were just to me what they were
+to them—so many pure and sweet sources of pleasure. The strong blast
+and the soft breeze; the rough and the halcyon day; the hours of
+sunrise and sunset; the moonlight and the clouded night, developed for
+me, in these regions, the same attraction as for them—wound round my
+faculties the same spell that entranced theirs.
+
+Indoors we agreed equally well. They were both more accomplished and
+better read than I was; but with eagerness I followed in the path of
+knowledge they had trodden before me. I devoured the books they lent
+me: then it was full satisfaction to discuss with them in the evening
+what I had perused during the day. Thought fitted thought; opinion met
+opinion: we coincided, in short, perfectly.
+
+If in our trio there was a superior and a leader, it was Diana.
+Physically, she far excelled me: she was handsome; she was vigorous. In
+her animal spirits there was an affluence of life and certainty of
+flow, such as excited my wonder, while it baffled my comprehension. I
+could talk a while when the evening commenced, but the first gush of
+vivacity and fluency gone, I was fain to sit on a stool at Diana’s
+feet, to rest my head on her knee, and listen alternately to her and
+Mary, while they sounded thoroughly the topic on which I had but
+touched. Diana offered to teach me German. I liked to learn of her: I
+saw the part of instructress pleased and suited her; that of scholar
+pleased and suited me no less. Our natures dovetailed: mutual
+affection—of the strongest kind—was the result. They discovered I could
+draw: their pencils and colour-boxes were immediately at my service. My
+skill, greater in this one point than theirs, surprised and charmed
+them. Mary would sit and watch me by the hour together: then she would
+take lessons; and a docile, intelligent, assiduous pupil she made. Thus
+occupied, and mutually entertained, days passed like hours, and weeks
+like days.
+
+As to Mr. St John, the intimacy which had arisen so naturally and
+rapidly between me and his sisters did not extend to him. One reason of
+the distance yet observed between us was, that he was comparatively
+seldom at home: a large proportion of his time appeared devoted to
+visiting the sick and poor among the scattered population of his
+parish.
+
+No weather seemed to hinder him in these pastoral excursions: rain or
+fair, he would, when his hours of morning study were over, take his
+hat, and, followed by his father’s old pointer, Carlo, go out on his
+mission of love or duty—I scarcely know in which light he regarded it.
+Sometimes, when the day was very unfavourable, his sisters would
+expostulate. He would then say, with a peculiar smile, more solemn than
+cheerful—
+
+“And if I let a gust of wind or a sprinkling of rain turn me aside from
+these easy tasks, what preparation would such sloth be for the future I
+propose to myself?”
+
+Diana and Mary’s general answer to this question was a sigh, and some
+minutes of apparently mournful meditation.
+
+But besides his frequent absences, there was another barrier to
+friendship with him: he seemed of a reserved, an abstracted, and even
+of a brooding nature. Zealous in his ministerial labours, blameless in
+his life and habits, he yet did not appear to enjoy that mental
+serenity, that inward content, which should be the reward of every
+sincere Christian and practical philanthropist. Often, of an evening,
+when he sat at the window, his desk and papers before him, he would
+cease reading or writing, rest his chin on his hand, and deliver
+himself up to I know not what course of thought; but that it was
+perturbed and exciting might be seen in the frequent flash and
+changeful dilation of his eye.
+
+I think, moreover, that Nature was not to him that treasury of delight
+it was to his sisters. He expressed once, and but once in my hearing, a
+strong sense of the rugged charm of the hills, and an inborn affection
+for the dark roof and hoary walls he called his home; but there was
+more of gloom than pleasure in the tone and words in which the
+sentiment was manifested; and never did he seem to roam the moors for
+the sake of their soothing silence—never seek out or dwell upon the
+thousand peaceful delights they could yield.
+
+Incommunicative as he was, some time elapsed before I had an
+opportunity of gauging his mind. I first got an idea of its calibre
+when I heard him preach in his own church at Morton. I wish I could
+describe that sermon: but it is past my power. I cannot even render
+faithfully the effect it produced on me.
+
+It began calm—and indeed, as far as delivery and pitch of voice went,
+it was calm to the end: an earnestly felt, yet strictly restrained zeal
+breathed soon in the distinct accents, and prompted the nervous
+language. This grew to force—compressed, condensed, controlled. The
+heart was thrilled, the mind astonished, by the power of the preacher:
+neither were softened. Throughout there was a strange bitterness; an
+absence of consolatory gentleness; stern allusions to Calvinistic
+doctrines—election, predestination, reprobation—were frequent; and each
+reference to these points sounded like a sentence pronounced for doom.
+When he had done, instead of feeling better, calmer, more enlightened
+by his discourse, I experienced an inexpressible sadness; for it seemed
+to me—I know not whether equally so to others—that the eloquence to
+which I had been listening had sprung from a depth where lay turbid
+dregs of disappointment—where moved troubling impulses of insatiate
+yearnings and disquieting aspirations. I was sure St. John
+Rivers—pure-lived, conscientious, zealous as he was—had not yet found
+that peace of God which passeth all understanding: he had no more found
+it, I thought, than had I with my concealed and racking regrets for my
+broken idol and lost elysium—regrets to which I have latterly avoided
+referring, but which possessed me and tyrannised over me ruthlessly.
+
+Meantime a month was gone. Diana and Mary were soon to leave Moor
+House, and return to the far different life and scene which awaited
+them, as governesses in a large, fashionable, south-of-England city,
+where each held a situation in families by whose wealthy and haughty
+members they were regarded only as humble dependents, and who neither
+knew nor sought out their innate excellences, and appreciated only
+their acquired accomplishments as they appreciated the skill of their
+cook or the taste of their waiting-woman. Mr. St. John had said nothing
+to me yet about the employment he had promised to obtain for me; yet it
+became urgent that I should have a vocation of some kind. One morning,
+being left alone with him a few minutes in the parlour, I ventured to
+approach the window-recess—which his table, chair, and desk consecrated
+as a kind of study—and I was going to speak, though not very well
+knowing in what words to frame my inquiry—for it is at all times
+difficult to break the ice of reserve glassing over such natures as
+his—when he saved me the trouble by being the first to commence a
+dialogue.
+
+Looking up as I drew near—“You have a question to ask of me?” he said.
+
+“Yes; I wish to know whether you have heard of any service I can offer
+myself to undertake?”
+
+“I found or devised something for you three weeks ago; but as you
+seemed both useful and happy here—as my sisters had evidently become
+attached to you, and your society gave them unusual pleasure—I deemed
+it inexpedient to break in on your mutual comfort till their
+approaching departure from Marsh End should render yours necessary.”
+
+“And they will go in three days now?” I said.
+
+“Yes; and when they go, I shall return to the parsonage at Morton:
+Hannah will accompany me; and this old house will be shut up.”
+
+I waited a few moments, expecting he would go on with the subject first
+broached: but he seemed to have entered another train of reflection:
+his look denoted abstraction from me and my business. I was obliged to
+recall him to a theme which was of necessity one of close and anxious
+interest to me.
+
+“What is the employment you had in view, Mr. Rivers? I hope this delay
+will not have increased the difficulty of securing it.”
+
+“Oh, no; since it is an employment which depends only on me to give,
+and you to accept.”
+
+He again paused: there seemed a reluctance to continue. I grew
+impatient: a restless movement or two, and an eager and exacting glance
+fastened on his face, conveyed the feeling to him as effectually as
+words could have done, and with less trouble.
+
+“You need be in no hurry to hear,” he said: “let me frankly tell you, I
+have nothing eligible or profitable to suggest. Before I explain,
+recall, if you please, my notice, clearly given, that if I helped you,
+it must be as the blind man would help the lame. I am poor; for I find
+that, when I have paid my father’s debts, all the patrimony remaining
+to me will be this crumbling grange, the row of scathed firs behind,
+and the patch of moorish soil, with the yew-trees and holly-bushes in
+front. I am obscure: Rivers is an old name; but of the three sole
+descendants of the race, two earn the dependent’s crust among
+strangers, and the third considers himself an alien from his native
+country—not only for life, but in death. Yes, and deems, and is bound
+to deem, himself honoured by the lot, and aspires but after the day
+when the cross of separation from fleshly ties shall be laid on his
+shoulders, and when the Head of that church-militant of whose humblest
+members he is one, shall give the word, ‘Rise, follow Me!’”
+
+St. John said these words as he pronounced his sermons, with a quiet,
+deep voice; with an unflushed cheek, and a coruscating radiance of
+glance. He resumed—
+
+“And since I am myself poor and obscure, I can offer you but a service
+of poverty and obscurity. _You_ may even think it degrading—for I see
+now your habits have been what the world calls refined: your tastes
+lean to the ideal, and your society has at least been amongst the
+educated; but _I_ consider that no service degrades which can better
+our race. I hold that the more arid and unreclaimed the soil where the
+Christian labourer’s task of tillage is appointed him—the scantier the
+meed his toil brings—the higher the honour. His, under such
+circumstances, is the destiny of the pioneer; and the first pioneers of
+the Gospel were the Apostles—their captain was Jesus, the Redeemer,
+Himself.”
+
+“Well?” I said, as he again paused—“proceed.”
+
+He looked at me before he proceeded: indeed, he seemed leisurely to
+read my face, as if its features and lines were characters on a page.
+The conclusions drawn from this scrutiny he partially expressed in his
+succeeding observations.
+
+“I believe you will accept the post I offer you,” said he, “and hold it
+for a while: not permanently, though: any more than I could permanently
+keep the narrow and narrowing—the tranquil, hidden office of English
+country incumbent; for in your nature is an alloy as detrimental to
+repose as that in mine, though of a different kind.”
+
+“Do explain,” I urged, when he halted once more.
+
+“I will; and you shall hear how poor the proposal is,—how trivial—how
+cramping. I shall not stay long at Morton, now that my father is dead,
+and that I am my own master. I shall leave the place probably in the
+course of a twelve-month; but while I do stay, I will exert myself to
+the utmost for its improvement. Morton, when I came to it two years
+ago, had no school: the children of the poor were excluded from every
+hope of progress. I established one for boys: I mean now to open a
+second school for girls. I have hired a building for the purpose, with
+a cottage of two rooms attached to it for the mistress’s house. Her
+salary will be thirty pounds a year: her house is already furnished,
+very simply, but sufficiently, by the kindness of a lady, Miss Oliver;
+the only daughter of the sole rich man in my parish—Mr. Oliver, the
+proprietor of a needle-factory and iron-foundry in the valley. The same
+lady pays for the education and clothing of an orphan from the
+workhouse, on condition that she shall aid the mistress in such menial
+offices connected with her own house and the school as her occupation
+of teaching will prevent her having time to discharge in person. Will
+you be this mistress?”
+
+He put the question rather hurriedly; he seemed half to expect an
+indignant, or at least a disdainful rejection of the offer: not knowing
+all my thoughts and feelings, though guessing some, he could not tell
+in what light the lot would appear to me. In truth it was humble—but
+then it was sheltered, and I wanted a safe asylum: it was plodding—but
+then, compared with that of a governess in a rich house, it was
+independent; and the fear of servitude with strangers entered my soul
+like iron: it was not ignoble—not unworthy—not mentally degrading, I
+made my decision.
+
+“I thank you for the proposal, Mr. Rivers, and I accept it with all my
+heart.”
+
+“But you comprehend me?” he said. “It is a village school: your
+scholars will be only poor girls—cottagers’ children—at the best,
+farmers’ daughters. Knitting, sewing, reading, writing, ciphering, will
+be all you will have to teach. What will you do with your
+accomplishments? What, with the largest portion of your
+mind—sentiments—tastes?”
+
+“Save them till they are wanted. They will keep.”
+
+“You know what you undertake, then?”
+
+“I do.”
+
+He now smiled: and not a bitter or a sad smile, but one well pleased
+and deeply gratified.
+
+“And when will you commence the exercise of your function?”
+
+“I will go to my house to-morrow, and open the school, if you like,
+next week.”
+
+“Very well: so be it.”
+
+He rose and walked through the room. Standing still, he again looked at
+me. He shook his head.
+
+“What do you disapprove of, Mr. Rivers?” I asked.
+
+“You will not stay at Morton long: no, no!”
+
+“Why? What is your reason for saying so?”
+
+“I read it in your eye; it is not of that description which promises
+the maintenance of an even tenor in life.”
+
+“I am not ambitious.”
+
+He started at the word “ambitious.” He repeated, “No. What made you
+think of ambition? Who is ambitious? I know I am: but how did you find
+it out?”
+
+“I was speaking of myself.”
+
+“Well, if you are not ambitious, you are—” He paused.
+
+“What?”
+
+“I was going to say, impassioned: but perhaps you would have
+misunderstood the word, and been displeased. I mean, that human
+affections and sympathies have a most powerful hold on you. I am sure
+you cannot long be content to pass your leisure in solitude, and to
+devote your working hours to a monotonous labour wholly void of
+stimulus: any more than I can be content,” he added, with emphasis, “to
+live here buried in morass, pent in with mountains—my nature, that God
+gave me, contravened; my faculties, heaven-bestowed, paralysed—made
+useless. You hear now how I contradict myself. I, who preached
+contentment with a humble lot, and justified the vocation even of
+hewers of wood and drawers of water in God’s service—I, His ordained
+minister, almost rave in my restlessness. Well, propensities and
+principles must be reconciled by some means.”
+
+He left the room. In this brief hour I had learnt more of him than in
+the whole previous month: yet still he puzzled me.
+
+Diana and Mary Rivers became more sad and silent as the day approached
+for leaving their brother and their home. They both tried to appear as
+usual; but the sorrow they had to struggle against was one that could
+not be entirely conquered or concealed. Diana intimated that this would
+be a different parting from any they had ever yet known. It would
+probably, as far as St. John was concerned, be a parting for years: it
+might be a parting for life.
+
+“He will sacrifice all to his long-framed resolves,” she said: “natural
+affection and feelings more potent still. St. John looks quiet, Jane;
+but he hides a fever in his vitals. You would think him gentle, yet in
+some things he is inexorable as death; and the worst of it is, my
+conscience will hardly permit me to dissuade him from his severe
+decision: certainly, I cannot for a moment blame him for it. It is
+right, noble, Christian: yet it breaks my heart!” And the tears gushed
+to her fine eyes. Mary bent her head low over her work.
+
+“We are now without father: we shall soon be without home and brother,”
+she murmured.
+
+At that moment a little accident supervened, which seemed decreed by
+fate purposely to prove the truth of the adage, that “misfortunes never
+come singly,” and to add to their distresses the vexing one of the slip
+between the cup and the lip. St. John passed the window reading a
+letter. He entered.
+
+“Our uncle John is dead,” said he.
+
+Both the sisters seemed struck: not shocked or appalled; the tidings
+appeared in their eyes rather momentous than afflicting.
+
+“Dead?” repeated Diana.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+She riveted a searching gaze on her brother’s face. “And what then?”
+she demanded, in a low voice.
+
+“What then, Die?” he replied, maintaining a marble immobility of
+feature. “What then? Why—nothing. Read.”
+
+He threw the letter into her lap. She glanced over it, and handed it to
+Mary. Mary perused it in silence, and returned it to her brother. All
+three looked at each other, and all three smiled—a dreary, pensive
+smile enough.
+
+“Amen! We can yet live,” said Diana at last.
+
+“At any rate, it makes us no worse off than we were before,” remarked
+Mary.
+
+“Only it forces rather strongly on the mind the picture of what _might
+have been_,” said Mr. Rivers, “and contrasts it somewhat too vividly
+with what _is_.”
+
+He folded the letter, locked it in his desk, and again went out.
+
+For some minutes no one spoke. Diana then turned to me.
+
+“Jane, you will wonder at us and our mysteries,” she said, “and think
+us hard-hearted beings not to be more moved at the death of so near a
+relation as an uncle; but we have never seen him or known him. He was
+my mother’s brother. My father and he quarrelled long ago. It was by
+his advice that my father risked most of his property in the
+speculation that ruined him. Mutual recrimination passed between them:
+they parted in anger, and were never reconciled. My uncle engaged
+afterwards in more prosperous undertakings: it appears he realised a
+fortune of twenty thousand pounds. He was never married, and had no
+near kindred but ourselves and one other person, not more closely
+related than we. My father always cherished the idea that he would
+atone for his error by leaving his possessions to us; that letter
+informs us that he has bequeathed every penny to the other relation,
+with the exception of thirty guineas, to be divided between St. John,
+Diana, and Mary Rivers, for the purchase of three mourning rings. He
+had a right, of course, to do as he pleased: and yet a momentary damp
+is cast on the spirits by the receipt of such news. Mary and I would
+have esteemed ourselves rich with a thousand pounds each; and to St.
+John such a sum would have been valuable, for the good it would have
+enabled him to do.”
+
+This explanation given, the subject was dropped, and no further
+reference made to it by either Mr. Rivers or his sisters. The next day
+I left Marsh End for Morton. The day after, Diana and Mary quitted it
+for distant B——. In a week, Mr. Rivers and Hannah repaired to the
+parsonage: and so the old grange was abandoned.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+My home, then, when I at last find a home,—is a cottage; a little room
+with whitewashed walls and a sanded floor, containing four painted
+chairs and a table, a clock, a cupboard, with two or three plates and
+dishes, and a set of tea-things in delf. Above, a chamber of the same
+dimensions as the kitchen, with a deal bedstead and chest of drawers;
+small, yet too large to be filled with my scanty wardrobe: though the
+kindness of my gentle and generous friends has increased that, by a
+modest stock of such things as are necessary.
+
+It is evening. I have dismissed, with the fee of an orange, the little
+orphan who serves me as a handmaid. I am sitting alone on the hearth.
+This morning, the village school opened. I had twenty scholars. But
+three of the number can read: none write or cipher. Several knit, and a
+few sew a little. They speak with the broadest accent of the district.
+At present, they and I have a difficulty in understanding each other’s
+language. Some of them are unmannered, rough, intractable, as well as
+ignorant; but others are docile, have a wish to learn, and evince a
+disposition that pleases me. I must not forget that these coarsely-clad
+little peasants are of flesh and blood as good as the scions of
+gentlest genealogy; and that the germs of native excellence,
+refinement, intelligence, kind feeling, are as likely to exist in their
+hearts as in those of the best-born. My duty will be to develop these
+germs: surely I shall find some happiness in discharging that office.
+Much enjoyment I do not expect in the life opening before me: yet it
+will, doubtless, if I regulate my mind, and exert my powers as I ought,
+yield me enough to live on from day to day.
+
+Was I very gleeful, settled, content, during the hours I passed in
+yonder bare, humble schoolroom this morning and afternoon? Not to
+deceive myself, I must reply—No: I felt desolate to a degree. I
+felt—yes, idiot that I am—I felt degraded. I doubted I had taken a step
+which sank instead of raising me in the scale of social existence. I
+was weakly dismayed at the ignorance, the poverty, the coarseness of
+all I heard and saw round me. But let me not hate and despise myself
+too much for these feelings; I know them to be wrong—that is a great
+step gained; I shall strive to overcome them. To-morrow, I trust, I
+shall get the better of them partially; and in a few weeks, perhaps,
+they will be quite subdued. In a few months, it is possible, the
+happiness of seeing progress, and a change for the better in my
+scholars may substitute gratification for disgust.
+
+Meantime, let me ask myself one question—Which is better?—To have
+surrendered to temptation; listened to passion; made no painful
+effort—no struggle;—but to have sunk down in the silken snare; fallen
+asleep on the flowers covering it; wakened in a southern clime, amongst
+the luxuries of a pleasure villa: to have been now living in France,
+Mr. Rochester’s mistress; delirious with his love half my time—for he
+would—oh, yes, he would have loved me well for a while. He _did_ love
+me—no one will ever love me so again. I shall never more know the sweet
+homage given to beauty, youth, and grace—for never to any one else
+shall I seem to possess these charms. He was fond and proud of me—it is
+what no man besides will ever be.—But where am I wandering, and what am
+I saying, and above all, feeling? Whether is it better, I ask, to be a
+slave in a fool’s paradise at Marseilles—fevered with delusive bliss
+one hour—suffocating with the bitterest tears of remorse and shame the
+next—or to be a village-schoolmistress, free and honest, in a breezy
+mountain nook in the healthy heart of England?
+
+Yes; I feel now that I was right when I adhered to principle and law,
+and scorned and crushed the insane promptings of a frenzied moment. God
+directed me to a correct choice: I thank His providence for the
+guidance!
+
+Having brought my eventide musings to this point, I rose, went to my
+door, and looked at the sunset of the harvest-day, and at the quiet
+fields before my cottage, which, with the school, was distant half a
+mile from the village. The birds were singing their last strains—
+
+“The air was mild, the dew was balm.”
+
+
+While I looked, I thought myself happy, and was surprised to find
+myself ere long weeping—and why? For the doom which had reft me from
+adhesion to my master: for him I was no more to see; for the desperate
+grief and fatal fury—consequences of my departure—which might now,
+perhaps, be dragging him from the path of right, too far to leave hope
+of ultimate restoration thither. At this thought, I turned my face
+aside from the lovely sky of eve and lonely vale of Morton—I say
+_lonely_, for in that bend of it visible to me there was no building
+apparent save the church and the parsonage, half-hid in trees, and,
+quite at the extremity, the roof of Vale Hall, where the rich Mr.
+Oliver and his daughter lived. I hid my eyes, and leant my head against
+the stone frame of my door; but soon a slight noise near the wicket
+which shut in my tiny garden from the meadow beyond it made me look up.
+A dog—old Carlo, Mr. Rivers’ pointer, as I saw in a moment—was pushing
+the gate with his nose, and St. John himself leant upon it with folded
+arms; his brow knit, his gaze, grave almost to displeasure, fixed on
+me. I asked him to come in.
+
+“No, I cannot stay; I have only brought you a little parcel my sisters
+left for you. I think it contains a colour-box, pencils, and paper.”
+
+I approached to take it: a welcome gift it was. He examined my face, I
+thought, with austerity, as I came near: the traces of tears were
+doubtless very visible upon it.
+
+“Have you found your first day’s work harder than you expected?” he
+asked.
+
+“Oh, no! On the contrary, I think in time I shall get on with my
+scholars very well.”
+
+“But perhaps your accommodations—your cottage—your furniture—have
+disappointed your expectations? They are, in truth, scanty enough;
+but—” I interrupted—
+
+“My cottage is clean and weather-proof; my furniture sufficient and
+commodious. All I see has made me thankful, not despondent. I am not
+absolutely such a fool and sensualist as to regret the absence of a
+carpet, a sofa, and silver plate; besides, five weeks ago I had
+nothing—I was an outcast, a beggar, a vagrant; now I have acquaintance,
+a home, a business. I wonder at the goodness of God; the generosity of
+my friends; the bounty of my lot. I do not repine.”
+
+“But you feel solitude an oppression? The little house there behind you
+is dark and empty.”
+
+“I have hardly had time yet to enjoy a sense of tranquillity, much less
+to grow impatient under one of loneliness.”
+
+“Very well; I hope you feel the content you express: at any rate, your
+good sense will tell you that it is too soon yet to yield to the
+vacillating fears of Lot’s wife. What you had left before I saw you, of
+course I do not know; but I counsel you to resist firmly every
+temptation which would incline you to look back: pursue your present
+career steadily, for some months at least.”
+
+“It is what I mean to do,” I answered. St. John continued—
+
+“It is hard work to control the workings of inclination and turn the
+bent of nature; but that it may be done, I know from experience. God
+has given us, in a measure, the power to make our own fate; and when
+our energies seem to demand a sustenance they cannot get—when our will
+strains after a path we may not follow—we need neither starve from
+inanition, nor stand still in despair: we have but to seek another
+nourishment for the mind, as strong as the forbidden food it longed to
+taste—and perhaps purer; and to hew out for the adventurous foot a road
+as direct and broad as the one Fortune has blocked up against us, if
+rougher than it.
+
+“A year ago I was myself intensely miserable, because I thought I had
+made a mistake in entering the ministry: its uniform duties wearied me
+to death. I burnt for the more active life of the world—for the more
+exciting toils of a literary career—for the destiny of an artist,
+author, orator; anything rather than that of a priest: yes, the heart
+of a politician, of a soldier, of a votary of glory, a lover of renown,
+a luster after power, beat under my curate’s surplice. I considered; my
+life was so wretched, it must be changed, or I must die. After a season
+of darkness and struggling, light broke and relief fell: my cramped
+existence all at once spread out to a plain without bounds—my powers
+heard a call from heaven to rise, gather their full strength, spread
+their wings, and mount beyond ken. God had an errand for me; to bear
+which afar, to deliver it well, skill and strength, courage and
+eloquence, the best qualifications of soldier, statesman, and orator,
+were all needed: for these all centre in the good missionary.
+
+“A missionary I resolved to be. From that moment my state of mind
+changed; the fetters dissolved and dropped from every faculty, leaving
+nothing of bondage but its galling soreness—which time only can heal.
+My father, indeed, imposed the determination, but since his death, I
+have not a legitimate obstacle to contend with; some affairs settled, a
+successor for Morton provided, an entanglement or two of the feelings
+broken through or cut asunder—a last conflict with human weakness, in
+which I know I shall overcome, because I have vowed that I _will_
+overcome—and I leave Europe for the East.”
+
+He said this, in his peculiar, subdued, yet emphatic voice; looking,
+when he had ceased speaking, not at me, but at the setting sun, at
+which I looked too. Both he and I had our backs towards the path
+leading up the field to the wicket. We had heard no step on that
+grass-grown track; the water running in the vale was the one lulling
+sound of the hour and scene; we might well then start when a gay voice,
+sweet as a silver bell, exclaimed—
+
+“Good evening, Mr. Rivers. And good evening, old Carlo. Your dog is
+quicker to recognise his friends than you are, sir; he pricked his ears
+and wagged his tail when I was at the bottom of the field, and you have
+your back towards me now.”
+
+It was true. Though Mr. Rivers had started at the first of those
+musical accents, as if a thunderbolt had split a cloud over his head,
+he stood yet, at the close of the sentence, in the same attitude in
+which the speaker had surprised him—his arm resting on the gate, his
+face directed towards the west. He turned at last, with measured
+deliberation. A vision, as it seemed to me, had risen at his side.
+There appeared, within three feet of him, a form clad in pure white—a
+youthful, graceful form: full, yet fine in contour; and when, after
+bending to caress Carlo, it lifted up its head, and threw back a long
+veil, there bloomed under his glance a face of perfect beauty. Perfect
+beauty is a strong expression; but I do not retrace or qualify it: as
+sweet features as ever the temperate clime of Albion moulded; as pure
+hues of rose and lily as ever her humid gales and vapoury skies
+generated and screened, justified, in this instance, the term. No charm
+was wanting, no defect was perceptible; the young girl had regular and
+delicate lineaments; eyes shaped and coloured as we see them in lovely
+pictures, large, and dark, and full; the long and shadowy eyelash which
+encircles a fine eye with so soft a fascination; the pencilled brow
+which gives such clearness; the white smooth forehead, which adds such
+repose to the livelier beauties of tint and ray; the cheek oval, fresh,
+and smooth; the lips, fresh too, ruddy, healthy, sweetly formed; the
+even and gleaming teeth without flaw; the small dimpled chin; the
+ornament of rich, plenteous tresses—all advantages, in short, which,
+combined, realise the ideal of beauty, were fully hers. I wondered, as
+I looked at this fair creature: I admired her with my whole heart.
+Nature had surely formed her in a partial mood; and, forgetting her
+usual stinted step-mother dole of gifts, had endowed this, her darling,
+with a grand-dame’s bounty.
+
+What did St. John Rivers think of this earthly angel? I naturally asked
+myself that question as I saw him turn to her and look at her; and, as
+naturally, I sought the answer to the inquiry in his countenance. He
+had already withdrawn his eye from the Peri, and was looking at a
+humble tuft of daisies which grew by the wicket.
+
+“A lovely evening, but late for you to be out alone,” he said, as he
+crushed the snowy heads of the closed flowers with his foot.
+
+“Oh, I only came home from S——” (she mentioned the name of a large town
+some twenty miles distant) “this afternoon. Papa told me you had opened
+your school, and that the new mistress was come; and so I put on my
+bonnet after tea, and ran up the valley to see her: this is she?”
+pointing to me.
+
+“It is,” said St. John.
+
+“Do you think you shall like Morton?” she asked of me, with a direct
+and naïve simplicity of tone and manner, pleasing, if child-like.
+
+“I hope I shall. I have many inducements to do so.”
+
+“Did you find your scholars as attentive as you expected?”
+
+“Quite.”
+
+“Do you like your house?”
+
+“Very much.”
+
+“Have I furnished it nicely?”
+
+“Very nicely, indeed.”
+
+“And made a good choice of an attendant for you in Alice Wood?”
+
+“You have indeed. She is teachable and handy.” (This then, I thought,
+is Miss Oliver, the heiress; favoured, it seems, in the gifts of
+fortune, as well as in those of nature! What happy combination of the
+planets presided over her birth, I wonder?)
+
+“I shall come up and help you to teach sometimes,” she added. “It will
+be a change for me to visit you now and then; and I like a change. Mr.
+Rivers, I have been _so_ gay during my stay at S——. Last night, or
+rather this morning, I was dancing till two o’clock. The ——th regiment
+are stationed there since the riots; and the officers are the most
+agreeable men in the world: they put all our young knife-grinders and
+scissor merchants to shame.”
+
+It seemed to me that Mr. St. John’s under lip protruded, and his upper
+lip curled a moment. His mouth certainly looked a good deal compressed,
+and the lower part of his face unusually stern and square, as the
+laughing girl gave him this information. He lifted his gaze, too, from
+the daisies, and turned it on her. An unsmiling, a searching, a meaning
+gaze it was. She answered it with a second laugh, and laughter well
+became her youth, her roses, her dimples, her bright eyes.
+
+As he stood, mute and grave, she again fell to caressing Carlo. “Poor
+Carlo loves me,” said she. “_He_ is not stern and distant to his
+friends; and if he could speak, he would not be silent.”
+
+As she patted the dog’s head, bending with native grace before his
+young and austere master, I saw a glow rise to that master’s face. I
+saw his solemn eye melt with sudden fire, and flicker with resistless
+emotion. Flushed and kindled thus, he looked nearly as beautiful for a
+man as she for a woman. His chest heaved once, as if his large heart,
+weary of despotic constriction, had expanded, despite the will, and
+made a vigorous bound for the attainment of liberty. But he curbed it,
+I think, as a resolute rider would curb a rearing steed. He responded
+neither by word nor movement to the gentle advances made him.
+
+“Papa says you never come to see us now,” continued Miss Oliver,
+looking up. “You are quite a stranger at Vale Hall. He is alone this
+evening, and not very well: will you return with me and visit him?”
+
+“It is not a seasonable hour to intrude on Mr. Oliver,” answered St.
+John.
+
+“Not a seasonable hour! But I declare it is. It is just the hour when
+papa most wants company: when the works are closed and he has no
+business to occupy him. Now, Mr. Rivers, _do_ come. Why are you so very
+shy, and so very sombre?” She filled up the hiatus his silence left by
+a reply of her own.
+
+“I forgot!” she exclaimed, shaking her beautiful curled head, as if
+shocked at herself. “I am so giddy and thoughtless! _Do_ excuse me. It
+had slipped my memory that you have good reasons to be indisposed for
+joining in my chatter. Diana and Mary have left you, and Moor House is
+shut up, and you are so lonely. I am sure I pity you. Do come and see
+papa.”
+
+“Not to-night, Miss Rosamond, not to-night.”
+
+Mr. St. John spoke almost like an automaton: himself only knew the
+effort it cost him thus to refuse.
+
+“Well, if you are so obstinate, I will leave you; for I dare not stay
+any longer: the dew begins to fall. Good evening!”
+
+She held out her hand. He just touched it. “Good evening!” he repeated,
+in a voice low and hollow as an echo. She turned, but in a moment
+returned.
+
+“Are you well?” she asked. Well might she put the question: his face
+was blanched as her gown.
+
+“Quite well,” he enunciated; and, with a bow, he left the gate. She
+went one way; he another. She turned twice to gaze after him as she
+tripped fairy-like down the field; he, as he strode firmly across,
+never turned at all.
+
+This spectacle of another’s suffering and sacrifice rapt my thoughts
+from exclusive meditation on my own. Diana Rivers had designated her
+brother “inexorable as death.” She had not exaggerated.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+
+I continued the labours of the village-school as actively and
+faithfully as I could. It was truly hard work at first. Some time
+elapsed before, with all my efforts, I could comprehend my scholars and
+their nature. Wholly untaught, with faculties quite torpid, they seemed
+to me hopelessly dull; and, at first sight, all dull alike: but I soon
+found I was mistaken. There was a difference amongst them as amongst
+the educated; and when I got to know them, and they me, this difference
+rapidly developed itself. Their amazement at me, my language, my rules,
+and ways, once subsided, I found some of these heavy-looking, gaping
+rustics wake up into sharp-witted girls enough. Many showed themselves
+obliging, and amiable too; and I discovered amongst them not a few
+examples of natural politeness, and innate self-respect, as well as of
+excellent capacity, that won both my goodwill and my admiration. These
+soon took a pleasure in doing their work well, in keeping their persons
+neat, in learning their tasks regularly, in acquiring quiet and orderly
+manners. The rapidity of their progress, in some instances, was even
+surprising; and an honest and happy pride I took in it: besides, I
+began personally to like some of the best girls; and they liked me. I
+had amongst my scholars several farmers’ daughters: young women grown,
+almost. These could already read, write, and sew; and to them I taught
+the elements of grammar, geography, history, and the finer kinds of
+needlework. I found estimable characters amongst them—characters
+desirous of information and disposed for improvement—with whom I passed
+many a pleasant evening hour in their own homes. Their parents then
+(the farmer and his wife) loaded me with attentions. There was an
+enjoyment in accepting their simple kindness, and in repaying it by a
+consideration—a scrupulous regard to their feelings—to which they were
+not, perhaps, at all times accustomed, and which both charmed and
+benefited them; because, while it elevated them in their own eyes, it
+made them emulous to merit the deferential treatment they received.
+
+I felt I became a favourite in the neighbourhood. Whenever I went out,
+I heard on all sides cordial salutations, and was welcomed with
+friendly smiles. To live amidst general regard, though it be but the
+regard of working people, is like “sitting in sunshine, calm and
+sweet;” serene inward feelings bud and bloom under the ray. At this
+period of my life, my heart far oftener swelled with thankfulness than
+sank with dejection: and yet, reader, to tell you all, in the midst of
+this calm, this useful existence—after a day passed in honourable
+exertion amongst my scholars, an evening spent in drawing or reading
+contentedly alone—I used to rush into strange dreams at night: dreams
+many-coloured, agitated, full of the ideal, the stirring, the
+stormy—dreams where, amidst unusual scenes, charged with adventure,
+with agitating risk and romantic chance, I still again and again met
+Mr. Rochester, always at some exciting crisis; and then the sense of
+being in his arms, hearing his voice, meeting his eye, touching his
+hand and cheek, loving him, being loved by him—the hope of passing a
+lifetime at his side, would be renewed, with all its first force and
+fire. Then I awoke. Then I recalled where I was, and how situated. Then
+I rose up on my curtainless bed, trembling and quivering; and then the
+still, dark night witnessed the convulsion of despair, and heard the
+burst of passion. By nine o’clock the next morning I was punctually
+opening the school; tranquil, settled, prepared for the steady duties
+of the day.
+
+Rosamond Oliver kept her word in coming to visit me. Her call at the
+school was generally made in the course of her morning ride. She would
+canter up to the door on her pony, followed by a mounted livery
+servant. Anything more exquisite than her appearance, in her purple
+habit, with her Amazon’s cap of black velvet placed gracefully above
+the long curls that kissed her cheek and floated to her shoulders, can
+scarcely be imagined: and it was thus she would enter the rustic
+building, and glide through the dazzled ranks of the village children.
+She generally came at the hour when Mr. Rivers was engaged in giving
+his daily catechising lesson. Keenly, I fear, did the eye of the
+visitress pierce the young pastor’s heart. A sort of instinct seemed to
+warn him of her entrance, even when he did not see it; and when he was
+looking quite away from the door, if she appeared at it, his cheek
+would glow, and his marble-seeming features, though they refused to
+relax, changed indescribably, and in their very quiescence became
+expressive of a repressed fervour, stronger than working muscle or
+darting glance could indicate.
+
+Of course, she knew her power: indeed, he did not, because he could
+not, conceal it from her. In spite of his Christian stoicism, when she
+went up and addressed him, and smiled gaily, encouragingly, even fondly
+in his face, his hand would tremble and his eye burn. He seemed to say,
+with his sad and resolute look, if he did not say it with his lips, “I
+love you, and I know you prefer me. It is not despair of success that
+keeps me dumb. If I offered my heart, I believe you would accept it.
+But that heart is already laid on a sacred altar: the fire is arranged
+round it. It will soon be no more than a sacrifice consumed.”
+
+And then she would pout like a disappointed child; a pensive cloud
+would soften her radiant vivacity; she would withdraw her hand hastily
+from his, and turn in transient petulance from his aspect, at once so
+heroic and so martyr-like. St. John, no doubt, would have given the
+world to follow, recall, retain her, when she thus left him; but he
+would not give one chance of heaven, nor relinquish, for the elysium of
+her love, one hope of the true, eternal Paradise. Besides, he could not
+bind all that he had in his nature—the rover, the aspirant, the poet,
+the priest—in the limits of a single passion. He could not—he would
+not—renounce his wild field of mission warfare for the parlours and the
+peace of Vale Hall. I learnt so much from himself in an inroad I once,
+despite his reserve, had the daring to make on his confidence.
+
+Miss Oliver already honoured me with frequent visits to my cottage. I
+had learnt her whole character, which was without mystery or disguise:
+she was coquettish but not heartless; exacting, but not worthlessly
+selfish. She had been indulged from her birth, but was not absolutely
+spoilt. She was hasty, but good-humoured; vain (she could not help it,
+when every glance in the glass showed her such a flush of loveliness),
+but not affected; liberal-handed; innocent of the pride of wealth;
+ingenuous; sufficiently intelligent; gay, lively, and unthinking: she
+was very charming, in short, even to a cool observer of her own sex
+like me; but she was not profoundly interesting or thoroughly
+impressive. A very different sort of mind was hers from that, for
+instance, of the sisters of St. John. Still, I liked her almost as I
+liked my pupil Adèle; except that, for a child whom we have watched
+over and taught, a closer affection is engendered than we can give an
+equally attractive adult acquaintance.
+
+She had taken an amiable caprice to me. She said I was like Mr. Rivers,
+only, certainly, she allowed, “not one-tenth so handsome, though I was
+a nice neat little soul enough, but he was an angel.” I was, however,
+good, clever, composed, and firm, like him. I was a _lusus naturæ_, she
+affirmed, as a village schoolmistress: she was sure my previous
+history, if known, would make a delightful romance.
+
+One evening, while, with her usual child-like activity, and thoughtless
+yet not offensive inquisitiveness, she was rummaging the cupboard and
+the table-drawer of my little kitchen, she discovered first two French
+books, a volume of Schiller, a German grammar and dictionary, and then
+my drawing-materials and some sketches, including a pencil-head of a
+pretty little cherub-like girl, one of my scholars, and sundry views
+from nature, taken in the Vale of Morton and on the surrounding moors.
+She was first transfixed with surprise, and then electrified with
+delight.
+
+“Had I done these pictures? Did I know French and German? What a
+love—what a miracle I was! I drew better than her master in the first
+school in S——. Would I sketch a portrait of her, to show to papa?”
+
+“With pleasure,” I replied; and I felt a thrill of artist-delight at
+the idea of copying from so perfect and radiant a model. She had then
+on a dark-blue silk dress; her arms and her neck were bare; her only
+ornament was her chestnut tresses, which waved over her shoulders with
+all the wild grace of natural curls. I took a sheet of fine card-board,
+and drew a careful outline. I promised myself the pleasure of colouring
+it; and, as it was getting late then, I told her she must come and sit
+another day.
+
+She made such a report of me to her father, that Mr. Oliver himself
+accompanied her next evening—a tall, massive-featured, middle-aged, and
+grey-headed man, at whose side his lovely daughter looked like a bright
+flower near a hoary turret. He appeared a taciturn, and perhaps a proud
+personage; but he was very kind to me. The sketch of Rosamond’s
+portrait pleased him highly: he said I must make a finished picture of
+it. He insisted, too, on my coming the next day to spend the evening at
+Vale Hall.
+
+I went. I found it a large, handsome residence, showing abundant
+evidences of wealth in the proprietor. Rosamond was full of glee and
+pleasure all the time I stayed. Her father was affable; and when he
+entered into conversation with me after tea, he expressed in strong
+terms his approbation of what I had done in Morton school, and said he
+only feared, from what he saw and heard, I was too good for the place,
+and would soon quit it for one more suitable.
+
+“Indeed,” cried Rosamond, “she is clever enough to be a governess in a
+high family, papa.”
+
+I thought I would far rather be where I am than in any high family in
+the land. Mr. Oliver spoke of Mr. Rivers—of the Rivers family—with
+great respect. He said it was a very old name in that neighbourhood;
+that the ancestors of the house were wealthy; that all Morton had once
+belonged to them; that even now he considered the representative of
+that house might, if he liked, make an alliance with the best. He
+accounted it a pity that so fine and talented a young man should have
+formed the design of going out as a missionary; it was quite throwing a
+valuable life away. It appeared, then, that her father would throw no
+obstacle in the way of Rosamond’s union with St. John. Mr. Oliver
+evidently regarded the young clergyman’s good birth, old name, and
+sacred profession as sufficient compensation for the want of fortune.
+
+It was the 5th of November, and a holiday. My little servant, after
+helping me to clean my house, was gone, well satisfied with the fee of
+a penny for her aid. All about me was spotless and bright—scoured
+floor, polished grate, and well-rubbed chairs. I had also made myself
+neat, and had now the afternoon before me to spend as I would.
+
+The translation of a few pages of German occupied an hour; then I got
+my palette and pencils, and fell to the more soothing, because easier
+occupation, of completing Rosamond Oliver’s miniature. The head was
+finished already: there was but the background to tint and the drapery
+to shade off; a touch of carmine, too, to add to the ripe lips—a soft
+curl here and there to the tresses—a deeper tinge to the shadow of the
+lash under the azured eyelid. I was absorbed in the execution of these
+nice details, when, after one rapid tap, my door unclosed, admitting
+St. John Rivers.
+
+“I am come to see how you are spending your holiday,” he said. “Not, I
+hope, in thought? No, that is well: while you draw you will not feel
+lonely. You see, I mistrust you still, though you have borne up
+wonderfully so far. I have brought you a book for evening solace,” and
+he laid on the table a new publication—a poem: one of those genuine
+productions so often vouchsafed to the fortunate public of those
+days—the golden age of modern literature. Alas! the readers of our era
+are less favoured. But courage! I will not pause either to accuse or
+repine. I know poetry is not dead, nor genius lost; nor has Mammon
+gained power over either, to bind or slay: they will both assert their
+existence, their presence, their liberty and strength again one day.
+Powerful angels, safe in heaven! they smile when sordid souls triumph,
+and feeble ones weep over their destruction. Poetry destroyed? Genius
+banished? No! Mediocrity, no: do not let envy prompt you to the
+thought. No; they not only live, but reign and redeem: and without
+their divine influence spread everywhere, you would be in hell—the hell
+of your own meanness.
+
+While I was eagerly glancing at the bright pages of “Marmion” (for
+“Marmion” it was), St. John stooped to examine my drawing. His tall
+figure sprang erect again with a start: he said nothing. I looked up at
+him: he shunned my eye. I knew his thoughts well, and could read his
+heart plainly; at the moment I felt calmer and cooler than he: I had
+then temporarily the advantage of him, and I conceived an inclination
+to do him some good, if I could.
+
+“With all his firmness and self-control,” thought I, “he tasks himself
+too far: locks every feeling and pang within—expresses, confesses,
+imparts nothing. I am sure it would benefit him to talk a little about
+this sweet Rosamond, whom he thinks he ought not to marry: I will make
+him talk.”
+
+I said first, “Take a chair, Mr. Rivers.” But he answered, as he always
+did, that he could not stay. “Very well,” I responded, mentally, “stand
+if you like; but you shall not go just yet, I am determined: solitude
+is at least as bad for you as it is for me. I’ll try if I cannot
+discover the secret spring of your confidence, and find an aperture in
+that marble breast through which I can shed one drop of the balm of
+sympathy.”
+
+“Is this portrait like?” I asked bluntly.
+
+“Like! Like whom? I did not observe it closely.”
+
+“You did, Mr. Rivers.”
+
+He almost started at my sudden and strange abruptness: he looked at me
+astonished. “Oh, that is nothing yet,” I muttered within. “I don’t mean
+to be baffled by a little stiffness on your part; I’m prepared to go to
+considerable lengths.” I continued, “You observed it closely and
+distinctly; but I have no objection to your looking at it again,” and I
+rose and placed it in his hand.
+
+“A well-executed picture,” he said; “very soft, clear colouring; very
+graceful and correct drawing.”
+
+“Yes, yes; I know all that. But what of the resemblance? Who is it
+like?”
+
+Mastering some hesitation, he answered, “Miss Oliver, I presume.”
+
+“Of course. And now, sir, to reward you for the accurate guess, I will
+promise to paint you a careful and faithful duplicate of this very
+picture, provided you admit that the gift would be acceptable to you. I
+don’t wish to throw away my time and trouble on an offering you would
+deem worthless.”
+
+He continued to gaze at the picture: the longer he looked, the firmer
+he held it, the more he seemed to covet it. “It is like!” he murmured;
+“the eye is well managed: the colour, light, expression, are perfect.
+It smiles!”
+
+“Would it comfort, or would it wound you to have a similar painting?
+Tell me that. When you are at Madagascar, or at the Cape, or in India,
+would it be a consolation to have that memento in your possession? or
+would the sight of it bring recollections calculated to enervate and
+distress?”
+
+He now furtively raised his eyes: he glanced at me, irresolute,
+disturbed: he again surveyed the picture.
+
+“That I should like to have it is certain: whether it would be
+judicious or wise is another question.”
+
+Since I had ascertained that Rosamond really preferred him, and that
+her father was not likely to oppose the match, I—less exalted in my
+views than St. John—had been strongly disposed in my own heart to
+advocate their union. It seemed to me that, should he become the
+possessor of Mr. Oliver’s large fortune, he might do as much good with
+it as if he went and laid his genius out to wither, and his strength to
+waste, under a tropical sun. With this persuasion I now answered—
+
+“As far as I can see, it would be wiser and more judicious if you were
+to take to yourself the original at once.”
+
+By this time he had sat down: he had laid the picture on the table
+before him, and with his brow supported on both hands, hung fondly over
+it. I discerned he was now neither angry nor shocked at my audacity. I
+saw even that to be thus frankly addressed on a subject he had deemed
+unapproachable—to hear it thus freely handled—was beginning to be felt
+by him as a new pleasure—an unhoped-for relief. Reserved people often
+really need the frank discussion of their sentiments and griefs more
+than the expansive. The sternest-seeming stoic is human after all; and
+to “burst” with boldness and good-will into “the silent sea” of their
+souls is often to confer on them the first of obligations.
+
+“She likes you, I am sure,” said I, as I stood behind his chair, “and
+her father respects you. Moreover, she is a sweet girl—rather
+thoughtless; but you would have sufficient thought for both yourself
+and her. You ought to marry her.”
+
+“_Does_ she like me?” he asked.
+
+“Certainly; better than she likes any one else. She talks of you
+continually: there is no subject she enjoys so much or touches upon so
+often.”
+
+“It is very pleasant to hear this,” he said—“very: go on for another
+quarter of an hour.” And he actually took out his watch and laid it
+upon the table to measure the time.
+
+“But where is the use of going on,” I asked, “when you are probably
+preparing some iron blow of contradiction, or forging a fresh chain to
+fetter your heart?”
+
+“Don’t imagine such hard things. Fancy me yielding and melting, as I am
+doing: human love rising like a freshly opened fountain in my mind and
+overflowing with sweet inundation all the field I have so carefully and
+with such labour prepared—so assiduously sown with the seeds of good
+intentions, of self-denying plans. And now it is deluged with a
+nectarous flood—the young germs swamped—delicious poison cankering
+them: now I see myself stretched on an ottoman in the drawing-room at
+Vale Hall at my bride Rosamond Oliver’s feet: she is talking to me with
+her sweet voice—gazing down on me with those eyes your skilful hand has
+copied so well—smiling at me with these coral lips. She is mine—I am
+hers—this present life and passing world suffice to me. Hush! say
+nothing—my heart is full of delight—my senses are entranced—let the
+time I marked pass in peace.”
+
+I humoured him: the watch ticked on: he breathed fast and low: I stood
+silent. Amidst this hush the quartet sped; he replaced the watch, laid
+the picture down, rose, and stood on the hearth.
+
+“Now,” said he, “that little space was given to delirium and delusion.
+I rested my temples on the breast of temptation, and put my neck
+voluntarily under her yoke of flowers; I tasted her cup. The pillow was
+burning: there is an asp in the garland: the wine has a bitter taste:
+her promises are hollow—her offers false: I see and know all this.”
+
+I gazed at him in wonder.
+
+“It is strange,” pursued he, “that while I love Rosamond Oliver so
+wildly—with all the intensity, indeed, of a first passion, the object
+of which is exquisitely beautiful, graceful, fascinating—I experience
+at the same time a calm, unwarped consciousness that she would not make
+me a good wife; that she is not the partner suited to me; that I should
+discover this within a year after marriage; and that to twelve months’
+rapture would succeed a lifetime of regret. This I know.”
+
+“Strange indeed!” I could not help ejaculating.
+
+“While something in me,” he went on, “is acutely sensible to her
+charms, something else is as deeply impressed with her defects: they
+are such that she could sympathise in nothing I aspired to—co-operate
+in nothing I undertook. Rosamond a sufferer, a labourer, a female
+apostle? Rosamond a missionary’s wife? No!”
+
+“But you need not be a missionary. You might relinquish that scheme.”
+
+“Relinquish! What! my vocation? My great work? My foundation laid on
+earth for a mansion in heaven? My hopes of being numbered in the band
+who have merged all ambitions in the glorious one of bettering their
+race—of carrying knowledge into the realms of ignorance—of substituting
+peace for war—freedom for bondage—religion for superstition—the hope of
+heaven for the fear of hell? Must I relinquish that? It is dearer than
+the blood in my veins. It is what I have to look forward to, and to
+live for.”
+
+After a considerable pause, I said—“And Miss Oliver? Are her
+disappointment and sorrow of no interest to you?”
+
+“Miss Oliver is ever surrounded by suitors and flatterers: in less than
+a month, my image will be effaced from her heart. She will forget me;
+and will marry, probably, some one who will make her far happier than I
+should do.”
+
+“You speak coolly enough; but you suffer in the conflict. You are
+wasting away.”
+
+“No. If I get a little thin, it is with anxiety about my prospects, yet
+unsettled—my departure, continually procrastinated. Only this morning,
+I received intelligence that the successor, whose arrival I have been
+so long expecting, cannot be ready to replace me for three months to
+come yet; and perhaps the three months may extend to six.”
+
+“You tremble and become flushed whenever Miss Oliver enters the
+schoolroom.”
+
+Again the surprised expression crossed his face. He had not imagined
+that a woman would dare to speak so to a man. For me, I felt at home in
+this sort of discourse. I could never rest in communication with
+strong, discreet, and refined minds, whether male or female, till I had
+passed the outworks of conventional reserve, and crossed the threshold
+of confidence, and won a place by their heart’s very hearthstone.
+
+“You _are_ original,” said he, “and not timid. There is something brave
+in your spirit, as well as penetrating in your eye; but allow me to
+assure you that you partially misinterpret my emotions. You think them
+more profound and potent than they are. You give me a larger allowance
+of sympathy than I have a just claim to. When I colour, and when I
+shake before Miss Oliver, I do not pity myself. I scorn the weakness. I
+know it is ignoble: a mere fever of the flesh: not, I declare, the
+convulsion of the soul. _That_ is just as fixed as a rock, firm set in
+the depths of a restless sea. Know me to be what I am—a cold hard man.”
+
+I smiled incredulously.
+
+“You have taken my confidence by storm,” he continued, “and now it is
+much at your service. I am simply, in my original state—stripped of
+that blood-bleached robe with which Christianity covers human
+deformity—a cold, hard, ambitious man. Natural affection only, of all
+the sentiments, has permanent power over me. Reason, and not feeling,
+is my guide; my ambition is unlimited: my desire to rise higher, to do
+more than others, insatiable. I honour endurance, perseverance,
+industry, talent; because these are the means by which men achieve
+great ends and mount to lofty eminence. I watch your career with
+interest, because I consider you a specimen of a diligent, orderly,
+energetic woman: not because I deeply compassionate what you have gone
+through, or what you still suffer.”
+
+“You would describe yourself as a mere pagan philosopher,” I said.
+
+“No. There is this difference between me and deistic philosophers: I
+believe; and I believe the Gospel. You missed your epithet. I am not a
+pagan, but a Christian philosopher—a follower of the sect of Jesus. As
+His disciple I adopt His pure, His merciful, His benignant doctrines. I
+advocate them: I am sworn to spread them. Won in youth to religion, she
+has cultivated my original qualities thus:—From the minute germ,
+natural affection, she has developed the overshadowing tree,
+philanthropy. From the wild stringy root of human uprightness, she has
+reared a due sense of the Divine justice. Of the ambition to win power
+and renown for my wretched self, she has formed the ambition to spread
+my Master’s kingdom; to achieve victories for the standard of the
+cross. So much has religion done for me; turning the original materials
+to the best account; pruning and training nature. But she could not
+eradicate nature: nor will it be eradicated ‘till this mortal shall put
+on immortality.’”
+
+Having said this, he took his hat, which lay on the table beside my
+palette. Once more he looked at the portrait.
+
+“She _is_ lovely,” he murmured. “She is well named the Rose of the
+World, indeed!”
+
+“And may I not paint one like it for you?”
+
+“_Cui bono_? No.”
+
+He drew over the picture the sheet of thin paper on which I was
+accustomed to rest my hand in painting, to prevent the cardboard from
+being sullied. What he suddenly saw on this blank paper, it was
+impossible for me to tell; but something had caught his eye. He took it
+up with a snatch; he looked at the edge; then shot a glance at me,
+inexpressibly peculiar, and quite incomprehensible: a glance that
+seemed to take and make note of every point in my shape, face, and
+dress; for it traversed all, quick, keen as lightning. His lips parted,
+as if to speak: but he checked the coming sentence, whatever it was.
+
+“What is the matter?” I asked.
+
+“Nothing in the world,” was the reply; and, replacing the paper, I saw
+him dexterously tear a narrow slip from the margin. It disappeared in
+his glove; and, with one hasty nod and “good-afternoon,” he vanished.
+
+“Well!” I exclaimed, using an expression of the district, “that caps
+the globe, however!”
+
+I, in my turn, scrutinised the paper; but saw nothing on it save a few
+dingy stains of paint where I had tried the tint in my pencil. I
+pondered the mystery a minute or two; but finding it insolvable, and
+being certain it could not be of much moment, I dismissed, and soon
+forgot it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+When Mr. St. John went, it was beginning to snow; the whirling storm
+continued all night. The next day a keen wind brought fresh and
+blinding falls; by twilight the valley was drifted up and almost
+impassable. I had closed my shutter, laid a mat to the door to prevent
+the snow from blowing in under it, trimmed my fire, and after sitting
+nearly an hour on the hearth listening to the muffled fury of the
+tempest, I lit a candle, took down “Marmion,” and beginning—
+
+“Day set on Norham’s castled steep,
+And Tweed’s fair river broad and deep,
+    And Cheviot’s mountains lone;
+The massive towers, the donjon keep,
+The flanking walls that round them sweep,
+    In yellow lustre shone”—
+
+
+I soon forgot storm in music.
+
+I heard a noise: the wind, I thought, shook the door. No; it was St.
+John Rivers, who, lifting the latch, came in out of the frozen
+hurricane—the howling darkness—and stood before me: the cloak that
+covered his tall figure all white as a glacier. I was almost in
+consternation, so little had I expected any guest from the blocked-up
+vale that night.
+
+“Any ill news?” I demanded. “Has anything happened?”
+
+“No. How very easily alarmed you are!” he answered, removing his cloak
+and hanging it up against the door, towards which he again coolly
+pushed the mat which his entrance had deranged. He stamped the snow
+from his boots.
+
+“I shall sully the purity of your floor,” said he, “but you must excuse
+me for once.” Then he approached the fire. “I have had hard work to get
+here, I assure you,” he observed, as he warmed his hands over the
+flame. “One drift took me up to the waist; happily the snow is quite
+soft yet.”
+
+“But why are you come?” I could not forbear saying.
+
+“Rather an inhospitable question to put to a visitor; but since you ask
+it, I answer simply to have a little talk with you; I got tired of my
+mute books and empty rooms. Besides, since yesterday I have experienced
+the excitement of a person to whom a tale has been half-told, and who
+is impatient to hear the sequel.”
+
+He sat down. I recalled his singular conduct of yesterday, and really I
+began to fear his wits were touched. If he were insane, however, his
+was a very cool and collected insanity: I had never seen that
+handsome-featured face of his look more like chiselled marble than it
+did just now, as he put aside his snow-wet hair from his forehead and
+let the firelight shine free on his pale brow and cheek as pale, where
+it grieved me to discover the hollow trace of care or sorrow now so
+plainly graved. I waited, expecting he would say something I could at
+least comprehend; but his hand was now at his chin, his finger on his
+lip: he was thinking. It struck me that his hand looked wasted like his
+face. A perhaps uncalled-for gush of pity came over my heart: I was
+moved to say—
+
+“I wish Diana or Mary would come and live with you: it is too bad that
+you should be quite alone; and you are recklessly rash about your own
+health.”
+
+“Not at all,” said he: “I care for myself when necessary. I am well
+now. What do you see amiss in me?”
+
+This was said with a careless, abstracted indifference, which showed
+that my solicitude was, at least in his opinion, wholly superfluous. I
+was silenced.
+
+He still slowly moved his finger over his upper lip, and still his eye
+dwelt dreamily on the glowing grate; thinking it urgent to say
+something, I asked him presently if he felt any cold draught from the
+door, which was behind him.
+
+“No, no!” he responded shortly and somewhat testily.
+
+“Well,” I reflected, “if you won’t talk, you may be still; I’ll let you
+alone now, and return to my book.”
+
+So I snuffed the candle and resumed the perusal of “Marmion.” He soon
+stirred; my eye was instantly drawn to his movements; he only took out
+a morocco pocket-book, thence produced a letter, which he read in
+silence, folded it, put it back, relapsed into meditation. It was vain
+to try to read with such an inscrutable fixture before me; nor could I,
+in impatience, consent to be dumb; he might rebuff me if he liked, but
+talk I would.
+
+“Have you heard from Diana and Mary lately?”
+
+“Not since the letter I showed you a week ago.”
+
+“There has not been any change made about your own arrangements? You
+will not be summoned to leave England sooner than you expected?”
+
+“I fear not, indeed: such chance is too good to befall me.” Baffled so
+far, I changed my ground. I bethought myself to talk about the school
+and my scholars.
+
+“Mary Garrett’s mother is better, and Mary came back to the school this
+morning, and I shall have four new girls next week from the Foundry
+Close—they would have come to-day but for the snow.”
+
+“Indeed!”
+
+“Mr. Oliver pays for two.”
+
+“Does he?”
+
+“He means to give the whole school a treat at Christmas.”
+
+“I know.”
+
+“Was it your suggestion?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Whose, then?”
+
+“His daughter’s, I think.”
+
+“It is like her: she is so good-natured.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+Again came the blank of a pause: the clock struck eight strokes. It
+aroused him; he uncrossed his legs, sat erect, turned to me.
+
+“Leave your book a moment, and come a little nearer the fire,” he said.
+
+Wondering, and of my wonder finding no end, I complied.
+
+“Half-an-hour ago,” he pursued, “I spoke of my impatience to hear the
+sequel of a tale: on reflection, I find the matter will be better
+managed by my assuming the narrator’s part, and converting you into a
+listener. Before commencing, it is but fair to warn you that the story
+will sound somewhat hackneyed in your ears; but stale details often
+regain a degree of freshness when they pass through new lips. For the
+rest, whether trite or novel, it is short.
+
+“Twenty years ago, a poor curate—never mind his name at this
+moment—fell in love with a rich man’s daughter; she fell in love with
+him, and married him, against the advice of all her friends, who
+consequently disowned her immediately after the wedding. Before two
+years passed, the rash pair were both dead, and laid quietly side by
+side under one slab. (I have seen their grave; it formed part of the
+pavement of a huge churchyard surrounding the grim, soot-black old
+cathedral of an overgrown manufacturing town in ——shire.) They left a
+daughter, which, at its very birth, Charity received in her lap—cold as
+that of the snow-drift I almost stuck fast in to-night. Charity carried
+the friendless thing to the house of its rich maternal relations; it
+was reared by an aunt-in-law, called (I come to names now) Mrs. Reed of
+Gateshead. You start—did you hear a noise? I daresay it is only a rat
+scrambling along the rafters of the adjoining schoolroom: it was a barn
+before I had it repaired and altered, and barns are generally haunted
+by rats.—To proceed. Mrs. Reed kept the orphan ten years: whether it
+was happy or not with her, I cannot say, never having been told; but at
+the end of that time she transferred it to a place you know—being no
+other than Lowood School, where you so long resided yourself. It seems
+her career there was very honourable: from a pupil, she became a
+teacher, like yourself—really it strikes me there are parallel points
+in her history and yours—she left it to be a governess: there, again,
+your fates were analogous; she undertook the education of the ward of a
+certain Mr. Rochester.”
+
+“Mr. Rivers!” I interrupted.
+
+“I can guess your feelings,” he said, “but restrain them for a while: I
+have nearly finished; hear me to the end. Of Mr. Rochester’s character
+I know nothing, but the one fact that he professed to offer honourable
+marriage to this young girl, and that at the very altar she discovered
+he had a wife yet alive, though a lunatic. What his subsequent conduct
+and proposals were is a matter of pure conjecture; but when an event
+transpired which rendered inquiry after the governess necessary, it was
+discovered she was gone—no one could tell when, where, or how. She had
+left Thornfield Hall in the night; every research after her course had
+been vain: the country had been scoured far and wide; no vestige of
+information could be gathered respecting her. Yet that she should be
+found is become a matter of serious urgency: advertisements have been
+put in all the papers; I myself have received a letter from one Mr.
+Briggs, a solicitor, communicating the details I have just imparted. Is
+it not an odd tale?”
+
+“Just tell me this,” said I, “and since you know so much, you surely
+_can_ tell it me—what of Mr. Rochester? How and where is he? What is he
+doing? Is he well?”
+
+“I am ignorant of all concerning Mr. Rochester: the letter never
+mentions him but to narrate the fraudulent and illegal attempt I have
+adverted to. You should rather ask the name of the governess—the nature
+of the event which requires her appearance.”
+
+“Did no one go to Thornfield Hall, then? Did no one see Mr. Rochester?”
+
+“I suppose not.”
+
+“But they wrote to him?”
+
+“Of course.”
+
+“And what did he say? Who has his letters?”
+
+“Mr. Briggs intimates that the answer to his application was not from
+Mr. Rochester, but from a lady: it is signed ‘Alice Fairfax.’”
+
+I felt cold and dismayed: my worst fears then were probably true: he
+had in all probability left England and rushed in reckless desperation
+to some former haunt on the Continent. And what opiate for his severe
+sufferings—what object for his strong passions—had he sought there? I
+dared not answer the question. Oh, my poor master—once almost my
+husband—whom I had often called “my dear Edward!”
+
+“He must have been a bad man,” observed Mr. Rivers.
+
+“You don’t know him—don’t pronounce an opinion upon him,” I said, with
+warmth.
+
+“Very well,” he answered quietly: “and indeed my head is otherwise
+occupied than with him: I have my tale to finish. Since you won’t ask
+the governess’s name, I must tell it of my own accord. Stay! I have it
+here—it is always more satisfactory to see important points written
+down, fairly committed to black and white.”
+
+And the pocket-book was again deliberately produced, opened, sought
+through; from one of its compartments was extracted a shabby slip of
+paper, hastily torn off: I recognised in its texture and its stains of
+ultra-marine, and lake, and vermillion, the ravished margin of the
+portrait-cover. He got up, held it close to my eyes: and I read, traced
+in Indian ink, in my own handwriting, the words “JANE EYRE”—the work
+doubtless of some moment of abstraction.
+
+“Briggs wrote to me of a Jane Eyre:” he said, “the advertisements
+demanded a Jane Eyre: I knew a Jane Elliott.—I confess I had my
+suspicions, but it was only yesterday afternoon they were at once
+resolved into certainty. You own the name and renounce the _alias_?”
+
+“Yes—yes; but where is Mr. Briggs? He perhaps knows more of Mr.
+Rochester than you do.”
+
+“Briggs is in London. I should doubt his knowing anything at all about
+Mr. Rochester; it is not in Mr. Rochester he is interested. Meantime,
+you forget essential points in pursuing trifles: you do not inquire why
+Mr. Briggs sought after you—what he wanted with you.”
+
+“Well, what did he want?”
+
+“Merely to tell you that your uncle, Mr. Eyre of Madeira, is dead; that
+he has left you all his property, and that you are now rich—merely
+that—nothing more.”
+
+“I!—rich?”
+
+“Yes, you, rich—quite an heiress.”
+
+Silence succeeded.
+
+“You must prove your identity of course,” resumed St. John presently:
+“a step which will offer no difficulties; you can then enter on
+immediate possession. Your fortune is vested in the English funds;
+Briggs has the will and the necessary documents.”
+
+Here was a new card turned up! It is a fine thing, reader, to be lifted
+in a moment from indigence to wealth—a very fine thing; but not a
+matter one can comprehend, or consequently enjoy, all at once. And then
+there are other chances in life far more thrilling and rapture-giving:
+_this_ is solid, an affair of the actual world, nothing ideal about it:
+all its associations are solid and sober, and its manifestations are
+the same. One does not jump, and spring, and shout hurrah! at hearing
+one has got a fortune; one begins to consider responsibilities, and to
+ponder business; on a base of steady satisfaction rise certain grave
+cares, and we contain ourselves, and brood over our bliss with a solemn
+brow.
+
+Besides, the words Legacy, Bequest, go side by side with the words,
+Death, Funeral. My uncle I had heard was dead—my only relative; ever
+since being made aware of his existence, I had cherished the hope of
+one day seeing him: now, I never should. And then this money came only
+to me: not to me and a rejoicing family, but to my isolated self. It
+was a grand boon doubtless; and independence would be glorious—yes, I
+felt that—_that_ thought swelled my heart.
+
+“You unbend your forehead at last,” said Mr. Rivers. “I thought Medusa
+had looked at you, and that you were turning to stone. Perhaps now you
+will ask how much you are worth?”
+
+“How much am I worth?”
+
+“Oh, a trifle! Nothing of course to speak of—twenty thousand pounds, I
+think they say—but what is that?”
+
+“Twenty thousand pounds?”
+
+Here was a new stunner—I had been calculating on four or five thousand.
+This news actually took my breath for a moment: Mr. St. John, whom I
+had never heard laugh before, laughed now.
+
+“Well,” said he, “if you had committed a murder, and I had told you
+your crime was discovered, you could scarcely look more aghast.”
+
+“It is a large sum—don’t you think there is a mistake?”
+
+“No mistake at all.”
+
+“Perhaps you have read the figures wrong—it may be two thousand!”
+
+“It is written in letters, not figures,—twenty thousand.”
+
+I again felt rather like an individual of but average gastronomical
+powers sitting down to feast alone at a table spread with provisions
+for a hundred. Mr. Rivers rose now and put his cloak on.
+
+“If it were not such a very wild night,” he said, “I would send Hannah
+down to keep you company: you look too desperately miserable to be left
+alone. But Hannah, poor woman! could not stride the drifts so well as
+I: her legs are not quite so long: so I must e’en leave you to your
+sorrows. Good-night.”
+
+He was lifting the latch: a sudden thought occurred to me.
+
+“Stop one minute!” I cried.
+
+“Well?”
+
+“It puzzles me to know why Mr. Briggs wrote to you about me; or how he
+knew you, or could fancy that you, living in such an out-of-the-way
+place, had the power to aid in my discovery.”
+
+“Oh! I am a clergyman,” he said; “and the clergy are often appealed to
+about odd matters.” Again the latch rattled.
+
+“No; that does not satisfy me!” I exclaimed: and indeed there was
+something in the hasty and unexplanatory reply which, instead of
+allaying, piqued my curiosity more than ever.
+
+“It is a very strange piece of business,” I added; “I must know more
+about it.”
+
+“Another time.”
+
+“No; to-night!—to-night!” and as he turned from the door, I placed
+myself between it and him. He looked rather embarrassed.
+
+“You certainly shall not go till you have told me all,” I said.
+
+“I would rather not just now.”
+
+“You shall!—you must!”
+
+“I would rather Diana or Mary informed you.”
+
+Of course these objections wrought my eagerness to a climax: gratified
+it must be, and that without delay; and I told him so.
+
+“But I apprised you that I was a hard man,” said he, “difficult to
+persuade.”
+
+“And I am a hard woman,—impossible to put off.”
+
+
+And I am a hard woman,—impossible to put off
+
+“And then,” he pursued, “I am cold: no fervour infects me.”
+
+“Whereas I am hot, and fire dissolves ice. The blaze there has thawed
+all the snow from your cloak; by the same token, it has streamed on to
+my floor, and made it like a trampled street. As you hope ever to be
+forgiven, Mr. Rivers, the high crime and misdemeanour of spoiling a
+sanded kitchen, tell me what I wish to know.”
+
+“Well, then,” he said, “I yield; if not to your earnestness, to your
+perseverance: as stone is worn by continual dropping. Besides, you must
+know some day,—as well now as later. Your name is Jane Eyre?”
+
+“Of course: that was all settled before.”
+
+“You are not, perhaps, aware that I am your namesake?—that I was
+christened St. John Eyre Rivers?”
+
+“No, indeed! I remember now seeing the letter E. comprised in your
+initials written in books you have at different times lent me; but I
+never asked for what name it stood. But what then? Surely—”
+
+I stopped: I could not trust myself to entertain, much less to express,
+the thought that rushed upon me—that embodied itself,—that, in a
+second, stood out a strong, solid probability. Circumstances knit
+themselves, fitted themselves, shot into order: the chain that had been
+lying hitherto a formless lump of links was drawn out straight,—every
+ring was perfect, the connection complete. I knew, by instinct, how the
+matter stood, before St. John had said another word; but I cannot
+expect the reader to have the same intuitive perception, so I must
+repeat his explanation.
+
+“My mother’s name was Eyre; she had two brothers; one a clergyman, who
+married Miss Jane Reed, of Gateshead; the other, John Eyre, Esq.,
+merchant, late of Funchal, Madeira. Mr. Briggs, being Mr. Eyre’s
+solicitor, wrote to us last August to inform us of our uncle’s death,
+and to say that he had left his property to his brother the clergyman’s
+orphan daughter, overlooking us, in consequence of a quarrel, never
+forgiven, between him and my father. He wrote again a few weeks since,
+to intimate that the heiress was lost, and asking if we knew anything
+of her. A name casually written on a slip of paper has enabled me to
+find her out. You know the rest.” Again he was going, but I set my back
+against the door.
+
+“Do let me speak,” I said; “let me have one moment to draw breath and
+reflect.” I paused—he stood before me, hat in hand, looking composed
+enough. I resumed—
+
+“Your mother was my father’s sister?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“My aunt, consequently?”
+
+He bowed.
+
+“My uncle John was your uncle John? You, Diana, and Mary are his
+sister’s children, as I am his brother’s child?”
+
+“Undeniably.”
+
+“You three, then, are my cousins; half our blood on each side flows
+from the same source?”
+
+“We are cousins; yes.”
+
+I surveyed him. It seemed I had found a brother: one I could be proud
+of,—one I could love; and two sisters, whose qualities were such, that,
+when I knew them but as mere strangers, they had inspired me with
+genuine affection and admiration. The two girls, on whom, kneeling down
+on the wet ground, and looking through the low, latticed window of Moor
+House kitchen, I had gazed with so bitter a mixture of interest and
+despair, were my near kinswomen; and the young and stately gentleman
+who had found me almost dying at his threshold was my blood relation.
+Glorious discovery to a lonely wretch! This was wealth indeed!—wealth
+to the heart!—a mine of pure, genial affections. This was a blessing,
+bright, vivid, and exhilarating;—not like the ponderous gift of gold:
+rich and welcome enough in its way, but sobering from its weight. I now
+clapped my hands in sudden joy—my pulse bounded, my veins thrilled.
+
+“Oh, I am glad!—I am glad!” I exclaimed.
+
+St. John smiled. “Did I not say you neglected essential points to
+pursue trifles?” he asked. “You were serious when I told you you had
+got a fortune; and now, for a matter of no moment, you are excited.”
+
+“What _can_ you mean? It may be of no moment to you; you have sisters
+and don’t care for a cousin; but I had nobody; and now three
+relations,—or two, if you don’t choose to be counted,—are born into my
+world full-grown. I say again, I am glad!”
+
+I walked fast through the room: I stopped, half suffocated with the
+thoughts that rose faster than I could receive, comprehend, settle
+them:—thoughts of what might, could, would, and should be, and that ere
+long. I looked at the blank wall: it seemed a sky thick with ascending
+stars,—every one lit me to a purpose or delight. Those who had saved my
+life, whom, till this hour, I had loved barrenly, I could now benefit.
+They were under a yoke,—I could free them: they were scattered,—I could
+reunite them: the independence, the affluence which was mine, might be
+theirs too. Were we not four? Twenty thousand pounds shared equally
+would be five thousand each, justice—enough and to spare: justice would
+be done,—mutual happiness secured. Now the wealth did not weigh on me:
+now it was not a mere bequest of coin,—it was a legacy of life, hope,
+enjoyment.
+
+How I looked while these ideas were taking my spirit by storm, I cannot
+tell; but I perceived soon that Mr. Rivers had placed a chair behind
+me, and was gently attempting to make me sit down on it. He also
+advised me to be composed; I scorned the insinuation of helplessness
+and distraction, shook off his hand, and began to walk about again.
+
+“Write to Diana and Mary to-morrow,” I said, “and tell them to come
+home directly. Diana said they would both consider themselves rich with
+a thousand pounds, so with five thousand they will do very well.”
+
+“Tell me where I can get you a glass of water,” said St. John; “you
+must really make an effort to tranquillise your feelings.”
+
+“Nonsense! and what sort of an effect will the bequest have on you?
+Will it keep you in England, induce you to marry Miss Oliver, and
+settle down like an ordinary mortal?”
+
+“You wander: your head becomes confused. I have been too abrupt in
+communicating the news; it has excited you beyond your strength.”
+
+“Mr. Rivers! you quite put me out of patience: I am rational enough; it
+is you who misunderstand, or rather who affect to misunderstand.”
+
+“Perhaps, if you explained yourself a little more fully, I should
+comprehend better.”
+
+“Explain! What is there to explain? You cannot fail to see that twenty
+thousand pounds, the sum in question, divided equally between the
+nephew and three nieces of our uncle, will give five thousand to each?
+What I want is, that you should write to your sisters and tell them of
+the fortune that has accrued to them.”
+
+“To you, you mean.”
+
+“I have intimated my view of the case: I am incapable of taking any
+other. I am not brutally selfish, blindly unjust, or fiendishly
+ungrateful. Besides, I am resolved I will have a home and connections.
+I like Moor House, and I will live at Moor House; I like Diana and
+Mary, and I will attach myself for life to Diana and Mary. It would
+please and benefit me to have five thousand pounds; it would torment
+and oppress me to have twenty thousand; which, moreover, could never be
+mine in justice, though it might in law. I abandon to you, then, what
+is absolutely superfluous to me. Let there be no opposition, and no
+discussion about it; let us agree amongst each other, and decide the
+point at once.”
+
+“This is acting on first impulses; you must take days to consider such
+a matter, ere your word can be regarded as valid.”
+
+“Oh! if all you doubt is my sincerity, I am easy: you see the justice
+of the case?”
+
+“I _do_ see a certain justice; but it is contrary to all custom.
+Besides, the entire fortune is your right: my uncle gained it by his
+own efforts; he was free to leave it to whom he would: he left it to
+you. After all, justice permits you to keep it: you may, with a clear
+conscience, consider it absolutely your own.”
+
+“With me,” said I, “it is fully as much a matter of feeling as of
+conscience: I must indulge my feelings; I so seldom have had an
+opportunity of doing so. Were you to argue, object, and annoy me for a
+year, I could not forego the delicious pleasure of which I have caught
+a glimpse—that of repaying, in part, a mighty obligation, and winning
+to myself lifelong friends.”
+
+“You think so now,” rejoined St. John, “because you do not know what it
+is to possess, nor consequently to enjoy wealth: you cannot form a
+notion of the importance twenty thousand pounds would give you; of the
+place it would enable you to take in society; of the prospects it would
+open to you: you cannot—”
+
+“And you,” I interrupted, “cannot at all imagine the craving I have for
+fraternal and sisterly love. I never had a home, I never had brothers
+or sisters; I must and will have them now: you are not reluctant to
+admit me and own me, are you?”
+
+“Jane, I will be your brother—my sisters will be your sisters—without
+stipulating for this sacrifice of your just rights.”
+
+“Brother? Yes; at the distance of a thousand leagues! Sisters? Yes;
+slaving amongst strangers! I, wealthy—gorged with gold I never earned
+and do not merit! You, penniless! Famous equality and fraternisation!
+Close union! Intimate attachment!”
+
+“But, Jane, your aspirations after family ties and domestic happiness
+may be realised otherwise than by the means you contemplate: you may
+marry.”
+
+“Nonsense, again! Marry! I don’t want to marry, and never shall marry.”
+
+“That is saying too much: such hazardous affirmations are a proof of
+the excitement under which you labour.”
+
+“It is not saying too much: I know what I feel, and how averse are my
+inclinations to the bare thought of marriage. No one would take me for
+love; and I will not be regarded in the light of a mere money
+speculation. And I do not want a stranger—unsympathising, alien,
+different from me; I want my kindred: those with whom I have full
+fellow-feeling. Say again you will be my brother: when you uttered the
+words I was satisfied, happy; repeat them, if you can, repeat them
+sincerely.”
+
+“I think I can. I know I have always loved my own sisters; and I know
+on what my affection for them is grounded,—respect for their worth and
+admiration of their talents. You too have principle and mind: your
+tastes and habits resemble Diana’s and Mary’s; your presence is always
+agreeable to me; in your conversation I have already for some time
+found a salutary solace. I feel I can easily and naturally make room in
+my heart for you, as my third and youngest sister.”
+
+“Thank you: that contents me for to-night. Now you had better go; for
+if you stay longer, you will perhaps irritate me afresh by some
+mistrustful scruple.”
+
+“And the school, Miss Eyre? It must now be shut up, I suppose?”
+
+“No. I will retain my post of mistress till you get a substitute.”
+
+He smiled approbation: we shook hands, and he took leave.
+
+I need not narrate in detail the further struggles I had, and arguments
+I used, to get matters regarding the legacy settled as I wished. My
+task was a very hard one; but, as I was absolutely resolved—as my
+cousins saw at length that my mind was really and immutably fixed on
+making a just division of the property—as they must in their own hearts
+have felt the equity of the intention; and must, besides, have been
+innately conscious that in my place they would have done precisely what
+I wished to do—they yielded at length so far as to consent to put the
+affair to arbitration. The judges chosen were Mr. Oliver and an able
+lawyer: both coincided in my opinion: I carried my point. The
+instruments of transfer were drawn out: St. John, Diana, Mary, and I,
+each became possessed of a competency.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+
+It was near Christmas by the time all was settled: the season of
+general holiday approached. I now closed Morton school, taking care
+that the parting should not be barren on my side. Good fortune opens
+the hand as well as the heart wonderfully; and to give somewhat when we
+have largely received, is but to afford a vent to the unusual
+ebullition of the sensations. I had long felt with pleasure that many
+of my rustic scholars liked me, and when we parted, that consciousness
+was confirmed: they manifested their affection plainly and strongly.
+Deep was my gratification to find I had really a place in their
+unsophisticated hearts: I promised them that never a week should pass
+in future that I did not visit them, and give them an hour’s teaching
+in their school.
+
+Mr. Rivers came up as, having seen the classes, now numbering sixty
+girls, file out before me, and locked the door, I stood with the key in
+my hand, exchanging a few words of special farewell with some
+half-dozen of my best scholars: as decent, respectable, modest, and
+well-informed young women as could be found in the ranks of the British
+peasantry. And that is saying a great deal; for after all, the British
+peasantry are the best taught, best mannered, most self-respecting of
+any in Europe: since those days I have seen paysannes and Bäuerinnen;
+and the best of them seemed to me ignorant, coarse, and besotted,
+compared with my Morton girls.
+
+“Do you consider you have got your reward for a season of exertion?”
+asked Mr. Rivers, when they were gone. “Does not the consciousness of
+having done some real good in your day and generation give pleasure?”
+
+“Doubtless.”
+
+“And you have only toiled a few months! Would not a life devoted to the
+task of regenerating your race be well spent?”
+
+“Yes,” I said; “but I could not go on for ever so: I want to enjoy my
+own faculties as well as to cultivate those of other people. I must
+enjoy them now; don’t recall either my mind or body to the school; I am
+out of it and disposed for full holiday.”
+
+He looked grave. “What now? What sudden eagerness is this you evince?
+What are you going to do?”
+
+“To be active: as active as I can. And first I must beg you to set
+Hannah at liberty, and get somebody else to wait on you.”
+
+“Do you want her?”
+
+“Yes, to go with me to Moor House. Diana and Mary will be at home in a
+week, and I want to have everything in order against their arrival.”
+
+“I understand. I thought you were for flying off on some excursion. It
+is better so: Hannah shall go with you.”
+
+“Tell her to be ready by to-morrow then; and here is the schoolroom
+key: I will give you the key of my cottage in the morning.”
+
+He took it. “You give it up very gleefully,” said he; “I don’t quite
+understand your light-heartedness, because I cannot tell what
+employment you propose to yourself as a substitute for the one you are
+relinquishing. What aim, what purpose, what ambition in life have you
+now?”
+
+“My first aim will be to _clean down_ (do you comprehend the full force
+of the expression?)—to _clean down_ Moor House from chamber to cellar;
+my next to rub it up with bees-wax, oil, and an indefinite number of
+cloths, till it glitters again; my third, to arrange every chair,
+table, bed, carpet, with mathematical precision; afterwards I shall go
+near to ruin you in coals and peat to keep up good fires in every room;
+and lastly, the two days preceding that on which your sisters are
+expected will be devoted by Hannah and me to such a beating of eggs,
+sorting of currants, grating of spices, compounding of Christmas cakes,
+chopping up of materials for mince-pies, and solemnising of other
+culinary rites, as words can convey but an inadequate notion of to the
+uninitiated like you. My purpose, in short, is to have all things in an
+absolutely perfect state of readiness for Diana and Mary before next
+Thursday; and my ambition is to give them a beau-ideal of a welcome
+when they come.”
+
+St. John smiled slightly: still he was dissatisfied.
+
+“It is all very well for the present,” said he; “but seriously, I trust
+that when the first flush of vivacity is over, you will look a little
+higher than domestic endearments and household joys.”
+
+“The best things the world has!” I interrupted.
+
+“No, Jane, no: this world is not the scene of fruition; do not attempt
+to make it so: nor of rest; do not turn slothful.”
+
+“I mean, on the contrary, to be busy.”
+
+“Jane, I excuse you for the present: two months’ grace I allow you for
+the full enjoyment of your new position, and for pleasing yourself with
+this late-found charm of relationship; but _then_, I hope you will
+begin to look beyond Moor House and Morton, and sisterly society, and
+the selfish calm and sensual comfort of civilised affluence. I hope
+your energies will then once more trouble you with their strength.”
+
+I looked at him with surprise. “St. John,” I said, “I think you are
+almost wicked to talk so. I am disposed to be as content as a queen,
+and you try to stir me up to restlessness! To what end?”
+
+“To the end of turning to profit the talents which God has committed to
+your keeping; and of which He will surely one day demand a strict
+account. Jane, I shall watch you closely and anxiously—I warn you of
+that. And try to restrain the disproportionate fervour with which you
+throw yourself into commonplace home pleasures. Don’t cling so
+tenaciously to ties of the flesh; save your constancy and ardour for an
+adequate cause; forbear to waste them on trite transient objects. Do
+you hear, Jane?”
+
+“Yes; just as if you were speaking Greek. I feel I have adequate cause
+to be happy, and I _will_ be happy. Goodbye!”
+
+Happy at Moor House I was, and hard I worked; and so did Hannah: she
+was charmed to see how jovial I could be amidst the bustle of a house
+turned topsy-turvy—how I could brush, and dust, and clean, and cook.
+And really, after a day or two of confusion worse confounded, it was
+delightful by degrees to invoke order from the chaos ourselves had
+made. I had previously taken a journey to S—— to purchase some new
+furniture: my cousins having given me _carte blanche_ to effect what
+alterations I pleased, and a sum having been set aside for that
+purpose. The ordinary sitting-room and bedrooms I left much as they
+were: for I knew Diana and Mary would derive more pleasure from seeing
+again the old homely tables, and chairs, and beds, than from the
+spectacle of the smartest innovations. Still some novelty was
+necessary, to give to their return the piquancy with which I wished it
+to be invested. Dark handsome new carpets and curtains, an arrangement
+of some carefully selected antique ornaments in porcelain and bronze,
+new coverings, and mirrors, and dressing-cases, for the toilet tables,
+answered the end: they looked fresh without being glaring. A spare
+parlour and bedroom I refurnished entirely, with old mahogany and
+crimson upholstery: I laid canvas on the passage, and carpets on the
+stairs. When all was finished, I thought Moor House as complete a model
+of bright modest snugness within, as it was, at this season, a specimen
+of wintry waste and desert dreariness without.
+
+The eventful Thursday at length came. They were expected about dark,
+and ere dusk fires were lit upstairs and below; the kitchen was in
+perfect trim; Hannah and I were dressed, and all was in readiness.
+
+St. John arrived first. I had entreated him to keep quite clear of the
+house till everything was arranged: and, indeed, the bare idea of the
+commotion, at once sordid and trivial, going on within its walls
+sufficed to scare him to estrangement. He found me in the kitchen,
+watching the progress of certain cakes for tea, then baking.
+Approaching the hearth, he asked, “If I was at last satisfied with
+housemaid’s work?” I answered by inviting him to accompany me on a
+general inspection of the result of my labours. With some difficulty, I
+got him to make the tour of the house. He just looked in at the doors I
+opened; and when he had wandered upstairs and downstairs, he said I
+must have gone through a great deal of fatigue and trouble to have
+effected such considerable changes in so short a time: but not a
+syllable did he utter indicating pleasure in the improved aspect of his
+abode.
+
+This silence damped me. I thought perhaps the alterations had disturbed
+some old associations he valued. I inquired whether this was the case:
+no doubt in a somewhat crest-fallen tone.
+
+“Not at all; he had, on the contrary, remarked that I had scrupulously
+respected every association: he feared, indeed, I must have bestowed
+more thought on the matter than it was worth. How many minutes, for
+instance, had I devoted to studying the arrangement of this very
+room?—By-the-bye, could I tell him where such a book was?”
+
+I showed him the volume on the shelf: he took it down, and withdrawing
+to his accustomed window recess, he began to read it.
+
+Now, I did not like this, reader. St. John was a good man; but I began
+to feel he had spoken truth of himself when he said he was hard and
+cold. The humanities and amenities of life had no attraction for
+him—its peaceful enjoyments no charm. Literally, he lived only to
+aspire—after what was good and great, certainly; but still he would
+never rest, nor approve of others resting round him. As I looked at his
+lofty forehead, still and pale as a white stone—at his fine lineaments
+fixed in study—I comprehended all at once that he would hardly make a
+good husband: that it would be a trying thing to be his wife. I
+understood, as by inspiration, the nature of his love for Miss Oliver;
+I agreed with him that it was but a love of the senses. I comprehended
+how he should despise himself for the feverish influence it exercised
+over him; how he should wish to stifle and destroy it; how he should
+mistrust its ever conducting permanently to his happiness or hers. I
+saw he was of the material from which nature hews her heroes—Christian
+and Pagan—her lawgivers, her statesmen, her conquerors: a steadfast
+bulwark for great interests to rest upon; but, at the fireside, too
+often a cold cumbrous column, gloomy and out of place.
+
+“This parlour is not his sphere,” I reflected: “the Himalayan ridge or
+Caffre bush, even the plague-cursed Guinea Coast swamp would suit him
+better. Well may he eschew the calm of domestic life; it is not his
+element: there his faculties stagnate—they cannot develop or appear to
+advantage. It is in scenes of strife and danger—where courage is
+proved, and energy exercised, and fortitude tasked—that he will speak
+and move, the leader and superior. A merry child would have the
+advantage of him on this hearth. He is right to choose a missionary’s
+career—I see it now.”
+
+“They are coming! they are coming!” cried Hannah, throwing open the
+parlour door. At the same moment old Carlo barked joyfully. Out I ran.
+It was now dark; but a rumbling of wheels was audible. Hannah soon had
+a lantern lit. The vehicle had stopped at the wicket; the driver opened
+the door: first one well-known form, then another, stepped out. In a
+minute I had my face under their bonnets, in contact first with Mary’s
+soft cheek, then with Diana’s flowing curls. They laughed—kissed
+me—then Hannah: patted Carlo, who was half wild with delight; asked
+eagerly if all was well; and being assured in the affirmative, hastened
+into the house.
+
+They were stiff with their long and jolting drive from Whitcross, and
+chilled with the frosty night air; but their pleasant countenances
+expanded to the cheerful firelight. While the driver and Hannah brought
+in the boxes, they demanded St. John. At this moment he advanced from
+the parlour. They both threw their arms round his neck at once. He gave
+each one quiet kiss, said in a low tone a few words of welcome, stood a
+while to be talked to, and then, intimating that he supposed they would
+soon rejoin him in the parlour, withdrew there as to a place of refuge.
+
+I had lit their candles to go upstairs, but Diana had first to give
+hospitable orders respecting the driver; this done, both followed me.
+They were delighted with the renovation and decorations of their rooms;
+with the new drapery, and fresh carpets, and rich tinted china vases:
+they expressed their gratification ungrudgingly. I had the pleasure of
+feeling that my arrangements met their wishes exactly, and that what I
+had done added a vivid charm to their joyous return home.
+
+Sweet was that evening. My cousins, full of exhilaration, were so
+eloquent in narrative and comment, that their fluency covered St.
+John’s taciturnity: he was sincerely glad to see his sisters; but in
+their glow of fervour and flow of joy he could not sympathise. The
+event of the day—that is, the return of Diana and Mary—pleased him; but
+the accompaniments of that event, the glad tumult, the garrulous glee
+of reception irked him: I saw he wished the calmer morrow was come. In
+the very meridian of the night’s enjoyment, about an hour after tea, a
+rap was heard at the door. Hannah entered with the intimation that “a
+poor lad was come, at that unlikely time, to fetch Mr. Rivers to see
+his mother, who was drawing away.”
+
+“Where does she live, Hannah?”
+
+“Clear up at Whitcross Brow, almost four miles off, and moor and moss
+all the way.”
+
+“Tell him I will go.”
+
+“I’m sure, sir, you had better not. It’s the worst road to travel after
+dark that can be: there’s no track at all over the bog. And then it is
+such a bitter night—the keenest wind you ever felt. You had better send
+word, sir, that you will be there in the morning.”
+
+But he was already in the passage, putting on his cloak; and without
+one objection, one murmur, he departed. It was then nine o’clock: he
+did not return till midnight. Starved and tired enough he was: but he
+looked happier than when he set out. He had performed an act of duty;
+made an exertion; felt his own strength to do and deny, and was on
+better terms with himself.
+
+I am afraid the whole of the ensuing week tried his patience. It was
+Christmas week: we took to no settled employment, but spent it in a
+sort of merry domestic dissipation. The air of the moors, the freedom
+of home, the dawn of prosperity, acted on Diana and Mary’s spirits like
+some life-giving elixir: they were gay from morning till noon, and from
+noon till night. They could always talk; and their discourse, witty,
+pithy, original, had such charms for me, that I preferred listening to,
+and sharing in it, to doing anything else. St. John did not rebuke our
+vivacity; but he escaped from it: he was seldom in the house; his
+parish was large, the population scattered, and he found daily business
+in visiting the sick and poor in its different districts.
+
+One morning at breakfast, Diana, after looking a little pensive for
+some minutes, asked him, “If his plans were yet unchanged.”
+
+“Unchanged and unchangeable,” was the reply. And he proceeded to inform
+us that his departure from England was now definitively fixed for the
+ensuing year.
+
+“And Rosamond Oliver?” suggested Mary, the words seeming to escape her
+lips involuntarily: for no sooner had she uttered them, than she made a
+gesture as if wishing to recall them. St. John had a book in his
+hand—it was his unsocial custom to read at meals—he closed it, and
+looked up.
+
+“Rosamond Oliver,” said he, “is about to be married to Mr. Granby, one
+of the best connected and most estimable residents in S——, grandson and
+heir to Sir Frederic Granby: I had the intelligence from her father
+yesterday.”
+
+His sisters looked at each other and at me; we all three looked at him:
+he was serene as glass.
+
+“The match must have been got up hastily,” said Diana: “they cannot
+have known each other long.”
+
+“But two months: they met in October at the county ball at S——. But
+where there are no obstacles to a union, as in the present case, where
+the connection is in every point desirable, delays are unnecessary:
+they will be married as soon as S—— Place, which Sir Frederic gives up
+to them, can be refitted for their reception.”
+
+The first time I found St. John alone after this communication, I felt
+tempted to inquire if the event distressed him: but he seemed so little
+to need sympathy, that, so far from venturing to offer him more, I
+experienced some shame at the recollection of what I had already
+hazarded. Besides, I was out of practice in talking to him: his reserve
+was again frozen over, and my frankness was congealed beneath it. He
+had not kept his promise of treating me like his sisters; he
+continually made little chilling differences between us, which did not
+at all tend to the development of cordiality: in short, now that I was
+acknowledged his kinswoman, and lived under the same roof with him, I
+felt the distance between us to be far greater than when he had known
+me only as the village schoolmistress. When I remembered how far I had
+once been admitted to his confidence, I could hardly comprehend his
+present frigidity.
+
+Such being the case, I felt not a little surprised when he raised his
+head suddenly from the desk over which he was stooping, and said—
+
+“You see, Jane, the battle is fought and the victory won.”
+
+Startled at being thus addressed, I did not immediately reply: after a
+moment’s hesitation I answered—
+
+“But are you sure you are not in the position of those conquerors whose
+triumphs have cost them too dear? Would not such another ruin you?”
+
+“I think not; and if I were, it does not much signify; I shall never be
+called upon to contend for such another. The event of the conflict is
+decisive: my way is now clear; I thank God for it!” So saying, he
+returned to his papers and his silence.
+
+As our mutual happiness (_i.e._, Diana’s, Mary’s, and mine) settled
+into a quieter character, and we resumed our usual habits and regular
+studies, St. John stayed more at home: he sat with us in the same room,
+sometimes for hours together. While Mary drew, Diana pursued a course
+of encyclopædic reading she had (to my awe and amazement) undertaken,
+and I fagged away at German, he pondered a mystic lore of his own: that
+of some Eastern tongue, the acquisition of which he thought necessary
+to his plans.
+
+Thus engaged, he appeared, sitting in his own recess, quiet and
+absorbed enough; but that blue eye of his had a habit of leaving the
+outlandish-looking grammar, and wandering over, and sometimes fixing
+upon us, his fellow-students, with a curious intensity of observation:
+if caught, it would be instantly withdrawn; yet ever and anon, it
+returned searchingly to our table. I wondered what it meant: I
+wondered, too, at the punctual satisfaction he never failed to exhibit
+on an occasion that seemed to me of small moment, namely, my weekly
+visit to Morton school; and still more was I puzzled when, if the day
+was unfavourable, if there was snow, or rain, or high wind, and his
+sisters urged me not to go, he would invariably make light of their
+solicitude, and encourage me to accomplish the task without regard to
+the elements.
+
+“Jane is not such a weakling as you would make her,” he would say: “she
+can bear a mountain blast, or a shower, or a few flakes of snow, as
+well as any of us. Her constitution is both sound and elastic;—better
+calculated to endure variations of climate than many more robust.”
+
+And when I returned, sometimes a good deal tired, and not a little
+weather-beaten, I never dared complain, because I saw that to murmur
+would be to vex him: on all occasions fortitude pleased him; the
+reverse was a special annoyance.
+
+One afternoon, however, I got leave to stay at home, because I really
+had a cold. His sisters were gone to Morton in my stead: I sat reading
+Schiller; he, deciphering his crabbed Oriental scrolls. As I exchanged
+a translation for an exercise, I happened to look his way: there I
+found myself under the influence of the ever-watchful blue eye. How
+long it had been searching me through and through, and over and over, I
+cannot tell: so keen was it, and yet so cold, I felt for the moment
+superstitious—as if I were sitting in the room with something uncanny.
+
+“Jane, what are you doing?”
+
+“Learning German.”
+
+“I want you to give up German and learn Hindostanee.”
+
+“You are not in earnest?”
+
+“In such earnest that I must have it so: and I will tell you why.”
+
+He then went on to explain that Hindostanee was the language he was
+himself at present studying; that, as he advanced, he was apt to forget
+the commencement; that it would assist him greatly to have a pupil with
+whom he might again and again go over the elements, and so fix them
+thoroughly in his mind; that his choice had hovered for some time
+between me and his sisters; but that he had fixed on me because he saw
+I could sit at a task the longest of the three. Would I do him this
+favour? I should not, perhaps, have to make the sacrifice long, as it
+wanted now barely three months to his departure.
+
+St. John was not a man to be lightly refused: you felt that every
+impression made on him, either for pain or pleasure, was deep-graved
+and permanent. I consented. When Diana and Mary returned, the former
+found her scholar transferred from her to her brother: she laughed, and
+both she and Mary agreed that St. John should never have persuaded them
+to such a step. He answered quietly—
+
+“I know it.”
+
+I found him a very patient, very forbearing, and yet an exacting
+master: he expected me to do a great deal; and when I fulfilled his
+expectations, he, in his own way, fully testified his approbation. By
+degrees, he acquired a certain influence over me that took away my
+liberty of mind: his praise and notice were more restraining than his
+indifference. I could no longer talk or laugh freely when he was by,
+because a tiresomely importunate instinct reminded me that vivacity (at
+least in me) was distasteful to him. I was so fully aware that only
+serious moods and occupations were acceptable, that in his presence
+every effort to sustain or follow any other became vain: I fell under a
+freezing spell. When he said “go,” I went; “come,” I came; “do this,” I
+did it. But I did not love my servitude: I wished, many a time, he had
+continued to neglect me.
+
+One evening when, at bedtime, his sisters and I stood round him,
+bidding him good-night, he kissed each of them, as was his custom; and,
+as was equally his custom, he gave me his hand. Diana, who chanced to
+be in a frolicsome humour (_she_ was not painfully controlled by his
+will; for hers, in another way, was as strong), exclaimed—
+
+“St. John! you used to call Jane your third sister, but you don’t treat
+her as such: you should kiss her too.”
+
+She pushed me towards him. I thought Diana very provoking, and felt
+uncomfortably confused; and while I was thus thinking and feeling, St.
+John bent his head; his Greek face was brought to a level with mine,
+his eyes questioned my eyes piercingly—he kissed me. There are no such
+things as marble kisses or ice kisses, or I should say my
+ecclesiastical cousin’s salute belonged to one of these classes; but
+there may be experiment kisses, and his was an experiment kiss. When
+given, he viewed me to learn the result; it was not striking: I am sure
+I did not blush; perhaps I might have turned a little pale, for I felt
+as if this kiss were a seal affixed to my fetters. He never omitted the
+ceremony afterwards, and the gravity and quiescence with which I
+underwent it, seemed to invest it for him with a certain charm.
+
+As for me, I daily wished more to please him; but to do so, I felt
+daily more and more that I must disown half my nature, stifle half my
+faculties, wrest my tastes from their original bent, force myself to
+the adoption of pursuits for which I had no natural vocation. He wanted
+to train me to an elevation I could never reach; it racked me hourly to
+aspire to the standard he uplifted. The thing was as impossible as to
+mould my irregular features to his correct and classic pattern, to give
+to my changeable green eyes the sea-blue tint and solemn lustre of his
+own.
+
+Not his ascendancy alone, however, held me in thrall at present. Of
+late it had been easy enough for me to look sad: a cankering evil sat
+at my heart and drained my happiness at its source—the evil of
+suspense.
+
+Perhaps you think I had forgotten Mr. Rochester, reader, amidst these
+changes of place and fortune. Not for a moment. His idea was still with
+me, because it was not a vapour sunshine could disperse, nor a
+sand-traced effigy storms could wash away; it was a name graven on a
+tablet, fated to last as long as the marble it inscribed. The craving
+to know what had become of him followed me everywhere; when I was at
+Morton, I re-entered my cottage every evening to think of that; and now
+at Moor House, I sought my bedroom each night to brood over it.
+
+In the course of my necessary correspondence with Mr. Briggs about the
+will, I had inquired if he knew anything of Mr. Rochester’s present
+residence and state of health; but, as St. John had conjectured, he was
+quite ignorant of all concerning him. I then wrote to Mrs. Fairfax,
+entreating information on the subject. I had calculated with certainty
+on this step answering my end: I felt sure it would elicit an early
+answer. I was astonished when a fortnight passed without reply; but
+when two months wore away, and day after day the post arrived and
+brought nothing for me, I fell a prey to the keenest anxiety.
+
+I wrote again: there was a chance of my first letter having missed.
+Renewed hope followed renewed effort: it shone like the former for some
+weeks, then, like it, it faded, flickered: not a line, not a word
+reached me. When half a year wasted in vain expectancy, my hope died
+out, and then I felt dark indeed.
+
+A fine spring shone round me, which I could not enjoy. Summer
+approached; Diana tried to cheer me: she said I looked ill, and wished
+to accompany me to the sea-side. This St. John opposed; he said I did
+not want dissipation, I wanted employment; my present life was too
+purposeless, I required an aim; and, I suppose, by way of supplying
+deficiencies, he prolonged still further my lessons in Hindostanee, and
+grew more urgent in requiring their accomplishment: and I, like a fool,
+never thought of resisting him—I could not resist him.
+
+One day I had come to my studies in lower spirits than usual; the ebb
+was occasioned by a poignantly felt disappointment. Hannah had told me
+in the morning there was a letter for me, and when I went down to take
+it, almost certain that the long-looked for tidings were vouchsafed me
+at last, I found only an unimportant note from Mr. Briggs on business.
+The bitter check had wrung from me some tears; and now, as I sat poring
+over the crabbed characters and flourishing tropes of an Indian scribe,
+my eyes filled again.
+
+St. John called me to his side to read; in attempting to do this my
+voice failed me: words were lost in sobs. He and I were the only
+occupants of the parlour: Diana was practising her music in the
+drawing-room, Mary was gardening—it was a very fine May day, clear,
+sunny, and breezy. My companion expressed no surprise at this emotion,
+nor did he question me as to its cause; he only said—
+
+“We will wait a few minutes, Jane, till you are more composed.” And
+while I smothered the paroxysm with all haste, he sat calm and patient,
+leaning on his desk, and looking like a physician watching with the eye
+of science an expected and fully understood crisis in a patient’s
+malady. Having stifled my sobs, wiped my eyes, and muttered something
+about not being very well that morning, I resumed my task, and
+succeeded in completing it. St. John put away my books and his, locked
+his desk, and said—
+
+“Now, Jane, you shall take a walk; and with me.”
+
+“I will call Diana and Mary.”
+
+“No; I want only one companion this morning, and that must be you. Put
+on your things; go out by the kitchen-door: take the road towards the
+head of Marsh Glen: I will join you in a moment.”
+
+I know no medium: I never in my life have known any medium in my
+dealings with positive, hard characters, antagonistic to my own,
+between absolute submission and determined revolt. I have always
+faithfully observed the one, up to the very moment of bursting,
+sometimes with volcanic vehemence, into the other; and as neither
+present circumstances warranted, nor my present mood inclined me to
+mutiny, I observed careful obedience to St. John’s directions; and in
+ten minutes I was treading the wild track of the glen, side by side
+with him.
+
+The breeze was from the west: it came over the hills, sweet with scents
+of heath and rush; the sky was of stainless blue; the stream descending
+the ravine, swelled with past spring rains, poured along plentiful and
+clear, catching golden gleams from the sun, and sapphire tints from the
+firmament. As we advanced and left the track, we trod a soft turf,
+mossy fine and emerald green, minutely enamelled with a tiny white
+flower, and spangled with a star-like yellow blossom: the hills,
+meantime, shut us quite in; for the glen, towards its head, wound to
+their very core.
+
+“Let us rest here,” said St. John, as we reached the first stragglers
+of a battalion of rocks, guarding a sort of pass, beyond which the beck
+rushed down a waterfall; and where, still a little farther, the
+mountain shook off turf and flower, had only heath for raiment and crag
+for gem—where it exaggerated the wild to the savage, and exchanged the
+fresh for the frowning—where it guarded the forlorn hope of solitude,
+and a last refuge for silence.
+
+I took a seat: St. John stood near me. He looked up the pass and down
+the hollow; his glance wandered away with the stream, and returned to
+traverse the unclouded heaven which coloured it: he removed his hat,
+let the breeze stir his hair and kiss his brow. He seemed in communion
+with the genius of the haunt: with his eye he bade farewell to
+something.
+
+“And I shall see it again,” he said aloud, “in dreams when I sleep by
+the Ganges: and again in a more remote hour—when another slumber
+overcomes me—on the shore of a darker stream!”
+
+Strange words of a strange love! An austere patriot’s passion for his
+fatherland! He sat down; for half-an-hour we never spoke; neither he to
+me nor I to him: that interval past, he recommenced—
+
+“Jane, I go in six weeks; I have taken my berth in an East Indiaman
+which sails on the 20th of June.”
+
+“God will protect you; for you have undertaken His work,” I answered.
+
+“Yes,” said he, “there is my glory and joy. I am the servant of an
+infallible Master. I am not going out under human guidance, subject to
+the defective laws and erring control of my feeble fellow-worms: my
+king, my lawgiver, my captain, is the All-perfect. It seems strange to
+me that all round me do not burn to enlist under the same banner,—to
+join in the same enterprise.”
+
+“All have not your powers, and it would be folly for the feeble to wish
+to march with the strong.”
+
+“I do not speak to the feeble, or think of them: I address only such as
+are worthy of the work, and competent to accomplish it.”
+
+“Those are few in number, and difficult to discover.”
+
+“You say truly; but when found, it is right to stir them up—to urge and
+exhort them to the effort—to show them what their gifts are, and why
+they were given—to speak Heaven’s message in their ear,—to offer them,
+direct from God, a place in the ranks of His chosen.”
+
+“If they are really qualified for the task, will not their own hearts
+be the first to inform them of it?”
+
+I felt as if an awful charm was framing round and gathering over me: I
+trembled to hear some fatal word spoken which would at once declare and
+rivet the spell.
+
+“And what does _your_ heart say?” demanded St. John.
+
+“My heart is mute,—my heart is mute,” I answered, struck and thrilled.
+
+“Then I must speak for it,” continued the deep, relentless voice.
+“Jane, come with me to India: come as my helpmeet and fellow-labourer.”
+
+The glen and sky spun round: the hills heaved! It was as if I had heard
+a summons from Heaven—as if a visionary messenger, like him of
+Macedonia, had enounced, “Come over and help us!” But I was no
+apostle,—I could not behold the herald,—I could not receive his call.
+
+“Oh, St. John!” I cried, “have some mercy!”
+
+I appealed to one who, in the discharge of what he believed his duty,
+knew neither mercy nor remorse. He continued—
+
+“God and nature intended you for a missionary’s wife. It is not
+personal, but mental endowments they have given you: you are formed for
+labour, not for love. A missionary’s wife you must—shall be. You shall
+be mine: I claim you—not for my pleasure, but for my Sovereign’s
+service.”
+
+“I am not fit for it: I have no vocation,” I said.
+
+He had calculated on these first objections: he was not irritated by
+them. Indeed, as he leaned back against the crag behind him, folded his
+arms on his chest, and fixed his countenance, I saw he was prepared for
+a long and trying opposition, and had taken in a stock of patience to
+last him to its close—resolved, however, that that close should be
+conquest for him.
+
+“Humility, Jane,” said he, “is the groundwork of Christian virtues: you
+say right that you are not fit for the work. Who is fit for it? Or who,
+that ever was truly called, believed himself worthy of the summons? I,
+for instance, am but dust and ashes. With St. Paul, I acknowledge
+myself the chiefest of sinners; but I do not suffer this sense of my
+personal vileness to daunt me. I know my Leader: that He is just as
+well as mighty; and while He has chosen a feeble instrument to perform
+a great task, He will, from the boundless stores of His providence,
+supply the inadequacy of the means to the end. Think like me,
+Jane—trust like me. It is the Rock of Ages I ask you to lean on: do not
+doubt but it will bear the weight of your human weakness.”
+
+“I do not understand a missionary life: I have never studied missionary
+labours.”
+
+“There I, humble as I am, can give you the aid you want: I can set you
+your task from hour to hour; stand by you always; help you from moment
+to moment. This I could do in the beginning: soon (for I know your
+powers) you would be as strong and apt as myself, and would not require
+my help.”
+
+“But my powers—where are they for this undertaking? I do not feel them.
+Nothing speaks or stirs in me while you talk. I am sensible of no light
+kindling—no life quickening—no voice counselling or cheering. Oh, I
+wish I could make you see how much my mind is at this moment like a
+rayless dungeon, with one shrinking fear fettered in its depths—the
+fear of being persuaded by you to attempt what I cannot accomplish!”
+
+“I have an answer for you—hear it. I have watched you ever since we
+first met: I have made you my study for ten months. I have proved you
+in that time by sundry tests: and what have I seen and elicited? In the
+village school I found you could perform well, punctually, uprightly,
+labour uncongenial to your habits and inclinations; I saw you could
+perform it with capacity and tact: you could win while you controlled.
+In the calm with which you learnt you had become suddenly rich, I read
+a mind clear of the vice of Demas:—lucre had no undue power over you.
+In the resolute readiness with which you cut your wealth into four
+shares, keeping but one to yourself, and relinquishing the three others
+to the claim of abstract justice, I recognised a soul that revelled in
+the flame and excitement of sacrifice. In the tractability with which,
+at my wish, you forsook a study in which you were interested, and
+adopted another because it interested me; in the untiring assiduity
+with which you have since persevered in it—in the unflagging energy and
+unshaken temper with which you have met its difficulties—I acknowledge
+the complement of the qualities I seek. Jane, you are docile, diligent,
+disinterested, faithful, constant, and courageous; very gentle, and
+very heroic: cease to mistrust yourself—I can trust you unreservedly.
+As a conductress of Indian schools, and a helper amongst Indian women,
+your assistance will be to me invaluable.”
+
+My iron shroud contracted round me; persuasion advanced with slow sure
+step. Shut my eyes as I would, these last words of his succeeded in
+making the way, which had seemed blocked up, comparatively clear. My
+work, which had appeared so vague, so hopelessly diffuse, condensed
+itself as he proceeded, and assumed a definite form under his shaping
+hand. He waited for an answer. I demanded a quarter of an hour to
+think, before I again hazarded a reply.
+
+“Very willingly,” he rejoined; and rising, he strode a little distance
+up the pass, threw himself down on a swell of heath, and there lay
+still.
+
+
+He threw himself down on a swell of heath, and there lay still
+
+“I _can_ do what he wants me to do: I am forced to see and acknowledge
+that,” I meditated,—“that is, if life be spared me. But I feel mine is
+not the existence to be long protracted under an Indian sun. What then?
+He does not care for that: when my time came to die, he would resign
+me, in all serenity and sanctity, to the God who gave me. The case is
+very plain before me. In leaving England, I should leave a loved but
+empty land—Mr. Rochester is not there; and if he were, what is, what
+can that ever be to me? My business is to live without him now: nothing
+so absurd, so weak as to drag on from day to day, as if I were waiting
+some impossible change in circumstances, which might reunite me to him.
+Of course (as St. John once said) I must seek another interest in life
+to replace the one lost: is not the occupation he now offers me truly
+the most glorious man can adopt or God assign? Is it not, by its noble
+cares and sublime results, the one best calculated to fill the void
+left by uptorn affections and demolished hopes? I believe I must say,
+Yes—and yet I shudder. Alas! If I join St. John, I abandon half myself:
+if I go to India, I go to premature death. And how will the interval
+between leaving England for India, and India for the grave, be filled?
+Oh, I know well! That, too, is very clear to my vision. By straining to
+satisfy St. John till my sinews ache, I _shall_ satisfy him—to the
+finest central point and farthest outward circle of his expectations.
+If I _do_ go with him—if I _do_ make the sacrifice he urges, I will
+make it absolutely: I will throw all on the altar—heart, vitals, the
+entire victim. He will never love me; but he shall approve me; I will
+show him energies he has not yet seen, resources he has never
+suspected. Yes, I can work as hard as he can, and with as little
+grudging.
+
+“Consent, then, to his demand is possible: but for one item—one
+dreadful item. It is—that he asks me to be his wife, and has no more of
+a husband’s heart for me than that frowning giant of a rock, down which
+the stream is foaming in yonder gorge. He prizes me as a soldier would
+a good weapon; and that is all. Unmarried to him, this would never
+grieve me; but can I let him complete his calculations—coolly put into
+practice his plans—go through the wedding ceremony? Can I receive from
+him the bridal ring, endure all the forms of love (which I doubt not he
+would scrupulously observe) and know that the spirit was quite absent?
+Can I bear the consciousness that every endearment he bestows is a
+sacrifice made on principle? No: such a martyrdom would be monstrous. I
+will never undergo it. As his sister, I might accompany him—not as his
+wife: I will tell him so.”
+
+I looked towards the knoll: there he lay, still as a prostrate column;
+his face turned to me: his eye beaming watchful and keen. He started to
+his feet and approached me.
+
+“I am ready to go to India, if I may go free.”
+
+“Your answer requires a commentary,” he said; “it is not clear.”
+
+“You have hitherto been my adopted brother—I, your adopted sister: let
+us continue as such: you and I had better not marry.”
+
+He shook his head. “Adopted fraternity will not do in this case. If you
+were my real sister it would be different: I should take you, and seek
+no wife. But as it is, either our union must be consecrated and sealed
+by marriage, or it cannot exist: practical obstacles oppose themselves
+to any other plan. Do you not see it, Jane? Consider a moment—your
+strong sense will guide you.”
+
+I did consider; and still my sense, such as it was, directed me only to
+the fact that we did not love each other as man and wife should: and
+therefore it inferred we ought not to marry. I said so. “St. John,” I
+returned, “I regard you as a brother—you, me as a sister: so let us
+continue.”
+
+“We cannot—we cannot,” he answered, with short, sharp determination:
+“it would not do. You have said you will go with me to India:
+remember—you have said that.”
+
+“Conditionally.”
+
+“Well—well. To the main point—the departure with me from England, the
+co-operation with me in my future labours—you do not object. You have
+already as good as put your hand to the plough: you are too consistent
+to withdraw it. You have but one end to keep in view—how the work you
+have undertaken can best be done. Simplify your complicated interests,
+feelings, thoughts, wishes, aims; merge all considerations in one
+purpose: that of fulfilling with effect—with power—the mission of your
+great Master. To do so, you must have a coadjutor: not a brother—that
+is a loose tie—but a husband. I, too, do not want a sister: a sister
+might any day be taken from me. I want a wife: the sole helpmeet I can
+influence efficiently in life, and retain absolutely till death.”
+
+I shuddered as he spoke: I felt his influence in my marrow—his hold on
+my limbs.
+
+“Seek one elsewhere than in me, St. John: seek one fitted to you.”
+
+“One fitted to my purpose, you mean—fitted to my vocation. Again I tell
+you it is not the insignificant private individual—the mere man, with
+the man’s selfish senses—I wish to mate: it is the missionary.”
+
+“And I will give the missionary my energies—it is all he wants—but not
+myself: that would be only adding the husk and shell to the kernel. For
+them he has no use: I retain them.”
+
+“You cannot—you ought not. Do you think God will be satisfied with half
+an oblation? Will He accept a mutilated sacrifice? It is the cause of
+God I advocate: it is under His standard I enlist you. I cannot accept
+on His behalf a divided allegiance: it must be entire.”
+
+“Oh! I will give my heart to God,” I said. “_You_ do not want it.”
+
+I will not swear, reader, that there was not something of repressed
+sarcasm both in the tone in which I uttered this sentence, and in the
+feeling that accompanied it. I had silently feared St. John till now,
+because I had not understood him. He had held me in awe, because he had
+held me in doubt. How much of him was saint, how much mortal, I could
+not heretofore tell: but revelations were being made in this
+conference: the analysis of his nature was proceeding before my eyes. I
+saw his fallibilities: I comprehended them. I understood that, sitting
+there where I did, on the bank of heath, and with that handsome form
+before me, I sat at the feet of a man, erring as I. The veil fell from
+his hardness and despotism. Having felt in him the presence of these
+qualities, I felt his imperfection and took courage. I was with an
+equal—one with whom I might argue—one whom, if I saw good, I might
+resist.
+
+He was silent after I had uttered the last sentence, and I presently
+risked an upward glance at his countenance. His eye, bent on me,
+expressed at once stern surprise and keen inquiry. “Is she sarcastic,
+and sarcastic to _me!_” it seemed to say. “What does this signify?”
+
+“Do not let us forget that this is a solemn matter,” he said ere long;
+“one of which we may neither think nor talk lightly without sin. I
+trust, Jane, you are in earnest when you say you will serve your heart
+to God: it is all I want. Once wrench your heart from man, and fix it
+on your Maker, the advancement of that Maker’s spiritual kingdom on
+earth will be your chief delight and endeavour; you will be ready to do
+at once whatever furthers that end. You will see what impetus would be
+given to your efforts and mine by our physical and mental union in
+marriage: the only union that gives a character of permanent conformity
+to the destinies and designs of human beings; and, passing over all
+minor caprices—all trivial difficulties and delicacies of feeling—all
+scruple about the degree, kind, strength or tenderness of mere personal
+inclination—you will hasten to enter into that union at once.”
+
+“Shall I?” I said briefly; and I looked at his features, beautiful in
+their harmony, but strangely formidable in their still severity; at his
+brow, commanding but not open; at his eyes, bright and deep and
+searching, but never soft; at his tall imposing figure; and fancied
+myself in idea _his wife_. Oh! it would never do! As his curate, his
+comrade, all would be right: I would cross oceans with him in that
+capacity; toil under Eastern suns, in Asian deserts with him in that
+office; admire and emulate his courage and devotion and vigour;
+accommodate quietly to his masterhood; smile undisturbed at his
+ineradicable ambition; discriminate the Christian from the man:
+profoundly esteem the one, and freely forgive the other. I should
+suffer often, no doubt, attached to him only in this capacity: my body
+would be under rather a stringent yoke, but my heart and mind would be
+free. I should still have my unblighted self to turn to: my natural
+unenslaved feelings with which to communicate in moments of loneliness.
+There would be recesses in my mind which would be only mine, to which
+he never came, and sentiments growing there fresh and sheltered which
+his austerity could never blight, nor his measured warrior-march
+trample down: but as his wife—at his side always, and always
+restrained, and always checked—forced to keep the fire of my nature
+continually low, to compel it to burn inwardly and never utter a cry,
+though the imprisoned flame consumed vital after vital—_this_ would be
+unendurable.
+
+“St. John!” I exclaimed, when I had got so far in my meditation.
+
+“Well?” he answered icily.
+
+“I repeat I freely consent to go with you as your fellow-missionary,
+but not as your wife; I cannot marry you and become part of you.”
+
+“A part of me you must become,” he answered steadily; “otherwise the
+whole bargain is void. How can I, a man not yet thirty, take out with
+me to India a girl of nineteen, unless she be married to me? How can we
+be for ever together—sometimes in solitudes, sometimes amidst savage
+tribes—and unwed?”
+
+“Very well,” I said shortly; “under the circumstances, quite as well as
+if I were either your real sister, or a man and a clergyman like
+yourself.”
+
+“It is known that you are not my sister; I cannot introduce you as
+such: to attempt it would be to fasten injurious suspicions on us both.
+And for the rest, though you have a man’s vigorous brain, you have a
+woman’s heart and—it would not do.”
+
+“It would do,” I affirmed with some disdain, “perfectly well. I have a
+woman’s heart, but not where you are concerned; for you I have only a
+comrade’s constancy; a fellow-soldier’s frankness, fidelity,
+fraternity, if you like; a neophyte’s respect and submission to his
+hierophant: nothing more—don’t fear.”
+
+“It is what I want,” he said, speaking to himself; “it is just what I
+want. And there are obstacles in the way: they must be hewn down. Jane,
+you would not repent marrying me—be certain of that; we _must_ be
+married. I repeat it: there is no other way; and undoubtedly enough of
+love would follow upon marriage to render the union right even in your
+eyes.”
+
+“I scorn your idea of love,” I could not help saying, as I rose up and
+stood before him, leaning my back against the rock. “I scorn the
+counterfeit sentiment you offer: yes, St. John, and I scorn you when
+you offer it.”
+
+He looked at me fixedly, compressing his well-cut lips while he did so.
+Whether he was incensed or surprised, or what, it was not easy to tell:
+he could command his countenance thoroughly.
+
+“I scarcely expected to hear that expression from you,” he said: “I
+think I have done and uttered nothing to deserve scorn.”
+
+I was touched by his gentle tone, and overawed by his high, calm mien.
+
+“Forgive me the words, St. John; but it is your own fault that I have
+been roused to speak so unguardedly. You have introduced a topic on
+which our natures are at variance—a topic we should never discuss: the
+very name of love is an apple of discord between us. If the reality
+were required, what should we do? How should we feel? My dear cousin,
+abandon your scheme of marriage—forget it.”
+
+“No,” said he; “it is a long-cherished scheme, and the only one which
+can secure my great end: but I shall urge you no further at present.
+To-morrow, I leave home for Cambridge: I have many friends there to
+whom I should wish to say farewell. I shall be absent a fortnight—take
+that space of time to consider my offer: and do not forget that if you
+reject it, it is not me you deny, but God. Through my means, He opens
+to you a noble career; as my wife only can you enter upon it. Refuse to
+be my wife, and you limit yourself for ever to a track of selfish ease
+and barren obscurity. Tremble lest in that case you should be numbered
+with those who have denied the faith, and are worse than infidels!”
+
+He had done. Turning from me, he once more
+
+“Looked to river, looked to hill.”
+
+
+But this time his feelings were all pent in his heart: I was not worthy
+to hear them uttered. As I walked by his side homeward, I read well in
+his iron silence all he felt towards me: the disappointment of an
+austere and despotic nature, which has met resistance where it expected
+submission—the disapprobation of a cool, inflexible judgment, which has
+detected in another feelings and views in which it has no power to
+sympathise: in short, as a man, he would have wished to coerce me into
+obedience: it was only as a sincere Christian he bore so patiently with
+my perversity, and allowed so long a space for reflection and
+repentance.
+
+That night, after he had kissed his sisters, he thought proper to
+forget even to shake hands with me, but left the room in silence.
+I—who, though I had no love, had much friendship for him—was hurt by
+the marked omission: so much hurt that tears started to my eyes.
+
+“I see you and St. John have been quarrelling, Jane,” said Diana,
+“during your walk on the moor. But go after him; he is now lingering in
+the passage expecting you—he will make it up.”
+
+I have not much pride under such circumstances: I would always rather
+be happy than dignified; and I ran after him—he stood at the foot of
+the stairs.
+
+“Good-night, St. John,” said I.
+
+“Good-night, Jane,” he replied calmly.
+
+“Then shake hands,” I added.
+
+What a cold, loose touch, he impressed on my fingers! He was deeply
+displeased by what had occurred that day; cordiality would not warm,
+nor tears move him. No happy reconciliation was to be had with him—no
+cheering smile or generous word: but still the Christian was patient
+and placid; and when I asked him if he forgave me, he answered that he
+was not in the habit of cherishing the remembrance of vexation; that he
+had nothing to forgive, not having been offended.
+
+And with that answer he left me. I would much rather he had knocked me
+down.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+
+He did not leave for Cambridge the next day, as he had said he would.
+He deferred his departure a whole week, and during that time he made me
+feel what severe punishment a good yet stern, a conscientious yet
+implacable man can inflict on one who has offended him. Without one
+overt act of hostility, one upbraiding word, he contrived to impress me
+momently with the conviction that I was put beyond the pale of his
+favour.
+
+Not that St. John harboured a spirit of unchristian vindictiveness—not
+that he would have injured a hair of my head, if it had been fully in
+his power to do so. Both by nature and principle, he was superior to
+the mean gratification of vengeance: he had forgiven me for saying I
+scorned him and his love, but he had not forgotten the words; and as
+long as he and I lived he never would forget them. I saw by his look,
+when he turned to me, that they were always written on the air between
+me and him; whenever I spoke, they sounded in my voice to his ear, and
+their echo toned every answer he gave me.
+
+He did not abstain from conversing with me: he even called me as usual
+each morning to join him at his desk; and I fear the corrupt man within
+him had a pleasure unimparted to, and unshared by, the pure Christian,
+in evincing with what skill he could, while acting and speaking
+apparently just as usual, extract from every deed and every phrase the
+spirit of interest and approval which had formerly communicated a
+certain austere charm to his language and manner. To me, he was in
+reality become no longer flesh, but marble; his eye was a cold, bright,
+blue gem; his tongue a speaking instrument—nothing more.
+
+All this was torture to me—refined, lingering torture. It kept up a
+slow fire of indignation and a trembling trouble of grief, which
+harassed and crushed me altogether. I felt how—if I were his wife, this
+good man, pure as the deep sunless source, could soon kill me, without
+drawing from my veins a single drop of blood, or receiving on his own
+crystal conscience the faintest stain of crime. Especially I felt this
+when I made any attempt to propitiate him. No ruth met my ruth. _He_
+experienced no suffering from estrangement—no yearning after
+reconciliation; and though, more than once, my fast falling tears
+blistered the page over which we both bent, they produced no more
+effect on him than if his heart had been really a matter of stone or
+metal. To his sisters, meantime, he was somewhat kinder than usual: as
+if afraid that mere coldness would not sufficiently convince me how
+completely I was banished and banned, he added the force of contrast;
+and this I am sure he did not by malice, but on principle.
+
+The night before he left home, happening to see him walking in the
+garden about sunset, and remembering, as I looked at him, that this
+man, alienated as he now was, had once saved my life, and that we were
+near relations, I was moved to make a last attempt to regain his
+friendship. I went out and approached him as he stood leaning over the
+little gate; I spoke to the point at once.
+
+“St. John, I am unhappy because you are still angry with me. Let us be
+friends.”
+
+“I hope we are friends,” was the unmoved reply; while he still watched
+the rising of the moon, which he had been contemplating as I
+approached.
+
+“No, St. John, we are not friends as we were. You know that.”
+
+“Are we not? That is wrong. For my part, I wish you no ill and all
+good.”
+
+“I believe you, St. John; for I am sure you are incapable of wishing
+any one ill; but, as I am your kinswoman, I should desire somewhat more
+of affection than that sort of general philanthropy you extend to mere
+strangers.”
+
+“Of course,” he said. “Your wish is reasonable, and I am far from
+regarding you as a stranger.”
+
+This, spoken in a cool, tranquil tone, was mortifying and baffling
+enough. Had I attended to the suggestions of pride and ire, I should
+immediately have left him; but something worked within me more strongly
+than those feelings could. I deeply venerated my cousin’s talent and
+principle. His friendship was of value to me: to lose it tried me
+severely. I would not so soon relinquish the attempt to reconquer it.
+
+“Must we part in this way, St. John? And when you go to India, will you
+leave me so, without a kinder word than you have yet spoken?”
+
+He now turned quite from the moon and faced me.
+
+“When I go to India, Jane, will I leave you! What! do you not go to
+India?”
+
+“You said I could not unless I married you.”
+
+“And you will not marry me! You adhere to that resolution?”
+
+Reader, do you know, as I do, what terror those cold people can put
+into the ice of their questions? How much of the fall of the avalanche
+is in their anger? of the breaking up of the frozen sea in their
+displeasure?
+
+“No. St. John, I will not marry you. I adhere to my resolution.”
+
+The avalanche had shaken and slid a little forward, but it did not yet
+crash down.
+
+“Once more, why this refusal?” he asked.
+
+“Formerly,” I answered, “because you did not love me; now, I reply,
+because you almost hate me. If I were to marry you, you would kill me.
+You are killing me now.”
+
+His lips and cheeks turned white—quite white.
+
+“_I should kill you_—_I am killing you_? Your words are such as ought
+not to be used: violent, unfeminine, and untrue. They betray an
+unfortunate state of mind: they merit severe reproof: they would seem
+inexcusable, but that it is the duty of man to forgive his fellow even
+until seventy-and-seven times.”
+
+I had finished the business now. While earnestly wishing to erase from
+his mind the trace of my former offence, I had stamped on that
+tenacious surface another and far deeper impression: I had burnt it in.
+
+“Now you will indeed hate me,” I said. “It is useless to attempt to
+conciliate you: I see I have made an eternal enemy of you.”
+
+A fresh wrong did these words inflict: the worse, because they touched
+on the truth. That bloodless lip quivered to a temporary spasm. I knew
+the steely ire I had whetted. I was heart-wrung.
+
+“You utterly misinterpret my words,” I said, at once seizing his hand:
+“I have no intention to grieve or pain you—indeed, I have not.”
+
+Most bitterly he smiled—most decidedly he withdrew his hand from mine.
+“And now you recall your promise, and will not go to India at all, I
+presume?” said he, after a considerable pause.
+
+“Yes, I will, as your assistant,” I answered.
+
+A very long silence succeeded. What struggle there was in him between
+Nature and Grace in this interval, I cannot tell: only singular gleams
+scintillated in his eyes, and strange shadows passed over his face. He
+spoke at last.
+
+“I before proved to you the absurdity of a single woman of your age
+proposing to accompany abroad a single man of mine. I proved it to you
+in such terms as, I should have thought, would have prevented your ever
+again alluding to the plan. That you have done so, I regret—for your
+sake.”
+
+I interrupted him. Anything like a tangible reproach gave me courage at
+once. “Keep to common sense, St. John: you are verging on nonsense. You
+pretend to be shocked by what I have said. You are not really shocked:
+for, with your superior mind, you cannot be either so dull or so
+conceited as to misunderstand my meaning. I say again, I will be your
+curate, if you like, but never your wife.”
+
+Again he turned lividly pale; but, as before, controlled his passion
+perfectly. He answered emphatically but calmly—
+
+“A female curate, who is not my wife, would never suit me. With me,
+then, it seems, you cannot go: but if you are sincere in your offer, I
+will, while in town, speak to a married missionary, whose wife needs a
+coadjutor. Your own fortune will make you independent of the Society’s
+aid; and thus you may still be spared the dishonour of breaking your
+promise and deserting the band you engaged to join.”
+
+Now I never had, as the reader knows, either given any formal promise
+or entered into any engagement; and this language was all much too hard
+and much too despotic for the occasion. I replied—
+
+“There is no dishonour, no breach of promise, no desertion in the case.
+I am not under the slightest obligation to go to India, especially with
+strangers. With you I would have ventured much, because I admire,
+confide in, and, as a sister, I love you; but I am convinced that, go
+when and with whom I would, I should not live long in that climate.”
+
+“Ah! you are afraid of yourself,” he said, curling his lip.
+
+“I am. God did not give me my life to throw away; and to do as you wish
+me would, I begin to think, be almost equivalent to committing suicide.
+Moreover, before I definitively resolve on quitting England, I will
+know for certain whether I cannot be of greater use by remaining in it
+than by leaving it.”
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+“It would be fruitless to attempt to explain; but there is a point on
+which I have long endured painful doubt, and I can go nowhere till by
+some means that doubt is removed.”
+
+“I know where your heart turns and to what it clings. The interest you
+cherish is lawless and unconsecrated. Long since you ought to have
+crushed it: now you should blush to allude to it. You think of Mr.
+Rochester?”
+
+It was true. I confessed it by silence.
+
+“Are you going to seek Mr. Rochester?”
+
+“I must find out what is become of him.”
+
+“It remains for me, then,” he said, “to remember you in my prayers, and
+to entreat God for you, in all earnestness, that you may not indeed
+become a castaway. I had thought I recognised in you one of the chosen.
+But God sees not as man sees: _His_ will be done—”
+
+He opened the gate, passed through it, and strayed away down the glen.
+He was soon out of sight.
+
+On re-entering the parlour, I found Diana standing at the window,
+looking very thoughtful. Diana was a great deal taller than I: she put
+her hand on my shoulder, and, stooping, examined my face.
+
+“Jane,” she said, “you are always agitated and pale now. I am sure
+there is something the matter. Tell me what business St. John and you
+have on hands. I have watched you this half hour from the window; you
+must forgive my being such a spy, but for a long time I have fancied I
+hardly know what. St. John is a strange being—”
+
+She paused—I did not speak: soon she resumed—
+
+“That brother of mine cherishes peculiar views of some sort respecting
+you, I am sure: he has long distinguished you by a notice and interest
+he never showed to any one else—to what end? I wish he loved you—does
+he, Jane?”
+
+I put her cool hand to my hot forehead; “No, Die, not one whit.”
+
+“Then why does he follow you so with his eyes, and get you so
+frequently alone with him, and keep you so continually at his side?
+Mary and I had both concluded he wished you to marry him.”
+
+“He does—he has asked me to be his wife.”
+
+Diana clapped her hands. “That is just what we hoped and thought! And
+you will marry him, Jane, won’t you? And then he will stay in England.”
+
+“Far from that, Diana; his sole idea in proposing to me is to procure a
+fitting fellow-labourer in his Indian toils.”
+
+“What! He wishes you to go to India?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Madness!” she exclaimed. “You would not live three months there, I am
+certain. You never shall go: you have not consented, have you, Jane?”
+
+“I have refused to marry him—”
+
+“And have consequently displeased him?” she suggested.
+
+“Deeply: he will never forgive me, I fear: yet I offered to accompany
+him as his sister.”
+
+“It was frantic folly to do so, Jane. Think of the task you
+undertook—one of incessant fatigue, where fatigue kills even the
+strong, and you are weak. St. John—you know him—would urge you to
+impossibilities: with him there would be no permission to rest during
+the hot hours; and unfortunately, I have noticed, whatever he exacts,
+you force yourself to perform. I am astonished you found courage to
+refuse his hand. You do not love him then, Jane?”
+
+“Not as a husband.”
+
+“Yet he is a handsome fellow.”
+
+“And I am so plain, you see, Die. We should never suit.”
+
+“Plain! You? Not at all. You are much too pretty, as well as too good,
+to be grilled alive in Calcutta.” And again she earnestly conjured me
+to give up all thoughts of going out with her brother.
+
+“I must indeed,” I said; “for when just now I repeated the offer of
+serving him for a deacon, he expressed himself shocked at my want of
+decency. He seemed to think I had committed an impropriety in proposing
+to accompany him unmarried: as if I had not from the first hoped to
+find in him a brother, and habitually regarded him as such.”
+
+“What makes you say he does not love you, Jane?”
+
+“You should hear himself on the subject. He has again and again
+explained that it is not himself, but his office he wishes to mate. He
+has told me I am formed for labour—not for love: which is true, no
+doubt. But, in my opinion, if I am not formed for love, it follows that
+I am not formed for marriage. Would it not be strange, Die, to be
+chained for life to a man who regarded one but as a useful tool?”
+
+“Insupportable—unnatural—out of the question!”
+
+“And then,” I continued, “though I have only sisterly affection for him
+now, yet, if forced to be his wife, I can imagine the possibility of
+conceiving an inevitable, strange, torturing kind of love for him,
+because he is so talented; and there is often a certain heroic grandeur
+in his look, manner, and conversation. In that case, my lot would
+become unspeakably wretched. He would not want me to love him; and if I
+showed the feeling, he would make me sensible that it was a
+superfluity, unrequired by him, unbecoming in me. I know he would.”
+
+“And yet St. John is a good man,” said Diana.
+
+“He is a good and a great man; but he forgets, pitilessly, the feelings
+and claims of little people, in pursuing his own large views. It is
+better, therefore, for the insignificant to keep out of his way, lest,
+in his progress, he should trample them down. Here he comes! I will
+leave you, Diana.” And I hastened upstairs as I saw him entering the
+garden.
+
+But I was forced to meet him again at supper. During that meal he
+appeared just as composed as usual. I had thought he would hardly speak
+to me, and I was certain he had given up the pursuit of his matrimonial
+scheme: the sequel showed I was mistaken on both points. He addressed
+me precisely in his ordinary manner, or what had, of late, been his
+ordinary manner—one scrupulously polite. No doubt he had invoked the
+help of the Holy Spirit to subdue the anger I had roused in him, and
+now believed he had forgiven me once more.
+
+For the evening reading before prayers, he selected the twenty-first
+chapter of Revelation. It was at all times pleasant to listen while
+from his lips fell the words of the Bible: never did his fine voice
+sound at once so sweet and full—never did his manner become so
+impressive in its noble simplicity, as when he delivered the oracles of
+God: and to-night that voice took a more solemn tone—that manner a more
+thrilling meaning—as he sat in the midst of his household circle (the
+May moon shining in through the uncurtained window, and rendering
+almost unnecessary the light of the candle on the table): as he sat
+there, bending over the great old Bible, and described from its page
+the vision of the new heaven and the new earth—told how God would come
+to dwell with men, how He would wipe away all tears from their eyes,
+and promised that there should be no more death, neither sorrow nor
+crying, nor any more pain, because the former things were passed away.
+
+The succeeding words thrilled me strangely as he spoke them: especially
+as I felt, by the slight, indescribable alteration in sound, that in
+uttering them, his eye had turned on me.
+
+“He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God,
+and he shall be my son. But,” was slowly, distinctly read, “the
+fearful, the unbelieving, &c., shall have their part in the lake which
+burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”
+
+Henceforward, I knew what fate St. John feared for me.
+
+A calm, subdued triumph, blent with a longing earnestness, marked his
+enunciation of the last glorious verses of that chapter. The reader
+believed his name was already written in the Lamb’s book of life, and
+he yearned after the hour which should admit him to the city to which
+the kings of the earth bring their glory and honour; which has no need
+of sun or moon to shine in it, because the glory of God lightens it,
+and the Lamb is the light thereof.
+
+In the prayer following the chapter, all his energy gathered—all his
+stern zeal woke: he was in deep earnest, wrestling with God, and
+resolved on a conquest. He supplicated strength for the weak-hearted;
+guidance for wanderers from the fold: a return, even at the eleventh
+hour, for those whom the temptations of the world and the flesh were
+luring from the narrow path. He asked, he urged, he claimed the boon of
+a brand snatched from the burning. Earnestness is ever deeply solemn:
+first, as I listened to that prayer, I wondered at his; then, when it
+continued and rose, I was touched by it, and at last awed. He felt the
+greatness and goodness of his purpose so sincerely: others who heard
+him plead for it, could not but feel it too.
+
+The prayer over, we took leave of him: he was to go at a very early
+hour in the morning. Diana and Mary having kissed him, left the room—in
+compliance, I think, with a whispered hint from him: I tendered my
+hand, and wished him a pleasant journey.
+
+“Thank you, Jane. As I said, I shall return from Cambridge in a
+fortnight: that space, then, is yet left you for reflection. If I
+listened to human pride, I should say no more to you of marriage with
+me; but I listen to my duty, and keep steadily in view my first aim—to
+do all things to the glory of God. My Master was long-suffering: so
+will I be. I cannot give you up to perdition as a vessel of wrath:
+repent—resolve, while there is yet time. Remember, we are bid to work
+while it is day—warned that ‘the night cometh when no man shall work.’
+Remember the fate of Dives, who had his good things in this life. God
+give you strength to choose that better part which shall not be taken
+from you!”
+
+He laid his hand on my head as he uttered the last words. He had spoken
+earnestly, mildly: his look was not, indeed, that of a lover beholding
+his mistress, but it was that of a pastor recalling his wandering
+sheep—or better, of a guardian angel watching the soul for which he is
+responsible. All men of talent, whether they be men of feeling or not;
+whether they be zealots, or aspirants, or despots—provided only they be
+sincere—have their sublime moments, when they subdue and rule. I felt
+veneration for St. John—veneration so strong that its impetus thrust me
+at once to the point I had so long shunned. I was tempted to cease
+struggling with him—to rush down the torrent of his will into the gulf
+of his existence, and there lose my own. I was almost as hard beset by
+him now as I had been once before, in a different way, by another. I
+was a fool both times. To have yielded then would have been an error of
+principle; to have yielded now would have been an error of judgment. So
+I think at this hour, when I look back to the crisis through the quiet
+medium of time: I was unconscious of folly at the instant.
+
+I stood motionless under my hierophant’s touch. My refusals were
+forgotten—my fears overcome—my wrestlings paralysed. The
+Impossible—_i.e._, my marriage with St. John—was fast becoming the
+Possible. All was changing utterly with a sudden sweep. Religion
+called—Angels beckoned—God commanded—life rolled together like a
+scroll—death’s gates opening, showed eternity beyond: it seemed, that
+for safety and bliss there, all here might be sacrificed in a second.
+The dim room was full of visions.
+
+“Could you decide now?” asked the missionary. The inquiry was put in
+gentle tones: he drew me to him as gently. Oh, that gentleness! how far
+more potent is it than force! I could resist St. John’s wrath: I grew
+pliant as a reed under his kindness. Yet I knew all the time, if I
+yielded now, I should not the less be made to repent, some day, of my
+former rebellion. His nature was not changed by one hour of solemn
+prayer: it was only elevated.
+
+“I could decide if I were but certain,” I answered: “were I but
+convinced that it is God’s will I should marry you, I could vow to
+marry you here and now—come afterwards what would!”
+
+“My prayers are heard!” ejaculated St. John. He pressed his hand firmer
+on my head, as if he claimed me: he surrounded me with his arm,
+_almost_ as if he loved me (I say _almost_—I knew the difference—for I
+had felt what it was to be loved; but, like him, I had now put love out
+of the question, and thought only of duty). I contended with my inward
+dimness of vision, before which clouds yet rolled. I sincerely, deeply,
+fervently longed to do what was right; and only that. “Show me, show me
+the path!” I entreated of Heaven. I was excited more than I had ever
+been; and whether what followed was the effect of excitement the reader
+shall judge.
+
+All the house was still; for I believe all, except St. John and myself,
+were now retired to rest. The one candle was dying out: the room was
+full of moonlight. My heart beat fast and thick: I heard its throb.
+Suddenly it stood still to an inexpressible feeling that thrilled it
+through, and passed at once to my head and extremities. The feeling was
+not like an electric shock, but it was quite as sharp, as strange, as
+startling: it acted on my senses as if their utmost activity hitherto
+had been but torpor, from which they were now summoned and forced to
+wake. They rose expectant: eye and ear waited while the flesh quivered
+on my bones.
+
+“What have you heard? What do you see?” asked St. John. I saw nothing,
+but I heard a voice somewhere cry—
+
+“Jane! Jane! Jane!”—nothing more.
+
+“O God! what is it?” I gasped.
+
+I might have said, “Where is it?” for it did not seem in the room—nor
+in the house—nor in the garden; it did not come out of the air—nor from
+under the earth—nor from overhead. I had heard it—where, or whence, for
+ever impossible to know! And it was the voice of a human being—a known,
+loved, well-remembered voice—that of Edward Fairfax Rochester; and it
+spoke in pain and woe, wildly, eerily, urgently.
+
+“I am coming!” I cried. “Wait for me! Oh, I will come!” I flew to the
+door and looked into the passage: it was dark. I ran out into the
+garden: it was void.
+
+“Where are you?” I exclaimed.
+
+The hills beyond Marsh Glen sent the answer faintly back—“Where are
+you?” I listened. The wind sighed low in the firs: all was moorland
+loneliness and midnight hush.
+
+“Down superstition!” I commented, as that spectre rose up black by the
+black yew at the gate. “This is not thy deception, nor thy witchcraft:
+it is the work of nature. She was roused, and did—no miracle—but her
+best.”
+
+I broke from St. John, who had followed, and would have detained me. It
+was _my_ time to assume ascendency. _My_ powers were in play and in
+force. I told him to forbear question or remark; I desired him to leave
+me: I must and would be alone. He obeyed at once. Where there is energy
+to command well enough, obedience never fails. I mounted to my chamber;
+locked myself in; fell on my knees; and prayed in my way—a different
+way to St. John’s, but effective in its own fashion. I seemed to
+penetrate very near a Mighty Spirit; and my soul rushed out in
+gratitude at His feet. I rose from the thanksgiving—took a resolve—and
+lay down, unscared, enlightened—eager but for the daylight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+
+The daylight came. I rose at dawn. I busied myself for an hour or two
+with arranging my things in my chamber, drawers, and wardrobe, in the
+order wherein I should wish to leave them during a brief absence.
+Meantime, I heard St. John quit his room. He stopped at my door: I
+feared he would knock—no, but a slip of paper was passed under the
+door. I took it up. It bore these words—
+
+“You left me too suddenly last night. Had you stayed but a little
+longer, you would have laid your hand on the Christian’s cross and the
+angel’s crown. I shall expect your clear decision when I return this
+day fortnight. Meantime, watch and pray that you enter not into
+temptation: the spirit, I trust, is willing, but the flesh, I see, is
+weak. I shall pray for you hourly.—Yours, ST. JOHN.”
+
+“My spirit,” I answered mentally, “is willing to do what is right; and
+my flesh, I hope, is strong enough to accomplish the will of Heaven,
+when once that will is distinctly known to me. At any rate, it shall be
+strong enough to search—inquire—to grope an outlet from this cloud of
+doubt, and find the open day of certainty.”
+
+It was the first of June; yet the morning was overcast and chilly: rain
+beat fast on my casement. I heard the front-door open, and St. John
+pass out. Looking through the window, I saw him traverse the garden. He
+took the way over the misty moors in the direction of Whitcross—there
+he would meet the coach.
+
+“In a few more hours I shall succeed you in that track, cousin,”
+thought I: “I too have a coach to meet at Whitcross. I too have some to
+see and ask after in England, before I depart for ever.”
+
+It wanted yet two hours of breakfast-time. I filled the interval in
+walking softly about my room, and pondering the visitation which had
+given my plans their present bent. I recalled that inward sensation I
+had experienced: for I could recall it, with all its unspeakable
+strangeness. I recalled the voice I had heard; again I questioned
+whence it came, as vainly as before: it seemed in _me_—not in the
+external world. I asked was it a mere nervous impression—a delusion? I
+could not conceive or believe: it was more like an inspiration. The
+wondrous shock of feeling had come like the earthquake which shook the
+foundations of Paul and Silas’s prison; it had opened the doors of the
+soul’s cell and loosed its bands—it had wakened it out of its sleep,
+whence it sprang trembling, listening, aghast; then vibrated thrice a
+cry on my startled ear, and in my quaking heart and through my spirit,
+which neither feared nor shook, but exulted as if in joy over the
+success of one effort it had been privileged to make, independent of
+the cumbrous body.
+
+“Ere many days,” I said, as I terminated my musings, “I will know
+something of him whose voice seemed last night to summon me. Letters
+have proved of no avail—personal inquiry shall replace them.”
+
+At breakfast I announced to Diana and Mary that I was going a journey,
+and should be absent at least four days.
+
+“Alone, Jane?” they asked.
+
+“Yes; it was to see or hear news of a friend about whom I had for some
+time been uneasy.”
+
+They might have said, as I have no doubt they thought, that they had
+believed me to be without any friends save them: for, indeed, I had
+often said so; but, with their true natural delicacy, they abstained
+from comment, except that Diana asked me if I was sure I was well
+enough to travel. I looked very pale, she observed. I replied, that
+nothing ailed me save anxiety of mind, which I hoped soon to alleviate.
+
+It was easy to make my further arrangements; for I was troubled with no
+inquiries—no surmises. Having once explained to them that I could not
+now be explicit about my plans, they kindly and wisely acquiesced in
+the silence with which I pursued them, according to me the privilege of
+free action I should under similar circumstances have accorded them.
+
+I left Moor House at three o’clock P.M., and soon after four I stood at
+the foot of the sign-post of Whitcross, waiting the arrival of the
+coach which was to take me to distant Thornfield. Amidst the silence of
+those solitary roads and desert hills, I heard it approach from a great
+distance. It was the same vehicle whence, a year ago, I had alighted
+one summer evening on this very spot—how desolate, and hopeless, and
+objectless! It stopped as I beckoned. I entered—not now obliged to part
+with my whole fortune as the price of its accommodation. Once more on
+the road to Thornfield, I felt like the messenger-pigeon flying home.
+
+It was a journey of six-and-thirty hours. I had set out from Whitcross
+on a Tuesday afternoon, and early on the succeeding Thursday morning
+the coach stopped to water the horses at a wayside inn, situated in the
+midst of scenery whose green hedges and large fields and low pastoral
+hills (how mild of feature and verdant of hue compared with the stern
+North-Midland moors of Morton!) met my eye like the lineaments of a
+once familiar face. Yes, I knew the character of this landscape: I was
+sure we were near my bourne.
+
+“How far is Thornfield Hall from here?” I asked of the ostler.
+
+“Just two miles, ma’am, across the fields.”
+
+“My journey is closed,” I thought to myself. I got out of the coach,
+gave a box I had into the ostler’s charge, to be kept till I called for
+it; paid my fare; satisfied the coachman, and was going: the
+brightening day gleamed on the sign of the inn, and I read in gilt
+letters, “The Rochester Arms.” My heart leapt up: I was already on my
+master’s very lands. It fell again: the thought struck it:—
+
+“Your master himself may be beyond the British Channel, for aught you
+know: and then, if he is at Thornfield Hall, towards which you hasten,
+who besides him is there? His lunatic wife: and you have nothing to do
+with him: you dare not speak to him or seek his presence. You have lost
+your labour—you had better go no farther,” urged the monitor. “Ask
+information of the people at the inn; they can give you all you seek:
+they can solve your doubts at once. Go up to that man, and inquire if
+Mr. Rochester be at home.”
+
+The suggestion was sensible, and yet I could not force myself to act on
+it. I so dreaded a reply that would crush me with despair. To prolong
+doubt was to prolong hope. I might yet once more see the Hall under the
+ray of her star. There was the stile before me—the very fields through
+which I had hurried, blind, deaf, distracted with a revengeful fury
+tracking and scourging me, on the morning I fled from Thornfield: ere I
+well knew what course I had resolved to take, I was in the midst of
+them. How fast I walked! How I ran sometimes! How I looked forward to
+catch the first view of the well-known woods! With what feelings I
+welcomed single trees I knew, and familiar glimpses of meadow and hill
+between them!
+
+At last the woods rose; the rookery clustered dark; a loud cawing broke
+the morning stillness. Strange delight inspired me: on I hastened.
+Another field crossed—a lane threaded—and there were the courtyard
+walls—the back offices: the house itself, the rookery still hid. “My
+first view of it shall be in front,” I determined, “where its bold
+battlements will strike the eye nobly at once, and where I can single
+out my master’s very window: perhaps he will be standing at it—he rises
+early: perhaps he is now walking in the orchard, or on the pavement in
+front. Could I but see him!—but a moment! Surely, in that case, I
+should not be so mad as to run to him? I cannot tell—I am not certain.
+And if I did—what then? God bless him! What then? Who would be hurt by
+my once more tasting the life his glance can give me? I rave: perhaps
+at this moment he is watching the sun rise over the Pyrenees, or on the
+tideless sea of the south.”
+
+I had coasted along the lower wall of the orchard—turned its angle:
+there was a gate just there, opening into the meadow, between two stone
+pillars crowned by stone balls. From behind one pillar I could peep
+round quietly at the full front of the mansion. I advanced my head with
+precaution, desirous to ascertain if any bedroom window-blinds were yet
+drawn up: battlements, windows, long front—all from this sheltered
+station were at my command.
+
+The crows sailing overhead perhaps watched me while I took this survey.
+I wonder what they thought. They must have considered I was very
+careful and timid at first, and that gradually I grew very bold and
+reckless. A peep, and then a long stare; and then a departure from my
+niche and a straying out into the meadow; and a sudden stop full in
+front of the great mansion, and a protracted, hardy gaze towards it.
+“What affectation of diffidence was this at first?” they might have
+demanded; “what stupid regardlessness now?”
+
+Hear an illustration, reader.
+
+A lover finds his mistress asleep on a mossy bank; he wishes to catch a
+glimpse of her fair face without waking her. He steals softly over the
+grass, careful to make no sound; he pauses—fancying she has stirred: he
+withdraws: not for worlds would he be seen. All is still: he again
+advances: he bends above her; a light veil rests on her features: he
+lifts it, bends lower; now his eyes anticipate the vision of
+beauty—warm, and blooming, and lovely, in rest. How hurried was their
+first glance! But how they fix! How he starts! How he suddenly and
+vehemently clasps in both arms the form he dared not, a moment since,
+touch with his finger! How he calls aloud a name, and drops his burden,
+and gazes on it wildly! He thus grasps and cries, and gazes, because he
+no longer fears to waken by any sound he can utter—by any movement he
+can make. He thought his love slept sweetly: he finds she is stone
+dead.
+
+I looked with timorous joy towards a stately house: I saw a blackened
+ruin.
+
+No need to cower behind a gate-post, indeed!—to peep up at chamber
+lattices, fearing life was astir behind them! No need to listen for
+doors opening—to fancy steps on the pavement or the gravel-walk! The
+lawn, the grounds were trodden and waste: the portal yawned void. The
+front was, as I had once seen it in a dream, but a shell-like wall,
+very high and very fragile-looking, perforated with paneless windows:
+no roof, no battlements, no chimneys—all had crashed in.
+
+And there was the silence of death about it: the solitude of a lonesome
+wild. No wonder that letters addressed to people here had never
+received an answer: as well despatch epistles to a vault in a church
+aisle. The grim blackness of the stones told by what fate the Hall had
+fallen—by conflagration: but how kindled? What story belonged to this
+disaster? What loss, besides mortar and marble and wood-work had
+followed upon it? Had life been wrecked as well as property? If so,
+whose? Dreadful question: there was no one here to answer it—not even
+dumb sign, mute token.
+
+In wandering round the shattered walls and through the devastated
+interior, I gathered evidence that the calamity was not of late
+occurrence. Winter snows, I thought, had drifted through that void
+arch, winter rains beaten in at those hollow casements; for, amidst the
+drenched piles of rubbish, spring had cherished vegetation: grass and
+weed grew here and there between the stones and fallen rafters. And oh!
+where meantime was the hapless owner of this wreck? In what land? Under
+what auspices? My eye involuntarily wandered to the grey church tower
+near the gates, and I asked, “Is he with Damer de Rochester, sharing
+the shelter of his narrow marble house?”
+
+Some answer must be had to these questions. I could find it nowhere but
+at the inn, and thither, ere long, I returned. The host himself brought
+my breakfast into the parlour. I requested him to shut the door and sit
+down: I had some questions to ask him. But when he complied, I scarcely
+knew how to begin; such horror had I of the possible answers. And yet
+the spectacle of desolation I had just left prepared me in a measure
+for a tale of misery. The host was a respectable-looking, middle-aged
+man.
+
+“You know Thornfield Hall, of course?” I managed to say at last.
+
+“Yes, ma’am; I lived there once.”
+
+“Did you?” Not in my time, I thought: you are a stranger to me.
+
+“I was the late Mr. Rochester’s butler,” he added.
+
+The late! I seem to have received, with full force, the blow I had been
+trying to evade.
+
+“The late!” I gasped. “Is he dead?”
+
+“I mean the present gentleman, Mr. Edward’s father,” he explained. I
+breathed again: my blood resumed its flow. Fully assured by these words
+that Mr. Edward—_my_ Mr. Rochester (God bless him, wherever he
+was!)—was at least alive: was, in short, “the present gentleman.”
+Gladdening words! It seemed I could hear all that was to come—whatever
+the disclosures might be—with comparative tranquillity. Since he was
+not in the grave, I could bear, I thought, to learn that he was at the
+Antipodes.
+
+“Is Mr. Rochester living at Thornfield Hall now?” I asked, knowing, of
+course, what the answer would be, but yet desirous of deferring the
+direct question as to where he really was.
+
+“No, ma’am—oh, no! No one is living there. I suppose you are a stranger
+in these parts, or you would have heard what happened last
+autumn,—Thornfield Hall is quite a ruin: it was burnt down just about
+harvest-time. A dreadful calamity! such an immense quantity of valuable
+property destroyed: hardly any of the furniture could be saved. The
+fire broke out at dead of night, and before the engines arrived from
+Millcote, the building was one mass of flame. It was a terrible
+spectacle: I witnessed it myself.”
+
+“At dead of night!” I muttered. Yes, that was ever the hour of fatality
+at Thornfield. “Was it known how it originated?” I demanded.
+
+“They guessed, ma’am: they guessed. Indeed, I should say it was
+ascertained beyond a doubt. You are not perhaps aware,” he continued,
+edging his chair a little nearer the table, and speaking low, “that
+there was a lady—a—a lunatic, kept in the house?”
+
+“I have heard something of it.”
+
+“She was kept in very close confinement, ma’am; people even for some
+years was not absolutely certain of her existence. No one saw her: they
+only knew by rumour that such a person was at the Hall; and who or what
+she was it was difficult to conjecture. They said Mr. Edward had
+brought her from abroad, and some believed she had been his mistress.
+But a queer thing happened a year since—a very queer thing.”
+
+I feared now to hear my own story. I endeavoured to recall him to the
+main fact.
+
+“And this lady?”
+
+“This lady, ma’am,” he answered, “turned out to be Mr. Rochester’s
+wife! The discovery was brought about in the strangest way. There was a
+young lady, a governess at the Hall, that Mr. Rochester fell in—”
+
+“But the fire,” I suggested.
+
+“I’m coming to that, ma’am—that Mr. Edward fell in love with. The
+servants say they never saw anybody so much in love as he was: he was
+after her continually. They used to watch him—servants will, you know,
+ma’am—and he set store on her past everything: for all, nobody but him
+thought her so very handsome. She was a little small thing, they say,
+almost like a child. I never saw her myself; but I’ve heard Leah, the
+house-maid, tell of her. Leah liked her well enough. Mr. Rochester was
+about forty, and this governess not twenty; and you see, when gentlemen
+of his age fall in love with girls, they are often like as if they were
+bewitched. Well, he would marry her.”
+
+“You shall tell me this part of the story another time,” I said; “but
+now I have a particular reason for wishing to hear all about the fire.
+Was it suspected that this lunatic, Mrs. Rochester, had any hand in
+it?”
+
+“You’ve hit it, ma’am: it’s quite certain that it was her, and nobody
+but her, that set it going. She had a woman to take care of her called
+Mrs. Poole—an able woman in her line, and very trustworthy, but for one
+fault—a fault common to a deal of them nurses and matrons—_she kept a
+private bottle of gin by her_, and now and then took a drop over-much.
+It is excusable, for she had a hard life of it: but still it was
+dangerous; for when Mrs. Poole was fast asleep after the gin and water,
+the mad lady, who was as cunning as a witch, would take the keys out of
+her pocket, let herself out of her chamber, and go roaming about the
+house, doing any wild mischief that came into her head. They say she
+had nearly burnt her husband in his bed once: but I don’t know about
+that. However, on this night, she set fire first to the hangings of the
+room next her own, and then she got down to a lower storey, and made
+her way to the chamber that had been the governess’s—(she was like as
+if she knew somehow how matters had gone on, and had a spite at
+her)—and she kindled the bed there; but there was nobody sleeping in
+it, fortunately. The governess had run away two months before; and for
+all Mr. Rochester sought her as if she had been the most precious thing
+he had in the world, he never could hear a word of her; and he grew
+savage—quite savage on his disappointment: he never was a wild man, but
+he got dangerous after he lost her. He would be alone, too. He sent
+Mrs. Fairfax, the housekeeper, away to her friends at a distance; but
+he did it handsomely, for he settled an annuity on her for life: and
+she deserved it—she was a very good woman. Miss Adèle, a ward he had,
+was put to school. He broke off acquaintance with all the gentry, and
+shut himself up like a hermit at the Hall.”
+
+“What! did he not leave England?”
+
+“Leave England? Bless you, no! He would not cross the door-stones of
+the house, except at night, when he walked just like a ghost about the
+grounds and in the orchard as if he had lost his senses—which it is my
+opinion he had; for a more spirited, bolder, keener gentleman than he
+was before that midge of a governess crossed him, you never saw, ma’am.
+He was not a man given to wine, or cards, or racing, as some are, and
+he was not so very handsome; but he had a courage and a will of his
+own, if ever man had. I knew him from a boy, you see: and for my part,
+I have often wished that Miss Eyre had been sunk in the sea before she
+came to Thornfield Hall.”
+
+“Then Mr. Rochester was at home when the fire broke out?”
+
+“Yes, indeed was he; and he went up to the attics when all was burning
+above and below, and got the servants out of their beds and helped them
+down himself, and went back to get his mad wife out of her cell. And
+then they called out to him that she was on the roof, where she was
+standing, waving her arms, above the battlements, and shouting out till
+they could hear her a mile off: I saw her and heard her with my own
+eyes. She was a big woman, and had long black hair: we could see it
+streaming against the flames as she stood. I witnessed, and several
+more witnessed, Mr. Rochester ascend through the sky-light on to the
+roof; we heard him call ‘Bertha!’ We saw him approach her; and then,
+ma’am, she yelled and gave a spring, and the next minute she lay
+smashed on the pavement.”
+
+
+The next minute she lay smashed on the pavement
+
+“Dead?”
+
+“Dead! Ay, dead as the stones on which her brains and blood were
+scattered.”
+
+“Good God!”
+
+“You may well say so, ma’am: it was frightful!”
+
+He shuddered.
+
+“And afterwards?” I urged.
+
+“Well, ma’am, afterwards the house was burnt to the ground: there are
+only some bits of walls standing now.”
+
+“Were any other lives lost?”
+
+“No—perhaps it would have been better if there had.”
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+“Poor Mr. Edward!” he ejaculated, “I little thought ever to have seen
+it! Some say it was a just judgment on him for keeping his first
+marriage secret, and wanting to take another wife while he had one
+living: but I pity him, for my part.”
+
+“You said he was alive?” I exclaimed.
+
+“Yes, yes: he is alive; but many think he had better be dead.”
+
+“Why? How?” My blood was again running cold. “Where is he?” I demanded.
+“Is he in England?”
+
+“Ay—ay—he’s in England; he can’t get out of England, I fancy—he’s a
+fixture now.”
+
+What agony was this! And the man seemed resolved to protract it.
+
+“He is stone-blind,” he said at last. “Yes, he is stone-blind, is Mr.
+Edward.”
+
+I had dreaded worse. I had dreaded he was mad. I summoned strength to
+ask what had caused this calamity.
+
+“It was all his own courage, and a body may say, his kindness, in a
+way, ma’am: he wouldn’t leave the house till every one else was out
+before him. As he came down the great staircase at last, after Mrs.
+Rochester had flung herself from the battlements, there was a great
+crash—all fell. He was taken out from under the ruins, alive, but sadly
+hurt: a beam had fallen in such a way as to protect him partly; but one
+eye was knocked out, and one hand so crushed that Mr. Carter, the
+surgeon, had to amputate it directly. The other eye inflamed: he lost
+the sight of that also. He is now helpless, indeed—blind and a
+cripple.”
+
+“Where is he? Where does he now live?”
+
+“At Ferndean, a manor-house on a farm he has, about thirty miles off:
+quite a desolate spot.”
+
+“Who is with him?”
+
+“Old John and his wife: he would have none else. He is quite broken
+down, they say.”
+
+“Have you any sort of conveyance?”
+
+“We have a chaise, ma’am, a very handsome chaise.”
+
+“Let it be got ready instantly; and if your post-boy can drive me to
+Ferndean before dark this day, I’ll pay both you and him twice the hire
+you usually demand.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+
+The manor-house of Ferndean was a building of considerable antiquity,
+moderate size, and no architectural pretensions, deep buried in a wood.
+I had heard of it before. Mr. Rochester often spoke of it, and
+sometimes went there. His father had purchased the estate for the sake
+of the game covers. He would have let the house, but could find no
+tenant, in consequence of its ineligible and insalubrious site.
+Ferndean then remained uninhabited and unfurnished, with the exception
+of some two or three rooms fitted up for the accommodation of the
+squire when he went there in the season to shoot.
+
+To this house I came just ere dark on an evening marked by the
+characteristics of sad sky, cold gale, and continued small penetrating
+rain. The last mile I performed on foot, having dismissed the chaise
+and driver with the double remuneration I had promised. Even when
+within a very short distance of the manor-house, you could see nothing
+of it, so thick and dark grew the timber of the gloomy wood about it.
+Iron gates between granite pillars showed me where to enter, and
+passing through them, I found myself at once in the twilight of
+close-ranked trees. There was a grass-grown track descending the forest
+aisle between hoar and knotty shafts and under branched arches. I
+followed it, expecting soon to reach the dwelling; but it stretched on
+and on, it wound far and farther: no sign of habitation or grounds was
+visible.
+
+I thought I had taken a wrong direction and lost my way. The darkness
+of natural as well as of sylvan dusk gathered over me. I looked round
+in search of another road. There was none: all was interwoven stem,
+columnar trunk, dense summer foliage—no opening anywhere.
+
+I proceeded: at last my way opened, the trees thinned a little;
+presently I beheld a railing, then the house—scarce, by this dim light,
+distinguishable from the trees; so dank and green were its decaying
+walls. Entering a portal, fastened only by a latch, I stood amidst a
+space of enclosed ground, from which the wood swept away in a
+semicircle. There were no flowers, no garden-beds; only a broad
+gravel-walk girdling a grass-plat, and this set in the heavy frame of
+the forest. The house presented two pointed gables in its front; the
+windows were latticed and narrow: the front door was narrow too, one
+step led up to it. The whole looked, as the host of the Rochester Arms
+had said, “quite a desolate spot.” It was as still as a church on a
+week-day: the pattering rain on the forest leaves was the only sound
+audible in its vicinage.
+
+“Can there be life here?” I asked.
+
+Yes, life of some kind there was; for I heard a movement—that narrow
+front-door was unclosing, and some shape was about to issue from the
+grange.
+
+It opened slowly: a figure came out into the twilight and stood on the
+step; a man without a hat: he stretched forth his hand as if to feel
+whether it rained. Dusk as it was, I had recognised him—it was my
+master, Edward Fairfax Rochester, and no other.
+
+I stayed my step, almost my breath, and stood to watch him—to examine
+him, myself unseen, and alas! to him invisible. It was a sudden
+meeting, and one in which rapture was kept well in check by pain. I had
+no difficulty in restraining my voice from exclamation, my step from
+hasty advance.
+
+His form was of the same strong and stalwart contour as ever: his port
+was still erect, his hair was still raven black; nor were his features
+altered or sunk: not in one year’s space, by any sorrow, could his
+athletic strength be quelled or his vigorous prime blighted. But in his
+countenance I saw a change: that looked desperate and brooding—that
+reminded me of some wronged and fettered wild beast or bird, dangerous
+to approach in his sullen woe. The caged eagle, whose gold-ringed eyes
+cruelty has extinguished, might look as looked that sightless Samson.
+
+And, reader, do you think I feared him in his blind ferocity?—if you
+do, you little know me. A soft hope blent with my sorrow that soon I
+should dare to drop a kiss on that brow of rock, and on those lips so
+sternly sealed beneath it: but not yet. I would not accost him yet.
+
+He descended the one step, and advanced slowly and gropingly towards
+the grass-plat. Where was his daring stride now? Then he paused, as if
+he knew not which way to turn. He lifted his hand and opened his
+eyelids; gazed blank, and with a straining effort, on the sky, and
+toward the amphitheatre of trees: one saw that all to him was void
+darkness. He stretched his right hand (the left arm, the mutilated one,
+he kept hidden in his bosom); he seemed to wish by touch to gain an
+idea of what lay around him: he met but vacancy still; for the trees
+were some yards off where he stood. He relinquished the endeavour,
+folded his arms, and stood quiet and mute in the rain, now falling fast
+on his uncovered head. At this moment John approached him from some
+quarter.
+
+“Will you take my arm, sir?” he said; “there is a heavy shower coming
+on: had you not better go in?”
+
+“Let me alone,” was the answer.
+
+John withdrew without having observed me. Mr. Rochester now tried to
+walk about: vainly,—all was too uncertain. He groped his way back to
+the house, and, re-entering it, closed the door.
+
+I now drew near and knocked: John’s wife opened for me. “Mary,” I said,
+“how are you?”
+
+She started as if she had seen a ghost: I calmed her. To her hurried
+“Is it really you, miss, come at this late hour to this lonely place?”
+I answered by taking her hand; and then I followed her into the
+kitchen, where John now sat by a good fire. I explained to them, in few
+words, that I had heard all which had happened since I left Thornfield,
+and that I was come to see Mr. Rochester. I asked John to go down to
+the turn-pike-house, where I had dismissed the chaise, and bring my
+trunk, which I had left there: and then, while I removed my bonnet and
+shawl, I questioned Mary as to whether I could be accommodated at the
+Manor House for the night; and finding that arrangements to that
+effect, though difficult, would not be impossible, I informed her I
+should stay. Just at this moment the parlour-bell rang.
+
+“When you go in,” said I, “tell your master that a person wishes to
+speak to him, but do not give my name.”
+
+“I don’t think he will see you,” she answered; “he refuses everybody.”
+
+When she returned, I inquired what he had said.
+
+“You are to send in your name and your business,” she replied. She then
+proceeded to fill a glass with water, and place it on a tray, together
+with candles.
+
+“Is that what he rang for?” I asked.
+
+“Yes: he always has candles brought in at dark, though he is blind.”
+
+“Give the tray to me; I will carry it in.”
+
+I took it from her hand: she pointed me out the parlour door. The tray
+shook as I held it; the water spilt from the glass; my heart struck my
+ribs loud and fast. Mary opened the door for me, and shut it behind me.
+
+This parlour looked gloomy: a neglected handful of fire burnt low in
+the grate; and, leaning over it, with his head supported against the
+high, old-fashioned mantelpiece, appeared the blind tenant of the room.
+His old dog, Pilot, lay on one side, removed out of the way, and coiled
+up as if afraid of being inadvertently trodden upon. Pilot pricked up
+his ears when I came in: then he jumped up with a yelp and a whine, and
+bounded towards me: he almost knocked the tray from my hands. I set it
+on the table; then patted him, and said softly, “Lie down!” Mr.
+Rochester turned mechanically to _see_ what the commotion was: but as
+he _saw_ nothing, he returned and sighed.
+
+“Give me the water, Mary,” he said.
+
+I approached him with the now only half-filled glass; Pilot followed
+me, still excited.
+
+“What is the matter?” he inquired.
+
+“Down, Pilot!” I again said. He checked the water on its way to his
+lips, and seemed to listen: he drank, and put the glass down. “This is
+you, Mary, is it not?”
+
+“Mary is in the kitchen,” I answered.
+
+He put out his hand with a quick gesture, but not seeing where I stood,
+he did not touch me. “Who is this? Who is this?” he demanded, trying,
+as it seemed, to _see_ with those sightless eyes—unavailing and
+distressing attempt! “Answer me—speak again!” he ordered, imperiously
+and aloud.
+
+“Will you have a little more water, sir? I spilt half of what was in
+the glass,” I said.
+
+“_Who_ is it? _What_ is it? Who speaks?”
+
+“Pilot knows me, and John and Mary know I am here. I came only this
+evening,” I answered.
+
+“Great God!—what delusion has come over me? What sweet madness has
+seized me?”
+
+“No delusion—no madness: your mind, sir, is too strong for delusion,
+your health too sound for frenzy.”
+
+“And where is the speaker? Is it only a voice? Oh! I _cannot_ see, but
+I must feel, or my heart will stop and my brain burst. Whatever—whoever
+you are—be perceptible to the touch or I cannot live!”
+
+He groped; I arrested his wandering hand, and prisoned it in both mine.
+
+“Her very fingers!” he cried; “her small, slight fingers! If so there
+must be more of her.”
+
+The muscular hand broke from my custody; my arm was seized, my
+shoulder—neck—waist—I was entwined and gathered to him.
+
+“Is it Jane? _What_ is it? This is her shape—this is her size—”
+
+“And this her voice,” I added. “She is all here: her heart, too. God
+bless you, sir! I am glad to be so near you again.”
+
+“Jane Eyre!—Jane Eyre,” was all he said.
+
+“My dear master,” I answered, “I am Jane Eyre: I have found you out—I
+am come back to you.”
+
+“In truth?—in the flesh? My living Jane?”
+
+“You touch me, sir,—you hold me, and fast enough: I am not cold like a
+corpse, nor vacant like air, am I?”
+
+“My living darling! These are certainly her limbs, and these her
+features; but I cannot be so blest, after all my misery. It is a dream;
+such dreams as I have had at night when I have clasped her once more to
+my heart, as I do now; and kissed her, as thus—and felt that she loved
+me, and trusted that she would not leave me.”
+
+“Which I never will, sir, from this day.”
+
+“Never will, says the vision? But I always woke and found it an empty
+mockery; and I was desolate and abandoned—my life dark, lonely,
+hopeless—my soul athirst and forbidden to drink—my heart famished and
+never to be fed. Gentle, soft dream, nestling in my arms now, you will
+fly, too, as your sisters have all fled before you: but kiss me before
+you go—embrace me, Jane.”
+
+“There, sir—and there!”’
+
+I pressed my lips to his once brilliant and now rayless eyes—I swept
+his hair from his brow, and kissed that too. He suddenly seemed to
+arouse himself: the conviction of the reality of all this seized him.
+
+“It is you—is it, Jane? You are come back to me then?”
+
+“I am.”
+
+“And you do not lie dead in some ditch under some stream? And you are
+not a pining outcast amongst strangers?”
+
+“No, sir! I am an independent woman now.”
+
+“Independent! What do you mean, Jane?”
+
+“My uncle in Madeira is dead, and he left me five thousand pounds.”
+
+“Ah! this is practical—this is real!” he cried: “I should never dream
+that. Besides, there is that peculiar voice of hers, so animating and
+piquant, as well as soft: it cheers my withered heart; it puts life
+into it.—What, Janet! Are you an independent woman? A rich woman?”
+
+“Quite rich, sir. If you won’t let me live with you, I can build a
+house of my own close up to your door, and you may come and sit in my
+parlour when you want company of an evening.”
+
+“But as you are rich, Jane, you have now, no doubt, friends who will
+look after you, and not suffer you to devote yourself to a blind
+lameter like me?”
+
+“I told you I am independent, sir, as well as rich: I am my own
+mistress.”
+
+“And you will stay with me?”
+
+“Certainly—unless you object. I will be your neighbour, your nurse,
+your housekeeper. I find you lonely: I will be your companion—to read
+to you, to walk with you, to sit with you, to wait on you, to be eyes
+and hands to you. Cease to look so melancholy, my dear master; you
+shall not be left desolate, so long as I live.”
+
+He replied not: he seemed serious—abstracted; he sighed; he half-opened
+his lips as if to speak: he closed them again. I felt a little
+embarrassed. Perhaps I had too rashly over-leaped conventionalities;
+and he, like St. John, saw impropriety in my inconsiderateness. I had
+indeed made my proposal from the idea that he wished and would ask me
+to be his wife: an expectation, not the less certain because
+unexpressed, had buoyed me up, that he would claim me at once as his
+own. But no hint to that effect escaping him and his countenance
+becoming more overcast, I suddenly remembered that I might have been
+all wrong, and was perhaps playing the fool unwittingly; and I began
+gently to withdraw myself from his arms—but he eagerly snatched me
+closer.
+
+“No—no—Jane; you must not go. No—I have touched you, heard you, felt
+the comfort of your presence—the sweetness of your consolation: I
+cannot give up these joys. I have little left in myself—I must have
+you. The world may laugh—may call me absurd, selfish—but it does not
+signify. My very soul demands you: it will be satisfied, or it will
+take deadly vengeance on its frame.”
+
+“Well, sir, I will stay with you: I have said so.”
+
+“Yes—but you understand one thing by staying with me; and I understand
+another. You, perhaps, could make up your mind to be about my hand and
+chair—to wait on me as a kind little nurse (for you have an
+affectionate heart and a generous spirit, which prompt you to make
+sacrifices for those you pity), and that ought to suffice for me no
+doubt. I suppose I should now entertain none but fatherly feelings for
+you: do you think so? Come—tell me.”
+
+“I will think what you like, sir: I am content to be only your nurse,
+if you think it better.”
+
+“But you cannot always be my nurse, Janet: you are young—you must marry
+one day.”
+
+“I don’t care about being married.”
+
+“You should care, Janet: if I were what I once was, I would try to make
+you care—but—a sightless block!”
+
+He relapsed again into gloom. I, on the contrary, became more cheerful,
+and took fresh courage: these last words gave me an insight as to where
+the difficulty lay; and as it was no difficulty with me, I felt quite
+relieved from my previous embarrassment. I resumed a livelier vein of
+conversation.
+
+“It is time some one undertook to rehumanise you,” said I, parting his
+thick and long uncut locks; “for I see you are being metamorphosed into
+a lion, or something of that sort. You have a ‘faux air’ of
+Nebuchadnezzar in the fields about you, that is certain: your hair
+reminds me of eagles’ feathers; whether your nails are grown like
+birds’ claws or not, I have not yet noticed.”
+
+“On this arm, I have neither hand nor nails,” he said, drawing the
+mutilated limb from his breast, and showing it to me. “It is a mere
+stump—a ghastly sight! Don’t you think so, Jane?”
+
+“It is a pity to see it; and a pity to see your eyes—and the scar of
+fire on your forehead: and the worst of it is, one is in danger of
+loving you too well for all this; and making too much of you.”
+
+“I thought you would be revolted, Jane, when you saw my arm, and my
+cicatrised visage.”
+
+“Did you? Don’t tell me so—lest I should say something disparaging to
+your judgment. Now, let me leave you an instant, to make a better fire,
+and have the hearth swept up. Can you tell when there is a good fire?”
+
+“Yes; with the right eye I see a glow—a ruddy haze.”
+
+“And you see the candles?”
+
+“Very dimly—each is a luminous cloud.”
+
+“Can you see me?”
+
+“No, my fairy: but I am only too thankful to hear and feel you.”
+
+“When do you take supper?”
+
+“I never take supper.”
+
+“But you shall have some to-night. I am hungry: so are you, I daresay,
+only you forget.”
+
+Summoning Mary, I soon had the room in more cheerful order: I prepared
+him, likewise, a comfortable repast. My spirits were excited, and with
+pleasure and ease I talked to him during supper, and for a long time
+after. There was no harassing restraint, no repressing of glee and
+vivacity with him; for with him I was at perfect ease, because I knew I
+suited him; all I said or did seemed either to console or revive him.
+Delightful consciousness! It brought to life and light my whole nature:
+in his presence I thoroughly lived; and he lived in mine. Blind as he
+was, smiles played over his face, joy dawned on his forehead: his
+lineaments softened and warmed.
+
+After supper, he began to ask me many questions, of where I had been,
+what I had been doing, how I had found him out; but I gave him only
+very partial replies: it was too late to enter into particulars that
+night. Besides, I wished to touch no deep-thrilling chord—to open no
+fresh well of emotion in his heart: my sole present aim was to cheer
+him. Cheered, as I have said, he was: and yet but by fits. If a
+moment’s silence broke the conversation, he would turn restless, touch
+me, then say, “Jane.”
+
+“You are altogether a human being, Jane? You are certain of that?”
+
+
+You are altogether a human being, Jane? You are certain of that?
+
+“I conscientiously believe so, Mr. Rochester.”
+
+“Yet how, on this dark and doleful evening, could you so suddenly rise
+on my lone hearth? I stretched my hand to take a glass of water from a
+hireling, and it was given me by you: I asked a question, expecting
+John’s wife to answer me, and your voice spoke at my ear.”
+
+“Because I had come in, in Mary’s stead, with the tray.”
+
+“And there is enchantment in the very hour I am now spending with you.
+Who can tell what a dark, dreary, hopeless life I have dragged on for
+months past? Doing nothing, expecting nothing; merging night in day;
+feeling but the sensation of cold when I let the fire go out, of hunger
+when I forgot to eat: and then a ceaseless sorrow, and, at times, a
+very delirium of desire to behold my Jane again. Yes: for her
+restoration I longed, far more than for that of my lost sight. How can
+it be that Jane is with me, and says she loves me? Will she not depart
+as suddenly as she came? To-morrow, I fear I shall find her no more.”
+
+A commonplace, practical reply, out of the train of his own disturbed
+ideas, was, I was sure, the best and most reassuring for him in this
+frame of mind. I passed my finger over his eyebrows, and remarked that
+they were scorched, and that I would apply something which would make
+them grow as broad and black as ever.
+
+“Where is the use of doing me good in any way, beneficent spirit, when,
+at some fatal moment, you will again desert me—passing like a shadow,
+whither and how to me unknown, and for me remaining afterwards
+undiscoverable?”
+
+“Have you a pocket-comb about you, sir?”
+
+“What for, Jane?”
+
+“Just to comb out this shaggy black mane. I find you rather alarming,
+when I examine you close at hand: you talk of my being a fairy, but I
+am sure, you are more like a brownie.”
+
+“Am I hideous, Jane?”
+
+“Very, sir: you always were, you know.”
+
+“Humph! The wickedness has not been taken out of you, wherever you have
+sojourned.”
+
+“Yet I have been with good people; far better than you: a hundred times
+better people; possessed of ideas and views you never entertained in
+your life: quite more refined and exalted.”
+
+“Who the deuce have you been with?”
+
+“If you twist in that way you will make me pull the hair out of your
+head; and then I think you will cease to entertain doubts of my
+substantiality.”
+
+“Who have you been with, Jane?”
+
+“You shall not get it out of me to-night, sir; you must wait till
+to-morrow; to leave my tale half told, will, you know, be a sort of
+security that I shall appear at your breakfast table to finish it. By
+the bye, I must mind not to rise on your hearth with only a glass of
+water then: I must bring an egg at the least, to say nothing of fried
+ham.”
+
+“You mocking changeling—fairy-born and human-bred! You make me feel as
+I have not felt these twelve months. If Saul could have had you for his
+David, the evil spirit would have been exorcised without the aid of the
+harp.”
+
+“There, sir, you are redd up and made decent. Now I’ll leave you: I
+have been travelling these last three days, and I believe I am tired.
+Good night.”
+
+“Just one word, Jane: were there only ladies in the house where you
+have been?”
+
+I laughed and made my escape, still laughing as I ran upstairs. “A good
+idea!” I thought with glee. “I see I have the means of fretting him out
+of his melancholy for some time to come.”
+
+Very early the next morning I heard him up and astir, wandering from
+one room to another. As soon as Mary came down I heard the question:
+“Is Miss Eyre here?” Then: “Which room did you put her into? Was it
+dry? Is she up? Go and ask if she wants anything; and when she will
+come down.”
+
+I came down as soon as I thought there was a prospect of breakfast.
+Entering the room very softly, I had a view of him before he discovered
+my presence. It was mournful, indeed, to witness the subjugation of
+that vigorous spirit to a corporeal infirmity. He sat in his
+chair—still, but not at rest: expectant evidently; the lines of now
+habitual sadness marking his strong features. His countenance reminded
+one of a lamp quenched, waiting to be re-lit—and alas! it was not
+himself that could now kindle the lustre of animated expression: he was
+dependent on another for that office! I had meant to be gay and
+careless, but the powerlessness of the strong man touched my heart to
+the quick: still I accosted him with what vivacity I could.
+
+“It is a bright, sunny morning, sir,” I said. “The rain is over and
+gone, and there is a tender shining after it: you shall have a walk
+soon.”
+
+I had wakened the glow: his features beamed.
+
+“Oh, you are indeed there, my skylark! Come to me. You are not gone:
+not vanished? I heard one of your kind an hour ago, singing high over
+the wood: but its song had no music for me, any more than the rising
+sun had rays. All the melody on earth is concentrated in my Jane’s
+tongue to my ear (I am glad it is not naturally a silent one): all the
+sunshine I can feel is in her presence.”
+
+The water stood in my eyes to hear this avowal of his dependence; just
+as if a royal eagle, chained to a perch, should be forced to entreat a
+sparrow to become its purveyor. But I would not be lachrymose: I dashed
+off the salt drops, and busied myself with preparing breakfast.
+
+Most of the morning was spent in the open air. I led him out of the wet
+and wild wood into some cheerful fields: I described to him how
+brilliantly green they were; how the flowers and hedges looked
+refreshed; how sparklingly blue was the sky. I sought a seat for him in
+a hidden and lovely spot, a dry stump of a tree; nor did I refuse to
+let him, when seated, place me on his knee. Why should I, when both he
+and I were happier near than apart? Pilot lay beside us: all was quiet.
+He broke out suddenly while clasping me in his arms—
+
+“Cruel, cruel deserter! Oh, Jane, what did I feel when I discovered you
+had fled from Thornfield, and when I could nowhere find you; and, after
+examining your apartment, ascertained that you had taken no money, nor
+anything which could serve as an equivalent! A pearl necklace I had
+given you lay untouched in its little casket; your trunks were left
+corded and locked as they had been prepared for the bridal tour. What
+could my darling do, I asked, left destitute and penniless? And what
+did she do? Let me hear now.”
+
+Thus urged, I began the narrative of my experience for the last year. I
+softened considerably what related to the three days of wandering and
+starvation, because to have told him all would have been to inflict
+unnecessary pain: the little I did say lacerated his faithful heart
+deeper than I wished.
+
+I should not have left him thus, he said, without any means of making
+my way: I should have told him my intention. I should have confided in
+him: he would never have forced me to be his mistress. Violent as he
+had seemed in his despair, he, in truth, loved me far too well and too
+tenderly to constitute himself my tyrant: he would have given me half
+his fortune, without demanding so much as a kiss in return, rather than
+I should have flung myself friendless on the wide world. I had endured,
+he was certain, more than I had confessed to him.
+
+“Well, whatever my sufferings had been, they were very short,” I
+answered: and then I proceeded to tell him how I had been received at
+Moor House; how I had obtained the office of schoolmistress, &c. The
+accession of fortune, the discovery of my relations, followed in due
+order. Of course, St. John Rivers’ name came in frequently in the
+progress of my tale. When I had done, that name was immediately taken
+up.
+
+“This St. John, then, is your cousin?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“You have spoken of him often: do you like him?”
+
+“He was a very good man, sir; I could not help liking him.”
+
+“A good man. Does that mean a respectable well-conducted man of fifty?
+Or what does it mean?”
+
+“St John was only twenty-nine, sir.”
+
+“‘_Jeune encore_,’ as the French say. Is he a person of low stature,
+phlegmatic, and plain. A person whose goodness consists rather in his
+guiltlessness of vice, than in his prowess in virtue.”
+
+“He is untiringly active. Great and exalted deeds are what he lives to
+perform.”
+
+“But his brain? That is probably rather soft? He means well: but you
+shrug your shoulders to hear him talk?”
+
+“He talks little, sir: what he does say is ever to the point. His brain
+is first-rate, I should think not impressible, but vigorous.”
+
+“Is he an able man, then?”
+
+“Truly able.”
+
+“A thoroughly educated man?”
+
+“St. John is an accomplished and profound scholar.”
+
+“His manners, I think, you said are not to your taste?—priggish and
+parsonic?”
+
+“I never mentioned his manners; but, unless I had a very bad taste,
+they must suit it; they are polished, calm, and gentlemanlike.”
+
+“His appearance,—I forget what description you gave of his
+appearance;—a sort of raw curate, half strangled with his white
+neckcloth, and stilted up on his thick-soled high-lows, eh?”
+
+“St. John dresses well. He is a handsome man: tall, fair, with blue
+eyes, and a Grecian profile.”
+
+(Aside.) “Damn him!”—(To me.) “Did you like him, Jane?”
+
+“Yes, Mr. Rochester, I liked him: but you asked me that before.”
+
+I perceived, of course, the drift of my interlocutor. Jealousy had got
+hold of him: she stung him; but the sting was salutary: it gave him
+respite from the gnawing fang of melancholy. I would not, therefore,
+immediately charm the snake.
+
+“Perhaps you would rather not sit any longer on my knee, Miss Eyre?”
+was the next somewhat unexpected observation.
+
+“Why not, Mr. Rochester?”
+
+“The picture you have just drawn is suggestive of a rather too
+overwhelming contrast. Your words have delineated very prettily a
+graceful Apollo: he is present to your imagination,—tall, fair,
+blue-eyed, and with a Grecian profile. Your eyes dwell on a Vulcan,—a
+real blacksmith, brown, broad-shouldered: and blind and lame into the
+bargain.”
+
+“I never thought of it, before; but you certainly are rather like
+Vulcan, sir.”
+
+“Well, you can leave me, ma’am: but before you go” (and he retained me
+by a firmer grasp than ever), “you will be pleased just to answer me a
+question or two.” He paused.
+
+“What questions, Mr. Rochester?”
+
+Then followed this cross-examination.
+
+“St. John made you schoolmistress of Morton before he knew you were his
+cousin?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“You would often see him? He would visit the school sometimes?”
+
+“Daily.”
+
+“He would approve of your plans, Jane? I know they would be clever, for
+you are a talented creature!”
+
+“He approved of them—yes.”
+
+“He would discover many things in you he could not have expected to
+find? Some of your accomplishments are not ordinary.”
+
+“I don’t know about that.”
+
+“You had a little cottage near the school, you say: did he ever come
+there to see you?”
+
+“Now and then?”
+
+“Of an evening?”
+
+“Once or twice.”
+
+A pause.
+
+“How long did you reside with him and his sisters after the cousinship
+was discovered?”
+
+“Five months.”
+
+“Did Rivers spend much time with the ladies of his family?”
+
+“Yes; the back parlour was both his study and ours: he sat near the
+window, and we by the table.”
+
+“Did he study much?”
+
+“A good deal.”
+
+“What?”
+
+“Hindostanee.”
+
+“And what did you do meantime?”
+
+“I learnt German, at first.”
+
+“Did he teach you?”
+
+“He did not understand German.”
+
+“Did he teach you nothing?”
+
+“A little Hindostanee.”
+
+“Rivers taught you Hindostanee?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“And his sisters also?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Only you?”
+
+“Only me.”
+
+“Did you ask to learn?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“He wished to teach you?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+A second pause.
+
+“Why did he wish it? Of what use could Hindostanee be to you?”
+
+“He intended me to go with him to India.”
+
+“Ah! here I reach the root of the matter. He wanted you to marry him?”
+
+“He asked me to marry him.”
+
+“That is a fiction—an impudent invention to vex me.”
+
+“I beg your pardon, it is the literal truth: he asked me more than
+once, and was as stiff about urging his point as ever you could be.”
+
+“Miss Eyre, I repeat it, you can leave me. How often am I to say the
+same thing? Why do you remain pertinaciously perched on my knee, when I
+have given you notice to quit?”
+
+“Because I am comfortable there.”
+
+“No, Jane, you are not comfortable there, because your heart is not
+with me: it is with this cousin—this St. John. Oh, till this moment, I
+thought my little Jane was all mine! I had a belief she loved me even
+when she left me: that was an atom of sweet in much bitter. Long as we
+have been parted, hot tears as I have wept over our separation, I never
+thought that while I was mourning her, she was loving another! But it
+is useless grieving. Jane, leave me: go and marry Rivers.”
+
+“Shake me off, then, sir,—push me away, for I’ll not leave you of my
+own accord.”
+
+“Jane, I ever like your tone of voice: it still renews hope, it sounds
+so truthful. When I hear it, it carries me back a year. I forget that
+you have formed a new tie. But I am not a fool—go—”
+
+“Where must I go, sir?”
+
+“Your own way—with the husband you have chosen.”
+
+“Who is that?”
+
+“You know—this St. John Rivers.”
+
+“He is not my husband, nor ever will be. He does not love me: I do not
+love him. He loves (as he _can_ love, and that is not as you love) a
+beautiful young lady called Rosamond. He wanted to marry me only
+because he thought I should make a suitable missionary’s wife, which
+she would not have done. He is good and great, but severe; and, for me,
+cold as an iceberg. He is not like you, sir: I am not happy at his
+side, nor near him, nor with him. He has no indulgence for me—no
+fondness. He sees nothing attractive in me; not even youth—only a few
+useful mental points.—Then I must leave you, sir, to go to him?”
+
+I shuddered involuntarily, and clung instinctively closer to my blind
+but beloved master. He smiled.
+
+“What, Jane! Is this true? Is such really the state of matters between
+you and Rivers?”
+
+“Absolutely, sir! Oh, you need not be jealous! I wanted to tease you a
+little to make you less sad: I thought anger would be better than
+grief. But if you wish me to love you, could you but see how much I
+_do_ love you, you would be proud and content. All my heart is yours,
+sir: it belongs to you; and with you it would remain, were fate to
+exile the rest of me from your presence for ever.”
+
+Again, as he kissed me, painful thoughts darkened his aspect.
+
+“My seared vision! My crippled strength!” he murmured regretfully.
+
+I caressed, in order to soothe him. I knew of what he was thinking, and
+wanted to speak for him, but dared not. As he turned aside his face a
+minute, I saw a tear slide from under the sealed eyelid, and trickle
+down the manly cheek. My heart swelled.
+
+“I am no better than the old lightning-struck chestnut-tree in
+Thornfield orchard,” he remarked ere long. “And what right would that
+ruin have to bid a budding woodbine cover its decay with freshness?”
+
+“You are no ruin, sir—no lightning-struck tree: you are green and
+vigorous. Plants will grow about your roots, whether you ask them or
+not, because they take delight in your bountiful shadow; and as they
+grow they will lean towards you, and wind round you, because your
+strength offers them so safe a prop.”
+
+Again he smiled: I gave him comfort.
+
+“You speak of friends, Jane?” he asked.
+
+“Yes, of friends,” I answered rather hesitatingly: for I knew I meant
+more than friends, but could not tell what other word to employ. He
+helped me.
+
+“Ah! Jane. But I want a wife.”
+
+“Do you, sir?”
+
+“Yes: is it news to you?”
+
+“Of course: you said nothing about it before.”
+
+“Is it unwelcome news?”
+
+“That depends on circumstances, sir—on your choice.”
+
+“Which you shall make for me, Jane. I will abide by your decision.”
+
+“Choose then, sir—_her who loves you best_.”
+
+“I will at least choose—_her I love best_. Jane, will you marry me?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“A poor blind man, whom you will have to lead about by the hand?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“A crippled man, twenty years older than you, whom you will have to
+wait on?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Truly, Jane?”
+
+“Most truly, sir.”
+
+“Oh! my darling! God bless you and reward you!”
+
+“Mr. Rochester, if ever I did a good deed in my life—if ever I thought
+a good thought—if ever I prayed a sincere and blameless prayer—if ever
+I wished a righteous wish,—I am rewarded now. To be your wife is, for
+me, to be as happy as I can be on earth.”
+
+“Because you delight in sacrifice.”
+
+“Sacrifice! What do I sacrifice? Famine for food, expectation for
+content. To be privileged to put my arms round what I value—to press my
+lips to what I love—to repose on what I trust: is that to make a
+sacrifice? If so, then certainly I delight in sacrifice.”
+
+“And to bear with my infirmities, Jane: to overlook my deficiencies.”
+
+“Which are none, sir, to me. I love you better now, when I can really
+be useful to you, than I did in your state of proud independence, when
+you disdained every part but that of the giver and protector.”
+
+“Hitherto I have hated to be helped—to be led: henceforth, I feel I
+shall hate it no more. I did not like to put my hand into a hireling’s,
+but it is pleasant to feel it circled by Jane’s little fingers. I
+preferred utter loneliness to the constant attendance of servants; but
+Jane’s soft ministry will be a perpetual joy. Jane suits me: do I suit
+her?”
+
+“To the finest fibre of my nature, sir.”
+
+“The case being so, we have nothing in the world to wait for: we must
+be married instantly.”
+
+He looked and spoke with eagerness: his old impetuosity was rising.
+
+“We must become one flesh without any delay, Jane: there is but the
+licence to get—then we marry.”
+
+“Mr. Rochester, I have just discovered the sun is far declined from its
+meridian, and Pilot is actually gone home to his dinner. Let me look at
+your watch.”
+
+“Fasten it into your girdle, Janet, and keep it henceforward: I have no
+use for it.”
+
+“It is nearly four o’clock in the afternoon, sir. Don’t you feel
+hungry?”
+
+“The third day from this must be our wedding-day, Jane. Never mind fine
+clothes and jewels, now: all that is not worth a fillip.”
+
+“The sun has dried up all the rain-drops, sir. The breeze is still: it
+is quite hot.”
+
+“Do you know, Jane, I have your little pearl necklace at this moment
+fastened round my bronze scrag under my cravat? I have worn it since
+the day I lost my only treasure, as a memento of her.”
+
+“We will go home through the wood: that will be the shadiest way.”
+
+He pursued his own thoughts without heeding me.
+
+“Jane! you think me, I daresay, an irreligious dog: but my heart swells
+with gratitude to the beneficent God of this earth just now. He sees
+not as man sees, but far clearer: judges not as man judges, but far
+more wisely. I did wrong: I would have sullied my innocent
+flower—breathed guilt on its purity: the Omnipotent snatched it from
+me. I, in my stiff-necked rebellion, almost cursed the dispensation:
+instead of bending to the decree, I defied it. Divine justice pursued
+its course; disasters came thick on me: I was forced to pass through
+the valley of the shadow of death. _His_ chastisements are mighty; and
+one smote me which has humbled me for ever. You know I was proud of my
+strength: but what is it now, when I must give it over to foreign
+guidance, as a child does its weakness? Of late, Jane—only—only of
+late—I began to see and acknowledge the hand of God in my doom. I began
+to experience remorse, repentance; the wish for reconcilement to my
+Maker. I began sometimes to pray: very brief prayers they were, but
+very sincere.
+
+“Some days since: nay, I can number them—four; it was last Monday
+night, a singular mood came over me: one in which grief replaced
+frenzy—sorrow, sullenness. I had long had the impression that since I
+could nowhere find you, you must be dead. Late that night—perhaps it
+might be between eleven and twelve o’clock—ere I retired to my dreary
+rest, I supplicated God, that, if it seemed good to Him, I might soon
+be taken from this life, and admitted to that world to come, where
+there was still hope of rejoining Jane.
+
+“I was in my own room, and sitting by the window, which was open: it
+soothed me to feel the balmy night-air; though I could see no stars and
+only by a vague, luminous haze, knew the presence of a moon. I longed
+for thee, Janet! Oh, I longed for thee both with soul and flesh! I
+asked of God, at once in anguish and humility, if I had not been long
+enough desolate, afflicted, tormented; and might not soon taste bliss
+and peace once more. That I merited all I endured, I acknowledged—that
+I could scarcely endure more, I pleaded; and the alpha and omega of my
+heart’s wishes broke involuntarily from my lips in the words—‘Jane!
+Jane! Jane!’”
+
+“Did you speak these words aloud?”
+
+“I did, Jane. If any listener had heard me, he would have thought me
+mad: I pronounced them with such frantic energy.”
+
+“And it was last Monday night, somewhere near midnight?”
+
+“Yes; but the time is of no consequence: what followed is the strange
+point. You will think me superstitious,—some superstition I have in my
+blood, and always had: nevertheless, this is true—true at least it is
+that I heard what I now relate.
+
+“As I exclaimed ‘Jane! Jane! Jane!’ a voice—I cannot tell whence the
+voice came, but I know whose voice it was—replied, ‘I am coming: wait
+for me;’ and a moment after, went whispering on the wind the
+words—‘Where are you?’
+
+“I’ll tell you, if I can, the idea, the picture these words opened to
+my mind: yet it is difficult to express what I want to express.
+Ferndean is buried, as you see, in a heavy wood, where sound falls
+dull, and dies unreverberating. ‘Where are you?’ seemed spoken amongst
+mountains; for I heard a hill-sent echo repeat the words. Cooler and
+fresher at the moment the gale seemed to visit my brow: I could have
+deemed that in some wild, lone scene, I and Jane were meeting. In
+spirit, I believe we must have met. You no doubt were, at that hour, in
+unconscious sleep, Jane: perhaps your soul wandered from its cell to
+comfort mine; for those were your accents—as certain as I live—they
+were yours!”
+
+Reader, it was on Monday night—near midnight—that I too had received
+the mysterious summons: those were the very words by which I replied to
+it. I listened to Mr. Rochester’s narrative, but made no disclosure in
+return. The coincidence struck me as too awful and inexplicable to be
+communicated or discussed. If I told anything, my tale would be such as
+must necessarily make a profound impression on the mind of my hearer:
+and that mind, yet from its sufferings too prone to gloom, needed not
+the deeper shade of the supernatural. I kept these things then, and
+pondered them in my heart.
+
+“You cannot now wonder,” continued my master, “that when you rose upon
+me so unexpectedly last night, I had difficulty in believing you any
+other than a mere voice and vision, something that would melt to
+silence and annihilation, as the midnight whisper and mountain echo had
+melted before. Now, I thank God! I know it to be otherwise. Yes, I
+thank God!”
+
+He put me off his knee, rose, and reverently lifting his hat from his
+brow, and bending his sightless eyes to the earth, he stood in mute
+devotion. Only the last words of the worship were audible.
+
+“I thank my Maker, that, in the midst of judgment, he has remembered
+mercy. I humbly entreat my Redeemer to give me strength to lead
+henceforth a purer life than I have done hitherto!”
+
+Then he stretched his hand out to be led. I took that dear hand, held
+it a moment to my lips, then let it pass round my shoulder: being so
+much lower of stature than he, I served both for his prop and guide. We
+entered the wood, and wended homeward.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII—CONCLUSION
+
+
+Reader, I married him. A quiet wedding we had: he and I, the parson and
+clerk, were alone present. When we got back from church, I went into
+the kitchen of the manor-house, where Mary was cooking the dinner and
+John cleaning the knives, and I said—
+
+“Mary, I have been married to Mr. Rochester this morning.” The
+housekeeper and her husband were both of that decent phlegmatic order
+of people, to whom one may at any time safely communicate a remarkable
+piece of news without incurring the danger of having one’s ears pierced
+by some shrill ejaculation, and subsequently stunned by a torrent of
+wordy wonderment. Mary did look up, and she did stare at me: the ladle
+with which she was basting a pair of chickens roasting at the fire, did
+for some three minutes hang suspended in air; and for the same space of
+time John’s knives also had rest from the polishing process: but Mary,
+bending again over the roast, said only—
+
+“Have you, Miss? Well, for sure!”
+
+A short time after she pursued—“I seed you go out with the master, but
+I didn’t know you were gone to church to be wed;” and she basted away.
+John, when I turned to him, was grinning from ear to ear.
+
+“I telled Mary how it would be,” he said: “I knew what Mr. Edward”
+(John was an old servant, and had known his master when he was the
+cadet of the house, therefore, he often gave him his Christian name)—“I
+knew what Mr. Edward would do; and I was certain he would not wait long
+neither: and he’s done right, for aught I know. I wish you joy, Miss!”
+and he politely pulled his forelock.
+
+“Thank you, John. Mr. Rochester told me to give you and Mary this.” I
+put into his hand a five-pound note. Without waiting to hear more, I
+left the kitchen. In passing the door of that sanctum some time after,
+I caught the words—
+
+“She’ll happen do better for him nor ony o’ t’ grand ladies.” And
+again, “If she ben’t one o’ th’ handsomest, she’s noan faâl and varry
+good-natured; and i’ his een she’s fair beautiful, onybody may see
+that.”
+
+I wrote to Moor House and to Cambridge immediately, to say what I had
+done: fully explaining also why I had thus acted. Diana and Mary
+approved the step unreservedly. Diana announced that she would just
+give me time to get over the honeymoon, and then she would come and see
+me.
+
+“She had better not wait till then, Jane,” said Mr. Rochester, when I
+read her letter to him; “if she does, she will be too late, for our
+honeymoon will shine our life long: its beams will only fade over your
+grave or mine.”
+
+How St. John received the news, I don’t know: he never answered the
+letter in which I communicated it: yet six months after he wrote to me,
+without, however, mentioning Mr. Rochester’s name or alluding to my
+marriage. His letter was then calm, and, though very serious, kind. He
+has maintained a regular, though not frequent, correspondence ever
+since: he hopes I am happy, and trusts I am not of those who live
+without God in the world, and only mind earthly things.
+
+You have not quite forgotten little Adèle, have you, reader? I had not;
+I soon asked and obtained leave of Mr. Rochester, to go and see her at
+the school where he had placed her. Her frantic joy at beholding me
+again moved me much. She looked pale and thin: she said she was not
+happy. I found the rules of the establishment were too strict, its
+course of study too severe for a child of her age: I took her home with
+me. I meant to become her governess once more, but I soon found this
+impracticable; my time and cares were now required by another—my
+husband needed them all. So I sought out a school conducted on a more
+indulgent system, and near enough to permit of my visiting her often,
+and bringing her home sometimes. I took care she should never want for
+anything that could contribute to her comfort: she soon settled in her
+new abode, became very happy there, and made fair progress in her
+studies. As she grew up, a sound English education corrected in a great
+measure her French defects; and when she left school, I found in her a
+pleasing and obliging companion: docile, good-tempered, and
+well-principled. By her grateful attention to me and mine, she has long
+since well repaid any little kindness I ever had it in my power to
+offer her.
+
+My tale draws to its close: one word respecting my experience of
+married life, and one brief glance at the fortunes of those whose names
+have most frequently recurred in this narrative, and I have done.
+
+I have now been married ten years. I know what it is to live entirely
+for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely
+blest—blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband’s
+life as fully as he is mine. No woman was ever nearer to her mate than
+I am: ever more absolutely bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. I
+know no weariness of my Edward’s society: he knows none of mine, any
+more than we each do of the pulsation of the heart that beats in our
+separate bosoms; consequently, we are ever together. To be together is
+for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company. We
+talk, I believe, all day long: to talk to each other is but a more
+animated and an audible thinking. All my confidence is bestowed on him,
+all his confidence is devoted to me; we are precisely suited in
+character—perfect concord is the result.
+
+Mr. Rochester continued blind the first two years of our union; perhaps
+it was that circumstance that drew us so very near—that knit us so very
+close: for I was then his vision, as I am still his right hand.
+Literally, I was (what he often called me) the apple of his eye. He saw
+nature—he saw books through me; and never did I weary of gazing for his
+behalf, and of putting into words the effect of field, tree, town,
+river, cloud, sunbeam—of the landscape before us; of the weather round
+us—and impressing by sound on his ear what light could no longer stamp
+on his eye. Never did I weary of reading to him; never did I weary of
+conducting him where he wished to go: of doing for him what he wished
+to be done. And there was a pleasure in my services, most full, most
+exquisite, even though sad—because he claimed these services without
+painful shame or damping humiliation. He loved me so truly, that he
+knew no reluctance in profiting by my attendance: he felt I loved him
+so fondly, that to yield that attendance was to indulge my sweetest
+wishes.
+
+One morning at the end of the two years, as I was writing a letter to
+his dictation, he came and bent over me, and said—“Jane, have you a
+glittering ornament round your neck?”
+
+I had a gold watch-chain: I answered “Yes.”
+
+“And have you a pale blue dress on?”
+
+
+And have you a pale blue dress on?
+
+I had. He informed me then, that for some time he had fancied the
+obscurity clouding one eye was becoming less dense; and that now he was
+sure of it.
+
+He and I went up to London. He had the advice of an eminent oculist;
+and he eventually recovered the sight of that one eye. He cannot now
+see very distinctly: he cannot read or write much; but he can find his
+way without being led by the hand: the sky is no longer a blank to
+him—the earth no longer a void. When his first-born was put into his
+arms, he could see that the boy had inherited his own eyes, as they
+once were—large, brilliant, and black. On that occasion, he again, with
+a full heart, acknowledged that God had tempered judgment with mercy.
+
+My Edward and I, then, are happy: and the more so, because those we
+most love are happy likewise. Diana and Mary Rivers are both married:
+alternately, once every year, they come to see us, and we go to see
+them. Diana’s husband is a captain in the navy, a gallant officer and a
+good man. Mary’s is a clergyman, a college friend of her brother’s,
+and, from his attainments and principles, worthy of the connection.
+Both Captain Fitzjames and Mr. Wharton love their wives, and are loved
+by them.
+
+As to St. John Rivers, he left England: he went to India. He entered on
+the path he had marked for himself; he pursues it still. A more
+resolute, indefatigable pioneer never wrought amidst rocks and dangers.
+Firm, faithful, and devoted, full of energy, and zeal, and truth, he
+labours for his race; he clears their painful way to improvement; he
+hews down like a giant the prejudices of creed and caste that encumber
+it. He may be stern; he may be exacting; he may be ambitious yet; but
+his is the sternness of the warrior Greatheart, who guards his pilgrim
+convoy from the onslaught of Apollyon. His is the exaction of the
+apostle, who speaks but for Christ, when he says—“Whosoever will come
+after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me.”
+His is the ambition of the high master-spirit, which aims to fill a
+place in the first rank of those who are redeemed from the earth—who
+stand without fault before the throne of God, who share the last mighty
+victories of the Lamb, who are called, and chosen, and faithful.
+
+St. John is unmarried: he never will marry now. Himself has hitherto
+sufficed to the toil, and the toil draws near its close: his glorious
+sun hastens to its setting. The last letter I received from him drew
+from my eyes human tears, and yet filled my heart with divine joy: he
+anticipated his sure reward, his incorruptible crown. I know that a
+stranger’s hand will write to me next, to say that the good and
+faithful servant has been called at length into the joy of his Lord.
+And why weep for this? No fear of death will darken St. John’s last
+hour: his mind will be unclouded, his heart will be undaunted, his hope
+will be sure, his faith steadfast. His own words are a pledge of this—
+
+“My Master,” he says, “has forewarned me. Daily He announces more
+distinctly,—‘Surely I come quickly!’ and hourly I more eagerly
+respond,—‘Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus!’”
+
+
+
+
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diff --git a/data/train/bronte_-_shirley.txt b/data/train/bronte_-_shirley.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8876a80
--- /dev/null
+++ b/data/train/bronte_-_shirley.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,25925 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Shirley, by Charlotte Brontë
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Shirley
+
+Author: Charlotte Brontë
+
+Release Date: November 16, 2009 [EBook #30486]
+[Last updated: September 8, 2020]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHIRLEY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Brenda Lewis, Fox in the Stars and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Canada Team at
+http://www.pgdpcanada.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Moore placed his hand on his cousin's shoulder, stooped,
+and left a kiss on her forehead.]
+
+
+
+
+SHIRLEY
+
+BY CHARLOTTE BRONTË
+
+T. Nelson & Sons
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+         I. LEVITICAL                                                  3
+
+        II. THE WAGONS                                                16
+
+       III. MR. YORKE                                                 31
+
+        IV. MR. YORKE (CONTINUED)                                     40
+
+         V. HOLLOW'S COTTAGE                                          51
+
+        VI. CORIOLANUS                                                66
+
+       VII. THE CURATES AT TEA                                        85
+
+      VIII. NOAH AND MOSES                                           110
+
+        IX. BRIARMAINS                                               125
+
+         X. OLD MAIDS                                                147
+
+        XI. FIELDHEAD                                                164
+
+       XII. SHIRLEY AND CAROLINE                                     181
+
+      XIII. FURTHER COMMUNICATIONS ON BUSINESS                       201
+
+       XIV. SHIRLEY SEEKS TO BE SAVED BY WORKS                       226
+
+        XV. MR. DONNE'S EXODUS                                       239
+
+       XVI. WHITSUNTIDE                                              253
+
+      XVII. THE SCHOOL FEAST                                         264
+
+     XVIII. WHICH THE GENTEEL READER IS RECOMMENDED TO SKIP, LOW
+            PERSONS BEING HERE INTRODUCED                            279
+
+       XIX. A SUMMER NIGHT                                           290
+
+        XX. TO-MORROW                                                306
+
+       XXI. MRS. PRYOR                                               319
+
+      XXII. TWO LIVES                                                336
+
+     XXIII. AN EVENING OUT                                           346
+
+      XXIV. THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH                        365
+
+       XXV. THE WEST WIND BLOWS                                      384
+
+      XXVI. OLD COPY-BOOKS                                           392
+
+     XXVII. THE FIRST BLUESTOCKING                                   410
+
+    XXVIII. PHŒBE                                                   433
+
+      XXIX. LOUIS MOORE                                              453
+
+       XXX. RUSHEDGE--A CONFESSIONAL                                 461
+
+      XXXI. UNCLE AND NIECE                                          475
+
+     XXXII. THE SCHOOLBOY AND THE WOOD-NYMPH                         491
+
+    XXXIII. MARTIN'S TACTICS                                         502
+
+     XXXIV. CASE OF DOMESTIC PERSECUTION--REMARKABLE INSTANCE
+            OF PIOUS PERSEVERANCE IN THE DISCHARGE OF RELIGIOUS
+            DUTIES                                                   513
+
+      XXXV. WHEREIN MATTERS MAKE SOME PROGRESS, BUT NOT MUCH         521
+
+     XXXVI. WRITTEN IN THE SCHOOLROOM                                534
+
+    XXXVII. THE WINDING-UP                                           555
+
+
+
+
+SHIRLEY.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+LEVITICAL.
+
+
+Of late years an abundant shower of curates has fallen upon the north of
+England: they lie very thick on the hills; every parish has one or more
+of them; they are young enough to be very active, and ought to be doing
+a great deal of good. But not of late years are we about to speak; we
+are going back to the beginning of this century: late years--present
+years are dusty, sunburnt, hot, arid; we will evade the noon, forget it
+in siesta, pass the midday in slumber, and dream of dawn.
+
+If you think, from this prelude, that anything like a romance is
+preparing for you, reader, you never were more mistaken. Do you
+anticipate sentiment, and poetry, and reverie? Do you expect passion,
+and stimulus, and melodrama? Calm your expectations; reduce them to a
+lowly standard. Something real, cool, and solid lies before you;
+something unromantic as Monday morning, when all who have work wake with
+the consciousness that they must rise and betake themselves thereto. It
+is not positively affirmed that you shall not have a taste of the
+exciting, perhaps towards the middle and close of the meal, but it is
+resolved that the first dish set upon the table shall be one that a
+Catholic--ay, even an Anglo-Catholic--might eat on Good Friday in
+Passion Week: it shall be cold lentils and vinegar without oil; it shall
+be unleavened bread with bitter herbs, and no roast lamb.
+
+Of late years, I say, an abundant shower of curates has fallen upon the
+north of England; but in eighteen-hundred-eleven-twelve that affluent
+rain had not descended. Curates were scarce then: there was no Pastoral
+Aid--no Additional Curates' Society to stretch a helping hand to
+worn-out old rectors and incumbents, and give them the wherewithal to
+pay a vigorous young colleague from Oxford or Cambridge. The present
+successors of the apostles, disciples of Dr. Pusey and tools of the
+Propaganda, were at that time being hatched under cradle-blankets, or
+undergoing regeneration by nursery-baptism in wash-hand basins. You
+could not have guessed by looking at any one of them that the
+Italian-ironed double frills of its net-cap surrounded the brows of a
+preordained, specially-sanctified successor of St. Paul, St. Peter, or
+St. John; nor could you have foreseen in the folds of its long
+night-gown the white surplice in which it was hereafter cruelly to
+exercise the souls of its parishioners, and strangely to nonplus its
+old-fashioned vicar by flourishing aloft in a pulpit the shirt-like
+raiment which had never before waved higher than the reading-desk.
+
+Yet even in those days of scarcity there were curates: the precious
+plant was rare, but it might be found. A certain favoured district in
+the West Riding of Yorkshire could boast three rods of Aaron blossoming
+within a circuit of twenty miles. You shall see them, reader. Step into
+this neat garden-house on the skirts of Whinbury, walk forward into the
+little parlour. There they are at dinner. Allow me to introduce them to
+you: Mr. Donne, curate of Whinbury; Mr. Malone, curate of Briarfield;
+Mr. Sweeting, curate of Nunnely. These are Mr. Donne's lodgings, being
+the habitation of one John Gale, a small clothier. Mr. Donne has kindly
+invited his brethren to regale with him. You and I will join the party,
+see what is to be seen, and hear what is to be heard. At present,
+however, they are only eating; and while they eat we will talk aside.
+
+These gentlemen are in the bloom of youth; they possess all the activity
+of that interesting age--an activity which their moping old vicars would
+fain turn into the channel of their pastoral duties, often expressing a
+wish to see it expended in a diligent superintendence of the schools,
+and in frequent visits to the sick of their respective parishes. But the
+youthful Levites feel this to be dull work; they prefer lavishing their
+energies on a course of proceeding which, though to other eyes it appear
+more heavy with _ennui_, more cursed with monotony, than the toil of
+the weaver at his loom, seems to yield them an unfailing supply of
+enjoyment and occupation.
+
+I allude to a rushing backwards and forwards, amongst themselves, to and
+from their respective lodgings--not a round, but a triangle of visits,
+which they keep up all the year through, in winter, spring, summer, and
+autumn. Season and weather make no difference; with unintelligible zeal
+they dare snow and hail, wind and rain, mire and dust, to go and dine,
+or drink tea, or sup with each other. What attracts them it would be
+difficult to say. It is not friendship, for whenever they meet they
+quarrel. It is not religion--the thing is never named amongst them;
+theology they may discuss occasionally, but piety--never. It is not the
+love of eating and drinking: each might have as good a joint and
+pudding, tea as potent, and toast as succulent, at his own lodgings, as
+is served to him at his brother's. Mrs. Gale, Mrs. Hogg, and Mrs.
+Whipp--their respective landladies--affirm that "it is just for naught
+else but to give folk trouble." By "folk" the good ladies of course mean
+themselves, for indeed they are kept in a continual "fry" by this system
+of mutual invasion.
+
+Mr. Donne and his guests, as I have said, are at dinner; Mrs. Gale waits
+on them, but a spark of the hot kitchen fire is in her eye. She
+considers that the privilege of inviting a friend to a meal
+occasionally, without additional charge (a privilege included in the
+terms on which she lets her lodgings), has been quite sufficiently
+exercised of late. The present week is yet but at Thursday, and on
+Monday Mr. Malone, the curate of Briarfield, came to breakfast and
+stayed dinner; on Tuesday Mr. Malone and Mr. Sweeting of Nunnely came to
+tea, remained to supper, occupied the spare bed, and favoured her with
+their company to breakfast on Wednesday morning; now, on Thursday, they
+are both here at dinner, and she is almost certain they will stay all
+night. "C'en est trop," she would say, if she could speak French.
+
+Mr. Sweeting is mincing the slice of roast beef on his plate, and
+complaining that it is very tough; Mr. Donne says the beer is flat. Ay,
+that is the worst of it: if they would only be civil Mrs. Gale wouldn't
+mind it so much, if they would only seem satisfied with what they get
+she wouldn't care; but "these young parsons is so high and so scornful,
+they set everybody beneath their 'fit.' They treat her with less than
+civility, just because she doesn't keep a servant, but does the work of
+the house herself, as her mother did afore her; then they are always
+speaking against Yorkshire ways and Yorkshire folk," and by that very
+token Mrs. Gale does not believe one of them to be a real gentleman, or
+come of gentle kin. "The old parsons is worth the whole lump of college
+lads; they know what belongs to good manners, and is kind to high and
+low."
+
+"More bread!" cries Mr. Malone, in a tone which, though prolonged but to
+utter two syllables, proclaims him at once a native of the land of
+shamrocks and potatoes. Mrs. Gale hates Mr. Malone more than either of
+the other two; but she fears him also, for he is a tall, strongly-built
+personage, with real Irish legs and arms, and a face as genuinely
+national--not the Milesian face, not Daniel O'Connell's style, but the
+high-featured, North-American-Indian sort of visage, which belongs to a
+certain class of the Irish gentry, and has a petrified and proud look,
+better suited to the owner of an estate of slaves than to the landlord
+of a free peasantry. Mr. Malone's father termed himself a gentleman: he
+was poor and in debt, and besottedly arrogant; and his son was like him.
+
+Mrs. Gale offered the loaf.
+
+"Cut it, woman," said her guest; and the "woman" cut it accordingly. Had
+she followed her inclinations, she would have cut the parson also; her
+Yorkshire soul revolted absolutely from his manner of command.
+
+The curates had good appetites, and though the beef was "tough," they
+ate a great deal of it. They swallowed, too, a tolerable allowance of
+the "flat beer," while a dish of Yorkshire pudding, and two tureens of
+vegetables, disappeared like leaves before locusts. The cheese, too,
+received distinguished marks of their attention; and a "spice-cake,"
+which followed by way of dessert, vanished like a vision, and was no
+more found. Its elegy was chanted in the kitchen by Abraham, Mrs. Gale's
+son and heir, a youth of six summers; he had reckoned upon the reversion
+thereof, and when his mother brought down the empty platter, he lifted
+up his voice and wept sore.
+
+The curates, meantime, sat and sipped their wine, a liquor of
+unpretending vintage, moderately enjoyed. Mr. Malone, indeed, would much
+rather have had whisky; but Mr. Donne, being an Englishman, did not keep
+the beverage. While they sipped they argued, not on politics, nor on
+philosophy, nor on literature--these topics were now, as ever, totally
+without interest for them--not even on theology, practical or doctrinal,
+but on minute points of ecclesiastical discipline, frivolities which
+seemed empty as bubbles to all save themselves. Mr. Malone, who
+contrived to secure two glasses of wine, when his brethren contented
+themselves with one, waxed by degrees hilarious after his fashion; that
+is, he grew a little insolent, said rude things in a hectoring tone, and
+laughed clamorously at his own brilliancy.
+
+Each of his companions became in turn his butt. Malone had a stock of
+jokes at their service, which he was accustomed to serve out regularly
+on convivial occasions like the present, seldom varying his wit; for
+which, indeed, there was no necessity, as he never appeared to consider
+himself monotonous, and did not at all care what others thought. Mr.
+Donne he favoured with hints about his extreme meagreness, allusions to
+his turned-up nose, cutting sarcasms on a certain threadbare chocolate
+surtout which that gentleman was accustomed to sport whenever it rained
+or seemed likely to rain, and criticisms on a choice set of cockney
+phrases and modes of pronunciation, Mr. Donne's own property, and
+certainly deserving of remark for the elegance and finish they
+communicated to his style.
+
+Mr. Sweeting was bantered about his stature--he was a little man, a mere
+boy in height and breadth compared with the athletic Malone; rallied on
+his musical accomplishments--he played the flute and sang hymns like a
+seraph, some young ladies of his parish thought; sneered at as "the
+ladies' pet;" teased about his mamma and sisters, for whom poor Mr.
+Sweeting had some lingering regard, and of whom he was foolish enough
+now and then to speak in the presence of the priestly Paddy, from whose
+anatomy the bowels of natural affection had somehow been omitted.
+
+The victims met these attacks each in his own way: Mr. Donne with a
+stilted self-complacency and half-sullen phlegm, the sole props of his
+otherwise somewhat rickety dignity; Mr. Sweeting with the indifference
+of a light, easy disposition, which never professed to have any dignity
+to maintain.
+
+When Malone's raillery became rather too offensive, which it soon did,
+they joined, in an attempt to turn the tables on him by asking him how
+many boys had shouted "Irish Peter!" after him as he came along the road
+that day (Malone's name was Peter--the Rev. Peter Augustus Malone);
+requesting to be informed whether it was the mode in Ireland for
+clergymen to carry loaded pistols in their pockets, and a shillelah in
+their hands, when they made pastoral visits; inquiring the signification
+of such words as vele, firrum, hellum, storrum (so Mr. Malone invariably
+pronounced veil, firm, helm, storm), and employing such other methods of
+retaliation as the innate refinement of their minds suggested.
+
+This, of course, would not do. Malone, being neither good-natured nor
+phlegmatic, was presently in a towering passion. He vociferated,
+gesticulated; Donne and Sweeting laughed. He reviled them as Saxons and
+snobs at the very top pitch of his high Celtic voice; they taunted him
+with being the native of a conquered land. He menaced rebellion in the
+name of his "counthry," vented bitter hatred against English rule; they
+spoke of rags, beggary, and pestilence. The little parlour was in an
+uproar; you would have thought a duel must follow such virulent abuse;
+it seemed a wonder that Mr. and Mrs. Gale did not take alarm at the
+noise, and send for a constable to keep the peace. But they were
+accustomed to such demonstrations; they well knew that the curates never
+dined or took tea together without a little exercise of the sort, and
+were quite easy as to consequences, knowing that these clerical quarrels
+were as harmless as they were noisy, that they resulted in nothing, and
+that, on whatever terms the curates might part to-night, they would be
+sure to meet the best friends in the world to-morrow morning.
+
+As the worthy pair were sitting by their kitchen fire, listening to the
+repeated and sonorous contact of Malone's fist with the mahogany plane
+of the parlour table, and to the consequent start and jingle of
+decanters and glasses following each assault, to the mocking laughter of
+the allied English disputants, and the stuttering declamation of the
+isolated Hibernian--as they thus sat, a foot was heard on the outer
+door-step, and the knocker quivered to a sharp appeal.
+
+Mr. Gale went and opened.
+
+"Whom have you upstairs in the parlour?" asked a voice--a rather
+remarkable voice, nasal in tone, abrupt in utterance.
+
+"O Mr. Helstone, is it you, sir? I could hardly see you for the
+darkness; it is so soon dark now. Will you walk in, sir?"
+
+"I want to know first whether it is worth my while walking in. Whom have
+you upstairs?"
+
+"The curates, sir."
+
+"What! all of them?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Been dining here?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"That will do."
+
+With these words a person entered--a middle-aged man, in black. He
+walked straight across the kitchen to an inner door, opened it, inclined
+his head forward, and stood listening. There was something to listen to,
+for the noise above was just then louder than ever.
+
+"Hey!" he ejaculated to himself; then turning to Mr. Gale--"Have you
+often this sort of work?"
+
+Mr. Gale had been a churchwarden, and was indulgent to the clergy.
+
+"They're young, you know, sir--they're young," said he deprecatingly.
+
+"Young! They want caning. Bad boys--bad boys! And if you were a
+Dissenter, John Gale, instead of being a good Churchman, they'd do the
+like--they'd expose themselves; but I'll----"
+
+By way of finish to this sentence, he passed through the inner door,
+drew it after him, and mounted the stair. Again he listened a few
+minutes when he arrived at the upper room. Making entrance without
+warning, he stood before the curates.
+
+And they were silent; they were transfixed; and so was the invader.
+He--a personage short of stature, but straight of port, and bearing on
+broad shoulders a hawk's head, beak, and eye, the whole surmounted by a
+Rehoboam, or shovel hat, which he did not seem to think it necessary to
+lift or remove before the presence in which he then stood--_he_ folded
+his arms on his chest and surveyed his young friends, if friends they
+were, much at his leisure.
+
+"What!" he began, delivering his words in a voice no longer nasal, but
+deep--more than deep--a voice made purposely hollow and
+cavernous--"what! has the miracle of Pentecost been renewed? Have the
+cloven tongues come down again? Where are they? The sound filled the
+whole house just now. I heard the seventeen languages in full action:
+Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in
+Judea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, in
+Egypt and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, strangers of Rome, Jews
+and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians; every one of these must have had
+its representative in this room two minutes since."
+
+"I beg your pardon, Mr. Helstone," began Mr. Donne; "take a seat, pray,
+sir. Have a glass of wine?"
+
+His civilities received no answer. The falcon in the black coat
+proceeded,--
+
+"What do I talk about the gift of tongues? Gift, indeed! I mistook the
+chapter, and book, and Testament--gospel for law, Acts for Genesis, the
+city of Jerusalem for the plain of Shinar. It was no gift but the
+confusion of tongues which has gabbled me deaf as a post. _You_,
+apostles? What! you three? Certainly not; three presumptuous Babylonish
+masons--neither more nor less!"
+
+"I assure you, sir, we were only having a little chat together over a
+glass of wine after a friendly dinner--settling the Dissenters!"
+
+"Oh! settling the Dissenters, were you? Was Malone settling the
+Dissenters? It sounded to me much more like settling his co-apostles.
+You were quarrelling together, making almost as much noise--you three
+alone--as Moses Barraclough, the preaching tailor, and all his hearers
+are making in the Methodist chapel down yonder, where they are in the
+thick of a revival. I know whose fault it is.--It is yours, Malone."
+
+"Mine, sir?"
+
+"Yours, sir. Donne and Sweeting were quiet before you came, and would be
+quiet if you were gone. I wish, when you crossed the Channel, you had
+left your Irish habits behind you. Dublin student ways won't do here.
+The proceedings which might pass unnoticed in a wild bog and mountain
+district in Connaught will, in a decent English parish, bring disgrace
+on those who indulge in them, and, what is far worse, on the sacred
+institution of which they are merely the humble appendages."
+
+There was a certain dignity in the little elderly gentleman's manner of
+rebuking these youths, though it was not, perhaps, quite the dignity
+most appropriate to the occasion. Mr. Helstone, standing straight as a
+ramrod, looking keen as a kite, presented, despite his clerical hat,
+black coat, and gaiters, more the air of a veteran officer chiding his
+subalterns than of a venerable priest exhorting his sons in the faith.
+Gospel mildness, apostolic benignity, never seemed to have breathed
+their influence over that keen brown visage, but firmness had fixed the
+features, and sagacity had carved her own lines about them.
+
+"I met Supplehough," he continued, "plodding through the mud this wet
+night, going to preach at Milldean opposition shop. As I told you, I
+heard Barraclough bellowing in the midst of a conventicle like a
+possessed bull; and I find _you_, gentlemen, tarrying over your
+half-pint of muddy port wine, and scolding like angry old women. No
+wonder Supplehough should have dipped sixteen adult converts in a
+day--which he did a fortnight since; no wonder Barraclough, scamp and
+hypocrite as he is, should attract all the weaver-girls in their flowers
+and ribbons, to witness how much harder are his knuckles than the wooden
+brim of his tub; as little wonder that _you_, when you are left to
+yourselves, without your rectors--myself, and Hall, and Boultby--to back
+you, should too often perform the holy service of our church to bare
+walls, and read your bit of a dry discourse to the clerk, and the
+organist, and the beadle. But enough of the subject. I came to see
+Malone.--I have an errand unto thee, O captain!"
+
+"What is it?" inquired Malone discontentedly. "There can be no funeral
+to take at this time of day."
+
+"Have you any arms about you?"
+
+"Arms, sir?--yes, and legs." And he advanced the mighty members.
+
+"Bah! weapons I mean."
+
+"I have the pistols you gave me yourself. I never part with them. I lay
+them ready cocked on a chair by my bedside at night. I have my
+blackthorn."
+
+"Very good. Will you go to Hollow's Mill?"
+
+"What is stirring at Hollow's Mill?"
+
+"Nothing as yet, nor perhaps will be; but Moore is alone there. He has
+sent all the workmen he can trust to Stilbro'; there are only two women
+left about the place. It would be a nice opportunity for any of his
+well-wishers to pay him a visit, if they knew how straight the path was
+made before them."
+
+"I am none of his well-wishers, sir. I don't care for him."
+
+"Soh! Malone, you are afraid."
+
+"You know me better than that. If I really thought there was a chance
+of a row I would go: but Moore is a strange, shy man, whom I never
+pretend to understand; and for the sake of his sweet company only I
+would not stir a step."
+
+"But there _is_ a chance of a row; if a positive riot does not take
+place--of which, indeed, I see no signs--yet it is unlikely this night
+will pass quite tranquilly. You know Moore has resolved to have new
+machinery, and he expects two wagon-loads of frames and shears from
+Stilbro' this evening. Scott, the overlooker, and a few picked men are
+gone to fetch them."
+
+"They will bring them in safely and quietly enough, sir."
+
+"Moore says so, and affirms he wants nobody. Some one, however, he must
+have, if it were only to bear evidence in case anything should happen. I
+call him very careless. He sits in the counting-house with the shutters
+unclosed; he goes out here and there after dark, wanders right up the
+hollow, down Fieldhead Lane, among the plantations, just as if he were
+the darling of the neighbourhood, or--being, as he is, its
+detestation--bore a 'charmed life,' as they say in tale-books. He takes
+no warning from the fate of Pearson, nor from that of Armitage--shot,
+one in his own house and the other on the moor."
+
+"But he should take warning, sir, and use precautions too," interposed
+Mr. Sweeting; "and I think he would if he heard what I heard the other
+day."
+
+"What did you hear, Davy?"
+
+"You know Mike Hartley, sir?"
+
+"The Antinomian weaver? Yes."
+
+"When Mike has been drinking for a few weeks together, he generally
+winds up by a visit to Nunnely vicarage, to tell Mr. Hall a piece of his
+mind about his sermons, to denounce the horrible tendency of his
+doctrine of works, and warn him that he and all his hearers are sitting
+in outer darkness."
+
+"Well, that has nothing to do with Moore."
+
+"Besides being an Antinomian, he is a violent Jacobin and leveller,
+sir."
+
+"I know. When he is very drunk, his mind is always running on regicide.
+Mike is not unacquainted with history, and it is rich to hear him going
+over the list of tyrants of whom, as he says, 'the revenger of blood has
+obtained satisfaction.' The fellow exults strangely in murder done on
+crowned heads or on any head for political reasons. I have already
+heard it hinted that he seems to have a queer hankering after Moore. Is
+that what you allude to, Sweeting?"
+
+"You use the proper term, sir. Mr. Hall thinks Mike has no personal
+hatred of Moore. Mike says he even likes to talk to him and run after
+him, but he has a _hankering_ that Moore should be made an example of.
+He was extolling him to Mr. Hall the other day as the mill-owner with
+the most brains in Yorkshire, and for that reason he affirms Moore
+should be chosen as a sacrifice, an oblation of a sweet savour. Is Mike
+Hartley in his right mind, do you think, sir?" inquired Sweeting simply.
+
+"Can't tell, Davy. He may be crazed, or he may be only crafty, or
+perhaps a little of both."
+
+"He talks of seeing visions, sir."
+
+"Ay! He is a very Ezekiel or Daniel for visions. He came just when I was
+going to bed last Friday night to describe one that had been revealed to
+him in Nunnely Park that very afternoon."
+
+"Tell it, sir. What was it?" urged Sweeting.
+
+"Davy, thou hast an enormous organ of wonder in thy cranium. Malone, you
+see, has none. Neither murders nor visions interest him. See what a big
+vacant Saph he looks at this moment."
+
+"Saph! Who was Saph, sir?"
+
+"I thought you would not know. You may find it out. It is biblical. I
+know nothing more of him than his name and race; but from a boy upwards
+I have always attached a personality to Saph. Depend on it he was
+honest, heavy, and luckless. He met his end at Gob by the hand of
+Sibbechai."
+
+"But the vision, sir?"
+
+"Davy, thou shalt hear. Donne is biting his nails, and Malone yawning,
+so I will tell it but to thee. Mike is out of work, like many others,
+unfortunately. Mr. Grame, Sir Philip Nunnely's steward, gave him a job
+about the priory. According to his account, Mike was busy hedging rather
+late in the afternoon, but before dark, when he heard what he thought
+was a band at a distance--bugles, fifes, and the sound of a trumpet; it
+came from the forest, and he wondered that there should be music there.
+He looked up. All amongst the trees he saw moving objects, red, like
+poppies, or white, like may-blossom. The wood was full of them; they
+poured out and filled the park. He then perceived they were
+soldiers--thousands and tens of thousands; but they made no more noise
+than a swarm of midges on a summer evening. They formed in order, he
+affirmed, and marched, regiment after regiment, across the park. He
+followed them to Nunnely Common; the music still played soft and
+distant. On the common he watched them go through a number of
+evolutions. A man clothed in scarlet stood in the centre and directed
+them. They extended, he declared, over fifty acres. They were in sight
+half an hour; then they marched away quite silently. The whole time he
+heard neither voice nor tread--nothing but the faint music playing a
+solemn march."
+
+"Where did they go, sir?"
+
+"Towards Briarfield. Mike followed them. They seemed passing Fieldhead,
+when a column of smoke, such as might be vomited by a park of artillery,
+spread noiseless over the fields, the road, the common, and rolled, he
+said, blue and dim, to his very feet. As it cleared away he looked again
+for the soldiers, but they were vanished; he saw them no more. Mike,
+like a wise Daniel as he is, not only rehearsed the vision but gave the
+interpretation thereof. It signifies, he intimated, bloodshed and civil
+conflict."
+
+"Do you credit it, sir?" asked Sweeting.
+
+"Do you, Davy?--But come, Malone; why are you not off?"
+
+"I am rather surprised, sir, you did not stay with Moore yourself. You
+like this kind of thing."
+
+"So I should have done, had I not unfortunately happened to engage
+Boultby to sup with me on his way home from the Bible Society meeting at
+Nunnely. I promised to send you as my substitute; for which, by-the-bye,
+he did not thank me. He would much rather have had me than you, Peter.
+Should there be any real need of help I shall join you. The mill-bell
+will give warning. Meantime, go--unless (turning suddenly to Messrs.
+Sweeting and Donne)--unless Davy Sweeting or Joseph Donne prefers
+going.--What do you say, gentlemen? The commission is an honourable one,
+not without the seasoning of a little real peril; for the country is in
+a queer state, as you all know, and Moore and his mill and his machinery
+are held in sufficient odium. There are chivalric sentiments, there is
+high-beating courage, under those waistcoats of yours, I doubt not.
+Perhaps I am too partial to my favourite Peter. Little David shall be
+the champion, or spotless Joseph.--Malone, you are but a great
+floundering Saul after all, good only to lend your armour. Out with your
+firearms; fetch your shillelah. It is there--in the corner."
+
+With a significant grin Malone produced his pistols, offering one to
+each of his brethren. They were not readily seized on. With graceful
+modesty each gentleman retired a step from the presented weapon.
+
+"I never touch them. I never did touch anything of the kind," said Mr.
+Donne.
+
+"I am almost a stranger to Mr. Moore," murmured Sweeting.
+
+"If you never touched a pistol, try the feel of it now, great satrap of
+Egypt. As to the little minstrel, he probably prefers encountering the
+Philistines with no other weapon than his flute.--Get their hats, Peter.
+They'll both of 'em go."
+
+"No, sir; no, Mr. Helstone. My mother wouldn't like it," pleaded
+Sweeting.
+
+"And I make it a rule never to get mixed up in affairs of the kind,"
+observed Donne.
+
+Helstone smiled sardonically; Malone laughed a horse-laugh. He then
+replaced his arms, took his hat and cudgel, and saying that "he never
+felt more in tune for a shindy in his life, and that he wished a score
+of greasy cloth-dressers might beat up Moore's quarters that night," he
+made his exit, clearing the stairs at a stride or two, and making the
+house shake with the bang of the front-door behind him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE WAGONS.
+
+
+The evening was pitch dark: star and moon were quenched in gray
+rain-clouds--gray they would have been by day; by night they looked
+sable. Malone was not a man given to close observation of nature; her
+changes passed, for the most part, unnoticed by him. He could walk miles
+on the most varying April day and never see the beautiful dallying of
+earth and heaven--never mark when a sunbeam kissed the hill-tops, making
+them smile clear in green light, or when a shower wept over them, hiding
+their crests with the low-hanging, dishevelled tresses of a cloud. He
+did not, therefore, care to contrast the sky as it now appeared--a
+muffled, streaming vault, all black, save where, towards the east, the
+furnaces of Stilbro' ironworks threw a tremulous lurid shimmer on the
+horizon--with the same sky on an unclouded frosty night. He did not
+trouble himself to ask where the constellations and the planets were
+gone, or to regret the "black-blue" serenity of the air-ocean which
+those white islets stud, and which another ocean, of heavier and denser
+element, now rolled below and concealed. He just doggedly pursued his
+way, leaning a little forward as he walked, and wearing his hat on the
+back of his head, as his Irish manner was. "Tramp, tramp," he went along
+the causeway, where the road boasted the privilege of such an
+accommodation; "splash, splash," through the mire-filled cart ruts,
+where the flags were exchanged for soft mud. He looked but for certain
+landmarks--the spire of Briarfield Church; farther on, the lights of
+Redhouse. This was an inn; and when he reached it, the glow of a fire
+through a half-curtained window, a vision of glasses on a round table,
+and of revellers on an oaken settle, had nearly drawn aside the curate
+from his course. He thought longingly of a tumbler of whisky-and-water.
+In a strange place he would instantly have realized the dream; but the
+company assembled in that kitchen were Mr. Helstone's own parishioners;
+they all knew him. He sighed, and passed on.
+
+The highroad was now to be quitted, as the remaining distance to
+Hollow's Mill might be considerably reduced by a short cut across
+fields. These fields were level and monotonous. Malone took a direct
+course through them, jumping hedge and wall. He passed but one building
+here, and that seemed large and hall-like, though irregular. You could
+see a high gable, then a long front, then a low gable, then a thick,
+lofty stack of chimneys. There were some trees behind it. It was dark;
+not a candle shone from any window. It was absolutely still; the rain
+running from the eaves, and the rather wild but very low whistle of the
+wind round the chimneys and through the boughs were the sole sounds in
+its neighbourhood.
+
+This building passed, the fields, hitherto flat, declined in a rapid
+descent. Evidently a vale lay below, through which you could hear the
+water run. One light glimmered in the depth. For that beacon Malone
+steered.
+
+He came to a little white house--you could see it was white even through
+this dense darkness--and knocked at the door. A fresh-faced servant
+opened it. By the candle she held was revealed a narrow passage,
+terminating in a narrow stair. Two doors covered with crimson baize, a
+strip of crimson carpet down the steps, contrasted with light-coloured
+walls and white floor, made the little interior look clean and fresh.
+
+"Mr. Moore is at home, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes, sir, but he is not in."
+
+"Not in! Where is he then?"
+
+"At the mill--in the counting-house."
+
+Here one of the crimson doors opened.
+
+"Are the wagons come, Sarah?" asked a female voice, and a female head at
+the same time was apparent. It might not be the head of a
+goddess--indeed a screw of curl-paper on each side the temples quite
+forbade that supposition--but neither was it the head of a Gorgon; yet
+Malone seemed to take it in the latter light. Big as he was, he shrank
+bashfully back into the rain at the view thereof, and saying, "I'll go
+to him," hurried in seeming trepidation down a short lane, across an
+obscure yard, towards a huge black mill.
+
+The work-hours were over; the "hands" were gone. The machinery was at
+rest, the mill shut up. Malone walked round it. Somewhere in its great
+sooty flank he found another chink of light; he knocked at another
+door, using for the purpose the thick end of his shillelah, with which
+he beat a rousing tattoo. A key turned; the door unclosed.
+
+"Is it Joe Scott? What news of the wagons, Joe?"
+
+"No; it's myself. Mr. Helstone would send me."
+
+"Oh! Mr. Malone." The voice in uttering this name had the slightest
+possible cadence of disappointment. After a moment's pause it continued,
+politely but a little formally,--
+
+"I beg you will come in, Mr. Malone. I regret extremely Mr. Helstone
+should have thought it necessary to trouble you so far. There was no
+necessity--I told him so--and on such a night; but walk forwards."
+
+Through a dark apartment, of aspect undistinguishable, Malone followed
+the speaker into a light and bright room within--very light and bright
+indeed it seemed to eyes which, for the last hour, had been striving to
+penetrate the double darkness of night and fog; but except for its
+excellent fire, and for a lamp of elegant design and vivid lustre
+burning on a table, it was a very plain place. The boarded floor was
+carpetless; the three or four stiff-backed, green-painted chairs seemed
+once to have furnished the kitchen of some farm-house; a desk of strong,
+solid formation, the table aforesaid, and some framed sheets on the
+stone-coloured walls, bearing plans for building, for gardening, designs
+of machinery, etc., completed the furniture of the place.
+
+Plain as it was, it seemed to satisfy Malone, who, when he had removed
+and hung up his wet surtout and hat, drew one of the rheumatic-looking
+chairs to the hearth, and set his knees almost within the bars of the
+red grate.
+
+"Comfortable quarters you have here, Mr. Moore; and all snug to
+yourself."
+
+"Yes, but my sister would be glad to see you, if you would prefer
+stepping into the house."
+
+"Oh no! The ladies are best alone, I never was a lady's man. You don't
+mistake me for my friend Sweeting, do you, Mr. Moore?"
+
+"Sweeting! Which of them is that? The gentleman in the chocolate
+overcoat, or the little gentleman?"
+
+"The little one--he of Nunnely; the cavalier of the Misses Sykes, with
+the whole six of whom he is in love, ha! ha!"
+
+"Better be generally in love with all than specially with one, I should
+think, in that quarter."
+
+"But he is specially in love with one besides, for when I and Donne
+urged him to make a choice amongst the fair bevy, he named--which do you
+think?"
+
+With a queer, quiet smile Mr. Moore replied, "Dora, of course, or
+Harriet."
+
+"Ha! ha! you've an excellent guess. But what made you hit on those two?"
+
+"Because they are the tallest, the handsomest, and Dora, at least, is
+the stoutest; and as your friend Mr. Sweeting is but a little slight
+figure, I concluded that, according to a frequent rule in such cases, he
+preferred his contrast."
+
+"You are right; Dora it is. But he has no chance, has he, Moore?"
+
+"What has Mr. Sweeting besides his curacy?"
+
+This question seemed to tickle Malone amazingly. He laughed for full
+three minutes before he answered it.
+
+"What has Sweeting? Why, David has his harp, or flute, which comes to
+the same thing. He has a sort of pinchbeck watch; ditto, ring; ditto,
+eyeglass. That's what he has."
+
+"How would he propose to keep Miss Sykes in gowns only?"
+
+"Ha! ha! Excellent! I'll ask him that next time I see him. I'll roast
+him for his presumption. But no doubt he expects old Christopher Sykes
+would do something handsome. He is rich, is he not? They live in a large
+house."
+
+"Sykes carries on an extensive concern."
+
+"Therefore he must be wealthy, eh?"
+
+"Therefore he must have plenty to do with his wealth, and in these times
+would be about as likely to think of drawing money from the business to
+give dowries to his daughters as I should be to dream of pulling down
+the cottage there, and constructing on its ruins a house as large as
+Fieldhead."
+
+"Do you know what I heard, Moore, the other day?"
+
+"No. Perhaps that I _was_ about to effect some such change. Your
+Briarfield gossips are capable of saying that or sillier things."
+
+"That you were going to take Fieldhead on a lease (I thought it looked a
+dismal place, by-the-bye, to-night, as I passed it), and that it was
+your intention to settle a Miss Sykes there as mistress--to be married,
+in short, ha! ha! Now, which is it? Dora, I am sure. You said she was
+the handsomest."
+
+"I wonder how often it has been settled that I was to be married since I
+came to Briarfield. They have assigned me every marriageable single
+woman by turns in the district. Now it was the two Misses Wynns--first
+the dark, then the light one; now the red-haired Miss Armitage; then the
+mature Ann Pearson. At present you throw on my shoulders all the tribe
+of the Misses Sykes. On what grounds this gossip rests God knows. I
+visit nowhere; I seek female society about as assiduously as you do, Mr.
+Malone. If ever I go to Whinbury, it is only to give Sykes or Pearson a
+call in their counting-house, where our discussions run on other topics
+than matrimony, and our thoughts are occupied with other things than
+courtships, establishments, dowries. The cloth we can't sell, the hands
+we can't employ, the mills we can't run, the perverse course of events
+generally, which we cannot alter, fill our hearts, I take it, pretty
+well at present, to the tolerably complete exclusion of such figments as
+love-making, etc."
+
+"I go along with you completely, Moore. If there is one notion I hate
+more than another, it is that of marriage--I mean marriage in the vulgar
+weak sense, as a mere matter of sentiment--two beggarly fools agreeing
+to unite their indigence by some fantastic tie of feeling. Humbug! But
+an advantageous connection, such as can be formed in consonance with
+dignity of views and permanency of solid interests, is not so bad--eh?"
+
+"No," responded Moore, in an absent manner. The subject seemed to have
+no interest for him; he did not pursue it. After sitting for some time
+gazing at the fire with a preoccupied air, he suddenly turned his head.
+
+"Hark!" said he. "Did you hear wheels?"
+
+Rising, he went to the window, opened it, and listened. He soon closed
+it. "It is only the sound of the wind rising," he remarked, "and the
+rivulet a little swollen, rushing down the hollow. I expected those
+wagons at six; it is near nine now."
+
+"Seriously, do you suppose that the putting up of this new machinery
+will bring you into danger?" inquired Malone. "Helstone seems to think
+it will."
+
+"I only wish the machines--the frames--were safe here, and lodged within
+the walls of this mill. Once put up, I defy the frame-breakers. Let them
+only pay me a visit and take the consequences. My mill is my castle."
+
+"One despises such low scoundrels," observed Malone, in a profound vein
+of reflection. "I almost wish a party would call upon you to-night; but
+the road seemed extremely quiet as I came along. I saw nothing astir."
+
+"You came by the Redhouse?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"There would be nothing on that road. It is in the direction of Stilbro'
+the risk lies."
+
+"And you think there is risk?"
+
+"What these fellows have done to others they may do to me. There is only
+this difference: most of the manufacturers seem paralyzed when they are
+attacked. Sykes, for instance, when his dressing-shop was set on fire
+and burned to the ground, when the cloth was torn from his tenters and
+left in shreds in the field, took no steps to discover or punish the
+miscreants: he gave up as tamely as a rabbit under the jaws of a ferret.
+Now I, if I know myself, should stand by my trade, my mill, and my
+machinery."
+
+"Helstone says these three are your gods; that the 'Orders in Council'
+are with you another name for the seven deadly sins; that Castlereagh is
+your Antichrist, and the war-party his legions."
+
+"Yes; I abhor all these things because they ruin me. They stand in my
+way. I cannot get on. I cannot execute my plans because of them. I see
+myself baffled at every turn by their untoward effects."
+
+"But you are rich and thriving, Moore?"
+
+"I am very rich in cloth I cannot sell. You should step into my
+warehouse yonder, and observe how it is piled to the roof with pieces.
+Roakes and Pearson are in the same condition. America used to be their
+market, but the Orders in Council have cut that off."
+
+Malone did not seem prepared to carry on briskly a conversation of this
+sort. He began to knock the heels of his boots together, and to yawn.
+
+"And then to think," continued Mr. Moore who seemed too much taken up
+with the current of his own thoughts to note the symptoms of his guest's
+_ennui_--"to think that these ridiculous gossips of Whinbury and
+Briarfield will keep pestering one about being married! As if there was
+nothing to be done in life but to 'pay attention,' as they say, to some
+young lady, and then to go to church with her, and then to start on a
+bridal tour, and then to run through a round of visits, and then, I
+suppose, to be 'having a family.' Oh, que le diable emporte!" He broke
+off the aspiration into which he was launching with a certain energy,
+and added, more calmly, "I believe women talk and think only of these
+things, and they naturally fancy men's minds similarly occupied."
+
+"Of course--of course," assented Malone; "but never mind them." And he
+whistled, looked impatiently round, and seemed to feel a great want of
+something. This time Moore caught and, it appeared, comprehended his
+demonstrations.
+
+"Mr. Malone," said he, "you must require refreshment after your wet
+walk. I forget hospitality."
+
+"Not at all," rejoined Malone; but he looked as if the right nail was at
+last hit on the head, nevertheless. Moore rose and opened a cupboard.
+
+"It is my fancy," said he, "to have every convenience within myself, and
+not to be dependent on the feminity in the cottage yonder for every
+mouthful I eat or every drop I drink. I often spend the evening and sup
+here alone, and sleep with Joe Scott in the mill. Sometimes I am my own
+watchman. I require little sleep, and it pleases me on a fine night to
+wander for an hour or two with my musket about the hollow. Mr. Malone,
+can you cook a mutton chop?"
+
+"Try me. I've done it hundreds of times at college."
+
+"There's a dishful, then, and there's the gridiron. Turn them quickly.
+You know the secret of keeping the juices in?"
+
+"Never fear me; you shall see. Hand a knife and fork, please."
+
+The curate turned up his coat-cuffs, and applied himself to the cookery
+with vigour. The manufacturer placed on the table plates, a loaf of
+bread, a black bottle, and two tumblers. He then produced a small copper
+kettle--still from the same well-stored recess, his cupboard--filled it
+with water from a large stone jar in a corner, set it on the fire beside
+the hissing gridiron, got lemons, sugar, and a small china punch-bowl;
+but while he was brewing the punch a tap at the door called him away.
+
+"Is it you, Sarah?"
+
+"Yes, sir. Will you come to supper, please, sir?"
+
+"No; I shall not be in to-night; I shall sleep in the mill. So lock the
+doors, and tell your mistress to go to bed."
+
+He returned.
+
+"You have your household in proper order," observed Malone approvingly,
+as, with his fine face ruddy as the embers over which he bent, he
+assiduously turned the mutton chops. "You are not under petticoat
+government, like poor Sweeting, a man--whew! how the fat spits! it has
+burnt my hand--destined to be ruled by women. Now you and I,
+Moore--there's a fine brown one for you, and full of gravy--you and I
+will have no gray mares in our stables when we marry."
+
+"I don't know; I never think about it. If the gray mare is handsome and
+tractable, why not?"
+
+"The chops are done. Is the punch brewed?"
+
+"There is a glassful. Taste it. When Joe Scott and his minions return
+they shall have a share of this, provided they bring home the frames
+intact."
+
+Malone waxed very exultant over the supper. He laughed aloud at trifles,
+made bad jokes and applauded them himself, and, in short, grew
+unmeaningly noisy. His host, on the contrary, remained quiet as before.
+It is time, reader, that you should have some idea of the appearance of
+this same host. I must endeavour to sketch him as he sits at table.
+
+He is what you would probably call, at first view, rather a
+strange-looking man; for he is thin, dark, sallow, very foreign of
+aspect, with shadowy hair carelessly streaking his forehead. It appears
+that he spends but little time at his toilet, or he would arrange it
+with more taste. He seems unconscious that his features are fine, that
+they have a southern symmetry, clearness, regularity in their
+chiselling; nor does a spectator become aware of this advantage till he
+has examined him well, for an anxious countenance and a hollow, somewhat
+haggard, outline of face disturb the idea of beauty with one of care.
+His eyes are large, and grave, and gray; their expression is intent and
+meditative, rather searching than soft, rather thoughtful than genial.
+When he parts his lips in a smile, his physiognomy is agreeable--not
+that it is frank or cheerful even then, but you feel the influence of a
+certain sedate charm, suggestive, whether truly or delusively, of a
+considerate, perhaps a kind nature, of feelings that may wear well at
+home--patient, forbearing, possibly faithful feelings. He is still
+young--not more than thirty; his stature is tall, his figure slender.
+His manner of speaking displeases. He has an outlandish accent, which,
+notwithstanding a studied carelessness of pronunciation and diction,
+grates on a British, and especially on a Yorkshire, ear.
+
+Mr. Moore, indeed, was but half a Briton, and scarcely that. He came of
+a foreign ancestry by the mother's side, and was himself born and partly
+reared on a foreign soil. A hybrid in nature, it is probable he had a
+hybrid's feeling on many points--patriotism for one; it is likely that
+he was unapt to attach himself to parties, to sects, even to climes and
+customs; it is not impossible that he had a tendency to isolate his
+individual person from any community amidst which his lot might
+temporarily happen to be thrown, and that he felt it to be his best
+wisdom to push the interests of Robert Gérard Moore, to the exclusion of
+philanthropic consideration for general interests, with which he
+regarded the said Gérard Moore as in a great measure disconnected. Trade
+was Mr. Moore's hereditary calling: the Gérards of Antwerp had been
+merchants for two centuries back. Once they had been wealthy merchants;
+but the uncertainties, the involvements, of business had come upon them;
+disastrous speculations had loosened by degrees the foundations of their
+credit. The house had stood on a tottering base for a dozen years; and
+at last, in the shock of the French Revolution, it had rushed down a
+total ruin. In its fall was involved the English and Yorkshire firm of
+Moore, closely connected with the Antwerp house, and of which one of the
+partners, resident in Antwerp, Robert Moore, had married Hortense
+Gérard, with the prospect of his bride inheriting her father Constantine
+Gérard's share in the business. She inherited, as we have seen, but his
+share in the liabilities of the firm; and these liabilities, though duly
+set aside by a composition with creditors, some said her son Robert
+accepted, in his turn, as a legacy, and that he aspired one day to
+discharge them, and to rebuild the fallen house of Gérard and Moore on a
+scale at least equal to its former greatness. It was even supposed that
+he took by-past circumstances much to heart; and if a childhood passed
+at the side of a saturnine mother, under foreboding of coming evil, and
+a manhood drenched and blighted by the pitiless descent of the storm,
+could painfully impress the mind, _his_ probably was impressed in no
+golden characters.
+
+If, however, he had a great end of restoration in view, it was not in
+his power to employ great means for its attainment. He was obliged to be
+content with the day of small things. When he came to Yorkshire,
+he--whose ancestors had owned warehouses in this seaport, and factories
+in that inland town, had possessed their town-house and their
+country-seat--saw no way open to him but to rent a cloth-mill in an
+out-of-the-way nook of an out-of-the-way district; to take a cottage
+adjoining it for his residence, and to add to his possessions, as
+pasture for his horse, and space for his cloth-tenters, a few acres of
+the steep, rugged land that lined the hollow through which his
+mill-stream brawled. All this he held at a somewhat high rent (for these
+war times were hard, and everything was dear) of the trustees of the
+Fieldhead estate, then the property of a minor.
+
+At the time this history commences, Robert Moore had lived but two years
+in the district, during which period he had at least proved himself
+possessed of the quality of activity. The dingy cottage was converted
+into a neat, tasteful residence. Of part of the rough land he had made
+garden-ground, which he cultivated with singular, even with Flemish,
+exactness and care. As to the mill, which was an old structure, and
+fitted up with old machinery, now become inefficient and out of date, he
+had from the first evinced the strongest contempt for all its
+arrangements and appointments. His aim had been to effect a radical
+reform, which he had executed as fast as his very limited capital would
+allow; and the narrowness of that capital, and consequent check on his
+progress, was a restraint which galled his spirit sorely. Moore ever
+wanted to push on. "Forward" was the device stamped upon his soul; but
+poverty curbed him. Sometimes (figuratively) he foamed at the mouth when
+the reins were drawn very tight.
+
+In this state of feeling, it is not to be expected that he would
+deliberate much as to whether his advance was or was not prejudicial to
+others. Not being a native, nor for any length of time a resident of the
+neighbourhood, he did not sufficiently care when the new inventions
+threw the old workpeople out of employ. He never asked himself where
+those to whom he no longer paid weekly wages found daily bread; and in
+this negligence he only resembled thousands besides, on whom the
+starving poor of Yorkshire seemed to have a closer claim.
+
+The period of which I write was an overshadowed one in British history,
+and especially in the history of the northern provinces. War was then
+at its height. Europe was all involved therein. England, if not weary,
+was worn with long resistance--yes, and half her people were weary too,
+and cried out for peace on any terms. National honour was become a mere
+empty name, of no value in the eyes of many, because their sight was dim
+with famine; and for a morsel of meat they would have sold their
+birthright.
+
+The "Orders in Council," provoked by Napoleon's Milan and Berlin
+decrees, and forbidding neutral powers to trade with France, had, by
+offending America, cut off the principal market of the Yorkshire woollen
+trade, and brought it consequently to the verge of ruin. Minor foreign
+markets were glutted, and would receive no more. The Brazils, Portugal,
+Sicily, were all overstocked by nearly two years' consumption. At this
+crisis certain inventions in machinery were introduced into the staple
+manufactures of the north, which, greatly reducing the number of hands
+necessary to be employed, threw thousands out of work, and left them
+without legitimate means of sustaining life. A bad harvest supervened.
+Distress reached its climax. Endurance, overgoaded, stretched the hand
+of fraternity to sedition. The throes of a sort of moral earthquake were
+felt heaving under the hills of the northern counties. But, as is usual
+in such cases, nobody took much notice. When a food-riot broke out in a
+manufacturing town, when a gig-mill was burnt to the ground, or a
+manufacturer's house was attacked, the furniture thrown into the
+streets, and the family forced to flee for their lives, some local
+measures were or were not taken by the local magistracy. A ringleader
+was detected, or more frequently suffered to elude detection; newspaper
+paragraphs were written on the subject, and there the thing stopped. As
+to the sufferers, whose sole inheritance was labour, and who had lost
+that inheritance--who could not get work, and consequently could not get
+wages, and consequently could not get bread--they were left to suffer
+on, perhaps inevitably left. It would not do to stop the progress of
+invention, to damage science by discouraging its improvements; the war
+could not be terminated; efficient relief could not be raised. There was
+no help then; so the unemployed underwent their destiny--ate the bread
+and drank the waters of affliction.
+
+Misery generates hate. These sufferers hated the machines which they
+believed took their bread from them; they hated the buildings which
+contained those machines; they hated the manufacturers who owned those
+buildings. In the parish of Briarfield, with which we have at present to
+do, Hollow's Mill was the place held most abominable; Gérard Moore, in
+his double character of semi-foreigner and thorough-going progressist,
+the man most abominated. And it perhaps rather agreed with Moore's
+temperament than otherwise to be generally hated, especially when he
+believed the thing for which he was hated a right and an expedient
+thing; and it was with a sense of warlike excitement he, on this night,
+sat in his counting-house waiting the arrival of his frame-laden wagons.
+Malone's coming and company were, it may be, most unwelcome to him. He
+would have preferred sitting alone; for he liked a silent, sombre,
+unsafe solitude. His watchman's musket would have been company enough
+for him; the full-flowing beck in the den would have delivered
+continuously the discourse most genial to his ear.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With the queerest look in the world had the manufacturer for some ten
+minutes been watching the Irish curate, as the latter made free with the
+punch, when suddenly that steady gray eye changed, as if another vision
+came between it and Malone. Moore raised his hand.
+
+"Chut!" he said in his French fashion, as Malone made a noise with his
+glass. He listened a moment, then rose, put his hat on, and went out at
+the counting-house door.
+
+The night was still, dark, and stagnant: the water yet rushed on full
+and fast; its flow almost seemed a flood in the utter silence. Moore's
+ear, however, caught another sound, very distant but yet dissimilar,
+broken and rugged--in short, a sound of heavy wheels crunching a stony
+road. He returned to the counting-house and lit a lantern, with which he
+walked down the mill-yard, and proceeded to open the gates. The big
+wagons were coming on; the dray-horses' huge hoofs were heard splashing
+in the mud and water. Moore hailed them.
+
+"Hey, Joe Scott! Is all right?"
+
+Probably Joe Scott was yet at too great a distance to hear the inquiry.
+He did not answer it.
+
+"Is all right, I say?" again asked Moore, when the elephant-like
+leader's nose almost touched his.
+
+Some one jumped out from the foremost wagon into the road; a voice cried
+aloud, "Ay, ay, divil; all's raight! We've smashed 'em."
+
+And there was a run. The wagons stood still; they were now deserted.
+
+"Joe Scott!" No Joe Scott answered. "Murgatroyd! Pighills! Sykes!" No
+reply. Mr. Moore lifted his lantern and looked into the vehicles. There
+was neither man nor machinery; they were empty and abandoned.
+
+Now Mr. Moore loved his machinery. He had risked the last of his capital
+on the purchase of these frames and shears which to-night had been
+expected. Speculations most important to his interests depended on the
+results to be wrought by them. Where were they?
+
+The words "we've smashed 'em" rang in his ears. How did the catastrophe
+affect him? By the light of the lantern he held were his features
+visible, relaxing to a singular smile--the smile the man of determined
+spirit wears when he reaches a juncture in his life where this
+determined spirit is to feel a demand on its strength, when the strain
+is to be made, and the faculty must bear or break. Yet he remained
+silent, and even motionless; for at the instant he neither knew what to
+say nor what to do. He placed the lantern on the ground, and stood with
+his arms folded, gazing down and reflecting.
+
+An impatient trampling of one of the horses made him presently look up.
+His eye in the moment caught the gleam of something white attached to a
+part of the harness. Examined by the light of the lantern this proved to
+be a folded paper--a billet. It bore no address without; within was the
+superscription:--
+
+"To the Divil of Hollow's Miln."
+
+We will not copy the rest of the orthography, which was very peculiar,
+but translate it into legible English. It ran thus:--
+
+"Your hellish machinery is shivered to smash on Stilbro' Moor, and your
+men are lying bound hand and foot in a ditch by the roadside. Take this
+as a warning from men that are starving, and have starving wives and
+children to go home to when they have done this deed. If you get new
+machines, or if you otherwise go on as you have done, you shall hear
+from us again. Beware!"
+
+"Hear from you again? Yes, I'll hear from you again, and you shall hear
+from me. I'll speak to you directly. On Stilbro' Moor you shall hear
+from me in a moment."
+
+Having led the wagons within the gates, he hastened towards the cottage.
+Opening the door, he spoke a few words quickly but quietly to two
+females who ran to meet him in the passage. He calmed the seeming alarm
+of one by a brief palliative account of what had taken place; to the
+other he said, "Go into the mill, Sarah--there is the key--and ring the
+mill-bell as loud as you can. Afterwards you will get another lantern
+and help me to light up the front."
+
+Returning to his horses, he unharnessed, fed, and stabled them with
+equal speed and care, pausing occasionally, while so occupied, as if to
+listen for the mill-bell. It clanged out presently, with irregular but
+loud and alarming din. The hurried, agitated peal seemed more urgent
+than if the summons had been steadily given by a practised hand. On that
+still night, at that unusual hour, it was heard a long way round. The
+guests in the kitchen of the Redhouse were startled by the clamour, and
+declaring that "there must be summat more nor common to do at Hollow's
+Miln," they called for lanterns, and hurried to the spot in a body. And
+scarcely had they thronged into the yard with their gleaming lights,
+when the tramp of horses was heard, and a little man in a shovel hat,
+sitting erect on the back of a shaggy pony, "rode lightly in," followed
+by an aide-de-camp mounted on a larger steed.
+
+Mr. Moore, meantime, after stabling his dray-horses, had saddled his
+hackney, and with the aid of Sarah, the servant, lit up his mill, whose
+wide and long front now glared one great illumination, throwing a
+sufficient light on the yard to obviate all fear of confusion arising
+from obscurity. Already a deep hum of voices became audible. Mr. Malone
+had at length issued from the counting-house, previously taking the
+precaution to dip his head and face in the stone water-jug; and this
+precaution, together with the sudden alarm, had nearly restored to him
+the possession of those senses which the punch had partially scattered.
+He stood with his hat on the back of his head, and his shillelah grasped
+in his dexter fist, answering much at random the questions of the
+newly-arrived party from the Redhouse. Mr. Moore now appeared, and was
+immediately confronted by the shovel hat and the shaggy pony.
+
+"Well, Moore, what is your business with us? I thought you would want us
+to-night--me and the hetman here (patting his pony's neck), and Tom and
+his charger. When I heard your mill-bell I could sit still no longer, so
+I left Boultby to finish his supper alone. But where is the enemy? I do
+not see a mask or a smutted face present; and there is not a pane of
+glass broken in your windows. Have you had an attack, or do you expect
+one?"
+
+"Oh, not at all! I have neither had one nor expect one," answered Moore
+coolly. "I only ordered the bell to be rung because I want two or three
+neighbours to stay here in the Hollow while I and a couple or so more go
+over to Stilbro' Moor."
+
+"To Stilbro' Moor! What to do? To meet the wagons?"
+
+"The wagons are come home an hour ago."
+
+"Then all's right. What more would you have?"
+
+"They came home empty; and Joe Scott and company are left on the moor,
+and so are the frames. Read that scrawl."
+
+Mr. Helstone received and perused the document of which the contents
+have before been given.
+
+"Hum! They've only served you as they serve others. But, however, the
+poor fellows in the ditch will be expecting help with some impatience.
+This is a wet night for such a berth. I and Tom will go with you. Malone
+may stay behind and take care of the mill. What is the matter with him?
+His eyes seem starting out of his head."
+
+"He has been eating a mutton chop."
+
+"Indeed!--Peter Augustus, be on your guard. Eat no more mutton chops
+to-night. You are left here in command of these premises--an honourable
+post!"
+
+"Is anybody to stay with me?"
+
+"As many of the present assemblage as choose.--My lads, how many of you
+will remain here, and how many will go a little way with me and Mr.
+Moore on the Stilbro' road, to meet some men who have been waylaid and
+assaulted by frame-breakers?"
+
+The small number of three volunteered to go; the rest preferred staying
+behind. As Mr. Moore mounted his horse, the rector asked him in a low
+voice whether he had locked up the mutton chops, so that Peter Augustus
+could not get at them? The manufacturer nodded an affirmative, and the
+rescue-party set out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+MR. YORKE.
+
+
+Cheerfulness, it would appear, is a matter which depends fully as much
+on the state of things within as on the state of things without and
+around us. I make this trite remark, because I happen to know that
+Messrs. Helstone and Moore trotted forth from the mill-yard gates, at
+the head of their very small company, in the best possible spirits. When
+a ray from a lantern (the three pedestrians of the party carried each
+one) fell on Mr. Moore's face, you could see an unusual, because a
+lively, spark dancing in his eyes, and a new-found vivacity mantling on
+his dark physiognomy; and when the rector's visage was illuminated, his
+hard features were revealed all agrin and ashine with glee. Yet a
+drizzling night, a somewhat perilous expedition, you would think were
+not circumstances calculated to enliven those exposed to the wet and
+engaged in the adventure. If any member or members of the crew who had
+been at work on Stilbro' Moor had caught a view of this party, they
+would have had great pleasure in shooting either of the leaders from
+behind a wall: and the leaders knew this; and the fact is, being both
+men of steely nerves and steady-beating hearts, were elate with the
+knowledge.
+
+I am aware, reader, and you need not remind me, that it is a dreadful
+thing for a parson to be warlike; I am aware that he should be a man of
+peace. I have some faint outline of an idea of what a clergyman's
+mission is amongst mankind, and I remember distinctly whose servant he
+is, whose message he delivers, whose example he should follow; yet, with
+all this, if you are a parson-hater, you need not expect me to go along
+with you every step of your dismal, downward-tending, unchristian road;
+you need not expect me to join in your deep anathemas, at once so narrow
+and so sweeping, in your poisonous rancour, so intense and so absurd,
+against "the cloth;" to lift up my eyes and hands with a Supplehough,
+or to inflate my lungs with a Barraclough, in horror and denunciation of
+the diabolical rector of Briarfield.
+
+He was not diabolical at all. The evil simply was--he had missed his
+vocation. He should have been a soldier, and circumstances had made him
+a priest. For the rest, he was a conscientious, hard-headed,
+hard-handed, brave, stern, implacable, faithful little man; a man almost
+without sympathy, ungentle, prejudiced, and rigid, but a man true to
+principle, honourable, sagacious, and sincere. It seems to me, reader,
+that you cannot always cut out men to fit their profession, and that you
+ought not to curse them because their profession sometimes hangs on them
+ungracefully. Nor will I curse Helstone, clerical Cossack as he was. Yet
+he _was_ cursed, and by many of his own parishioners, as by others he
+was adored--which is the frequent fate of men who show partiality in
+friendship and bitterness in enmity, who are equally attached to
+principles and adherent to prejudices.
+
+Helstone and Moore being both in excellent spirits, and united for the
+present in one cause, you would expect that, as they rode side by side,
+they would converse amicably. Oh no! These two men, of hard, bilious
+natures both, rarely came into contact but they chafed each other's
+moods. Their frequent bone of contention was the war. Helstone was a
+high Tory (there were Tories in those days), and Moore was a bitter
+Whig--a Whig, at least, as far as opposition to the war-party was
+concerned, that being the question which affected his own interest; and
+only on that question did he profess any British politics at all. He
+liked to infuriate Helstone by declaring his belief in the invincibility
+of Bonaparte, by taunting England and Europe with the impotence of their
+efforts to withstand him, and by coolly advancing the opinion that it
+was as well to yield to him soon as late, since he must in the end crush
+every antagonist, and reign supreme.
+
+Helstone could not bear these sentiments. It was only on the
+consideration of Moore being a sort of outcast and alien, and having but
+half measure of British blood to temper the foreign gall which corroded
+his veins, that he brought himself to listen to them without indulging
+the wish he felt to cane the speaker. Another thing, too, somewhat
+allayed his disgust--namely, a fellow-feeling for the dogged tone with
+which these opinions were asserted, and a respect for the consistency
+of Moore's crabbed contumacy.
+
+As the party turned into the Stilbro' road, they met what little wind
+there was; the rain dashed in their faces. Moore had been fretting his
+companion previously, and now, braced up by the raw breeze, and perhaps
+irritated by the sharp drizzle, he began to goad him.
+
+"Does your Peninsular news please you still?" he asked.
+
+"What do you mean?" was the surly demand of the rector.
+
+"I mean, have you still faith in that Baal of a Lord Wellington?"
+
+"And what do you mean now?"
+
+"Do you still believe that this wooden-faced and pebble-hearted idol of
+England has power to send fire down from heaven to consume the French
+holocaust you want to offer up?"
+
+"I believe Wellington will flog Bonaparte's marshals into the sea the
+day it pleases him to lift his arm."
+
+"But, my dear sir, you can't be serious in what you say. Bonaparte's
+marshals are great men, who act under the guidance of an omnipotent
+master-spirit. Your Wellington is the most humdrum of commonplace
+martinets, whose slow, mechanical movements are further cramped by an
+ignorant home government."
+
+"Wellington is the soul of England. Wellington is the right champion of
+a good cause, the fit representative of a powerful, a resolute, a
+sensible, and an honest nation."
+
+"Your good cause, as far as I understand it, is simply the restoration
+of that filthy, feeble Ferdinand to a throne which he disgraced. Your
+fit representative of an honest people is a dull-witted drover, acting
+for a duller-witted farmer; and against these are arrayed victorious
+supremacy and invincible genius."
+
+"Against legitimacy is arrayed usurpation; against modest,
+single-minded, righteous, and brave resistance to encroachment is
+arrayed boastful, double-tongued, selfish, and treacherous ambition to
+possess. God defend the right!"
+
+"God often defends the powerful."
+
+"What! I suppose the handful of Israelites standing dryshod on the
+Asiatic side of the Red Sea was more powerful than the host of the
+Egyptians drawn up on the African side? Were they more numerous? Were
+they better appointed? Were they more mighty, in a word--eh? Don't
+speak, or you'll tell a lie, Moore; you know you will. They were a poor,
+overwrought band of bondsmen. Tyrants had oppressed them through four
+hundred years; a feeble mixture of women and children diluted their thin
+ranks; their masters, who roared to follow them through the divided
+flood, were a set of pampered Ethiops, about as strong and brutal as the
+lions of Libya. They were armed, horsed, and charioted; the poor Hebrew
+wanderers were afoot. Few of them, it is likely, had better weapons than
+their shepherds' crooks or their masons' building-tools; their meek and
+mighty leader himself had only his rod. But bethink you, Robert Moore,
+right was with them; the God of battles was on their side. Crime and the
+lost archangel generalled the ranks of Pharaoh, and which triumphed? We
+know that well. 'The Lord saved Israel that day out of the hand of the
+Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the sea-shore'--yea,
+'the depths covered them, they sank to the bottom as a stone.' The right
+hand of the Lord became glorious in power; the right hand of the Lord
+dashed in pieces the enemy!"
+
+"You are all right; only you forget the true parallel. France is Israel,
+and Napoleon is Moses. Europe, with her old overgorged empires and
+rotten dynasties, is corrupt Egypt; gallant France is the Twelve Tribes,
+and her fresh and vigorous Usurper the Shepherd of Horeb."
+
+"I scorn to answer you."
+
+Moore accordingly answered himself--at least, he subjoined to what he
+had just said an additional observation in a lower voice.
+
+"Oh, in Italy he was as great as any Moses! He was the right thing
+there, fit to head and organize measures for the regeneration of
+nations. It puzzles me to this day how the conqueror of Lodi should have
+condescended to become an emperor, a vulgar, a stupid humbug; and still
+more how a people who had once called themselves republicans should have
+sunk again to the grade of mere slaves. I despise France! If England had
+gone as far on the march of civilization as France did, she would hardly
+have retreated so shamelessly."
+
+"You don't mean to say that besotted imperial France is any worse than
+bloody republican France?" demanded Helstone fiercely.
+
+"I mean to say nothing, but I can think what I please, you know, Mr.
+Helstone, both about France and England; and about revolutions, and
+regicides, and restorations in general; and about the divine right of
+kings, which you often stickle for in your sermons, and the duty of
+non-resistance, and the sanity of war, and----"
+
+Mr. Moore's sentence was here cut short by the rapid rolling up of a
+gig, and its sudden stoppage in the middle of the road. Both he and the
+rector had been too much occupied with their discourse to notice its
+approach till it was close upon them.
+
+"Nah, maister; did th' wagons hit home?" demanded a voice from the
+vehicle.
+
+"Can that be Joe Scott?"
+
+"Ay, ay!" returned another voice; for the gig contained two persons, as
+was seen by the glimmer of its lamp. The men with the lanterns had now
+fallen into the rear, or rather, the equestrians of the rescue-party had
+outridden the pedestrians. "Ay, Mr. Moore, it's Joe Scott. I'm bringing
+him back to you in a bonny pickle. I fand him on the top of the moor
+yonder, him and three others. What will you give me for restoring him to
+you?"
+
+"Why, my thanks, I believe; for I could better have afforded to lose a
+better man. That is you, I suppose, Mr. Yorke, by your voice?"
+
+"Ay, lad, it's me. I was coming home from Stilbro' market, and just as I
+got to the middle of the moor, and was whipping on as swift as the wind
+(for these, they say, are not safe times, thanks to a bad government!),
+I heard a groan. I pulled up. Some would have whipt on faster; but I've
+naught to fear that I know of. I don't believe there's a lad in these
+parts would harm me--at least, I'd give them as good as I got if they
+offered to do it. I said, 'Is there aught wrong anywhere?' ''Deed is
+there,' somebody says, speaking out of the ground, like. 'What's to do?
+Be sharp and tell me,' I ordered. 'Nobbut four on us ligging in a
+ditch,' says Joe, as quiet as could be. I telled 'em more shame to 'em,
+and bid them get up and move on, or I'd lend them a lick of the
+gig-whip; for my notion was they were all fresh. 'We'd ha' done that an
+hour sin', but we're teed wi' a bit o' band,' says Joe. So in a while I
+got down and loosed 'em wi' my penknife; and Scott would ride wi' me, to
+tell me all how it happened; and t' others are coming on as fast as
+their feet will bring them."
+
+"Well, I am greatly obliged to you, Mr. Yorke."
+
+"Are you, my lad? You know you're not. However, here are the rest
+approaching. And here, by the Lord, is another set with lights in their
+pitchers, like the army of Gideon; and as we've th' parson wi',
+us--good-evening, Mr. Helstone--we'se do."
+
+Mr. Helstone returned the salutation of the individual in the gig very
+stiffly indeed. That individual proceeded,--
+
+"We're eleven strong men, and there's both horses and chariots amang us.
+If we could only fall in wi' some of these starved ragamuffins of
+frame-breakers we could win a grand victory. We could iv'ry one be a
+Wellington--that would please ye, Mr. Helstone--and sich paragraphs as
+we could contrive for t' papers! Briarfield suld be famous. But we'se
+hev a column and a half i' th' _Stilbro' Courier_ ower this job, as it
+is, I dare say. I'se expect no less."
+
+"And I'll promise you no less, Mr. Yorke, for I'll write the article
+myself," returned the rector.
+
+"To be sure--sartainly! And mind ye recommend weel that them 'at brake
+t' bits o' frames, and teed Joe Scott's legs wi' band, suld be hung
+without benefit o' clergy. It's a hanging matter, or suld be. No doubt
+o' that."
+
+"If I judged them I'd give them short shrift!" cried Moore. "But I mean
+to let them quite alone this bout, to give them rope enough, certain
+that in the end they will hang themselves."
+
+"Let them alone, will ye, Moore? Do you promise that?"
+
+"Promise! No. All I mean to say is, I shall give myself no particular
+trouble to catch them; but if one falls in my way----"
+
+"You'll snap him up, of course. Only you would rather they would do
+something worse than merely stop a wagon before you reckon with them.
+Well, we'll say no more on the subject at present. Here we are at my
+door, gentlemen, and I hope you and the men will step in. You will none
+of you be the worse of a little refreshment."
+
+Moore and Helstone opposed this proposition as unnecessary. It was,
+however, pressed on them so courteously, and the night, besides, was so
+inclement, and the gleam from the muslin-curtained windows of the house
+before which they had halted looked so inviting, that at length they
+yielded. Mr. Yorke, after having alighted from his gig, which he left in
+charge of a man who issued from an outbuilding on his arrival, led the
+way in.
+
+It will have been remarked that Mr. Yorke varied a little in his
+phraseology. Now he spoke broad Yorkshire, and anon he expressed himself
+in very pure English. His manner seemed liable to equal alternations. He
+could be polite and affable, and he could be blunt and rough. His
+station then you could not easily determine by his speech and demeanour.
+Perhaps the appearance of his residence may decide it.
+
+The men he recommended to take the kitchen way, saying that he would
+"see them served wi' summat to taste presently." The gentlemen were
+ushered in at the front entrance. They found themselves in a matted
+hall, lined almost to the ceiling with pictures. Through this they were
+conducted to a large parlour, with a magnificent fire in the grate--the
+most cheerful of rooms it appeared as a whole, and when you came to
+examine details, the enlivening effect was not diminished. There was no
+splendour, but there was taste everywhere, unusual taste--the taste, you
+would have said, of a travelled man, a scholar, and a gentleman. A
+series of Italian views decked the walls. Each of these was a specimen
+of true art. A connoisseur had selected them; they were genuine and
+valuable. Even by candle-light the bright clear skies, the soft
+distances, with blue air quivering between the eye and the hills, the
+fresh tints, and well-massed lights and shadows, charmed the view. The
+subjects were all pastoral, the scenes were all sunny. There was a
+guitar and some music on a sofa; there were cameos, beautiful
+miniatures; a set of Grecian-looking vases on the mantelpiece; there
+were books well arranged in two elegant bookcases.
+
+Mr. Yorke bade his guests be seated. He then rang for wine. To the
+servant who brought it he gave hospitable orders for the refreshment of
+the men in the kitchen. The rector remained standing; he seemed not to
+like his quarters; he would not touch the wine his host offered him.
+
+"E'en as you will," remarked Mr. Yorke. "I reckon you're thinking of
+Eastern customs, Mr. Helstone, and you'll not eat nor drink under my
+roof, feared we suld be forced to be friends; but I am not so particular
+or superstitious. You might sup the contents of that decanter, and you
+might give me a bottle of the best in your own cellar, and I'd hold
+myself free to oppose you at every turn still--in every vestry-meeting
+and justice-meeting where we encountered one another."
+
+"It is just what I should expect of you, Mr. Yorke."
+
+"Does it agree wi' ye now, Mr. Helstone, to be riding out after rioters,
+of a wet night, at your age?"
+
+"It always agrees with me to be doing my duty; and in this case my duty
+is a thorough pleasure. To hunt down vermin is a noble occupation, fit
+for an archbishop."
+
+"Fit for ye, at ony rate. But where's t' curate? He's happen gone to
+visit some poor body in a sick gird, or he's happen hunting down vermin
+in another direction."
+
+"He is doing garrison-duty at Hollow's Mill."
+
+"You left him a sup o' wine, I hope, Bob" (turning to Mr. Moore), "to
+keep his courage up?"
+
+He did not pause for an answer, but continued, quickly, still addressing
+Moore, who had thrown himself into an old-fashioned chair by the
+fireside--"Move it, Robert! Get up, my lad! That place is mine. Take the
+sofa, or three other chairs, if you will, but not this. It belangs to
+me, and nob'dy else."
+
+"Why are you so particular to that chair, Mr. Yorke?" asked Moore,
+lazily vacating the place in obedience to orders.
+
+"My father war afore me, and that's all t' answer I sall gie thee; and
+it's as good a reason as Mr. Helstone can give for the main feck o' his
+notions."
+
+"Moore, are you ready to go?" inquired the rector.
+
+"Nay; Robert's not ready, or rather, I'm not ready to part wi' him. He's
+an ill lad, and wants correcting."
+
+"Why, sir? What have I done?"
+
+"Made thyself enemies on every hand."
+
+"What do I care for that? What difference does it make to me whether
+your Yorkshire louts hate me or like me?"
+
+"Ay, there it is. The lad is a mak' of an alien amang us. His father
+would never have talked i' that way.--Go back to Antwerp, where you were
+born and bred, mauvaise tête!"
+
+"Mauvaise tête vous-même; je ne fais que mon devoir; quant à vos
+lourdauds de paysans, je m'en moque!"
+
+"En ravanche, mon garçon, nos lourdauds de paysans se moqueront de toi;
+sois en certain," replied Yorke, speaking with nearly as pure a French
+accent as Gérard Moore.
+
+"C'est bon! c'est bon! Et puisque cela m'est égal, que mes amis ne s'en
+inquiètent pas."
+
+"Tes amis! Où sont-ils, tes amis?"
+
+"Je fais écho, où sont-ils? et je suis fort aise que l'écho seul y
+répond. Au diable les amis! Je me souviens encore du moment où mon père
+et mes oncles Gérard appellèrent autour d'eux leurs amis, et Dieu sait
+si les amis se sont empressés d'accourir à leur secours! Tenez, M.
+Yorke, ce mot, ami, m'irrite trop; ne m'en parlez plus."
+
+"Comme tu voudras."
+
+And here Mr. Yorke held his peace; and while he sits leaning back in his
+three-cornered carved oak chair, I will snatch my opportunity to sketch
+the portrait of this French-speaking Yorkshire gentleman.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+MR. YORKE (_continued_).
+
+
+A Yorkshire gentleman he was, _par excellence_, in every point; about
+fifty-five years old, but looking at first sight still older, for his
+hair was silver white. His forehead was broad, not high; his face fresh
+and hale; the harshness of the north was seen in his features, as it was
+heard in his voice; every trait was thoroughly English--not a Norman
+line anywhere; it was an inelegant, unclassic, unaristocratic mould of
+visage. Fine people would perhaps have called it vulgar; sensible people
+would have termed it characteristic; shrewd people would have delighted
+in it for the pith, sagacity, intelligence, the rude yet real
+originality marked in every lineament, latent in every furrow. But it
+was an indocile, a scornful, and a sarcastic face--the face of a man
+difficult to lead, and impossible to drive. His stature was rather tall,
+and he was well made and wiry, and had a stately integrity of port;
+there was not a suspicion of the clown about him anywhere.
+
+I did not find it easy to sketch Mr. Yorke's person, but it is more
+difficult to indicate his mind. If you expect to be treated to a
+Perfection, reader, or even to a benevolent, philanthropic old gentleman
+in him, you are mistaken. He has spoken with some sense and with some
+good feeling to Mr. Moore, but you are not thence to conclude that he
+always spoke and thought justly and kindly.
+
+Mr. Yorke, in the first place, was without the organ of veneration--a
+great want, and which throws a man wrong on every point where veneration
+is required. Secondly, he was without the organ of comparison--a
+deficiency which strips a man of sympathy; and thirdly, he had too
+little of the organs of benevolence and ideality, which took the glory
+and softness from his nature, and for him diminished those divine
+qualities throughout the universe.
+
+The want of veneration made him intolerant to those above him--kings and
+nobles and priests, dynasties and parliaments and establishments, with
+all their doings, most of their enactments, their forms, their rights,
+their claims, were to him an abomination, all rubbish; he found no use
+or pleasure in them, and believed it would be clear gain, and no damage
+to the world, if its high places were razed, and their occupants crushed
+in the fall. The want of veneration, too, made him dead at heart to the
+electric delight of admiring what is admirable; it dried up a thousand
+pure sources of enjoyment; it withered a thousand vivid pleasures. He
+was not irreligious, though a member of no sect; but his religion could
+not be that of one who knows how to venerate. He believed in God and
+heaven; but his God and heaven were those of a man in whom awe,
+imagination, and tenderness lack.
+
+The weakness of his powers of comparison made him inconsistent; while he
+professed some excellent general doctrines of mutual toleration and
+forbearance, he cherished towards certain classes a bigoted antipathy.
+He spoke of "parsons" and all who belonged to parsons, of "lords" and
+the appendages of lords, with a harshness, sometimes an insolence, as
+unjust as it was insufferable. He could not place himself in the
+position of those he vituperated; he could not compare their errors with
+their temptations, their defects with their disadvantages; he could not
+realize the effect of such and such circumstances on himself similarly
+situated, and he would often express the most ferocious and tyrannical
+wishes regarding those who had acted, as he thought, ferociously and
+tyrannically. To judge by his threats, he would have employed arbitrary,
+even cruel, means to advance the cause of freedom and equality.
+Equality! yes, Mr. Yorke talked about equality, but at heart he was a
+proud man--very friendly to his workpeople, very good to all who were
+beneath him, and submitted quietly to be beneath him, but haughty as
+Beelzebub to whomsoever the world deemed (for he deemed no man) his
+superior. Revolt was in his blood: he could not bear control; his
+father, his grandfather before him, could not bear it, and his children
+after him never could.
+
+The want of general benevolence made him very impatient of imbecility,
+and of all faults which grated on his strong, shrewd nature; it left no
+check to his cutting sarcasm. As he was not merciful, he would sometimes
+wound and wound again, without noticing how much he hurt, or caring how
+deep he thrust.
+
+As to the paucity of ideality in his mind, that can scarcely be called a
+fault: a fine ear for music, a correct eye for colour and form, left him
+the quality of taste; and who cares for imagination? Who does not think
+it a rather dangerous, senseless attribute, akin to weakness, perhaps
+partaking of frenzy--a disease rather than a gift of the mind?
+
+Probably all think it so but those who possess, or fancy they possess,
+it. To hear them speak, you would believe that their hearts would be
+cold if that elixir did not flow about them, that their eyes would be
+dim if that flame did not refine their vision, that they would be lonely
+if this strange companion abandoned them. You would suppose that it
+imparted some glad hope to spring, some fine charm to summer, some
+tranquil joy to autumn, some consolation to winter, which you do not
+feel. An illusion, of course; but the fanatics cling to their dream, and
+would not give it for gold.
+
+As Mr. Yorke did not possess poetic imagination himself, he considered
+it a most superfluous quality in others. Painters and musicians he could
+tolerate, and even encourage, because he could relish the results of
+their art; he could see the charm of a fine picture, and feel the
+pleasure of good music; but a quiet poet--whatever force struggled,
+whatever fire glowed, in his breast--if he could not have played the man
+in the counting-house, of the tradesman in the Piece Hall, might have
+lived despised, and died scorned, under the eyes of Hiram Yorke.
+
+And as there are many Hiram Yorkes in the world, it is well that the
+true poet, quiet externally though he may be, has often a truculent
+spirit under his placidity, and is full of shrewdness in his meekness,
+and can measure the whole stature of those who look down on him, and
+correctly ascertain the weight and value of the pursuits they disdain
+him for not having followed. It is happy that he can have his own bliss,
+his own society with his great friend and goddess Nature, quite
+independent of those who find little pleasure in him, and in whom he
+finds no pleasure at all. It is just that while the world and
+circumstances often turn a dark, cold side to him--and properly, too,
+because he first turns a dark, cold, careless side to them--he should be
+able to maintain a festal brightness and cherishing glow in his bosom,
+which makes all bright and genial for him; while strangers, perhaps,
+deem his existence a Polar winter never gladdened by a sun. The true
+poet is not one whit to be pitied, and he is apt to laugh in his sleeve
+when any misguided sympathizer whines over his wrongs. Even when
+utilitarians sit in judgment on him, and pronounce him and his art
+useless, he hears the sentence with such a hard derision, such a broad,
+deep, comprehensive, and merciless contempt of the unhappy Pharisees who
+pronounce it, that he is rather to be chidden than condoled with. These,
+however, are not Mr. Yorke's reflections, and it is with Mr. Yorke we
+have at present to do.
+
+I have told you some of his faults, reader: as to his good points, he
+was one of the most honourable and capable men in Yorkshire; even those
+who disliked him were forced to respect him. He was much beloved by the
+poor, because he was thoroughly kind and very fatherly to them. To his
+workmen he was considerate and cordial. When he dismissed them from an
+occupation, he would try to set them on to something else, or, if that
+was impossible, help them to remove with their families to a district
+where work might possibly be had. It must also be remarked that if, as
+sometimes chanced, any individual amongst his "hands" showed signs of
+insubordination, Yorke--who, like many who abhor being controlled, knew
+how to control with vigour--had the secret of crushing rebellion in the
+germ, of eradicating it like a bad weed, so that it never spread or
+developed within the sphere of his authority. Such being the happy state
+of his own affairs, he felt himself at liberty to speak with the utmost
+severity of those who were differently situated, to ascribe whatever was
+unpleasant in their position entirely to their own fault, to sever
+himself from the masters, and advocate freely the cause of the
+operatives.
+
+Mr. Yorke's family was the first and oldest in the district; and he,
+though not the wealthiest, was one of the most influential men. His
+education had been good. In his youth, before the French Revolution, he
+had travelled on the Continent. He was an adept in the French and
+Italian languages. During a two years' sojourn in Italy he had collected
+many good paintings and tasteful rarities, with which his residence was
+now adorned. His manners, when he liked, were those of a finished
+gentleman of the old school; his conversation, when he was disposed to
+please, was singularly interesting and original; and if he usually
+expressed himself in the Yorkshire dialect, it was because he chose to
+do so, preferring his native Doric to a more refined vocabulary, "A
+Yorkshire burr," he affirmed, "was as much better than a cockney's lisp
+as a bull's bellow than a raton's squeak."
+
+Mr. Yorke knew every one, and was known by every one, for miles round;
+yet his intimate acquaintances were very few. Himself thoroughly
+original, he had no taste for what was ordinary: a racy, rough
+character, high or low, ever found acceptance with him; a refined,
+insipid personage, however exalted in station, was his aversion. He
+would spend an hour any time in talking freely with a shrewd workman of
+his own, or with some queer, sagacious old woman amongst his cottagers,
+when he would have grudged a moment to a commonplace fine gentleman or
+to the most fashionable and elegant, if frivolous, lady. His preferences
+on these points he carried to an extreme, forgetting that there may be
+amiable and even admirable characters amongst those who cannot be
+original. Yet he made exceptions to his own rule. There was a certain
+order of mind, plain, ingenuous, neglecting refinement, almost devoid of
+intellectuality, and quite incapable of appreciating what was
+intellectual in him, but which, at the same time, never felt disgust at
+his rudeness, was not easily wounded by his sarcasm, did not closely
+analyze his sayings, doings, or opinions, with which he was peculiarly
+at ease, and, consequently, which he peculiarly preferred. He was lord
+amongst such characters. They, while submitting implicitly to his
+influence, never acknowledged, because they never reflected on, his
+superiority; they were quite tractable, therefore, without running the
+smallest danger of being servile; and their unthinking, easy, artless
+insensibility was as acceptable, because as convenient, to Mr. Yorke as
+that of the chair he sat on, or of the floor he trod.
+
+It will have been observed that he was not quite uncordial with Mr.
+Moore. He had two or three reasons for entertaining a faint partiality
+to that gentleman. It may sound odd, but the first of these was that
+Moore spoke English with a foreign, and French with a perfectly pure,
+accent; and that his dark, thin face, with its fine though rather wasted
+lines, had a most anti-British and anti-Yorkshire look. These points
+seem frivolous, unlikely to influence a character like Yorke's; but the
+fact is they recalled old, perhaps pleasurable, associations--they
+brought back his travelling, his youthful days. He had seen, amidst
+Italian cities and scenes, faces like Moore's; he had heard, in Parisian
+cafés and theatres, voices like his. He was young then, and when he
+looked at and listened to the alien, he seemed young again.
+
+Secondly, he had known Moore's father, and had had dealings with him.
+That was a more substantial, though by no means a more agreeable tie;
+for as his firm had been connected with Moore's in business, it had
+also, in some measure, been implicated in its losses.
+
+Thirdly, he had found Robert himself a sharp man of business. He saw
+reason to anticipate that he would, in the end, by one means or another,
+make money; and he respected both his resolution and acuteness--perhaps,
+also, his hardness. A fourth circumstance which drew them together was
+that of Mr. Yorke being one of the guardians of the minor on whose
+estate Hollow's Mill was situated; consequently Moore, in the course of
+his alterations and improvements, had frequent occasion to consult him.
+
+As to the other guest now present in Mr. Yorke's parlour, Mr. Helstone,
+between him and his host there existed a double antipathy--the antipathy
+of nature and that of circumstances. The free-thinker hated the
+formalist; the lover of liberty detested the disciplinarian. Besides, it
+was said that in former years they had been rival suitors of the same
+lady.
+
+Mr. Yorke, as a general rule, was, when young, noted for his preference
+of sprightly and dashing women: a showy shape and air, a lively wit, a
+ready tongue, chiefly seemed to attract him. He never, however, proposed
+to any of these brilliant belles whose society he sought; and all at
+once he seriously fell in love with and eagerly wooed a girl who
+presented a complete contrast to those he had hitherto noticed--a girl
+with the face of a Madonna; a girl of living marble--stillness
+personified. No matter that, when he spoke to her, she only answered him
+in monosyllables; no matter that his sighs seemed unheard, that his
+glances were unreturned, that she never responded to his opinions,
+rarely smiled at his jests, paid him no respect and no attention; no
+matter that she seemed the opposite of everything feminine he had ever
+in his whole life been known to admire. For him Mary Cave was perfect,
+because somehow, for some reason--no doubt he had a reason--he loved
+her.
+
+Mr. Helstone, at that time curate of Briarfield, loved Mary too--or, at
+any rate, he fancied her. Several others admired her, for she was
+beautiful as a monumental angel; but the clergyman was preferred for his
+office's sake--that office probably investing him with some of the
+illusion necessary to allure to the commission of matrimony, and which
+Miss Cave did not find in any of the young wool-staplers, her other
+adorers. Mr. Helstone neither had, nor professed to have, Mr. Yorke's
+absorbing passion for her. He had none of the humble reverence which
+seemed to subdue most of her suitors; he saw her more as she really was
+than the rest did. He was, consequently, more master of her and himself.
+She accepted him at the first offer, and they were married.
+
+Nature never intended Mr. Helstone to make a very good husband,
+especially to a quiet wife. He thought so long as a woman was silent
+nothing ailed her, and she wanted nothing. If she did not complain of
+solitude, solitude, however continued, could not be irksome to her. If
+she did not talk and put herself forward, express a partiality for this,
+an aversion to that, she had no partialities or aversions, and it was
+useless to consult her tastes. He made no pretence of comprehending
+women, or comparing them with men. They were a different, probably a
+very inferior, order of existence. A wife could not be her husband's
+companion, much less his confidante, much less his stay. _His_ wife,
+after a year or two, was of no great importance to him in any shape; and
+when she one day, as he thought, suddenly--for he had scarcely noticed
+her decline--but, as others thought, gradually, took her leave of him
+and of life, and there was only a still, beautiful-featured mould of
+clay left, cold and white, in the conjugal couch, he felt his
+bereavement--who shall say how little? Yet, perhaps, more than he seemed
+to feel it; for he was not a man from whom grief easily wrung tears.
+
+His dry-eyed and sober mourning scandalized an old housekeeper, and
+likewise a female attendant, who had waited upon Mrs. Helstone in her
+sickness, and who, perhaps, had had opportunities of learning more of
+the deceased lady's nature, of her capacity for feeling and loving, than
+her husband knew. They gossiped together over the corpse, related
+anecdotes, with embellishments of her lingering decline, and its real or
+supposed cause. In short, they worked each other up to some indignation
+against the austere little man, who sat examining papers in an adjoining
+room, unconscious of what opprobrium he was the object.
+
+Mrs. Helstone was hardly under the sod when rumours began to be rife in
+the neighbourhood that she had died of a broken heart. These magnified
+quickly into reports of hard usage, and, finally, details of harsh
+treatment on the part of her husband--reports grossly untrue, but not
+the less eagerly received on that account. Mr. Yorke heard them, partly
+believed them. Already, of course, he had no friendly feeling to his
+successful rival. Though himself a married man now, and united to a
+woman who seemed a complete contrast to Mary Cave in all respects, he
+could not forget the great disappointment of his life; and when he heard
+that what would have been so precious to him had been neglected, perhaps
+abused, by another, he conceived for that other a rooted and bitter
+animosity.
+
+Of the nature and strength of this animosity Mr. Helstone was but half
+aware. He neither knew how much Yorke had loved Mary Cave, what he had
+felt on losing her, nor was he conscious of the calumnies concerning his
+treatment of her, familiar to every ear in the neighbourhood but his
+own. He believed political and religious differences alone separated him
+and Mr. Yorke. Had he known how the case really stood, he would hardly
+have been induced by any persuasion to cross his former rival's
+threshold.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Yorke did not resume his lecture of Robert Moore. The conversation
+ere long recommenced in a more general form, though still in a somewhat
+disputative tone. The unquiet state of the country, the various
+depredations lately committed on mill-property in the district, supplied
+abundant matter for disagreement, especially as each of the three
+gentlemen present differed more or less in his views on these subjects.
+Mr. Helstone thought the masters aggrieved, the workpeople unreasonable;
+he condemned sweepingly the widespread spirit of disaffection against
+constituted authorities, the growing indisposition to bear with patience
+evils he regarded as inevitable. The cures he prescribed were vigorous
+government interference, strict magisterial vigilance; when necessary,
+prompt military coercion.
+
+Mr. Yorke wished to know whether this interference, vigilance, and
+coercion would feed those who were hungry, give work to those who wanted
+work, and whom no man would hire. He scouted the idea of inevitable
+evils. He said public patience was a camel, on whose back the last atom
+that could be borne had already been laid, and that resistance was now a
+duty; the widespread spirit of disaffection against constituted
+authorities he regarded as the most promising sign of the times; the
+masters, he allowed, were truly aggrieved, but their main grievances had
+been heaped on them by a "corrupt, base, and bloody" government (these
+were Mr. Yorke's epithets). Madmen like Pitt, demons like Castlereagh,
+mischievous idiots like Perceval, were the tyrants, the curses of the
+country, the destroyers of her trade. It was their infatuated
+perseverance in an unjustifiable, a hopeless, a ruinous war, which had
+brought the nation to its present pass. It was their monstrously
+oppressive taxation, it was the infamous "Orders in Council"--the
+originators of which deserved impeachment and the scaffold, if ever
+public men did--that hung a millstone about England's neck.
+
+"But where was the use of talking?" he demanded. "What chance was there
+of reason being heard in a land that was king-ridden, priest-ridden,
+peer-ridden; where a lunatic was the nominal monarch, an unprincipled
+debauchee the real ruler; where such an insult to common sense as
+hereditary legislators was tolerated; where such a humbug as a bench of
+bishops, such an arrogant abuse as a pampered, persecuting established
+church was endured and venerated; where a standing army was maintained,
+and a host of lazy parsons and their pauper families were kept on the
+fat of the land?"
+
+Mr. Helstone, rising up and putting on his shovel-hat, observed in
+reply, "that in the course of his life he had met with two or three
+instances where sentiments of this sort had been very bravely maintained
+so long as health, strength, and worldly prosperity had been the allies
+of him who professed them; but there came a time," he said, "to all men,
+'when the keepers of the house should tremble; when they should be
+afraid of that which is high, and fear should be in the way;' and that
+time was the test of the advocate of anarchy and rebellion, the enemy of
+religion and order. Ere now," he affirmed, "he had been called upon to
+read those prayers our church has provided for the sick by the miserable
+dying-bed of one of her most rancorous foes; he had seen such a one
+stricken with remorse, solicitous to discover a place for repentance,
+and unable to find any, though he sought it carefully with tears. He
+must forewarn Mr. Yorke that blasphemy against God and the king was a
+deadly sin, and that there was such a thing as 'judgment to come.'"
+
+Mr. Yorke "believed fully that there was such a thing as judgment to
+come. If it were otherwise, it would be difficult to imagine how all the
+scoundrels who seemed triumphant in this world, who broke innocent
+hearts with impunity, abused unmerited privileges, were a scandal to
+honourable callings, took the bread out of the mouths of the poor,
+browbeat the humble, and truckled meanly to the rich and proud, were to
+be properly paid off in such coin as they had earned. But," he added,
+"whenever he got low-spirited about such-like goings-on, and their
+seeming success in this mucky lump of a planet, he just reached down t'
+owd book" (pointing to a great Bible in the bookcase), "opened it like
+at a chance, and he was sure to light of a verse blazing wi' a blue
+brimstone low that set all straight. He knew," he said, "where some folk
+war bound for, just as weel as if an angel wi' great white wings had
+come in ower t' door-stone and told him."
+
+"Sir," said Mr. Helstone, collecting all his dignity--"sir, the great
+knowledge of man is to know himself, and the bourne whither his own
+steps tend."
+
+"Ay, ay. You'll recollect, Mr. Helstone, that Ignorance was carried away
+from the very gates of heaven, borne through the air, and thrust in at a
+door in the side of the hill which led down to hell."
+
+"Nor have I forgotten, Mr. Yorke, that Vain-Confidence, not seeing the
+way before him, fell into a deep pit, which was on purpose there made by
+the prince of the grounds, to catch vainglorious fools withal, and was
+dashed to pieces with his fall."
+
+"Now," interposed Mr. Moore, who had hitherto sat a silent but amused
+spectator of this worldly combat, and whose indifference to the party
+politics of the day, as well as to the gossip of the neighbourhood, made
+him an impartial, if apathetic, judge of the merits of such an
+encounter, "you have both sufficiently blackballed each other, and
+proved how cordially you detest each other, and how wicked you think
+each other. For my part, my hate is still running in such a strong
+current against the fellows who have broken my frames that I have none
+to spare for my private acquaintance, and still less for such a vague
+thing as a sect or a government. But really, gentlemen, you both seem
+very bad by your own showing--worse than ever I suspected you to be.--I
+dare not stay all night with a rebel and blasphemer like you, Yorke; and
+I hardly dare ride home with a cruel and tyrannical ecclesiastic like
+Mr. Helstone."
+
+"I am going, however, Mr. Moore," said the rector sternly. "Come with me
+or not, as you please."
+
+"Nay, he shall not have the choice; he _shall_ go with you," responded
+Yorke. "It's midnight, and past; and I'll have nob'dy staying up i' my
+house any longer. Ye mun all go."
+
+He rang the bell.
+
+"Deb," said he to the servant who answered it, "clear them folk out o'
+t' kitchen, and lock t' doors, and be off to bed.--Here is your way,
+gentlemen," he continued to his guests; and, lighting them through the
+passage, he fairly put them out at his front door.
+
+They met their party hurrying out pell-mell by the back way. Their
+horses stood at the gate; they mounted, and rode off, Moore laughing at
+their abrupt dismissal, Helstone deeply indignant thereat.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+HOLLOW'S COTTAGE.
+
+
+Moore's good spirits were still with him when he rose next morning. He
+and Joe Scott had both spent the night in the mill, availing themselves
+of certain sleeping accommodations producible from recesses in the front
+and back counting-houses. The master, always an early riser, was up
+somewhat sooner even than usual. He awoke his man by singing a French
+song as he made his toilet.
+
+"Ye're not custen dahn, then, maister?" cried Joe.
+
+"Not a stiver, mon garçon--which means, my lad. Get up, and we'll take a
+turn through the mill before the hands come in, and I'll explain my
+future plans. We'll have the machinery yet, Joseph. You never heard of
+Bruce, perhaps?"
+
+"And th' arrand (spider)? Yes, but I hev. I've read th' history o'
+Scotland, and happen knaw as mich on't as ye; and I understand ye to
+mean to say ye'll persevere."
+
+"I do."
+
+"Is there mony o' your mak' i' your country?" inquired Joe, as he folded
+up his temporary bed, and put it away.
+
+"In my country! Which is my country?"
+
+"Why, France--isn't it?"
+
+"Not it, indeed! The circumstance of the French having seized Antwerp,
+where I was born, does not make me a Frenchman."
+
+"Holland, then?"
+
+"I am not a Dutchman. Now you are confounding Antwerp with Amsterdam."
+
+"Flanders?"
+
+"I scorn the insinuation, Joe! I a Flamand! Have I a Flemish face--the
+clumsy nose standing out, the mean forehead falling back, the pale blue
+eyes 'à fleur de tête'? Am I all body and no legs, like a Flamand? But
+you don't know what they are like, those Netherlanders. Joe, I'm an
+Anversois. My mother was an Anversoise, though she came of French
+lineage, which is the reason I speak French."
+
+"But your father war Yorkshire, which maks ye a bit Yorkshire too; and
+onybody may see ye're akin to us, ye're so keen o' making brass, and
+getting forrards."
+
+"Joe, you're an impudent dog; but I've always been accustomed to a
+boorish sort of insolence from my youth up. The 'classe ouvrière'--that
+is, the working people in Belgium--bear themselves brutally towards
+their employers; and by _brutally_, Joe, I mean _brutalement_--which,
+perhaps, when properly translated, should be _roughly_."
+
+"We allus speak our minds i' this country; and them young parsons and
+grand folk fro' London is shocked at wer 'incivility;' and we like weel
+enough to gi'e 'em summat to be shocked at, 'cause it's sport to us to
+watch 'em turn up the whites o' their een, and spreed out their bits o'
+hands, like as they're flayed wi' bogards, and then to hear 'em say,
+nipping off their words short like, 'Dear! dear! Whet seveges! How very
+corse!'"
+
+"You _are_ savages, Joe. You don't suppose you're civilized, do you?"
+
+"Middling, middling, maister. I reckon 'at us manufacturing lads i' th'
+north is a deal more intelligent, and knaws a deal more nor th' farming
+folk i' th' south. Trade sharpens wer wits; and them that's mechanics
+like me is forced to think. Ye know, what wi' looking after machinery
+and sich like, I've getten into that way that when I see an effect, I
+look straight out for a cause, and I oft lig hold on't to purpose; and
+then I like reading, and I'm curious to knaw what them that reckons to
+govern us aims to do for us and wi' us. And there's many 'cuter nor me;
+there's many a one amang them greasy chaps 'at smells o' oil, and amang
+them dyers wi' blue and black skins, that has a long head, and that can
+tell what a fooil of a law is, as well as ye or old Yorke, and a deal
+better nor soft uns like Christopher Sykes o' Whinbury, and greet
+hectoring nowts like yond' Irish Peter, Helstone's curate."
+
+"You think yourself a clever fellow, I know, Scott."
+
+"Ay! I'm fairish. I can tell cheese fro' chalk, and I'm varry weel aware
+that I've improved sich opportunities as I have had, a deal better nor
+some 'at reckons to be aboon me; but there's thousands i' Yorkshire
+that's as good as me, and a two-three that's better."
+
+"You're a great man--you're a sublime fellow; but you're a prig, a
+conceited noodle with it all, Joe! You need not to think that because
+you've picked up a little knowledge of practical mathematics, and
+because you have found some scantling of the elements of chemistry at
+the bottom of a dyeing vat, that therefore you're a neglected man of
+science; and you need not to suppose that because the course of trade
+does not always run smooth, and you, and such as you, are sometimes
+short of work and of bread, that therefore your class are martyrs, and
+that the whole form of government under which you live is wrong. And,
+moreover, you need not for a moment to insinuate that the virtues have
+taken refuge in cottages and wholly abandoned slated houses. Let me tell
+you, I particularly abominate that sort of trash, because I know so well
+that human nature is human nature everywhere, whether under tile or
+thatch, and that in every specimen of human nature that breathes, vice
+and virtue are ever found blended, in smaller or greater proportions,
+and that the proportion is not determined by station. I have seen
+villains who were rich, and I have seen villains who were poor, and I
+have seen villains who were neither rich nor poor, but who had realized
+Agar's wish, and lived in fair and modest competency. The clock is going
+to strike six. Away with you, Joe, and ring the mill bell."
+
+It was now the middle of the month of February; by six o'clock therefore
+dawn was just beginning to steal on night, to penetrate with a pale ray
+its brown obscurity, and give a demi-translucence to its opaque shadows.
+Pale enough that ray was on this particular morning: no colour tinged
+the east, no flush warmed it. To see what a heavy lid day slowly lifted,
+what a wan glance she flung along the hills, you would have thought the
+sun's fire quenched in last night's floods. The breath of this morning
+was chill as its aspect; a raw wind stirred the mass of night-cloud, and
+showed, as it slowly rose, leaving a colourless, silver-gleaming ring
+all round the horizon, not blue sky, but a stratum of paler vapour
+beyond. It had ceased to rain, but the earth was sodden, and the pools
+and rivulets were full.
+
+The mill-windows were alight, the bell still rung loud, and now the
+little children came running in, in too great a hurry, let us hope, to
+feel very much nipped by the inclement air; and indeed, by contrast,
+perhaps the morning appeared rather favourable to them than otherwise,
+for they had often come to their work that winter through snow-storms,
+through heavy rain, through hard frost.
+
+Mr. Moore stood at the entrance to watch them pass. He counted them as
+they went by. To those who came rather late he said a word of reprimand,
+which was a little more sharply repeated by Joe Scott when the lingerers
+reached the work-rooms. Neither master nor overlooker spoke savagely.
+They were not savage men either of them, though it appeared both were
+rigid, for they fined a delinquent who came considerably too late. Mr.
+Moore made him pay his penny down ere he entered, and informed him that
+the next repetition of the fault would cost him twopence.
+
+Rules, no doubt, are necessary in such cases, and coarse and cruel
+masters will make coarse and cruel rules, which, at the time we treat of
+at least, they used sometimes to enforce tyrannically; but though I
+describe imperfect characters (every character in this book will be
+found to be more or less imperfect, my pen refusing to draw anything in
+the model line), I have not undertaken to handle degraded or utterly
+infamous ones. Child-torturers, slave masters and drivers, I consign to
+the hands of jailers. The novelist may be excused from sullying his page
+with the record of their deeds.
+
+Instead, then, of harrowing up my reader's soul and delighting his organ
+of wonder with effective descriptions of stripes and scourgings, I am
+happy to be able to inform him that neither Mr. Moore nor his overlooker
+ever struck a child in their mill. Joe had, indeed, once very severely
+flogged a son of his own for telling a lie and persisting in it; but,
+like his employer, he was too phlegmatic, too calm, as well as too
+reasonable a man, to make corporal chastisement other than the exception
+to his treatment of the young.
+
+Mr. Moore haunted his mill, his mill-yard, his dye-house, and his
+warehouse till the sickly dawn strengthened into day. The sun even
+rose--at least a white disc, clear, tintless, and almost chill-looking
+as ice, peeped over the dark crest of a hill, changed to silver the
+livid edge of the cloud above it, and looked solemnly down the whole
+length of the den, or narrow dale, to whose strait bounds we are at
+present limited. It was eight o'clock; the mill lights were all
+extinguished; the signal was given for breakfast; the children, released
+for half an hour from toil, betook themselves to the little tin cans
+which held their coffee, and to the small baskets which contained their
+allowance of bread. Let us hope they have enough to eat; it would be a
+pity were it otherwise.
+
+And now at last Mr. Moore quitted the mill-yard, and bent his steps to
+his dwelling-house. It was only a short distance from the factory, but
+the hedge and high bank on each side of the lane which conducted to it
+seemed to give it something of the appearance and feeling of seclusion.
+It was a small, whitewashed place, with a green porch over the door;
+scanty brown stalks showed in the garden soil near this porch, and
+likewise beneath the windows--stalks budless and flowerless now, but
+giving dim prediction of trained and blooming creepers for summer days.
+A grass plat and borders fronted the cottage. The borders presented only
+black mould yet, except where, in sheltered nooks, the first shoots of
+snowdrop or crocus peeped, green as emerald, from the earth. The spring
+was late; it had been a severe and prolonged winter; the last deep snow
+had but just disappeared before yesterday's rains; on the hills, indeed,
+white remnants of it yet gleamed, flecking the hollows and crowning the
+peaks; the lawn was not verdant, but bleached, as was the grass on the
+bank, and under the hedge in the lane. Three trees, gracefully grouped,
+rose beside the cottage. They were not lofty, but having no rivals near,
+they looked well and imposing where they grew. Such was Mr. Moore's
+home--a snug nest for content and contemplation, but one within which
+the wings of action and ambition could not long lie folded.
+
+Its air of modest comfort seemed to possess no particular attraction for
+its owner. Instead of entering the house at once he fetched a spade from
+a little shed and began to work in the garden. For about a quarter of an
+hour he dug on uninterrupted. At length, however, a window opened, and a
+female voice called to him,--
+
+"Eh, bien! Tu ne déjeûnes pas ce matin?"
+
+The answer, and the rest of the conversation, was in French; but as this
+is an English book, I shall translate it into English.
+
+"Is breakfast ready, Hortense?"
+
+"Certainly; it has been ready half an hour."
+
+"Then I am ready too. I have a canine hunger."
+
+He threw down his spade, and entered the house. The narrow passage
+conducted him to a small parlour, where a breakfast of coffee and bread
+and butter, with the somewhat un-English accompaniment of stewed pears,
+was spread on the table. Over these viands presided the lady who had
+spoken from the window. I must describe her before I go any farther.
+
+She seemed a little older than Mr. Moore--perhaps she was thirty-five,
+tall, and proportionately stout; she had very black hair, for the
+present twisted up in curl-papers, a high colour in her cheeks, a small
+nose, a pair of little black eyes. The lower part of her face was large
+in proportion to the upper; her forehead was small and rather
+corrugated; she had a fretful though not an ill-natured expression of
+countenance; there was something in her whole appearance one felt
+inclined to be half provoked with and half amused at. The strangest
+point was her dress--a stuff petticoat and a striped cotton camisole.
+The petticoat was short, displaying well a pair of feet and ankles which
+left much to be desired in the article of symmetry.
+
+You will think I have depicted a remarkable slattern, reader. Not at
+all. Hortense Moore (she was Mr. Moore's sister) was a very orderly,
+economical person. The petticoat, camisole, and curl-papers were her
+morning costume, in which, of forenoons, she had always been accustomed
+to "go her household ways" in her own country. She did not choose to
+adopt English fashions because she was obliged to live in England; she
+adhered to her old Belgian modes, quite satisfied that there was a merit
+in so doing.
+
+Mademoiselle had an excellent opinion of herself--an opinion not wholly
+undeserved, for she possessed some good and sterling qualities; but she
+rather over-estimated the kind and degree of these qualities, and quite
+left out of the account sundry little defects which accompanied them.
+You could never have persuaded her that she was a prejudiced and
+narrow-minded person, that she was too susceptible on the subject of her
+own dignity and importance, and too apt to take offence about trifles;
+yet all this was true. However, where her claims to distinction were not
+opposed, and where her prejudices were not offended, she could be kind
+and friendly enough. To her two brothers (for there was another Gérard
+Moore besides Robert) she was very much attached. As the sole remaining
+representatives of their decayed family, the persons of both were almost
+sacred in her eyes. Of Louis, however, she knew less than of Robert. He
+had been sent to England when a mere boy, and had received his education
+at an English school. His education not being such as to adapt him for
+trade, perhaps, too, his natural bent not inclining him to mercantile
+pursuits, he had, when the blight of hereditary prospects rendered it
+necessary for him to push his own fortune, adopted the very arduous and
+very modest career of a teacher. He had been usher in a school, and was
+said now to be tutor in a private family. Hortense, when she mentioned
+Louis, described him as having what she called "des moyens," but as
+being too backward and quiet. Her praise of Robert was in a different
+strain, less qualified: she was very proud of him; she regarded him as
+the greatest man in Europe; all he said and did was remarkable in her
+eyes, and she expected others to behold him from the same point of view;
+nothing could be more irrational, monstrous, and infamous than
+opposition from any quarter to Robert, unless it were opposition to
+herself.
+
+Accordingly, as soon as the said Robert was seated at the
+breakfast-table, and she had helped him to a portion of stewed pears,
+and cut him a good-sized Belgian tartine, she began to pour out a flood
+of amazement and horror at the transaction of last night, the
+destruction of the frames.
+
+"Quelle idée! to destroy them. Quelle action honteuse! On voyait bien
+que les ouvriers de ce pays étaient à la fois betes et méchants. C'était
+absolument comme les domestiques anglais, les servantes surtout: rien
+d'insupportable comme cette Sara, par exemple!"
+
+"She looks clean and industrious," Mr. Moore remarked.
+
+"Looks! I don't know how she looks, and I do not say that she is
+altogether dirty or idle, mais elle est d'une insolence! She disputed
+with me a quarter of an hour yesterday about the cooking of the beef;
+she said I boiled it to rags, that English people would never be able to
+eat such a dish as our bouilli, that the bouillon was no better than
+greasy warm water, and as to the choucroute, she affirms she cannot
+touch it! That barrel we have in the cellar--delightfully prepared by my
+own hands--she termed a tub of hog-wash, which means food for pigs. I am
+harassed with the girl, and yet I cannot part with her lest I should get
+a worse. You are in the same position with your workmen, pauvre cher
+frère!"
+
+"I am afraid you are not very happy in England, Hortense."
+
+"It is my duty to be happy where you are, brother; but otherwise there
+are certainly a thousand things which make me regret our native town.
+All the world here appears to me ill-bred (mal-élevé). I find my habits
+considered ridiculous. If a girl out of your mill chances to come into
+the kitchen and find me in my jupon and camisole preparing dinner (for
+you know I cannot trust Sarah to cook a single dish), she sneers. If I
+accept an invitation out to tea, which I have done once or twice, I
+perceive I am put quite into the background; I have not that attention
+paid me which decidedly is my due. Of what an excellent family are the
+Gérards, as we know, and the Moores also! They have a right to claim a
+certain respect, and to feel wounded when it is withheld from them. In
+Antwerp I was always treated with distinction; here, one would think
+that when I open my lips in company I speak English with a ridiculous
+accent, whereas I am quite assured that I pronounce it perfectly."
+
+"Hortense, in Antwerp we were known rich; in England we were never known
+but poor."
+
+"Precisely, and thus mercenary are mankind. Again, dear brother, last
+Sunday, if you recollect, was very wet; accordingly I went to church in
+my neat black sabots, objects one would not indeed wear in a fashionable
+city, but which in the country I have ever been accustomed to use for
+walking in dirty roads. Believe me, as I paced up the aisle, composed
+and tranquil, as I am always, four ladies, and as many gentlemen,
+laughed and hid their faces behind their prayer-books."
+
+"Well, well! don't put on the sabots again. I told you before I thought
+they were not quite the thing for this country."
+
+"But, brother, they are not common sabots, such as the peasantry wear. I
+tell you, they are sabots noirs, très propres, très convenables. At Mons
+and Leuze--cities not very far removed from the elegant capital of
+Brussels--it is very seldom that the respectable people wear anything
+else for walking in winter. Let any one try to wade the mud of the
+Flemish chaussées in a pair of Paris brodequins, on m'en dirait des
+nouvelles!"
+
+"Never mind Mons and Leuze and the Flemish chaussées; do at Rome as the
+Romans do. And as to the camisole and jupon, I am not quite sure about
+them either. I never see an English lady dressed in such garments. Ask
+Caroline Helstone."
+
+"Caroline! _I_ ask Caroline? _I_ consult her about my dress? It is _she_
+who on all points should consult _me_. She is a child."
+
+"She is eighteen, or at least seventeen--old enough to know all about
+gowns, petticoats, and chaussures."
+
+"Do not spoil Caroline, I entreat you, brother. Do not make her of more
+consequence than she ought to be. At present she is modest and
+unassuming: let us keep her so."
+
+"With all my heart. Is she coming this morning?"
+
+"She will come at ten, as usual, to take her French lesson."
+
+"You don't find that she sneers at you, do you?"
+
+"She does not. She appreciates me better than any one else here; but
+then she has more intimate opportunities of knowing me. She sees that I
+have education, intelligence, manner, principles--all, in short, which
+belongs to a person well born and well bred."
+
+"Are you at all fond of her?"
+
+"For _fond_ I cannot say. I am not one who is prone to take violent
+fancies, and, consequently, my friendship is the more to be depended on.
+I have a regard for her as my relative; her position also inspires
+interest, and her conduct as my pupil has hitherto been such as rather
+to enhance than diminish the attachment that springs from other causes."
+
+"She behaves pretty well at lessons?"
+
+"To _me_ she behaves very well; but you are conscious, brother, that I
+have a manner calculated to repel over-familiarity, to win esteem, and
+to command respect. Yet, possessed of penetration, I perceive clearly
+that Caroline is not perfect, that there is much to be desired in her."
+
+"Give me a last cup of coffee, and while I am drinking it amuse me with
+an account of her faults."
+
+"Dear brother, I am happy to see you eat your breakfast with relish,
+after the fatiguing night you have passed. Caroline, then, is defective;
+but with my forming hand and almost motherly care she may improve. There
+is about her an occasional something--a reserve, I think--which I do not
+quite like, because it is not sufficiently girlish and submissive; and
+there are glimpses of an unsettled hurry in her nature, which put me
+out. Yet she is usually most tranquil, too dejected and thoughtful
+indeed sometimes. In time, I doubt not, I shall make her uniformly
+sedate and decorous, without being unaccountably pensive. I ever
+disapprove what is not intelligible."
+
+"I don't understand your account in the least. What do you mean by
+'unsettled hurries,' for instance?"
+
+"An example will, perhaps, be the most satisfactory explanation. I
+sometimes, you are aware, make her read French poetry by way of
+practice in pronunciation. She has in the course of her lessons gone
+through much of Corneille and Racine, in a very steady, sober spirit,
+such as I approve. Occasionally she showed, indeed, a degree of languor
+in the perusal of those esteemed authors, partaking rather of apathy
+than sobriety; and apathy is what I cannot tolerate in those who have
+the benefit of my instructions--besides, one should not be apathetic in
+studying standard works. The other day I put into her hands a volume of
+short fugitive pieces. I sent her to the window to learn one by heart,
+and when I looked up I saw her turning the leaves over impatiently, and
+curling her lip, absolutely with scorn, as she surveyed the little poems
+cursorily. I chid her. 'Ma cousine,' said she, 'tout cela m'ennuie à la
+mort.' I told her this was improper language. 'Dieu!' she exclaimed, 'il
+n'y a donc pas deux lignes de poësie dans toute la littérature
+française?' I inquired what she meant. She begged my pardon with proper
+submission. Ere long she was still. I saw her smiling to herself over
+the book. She began to learn assiduously. In half an hour she came and
+stood before me, presented the volume, folded her hands, as I always
+require her to do, and commenced the repetition of that short thing by
+Chénier, 'La Jeune Captive.' If you had heard the manner in which she
+went through this, and in which she uttered a few incoherent comments
+when she had done, you would have known what I meant by the phrase
+'unsettled hurry.' One would have thought Chénier was more moving than
+all Racine and all Corneille. You, brother, who have so much sagacity,
+will discern that this disproportionate preference argues an
+ill-regulated mind; but she is fortunate in her preceptress. I will give
+her a system, a method of thought, a set of opinions; I will give her
+the perfect control and guidance of her feelings."
+
+"Be sure you do, Hortense. Here she comes. That was her shadow passed
+the window, I believe."
+
+"Ah! truly. She is too early--half an hour before her time.--My child,
+what brings you here before I have breakfasted?"
+
+This question was addressed to an individual who now entered the room, a
+young girl, wrapped in a winter mantle, the folds of which were gathered
+with some grace round an apparently slender figure.
+
+"I came in haste to see how you were, Hortense, and how Robert was too.
+I was sure you would be both grieved by what happened last night. I did
+not hear till this morning. My uncle told me at breakfast."
+
+"Ah! it is unspeakable. You sympathize with us? Your uncle sympathizes
+with us?"
+
+"My uncle is very angry--but he was with Robert, I believe, was he
+not?--Did he not go with you to Stilbro' Moor?"
+
+"Yes, we set out in very martial style, Caroline; but the prisoners we
+went to rescue met us half-way."
+
+"Of course nobody was hurt?"
+
+"Why, no; only Joe Scott's wrists were a little galled with being
+pinioned too tightly behind his back."
+
+"You were not there? You were not with the wagons when they were
+attacked?"
+
+"No. One seldom has the fortune to be present at occurrences at which
+one would particularly wish to assist."
+
+"Where are you going this morning? I saw Murgatroyd saddling your horse
+in the yard."
+
+"To Whinbury. It is market day."
+
+"Mr. Yorke is going too. I met him in his gig. Come home with him."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Two are better than one, and nobody dislikes Mr. Yorke--at least, poor
+people do not dislike him."
+
+"Therefore he would be a protection to me, who am hated?"
+
+"Who are _misunderstood_. That, probably, is the word. Shall you be
+late?--Will he be late, Cousin Hortense?"
+
+"It is too probable. He has often much business to transact at Whinbury.
+Have you brought your exercise-book, child?"
+
+"Yes.--What time will you return, Robert?"
+
+"I generally return at seven. Do you wish me to be at home earlier?"
+
+"Try rather to be back by six. It is not absolutely dark at six now, but
+by seven daylight is quite gone."
+
+"And what danger is to be apprehended, Caroline, when daylight _is_
+gone? What peril do you conceive comes as the companion of darkness for
+me?"
+
+"I am not sure that I can define my fears, but we all have a certain
+anxiety at present about our friends. My uncle calls these times
+dangerous. He says, too, that mill-owners are unpopular."
+
+"And I am one of the most unpopular? Is not that the fact? You are
+reluctant to speak out plainly, but at heart you think me liable to
+Pearson's fate, who was shot at--not, indeed, from behind a hedge, but
+in his own house, through his staircase window, as he was going to bed."
+
+"Anne Pearson showed me the bullet in the chamber-door," remarked
+Caroline gravely, as she folded her mantle and arranged it and her muff
+on a side-table. "You know," she continued, "there is a hedge all the
+way along the road from here to Whinbury, and there are the Fieldhead
+plantations to pass; but you will be back by six--or before?"
+
+"Certainly he will," affirmed Hortense. "And now, my child, prepare your
+lessons for repetition, while I put the peas to soak for the purée at
+dinner."
+
+With this direction she left the room.
+
+"You suspect I have many enemies, then, Caroline," said Mr. Moore, "and
+doubtless you know me to be destitute of friends?"
+
+"Not destitute, Robert. There is your sister, your brother Louis, whom I
+have never seen; there is Mr. Yorke, and there is my uncle--besides, of
+course, many more."
+
+Robert smiled. "You would be puzzled to name your 'many more,'" said he.
+"But show me your exercise-book. What extreme pains you take with the
+writing! My sister, I suppose, exacts this care. She wants to form you
+in all things after the model of a Flemish school-girl. What life are
+you destined for, Caroline? What will you do with your French, drawing,
+and other accomplishments, when they are acquired?"
+
+"You may well say, when they are acquired; for, as you are aware, till
+Hortense began to teach me, I knew precious little. As to the life I am
+destined for, I cannot tell. I suppose to keep my uncle's house
+till----" She hesitated.
+
+"Till what? Till he dies?"
+
+"No. How harsh to say that! I never think of his dying. He is only
+fifty-five. But till--in short, till events offer other occupations for
+me."
+
+"A remarkably vague prospect! Are you content with it?"
+
+"I used to be, formerly. Children, you know, have little reflection, or
+rather their reflections run on ideal themes. There are moments _now_
+when I am not quite satisfied."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I am making no money--earning nothing."
+
+"You come to the point, Lina. You too, then, wish to make money?"
+
+"I do. I should like an occupation; and if I were a boy, it would not be
+so difficult to find one. I see such an easy, pleasant way of learning a
+business, and making my way in life."
+
+"Go on. Let us hear what way."
+
+"I could be apprenticed to your trade--the cloth-trade. I could learn it
+of you, as we are distant relations. I would do the counting-house work,
+keep the books, and write the letters, while you went to market. I know
+you greatly desire to be rich, in order to pay your father's debts;
+perhaps I could help you to get rich."
+
+"Help _me_? You should think of yourself."
+
+"I do think of myself; but must one for ever think only of oneself?"
+
+"Of whom else do I think? Of whom else _dare_ I think? The poor ought to
+have no large sympathies; it is their duty to be narrow."
+
+"No, Robert----"
+
+"Yes, Caroline. Poverty is necessarily selfish, contracted, grovelling,
+anxious. Now and then a poor man's heart, when certain beams and dews
+visit it, may smell like the budding vegetation in yonder garden on this
+spring day, may feel ripe to evolve in foliage, perhaps blossom; but he
+must not encourage the pleasant impulse; he must invoke Prudence to
+check it, with that frosty breath of hers, which is as nipping as any
+north wind."
+
+"No cottage would be happy then."
+
+"When I speak of poverty, I do not so much mean the natural, habitual
+poverty of the working-man, as the embarrassed penury of the man in
+debt. My grub-worm is always a straitened, struggling, care-worn
+tradesman."
+
+"Cherish hope, not anxiety. Certain ideas have become too fixed in your
+mind. It may be presumptuous to say it, but I have the impression that
+there is something wrong in your notions of the best means of attaining
+happiness, as there is in----" Second hesitation.
+
+"I am all ear, Caroline."
+
+"In (courage! let me speak the truth)--in your manner--mind, I say only
+_manner_--to these Yorkshire workpeople."
+
+"You have often wanted to tell me that, have you not?"
+
+"Yes; often--very often."
+
+"The faults of my manner are, I think, only negative. I am not proud.
+What has a man in my position to be proud of? I am only taciturn,
+phlegmatic, and joyless."
+
+"As if your living cloth-dressers were all machines like your frames and
+shears. In your own house you seem different."
+
+"To those of my own house I am no alien, which I am to these English
+clowns. I might act the benevolent with them, but acting is not my
+_forte_. I find them irrational, perverse; they hinder me when I long to
+hurry forward. In treating them justly I fulfil my whole duty towards
+them."
+
+"You don't expect them to love you, of course?"
+
+"Nor wish it."
+
+"Ah!" said the monitress, shaking her head and heaving a deep sigh. With
+this ejaculation, indicative that she perceived a screw to be loose
+somewhere, but that it was out of her reach to set it right, she bent
+over her grammar, and sought the rule and exercise for the day.
+
+"I suppose I am not an affectionate man, Caroline. The attachment of a
+very few suffices me."
+
+"If you please, Robert, will you mend me a pen or two before you go?"
+
+"First let me rule your book, for you always contrive to draw the lines
+aslant. There now. And now for the pens. You like a fine one, I think?"
+
+"Such as you generally make for me and Hortense; not your own broad
+points."
+
+"If I were of Louis's calling I might stay at home and dedicate this
+morning to you and your studies, whereas I must spend it in Skyes's
+wool-warehouse."
+
+"You will be making money."
+
+"More likely losing it."
+
+As he finished mending the pens, a horse, saddled and bridled, was
+brought up to the garden-gate.
+
+"There, Fred is ready for me; I must go. I'll take one look to see what
+the spring has done in the south border, too, first."
+
+He quitted the room, and went out into the garden ground behind the
+mill. A sweet fringe of young verdure and opening flowers--snowdrop,
+crocus, even primrose--bloomed in the sunshine under the hot wall of the
+factory. Moore plucked here and there a blossom and leaf, till he had
+collected a little bouquet. He returned to the parlour, pilfered a
+thread of silk from his sister's work-basket, tied the flowers, and laid
+them on Caroline's desk.
+
+"Now, good-morning."
+
+"Thank you, Robert. It is pretty; it looks, as it lies there, like
+sparkles of sunshine and blue sky. Good-morning."
+
+He went to the door, stopped, opened his lips as if to speak, said
+nothing, and moved on. He passed through the wicket, and mounted his
+horse. In a second he had flung himself from his saddle again,
+transferred the reins to Murgatroyd, and re-entered the cottage.
+
+"I forgot my gloves," he said, appearing to take something from the
+side-table; then, as an impromptu thought, he remarked, "You have no
+binding engagement at home perhaps, Caroline?"
+
+"I never have. Some children's socks, which Mrs. Ramsden has ordered, to
+knit for the Jew's basket; but they will keep."
+
+"Jew's basket be--sold! Never was utensil better named. Anything more
+Jewish than it--its contents and their prices--cannot be conceived. But
+I see something, a very tiny curl, at the corners of your lip, which
+tells me that you know its merits as well as I do. Forget the Jew's
+basket, then, and spend the day here as a change. Your uncle won't break
+his heart at your absence?"
+
+She smiled. "No."
+
+"The old Cossack! I dare say not," muttered Moore.
+
+"Then stay and dine with Hortense; she will be glad of your company. I
+shall return in good time. We will have a little reading in the evening.
+The moon rises at half-past eight, and I will walk up to the rectory
+with you at nine. Do you agree?"
+
+She nodded her head, and her eyes lit up.
+
+Moore lingered yet two minutes. He bent over Caroline's desk and glanced
+at her grammar, he fingered her pen, he lifted her bouquet and played
+with it; his horse stamped impatient; Fred Murgatroyd hemmed and coughed
+at the gate, as if he wondered what in the world his master was doing.
+"Good-morning," again said Moore, and finally vanished.
+
+Hortense, coming in ten minutes after, found, to her surprise, that
+Caroline had not yet commenced her exercise.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+CORIOLANUS.
+
+
+Mademoiselle Moore had that morning a somewhat absent-minded pupil.
+Caroline forgot, again and again, the explanations which were given to
+her. However, she still bore with unclouded mood the chidings her
+inattention brought upon her. Sitting in the sunshine near the window,
+she seemed to receive with its warmth a kind influence, which made her
+both happy and good. Thus disposed, she looked her best, and her best
+was a pleasing vision.
+
+To her had not been denied the gift of beauty. It was not absolutely
+necessary to know her in order to like her; she was fair enough to
+please, even at the first view. Her shape suited her age: it was
+girlish, light, and pliant; every curve was neat, every limb
+proportionate; her face was expressive and gentle; her eyes were
+handsome, and gifted at times with a winning beam that stole into the
+heart, with a language that spoke softly to the affections. Her mouth
+was very pretty; she had a delicate skin, and a fine flow of brown hair,
+which she knew how to arrange with taste; curls became her, and she
+possessed them in picturesque profusion. Her style of dress announced
+taste in the wearer--very unobtrusive in fashion, far from costly in
+material, but suitable in colour to the fair complexion with which it
+contrasted, and in make to the slight form which it draped. Her present
+winter garb was of merino--the same soft shade of brown as her hair; the
+little collar round her neck lay over a pink ribbon, and was fastened
+with a pink knot. She wore no other decoration.
+
+So much for Caroline Helstone's appearance. As to her character or
+intellect, if she had any, they must speak for themselves in due time.
+
+Her connections are soon explained. She was the child of parents
+separated soon after her birth, in consequence of disagreement of
+disposition. Her mother was the half-sister of Mr. Moore's father; thus,
+though there was no mixture of blood, she was, in a distant sense, the
+cousin of Robert, Louis, and Hortense. Her father was the brother of Mr.
+Helstone--a man of the character friends desire not to recall, after
+death has once settled all earthly accounts. He had rendered his wife
+unhappy. The reports which were known to be true concerning him had
+given an air of probability to those which were falsely circulated
+respecting his better-principled brother. Caroline had never known her
+mother, as she was taken from her in infancy, and had not since seen
+her; her father died comparatively young, and her uncle, the rector, had
+for some years been her sole guardian. He was not, as we are aware, much
+adapted, either by nature or habits, to have the charge of a young girl.
+He had taken little trouble about her education; probably he would have
+taken none if she, finding herself neglected, had not grown anxious on
+her own account, and asked, every now and then, for a little attention,
+and for the means of acquiring such amount of knowledge as could not be
+dispensed with. Still, she had a depressing feeling that she was
+inferior, that her attainments were fewer than were usually possessed by
+girls of her age and station; and very glad was she to avail herself of
+the kind offer made by her cousin Hortense, soon after the arrival of
+the latter at Hollow's Mill, to teach her French and fine needle-work.
+Mdlle. Moore, for her part, delighted in the task, because it gave her
+importance; she liked to lord it a little over a docile yet quick pupil.
+She took Caroline precisely at her own estimate, as an
+irregularly-taught, even ignorant girl; and when she found that she made
+rapid and eager progress, it was to no talent, no application, in the
+scholar she ascribed the improvement, but entirely to her own superior
+method of teaching. When she found that Caroline, unskilled in routine,
+had a knowledge of her own, desultory but varied, the discovery caused
+her no surprise, for she still imagined that from her conversation had
+the girl unawares gleaned these treasures. She thought it even when
+forced to feel that her pupil knew much on subjects whereof she knew
+little. The idea was not logical, but Hortense had perfect faith in it.
+
+Mademoiselle, who prided herself on possessing "un esprit positif," and
+on entertaining a decided preference for dry studies, kept her young
+cousin to the same as closely as she could. She worked her unrelentingly
+at the grammar of the French language, assigning her, as the most
+improving exercise she could devise, interminable "analyses logiques."
+These "analyses" were by no means a source of particular pleasure to
+Caroline; she thought she could have learned French just as well without
+them, and grudged excessively the time spent in pondering over
+"propositions, principales, et incidents;" in deciding the "incidente
+determinative," and the "incidente applicative;" in examining whether
+the proposition was "pleine," "elliptique," or "implicite." Sometimes
+she lost herself in the maze, and when so lost she would, now and then
+(while Hortense was rummaging her drawers upstairs--an unaccountable
+occupation in which she spent a large portion of each day, arranging,
+disarranging, rearranging, and counter-arranging), carry her book to
+Robert in the counting-house, and get the rough place made smooth by his
+aid. Mr. Moore possessed a clear, tranquil brain of his own. Almost as
+soon as he looked at Caroline's little difficulties they seemed to
+dissolve beneath his eye. In two minutes he would explain all, in two
+words give the key to the puzzle. She thought if Hortense could only
+teach like him, how much faster she might learn! Repaying him by an
+admiring and grateful smile, rather shed at his feet than lifted to his
+face, she would leave the mill reluctantly to go back to the cottage,
+and then, while she completed the exercise, or worked out the sum (for
+Mdlle. Moore taught her arithmetic too), she would wish nature had made
+her a boy instead of a girl, that she might ask Robert to let her be his
+clerk, and sit with him in the counting-house, instead of sitting with
+Hortense in the parlour.
+
+Occasionally--but this happened very rarely--she spent the evening at
+Hollow's Cottage. Sometimes during these visits Moore was away attending
+a market; sometimes he was gone to Mr. Yorke's; often he was engaged
+with a male visitor in another room; but sometimes, too, he was at home,
+disengaged, free to talk with Caroline. When this was the case, the
+evening hours passed on wings of light; they were gone before they were
+counted. There was no room in England so pleasant as that small parlour
+when the three cousins occupied it. Hortense, when she was not teaching,
+or scolding, or cooking, was far from ill-humoured; it was her custom to
+relax towards evening, and to be kind to her young English kinswoman.
+There was a means, too, of rendering her delightful, by inducing her to
+take her guitar and sing and play. She then became quite good-natured.
+And as she played with skill, and had a well-toned voice, it was not
+disagreeable to listen to her. It would have been absolutely agreeable,
+except that her formal and self-important character modulated her
+strains, as it impressed her manners and moulded her countenance.
+
+Mr. Moore, released from the business yoke, was, if not lively himself,
+a willing spectator of Caroline's liveliness, a complacent listener to
+her talk, a ready respondent to her questions. He was something
+agreeable to sit near, to hover round, to address and look at. Sometimes
+he was better than this--almost animated, quite gentle and friendly.
+
+The drawback was that by the next morning he was sure to be frozen up
+again; and however much he seemed, in his quiet way, to enjoy these
+social evenings, he rarely contrived their recurrence. This circumstance
+puzzled the inexperienced head of his cousin. "If I had a means of
+happiness at my command," she thought, "I would employ that means often.
+I would keep it bright with use, and not let it lie for weeks aside,
+till it gets rusty."
+
+Yet she was careful not to put in practice her own theory. Much as she
+liked an evening visit to the cottage, she never paid one unasked.
+Often, indeed, when pressed by Hortense to come, she would refuse,
+because Robert did not second, or but slightly seconded the request.
+This morning was the first time he had ever, of his own unprompted will,
+given her an invitation; and then he had spoken so kindly that in
+hearing him she had received a sense of happiness sufficient to keep her
+glad for the whole day.
+
+The morning passed as usual. Mademoiselle, ever breathlessly busy, spent
+it in bustling from kitchen to parlour, now scolding Sarah, now looking
+over Caroline's exercise or hearing her repetition-lesson. However
+faultlessly these tasks were achieved, she never commended: it was a
+maxim with her that praise is inconsistent with a teacher's dignity, and
+that blame, in more or less unqualified measure, is indispensable to it.
+She thought incessant reprimand, severe or slight, quite necessary to
+the maintenance of her authority; and if no possible error was to be
+found in the lesson, it was the pupil's carriage, or air, or dress, or
+mien, which required correction.
+
+The usual affray took place about the dinner, which meal, when Sarah at
+last brought it into the room, she almost flung upon the table, with a
+look that expressed quite plainly, "I never dished such stuff i' my life
+afore; it's not fit for dogs." Notwithstanding Sarah's scorn, it was a
+savoury repast enough. The soup was a sort of purée of dried peas, which
+mademoiselle had prepared amidst bitter lamentations that in this
+desolate country of England no haricot beans were to be had. Then came a
+dish of meat--nature unknown, but supposed to be
+miscellaneous--singularly chopped up with crumbs of bread, seasoned
+uniquely though not unpleasantly, and baked in a mould--a queer but by
+no means unpalatable dish. Greens, oddly bruised, formed the
+accompanying vegetable; and a pâté of fruit, conserved after a recipe
+devised by Madame Gérard Moore's "grand'mère," and from the taste of
+which it appeared probable that "mélasse" had been substituted for
+sugar, completed the dinner.
+
+Caroline had no objection to this Belgian cookery--indeed she rather
+liked it for a change; and it was well she did so, for had she evinced
+any disrelish thereof, such manifestation would have injured her in
+mademoiselle's good graces for ever; a positive crime might have been
+more easily pardoned than a symptom of distaste for the foreign
+comestibles.
+
+Soon after dinner Caroline coaxed her governess-cousin upstairs to
+dress. This manœuvre required management. To have hinted that the
+jupon, camisole, and curl-papers were odious objects, or indeed other
+than quite meritorious points, would have been a felony. Any premature
+attempt to urge their disappearance was therefore unwise, and would be
+likely to issue in the persevering wear of them during the whole day.
+Carefully avoiding rocks and quicksands, however, the pupil, on pretence
+of requiring a change of scene, contrived to get the teacher aloft; and,
+once in the bedroom, she persuaded her that it was not worth while
+returning thither, and that she might as well make her toilet now; and
+while mademoiselle delivered a solemn homily on her own surpassing merit
+in disregarding all frivolities of fashion, Caroline denuded her of the
+camisole, invested her with a decent gown, arranged her collar, hair,
+etc., and made her quite presentable. But Hortense would put the
+finishing touches herself, and these finishing touches consisted in a
+thick handkerchief tied round the throat, and a large, servant-like
+black apron, which spoiled everything. On no account would mademoiselle
+have appeared in her own house without the thick handkerchief and the
+voluminous apron. The first was a positive matter of morality--it was
+quite improper not to wear a fichu; the second was the ensign of a good
+housewife--she appeared to think that by means of it she somehow
+effected a large saving in her brother's income. She had, with her own
+hands, made and presented to Caroline similar equipments; and the only
+serious quarrel they had ever had, and which still left a soreness in
+the elder cousin's soul, had arisen from the refusal of the younger one
+to accept of and profit by these elegant presents.
+
+"I wear a high dress and a collar," said Caroline, "and I should feel
+suffocated with a handkerchief in addition; and my short aprons do quite
+as well as that very long one. I would rather make no change."
+
+Yet Hortense, by dint of perseverance, would probably have compelled her
+to make a change, had not Mr. Moore chanced to overhear a dispute on the
+subject, and decided that Caroline's little aprons would suffice, and
+that, in his opinion, as she was still but a child, she might for the
+present dispense with the fichu, especially as her curls were long, and
+almost touched her shoulders.
+
+There was no appeal against Robert's opinion, therefore his sister was
+compelled to yield; but she disapproved entirely of the piquant neatness
+of Caroline's costume, and the ladylike grace of her appearance.
+Something more solid and homely she would have considered "beaucoup plus
+convenable."
+
+The afternoon was devoted to sewing. Mademoiselle, like most Belgian
+ladies, was specially skilful with her needle. She by no means thought
+it waste of time to devote unnumbered hours to fine embroidery,
+sight-destroying lace-work, marvellous netting and knitting, and, above
+all, to most elaborate stocking-mending. She would give a day to the
+mending of two holes in a stocking any time, and think her "mission"
+nobly fulfilled when she had accomplished it. It was another of
+Caroline's troubles to be condemned to learn this foreign style of
+darning, which was done stitch by stitch, so as exactly to imitate the
+fabric of the stocking itself--a wearifu' process, but considered by
+Hortense Gérard, and by her ancestresses before her for long generations
+back, as one of the first "duties of a woman." She herself had had a
+needle, cotton, and a fearfully torn stocking put into her hand while
+she yet wore a child's coif on her little black head; her "hauts faits"
+in the darning line had been exhibited to company ere she was six years
+old; and when she first discovered that Caroline was profoundly ignorant
+of this most essential of attainments, she could have wept with pity
+over her miserably-neglected youth.
+
+No time did she lose in seeking up a hopeless pair of hose, of which the
+heels were entirely gone, and in setting the ignorant English girl to
+repair the deficiency. This task had been commenced two years ago, and
+Caroline had the stockings in her work-bag yet. She did a few rows every
+day, by way of penance for the expiation of her sins. They were a
+grievous burden to her; she would much have liked to put them in the
+fire; and once Mr. Moore, who had observed her sitting and sighing over
+them, had proposed a private incremation in the counting-house; but to
+this proposal Caroline knew it would have been impolitic to accede--the
+result could only be a fresh pair of hose, probably in worse condition.
+She adhered, therefore, to the ills she knew.
+
+All the afternoon the two ladies sat and sewed, till the eyes and
+fingers, and even the spirits of one of them, were weary. The sky since
+dinner had darkened; it had begun to rain again, to pour fast. Secret
+fears began to steal on Caroline that Robert would be persuaded by Mr.
+Sykes or Mr. Yorke to remain at Whinbury till it cleared, and of that
+there appeared no present chance. Five o'clock struck, and time stole
+on; still the clouds streamed. A sighing wind whispered in the
+roof-trees of the cottage; day seemed already closing; the parlour fire
+shed on the clear hearth a glow ruddy as at twilight.
+
+"It will not be fair till the moon rises," pronounced Mademoiselle
+Moore, "consequently I feel assured that my brother will not return till
+then. Indeed I should be sorry if he did. We will have coffee. It would
+be vain to wait for him."
+
+"I am tired. May I leave my work now, cousin?"
+
+"You may, since it grows too dark to see to do it well. Fold it up; put
+it carefully in your bag; then step into the kitchen and desire Sarah to
+bring in the goûter, or tea, as you call it."
+
+"But it has not yet struck six. He may still come."
+
+"He will not, I tell you. I can calculate his movements. I understand my
+brother."
+
+Suspense is irksome, disappointment bitter. All the world has, some
+time or other, felt that. Caroline, obedient to orders, passed into the
+kitchen. Sarah was making a dress for herself at the table.
+
+"You are to bring in coffee," said the young lady in a spiritless tone;
+and then she leaned her arm and head against the kitchen mantelpiece,
+and hung listlessly over the fire.
+
+"How low you seem, miss! But it's all because your cousin keeps you so
+close to work. It's a shame!"
+
+"Nothing of the kind, Sarah," was the brief reply.
+
+"Oh! but I know it is. You're fit to cry just this minute, for nothing
+else but because you've sat still the whole day. It would make a kitten
+dull to be mewed up so."
+
+"Sarah, does your master often come home early from market when it is
+wet?"
+
+"Never, hardly; but just to-day, for some reason, he has made a
+difference."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"He is come. I am certain I saw Murgatroyd lead his horse into the yard
+by the back-way, when I went to get some water at the pump five minutes
+since. He was in the counting-house with Joe Scott, I believe."
+
+"You are mistaken."
+
+"What should I be mistaken for? I know his horse surely?"
+
+"But you did not see himself?"
+
+"I heard him speak, though. He was saying something to Joe Scott about
+having settled all concerning ways and means, and that there would be a
+new set of frames in the mill before another week passed, and that this
+time he would get four soldiers from Stilbro' barracks to guard the
+wagon."
+
+"Sarah, are you making a gown?"
+
+"Yes. Is it a handsome one?"
+
+"Beautiful! Get the coffee ready. I'll finish cutting out that sleeve
+for you, and I'll give you some trimming for it. I have some narrow
+satin ribbon of a colour that will just match it."
+
+"You're very kind, miss."
+
+"Be quick; there's a good girl. But first put your master's shoes on the
+hearth: he will take his boots off when he comes in. I hear him; he is
+coming."
+
+"Miss, you are cutting the stuff wrong."
+
+"So I am; but it is only a snip. There is no harm done."
+
+The kitchen door opened; Mr. Moore entered, very wet and cold. Caroline
+half turned from her dressmaking occupation, but renewed it for a
+moment, as if to gain a minute's time for some purpose. Bent over the
+dress, her face was hidden; there was an attempt to settle her features
+and veil their expression, which failed. When she at last met Mr. Moore,
+her countenance beamed.
+
+"We had ceased to expect you. They asserted you would not come," she
+said.
+
+"But I promised to return soon. _You_ expected me, I suppose?"
+
+"No, Robert; I dared not when it rained so fast. And you are wet and
+chilled. Change everything. If you took cold, I should--we should blame
+ourselves in some measure."
+
+"I am not wet through: my riding-coat is waterproof. Dry shoes are all I
+require. There--the fire is pleasant after facing the cold wind and rain
+for a few miles."
+
+He stood on the kitchen hearth; Caroline stood beside him. Mr. Moore,
+while enjoying the genial glow, kept his eyes directed towards the
+glittering brasses on the shelf above. Chancing for an instant to look
+down, his glance rested on an uplifted face, flushed, smiling, happy,
+shaded with silky curls, lit with fine eyes. Sarah was gone into the
+parlour with the tray; a lecture from her mistress detained her there.
+Moore placed his hand a moment on his young cousin's shoulder, stooped,
+and left a kiss on her forehead.
+
+"Oh!" said she, as if the action had unsealed her lips, "I was miserable
+when I thought you would not come. I am almost too happy now. Are you
+happy, Robert? Do you like to come home?"
+
+"I think I do--to-night, at least."
+
+"Are you certain you are not fretting about your frames, and your
+business, and the war?"
+
+"Not just now."
+
+"Are you positive you don't feel Hollow's Cottage too small for you, and
+narrow, and dismal?"
+
+"At this moment, no."
+
+"Can you affirm that you are not bitter at heart because rich and great
+people forget you?"
+
+"No more questions. You are mistaken if you think I am anxious to curry
+favour with rich and great people. I only want means--a position--a
+career."
+
+"Which your own talent and goodness shall win you. You were made to be
+great; you _shall_ be great."
+
+"I wonder now, if you spoke honestly out of your heart, what recipe you
+would give me for acquiring this same greatness; but I know it--better
+than you know it yourself. Would it be efficacious? Would it work?
+Yes--poverty, misery, bankruptcy. Oh, life is not what you think it,
+Lina!"
+
+"But you are what I think you."
+
+"I am not."
+
+"You are better, then?"
+
+"Far worse."
+
+"No; far better. I know you are good."
+
+"How do you know it?"
+
+"You look so, and I feel you _are_ so."
+
+"Where do you feel it?"
+
+"In my heart."
+
+"Ah! You judge me with your heart, Lina: you should judge me with your
+head."
+
+"I do; and then I am quite proud of you. Robert, you cannot tell all my
+thoughts about you."
+
+Mr. Moore's dark face mustered colour; his lips smiled, and yet were
+compressed; his eyes laughed, and yet he resolutely knit his brow.
+
+"Think meanly of me, Lina," said he. "Men, in general, are a sort of
+scum, very different to anything of which you have an idea. I make no
+pretension to be better than my fellows."
+
+"If you did, I should not esteem you so much. It is because you are
+modest that I have such confidence in your merit."
+
+"Are you flattering me?" he demanded, turning sharply upon her, and
+searching her face with an eye of acute penetration.
+
+"No," she said softly, laughing at his sudden quickness. She seemed to
+think it unnecessary to proffer any eager disavowal of the charge.
+
+"You don't care whether I think you flatter me or not?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You are so secure of your own intentions?"
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+"What are they, Caroline?"
+
+"Only to ease my mind by expressing for once part of what I think, and
+then to make you better satisfied with yourself."
+
+"By assuring me that my kinswoman is my sincere friend?"
+
+"Just so. I am your sincere friend, Robert."
+
+"And I am--what chance and change shall make me, Lina."
+
+"Not my enemy, however?"
+
+The answer was cut short by Sarah and her mistress entering the kitchen
+together in some commotion. They had been improving the time which Mr.
+Moore and Miss Helstone had spent in dialogue by a short dispute on the
+subject of "café au lait," which Sarah said was the queerest mess she
+ever saw, and a waste of God's good gifts, as it was "the nature of
+coffee to be boiled in water," and which mademoiselle affirmed to be "un
+breuvage royal," a thousand times too good for the mean person who
+objected to it.
+
+The former occupants of the kitchen now withdrew into the parlour.
+Before Hortense followed them thither, Caroline had only time again to
+question, "Not my enemy, Robert?" And Moore, Quaker-like, had replied
+with another query, "Could I be?" And then, seating himself at the
+table, had settled Caroline at his side.
+
+Caroline scarcely heard mademoiselle's explosion of wrath when she
+rejoined them; the long declamation about the "conduite indigne de cette
+méchante créature" sounded in her ear as confusedly as the agitated
+rattling of the china. Robert laughed a little at it, in very subdued
+sort, and then, politely and calmly entreating his sister to be
+tranquil, assured her that if it would yield her any satisfaction, she
+should have her choice of an attendant amongst all the girls in his
+mill. Only he feared they would scarcely suit her, as they were most of
+them, he was informed, completely ignorant of household work; and pert
+and self-willed as Sarah was, she was, perhaps, no worse than the
+majority of the women of her class.
+
+Mademoiselle admitted the truth of this conjecture: according to her,
+"ces paysannes anglaises étaient tout insupportables." What would she
+not give for some "bonne cuisinière anversoise," with the high cap,
+short petticoat, and decent sabots proper to her class--something
+better, indeed, than an insolent coquette in a flounced gown, and
+absolutely without cap! (For Sarah, it appears, did not partake the
+opinion of St. Paul that "it is a shame for a woman to go with her head
+uncovered;" but, holding rather a contrary doctrine, resolutely refused
+to imprison in linen or muslin the plentiful tresses of her yellow hair,
+which it was her wont to fasten up smartly with a comb behind, and on
+Sundays to wear curled in front.)
+
+"Shall I try and get you an Antwerp girl?" asked Mr. Moore, who, stern
+in public, was on the whole very kind in private.
+
+"Merci du cadeau!" was the answer. "An Antwerp girl would not stay here
+ten days, sneered at as she would be by all the young coquines in your
+factory;" then softening, "You are very good, dear brother--excuse my
+petulance--but truly my domestic trials are severe, yet they are
+probably my destiny; for I recollect that our revered mother experienced
+similar sufferings, though she had the choice of all the best servants
+in Antwerp. Domestics are in all countries a spoiled and unruly set."
+
+Mr. Moore had also certain reminiscences about the trials of his revered
+mother. A good mother she had been to him, and he honoured her memory;
+but he recollected that she kept a hot kitchen of it in Antwerp, just as
+his faithful sister did here in England. Thus, therefore, he let the
+subject drop, and when the coffee-service was removed, proceeded to
+console Hortense by fetching her music-book and guitar; and having
+arranged the ribbon of the instrument round her neck with a quiet
+fraternal kindness he knew to be all-powerful in soothing her most
+ruffled moods, he asked her to give him some of their mother's favourite
+songs.
+
+Nothing refines like affection. Family jarring vulgarizes; family union
+elevates. Hortense, pleased with her brother, and grateful to him,
+looked, as she touched her guitar, almost graceful, almost handsome; her
+everyday fretful look was gone for a moment, and was replaced by a
+"sourire plein de bonté." She sang the songs he asked for, with feeling;
+they reminded her of a parent to whom she had been truly attached; they
+reminded her of her young days. She observed, too, that Caroline
+listened with naïve interest; this augmented her good-humour; and the
+exclamation at the close of the song, "I wish I could sing and play like
+Hortense!" achieved the business, and rendered her charming for the
+evening.
+
+It is true a little lecture to Caroline followed, on the vanity of
+_wishing_ and the duty of _trying_. "As Rome," it was suggested, "had
+not been built in a day, so neither had Mademoiselle Gérard Moore's
+education been completed in a week, or by merely _wishing_ to be clever.
+It was effort that had accomplished that great work. She was ever
+remarkable for her perseverance, for her industry. Her masters had
+remarked that it was as delightful as it was uncommon to find so much
+talent united with so much solidity, and so on." Once on the theme of
+her own merits, mademoiselle was fluent.
+
+Cradled at last in blissful self-complacency, she took her knitting, and
+sat down tranquil. Drawn curtains, a clear fire, a softly-shining lamp,
+gave now to the little parlour its best, its evening charm. It is
+probable that the three there present felt this charm. They all looked
+happy.
+
+"What shall we do now, Caroline?" asked Mr. Moore, returning to his seat
+beside his cousin.
+
+"What shall we do, Robert?" repeated she playfully. "You decide."
+
+"Not play at chess?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Nor draughts, nor backgammon?"
+
+"No, no; we both hate silent games that only keep one's hands employed,
+don't we?"
+
+"I believe we do. Then shall we talk scandal?"
+
+"About whom? Are we sufficiently interested in anybody to take a
+pleasure in pulling their character to pieces?"
+
+"A question that comes to the point. For my part, unamiable as it
+sounds, I must say no."
+
+"And I too. But it is strange, though we want no third--fourth, I mean
+(she hastily and with contrition glanced at Hortense), living person
+among us--so selfish we are in our happiness--though we don't want to
+think of the present existing world, it would be pleasant to go back to
+the past, to hear people that have slept for generations in graves that
+are perhaps no longer graves now, but gardens and fields, speak to us
+and tell us their thoughts, and impart their ideas."
+
+"Who shall be the speaker? What language shall he utter? French?"
+
+"Your French forefathers don't speak so sweetly, nor so solemnly, nor so
+impressively as your English ancestors, Robert. To-night you shall be
+entirely English. You shall read an English book."
+
+"An old English book?"
+
+"Yes, an old English book--one that you like; and I will choose a part
+of it that is toned quite in harmony with something in you. It shall
+waken your nature, fill your mind with music; it shall pass like a
+skilful hand over your heart, and make its strings sound. Your heart is
+a lyre, Robert; but the lot of your life has not been a minstrel to
+sweep it, and it is often silent. Let glorious William come near and
+touch it. You will see how he will draw the English power and melody out
+of its chords."
+
+"I must read Shakespeare?"
+
+"You must have his spirit before you; you must hear his voice with your
+mind's ear; you must take some of his soul into yours."
+
+"With a view to making me better? Is it to operate like a sermon?"
+
+"It is to stir you, to give you new sensations. It is to make you feel
+your life strongly--not only your virtues, but your vicious, perverse
+points."
+
+"Dieu! que dit-elle?" cried Hortense, who hitherto had been counting
+stitches in her knitting, and had not much attended to what was said,
+but whose ear these two strong words caught with a tweak.
+
+"Never mind her, sister; let her talk. Now just let her say anything she
+pleases to-night. She likes to come down hard upon your brother
+sometimes. It amuses me, so let her alone."
+
+Caroline, who, mounted on a chair, had been rummaging the bookcase,
+returned with a book.
+
+"Here's Shakespeare," she said, "and there's 'Coriolanus.' Now, read,
+and discover by the feelings the reading will give you at once how low
+and how high you are."
+
+"Come, then, sit near me, and correct when I mispronounce."
+
+"I am to be the teacher then, and you my pupil?"
+
+"Ainsi, soit-il!"
+
+"And Shakespeare is our science, since we are going to study?"
+
+"It appears so."
+
+"And you are not going to be French, and sceptical, and sneering? You
+are not going to think it a sign of wisdom to refuse to admire?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"If you do, Robert, I'll take Shakespeare away; and I'll shrivel up
+within myself, and put on my bonnet and go home."
+
+"Sit down. Here I begin."
+
+"One minute, if you please, brother," interrupted mademoiselle. "When
+the gentleman of a family reads, the ladies should always
+sew.--Caroline, dear child, take your embroidery. You may get three
+sprigs done to-night."
+
+Caroline looked dismayed. "I can't see by lamp-light; my eyes are tired,
+and I can't do two things well at once. If I sew, I cannot listen; if I
+listen, I cannot sew."
+
+"Fi, donc! Quel enfantillage!" began Hortense. Mr. Moore, as usual,
+suavely interposed.
+
+"Permit her to neglect the embroidery for this evening. I wish her whole
+attention to be fixed on my accent; and to ensure this, she must follow
+the reading with her eyes--she must look at the book."
+
+He placed it between them, reposed his arm on the back of Caroline's
+chair, and thus began to read.
+
+The very first scene in "Coriolanus" came with smart relish to his
+intellectual palate, and still as he read he warmed. He delivered the
+haughty speech of Caius Marcius to the starving citizens with unction;
+he did not say he thought his irrational pride right, but he seemed to
+feel it so. Caroline looked up at him with a singular smile.
+
+"There's a vicious point hit already," she said. "You sympathize with
+that proud patrician who does not sympathize with his famished
+fellow-men, and insults them. There, go on." He proceeded. The warlike
+portions did not rouse him much; he said all that was out of date, or
+should be; the spirit displayed was barbarous; yet the encounter
+single-handed between Marcius and Tullus Aufidius he delighted in. As he
+advanced, he forgot to criticise; it was evident he appreciated the
+power, the truth of each portion; and, stepping out of the narrow line
+of private prejudices, began to revel in the large picture of human
+nature, to feel the reality stamped upon the characters who were
+speaking from that page before him.
+
+He did not read the comic scenes well; and Caroline, taking the book out
+of his hand, read these parts for him. From her he seemed to enjoy them,
+and indeed she gave them with a spirit no one could have expected of
+her, with a pithy expression with which she seemed gifted on the spot,
+and for that brief moment only. It may be remarked, in passing, that the
+general character of her conversation that evening, whether serious or
+sprightly, grave or gay, was as of something untaught, unstudied,
+intuitive, fitful--when once gone, no more to be reproduced as it had
+been than the glancing ray of the meteor, than the tints of the dew-gem,
+than the colour or form of the sunset cloud, than the fleeting and
+glittering ripple varying the flow of a rivulet.
+
+Coriolanus in glory, Coriolanus in disaster, Coriolanus banished,
+followed like giant shades one after the other. Before the vision of the
+banished man Moore's spirit seemed to pause. He stood on the hearth of
+Aufidius's hall, facing the image of greatness fallen, but greater than
+ever in that low estate. He saw "the grim appearance," the dark face
+"bearing command in it," "the noble vessel with its tackle torn." With
+the revenge of Caius Marcius, Moore perfectly sympathized; he was not
+scandalized by it; and again Caroline whispered, "There I see another
+glimpse of brotherhood in error."
+
+The march on Rome, the mother's supplication, the long resistance, the
+final yielding of bad passions to good, which ever must be the case in a
+nature worthy the epithet of noble, the rage of Aufidius at what he
+considered his ally's weakness, the death of Coriolanus, the final
+sorrow of his great enemy--all scenes made of condensed truth and
+strength--came on in succession and carried with them in their deep,
+fast flow the heart and mind of reader and listener.
+
+"Now, have you felt Shakespeare?" asked Caroline, some ten minutes after
+her cousin had closed the book.
+
+"I think so."
+
+"And have you felt anything in Coriolanus like you?"
+
+"Perhaps I have."
+
+"Was he not faulty as well as great?"
+
+Moore nodded.
+
+"And what was his fault? What made him hated by the citizens? What
+caused him to be banished by his countrymen?"
+
+"What do you think it was?"
+
+"I ask again--
+
+                      'Whether was it pride,
+    Which out of daily fortune ever taints
+    The happy man? whether defect of judgment,
+    To fail in the disposing of those chances
+    Which he was lord of? or whether nature,
+    Not to be other than one thing, not moving
+    From the casque to the cushion, but commanding peace
+    Even with the same austerity and garb
+    As he controlled the war?'"
+
+"Well, answer yourself, Sphinx."
+
+"It was a spice of all; and you must not be proud to your workpeople;
+you must not neglect chances of soothing them; and you must not be of an
+inflexible nature, uttering a request as austerely as if it were a
+command."
+
+"That is the moral you tack to the play. What puts such notions into
+your head?"
+
+"A wish for your good, a care for your safety, dear Robert, and a fear,
+caused by many things which I have heard lately, that you will come to
+harm."
+
+"Who tells you these things?"
+
+"I hear my uncle talk about you. He praises your hard spirit, your
+determined cast of mind, your scorn of low enemies, your resolution not
+'to truckle to the mob,' as he says."
+
+"And would you have me truckle to them?"
+
+"No, not for the world. I never wish you to lower yourself; but somehow
+I cannot help thinking it unjust to include all poor working-people
+under the general and insulting name of 'the mob,' and continually to
+think of them and treat them haughtily."
+
+"You are a little democrat, Caroline. If your uncle knew, what would he
+say?"
+
+"I rarely talk to my uncle, as you know, and never about such things. He
+thinks everything but sewing and cooking above women's comprehension,
+and out of their line."
+
+"And do you fancy you comprehend the subjects on which you advise me?"
+
+"As far as they concern you, I comprehend them. I know it would be
+better for you to be loved by your workpeople than to be hated by them,
+and I am sure that kindness is more likely to win their regard than
+pride. If you were proud and cold to me and Hortense, should we love
+you? When you are cold to me, as you _are_ sometimes, can I venture to
+be affectionate in return?"
+
+"Now, Lina, I've had my lesson both in languages and ethics, with a
+touch on politics; it is your turn. Hortense tells me you were much
+taken by a little piece of poetry you learned the other day, a piece by
+poor André Chénier--'La Jeune Captive.' Do you remember it still?"
+
+"I think so."
+
+"Repeat it, then. Take your time and mind your accent; especially let us
+have no English _u_'s."
+
+Caroline, beginning in a low, rather tremulous voice, but gaining
+courage as she proceeded, repeated the sweet verses of Chénier. The last
+three stanzas she rehearsed well.
+
+    "Mon beau voyage encore est si loin de sa fin!
+     Je pars, et des ormeaux qui bordent le chemin
+       J'ai passé le premiers à peine.
+     Au banquet de la vie à peine commencé,
+     Un instant seulement mes lèvres ont pressé
+       La coupe en mes mains encore pleine.
+
+    "Je ne suis qu'au printemps--je veux voir la moisson;
+     Et comme le soleil, de saison en saison,
+       Je veux achever mon année,
+     Brillante sur ma tige, et l'honneur du jardin
+     Je n'ai vu luire encore que les feux du matin,
+       Je veux achever ma journée!"
+
+Moore listened at first with his eyes cast down, but soon he furtively
+raised them. Leaning back in his chair he could watch Caroline without
+her perceiving where his gaze was fixed. Her cheek had a colour, her
+eyes a light, her countenance an expression this evening which would
+have made even plain features striking; but there was not the grievous
+defect of plainness to pardon in her case. The sunshine was not shed on
+rough barrenness; it fell on soft bloom. Each lineament was turned with
+grace; the whole aspect was pleasing. At the present moment--animated,
+interested, touched--she might be called beautiful. Such a face was
+calculated to awaken not only the calm sentiment of esteem, the distant
+one of admiration, but some feeling more tender, genial,
+intimate--friendship, perhaps, affection, interest. When she had
+finished, she turned to Moore, and met his eye.
+
+"Is that pretty well repeated?" she inquired, smiling like any happy,
+docile child.
+
+"I really don't know."
+
+"Why don't you know? Have you not listened?"
+
+"Yes--and looked. You are fond of poetry, Lina?"
+
+"When I meet with _real_ poetry, I cannot rest till I have learned it by
+heart, and so made it partly mine."
+
+Mr. Moore now sat silent for several minutes. It struck nine o'clock.
+Sarah entered, and said that Mr. Helstone's servant was come for Miss
+Caroline.
+
+"Then the evening is gone already," she observed, "and it will be long,
+I suppose, before I pass another here."
+
+Hortense had been for some time nodding over her knitting; fallen into a
+doze now, she made no response to the remark.
+
+"You would have no objection to come here oftener of an evening?"
+inquired Robert, as he took her folded mantle from the side-table, where
+it still lay, and carefully wrapped it round her.
+
+"I like to come here; but I have no desire to be intrusive. I am not
+hinting to be asked; you must understand that."
+
+"Oh! I understand thee, child. You sometimes lecture me for wishing to
+be rich, Lina; but if I _were_ rich, you should live here always--at any
+rate, you should live with me wherever my habitation might be."
+
+"That would be pleasant; and if you were poor--ever so poor--it would
+still be pleasant. Good-night, Robert."
+
+"I promised to walk with you up to the rectory."
+
+"I know you did; but I thought you had forgotten, and I hardly knew how
+to remind you, though I wished to do it. But would you like to go? It is
+a cold night, and as Fanny is come, there is no necessity----"
+
+"Here is your muff; don't wake Hortense--come."
+
+The half mile to the rectory was soon traversed. They parted in the
+garden without kiss, scarcely with a pressure of hands; yet Robert sent
+his cousin in excited and joyously troubled. He had been singularly kind
+to her that day--not in phrase, compliment, profession, but in manner,
+in look, and in soft and friendly tones.
+
+For himself, he came home grave, almost morose. As he stood leaning on
+his own yard-gate, musing in the watery moonlight all alone, the hushed,
+dark mill before him, the hill-environed hollow round, he exclaimed,
+abruptly,--
+
+"This won't do! There's weakness--there's downright ruin in all this.
+However," he added, dropping his voice, "the frenzy is quite temporary.
+I know it very well; I have had it before. It will be gone to-morrow."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+The Curates at Tea.
+
+
+Caroline Helstone was just eighteen years old, and at eighteen the true
+narrative of life is yet to be commenced. Before that time we sit
+listening to a tale, a marvellous fiction, delightful sometimes, and sad
+sometimes, almost always unreal. Before that time our world is heroic,
+its inhabitants half-divine or semi-demon; its scenes are dream-scenes;
+darker woods and stranger hills, brighter skies, more dangerous waters,
+sweeter flowers, more tempting fruits, wider plains, drearier deserts,
+sunnier fields than are found in nature, overspread our enchanted globe.
+What a moon we gaze on before that time! How the trembling of our hearts
+at her aspect bears witness to its unutterable beauty! As to our sun, it
+is a burning heaven--the world of gods.
+
+At that time, at eighteen, drawing near the confines of illusive, void
+dreams, Elf-land lies behind us, the shores of Reality rise in front.
+These shores are yet distant; they look so blue, soft, gentle, we long
+to reach them. In sunshine we see a greenness beneath the azure, as of
+spring meadows; we catch glimpses of silver lines, and imagine the roll
+of living waters. Could we but reach this land, we think to hunger and
+thirst no more; whereas many a wilderness, and often the flood of death,
+or some stream of sorrow as cold and almost as black as death, is to be
+crossed ere true bliss can be tasted. Every joy that life gives must be
+earned ere it is secured; and how hardly earned, those only know who
+have wrestled for great prizes. The heart's blood must gem with red
+beads the brow of the combatant, before the wreath of victory rustles
+over it.
+
+At eighteen we are not aware of this. Hope, when she smiles on us, and
+promises happiness to-morrow, is implicitly believed; Love, when he
+comes wandering like a lost angel to our door, is at once admitted,
+welcomed, embraced. His quiver is not seen; if his arrows penetrate,
+their wound is like a thrill of new life. There are no fears of poison,
+none of the barb which no leech's hand can extract. That perilous
+passion--an agony ever in some of its phases; with many, an agony
+throughout--is believed to be an unqualified good. In short, at eighteen
+the school of experience is to be entered, and her humbling, crushing,
+grinding, but yet purifying and invigorating lessons are yet to be
+learned.
+
+Alas, Experience! No other mentor has so wasted and frozen a face as
+yours, none wears a robe so black, none bears a rod so heavy, none with
+hand so inexorable draws the novice so sternly to his task, and forces
+him with authority so resistless to its acquirement. It is by your
+instructions alone that man or woman can ever find a safe track through
+life's wilds; without it, how they stumble, how they stray! On what
+forbidden grounds do they intrude, down what dread declivities are they
+hurled!
+
+Caroline, having been convoyed home by Robert, had no wish to pass what
+remained of the evening with her uncle. The room in which he sat was
+very sacred ground to her; she seldom intruded on it; and to-night she
+kept aloof till the bell rang for prayers. Part of the evening church
+service was the form of worship observed in Mr. Helstone's household. He
+read it in his usual nasal voice, clear, loud, and monotonous. The rite
+over, his niece, according to her wont, stepped up to him.
+
+"Good-night, uncle."
+
+"Hey! You've been gadding abroad all day--visiting, dining out, and what
+not!"
+
+"Only at the cottage."
+
+"And have you learned your lessons?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And made a shirt?"
+
+"Only part of one."
+
+"Well, that will do. Stick to the needle, learn shirt-making and
+gown-making and piecrust-making, and you'll be a clever woman some day.
+Go to bed now. I'm busy with a pamphlet here."
+
+Presently the niece was enclosed in her small bedroom, the door bolted,
+her white dressing-gown assumed, her long hair loosened and falling
+thick, soft, and wavy to her waist; and as, resting from the task of
+combing it out, she leaned her check on her hand and fixed her eyes on
+the carpet, before her rose, and close around her drew, the visions we
+see at eighteen years.
+
+Her thoughts were speaking with her, speaking pleasantly, as it seemed,
+for she smiled as she listened. She looked pretty meditating thus; but a
+brighter thing than she was in that apartment--the spirit of youthful
+Hope. According to this flattering prophet, she was to know
+disappointment, to feel chill no more; she had entered on the dawn of a
+summer day--no false dawn, but the true spring of morning--and her sun
+would quickly rise. Impossible for her now to suspect that she was the
+sport of delusion; her expectations seemed warranted, the foundation on
+which they rested appeared solid.
+
+"When people love, the next step is they marry," was her argument. "Now,
+I love Robert, and I feel sure that Robert loves me. I have thought so
+many a time before; to-day I _felt_ it. When I looked up at him after
+repeating Chénier's poem, his eyes (what handsome eyes he has!) sent the
+truth through my heart. Sometimes I am afraid to speak to him, lest I
+should be too frank, lest I should seem forward--for I have more than
+once regretted bitterly overflowing, superfluous words, and feared I had
+said more than he expected me to say, and that he would disapprove what
+he might deem my indiscretion; now, to-night I could have ventured to
+express any thought, he was so indulgent. How kind he was as we walked
+up the lane! He does not flatter or say foolish things; his love-making
+(friendship, I mean; of course I don't yet account him my lover, but I
+hope he will be so some day) is not like what we read of in books,--it
+is far better--original, quiet, manly, sincere. I _do_ like him; I would
+be an excellent wife to him if he did marry me; I would tell him of his
+faults (for he has a few faults), but I would study his comfort, and
+cherish him, and do my best to make him happy. Now, I am sure he will
+not be cold to-morrow. I feel almost certain that to-morrow evening he
+will either come here, or ask me to go there."
+
+She recommenced combing her hair, long as a mermaid's. Turning her head
+as she arranged it she saw her own face and form in the glass. Such
+reflections are soberizing to plain people: their own eyes are not
+enchanted with the image; they are confident then that the eyes of
+others can see in it no fascination. But the fair must naturally draw
+other conclusions: the picture is charming, and must charm. Caroline saw
+a shape, a head, that, daguerreotyped in that attitude and with that
+expression, would have been lovely. She could not choose but derive
+from the spectacle confirmation to her hopes. It was then in
+undiminished gladness she sought her couch.
+
+And in undiminished gladness she rose the next day. As she entered her
+uncle's breakfast-room, and with soft cheerfulness wished him
+good-morning, even that little man of bronze himself thought, for an
+instant, his niece was growing "a fine girl." Generally she was quiet
+and timid with him--very docile, but not communicative; this morning,
+however, she found many things to say. Slight topics alone might be
+discussed between them; for with a woman--a girl--Mr. Helstone would
+touch on no other. She had taken an early walk in the garden, and she
+told him what flowers were beginning to spring there; she inquired when
+the gardener was to come and trim the borders; she informed him that
+certain starlings were beginning to build their nests in the
+church-tower (Briarfield church was close to Briarfield rectory); she
+wondered the tolling of the bells in the belfry did not scare them.
+
+Mr. Helstone opined that "they were like other fools who had just
+paired--insensible to inconvenience just for the moment." Caroline, made
+perhaps a little too courageous by her temporary good spirits, here
+hazarded a remark of a kind she had never before ventured to make on
+observations dropped by her revered relative.
+
+"Uncle," said she, "whenever you speak of marriage you speak of it
+scornfully. Do you think people shouldn't marry?"
+
+"It is decidedly the wisest plan to remain single, especially for
+women."
+
+"Are all marriages unhappy?"
+
+"Millions of marriages are unhappy. If everybody confessed the truth,
+perhaps all are more or less so."
+
+"You are always vexed when you are asked to come and marry a couple.
+Why?"
+
+"Because one does not like to act as accessory to the commission of a
+piece of pure folly."
+
+Mr. Helstone spoke so readily, he seemed rather glad of the opportunity
+to give his niece a piece of his mind on this point. Emboldened by the
+impunity which had hitherto attended her questions, she went a little
+further.
+
+"But why," said she, "should it be pure folly? If two people like each
+other, why shouldn't they consent to live together?"
+
+"They tire of each other--they tire of each other in a month. A
+yokefellow is not a companion; he or she is a fellow-sufferer."
+
+It was by no means naïve simplicity which inspired Caroline's next
+remark; it was a sense of antipathy to such opinions, and of displeasure
+at him who held them.
+
+"One would think you had never been married, uncle. One would think you
+were an old bachelor."
+
+"Practically, I am so."
+
+"But you have been married. Why were you so inconsistent as to marry?"
+
+"Every man is mad once or twice in his life."
+
+"So you tired of my aunt, and my aunt of you, and you were miserable
+together?"
+
+Mr. Helstone pushed out his cynical lip, wrinkled his brown forehead,
+and gave an inarticulate grunt.
+
+"Did she not suit you? Was she not good-tempered? Did you not get used
+to her? Were you not sorry when she died?"
+
+"Caroline," said Mr. Helstone, bringing his hand slowly down to within
+an inch or two of the table, and then smiting it suddenly on the
+mahogany, "understand this: it is vulgar and puerile to confound
+generals with particulars. In every case there is the rule and there are
+the exceptions. Your questions are stupid and babyish. Ring the bell, if
+you have done breakfast."
+
+The breakfast was taken away, and that meal over, it was the general
+custom of uncle and niece to separate, and not to meet again till
+dinner; but to-day the niece, instead of quitting the room, went to the
+window-seat, and sat down there. Mr. Helstone looked round uneasily once
+or twice, as if he wished her away; but she was gazing from the window,
+and did not seem to mind him: so he continued the perusal of his morning
+paper--a particularly interesting one it chanced to be, as new movements
+had just taken place in the Peninsula, and certain columns of the
+journal were rich in long dispatches from General Lord Wellington. He
+little knew, meantime, what thoughts were busy in his niece's
+mind--thoughts the conversation of the past half-hour had revived but
+not generated; tumultuous were they now, as disturbed bees in a hive,
+but it was years since they had first made their cells in her brain.
+
+She was reviewing his character, his disposition, repeating his
+sentiments on marriage. Many a time had she reviewed them before, and
+sounded the gulf between her own mind and his; and then, on the other
+side of the wide and deep chasm, she had seen, and she now saw, another
+figure standing beside her uncle's--a strange shape, dim, sinister,
+scarcely earthly--the half-remembered image of her own father, James
+Helstone, Matthewson Helstone's brother.
+
+Rumours had reached her ear of what that father's character was; old
+servants had dropped hints; she knew, too, that he was not a good man,
+and that he was never kind to her. She recollected--a dark recollection
+it was--some weeks that she had spent with him in a great town
+somewhere, when she had had no maid to dress her or take care of her;
+when she had been shut up, day and night, in a high garret-room, without
+a carpet, with a bare uncurtained bed, and scarcely any other furniture;
+when he went out early every morning, and often forgot to return and
+give her her dinner during the day, and at night, when he came back, was
+like a madman, furious, terrible, or--still more painful--like an idiot,
+imbecile, senseless. She knew she had fallen ill in this place, and that
+one night, when she was very sick he had come raving into the room, and
+said he would kill her, for she was a burden to him. Her screams had
+brought aid; and from the moment she was then rescued from him she had
+never seen him, except as a dead man in his coffin.
+
+That was her father. Also she had a mother, though Mr. Helstone never
+spoke to her of that mother, though she could not remember having seen
+her; but that she was alive she knew. This mother was then the
+drunkard's wife. What had _their_ marriage been? Caroline, turning from
+the lattice, whence she had been watching the starlings (though without
+seeing them), in a low voice, and with a sad, bitter tone, thus broke
+the silence of the room,--
+
+"You term marriage miserable, I suppose, from what you saw of my father
+and mother's. If my mother suffered what I suffered when I was with
+papa, she must have had a dreadful life."
+
+Mr. Helstone, thus addressed, wheeled about in his chair, and looked
+over his spectacles at his niece. He was taken aback.
+
+Her father and mother! What had put it into her head to mention her
+father and mother, of whom he had never, during the twelve years she had
+lived with him, spoken to her? That the thoughts were self-matured, that
+she had any recollections or speculations about her parents, he could
+not fancy.
+
+"Your father and mother? Who has been talking to you about them?"
+
+"Nobody; but I remember something of what papa was, and I pity mamma.
+Where is she?"
+
+This "Where is she?" had been on Caroline's lips hundreds of times
+before, but till now she had never uttered it.
+
+"I hardly know," returned Mr. Helstone; "I was little acquainted with
+her. I have not heard from her for years: but wherever she is, she
+thinks nothing of you; she never inquires about you. I have reason to
+believe she does not wish to see you. Come, it is school-time. You go to
+your cousin at ten, don't you? The clock has struck."
+
+Perhaps Caroline would have said more; but Fanny, coming in, informed
+her master that the churchwardens wanted to speak to him in the vestry.
+He hastened to join them, and his niece presently set out for the
+cottage.
+
+The road from the rectory to Hollow's Mill inclined downwards; she ran,
+therefore, almost all the way. Exercise, the fresh air, the thought of
+seeing Robert, at least of being on his premises, in his vicinage,
+revived her somewhat depressed spirits quickly. Arriving in sight of the
+white house, and within hearing of the thundering mill and its rushing
+watercourse, the first thing she saw was Moore at his garden gate. There
+he stood, in his belted Holland blouse, a light cap covering his head,
+which undress costume suited him. He was looking down the lane, not in
+the direction of his cousin's approach. She stopped, withdrawing a
+little behind a willow, and studied his appearance.
+
+"He has not his peer," she thought. "He is as handsome as he is
+intelligent. What a keen eye he has! What clearly-cut, spirited
+features--thin and serious, but graceful! I do like his face, I do like
+his aspect, I do like him so much--better than any of those shuffling
+curates, for instance--better than anybody; bonny Robert!"
+
+She sought "bonny Robert's" presence speedily. For his part, when she
+challenged his sight, I believe he would have passed from before her
+eyes like a phantom, if he could; but being a tall fact, and no fiction,
+he was obliged to stand the greeting. He made it brief. It was
+cousin-like, brother-like, friend-like, anything but lover-like. The
+nameless charm of last night had left his manner: he was no longer the
+same man: or, at any rate, the same heart did not beat in his breast.
+Rude disappointment, sharp cross! At first the eager girl would not
+believe in the change, though she saw and felt it. It was difficult to
+withdraw her hand from his, till he had bestowed at least something like
+a kind pressure; it was difficult to turn her eyes from his eyes, till
+his looks had expressed something more and fonder than that cool
+welcome.
+
+A lover masculine so disappointed can speak and urge explanation, a
+lover feminine can say nothing; if she did, the result would be shame
+and anguish, inward remorse for self-treachery. Nature would brand such
+demonstration as a rebellion against her instincts, and would
+vindictively repay it afterwards by the thunderbolt of self-contempt
+smiting suddenly in secret. Take the matter as you find it: ask no
+questions, utter no remonstrances; it is your best wisdom. You expected
+bread, and you have got a stone: break your teeth on it, and don't
+shriek because the nerves are martyrized; do not doubt that your mental
+stomach--if you have such a thing--is strong as an ostrich's; the stone
+will digest. You held out your hand for an egg, and fate put into it a
+scorpion. Show no consternation: close your fingers firmly upon the
+gift; let it sting through your palm. Never mind; in time, after your
+hand and arm have swelled and quivered long with torture, the squeezed
+scorpion will die, and you will have learned the great lesson how to
+endure without a sob. For the whole remnant of your life, if you survive
+the test--some, it is said, die under it--you will be stronger, wiser,
+less sensitive. This you are not aware of, perhaps, at the time, and so
+cannot borrow courage of that hope. Nature, however, as has been
+intimated, is an excellent friend in such cases, sealing the lips,
+interdicting utterance, commanding a placid dissimulation--a
+dissimulation often wearing an easy and gay mien at first, settling down
+to sorrow and paleness in time, then passing away, and leaving a
+convenient stoicism, not the less fortifying because it is half-bitter.
+
+Half-bitter! Is that wrong? No; it should be bitter: bitterness is
+strength--it is a tonic. Sweet, mild force following acute suffering you
+find nowhere; to talk of it is delusion. There may be apathetic
+exhaustion after the rack. If energy remains, it will be rather a
+dangerous energy--deadly when confronted with injustice.
+
+Who has read the ballad of "Puir Mary Lee"--that old Scotch ballad,
+written I know not in what generation nor by what hand? Mary had been
+ill-used--probably in being made to believe that truth which was
+falsehood. She is not complaining, but she is sitting alone in the
+snowstorm, and you hear her thoughts. They are not the thoughts of a
+model heroine under her circumstances, but they are those of a
+deeply-feeling, strongly-resentful peasant-girl. Anguish has driven her
+from the ingle-nook of home to the white-shrouded and icy hills.
+Crouched under the "cauld drift," she recalls every image of
+horror--"the yellow-wymed ask," "the hairy adder," "the auld moon-bowing
+tyke," "the ghaist at e'en,", "the sour bullister," "the milk on the
+taed's back." She hates these, but "waur she hates Robin-a-Ree."
+
+    "Oh, ance I lived happily by yon bonny burn--
+       The warld was in love wi' me;
+     But now I maun sit 'neath the cauld drift and mourn,
+       And curse black Robin-a-Ree!
+
+    "Then whudder awa, thou bitter biting blast,
+       And sough through the scrunty tree,
+     And smoor me up in the snaw fu' fast,
+       And n'er let the sun me see!
+
+    "Oh, never melt awa, thou wreath o' snaw,
+       That's sae kind in graving me;
+     But hide me frae the scorn and guffaw
+       O' villains like Robin-a-Ree!"
+
+But what has been said in the last page or two is not germane to
+Caroline Helstone's feelings, or to the state of things between her and
+Robert Moore. Robert had done her no wrong; he had told her no lie; it
+was she that was to blame, if any one was. What bitterness her mind
+distilled should and would be poured on her own head. She had loved
+without being asked to love--a natural, sometimes an inevitable chance,
+but big with misery.
+
+Robert, indeed, had sometimes seemed to be fond of her; but why? Because
+she had made herself so pleasing to him, he could not, in spite of all
+his efforts, help testifying a state of feeling his judgment did not
+approve nor his will sanction. He was about to withdraw decidedly from
+intimate communication with her, because he did not choose to have his
+affections inextricably entangled, nor to be drawn, despite his reason,
+into a marriage he believed imprudent. Now, what was she to do? To give
+way to her feelings, or to vanquish them? To pursue him, or to turn
+upon herself? If she is weak, she will try the first expedient--will
+lose his esteem and win his aversion; if she has sense, she will be her
+own governor, and resolve to subdue and bring under guidance the
+disturbed realm of her emotions. She will determine to look on life
+steadily, as it is; to begin to learn its severe truths seriously, and
+to study its knotty problems closely, conscientiously.
+
+It appeared she had a little sense, for she quitted Robert quietly,
+without complaint or question, without the alteration of a muscle or the
+shedding of a tear, betook herself to her studies under Hortense as
+usual, and at dinner-time went home without lingering.
+
+When she had dined, and found herself in the rectory drawing-room alone,
+having left her uncle over his temperate glass of port wine, the
+difficulty that occurred to and embarrassed her was, "How am I to get
+through this day?"
+
+Last night she had hoped it would be spent as yesterday was, that the
+evening would be again passed with happiness and Robert. She had learned
+her mistake this morning; and yet she could not settle down, convinced
+that no chance would occur to recall her to Hollow's Cottage, or to
+bring Moore again into her society.
+
+He had walked up after tea more than once to pass an hour with her
+uncle. The door-bell had rung, his voice had been heard in the passage
+just at twilight, when she little expected such a pleasure; and this had
+happened twice after he had treated her with peculiar reserve; and
+though he rarely talked to her in her uncle's presence, he had looked at
+her relentingly as he sat opposite her work-table during his stay. The
+few words he had spoken to her were comforting; his manner on bidding
+her good-night was genial. Now, he might come this evening, said False
+Hope. She almost knew it was False Hope which breathed the whisper, and
+yet she listened.
+
+She tried to read--her thoughts wandered; she tried to sew--every stitch
+she put in was an _ennui_, the occupation was insufferably tedious; she
+opened her desk and attempted to write a French composition--she wrote
+nothing but mistakes.
+
+Suddenly the door-bell sharply rang; her heart leaped; she sprang to the
+drawing-room door, opened it softly, peeped through the aperture. Fanny
+was admitting a visitor--a gentleman--a tall man--just the height of
+Robert. For one second she thought it was Robert--for one second she
+exulted; but the voice asking for Mr. Helstone undeceived her. That
+voice was an Irish voice, consequently not Moore's, but the
+curate's--Malone's. He was ushered into the dining-room, where,
+doubtless, he speedily helped his rector to empty the decanters.
+
+It was a fact to be noted, that at whatever house in Briarfield,
+Whinbury, or Nunnely one curate dropped in to a meal--dinner or tea, as,
+the case might be--another presently followed, often two more. Not that
+they gave each other the rendezvous, but they were usually all on the
+run at the same time; and when Donne, for instance, sought Malone at his
+lodgings and found him not, he inquired whither he had posted, and
+having learned of the landlady his destination, hastened with all speed
+after him. The same causes operated in the same way with Sweeting. Thus
+it chanced on that afternoon that Caroline's ears were three times
+tortured with the ringing of the bell and the advent of undesired
+guests; for Donne followed Malone, and Sweeting followed Donne; and more
+wine was ordered up from the cellar into the dining-room (for though old
+Helstone chid the inferior priesthood when he found them "carousing," as
+he called it, in their own tents, yet at his hierarchical table he ever
+liked to treat them to a glass of his best), and through the closed
+doors Caroline heard their boyish laughter, and the vacant cackle of
+their voices. Her fear was lest they should stay to tea, for she had no
+pleasure in making tea for that particular trio. What distinctions
+people draw! These three were men--young men--educated men, like Moore;
+yet, for her, how great the difference! Their society was a bore--his a
+delight.
+
+Not only was she destined to be favoured with their clerical company,
+but Fortune was at this moment bringing her four other guests--lady
+guests, all packed in a pony-phaeton now rolling somewhat heavily along
+the road from Whinbury: an elderly lady and three of her buxom daughters
+were coming to see her "in a friendly way," as the custom of that
+neighbourhood was. Yes, a fourth time the bell clanged. Fanny brought
+the present announcement to the drawing-room,--
+
+"Mrs. Sykes and the three Misses Sykes."
+
+When Caroline was going to receive company, her habit was to wring her
+hands very nervously, to flush a little, and come forward hurriedly yet
+hesitatingly, wishing herself meantime at Jericho. She was, at such
+crises, sadly deficient in finished manner, though she had once been at
+school a year. Accordingly, on this occasion, her small white hands
+sadly maltreated each other, while she stood up, waiting the entrance of
+Mrs. Sykes.
+
+In stalked that lady, a tall, bilious gentlewoman, who made an ample and
+not altogether insincere profession of piety, and was greatly given to
+hospitality towards the clergy. In sailed her three daughters, a showy
+trio, being all three well-grown, and more or less handsome.
+
+In English country ladies there is this point to be remarked. Whether
+young or old, pretty or plain, dull or sprightly, they all (or almost
+all) have a certain expression stamped on their features, which seems to
+say, "I know--I do not boast of it, but I _know_ that I am the standard
+of what is proper; let every one therefore whom I approach, or who
+approaches me, keep a sharp lookout, for wherein they differ from me--be
+the same in dress, manner, opinion, principle, or practice--therein they
+are wrong."
+
+Mrs. and Misses Sykes, far from being exceptions to this observation,
+were pointed illustrations of its truth. Miss Mary--a well-looked,
+well-meant, and, on the whole, well-dispositioned girl--wore her
+complacency with some state, though without harshness. Miss Harriet--a
+beauty--carried it more overbearingly; she looked high and cold. Miss
+Hannah, who was conceited, dashing, pushing, flourished hers consciously
+and openly. The mother evinced it with the gravity proper to her age and
+religious fame.
+
+The reception was got through somehow. Caroline "was glad to see them"
+(an unmitigated fib), hoped they were well, hoped Mrs. Sykes's cough was
+better (Mrs. Sykes had had a cough for the last twenty years), hoped the
+Misses Sykes had left their sisters at home well; to which inquiry the
+Misses Sykes, sitting on three chairs opposite the music-stool, whereon
+Caroline had undesignedly come to anchor, after wavering for some
+seconds between it and a large arm-chair, into which she at length
+recollected she ought to induct Mrs. Sykes--and indeed that lady saved
+her the trouble by depositing herself therein--the Misses Sykes replied
+to Caroline by one simultaneous bow, very majestic and mighty awful. A
+pause followed. This bow was of a character to ensure silence for the
+next five minutes, and it did. Mrs. Sykes then inquired after Mr.
+Helstone, and whether he had had any return of rheumatism, and whether
+preaching twice on a Sunday fatigued him, and if he was capable of
+taking a full service now; and on being assured he was, she and all her
+daughters, combining in chorus, expressed their opinion that he was "a
+wonderful man of his years."
+
+Pause second.
+
+Miss Mary, getting up the steam in her turn, asked whether Caroline had
+attended the Bible Society meeting which had been held at Nunnely last
+Thursday night. The negative answer which truth compelled Caroline to
+utter--for last Thursday evening she had been sitting at home, reading a
+novel which Robert had lent her--elicited a simultaneous expression of
+surprise from the lips of the four ladies.
+
+"We were all there," said Miss Mary--"mamma and all of us. We even
+persuaded papa to go. Hannah would insist upon it. But he fell asleep
+while Mr. Langweilig, the German Moravian minister, was speaking. I felt
+quite ashamed, he nodded so."
+
+"And there was Dr. Broadbent," cried Hannah--"such a beautiful speaker!
+You couldn't expect it of him, for he is almost a vulgar-looking man."
+
+"But such a dear man," interrupted Mary.
+
+"And such a good man, such a useful man," added her mother.
+
+"Only like a butcher in appearance," interposed the fair, proud Harriet.
+"I couldn't bear to look at him. I listened with my eyes shut."
+
+Miss Helstone felt her ignorance and incompetency. Not having seen Dr.
+Broadbent, she could not give her opinion. Pause third came on. During
+its continuance, Caroline was feeling at her heart's core what a
+dreaming fool she was, what an unpractical life she led, how little
+fitness there was in her for ordinary intercourse with the ordinary
+world. She was feeling how exclusively she had attached herself to the
+white cottage in the Hollow, how in the existence of one inmate of that
+cottage she had pent all her universe. She was sensible that this would
+not do, and that some day she would be forced to make an alteration. It
+could not be said that she exactly wished to resemble the ladies before
+her, but she wished to become superior to her present self, so as to
+feel less scared by their dignity.
+
+The sole means she found of reviving the flagging discourse was by
+asking them if they would all stay to tea; and a cruel struggle it cost
+her to perform this piece of civility. Mrs. Sykes had begun, "We are
+much obliged to you, but----" when in came Fanny once more.
+
+"The gentlemen will stay the evening, ma'am," was the message she
+brought from Mr. Helstone.
+
+"What gentlemen have you?" now inquired Mrs. Sykes. Their names were
+specified; she and her daughters interchanged glances. The curates were
+not to them what they were to Caroline. Mr. Sweeting was quite a
+favourite with them; even Mr. Malone rather so, because he was a
+clergyman. "Really, since you have company already, I think we will
+stay," remarked Mrs. Sykes. "We shall be quite a pleasant little party.
+I always like to meet the clergy."
+
+And now Caroline had to usher them upstairs, to help them to unshawl,
+smooth their hair, and make themselves smart; to reconduct them to the
+drawing-room, to distribute amongst them books of engravings, or odd
+things purchased from the Jew-basket. She was obliged to be a purchaser,
+though she was but a slack contributor; and if she had possessed plenty
+of money, she would rather, when it was brought to the rectory--an awful
+incubus!--have purchased the whole stock than contributed a single
+pin-cushion.
+
+It ought perhaps to be explained in passing, for the benefit of those
+who are not _au fait_ to the mysteries of the "Jew-basket" and
+"missionary-basket," that these _meubles_ are willow repositories, of
+the capacity of a good-sized family clothes-basket, dedicated to the
+purpose of conveying from house to house a monster collection of
+pin-cushions, needle-books, card-racks, workbags, articles of infant
+wear, etc., etc., etc., made by the willing or reluctant hands of the
+Christian ladies of a parish, and sold perforce to the heathenish
+gentlemen thereof, at prices unblushingly exorbitant. The proceeds of
+such compulsory sales are applied to the conversion of the Jews, the
+seeking up of the ten missing tribes, or to the regeneration of the
+interesting coloured population of the globe. Each lady contributor
+takes it in her turn to keep the basket a month, to sew for it, and to
+foist off its contents on a shrinking male public. An exciting time it
+is when that turn comes round. Some active-minded woman, with a good
+trading spirit, like it, and enjoy exceedingly the fun of making
+hard-handed worsted-spinners cash up, to the tune of four or five
+hundred per cent. above cost price, for articles quite useless to them;
+other feebler souls object to it, and would rather see the prince of
+darkness himself at their door any morning than that phantom basket,
+brought with "Mrs. Rouse's compliments; and please, ma'am, she says it's
+your turn now."
+
+Miss Helstone's duties of hostess performed, more anxiously than
+cheerily, she betook herself to the kitchen, to hold a brief
+privy-council with Fanny and Eliza about the tea.
+
+"What a lot on 'em!" cried Eliza, who was cook. "And I put off the
+baking to-day because I thought there would be bread plenty to fit while
+morning. We shall never have enow."
+
+"Are there any tea-cakes?" asked the young mistress.
+
+"Only three and a loaf. I wish these fine folk would stay at home till
+they're asked; and I want to finish trimming my hat" (bonnet she meant).
+
+"Then," suggested Caroline, to whom the importance of the emergency gave
+a certain energy, "Fanny must run down to Briarfield and buy some
+muffins and crumpets and some biscuits. And don't be cross, Eliza; we
+can't help it now."
+
+"And which tea-things are we to have?"
+
+"Oh, the best, I suppose. I'll get out the silver service." And she ran
+upstairs to the plate-closet, and presently brought down teapot,
+cream-ewer, and sugar-basin.
+
+"And mun we have th' urn?"
+
+"Yes; and now get it ready as quickly as you can, for the sooner we have
+tea over the sooner they will go--at least, I hope so. Heigh-ho! I wish
+they were gone," she sighed, as she returned to the drawing-room.
+"Still," she thought, as she paused at the door ere opening it, "if
+Robert would but come even now how bright all would be! How
+comparatively easy the task of amusing these people if he were present!
+There would be an interest in hearing him talk (though he never says
+much in company) and in talking in his presence. There can be no
+interest in hearing any of them, or in speaking to them. How they will
+gabble when the curates come in, and how weary I shall grow with
+listening to them! But I suppose I am a selfish fool. These are very
+respectable gentlefolks. I ought, no doubt, to be proud of their
+countenance. I don't say they are not as good as I am--far from it--but
+they are different from me."
+
+She went in.
+
+Yorkshire people in those days took their tea round the table, sitting
+well into it, with their knees duly introduced under the mahogany. It
+was essential to have a multitude of plates of bread and butter, varied
+in sorts and plentiful in quantity. It was thought proper, too, that on
+the centre plate should stand a glass dish of marmalade. Among the
+viands was expected to be found a small assortment of cheesecakes and
+tarts. If there was also a plate of thin slices of pink ham garnished
+with green parsley, so much the better.
+
+Eliza, the rector's cook, fortunately knew her business as provider. She
+had been put out of humour a little at first, when the invaders came so
+unexpectedly in such strength; but it appeared that she regained her
+cheerfulness with action, for in due time the tea was spread forth in
+handsome style, and neither ham, tarts, nor marmalade were wanting among
+its accompaniments.
+
+The curates, summoned to this bounteous repast, entered joyous; but at
+once, on seeing the ladies, of whose presence they had not been
+forewarned, they came to a stand in the doorway. Malone headed the
+party; he stopped short and fell back, almost capsizing Donne, who was
+behind him. Donne, staggering three paces in retreat, sent little
+Sweeting into the arms of old Helstone, who brought up the rear. There
+was some expostulation, some tittering. Malone was desired to mind what
+he was about, and urged to push forward, which at last he did, though
+colouring to the top of his peaked forehead a bluish purple. Helstone,
+advancing, set the shy curates aside, welcomed all his fair guests,
+shook hands and passed a jest with each, and seated himself snugly
+between the lovely Harriet and the dashing Hannah. Miss Mary he
+requested to move to the seat opposite to him, that he might see her if
+he couldn't be near her. Perfectly easy and gallant, in his way, were
+his manners always to young ladies, and most popular was he amongst
+them; yet at heart he neither respected nor liked the sex, and such of
+them as circumstances had brought into intimate relation with him had
+ever feared rather than loved him.
+
+The curates were left to shift for themselves. Sweeting, who was the
+least embarrassed of the three, took refuge beside Mrs. Sykes, who, he
+knew, was almost as fond of him as if he had been her son. Donne, after
+making his general bow with a grace all his own, and saying in a high,
+pragmatical voice, "How d'ye do, Miss Helstone?" dropped into a seat at
+Caroline's elbow, to her unmitigated annoyance, for she had a peculiar
+antipathy to Donne, on account of his stultified and immovable
+self-conceit and his incurable narrowness of mind. Malone, grinning most
+unmeaningly, inducted himself into the corresponding seat on the other
+side. She was thus blessed in a pair of supporters, neither of whom, she
+knew, would be of any mortal use, whether for keeping up the
+conversation, handing cups, circulating the muffins, or even lifting the
+plate from the slop-basin. Little Sweeting, small and boyish as he was,
+would have been worth twenty of them.
+
+Malone, though a ceaseless talker when there were only men present, was
+usually tongue-tied in the presence of ladies. Three phrases, however,
+he had ready cut and dried, which he never failed to produce:--
+
+1stly. "Have you had a walk to-day, Miss Helstone?"
+
+2ndly. "Have you seen your cousin Moore lately?"
+
+3rdly. "Does your class at the Sunday school keep up its number?"
+
+These three questions being put and responded to, between Caroline and
+Malone reigned silence.
+
+With Donne it was otherwise; he was troublesome, exasperating. He had a
+stock of small-talk on hand, at once the most trite and perverse that
+can well be imagined--abuse of the people of Briarfield; of the natives
+of Yorkshire generally; complaints of the want of high society; of the
+backward state of civilization in these districts; murmurings against
+the disrespectful conduct of the lower orders in the north toward their
+betters; silly ridicule of the manner of living in these parts--the want
+of style, the absence of elegance, as if he, Donne, had been accustomed
+to very great doings indeed, an insinuation which his somewhat underbred
+manner and aspect failed to bear out. These strictures, he seemed to
+think, must raise him in the estimation of Miss Helstone or of any other
+lady who heard him; whereas with her, at least, they brought him to a
+level below contempt, though sometimes, indeed, they incensed her; for,
+a Yorkshire girl herself, she hated to hear Yorkshire abused by such a
+pitiful prater; and when wrought up to a certain pitch, she would turn
+and say something of which neither the matter nor the manner recommended
+her to Mr. Donne's good-will. She would tell him it was no proof of
+refinement to be ever scolding others for vulgarity, and no sign of a
+good pastor to be eternally censuring his flock. She would ask him what
+he had entered the church for, since he complained there were only
+cottages to visit, and poor people to preach to--whether he had been
+ordained to the ministry merely to wear soft clothing and sit in king's
+houses. These questions were considered by all the curates as, to the
+last degree, audacious and impious.
+
+Tea was a long time in progress; all the guests gabbled as their hostess
+had expected they would. Mr. Helstone, being in excellent spirits--when,
+indeed, was he ever otherwise in society, attractive female society? it
+being only with the one lady of his own family that he maintained a grim
+taciturnity--kept up a brilliant flow of easy prattle with his
+right-hand and left-hand neighbours, and even with his _vis-à-vis_, Miss
+Mary; though, as Mary was the most sensible, the least coquettish, of
+the three, to her the elderly widower was the least attentive. At heart
+he could not abide sense in women. He liked to see them as silly, as
+light-headed, as vain, as open to ridicule as possible, because they
+were then in reality what he held them to be, and wished them to
+be--inferior, toys to play with, to amuse a vacant hour, and to be
+thrown away.
+
+Hannah was his favourite. Harriet, though beautiful, egotistical, and
+self-satisfied, was not quite weak enough for him. She had some genuine
+self-respect amidst much false pride, and if she did not talk like an
+oracle, neither would she babble like one crazy; she would not permit
+herself to be treated quite as a doll, a child, a plaything; she
+expected to be bent to like a queen.
+
+Hannah, on the contrary, demanded no respect, only flattery. If her
+admirers only _told_ her that she was an angel, she would let them
+_treat_ her like an idiot. So very credulous and frivolous was she, so
+very silly did she become when besieged with attention, flattered and
+admired to the proper degree, that there were moments when Helstone
+actually felt tempted to commit matrimony a second time, and to try the
+experiment of taking her for his second helpmeet; but fortunately the
+salutary recollection of the _ennuis_ of his first marriage, the
+impression still left on him of the weight of the millstone he had once
+worn round his neck, the fixity of his feelings respecting the
+insufferable evils of conjugal existence, operated as a check to his
+tenderness, suppressed the sigh heaving his old iron lungs, and
+restrained him from whispering to Hannah proposals it would have been
+high fun and great satisfaction to her to hear.
+
+It is probable she would have married him if he had asked her; her
+parents would have quite approved the match. To them his fifty-five
+years, his bend-leather heart, could have presented no obstacles; and as
+he was a rector, held an excellent living, occupied a good house, and
+was supposed even to have private property (though in that the world was
+mistaken; every penny of the £5,000 inherited by him from his father had
+been devoted to the building and endowing of a new church at his native
+village in Lancashire--for he could show a lordly munificence when he
+pleased, and if the end was to his liking, never hesitated about making
+a grand sacrifice to attain it)--her parents, I say, would have
+delivered Hannah over to his lovingkindness and his tender mercies
+without one scruple; and the second Mrs. Helstone, inverting the natural
+order of insect existence, would have fluttered through the honeymoon a
+bright, admired butterfly, and crawled the rest of her days a sordid,
+trampled worm.
+
+Little Mr. Sweeting, seated between Mrs. Sykes and Miss Mary, both of
+whom were very kind to him, and having a dish of tarts before him, and
+marmalade and crumpet upon his plate, looked and felt more content than
+any monarch. He was fond of all the Misses Sykes; they were all fond of
+him. He thought them magnificent girls, quite proper to mate with one of
+his inches. If he had a cause of regret at this blissful moment, it was
+that Miss Dora happened to be absent--Dora being the one whom he
+secretly hoped one day to call Mrs. David Sweeting, with whom he dreamt
+of taking stately walks, leading her like an empress through the village
+of Nunnely; and an empress she would have been, if size could make an
+empress. She was vast, ponderous. Seen from behind, she had the air of a
+very stout lady of forty; but withal she possessed a good face, and no
+unkindly character.
+
+The meal at last drew to a close. It would have been over long ago if
+Mr. Donne had not persisted in sitting with his cup half full of cold
+tea before him, long after the rest had finished and after he himself
+had discussed such allowance of viands as he felt competent to
+swallow--long, indeed, after signs of impatience had been manifested
+all round the board, till chairs were pushed back, till the talk
+flagged, till silence fell. Vainly did Caroline inquire repeatedly if he
+would have another cup, if he would take a little hot tea, as that must
+be cold, etc.; he would neither drink it nor leave it. He seemed to
+think that this isolated position of his gave him somehow a certain
+importance, that it was dignified and stately to be the last, that it
+was grand to keep all the others waiting. So long did he linger, that
+the very urn died; it ceased to hiss. At length, however, the old rector
+himself, who had hitherto been too pleasantly engaged with Hannah to
+care for the delay, got impatient.
+
+"For whom are we waiting?" he asked.
+
+"For me, I believe," returned Donne complacently, appearing to think it
+much to his credit that a party should thus be kept dependent on his
+movements.
+
+"Tut!" cried Helstone. Then standing up, "Let us return thanks," said
+he; which he did forthwith, and all quitted the table. Donne, nothing
+abashed, still sat ten minutes quite alone, whereupon Mr. Helstone rang
+the bell for the things to be removed. The curate at length saw himself
+forced to empty his cup, and to relinquish the _rôle_ which, he thought,
+had given him such a felicitous distinction, drawing upon him such
+flattering general notice.
+
+And now, in the natural course of events (Caroline, knowing how it would
+be, had opened the piano, and produced music-books in readiness), music
+was asked for. This was Mr. Sweeting's chance for showing off. He was
+eager to commence. He undertook, therefore, the arduous task of
+persuading the young ladies to favour the company with an air--a song.
+_Con amore_ he went through the whole business of begging, praying,
+resisting excuses, explaining away difficulties, and at last succeeded
+in persuading Miss Harriet to allow herself to be led to the instrument.
+Then out came the pieces of his flute (he always carried them in his
+pocket, as unfailingly as he carried his handkerchief). They were
+screwed and arranged, Malone and Donne meanwhile herding together and
+sneering at him, which the little man, glancing over his shoulder, saw,
+but did not heed at all. He was persuaded their sarcasm all arose from
+envy. They could not accompany the ladies as he could; he was about to
+enjoy a triumph over them.
+
+The triumph began. Malone, much chagrined at hearing him pipe up in most
+superior style, determined to earn distinction too, if possible, and
+all at once assuming the character of a swain (which character he had
+endeavoured to enact once or twice before, but in which he had not
+hitherto met with the success he doubtless opined his merits deserved),
+approached a sofa on which Miss Helstone was seated, and depositing his
+great Irish frame near her, tried his hand (or rather tongue) at a fine
+speech or two, accompanied by grins the most extraordinary and
+incomprehensible. In the course of his efforts to render himself
+agreeable, he contrived to possess himself of the two long sofa cushions
+and a square one; with which, after rolling them about for some time
+with strange gestures, he managed to erect a sort of barrier between
+himself and the object of his attentions. Caroline, quite willing that
+they should be sundered, soon devised an excuse for stepping over to the
+opposite side of the room, and taking up a position beside Mrs. Sykes,
+of which good lady she entreated some instruction in a new stitch in
+ornamental knitting, a favour readily granted; and thus Peter Augustus
+was thrown out.
+
+Very sullenly did his countenance lower when he saw himself
+abandoned--left entirely to his own resources, on a large sofa, with the
+charge of three small cushions on his hands. The fact was, he felt
+disposed seriously to cultivate acquaintance with Miss Helstone, because
+he thought, in common with others, that her uncle possessed money, and
+concluded that, since he had no children, he would probably leave it to
+his niece. Gérard Moore was better instructed on this point: he had seen
+the neat church that owed its origin to the rector's zeal and cash, and
+more than once, in his inmost soul, had cursed an expensive caprice
+which crossed his wishes.
+
+The evening seemed long to one person in that room. Caroline at
+intervals dropped her knitting on her lap, and gave herself up to a sort
+of brain-lethargy--closing her eyes and depressing her head--caused by
+what seemed to her the unmeaning hum around her,--the inharmonious,
+tasteless rattle of the piano keys, the squeaking and gasping notes of
+the flute, the laughter and mirth of her uncle, and Hannah, and Mary,
+she could not tell whence originating, for she heard nothing comic or
+gleeful in their discourse; and more than all, by the interminable
+gossip of Mrs. Sykes murmured close at her ear, gossip which rang the
+changes on four subjects--her own health and that of the various
+members of her family; the missionary and Jew baskets and their
+contents; the late meeting at Nunnely, and one which was expected to
+come off next week at Whinbury.
+
+Tired at length to exhaustion, she embraced the opportunity of Mr.
+Sweeting coming up to speak to Mrs. Sykes to slip quietly out of the
+apartment, and seek a moment's respite in solitude. She repaired to the
+dining-room, where the clear but now low remnant of a fire still burned
+in the grate. The place was empty and quiet, glasses and decanters were
+cleared from the table, the chairs were put back in their places, all
+was orderly. Caroline sank into her uncle's large easy-chair, half shut
+her eyes, and rested herself--rested at least her limbs, her senses, her
+hearing, her vision--weary with listening to nothing, and gazing on
+vacancy. As to her mind, that flew directly to the Hollow. It stood on
+the threshold of the parlour there, then it passed to the
+counting-house, and wondered which spot was blessed by the presence of
+Robert. It so happened that neither locality had that honour; for Robert
+was half a mile away from both, and much nearer to Caroline than her
+deadened spirit suspected. He was at this moment crossing the
+churchyard, approaching the rectory garden-gate--not, however, coming to
+see his cousin, but intent solely on communicating a brief piece of
+intelligence to the rector.
+
+Yes, Caroline; you hear the wire of the bell vibrate; it rings again for
+the fifth time this afternoon. You start, and you are certain now that
+this must be he of whom you dream. Why you are so certain you cannot
+explain to yourself, but you know it. You lean forward, listening
+eagerly as Fanny opens the door. Right! That is _the_ voice--low, with
+the slight foreign accent, but so sweet, as you fancy. You half rise.
+"Fanny will tell him Mr. Helstone is with company, and then he will go
+away." Oh! she cannot let him go. In spite of herself, in spite of her
+reason, she walks half across the room; she stands ready to dart out in
+case the step should retreat; but he enters the passage. "Since your
+master is engaged," he says, "just show me into the dining-room. Bring
+me pen and ink. I will write a short note and leave it for him."
+
+Now, having caught these words, and hearing him advance, Caroline, if
+there was a door within the dining-room, would glide through it and
+disappear. She feels caught, hemmed in; she dreads her unexpected
+presence may annoy him. A second since she would have flown to him;
+that second past, she would flee from him. She cannot. There is no way
+of escape. The dining-room has but one door, through which now enters
+her cousin. The look of troubled surprise she expected to see in his
+face has appeared there, has shocked her, and is gone. She has stammered
+a sort of apology:--
+
+"I only left the drawing-room a minute for a little quiet."
+
+There was something so diffident and downcast in the air and tone with
+which she said this, any one might perceive that some saddening change
+had lately passed over her prospects, and that the faculty of cheerful
+self-possession had left her. Mr. Moore, probably, remembered how she
+had formerly been accustomed to meet him with gentle ardour and hopeful
+confidence. He must have seen how the check of this morning had
+operated. Here was an opportunity for carrying out his new system with
+effect, if he chose to improve it. Perhaps he found it easier to
+practise that system in broad daylight, in his mill-yard, amidst busy
+occupations, than in a quiet parlour, disengaged, at the hour of
+eventide. Fanny lit the candles, which before had stood unlit on the
+table, brought writing materials, and left the room. Caroline was about
+to follow her. Moore, to act consistently, should have let her go;
+whereas he stood in the doorway, and, holding out his hand, gently kept
+her back. He did not ask her to stay, but he would not let her go.
+
+"Shall I tell my uncle you are here?" asked she, still in the same
+subdued voice.
+
+"No; I can say to you all I had to say to him. You will be my
+messenger?"
+
+"Yes, Robert."
+
+"Then you may just inform him that I have got a clue to the identity of
+one, at least, of the men who broke my frames; that he belongs to the
+same gang who attacked Sykes and Pearson's dressing-shop, and that I
+hope to have him in custody to-morrow. You can remember that?"
+
+"Oh yes!" These two monosyllables were uttered in a sadder tone than
+ever; and as she said them she shook her head slightly and sighed. "Will
+you prosecute him?"
+
+"Doubtless."
+
+"No, Robert."
+
+"And why no, Caroline?"
+
+"Because it will set all the neighbourhood against you more than ever."
+
+"That is no reason why I should not do my duty, and defend my property.
+This fellow is a great scoundrel, and ought to be incapacitated from
+perpetrating further mischief."
+
+"But his accomplices will take revenge on you. You do not know how the
+people of this country bear malice. It is the boast of some of them that
+they can keep a stone in their pocket seven years, turn it at the end of
+that time, keep it seven years longer, and hurl it and hit their mark
+'at last.'"
+
+Moore laughed.
+
+"A most pithy vaunt," said he--"one that redounds vastly to the credit
+of your dear Yorkshire friends. But don't fear for me, Lina. I am on my
+guard against these lamb-like compatriots of yours. Don't make yourself
+uneasy about me."
+
+"How can I help it? You are my cousin. If anything happened----" She
+stopped.
+
+"Nothing will happen, Lina. To speak in your own language, there is a
+Providence above all--is there not?"
+
+"Yes, dear Robert. May He guard you!"
+
+"And if prayers have efficacy, yours will benefit me. You pray for me
+sometimes?"
+
+"Not _sometimes_, Robert. You, and Louis, and Hortense are _always_
+remembered."
+
+"So I have often imagined. It has occurred to me when, weary and vexed,
+I have myself gone to bed like a heathen, that another had asked
+forgiveness for my day, and safety for my night. I don't suppose such
+vicarial piety will avail much, but the petitions come out of a sincere
+breast, from innocent lips. They should be acceptable as Abel's
+offering; and doubtless would be, if the object deserved them."
+
+"Annihilate that doubt. It is groundless."
+
+"When a man has been brought up only to make money, and lives to make
+it, and for nothing else, and scarcely breathes any other air than that
+of mills and markets, it seems odd to utter his name in a prayer, or to
+mix his idea with anything divine; and very strange it seems that a
+good, pure heart should take him in and harbour him, as if he had any
+claim to that sort of nest. If I could guide that benignant heart, I
+believe I should counsel it to exclude one who does not profess to have
+any higher aim in life than that of patching up his broken fortune, and
+wiping clean from his _bourgeois_ scutcheon the foul stain of
+bankruptcy."
+
+The hint, though conveyed thus tenderly and modestly (as Caroline
+thought), was felt keenly and comprehended clearly.
+
+"Indeed, I only think--or I _will only_ think--of you as my cousin," was
+the quick answer. "I am beginning to understand things better than I
+did, Robert, when you first came to England--better than I did a week, a
+day ago. I know it is your duty to try to get on, and that it won't do
+for you to be romantic; but in future you must not misunderstand me if I
+seem friendly. You misunderstood me this morning, did you not?"
+
+"What made you think so?"
+
+"Your look--your manner."
+
+"But look at me now----"
+
+"Oh! you are different now. At present I dare speak to you."
+
+"Yet I am the same, except that I have left the tradesman behind me in
+the Hollow. Your kinsman alone stands before you."
+
+"My cousin Robert--not Mr. Moore."
+
+"Not a bit of Mr. Moore. Caroline----"
+
+Here the company was heard rising in the other room. The door was
+opened; the pony-carriage was ordered; shawls and bonnets were demanded;
+Mr. Helstone called for his niece.
+
+"I must go, Robert."
+
+"Yes, you must go, or they will come in and find us here; and I, rather
+than meet all that host in the passage, will take my departure through
+the window. Luckily it opens like a door. One minute only--put down the
+candle an instant--good-night. I kiss you because we are cousins, and,
+being cousins, one--two--three kisses are allowable. Caroline,
+good-night."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+NOAH AND MOSES.
+
+
+The next day Moore had risen before the sun, and had taken a ride to
+Whinbury and back ere his sister had made the café au lait or cut the
+tartines for his breakfast. What business he transacted there he kept to
+himself. Hortense asked no questions: it was not her wont to comment on
+his movements, nor his to render an account of them. The secrets of
+business--complicated and often dismal mysteries--were buried in his
+breast, and never came out of their sepulchre save now and then to scare
+Joe Scott, or give a start to some foreign correspondent. Indeed, a
+general habit of reserve on whatever was important seemed bred in his
+mercantile blood.
+
+Breakfast over, he went to his counting-house. Henry, Joe Scott's boy,
+brought in the letters and the daily papers; Moore seated himself at his
+desk, broke the seals of the documents, and glanced them over. They were
+all short, but not, it seemed, sweet--probably rather sour, on the
+contrary, for as Moore laid down the last, his nostrils emitted a
+derisive and defiant snuff, and though he burst into no soliloquy, there
+was a glance in his eye which seemed to invoke the devil, and lay
+charges on him to sweep the whole concern to Gehenna. However, having
+chosen a pen and stripped away the feathered top in a brief spasm of
+finger-fury (only finger-fury--his face was placid), he dashed off a
+batch of answers, sealed them, and then went out and walked through the
+mill. On coming back he sat down to read his newspaper.
+
+The contents seemed not absorbingly interesting; he more than once laid
+it across his knee, folded his arms, and gazed into the fire; he
+occasionally turned his head towards the window; he looked at intervals
+at his watch; in short, his mind appeared preoccupied. Perhaps he was
+thinking of the beauty of the weather--for it was a fine and mild
+morning for the season--and wishing to be out in the fields enjoying
+it. The door of his counting-house stood wide open. The breeze and
+sunshine entered freely; but the first visitant brought no spring
+perfume on its wings, only an occasional sulphur-puff from the
+soot-thick column of smoke rushing sable from the gaunt mill-chimney.
+
+A dark-blue apparition (that of Joe Scott, fresh from a dyeing vat)
+appeared momentarily at the open door, uttered the words "He's comed,
+sir," and vanished.
+
+Mr. Moore raised not his eyes from the paper. A large man,
+broad-shouldered and massive-limbed, clad in fustian garments and gray
+worsted stockings, entered, who was received with a nod, and desired to
+take a seat, which he did, making the remark, as he removed his hat (a
+very bad one), stowed it away under his chair, and wiped his forehead
+with a spotted cotton handkerchief extracted from the hat-crown, that it
+was "raight dahn warm for Febewerry." Mr. Moore assented--at least he
+uttered some slight sound, which, though inarticulate, might pass for an
+assent. The visitor now carefully deposited in the corner beside him an
+official-looking staff which he bore in his hand; this done, he
+whistled, probably by way of appearing at his ease.
+
+"You have what is necessary, I suppose?" said Mr. Moore.
+
+"Ay, ay! all's right."
+
+He renewed his whistling, Mr. Moore his reading. The paper apparently
+had become more interesting. Presently, however, he turned to his
+cupboard, which was within reach of his long arm, opened it without
+rising, took out a black bottle--the same he had produced for Malone's
+benefit--a tumbler, and a jug, placed them on the table, and said to his
+guest,--
+
+"Help yourself; there's water in that jar in the corner."
+
+"I dunnut knaw that there's mich need, for all a body is dry (thirsty)
+in a morning," said the fustian gentleman, rising and doing as
+requested.
+
+"Will you tak naught yourseln, Mr. Moore?" he inquired, as with skilled
+hand he mixed a portion, and having tested it by a deep draught, sank
+back satisfied and bland in his seat. Moore, chary of words, replied by
+a negative movement and murmur.
+
+"Yah'd as good," continued his visitor; "it 'uld set ye up wald a sup o'
+this stuff. Uncommon good hollands. Ye get it fro' furrin parts, I'se
+think?"
+
+"Ay!"
+
+"Tak my advice and try a glass on't. Them lads 'at's coming 'll keep ye
+talking, nob'dy knows how long. Ye'll need propping."
+
+"Have you seen Mr. Sykes this morning?" inquired Moore.
+
+"I seed him a hauf an hour--nay, happen a quarter of an hour sin', just
+afore I set off. He said he aimed to come here, and I sudn't wonder but
+ye'll have old Helstone too. I seed 'em saddling his little nag as I
+passed at back o' t' rectory."
+
+The speaker was a true prophet, for the trot of a little nag's hoofs
+was, five minutes after, heard in the yard. It stopped, and a well-known
+nasal voice cried aloud, "Boy" (probably addressing Harry Scott, who
+usually hung about the premises from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.), "take my horse
+and lead him into the stable."
+
+Helstone came in marching nimbly and erect, looking browner, keener, and
+livelier than usual.
+
+"Beautiful morning, Moore. How do, my boy? Ha! whom have we here?"
+(turning to the personage with the staff). "Sugden! What! you're going
+to work directly? On my word, you lose no time. But I come to ask
+explanations. Your message was delivered to me. Are you sure you are on
+the right scent? How do you mean to set about the business? Have you got
+a warrant?"
+
+"Sugden has."
+
+"Then you are going to seek him now? I'll accompany you."
+
+"You will be spared that trouble, sir; he is coming to seek me. I'm just
+now sitting in state waiting his arrival."
+
+"And who is it? One of my parishioners?"
+
+Joe Scott had entered unobserved. He now stood, a most sinister phantom,
+half his person being dyed of the deepest tint of indigo, leaning on the
+desk. His master's answer to the rector's question was a smile. Joe took
+the word. Putting on a quiet but pawky look, he said,--
+
+"It's a friend of yours, Mr. Helstone, a gentleman you often speak of."
+
+"Indeed! His name, Joe? You look well this morning."
+
+"Only the Rev. Moses Barraclough; t' tub orator you call him sometimes,
+I think."
+
+"Ah!" said the rector, taking out his snuff-box, and administering to
+himself a very long pinch--"ah! couldn't have supposed it. Why, the
+pious man never was a workman of yours, Moore. He's a tailor by trade."
+
+"And so much the worse grudge I owe him, for interfering and setting my
+discarded men against me."
+
+"And Moses was actually present at the battle of Stilbro' Moor? He went
+there, wooden leg and all?"
+
+"Ay, sir," said Joe; "he went there on horseback, that his leg mightn't
+be noticed. He was the captain, and wore a mask. The rest only had their
+faces blackened."
+
+"And how was he found out?"
+
+"I'll tell you, sir," said Joe. "T' maister's not so fond of talking.
+I've no objections. He courted Sarah, Mr. Moore's sarvant lass, and so
+it seems she would have nothing to say to him; she either didn't like
+his wooden leg or she'd some notion about his being a hypocrite. Happen
+(for women is queer hands; we may say that amang werseln when there's
+none of 'em nigh) she'd have encouraged him, in spite of his leg and his
+deceit, just to pass time like. I've known some on 'em do as mich, and
+some o' t' bonniest and mimmest-looking, too--ay, I've seen clean, trim
+young things, that looked as denty and pure as daisies, and wi' time a
+body fun' 'em out to be nowt but stinging, venomed nettles."
+
+"Joe's a sensible fellow," interjected Helstone.
+
+"Howsiver, Sarah had another string to her bow. Fred Murgatroyd, one of
+our lads, is for her; and as women judge men by their faces--and Fred
+has a middling face, while Moses is none so handsome, as we all
+knaw--the lass took on wi' Fred. A two-three months sin', Murgatroyd and
+Moses chanced to meet one Sunday night; they'd both come lurking about
+these premises wi' the notion of counselling Sarah to tak a bit of a
+walk wi' them. They fell out, had a tussle, and Fred was worsted, for
+he's young and small, and Barraclough, for all he has only one leg, is
+almost as strong as Sugden there--indeed, anybody that hears him roaring
+at a revival or a love-feast may be sure he's no weakling."
+
+"Joe, you're insupportable," here broke in Mr. Moore. "You spin out your
+explanation as Moses spins out his sermons. The long and short of it is,
+Murgatroyd was jealous of Barraclough; and last night, as he and a
+friend took shelter in a barn from a shower, they heard and saw Moses
+conferring with some associates within. From their discourse it was
+plain he had been the leader, not only at Stilbro' Moor, but in the
+attack on Sykes's property. Moreover they planned a deputation to wait
+on me this morning, which the tailor is to head, and which, in the most
+religious and peaceful spirit, is to entreat me to put the accursed
+thing out of my tent. I rode over to Whinbury this morning, got a
+constable and a warrant, and I am now waiting to give my friend the
+reception he deserves. Here, meantime, comes Sykes. Mr. Helstone, you
+must spirit him up. He feels timid at the thoughts of prosecuting."
+
+A gig was heard to roll into the yard. Mr. Sykes entered--a tall stout
+man of about fifty, comely of feature, but feeble of physiognomy. He
+looked anxious.
+
+"Have they been? Are they gone? Have you got him? Is it over?" he asked.
+
+"Not yet," returned Moore with phlegm. "We are waiting for them."
+
+"They'll not come; it's near noon. Better give it up. It will excite bad
+feeling--make a stir--cause perhaps fatal consequences."
+
+"_You_ need not appear," said Moore. "I shall meet them in the yard when
+they come; _you_ can stay here."
+
+"But my name must be seen in the law proceedings. A wife and family, Mr.
+Moore--a wife and family make a man cautious."
+
+Moore looked disgusted. "Give way, if you please," said he; "leave me to
+myself. I have no objection to act alone; only be assured you will not
+find safety in submission. Your partner Pearson gave way, and conceded,
+and forbore. Well, that did not prevent them from attempting to shoot
+him in his own house."
+
+"My dear sir, take a little wine and water," recommended Mr. Helstone.
+The wine and water was hollands and water, as Mr. Sykes discovered when
+he had compounded and swallowed a brimming tumbler thereof. It
+transfigured him in two minutes, brought the colour back to his face,
+and made him at least _word_-valiant. He now announced that he hoped he
+was above being trampled on by the common people; he was determined to
+endure the insolence of the working-classes no longer; he had considered
+of it, and made up his mind to go all lengths; if money and spirit could
+put down these rioters, they should be put down; Mr. Moore might do as
+he liked, but _he_--Christie Sykes--would spend his last penny in law
+before he would be beaten; he'd settle them, or he'd see.
+
+"Take another glass," urged Moore.
+
+Mr. Sykes didn't mind if he did. This was a cold morning (Sugden had
+found it a warm one); it was necessary to be careful at this season of
+the year--it was proper to take something to keep the damp out; he had a
+little cough already (here he coughed in attestation of the fact);
+something of this sort (lifting the black bottle) was excellent, taken
+medicinally (he poured the physic into his tumbler); he didn't make a
+practice of drinking spirits in a morning, but occasionally it really
+was prudent to take precautions.
+
+"Quite prudent, and take them by all means," urged the host.
+
+Mr. Sykes now addressed Mr. Helstone, who stood on the hearth, his
+shovel-hat on his head, watching him significantly with his little, keen
+eyes.
+
+"You, sir, as a clergyman," said he, "may feel it disagreeable to be
+present amidst scenes of hurry and flurry, and, I may say, peril. I dare
+say your nerves won't stand it. You're a man of peace, sir; but we
+manufacturers, living in the world, and always in turmoil, get quite
+belligerent. Really, there's an ardour excited by the thoughts of danger
+that makes my heart pant. When Mrs. Sykes is afraid of the house being
+attacked and broke open--as she is every night--I get quite excited. I
+couldn't describe to you, sir, my feelings. Really, if anybody was to
+come--thieves or anything--I believe I should enjoy it, such is my
+spirit."
+
+The hardest of laughs, though brief and low, and by no means insulting,
+was the response of the rector. Moore would have pressed upon the heroic
+mill-owner a third tumbler, but the clergyman, who never transgressed,
+nor would suffer others in his presence to transgress, the bounds of
+decorum, checked him.
+
+"Enough is as good as a feast, is it not, Mr. Sykes?" he said; and Mr.
+Sykes assented, and then sat and watched Joe Scott remove the bottle at
+a sign from Helstone, with a self-satisfied simper on his lips and a
+regretful glisten in his eye. Moore looked as if he should have liked to
+fool him to the top of his bent. What would a certain young kinswoman of
+his have said could she have seen her dear, good, great Robert--her
+Coriolanus--just now? Would she have acknowledged in that mischievous,
+sardonic visage the same face to which she had looked up with such love,
+which had bent over her with such gentleness last night? Was that the
+man who had spent so quiet an evening with his sister and his cousin--so
+suave to one, so tender to the other--reading Shakespeare and listening
+to Chénier?
+
+Yes, it was the same man, only seen on a different side--a side Caroline
+had not yet fairly beheld, though perhaps she had enough sagacity
+faintly to suspect its existence. Well, Caroline had, doubtless, her
+defective side too. She was human. She must, then, have been very
+imperfect; and had she seen Moore on his very worst side, she would
+probably have said this to herself and excused him. Love can excuse
+anything except meanness; but meanness kills love, cripples even natural
+affection; without esteem true love cannot exist. Moore, with all his
+faults, might be esteemed; for he had no moral scrofula in his mind, no
+hopeless polluting taint--such, for instance, as that of falsehood;
+neither was he the slave of his appetites. The active life to which he
+had been born and bred had given him something else to do than to join
+the futile chase of the pleasure-hunter. He was a man undegraded, the
+disciple of reason, _not_ the votary of sense. The same might be said of
+old Helstone. Neither of these two would look, think, or speak a lie;
+for neither of them had the wretched black bottle, which had just been
+put away, any charms. Both might boast a valid claim to the proud title
+of "lord of the creation," for no animal vice was lord of them; they
+looked and were superior beings to poor Sykes.
+
+A sort of gathering and trampling sound was heard in the yard, and then
+a pause. Moore walked to the window; Helstone followed. Both stood on
+one side, the tall junior behind the under-sized senior, looking forth
+carefully, so that they might not be visible from without. Their sole
+comment on what they saw was a cynical smile flashed into each other's
+stern eyes.
+
+A flourishing oratorical cough was now heard, followed by the
+interjection "Whisht!" designed, as it seemed, to still the hum of
+several voices. Moore opened his casement an inch or two to admit sound
+more freely.
+
+"Joseph Scott," began a snuffling voice--Scott was standing sentinel at
+the counting-house door--"might we inquire if your master be within, and
+is to be spoken to?"
+
+"He's within, ay," said Joe nonchalantly.
+
+"Would you then, if _you_ please" (emphasis on "you"), "have the
+goodness to tell _him_ that twelve gentlemen wants to see him."
+
+"He'd happen ax what for," suggested Joe. "I mught as weel tell him that
+at t' same time."
+
+"For a purpose," was the answer. Joe entered.
+
+"Please, sir, there's twelve gentlemen wants to see ye, 'for a
+purpose.'"
+
+"Good, Joe; I'm their man.--Sugden, come when I whistle."
+
+Moore went out, chuckling dryly. He advanced into the yard, one hand in
+his pocket, the other in his waistcoat, his cap brim over his eyes,
+shading in some measure their deep dancing ray of scorn. Twelve men
+waited in the yard, some in their shirt-sleeves, some in blue aprons.
+Two figured conspicuously in the van of the party. One, a little dapper
+strutting man with a turned-up nose; the other a broad-shouldered
+fellow, distinguished no less by his demure face and cat like, trustless
+eyes than by a wooden leg and stout crutch. There was a kind of leer
+about his lips; he seemed laughing in his sleeve at some person or
+thing; his whole air was anything but that of a true man.
+
+"Good-morning, Mr. Barraclough," said Moore debonairly, for him.
+
+"Peace be unto you!" was the answer, Mr. Barraclough entirely closing
+his naturally half-shut eyes as he delivered it.
+
+"I'm obliged to you. Peace is an excellent thing; there's nothing I more
+wish for myself. But that is not all you have to say to me, I suppose? I
+imagine peace is not your purpose?"
+
+"As to our purpose," began Barraclough, "it's one that may sound strange
+and perhaps foolish to ears like yours, for the childer of this world is
+wiser in their generation than the childer of light."
+
+"To the point, if you please, and let me hear what it is."
+
+"Ye'se hear, sir. If I cannot get it off, there's eleven behint can help
+me. It is a grand purpose, and" (changing his voice from a half-sneer to
+a whine) "it's the Looard's own purpose, and that's better."
+
+"Do you want a subscription to a new Ranter's chapel, Mr. Barraclough?
+Unless your errand be something of that sort, I cannot see what you have
+to do with it."
+
+"I hadn't that duty on my mind, sir; but as Providence has led ye to
+mention the subject, I'll make it i' my way to tak ony trifle ye may
+have to spare; the smallest contribution will be acceptable."
+
+With that he doffed his hat, and held it out as a begging-box, a brazen
+grin at the same time crossing his countenance.
+
+"If I gave you sixpence you would drink it."
+
+Barraclough uplifted the palms of his hands and the whites of his eyes,
+evincing in the gesture a mere burlesque of hypocrisy.
+
+"You seem a fine fellow," said Moore, quite coolly and dryly; "you don't
+care for showing me that you are a double-dyed hypocrite, that your
+trade is fraud. You expect indeed to make me laugh at the cleverness
+with which you play your coarsely farcical part, while at the same time
+you think you are deceiving the men behind you."
+
+Moses' countenance lowered. He saw he had gone too far. He was going to
+answer, when the second leader, impatient of being hitherto kept in the
+background, stepped forward. This man did not look like a traitor,
+though he had an exceedingly self-confident and conceited air.
+
+"Mr. Moore," commenced he, speaking also in his throat and nose, and
+enunciating each word very slowly, as if with a view to giving his
+audience time to appreciate fully the uncommon elegance of the
+phraseology, "it might, perhaps, justly be said that reason rather than
+peace is our purpose. We come, in the first place, to request you to
+hear reason; and should _you_ refuse, it is my duty to warn _you_, in
+very decided terms, that measures will be had resort to" (he meant
+recourse) "which will probably terminate in--in bringing _you_ to a
+sense of the unwisdom, of the--the foolishness which seems to guide and
+guard your proceedings as a tradesman in this manufacturing part of the
+country. Hem! Sir, I would beg to allude that as a furriner, coming from
+a distant coast, another quarter and hemisphere of this globe, thrown,
+as I may say, a perfect outcast on these shores--the cliffs of
+Albion--you have not that understanding of huz and wer ways which might
+conduce to the benefit of the working-classes. If, to come at once to
+partic'lars, you'd consider to give up this here miln, and go without
+further protractions straight home to where you belong, it 'ud happen be
+as well. I can see naught ageean such a plan.--What hev ye to say
+tull't, lads?" turning round to the other members of the deputation,
+who responded unanimously, "Hear, hear!"
+
+"Brayvo, Noah o' Tim's!" murmured Joe Scott, who stood behind Mr. Moore.
+"Moses'll niver beat that. Cliffs o' Albion, and t' other hemisphere! My
+certy! Did ye come fro' th' Antarctic Zone, maister? Moses is dished."
+
+Moses, however, refused to be dished. He thought he would try again.
+Casting a somewhat ireful glance at "Noah o' Tim's," he launched out in
+his turn; and now he spoke in a serious tone, relinquishing the sarcasm
+which he found had not answered.
+
+"Or iver you set up the pole o' your tent amang us, Mr. Moore, we lived
+i' peace and quietness--yea, I may say, in all loving-kindness. I am not
+myself an aged person as yet, but I can remember as far back as maybe
+some twenty year, when hand-labour were encouraged and respected, and no
+mischief-maker had ventured to introduce these here machines which is so
+pernicious. Now, I'm not a cloth-dresser myself, but by trade a tailor.
+Howsiver, my heart is of a softish nature. I'm a very feeling man, and
+when I see my brethren oppressed, like my great namesake of old, I stand
+up for 'em; for which intent I this day speak with you face to face, and
+advises you to part wi' your infernal machinery, and tak on more hands."
+
+"What if I don't follow your advice, Mr. Barraclough?"
+
+"The Looard pardon you! The Looard soften your heart, sir!"
+
+"Are you in connection with the Wesleyans now, Mr. Barraclough?"
+
+"Praise God! Bless His name! I'm a joined Methody!"
+
+"Which in no respect prevents you from being at the same time a drunkard
+and a swindler. I saw you one night a week ago laid dead-drunk by the
+roadside, as I returned from Stilbro' market; and while you preach
+peace, you make it the business of your life to stir up dissension. You
+no more sympathize with the poor who are in distress than you sympathize
+with me. You incite them to outrage for bad purposes of your own; so
+does the individual called Noah of Tim's. You two are restless,
+meddling, impudent scoundrels, whose chief motive-principle is a selfish
+ambition, as dangerous as it is puerile. The persons behind you are some
+of them honest though misguided men; but you two I count altogether
+bad."
+
+Barraclough was going to speak.
+
+"Silence! You have had your say, and now I will have mine. As to being
+dictated to by you, or any Jack, Jem, or Jonathan on earth, I shall not
+suffer it for a moment. You desire me to quit the country; you request
+me to part with my machinery. In case I refuse, you threaten me. I _do_
+refuse--point-blank! Here I stay, and by this mill I stand, and into it
+will I convey the best machinery inventors can furnish. What will you
+do? The utmost you _can_ do--and this you will never _dare_ to do--is to
+burn down my mill, destroy its contents, and shoot me. What then?
+Suppose that building was a ruin and I was a corpse--what then, you lads
+behind these two scamps? Would that stop invention or exhaust science?
+Not for the fraction of a second of time! Another and better gig-mill
+would rise on the ruins of this, and perhaps a more enterprising owner
+come in my place. Hear me! I'll make my cloth as I please, and according
+to the best lights I have. In its manufacture I will employ what means I
+choose. Whoever, after hearing this, shall dare to interfere with me may
+just take the consequences. An example shall prove I'm in earnest."
+
+He whistled shrill and loud. Sugden, his staff and warrant, came on the
+scene.
+
+Moore turned sharply to Barraclough. "You were at Stilbro'," said he; "I
+have proof of that. You were on the moor, you wore a mask, you knocked
+down one of my men with your own hand--you! a preacher of the
+gospel!--Sugden, arrest him!"
+
+Moses was captured. There was a cry and a rush to rescue, but the right
+hand which all this while had lain hidden in Moore's breast,
+reappearing, held out a pistol.
+
+"Both barrels are loaded," said he. "I'm quite determined! Keep off!"
+
+Stepping backwards, facing the foe as he went, he guarded his prey to
+the counting-house. He ordered Joe Scott to pass in with Sugden and the
+prisoner, and to bolt the door inside. For himself, he walked backwards
+and forwards along the front of the mill, looking meditatively on the
+ground, his hand hanging carelessly by his side, but still holding the
+pistol. The eleven remaining deputies watched him some time, talking
+under their breath to each other. At length one of them approached. This
+man looked very different from either of the two who had previously
+spoken; he was hard-favoured, but modest and manly-looking.
+
+"I've not much faith i' Moses Barraclough," said he, "and I would speak
+a word to you myseln, Mr. Moore. It's out o' no ill-will that I'm here,
+for my part; it's just to mak a effort to get things straightened, for
+they're sorely a-crooked. Ye see we're ill off--varry ill off; wer
+families is poor and pined. We're thrown out o' work wi' these frames;
+we can get nought to do; we can earn nought. What is to be done? Mun we
+say, wisht! and lig us down and dee? Nay; I've no grand words at my
+tongue's end, Mr. Moore, but I feel that it wad be a low principle for a
+reasonable man to starve to death like a dumb cratur. I willn't do't.
+I'm not for shedding blood: I'd neither kill a man nor hurt a man; and
+I'm not for pulling down mills and breaking machines--for, as ye say,
+that way o' going on'll niver stop invention; but I'll talk--I'll mak as
+big a din as ever I can. Invention may be all right, but I know it isn't
+right for poor folks to starve. Them that governs mun find a way to help
+us; they mun make fresh orderations. Ye'll say that's hard to do. So
+mich louder mun we shout out then, for so much slacker will t'
+Parliament-men be to set on to a tough job."
+
+"Worry the Parliament-men as much as you please," said Moore; "but to
+worry the mill-owners is absurd, and I for one won't stand it."
+
+"Ye're a raight hard un!" returned the workman. "Willn't ye gie us a bit
+o' time? Willn't ye consent to mak your changes rather more slowly?"
+
+"Am I the whole body of clothiers in Yorkshire? Answer me that."
+
+"Ye're yourseln."
+
+"And only myself. And if I stopped by the way an instant, while others
+are rushing on, I should be trodden down. If I did as you wish me to do,
+I should be bankrupt in a month; and would my bankruptcy put bread into
+your hungry children's mouths? William Farren, neither to your dictation
+nor to that of any other will I submit. Talk to me no more about
+machinery. I will have my own way. I shall get new frames in to-morrow.
+If you broke these, I would still get more. _I'll never give in._"
+
+Here the mill-bell rang twelve o'clock. It was the dinner-hour. Moore
+abruptly turned from the deputation and re-entered his counting-house.
+
+His last words had left a bad, harsh impression; he, at least, had
+"failed in the disposing of a chance he was lord of." By speaking kindly
+to William Farren--who was a very honest man, without envy or hatred of
+those more happily circumstanced than himself, thinking it no hardship
+and no injustice to be forced to live by labour, disposed to be
+honourably content if he could but get work to do--Moore might have made
+a friend. It seemed wonderful how he could turn from such a man without
+a conciliatory or a sympathizing expression. The poor fellow's face
+looked haggard with want; he had the aspect of a man who had not known
+what it was to live in comfort and plenty for weeks, perhaps months,
+past, and yet there was no ferocity, no malignity in his countenance; it
+was worn, dejected, austere, but still patient. How could Moore leave
+him thus, with the words, "I'll never give in," and not a whisper of
+good-will, or hope, or aid?
+
+Farren, as he went home to his cottage--once, in better times, a decent,
+clean, pleasant place, but now, though still clean, very dreary, because
+so poor--asked himself this question. He concluded that the foreign
+mill-owner was a selfish, an unfeeling, and, he thought, too, a foolish
+man. It appeared to him that emigration, had he only the means to
+emigrate, would be preferable to service under such a master. He felt
+much cast down--almost hopeless.
+
+On his entrance his wife served out, in orderly sort, such dinner as she
+had to give him and the bairns. It was only porridge, and too little of
+that. Some of the younger children asked for more when they had done
+their portion--an application which disturbed William much. While his
+wife quieted them as well as she could, he left his seat and went to the
+door. He whistled a cheery stave, which did not, however, prevent a
+broad drop or two (much more like the "first of a thunder-shower" than
+those which oozed from the wound of the gladiator) from gathering on the
+lids of his gray eyes, and plashing thence to the threshold. He cleared
+his vision with his sleeve, and the melting mood over, a very stern one
+followed.
+
+He still stood brooding in silence, when a gentleman in black came up--a
+clergyman, it might be seen at once, but neither Helstone, nor Malone,
+nor Donne, nor Sweeting. He might be forty years old; he was
+plain-looking, dark-complexioned, and already rather gray-haired. He
+stooped a little in walking. His countenance, as he came on, wore an
+abstracted and somewhat doleful air; but in approaching Farren he looked
+up, and then a hearty expression illuminated the preoccupied, serious
+face.
+
+"Is it you, William? How are you?" he asked.
+
+"Middling, Mr. Hall. How are _ye_? Will ye step in and rest ye?"
+
+Mr. Hall, whose name the reader has seen mentioned before (and who,
+indeed, was vicar of Nunnely, of which parish Farren was a native, and
+from whence he had removed but three years ago to reside in Briarfield,
+for the convenience of being near Hollow's Mill, where he had obtained
+work), entered the cottage, and having greeted the good-wife and the
+children, sat down. He proceeded to talk very cheerfully about the
+length of time that had elapsed since the family quitted his parish, the
+changes which had occurred since; he answered questions touching his
+sister Margaret, who was inquired after with much interest; he asked
+questions in his turn, and at last, glancing hastily and anxiously round
+through his spectacles (he wore spectacles, for he was short-sighted) at
+the bare room, and at the meagre and wan faces of the circle about
+him--for the children had come round his knee, and the father and mother
+stood before him--he said abruptly,--
+
+"And how are you all? How do you get on?"
+
+Mr. Hall, be it remarked, though an accomplished scholar, not only spoke
+with a strong northern accent, but, on occasion, used freely
+north-country expressions.
+
+"We get on poorly," said William; "we're all out of work. I've selled
+most o' t' household stuff, as ye may see; and what we're to do next,
+God knows."
+
+"Has Mr. Moore turned you off?"
+
+"He has turned us off; and I've sich an opinion of him now that I think
+if he'd tak me on again to-morrow I wouldn't work for him."
+
+"It is not like you to say so, William."
+
+"I know it isn't; but I'm getting different to mysel'; I feel I am
+changing. I wadn't heed if t' bairns and t' wife had enough to live on;
+but they're pinched--they're pined----"
+
+"Well, my lad, and so are you; I see you are. These are grievous times;
+I see suffering wherever I turn. William, sit down. Grace, sit down. Let
+us talk it over."
+
+And in order the better to talk it over, Mr. Hall lifted the least of
+the children on to his knee, and placed his hand on the head of the
+next least; but when the small things began to chatter to him he bade
+them "Whisht!" and fixing his eyes on the grate, he regarded the handful
+of embers which burned there very gravely.
+
+"Sad times," he said, "and they last long. It is the will of God. His
+will be done. But He tries us to the utmost."
+
+Again he reflected.
+
+"You've no money, William, and you've nothing you could sell to raise a
+small sum?"
+
+"No. I've selled t' chest o' drawers, and t' clock, and t' bit of a
+mahogany stand, and t' wife's bonny tea-tray and set o' cheeney 'at she
+brought for a portion when we were wed."
+
+"And if somebody lent you a pound or two, could you make any good use of
+it? Could you get into a new way of doing something?"
+
+Farren did not answer, but his wife said quickly, "Ay, I'm sure he
+could, sir. He's a very contriving chap is our William. If he'd two or
+three pounds he could begin selling stuff."
+
+"Could you, William?"
+
+"Please God," returned William deliberately, "I could buy groceries, and
+bits o' tapes, and thread, and what I thought would sell, and I could
+begin hawking at first."
+
+"And you know, sir," interposed Grace, "you're sure William would
+neither drink, nor idle, nor waste, in any way. He's my husband, and I
+shouldn't praise him; but I _will_ say there's not a soberer, honester
+man i' England nor he is."
+
+"Well, I'll speak to one or two friends, and I think I can promise to
+let him have £5 in a day or two--as a loan, ye mind, not a gift. He must
+pay it back."
+
+"I understand, sir. I'm quite agreeable to that."
+
+"Meantime, there's a few shillings for you, Grace, just to keep the pot
+boiling till custom comes.--Now, bairns, stand up in a row and say your
+catechism, while your mother goes and buys some dinner; for you've not
+had much to-day, I'll be bound.--You begin, Ben. What is your name?"
+
+Mr. Hall stayed till Grace came back; then he hastily took his leave,
+shaking hands with both Farren and his wife. Just at the door he said to
+them a few brief but very earnest words of religious consolation and
+exhortation. With a mutual "God bless you, sir!" "God bless you, my
+friends!" they separated.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+BRIARMAINS.
+
+
+Messrs. Helstone and Sykes began to be extremely jocose and
+congratulatory with Mr. Moore when he returned to them after dismissing
+the deputation. He was so quiet, however, under their compliments upon
+his firmness, etc., and wore a countenance so like a still, dark day,
+equally beamless and breezeless, that the rector, after glancing
+shrewdly into his eyes, buttoned up his felicitations with his coat, and
+said to Sykes, whose senses were not acute enough to enable him to
+discover unassisted where his presence and conversation were a nuisance,
+"Come, sir; your road and mine lie partly together. Had we not better
+bear each other company? We'll bid Moore good-morning, and leave him to
+the happy fancies he seems disposed to indulge."
+
+"And where is Sugden?" demanded Moore, looking up.
+
+"Ah, ha!" cried Helstone. "I've not been quite idle while you were busy.
+I've been helping you a little; I flatter myself not injudiciously. I
+thought it better not to lose time; so, while you were parleying with
+that down-looking gentleman--Farren I think his name is--I opened this
+back window, shouted to Murgatroyd, who was in the stable, to bring Mr.
+Sykes's gig round; then I smuggled Sugden and brother Moses--wooden leg
+and all--through the aperture, and saw them mount the gig (always with
+our good friend Sykes's permission, of course). Sugden took the
+reins--he drives like Jehu--and in another quarter of an hour
+Barraclough will be safe in Stilbro' jail."
+
+"Very good; thank you," said Moore; "and good-morning, gentlemen," he
+added, and so politely conducted them to the door, and saw them clear of
+his premises.
+
+He was a taciturn, serious man the rest of the day. He did not even
+bandy a repartee with Joe Scott, who, for his part, said to his master
+only just what was absolutely necessary to the progress of business,
+but looked at him a good deal out of the corners of his eyes, frequently
+came to poke the counting-house fire for him, and once, as he was
+locking up for the day (the mill was then working short time, owing to
+the slackness of trade), observed that it was a grand evening, and he
+"could wish Mr. Moore to take a bit of a walk up th' Hollow. It would do
+him good."
+
+At this recommendation Mr. Moore burst into a short laugh, and after
+demanding of Joe what all this solicitude meant, and whether he took him
+for a woman or a child, seized the keys from his hand, and shoved him by
+the shoulders out of his presence. He called him back, however, ere he
+had reached the yard-gate.
+
+"Joe, do you know those Farrens? They are not well off, I suppose?"
+
+"They cannot be well off, sir, when they've not had work as a three
+month. Ye'd see yoursel' 'at William's sorely changed--fair paired.
+They've selled most o' t' stuff out o' th' house."
+
+"He was not a bad workman?"
+
+"Ye never had a better, sir, sin' ye began trade."
+
+"And decent people--the whole family?"
+
+"Niver dacenter. Th' wife's a raight cant body, and as clean--ye mught
+eat your porridge off th' house floor. They're sorely comed down. I wish
+William could get a job as gardener or summat i' that way; he
+understands gardening weel. He once lived wi' a Scotchman that tached
+him the mysteries o' that craft, as they say."
+
+"Now, then, you can go, Joe. You need not stand there staring at me."
+
+"Ye've no orders to give, sir?"
+
+"None, but for you to take yourself off."
+
+Which Joe did accordingly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Spring evenings are often cold and raw, and though this had been a fine
+day, warm even in the morning and meridian sunshine, the air chilled at
+sunset, the ground crisped, and ere dusk a hoar frost was insidiously
+stealing over growing grass and unfolding bud. It whitened the pavement
+in front of Briarmains (Mr. Yorke's residence), and made silent havoc
+among the tender plants in his garden, and on the mossy level of his
+lawn. As to that great tree, strong-trunked and broad-armed, which
+guarded the gable nearest the road, it seemed to defy a spring-night
+frost to harm its still bare boughs; and so did the leafless grove of
+walnut-trees rising tall behind the house.
+
+In the dusk of the moonless if starry night, lights from windows shone
+vividly. This was no dark or lonely scene, nor even a silent one.
+Briarmains stood near the highway. It was rather an old place, and had
+been built ere that highway was cut, and when a lane winding up through
+fields was the only path conducting to it. Briarfield lay scarce a mile
+off; its hum was heard, its glare distinctly seen. Briar Chapel, a
+large, new, raw Wesleyan place of worship, rose but a hundred yards
+distant; and as there was even now a prayer-meeting being held within
+its walls, the illumination of its windows cast a bright reflection on
+the road, while a hymn of a most extraordinary description, such as a
+very Quaker might feel himself moved by the Spirit to dance to, roused
+cheerily all the echoes of the vicinage. The words were distinctly
+audible by snatches. Here is a quotation or two from different strains;
+for the singers passed jauntily from hymn to hymn and from tune to tune,
+with an ease and buoyancy all their own:--
+
+    "Oh! who can explain
+       This struggle for life,
+     This travail and pain,
+       This trembling and strife?
+     Plague, earthquake, and famine,
+       And tumult and war,
+     The wonderful coming
+       Of Jesus declare!
+
+    "For every fight
+       Is dreadful and loud:
+     The warrior's delight
+       Is slaughter and blood,
+     His foes overturning,
+       Till all shall expire:
+     And this is with burning,
+       And fuel, and fire!"
+
+Here followed an interval of clamorous prayer, accompanied by fearful
+groans. A shout of "I've found liberty!" "Doad o' Bill's has fun'
+liberty!" rang from the chapel, and out all the assembly broke again.
+
+    "What a mercy is this!
+      What a heaven of bliss!
+    How unspeakably happy am I!
+      Gathered into the fold,
+      With Thy people enrolled,
+    With Thy people to live and to die!
+
+    "Oh, the goodness of God
+      In employing a clod
+    His tribute of glory to raise;
+      His standard to bear,
+      And with triumph declare
+    His unspeakable riches of grace!
+
+    "Oh, the fathomless love
+      That has deigned to approve
+    And prosper the work of my hands.
+      With my pastoral crook
+      I went over the brook,
+    And behold I am spread into bands!
+
+    "Who, I ask in amaze,
+      Hath begotten me these?
+    And inquire from what quarter they came.
+      My full heart it replies,
+      They are born from the skies,
+    And gives glory to God and the Lamb!"
+
+The stanza which followed this, after another and longer interregnum of
+shouts, yells, ejaculations, frantic cries, agonized groans, seemed to
+cap the climax of noise and zeal.
+
+    "Sleeping on the brink of sin,
+     Tophet gaped to take us in;
+     Mercy to our rescue flew,
+     Broke the snare, and brought us through.
+
+    "Here, as in a lion's den,
+     Undevoured we still remain,
+     Pass secure the watery flood,
+     Hanging on the arm of God.
+
+    "Here----"
+
+(Terrible, most distracting to the ear, was the strained shout in which
+the last stanza was given.)
+
+    "Here we raise our voices higher,
+     Shout in the refiner's fire,
+     Clap our hands amidst the flame,
+     Glory give to Jesus' name!"
+
+The roof of the chapel did _not_ fly off, which speaks volumes in praise
+of its solid slating.
+
+But if Briar Chapel seemed alive, so also did Briarmains, though
+certainly the mansion appeared to enjoy a quieter phase of existence
+than the temple. Some of its windows too were aglow; the lower casements
+opened upon the lawn; curtains concealed the interior, and partly
+obscured the ray of the candles which lit it, but they did not entirely
+muffle the sound of voice and laughter. We are privileged to enter that
+front door, and to penetrate to the domestic sanctum.
+
+It is not the presence of company which makes Mr. Yorke's habitation
+lively, for there is none within it save his own family, and they are
+assembled in that farthest room to the right, the back parlour.
+
+This is the usual sitting-room of an evening. Those windows would be
+seen by daylight to be of brilliantly-stained glass, purple and amber
+the predominant hues, glittering round a gravely-tinted medallion in the
+centre of each, representing the suave head of William Shakespeare, and
+the serene one of John Milton. Some Canadian views hung on the
+walls--green forest and blue water scenery--and in the midst of them
+blazes a night-eruption of Vesuvius; very ardently it glows, contrasted
+with the cool foam and azure of cataracts, and the dusky depths of
+woods.
+
+The fire illuminating this room, reader, is such as, if you be a
+southern, you do not often see burning on the hearth of a private
+apartment. It is a clear, hot coal fire, heaped high in the ample
+chimney. Mr. Yorke _will_ have such fires even in warm summer weather.
+He sits beside it with a book in his hand, a little round stand at his
+elbow supporting a candle; but he is not reading--he is watching his
+children. Opposite to him sits his lady--a personage whom I might
+describe minutely, but I feel no vocation to the task. I see her,
+though, very plainly before me--a large woman of the gravest aspect,
+care on her front and on her shoulders, but not overwhelming, inevitable
+care, rather the sort of voluntary, exemplary cloud and burden people
+ever carry who deem it their duty to be gloomy. Ah, well-a-day! Mrs.
+Yorke had that notion, and grave as Saturn she was, morning, noon, and,
+night; and hard things she thought if any unhappy wight--especially of
+the female sex--who dared in her presence to show the light of a gay
+heart on a sunny countenance. In her estimation, to be mirthful was to
+be profane, to be cheerful was to be frivolous. She drew no
+distinctions. Yet she was a very good wife, a very careful mother,
+looked after her children unceasingly, was sincerely attached to her
+husband; only the worst of it was, if she could have had her will, she
+would not have permitted him to have any friend in the world beside
+herself. All his relations were insupportable to her, and she kept them
+at arm's length.
+
+Mr. Yorke and she agreed perfectly well, yet he was naturally a social,
+hospitable man, an advocate for family unity; and in his youth, as has
+been said, he liked none but lively, cheerful women. Why he chose her,
+how they contrived to suit each other, is a problem puzzling enough, but
+which might soon be solved if one had time to go into the analysis of
+the case. Suffice it here to say that Yorke had a shadowy side as well
+as a sunny side to his character, and that his shadowy side found
+sympathy and affinity in the whole of his wife's uniformly overcast
+nature. For the rest, she was a strong-minded woman; never said a weak
+or a trite thing; took stern, democratic views of society, and rather
+cynical ones of human nature; considered herself perfect and safe, and
+the rest of the world all wrong. Her main fault was a brooding, eternal,
+immitigable suspicion of all men, things, creeds, and parties; this
+suspicion was a mist before her eyes, a false guide in her path,
+wherever she looked, wherever she turned.
+
+It may be supposed that the children of such a pair were not likely to
+turn out quite ordinary, commonplace beings; and they were not. You see
+six of them, reader. The youngest is a baby on the mother's knee. It is
+all her own yet, and that one she has not yet begun to doubt, suspect,
+condemn; it derives its sustenance from her, it hangs on her, it clings
+to her, it loves her above everything else in the world. She is sure of
+that, because, as it lives by her, it cannot be otherwise, therefore she
+loves it.
+
+The two next are girls, Rose and Jessy; they are both now at their
+father's knee; they seldom go near their mother, except when obliged to
+do so. Rose, the elder, is twelve years old; she is like her father--the
+most like him of the whole group--but it is a granite head copied in
+ivory; all is softened in colour and line. Yorke himself has a harsh
+face--his daughter's is not harsh, neither is it quite pretty; it is
+simple, childlike in feature; the round cheeks bloom: as to the gray
+eyes, they are otherwise than childlike; a serious soul lights them--a
+young soul yet, but it will mature, if the body lives; and neither
+father nor mother have a spirit to compare with it. Partaking of the
+essence of each, it will one day be better than either--stronger, much
+purer, more aspiring. Rose is a still, sometimes a stubborn, girl now.
+Her mother wants to make of her such a woman as she is herself--a woman
+of dark and dreary duties; and Rose has a mind full-set, thick-sown with
+the germs of ideas her mother never knew. It is agony to her often to
+have these ideas trampled on and repressed. She has never rebelled yet;
+but if hard driven, she will rebel one day, and then it will be once for
+all. Rose loves her father: her father does not rule her with a rod of
+iron; he is good to her. He sometimes fears she will not live, so bright
+are the sparks of intelligence which, at moments, flash from her glance
+and gleam in her language. This idea makes him often sadly tender to
+her.
+
+He has no idea that little Jessy will die young, she is so gay and
+chattering, arch, original even now; passionate when provoked, but most
+affectionate if caressed; by turns gentle and rattling; exacting, yet
+generous; fearless--of her mother, for instance, whose irrationally hard
+and strict rule she has often defied--yet reliant on any who will help
+her. Jessy, with her little piquant face, engaging prattle, and winning
+ways, is made to be a pet, and her father's pet she accordingly is. It
+is odd that the doll should resemble her mother feature by feature, as
+Rose resembles her father, and yet the physiognomy--how different!
+
+Mr. Yorke, if a magic mirror were now held before you, and if therein
+were shown you your two daughters as they will be twenty years from this
+night, what would you think? The magic mirror is here: you shall learn
+their destinies--and first that of your little life, Jessy.
+
+Do you know this place? No, you never saw it; but you recognize the
+nature of these trees, this foliage--the cypress, the willow, the yew.
+Stone crosses like these are not unfamiliar to you, nor are these dim
+garlands of everlasting flowers. Here is the place--green sod and a gray
+marble headstone. Jessy sleeps below. She lived through an April day;
+much loved was she, much loving. She often, in her brief life, shed
+tears, she had frequent sorrows; she smiled between, gladdening whatever
+saw her. Her death was tranquil and happy in Rose's guardian arms, for
+Rose had been her stay and defence through many trials. The dying and
+the watching English girls were at that hour alone in a foreign
+country, and the soil of that country gave Jessy a grave.
+
+Now, behold Rose two years later. The crosses and garlands looked
+strange, but the hills and woods of this landscape look still stranger.
+This, indeed, is far from England; remote must be the shores which wear
+that wild, luxuriant aspect. This is some virgin solitude. Unknown birds
+flutter round the skirts of that forest; no European river this, on
+whose banks Rose sits thinking. The little quiet Yorkshire girl is a
+lonely emigrant in some region of the southern hemisphere. Will she ever
+come back?
+
+The three eldest of the family are all boys--Matthew, Mark, and Martin.
+They are seated together in that corner, engaged in some game. Observe
+their three heads: much alike at a first glance; at a second, different;
+at a third, contrasted. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, red-cheeked are the
+whole trio; small English features they all possess; all own a blended
+resemblance to sire and mother; and yet a distinctive physiognomy, mark
+of a separate character, belongs to each.
+
+I shall not say much about Matthew, the first-born of the house, though
+it is impossible to avoid gazing at him long, and conjecturing what
+qualities that visage hides or indicates. He is no plain-looking boy:
+that jet-black hair, white brow, high-coloured cheek, those quick, dark
+eyes, are good points in their way. How is it that, look as long as you
+will, there is but one object in the room, and that the most sinister,
+to which Matthew's face seems to bear an affinity, and of which, ever
+and anon, it reminds you strangely--the eruption of Vesuvius? Flame and
+shadow seem the component parts of that lad's soul--no daylight in it,
+and no sunshine, and no pure, cool moonbeam ever shone there. He has an
+English frame, but, apparently, not an English mind--you would say, an
+Italian stiletto in a sheath of British workmanship. He is crossed in
+the game--look at his scowl. Mr. Yorke sees it, and what does he say? In
+a low voice he pleads, "Mark and Martin, don't anger your brother." And
+this is ever the tone adopted by both parents. Theoretically, they decry
+partiality--no rights of primogeniture are to be allowed in that house;
+but Matthew is never to be vexed, never to be opposed; they avert
+provocation from him as assiduously as they would avert fire from a
+barrel of gunpowder. "Concede, conciliate," is their motto wherever he
+is concerned. The republicans are fast making a tyrant of their own
+flesh and blood. This the younger scions know and feel, and at heart
+they all rebel against the injustice. They cannot read their parents'
+motives; they only see the difference of treatment. The dragon's teeth
+are already sown amongst Mr. Yorke's young olive-branches; discord will
+one day be the harvest.
+
+Mark is a bonny-looking boy, the most regular-featured of the family. He
+is exceedingly calm; his smile is shrewd; he can say the driest, most
+cutting things in the quietest of tones. Despite his tranquillity, a
+somewhat heavy brow speaks temper, and reminds you that the smoothest
+waters are not always the safest. Besides, he is too still, unmoved,
+phlegmatic, to be happy. Life will never have much joy in it for Mark.
+By the time he is five-and-twenty he will wonder why people ever laugh,
+and think all fools who seem merry. Poetry will not exist for Mark,
+either in literature or in life; its best effusions will sound to him
+mere rant and jargon. Enthusiasm will be his aversion and contempt. Mark
+will have no youth; while he looks juvenile and blooming, he will be
+already middle-aged in mind. His body is now fourteen years of age, but
+his soul is already thirty.
+
+Martin, the youngest of the three, owns another nature. Life may, or may
+not, be brief for him, but it will certainly be brilliant. He will pass
+through all its illusions, half believe in them, wholly enjoy them, then
+outlive them. That boy is not handsome--not so handsome as either of his
+brothers. He is plain; there is a husk upon him, a dry shell, and he
+will wear it till he is near twenty, then he will put it off. About that
+period he will make himself handsome. He will wear uncouth manners till
+that age, perhaps homely garments; but the chrysalis will retain the
+power of transfiguring itself into the butterfly, and such
+transfiguration will, in due season, take place. For a space he will be
+vain, probably a downright puppy, eager for pleasure and desirous of
+admiration, athirst, too, for knowledge. He will want all that the world
+can give him, both of enjoyment and lore; he will, perhaps, take deep
+draughts at each fount. That thirst satisfied, what next? I know not.
+Martin might be a remarkable man. Whether he will or not, the seer is
+powerless to predict: on that subject there has been no open vision.
+
+Take Mr. Yorke's family in the aggregate: there is as much mental power
+in those six young heads, as much originality, as much activity and
+vigour of brain, as--divided amongst half a dozen commonplace
+broods--would give to each rather more than an average amount of sense
+and capacity. Mr. Yorke knows this, and is proud of his race. Yorkshire
+has such families here and there amongst her hills and wolds--peculiar,
+racy, vigorous; of good blood and strong brain; turbulent somewhat in
+the pride of their strength, and intractable in the force of their
+native powers; wanting polish, wanting consideration, wanting docility,
+but sound, spirited, and true-bred as the eagle on the cliff or the
+steed in the steppe.
+
+A low tap is heard at the parlour door; the boys have been making such a
+noise over their game, and little Jessy, besides, has been singing so
+sweet a Scotch song to her father--who delights in Scotch and Italian
+songs, and has taught his musical little daughter some of the best--that
+the ring at the outer door was not observed.
+
+"Come in," says Mrs. Yorke, in that conscientiously constrained and
+solemnized voice of hers, which ever modulates itself to a funereal
+dreariness of tone, though the subject it is exercised upon be but to
+give orders for the making of a pudding in the kitchen, to bid the boys
+hang up their caps in the hall, or to call the girls to their
+sewing--"come in!" And in came Robert Moore.
+
+Moore's habitual gravity, as well as his abstemiousness (for the case of
+spirit decanters is never ordered up when he pays an evening visit), has
+so far recommended him to Mrs. Yorke that she has not yet made him the
+subject of private animadversions with her husband; she has not yet
+found out that he is hampered by a secret intrigue which prevents him
+from marrying, or that he is a wolf in sheep's clothing--discoveries
+which she made at an early date after marriage concerning most of her
+husband's bachelor friends, and excluded them from her board
+accordingly; which part of her conduct, indeed, might be said to have
+its just and sensible as well as its harsh side.
+
+"Well, is it you?" she says to Mr. Moore, as he comes up to her and
+gives his hand. "What are you roving about at this time of night for?
+You should be at home."
+
+"Can a single man be said to have a home, madam?" he asks.
+
+"Pooh!" says Mrs. Yorke, who despises conventional smoothness quite as
+much as her husband does, and practises it as little, and whose plain
+speaking on all occasions is carried to a point calculated, sometimes,
+to awaken admiration, but oftener alarm--"pooh! you need not talk
+nonsense to me; a single man can have a home if he likes. Pray, does not
+your sister make a home for you?"
+
+"Not she," joined in Mr. Yorke. "Hortense is an honest lass. But when I
+was Robert's age I had five or six sisters, all as decent and proper as
+she is; but you see, Hesther, for all that it did not hinder me from
+looking out for a wife."
+
+"And sorely he has repented marrying me," added Mrs. Yorke, who liked
+occasionally to crack a dry jest against matrimony, even though it
+should be at her own expense. "He has repented it in sackcloth and
+ashes, Robert Moore, as you may well believe when you see his
+punishment" (here she pointed to her children). "Who would burden
+themselves with such a set of great, rough lads as those, if they could
+help it? It is not only bringing them into the world, though that is bad
+enough, but they are all to feed, to clothe, to rear, to settle in life.
+Young sir, when you feel tempted to marry, think of our four sons and
+two daughters, and look twice before you leap."
+
+"I am not tempted now, at any rate. I think these are not times for
+marrying or giving in marriage."
+
+A lugubrious sentiment of this sort was sure to obtain Mrs. Yorke's
+approbation. She nodded and groaned acquiescence; but in a minute she
+said, "I make little account of the wisdom of a Solomon of your age; it
+will be upset by the first fancy that crosses you. Meantime, sit down,
+sir. You can talk, I suppose, as well sitting as standing?"
+
+This was her way of inviting her guest to take a chair. He had no sooner
+obeyed her than little Jessy jumped from her father's knee and ran into
+Mr. Moore's arms, which were very promptly held out to receive her.
+
+"You talk of marrying him," said she to her mother, quite indignantly,
+as she was lifted lightly to his knee, "and he is married now, or as
+good. He promised that I should be his wife last summer, the first time
+he saw me in my new white frock and blue sash. Didn't he, father?"
+(These children were not accustomed to say papa and mamma; their mother
+would allow no such "namby-pamby.")
+
+"Ay, my little lassie, he promised; I'll bear witness. But make him say
+it over again now, Jessy. Such as he are only false loons."
+
+"He is not false. He is too bonny to be false," said Jessy, looking up
+to her tall sweetheart with the fullest confidence in his faith.
+
+"Bonny!" cried Mr. Yorke. "That's the reason that he should be, and
+proof that he is, a scoundrel."
+
+"But he looks too sorrowful to be false," here interposed a quiet voice
+from behind the father's chair. "If he was always laughing, I should
+think he forgot promises soon, but Mr. Moore never laughs."
+
+"Your sentimental buck is the greatest cheat of all, Rose," remarked Mr.
+Yorke.
+
+"He's not sentimental," said Rose.
+
+Mr. Moore turned to her with a little surprise, smiling at the same
+time.
+
+"How do you know I am not sentimental, Rose?"
+
+"Because I heard a lady say you were not."
+
+"Voilà, qui devient intéressant!" exclaimed Mr. Yorke, hitching his
+chair nearer the fire. "A lady! That has quite a romantic twang. We must
+guess who it is.--Rosy, whisper the name low to your father. Don't let
+_him_ hear."
+
+"Rose, don't be too forward to talk," here interrupted Mrs. Yorke, in
+her usual kill-joy fashion, "nor Jessy either. It becomes all children,
+especially girls, to be silent in the presence of their elders."
+
+"Why have we tongues, then?" asked Jessy pertly; while Rose only looked
+at her mother with an expression that seemed to say she should take that
+maxim in and think it over at her leisure. After two minutes' grave
+deliberation, she asked, "And why especially girls, mother?"
+
+"Firstly, because I say so; and secondly, because discretion and reserve
+are a girl's best wisdom."
+
+"My dear madam," observed Moore, "what you say is excellent--it reminds
+me, indeed, of my dear sister's observations; but really it is not
+applicable to these little ones. Let Rose and Jessy talk to me freely,
+or my chief pleasure in coming here is gone. I like their prattle; it
+does me good."
+
+"Does it not?" asked Jessy. "More good than if the rough lads came round
+you.--You call them rough, mother, yourself."
+
+"Yes, mignonne, a thousand times more good. I have rough lads enough
+about me all day long, poulet."
+
+"There are plenty of people," continued she, "who take notice of the
+boys. All my uncles and aunts seem to think their nephews better than
+their nieces, and when gentlemen come here to dine, it is always
+Matthew, and Mark, and Martin that are talked to, and never Rose and me.
+Mr. Moore is _our_ friend, and we'll keep him.--But mind, Rose, he's not
+so much your friend as he is mine. He is my _particular acquaintance_;
+remember that!" And she held up her small hand with an admonitory
+gesture.
+
+Rose was quite accustomed to be admonished by that small hand. Her will
+daily bent itself to that of the impetuous little Jessy. She was guided,
+overruled by Jessy in a thousand things. On all occasions of show and
+pleasure Jessy took the lead, and Rose fell quietly into the background;
+whereas, when the disagreeables of life--its work and privations--were
+in question, Rose instinctively took upon her, in addition to her own
+share, what she could of her sister's. Jessy had already settled it in
+her mind that she, when she was old enough, was to be married; Rose, she
+decided, must be an old maid, to live with her, look after her children,
+keep her house. This state of things is not uncommon between two
+sisters, where one is plain and the other pretty; but in this case, if
+there _was_ a difference in external appearance, Rose had the advantage:
+her face was more regular-featured than that of the piquant little
+Jessy. Jessy, however, was destined to possess, along with sprightly
+intelligence and vivacious feeling, the gift of fascination, the power
+to charm when, where, and whom she would. Rose was to have a fine,
+generous soul, a noble intellect profoundly cultivated, a heart as true
+as steel, but the manner to attract was not to be hers.
+
+"Now, Rose, tell me the name of this lady who denied that I was
+sentimental," urged Mr. Moore.
+
+Rose had no idea of tantalization, or she would have held him a while in
+doubt. She answered briefly, "I can't. I don't know her name."
+
+"Describe her to me. What was she like? Where did you see her?"
+
+"When Jessy and I went to spend the day at Whinbury with Kate and Susan
+Pearson, who were just come home from school, there was a party at Mrs.
+Pearson's, and some grown-up ladies were sitting in a corner of the
+drawing-room talking about you."
+
+"Did you know none of them?"
+
+"Hannah, and Harriet, and Dora, and Mary Sykes."
+
+"Good. Were they abusing me, Rosy?"
+
+"Some of them were. They called you a misanthrope. I remember the word.
+I looked for it in the dictionary when I came home. It means a
+man-hater."
+
+"What besides?"
+
+"Hannah Sykes said you were a solemn puppy."
+
+"Better!" cried Mr. Yorke, laughing. "Oh, excellent! Hannah! that's the
+one with the red hair--a fine girl, but half-witted."
+
+"She has wit enough for me, it appears," said Moore. "A solemn puppy,
+indeed! Well, Rose, go on."
+
+"Miss Pearson said she believed there was a good deal of affectation
+about you, and that with your dark hair and pale face you looked to her
+like some sort of a sentimental noodle."
+
+Again Mr. Yorke laughed. Mrs. Yorke even joined in this time. "You see
+in what esteem you are held behind your back," said she; "yet I believe
+_that_ Miss Pearson would like to catch you. She set her cap at you when
+you first came into the country, old as she is."
+
+"And who contradicted her, Rosy?" inquired Moore.
+
+"A lady whom I don't know, because she never visits here, though I see
+her every Sunday at church. She sits in the pew near the pulpit. I
+generally look at her, instead of looking at my prayer-book, for she is
+like a picture in our dining-room, that woman with the dove in her
+hand--at least she has eyes like it, and a nose too, a straight nose,
+that makes all her face look, somehow, what I call clear."
+
+"And you don't know her!" exclaimed Jessy, in a tone of exceeding
+surprise. "That's so like Rose. Mr. Moore, I often wonder in what sort
+of a world my sister lives. I am sure she does not live all her time in
+this. One is continually finding out that she is quite ignorant of some
+little matter which everybody else knows. To think of her going solemnly
+to church every Sunday, and looking all service-time at one particular
+person, and never so much as asking that person's name. She means
+Caroline Helstone, the rector's niece. I remember all about it. Miss
+Helstone was quite angry with Anne Pearson. She said, 'Robert Moore is
+neither affected nor sentimental; you mistake his character utterly, or
+rather not one of you here knows anything about it.' Now, shall I tell
+you what she is like? I can tell what people are like, and how they are
+dressed, better than Rose can."
+
+"Let us hear."
+
+"She is nice; she is fair; she has a pretty white slender throat; she
+has long curls, not stiff ones--they hang loose and soft, their colour
+is brown but not dark; she speaks quietly, with a clear tone; she never
+makes a bustle in moving; she often wears a gray silk dress; she is neat
+all over--her gowns, and her shoes, and her gloves always fit her. She
+is what I call a lady, and when I am as tall as she is, I mean to be
+like her. Shall I suit you if I am? Will you really marry me?"
+
+Moore stroked Jessy's hair. For a minute he seemed as if he would draw
+her nearer to him, but instead he put her a little farther off.
+
+"Oh! you won't have me? You push me away."
+
+"Why, Jessy, you care nothing about me. You never come to see me now at
+the Hollow."
+
+"Because you don't ask me."
+
+Hereupon Mr. Moore gave both the little girls an invitation to pay him a
+visit next day, promising that, as he was going to Stilbro' in the
+morning, he would buy them each a present, of what nature he would not
+then declare, but they must come and see. Jessy was about to reply, when
+one of the boys unexpectedly broke in,--
+
+"I know that Miss Helstone you have all been palavering about. She's an
+ugly girl. I hate her. I hate all womenites. I wonder what they were
+made for."
+
+"Martin!" said his father, for Martin it was. The lad only answered by
+turning his cynical young face, half-arch, half-truculent, towards the
+paternal chair. "Martin, my lad, thou'rt a swaggering whelp now; thou
+wilt some day be an outrageous puppy. But stick to those sentiments of
+thine. See, I'll write down the words now i' my pocket-book." (The
+senior took out a morocco-covered book, and deliberately wrote therein.)
+"Ten years hence, Martin, if thou and I be both alive at that day, I'll
+remind thee of that speech."
+
+"I'll say the same then. I mean always to hate women. They're such
+dolls; they do nothing but dress themselves finely, and go swimming
+about to be admired. I'll never marry. I'll be a bachelor."
+
+"Stick to it! stick to it!--Hesther" (addressing his wife), "I was like
+him when I was his age--a regular misogamist; and, behold! by the time I
+was three-and-twenty--being then a tourist in France and Italy, and the
+Lord knows where--I curled my hair every night before I went to bed, and
+wore a ring i' my ear, and would have worn one i' my nose if it had been
+the fashion, and all that I might make myself pleasing and charming to
+the ladies. Martin will do the like."
+
+"Will I? Never! I've more sense. What a guy you were, father! As to
+dressing, I make this vow: I'll never dress more finely than as you see
+me at present.--Mr. Moore, I'm clad in blue cloth from top to toe, and
+they laugh at me, and call me sailor at the grammar-school. I laugh
+louder at them, and say they are all magpies and parrots, with their
+coats one colour, and their waistcoats another, and their trousers a
+third. I'll always wear blue cloth, and nothing but blue cloth. It is
+beneath a human being's dignity to dress himself in parti-coloured
+garments."
+
+"Ten years hence, Martin, no tailor's shop will have choice of colours
+varied enough for thy exacting taste; no perfumer's stores essences
+exquisite enough for thy fastidious senses."
+
+Martin looked disdain, but vouchsafed no further reply. Meantime Mark,
+who for some minutes had been rummaging amongst a pile of books on a
+side-table, took the word. He spoke in a peculiarly slow, quiet voice,
+and with an expression of still irony in his face not easy to describe.
+
+"Mr. Moore," said he, "you think perhaps it was a compliment on Miss
+Caroline Helstone's part to say you were not sentimental. I thought you
+appeared confused when my sisters told you the words, as if you felt
+flattered. You turned red, just like a certain vain little lad at our
+school, who always thinks proper to blush when he gets a rise in the
+class. For your benefit, Mr. Moore, I've been looking up the word
+'sentimental' in the dictionary, and I find it to mean 'tinctured with
+sentiment.' On examining further, 'sentiment' is explained to be
+thought, idea, notion. A sentimental man, then, is one who has thoughts,
+ideas, notions; an unsentimental man is one destitute of thought, idea,
+or notion."
+
+And Mark stopped. He did not smile, he did not look round for
+admiration. He had said his say, and was silent.
+
+"Ma foi! mon ami," observed Mr. Moore to Yorke, "ce sont vraiment des
+enfants terribles, que les vôtres!"
+
+Rose, who had been listening attentively to Mark's speech, replied to
+him, "There are different kinds of thoughts, ideas, and notions," said
+she, "good and bad. Sentimental must refer to the bad, or Miss Helstone
+must have taken it in that sense, for she was not blaming Mr. Moore; she
+was defending him."
+
+"That's my kind little advocate!" said Moore, taking Rose's hand.
+
+"She was defending him," repeated Rose, "as I should have done had I
+been in her place, for the other ladies seemed to speak spitefully."
+
+"Ladies always do speak spitefully," observed Martin. "It is the nature
+of womenites to be spiteful."
+
+Matthew now, for the first time, opened his lips. "What a fool Martin
+is, to be always gabbling about what he does not understand!"
+
+"It is my privilege, as a freeman, to gabble on whatever subject I
+like," responded Martin.
+
+"You use it, or rather abuse it, to such an extent," rejoined the elder
+brother, "that you prove you ought to have been a slave."
+
+"A slave! a slave! That to a Yorke, and from a Yorke! This fellow," he
+added, standing up at the table, and pointing across it to
+Matthew--"this fellow forgets, what every cottier in Briarfield knows,
+that all born of our house have that arched instep under which water can
+flow--proof that there has not been a slave of the blood for three
+hundred years."
+
+"Mountebank!" said Matthew.
+
+"Lads, be silent!" exclaimed Mr. Yorke.--"Martin, you are a
+mischief-maker. There would have been no disturbance but for you."
+
+"Indeed! Is that correct? Did I begin, or did Matthew? Had I spoken to
+him when he accused me of gabbling like a fool?"
+
+"A presumptuous fool!" repeated Matthew.
+
+Here Mrs. Yorke commenced rocking herself--rather a portentous movement
+with her, as it was occasionally followed, especially when Matthew was
+worsted in a conflict, by a fit of hysterics.
+
+"I don't see why I should bear insolence from Matthew Yorke, or what
+right he has to use bad language to me," observed Martin.
+
+"He has no right, my lad; but forgive your brother until
+seventy-and-seven times," said Mr. Yorke soothingly.
+
+"Always alike, and theory and practice always adverse!" murmured Martin
+as he turned to leave the room.
+
+"Where art thou going, my son?" asked the father.
+
+"Somewhere where I shall be safe from insult, if in this house I can
+find any such place."
+
+Matthew laughed very insolently. Martin threw a strange look at him, and
+trembled through all his slight lad's frame; but he restrained himself.
+
+"I suppose there is no objection to my withdrawing?" he inquired.
+
+"No. Go, my lad; but remember not to bear malice."
+
+Martin went, and Matthew sent another insolent laugh after him. Rose,
+lifting her fair head from Moore's shoulder, against which, for a
+moment, it had been resting, said, as she directed a steady gaze to
+Matthew, "Martin is grieved, and you are glad; but I would rather be
+Martin than you. I dislike your nature."
+
+Here Mr. Moore, by way of averting, or at least escaping, a scene--which
+a sob from Mrs. Yorke warned him was likely to come on--rose, and
+putting Jessy off his knee, he kissed her and Rose, reminding them, at
+the same time, to be sure and come to the Hollow in good time to-morrow
+afternoon; then, having taken leave of his hostess, he said to Mr.
+Yorke, "May I speak a word with you?" and was followed by him from the
+room. Their brief conference took place in the hall.
+
+"Have you employment for a good workman?" asked Moore.
+
+"A nonsense question in these times, when you know that every master has
+many good workmen to whom he cannot give full employment."
+
+"You must oblige me by taking on this man, if possible."
+
+"My lad, I can take on no more hands to oblige all England."
+
+"It does not signify; I must find him a place somewhere."
+
+"Who is he?"
+
+"William Farren."
+
+"I know William. A right-down honest man is William."
+
+"He has been out of work three months. He has a large family. We are
+sure they cannot live without wages. He was one of the deputation of
+cloth-dressers who came to me this morning to complain and threaten.
+William did not threaten. He only asked me to give them rather more
+time--to make my changes more slowly. You know I cannot do that:
+straitened on all sides as I am, I have nothing for it but to push on. I
+thought it would be idle to palaver long with them. I sent them away,
+after arresting a rascal amongst them, whom I hope to transport--a
+fellow who preaches at the chapel yonder sometimes."
+
+"Not Moses Barraclough?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Ah! you've arrested him? Good! Then out of a scoundrel you're going to
+make a martyr. You've done a wise thing."
+
+"I've done a right thing. Well, the short and the long of it is, I'm
+determined to get Farren a place, and I reckon on you to give him one."
+
+"This is cool, however!" exclaimed Mr. Yorke. "What right have you to
+reckon on me to provide for your dismissed workmen? What do I know about
+your Farrens and your Williams? I've heard he's an honest man, but am I
+to support all the honest men in Yorkshire? You may say that would be no
+great charge to undertake; but great or little, I'll none of it."
+
+"Come, Mr. Yorke, what can you find for him to do?"
+
+"_I_ find! You'll make me use language I'm not accustomed to use. I wish
+you would go home. Here is the door; set off."
+
+Moore sat down on one of the hall chairs.
+
+"You can't give him work in your mill--good; but you have land. Find him
+some occupation on your land, Mr. Yorke."
+
+"Bob, I thought you cared nothing about our _lourdauds de paysans_. I
+don't understand this change."
+
+"I do. The fellow spoke to me nothing but truth and sense. I answered
+him just as roughly as I did the rest, who jabbered mere gibberish. I
+couldn't make distinctions there and then. His appearance told what he
+had gone through lately clearer than his words; but where is the use of
+explaining? Let him have work."
+
+"Let him have it yourself. If you are so very much in earnest, strain a
+point."
+
+"If there was a point left in my affairs to strain, I would strain it
+till it cracked again; but I received letters this morning which showed
+me pretty clearly where I stand, and it is not far off the end of the
+plank. My foreign market, at any rate, is gorged. If there is no
+change--if there dawns no prospect of peace--if the Orders in Council
+are not, at least, suspended, so as to open our way in the West--I do
+not know where I am to turn. I see no more light than if I were sealed
+in a rock, so that for me to pretend to offer a man a livelihood would
+be to do a dishonest thing."
+
+"Come, let us take a turn on the front. It is a starlight night," said
+Mr. Yorke.
+
+They passed out, closing the front door after them, and side by side
+paced the frost-white pavement to and fro.
+
+"Settle about Farren at once," urged Mr. Moore. "You have large
+fruit-gardens at Yorke Mills. He is a good gardener. Give him work
+there."
+
+"Well, so be it. I'll send for him to-morrow, and we'll see. And now, my
+lad, you're concerned about the condition of your affairs?"
+
+"Yes, a second failure--which I may delay, but which, at this moment, I
+see no way finally to avert--would blight the name of Moore completely;
+and you are aware I had fine intentions of paying off every debt and
+re-establishing the old firm on its former basis."
+
+"You want capital--that's all you want."
+
+"Yes; but you might as well say that breath is all a dead man wants to
+live."
+
+"I know--I know capital is not to be had for the asking; and if you were
+a married man, and had a family, like me, I should think your case
+pretty nigh desperate; but the young and unencumbered have chances
+peculiar to themselves. I hear gossip now and then about your being on
+the eve of marriage with this miss and that; but I suppose it is none of
+it true?"
+
+"You may well suppose that. I think I am not in a position to be
+dreaming of marriage. Marriage! I cannot bear the word; it sounds so
+silly and utopian. I have settled it decidedly that marriage and love
+are superfluities, intended only for the rich, who live at ease, and
+have no need to take thought for the morrow; or desperations--the last
+and reckless joy of the deeply wretched, who never hope to rise out of
+the slough of their utter poverty."
+
+"I should not think so if I were circumstanced as you are. I should
+think I could very likely get a wife with a few thousands, who would
+suit both me and my affairs."
+
+"I wonder where?"
+
+"Would you try if you had a chance?"
+
+"I don't know. It depends on--in short, it depends on many things."
+
+"Would you take an old woman?"
+
+"I'd rather break stones on the road."
+
+"So would I. Would you take an ugly one?"
+
+"Bah! I hate ugliness and delight in beauty. My eyes and heart, Yorke,
+take pleasure in a sweet, young, fair face, as they are repelled by a
+grim, rugged, meagre one. Soft delicate lines and hues please, harsh
+ones prejudice me. I won't have an ugly wife."
+
+"Not if she were rich?"
+
+"Not if she were dressed in gems. I could not love--I could not fancy--I
+could not endure her. My taste must have satisfaction, or disgust would
+break out in despotism, or worse--freeze to utter iciness."
+
+"What! Bob, if you married an honest, good-natured, and wealthy lass,
+though a little hard-favoured, couldn't you put up with the high
+cheek-bones, the rather wide mouth, and reddish hair?"
+
+"I'll never try, I tell you. Grace at least I _will_ have, and youth and
+symmetry--yes, and what I call beauty."
+
+"And poverty, and a nursery full of bairns you can neither clothe nor
+feed, and very soon an anxious, faded mother; and then bankruptcy,
+discredit--a life-long struggle."
+
+"Let me alone, Yorke."
+
+"If you are romantic, Robert, and especially if you are already in love,
+it is of no use talking."
+
+"I am not romantic. I am stripped of romance as bare as the white
+tenters in that field are of cloth."
+
+"Always use such figures of speech, lad; I can understand them. And
+there is no love affair to disturb your judgment?"
+
+"I thought I had said enough on that subject before. Love for me?
+Stuff!"
+
+"Well, then, if you are sound both in heart and head, there is no
+reason why you should not profit by a good chance if it offers;
+therefore, wait and see."
+
+"You are quite oracular, Yorke."
+
+"I think I am a bit i' that line. I promise ye naught and I advise ye
+naught; but I bid ye keep your heart up, and be guided by
+circumstances."
+
+"My namesake the physician's almanac could not speak more guardedly."
+
+"In the meantime, I care naught about ye, Robert Moore: ye are nothing
+akin to me or mine, and whether ye lose or find a fortune it maks no
+difference to me. Go home, now. It has stricken ten. Miss Hortense will
+be wondering where ye are."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+OLD MAIDS.
+
+
+Time wore on, and spring matured. The surface of England began to look
+pleasant: her fields grew green, her hills fresh, her gardens blooming;
+but at heart she was no better. Still her poor were wretched, still
+their employers were harassed. Commerce, in some of its branches, seemed
+threatened with paralysis, for the war continued; England's blood was
+shed and her wealth lavished--all, it seemed, to attain most inadequate
+ends. Some tidings there were indeed occasionally of successes in the
+Peninsula, but these came in slowly; long intervals occurred between, in
+which no note was heard but the insolent self-felicitations of Bonaparte
+on his continued triumphs. Those who suffered from the results of the
+war felt this tedious, and, as they thought, hopeless struggle against
+what their fears or their interests taught them to regard as an
+invincible power, most insufferable. They demanded peace on any terms.
+Men like Yorke and Moore--and there were thousands whom the war placed
+where it placed them, shuddering on the verge of bankruptcy--insisted on
+peace with the energy of desperation.
+
+They held meetings, they made speeches, they got up petitions to extort
+this boon; on what terms it was made they cared not.
+
+All men, taken singly, are more or less selfish; and taken in bodies,
+they are intensely so. The British merchant is no exception to this
+rule: the mercantile classes illustrate it strikingly. These classes
+certainly think too exclusively of making money; they are too oblivious
+of every national consideration but that of extending England's--that
+is, their own--commerce. Chivalrous feeling, disinterestedness, pride in
+honour, is too dead in their hearts. A land ruled by them alone would
+too often make ignominious submission--not at all from the motives
+Christ teaches, but rather from those Mammon instils. During the late
+war, the tradesmen of England would have endured buffets from the
+French on the right cheek and on the left; their cloak they would have
+given to Napoleon, and then have politely offered him their coat also,
+nor would they have withheld their waistcoat if urged; they would have
+prayed permission only to retain their one other garment, for the sake
+of the purse in its pocket. Not one spark of spirit, not one symptom of
+resistance, would they have shown till the hand of the Corsican bandit
+had grasped that beloved purse; _then_, perhaps, transfigured at once
+into British bulldogs, they would have sprung at the robber's throat,
+and there they would have fastened, and there hung, inveterate,
+insatiable, till the treasure had been restored. Tradesmen, when they
+speak against war, always profess to hate it because it is a bloody and
+barbarous proceeding. You would think, to hear them talk, that they are
+peculiarly civilized--especially gentle and kindly of disposition to
+their fellow-men. This is not the case. Many of them are extremely
+narrow and cold-hearted; have no good feeling for any class but their
+own; are distant, even hostile, to all others; call them useless; seem
+to question their right to exist; seem to grudge them the very air they
+breathe, and to think the circumstance of their eating, drinking, and
+living in decent houses quite unjustifiable. They do not know what
+others do in the way of helping, pleasing, or teaching their race; they
+will not trouble themselves to inquire. Whoever is not in trade is
+accused of eating the bread of idleness, of passing a useless existence.
+Long may it be ere England really becomes a nation of shop-keepers!
+
+We have already said that Moore was no self-sacrificing patriot, and we
+have also explained what circumstances rendered him specially prone to
+confine his attention and efforts to the furtherance of his individual
+interest; accordingly, when he felt himself urged a second time to the
+brink of ruin, none struggled harder than he against the influences
+which would have thrust him over. What he _could_ do towards stirring
+agitation in the north against the war he did, and he instigated others
+whose money and connections gave them more power than he possessed.
+Sometimes, by flashes, he felt there was little reason in the demands
+his party made on Government. When he heard of all Europe threatened by
+Bonaparte, and of all Europe arming to resist him; when he saw Russia
+menaced, and beheld Russia rising, incensed and stern, to defend her
+frozen soil, her wild provinces of serfs, her dark native despotism,
+from the tread, the yoke, the tyranny of a foreign victor--he knew that
+England, a free realm, could not _then_ depute her sons to make
+concessions and propose terms to the unjust, grasping French leader.
+When news came from time to time of the movements of that MAN then
+representing England in the Peninsula, of his advance from success to
+success--that advance so deliberate but so unswerving, so circumspect
+but so certain, so "unhasting" but so "unresting;" when he read Lord
+Wellington's own dispatches in the columns of the newspapers, documents
+written by modesty to the dictation of truth--Moore confessed at heart
+that a power was with the troops of Britain, of that vigilant, enduring,
+genuine, unostentatious sort, which must win victory to the side it led,
+in the end. In the end! But that end, he thought, was yet far off; and
+meantime he, Moore, as an individual, would be crushed, his hopes ground
+to dust. It was himself he had to care for, his hopes he had to pursue;
+and he would fulfil his destiny.
+
+He fulfilled it so vigorously that ere long he came to a decisive
+rupture with his old Tory friend the rector. They quarrelled at a public
+meeting, and afterwards exchanged some pungent letters in the
+newspapers. Mr. Helstone denounced Moore as a Jacobin, ceased to see
+him, would not even speak to him when they met. He intimated also to his
+niece, very distinctly, that her communications with Hollow's Cottage
+must for the present cease; she must give up taking French lessons. The
+language, he observed, was a bad and frivolous one at the best, and most
+of the works it boasted were bad and frivolous, highly injurious in
+their tendency to weak female minds. He wondered (he remarked
+parenthetically) what noodle first made it the fashion to teach women
+French. Nothing was more improper for them. It was like feeding a
+rickety child on chalk and water gruel. Caroline must give it up, and
+give up her cousins too. They were dangerous people.
+
+Mr. Helstone quite expected opposition to this order; he expected tears.
+Seldom did he trouble himself about Caroline's movements, but a vague
+idea possessed him that she was fond of going to Hollow's Cottage; also
+he suspected that she liked Robert Moore's occasional presence at the
+rectory. The Cossack had perceived that whereas if Malone stepped in of
+an evening to make himself sociable and charming, by pinching the ears
+of an aged black cat, which usually shared with Miss Helstone's feet the
+accommodation of her footstool, or by borrowing a fowling-piece, and
+banging away at a tool shed door in the garden while enough of daylight
+remained to show that conspicuous mark, keeping the passage and
+sitting-room doors meantime uncomfortably open for the convenience of
+running in and out to announce his failures and successes with noisy
+_brusquerie_--he had observed that under such entertaining circumstances
+Caroline had a trick of disappearing, tripping noiselessly upstairs, and
+remaining invisible till called down to supper. On the other hand, when
+Robert Moore was the guest, though he elicited no vivacities from the
+cat, did nothing to it, indeed, beyond occasionally coaxing it from the
+stool to his knee, and there letting it purr, climb to his shoulder, and
+rub its head against his cheek; though there was no ear-splitting
+cracking off of firearms, no diffusion of sulphurous gunpowder perfume,
+no noise, no boasting during his stay--that still Caroline sat in the
+room, and seemed to find wondrous content in the stitching of Jew-basket
+pin-cushions and the knitting of missionary-basket socks.
+
+She was very quiet, and Robert paid her little attention, scarcely ever
+addressing his discourse to her; but Mr. Helstone, not being one of
+those elderly gentlemen who are easily blinded--on the contrary, finding
+himself on all occasions extremely wide-awake--had watched them when
+they bade each other good-night. He had just seen their eyes meet
+once--only once. Some natures would have taken pleasure in the glance
+then surprised, because there was no harm and some delight in it. It was
+by no means a glance of mutual intelligence, for mutual love secrets
+existed not between them. There was nothing then of craft and
+concealment to offend: only Mr. Moore's eyes, looking into Caroline's,
+felt they were clear and gentle; and Caroline's eyes, encountering Mr.
+Moore's, confessed they were manly and searching. Each acknowledged the
+charm in his or her own way. Moore smiled slightly, and Caroline
+coloured as slightly. Mr. Helstone could, on the spot, have rated them
+both. They annoyed him. Why? Impossible to say. If you had asked him
+what Moore merited at that moment, he would have said a "horsewhip;" if
+you had inquired into Caroline's deserts, he would have adjudged her a
+box on the ear; if you had further demanded the reason of such
+chastisements, he would have stormed against flirtation and
+love-making, and vowed he would have no such folly going on under his
+roof.
+
+These private considerations, combined with political reasons, fixed his
+resolution of separating the cousins. He announced his will to Caroline
+one evening as she was sitting at work near the drawing-room window. Her
+face was turned towards him, and the light fell full upon it. It had
+struck him a few minutes before that she was looking paler and quieter
+than she used to look. It had not escaped him either that Robert Moore's
+name had never, for some three weeks past, dropped from her lips; nor
+during the same space of time had that personage made his appearance at
+the rectory. Some suspicion of clandestine meetings haunted his mind.
+Having but an indifferent opinion of women, he always suspected them. He
+thought they needed constant watching. It was in a tone dryly
+significant he desired her to cease her daily visits to the Hollow. He
+expected a start, a look of depreciation. The start he saw, but it was a
+very slight one; no look whatever was directed to him.
+
+"Do you hear me?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, uncle."
+
+"Of course you mean to attend to what I say?"
+
+"Yes, certainly."
+
+"And there must be no letter-scribbling to your cousin Hortense--no
+intercourse whatever. I do not approve of the principles of the family.
+They are Jacobinical."
+
+"Very well," said Caroline quietly. She acquiesced then. There was no
+vexed flushing of the face, no gathering tears; the shadowy
+thoughtfulness which had covered her features ere Mr. Helstone spoke
+remained undisturbed; she was obedient.
+
+Yes, perfectly; because the mandate coincided with her own previous
+judgment; because it was now become pain to her to go to Hollow's
+Cottage; nothing met her there but disappointment. Hope and love had
+quitted that little tenement, for Robert seemed to have deserted its
+precincts. Whenever she asked after him--which she very seldom did,
+since the mere utterance of his name made her face grow hot--the answer
+was, he was from home, or he was quite taken up with business. Hortense
+feared he was killing himself by application. He scarcely ever took a
+meal in the house; he lived in the counting-house.
+
+At church only Caroline had the chance of seeing him, and there she
+rarely looked at him. It was both too much pain and too much pleasure
+to look--it excited too much emotion; and that it was all wasted emotion
+she had learned well to comprehend.
+
+Once, on a dark, wet Sunday, when there were few people at church, and
+when especially certain ladies were absent, of whose observant faculties
+and tomahawk tongues Caroline stood in awe, she had allowed her eye to
+seek Robert's pew, and to rest awhile on its occupant. He was there
+alone. Hortense had been kept at home by prudent considerations relative
+to the rain and a new spring _chapeau_. During the sermon he sat with
+folded arms and eyes cast down, looking very sad and abstracted. When
+depressed, the very hue of his face seemed more dusk than when he
+smiled, and to-day cheek and forehead wore their most tintless and sober
+olive. By instinct Caroline knew, as she examined that clouded
+countenance, that his thoughts were running in no familiar or kindly
+channel; that they were far away, not merely from her, but from all
+which she could comprehend, or in which she could sympathize. Nothing
+that they had ever talked of together was now in his mind: he was wrapt
+from her by interests and responsibilities in which it was deemed such
+as she could have no part.
+
+Caroline meditated in her own way on the subject; speculated on his
+feelings, on his life, on his fears, on his fate; mused over the mystery
+of "business," tried to comprehend more about it than had ever been told
+her--to understand its perplexities, liabilities, duties, exactions;
+endeavoured to realize the state of mind of a "man of business," to
+enter into it, feel what he would feel, aspire to what he would aspire.
+Her earnest wish was to see things as they were, and not to be romantic.
+By dint of effort she contrived to get a glimpse of the light of truth
+here and there, and hoped that scant ray might suffice to guide her.
+
+"Different, indeed," she concluded, "is Robert's mental condition to
+mine. I think only of him; he has no room, no leisure, to think of me.
+The feeling called love is and has been for two years the predominant
+emotion of my heart--always there, always awake, always astir. Quite
+other feelings absorb his reflections and govern his faculties. He is
+rising now, going to leave the church, for service is over. Will he turn
+his head towards this pew? No, not once. He has not one look for me.
+That is hard. A kind glance would have made me happy till to-morrow. I
+have not got it; he would not give it; he is gone. Strange that grief
+should now almost choke me, because another human being's eye has failed
+to greet mine."
+
+That Sunday evening, Mr. Malone coming, as usual, to pass it with his
+rector, Caroline withdrew after tea to her chamber. Fanny, knowing her
+habits, had lit her a cheerful little fire, as the weather was so gusty
+and chill. Closeted there, silent and solitary, what could she do but
+think? She noiselessly paced to and fro the carpeted floor, her head
+drooped, her hands folded. It was irksome to sit; the current of
+reflection ran rapidly through her mind; to-night she was mutely
+excited.
+
+Mute was the room, mute the house. The double door of the study muffled
+the voices of the gentlemen. The servants were quiet in the kitchen,
+engaged with books their young mistress had lent them--books which she
+had told them were "fit for Sunday reading." And she herself had another
+of the same sort open on the table, but she could not read it. Its
+theology was incomprehensible to her, and her own mind was too busy,
+teeming, wandering, to listen to the language of another mind.
+
+Then, too, her imagination was full of pictures--images of Moore, scenes
+where he and she had been together; winter fireside sketches; a glowing
+landscape of a hot summer afternoon passed with him in the bosom of
+Nunnely Wood; divine vignettes of mild spring or mellow autumn moments,
+when she had sat at his side in Hollow's Copse, listening to the call of
+the May cuckoo, or sharing the September treasure of nuts and ripe
+blackberries--a wild dessert which it was her morning's pleasure to
+collect in a little basket, and cover with green leaves and fresh
+blossoms, and her afternoon's delight to administer to Moore, berry by
+berry, and nut by nut, like a bird feeding its fledgling.
+
+Robert's features and form were with her; the sound of his voice was
+quite distinct in her ear; his few caresses seemed renewed. But these
+joys, being hollow, were, ere long, crushed in. The pictures faded, the
+voice failed, the visionary clasp melted chill from her hand, and where
+the warm seal of lips had made impress on her forehead, it felt now as
+if a sleety rain-drop had fallen. She returned from an enchanted region
+to the real world: for Nunnely Wood in June she saw her narrow chamber;
+for the songs of birds in alleys she heard the rain on her casement; for
+the sigh of the south wind came the sob of the mournful east; and for
+Moore's manly companionship she had the thin illusion of her own dim
+shadow on the wall. Turning from the pale phantom which reflected
+herself in its outline, and her reverie in the drooped attitude of its
+dim head and colourless tresses, she sat down--inaction would suit the
+frame of mind into which she was now declining--she said to herself, "I
+have to live, perhaps, till seventy years. As far as I know, I have good
+health; half a century of existence may lie before me. How am I to
+occupy it? What am I to do to fill the interval of time which spreads
+between me and the grave?"
+
+She reflected.
+
+"I shall not be married, it appears," she continued. "I suppose, as
+Robert does not care for me, I shall never have a husband to love, nor
+little children to take care of. Till lately I had reckoned securely on
+the duties and affections of wife and mother to occupy my existence. I
+considered, somehow, as a matter of course, that I was growing up to the
+ordinary destiny, and never troubled myself to seek any other; but now I
+perceive plainly I may have been mistaken. Probably I shall be an old
+maid. I shall live to see Robert married to some one else, some rich
+lady. I shall never marry. What was I created for, I wonder? Where is my
+place in the world?"
+
+She mused again.
+
+"Ah! I see," she pursued presently; "that is the question which most old
+maids are puzzled to solve. Other people solve it for them by saying,
+'Your place is to do good to others, to be helpful whenever help is
+wanted.' That is right in some measure, and a very convenient doctrine
+for the people who hold it; but I perceive that certain sets of human
+beings are very apt to maintain that other sets should give up their
+lives to them and their service, and then they requite them by praise;
+they call them devoted and virtuous. Is this enough? Is it to live? Is
+there not a terrible hollowness, mockery, want, craving, in that
+existence which is given away to others, for want of something of your
+own to bestow it on? I suspect there is. Does virtue lie in abnegation
+of self? I do not believe it. Undue humility makes tyranny; weak
+concession creates selfishness. The Romish religion especially teaches
+renunciation of self, submission to others, and nowhere are found so
+many grasping tyrants as in the ranks of the Romish priesthood. Each
+human being has his share of rights. I suspect it would conduce to the
+happiness and welfare of all if each knew his allotment, and held to it
+as tenaciously as the martyr to his creed. Queer thoughts these that
+surge in my mind. Are they right thoughts? I am not certain.
+
+"Well, life is short at the best. Seventy years, they say, pass like a
+vapour, like a dream when one awaketh; and every path trod by human feet
+terminates in one bourne--the grave, the little chink in the surface of
+this great globe, the furrow where the mighty husbandman with the scythe
+deposits the seed he has shaken from the ripe stem; and there it falls,
+decays, and thence it springs again, when the world has rolled round a
+few times more. So much for the body. The soul meantime wings its long
+flight upward, folds its wings on the brink of the sea of fire and
+glass, and gazing down through the burning clearness, finds there
+mirrored the vision of the Christian's triple Godhead--the sovereign
+Father, the mediating Son, the Creator Spirit. Such words, at least,
+have been chosen to express what is inexpressible, to describe what
+baffles description. The soul's real hereafter who shall guess?"
+
+Her fire was decayed to its last cinder; Malone had departed; and now
+the study bell rang for prayers.
+
+The next day Caroline had to spend altogether alone, her uncle being
+gone to dine with his friend Dr. Boultby, vicar of Whinbury. The whole
+time she was talking inwardly in the same strain--looking forwards,
+asking what she was to do with life. Fanny, as she passed in and out of
+the room occasionally, intent on housemaid errands, perceived that her
+young mistress sat very still. She was always in the same place, always
+bent industriously over a piece of work. She did not lift her head to
+speak to Fanny, as her custom was; and when the latter remarked that the
+day was fine, and she ought to take a walk, she only said, "It is cold."
+
+"You are very diligent at that sewing, Miss Caroline," continued the
+girl, approaching her little table.
+
+"I am tired of it, Fanny."
+
+"Then why do you go on with it? Put it down. Read, or do something to
+amuse you."
+
+"It is solitary in this house, Fanny. Don't you think so?"
+
+"I don't find it so, miss. Me and Eliza are company for one another; but
+you are quite too still. You should visit more. Now, be persuaded: go
+upstairs and dress yourself smart, and go and take tea, in a friendly
+way, with Miss Mann or Miss Ainley. I am certain either of those ladies
+would be delighted to see you."
+
+"But their houses are dismal: they are both old maids. I am certain old
+maids are a very unhappy race."
+
+"Not they, miss. They can't be unhappy; they take such care of
+themselves. They are all selfish."
+
+"Miss Ainley is not selfish, Fanny. She is always doing good. How
+devotedly kind she was to her step-mother as long as the old lady lived;
+and now when she is quite alone in the world, without brother or sister,
+or any one to care for her, how charitable she is to the poor, as far as
+her means permit! Still nobody thinks much of her, or has pleasure in
+going to see her; and how gentlemen always sneer at her!"
+
+"They shouldn't, miss. I believe she is a good woman. But gentlemen
+think only of ladies' looks."
+
+"I'll go and see her," exclaimed Caroline, starting up; "and if she asks
+me to stay to tea, I'll stay. How wrong it is to neglect people because
+they are not pretty, and young, and merry! And I will certainly call to
+see Miss Mann too. She may not be amiable, but what has made her
+unamiable? What has life been to her?"
+
+Fanny helped Miss Helstone to put away her work, and afterwards assisted
+her to dress.
+
+"_You_'ll not be an old maid, Miss Caroline," she said, as she tied the
+sash of her brown silk frock, having previously smoothed her soft, full,
+and shining curls; "there are no signs of an old maid about you."
+
+Caroline looked at the little mirror before her, and she thought there
+were some signs. She could see that she was altered within the last
+month; that the hues of her complexion were paler, her eyes changed--a
+wan shade seemed to circle them; her countenance was dejected--she was
+not, in short, so pretty or so fresh as she used to be. She distantly
+hinted this to Fanny, from whom she got no direct answer, only a remark
+that people did vary in their looks, but that at her age a little
+falling away signified nothing; she would soon come round again, and be
+plumper and rosier than ever. Having given this assurance, Fanny showed
+singular zeal in wrapping her up in warm shawls and handkerchiefs, till
+Caroline, nearly smothered with the weight, was fain to resist further
+additions.
+
+She paid her visits--first to Miss Mann, for this was the most difficult
+point. Miss Mann was certainly not quite a lovable person. Till now,
+Caroline had always unhesitatingly declared she disliked her, and more
+than once she had joined her cousin Robert in laughing at some of her
+peculiarities. Moore was not habitually given to sarcasm, especially on
+anything humbler or weaker than himself; but he had once or twice
+happened to be in the room when Miss Mann had made a call on his sister,
+and after listening to her conversation and viewing her features for a
+time, he had gone out into the garden where his little cousin was
+tending some of his favourite flowers, and while standing near and
+watching her he had amused himself with comparing fair youth, delicate
+and attractive, with shrivelled eld, livid and loveless, and in
+jestingly repeating to a smiling girl the vinegar discourse of a
+cankered old maid. Once on such an occasion Caroline had said to him,
+looking up from the luxuriant creeper she was binding to its frame, "Ah!
+Robert, you do not like old maids. I, too, should come under the lash of
+your sarcasm if I were an old maid."
+
+"You an old maid!" he had replied. "A piquant notion suggested by lips
+of that tint and form. I can fancy you, though, at forty, quietly
+dressed, pale and sunk, but still with that straight nose, white
+forehead, and those soft eyes. I suppose, too, you will keep your voice,
+which has another 'timbre' than that hard, deep organ of Miss Mann's.
+Courage, Cary! Even at fifty you will not be repulsive."
+
+"Miss Mann did not make herself, or tune her voice, Robert."
+
+"Nature made her in the mood in which she makes her briars and thorns;
+whereas for the creation of some women she reserves the May morning
+hours, when with light and dew she wooes the primrose from the turf and
+the lily from the wood-moss."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ushered into Miss Mann's little parlour, Caroline found her, as she
+always found her, surrounded by perfect neatness, cleanliness, and
+comfort (after all, is it not a virtue in old maids that solitude rarely
+makes them negligent or disorderly?)--no dust on her polished furniture,
+none on her carpet, fresh flowers in the vase on her table, a bright
+fire in the grate. She herself sat primly and somewhat grimly-tidy in a
+cushioned rocking-chair, her hands busied with some knitting. This was
+her favourite work, as it required the least exertion. She scarcely rose
+as Caroline entered. To avoid excitement was one of Miss Mann's aims in
+life. She had been composing herself ever since she came down in the
+morning, and had just attained a certain lethargic state of tranquillity
+when the visitor's knock at the door startled her, and undid her day's
+work. She was scarcely pleased, therefore, to see Miss Helstone. She
+received her with reserve, bade her be seated with austerity, and when
+she got her placed opposite, she fixed her with her eye.
+
+This was no ordinary doom--to be fixed with Miss Mann's eye. Robert
+Moore had undergone it once, and had never forgotten the circumstance.
+
+He considered it quite equal to anything Medusa could do. He professed
+to doubt whether, since that infliction, his flesh had been quite what
+it was before--whether there was not something stony in its texture. The
+gaze had had such an effect on him as to drive him promptly from the
+apartment and house; it had even sent him straightway up to the rectory,
+where he had appeared in Caroline's presence with a very queer face, and
+amazed her by demanding a cousinly salute on the spot, to rectify a
+damage that had been done him.
+
+Certainly Miss Mann had a formidable eye for one of the softer sex. It
+was prominent, and showed a great deal of the white, and looked as
+steadily, as unwinkingly, at you as if it were a steel ball soldered in
+her head; and when, while looking, she began to talk in an indescribably
+dry, monotonous tone--a tone without vibration or inflection--you felt
+as if a graven image of some bad spirit were addressing you. But it was
+all a figment of fancy, a matter of surface. Miss Mann's goblin grimness
+scarcely went deeper than the angel sweetness of hundreds of beauties.
+She was a perfectly honest, conscientious woman, who had performed
+duties in her day from whose severe anguish many a human Peri,
+gazelle-eyed, silken-tressed, and silver-tongued, would have shrunk
+appalled. She had passed alone through protracted scenes of suffering,
+exercised rigid self-denial, made large sacrifices of time, money,
+health for those who had repaid her only by ingratitude, and now her
+main--almost her sole--fault was that she was censorious.
+
+Censorious she certainly was. Caroline had not sat five minutes ere her
+hostess, still keeping her under the spell of that dread and Gorgon
+gaze, began flaying alive certain of the families in the neighbourhood.
+She went to work at this business in a singularly cool, deliberate
+manner, like some surgeon practising with his scalpel on a lifeless
+subject. She made few distinctions; she allowed scarcely any one to be
+good; she dissected impartially almost all her acquaintance. If her
+auditress ventured now and then to put in a palliative word she set it
+aside with a certain disdain. Still, though thus pitiless in moral
+anatomy, she was no scandal-monger. She never disseminated really
+malignant or dangerous reports. It was not her heart so much as her
+temper that was wrong.
+
+Caroline made this discovery for the first time to-day, and moved
+thereby to regret divers unjust judgments she had more than once passed
+on the crabbed old maid, she began to talk to her softly, not in
+sympathizing words, but with a sympathizing voice. The loneliness of her
+condition struck her visitor in a new light, as did also the character
+of her ugliness--a bloodless pallor of complexion, and deeply worn lines
+of feature. The girl pitied the solitary and afflicted woman; her looks
+told what she felt. A sweet countenance is never so sweet as when the
+moved heart animates it with compassionate tenderness. Miss Mann, seeing
+such a countenance raised to her, was touched in her turn. She
+acknowledged her sense of the interest thus unexpectedly shown in her,
+who usually met with only coldness and ridicule, by replying to her
+candidly. Communicative on her own affairs she usually was not, because
+no one cared to listen to her; but to-day she became so, and her
+confidante shed tears as she heard her speak, for she told of cruel,
+slow-wasting, obstinate sufferings. Well might she be corpse-like; well
+might she look grim, and never smile; well might she wish to avoid
+excitement, to gain and retain composure! Caroline, when she knew all,
+acknowledged that Miss Mann was rather to be admired for fortitude than
+blamed for moroseness. Reader! when you behold an aspect for whose
+constant gloom and frown you cannot account, whose unvarying cloud
+exasperates you by its apparent causelessness, be sure that there is a
+canker somewhere, and a canker not the less deeply corroding because
+concealed.
+
+Miss Mann felt that she was understood partly, and wished to be
+understood further; for, however old, plain, humble, desolate, afflicted
+we may be, so long as our hearts preserve the feeblest spark of life,
+they preserve also, shivering near that pale ember, a starved, ghostly
+longing for appreciation and affection. To this extenuated spectre,
+perhaps, a crumb is not thrown once a year, but when ahungered and
+athirst to famine--when all humanity has forgotten the dying tenant of a
+decaying house--Divine mercy remembers the mourner, and a shower of
+manna falls for lips that earthly nutriment is to pass no more. Biblical
+promises, heard first in health, but then unheeded, come whispering to
+the couch of sickness; it is felt that a pitying God watches what all
+mankind have forsaken. The tender compassion of Jesus is recalled and
+relied on; the faded eye, gazing beyond time, sees a home, a friend, a
+refuge in eternity.
+
+Miss Mann, drawn on by the still attention of her listener, proceeded to
+allude to circumstances in her past life. She spoke like one who tells
+the truth--simply, and with a certain reserve; she did not boast, nor
+did she exaggerate. Caroline found that the old maid had been a most
+devoted daughter and sister, an unwearied watcher by lingering
+deathbeds; that to prolonged and unrelaxing attendance on the sick the
+malady that now poisoned her own life owed its origin; that to one
+wretched relative she had been a support and succour in the depths of
+self-earned degradation, and that it was still her hand which kept him
+from utter destitution. Miss Helstone stayed the whole evening, omitting
+to pay her other intended visit; and when she left Miss Mann it was with
+the determination to try in future to excuse her faults; never again to
+make light of her peculiarities or to laugh at her plainness; and, above
+all things, not to neglect her, but to come once a week, and to offer
+her, from one human heart at least, the homage of affection and respect.
+She felt she could now sincerely give her a small tribute of each
+feeling.
+
+Caroline, on her return, told Fanny she was very glad she had gone out,
+as she felt much better for the visit. The next day she failed not to
+seek Miss Ainley. This lady was in narrower circumstances than Miss
+Mann, and her dwelling was more humble. It was, however, if possible,
+yet more exquisitely clean, though the decayed gentlewoman could not
+afford to keep a servant, but waited on herself, and had only the
+occasional assistance of a little girl who lived in a cottage near.
+
+Not only was Miss Ainley poorer, but she was even plainer than the other
+old maid. In her first youth she must have been ugly; now, at the age of
+fifty, she was _very_ ugly. At first sight, all but peculiarly
+well-disciplined minds were apt to turn from her with annoyance, to
+conceive against her a prejudice, simply on the ground of her
+unattractive look. Then she was prim in dress and manner; she looked,
+spoke, and moved the complete old maid.
+
+Her welcome to Caroline was formal, even in its kindness--for it was
+kind; but Miss Helstone excused this. She knew something of the
+benevolence of the heart which beat under that starched kerchief; all
+the neighbourhood--at least all the female neighbourhood--knew something
+of it. No one spoke against Miss Ainley except lively young gentlemen
+and inconsiderate old ones, who declared her hideous.
+
+Caroline was soon at home in that tiny parlour. A kind hand took from
+her her shawl and bonnet, and installed her in the most comfortable seat
+near the fire. The young and the antiquated woman were presently deep in
+kindly conversation, and soon Caroline became aware of the power a most
+serene, unselfish, and benignant mind could exercise over those to whom
+it was developed. She talked never of herself, always of others. Their
+faults she passed over. Her theme was their wants, which she sought to
+supply; their sufferings, which she longed to alleviate. She was
+religious, a professor of religion--what some would call "a saint;" and
+she referred to religion often in sanctioned phrase--in phrase which
+those who possess a perception of the ridiculous, without owning the
+power of exactly testing and truly judging character, would certainly
+have esteemed a proper subject for satire, a matter for mimicry and
+laughter. They would have been hugely mistaken for their pains.
+Sincerity is never ludicrous; it is always respectable. Whether
+truth--be it religious or moral truth--speak eloquently and in
+well-chosen language or not, its voice should be heard with reverence.
+Let those who cannot nicely, and with certainty, discern the difference
+between the tones of hypocrisy and those of sincerity, never presume to
+laugh at all, lest they should have the miserable misfortune to laugh in
+the wrong place, and commit impiety when they think they are achieving
+wit.
+
+Not from Miss Ainley's own lips did Caroline hear of her good works, but
+she knew much of them nevertheless. Her beneficence was the familiar
+topic of the poor in Briarfield. They were not works of almsgiving. The
+old maid was too poor to give much, though she straitened herself to
+privation that she might contribute her mite when needful. They were the
+works of a Sister of Charity--far more difficult to perform than those
+of a Lady Bountiful. She would watch by any sick-bed; she seemed to fear
+no disease. She would nurse the poorest whom none else would nurse. She
+was serene, humble, kind, and equable through everything.
+
+For this goodness she got but little reward in this life. Many of the
+poor became so accustomed to her services that they hardly thanked her
+for them. The rich heard them mentioned with wonder, but were silent,
+from a sense of shame at the difference between her sacrifices and their
+own. Many ladies, however, respected her deeply. They could not help it.
+One gentleman--one only--gave her his friendship and perfect confidence.
+This was Mr. Hall, the vicar of Nunnely. He said, and said truly, that
+her life came nearer the life of Christ than that of any other human
+being he had ever met with. You must not think, reader, that in
+sketching Miss Ainley's character I depict a figment of imagination. No.
+We seek the originals of such portraits in real life only.
+
+Miss Helstone studied well the mind and heart now revealed to her. She
+found no high intellect to admire--the old maid was merely sensible--but
+she discovered so much goodness, so much usefulness, so much mildness,
+patience, truth, that she bent her own mind before Miss Ainley's in
+reverence. What was her love of nature, what was her sense of beauty,
+what were her more varied and fervent emotions, what was her deeper
+power of thought, what her wider capacity to comprehend, compared to the
+practical excellence of this good woman? Momently, they seemed only
+beautiful forms of selfish delight; mentally, she trod them under foot.
+
+It is true she still felt with pain that the life which made Miss Ainley
+happy could not make her happy. Pure and active as it was, in her heart
+she deemed it deeply dreary, because it was so loveless--to her ideas,
+so forlorn. Yet, doubtless, she reflected, it needed only habit to make
+it practicable and agreeable to any one. It was despicable, she felt, to
+pine sentimentally, to cherish secret griefs, vain memories, to be
+inert, to waste youth in aching languor, to grow old doing nothing.
+
+"I will bestir myself," was her resolution, "and try to be wise if I
+cannot be good."
+
+She proceeded to make inquiry of Miss Ainley if she could help her in
+anything. Miss Ainley, glad of an assistant, told her that she could,
+and indicated some poor families in Briarfield that it was desirable she
+should visit, giving her likewise, at her further request, some work to
+do for certain poor women who had many children, and who were unskilled
+in using the needle for themselves.
+
+Caroline went home, laid her plans, and took a resolve not to swerve
+from them. She allotted a certain portion of her time for her various
+studies, and a certain portion for doing anything Miss Ainley might
+direct her to do. The remainder was to be spent in exercise; not a
+moment was to be left for the indulgence of such fevered thoughts as had
+poisoned last Sunday evening.
+
+To do her justice, she executed her plans conscientiously,
+perseveringly. It was very hard work at first--it was even hard work to
+the end--but it helped her to stem and keep down anguish; it forced her
+to be employed; it forbade her to brood; and gleams of satisfaction
+chequered her gray life here and there when she found she had done good,
+imparted pleasure, or allayed suffering.
+
+Yet I must speak truth. These efforts brought her neither health of body
+nor continued peace of mind. With them all she wasted, grew more joyless
+and more wan; with them all her memory kept harping on the name of
+Robert Moore; an elegy over the past still rung constantly in her ear; a
+funereal inward cry haunted and harassed her; the heaviness of a broken
+spirit, and of pining and palsying faculties, settled slow on her
+buoyant youth. Winter seemed conquering her spring; the mind's soil and
+its treasures were freezing gradually to barren stagnation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+FIELDHEAD.
+
+
+Yet Caroline refused tamely to succumb. She had native strength in her
+girl's heart, and she used it. Men and women never struggle so hard as
+when they struggle alone, without witness, counsellor, or confidant,
+unencouraged, unadvised, and unpitied.
+
+Miss Helstone was in this position. Her sufferings were her only spur,
+and being very real and sharp, they roused her spirit keenly. Bent on
+victory over a mortal pain, she did her best to quell it. Never had she
+been seen so busy, so studious, and, above all, so active. She took
+walks in all weathers, long walks in solitary directions. Day by day she
+came back in the evening, pale and wearied-looking, yet seemingly not
+fatigued; for still, as soon as she had thrown off her bonnet and shawl,
+she would, instead of resting, begin to pace her apartment. Sometimes
+she would not sit down till she was literally faint. She said she did
+this to tire herself well, that she might sleep soundly at night. But if
+that was her aim it was unattained; for at night, when others slumbered,
+she was tossing on her pillow, or sitting at the foot of her couch in
+the darkness, forgetful, apparently, of the necessity of seeking repose.
+Often, unhappy girl! she was crying--crying in a sort of intolerable
+despair, which, when it rushed over her, smote down her strength, and
+reduced her to childlike helplessness.
+
+When thus prostrate, temptations besieged her. Weak suggestions
+whispered in her weary heart to write to Robert, and say that she was
+unhappy because she was forbidden to see him and Hortense, and that she
+feared he would withdraw his friendship (not love) from her, and forget
+her entirely, and begging him to remember her, and sometimes to write to
+her. One or two such letters she actually indited, but she never sent
+them: shame and good sense forbade.
+
+At last the life she led reached the point when it seemed she could bear
+it no longer, that she must seek and find a change somehow, or her heart
+and head would fail under the pressure which strained them. She longed
+to leave Briarfield, to go to some very distant place. She longed for
+something else--the deep, secret, anxious yearning to discover and know
+her mother strengthened daily; but with the desire was coupled a doubt,
+a dread--if she knew her, could she love her? There was cause for
+hesitation, for apprehension on this point. Never in her life had she
+heard that mother praised; whoever mentioned her mentioned her coolly.
+Her uncle seemed to regard his sister-in-law with a sort of tacit
+antipathy; an old servant, who had lived with Mrs. James Helstone for a
+short time after her marriage, whenever she referred to her former
+mistress, spoke with chilling reserve--sometimes she called her "queer,"
+sometimes she said she did not understand her. These expressions were
+ice to the daughter's heart; they suggested the conclusion that it was
+perhaps better never to know her parent than to know her and not like
+her.
+
+But one project could she frame whose execution seemed likely to bring
+her a hope of relief: it was to take a situation, to be a governess; she
+could do nothing else. A little incident brought her to the point, when
+she found courage to break her design to her uncle.
+
+Her long and late walks lay always, as has been said, on lonely roads;
+but in whatever direction she had rambled--whether along the drear
+skirts of Stilbro' Moor or over the sunny stretch of Nunnely Common--her
+homeward path was still so contrived as to lead her near the Hollow. She
+rarely descended the den, but she visited its brink at twilight almost
+as regularly as the stars rose over the hillcrests. Her resting-place
+was at a certain stile under a certain old thorn. Thence she could look
+down on the cottage, the mill, the dewy garden-ground, the still, deep
+dam; thence was visible the well-known counting-house window, from whose
+panes at a fixed hour shot, suddenly bright, the ray of the well-known
+lamp. Her errand was to watch for this ray, her reward to catch it,
+sometimes sparkling bright in clear air, sometimes shimmering dim
+through mist, and anon flashing broken between slant lines of rain--for
+she came in all weathers.
+
+There were nights when it failed to appear. She knew then that Robert
+was from home, and went away doubly sad; whereas its kindling rendered
+her elate, as though she saw in it the promise of some indefinite hope.
+If, while she gazed, a shadow bent between the light and lattice, her
+heart leaped. That eclipse was Robert; she had seen him. She would
+return home comforted, carrying in her mind a clearer vision of his
+aspect, a distincter recollection of his voice, his smile, his bearing;
+and blent with these impressions was often a sweet persuasion that, if
+she could get near him, his heart might welcome her presence yet, that
+at this moment he might be willing to extend his hand and draw her to
+him, and shelter her at his side as he used to do. That night, though
+she might weep as usual, she would fancy her tears less scalding; the
+pillow they watered seemed a little softer; the temples pressed to that
+pillow ached less.
+
+The shortest path from the Hollow to the rectory wound near a certain
+mansion, the same under whose lone walls Malone passed on that
+night-journey mentioned in an early chapter of this work--the old and
+tenantless dwelling yclept Fieldhead. Tenantless by the proprietor it
+had been for ten years, but it was no ruin. Mr. Yorke had seen it kept
+in good repair, and an old gardener and his wife had lived in it,
+cultivated the grounds, and maintained the house in habitable condition.
+
+If Fieldhead had few other merits as a building, it might at least be
+termed picturesque. Its regular architecture, and the gray and mossy
+colouring communicated by time, gave it a just claim to this epithet.
+The old latticed windows, the stone porch, the walls, the roof, the
+chimney-stacks, were rich in crayon touches and sepia lights and shades.
+The trees behind were fine, bold, and spreading; the cedar on the lawn
+in front was grand; and the granite urns on the garden wall, the fretted
+arch of the gateway, were, for an artist, as the very desire of the eye.
+
+One mild May evening Caroline, passing near about moonrise, and feeling,
+though weary, unwilling yet to go home, where there was only the bed of
+thorns and the night of grief to anticipate, sat down on the mossy
+ground near the gate, and gazed through towards cedar and mansion. It
+was a still night--calm, dewy, cloudless; the gables, turned to the
+west, reflected the clear amber of the horizon they faced; the oaks
+behind were black; the cedar was blacker. Under its dense, raven boughs
+a glimpse of sky opened gravely blue. It was full of the moon, which
+looked solemnly and mildly down on Caroline from beneath that sombre
+canopy.
+
+She felt this night and prospect mournfully lovely. She wished she could
+be happy; she wished she could know inward peace; she wondered
+Providence had no pity on her, and would not help or console her.
+Recollections of happy trysts of lovers, commemorated in old ballads,
+returned on her mind; she thought such tryst in such scene would be
+blissful. Where now was Robert? she asked. Not at the Hollow; she had
+watched for his lamp long, and had not seen it. She questioned within
+herself whether she and Moore were ever destined to meet and speak
+again. Suddenly the door within the stone porch of the hall opened, and
+two men came out--one elderly and white-headed, the other young,
+dark-haired, and tall. They passed across the lawn, out through a portal
+in the garden wall. Caroline saw them cross the road, pass the stile,
+descend the fields; she saw them disappear. Robert Moore had passed
+before her with his friend Mr. Yorke. Neither had seen her.
+
+The apparition had been transient--scarce seen ere gone; but its
+electric passage left her veins kindled, her soul insurgent. It found
+her despairing, it left her desperate--two different states.
+
+"Oh, had he but been alone! had he but seen me!" was her cry. "He would
+have said something. He would have given me his hand. He _does_, he
+_must_, love me a little. He would have shown some token of affection.
+In his eye, on his lips, I should have read comfort; but the chance is
+lost. The wind, the cloud's shadow, does not pass more silently, more
+emptily than he. I have been mocked, and Heaven is cruel!"
+
+Thus, in the utter sickness of longing and disappointment, she went
+home.
+
+The next morning at breakfast, where she appeared white-cheeked and
+miserable-looking as one who had seen a ghost, she inquired of Mr.
+Helstone, "Have you any objection, uncle, to my inquiring for a
+situation in a family?"
+
+Her uncle, ignorant as the table supporting his coffee-cup of all his
+niece had undergone and was undergoing, scarcely believed his ears.
+
+"What whim now?" he asked. "Are you bewitched? What can you mean?"
+
+"I am not well, and need a change," she said.
+
+He examined her. He discovered she had _experienced_ a change, at any
+rate. Without his being aware of it, the rose had dwindled and faded to
+a mere snowdrop; bloom had vanished, flesh wasted; she sat before him
+drooping, colourless, and thin. But for the soft expression of her brown
+eyes, the delicate lines of her features, and the flowing abundance of
+her hair, she would no longer have possessed a claim to the epithet
+pretty.
+
+"What on earth is the matter with you?" he asked. "What is wrong? How
+are you ailing?"
+
+No answer; only the brown eyes filled, the faintly-tinted lips trembled.
+
+"Look out for a situation, indeed! For what situation are you fit? What
+have you been doing with yourself? You are not well."
+
+"I should be well if I went from home."
+
+"These women are incomprehensible. They have the strangest knack of
+startling you with unpleasant surprises. To-day you see them bouncing,
+buxom, red as cherries, and round as apples; to-morrow they exhibit
+themselves effete as dead weeds, blanched and broken down. And the
+reason of it all? That's the puzzle. She has her meals, her liberty, a
+good house to live in, and good clothes to wear, as usual. A while since
+that sufficed to keep her handsome and cheery, and there she sits now a
+poor, little, pale, puling chit enough. Provoking! Then comes the
+question, What is to be done? I suppose I must send for advice. Will you
+have a doctor, child?"
+
+"No, uncle, I don't want one. A doctor could do me no good. I merely
+want change of air and scene."
+
+"Well, if that be the caprice, it shall be gratified. You shall go to a
+watering-place. I don't mind the expense. Fanny shall accompany you."
+
+"But, uncle, some day I must do something for myself; I have no fortune.
+I had better begin now."
+
+"While I live, you shall not turn out as a governess, Caroline. I will
+not have it said that my niece is a governess."
+
+"But the later in life one makes a change of that sort, uncle, the more
+difficult and painful it is. I should wish to get accustomed to the yoke
+before any habits of ease and independence are formed."
+
+"I beg you will not harass me, Caroline. I mean to provide for you. I
+have always meant to provide for you. I will purchase an annuity. Bless
+me! I am but fifty-five; my health and constitution are excellent.
+There is plenty of time to save and take measures. Don't make yourself
+anxious respecting the future. Is that what frets you?"
+
+"No, uncle; but I long for a change."
+
+He laughed. "There speaks the woman!" cried he, "the very woman! A
+change! a change! Always fantastical and whimsical! Well, it's in her
+sex."
+
+"But it is not fantasy and whim, uncle."
+
+"What is it then?"
+
+"Necessity, I think. I feel weaker than formerly. I believe I should
+have more to do."
+
+"Admirable! She feels weak, and _therefore_ she should be set to hard
+labour--'clair comme le jour,' as Moore--confound Moore! You shall go to
+Cliff Bridge; and there are two guineas to buy a new frock. Come, Cary,
+never fear. We'll find balm in Gilead."
+
+"Uncle, I wish you were less generous and more----"
+
+"More what?"
+
+Sympathizing was the word on Caroline's lips, but it was not uttered.
+She checked herself in time. Her uncle would indeed have laughed if that
+namby-pamby word had escaped her. Finding her silent, he said, "The fact
+is, you don't know precisely what you want."
+
+"Only to be a governess."
+
+"Pooh! mere nonsense! I'll not hear of governessing. Don't mention it
+again. It is rather too feminine a fancy. I have finished breakfast.
+Ring the bell. Put all crotchets out of your head, and run away and
+amuse yourself."
+
+"What with? My doll?" asked Caroline to herself as she quitted the room.
+
+A week or two passed; her bodily and mental health neither grew worse
+nor better. She was now precisely in that state when, if her
+constitution had contained the seeds of consumption, decline, or slow
+fever, those diseases would have been rapidly developed, and would soon
+have carried her quietly from the world. People never die of love or
+grief alone, though some die of inherent maladies which the tortures of
+those passions prematurely force into destructive action. The sound by
+nature undergo these tortures, and are racked, shaken, shattered; their
+beauty and bloom perish, but life remains untouched. They are brought to
+a certain point of dilapidation; they are reduced to pallor, debility,
+and emaciation. People think, as they see them gliding languidly about,
+that they will soon withdraw to sick-beds, perish there, and cease from
+among the healthy and happy. This does not happen. They live on; and
+though they cannot regain youth and gaiety, they may regain strength and
+serenity. The blossom which the March wind nips, but fails to sweep
+away, may survive to hang a withered apple on the tree late into autumn:
+having braved the last frosts of spring, it may also brave the first of
+winter.
+
+Every one noticed the change in Miss Helstone's appearance, and most
+people said she was going to die. She never thought so herself. She felt
+in no dying case; she had neither pain nor sickness. Her appetite was
+diminished; she knew the reason. It was because she wept so much at
+night. Her strength was lessened; she could account for it. Sleep was
+coy and hard to be won; dreams were distressing and baleful. In the far
+future she still seemed to anticipate a time when this passage of misery
+should be got over, and when she should once more be calm, though
+perhaps never again happy.
+
+Meanwhile her uncle urged her to visit, to comply with the frequent
+invitations of their acquaintance. This she evaded doing. She could not
+be cheerful in company; she felt she was observed there with more
+curiosity than sympathy. Old ladies were always offering her their
+advice, recommending this or that nostrum; young ladies looked at her in
+a way she understood, and from which she shrank. Their eyes said they
+knew she had been "disappointed," as custom phrases it; by whom, they
+were not certain.
+
+Commonplace young ladies can be quite as hard as commonplace young
+gentlemen--quite as worldly and selfish. Those who suffer should always
+avoid them. Grief and calamity they despise; they seem to regard them as
+the judgments of God on the lowly. With them, to "love" is merely to
+contrive a scheme for achieving a good match; to be "disappointed" is to
+have their scheme seen through and frustrated. They think the feelings
+and projects of others on the subject of love similar to their own, and
+judge them accordingly.
+
+All this Caroline knew, partly by instinct, partly by observation. She
+regulated her conduct by her knowledge, keeping her pale face and wasted
+figure as much out of sight as she could. Living thus in complete
+seclusion, she ceased to receive intelligence of the little transactions
+of the neighbourhood.
+
+One morning her uncle came into the parlour, where she sat endeavouring
+to find some pleasure in painting a little group of wild flowers,
+gathered under a hedge at the top of the Hollow fields, and said to her
+in his abrupt manner, "Come, child, you are always stooping over
+palette, or book, or sampler; leave that tinting work. By-the-bye, do
+you put your pencil to your lips when you paint?"
+
+"Sometimes, uncle, when I forget."
+
+"Then it is that which is poisoning you. The paints are deleterious,
+child. There is white lead and red lead, and verdigris, and gamboge, and
+twenty other poisons in those colour cakes. Lock them up! lock them up!
+Get your bonnet on. I want you to make a call with me."
+
+"With _you_, uncle?"
+
+This question was asked in a tone of surprise. She was not accustomed to
+make calls with her uncle. She never rode or walked out with him on any
+occasion.
+
+"Quick! quick! I am always busy, you know. I have no time to lose."
+
+She hurriedly gathered up her materials, asking, meantime, where they
+were going.
+
+"To Fieldhead."
+
+"Fieldhead! What! to see old James Booth, the gardener? Is he ill?"
+
+"We are going to see Miss Shirley Keeldar."
+
+"Miss Keeldar! Is she coming to Yorkshire? Is she at Fieldhead?"
+
+"She is. She has been there a week. I met her at a party last
+night--that party to which you would not go. I was pleased with her. I
+choose that you shall make her acquaintance. It will do you good."
+
+"She is now come of age, I suppose?"
+
+"She is come of age, and will reside for a time on her property. I
+lectured her on the subject; I showed her her duty. She is not
+intractable. She is rather a fine girl; she will teach you what it is to
+have a sprightly spirit. Nothing lackadaisical about _her_."
+
+"I don't think she will want to see me, or to have me introduced to her.
+What good can I do her? How can I amuse her?"
+
+"Pshaw! Put your bonnet on."
+
+"Is she proud, uncle?"
+
+"Don't know. You hardly imagine she would show her pride to me, I
+suppose? A chit like that would scarcely presume to give herself airs
+with the rector of her parish, however rich she might be."
+
+"No. But how did she behave to other people?"
+
+"Didn't observe. She holds her head high, and probably can be saucy
+enough where she dare. She wouldn't be a woman otherwise. There! Away
+now for your bonnet at once!"
+
+Not naturally very confident, a failure of physical strength and a
+depression of spirits had not tended to increase Caroline's presence of
+mind and ease of manner, or to give her additional courage to face
+strangers, and she quailed, in spite of self-remonstrance, as she and
+her uncle walked up the broad, paved approach leading from the gateway
+of Fieldhead to its porch. She followed Mr. Helstone reluctantly through
+that porch into the sombre old vestibule beyond.
+
+Very sombre it was--long, vast, and dark; one latticed window lit it but
+dimly. The wide old chimney contained now no fire, for the present warm
+weather needed it not; it was filled instead with willow-boughs. The
+gallery on high, opposite the entrance, was seen but in outline, so
+shadowy became this hall towards its ceiling. Carved stags' heads, with
+real antlers, looked down grotesquely from the walls. This was neither a
+grand nor a comfortable house; within as without it was antique,
+rambling, and incommodious. A property of a thousand a year belonged to
+it, which property had descended, for lack of male heirs, on a female.
+There were mercantile families in the district boasting twice the
+income, but the Keeldars, by virtue of their antiquity, and their
+distinction of lords of the manor, took the precedence of all.
+
+Mr. and Miss Helstone were ushered into a parlour. Of course, as was to
+be expected in such a Gothic old barrack, this parlour was lined with
+oak: fine, dark, glossy panels compassed the walls gloomily and grandly.
+Very handsome, reader, these shining brown panels are, very mellow in
+colouring and tasteful in effect, but--if you know what a "spring clean"
+is--very execrable and inhuman. Whoever, having the bowels of humanity,
+has seen servants scrubbing at these polished wooden walls with
+beeswaxed cloths on a warm May day must allow that they are "intolerable
+and not to be endured;" and I cannot but secretly applaud the benevolent
+barbarian who had painted another and larger apartment of Fieldhead--the
+drawing-room, to wit, formerly also an oak-room--of a delicate pinky
+white, thereby earning for himself the character of a Hun, but mightily
+enhancing the cheerfulness of that portion of his abode, and saving
+future housemaids a world of toil.
+
+The brown-panelled parlour was furnished all in old style, and with real
+old furniture. On each side of the high mantelpiece stood two antique
+chairs of oak, solid as silvan thrones, and in one of these sat a lady.
+But if this were Miss Keeldar, she must have come of age at least some
+twenty years ago. She was of matronly form, and though she wore no cap,
+and possessed hair of quite an undimmed auburn, shading small and
+naturally young-looking features, she had no youthful aspect, nor
+apparently the wish to assume it. You could have wished her attire of a
+newer fashion. In a well-cut, well-made gown hers would have been no
+uncomely presence. It puzzled you to guess why a garment of handsome
+materials should be arranged in such scanty folds, and devised after
+such an obsolete mode. You felt disposed to set down the wearer as
+somewhat eccentric at once.
+
+This lady received the visitors with a mixture of ceremony and
+diffidence quite English. No middle-aged matron who was not an
+Englishwoman _could_ evince precisely the same manner--a manner so
+uncertain of herself, of her own merits, of her power to please, and yet
+so anxious to be proper, and, if possible, rather agreeable than
+otherwise. In the present instance, however, more embarrassment was
+shown than is usual even with diffident Englishwomen. Miss Helstone felt
+this, sympathized with the stranger, and knowing by experience what was
+good for the timid, took a seat quietly near her, and began to talk to
+her with a gentle ease, communicated for the moment by the presence of
+one less self-possessed than herself.
+
+She and this lady would, if alone, have at once got on extremely well
+together. The lady had the clearest voice imaginable--infinitely softer
+and more tuneful than could have been reasonably expected from forty
+years--and a form decidedly inclined to _embonpoint_. This voice
+Caroline liked; it atoned for the formal, if correct, accent and
+language. The lady would soon have discovered she liked it and her, and
+in ten minutes they would have been friends. But Mr. Helstone stood on
+the rug looking at them both, looking especially at the strange lady
+with his sarcastic, keen eye, that clearly expressed impatience of her
+chilly ceremony, and annoyance at her want of _aplomb_. His hard gaze
+and rasping voice discomfited the lady more and more. She tried,
+however, to get up little speeches about the weather, the aspect of the
+country, etc.; but the impracticable Mr. Helstone presently found
+himself somewhat deaf. Whatever she said he affected not to hear
+distinctly, and she was obliged to go over each elaborately-constructed
+nothing twice. The effort soon became too much for her. She was just
+rising in a perplexed flutter, nervously murmuring that she knew not
+what detained Miss Keeldar, that she would go and look for her, when
+Miss Keeldar saved her the trouble by appearing. It was to be presumed
+at least that she who now came in through a glass door from the garden
+owned that name.
+
+There is real grace in ease of manner, and so old Helstone felt when an
+erect, slight girl walked up to him, retaining with her left hand her
+little silk apron full of flowers, and, giving him her right hand, said
+pleasantly, "I knew you would come to see me, though you _do_ think Mr.
+Yorke has made me a Jacobin. Good-morning."
+
+"But we'll not have you a Jacobin," returned he. "No, Miss Shirley; they
+shall not steal the flower of my parish from me. Now that you are
+amongst us, you shall be my pupil in politics and religion; I'll teach
+you sound doctrine on both points."
+
+"Mrs. Pryor has anticipated you," she replied, turning to the elder
+lady. "Mrs. Pryor, you know, was my governess, and is still my friend;
+and of all the high and rigid Tories she is queen; of all the stanch
+churchwomen she is chief. I have been well drilled both in theology and
+history, I assure you, Mr. Helstone."
+
+The rector immediately bowed very low to Mrs. Pryor, and expressed
+himself obliged to her.
+
+The ex-governess disclaimed skill either in political or religious
+controversy, explained that she thought such matters little adapted for
+female minds, but avowed herself in general terms the advocate of order
+and loyalty, and, of course, truly attached to the Establishment. She
+added she was ever averse to change under any circumstances, and
+something scarcely audible about the extreme danger of being too ready
+to take up new ideas closed her sentence.
+
+"Miss Keeldar thinks as you think, I hope, madam."
+
+"Difference of age and difference of temperament occasion difference of
+sentiment," was the reply. "It can scarcely be expected that the eager
+and young should hold the opinions of the cool and middle-aged."
+
+"Oh! oh! we are independent; we think for ourselves!" cried Mr.
+Helstone. "We are a little Jacobin, for anything I know--a little
+freethinker, in good earnest. Let us have a confession of faith on the
+spot."
+
+And he took the heiress's two hands--causing her to let fall her whole
+cargo of flowers--and seated her by him on the sofa.
+
+"Say your creed," he ordered.
+
+"The Apostles' Creed?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+She said it like a child.
+
+"Now for St. Athanasius's. That's the test!"
+
+"Let me gather up my flowers. Here is Tartar coming; he will tread upon
+them."
+
+Tartar was a rather large, strong, and fierce-looking dog, very ugly,
+being of a breed between mastiff and bulldog, who at this moment entered
+through the glass door, and posting directly to the rug, snuffed the
+fresh flowers scattered there. He seemed to scorn them as food; but
+probably thinking their velvety petals might be convenient as litter, he
+was turning round preparatory to depositing his tawny bulk upon them,
+when Miss Helstone and Miss Keeldar simultaneously stooped to the
+rescue.
+
+"Thank you," said the heiress, as she again held out her little apron
+for Caroline to heap the blossoms into it. "Is this your daughter, Mr.
+Helstone?" she asked.
+
+"My niece Caroline."
+
+Miss Keeldar shook hands with her, and then looked at her. Caroline also
+looked at her hostess.
+
+Shirley Keeldar (she had no Christian name but Shirley: her parents, who
+had wished to have a son, finding that, after eight years of marriage,
+Providence had granted them only a daughter, bestowed on her the same
+masculine family cognomen they would have bestowed on a boy, if with a
+boy they had been blessed)--Shirley Keeldar was no ugly heiress. She was
+agreeable to the eye. Her height and shape were not unlike Miss
+Helstone's; perhaps in stature she might have the advantage by an inch
+or two. She was gracefully made, and her face, too, possessed a charm as
+well described by the word grace as any other. It was pale naturally,
+but intelligent, and of varied expression. She was not a blonde, like
+Caroline. Clear and dark were the characteristics of her aspect as to
+colour. Her face and brow were clear, her eyes of the darkest gray (no
+green lights in them--transparent, pure, neutral gray), and her hair of
+the darkest brown. Her features were distinguished--by which I do not
+mean that they were high, bony, and Roman, being indeed rather small and
+slightly marked than otherwise, but only that they were, to use a few
+French words, "fins, gracieux, spirituels"--mobile they were and
+speaking; but their changes were not to be understood nor their language
+interpreted all at once. She examined Caroline seriously, inclining her
+head a little to one side, with a thoughtful air.
+
+"You see she is only a feeble chick," observed Mr. Helstone.
+
+"She looks young--younger than I.--How old are you?" she inquired in a
+manner that would have been patronizing if it had not been extremely
+solemn and simple.
+
+"Eighteen years and six months."
+
+"And I am twenty-one."
+
+She said no more. She had now placed her flowers on the table, and was
+busied in arranging them.
+
+"And St. Athanasius's Creed?" urged the rector. "You believe it all,
+don't you?"
+
+"I can't remember it quite all. I will give you a nosegay, Mr. Helstone,
+when I have given your niece one."
+
+She had selected a little bouquet of one brilliant and two or three
+delicate flowers, relieved by a spray of dark verdure. She tied it with
+silk from her work-box, and placed it on Caroline's lap; and then she
+put her hands behind her, and stood bending slightly towards her guest,
+still regarding her, in the attitude and with something of the aspect of
+a grave but gallant little cavalier. This temporary expression of face
+was aided by the style in which she wore her hair, parted on one temple,
+and brushed in a glossy sweep above the forehead, whence it fell in
+curls that looked natural, so free were their wavy undulations.
+
+"Are you tired with your walk?" she inquired.
+
+"No--not in the least. It is but a short distance--but a mile."
+
+"You look pale.--Is she always so pale?" she asked, turning to the
+rector.
+
+"She used to be as rosy as the reddest of your flowers."
+
+"Why is she altered? What has made her pale? Has she been ill?"
+
+"She tells me she wants a change."
+
+"She ought to have one. You ought to give her one. You should send her
+to the sea-coast."
+
+"I will, ere summer is over. Meantime, I intend her to make acquaintance
+with you, if you have no objection."
+
+"I am sure Miss Keeldar will have no objection," here observed Mrs.
+Pryor. "I think I may take it upon me to say that Miss Helstone's
+frequent presence at Fieldhead will be esteemed a favour."
+
+"You speak my sentiments precisely, ma'am," said Shirley, "and I thank
+you for anticipating me.--Let me tell you," she continued, turning again
+to Caroline, "that you also ought to thank my governess. It is not every
+one she would welcome as she has welcomed you. You are distinguished
+more than you think. This morning, as soon as you are gone, I shall ask
+Mrs. Pryor's opinion of you. I am apt to rely on her judgment of
+character, for hitherto I have found it wondrous accurate. Already I
+foresee a favourable answer to my inquiries.--Do I not guess rightly,
+Mrs. Pryor?"
+
+"My dear, you said but now you would ask my opinion when Miss Helstone
+was gone. I am scarcely likely to give it in her presence."
+
+"No; and perhaps it will be long enough before I obtain it.--I am
+sometimes sadly tantalized, Mr. Helstone, by Mrs. Pryor's extreme
+caution. Her judgments ought to be correct when they come, for they are
+often as tardy of delivery as a Lord Chancellor's. On some people's
+characters I cannot get her to pronounce a sentence, entreat as I may."
+
+Mrs. Pryor here smiled.
+
+"Yes," said her pupil, "I know what that smile means. You are thinking
+of my gentleman-tenant.--Do you know Mr. Moore of the Hollow?" she asked
+Mr. Helstone.
+
+"Ay! ay! Your tenant--so he is. You have seen a good deal of him, no
+doubt, since you came?"
+
+"I have been obliged to see him. There was business to transact.
+Business! Really the word makes me conscious I am indeed no longer a
+girl, but quite a woman and something more. I am an esquire! Shirley
+Keeldar, Esquire, ought to be my style and title. They gave me a man's
+name; I hold a man's position. It is enough to inspire me with a touch
+of manhood; and when I see such people as that stately
+Anglo-Belgian--that Gérard Moore--before me, gravely talking to me of
+business, really I feel quite gentlemanlike. You must choose me for your
+churchwarden, Mr. Helstone, the next time you elect new ones. They ought
+to make me a magistrate and a captain of yeomanry. Tony Lumpkin's mother
+was a colonel, and his aunt a justice of the peace. Why shouldn't I be?"
+
+"With all my heart. If you choose to get up a requisition on the
+subject, I promise to head the list of signatures with my name. But you
+were speaking of Moore?"
+
+"Ah! yes. I find it a little difficult to understand Mr. Moore, to know
+what to think of him, whether to like him or not. He seems a tenant of
+whom any proprietor might be proud--and proud of him I am, in that
+sense; but as a neighbour, what is he? Again and again I have entreated
+Mrs. Pryor to say what she thinks of him, but she still evades returning
+a direct answer. I hope you will be less oracular, Mr. Helstone, and
+pronounce at once. Do you like him?"
+
+"Not at all, just now. His name is entirely blotted from my good books."
+
+"What is the matter? What has he done?"
+
+"My uncle and he disagree on politics," interposed the low voice of
+Caroline. She had better not have spoken just then. Having scarcely
+joined in the conversation before, it was not apropos to do it now. She
+felt this with nervous acuteness as soon as she had spoken, and coloured
+to the eyes.
+
+"What are Moore's politics?" inquired Shirley.
+
+"Those of a tradesman," returned the rector--"narrow, selfish, and
+unpatriotic. The man is eternally writing and speaking against the
+continuance of the war. I have no patience with him."
+
+"The war hurts his trade. I remember he remarked that only yesterday.
+But what other objection have you to him?"
+
+"That is enough."
+
+"He looks the gentleman, in my sense of the term," pursued Shirley, "and
+it pleases me to think he is such."
+
+Caroline rent the Tyrian petals of the one brilliant flower in her
+bouquet, and answered in distinct tones, "Decidedly he is." Shirley,
+hearing this courageous affirmation, flashed an arch, searching glance
+at the speaker from her deep, expressive eyes.
+
+"_You_ are his friend, at any rate," she said. "You defend him in his
+absence."
+
+"I am both his friend and his relative," was the prompt reply. "Robert
+Moore is my cousin."
+
+"Oh, then, you can tell me all about him. Just give me a sketch of his
+character."
+
+Insuperable embarrassment seized Caroline when this demand was made. She
+could not, and did not, attempt to comply with it. Her silence was
+immediately covered by Mrs. Pryor, who proceeded to address sundry
+questions to Mr. Helstone regarding a family or two in the
+neighbourhood, with whose connections in the south she said she was
+acquainted. Shirley soon withdrew her gaze from Miss Helstone's face.
+She did not renew her interrogations, but returning to her flowers,
+proceeded to choose a nosegay for the rector. She presented it to him as
+he took leave, and received the homage of a salute on the hand in
+return.
+
+"Be sure you wear it for my sake," said she.
+
+"Next my heart, of course," responded Helstone.--"Mrs. Pryor, take care
+of this future magistrate, this churchwarden in perspective, this
+captain of yeomanry, this young squire of Briarfield, in a word. Don't
+let him exert himself too much; don't let him break his neck in hunting;
+especially, let him mind how he rides down that dangerous hill near the
+Hollow."
+
+"I like a descent," said Shirley; "I like to clear it rapidly; and
+especially I like that romantic Hollow with all my heart."
+
+"Romantic, with a mill in it?"
+
+"Romantic with a mill in it. The old mill and the white cottage are each
+admirable in its way."
+
+"And the counting-house, Mr. Keeldar?"
+
+"The counting-house is better than my bloom-coloured drawing-room. I
+adore the counting-house."
+
+"And the trade? The cloth, the greasy wool, the polluting dyeing-vats?"
+
+"The trade is to be thoroughly respected."
+
+"And the tradesman is a hero? Good!"
+
+"I am glad to hear you say so. I thought the tradesman looked heroic."
+
+Mischief, spirit, and glee sparkled all over her face as she thus
+bandied words with the old Cossack, who almost equally enjoyed the tilt.
+
+"Captain Keeldar, you have no mercantile blood in your veins. Why are
+you so fond of trade?"
+
+"Because I am a mill-owner, of course. Half my income comes from the
+works in that Hollow."
+
+"Don't enter into partnership--that's all."
+
+"You've put it into my head! you've put it into my head!" she exclaimed,
+with a joyous laugh. "It will never get out. Thank you." And waving her
+hand, white as a lily and fine as a fairy's, she vanished within the
+porch, while the rector and his niece passed out through the arched
+gateway.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+SHIRLEY AND CAROLINE.
+
+
+Shirley showed she had been sincere in saying she should be glad of
+Caroline's society, by frequently seeking it; and, indeed, if she had
+not sought it, she would not have had it, for Miss Helstone was slow to
+make fresh acquaintance. She was always held back by the idea that
+people could not want her, that she could not amuse them; and a
+brilliant, happy, youthful creature like the heiress of Fieldhead seemed
+to her too completely independent of society so uninteresting as hers
+ever to find it really welcome.
+
+Shirley might be brilliant, and probably happy likewise, but no one is
+independent of genial society; and though in about a month she had made
+the acquaintance of most of the families round, and was on quite free
+and easy terms with all the Misses Sykes, and all the Misses Pearson,
+and the two superlative Misses Wynne of Walden Hall, yet, it appeared,
+she found none amongst them very genial: she fraternized with none of
+them, to use her own words. If she had had the bliss to be really
+Shirley Keeldar, Esq., lord of the manor of Briarfield, there was not a
+single fair one in this and the two neighbouring parishes whom she
+should have felt disposed to request to become Mrs. Keeldar, lady of the
+manor. This declaration she made to Mrs. Pryor, who received it very
+quietly, as she did most of her pupil's off-hand speeches, responding,
+"My dear, do not allow that habit of alluding to yourself as a gentleman
+to be confirmed. It is a strange one. Those who do not know you, hearing
+you speak thus, would think you affected masculine manners."
+
+Shirley never laughed at her former governess; even the little
+formalities and harmless peculiarities of that lady were respectable in
+her eyes. Had it been otherwise, she would have proved herself a weak
+character at once; for it is only the weak who make a butt of quiet
+worth. Therefore she took her remonstrance in silence. She stood
+quietly near the window, looking at the grand cedar on her lawn
+watching a bird on one of its lower boughs. Presently she began to
+chirrup to the bird; soon her chirrup grew clearer; ere long she was
+whistling; the whistle struck into a tune, and very sweetly and deftly
+it was executed.
+
+"My dear!" expostulated Mrs. Pryor.
+
+"Was I whistling?" said Shirley. "I forgot. I beg your pardon, ma'am. I
+had resolved to take care not to whistle before you."
+
+"But, Miss Keeldar, where did you learn to whistle? You must have got
+the habit since you came down into Yorkshire. I never knew you guilty of
+it before."
+
+"Oh! I learned to whistle a long while ago."
+
+"Who taught you?"
+
+"No one. I took it up by listening, and I had laid it down again. But
+lately, yesterday evening, as I was coming up our lane, I heard a
+gentleman whistling that very tune in the field on the other side of the
+hedge, and that reminded me."
+
+"What gentleman was it?"
+
+"We have only one gentleman in this region, ma'am, and that is Mr.
+Moore--at least he is the only gentleman who is not gray-haired. My two
+venerable favourites, Mr. Helstone and Mr. Yorke, it is true, are fine
+old beaus, infinitely better than any of the stupid young ones."
+
+Mrs. Pryor was silent.
+
+"You do not like Mr. Helstone, ma'am?"
+
+"My dear, Mr. Helstone's office secures him from criticism."
+
+"You generally contrive to leave the room when he is announced."
+
+"Do you walk out this morning, my dear?"
+
+"Yes, I shall go to the rectory, and seek and find Caroline Helstone,
+and make her take some exercise. She shall have a breezy walk over
+Nunnely Common."
+
+"If you go in that direction, my dear, have the goodness to remind Miss
+Helstone to wrap up well, as there is a fresh wind, and she appears to
+me to require care."
+
+"You shall be minutely obeyed, Mrs. Pryor. Meantime, will you not
+accompany us yourself?"
+
+"No, my love; I should be a restraint upon you. I am stout, and cannot
+walk so quickly as you would wish to do."
+
+Shirley easily persuaded Caroline to go with her, and when they were
+fairly out on the quiet road, traversing the extensive and solitary
+sweep of Nunnely Common, she as easily drew her into conversation. The
+first feelings of diffidence overcome, Caroline soon felt glad to talk
+with Miss Keeldar. The very first interchange of slight observations
+sufficed to give each an idea of what the other was. Shirley said she
+liked the green sweep of the common turf, and, better still, the heath
+on its ridges, for the heath reminded her of moors. She had seen moors
+when she was travelling on the borders near Scotland. She remembered
+particularly a district traversed one long afternoon, on a sultry but
+sunless day in summer. They journeyed from noon till sunset, over what
+seemed a boundless waste of deep heath, and nothing had they seen but
+wild sheep, nothing heard but the cries of wild birds.
+
+"I know how the heath would look on such a day," said Caroline;
+"purple-black--a deeper shade of the sky-tint, and that would be livid."
+
+"Yes, quite livid, with brassy edges to the clouds, and here and there a
+white gleam, more ghastly than the lurid tinge, which, as you looked at
+it, you momentarily expected would kindle into blinding lightning."
+
+"Did it thunder?"
+
+"It muttered distant peals, but the storm did not break till evening,
+after we had reached our inn--that inn being an isolated house at the
+foot of a range of mountains."
+
+"Did you watch the clouds come down over the mountains?"
+
+"I did. I stood at the window an hour watching them. The hills seemed
+rolled in a sullen mist, and when the rain fell in whitening sheets,
+suddenly they were blotted from the prospect; they were washed from the
+world."
+
+"I have seen such storms in hilly districts in Yorkshire; and at their
+riotous climax, while the sky was all cataract, the earth all flood, I
+have remembered the Deluge."
+
+"It is singularly reviving after such hurricanes to feel calm return,
+and from the opening clouds to receive a consolatory gleam, softly
+testifying that the sun is not quenched."
+
+"Miss Keeldar, just stand still now, and look down at Nunnely dale and
+wood."
+
+They both halted on the green brow of the common. They looked down on
+the deep valley robed in May raiment; on varied meads, some pearled with
+daisies, and some golden with king-cups. To-day all this young verdure
+smiled clear in sunlight; transparent emerald and amber gleams played
+over it. On Nunnwood--the sole remnant of antique British forest in a
+region whose lowlands were once all silvan chase, as its highlands were
+breast-deep heather--slept the shadow of a cloud; the distant hills were
+dappled, the horizon was shaded and tinted like mother-of-pearl; silvery
+blues, soft purples, evanescent greens and rose-shades, all melting into
+fleeces of white cloud, pure as azury snow, allured the eye as with a
+remote glimpse of heaven's foundations. The air blowing on the brow was
+fresh, and sweet, and bracing.
+
+"Our England is a bonny island," said Shirley, "and Yorkshire is one of
+her bonniest nooks."
+
+"You are a Yorkshire girl too?"
+
+"I am--Yorkshire in blood and birth. Five generations of my race sleep
+under the aisles of Briarfield Church. I drew my first breath in the old
+black hall behind us."
+
+Hereupon Caroline presented her hand, which was accordingly taken and
+shaken. "We are compatriots," said she.
+
+"Yes," agreed Shirley, with a grave nod.
+
+"And that," asked Miss Keeldar, pointing to the forest--"that is
+Nunnwood?"
+
+"It is."
+
+"Were you ever there?"
+
+"Many a time."
+
+"In the heart of it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What is it like?"
+
+"It is like an encampment of forest sons of Anak. The trees are huge and
+old. When you stand at their roots, the summits seem in another region.
+The trunks remain still and firm as pillars, while the boughs sway to
+every breeze. In the deepest calm their leaves are never quite hushed,
+and in high wind a flood rushes, a sea thunders above you."
+
+"Was it not one of Robin Hood's haunts?"
+
+"Yes, and there are mementos of him still existing. To penetrate into
+Nunnwood, Miss Keeldar, is to go far back into the dim days of old. Can
+you see a break in the forest, about the centre?"
+
+"Yes, distinctly."
+
+"That break is a dell--a deep, hollow cup, lined with turf as green and
+short as the sod of this common. The very oldest of the trees, gnarled
+mighty oaks, crowd about the brink of this dell. In the bottom lie the
+ruins of a nunnery."
+
+"We will go--you and I alone, Caroline--to that wood, early some fine
+summer morning, and spend a long day there. We can take pencils and
+sketch-books, and any interesting reading book we like; and of course we
+shall take something to eat. I have two little baskets, in which Mrs.
+Gill, my housekeeper, might pack our provisions, and we could each carry
+our own. It would not tire you too much to walk so far?"
+
+"Oh no; especially if we rested the whole day in the wood. And I know
+all the pleasantest spots. I know where we could get nuts in nutting
+time; I know where wild strawberries abound; I know certain lonely,
+quite untrodden glades, carpeted with strange mosses, some yellow as if
+gilded, some a sober gray, some gem-green. I know groups of trees that
+ravish the eye with their perfect, picture-like effects--rude oak,
+delicate birch, glossy beech, clustered in contrast; and ash trees
+stately as Saul, standing isolated; and superannuated wood-giants clad
+in bright shrouds of ivy. Miss Keeldar, I could guide you."
+
+"You would be dull with me alone?"
+
+"I should not. I think we should suit; and what third person is there
+whose presence would not spoil our pleasure?"
+
+"Indeed, I know of none about our own ages--no lady at least; and as to
+gentlemen----"
+
+"An excursion becomes quite a different thing when there are gentlemen
+of the party," interrupted Caroline.
+
+"I agree with you--quite a different thing to what we were proposing."
+
+"We were going simply to see the old trees, the old ruins; to pass a day
+in old times, surrounded by olden silence, and above all by quietude."
+
+"You are right; and the presence of gentlemen dispels the last charm, I
+think. If they are of the wrong sort, like your Malones, and your young
+Sykes, and Wynnes, irritation takes the place of serenity. If they are
+of the right sort, there is still a change; I can hardly tell what
+change--one easy to feel, difficult to describe."
+
+"We forget Nature, _imprimis_."
+
+"And then Nature forgets us, covers her vast calm brow with a dim veil,
+conceals her face, and withdraws the peaceful joy with which, if we had
+been content to worship her only, she would have filled our hearts."
+
+"What does she give us instead?"
+
+"More elation and more anxiety; an excitement that steals the hours away
+fast, and a trouble that ruffles their course."
+
+"Our power of being happy lies a good deal in ourselves, I believe,"
+remarked Caroline sagely. "I have gone to Nunnwood with a large
+party--all the curates and some other gentry of these parts, together
+with sundry ladies--and I found the affair insufferably tedious and
+absurd; and I have gone quite alone, or accompanied but by Fanny, who
+sat in the woodman's hut and sewed, or talked to the goodwife, while I
+roamed about and made sketches, or read; and I have enjoyed much
+happiness of a quiet kind all day long. But that was when I was
+young--two years ago."
+
+"Did you ever go with your cousin, Robert Moore?"
+
+"Yes; once."
+
+"What sort of a companion is he on these occasions?"
+
+"A cousin, you know, is different to a stranger."
+
+"I am aware of that; but cousins, if they are stupid, are still more
+insupportable than strangers, because you cannot so easily keep them at
+a distance. But your cousin is not stupid?"
+
+"No; but----"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"If the company of fools irritates, as you say, the society of clever
+men leaves its own peculiar pain also. Where the goodness or talent of
+your friend is beyond and above all doubt, your own worthiness to be his
+associate often becomes a matter of question."
+
+"Oh! there I cannot follow you. That crotchet is not one I should choose
+to entertain for an instant. I consider myself not unworthy to be the
+associate of the best of them--of gentlemen, I mean--though that is
+saying a great deal. Where they are good, they are very good, I believe.
+Your uncle, by-the-bye, is not a bad specimen of the elderly gentleman.
+I am always glad to see his brown, keen, sensible old face, either in my
+own house or any other. Are you fond of him? Is he kind to you? Now,
+speak the truth."
+
+"He has brought me up from childhood, I doubt not, precisely as he would
+have brought up his own daughter, if he had had one; and that is
+kindness. But I am not fond of him. I would rather be out of his
+presence than in it."
+
+"Strange, when he has the art of making himself so agreeable."
+
+"Yes, in company; but he is stern and silent at home. As he puts away
+his cane and shovel-hat in the rectory hall, so he locks his liveliness
+in his book-case and study-desk: the knitted brow and brief word for the
+fireside; the smile, the jest, the witty sally for society."
+
+"Is he tyrannical?"
+
+"Not in the least. He is neither tyrannical nor hypocritical. He is
+simply a man who is rather liberal than good-natured, rather brilliant
+than genial, rather scrupulously equitable than truly just--if you can
+understand such superfine distinctions."
+
+"Oh yes! Good-nature implies indulgence, which he has not; geniality,
+warmth of heart, which he does not own; and genuine justice is the
+offspring of sympathy and considerateness, of which, I can well
+conceive, my bronzed old friend is quite innocent."
+
+"I often wonder, Shirley, whether most men resemble my uncle in their
+domestic relations; whether it is necessary to be new and unfamiliar to
+them in order to seem agreeable or estimable in their eyes; and whether
+it is impossible to their natures to retain a constant interest and
+affection for those they see every day."
+
+"I don't know. I can't clear up your doubts. I ponder over similar ones
+myself sometimes. But, to tell you a secret, if I were convinced that
+they are necessarily and universally different from us--fickle, soon
+petrifying, unsympathizing--I would never marry. I should not like to
+find out that what I loved did not love me, that it was weary of me, and
+that whatever effort I might make to please would hereafter be worse
+than useless, since it was inevitably in its nature to change and become
+indifferent. That discovery once made, what should I long for? To go
+away, to remove from a presence where my society gave no pleasure."
+
+"But you could not if you were married."
+
+"No, I could not. There it is. I could never be my own mistress more. A
+terrible thought! It suffocates me! Nothing irks me like the idea of
+being a burden and a bore--an inevitable burden, a ceaseless bore! Now,
+when I feel my company superfluous, I can comfortably fold my
+independence round me like a mantle, and drop my pride like a veil, and
+withdraw to solitude. If married, that could not be."
+
+"I wonder we don't all make up our minds to remain single," said
+Caroline. "We should if we listened to the wisdom of experience. My
+uncle always speaks of marriage as a burden; and I believe whenever he
+hears of a man being married he invariably regards him as a fool, or, at
+any rate, as doing a foolish thing."
+
+"But, Caroline, men are not all like your uncle. Surely not. I hope
+not."
+
+She paused and mused.
+
+"I suppose we each find an exception in the one we love, till we _are_
+married," suggested Caroline.
+
+"I suppose so. And this exception we believe to be of sterling
+materials. We fancy it like ourselves; we imagine a sense of harmony. We
+think his voice gives the softest, truest promise of a heart that will
+never harden against us; we read in his eyes that faithful
+feeling--affection. I don't think we should trust to what they call
+passion at all, Caroline. I believe it is a mere fire of dry sticks,
+blazing up and vanishing. But we watch him, and see him kind to animals,
+to little children, to poor people. He is kind to us likewise, good,
+considerate. He does not flatter women, but he is patient with them, and
+he seems to be easy in their presence, and to find their company genial.
+He likes them not only for vain and selfish reasons, but as _we_ like
+him--because we like him. Then we observe that he is just, that he
+always speaks the truth, that he is conscientious. We feel joy and peace
+when he comes into a room; we feel sadness and trouble when he leaves
+it. We know that this man has been a kind son, that he is a kind
+brother. Will any one dare to tell me that he will not be a kind
+husband?"
+
+"My uncle would affirm it unhesitatingly. 'He will be sick of you in a
+month,' he would say."
+
+"Mrs. Pryor would seriously intimate the same."
+
+"Mrs. Yorke and Miss Mann would darkly suggest ditto."
+
+"If they are true oracles, it is good never to fall in love."
+
+"Very good, if you can avoid it."
+
+"I choose to doubt their truth."
+
+"I am afraid that proves you are already caught."
+
+"Not I. But if I were, do you know what soothsayers I would consult?"
+
+"Let me hear."
+
+"Neither man nor woman, elderly nor young: the little Irish beggar that
+comes barefoot to my door; the mouse that steals out of the cranny in
+the wainscot; the bird that in frost and snow pecks at my window for a
+crumb; the dog that licks my hand and sits beside my knee."
+
+"Did you ever see any one who was kind to such things?"
+
+"Did you ever see any one whom such things seemed instinctively to
+follow, like, rely on?"
+
+"We have a black cat and an old dog at the rectory. I know somebody to
+whose knee that black cat loves to climb, against whose shoulder and
+cheek it likes to purr. The old dog always comes out of his kennel and
+wags his tail, and whines affectionately when somebody passes."
+
+"And what does that somebody do?"
+
+"He quietly strokes the cat, and lets her sit while he conveniently can;
+and when he must disturb her by rising, he puts her softly down, and
+never flings her from him roughly. He always whistles to the dog and
+gives him a caress."
+
+"Does he? It is not Robert?"
+
+"But it is Robert."
+
+"Handsome fellow!" said Shirley, with enthusiasm. Her eyes sparkled.
+
+"Is he not handsome? Has he not fine eyes and well-cut features, and a
+clear, princely forehead?"
+
+"He has all that, Caroline. Bless him! he is both graceful and good."
+
+"I was sure you would see that he was. When I first looked at your face
+I knew you would."
+
+"I was well inclined to him before I saw him. I liked him when I did see
+him. I admire him now. There is charm in beauty for itself, Caroline;
+when it is blent with goodness, there is a powerful charm."
+
+"When mind is added, Shirley?"
+
+"Who can resist it?"
+
+"Remember my uncle, Mesdames Pryor, Yorke, and Mann."
+
+"Remember the croaking of the frogs of Egypt. He is a noble being. I
+tell you when they _are_ good they are the lords of the creation--they
+are the sons of God. Moulded in their Maker's image, the minutest spark
+of His spirit lifts them almost above mortality. Indisputably, a great,
+good, handsome man is the first of created things."
+
+"Above us?"
+
+"I would scorn to contend for empire with him--I would scorn it. Shall
+my left hand dispute for precedence with my right? Shall my heart
+quarrel with my pulse? Shall my veins be jealous of the blood which
+fills them?"
+
+"Men and women, husbands and wives, quarrel horribly, Shirley."
+
+"Poor things! Poor, fallen, degenerate things! God made them for another
+lot, for other feelings."
+
+"But are we men's equals, or are we not?"
+
+"Nothing ever charms me more than when I meet my superior--one who makes
+me sincerely feel that he is my superior."
+
+"Did you ever meet him?"
+
+"I should be glad to see him any day. The higher above me, so much the
+better. It degrades to stoop; it is glorious to look up. What frets me
+is, that when I try to esteem, I am baffled; when religiously inclined,
+there are but false gods to adore. I disdain to be a pagan."
+
+"Miss Keeldar, will you come in? We are here at the rectory gates."
+
+"Not to-day, but to-morrow I shall fetch you to spend the evening with
+me. Caroline Helstone, if you really are what at present to me you seem,
+you and I will suit. I have never in my whole life been able to talk to
+a young lady as I have talked to you this morning. Kiss me--and
+good-bye."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mrs. Pryor seemed as well disposed to cultivate Caroline's acquaintance
+as Shirley. She, who went nowhere else, called on an early day at the
+rectory. She came in the afternoon, when the rector happened to be out.
+It was rather a close day; the heat of the weather had flushed her, and
+she seemed fluttered too by the circumstance of entering a strange
+house, for it appeared her habits were most retiring and secluded. When
+Miss Helstone went to her in the dining-room she found her seated on the
+sofa, trembling, fanning herself with her handkerchief, and seeming to
+contend with a nervous discomposure that threatened to become
+hysterical.
+
+Caroline marvelled somewhat at this unusual want of self-command in a
+lady of her years, and also at the lack of real strength in one who
+appeared almost robust--for Mrs. Pryor hastened to allege the fatigue of
+her walk, the heat of the sun, etc., as reasons for her temporary
+indisposition; and still as, with more hurry than coherence, she again
+and again enumerated these causes of exhaustion, Caroline gently sought
+to relieve her by opening her shawl and removing her bonnet. Attentions
+of this sort Mrs. Pryor would not have accepted from every one. In
+general she recoiled from touch or close approach with a mixture of
+embarrassment and coldness far from flattering to those who offered her
+aid. To Miss Helstone's little light hand, however, she yielded
+tractably, and seemed soothed by its contact. In a few minutes she
+ceased to tremble, and grew quiet and tranquil.
+
+Her usual manner being resumed, she proceeded to talk of ordinary
+topics. In a miscellaneous company Mrs. Pryor rarely opened her lips,
+or, if obliged to speak, she spoke under restraint, and consequently not
+well; in dialogue she was a good converser. Her language, always a
+little formal, was well chosen; her sentiments were just; her
+information was varied and correct. Caroline felt it pleasant to listen
+to her, more pleasant than she could have anticipated.
+
+On the wall opposite the sofa where they sat hung three pictures--the
+centre one, above the mantelpiece, that of a lady; the two others, male
+portraits.
+
+"That is a beautiful face," said Mrs. Pryor, interrupting a brief pause
+which had followed half an hour's animated conversation. "The features
+may be termed perfect; no statuary's chisel could improve them. It is a
+portrait from the life, I presume?"
+
+"It is a portrait of Mrs. Helstone."
+
+"Of Mrs. Matthewson Helstone? Of your uncle's wife?"
+
+"It is, and is said to be a good likeness. Before her marriage she was
+accounted the beauty of the district."
+
+"I should say she merited the distinction. What accuracy in all the
+lineaments! It is, however, a passive face. The original could not have
+been what is generally termed 'a woman of spirit.'"
+
+"I believe she was a remarkably still, silent person."
+
+"One would scarcely have expected, my dear, that your uncle's choice
+should have fallen on a partner of that description. Is he not fond of
+being amused by lively chat?"
+
+"In company he is. But he always says he could never do with a talking
+wife. He must have quiet at home. You go out to gossip, he affirms; you
+come home to read and reflect."
+
+"Mrs. Matthewson lived but a few years after her marriage, I think I
+have heard?"
+
+"About five years."
+
+"Well, my dear," pursued Mrs. Pryor, rising to go, "I trust it is
+understood that you will frequently come to Fieldhead. I hope you will.
+You must feel lonely here, having no female relative in the house; you
+must necessarily pass much of your time in solitude."
+
+"I am inured to it. I have grown up by myself. May I arrange your shawl
+for you?"
+
+Mrs. Pryor submitted to be assisted.
+
+"Should you chance to require help in your studies," she said, "you may
+command me."
+
+Caroline expressed her sense of such kindness.
+
+"I hope to have frequent conversations with you. I should wish to be of
+use to you."
+
+Again Miss Helstone returned thanks. She thought what a kind heart was
+hidden under her visitor's seeming chilliness. Observing that Mrs. Pryor
+again glanced with an air of interest towards the portraits, as she
+walked down the room, Caroline casually explained: "The likeness that
+hangs near the window, you will see, is my uncle, taken twenty years
+ago; the other, to the left of the mantelpiece, is his brother James, my
+father."
+
+"They resemble each other in some measure," said Mrs. Pryor; "yet a
+difference of character may be traced in the different mould of the brow
+and mouth."
+
+"What difference?" inquired Caroline, accompanying her to the door.
+"James Helstone--that is, my father--is generally considered the
+best-looking of the two. Strangers, I remark, always exclaim, 'What a
+handsome man!' Do you think his picture handsome, Mrs. Pryor?"
+
+"It is much softer or finer featured than that of your uncle."
+
+"But where or what is the difference of character to which you alluded?
+Tell me. I wish to see if you guess right."
+
+"My dear, your uncle is a man of principle. His forehead and his lips
+are firm, and his eye is steady."
+
+"Well, and the other? Do not be afraid of offending me. I always like
+the truth."
+
+"Do you like the truth? It is well for you. Adhere to that
+preference--never swerve thence. The other, my dear, if he had been
+living now, would probably have furnished little support to his
+daughter. It is, however, a graceful head--taken in youth, I should
+think. My dear" (turning abruptly), "you acknowledge an inestimable
+value in principle?"
+
+"I am sure no character can have true worth without it."
+
+"You feel what you say? You have considered the subject?"
+
+"Often. Circumstances early forced it upon my attention."
+
+"The lesson was not lost, then, though it came so prematurely. I suppose
+the soil is not light nor stony, otherwise seed falling in that season
+never would have borne fruit. My dear, do not stand in the air of the
+door; you will take cold. Good-afternoon."
+
+Miss Helstone's new acquaintance soon became of value to her: their
+society was acknowledged a privilege. She found she would have been in
+error indeed to have let slip this chance of relief, to have neglected
+to avail herself of this happy change. A turn was thereby given to her
+thoughts; a new channel was opened for them, which, diverting a few of
+them at least from the one direction in which all had hitherto tended,
+abated the impetuosity of their rush, and lessened the force of their
+pressure on one worn-down point.
+
+Soon she was content to spend whole days at Fieldhead, doing by turns
+whatever Shirley or Mrs. Pryor wished her to do; and now one would claim
+her, now the other. Nothing could be less demonstrative than the
+friendship of the elder lady, but also nothing could be more vigilant,
+assiduous, untiring. I have intimated that she was a peculiar personage,
+and in nothing was her peculiarity more shown than in the nature of the
+interest she evinced for Caroline. She watched all her movements; she
+seemed as if she would have guarded all her steps. It gave her pleasure
+to be applied to by Miss Helstone for advice and assistance. She yielded
+her aid, when asked, with such quiet yet obvious enjoyment that Caroline
+ere long took delight in depending on her.
+
+Shirley Keeldar's complete docility with Mrs. Pryor had at first
+surprised Miss Helstone, and not less the fact of the reserved
+ex-governess being so much at home and at ease in the residence of her
+young pupil, where she filled with such quiet independency a very
+dependent post; but she soon found that it needed but to know both
+ladies to comprehend fully the enigma. Every one, it seemed to her, must
+like, must love, must prize Mrs. Pryor when they knew her. No matter
+that she perseveringly wore old-fashioned gowns; that her speech was
+formal and her manner cool; that she had twenty little ways such as
+nobody else had: she was still such a stay, such a counsellor, so
+truthful, so kind in her way, that, in Caroline's idea, none once
+accustomed to her presence could easily afford to dispense with it.
+
+As to dependency or humiliation, Caroline did not feel it in her
+intercourse with Shirley, and why should Mrs. Pryor? The heiress was
+rich--very rich--compared with her new friend: one possessed a clear
+thousand a year, the other not a penny; and yet there was a safe sense
+of equality experienced in her society, never known in that of the
+ordinary Briarfield and Whinbury gentry.
+
+The reason was, Shirley's head ran on other things than money and
+position. She was glad to be independent as to property; by fits she was
+even elated at the notion of being lady of the manor, and having tenants
+and an estate. She was especially tickled with an agreeable complacency
+when reminded of "all that property" down in the Hollow, "comprising an
+excellent cloth-mill, dyehouse, warehouse, together with the messuage,
+gardens, and outbuildings, termed Hollow's Cottage;" but her exultation
+being quite undisguised was singularly inoffensive; and, for her serious
+thoughts, they tended elsewhere. To admire the great, reverence the
+good, and be joyous with the genial, was very much the bent of Shirley's
+soul: she mused, therefore, on the means of following this bent far
+oftener than she pondered on her social superiority.
+
+In Caroline Miss Keeldar had first taken an interest because she was
+quiet, retiring, looked delicate, and seemed as if she needed some one
+to take care of her. Her predilection increased greatly when she
+discovered that her own way of thinking and talking was understood and
+responded to by this new acquaintance. She had hardly expected it. Miss
+Helstone, she fancied, had too pretty a face, manners and voice too
+soft, to be anything out of the common way in mind and attainments; and
+she very much wondered to see the gentle features light up archly to the
+reveille of a dry sally or two risked by herself; and more did she
+wonder to discover the self-won knowledge treasured, and the untaught
+speculations working in that girlish, curl-veiled head. Caroline's
+instinct of taste, too, was like her own. Such books as Miss Keeldar had
+read with the most pleasure were Miss Helstone's delight also. They held
+many aversions too in common, and could have the comfort of laughing
+together over works of false sentimentality and pompous pretension.
+
+Few, Shirley conceived, men or women have the right taste in poetry, the
+right sense for discriminating between what is real and what is false.
+She had again and again heard very clever people pronounce this or that
+passage, in this or that versifier, altogether admirable, which, when
+she read, her soul refused to acknowledge as anything but cant,
+flourish, and tinsel, or at the best elaborate wordiness, curious,
+clever, learned, perhaps, haply even tinged with the fascinating hues of
+fancy, but, God knows, as different from real poetry as the gorgeous and
+massy vase of mosaic is from the little cup of pure metal; or, to give
+the reader a choice of similes, as the milliner's artificial wreath is
+from the fresh-gathered lily of the field.
+
+Caroline, she found, felt the value of the true ore, and knew the
+deception of the flashy dross. The minds of the two girls being toned in
+harmony often chimed very sweetly together.
+
+One evening they chanced to be alone in the oak-parlour. They had passed
+a long wet day together without _ennui_. It was now on the edge of dark;
+candles were not yet brought in; both, as twilight deepened, grew
+meditative and silent. A western wind roared high round the hall,
+driving wild clouds and stormy rain up from the far-remote ocean; all
+was tempest outside the antique lattices, all deep peace within. Shirley
+sat at the window, watching the rack in heaven, the mist on earth,
+listening to certain notes of the gale that plained like restless
+spirits--notes which, had she not been so young, gay, and healthy, would
+have swept her trembling nerves like some omen, some anticipatory dirge.
+In this her prime of existence and bloom of beauty they but subdued
+vivacity to pensiveness. Snatches of sweet ballads haunted her ear; now
+and then she sang a stanza. Her accents obeyed the fitful impulse of the
+wind; they swelled as its gusts rushed on, and died as they wandered
+away. Caroline, withdrawn to the farthest and darkest end of the room,
+her figure just discernible by the ruby shine of the flameless fire,
+was pacing to and fro, muttering to herself fragments of well-remembered
+poetry. She spoke very low, but Shirley heard her; and while singing
+softly, she listened. This was the strain:--
+
+    "Obscurest night involved the sky,
+       The Atlantic billows roared,
+     When such a destined wretch as I,
+       Washed headlong from on board,
+     Of friends, of hope, of all bereft,
+     His floating home for ever left."
+
+Here the fragment stopped, because Shirley's song, erewhile somewhat
+full and thrilling, had become delicately faint.
+
+"Go on," said she.
+
+"Then you go on too. I was only repeating 'The Castaway.'"
+
+"I know. If you can remember it all, say it all."
+
+And as it was nearly dark, and, after all, Miss Keeldar was no
+formidable auditor, Caroline went through it. She went through it as she
+should have gone through it. The wild sea, the drowning mariner, the
+reluctant ship swept on in the storm, you heard were realized by her;
+and more vividly was realized the heart of the poet, who did not weep
+for "The Castaway," but who, in an hour of tearless anguish, traced a
+semblance to his own God-abandoned misery in the fate of that
+man-forsaken sailor, and cried from the depths where he struggled,--
+
+    "No voice divine the storm allayed,
+       No light propitious shone,
+     When, snatched from all effectual aid,
+       We perished--each alone!
+     But I beneath a rougher sea,
+     And whelmed in deeper gulfs than he."
+
+"I hope William Cowper is safe and calm in heaven now," said Caroline.
+
+"Do you pity what he suffered on earth?" asked Miss Keeldar.
+
+"Pity him, Shirley? What can I do else? He was nearly broken-hearted
+when he wrote that poem, and it almost breaks one's heart to read it.
+But he found relief in writing it--I know he did; and that gift of
+poetry--the most divine bestowed on man--was, I believe, granted to
+allay emotions when their strength threatens harm. It seems to me,
+Shirley, that nobody should write poetry to exhibit intellect or
+attainment. Who cares for that sort of poetry? Who cares for
+learning--who cares for fine words in poetry? And who does not care for
+feeling--real feeling--however simply, even rudely expressed?"
+
+"It seems you care for it, at all events; and certainly, in hearing that
+poem, one discovers that Cowper was under an impulse strong as that of
+the wind which drove the ship--an impulse which, while it would not
+suffer him to stop to add ornament to a single stanza, filled him with
+force to achieve the whole with consummate perfection. You managed to
+recite it with a steady voice, Caroline. I wonder thereat."
+
+"Cowper's hand did not tremble in writing the lines. Why should my voice
+falter in repeating them? Depend on it, Shirley, no tear blistered the
+manuscript of 'The Castaway.' I hear in it no sob of sorrow, only the
+cry of despair; but, that cry uttered, I believe the deadly spasm passed
+from his heart, that he wept abundantly, and was comforted."
+
+Shirley resumed her ballad minstrelsy. Stopping short, she remarked ere
+long, "One could have loved Cowper, if it were only for the sake of
+having the privilege of comforting him."
+
+"You never would have loved Cowper," rejoined Caroline promptly. "He was
+not made to be loved by woman."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"What I say. I know there is a kind of natures in the world--and very
+noble, elevated natures too--whom love never comes near. You might have
+sought Cowper with the intention of loving him, and you would have
+looked at him, pitied him, and left him, forced away by a sense of the
+impossible, the incongruous, as the crew were borne from their drowning
+comrade by 'the furious blast.'"
+
+"You may be right. Who told you this?"
+
+"And what I say of Cowper, I should say of Rousseau. Was Rousseau ever
+loved? He loved passionately; but was his passion ever returned? I am
+certain, never. And if there were any female Cowpers and Rousseaus, I
+should assert the same of them."
+
+"Who told you this, I ask? Did Moore?"
+
+"Why should anybody have told me? Have I not an instinct? Can I not
+divine by analogy? Moore never talked to me either about Cowper, or
+Rousseau, or love. The voice we hear in solitude told me all I know on
+these subjects."
+
+"Do you like characters of the Rousseau order, Caroline?"
+
+"Not at all, as a whole. I sympathize intensely with certain qualities
+they possess. Certain divine sparks in their nature dazzle my eyes, and
+make my soul glow. Then, again, I scorn them. They are made of clay and
+gold. The refuse and the ore make a mass of weakness: taken altogether,
+I feel them unnatural, unhealthy, repulsive."
+
+"I dare say I should be more tolerant of a Rousseau than you would,
+Cary. Submissive and contemplative yourself, you like the stern and the
+practical. By the way, you must miss that Cousin Robert of yours very
+much, now that you and he never meet."
+
+"I do."
+
+"And he must miss you?"
+
+"That he does not."
+
+"I cannot imagine," pursued Shirley, who had lately got a habit of
+introducing Moore's name into the conversation, even when it seemed to
+have no business there--"I cannot imagine but that he was fond of you,
+since he took so much notice of you, talked to you, and taught you so
+much."
+
+"He never was fond of me; he never professed to be fond of me. He took
+pains to prove that he only just tolerated me."
+
+Caroline, determined not to err on the flattering side in estimating her
+cousin's regard for her, always now habitually thought of it and
+mentioned it in the most scanty measure. She had her own reasons for
+being less sanguine than ever in hopeful views of the future, less
+indulgent to pleasurable retrospections of the past.
+
+"Of course, then," observed Miss Keeldar, "you only just tolerated him
+in return?"
+
+"Shirley, men and women are so different; they are in such a different
+position. Women have so few things to think about, men so many. You may
+have a friendship for a man, while he is almost indifferent to you. Much
+of what cheers your life may be dependent on him, while not a feeling or
+interest of moment in his eyes may have reference to you. Robert used to
+be in the habit of going to London, sometimes for a week or a fortnight
+together. Well, while he was away, I found his absence a void. There
+was something wanting; Briarfield was duller. Of course, I had my usual
+occupations; still I missed him. As I sat by myself in the evenings, I
+used to feel a strange certainty of conviction I cannot describe, that
+if a magician or a genius had, at that moment, offered me Prince Ali's
+tube (you remember it in the 'Arabian Nights'?), and if, with its aid, I
+had been enabled to take a view of Robert--to see where he was, how
+occupied--I should have learned, in a startling manner, the width of the
+chasm which gaped between such as he and such as I. I knew that, however
+my thoughts might adhere to him, his were effectually sundered from me."
+
+"Caroline," demanded Miss Keeldar abruptly, "don't you wish you had a
+profession--a trade?"
+
+"I wish it fifty times a day. As it is, I often wonder what I came into
+the world for. I long to have something absorbing and compulsory to fill
+my head and hands and to occupy my thoughts."
+
+"Can labour alone make a human being happy?"
+
+"No; but it can give varieties of pain, and prevent us from breaking our
+hearts with a single tyrant master-torture. Besides, successful labour
+has its recompense; a vacant, weary, lonely, hopeless life has none."
+
+"But hard labour and learned professions, they say, make women
+masculine, coarse, unwomanly."
+
+"And what does it signify whether unmarried and never-to-be-married
+women are unattractive and inelegant or not? Provided only they are
+decent, decorous, and neat, it is enough. The utmost which ought to be
+required of old maids, in the way of appearance, is that they should not
+absolutely offend men's eyes as they pass them in the street; for the
+rest, they should be allowed, without too much scorn, to be as absorbed,
+grave, plain-looking, and plain-dressed as they please."
+
+"You might be an old maid yourself, Caroline, you speak so earnestly."
+
+"I shall be one. It is my destiny. I will never marry a Malone or a
+Sykes; and no one else will ever marry me."
+
+Here fell a long pause. Shirley broke it. Again the name by which she
+seemed bewitched was almost the first on her lips.
+
+"Lina--did not Moore call you Lina sometimes?"
+
+"Yes. It is sometimes used as the abbreviation of Caroline in his native
+country."
+
+"Well, Lina, do you remember my one day noticing an inequality in your
+hair--a curl wanting on that right side--and your telling me that it was
+Robert's fault, as he had once cut therefrom a long lock?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"If he is, and always was, as indifferent to you as you say, why did he
+steal your hair?"
+
+"I don't know--yes, I do. It was my doing, not his. Everything of that
+sort always was my doing. He was going from home--to London, as usual;
+and the night before he went, I had found in his sister's workbox a lock
+of black hair--a short, round curl. Hortense told me it was her
+brother's, and a keepsake. He was sitting near the table. I looked at
+his head. He has plenty of hair; on the temples were many such round
+curls. I thought he could spare me one. I knew I should like to have it,
+and I asked for it. He said, on condition that he might have his choice
+of a tress from my head. So he got one of my long locks of hair, and I
+got one of his short ones. I keep his, but I dare say he has lost mine.
+It was my doing, and one of those silly deeds it distresses the heart
+and sets the face on fire to think of; one of those small but sharp
+recollections that return, lacerating your self-respect like tiny
+penknives, and forcing from your lips, as you sit alone, sudden,
+insane-sounding interjections."
+
+"Caroline!"
+
+"I _do_ think myself a fool, Shirley, in some respects; I _do_ despise
+myself. But I said I would not make you my confessor, for you cannot
+reciprocate foible for foible; you are not weak. How steadily you watch
+me now! Turn aside your clear, strong, she-eagle eye; it is an insult to
+fix it on me thus."
+
+"What a study of character you are--weak, certainly, but not in the
+sense you think!--Come in!"
+
+This was said in answer to a tap at the door. Miss Keeldar happened to
+be near it at the moment, Caroline at the other end of the room. She saw
+a note put into Shirley's hands, and heard the words, "From Mr. Moore,
+ma'am."
+
+"Bring candles," said Miss Keeldar.
+
+Caroline sat expectant.
+
+"A communication on business," said the heiress; but when candles were
+brought, she neither opened nor read it. The rector's Fanny was
+presently announced, and the rector's niece went home.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+FURTHER COMMUNICATIONS ON BUSINESS.
+
+
+In Shirley's nature prevailed at times an easy indolence. There were
+periods when she took delight in perfect vacancy of hand and
+eye--moments when her thoughts, her simple existence, the fact of the
+world being around and heaven above her, seemed to yield her such
+fullness of happiness that she did not need to lift a finger to increase
+the joy. Often, after an active morning, she would spend a sunny
+afternoon in lying stirless on the turf, at the foot of some tree of
+friendly umbrage. No society did she need but that of Caroline, and it
+sufficed if she were within call; no spectacle did she ask but that of
+the deep blue sky, and such cloudlets as sailed afar and aloft across
+its span; no sound but that of the bee's hum, the leaf's whisper. Her
+sole book in such hours was the dim chronicle of memory or the sibyl
+page of anticipation. From her young eyes fell on each volume a glorious
+light to read by; round her lips at moments played a smile which
+revealed glimpses of the tale or prophecy. It was not sad, not dark.
+Fate had been benign to the blissful dreamer, and promised to favour her
+yet again. In her past were sweet passages, in her future rosy hopes.
+
+Yet one day when Caroline drew near to rouse her, thinking she had lain
+long enough, behold, as she looked down, Shirley's cheek was wet as if
+with dew; those fine eyes of hers shone humid and brimming.
+
+"Shirley, why do _you_ cry?" asked Caroline, involuntarily laying stress
+on _you_.
+
+Miss Keeldar smiled, and turned her picturesque head towards the
+questioner. "Because it pleases me mightily to cry," she said. "My heart
+is both sad and glad. But why, you good, patient child--why do you not
+bear me company? I only weep tears, delightful and soon wiped away; you
+might weep gall, if you choose."
+
+"Why should I weep gall?"
+
+"Mateless, solitary bird!" was the only answer.
+
+"And are not you too mateless, Shirley?"
+
+"At heart--no."
+
+"Oh! who nestles there, Shirley?"
+
+But Shirley only laughed gaily at this question, and alertly started up.
+
+"I have dreamed," she said, "a mere day-dream--certainly bright,
+probably baseless!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Miss Helstone was by this time free enough from illusions: she took a
+sufficiently grave view of the future, and fancied she knew pretty well
+how her own destiny and that of some others were tending. Yet old
+associations retained their influence over her, and it was these and the
+power of habit which still frequently drew her of an evening to the
+field-style and the old thorn overlooking the Hollow.
+
+One night, the night after the incident of the note, she had been at her
+usual post, watching for her beacon--watching vainly: that evening no
+lamp was lit. She waited till the rising of certain constellations
+warned her of lateness and signed her away. In passing Fieldhead, on her
+return, its moonlight beauty attracted her glance, and stayed her step
+an instant. Tree and hall rose peaceful under the night sky and clear
+full orb; pearly paleness gilded the building; mellow brown gloom
+bosomed it round; shadows of deep green brooded above its oak-wreathed
+roof. The broad pavement in front shone pale also; it gleamed as if some
+spell had transformed the dark granite to glistering Parian. On the
+silvery space slept two sable shadows, thrown sharply defined from two
+human figures. These figures when first seen were motionless and mute;
+presently they moved in harmonious step, and spoke low in harmonious
+key. Earnest was the gaze that scrutinized them as they emerged from
+behind the trunk of the cedar. "Is it Mrs. Pryor and Shirley?"
+
+Certainly it is Shirley. Who else has a shape so lithe, and proud, and
+graceful? And her face, too, is visible--her countenance careless and
+pensive, and musing and mirthful, and mocking and tender. Not fearing
+the dew, she has not covered her head; her curls are free--they veil her
+neck and caress her shoulder with their tendril rings. An ornament of
+gold gleams through the half-closed folds of the scarf she has wrapped
+across her bust, and a large bright gem glitters on the white hand
+which confines it. Yes, that is Shirley.
+
+Her companion then is, of course, Mrs. Pryor?
+
+Yes, if Mrs. Pryor owns six feet of stature, and if she has changed her
+decent widow's weeds for masculine disguise. The figure walking at Miss
+Keeldar's side is a man--a tall, young, stately man; it is her tenant,
+Robert Moore.
+
+The pair speak softly; their words are not distinguishable. To remain a
+moment to gaze is not to be an eavesdropper; and as the moon shines so
+clearly and their countenances are so distinctly apparent, who can
+resist the attraction of such interest? Caroline, it seems, cannot, for
+she lingers.
+
+There was a time when, on summer nights, Moore had been wont to walk
+with his cousin, as he was now walking with the heiress. Often had she
+gone up the Hollow with him after sunset, to scent the freshness of the
+earth, where a growth of fragrant herbage carpeted a certain narrow
+terrace, edging a deep ravine, from whose rifted gloom was heard a sound
+like the spirit of the lonely watercourse, moaning amongst its wet
+stones, and between its weedy banks, and under its dark bower of alders.
+
+"But I used to be closer to him," thought Caroline. "He felt no
+obligation to treat me with homage; I needed only kindness. He used to
+hold my hand; he does not touch hers. And yet Shirley is not proud where
+she loves. There is no haughtiness in her aspect now, only a little in
+her port--what is natural to and inseparable from her, what she retains
+in her most careless as in her most guarded moments. Robert must think,
+as I think, that he is at this instant looking down on a fine face; and
+he must think it with a man's brain, not with mine. She has such
+generous yet soft fire in her eyes. She smiles--what makes her smile so
+sweet? I saw that Robert felt its beauty, and he must have felt it with
+his man's heart, not with my dim woman's perceptions. They look to me
+like two great happy spirits. Yonder silvered pavement reminds me of
+that white shore we believe to be beyond the death-flood. They have
+reached it; they walk there united. And what am I, standing here in
+shadow, shrinking into concealment, my mind darker than my hiding-place?
+I am one of this world, no spirit--a poor doomed mortal, who asks, in
+ignorance and hopelessness, wherefore she was born, to what end she
+lives; whose mind for ever runs on the question, how she shall at last
+encounter, and by whom be sustained through death.
+
+"This is the worst passage I have come to yet; still I was quite
+prepared for it. I gave Robert up, and gave him up to Shirley, the first
+day I heard she was come, the first moment I saw her--rich, youthful,
+and lovely. She has him now. He is her lover. She is his darling. She
+will be far more his darling yet when they are married. The more Robert
+knows of Shirley the more his soul will cleave to her. They will both be
+happy, and I do not grudge them their bliss; but I groan under my own
+misery. Some of my suffering is very acute. Truly I ought not to have
+been born; they should have smothered me at the first cry."
+
+Here, Shirley stepping aside to gather a dewy flower, she and her
+companion turned into a path that lay nearer the gate. Some of their
+conversation became audible. Caroline would not stay to listen. She
+passed away noiselessly, and the moonlight kissed the wall which her
+shadow had dimmed. The reader is privileged to remain, and try what he
+can make of the discourse.
+
+"I cannot conceive why nature did not give you a bulldog's head, for you
+have all a bulldog's tenacity," said Shirley.
+
+"Not a flattering idea. Am I so ignoble?"
+
+"And something also you have of the same animal's silent ways of going
+about its work. You give no warning; you come noiselessly behind, seize
+fast, and hold on."
+
+"This is guess-work. You have witnessed no such feat on my part. In your
+presence I have been no bulldog."
+
+"Your very silence indicates your race. How little you talk in general,
+yet how deeply you scheme! You are far-seeing; you are calculating."
+
+"I know the ways of these people. I have gathered information of their
+intentions. My note last night informed you that Barraclough's trial had
+ended in his conviction and sentence to transportation. His associates
+will plot vengeance. I shall lay my plans so as to counteract or at
+least be prepared for theirs--that is all. Having now given you as clear
+an explanation as I can, am I to understand that for what I propose
+doing I have your approbation?"
+
+"I shall stand by you so long as you remain on the defensive. Yes."
+
+"Good! Without any aid--even opposed or disapproved by you--I believe I
+should have acted precisely as I now intend to act, but in another
+spirit. I now feel satisfied. On the whole, I relish the position."
+
+"I dare say you do. That is evident. You relish the work which lies
+before you still better than you would relish the execution of a
+government order for army-cloth."
+
+"I certainly feel it congenial."
+
+"So would old Helstone. It is true there is a shade of difference in
+your motives--many shades, perhaps. Shall I speak to Mr. Helstone? I
+will, if you like."
+
+"Act as you please. Your judgment, Miss Keeldar, will guide you
+accurately. I could rely on it myself in a more difficult crisis. But I
+should inform you Mr. Helstone is somewhat prejudiced against me at
+present."
+
+"I am aware--I have heard all about your differences. Depend upon it,
+they will melt away. He cannot resist the temptation of an alliance
+under present circumstances."
+
+"I should be glad to have him; he is of true metal."
+
+"I think so also."
+
+"An old blade, and rusty somewhat, but the edge and temper still
+excellent."
+
+"Well, you shall have him, Mr. Moore--that is, if I can win him."
+
+"Whom can you not win?"
+
+"Perhaps not the rector; but I will make the effort."
+
+"Effort! He will yield for a word--a smile."
+
+"By no means. It will cost me several cups of tea, some toast and cake,
+and an ample measure of remonstrances, expostulations, and persuasions.
+It grows rather chill."
+
+"I perceive you shiver. Am I acting wrongly to detain you here? Yet it
+is so calm--I even feel it warm--and society such as yours is a pleasure
+to me so rare. If you were wrapped in a thicker shawl----"
+
+"I might stay longer, and forget how late it is, which would chagrin
+Mrs. Pryor. We keep early and regular hours at Fieldhead, Mr. Moore; and
+so, I am sure, does your sister at the cottage."
+
+"Yes; but Hortense and I have an understanding the most convenient in
+the world, that we shall each do as we please."
+
+"How do you please to do?"
+
+"Three nights in the week I sleep in the mill--but I require little
+rest--and when it is moonlight and mild I often haunt the Hollow till
+daybreak."
+
+"When I was a very little girl, Mr. Moore, my nurse used to tell me
+tales of fairies being seen in that Hollow. That was before my father
+built the mill, when it was a perfectly solitary ravine. You will be
+falling under enchantment."
+
+"I fear it is done," said Moore, in a low voice.
+
+"But there are worse things than fairies to be guarded against," pursued
+Miss Keeldar.
+
+"Things more perilous," he subjoined.
+
+"Far more so. For instance, how would you like to meet Michael Hartley,
+that mad Calvinist and Jacobin weaver? They say he is addicted to
+poaching, and often goes abroad at night with his gun."
+
+"I have already had the luck to meet him. We held a long argument
+together one night. A strange little incident it was; I liked it."
+
+"Liked it? I admire your taste! Michael is not sane. Where did you meet
+him?"
+
+"In the deepest, shadiest spot in the glen, where the water runs low,
+under brushwood. We sat down near that plank bridge. It was moonlight,
+but clouded, and very windy. We had a talk."
+
+"On politics?"
+
+"And religion. I think the moon was at the full, and Michael was as near
+crazed as possible. He uttered strange blasphemy in his Antinomian
+fashion."
+
+"Excuse me, but I think you must have been nearly as mad as he, to sit
+listening to him."
+
+"There is a wild interest in his ravings. The man would be half a poet,
+if he were not wholly a maniac; and perhaps a prophet, if he were not a
+profligate. He solemnly informed me that hell was foreordained my
+inevitable portion; that he read the mark of the beast on my brow; that
+I had been an outcast from the beginning. God's vengeance, he said, was
+preparing for me, and affirmed that in a vision of the night he had
+beheld the manner and the instrument of my doom. I wanted to know
+further, but he left me with these words, 'The end is not yet.'"
+
+"Have you ever seen him since?"
+
+"About a month afterwards, in returning from market, I encountered him
+and Moses Barraclough, both in an advanced stage of inebriation. They
+were praying in frantic sort at the roadside. They accosted me as Satan,
+bid me avaunt, and clamoured to be delivered from temptation. Again, but
+a few days ago, Michael took the trouble of appearing at the
+counting-house door, hatless, in his shirt-sleeves--his coat and castor
+having been detained at the public-house in pledge. He delivered himself
+of the comfortable message that he could wish Mr. Moore to set his house
+in order, as his soul was likely shortly to be required of him."
+
+"Do you make light of these things?"
+
+"The poor man had been drinking for weeks, and was in a state bordering
+on delirium tremens."
+
+"What then? He is the more likely to attempt the fulfilment of his own
+prophecies."
+
+"It would not do to permit incidents of this sort to affect one's
+nerves."
+
+"Mr. Moore, go home!"
+
+"So soon?"
+
+"Pass straight down the fields, not round by the lade and plantations."
+
+"It is early yet."
+
+"It is late. For my part, I am going in. Will you promise me not to
+wander in the Hollow to-night?"
+
+"If you wish it."
+
+"I do wish it. May I ask whether you consider life valueless?"
+
+"By no means. On the contrary, of late I regard my life as invaluable."
+
+"Of late?"
+
+"Existence is neither aimless nor hopeless to me now, and it was both
+three months ago. I was then drowning, and rather wished the operation
+over. All at once a hand was stretched to me--such a delicate hand I
+scarcely dared trust it; its strength, however, has rescued me from
+ruin."
+
+"Are you really rescued?"
+
+"For the time. Your assistance has given me another chance."
+
+"Live to make the best of it. Don't offer yourself as a target to
+Michael Hartley; and good-night!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Miss Helstone was under a promise to spend the evening of the next day
+at Fieldhead. She kept her promise. Some gloomy hours had she spent in
+the interval. Most of the time had been passed shut up in her own
+apartment, only issuing from it, indeed, to join her uncle at meals, and
+anticipating inquiries from Fanny by telling her that she was busy
+altering a dress, and preferred sewing upstairs, to avoid interruption.
+
+She did sew. She plied her needle continuously, ceaselessly, but her
+brain worked faster than her fingers. Again, and more intensely than
+ever, she desired a fixed occupation, no matter how onerous, how
+irksome. Her uncle must be once more entreated, but first she would
+consult Mrs. Pryor. Her head laboured to frame projects as diligently as
+her hands to plait and stitch the thin texture of the muslin summer
+dress spread on the little white couch at the foot of which she sat. Now
+and then, while thus doubly occupied, a tear would fill her eyes and
+fall on her busy hands; but this sign of emotion was rare and quickly
+effaced. The sharp pang passed; the dimness cleared from her vision. She
+would re-thread her needle, rearrange tuck and trimming, and work on.
+
+Late in the afternoon she dressed herself. She reached Fieldhead, and
+appeared in the oak parlour just as tea was brought in. Shirley asked
+her why she came so late.
+
+"Because I have been making my dress," said she. "These fine sunny days
+began to make me ashamed of my winter merino, so I have furbished up a
+lighter garment."
+
+"In which you look as I like to see you," said Shirley. "You are a
+lady-like little person, Caroline.--Is she not, Mrs. Pryor?"
+
+Mrs. Pryor never paid compliments, and seldom indulged in remarks,
+favourable or otherwise, on personal appearance. On the present occasion
+she only swept Caroline's curls from her cheek as she took a seat near
+her, caressed the oval outline, and observed, "You get somewhat thin, my
+love, and somewhat pale. Do you sleep well? your eyes have a languid
+look." And she gazed at her anxiously.
+
+"I sometimes dream melancholy dreams," answered Caroline; "and if I lie
+awake for an hour or two in the night, I am continually thinking of the
+rectory as a dreary old place. You know it is very near the churchyard.
+The back part of the house is extremely ancient, and it is said that the
+out-kitchens there were once enclosed in the churchyard, and that there
+are graves under them. I rather long to leave the rectory."
+
+"My dear, you are surely not superstitious?"
+
+"No, Mrs. Pryor; but I think I grow what is called nervous. I see things
+under a darker aspect than I used to do. I have fears I never used to
+have--not of ghosts, but of omens and disastrous events; and I have an
+inexpressible weight on my mind which I would give the world to shake
+off, and I cannot do it."
+
+"Strange!" cried Shirley. "I never feel so." Mrs. Pryor said nothing.
+
+"Fine weather, pleasant days, pleasant scenes, are powerless to give me
+pleasure," continued Caroline. "Calm evenings are not calm to me.
+Moonlight, which I used to think mild, now only looks mournful. Is this
+weakness of mind, Mrs. Pryor, or what is it? I cannot help it. I often
+struggle against it. I reason; but reason and effort make no
+difference."
+
+"You should take more exercise," said Mrs. Pryor.
+
+"Exercise! I exercise sufficiently. I exercise till I am ready to drop."
+
+"My dear, you should go from home."
+
+"Mrs. Pryor, I should like to go from home, but not on any purposeless
+excursion or visit. I wish to be a governess, as you have been. It would
+oblige me greatly if you would speak to my uncle on the subject."
+
+"Nonsense!" broke in Shirley. "What an idea! Be a governess! Better be a
+slave at once. Where is the necessity of it? Why should you dream of
+such a painful step?"
+
+"My dear," said Mrs. Pryor, "you are very young to be a governess, and
+not sufficiently robust. The duties a governess undertakes are often
+severe."
+
+"And I believe I want severe duties to occupy me."
+
+"Occupy you!" cried Shirley. "When are you idle? I never saw a more
+industrious girl than you. You are always at work. Come," she
+continued--"come and sit by my side, and take some tea to refresh you.
+You don't care much for my friendship, then, that you wish to leave me?"
+
+"Indeed I do, Shirley; and I don't wish to leave you. I shall never find
+another friend so dear."
+
+At which words Miss Keeldar put her hand into Caroline's with an
+impulsively affectionate movement, which was well seconded by the
+expression of her face.
+
+"If you think so, you had better make much of me," she said, "and not
+run away from me. I hate to part with those to whom I am become
+attached. Mrs. Pryor there sometimes talks of leaving me, and says I
+might make a more advantageous connection than herself. I should as soon
+think of exchanging an old-fashioned mother for something modish and
+stylish. As for you--why, I began to flatter myself we were thoroughly
+friends; that you liked Shirley almost as well as Shirley likes you, and
+she does not stint her regard."
+
+"I _do_ like Shirley. I like her more and more every day. But that does
+not make me strong or happy."
+
+"And would it make you strong or happy to go and live as a dependent
+amongst utter strangers? It would not. And the experiment must not be
+tried; I tell you it would fail. It is not in your nature to bear the
+desolate life governesses generally lead; you would fall ill. I won't
+hear of it."
+
+And Miss Keeldar paused, having uttered this prohibition very decidedly.
+Soon she recommenced, still looking somewhat _courroucée_, "Why, it is
+my daily pleasure now to look out for the little cottage bonnet and the
+silk scarf glancing through the trees in the lane, and to know that my
+quiet, shrewd, thoughtful companion and monitress is coming back to me;
+that I shall have her sitting in the room to look at, to talk to or to
+let alone, as she and I please. This may be a selfish sort of
+language--I know it is--but it is the language which naturally rises to
+my lips, therefore I utter it."
+
+"I would write to you, Shirley."
+
+"And what are letters? Only a sort of _pis aller_. Drink some tea,
+Caroline. Eat something--you eat nothing. Laugh and be cheerful, and
+stay at home."
+
+Miss Helstone shook her head and sighed. She felt what difficulty she
+would have to persuade any one to assist or sanction her in making that
+change in her life which she believed desirable. Might she only follow
+her own judgment, she thought she should be able to find perhaps a harsh
+but an effectual cure for her sufferings. But this judgment, founded on
+circumstances she could fully explain to none, least of all to Shirley,
+seemed, in all eyes but her own, incomprehensible and fantastic, and
+was opposed accordingly.
+
+There really was no present pecuniary need for her to leave a
+comfortable home and "take a situation;" and there was every probability
+that her uncle might, in some way, permanently provide for her. So her
+friends thought, and, as far as their lights enabled them to see, they
+reasoned correctly; but of Caroline's strange sufferings, which she
+desired so eagerly to overcome or escape, they had no idea, of her
+racked nights and dismal days no suspicion. It was at once impossible
+and hopeless to explain; to wait and endure was her only plan. Many that
+want food and clothing have cheerier lives and brighter prospects than
+she had; many, harassed by poverty, are in a strait less afflictive.
+
+"Now, is your mind quieted?" inquired Shirley. "Will you consent to stay
+at home?"
+
+"I shall not leave it against the approbation of my friends," was the
+reply; "but I think in time they will be obliged to think as I do."
+
+During this conversation Mrs. Pryor looked far from easy. Her extreme
+habitual reserve would rarely permit her to talk freely or to
+interrogate others closely. She could think a multitude of questions she
+never ventured to put, give advice in her mind which her tongue never
+delivered. Had she been alone with Caroline, she might possibly have
+said something to the point: Miss Keeldar's presence, accustomed as she
+was to it, sealed her lips. Now, as on a thousand other occasions,
+inexplicable nervous scruples kept her back from interfering. She merely
+showed her concern for Miss Helstone in an indirect way, by asking her
+if the fire made her too warm, placing a screen between her chair and
+the hearth, closing a window whence she imagined a draught proceeded,
+and often and restlessly glancing at her. Shirley resumed: "Having
+destroyed your plan," she said, "which I hope I have done, I shall
+construct a new one of my own. Every summer I make an excursion. This
+season I propose spending two months either at the Scotch lochs or the
+English lakes--that is, I shall go there provided you consent to
+accompany me. If you refuse, I shall not stir a foot."
+
+"You are very good, Shirley."
+
+"I would be very good if you would let me. I have every disposition to
+be good. It is my misfortune and habit, I know, to think of myself
+paramount to anybody else; but who is not like me in that respect?
+However, when Captain Keeldar is made comfortable, accommodated with all
+he wants, including a sensible, genial comrade, it gives him a thorough
+pleasure to devote his spare efforts to making that comrade happy. And
+should we not be happy, Caroline, in the Highlands? We will go to the
+Highlands. We will, if you can bear a sea-voyage, go to the Isles--the
+Hebrides, the Shetland, the Orkney Islands. Would you not like that? I
+see you would.--Mrs. Pryor, I call you to witness. Her face is all
+sunshine at the bare mention of it."
+
+"I should like it much," returned Caroline, to whom, indeed, the notion
+of such a tour was not only pleasant, but gloriously reviving. Shirley
+rubbed her hands.
+
+"Come; I can bestow a benefit," she exclaimed. "I can do a good deed
+with my cash. My thousand a year is not merely a matter of dirty
+bank-notes and jaundiced guineas (let me speak respectfully of both,
+though, for I adore them), but, it may be, health to the drooping,
+strength to the weak, consolation to the sad. I was determined to make
+something of it better than a fine old house to live in, than satin
+gowns to wear, better than deference from acquaintance and homage from
+the poor. Here is to begin. This summer, Caroline, Mrs. Pryor and I go
+out into the North Atlantic, beyond the Shetland, perhaps to the Faroe
+Isles. We will see seals in Suderoe, and, doubtless, mermaids in
+Stromoe.--Caroline is laughing, Mrs. Pryor. _I_ made her laugh; _I_ have
+done her good."
+
+"I shall like to go, Shirley," again said Miss Helstone. "I long to hear
+the sound of waves--ocean-waves--and to see them as I have imagined them
+in dreams, like tossing banks of green light, strewed with vanishing and
+reappearing wreaths of foam, whiter than lilies. I shall delight to pass
+the shores of those lone rock-islets where the sea-birds live and breed
+unmolested. We shall be on the track of the old Scandinavians--of the
+Norsemen. We shall almost see the shores of Norway. This is a very vague
+delight that I feel, communicated by your proposal, but it _is_ a
+delight."
+
+"Will you think of Fitful Head now when you lie awake at night, of gulls
+shrieking round it, and waves tumbling in upon it, rather than of the
+graves under the rectory back-kitchen?"
+
+"I will try; and instead of musing about remnants of shrouds, and
+fragments of coffins, and human bones and mould, I will fancy seals
+lying in the sunshine on solitary shores, where neither fisherman nor
+hunter ever come; of rock crevices full of pearly eggs bedded in
+seaweed; of unscared birds covering white sands in happy flocks."
+
+"And what will become of that inexpressible weight you said you had on
+your mind?"
+
+"I will try to forget it in speculation on the sway of the whole great
+deep above a herd of whales rushing through the livid and liquid thunder
+down from the frozen zone--a hundred of them, perhaps, wallowing,
+flashing, rolling in the wake of a patriarch bull, huge enough to have
+been spawned before the Flood, such a creature as poor Smart had in his
+mind when he said,--
+
+    'Strong against tides, the enormous whale
+       Emerges as he goes.'"
+
+"I hope our bark will meet with no such shoal, or herd as you term it,
+Caroline. (I suppose you fancy the sea-mammoths pasturing about the
+bases of the 'everlasting hills,' devouring strange provender in the
+vast valleys through and above which sea-billows roll.) I should not
+like to be capsized by the patriarch bull."
+
+"I suppose you expect to see mermaids, Shirley?"
+
+"One of them, at any rate--I do not bargain for less--and she is to
+appear in some such fashion as this. I am to be walking by myself on
+deck, rather late of an August evening, watching and being watched by a
+full harvest moon. Something is to rise white on the surface of the sea,
+over which that moon mounts silent and hangs glorious. The object
+glitters and sinks. It rises again. I think I hear it cry with an
+articulate voice; I call you up from the cabin; I show you an image,
+fair as alabaster, emerging from the dim wave. We both see the long
+hair, the lifted and foam-white arm, the oval mirror brilliant as a
+star. It glides nearer; a human face is plainly visible--a face in the
+style of yours--whose straight, pure (excuse the word, it is
+appropriate)--whose straight, pure lineaments paleness does not
+disfigure. It looks at us, but not with your eyes. I see a preternatural
+lure in its wily glance. It beckons. Were we men, we should spring at
+the sign--the cold billow would be dared for the sake of the colder
+enchantress; being women, we stand safe, though not dreadless. She
+comprehends our unmoved gaze; she feels herself powerless; anger crosses
+her front; she cannot charm, but she will appal us; she rises high, and
+glides all revealed on the dark wave-ridge. Temptress-terror! monstrous
+likeness of ourselves! Are you not glad, Caroline, when at last, and
+with a wild shriek, she dives?"
+
+"But, Shirley, she is not like us. We are neither temptresses, nor
+terrors, nor monsters."
+
+"Some of our kind, it is said, are all three. There are men who ascribe
+to 'woman,' in general, such attributes."
+
+"My dears," here interrupted Mrs. Pryor, "does it not strike you that
+your conversation for the last ten minutes has been rather fanciful?"
+
+"But there is no harm in our fancies; is there, ma'am?"
+
+"We are aware that mermaids do not exist; why speak of them as if they
+did? How can you find interest in speaking of a nonentity?"
+
+"I don't know," said Shirley.
+
+"My dear, I think there is an arrival. I heard a step in the lane while
+you were talking; and is not that the garden-gate which creaks?"
+
+Shirley stepped to the window.
+
+"Yes, there is some one," said she, turning quietly away; and as she
+resumed her seat a sensitive flush animated her face, while a trembling
+ray at once kindled and softened her eye. She raised her hand to her
+chin, cast her gaze down, and seemed to think as she waited.
+
+The servant announced Mr. Moore, and Shirley turned round when Mr. Moore
+appeared at the door. His figure seemed very tall as he entered, and
+stood in contrast with the three ladies, none of whom could boast a
+stature much beyond the average. He was looking well, better than he had
+been known to look for the past twelve months. A sort of renewed youth
+glowed in his eye and colour, and an invigorated hope and settled
+purpose sustained his bearing. Firmness his countenance still indicated,
+but not austerity. It looked as cheerful as it was earnest.
+
+"I am just returned from Stilbro'," he said to Miss Keeldar, as he
+greeted her; "and I thought I would call to impart to you the result of
+my mission."
+
+"You did right not to keep me in suspense," she said, "and your visit is
+well timed. Sit down. We have not finished tea. Are you English enough
+to relish tea, or do you faithfully adhere to coffee?"
+
+Moore accepted tea.
+
+"I am learning to be a naturalized Englishman," said he; "my foreign
+habits are leaving me one by one."
+
+And now he paid his respects to Mrs. Pryor, and paid them well, with a
+grave modesty that became his age compared with hers. Then he looked at
+Caroline--not, however, for the first time: his glance had fallen upon
+her before. He bent towards her as she sat, gave her his hand, and asked
+her how she was. The light from the window did not fall upon Miss
+Helstone; her back was turned towards it. A quiet though rather low
+reply, a still demeanour, and the friendly protection of early twilight
+kept out of view each traitorous symptom. None could affirm that she had
+trembled or blushed, that her heart had quaked or her nerves thrilled;
+none could prove emotion; a greeting showing less effusion was never
+interchanged. Moore took the empty chair near her, opposite Miss
+Keeldar. He had placed himself well. His neighbour, screened by the very
+closeness of his vicinage from his scrutiny, and sheltered further by
+the dusk which deepened each moment, soon regained not merely _seeming_
+but _real_ mastery of the feelings which had started into insurrection
+at the first announcement of his name.
+
+He addressed his conversation to Miss Keeldar.
+
+"I went to the barracks," he said, "and had an interview with Colonel
+Ryde. He approved my plans, and promised the aid I wanted. Indeed, he
+offered a more numerous force than I require--half a dozen will suffice.
+I don't intend to be swamped by redcoats. They are needed for appearance
+rather than anything else. My main reliance is on my own civilians."
+
+"And on their captain," interposed Shirley.
+
+"What, Captain Keeldar?" inquired Moore, slightly smiling, and not
+lifting his eyes. The tone of raillery in which he said this was very
+respectful and suppressed.
+
+"No," returned Shirley, answering the smile; "Captain Gérard Moore, who
+trusts much to the prowess of his own right arm, I believe."
+
+"Furnished with his counting-house ruler," added Moore. Resuming his
+usual gravity, he went on: "I received by this evening's post a note
+from the Home Secretary in answer to mine. It appears they are uneasy at
+the state of matters here in the north; they especially condemn the
+supineness and pusillanimity of the mill-owners. They say, as I have
+always said, that inaction, under present circumstances, is criminal,
+and that cowardice is cruelty, since both can only encourage disorder,
+and lead finally to sanguinary outbreaks. There is the note--I brought
+it for your perusal; and there is a batch of newspapers, containing
+further accounts of proceedings in Nottingham, Manchester, and
+elsewhere."
+
+He produced letters and journals, and laid them before Miss Keeldar.
+While she perused them he took his tea quietly; but though his tongue
+was still, his observant faculties seemed by no means off duty. Mrs.
+Pryor, sitting in the background, did not come within the range of his
+glance, but the two younger ladies had the full benefit thereof.
+
+Miss Keeldar, placed directly opposite, was seen without effort. She was
+the object his eyes, when lifted, naturally met first; and as what
+remained of daylight--the gilding of the west--was upon her, her shape
+rose in relief from the dark panelling behind. Shirley's clear cheek was
+tinted yet with the colour which had risen into it a few minutes since.
+The dark lashes of her eyes looking down as she read, the dusk yet
+delicate line of her eyebrows, the almost sable gloss of her curls, made
+her heightened complexion look fine as the bloom of a red wild flower by
+contrast. There was natural grace in her attitude, and there was
+artistic effect in the ample and shining folds of her silk dress--an
+attire simply fashioned, but almost splendid from the shifting
+brightness of its dye, warp and woof being of tints deep and changing as
+the hue on a pheasant's neck. A glancing bracelet on her arm produced
+the contrast of gold and ivory. There was something brilliant in the
+whole picture. It is to be supposed that Moore thought so, as his eye
+dwelt long on it, but he seldom permitted his feelings or his opinions
+to exhibit themselves in his face. His temperament boasted a certain
+amount of phlegm, and he preferred an undemonstrative, not ungentle, but
+serious aspect to any other.
+
+He could not, by looking straight before him, see Caroline, as she was
+close at his side. It was necessary, therefore, to manœuvre a little to
+get her well within the range of his observation. He leaned back in his
+chair, and looked down on her. In Miss Helstone neither he nor any one
+else could discover brilliancy. Sitting in the shade, without flowers
+or ornaments, her attire the modest muslin dress, colourless but for its
+narrow stripe of pale azure, her complexion unflushed, unexcited, the
+very brownness of her hair and eyes invisible by this faint light, she
+was, compared with the heiress, as a graceful pencil sketch compared
+with a vivid painting. Since Robert had seen her last a great change had
+been wrought in her. Whether he perceived it might not be ascertained.
+He said nothing to that effect.
+
+"How is Hortense?" asked Caroline softly.
+
+"Very well; but she complains of being unemployed. She misses you."
+
+"Tell her that I miss her, and that I write and read a portion of French
+every day."
+
+"She will ask if you sent your love; she is always particular on that
+point. You know she likes attention."
+
+"My best love--my very best. And say to her that whenever she has time
+to write me a little note I shall be glad to hear from her."
+
+"What if I forget? I am not the surest messenger of compliments."
+
+"No, don't forget, Robert. It is no compliment; it is in good earnest."
+
+"And must, therefore, be delivered punctually."
+
+"If you please."
+
+"Hortense will be ready to shed tears. She is tenderhearted on the
+subject of her pupil; yet she reproaches you sometimes for obeying your
+uncle's injunctions too literally. Affection, like love, will be unjust
+now and then."
+
+And Caroline made no answer to this observation; for indeed her heart
+was troubled, and to her eyes she would have raised her handkerchief if
+she had dared. If she had dared, too, she would have declared how the
+very flowers in the garden of Hollow's Cottage were dear to her; how the
+little parlour of that house was her earthly paradise; how she longed to
+return to it, as much almost as the first woman, in her exile, must have
+longed to revisit Eden. Not daring, however, to say these things, she
+held her peace; she sat quiet at Robert's side, waiting for him to say
+something more. It was long since this proximity had been hers--long
+since his voice had addressed her; could she, with any show of
+probability, even of possibility, have imagined that the meeting gave
+him pleasure, to her it would have given deep bliss. Yet, even in doubt
+that it pleased, in dread that it might annoy him, she received the
+boon of the meeting as an imprisoned bird would the admission of
+sunshine to its cage. It was of no use arguing, contending against the
+sense of present happiness; to be near Robert was to be revived.
+
+Miss Keeldar laid down the papers.
+
+"And are you glad or sad for all these menacing tidings?" she inquired
+of her tenant.
+
+"Not precisely either; but I certainly am instructed. I see that our
+only plan is to be firm. I see that efficient preparation and a resolute
+attitude are the best means of averting bloodshed."
+
+He then inquired if she had observed some particular paragraph, to which
+she replied in the negative, and he rose to show it to her. He continued
+the conversation standing before her. From the tenor of what he said, it
+appeared evident that they both apprehended disturbances in the
+neighbourhood of Briarfield, though in what form they expected them to
+break out was not specified. Neither Caroline nor Mrs. Pryor asked
+questions. The subject did not appear to be regarded as one ripe for
+free discussion; therefore the lady and her tenant were suffered to keep
+details to themselves, unimportuned by the curiosity of their listeners.
+
+Miss Keeldar, in speaking to Mr. Moore, took a tone at once animated and
+dignified, confidential and self-respecting. When, however, the candles
+were brought in, and the fire was stirred up, and the fullness of light
+thus produced rendered the expression of her countenance legible, you
+could see that she was all interest, life, and earnestness. There was
+nothing coquettish in her demeanour; whatever she felt for Moore she
+felt it seriously. And serious, too, were his feelings, and settled were
+his views, apparently, for he made no petty effort to attract, dazzle,
+or impress. He contrived, notwithstanding, to command a little; because
+the deeper voice, however mildly modulated, the somewhat harder mind,
+now and then, though involuntarily and unintentionally, bore down by
+some peremptory phrase or tone the mellow accents and susceptible, if
+high, nature of Shirley. Miss Keeldar looked happy in conversing with
+him, and her joy seemed twofold--a joy of the past and present, of
+memory and of hope.
+
+What I have just said are Caroline's ideas of the pair. She felt what
+has just been described. In thus feeling she tried not to suffer, but
+suffered sharply nevertheless. She suffered, indeed, miserably. A few
+minutes before her famished heart had tasted a drop and crumb of
+nourishment, that, if freely given, would have brought back abundance of
+life where life was failing; but the generous feast was snatched from
+her, spread before another, and she remained but a bystander at the
+banquet.
+
+The clock struck nine; it was Caroline's time for going home. She
+gathered up her work, put the embroidery, the scissors, the thimble into
+her bag. She bade Mrs. Pryor a quiet good-night, receiving from that
+lady a warmer pressure of the hand than usual. She stepped up to Miss
+Keeldar.
+
+"Good-night, Shirley!"
+
+Shirley started up. "What! so soon? Are you going already?"
+
+"It is past nine."
+
+"I never heard the clock. You will come again to-morrow, and you will be
+happy to-night, will you not? Remember our plans."
+
+"Yes," said Caroline; "I have not forgotten."
+
+Her mind misgave her that neither those plans nor any other could
+permanently restore her mental tranquillity. She turned to Robert, who
+stood close behind her. As he looked up, the light of the candles on the
+mantelpiece fell full on her face. All its paleness, all its change, all
+its forlorn meaning were clearly revealed. Robert had good eyes, and
+might have seen it if he would; whether he did see it, nothing
+indicated.
+
+"Good-night!" she said, shaking like a leaf, offering her thin hand
+hastily, anxious to part from him quickly.
+
+"You are going home?" he asked, not touching her hand.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Is Fanny come for you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I may as well accompany you a step of the way; not up to the rectory,
+though, lest my old friend Helstone should shoot me from the window."
+
+He laughed, and took his hat. Caroline spoke of unnecessary trouble; he
+told her to put on her bonnet and shawl. She was quickly ready, and they
+were soon both in the open air. Moore drew her hand under his arm, just
+in his old manner--that manner which she ever felt to be so kind.
+
+"You may run on, Fanny," he said to the housemaid; "we shall overtake
+you." And when the girl had got a little in advance, he enclosed
+Caroline's hand in his, and said he was glad to find she was a familiar
+guest at Fieldhead. He hoped her intimacy with Miss Keeldar would
+continue; such society would be both pleasant and improving.
+
+Caroline replied that she liked Shirley.
+
+"And there is no doubt the liking is mutual," said Moore. "If she
+professes friendship, be certain she is sincere. She cannot feign; she
+scorns hypocrisy. And, Caroline, are we never to see you at Hollow's
+Cottage again?"
+
+"I suppose not, unless my uncle should change his mind."
+
+"Are you much alone now?"
+
+"Yes, a good deal. I have little pleasure in any society but Miss
+Keeldar's."
+
+"Have you been quite well lately?"
+
+"Quite."
+
+"You must take care of yourself. Be sure not to neglect exercise. Do you
+know I fancied you somewhat altered--a little fallen away, and pale. Is
+your uncle kind to you?"
+
+"Yes; he is just as he always is."
+
+"Not too tender, that is to say--not too protective and attentive. And
+what ails you, then? Tell me, Lina."
+
+"Nothing, Robert." But her voice faltered.
+
+"That is to say, nothing that you will tell me. I am not to be taken
+into confidence. Separation is then quite to estrange us, is it?"
+
+"I do not know. Sometimes I almost fear it is."
+
+"But it ought not to have that effect. 'Should auld acquaintance be
+forgot, and days o' lang syne?'"
+
+"Robert, I don't forget."
+
+"It is two months, I should think, Caroline, since you were at the
+cottage."
+
+"Since I was _within_ it--yes."
+
+"Have you ever passed that way in your walk?"
+
+"I have come to the top of the fields sometimes of an evening and looked
+down. Once I saw Hortense in the garden watering her flowers, and I know
+at what time you light your lamp in the counting-house. I have waited
+for it to shine out now and then, and I have seen you bend between it
+and the window. I knew it was you; I could almost trace the outline of
+your form."
+
+"I wonder I never encountered you. I occasionally walk to the top of the
+Hollow's fields after sunset."
+
+"I know you do. I had almost spoken to you one night, you passed so near
+me."
+
+"Did I? I passed near you, and did not see you! Was I alone?"
+
+"I saw you twice, and neither time were you alone."
+
+"Who was my companion? Probably nothing but Joe Scott, or my own shadow
+by moonlight."
+
+"No; neither Joe Scott nor your shadow, Robert. The first time you were
+with Mr. Yorke; and the second time what you call your shadow was a
+shape with a white forehead and dark curls, and a sparkling necklace
+round its neck. But I only just got a glimpse of you and that fairy
+shadow; I did not wait to hear you converse."
+
+"It appears you walk invisible. I noticed a ring on your hand this
+evening; can it be the ring of Gyges? Henceforth, when sitting in the
+counting-house by myself, perhaps at dead of night, I shall permit
+myself to imagine that Caroline may be leaning over my shoulder reading
+with me from the same book, or sitting at my side engaged in her own
+particular task, and now and then raising her unseen eyes to my face to
+read there my thoughts."
+
+"You need fear no such infliction. I do not come near you; I only stand
+afar off, watching what may become of you."
+
+"When I walk out along the hedgerows in the evening after the mill is
+shut, or at night when I take the watchman's place, I shall fancy the
+flutter of every little bird over its nest, the rustle of every leaf, a
+movement made by you; tree-shadows will take your shape; in the white
+sprays of hawthorn I shall imagine glimpses of you. Lina, you will haunt
+me."
+
+"I will never be where you would not wish me to be, nor see nor hear
+what you would wish unseen and unheard."
+
+"I shall see you in my very mill in broad daylight. Indeed, I have seen
+you there once. But a week ago I was standing at the top of one of my
+long rooms; girls were working at the other end, and amongst half a
+dozen of them, moving to and fro, I seemed to see a figure resembling
+yours. It was some effect of doubtful light or shade, or of dazzling
+sunbeam. I walked up to this group. What I sought had glided away; I
+found myself between two buxom lasses in pinafores."
+
+"I shall not follow you into your mill, Robert, unless you call me
+there."
+
+"Nor is that the only occasion on which imagination has played me a
+trick. One night, when I came home late from market, I walked into the
+cottage parlour thinking to find Hortense; but instead of her I thought
+I found you. There was no candle in the room; my sister had taken the
+light upstairs with her. The window-blind was not drawn, and broad
+moonbeams poured through the panes. There you were, Lina, at the
+casement, shrinking a little to one side in an attitude not unusual with
+you. You were dressed in white, as I have seen you dressed at an evening
+party. For half a second your fresh, living face seemed turned towards
+me, looking at me; for half a second my idea was to go and take your
+hand, to chide you for your long absence, and welcome your present
+visit. Two steps forward broke the spell. The drapery of the dress
+changed outline; the tints of the complexion dissolved, and were
+formless. Positively, as I reached the spot, there was nothing left but
+the sweep of a white muslin curtain, and a balsam plant in a flower-pot,
+covered with a flush of bloom. 'Sic transit,' et cetera."
+
+"It was not my wraith, then? I almost thought it was."
+
+"No; only gauze, crockery, and pink blossom--a sample of earthly
+illusions."
+
+"I wonder you have time for such illusions, occupied as your mind must
+be."
+
+"So do I. But I find in myself, Lina, two natures--one for the world and
+business, and one for home and leisure. Gérard Moore is a hard dog,
+brought up to mill and market; the person you call your cousin Robert is
+sometimes a dreamer, who lives elsewhere than in Cloth-hall and
+counting-house."
+
+"Your two natures agree with you. I think you are looking in good
+spirits and health. You have quite lost that harassed air which it often
+pained one to see in your face a few months ago."
+
+"Do you observe that? Certainly I am disentangled of some difficulties.
+I have got clear of some shoals, and have more sea-room."
+
+"And, with a fair wind, you may now hope to make a prosperous voyage?"
+
+"I may _hope_ it--yes--but hope is deceptive. There is no controlling
+wind or wave. Gusts and swells perpetually trouble the mariner's
+course; he dare not dismiss from his mind the expectation of tempest."
+
+"But you are ready for a breeze; you are a good seaman, an able
+commander. You are a skilful pilot, Robert; you will weather the storm."
+
+"My kinswoman always thinks the best of me, but I will take her words
+for a propitious omen. I will consider that in meeting her to-night I
+have met with one of those birds whose appearance is to the sailor the
+harbinger of good luck."
+
+"A poor harbinger of good luck is she who can do nothing, who has no
+power. I feel my incapacity. It is of no use saying I have the will to
+serve you when I cannot prove it. Yet I have that will. I wish you
+success. I wish you high fortune and true happiness."
+
+"When did you ever wish me anything else? What is Fanny waiting for? I
+told her to walk on. Oh! we have reached the churchyard. Then we are to
+part here, I suppose. We might have sat a few minutes in the church
+porch, if the girl had not been with us. It is so fine a night, so
+summer-mild and still, I have no particular wish to return yet to the
+Hollow."
+
+"But we cannot sit in the porch now, Robert."
+
+Caroline said this because Moore was turning her round towards it.
+
+"Perhaps not. But tell Fanny to go in. Say we are coming. A few minutes
+will make no difference."
+
+The church clock struck ten.
+
+"My uncle will be coming out to take his usual sentinel round, and he
+always surveys the church and churchyard."
+
+"And if he does? If it were not for Fanny, who knows we are here, I
+should find pleasure in dodging and eluding him. We could be under the
+east window when he is at the porch; as he came round to the north side
+we could wheel off to the south; we might at a pinch hide behind some of
+the monuments. That tall erection of the Wynnes would screen us
+completely."
+
+"Robert, what good spirits you have! Go! go!" added Caroline hastily. "I
+hear the front door----"
+
+"I don't want to go; on the contrary, I want to stay."
+
+"You know my uncle will be terribly angry. He forbade me to see you
+because you are a Jacobin."
+
+"A queer Jacobin!"
+
+"Go, Robert, he is coming; I hear him cough."
+
+"Diable! It is strange--what a pertinacious wish I feel to stay!"
+
+"You remember what he did to Fanny's--" began Caroline, and stopped
+abruptly short. "Sweetheart" was the word that ought to have followed,
+but she could not utter it. It seemed calculated to suggest ideas she
+had no intention to suggest--ideas delusive and disturbing. Moore was
+less scrupulous. "Fanny's sweetheart?" he said at once. "He gave him a
+shower-bath under the pump, did he not? He'd do as much for me, I dare
+say, with pleasure. I should like to provoke the old Turk--not, however,
+against you. But he would make a distinction between a cousin and a
+lover, would he not?"
+
+"Oh, he would not think of you in that way, of course not; his quarrel
+with you is entirely political. Yet I should not like the breach to be
+widened, and he is so testy. Here he is at the garden gate. For your own
+sake and mine, Robert, go!"
+
+The beseeching words were aided by a beseeching gesture and a more
+beseeching look. Moore covered her clasped hands an instant with his,
+answered her upward by a downward gaze, said "Good-night!" and went.
+
+Caroline was in a moment at the kitchen door behind Fanny. The shadow of
+the shovel-hat at that very instant fell on a moonlit tomb. The rector
+emerged, erect as a cane, from his garden, and proceeded in slow march,
+his hands behind him, down the cemetery. Moore was almost caught. He had
+to "dodge" after all, to coast round the church, and finally to bend his
+tall form behind the Wynnes' ambitious monument. There he was forced to
+hide full ten minutes, kneeling with one knee on the turf, his hat off,
+his curls bare to the dew, his dark eye shining, and his lips parted
+with inward laughter at his position; for the rector meantime stood
+coolly star-gazing, and taking snuff within three feet of him.
+
+It happened, however, that Mr. Helstone had no suspicion whatever on his
+mind; for being usually but vaguely informed of his niece's movements,
+not thinking it worth while to follow them closely, he was not aware
+that she had been out at all that day, and imagined her then occupied
+with book or work in her chamber--where, indeed, she was by this time,
+though not absorbed in the tranquil employment he ascribed to her, but
+standing at her window with fast-throbbing heart, peeping anxiously from
+behind the blind, watching for her uncle to re-enter and her cousin to
+escape. And at last she was gratified. She heard Mr. Helstone come in;
+she saw Robert stride the tombs and vault the wall; she then went down
+to prayers. When she returned to her chamber, it was to meet the memory
+of Robert. Slumber's visitation was long averted. Long she sat at her
+lattice, long gazed down on the old garden and older church, on the
+tombs laid out all gray and calm, and clear in moonlight. She followed
+the steps of the night, on its pathway of stars, far into the "wee sma'
+hours ayont the twal'." She was with Moore, in spirit, the whole time;
+she was at his side; she heard his voice; she gave her hand into his
+hand; it rested warm in his fingers. When the church clock struck, when
+any other sound stirred, when a little mouse familiar to her chamber--an
+intruder for which she would never permit Fanny to lay a trap--came
+rattling amongst the links of her locket-chain, her one ring, and
+another trinket or two on the toilet-table, to nibble a bit of biscuit
+laid ready for it, she looked up, recalled momentarily to the real. Then
+she said half aloud, as if deprecating the accusation of some unseen and
+unheard monitor, "I am not cherishing love dreams; I am only thinking
+because I cannot sleep. Of course, I know he will marry Shirley."
+
+With returning silence, with the lull of the chime, and the retreat of
+her small untamed and unknown _protégé_, she still resumed the dream,
+nestling to the vision's side--listening to, conversing with it. It
+paled at last. As dawn approached, the setting stars and breaking day
+dimmed the creation of fancy; the wakened song of birds hushed her
+whispers. The tale full of fire, quick with interest, borne away by the
+morning wind, became a vague murmur. The shape that, seen in a moonbeam,
+lived, had a pulse, had movement, wore health's glow and youth's
+freshness, turned cold and ghostly gray, confronted with the red of
+sunrise. It wasted. She was left solitary at last. She crept to her
+couch, chill and dejected.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+SHIRLEY SEEKS TO BE SAVED BY WORKS.
+
+
+"Of course, I know he will marry Shirley," were her first words when she
+rose in the morning. "And he ought to marry her. She can help him," she
+added firmly. "But I shall be forgotten when they _are_ married," was
+the cruel succeeding thought. "Oh! I shall be wholly forgotten! And
+what--_what_ shall I do when Robert is taken quite from me? Where shall
+I turn? _My_ Robert! I wish I could justly call him mine. But I am
+poverty and incapacity; Shirley is wealth and power. And she is beauty
+too, and love. I cannot deny it. This is no sordid suit. She loves
+him--not with inferior feelings. She loves, or _will_ love, as he must
+feel proud to be loved. Not a valid objection can be made. Let them be
+married, then. But afterwards I shall be nothing to him. As for being
+his sister, and all that stuff, I despise it. I will either be all or
+nothing to a man like Robert; no feeble shuffling or false cant is
+endurable. Once let that pair be united, and I will certainly leave
+them. As for lingering about, playing the hypocrite, and pretending to
+calm sentiments of friendship, when my soul will be wrung with other
+feelings, I shall not descend to such degradation. As little could I
+fill the place of their mutual friend as that of their deadly foe; as
+little could I stand between them as trample over them. Robert is a
+first-rate man--in my eyes. I _have_ loved, _do_ love, and _must___ love
+him. I would be his wife if I could; as I cannot, I must go where I
+shall never see him. There is but one alternative--to cleave to him as
+if I were a part of him, or to be sundered from him wide as the two
+poles of a sphere.--Sunder me then, Providence. Part us speedily."
+
+Some such aspirations as these were again working in her mind late in
+the afternoon, when the apparition of one of the personages haunting her
+thoughts passed the parlour window. Miss Keeldar sauntered slowly by,
+her gait, her countenance, wearing that mixture of wistfulness and
+carelessness which, when quiescent, was the wonted cast of her look and
+character of her bearing. When animated, the carelessness quite
+vanished, the wistfulness became blent with a genial gaiety, seasoning
+the laugh, the smile, the glance, with a unique flavour of sentiment, so
+that mirth from her never resembled "the crackling of thorns under a
+pot."
+
+"What do you mean by not coming to see me this afternoon, as you
+promised?" was her address to Caroline as she entered the room.
+
+"I was not in the humour," replied Miss Helstone, very truly.
+
+Shirley had already fixed on her a penetrating eye.
+
+"No," she said; "I see you are not in the humour for loving me. You are
+in one of your sunless, inclement moods, when one feels a
+fellow-creature's presence is not welcome to you. You have such moods.
+Are you aware of it?"
+
+"Do you mean to stay long, Shirley?"
+
+"Yes. I am come to have my tea, and must have it before I go. I shall
+take the liberty, then, of removing my bonnet, without being asked."
+
+And this she did, and then stood on the rug with her hands behind her.
+
+"A pretty expression you have in your countenance," she went on, still
+gazing keenly, though not inimically--rather indeed pityingly--at
+Caroline. "Wonderfully self-supported you look, you solitude-seeking,
+wounded deer. Are you afraid Shirley will worry you if she discovers
+that you are hurt, and that you bleed?"
+
+"I never do fear Shirley."
+
+"But sometimes you dislike her; often you avoid her. Shirley can feel
+when she is slighted and shunned. If you had not walked home in the
+company you did last night, you would have been a different girl to-day.
+What time did you reach the rectory?"
+
+"By ten."
+
+"Humph! You took three-quarters of an hour to walk a mile. Was it you,
+or Moore, who lingered so?"
+
+"Shirley, you talk nonsense."
+
+"_He_ talked nonsense--that I doubt not; or he looked it, which is a
+thousand times worse. I see the reflection of his eyes on your forehead
+at this moment. I feel disposed to call him out, if I could only get a
+trustworthy second. I feel desperately irritated. I felt so last night,
+and have felt it all day."
+
+"You don't ask me why," she proceeded, after a pause, "you little
+silent, over-modest thing; and you don't deserve that I should pour out
+my secrets into your lap without an invitation. Upon my word, I could
+have found it in my heart to have dogged Moore yesterday evening with
+dire intent. I have pistols, and can use them."
+
+"Stuff, Shirley! Which would you have shot--me or Robert?"
+
+"Neither, perhaps. Perhaps myself--more likely a bat or a tree-bough. He
+is a puppy, your cousin--a quiet, serious, sensible, judicious,
+ambitious puppy. I see him standing before me, talking his half-stern,
+half-gentle talk, bearing me down (as I am very conscious he does) with
+his fixity of purpose, etc.; and then--I have no patience with him!"
+
+Miss Keeldar started off on a rapid walk through the room, repeating
+energetically that she had no patience with men in general, and with her
+tenant in particular.
+
+"You are mistaken," urged Caroline, in some anxiety. "Robert is no puppy
+or male flirt; I can vouch for that."
+
+"_You_ vouch for it! Do you think I'll take your word on the subject?
+There is no one's testimony I would not credit sooner than yours. To
+advance Moore's fortune you would cut off your right hand."
+
+"But not tell lies. And if I speak the truth, I must assure you that he
+was just civil to me last night--that was all."
+
+"I never asked what he was. I can guess. I saw him from the window take
+your hand in his long fingers, just as he went out at my gate."
+
+"That is nothing. I am not a stranger, you know. I am an old
+acquaintance, and his cousin."
+
+"I feel indignant, and that is the long and short of the matter,"
+responded Miss Keeldar. "All my comfort," she added presently, "is
+broken up by his manœuvres. He keeps intruding between you and me.
+Without him we should be good friends; but that six feet of puppyhood
+makes a perpetually-recurring eclipse of our friendship. Again and again
+he crosses and obscures the disc I want always to see clear; ever and
+anon he renders me to you a mere bore and nuisance."
+
+"No, Shirley, no."
+
+"He does. You did not want my society this afternoon, and I feel it
+hard. You are naturally somewhat reserved, but I am a social personage,
+who cannot live alone. If we were but left unmolested, I have that
+regard for you that I could bear you in my presence for ever, and not
+for the fraction of a second do I ever wish to be rid of you. You cannot
+say as much respecting me."
+
+"Shirley, I can say anything you wish. Shirley, I like you."
+
+"You will wish me at Jericho to-morrow, Lina."
+
+"I shall not. I am every day growing more accustomed to--fonder of you.
+You know I am too English to get up a vehement friendship all at once;
+but you are so much better than common--you are so different to
+every-day young ladies--I esteem you, I value you; you are never a
+burden to me--never. Do you believe what I say?"
+
+"Partly," replied Miss Keeldar, smiling rather incredulously; "but you
+are a peculiar personage. Quiet as you look, there is both a force and a
+depth somewhere within not easily reached or appreciated. Then you
+certainly are not happy."
+
+"And unhappy people are rarely good. Is that what you mean?"
+
+"Not at all. I mean rather that unhappy people are often preoccupied,
+and not in the mood for discoursing with companions of my nature.
+Moreover, there is a sort of unhappiness which not only depresses, but
+corrodes; and that, I fear, is your portion. Will pity do you any good,
+Lina? If it will, take some from Shirley; she offers largely, and
+warrants the article genuine."
+
+"Shirley, I never had a sister--you never had a sister; but it flashes
+on me at this moment how sisters feel towards each other--affection
+twined with their life, which no shocks of feeling can uproot, which
+little quarrels only trample an instant, that it may spring more freshly
+when the pressure is removed; affection that no passion can ultimately
+outrival, with which even love itself cannot do more than compete in
+force and truth. Love hurts us so, Shirley. It is so tormenting, so
+racking, and it burns away our strength with its flame. In affection is
+no pain and no fire, only sustenance and balm. I am supported and
+soothed when you--that is, _you only_--are near, Shirley. Do you
+believe me now?"
+
+"I am always easy of belief when the creed pleases me. We really are
+friends, then, Lina, in spite of the black eclipse?"
+
+"We really are," returned the other, drawing Shirley towards her, and
+making her sit down, "chance what may."
+
+"Come, then; we will talk of something else than the Troubler." But at
+this moment the rector came in, and the "something else" of which Miss
+Keeldar was about to talk was not again alluded to till the moment of
+her departure. She then delayed a few minutes in the passage to say,
+"Caroline, I wish to tell you that I have a great weight on my mind; my
+conscience is quite uneasy as if I had committed, or was going to
+commit, a crime. It is not my _private_ conscience, you must understand,
+but my landed-proprietor and lord-of-the-manor conscience. I have got
+into the clutch of an eagle with iron talons. I have fallen under a
+stern influence, which I scarcely approve, but cannot resist. Something
+will be done ere long, I fear, which it by no means pleases me to think
+of. To ease my mind, and to prevent harm as far as I can, I mean to
+enter on a series of good works. Don't be surprised, therefore, if you
+see me all at once turn outrageously charitable. I have no idea how to
+begin, but you must give me some advice. We will talk more on the
+subject to-morrow; and just ask that excellent person, Miss Ainley, to
+step up to Fieldhead. I have some notion of putting myself under her
+tuition. Won't she have a precious pupil? Drop a hint to her, Lina,
+that, though a well-meaning, I am rather a neglected character, and then
+she will feel less scandalized at my ignorance about clothing societies
+and such things."
+
+On the morrow Caroline found Shirley sitting gravely at her desk, with
+an account-book, a bundle of banknotes, and a well-filled purse before
+her. She was looking mighty serious, but a little puzzled. She said she
+had been "casting an eye" over the weekly expenditure in housekeeping at
+the hall, trying to find out where she could retrench; that she had also
+just given audience to Mrs. Gill, the cook, and had sent that person
+away with a notion that her (Shirley's) brain was certainly crazed. "I
+have lectured her on the duty of being careful," said she, "in a way
+quite new to her. So eloquent was I on the text of economy that I
+surprised myself; for, you see, it is altogether a fresh idea. I never
+thought, much less spoke, on the subject till lately. But it is all
+theory; for when I came to the practical part I could retrench nothing.
+I had not firmness to take off a single pound of butter, or to prosecute
+to any clear result an inquest into the destiny of either dripping,
+lard, bread, cold meat, or other kitchen perquisite whatever. I know we
+never get up illuminations at Fieldhead, but I could not ask the meaning
+of sundry quite unaccountable pounds of candles. We do not wash for the
+parish, yet I viewed in silence items of soap and bleaching-powder
+calculated to satisfy the solicitude of the most anxious inquirer after
+our position in reference to those articles. Carnivorous I am not, nor
+is Mrs. Pryor, nor is Mrs. Gill herself, yet I only hemmed and opened my
+eyes a little wide when I saw butchers' bills whose figures seemed to
+prove that fact--falsehood, I mean. Caroline, you may laugh at me, but
+you can't change me. I am a poltroon on certain points; I feel it. There
+is a base alloy of moral cowardice in my composition. I blushed and hung
+my head before Mrs. Gill, when she ought to have been faltering
+confessions to me. I found it impossible to get up the spirit even to
+hint, much less to prove, to her that she was a cheat. I have no calm
+dignity, no true courage about me."
+
+"Shirley, what fit of self-injustice is this? My uncle, who is not given
+to speak well of women, says there are not ten thousand men in England
+as genuinely fearless as you."
+
+"I am fearless, physically; I am never nervous about danger. I was not
+startled from self-possession when Mr. Wynne's great red bull rose with
+a bellow before my face, as I was crossing the cowslip lea alone,
+stooped his begrimed, sullen head, and made a run at me; but I was
+afraid of seeing Mrs. Gill brought to shame and confusion of face. You
+have twice--ten times--my strength of mind on certain subjects,
+Caroline. You, whom no persuasion can induce to pass a bull, however
+quiet he looks, would have firmly shown my housekeeper she had done
+wrong; then you would have gently and wisely admonished her; and at
+last, I dare say, provided she had seemed penitent, you would have very
+sweetly forgiven her. Of this conduct I am incapable. However, in spite
+of exaggerated imposition, I still find we live within our means. I have
+money in hand, and I really must do some good with it. The Briarfield
+poor are badly off; they must be helped. What ought I to do, think you,
+Lina? Had I not better distribute the cash at once?"
+
+"No, indeed, Shirley; you will not manage properly. I have often noticed
+that your only notion of charity is to give shillings and half-crowns in
+a careless, free-handed sort of way, which is liable to continual abuse.
+You must have a prime minister, or you will get yourself into a series
+of scrapes. You suggested Miss Ainley yourself; to Miss Ainley I will
+apply. And, meantime, promise to keep quiet, and not begin throwing away
+your money. What a great deal you have, Shirley! You must feel very rich
+with all that?"
+
+"Yes; I feel of consequence. It is not an immense sum, but I feel
+responsible for its disposal; and really this responsibility weighs on
+my mind more heavily than I could have expected. They say that there are
+some families almost starving to death in Briarfield. Some of my own
+cottagers are in wretched circumstances. I must and will help them."
+
+"Some people say we shouldn't give alms to the poor, Shirley."
+
+"They are great fools for their pains. For those who are not hungry, it
+is easy to palaver about the degradation of charity, and so on: but they
+forget the brevity of life, as well as its bitterness. We have none of
+us long to live. Let us help each other through seasons of want and woe
+as well as we can, without heeding in the least the scruples of vain
+philosophy."
+
+"But you do help others, Shirley. You give a great deal as it is."
+
+"Not enough. I must give more, or, I tell you, my brother's blood will
+some day be crying to Heaven against me. For, after all, if political
+incendiaries come here to kindle conflagration in the neighbourhood, and
+my property is attacked, I shall defend it like a tigress--I know I
+shall. Let me listen to Mercy as long as she is near me. Her voice once
+drowned by the shout of ruffian defiance, and I shall be full of
+impulses to resist and quell. If once the poor gather and rise in the
+form of the mob, I shall turn against them as an aristocrat; if they
+bully me, I must defy: if they attack, I must resist, and I will."
+
+"You talk like Robert."
+
+"I feel like Robert, only more fierily. Let them meddle with Robert, or
+Robert's mill, or Robert's interests, and I shall hate them. At present
+I am no patrician, nor do I regard the poor around me as plebeians; but
+if once they violently wrong me or mine, and then presume to dictate to
+us, I shall quite forget pity for their wretchedness and respect for
+their poverty, in scorn of their ignorance and wrath at their
+insolence."
+
+"Shirley, how your eyes flash!"
+
+"Because my soul burns. Would you, any more than me, let Robert be borne
+down by numbers?"
+
+"If I had your power to aid Robert, I would use it as you mean to use
+it. If I could be such a friend to him as you can be, I would stand by
+him, as you mean to stand by him, till death."
+
+"And now, Lina, though your eyes don't flash, they glow. You drop your
+lids; but I saw a kindled spark. However, it is not yet come to
+fighting. What I want to do is to _prevent_ mischief. I cannot forget,
+either day or night, that these embittered feelings of the poor against
+the rich have been generated in suffering: they would neither hate nor
+envy us if they did not deem us so much happier than themselves. To
+allay this suffering, and thereby lessen this hate, let me, out of my
+abundance, give abundantly; and that the donation may go farther, let it
+be made wisely. To that intent, we must introduce some clear, calm,
+practical sense into our councils. So go and fetch Miss Ainley."
+
+Without another word Caroline put on her bonnet and departed. It may,
+perhaps, appear strange that neither she nor Shirley thought of
+consulting Mrs. Pryor on their scheme; but they were wise in abstaining.
+To have consulted her--and this they knew by instinct--would only have
+been to involve her in painful embarrassment. She was far better
+informed, better read, a deeper thinker than Miss Ainley, but of
+administrative energy, of executive activity, she had none. She would
+subscribe her own modest mite to a charitable object willingly--secret
+almsgiving suited her; but in public plans, on a large scale, she could
+take no part; as to originating them, that was out of the question. This
+Shirley knew, and therefore she did not trouble Mrs. Pryor by unavailing
+conferences, which could only remind her of her own deficiencies, and do
+no good.
+
+It was a bright day for Miss Ainley when she was summoned to Fieldhead
+to deliberate on projects so congenial to her; when she was seated with
+all honour and deference at a table with paper, pen, ink, and--what was
+best of all--cash before her, and requested to draw up a regular plan
+for administering relief to the destitute poor of Briarfield. She, who
+knew them all, had studied their wants, had again and again felt in what
+way they might best be succoured, could the means of succour only be
+found, was fully competent to the undertaking, and a meek exultation
+gladdened her kind heart as she felt herself able to answer clearly and
+promptly the eager questions put by the two young girls, as she showed
+them in her answers how much and what serviceable knowledge she had
+acquired of the condition of her fellow-creatures around her.
+
+Shirley placed at her disposal £300, and at sight of the money Miss
+Ainley's eyes filled with joyful tears; for she already saw the hungry
+fed, the naked clothed, the sick comforted thereby. She quickly drew up
+a simple, sensible plan for its expenditure; and she assured them
+brighter times would now come round, for she doubted not the lady of
+Fieldhead's example would be followed by others. She should try to get
+additional subscriptions, and to form a fund; but first she must consult
+the clergy. Yes, on that point she was peremptory. Mr. Helstone, Dr.
+Boultby, Mr. Hall, _must_ be consulted (for not only must Briarfield be
+relieved, but Whinbury and Nunnely). It would, she averred, be
+presumption in her to take a single step unauthorized by them.
+
+The clergy were sacred beings in Miss Ainley's eyes; no matter what
+might be the insignificance of the individual, his station made him
+holy. The very curates--who, in their trivial arrogance, were hardly
+worthy to tie her patten-strings, or carry her cotton umbrella, or check
+woollen shawl--she, in her pure, sincere enthusiasm, looked upon as
+sucking saints. No matter how clearly their little vices and enormous
+absurdities were pointed out to her, she could not see them; she was
+blind to ecclesiastical defects; the white surplice covered a multitude
+of sins.
+
+Shirley, knowing this harmless infatuation on the part of her
+recently-chosen prime minister, stipulated expressly that the curates
+were to have no voice in the disposal of the money, that their meddling
+fingers were not to be inserted into the pie. The rectors, of course,
+must be paramount, and they might be trusted. They had some experience,
+some sagacity, and Mr. Hall, at least, had sympathy and loving-kindness
+for his fellow-men; but as for the youth under them, they must be set
+aside, kept down, and taught that subordination and silence best became
+their years and capacity.
+
+It was with some horror Miss Ainley heard this language. Caroline,
+however, interposing with a mild word or two in praise of Mr Sweeting,
+calmed her again. Sweeting was, indeed, her own favourite. She
+endeavoured to respect Messrs. Malone and Donne, but the slices of
+sponge-cake and glasses of cowslip or primrose wine she had at different
+times administered to Sweeting, when he came to see her in her little
+cottage, were ever offered with sentiments of truly motherly regard. The
+same innocuous collation she had once presented to Malone; but that
+personage evinced such open scorn of the offering, she had never
+ventured to renew it. To Donne she always served the treat, and was
+happy to see his approbation of it proved beyond a doubt by the fact of
+his usually eating two pieces of cake, and putting a third in his
+pocket.
+
+Indefatigable in her exertions where good was to be done, Miss Ainley
+would immediately have set out on a walk of ten miles round to the three
+rectors, in order to show her plan, and humbly solicit their approval;
+but Miss Keeldar interdicted this, and proposed, as an amendment, to
+collect the clergy in a small select reunion that evening at Fieldhead.
+Miss Ainley was to meet them, and the plan was to be discussed in full
+privy council.
+
+Shirley managed to get the senior priesthood together accordingly, and
+before the old maid's arrival, she had, further, talked all the
+gentlemen into the most charming mood imaginable. She herself had taken
+in hand Dr. Boultby and Mr. Helstone. The first was a stubborn old
+Welshman, hot, opinionated, and obstinate, but withal a man who did a
+great deal of good, though not without making some noise about it. The
+latter we know. She had rather a friendly feeling for both, especially
+for old Helstone; and it cost her no trouble to be quite delightful to
+them. She took them round the garden; she gathered them flowers; she was
+like a kind daughter to them. Mr. Hall she left to Caroline--or rather,
+it was to Caroline's care Mr. Hall consigned himself.
+
+He generally sought Caroline in every party where she and he happened to
+be. He was not in general a lady's man, though all ladies liked him;
+something of a book-worm he was, near-sighted, spectacled, now and then
+abstracted. To old ladies he was kind as a son. To men of every
+occupation and grade he was acceptable. The truth, simplicity, frankness
+of his manners, the nobleness of his integrity, the reality and
+elevation of his piety, won him friends in every grade. His poor clerk
+and sexton delighted in him; the noble patron of his living esteemed him
+highly. It was only with young, handsome, fashionable, and stylish
+ladies he felt a little shy. Being himself a plain man--plain in aspect,
+plain in manners, plain in speech--he seemed to fear their dash,
+elegance, and airs. But Miss Helstone had neither dash nor airs, and her
+native elegance was of a very quiet order--quiet as the beauty of a
+ground-loving hedge-flower. He was a fluent, cheerful, agreeable talker.
+Caroline could talk too in a _tête-à-tête_. She liked Mr. Hall to come
+and take the seat next her in a party, and thus secure her from Peter
+Augustus Malone, Joseph Donne, or John Sykes; and Mr. Hall never failed
+to avail himself of this privilege when he possibly could. Such
+preference shown by a single gentleman to a single lady would certainly,
+in ordinary cases, have set in motion the tongues of the gossips; but
+Cyril Hall was forty-five years old, slightly bald, and slightly gray,
+and nobody ever said or thought he was likely to be married to Miss
+Helstone. Nor did he think so himself. He was wedded already to his
+books and his parish. His kind sister Margaret, spectacled and learned
+like himself, made him happy in his single state; he considered it too
+late to change. Besides, he had known Caroline as a pretty little girl.
+She had sat on his knee many a time; he had bought her toys and given
+her books; he felt that her friendship for him was mixed with a sort of
+filial respect; he could not have brought himself to attempt to give
+another colour to her sentiments, and his serene mind could glass a fair
+image without feeling its depths troubled by the reflection.
+
+When Miss Ainley arrived, she was made kindly welcome by every one. Mrs.
+Pryor and Margaret Hall made room for her on the sofa between them; and
+when the three were seated, they formed a trio which the gay and
+thoughtless would have scorned, indeed, as quite worthless and
+unattractive--a middle-aged widow and two plain, spectacled old
+maids--yet which had its own quiet value, as many a suffering and
+friendless human being knew.
+
+Shirley opened the business and showed the plan.
+
+"I know the hand which drew up that," said Mr. Hall, glancing at Miss
+Ainley, and smiling benignantly. His approbation was won at once.
+Boultby heard and deliberated with bent brow and protruded under lip.
+His consent he considered too weighty to be given in a hurry. Helstone
+glanced sharply round with an alert, suspicious expression, as if he
+apprehended that female craft was at work, and that something in
+petticoats was somehow trying underhand to acquire too much influence,
+and make itself of too much importance. Shirley caught and comprehended
+the expression. "This scheme is nothing," said she carelessly. "It is
+only an outline--a mere suggestion. You, gentlemen, are requested to
+draw up rules of your own."
+
+And she directly fetched her writing-case, smiling queerly to herself as
+she bent over the table where it stood. She produced a sheet of paper, a
+new pen, drew an arm-chair to the table, and presenting her hand to old
+Helstone, begged permission to install him in it. For a minute he was a
+little stiff, and stood wrinkling his copper-coloured forehead
+strangely. At last he muttered, "Well, you are neither my wife nor my
+daughter, so I'll be led for once; but mind--I know I _am_ led. Your
+little female manœuvres don't blind me."
+
+"Oh!" said Shirley, dipping the pen in the ink, and putting it into his
+hand, "you must regard me as Captain Keeldar to-day. This is quite a
+gentleman's affair--yours and mine entirely, doctor" (so she had dubbed
+the rector). "The ladies there are only to be our aides-de-camp, and at
+their peril they speak, till we have settled the whole business."
+
+He smiled a little grimly, and began to write. He soon interrupted
+himself to ask questions, and consult his brethren, disdainfully lifting
+his glance over the curly heads of the two girls and the demure caps of
+the elder ladies, to meet the winking glasses and gray pates of the
+priests. In the discussion which ensued, all three gentlemen, to their
+infinite credit, showed a thorough acquaintance with the poor of their
+parishes--an even minute knowledge of their separate wants. Each rector
+knew where clothing was needed, where food would be most acceptable,
+where money could be bestowed with a probability of it being judiciously
+laid out. Wherever their memories fell short, Miss Ainley or Miss Hall,
+if applied to, could help them out; but both ladies took care not to
+speak unless spoken to. Neither of them wanted to be foremost, but each
+sincerely desired to be useful; and useful the clergy consented to make
+them--with which boon they were content.
+
+Shirley stood behind the rectors, leaning over their shoulders now and
+then to glance at the rules drawn up and the list of cases making out,
+listening to all they said, and still at intervals smiling her queer
+smile--a smile not ill-natured, but significant--too significant to be
+generally thought amiable. Men rarely like such of their fellows as read
+their inward nature too clearly and truly. It is good for women,
+especially, to be endowed with a soft blindness; to have mild, dim eyes,
+that never penetrate below the surface of things--that take all for what
+it seems. Thousands, knowing this, keep their eyelids drooped on system;
+but the most downcast glance has its loophole, through which it can, on
+occasion, take its sentinel-survey of life. I remember once seeing a
+pair of blue eyes, that were usually thought sleepy, secretly on the
+alert, and I knew by their expression--an expression which chilled my
+blood, it was in that quarter so wondrously unexpected--that for years
+they had been accustomed to silent soul-reading. The world called the
+owner of these blue eyes _bonne petite femme_ (she was not an
+Englishwoman). I learned her nature afterwards--got it off by
+heart--studied it in its farthest, most hidden recesses. She was the
+finest, deepest, subtlest schemer in Europe.
+
+When all was at length settled to Miss Keeldar's mind, and the clergy
+had entered so fully into the spirit of her plans as to head the
+subscription-list with their signatures for £50 each, she ordered supper
+to be served, having previously directed Mrs. Gill to exercise her
+utmost skill in the preparation of this repast. Mr. Hall was no _bon
+vivant_--he was naturally an abstemious man, indifferent to luxury; but
+Boultby and Helstone both liked good cookery. The _recherché_ supper
+consequently put them into excellent humour. They did justice to it,
+though in a gentlemanly way--not in the mode Mr. Donne would have done
+had he been present. A glass of fine wine was likewise tasted, with
+discerning though most decorous relish. Captain Keeldar was complimented
+on his taste; the compliment charmed him. It had been his aim to gratify
+and satisfy his priestly guests. He had succeeded, and was radiant with
+glee.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+MR. DONNE'S EXODUS.
+
+
+The next day Shirley expressed to Caroline how delighted she felt that
+the little party had gone off so well.
+
+"I rather like to entertain a circle of gentlemen," said she. "It is
+amusing to observe how they enjoy a judiciously concocted repast. For
+ourselves, you see, these choice wines and these scientific dishes are
+of no importance to us; but gentlemen seem to retain something of the
+_naïveté_ of children about food, and one likes to please them--that is,
+when they show the becoming, decent self-government of our admirable
+rectors. I watch Moore sometimes, to try and discover how he can be
+pleased; but he has not that child's simplicity about him. Did you ever
+find out his accessible point, Caroline? you have seen more of him than
+I."
+
+"It is not, at any rate, that of my uncle and Dr. Boultby," returned
+Caroline, smiling. She always felt a sort of shy pleasure in following
+Miss Keeldar's lead respecting the discussion of her cousin's character.
+Left to herself, she would never have touched on the subject; but when
+invited, the temptation of talking about him of whom she was ever
+thinking was irresistible. "But," she added, "I really don't know what
+it is, for I never watched Robert in my life but my scrutiny was
+presently baffled by finding he was watching me."
+
+"There it is!" exclaimed Shirley. "You can't fix your eyes on him but
+his presently flash on you. He is never off his guard. He won't give you
+an advantage. Even when he does not look at you, his thoughts seem to be
+busy amongst your own thoughts, tracing your words and actions to their
+source, contemplating your motives at his ease. Oh! I know that sort of
+character, or something in the same style. It is one that piques me
+singularly. How does it affect you?"
+
+This question was a specimen of one of Shirley's sharp, sudden turns.
+Caroline used to be fluttered by them at first, but she had now got into
+the way of parrying these home-thrusts like a little Quakeress.
+
+"Pique you? In what way does it pique you?" she said.
+
+"Here he comes!" suddenly exclaimed Shirley, breaking off, starting up
+and running to the window. "Here comes a diversion. I never told you of
+a superb conquest I have made lately--made at those parties to which I
+can never persuade you to accompany me; and the thing has been done
+without effort or intention on my part--that I aver. There is the
+bell--and, by all that's delicious! there are two of them. Do they never
+hunt, then, except in couples? You may have one, Lina, and you may take
+your choice. I hope I am generous enough. Listen to Tartar!"
+
+The black-muzzled, tawny dog, a glimpse of which was seen in the chapter
+which first introduced its mistress to the reader, here gave tongue in
+the hall, amidst whose hollow space the deep bark resounded formidably.
+A growl more terrible than the bark, menacing as muttered thunder,
+succeeded.
+
+"Listen!" again cried Shirley, laughing. "You would think that the
+prelude to a bloody onslaught. They will be frightened. They don't know
+old Tartar as I do. They are not aware his uproars are all sound and
+fury, signifying nothing!"
+
+Some bustle was heard. "Down, sir, down!" exclaimed a high-toned,
+imperious voice, and then came a crack of a cane or whip. Immediately
+there was a yell--a scutter--a run--a positive tumult.
+
+"O Malone, Malone!"
+
+"Down! down! down!" cried the high voice.
+
+"He really is worrying them!" exclaimed Shirley. "They have struck him.
+A blow is what he is not used to, and will not take."
+
+Out she ran. A gentleman was fleeing up the oak staircase, making for
+refuge in the gallery or chambers in hot haste; another was backing fast
+to the stairfoot, wildly flourishing a knotty stick, at the same time
+reiterating, "Down! down! down!" while the tawny dog bayed, bellowed,
+howled at him, and a group of servants came bundling from the kitchen.
+The dog made a spring; the second gentleman turned tail and rushed after
+his comrade. The first was already safe in a bedroom; he held the door
+against his fellow--nothing so merciless as terror. But the other
+fugitive struggled hard; the door was about to yield to his strength.
+
+"Gentlemen," was uttered in Miss Keeldar's silvery but vibrating tones,
+"spare my locks, if you please. Calm yourselves! Come down! Look at
+Tartar; he won't harm a cat."
+
+She was caressing the said Tartar. He lay crouched at her feet, his fore
+paws stretched out, his tail still in threatening agitation, his
+nostrils snorting, his bulldog eyes conscious of a dull fire. He was an
+honest, phlegmatic, stupid, but stubborn canine character. He loved his
+mistress and John--the man who fed him--but was mostly indifferent to
+the rest of the world. Quiet enough he was, unless struck or threatened
+with a stick, and that put a demon into him at once.
+
+"Mr. Malone, how do you do?" continued Shirley, lifting up her mirth-lit
+face to the gallery. "That is not the way to the oak parlour; that is
+Mrs. Pryor's apartment. Request your friend Mr. Donne to evacuate. I
+shall have the greatest pleasure in receiving him in a lower room."
+
+"Ha! ha!" cried Malone, in hollow laughter, quitting the door, and
+leaning over the massive balustrade. "Really that animal alarmed Donne.
+He is a little timid," he proceeded, stiffening himself, and walking
+trimly to the stairhead. "I thought it better to follow, in order to
+reassure him."
+
+"It appears you did. Well, come down, if you please.--John" (turning to
+her manservant), "go upstairs and liberate Mr. Donne.--Take care, Mr.
+Malone; the stairs are slippery."
+
+In truth they were, being of polished oak. The caution came a little
+late for Malone. He had slipped already in his stately descent, and was
+only saved from falling by a clutch at the banisters, which made the
+whole structure creak again.
+
+Tartar seemed to think the visitor's descent effected with unwarranted
+_éclat_, and accordingly he growled once more. Malone, however, was no
+coward. The spring of the dog had taken him by surprise, but he passed
+him now in suppressed fury rather than fear. If a look could have
+strangled Tartar, he would have breathed no more. Forgetting politeness
+in his sullen rage, Malone pushed into the parlour before Miss Keeldar.
+He glanced at Miss Helstone; he could scarcely bring himself to bend to
+her. He glared on both the ladies. He looked as if, had either of them
+been his wife, he would have made a glorious husband at the moment. In
+each hand he seemed as if he would have liked to clutch one and gripe
+her to death.
+
+However, Shirley took pity. She ceased to laugh; and Caroline was too
+true a lady to smile even at any one under mortification. Tartar was
+dismissed; Peter Augustus was soothed--for Shirley had looks and tones
+that might soothe a very bull. He had sense to feel that, since he could
+not challenge the owner of the dog, he had better be civil. And civil he
+tried to be; and his attempts being well received, he grew presently
+_very_ civil and quite himself again. He had come, indeed, for the
+express purpose of making himself charming and fascinating. Rough
+portents had met him on his first admission to Fieldhead; but that
+passage got over, charming and fascinating he resolved to be. Like
+March, having come in like a lion, he purposed to go out like a lamb.
+
+For the sake of air, as it appeared, or perhaps for that of ready exit
+in case of some new emergency arising, he took his seat,--not on the
+sofa, where Miss Keeldar offered him enthronization, nor yet near the
+fireside, to which Caroline, by a friendly sign, gently invited him, but
+on a chair close to the door. Being no longer sullen or furious, he
+grew, after his fashion, constrained and embarrassed. He talked to the
+ladies by fits and starts, choosing for topics whatever was most
+intensely commonplace. He sighed deeply, significantly, at the close of
+every sentence; he sighed in each pause; he sighed ere he opened his
+mouth. At last, finding it desirable to add ease to his other charms, he
+drew forth to aid him an ample silk pocket-handkerchief. This was to be
+the graceful toy with which his unoccupied hands were to trifle. He went
+to work with a certain energy. He folded the red-and-yellow square
+cornerwise; he whipped it open with a waft; again he folded it in
+narrower compass; he made of it a handsome band. To what purpose would
+he proceed to apply the ligature? Would he wrap it about his throat--his
+head? Should it be a comforter or a turban? Neither. Peter Augustus had
+an inventive, an original genius. He was about to show the ladies graces
+of action possessing at least the charm of novelty. He sat on the chair
+with his athletic Irish legs crossed, and these legs, in that attitude,
+he circled with the bandana and bound firmly together. It was evident
+he felt this device to be worth an encore; he repeated it more than
+once. The second performance sent Shirley to the window, to laugh her
+silent but irrepressible laugh unseen; it turned Caroline's head aside,
+that her long curls might screen the smile mantling on her features.
+Miss Helstone, indeed, was amused by more than one point in Peter's
+demeanour. She was edified at the complete though abrupt diversion of
+his homage from herself to the heiress. The £5,000 he supposed her
+likely one day to inherit were not to be weighed in the balance against
+Miss Keeldar's estate and hall. He took no pains to conceal his
+calculations and tactics. He pretended to no gradual change of views; he
+wheeled about at once. The pursuit of the lesser fortune was openly
+relinquished for that of the greater. On what grounds he expected to
+succeed in his chase himself best knew; certainly not by skilful
+management.
+
+From the length of time that elapsed, it appeared that John had some
+difficulty in persuading Mr. Donne to descend. At length, however, that
+gentleman appeared; nor, as he presented himself at the oak-parlour
+door, did he seem in the slightest degree ashamed or confused--not a
+whit. Donne, indeed, was of that coldly phlegmatic, immovably
+complacent, densely self-satisfied nature which is insensible to shame.
+He had never blushed in his life; no humiliation could abash him; his
+nerves were not capable of sensation enough to stir his life and make
+colour mount to his cheek; he had no fire in his blood and no modesty in
+his soul; he was a frontless, arrogant, decorous slip of the
+commonplace--conceited, inane, insipid; and this gentleman had a notion
+of wooing Miss Keeldar! He knew no more, however, how to set about the
+business than if he had been an image carved in wood. He had no idea of
+a taste to be pleased, a heart to be reached in courtship. His notion
+was, when he should have formally visited her a few times, to write a
+letter proposing marriage. Then he calculated she would accept him for
+love of his office; then they would be married; then he should be master
+of Fieldhead; and he should live very comfortably, have servants at his
+command, eat and drink of the best, and be a great man. You would not
+have suspected his intentions when he addressed his intended bride in an
+impertinent, injured tone--"A very dangerous dog that, Miss Keeldar. I
+wonder you should keep such an animal."
+
+"Do you, Mr. Donne? Perhaps you will wonder more when I tell you I am
+very fond of him."
+
+"I should say you are not serious in the assertion. Can't fancy a lady
+fond of that brute--'tis so ugly--a mere carter's dog. Pray hang him."
+
+"Hang what I am fond of!"
+
+"And purchase in his stead some sweetly pooty pug or poodle--something
+appropriate to the fair sex. Ladies generally like lap-dogs."
+
+"Perhaps I am an exception."
+
+"Oh, you can't be, you know. All ladies are alike in those matters. That
+is universally allowed."
+
+"Tartar frightened you terribly, Mr. Donne. I hope you won't take any
+harm."
+
+"That I shall, no doubt. He gave me a turn I shall not soon forget. When
+I _sor_ him" (such was Mr. Donne's pronunciation) "about to spring, I
+thought I should have fainted."
+
+"Perhaps you did faint in the bedroom; you were a long time there."
+
+"No; I bore up that I might hold the door fast. I was determined not to
+let any one enter. I thought I would keep a barrier between me and the
+enemy."
+
+"But what if your friend Mr. Malone had been worried?"
+
+"Malone must take care of himself. Your man persuaded me to come out at
+last by saying the dog was chained up in his kennel. If I had not been
+assured of this, I would have remained all day in the chamber. But what
+is that? I declare the man has told a falsehood! The dog is there!"
+
+And indeed Tartar walked past the glass door opening to the garden,
+stiff, tawny, and black-muzzled as ever. He still seemed in bad humour.
+He was growling again, and whistling a half-strangled whistle, being an
+inheritance from the bulldog side of his ancestry.
+
+"There are other visitors coming," observed Shirley, with that provoking
+coolness which the owners of formidable-looking dogs are apt to show
+while their animals are all bristle and bay. Tartar sprang down the
+pavement towards the gate, bellowing _avec explosion_. His mistress
+quietly opened the glass door, and stepped out chirruping to him. His
+bellow was already silenced, and he was lifting up his huge, blunt,
+stupid head to the new callers to be patted.
+
+"What! Tartar, Tartar!" said a cheery, rather boyish voice, "don't you
+know us? Good-morning, old boy!"
+
+And little Mr. Sweeting, whose conscious good nature made him
+comparatively fearless of man, woman, child, or brute, came through the
+gate, caressing the guardian. His vicar, Mr. Hall, followed. He had no
+fear of Tartar either, and Tartar had no ill-will to him. He snuffed
+both the gentlemen round, and then, as if concluding that they were
+harmless, and might be allowed to pass, he withdrew to the sunny front
+of the hall, leaving the archway free. Mr. Sweeting followed, and would
+have played with him; but Tartar took no notice of his caresses. It was
+only his mistress's hand whose touch gave him pleasure; to all others he
+showed himself obstinately insensible.
+
+Shirley advanced to meet Messrs. Hall and Sweeting, shaking hands with
+them cordially. They were come to tell her of certain successes they had
+achieved that morning in applications for subscriptions to the fund. Mr.
+Hall's eyes beamed benignantly through his spectacles, his plain face
+looked positively handsome with goodness; and when Caroline, seeing who
+was come, ran out to meet him, and put both her hands into his, he gazed
+down on her with a gentle, serene, affectionate expression that gave him
+the aspect of a smiling Melanchthon.
+
+Instead of re-entering the house, they strayed through the garden, the
+ladies walking one on each side of Mr. Hall. It was a breezy sunny day;
+the air freshened the girls' cheeks and gracefully dishevelled their
+ringlets. Both of them looked pretty--one gay. Mr. Hall spoke oftenest
+to his brilliant companion, looked most frequently at the quiet one.
+Miss Keeldar gathered handfuls of the profusely blooming flowers whose
+perfume filled the enclosure. She gave some to Caroline, telling her to
+choose a nosegay for Mr. Hall; and with her lap filled with delicate and
+splendid blossoms, Caroline sat down on the steps of a summer-house. The
+vicar stood near her, leaning on his cane.
+
+Shirley, who could not be inhospitable, now called out the neglected
+pair in the oak parlour. She convoyed Donne past his dread enemy Tartar,
+who, with his nose on his fore paws, lay snoring under the meridian sun.
+Donne was not grateful--he never _was_ grateful for kindness and
+attention--but he was glad of the safeguard. Miss Keeldar, desirous of
+being impartial, offered the curates flowers. They accepted them with
+native awkwardness. Malone seemed specially at a loss, when a bouquet
+filled one hand, while his shillelah occupied the other. Donne's "Thank
+you!" was rich to hear. It was the most fatuous and arrogant of sounds,
+implying that he considered this offering a homage to his merits, and an
+attempt on the part of the heiress to ingratiate herself into his
+priceless affections. Sweeting alone received the posy like a smart,
+sensible little man, as he was, putting it gallantly and nattily into
+his buttonhole.
+
+As a reward for his good manners, Miss Keeldar, beckoning him apart,
+gave him some commission, which made his eyes sparkle with glee. Away he
+flew, round by the courtyard to the kitchen. No need to give him
+directions; he was always at home everywhere. Ere long he reappeared,
+carrying a round table, which he placed under the cedar; then he
+collected six garden-chairs from various nooks and bowers in the
+grounds, and placed them in a circle. The parlour-maid--Miss Keeldar
+kept no footman--came out, bearing a napkin-covered tray. Sweeting's
+nimble fingers aided in disposing glasses, plates, knives, and forks; he
+assisted her too in setting forth a neat luncheon, consisting of cold
+chicken, ham, and tarts.
+
+This sort of impromptu regale it was Shirley's delight to offer any
+chance guests; and nothing pleased her better than to have an alert,
+obliging little friend, like Sweeting, to run about her hand, cheerily
+receive and briskly execute her hospitable hints. David and she were on
+the best terms in the world; and his devotion to the heiress was quite
+disinterested, since it prejudiced in nothing his faithful allegiance to
+the magnificent Dora Sykes.
+
+The repast turned out a very merry one. Donne and Malone, indeed,
+contributed but little to its vivacity, the chief part they played in it
+being what concerned the knife, fork, and wine-glass; but where four
+such natures as Mr. Hall, David Sweeting, Shirley, and Caroline were
+assembled in health and amity, on a green lawn, under a sunny sky,
+amidst a wilderness of flowers, there could not be ungenial dullness.
+
+In the course of conversation Mr. Hall reminded the ladies that
+Whitsuntide was approaching, when the grand united Sunday-school
+tea-drinking and procession of the three parishes of Briarfield,
+Whinbury, and Nunnely were to take place. Caroline, he knew, would be at
+her post as teacher, he said, and he hoped Miss Keeldar would not be
+wanting. He hoped she would make her first public appearance amongst
+them at that time. Shirley was not the person to miss an occasion of
+this sort. She liked festive excitement, a gathering of happiness, a
+concentration and combination of pleasant details, a throng of glad
+faces, a muster of elated hearts. She told Mr. Hall they might count on
+her with security. She did not know what she would have to do, but they
+might dispose of her as they pleased.
+
+"And," said Caroline, "you will promise to come to my table, and to sit
+near me, Mr. Hall?"
+
+"I shall not fail, _Deo volente_," said he.--"I have occupied the place
+on her right hand at these monster tea-drinkings for the last six
+years," he proceeded, turning to Miss Keeldar. "They made her a
+Sunday-school teacher when she was a little girl of twelve. She is not
+particularly self-confident by nature, as you may have observed; and the
+first time she had to 'take a tray,' as the phrase is, and make tea in
+public, there was some piteous trembling and flushing. I observed the
+speechless panic, the cups shaking in the little hand, and the
+overflowing teapot filled too full from the urn. I came to her aid, took
+a seat near her, managed the urn and the slop-basin, and in fact made
+the tea for her like any old woman."
+
+"I was very grateful to you," interposed Caroline.
+
+"You were. You told me so with an earnest sincerity that repaid me well,
+inasmuch as it was not like the majority of little ladies of twelve,
+whom you may help and caress for ever without their evincing any quicker
+sense of the kindness done and meant than if they were made of wax and
+wood instead of flesh and nerves.--She kept close to me, Miss Keeldar,
+the rest of the evening, walking with me over the grounds where the
+children were playing; she followed me into the vestry when all were
+summoned into church; she would, I believe, have mounted with me to the
+pulpit, had I not taken the previous precaution of conducting her to the
+rectory pew."
+
+"And he has been my friend ever since," said Caroline.
+
+"And always sat at her table, near her tray, and handed the cups--that
+is the extent of my services. The next thing I do for her will be to
+marry her some day to some curate or mill-owner.--But mind, Caroline, I
+shall inquire about the bridegroom's character; and if he is not a
+gentleman likely to render happy the little girl who walked with me
+hand in hand over Nunnely Common, I will not officiate. So take care."
+
+"The caution is useless. I am not going to be married. I shall live
+single, like your sister Margaret, Mr. Hall."
+
+"Very well. You might do worse. Margaret is not unhappy. She has her
+books for a pleasure, and her brother for a care, and is content. If
+ever you want a home, if the day should come when Briarfield rectory is
+yours no longer, come to Nunnely vicarage. Should the old maid and
+bachelor be still living, they will make you tenderly welcome."
+
+"There are your flowers. Now," said Caroline, who had kept the nosegay
+she had selected for him till this moment, "_you_ don't care for a
+bouquet, but you must give it to Margaret; only--to be sentimental for
+once--keep that little forget-me-not, which is a wild flower I gathered
+from the grass; and--to be still more sentimental--let me take two or
+three of the blue blossoms and put them in my souvenir."
+
+And she took out a small book with enamelled cover and silver clasp,
+wherein, having opened it, she inserted the flowers, writing round them
+in pencil, "To be kept for the sake of the Rev. Cyril Hall, my friend.
+May --, 18--."
+
+The Rev. Cyril Hall, on his part, also placed a sprig in safety between
+the leaves of a pocket Testament. He only wrote on the margin,
+"Caroline."
+
+"Now," said he, smiling, "I trust we are romantic enough. Miss Keeldar,"
+he continued (the curates, by-the-bye, during this conversation, were
+too much occupied with their own jokes to notice what passed at the
+other end of the table), "I hope you are laughing at this trait of
+'_exaltation_' in the old gray-headed vicar; but the fact is, I am so
+used to comply with the requests of this young friend of yours, I don't
+know how to refuse her when she tells me to do anything. You would say
+it is not much in my way to traffic with flowers and forget-me-nots;
+but, you see, when requested to be sentimental, I am obedient."
+
+"He is naturally rather sentimental," remarked Caroline. "Margaret told
+me so, and I know what pleases him."
+
+"That you should be good and happy? Yes; that is one of my greatest
+pleasures. May God long preserve to you the blessings of peace and
+innocence! By which phrase I mean _comparative_ innocence; for in His
+sight, I am well aware, _none_ are pure. What to our human perceptions
+looks spotless as we fancy angels, is to Him but frailty, needing the
+blood of His Son to cleanse, and the strength of His Spirit to sustain.
+Let us each and all cherish humility--I, as you, my young friends; and
+we may well do it when we look into our own hearts, and see there
+temptations, inconsistencies, propensities, even we blush to recognize.
+And it is not youth, nor good looks, nor grace, nor any gentle outside
+charm which makes either beauty or goodness in God's eyes.--Young
+ladies, when your mirror or men's tongues flatter you, remember that, in
+the sight of her Maker, Mary Ann Ainley--a woman whom neither glass nor
+lips have ever panegyrized--is fairer and better than either of you. She
+is indeed," he added, after a pause--"she is indeed. You young things,
+wrapt up in yourselves and in earthly hopes, scarcely live as Christ
+lived. Perhaps you cannot do it yet, while existence is so sweet and
+earth so smiling to you; it would be too much to expect. She, with meek
+heart and due reverence, treads close in her Redeemer's steps."
+
+Here the harsh voice of Donne broke in on the mild tones of Mr. Hall.
+"Ahem!" he began, clearing his throat evidently for a speech of some
+importance--"ahem! Miss Keeldar, your attention an instant, if you
+please."
+
+"Well," said Shirley nonchalantly, "what is it? I listen. All of me is
+ear that is not eye."
+
+"I hope part of you is hand also," returned Donne, in his vulgarly
+presumptuous and familiar style, "and part purse. It is to the hand and
+purse I propose to appeal. I came here this morning with a view to beg
+of you----"
+
+"You should have gone to Mrs. Gill; she is my almoner."
+
+"To beg of you a subscription to a school. I and Dr. Boultby intend to
+erect one in the hamlet of Ecclefigg, which is under our vicarage of
+Whinbury. The Baptists have got possession of it. They have a chapel
+there, and we want to dispute the ground."
+
+"But I have nothing to do with Ecclefigg. I possess no property there."
+
+"What does that signify? You're a churchwoman, ain't you?"
+
+"Admirable creature!" muttered Shirley, under her breath. "Exquisite
+address! Fine style! What raptures he excites in me!" Then aloud, "I am
+a churchwoman, certainly."
+
+"Then you can't refuse to contribute in this case. The population of
+Ecclefigg are a parcel of brutes; we want to civilize them."
+
+"Who is to be the missionary?"
+
+"Myself, probably."
+
+"You won't fail through lack of sympathy with your flock."
+
+"I hope not--I expect success; but we must have money. There is the
+paper. Pray give a handsome sum."
+
+When asked for money, Shirley rarely held back. She put down her name
+for £5. After the £300 she had lately given, and the many smaller sums
+she was giving constantly, it was as much as she could at present
+afford. Donne looked at it, declared the subscription "shabby," and
+clamorously demanded more. Miss Keeldar flushed up with some indignation
+and more astonishment.
+
+"At present I shall give no more," said she.
+
+"Not give more! Why, I expected you to head the list with a cool
+hundred. With your property, you should never put down a signature for
+less."
+
+She was silent.
+
+"In the south," went on Donne, "a lady with a thousand a year would be
+ashamed to give five pounds for a public object."
+
+Shirley, so rarely haughty, looked so now. Her slight frame became
+nerved; her distinguished face quickened with scorn.
+
+"Strange remarks?" said she--"most inconsiderate! Reproach in return for
+bounty is misplaced."
+
+"Bounty! Do you call five pounds bounty?"
+
+"I do; and bounty which, had I not given it to Dr. Boultby's intended
+school, of the erection of which I approve, and in no sort to his
+curate, who seems ill-advised in his manner of applying for, or rather
+extorting, subscriptions--bounty, I repeat, which, but for this
+consideration, I should instantly reclaim."
+
+Donne was thick-skinned. He did not feel all or half that the tone, air,
+glance of the speaker expressed. He knew not on what ground he stood.
+
+"Wretched place this Yorkshire," he went on. "I could never have formed
+an idea_r_ of the country had I not seen it. And the people--rich and
+poor--what a set! How _corse_ and uncultivated! They would be scouted in
+the south."
+
+Shirley leaned forwards on the table, her nostrils dilating a little,
+her taper fingers interlaced and compressing each other hard.
+
+"The rich," pursued the infatuated and unconscious Donne, "are a parcel
+of misers, never living as persons with their incomes ought to live. You
+scarsley"--(you must excuse Mr. Donne's pronunciation, reader; it was
+very choice; he considered it genteel, and prided himself on his
+southern accent; northern ears received with singular sensations his
+utterance of certain words)--"you scarsley ever see a fam'ly where a
+propa carriage or a reg'la butla is kep; and as to the poor--just look
+at them when they come crowding about the church doors on the occasion
+of a marriage or a funeral, clattering in clogs; the men in their
+shirt-sleeves and wool-combers' aprons, the women in mob-caps and
+bed-gowns. They positively deserve that one should turn a mad cow in
+amongst them to rout their rabble-ranks. He-he! what fun it would be!"
+
+"There! you have reached the climax," said Shirley quietly. "You have
+reached the climax," she repeated, turning her glowing glance towards
+him. "You cannot go beyond it, and," she added with emphasis, "you
+_shall_ not, in my house."
+
+Up she rose--nobody could control her now, for she was
+exasperated--straight she walked to her garden gates, wide she flung
+them open.
+
+"Walk through," she said austerely, "and pretty quickly, and set foot on
+this pavement no more."
+
+Donne was astounded. He had thought all the time he was showing himself
+off to high advantage, as a lofty-souled person of the first "ton;" he
+imagined he was producing a crushing impression. Had he not expressed
+disdain of everything in Yorkshire? What more conclusive proof could be
+given that he was better than anything there? And yet here was he about
+to be turned like a dog out of a Yorkshire garden! Where, under such
+circumstances, was the "concatenation accordingly"?
+
+"Rid me of you instantly--instantly!" reiterated Shirley, as he
+lingered.
+
+"Madam--a clergyman! turn out a clergyman!"
+
+"Off! Were you an archbishop you have proved yourself no gentleman, and
+must go. Quick!"
+
+She was quite resolved. There was no trifling with her. Besides, Tartar
+was again rising; he perceived symptoms of a commotion; he manifested a
+disposition to join in. There was evidently nothing for it but to go,
+and Donne made his exodus, the heiress sweeping him a deep curtsy as she
+closed the gates on him.
+
+"How dare the pompous priest abuse his flock! How dare the lisping
+cockney revile Yorkshire!" was her sole observation on the circumstance,
+as she returned to the table.
+
+Ere long the little party broke up; Miss Keeldar's ruffled and darkened
+brow, curled lip, and incensed eye gave no invitation to further social
+enjoyment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+WHITSUNTIDE.
+
+
+The fund prospered. By dint of Miss Keeldar's example, the three
+rectors' vigorous exertions, and the efficient though quiet aid of their
+spinster and spectacled lieutenants, Mary Ann Ainley and Margaret Hall,
+a handsome sum was raised; and this being judiciously managed, served
+for the present greatly to alleviate the distress of the unemployed
+poor. The neighbourhood seemed to grow calmer. For a fortnight past no
+cloth had been destroyed; no outrage on mill or mansion had been
+committed in the three parishes. Shirley was sanguine that the evil she
+wished to avert was almost escaped, that the threatened storm was
+passing over. With the approach of summer she felt certain that trade
+would improve--it always did; and then this weary war could not last for
+ever; peace must return one day. With peace, what an impulse would be
+given to commerce!
+
+Such was the usual tenor of her observations to her tenant, Gérard
+Moore, whenever she met him where they could converse; and Moore would
+listen very quietly--too quietly to satisfy her. She would then by her
+impatient glance demand something more from him--some explanation, or at
+least some additional remark. Smiling in his way, with that expression
+which gave a remarkable cast of sweetness to his mouth, while his brow
+remained grave, he would answer to the effect that himself too trusted
+in the finite nature of the war; that it was indeed on that ground the
+anchor of his hopes was fixed; thereon his speculations depended. "For
+you are aware," he would continue, "that I now work Hollow's Mill
+entirely on speculation. I sell nothing; there is no market for my
+goods. I manufacture for a future day. I make myself ready to take
+advantage of the first opening that shall occur. Three months ago this
+was impossible to me; I had exhausted both credit and capital. You well
+know who came to my rescue, from what hand I received the loan which
+saved me. It is on the strength of that loan I am enabled to continue
+the bold game which, a while since, I feared I should never play more.
+Total ruin I know will follow loss, and I am aware that gain is
+doubtful; but I am quite cheerful. So long as I can be active, so long
+as I can strive, so long, in short, as my hands are not tied, it is
+impossible for me to be depressed. One year--nay, but six months--of the
+reign of the olive, and I am safe; for, as you say, peace will give an
+impulse to commerce. In this you are right; but as to the restored
+tranquillity of the neighbourhood, as to the permanent good effect of
+your charitable fund, I doubt. Eleemosynary relief never yet
+tranquillized the working-classes--it never made them grateful; it is
+not in human nature that it should. I suppose, were all things ordered
+aright, they ought not to be in a position to need that humiliating
+relief; and this they feel. We should feel it were we so placed.
+Besides, to whom should they be grateful? To you, to the clergy perhaps,
+but not to us mill-owners. They hate us worse than ever. Then the
+disaffected here are in correspondence with the disaffected elsewhere.
+Nottingham is one of their headquarters, Manchester another, Birmingham
+a third. The subalterns receive orders from their chiefs; they are in a
+good state of discipline; no blow is struck without mature deliberation.
+In sultry weather you have seen the sky threaten thunder day by day, and
+yet night after night the clouds have cleared, and the sun has set
+quietly; but the danger was not gone--it was only delayed. The
+long-threatening storm is sure to break at last. There is analogy
+between the moral and physical atmosphere."
+
+"Well, Mr. Moore" (so these conferences always ended), "take care of
+yourself. If you think that I have ever done you any good, reward me by
+promising to take care of yourself."
+
+"I do; I will take close and watchful care. I wish to live, not to die.
+The future opens like Eden before me; and still, when I look deep into
+the shades of my paradise, I see a vision that I like better than seraph
+or cherub glide across remote vistas."
+
+"Do you? Pray, what vision?"
+
+"I see----"
+
+The maid came bustling in with the tea-things.
+
+The early part of that May, as we have seen, was fine; the middle was
+wet; but in the last week, at change of moon, it cleared again. A fresh
+wind swept off the silver-white, deep-piled rain-clouds, bearing them,
+mass on mass, to the eastern horizon, on whose verge they dwindled, and
+behind whose rim they disappeared, leaving the vault behind all pure
+blue space, ready for the reign of the summer sun. That sun rose broad
+on Whitsuntide. The gathering of the schools was signalized by splendid
+weather.
+
+Whit-Tuesday was the great day, in preparation for which the two large
+schoolrooms of Briarfield, built by the present rector, chiefly at his
+own expense, were cleaned out, whitewashed, repainted, and decorated
+with flowers and evergreens--some from the rectory garden, two cartloads
+from Fieldhead, and a wheel-barrowful from the more stingy domain of De
+Walden, the residence of Mr. Wynne. In these schoolrooms twenty tables,
+each calculated to accommodate twenty guests, were laid out, surrounded
+with benches, and covered with white cloths. Above them were suspended
+at least some twenty cages, containing as many canaries, according to a
+fancy of the district, specially cherished by Mr. Helstone's clerk, who
+delighted in the piercing song of these birds, and knew that amidst
+confusion of tongues they always carolled loudest. These tables, be it
+understood, were not spread for the twelve hundred scholars to be
+assembled from the three parishes, but only for the patrons and teachers
+of the schools. The children's feast was to be spread in the open air.
+At one o'clock the troops were to come in; at two they were to be
+marshalled; till four they were to parade the parish; then came the
+feast, and afterwards the meeting, with music and speechifying in the
+church.
+
+Why Briarfield was chosen for the point of rendezvous--the scene of the
+_fête_--should be explained. It was not because it was the largest or
+most populous parish--Whinbury far outdid it in that respect; nor
+because it was the oldest, antique as were the hoary church and
+rectory--Nunnely's low-roofed temple and mossy parsonage, buried both in
+coeval oaks, outstanding sentinels of Nunnwood, were older still. It was
+simply because Mr. Helstone willed it so, and Mr. Helstone's will was
+stronger than that of Boultby or Hall; the former _could_ not, the
+latter _would_ not, dispute a point of precedence with their resolute
+and imperious brother. They let him lead and rule.
+
+This notable anniversary had always hitherto been a trying day to
+Caroline Helstone, because it dragged her perforce into public,
+compelling her to face all that was wealthy, respectable, influential in
+the neighbourhood; in whose presence, but for the kind countenance of
+Mr. Hall, she would have appeared unsupported. Obliged to be
+conspicuous; obliged to walk at the head of her regiment as the rector's
+niece, and first teacher of the first class; obliged to make tea at the
+first table for a mixed multitude of ladies and gentlemen, and to do all
+this without the countenance of mother, aunt, or other chaperon--she,
+meantime, being a nervous person, who mortally feared publicity--it will
+be comprehended that, under these circumstances, she trembled at the
+approach of Whitsuntide.
+
+But this year Shirley was to be with her, and that changed the aspect of
+the trial singularly--it changed it utterly. It was a trial no
+longer--it was almost an enjoyment. Miss Keeldar was better in her
+single self than a host of ordinary friends. Quite self-possessed, and
+always spirited and easy; conscious of her social importance, yet never
+presuming upon it--it would be enough to give one courage only to look
+at her. The only fear was lest the heiress should not be punctual to
+tryst. She often had a careless way of lingering behind time, and
+Caroline knew her uncle would not wait a second for any one. At the
+moment of the church clock tolling two, the bells would clash out and
+the march begin. She must look after Shirley, then, in this matter, or
+her expected companion would fail her.
+
+Whit-Tuesday saw her rise almost with the sun. She, Fanny, and Eliza
+were busy the whole morning arranging the rectory parlours in first-rate
+company order, and setting out a collation of cooling
+refreshments--wine, fruit, cakes--on the dining-room sideboard. Then she
+had to dress in her freshest and fairest attire of white muslin: the
+perfect fineness of the day and the solemnity of the occasion warranted,
+and even exacted, such costume. Her new sash--a birthday present from
+Margaret Hall, which she had reason to believe Cyril himself had bought,
+and in return for which she had indeed given him a set of cambric bands
+in a handsome case--was tied by the dexterous fingers of Fanny, who took
+no little pleasure in arraying her fair young mistress for the occasion.
+Her simple bonnet had been trimmed to correspond with her sash; her
+pretty but inexpensive scarf of white crape suited her dress. When ready
+she formed a picture, not bright enough to dazzle, but fair enough to
+interest; not brilliantly striking, but very delicately pleasing--a
+picture in which sweetness of tint, purity of air, and grace of mien
+atoned for the absence of rich colouring and magnificent contour. What
+her brown eye and clear forehead showed of her mind was in keeping with
+her dress and face--modest, gentle, and, though pensive, harmonious. It
+appeared that neither lamb nor dove need fear her, but would welcome
+rather, in her look of simplicity and softness, a sympathy with their
+own natures, or with the natures we ascribe to them.
+
+After all, she was an imperfect, faulty human being, fair enough of
+form, hue, and array, but, as Cyril Hall said, neither so good nor so
+great as the withered Miss Ainley, now putting on her best black gown
+and Quaker drab shawl and bonnet in her own narrow cottage chamber.
+
+Away Caroline went, across some very sequestered fields and through some
+quite hidden lanes, to Fieldhead. She glided quickly under the green
+hedges and across the greener leas. There was no dust, no moisture, to
+soil the hem of her stainless garment, or to damp her slender sandal.
+After the late rains all was clean, and under the present glowing sun
+all was dry. She walked fearlessly, then, on daisy and turf, and through
+thick plantations; she reached Fieldhead, and penetrated to Miss
+Keeldar's dressing-room.
+
+It was well she had come, or Shirley would have been too late. Instead
+of making ready with all speed, she lay stretched on a couch, absorbed
+in reading. Mrs. Pryor stood near, vainly urging her to rise and dress.
+Caroline wasted no words. She immediately took the book from her, and
+with her own hands commenced the business of disrobing and rerobing her.
+Shirley, indolent with the heat, and gay with her youth and pleasurable
+nature, wanted to talk, laugh, and linger; but Caroline, intent on being
+in time, persevered in dressing her as fast as fingers could fasten
+strings or insert pins. At length, as she united a final row of hooks
+and eyes, she found leisure to chide her, saying she was very naughty to
+be so unpunctual, that she looked even now the picture of incorrigible
+carelessness; and so Shirley did, but a very lovely picture of that
+tiresome quality.
+
+She presented quite a contrast to Caroline. There was style in every
+fold of her dress and every line of her figure. The rich silk suited her
+better than a simpler costume; the deep embroidered scarf became her.
+She wore it negligently but gracefully. The wreath on her bonnet
+crowned her well. The attention to fashion, the tasteful appliance of
+ornament in each portion of her dress, were quite in place with her. All
+this suited her, like the frank light in her eyes, the rallying smile
+about her lips, like her shaft-straight carriage and lightsome step.
+Caroline took her hand when she was dressed, hurried her downstairs, out
+of doors; and thus they sped through the fields, laughing as they went,
+and looking very much like a snow-white dove and gem-tinted bird of
+paradise joined in social flight.
+
+Thanks to Miss Helstone's promptitude, they arrived in good time. While
+yet trees hid the church, they heard the bell tolling a measured but
+urgent summons for all to assemble. The trooping in of numbers, the
+trampling of many steps and murmuring of many voices, were likewise
+audible. From a rising ground, they presently saw, on the Whinbury road,
+the Whinbury school approaching. It numbered five hundred souls. The
+rector and curate, Boultby and Donne, headed it--the former looming
+large in full canonicals, walking as became a beneficed priest, under
+the canopy of a shovel-hat, with the dignity of an ample corporation,
+the embellishment of the squarest and vastest of black coats, and the
+support of the stoutest of gold-headed canes. As the doctor walked, he
+now and then slightly flourished his cane, and inclined his shovel-hat
+with a dogmatical wag towards his aide-de-camp. That
+aide-de-camp--Donne, to wit--narrow as the line of his shape was,
+compared to the broad bulk of his principal, contrived, notwithstanding,
+to look every inch a curate. All about him was pragmatical and
+self-complacent, from his turned-up nose and elevated chin to his
+clerical black gaiters, his somewhat short, strapless trousers, and his
+square-toed shoes.
+
+Walk on, Mr. Donne! You have undergone scrutiny. You think you look
+well. Whether the white and purple figures watching you from yonder hill
+think so is another question.
+
+These figures come running down when the regiment has marched by. The
+churchyard is full of children and teachers, all in their very best
+holiday attire; and, distressed as is the district, bad as are the
+times, it is wonderful to see how respectably, how handsomely even, they
+have contrived to clothe themselves. That British love of decency will
+work miracles. The poverty which reduces an Irish girl to rags is
+impotent to rob the English girl of the neat wardrobe she knows
+necessary to her self-respect. Besides, the lady of the manor--that
+Shirley, now gazing with pleasure on this well-dressed and happy-looking
+crowd--has really done them good. Her seasonable bounty consoled many a
+poor family against the coming holiday, and supplied many a child with a
+new frock or bonnet for the occasion. She knows it, and is elate with
+the consciousness--glad that her money, example, and influence have
+really, substantially, benefited those around her. She cannot be
+charitable like Miss Ainley: it is not in her nature. It relieves her to
+feel that there is another way of being charitable, practicable for
+other characters, and under other circumstances.
+
+Caroline, too, is pleased, for she also has done good in her small
+way--robbed herself of more than one dress, ribbon, or collar she could
+ill spare, to aid in fitting out the scholars of her class; and as she
+could not give money, she has followed Miss Ainley's example in giving
+her time and her industry to sew for the children.
+
+Not only is the churchyard full, but the rectory garden is also
+thronged. Pairs and parties of ladies and gentlemen are seen walking
+amongst the waving lilacs and laburnums. The house also is occupied: at
+the wide-open parlour windows gay groups are standing. These are the
+patrons and teachers, who are to swell the procession. In the parson's
+croft, behind the rectory, are the musicians of the three parish bands,
+with their instruments. Fanny and Eliza, in the smartest of caps and
+gowns, and the whitest of aprons, move amongst them, serving out quarts
+of ale, whereof a stock was brewed very sound and strong some weeks
+since by the rector's orders, and under his special superintendence.
+Whatever he had a hand in must be managed handsomely. "Shabby doings" of
+any description were not endured under his sanction. From the erection
+of a public building, a church, school, or court-house, to the cooking
+of a dinner, he still advocated the lordly, liberal, and effective. Miss
+Keeldar was like him in this respect, and they mutually approved each
+other's arrangements.
+
+Caroline and Shirley were soon in the midst of the company. The former
+met them very easily for her. Instead of sitting down in a retired
+corner, or stealing away to her own room till the procession should be
+marshalled, according to her wont, she moved through the three
+parlours, conversed and smiled, absolutely spoke once or twice ere she
+was spoken to, and, in short, seemed a new creature. It was Shirley's
+presence which thus transformed her; the view of Miss Keeldar's air and
+manner did her a world of good. Shirley had no fear of her kind, no
+tendency to shrink from, to avoid it. All human beings--men, women, or
+children--whom low breeding or coarse presumption did not render
+positively offensive, were welcome enough to her--some much more so than
+others, of course; but, generally speaking, till a man had indisputably
+proved himself bad and a nuisance, Shirley was willing to think him good
+and an acquisition, and to treat him accordingly. This disposition made
+her a general favourite, for it robbed her very raillery of its sting,
+and gave her serious or smiling conversation a happy charm; nor did it
+diminish the value of her intimate friendship, which was a distinct
+thing from this social benevolence--depending, indeed, on quite a
+different part of her character. Miss Helstone was the choice of her
+affection and intellect; the Misses Pearson, Sykes, Wynne, etc., etc.,
+only the profiteers by her good-nature and vivacity.
+
+Donne happened to come into the drawing-room while Shirley, sitting on
+the sofa, formed the centre of a tolerably wide circle. She had already
+forgotten her exasperation against him, and she bowed and smiled
+good-humouredly. The disposition of the man was then seen. He knew
+neither how to decline the advance with dignity, as one whose just pride
+has been wounded, nor how to meet it with frankness, as one who is glad
+to forget and forgive. His punishment had impressed him with no sense of
+shame, and he did not experience that feeling on encountering his
+chastiser. He was not vigorous enough in evil to be actively
+malignant--he merely passed by sheepishly with a rated, scowling look.
+Nothing could ever again reconcile him to his enemy; while no passion of
+resentment, for even sharper and more ignominious inflictions, could his
+lymphatic nature know.
+
+"He was not worth a scene!" said Shirley to Caroline. "What a fool I
+was! To revenge on poor Donne his silly spite at Yorkshire is something
+like crushing a gnat for attacking the hide of a rhinoceros. Had I been
+a gentleman, I believe I should have helped him off the premises by dint
+of physical force. I am glad now I only employed the moral weapon. But
+he must come near me no more. I don't like him. He irritates me. There
+is not even amusement to be had out of him. Malone is better sport."
+
+It seemed as if Malone wished to justify the preference, for the words
+were scarcely out of the speaker's mouth when Peter Augustus came up,
+all in _grande tenue_, gloved and scented, with his hair oiled and
+brushed to perfection, and bearing in one hand a huge bunch of
+cabbage-roses, five or six in full blow. These he presented to the
+heiress with a grace to which the most cunning pencil could do but
+defective justice. And who, after this, could dare to say that Peter was
+not a lady's man? He had gathered and he had given flowers; he had
+offered a sentimental, a poetic tribute at the shrine of Love or Mammon.
+Hercules holding the distaff was but a faint type of Peter bearing the
+roses. He must have thought this himself, for he seemed amazed at what
+he had done. He backed without a word; he was going away with a husky
+chuckle of self-satisfaction; then he bethought himself to stop and
+turn, to ascertain by ocular testimony that he really had presented a
+bouquet. Yes, there were the six red cabbages on the purple satin lap, a
+very white hand, with some gold rings on the fingers, slightly holding
+them together, and streaming ringlets, half hiding a laughing face,
+drooped over them. Only _half_ hiding! Peter saw the laugh; it was
+unmistakable. He was made a joke of; his gallantry, his chivalry, were
+the subject of a jest for a petticoat--for two petticoats: Miss Helstone
+too was smiling. Moreover, he felt he was seen through, and Peter grew
+black as a thunder-cloud. When Shirley looked up, a fell eye was
+fastened on her. Malone, at least, had energy enough in hate. She saw it
+in his glance.
+
+"Peter _is_ worth a scene, and shall have it, if he likes, one day," she
+whispered to her friend.
+
+And now--solemn and sombre as to their colour, though bland enough as to
+their faces--appeared at the dining-room door the three rectors. They
+had hitherto been busy in the church, and were now coming to take some
+little refreshment for the body, ere the march commenced. The large
+morocco-covered easy-chair had been left vacant for Dr. Boultby. He was
+put into it, and Caroline, obeying the instigations of Shirley, who told
+her now was the time to play the hostess, hastened to hand to her
+uncle's vast, revered, and, on the whole, worthy friend, a glass of
+wine and a plate of macaroons. Boultby's churchwardens, patrons of the
+Sunday school both, as he insisted on their being, were already beside
+him; Mrs. Sykes and the other ladies of his congregation were on his
+right hand and on his left, expressing their hopes that he was not
+fatigued, their fears that the day would be too warm for him. Mrs.
+Boultby, who held an opinion that when her lord dropped asleep after a
+good dinner his face became as the face of an angel, was bending over
+him, tenderly wiping some perspiration, real or imaginary, from his
+brow. Boultby, in short, was in his glory, and in a round, sound _voix
+de poitrine_ he rumbled out thanks for attentions and assurances of his
+tolerable health. Of Caroline he took no manner of notice as she came
+near, save to accept what she offered. He did not see her--he never did
+see her; he hardly knew that such a person existed. He saw the
+macaroons, however, and being fond of sweets, possessed himself of a
+small handful thereof. The wine Mrs. Boultby insisted on mingling with
+hot water, and qualifying with sugar and nutmeg.
+
+Mr. Hall stood near an open window, breathing the fresh air and scent of
+flowers, and talking like a brother to Miss Ainley. To him Caroline
+turned her attention with pleasure. "What should she bring him? He must
+not help himself--he must be served by her." And she provided herself
+with a little salver, that she might offer him variety. Margaret Hall
+joined them; so did Miss Keeldar. The four ladies stood round their
+favourite pastor. They also had an idea that they looked on the face of
+an earthly angel. Cyril Hall was their pope, infallible to them as Dr.
+Thomas Boultby to his admirers. A throng, too, enclosed the rector of
+Briarfield--twenty or more pressed round him; and no parson was ever
+more potent in a circle than old Helstone. The curates, herding together
+after their manner, made a constellation of three lesser planets. Divers
+young ladies watched them afar off, but ventured not nigh.
+
+Mr. Helstone produced his watch. "Ten minutes to two," he announced
+aloud. "Time for all to fall into line. Come." He seized his shovel-hat
+and marched away. All rose and followed _en masse_.
+
+The twelve hundred children were drawn up in three bodies of four
+hundred souls each; in the rear of each regiment was stationed a band;
+between every twenty there was an interval, wherein Helstone posted the
+teachers in pairs. To the van of the armies he summoned,--
+
+"Grace Boultby and Mary Sykes lead out Whinbury.
+
+"Margaret Hall and Mary Ann Ainley conduct Nunnely.
+
+"Caroline Helstone and Shirley Keeldar head Briarfield."
+
+Then again he gave command,--
+
+"Mr. Donne to Whinbury; Mr. Sweeting to Nunnely; Mr. Malone to
+Briarfield."
+
+And these gentlemen stepped up before the lady-generals.
+
+The rectors passed to the full front; the parish clerks fell to the
+extreme rear. Helstone lifted his shovel-hat. In an instant out clashed
+the eight bells in the tower, loud swelled the sounding bands, flute
+spoke and clarion answered, deep rolled the drums, and away they
+marched.
+
+The broad white road unrolled before the long procession, the sun and
+sky surveyed it cloudless, the wind tossed the tree boughs above it, and
+the twelve hundred children and one hundred and forty adults of which it
+was composed trod on in time and tune, with gay faces and glad hearts.
+It was a joyous scene, and a scene to do good. It was a day of happiness
+for rich and poor--the work, first of God, and then of the clergy. Let
+England's priests have their due. They are a faulty set in some
+respects, being only of common flesh and blood like us all; but the land
+would be badly off without them. Britain would miss her church, if that
+church fell. God save it! God also reform it!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+THE SCHOOL FEAST.
+
+
+Not on combat bent, nor of foemen in search, was this priest-led and
+woman-officered company; yet their music played martial tunes, and, to
+judge by the eyes and carriage of some--Miss Keeldar, for
+instance--these sounds awoke, if not a martial, yet a longing spirit.
+Old Helstone, turning by chance, looked into her face; and he laughed,
+and she laughed at him.
+
+"There is no battle in prospect," he said; "our country does not want us
+to fight for it. No foe or tyrant is questioning or threatening our
+liberty. There is nothing to be done. We are only taking a walk. Keep
+your hand on the reins, captain, and slack the fire of that spirit. It
+is not wanted, the more's the pity."
+
+"Take your own advice, doctor," was Shirley's response. To Caroline she
+murmured, "I'll borrow of imagination what reality will not give me. We
+are not soldiers--bloodshed is not my desire--or if we are, we are
+soldiers of the Cross. Time has rolled back some hundreds of years, and
+we are bound on a pilgrimage to Palestine. But no; that is too
+visionary. I need a sterner dream. We are Lowlanders of Scotland,
+following a Covenanting captain up into the hills to hold a meeting out
+of the reach of persecuting troopers. We know that battle may follow
+prayer; and as we believe that in the worst issue of battle heaven must
+be our reward, we are ready and willing to redden the peat-moss with our
+blood. That music stirs my soul; it wakens all my life; it makes my
+heart beat--not with its temperate daily pulse, but with a new,
+thrilling vigour. I almost long for danger--for a faith, a land, or at
+least a lover to defend."
+
+"Look, Shirley!" interrupted Caroline. "What is that red speck above
+Stilbro' Brow? You have keener sight than I. Just turn your eagle eye to
+it."
+
+Miss Keeldar looked. "I see," she said; then added presently, "there is
+a line of red. They are soldiers--cavalry soldiers," she subjoined
+quickly. "They ride fast. There are six of them. They will pass us. No;
+they have turned off to the right. They saw our procession, and avoid it
+by making a circuit. Where are they going?"
+
+"Perhaps they are only exercising their horses."
+
+"Perhaps so. We see them no more now."
+
+Mr. Helstone here spoke.
+
+"We shall pass through Royd Lane, to reach Nunnely Common by a short
+cut," said he.
+
+And into the straits of Royd Lane they accordingly defiled. It was very
+narrow--so narrow that only two could walk abreast without falling into
+the ditch which ran along each side. They had gained the middle of it,
+when excitement became obvious in the clerical commanders. Boultby's
+spectacles and Helstone's Rehoboam were agitated; the curates nudged
+each other; Mr. Hall turned to the ladies and smiled.
+
+"What is the matter?" was the demand.
+
+He pointed with his staff to the end of the lane before them. Lo and
+behold! another, an opposition, procession was there entering, headed
+also by men in black, and followed also, as they could now hear, by
+music.
+
+"Is it our double?" asked Shirley, "our manifold wraith? Here is a card
+turned up."
+
+"If you wanted a battle, you are likely to get one--at least of looks,"
+whispered Caroline, laughing.
+
+"They shall not pass us!" cried the curates unanimously; "we'll not give
+way!"
+
+"Give way!" retorted Helstone sternly, turning round; "who talks of
+giving way? You, boys, mind what you are about. The ladies, I know, will
+be firm. I can trust them. There is not a churchwoman here but will
+stand her ground against these folks, for the honour of the
+Establishment.--What does Miss Keeldar say?"
+
+"She asks what is it."
+
+"The Dissenting and Methodist schools, the Baptists, Independents, and
+Wesleyans, joined in unholy alliance, and turning purposely into this
+lane with the intention of obstructing our march and driving us back."
+
+"Bad manners!" said Shirley, "and I hate bad manners. Of course, they
+must have a lesson."
+
+"A lesson in politeness," suggested Mr. Hall, who was ever for peace;
+"not an example of rudeness."
+
+Old Helstone moved on. Quickening his step, he marched some yards in
+advance of his company. He had nearly reached the other sable leaders,
+when he who appeared to act as the hostile commander-in-chief--a large,
+greasy man, with black hair combed flat on his forehead--called a halt.
+The procession paused. He drew forth a hymn book, gave out a verse, set
+a tune, and they all struck up the most dolorous of canticles.
+
+Helstone signed to his bands. They clashed out with all the power of
+brass. He desired them to play "Rule, Britannia!" and ordered the
+children to join in vocally, which they did with enthusiastic spirit.
+The enemy was sung and stormed down, his psalm quelled. As far as noise
+went, he was conquered.
+
+"Now, follow me!" exclaimed Helstone; "not at a run, but at a firm,
+smart pace. Be steady, every child and woman of you. Keep together. Hold
+on by each other's skirts, if necessary."
+
+And he strode on with such a determined and deliberate gait, and was,
+besides, so well seconded by his scholars and teachers, who did exactly
+as he told them, neither running nor faltering, but marching with cool,
+solid impetus--the curates, too, being compelled to do the same, as they
+were between two fires, Helstone and Miss Keeldar, both of whom watched
+any deviation with lynx-eyed vigilance, and were ready, the one with his
+cane, the other with her parasol, to rebuke the slightest breach of
+orders, the least independent or irregular demonstration--that the body
+of Dissenters were first amazed, then alarmed, then borne down and
+pressed back, and at last forced to turn tail and leave the outlet from
+Royd Lane free. Boultby suffered in the onslaught, but Helstone and
+Malone, between them, held him up, and brought him through the business,
+whole in limb, though sorely tried in wind.
+
+The fat Dissenter who had given out the hymn was left sitting in the
+ditch. He was a spirit merchant by trade, a leader of the
+Nonconformists, and, it was said, drank more water in that one afternoon
+than he had swallowed for a twelvemonth before. Mr. Hall had taken care
+of Caroline, and Caroline of him. He and Miss Ainley made their own
+quiet comments to each other afterwards on the incident. Miss Keeldar
+and Mr. Helstone shook hands heartily when they had fairly got the whole
+party through the lane. The curates began to exult, but Mr. Helstone
+presently put the curb on their innocent spirits. He remarked that they
+never had sense to know what to say, and had better hold their tongues;
+and he reminded them that the business was none of their managing.
+
+About half-past three the procession turned back, and at four once more
+regained the starting-place. Long lines of benches were arranged in the
+close-shorn fields round the school. There the children were seated, and
+huge baskets, covered up with white cloths, and great smoking tin
+vessels were brought out. Ere the distribution of good things commenced,
+a brief grace was pronounced by Mr. Hall and sung by the children. Their
+young voices sounded melodious, even touching, in the open air. Large
+currant buns and hot, well-sweetened tea were then administered in the
+proper spirit of liberality. No stinting was permitted on this day, at
+least; the rule for each child's allowance being that it was to have
+about twice as much as it could possibly eat, thus leaving a reserve to
+be carried home for such as age, sickness, or other impediment prevented
+from coming to the feast. Buns and beer circulated, meantime, amongst
+the musicians and church-singers; afterwards the benches were removed,
+and they were left to unbend their spirits in licensed play.
+
+A bell summoned the teachers, patrons, and patronesses to the
+schoolroom. Miss Keeldar, Miss Helstone, and many other ladies were
+already there, glancing over the arrangement of their separate trays and
+tables. Most of the female servants of the neighbourhood, together with
+the clerks', the singers', and the musicians' wives, had been pressed
+into the service of the day as waiters. Each vied with the other in
+smartness and daintiness of dress, and many handsome forms were seen
+amongst the younger ones. About half a score were cutting bread and
+butter, another half-score supplying hot water, brought from the coppers
+of the rector's kitchen. The profusion of flowers and evergreens
+decorating the white walls, the show of silver teapots and bright
+porcelain on the tables, the active figures, blithe faces, gay dresses
+flitting about everywhere, formed altogether a refreshing and lively
+spectacle. Everybody talked, not very loudly, but merrily, and the
+canary birds sang shrill in their high-hung cages.
+
+Caroline, as the rector's niece, took her place at one of the three
+first tables; Mrs. Boultby and Margaret Hall officiated at the others.
+At these tables the _élite_ of the company were to be entertained,
+strict rules of equality not being more in fashion at Briarfield than
+elsewhere. Miss Helstone removed her bonnet and scarf, that she might be
+less oppressed with the heat. Her long curls, falling on her neck,
+served almost in place of a veil; and for the rest, her muslin dress was
+fashioned modestly as a nun's robe, enabling her thus to dispense with
+the encumbrance of a shawl.
+
+The room was filling. Mr. Hall had taken his post beside Caroline, who
+now, as she rearranged the cups and spoons before her, whispered to him
+in a low voice remarks on the events of the day. He looked a little
+grave about what had taken place in Royd Lane, and she tried to smile
+him out of his seriousness. Miss Keeldar sat near--for a wonder, neither
+laughing nor talking; on the contrary, very still, and gazing round her
+vigilantly. She seemed afraid lest some intruder should take a seat she
+apparently wished to reserve next her own. Ever and anon she spread her
+satin dress over an undue portion of the bench, or laid her gloves or
+her embroidered handkerchief upon it. Caroline noticed this _manège_ at
+last, and asked her what friend she expected. Shirley bent towards her,
+almost touched her ear with her rosy lips, and whispered with a musical
+softness that often characterized her tones when what she said tended
+even remotely to stir some sweet secret source of feeling in her heart,
+"I expect Mr. Moore. I saw him last night, and I made him promise to
+come with his sister, and to sit at our table. He won't fail me, I feel
+certain; but I apprehend his coming too late, and being separated from
+us. Here is a fresh batch arriving; every place will be taken.
+Provoking!"
+
+In fact, Mr. Wynne the magistrate, his wife, his son, and his two
+daughters now entered in high state. They were Briarfield gentry. Of
+course their place was at the first table, and being conducted thither,
+they filled up the whole remaining space. For Miss Keeldar's comfort,
+Mr. Sam Wynne inducted himself into the very vacancy she had kept for
+Moore, planting himself solidly on her gown, her gloves, and her
+handkerchief. Mr. Sam was one of the objects of her aversion, and the
+more so because he showed serious symptoms of an aim at her hand. The
+old gentleman, too, had publicly declared that the Fieldhead estate and
+the De Walden estate were delightfully _contagious_--a malapropism which
+rumour had not failed to repeat to Shirley.
+
+Caroline's ears yet rung with that thrilling whisper, "I expect Mr.
+Moore," her heart yet beat and her cheek yet glowed with it, when a note
+from the organ pealed above the confused hum of the place. Dr. Boultby,
+Mr. Helstone, and Mr. Hall rose, so did all present, and grace was sung
+to the accompaniment of the music; and then tea began. She was kept too
+busy with her office for a while to have leisure for looking round, but
+the last cup being filled, she threw a restless glance over the room.
+There were some ladies and several gentlemen standing about yet
+unaccommodated with seats. Amidst a group she recognized her spinster
+friend, Miss Mann, whom the fine weather had tempted, or some urgent
+friend had persuaded, to leave her drear solitude for one hour of social
+enjoyment. Miss Mann looked tired of standing; a lady in a yellow bonnet
+brought her a chair. Caroline knew well that _chapeau en satin jaune_;
+she knew the black hair, and the kindly though rather opinionated and
+froward-looking face under it; she knew that _robe de soie noire_, she
+knew even that _schall gris de lin_; she knew, in short, Hortense Moore,
+and she wanted to jump up and run to her and kiss her--to give her one
+embrace for her own sake and two for her brother's. She half rose,
+indeed, with a smothered exclamation, and perhaps--for the impulse was
+very strong--she would have run across the room and actually saluted
+her; but a hand replaced her in her seat, and a voice behind her
+whispered, "Wait till after tea, Lina, and then I'll bring her to you."
+
+And when she _could_ look up she did, and there was Robert himself close
+behind, smiling at her eagerness, looking better than she had ever seen
+him look--looking, indeed, to her partial eyes, so very handsome that
+she dared not trust herself to hazard a second glance; for his image
+struck on her vision with painful brightness, and pictured itself on her
+memory as vividly as if there daguerreotyped by a pencil of keen
+lightning.
+
+He moved on, and spoke to Miss Keeldar. Shirley, irritated by some
+unwelcome attentions from Sam Wynne, and by the fact of that gentleman
+being still seated on her gloves and handkerchief--and probably, also,
+by Moore's want of punctuality--was by no means in good humour. She
+first shrugged her shoulders at him, and then she said a bitter word or
+two about his "insupportable tardiness." Moore neither apologized nor
+retorted. He stood near her quietly, as if waiting to see whether she
+would recover her temper; which she did in little more than three
+minutes, indicating the change by offering him her hand. Moore took it
+with a smile, half-corrective, half-grateful. The slightest possible
+shake of the head delicately marked the former quality; it is probable a
+gentle pressure indicated the latter.
+
+"You may sit where you can now, Mr. Moore," said Shirley, also smiling.
+"You see there is not an inch of room for you here; but I discern plenty
+of space at Mrs. Boultby's table, between Miss Armitage and Miss
+Birtwhistle. Go! John Sykes will be your _vis-à-vis_, and you will sit
+with your back towards us."
+
+Moore, however, preferred lingering about where he was. He now and then
+took a turn down the long room, pausing in his walk to interchange
+greetings with other gentlemen in his own placeless predicament; but
+still he came back to the magnet, Shirley, bringing with him, each time
+he returned, observations it was necessary to whisper in her ear.
+
+Meantime poor Sam Wynne looked far from comfortable. His fair neighbour,
+judging from her movements, appeared in a mood the most unquiet and
+unaccommodating. She would not sit still two seconds. She was hot; she
+fanned herself; complained of want of air and space. She remarked that,
+in her opinion, when people had finished their tea they ought to leave
+the tables, and announced distinctly that she expected to faint if the
+present state of things continued. Mr. Sam offered to accompany her into
+the open air; just the way to give her her death of cold, she alleged.
+In short, his post became untenable; and having swallowed his quantum of
+tea, he judged it expedient to evacuate.
+
+Moore should have been at hand, whereas he was quite at the other
+extremity of the room, deep in conference with Christopher Sykes. A
+large corn-factor, Timothy Ramsden, Esq., happened to be nearer; and
+feeling himself tired of standing, he advanced to fill the vacant seat.
+Shirley's expedients did not fail her. A sweep of her scarf upset her
+teacup: its contents were shared between the bench and her own satin
+dress. Of course, it became necessary to call a waiter to remedy the
+mischief. Mr. Ramsden, a stout, puffy gentleman, as large in person as
+he was in property, held aloof from the consequent commotion. Shirley,
+usually almost culpably indifferent to slight accidents affecting dress,
+etc., now made a commotion that might have become the most delicate and
+nervous of her sex. Mr. Ramsden opened his mouth, withdrew slowly, and,
+as Miss Keeldar again intimated her intention to "give way" and swoon on
+the spot, he turned on his heel, and beat a heavy retreat.
+
+Moore at last returned. Calmly surveying the bustle, and somewhat
+quizzically scanning Shirley's enigmatical-looking countenance, he
+remarked that in truth this was the hottest end of the room, that he
+found a climate there calculated to agree with none but cool
+temperaments like his own; and putting the waiters, the napkins, the
+satin robe--the whole turmoil, in short--to one side, he installed
+himself where destiny evidently decreed he should sit. Shirley subsided;
+her features altered their lines; the raised knit brow and inexplicable
+curve of the mouth became straight again; wilfulness and roguery gave
+place to other expressions; and all the angular movements with which she
+had vexed the soul of Sam Wynne were conjured to rest as by a charm.
+Still no gracious glance was cast on Moore. On the contrary, he was
+accused of giving her a world of trouble, and roundly charged with being
+the cause of depriving her of the esteem of Mr. Ramsden and the
+invaluable friendship of Mr. Samuel Wynne.
+
+"Wouldn't have offended either gentleman for the world," she averred. "I
+have always been accustomed to treat both with the most respectful
+consideration, and there, owing to you, how they have been used! I shall
+not be happy till I have made it up. I never am happy till I am friends
+with my neighbours. So to-morrow I must make a pilgrimage to Royd
+corn-mill, soothe the miller, and praise the grain; and next day I must
+call at De Walden--where I hate to go--and carry in my reticule half an
+oatcake to give to Mr. Sam's favourite pointers."
+
+"You know the surest path to the heart of each swain, I doubt not," said
+Moore quietly. He looked very content to have at last secured his
+present place; but he made no fine speech expressive of gratification,
+and offered no apology for the trouble he had given. His phlegm became
+him wonderfully. It made him look handsomer, he was so composed; it made
+his vicinage pleasant, it was so peace-restoring. You would not have
+thought, to look at him, that he was a poor, struggling man seated
+beside a rich woman; the calm of equality stilled his aspect; perhaps
+that calm, too, reigned in his soul. Now and then, from the way in which
+he looked down on Miss Keeldar as he addressed her, you would have
+fancied his station towered above hers as much as his stature did.
+Almost stern lights sometimes crossed his brow and gleamed in his eyes.
+Their conversation had become animated, though it was confined to a low
+key; she was urging him with questions--evidently he refused to her
+curiosity all the gratification it demanded. She sought his eye once
+with hers. You read, in its soft yet eager expression, that it solicited
+clearer replies. Moore smiled pleasantly, but his lips continued sealed.
+Then she was piqued, and turned away; but he recalled her attention in
+two minutes. He seemed making promises, which he soothed her into
+accepting in lieu of information.
+
+It appeared that the heat of the room did not suit Miss Helstone. She
+grew paler and paler as the process of tea-making was protracted. The
+moment thanks were returned she quitted the table, and hastened to
+follow her cousin Hortense, who, with Miss Mann, had already sought the
+open air. Robert Moore had risen when she did--perhaps he meant to speak
+to her; but there was yet a parting word to exchange with Miss Keeldar,
+and while it was being uttered Caroline had vanished.
+
+Hortense received her former pupil with a demeanour of more dignity than
+warmth. She had been seriously offended by Mr. Helstone's proceedings,
+and had all along considered Caroline to blame in obeying her uncle too
+literally.
+
+"You are a very great stranger," she said austerely, as her pupil held
+and pressed her hand. The pupil knew her too well to remonstrate or
+complain of coldness. She let the punctilious whim pass, sure that her
+natural _bonté_ (I use this French word because it expresses just what I
+mean--neither goodness nor good-nature, but something between the two)
+would presently get the upper hand. It did. Hortense had no sooner
+examined her face well, and observed the change its somewhat wasted
+features betrayed, than her mien softened. Kissing her on both cheeks,
+she asked anxiously after her health. Caroline answered gaily. It would,
+however, have been her lot to undergo a long cross-examination, followed
+by an endless lecture on this head, had not Miss Mann called off the
+attention of the questioner by requesting to be conducted home. The poor
+invalid was already fatigued. Her weariness made her cross--too cross
+almost to speak to Caroline; and besides, that young person's white
+dress and lively look were displeasing in the eyes of Miss Mann. The
+everyday garb of brown stuff or gray gingham, and the everyday air of
+melancholy, suited the solitary spinster better; she would hardly know
+her young friend to-night, and quitted her with a cool nod. Hortense
+having promised to accompany her home, they departed together.
+
+Caroline now looked round for Shirley. She saw the rainbow scarf and
+purple dress in the centre of a throng of ladies, all well known to
+herself, but all of the order whom she systematically avoided whenever
+avoidance was possible. Shyer at some moments than at others, she felt
+just now no courage at all to join this company. She could not, however,
+stand alone where all others went in pairs or parties; so she approached
+a group of her own scholars, great girls, or rather young women, who
+were standing watching some hundreds of the younger children playing at
+blind-man's buff.
+
+Miss Helstone knew these girls liked her, yet she was shy even with them
+out of school. They were not more in awe of her than she of them. She
+drew near them now, rather to find protection in their company than to
+patronize them with her presence. By some instinct they knew her
+weakness, and with natural politeness they respected it. Her knowledge
+commanded their esteem when she taught them; her gentleness attracted
+their regard; and because she was what they considered wise and good
+when _on_ duty, they kindly overlooked her evident timidity when off.
+They did not take advantage of it. Peasant girls as they were, they had
+too much of our own English sensibility to be guilty of the coarse
+error. They stood round her still, civil, friendly, receiving her slight
+smiles and rather hurried efforts to converse with a good feeling and
+good breeding--the last quality being the result of the first--which
+soon set her at her ease.
+
+Mr. Sam Wynne coming up with great haste, to insist on the elder girls
+joining in the game as well as the younger ones, Caroline was again left
+alone. She was meditating a quiet retreat to the house, when Shirley,
+perceiving from afar her isolation, hastened to her side.
+
+"Let us go to the top of the fields," she said. "I know you don't like
+crowds, Caroline."
+
+"But it will be depriving you of a pleasure, Shirley, to take you from
+all these fine people, who court your society so assiduously, and to
+whom you can, without art or effort, make yourself so pleasant."
+
+"Not quite without effort; I am already tired of the exertion. It is but
+insipid, barren work, talking and laughing with the good gentlefolks of
+Briarfield. I have been looking out for your white dress for the last
+ten minutes. I like to watch those I love in a crowd, and to compare
+them with others. I have thus compared you. You resemble none of the
+rest, Lina. There are some prettier faces than yours here. You are not a
+model beauty like Harriet Sykes, for instance--beside her your person
+appears almost insignificant--but you look agreeable, you look
+reflective, you look what I call interesting."
+
+"Hush, Shirley! you flatter me."
+
+"I don't wonder that your scholars like you."
+
+"Nonsense, Shirley! Talk of something else."
+
+"We will talk of Moore, then, and we will watch him. I see him even
+now."
+
+"Where?" And as Caroline asked the question she looked not over the
+fields, but into Miss Keeldar's eyes, as was her wont whenever Shirley
+mentioned any object she descried afar. Her friend had quicker vision
+than herself, and Caroline seemed to think that the secret of her eagle
+acuteness might be read in her dark gray irides, or rather, perhaps, she
+only sought guidance by the direction of those discriminating and
+brilliant spheres.
+
+"There is Moore," said Shirley, pointing right across the wide field
+where a thousand children were playing, and now nearly a thousand adult
+spectators walking about. "There--can you miss the tall stature and
+straight port? He looks amidst the set that surround him like Eliab
+amongst humbler shepherds--like Saul in a war-council; and a war-council
+it is, if I am not mistaken."
+
+"Why so, Shirley?" asked Caroline, whose eye had at last caught the
+object it sought. "Robert is just now speaking to my uncle, and they are
+shaking hands. They are then reconciled."
+
+"Reconciled not without good reason, depend on it--making common cause
+against some common foe. And why, think you, are Messrs. Wynne and
+Sykes, and Armitage and Ramsden, gathered in such a close circle round
+them? And why is Malone beckoned to join them? Where _he_ is summoned,
+be sure a strong arm is needed."
+
+Shirley, as she watched, grew restless; her eyes flashed.
+
+"They won't trust me," she said. "That is always the way when it comes
+to the point."
+
+"What about?"
+
+"Cannot you feel? There is some mystery afloat; some event is expected;
+some preparation is to be made, I am certain. I saw it all in Mr.
+Moore's manner this evening. He was excited, yet hard."
+
+"Hard to _you_, Shirley?"
+
+"Yes, to _me_. He often is hard to me. We seldom converse _tête-à-tête_
+but I am made to feel that the basis of his character is not of eider
+down."
+
+"Yet he seemed to talk to you softly."
+
+"Did he not? Very gentle tones and quiet manner. Yet the man is
+peremptory and secret: his secrecy vexes me."
+
+"Yes, Robert is secret."
+
+"Which he has scarcely a right to be with me, especially as he commenced
+by giving me his confidence. Having done nothing to forfeit that
+confidence, it ought not to be withdrawn; but I suppose I am not
+considered iron-souled enough to be trusted in a crisis."
+
+"He fears, probably, to occasion you uneasiness."
+
+"An unnecessary precaution. I am of elastic materials, not soon crushed.
+He ought to know that. But the man is proud. He has his faults, say what
+you will, Lina. Observe how engaged that group appear. They do not know
+we are watching them."
+
+"If we keep on the alert, Shirley, we shall perhaps find the clue to
+their secret."
+
+"There will be some unusual movements ere long--perhaps to-morrow,
+possibly to-night. But my eyes and ears are wide open. Mr. Moore, you
+shall be under surveillance. Be you vigilant also, Lina."
+
+"I will. Robert is going; I saw him turn. I believe he noticed us. They
+are shaking hands."
+
+"Shaking hands, with emphasis," added Shirley, "as if they were
+ratifying some solemn league and covenant."
+
+They saw Robert quit the group, pass through a gate, and disappear.
+
+"And he has not bid us good-bye," murmured Caroline.
+
+Scarcely had the words escaped her lips when she tried by a smile to
+deny the confession of disappointment they seemed to imply. An unbidden
+suffusion for one moment both softened and brightened her eyes.
+
+"Oh, that is soon remedied!" exclaimed Shirley: "we'll _make_ him bid us
+good-bye."
+
+"_Make_ him! That is not the same thing," was the answer.
+
+"It _shall_ be the same thing."
+
+"But he is gone; you can't overtake him."
+
+"I know a shorter way than that he has taken. We will intercept him."
+
+"But, Shirley, I would rather not go."
+
+Caroline said this as Miss Keeldar seized her arm and hurried her down
+the fields. It was vain to contend. Nothing was so wilful as Shirley
+when she took a whim into her head. Caroline found herself out of sight
+of the crowd almost before she was aware, and ushered into a narrow
+shady spot, embowered above with hawthorns, and enamelled under foot
+with daisies. She took no notice of the evening sun chequering the turf,
+nor was she sensible of the pure incense exhaling at this hour from tree
+and plant; she only heard the wicket opening at one end, and knew Robert
+was approaching. The long sprays of the hawthorns, shooting out before
+them, served as a screen. They saw him before he observed them. At a
+glance Caroline perceived that his social hilarity was gone; he had left
+it behind him in the joy-echoing fields round the school. What remained
+now was his dark, quiet, business countenance. As Shirley had said, a
+certain hardness characterized his air, while his eye was excited, but
+austere. So much the worse timed was the present freak of Shirley's. If
+he had looked disposed for holiday mirth, it would not have mattered
+much; but now----
+
+"I told you not to come," said Caroline, somewhat bitterly, to her
+friend. She seemed truly perturbed. To be intruded on Robert thus,
+against her will and his expectation, and when he evidently would rather
+not be delayed, keenly annoyed her. It did not annoy Miss Keeldar in the
+least. She stepped forward and faced her tenant, barring his way. "You
+omitted to bid us good-bye," she said.
+
+"Omitted to bid you good-bye! Where did you come from? Are you fairies?
+I left two like you, one in purple and one in white, standing at the top
+of a bank, four fields off, but a minute ago."
+
+"You left us there and find us here. We have been watching you, and
+shall watch you still. You must be questioned one day, but not now. At
+present all you have to do is to say good-night, and then pass."
+
+Moore glanced from one to the other without unbending his aspect. "Days
+of fête have their privileges, and so have days of hazard," observed he
+gravely.
+
+"Come, don't moralize. Say good-night, and pass," urged Shirley.
+
+"Must I say good-night to you, Miss Keeldar?"
+
+"Yes, and to Caroline likewise. It is nothing new, I hope. You have bid
+us both good-night before."
+
+He took her hand, held it in one of his, and covered it with the other.
+He looked down at her gravely, kindly, yet commandingly. The heiress
+could not make this man her subject. In his gaze on her bright face
+there was no servility, hardly homage; but there were interest and
+affection, heightened by another feeling. Something in his tone when he
+spoke, as well as in his words, marked that last sentiment to be
+gratitude.
+
+"Your debtor bids you good-night! May you rest safely and serenely till
+morning."
+
+"And you, Mr. Moore--what are you going to do? What have you been saying
+to Mr. Helstone, with whom I saw you shake hands? Why did all those
+gentlemen gather round you? Put away reserve for once. Be frank with
+me."
+
+"Who can resist you? I will be frank. To-morrow, if there is anything to
+relate, you shall hear it."
+
+"Just now," pleaded Shirley; "don't procrastinate."
+
+"But I could only tell half a tale. And my time is limited; I have not a
+moment to spare. Hereafter I will make amends for delay by candour."
+
+"But are you going home?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Not to leave it any more to-night?"
+
+"Certainly not. At present, farewell to both of you."
+
+He would have taken Caroline's hand and joined it in the same clasp in
+which he held Shirley's, but somehow it was not ready for him. She had
+withdrawn a few steps apart. Her answer to Moore's adieu was only a
+slight bend of the head and a gentle, serious smile. He sought no more
+cordial token. Again he said "Farewell," and quitted them both.
+
+"There! it is over," said Shirley when he was gone. "We have made him
+bid us good-night, and yet not lost ground in his esteem, I think,
+Cary."
+
+"I hope not," was the brief reply.
+
+"I consider you very timid and undemonstrative," remarked Miss Keeldar.
+"Why did you not give Moore your hand when he offered you his? He is
+your cousin; you like him. Are you ashamed to let him perceive your
+affection?"
+
+"He perceives all of it that interests him. No need to make a display of
+feeling."
+
+"You are laconic; you would be stoical if you could. Is love, in your
+eyes, a crime, Caroline?"
+
+"Love a crime! No, Shirley; love is a divine virtue. But why drag that
+word into the conversation? It is singularly irrelevant."
+
+"Good!" pronounced Shirley.
+
+The two girls paced the green lane in silence. Caroline first resumed.
+
+"Obtrusiveness is a crime, forwardness is a crime, and both disgust; but
+love! no purest angel need blush to love. And when I see or hear either
+man or woman couple shame with love, I know their minds are coarse,
+their associations debased. Many who think themselves refined ladies and
+gentlemen, and on whose lips the word 'vulgarity' is for ever hovering,
+cannot mention 'love' without betraying their own innate and imbecile
+degradation. It is a low feeling in their estimation, connected only
+with low ideas for them."
+
+"You describe three-fourths of the world, Caroline."
+
+"They are cold--they are cowardly--they are stupid on the subject,
+Shirley! They never loved--they never were loved!"
+
+"Thou art right, Lina. And in their dense ignorance they blaspheme
+living fire, seraph-brought from a divine altar."
+
+"They confound it with sparks mounting from Tophet."
+
+The sudden and joyous clash of bells here stopped the dialogue by
+summoning all to the church.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+WHICH THE GENTEEL READER IS RECOMMENDED TO SKIP, LOW PERSONS BEING HERE
+INTRODUCED.
+
+
+The evening was still and warm; close and sultry it even promised to
+become. Round the descending sun the clouds glowed purple; summer tints,
+rather Indian than English, suffused the horizon, and cast rosy
+reflections on hillside, house-front, tree-bole, on winding road and
+undulating pasture-ground. The two girls came down from the fields
+slowly. By the time they reached the churchyard the bells were hushed;
+the multitudes were gathered into the church. The whole scene was
+solitary.
+
+"How pleasant and calm it is!" said Caroline.
+
+"And how hot it will be in the church!" responded Shirley. "And what a
+dreary long speech Dr. Boultby will make! And how the curates will
+hammer over their prepared orations! For my part, I would rather not
+enter."
+
+"But my uncle will be angry if he observes our absence."
+
+"I will bear the brunt of his wrath; he will not devour me. I shall be
+sorry to miss his pungent speech. I know it will be all sense for the
+church, and all causticity for schism. He'll not forget the battle of
+Royd Lane. I shall be sorry also to deprive you of Mr. Hall's sincere
+friendly homily, with all its racy Yorkshireisms; but here I must stay.
+The gray church and grayer tombs look divine with this crimson gleam on
+them. Nature is now at her evening prayers; she is kneeling before those
+red hills. I see her prostrate on the great steps of her altar, praying
+for a fair night for mariners at sea, for travellers in deserts, for
+lambs on moors, and unfledged birds in woods. Caroline, I see her, and I
+will tell you what she is like. She is like what Eve was when she and
+Adam stood alone on earth."
+
+"And that is not Milton's Eve, Shirley."
+
+"Milton's Eve! Milton's Eve! I repeat. No, by the pure Mother of God,
+she is not! Cary, we are alone; we may speak what we think. Milton was
+great; but was he good? His brain was right; how was his heart? He saw
+heaven; he looked down on hell. He saw Satan, and Sin his daughter, and
+Death their horrible offspring. Angels serried before him their
+battalions; the long lines of adamantine shields flashed back on his
+blind eyeballs the unutterable splendour of heaven. Devils gathered
+their legions in his sight; their dim, discrowned, and tarnished armies
+passed rank and file before him. Milton tried to see the first woman;
+but, Cary, he saw her not."
+
+"You are bold to say so, Shirley."
+
+"Not more bold than faithful. It was his cook that he saw; or it was
+Mrs. Gill, as I have seen her, making custards, in the heat of summer,
+in the cool dairy, with rose-trees and nasturtiums about the latticed
+window, preparing a cold collation for the rectors--preserves and
+'dulcet creams;' puzzled 'what choice to choose for delicacy best; what
+order so contrived as not to mix tastes, not well-joined, inelegant, but
+bring taste after taste, upheld with kindliest change.'"
+
+"All very well too, Shirley."
+
+"I would beg to remind him that the first men of the earth were Titans,
+and that Eve was their mother; from her sprang Saturn, Hyperion,
+Oceanus; she bore Prometheus----"
+
+"Pagan that you are! what does that signify?"
+
+"I say, there were giants on the earth in those days--giants that strove
+to scale heaven. The first woman's breast that heaved with life on this
+world yielded the daring which could contend with Omnipotence, the
+strength which could bear a thousand years of bondage, the vitality
+which could feed that vulture death through uncounted ages, the
+unexhausted life and uncorrupted excellence, sisters to immortality,
+which, after millenniums of crimes, struggles, and woes, could conceive
+and bring forth a Messiah. The first woman was heaven-born. Vast was the
+heart whence gushed the well-spring of the blood of nations, and grand
+the undegenerate head where rested the consort-crown of creation."
+
+"She coveted an apple, and was cheated by a snake; but you have got such
+a hash of Scripture and mythology into your head that there is no making
+any sense of you. You have not yet told me what you saw kneeling on
+those hills."
+
+"I saw--I now see--a woman-Titan. Her robe of blue air spreads to the
+outskirts of the heath, where yonder flock is grazing; a veil white as
+an avalanche sweeps from her head to her feet, and arabesques of
+lightning flame on its borders. Under her breast I see her zone, purple
+like that horizon; through its blush shines the star of evening. Her
+steady eyes I cannot picture. They are clear, they are deep as lakes,
+they are lifted and full of worship, they tremble with the softness of
+love and the lustre of prayer. Her forehead has the expanse of a cloud,
+and is paler than the early moon, risen long before dark gathers. She
+reclines her bosom on the ridge of Stilbro' Moor; her mighty hands are
+joined beneath it. So kneeling, face to face she speaks with God. That
+Eve is Jehovah's daughter, as Adam was His son."
+
+"She is very vague and visionary. Come, Shirley, we ought to go into
+church."
+
+"Caroline, I will not; I will stay out here with my mother Eve, in these
+days called Nature. I love her--undying, mighty being! Heaven may have
+faded from her brow when she fell in paradise, but all that is glorious
+on earth shines there still. She is taking me to her bosom, and showing
+me her heart. Hush, Caroline! You will see her and feel as I do, if we
+are both silent."
+
+"I will humour your whim; but you will begin talking again ere ten
+minutes are over."
+
+Miss Keeldar, on whom the soft excitement of the warm summer evening
+seemed working with unwonted power, leaned against an upright headstone;
+she fixed her eyes on the deep-burning west, and sank into a pleasurable
+trance. Caroline, going a little apart, paced to and fro beneath the
+rectory garden wall, dreaming too in her way. Shirley had mentioned the
+word "mother." That word suggested to Caroline's imagination not the
+mighty and mystical parent of Shirley's visions, but a gentle human
+form--the form she ascribed to her own mother, unknown, unloved, but not
+unlonged for.
+
+"Oh that the day would come when she would remember her child! Oh that I
+might know her, and knowing, love her!"
+
+Such was her aspiration.
+
+The longing of her childhood filled her soul again. The desire which
+many a night had kept her awake in her crib, and which fear of its
+fallacy had of late years almost extinguished, relit suddenly, and
+glowed warm in her heart, that her mother might come some happy day,
+and send for her to her presence, look upon her fondly with loving eyes,
+and say to her tenderly, in a sweet voice, "Caroline, my child, I have a
+home for you; you shall live with me. All the love you have needed, and
+not tasted, from infancy, I have saved for you carefully. Come; it shall
+cherish you now."
+
+A noise on the road roused Caroline from her filial hopes, and Shirley
+from her Titan visions. They listened, and heard the tramp of horses.
+They looked, and saw a glitter through the trees. They caught through
+the foliage glimpses of martial scarlet; helm shone, plume waved. Silent
+and orderly, six soldiers rode softly by.
+
+"The same we saw this afternoon," whispered Shirley. "They have been
+halting somewhere till now. They wish to be as little noticed as
+possible, and are seeking their rendezvous at this quiet hour, while the
+people are at church. Did I not say we should see unusual things ere
+long?"
+
+Scarcely were sight and sound of the soldiers lost, when another and
+somewhat different disturbance broke the night-hush--a child's impatient
+scream. They looked. A man issued from the church, carrying in his arms
+an infant--a robust, ruddy little boy of some two years old--roaring
+with all the power of his lungs. He had probably just awaked from a
+church-sleep. Two little girls, of nine and ten, followed. The influence
+of the fresh air, and the attraction of some flowers gathered from a
+grave, soon quieted the child. The man sat down with him, dandling him
+on his knee as tenderly as any woman; the two little girls took their
+places one on each side.
+
+"Good-evening, William," said Shirley, after due scrutiny of the man. He
+had seen her before, and apparently was waiting to be recognized. He now
+took off his hat, and grinned a smile of pleasure. He was a
+rough-headed, hard-featured personage, not old, but very weather-beaten.
+His attire was decent and clean; that of his children singularly neat.
+It was our old friend Farren. The young ladies approached him.
+
+"You are not going into the church?" he inquired, gazing at them
+complacently, yet with a mixture of bashfulness in his look--a sentiment
+not by any means the result of awe of their station, but only of
+appreciation of their elegance and youth. Before gentlemen--such as
+Moore or Helstone, for instance--William was often a little dogged;
+with proud or insolent ladies, too, he was quite unmanageable, sometimes
+very resentful; but he was most sensible of, most tractable to,
+good-humour and civility. His nature--a stubborn one--was repelled by
+inflexibility in other natures; for which reason he had never been able
+to like his former master, Moore; and unconscious of that gentleman's
+good opinion of himself, and of the service he had secretly rendered him
+in recommending him as gardener to Mr. Yorke, and by this means to other
+families in the neighbourhood, he continued to harbour a grudge against
+his austerity. Latterly he had often worked at Fieldhead. Miss Keeldar's
+frank, hospitable manners were perfectly charming to him. Caroline he
+had known from her childhood; unconsciously she was his ideal of a lady.
+Her gentle mien, step, gestures, her grace of person and attire, moved
+some artist-fibres about his peasant heart. He had a pleasure in looking
+at her, as he had in examining rare flowers or in seeing pleasant
+landscapes. Both the ladies liked William; it was their delight to lend
+him books, to give him plants; and they preferred his conversation far
+before that of many coarse, hard, pretentious people immeasurably higher
+in station.
+
+"Who was speaking, William, when you came out?" asked Shirley.
+
+"A gentleman ye set a deal of store on, Miss Shirley--Mr. Donne."
+
+"You look knowing, William. How did you find out my regard for Mr.
+Donne?"
+
+"Ay, Miss Shirley, there's a gleg light i' your een sometimes which
+betrays you. You look raight down scornful sometimes when Mr. Donne is
+by."
+
+"Do you like him yourself, William?"
+
+"Me? I'm stalled o' t' curates, and so is t' wife. They've no manners.
+They talk to poor folk fair as if they thought they were beneath them.
+They're allus magnifying their office. It is a pity but their office
+could magnify them; but it does nought o' t' soart. I fair hate pride."
+
+"But you are proud in your own way yourself," interposed Caroline. "You
+are what you call house-proud: you like to have everything handsome
+about you. Sometimes you look as if you were almost too proud to take
+your wages. When you were out of work, you were too proud to get
+anything on credit. But for your children, I believe you would rather
+have starved than gone to the shops without money; and when I wanted to
+give you something, what a difficulty I had in making you take it!"
+
+"It is partly true, Miss Caroline. Ony day I'd rather give than take,
+especially from sich as ye. Look at t' difference between us. Ye're a
+little, young, slender lass, and I'm a great strong man; I'm rather more
+nor twice your age. It is not _my_ part, then, I think, to tak fro'
+_ye_--to be under obligations (as they say) to _ye_. And that day ye
+came to our house, and called me to t' door, and offered me five
+shillings, which I doubt ye could ill spare--for ye've no fortin', I
+know--that day I war fair a rebel, a radical, an insurrectionist; and
+_ye_ made me so. I thought it shameful that, willing and able as I was
+to work, I suld be i' such a condition that a young cratur about the age
+o' my own eldest lass suld think it needful to come and offer me her bit
+o' brass."
+
+"I suppose you were angry with me, William?"
+
+"I almost was, in a way. But I forgave ye varry soon. Ye meant well. Ay,
+_I am_ proud, and so are _ye_; but your pride and mine is t' raight
+mak--what we call i' Yorkshire clean pride--such as Mr. Malone and Mr.
+Donne knows nought about. Theirs is mucky pride. Now, I shall teach my
+lasses to be as proud as Miss Shirley there, and my lads to be as proud
+as myseln; but I dare ony o' 'em to be like t' curates. I'd lick little
+Michael if I seed him show any signs o' that feeling."
+
+"What is the difference, William?"
+
+"Ye know t' difference weel enow, but ye want me to get a gate o'
+talking. Mr. Malone and Mr. Donne is almost too proud to do aught for
+theirseln; _we_ are almost too proud to let anybody do aught for us. T'
+curates can hardly bide to speak a civil word to them they think beneath
+them; _we_ can hardly bide to tak an uncivil word fro' them that thinks
+themseln aboon us."
+
+"Now, William, be humble enough to tell me truly how you are getting on
+in the world. Are you well off?"
+
+"Miss Shirley, I am varry well off. Since I got into t' gardening line,
+wi' Mr. Yorke's help, and since Mr. Hall (another o' t' raight sort)
+helped my wife to set up a bit of a shop, I've nought to complain of. My
+family has plenty to eat and plenty to wear. My pride makes me find
+means to have an odd pound now and then against rainy days; for I think
+I'd die afore I'd come to t' parish; and me and mine is content. But t'
+neighbours is poor yet. I see a great deal of distress."
+
+"And, consequently, there is still discontent, I suppose?" inquired Miss
+Keeldar.
+
+"_Consequently_--ye say right--_consequently_. In course, starving folk
+cannot be satisfied or settled folk. The country's not in a safe
+condition--I'll say so mich!"
+
+"But what can be done? What more can I do, for instance?"
+
+"Do? Ye can do not mich, poor young lass! Ye've gi'en your brass; ye've
+done well. If ye could transport your tenant, Mr. Moore, to Botany Bay,
+ye'd happen do better. Folks hate him."
+
+"William, for shame!" exclaimed Caroline warmly. "If folks _do_ hate
+him, it is to their disgrace, not his. Mr. Moore himself hates nobody.
+He only wants to do his duty, and maintain his rights. You are wrong to
+talk so."
+
+"I talk as I think. He has a cold, unfeeling heart, yond' Moore."
+
+"But," interposed Shirley, "supposing Moore was driven from the country,
+and his mill razed to the ground, would people have more work?"
+
+"They'd have less. I know that, and they know that; and there is many an
+honest lad driven desperate by the certainty that whichever way he turns
+he cannot better himself; and there is dishonest men plenty to guide
+them to the devil, scoundrels that reckons to be the 'people's friends,'
+and that knows nought about the people, and is as insincere as Lucifer.
+I've lived aboon forty year in the world, and I believe that 'the
+people' will never have any true friends but theirseln and them two or
+three good folk i' different stations that is friends to all the world.
+Human natur', taking it i' th' lump, is nought but selfishness. It is
+but excessive few, it is but just an exception here and there, now and
+then, sich as ye two young uns and me, that, being in a different
+sphere, can understand t' one t' other, and be friends wi'out
+slavishness o' one hand or pride o' t' other. Them that reckons to be
+friends to a lower class than their own fro' political motives is never
+to be trusted; they always try to make their inferiors tools. For my own
+part, I will neither be patronized nor misled for no man's pleasure.
+I've had overtures made to me lately that I saw were treacherous, and I
+flung 'em back i' the faces o' them that offered 'em."
+
+"You won't tell us what overtures?"
+
+"I will not. It would do no good. It would mak no difference. Them they
+concerned can look after theirseln."
+
+"Ay, we'se look after werseln," said another voice. Joe Scott had
+sauntered forth from the church to get a breath of fresh air, and there
+he stood.
+
+"I'll warrant _ye_, Joe," observed William, smiling.
+
+"And I'll warrant my maister," was the answer.--"Young ladies,"
+continued Joe, assuming a lordly air, "ye'd better go into th' house."
+
+"I wonder what for?" inquired Shirley, to whom the overlooker's somewhat
+pragmatical manners were familiar, and who was often at war with him;
+for Joe, holding supercilious theories about women in general, resented
+greatly, in his secret soul, the fact of his master and his master's
+mill being, in a manner, under petticoat government, and had felt as
+wormwood and gall certain business visits of the heiress to the Hollow's
+counting-house.
+
+"Because there is nought agate that fits women to be consarned in."
+
+"Indeed! There is prayer and preaching agate in that church. Are we not
+concerned in that?"
+
+"Ye have been present neither at the prayer nor preaching, ma'am, if I
+have observed aright. What I alluded to was politics. William Farren
+here was touching on that subject, if I'm not mista'en."
+
+"Well, what then? Politics are our habitual study, Joe. Do you know I
+see a newspaper every day, and two of a Sunday?"
+
+"I should think you'll read the marriages, probably, miss, and the
+murders, and the accidents, and sich like?"
+
+"I read the leading articles, Joe, and the foreign intelligence, and I
+look over the market prices. In short, I read just what gentlemen read."
+
+Joe looked as if he thought this talk was like the chattering of a pie.
+He replied to it by a disdainful silence.
+
+"Joe," continued Miss Keeldar, "I never yet could ascertain properly
+whether you are a Whig or a Tory. Pray, which party has the honour of
+your alliance?"
+
+"It is rayther difficult to explain where you are sure not to be
+understood," was Joe's haughty response; "but as to being a Tory, I'd as
+soon be an old woman, or a young one, which is a more flimsier article
+still. It is the Tories that carries on the war and ruins trade; and if
+I be of any party--though political parties is all nonsense--I'm of
+that which is most favourable to peace, and, by consequence, to the
+mercantile interests of this here land."
+
+"So am I, Joe," replied Shirley, who had rather a pleasure in teasing
+the overlooker, by persisting in talking on subjects with which he
+opined she, as a woman, had no right to meddle--"partly, at least. I
+have rather a leaning to the agricultural interest, too; as good reason
+is, seeing that I don't desire England to be under the feet of France,
+and that if a share of my income comes from Hollow's Mill, a larger
+share comes from the landed estate around it. It would not do to take
+any measures injurious to the farmers, Joe, I think?"
+
+"The dews at this hour is unwholesome for females," observed Joe.
+
+"If you make that remark out of interest in me, I have merely to assure
+you that I am impervious to cold. I should not mind taking my turn to
+watch the mill one of these summer nights, armed with your musket, Joe."
+
+Joe Scott's chin was always rather prominent. He poked it out, at this
+speech, some inches farther than usual.
+
+"But--to go back to my sheep," she proceeded--"clothier and mill-owner
+as I am, besides farmer, I cannot get out of my head a certain idea that
+we manufacturers and persons of business are sometimes a little--a _very
+little_--selfish and short-sighted in our views, and rather _too_
+regardless of human suffering, rather heartless in our pursuit of gain.
+Don't you agree with me, Joe?"
+
+"I cannot argue where I cannot be comprehended," was again the answer.
+
+"Man of mystery! Your master will argue with me sometimes, Joe. He is
+not so stiff as you are."
+
+"Maybe not. We've all our own ways."
+
+"Joe, do you seriously think all the wisdom in the world is lodged in
+male skulls?"
+
+"I think that women are a kittle and a froward generation; and I've a
+great respect for the doctrines delivered in the second chapter of St.
+Paul's first Epistle to Timothy."
+
+"What doctrines, Joe?"
+
+"'Let the woman learn in silence, with all subjection. I suffer not a
+woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in
+silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve.'"
+
+"What has that to do with the business?" interjected Shirley. "That
+smacks of rights of primogeniture. I'll bring it up to Mr. Yorke the
+first time he inveighs against those rights."
+
+"And," continued Joe Scott, "Adam was not deceived, but the woman being
+deceived was in the transgression."
+
+"More shame to Adam to sin with his eyes open!" cried Miss Keeldar. "To
+confess the honest truth, Joe, I never was easy in my mind concerning
+that chapter. It puzzles me."
+
+"It is very plain, miss. He that runs may read."
+
+"He may read it in his own fashion," remarked Caroline, now joining in
+the dialogue for the first time. "You allow the right of private
+judgment, I suppose, Joe?"
+
+"My certy, that I do! I allow and claim it for every line of the holy
+Book."
+
+"Women may exercise it as well as men?"
+
+"Nay. Women is to take their husbands' opinion, both in politics and
+religion. It's wholesomest for them."
+
+"Oh! oh!" exclaimed both Shirley and Caroline.
+
+"To be sure; no doubt on't," persisted the stubborn overlooker.
+
+"Consider yourself groaned down, and cried shame over, for such a stupid
+observation," said Miss Keeldar. "You might as well say men are to take
+the opinions of their priests without examination. Of what value would a
+religion so adopted be? It would be mere blind, besotted superstition."
+
+"And what is _your_ reading, Miss Helstone, o' these words o' St.
+Paul's?"
+
+"Hem! I--I account for them in this way. He wrote that chapter for a
+particular congregation of Christians, under peculiar circumstances; and
+besides, I dare say, if I could read the original Greek, I should find
+that many of the words have been wrongly translated, perhaps
+misapprehended altogether. It would be possible, I doubt not, with a
+little ingenuity, to give the passage quite a contrary turn--to make it
+say, 'Let the woman speak out whenever she sees fit to make an
+objection.' 'It is permitted to a woman to teach and to exercise
+authority as much as may be. Man, meantime, cannot do better than hold
+his peace;' and so on."
+
+"That willn't wash, miss."
+
+"I dare say it will. My notions are dyed in faster colours than yours,
+Joe. Mr. Scott, you are a thoroughly dogmatical person, and always
+were. I like William better than you."
+
+"Joe is well enough in his own house," said Shirley. "I have seen him as
+quiet as a lamb at home. There is not a better nor a kinder husband in
+Briarfield. He does not dogmatize to his wife."
+
+"My wife is a hard-working, plain woman; time and trouble has ta'en all
+the conceit out of her. But that is not the case with you, young misses.
+And then you reckon to have so much knowledge; and i' my thoughts it's
+only superficial sort o' vanities you're acquainted with. I can
+tell--happen a year sin'--one day Miss Caroline coming into our
+counting-house when I war packing up summat behind t' great desk, and
+she didn't see me, and she brought a slate wi' a sum on it to t'
+maister. It war only a bit of a sum in practice, that our Harry would
+have settled i' two minutes. She couldn't do it. Mr. Moore had to show
+her how. And when he did show her, she couldn't understand him."
+
+"Nonsense, Joe!"
+
+"Nay, it's no nonsense. And Miss Shirley there reckons to hearken to t'
+maister when he's talking ower trade, so attentive like, as if she
+followed him word for word, and all war as clear as a lady's
+looking-glass to her een; and all t' while she's peeping and peeping out
+o' t' window to see if t' mare stands quiet; and then looking at a bit
+of a splash on her riding-skirt; and then glancing glegly round at wer
+counting-house cobwebs and dust, and thinking what mucky folk we are,
+and what a grand ride she'll have just i' now ower Nunnely Common. She
+hears no more o' Mr. Moore's talk nor if he spake Hebrew."
+
+"Joe, you are a real slanderer. I would give you your answer, only the
+people are coming out of church. We must leave you. Man of prejudice,
+good-bye.--William, good-bye.--Children, come up to Fieldhead to-morrow,
+and you shall choose what you like best out of Mrs. Gill's store-room."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+A SUMMER NIGHT.
+
+
+The hour was now that of dusk. A clear air favoured the kindling of the
+stars.
+
+"There will be just light enough to show me the way home," said Miss
+Keeldar, as she prepared to take leave of Caroline at the rectory garden
+door.
+
+"You must not go alone, Shirley; Fanny shall accompany you."
+
+"That she shall not. Of what need I be afraid in my own parish? I would
+walk from Fieldhead to the church any fine midsummer night, three hours
+later than this, for the mere pleasure of seeing the stars and the
+chance of meeting a fairy."
+
+"But just wait till the crowd is cleared away."
+
+"Agreed. There are the five Misses Armitage streaming by. Here comes
+Mrs. Sykes's phaeton, Mr. Wynne's close carriage, Mrs. Birtwhistle's
+car. I don't wish to go through the ceremony of bidding them all
+good-bye, so we will step into the garden and take shelter amongst the
+laburnums for an instant."
+
+The rectors, their curates, and their churchwardens now issued from the
+church porch. There was a great confabulation, shaking of hands,
+congratulation on speeches, recommendation to be careful of the night
+air, etc. By degrees the throng dispersed, the carriages drove off. Miss
+Keeldar was just emerging from her flowery refuge when Mr. Helstone
+entered the garden and met her.
+
+"Oh, I want you!" he said. "I was afraid you were already
+gone.--Caroline, come here."
+
+Caroline came, expecting, as Shirley did, a lecture on not having been
+visible at church. Other subjects, however, occupied the rector's mind.
+
+"I shall not sleep at home to-night," he continued. "I have just met
+with an old friend, and promised to accompany him. I shall return
+probably about noon to-morrow. Thomas, the clerk, is engaged, and I
+cannot get him to sleep in the house, as I usually do when I am absent
+for a night. Now----"
+
+"Now," interrupted Shirley, "you want me as a gentleman--the first
+gentleman in Briarfield, in short--to supply your place, be master of
+the rectory and guardian of your niece and maids while you are away?"
+
+"Exactly, captain. I thought the post would suit you. Will you favour
+Caroline so far as to be her guest for one night? Will you stay here
+instead of going back to Fieldhead?"
+
+"And what will Mrs. Pryor do? she expects me home."
+
+"I will send her word. Come, make up your mind to stay. It grows late;
+the dew falls heavily. You and Caroline will enjoy each other's society,
+I doubt not."
+
+"I promise you, then, to stay with Caroline," replied Shirley. "As you
+say, we shall enjoy each other's society. We will not be separated
+to-night. Now, rejoin your old friend, and fear nothing for us."
+
+"If there should chance to be any disturbance in the night, captain; if
+you should hear the picking of a lock, the cutting out of a pane of
+glass, a stealthy tread of steps about the house (and I need not fear to
+tell _you_, who bear a well-tempered, mettlesome heart under your girl's
+ribbon sash, that such little incidents are very possible in the present
+time), what would you do?"
+
+"Don't know; faint, perhaps--fall down, and have to be picked up again.
+But, doctor, if you assign me the post of honour, you must give me arms.
+What weapons are there in your stronghold?"
+
+"You could not wield a sword?"
+
+"No; I could manage the carving-knife better."
+
+"You will find a good one in the dining-room sideboard--a lady's knife,
+light to handle, and as sharp-pointed as a poniard."
+
+"It will suit Caroline. But you must give me a brace of pistols. I know
+you have pistols."
+
+"I have two pairs. One pair I can place at your disposal. You will find
+them suspended over the mantelpiece of my study in cloth cases."
+
+"Loaded?"
+
+"Yes, but not on the cock. Cock them before you go to bed. It is paying
+you a great compliment, captain, to lend you these. Were you one of the
+awkward squad you should not have them."
+
+"I will take care. You need delay no longer, Mr. Helstone. You may go
+now.--He is gracious to me to lend me his pistols," she remarked, as the
+rector passed out at the garden gate. "But come, Lina," she continued,
+"let us go in and have some supper. I was too much vexed at tea with the
+vicinage of Mr. Sam Wynne to be able to eat, and now I am really
+hungry."
+
+Entering the house, they repaired to the darkened dining-room, through
+the open windows of which apartment stole the evening air, bearing the
+perfume of flowers from the garden, the very distant sound of
+far-retreating steps from the road, and a soft, vague murmur whose
+origin Caroline explained by the remark, uttered as she stood listening
+at the casement, "Shirley, I hear the beck in the Hollow."
+
+Then she rang the bell, asked for a candle and some bread and milk--Miss
+Keeldar's usual supper and her own. Fanny, when she brought in the tray,
+would have closed the windows and the shutters, but was requested to
+desist for the present. The twilight was too calm, its breath too balmy
+to be yet excluded. They took their meal in silence. Caroline rose once
+to remove to the window-sill a glass of flowers which stood on the
+sideboard, the exhalation from the blossoms being somewhat too powerful
+for the sultry room. In returning she half opened a drawer, and took
+from it something that glittered clear and keen in her hand.
+
+"You assigned this to me, then, Shirley, did you? It is bright,
+keen-edged, finely tapered; it is dangerous-looking. I never yet felt
+the impulse which could move me to direct this against a
+fellow-creature. It is difficult to fancy that circumstances could nerve
+my arm to strike home with this long knife."
+
+"I should hate to do it," replied Shirley, "but I think I could do it,
+if goaded by certain exigencies which I can imagine." And Miss Keeldar
+quietly sipped her glass of new milk, looking somewhat thoughtful and a
+little pale; though, indeed, when did she not look pale? She was never
+florid.
+
+The milk sipped and the bread eaten, Fanny was again summoned. She and
+Eliza were recommended to go to bed, which they were quite willing to
+do, being weary of the day's exertions, of much cutting of currant-buns,
+and filling of urns and teapots, and running backwards and forwards
+with trays. Ere long the maids' chamber door was heard to close.
+Caroline took a candle and went quietly all over the house, seeing that
+every window was fast and every door barred. She did not even evade the
+haunted back kitchen nor the vault-like cellars. These visited, she
+returned.
+
+"There is neither spirit nor flesh in the house at present," she said,
+"which should not be there. It is now near eleven o'clock, fully
+bedtime; yet I would rather sit up a little longer, if you do not
+object, Shirley. Here," she continued, "I have brought the brace of
+pistols from my uncle's study. You may examine them at your leisure."
+
+She placed them on the table before her friend.
+
+"Why would you rather sit up longer?" asked Miss Keeldar, taking up the
+firearms, examining them, and again laying them down.
+
+"Because I have a strange, excited feeling in my heart."
+
+"So have I."
+
+"Is this state of sleeplessness and restlessness caused by something
+electrical in the air, I wonder?"
+
+"No; the sky is clear, the stars numberless. It is a fine night."
+
+"But very still. I hear the water fret over its stony bed in Hollow's
+Copse as distinctly as if it ran below the churchyard wall."
+
+"I am glad it is so still a night. A moaning wind or rushing rain would
+vex me to fever just now."
+
+"Why, Shirley?"
+
+"Because it would baffle my efforts to listen."
+
+"Do you listen towards the Hollow?"
+
+"Yes; it is the only quarter whence we can hear a sound just now."
+
+"The only one, Shirley."
+
+They both sat near the window, and both leaned their arms on the sill,
+and both inclined their heads towards the open lattice. They saw each
+other's young faces by the starlight and that dim June twilight which
+does not wholly fade from the west till dawn begins to break in the
+east.
+
+"Mr. Helstone thinks we have no idea which way he is gone," murmured
+Miss Keeldar, "nor on what errand, nor with what expectations, nor how
+prepared. But I guess much; do not you?"
+
+"I guess something."
+
+"All those gentlemen--your cousin Moore included--think that you and I
+are now asleep in our beds, unconscious."
+
+"Caring nothing about them--hoping and fearing nothing for them," added
+Caroline.
+
+Both kept silent for full half an hour. The night was silent too; only
+the church clock measured its course by quarters. Some words were
+interchanged about the chill of the air. They wrapped their scarves
+closer round them, resumed their bonnets, which they had removed, and
+again watched.
+
+Towards midnight the teasing, monotonous bark of the house-dog disturbed
+the quietude of their vigil. Caroline rose, and made her way noiselessly
+through the dark passages to the kitchen, intending to appease him with
+a piece of bread. She succeeded. On returning to the dining-room she
+found it all dark, Miss Keeldar having extinguished the candle. The
+outline of her shape was visible near the still open window, leaning
+out. Miss Helstone asked no questions; she stole to her side. The dog
+recommenced barking furiously. Suddenly he stopped, and seemed to
+listen. The occupants of the dining-room listened too, and not merely
+now to the flow of the mill-stream. There was a nearer, though a
+muffled, sound on the road below the churchyard--a measured, beating,
+approaching sound--a dull tramp of marching feet.
+
+It drew near. Those who listened by degrees comprehended its extent. It
+was not the tread of two, nor of a dozen, nor of a score of men; it was
+the tread of hundreds. They could see nothing; the high shrubs of the
+garden formed a leafy screen between them and the road. To hear,
+however, was not enough, and this they felt as the troop trod forwards,
+and seemed actually passing the rectory. They felt it more when a human
+voice--though that voice spoke but one word--broke the hush of the
+night.
+
+"Halt!"
+
+A halt followed. The march was arrested. Then came a low conference, of
+which no word was distinguishable from the dining-room.
+
+"We _must_ hear this," said Shirley.
+
+She turned, took her pistols from the table, silently passed out through
+the middle window of the dining-room, which was, in fact, a glass door,
+stole down the walk to the garden wall, and stood listening under the
+lilacs. Caroline would not have quitted the house had she been alone,
+but where Shirley went she would go. She glanced at the weapon on the
+sideboard, but left it behind her, and presently stood at her friend's
+side. They dared not look over the wall, for fear of being seen; they
+were obliged to crouch behind it. They heard these words,--
+
+"It looks a rambling old building. Who lives in it besides the damned
+parson?"
+
+"Only three women--his niece and two servants."
+
+"Do you know where they sleep?"
+
+"The lasses behind; the niece in a front room."
+
+"And Helstone?"
+
+"Yonder is his chamber. He was burning a light, but I see none now."
+
+"Where would you get in?"
+
+"If I were ordered to do his job--and he desarves it--I'd try yond' long
+window; it opens to the dining-room. I could grope my way upstairs, and
+I know his chamber."
+
+"How would you manage about the women folk?"
+
+"Let 'em alone except they shrieked, and then I'd soon quieten 'em. I
+could wish to find the old chap asleep. If he waked, he'd be dangerous."
+
+"Has he arms?"
+
+"Firearms, allus--and allus loadened."
+
+"Then you're a fool to stop us here. A shot would give the alarm. Moore
+would be on us before we could turn round. We should miss our main
+object."
+
+"You might go on, I tell you. I'd engage Helstone alone."
+
+A pause. One of the party dropped some weapon, which rang on the stone
+causeway. At this sound the rectory dog barked again
+furiously--fiercely.
+
+"That spoils all!" said the voice. "He'll awake. A noise like that might
+rouse the dead. You did not say there was a dog. Damn you! Forward!"
+
+Forward they went--tramp, tramp--with mustering, manifold, slow-filing
+tread. They were gone.
+
+Shirley stood erect, looked over the wall, along the road.
+
+"Not a soul remains," she said.
+
+She stood and mused. "Thank God!" was the next observation.
+
+Caroline repeated the ejaculation--not in so steady a tone. She was
+trembling much. Her heart was beating fast and thick; her face was cold,
+her forehead damp.
+
+"Thank God for us!" she reiterated. "But what will happen elsewhere?
+They have passed us by that they may make sure of others."
+
+"They have done well," returned Shirley, with composure. "The others
+will defend themselves. They can do it. They are prepared for them. With
+us it is otherwise. My finger was on the trigger of this pistol. I was
+quite ready to give that man, if he had entered, such a greeting as he
+little calculated on; but behind him followed three hundred. I had
+neither three hundred hands nor three hundred weapons. I could not have
+effectually protected either you, myself, or the two poor women asleep
+under that roof. Therefore I again earnestly thank God for insult and
+peril escaped."
+
+After a second pause she continued: "What is it my duty and wisdom to do
+next? Not to stay here inactive, I am glad to say, but, of course, to
+walk over to the Hollow."
+
+"To the Hollow, Shirley?"
+
+"To the Hollow. Will you go with me?"
+
+"Where those men are gone?"
+
+"They have taken the highway; we should not encounter them. The road
+over the fields is as safe, silent, and solitary as a path through the
+air would be. Will you go?"
+
+"Yes," was the answer, given mechanically, not because the speaker
+wished or was prepared to go, or, indeed, was otherwise than scared at
+the prospect of going, but because she felt she could not abandon
+Shirley.
+
+"Then we must fasten up these windows, and leave all as secure as we can
+behind us. Do you know what we are going for, Cary?"
+
+"Yes--no--because you wish it."
+
+"Is that all? And are you so obedient to a mere caprice of mine? What a
+docile wife you would make to a stern husband! The moon's face is not
+whiter than yours at this moment, and the aspen at the gate does not
+tremble more than your busy fingers; and so, tractable and
+terror-struck, and dismayed and devoted, you would follow me into the
+thick of real danger! Cary, let me give your fidelity a motive. We are
+going for Moore's sake--to see if we can be of use to him, to make an
+effort to warn him of what is coming."
+
+"To be sure! I am a blind, weak fool, and you are acute and sensible,
+Shirley. I will go with you; I will gladly go with you!"
+
+"I do not doubt it. You would die blindly and meekly for me, but you
+would intelligently and gladly die for Moore. But, in truth, there is no
+question of death to-night; we run no risk at all."
+
+Caroline rapidly closed shutter and lattice. "Do not fear that I shall
+not have breath to run as fast as you can possibly run, Shirley. Take my
+hand. Let us go straight across the fields."
+
+"But you cannot climb walls?"
+
+"To-night I can."
+
+"You are afraid of hedges, and the beck which we shall be forced to
+cross?"
+
+"I can cross it."
+
+They started; they ran. Many a wall checked but did not baffle them.
+Shirley was surefooted and agile; she could spring like a deer when she
+chose. Caroline, more timid and less dexterous, fell once or twice, and
+bruised herself; but she rose again directly, saying she was not hurt. A
+quickset hedge bounded the last field; they lost time in seeking a gap
+in it. The aperture, when found, was narrow, but they worked their way
+through. The long hair, the tender skin, the silks and the muslins
+suffered; but what was chiefly regretted was the impediment this
+difficulty had caused to speed. On the other side they met the beck,
+flowing deep in a rough bed. At this point a narrow plank formed the
+only bridge across it. Shirley had trodden the plank successfully and
+fearlessly many a time before; Caroline had never yet dared to risk the
+transit.
+
+"I will carry you across," said Miss Keeldar. "You are light, and I am
+not weak. Let me try."
+
+"If I fall in, you may fish me out," was the answer, as a grateful
+squeeze compressed her hand. Caroline, without pausing, trod forward on
+the trembling plank as if it were a continuation of the firm turf.
+Shirley, who followed, did not cross it more resolutely or safely. In
+their present humour, on their present errand, a strong and foaming
+channel would have been a barrier to neither. At the moment they were
+above the control either of fire or water. All Stilbro' Moor, alight and
+aglow with bonfires, would not have stopped them, nor would Calder or
+Aire thundering in flood. Yet one sound made them pause. Scarce had
+they set foot on the solid opposite bank when a shot split the air from
+the north. One second elapsed. Further off burst a like note in the
+south. Within the space of three minutes similar signals boomed in the
+east and west.
+
+"I thought we were dead at the first explosion," observed Shirley,
+drawing a long breath. "I felt myself hit in the temples, and I
+concluded your heart was pierced; but the reiterated voice was an
+explanation. Those are signals--it is their way--the attack must be
+near. We should have had wings. Our feet have not borne us swiftly
+enough."
+
+A portion of the copse was now to clear. When they emerged from it the
+mill lay just below them. They could look down upon the buildings, the
+yard; they could see the road beyond. And the first glance in that
+direction told Shirley she was right in her conjecture. They were
+already too late to give warning. It had taken more time than they
+calculated on to overcome the various obstacles which embarrassed the
+short cut across the fields.
+
+The road, which should have been white, was dark with a moving mass. The
+rioters were assembled in front of the closed yard gates, and a single
+figure stood within, apparently addressing them. The mill itself was
+perfectly black and still. There was neither life, light, nor motion
+around it.
+
+"Surely he is prepared. Surely that is not Moore meeting them alone?"
+whispered Shirley.
+
+"It is. We must go to him. I _will_ go to him."
+
+"_That_ you will not."
+
+"Why did I come, then? I came only for him. I shall join him."
+
+"Fortunately it is out of your power. There is no entrance to the yard."
+
+"There _is_ a small entrance at the back, besides the gates in front. It
+opens by a secret method which I know. I will try it."
+
+"Not with my leave."
+
+Miss Keeldar clasped her round the waist with both arms and held her
+back. "Not one step shall you stir," she went on authoritatively. "At
+this moment Moore would be both shocked and embarrassed if he saw either
+you or me. Men never want women near them in time of real danger."
+
+"I would not trouble--I would help him," was the reply.
+
+"How?--by inspiring him with heroism? Pooh! these are not the days of
+chivalry. It is not a tilt at a tournament we are going to behold, but a
+struggle about money, and food, and life."
+
+"It is natural that I should be at his side."
+
+"As queen of his heart? His mill is his lady-love, Cary! Backed by his
+factory and his frames, he has all the encouragement he wants or can
+know. It is not for love or beauty, but for ledger and broadcloth, he is
+going to break a spear. Don't be sentimental; Robert is not so."
+
+"I _could_ help him; I _will_ seek him."
+
+"Off then--I let you go--seek Moore. You'll not find him."
+
+She loosened her hold. Caroline sped like levelled shaft from bent bow;
+after her rang a jesting, gibing laugh. "Look well there is no mistake!"
+was the warning given.
+
+But there _was_ a mistake. Miss Helstone paused, hesitated, gazed. The
+figure had suddenly retreated from the gate, and was running back
+hastily to the mill.
+
+"Make haste, Lina!" cried Shirley; "meet him before he enters."
+
+Caroline slowly returned. "It is not Robert," she said. "It has neither
+his height, form, nor bearing."
+
+"I saw it was not Robert when I let you go. How could you imagine it? It
+is a shabby little figure of a private soldier; they had posted him as
+sentinel. He is safe in the mill now. I saw the door open and admit him.
+My mind grows easier. Robert is prepared. Our warning would have been
+superfluous; and now I am thankful we came too late to give it. It has
+saved us the trouble of a scene. How fine to have entered the
+counting-house _toute éperdue_, and to have found oneself in presence of
+Messrs. Armitage and Ramsden smoking, Malone swaggering, your uncle
+sneering, Mr. Sykes sipping a cordial, and Moore himself in his cold
+man-of-business vein! I am glad we missed it all."
+
+"I wonder if there are many in the mill, Shirley!"
+
+"Plenty to defend it. The soldiers we have twice seen to-day were going
+there, no doubt, and the group we noticed surrounding your cousin in the
+fields will be with him."
+
+"What are they doing now, Shirley? What is that noise?"
+
+"Hatchets and crowbars against the yard gates. They are forcing them.
+Are you afraid?"
+
+"No; but my heart throbs fast. I have a difficulty in standing. I will
+sit down. Do you feel unmoved?"
+
+"Hardly that; but I am glad I came. We shall see what transpires with
+our own eyes. We are here on the spot, and none know it. Instead of
+amazing the curate, the clothier, and the corn-dealer with a romantic
+rush on the stage, we stand alone with the friendly night, its mute
+stars, and these whispering trees, whose report our friends will not
+come to gather."
+
+"Shirley, Shirley, the gates are down! That crash was like the felling
+of great trees. Now they are pouring through. They will break down the
+mill doors as they have broken the gate. What can Robert do against so
+many? Would to God I were a little nearer him--could hear him
+speak--could speak to him! With my will--my longing to serve him--I
+could not be a useless burden in his way; I could be turned to some
+account."
+
+"They come on!" cried Shirley. "How steadily they march in! There is
+discipline in their ranks. I will not say there is courage--hundreds
+against tens are no proof of that quality--but" (she dropped her voice)
+"there is suffering and desperation enough amongst them. These goads
+will urge them forwards."
+
+"Forwards against Robert; and they hate him. Shirley, is there much
+danger they will win the day?"
+
+"We shall see. Moore and Helstone are of 'earth's first blood'--no
+bunglers--no cravens----"
+
+A crash--smash--shiver--stopped their whispers. A simultaneously hurled
+volley of stones had saluted the broad front of the mill, with all its
+windows; and now every pane of every lattice lay in shattered and
+pounded fragments. A yell followed this demonstration--a rioters'
+yell--a north-of-England, a Yorkshire, a West-Riding, a
+West-Riding-clothing-district-of-Yorkshire rioters' yell.
+
+You never heard that sound, perhaps, reader? So much the better for your
+ears--perhaps for your heart, since, if it rends the air in hate to
+yourself, or to the men or principles you approve, the interests to
+which you wish well, wrath wakens to the cry of hate; the lion shakes
+his mane, and rises to the howl of the hyena; caste stands up, ireful
+against caste; and the indignant, wronged spirit of the middle rank
+bears down in zeal and scorn on the famished and furious mass of the
+operative class. It is difficult to be tolerant, difficult to be just,
+in such moments.
+
+Caroline rose; Shirley put her arm round her: they stood together as
+still as the straight stems of two trees. That yell was a long one, and
+when it ceased the night was yet full of the swaying and murmuring of a
+crowd.
+
+"What next?" was the question of the listeners. Nothing came yet. The
+mill remained mute as a mausoleum.
+
+"He _cannot_ be alone!" whispered Caroline.
+
+"I would stake all I have that he is as little alone as he is alarmed,"
+responded Shirley.
+
+Shots were discharged by the rioters. Had the defenders waited for this
+signal? It seemed so. The hitherto inert and passive mill woke; fire
+flashed from its empty window-frames; a volley of musketry pealed sharp
+through the Hollow.
+
+"Moore speaks at last!" said Shirley, "and he seems to have the gift of
+tongues. That was not a single voice."
+
+"He has been forbearing. No one can accuse him of rashness," alleged
+Caroline. "Their discharge preceded his. They broke his gates and his
+windows. They fired at his garrison before he repelled them."
+
+What was going on now? It seemed difficult, in the darkness, to
+distinguish; but something terrible, a still-renewing tumult, was
+obvious--fierce attacks, desperate repulses. The mill-yard, the mill
+itself, was full of battle movement. There was scarcely any cessation
+now of the discharge of firearms; and there was struggling, rushing,
+trampling, and shouting between. The aim of the assailants seemed to be
+to enter the mill, that of the defenders to beat them off. They heard
+the rebel leader cry, "To the back, lads!" They heard a voice retort,
+"Come round; we will meet you."
+
+"To the counting-house!" was the order again.
+
+"Welcome! we shall have you there!" was the response. And accordingly
+the fiercest blaze that had yet glowed, the loudest rattle that had yet
+been heard, burst from the counting-house front when the mass of rioters
+rushed up to it.
+
+The voice that had spoken was Moore's own voice. They could tell by its
+tones that his soul was now warm with the conflict; they could guess
+that the fighting animal was roused in every one of those men there
+struggling together, and was for the time quite paramount above the
+rational human being.
+
+Both the girls felt their faces glow and their pulses throb; both knew
+they would do no good by rushing down into the _mêlée_. They desired
+neither to deal nor to receive blows; but they could not have run
+away--Caroline no more than Shirley; they could not have fainted; they
+could not have taken their eyes from the dim, terrible scene--from the
+mass of cloud, of smoke, the musket-lightning--for the world.
+
+"How and when would it end?" was the demand throbbing in their throbbing
+pulses. "Would a juncture arise in which they could be useful?" was what
+they waited to see; for though Shirley put off their too-late arrival
+with a jest, and was ever ready to satirize her own or any other
+person's enthusiasm, she would have given a farm of her best land for a
+chance of rendering good service.
+
+The chance was not vouchsafed her; the looked-for juncture never came.
+It was not likely. Moore had expected this attack for days, perhaps
+weeks; he was prepared for it at every point. He had fortified and
+garrisoned his mill, which in itself was a strong building. He was a
+cool, brave man; he stood to the defence with unflinching firmness.
+Those who were with him caught his spirit, and copied his demeanour. The
+rioters had never been so met before. At other mills they had attacked
+they had found no resistance; an organized, resolute defence was what
+they never dreamed of encountering. When their leaders saw the steady
+fire kept up from the mill, witnessed the composure and determination of
+its owner, heard themselves coolly defied and invited on to death, and
+beheld their men falling wounded round them, they felt that nothing was
+to be done here. In haste they mustered their forces, drew them away
+from the building. A roll was called over, in which the men answered to
+figures instead of names. They dispersed wide over the fields, leaving
+silence and ruin behind them. The attack, from its commencement to its
+termination, had not occupied an hour.
+
+Day was by this time approaching; the west was dim, the east beginning
+to gleam. It would have seemed that the girls who had watched this
+conflict would now wish to hasten to the victors, on whose side all
+their interest had been enlisted; but they only very cautiously
+approached the now battered mill, and when suddenly a number of soldiers
+and gentlemen appeared at the great door opening into the yard, they
+quickly stepped aside into a shed, the deposit of old iron and timber,
+whence they could see without being seen.
+
+It was no cheering spectacle. These premises were now a mere blot of
+desolation on the fresh front of the summer dawn. All the copse up the
+Hollow was shady and dewy, the hill at its head was green; but just
+here, in the centre of the sweet glen, Discord, broken loose in the
+night from control, had beaten the ground with his stamping hoofs, and
+left it waste and pulverized. The mill yawned all ruinous with unglazed
+frames; the yard was thickly bestrewn with stones and brickbats; and
+close under the mill, with the glittering fragments of the shattered
+windows, muskets and other weapons lay here and there. More than one
+deep crimson stain was visible on the gravel, a human body lay quiet on
+its face near the gates, and five or six wounded men writhed and moaned
+in the bloody dust.
+
+Miss Keeldar's countenance changed at this view. It was the after-taste
+of the battle, death and pain replacing excitement and exertion. It was
+the blackness the bright fire leaves when its blaze is sunk, its warmth
+failed, and its glow faded.
+
+"This is what I wished to prevent," she said, in a voice whose cadence
+betrayed the altered impulse of her heart.
+
+"But you could not prevent it; you did your best--it was in vain," said
+Caroline comfortingly. "Don't grieve, Shirley."
+
+"I am sorry for those poor fellows," was the answer, while the spark in
+her glance dissolved to dew. "Are any within the mill hurt, I wonder? Is
+that your uncle?"
+
+"It is, and there is Mr. Malone; and, O Shirley, there is Robert!"
+
+"Well" (resuming her former tone), "don't squeeze your fingers quite
+into my hand. I see. There is nothing wonderful in that. We knew he, at
+least, was here, whoever might be absent."
+
+"He is coming here towards us, Shirley!"
+
+"Towards the pump, that is to say, for the purpose of washing his hands
+and his forehead, which has got a scratch, I perceive."
+
+"He bleeds, Shirley. Don't hold me. I must go."
+
+"Not a step."
+
+"He is hurt, Shirley!"
+
+"Fiddlestick!"
+
+"But I _must_ go to him. I wish to go so much. I cannot bear to be
+restrained."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"To speak to him, to ask how he is, and what I can do for him."
+
+"To tease and annoy him; to make a spectacle of yourself and him before
+those soldiers, Mr. Malone, your uncle, et cetera. Would he like it,
+think you? Would you like to remember it a week hence?"
+
+"Am I always to be curbed and kept down?" demanded Caroline, a little
+passionately.
+
+"For his sake, yes; and still more for your own. I tell you, if you
+showed yourself now you would repent it an hour hence, and so would
+Robert."
+
+"You think he would not like it, Shirley?"
+
+"Far less than he would like our stopping him to say good-night, which
+you were so sore about."
+
+"But that was all play; there was no danger."
+
+"And this is serious work; he must be unmolested."
+
+"I only wish to go to him because he is my cousin--you understand?"
+
+"I quite understand. But now, watch him. He has bathed his forehead, and
+the blood has ceased trickling. His hurt is really a mere graze; I can
+see it from hence. He is going to look after the wounded men."
+
+Accordingly Mr. Moore and Mr. Helstone went round the yard, examining
+each prostrate form. They then gave directions to have the wounded taken
+up and carried into the mill. This duty being performed, Joe Scott was
+ordered to saddle his master's horse and Mr. Helstone's pony, and the
+two gentlemen rode away full gallop, to seek surgical aid in different
+directions.
+
+Caroline was not yet pacified.
+
+"Shirley, Shirley, I should have liked to speak one word to him before
+he went," she murmured, while the tears gathered glittering in her eyes.
+
+"Why do you cry, Lina?" asked Miss Keeldar a little sternly. "You ought
+to be glad instead of sorry. Robert has escaped any serious harm; he is
+victorious; he has been cool and brave in combat; he is now considerate
+in triumph. Is this a time--are these causes for weeping?"
+
+"You do not know what I have in my heart," pleaded the other--"what
+pain, what distraction--nor whence it arises. I can understand that you
+should exult in Robert's greatness and goodness; so do I, in one sense,
+but in another I feel _so_ miserable. I am too far removed from him. I
+used to be nearer. Let me alone, Shirley. Do let me cry a few minutes;
+it relieves me."
+
+Miss Keeldar, feeling her tremble in every limb, ceased to expostulate
+with her. She went out of the shed, and left her to weep in peace. It
+was the best plan. In a few minutes Caroline rejoined her, much calmer.
+She said, with her natural, docile, gentle manner, "Come, Shirley, we
+will go home now. I promise not to try to see Robert again till he asks
+for me. I never will try to push myself on him. I thank you for
+restraining me just now."
+
+"I did it with a good intention," returned Miss Keeldar.
+
+"Now, dear Lina," she continued, "let us turn our faces to the cool
+morning breeze, and walk very quietly back to the rectory. We will steal
+in as we stole out. None shall know where we have been or what we have
+seen to-night; neither taunt nor misconstruction can consequently molest
+us. To-morrow we will see Robert, and be of good cheer; but I will say
+no more, lest I should begin to cry too. I seem hard towards you, but I
+am not so."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+TO-MORROW.
+
+
+The two girls met no living soul on their way back to the rectory. They
+let themselves in noiselessly; they stole upstairs unheard--the breaking
+morning gave them what light they needed. Shirley sought her couch
+immediately; and though the room was strange--for she had never slept at
+the rectory before--and though the recent scene was one unparalleled for
+excitement and terror by any it had hitherto been her lot to witness,
+yet scarce was her head laid on the pillow ere a deep, refreshing sleep
+closed her eyes and calmed her senses.
+
+Perfect health was Shirley's enviable portion. Though warm-hearted and
+sympathetic, she was not nervous; powerful emotions could rouse and sway
+without exhausting her spirit. The tempest troubled and shook her while
+it lasted, but it left her elasticity unbent, and her freshness quite
+unblighted. As every day brought her stimulating emotion, so every night
+yielded her recreating rest. Caroline now watched her sleeping, and read
+the serenity of her mind in the beauty of her happy countenance.
+
+For herself, being of a different temperament, she could not sleep. The
+commonplace excitement of the tea-drinking and school-gathering would
+alone have sufficed to make her restless all night; the effect of the
+terrible drama which had just been enacted before her eyes was not
+likely to quit her for days. It was vain even to try to retain a
+recumbent posture; she sat up by Shirley's side, counting the slow
+minutes, and watching the June sun mount the heavens.
+
+Life wastes fast in such vigils as Caroline had of late but too often
+kept--vigils during which the mind, having no pleasant food to nourish
+it, no manna of hope, no hived-honey of joyous memories, tries to live
+on the meagre diet of wishes, and failing to derive thence either
+delight or support, and feeling itself ready to perish with craving
+want, turns to philosophy, to resolution, to resignation; calls on all
+these gods for aid, calls vainly--is unheard, unhelped, and languishes.
+
+Caroline was a Christian; therefore in trouble she framed many a prayer
+after the Christian creed, preferred it with deep earnestness, begged
+for patience, strength, relief. This world, however, we all know, is the
+scene of trial and probation; and, for any favourable result her
+petitions had yet wrought, it seemed to her that they were unheard and
+unaccepted. She believed, sometimes, that God had turned His face from
+her. At moments she was a Calvinist, and, sinking into the gulf of
+religious despair, she saw darkening over her the doom of reprobation.
+
+Most people have had a period or periods in their lives when they have
+felt thus forsaken--when, having long hoped against hope, and still seen
+the day of fruition deferred, their hearts have truly sickened within
+them. This is a terrible hour, but it is often that darkest point which
+precedes the rise of day--that turn of the year when the icy January
+wind carries over the waste at once the dirge of departing winter and
+the prophecy of coming spring. The perishing birds, however, cannot thus
+understand the blast before which they shiver; and as little can the
+suffering soul recognize, in the climax of its affliction, the dawn of
+its deliverance. Yet, let whoever grieves still cling fast to love and
+faith in God. God will never deceive, never finally desert him. "Whom He
+loveth, He chasteneth." These words are true, and should not be
+forgotten.
+
+The household was astir at last; the servants were up; the shutters were
+opened below. Caroline, as she quitted the couch, which had been but a
+thorny one to her, felt that revival of spirits which the return of day,
+of action, gives to all but the wholly despairing or actually dying. She
+dressed herself, as usual, carefully, trying so to arrange her hair and
+attire that nothing of the forlornness she felt at heart should be
+visible externally. She looked as fresh as Shirley when both were
+dressed, only that Miss Keeldar's eyes were lively, and Miss Helstone's
+languid.
+
+"To-day I shall have much to say to Moore," were Shirley's first words;
+and you could see in her face that life was full of interest,
+expectation, and occupation for her. "He will have to undergo
+cross-examination," she added. "I dare say he thinks he has outwitted me
+cleverly. And this is the way men deal with women--still concealing
+danger from them--thinking, I suppose, to spare them pain. They
+imagined we little knew where they were to-night. We _know_ they little
+conjectured where we were. Men, I believe, fancy women's minds something
+like those of children. Now, that is a mistake."
+
+This was said as she stood at the glass, training her naturally waved
+hair into curls, by twining it round her fingers. She took up the theme
+again five minutes after, as Caroline fastened her dress and clasped her
+girdle.
+
+"If men could see us as we really are, they would be a little amazed;
+but the cleverest, the acutest men are often under an illusion about
+women. They do not read them in a true light; they misapprehend them,
+both for good and evil. Their good woman is a queer thing, half doll,
+half angel; their bad woman almost always a fiend. Then to hear them
+fall into ecstasies with each other's creations--worshipping the heroine
+of such a poem, novel, drama--thinking it fine, divine! Fine and divine
+it may be, but often quite artificial--false as the rose in my best
+bonnet there. If I spoke all I think on this point, if I gave my real
+opinion of some first-rate female characters in first-rate works, where
+should I be? Dead under a cairn of avenging stones in half an hour."
+
+"Shirley, you chatter so, I can't fasten you. Be still. And, after all,
+authors' heroines are almost as good as authoresses' heroes."
+
+"Not at all. Women read men more truly than men read women. I'll prove
+that in a magazine paper some day when I've time; only it will never be
+inserted. It will be 'declined with thanks,' and left for me at the
+publisher's."
+
+"To be sure. You could not write cleverly enough. You don't know enough.
+You are not learned, Shirley."
+
+"God knows I can't contradict you, Cary; I'm as ignorant as a stone.
+There's one comfort, however: you are not much better."
+
+They descended to breakfast.
+
+"I wonder how Mrs. Pryor and Hortense Moore have passed the night," said
+Caroline, as she made the coffee. "Selfish being that I am, I never
+thought of either of them till just now. They will have heard all the
+tumult, Fieldhead and the cottage are so near; and Hortense is timid in
+such matters--so, no doubt, is Mrs. Pryor."
+
+"Take my word for it, Lina, Moore will have contrived to get his sister
+out of the way. She went home with Miss Mann. He will have quartered
+her there for the night. As to Mrs. Pryor, I own I am uneasy about her;
+but in another half-hour we will be with her."
+
+By this time the news of what had happened at the Hollow was spread all
+over the neighbourhood. Fanny, who had been to Fieldhead to fetch the
+milk, returned in panting haste with tidings that there had been a
+battle in the night at Mr. Moore's mill, and that some said twenty men
+were killed. Eliza, during Fanny's absence, had been apprised by the
+butcher's boy that the mill was burnt to the ground. Both women rushed
+into the parlour to announce these terrible facts to the ladies,
+terminating their clear and accurate narrative by the assertion that
+they were sure master must have been in it all. He and Thomas, the
+clerk, they were confident, must have gone last night to join Mr. Moore
+and the soldiers. Mr. Malone, too, had not been heard of at his lodgings
+since yesterday afternoon; and Joe Scott's wife and family were in the
+greatest distress, wondering what had become of their head.
+
+Scarcely was this information imparted when a knock at the kitchen door
+announced the Fieldhead errand-boy, arrived in hot haste, bearing a
+billet from Mrs. Pryor. It was hurriedly written, and urged Miss Keeldar
+to return directly, as the neighbourhood and the house seemed likely to
+be all in confusion, and orders would have to be given which the
+mistress of the hall alone could regulate. In a postscript it was
+entreated that Miss Helstone might not be left alone at the rectory. She
+had better, it was suggested, accompany Miss Keeldar.
+
+"There are not two opinions on that head," said Shirley, as she tied on
+her own bonnet, and then ran to fetch Caroline's.
+
+"But what will Fanny and Eliza do? And if my uncle returns?"
+
+"Your uncle will not return yet; he has other fish to fry. He will be
+galloping backwards and forwards from Briarfield to Stilbro' all day,
+rousing the magistrates in the court-house and the officers at the
+barracks; and Fanny and Eliza can have in Joe Scott's and the clerk's
+wives to bear them company. Besides, of course, there is no real danger
+to be apprehended now. Weeks will elapse before the rioters can again
+rally, or plan any other attempt; and I am much mistaken if Moore and
+Mr. Helstone will not take advantage of last night's outbreak to quell
+them altogether. They will frighten the authorities of Stilbro' into
+energetic measures. I only hope they will not be too severe--not pursue
+the discomfited too relentlessly."
+
+"Robert will not be cruel. We saw that last night," said Caroline.
+
+"But he will be hard," retorted Shirley; "and so will your uncle."
+
+As they hurried along the meadow and plantation path to Fieldhead, they
+saw the distant highway already alive with an unwonted flow of
+equestrians and pedestrians, tending in the direction of the usually
+solitary Hollow. On reaching the hall, they found the backyard gates
+open, and the court and kitchen seemed crowded with excited
+milk-fetchers--men, women, and children--whom Mrs. Gill, the
+housekeeper, appeared vainly persuading to take their milk-cans and
+depart. (It _is_, or _was_, by-the-bye, the custom in the north of
+England for the cottagers on a country squire's estate to receive their
+supplies of milk and butter from the dairy of the manor house, on whose
+pastures a herd of milch kine was usually fed for the convenience of the
+neighbourhood. Miss Keeldar owned such a herd--all deep-dewlapped,
+Craven cows, reared on the sweet herbage and clear waters of bonny
+Airedale; and very proud she was of their sleek aspect and high
+condition.) Seeing now the state of matters, and that it was desirable
+to effect a clearance of the premises, Shirley stepped in amongst the
+gossiping groups. She bade them good-morning with a certain frank,
+tranquil ease--the natural characteristic of her manner when she
+addressed numbers, especially if those numbers belonged to the
+working-class; she was cooler amongst her equals, and rather proud to
+those above her. She then asked them if they had all got their milk
+measured out; and understanding that they had, she further observed that
+she "wondered what they were waiting for, then."
+
+"We're just talking a bit over this battle there has been at your mill,
+mistress," replied a man.
+
+"Talking a bit! Just like you!" said Shirley. "It is a queer thing all
+the world is so fond of _talking_ over events. You _talk_ if anybody
+dies suddenly; you _talk_ if a fire breaks out; you _talk_ if a
+mill-owner fails; you _talk_ if he's murdered. What good does your
+talking do?"
+
+There is nothing the lower orders like better than a little downright
+good-humoured rating. Flattery they scorn very much; honest abuse they
+enjoy. They call it speaking plainly, and take a sincere delight in
+being the objects thereof. The homely harshness of Miss Keeldar's
+salutation won her the ear of the whole throng in a second.
+
+"We're no war nor some 'at is aboon us, are we?" asked a man, smiling.
+
+"Nor a whit better. You that should be models of industry are just as
+gossip-loving as the idle. Fine, rich people that have nothing to do may
+be partly excused for trifling their time away; you who have to earn
+your bread with the sweat of your brow are quite inexcusable."
+
+"That's queer, mistress. Suld we never have a holiday because we work
+hard?"
+
+"_Never_," was the prompt answer; "unless," added the "mistress," with a
+smile that half belied the severity of her speech--"unless you knew how
+to make a better use of it than to get together over rum and tea if you
+are women, or over beer and pipes if you are men, and _talk_ scandal at
+your neighbours' expense. Come, friends," she added, changing at once
+from bluntness to courtesy, "oblige me by taking your cans and going
+home. I expect several persons to call to-day, and it will be
+inconvenient to have the avenues to the house crowded."
+
+Yorkshire people are as yielding to persuasion as they are stubborn
+against compulsion. The yard was clear in five minutes.
+
+"Thank you, and good-bye to you, friends," said Shirley, as she closed
+the gates on a quiet court.
+
+Now, let me hear the most refined of cockneys presume to find fault with
+Yorkshire manners. Taken as they ought to be, the majority of the lads
+and lasses of the West Riding are gentlemen and ladies, every inch of
+them. It is only against the weak affectation and futile pomposity of a
+would-be aristocrat they turn mutinous.
+
+Entering by the back way, the young ladies passed through the kitchen
+(or _house_, as the inner kitchen is called) to the hall. Mrs. Pryor
+came running down the oak staircase to meet them. She was all unnerved;
+her naturally sanguine complexion was pale; her usually placid, though
+timid, blue eye was wandering, unsettled, alarmed. She did not, however,
+break out into any exclamations, or hurried narrative of what had
+happened. Her predominant feeling had been in the course of the night,
+and was now this morning, a sense of dissatisfaction with herself that
+she could not feel firmer, cooler, more equal to the demands of the
+occasion.
+
+"You are aware," she began with a trembling voice, and yet the most
+conscientious anxiety to avoid exaggeration in what she was about to
+say, "that a body of rioters has attacked Mr. Moore's mill to-night. We
+heard the firing and confusion very plainly here; we none of us slept.
+It was a sad night. The house has been in great bustle all the morning
+with people coming and going. The servants have applied to me for orders
+and directions, which I really did not feel warranted in giving. Mr.
+Moore has, I believe, sent up for refreshments for the soldiers and
+others engaged in the defence, for some conveniences also for the
+wounded. I could not undertake the responsibility of giving orders or
+taking measures. I fear delay may have been injurious in some instances;
+but this is not my house. You were absent, my dear Miss Keeldar. What
+could I do?"
+
+"Were no refreshments sent?" asked Shirley, while her countenance,
+hitherto so clear, propitious, and quiet, even while she was rating the
+milk-fetchers, suddenly turned dark and warm.
+
+"I think not, my dear."
+
+"And nothing for the wounded--no linen, no wine, no bedding?"
+
+"I think not. I cannot tell what Mrs. Gill did; but it seemed impossible
+to me, at the moment, to venture to dispose of your property by sending
+supplies to soldiers. Provisions for a company of soldiers sounds
+formidable. How many there are I did not ask; but I could not think of
+allowing them to pillage the house, as it were. I intended to do what
+was right, yet I did not see the case quite clearly, I own."
+
+"It lies in a nutshell, notwithstanding. These soldiers have risked
+their lives in defence of my property: I suppose they have a right to my
+gratitude. The wounded are our fellow-creatures: I suppose we should aid
+them.--Mrs. Gill!"
+
+She turned, and called in a voice more clear than soft. It rang through
+the thick oak of the hall and kitchen doors more effectually than a
+bell's summons. Mrs. Gill, who was deep in bread-making, came with hands
+and apron in culinary case, not having dared to stop to rub the dough
+from the one or to shake the flour from the other. Her mistress had
+never called a servant in that voice save once before, and that was when
+she had seen from the window Tartar in full tug with two carriers' dogs,
+each of them a match for him in size, if not in courage, and their
+masters standing by, encouraging their animals, while hers was
+unbefriended. Then indeed she had summoned John as if the Day of
+Judgment were at hand. Nor had she waited for the said John's coming,
+but had walked out into the lane bonnetless, and after informing the
+carriers that she held them far less of men than the three brutes
+whirling and worrying in the dust before them, had put her hands round
+the thick neck of the largest of the curs, and given her whole strength
+to the essay of choking it from Tartar's torn and bleeding eye, just
+above and below which organ the vengeful fangs were inserted. Five or
+six men were presently on the spot to help her, but she never thanked
+one of them. "They might have come before if their will had been good,"
+she said. She had not a word for anybody during the rest of the day, but
+sat near the hall fire till evening watching and tending Tartar, who lay
+all gory, stiff, and swelled on a mat at her feet. She wept furtively
+over him sometimes, and murmured the softest words of pity and
+endearment, in tones whose music the old, scarred, canine warrior
+acknowledged by licking her hand or her sandal alternately with his own
+red wounds. As to John, his lady turned a cold shoulder on him for a
+week afterwards.
+
+Mrs. Gill, remembering this little episode, came "all of a tremble," as
+she said herself. In a firm, brief voice Miss Keeldar proceeded to put
+questions and give orders. That at such a time Fieldhead should have
+evinced the inhospitality of a miser's hovel stung her haughty spirit to
+the quick; and the revolt of its pride was seen in the heaving of her
+heart, stirred stormily under the lace and silk which veiled it.
+
+"How long is it since that message came from the mill?"
+
+"Not an hour yet, ma'am," answered the housekeeper soothingly.
+
+"Not an hour! You might almost as well have said not a day. They will
+have applied elsewhere by this time. Send a man instantly down to tell
+them that everything this house contains is at Mr. Moore's, Mr.
+Helstone's, and the soldiers' service. Do that first."
+
+While the order was being executed, Shirley moved away from her friends,
+and stood at the hall-window, silent, unapproachable. When Mrs. Gill
+came back, she turned. The purple flush which painful excitement kindles
+on a pale cheek glowed on hers; the spark which displeasure lights in a
+dark eye fired her glance.
+
+"Let the contents of the larder and the wine-cellar be brought up, put
+into the hay-carts, and driven down to the Hollow. If there does not
+happen to be much bread or much meat in the house, go to the butcher and
+baker, and desire them to send what they have. But I will see for
+myself."
+
+She moved off.
+
+"All will be right soon; she will get over it in an hour," whispered
+Caroline to Mrs. Pryor. "Go upstairs, dear madam," she added
+affectionately, "and try to be as calm and easy as you can. The truth
+is, Shirley will blame herself more than you before the day is over."
+
+By dint of a few more gentle assurances and persuasions, Miss Helstone
+contrived to soothe the agitated lady. Having accompanied her to her
+apartment, and promised to rejoin her there when things were settled,
+Caroline left her to see, as she said, "if she could be useful." She
+presently found that she could be very useful; for the retinue of
+servants at Fieldhead was by no means numerous, and just now their
+mistress found plenty of occupation for all the hands at her command,
+and for her own also. The delicate good-nature and dexterous activity
+which Caroline brought to the aid of the housekeeper and maids--all
+somewhat scared by their lady's unwonted mood--did a world of good at
+once; it helped the assistants and appeased the directress. A chance
+glance and smile from Caroline moved Shirley to an answering smile
+directly. The former was carrying a heavy basket up the cellar stairs.
+
+"This is a shame!" cried Shirley, running to her. "It will strain your
+arm."
+
+She took it from her, and herself bore it out into the yard. The cloud
+of temper was dispelled when she came back; the flash in her eye was
+melted; the shade on her forehead vanished. She resumed her usual
+cheerful and cordial manner to those about her, tempering her revived
+spirits with a little of the softness of shame at her previous unjust
+anger.
+
+She was still superintending the lading of the cart, when a gentleman
+entered the yard and approached her ere she was aware of his presence.
+
+"I hope I see Miss Keeldar well this morning?" he said, examining with
+rather significant scrutiny her still flushed face.
+
+She gave him a look, and then again bent to her employment without
+reply. A pleasant enough smile played on her lips, but she hid it. The
+gentleman repeated his salutation, stooping, that it might reach her ear
+with more facility.
+
+"Well enough, if she be good enough," was the answer; "and so is Mr.
+Moore too, I dare say. To speak truth, I am not anxious about him; some
+slight mischance would be only his just due. His conduct has been--we
+will say _strange_ just now, till we have time to characterize it by a
+more exact epithet. Meantime, may I ask what brings him here?"
+
+"Mr. Helstone and I have just received your message that everything at
+Fieldhead was at our service. We judged, by the unlimited wording of the
+gracious intimation, that you would be giving yourself too much trouble.
+I perceive our conjecture was correct. We are not a regiment,
+remember--only about half a dozen soldiers and as many civilians. Allow
+me to retrench something from these too abundant supplies."
+
+Miss Keeldar blushed, while she laughed at her own over-eager generosity
+and most disproportionate calculations. Moore laughed too, very quietly
+though; and as quietly he ordered basket after basket to be taken from
+the cart, and remanded vessel after vessel to the cellar.
+
+"The rector must hear of this," he said; "he will make a good story of
+it. What an excellent army contractor Miss Keeldar would have been!"
+Again he laughed, adding, "It is precisely as I conjectured."
+
+"You ought to be thankful," said Shirley, "and not mock me. What could I
+do? How could I gauge your appetites or number your band? For aught I
+knew, there might have been fifty of you at least to victual. You told
+me nothing; and then an application to provision soldiers naturally
+suggests large ideas."
+
+"It appears so," remarked Moore, levelling another of his keen, quiet
+glances at the discomfited Shirley.--"Now," he continued, addressing the
+carter, "I think you may take what remains to the Hollow. Your load will
+be somewhat lighter than the one Miss Keeldar destined you to carry."
+
+As the vehicle rumbled out of the yard, Shirley, rallying her spirits,
+demanded what had become of the wounded.
+
+"There was not a single man hurt on our side," was the answer.
+
+"You were hurt yourself, on the temples," interposed a quick, low
+voice--that of Caroline, who, having withdrawn within the shade of the
+door, and behind the large person of Mrs. Gill, had till now escaped
+Moore's notice. When she spoke, his eye searched the obscurity of her
+retreat.
+
+"Are you much hurt?" she inquired.
+
+"As you might scratch your finger with a needle in sewing."
+
+"Lift your hair and let us see."
+
+He took his hat off, and did as he was bid, disclosing only a narrow
+slip of court-plaster. Caroline indicated, by a slight movement of the
+head, that she was satisfied, and disappeared within the clear obscure
+of the interior.
+
+"How did she know I was hurt?" asked Moore.
+
+"By rumour, no doubt. But it is too good in her to trouble herself about
+you. For my part, it was of your victims I was thinking when I inquired
+after the wounded. What damage have your opponents sustained?"
+
+"One of the rioters, or victims as you call them, was killed, and six
+were hurt."
+
+"What have you done with them?"
+
+"What you will perfectly approve. Medical aid was procured immediately;
+and as soon as we can get a couple of covered wagons and some clean
+straw, they will be removed to Stilbro'."
+
+"Straw! You must have beds and bedding. I will send my wagon directly,
+properly furnished; and Mr. Yorke, I am sure, will send his."
+
+"You guess correctly; he has volunteered already. And Mrs. Yorke--who,
+like you, seems disposed to regard the rioters as martyrs, and me, and
+especially Mr. Helstone, as murderers--is at this moment, I believe,
+most assiduously engaged in fitting it up with feather-beds, pillows,
+bolsters, blankets, etc. The _victims_ lack no attentions, I promise
+you. Mr. Hall, your favourite parson, has been with them ever since six
+o'clock, exhorting them, praying with them, and even waiting on them
+like any nurse; and Caroline's good friend, Miss Ainley, that _very_
+plain old maid, sent in a stock of lint and linen, something in the
+proportion of another lady's allowance of beef and wine."
+
+"That will do. Where is your sister?"
+
+"Well cared for. I had her securely domiciled with Miss Mann. This very
+morning the two set out for Wormwood Wells [a noted watering-place],
+and will stay there some weeks."
+
+"So Mr. Helstone domiciled me at the rectory! Mighty clever you
+gentlemen think you are! I make you heartily welcome to the idea, and
+hope its savour, as you chew the cud of reflection upon it, gives you
+pleasure. Acute and astute, why are you not also omniscient? How is it
+that events transpire, under your very noses, of which you have no
+suspicion? It should be so, otherwise the exquisite gratification of
+outmanoeuvring you would be unknown. Ah, friend, you may search my
+countenance, but you cannot read it."
+
+Moore, indeed, looked as if he could not.
+
+"You think me a dangerous specimen of my sex. Don't you now?"
+
+"A peculiar one, at least."
+
+"But Caroline--is she peculiar?"
+
+"In her way--yes."
+
+"Her way! What is her way?"
+
+"You know her as well as I do."
+
+"And knowing her, I assert that she is neither eccentric nor difficult
+of control. Is she?"
+
+"That depends----"
+
+"However, there is nothing masculine about _her_?"
+
+"Why lay such emphasis on _her_? Do you consider her a contrast, in that
+respect, to yourself?"
+
+"You do, no doubt; but that does not signify. Caroline is neither
+masculine, nor of what they call the spirited order of women."
+
+"I have seen her flash out."
+
+"So have I, but not with manly fire. It was a short, vivid, trembling
+glow, that shot up, shone, vanished----"
+
+"And left her scared at her own daring. You describe others besides
+Caroline."
+
+"The point I wish to establish is, that Miss Helstone, though gentle,
+tractable, and candid enough, is still perfectly capable of defying even
+Mr. Moore's penetration."
+
+"What have you and she been doing?" asked Moore suddenly.
+
+"Have you had any breakfast?"
+
+"What is your mutual mystery?"
+
+"If you are hungry, Mrs. Gill will give you something to eat here. Step
+into the oak parlour, and ring the bell. You will be served as if at an
+inn; or, if you like better, go back to the Hollow."
+
+"The alternative is not open to me; I _must_ go back. Good-morning. The
+first leisure I have I will see you again."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+MRS. PRYOR.
+
+
+While Shirley was talking with Moore, Caroline rejoined Mrs. Pryor
+upstairs. She found that lady deeply depressed. She would not say that
+Miss Keeldar's hastiness had hurt her feelings, but it was evident an
+inward wound galled her. To any but a congenial nature she would have
+seemed insensible to the quiet, tender attentions by which Miss Helstone
+sought to impart solace; but Caroline knew that, unmoved or slightly
+moved as she looked, she felt, valued, and was healed by them.
+
+"I am deficient in self-confidence and decision," she said at last. "I
+always have been deficient in those qualities. Yet I think Miss Keeldar
+should have known my character well enough by this time to be aware that
+I always feel an even painful solicitude to do right, to act for the
+best. The unusual nature of the demand on my judgment puzzled me,
+especially following the alarms of the night. I could not venture to act
+promptly for another; but I trust no serious harm will result from my
+lapse of firmness."
+
+A gentle knock was here heard at the door. It was half opened.
+
+"Caroline, come here," said a low voice.
+
+Miss Helstone went out. There stood Shirley in the gallery, looking
+contrite, ashamed, sorry as any repentant child.
+
+"How is Mrs. Pryor?" she asked.
+
+"Rather out of spirits," said Caroline.
+
+"I have behaved very shamefully, very ungenerously, very ungratefully to
+her," said Shirley. "How insolent in me to turn on her thus for what,
+after all, was no fault--only an excess of conscientiousness on her
+part. But I regret my error most sincerely. Tell her so, and ask if she
+will forgive me."
+
+Caroline discharged the errand with heartfelt pleasure. Mrs. Pryor rose,
+came to the door. She did not like scenes; she dreaded them as all
+timid people do. She said falteringly, "Come in, my dear."
+
+Shirley did come in with some impetuosity. She threw her arms round her
+governess, and while she kissed her heartily she said, "You know you
+_must_ forgive me, Mrs. Pryor. I could not get on at all if there was a
+misunderstanding between you and me."
+
+"I have nothing to forgive," was the reply. "We will pass it over now,
+if you please. The final result of the incident is that it proves more
+plainly than ever how unequal I am to certain crises."
+
+And that was the painful feeling which _would_ remain on Mrs. Pryor's
+mind. No effort of Shirley's or Caroline's could efface it thence. She
+could forgive her offending pupil, not her innocent self.
+
+Miss Keeldar, doomed to be in constant request during the morning, was
+presently summoned downstairs again. The rector called first. A lively
+welcome and livelier reprimand were at his service. He expected both,
+and, being in high spirits, took them in equally good part.
+
+In the course of his brief visit he quite forgot to ask after his niece;
+the riot, the rioters, the mill, the magistrates, the heiress, absorbed
+all his thoughts to the exclusion of family ties. He alluded to the part
+himself and curate had taken in the defence of the Hollow.
+
+"The vials of pharisaical wrath will be emptied on our heads for our
+share in this business," he said; "but I defy every calumniator. I was
+there only to support the law, to play my part as a man and a Briton;
+which characters I deem quite compatible with those of the priest and
+Levite, in their highest sense. Your tenant Moore," he went on, "has won
+my approbation. A cooler commander I would not wish to see, nor a more
+determined. Besides, the man has shown sound judgment and good
+sense--first, in being thoroughly prepared for the event which has taken
+place; and subsequently, when his well-concerted plans had secured him
+success, in knowing how to use without abusing his victory. Some of the
+magistrates are now well frightened, and, like all cowards, show a
+tendency to be cruel. Moore restrains them with admirable prudence. He
+has hitherto been very unpopular in the neighbourhood; but, mark my
+words, the tide of opinion will now take a turn in his favour. People
+will find out that they have not appreciated him, and will hasten to
+remedy their error; and he, when he perceives the public disposed to
+acknowledge his merits, will show a more gracious mien than that with
+which he has hitherto favoured us."
+
+Mr. Helstone was about to add to this speech some half-jesting,
+half-serious warnings to Miss Keeldar on the subject of her rumoured
+partiality for her talented tenant, when a ring at the door, announcing
+another caller, checked his raillery; and as that other caller appeared
+in the form of a white-haired elderly gentleman, with a rather truculent
+countenance and disdainful eye--in short, our old acquaintance, and the
+rector's old enemy, Mr. Yorke--the priest and Levite seized his hat, and
+with the briefest of adieus to Miss Keeldar and the sternest of nods to
+her guest took an abrupt leave.
+
+Mr. Yorke was in no mild mood, and in no measured terms did he express
+his opinion on the transaction of the night. Moore, the magistrates, the
+soldiers, the mob leaders, each and all came in for a share of his
+invectives; but he reserved his strongest epithets--and real racy
+Yorkshire Doric adjectives they were--for the benefit of the fighting
+parsons, the "sanguinary, demoniac" rector and curate. According to him,
+the cup of ecclesiastical guilt was now full indeed.
+
+"The church," he said, "was in a bonny pickle now. It was time it came
+down when parsons took to swaggering amang soldiers, blazing away wi'
+bullet and gunpowder, taking the lives of far honester men than
+themselves."
+
+"What would Moore have done if nobody had helped him?" asked Shirley.
+
+"Drunk as he'd brewed, eaten as he'd baked."
+
+"Which means you would have left him by himself to face that mob. Good!
+He has plenty of courage, but the greatest amount of gallantry that ever
+garrisoned one human breast could scarce avail against two hundred."
+
+"He had the soldiers, those poor slaves who hire out their own blood and
+spill other folk's for money."
+
+"You abuse soldiers almost as much as you abuse clergymen. All who wear
+red coats are national refuse in your eyes, and all who wear black are
+national swindlers. Mr. Moore, according to you, did wrong to get
+military aid, and he did still worse to accept of any other aid. Your
+way of talking amounts to this: he should have abandoned his mill and
+his life to the rage of a set of misguided madmen, and Mr. Helstone and
+every other gentleman in the parish should have looked on, and seen the
+building razed and its owner slaughtered, and never stirred a finger to
+save either."
+
+"If Moore had behaved to his men from the beginning as a master ought to
+behave, they never would have entertained their present feelings towards
+him."
+
+"Easy for you to talk," exclaimed Miss Keeldar, who was beginning to wax
+warm in her tenant's cause--"you, whose family have lived at Briarmains
+for six generations, to whose person the people have been accustomed for
+fifty years, who know all their ways, prejudices, and preferences--easy,
+indeed, for _you_ to act so as to avoid offending them. But Mr. Moore
+came a stranger into the district; he came here poor and friendless,
+with nothing but his own energies to back him, nothing but his honour,
+his talent, and his industry to make his way for him. A monstrous crime
+indeed that, under such circumstances, he could not popularize his
+naturally grave, quiet manners all at once; could not be jocular, and
+free, and cordial with a strange peasantry, as you are with your
+fellow-townsmen! An unpardonable transgression that when he introduced
+improvements he did not go about the business in quite the most politic
+way, did not graduate his changes as delicately as a rich capitalist
+might have done! For errors of this sort is he to be the victim of mob
+outrage? Is he to be denied even the privilege of defending himself? Are
+those who have the hearts of men in their breasts (and Mr. Helstone, say
+what you will of him, has such a heart) to be reviled like malefactors
+because they stand by him, because they venture to espouse the cause of
+one against two hundred?"
+
+"Come, come now, be cool," said Mr. Yorke, smiling at the earnestness
+with which Shirley multiplied her rapid questions.
+
+"Cool! Must I listen coolly to downright nonsense--to dangerous
+nonsense? No. I like you very well, Mr. Yorke, as you know, but I
+thoroughly dislike some of your principles. All that cant--excuse me,
+but I repeat the word--all that _cant_ about soldiers and parsons is
+most offensive in my ears. All ridiculous, irrational crying up of one
+class, whether the same be aristocrat or democrat--all howling down of
+another class, whether clerical or military--all exacting injustice to
+individuals, whether monarch or mendicant--is really sickening to me;
+all arraying of ranks against ranks, all party hatreds, all tyrannies
+disguised as liberties, I reject and wash my hands of. _You_ think you
+are a philanthropist; _you_ think you are an advocate of liberty; but I
+will tell you this--Mr. Hall, the parson of Nunnely, is a better friend
+both of man and freedom than Hiram Yorke, the reformer of Briarfield."
+
+From a man Mr. Yorke would not have borne this language very patiently,
+nor would he have endured it from some women; but he accounted Shirley
+both honest and pretty, and her plain-spoken ire amused him. Besides, he
+took a secret pleasure in hearing her defend her tenant, for we have
+already intimated he had Robert Moore's interest very much at heart.
+Moreover, if he wished to avenge himself for her severity, he knew the
+means lay in his power: a word, he believed, would suffice to tame and
+silence her, to cover her frank forehead with the rosy shadow of shame,
+and veil the glow of her eye under down-drooped lid and lash.
+
+"What more hast thou to say?" he inquired, as she paused, rather, it
+appeared, to take breath than because her subject or her zeal was
+exhausted.
+
+"Say, Mr. Yorke!" was the answer, the speaker meantime walking fast from
+wall to wall of the oak parlour--"say? I have a great deal to say, if I
+could get it out in lucid order, which I never _can_ do. I have to say
+that your views, and those of most extreme politicians, are such as none
+but men in an irresponsible position _can_ advocate; that they are
+purely opposition views, meant only to be talked about, and never
+intended to be acted on. Make you Prime Minister of England to-morrow,
+and you would have to abandon them. You abuse Moore for defending his
+mill. Had you been in Moore's place you could not with honour or sense
+have acted otherwise than he acted. You abuse Mr. Helstone for
+everything he does. Mr. Helstone has his faults; he sometimes does
+wrong, but oftener right. Were you ordained vicar of Briarfield, you
+would find it no easy task to sustain all the active schemes for the
+benefit of the parish planned and persevered in by your predecessor. I
+wonder people cannot judge more fairly of each other and themselves.
+When I hear Messrs. Malone and Donne chatter about the authority of the
+church, the dignity and claims of the priesthood, the deference due to
+them as clergymen; when I hear the outbreaks of their small spite
+against Dissenters; when I witness their silly, narrow jealousies and
+assumptions; when their palaver about forms, and traditions, and
+superstitions is sounding in my ear; when I behold their insolent
+carriage to the poor, their often base servility to the rich--I think
+the Establishment is indeed in a poor way, and both she and her sons
+appear in the utmost need of reformation. Turning away distressed from
+minster tower and village spire--ay, as distressed as a churchwarden who
+feels the exigence of white-wash and has not wherewithal to purchase
+lime--I recall your senseless sarcasms on the 'fat bishops,' the
+'pampered parsons,' 'old mother church,' etc. I remember your strictures
+on all who differ from you, your sweeping condemnation of classes and
+individuals, without the slightest allowance made for circumstances or
+temptations; and then, Mr. Yorke, doubt clutches my inmost heart as to
+whether men exist clement, reasonable, and just enough to be entrusted
+with the task of reform. I don't believe _you_ are of the number."
+
+"You have an ill opinion of me, Miss Shirley. You never told me so much
+of your mind before."
+
+"I never had an opening. But I have sat on Jessy's stool by your chair
+in the back-parlour at Briarmains, for evenings together, listening
+excitedly to your talk, half admiring what you said, and half rebelling
+against it. I think you a fine old Yorkshireman, sir. I am proud to have
+been born in the same county and parish as yourself. Truthful, upright,
+independent you are, as a rock based below seas; but also you are harsh,
+rude, narrow, and merciless."
+
+"Not to the poor, lass, nor to the meek of the earth; only to the proud
+and high-minded."
+
+"And what right have you, sir, to make such distinctions? A prouder, a
+higher-minded man than yourself does not exist. You find it easy to
+speak comfortably to your inferiors; you are too haughty, too ambitious,
+too jealous to be civil to those above you. But you are all alike.
+Helstone also is proud and prejudiced. Moore, though juster and more
+considerate than either you or the rector, is still haughty, stern, and,
+in a public sense, selfish. It is well there are such men as Mr. Hall to
+be found occasionally--men of large and kind hearts, who can love their
+whole race, who can forgive others for being richer, more prosperous, or
+more powerful than they are. Such men may have less originality, less
+force of character than you, but they are better friends to mankind."
+
+"And when is it to be?" said Mr. Yorke, now rising.
+
+"When is what to be?"
+
+"The wedding."
+
+"Whose wedding?"
+
+"Only that of Robert Gérard Moore, Esq., of Hollow's Cottage, with Miss
+Keeldar, daughter and heiress of the late Charles Cave Keeldar of
+Fieldhead Hall."
+
+Shirley gazed at the questioner with rising colour. But the light in her
+eye was not faltering; it shone steadily--yes, it burned deeply.
+
+"That is your revenge," she said slowly; then added, "Would it be a bad
+match, unworthy of the late Charles Cave Keeldar's representative?"
+
+"My lass, Moore is a gentleman; his blood is pure and ancient as mine or
+thine."
+
+"And we two set store by ancient blood? We have family pride, though one
+of us at least is a republican?"
+
+Yorke bowed as he stood before her. His lips were mute, but his eye
+confessed the impeachment. Yes, he had family pride; you saw it in his
+whole bearing.
+
+"Moore _is_ a gentleman," echoed Shirley, lifting her head with glad
+grace. She checked herself. Words seemed crowding to her tongue. She
+would not give them utterance; but her look spoke much at the moment.
+What, Yorke tried to read, but could not. The language was there,
+visible, but untranslatable--a poem, a fervid lyric, in an unknown
+tongue. It was not a plain story, however, no simple gush of feeling, no
+ordinary love-confession--that was obvious. It was something other,
+deeper, more intricate than he guessed at. He felt his revenge had not
+struck home. He felt that Shirley triumphed. She held him at fault,
+baffled, puzzled. _She_ enjoyed the moment, not _he_.
+
+"And if Moore _is_ a gentleman, you _can_ be only a lady; therefore----"
+
+"Therefore there would be no inequality in our union."
+
+"None."
+
+"Thank you for your approbation. Will you give me away when I relinquish
+the name of Keeldar for that of Moore?"
+
+Mr. Yorke, instead of replying, gazed at her much puzzled. He could not
+divine what her look signified--whether she spoke in earnest or in jest.
+There were purpose and feeling, banter and scoff, playing, mingled, on
+her mobile lineaments.
+
+"I don't understand thee," he said, turning away.
+
+She laughed. "Take courage, sir; you are not singular in your ignorance.
+But I suppose if Moore understands me that will do, will it not?"
+
+"Moore may settle his own matters henceforward for me; I'll neither
+meddle nor make with them further."
+
+A new thought crossed her. Her countenance changed magically. With a
+sudden darkening of the eye and austere fixing of the features she
+demanded, "Have you been asked to interfere? Are you questioning me as
+another's proxy?"
+
+"The Lord save us! Whoever weds thee must look about him! Keep all your
+questions for Robert; I'll answer no more on 'em. Good-day, lassie!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The day being fine, or at least fair--for soft clouds curtained the sun,
+and a dim but not chill or waterish haze slept blue on the
+hills--Caroline, while Shirley was engaged with her callers, had
+persuaded Mrs. Pryor to assume her bonnet and summer shawl, and to take
+a walk with her up towards the narrow end of the Hollow.
+
+Here the opposing sides of the glen, approaching each other and becoming
+clothed with brushwood and stunted oaks, formed a wooded ravine, at the
+bottom of which ran the mill-stream, in broken, unquiet course,
+struggling with many stones, chafing against rugged banks, fretting with
+gnarled tree-roots, foaming, gurgling, battling as it went. Here, when
+you had wandered half a mile from the mill, you found a sense of deep
+solitude--found it in the shade of unmolested trees, received it in the
+singing of many birds, for which that shade made a home. This was no
+trodden way. The freshness of the wood flowers attested that foot of man
+seldom pressed them; the abounding wild roses looked as if they budded,
+bloomed, and faded under the watch of solitude, as if in a sultan's
+harem. Here you saw the sweet azure of blue-bells, and recognized in
+pearl-white blossoms, spangling the grass, a humble type of some starlit
+spot in space.
+
+Mrs. Pryor liked a quiet walk. She ever shunned high-roads, and sought
+byways and lonely lanes. One companion she preferred to total solitude,
+for in solitude she was nervous; a vague fear of annoying encounters
+broke the enjoyment of quite lonely rambles. But she feared nothing with
+Caroline. When once she got away from human habitations, and entered
+the still demesne of nature accompanied by this one youthful friend, a
+propitious change seemed to steal over her mind and beam in her
+countenance. When with Caroline--and Caroline only--her heart, you would
+have said, shook off a burden, her brow put aside a veil, her spirits
+too escaped from a restraint. With her she was cheerful; with her, at
+times, she was tender; to her she would impart her knowledge, reveal
+glimpses of her experience, give her opportunities for guessing what
+life she had lived, what cultivation her mind had received, of what
+calibre was her intelligence, how and where her feelings were
+vulnerable.
+
+To-day, for instance, as they walked along, Mrs. Pryor talked to her
+companion about the various birds singing in the trees, discriminated
+their species, and said something about their habits and peculiarities.
+English natural history seemed familiar to her. All the wild flowers
+round their path were recognized by her; tiny plants springing near
+stones and peeping out of chinks in old walls--plants such as Caroline
+had scarcely noticed before--received a name and an intimation of their
+properties. It appeared that she had minutely studied the botany of
+English fields and woods. Having reached the head of the ravine, they
+sat down together on a ledge of gray and mossy rock jutting from the
+base of a steep green hill which towered above them. She looked round
+her, and spoke of the neighbourhood as she had once before seen it long
+ago. She alluded to its changes, and compared its aspect with that of
+other parts of England, revealing in quiet, unconscious touches of
+description a sense of the picturesque, an appreciation of the beautiful
+or commonplace, a power of comparing the wild with the cultured, the
+grand with the tame, that gave to her discourse a graphic charm as
+pleasant as it was unpretending.
+
+The sort of reverent pleasure with which Caroline listened--so sincere,
+so quiet, yet so evident--stirred the elder lady's faculties to gentle
+animation. Rarely, probably, had she, with her chill, repellent outside,
+her diffident mien, and incommunicative habits, known what it was to
+excite in one whom she herself could love feelings of earnest affection
+and admiring esteem. Delightful, doubtless, was the consciousness that a
+young girl towards whom it seemed, judging by the moved expression of
+her eyes and features, her heart turned with almost a fond impulse,
+looked up to her as an instructor, and clung to her as a friend. With a
+somewhat more marked accent of interest than she often permitted herself
+to use, she said, as she bent towards her youthful companion, and put
+aside from her forehead a pale brown curl which had strayed from the
+confining comb, "I do hope this sweet air blowing from the hill will do
+you good, my dear Caroline. I wish I could see something more of colour
+in these cheeks; but perhaps you were never florid?"
+
+"I had red cheeks once," returned Miss Helstone, smiling. "I remember a
+year--two years ago--when I used to look in the glass, I saw a different
+face there to what I see now--rounder and rosier. But when we are
+young," added the girl of eighteen, "our minds are careless and our
+lives easy."
+
+"Do you," continued Mrs. Pryor, mastering by an effort that tyrant
+timidity which made it difficult for her, even under present
+circumstances, to attempt the scrutiny of another's heart--"do you, at
+your age, fret yourself with cares for the future? Believe me, you had
+better not. Let the morrow take thought for the things of itself."
+
+"True, dear madam. It is not over the future I pine. The evil of the day
+is sometimes oppressive--too oppressive--and I long to escape it."
+
+"That is--the evil of the day--that is--your uncle perhaps is not--you
+find it difficult to understand--he does not appreciate----"
+
+Mrs. Pryor could not complete her broken sentences; she could not manage
+to put the question whether Mr. Helstone was too harsh with his niece.
+But Caroline comprehended.
+
+"Oh, that is nothing," she replied. "My uncle and I get on very well. We
+never quarrel--I don't call him harsh--he never scolds me. Sometimes I
+wish somebody in the world loved me, but I cannot say that I
+particularly wish him to have more affection for me than he has. As a
+child, I should perhaps have felt the want of attention, only the
+servants were very kind to me; but when people are long indifferent to
+us, we grow indifferent to their indifference. It is my uncle's way not
+to care for women and girls, unless they be ladies that he meets in
+company. He could not alter, and I have no wish that he should alter, as
+far as I am concerned. I believe it would merely annoy and frighten me
+were he to be affectionate towards me now. But you know, Mrs. Pryor, it
+is scarcely _living_ to measure time as I do at the rectory. The hours
+pass, and I get them over somehow, but I do not _live_. I endure
+existence, but I rarely enjoy it. Since Miss Keeldar and you came I have
+been--I was going to say happier, but that would be untrue." She paused.
+
+"How untrue? You are fond of Miss Keeldar, are you not, my dear?"
+
+"Very fond of Shirley. I both like and admire her. But I am painfully
+circumstanced. For a reason I cannot explain I want to go away from this
+place, and to forget it."
+
+"You told me before you wished to be a governess; but, my dear, if you
+remember, I did not encourage the idea. I have been a governess myself
+great part of my life. In Miss Keeldar's acquaintance I esteem myself
+most fortunate. Her talents and her really sweet disposition have
+rendered my office easy to me; but when I was young, before I married,
+my trials were severe, poignant. I should not like a---- I should not
+like you to endure similar ones. It was my lot to enter a family of
+considerable pretensions to good birth and mental superiority, and the
+members of which also believed that 'on them was perceptible' an unusual
+endowment of the 'Christian graces;' that all their hearts were
+regenerate, and their spirits in a peculiar state of discipline. I was
+early given to understand that 'as I was not their equal,' so I could
+not expect 'to have their sympathy.' It was in no sort concealed from me
+that I was held a 'burden and a restraint in society.' The gentlemen, I
+found, regarded me as a 'tabooed woman,' to whom 'they were interdicted
+from granting the usual privileges of the sex,' and yet 'who annoyed
+them by frequently crossing their path.' The ladies too made it plain
+that they thought me 'a bore.' The servants, it was signified, 'detested
+me;' _why_, I could never clearly comprehend. My pupils, I was told,
+'however much they might love me, and how deep soever the interest I
+might take in them, could not be my friends.' It was intimated that I
+must 'live alone, and never transgress the invisible but rigid line
+which established the difference between me and my employers.' My life
+in this house was sedentary, solitary, constrained, joyless, toilsome.
+The dreadful crushing of the animal spirits, the ever-prevailing sense
+of friendlessness and homelessness consequent on this state of things
+began ere long to produce mortal effects on my constitution. I sickened.
+The lady of the house told me coolly I was the victim of 'wounded
+vanity.' She hinted that if I did not make an effort to quell my
+'ungodly discontent,' to cease 'murmuring against God's appointment,'
+and to cultivate the profound humility befitting my station, my mind
+would very likely 'go to pieces' on the rock that wrecked most of my
+sisterhood--morbid self-esteem--and that I should die an inmate of a
+lunatic asylum.
+
+"I said nothing to Mrs. Hardman--it would have been useless; but to her
+eldest daughter I one day dropped a few observations, which were
+answered thus. There were hardships, she allowed, in the position of a
+governess. 'Doubtless they had their trials; but,' she averred, with a
+manner it makes me smile now to recall--'but it must be so. _She_' (Miss
+H.) 'had neither view, hope, nor _wish_ to see these things remedied;
+for in the inherent constitution of English habits, feelings, and
+prejudices there was no possibility that they should be. Governesses,'
+she observed, 'must ever be kept in a sort of isolation. It is the only
+means of maintaining that distance which the reserve of English manners
+and the decorum of English families exact.'
+
+"I remember I sighed as Miss Hardman quitted my bedside. She caught the
+sound, and turning, said severely, 'I fear, Miss Grey, you have
+inherited in fullest measure the worst sin of our fallen nature--the sin
+of pride. You are proud, and therefore you are ungrateful too. Mamma
+pays you a handsome salary, and if you had average sense you would
+thankfully put up with much that is fatiguing to do and irksome to bear,
+since it is so well made worth your while.'
+
+"Miss Hardman, my love, was a very strong-minded young lady, of most
+distinguished talents. The aristocracy are decidedly a very superior
+class, you know, both physically, and morally, and mentally; as a high
+Tory I acknowledge that. I could not describe the dignity of her voice
+and mien as she addressed me thus; still, I fear she was selfish, my
+dear. I would never wish to speak ill of my superiors in rank, but I
+think she was a little selfish."
+
+"I remember," continued Mrs. Pryor, after a pause, "another of Miss H.'s
+observations, which she would utter with quite a grand air. 'WE,' she
+would say--'WE need the imprudences, extravagances, mistakes, and crimes
+of a certain number of fathers to sow the seed from which WE reap the
+harvest of governesses. The daughters of trades-people, however well
+educated, must necessarily be underbred, and as such unfit to be
+inmates of OUR dwellings, or guardians of OUR children's minds and
+persons. WE shall ever prefer to place those about OUR offspring who
+have been born and bred with somewhat of the same refinement as
+OURSELVES.'"
+
+"Miss Hardman must have thought herself something better than her
+fellow-creatures, ma'am, since she held that their calamities, and even
+crimes, were necessary to minister to her convenience. You say she was
+religious. Her religion must have been that of the Pharisee who thanked
+God that he was not as other men are, nor even as that publican."
+
+"My dear, we will not discuss the point. I should be the last person to
+wish to instil into your mind any feeling of dissatisfaction with your
+lot in life, or any sentiment of envy or insubordination towards your
+superiors. Implicit submission to authorities, scrupulous deference to
+our betters (under which term I, of course, include the higher classes
+of society), are, in my opinion, indispensable to the well-being of
+every community. All I mean to say, my dear, is that you had better not
+attempt to be a governess, as the duties of the position would be too
+severe for your constitution. Not one word of disrespect would I breathe
+towards either Mrs. or Miss Hardman; only, recalling my own experience,
+I cannot but feel that, were you to fall under auspices such as theirs,
+you would contend a while courageously with your doom, then you would
+pine and grow too weak for your work; you would come home--if you still
+had a home--broken down. Those languishing years would follow of which
+none but the invalid and her immediate friends feel the heart-sickness
+and know the burden. Consumption or decline would close the chapter.
+Such is the history of many a life. I would not have it yours. My dear,
+we will now walk about a little, if you please."
+
+They both rose, and slowly paced a green natural terrace bordering the
+chasm.
+
+"My dear," ere long again began Mrs. Pryor, a sort of timid, embarrassed
+abruptness marking her manner as she spoke, "the young, especially those
+to whom nature has been favourable, often--frequently--anticipate--look
+forward to--to marriage as the end, the goal of their hopes."
+
+And she stopped. Caroline came to her relief with promptitude, showing a
+great deal more self-possession and courage than herself on the
+formidable topic now broached.
+
+"They do, and naturally," she replied, with a calm emphasis that
+startled Mrs. Pryor. "They look forward to marriage with some one they
+love as the brightest, the only bright destiny that can await them. Are
+they wrong?"
+
+"Oh, my dear!" exclaimed Mrs. Pryor, clasping her hands; and again she
+paused. Caroline turned a searching, an eager eye on the face of her
+friend: that face was much agitated. "My dear," she murmured, "life is
+an illusion."
+
+"But not love! Love is real--the most real, the most lasting, the
+sweetest and yet the bitterest thing we know."
+
+"My dear, it is very bitter. It is said to be strong--strong as death!
+Most of the cheats of existence are strong. As to their sweetness,
+nothing is so transitory; its date is a moment, the twinkling of an eye.
+The sting remains for ever. It may perish with the dawn of eternity, but
+it tortures through time into its deepest night."
+
+"Yes, it tortures through time," agreed Caroline, "except when it is
+mutual love."
+
+"Mutual love! My dear, romances are pernicious. You do not read them, I
+hope?"
+
+"Sometimes--whenever I can get them, indeed. But romance-writers might
+know nothing of love, judging by the way in which they treat of it."
+
+"Nothing whatever, my dear," assented Mrs. Pryor eagerly, "nor of
+marriage; and the false pictures they give of those subjects cannot be
+too strongly condemned. They are not like reality. They show you only
+the green, tempting surface of the marsh, and give not one faithful or
+truthful hint of the slough underneath."
+
+"But it is not always slough," objected Caroline. "There are happy
+marriages. Where affection is reciprocal and sincere, and minds are
+harmonious, marriage _must_ be happy."
+
+"It is never wholly happy. Two people can never literally be as one.
+There is, perhaps, a possibility of content under peculiar
+circumstances, such as are seldom combined; but it is as well not to run
+the risk--you may make fatal mistakes. Be satisfied, my dear. Let all
+the single be satisfied with their freedom."
+
+"You echo my uncle's words!" exclaimed Caroline, in a tone of dismay.
+"You speak like Mrs. Yorke in her most gloomy moments, like Miss Mann
+when she is most sourly and hypochondriacally disposed. This is
+terrible!"
+
+"No, it is only true. O child, you have only lived the pleasant morning
+time of life; the hot, weary noon, the sad evening, the sunless night,
+are yet to come for you. Mr. Helstone, you say, talks as I talk; and I
+wonder how Mrs. Matthewson Helstone would have talked had she been
+living. She died! she died!"
+
+"And, alas! my own mother and father----" exclaimed Caroline, struck by
+a sombre recollection.
+
+"What of them?"
+
+"Did I never tell you that they were separated?"
+
+"I have heard it."
+
+"They must, then, have been very miserable."
+
+"You see all _facts_ go to prove what I say."
+
+"In this case there ought to be no such thing as marriage."
+
+"There ought, my dear, were it only to prove that this life is a mere
+state of probation, wherein neither rest nor recompense is to be
+vouchsafed."
+
+"But your own marriage, Mrs. Pryor?"
+
+Mrs. Pryor shrank and shuddered as if a rude finger had pressed a naked
+nerve. Caroline felt she had touched what would not bear the slightest
+contact.
+
+"My marriage was unhappy," said the lady, summoning courage at last;
+"but yet----" She hesitated.
+
+"But yet," suggested Caroline, "not immitigably wretched?"
+
+"Not in its results, at least. No," she added, in a softer tone; "God
+mingles something of the balm of mercy even in vials of the most
+corrosive woe. He can so turn events that from the very same blind, rash
+act whence sprang the curse of half our life may flow the blessing of
+the remainder. Then I am of a peculiar disposition--I own that--far from
+facile, without address, in some points eccentric. I ought never to have
+married. Mine is not the nature easily to find a duplicate or likely to
+assimilate with a contrast. I was quite aware of my own ineligibility;
+and if I had not been so miserable as a governess, I never should have
+married; and then----"
+
+Caroline's eyes asked her to proceed. They entreated her to break the
+thick cloud of despair which her previous words had seemed to spread
+over life.
+
+"And then, my dear, Mr.--that is, the gentleman I married--was, perhaps,
+rather an exceptional than an average character. I hope, at least, the
+experience of few has been such as mine was, or that few have felt their
+sufferings as I felt mine. They nearly shook my mind; relief was so
+hopeless, redress so unattainable. But, my dear, I do not wish to
+dishearten; I only wish to warn you, and to prove that the single should
+not be too anxious to change their state, as they may change for the
+worse."
+
+"Thank you, my dear madam. I quite understand your kind intentions, but
+there is no fear of my falling into the error to which you allude. I, at
+least, have no thoughts of marriage, and for that reason I want to make
+myself a position by some other means."
+
+"My dear, listen to me. On what I am going to say I have carefully
+deliberated, having, indeed, revolved the subject in my thoughts ever
+since you first mentioned your wish to obtain a situation. You know I at
+present reside with Miss Keeldar in the capacity of companion. Should
+she marry (and that she _will_ marry ere long many circumstances induce
+me to conclude), I shall cease to be necessary to her in that capacity.
+I must tell you that I possess a small independency, arising partly from
+my own savings, and partly from a legacy left me some years since.
+Whenever I leave Fieldhead I shall take a house of my own. I could not
+endure to live in solitude. I have no relations whom I care to invite to
+close intimacy; for, as you must have observed, and as I have already
+avowed, my habits and tastes have their peculiarities. To you, my dear,
+I need not say I am attached; with you I am happier than I have ever
+been with any living thing" (this was said with marked emphasis). "Your
+society I should esteem a very dear privilege--an inestimable privilege,
+a comfort, a blessing. You shall come to me, then. Caroline, do you
+refuse me? I hope you can love me?"
+
+And with these two abrupt questions she stopped.
+
+"Indeed, I _do_ love you," was the reply. "I should like to live with
+you. But you are too kind."
+
+"All I have," went on Mrs. Pryor, "I would leave to you. You should be
+provided for. But never again say I am _too kind_. You pierce my heart,
+child!"
+
+"But, my dear madam--this generosity--I have no claim----"
+
+"Hush! you must not talk about it. There are some things we cannot bear
+to hear. Oh! it is late to begin, but I may yet live a few years. I can
+never wipe out the past, but perhaps a brief space in the future may
+yet be mine."
+
+Mrs. Pryor seemed deeply agitated. Large tears trembled in her eyes and
+rolled down her cheeks. Caroline kissed her, in her gentle, caressing
+way, saying softly, "I love you dearly. Don't cry."
+
+But the lady's whole frame seemed shaken. She sat down, bent her head to
+her knee, and wept aloud. Nothing could console her till the inward
+storm had had its way. At last the agony subsided of itself.
+
+"Poor thing!" she murmured, returning Caroline's kiss, "poor lonely
+lamb! But come," she added abruptly--"come; we must go home."
+
+For a short distance Mrs. Pryor walked very fast. By degrees, however,
+she calmed down to her wonted manner, fell into her usual characteristic
+pace--a peculiar one, like all her movements--and by the time they
+reached Fieldhead she had re-entered into herself. The outside was, as
+usual, still and shy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+TWO LIVES.
+
+
+Only half of Moore's activity and resolution had been seen in his
+defence of the mill; he showed the other half (and a terrible half it
+was) in the indefatigable, the relentless assiduity with which he
+pursued the leaders of the riot. The mob, the mere followers, he let
+alone. Perhaps an innate sense of justice told him that men misled by
+false counsel and goaded by privations are not fit objects of vengeance,
+and that he who would visit an even violent act on the bent head of
+suffering is a tyrant, not a judge. At all events, though he knew many
+of the number, having recognized them during the latter part of the
+attack when day began to dawn, he let them daily pass him on street and
+road without notice or threat.
+
+The leaders he did not know. They were strangers--emissaries from the
+large towns. Most of these were not members of the operative class. They
+were chiefly "down-draughts," bankrupts, men always in debt and often in
+drink, men who had nothing to lose, and much, in the way of character,
+cash, and cleanliness, to gain. These persons Moore hunted like any
+sleuth-hound, and well he liked the occupation. Its excitement was of a
+kind pleasant to his nature. He liked it better than making cloth.
+
+His horse must have hated these times, for it was ridden both hard and
+often. He almost lived on the road, and the fresh air was as welcome to
+his lungs as the policeman's quest to his mood; he preferred it to the
+steam of dye-houses. The magistrates of the district must have dreaded
+him. They were slow, timid men; he liked both to frighten and to rouse
+them. He liked to force them to betray a certain fear, which made them
+alike falter in resolve and recoil in action--the fear, simply, of
+assassination. This, indeed, was the dread which had hitherto hampered
+every manufacturer and almost every public man in the district. Helstone
+alone had ever repelled it. The old Cossack knew well he might be shot.
+He knew there was risk; but such death had for his nerves no terrors. It
+would have been his chosen, might he have had a choice.
+
+Moore likewise knew his danger. The result was an unquenchable scorn of
+the quarter whence such danger was to be apprehended. The consciousness
+that he hunted assassins was the spur in his high-mettled temper's
+flank. As for fear, he was too proud, too hard-natured (if you will),
+too phlegmatic a man to fear. Many a time he rode belated over the
+moors, moonlit or moonless as the case might be, with feelings far more
+elate, faculties far better refreshed, than when safety and stagnation
+environed him in the counting-house. Four was the number of the leaders
+to be accounted for. Two, in the course of a fortnight, were brought to
+bay near Stilbro'; the remaining two it was necessary to seek farther
+off. Their haunts were supposed to lie near Birmingham.
+
+Meantime the clothier did not neglect his battered mill. Its reparation
+was esteemed a light task, carpenters' and glaziers' work alone being
+needed. The rioters not having succeeded in effecting an entrance, his
+grim metal darlings--the machines--had escaped damage.
+
+Whether during this busy life--whether while stern justice and exacting
+business claimed his energies and harassed his thoughts--he now and then
+gave one moment, dedicated one effort, to keep alive gentler fires than
+those which smoulder in the fane of Nemesis, it was not easy to
+discover. He seldom went near Fieldhead; if he did, his visits were
+brief. If he called at the rectory, it was only to hold conferences with
+the rector in his study. He maintained his rigid course very steadily.
+Meantime the history of the year continued troubled. There was no lull
+in the tempest of war; her long hurricane still swept the Continent.
+There was not the faintest sign of serene weather, no opening amid "the
+clouds of battle-dust and smoke," no fall of pure dews genial to the
+olive, no cessation of the red rain which nourishes the baleful and
+glorious laurel. Meantime, Ruin had her sappers and miners at work under
+Moore's feet, and whether he rode or walked, whether he only crossed his
+counting-house hearth or galloped over sullen Rushedge, he was aware of
+a hollow echo, and felt the ground shake to his tread.
+
+While the summer thus passed with Moore, how did it lapse with Shirley
+and Caroline? Let us first visit the heiress. How does she look? Like a
+love-lorn maiden, pale and pining for a neglectful swain? Does she sit
+the day long bent over some sedentary task? Has she for ever a book in
+her hand, or sewing on her knee, and eyes only for that, and words for
+nothing, and thoughts unspoken?
+
+By no means. Shirley is all right. If her wistful cast of physiognomy is
+not gone, no more is her careless smile. She keeps her dark old
+manor-house light and bright with her cheery presence. The gallery and
+the low-ceiled chambers that open into it have learned lively echoes
+from her voice; the dim entrance-hall, with its one window, has grown
+pleasantly accustomed to the frequent rustle of a silk dress, as its
+wearer sweeps across from room to room, now carrying flowers to the
+barbarous peach-bloom salon, now entering the dining-room to open its
+casements and let in the scent of mignonette and sweet-briar, anon
+bringing plants from the staircase window to place in the sun at the
+open porch door.
+
+She takes her sewing occasionally; but, by some fatality, she is doomed
+never to sit steadily at it for above five minutes at a time. Her
+thimble is scarcely fitted on, her needle scarce threaded, when a sudden
+thought calls her upstairs. Perhaps she goes to seek some
+just-then-remembered old ivory-backed needle-book or older china-topped
+work-box, quite unneeded, but which seems at the moment indispensable;
+perhaps to arrange her hair, or a drawer which she recollects to have
+seen that morning in a state of curious confusion; perhaps only to take
+a peep from a particular window at a particular view, whence Briarfield
+church and rectory are visible, pleasantly bowered in trees. She has
+scarcely returned, and again taken up the slip of cambric or square of
+half-wrought canvas, when Tartar's bold scrape and strangled whistle are
+heard at the porch door, and she must run to open it for him. It is a
+hot day; he comes in panting; she must convoy him to the kitchen, and
+see with her own eyes that his water-bowl is replenished. Through the
+open kitchen door the court is visible, all sunny and gay, and peopled
+with turkeys and their poults, peahens and their chicks, pearl-flecked
+Guinea-fowls, and a bright variety of pure white, and purple-necked, and
+blue and cinnamon plumed pigeons. Irresistible spectacle to Shirley! She
+runs to the pantry for a roll, and she stands on the door step
+scattering crumbs. Around her throng her eager, plump, happy feathered
+vassals. John is about the stables, and John must be talked to, and her
+mare looked at. She is still petting and patting it when the cows come
+in to be milked. This is important; Shirley must stay and take a review
+of them all. There are perhaps some little calves, some little
+new-yeaned lambs--it may be twins, whose mothers have rejected them.
+Miss Keeldar must be introduced to them by John, must permit herself the
+treat of feeding them with her own hand, under the direction of her
+careful foreman. Meantime John moots doubtful questions about the
+farming of certain "crofts," and "ings," and "holmes," and his mistress
+is necessitated to fetch her garden-hat--a gipsy straw--and accompany
+him, over stile and along hedgerow, to hear the conclusion of the whole
+agricultural matter on the spot, and with the said "crofts," "ings," and
+"holms" under her eye. Bright afternoon thus wears into soft evening,
+and she comes home to a late tea, and after tea she never sews.
+
+After tea Shirley reads, and she is just about as tenacious of her book
+as she is lax of her needle. Her study is the rug, her seat a footstool,
+or perhaps only the carpet at Mrs. Pryor's feet: there she always
+learned her lessons when a child, and old habits have a strong power
+over her. The tawny and lionlike bulk of Tartar is ever stretched beside
+her, his negro muzzle laid on his fore paws--straight, strong, and
+shapely as the limbs of an Alpine wolf. One hand of the mistress
+generally reposes on the loving serf's rude head, because if she takes
+it away he groans and is discontented. Shirley's mind is given to her
+book. She lifts not her eyes; she neither stirs nor speaks--unless,
+indeed, it be to return a brief respectful answer to Mrs. Pryor, who
+addresses deprecatory phrases to her now and then.
+
+"My dear, you had better not have that great dog so near you; he is
+crushing the border of your dress."
+
+"Oh, it is only muslin. I can put a clean one on to-morrow."
+
+"My dear, I wish you could acquire the habit of sitting to a table when
+you read."
+
+"I will try, ma'am, some time; but it is so comfortable to do as one has
+always been accustomed to do."
+
+"My dear, let me beg of you to put that book down. You are trying your
+eyes by the doubtful firelight."
+
+"No, ma'am, not at all; my eyes are never tired."
+
+At last, however, a pale light falls on the page from the window. She
+looks; the moon is up. She closes the volume, rises, and walks through
+the room. Her book has perhaps been a good one; it has refreshed,
+refilled, rewarmed her heart; it has set her brain astir, furnished her
+mind with pictures. The still parlour, the clean hearth, the window
+opening on the twilight sky, and showing its "sweet regent," new throned
+and glorious, suffice to make earth an Eden, life a poem, for Shirley. A
+still, deep, inborn delight glows in her young veins, unmingled,
+untroubled, not to be reached or ravished by human agency, because by no
+human agency bestowed--the pure gift of God to His creature, the free
+dower of Nature to her child. This joy gives her experience of a
+genii-life. Buoyant, by green steps, by glad hills, all verdure and
+light, she reaches a station scarcely lower than that whence angels
+looked down on the dreamer of Bethel, and her eye seeks, and her soul
+possesses, the vision of life as she wishes it. No, not as she wishes
+it; she has not time to wish. The swift glory spreads out, sweeping and
+kindling, and multiplies its splendours faster than Thought can effect
+his combinations, faster than Aspiration can utter her longings. Shirley
+says nothing while the trance is upon her--she is quite mute; but if
+Mrs. Pryor speaks to her now, she goes out quietly, and continues her
+walk upstairs in the dim gallery.
+
+If Shirley were not an indolent, a reckless, an ignorant being, she
+would take a pen at such moments, or at least while the recollection of
+such moments was yet fresh on her spirit. She would seize, she would fix
+the apparition, tell the vision revealed. Had she a little more of the
+organ of acquisitiveness in her head, a little more of the love of
+property in her nature, she would take a good-sized sheet of paper and
+write plainly out, in her own queer but clear and legible hand, the
+story that has been narrated, the song that has been sung to her, and
+thus possess what she was enabled to create. But indolent she is,
+reckless she is, and most ignorant; for she does not know her dreams are
+rare, her feelings peculiar. She does not know, has never known, and
+will die without knowing, the full value of that spring whose bright
+fresh bubbling in her heart keeps it green.
+
+Shirley takes life easily. Is not that fact written in her eye? In her
+good-tempered moments is it not as full of lazy softness as in her brief
+fits of anger it is fulgent with quick-flashing fire? Her nature is in
+her eye. So long as she is calm, indolence, indulgence, humour, and
+tenderness possess that large gray sphere; incense her, a red ray
+pierces the dew, it quickens instantly to flame.
+
+Ere the month of July was past, Miss Keeldar would probably have started
+with Caroline on that northern tour they had planned; but just at that
+epoch an invasion befell Fieldhead. A genteel foraging party besieged
+Shirley in her castle, and compelled her to surrender at discretion. An
+uncle, an aunt, and two cousins from the south--a Mr., Mrs., and two
+Misses Sympson, of Sympson Grove, ----shire--came down upon her in
+state. The laws of hospitality obliged her to give in, which she did
+with a facility which somewhat surprised Caroline, who knew her to be
+prompt in action and fertile in expedient where a victory was to be
+gained for her will. Miss Helstone even asked her how it was she
+submitted so readily. She answered, old feelings had their power; she
+had passed two years of her early youth at Sympson Grove.
+
+"How did she like her relatives?"
+
+She had nothing in common with them, she replied. Little Harry Sympson,
+indeed, the sole son of the family, was very unlike his sisters, and of
+him she had formerly been fond; but he was not coming to Yorkshire--at
+least not yet.
+
+The next Sunday the Fieldhead pew in Briarfield Church appeared peopled
+with a prim, trim, fidgety, elderly gentleman, who shifted his
+spectacles, and changed his position every three minutes; a patient,
+placid-looking elderly lady in brown satin; and two pattern young
+ladies, in pattern attire, with pattern deportment. Shirley had the air
+of a black swan or a white crow in the midst of this party, and very
+forlorn was her aspect. Having brought her into respectable society, we
+will leave her there a while, and look after Miss Helstone.
+
+Separated from Miss Keeldar for the present, as she could not seek her
+in the midst of her fine relatives, scared away from Fieldhead by the
+visiting commotion which the new arrivals occasioned in the
+neighbourhood, Caroline was limited once more to the gray rectory, the
+solitary morning walk in remote by-paths, the long, lonely afternoon
+sitting in a quiet parlour which the sun forsook at noon, or in the
+garden alcove where it shone bright, yet sad, on the ripening red
+currants trained over the trellis, and on the fair monthly roses
+entwined between, and through them fell chequered on Caroline sitting in
+her white summer dress, still as a garden statue. There she read old
+books, taken from her uncle's library. The Greek and Latin were of no
+use to her, and its collection of light literature was chiefly contained
+on a shelf which had belonged to her aunt Mary--some venerable Lady's
+Magazines, that had once performed a sea-voyage with their owner, and
+undergone a storm, and whose pages were stained with salt water; some
+mad Methodist Magazines, full of miracles and apparitions, of
+preternatural warnings, ominous dreams, and frenzied fanaticism; the
+equally mad letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe from the Dead to the Living;
+a few old English classics. From these faded flowers Caroline had in her
+childhood extracted the honey; they were tasteless to her now. By way of
+change, and also of doing good, she would sew--make garments for the
+poor, according to good Miss Ainley's direction. Sometimes, as she felt
+and saw her tears fall slowly on her work, she would wonder how the
+excellent woman who had cut it out and arranged it for her managed to be
+so equably serene in _her_ solitude.
+
+"I never find Miss Ainley oppressed with despondency or lost in grief,"
+she thought; "yet her cottage is a still, dim little place, and she is
+without a bright hope or near friend in the world. I remember, though,
+she told me once she had tutored her thoughts to tend upwards to heaven.
+She allowed there was, and ever had been, little enjoyment in this world
+for her, and she looks, I suppose, to the bliss of the world to come. So
+do nuns, with their close cell, their iron lamp, their robe strait as a
+shroud, their bed narrow as a coffin. She says often she has no fear of
+death--no dread of the grave; no more, doubtless, had St. Simeon
+Stylites, lifted up terrible on his wild column in the wilderness; no
+more has the Hindu votary stretched on his couch of iron spikes. Both
+these having violated nature, their natural likings and antipathies are
+reversed; they grow altogether morbid. I do fear death as yet, but I
+believe it is because I am young. Poor Miss Ainley would cling closer to
+life if life had more charms for her. God surely did not create us and
+cause us to live with the sole end of wishing always to die. I believe
+in my heart we were intended to prize life and enjoy it so long as we
+retain it. Existence never was originally meant to be that useless,
+blank, pale, slow-trailing thing it often becomes to many, and is
+becoming to me among the rest.
+
+"Nobody," she went on--"nobody in particular is to blame, that I can
+see, for the state in which things are; and I cannot tell, however much
+I puzzle over it, how they are to be altered for the better; but I feel
+there is something wrong somewhere. I believe single women should have
+more to do--better chances of interesting and profitable occupation than
+they possess now. And when I speak thus I have no impression that I
+displease God by my words; that I am either impious or impatient,
+irreligious or sacrilegious. My consolation is, indeed, that God hears
+many a groan, and compassionates much grief which man stops his ears
+against, or frowns on with impotent contempt. I say _impotent_, for I
+observe that to such grievances as society cannot readily cure it
+usually forbids utterance, on pain of its scorn, this scorn being only a
+sort of tinselled cloak to its deformed weakness. People hate to be
+reminded of ills they are unable or unwilling to remedy. Such reminder,
+in forcing on them a sense of their own incapacity, or a more painful
+sense of an obligation to make some unpleasant effort, troubles their
+ease and shakes their self-complacency. Old maids, like the houseless
+and unemployed poor, should not ask for a place and an occupation in the
+world; the demand disturbs the happy and rich--it disturbs parents. Look
+at the numerous families of girls in this neighbourhood--the Armitages,
+the Birtwhistles, the Sykeses. The brothers of these girls are every one
+in business or in professions; they have something to do. Their sisters
+have no earthly employment but household work and sewing, no earthly
+pleasure but an unprofitable visiting, and no hope, in all their life to
+come, of anything better. This stagnant state of things makes them
+decline in health. They are never well, and their minds and views shrink
+to wondrous narrowness. The great wish, the sole aim of every one of
+them is to be married, but the majority will never marry; they will die
+as they now live. They scheme, they plot, they dress to ensnare
+husbands. The gentlemen turn them into ridicule; they don't want them;
+they hold them very cheap. They say--I have heard them say it with
+sneering laughs many a time--the matrimonial market is overstocked.
+Fathers say so likewise, and are angry with their daughters when they
+observe their manœuvres--they order them to stay at home. What do they
+expect them to do at home? If you ask, they would answer, sew and cook.
+They expect them to do this, and this only, contentedly, regularly,
+uncomplainingly, all their lives long, as if they had no germs of
+faculties for anything else--a doctrine as reasonable to hold as it
+would be that the fathers have no faculties but for eating what their
+daughters cook or for wearing what they sew. Could men live so
+themselves? Would they not be very weary? And when there came no relief
+to their weariness, but only reproaches at its slightest manifestation,
+would not their weariness ferment in time to frenzy? Lucretia, spinning
+at midnight in the midst of her maidens, and Solomon's virtuous woman
+are often quoted as patterns of what 'the sex,' as they say, ought to
+be. I don't know. Lucretia, I dare say, was a most worthy sort of
+person, much like my cousin Hortense Moore; but she kept her servants up
+very late. I should not have liked to be amongst the number of the
+maidens. Hortense would just work me and Sarah in that fashion, if she
+could, and neither of us would bear it. The 'virtuous woman,' again, had
+her household up in the very middle of the night; she 'got breakfast
+over,' as Mrs. Sykes says, before one o'clock a.m.; but _she_ had
+something more to do than spin and give out portions. She was a
+manufacturer--she made fine linen and sold it; she was an
+agriculturist--she bought estates and planted vineyards. _That_ woman
+was a manager. She was what the matrons hereabouts call 'a clever
+woman.' On the whole, I like her a good deal better than Lucretia; but I
+don't believe either Mr. Armitage or Mr. Sykes could have got the
+advantage of her in a bargain. Yet I like her. 'Strength and honour were
+her clothing; the heart of her husband safely trusted in her. She opened
+her mouth with wisdom; in her tongue was the law of kindness; her
+children rose up and called her blessed; her husband also praised her.'
+King of Israel! your model of a woman is a worthy model! But are we, in
+these days, brought up to be like her? Men of Yorkshire! do your
+daughters reach this royal standard? Can they reach it? Can you help
+them to reach it? Can you give them a field in which their faculties may
+be exercised and grow? Men of England! look at your poor girls, many of
+them fading around you, dropping off in consumption or decline; or, what
+is worse, degenerating to sour old maids--envious, back-biting,
+wretched, because life is a desert to them; or, what is worst of all,
+reduced to strive, by scarce modest coquetry and debasing artifice, to
+gain that position and consideration by marriage which to celibacy is
+denied. Fathers! cannot you alter these things? Perhaps not all at once;
+but consider the matter well when it is brought before you, receive it
+as a theme worthy of thought; do not dismiss it with an idle jest or an
+unmanly insult. You would wish to be proud of your daughters, and not to
+blush for them; then seek for them an interest and an occupation which
+shall raise them above the flirt, the manœuvrer, the mischief-making
+tale-bearer. Keep your girls' minds narrow and fettered; they will still
+be a plague and a care, sometimes a disgrace to you. Cultivate
+them--give them scope and work; they will be your gayest companions in
+health, your tenderest nurses in sickness, your most faithful prop in
+age."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+AN EVENING OUT.
+
+
+One fine summer day that Caroline had spent entirely alone (her uncle
+being at Whinbury), and whose long, bright, noiseless, breezeless,
+cloudless hours (how many they seemed since sunrise!) had been to her as
+desolate as if they had gone over her head in the shadowless and
+trackless wastes of Sahara, instead of in the blooming garden of an
+English home, she was sitting in the alcove--her task of work on her
+knee, her fingers assiduously plying the needle, her eyes following and
+regulating their movements, her brain working restlessly--when Fanny
+came to the door, looked round over the lawn and borders, and not seeing
+her whom she sought, called out, "Miss Caroline!"
+
+A low voice answered "Fanny!" It issued from the alcove, and thither
+Fanny hastened, a note in her hand, which she delivered to fingers that
+hardly seemed to have nerve to hold it. Miss Helstone did not ask whence
+it came, and she did not look at it; she let it drop amongst the folds
+of her work.
+
+"Joe Scott's son, Harry, brought it," said Fanny.
+
+The girl was no enchantress, and knew no magic spell; yet what she said
+took almost magical effect on her young mistress. She lifted her head
+with the quick motion of revived sensation; she shot, not a languid, but
+a lifelike, questioning glance at Fanny.
+
+"Harry Scott! who sent him?"
+
+"He came from the Hollow."
+
+The dropped note was snatched up eagerly, the seal was broken--it was
+read in two seconds. An affectionate billet from Hortense, informing her
+young cousin that she was returned from Wormwood Wells; that she was
+alone to-day, as Robert was gone to Whinbury market; that nothing would
+give her greater pleasure than to have Caroline's company to tea, and
+the good lady added, she was quite sure such a change would be most
+acceptable and beneficial to Caroline, who must be sadly at a loss both
+for safe guidance and improving society since the misunderstanding
+between Robert and Mr. Helstone had occasioned a separation from her
+"meilleure amie, Hortense Gérard Moore." In a postscript she was urged
+to put on her bonnet and run down directly.
+
+Caroline did not need the injunction. Glad was she to lay by the brown
+holland child's slip she was trimming with braid for the Jew's basket,
+to hasten upstairs, cover her curls with her straw bonnet, and throw
+round her shoulders the black silk scarf, whose simple drapery suited as
+well her shape as its dark hue set off the purity of her dress and the
+fairness of her face; glad was she to escape for a few hours the
+solitude, the sadness, the nightmare of her life; glad to run down the
+green lane sloping to the Hollow, to scent the fragrance of hedge
+flowers sweeter than the perfume of moss-rose or lily. True, she knew
+Robert was not at the cottage; but it was delight to go where he had
+lately been. So long, so totally separated from him, merely to see his
+home, to enter the room where he had that morning sat, felt like a
+reunion. As such it revived her; and then Illusion was again following
+her in Peri mask. The soft agitation of wings caressed her cheek, and
+the air, breathing from the blue summer sky, bore a voice which
+whispered, "Robert may come home while you are in his house, and then,
+at least, you may look in his face--at least you may give him your hand;
+perhaps, for a minute, you may sit beside him."
+
+"Silence!" was her austere response; but she loved the comforter and the
+consolation.
+
+Miss Moore probably caught from the window the gleam and flutter of
+Caroline's white attire through the branchy garden shrubs, for she
+advanced from the cottage porch to meet her. Straight, unbending,
+phlegmatic as usual, she came on. No haste or ecstasy was ever permitted
+to disorder the dignity of _her_ movements; but she smiled, well pleased
+to mark the delight of her pupil, to feel her kiss and the gentle,
+genial strain of her embrace. She led her tenderly in, half deceived and
+wholly flattered. Half deceived! had it not been so she would in all
+probability have put her to the wicket, and shut her out. Had she known
+clearly to whose account the chief share of this childlike joy was to be
+placed, Hortense would most likely have felt both shocked and incensed.
+Sisters do not like young ladies to fall in love with their brothers.
+It seems, if not presumptuous, silly, weak, a delusion, an absurd
+mistake. _They_ do not love these gentlemen--whatever sisterly affection
+they may cherish towards them--and that others should, repels them with
+a sense of crude romance. The first movement, in short, excited by such
+discovery (as with many parents on finding their children to be in love)
+is one of mixed impatience and contempt. Reason--if they be rational
+people--corrects the false feeling in time; but if they be irrational,
+it is never corrected, and the daughter or sister-in-law is disliked to
+the end.
+
+"You would expect to find me alone, from what I said in my note,"
+observed Miss Moore, as she conducted Caroline towards the parlour; "but
+it was written this morning: since dinner, company has come in."
+
+And opening the door she made visible an ample spread of crimson skirts
+overflowing the elbow-chair at the fireside, and above them, presiding
+with dignity, a cap more awful than a crown. That cap had never come to
+the cottage under a bonnet; no, it had been brought in a vast bag, or
+rather a middle-sized balloon of black silk, held wide with whalebone.
+The screed, or frill of the cap, stood a quarter of a yard broad round
+the face of the wearer. The ribbon, flourishing in puffs and bows about
+the head, was of the sort called love-ribbon. There was a good deal of
+it, I may say, a very great deal. Mrs. Yorke wore the cap--it became
+her; she wore the gown also--it suited her no less.
+
+That great lady was come in a friendly way to take tea with Miss Moore.
+It was almost as great and as rare a favour as if the queen were to go
+uninvited to share pot-luck with one of her subjects. A higher mark of
+distinction she could not show--she who in general scorned visiting and
+tea-drinking, and held cheap and stigmatized as "gossips" every maid and
+matron of the vicinage.
+
+There was no mistake, however; Miss Moore _was_ a favourite with her.
+She had evinced the fact more than once--evinced it by stopping to speak
+to her in the churchyard on Sundays; by inviting her, almost hospitably,
+to come to Briarmains; evinced it to-day by the grand condescension of a
+personal visit. Her reasons for the preference, as assigned by herself,
+were that Miss Moore was a woman of steady deportment, without the least
+levity of conversation or carriage; also that, being a foreigner, she
+must feel the want of a friend to countenance her. She might have added
+that her plain aspect, homely, precise dress, and phlegmatic,
+unattractive manner were to her so many additional recommendations. It
+is certain, at least, that ladies remarkable for the opposite qualities
+of beauty, lively bearing, and elegant taste in attire were not often
+favoured with her approbation. Whatever gentlemen are apt to admire in
+women, Mrs. Yorke condemned; and what they overlook or despise, she
+patronized.
+
+Caroline advanced to the mighty matron with some sense of diffidence.
+She knew little of Mrs. Yorke, and, as a parson's niece, was doubtful
+what sort of a reception she might get. She got a very cool one, and was
+glad to hide her discomfiture by turning away to take off her bonnet.
+Nor, upon sitting down, was she displeased to be immediately accosted by
+a little personage in a blue frock and sash, who started up like some
+fairy from the side of the great dame's chair, where she had been
+sitting on a footstool, screened from view by the folds of the wide red
+gown, and running to Miss Helstone, unceremoniously threw her arms round
+her neck and demanded a kiss.
+
+"My mother is not civil to you," said the petitioner, as she received
+and repaid a smiling salute, "and Rose there takes no notice of you; it
+is their way. If, instead of you, a white angel, with a crown of stars,
+had come into the room, mother would nod stiffly, and Rose never lift
+her head at all; but I will be your friend--I have always liked you."
+
+"Jessie, curb that tongue of yours, and repress your forwardness!" said
+Mrs. Yorke.
+
+"But, mother, you are so frozen!" expostulated Jessie. "Miss Helstone
+has never done you any harm; why can't you be kind to her? You sit so
+stiff, and look so cold, and speak so dry--what for? That's just the
+fashion in which you treat Miss Shirley Keeldar and every other young
+lady who comes to our house. And Rose there is such an aut--aut--I have
+forgotten the word, but it means a machine in the shape of a human
+being. However, between you, you will drive every soul away from
+Briarmains; Martin often says so."
+
+"I am an automaton? Good! Let me alone, then," said Rose, speaking from
+a corner where she was sitting on the carpet at the foot of a bookcase,
+with a volume spread open on her knee.--"Miss Helstone, how do you do?"
+she added, directing a brief glance to the person addressed, and then
+again casting down her gray, remarkable eyes on the book and returning
+to the study of its pages.
+
+Caroline stole a quiet gaze towards her, dwelling on her young, absorbed
+countenance, and observing a certain unconscious movement of the mouth
+as she read--a movement full of character. Caroline had tact, and she
+had fine instinct. She felt that Rose Yorke was a peculiar child--one of
+the unique; she knew how to treat her. Approaching quietly, she knelt on
+the carpet at her side, and looked over her little shoulder at her book.
+It was a romance of Mrs. Radcliffe's--"The Italian."
+
+Caroline read on with her, making no remark. Presently Rose showed her
+the attention of asking, ere she turned the leaf, "Are you ready?"
+
+Caroline only nodded.
+
+"Do you like it?" inquired Rose ere long.
+
+"Long since, when I read it as a child, I was wonderfully taken with
+it."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"It seemed to open with such promise--such foreboding of a most strange
+tale to be unfolded."
+
+"And in reading it you feel as if you were far away from England--really
+in Italy--under another sort of sky--that blue sky of the south which
+travellers describe."
+
+"You are sensible of that, Rose?"
+
+"It makes me long to travel, Miss Helstone."
+
+"When you are a woman, perhaps, you may be able to gratify your wish."
+
+"I mean to make a way to do so, if one is not made for me. I cannot live
+always in Briarfield. The whole world is not very large compared with
+creation. I must see the outside of our own round planet, at least."
+
+"How much of its outside?"
+
+"First this hemisphere where we live; then the other. I am resolved that
+my life shall be a life. Not a black trance like the toad's, buried in
+marble; nor a long, slow death like yours in Briarfield rectory."
+
+"Like mine! what can you mean, child?"
+
+"Might you not as well be tediously dying as for ever shut up in that
+glebe-house--a place that, when I pass it, always reminds me of a
+windowed grave? I never see any movement about the door. I never hear a
+sound from the wall. I believe smoke never issues from the chimneys.
+What do you do there?"
+
+"I sew, I read, I learn lessons."
+
+"Are you happy?"
+
+"Should I be happy wandering alone in strange countries as you wish to
+do?"
+
+"Much happier, even if you did nothing but wander. Remember, however,
+that I shall have an object in view; but if you only went on and on,
+like some enchanted lady in a fairy tale, you might be happier than now.
+In a day's wandering you would pass many a hill, wood, and watercourse,
+each perpetually altering in aspect as the sun shone out or was
+overcast; as the weather was wet or fair, dark or bright. Nothing
+changes in Briarfield rectory. The plaster of the parlour ceilings, the
+paper on the walls, the curtains, carpets, chairs, are still the same."
+
+"Is change necessary to happiness?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Is it synonymous with it?"
+
+"I don't know; but I feel monotony and death to be almost the same."
+
+Here Jessie spoke.
+
+"Isn't she mad?" she asked.
+
+"But, Rose," pursued Caroline, "I fear a wanderer's life, for me at
+least, would end like that tale you are reading--in disappointment,
+vanity, and vexation of spirit."
+
+"Does 'The Italian' so end?"
+
+"I thought so when I read it."
+
+"Better to try all things and find all empty than to try nothing and
+leave your life a blank. To do this is to commit the sin of him who
+buried his talent in a napkin--despicable sluggard!"
+
+"Rose," observed Mrs. Yorke, "solid satisfaction is only to be realized
+by doing one's duty."
+
+"Right, mother! And if my Master has given me ten talents, my duty is to
+trade with them, and make them ten talents more. Not in the dust of
+household drawers shall the coin be interred. I will _not_ deposit it in
+a broken-spouted teapot, and shut it up in a china closet among
+tea-things. I will _not_ commit it to your work-table to be smothered in
+piles of woollen hose. I will _not_ prison it in the linen press to find
+shrouds among the sheets. And least of all, mother" (she got up from the
+floor)--"least of all will I hide it in a tureen of cold potatoes, to be
+ranged with bread, butter, pastry, and ham on the shelves of the
+larder."
+
+She stopped, then went on, "Mother, the Lord who gave each of us our
+talents will come home some day, and will demand from all an account.
+The teapot, the old stocking-foot, the linen rag, the willow-pattern
+tureen will yield up their barren deposit in many a house. Suffer your
+daughters, at least, to put their money to the exchangers, that they may
+be enabled at the Master's coming to pay Him His own with usury."
+
+"Rose, did you bring your sampler with you, as I told you?"
+
+"Yes, mother."
+
+"Sit down, and do a line of marking."
+
+Rose sat down promptly, and wrought according to orders. After a busy
+pause of ten minutes, her mother asked, "Do you think yourself oppressed
+now--a victim?"
+
+"No, mother."
+
+"Yet, as far as I understood your tirade, it was a protest against all
+womanly and domestic employment."
+
+"You misunderstood it, mother. I should be sorry not to learn to sew.
+You do right to teach me, and to make me work."
+
+"Even to the mending of your brothers' stockings and the making of
+sheets?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Where is the use of ranting and spouting about it, then?"
+
+"Am I to do nothing but that? I will do that, and then I will do more.
+Now, mother, I have said my say. I am twelve years old at present, and
+not till I am sixteen will I speak again about talents. For four years I
+bind myself an industrious apprentice to all you can teach me."
+
+"You see what my daughters are, Miss Helstone," observed Mrs. Yorke;
+"how precociously wise in their own conceits! 'I would rather this, I
+prefer that'--such is Jessie's cuckoo song; while Rose utters the bolder
+cry, 'I _will_, and I will _not_!'"
+
+"I render a reason, mother; besides, if my cry is bold, it is only heard
+once in a twelvemonth. About each birthday the spirit moves me to
+deliver one oracle respecting my own instruction and management. I utter
+it and leave it; it is for you, mother, to listen or not."
+
+"I would advise all young ladies," pursued Mrs. Yorke, "to study the
+characters of such children as they chance to meet with before they
+marry and have any of their own to consider well how they would like
+the responsibility of guiding the careless, the labour of persuading the
+stubborn, the constant burden and task of training the best."
+
+"But with love it need not be so very difficult," interposed Caroline.
+"Mothers love their children most dearly--almost better than they love
+themselves."
+
+"Fine talk! very sentimental! There is the rough, practical part of life
+yet to come for you, young miss."
+
+"But, Mrs. Yorke, if I take a little baby into my arms--any poor woman's
+infant, for instance--I feel that I love that helpless thing quite
+peculiarly, though I am not its mother. I could do almost anything for
+it willingly, if it were delivered over entirely to my care--if it were
+quite dependent on me."
+
+"You _feel_! Yes, yes! I dare say, now. You are led a great deal by your
+_feelings_, and you think yourself a very sensitive personage, no doubt.
+Are you aware that, with all these romantic ideas, you have managed to
+train your features into an habitually lackadaisical expression, better
+suited to a novel-heroine than to a woman who is to make her way in the
+real world by dint of common sense?"
+
+"No; I am not at all aware of that, Mrs. Yorke."
+
+"Look in the glass just behind you. Compare the face you see there with
+that of any early-rising, hard-working milkmaid."
+
+"My face is a pale one, but it is _not_ sentimental; and most milkmaids,
+however red and robust they may be, are more stupid and less practically
+fitted to make their way in the world than I am. I think more, and more
+correctly, than milkmaids in general do; consequently, where they would
+often, for want of reflection, act weakly, I, by dint of reflection,
+should act judiciously."
+
+"Oh no! you would be influenced by your feelings; you would be guided by
+impulse."
+
+"Of course I should often be influenced by my feelings. They were given
+me to that end. Whom my feelings teach me to love I _must_ and _shall_
+love; and I hope, if ever I have a husband and children, my feelings
+will induce me to love them. I hope, in that case, all my impulses will
+be strong in compelling me to love."
+
+Caroline had a pleasure in saying this with emphasis; she had a pleasure
+in daring to say it in Mrs. Yorke's presence. She did not care what
+unjust sarcasm might be hurled at her in reply. She flushed, not with
+anger but excitement, when the ungenial matron answered coolly, "Don't
+waste your dramatic effects. That was well said--it was quite fine; but
+it is lost on two women--an old wife and an old maid. There should have
+been a disengaged gentleman present.--Is Mr. Robert nowhere hid behind
+the curtains, do you think, Miss Moore?"
+
+Hortense, who during the chief part of the conversation had been in the
+kitchen superintending the preparations for tea, did not yet quite
+comprehend the drift of the discourse. She answered, with a puzzled air,
+that Robert was at Whinbury. Mrs. Yorke laughed her own peculiar short
+laugh.
+
+"Straightforward Miss Moore!" said she patronizingly. "It is like you to
+understand my question so literally and answer it so simply. _Your_ mind
+comprehends nothing of intrigue. Strange things might go on around you
+without your being the wiser; you are not of the class the world calls
+sharp-witted."
+
+These equivocal compliments did not seem to please Hortense. She drew
+herself up, puckered her black eyebrows, but still looked puzzled.
+
+"I have ever been noted for sagacity and discernment from childhood,"
+she returned; for, indeed, on the possession of these qualities she
+peculiarly piqued herself.
+
+"You never plotted to win a husband, I'll be bound," pursued Mrs. Yorke;
+"and you have not the benefit of previous experience to aid you in
+discovering when others plot."
+
+Caroline felt this kind language where the benevolent speaker intended
+she should feel it--in her very heart. She could not even parry the
+shafts; she was defenceless for the present. To answer would have been
+to avow that the cap fitted. Mrs. Yorke, looking at her as she sat with
+troubled, downcast eyes, and cheek burning painfully, and figure
+expressing in its bent attitude and unconscious tremor all the
+humiliation and chagrin she experienced, felt the sufferer was fair
+game. The strange woman had a natural antipathy to a shrinking,
+sensitive character--a nervous temperament; nor was a pretty, delicate,
+and youthful face a passport to her affections. It was seldom she met
+with all these obnoxious qualities combined in one individual; still
+more seldom she found that individual at her mercy, under circumstances
+in which she could crush her well. She happened this afternoon to be
+specially bilious and morose--as much disposed to gore as any vicious
+"mother of the herd." Lowering her large head she made a new charge.
+
+"Your cousin Hortense is an excellent sister, Miss Helstone. Such ladies
+as come to try their life's luck here at Hollow's Cottage may, by a very
+little clever female artifice, cajole the mistress of the house, and
+have the game all in their own hands. You are fond of your cousin's
+society, I dare say, miss?"
+
+"Of which cousin's?"
+
+"Oh, of the lady's, _of course_."
+
+"Hortense is, and always has been, most kind to me."
+
+"Every sister with an eligible single brother is considered most kind by
+her spinster friends."
+
+"Mrs. Yorke," said Caroline, lifting her eyes slowly, their blue orbs at
+the same time clearing from trouble, and shining steady and full, while
+the glow of shame left her cheek, and its hue turned pale and
+settled--"Mrs. Yorke, may I ask what you mean?"
+
+"To give you a lesson on the cultivation of rectitude, to disgust you
+with craft and false sentiment."
+
+"Do I need this lesson?"
+
+"Most young ladies of the present day need it. You are quite a modern
+young lady--morbid, delicate, professing to like retirement; which
+implies, I suppose, that you find little worthy of your sympathies in
+the ordinary world. The ordinary world--every-day honest folks--are
+better than you think them, much better than any bookish, romancing chit
+of a girl can be who hardly ever puts her nose over her uncle the
+parson's garden wall."
+
+"Consequently of whom you know nothing. Excuse me--indeed, it does not
+matter whether you excuse me or not--you have attacked me without
+provocation; I shall defend myself without apology. Of my relations with
+my two cousins you are ignorant. In a fit of ill-humour you have
+attempted to poison them by gratuitous insinuations, which are far more
+crafty and false than anything with which you can justly charge me. That
+I happen to be pale, and sometimes to look diffident, is no business of
+yours; that I am fond of books, and indisposed for common gossip, is
+still less your business; that I am a 'romancing chit of a girl' is a
+mere conjecture on your part. I never romanced to you nor to anybody you
+know. That I am the parson's niece is not a crime, though you may be
+narrow-minded enough to think it so. You dislike me. You have no just
+reason for disliking me; therefore keep the expression of your aversion
+to yourself. If at any time in future you evince it annoyingly, I shall
+answer even less scrupulously than I have done now."
+
+She ceased, and sat in white and still excitement. She had spoken in the
+clearest of tones, neither fast nor loud; but her silver accents
+thrilled the ear. The speed of the current in her veins was just then as
+swift as it was viewless.
+
+Mrs. Yorke was not irritated at the reproof, worded with a severity so
+simple, dictated by a pride so quiet. Turning coolly to Miss Moore, she
+said, nodding her cap approvingly, "She has spirit in her, after
+all.--Always speak as honestly as you have done just now," she
+continued, "and you'll do."
+
+"I repel a recommendation so offensive," was the answer, delivered in
+the same pure key, with the same clear look. "I reject counsel poisoned
+by insinuation. It is my right to speak as I think proper; nothing binds
+me to converse as you dictate. So far from always speaking as I have
+done just now, I shall never address any one in a tone so stern or in
+language so harsh, unless in answer to unprovoked insult."
+
+"Mother, you have found your match," pronounced little Jessie, whom the
+scene appeared greatly to edify. Rose had heard the whole with an
+unmoved face. She now said, "No; Miss Helstone is not my mother's match,
+for she allows herself to be vexed. My mother would wear her out in a
+few weeks. Shirley Keeldar manages better.--Mother, you have never hurt
+Miss Keeldar's feelings yet. She wears armour under her silk dress that
+you cannot penetrate."
+
+Mrs. Yorke often complained that her children were mutinous. It was
+strange that with all her strictness, with all her "strong-mindedness,"
+she could gain no command over them. A look from their father had more
+influence with them than a lecture from her.
+
+Miss Moore--to whom the position of witness to an altercation in which
+she took no part was highly displeasing, as being an unimportant
+secondary post--now rallying her dignity, prepared to utter a discourse
+which was to prove both parties in the wrong, and to make it clear to
+each disputant that she had reason to be ashamed of herself, and ought
+to submit humbly to the superior sense of the individual then addressing
+her. Fortunately for her audience, she had not harangued above ten
+minutes when Sarah's entrance with the tea-tray called her attention,
+first to the fact of that damsel having a gilt comb in her hair and a
+red necklace round her throat, and secondly, and subsequently to a
+pointed remonstrance, to the duty of making tea. After the meal Rose
+restored her to good-humour by bringing her guitar and asking for a
+song, and afterwards engaging her in an intelligent and sharp
+cross-examination about guitar-playing and music in general.
+
+Jessie, meantime, directed her assiduities to Caroline. Sitting on a
+stool at her feet, she talked to her, first about religion and then
+about politics. Jessie was accustomed at home to drink in a great deal
+of what her father said on these subjects, and afterwards in company to
+retail, with more wit and fluency than consistency or discretion, his
+opinions, antipathies, and preferences. She rated Caroline soundly for
+being a member of the Established Church, and for having an uncle a
+clergyman. She informed her that she lived on the country, and ought to
+work for her living honestly, instead of passing a useless life, and
+eating the bread of idleness in the shape of tithes. Thence Jessie
+passed to a review of the ministry at that time in office, and a
+consideration of its deserts. She made familiar mention of the names of
+Lord Castlereagh and Mr. Perceval. Each of these personages she adorned
+with a character that might have separately suited Moloch and Belial.
+She denounced the war as wholesale murder, and Lord Wellington as a
+"hired butcher."
+
+Her auditress listened with exceeding edification. Jessie had something
+of the genius of humour in her nature. It was inexpressibly comic to
+hear her repeating her sire's denunciations in his nervous northern
+Doric; as hearty a little Jacobin as ever pent a free mutinous spirit in
+a muslin frock and sash. Not malignant by nature, her language was not
+so bitter as it was racy, and the expressive little face gave a piquancy
+to every phrase which held a beholder's interest captive.
+
+Caroline chid her when she abused Lord Wellington; but she listened
+delighted to a subsequent tirade against the Prince Regent. Jessie
+quickly read, in the sparkle of her hearer's eye and the laughter
+hovering round her lips, that at last she had hit on a topic that
+pleased. Many a time had she heard the fat "Adonis of fifty" discussed
+at her father's breakfast-table, and she now gave Mr. Yorke's comments
+on the theme--genuine as uttered by his Yorkshire lips.
+
+But, Jessie, I will write about you no more. This is an autumn evening,
+wet and wild. There is only one cloud in the sky, but it curtains it
+from pole to pole. The wind cannot rest; it hurries sobbing over hills
+of sullen outline, colourless with twilight and mist. Rain has beat all
+day on that church tower. It rises dark from the stony enclosure of its
+graveyard. The nettles, the long grass, and the tombs all drip with wet.
+This evening reminds me too forcibly of another evening some years
+ago--a howling, rainy autumn evening too--when certain who had that day
+performed a pilgrimage to a grave new-made in a heretic cemetery sat
+near a wood fire on the hearth of a foreign dwelling. They were merry
+and social, but they each knew that a gap, never to be filled, had been
+made in their circle. They knew they had lost something whose absence
+could never be quite atoned for so long as they lived; and they knew
+that heavy falling rain was soaking into the wet earth which covered
+their lost darling, and that the sad, sighing gale was mourning above
+her buried head. The fire warmed them; life and friendship yet blessed
+them; but Jessie lay cold, coffined, solitary--only the sod screening
+her from the storm.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mrs. Yorke folded up her knitting, cut short the music lesson and the
+lecture on politics, and concluded her visit to the cottage, at an hour
+early enough to ensure her return to Briarmains before the blush of
+sunset should quite have faded in heaven, or the path up the fields have
+become thoroughly moist with evening dew.
+
+The lady and her daughters being gone, Caroline felt that she also ought
+to resume her scarf, kiss her cousin's cheek, and trip away homeward. If
+she lingered much later dusk would draw on, and Fanny would be put to
+the trouble of coming to fetch her. It was both baking and ironing day
+at the rectory, she remembered--Fanny would be busy. Still, she could
+not quit her seat at the little parlour window. From no point of view
+could the west look so lovely as from that lattice with the garland of
+jessamine round it, whose white stars and green leaves seemed now but
+gray pencil outlines--graceful in form, but colourless in tint--against
+the gold incarnadined of a summer evening--against the fire-tinged blue
+of an August sky at eight o'clock p.m.
+
+Caroline looked at the wicket-gate, beside which holly-oaks spired up
+tall. She looked at the close hedge of privet and laurel fencing in the
+garden; her eyes longed to see something more than the shrubs before
+they turned from that limited prospect. They longed to see a human
+figure, of a certain mould and height, pass the hedge and enter the
+gate. A human figure she at last saw--nay, two. Frederick Murgatroyd
+went by, carrying a pail of water; Joe Scott followed, dangling on his
+forefinger the keys of the mill. They were going to lock up mill and
+stables for the night, and then betake themselves home.
+
+"So must I," thought Caroline, as she half rose and sighed.
+
+"This is all folly--heart-breaking folly," she added. "In the first
+place, though I should stay till dark there will be no arrival; because
+I feel in my heart, Fate has written it down in to-day's page of her
+eternal book, that I am not to have the pleasure I long for. In the
+second place, if he stepped in this moment, my presence here would be a
+chagrin to him, and the consciousness that it must be so would turn half
+my blood to ice. His hand would, perhaps, be loose and chill if I put
+mine into it; his eye would be clouded if I sought its beam. I should
+look up for that kindling, something I have seen in past days, when my
+face, or my language, or my disposition had at some happy moment pleased
+him; I should discover only darkness. I had better go home."
+
+She took her bonnet from the table where it lay, and was just fastening
+the ribbon, when Hortense, directing her attention to a splendid bouquet
+of flowers in a glass on the same table, mentioned that Miss Keeldar had
+sent them that morning from Fieldhead; and went on to comment on the
+guests that lady was at present entertaining, on the bustling life she
+had lately been leading; adding divers conjectures that she did not very
+well like it, and much wonderment that a person who was so fond of her
+own way as the heiress did not find some means of sooner getting rid of
+this _cortége_ of relatives.
+
+"But they say she actually will not let Mr. Sympson and his family go,"
+she added. "They wanted much to return to the south last week, to be
+ready for the reception of the only son, who is expected home from a
+tour. She insists that her cousin Henry shall come and join his friends
+here in Yorkshire. I dare say she partly does it to oblige Robert and
+myself."
+
+"How to oblige Robert and you?" inquired Caroline.
+
+"Why, my child, you are dull. Don't you know--you must often have
+heard----"
+
+"Please, ma'am," said Sarah, opening the door, "the preserves that you
+told me to boil in treacle--the congfiters, as you call them--is all
+burnt to the pan."
+
+"Les confitures! Elles sont brûlées? Ah, quelle négligence coupable!
+Coquine de cuisinière, fille insupportable!"
+
+And mademoiselle, hastily taking from a drawer a large linen apron, and
+tying it over her black apron, rushed _éperdue_ into the kitchen,
+whence, to speak truth, exhaled an odour of calcined sweets rather
+strong than savoury.
+
+The mistress and maid had been in full feud the whole day, on the
+subject of preserving certain black cherries, hard as marbles, sour as
+sloes. Sarah held that sugar was the only orthodox condiment to be used
+in that process; mademoiselle maintained--and proved it by the practice
+and experience of her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother--that
+treacle, "mélasse," was infinitely preferable. She had committed an
+imprudence in leaving Sarah in charge of the preserving-pan, for her
+want of sympathy in the nature of its contents had induced a degree of
+carelessness in watching their confection, whereof the result was--dark
+and cindery ruin. Hubbub followed; high upbraiding, and sobs rather loud
+than deep or real.
+
+Caroline, once more turning to the little mirror, was shading her
+ringlets from her cheek to smooth them under her cottage bonnet, certain
+that it would not only be useless but unpleasant to stay longer, when,
+on the sudden opening of the back-door, there fell an abrupt calm in the
+kitchen. The tongues were checked, pulled up as with bit and bridle.
+"Was it--was it--Robert?" He often--almost always--entered by the
+kitchen way on his return from market. No; it was only Joe Scott, who,
+having hemmed significantly thrice--every hem being meant as a lofty
+rebuke to the squabbling womankind--said, "Now, I thowt I heerd a
+crack?"
+
+None answered.
+
+"And," he continued pragmatically, "as t' maister's comed, and as he'll
+enter through this hoyle, I _con_sidered it desirable to step in and let
+ye know. A household o' women is nivver fit to be comed on wi'out
+warning. Here he is.--Walk forrard, sir. They war playing up queerly,
+but I think I've quietened 'em."
+
+Another person, it was now audible, entered. Joe Scott proceeded with
+his rebukes.
+
+"What d'ye mean by being all i' darkness? Sarah, thou quean, canst t'
+not light a candle? It war sundown an hour syne. He'll brak his shins
+agean some o' yer pots, and tables, and stuff.--Tak tent o' this
+baking-bowl, sir; they've set it i' yer way, fair as if they did it i'
+malice."
+
+To Joe's observations succeeded a confused sort of pause, which
+Caroline, though she was listening with both her ears, could not
+understand. It was very brief. A cry broke it--a sound of surprise,
+followed by the sound of a kiss; ejaculations, but half articulate,
+succeeded.
+
+"Mon Dieu! mon Dieu! Est-ce que je m'y attendais?" were the words
+chiefly to be distinguished.
+
+"Et tu te portes toujours bien, bonne sœur?" inquired another
+voice--Robert's, certainly.
+
+Caroline was puzzled. Obeying an impulse the wisdom of which she had not
+time to question, she escaped from the little parlour, by way of leaving
+the coast clear, and running upstairs took up a position at the head of
+the banisters, whence she could make further observations ere presenting
+herself. It was considerably past sunset now; dusk filled the passage,
+yet not such deep dusk but that she could presently see Robert and
+Hortense traverse it.
+
+"Caroline! Caroline!" called Hortense, a moment afterwards, "venez voir
+mon frère!"
+
+"Strange," commented Miss Helstone, "passing strange! What does this
+unwonted excitement about such an every-day occurrence as a return from
+market portend? She has not lost her senses, has she? Surely the burnt
+treacle has not crazed her?"
+
+She descended in a subdued flutter. Yet more was she fluttered when
+Hortense seized her hand at the parlour door, and leading her to Robert,
+who stood in bodily presence, tall and dark against the one window,
+presented her with a mixture of agitation and formality, as though they
+had been utter strangers, and this was their first mutual introduction.
+
+Increasing puzzle! He bowed rather awkwardly, and turning from her with
+a stranger's embarrassment, he met the doubtful light from the window.
+It fell on his face, and the enigma of the dream (a dream it seemed)
+was at its height. She saw a visage like and unlike--Robert, and no
+Robert.
+
+"What is the matter?" said Caroline. "Is my sight wrong? Is it my
+cousin?"
+
+"Certainly it is your cousin," asserted Hortense.
+
+Then who was this now coming through the passage--now entering the room?
+Caroline, looking round, met a new Robert--the real Robert, as she felt
+at once.
+
+"Well," said he, smiling at her questioning, astonished face, "which is
+which?"
+
+"Ah, this is _you_!" was the answer.
+
+He laughed. "I believe it is _me_. And do you know who _he_ is? You
+never saw him before, but you have heard of him."
+
+She had gathered her senses now.
+
+"It _can_ be only one person--your brother, since it is so like you; my
+other cousin, Louis."
+
+"Clever little Œdipus! you would have baffled the Sphinx! But now, see
+us together.--Change places; change again, to confuse her, Louis.--Which
+is the old love now, Lina?"
+
+"As if it were possible to make a mistake when you speak! You should
+have told Hortense to ask. But you are not so much alike. It is only
+your height, your figure, and complexion that are so similar."
+
+"And I am Robert, am I not?" asked the newcomer, making a first effort
+to overcome what seemed his natural shyness.
+
+Caroline shook her head gently. A soft, expressive ray from her eye
+beamed on the real Robert. It said much.
+
+She was not permitted to quit her cousins soon. Robert himself was
+peremptory in obliging her to remain. Glad, simple, and affable in her
+demeanour (glad for this night, at least), in light, bright spirits for
+the time, she was too pleasant an addition to the cottage circle to be
+willingly parted with by any of them. Louis seemed naturally rather a
+grave, still, retiring man; but the Caroline of this evening, which was
+not (as you know, reader) the Caroline of every day, thawed his reserve,
+and cheered his gravity soon. He sat near her and talked to her. She
+already knew his vocation was that of tuition. She learned now he had
+for some years been the tutor of Mr. Sympson's son; that he had been
+travelling with him, and had accompanied him to the north. She inquired
+if he liked his post, but got a look in reply which did not invite or
+license further question. The look woke Caroline's ready sympathy. She
+thought it a very sad expression to pass over so sensible a face as
+Louis's; for he _had_ a sensible face, though not handsome, she
+considered, when seen near Robert's. She turned to make the comparison.
+Robert was leaning against the wall, a little behind her, turning over
+the leaves of a book of engravings, and probably listening, at the same
+time, to the dialogue between her and Louis.
+
+"How could I think them alike?" she asked herself. "I see now it is
+Hortense Louis resembles, not Robert."
+
+And this was in part true. He had the shorter nose and longer upper lip
+of his sister rather than the fine traits of his brother. He had her
+mould of mouth and chin--all less decisive, accurate, and clear than
+those of the young mill-owner. His air, though deliberate and
+reflective, could scarcely be called prompt and acute. You felt, in
+sitting near and looking up at him, that a slower and probably a more
+benignant nature than that of the elder Moore shed calm on your
+impressions.
+
+Robert--perhaps aware that Caroline's glance had wandered towards and
+dwelt upon him, though he had neither met nor answered it--put down the
+book of engravings, and approaching, took a seat at her side. She
+resumed her conversation with Louis, but while she talked to him her
+thoughts were elsewhere. Her heart beat on the side from which her face
+was half averted. She acknowledged a steady, manly, kindly air in Louis;
+but she bent before the secret power of Robert. To be so near
+him--though he was silent, though he did not touch so much as her
+scarf-fringe or the white hem of her dress--affected her like a spell.
+Had she been obliged to speak to him _only_, it would have quelled, but,
+at liberty to address another, it excited her. Her discourse flowed
+freely; it was gay, playful, eloquent. The indulgent look and placid
+manner of her auditor encouraged her to ease; the sober pleasure
+expressed by his smile drew out all that was brilliant in her nature.
+She felt that this evening she appeared to advantage, and as Robert was
+a spectator, the consciousness contented her. Had he been called away,
+collapse would at once have succeeded stimulus.
+
+But her enjoyment was not long to shine full-orbed; a cloud soon crossed
+it.
+
+Hortense, who for some time had been on the move ordering supper, and
+was now clearing the little table of some books, etc., to make room for
+the tray, called Robert's attention to the glass of flowers, the carmine
+and snow and gold of whose petals looked radiant indeed by candlelight.
+
+"They came from Fieldhead," she said, "intended as a gift to you, no
+doubt. We know who is the favourite there; not I, I'm sure."
+
+It was a wonder to hear Hortense jest--a sign that her spirits were at
+high-water mark indeed.
+
+"We are to understand, then, that Robert is the favourite?" observed
+Louis.
+
+"Mon cher," replied Hortense, "Robert--c'est tout ce qu'il y a de plus
+précieux au monde; à côté de lui le reste du genre humain n'est que du
+rebut.--N'ai-je pas raison, mon enfant?" she added, appealing to
+Caroline.
+
+Caroline was obliged to reply, "Yes," and her beacon was quenched. Her
+star withdrew as she spoke.
+
+"Et toi, Robert?" inquired Louis.
+
+"When you shall have an opportunity, ask herself," was the quiet answer.
+Whether he reddened or paled Caroline did not examine. She discovered
+that it was late, and she must go home. Home she would go; not even
+Robert could detain her now.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH.
+
+
+The future sometimes seems to sob a low warning of the events it is
+bringing us, like some gathering though yet remote storm, which, in
+tones of the wind, in flushings of the firmament, in clouds strangely
+torn, announces a blast strong to strew the sea with wrecks; or
+commissioned to bring in fog the yellow taint of pestilence covering
+white Western isles with the poisoned exhalations of the East, dimming
+the lattices of English homes with the breath of Indian plague. At other
+times this future bursts suddenly, as if a rock had rent, and in it a
+grave had opened, whence issues the body of one that slept. Ere you are
+aware you stand face to face with a shrouded and unthought-of
+calamity--a new Lazarus.
+
+Caroline Helstone went home from Hollow's Cottage in good health, as she
+imagined. On waking the next morning she felt oppressed with unwonted
+languor. At breakfast, at each meal of the following day, she missed all
+sense of appetite. Palatable food was as ashes and sawdust to her.
+
+"Am I ill?" she asked, and looked at herself in the glass. Her eyes were
+bright, their pupils dilated, her cheeks seemed rosier, and fuller than
+usual. "I look well; why can I not eat?"
+
+She felt a pulse beat fast in her temples; she felt, too, her brain in
+strange activity. Her spirits were raised; hundreds of busy and broken
+but brilliant thoughts engaged her mind. A glow rested on them, such as
+tinged her complexion.
+
+Now followed a hot, parched, thirsty, restless night. Towards morning
+one terrible dream seized her like a tiger; when she woke, she felt and
+knew she was ill.
+
+How she had caught the fever (fever it was) she could not tell. Probably
+in her late walk home, some sweet, poisoned breeze, redolent of
+honey-dew and miasma, had passed into her lungs and veins, and finding
+there already a fever of mental excitement, and a languor of long
+conflict and habitual sadness, had fanned the spark to flame, and left a
+well-lit fire behind it.
+
+It seemed, however, but a gentle fire. After two hot days and worried
+nights, there was no violence in the symptoms, and neither her uncle,
+nor Fanny, nor the doctor, nor Miss Keeldar, when she called, had any
+fear for her. A few days would restore her, every one believed.
+
+The few days passed, and--though it was still thought it could not long
+delay--the revival had not begun. Mrs. Pryor, who had visited her
+daily--being present in her chamber one morning when she had been ill a
+fortnight--watched her very narrowly for some minutes. She took her hand
+and placed her finger on her wrist; then, quietly leaving the chamber,
+she went to Mr. Helstone's study. With him she remained closeted a long
+time--half the morning. On returning to her sick young friend, she laid
+aside shawl and bonnet. She stood awhile at the bedside, one hand placed
+in the other, gently rocking herself to and fro, in an attitude and with
+a movement habitual to her. At last she said, "I have sent Fanny to
+Fieldhead to fetch a few things for me, such as I shall want during a
+short stay here. It is my wish to remain with you till you are better.
+Your uncle kindly permits my attendance. Will it to yourself be
+acceptable, Caroline?"
+
+"I am sorry you should take such needless trouble. I do not feel very
+ill, but I cannot refuse resolutely. It will be such comfort to know you
+are in the house, to see you sometimes in the room; but don't confine
+yourself on my account, dear Mrs. Pryor. Fanny nurses me very well."
+
+Mrs. Pryor, bending over the pale little sufferer, was now smoothing the
+hair under her cap, and gently raising her pillow. As she performed
+these offices, Caroline, smiling, lifted her face to kiss her.
+
+"Are you free from pain? Are you tolerably at ease?" was inquired in a
+low, earnest voice, as the self-elected nurse yielded to the caress.
+
+"I think I am almost happy."
+
+"You wish to drink? Your lips are parched."
+
+She held a glass filled with some cooling beverage to her mouth.
+
+"Have you eaten anything to-day, Caroline?"
+
+"I cannot eat."
+
+"But soon your appetite will return; it _must_ return--that is, I pray
+God it may."
+
+In laying her again on the couch, she encircled her in her arms; and
+while so doing, by a movement which seemed scarcely voluntary, she drew
+her to her heart, and held her close gathered an instant.
+
+"I shall hardly wish to get well, that I may keep you always," said
+Caroline.
+
+Mrs. Pryor did not smile at this speech. Over her features ran a tremor,
+which for some minutes she was absorbed in repressing.
+
+"You are more used to Fanny than to me," she remarked ere long. "I
+should think my attendance must seem strange, officious?"
+
+"No; quite natural, and very soothing. You must have been accustomed to
+wait on sick people, ma'am. You move about the room so softly, and you
+speak so quietly, and touch me so gently."
+
+"I am dexterous in nothing, my dear. You will often find me awkward, but
+never negligent."
+
+Negligent, indeed, she was not. From that hour Fanny and Eliza became
+ciphers in the sick-room. Mrs. Pryor made it her domain; she performed
+all its duties; she lived in it day and night. The patient
+remonstrated--faintly, however, from the first, and not at all ere long.
+Loneliness and gloom were now banished from her bedside; protection and
+solace sat there instead. She and her nurse coalesced in wondrous union.
+Caroline was usually pained to require or receive much attendance. Mrs.
+Pryor, under ordinary circumstances, had neither the habit nor the art
+of performing little offices of service; but all now passed with such
+ease, so naturally, that the patient was as willing to be cherished as
+the nurse was bent on cherishing; no sign of weariness in the latter
+ever reminded the former that she ought to be anxious. There was, in
+fact, no very hard duty to perform; but a hireling might have found it
+hard.
+
+With all this care it seemed strange the sick girl did not get well; yet
+such was the case. She wasted like any snow-wreath in thaw; she faded
+like any flower in drought. Miss Keeldar, on whose thoughts danger or
+death seldom intruded, had at first entertained no fears at all for her
+friend; but seeing her change and sink from time to time when she paid
+her visits, alarm clutched her heart. She went to Mr. Helstone and
+expressed herself with so much energy that that gentleman was at last
+obliged, however unwillingly, to admit the idea that his niece was ill
+of something more than a migraine; and when Mrs. Pryor came and quietly
+demanded a physician, he said she might send for two if she liked. One
+came, but that one was an oracle. He delivered a dark saying of which
+the future was to solve the mystery, wrote some prescriptions, gave some
+directions--the whole with an air of crushing authority--pocketed his
+fee, and went. Probably he knew well enough he could do no good, but
+didn't like to say so.
+
+Still, no rumour of serious illness got wind in the neighbourhood. At
+Hollow's Cottage it was thought that Caroline had only a severe cold,
+she having written a note to Hortense to that effect; and mademoiselle
+contented herself with sending two pots of currant jam, a recipe for a
+tisane, and a note of advice.
+
+Mrs. Yorke being told that a physician had been summoned, sneered at the
+hypochondriac fancies of the rich and idle, who, she said, having
+nothing but themselves to think about, must needs send for a doctor if
+only so much as their little finger ached.
+
+The "rich and idle," represented in the person of Caroline, were
+meantime falling fast into a condition of prostration, whose quickly
+consummated debility puzzled all who witnessed it except one; for that
+one alone reflected how liable is the undermined structure to sink in
+sudden ruin.
+
+Sick people often have fancies inscrutable to ordinary attendants, and
+Caroline had one which even her tender nurse could not at first explain.
+On a certain day in the week, at a certain hour, she would--whether
+worse or better--entreat to be taken up and dressed, and suffered to sit
+in her chair near the window. This station she would retain till noon
+was past. Whatever degree of exhaustion or debility her wan aspect
+betrayed, she still softly put off all persuasion to seek repose until
+the church clock had duly tolled midday. The twelve strokes sounded, she
+grew docile, and would meekly lie down. Returned to the couch, she
+usually buried her face deep in the pillow, and drew the coverlets close
+round her, as if to shut out the world and sun, of which she was tired.
+More than once, as she thus lay, a slight convulsion shook the sick-bed,
+and a faint sob broke the silence round it. These things were not
+unnoted by Mrs. Pryor.
+
+One Tuesday morning, as usual, she had asked leave to rise, and now she
+sat wrapped in her white dressing-gown, leaning forward in the
+easy-chair, gazing steadily and patiently from the lattice. Mrs. Pryor
+was seated a little behind, knitting as it seemed, but, in truth,
+watching her. A change crossed her pale, mournful brow, animating its
+languor; a light shot into her faded eyes, reviving their lustre; she
+half rose and looked earnestly out. Mrs. Pryor, drawing softly near,
+glanced over her shoulder. From this window was visible the churchyard,
+beyond it the road; and there, riding sharply by, appeared a horseman.
+The figure was not yet too remote for recognition. Mrs. Pryor had long
+sight; she knew Mr. Moore. Just as an intercepting rising ground
+concealed him from view, the clock struck twelve.
+
+"May I lie down again?" asked Caroline.
+
+Her nurse assisted her to bed. Having laid her down and drawn the
+curtain, she stood listening near. The little couch trembled, the
+suppressed sob stirred the air. A contraction as of anguish altered Mrs.
+Pryor's features; she wrung her hands; half a groan escaped her lips.
+She now remembered that Tuesday was Whinbury market day. Mr. Moore must
+always pass the rectory on his way thither, just ere noon of that day.
+
+Caroline wore continually round her neck a slender braid of silk,
+attached to which was some trinket. Mrs. Pryor had seen the bit of gold
+glisten, but had not yet obtained a fair view of it. Her patient never
+parted with it. When dressed it was hidden in her bosom; as she lay in
+bed she always held it in her hand. That Tuesday afternoon the transient
+doze--more like lethargy than sleep--which sometimes abridged the long
+days, had stolen over her. The weather was hot. While turning in febrile
+restlessness, she had pushed the coverlets a little aside. Mrs. Pryor
+bent to replace them. The small, wasted hand, lying nerveless on the
+sick girl's breast, clasped as usual her jealously-guarded treasure.
+Those fingers whose attenuation it gave pain to see were now relaxed in
+sleep. Mrs. Pryor gently disengaged the braid, drawing out a tiny
+locket--a slight thing it was, such as it suited her small purse to
+purchase. Under its crystal face appeared a curl of black hair, too
+short and crisp to have been severed from a female head.
+
+Some agitated movement occasioned a twitch of the silken chain. The
+sleeper started and woke. Her thoughts were usually now somewhat
+scattered on waking, her look generally wandering. Half rising, as if
+in terror, she exclaimed, "Don't take it from me, Robert! Don't! It is
+my last comfort; let me keep it. I never tell any one whose hair it is;
+I never show it."
+
+Mrs. Pryor had already disappeared behind the curtain. Reclining far
+back in a deep arm-chair by the bedside, she was withdrawn from view.
+Caroline looked abroad into the chamber; she thought it empty. As her
+stray ideas returned slowly, each folding its weak wings on the mind's
+sad shore, like birds exhausted, beholding void, and perceiving silence
+round her, she believed herself alone. Collected she was not yet;
+perhaps healthy self-possession and self-control were to be hers no
+more; perhaps that world the strong and prosperous live in had already
+rolled from beneath her feet for ever. So, at least, it often seemed to
+herself. In health she had never been accustomed to think aloud, but now
+words escaped her lips unawares.
+
+"Oh, I _should_ see him once more before all is over! Heaven _might_
+favour me thus far!" she cried. "God grant me a little comfort before I
+die!" was her humble petition.
+
+"But he will not know I am ill till I am gone, and he will come when
+they have laid me out, and I am senseless, cold, and stiff.
+
+"What can my departed soul feel then? Can it see or know what happens to
+the clay? Can spirits, through any medium, communicate with living
+flesh? Can the dead at all revisit those they leave? Can they come in
+the elements? Will wind, water, fire, lend me a path to Moore?
+
+"Is it for nothing the wind sounds almost articulately sometimes--sings
+as I have lately heard it sing at night--or passes the casement sobbing,
+as if for sorrow to come? Does nothing, then, haunt it, nothing inspire
+it?
+
+"Why, it suggested to me words one night; it poured a strain which I
+could have written down, only I was appalled, and dared not rise to seek
+pencil and paper by the dim watch-light.
+
+"What is that electricity they speak of, whose changes make us well or
+ill, whose lack or excess blasts, whose even balance revives? What are
+all those influences that are about us in the atmosphere, that keep
+playing over our nerves like fingers on stringed instruments, and call
+forth now a sweet note, and now a wail--now an exultant swell, and anon
+the saddest cadence?
+
+"_Where is_ the other world? In _what_ will another life consist? Why do
+I ask? Have I not cause to think that the hour is hasting but too fast
+when the veil must be rent for me? Do I not know the Grand Mystery is
+likely to burst prematurely on me? Great Spirit, in whose goodness I
+confide, whom, as my Father, I have petitioned night and morning from
+early infancy, help the weak creation of Thy hands! Sustain me through
+the ordeal I dread and must undergo! Give me strength! Give me patience!
+Give me--oh, _give me_ FAITH!"
+
+She fell back on her pillow. Mrs. Pryor found means to steal quietly
+from the room. She re-entered it soon after, apparently as composed as
+if she had really not overheard this strange soliloquy.
+
+The next day several callers came. It had become known that Miss
+Helstone was worse. Mr. Hall and his sister Margaret arrived. Both,
+after they had been in the sickroom, quitted it in tears; they had found
+the patient more altered than they expected. Hortense Moore came.
+Caroline seemed stimulated by her presence. She assured her, smiling,
+she was not dangerously ill; she talked to her in a low voice, but
+cheerfully. During her stay, excitement kept up the flush of her
+complexion; she looked better.
+
+"How is Mr. Robert?" asked Mrs. Pryor, as Hortense was preparing to take
+leave.
+
+"He was very well when he left."
+
+"Left! Is he gone from home?"
+
+It was then explained that some police intelligence about the rioters of
+whom he was in pursuit had, that morning, called him away to Birmingham,
+and probably a fortnight might elapse ere he returned.
+
+"He is not aware that Miss Helstone is very ill?"
+
+"Oh no! He thought, like me, that she had only a bad cold."
+
+After this visit, Mrs. Pryor took care not to approach Caroline's couch
+for above an hour. She heard her weep, and dared not look on her tears.
+
+As evening closed in, she brought her some tea. Caroline, opening her
+eyes from a moment's slumber, viewed her nurse with an unrecognizing
+glance.
+
+"I smelt the honeysuckles in the glen this summer morning," she said,
+"as I stood at the counting-house window."
+
+Strange words like these from pallid lips pierce a loving listener's
+heart more poignantly than steel. They sound romantic, perhaps, in
+books; in real life they are harrowing.
+
+"My darling, do you know me?" said Mrs. Pryor.
+
+"I went in to call Robert to breakfast. I have been with him in the
+garden. He asked me to go. A heavy dew has refreshed the flowers. The
+peaches are ripening."
+
+"My darling! my darling!" again and again repeated the nurse.
+
+"I thought it was daylight--long after sunrise. It looks dark. Is the
+moon now set?"
+
+That moon, lately risen, was gazing full and mild upon her. Floating in
+deep blue space, it watched her unclouded.
+
+"Then it is not morning? I am not at the cottage? Who is this? I see a
+shape at my bedside."
+
+"It is myself--it is your friend--your nurse--your---- Lean your head on
+my shoulder. Collect yourself." In a lower tone--"O God, take pity! Give
+_her_ life, and _me_ strength! Send me courage! Teach me words!"
+
+Some minutes passed in silence. The patient lay mute and passive in the
+trembling arms, on the throbbing bosom of the nurse.
+
+"I am better now," whispered Caroline at last, "much better. I feel
+where I am. This is Mrs. Pryor near me. I was dreaming. I talk when I
+wake up from dreams; people often do in illness. How fast your heart
+beats, ma'am! Do not be afraid."
+
+"It is not fear, child--only a little anxiety, which will pass. I have
+brought you some tea, Cary. Your uncle made it himself. You know he says
+he can make a better cup of tea than any housewife can. Taste it. He is
+concerned to hear that you eat so little; he would be glad if you had a
+better appetite."
+
+"I am thirsty. Let me drink."
+
+She drank eagerly.
+
+"What o'clock is it, ma'am?" she asked.
+
+"Past nine."
+
+"Not later? Oh! I have yet a long night before me. But the tea has made
+me strong. I will sit up."
+
+Mrs. Pryor raised her, and arranged her pillows.
+
+"Thank Heaven! I am not always equally miserable, and ill, and hopeless.
+The afternoon has been bad since Hortense went; perhaps the evening may
+be better. It is a fine night, I think? The moon shines clear."
+
+"Very fine--a perfect summer night. The old church-tower gleams white
+almost as silver."
+
+"And does the churchyard look peaceful?"
+
+"Yes, and the garden also. Dew glistens on the foliage."
+
+"Can you see many long weeds and nettles amongst the graves? or do they
+look turfy and flowery?"
+
+"I see closed daisy-heads gleaming like pearls on some mounds. Thomas
+has mown down the dock-leaves and rank grass, and cleared all away."
+
+"I always like that to be done; it soothes one's mind to see the place
+in order. And, I dare say, within the church just now that moonlight
+shines as softly as in my room. It will fall through the east window
+full on the Helstone monument. When I close my eyes I seem to see poor
+papa's epitaph in black letters on the white marble. There is plenty of
+room for other inscriptions underneath."
+
+"William Farren came to look after your flowers this morning. He was
+afraid, now you cannot tend them yourself, they would be neglected. He
+has taken two of your favourite plants home to nurse for you."
+
+"If I were to make a will, I would leave William all my plants; Shirley
+my trinkets--except one, which must not be taken off my neck; and you,
+ma'am, my books." After a pause--"Mrs. Pryor, I feel a longing wish for
+something."
+
+"For what, Caroline?"
+
+"You know I always delight to hear you sing. Sing me a hymn just now.
+Sing that hymn which begins,--
+
+    'Our God, our help in ages past,
+       Our hope for years to come,
+     Our shelter from the stormy blast,
+       Our refuge, haven, home!'"
+
+Mrs. Pryor at once complied.
+
+No wonder Caroline liked to hear her sing. Her voice, even in speaking,
+was sweet and silver clear; in song it was almost divine. Neither flute
+nor dulcimer has tones so pure. But the tone was secondary, compared to
+the expression which trembled through--a tender vibration from a feeling
+heart.
+
+The servants in the kitchen, hearing the strain, stole to the stair-foot
+to listen. Even old Helstone, as he walked in the garden, pondering over
+the unaccountable and feeble nature of women, stood still amongst his
+borders to catch the mournful melody more distinctly. Why it reminded
+him of his forgotten dead wife, he could not tell; nor why it made him
+more concerned than he had hitherto been for Caroline's fading girlhood.
+He was glad to recollect that he had promised to pay Wynne, the
+magistrate, a visit that evening. Low spirits and gloomy thoughts were
+very much his aversion. When they attacked him he usually found means to
+make them march in double-quick time. The hymn followed him faintly as
+he crossed the fields. He hastened his customary sharp pace, that he
+might get beyond its reach.
+
+    "Thy word commands our flesh to dust,--
+       'Return, ye sons of men;'
+     All nations rose from earth at first,
+       And turn to earth again.
+
+    "A thousand ages in Thy sight
+       Are like an evening gone--
+     Short as the watch that ends the night
+       Before the rising sun.
+
+    "Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
+       Bears all its sons away;
+     They fly, forgotten, as a dream
+       Dies at the opening day.
+
+    "Like flowery fields, the nations stand,
+       Fresh in the morning light;
+     The flowers beneath the mower's hand
+       Lie withering ere 'tis night.
+
+    "Our God, our help in ages past,
+       Our hope for years to come,
+     Be Thou our guard while troubles last--
+       O Father, be our home!"
+
+"Now sing a song--a Scottish song," suggested Caroline, when the hymn
+was over--"'Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon.'"
+
+Again Mrs. Pryor obeyed, or essayed to obey. At the close of the first
+stanza she stopped. She could get no further. Her full heart flowed
+over.
+
+"You are weeping at the pathos of the air. Come here, and I will comfort
+you," said Caroline, in a pitying accent. Mrs. Pryor came. She sat down
+on the edge of her patient's bed, and allowed the wasted arms to
+encircle her.
+
+"You often soothe me; let me soothe you," murmured the young girl,
+kissing her cheek. "I hope," she added, "it is not for me you weep?"
+
+No answer followed.
+
+"Do you think I shall not get better? I do not feel _very_ ill--only
+weak."
+
+"But your mind, Caroline--your mind is crushed. Your heart is almost
+broken; you have been so neglected, so repulsed, left so desolate."
+
+"I believe grief is, and always has been, my worst ailment. I sometimes
+think if an abundant gush of happiness came on me I could revive yet."
+
+"Do you wish to live?"
+
+"I have no object in life."
+
+"You love me, Caroline?"
+
+"Very much--very truly--inexpressibly sometimes. Just now I feel as if I
+could almost grow to your heart."
+
+"I will return directly, dear," remarked Mrs. Pryor, as she laid
+Caroline down.
+
+Quitting her, she glided to the door, softly turned the key in the lock,
+ascertained that it was fast, and came back. She bent over her. She
+threw back the curtain to admit the moonlight more freely. She gazed
+intently on her face.
+
+"Then, if you love me," said she, speaking quickly, with an altered
+voice; "if you feel as if, to use your own words, you could 'grow to my
+heart,' it will be neither shock nor pain for you to know that _that_
+heart is the source whence yours was filled; that from _my_ veins issued
+the tide which flows in _yours_; that you are _mine_--my daughter--my
+own child."
+
+"Mrs. Pryor----"
+
+"My own child!"
+
+"That is--that means--you have adopted me?"
+
+"It means that, if I have given you nothing else, I at least gave you
+life; that I bore you, nursed you; that I am your true mother. No other
+woman can claim the title; it is _mine_."
+
+"But Mrs. James Helstone--but my father's wife, whom I do not remember
+ever to have seen, she is my mother?"
+
+"She _is_ your mother. James Helstone was _my_ husband. I say you are
+_mine_. I have proved it. I thought perhaps you were all his, which
+would have been a cruel dispensation for me. I find it is _not_ so. God
+permitted me to be the parent of my child's mind. It belongs to me; it
+is my property--my _right_. These features are James's own. He had a
+fine face when he was young, and not altered by error. Papa, my darling,
+gave you your blue eyes and soft brown hair; he gave you the oval of
+your face and the regularity of your lineaments--the outside _he_
+conferred; but the heart and the brain are _mine_. The germs are from
+_me_, and they are improved, they are developed to excellence. I esteem
+and approve my child as highly as I do most fondly love her."
+
+"Is what I hear true? Is it no dream?"
+
+"I wish it were as true that the substance and colour of health were
+restored to your cheek."
+
+"My own mother! is she one I can be so fond of as I can of you? People
+generally did not like her--so I have been given to understand."
+
+"They told you that? Well, your mother now tells you that, not having
+the gift to please people generally, for their approbation she does not
+care. Her thoughts are centred in her child. Does that child welcome or
+reject her?"
+
+"But if you _are_ my mother, the world is all changed to me. Surely I
+can live. I should like to recover----"
+
+"You _must_ recover. You drew life and strength from my breast when you
+were a tiny, fair infant, over whose blue eyes I used to weep, fearing I
+beheld in your very beauty the sign of qualities that had entered my
+heart like iron, and pierced through my soul like a sword. Daughter! we
+have been long parted; I return now to cherish you again."
+
+She held her to her bosom; she cradled her in her arms; she rocked her
+softly, as if lulling a young child to sleep.
+
+"My mother--my own mother!"
+
+The offspring nestled to the parent; that parent, feeling the endearment
+and hearing the appeal, gathered her closer still. She covered her with
+noiseless kisses; she murmured love over her, like a cushat fostering
+its young.
+
+There was silence in the room for a long while.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Does my uncle know?"
+
+"Your uncle knows. I told him when I first came to stay with you here."
+
+"Did you recognize me when we first met at Fieldhead?"
+
+"How could it be otherwise? Mr. and Miss Helstone being announced, I was
+prepared to see my child."
+
+"It was that, then, which moved you. I saw you disturbed."
+
+"You saw nothing, Caroline; I can cover my feelings. You can never tell
+what an age of strange sensation I lived, during the two minutes that
+elapsed between the report of your name and your entrance. You can never
+tell how your look, mien, carriage, shook me."
+
+"Why? Were you disappointed?"
+
+"What will she be like? I had asked myself; and when I saw what you were
+like, I could have dropped."
+
+"Mamma, why?"
+
+"I trembled in your presence. I said, I will never own her; she shall
+never know me."
+
+"But I said and did nothing remarkable. I felt a little diffident at the
+thought of an introduction to strangers--that was all."
+
+"I soon saw you were diffident. That was the first thing which reassured
+me. Had you been rustic, clownish, awkward, I should have been content."
+
+"You puzzle me."
+
+"I had reason to dread a fair outside, to mistrust a popular bearing, to
+shudder before distinction, grace, and courtesy. Beauty and affability
+had come in my way when I was recluse, desolate, young, and ignorant--a
+toil-worn governess perishing of uncheered labour, breaking down before
+her time. These, Caroline, when they smiled on me, I mistook for angels.
+I followed them home; and when into their hands I had given without
+reserve my whole chance of future happiness, it was my lot to witness a
+transfiguration on the domestic hearth--to see the white mask lifted,
+the bright disguise put away, and opposite me sat down---- O God, I
+_have_ suffered!"
+
+She sank on the pillow.
+
+"I _have_ suffered! None saw--none knew. There was no sympathy, no
+redemption, no redress!"
+
+"Take comfort, mother. It is over now."
+
+"It is over, and not fruitlessly. I tried to keep the word of His
+patience. He kept me in the days of my anguish. I was afraid with
+terror--I was troubled. Through great tribulation He brought me through
+to a salvation revealed in this last time. My fear had torment; He has
+cast it out. He has given me in its stead perfect love. But,
+Caroline----"
+
+Thus she invoked her daughter after a pause.
+
+"Mother!"
+
+"I charge you, when you next look on your father's monument, to respect
+the name chiselled there. To you he did only good. On you he conferred
+his whole treasure of beauties, nor added to them one dark defect. All
+_you_ derived from him is excellent. You owe him gratitude. Leave,
+between him and me, the settlement of our mutual account. Meddle not.
+God is the arbiter. This world's laws never came near us--never! They
+were powerless as a rotten bulrush to protect me--impotent as idiot
+babblings to restrain him! As you said, it is all over now; the grave
+lies between us. There he sleeps, in that church. To his dust I say this
+night, what I have never said before, 'James, slumber peacefully! See!
+your terrible debt is cancelled! Look! I wipe out the long, black
+account with my own hand! James, your child atones. This living likeness
+of you--this thing with your perfect features--this one good gift you
+gave me has nestled affectionately to my heart, and tenderly called me
+"mother." Husband, rest forgiven!'"
+
+"Dearest mother, that is right! Can papa's spirit hear us? Is he
+comforted to know that we still love him?"
+
+"I said nothing of love. I spoke of forgiveness. Mind the truth, child;
+I said nothing of love! On the threshold of eternity, should he be there
+to see me enter, will I maintain that."
+
+"O mother, you must have suffered!"
+
+"O child, the human heart _can_ suffer! It can hold more tears than the
+ocean holds waters. We never know how deep, how wide it is, till misery
+begins to unbind her clouds, and fill it with rushing blackness."
+
+"Mother, forget."
+
+"Forget!" she said, with the strangest spectre of a laugh. "The north
+pole will rush to the south, and the headlands of Europe be locked into
+the bays of Australia ere I forget."
+
+"Hush, mother! Rest! Be at peace!"
+
+And the child lulled the parent, as the parent had erst lulled the
+child. At last Mrs. Pryor wept. She then grew calmer. She resumed those
+tender cares agitation had for a moment suspended. Replacing her
+daughter on the couch, she smoothed the pillow and spread the sheet. The
+soft hair whose locks were loosened she rearranged, the damp brow she
+refreshed with a cool, fragrant essence.
+
+"Mamma, let them bring a candle, that I may see you; and tell my uncle
+to come into this room by-and-by. I want to hear him say that I am your
+daughter. And, mamma, take your supper here. Don't leave me for one
+minute to-night."
+
+"O Caroline, it is well you are gentle! You will say to me, Go, and I
+shall go; Come, and I shall come; Do this, and I shall do it. You
+inherit a certain manner as well as certain features. It will always be
+'mamma' prefacing a mandate--softly spoken, though, from you, thank God!
+Well," she added, under her breath, "he spoke softly too, once, like a
+flute breathing tenderness; and then, when the world was not by to
+listen, discords that split the nerves and curdled the blood--sounds to
+inspire insanity."
+
+"It seems so natural, mamma, to ask you for this and that. I shall want
+nobody but you to be near me, or to do anything for me. But do not let
+me be troublesome. Check me if I encroach."
+
+"You must not depend on me to check you; you must keep guard over
+yourself. I have little moral courage; the want of it is my bane. It is
+that which has made me an unnatural parent--which has kept me apart from
+my child during the ten years which have elapsed since my husband's
+death left me at liberty to claim her. It was that which first unnerved
+my arms and permitted the infant I might have retained a while longer to
+be snatched prematurely from their embrace."
+
+"How, mamma?"
+
+"I let you go as a babe, because you were pretty, and I feared your
+loveliness, deeming it the stamp of perversity. They sent me your
+portrait, taken at eight years old; that portrait confirmed my fears.
+Had it shown me a sunburnt little rustic--a heavy, blunt-featured,
+commonplace child--I should have hastened to claim you; but there, under
+the silver paper, I saw blooming the delicacy of an aristocratic
+flower--'little lady' was written on every trait. I had too recently
+crawled from under the yoke of the fine gentleman--escaped galled,
+crushed, paralyzed, dying--to dare to encounter his still finer and most
+fairy-like representative. My sweet little lady overwhelmed me with
+dismay; her air of native elegance froze my very marrow. In my
+experience I had not met with truth, modesty, good principle as the
+concomitants of beauty. A form so straight and fine, I argued, must
+conceal a mind warped and cruel. I had little faith in the power of
+education to rectify such a mind; or rather, I entirely misdoubted my
+own ability to influence it. Caroline, I dared not undertake to rear
+you. I resolved to leave you in your uncle's hands. Matthewson Helstone
+I knew, if an austere, was an upright man. He and all the world thought
+hardly of me for my strange, unmotherly resolve, and I deserved to be
+misjudged."
+
+"Mamma, why did you call yourself Mrs. Pryor?"
+
+"It was a name in my mother's family. I adopted it that I might live
+unmolested. My married name recalled too vividly my married life; I
+could not bear it. Besides, threats were uttered of forcing me to return
+to bondage. It could not be. Rather a bier for a bed, the grave for a
+home. My new name sheltered me. I resumed under its screen my old
+occupation of teaching. At first it scarcely procured me the means of
+sustaining life; but how savoury was hunger when I fasted in peace! How
+safe seemed the darkness and chill of an unkindled hearth when no lurid
+reflection from terror crimsoned its desolation! How serene was
+solitude, when I feared not the irruption of violence and vice!"
+
+"But, mamma, you have been in this neighbourhood before. How did it
+happen that when you reappeared here with Miss Keeldar you were not
+recognized?"
+
+"I only paid a short visit, as a bride, twenty years ago, and then I was
+very different to what I am now--slender, almost as slender as my
+daughter is at this day. My complexion, my very features are changed; my
+hair, my style of dress--everything is altered. You cannot fancy me a
+slim young person, attired in scanty drapery of white muslin, with bare
+arms, bracelets and necklace of beads, and hair disposed in round
+Grecian curls above my forehead?"
+
+"You must, indeed, have been different. Mamma, I heard the front door
+open. If it is my uncle coming in, just ask him to step upstairs, and
+let me hear his assurance that I am truly awake and collected, and not
+dreaming or delirious."
+
+The rector, of his own accord, was mounting the stairs, and Mrs. Pryor
+summoned him to his niece's apartment.
+
+"She's not worse, I hope?" he inquired hastily.
+
+"I think her better. She is disposed to converse; she seems stronger."
+
+"Good!" said he, brushing quickly into the room.--"Ha, Cary! how do? Did
+you drink my cup of tea? I made it for you just as I like it myself."
+
+"I drank it every drop, uncle. It did me good; it has made me quite
+alive. I have a wish for company, so I begged Mrs. Pryor to call you
+in."
+
+The respected ecclesiastic looked pleased, and yet embarrassed. He was
+willing enough to bestow his company on his sick niece for ten minutes,
+since it was her whim to wish it; but what means to employ for her
+entertainment he knew not. He hemmed--he fidgeted.
+
+"You'll be up in a trice," he observed, by way of saying something. "The
+little weakness will soon pass off; and then you must drink port wine--a
+pipe, if you can--and eat game and oysters. I'll get them for you, if
+they are to be had anywhere. Bless me! we'll make you as strong as
+Samson before we're done with you."
+
+"Who is that lady, uncle, standing beside you at the bed-foot?"
+
+"Good God!" he ejaculated. "She's not wandering, is she, ma'am?"
+
+Mrs. Pryor smiled.
+
+"I am wandering in a pleasant world," said Caroline, in a soft, happy
+voice, "and I want you to tell me whether it is real or visionary. What
+lady is that? Give her a name, uncle."
+
+"We must have Dr. Rile again, ma'am; or better still, MacTurk. He's less
+of a humbug. Thomas must saddle the pony and go for him."
+
+"No; I don't want a doctor. Mamma shall be my only physician. Now, do
+you understand, uncle?"
+
+Mr. Helstone pushed up his spectacles from his nose to his forehead,
+handled his snuff-box, and administered to himself a portion of the
+contents. Thus fortified, he answered briefly, "I see daylight. You've
+told her then, ma'am?"
+
+"And is it _true_?" demanded Caroline, rising on her pillow. "Is she
+_really_ my mother?"
+
+"You won't cry, or make any scene, or turn hysterical, if I answer Yes?"
+
+"Cry! I'd cry if you said _No_. It would be terrible to be disappointed
+now. But give her a name. How do you call her?"
+
+"I call this stout lady in a quaint black dress, who looks young enough
+to wear much smarter raiment, if she would--I call her Agnes Helstone.
+She married my brother James, and is his widow."
+
+"And my mother?"
+
+"What a little sceptic it is! Look at her small face, Mrs. Pryor,
+scarcely larger than the palm of my hand, alive with acuteness and
+eagerness." To Caroline--"She had the trouble of bringing you into the
+world at any rate. Mind you show your duty to her by quickly getting
+well, and repairing the waste of these cheeks.--Heigh-ho! she used to be
+plump. What she has done with it all I can't, for the life of me,
+divine."
+
+"If _wishing_ to get well will help me, I shall not be long sick. This
+morning I had no reason and no strength to wish it."
+
+Fanny here tapped at the door, and said that supper was ready.
+
+"Uncle, if you please, you may send me a little bit of supper--anything
+you like, from your own plate. That is wiser than going into hysterics,
+is it not?"
+
+"It is spoken like a sage, Cary. See if I don't cater for you
+judiciously. When women are sensible, and, above all, intelligible, I
+can get on with them. It is only the vague, superfine sensations, and
+extremely wire-drawn notions, that put me about. Let a woman ask me to
+give her an edible or a wearable--be the same a roc's egg or the
+breastplate of Aaron, a share of St. John's locusts and honey or the
+leathern girdle about his loins--I can, at least, understand the demand;
+but when they pine for they know not what--sympathy, sentiment, some of
+these indefinite abstractions--I can't do it; I don't know it; I haven't
+got it.--Madam, accept my arm."
+
+Mrs. Pryor signified that she should stay with her daughter that
+evening. Helstone, accordingly, left them together. He soon returned,
+bringing a plate in his own consecrated hand.
+
+"This is chicken," he said, "but we'll have partridge to-morrow.--Lift
+her up, and put a shawl over her. On my word, I understand
+nursing.--Now, here is the very same little silver fork you used when
+you first came to the rectory. That strikes me as being what you may
+call a happy thought--a delicate attention. Take it, Cary, and munch
+away cleverly."
+
+Caroline did her best. Her uncle frowned to see that her powers were so
+limited. He prophesied, however, great things for the future; and as she
+praised the morsel he had brought, and smiled gratefully in his face, he
+stooped over her pillow, kissed her, and said, with a broken, rugged
+accent, "Good-night, bairnie! God bless thee!"
+
+Caroline enjoyed such peaceful rest that night, circled by her mother's
+arms, and pillowed on her breast, that she forgot to wish for any other
+stay; and though more than one feverish dream came to her in slumber,
+yet, when she woke up panting, so happy and contented a feeling returned
+with returning consciousness that her agitation was soothed almost as
+soon as felt.
+
+As to the mother, she spent the night like Jacob at Peniel. Till break
+of day she wrestled with God in earnest prayer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+THE WEST WIND BLOWS.
+
+
+Not always do those who dare such divine conflict prevail. Night after
+night the sweat of agony may burst dark on the forehead; the supplicant
+may cry for mercy with that soundless voice the soul utters when its
+appeal is to the Invisible. "Spare my beloved," it may implore. "Heal my
+life's life. Rend not from me what long affection entwines with my whole
+nature. God of heaven, bend, hear, be clement!" And after this cry and
+strife the sun may rise and see him worsted. That opening morn, which
+used to salute him with the whisper of zephyrs, the carol of skylarks,
+may breathe, as its first accents, from the dear lips which colour and
+heat have quitted, "Oh! I have had a suffering night. This morning I am
+worse. I have tried to rise. I cannot. Dreams I am unused to have
+troubled me."
+
+Then the watcher approaches the patient's pillow, and sees a new and
+strange moulding of the familiar features, feels at once that the
+insufferable moment draws nigh, knows that it is God's will his idol
+shall be broken, and bends his head, and subdues his soul to the
+sentence he cannot avert and scarce can bear.
+
+Happy Mrs. Pryor! She was still praying, unconscious that the summer sun
+hung above the hills, when her child softly woke in her arms. No
+piteous, unconscious moaning--sound which so wastes our strength that,
+even if we have sworn to be firm, a rush of unconquerable tears sweeps
+away the oath--preceded her waking. No space of deaf apathy followed.
+The first words spoken were not those of one becoming estranged from
+this world, and already permitted to stray at times into realms foreign
+to the living. Caroline evidently remembered with clearness what had
+happened.
+
+"Mamma, I have slept _so_ well. I only dreamed and woke twice."
+
+Mrs. Pryor rose with a start, that her daughter might not see the joyful
+tears called into her eyes by that affectionate word "mamma," and the
+welcome assurance that followed it.
+
+For many days the mother dared rejoice only with trembling. That first
+revival seemed like the flicker of a dying lamp. If the flame streamed
+up bright one moment, the next it sank dim in the socket. Exhaustion
+followed close on excitement.
+
+There was always a touching endeavour to _appear_ better, but too often
+ability refused to second will; too often the attempt to bear up failed.
+The effort to eat, to talk, to look cheerful, was unsuccessful. Many an
+hour passed during which Mrs. Pryor feared that the chords of life could
+never more be strengthened, though the time of their breaking might be
+deferred.
+
+During this space the mother and daughter seemed left almost alone in
+the neighbourhood. It was the close of August; the weather was
+fine--that is to say, it was very dry and very dusty, for an arid wind
+had been blowing from the east this month past; very cloudless, too,
+though a pale haze, stationary in the atmosphere, seemed to rob of all
+depth of tone the blue of heaven, of all freshness the verdure of earth,
+and of all glow the light of day. Almost every family in Briarfield was
+absent on an excursion. Miss Keeldar and her friends were at the
+seaside; so were Mrs. Yorke's household. Mr. Hall and Louis Moore,
+between whom a spontaneous intimacy seemed to have arisen--the result,
+probably, of harmony of views and temperament--were gone "up north" on a
+pedestrian excursion to the Lakes. Even Hortense, who would fain have
+stayed at home and aided Mrs. Pryor in nursing Caroline, had been so
+earnestly entreated by Miss Mann to accompany her once more to Wormwood
+Wells, in the hope of alleviating sufferings greatly aggravated by the
+insalubrious weather, that she felt obliged to comply; indeed, it was
+not in her nature to refuse a request that at once appealed to her
+goodness of heart, and, by a confession of dependency, flattered her
+_amour propre_. As for Robert, from Birmingham he had gone on to London,
+where he still sojourned.
+
+So long as the breath of Asiatic deserts parched Caroline's lips and
+fevered her veins, her physical convalescence could not keep pace with
+her returning mental tranquillity; but there came a day when the wind
+ceased to sob at the eastern gable of the rectory, and at the oriel
+window of the church. A little cloud like a man's hand arose in the
+west; gusts from the same quarter drove it on and spread it wide; wet
+and tempest prevailed a while. When that was over the sun broke out
+genially, heaven regained its azure, and earth its green; the livid
+cholera-tint had vanished from the face of nature; the hills rose clear
+round the horizon, absolved from that pale malaria-haze.
+
+Caroline's youth could now be of some avail to her, and so could her
+mother's nurture. Both, crowned by God's blessing, sent in the pure west
+wind blowing soft as fresh through the ever-open chamber lattice,
+rekindled her long-languishing energies. At last Mrs. Pryor saw that it
+was permitted to hope: a genuine, material convalescence had commenced.
+It was not merely Caroline's smile which was brighter, or her spirits
+which were cheered, but a certain look had passed from her face and
+eye--a look dread and indescribable, but which will easily be recalled
+by those who have watched the couch of dangerous disease. Long before
+the emaciated outlines of her aspect began to fill, or its departed
+colour to return, a more subtle change took place; all grew softer and
+warmer. Instead of a marble mask and glassy eye, Mrs. Pryor saw laid on
+the pillow a face pale and wasted enough, perhaps more haggard than the
+other appearance, but less awful; for it was a sick, living girl, not a
+mere white mould or rigid piece of statuary.
+
+Now, too, she was not always petitioning to drink. The words, "I am _so_
+thirsty," ceased to be her plaint. Sometimes, when she had swallowed a
+morsel, she would say it had revived her. All descriptions of food were
+no longer equally distasteful; she could be induced, sometimes, to
+indicate a preference. With what trembling pleasure and anxious care did
+not her nurse prepare what was selected! How she watched her as she
+partook of it!
+
+Nourishment brought strength. She could sit up. Then she longed to
+breathe the fresh air, to revisit her flowers, to see how the fruit had
+ripened. Her uncle, always liberal, had bought a garden-chair for her
+express use. He carried her down in his own arms, and placed her in it
+himself, and William Farren was there to wheel her round the walks, to
+show her what he had done amongst her plants, to take her directions for
+further work.
+
+William and she found plenty to talk about. They had a dozen topics in
+common--interesting to them, unimportant to the rest of the world. They
+took a similar interest in animals, birds, insects, and plants; they
+held similar doctrines about humanity to the lower creation, and had a
+similar turn for minute observation on points of natural history. The
+nest and proceedings of some ground-bees, which had burrowed in the turf
+under an old cherry-tree, was one subject of interest; the haunts of
+certain hedge-sparrows, and the welfare of certain pearly eggs and
+callow fledglings, another.
+
+Had _Chambers's Journal_ existed in those days, it would certainly have
+formed Miss Helstone's and Farren's favourite periodical. She would have
+subscribed for it, and to him each number would duly have been lent;
+both would have put implicit faith and found great savour in its
+marvellous anecdotes of animal sagacity.
+
+This is a digression, but it suffices to explain why Caroline would have
+no other hand than William's to guide her chair, and why his society and
+conversation sufficed to give interest to her garden-airings.
+
+Mrs. Pryor, walking near, wondered how her daughter could be so much at
+ease with a "man of the people." _She_ found it impossible to speak to
+him otherwise than stiffly. She felt as if a great gulf lay between her
+caste and his, and that to cross it or meet him half-way would be to
+degrade herself. She gently asked Caroline, "Are you not afraid, my
+dear, to converse with that person so unreservedly? He may presume, and
+become troublesomely garrulous."
+
+"William presume, mamma? You don't know him. He never presumes. He is
+altogether too proud and sensitive to do so. William has very fine
+feelings."
+
+And Mrs. Pryor smiled sceptically at the naïve notion of that
+rough-handed, rough-headed, fustian-clad clown having "fine feelings."
+
+Farren, for his part, showed Mrs. Pryor only a very sulky brow. He knew
+when he was misjudged, and was apt to turn unmanageable with such as
+failed to give him his due.
+
+The evening restored Caroline entirely to her mother, and Mrs. Pryor
+liked the evening; for then, alone with her daughter, no human shadow
+came between her and what she loved. During the day she would have her
+stiff demeanour and cool moments, as was her wont. Between her and Mr.
+Helstone a very respectful but most rigidly ceremonious intercourse was
+kept up. Anything like familiarity would have bred contempt at once in
+one or both these personages; but by dint of strict civility and
+well-maintained distance they got on very smoothly.
+
+Towards the servants Mrs. Pryor's bearing was not uncourteous, but shy,
+freezing, ungenial. Perhaps it was diffidence rather than pride which
+made her appear so haughty; but, as was to be expected, Fanny and Eliza
+failed to make the distinction, and she was unpopular with them
+accordingly. She felt the effect produced; it rendered her at times
+dissatisfied with herself for faults she could not help, and with all
+else dejected, chill, and taciturn.
+
+This mood changed to Caroline's influence, and to that influence alone.
+The dependent fondness of her nursling, the natural affection of her
+child, came over her suavely. Her frost fell away, her rigidity unbent;
+she grew smiling and pliant. Not that Caroline made any wordy profession
+of love--that would ill have suited Mrs. Pryor; she would have read
+therein the proof of insincerity--but she hung on her with easy
+dependence; she confided in her with fearless reliance. These things
+contented the mother's heart.
+
+She liked to hear her daughter say, "Mamma, do this;" "Please, mamma,
+fetch me that;" "Mamma, read to me;" "Sing a little, mamma."
+
+Nobody else--not one living thing--had ever so claimed her services, so
+looked for help at her hand. Other people were always more or less
+reserved and stiff with her, as she was reserved and stiff with them;
+other people betrayed consciousness of and annoyance at her weak points.
+Caroline no more showed such wounding sagacity or reproachful
+sensitiveness now than she had done when a suckling of three months old.
+
+Yet Caroline could find fault. Blind to the constitutional defects that
+were incurable, she had her eyes wide open to the acquired habits that
+were susceptible of remedy. On certain points she would quite artlessly
+lecture her parent; and that parent, instead of being hurt, felt a
+sensation of pleasure in discovering that the girl _dared_ lecture her,
+that she was so much at home with her.
+
+"Mamma, I am determined you shall not wear that old gown any more. Its
+fashion is not becoming; it is too strait in the skirt. You shall put on
+your black silk every afternoon. In that you look nice; it suits you.
+And you shall have a black satin dress for Sundays--a real satin, not a
+satinet or any of the shams. And, mamma, when you get the new one, mind
+you must wear it."
+
+"My dear, I thought of the black silk serving me as a best dress for
+many years yet, and I wished to buy you several things."
+
+"Nonsense, mamma. My uncle gives me cash to get what I want. You know he
+is generous enough; and I have set my heart on seeing you in a black
+satin. Get it soon, and let it be made by a dressmaker of my
+recommending. Let me choose the pattern. You always want to disguise
+yourself like a grandmother. You would persuade one that you are old and
+ugly. Not at all! On the contrary, when well dressed and cheerful you
+are very comely indeed; your smile is so pleasant, your teeth are so
+white, your hair is still such a pretty light colour. And then you speak
+like a young lady, with such a clear, fine tone, and you sing better
+than any young lady I ever heard. Why do you wear such dresses and
+bonnets, mamma, such as nobody else ever wears?"
+
+"Does it annoy you, Caroline?"
+
+"Very much; it vexes me even. People say you are miserly; and yet you
+are not, for you give liberally to the poor and to religious
+societies--though your gifts are conveyed so secretly and quietly that
+they are known to few except the receivers. But I will be your
+lady's-maid myself. When I get a little stronger I will set to work, and
+you must be good, mamma, and do as I bid you."
+
+And Caroline, sitting near her mother, rearranged her muslin
+handkerchief and resmoothed her hair.
+
+"My own mamma," then she went on, as if pleasing herself with the
+thought of their relationship, "who belongs to me, and to whom I belong!
+I am a rich girl now. I have something I can love well, and not be
+afraid of loving. Mamma, who gave you this little brooch? Let me unpin
+it and look at it."
+
+Mrs. Pryor, who usually shrank from meddling fingers and near approach,
+allowed the license complacently.
+
+"Did papa give you this, mamma?"
+
+"My sister gave it me--my only sister, Cary. Would that your Aunt
+Caroline had lived to see her niece!"
+
+"Have you nothing of papa's--no trinket, no gift of his?"
+
+"I have one thing."
+
+"That you prize?"
+
+"That I prize."
+
+"Valuable and pretty?"
+
+"Invaluable and sweet to me."
+
+"Show it, mamma. Is it here or at Fieldhead?"
+
+"It is talking to me now, leaning on me. Its arms are round me."
+
+"Ah, mamma, you mean your teasing daughter, who will never let you
+alone; who, when you go into your room, cannot help running to seek for
+you; who follows you upstairs and down, like a dog."
+
+"Whose features still give me such a strange thrill sometimes. I half
+fear your fair looks yet, child."
+
+"You don't; you can't. Mamma, I am sorry papa was not good. I do so wish
+he had been. Wickedness spoils and poisons all pleasant things. It kills
+love. If you and I thought each other wicked, we could not love each
+other, could we?"
+
+"And if we could not trust each other, Cary?"
+
+"How miserable we should be! Mother, before I knew you I had an
+apprehension that you were not good--that I could not esteem you. That
+dread damped my wish to see you. And now my heart is elate because I
+find you perfect--almost; kind, clever, nice. Your sole fault is that
+you are old-fashioned, and of that I shall cure you. Mamma, put your
+work down; read to me. I like your southern accent; it is so pure, so
+soft. It has no rugged burr, no nasal twang, such as almost every one's
+voice here in the north has. My uncle and Mr. Hall say that you are a
+fine reader, mamma. Mr. Hall said he never heard any lady read with such
+propriety of expression or purity of accent."
+
+"I wish I could reciprocate the compliment, Cary; but, really, the first
+time I heard your truly excellent friend read and preach I could not
+understand his broad northern tongue."
+
+"Could you understand me, mamma? Did I seem to speak roughly?"
+
+"No. I almost wished you had, as I wished you had looked unpolished.
+Your father, Caroline, naturally spoke well, quite otherwise than your
+worthy uncle--correctly, gently, smoothly. You inherit the gift."
+
+"Poor papa! When he was so agreeable, why was he not good?"
+
+"Why he was _as_ he was--and happily of that you, child, can form no
+conception--I cannot tell. It is a deep mystery. The key is in the hands
+of his Maker. There I leave it."
+
+"Mamma, you will keep stitching, stitching away. Put down the sewing; I
+am an enemy to it. It cumbers your lap, and I want it for my head; it
+engages your eyes, and I want them for a book. Here is your
+favourite--Cowper."
+
+These importunities were the mother's pleasure. If ever she delayed
+compliance, it was only to hear them repeated, and to enjoy her child's
+soft, half-playful, half-petulant urgency. And then, when she yielded,
+Caroline would say archly, "You will spoil me, mamma. I always thought I
+should like to be spoiled, and I find it very sweet." So did Mrs.
+Pryor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+OLD COPY-BOOKS.
+
+
+By the time the Fieldhead party returned to Briarfield Caroline was
+nearly well. Miss Keeldar, who had received news by post of her friend's
+convalescence, hardly suffered an hour to elapse between her arrival at
+home and her first call at the rectory.
+
+A shower of rain was falling gently, yet fast, on the late flowers and
+russet autumn shrubs, when the garden wicket was heard to swing open,
+and Shirley's well-known form passed the window. On her entrance her
+feelings were evinced in her own peculiar fashion. When deeply moved by
+serious fears or joys she was not garrulous. The strong emotion was
+rarely suffered to influence her tongue, and even her eye refused it
+more than a furtive and fitful conquest. She took Caroline in her arms,
+gave her one look, one kiss, then said, "You are better."
+
+And a minute after, "I see you are safe now; but take care. God grant
+your health may be called on to sustain no more shocks!"
+
+She proceeded to talk fluently about the journey. In the midst of
+vivacious discourse her eye still wandered to Caroline. There spoke in
+its light a deep solicitude, some trouble, and some amaze.
+
+"She may be better," it said, "but how weak she still is! What peril she
+has come through!"
+
+Suddenly her glance reverted to Mrs. Pryor. It pierced her through.
+
+"When will my governess return to me?" she asked.
+
+"May I tell her all?" demanded Caroline of her mother. Leave being
+signified by a gesture, Shirley was presently enlightened on what had
+happened in her absence.
+
+"Very good," was the cool comment--"very good! But it is no news to me."
+
+"What! did you know?"
+
+"I guessed long since the whole business. I have heard somewhat of Mrs.
+Pryor's history--not from herself, but from others. With every detail of
+Mr. James Helstone's career and character I was acquainted. An
+afternoon's sitting and conversation with Miss Mann had rendered me
+familiar therewith; also he is one of Mrs. Yorke's warning examples--one
+of the blood-red lights she hangs out to scare young ladies from
+matrimony. I believe I should have been sceptical about the truth of the
+portrait traced by such fingers--both these ladies take a dark pleasure
+in offering to view the dark side of life--but I questioned Mr. Yorke on
+the subject, and he said, 'Shirley, my woman, if you want to know aught
+about yond' James Helstone, I can only say he was a man-tiger. He was
+handsome, dissolute, soft, treacherous, courteous, cruel----' Don't cry,
+Cary; we'll say no more about it."
+
+"I am not crying, Shirley; or if I am, it is nothing. Go on; you are no
+friend if you withhold from me the truth. I hate that false plan of
+disguising, mutilating the truth."
+
+"Fortunately I have said pretty nearly all that I have to say, except
+that your uncle himself confirmed Mr. Yorke's words; for he too scorns a
+lie, and deals in none of those conventional subterfuges that are
+shabbier than lies."
+
+"But papa is dead; they should let him alone now."
+
+"They should; and we _will_ let him alone. Cry away, Cary; it will do
+you good. It is wrong to check natural tears. Besides, I choose to
+please myself by sharing an idea that at this moment beams in your
+mother's eye while she looks at you. Every drop blots out a sin. Weep!
+your tears have the virtue which the rivers of Damascus lacked. Like
+Jordan, they can cleanse a leprous memory."
+
+"Madam," she continued, addressing Mrs. Pryor, "did you think I could be
+daily in the habit of seeing you and your daughter together--marking
+your marvellous similarity in many points, observing (pardon me) your
+irrepressible emotions in the presence and still more in the absence of
+your child--and not form my own conjectures? I formed them, and they are
+literally correct. I shall begin to think myself shrewd."
+
+"And you said nothing?" observed Caroline, who soon regained the quiet
+control of her feelings.
+
+"Nothing. I had no warrant to breathe a word on the subject. _My_
+business it was not; I abstained from making it such."
+
+"You guessed so deep a secret, and did not hint that you guessed it?"
+
+"Is that so difficult?"
+
+"It is not like you."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"You are not reserved; you are frankly communicative."
+
+"I may be communicative, yet know where to stop. In showing my treasure
+I may withhold a gem or two--a curious, unbought graven stone--an amulet
+of whose mystic glitter I rarely permit even myself a glimpse.
+Good-day."
+
+Caroline thus seemed to get a view of Shirley's character under a novel
+aspect. Ere long the prospect was renewed; it opened upon her.
+
+No sooner had she regained sufficient strength to bear a change of
+scene--the excitement of a little society--than Miss Keeldar sued daily
+for her presence at Fieldhead. Whether Shirley had become wearied of her
+honoured relatives is not known. She did not say she was; but she
+claimed and retained Caroline with an eagerness which proved that an
+addition to that worshipful company was not unwelcome.
+
+The Sympsons were church people. Of course the rector's niece was
+received by them with courtesy. Mr. Sympson proved to be a man of
+spotless respectability, worrying temper, pious principles, and worldly
+views; his lady was a very good woman--patient, kind, well-bred. She had
+been brought up on a narrow system of views, starved on a few
+prejudices--a mere handful of bitter herbs; a few preferences, soaked
+till their natural flavour was extracted, and with no seasoning added in
+the cooking; some excellent principles, made up in a stiff raised crust
+of bigotry difficult to digest. Far too submissive was she to complain
+of this diet or to ask for a crumb beyond it.
+
+The daughters were an example to their sex. They were tall, with a Roman
+nose apiece. They had been educated faultlessly. All they did was well
+done. History and the most solid books had cultivated their minds.
+Principles and opinions they possessed which could not be mended. More
+exactly-regulated lives, feelings, manners, habits, it would have been
+difficult to find anywhere. They knew by heart a certain
+young-ladies'-schoolroom code of laws on language, demeanour, etc.;
+themselves never deviated from its curious little pragmatical
+provisions, and they regarded with secret whispered horror all
+deviations in others. The Abomination of Desolation was no mystery to
+them; they had discovered that unutterable Thing in the characteristic
+others call Originality. Quick were they to recognize the signs of this
+evil; and wherever they saw its trace--whether in look, word, or deed;
+whether they read it in the fresh, vigorous style of a book, or listened
+to it in interesting, unhackneyed, pure, expressive language--they
+shuddered, they recoiled. Danger was above their heads, peril about
+their steps. What was this strange thing? Being unintelligible it must
+be bad. Let it be denounced and chained up.
+
+Henry Sympson, the only son and youngest child of the family, was a boy
+of fifteen. He generally kept with his tutor. When he left him, he
+sought his cousin Shirley. This boy differed from his sisters. He was
+little, lame, and pale; his large eyes shone somewhat languidly in a wan
+orbit. They were, indeed, usually rather dim, but they were capable of
+illumination. At times they could not only shine, but blaze. Inward
+emotion could likewise give colour to his cheek and decision to his
+crippled movements. Henry's mother loved him; she thought his
+peculiarities were a mark of election. He was not like other children,
+she allowed. She believed him regenerate--a new Samuel--called of God
+from his birth. He was to be a clergyman. Mr. and the Misses Sympson,
+not understanding the youth, let him much alone. Shirley made him her
+pet, and he made Shirley his playmate.
+
+In the midst of this family circle, or rather outside it, moved the
+tutor--the satellite.
+
+Yes, Louis Moore was a satellite of the house of Sympson--connected, yet
+apart; ever attendant, ever distant. Each member of that correct family
+treated him with proper dignity. The father was austerely civil,
+sometimes irritable; the mother, being a kind woman, was attentive, but
+formal; the daughters saw in him an abstraction, not a man. It seemed,
+by their manner, that their brother's tutor did not live for them. They
+were learned; so was he--but not for them. They were accomplished; he
+had talents too, imperceptible to their senses. The most spirited sketch
+from his fingers was a blank to their eyes; the most original
+observation from his lips fell unheard on their ears. Nothing could
+exceed the propriety of their behaviour.
+
+I should have said nothing could have equalled it; but I remember a fact
+which strangely astonished Caroline Helstone. It was--to discover that
+her cousin had absolutely _no_ sympathizing friend at Fieldhead; that to
+Miss Keeldar he was as much a mere teacher, as little a gentleman, as
+little a man, as to the estimable Misses Sympson.
+
+What had befallen the kind-hearted Shirley that she should be so
+indifferent to the dreary position of a fellow-creature thus isolated
+under her roof? She was not, perhaps, haughty to him, but she never
+noticed him--she let him alone. He came and went, spoke or was silent,
+and she rarely recognized his existence.
+
+As to Louis Moore himself, he had the air of a man used to this life,
+and who had made up his mind to bear it for a time. His faculties seemed
+walled up in him, and were unmurmuring in their captivity. He never
+laughed; he seldom smiled; he was uncomplaining. He fulfilled the round
+of his duties scrupulously. His pupil loved him; he asked nothing more
+than civility from the rest of the world. It even appeared that he would
+accept nothing more--in that abode at least; for when his cousin
+Caroline made gentle overtures of friendship, he did not encourage
+them--he rather avoided than sought her. One living thing alone, besides
+his pale, crippled scholar, he fondled in the house, and that was the
+ruffianly Tartar, who, sullen and impracticable to others, acquired a
+singular partiality for him--a partiality so marked that sometimes, when
+Moore, summoned to a meal, entered the room and sat down unwelcomed,
+Tartar would rise from his lair at Shirley's feet and betake himself to
+the taciturn tutor. Once--but once--she noticed the desertion, and
+holding out her white hand, and speaking softly, tried to coax him back.
+Tartar looked, slavered, and sighed, as his manner was, but yet
+disregarded the invitation, and coolly settled himself on his haunches
+at Louis Moore's side. That gentleman drew the dog's big, black-muzzled
+head on to his knee, patted him, and smiled one little smile to himself.
+
+An acute observer might have remarked, in the course of the same
+evening, that after Tartar had resumed his allegiance to Shirley, and
+was once more couched near her footstool, the audacious tutor by one
+word and gesture fascinated him again. He pricked up his ears at the
+word; he started erect at the gesture, and came, with head lovingly
+depressed, to receive the expected caress. As it was given, the
+significant smile again rippled across Moore's quiet face.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Shirley," said Caroline one day, as they two were sitting alone in the
+summer-house, "did you know that my cousin Louis was tutor in your
+uncle's family before the Sympsons came down here?"
+
+Shirley's reply was not so prompt as her responses usually were, but at
+last she answered, "Yes--of course; I knew it well."
+
+"I thought you must have been aware of the circumstance."
+
+"Well! what then?"
+
+"It puzzles me to guess how it chanced that you never mentioned it to
+me."
+
+"Why should it puzzle you?"
+
+"It seems odd. I cannot account for it. You talk a great deal--you talk
+freely. How was that circumstance never touched on?"
+
+"Because it never was," and Shirley laughed.
+
+"You are a singular being!" observed her friend. "I thought I knew you
+quite well; I begin to find myself mistaken. You were silent as the
+grave about Mrs. Pryor, and now again here is another secret. But why
+you made it a secret is the mystery to me."
+
+"I never made it a secret; I had no reason for so doing. If you had
+asked me who Henry's tutor was, I would have told you. Besides, I
+thought you knew."
+
+"I am puzzled about more things than one in this matter. You don't like
+poor Louis. Why? Are you impatient at what you perhaps consider his
+_servile_ position? Do you wish that Robert's brother were more highly
+placed?"
+
+"Robert's brother, indeed!" was the exclamation, uttered in a tone like
+the accents of scorn; and with a movement of proud impatience Shirley
+snatched a rose from a branch peeping through the open lattice.
+
+"Yes," repeated Caroline, with mild firmness, "Robert's brother. He _is_
+thus closely related to Gérard Moore of the Hollow, though nature has
+not given him features so handsome or an air so noble as his kinsman;
+but his blood is as good, and he is as much a gentleman were he free."
+
+"Wise, humble, pious Caroline!" exclaimed Shirley ironically. "Men and
+angels, hear her! We should not despise plain features, nor a laborious
+yet honest occupation, should we? Look at the subject of your panegyric.
+He is there in the garden," she continued, pointing through an aperture
+in the clustering creepers; and by that aperture Louis Moore was
+visible, coming slowly down the walk.
+
+"He is not ugly, Shirley," pleaded Caroline; "he is not ignoble. He is
+sad; silence seals his mind. But I believe him to be intelligent; and be
+certain, if he had not something very commendable in his disposition,
+Mr. Hall would never seek his society as he does."
+
+Shirley laughed; she laughed again, each time with a slightly sarcastic
+sound. "Well, well," was her comment. "On the plea of the man being
+Cyril Hall's friend and Robert Moore's brother, we'll just tolerate his
+existence; won't we, Cary? You believe him to be intelligent, do you?
+Not quite an idiot--eh? Something commendable in his disposition!--_id
+est_, not an absolute ruffian. Good! Your representations have weight
+with me; and to prove that they have, should he come this way I will
+speak to him."
+
+He approached the summer-house. Unconscious that it was tenanted, he sat
+down on the step. Tartar, now his customary companion, had followed him,
+and he couched across his feet.
+
+"Old boy!" said Louis, pulling his tawny ear, or rather the mutilated
+remains of that organ, torn and chewed in a hundred battles, "the autumn
+sun shines as pleasantly on us as on the fairest and richest. This
+garden is none of ours, but we enjoy its greenness and perfume, don't
+we?"
+
+He sat silent, still caressing Tartar, who slobbered with exceeding
+affection. A faint twittering commenced among the trees round. Something
+fluttered down as light as leaves. They were little birds, which,
+lighting on the sward at shy distance, hopped as if expectant.
+
+"The small brown elves actually remember that I fed them the other day,"
+again soliloquized Louis. "They want some more biscuit. To-day I forgot
+to save a fragment. Eager little sprites, I have not a crumb for you."
+
+He put his hand in his pocket and drew it out empty.
+
+"A want easily supplied," whispered the listening Miss Keeldar.
+
+She took from her reticule a morsel of sweet-cake; for that repository
+was never destitute of something available to throw to the chickens,
+young ducks, or sparrows. She crumbled it, and bending over his
+shoulder, put the crumbs into his hand.
+
+"There," said she--"there is a providence for the improvident."
+
+"This September afternoon is pleasant," observed Louis Moore, as, not at
+all discomposed, he calmly cast the crumbs on to the grass.
+
+"Even for you?"
+
+"As pleasant for me as for any monarch."
+
+"You take a sort of harsh, solitary triumph in drawing pleasure out of
+the elements and the inanimate and lower animate creation."
+
+"Solitary, but not harsh. With animals I feel I am Adam's son, the heir
+of him to whom dominion was given over 'every living thing that moveth
+upon the earth.' Your dog likes and follows me. When I go into that
+yard, the pigeons from your dovecot flutter at my feet. Your mare in the
+stable knows me as well as it knows you, and obeys me better."
+
+"And my roses smell sweet to you, and my trees give you shade."
+
+"And," continued Louis, "no caprice can withdraw these pleasures from
+me; they are _mine_."
+
+He walked off. Tartar followed him, as if in duty and affection bound,
+and Shirley remained standing on the summer-house step. Caroline saw her
+face as she looked after the rude tutor. It was pale, as if her pride
+bled inwardly.
+
+"You see," remarked Caroline apologetically, "his feelings are so often
+hurt it makes him morose."
+
+"You see," retorted Shirley, with ire, "he is a topic on which you and I
+shall quarrel if we discuss it often; so drop it henceforward and for
+ever."
+
+"I suppose he has more than once behaved in this way," thought Caroline
+to herself, "and that renders Shirley so distant to him. Yet I wonder
+she cannot make allowance for character and circumstances. I wonder the
+general modesty, manliness, sincerity of his nature do not plead with
+her in his behalf. She is not often so inconsiderate, so irritable."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The verbal testimony of two friends of Caroline's to her cousin's
+character augmented her favourable opinion of him. William Farren, whose
+cottage he had visited in company with Mr. Hall, pronounced him a "real
+gentleman;" there was not such another in Briarfield.
+He--William--"could do aught for that man. And then to see how t' bairns
+liked him, and how t' wife took to him first minute she saw him. He
+never went into a house but t' childer wor about him directly. Them
+little things wor like as if they'd a keener sense nor grown-up folks i'
+finding our folk's natures."
+
+Mr. Hall, in answer to a question of Miss Helstone's as to what he
+thought of Louis Moore, replied promptly that he was the best fellow he
+had met with since he left Cambridge.
+
+"But he is so grave," objected Caroline.
+
+"Grave! the finest company in the world! Full of odd, quiet,
+out-of-the-way humour. Never enjoyed an excursion so much in my life as
+the one I took with him to the Lakes. His understanding and tastes are
+so superior, it does a man good to be within their influence; and as to
+his temper and nature, I call them fine."
+
+"At Fieldhead he looks gloomy, and, I believe, has the character of
+being misanthropical."
+
+"Oh! I fancy he is rather out of place there--in a false position. The
+Sympsons are most estimable people, but not the folks to comprehend him.
+They think a great deal about form and ceremony, which are quite out of
+Louis's way."
+
+"I don't think Miss Keeldar likes him."
+
+"She doesn't know him--she doesn't know him; otherwise she has sense
+enough to do justice to his merits."
+
+"Well, I suppose she doesn't know him," mused Caroline to herself, and
+by this hypothesis she endeavoured to account for what seemed else
+unaccountable. But such simple solution of the difficulty was not left
+her long. She was obliged to refuse Miss Keeldar even this negative
+excuse for her prejudice.
+
+One day she chanced to be in the schoolroom with Henry Sympson, whose
+amiable and affectionate disposition had quickly recommended him to her
+regard. The boy was busied about some mechanical contrivance; his
+lameness made him fond of sedentary occupation. He began to ransack his
+tutor's desk for a piece of wax or twine necessary to his work. Moore
+happened to be absent. Mr. Hall, indeed, had called for him to take a
+long walk. Henry could not immediately find the object of his search. He
+rummaged compartment after compartment; and at last, opening an inner
+drawer, he came upon--not a ball of cord or a lump of beeswax, but a
+little bundle of small marble-coloured cahiers, tied with tape. Henry
+looked at them. "What rubbish Mr. Moore stores up in his desk!" he
+said. "I hope he won't keep my old exercises so carefully."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Old copy-books."
+
+He threw the bundle to Caroline. The packet looked so neat externally
+her curiosity was excited to see its contents.
+
+"If they are only copy-books, I suppose I may open them?"
+
+"Oh yes, quite freely. Mr. Moore's desk is half mine--for he lets me
+keep all sorts of things in it--and I give you leave."
+
+On scrutiny they proved to be French compositions, written in a hand
+peculiar but compact, and exquisitely clean and clear. The writing was
+recognizable. She scarcely needed the further evidence of the name
+signed at the close of each theme to tell her whose they were. Yet that
+name astonished her--"Shirley Keeldar, Sympson Grove, ----shire" (a
+southern county), and a date four years back.
+
+She tied up the packet, and held it in her hand, meditating over it. She
+half felt as if, in opening it, she had violated a confidence.
+
+"They are Shirley's, you see," said Henry carelessly.
+
+"Did _you_ give them to Mr. Moore? She wrote them with Mrs. Pryor, I
+suppose?"
+
+"She wrote them in my schoolroom at Sympson Grove, when she lived with
+us there. Mr. Moore taught her French; it is his native language."
+
+"I know. Was she a good pupil, Henry?"
+
+"She was a wild, laughing thing, but pleasant to have in the room. She
+made lesson-time charming. She learned fast--you could hardly tell when
+or how. French was nothing to her. She spoke it quick, quick--as quick
+as Mr. Moore himself."
+
+"Was she obedient? Did she give trouble?"
+
+"She gave plenty of trouble, in a way. She was giddy, but I liked her.
+I'm desperately fond of Shirley."
+
+"_Desperately_ fond--you small simpleton! You don't know what you say."
+
+"I _am desperately_ fond of her. She is the light of my eyes. I said so
+to Mr. Moore last night."
+
+"He would reprove you for speaking with exaggeration."
+
+"He didn't. He never reproves and reproves, as girls' governesses do. He
+was reading, and he only smiled into his book, and said that if Miss
+Keeldar was no more than that, she was less than he took her to be; for
+I was but a dim-eyed, short-sighted little chap. I'm afraid I am a poor
+unfortunate, Miss Caroline Helstone. I am a cripple, you know."
+
+"Never mind, Henry, you are a very nice little fellow; and if God has
+not given you health and strength, He has given you a good disposition
+and an excellent heart and brain."
+
+"I shall be despised. I sometimes think both Shirley and you despise
+me."
+
+"Listen, Henry. Generally, I don't like schoolboys. I have a great
+horror of them. They seem to me little ruffians, who take an unnatural
+delight in killing and tormenting birds, and insects, and kittens, and
+whatever is weaker than themselves. But you are so different I am quite
+fond of you. You have almost as much sense as a man (far more, God wot,"
+she muttered to herself, "than many men); you are fond of reading, and
+you can talk sensibly about what you read."
+
+"I _am_ fond of reading. I know I have sense, and I know I have
+feeling."
+
+Miss Keeldar here entered.
+
+"Henry," she said, "I have brought your lunch here. I shall prepare it
+for you myself."
+
+She placed on the table a glass of new milk, a plate of something which
+looked not unlike leather, and a utensil which resembled a
+toasting-fork.
+
+"What are you two about," she continued, "ransacking Mr. Moore's desk?"
+
+"Looking at your old copy-books," returned Caroline.
+
+"My old copy-books?"
+
+"French exercise-books. Look here! They must be held precious; they are
+kept carefully."
+
+She showed the bundle. Shirley snatched it up. "Did not know one was in
+existence," she said. "I thought the whole lot had long since lit the
+kitchen fire, or curled the maid's hair at Sympson Grove.--What made you
+keep them, Henry?"
+
+"It is not my doing. I should not have thought of it. It never entered
+my head to suppose copy-books of value. Mr. Moore put them by in the
+inner drawer of his desk. Perhaps he forgot them."
+
+"C'est cela. He forgot them, no doubt," echoed Shirley. "They are
+extremely well written," she observed complacently.
+
+"What a giddy girl you were, Shirley, in those days! I remember you so
+well. A slim, light creature whom, though you were so tall, I could lift
+off the floor. I see you with your long, countless curls on your
+shoulders, and your streaming sash. You used to make Mr. Moore
+lively--that is, at first. I believe you grieved him after a while."
+
+Shirley turned the closely-written pages and said nothing. Presently she
+observed, "That was written one winter afternoon. It was a description
+of a snow scene."
+
+"I remember," said Henry. "Mr. Moore, when he read it, cried, 'Voilà le
+Français gagné!' He said it was well done. Afterwards you made him draw,
+in sepia, the landscape you described."
+
+"You have not forgotten, then, Hal?"
+
+"Not at all. We were all scolded that day for not coming down to tea
+when called. I can remember my tutor sitting at his easel, and you
+standing behind him, holding the candle, and watching him draw the snowy
+cliff, the pine, the deer couched under it, and the half-moon hung
+above."
+
+"Where are his drawings, Harry? Caroline should see them."
+
+"In his portfolio. But it is padlocked; he has the key."
+
+"Ask him for it when he comes in."
+
+"You should ask him, Shirley. You are shy of him now. You are grown a
+proud lady to him; I notice that."
+
+"Shirley, you are a real enigma," whispered Caroline in her ear. "What
+queer discoveries I make day by day now!--I who thought I had your
+confidence. Inexplicable creature! even this boy reproves you."
+
+"I have forgotten 'auld lang syne,' you see, Harry," said Miss Keeldar,
+answering young Sympson, and not heeding Caroline.
+
+"Which you never should have done. You don't deserve to be a man's
+morning star if you have so short a memory."
+
+"A man's morning star, indeed! and by 'a man' is meant your worshipful
+self, I suppose? Come, drink your new milk while it is warm."
+
+The young cripple rose and limped towards the fire; he had left his
+crutch near the mantelpiece.
+
+"My poor lame darling!" murmured Shirley, in her softest voice, aiding
+him.
+
+"Whether do you like me or Mr. Sam Wynne best, Shirley?" inquired the
+boy, as she settled him in an arm-chair.
+
+"O Harry, Sam Wynne is my aversion; you are my pet."
+
+"Me or Mr. Malone?"
+
+"You again, a thousand times."
+
+"Yet they are great whiskered fellows, six feet high each."
+
+"Whereas, as long as you live, Harry, you will never be anything more
+than a little pale lameter."
+
+"Yes, I know."
+
+"You need not be sorrowful. Have I not often told you who was almost as
+little, as pale, as suffering as you, and yet potent as a giant and
+brave as a lion?"
+
+"Admiral Horatio?"
+
+"Admiral Horatio, Viscount Nelson, and Duke of Bronte; great at heart as
+a Titan; gallant and heroic as all the world and age of chivalry; leader
+of the might of England; commander of her strength on the deep; hurler
+of her thunder over the flood."
+
+"A great man. But I am not warlike, Shirley; and yet my mind is so
+restless I burn day and night--for what I can hardly tell--to be--to
+do--to suffer, I think."
+
+"Harry, it is your mind, which is stronger and older than your frame,
+that troubles you. It is a captive; it lies in physical bondage. But it
+will work its own redemption yet. Study carefully not only books but the
+world. You love nature; love her without fear. Be patient--wait the
+course of time. You will not be a soldier or a sailor, Henry; but if you
+live you will be--listen to my prophecy--you will be an author, perhaps
+a poet."
+
+"An author! It is a flash--a flash of light to me! I will--I _will_!
+I'll write a book that I may dedicate it to you."
+
+"You will write it that you may give your soul its natural release.
+Bless me! what am I saying? more than I understand, I believe, or can
+make good. Here, Hal--here is your toasted oatcake; eat and live!"
+
+"Willingly!" here cried a voice outside the open window. "I know that
+fragrance of meal bread. Miss Keeldar, may I come in and partake?"
+
+"Mr. Hall"--it was Mr. Hall, and with him was Louis Moore, returned from
+their walk--"there is a proper luncheon laid out in the dining-room and
+there are proper people seated round it. You may join that society and
+share that fare if you please; but if your ill-regulated tastes lead you
+to prefer ill-regulated proceedings, step in here, and do as we do."
+
+"I approve the perfume, and therefore shall suffer myself to be led by
+the nose," returned Mr. Hall, who presently entered, accompanied by
+Louis Moore. That gentleman's eye fell on his desk, pillaged.
+
+"Burglars!" said he.--"Henry, you merit the ferule."
+
+"Give it to Shirley and Caroline; they did it," was alleged, with more
+attention to effect than truth.
+
+"Traitor and false witness!" cried both the girls. "We never laid hands
+on a thing, except in the spirit of laudable inquiry!"
+
+"Exactly so," said Moore, with his rare smile. "And what have you
+ferreted out, in your 'spirit of laudable inquiry'?"
+
+He perceived the inner drawer open.
+
+"This is empty," said he. "Who has taken----"
+
+"Here, here!" Caroline hastened to say, and she restored the little
+packet to its place. He shut it up; he locked it in with a small key
+attached to his watch-guard; he restored the other papers to order,
+closed the repository, and sat down without further remark.
+
+"I thought you would have scolded much more, sir," said Henry. "The
+girls deserve reprimand."
+
+"I leave them to their own consciences."
+
+"It accuses them of crimes intended as well as perpetrated, sir. If I
+had not been here, they would have treated your portfolio as they have
+done your desk; but I told them it was padlocked."
+
+"And will you have lunch with us?" here interposed Shirley, addressing
+Moore, and desirous, as it seemed, to turn the conversation.
+
+"Certainly, if I may."
+
+"You will be restricted to new milk and Yorkshire oatcake."
+
+"Va--pour le lait frais!" said Louis. "But for your oatcake!" and he
+made a grimace.
+
+"He cannot eat it," said Henry. "He thinks it is like bran, raised with
+sour yeast."
+
+"Come, then; by special dispensation we will allow him a few cracknels,
+but nothing less homely."
+
+The hostess rang the bell and gave her frugal orders, which were
+presently executed. She herself measured out the milk, and distributed
+the bread round the cosy circle now enclosing the bright little
+schoolroom fire. She then took the post of toaster-general; and kneeling
+on the rug, fork in hand, fulfilled her office with dexterity. Mr. Hall,
+who relished any homely innovation on ordinary usages, and to whom the
+husky oatcake was from custom suave as manna, seemed in his best
+spirits. He talked and laughed gleefully--now with Caroline, whom he had
+fixed by his side, now with Shirley, and again with Louis Moore. And
+Louis met him in congenial spirit. He did not laugh much, but he uttered
+in the quietest tone the wittiest things. Gravely spoken sentences,
+marked by unexpected turns and a quite fresh flavour and poignancy, fell
+easily from his lips. He proved himself to be--what Mr. Hall had said he
+was--excellent company. Caroline marvelled at his humour, but still more
+at his entire self-possession. Nobody there present seemed to impose on
+him a sensation of unpleasant restraint. Nobody seemed a bore--a
+check--a chill to him; and yet there was the cool and lofty Miss Keeldar
+kneeling before the fire, almost at his feet.
+
+But Shirley was cool and lofty no longer, at least not at this moment.
+She appeared unconscious of the humility of her present position; or if
+conscious, it was only to taste a charm in its lowliness. It did not
+revolt her pride that the group to whom she voluntarily officiated as
+handmaid should include her cousin's tutor. It did not scare her that
+while she handed the bread and milk to the rest, she had to offer it to
+him also; and Moore took his portion from her hand as calmly as if he
+had been her equal.
+
+"You are overheated now," he said, when she had retained the fork for
+some time; "let me relieve you."
+
+And he took it from her with a sort of quiet authority, to which she
+submitted passively, neither resisting him nor thanking him.
+
+"I should like to see your pictures, Louis," said Caroline, when the
+sumptuous luncheon was discussed.--"Would not you, Mr. Hall?"
+
+"To please you, I should; but, for my own part, I have cut him as an
+artist. I had enough of him in that capacity in Cumberland and
+Westmoreland. Many a wetting we got amongst the mountains because he
+would persist in sitting on a camp-stool, catching effects of
+rain-clouds, gathering mists, fitful sunbeams, and what not."
+
+"Here is the portfolio," said Henry, bringing it in one hand and leaning
+on his crutch with the other.
+
+Louis took it, but he still sat as if he wanted another to speak. It
+seemed as if he would not open it unless the proud Shirley deigned to
+show herself interested in the exhibition.
+
+"He makes us wait to whet our curiosity," she said.
+
+"You understand opening it," observed Louis, giving her the key. "You
+spoiled the lock for me once; try now."
+
+He held it. She opened it, and, monopolizing the contents, had the first
+view of every sketch herself. She enjoyed the treat--if treat it
+were--in silence, without a single comment. Moore stood behind her chair
+and looked over her shoulder, and when she had done and the others were
+still gazing, he left his post and paced through the room.
+
+A carriage was heard in the lane--the gate-bell rang. Shirley started.
+
+"There are callers," she said, "and I shall be summoned to the room. A
+pretty figure--as they say--I am to receive company. I and Henry have
+been in the garden gathering fruit half the morning. Oh for rest under
+my own vine and my own fig-tree! Happy is the slave-wife of the Indian
+chief, in that she has no drawing-room duty to perform, but can sit at
+ease weaving mats, and stringing beads, and peacefully flattening her
+pickaninny's head in an unmolested corner of her wigwam. I'll emigrate
+to the western woods."
+
+Louis Moore laughed.
+
+"To marry a White Cloud or a Big Buffalo, and after wedlock to devote
+yourself to the tender task of digging your lord's maize-field while he
+smokes his pipe or drinks fire-water."
+
+Shirley seemed about to reply, but here the schoolroom door unclosed,
+admitting Mr. Sympson. That personage stood aghast when he saw the group
+around the fire.
+
+"I thought you alone, Miss Keeldar," he said. "I find quite a party."
+
+And evidently from his shocked, scandalized air, had he not recognized
+in one of the party a clergyman, he would have delivered an extempore
+philippic on the extraordinary habits of his niece: respect for the
+cloth arrested him.
+
+"I merely wished to announce," he proceeded coldly, "that the family
+from De Walden Hall, Mr., Mrs., the Misses, and Mr. Sam Wynne, are in
+the drawing-room." And he bowed and withdrew.
+
+"The family from De Walden Hall! Couldn't be a worse set," murmured
+Shirley.
+
+She sat still, looking a little contumacious, and very much indisposed
+to stir. She was flushed with the fire. Her dark hair had been more than
+once dishevelled by the morning wind that day. Her attire was a light,
+neatly fitting, but amply flowing dress of muslin; the shawl she had
+worn in the garden was still draped in a careless fold round her.
+Indolent, wilful, picturesque, and singularly pretty was her
+aspect--prettier than usual, as if some soft inward emotion, stirred who
+knows how, had given new bloom and expression to her features.
+
+"Shirley, Shirley, you ought to go," whispered Caroline.
+
+"I wonder why?"
+
+She lifted her eyes, and saw in the glass over the fireplace both Mr.
+Hall and Louis Moore gazing at her gravely.
+
+"If," she said, with a yielding smile--"if a majority of the present
+company maintain that the De Walden Hall people have claims on my
+civility, I will subdue my inclinations to my duty. Let those who think
+I ought to go hold up their hands."
+
+Again consulting the mirror, it reflected an unanimous vote against her.
+
+"You must go," said Mr. Hall, "and behave courteously too. You owe many
+duties to society. It is not permitted you to please only yourself."
+
+Louis Moore assented with a low "Hear, hear!"
+
+Caroline, approaching her, smoothed her wavy curls, gave to her attire a
+less artistic and more domestic grace, and Shirley was put out of the
+room, protesting still, by a pouting lip, against her dismissal.
+
+"There is a curious charm about her," observed Mr. Hall, when she was
+gone. "And now," he added, "I must away; for Sweeting is off to see his
+mother, and there are two funerals."
+
+"Henry, get your books; it is lesson-time," said Moore, sitting down to
+his desk.
+
+"A curious charm!" repeated the pupil, when he and his master were left
+alone. "True. Is she not a kind of white witch?" he asked.
+
+"Of whom are you speaking, sir?"
+
+"Of my cousin Shirley."
+
+"No irrelevant questions; study in silence."
+
+Mr. Moore looked and spoke sternly--sourly. Henry knew this mood. It was
+a rare one with his tutor; but when it came he had an awe of it. He
+obeyed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+THE FIRST BLUESTOCKING.
+
+
+Miss Keeldar and her uncle had characters that would not harmonize, that
+never had harmonized. He was irritable, and she was spirited. He was
+despotic, and she liked freedom. He was worldly, and she, perhaps,
+romantic.
+
+Not without purpose had he come down to Yorkshire. His mission was
+clear, and he intended to discharge it conscientiously. He anxiously
+desired to have his niece married, to make for her a suitable match,
+give her in charge to a proper husband, and wash his hands of her for
+ever.
+
+The misfortune was, from infancy upwards, Shirley and he had disagreed
+on the meaning of the words "suitable" and "proper." She never yet had
+accepted his definition; and it was doubtful whether, in the most
+important step of her life, she would consent to accept it.
+
+The trial soon came.
+
+Mr. Wynne proposed in form for his son, Samuel Fawthrop Wynne.
+
+"Decidedly suitable! most proper!" pronounced Mr. Sympson. "A fine
+unencumbered estate, real substance, good connections. _It must be
+done!_"
+
+He sent for his niece to the oak parlour; he shut himself up there with
+her alone; he communicated the offer; he gave his opinion; he claimed
+her consent.
+
+It was withheld.
+
+"No; I shall not marry Samuel Fawthrop Wynne."
+
+"I ask why. I must have a reason. In all respects he is more than worthy
+of you."
+
+She stood on the hearth. She was pale as the white marble slab and
+cornice behind her; her eyes flashed large, dilated, unsmiling.
+
+"And _I_ ask in what sense that young man is worthy of _me_?"
+
+"He has twice your money, twice your common sense, equal connections,
+equal respectability."
+
+"Had he my money counted fivescore times I would take no vow to love
+him."
+
+"Please to state your objections."
+
+"He has run a course of despicable, commonplace profligacy. Accept that
+as the first reason why I spurn him."
+
+"Miss Keeldar, you shock me!"
+
+"That conduct alone sinks him in a gulf of immeasurable inferiority. His
+intellect reaches no standard I can esteem: there is a second
+stumbling-block. His views are narrow, his feelings are blunt, his
+tastes are coarse, his manners vulgar."
+
+"The man is a respectable, wealthy man! To refuse him is presumption on
+your part."
+
+"I refuse point-blank! Cease to annoy me with the subject; I forbid it!"
+
+"Is it your intention ever to marry; or do you prefer celibacy?"
+
+"I deny your right to claim an answer to that question."
+
+"May I ask if you expect some man of title--some peer of the realm--to
+demand your hand?"
+
+"I doubt if the peer breathes on whom I would confer it."
+
+"Were there insanity in the family, I should believe you mad. Your
+eccentricity and conceit touch the verge of frenzy."
+
+"Perhaps, ere I have finished, you will see me over-leap it."
+
+"I anticipate no less. Frantic and impracticable girl! Take warning! I
+dare you to sully our name by a _mésalliance_!"
+
+"_Our_ name! Am _I_ called Sympson?"
+
+"God be thanked that you are not! But be on your guard; I will not be
+trifled with!"
+
+"What, in the name of common law and common sense, would you or could
+you do if my pleasure led me to a choice you disapproved?"
+
+"Take care! take care!" warning her with voice and hand that trembled
+alike.
+
+"Why? What shadow of power have _you_ over me? Why should I fear you?"
+
+"Take care, madam!"
+
+"Scrupulous care I will take, Mr. Sympson. Before I marry I am resolved
+to esteem--to admire--to _love_."
+
+"Preposterous stuff! indecorous, unwomanly!"
+
+"To love with my whole heart. I know I speak in an unknown tongue; but I
+feel indifferent whether I am comprehended or not."
+
+"And if this love of yours should fall on a beggar?"
+
+"On a beggar it will never fall. Mendicancy is not estimable."
+
+"On a low clerk, a play-actor, a play-writer, or--or----"
+
+"Take courage, Mr. Sympson! Or what?"
+
+"Any literary scrub, or shabby, whining artist."
+
+"For the scrubby, shabby, whining I have no taste; for literature and
+the arts I have. And there I wonder how your Fawthrop Wynne would suit
+me. He cannot write a note without orthographical errors; he reads only
+a sporting paper; he was the booby of Stilbro' grammar school!"
+
+"Unladylike language! Great God! to what will she come?" He lifted hands
+and eyes.
+
+"Never to the altar of Hymen with Sam Wynne."
+
+"To what will she come? Why are not the laws more stringent, that I
+might compel her to hear reason?"
+
+"Console yourself, uncle. Were Britain a serfdom and you the Czar, you
+could not _compel_ me to this step. _I_ will write to Mr. Wynne. Give
+yourself no further trouble on the subject."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Fortune is proverbially called changeful, yet her caprice often takes
+the form of repeating again and again a similar stroke of luck in the
+same quarter. It appeared that Miss Keeldar--or her fortune--had by this
+time made a sensation in the district, and produced an impression in
+quarters by her unthought of. No less than three offers followed Mr.
+Wynne's, all more or less eligible. All were in succession pressed on
+her by her uncle, and all in succession she refused. Yet amongst them
+was more than one gentleman of unexceptionable character as well as
+ample wealth. Many besides her uncle asked what she meant, and whom she
+expected to entrap, that she was so insolently fastidious.
+
+At last the gossips thought they had found the key to her conduct, and
+her uncle was sure of it; and what is more, the discovery showed his
+niece to him in quite a new light, and he changed his whole deportment
+to her accordingly.
+
+Fieldhead had of late been fast growing too hot to hold them both. The
+suave aunt could not reconcile them; the daughters froze at the view of
+their quarrels. Gertrude and Isabella whispered by the hour together in
+their dressing-room, and became chilled with decorous dread if they
+chanced to be left alone with their audacious cousin. But, as I have
+said, a change supervened. Mr. Sympson was appeased and his family
+tranquillized.
+
+The village of Nunnely has been alluded to--its old church, its forest,
+its monastic ruins. It had also its hall, called the priory--an older, a
+larger, a more lordly abode than any Briarfield or Whinbury owned; and
+what is more, it had its man of title--its baronet, which neither
+Briarfield nor Whinbury could boast. This possession--its proudest and
+most prized--had for years been nominal only. The present baronet, a
+young man hitherto resident in a distant province, was unknown on his
+Yorkshire estate.
+
+During Miss Keeldar's stay at the fashionable watering-place of
+Cliffbridge, she and her friends had met with and been introduced to Sir
+Philip Nunnely. They encountered him again and again on the sands, the
+cliffs, in the various walks, sometimes at the public balls of the
+place. He seemed solitary. His manner was very unpretending--too simple
+to be termed affable; rather timid than proud. He did not _condescend_
+to their society; he seemed _glad_ of it.
+
+With any unaffected individual Shirley could easily and quickly cement
+an acquaintance. She walked and talked with Sir Philip; she, her aunt,
+and cousins sometimes took a sail in his yacht. She liked him because
+she found him kind and modest, and was charmed to feel she had the power
+to amuse him.
+
+One slight drawback there was--where is the friendship without it?--Sir
+Philip had a literary turn. He wrote poetry--sonnets, stanzas, ballads.
+Perhaps Miss Keeldar thought him a little too fond of reading and
+reciting these compositions; perhaps she wished the rhyme had possessed
+more accuracy, the measure more music, the tropes more freshness, the
+inspiration more fire. At any rate, she always winced when he recurred
+to the subject of his poems, and usually did her best to divert the
+conversation into another channel.
+
+He would beguile her to take moonlight walks with him on the bridge, for
+the sole purpose, as it seemed, of pouring into her ear the longest of
+his ballads. He would lead her away to sequestered rustic seats, whence
+the rush of the surf to the sands was heard soft and soothing; and when
+he had her all to himself, and the sea lay before them, and the scented
+shade of gardens spread round, and the tall shelter of cliffs rose
+behind them, he would pull out his last batch of sonnets, and read them
+in a voice tremulous with emotion. He did not seem to know that though
+they might be rhyme they were not poetry. It appeared, by Shirley's
+downcast eye and disturbed face, that she knew it, and felt heartily
+mortified by the single foible of this good and amiable gentleman.
+
+Often she tried, as gently as might be, to wean him from this fanatic
+worship of the Muses. It was his monomania; on all ordinary subjects he
+was sensible enough, and fain was she to engage him in ordinary topics.
+He questioned her sometimes about his place at Nunnely; she was but too
+happy to answer his interrogatories at length. She never wearied of
+describing the antique priory, the wild silvan park, the hoary church
+and hamlet; nor did she fail to counsel him to come down and gather his
+tenantry about him in his ancestral halls.
+
+Somewhat to her surprise, Sir Philip followed her advice to the letter,
+and actually, towards the close of September, arrived at the priory.
+
+He soon made a call at Fieldhead, and his first visit was not his last.
+He said--when he had achieved the round of the neighbourhood--that under
+no roof had he found such pleasant shelter as beneath the massive oak
+beams of the gray manor-house of Briarfield; a cramped, modest dwelling
+enough compared with his own, but he liked it.
+
+Presently it did not suffice to sit with Shirley in her panelled
+parlour, where others came and went, and where he could rarely find a
+quiet moment to show her the latest production of his fertile muse; he
+must have her out amongst the pleasant pastures, and lead her by the
+still waters. _Tête-à-tête_ ramblings she shunned, so he made parties
+for her to his own grounds, his glorious forest; to remoter
+scenes--woods severed by the Wharfe, vales watered by the Aire.
+
+Such assiduity covered Miss Keeldar with distinction. Her uncle's
+prophetic soul anticipated a splendid future. He already scented the
+time afar off when, with nonchalant air, and left foot nursed on his
+right knee, he should be able to make dashingly-familiar allusion to his
+"nephew the baronet." Now his niece dawned upon him no longer "a mad
+girl," but a "most sensible woman." He termed her, in confidential
+dialogues with Mrs. Sympson, "a truly superior person; peculiar, but
+very clever." He treated her with exceeding deference; rose reverently
+to open and shut doors for her; reddened his face and gave himself
+headaches with stooping to pick up gloves, handkerchiefs, and other
+loose property, whereof Shirley usually held but insecure tenure. He
+would cut mysterious jokes about the superiority of woman's wit over
+man's wisdom; commence obscure apologies for the blundering mistake he
+had committed respecting the generalship, the tactics, of "a personage
+not a hundred miles from Fieldhead." In short, he seemed elate as any
+"midden-cock on pattens."
+
+His niece viewed his manœuvres and received his innuendoes with phlegm;
+apparently she did not above half comprehend to what aim they tended.
+When plainly charged with being the preferred of the baronet, she said
+she believed he did like her, and for her part she liked him. She had
+never thought a man of rank--the only son of a proud, fond mother, the
+only brother of doting sisters--could have so much goodness, and, on the
+whole, so much sense.
+
+Time proved, indeed, that Sir Philip liked her. Perhaps he had found in
+her that "curious charm" noticed by Mr. Hall. He sought her presence
+more and more, and at last with a frequency that attested it had become
+to him an indispensable stimulus. About this time strange feelings
+hovered round Fieldhead; restless hopes and haggard anxieties haunted
+some of its rooms. There was an unquiet wandering of some of the inmates
+among the still fields round the mansion; there was a sense of
+expectancy that kept the nerves strained.
+
+One thing seemed clear: Sir Philip was not a man to be despised. He was
+amiable; if not highly intellectual, he was intelligent. Miss Keeldar
+could not affirm of him, what she had so bitterly affirmed of Sam Wynne,
+that his feelings were blunt, his tastes coarse, and his manners vulgar.
+There was sensibility in his nature; there was a very real, if not a
+very discriminating, love of the arts; there was the English gentleman
+in all his deportment. As to his lineage and wealth, both were, of
+course, far beyond her claims.
+
+His appearance had at first elicited some laughing though not
+ill-natured remarks from the merry Shirley. It was boyish. His features
+were plain and slight, his hair sandy, his stature insignificant. But
+she soon checked her sarcasm on this point; she would even fire up if
+any one else made uncomplimentary allusion thereto. He had "a pleasing
+countenance," she affirmed; "and there was that in his heart which was
+better than three Roman noses, than the locks of Absalom or the
+proportions of Saul." A spare and rare shaft she still reserved for his
+unfortunate poetic propensity; but even here she would tolerate no irony
+save her own.
+
+In short, matters had reached a point which seemed fully to warrant an
+observation made about this time by Mr. Yorke to the tutor, Louis.
+
+"Yond' brother Robert of yours seems to me to be either a fool or a
+madman. Two months ago I could have sworn he had the game all in his own
+hands; and there he runs the country, and quarters himself up in London
+for weeks together, and by the time he comes back he'll find himself
+checkmated. Louis, 'there is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken
+at the flood, leads on to fortune, but, once let slip, never returns
+again.' I'd write to Robert, if I were you, and remind him of that."
+
+"Robert had views on Miss Keeldar?" inquired Louis, as if the idea was
+new to him.
+
+"Views I suggested to him myself, and views he might have realized, for
+she liked him."
+
+"As a neighbour?"
+
+"As more than that. I have seen her change countenance and colour at the
+mere mention of his name. Write to the lad, I say, and tell him to come
+home. He is a finer gentleman than this bit of a baronet, after all."
+
+"Does it not strike you, Mr. Yorke, that for a mere penniless adventurer
+to aspire to a rich woman's hand is presumptuous--contemptible?"
+
+"Oh, if you are for high notions and double-refined sentiment, I've
+naught to say. I'm a plain, practical man myself, and if Robert is
+willing to give up that royal prize to a lad-rival--a puling slip of
+aristocracy--I am quite agreeable. At _his_ age, in _his_ place, with
+_his_ inducements, I would have acted differently. Neither baronet, nor
+duke, nor prince should have snatched my sweetheart from me without a
+struggle. But you tutors are such solemn chaps; it is almost like
+speaking to a parson to consult with you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Flattered and fawned upon as Shirley was just now, it appeared she was
+not absolutely spoiled--that her better nature did not quite leave her.
+Universal report had indeed ceased to couple her name with that of
+Moore, and this silence seemed sanctioned by her own apparent oblivion
+of the absentee; but that she had not _quite_ forgotten him--that she
+still regarded him, if not with love, yet with interest--seemed proved
+by the increased attention which at this juncture of affairs a sudden
+attack of illness induced her to show that tutor-brother of Robert's, to
+whom she habitually bore herself with strange alternations of cool
+reserve and docile respect--now sweeping past him in all the dignity of
+the moneyed heiress and prospective Lady Nunnely, and anon accosting him
+as abashed school-girls are wont to accost their stern professors;
+bridling her neck of ivory and curling her lip of carmine, if he
+encountered her glance, one minute, and the next submitting to the grave
+rebuke of his eye with as much contrition as if he had the power to
+inflict penalties in case of contumacy.
+
+Louis Moore had perhaps caught the fever, which for a few days laid him
+low, in one of the poor cottages of the district, which he, his lame
+pupil, and Mr. Hall were in the habit of visiting together. At any rate
+he sickened, and after opposing to the malady a taciturn resistance for
+a day or two, was obliged to keep his chamber.
+
+He lay tossing on his thorny bed one evening, Henry, who would not quit
+him, watching faithfully beside him, when a tap--too light to be that of
+Mrs. Gill or the housemaid--summoned young Sympson to the door.
+
+"How is Mr. Moore to-night?" asked a low voice from the dark gallery.
+
+"Come in and see him yourself."
+
+"Is he asleep?"
+
+"I wish he could sleep. Come and speak to him, Shirley."
+
+"He would not like it."
+
+But the speaker stepped in, and Henry, seeing her hesitate on the
+threshold, took her hand and drew her to the couch.
+
+The shaded light showed Miss Keeldar's form but imperfectly; yet it
+revealed her in elegant attire. There was a party assembled below,
+including Sir Philip Nunnely; the ladies were now in the drawing-room,
+and their hostess had stolen from them to visit Henry's tutor. Her pure
+white dress, her fair arms and neck, the trembling chainlet of gold
+circling her throat and quivering on her breast, glistened strangely
+amid the obscurity of the sickroom. Her mien was chastened and pensive.
+She spoke gently.
+
+"Mr. Moore, how are you to-night?"
+
+"I have not been very ill, and am now better."
+
+"I heard that you complained of thirst. I have brought you some grapes;
+can you taste one?"
+
+"No; but I thank you for remembering me."
+
+"Just one."
+
+From the rich cluster that filled a small basket held in her hand she
+severed a berry and offered it to his lips. He shook his head, and
+turned aside his flushed face.
+
+"But what, then, can I bring you instead? You have no wish for fruit;
+yet I see that your lips are parched. What beverage do you prefer?"
+
+"Mrs. Gill supplies me with toast-and-water. I like it best."
+
+Silence fell for some minutes.
+
+"Do you suffer?--have you pain?"
+
+"Very little."
+
+"What made you ill?"
+
+Silence.
+
+"I wonder what caused this fever? To what do you attribute it?"
+
+"Miasma, perhaps--malaria. This is autumn, a season fertile in fevers."
+
+"I hear you often visit the sick in Briarfield, and Nunnely too, with
+Mr. Hall. You should be on your guard; temerity is not wise."
+
+"That reminds me, Miss Keeldar, that perhaps you had better not enter
+this chamber or come near this couch. I do not believe my illness is
+infectious. I scarcely fear"--with a sort of smile--"_you_ will take it;
+but why should you run even the shadow of a risk? Leave me."
+
+"Patience, I will go soon; but I should like to do something for you
+before I depart--any little service----"
+
+"They will miss you below."
+
+"No; the gentlemen are still at table."
+
+"They will not linger long. Sir Philip Nunnely is no wine-bibber, and I
+hear him just now pass from the dining-room to the drawing-room."
+
+"It is a servant."
+
+"It is Sir Philip; I know his step."
+
+"Your hearing is acute."
+
+"It is never dull, and the sense seems sharpened at present. Sir Philip
+was here to tea last night. I heard you sing to him some song which he
+had brought you. I heard him, when he took his departure at eleven
+o'clock, call you out on to the pavement, to look at the evening star."
+
+"You must be nervously sensitive."
+
+"I heard him kiss your hand."
+
+"Impossible!"
+
+"No: my chamber is over the hall, the window just above the front door;
+the sash was a little raised, for I felt feverish. You stood ten minutes
+with him on the steps. I heard your discourse, every word, and I heard
+the salute.--Henry, give me some water."
+
+"Let me give it him."
+
+But he half rose to take the glass from young Sympson, and declined her
+attendance.
+
+"And can I do nothing?"
+
+"Nothing; for you cannot guarantee me a night's peaceful rest, and it is
+all I at present want."
+
+"You do not sleep well?"
+
+"Sleep has left me."
+
+"Yet you said you were not very ill?"
+
+"I am often sleepless when in high health."
+
+"If I had power, I would lap you in the most placid slumber--quite deep
+and hushed, without a dream."
+
+"Blank annihilation! I do not ask that."
+
+"With dreams of all you most desire."
+
+"Monstrous delusions! The sleep would be delirium, the waking death."
+
+"Your wishes are not so chimerical; you are no visionary."
+
+"Miss Keeldar, I suppose you think so; but my character is not, perhaps,
+quite as legible to you as a page of the last new novel might be."
+
+"That is possible. But this sleep--I _should_ like to woo it to your
+pillow, to win for you its favour. If I took a book and sat down and
+read some pages? I can well spare half an hour."
+
+"Thank you, but I will not detain you."
+
+"I would read softly."
+
+"It would not do. I am too feverish and excitable to bear a soft,
+cooing, vibrating voice close at my ear. You had better leave me."
+
+"Well, I will go."
+
+"And no good-night?"
+
+"Yes, sir, yes. Mr. Moore, good-night." (Exit Shirley.)
+
+"Henry, my boy, go to bed now; it is time you had some repose."
+
+"Sir, it would please me to watch at your bedside all night."
+
+"Nothing less called for. I am getting better. There, go."
+
+"Give me your blessing, sir."
+
+"God bless you, my best pupil!"
+
+"You never call me your dearest pupil!"
+
+"No, nor ever shall."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Possibly Miss Keeldar resented her former teacher's rejection of her
+courtesy. It is certain she did not repeat the offer of it. Often as her
+light step traversed the gallery in the course of a day, it did not
+again pause at his door; nor did her "cooing, vibrating voice" disturb a
+second time the hush of the sickroom. A sickroom, indeed, it soon ceased
+to be; Mr. Moore's good constitution quickly triumphed over his
+indisposition. In a few days he shook it off, and resumed his duties as
+tutor.
+
+That "auld lang syne" had still its authority both with preceptor and
+scholar was proved by the manner in which he sometimes promptly passed
+the distance she usually maintained between them, and put down her high
+reserve with a firm, quiet hand.
+
+One afternoon the Sympson family were gone out to take a carriage
+airing. Shirley, never sorry to snatch a reprieve from their society,
+had remained behind, detained by business, as she said. The business--a
+little letter-writing--was soon dispatched after the yard gates had
+closed on the carriage; Miss Keeldar betook herself to the garden.
+
+It was a peaceful autumn day. The gilding of the Indian summer mellowed
+the pastures far and wide. The russet woods stood ripe to be stripped,
+but were yet full of leaf. The purple of heath-bloom, faded but not
+withered, tinged the hills. The beck wandered down to the Hollow,
+through a silent district; no wind followed its course or haunted its
+woody borders. Fieldhead gardens bore the seal of gentle decay. On the
+walks, swept that morning, yellow leaves had fluttered down again. Its
+time of flowers, and even of fruits, was over; but a scantling of
+apples enriched the trees. Only a blossom here and there expanded pale
+and delicate amidst a knot of faded leaves.
+
+These single flowers--the last of their race--Shirley culled as she
+wandered thoughtfully amongst the beds. She was fastening into her
+girdle a hueless and scentless nosegay, when Henry Sympson called to her
+as he came limping from the house.
+
+"Shirley, Mr. Moore would be glad to see you in the schoolroom and to
+hear you read a little French, if you have no more urgent occupation."
+
+The messenger delivered his commission very simply, as if it were a mere
+matter of course.
+
+"Did Mr. Moore tell you to say that?"
+
+"Certainly; why not? And now, do come, and let us once more be as we
+were at Sympson Grove. We used to have pleasant school-hours in those
+days."
+
+Miss Keeldar perhaps thought that circumstances were changed since then;
+however, she made no remark, but after a little reflection quietly
+followed Henry.
+
+Entering the schoolroom, she inclined her head with a decent obeisance,
+as had been her wont in former times. She removed her bonnet, and hung
+it up beside Henry's cap. Louis Moore sat at his desk, turning the
+leaves of a book, open before him, and marking passages with his pencil.
+He just moved, in acknowledgment of her curtsy, but did not rise.
+
+"You proposed to read to me a few nights ago," said he. "I could not
+hear you then. My attention is now at your service. A little renewed
+practice in French may not be unprofitable. Your accent, I have
+observed, begins to rust."
+
+"What book shall I take?"
+
+"Here are the posthumous works of St. Pierre. Read a few pages of the
+'Fragments de l'Amazone.'"
+
+She accepted the chair which he had placed in readiness near his own;
+the volume lay on his desk--there was but one between them; her sweeping
+curls dropped so low as to hide the page from him.
+
+"Put back your hair," he said.
+
+For one moment Shirley looked not quite certain whether she would obey
+the request or disregard it. A flicker of her eye beamed furtive on the
+professor's face. Perhaps if he had been looking at her harshly or
+timidly, or if one undecided line had marked his countenance, she would
+have rebelled, and the lesson had ended there and then; but he was only
+awaiting her compliance--as calm as marble, and as cool. She threw the
+veil of tresses behind her ear. It was well her face owned an agreeable
+outline, and that her cheek possessed the polish and the roundness of
+early youth, or, thus robbed of a softening shade, the contours might
+have lost their grace. But what mattered that in the present society?
+Neither Calypso nor Eucharis cared to fascinate Mentor.
+
+She began to read. The language had become strange to her tongue; it
+faltered; the lecture flowed unevenly, impeded by hurried breath, broken
+by Anglicized tones. She stopped.
+
+"I can't do it. Read me a paragraph, if you please, Mr. Moore."
+
+What _he_ read _she_ repeated. She caught his accent in three minutes.
+
+"Très bien," was the approving comment at the close of the piece.
+
+"C'est presque le Français rattrapé, n'est-ce pas?"
+
+"You could not write French as you once could, I dare say?"
+
+"Oh no! I should make strange work of my concords now."
+
+"You could not compose the _devoir_ of 'La Première Femme Savante'?"
+
+"Do you still remember that rubbish?"
+
+"Every line."
+
+"I doubt you."
+
+"I will engage to repeat it word for word."
+
+"You would stop short at the first line."
+
+"Challenge me to the experiment."
+
+"I challenge you."
+
+He proceeded to recite the following. He gave it in French, but we must
+translate, on pain of being unintelligible to some readers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of
+       the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons
+       of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they
+       took them wives of all which they chose."
+
+This was in the dawn of time, before the morning stars were set, and
+while they yet sang together.
+
+The epoch is so remote, the mists and dewy gray of matin twilight veil
+it with so vague an obscurity, that all distinct feature of custom, all
+clear line of locality, evade perception and baffle research. It must
+suffice to know that the world then existed; that men peopled it; that
+man's nature, with its passions, sympathies, pains, and pleasures,
+informed the planet and gave it soul.
+
+A certain tribe colonized a certain spot on the globe; of what race this
+tribe--unknown; in what region that spot--untold. We usually think of
+the East when we refer to transactions of that date; but who shall
+declare that there was no life in the West, the South, the North? What
+is to disprove that this tribe, instead of camping under palm groves in
+Asia, wandered beneath island oak woods rooted in our own seas of
+Europe?
+
+It is no sandy plain, nor any circumscribed and scant oasis I seem to
+realize. A forest valley, with rocky sides and brown profundity of
+shade, formed by tree crowding on tree, descends deep before me. Here,
+indeed, dwell human beings, but so few, and in alleys so thick branched
+and overarched, they are neither heard nor seen. Are they savage?
+Doubtless. They live by the crook and the bow; half shepherds, half
+hunters, their flocks wander wild as their prey. Are they happy? No, not
+more happy than we are at this day. Are they good? No, not better than
+ourselves. Their nature is our nature--human both. There is one in this
+tribe too often miserable--a child bereaved of both parents. None cares
+for this child. She is fed sometimes, but oftener forgotten. A hut
+rarely receives her; the hollow tree and chill cavern are her home.
+Forsaken, lost, and wandering, she lives more with the wild beast and
+bird than with her own kind. Hunger and cold are her comrades; sadness
+hovers over, and solitude besets her round. Unheeded and unvalued, she
+should die; but she both lives and grows. The green wilderness nurses
+her, and becomes to her a mother; feeds her on juicy berry, on
+saccharine root and nut.
+
+There is something in the air of this clime which fosters life kindly.
+There must be something, too, in its dews which heals with sovereign
+balm. Its gentle seasons exaggerate no passion, no sense; its
+temperature tends to harmony; its breezes, you would say, bring down
+from heaven the germ of pure thought and purer feeling. Not grotesquely
+fantastic are the forms of cliff and foliage, not violently vivid the
+colouring of flower and bird. In all the grandeur of these forests
+there is repose; in all their freshness there is tenderness.
+
+The gentle charm vouchsafed to flower and tree, bestowed on deer and
+dove, has not been denied to the human nursling. All solitary, she has
+sprung up straight and graceful. Nature cast her features in a fine
+mould; they have matured in their pure, accurate first lines, unaltered
+by the shocks of disease. No fierce dry blast has dealt rudely with the
+surface of her frame; no burning sun has crisped or withered her
+tresses. Her form gleams ivory-white through the trees; her hair flows
+plenteous, long, and glossy; her eyes, not dazzled by vertical fires,
+beam in the shade large and open, and full and dewy. Above those eyes,
+when the breeze bares her forehead, shines an expanse fair and ample--a
+clear, candid page, whereon knowledge, should knowledge ever come, might
+write a golden record. You see in the desolate young savage nothing
+vicious or vacant. She haunts the wood harmless and thoughtful, though
+of what one so untaught can think it is not easy to divine.
+
+On the evening of one summer day, before the Flood, being utterly
+alone--for she had lost all trace of her tribe, who had wandered leagues
+away, she knew not where--she went up from the vale, to watch Day take
+leave and Night arrive. A crag overspread by a tree was her station. The
+oak roots, turfed and mossed, gave a seat; the oak boughs, thick-leaved,
+wove a canopy.
+
+Slow and grand the Day withdrew, passing in purple fire, and parting to
+the farewell of a wild, low chorus from the woodlands. Then Night
+entered, quiet as death. The wind fell, the birds ceased singing. Now
+every nest held happy mates, and hart and hind slumbered blissfully safe
+in their lair.
+
+The girl sat, her body still, her soul astir; occupied, however, rather
+in feeling than in thinking, in wishing than hoping, in imagining than
+projecting. She felt the world, the sky, the night, boundlessly mighty.
+Of all things herself seemed to herself the centre--a small, forgotten
+atom of life, a spark of soul, emitted inadvertent from the great
+creative source, and now burning unmarked to waste in the heart of a
+black hollow. She asked, was she thus to burn out and perish, her living
+light doing no good, never seen, never needed--a star in an else
+starless firmament, which nor shepherd, nor wanderer, nor sage, nor
+priest tracked as a guide or read as a prophecy? Could this be, she
+demanded, when the flame of her intelligence burned so vivid; when her
+life beat so true, and real, and potent; when something within her
+stirred disquieted, and restlessly asserted a God-given strength, for
+which it insisted she should find exercise?
+
+She gazed abroad on Heaven and Evening. Heaven and Evening gazed back on
+her. She bent down, searching bank, hill, river, spread dim below. All
+she questioned responded by oracles. She heard--she was impressed; but
+she could not understand. Above her head she raised her hands joined
+together.
+
+"Guidance--help--comfort--come!" was her cry.
+
+There was no voice, nor any that answered.
+
+She waited, kneeling, steadfastly looking up. Yonder sky was sealed; the
+solemn stars shone alien and remote.
+
+At last one overstretched chord of her agony slacked; she thought
+Something above relented; she felt as if Something far round drew
+nigher; she heard as if Silence spoke. There was no language, no word,
+only a tone.
+
+Again--a fine, full, lofty tone, a deep, soft sound, like a storm
+whispering, made twilight undulate.
+
+Once more, profounder, nearer, clearer, it rolled harmonious.
+
+Yet again--a distinct voice passed between Heaven and Earth.
+
+"Eva!"
+
+If Eva were not this woman's name, she had none. She rose. "Here am I."
+
+"Eva!"
+
+"O Night (it can be but Night that speaks), I am here!"
+
+The voice, descending, reached Earth.
+
+"Eva!"
+
+"Lord," she cried, "behold thine handmaid!"
+
+She had her religion--all tribes held some creed.
+
+"I come--a Comforter!"
+
+"Lord, come quickly!"
+
+The Evening flushed full of hope; the Air panted; the Moon--rising
+before--ascended large, but her light showed no shape.
+
+"Lean towards me, Eva. Enter my arms; repose thus."
+
+"Thus I lean, O Invisible but felt! And what art thou?"
+
+"Eva, I have brought a living draught from heaven. Daughter of Man,
+drink of my cup!"
+
+"I drink: it is as if sweetest dew visited my lips in a full current. My
+arid heart revives; my affliction is lightened; my strait and struggle
+are gone. And the night changes! the wood, the hill, the moon, the wide
+sky--all change!"
+
+"All change, and for ever. I take from thy vision darkness; I loosen
+from thy faculties fetters! I level in thy path obstacles; I with my
+presence fill vacancy. I claim as mine the lost atom of life. I take to
+myself the spark of soul--burning heretofore forgotten!"
+
+"O take me! O claim me! This is a god."
+
+"This is a son of God--one who feels himself in the portion of life that
+stirs you. He is suffered to reclaim his own, and so to foster and aid
+that it shall not perish hopeless."
+
+"A son of God! Am I indeed chosen?"
+
+"Thou only in this land. I saw thee that thou wert fair; I knew thee
+that thou wert mine. To me it is given to rescue, to sustain, to cherish
+mine own. Acknowledge in me that Seraph on earth named Genius."
+
+"My glorious Bridegroom! true Dayspring from on high! All I would have
+at last I possess. I receive a revelation. The dark hint, the obscure
+whisper, which have haunted me from childhood, are interpreted. Thou art
+He I sought. Godborn, take me, thy bride!"
+
+"Unhumbled, I can take what is mine. Did I not give from the altar the
+very flame which lit Eva's being? Come again into the heaven whence thou
+wert sent."
+
+That Presence, invisible but mighty, gathered her in like a lamb to the
+fold; that voice, soft but all-pervading, vibrated through her heart
+like music. Her eye received no image; and yet a sense visited her
+vision and her brain as of the serenity of stainless air, the power of
+sovereign seas, the majesty of marching stars, the energy of colliding
+elements, the rooted endurance of hills wide based, and, above all, as
+of the lustre of heroic beauty rushing victorious on the Night,
+vanquishing its shadows like a diviner sun.
+
+Such was the bridal hour of Genius and Humanity. Who shall rehearse the
+tale of their after-union? Who shall depict its bliss and bale? Who
+shall tell how He between whom and the Woman God put enmity forged
+deadly plots to break the bond or defile its purity? Who shall record
+the long strife between Serpent and Seraph:--How still the Father of
+Lies insinuated evil into good, pride into wisdom, grossness into glory,
+pain into bliss, poison into passion? How the "dreadless Angel" defied,
+resisted, and repelled? How again and again he refined the polluted cup,
+exalted the debased emotion, rectified the perverted impulse, detected
+the lurking venom, baffled the frontless temptation--purified,
+justified, watched, and withstood? How, by his patience, by his
+strength, by that unutterable excellence he held from God--his
+Origin--this faithful Seraph fought for Humanity a good fight through
+time; and, when Time's course closed, and Death was encountered at the
+end, barring with fleshless arm the portals of Eternity, how Genius
+still held close his dying bride, sustained her through the agony of the
+passage, bore her triumphant into his own home, Heaven; restored her,
+redeemed, to Jehovah, her Maker; and at last, before Angel and
+Archangel, crowned her with the crown of Immortality?
+
+Who shall of these things write the chronicle?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I never could correct that composition," observed Shirley, as Moore
+concluded. "Your censor-pencil scored it with condemnatory lines, whose
+signification I strove vainly to fathom."
+
+She had taken a crayon from the tutor's desk, and was drawing little
+leaves, fragments of pillars, broken crosses, on the margin of the book.
+
+"French may be half forgotten, but the habits of the French lesson are
+retained, I see," said Louis. "My books would now, as erst, be unsafe
+with you. My newly-bound St. Pierre would soon be like my Racine--Miss
+Keeldar, her mark, traced on every page."
+
+Shirley dropped her crayon as if it burned her fingers.
+
+"Tell me what were the faults of that _devoir_?" she asked. "Were they
+grammatical errors, or did you object to the substance?"
+
+"I never said that the lines I drew were indications of faults at all.
+You would have it that such was the case, and I refrained from
+contradiction."
+
+"What else did they denote?"
+
+"No matter now."
+
+"Mr. Moore," cried Henry, "make Shirley repeat some of the pieces she
+used to say so well by heart."
+
+"If I ask for any, it will be 'Le Cheval Dompté,'" said Moore, trimming
+with his penknife the pencil Miss Keeldar had worn to a stump.
+
+She turned aside her head; the neck, the clear cheek, forsaken by their
+natural veil, were seen to flush warm.
+
+"Ah! she has not forgotten, you see, sir," said Henry, exultant. "She
+knows how naughty she was."
+
+A smile, which Shirley would not permit to expand, made her lip tremble;
+she bent her face, and hid it half with her arms, half in her curls,
+which, as she stooped, fell loose again. "Certainly I was a rebel," she
+answered.
+
+"A rebel!" repeated Henry. "Yes; you and papa had quarrelled terribly,
+and you set both him and mamma, and Mrs. Pryor, and everybody, at
+defiance. You said he had insulted you----"
+
+"He _had_ insulted me," interposed Shirley.
+
+"And you wanted to leave Sympson Grove directly. You packed your things
+up, and papa threw them out of your trunk; mamma cried, Mrs. Pryor
+cried; they both stood wringing their hands begging you to be patient;
+and you knelt on the floor with your things and your up-turned box
+before you, looking, Shirley, looking--why, in one of _your_ passions.
+Your features, in such passions, are not distorted; they are fixed, but
+quite beautiful. You scarcely look angry, only resolute, and in a
+certain haste; yet one feels that at such times an obstacle cast across
+your path would be split as with lightning. Papa lost heart, and called
+Mr. Moore."
+
+"Enough, Henry."
+
+"No, it is not enough. I hardly know how Mr. Moore managed, except that
+I recollect he suggested to papa that agitation would bring on his gout;
+and then he spoke quietly to the ladies, and got them away; and
+afterwards he said to you, Miss Shirley, that it was of no use talking
+or lecturing now, but that the tea-things were just brought into the
+schoolroom, and he was very thirsty, and he would be glad if you would
+leave your packing for the present and come and make a cup of tea for
+him and me. You came; you would not talk at first, but soon you softened
+and grew cheerful. Mr. Moore began to tell us about the Continent, the
+war, and Bonaparte--subjects we were both fond of listening to. After
+tea he said we should neither of us leave him that evening; he would not
+let us stray out of his sight, lest we should again get into mischief.
+We sat one on each side of him. We were so happy. I never passed so
+pleasant an evening. The next day he gave you, missy, a lecture of an
+hour, and wound it up by marking you a piece to learn in Bossuet as a
+punishment-lesson--'Le Cheval Dompté.' You learned it instead of packing
+up, Shirley. We heard no more of your running away. Mr. Moore used to
+tease you on the subject for a year afterwards."
+
+"She never said a lesson with greater spirit," subjoined Moore. "She
+then, for the first time, gave me the treat of hearing my native tongue
+spoken without accent by an English girl."
+
+"She was as sweet as summer cherries for a month afterwards," struck in
+Henry: "a good hearty quarrel always left Shirley's temper better than
+it found it."
+
+"You talk of me as if I were not present," observed Miss Keeldar, who
+had not yet lifted her face.
+
+"Are you sure you _are_ present?" asked Moore. "There have been moments
+since my arrival here when I have been tempted to inquire of the lady of
+Fieldhead if she knew what had become of my former pupil."
+
+"She is here now."
+
+"I see her, and humble enough; but I would neither advise Harry nor
+others to believe too implicitly in the humility which one moment can
+hide its blushing face like a modest little child, and the next lift it
+pale and lofty as a marble Juno."
+
+"One man in times of old, it is said, imparted vitality to the statue he
+had chiselled; others may have the contrary gift of turning life to
+stone."
+
+Moore paused on this observation before he replied to it. His look, at
+once struck and meditative, said, "A strange phrase; what may it mean?"
+He turned it over in his mind, with thought deep and slow, as some
+German pondering metaphysics.
+
+"You mean," he said at last, "that some men inspire repugnance, and so
+chill the kind heart."
+
+"Ingenious!" responded Shirley. "If the interpretation pleases you, you
+are welcome to hold it valid. _I_ don't care."
+
+And with that she raised her head, lofty in look and statue-like in hue,
+as Louis had described it.
+
+"Behold the metamorphosis!" he said; "scarce imagined ere it is
+realized: a lowly nymph develops to an inaccessible goddess. But Henry
+must not be disappointed of his recitation, and Olympia will deign to
+oblige him. Let us begin."
+
+"I have forgotten the very first line."
+
+"Which I have not. _My_ memory, if a slow, is a retentive one. I acquire
+deliberately both knowledge and liking. The acquisition grows into my
+brain, and the sentiment into my breast; and it is not as the
+rapid-springing produce which, having no root in itself, flourishes
+verdurous enough for a time, but too soon falls withered away.
+Attention, Henry! Miss Keeldar consents to favour you. 'Voyez ce cheval
+ardent et impétueux,' so it commences."
+
+Miss Keeldar did consent to make the effort; but she soon stopped.
+
+"Unless I heard the whole repeated I cannot continue it," she said.
+
+"Yet it was quickly learned--'soon gained, soon gone,'" moralized the
+tutor. He recited the passage deliberately, accurately, with slow,
+impressive emphasis.
+
+Shirley, by degrees, inclined her ear as he went on. Her face, before
+turned from him, _re_turned towards him. When he ceased, she took the
+word up as if from his lips; she took his very tone; she seized his very
+accent; she delivered the periods as he had delivered them; she
+reproduced his manner, his pronunciation, his expression.
+
+It was now her turn to petition.
+
+"Recall 'Le Songe d'Athalie,'" she entreated, "and say it."
+
+He said it for her. She took it from him; she found lively excitement in
+the pleasure of making his language her own. She asked for further
+indulgence; all the old school pieces were revived, and with them
+Shirley's old school days.
+
+He had gone through some of the best passages of Racine and Corneille,
+and then had heard the echo of his own deep tones in the girl's voice,
+that modulated itself faithfully on his. "Le chêne et le Roseau," that
+most beautiful of La Fontaine's fables, had been recited, well recited,
+by the tutor, and the pupil had animatedly availed herself of the
+lesson. Perhaps a simultaneous feeling seized them now, that their
+enthusiasm had kindled to a glow, which the slight fuel of French poetry
+no longer sufficed to feed; perhaps they longed for a trunk of English
+oak to be thrown as a Yule log to the devouring flame. Moore observed,
+"And these are our best pieces! And we have nothing more dramatic,
+nervous, natural!"
+
+And then he smiled and was silent. His whole nature seemed serenely
+alight. He stood on the hearth, leaning his elbow on the mantelpiece,
+musing not unblissfully.
+
+Twilight was closing on the diminished autumn day. The schoolroom
+windows--darkened with creeping plants, from which no high October winds
+had as yet swept the sere foliage--admitted scarce a gleam of sky; but
+the fire gave light enough to talk by.
+
+And now Louis Moore addressed his pupil in French, and she answered at
+first with laughing hesitation and in broken phrase. Moore encouraged
+while he corrected her. Henry joined in the lesson; the two scholars
+stood opposite the master, their arms round each other's waists. Tartar,
+who long since had craved and obtained admission, sat sagely in the
+centre of the rug, staring at the blaze which burst fitful from morsels
+of coal among the red cinders. The group were happy enough, but--
+
+    "Pleasures are like poppies spread;
+     You seize the flower--its bloom is shed."
+
+The dull, rumbling sound of wheels was heard on the pavement in the
+yard.
+
+"It is the carriage returned," said Shirley; "and dinner must be just
+ready, and I am not dressed."
+
+A servant came in with Mr. Moore's candle and tea; for the tutor and his
+pupil usually dined at luncheon time.
+
+"Mr. Sympson and the ladies are returned," she said, "and Sir Philip
+Nunnely is with them."
+
+"How you did start, and how your hand trembled, Shirley!" said Henry,
+when the maid had closed the shutter and was gone. "But I know
+why--don't you, Mr. Moore? I know what papa intends. He is a little ugly
+man, that Sir Philip. I wish he had not come. I wish sisters and all of
+them had stayed at De Walden Hall to dine.--Shirley should once more
+have made tea for you and me, Mr. Moore, and we would have had a happy
+evening of it."
+
+Moore was locking up his desk and putting away his St. Pierre. "That was
+_your_ plan, was it, my boy?"
+
+"Don't you approve it, sir?"
+
+"I approve nothing utopian. Look Life in its iron face; stare Reality
+out of its brassy countenance. Make the tea, Henry; I shall be back in a
+minute."
+
+He left the room; so did Shirley, by another door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+PHŒBE.
+
+
+Shirley probably got on pleasantly with Sir Philip that evening, for the
+next morning she came down in one of her best moods.
+
+"Who will take a walk with me?" she asked, after breakfast. "Isabella
+and Gertrude, will you?"
+
+So rare was such an invitation from Miss Keeldar to her female cousins
+that they hesitated before they accepted it. Their mamma, however,
+signifying acquiescence in the project, they fetched their bonnets, and
+the trio set out.
+
+It did not suit these three young persons to be thrown much together.
+Miss Keeldar liked the society of few ladies; indeed, she had a cordial
+pleasure in that of none except Mrs. Pryor and Caroline Helstone. She
+was civil, kind, attentive even to her cousins; but still she usually
+had little to say to them. In the sunny mood of this particular morning,
+she contrived to entertain even the Misses Sympson. Without deviating
+from her wonted rule of discussing with them only ordinary themes, she
+imparted to these themes an extraordinary interest; the sparkle of her
+spirit glanced along her phrases.
+
+What made her so joyous? All the cause must have been in herself. The
+day was not bright. It was dim--a pale, waning autumn day. The walks
+through the dun woods were damp; the atmosphere was heavy, the sky
+overcast; and yet it seemed that in Shirley's heart lived all the light
+and azure of Italy, as all its fervour laughed in her gray English eye.
+
+Some directions necessary to be given to her foreman, John, delayed her
+behind her cousins as they neared Fieldhead on their return. Perhaps an
+interval of twenty minutes elapsed between her separation from them and
+her re-entrance into the house. In the meantime she had spoken to John,
+and then she had lingered in the lane at the gate. A summons to
+luncheon called her in. She excused herself from the meal, and went
+upstairs.
+
+"Is not Shirley coming to luncheon?" asked Isabella. "She said she was
+hungry."
+
+An hour after, as she did not quit her chamber, one of her cousins went
+to seek her there. She was found sitting at the foot of the bed, her
+head resting on her hand; she looked quite pale, very thoughtful, almost
+sad.
+
+"You are not ill?" was the question put.
+
+"A little sick," replied Miss Keeldar.
+
+Certainly she was not a little changed from what she had been two hours
+before.
+
+This change, accounted for only by those three words, explained no
+otherwise; this change--whencesoever springing, effected in a brief ten
+minutes--passed like no light summer cloud. She talked when she joined
+her friends at dinner, talked as usual. She remained with them during
+the evening. When again questioned respecting her health, she declared
+herself perfectly recovered. It had been a mere passing faintness, a
+momentary sensation, not worth a thought; yet it was felt there was a
+difference in Shirley.
+
+The next day--the day, the week, the fortnight after--this new and
+peculiar shadow lingered on the countenance, in the manner of Miss
+Keeldar. A strange quietude settled over her look, her movements, her
+very voice. The alteration was not so marked as to court or permit
+frequent questioning, yet it _was_ there, and it would not pass away. It
+hung over her like a cloud which no breeze could stir or disperse. Soon
+it became evident that to notice this change was to annoy her. First she
+shrank from remark; and, if persisted in, she, with her own peculiar
+_hauteur_, repelled it. "Was she ill?" The reply came with decision.
+
+"I _am not_."
+
+"Did anything weigh on her mind? Had anything happened to affect her
+spirits?"
+
+She scornfully ridiculed the idea. "What did they mean by spirits? She
+had no spirits, black or white, blue or gray, to affect."
+
+"Something must be the matter--she was so altered."
+
+"She supposed she had a right to alter at her ease. She knew she was
+plainer. If it suited her to grow ugly, why need others fret themselves
+on the subject?"
+
+"There must be a cause for the change. What was it?"
+
+She peremptorily requested to be let alone.
+
+Then she would make every effort to appear quite gay, and she seemed
+indignant at herself that she could not perfectly succeed. Brief
+self-spurning epithets burst from her lips when alone. "Fool! coward!"
+she would term herself. "Poltroon!" she would say, "if you must tremble,
+tremble in secret! Quail where no eye sees you!"
+
+"How dare you," she would ask herself--"how dare you show your weakness
+and betray your imbecile anxieties? Shake them off; rise above them. If
+you cannot do this, hide them."
+
+And to hide them she did her best. She once more became resolutely
+lively in company. When weary of effort and forced to relax, she sought
+solitude--not the solitude of her chamber (she refused to mope, shut up
+between four walls), but that wilder solitude which lies out of doors,
+and which she could chase, mounted on Zoë, her mare. She took long rides
+of half a day. Her uncle disapproved, but he dared not remonstrate. It
+was never pleasant to face Shirley's anger, even when she was healthy
+and gay; but now that her face showed thin, and her large eye looked
+hollow, there was something in the darkening of that face and kindling
+of that eye which touched as well as alarmed.
+
+To all comparative strangers who, unconscious of the alterations in her
+spirits, commented on the alteration in her looks, she had one reply,--
+
+"I am perfectly well; I have not an ailment."
+
+And health, indeed, she must have had, to be able to bear the exposure
+to the weather she now encountered. Wet or fair, calm or storm, she took
+her daily ride over Stilbro' Moor, Tartar keeping up at her side, with
+his wolf-like gallop, long and untiring.
+
+Twice, three times, the eyes of gossips--those eyes which are
+everywhere, in the closet and on the hill-top--noticed that instead of
+turning on Rushedge, the top ridge of Stilbro' Moor, she rode forwards
+all the way to the town. Scouts were not wanting to mark her destination
+there. It was ascertained that she alighted at the door of one Mr.
+Pearson Hall, a solicitor, related to the vicar of Nunnely. This
+gentleman and his ancestors had been the agents of the Keeldar family
+for generations back. Some people affirmed that Miss Keeldar was become
+involved in business speculations connected with Hollow's Mill--that she
+had lost money, and was constrained to mortgage her land. Others
+conjectured that she was going to be married, and that the settlements
+were preparing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Moore and Henry Sympson were together in the schoolroom. The tutor
+was waiting for a lesson which the pupil seemed busy in preparing.
+
+"Henry, make haste. The afternoon is getting on."
+
+"Is it, sir?"
+
+"Certainly. Are you nearly ready with that lesson?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Not _nearly_ ready?"
+
+"I have not construed a line."
+
+Mr. Moore looked up. The boy's tone was rather peculiar.
+
+"The task presents no difficulties, Henry; or, if it does, bring them to
+me. We will work together."
+
+"Mr. Moore, I can do no work."
+
+"My boy, you are ill."
+
+"Sir, I am not worse in bodily health than usual, but my heart is full."
+
+"Shut the book. Come hither, Harry. Come to the fireside."
+
+Harry limped forward. His tutor placed him in a chair; his lips were
+quivering, his eyes brimming. He laid his crutch on the floor, bent down
+his head, and wept.
+
+"This distress is not occasioned by physical pain, you say, Harry? You
+have a grief; tell it me."
+
+"Sir, I have such a grief as I never had before. I wish it could be
+relieved in some way; I can hardly bear it."
+
+"Who knows but, if we talk it over, we may relieve it? What is the
+cause? Whom does it concern?"
+
+"The cause, sir, is Shirley; it concerns Shirley."
+
+"Does it? You think her changed?"
+
+"All who know her think her changed--you too, Mr. Moore."
+
+"Not seriously--no. I see no alteration but such as a favourable turn
+might repair in a few weeks; besides, her own word must go for
+something: she says she is well."
+
+"There it is, sir. As long as she maintained she was well, I believed
+her. When I was sad out of her sight, I soon recovered spirits in her
+presence. Now----"
+
+"Well, Harry, now. Has she said anything to you? You and she were
+together in the garden two hours this morning. I saw her talking, and
+you listening. Now, my dear Harry, if Miss Keeldar has said she is ill,
+and enjoined you to keep her secret, do not obey her. For her life's
+sake, avow everything. Speak, my boy."
+
+"_She_ say she is ill! I believe, sir, if she were dying, she would
+smile, and aver, 'Nothing ails me.'"
+
+"What have you learned then? What new circumstance?"
+
+"I have learned that she has just made her will."
+
+"Made her will?"
+
+The tutor and pupil were silent.
+
+"She told you that?" asked Moore, when some minutes had elapsed.
+
+"She told me quite cheerfully, not as an ominous circumstance, which I
+felt it to be. She said I was the only person besides her solicitor,
+Pearson Hall, and Mr. Helstone and Mr. Yorke, who knew anything about
+it; and to me, she intimated, she wished specially to explain its
+provisions."
+
+"Go on, Harry."
+
+"'Because,' she said, looking down on me with her beautiful eyes--oh!
+they _are_ beautiful, Mr. Moore! I love them! I love her! She is my
+star! Heaven must not claim her! She is lovely in this world, and fitted
+for this world. Shirley is not an angel; she is a woman, and she shall
+live with men. Seraphs shall not have her! Mr. Moore, if one of the
+'sons of God,' with wings wide and bright as the sky, blue and sounding
+as the sea, having seen that she was fair, descended to claim her, his
+claim should be withstood--withstood by me--boy and cripple as I am."
+
+"Henry Sympson, go on, when I tell you."
+
+"'Because,' she said, 'if I made no will, and died before you, Harry,
+all my property would go to you; and I do not intend that it should be
+so, though your father would like it. But you,' she said, 'will have his
+whole estate, which is large--larger than Fieldhead. Your sisters will
+have nothing; so I have left them some money, though I do not love them,
+both together, half so much as I love one lock of your fair hair.' She
+said these words, and she called me her 'darling,' and let me kiss her.
+She went on to tell me that she had left Caroline Helstone some money
+too; that this manor house, with its furniture and books, she had
+bequeathed to me, as she did not choose to take the old family place
+from her own blood; and that all the rest of her property, amounting to
+about twelve thousand pounds, exclusive of the legacies to my sisters
+and Miss Helstone, she had willed, not to me, seeing I was already rich,
+but to a good man, who would make the best use of it that any human
+being could do--a man, she said, that was both gentle and brave, strong
+and merciful--a man that might not profess to be pious, but she knew he
+had the secret of religion pure and undefiled before God. The spirit of
+love and peace was with him. He visited the fatherless and widows in
+their affliction, and kept himself unspotted from the world. Then she
+asked, 'Do you approve what I have done, Harry?' I could not answer. My
+tears choked me, as they do now."
+
+Mr. Moore allowed his pupil a moment to contend with and master his
+emotion. He then demanded, "What else did she say?"
+
+"When I had signified my full consent to the conditions of her will, she
+told me I was a generous boy, and she was proud of me. 'And now,' she
+added, 'in case anything should happen, you will know what to say to
+Malice when she comes whispering hard things in your ear, insinuating
+that Shirley has wronged you, that she did not love you. You will know
+that I _did_ love you, Harry; that no sister could have loved you
+better--my own treasure.' Mr. Moore, sir, when I remember her voice, and
+recall her look, my heart beats as if it would break its strings. She
+_may_ go to heaven before me--if God commands it, she _must_; but the
+rest of my life--and my life will not be long, I am glad of that
+now--shall be a straight, quick, thoughtful journey in the path her step
+has pressed. I thought to enter the vault of the Keeldars before her.
+Should it be otherwise, lay my coffin by Shirley's side."
+
+Moore answered him with a weighty calm, that offered a strange contrast
+to the boy's perturbed enthusiasm.
+
+"You are wrong, both of you--you harm each other. If youth once falls
+under the influence of a shadowy terror, it imagines there will never be
+full sunlight again; its first calamity it fancies will last a lifetime.
+What more did she say? Anything more?"
+
+"We settled one or two family points between ourselves."
+
+"I should rather like to know what----"
+
+"But, Mr. Moore, you smile. _I_ could not smile to see Shirley in such a
+mood."
+
+"My boy, I am neither nervous, nor poetic, nor inexperienced. I see
+things as they are; you don't as yet. Tell me these family points."
+
+"Only, sir, she asked me whether I considered myself most of a Keeldar
+or a Sympson; and I answered I was Keeldar to the core of the heart and
+to the marrow of the bones. She said she was glad of it; for, besides
+her, I was the only Keeldar left in England. And then we agreed on some
+matters."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, sir, that if I lived to inherit my father's estate, and her
+house, I was to take the name of Keeldar, and to make Fieldhead my
+residence. Henry Shirley Keeldar I said I would be called; and I will.
+Her name and her manor house are ages old, and Sympson and Sympson Grove
+are of yesterday."
+
+"Come, you are neither of you going to heaven yet. I have the best hopes
+of you both, with your proud distinctions--a pair of half-fledged
+eaglets. Now, what is your inference from all you have told me? Put it
+into words."
+
+"That Shirley thinks she is going to die."
+
+"She referred to her health?"
+
+"Not once; but I assure you she is wasting. Her hands are grown quite
+thin, and so is her cheek."
+
+"Does she ever complain to your mother or sisters?"
+
+"Never. She laughs at them when they question her. Mr. Moore, she is a
+strange being, so fair and girlish--not a man-like woman at all, not an
+Amazon, and yet lifting her head above both help and sympathy."
+
+"Do you know where she is now, Henry? Is she in the house, or riding
+out?"
+
+"Surely not out, sir. It rains fast."
+
+"True; which, however, is no guarantee that she is not at this moment
+cantering over Rushedge. Of late she has never permitted weather to be a
+hindrance to her rides."
+
+"You remember, Mr. Moore, how wet and stormy it was last Wednesday--so
+wild, indeed, that she would not permit Zoë to be saddled? Yet the blast
+she thought too tempestuous for her mare she herself faced on foot; that
+afternoon she walked nearly as far as Nunnely. I asked her, when she
+came in, if she was not afraid of taking cold. 'Not I,' she said. 'It
+would be too much good luck for me. I don't know, Harry, but the best
+thing that could happen to me would be to take a good cold and fever,
+and so pass off like other Christians.' She is reckless, you see, sir."
+
+"Reckless indeed! Go and find out where she is, and if you can get an
+opportunity of speaking to her without attracting attention, request her
+to come here a minute."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+He snatched his crutch, and started up to go.
+
+"Harry!"
+
+He returned.
+
+"Do not deliver the message formally. Word it as, in former days, you
+would have worded an ordinary summons to the schoolroom."
+
+"I see, sir. She will be more likely to obey."
+
+"And, Harry----"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"I will call you when I want you. Till then, you are dispensed from
+lessons."
+
+He departed. Mr. Moore, left alone, rose from his desk.
+
+"I can be very cool and very supercilious with Henry," he said. "I can
+seem to make light of his apprehensions, and look down _du haut de ma
+grandeur_ on his youthful ardour. To _him_ I can speak as if, in my
+eyes, they were both children. Let me see if I can keep up the same rôle
+with her. I have known the moment when I seemed about to forget it, when
+Confusion and Submission seemed about to crush me with their soft
+tyranny, when my tongue faltered, and I have almost let the mantle drop,
+and stood in her presence, not master--no--but something else. I trust I
+shall never so play the fool. It is well for a Sir Philip Nunnely to
+redden when he meets her eye. He may permit himself the indulgence of
+submission. He may even, without disgrace, suffer his hand to tremble
+when it touches hers; but if one of her farmers were to show himself
+susceptible and sentimental, he would merely prove his need of a strait
+waistcoat. So far I have always done very well. She has sat near me, and
+I have not shaken--more than my desk. I have encountered her looks and
+smiles like--why, like a tutor, as I am. Her hand I never yet
+touched--never underwent that test. Her farmer or her footman I am
+not--no serf nor servant of hers have I ever been; but I am poor, and it
+behoves me to look to my self-respect--not to compromise an inch of it.
+What did she mean by that allusion to the cold people who petrify flesh
+to marble? It pleased me--I hardly know why; I would not permit myself
+to inquire. I never do indulge in scrutiny either of her language or
+countenance; for if I did, I should sometimes forget common sense and
+believe in romance. A strange, secret ecstasy steals through my veins at
+moments. I'll not encourage--I'll not remember it. I am resolved, as
+long as may be, to retain the right to say with Paul, 'I am not mad, but
+speak forth the words of truth and soberness.'"
+
+He paused, listening.
+
+"Will she come, or will she not come?" he inquired. "How will she take
+the message? Naïvely or disdainfully? Like a child or like a queen? Both
+characters are in her nature.
+
+"If she comes, what shall I say to her? How account, firstly, for the
+freedom of the request? Shall I apologize to her? I could in all
+humility; but would an apology tend to place us in the positions we
+ought relatively to occupy in this matter? I _must_ keep up the
+professor, otherwise---- I hear a door."
+
+He waited. Many minutes passed.
+
+"She will refuse me. Henry is entreating her to come; she declines. My
+petition is presumption in her eyes. Let her _only_ come, I can teach
+her to the contrary. I would rather she were a little perverse; it will
+steel me. I prefer her cuirassed in pride, armed with a taunt. Her scorn
+startles me from my dreams; I stand up myself. A sarcasm from her eyes
+or lips puts strength into every nerve and sinew I have. Some step
+approaches, and not Henry's."
+
+The door unclosed; Miss Keeldar came in. The message, it appeared, had
+found her at her needle; she brought her work in her hand. That day she
+had not been riding out; she had evidently passed it quietly. She wore
+her neat indoor dress and silk apron. This was no Thalestris from the
+fields, but a quiet domestic character from the fireside. Mr. Moore had
+her at advantage. He should have addressed her at once in solemn
+accents, and with rigid mien. Perhaps he would, had she looked saucy;
+but her air never showed less of _crânerie_. A soft kind of youthful
+shyness depressed her eyelid and mantled on her cheek. The tutor stood
+silent.
+
+She made a full stop between the door and his desk.
+
+"Did you want me, sir?" she asked.
+
+"I ventured, Miss Keeldar, to send for you--that is, to ask an interview
+of a few minutes."
+
+She waited; she plied her needle.
+
+"Well, sir" (not lifting her eyes), "what about?"
+
+"Be seated first. The subject I would broach is one of some moment.
+Perhaps I have hardly a right to approach it. It is possible I ought to
+frame an apology; it is possible no apology can excuse me. The liberty I
+have taken arises from a conversation with Henry. The boy is unhappy
+about your health; all your friends are unhappy on that subject. It is
+of your health I would speak."
+
+"I am quite well," she said briefly.
+
+"Yet changed."
+
+"That matters to none but myself. We all change."
+
+"Will you sit down? Formerly, Miss Keeldar, I had some influence with
+you: have I any now? May I feel that what I am saying is not accounted
+positive presumption?"
+
+"Let me read some French, Mr. Moore, or I will even take a spell at the
+Latin grammar, and let us proclaim a truce to all sanitary discussions."
+
+"No, no. It is time there were discussions."
+
+"Discuss away, then, but do not choose me for your text. I am a healthy
+subject."
+
+"Do you not think it wrong to affirm and reaffirm what is substantially
+untrue?"
+
+"I say I am well. I have neither cough, pain, nor fever."
+
+"Is there no equivocation in that assertion? Is it the direct truth?"
+
+"The direct truth."
+
+Louis Moore looked at her earnestly.
+
+"I can myself," he said, "trace no indications of actual disease. But
+why, then, are you altered?"
+
+"_Am_ I altered?"
+
+"We will try. We will seek a proof."
+
+"How?"
+
+"I ask, in the first place, do you sleep as you used to?"
+
+"I do not; but it is not because I am ill."
+
+"Have you the appetite you once had?"
+
+"No; but it is not because I am ill."
+
+"You remember this little ring fastened to my watch-chain? It was my
+mother's, and is too small to pass the joint of my little finger. You
+have many a time sportively purloined it. It fitted your fore-finger.
+Try now."
+
+She permitted the test. The ring dropped from the wasted little hand.
+Louis picked it up, and reattached it to the chain. An uneasy flush
+coloured his brow. Shirley again said, "It is not because I am ill."
+
+"Not only have you lost sleep, appetite, and flesh," proceeded Moore,
+"but your spirits are always at ebb. Besides, there is a nervous alarm
+in your eye, a nervous disquiet in your manner. These peculiarities were
+not formerly yours."
+
+"Mr. Moore, we will pause here. You have exactly hit it. I am nervous.
+Now, talk of something else. What wet weather we have--steady, pouring
+rain!"
+
+"_You_ nervous? Yes; and if Miss Keeldar is nervous, it is not without a
+cause. Let me reach it. Let me look nearer. The ailment is not physical.
+I have suspected that. It came in one moment. I know the day. I noticed
+the change. Your pain is mental."
+
+"Not at all. It is nothing so dignified--merely nervous. Oh! dismiss the
+topic."
+
+"When it is exhausted; not till then. Nervous alarms should always be
+communicated, that they may be dissipated. I wish I had the gift of
+persuasion, and could incline you to speak willingly. I believe
+confession, in your case, would be half equivalent to cure."
+
+"No," said Shirley abruptly. "I wish that were at all probable; but I am
+afraid it is not."
+
+She suspended her work a moment. She was now seated. Resting her elbow
+on the table, she leaned her head on her hand. Mr. Moore looked as if he
+felt he had at last gained some footing in this difficult path. She was
+serious, and in her wish was implied an important admission; after that
+she could no longer affirm that _nothing_ ailed her.
+
+The tutor allowed her some minutes for repose and reflection ere he
+returned to the charge. Once his lips moved to speak, but he thought
+better of it, and prolonged the pause. Shirley lifted her eye to his.
+Had he betrayed injudicious emotion, perhaps obstinate persistence in
+silence would have been the result; but he looked calm, strong,
+trustworthy.
+
+"I had better tell _you_ than my aunt," she said, "or than my cousins,
+or my uncle. They would all make such a bustle, and it is that very
+bustle I dread--the alarm, the flurry, the _éclat_. In short, I never
+liked to be the centre of a small domestic whirlpool. You can bear a
+little shock--eh?"
+
+"A great one, if necessary."
+
+Not a muscle of the man's frame moved, and yet his large heart beat fast
+in his deep chest. What was she going to tell him? Was irremediable
+mischief done?
+
+"Had I thought it right to go to you, I would never have made a secret
+of the matter one moment," she continued. "I would have told you at
+once, and asked advice."
+
+"Why was it not right to come to me?"
+
+"It might be _right_--I do not mean that; but I could not do it. I
+seemed to have no title to trouble you. The mishap concerned me only. I
+wanted to keep it to myself, and people will not let me. I tell you, I
+hate to be an object of worrying attention, or a theme for village
+gossip. Besides, it may pass away without result--God knows!"
+
+Moore, though tortured with suspense, did not demand a quick
+explanation. He suffered neither gesture, glance, nor word to betray
+impatience. His tranquillity tranquillized Shirley; his confidence
+reassured her.
+
+"Great effects may spring from trivial causes," she remarked, as she
+loosened a bracelet from her wrist. Then, unfastening her sleeve, and
+partially turning it up, "Look here, Mr. Moore."
+
+She showed a mark in her white arm--rather a deep though healed-up
+indentation--something between a burn and a cut.
+
+"I would not show that to any one in Briarfield but you, because you can
+take it quietly."
+
+"Certainly there is nothing in the little mark to shock. Its history
+will explain."
+
+"Small as it is, it has taken my sleep away, and made me nervous, thin,
+and foolish; because, on account of that little mark, I am obliged to
+look forward to a possibility that has its terrors."
+
+The sleeve was readjusted, the bracelet replaced.
+
+"Do you know that you try me?" he said, smiling. "I am a patient sort of
+man, but my pulse is quickening."
+
+"Whatever happens, you will befriend me, Mr. Moore? You will give me the
+benefit of your self-possession, and not leave me at the mercy of
+agitated cowards?"
+
+"I make no promise now. Tell me the tale, and then exact what pledge you
+will."
+
+"It is a very short tale. I took a walk with Isabella and Gertrude one
+day, about three weeks ago. They reached home before me; I stayed behind
+to speak to John. After leaving him, I pleased myself with lingering in
+the lane, where all was very still and shady. I was tired of chattering
+to the girls, and in no hurry to rejoin them. As I stood leaning against
+the gate-pillar, thinking some very happy thoughts about my future
+life--for that morning I imagined that events were beginning to turn as
+I had long wished them to turn----"
+
+"Ah! Nunnely had been with her the evening before!" thought Moore
+parenthetically.
+
+"I heard a panting sound; a dog came running up the lane. I know most of
+the dogs in this neighbourhood. It was Phœbe, one of Mr. Sam Wynne's
+pointers. The poor creature ran with her head down, her tongue hanging
+out; she looked as if bruised and beaten all over. I called her. I meant
+to coax her into the house and give her some water and dinner. I felt
+sure she had been ill-used. Mr. Sam often flogs his pointers cruelly.
+She was too flurried to know me; and when I attempted to pat her head,
+she turned and snatched at my arm. She bit it so as to draw blood, then
+ran panting on. Directly after, Mr. Wynne's keeper came up, carrying a
+gun. He asked if I had seen a dog. I told him I had seen Phœbe.
+
+"'You had better chain up Tartar, ma'am,' he said, 'and tell your people
+to keep within the house. I am after Phœbe to shoot her, and the groom
+is gone another way. She is raging mad.'"
+
+Mr. Moore leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest.
+Miss Keeldar resumed her square of silk canvas, and continued the
+creation of a wreath of Parmese violets.
+
+"And you told no one, sought no help, no cure? You would not come to
+me?"
+
+"I got as far as the schoolroom door; there my courage failed. I
+preferred to cushion the matter."
+
+"Why? What can I demand better in this world than to be of use to you?"
+
+"I had no claim."
+
+"Monstrous! And you did nothing?"
+
+"Yes. I walked straight into the laundry, where they are ironing most of
+the week, now that I have so many guests in the house. While the maid
+was busy crimping or starching, I took an Italian iron from the fire,
+and applied the light scarlet glowing tip to my arm. I bored it well
+in. It cauterized the little wound. Then I went upstairs."
+
+"I dare say you never once groaned?"
+
+"I am sure I don't know. I was very miserable--not firm or tranquil at
+all, I think. There was no calm in my mind."
+
+"There was calm in your person. I remember listening the whole time we
+sat at luncheon, to hear if you moved in the room above. All was quiet."
+
+"I was sitting at the foot of the bed, wishing Phœbe had not bitten
+me."
+
+"And alone. You like solitude."
+
+"Pardon me."
+
+"You disdain sympathy."
+
+"Do I, Mr. Moore?"
+
+"With your powerful mind you must feel independent of help, of advice,
+of society."
+
+"So be it, since it pleases you."
+
+She smiled. She pursued her embroidery carefully and quickly, but her
+eyelash twinkled, and then it glittered, and then a drop fell.
+
+Mr. Moore leaned forward on his desk, moved his chair, altered his
+attitude.
+
+"If it is not so," he asked, with a peculiar, mellow change in his
+voice, "how is it, then?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"You do know, but you won't speak. All must be locked up in yourself."
+
+"Because it is not worth sharing."
+
+"Because nobody can give the high price you require for your confidence.
+Nobody is rich enough to purchase it. Nobody has the honour, the
+intellect, the power you demand in your adviser. There is not a shoulder
+in England on which you would rest your hand for support, far less a
+bosom which you would permit to pillow your head. Of course you must
+live alone."
+
+"I _can_ live alone, if need be. But the question is not how to live,
+but how to die alone. That strikes me in a more grisly light."
+
+"You apprehend the effects of the virus? You anticipate an indefinitely
+threatening, dreadful doom?"
+
+She bowed.
+
+"You are very nervous and womanish."
+
+"You complimented me two minutes since on my powerful mind."
+
+"You are very womanish. If the whole affair were coolly examined and
+discussed, I feel assured it would turn out that there is no danger of
+your dying at all."
+
+"Amen! I am very willing to live, if it please God. I have felt life
+sweet."
+
+"How can it be otherwise than sweet with your endowments and nature? Do
+you truly expect that you will be seized with hydrophobia, and die
+raving mad?"
+
+"I _expect_ it, and have _feared_ it. Just now I fear nothing."
+
+"Nor do I, on your account. I doubt whether the smallest particle of
+virus mingled with your blood; and if it did, let me assure you that,
+young, healthy, faultlessly sound as you are, no harm will ensue. For
+the rest, I shall inquire whether the dog was really mad. I hold she was
+not mad."
+
+"Tell nobody that she bit me."
+
+"Why should I, when I believe the bite innocuous as a cut of this
+penknife? Make yourself easy. _I_ am easy, though I value your life as
+much as I do my own chance of happiness in eternity. Look up."
+
+"Why, Mr. Moore?"
+
+"I wish to see if you are cheered. Put your work down; raise your head."
+
+"There----"
+
+"Look at me. Thank you. And is the cloud broken?"
+
+"I fear nothing."
+
+"Is your mind restored to its own natural sunny clime?"
+
+"I am very content; but I want your promise."
+
+"Dictate."
+
+"You know, in case the worst I _have_ feared should happen, they will
+smother me. You need not smile. They will; they always do. My uncle will
+be full of horror, weakness, precipitation; and that is the only
+expedient which will suggest itself to him. Nobody in the house will be
+self-possessed but you. Now promise to befriend me--to keep Mr. Sympson
+away from me, not to let Henry come near, lest I should hurt him.
+Mind--_mind_ that you take care of yourself too. But I shall not injure
+you; I know I shall not. Lock the chamber door against the surgeons;
+turn them out if they get in. Let neither the young nor the old MacTurk
+lay a finger on me; nor Mr. Greaves, their colleague; and lastly, if I
+give trouble, with your own hand administer to me a strong
+narcotic--such a sure dose of laudanum as shall leave no mistake.
+_Promise to do this._"
+
+Moore left his desk, and permitted himself the recreation of one or two
+turns through the room. Stopping behind Shirley's chair, he bent over
+her, and said, in a low, emphatic voice, "I promise all you ask--without
+comment, without reservation."
+
+"If female help is needed, call in my housekeeper, Mrs. Gill. Let her
+lay me out if I die. She is attached to me. She wronged me again and
+again, and again and again I forgave her. She now loves me, and would
+not defraud me of a pin. Confidence has made her honest; forbearance has
+made her kind-hearted. At this day I can trust both her integrity, her
+courage, and her affection. Call her; but keep my good aunt and my timid
+cousins away. Once more, promise."
+
+"I promise."
+
+"That is good in you," she said, looking up at him as he bent over her,
+and smiling.
+
+"Is it good? Does it comfort?"
+
+"Very much."
+
+"I will be with you--I and Mrs. Gill only--in any, in every extremity
+where calm and fidelity are needed. No rash or coward hand shall
+meddle."
+
+"Yet you think me childish?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"Ah! you despise me."
+
+"Do we despise children?"
+
+"In fact, I am neither so strong, nor have I such pride in my strength,
+as people think, Mr. Moore; nor am I so regardless of sympathy. But when
+I have any grief, I fear to impart it to those I love, lest it should
+pain them; and to those whom I view with indifference I cannot
+condescend to complain. After all, you should not taunt me with being
+childish, for if you were as unhappy as I have been for the last three
+weeks, you too would want some friend."
+
+"We all want a friend, do we not?"
+
+"All of us that have anything good in our natures."
+
+"Well, you have Caroline Helstone."
+
+"Yes. And you have Mr. Hall."
+
+"Yes. Mrs. Pryor is a wise, good woman. She can counsel you when you
+need counsel."
+
+"For your part, you have your brother Robert."
+
+"For any right-hand defections, there is the Rev. Matthewson Helstone,
+M.A., to lean upon; for any left-hand fallings-off there is Hiram Yorke,
+Esq. Both elders pay you homage."
+
+"I never saw Mrs. Yorke so motherly to any young man as she is to you. I
+don't know how you have won her heart, but she is more tender to you
+than she is to her own sons. You have, besides, your sister Hortense."
+
+"It appears we are both well provided."
+
+"It appears so."
+
+"How thankful we ought to be!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How contented!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"For my part, I am almost contented just now, and very thankful.
+Gratitude is a divine emotion. It fills the heart, but not to bursting;
+it warms it, but not to fever. I like to taste leisurely of bliss.
+Devoured in haste, I do not know its flavour."
+
+Still leaning on the back of Miss Keeldar's chair, Moore watched the
+rapid motion of her fingers, as the green and purple garland grew
+beneath them. After a prolonged pause, he again asked, "Is the shadow
+_quite_ gone?"
+
+"Wholly. As I _was_ two hours since, and as I _am_ now, are two
+different states of existence. I believe, Mr. Moore, griefs and fears
+nursed in silence grow like Titan infants."
+
+"You will cherish such feelings no more in silence?"
+
+"Not if I dare speak."
+
+"In using the word '_dare_,' to whom do you allude?"
+
+"To you."
+
+"How is it applicable to me?"
+
+"On account of your austerity and shyness."
+
+"Why am I austere and shy?"
+
+"Because you are proud."
+
+"Why am I proud?"
+
+"I should like to know. Will you be good enough to tell me?"
+
+"Perhaps, because I am poor, for one reason. Poverty and pride often go
+together."
+
+"That is such a nice reason. I should be charmed to discover another
+that would pair with it. Mate that turtle, Mr. Moore."
+
+"Immediately. What do you think of marrying to sober Poverty many-tinted
+Caprice?"
+
+"Are you capricious?"
+
+"_You_ are."
+
+"A libel. I am steady as a rock, fixed as the polar star."
+
+"I look out at some early hour of the day, and see a fine, perfect
+rainbow, bright with promise, gloriously spanning the beclouded welkin
+of life. An hour afterwards I look again: half the arch is gone, and the
+rest is faded. Still later, the stern sky denies that it ever wore so
+benign a symbol of hope."
+
+"Well, Mr. Moore, you should contend against these changeful humours.
+They are your besetting sin. One never knows where to have you."
+
+"Miss Keeldar, I had once, for two years, a pupil who grew very dear to
+me. Henry is dear, but she was dearer. Henry never gives me trouble;
+she--well, she did. I think she vexed me twenty-three hours out of the
+twenty-four----"
+
+"She was never with you above three hours, or at the most six at a
+time."
+
+"She sometimes spilled the draught from my cup, and stole the food from
+my plate; and when she had kept me unfed for a day (and that did not
+suit me, for I am a man accustomed to take my meals with reasonable
+relish, and to ascribe due importance to the rational enjoyment of
+creature comforts)----"
+
+"I know you do. I can tell what sort of dinners you like best--perfectly
+well. I know precisely the dishes you prefer----"
+
+"She robbed these dishes of flavour, and made a fool of me besides. I
+like to sleep well. In my quiet days, when I was my own man, I never
+quarrelled with the night for being long, nor cursed my bed for its
+thorns. She changed all this."
+
+"Mr. Moore----"
+
+"And having taken from me peace of mind and ease of life, she took from
+me herself--quite coolly, just as if, when she was gone, the world would
+be all the same to me. I knew I should see her again at some time. At
+the end of two years, it fell out that we encountered again under her
+own roof, where she was mistress. How do you think she bore herself
+towards me, Miss Keeldar?"
+
+"Like one who had profited well by lessons learned from yourself."
+
+"She received me haughtily. She meted out a wide space between us, and
+kept me aloof by the reserved gesture, the rare and alienated glance,
+the word calmly civil."
+
+"She was an excellent pupil! Having seen you distant, she at once
+learned to withdraw. Pray, sir, admire in her _hauteur_ a careful
+improvement on your own coolness."
+
+"Conscience, and honour, and the most despotic necessity dragged me
+apart from her, and kept me sundered with ponderous fetters. She was
+free: she might have been clement."
+
+"Never free to compromise her self-respect, to seek where she had been
+shunned."
+
+"Then she was inconsistent; she tantalized as before. When I thought I
+had made up my mind to seeing in her only a lofty stranger, she would
+suddenly show me such a glimpse of loving simplicity--she would warm me
+with such a beam of reviving sympathy, she would gladden an hour with
+converse so gentle, gay, and kindly--that I could no more shut my heart
+on her image than I could close that door against her presence. Explain
+why she distressed me so."
+
+"She could not bear to be quite outcast; and then she would sometimes
+get a notion into her head, on a cold, wet day, that the schoolroom was
+no cheerful place, and feel it incumbent on her to go and see if you and
+Henry kept up a good fire; and once there, she liked to stay."
+
+"But she should not be changeful. If she came at all, she should come
+oftener."
+
+"There is such a thing as intrusion."
+
+"To-morrow you will not be as you are to-day."
+
+"I don't know. Will you?"
+
+"I am not mad, most noble Berenice! We may give one day to dreaming, but
+the next we must awake; and I shall awake to purpose the morning you are
+married to Sir Philip Nunnely. The fire shines on you and me, and shows
+us very clearly in the glass, Miss Keeldar; and I have been gazing on
+the picture all the time I have been talking. Look up! What a difference
+between your head and mine! I look old for thirty!"
+
+"You are so grave; you have such a square brow; and your face is sallow.
+I never regard you as a young man, nor as Robert's junior."
+
+"Don't you? I thought not. Imagine Robert's clear-cut, handsome face
+looking over my shoulder. Does not the apparition make vividly manifest
+the obtuse mould of my heavy traits? There!" (he started), "I have been
+expecting that wire to vibrate this last half-hour."
+
+The dinner-bell rang, and Shirley rose.
+
+"Mr. Moore," she said, as she gathered up her silks, "have you heard
+from your brother lately? Do you know what he means by staying in town
+so long? Does he talk of returning?"
+
+"He talks of returning; but what has caused his long absence I cannot
+tell. To speak the truth, I thought none in Yorkshire knew better than
+yourself why he was reluctant to come home."
+
+A crimson shadow passed across Miss Keeldar's cheek.
+
+"Write to him and urge him to come," she said. "I know there has been no
+impolicy in protracting his absence thus far. It is good to let the mill
+stand, while trade is so bad; but he must not abandon the county."
+
+"I am aware," said Louis, "that he had an interview with you the evening
+before he left, and I saw him quit Fieldhead afterwards. I read his
+countenance, or _tried_ to read it. He turned from me. I divined that he
+would be long away. Some fine, slight fingers have a wondrous knack at
+pulverizing a man's brittle pride. I suppose Robert put too much trust
+in his manly beauty and native gentlemanhood. Those are better off who,
+being destitute of advantage, cannot cherish delusion. But I will write,
+and say you advise his return."
+
+"Do not say _I_ advise his return, but that his return is advisable."
+
+The second bell rang, and Miss Keeldar obeyed its call.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+LOUIS MOORE.
+
+
+Louis Moore was used to a quiet life. Being a quiet man, he endured it
+better than most men would. Having a large world of his own in his own
+head and heart, he tolerated confinement to a small, still corner of the
+real world very patiently.
+
+How hushed is Fieldhead this evening! All but Moore--Miss Keeldar, the
+whole family of the Sympsons, even Henry--are gone to Nunnely. Sir
+Philip would have them come; he wished to make them acquainted with his
+mother and sisters, who are now at the priory. Kind gentleman as the
+baronet is, he asked the tutor too; but the tutor would much sooner have
+made an appointment with the ghost of the Earl of Huntingdon to meet
+him, and a shadowy ring of his merry men, under the canopy of the
+thickest, blackest, oldest oak in Nunnely Forest. Yes, he would rather
+have appointed tryst with a phantom abbess, or mist-pale nun, among the
+wet and weedy relics of that ruined sanctuary of theirs, mouldering in
+the core of the wood. Louis Moore longs to have something near him
+to-night; but not the boy-baronet, nor his benevolent but stern mother,
+nor his patrician sisters, nor one soul of the Sympsons.
+
+This night is not calm; the equinox still struggles in its storms. The
+wild rains of the day are abated; the great single cloud disparts and
+rolls away from heaven, not passing and leaving a sea all sapphire, but
+tossed buoyant before a continued, long-sounding, high-rushing moonlight
+tempest. The moon reigns glorious, glad of the gale, as glad as if she
+gave herself to his fierce caress with love. No Endymion will watch for
+his goddess to-night. There are no flocks out on the mountains; and it
+is well, for to-night she welcomes Æolus.
+
+Moore, sitting in the schoolroom, heard the storm roar round the other
+gable and along the hall-front. This end was sheltered. He wanted no
+shelter; he desired no subdued sounds or screened position.
+
+"All the parlours are empty," said he. "I am sick at heart of this
+cell."
+
+He left it, and went where the casements, larger and freer than the
+branch-screened lattice of his own apartment, admitted unimpeded the
+dark-blue, the silver-fleeced, the stirring and sweeping vision of the
+autumn night-sky. He carried no candle; unneeded was lamp or fire. The
+broad and clear though cloud-crossed and fluctuating beam of the moon
+shone on every floor and wall.
+
+Moore wanders through all the rooms. He seems following a phantom from
+parlour to parlour. In the oak room he stops. This is not chill, and
+polished, and fireless like the _salon_. The hearth is hot and ruddy;
+the cinders tinkle in the intense heat of their clear glow; near the rug
+is a little work-table, a desk upon it, a chair near it.
+
+Does the vision Moore has tracked occupy that chair? You would think so,
+could you see him standing before it. There is as much interest now in
+his eye, and as much significance in his face, as if in this household
+solitude he had found a living companion, and was going to speak to it.
+
+He makes discoveries. A bag--a small satin bag--hangs on the chair-back.
+The desk is open, the keys are in the lock. A pretty seal, a silver pen,
+a crimson berry or two of ripe fruit on a green leaf, a small, clean,
+delicate glove--these trifles at once decorate and disarrange the stand
+they strew. Order forbids details in a picture--she puts them tidily
+away; but details give charm.
+
+Moore spoke.
+
+"Her mark," he said. "Here she has been--careless, attractive
+thing!--called away in haste, doubtless, and forgetting to return and
+put all to rights. Why does she leave fascination in her footprints?
+Whence did she acquire the gift to be heedless and never offend? There
+is always something to chide in her, and the reprimand never settles in
+displeasure on the heart, but, for her lover or her husband, when it had
+trickled a while in words, would naturally melt from his lips in a kiss.
+Better pass half an hour in remonstrating with her than a day in
+admiring or praising any other woman alive. Am I muttering?
+soliloquizing? Stop that."
+
+He did stop it. He stood thinking, and then he made an arrangement for
+his evening's comfort.
+
+He dropped the curtains over the broad window and regal moon. He shut
+out sovereign and court and starry armies; he added fuel to the hot but
+fast-wasting fire; he lit a candle, of which there were a pair on the
+table; he placed another chair opposite that near the workstand; and
+then he sat down. His next movement was to take from his pocket a small,
+thick book of blank paper, to produce a pencil, and to begin to write in
+a cramp, compact hand. Come near, by all means, reader. Do not be shy.
+Stoop over his shoulder fearlessly, and read as he scribbles.
+
+"It is nine o'clock; the carriage will not return before eleven, I am
+certain. Freedom is mine till then; till then I may occupy her room, sit
+opposite her chair, rest my elbow on her table, have her little
+mementoes about me.
+
+"I used rather to like Solitude--to fancy her a somewhat quiet and
+serious, yet fair nymph; an Oread, descending to me from lone
+mountain-passes, something of the blue mist of hills in her array and of
+their chill breeze in her breath, but much also of their solemn beauty
+in her mien. I once could court her serenely, and imagine my heart
+easier when I held her to it--all mute, but majestic.
+
+"Since that day I called S. to me in the schoolroom, and she came and
+sat so near my side; since she opened the trouble of her mind to me,
+asked my protection, appealed to my strength--since that hour I abhor
+Solitude. Cold abstraction, fleshless skeleton, daughter, mother, and
+mate of Death!
+
+"It is pleasant to write about what is near and dear as the core of my
+heart. None can deprive me of this little book, and through this pencil
+I can say to it what I will--say what I dare utter to nothing
+living--say what I dare not _think_ aloud.
+
+"We have scarcely encountered each other since that evening. Once, when
+I was alone in the drawing-room, seeking a book of Henry's, she entered,
+dressed for a concert at Stilbro'. Shyness--_her_ shyness, not
+mine--drew a silver veil between us. Much cant have I heard and read
+about 'maiden modesty,' but, properly used, and not hackneyed, the words
+are good and appropriate words. As she passed to the window, after
+tacitly but gracefully recognizing me, I could call her nothing in my
+own mind save 'stainless virgin.' To my perception, a delicate
+splendour robed her, and the modesty of girlhood was her halo. I may be
+the most fatuous, as I am one of the plainest, of men, but in truth that
+shyness of hers touched me exquisitely; it flattered my finest
+sensations. I looked a stupid block, I dare say. I was alive with a life
+of Paradise, as she turned _her_ glance from _my_ glance, and softly
+averted her head to hide the suffusion of her cheek.
+
+"I know this is the talk of a dreamer--of a rapt, romantic lunatic. I
+_do_ dream. I _will_ dream now and then; and if she has inspired romance
+into my prosaic composition, how can I help it?
+
+"What a child she is sometimes! What an unsophisticated, untaught thing!
+I see her now looking up into my face, and entreating me to prevent them
+from smothering her, and to be sure and give her a strong narcotic. I
+see her confessing that she was not so self-sufficing, so independent of
+sympathy, as people thought. I see the secret tear drop quietly from her
+eyelash. She said I thought her childish, and I did. She imagined I
+despised her. Despised her! It was unutterably sweet to feel myself at
+once near her and above her--to be conscious of a natural right and
+power to sustain her, as a husband should sustain his wife.
+
+"I worship her perfections; but it is her faults, or at least her
+foibles, that bring her near to me, that nestle her to my heart, that
+fold her about with my love, and that for a most selfish but
+deeply-natural reason. These faults are the steps by which I mount to
+ascendency over her. If she rose a trimmed, artificial mound, without
+inequality, what vantage would she offer the foot? It is the natural
+hill, with its mossy breaks and hollows, whose slope invites ascent,
+whose summit it is pleasure to gain.
+
+"To leave metaphor. It delights my eye to look on her. She suits me. If
+I were a king and she the housemaid that swept my palace-stairs, across
+all that space between us my eye would recognize her qualities; a true
+pulse would beat for her in my heart, though an unspanned gulf made
+acquaintance impossible. If I were a gentleman, and she waited on me as
+a servant, I could not help liking that Shirley. Take from her her
+education; take her ornaments, her sumptuous dress, all extrinsic
+advantages; take all grace, but such as the symmetry of her form renders
+inevitable; present her to me at a cottage door, in a stuff gown; let
+her offer me there a draught of water, with that smile, with that warm
+good-will with which she now dispenses manorial hospitality--I should
+like her. I should wish to stay an hour; I should linger to talk with
+that rustic. I should not feel as I _now_ do; I should find in her
+nothing divine; but whenever I met the young peasant, it would be with
+pleasure; whenever I left her, it would be with regret.
+
+"How culpably careless in her to leave her desk open, where I know she
+has money! In the lock hang the keys of all her repositories, of her
+very jewel-casket. There is a purse in that little satin bag; I see the
+tassel of silver beads hanging out. That spectacle would provoke my
+brother Robert. All her little failings would, I know, be a source of
+irritation to him. If they vex me it is a most pleasurable vexation. I
+delight to find her at fault; and were I always resident with her, I am
+aware she would be no niggard in thus ministering to my enjoyment. She
+would just give me something to do, to rectify--a theme for my tutor
+lectures. I never lecture Henry, never feel disposed to do so. If he
+does wrong--and that is very seldom, dear, excellent lad!--a word
+suffices. Often I do no more than shake my head. But the moment her
+_minois mutin_ meets my eye, expostulatory words crowd to my lips. From
+a taciturn man I believe she would transform me into a talker. Whence
+comes the delight I take in that talk? It puzzles myself sometimes. The
+more _crâne, malin, taquin_ is her mood, consequently the clearer
+occasion she gives me for disapprobation, the more I seek her, the
+better I like her. She is never wilder than when equipped in her habit
+and hat, never less manageable than when she and Zoë come in fiery from
+a race with the wind on the hills; and I confess it--to this mute page I
+may confess it--I have waited an hour in the court for the chance of
+witnessing her return, and for the dearer chance of receiving her in my
+arms from the saddle. I have noticed (again it is to this page only I
+would make the remark) that she will never permit any man but myself to
+render her that assistance. I have seen her politely decline Sir Philip
+Nunnely's aid. She is always mighty gentle with her young baronet,
+mighty tender for his feelings, forsooth, and of his very thin-skinned
+_amour propre_. I have marked her haughtily reject Sam Wynne's. Now I
+know--my heart knows it, for it has felt it--that she resigns herself to
+me unreluctantly. Is she conscious how my strength rejoices to serve
+her? I myself am not her slave--I declare it--but my faculties gather
+to her beauty, like the genii to the glisten of the lamp. All my
+knowledge, all my prudence, all my calm, and all my power stand in her
+presence humbly waiting a task. How glad they are when a mandate comes!
+What joy they take in the toils she assigns! Does she know it?
+
+"I have called her careless. It is remarkable that her carelessness
+never compromises her refinement. Indeed, through this very loophole of
+character, the reality, depth, genuineness of that refinement may be
+ascertained. A whole garment sometimes covers meagreness and
+malformation; through a rent sleeve a fair round arm may be revealed. I
+have seen and handled many of her possessions, because they are
+frequently astray. I never saw anything that did not proclaim the
+lady--nothing sordid, nothing soiled. In one sense she is as scrupulous
+as, in another, she is unthinking. As a peasant girl, she would go ever
+trim and cleanly. Look at the pure kid of this little glove, at the
+fresh, unsullied satin of the bag.
+
+"What a difference there is between S. and that pearl C. H.! Caroline, I
+fancy, is the soul of conscientious punctuality and nice exactitude. She
+would precisely suit the domestic habits of a certain fastidious kinsman
+of mine--so delicate, dexterous, quaint, quick, quiet--all done to a
+minute, all arranged to a strawbreadth. She would suit Robert. But what
+could _I_ do with anything so nearly faultless? _She_ is my equal, poor
+as myself. She is certainly pretty: a little Raffaelle head
+hers--Raffaelle in feature, quite English in expression, all insular
+grace and purity; but where is there anything to alter, anything to
+endure, anything to reprimand, to be anxious about? There she is, a lily
+of the valley, untinted, needing no tint. What change could improve her?
+What pencil dare to paint? _My_ sweetheart, if I ever have one, must
+bear nearer affinity to the rose--a sweet, lively delight guarded with
+prickly peril. _My_ wife, if I ever marry, must stir my great frame with
+a sting now and then; she must furnish use to her husband's vast mass of
+patience. I was not made so enduring to be mated with a lamb; I should
+find more congenial responsibility in the charge of a young lioness or
+leopardess. I like few things sweet but what are likewise pungent--few
+things bright but what are likewise hot. I like the summer day, whose
+sun makes fruit blush and corn blanch. Beauty is never so beautiful as
+when, if I tease it, it wreathes back on me with spirit. Fascination is
+never so imperial as when, roused and half ireful, she threatens
+transformation to fierceness. I fear I should tire of the mute,
+monotonous innocence of the lamb; I should ere long feel as burdensome
+the nestling dove which never stirred in my bosom; but my patience would
+exult in stilling the flutterings and training the energies of the
+restless merlin. In managing the wild instincts of the scarce manageable
+_bête fauve_ my powers would revel.
+
+"O my pupil! O Peri! too mutinous for heaven, too innocent for hell,
+never shall I do more than see, and worship, and wish for thee. Alas!
+knowing I could make thee happy, will it be my doom to see thee
+possessed by those who have not that power?
+
+"However kindly the hand, if it is feeble, it cannot bend Shirley; and
+she must be bent. It cannot curb her; and she must be curbed.
+
+"Beware, Sir Philip Nunnely! I never see you walking or sitting at her
+side, and observe her lips compressed, or her brow knit, in resolute
+endurance of some trait of your character which she neither admires nor
+likes, in determined toleration of some weakness she believes atoned for
+by a virtue, but which annoys her despite that belief; I never mark the
+grave glow of her face, the unsmiling sparkle of her eye, the slight
+recoil of her whole frame when you draw a little too near, and gaze a
+little too expressively, and whisper a little too warmly--I never
+witness these things but I think of the fable of Semele reversed.
+
+"It is not the daughter of Cadmus I see, nor do I realize her fatal
+longing to look on Jove in the majesty of his god-head. It is a priest
+of Juno that stands before me, watching late and lone at a shrine in an
+Argive temple. For years of solitary ministry he has lived on dreams.
+There is divine madness upon him. He loves the idol he serves, and prays
+day and night that his frenzy may be fed, and that the Ox-eyed may smile
+on her votary. She has heard; she will be propitious. All Argos
+slumbers. The doors of the temple are shut; the priest waits at the
+altar.
+
+"A shock of heaven and earth is felt--not by the slumbering city, only
+by that lonely watcher, brave and unshaken in his fanaticism. In the
+midst of silence, with no preluding sound, he is wrapped in sudden
+light. Through the roof, through the rent, wide-yawning, vast,
+white-blazing blue of heaven above, pours a wondrous descent, dread as
+the downrushing of stars. He has what he asked. Withdraw--forbear to
+look--I am blinded. I hear in that fane an unspeakable sound. Would that
+I could not hear it! I see an insufferable glory burning terribly
+between the pillars. Gods be merciful and quench it!
+
+"A pious Argive enters to make an early offering in the cool dawn of
+morning. There was thunder in the night; the bolt fell here. The shrine
+is shivered, the marble pavement round split and blackened. Saturnia's
+statue rises chaste, grand, untouched; at her feet piled ashes lie pale.
+No priest remains; he who watched will be seen no more.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"There is the carriage! Let me lock up the desk and pocket the keys. She
+will be seeking them to-morrow; she will have to come to me. I hear her:
+'Mr. Moore, have you seen my keys?'
+
+"So she will say, in her clear voice, speaking with reluctance, looking
+ashamed, conscious that this is the twentieth time of asking. I will
+tantalize her, keep her with me, expecting, doubting; and when I _do_
+restore them, it shall not be without a lecture. Here is the bag, too,
+and the purse; the glove--pen--seal. She shall wring them all out of me
+slowly and separately--only by confession, penitence, entreaty. I never
+can touch her hand, or a ringlet of her head, or a ribbon of her dress,
+but I will make privileges for myself. Every feature of her face, her
+bright eyes, her lips, shall go through each change they know, for my
+pleasure--display each exquisite variety of glance and curve, to
+delight, thrill, perhaps more hopelessly to enchain me. If I must be her
+slave, I will not lose my freedom for nothing."
+
+He locked the desk, pocketed all the property, and went.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+RUSHEDGE--A CONFESSIONAL.
+
+
+Everybody said it was high time for Mr. Moore to return home. All
+Briarfield wondered at his strange absence, and Whinbury and Nunnely
+brought each its separate contribution of amazement.
+
+Was it known why he stayed away? Yes. It was known twenty--forty times
+over, there being at least forty plausible reasons adduced to account
+for the unaccountable circumstance. Business it was not--_that_ the
+gossips agreed. He had achieved the business on which he departed long
+ago. His four ringleaders he had soon scented out and run down. He had
+attended their trial, heard their conviction and sentence, and seen them
+safely shipped prior to transportation.
+
+This was known at Briarfield. The newspapers had reported it. The
+_Stilbro' Courier_ had given every particular, with amplifications. None
+applauded his perseverance or hailed his success, though the mill-owners
+were glad of it, trusting that the terrors of law vindicated would
+henceforward paralyze the sinister valour of disaffection. Disaffection,
+however, was still heard muttering to himself. He swore ominous oaths
+over the drugged beer of alehouses, and drank strange toasts in fiery
+British gin.
+
+One report affirmed that Moore _dared_ not come to Yorkshire; he knew
+his life was not worth an hour's purchase if he did.
+
+"I'll tell him that," said Mr. Yorke, when his foreman mentioned the
+rumour; "and if _that_ does not bring him home full gallop, nothing
+will."
+
+Either that or some other motive prevailed at last to recall him. He
+announced to Joe Scott the day he should arrive at Stilbro', desiring
+his hackney to be sent to the George for his accommodation; and Joe
+Scott having informed Mr. Yorke, that gentleman made it in his way to
+meet him.
+
+It was market-day. Moore arrived in time to take his usual place at the
+market dinner. As something of a stranger, and as a man of note and
+action, the assembled manufacturers received him with a certain
+distinction. Some, who in public would scarcely have dared to
+acknowledge his acquaintance, lest a little of the hate and vengeance
+laid up in store for him should perchance have fallen on them, in
+private hailed him as in some sort their champion. When the wine had
+circulated, their respect would have kindled to enthusiasm had not
+Moore's unshaken nonchalance held it in a damp, low, smouldering state.
+
+Mr. Yorke, the permanent president of these dinners, witnessed his young
+friend's bearing with exceeding complacency. If one thing could stir his
+temper or excite his contempt more than another, it was to see a man
+befooled by flattery or elate with popularity. If one thing smoothed,
+soothed, and charmed him especially, it was the spectacle of a public
+character incapable of relishing his publicity--_incapable_, I say.
+Disdain would but have incensed; it was indifference that appeased his
+rough spirit.
+
+Robert, leaning back in his chair, quiet and almost surly, while the
+clothiers and blanket-makers vaunted his prowess and rehearsed his
+deeds--many of them interspersing their flatteries with coarse
+invectives against the operative class--was a delectable sight for Mr.
+Yorke. His heart tingled with the pleasing conviction that these gross
+eulogiums shamed Moore deeply, and made him half scorn himself and his
+work. On abuse, on reproach, on calumny, it is easy to smile; but
+painful indeed is the panegyric of those we contemn. Often had Moore
+gazed with a brilliant countenance over howling crowds from a hostile
+hustings. He had breasted the storm of unpopularity with gallant bearing
+and soul elate; but he drooped his head under the half-bred tradesmen's
+praise, and shrank chagrined before their congratulations.
+
+Yorke could not help asking him how he liked his supporters, and whether
+he did not think they did honour to his cause. "But it is a pity, lad,"
+he added, "that you did not hang these four samples of the unwashed. If
+you had managed _that_ feat, the gentry here would have riven the horses
+out of the coach, yoked to a score of asses, and drawn you into Stilbro'
+like a conquering general."
+
+Moore soon forsook the wine, broke from the party, and took the road.
+In less than five minutes Mr. Yorke followed him. They rode out of
+Stilbro' together.
+
+It was early to go home, but yet it was late in the day. The last ray of
+the sun had already faded from the cloud-edges, and the October night
+was casting over the moorlands the shadow of her approach.
+
+Mr. Yorke, moderately exhilarated with his moderate libations, and not
+displeased to see young Moore again in Yorkshire, and to have him for
+his comrade during the long ride home, took the discourse much to
+himself. He touched briefly, but scoffingly, on the trials and the
+conviction; he passed thence to the gossip of the neighbourhood, and ere
+long he attacked Moore on his own personal concerns.
+
+"Bob, I believe you are worsted, and you deserve it. All was smooth.
+Fortune had fallen in love with you. She had decreed you the first prize
+in her wheel--twenty thousand pounds; she only required that you should
+hold your hand out and take it. And what did you do? You called for a
+horse and rode a-hunting to Warwickshire. Your sweetheart--Fortune, I
+mean--was perfectly indulgent. She said, 'I'll excuse him; he's young.'
+She waited, like 'Patience on a monument,' till the chase was over and
+the vermin-prey run down. She expected you would come back then, and be
+a good lad. You might still have had her first prize.
+
+"It capped her beyond expression, and me too, to find that, instead of
+thundering home in a breakneck gallop and laying your assize laurels at
+her feet, you coolly took coach up to London. What you have done there
+Satan knows; nothing in this world, I believe, but sat and sulked. Your
+face was never lily fair, but it is olive green now. You're not as bonny
+as you were, man."
+
+"And who is to have this prize you talk so much about?"
+
+"Only a baronet; that is all. I have not a doubt in my own mind you've
+lost her. She will be Lady Nunnely before Christmas."
+
+"Hem! Quite probable."
+
+"But she need not to have been. Fool of a lad! I swear you might have
+had her."
+
+"By what token, Mr. Yorke?"
+
+"By every token--by the light of her eyes, the red of her cheeks. Red
+they grew when your name was mentioned, though of custom they are pale."
+
+"My chance is quite over, I suppose?"
+
+"It ought to be. But try; it is worth trying. I call this Sir Philip
+milk and water. And then he writes verses, they say--tags rhymes. _You_
+are above that, Bob, at all events."
+
+"Would you advise me to propose, late as it is, Mr. Yorke--at the
+eleventh hour?"
+
+"You can but make the experiment, Robert. If she has a fancy for
+you--and, on my conscience, I believe she has or had--she will forgive
+much. But, my lad, you are laughing. Is it at me? You had better grin at
+your own perverseness. I see, however, you laugh at the wrong side of
+your mouth. You have as sour a look at this moment as one need wish to
+see."
+
+"I have so quarrelled with myself, Yorke. I have so kicked against the
+pricks, and struggled in a strait waistcoat, and dislocated my wrists
+with wrenching them in handcuffs, and battered my hard head by driving
+it against a harder wall."
+
+"Ha! I'm glad to hear that. Sharp exercise yon! I hope it has done you
+good--ta'en some of the self-conceit out of you?"
+
+"Self-conceit? What is it? Self-respect, self-tolerance even, what are
+they? Do you sell the articles? Do you know anybody who does? Give an
+indication. They would find in me a liberal chapman. I would part with
+my last guinea this minute to buy."
+
+"Is it so with you, Robert? I find that spicy. I like a man to speak his
+mind. What has gone wrong?"
+
+"The machinery of all my nature; the whole enginery of this human mill;
+the boiler, which I take to be the heart, is fit to burst."
+
+"That suld be putten i' print; it's striking. It's almost blank verse.
+Ye'll be jingling into poetry just e'now. If the afflatus comes, give
+way, Robert. Never heed me; I'll bear it this whet [time]."
+
+"Hideous, abhorrent, base blunder! You may commit in a moment what you
+will rue for years--what life cannot cancel."
+
+"Lad, go on. I call it pie, nuts, sugar-candy. I like the taste
+uncommonly. Go on. It will do you good to talk. The moor is before us
+now, and there is no life for many a mile round."
+
+"I _will_ talk. I am not ashamed to tell. There is a sort of wild cat in
+my breast, and I choose that you shall hear how it can yell."
+
+"To me it is music. What grand voices you and Louis have! When Louis
+sings--tones off like a soft, deep bell--I've felt myself tremble again.
+The night is still. It listens. It is just leaning down to you, like a
+black priest to a blacker penitent. Confess, lad. Smooth naught down. Be
+candid as a convicted, justified, sanctified Methody at an experience
+meeting. Make yourself as wicked as Beelzebub. It will ease your mind."
+
+"As mean as Mammon, you would say. Yorke, if I got off horseback and
+laid myself down across the road, would you have the goodness to gallop
+over me, backwards and forwards, about twenty times?"
+
+"Wi' all the pleasure in life, if there were no such thing as a
+coroner's inquest."
+
+"Hiram Yorke, I certainly believed she loved me. I have seen her eyes
+sparkle radiantly when she has found me out in a crowd; she has flushed
+up crimson when she has offered me her hand, and said, 'How do you do,
+Mr. Moore?'
+
+"My name had a magical influence over her. When others uttered it she
+changed countenance--I know she did. She pronounced it herself in the
+most musical of her many musical tones. She was cordial to me; she took
+an interest in me; she was anxious about me; she wished me well; she
+sought, she seized every opportunity to benefit me. I considered,
+paused, watched, weighed, wondered. I could come to but one
+conclusion--this is love.
+
+"I looked at her, Yorke. I saw in her youth and a species of beauty. I
+saw power in her. Her wealth offered me the redemption of my honour and
+my standing. I owed her gratitude. She had aided me substantially and
+effectually by a loan of five thousand pounds. Could I remember these
+things? Could I believe she loved me? Could I hear wisdom urge me to
+marry her, and disregard every dear advantage, disbelieve every
+flattering suggestion, disdain every well-weighed counsel, turn and
+leave her? Young, graceful, gracious--my benefactress, attached to me,
+enamoured of me. I used to say so to myself; dwell on the word; mouth it
+over and over again; swell over it with a pleasant, pompous complacency,
+with an admiration dedicated entirely to myself, and unimpaired even by
+esteem for her; indeed I smiled in deep secrecy at her _naïveté_ and
+simplicity in being the first to love, and to show it. That whip of
+yours seems to have a good heavy handle, Yorke; you can swing it about
+your head and knock me out of the saddle, if you choose. I should rather
+relish a loundering whack."
+
+"Tak patience, Robert, till the moon rises and I can see you. Speak
+plain out--did you love her or not? I could like to know. I feel
+curious."
+
+"Sir--sir--I say--she is very pretty, in her own style, and very
+attractive. She has a look, at times, of a thing made out of fire and
+air, at which I stand and marvel, without a thought of clasping and
+kissing it. I felt in her a powerful magnet to my interest and vanity. I
+never felt as if nature meant her to be my other and better self. When a
+question on that head rushed upon me, I flung it off, saying brutally I
+should be rich with her and ruined without her--vowing I would be
+practical, and not romantic."
+
+"A very sensible resolve. What mischief came of it, Bob?"
+
+"With this sensible resolve I walked up to Fieldhead one night last
+August. It was the very eve of my departure for Birmingham; for, you
+see, I wanted to secure Fortune's splendid prize. I had previously
+dispatched a note requesting a private interview. I found her at home,
+and alone.
+
+"She received me without embarrassment, for she thought I came on
+business. _I_ was embarrassed enough, but determined. I hardly know how
+I got the operation over; but I went to work in a hard, firm
+fashion--frightful enough, I dare say. I sternly offered myself--my fine
+person--with my debts, of course, as a settlement.
+
+"It vexed me, it kindled my ire, to find that she neither blushed,
+trembled, nor looked down. She responded, 'I doubt whether I have
+understood you, Mr. Moore.'
+
+"And I had to go over the whole proposal twice, and word it as plainly
+as A B C, before she would fully take it in. And then, what did she do?
+Instead of faltering a sweet Yes, or maintaining a soft, confused
+silence (which would have been as good), she started up, walked twice
+fast through the room, in the way that _she_ only does, and no other
+woman, and ejaculated, 'God bless me!'
+
+"Yorke, I stood on the hearth, backed by the mantelpiece; against it I
+leaned, and prepared for anything--everything. I knew my doom, and I
+knew myself. There was no misunderstanding her aspect and voice. She
+stopped and looked at me.
+
+"'God bless me!' she piteously repeated, in that shocked, indignant, yet
+saddened accent. 'You have made a strange proposal--strange from _you_;
+and if you knew how strangely you worded it and looked it, you would be
+startled at yourself. You spoke like a brigand who demanded my purse
+rather than like a lover who asked my heart.'
+
+"A queer sentence, was it not, Yorke? And I knew, as she uttered it, it
+was true as queer. Her words were a mirror in which I saw myself.
+
+"I looked at her, dumb and wolfish. She at once enraged and shamed me.
+
+"'Gérard Moore, you know you don't love Shirley Keeldar.' I might have
+broken out into false swearing--vowed that I did love her; but I could
+not lie in her pure face. I could not perjure myself in her truthful
+presence. Besides, such hollow oaths would have been vain as void. She
+would no more have believed me than she would have believed the ghost of
+Judas, had he broken from the night and stood before her. Her female
+heart had finer perceptions than to be cheated into mistaking my
+half-coarse, half-cold admiration for true-throbbing, manly love.
+
+"What next happened? you will say, Mr. Yorke.
+
+"Why, she sat down in the window-seat and cried. She cried passionately.
+Her eyes not only rained but lightened. They flashed, open, large, dark,
+haughty, upon me. They said, 'You have pained me; you have outraged me;
+you have deceived me.'
+
+"She added words soon to looks.
+
+"'I _did_ respect--I _did_ admire--I _did_ like you,' she said--'yes, as
+much as if you were my brother; and _you--you_ want to make a
+speculation of me. You would immolate me to that mill, your Moloch!'
+
+"I had the common sense to abstain from any word of excuse, any attempt
+at palliation. I stood to be scorned.
+
+"Sold to the devil for the time being, I was certainly infatuated. When
+I did speak, what do you think I said?
+
+"'Whatever my own feelings were, I was persuaded _you_ loved _me_, Miss
+Keeldar.'
+
+"Beautiful, was it not? She sat quite confounded. 'Is it Robert Moore
+that speaks?' I heard her mutter. 'Is it a man--or something lower?'
+
+"'Do you mean,' she asked aloud--'do you mean you thought I loved you as
+we love those we wish to marry?'
+
+"It _was_ my meaning, and I said so.
+
+"'You conceived an idea obnoxious to a woman's feelings,' was her
+answer. 'You have announced it in a fashion revolting to a woman's soul.
+You insinuate that all the frank kindness I have shown you has been a
+complicated, a bold, and an immodest manœuvre to ensnare a husband. You
+imply that at last you come here out of pity to offer me your hand,
+because I have courted you. Let me say this: Your sight is jaundiced;
+you have seen wrong. Your mind is warped; you have judged wrong. Your
+tongue betrays you; you now speak wrong. I never loved you. Be at rest
+there. My heart is as pure of passion for you as yours is barren of
+affection for me.'
+
+"I hope I was answered, Yorke?
+
+"'I seem to be a blind, besotted sort of person,' was my remark.
+
+"'_Loved_ you!' she cried. 'Why, I have been as frank with you as a
+sister--never shunned you, never feared you. You cannot,' she affirmed
+triumphantly--'you cannot make me tremble with your coming, nor
+accelerate my pulse by your influence.'
+
+"I alleged that often, when she spoke to me, she blushed, and that the
+sound of my name moved her.
+
+"'Not for _your_ sake!' she declared briefly. I urged explanation, but
+could get none.
+
+"'When I sat beside you at the school feast, did you think I loved you
+then? When I stopped you in Maythorn Lane, did you think I loved you
+then? When I called on you in the counting-house, when I walked with you
+on the pavement, did you think I loved you then?'
+
+"So she questioned me; and I said I did.
+
+"By the Lord! Yorke, she rose, she grew tall, she expanded and refined
+almost to flame. There was a trembling all through her, as in live coal
+when its vivid vermilion is hottest.
+
+"'That is to say that you have the worst opinion of me; that you deny me
+the possession of all I value most. That is to say that I am a traitor
+to all my sisters; that I have acted as no woman can act without
+degrading herself and her sex; that I have sought where the incorrupt of
+my kind naturally scorn and abhor to seek.' She and I were silent for
+many a minute. 'Lucifer, Star of the Morning,' she went on, 'thou art
+fallen! You, once high in my esteem, are hurled down; you, once intimate
+in my friendship, are cast out. Go!'
+
+"I went not. I had heard her voice tremble, seen her lip quiver. I knew
+another storm of tears would fall, and then I believed some calm and
+some sunshine must come, and I would wait for it.
+
+"As fast, but more quietly than before, the warm rain streamed down.
+There was another sound in her weeping--a softer, more regretful sound.
+While I watched, her eyes lifted to me a gaze more reproachful than
+haughty, more mournful than incensed.
+
+"'O Moore!' said she. It was worse than 'Et tu, Brute!'
+
+"I relieved myself by what should have been a sigh, but it became a
+groan. A sense of Cain-like desolation made my breast ache.
+
+"'There has been error in what I have done,' I said, 'and it has won me
+bitter wages, which I will go and spend far from her who gave them.'
+
+"I took my hat. All the time I could not have borne to depart so, and I
+believed she would not let me. Nor would she but for the mortal pang I
+had given her pride, that cowed her compassion and kept her silent.
+
+"I was obliged to turn back of my own accord when I reached the door, to
+approach her, and to say, 'Forgive me.'
+
+"'I could, if there was not myself to forgive too,' was her reply; 'but
+to mislead a sagacious man so far I must have done wrong.'
+
+"I broke out suddenly with some declamation I do not remember. I know
+that it was sincere, and that my wish and aim were to absolve her to
+herself. In fact, in her case self-accusation was a chimera.
+
+"At last she extended her hand. For the first time I wished to take her
+in my arms and kiss her. I _did_ kiss her hand many times.
+
+"'Some day we shall be friends again,' she said, 'when you have had time
+to read my actions and motives in a true light, and not so horribly to
+misinterpret them. Time may give you the right key to all. Then,
+perhaps, you will comprehend me, and then we shall be reconciled.'
+
+"Farewell drops rolled slow down her cheeks. She wiped them away.
+
+"'I am sorry for what has happened--deeply sorry,' she sobbed. So was I,
+God knows! Thus were we severed."
+
+"A queer tale!" commented Mr. Yorke.
+
+"I'll do it no more," vowed his companion; "never more will I mention
+marriage to a woman unless I feel love. Henceforth credit and commerce
+may take care of themselves. Bankruptcy may come when it lists. I have
+done with slavish fear of disaster. I mean to work diligently, wait
+patiently, bear steadily. Let the worst come, I will take my axe and an
+emigrant's berth, and go out with Louis to the West; he and I have
+settled it. No woman shall ever again look at me as Miss Keeldar looked,
+ever again feel towards me as Miss Keeldar felt. In no woman's presence
+will I ever again stand at once such a fool and such a knave, such a
+brute and such a puppy."
+
+"Tut!" said the imperturbable Yorke, "you make too much of it; but
+still, I say, I am capped. Firstly, that she did not love you; and
+secondly, that you did not love her. You are both young; you are both
+handsome; you are both well enough for wit and even for temper--take you
+on the right side. What ailed you that you could not agree?"
+
+"We never _have_ been, never _could_ be _at home_ with each other,
+Yorke. Admire each other as we might at a distance, still we jarred when
+we came very near. I have sat at one side of a room and observed her at
+the other, perhaps in an excited, genial moment, when she had some of
+her favourites round her--her old beaux, for instance, yourself and
+Helstone, with whom she is so playful, pleasant, and eloquent. I have
+watched her when she was most natural, most lively, and most lovely; my
+judgment has pronounced her beautiful. Beautiful she is at times, when
+her mood and her array partake of the splendid. I have drawn a little
+nearer, feeling that our terms of acquaintance gave me the right of
+approach. I have joined the circle round her seat, caught her eye, and
+mastered her attention; then we have conversed; and others, thinking me,
+perhaps, peculiarly privileged, have withdrawn by degrees, and left us
+alone. Were we happy thus left? For myself, I must say No. Always a
+feeling of constraint came over me; always I was disposed to be stern
+and strange. We talked politics and business. No soft sense of domestic
+intimacy ever opened our hearts, or thawed our language and made it flow
+easy and limpid. If we had confidences, they were confidences of the
+counting-house, not of the heart. Nothing in her cherished affection in
+me, made me better, gentler; she only stirred my brain and whetted my
+acuteness. She never crept into my heart or influenced its pulse; and
+for this good reason, no doubt, because I had not the secret of making
+her love me."
+
+"Well, lad, it is a queer thing. I might laugh at thee, and reckon to
+despise thy refinements; but as it is dark night and we are by
+ourselves, I don't mind telling thee that thy talk brings back a glimpse
+of my own past life. Twenty-five years ago I tried to persuade a
+beautiful woman to love me, and she would not. I had not the key to her
+nature; she was a stone wall to me, doorless and windowless."
+
+"But you loved _her_, Yorke; you worshipped Mary Cave. Your conduct,
+after all, was that of a man--never of a fortune-hunter."
+
+"Ay, I _did_ love her; but then she was beautiful as the moon we do
+_not_ see to-night. There is naught like her in these days. Miss
+Helstone, maybe, has a look of her, but nobody else."
+
+"Who has a look of her?"
+
+"That black-coated tyrant's niece--that quiet, delicate Miss Helstone.
+Many a time I have put on my spectacles to look at the lassie in church,
+because she has gentle blue een, wi' long lashes; and when she sits in
+shadow, and is very still and very pale, and is, happen, about to fall
+asleep wi' the length of the sermon and the heat of the biggin', she is
+as like one of Canova's marbles as aught else."
+
+"Was Mary Cave in that style?"
+
+"Far grander!--less lass-like and flesh-like. You wondered why she
+hadn't wings and a crown. She was a stately, peaceful angel was my
+Mary."
+
+"And you could not persuade her to love you?"
+
+"Not with all I could do, though I prayed Heaven many a time, on my
+bended knees, to help me."
+
+"Mary Cave was not what you think her, Yorke. I have seen her picture at
+the rectory. She is no angel, but a fair, regular-featured,
+taciturn-looking woman--rather too white and lifeless for my taste. But,
+supposing she had been something better than she was----"
+
+"Robert," interrupted Yorke, "I could fell you off your horse at this
+moment. However, I'll hold my hand. Reason tells me you are right and I
+am wrong. I know well enough that the passion I still have is only the
+remnant of an illusion. If Miss Cave had possessed either feeling or
+sense, she could not have been so perfectly impassible to my regard as
+she showed herself; she must have preferred me to that copper-faced
+despot."
+
+"Supposing, Yorke, she had been educated (no women were educated in
+those days); supposing she had possessed a thoughtful, original mind, a
+love of knowledge, a wish for information, which she took an artless
+delight in receiving from your lips, and having measured out to her by
+your hand; supposing her conversation, when she sat at your side, was
+fertile, varied, imbued with a picturesque grace and genial interest,
+quiet flowing but clear and bounteous; supposing that when you stood
+near her by chance, or when you sat near her by design, comfort at once
+became your atmosphere, and content your element; supposing that
+whenever her face was under your gaze, or her idea filled your thoughts,
+you gradually ceased to be hard and anxious, and pure affection, love of
+home, thirst for sweet discourse, unselfish longing to protect and
+cherish, replaced the sordid, cankering calculations of your trade;
+supposing, with all this, that many a time, when you had been so happy
+as to possess your Mary's little hand, you had felt it tremble as you
+held it, just as a warm little bird trembles when you take it from its
+nest; supposing you had noticed her shrink into the background on your
+entrance into a room, yet if you sought her in her retreat she welcomed
+you with the sweetest smile that ever lit a fair virgin face, and only
+turned her eyes from the encounter of your own lest their clearness
+should reveal too much; supposing, in short, your Mary had been not
+cold, but modest; not vacant, but reflective; not obtuse, but sensitive;
+not inane, but innocent; not prudish, but pure,--would you have left her
+to court another woman for her wealth?"
+
+Mr. Yorke raised his hat, wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.
+
+"The moon is up," was his first not quite relevant remark, pointing with
+his whip across the moor. "There she is, rising into the haze, staring
+at us wi' a strange red glower. She is no more silver than old
+Helstone's brow is ivory. What does she mean by leaning her cheek on
+Rushedge i' that way, and looking at us wi' a scowl and a menace?"
+
+"Yorke, if Mary had loved you silently yet faithfully, chastely yet
+fervently, as you would wish your wife to love, would you have left
+her?"
+
+"Robert!"--he lifted his arm, he held it suspended, and paused--"Robert!
+this is a queer world, and men are made of the queerest dregs that
+Chaos churned up in her ferment. I might swear sounding oaths--oaths
+that would make the poachers think there was a bittern booming in
+Bilberry Moss--that, in the case you put, death only should have parted
+me from Mary. But I have lived in the world fifty-five years; I have
+been forced to study human nature; and, to speak a dark truth, the odds
+are, if Mary had loved and not scorned me, if I had been secure of her
+affection, certain of her constancy, been irritated by no doubts, stung
+by no humiliations--the odds are" (he let his hand fall heavy on the
+saddle)--"the odds are I should have left her!"
+
+They rode side by side in silence. Ere either spoke again they were on
+the other side of Rushedge. Briarfield lights starred the purple skirt
+of the moor. Robert, being the youngest, and having less of the past to
+absorb him than his comrade, recommenced first.
+
+"I believe--I daily find it proved--that we can get nothing in this
+world worth keeping, not so much as a principle or a conviction, except
+out of purifying flame or through strengthening peril. We err, we fall,
+we are humbled; then we walk more carefully. We greedily eat and drink
+poison out of the gilded cup of vice or from the beggar's wallet of
+avarice. We are sickened, degraded; everything good in us rebels against
+us; our souls rise bitterly indignant against our bodies; there is a
+period of civil war; if the soul has strength, it conquers and rules
+thereafter."
+
+"What art thou going to do now, Robert? What are thy plans?"
+
+"For my private plans, I'll keep them to myself--which is very easy, as
+at present I have none. No private life is permitted a man in my
+position--a man in debt. For my public plans, my views are a little
+altered. While I was in Birmingham I looked a little into reality,
+considered closely and at their source the causes of the present
+troubles of this country. I did the same in London. Unknown, I could go
+where I pleased, mix with whom I would. I went where there was want of
+food, of fuel, of clothing; where there was no occupation and no hope. I
+saw some, with naturally elevated tendencies and good feelings, kept
+down amongst sordid privations and harassing griefs. I saw many
+originally low, and to whom lack of education left scarcely anything but
+animal wants, disappointed in those wants, ahungered, athirst, and
+desperate as famished animals. I saw what taught my brain a new lesson,
+and filled my breast with fresh feelings. I have no intention to profess
+more softness or sentiment than I have hitherto professed; mutiny and
+ambition I regard as I have always regarded them. I should resist a
+riotous mob just as heretofore; I should open on the scent of a runaway
+ringleader as eagerly as ever, and run him down as relentlessly, and
+follow him up to condign punishment as rigorously; but I should do it
+now chiefly for the sake and the security of those he misled. Something
+there is to look to, Yorke, beyond a man's personal interest, beyond the
+advancement of well-laid schemes, beyond even the discharge of
+dishonouring debts. To respect himself, a man must believe he renders
+justice to his fellow-men. Unless I am more considerate to ignorance,
+more forbearing to suffering, than I have hitherto been, I shall scorn
+myself as grossly unjust.--What now?" he said, addressing his horse,
+which, hearing the ripple of water, and feeling thirsty, turned to a
+wayside trough, where the moonbeam was playing in a crystal eddy.
+
+"Yorke," pursued Moore, "ride on; I must let him drink."
+
+Yorke accordingly rode slowly forwards, occupying himself as he advanced
+in discriminating, amongst the many lights now spangling the distance,
+those of Briarmains. Stilbro' Moor was left behind; plantations rose
+dusk on either hand; they were descending the hill; below them lay the
+valley with its populous parish: they felt already at home.
+
+Surrounded no longer by heath, it was not startling to Mr. Yorke to see
+a hat rise, and to hear a voice speak behind the wall. The words,
+however, were peculiar.
+
+"When the wicked perisheth there is shouting," it said; and added, "As
+the whirlwind passeth, so is the wicked no more" (with a deeper growl):
+"terrors take hold of him as waters; hell is naked before him. He shall
+die without knowledge."
+
+A fierce flash and sharp crack violated the calm of night. Yorke, ere he
+turned, knew the four convicts of Birmingham were avenged.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+UNCLE AND NIECE.
+
+
+The die was cast. Sir Philip Nunnely knew it; Shirley knew it; Mr.
+Sympson knew it. That evening, when all the Fieldhead family dined at
+Nunnely Priory, decided the business.
+
+Two or three things conduced to bring the baronet to a point. He had
+observed that Miss Keeldar looked pensive and delicate. This new phase
+in her demeanour smote him on his weak or poetic side. A spontaneous
+sonnet brewed in his brain; and while it was still working there, one of
+his sisters persuaded his lady-love to sit down to the piano and sing a
+ballad--one of Sir Philip's own ballads. It was the least elaborate, the
+least affected--out of all comparison the best of his numerous efforts.
+
+It chanced that Shirley, the moment before, had been gazing from a
+window down on the park. She had seen that stormy moonlight which "le
+Professeur Louis" was perhaps at the same instant contemplating from her
+own oak-parlour lattice; she had seen the isolated trees of the
+domain--broad, strong, spreading oaks, and high-towering heroic
+beeches--wrestling with the gale. Her ear had caught the full roar of
+the forest lower down; the swift rushing of clouds, the moon, to the
+eye, hasting swifter still, had crossed her vision. She turned from
+sight and sound--touched, if not rapt; wakened, if not inspired.
+
+She sang, as requested. There was much about love in the
+ballad--faithful love that refused to abandon its object; love that
+disaster could not shake; love that in calamity waxed fonder, in poverty
+clung closer. The words were set to a fine old air; in themselves they
+were simple and sweet. Perhaps, when read, they wanted force; when
+_well_ sung, they wanted nothing. Shirley sang them well. She breathed
+into the feeling softness; she poured round the passion force. Her voice
+was fine that evening, its expression dramatic. She impressed all, and
+charmed one.
+
+On leaving the instrument she went to the fire, and sat down on a
+seat--semi-stool, semi-cushion. The ladies were round her; none of them
+spoke. The Misses Sympson and the Misses Nunnely looked upon her as
+quiet poultry might look on an egret, an ibis, or any other strange
+fowl. What made her sing so? _They_ never sang so. Was it _proper_ to
+sing with such expression, with such originality--so unlike a
+school-girl? Decidedly not. It was strange, it was unusual. What was
+_strange_ must be _wrong_; what was _unusual_ must be _improper_.
+Shirley was judged.
+
+Moreover, old Lady Nunnely eyed her stonily from her great chair by the
+fireside. Her gaze said, "This woman is not of mine or my daughters'
+kind. I object to her as my son's wife."
+
+Her son, catching the look, read its meaning. He grew alarmed. What he
+so wished to win there was danger he might lose. He must make haste.
+
+The room they were in had once been a picture-gallery. Sir Philip's
+father--Sir Monckton--had converted it into a saloon; but still it had a
+shadowy, long-withdrawing look. A deep recess with a window--a recess
+that held one couch, one table, and a fairy cabinet--formed a room
+within a room. Two persons standing there might interchange a dialogue,
+and, so it were neither long nor loud, none be the wiser.
+
+Sir Philip induced two of his sisters to perpetrate a duet. He gave
+occupation to the Misses Sympson. The elder ladies were conversing
+together. He was pleased to remark that meantime Shirley rose to look at
+the pictures. He had a tale to tell about one ancestress, whose dark
+beauty seemed as that of a flower of the south. He joined her, and began
+to tell it.
+
+There were mementoes of the same lady in the cabinet adorning the
+recess; and while Shirley was stooping to examine the missal and the
+rosary on the inlaid shelf, and while the Misses Nunnely indulged in a
+prolonged screech, guiltless of expression, pure of originality,
+perfectly conventional and absolutely unmeaning, Sir Philip stooped too,
+and whispered a few hurried sentences. At first Miss Keeldar was struck
+so still you might have fancied that whisper a charm which had changed
+her to a statue; but she presently looked up and answered. They parted.
+Miss Keeldar returned to the fire, and resumed her seat. The baronet
+gazed after her, then went and stood behind his sisters. Mr.
+Sympson--Mr. Sympson only--had marked the pantomime.
+
+That gentleman drew his own conclusions. Had he been as acute as he was
+meddling, as profound as he was prying, he might have found that in Sir
+Philip's face whereby to correct his inference. Ever shallow, hasty, and
+positive, he went home quite cock-a-hoop.
+
+He was not a man that kept secrets well. When elate on a subject, he
+could not avoid talking about it. The next morning, having occasion to
+employ his son's tutor as his secretary, he must needs announce to him,
+in mouthing accents, and with much flimsy pomp of manner, that he had
+better hold himself prepared for a return to the south at an early day,
+as the important business which had detained him (Mr. Sympson) so long
+in Yorkshire was now on the eve of fortunate completion. His anxious and
+laborious efforts were likely, at last, to be crowned with the happiest
+success. A truly eligible addition was about to be made to the family
+connections.
+
+"In Sir Philip Nunnely?" Louis Moore conjectured.
+
+Whereupon Mr. Sympson treated himself simultaneously to a pinch of snuff
+and a chuckling laugh, checked only by a sudden choke of dignity, and an
+order to the tutor to proceed with business.
+
+For a day or two Mr. Sympson continued as bland as oil, but also he
+seemed to sit on pins, and his gait, when he walked, emulated that of a
+hen treading a hot girdle. He was for ever looking out of the window and
+listening for chariot-wheels. Bluebeard's wife--Sisera's mother--were
+nothing to him. He waited when the matter should be opened in form, when
+himself should be consulted, when lawyers should be summoned, when
+settlement discussions and all the delicious worldly fuss should
+pompously begin.
+
+At last there came a letter. He himself handed it to Miss Keeldar out of
+the bag. He knew the handwriting; he knew the crest on the seal. He did
+not see it opened and read, for Shirley took it to her own room; nor did
+he see it answered, for she wrote her reply shut up, and was very long
+about it--the best part of a day. He questioned her whether it was
+answered; she responded, "Yes."
+
+Again he waited--waited in silence, absolutely not daring to speak, kept
+mute by something in Shirley's face--a very awful something--inscrutable
+to him as the writing on the wall to Belshazzar. He was moved more than
+once to call Daniel, in the person of Louis Moore, and to ask an
+interpretation; but his dignity forbade the familiarity. Daniel himself,
+perhaps, had his own private difficulties connected with that baffling
+bit of translation; he looked like a student for whom grammars are blank
+and dictionaries dumb.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Sympson had been out, to while away an anxious hour in the society
+of his friends at De Walden Hall. He returned a little sooner than was
+expected. His family and Miss Keeldar were assembled in the oak parlour.
+Addressing the latter, he requested her to step with him into another
+room. He wished to have with her a "_strictly_ private interview."
+
+She rose, asking no questions and professing no surprise.
+
+"Very well, sir," she said, in the tone of a determined person who is
+informed that the dentist is come to extract that large double tooth of
+his, from which he has suffered such a purgatory this month past. She
+left her sewing and her thimble in the window-seat, and followed her
+uncle where he led.
+
+Shut into the drawing-room, the pair took seats, each in an arm-chair,
+placed opposite, a few yards between them.
+
+"I have been to De Walden Hall," said Mr. Sympson. He paused. Miss
+Keeldar's eyes were on the pretty white-and-green carpet. _That_
+information required no response. She gave none.
+
+"I have learned," he went on slowly--"I have learned a circumstance
+which surprises me."
+
+Resting her cheek on her forefinger, she waited to be told _what_
+circumstance.
+
+"It seems that Nunnely Priory is shut up--that the family are gone back
+to their place in ----shire. It seems that the baronet--that the
+baronet--that Sir Philip himself has accompanied his mother and
+sisters."
+
+"Indeed!" said Shirley.
+
+"May I ask if you share the amazement with which I received this news?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"_Is_ it news to you?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"I mean--I mean," pursued Mr. Sympson, now fidgeting in his chair,
+quitting his hitherto brief and tolerably clear phraseology, and
+returning to his customary wordy, confused, irritable style--"I mean to
+have a _thorough_ explanation. I will _not_ be put off. I--I--shall
+_insist_ on being heard, and on--on having my own way. My questions
+_must_ be answered. I will have clear, satisfactory replies. I am not to
+be trifled with. (Silence.)
+
+"It is a strange and an extraordinary thing--a very singular--a most odd
+thing! I thought all was right, knew no other; and there--the family are
+gone!"
+
+"I suppose, sir, they had a right to go."
+
+"_Sir Philip is gone!_" (with emphasis).
+
+Shirley raised her brows. "_Bon voyage!_" said she.
+
+"This will not do; this must be altered, ma'am."
+
+He drew his chair forward; he pushed it back; he looked perfectly
+incensed, and perfectly helpless.
+
+"Come, come now, uncle," expostulated Shirley, "do not begin to fret and
+fume, or we shall make no sense of the business. Ask me what you want to
+know. I am as willing to come to an explanation as you. I promise you
+truthful replies."
+
+"I want--I demand to know, Miss Keeldar, whether Sir Philip has made you
+an offer?"
+
+"He has."
+
+"You avow it?"
+
+"I avow it. But now, go on. Consider that point settled."
+
+"He made you an offer that night we dined at the priory?"
+
+"It is enough to say that he made it. Go on."
+
+"He proposed in the recess--in the room that used to be a
+picture-gallery--that Sir Monckton converted into it saloon?"
+
+No answer.
+
+"You were both examining a cabinet. I saw it all. My sagacity was not at
+fault--it never is. Subsequently you received a letter from him. On what
+subject--of what nature were the contents?"
+
+"No matter."
+
+"Ma'am, is that the way in which you speak to me?"
+
+Shirley's foot tapped quick on the carpet.
+
+"There you sit, silent and sullen--_you_ who promised truthful replies."
+
+"Sir, I have answered you thus far. Proceed."
+
+"I should like to see that letter."
+
+"You _cannot_ see it."
+
+"I _must_ and _shall_, ma'am; I am your guardian."
+
+"Having ceased to be a ward, I have no guardian."
+
+"Ungrateful being! Reared by me as my own daughter----"
+
+"Once more, uncle, have the kindness to keep to the point. Let us both
+remain cool. For my part, I do not wish to get into a passion; but, you
+know, once drive me beyond certain bounds, I care little what I say--I
+am not then soon checked. Listen! You have asked me whether Sir Philip
+made me an offer. That question is answered. What do you wish to know
+next?"
+
+"I desire to know whether you accepted or refused him, and know it I
+will."
+
+"Certainly, you ought to know it. I refused him."
+
+"Refused him! You--_you_, Shirley Keeldar, _refused_ Sir Philip
+Nunnely?"
+
+"I did."
+
+The poor gentleman bounced from his chair, and first rushed and then
+trotted through the room.
+
+"There it is! There it is! There it is!"
+
+"Sincerely speaking, I am sorry, uncle, you are so disappointed."
+
+Concession, contrition, never do any good with some people. Instead of
+softening and conciliating, they but embolden and harden them. Of that
+number was Mr. Sympson.
+
+"_I_ disappointed? What is it to me? Have _I_ an interest in it? You
+would insinuate, perhaps, that I have motives?"
+
+"Most people have motives of some sort for their actions."
+
+"She accuses me to my face! I, that have been a parent to her, she
+charges with bad motives!"
+
+"_Bad_ motives I did not say."
+
+"And now you prevaricate; you have no principles!"
+
+"Uncle, you tire me. I want to go away."
+
+"Go you shall not! I will be answered. What are your intentions, Miss
+Keeldar?"
+
+"In what respect?"
+
+"In respect of matrimony?"
+
+"To be quiet, and to do just as I please."
+
+"Just as you please! The words are to the last degree indecorous."
+
+"Mr. Sympson, I advise you not to become insulting. You know I will not
+bear that."
+
+"You read French. Your mind is poisoned with French novels. You have
+imbibed French principles."
+
+"The ground you are treading now returns a mighty hollow sound under
+your feet. Beware!"
+
+"It will end in infamy, sooner or later. I have foreseen it all along."
+
+"Do you assert, sir, that something in which _I_ am concerned will end
+in infamy?"
+
+"That it will--that it will. You said just now you would act as you
+please. You acknowledge no rules--no limitations."
+
+"Silly stuff, and vulgar as silly!"
+
+"Regardless of decorum, you are prepared to fly in the face of
+propriety."
+
+"You tire me, uncle."
+
+"What, madam--_what_ could be your reasons for refusing Sir Philip?"
+
+"At last there is another sensible question; I shall be glad to reply to
+it. Sir Philip is too young for me. I regard him as a boy. All his
+relations--his mother especially--would be annoyed if he married me.
+Such a step would embroil him with them. I am not his equal in the
+world's estimation."
+
+"Is that all?"
+
+"Our dispositions are not compatible."
+
+"Why, a more amiable gentleman never breathed."
+
+"He is very amiable--very excellent--truly estimable; but _not my
+master_--not in one point. I could not trust myself with his happiness.
+I would not undertake the keeping of it for thousands. I will accept no
+hand which cannot hold me in check."
+
+"I thought you liked to do as you please. You are vastly inconsistent."
+
+"When I promise to obey, it shall be under the conviction that I can
+keep that promise. I could not obey a youth like Sir Philip. Besides, he
+would never command me. He would expect me always to rule--to guide--and
+I have no taste whatever for the office."
+
+"_You_ no taste for swaggering, and subduing, and ordering, and ruling?"
+
+"Not my husband; only my uncle."
+
+"Where is the difference?"
+
+"There _is_ a slight difference--that is certain. And I know full well
+any man who wishes to live in decent comfort with me as a husband must
+be able to control me."
+
+"I wish you had a real tyrant."
+
+"A tyrant would not hold me for a day, not for an hour. I would
+rebel--break from him--defy him."
+
+"Are you not enough to bewilder one's brain with your
+self-contradiction?"
+
+"It is evident I bewilder your brain."
+
+"You talk of Sir Philip being young. He is two-and-twenty."
+
+"My husband must be thirty, with the sense of forty."
+
+"You had better pick out some old man--some white-headed or bald-headed
+swain."
+
+"No, thank you."
+
+"You could lead some doting fool; you might pin him to your apron."
+
+"I might do that with a boy; but it is not my vocation. Did I not say I
+prefer a _master_--one in whose presence I shall feel obliged and
+disposed to be good; one whose control my impatient temper must
+acknowledge; a man whose approbation can reward, whose displeasure
+punish me; a man I shall feel it impossible not to love, and very
+possible to fear?"
+
+"What is there to hinder you from doing all this with Sir Philip? He is
+a baronet--a man of rank, property, connections far above yours. If you
+talk of intellect, he is a poet--he writes verses; which you, I take it,
+cannot do, with all your cleverness."
+
+"Neither his title, wealth, pedigree, nor poetry avail to invest him
+with the power I describe. These are feather-weights; they want ballast.
+A measure of sound, solid, practical sense would have stood him in
+better stead with me."
+
+"You and Henry rave about poetry! You used to catch fire like tinder on
+the subject when you were a girl."
+
+"O uncle, there is nothing really valuable in this world, there is
+nothing glorious in the world to come that is not poetry!"
+
+"Marry a poet, then, in God's name!"
+
+"Show him me, and I will."
+
+"Sir Philip."
+
+"Not at all. You are almost as good a poet as he."
+
+"Madam, you are wandering from the point."
+
+"Indeed, uncle, I wanted to do so, and I shall be glad to lead you away
+with me. Do not let us get out of temper with each other; it is not
+worth while."
+
+"Out of temper, Miss Keeldar! I should be glad to know who is out of
+temper."
+
+"_I_ am not, yet."
+
+"If you mean to insinuate that _I_ am, I consider that you are guilty of
+impertinence."
+
+"You will be soon, if you go on at that rate."
+
+"There it is! With your pert tongue you would try the patience of a
+Job."
+
+"I know I should."
+
+"No levity, miss! This is not a laughing matter. It is an affair I am
+resolved to probe thoroughly, convinced that there is mischief at the
+bottom. You described just now, with far too much freedom for your years
+and sex, the sort of individual you would prefer as a husband. Pray, did
+you paint from the life?"
+
+Shirley opened her lips, but instead of speaking she only glowed
+rose-red.
+
+"I shall have an answer to that question," affirmed Mr. Sympson,
+assuming vast courage and consequence on the strength of this symptom of
+confusion.
+
+"It was an historical picture, uncle, from several originals."
+
+"Several originals! Bless my heart!"
+
+"I have been in love several times."
+
+"This is cynical."
+
+"With heroes of many nations."
+
+"What next----"
+
+"And philosophers."
+
+"She is mad----"
+
+"Don't ring the bell, uncle; you will alarm my aunt."
+
+"Your poor dear aunt, what a niece has she!"
+
+"Once I loved Socrates."
+
+"Pooh! no trifling, ma'am."
+
+"I admired Themistocles, Leonidas, Epaminondas."
+
+"Miss Keeldar----"
+
+"To pass over a few centuries, Washington was a plain man, but I liked
+him; but to speak of the actual present----"
+
+"Ah! the actual present."
+
+"To quit crude schoolgirl fancies, and come to realities."
+
+"Realities! That is the test to which you shall be brought, ma'am."
+
+"To avow before what altar I now kneel--to reveal the present idol of my
+soul----"
+
+"You will make haste about it, if you please. It is near luncheon time,
+and confess _you shall_."
+
+"Confess I must. My heart is full of the secret. It must be spoken. I
+only wish you were Mr. Helstone instead of Mr. Sympson; you would
+sympathize with me better."
+
+"Madam, it is a question of common sense and common prudence, not of
+sympathy and sentiment, and so on. Did you say it was Mr. Helstone?"
+
+"Not precisely, but as near as may be; they are rather alike."
+
+"I will know the name; I will have particulars."
+
+"They positively _are_ rather alike. Their very faces are not
+dissimilar--a pair of human falcons--and dry, direct, decided both. But
+my hero is the mightier of the two. His mind has the clearness of the
+deep sea, the patience of its rocks, the force of its billows."
+
+"Rant and fustian!"
+
+"I dare say he can be harsh as a saw-edge and gruff as a hungry raven."
+
+"Miss Keeldar, does the person reside in Briarfield? Answer me that."
+
+"Uncle, I am going to tell you; his name is trembling on my tongue."
+
+"Speak, girl!"
+
+"That was well said, uncle. 'Speak, girl!' It is quite tragic. England
+has howled savagely against this man, uncle, and she will one day roar
+exultingly over him. He has been unscared by the howl, and he will be
+unelated by the shout."
+
+"I said she was mad. She is."
+
+"This country will change and change again in her demeanour to him; he
+will never change in his duty to her. Come, cease to chafe, uncle, I'll
+tell you his name."
+
+"You shall tell me, or----"
+
+"Listen! Arthur Wellesley, Lord Wellington."
+
+Mr. Sympson rose up furious. He bounced out of the room, but immediately
+bounced back again, shut the door, and resumed his seat.
+
+"Ma'am, you _shall_ tell me _this_. Will your principles permit you to
+marry a man without money--a man below you?"
+
+"Never a man below me."
+
+(In a high voice.) "Will you, Miss Keeldar, marry a poor man?"
+
+"What right have you, Mr. Sympson, to ask me?"
+
+"I insist upon knowing."
+
+"You don't go the way to know."
+
+"My family respectability shall not be compromised."
+
+"A good resolution; keep it."
+
+"Madam, it is _you_ who shall keep it."
+
+"Impossible, sir, since I form no part of your family."
+
+"Do you disown us?"
+
+"I disdain your dictatorship."
+
+"Whom _will_ you marry, Miss Keeldar?"
+
+"Not Mr. Sam Wynne, because I scorn him; not Sir Philip Nunnely, because
+I _only_ esteem him."
+
+"Whom have you in your eye?"
+
+"Four rejected candidates."
+
+"Such obstinacy could not be unless you were under improper influence."
+
+"What do you mean? There are certain phrases potent to make my blood
+boil. Improper influence! What old woman's cackle is that?"
+
+"Are you a young lady?"
+
+"I am a thousand times better: I am an honest woman, and as such I will
+be treated."
+
+"Do you know" (leaning mysteriously forward, and speaking with ghastly
+solemnity)--"do you know the whole neighbourhood teems with rumours
+respecting you and a bankrupt tenant of yours, the foreigner Moore?"
+
+"Does it?"
+
+"It does. Your name is in every mouth."
+
+"It honours the lips it crosses, and I wish to the gods it may purify
+them."
+
+"Is it _that_ person who has power to influence you?"
+
+"Beyond any whose cause you have advocated."
+
+"Is it he you will marry?"
+
+"He is handsome, and manly, and commanding."
+
+"You declare it to my face! The Flemish knave! the low trader!"
+
+"He is talented, and venturous, and resolute. Prince is on his brow, and
+ruler in his bearing."
+
+"She glories in it! She conceals nothing! No shame, no fear!"
+
+"When we speak the name of Moore, shame should be forgotten and fear
+discarded. The Moores know only honour and courage."
+
+"I say she is mad."
+
+"You have taunted me till my blood is up; you have worried me till I
+turn again."
+
+"That Moore is the brother of my son's tutor. Would you let the usher
+call you sister?"
+
+Bright and broad shone Shirley's eye as she fixed it on her questioner
+now.
+
+"No, no; not for a province of possession, not for a century of life."
+
+"You cannot separate the husband from his family."
+
+"What then?"
+
+"Mr. Louis Moore's sister you will be."
+
+"Mr. Sympson, I am sick at heart with all this weak trash; I will bear
+no more. Your thoughts are not my thoughts, your aims are not my aims,
+your gods are not my gods. We do not view things in the same light; we
+do not measure them by the same standard; we hardly speak in the same
+tongue. Let us part."
+
+"It is not," she resumed, much excited--"it is not that I hate you; you
+are a good sort of man. Perhaps you mean well in your way. But we cannot
+suit; we are ever at variance. You annoy me with small meddling, with
+petty tyranny; you exasperate my temper, and make and keep me
+passionate. As to your small maxims, your narrow rules, your little
+prejudices, aversions, dogmas, bundle them off. Mr. Sympson, go, offer
+them a sacrifice to the deity you worship; I'll none of them. I wash my
+hands of the lot. I walk by another creed, light, faith, and hope than
+you."
+
+"Another creed! I believe she is an infidel."
+
+"An infidel to _your_ religion, an atheist to _your_ god."
+
+"_An--atheist!!!_"
+
+"Your god, sir, is the world. In my eyes you too, if not an infidel, are
+an idolater. I conceive that you ignorantly worship; in all things you
+appear to me too superstitious. Sir, your god, your great Bel, your
+fish-tailed Dagon, rises before me as a demon. You, and such as you,
+have raised him to a throne, put on him a crown, given him a sceptre.
+Behold how hideously he governs! See him busied at the work he likes
+best--making marriages. He binds the young to the old, the strong to the
+imbecile. He stretches out the arm of Mezentius, and fetters the dead to
+the living. In his realm there is hatred--secret hatred; there is
+disgust--unspoken disgust; there is treachery--family treachery; there
+is vice--deep, deadly domestic vice. In his dominions children grow
+unloving between parents who have never loved; infants are nursed on
+deception from their very birth; they are reared in an atmosphere
+corrupt with lies. Your god rules at the bridal of kings; look at your
+royal dynasties! Your deity is the deity of foreign aristocracies;
+analyze the blue blood of Spain! Your god is the Hymen of France; what
+is French domestic life? All that surrounds him hastens to decay; all
+declines and degenerates under his sceptre. _Your_ god is a masked
+Death."
+
+"This language is terrible! My daughters and you must associate no
+longer, Miss Keeldar; there is danger in such companionship. Had I known
+you a little earlier--but, extraordinary as I thought you, I could not
+have believed----"
+
+"Now, sir, do you begin to be aware that it is useless to scheme for me;
+that in doing so you but sow the wind to reap the whirlwind? I sweep
+your cobweb projects from my path, that I may pass on unsullied. I am
+anchored on a resolve you cannot shake. My heart, my conscience shall
+dispose of my hand--_they only_. Know this at last."
+
+Mr. Sympson was becoming a little bewildered.
+
+"Never heard such language!" he muttered again and again; "never was so
+addressed in my life--never was so used!"
+
+"You are quite confused, sir. You had better withdraw, or I will."
+
+He rose hastily. "We must leave this place; they must pack up at once."
+
+"Do not hurry my aunt and cousins; give them time."
+
+"No more intercourse; she's not proper."
+
+He made his way to the door. He came back for his handkerchief. He
+dropped his snuff-box, leaving the contents scattered on the carpet; he
+stumbled out. Tartar lay outside across the mat; Mr. Sympson almost fell
+over him. In the climax of his exasperation he hurled an oath at the dog
+and a coarse epithet at his mistress.
+
+"Poor Mr. Sympson! he is both feeble and vulgar," said Shirley to
+herself. "My head aches, and I am tired," she added; and leaning her
+head upon a cushion, she softly subsided from excitement to repose. One,
+entering the room a quarter of an hour afterwards, found her asleep.
+When Shirley had been agitated, she generally took this natural
+refreshment; it would come at her call.
+
+The intruder paused in her unconscious presence, and said, "Miss
+Keeldar."
+
+Perhaps his voice harmonized with some dream into which she was passing.
+It did not startle, it hardly roused her. Without opening her eyes, she
+but turned her head a little, so that her cheek and profile, before
+hidden by her arm, became visible. She looked rosy, happy, half smiling,
+but her eyelashes were wet. She had wept in slumber; or perhaps, before
+dropping asleep, a few natural tears had fallen after she had heard that
+epithet. No man--no woman--is always strong, always able to bear up
+against the unjust opinion, the vilifying word. Calumny, even from the
+mouth of a fool, will sometimes cut into unguarded feelings. Shirley
+looked like a child that had been naughty and punished, but was now
+forgiven and at rest.
+
+"Miss Keeldar," again said the voice. This time it woke her. She looked
+up, and saw at her side Louis Moore--not close at her side, but
+standing, with arrested step, two or three yards from her.
+
+"O Mr. Moore!" she said. "I was afraid it was my uncle again: he and I
+have quarrelled."
+
+"Mr. Sympson should let you alone," was the reply. "Can he not see that
+you are as yet far from strong?"
+
+"I assure you he did not find me weak. I did not cry when he was here."
+
+"He is about to evacuate Fieldhead--so he says. He is now giving orders
+to his family. He has been in the schoolroom issuing commands in a
+manner which, I suppose, was a continuation of that with which he has
+harassed you."
+
+"Are you and Henry to go?"
+
+"I believe, as far as Henry is concerned, that was the tenor of his
+scarcely intelligible directions; but he may change all to-morrow. He is
+just in that mood when you cannot depend on his consistency for two
+consecutive hours. I doubt whether he will leave you for weeks yet. To
+myself he addressed some words which will require a little attention and
+comment by-and-by, when I have time to bestow on them. At the moment he
+came in I was busied with a note I had got from Mr. Yorke--so fully
+busied that I cut short the interview with him somewhat abruptly. I left
+him raving. Here is the note. I wish you to see it. It refers to my
+brother Robert." And he looked at Shirley.
+
+"I shall be glad to hear news of him. Is he coming home?"
+
+"He is come. He is in Yorkshire. Mr. Yorke went yesterday to Stilbro' to
+meet him."
+
+"Mr. Moore, something is wrong----"
+
+"Did my voice tremble? He is now at Briarmains, and I am going to see
+him."
+
+"What has occurred?"
+
+"If you turn so pale I shall be sorry I have spoken. It might have been
+worse. Robert is not dead, but much hurt."
+
+"O sir, it is you who are pale. Sit down near me."
+
+"Read the note. Let me open it."
+
+Miss Keeldar read the note. It briefly signified that last night Robert
+Moore had been shot at from behind the wall of Milldean plantation, at
+the foot of the Brow; that he was wounded severely, but it was hoped not
+fatally. Of the assassin, or assassins, nothing was known; they had
+escaped. "No doubt," Mr. Yorke observed, "it was done in revenge. It was
+a pity ill-will had ever been raised; but that could not be helped now."
+
+"He is my only brother," said Louis, as Shirley returned the note. "I
+cannot hear unmoved that ruffians have laid in wait for him, and shot
+him down, like some wild beast from behind a wall."
+
+"Be comforted; be hopeful. He will get better--I know he will."
+
+Shirley, solicitous to soothe, held her hand over Mr. Moore's as it lay
+on the arm of the chair. She just touched it lightly, scarce palpably.
+
+"Well, give me your hand," he said. "It will be for the first time; it
+is in a moment of calamity. Give it me."
+
+Awaiting neither consent nor refusal, he took what he asked.
+
+"I am going to Briarmains now," he went on. "I want you to step over to
+the rectory and tell Caroline Helstone what has happened. Will you do
+this? She will hear it best from you."
+
+"Immediately," said Shirley, with docile promptitude. "Ought I to say
+that there is no danger?"
+
+"Say so."
+
+"You will come back soon, and let me know more?"
+
+"I will either come or write."
+
+"Trust me for watching over Caroline. I will communicate with your
+sister too; but doubtless she is already with Robert?"
+
+"Doubtless, or will be soon. Good-morning now."
+
+"You will bear up, come what may."
+
+"We shall see that."
+
+Shirley's fingers were obliged to withdraw from the tutor's. Louis was
+obliged to relinquish that hand folded, clasped, hidden in his own.
+
+"I thought I should have had to support her," he said, as he walked
+towards Briarmains, "and it is she who has made me strong. That look of
+pity, that gentle touch! No down was ever softer, no elixir more potent!
+It lay like a snowflake; it thrilled like lightning. A thousand times I
+have longed to possess that hand--to have it in mine. I _have_ possessed
+it; for five minutes I held it. Her fingers and mine can never be
+strangers more. Having met once they must meet again."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+THE SCHOOLBOY AND THE WOOD-NYMPH.
+
+
+Briarmains being nearer than the Hollow, Mr. Yorke had conveyed his
+young comrade there. He had seen him laid in the best bed of the house,
+as carefully as if he had been one of his own sons. The sight of his
+blood, welling from the treacherously inflicted wound, made him indeed
+the son of the Yorkshire gentleman's heart. The spectacle of the sudden
+event, of the tall, straight shape prostrated in its pride across the
+road, of the fine southern head laid low in the dust, of that youth in
+prime flung at once before him pallid, lifeless, helpless--this was the
+very combination of circumstances to win for the victim Mr. Yorke's
+liveliest interest.
+
+No other hand was there to raise--to aid, no other voice to question
+kindly, no other brain to concert measures; he had to do it all himself.
+This utter dependence of the speechless, bleeding youth (as a youth he
+regarded him) on his benevolence secured that benevolence most
+effectually. Well did Mr. Yorke like to have power, and to use it. He
+had now between his hands power over a fellow-creature's life. It suited
+him.
+
+No less perfectly did it suit his saturnine better half. The incident
+was quite in her way and to her taste. Some women would have been
+terror-struck to see a gory man brought in over their threshold, and
+laid down in their hall in the "howe of the night." There, you would
+suppose, was subject-matter for hysterics. No. Mrs. Yorke went into
+hysterics when Jessie would not leave the garden to come to her
+knitting, or when Martin proposed starting for Australia, with a view to
+realize freedom and escape the tyranny of Matthew; but an attempted
+murder near her door--a half-murdered man in her best bed--set her
+straight, cheered her spirits, gave her cap the dash of a turban.
+
+Mrs. Yorke was just the woman who, while rendering miserable the
+drudging life of a simple maid-servant, would nurse like a heroine a
+hospital full of plague patients. She almost loved Moore. Her tough
+heart almost yearned towards him when she found him committed to her
+charge--left in her arms, as dependent on her as her youngest-born in
+the cradle. Had she seen a domestic or one of her daughters give him a
+draught of water or smooth his pillow, she would have boxed the
+intruder's ears. She chased Jessie and Rose from the upper realm of the
+house; she forbade the housemaids to set their foot in it.
+
+Now, if the accident had happened at the rectory gates, and old Helstone
+had taken in the martyr, neither Yorke nor his wife would have pitied
+him. They would have adjudged him right served for his tyranny and
+meddling. As it was, he became, for the present, the apple of their eye.
+
+Strange! Louis Moore was permitted to come--to sit down on the edge of
+the bed and lean over the pillow; to hold his brother's hand, and press
+his pale forehead with his fraternal lips; and Mrs. Yorke bore it well.
+She suffered him to stay half the day there; she once suffered him to
+sit up all night in the chamber; she rose herself at five o'clock of a
+wet November morning, and with her own hands lit the kitchen fire, and
+made the brothers a breakfast, and served it to them herself.
+Majestically arrayed in a boundless flannel wrapper, a shawl, and her
+nightcap, she sat and watched them eat, as complacently as a hen beholds
+her chickens feed. Yet she gave the cook warning that day for venturing
+to make and carry up to Mr. Moore a basin of sago-gruel; and the
+housemaid lost her favour because, when Mr. Louis was departing, she
+brought him his surtout aired from the kitchen, and, like a "forward
+piece" as she was, helped him on with it, and accepted in return a
+smile, a "Thank you, my girl," and a shilling. Two ladies called one
+day, pale and anxious, and begged earnestly, humbly, to be allowed to
+see Mr. Moore one instant. Mrs. Yorke hardened her heart, and sent them
+packing--not without opprobrium.
+
+But how was it when Hortense Moore came? Not so bad as might have been
+expected. The whole family of the Moores really seemed to suit Mrs.
+Yorke so as no other family had ever suited her. Hortense and she
+possessed an exhaustless mutual theme of conversation in the corrupt
+propensities of servants. Their views of this class were similar; they
+watched them with the same suspicion, and judged them with the same
+severity. Hortense, too, from the very first showed no manner of
+jealousy of Mrs. Yorke's attentions to Robert--she let her keep the post
+of nurse with little interference; and, for herself, found ceaseless
+occupation in fidgeting about the house, holding the kitchen under
+surveillance, reporting what passed there, and, in short, making herself
+generally useful. Visitors they both of them agreed in excluding
+sedulously from the sickroom. They held the young mill-owner captive,
+and hardly let the air breathe or the sun shine on him.
+
+Mr. MacTurk, the surgeon to whom Moore's case had been committed,
+pronounced his wound of a dangerous, but, he trusted, not of a hopeless
+character. At first he wished to place with him a nurse of his own
+selection; but this neither Mrs. Yorke nor Hortense would hear of. They
+promised faithful observance of directions. He was left, therefore, for
+the present in their hands.
+
+Doubtless they executed the trust to the best of their ability; but
+something got wrong. The bandages were displaced or tampered with; great
+loss of blood followed. MacTurk, being summoned, came with steed afoam.
+He was one of those surgeons whom it is dangerous to vex--abrupt in his
+best moods, in his worst savage. On seeing Moore's state he relieved his
+feelings by a little flowery language, with which it is not necessary to
+strew the present page. A bouquet or two of the choicest blossoms fell
+on the unperturbed head of one Mr. Graves, a stony young assistant he
+usually carried about with him; with a second nosegay he gifted another
+young gentleman in his train--an interesting fac-simile of himself,
+being indeed his own son; but the full _corbeille_ of blushing bloom
+fell to the lot of meddling womankind, _en masse_.
+
+For the best part of one winter night himself and satellites were busied
+about Moore. There at his bedside, shut up alone with him in his
+chamber, they wrought and wrangled over his exhausted frame. They three
+were on one side of the bed, and Death on the other. The conflict was
+sharp; it lasted till day broke, when the balance between the
+belligerents seemed so equal that both parties might have claimed the
+victory.
+
+At dawn Graves and young MacTurk were left in charge of the patient,
+while the senior went himself in search of additional strength, and
+secured it in the person of Mrs. Horsfall, the best nurse on his staff.
+To this woman he gave Moore in charge, with the sternest injunctions
+respecting the responsibility laid on her shoulders. She took this
+responsibility stolidly, as she did also the easy-chair at the bedhead.
+That moment she began her reign.
+
+Mrs. Horsfall had one virtue--orders received from MacTurk she obeyed to
+the letter. The ten commandments were less binding in her eyes than her
+surgeon's dictum. In other respects she was no woman, but a dragon.
+Hortense Moore fell effaced before her; Mrs. Yorke withdrew--crushed;
+yet both these women were personages of some dignity in their own
+estimation, and of some bulk in the estimation of others. Perfectly
+cowed by the breadth, the height, the bone, and the brawn of Mrs.
+Horsfall, they retreated to the back parlour. She, for her part, sat
+upstairs when she liked, and downstairs when she preferred it. She took
+her dram three times a day, and her pipe of tobacco four times.
+
+As to Moore, no one now ventured to inquire about him. Mrs. Horsfall had
+him at dry-nurse. It was she who was to do for him, and the general
+conjecture now ran that she did for him accordingly.
+
+Morning and evening MacTurk came to see him. His case, thus complicated
+by a new mischance, was become one of interest in the surgeon's eyes. He
+regarded him as a damaged piece of clockwork, which it would be
+creditable to his skill to set agoing again. Graves and young
+MacTurk--Moore's sole other visitors--contemplated him in the light in
+which they were wont to contemplate the occupant for the time being of
+the dissecting-room at Stilbro' Infirmary.
+
+Robert Moore had a pleasant time of it--in pain, in danger, too weak to
+move, almost too weak to speak, a sort of giantess his keeper, the three
+surgeons his sole society. Thus he lay through the diminishing days and
+lengthening nights of the whole drear month of November.
+
+In the commencement of his captivity Moore used feebly to resist Mrs.
+Horsfall. He hated the sight of her rough bulk, and dreaded the contact
+of her hard hands; but she taught him docility in a trice. She made no
+account whatever of his six feet, his manly thews and sinews; she turned
+him in his bed as another woman would have turned a babe in its cradle.
+When he was good she addressed him as "my dear" and "honey," and when he
+was bad she sometimes shook him. Did he attempt to speak when MacTurk
+was there, she lifted her hand and bade him "Hush!" like a nurse
+checking a forward child. If she had not smoked, if she had not taken
+gin, it would have been better, he thought; but she did both. Once, in
+her absence, he intimated to MacTurk that "that woman was a
+dram-drinker."
+
+"Pooh! my dear sir, they are all so," was the reply he got for his
+pains. "But Horsfall has this virtue," added the surgeon--"drunk or
+sober, she always remembers to obey _me_."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At length the latter autumn passed; its fogs, its rains withdrew from
+England their mourning and their tears; its winds swept on to sigh over
+lands far away. Behind November came deep winter--clearness, stillness,
+frost accompanying.
+
+A calm day had settled into a crystalline evening. The world wore a
+North Pole colouring; all its lights and tints looked like the
+_reflets_[A] of white, or violet, or pale green gems. The hills wore a
+lilac blue; the setting sun had purple in its red; the sky was ice, all
+silvered azure; when the stars rose, they were of white crystal, not
+gold; gray, or cerulean, or faint emerald hues--cool, pure, and
+transparent--tinged the mass of the landscape.
+
+    [A] Find me an English word as good, reader, and I will gladly
+        dispense with the French word. "Reflections" won't do.
+
+What is this by itself in a wood no longer green, no longer even russet,
+a wood neutral tint--this dark blue moving object? Why, it is a
+schoolboy--a Briarfield grammar-school boy--who has left his companions,
+now trudging home by the highroad, and is seeking a certain tree, with a
+certain mossy mound at its root, convenient as a seat. Why is he
+lingering here? The air is cold and the time wears late. He sits down.
+What is he thinking about? Does he feel the chaste charm Nature wears
+to-night? A pearl-white moon smiles through the gray trees; does he care
+for her smile?
+
+Impossible to say; for he is silent, and his countenance does not speak.
+As yet it is no mirror to reflect sensation, but rather a mask to
+conceal it. This boy is a stripling of fifteen--slight, and tall of his
+years. In his face there is as little of amenity as of servility, his
+eye seems prepared to note any incipient attempt to control or overreach
+him, and the rest of his features indicate faculties alert for
+resistance. Wise ushers avoid unnecessary interference with that lad.
+To break him in by severity would be a useless attempt; to win him by
+flattery would be an effort worse than useless. He is best let alone.
+Time will educate and experience train him.
+
+Professedly Martin Yorke (it is a young Yorke, of course) tramples on
+the name of poetry. Talk sentiment to him, and you would be answered by
+sarcasm. Here he is, wandering alone, waiting duteously on Nature, while
+she unfolds a page of stern, of silent, and of solemn poetry beneath his
+attentive gaze.
+
+Being seated, he takes from his satchel a book--not the Latin grammar,
+but a contraband volume of fairy tales. There will be light enough yet
+for an hour to serve his keen young vision. Besides, the moon waits on
+him; her beam, dim and vague as yet, fills the glade where he sits.
+
+He reads. He is led into a solitary mountain region; all round him is
+rude and desolate, shapeless, and almost colourless. He hears bells
+tinkle on the wind. Forth-riding from the formless folds of the mist
+dawns on him the brightest vision--a green-robed lady, on a snow-white
+palfrey. He sees her dress, her gems, and her steed. She arrests him
+with some mysterious question. He is spell-bound, and must follow her
+into fairyland.
+
+A second legend bears him to the sea-shore. There tumbles in a strong
+tide, boiling at the base of dizzy cliffs. It rains and blows. A reef of
+rocks, black and rough, stretches far into the sea. All along, and
+among, and above these crags dash and flash, sweep and leap, swells,
+wreaths, drifts of snowy spray. Some lone wanderer is out on these
+rocks, treading with cautious step the wet, wild seaweed; glancing down
+into hollows where the brine lies fathoms deep and emerald clear, and
+seeing there wilder and stranger and huger vegetation than is found on
+land, with treasure of shells--some green, some purple, some
+pearly--clustered in the curls of the snaky plants. He hears a cry.
+Looking up and forward, he sees, at the bleak point of the reef, a tall,
+pale thing--shaped like man, but made of spray--transparent, tremulous,
+awful. It stands not alone. They are all human figures that wanton in
+the rocks--a crowd of foam-women--a band of white, evanescent Nereids.
+
+Hush! Shut the book; hide it in the satchel. Martin hears a tread. He
+listens. No--yes. Once more the dead leaves, lightly crushed, rustle on
+the wood path. Martin watches; the trees part, and a woman issues
+forth.
+
+She is a lady dressed in dark silk, a veil covering her face. Martin
+never met a lady in this wood before--nor any female, save, now and
+then, a village girl come to gather nuts. To-night the apparition does
+not displease him. He observes, as she approaches, that she is neither
+old nor plain, but, on the contrary, very youthful; and, but that he now
+recognizes her for one whom he has often wilfully pronounced ugly, he
+would deem that he discovered traits of beauty behind the thin gauze of
+that veil.
+
+She passes him and says nothing. He knew she would. All women are proud
+monkeys, and he knows no more conceited doll than that Caroline
+Helstone. The thought is hardly hatched in his mind when the lady
+retraces those two steps she had got beyond him, and raising her veil,
+reposes her glance on his face, while she softly asks, "Are you one of
+Mr. Yorke's sons?"
+
+No human evidence would ever have been able to persuade Martin Yorke
+that he blushed when thus addressed; yet blush he did, to the ears.
+
+"I am," he said bluntly, and encouraged himself to wonder,
+superciliously, what would come next.
+
+"You are Martin, I think?" was the observation that followed.
+
+It could not have been more felicitous. It was a simple sentence--very
+artlessly, a little timidly, pronounced; but it chimed in harmony to the
+youth's nature. It stilled him like a note of music.
+
+Martin had a keen sense of his personality; he felt it right and
+sensible that the girl should discriminate him from his brothers. Like
+his father, he hated ceremony. It was acceptable to hear a lady address
+him as "Martin," and not Mr. Martin or Master Martin, which form would
+have lost her his good graces for ever. Worse, if possible, than
+ceremony was the other extreme of slipshod familiarity. The slight tone
+of bashfulness, the scarcely perceptible hesitation, was considered
+perfectly in place.
+
+"I am Martin," he said.
+
+"Are your father and mother well?" (it was lucky she did not say _papa_
+and _mamma_; that would have undone all); "and Rose and Jessie?"
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+"My cousin Hortense is still at Briarmains?"
+
+"Oh yes."
+
+Martin gave a comic half-smile and demi-groan. The half-smile was
+responded to by the lady, who could guess in what sort of odour Hortense
+was likely to be held by the young Yorkes.
+
+"Does your mother like her?"
+
+"They suit so well about the servants they can't help liking each
+other."
+
+"It is cold to-night."
+
+"Why are you out so late?"
+
+"I lost my way in this wood."
+
+Now, indeed, Martin allowed himself a refreshing laugh of scorn.
+
+"Lost your way in the mighty forest of Briarmains! You deserve never
+more to find it."
+
+"I never was here before, and I believe I am trespassing now. You might
+inform against me if you chose, Martin, and have me fined. It is your
+father's wood."
+
+"I should think I knew that. But since you are so simple as to lose your
+way, I will guide you out."
+
+"You need not. I have got into the track now. I shall be right. Martin"
+(a little quickly), "how is Mr. Moore?"
+
+Martin had heard certain rumours; it struck him that it might be amusing
+to make an experiment.
+
+"Going to die. Nothing can save him. All hope flung overboard!"
+
+She put her veil aside. She looked into his eyes, and said, "To die!"
+
+"To die. All along of the women, my mother and the rest. They did
+something about his bandages that finished everything. He would have got
+better but for them. I am sure they should be arrested, cribbed, tried,
+and brought in for Botany Bay, at the very least."
+
+The questioner, perhaps, did nor hear this judgment. She stood
+motionless. In two minutes, without another word, she moved forwards; no
+good-night, no further inquiry. This was not amusing, nor what Martin
+had calculated on. He expected something dramatic and demonstrative. It
+was hardly worth while to frighten the girl if she would not entertain
+him in return. He called, "Miss Helstone!"
+
+She did not hear or turn. He hastened after and overtook her.
+
+"Come; are you uneasy about what I said?"
+
+"You know nothing about death, Martin; you are too young for me to talk
+to concerning such a thing."
+
+"Did you believe me? It's all flummery! Moore eats like three men. They
+are always making sago or tapioca or something good for him. I never go
+into the kitchen but there is a saucepan on the fire, cooking him some
+dainty. I think I will play the old soldier, and be fed on the fat of
+the land like him."
+
+"Martin! Martin!" Here her voice trembled, and she stopped.
+
+"It is exceedingly wrong of you, Martin. You have almost killed me."
+
+Again she stopped. She leaned against a tree, trembling, shuddering, and
+as pale as death.
+
+Martin contemplated her with inexpressible curiosity. In one sense it
+was, as he would have expressed it, "nuts" to him to see this. It told
+him so much, and he was beginning to have a great relish for discovering
+secrets. In another sense it reminded him of what he had once felt when
+he had heard a blackbird lamenting for her nestlings, which Matthew had
+crushed with a stone, and that was not a pleasant feeling. Unable to
+find anything very appropriate to _say_ in order to comfort her, he
+began to cast about in his mind what he could _do_. He smiled. The lad's
+smile gave wondrous transparency to his physiognomy.
+
+"Eureka!" he cried. "I'll set all straight by-and-by. You are better
+now, Miss Caroline. Walk forward," he urged.
+
+Not reflecting that it would be more difficult for Miss Helstone than
+for himself to climb a wall or penetrate a hedge, he piloted her by a
+short cut which led to no gate. The consequence was he had to help her
+over some formidable obstacles, and while he railed at her for
+helplessness, he perfectly liked to feel himself of use.
+
+"Martin, before we separate, assure me seriously, and on your word of
+honour, that Mr. Moore is better."
+
+"How very much you think of that Moore!"
+
+"No--but--many of his friends may ask me, and I wish to be able to give
+an authentic answer."
+
+"You may tell them he is well enough, only idle. You may tell them that
+he takes mutton chops for dinner, and the best of arrowroot for supper.
+I intercepted a basin myself one night on its way upstairs, and ate half
+of it."
+
+"And who waits on him, Martin? who nurses him?"
+
+"Nurses him? The great baby! Why, a woman as round and big as our
+largest water-butt--a rough, hard-favoured old girl. I make no doubt
+she leads him a rich life. Nobody else is let near him. He is chiefly in
+the dark. It is my belief she knocks him about terribly in that chamber.
+I listen at the wall sometimes when I am in bed, and I think I hear her
+thumping him. You should see her fist. She could hold half a dozen hands
+like yours in her one palm. After all, notwithstanding the chops and
+jellies he gets, I would not be in his shoes. In fact, it is my private
+opinion that she eats most of what goes up on the tray to Mr. Moore. I
+wish she may not be starving him."
+
+Profound silence and meditation on Caroline's part, and a sly
+watchfulness on Martin's.
+
+"You never see him, I suppose, Martin?"
+
+"I? No. I don't care to see him, for my own part."
+
+Silence again.
+
+"Did not you come to our house once with Mrs. Pryor, about five weeks
+since, to ask after him?" again inquired Martin.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I dare say you wished to be shown upstairs?"
+
+"We _did_ wish it. We entreated it; but your mother declined."
+
+"Ay! she declined. I heard it all. She treated you as it is her pleasure
+to treat visitors now and then. She behaved to you rudely and harshly."
+
+"She was not kind; for you know, Martin, we are relations, and it is
+natural we should take an interest in Mr. Moore. But here we must part;
+we are at your father's gate."
+
+"Very well, what of that? I shall walk home with you."
+
+"They will miss you, and wonder where you are."
+
+"Let them. I can take care of myself, I suppose."
+
+Martin knew that he had already incurred the penalty of a lecture, and
+dry bread for his tea. No matter; the evening had furnished him with an
+adventure. It was better than muffins and toast.
+
+He walked home with Caroline. On the way he promised to see Mr. Moore,
+in spite of the dragon who guarded his chamber, and appointed an hour on
+the next day when Caroline was to come to Briarmains Wood and get
+tidings of him. He would meet her at a certain tree. The scheme led to
+nothing; still he liked it.
+
+Having reached home, the dry bread and the lecture were duly
+administered to him, and he was dismissed to bed at an early hour. He
+accepted his punishment with the toughest stoicism.
+
+Ere ascending to his chamber he paid a secret visit to the dining-room,
+a still, cold, stately apartment, seldom used, for the family
+customarily dined in the back parlour. He stood before the mantelpiece,
+and lifted his candle to two pictures hung above--female heads: one, a
+type of serene beauty, happy and innocent; the other, more lovely, but
+forlorn and desperate.
+
+"She looked like _that_," he said, gazing on the latter sketch, "when
+she sobbed, turned white, and leaned against the tree."
+
+"I suppose," he pursued, when he was in his room, and seated on the edge
+of his pallet-bed--"I suppose she is what they call '_in love_'--yes,
+_in love_ with that long thing in the next chamber. Whisht! is that
+Horsfall clattering him? I wonder he does not yell out. It really sounds
+as if she had fallen on him tooth and nail; but I suppose she is making
+the bed. I saw her at it once. She hit into the mattresses as if she was
+boxing. It is queer, Zillah (they call her Zillah)--Zillah Horsfall is a
+woman, and Caroline Helstone is a woman; they are two individuals of the
+same species--not much alike though. Is she a pretty girl, that
+Caroline? I suspect she is; very nice to look at--something so clear in
+her face, so soft in her eyes. I approve of her looking at me; it does
+me good. She has long eyelashes. Their shadow seems to rest where she
+gazes, and to instil peace and thought. If she behaves well, and
+continues to suit me as she has suited me to-day, I may do her a good
+turn. I rather relish the notion of circumventing my mother and that
+ogress old Horsfall. Not that I like humouring Moore; but whatever I do
+I'll be paid for, and in coin of my own choosing. I know what reward I
+will claim--one displeasing to Moore, and agreeable to myself."
+
+He turned into bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+MARTIN'S TACTICS.
+
+
+It was necessary to the arrangement of Martin's plan that he should stay
+at home that day. Accordingly, he found no appetite for breakfast, and
+just about school-time took a severe pain about his heart, which
+rendered it advisable that, instead of setting out to the grammar school
+with Mark, he should succeed to his father's arm-chair by the fireside,
+and also to his morning paper. This point being satisfactorily settled,
+and Mark being gone to Mr. Summer's class, and Matthew and Mr. Yorke
+withdrawn to the counting-house, three other exploits--nay,
+four--remained to be achieved.
+
+The first of these was to realize the breakfast he had not yet tasted,
+and with which his appetite of fifteen could ill afford to dispense; the
+second, third, fourth, to get his mother, Miss Moore, and Mrs. Horsfall
+successfully out of the way before four o'clock that afternoon.
+
+The first was, for the present, the most pressing, since the work before
+him demanded an amount of energy which the present empty condition of
+his youthful stomach did not seem likely to supply.
+
+Martin knew the way to the larder, and knowing this way he took it. The
+servants were in the kitchen, breakfasting solemnly with closed doors;
+his mother and Miss Moore were airing themselves on the lawn, and
+discussing the closed doors aforesaid. Martin, safe in the larder, made
+fastidious selection from its stores. His breakfast had been delayed; he
+was determined it should be _recherché_. It appeared to him that a
+variety on his usual somewhat insipid fare of bread and milk was both
+desirable and advisable; the savoury and the salutary he thought might
+be combined. There was store of rosy apples laid in straw upon a shelf;
+he picked out three. There was pastry upon a dish; he selected an
+apricot puff and a damson tart. On the plain household bread his eye
+did not dwell; but he surveyed with favour some currant tea-cakes, and
+condescended to make choice of one. Thanks to his clasp-knife, he was
+able to appropriate a wing of fowl and a slice of ham; a cantlet of cold
+custard-pudding he thought would harmonize with these articles; and
+having made this final addition to his booty, he at length sallied forth
+into the hall.
+
+He was already half-way across--three steps more would have anchored him
+in the harbour of the back parlour--when the front door opened, and
+there stood Matthew. Better far had it been the Old Gentleman, in full
+equipage of horns, hoofs, and tail.
+
+Matthew, sceptic and scoffer, had already failed to subscribe a prompt
+belief in that pain about the heart. He had muttered some words, amongst
+which the phrase "shamming Abraham" had been very distinctly audible,
+and the succession to the armchair and newspaper had appeared to affect
+him with mental spasms. The spectacle now before him--the apples, the
+tarts, the tea-cakes, the fowl, ham, and pudding--offered evidence but
+too well calculated to inflate his opinion of his own sagacity.
+
+Martin paused _interdit_ one minute, one instant; the next he knew his
+ground, and pronounced all well. With the true perspicacity _des âmes
+élites_, he at once saw how this at first sight untoward event might be
+turned to excellent account. He saw how it might be so handled as to
+secure the accomplishment of his second task--namely, the disposal of
+his mother. He knew that a collision between him and Matthew always
+suggested to Mrs. Yorke the propriety of a fit of hysterics. He further
+knew that, on the principle of calm succeeding to storm, after a morning
+of hysterics his mother was sure to indulge in an afternoon of bed. This
+would accommodate him perfectly.
+
+The collision duly took place in the hall. A dry laugh, an insulting
+sneer, a contemptuous taunt, met by a nonchalant but most cutting reply,
+were the signals. They rushed at it. Martin, who usually made little
+noise on these occasions, made a great deal now. In flew the servants,
+Mrs. Yorke, Miss Moore. No female hand could separate them. Mr. Yorke
+was summoned.
+
+"Sons," said he, "one of you must leave my roof if this occurs again. I
+will have no Cain and Abel strife here."
+
+Martin now allowed himself to be taken off. He had been hurt; he was the
+youngest and slightest. He was quite cool, in no passion; he even
+smiled, content that the most difficult part of the labour he had set
+himself was over.
+
+Once he seemed to flag in the course of the morning.
+
+"It is not worth while to bother myself for that Caroline," he remarked.
+But a quarter of an hour afterwards he was again in the dining-room,
+looking at the head with dishevelled tresses, and eyes turbid with
+despair.
+
+"Yes," he said, "I made her sob, shudder, almost faint. I'll see her
+smile before I've done with her; besides, I want to outwit all these
+womenites."
+
+Directly after dinner Mrs. Yorke fulfilled her son's calculation by
+withdrawing to her chamber. Now for Hortense.
+
+That lady was just comfortably settled to stocking-mending in the back
+parlour, when Martin--laying down a book which, stretched on the sofa
+(he was still indisposed, according to his own account), he had been
+perusing in all the voluptuous ease of a yet callow pacha--lazily
+introduced some discourse about Sarah, the maid at the Hollow. In the
+course of much verbal meandering he insinuated information that this
+damsel was said to have three suitors--Frederic Murgatroyd, Jeremiah
+Pighills, and John-of-Mally's-of-Hannah's-of-Deb's; and that Miss Mann
+had affirmed she knew for a fact that, now the girl was left in sole
+charge of the cottage, she often had her swains to meals, and
+entertained them with the best the house afforded.
+
+It needed no more. Hortense could not have lived another hour without
+betaking herself to the scene of these nefarious transactions, and
+inspecting the state of matters in person. Mrs. Horsfall remained.
+
+Martin, master of the field now, extracted from his mother's work-basket
+a bunch of keys; with these he opened the sideboard cupboard, produced
+thence a black bottle and a small glass, placed them on the table,
+nimbly mounted the stairs, made for Mr. Moore's door, tapped; the nurse
+opened.
+
+"If you please, ma'am, you are invited to step into the back parlour and
+take some refreshment. You will not be disturbed; the family are out."
+
+He watched her down; he watched her in; himself shut the door. He knew
+she was safe.
+
+The hard work was done; now for the pleasure. He snatched his cap, and
+away for the wood.
+
+It was yet but half-past three. It had been a fine morning, but the sky
+looked dark now. It was beginning to snow; the wind blew cold; the wood
+looked dismal, the old tree grim. Yet Martin approved the shadow on his
+path. He found a charm in the spectral aspect of the doddered oak.
+
+He had to wait. To and fro he walked, while the flakes fell faster; and
+the wind, which at first had but moaned, pitifully howled.
+
+"She is long in coming," he muttered, as he glanced along the narrow
+track. "I wonder," he subjoined, "what I wish to see her so much for?
+She is not coming for me. But I have power over her, and I want her to
+come that I may use that power."
+
+He continued his walk.
+
+"Now," he resumed, when a further period had elapsed, "if she fails to
+come, I shall hate and scorn her."
+
+It struck four. He heard the church clock far away. A step so quick, so
+light, that, but for the rustling of leaves, it would scarcely have
+sounded on the wood-walk, checked his impatience. The wind blew fiercely
+now, and the thickening white storm waxed bewildering; but on she came,
+and not dismayed.
+
+"Well, Martin," she said eagerly, "how is he?"
+
+"It is queer how she thinks of _him_," reflected Martin. "The blinding
+snow and bitter cold are nothing to her, I believe; yet she is but a
+'chitty-faced creature,' as my mother would say. I could find in my
+heart to wish I had a cloak to wrap her in."
+
+Thus meditating to himself, he neglected to answer Miss Helstone.
+
+"You have seen him?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh! you promised you would."
+
+"I mean to do better by you than that. Didn't I say _I_ don't care to
+see him?"
+
+"But now it will be so long before I get to know any thing certain about
+him, and I am sick of waiting. Martin, _do_ see him, and give him
+Caroline Helstone's regards, and say she wished to know how he was, and
+if anything could be done for his comfort."
+
+"I won't."
+
+"You are changed. You were so friendly last night."
+
+"Come, we must not stand in this wood; it is too cold."
+
+"But before I go promise me to come again to-morrow with news."
+
+"No such thing. I am much too delicate to make and keep such
+appointments in the winter season. If you knew what a pain I had in my
+chest this morning, and how I went without breakfast, and was knocked
+down besides, you'd feel the impropriety of bringing me here in the
+snow. Come, I say."
+
+"Are you really delicate, Martin?"
+
+"Don't I look so?"
+
+"You have rosy cheeks."
+
+"That's hectic. Will you come--or you won't?"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"With me. I was a fool not to bring a cloak. I would have made you
+cosy."
+
+"You are going home; my nearest road lies in the opposite direction."
+
+"Put your arm through mine; I'll take care of you."
+
+"But the wall--the hedge--it is such hard work climbing, and you are too
+slender and young to help me without hurting yourself."
+
+"You shall go through the gate."
+
+"But----"
+
+"But, but--will you trust me or not?"
+
+She looked into his face.
+
+"I think I will. Anything rather than return as anxious as I came."
+
+"I can't answer for that. This, however, I promise you: be ruled by me,
+and you shall see Moore yourself."
+
+"See him myself?"
+
+"Yourself."
+
+"But, dear Martin, does he know?"
+
+"Ah! I'm dear now. No, he doesn't know."
+
+"And your mother and the others?"
+
+"All is right."
+
+Caroline fell into a long, silent fit of musing, but still she walked on
+with her guide. They came in sight of Briarmains.
+
+"Have you made up your mind?" he asked.
+
+She was silent.
+
+"Decide; we are just on the spot. I _won't_ see him--that I tell
+you--except to announce your arrival."
+
+"Martin, you are a strange boy, and this is a strange step; but all I
+feel _is_ and _has_ been, for a long time, strange. I will see him."
+
+"Having said that, you will neither hesitate nor retract?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Here we are, then. Do not be afraid of passing the parlour window; no
+one will see you. My father and Matthew are at the mill, Mark is at
+school, the servants are in the back kitchen, Miss Moore is at the
+cottage, my mother in her bed, and Mrs. Horsfall in paradise. Observe--I
+need not ring. I open the door; the hall is empty, the staircase quiet;
+so is the gallery. The whole house and all its inhabitants are under a
+spell, which I will not break till you are gone."
+
+"Martin, I trust you."
+
+"You never said a better word. Let me take your shawl. I will shake off
+the snow and dry it for you. You are cold and wet. Never mind; there is
+a fire upstairs. Are you ready?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Follow me."
+
+He left his shoes on the mat, mounted the stair unshod. Caroline stole
+after, with noiseless step. There was a gallery, and there was a
+passage; at the end of that passage Martin paused before a door and
+tapped. He had to tap twice--thrice. A voice, known to one listener, at
+last said, "Come in."
+
+The boy entered briskly.
+
+"Mr. Moore, a lady called to inquire after you. None of the women were
+about. It is washing-day, and the maids are over the crown of the head
+in soap-suds in the back kitchen, so I asked her to step up."
+
+"Up here, sir?"
+
+"Up here, sir; but if you object, she shall go down again."
+
+"Is this a place or am I a person to bring a lady to, you absurd lad?"
+
+"No; so I'll take her off."
+
+"Martin, you will stay here. Who is she?"
+
+"Your grandmother from that château on the Scheldt Miss Moore talks
+about."
+
+"Martin," said the softest whisper at the door, "don't be foolish."
+
+"Is she there?" inquired Moore hastily. He had caught an imperfect
+sound.
+
+"She is there, fit to faint. She is standing on the mat, shocked at your
+want of filial affection."
+
+"Martin, you are an evil cross between an imp and a page. What is she
+like?"
+
+"More like me than you; for she is young and beautiful."
+
+"You are to show her forward. Do you hear?"
+
+"Come, Miss Caroline."
+
+"Miss Caroline!" repeated Moore.
+
+And when Miss Caroline entered she was encountered in the middle of the
+chamber by a tall, thin, wasted figure, who took both her hands.
+
+"I give you a quarter of an hour," said Martin, as he withdrew, "no
+more. Say what you have to say in that time. Till it is past I will wait
+in the gallery; nothing shall approach; I'll see you safe away. Should
+you persist in staying longer, I leave you to your fate."
+
+He shut the door. In the gallery he was as elate as a king. He had never
+been engaged in an adventure he liked so well, for no adventure had ever
+invested him with so much importance or inspired him with so much
+interest.
+
+"You are come at last," said the meagre man, gazing on his visitress
+with hollow eyes.
+
+"Did you expect me before?"
+
+"For a month, near two months, we have been very near; and I have been
+in sad pain, and danger, and misery, Cary."
+
+"I could not come."
+
+"Couldn't you? But the rectory and Briarmains are very near--not two
+miles apart."
+
+There was pain and there was pleasure in the girl's face as she listened
+to these implied reproaches. It was sweet, it was bitter to defend
+herself.
+
+"When I say I could not come, I mean I could not see you; for I came
+with mamma the very day we heard what had happened. Mr. MacTurk then
+told us it was impossible to admit any stranger."
+
+"But afterwards--every fine afternoon these many weeks past I have
+waited and listened. Something here, Cary"--laying his hand on his
+breast--"told me it was impossible but that you should think of me. Not
+that I merit thought; but we are old acquaintance--we are cousins."
+
+"I came again, Robert; mamma and I came again."
+
+"Did you? Come, that is worth hearing. Since you came again, we will sit
+down and talk about it."
+
+They sat down. Caroline drew her chair up to his. The air was now dark
+with snow; an Iceland blast was driving it wildly. This pair neither
+heard the long "wuthering" rush, nor saw the white burden it drifted.
+Each seemed conscious but of one thing--the presence of the other.
+
+"So mamma and you came again?"
+
+"And Mrs. Yorke did treat us strangely. We asked to see you. 'No,' said
+she, 'not in my house. I am at present responsible for his life; it
+shall not be forfeited for half an hour's idle gossip.' But I must not
+tell you all she said; it was very disagreeable. However, we came yet
+again--mamma, Miss Keeldar, and I. This time we thought we should
+conquer, as we were three against one, and Shirley was on our side. But
+Mrs. Yorke opened such a battery."
+
+Moore smiled. "What did she say?"
+
+"Things that astonished us. Shirley laughed at last; I cried; mamma was
+seriously annoyed. We were all three driven from the field. Since that
+time I have only walked once a day past the house, just for the
+satisfaction of looking up at your window, which I could distinguish by
+the drawn curtains. I really dared not come in."
+
+"I _have_ wished for you, Caroline."
+
+"I did not know that; I never dreamt one instant that you thought of me.
+If I had but most distantly imagined such a possibility----"
+
+"Mrs. Yorke would still have beaten you."
+
+"She would not. Stratagem should have been tried, if persuasion failed.
+I would have come to the kitchen door; the servants should have let me
+in, and I would have walked straight upstairs. In fact, it was far more
+the fear of intrusion--the fear of yourself--that baffled me than the
+fear of Mrs. Yorke."
+
+"Only last night I despaired of ever seeing you again. Weakness has
+wrought terrible depression in me--terrible depression."
+
+"And you sit alone?"
+
+"Worse than alone."
+
+"But you must be getting better, since you can leave your bed?"
+
+"I doubt whether I shall live. I see nothing for it, after such
+exhaustion, but decline."
+
+"You--you shall go home to the Hollow."
+
+"Dreariness would accompany, nothing cheerful come near me."
+
+"I _will_ alter this. This _shall_ be altered, were there ten Mrs.
+Yorkes to do battle with."
+
+"Cary, you make me smile."
+
+"Do smile; smile again. Shall I tell you what I should like?"
+
+"Tell me anything--only keep talking. I am Saul; but for music I should
+perish."
+
+"I should like you to be brought to the rectory, and given to me and
+mamma."
+
+"A precious gift! I have not laughed since they shot me till now."
+
+"Do you suffer pain, Robert?"
+
+"Not so much pain now; but I am hopelessly weak, and the state of my
+mind is inexpressible--dark, barren, impotent. Do you not read it all in
+my face? I look a mere ghost."
+
+"Altered; yet I should have known you anywhere. But I understand your
+feelings; I experienced something like it. Since we met, I too have been
+very ill."
+
+"_Very_ ill?"
+
+"I thought I should die. The tale of my life seemed told. Every night,
+just at midnight, I used to wake from awful dreams; and the book lay
+open before me at the last page, where was written 'Finis.' I had
+strange feelings."
+
+"You speak my experience."
+
+"I believed I should never see you again; and I grew so thin--as thin as
+you are now. I could do nothing for myself--neither rise nor lie down;
+and I could not eat. Yet you see I am better."
+
+"Comforter--sad as sweet. I am too feeble to say what I feel; but while
+you speak I _do_ feel."
+
+"Here I am at your side, where I thought never more to be. Here I speak
+to you. I see you listen to me willingly--look at me kindly. Did I count
+on that? I despaired."
+
+Moore sighed--a sigh so deep it was nearly a groan. He covered his eyes
+with his hand.
+
+"May I be spared to make some atonement."
+
+Such was his prayer.
+
+"And for what?"
+
+"We will not touch on it now, Cary; unmanned as I am, I have not the
+power to cope with such a topic. Was Mrs. Pryor with you during your
+illness?"
+
+"Yes"--Caroline smiled brightly--"you know she is mamma?"
+
+"I have heard--Hortense told me; but that tale too I will receive from
+yourself. Does she add to your happiness?"
+
+"What! mamma? She is _dear_ to me; _how_ dear I cannot say. I was
+altogether weary, and she held me up."
+
+"I deserve to hear that in a moment when I can scarce lift my hand to my
+head. I deserve it."
+
+"It is no reproach against you."
+
+"It is a coal of fire heaped on my head; and so is every word you
+address to me, and every look that lights your sweet face. Come still
+nearer, Lina; and give me your hand--if my thin fingers do not scare
+you."
+
+She took those thin fingers between her two little hands; she bent her
+head _et les effleura de ses lèvres_. (I put that in French because the
+word _effleurer_ is an exquisite word.) Moore was much moved. A large
+tear or two coursed down his hollow cheek.
+
+"I'll keep these things in my heart, Cary; that kiss I will put by, and
+you shall hear of it again one day."
+
+"Come out!" cried Martin, opening the door--"come away; you have had
+twenty minutes instead of a quarter of an hour."
+
+"She will not stir yet, you hempseed."
+
+"I dare not stay longer, Robert."
+
+"Can you promise to return?"
+
+"No, she can't," responded Martin. "The thing mustn't become customary.
+I can't be troubled. It's very well for once; I'll not have it
+repeated."
+
+"_You_'ll not have it repeated."
+
+"Hush! don't vex him; we could not have met to-day but for him. But I
+will come again, if it is your wish that I should come."
+
+"It _is_ my wish--my _one_ wish--almost the only wish I can feel."
+
+"Come this minute. My mother has coughed, got up, set her feet on the
+floor. Let her only catch you on the stairs, Miss Caroline. You're not
+to bid him good-bye"--stepping between her and Moore--"you are to
+march."
+
+"My shawl, Martin."
+
+"I have it. I'll put it on for you when you are in the hall."
+
+He made them part. He would suffer no farewell but what could be
+expressed in looks. He half carried Caroline down the stairs. In the
+hall he wrapped her shawl round her, and, but that his mother's tread
+then creaked in the gallery, and but that a sentiment of diffidence--the
+proper, natural, therefore the noble impulse of his boy's heart--held
+him back, he would have claimed his reward; he would have said, "Now,
+Miss Caroline, for all this give me one kiss." But ere the words had
+passed his lips she was across the snowy road, rather skimming than
+wading the drifts.
+
+"She is my debtor, and I _will_ be paid."
+
+He flattered himself that it was opportunity, not audacity, which had
+failed him. He misjudged the quality of his own nature, and held it for
+something lower than it was.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+CASE OF DOMESTIC PERSECUTION--REMARKABLE INSTANCE OF PIOUS PERSEVERANCE
+IN THE DISCHARGE OF RELIGIOUS DUTIES.
+
+
+Martin, having known the taste of excitement, wanted a second draught;
+having felt the dignity of power, he loathed to relinquish it. Miss
+Helstone--that girl he had always called ugly, and whose face was now
+perpetually before his eyes, by day and by night, in dark and in
+sunshine--had once come within his sphere. It fretted him to think the
+visit might never be repeated.
+
+Though a schoolboy he was no ordinary schoolboy; he was destined to grow
+up an original. At a few years' later date he took great pains to pare
+and polish himself down to the pattern of the rest of the world, but he
+never succeeded; an unique stamp marked him always. He now sat idle at
+his desk in the grammar school, casting about in his mind for the means
+of adding another chapter to his commenced romance. He did not yet know
+how many commenced life-romances are doomed never to get beyond the
+first, or at most the second chapter. His Saturday half-holiday he spent
+in the wood with his book of fairy legends, and that other unwritten
+book of his imagination.
+
+Martin harboured an irreligious reluctance to see the approach of
+Sunday. His father and mother, while disclaiming community with the
+Establishment, failed not duly, once on the sacred day, to fill their
+large pew in Briarfield Church with the whole of their blooming family.
+Theoretically, Mr. Yorke placed all sects and churches on a level. Mrs.
+Yorke awarded the palm to Moravians and Quakers, on account of that
+crown of humility by these worthies worn. Neither of them were ever
+known, however, to set foot in a conventicle.
+
+Martin, I say, disliked Sunday, because the morning service was long,
+and the sermon usually little to his taste. This Saturday afternoon,
+however, his woodland musings disclosed to him a new-found charm in the
+coming day.
+
+It proved a day of deep snow--so deep that Mrs. Yorke during breakfast
+announced her conviction that the children, both boys and girls, would
+be better at home; and her decision that, instead of going to church,
+they should sit silent for two hours in the back parlour, while Rose and
+Martin alternately read a succession of sermons--John Wesley's
+"Sermons." John Wesley, being a reformer and an agitator, had a place
+both in her own and her husband's favour.
+
+"Rose will do as she pleases," said Martin, not looking up from the book
+which, according to his custom then and in after-life, he was studying
+over his bread and milk.
+
+"Rose will do as she is told, and Martin too," observed the mother.
+
+"I am going to church."
+
+So her son replied, with the ineffable quietude of a true Yorke, who
+knows his will and means to have it, and who, if pushed to the wall,
+will let himself be crushed to death, provided no way of escape can be
+found, but will never capitulate.
+
+"It is not fit weather," said the father.
+
+No answer. The youth read studiously; he slowly broke his bread and
+sipped his milk.
+
+"Martin hates to go to church, but he hates still more to obey," said
+Mrs. Yorke.
+
+"I suppose I am influenced by pure perverseness?"
+
+"Yes, you are."
+
+"Mother, _I am not_."
+
+"By what, then, are you influenced?"
+
+"By a complication of motives, the intricacies of which I should as soon
+think of explaining to you as I should of turning myself inside out to
+exhibit the internal machinery of my frame."
+
+"Hear Martin! hear him!" cried Mr. Yorke. "I must see and have this lad
+of mine brought up to the bar. Nature meant him to live by his tongue.
+Hesther, your third son must certainly be a lawyer; he has the
+stock-in-trade--brass, self-conceit, and words--words--words."
+
+"Some bread, Rose, if you please," requested Martin, with intense
+gravity, serenity, phlegm. The boy had naturally a low, plaintive voice,
+which in his "dour moods" rose scarcely above a lady's whisper. The more
+inflexibly stubborn the humour, the softer, the sadder the tone. He
+rang the bell, and gently asked for his walking-shoes.
+
+"But, Martin," urged his sire, "there is drift all the way; a man could
+hardly wade through it. However, lad," he continued, seeing that the boy
+rose as the church bell began to toll, "this is a case wherein I would
+by no means balk the obdurate chap of his will. Go to church by all
+means. There is a pitiless wind, and a sharp, frozen sleet, besides the
+depth under foot. Go out into it, since thou prefers it to a warm
+fireside."
+
+Martin quietly assumed his cloak, comforter, and cap, and deliberately
+went out.
+
+"My father has more sense than my mother," he pronounced. "How women
+miss it! They drive the nail into the flesh, thinking they are hammering
+away at insensate stone."
+
+He reached church early.
+
+"Now, if the weather frightens her (and it is a real December tempest),
+or if that Mrs. Pryor objects to her going out, and I should miss her
+after all, it will vex me; but, tempest or tornado, hail or ice, she
+_ought_ to come, and if she has a mind worthy of her eyes and features
+she _will_ come. She will be here for the chance of seeing me, as I am
+here for the chance of seeing her. She will want to get a word
+respecting her confounded sweetheart, as I want to get another flavour
+of what I think the essence of life--a taste of existence, with the
+spirit preserved in it, and not evaporated. Adventure is to stagnation
+what champagne is to flat porter."
+
+He looked round. The church was cold, silent, empty, but for one old
+woman. As the chimes subsided and the single bell tolled slowly, another
+and another elderly parishioner came dropping in, and took a humble
+station in the free sittings. It is always the frailest, the oldest, and
+the poorest that brave the worst weather, to prove and maintain their
+constancy to dear old mother church. This wild morning not one affluent
+family attended, not one carriage party appeared--all the lined and
+cushioned pews were empty; only on the bare oaken seats sat ranged the
+gray-haired elders and feeble paupers.
+
+"I'll scorn her if she doesn't come," muttered Martin, shortly and
+savagely, to himself. The rector's shovel-hat had passed the porch. Mr.
+Helstone and his clerk were in the vestry.
+
+The bells ceased--the reading-desk was filled--the doors were
+closed--the service commenced. Void stood the rectory pew--she was not
+there. Martin scorned her.
+
+"Worthless thing! vapid thing! commonplace humbug! Like all other
+girls--weakly, selfish, shallow!"
+
+Such was Martin's liturgy.
+
+"She is not like our picture. Her eyes are not large and expressive; her
+nose is not straight, delicate, Hellenic; her mouth has not that charm I
+thought it had, which I imagined could beguile me of sullenness in my
+worst moods. What is she? A thread-paper, a doll, a toy, a _girl_, in
+short."
+
+So absorbed was the young cynic he forgot to rise from his knees at the
+proper place, and was still in an exemplary attitude of devotion when,
+the litany over, the first hymn was given out. To be so caught did not
+contribute to soothe him. He started up red (for he was as sensitive to
+ridicule as any girl). To make the matter worse, the church door had
+reopened, and the aisles were filling: patter, patter, patter, a hundred
+little feet trotted in. It was the Sunday scholars. According to
+Briarfield winter custom, these children had till now been kept where
+there was a warm stove, and only led into church just before the
+communion and sermon.
+
+The little ones were settled first, and at last, when the boys and the
+younger girls were all arranged--when the organ was swelling high, and
+the choir and congregation were rising to uplift a spiritual song--a
+tall class of young women came quietly in, closing the procession. Their
+teacher, having seen them seated, passed into the rectory pew. The
+French-gray cloak and small beaver bonnet were known to Martin; it was
+the very costume his eyes had ached to catch. Miss Helstone had not
+suffered the storm to prove an impediment. After all, she was come to
+church. Martin probably whispered his satisfaction to his hymn book; at
+any rate, he therewith hid his face two minutes.
+
+Satisfied or not, he had time to get very angry with her again before
+the sermon was over. She had never once looked his way; at least he had
+not been so lucky as to encounter a glance.
+
+"If," he said--"if she takes no notice of me, if she shows I am not in
+her thoughts, I shall have a worse, a meaner opinion of her than ever.
+Most despicable would it be to come for the sake of those sheep-faced
+Sunday scholars, and not for my sake or that long skeleton Moore's."
+
+The sermon found an end; the benediction was pronounced; the
+congregation dispersed. She had not been near him.
+
+Now, indeed, as Martin set his face homeward, he felt that the sleet was
+sharp and the east wind cold.
+
+His nearest way lay through some fields. It was a dangerous, because an
+untrodden way. He did not care; he would take it. Near the second stile
+rose a clump of trees. Was that an umbrella waiting there? Yes, an
+umbrella, held with evident difficulty against the blast; behind it
+fluttered a French-gray cloak. Martin grinned as he toiled up the steep,
+encumbered field, difficult to the foot as a slope in the upper realms
+of Etna. There was an inimitable look in his face when, having gained
+the stile, he seated himself coolly thereupon, and thus opened a
+conference which, for his own part, he was willing to prolong
+indefinitely.
+
+"I think you had better strike a bargain. Exchange me for Mrs. Pryor."
+
+"I was not sure whether you would come this way, Martin, but I thought I
+would run the chance. There is no such thing as getting a quiet word
+spoken in the church or churchyard."
+
+"Will you agree?--make over Mrs. Pryor to my mother, and put me in her
+skirts?"
+
+"As if I could understand you! What puts Mrs. Pryor into your head?"
+
+"You call her 'mamma,' don't you?"
+
+"She _is_ my mamma."
+
+"Not possible--or so inefficient, so careless a mamma; I should make a
+five times better one. You _may_ laugh. I have no objection to see you
+laugh. Your teeth--I hate ugly teeth; but yours are as pretty as a pearl
+necklace, and a necklace of which the pearls are very fair, even, and
+well matched too."
+
+"Martin, what now? I thought the Yorkes never paid compliments?"
+
+"They have not done till this generation; but I feel as if it were my
+vocation to turn out a new variety of the Yorke species. I am rather
+tired of my own ancestors. We have traditions going back for four
+ages--tales of Hiram, which was the son of Hiram, which was the son of
+Samuel, which was the son of John, which was the son of Zerubbabel
+Yorke. All, from Zerubbabel down to the last Hiram, were such as you see
+my father. Before that there was a Godfrey. We have his picture; it
+hangs in Moore's bedroom; it is like me. Of his character we know
+nothing; but I am sure it was different to his descendants. He has long,
+curling dark hair; he is carefully and cavalierly dressed. Having said
+that he is like me, I need not add that he is handsome."
+
+"You are not handsome, Martin."
+
+"No; but wait awhile--just let me take my time. I mean to begin from
+this day to cultivate, to polish, and we shall see."
+
+"You are a very strange, a very unaccountable boy, Martin. But don't
+imagine you ever will be handsome; you cannot."
+
+"I mean to try. But we were talking about Mrs. Pryor. She must be the
+most unnatural mamma in existence, coolly to let her daughter come out
+in this weather. Mine was in such a rage because I would go to church;
+she was fit to fling the kitchen brush after me."
+
+"Mamma was very much concerned about me; but I am afraid I was
+obstinate. I _would_ go."
+
+"To see me?"
+
+"Exactly; I thought of nothing else. I greatly feared the snow would
+hinder you from coming. You don't know how pleased I was to see you all
+by yourself in the pew."
+
+"_I_ came to fulfil my duty, and set the parish a good example. And so
+you were obstinate, were you? I should like to see you obstinate, I
+should. Wouldn't I have you in good discipline if I owned you? Let me
+take the umbrella."
+
+"I can't stay two minutes; our dinner will be ready."
+
+"And so will ours; and we have always a hot dinner on Sundays. Roast
+goose to-day, with apple-pie and rice-pudding. I always contrive to know
+the bill of fare. Well, I like these things uncommonly; but I'll make
+the sacrifice, if you will."
+
+"We have a cold dinner. My uncle will allow no unnecessary cooking on
+the Sabbath. But I must return; the house would be in commotion if I
+failed to appear."
+
+"So will Briarmains, bless you! I think I hear my father sending out the
+overlooker and five of the dyers, to look in six directions for the body
+of his prodigal son in the snow; and my mother repenting her of her
+many misdeeds towards me, now I am gone."
+
+"Martin, how is Mr. Moore?"
+
+"_That_ is what you came for, just to say that word."
+
+"Come, tell me quickly."
+
+"Hang him! he is no worse; but as ill-used as ever--mewed up, kept in
+solitary confinement. They mean to make either an idiot or a maniac of
+him, and take out a commission of lunacy. Horsfall starves him; you saw
+how thin he was."
+
+"You were very good the other day, Martin."
+
+"What day? I am always good--a model."
+
+"When will you be so good again?"
+
+"I see what you are after; but you'll not wheedle me--I am no
+cat's-paw."
+
+"But it must be done. It is quite a right thing, and a necessary thing."
+
+"How you encroach! Remember, I managed the matter of my own free will
+before."
+
+"And you will again."
+
+"I won't. The business gave me far too much trouble. I like my ease."
+
+"Mr. Moore wishes to see me, Martin, and I wish to see him."
+
+"I dare say" (coolly).
+
+"It is too bad of your mother to exclude his friends."
+
+"Tell her so."
+
+"His own relations."
+
+"Come and blow her up."
+
+"You know that would advance nothing. Well, I shall stick to my point.
+See him I will. If you won't help me, I'll manage without help."
+
+"Do; there is nothing like self-reliance, self-dependence."
+
+"I have no time to reason with you now; but I consider you provoking.
+Good-morning."
+
+Away she went, the umbrella shut, for she could not carry it against the
+wind.
+
+"She is not vapid; she is not shallow," said Martin. "I shall like to
+watch, and mark how she will work her way without help. If the storm
+were not of snow, but of fire--such as came refreshingly down on the
+cities of the plain--she would go through it to procure five minutes'
+speech of that Moore. Now, I consider I have had a pleasant morning.
+The disappointments got time on; the fears and fits of anger only made
+that short discourse pleasanter, when it came at last. She expected to
+coax me at once. She'll not manage that in one effort. She shall come
+again, again, and yet again. It would please me to put her in a
+passion--to make her cry. I want to discover how far she will go--what
+she will do and dare--to get her will. It seems strange and new to find
+one human being thinking so much about another as she thinks about
+Moore. But it is time to go home; my appetite tells me the hour. Won't I
+walk into that goose? and we'll try whether Matthew or I shall get the
+largest cut of the apple-pie to-day."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+WHEREIN MATTERS MAKE SOME PROGRESS, BUT NOT MUCH.
+
+
+Martin had planned well. He had laid out a dexterously concerted scheme
+for his private amusement. But older and wiser schemers than he are
+often doomed to see their finest-spun projects swept to annihilation by
+the sudden broom of Fate, that fell housewife whose red arm none can
+control. In the present instance this broom was manufactured out of the
+tough fibres of Moore's own stubborn purpose, bound tight with his will.
+He was now resuming his strength, and making strange head against Mrs.
+Horsfall. Each morning he amazed that matron with a fresh astonishment.
+First he discharged her from her valet duties; he would dress himself.
+Then he refused the coffee she brought him; he would breakfast with the
+family. Lastly, he forbade her his chamber. On the same day, amidst the
+outcries of all the women in the place, he put his head out of doors.
+The morning after, he followed Mr. Yorke to his counting-house, and
+requested an envoy to fetch a chaise from the Red House Inn. He was
+resolved, he said, to return home to the Hollow that very afternoon. Mr.
+Yorke, instead of opposing, aided and abetted him. The chaise was sent
+for, though Mrs. Yorke declared the step would be his death. It came.
+Moore, little disposed to speak, made his purse do duty for his tongue.
+He expressed his gratitude to the servants and to Mrs. Horsfall by the
+chink of his coin. The latter personage approved and understood this
+language perfectly; it made amends for all previous contumacy. She and
+her patient parted the best friends in the world.
+
+The kitchen visited and soothed, Moore betook himself to the parlour. He
+had Mrs. Yorke to appease; not quite so easy a task as the pacification
+of her housemaids. There she sat plunged in sullen dudgeon, the
+gloomiest speculations on the depths of man's ingratitude absorbing her
+thoughts. He drew near and bent over her; she was obliged to look up,
+if it were only to bid him "avaunt." There was beauty still in his pale,
+wasted features; there was earnestness and a sort of sweetness--for he
+was smiling--in his hollow eyes.
+
+"Good-bye!" he said, and as he spoke the smile glittered and melted. He
+had no iron mastery of his sensations now; a trifling emotion made
+itself apparent in his present weak state.
+
+"And what are you going to leave us for?" she asked. "We will keep you,
+and do anything in the world for you, if you will only stay till you are
+stronger."
+
+"Good-bye!" he again said; and added, "You have been a mother to me;
+give your wilful son one embrace."
+
+Like a foreigner, as he was, he offered her first one cheek, then the
+other. She kissed him.
+
+"What a trouble--what a burden I have been to you!" he muttered.
+
+"You are the worst trouble now, headstrong youth!" was the answer. "I
+wonder who is to nurse you at Hollow's Cottage? Your sister Hortense
+knows no more about such matters than a child."
+
+"Thank God! for I have had nursing enough to last me my life."
+
+Here the little girls came in--Jessie crying, Rose quiet but grave.
+Moore took them out into the hall to soothe, pet, and kiss them. He knew
+it was not in their mother's nature to bear to see any living thing
+caressed but herself. She would have felt annoyed had he fondled a
+kitten in her presence.
+
+The boys were standing about the chaise as Moore entered it; but for
+them he had no farewell. To Mr. Yorke he only said, "You have a good
+riddance of me. That was an unlucky shot for you, Yorke; it turned
+Briarmains into an hospital. Come and see me at the cottage soon."
+
+He drew up the glass; the chaise rolled away. In half an hour he
+alighted at his own garden wicket. Having paid the driver and dismissed
+the vehicle, he leaned on that wicket an instant, at once to rest and to
+muse.
+
+"Six months ago I passed out at this gate," said he, "a proud, angry,
+disappointed man. I come back sadder and wiser; weakly enough, but not
+worried. A cold, gray, yet quiet world lies round--a world where, if I
+hope little, I fear nothing. All slavish terrors of embarrassment have
+left me. Let the worst come, I can work, as Joe Scott does, for an
+honourable living; in such doom I yet see some hardship but no
+degradation. Formerly, pecuniary ruin was equivalent in my eyes to
+personal dishonour. It is not so now; I know the difference. Ruin _is_
+an evil, but one for which I am prepared; the day of whose coming I
+know, for I have calculated. I can yet put it off six months--not an
+hour longer. If things by that time alter, which is not probable; if
+fetters, which now seem indissoluble, should be loosened from our trade
+(of all things the most unlikely to happen), I might conquer in this
+long struggle yet--I might--good God! what might I not do? But the
+thought is a brief madness; let me see things with sane eyes. Ruin will
+come, lay her axe to my fortune's roots, and hew them down. I shall
+snatch a sapling, I shall cross the sea, and plant it in American woods.
+Louis will go with me. Will none but Louis go? I cannot tell--I have no
+right to ask."
+
+He entered the house.
+
+It was afternoon, twilight yet out of doors--starless and moonless
+twilight; for though keenly freezing with a dry, black frost, heaven
+wore a mask of clouds congealed and fast locked. The mill-dam too was
+frozen. The Hollow was very still. Indoors it was already dark. Sarah
+had lit a good fire in the parlour; she was preparing tea in the
+kitchen.
+
+"Hortense," said Moore, as his sister bustled up to help him off with
+his cloak, "I am pleased to come home."
+
+Hortense did not feel the peculiar novelty of this expression coming
+from her brother, who had never before called the cottage his home, and
+to whom its narrow limits had always heretofore seemed rather
+restrictive than protective. Still, whatever contributed to his
+happiness pleased her, and she expressed herself to that effect.
+
+He sat down, but soon rose again. He went to the window; he came back to
+the fire.
+
+"Hortense!"
+
+"Mon frère?"
+
+"This little parlour looks very clean and pleasant--unusually bright,
+somehow."
+
+"It is true, brother; I have had the whole house thoroughly and
+scrupulously cleaned in your absence."
+
+"Sister, I think on this first day of your return home you ought to have
+a friend or so to tea, if it were only to see how fresh and spruce you
+have made the little place."
+
+"True, brother. If it were not late I might send for Miss Mann."
+
+"So you might; but it really is too late to disturb that good lady, and
+the evening is much too cold for her to come out."
+
+"How thoughtful in you, dear Gérard! We must put it off till another
+day."
+
+"I want some one to-day, dear sister--some quiet guest, who would tire
+neither of us."
+
+"Miss Ainley?"
+
+"An excellent person, they say; but she lives too far off. Tell Harry
+Scott to step up to the rectory with a request from you that Caroline
+Helstone should come and spend the evening with you."
+
+"Would it not be better to-morrow, dear brother?"
+
+"I should like her to see the place as it is just now; its brilliant
+cleanliness and perfect neatness are so much to your credit."
+
+"It might benefit her in the way of example."
+
+"It might and must; she ought to come."
+
+He went into the kitchen.
+
+"Sarah, delay tea half an hour." He then commissioned her to dispatch
+Harry Scott to the rectory, giving her a twisted note hastily scribbled
+in pencil by himself, and addressed "Miss Helstone."
+
+Scarcely had Sarah time to get impatient under the fear of damage to her
+toast already prepared when the messenger returned, and with him the
+invited guest.
+
+She entered through the kitchen, quietly tripped up Sarah's stairs to
+take off her bonnet and furs, and came down as quietly, with her
+beautiful curls nicely smoothed, her graceful merino dress and delicate
+collar all trim and spotless, her gay little work-bag in her hand. She
+lingered to exchange a few kindly words with Sarah, and to look at the
+new tortoise-shell kitten basking on the kitchen hearth, and to speak to
+the canary-bird, which a sudden blaze from the fire had startled on its
+perch; and then she betook herself to the parlour.
+
+The gentle salutation, the friendly welcome, were interchanged in such
+tranquil sort as befitted cousins meeting; a sense of pleasure, subtle
+and quiet as a perfume, diffused itself through the room; the
+newly-kindled lamp burnt up bright; the tray and the singing urn were
+brought in.
+
+"I am pleased to come home," repeated Mr. Moore.
+
+They assembled round the table. Hortense chiefly talked. She
+congratulated Caroline on the evident improvement in her health. Her
+colour and her plump cheeks were returning, she remarked. It was true.
+There was an obvious change in Miss Helstone. All about her seemed
+elastic; depression, fear, forlornness, were withdrawn. No longer
+crushed, and saddened, and slow, and drooping, she looked like one who
+had tasted the cordial of heart's ease, and been lifted on the wing of
+hope.
+
+After tea Hortense went upstairs. She had not rummaged her drawers for a
+month past, and the impulse to perform that operation was now become
+resistless. During her absence the talk passed into Caroline's hands.
+She took it up with ease; she fell into her best tone of conversation. A
+pleasing facility and elegance of language gave fresh charm to familiar
+topics; a new music in the always soft voice gently surprised and
+pleasingly captivated the listener; unwonted shades and lights of
+expression elevated the young countenance with character, and kindled it
+with animation.
+
+"Caroline, you look as if you had heard good tidings," said Moore, after
+earnestly gazing at her for some minutes.
+
+"Do I?"
+
+"I sent for you this evening that I might be cheered; but you cheer me
+more than I had calculated."
+
+"I am glad of that. And I _really_ cheer you?"
+
+"You look brightly, move buoyantly, speak musically."
+
+"It is pleasant to be here again."
+
+"Truly it is pleasant; I feel it so. And to see health on your cheek and
+hope in your eye is pleasant, Cary; but what is this hope, and what is
+the source of this sunshine I perceive about you?"
+
+"For one thing, I am happy in mamma. I love her so much, and she loves
+me. Long and tenderly she nursed me. Now, when her care has made me
+well, I can occupy myself for and with her all the day. I say it is my
+turn to attend to her; and I _do_ attend to her. I am her waiting-woman
+as well as her child. I like--you would laugh if you knew what pleasure
+I have in making dresses and sewing for her. She looks so nice now,
+Robert; I will not let her be old-fashioned. And then, she is charming
+to talk to--full of wisdom, ripe in judgment, rich in information,
+exhaustless in stores her observant faculties have quietly amassed.
+Every day that I live with her I like her better, I esteem her more
+highly, I love her more tenderly."
+
+"_That_ for one thing, then, Cary. You talk in such a way about 'mamma'
+it is enough to make one jealous of the old lady."
+
+"She is not old, Robert."
+
+"Of the young lady, then."
+
+"She does not pretend to be young."
+
+"Well, of the matron. But you said 'mamma's' affection was _one_ thing
+that made you happy; now for the other thing."
+
+"I am glad you are better."
+
+"What besides?"
+
+"I am glad we are friends."
+
+"You and I?"
+
+"Yes. I once thought we never should be."
+
+"Cary, some day I mean to tell you a thing about myself that is not to
+my credit, and consequently will not please you."
+
+"Ah, don't! I cannot bear to think ill of you."
+
+"And I cannot bear that you should think better of me than I deserve."
+
+"Well, but I half know your 'thing;' indeed, I believe I know all about
+it."
+
+"You do not."
+
+"I believe I do."
+
+"Whom does it concern besides me?"
+
+She coloured; she hesitated; she was silent.
+
+"Speak, Cary! Whom does it concern?"
+
+She tried to utter a name, and could not.
+
+"Tell me; there is none present but ourselves. Be frank."
+
+"But if I guess wrong?"
+
+"I will forgive. Whisper, Cary."
+
+He bent his ear to her lips. Still she would not, or could not, speak
+clearly to the point. Seeing that Moore waited and was resolved to hear
+something, she at last said, "Miss Keeldar spent a day at the rectory
+about a week since. The evening came on very wintry, and we persuaded
+her to stay all night."
+
+"And you and she curled your hair together?"
+
+"How do you know that?"
+
+"And then you chattered, and she told you----"
+
+"It was not at curling-hair time, so you are not as wise as you think;
+and, besides, she didn't tell me."
+
+"You slept together afterwards?"
+
+"We occupied the same room and bed. We did not sleep much; we talked the
+whole night through."
+
+"I'll be sworn you did! And then it all came out--_tant pis_. I would
+rather you had heard it from myself."
+
+"You are quite wrong. She did not tell me what you suspect--she is not
+the person to proclaim such things; but yet I inferred something from
+parts of her discourse. I gathered more from rumour, and I made out the
+rest by instinct."
+
+"But if she did not tell you that I wanted to marry her for the sake of
+her money, and that she refused me indignantly and scornfully (you need
+neither start nor blush; nor yet need you prick your trembling fingers
+with your needle. That is the plain truth, whether you like it or
+not)--if such was not the subject of her august confidences, on what
+point did they turn? You say you talked the whole night through; what
+about?"
+
+"About things we never thoroughly discussed before, intimate friends as
+we have been; but you hardly expect I should tell you?"
+
+"Yes, yes, Cary; you will tell me. You said we were friends, and friends
+should always confide in each other."
+
+"But you are sure you won't repeat it?"
+
+"Quite sure."
+
+"Not to Louis?"
+
+"Not even to Louis. What does Louis care for young ladies' secrets?"
+
+"Robert, Shirley is a curious, magnanimous being."
+
+"I dare say. I can imagine there are both odd points and grand points
+about her."
+
+"I have found her chary in showing her feelings; but when they rush out,
+river-like, and pass full and powerful before you--almost without leave
+from her--you gaze, wonder; you admire, and--I think--love her."
+
+"You saw this spectacle?"
+
+"Yes; at dead of night, when all the house was silent, and starlight and
+the cold reflection from the snow glimmered in our chamber, then I saw
+Shirley's heart."
+
+"Her heart's core? Do you think she showed you that?"
+
+"Her heart's core."
+
+"And how was it?"
+
+"Like a shrine, for it was holy; like snow, for it was pure; like
+flame, for it was warm; like death, for it was strong."
+
+"Can she love? tell me that."
+
+"What think you?"
+
+"She has loved none that have loved her yet."
+
+"Who are those that have loved her?"
+
+He named a list of gentlemen, closing with Sir Philip Nunnely.
+
+"She has loved none of these."
+
+"Yet some of them were worthy of a woman's affection."
+
+"Of some women's, but not of Shirley's."
+
+"Is she better than others of her sex?"
+
+"She is peculiar, and more dangerous to take as a wife--rashly."
+
+"I can imagine that."
+
+"She spoke of you----"
+
+"Oh, she did! I thought you denied it."
+
+"She did not speak in the way you fancy; but I asked her, and I would
+make her tell me what she thought of you, or rather how she felt towards
+you. I wanted to know; I had long wanted to know."
+
+"So had I; but let us hear. She thinks meanly, she feels contemptuously,
+doubtless?"
+
+"She thinks of you almost as highly as a woman can think of a man. You
+know she can be eloquent. I yet feel in fancy the glow of the language
+in which her opinion was conveyed."
+
+"But how does she feel?"
+
+"Till you shocked her (she said you had shocked her, but she would not
+tell me how) she felt as a sister feels towards a brother of whom she is
+at once fond and proud."
+
+"I'll shock her no more, Cary, for the shock rebounded on myself till I
+staggered again. But that comparison about sister and brother is all
+nonsense. She is too rich and proud to entertain fraternal sentiments
+for me."
+
+"You don't know her, Robert; and, somehow, I fancy now (I had other
+ideas formerly) that you cannot know her. You and she are not so
+constructed as to be able thoroughly to understand each other."
+
+"It may be so. I esteem her, I admire her; and yet my impressions
+concerning her are harsh--perhaps uncharitable. I believe, for instance,
+that she is incapable of love----"
+
+"Shirley incapable of love!"
+
+"That she will never marry. I imagine her jealous of compromising her
+pride, of relinquishing her power, of sharing her property."
+
+"Shirley has hurt your _amour propre_."
+
+"She did hurt it; though I had not an emotion of tenderness, nor a spark
+of passion for her."
+
+"Then, Robert, it was very wicked in you to want to marry her."
+
+"And very mean, my little pastor, my pretty priestess. I never wanted to
+kiss Miss Keeldar in my life, though she has fine lips, scarlet and
+round as ripe cherries; or, if I did wish it, it was the mere desire of
+the eye."
+
+"I doubt, now, whether you are speaking the truth. The grapes or the
+cherries are sour--'hung too high.'"
+
+"She has a pretty figure, a pretty face, beautiful hair. I acknowledge
+all her charms and feel none of them, or only feel them in a way she
+would disdain. I suppose I was truly tempted by the mere gilding of the
+bait. Caroline, what a noble fellow your Robert is--great, good,
+disinterested, and then so pure!"
+
+"But not perfect. He made a great blunder once, and we will hear no more
+about it."
+
+"And shall we think no more about it, Cary? Shall we not despise him in
+our heart--gentle but just, compassionate but upright?"
+
+"Never! We will remember that with what measure we mete it shall be
+measured unto us, and so we will give no scorn, only affection."
+
+"Which won't satisfy, I warn you of that. Something besides
+affection--something far stronger, sweeter, warmer--will be demanded one
+day. Is it there to give?"
+
+Caroline was moved, much moved.
+
+"Be calm, Lina," said Moore soothingly. "I have no intention, because I
+have no right, to perturb your mind now, nor for months to come. Don't
+look as if you would leave me. We will make no more agitating allusions;
+we will resume our gossip. Do not tremble; look me in the face. See what
+a poor, pale, grim phantom I am--more pitiable than formidable."
+
+She looked shyly. "There is something formidable still, pale as you
+are," she said, as her eye fell under his.
+
+"To return to Shirley," pursued Moore: "is it your opinion that she is
+ever likely to marry?"
+
+"She loves."
+
+"Platonically--theoretically--all humbug!"
+
+"She loves what I call sincerely."
+
+"Did she say so?"
+
+"I cannot affirm that she said so. No such confession as 'I love this
+man or that' passed her lips."
+
+"I thought not."
+
+"But the feeling made its way in spite of her, and I saw it. She spoke
+of one man in a strain not to be misunderstood. Her voice alone was
+sufficient testimony. Having wrung from her an opinion on your
+character, I demanded a second opinion of--another person about whom I
+had my conjectures, though they were the most tangled and puzzled
+conjectures in the world. I would _make_ her speak. I shook her, I chid
+her, I pinched her fingers when she tried to put me off with gibes and
+jests in her queer provoking way, and at last out it came. The voice, I
+say, was enough; hardly raised above a whisper, and yet such a soft
+vehemence in its tones. There was no confession, no confidence, in the
+matter. To these things she cannot condescend; but I am sure that man's
+happiness is dear to her as her own life."
+
+"Who is it?"
+
+"I charged her with the fact. She did not deny, she did not avow, but
+looked at me. I saw her eyes by the snow-gleam. It was quite enough. I
+triumphed over her mercilessly."
+
+"What right had _you_ to triumph? Do you mean to say _you_ are fancy
+free?"
+
+"Whatever _I_ am, Shirley is a bondswoman. Lioness, she has found her
+captor. Mistress she may be of all round her, but her own mistress she
+is not."
+
+"So you exulted at recognizing a fellow-slave in one so fair and
+imperial?"
+
+"I did; Robert, you say right, in one so fair and imperial."
+
+"You confess it--a _fellow_-slave?"
+
+"I confess nothing; but I say that haughty Shirley is no more free than
+was Hagar."
+
+"And who, pray, is the Abraham, the hero of a patriarch who has achieved
+such a conquest?"
+
+"You still speak scornfully, and cynically, and sorely; but I will make
+you change your note before I have done with you."
+
+"We will see that. Can she marry this Cupidon?"
+
+"Cupidon! he is just about as much a Cupidon as you are a Cyclops."
+
+"Can she marry him?"
+
+"You will see."
+
+"I want to know his name, Cary."
+
+"Guess it."
+
+"Is it any one in this neighbourhood?"
+
+"Yes, in Briarfield parish."
+
+"Then it is some person unworthy of her. I don't know a soul in
+Briarfield parish her equal."
+
+"Guess."
+
+"Impossible. I suppose she is under a delusion, and will plunge into
+some absurdity, after all."
+
+Caroline smiled.
+
+"Do _you_ approve the choice?" asked Moore.
+
+"Quite, _quite_."
+
+"Then I _am_ puzzled; for the head which owns this bounteous fall of
+hazel curls is an excellent little thinking machine, most accurate in
+its working. It boasts a correct, steady judgment, inherited from
+'mamma,' I suppose."
+
+"And I _quite_ approve, and mamma was charmed."
+
+"'Mamma' charmed--Mrs. Pryor! It can't be romantic, then?"
+
+"It _is_ romantic, but it is also right."
+
+"Tell me, Cary--tell me out of pity; I am too weak to be tantalized."
+
+"You shall be tantalized--it will do you no harm; you are not so weak as
+you pretend."
+
+"I have twice this evening had some thoughts of falling on the floor at
+your feet."
+
+"You had better not. I shall decline to help you up."
+
+"And worshipping you downright. My mother was a Roman Catholic. You look
+like the loveliest of her pictures of the Virgin. I think I will embrace
+her faith and kneel and adore."
+
+"Robert, Robert, sit still; don't be absurd. I will go to Hortense if
+you commit extravagances."
+
+"You have stolen my senses. Just now nothing will come into my mind but
+_les litanies de la sainte Vièrge. Rose céleste, reine des anges_!"
+
+"_Tour d'ivoire, maison d'or_--is not that the jargon? Well, sit down
+quietly, and guess your riddle."
+
+"But 'mamma' charmed--there's the puzzle."
+
+"I'll tell you what mamma said when I told her. 'Depend upon it, my
+dear, such a choice will make the happiness of Miss Keeldar's life.'"
+
+"I'll guess once, and no more. It is old Helstone. She is going to be
+your aunt."
+
+"I'll tell my uncle; I'll tell Shirley!" cried Caroline, laughing
+gleefully. "Guess again, Robert; your blunders are charming."
+
+"It is the parson--Hall."
+
+"Indeed, no; he is mine, if you please."
+
+"Yours! Ay, the whole generation of women in Briarfield seem to have
+made an idol of that priest. I wonder why; he is bald, sand-blind,
+gray-haired."
+
+"Fanny will be here to fetch me before you have solved the riddle, if
+you don't make haste."
+
+"I'll guess no more--I am tired; and then I don't care. Miss Keeldar may
+marry _le grand Turc_ for me."
+
+"Must I whisper?"
+
+"That you must, and quickly. Here comes Hortense; come near, a little
+nearer, my own Lina. I care for the whisper more than the words."
+
+She whispered. Robert gave a start, a flash of the eye, a brief laugh.
+Miss Moore entered, and Sarah followed behind, with information that
+Fanny was come. The hour of converse was over.
+
+Robert found a moment to exchange a few more whispered sentences. He was
+waiting at the foot of the staircase as Caroline descended after putting
+on her shawl.
+
+"Must I call Shirley a noble creature now?" he asked.
+
+"If you wish to speak the truth, certainly."
+
+"Must I forgive her?"
+
+"Forgive her? Naughty Robert! Was she in the wrong, or were you?"
+
+"Must I at length love her downright, Cary?"
+
+Caroline looked keenly up, and made a movement towards him, something
+between the loving and the petulant.
+
+"Only give the word, and I'll try to obey you."
+
+"Indeed, you must not love her; the bare idea is perverse."
+
+"But then she is handsome, peculiarly handsome. Hers is a beauty that
+grows on you. You think her but graceful when you first see her; you
+discover her to be beautiful when you have known her for a year."
+
+"It is not you who are to say these things. Now, Robert, be good."
+
+"O Cary, I have no love to give. Were the goddess of beauty to woo me, I
+could not meet her advances. There is no heart which I can call mine in
+this breast."
+
+"So much the better; you are a great deal safer without. Good-night."
+
+"Why must you always go, Lina, at the very instant when I most want you
+to stay?"
+
+"Because you most wish to retain when you are most certain to lose."
+
+"Listen; one other word. Take care of your own heart--do you hear me?"
+
+"There is no danger."
+
+"I am not convinced of that. The Platonic parson, for instance."
+
+"Who--Malone?"
+
+"Cyril Hall. I owe more than one twinge of jealousy to that quarter."
+
+"As to you, you have been flirting with Miss Mann. She showed me the
+other day a plant you had given her.--Fanny, I am ready."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+WRITTEN IN THE SCHOOLROOM.
+
+
+Louis Moore's doubts respecting the immediate evacuation of Fieldhead by
+Mr. Sympson turned out to be perfectly well founded. The very next day
+after the grand quarrel about Sir Philip Nunnely a sort of
+reconciliation was patched up between uncle and niece. Shirley, who
+could never find it in her heart to be or to seem inhospitable (except
+in the single instance of Mr. Donne), begged the whole party to stay a
+little longer. She begged in such earnest it was evident she wished it
+for some reason. They took her at her word. Indeed, the uncle could not
+bring himself to leave her quite unwatched--at full liberty to marry
+Robert Moore as soon as that gentleman should be able (Mr. Sympson
+piously prayed this might never be the case) to reassert his supposed
+pretensions to her hand. They all stayed.
+
+In his first rage against all the house of Moore, Mr. Sympson had so
+conducted himself towards Mr. Louis that that gentleman--patient of
+labour or suffering, but intolerant of coarse insolence--had promptly
+resigned his post, and could now be induced to resume and retain it only
+till such time as the family should quit Yorkshire. Mrs. Sympson's
+entreaties prevailed with him thus far; his own attachment to his pupil
+constituted an additional motive for concession; and probably he had a
+third motive, stronger than either of the other two. Probably he would
+have found it very hard indeed to leave Fieldhead just now.
+
+Things went on for some time pretty smoothly. Miss Keeldar's health was
+re-established; her spirits resumed their flow. Moore had found means to
+relieve her from every nervous apprehension; and, indeed, from the
+moment of giving him her confidence, every fear seemed to have taken
+wing. Her heart became as lightsome, her manner as careless, as those of
+a little child, that, thoughtless of its own life or death, trusts all
+responsibility to its parents. He and William Farren--through whose
+medium he made inquiries concerning the state of Phœbe--agreed in
+asserting that the dog was not mad, that it was only ill-usage which had
+driven her from home; for it was proved that her master was in the
+frequent habit of chastising her violently. Their assertion might or
+might not be true. The groom and gamekeeper affirmed to the
+contrary--both asserting that, if hers was not a clear case of
+hydrophobia, there was no such disease. But to this evidence Louis Moore
+turned an incredulous ear. He reported to Shirley only what was
+encouraging. She believed him; and, right or wrong, it is certain that
+in her case the bite proved innocuous.
+
+November passed; December came. The Sympsons were now really departing.
+It was incumbent on them to be at home by Christmas. Their packages were
+preparing; they were to leave in a few days. One winter evening, during
+the last week of their stay, Louis Moore again took out his little blank
+book, and discoursed with it as follows:--
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"She is lovelier than ever. Since that little cloud was dispelled all
+the temporary waste and wanness have vanished. It was marvellous to see
+how soon the magical energy of youth raised her elastic and revived her
+blooming.
+
+"After breakfast this morning, when I had seen her, and listened to her,
+and, so to speak, felt her, in every sentient atom of my frame, I passed
+from her sunny presence into the chill drawing-room. Taking up a little
+gilt volume, I found it to contain a selection of lyrics. I read a poem
+or two; whether the spell was in me or in the verse I know not, but my
+heart filled genially, my pulse rose. I glowed, notwithstanding the
+frost air. I, too, am young as yet. Though she said she never considered
+me young, I am barely thirty. There are moments when life, for no other
+reason than my own youth, beams with sweet hues upon me.
+
+"It was time to go to the schoolroom. I went. That same schoolroom is
+rather pleasant in a morning. The sun then shines through the low
+lattice; the books are in order; there are no papers strewn about; the
+fire is clear and clean; no cinders have fallen, no ashes accumulated. I
+found Henry there, and he had brought with him Miss Keeldar. They were
+together.
+
+"I said she was lovelier than ever. She is. A fine rose, not deep but
+delicate, opens on her cheek. Her eye, always dark, clear, and speaking,
+utters now a language I cannot render; it is the utterance, seen not
+heard, through which angels must have communed when there was 'silence
+in heaven.' Her hair was always dusk as night and fine as silk, her neck
+was always fair, flexible, polished; but both have now a new charm. The
+tresses are soft as shadow, the shoulders they fall on wear a goddess
+grace. Once I only _saw_ her beauty, now I _feel_ it.
+
+"Henry was repeating his lesson to her before bringing it to me. One of
+her hands was occupied with the book; he held the other. That boy gets
+more than his share of privileges; he dares caress and is caressed. What
+indulgence and compassion she shows him! Too much. If this went on,
+Henry in a few years, when his soul was formed, would offer it on her
+altar, as I have offered mine.
+
+"I saw her eyelid flitter when I came in, but she did not look up; _now_
+she hardly ever gives me a glance. She seems to grow silent too; to _me_
+she rarely speaks, and when I am present, she says little to others. In
+my gloomy moments I attribute this change to indifference, aversion,
+what not? In my sunny intervals I give it another meaning. I say, were I
+her equal, I could find in this shyness coyness, and in that coyness
+love. As it is, dare I look for it? What could I do with it if found?
+
+"This morning I dared at least contrive an hour's communion for her and
+me; I dared not only _wish_ but _will_ an interview with her. I dared
+summon solitude to guard us. Very decidedly I called Henry to the door.
+Without hesitation I said, 'Go where you will, my boy; but, till I call
+you, return not here.'
+
+"Henry, I could see, did not like his dismissal. That boy is young, but
+a thinker; his meditative eye shines on me strangely sometimes. He half
+feels what links me to Shirley; he half guesses that there is a dearer
+delight in the reserve with which I am treated than in all the
+endearments he is allowed. The young, lame, half-grown lion would growl
+at me now and then, because I have tamed his lioness and am her keeper,
+did not the habit of discipline and the instinct of affection hold him
+subdued. Go, Henry; you must learn to take your share of the bitter of
+life with all of Adam's race that have gone before or will come after
+you. Your destiny can be no exception to the common lot; be grateful
+that your love is overlooked thus early, before it can claim any
+affinity to passion. An hour's fret, a pang of envy, suffice to express
+what you feel. Jealousy hot as the sun above the line, rage destructive
+as the tropic storm, the clime of your sensations ignores--as yet.
+
+"I took my usual seat at the desk, quite in my usual way. I am blessed
+in that power to cover all inward ebullition with outward calm. No one
+who looks at my slow face can guess the vortex sometimes whirling in my
+heart, and engulfing thought and wrecking prudence. Pleasant is it to
+have the gift to proceed peacefully and powerfully in your course
+without alarming by one eccentric movement. It was not my present
+intention to utter one word of love to her, or to reveal one glimpse of
+the fire in which I wasted. Presumptuous I never have been; presumptuous
+I never will be. Rather than even _seem_ selfish and interested, I would
+resolutely rise, gird my loins, part and leave her, and seek, on the
+other side of the globe, a new life, cold and barren as the rock the
+salt tide daily washes. My design this morning was to take of her a near
+scrutiny--to read a line in the page of her heart. Before I left I
+determined to know _what_ I was leaving.
+
+"I had some quills to make into pens. Most men's hands would have
+trembled when their hearts were so stirred; mine went to work steadily,
+and my voice, when I called it into exercise, was firm.
+
+"'This day week you will be alone at Fieldhead, Miss Keeldar.'
+
+"'Yes: I rather think my uncle's intention to go is a settled one now.'
+
+"'He leaves you dissatisfied.'
+
+"'He is not pleased with me.'
+
+"'He departs as he came--no better for his journey. This is mortifying.'
+
+"'I trust the failure of his plans will take from him all inclination to
+lay new ones.'
+
+"'In his way Mr. Sympson honestly wished you well. All he has done or
+intended to do he believed to be for the best.'
+
+"'You are kind to undertake the defence of a man who has permitted
+himself to treat you with so much insolence.'
+
+"'I never feel shocked at, or bear malice for, what is spoken in
+character; and most perfectly in character was that vulgar and violent
+onset against me, when he had quitted you worsted.'
+
+"'You cease now to be Henry's tutor?'
+
+"'I shall be parted from Henry for a while (if he and I live we shall
+meet again somehow, for we love each other) and be ousted from the bosom
+of the Sympson family for ever. Happily this change does not leave me
+stranded; it but hurries into premature execution designs long formed.'
+
+"'No change finds you off your guard. I was sure, in your calm way, you
+would be prepared for sudden mutation. I always think you stand in the
+world like a solitary but watchful, thoughtful archer in a wood. And the
+quiver on your shoulder holds more arrows than one; your bow is provided
+with a second string. Such too is your brother's wont. You two might go
+forth homeless hunters to the loneliest western wilds; all would be well
+with you. The hewn tree would make you a hut, the cleared forest yield
+you fields from its stripped bosom, the buffalo would feel your
+rifle-shot, and with lowered horns and hump pay homage at your feet.'
+
+"'And any Indian tribe of Blackfeet or Flatheads would afford us a
+bride, perhaps?'
+
+"'No' (hesitating), 'I think not. The savage is sordid. I think--that
+is, I _hope_--you would neither of you share your hearth with that to
+which you could not give your heart.'
+
+"'What suggested the wild West to your mind, Miss Keeldar? Have you been
+with me in spirit when I did not see you? Have you entered into my
+day-dreams, and beheld my brain labouring at its scheme of a future?'
+
+"She had separated a slip of paper for lighting tapers--a spill, as it
+is called--into fragments. She threw morsel by morsel into the fire, and
+stood pensively watching them consume. She did not speak.
+
+"'How did you learn what you seem to know about my intentions?'
+
+"'I know nothing. I am only discovering them now. I spoke at hazard.'
+
+"'Your hazard sounds like divination. A tutor I will never be again;
+never take a pupil after Henry and yourself; not again will I sit
+habitually at another man's table--no more be the appendage of a family.
+I am now a man of thirty; I have never been free since I was a boy of
+ten. I have such a thirst for freedom, such a deep passion to know her
+and call her mine, such a day-desire and night-longing to win her and
+possess her, I will not refuse to cross the Atlantic for her sake; her I
+will follow deep into virgin woods. Mine it shall not be to accept a
+savage girl as a slave--she could not be a wife. I know no white woman
+whom I love that would accompany me; but I am certain Liberty will await
+me, sitting under a pine. When I call her she will come to my loghouse,
+and she shall fill my arms.'
+
+"She could not hear me speak so unmoved, and she _was_ moved. It was
+right--I meant to move her. She could not answer me, nor could she look
+at me. I should have been sorry if she could have done either. Her cheek
+glowed as if a crimson flower through whose petals the sun shone had
+cast its light upon it. On the white lid and dark lashes of her downcast
+eye trembled all that is graceful in the sense of half-painful,
+half-pleasing shame.
+
+"Soon she controlled her emotion, and took all her feelings under
+command. I saw she had felt insurrection, and was waking to empire. She
+sat down. There was that in her face which I could read. It said, I see
+the line which is my limit; nothing shall make me pass it. I feel--I
+know how far I may reveal my feelings, and when I must clasp the volume.
+I have advanced to a certain distance, as far as the true and sovereign
+and undegraded nature of my kind permits; now here I stand rooted. My
+heart may break if it is baffled; let it break. It shall never dishonour
+me; it shall never dishonour my sisterhood in me. Suffering before
+degradation! death before treachery!
+
+"I, for my part, said, 'If she were poor, I would be at her feet; if she
+were lowly, I would take her in my arms. Her gold and her station are
+two griffins that guard her on each side. Love looks and longs, and
+dares not; Passion hovers round, and is kept at bay; Truth and Devotion
+are scared. There is nothing to lose in winning her, no sacrifice to
+make. It is all clear gain, and therefore unimaginably difficult.'
+
+"Difficult or not, something must be done, something must be said. I
+could not, and would not, sit silent with all that beauty modestly mute
+in my presence. I spoke thus, and still I spoke with calm. Quiet as my
+words were, I could hear they fell in a tone distinct, round, and deep.
+
+"'Still, I know I shall be strangely placed with that mountain nymph
+Liberty. She is, I suspect, akin to that Solitude which I once wooed,
+and from which I now seek a divorce. These Oreads are peculiar. They
+come upon you with an unearthly charm, like some starlight evening; they
+inspire a wild but not warm delight; their beauty is the beauty of
+spirits; their grace is not the grace of life, but of seasons or scenes
+in nature. Theirs is the dewy bloom of morning, the languid flush of
+evening, the peace of the moon, the changefulness of clouds. I want and
+will have something different. This elfish splendour looks chill to my
+vision, and feels frozen to my touch. I am not a poet; I cannot live
+with abstractions. You, Miss Keeldar, have sometimes, in your laughing
+satire, called me a material philosopher, and implied that I live
+sufficiently for the substantial. Certainly I feel material from head to
+foot; and glorious as Nature is, and deeply as I worship her with the
+solid powers of a solid heart, I would rather behold her through the
+soft human eyes of a loved and lovely wife than through the wild orbs of
+the highest goddess of Olympus.'
+
+"'Juno could not cook a buffalo steak as you like it,' said she.
+
+"'She could not; but I will tell you who could--some young, penniless,
+friendless orphan girl. I wish I could find such a one--pretty enough
+for me to love, with something of the mind and heart suited to my taste;
+not uneducated--honest and modest. I care nothing for attainments, but I
+would fain have the germ of those sweet natural powers which nothing
+acquired can rival; any temper Fate wills--I can manage the hottest. To
+such a creature as this I should like to be first tutor and then
+husband. I would teach her my language, my habits and my principles, and
+then I would reward her with my love.'
+
+"'_Reward_ her, lord of the creation--_reward_ her!'" ejaculated she,
+with a curled lip.
+
+"'And be repaid a thousandfold.'
+
+"'If she willed it, monseigneur.'
+
+"'And she _should_ will it.'
+
+"'You have stipulated for any temper Fate wills. Compulsion is flint and
+a blow to the metal of some souls.'
+
+"'And love the spark it elicits.'
+
+"'Who cares for the love that is but a spark--seen, flown upward, and
+gone?'
+
+"'I must find my orphan girl. Tell me how, Miss Keeldar.'
+
+"'Advertise; and be sure you add, when you describe the qualifications,
+she must be a good plain cook.'
+
+"'I must find her; and when I do find her I shall marry her.'
+
+"'Not you!' and her voice took a sudden accent of peculiar scorn.
+
+"I liked this. I had roused her from the pensive mood in which I had
+first found her. I would stir her further.
+
+"'Why doubt it?'
+
+"'_You_ marry!'
+
+"'Yes, of course; nothing more evident than that I can and shall.'
+
+"'The contrary is evident, Mr. Moore.'
+
+"She charmed me in this mood--waxing disdainful, half insulting; pride,
+temper, derision, blent in her large fine eye, that had just now the
+look of a merlin's.
+
+"'Favour me with your reasons for such an opinion, Miss Keeldar.'
+
+"'How will _you_ manage to marry, I wonder?'
+
+"'I shall manage it with ease and speed when I find the proper person.'
+
+"'Accept celibacy!' (and she made a gesture with her hand as if she gave
+me something) 'take it as your doom!'
+
+"'No; you cannot give what I already have. Celibacy has been mine for
+thirty years. If you wish to offer me a gift, a parting present, a
+keepsake, you must change the boon.'
+
+"'Take worse, then!'
+
+"'How--what?'
+
+"I now felt, and looked, and spoke eagerly. I was unwise to quit my
+sheet-anchor of calm even for an instant; it deprived me of an advantage
+and transferred it to her. The little spark of temper dissolved in
+sarcasm, and eddied over her countenance in the ripples of a mocking
+smile.
+
+"'Take a wife that has paid you court to save your modesty, and thrust
+herself upon you to spare your scruples.'
+
+"'Only show me where.'
+
+"'Any stout widow that has had a few husbands already, and can manage
+these things.'
+
+"'She must not be rich, then. Oh these riches!'
+
+"'Never would you have gathered the produce of the gold-bearing garden.
+You have not courage to confront the sleepless dragon; you have not
+craft to borrow the aid of Atlas.'
+
+"'You look hot and haughty.'
+
+"'And you far haughtier. Yours is the monstrous pride which counterfeits
+humility.'
+
+"'I am a dependant; I know my place.'
+
+"'I am a woman; I know mine.'
+
+"'I am poor; I must be proud.'
+
+"'I have received ordinances, and own obligations stringent as yours.'
+
+"We had reached a critical point now, and we halted and looked at each
+other. _She_ would not give in, I felt. Beyond this I neither felt nor
+saw. A few moments yet were mine. The end was coming--I heard its
+rush--but not come. I would dally, wait, talk, and when impulse urged I
+would act. I am never in a hurry; I never was in a hurry in my whole
+life. Hasty people drink the nectar of existence scalding hot; I taste
+it cool as dew. I proceeded: 'Apparently, Miss Keeldar, you are as
+little likely to marry as myself. I know you have refused three--nay,
+four--advantageous offers, and, I believe, a fifth. Have you rejected
+Sir Philip Nunnely?'
+
+"I put this question suddenly and promptly.
+
+"'Did you think I should take him?'
+
+"'I thought you might.'
+
+"'On what grounds, may I ask?'
+
+"'Conformity of rank, age, pleasing contrast of temper--for _he_ is mild
+and amiable--harmony of intellectual tastes.'
+
+"'A beautiful sentence! Let us take it to pieces. "Conformity of rank."
+He is quite above me. Compare my grange with his palace, if you please.
+I am disdained by his kith and kin. "Suitability of age." We were born
+in the same year; consequently he is still a boy, while I am a
+woman--ten years his senior to all intents and purposes. "Contrast of
+temper." Mild and amiable, is he; I--what? Tell me.'
+
+"'Sister of the spotted, bright, quick, fiery leopard.'
+
+"'And you would mate me with a kid--the millennium being yet millions of
+centuries from mankind; being yet, indeed, an archangel high in the
+seventh heaven, uncommissioned to descend? Unjust barbarian! "Harmony of
+intellectual tastes." He is fond of poetry, and I hate it----'
+
+"'Do you? That is news.'
+
+"'I absolutely shudder at the sight of metre or at the sound of rhyme
+whenever I am at the priory or Sir Philip at Fieldhead. Harmony,
+indeed! When did I whip up syllabub sonnets or string stanzas fragile as
+fragments of glass? and when did I betray a belief that those
+penny-beads were genuine brilliants?'
+
+"'You might have the satisfaction of leading him to a higher standard,
+of improving his tastes.'
+
+"'Leading and improving! teaching and tutoring! bearing and forbearing!
+Pah! my husband is not to be my baby. I am not to set him his daily
+lesson and see that he learns it, and give him a sugar-plum if he is
+good, and a patient, pensive, pathetic lecture if he is bad. But it is
+like a tutor to talk of the "satisfaction of teaching." I suppose _you_
+think it the finest employment in the world. I don't. I reject it.
+Improving a husband! No. I shall insist upon my husband improving me, or
+else we part.'
+
+"'God knows it is needed!'
+
+"'What do you mean by that, Mr. Moore?'
+
+"'What I say. Improvement is imperatively needed.'
+
+"'If you were a woman you would school _monsieur, votre mari_,
+charmingly. It would just suit you; schooling is your vocation.'
+
+"'May I ask whether, in your present just and gentle mood, you mean to
+taunt me with being a tutor?'
+
+"'Yes, bitterly; and with anything else you please--any defect of which
+you are painfully conscious.'
+
+"'With being poor, for instance?'
+
+"'Of course; that will sting you. You are sore about your poverty; you
+brood over that.'
+
+"'With having nothing but a very plain person to offer the woman who may
+master my heart?'
+
+"'Exactly. You have a habit of calling yourself plain. You are sensitive
+about the cut of your features because they are not quite on an Apollo
+pattern. You abase them more than is needful, in the faint hope that
+others may say a word in their behalf--which won't happen. Your face is
+nothing to boast of, certainly--not a pretty line nor a pretty tint to
+be found therein.'
+
+"'Compare it with your own.'
+
+"'It looks like a god of Egypt--a great sand-buried stone head; or
+rather I will compare it to nothing so lofty. It looks like Tartar. You
+are my mastiff's cousin. I think you as much like him as a man can be
+like a dog.'
+
+"'Tartar is your dear companion. In summer, when you rise early, and
+run out into the fields to wet your feet with the dew, and freshen your
+cheek and uncurl your hair with the breeze, you always call him to
+follow you. You call him sometimes with a whistle that you learned from
+me. In the solitude of your wood, when you think nobody but Tartar is
+listening, you whistle the very tunes you imitated from my lips, or sing
+the very songs you have caught up by ear from my voice. I do not ask
+whence flows the feeling which you pour into these songs, for I know it
+flows out of your heart, Miss Keeldar. In the winter evenings Tartar
+lies at your feet. You suffer him to rest his head on your perfumed lap;
+you let him couch on the borders of your satin raiment. His rough hide
+is familiar with the contact of your hand. I once saw you kiss him on
+that snow-white beauty spot which stars his broad forehead. It is
+dangerous to say I am like Tartar; it suggests to me a claim to be
+treated like Tartar.'
+
+"'Perhaps, sir, you can extort as much from your penniless and
+friendless young orphan girl, when you find her.'
+
+"'Oh could I find her such as I image her! Something to tame first, and
+teach afterwards; to break in, and then to fondle. To lift the destitute
+proud thing out of poverty; to establish power over and then to be
+indulgent to the capricious moods that never were influenced and never
+indulged before; to see her alternately irritated and subdued about
+twelve times in the twenty-four hours; and perhaps, eventually, when her
+training was accomplished, to behold her the exemplary and patient
+mother of about a dozen children, only now and then lending little Louis
+a cordial cuff by way of paying the interest of the vast debt she owes
+his father. Oh' (I went on), 'my orphan girl would give me many a kiss;
+she would watch on the threshold for my coming home of an evening; she
+would run into my arms; she would keep my hearth as bright as she would
+make it warm. God bless the sweet idea! Find her I must.'
+
+"Her eyes emitted an eager flash, her lips opened; but she reclosed
+them, and impetuously turned away.
+
+"'Tell me, tell me where she is, Miss Keeldar!'
+
+"Another movement, all haughtiness and fire and impulse.
+
+"'I must know. You _can_ tell me; you _shall_ tell me.'
+
+"'I _never will_.'
+
+"She turned to leave me. Could I now let her part as she had always
+parted from me? No. I had gone too far not to finish; I had come too
+near the end not to drive home to it. All the encumbrance of doubt, all
+the rubbish of indecision, must be removed at once, and the plain truth
+must be ascertained. She must take her part, and tell me what it was; I
+must take mine and adhere to it.
+
+"'A minute, madam,' I said, keeping my hand on the door-handle before I
+opened it. 'We have had a long conversation this morning, but the last
+word has not been spoken yet. It is yours to speak it.'
+
+"'May I pass?'
+
+"'No; I guard the door. I would almost rather die than let you leave me
+just now, without speaking the word I demand.'
+
+"'What dare you expect me to say?'
+
+"'What I am dying and perishing to hear; what I _must_ and _will_ hear;
+what you dare not now suppress.'
+
+"'Mr. Moore, I hardly know what you mean. You are not like yourself.'
+
+"I suppose I hardly was like my usual self, for I scared her--that I
+could see. It was right: she must be scared to be won.
+
+"'You _do_ know what I mean, and for the first time I stand before you
+_myself_. I have flung off the tutor, and beg to introduce you to the
+man. And remember, he is a gentleman.'
+
+"She trembled. She put her hand to mine as if to remove it from the
+lock. She might as well have tried to loosen, by her soft touch, metal
+welded to metal. She felt she was powerless, and receded; and again she
+trembled.
+
+"What change I underwent I cannot explain, but out of her emotion passed
+into me a new spirit. I neither was crushed nor elated by her lands and
+gold; I thought not of them, cared not for them. They were
+nothing--dross that could not dismay me. I saw only herself--her young
+beautiful form, the grace, the majesty, the modesty of her girlhood.
+
+"'My pupil,' I said.
+
+"'My master,' was the low answer.
+
+"'I have a thing to tell you.'
+
+"She waited with declined brow and ringlets drooped.
+
+"'I have to tell you that for four years you have been growing into
+your tutor's heart, and that you are rooted there now. I have to declare
+that you have bewitched me, in spite of sense, and experience, and
+difference of station and estate. You have so looked, and spoken, and
+moved; so shown me your faults and your virtues--beauties rather, they
+are hardly so stern as virtues--that I love you--love you with my life
+and strength. It is out now.'
+
+"She sought what to say, but could not find a word. She tried to rally,
+but vainly. I passionately repeated that I loved her.
+
+"'Well, Mr. Moore, what then?' was the answer I got, uttered in a tone
+that would have been petulant if it had not faltered.
+
+"'Have you nothing to say to me? Have you no love for me?'
+
+"'A little bit.'
+
+"'I am not to be tortured. I will not even play at present.'
+
+"'I don't want to play; I want to go.'
+
+"'I wonder you dare speak of going at this moment. _You_ go! What! with
+my heart in your hand, to lay it on your toilet and pierce it with your
+pins? From my presence you do not stir, out of my reach you do not
+stray, till I receive a hostage--pledge for pledge--your heart for
+mine.'
+
+"'The thing you want is mislaid--lost some time since. Let me go and
+seek it.'
+
+"'Declare that it is where your keys often are--in my possession.'
+
+"'You ought to know. And where are my keys, Mr. Moore? Indeed and truly
+I have lost them again; and Mrs. Gill wants some money, and I have none,
+except this sixpence.'
+
+"She took the coin out of her apron pocket, and showed it in her palm. I
+could have trifled with her, but it would not do; life and death were at
+stake. Mastering at once the sixpence and the hand that held it, I
+demanded, 'Am I to die without you, or am I to live for you?'
+
+"'Do as you please. Far be it from me to dictate your choice.'
+
+"'You shall tell me with your own lips whether you doom me to exile or
+call me to hope.'
+
+"'Go; I can bear to be left.'
+
+"'Perhaps I too _can_ bear to leave you. But reply, Shirley, my pupil,
+my sovereign--reply.'
+
+"'Die without me if you will; live for me if you dare.'
+
+"'I am not afraid of you, my leopardess. I _dare_ live for and with you,
+from this hour till my death. Now, then, I have you. You are mine. I
+will never let you go. Wherever my home be, I have chosen my wife. If I
+stay in England, in England you will stay; if I cross the Atlantic, you
+will cross it also. Our lives are riveted, our lots intertwined.'
+
+"'And are we equal, then, sir? are we equal at last?'
+
+"'You are younger, frailer, feebler, more ignorant than I.'
+
+"'Will you be good to me, and never tyrannize?'
+
+"'Will you let me breathe, and not bewilder me? You must not smile at
+present. The world swims and changes round me. The sun is a dizzying
+scarlet blaze, the sky a violet vortex whirling over me.'
+
+"I am a strong man, but I staggered as I spoke. All creation was
+exaggerated. Colour grew more vivid, motion more rapid, life itself more
+vital. I hardly saw her for a moment, but I heard her voice--pitilessly
+sweet. She would not subdue one of her charms in compassion. Perhaps she
+did not know what I felt.
+
+"'You name me leopardess. Remember, the leopardess is tameless,' said
+she.
+
+"'Tame or fierce, wild or subdued, you are _mine_.'
+
+"'I am glad I know my keeper and am used to him. Only his voice will I
+follow; only his hand shall manage me; only at his feet will I repose.'
+
+"I took her back to her seat, and sat down by her side. I wanted to hear
+her speak again. I could never have enough of her voice and her words.
+
+"'How much do you love me?' I asked.
+
+"'Ah! you know. I will not gratify you--I will not flatter.'
+
+"'I don't know half enough; my heart craves to be fed. If you knew how
+hungry and ferocious it is, you would hasten to stay it with a kind word
+or two.'
+
+"'Poor Tartar!' said she, touching and patting my hand--'poor fellow,
+stalwart friend, Shirley's pet and favourite, lie down!'
+
+"'But I will not lie down till I am fed with one sweet word.'
+
+"And at last she gave it.
+
+"'Dear Louis, be faithful to me; never leave me. I don't care for life
+unless I may pass it at your side.'
+
+"'Something more.'
+
+"She gave me a change; it was not her way to offer the same dish twice.
+
+"'Sir,' she said, starting up, 'at your peril you ever again name such
+sordid things as money, or poverty, or inequality. It will be absolutely
+dangerous to torment me with these maddening scruples. I defy you to do
+it.'
+
+"My face grew hot. I did once more wish I were not so poor or she were
+not so rich. She saw the transient misery; and then, indeed, she
+caressed me. Blent with torment, I experienced rapture.
+
+"'Mr. Moore,' said she, looking up with a sweet, open, earnest
+countenance, 'teach me and help me to be good. I do not ask you to take
+off my shoulders all the cares and duties of property, but I ask you to
+share the burden, and to show me how to sustain my part well. Your
+judgment is well balanced, your heart is kind, your principles are
+sound. I know you are wise; I feel you are benevolent; I believe you are
+conscientious. Be my companion through life; be my guide where I am
+ignorant; be my master where I am faulty; be my friend always!'
+
+"'So help me God, I will!'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yet again a passage from the blank book if you like, reader; if you
+don't like it, pass it over:--
+
+"The Sympsons are gone, but not before discovery and explanation. My
+manner must have betrayed something, or my looks. I was quiet, but I
+forgot to be guarded sometimes. I stayed longer in the room than usual;
+I could not bear to be out of her presence; I returned to it, and basked
+in it, like Tartar in the sun. If she left the oak parlour,
+instinctively I rose and left it too. She chid me for this procedure
+more than once. I did it with a vague, blundering idea of getting a word
+with her in the hall or elsewhere. Yesterday towards dusk I had her to
+myself for five minutes by the hall fire. We stood side by side; she was
+railing at me, and I was enjoying the sound of her voice. The young
+ladies passed, and looked at us; we did not separate. Ere long they
+repassed, and again looked. Mrs. Sympson came; we did not move. Mr.
+Sympson opened the dining-room door. Shirley flashed him back full
+payment for his spying gaze. She curled her lip and tossed her tresses.
+The glance she gave was at once explanatory and defiant. It said: 'I
+like Mr. Moore's society, and I dare you to find fault with my taste.'
+
+"I asked, 'Do you mean him to understand how matters are?'
+
+"'I do,' said she; 'but I leave the development to chance. There will be
+a scene. I neither invite it nor fear it; only, you must be present, for
+I am inexpressibly tired of facing him solus. I don't like to see him in
+a rage. He then puts off all his fine proprieties and conventional
+disguises, and the real human being below is what you would call
+_commun, plat, bas--vilain et un peu méchant_. His ideas are not clean,
+Mr. Moore; they want scouring with soft soap and fuller's earth. I
+think, if he could add his imagination to the contents of Mrs. Gill's
+bucking-basket, and let her boil it in her copper, with rain-water and
+bleaching-powder (I hope you think me a tolerable laundress), it would
+do him incalculable good.'
+
+"This morning, fancying I heard her descend somewhat early, I was down
+instantly. I had not been deceived. There she was, busy at work in the
+breakfast-parlour, of which the housemaid was completing the arrangement
+and dusting. She had risen betimes to finish some little keepsake she
+intended for Henry. I got only a cool reception, which I accepted till
+the girl was gone, taking my book to the window-seat very quietly. Even
+when we were alone I was slow to disturb her. To sit with her in sight
+was happiness, and the proper happiness, for early morning--serene,
+incomplete, but progressive. Had I been obtrusive, I knew I should have
+encountered rebuff. 'Not at home to suitors' was written on her brow.
+Therefore I read on, stole now and then a look, watched her countenance
+soften and open as she felt I respected her mood, and enjoyed the gentle
+content of the moment.
+
+"The distance between us shrank, and the light hoar-frost thawed
+insensibly. Ere an hour elapsed I was at her side, watching her sew,
+gathering her sweet smiles and her merry words, which fell for me
+abundantly. We sat, as we had a right to sit, side by side; my arm
+rested on her chair; I was near enough to count the stitches of her
+work, and to discern the eye of her needle. The door suddenly opened.
+
+"I believe, if I had just then started from her, she would have
+despised me. Thanks to the phlegm of my nature, I rarely start. When I
+am well-off, _bien_, comfortable, I am not soon stirred. _Bien_ I
+was--_très bien_--consequently immutable. No muscle moved. I hardly
+looked to the door.
+
+"'Good-morning, uncle,' said she, addressing that personage, who paused
+on the threshold in a state of petrifaction.
+
+"'Have you been long downstairs, Miss Keeldar, and alone with Mr.
+Moore?'
+
+"'Yes, a very long time. We both came down early; it was scarcely
+light.'
+
+"'The proceeding is improper----'
+
+"'It was at first, I was rather cross, and not civil; but you will
+perceive that we are now friends.'
+
+"'I perceive more than you would wish me to perceive.'
+
+"'Hardly, sir,' said I; 'we have no disguises. Will you permit me to
+intimate that any further observations you have to make may as well be
+addressed to me? Henceforward I stand between Miss Keeldar and all
+annoyance.'
+
+"'_You!_ What have _you_ to do with Miss Keeldar?'
+
+"'To protect, watch over, serve her.'
+
+"'You, sir--you, the tutor?'
+
+"'Not one word of insult, sir,' interposed she; 'not one syllable of
+disrespect to Mr. Moore in this house.'
+
+"'Do you take his part?'
+
+"'_His_ part? oh yes!'
+
+"She turned to me with a sudden fond movement, which I met by circling
+her with my arm. She and I both rose.
+
+"'Good Ged!' was the cry from the morning-gown standing quivering at the
+door. _Ged_, I think, must be the cognomen of Mr. Sympson's Lares. When
+hard pressed he always invokes this idol.
+
+"'Come forward, uncle; you shall hear all.--Tell him all, Louis.'
+
+"'I dare him to speak--the beggar! the knave! the specious hypocrite!
+the vile, insinuating, infamous menial!--Stand apart from my niece, sir.
+Let her go!'
+
+"She clung to me with energy. 'I am near my future husband,' she said.
+'Who dares touch him or me?'
+
+"'Her husband!' He raised and spread his hands. He dropped into a seat.
+
+"'A while ago you wanted much to know whom I meant to marry. My
+intention was then formed, but not mature for communication. Now it is
+ripe, sun-mellowed, perfect. Take the crimson peach--take Louis Moore!'
+
+"'But' (savagely) 'you _shall not_ have him; he _shall not_ have you.'
+
+"'I would die before I would have another. I would die if I might not
+have him.'
+
+"He uttered words with which this page shall never be polluted.
+
+"She turned white as death; she shook all over; she lost her strength. I
+laid her down on the sofa; just looked to ascertain that she had not
+fainted--of which, with a divine smile, she assured me. I kissed her;
+and then, if I were to perish, I cannot give a clear account of what
+happened in the course of the next five minutes. She has since--through
+tears, laughter, and trembling--told me that I turned terrible, and gave
+myself to the demon. She says I left her, made one bound across the
+room; that Mr. Sympson vanished through the door as if shot from a
+cannon. I also vanished, and she heard Mrs. Gill scream.
+
+"Mrs. Gill was still screaming when I came to my senses. I was then in
+another apartment--the oak parlour, I think. I held Sympson before me
+crushed into a chair, and my hand was on his cravat. His eyes rolled in
+his head; I was strangling him, I think. The housekeeper stood wringing
+her hands, entreating me to desist. I desisted that moment, and felt at
+once as cool as stone. But I told Mrs. Gill to fetch the Red-House Inn
+chaise instantly, and informed Mr. Sympson he must depart from Fieldhead
+the instant it came. Though half frightened out of his wits, he declared
+he would not. Repeating the former order, I added a commission to fetch
+a constable. I said, 'You _shall_ go, by fair means or foul.'
+
+"He threatened prosecution; I cared for nothing. I had stood over him
+once before, not quite so fiercely as now, but full as austerely. It was
+one night when burglars attempted the house at Sympson Grove, and in his
+wretched cowardice he would have given a vain alarm, without daring to
+offer defence. I had then been obliged to protect his family and his
+abode by mastering himself--and I had succeeded. I now remained with him
+till the chaise came. I marshalled him to it, he scolding all the way.
+He was terribly bewildered, as well as enraged. He would have resisted
+me, but knew not how. He called for his wife and daughters to come. I
+said they should follow him as soon as they could prepare. The smoke,
+the fume, the fret of his demeanour was inexpressible, but it was a fury
+incapable of producing a deed. That man, properly handled, must ever
+remain impotent. I know he will never touch me with the law. I know his
+wife, over whom he tyrannizes in trifles, guides him in matters of
+importance. I have long since earned her undying mother's gratitude by
+my devotion to her boy. In some of Henry's ailments I have nursed
+him--better, she said, than any woman could nurse. She will never forget
+that. She and her daughters quitted me to-day, in mute wrath and
+consternation; but she respects me. When Henry clung to my neck as I
+lifted him into the carriage and placed him by her side, when I arranged
+her own wrapping to make her warm, though she turned her head from me, I
+saw the tears start to her eyes. She will but the more zealously
+advocate my cause because she has left me in anger. I am glad of
+this--not for my own sake, but for that of my life and idol--my
+Shirley."
+
+Once again he writes, a week after:--"I am now at Stilbro'. I have taken
+up my temporary abode with a friend--a professional man, in whose
+business I can be useful. Every day I ride over to Fieldhead. How long
+will it be before I can call that place my home, and its mistress mine?
+I am not easy, not tranquil; I am tantalized, sometimes tortured. To see
+her now, one would think she had never pressed her cheek to my shoulder,
+or clung to me with tenderness or trust. I feel unsafe; she renders me
+miserable. I am shunned when I visit her; she withdraws from my reach.
+Once this day I lifted her face, resolved to get a full look down her
+deep, dark eyes. Difficult to describe what I read there! Pantheress!
+beautiful forest-born! wily, tameless, peerless nature! She gnaws her
+chain; I see the white teeth working at the steel! She has dreams of her
+wild woods and pinings after virgin freedom. I wish Sympson would come
+again, and oblige her again to entwine her arms about me. I wish there
+was danger she should lose me, as there is risk I shall lose her. No;
+final loss I do not fear, but long delay----
+
+"It is now night--midnight. I have spent the afternoon and evening at
+Fieldhead. Some hours ago she passed me, coming down the oak staircase
+to the hall. She did not know I was standing in the twilight, near the
+staircase window, looking at the frost-bright constellations. How
+closely she glided against the banisters! How shyly shone her large eyes
+upon me! How evanescent, fugitive, fitful she looked--slim and swift as
+a northern streamer!
+
+"I followed her into the drawing-room. Mrs. Pryor and Caroline Helstone
+were both there; she has summoned them to bear her company awhile. In
+her white evening dress, with her long hair flowing full and wavy, with
+her noiseless step, her pale cheek, her eye full of night and lightning,
+she looked, I thought, spirit-like--a thing made of an element, the
+child of a breeze and a flame, the daughter of ray and raindrop--a thing
+never to be overtaken, arrested, fixed. I wished I could avoid following
+her with my gaze as she moved here and there, but it was impossible. I
+talked with the other ladies as well as I could, but still I looked at
+her. She was very silent; I think she never spoke to me--not even when
+she offered me tea. It happened that she was called out a minute by Mrs.
+Gill. I passed into the moonlit hall, with the design of getting a word
+as she returned; nor in this did I fail.
+
+"'Miss Keeldar, stay one instant,' said I, meeting her.
+
+"'Why? the hall is too cold.'
+
+"'It is not cold for me; at my side it should not be cold for you.'
+
+"'But I shiver.'
+
+"'With fear, I believe. What makes you fear me? You are quiet and
+distant. Why?'
+
+"'I may well fear what looks like a great dark goblin meeting me in the
+moonlight.'
+
+"'_Do not--do not_ pass! Stay with me awhile. Let us exchange a few
+quiet words. It is three days since I spoke to you alone. Such changes
+are cruel.'
+
+"'I have no wish to be cruel,' she responded, softly enough. Indeed
+there was softness in her whole deportment--in her face, in her voice;
+but there was also reserve, and an air fleeting, evanishing, intangible.
+
+"'You certainly give me pain,' said I. 'It is hardly a week since you
+called me your future husband and treated me as such. Now I am once more
+the tutor for you. I am addressed as Mr. Moore and sir. Your lips have
+forgotten Louis.'
+
+"'No, Louis, no. It is an easy, liquid name--not soon forgotten.'
+
+"'Be cordial to Louis, then; approach him--let him approach.'
+
+"'I _am_ cordial,' said she, hovering aloof like a white shadow.
+
+"'Your voice is very sweet and very low,' I answered, quietly advancing.
+'You seem subdued, but still startled.'
+
+"'No--quite calm, and afraid of nothing,' she assured me.
+
+"'Of nothing but your votary.'
+
+"I bent a knee to the flags at her feet.
+
+"'You see I am in a new world, Mr. Moore. I don't know myself; I don't
+know you. But rise. When you do so I feel troubled and disturbed.'
+
+"I obeyed. It would not have suited me to retain that attitude long. I
+courted serenity and confidence for her, and not vainly. She trusted and
+clung to me again.
+
+"'Now, Shirley,' I said, 'you can conceive I am far from happy in my
+present uncertain, unsettled state.'
+
+"'Oh yes, you _are_ happy!' she cried hastily. 'You don't know how happy
+you are. Any change will be for the worse.'
+
+"'Happy or not, I cannot bear to go on so much longer. You are too
+generous to require it.'
+
+"'Be reasonable, Louis; be patient! I like you because you are patient.'
+
+"'Like me no longer, then; love me instead. Fix our marriage day; think
+of it to-night, and decide.'
+
+"She breathed a murmur, inarticulate yet expressive; darted, or melted,
+from my arms--and I lost her."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+THE WINDING-UP.
+
+
+Yes, reader, we must settle accounts now. I have only briefly to narrate
+the final fates of some of the personages whose acquaintance we have
+made in this narrative, and then you and I must shake hands, and for the
+present separate.
+
+Let us turn to the curates--to the much-loved, though long-neglected.
+Come forward, modest merit! Malone, I see, promptly answers the
+invocation. He knows his own description when he hears it.
+
+No, Peter Augustus; we can have nothing to say to you. It won't do.
+Impossible to trust ourselves with the touching tale of your deeds and
+destinies. Are you not aware, Peter, that a discriminating public has
+its crotchets; that the unvarnished truth does not answer; that plain
+facts will not digest? Do you not know that the squeak of the real pig
+is no more relished now than it was in days of yore? Were I to give the
+catastrophe of your life and conversation, the public would sweep off in
+shrieking hysterics, and there would be a wild cry for sal-volatile and
+burnt feathers. "Impossible!" would be pronounced here; "untrue!" would
+be responded there; "inartistic!" would be solemnly decided. Note well.
+Whenever you present the actual, simple truth, it is, somehow, always
+denounced as a lie--they disown it, cast it off, throw it on the parish;
+whereas the product of your own imagination, the mere figment, the sheer
+fiction, is adopted, petted, termed pretty, proper, sweetly natural--the
+little, spurious wretch gets all the comfits, the honest, lawful
+bantling all the cuffs. Such is the way of the world, Peter; and as you
+are the legitimate urchin, rude, unwashed, and naughty, you must stand
+down.
+
+Make way for Mr. Sweeting.
+
+Here he comes, with his lady on his arm--the most splendid and the
+weightiest woman in Yorkshire--Mrs. Sweeting, formerly Miss Dora Sykes.
+They were married under the happiest auspices, Mr. Sweeting having been
+just inducted to a comfortable living, and Mr. Sykes being in
+circumstances to give Dora a handsome portion. They lived long and
+happily together, beloved by their parishioners and by a numerous circle
+of friends.
+
+There! I think the varnish has been put on very nicely.
+
+Advance, Mr. Donne.
+
+This gentleman turned out admirably--far better than either you or I
+could possibly have expected, reader. He, too, married a most sensible,
+quiet, lady-like little woman. The match was the making of him. He
+became an exemplary domestic character, and a truly active parish priest
+(as a pastor he, to his dying day, conscientiously refused to act). The
+outside of the cup and platter he burnished up with the best
+polishing-powder; the furniture of the altar and temple he looked after
+with the zeal of an upholsterer, the care of a cabinet-maker. His little
+school, his little church, his little parsonage, all owed their erection
+to him; and they did him credit. Each was a model in its way. If
+uniformity and taste in architecture had been the same thing as
+consistency and earnestness in religion, what a shepherd of a Christian
+flock Mr. Donne would have made! There was one art in the mastery of
+which nothing mortal ever surpassed Mr. Donne: it was that of begging.
+By his own unassisted efforts he begged all the money for all his
+erections. In this matter he had a grasp of plan, a scope of action
+quite unique. He begged of high and low--of the shoeless cottage brat
+and the coroneted duke. He sent out begging-letters far and wide--to old
+Queen Charlotte, to the princesses her daughters, to her sons the royal
+dukes, to the Prince Regent, to Lord Castlereagh, to every member of the
+ministry then in office; and, what is more remarkable, he screwed
+something out of every one of these personages. It is on record that he
+got five pounds from the close-fisted old lady Queen Charlotte, and two
+guineas from the royal profligate her eldest son. When Mr. Donne set out
+on begging expeditions, he armed himself in a complete suit of brazen
+mail. That you had given a hundred pounds yesterday was with him no
+reason why you should not give two hundred to-day. He would tell you so
+to your face, and, ten to one, get the money out of you. People gave to
+get rid of him. After all, he did some good with the cash. He was
+useful in his day and generation.
+
+Perhaps I ought to remark that on the premature and sudden vanishing of
+Mr. Malone from the stage of Briarfield parish (you cannot know how it
+happened, reader; your curiosity must be robbed to pay your elegant love
+of the pretty and pleasing), there came as his successor another Irish
+curate, Mr. Macarthey. I am happy to be able to inform you, _with
+truth_, that this gentleman did as much credit to his country as Malone
+had done it discredit. He proved himself as decent, decorous, and
+conscientious as Peter was rampant, boisterous, and---- This last
+epithet I choose to suppress, because it would let the cat out of the
+bag. He laboured faithfully in the parish. The schools, both Sunday and
+day schools, flourished under his sway like green bay trees. Being
+human, of course he had his faults. These, however, were proper,
+steady-going, clerical faults--what many would call virtues. The
+circumstance of finding himself invited to tea with a Dissenter would
+unhinge him for a week. The spectacle of a Quaker wearing his hat in the
+church, the thought of an unbaptized fellow-creature being interred with
+Christian rites--these things could make strange havoc in Mr.
+Macarthey's physical and mental economy. Otherwise he was sane and
+rational, diligent and charitable.
+
+I doubt not a justice-loving public will have remarked, ere this, that I
+have thus far shown a criminal remissness in pursuing, catching, and
+bringing to condign punishment the would-be assassin of Mr. Robert
+Moore. Here was a fine opening to lead my willing readers a dance, at
+once decorous and exciting--a dance of law and gospel, of the dungeon,
+the dock, and the "dead-thraw." You might have liked it, reader, but _I_
+should not. I and my subject would presently have quarrelled, and then I
+should have broken down. I was happy to find that facts perfectly
+exonerated me from the attempt. The murderer was never punished, for the
+good reason that he was never caught--the result of the further
+circumstance that he was never pursued. The magistrates made a
+shuffling, as if they were going to rise and do valiant things; but
+since Moore himself, instead of urging and leading them as heretofore,
+lay still on his little cottage-couch, laughing in his sleeve, and
+sneering with every feature of his pale, foreign face, they considered
+better of it, and after fulfilling certain indispensable forms,
+prudently resolved to let the matter quietly drop, which they did.
+
+Mr. Moore knew who had shot him, and all Briarfield knew. It was no
+other than Michael Hartley, the half-crazed weaver once before alluded
+to, a frantic Antinomian in religion, and a mad leveller in politics.
+The poor soul died of delirium tremens a year after the attempt on
+Moore, and Robert gave his wretched widow a guinea to bury him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The winter is over and gone; spring has followed with beamy and shadowy,
+with flowery and showery flight. We are now in the heart of summer--in
+mid-June--the June of 1812.
+
+It is burning weather. The air is deep azure and red gold. It fits the
+time; it fits the age; it fits the present spirit of the nations. The
+nineteenth century wantons in its giant adolescence; the Titan boy
+uproots mountains in his game, and hurls rocks in his wild sport. This
+summer Bonaparte is in the saddle; he and his host scour Russian
+deserts. He has with him Frenchmen and Poles, Italians and children of
+the Rhine, six hundred thousand strong. He marches on old Moscow. Under
+old Moscow's walls the rude Cossack waits him. Barbarian stoic! he waits
+without fear of the boundless ruin rolling on. He puts his trust in a
+snow-cloud; the wilderness, the wind, and the hail-storm are his refuge;
+his allies are the elements--air, fire, water. And what are these? Three
+terrible archangels ever stationed before the throne of Jehovah. They
+stand clothed in white, girdled with golden girdles; they uplift vials,
+brimming with the wrath of God. Their time is the day of vengeance;
+their signal, the word of the Lord of hosts, "thundering with the voice
+of His excellency."
+
+"Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? or hast thou seen the
+treasures of the hail, which I have reserved against the time of
+trouble, against the day of battle and war?
+
+"Go your ways. Pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth."
+
+It is done. The earth is scorched with fire; the sea becomes "as the
+blood of a dead man;" the islands flee away; the mountains are not
+found.
+
+In this year, Lord Wellington assumed the reins in Spain. They made him
+generalissimo, for their own salvation's sake. In this year he took
+Badajos, he fought the field of Vittoria, he captured Pampeluna, he
+stormed San Sebastian; in this year he won Salamanca.
+
+Men of Manchester, I beg your pardon for this slight _résumé_ of warlike
+facts, but it is of no consequence. Lord Wellington is, for you, only a
+decayed old gentleman now. I rather think some of you have called him a
+"dotard;" you have taunted him with his age and the loss of his physical
+vigour. What fine heroes you are yourselves! Men like you have a right
+to trample on what is mortal in a demigod. Scoff at your ease; your
+scorn can never break his grand old heart.
+
+But come, friends, whether Quakers or cotton-printers, let us hold a
+peace-congress, and let out our venom quietly. We have been talking with
+unseemly zeal about bloody battles and butchering generals; we arrive
+now at a triumph in your line. On the 18th of June 1812 the Orders in
+Council were repealed, and the blockaded ports thrown open. You know
+very well--such of you as are old enough to remember--you made Yorkshire
+and Lancashire shake with your shout on that occasion. The ringers
+cracked a bell in Briarfield belfry; it is dissonant to this day. The
+Association of Merchants and Manufacturers dined together at Stilbro',
+and one and all went home in such a plight as their wives would never
+wish to witness more. Liverpool started and snorted like a river-horse
+roused amongst his reeds by thunder. Some of the American merchants felt
+threatenings of apoplexy, and had themselves bled--all, like wise men,
+at this first moment of prosperity, prepared to rush into the bowels of
+speculation, and to delve new difficulties, in whose depths they might
+lose themselves at some future day. Stocks which had been accumulating
+for years now went off in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.
+Warehouses were lightened, ships were laden; work abounded, wages rose;
+the good time seemed come. These prospects might be delusive, but they
+were brilliant--to some they were even true. At that epoch, in that
+single month of June, many a solid fortune was realized.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When a whole province rejoices, the humblest of its inhabitants tastes a
+festal feeling; the sound of public bells rouses the most secluded
+abode, as if with a call to be gay. And so Caroline Helstone thought,
+when she dressed herself more carefully than usual on the day of this
+trading triumph, and went, attired in her neatest muslin, to spend the
+afternoon at Fieldhead, there to superintend certain millinery
+preparations for a great event, the last appeal in these matters being
+reserved for her unimpeachable taste. She decided on the wreath, the
+veil, the dress to be worn at the altar. She chose various robes and
+fashions for more ordinary occasions, without much reference to the
+bride's opinion--that lady, indeed, being in a somewhat impracticable
+mood.
+
+Louis had presaged difficulties, and he had found them--in fact, his
+mistress had shown herself exquisitely provoking, putting off her
+marriage day by day, week by week, month by month, at first coaxing him
+with soft pretences of procrastination, and in the end rousing his whole
+deliberate but determined nature to revolt against her tyranny, at once
+so sweet and so intolerable.
+
+It had needed a sort of tempest-shock to bring her to the point; but
+there she was at last, fettered to a fixed day. There she lay, conquered
+by love, and bound with a vow.
+
+Thus vanquished and restricted, she pined, like any other chained
+denizen of deserts. Her captor alone could cheer her; his society only
+could make amends for the lost privilege of liberty. In his absence she
+sat or wandered alone, spoke little, and ate less.
+
+She furthered no preparations for her nuptials; Louis was himself
+obliged to direct all arrangements. He was virtually master of Fieldhead
+weeks before he became so nominally--the least presumptuous, the kindest
+master that ever was, but with his lady absolute. She abdicated without
+a word or a struggle. "Go to Mr. Moore, ask Mr. Moore," was her answer
+when applied to for orders. Never was wooer of wealthy bride so
+thoroughly absolved from the subaltern part, so inevitably compelled to
+assume a paramount character.
+
+In all this Miss Keeldar partly yielded to her disposition; but a remark
+she made a year afterwards proved that she partly also acted on system.
+"Louis," she said, "would never have learned to rule if she had not
+ceased to govern. The incapacity of the sovereign had developed the
+powers of the premier."
+
+It had been intended that Miss Helstone should act as bridesmaid at the
+approaching nuptials, but Fortune had destined her another part.
+
+She came home in time to water her plants. She had performed this little
+task. The last flower attended to was a rose-tree, which bloomed in a
+quiet green nook at the back of the house. This plant had received the
+refreshing shower; she was now resting a minute. Near the wall stood a
+fragment of sculptured stone--a monkish relic--once, perhaps, the base
+of a cross. She mounted it, that she might better command the view. She
+had still the watering pot in one hand; with the other her pretty dress
+was held lightly aside, to avoid trickling drops. She gazed over the
+wall, along some lonely fields; beyond three dusk trees, rising side by
+side against the sky; beyond a solitary thorn at the head of a solitary
+lane far off. She surveyed the dusk moors, where bonfires were kindling.
+The summer evening was warm; the bell-music was joyous; the blue smoke
+of the fires looked soft, their red flame bright. Above them, in the sky
+whence the sun had vanished, twinkled a silver point--the star of love.
+
+Caroline was not unhappy that evening--far otherwise; but as she gazed
+she sighed, and as she sighed a hand circled her, and rested quietly on
+her waist. Caroline thought she knew who had drawn near; she received
+the touch unstartled.
+
+"I am looking at Venus, mamma. See, she is beautiful. How white her
+lustre is, compared with the deep red of the bonfires!"
+
+The answer was a closer caress; and Caroline turned, and looked, not
+into Mrs. Pryor's matron face, but up at a dark manly visage. She
+dropped her watering-pot and stepped down from the pedestal.
+
+"I have been sitting with 'mamma' an hour," said the intruder. "I have
+had a long conversation with her. Where, meantime, have you been?"
+
+"To Fieldhead. Shirley is as naughty as ever, Robert. She will neither
+say Yes nor No to any question put. She sits alone. I cannot tell
+whether she is melancholy or nonchalant. If you rouse her or scold her,
+she gives you a look, half wistful, half reckless, which sends you away
+as queer and crazed as herself. What Louis will make of her, I cannot
+tell. For my part, if I were a gentleman, I think I would not dare
+undertake her."
+
+"Never mind them. They were cut out for each other. Louis, strange to
+say, likes her all the better for these freaks. He will manage her, if
+any one can. She tries him, however. He has had a stormy courtship for
+such a calm character; but you see it all ends in victory for him.
+Caroline, I have sought you to ask an audience. Why are those bells
+ringing?"
+
+"For the repeal of your terrible law--the Orders you hate so much. You
+are pleased, are you not?"
+
+"Yesterday evening at this time I was packing some books for a
+sea-voyage. They were the only possessions, except some clothes, seeds,
+roots, and tools, which I felt free to take with me to Canada. I was
+going to leave you."
+
+"To leave me? To leave _me_?"
+
+Her little fingers fastened on his arm; she spoke and looked affrighted.
+
+"Not now--not now. Examine my face--yes, look at me well. Is the despair
+of parting legible thereon?"
+
+She looked into an illuminated countenance, whose characters were all
+beaming, though the page itself was dusk. This face, potent in the
+majesty of its traits, shed down on her hope, fondness, delight.
+
+"Will the repeal do you good--_much_ good, _immediate_ good?" she
+inquired.
+
+"The repeal of the Orders in Council saves me. Now I shall not turn
+bankrupt; now I shall not give up business; now I shall not leave
+England; now I shall be no longer poor; now I can pay my debts; now all
+the cloth I have in my warehouses will be taken off my hands, and
+commissions given me for much more. This day lays for my fortunes a
+broad, firm foundation, on which, for the first time in my life, I can
+securely build."
+
+Caroline devoured his words; she held his hand in hers; she drew a long
+breath.
+
+"You are saved? Your heavy difficulties are lifted?"
+
+"They are lifted. I breathe. I can act."
+
+"At last! Oh, Providence is kind! Thank Him, Robert."
+
+"I do thank Providence."
+
+"And I also, for your sake!" She looked up devoutly.
+
+"Now I can take more workmen, give better wages, lay wiser and more
+liberal plans, do some good, be less selfish. _Now_, Caroline, I can
+have a house--a home which I can truly call mine--and _now_----"
+
+He paused, for his deep voice was checked.
+
+"And _now_," he resumed--"now I can think of marriage, _now_ I can seek
+a wife."
+
+This was no moment for her to speak. She did not speak.
+
+"Will Caroline, who meekly hopes to be forgiven as she forgives--will
+she pardon all I have made her suffer, all that long pain I have
+wickedly caused her, all that sickness of body and mind she owed to me?
+Will she forget what she knows of my poor ambition, my sordid schemes?
+Will she let me expiate these things? Will she suffer me to prove that,
+as I once deserted cruelly, trifled wantonly, injured basely, I can now
+love faithfully, cherish fondly, treasure tenderly?"
+
+His hand was in Caroline's still; a gentle pressure answered him.
+
+"Is Caroline mine?"
+
+"Caroline is yours."
+
+"I will prize her. The sense of her value is here, in my heart; the
+necessity for her society is blended with my life. Not more jealous
+shall I be of the blood whose flow moves my pulses than of her happiness
+and well-being."
+
+"I love you, too, Robert, and will take faithful care of you."
+
+"Will you take faithful care of me? Faithful care! As if that rose
+should promise to shelter from tempest this hard gray stone! But she
+_will_ care for me, in her way. These hands will be the gentle
+ministrants of every comfort I can taste. I know the being I seek to
+entwine with my own will bring me a solace, a charity, a purity, to
+which, of myself, I am a stranger."
+
+Suddenly Caroline was troubled; her lip quivered.
+
+"What flutters my dove?" asked Moore, as she nestled to and then
+uneasily shrank from him.
+
+"Poor mamma! I am all mamma has. Must I leave her?"
+
+"Do you know, I thought of that difficulty. I and 'mamma' have discussed
+it."
+
+"Tell me what you wish, what you would like, and I will consider if it
+is possible to consent. But I cannot desert her, even for you. I cannot
+break her heart, even for your sake."
+
+"She was faithful when I was false--was she not? I never came near your
+sick-bed, and she watched it ceaselessly."
+
+"What must I do? Anything but leave her."
+
+"At my wish you never shall leave her."
+
+"She may live very near us?"
+
+"With us--only she will have her own rooms and servant. For this she
+stipulates herself."
+
+"You know she has an income, that, with her habits, makes her quite
+independent?"
+
+"She told me that, with a gentle pride that reminded me of somebody
+else."
+
+"She is not at all interfering, and incapable of gossip."
+
+"I know her, Cary. But if, instead of being the personification of
+reserve and discretion, she were something quite opposite, I should not
+fear her."
+
+"Yet she will be your mother-in-law?" The speaker gave an arch little
+nod. Moore smiled.
+
+"Louis and I are not of the order of men who fear their mothers-in-law,
+Cary. Our foes never have been, nor will be, those of our own household.
+I doubt not my mother-in-law will make much of me."
+
+"That she will--in her quiet way, you know. She is not demonstrative;
+and when you see her silent, or even cool, you must not fancy her
+displeased; it is only a manner she has. Be sure to let me interpret for
+her whenever she puzzles you; always believe my account of the matter,
+Robert."
+
+"Oh, implicitly! Jesting apart, I feel that she and I will suit--_on ne
+peut mieux_. Hortense, you know, is exquisitely susceptible--in our
+French sense of the word--and not, perhaps, always reasonable in her
+requirements; yet, dear, honest girl, I never painfully wounded her
+feelings or had a serious quarrel with her in my life."
+
+"No; you are most generously considerate, indeed, most tenderly
+indulgent to her; and you will be considerate with mamma. You are a
+gentleman all through, Robert, to the bone, and nowhere so perfect a
+gentleman as at your own fireside."
+
+"A eulogium I like; it is very sweet. I am well pleased my Caroline
+should view me in this light."
+
+"Mamma just thinks of you as I do."
+
+"Not quite, I hope?"
+
+"She does not want to marry you--don't be vain; but she said to me the
+other day, 'My dear, Mr. Moore has pleasing manners; he is one of the
+few gentlemen I have seen who combine politeness with an air of
+sincerity.'"
+
+"'Mamma' is rather a misanthropist, is she not? Not the best opinion of
+the sterner sex?"
+
+"She forbears to judge them as a whole, but she has her exceptions whom
+she admires--Louis and Mr. Hall, and, of late, yourself. She did not
+like you once; I knew that, because she would never speak of you. But,
+Robert----"
+
+"Well, what now? What is the new thought?"
+
+"You have not seen my uncle yet?"
+
+"I have. 'Mamma' called him into the room. He consents conditionally. If
+I prove that I can keep a wife, I may have her; and I _can_ keep her
+better than he thinks--better than I choose to boast."
+
+"If you get rich you will do good with your money, Robert?"
+
+"I _will_ do good; you shall tell me how. Indeed, I have some schemes of
+my own, which you and I will talk about on our own hearth one day. I
+have seen the necessity of doing good; I have learned the downright
+folly of being selfish. Caroline, I foresee what I will now foretell.
+This war _must_ ere long draw to a close. Trade is likely to prosper for
+some years to come. There may be a brief misunderstanding between
+England and America, but that will not last. What would you think if,
+one day--perhaps ere another ten years elapse--Louis and I divide
+Briarfield parish betwixt us? Louis, at any rate, is certain of power
+and property. He will not bury his talents. He is a benevolent fellow,
+and has, besides, an intellect of his own of no trifling calibre. His
+mind is slow but strong. It must work. It may work deliberately, but it
+will work well. He will be made magistrate of the district--Shirley says
+he shall. She would proceed impetuously and prematurely to obtain for
+him this dignity, if he would let her, but he will not. As usual, he
+will be in no haste. Ere he has been master of Fieldhead a year all the
+district will feel his quiet influence, and acknowledge his unassuming
+superiority. A magistrate is wanted; they will, in time, invest him with
+the office voluntarily and unreluctantly. Everybody admires his future
+wife, and everybody will, in time, like him. He is of the _pâte_
+generally approved, _bon comme le pain_--daily bread for the most
+fastidious, good for the infant and the aged, nourishing for the poor,
+wholesome for the rich. Shirley, in spite of her whims and oddities, her
+dodges and delays, has an infatuated fondness for him. She will one day
+see him as universally beloved as even _she_ could wish. He will also be
+universally esteemed, considered, consulted, depended on--too much so.
+His advice will be always judicious, his help always good-natured. Ere
+long both will be in inconvenient request. He will have to impose
+restrictions. As for me, if I succeed as I intend to do, my success will
+add to his and Shirley's income. I can double the value of their mill
+property. I can line yonder barren Hollow with lines of cottages and
+rows of cottage-gardens----"
+
+"Robert! And root up the copse?"
+
+"The copse shall be firewood ere five years elapse. The beautiful wild
+ravine shall be a smooth descent; the green natural terrace shall be a
+paved street. There shall be cottages in the dark ravine, and cottages
+on the lonely slopes. The rough pebbled track shall be an even, firm,
+broad, black, sooty road, bedded with the cinders from my mill; and my
+mill, Caroline--my mill shall fill its present yard."
+
+"Horrible! You will change our blue hill-country air into the Stilbro'
+smoke atmosphere."
+
+"I will pour the waters of Pactolus through the valley of Briarfield."
+
+"I like the beck a thousand times better."
+
+"I will get an Act for enclosing Nunnely Common, and parcelling it out
+into farms."
+
+"Stilbro' Moor, however, defies you, thank Heaven! What can you grow in
+Bilberry Moss? What will flourish on Rushedge?"
+
+"Caroline, the houseless, the starving, the unemployed shall come to
+Hollow's Mill from far and near; and Joe Scott shall give them work, and
+Louis Moore, Esq., shall let them a tenement, and Mrs. Gill shall mete
+them a portion till the first pay-day."
+
+She smiled up in his face.
+
+"Such a Sunday school as you will have, Cary! such collections as you
+will get! such a day school as you and Shirley and Miss Ainley will have
+to manage between you! The mill shall find salaries for a master and
+mistress, and the squire or the clothier shall give a treat once a
+quarter."
+
+She mutely offered a kiss--an offer taken unfair advantage of, to the
+extortion of about a hundred kisses.
+
+"Extravagant day-dreams," said Moore, with a sigh and smile, "yet
+perhaps we may realize some of them. Meantime, the dew is falling. Mrs.
+Moore, I shall take you in."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is August. The bells clash out again, not only through Yorkshire, but
+through England. From Spain the voice of a trumpet has sounded long; it
+now waxes louder and louder; it proclaims Salamanca won. This night is
+Briarfield to be illuminated. On this day the Fieldhead tenantry dine
+together; the Hollow's Mill workpeople will be assembled for a like
+festal purpose; the schools have a grand treat. This morning there were
+two marriages solemnized in Briarfield church--Louis Gérard Moore, Esq.,
+late of Antwerp, to Shirley, daughter of the late Charles Cave Keeldar,
+Esq., of Fieldhead; Robert Gérard Moore, Esq., of Hollow's Mill, to
+Caroline, niece of the Rev. Matthewson Helstone, M.A., rector of
+Briarfield.
+
+The ceremony, in the first instance, was performed by Mr. Helstone,
+Hiram Yorke, Esq., of Briarmains, giving the bride away. In the second
+instance, Mr. Hall, vicar of Nunnely, officiated. Amongst the bridal
+train the two most noticeable personages were the youthful bridesmen,
+Henry Sympson and Martin Yorke.
+
+I suppose Robert Moore's prophecies were, partially at least, fulfilled.
+The other day I passed up the Hollow, which tradition says was once
+green, and lone, and wild; and there I saw the manufacturer's day-dreams
+embodied in substantial stone and brick and ashes--the cinder-black
+highway, the cottages, and the cottage gardens; there I saw a mighty
+mill, and a chimney ambitious as the tower of Babel. I told my old
+housekeeper when I came home where I had been.
+
+"Ay," said she, "this world has queer changes. I can remember the old
+mill being built--the very first it was in all the district; and then I
+can remember it being pulled down, and going with my lake-lasses
+[companions] to see the foundation-stone of the new one laid. The two
+Mr. Moores made a great stir about it. They were there, and a deal of
+fine folk besides, and both their ladies; very bonny and grand they
+looked. But Mrs. Louis was the grandest; she always wore such handsome
+dresses. Mrs. Robert was quieter like. Mrs. Louis smiled when she
+talked. She had a real, happy, glad, good-natured look; but she had een
+that pierced a body through. There is no such ladies nowadays."
+
+"What was the Hollow like then, Martha?"
+
+"Different to what it is now; but I can tell of it clean different
+again, when there was neither mill, nor cot, nor hall, except Fieldhead,
+within two miles of it. I can tell, one summer evening, fifty years
+syne, my mother coming running in just at the edge of dark, almost
+fleyed out of her wits, saying she had seen a fairish [fairy] in
+Fieldhead Hollow; and that was the last fairish that ever was seen on
+this countryside (though they've been heard within these forty years). A
+lonesome spot it was, and a bonny spot, full of oak trees and nut trees.
+It is altered now."
+
+The story is told. I think I now see the judicious reader putting on his
+spectacles to look for the moral. It would be an insult to his sagacity
+to offer directions. I only say, God speed him in the quest!
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+ESTABLISHED 1798
+
+[Illustration]
+
+T. NELSON AND SONS
+
+PRINTERS AND PUBLISHERS
+
+
+
+
+THE NELSON CLASSICS.
+
+_Uniform with this Volume and Same Price._
+
+
+=Jack Sheppard.= HARRISON AINSWORTH.
+
+
+=Masterman Ready.= CAPTAIN MARRYAT.
+
+
+=Michael Strogoff.= JULES VERNE.
+
+
+=The Wide Wide World.= ELIZ. WETHERELL.
+
+This famous American novel has for many years been a classic in every
+home. It is a masterpiece of the best type of domestic fiction.
+
+
+=Hereward the Wake.= CHARLES KINGSLEY.
+
+This brilliant romance tells of the last stand of the great English
+leader, Hereward, against the advance of the Normans. The scene is
+largely laid in the Fen country, and every page is a record of fierce
+strife. The fall of Hereward is one of the greatest death scenes in
+literature.
+
+
+=David Copperfield--I.= CHARLES DICKENS.
+
+
+=David Copperfield--II.= CHARLES DICKENS.
+
+"David Copperfield" is, by general consent, Dickens's masterpiece,
+showing, as it does, all his peculiar merits in their highest form. It
+is the most autobiographical of his novels, and the one into which he
+put most of his philosophy of life.
+
+
+=Jane Eyre.= CHARLOTTE BRONTË.
+
+"Jane Eyre" is Charlotte Brontë's first and most famous work. It was the
+first realistic novel, in the modern sense of the word, in English
+literature, and its influence has been beyond reckoning. It ranks as one
+of the great novels of the nineteenth century.
+
+
+=Verdant Green.= CUTHBERT BEDE.
+
+This is the humorous classic of Oxford life. Published more than half a
+century ago, its humour is as fresh to-day as ever.
+
+
+=Pickwick Papers--I.= CHARLES DICKENS.
+
+
+=Pickwick Papers--II.= CHARLES DICKENS.
+
+Every year sees a new edition of "Pickwick," and the world still asks
+for more. It is one of the world's greatest romances of the road, where
+adventures fall to those who seek them. It is also a faithful and loving
+picture of an older England, from which we have travelled far to-day. We
+may become a wiser people, but we shall never again be so humorous.
+
+
+=Windsor Castle.= HARRISON AINSWORTH.
+
+The romances of Harrison Ainsworth need no advertisement. In this, as in
+his "Tower of London" and "Old St. Paul's," he has taken one of
+England's great historical sites, and woven around it an appropriate
+romance.
+
+
+=Peg Woffington.= CHARLES READE.
+
+"Peg Woffington" was the first of Charles Reade's romances, and was
+founded upon his comedy, "Masks and Faces." The story of the famous
+Irish actress who dazzled London in the eighteenth century, and with
+whom Garrick was in love, has been made the foundation of a charming
+romance.
+
+
+=Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character.= Dean RAMSAY.
+
+The only book of jests that has ever attained an honourable place in
+literature. Its wealth of genuine humour is a perpetual refutation of
+the old slander that Scots joke "wi' deeficulty."
+
+
+=Parables from Nature.= Mrs. GATTY.
+
+This is one of the great children's books of the world. It was a classic
+in our grandmothers' time, and possesses that imperishable charm which
+makes it as attractive to-day as when it was first written.
+
+
+=Lavengro.= GEORGE BORROW.
+
+The greatest romance of the road in English literature, telling of all
+the byways and humours of that older England which is fast disappearing.
+
+
+=Little Women.= LOUISA M. ALCOTT.
+
+This delightful book has become a possession of childhood and youth. It
+has captured the affections of millions of young people in two
+continents, and is certainly the finest piece of work in the whole range
+of Miss Alcott's breezy, hopeful, genial, and tender writings.
+
+
+=Pride and Prejudice.= JANE AUSTEN.
+
+=Sense and Sensibility.= JANE AUSTEN.
+
+Sir Walter Scott was among the earliest to detect the merits of Miss
+Austen's work, and of recent years her humour and her keen insight into
+human nature have been abundantly recognized, so that to-day she is
+probably the most read novelist of her period. In Sir Walter Scott's
+phrase she possesses "the exquisite touch which renders ordinary
+commonplace things and characters interesting."
+
+
+=Toilers of the Sea.= VICTOR HUGO.
+
+=The Laughing Man.= VICTOR HUGO.
+
+=Les Misérables--I.= VICTOR HUGO.
+
+=Les Misérables--II.= VICTOR HUGO.
+
+
+='Ninety-Three.= VICTOR HUGO.
+
+Victor Hugo took the romantic novel as invented by Sir Walter Scott and
+gave it a new and philosophic interest. All his great romances have a
+purpose. "Les Misérables" exposes the tyranny of human laws; "The
+Toilers of the Sea" shows the conflict of man with nature; "The Laughing
+Man" expounds the tyranny of the aristocratic ideal as exemplified in
+England. But being a great artist as well as a great thinker, he never
+turned his romances into pamphlets. Drama is always his aim, and no
+novelist has attained more often the supreme dramatic moment.
+
+
+=The Heir of Redclyffe.= C. M. YONGE.
+
+This is a reprint of Miss Yonge's most famous tale. It has been said of
+her that she domesticated the historical romance, which owed its origin
+to Sir Walter Scott, and her characters were for long the ideal figures
+of most English households.
+
+
+=Wild Wales.= GEORGE BORROW.
+
+This book was the result of Borrow's wanderings after the publication of
+"Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye." He tramped on foot throughout the
+country, and the work is a classic of description, both of the scenery
+and people.
+
+
+=The Cloister and the Hearth.= CHARLES READE.
+
+There are many who think this the greatest of all historical novels, and
+it is certain that there are few better. It is not a story so much as a
+vast and varied transcript of life. It is also a delightful romance, and
+Gerard and Margaret are among the immortals of fiction.
+
+
+=Romola.= GEORGE ELIOT.
+
+This is the only novel of George Eliot's in which the scene is laid
+outside her own country. It is a story of Florence during the time of
+the Renaissance, a marvellous picture of the intellectual and moral
+ferment which the New Learning created. With amazing learning and
+insight the author portrays the souls of men and women, and her study of
+a weak man and a strong woman has rarely been surpassed in English
+literature for dramatic power and moral truth.
+
+
+=Silas Marner.= GEORGE ELIOT.
+
+This, the shortest and the most exquisite of George Eliot's tales,
+represents her great powers at their best. In the picture of the hero
+she shows a profound understanding of human nature, and the feelings
+which were then moving rural and industrial England.
+
+
+=The Abbot.= Sir WALTER SCOTT.
+
+One of the Waverley novels which has always been deservedly popular.
+
+
+=Bride of Lammermoor.= Sir WALTER SCOTT.
+
+The story is a tragedy on the lines of Greek drama, and the ending has
+been pronounced by great critics to be the most moving in prose
+literature. In the Master of Ravenswood, Scott has drawn perhaps his
+greatest tragic figure, and in Caleb Balderstone one of his most
+humorous creations.
+
+
+=The Black Tulip.= ALEXANDRE DUMAS.
+
+This was the last of Dumas' great stories. It is a veritable _tour de
+force_, for in it the reader follows with consuming interest the
+vicissitudes of a tulip, and the human element in the story is quite
+subsidiary. Nevertheless, it contains such strongly-drawn characters as
+Cornelius van Baerle, the guardian of the tulip, and Rosa, the jailer's
+daughter.
+
+
+=Tom Cringle's Log.= MICHAEL SCOTT.
+
+A brilliant story of West Indian life by an author who combined abundant
+personal experience with keen observation, sprightly temper, and
+delightful humour. "Tom Cringle's Log" has been many times reprinted,
+and has lost nothing of its popularity and power to please.
+
+
+=Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare.=
+
+Tens of thousands of readers have been led to Shakespeare by the
+charmingly told stories which Charles and Mary Lamb, about a hundred
+years ago, extracted from the plays of the greatest dramatist of all
+time. Though produced by Lamb at the very outset of his literary career,
+these stories betray that unique and finished art, that delightful
+freshness and rare sympathy, which are the characteristics of his mature
+work.
+
+
+=The Scarlet Letter.= NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
+
+This is one of the most powerful and affecting stories ever conceived.
+On its first appearance, in 1850, it immediately leaped high into public
+favour, and attained the distinction of an unmistakable classic. The
+tragedy of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale is wrought out in the
+midst of an austere Puritan community, which exacts the bitterest
+expiation for sin.
+
+
+
+
+THE NELSON CLASSICS.
+
+
+_Uniform with this Volume and Same Price_.
+
+CONDENSED LIST.
+
+     1. A Tale of Two Cities.
+     2. Tom Brown's Schooldays.
+     3. The Deerslayer.
+     4. Henry Esmond.
+     5. Hypatia.
+     6. The Mill on the Floss.
+     7. Uncle Tom's Cabin.
+     8. The Last of the Mohicans.
+     9. Adam Bede.
+    10. The Old Curiosity Shop.
+    11. Oliver Twist.
+    12. Kenilworth.
+    13. Robinson Crusoe.
+    14. The Last Days of Pompeii.
+    15. Cloister and the Hearth.
+    16. Ivanhoe.
+    17. East Lynne.
+    18. Cranford.
+    19. John Halifax, Gentleman.
+    20. The Pathfinder.
+    21. Westward Ho!
+    22. The Three Musketeers.
+    23. The Channings.
+    24. The Pilgrim's Progress.
+    25. Pride and Prejudice.
+    26. Quentin Durward.
+    27. Villette.
+    28. Hard Times.
+    29. Child's History of England.
+    30. The Bible in Spain.
+    31. Gulliver's Travels.
+    32. Sense and Sensibility.
+    33. Kate Coventry.
+    34. Silas Marner.
+    35. Notre Dame.
+    36. Old St. Paul's.
+    37. Waverley.
+    38. 'Ninety-Three.
+    39. Eothen.
+    40. Toilers of the Sea.
+    41. Children of the New Forest.
+    42. The Laughing Man.
+    43. A Book of Golden Deeds.
+    44. Great Expectations.
+    45. Guy Mannering.
+    46. Modern Painters (Selections)
+    47. Les Misérables--I.
+    48. Les Misérables--II.
+    49. The Monastery.
+    50. Romola.
+    51. The Vicar of Wakefield.
+    52. Emma.
+    53. Lavengro.
+    54. Emerson's Essays.
+    55. The Bride of Lammermoor.
+    56. The Abbot.
+    57. Tom Cringle's Log.
+    58. Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare.
+    59. The Scarlet Letter.
+    60. Old Mortality.
+    61. The Romany Rye.
+    62. Hans Andersen.
+    63. The Black Tulip.
+    64. Little Women.
+    65. The Talisman.
+    66. Scottish Life and Character.
+    67. The Woman in White.
+    68. Tales of Mystery.
+    69. Fair Maid of Perth.
+    70. Parables from Nature.
+    71. Peg Woffington.
+    72. Windsor Castle.
+    73. Edmund Burke.
+    74. Ingoldsby Legends.
+    75. Pickwick Papers.--I.
+    76. Pickwick Papers.--II.
+    77. Verdant Green.
+    78. The Heir of Redclyffe.
+    79. Wild Wales.
+    80. Two Years Before the Mast.
+    81. Jane Eyre.
+    82. David Copperfield.--I.
+    83. David Copperfield.--II.
+    84. Hereward the Wake.
+    85. Wide Wide World.
+    86. Michael Strogoff.
+
+THOMAS NELSON AND SONS.
+
+
+
+
+    Transcriber's Note:
+
+    Variations in hyphenated words have been retained as
+    they appear in the original publication.
+
+    Changes have been made as follows:
+
+    Page 30
+    with some inpatience _changed to_
+    with some impatience
+
+    Page 48
+    very bravely mantained _changed to_
+    very bravely maintained
+
+    Page 120
+    Sudgen, his staff; and Sudgen arrest him _changed to_
+    Sugden, his staff; and Sugden arrest him
+
+    Page 166
+    The old atticed _changed to_
+    The old latticed
+
+    Page 175
+    Let as have _changed to_
+    Let us have
+
+    Page 185
+    Mrs. Gill, my houskeeper _changed to_
+    Mrs. Gill, my housekeeper
+
+    Page 224
+    by a downward gave _changed to_
+    by a downward gaze
+
+    Page 242
+    gently invired him _changed to_
+    gently invited him
+
+    Page 245
+    a smiling Melancthon _changed to_
+    a smiling Melanchthon
+
+    Page 255
+    Sentinels of Nunwood _changed to_
+    Sentinels of Nunnwood
+
+    Page 260
+    only the profiters _changed to_
+    only the profiteers
+
+    Page 274
+    dark gray irids _changed to_
+    dark gray irides
+
+    Page 297
+    alight and alow _changed to_
+    alight and aglow
+
+    Page 380
+    my old accupation _changed to_
+    my old occupation
+
+    Page 492
+    not without approbrium _changed to_
+    not without opprobrium
+
+    Punctuation has been changed as follows:
+
+    Page 119
+    Mr Moore, we lived _changed to_
+    Mr. Moore, we lived
+
+    Page 145
+    stones on the road? _changed to_
+    stones on the road.
+
+    Page 393
+    "Shirley, my woman _changed to_
+    'Shirley, my woman
+
+    Page 540
+    _reward_ her!" _changed to_
+    _reward_ her!'"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Shirley, by Charlotte Brontë
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHIRLEY ***
+
+***** This file should be named 30486-0.txt or 30486-0.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
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diff --git a/data/train/carroll_-_alice_in_wonderland.txt b/data/train/carroll_-_alice_in_wonderland.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..74bbf1a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/data/train/carroll_-_alice_in_wonderland.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,3774 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+Title: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
+
+Author: Lewis Carroll
+
+Release Date: June 25, 2008 [EBook #11]
+[Most recently updated: October 12, 2020]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND ***
+
+
+
+Produced by Arthur DiBianca and David Widger
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
+
+by Lewis Carroll
+
+THE MILLENNIUM FULCRUM EDITION 3.0
+
+Contents
+
+ CHAPTER I.     Down the Rabbit-Hole
+ CHAPTER II.    The Pool of Tears
+ CHAPTER III.   A Caucus-Race and a Long Tale
+ CHAPTER IV.    The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill
+ CHAPTER V.     Advice from a Caterpillar
+ CHAPTER VI.    Pig and Pepper
+ CHAPTER VII.   A Mad Tea-Party
+ CHAPTER VIII.  The Queen’s Croquet-Ground
+ CHAPTER IX.    The Mock Turtle’s Story
+ CHAPTER X.     The Lobster Quadrille
+ CHAPTER XI.    Who Stole the Tarts?
+ CHAPTER XII.   Alice’s Evidence
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+Down the Rabbit-Hole
+
+
+Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the
+bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into
+the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or
+conversations in it, “and what is the use of a book,” thought Alice
+“without pictures or conversations?”
+
+So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the
+hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of
+making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and
+picking the daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran
+close by her.
+
+There was nothing so _very_ remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it
+so _very_ much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, “Oh
+dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!” (when she thought it over afterwards,
+it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the
+time it all seemed quite natural); but when the Rabbit actually _took a
+watch out of its waistcoat-pocket_, and looked at it, and then hurried
+on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she
+had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a
+watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the
+field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a
+large rabbit-hole under the hedge.
+
+In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how
+in the world she was to get out again.
+
+The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then
+dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think
+about stopping herself before she found herself falling down a very
+deep well.
+
+Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had
+plenty of time as she went down to look about her and to wonder what
+was going to happen next. First, she tried to look down and make out
+what she was coming to, but it was too dark to see anything; then she
+looked at the sides of the well, and noticed that they were filled with
+cupboards and book-shelves; here and there she saw maps and pictures
+hung upon pegs. She took down a jar from one of the shelves as she
+passed; it was labelled “ORANGE MARMALADE”, but to her great
+disappointment it was empty: she did not like to drop the jar for fear
+of killing somebody underneath, so managed to put it into one of the
+cupboards as she fell past it.
+
+“Well!” thought Alice to herself, “after such a fall as this, I shall
+think nothing of tumbling down stairs! How brave they’ll all think me
+at home! Why, I wouldn’t say anything about it, even if I fell off the
+top of the house!” (Which was very likely true.)
+
+Down, down, down. Would the fall _never_ come to an end? “I wonder how
+many miles I’ve fallen by this time?” she said aloud. “I must be
+getting somewhere near the centre of the earth. Let me see: that would
+be four thousand miles down, I think—” (for, you see, Alice had learnt
+several things of this sort in her lessons in the schoolroom, and
+though this was not a _very_ good opportunity for showing off her
+knowledge, as there was no one to listen to her, still it was good
+practice to say it over) “—yes, that’s about the right distance—but
+then I wonder what Latitude or Longitude I’ve got to?” (Alice had no
+idea what Latitude was, or Longitude either, but thought they were nice
+grand words to say.)
+
+Presently she began again. “I wonder if I shall fall right _through_
+the earth! How funny it’ll seem to come out among the people that walk
+with their heads downward! The Antipathies, I think—” (she was rather
+glad there _was_ no one listening, this time, as it didn’t sound at all
+the right word) “—but I shall have to ask them what the name of the
+country is, you know. Please, Ma’am, is this New Zealand or Australia?”
+(and she tried to curtsey as she spoke—fancy _curtseying_ as you’re
+falling through the air! Do you think you could manage it?) “And what
+an ignorant little girl she’ll think me for asking! No, it’ll never do
+to ask: perhaps I shall see it written up somewhere.”
+
+Down, down, down. There was nothing else to do, so Alice soon began
+talking again. “Dinah’ll miss me very much to-night, I should think!”
+(Dinah was the cat.) “I hope they’ll remember her saucer of milk at
+tea-time. Dinah my dear! I wish you were down here with me! There are
+no mice in the air, I’m afraid, but you might catch a bat, and that’s
+very like a mouse, you know. But do cats eat bats, I wonder?” And here
+Alice began to get rather sleepy, and went on saying to herself, in a
+dreamy sort of way, “Do cats eat bats? Do cats eat bats?” and
+sometimes, “Do bats eat cats?” for, you see, as she couldn’t answer
+either question, it didn’t much matter which way she put it. She felt
+that she was dozing off, and had just begun to dream that she was
+walking hand in hand with Dinah, and saying to her very earnestly,
+“Now, Dinah, tell me the truth: did you ever eat a bat?” when suddenly,
+thump! thump! down she came upon a heap of sticks and dry leaves, and
+the fall was over.
+
+Alice was not a bit hurt, and she jumped up on to her feet in a moment:
+she looked up, but it was all dark overhead; before her was another
+long passage, and the White Rabbit was still in sight, hurrying down
+it. There was not a moment to be lost: away went Alice like the wind,
+and was just in time to hear it say, as it turned a corner, “Oh my ears
+and whiskers, how late it’s getting!” She was close behind it when she
+turned the corner, but the Rabbit was no longer to be seen: she found
+herself in a long, low hall, which was lit up by a row of lamps hanging
+from the roof.
+
+There were doors all round the hall, but they were all locked; and when
+Alice had been all the way down one side and up the other, trying every
+door, she walked sadly down the middle, wondering how she was ever to
+get out again.
+
+Suddenly she came upon a little three-legged table, all made of solid
+glass; there was nothing on it except a tiny golden key, and Alice’s
+first thought was that it might belong to one of the doors of the hall;
+but, alas! either the locks were too large, or the key was too small,
+but at any rate it would not open any of them. However, on the second
+time round, she came upon a low curtain she had not noticed before, and
+behind it was a little door about fifteen inches high: she tried the
+little golden key in the lock, and to her great delight it fitted!
+
+Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not
+much larger than a rat-hole: she knelt down and looked along the
+passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw. How she longed to get
+out of that dark hall, and wander about among those beds of bright
+flowers and those cool fountains, but she could not even get her head
+through the doorway; “and even if my head would go through,” thought
+poor Alice, “it would be of very little use without my shoulders. Oh,
+how I wish I could shut up like a telescope! I think I could, if I only
+knew how to begin.” For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had
+happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things
+indeed were really impossible.
+
+There seemed to be no use in waiting by the little door, so she went
+back to the table, half hoping she might find another key on it, or at
+any rate a book of rules for shutting people up like telescopes: this
+time she found a little bottle on it, (“which certainly was not here
+before,” said Alice,) and round the neck of the bottle was a paper
+label, with the words “DRINK ME,” beautifully printed on it in large
+letters.
+
+It was all very well to say “Drink me,” but the wise little Alice was
+not going to do _that_ in a hurry. “No, I’ll look first,” she said,
+“and see whether it’s marked ‘_poison_’ or not”; for she had read
+several nice little histories about children who had got burnt, and
+eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they
+_would_ not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them:
+such as, that a red-hot poker will burn you if you hold it too long;
+and that if you cut your finger _very_ deeply with a knife, it usually
+bleeds; and she had never forgotten that, if you drink much from a
+bottle marked “poison,” it is almost certain to disagree with you,
+sooner or later.
+
+However, this bottle was _not_ marked “poison,” so Alice ventured to
+taste it, and finding it very nice, (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed
+flavour of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffee, and
+hot buttered toast,) she very soon finished it off.
+
+*      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+    *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+*      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+“What a curious feeling!” said Alice; “I must be shutting up like a
+telescope.”
+
+And so it was indeed: she was now only ten inches high, and her face
+brightened up at the thought that she was now the right size for going
+through the little door into that lovely garden. First, however, she
+waited for a few minutes to see if she was going to shrink any further:
+she felt a little nervous about this; “for it might end, you know,”
+said Alice to herself, “in my going out altogether, like a candle. I
+wonder what I should be like then?” And she tried to fancy what the
+flame of a candle is like after the candle is blown out, for she could
+not remember ever having seen such a thing.
+
+After a while, finding that nothing more happened, she decided on going
+into the garden at once; but, alas for poor Alice! when she got to the
+door, she found she had forgotten the little golden key, and when she
+went back to the table for it, she found she could not possibly reach
+it: she could see it quite plainly through the glass, and she tried her
+best to climb up one of the legs of the table, but it was too slippery;
+and when she had tired herself out with trying, the poor little thing
+sat down and cried.
+
+“Come, there’s no use in crying like that!” said Alice to herself,
+rather sharply; “I advise you to leave off this minute!” She generally
+gave herself very good advice, (though she very seldom followed it),
+and sometimes she scolded herself so severely as to bring tears into
+her eyes; and once she remembered trying to box her own ears for having
+cheated herself in a game of croquet she was playing against herself,
+for this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people.
+“But it’s no use now,” thought poor Alice, “to pretend to be two
+people! Why, there’s hardly enough of me left to make _one_ respectable
+person!”
+
+Soon her eye fell on a little glass box that was lying under the table:
+she opened it, and found in it a very small cake, on which the words
+“EAT ME” were beautifully marked in currants. “Well, I’ll eat it,” said
+Alice, “and if it makes me grow larger, I can reach the key; and if it
+makes me grow smaller, I can creep under the door; so either way I’ll
+get into the garden, and I don’t care which happens!”
+
+She ate a little bit, and said anxiously to herself, “Which way? Which
+way?”, holding her hand on the top of her head to feel which way it was
+growing, and she was quite surprised to find that she remained the same
+size: to be sure, this generally happens when one eats cake, but Alice
+had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way
+things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go
+on in the common way.
+
+So she set to work, and very soon finished off the cake.
+
+*      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+    *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+*      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+The Pool of Tears
+
+
+“Curiouser and curiouser!” cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that
+for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English); “now I’m
+opening out like the largest telescope that ever was! Good-bye, feet!”
+(for when she looked down at her feet, they seemed to be almost out of
+sight, they were getting so far off). “Oh, my poor little feet, I
+wonder who will put on your shoes and stockings for you now, dears? I’m
+sure _I_ shan’t be able! I shall be a great deal too far off to trouble
+myself about you: you must manage the best way you can;—but I must be
+kind to them,” thought Alice, “or perhaps they won’t walk the way I
+want to go! Let me see: I’ll give them a new pair of boots every
+Christmas.”
+
+And she went on planning to herself how she would manage it. “They must
+go by the carrier,” she thought; “and how funny it’ll seem, sending
+presents to one’s own feet! And how odd the directions will look!
+
+     _Alice’s Right Foot, Esq., Hearthrug, near the Fender,_ (_with
+     Alice’s love_).
+
+Oh dear, what nonsense I’m talking!”
+
+Just then her head struck against the roof of the hall: in fact she was
+now more than nine feet high, and she at once took up the little golden
+key and hurried off to the garden door.
+
+Poor Alice! It was as much as she could do, lying down on one side, to
+look through into the garden with one eye; but to get through was more
+hopeless than ever: she sat down and began to cry again.
+
+“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” said Alice, “a great girl like
+you,” (she might well say this), “to go on crying in this way! Stop
+this moment, I tell you!” But she went on all the same, shedding
+gallons of tears, until there was a large pool all round her, about
+four inches deep and reaching half down the hall.
+
+After a time she heard a little pattering of feet in the distance, and
+she hastily dried her eyes to see what was coming. It was the White
+Rabbit returning, splendidly dressed, with a pair of white kid gloves
+in one hand and a large fan in the other: he came trotting along in a
+great hurry, muttering to himself as he came, “Oh! the Duchess, the
+Duchess! Oh! won’t she be savage if I’ve kept her waiting!” Alice felt
+so desperate that she was ready to ask help of any one; so, when the
+Rabbit came near her, she began, in a low, timid voice, “If you please,
+sir—” The Rabbit started violently, dropped the white kid gloves and
+the fan, and skurried away into the darkness as hard as he could go.
+
+Alice took up the fan and gloves, and, as the hall was very hot, she
+kept fanning herself all the time she went on talking: “Dear, dear! How
+queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual.
+I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the
+same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling
+a little different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is, Who
+in the world am I? Ah, _that’s_ the great puzzle!” And she began
+thinking over all the children she knew that were of the same age as
+herself, to see if she could have been changed for any of them.
+
+“I’m sure I’m not Ada,” she said, “for her hair goes in such long
+ringlets, and mine doesn’t go in ringlets at all; and I’m sure I can’t
+be Mabel, for I know all sorts of things, and she, oh! she knows such a
+very little! Besides, _she’s_ she, and _I’m_ I, and—oh dear, how
+puzzling it all is! I’ll try if I know all the things I used to know.
+Let me see: four times five is twelve, and four times six is thirteen,
+and four times seven is—oh dear! I shall never get to twenty at that
+rate! However, the Multiplication Table doesn’t signify: let’s try
+Geography. London is the capital of Paris, and Paris is the capital of
+Rome, and Rome—no, _that’s_ all wrong, I’m certain! I must have been
+changed for Mabel! I’ll try and say ‘_How doth the little_—’” and she
+crossed her hands on her lap as if she were saying lessons, and began
+to repeat it, but her voice sounded hoarse and strange, and the words
+did not come the same as they used to do:—
+
+“How doth the little crocodile
+    Improve his shining tail,
+And pour the waters of the Nile
+    On every golden scale!
+
+“How cheerfully he seems to grin,
+    How neatly spread his claws,
+And welcome little fishes in
+    With gently smiling jaws!”
+
+
+“I’m sure those are not the right words,” said poor Alice, and her eyes
+filled with tears again as she went on, “I must be Mabel after all, and
+I shall have to go and live in that poky little house, and have next to
+no toys to play with, and oh! ever so many lessons to learn! No, I’ve
+made up my mind about it; if I’m Mabel, I’ll stay down here! It’ll be
+no use their putting their heads down and saying ‘Come up again, dear!’
+I shall only look up and say ‘Who am I then? Tell me that first, and
+then, if I like being that person, I’ll come up: if not, I’ll stay down
+here till I’m somebody else’—but, oh dear!” cried Alice, with a sudden
+burst of tears, “I do wish they _would_ put their heads down! I am so
+_very_ tired of being all alone here!”
+
+As she said this she looked down at her hands, and was surprised to see
+that she had put on one of the Rabbit’s little white kid gloves while
+she was talking. “How _can_ I have done that?” she thought. “I must be
+growing small again.” She got up and went to the table to measure
+herself by it, and found that, as nearly as she could guess, she was
+now about two feet high, and was going on shrinking rapidly: she soon
+found out that the cause of this was the fan she was holding, and she
+dropped it hastily, just in time to avoid shrinking away altogether.
+
+“That _was_ a narrow escape!” said Alice, a good deal frightened at the
+sudden change, but very glad to find herself still in existence; “and
+now for the garden!” and she ran with all speed back to the little
+door: but, alas! the little door was shut again, and the little golden
+key was lying on the glass table as before, “and things are worse than
+ever,” thought the poor child, “for I never was so small as this
+before, never! And I declare it’s too bad, that it is!”
+
+As she said these words her foot slipped, and in another moment,
+splash! she was up to her chin in salt water. Her first idea was that
+she had somehow fallen into the sea, “and in that case I can go back by
+railway,” she said to herself. (Alice had been to the seaside once in
+her life, and had come to the general conclusion, that wherever you go
+to on the English coast you find a number of bathing machines in the
+sea, some children digging in the sand with wooden spades, then a row
+of lodging houses, and behind them a railway station.) However, she
+soon made out that she was in the pool of tears which she had wept when
+she was nine feet high.
+
+“I wish I hadn’t cried so much!” said Alice, as she swam about, trying
+to find her way out. “I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by
+being drowned in my own tears! That _will_ be a queer thing, to be
+sure! However, everything is queer to-day.”
+
+Just then she heard something splashing about in the pool a little way
+off, and she swam nearer to make out what it was: at first she thought
+it must be a walrus or hippopotamus, but then she remembered how small
+she was now, and she soon made out that it was only a mouse that had
+slipped in like herself.
+
+“Would it be of any use, now,” thought Alice, “to speak to this mouse?
+Everything is so out-of-the-way down here, that I should think very
+likely it can talk: at any rate, there’s no harm in trying.” So she
+began: “O Mouse, do you know the way out of this pool? I am very tired
+of swimming about here, O Mouse!” (Alice thought this must be the right
+way of speaking to a mouse: she had never done such a thing before, but
+she remembered having seen in her brother’s Latin Grammar, “A mouse—of
+a mouse—to a mouse—a mouse—O mouse!”) The Mouse looked at her rather
+inquisitively, and seemed to her to wink with one of its little eyes,
+but it said nothing.
+
+“Perhaps it doesn’t understand English,” thought Alice; “I daresay it’s
+a French mouse, come over with William the Conqueror.” (For, with all
+her knowledge of history, Alice had no very clear notion how long ago
+anything had happened.) So she began again: “Où est ma chatte?” which
+was the first sentence in her French lesson-book. The Mouse gave a
+sudden leap out of the water, and seemed to quiver all over with
+fright. “Oh, I beg your pardon!” cried Alice hastily, afraid that she
+had hurt the poor animal’s feelings. “I quite forgot you didn’t like
+cats.”
+
+“Not like cats!” cried the Mouse, in a shrill, passionate voice. “Would
+_you_ like cats if you were me?”
+
+“Well, perhaps not,” said Alice in a soothing tone: “don’t be angry
+about it. And yet I wish I could show you our cat Dinah: I think you’d
+take a fancy to cats if you could only see her. She is such a dear
+quiet thing,” Alice went on, half to herself, as she swam lazily about
+in the pool, “and she sits purring so nicely by the fire, licking her
+paws and washing her face—and she is such a nice soft thing to
+nurse—and she’s such a capital one for catching mice—oh, I beg your
+pardon!” cried Alice again, for this time the Mouse was bristling all
+over, and she felt certain it must be really offended. “We won’t talk
+about her any more if you’d rather not.”
+
+“We indeed!” cried the Mouse, who was trembling down to the end of his
+tail. “As if _I_ would talk on such a subject! Our family always
+_hated_ cats: nasty, low, vulgar things! Don’t let me hear the name
+again!”
+
+“I won’t indeed!” said Alice, in a great hurry to change the subject of
+conversation. “Are you—are you fond—of—of dogs?” The Mouse did not
+answer, so Alice went on eagerly: “There is such a nice little dog near
+our house I should like to show you! A little bright-eyed terrier, you
+know, with oh, such long curly brown hair! And it’ll fetch things when
+you throw them, and it’ll sit up and beg for its dinner, and all sorts
+of things—I can’t remember half of them—and it belongs to a farmer, you
+know, and he says it’s so useful, it’s worth a hundred pounds! He says
+it kills all the rats and—oh dear!” cried Alice in a sorrowful tone,
+“I’m afraid I’ve offended it again!” For the Mouse was swimming away
+from her as hard as it could go, and making quite a commotion in the
+pool as it went.
+
+So she called softly after it, “Mouse dear! Do come back again, and we
+won’t talk about cats or dogs either, if you don’t like them!” When the
+Mouse heard this, it turned round and swam slowly back to her: its face
+was quite pale (with passion, Alice thought), and it said in a low
+trembling voice, “Let us get to the shore, and then I’ll tell you my
+history, and you’ll understand why it is I hate cats and dogs.”
+
+It was high time to go, for the pool was getting quite crowded with the
+birds and animals that had fallen into it: there were a Duck and a
+Dodo, a Lory and an Eaglet, and several other curious creatures. Alice
+led the way, and the whole party swam to the shore.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+A Caucus-Race and a Long Tale
+
+
+They were indeed a queer-looking party that assembled on the bank—the
+birds with draggled feathers, the animals with their fur clinging close
+to them, and all dripping wet, cross, and uncomfortable.
+
+The first question of course was, how to get dry again: they had a
+consultation about this, and after a few minutes it seemed quite
+natural to Alice to find herself talking familiarly with them, as if
+she had known them all her life. Indeed, she had quite a long argument
+with the Lory, who at last turned sulky, and would only say, “I am
+older than you, and must know better;” and this Alice would not allow
+without knowing how old it was, and, as the Lory positively refused to
+tell its age, there was no more to be said.
+
+At last the Mouse, who seemed to be a person of authority among them,
+called out, “Sit down, all of you, and listen to me! _I’ll_ soon make
+you dry enough!” They all sat down at once, in a large ring, with the
+Mouse in the middle. Alice kept her eyes anxiously fixed on it, for she
+felt sure she would catch a bad cold if she did not get dry very soon.
+
+“Ahem!” said the Mouse with an important air, “are you all ready? This
+is the driest thing I know. Silence all round, if you please! ‘William
+the Conqueror, whose cause was favoured by the pope, was soon submitted
+to by the English, who wanted leaders, and had been of late much
+accustomed to usurpation and conquest. Edwin and Morcar, the earls of
+Mercia and Northumbria—’”
+
+“Ugh!” said the Lory, with a shiver.
+
+“I beg your pardon!” said the Mouse, frowning, but very politely: “Did
+you speak?”
+
+“Not I!” said the Lory hastily.
+
+“I thought you did,” said the Mouse. “—I proceed. ‘Edwin and Morcar,
+the earls of Mercia and Northumbria, declared for him: and even
+Stigand, the patriotic archbishop of Canterbury, found it advisable—’”
+
+“Found _what_?” said the Duck.
+
+“Found _it_,” the Mouse replied rather crossly: “of course you know
+what ‘it’ means.”
+
+“I know what ‘it’ means well enough, when _I_ find a thing,” said the
+Duck: “it’s generally a frog or a worm. The question is, what did the
+archbishop find?”
+
+The Mouse did not notice this question, but hurriedly went on, “‘—found
+it advisable to go with Edgar Atheling to meet William and offer him
+the crown. William’s conduct at first was moderate. But the insolence
+of his Normans—’ How are you getting on now, my dear?” it continued,
+turning to Alice as it spoke.
+
+“As wet as ever,” said Alice in a melancholy tone: “it doesn’t seem to
+dry me at all.”
+
+“In that case,” said the Dodo solemnly, rising to its feet, “I move
+that the meeting adjourn, for the immediate adoption of more energetic
+remedies—”
+
+“Speak English!” said the Eaglet. “I don’t know the meaning of half
+those long words, and, what’s more, I don’t believe you do either!” And
+the Eaglet bent down its head to hide a smile: some of the other birds
+tittered audibly.
+
+“What I was going to say,” said the Dodo in an offended tone, “was,
+that the best thing to get us dry would be a Caucus-race.”
+
+“What _is_ a Caucus-race?” said Alice; not that she wanted much to
+know, but the Dodo had paused as if it thought that _somebody_ ought to
+speak, and no one else seemed inclined to say anything.
+
+“Why,” said the Dodo, “the best way to explain it is to do it.” (And,
+as you might like to try the thing yourself, some winter day, I will
+tell you how the Dodo managed it.)
+
+First it marked out a race-course, in a sort of circle, (“the exact
+shape doesn’t matter,” it said,) and then all the party were placed
+along the course, here and there. There was no “One, two, three, and
+away,” but they began running when they liked, and left off when they
+liked, so that it was not easy to know when the race was over. However,
+when they had been running half an hour or so, and were quite dry
+again, the Dodo suddenly called out “The race is over!” and they all
+crowded round it, panting, and asking, “But who has won?”
+
+This question the Dodo could not answer without a great deal of
+thought, and it sat for a long time with one finger pressed upon its
+forehead (the position in which you usually see Shakespeare, in the
+pictures of him), while the rest waited in silence. At last the Dodo
+said, “_Everybody_ has won, and all must have prizes.”
+
+“But who is to give the prizes?” quite a chorus of voices asked.
+
+“Why, _she_, of course,” said the Dodo, pointing to Alice with one
+finger; and the whole party at once crowded round her, calling out in a
+confused way, “Prizes! Prizes!”
+
+Alice had no idea what to do, and in despair she put her hand in her
+pocket, and pulled out a box of comfits, (luckily the salt water had
+not got into it), and handed them round as prizes. There was exactly
+one a-piece, all round.
+
+“But she must have a prize herself, you know,” said the Mouse.
+
+“Of course,” the Dodo replied very gravely. “What else have you got in
+your pocket?” he went on, turning to Alice.
+
+“Only a thimble,” said Alice sadly.
+
+“Hand it over here,” said the Dodo.
+
+Then they all crowded round her once more, while the Dodo solemnly
+presented the thimble, saying “We beg your acceptance of this elegant
+thimble;” and, when it had finished this short speech, they all
+cheered.
+
+Alice thought the whole thing very absurd, but they all looked so grave
+that she did not dare to laugh; and, as she could not think of anything
+to say, she simply bowed, and took the thimble, looking as solemn as
+she could.
+
+The next thing was to eat the comfits: this caused some noise and
+confusion, as the large birds complained that they could not taste
+theirs, and the small ones choked and had to be patted on the back.
+However, it was over at last, and they sat down again in a ring, and
+begged the Mouse to tell them something more.
+
+“You promised to tell me your history, you know,” said Alice, “and why
+it is you hate—C and D,” she added in a whisper, half afraid that it
+would be offended again.
+
+“Mine is a long and a sad tale!” said the Mouse, turning to Alice, and
+sighing.
+
+“It _is_ a long tail, certainly,” said Alice, looking down with wonder
+at the Mouse’s tail; “but why do you call it sad?” And she kept on
+puzzling about it while the Mouse was speaking, so that her idea of the
+tale was something like this:—
+
+         “Fury said to a mouse, That he met in the house, ‘Let us both
+         go to law: _I_ will prosecute _you_.—Come, I’ll take no
+         denial; We must have a trial: For really this morning I’ve
+         nothing to do.’ Said the mouse to the cur, ‘Such a trial, dear
+         sir, With no jury or judge, would be wasting our breath.’
+         ‘I’ll be judge, I’ll be jury,’ Said cunning old Fury: ‘I’ll
+         try the whole cause, and condemn you to death.’”
+
+“You are not attending!” said the Mouse to Alice severely. “What are
+you thinking of?”
+
+“I beg your pardon,” said Alice very humbly: “you had got to the fifth
+bend, I think?”
+
+“I had _not!_” cried the Mouse, sharply and very angrily.
+
+“A knot!” said Alice, always ready to make herself useful, and looking
+anxiously about her. “Oh, do let me help to undo it!”
+
+“I shall do nothing of the sort,” said the Mouse, getting up and
+walking away. “You insult me by talking such nonsense!”
+
+“I didn’t mean it!” pleaded poor Alice. “But you’re so easily offended,
+you know!”
+
+The Mouse only growled in reply.
+
+“Please come back and finish your story!” Alice called after it; and
+the others all joined in chorus, “Yes, please do!” but the Mouse only
+shook its head impatiently, and walked a little quicker.
+
+“What a pity it wouldn’t stay!” sighed the Lory, as soon as it was
+quite out of sight; and an old Crab took the opportunity of saying to
+her daughter “Ah, my dear! Let this be a lesson to you never to lose
+_your_ temper!” “Hold your tongue, Ma!” said the young Crab, a little
+snappishly. “You’re enough to try the patience of an oyster!”
+
+“I wish I had our Dinah here, I know I do!” said Alice aloud,
+addressing nobody in particular. “She’d soon fetch it back!”
+
+“And who is Dinah, if I might venture to ask the question?” said the
+Lory.
+
+Alice replied eagerly, for she was always ready to talk about her pet:
+“Dinah’s our cat. And she’s such a capital one for catching mice you
+can’t think! And oh, I wish you could see her after the birds! Why,
+she’ll eat a little bird as soon as look at it!”
+
+This speech caused a remarkable sensation among the party. Some of the
+birds hurried off at once: one old Magpie began wrapping itself up very
+carefully, remarking, “I really must be getting home; the night-air
+doesn’t suit my throat!” and a Canary called out in a trembling voice
+to its children, “Come away, my dears! It’s high time you were all in
+bed!” On various pretexts they all moved off, and Alice was soon left
+alone.
+
+“I wish I hadn’t mentioned Dinah!” she said to herself in a melancholy
+tone. “Nobody seems to like her, down here, and I’m sure she’s the best
+cat in the world! Oh, my dear Dinah! I wonder if I shall ever see you
+any more!” And here poor Alice began to cry again, for she felt very
+lonely and low-spirited. In a little while, however, she again heard a
+little pattering of footsteps in the distance, and she looked up
+eagerly, half hoping that the Mouse had changed his mind, and was
+coming back to finish his story.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill
+
+
+It was the White Rabbit, trotting slowly back again, and looking
+anxiously about as it went, as if it had lost something; and she heard
+it muttering to itself “The Duchess! The Duchess! Oh my dear paws! Oh
+my fur and whiskers! She’ll get me executed, as sure as ferrets are
+ferrets! Where _can_ I have dropped them, I wonder?” Alice guessed in a
+moment that it was looking for the fan and the pair of white kid
+gloves, and she very good-naturedly began hunting about for them, but
+they were nowhere to be seen—everything seemed to have changed since
+her swim in the pool, and the great hall, with the glass table and the
+little door, had vanished completely.
+
+Very soon the Rabbit noticed Alice, as she went hunting about, and
+called out to her in an angry tone, “Why, Mary Ann, what _are_ you
+doing out here? Run home this moment, and fetch me a pair of gloves and
+a fan! Quick, now!” And Alice was so much frightened that she ran off
+at once in the direction it pointed to, without trying to explain the
+mistake it had made.
+
+“He took me for his housemaid,” she said to herself as she ran. “How
+surprised he’ll be when he finds out who I am! But I’d better take him
+his fan and gloves—that is, if I can find them.” As she said this, she
+came upon a neat little house, on the door of which was a bright brass
+plate with the name “W. RABBIT,” engraved upon it. She went in without
+knocking, and hurried upstairs, in great fear lest she should meet the
+real Mary Ann, and be turned out of the house before she had found the
+fan and gloves.
+
+“How queer it seems,” Alice said to herself, “to be going messages for
+a rabbit! I suppose Dinah’ll be sending me on messages next!” And she
+began fancying the sort of thing that would happen: “‘Miss Alice! Come
+here directly, and get ready for your walk!’ ‘Coming in a minute,
+nurse! But I’ve got to see that the mouse doesn’t get out.’ Only I
+don’t think,” Alice went on, “that they’d let Dinah stop in the house
+if it began ordering people about like that!”
+
+By this time she had found her way into a tidy little room with a table
+in the window, and on it (as she had hoped) a fan and two or three
+pairs of tiny white kid gloves: she took up the fan and a pair of the
+gloves, and was just going to leave the room, when her eye fell upon a
+little bottle that stood near the looking-glass. There was no label
+this time with the words “DRINK ME,” but nevertheless she uncorked it
+and put it to her lips. “I know _something_ interesting is sure to
+happen,” she said to herself, “whenever I eat or drink anything; so
+I’ll just see what this bottle does. I do hope it’ll make me grow large
+again, for really I’m quite tired of being such a tiny little thing!”
+
+It did so indeed, and much sooner than she had expected: before she had
+drunk half the bottle, she found her head pressing against the ceiling,
+and had to stoop to save her neck from being broken. She hastily put
+down the bottle, saying to herself “That’s quite enough—I hope I shan’t
+grow any more—As it is, I can’t get out at the door—I do wish I hadn’t
+drunk quite so much!”
+
+Alas! it was too late to wish that! She went on growing, and growing,
+and very soon had to kneel down on the floor: in another minute there
+was not even room for this, and she tried the effect of lying down with
+one elbow against the door, and the other arm curled round her head.
+Still she went on growing, and, as a last resource, she put one arm out
+of the window, and one foot up the chimney, and said to herself “Now I
+can do no more, whatever happens. What _will_ become of me?”
+
+Luckily for Alice, the little magic bottle had now had its full effect,
+and she grew no larger: still it was very uncomfortable, and, as there
+seemed to be no sort of chance of her ever getting out of the room
+again, no wonder she felt unhappy.
+
+“It was much pleasanter at home,” thought poor Alice, “when one wasn’t
+always growing larger and smaller, and being ordered about by mice and
+rabbits. I almost wish I hadn’t gone down that rabbit-hole—and yet—and
+yet—it’s rather curious, you know, this sort of life! I do wonder what
+_can_ have happened to me! When I used to read fairy-tales, I fancied
+that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of
+one! There ought to be a book written about me, that there ought! And
+when I grow up, I’ll write one—but I’m grown up now,” she added in a
+sorrowful tone; “at least there’s no room to grow up any more _here_.”
+
+“But then,” thought Alice, “shall I _never_ get any older than I am
+now? That’ll be a comfort, one way—never to be an old woman—but
+then—always to have lessons to learn! Oh, I shouldn’t like _that!_”
+
+“Oh, you foolish Alice!” she answered herself. “How can you learn
+lessons in here? Why, there’s hardly room for _you_, and no room at all
+for any lesson-books!”
+
+And so she went on, taking first one side and then the other, and
+making quite a conversation of it altogether; but after a few minutes
+she heard a voice outside, and stopped to listen.
+
+“Mary Ann! Mary Ann!” said the voice. “Fetch me my gloves this moment!”
+Then came a little pattering of feet on the stairs. Alice knew it was
+the Rabbit coming to look for her, and she trembled till she shook the
+house, quite forgetting that she was now about a thousand times as
+large as the Rabbit, and had no reason to be afraid of it.
+
+Presently the Rabbit came up to the door, and tried to open it; but, as
+the door opened inwards, and Alice’s elbow was pressed hard against it,
+that attempt proved a failure. Alice heard it say to itself “Then I’ll
+go round and get in at the window.”
+
+“_That_ you won’t!” thought Alice, and, after waiting till she fancied
+she heard the Rabbit just under the window, she suddenly spread out her
+hand, and made a snatch in the air. She did not get hold of anything,
+but she heard a little shriek and a fall, and a crash of broken glass,
+from which she concluded that it was just possible it had fallen into a
+cucumber-frame, or something of the sort.
+
+Next came an angry voice—the Rabbit’s—“Pat! Pat! Where are you?” And
+then a voice she had never heard before, “Sure then I’m here! Digging
+for apples, yer honour!”
+
+“Digging for apples, indeed!” said the Rabbit angrily. “Here! Come and
+help me out of _this!_” (Sounds of more broken glass.)
+
+“Now tell me, Pat, what’s that in the window?”
+
+“Sure, it’s an arm, yer honour!” (He pronounced it “arrum.”)
+
+“An arm, you goose! Who ever saw one that size? Why, it fills the whole
+window!”
+
+“Sure, it does, yer honour: but it’s an arm for all that.”
+
+“Well, it’s got no business there, at any rate: go and take it away!”
+
+There was a long silence after this, and Alice could only hear whispers
+now and then; such as, “Sure, I don’t like it, yer honour, at all, at
+all!” “Do as I tell you, you coward!” and at last she spread out her
+hand again, and made another snatch in the air. This time there were
+_two_ little shrieks, and more sounds of broken glass. “What a number
+of cucumber-frames there must be!” thought Alice. “I wonder what
+they’ll do next! As for pulling me out of the window, I only wish they
+_could!_ I’m sure _I_ don’t want to stay in here any longer!”
+
+She waited for some time without hearing anything more: at last came a
+rumbling of little cartwheels, and the sound of a good many voices all
+talking together: she made out the words: “Where’s the other
+ladder?—Why, I hadn’t to bring but one; Bill’s got the other—Bill!
+fetch it here, lad!—Here, put ’em up at this corner—No, tie ’em
+together first—they don’t reach half high enough yet—Oh! they’ll do
+well enough; don’t be particular—Here, Bill! catch hold of this
+rope—Will the roof bear?—Mind that loose slate—Oh, it’s coming down!
+Heads below!” (a loud crash)—“Now, who did that?—It was Bill, I
+fancy—Who’s to go down the chimney?—Nay, _I_ shan’t! _You_ do
+it!—_That_ I won’t, then!—Bill’s to go down—Here, Bill! the master says
+you’re to go down the chimney!”
+
+“Oh! So Bill’s got to come down the chimney, has he?” said Alice to
+herself. “Shy, they seem to put everything upon Bill! I wouldn’t be in
+Bill’s place for a good deal: this fireplace is narrow, to be sure; but
+I _think_ I can kick a little!”
+
+She drew her foot as far down the chimney as she could, and waited till
+she heard a little animal (she couldn’t guess of what sort it was)
+scratching and scrambling about in the chimney close above her: then,
+saying to herself “This is Bill,” she gave one sharp kick, and waited
+to see what would happen next.
+
+The first thing she heard was a general chorus of “There goes Bill!”
+then the Rabbit’s voice along—“Catch him, you by the hedge!” then
+silence, and then another confusion of voices—“Hold up his head—Brandy
+now—Don’t choke him—How was it, old fellow? What happened to you? Tell
+us all about it!”
+
+Last came a little feeble, squeaking voice, (“That’s Bill,” thought
+Alice,) “Well, I hardly know—No more, thank ye; I’m better now—but I’m
+a deal too flustered to tell you—all I know is, something comes at me
+like a Jack-in-the-box, and up I goes like a sky-rocket!”
+
+“So you did, old fellow!” said the others.
+
+“We must burn the house down!” said the Rabbit’s voice; and Alice
+called out as loud as she could, “If you do, I’ll set Dinah at you!”
+
+There was a dead silence instantly, and Alice thought to herself, “I
+wonder what they _will_ do next! If they had any sense, they’d take the
+roof off.” After a minute or two, they began moving about again, and
+Alice heard the Rabbit say, “A barrowful will do, to begin with.”
+
+“A barrowful of _what?_” thought Alice; but she had not long to doubt,
+for the next moment a shower of little pebbles came rattling in at the
+window, and some of them hit her in the face. “I’ll put a stop to
+this,” she said to herself, and shouted out, “You’d better not do that
+again!” which produced another dead silence.
+
+Alice noticed with some surprise that the pebbles were all turning into
+little cakes as they lay on the floor, and a bright idea came into her
+head. “If I eat one of these cakes,” she thought, “it’s sure to make
+_some_ change in my size; and as it can’t possibly make me larger, it
+must make me smaller, I suppose.”
+
+So she swallowed one of the cakes, and was delighted to find that she
+began shrinking directly. As soon as she was small enough to get
+through the door, she ran out of the house, and found quite a crowd of
+little animals and birds waiting outside. The poor little Lizard, Bill,
+was in the middle, being held up by two guinea-pigs, who were giving it
+something out of a bottle. They all made a rush at Alice the moment she
+appeared; but she ran off as hard as she could, and soon found herself
+safe in a thick wood.
+
+“The first thing I’ve got to do,” said Alice to herself, as she
+wandered about in the wood, “is to grow to my right size again; and the
+second thing is to find my way into that lovely garden. I think that
+will be the best plan.”
+
+It sounded an excellent plan, no doubt, and very neatly and simply
+arranged; the only difficulty was, that she had not the smallest idea
+how to set about it; and while she was peering about anxiously among
+the trees, a little sharp bark just over her head made her look up in a
+great hurry.
+
+An enormous puppy was looking down at her with large round eyes, and
+feebly stretching out one paw, trying to touch her. “Poor little
+thing!” said Alice, in a coaxing tone, and she tried hard to whistle to
+it; but she was terribly frightened all the time at the thought that it
+might be hungry, in which case it would be very likely to eat her up in
+spite of all her coaxing.
+
+Hardly knowing what she did, she picked up a little bit of stick, and
+held it out to the puppy; whereupon the puppy jumped into the air off
+all its feet at once, with a yelp of delight, and rushed at the stick,
+and made believe to worry it; then Alice dodged behind a great thistle,
+to keep herself from being run over; and the moment she appeared on the
+other side, the puppy made another rush at the stick, and tumbled head
+over heels in its hurry to get hold of it; then Alice, thinking it was
+very like having a game of play with a cart-horse, and expecting every
+moment to be trampled under its feet, ran round the thistle again; then
+the puppy began a series of short charges at the stick, running a very
+little way forwards each time and a long way back, and barking hoarsely
+all the while, till at last it sat down a good way off, panting, with
+its tongue hanging out of its mouth, and its great eyes half shut.
+
+This seemed to Alice a good opportunity for making her escape; so she
+set off at once, and ran till she was quite tired and out of breath,
+and till the puppy’s bark sounded quite faint in the distance.
+
+“And yet what a dear little puppy it was!” said Alice, as she leant
+against a buttercup to rest herself, and fanned herself with one of the
+leaves: “I should have liked teaching it tricks very much, if—if I’d
+only been the right size to do it! Oh dear! I’d nearly forgotten that
+I’ve got to grow up again! Let me see—how _is_ it to be managed? I
+suppose I ought to eat or drink something or other; but the great
+question is, what?”
+
+The great question certainly was, what? Alice looked all round her at
+the flowers and the blades of grass, but she did not see anything that
+looked like the right thing to eat or drink under the circumstances.
+There was a large mushroom growing near her, about the same height as
+herself; and when she had looked under it, and on both sides of it, and
+behind it, it occurred to her that she might as well look and see what
+was on the top of it.
+
+She stretched herself up on tiptoe, and peeped over the edge of the
+mushroom, and her eyes immediately met those of a large blue
+caterpillar, that was sitting on the top with its arms folded, quietly
+smoking a long hookah, and taking not the smallest notice of her or of
+anything else.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+Advice from a Caterpillar
+
+
+The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in
+silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and
+addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice.
+
+“Who are _you?_” said the Caterpillar.
+
+This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied,
+rather shyly, “I—I hardly know, sir, just at present—at least I know
+who I _was_ when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been
+changed several times since then.”
+
+“What do you mean by that?” said the Caterpillar sternly. “Explain
+yourself!”
+
+“I can’t explain _myself_, I’m afraid, sir,” said Alice, “because I’m
+not myself, you see.”
+
+“I don’t see,” said the Caterpillar.
+
+“I’m afraid I can’t put it more clearly,” Alice replied very politely,
+“for I can’t understand it myself to begin with; and being so many
+different sizes in a day is very confusing.”
+
+“It isn’t,” said the Caterpillar.
+
+“Well, perhaps you haven’t found it so yet,” said Alice; “but when you
+have to turn into a chrysalis—you will some day, you know—and then
+after that into a butterfly, I should think you’ll feel it a little
+queer, won’t you?”
+
+“Not a bit,” said the Caterpillar.
+
+“Well, perhaps your feelings may be different,” said Alice; “all I know
+is, it would feel very queer to _me_.”
+
+“You!” said the Caterpillar contemptuously. “Who are _you?_”
+
+Which brought them back again to the beginning of the conversation.
+Alice felt a little irritated at the Caterpillar’s making such _very_
+short remarks, and she drew herself up and said, very gravely, “I
+think, you ought to tell me who _you_ are, first.”
+
+“Why?” said the Caterpillar.
+
+Here was another puzzling question; and as Alice could not think of any
+good reason, and as the Caterpillar seemed to be in a _very_ unpleasant
+state of mind, she turned away.
+
+“Come back!” the Caterpillar called after her. “I’ve something
+important to say!”
+
+This sounded promising, certainly: Alice turned and came back again.
+
+“Keep your temper,” said the Caterpillar.
+
+“Is that all?” said Alice, swallowing down her anger as well as she
+could.
+
+“No,” said the Caterpillar.
+
+Alice thought she might as well wait, as she had nothing else to do,
+and perhaps after all it might tell her something worth hearing. For
+some minutes it puffed away without speaking, but at last it unfolded
+its arms, took the hookah out of its mouth again, and said, “So you
+think you’re changed, do you?”
+
+“I’m afraid I am, sir,” said Alice; “I can’t remember things as I
+used—and I don’t keep the same size for ten minutes together!”
+
+“Can’t remember _what_ things?” said the Caterpillar.
+
+“Well, I’ve tried to say “How doth the little busy bee,” but it all
+came different!” Alice replied in a very melancholy voice.
+
+“Repeat, “_You are old, Father William_,’” said the Caterpillar.
+
+Alice folded her hands, and began:—
+
+“You are old, Father William,” the young man said,
+    “And your hair has become very white;
+And yet you incessantly stand on your head—
+    Do you think, at your age, it is right?”
+
+“In my youth,” Father William replied to his son,
+    “I feared it might injure the brain;
+But, now that I’m perfectly sure I have none,
+    Why, I do it again and again.”
+
+“You are old,” said the youth, “as I mentioned before,
+    And have grown most uncommonly fat;
+Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door—
+    Pray, what is the reason of that?”
+
+“In my youth,” said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
+    “I kept all my limbs very supple
+By the use of this ointment—one shilling the box—
+    Allow me to sell you a couple?”
+
+“You are old,” said the youth, “and your jaws are too weak
+    For anything tougher than suet;
+Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak—
+    Pray, how did you manage to do it?”
+
+“In my youth,” said his father, “I took to the law,
+    And argued each case with my wife;
+And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw,
+    Has lasted the rest of my life.”
+
+“You are old,” said the youth, “one would hardly suppose
+    That your eye was as steady as ever;
+Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose—
+    What made you so awfully clever?”
+
+“I have answered three questions, and that is enough,”
+    Said his father; “don’t give yourself airs!
+Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
+    Be off, or I’ll kick you down stairs!”
+
+
+“That is not said right,” said the Caterpillar.
+
+“Not _quite_ right, I’m afraid,” said Alice, timidly; “some of the
+words have got altered.”
+
+“It is wrong from beginning to end,” said the Caterpillar decidedly,
+and there was silence for some minutes.
+
+The Caterpillar was the first to speak.
+
+“What size do you want to be?” it asked.
+
+“Oh, I’m not particular as to size,” Alice hastily replied; “only one
+doesn’t like changing so often, you know.”
+
+“I _don’t_ know,” said the Caterpillar.
+
+Alice said nothing: she had never been so much contradicted in her life
+before, and she felt that she was losing her temper.
+
+“Are you content now?” said the Caterpillar.
+
+“Well, I should like to be a _little_ larger, sir, if you wouldn’t
+mind,” said Alice: “three inches is such a wretched height to be.”
+
+“It is a very good height indeed!” said the Caterpillar angrily,
+rearing itself upright as it spoke (it was exactly three inches high).
+
+“But I’m not used to it!” pleaded poor Alice in a piteous tone. And she
+thought of herself, “I wish the creatures wouldn’t be so easily
+offended!”
+
+“You’ll get used to it in time,” said the Caterpillar; and it put the
+hookah into its mouth and began smoking again.
+
+This time Alice waited patiently until it chose to speak again. In a
+minute or two the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth and
+yawned once or twice, and shook itself. Then it got down off the
+mushroom, and crawled away in the grass, merely remarking as it went,
+“One side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you
+grow shorter.”
+
+“One side of _what?_ The other side of _what?_” thought Alice to
+herself.
+
+“Of the mushroom,” said the Caterpillar, just as if she had asked it
+aloud; and in another moment it was out of sight.
+
+Alice remained looking thoughtfully at the mushroom for a minute,
+trying to make out which were the two sides of it; and as it was
+perfectly round, she found this a very difficult question. However, at
+last she stretched her arms round it as far as they would go, and broke
+off a bit of the edge with each hand.
+
+“And now which is which?” she said to herself, and nibbled a little of
+the right-hand bit to try the effect: the next moment she felt a
+violent blow underneath her chin: it had struck her foot!
+
+She was a good deal frightened by this very sudden change, but she felt
+that there was no time to be lost, as she was shrinking rapidly; so she
+set to work at once to eat some of the other bit. Her chin was pressed
+so closely against her foot, that there was hardly room to open her
+mouth; but she did it at last, and managed to swallow a morsel of the
+lefthand bit.
+
+*      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+    *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+*      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+“Come, my head’s free at last!” said Alice in a tone of delight, which
+changed into alarm in another moment, when she found that her shoulders
+were nowhere to be found: all she could see, when she looked down, was
+an immense length of neck, which seemed to rise like a stalk out of a
+sea of green leaves that lay far below her.
+
+“What _can_ all that green stuff be?” said Alice. “And where _have_ my
+shoulders got to? And oh, my poor hands, how is it I can’t see you?”
+She was moving them about as she spoke, but no result seemed to follow,
+except a little shaking among the distant green leaves.
+
+As there seemed to be no chance of getting her hands up to her head,
+she tried to get her head down to them, and was delighted to find that
+her neck would bend about easily in any direction, like a serpent. She
+had just succeeded in curving it down into a graceful zigzag, and was
+going to dive in among the leaves, which she found to be nothing but
+the tops of the trees under which she had been wandering, when a sharp
+hiss made her draw back in a hurry: a large pigeon had flown into her
+face, and was beating her violently with its wings.
+
+“Serpent!” screamed the Pigeon.
+
+“I’m _not_ a serpent!” said Alice indignantly. “Let me alone!”
+
+“Serpent, I say again!” repeated the Pigeon, but in a more subdued
+tone, and added with a kind of sob, “I’ve tried every way, and nothing
+seems to suit them!”
+
+“I haven’t the least idea what you’re talking about,” said Alice.
+
+“I’ve tried the roots of trees, and I’ve tried banks, and I’ve tried
+hedges,” the Pigeon went on, without attending to her; “but those
+serpents! There’s no pleasing them!”
+
+Alice was more and more puzzled, but she thought there was no use in
+saying anything more till the Pigeon had finished.
+
+“As if it wasn’t trouble enough hatching the eggs,” said the Pigeon;
+“but I must be on the look-out for serpents night and day! Why, I
+haven’t had a wink of sleep these three weeks!”
+
+“I’m very sorry you’ve been annoyed,” said Alice, who was beginning to
+see its meaning.
+
+“And just as I’d taken the highest tree in the wood,” continued the
+Pigeon, raising its voice to a shriek, “and just as I was thinking I
+should be free of them at last, they must needs come wriggling down
+from the sky! Ugh, Serpent!”
+
+“But I’m _not_ a serpent, I tell you!” said Alice. “I’m a—I’m a—”
+
+“Well! _What_ are you?” said the Pigeon. “I can see you’re trying to
+invent something!”
+
+“I—I’m a little girl,” said Alice, rather doubtfully, as she remembered
+the number of changes she had gone through that day.
+
+“A likely story indeed!” said the Pigeon in a tone of the deepest
+contempt. “I’ve seen a good many little girls in my time, but never
+_one_ with such a neck as that! No, no! You’re a serpent; and there’s
+no use denying it. I suppose you’ll be telling me next that you never
+tasted an egg!”
+
+“I _have_ tasted eggs, certainly,” said Alice, who was a very truthful
+child; “but little girls eat eggs quite as much as serpents do, you
+know.”
+
+“I don’t believe it,” said the Pigeon; “but if they do, why then
+they’re a kind of serpent, that’s all I can say.”
+
+This was such a new idea to Alice, that she was quite silent for a
+minute or two, which gave the Pigeon the opportunity of adding, “You’re
+looking for eggs, I know _that_ well enough; and what does it matter to
+me whether you’re a little girl or a serpent?”
+
+“It matters a good deal to _me_,” said Alice hastily; “but I’m not
+looking for eggs, as it happens; and if I was, I shouldn’t want
+_yours_: I don’t like them raw.”
+
+“Well, be off, then!” said the Pigeon in a sulky tone, as it settled
+down again into its nest. Alice crouched down among the trees as well
+as she could, for her neck kept getting entangled among the branches,
+and every now and then she had to stop and untwist it. After a while
+she remembered that she still held the pieces of mushroom in her hands,
+and she set to work very carefully, nibbling first at one and then at
+the other, and growing sometimes taller and sometimes shorter, until
+she had succeeded in bringing herself down to her usual height.
+
+It was so long since she had been anything near the right size, that it
+felt quite strange at first; but she got used to it in a few minutes,
+and began talking to herself, as usual. “Come, there’s half my plan
+done now! How puzzling all these changes are! I’m never sure what I’m
+going to be, from one minute to another! However, I’ve got back to my
+right size: the next thing is, to get into that beautiful garden—how
+_is_ that to be done, I wonder?” As she said this, she came suddenly
+upon an open place, with a little house in it about four feet high.
+“Whoever lives there,” thought Alice, “it’ll never do to come upon them
+_this_ size: why, I should frighten them out of their wits!” So she
+began nibbling at the righthand bit again, and did not venture to go
+near the house till she had brought herself down to nine inches high.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+Pig and Pepper
+
+
+For a minute or two she stood looking at the house, and wondering what
+to do next, when suddenly a footman in livery came running out of the
+wood—(she considered him to be a footman because he was in livery:
+otherwise, judging by his face only, she would have called him a
+fish)—and rapped loudly at the door with his knuckles. It was opened by
+another footman in livery, with a round face, and large eyes like a
+frog; and both footmen, Alice noticed, had powdered hair that curled
+all over their heads. She felt very curious to know what it was all
+about, and crept a little way out of the wood to listen.
+
+The Fish-Footman began by producing from under his arm a great letter,
+nearly as large as himself, and this he handed over to the other,
+saying, in a solemn tone, “For the Duchess. An invitation from the
+Queen to play croquet.” The Frog-Footman repeated, in the same solemn
+tone, only changing the order of the words a little, “From the Queen.
+An invitation for the Duchess to play croquet.”
+
+Then they both bowed low, and their curls got entangled together.
+
+Alice laughed so much at this, that she had to run back into the wood
+for fear of their hearing her; and when she next peeped out the
+Fish-Footman was gone, and the other was sitting on the ground near the
+door, staring stupidly up into the sky.
+
+Alice went timidly up to the door, and knocked.
+
+“There’s no sort of use in knocking,” said the Footman, “and that for
+two reasons. First, because I’m on the same side of the door as you
+are; secondly, because they’re making such a noise inside, no one could
+possibly hear you.” And certainly there _was_ a most extraordinary
+noise going on within—a constant howling and sneezing, and every now
+and then a great crash, as if a dish or kettle had been broken to
+pieces.
+
+“Please, then,” said Alice, “how am I to get in?”
+
+“There might be some sense in your knocking,” the Footman went on
+without attending to her, “if we had the door between us. For instance,
+if you were _inside_, you might knock, and I could let you out, you
+know.” He was looking up into the sky all the time he was speaking, and
+this Alice thought decidedly uncivil. “But perhaps he can’t help it,”
+she said to herself; “his eyes are so _very_ nearly at the top of his
+head. But at any rate he might answer questions.—How am I to get in?”
+she repeated, aloud.
+
+“I shall sit here,” the Footman remarked, “till tomorrow—”
+
+At this moment the door of the house opened, and a large plate came
+skimming out, straight at the Footman’s head: it just grazed his nose,
+and broke to pieces against one of the trees behind him.
+
+“—or next day, maybe,” the Footman continued in the same tone, exactly
+as if nothing had happened.
+
+“How am I to get in?” asked Alice again, in a louder tone.
+
+“_Are_ you to get in at all?” said the Footman. “That’s the first
+question, you know.”
+
+It was, no doubt: only Alice did not like to be told so. “It’s really
+dreadful,” she muttered to herself, “the way all the creatures argue.
+It’s enough to drive one crazy!”
+
+The Footman seemed to think this a good opportunity for repeating his
+remark, with variations. “I shall sit here,” he said, “on and off, for
+days and days.”
+
+“But what am _I_ to do?” said Alice.
+
+“Anything you like,” said the Footman, and began whistling.
+
+“Oh, there’s no use in talking to him,” said Alice desperately: “he’s
+perfectly idiotic!” And she opened the door and went in.
+
+The door led right into a large kitchen, which was full of smoke from
+one end to the other: the Duchess was sitting on a three-legged stool
+in the middle, nursing a baby; the cook was leaning over the fire,
+stirring a large cauldron which seemed to be full of soup.
+
+“There’s certainly too much pepper in that soup!” Alice said to
+herself, as well as she could for sneezing.
+
+There was certainly too much of it in the air. Even the Duchess sneezed
+occasionally; and as for the baby, it was sneezing and howling
+alternately without a moment’s pause. The only things in the kitchen
+that did not sneeze, were the cook, and a large cat which was sitting
+on the hearth and grinning from ear to ear.
+
+“Please would you tell me,” said Alice, a little timidly, for she was
+not quite sure whether it was good manners for her to speak first, “why
+your cat grins like that?”
+
+“It’s a Cheshire cat,” said the Duchess, “and that’s why. Pig!”
+
+She said the last word with such sudden violence that Alice quite
+jumped; but she saw in another moment that it was addressed to the
+baby, and not to her, so she took courage, and went on again:—
+
+“I didn’t know that Cheshire cats always grinned; in fact, I didn’t
+know that cats _could_ grin.”
+
+“They all can,” said the Duchess; “and most of ’em do.”
+
+“I don’t know of any that do,” Alice said very politely, feeling quite
+pleased to have got into a conversation.
+
+“You don’t know much,” said the Duchess; “and that’s a fact.”
+
+Alice did not at all like the tone of this remark, and thought it would
+be as well to introduce some other subject of conversation. While she
+was trying to fix on one, the cook took the cauldron of soup off the
+fire, and at once set to work throwing everything within her reach at
+the Duchess and the baby—the fire-irons came first; then followed a
+shower of saucepans, plates, and dishes. The Duchess took no notice of
+them even when they hit her; and the baby was howling so much already,
+that it was quite impossible to say whether the blows hurt it or not.
+
+“Oh, _please_ mind what you’re doing!” cried Alice, jumping up and down
+in an agony of terror. “Oh, there goes his _precious_ nose!” as an
+unusually large saucepan flew close by it, and very nearly carried it
+off.
+
+“If everybody minded their own business,” the Duchess said in a hoarse
+growl, “the world would go round a deal faster than it does.”
+
+“Which would _not_ be an advantage,” said Alice, who felt very glad to
+get an opportunity of showing off a little of her knowledge. “Just
+think of what work it would make with the day and night! You see the
+earth takes twenty-four hours to turn round on its axis—”
+
+“Talking of axes,” said the Duchess, “chop off her head!”
+
+Alice glanced rather anxiously at the cook, to see if she meant to take
+the hint; but the cook was busily stirring the soup, and seemed not to
+be listening, so she went on again: “Twenty-four hours, I _think_; or
+is it twelve? I—”
+
+“Oh, don’t bother _me_,” said the Duchess; “I never could abide
+figures!” And with that she began nursing her child again, singing a
+sort of lullaby to it as she did so, and giving it a violent shake at
+the end of every line:
+
+“Speak roughly to your little boy,
+    And beat him when he sneezes:
+He only does it to annoy,
+    Because he knows it teases.”
+
+
+CHORUS.
+(In which the cook and the baby joined):
+
+
+“Wow! wow! wow!”
+
+
+While the Duchess sang the second verse of the song, she kept tossing
+the baby violently up and down, and the poor little thing howled so,
+that Alice could hardly hear the words:—
+
+“I speak severely to my boy,
+    I beat him when he sneezes;
+For he can thoroughly enjoy
+    The pepper when he pleases!”
+
+
+CHORUS.
+
+
+“Wow! wow! wow!”
+
+
+“Here! you may nurse it a bit, if you like!” the Duchess said to Alice,
+flinging the baby at her as she spoke. “I must go and get ready to play
+croquet with the Queen,” and she hurried out of the room. The cook
+threw a frying-pan after her as she went out, but it just missed her.
+
+Alice caught the baby with some difficulty, as it was a queer-shaped
+little creature, and held out its arms and legs in all directions,
+“just like a star-fish,” thought Alice. The poor little thing was
+snorting like a steam-engine when she caught it, and kept doubling
+itself up and straightening itself out again, so that altogether, for
+the first minute or two, it was as much as she could do to hold it.
+
+As soon as she had made out the proper way of nursing it, (which was to
+twist it up into a sort of knot, and then keep tight hold of its right
+ear and left foot, so as to prevent its undoing itself,) she carried it
+out into the open air. “If I don’t take this child away with me,”
+thought Alice, “they’re sure to kill it in a day or two: wouldn’t it be
+murder to leave it behind?” She said the last words out loud, and the
+little thing grunted in reply (it had left off sneezing by this time).
+“Don’t grunt,” said Alice; “that’s not at all a proper way of
+expressing yourself.”
+
+The baby grunted again, and Alice looked very anxiously into its face
+to see what was the matter with it. There could be no doubt that it had
+a _very_ turn-up nose, much more like a snout than a real nose; also
+its eyes were getting extremely small for a baby: altogether Alice did
+not like the look of the thing at all. “But perhaps it was only
+sobbing,” she thought, and looked into its eyes again, to see if there
+were any tears.
+
+No, there were no tears. “If you’re going to turn into a pig, my dear,”
+said Alice, seriously, “I’ll have nothing more to do with you. Mind
+now!” The poor little thing sobbed again (or grunted, it was impossible
+to say which), and they went on for some while in silence.
+
+Alice was just beginning to think to herself, “Now, what am I to do
+with this creature when I get it home?” when it grunted again, so
+violently, that she looked down into its face in some alarm. This time
+there could be _no_ mistake about it: it was neither more nor less than
+a pig, and she felt that it would be quite absurd for her to carry it
+further.
+
+So she set the little creature down, and felt quite relieved to see it
+trot away quietly into the wood. “If it had grown up,” she said to
+herself, “it would have made a dreadfully ugly child: but it makes
+rather a handsome pig, I think.” And she began thinking over other
+children she knew, who might do very well as pigs, and was just saying
+to herself, “if one only knew the right way to change them—” when she
+was a little startled by seeing the Cheshire Cat sitting on a bough of
+a tree a few yards off.
+
+The Cat only grinned when it saw Alice. It looked good-natured, she
+thought: still it had _very_ long claws and a great many teeth, so she
+felt that it ought to be treated with respect.
+
+“Cheshire Puss,” she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know
+whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little
+wider. “Come, it’s pleased so far,” thought Alice, and she went on.
+“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
+
+“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
+
+“I don’t much care where—” said Alice.
+
+“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
+
+“—so long as I get _somewhere_,” Alice added as an explanation.
+
+“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long
+enough.”
+
+Alice felt that this could not be denied, so she tried another
+question. “What sort of people live about here?”
+
+“In _that_ direction,” the Cat said, waving its right paw round, “lives
+a Hatter: and in _that_ direction,” waving the other paw, “lives a
+March Hare. Visit either you like: they’re both mad.”
+
+“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
+
+“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad.
+You’re mad.”
+
+“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
+
+“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”
+
+Alice didn’t think that proved it at all; however, she went on “And how
+do you know that you’re mad?”
+
+“To begin with,” said the Cat, “a dog’s not mad. You grant that?”
+
+“I suppose so,” said Alice.
+
+“Well, then,” the Cat went on, “you see, a dog growls when it’s angry,
+and wags its tail when it’s pleased. Now _I_ growl when I’m pleased,
+and wag my tail when I’m angry. Therefore I’m mad.”
+
+“_I_ call it purring, not growling,” said Alice.
+
+“Call it what you like,” said the Cat. “Do you play croquet with the
+Queen to-day?”
+
+“I should like it very much,” said Alice, “but I haven’t been invited
+yet.”
+
+“You’ll see me there,” said the Cat, and vanished.
+
+Alice was not much surprised at this, she was getting so used to queer
+things happening. While she was looking at the place where it had been,
+it suddenly appeared again.
+
+“By-the-bye, what became of the baby?” said the Cat. “I’d nearly
+forgotten to ask.”
+
+“It turned into a pig,” Alice quietly said, just as if it had come back
+in a natural way.
+
+“I thought it would,” said the Cat, and vanished again.
+
+Alice waited a little, half expecting to see it again, but it did not
+appear, and after a minute or two she walked on in the direction in
+which the March Hare was said to live. “I’ve seen hatters before,” she
+said to herself; “the March Hare will be much the most interesting, and
+perhaps as this is May it won’t be raving mad—at least not so mad as it
+was in March.” As she said this, she looked up, and there was the Cat
+again, sitting on a branch of a tree.
+
+“Did you say pig, or fig?” said the Cat.
+
+“I said pig,” replied Alice; “and I wish you wouldn’t keep appearing
+and vanishing so suddenly: you make one quite giddy.”
+
+“All right,” said the Cat; and this time it vanished quite slowly,
+beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which
+remained some time after the rest of it had gone.
+
+“Well! I’ve often seen a cat without a grin,” thought Alice; “but a
+grin without a cat! It’s the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!”
+
+She had not gone much farther before she came in sight of the house of
+the March Hare: she thought it must be the right house, because the
+chimneys were shaped like ears and the roof was thatched with fur. It
+was so large a house, that she did not like to go nearer till she had
+nibbled some more of the lefthand bit of mushroom, and raised herself
+to about two feet high: even then she walked up towards it rather
+timidly, saying to herself “Suppose it should be raving mad after all!
+I almost wish I’d gone to see the Hatter instead!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+A Mad Tea-Party
+
+
+There was a table set out under a tree in front of the house, and the
+March Hare and the Hatter were having tea at it: a Dormouse was sitting
+between them, fast asleep, and the other two were using it as a
+cushion, resting their elbows on it, and talking over its head. “Very
+uncomfortable for the Dormouse,” thought Alice; “only, as it’s asleep,
+I suppose it doesn’t mind.”
+
+The table was a large one, but the three were all crowded together at
+one corner of it: “No room! No room!” they cried out when they saw
+Alice coming. “There’s _plenty_ of room!” said Alice indignantly, and
+she sat down in a large arm-chair at one end of the table.
+
+“Have some wine,” the March Hare said in an encouraging tone.
+
+Alice looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but tea.
+“I don’t see any wine,” she remarked.
+
+“There isn’t any,” said the March Hare.
+
+“Then it wasn’t very civil of you to offer it,” said Alice angrily.
+
+“It wasn’t very civil of you to sit down without being invited,” said
+the March Hare.
+
+“I didn’t know it was _your_ table,” said Alice; “it’s laid for a great
+many more than three.”
+
+“Your hair wants cutting,” said the Hatter. He had been looking at
+Alice for some time with great curiosity, and this was his first
+speech.
+
+“You should learn not to make personal remarks,” Alice said with some
+severity; “it’s very rude.”
+
+The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this; but all he _said_
+was, “Why is a raven like a writing-desk?”
+
+“Come, we shall have some fun now!” thought Alice. “I’m glad they’ve
+begun asking riddles.—I believe I can guess that,” she added aloud.
+
+“Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?” said
+the March Hare.
+
+“Exactly so,” said Alice.
+
+“Then you should say what you mean,” the March Hare went on.
+
+“I do,” Alice hastily replied; “at least—at least I mean what I
+say—that’s the same thing, you know.”
+
+“Not the same thing a bit!” said the Hatter. “You might just as well
+say that ‘I see what I eat’ is the same thing as ‘I eat what I see’!”
+
+“You might just as well say,” added the March Hare, “that ‘I like what
+I get’ is the same thing as ‘I get what I like’!”
+
+“You might just as well say,” added the Dormouse, who seemed to be
+talking in his sleep, “that ‘I breathe when I sleep’ is the same thing
+as ‘I sleep when I breathe’!”
+
+“It _is_ the same thing with you,” said the Hatter, and here the
+conversation dropped, and the party sat silent for a minute, while
+Alice thought over all she could remember about ravens and
+writing-desks, which wasn’t much.
+
+The Hatter was the first to break the silence. “What day of the month
+is it?” he said, turning to Alice: he had taken his watch out of his
+pocket, and was looking at it uneasily, shaking it every now and then,
+and holding it to his ear.
+
+Alice considered a little, and then said “The fourth.”
+
+“Two days wrong!” sighed the Hatter. “I told you butter wouldn’t suit
+the works!” he added looking angrily at the March Hare.
+
+“It was the _best_ butter,” the March Hare meekly replied.
+
+“Yes, but some crumbs must have got in as well,” the Hatter grumbled:
+“you shouldn’t have put it in with the bread-knife.”
+
+The March Hare took the watch and looked at it gloomily: then he dipped
+it into his cup of tea, and looked at it again: but he could think of
+nothing better to say than his first remark, “It was the _best_ butter,
+you know.”
+
+Alice had been looking over his shoulder with some curiosity. “What a
+funny watch!” she remarked. “It tells the day of the month, and doesn’t
+tell what o’clock it is!”
+
+“Why should it?” muttered the Hatter. “Does _your_ watch tell you what
+year it is?”
+
+“Of course not,” Alice replied very readily: “but that’s because it
+stays the same year for such a long time together.”
+
+“Which is just the case with _mine_,” said the Hatter.
+
+Alice felt dreadfully puzzled. The Hatter’s remark seemed to have no
+sort of meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English. “I don’t quite
+understand you,” she said, as politely as she could.
+
+“The Dormouse is asleep again,” said the Hatter, and he poured a little
+hot tea upon its nose.
+
+The Dormouse shook its head impatiently, and said, without opening its
+eyes, “Of course, of course; just what I was going to remark myself.”
+
+“Have you guessed the riddle yet?” the Hatter said, turning to Alice
+again.
+
+“No, I give it up,” Alice replied: “what’s the answer?”
+
+“I haven’t the slightest idea,” said the Hatter.
+
+“Nor I,” said the March Hare.
+
+Alice sighed wearily. “I think you might do something better with the
+time,” she said, “than waste it in asking riddles that have no
+answers.”
+
+“If you knew Time as well as I do,” said the Hatter, “you wouldn’t talk
+about wasting _it_. It’s _him_.”
+
+“I don’t know what you mean,” said Alice.
+
+“Of course you don’t!” the Hatter said, tossing his head
+contemptuously. “I dare say you never even spoke to Time!”
+
+“Perhaps not,” Alice cautiously replied: “but I know I have to beat
+time when I learn music.”
+
+“Ah! that accounts for it,” said the Hatter. “He won’t stand beating.
+Now, if you only kept on good terms with him, he’d do almost anything
+you liked with the clock. For instance, suppose it were nine o’clock in
+the morning, just time to begin lessons: you’d only have to whisper a
+hint to Time, and round goes the clock in a twinkling! Half-past one,
+time for dinner!”
+
+(“I only wish it was,” the March Hare said to itself in a whisper.)
+
+“That would be grand, certainly,” said Alice thoughtfully: “but then—I
+shouldn’t be hungry for it, you know.”
+
+“Not at first, perhaps,” said the Hatter: “but you could keep it to
+half-past one as long as you liked.”
+
+“Is that the way _you_ manage?” Alice asked.
+
+The Hatter shook his head mournfully. “Not I!” he replied. “We
+quarrelled last March—just before _he_ went mad, you know—” (pointing
+with his tea spoon at the March Hare,) “—it was at the great concert
+given by the Queen of Hearts, and I had to sing
+
+‘Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!
+How I wonder what you’re at!’
+
+
+You know the song, perhaps?”
+
+“I’ve heard something like it,” said Alice.
+
+“It goes on, you know,” the Hatter continued, “in this way:—
+
+‘Up above the world you fly,
+Like a tea-tray in the sky.
+                    Twinkle, twinkle—’”
+
+
+Here the Dormouse shook itself, and began singing in its sleep
+“_Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle, twinkle_—” and went on so long that they
+had to pinch it to make it stop.
+
+“Well, I’d hardly finished the first verse,” said the Hatter, “when the
+Queen jumped up and bawled out, ‘He’s murdering the time! Off with his
+head!’”
+
+“How dreadfully savage!” exclaimed Alice.
+
+“And ever since that,” the Hatter went on in a mournful tone, “he won’t
+do a thing I ask! It’s always six o’clock now.”
+
+A bright idea came into Alice’s head. “Is that the reason so many
+tea-things are put out here?” she asked.
+
+“Yes, that’s it,” said the Hatter with a sigh: “it’s always tea-time,
+and we’ve no time to wash the things between whiles.”
+
+“Then you keep moving round, I suppose?” said Alice.
+
+“Exactly so,” said the Hatter: “as the things get used up.”
+
+“But what happens when you come to the beginning again?” Alice ventured
+to ask.
+
+“Suppose we change the subject,” the March Hare interrupted, yawning.
+“I’m getting tired of this. I vote the young lady tells us a story.”
+
+“I’m afraid I don’t know one,” said Alice, rather alarmed at the
+proposal.
+
+“Then the Dormouse shall!” they both cried. “Wake up, Dormouse!” And
+they pinched it on both sides at once.
+
+The Dormouse slowly opened his eyes. “I wasn’t asleep,” he said in a
+hoarse, feeble voice: “I heard every word you fellows were saying.”
+
+“Tell us a story!” said the March Hare.
+
+“Yes, please do!” pleaded Alice.
+
+“And be quick about it,” added the Hatter, “or you’ll be asleep again
+before it’s done.”
+
+“Once upon a time there were three little sisters,” the Dormouse began
+in a great hurry; “and their names were Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie; and
+they lived at the bottom of a well—”
+
+“What did they live on?” said Alice, who always took a great interest
+in questions of eating and drinking.
+
+“They lived on treacle,” said the Dormouse, after thinking a minute or
+two.
+
+“They couldn’t have done that, you know,” Alice gently remarked;
+“they’d have been ill.”
+
+“So they were,” said the Dormouse; “_very_ ill.”
+
+Alice tried to fancy to herself what such an extraordinary ways of
+living would be like, but it puzzled her too much, so she went on: “But
+why did they live at the bottom of a well?”
+
+“Take some more tea,” the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.
+
+“I’ve had nothing yet,” Alice replied in an offended tone, “so I can’t
+take more.”
+
+“You mean you can’t take _less_,” said the Hatter: “it’s very easy to
+take _more_ than nothing.”
+
+“Nobody asked _your_ opinion,” said Alice.
+
+“Who’s making personal remarks now?” the Hatter asked triumphantly.
+
+Alice did not quite know what to say to this: so she helped herself to
+some tea and bread-and-butter, and then turned to the Dormouse, and
+repeated her question. “Why did they live at the bottom of a well?”
+
+The Dormouse again took a minute or two to think about it, and then
+said, “It was a treacle-well.”
+
+“There’s no such thing!” Alice was beginning very angrily, but the
+Hatter and the March Hare went “Sh! sh!” and the Dormouse sulkily
+remarked, “If you can’t be civil, you’d better finish the story for
+yourself.”
+
+“No, please go on!” Alice said very humbly; “I won’t interrupt again. I
+dare say there may be _one_.”
+
+“One, indeed!” said the Dormouse indignantly. However, he consented to
+go on. “And so these three little sisters—they were learning to draw,
+you know—”
+
+“What did they draw?” said Alice, quite forgetting her promise.
+
+“Treacle,” said the Dormouse, without considering at all this time.
+
+“I want a clean cup,” interrupted the Hatter: “let’s all move one place
+on.”
+
+He moved on as he spoke, and the Dormouse followed him: the March Hare
+moved into the Dormouse’s place, and Alice rather unwillingly took the
+place of the March Hare. The Hatter was the only one who got any
+advantage from the change: and Alice was a good deal worse off than
+before, as the March Hare had just upset the milk-jug into his plate.
+
+Alice did not wish to offend the Dormouse again, so she began very
+cautiously: “But I don’t understand. Where did they draw the treacle
+from?”
+
+“You can draw water out of a water-well,” said the Hatter; “so I should
+think you could draw treacle out of a treacle-well—eh, stupid?”
+
+“But they were _in_ the well,” Alice said to the Dormouse, not choosing
+to notice this last remark.
+
+“Of course they were,” said the Dormouse; “—well in.”
+
+This answer so confused poor Alice, that she let the Dormouse go on for
+some time without interrupting it.
+
+“They were learning to draw,” the Dormouse went on, yawning and rubbing
+its eyes, for it was getting very sleepy; “and they drew all manner of
+things—everything that begins with an M—”
+
+“Why with an M?” said Alice.
+
+“Why not?” said the March Hare.
+
+Alice was silent.
+
+The Dormouse had closed its eyes by this time, and was going off into a
+doze; but, on being pinched by the Hatter, it woke up again with a
+little shriek, and went on: “—that begins with an M, such as
+mouse-traps, and the moon, and memory, and muchness—you know you say
+things are “much of a muchness”—did you ever see such a thing as a
+drawing of a muchness?”
+
+“Really, now you ask me,” said Alice, very much confused, “I don’t
+think—”
+
+“Then you shouldn’t talk,” said the Hatter.
+
+This piece of rudeness was more than Alice could bear: she got up in
+great disgust, and walked off; the Dormouse fell asleep instantly, and
+neither of the others took the least notice of her going, though she
+looked back once or twice, half hoping that they would call after her:
+the last time she saw them, they were trying to put the Dormouse into
+the teapot.
+
+“At any rate I’ll never go _there_ again!” said Alice as she picked her
+way through the wood. “It’s the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in
+all my life!”
+
+Just as she said this, she noticed that one of the trees had a door
+leading right into it. “That’s very curious!” she thought. “But
+everything’s curious today. I think I may as well go in at once.” And
+in she went.
+
+Once more she found herself in the long hall, and close to the little
+glass table. “Now, I’ll manage better this time,” she said to herself,
+and began by taking the little golden key, and unlocking the door that
+led into the garden. Then she went to work nibbling at the mushroom
+(she had kept a piece of it in her pocket) till she was about a foot
+high: then she walked down the little passage: and _then_—she found
+herself at last in the beautiful garden, among the bright flower-beds
+and the cool fountains.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+The Queen’s Croquet-Ground
+
+
+A large rose-tree stood near the entrance of the garden: the roses
+growing on it were white, but there were three gardeners at it, busily
+painting them red. Alice thought this a very curious thing, and she
+went nearer to watch them, and just as she came up to them she heard
+one of them say, “Look out now, Five! Don’t go splashing paint over me
+like that!”
+
+“I couldn’t help it,” said Five, in a sulky tone; “Seven jogged my
+elbow.”
+
+On which Seven looked up and said, “That’s right, Five! Always lay the
+blame on others!”
+
+“_You’d_ better not talk!” said Five. “I heard the Queen say only
+yesterday you deserved to be beheaded!”
+
+“What for?” said the one who had spoken first.
+
+“That’s none of _your_ business, Two!” said Seven.
+
+“Yes, it _is_ his business!” said Five, “and I’ll tell him—it was for
+bringing the cook tulip-roots instead of onions.”
+
+Seven flung down his brush, and had just begun “Well, of all the unjust
+things—” when his eye chanced to fall upon Alice, as she stood watching
+them, and he checked himself suddenly: the others looked round also,
+and all of them bowed low.
+
+“Would you tell me,” said Alice, a little timidly, “why you are
+painting those roses?”
+
+Five and Seven said nothing, but looked at Two. Two began in a low
+voice, “Why the fact is, you see, Miss, this here ought to have been a
+_red_ rose-tree, and we put a white one in by mistake; and if the Queen
+was to find it out, we should all have our heads cut off, you know. So
+you see, Miss, we’re doing our best, afore she comes, to—” At this
+moment Five, who had been anxiously looking across the garden, called
+out “The Queen! The Queen!” and the three gardeners instantly threw
+themselves flat upon their faces. There was a sound of many footsteps,
+and Alice looked round, eager to see the Queen.
+
+First came ten soldiers carrying clubs; these were all shaped like the
+three gardeners, oblong and flat, with their hands and feet at the
+corners: next the ten courtiers; these were ornamented all over with
+diamonds, and walked two and two, as the soldiers did. After these came
+the royal children; there were ten of them, and the little dears came
+jumping merrily along hand in hand, in couples: they were all
+ornamented with hearts. Next came the guests, mostly Kings and Queens,
+and among them Alice recognised the White Rabbit: it was talking in a
+hurried nervous manner, smiling at everything that was said, and went
+by without noticing her. Then followed the Knave of Hearts, carrying
+the King’s crown on a crimson velvet cushion; and, last of all this
+grand procession, came THE KING AND QUEEN OF HEARTS.
+
+Alice was rather doubtful whether she ought not to lie down on her face
+like the three gardeners, but she could not remember ever having heard
+of such a rule at processions; “and besides, what would be the use of a
+procession,” thought she, “if people had all to lie down upon their
+faces, so that they couldn’t see it?” So she stood still where she was,
+and waited.
+
+When the procession came opposite to Alice, they all stopped and looked
+at her, and the Queen said severely “Who is this?” She said it to the
+Knave of Hearts, who only bowed and smiled in reply.
+
+“Idiot!” said the Queen, tossing her head impatiently; and, turning to
+Alice, she went on, “What’s your name, child?”
+
+“My name is Alice, so please your Majesty,” said Alice very politely;
+but she added, to herself, “Why, they’re only a pack of cards, after
+all. I needn’t be afraid of them!”
+
+“And who are _these?_” said the Queen, pointing to the three gardeners
+who were lying round the rose-tree; for, you see, as they were lying on
+their faces, and the pattern on their backs was the same as the rest of
+the pack, she could not tell whether they were gardeners, or soldiers,
+or courtiers, or three of her own children.
+
+“How should _I_ know?” said Alice, surprised at her own courage. “It’s
+no business of _mine_.”
+
+The Queen turned crimson with fury, and, after glaring at her for a
+moment like a wild beast, screamed “Off with her head! Off—”
+
+“Nonsense!” said Alice, very loudly and decidedly, and the Queen was
+silent.
+
+The King laid his hand upon her arm, and timidly said “Consider, my
+dear: she is only a child!”
+
+The Queen turned angrily away from him, and said to the Knave “Turn
+them over!”
+
+The Knave did so, very carefully, with one foot.
+
+“Get up!” said the Queen, in a shrill, loud voice, and the three
+gardeners instantly jumped up, and began bowing to the King, the Queen,
+the royal children, and everybody else.
+
+“Leave off that!” screamed the Queen. “You make me giddy.” And then,
+turning to the rose-tree, she went on, “What _have_ you been doing
+here?”
+
+“May it please your Majesty,” said Two, in a very humble tone, going
+down on one knee as he spoke, “we were trying—”
+
+“_I_ see!” said the Queen, who had meanwhile been examining the roses.
+“Off with their heads!” and the procession moved on, three of the
+soldiers remaining behind to execute the unfortunate gardeners, who ran
+to Alice for protection.
+
+“You shan’t be beheaded!” said Alice, and she put them into a large
+flower-pot that stood near. The three soldiers wandered about for a
+minute or two, looking for them, and then quietly marched off after the
+others.
+
+“Are their heads off?” shouted the Queen.
+
+“Their heads are gone, if it please your Majesty!” the soldiers shouted
+in reply.
+
+“That’s right!” shouted the Queen. “Can you play croquet?”
+
+The soldiers were silent, and looked at Alice, as the question was
+evidently meant for her.
+
+“Yes!” shouted Alice.
+
+“Come on, then!” roared the Queen, and Alice joined the procession,
+wondering very much what would happen next.
+
+“It’s—it’s a very fine day!” said a timid voice at her side. She was
+walking by the White Rabbit, who was peeping anxiously into her face.
+
+“Very,” said Alice: “—where’s the Duchess?”
+
+“Hush! Hush!” said the Rabbit in a low, hurried tone. He looked
+anxiously over his shoulder as he spoke, and then raised himself upon
+tiptoe, put his mouth close to her ear, and whispered “She’s under
+sentence of execution.”
+
+“What for?” said Alice.
+
+“Did you say ‘What a pity!’?” the Rabbit asked.
+
+“No, I didn’t,” said Alice: “I don’t think it’s at all a pity. I said
+‘What for?’”
+
+“She boxed the Queen’s ears—” the Rabbit began. Alice gave a little
+scream of laughter. “Oh, hush!” the Rabbit whispered in a frightened
+tone. “The Queen will hear you! You see, she came rather late, and the
+Queen said—”
+
+“Get to your places!” shouted the Queen in a voice of thunder, and
+people began running about in all directions, tumbling up against each
+other; however, they got settled down in a minute or two, and the game
+began. Alice thought she had never seen such a curious croquet-ground
+in her life; it was all ridges and furrows; the balls were live
+hedgehogs, the mallets live flamingoes, and the soldiers had to double
+themselves up and to stand on their hands and feet, to make the arches.
+
+The chief difficulty Alice found at first was in managing her flamingo:
+she succeeded in getting its body tucked away, comfortably enough,
+under her arm, with its legs hanging down, but generally, just as she
+had got its neck nicely straightened out, and was going to give the
+hedgehog a blow with its head, it _would_ twist itself round and look
+up in her face, with such a puzzled expression that she could not help
+bursting out laughing: and when she had got its head down, and was
+going to begin again, it was very provoking to find that the hedgehog
+had unrolled itself, and was in the act of crawling away: besides all
+this, there was generally a ridge or furrow in the way wherever she
+wanted to send the hedgehog to, and, as the doubled-up soldiers were
+always getting up and walking off to other parts of the ground, Alice
+soon came to the conclusion that it was a very difficult game indeed.
+
+The players all played at once without waiting for turns, quarrelling
+all the while, and fighting for the hedgehogs; and in a very short time
+the Queen was in a furious passion, and went stamping about, and
+shouting “Off with his head!” or “Off with her head!” about once in a
+minute.
+
+Alice began to feel very uneasy: to be sure, she had not as yet had any
+dispute with the Queen, but she knew that it might happen any minute,
+“and then,” thought she, “what would become of me? They’re dreadfully
+fond of beheading people here; the great wonder is, that there’s any
+one left alive!”
+
+She was looking about for some way of escape, and wondering whether she
+could get away without being seen, when she noticed a curious
+appearance in the air: it puzzled her very much at first, but, after
+watching it a minute or two, she made it out to be a grin, and she said
+to herself “It’s the Cheshire Cat: now I shall have somebody to talk
+to.”
+
+“How are you getting on?” said the Cat, as soon as there was mouth
+enough for it to speak with.
+
+Alice waited till the eyes appeared, and then nodded. “It’s no use
+speaking to it,” she thought, “till its ears have come, or at least one
+of them.” In another minute the whole head appeared, and then Alice put
+down her flamingo, and began an account of the game, feeling very glad
+she had someone to listen to her. The Cat seemed to think that there
+was enough of it now in sight, and no more of it appeared.
+
+“I don’t think they play at all fairly,” Alice began, in rather a
+complaining tone, “and they all quarrel so dreadfully one can’t hear
+oneself speak—and they don’t seem to have any rules in particular; at
+least, if there are, nobody attends to them—and you’ve no idea how
+confusing it is all the things being alive; for instance, there’s the
+arch I’ve got to go through next walking about at the other end of the
+ground—and I should have croqueted the Queen’s hedgehog just now, only
+it ran away when it saw mine coming!”
+
+“How do you like the Queen?” said the Cat in a low voice.
+
+“Not at all,” said Alice: “she’s so extremely—” Just then she noticed
+that the Queen was close behind her, listening: so she went on,
+“—likely to win, that it’s hardly worth while finishing the game.”
+
+The Queen smiled and passed on.
+
+“Who _are_ you talking to?” said the King, going up to Alice, and
+looking at the Cat’s head with great curiosity.
+
+“It’s a friend of mine—a Cheshire Cat,” said Alice: “allow me to
+introduce it.”
+
+“I don’t like the look of it at all,” said the King: “however, it may
+kiss my hand if it likes.”
+
+“I’d rather not,” the Cat remarked.
+
+“Don’t be impertinent,” said the King, “and don’t look at me like
+that!” He got behind Alice as he spoke.
+
+“A cat may look at a king,” said Alice. “I’ve read that in some book,
+but I don’t remember where.”
+
+“Well, it must be removed,” said the King very decidedly, and he called
+the Queen, who was passing at the moment, “My dear! I wish you would
+have this cat removed!”
+
+The Queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or
+small. “Off with his head!” she said, without even looking round.
+
+“I’ll fetch the executioner myself,” said the King eagerly, and he
+hurried off.
+
+Alice thought she might as well go back, and see how the game was going
+on, as she heard the Queen’s voice in the distance, screaming with
+passion. She had already heard her sentence three of the players to be
+executed for having missed their turns, and she did not like the look
+of things at all, as the game was in such confusion that she never knew
+whether it was her turn or not. So she went in search of her hedgehog.
+
+The hedgehog was engaged in a fight with another hedgehog, which seemed
+to Alice an excellent opportunity for croqueting one of them with the
+other: the only difficulty was, that her flamingo was gone across to
+the other side of the garden, where Alice could see it trying in a
+helpless sort of way to fly up into a tree.
+
+By the time she had caught the flamingo and brought it back, the fight
+was over, and both the hedgehogs were out of sight: “but it doesn’t
+matter much,” thought Alice, “as all the arches are gone from this side
+of the ground.” So she tucked it away under her arm, that it might not
+escape again, and went back for a little more conversation with her
+friend.
+
+When she got back to the Cheshire Cat, she was surprised to find quite
+a large crowd collected round it: there was a dispute going on between
+the executioner, the King, and the Queen, who were all talking at once,
+while all the rest were quite silent, and looked very uncomfortable.
+
+The moment Alice appeared, she was appealed to by all three to settle
+the question, and they repeated their arguments to her, though, as they
+all spoke at once, she found it very hard indeed to make out exactly
+what they said.
+
+The executioner’s argument was, that you couldn’t cut off a head unless
+there was a body to cut it off from: that he had never had to do such a
+thing before, and he wasn’t going to begin at _his_ time of life.
+
+The King’s argument was, that anything that had a head could be
+beheaded, and that you weren’t to talk nonsense.
+
+The Queen’s argument was, that if something wasn’t done about it in
+less than no time she’d have everybody executed, all round. (It was
+this last remark that had made the whole party look so grave and
+anxious.)
+
+Alice could think of nothing else to say but “It belongs to the
+Duchess: you’d better ask _her_ about it.”
+
+“She’s in prison,” the Queen said to the executioner: “fetch her here.”
+And the executioner went off like an arrow.
+
+The Cat’s head began fading away the moment he was gone, and, by the
+time he had come back with the Duchess, it had entirely disappeared; so
+the King and the executioner ran wildly up and down looking for it,
+while the rest of the party went back to the game.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+The Mock Turtle’s Story
+
+
+“You can’t think how glad I am to see you again, you dear old thing!”
+said the Duchess, as she tucked her arm affectionately into Alice’s,
+and they walked off together.
+
+Alice was very glad to find her in such a pleasant temper, and thought
+to herself that perhaps it was only the pepper that had made her so
+savage when they met in the kitchen.
+
+“When _I’m_ a Duchess,” she said to herself, (not in a very hopeful
+tone though), “I won’t have any pepper in my kitchen _at all_. Soup
+does very well without—Maybe it’s always pepper that makes people
+hot-tempered,” she went on, very much pleased at having found out a new
+kind of rule, “and vinegar that makes them sour—and camomile that makes
+them bitter—and—and barley-sugar and such things that make children
+sweet-tempered. I only wish people knew _that_: then they wouldn’t be
+so stingy about it, you know—”
+
+She had quite forgotten the Duchess by this time, and was a little
+startled when she heard her voice close to her ear. “You’re thinking
+about something, my dear, and that makes you forget to talk. I can’t
+tell you just now what the moral of that is, but I shall remember it in
+a bit.”
+
+“Perhaps it hasn’t one,” Alice ventured to remark.
+
+“Tut, tut, child!” said the Duchess. “Everything’s got a moral, if only
+you can find it.” And she squeezed herself up closer to Alice’s side as
+she spoke.
+
+Alice did not much like keeping so close to her: first, because the
+Duchess was _very_ ugly; and secondly, because she was exactly the
+right height to rest her chin upon Alice’s shoulder, and it was an
+uncomfortably sharp chin. However, she did not like to be rude, so she
+bore it as well as she could.
+
+“The game’s going on rather better now,” she said, by way of keeping up
+the conversation a little.
+
+“’Tis so,” said the Duchess: “and the moral of that is—‘Oh, ’tis love,
+’tis love, that makes the world go round!’”
+
+“Somebody said,” Alice whispered, “that it’s done by everybody minding
+their own business!”
+
+“Ah, well! It means much the same thing,” said the Duchess, digging her
+sharp little chin into Alice’s shoulder as she added, “and the moral of
+_that_ is—‘Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of
+themselves.’”
+
+“How fond she is of finding morals in things!” Alice thought to
+herself.
+
+“I dare say you’re wondering why I don’t put my arm round your waist,”
+the Duchess said after a pause: “the reason is, that I’m doubtful about
+the temper of your flamingo. Shall I try the experiment?”
+
+“He might bite,” Alice cautiously replied, not feeling at all anxious
+to have the experiment tried.
+
+“Very true,” said the Duchess: “flamingoes and mustard both bite. And
+the moral of that is—‘Birds of a feather flock together.’”
+
+“Only mustard isn’t a bird,” Alice remarked.
+
+“Right, as usual,” said the Duchess: “what a clear way you have of
+putting things!”
+
+“It’s a mineral, I _think_,” said Alice.
+
+“Of course it is,” said the Duchess, who seemed ready to agree to
+everything that Alice said; “there’s a large mustard-mine near here.
+And the moral of that is—‘The more there is of mine, the less there is
+of yours.’”
+
+“Oh, I know!” exclaimed Alice, who had not attended to this last
+remark, “it’s a vegetable. It doesn’t look like one, but it is.”
+
+“I quite agree with you,” said the Duchess; “and the moral of that
+is—‘Be what you would seem to be’—or if you’d like it put more
+simply—‘Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might
+appear to others that what you were or might have been was not
+otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be
+otherwise.’”
+
+“I think I should understand that better,” Alice said very politely,
+“if I had it written down: but I can’t quite follow it as you say it.”
+
+“That’s nothing to what I could say if I chose,” the Duchess replied,
+in a pleased tone.
+
+“Pray don’t trouble yourself to say it any longer than that,” said
+Alice.
+
+“Oh, don’t talk about trouble!” said the Duchess. “I make you a present
+of everything I’ve said as yet.”
+
+“A cheap sort of present!” thought Alice. “I’m glad they don’t give
+birthday presents like that!” But she did not venture to say it out
+loud.
+
+“Thinking again?” the Duchess asked, with another dig of her sharp
+little chin.
+
+“I’ve a right to think,” said Alice sharply, for she was beginning to
+feel a little worried.
+
+“Just about as much right,” said the Duchess, “as pigs have to fly; and
+the m—”
+
+But here, to Alice’s great surprise, the Duchess’s voice died away,
+even in the middle of her favourite word ‘moral,’ and the arm that was
+linked into hers began to tremble. Alice looked up, and there stood the
+Queen in front of them, with her arms folded, frowning like a
+thunderstorm.
+
+“A fine day, your Majesty!” the Duchess began in a low, weak voice.
+
+“Now, I give you fair warning,” shouted the Queen, stamping on the
+ground as she spoke; “either you or your head must be off, and that in
+about half no time! Take your choice!”
+
+The Duchess took her choice, and was gone in a moment.
+
+“Let’s go on with the game,” the Queen said to Alice; and Alice was too
+much frightened to say a word, but slowly followed her back to the
+croquet-ground.
+
+The other guests had taken advantage of the Queen’s absence, and were
+resting in the shade: however, the moment they saw her, they hurried
+back to the game, the Queen merely remarking that a moment’s delay
+would cost them their lives.
+
+All the time they were playing the Queen never left off quarrelling
+with the other players, and shouting “Off with his head!” or “Off with
+her head!” Those whom she sentenced were taken into custody by the
+soldiers, who of course had to leave off being arches to do this, so
+that by the end of half an hour or so there were no arches left, and
+all the players, except the King, the Queen, and Alice, were in custody
+and under sentence of execution.
+
+Then the Queen left off, quite out of breath, and said to Alice, “Have
+you seen the Mock Turtle yet?”
+
+“No,” said Alice. “I don’t even know what a Mock Turtle is.”
+
+“It’s the thing Mock Turtle Soup is made from,” said the Queen.
+
+“I never saw one, or heard of one,” said Alice.
+
+“Come on, then,” said the Queen, “and he shall tell you his history,”
+
+As they walked off together, Alice heard the King say in a low voice,
+to the company generally, “You are all pardoned.” “Come, _that’s_ a
+good thing!” she said to herself, for she had felt quite unhappy at the
+number of executions the Queen had ordered.
+
+They very soon came upon a Gryphon, lying fast asleep in the sun. (If
+you don’t know what a Gryphon is, look at the picture.) “Up, lazy
+thing!” said the Queen, “and take this young lady to see the Mock
+Turtle, and to hear his history. I must go back and see after some
+executions I have ordered;” and she walked off, leaving Alice alone
+with the Gryphon. Alice did not quite like the look of the creature,
+but on the whole she thought it would be quite as safe to stay with it
+as to go after that savage Queen: so she waited.
+
+The Gryphon sat up and rubbed its eyes: then it watched the Queen till
+she was out of sight: then it chuckled. “What fun!” said the Gryphon,
+half to itself, half to Alice.
+
+“What _is_ the fun?” said Alice.
+
+“Why, _she_,” said the Gryphon. “It’s all her fancy, that: they never
+executes nobody, you know. Come on!”
+
+“Everybody says ‘come on!’ here,” thought Alice, as she went slowly
+after it: “I never was so ordered about in all my life, never!”
+
+They had not gone far before they saw the Mock Turtle in the distance,
+sitting sad and lonely on a little ledge of rock, and, as they came
+nearer, Alice could hear him sighing as if his heart would break. She
+pitied him deeply. “What is his sorrow?” she asked the Gryphon, and the
+Gryphon answered, very nearly in the same words as before, “It’s all
+his fancy, that: he hasn’t got no sorrow, you know. Come on!”
+
+So they went up to the Mock Turtle, who looked at them with large eyes
+full of tears, but said nothing.
+
+“This here young lady,” said the Gryphon, “she wants for to know your
+history, she do.”
+
+“I’ll tell it her,” said the Mock Turtle in a deep, hollow tone: “sit
+down, both of you, and don’t speak a word till I’ve finished.”
+
+So they sat down, and nobody spoke for some minutes. Alice thought to
+herself, “I don’t see how he can _ever_ finish, if he doesn’t begin.”
+But she waited patiently.
+
+“Once,” said the Mock Turtle at last, with a deep sigh, “I was a real
+Turtle.”
+
+These words were followed by a very long silence, broken only by an
+occasional exclamation of “Hjckrrh!” from the Gryphon, and the constant
+heavy sobbing of the Mock Turtle. Alice was very nearly getting up and
+saying, “Thank you, sir, for your interesting story,” but she could not
+help thinking there _must_ be more to come, so she sat still and said
+nothing.
+
+“When we were little,” the Mock Turtle went on at last, more calmly,
+though still sobbing a little now and then, “we went to school in the
+sea. The master was an old Turtle—we used to call him Tortoise—”
+
+“Why did you call him Tortoise, if he wasn’t one?” Alice asked.
+
+“We called him Tortoise because he taught us,” said the Mock Turtle
+angrily: “really you are very dull!”
+
+“You ought to be ashamed of yourself for asking such a simple
+question,” added the Gryphon; and then they both sat silent and looked
+at poor Alice, who felt ready to sink into the earth. At last the
+Gryphon said to the Mock Turtle, “Drive on, old fellow! Don’t be all
+day about it!” and he went on in these words:
+
+“Yes, we went to school in the sea, though you mayn’t believe it—”
+
+“I never said I didn’t!” interrupted Alice.
+
+“You did,” said the Mock Turtle.
+
+“Hold your tongue!” added the Gryphon, before Alice could speak again.
+The Mock Turtle went on.
+
+“We had the best of educations—in fact, we went to school every day—”
+
+“_I’ve_ been to a day-school, too,” said Alice; “you needn’t be so
+proud as all that.”
+
+“With extras?” asked the Mock Turtle a little anxiously.
+
+“Yes,” said Alice, “we learned French and music.”
+
+“And washing?” said the Mock Turtle.
+
+“Certainly not!” said Alice indignantly.
+
+“Ah! then yours wasn’t a really good school,” said the Mock Turtle in a
+tone of great relief. “Now at _ours_ they had at the end of the bill,
+‘French, music, _and washing_—extra.’”
+
+“You couldn’t have wanted it much,” said Alice; “living at the bottom
+of the sea.”
+
+“I couldn’t afford to learn it.” said the Mock Turtle with a sigh. “I
+only took the regular course.”
+
+“What was that?” inquired Alice.
+
+“Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with,” the Mock Turtle
+replied; “and then the different branches of Arithmetic—Ambition,
+Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.”
+
+“I never heard of ‘Uglification,’” Alice ventured to say. “What is it?”
+
+The Gryphon lifted up both its paws in surprise. “What! Never heard of
+uglifying!” it exclaimed. “You know what to beautify is, I suppose?”
+
+“Yes,” said Alice doubtfully: “it means—to—make—anything—prettier.”
+
+“Well, then,” the Gryphon went on, “if you don’t know what to uglify
+is, you _are_ a simpleton.”
+
+Alice did not feel encouraged to ask any more questions about it, so
+she turned to the Mock Turtle, and said “What else had you to learn?”
+
+“Well, there was Mystery,” the Mock Turtle replied, counting off the
+subjects on his flappers, “—Mystery, ancient and modern, with
+Seaography: then Drawling—the Drawling-master was an old conger-eel,
+that used to come once a week: _he_ taught us Drawling, Stretching, and
+Fainting in Coils.”
+
+“What was _that_ like?” said Alice.
+
+“Well, I can’t show it you myself,” the Mock Turtle said: “I’m too
+stiff. And the Gryphon never learnt it.”
+
+“Hadn’t time,” said the Gryphon: “I went to the Classics master,
+though. He was an old crab, _he_ was.”
+
+“I never went to him,” the Mock Turtle said with a sigh: “he taught
+Laughing and Grief, they used to say.”
+
+“So he did, so he did,” said the Gryphon, sighing in his turn; and both
+creatures hid their faces in their paws.
+
+“And how many hours a day did you do lessons?” said Alice, in a hurry
+to change the subject.
+
+“Ten hours the first day,” said the Mock Turtle: “nine the next, and so
+on.”
+
+“What a curious plan!” exclaimed Alice.
+
+“That’s the reason they’re called lessons,” the Gryphon remarked:
+“because they lessen from day to day.”
+
+This was quite a new idea to Alice, and she thought it over a little
+before she made her next remark. “Then the eleventh day must have been
+a holiday?”
+
+“Of course it was,” said the Mock Turtle.
+
+“And how did you manage on the twelfth?” Alice went on eagerly.
+
+“That’s enough about lessons,” the Gryphon interrupted in a very
+decided tone: “tell her something about the games now.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+The Lobster Quadrille
+
+
+The Mock Turtle sighed deeply, and drew the back of one flapper across
+his eyes. He looked at Alice, and tried to speak, but for a minute or
+two sobs choked his voice. “Same as if he had a bone in his throat,”
+said the Gryphon: and it set to work shaking him and punching him in
+the back. At last the Mock Turtle recovered his voice, and, with tears
+running down his cheeks, he went on again:—
+
+“You may not have lived much under the sea—” (“I haven’t,” said
+Alice)—“and perhaps you were never even introduced to a lobster—”
+(Alice began to say “I once tasted—” but checked herself hastily, and
+said “No, never”) “—so you can have no idea what a delightful thing a
+Lobster Quadrille is!”
+
+“No, indeed,” said Alice. “What sort of a dance is it?”
+
+“Why,” said the Gryphon, “you first form into a line along the
+sea-shore—”
+
+“Two lines!” cried the Mock Turtle. “Seals, turtles, salmon, and so on;
+then, when you’ve cleared all the jelly-fish out of the way—”
+
+“_That_ generally takes some time,” interrupted the Gryphon.
+
+“—you advance twice—”
+
+“Each with a lobster as a partner!” cried the Gryphon.
+
+“Of course,” the Mock Turtle said: “advance twice, set to partners—”
+
+“—change lobsters, and retire in same order,” continued the Gryphon.
+
+“Then, you know,” the Mock Turtle went on, “you throw the—”
+
+“The lobsters!” shouted the Gryphon, with a bound into the air.
+
+“—as far out to sea as you can—”
+
+“Swim after them!” screamed the Gryphon.
+
+“Turn a somersault in the sea!” cried the Mock Turtle, capering wildly
+about.
+
+“Change lobsters again!” yelled the Gryphon at the top of its voice.
+
+“Back to land again, and that’s all the first figure,” said the Mock
+Turtle, suddenly dropping his voice; and the two creatures, who had
+been jumping about like mad things all this time, sat down again very
+sadly and quietly, and looked at Alice.
+
+“It must be a very pretty dance,” said Alice timidly.
+
+“Would you like to see a little of it?” said the Mock Turtle.
+
+“Very much indeed,” said Alice.
+
+“Come, let’s try the first figure!” said the Mock Turtle to the
+Gryphon. “We can do without lobsters, you know. Which shall sing?”
+
+“Oh, _you_ sing,” said the Gryphon. “I’ve forgotten the words.”
+
+So they began solemnly dancing round and round Alice, every now and
+then treading on her toes when they passed too close, and waving their
+forepaws to mark the time, while the Mock Turtle sang this, very slowly
+and sadly:—
+
+“Will you walk a little faster?” said a whiting to a snail.
+“There’s a porpoise close behind us, and he’s treading on my tail.
+See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance!
+They are waiting on the shingle—will you come and join the dance?
+Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?
+Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, won’t you join the dance?
+
+“You can really have no notion how delightful it will be
+When they take us up and throw us, with the lobsters, out to sea!”
+But the snail replied “Too far, too far!” and gave a look askance—
+Said he thanked the whiting kindly, but he would not join the dance.
+Would not, could not, would not, could not, would not join the dance.
+Would not, could not, would not, could not, could not join the dance.
+
+“What matters it how far we go?” his scaly friend replied.
+“There is another shore, you know, upon the other side.
+The further off from England the nearer is to France—
+Then turn not pale, beloved snail, but come and join the dance.
+Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?
+Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, won’t you join the dance?”
+
+
+“Thank you, it’s a very interesting dance to watch,” said Alice,
+feeling very glad that it was over at last: “and I do so like that
+curious song about the whiting!”
+
+“Oh, as to the whiting,” said the Mock Turtle, “they—you’ve seen them,
+of course?”
+
+“Yes,” said Alice, “I’ve often seen them at dinn—” she checked herself
+hastily.
+
+“I don’t know where Dinn may be,” said the Mock Turtle, “but if you’ve
+seen them so often, of course you know what they’re like.”
+
+“I believe so,” Alice replied thoughtfully. “They have their tails in
+their mouths—and they’re all over crumbs.”
+
+“You’re wrong about the crumbs,” said the Mock Turtle: “crumbs would
+all wash off in the sea. But they _have_ their tails in their mouths;
+and the reason is—” here the Mock Turtle yawned and shut his
+eyes.—“Tell her about the reason and all that,” he said to the Gryphon.
+
+“The reason is,” said the Gryphon, “that they _would_ go with the
+lobsters to the dance. So they got thrown out to sea. So they had to
+fall a long way. So they got their tails fast in their mouths. So they
+couldn’t get them out again. That’s all.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Alice, “it’s very interesting. I never knew so much
+about a whiting before.”
+
+“I can tell you more than that, if you like,” said the Gryphon. “Do you
+know why it’s called a whiting?”
+
+“I never thought about it,” said Alice. “Why?”
+
+“_It does the boots and shoes_,” the Gryphon replied very solemnly.
+
+Alice was thoroughly puzzled. “Does the boots and shoes!” she repeated
+in a wondering tone.
+
+“Why, what are _your_ shoes done with?” said the Gryphon. “I mean, what
+makes them so shiny?”
+
+Alice looked down at them, and considered a little before she gave her
+answer. “They’re done with blacking, I believe.”
+
+“Boots and shoes under the sea,” the Gryphon went on in a deep voice,
+“are done with a whiting. Now you know.”
+
+“And what are they made of?” Alice asked in a tone of great curiosity.
+
+“Soles and eels, of course,” the Gryphon replied rather impatiently:
+“any shrimp could have told you that.”
+
+“If I’d been the whiting,” said Alice, whose thoughts were still
+running on the song, “I’d have said to the porpoise, ‘Keep back,
+please: we don’t want _you_ with us!’”
+
+“They were obliged to have him with them,” the Mock Turtle said: “no
+wise fish would go anywhere without a porpoise.”
+
+“Wouldn’t it really?” said Alice in a tone of great surprise.
+
+“Of course not,” said the Mock Turtle: “why, if a fish came to _me_,
+and told me he was going a journey, I should say ‘With what porpoise?’”
+
+“Don’t you mean ‘purpose’?” said Alice.
+
+“I mean what I say,” the Mock Turtle replied in an offended tone. And
+the Gryphon added “Come, let’s hear some of _your_ adventures.”
+
+“I could tell you my adventures—beginning from this morning,” said
+Alice a little timidly: “but it’s no use going back to yesterday,
+because I was a different person then.”
+
+“Explain all that,” said the Mock Turtle.
+
+“No, no! The adventures first,” said the Gryphon in an impatient tone:
+“explanations take such a dreadful time.”
+
+So Alice began telling them her adventures from the time when she first
+saw the White Rabbit. She was a little nervous about it just at first,
+the two creatures got so close to her, one on each side, and opened
+their eyes and mouths so _very_ wide, but she gained courage as she
+went on. Her listeners were perfectly quiet till she got to the part
+about her repeating “_You are old, Father William_,” to the
+Caterpillar, and the words all coming different, and then the Mock
+Turtle drew a long breath, and said “That’s very curious.”
+
+“It’s all about as curious as it can be,” said the Gryphon.
+
+“It all came different!” the Mock Turtle repeated thoughtfully. “I
+should like to hear her try and repeat something now. Tell her to
+begin.” He looked at the Gryphon as if he thought it had some kind of
+authority over Alice.
+
+“Stand up and repeat ‘’_Tis the voice of the sluggard_,’” said the
+Gryphon.
+
+“How the creatures order one about, and make one repeat lessons!”
+thought Alice; “I might as well be at school at once.” However, she got
+up, and began to repeat it, but her head was so full of the Lobster
+Quadrille, that she hardly knew what she was saying, and the words came
+very queer indeed:—
+
+“’Tis the voice of the Lobster; I heard him declare,
+“You have baked me too brown, I must sugar my hair.”
+As a duck with its eyelids, so he with his nose
+Trims his belt and his buttons, and turns out his toes.”
+
+[later editions continued as follows
+When the sands are all dry, he is gay as a lark,
+And will talk in contemptuous tones of the Shark,
+But, when the tide rises and sharks are around,
+His voice has a timid and tremulous sound.]
+
+
+“That’s different from what _I_ used to say when I was a child,” said
+the Gryphon.
+
+“Well, I never heard it before,” said the Mock Turtle; “but it sounds
+uncommon nonsense.”
+
+Alice said nothing; she had sat down with her face in her hands,
+wondering if anything would _ever_ happen in a natural way again.
+
+“I should like to have it explained,” said the Mock Turtle.
+
+“She can’t explain it,” said the Gryphon hastily. “Go on with the next
+verse.”
+
+“But about his toes?” the Mock Turtle persisted. “How _could_ he turn
+them out with his nose, you know?”
+
+“It’s the first position in dancing.” Alice said; but was dreadfully
+puzzled by the whole thing, and longed to change the subject.
+
+“Go on with the next verse,” the Gryphon repeated impatiently: “it
+begins ‘_I passed by his garden_.’”
+
+Alice did not dare to disobey, though she felt sure it would all come
+wrong, and she went on in a trembling voice:—
+
+“I passed by his garden, and marked, with one eye,
+How the Owl and the Panther were sharing a pie—”
+
+[later editions continued as follows
+The Panther took pie-crust, and gravy, and meat,
+While the Owl had the dish as its share of the treat.
+When the pie was all finished, the Owl, as a boon,
+Was kindly permitted to pocket the spoon:
+While the Panther received knife and fork with a growl,
+And concluded the banquet—]
+
+
+“What _is_ the use of repeating all that stuff,” the Mock Turtle
+interrupted, “if you don’t explain it as you go on? It’s by far the
+most confusing thing _I_ ever heard!”
+
+“Yes, I think you’d better leave off,” said the Gryphon: and Alice was
+only too glad to do so.
+
+“Shall we try another figure of the Lobster Quadrille?” the Gryphon
+went on. “Or would you like the Mock Turtle to sing you a song?”
+
+“Oh, a song, please, if the Mock Turtle would be so kind,” Alice
+replied, so eagerly that the Gryphon said, in a rather offended tone,
+“Hm! No accounting for tastes! Sing her ‘_Turtle Soup_,’ will you, old
+fellow?”
+
+The Mock Turtle sighed deeply, and began, in a voice sometimes choked
+with sobs, to sing this:—
+
+“Beautiful Soup, so rich and green,
+Waiting in a hot tureen!
+Who for such dainties would not stoop?
+Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!
+Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!
+    Beau—ootiful Soo—oop!
+    Beau—ootiful Soo—oop!
+Soo—oop of the e—e—evening,
+    Beautiful, beautiful Soup!
+
+“Beautiful Soup! Who cares for fish,
+Game, or any other dish?
+Who would not give all else for two p
+ennyworth only of beautiful Soup?
+Pennyworth only of beautiful Soup?
+    Beau—ootiful Soo—oop!
+    Beau—ootiful Soo—oop!
+Soo—oop of the e—e—evening,
+    Beautiful, beauti—FUL SOUP!”
+
+
+“Chorus again!” cried the Gryphon, and the Mock Turtle had just begun
+to repeat it, when a cry of “The trial’s beginning!” was heard in the
+distance.
+
+“Come on!” cried the Gryphon, and, taking Alice by the hand, it hurried
+off, without waiting for the end of the song.
+
+“What trial is it?” Alice panted as she ran; but the Gryphon only
+answered “Come on!” and ran the faster, while more and more faintly
+came, carried on the breeze that followed them, the melancholy words:—
+
+“Soo—oop of the e—e—evening,
+    Beautiful, beautiful Soup!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+Who Stole the Tarts?
+
+
+The King and Queen of Hearts were seated on their throne when they
+arrived, with a great crowd assembled about them—all sorts of little
+birds and beasts, as well as the whole pack of cards: the Knave was
+standing before them, in chains, with a soldier on each side to guard
+him; and near the King was the White Rabbit, with a trumpet in one
+hand, and a scroll of parchment in the other. In the very middle of the
+court was a table, with a large dish of tarts upon it: they looked so
+good, that it made Alice quite hungry to look at them—“I wish they’d
+get the trial done,” she thought, “and hand round the refreshments!”
+But there seemed to be no chance of this, so she began looking at
+everything about her, to pass away the time.
+
+Alice had never been in a court of justice before, but she had read
+about them in books, and she was quite pleased to find that she knew
+the name of nearly everything there. “That’s the judge,” she said to
+herself, “because of his great wig.”
+
+The judge, by the way, was the King; and as he wore his crown over the
+wig, (look at the frontispiece if you want to see how he did it,) he
+did not look at all comfortable, and it was certainly not becoming.
+
+“And that’s the jury-box,” thought Alice, “and those twelve creatures,”
+(she was obliged to say “creatures,” you see, because some of them were
+animals, and some were birds,) “I suppose they are the jurors.” She
+said this last word two or three times over to herself, being rather
+proud of it: for she thought, and rightly too, that very few little
+girls of her age knew the meaning of it at all. However, “jury-men”
+would have done just as well.
+
+The twelve jurors were all writing very busily on slates. “What are
+they doing?” Alice whispered to the Gryphon. “They can’t have anything
+to put down yet, before the trial’s begun.”
+
+“They’re putting down their names,” the Gryphon whispered in reply,
+“for fear they should forget them before the end of the trial.”
+
+“Stupid things!” Alice began in a loud, indignant voice, but she
+stopped hastily, for the White Rabbit cried out, “Silence in the
+court!” and the King put on his spectacles and looked anxiously round,
+to make out who was talking.
+
+Alice could see, as well as if she were looking over their shoulders,
+that all the jurors were writing down “stupid things!” on their slates,
+and she could even make out that one of them didn’t know how to spell
+“stupid,” and that he had to ask his neighbour to tell him. “A nice
+muddle their slates’ll be in before the trial’s over!” thought Alice.
+
+One of the jurors had a pencil that squeaked. This of course, Alice
+could _not_ stand, and she went round the court and got behind him, and
+very soon found an opportunity of taking it away. She did it so quickly
+that the poor little juror (it was Bill, the Lizard) could not make out
+at all what had become of it; so, after hunting all about for it, he
+was obliged to write with one finger for the rest of the day; and this
+was of very little use, as it left no mark on the slate.
+
+“Herald, read the accusation!” said the King.
+
+On this the White Rabbit blew three blasts on the trumpet, and then
+unrolled the parchment scroll, and read as follows:—
+
+“The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts,
+    All on a summer day:
+The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts,
+    And took them quite away!”
+
+
+“Consider your verdict,” the King said to the jury.
+
+“Not yet, not yet!” the Rabbit hastily interrupted. “There’s a great
+deal to come before that!”
+
+“Call the first witness,” said the King; and the White Rabbit blew
+three blasts on the trumpet, and called out, “First witness!”
+
+The first witness was the Hatter. He came in with a teacup in one hand
+and a piece of bread-and-butter in the other. “I beg pardon, your
+Majesty,” he began, “for bringing these in: but I hadn’t quite finished
+my tea when I was sent for.”
+
+“You ought to have finished,” said the King. “When did you begin?”
+
+The Hatter looked at the March Hare, who had followed him into the
+court, arm-in-arm with the Dormouse. “Fourteenth of March, I _think_ it
+was,” he said.
+
+“Fifteenth,” said the March Hare.
+
+“Sixteenth,” added the Dormouse.
+
+“Write that down,” the King said to the jury, and the jury eagerly
+wrote down all three dates on their slates, and then added them up, and
+reduced the answer to shillings and pence.
+
+“Take off your hat,” the King said to the Hatter.
+
+“It isn’t mine,” said the Hatter.
+
+“_Stolen!_” the King exclaimed, turning to the jury, who instantly made
+a memorandum of the fact.
+
+“I keep them to sell,” the Hatter added as an explanation; “I’ve none
+of my own. I’m a hatter.”
+
+Here the Queen put on her spectacles, and began staring at the Hatter,
+who turned pale and fidgeted.
+
+“Give your evidence,” said the King; “and don’t be nervous, or I’ll
+have you executed on the spot.”
+
+This did not seem to encourage the witness at all: he kept shifting
+from one foot to the other, looking uneasily at the Queen, and in his
+confusion he bit a large piece out of his teacup instead of the
+bread-and-butter.
+
+Just at this moment Alice felt a very curious sensation, which puzzled
+her a good deal until she made out what it was: she was beginning to
+grow larger again, and she thought at first she would get up and leave
+the court; but on second thoughts she decided to remain where she was
+as long as there was room for her.
+
+“I wish you wouldn’t squeeze so.” said the Dormouse, who was sitting
+next to her. “I can hardly breathe.”
+
+“I can’t help it,” said Alice very meekly: “I’m growing.”
+
+“You’ve no right to grow _here_,” said the Dormouse.
+
+“Don’t talk nonsense,” said Alice more boldly: “you know you’re growing
+too.”
+
+“Yes, but _I_ grow at a reasonable pace,” said the Dormouse: “not in
+that ridiculous fashion.” And he got up very sulkily and crossed over
+to the other side of the court.
+
+All this time the Queen had never left off staring at the Hatter, and,
+just as the Dormouse crossed the court, she said to one of the officers
+of the court, “Bring me the list of the singers in the last concert!”
+on which the wretched Hatter trembled so, that he shook both his shoes
+off.
+
+“Give your evidence,” the King repeated angrily, “or I’ll have you
+executed, whether you’re nervous or not.”
+
+“I’m a poor man, your Majesty,” the Hatter began, in a trembling voice,
+“—and I hadn’t begun my tea—not above a week or so—and what with the
+bread-and-butter getting so thin—and the twinkling of the tea—”
+
+“The twinkling of the _what?_” said the King.
+
+“It _began_ with the tea,” the Hatter replied.
+
+“Of course twinkling begins with a T!” said the King sharply. “Do you
+take me for a dunce? Go on!”
+
+“I’m a poor man,” the Hatter went on, “and most things twinkled after
+that—only the March Hare said—”
+
+“I didn’t!” the March Hare interrupted in a great hurry.
+
+“You did!” said the Hatter.
+
+“I deny it!” said the March Hare.
+
+“He denies it,” said the King: “leave out that part.”
+
+“Well, at any rate, the Dormouse said—” the Hatter went on, looking
+anxiously round to see if he would deny it too: but the Dormouse denied
+nothing, being fast asleep.
+
+“After that,” continued the Hatter, “I cut some more bread-and-butter—”
+
+“But what did the Dormouse say?” one of the jury asked.
+
+“That I can’t remember,” said the Hatter.
+
+“You _must_ remember,” remarked the King, “or I’ll have you executed.”
+
+The miserable Hatter dropped his teacup and bread-and-butter, and went
+down on one knee. “I’m a poor man, your Majesty,” he began.
+
+“You’re a _very_ poor _speaker_,” said the King.
+
+Here one of the guinea-pigs cheered, and was immediately suppressed by
+the officers of the court. (As that is rather a hard word, I will just
+explain to you how it was done. They had a large canvas bag, which tied
+up at the mouth with strings: into this they slipped the guinea-pig,
+head first, and then sat upon it.)
+
+“I’m glad I’ve seen that done,” thought Alice. “I’ve so often read in
+the newspapers, at the end of trials, “There was some attempts at
+applause, which was immediately suppressed by the officers of the
+court,” and I never understood what it meant till now.”
+
+“If that’s all you know about it, you may stand down,” continued the
+King.
+
+“I can’t go no lower,” said the Hatter: “I’m on the floor, as it is.”
+
+“Then you may _sit_ down,” the King replied.
+
+Here the other guinea-pig cheered, and was suppressed.
+
+“Come, that finished the guinea-pigs!” thought Alice. “Now we shall get
+on better.”
+
+“I’d rather finish my tea,” said the Hatter, with an anxious look at
+the Queen, who was reading the list of singers.
+
+“You may go,” said the King, and the Hatter hurriedly left the court,
+without even waiting to put his shoes on.
+
+“—and just take his head off outside,” the Queen added to one of the
+officers: but the Hatter was out of sight before the officer could get
+to the door.
+
+“Call the next witness!” said the King.
+
+The next witness was the Duchess’s cook. She carried the pepper-box in
+her hand, and Alice guessed who it was, even before she got into the
+court, by the way the people near the door began sneezing all at once.
+
+“Give your evidence,” said the King.
+
+“Shan’t,” said the cook.
+
+The King looked anxiously at the White Rabbit, who said in a low voice,
+“Your Majesty must cross-examine _this_ witness.”
+
+“Well, if I must, I must,” the King said, with a melancholy air, and,
+after folding his arms and frowning at the cook till his eyes were
+nearly out of sight, he said in a deep voice, “What are tarts made of?”
+
+“Pepper, mostly,” said the cook.
+
+“Treacle,” said a sleepy voice behind her.
+
+“Collar that Dormouse,” the Queen shrieked out. “Behead that Dormouse!
+Turn that Dormouse out of court! Suppress him! Pinch him! Off with his
+whiskers!”
+
+For some minutes the whole court was in confusion, getting the Dormouse
+turned out, and, by the time they had settled down again, the cook had
+disappeared.
+
+“Never mind!” said the King, with an air of great relief. “Call the
+next witness.” And he added in an undertone to the Queen, “Really, my
+dear, _you_ must cross-examine the next witness. It quite makes my
+forehead ache!”
+
+Alice watched the White Rabbit as he fumbled over the list, feeling
+very curious to see what the next witness would be like, “—for they
+haven’t got much evidence _yet_,” she said to herself. Imagine her
+surprise, when the White Rabbit read out, at the top of his shrill
+little voice, the name “Alice!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+Alice’s Evidence
+
+
+“Here!” cried Alice, quite forgetting in the flurry of the moment how
+large she had grown in the last few minutes, and she jumped up in such
+a hurry that she tipped over the jury-box with the edge of her skirt,
+upsetting all the jurymen on to the heads of the crowd below, and there
+they lay sprawling about, reminding her very much of a globe of
+goldfish she had accidentally upset the week before.
+
+“Oh, I _beg_ your pardon!” she exclaimed in a tone of great dismay, and
+began picking them up again as quickly as she could, for the accident
+of the goldfish kept running in her head, and she had a vague sort of
+idea that they must be collected at once and put back into the
+jury-box, or they would die.
+
+“The trial cannot proceed,” said the King in a very grave voice, “until
+all the jurymen are back in their proper places—_all_,” he repeated
+with great emphasis, looking hard at Alice as he said so.
+
+Alice looked at the jury-box, and saw that, in her haste, she had put
+the Lizard in head downwards, and the poor little thing was waving its
+tail about in a melancholy way, being quite unable to move. She soon
+got it out again, and put it right; “not that it signifies much,” she
+said to herself; “I should think it would be _quite_ as much use in the
+trial one way up as the other.”
+
+As soon as the jury had a little recovered from the shock of being
+upset, and their slates and pencils had been found and handed back to
+them, they set to work very diligently to write out a history of the
+accident, all except the Lizard, who seemed too much overcome to do
+anything but sit with its mouth open, gazing up into the roof of the
+court.
+
+“What do you know about this business?” the King said to Alice.
+
+“Nothing,” said Alice.
+
+“Nothing _whatever?_” persisted the King.
+
+“Nothing whatever,” said Alice.
+
+“That’s very important,” the King said, turning to the jury. They were
+just beginning to write this down on their slates, when the White
+Rabbit interrupted: “_Un_important, your Majesty means, of course,” he
+said in a very respectful tone, but frowning and making faces at him as
+he spoke.
+
+“_Un_important, of course, I meant,” the King hastily said, and went on
+to himself in an undertone,
+
+“important—unimportant—unimportant—important—” as if he were trying
+which word sounded best.
+
+Some of the jury wrote it down “important,” and some “unimportant.”
+Alice could see this, as she was near enough to look over their slates;
+“but it doesn’t matter a bit,” she thought to herself.
+
+At this moment the King, who had been for some time busily writing in
+his note-book, cackled out “Silence!” and read out from his book, “Rule
+Forty-two. _All persons more than a mile high to leave the court_.”
+
+Everybody looked at Alice.
+
+“_I’m_ not a mile high,” said Alice.
+
+“You are,” said the King.
+
+“Nearly two miles high,” added the Queen.
+
+“Well, I shan’t go, at any rate,” said Alice: “besides, that’s not a
+regular rule: you invented it just now.”
+
+“It’s the oldest rule in the book,” said the King.
+
+“Then it ought to be Number One,” said Alice.
+
+The King turned pale, and shut his note-book hastily. “Consider your
+verdict,” he said to the jury, in a low, trembling voice.
+
+“There’s more evidence to come yet, please your Majesty,” said the
+White Rabbit, jumping up in a great hurry; “this paper has just been
+picked up.”
+
+“What’s in it?” said the Queen.
+
+“I haven’t opened it yet,” said the White Rabbit, “but it seems to be a
+letter, written by the prisoner to—to somebody.”
+
+“It must have been that,” said the King, “unless it was written to
+nobody, which isn’t usual, you know.”
+
+“Who is it directed to?” said one of the jurymen.
+
+“It isn’t directed at all,” said the White Rabbit; “in fact, there’s
+nothing written on the _outside_.” He unfolded the paper as he spoke,
+and added “It isn’t a letter, after all: it’s a set of verses.”
+
+“Are they in the prisoner’s handwriting?” asked another of the jurymen.
+
+“No, they’re not,” said the White Rabbit, “and that’s the queerest
+thing about it.” (The jury all looked puzzled.)
+
+“He must have imitated somebody else’s hand,” said the King. (The jury
+all brightened up again.)
+
+“Please your Majesty,” said the Knave, “I didn’t write it, and they
+can’t prove I did: there’s no name signed at the end.”
+
+“If you didn’t sign it,” said the King, “that only makes the matter
+worse. You _must_ have meant some mischief, or else you’d have signed
+your name like an honest man.”
+
+There was a general clapping of hands at this: it was the first really
+clever thing the King had said that day.
+
+“That _proves_ his guilt,” said the Queen.
+
+“It proves nothing of the sort!” said Alice. “Why, you don’t even know
+what they’re about!”
+
+“Read them,” said the King.
+
+The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. “Where shall I begin, please
+your Majesty?” he asked.
+
+“Begin at the beginning,” the King said gravely, “and go on till you
+come to the end: then stop.”
+
+These were the verses the White Rabbit read:—
+
+“They told me you had been to her,
+    And mentioned me to him:
+She gave me a good character,
+    But said I could not swim.
+
+He sent them word I had not gone
+    (We know it to be true):
+If she should push the matter on,
+    What would become of you?
+
+I gave her one, they gave him two,
+    You gave us three or more;
+They all returned from him to you,
+    Though they were mine before.
+
+If I or she should chance to be
+    Involved in this affair,
+He trusts to you to set them free,
+    Exactly as we were.
+
+My notion was that you had been
+    (Before she had this fit)
+An obstacle that came between
+    Him, and ourselves, and it.
+
+Don’t let him know she liked them best,
+    For this must ever be
+A secret, kept from all the rest,
+    Between yourself and me.”
+
+
+“That’s the most important piece of evidence we’ve heard yet,” said the
+King, rubbing his hands; “so now let the jury—”
+
+“If any one of them can explain it,” said Alice, (she had grown so
+large in the last few minutes that she wasn’t a bit afraid of
+interrupting him,) “I’ll give him sixpence. _I_ don’t believe there’s
+an atom of meaning in it.”
+
+The jury all wrote down on their slates, “_She_ doesn’t believe there’s
+an atom of meaning in it,” but none of them attempted to explain the
+paper.
+
+“If there’s no meaning in it,” said the King, “that saves a world of
+trouble, you know, as we needn’t try to find any. And yet I don’t
+know,” he went on, spreading out the verses on his knee, and looking at
+them with one eye; “I seem to see some meaning in them, after all.
+“—_said I could not swim_—” you can’t swim, can you?” he added, turning
+to the Knave.
+
+The Knave shook his head sadly. “Do I look like it?” he said. (Which he
+certainly did _not_, being made entirely of cardboard.)
+
+“All right, so far,” said the King, and he went on muttering over the
+verses to himself: “‘_We know it to be true_—’ that’s the jury, of
+course—‘_I gave her one, they gave him two_—’ why, that must be what he
+did with the tarts, you know—”
+
+“But, it goes on ‘_they all returned from him to you_,’” said Alice.
+
+“Why, there they are!” said the King triumphantly, pointing to the
+tarts on the table. “Nothing can be clearer than _that_. Then
+again—‘_before she had this fit_—’ you never had fits, my dear, I
+think?” he said to the Queen.
+
+“Never!” said the Queen furiously, throwing an inkstand at the Lizard
+as she spoke. (The unfortunate little Bill had left off writing on his
+slate with one finger, as he found it made no mark; but he now hastily
+began again, using the ink, that was trickling down his face, as long
+as it lasted.)
+
+“Then the words don’t _fit_ you,” said the King, looking round the
+court with a smile. There was a dead silence.
+
+“It’s a pun!” the King added in an offended tone, and everybody
+laughed, “Let the jury consider their verdict,” the King said, for
+about the twentieth time that day.
+
+“No, no!” said the Queen. “Sentence first—verdict afterwards.”
+
+“Stuff and nonsense!” said Alice loudly. “The idea of having the
+sentence first!”
+
+“Hold your tongue!” said the Queen, turning purple.
+
+“I won’t!” said Alice.
+
+“Off with her head!” the Queen shouted at the top of her voice. Nobody
+moved.
+
+“Who cares for you?” said Alice, (she had grown to her full size by
+this time.) “You’re nothing but a pack of cards!”
+
+At this the whole pack rose up into the air, and came flying down upon
+her: she gave a little scream, half of fright and half of anger, and
+tried to beat them off, and found herself lying on the bank, with her
+head in the lap of her sister, who was gently brushing away some dead
+leaves that had fluttered down from the trees upon her face.
+
+“Wake up, Alice dear!” said her sister; “Why, what a long sleep you’ve
+had!”
+
+“Oh, I’ve had such a curious dream!” said Alice, and she told her
+sister, as well as she could remember them, all these strange
+Adventures of hers that you have just been reading about; and when she
+had finished, her sister kissed her, and said, “It _was_ a curious
+dream, dear, certainly: but now run in to your tea; it’s getting late.”
+So Alice got up and ran off, thinking while she ran, as well she might,
+what a wonderful dream it had been.
+
+
+But her sister sat still just as she left her, leaning her head on her
+hand, watching the setting sun, and thinking of little Alice and all
+her wonderful Adventures, till she too began dreaming after a fashion,
+and this was her dream:—
+
+First, she dreamed of little Alice herself, and once again the tiny
+hands were clasped upon her knee, and the bright eager eyes were
+looking up into hers—she could hear the very tones of her voice, and
+see that queer little toss of her head to keep back the wandering hair
+that _would_ always get into her eyes—and still as she listened, or
+seemed to listen, the whole place around her became alive with the
+strange creatures of her little sister’s dream.
+
+The long grass rustled at her feet as the White Rabbit hurried by—the
+frightened Mouse splashed his way through the neighbouring pool—she
+could hear the rattle of the teacups as the March Hare and his friends
+shared their never-ending meal, and the shrill voice of the Queen
+ordering off her unfortunate guests to execution—once more the pig-baby
+was sneezing on the Duchess’s knee, while plates and dishes crashed
+around it—once more the shriek of the Gryphon, the squeaking of the
+Lizard’s slate-pencil, and the choking of the suppressed guinea-pigs,
+filled the air, mixed up with the distant sobs of the miserable Mock
+Turtle.
+
+So she sat on, with closed eyes, and half believed herself in
+Wonderland, though she knew she had but to open them again, and all
+would change to dull reality—the grass would be only rustling in the
+wind, and the pool rippling to the waving of the reeds—the rattling
+teacups would change to tinkling sheep-bells, and the Queen’s shrill
+cries to the voice of the shepherd boy—and the sneeze of the baby, the
+shriek of the Gryphon, and all the other queer noises, would change
+(she knew) to the confused clamour of the busy farm-yard—while the
+lowing of the cattle in the distance would take the place of the Mock
+Turtle’s heavy sobs.
+
+Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers
+would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman; and how she would
+keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her
+childhood: and how she would gather about her other little children,
+and make _their_ eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale,
+perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago: and how she
+would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all
+their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer
+days.
+
+THE END 
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll
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+
+Project Gutenberg's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
+
+Author: Arthur Conan Doyle
+
+Release Date: November 29, 2002 [EBook #1661]
+Last Updated: May 20, 2019
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES ***
+
+
+
+Produced by an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer and Jose Menendez
+
+
+
+cover
+
+
+
+The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
+
+
+
+by Arthur Conan Doyle
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+   I.     A Scandal in Bohemia
+   II.    The Red-Headed League
+   III.   A Case of Identity
+   IV.    The Boscombe Valley Mystery
+   V.     The Five Orange Pips
+   VI.    The Man with the Twisted Lip
+   VII.   The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
+   VIII.  The Adventure of the Speckled Band
+   IX.    The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb
+   X.     The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor
+   XI.    The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet
+   XII.   The Adventure of the Copper Beeches
+
+
+
+I. A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA
+
+
+I.
+
+To Sherlock Holmes she is always _the_ woman. I have seldom heard him
+mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and
+predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion
+akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly,
+were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He
+was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that
+the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a
+false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe
+and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer—excellent for
+drawing the veil from men’s motives and actions. But for the trained
+reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely
+adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might
+throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive
+instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not
+be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his. And
+yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene
+Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.
+
+I had seen little of Holmes lately. My marriage had drifted us away
+from each other. My own complete happiness, and the home-centred
+interests which rise up around the man who first finds himself master
+of his own establishment, were sufficient to absorb all my attention,
+while Holmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian
+soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among his old
+books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition,
+the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen
+nature. He was still, as ever, deeply attracted by the study of crime,
+and occupied his immense faculties and extraordinary powers of
+observation in following out those clues, and clearing up those
+mysteries which had been abandoned as hopeless by the official police.
+From time to time I heard some vague account of his doings: of his
+summons to Odessa in the case of the Trepoff murder, of his clearing up
+of the singular tragedy of the Atkinson brothers at Trincomalee, and
+finally of the mission which he had accomplished so delicately and
+successfully for the reigning family of Holland. Beyond these signs of
+his activity, however, which I merely shared with all the readers of
+the daily press, I knew little of my former friend and companion.
+
+One night—it was on the twentieth of March, 1888—I was returning from a
+journey to a patient (for I had now returned to civil practice), when
+my way led me through Baker Street. As I passed the well-remembered
+door, which must always be associated in my mind with my wooing, and
+with the dark incidents of the Study in Scarlet, I was seized with a
+keen desire to see Holmes again, and to know how he was employing his
+extraordinary powers. His rooms were brilliantly lit, and, even as I
+looked up, I saw his tall, spare figure pass twice in a dark silhouette
+against the blind. He was pacing the room swiftly, eagerly, with his
+head sunk upon his chest and his hands clasped behind him. To me, who
+knew his every mood and habit, his attitude and manner told their own
+story. He was at work again. He had risen out of his drug-created
+dreams and was hot upon the scent of some new problem. I rang the bell
+and was shown up to the chamber which had formerly been in part my own.
+
+His manner was not effusive. It seldom was; but he was glad, I think,
+to see me. With hardly a word spoken, but with a kindly eye, he waved
+me to an armchair, threw across his case of cigars, and indicated a
+spirit case and a gasogene in the corner. Then he stood before the fire
+and looked me over in his singular introspective fashion.
+
+“Wedlock suits you,” he remarked. “I think, Watson, that you have put
+on seven and a half pounds since I saw you.”
+
+“Seven!” I answered.
+
+“Indeed, I should have thought a little more. Just a trifle more, I
+fancy, Watson. And in practice again, I observe. You did not tell me
+that you intended to go into harness.”
+
+“Then, how do you know?”
+
+“I see it, I deduce it. How do I know that you have been getting
+yourself very wet lately, and that you have a most clumsy and careless
+servant girl?”
+
+“My dear Holmes,” said I, “this is too much. You would certainly have
+been burned, had you lived a few centuries ago. It is true that I had a
+country walk on Thursday and came home in a dreadful mess, but as I
+have changed my clothes I can’t imagine how you deduce it. As to Mary
+Jane, she is incorrigible, and my wife has given her notice, but there,
+again, I fail to see how you work it out.”
+
+He chuckled to himself and rubbed his long, nervous hands together.
+
+“It is simplicity itself,” said he; “my eyes tell me that on the inside
+of your left shoe, just where the firelight strikes it, the leather is
+scored by six almost parallel cuts. Obviously they have been caused by
+someone who has very carelessly scraped round the edges of the sole in
+order to remove crusted mud from it. Hence, you see, my double
+deduction that you had been out in vile weather, and that you had a
+particularly malignant boot-slitting specimen of the London slavey. As
+to your practice, if a gentleman walks into my rooms smelling of
+iodoform, with a black mark of nitrate of silver upon his right
+forefinger, and a bulge on the right side of his top-hat to show where
+he has secreted his stethoscope, I must be dull, indeed, if I do not
+pronounce him to be an active member of the medical profession.”
+
+I could not help laughing at the ease with which he explained his
+process of deduction. “When I hear you give your reasons,” I remarked,
+“the thing always appears to me to be so ridiculously simple that I
+could easily do it myself, though at each successive instance of your
+reasoning I am baffled until you explain your process. And yet I
+believe that my eyes are as good as yours.”
+
+“Quite so,” he answered, lighting a cigarette, and throwing himself
+down into an armchair. “You see, but you do not observe. The
+distinction is clear. For example, you have frequently seen the steps
+which lead up from the hall to this room.”
+
+“Frequently.”
+
+“How often?”
+
+“Well, some hundreds of times.”
+
+“Then how many are there?”
+
+“How many? I don’t know.”
+
+“Quite so! You have not observed. And yet you have seen. That is just
+my point. Now, I know that there are seventeen steps, because I have
+both seen and observed. By the way, since you are interested in these
+little problems, and since you are good enough to chronicle one or two
+of my trifling experiences, you may be interested in this.” He threw
+over a sheet of thick, pink-tinted notepaper which had been lying open
+upon the table. “It came by the last post,” said he. “Read it aloud.”
+
+The note was undated, and without either signature or address.
+
+“There will call upon you to-night, at a quarter to eight o’clock,” it
+said, “a gentleman who desires to consult you upon a matter of the very
+deepest moment. Your recent services to one of the royal houses of
+Europe have shown that you are one who may safely be trusted with
+matters which are of an importance which can hardly be exaggerated.
+This account of you we have from all quarters received. Be in your
+chamber then at that hour, and do not take it amiss if your visitor
+wear a mask.”
+
+“This is indeed a mystery,” I remarked. “What do you imagine that it
+means?”
+
+“I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has
+data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of
+theories to suit facts. But the note itself. What do you deduce from
+it?”
+
+I carefully examined the writing, and the paper upon which it was
+written.
+
+“The man who wrote it was presumably well to do,” I remarked,
+endeavouring to imitate my companion’s processes. “Such paper could not
+be bought under half a crown a packet. It is peculiarly strong and
+stiff.”
+
+“Peculiar—that is the very word,” said Holmes. “It is not an English
+paper at all. Hold it up to the light.”
+
+I did so, and saw a large “E” with a small “g,” a “P,” and a large “G”
+with a small “t” woven into the texture of the paper.
+
+“What do you make of that?” asked Holmes.
+
+“The name of the maker, no doubt; or his monogram, rather.”
+
+“Not at all. The ‘G’ with the small ‘t’ stands for ‘Gesellschaft,’
+which is the German for ‘Company.’ It is a customary contraction like
+our ‘Co.’ ‘P,’ of course, stands for ‘Papier.’ Now for the ‘Eg.’ Let us
+glance at our Continental Gazetteer.” He took down a heavy brown volume
+from his shelves. “Eglow, Eglonitz—here we are, Egria. It is in a
+German-speaking country—in Bohemia, not far from Carlsbad. ‘Remarkable
+as being the scene of the death of Wallenstein, and for its numerous
+glass-factories and paper-mills.’ Ha, ha, my boy, what do you make of
+that?” His eyes sparkled, and he sent up a great blue triumphant cloud
+from his cigarette.
+
+“The paper was made in Bohemia,” I said.
+
+“Precisely. And the man who wrote the note is a German. Do you note the
+peculiar construction of the sentence—‘This account of you we have from
+all quarters received.’ A Frenchman or Russian could not have written
+that. It is the German who is so uncourteous to his verbs. It only
+remains, therefore, to discover what is wanted by this German who
+writes upon Bohemian paper and prefers wearing a mask to showing his
+face. And here he comes, if I am not mistaken, to resolve all our
+doubts.”
+
+As he spoke there was the sharp sound of horses’ hoofs and grating
+wheels against the curb, followed by a sharp pull at the bell. Holmes
+whistled.
+
+“A pair, by the sound,” said he. “Yes,” he continued, glancing out of
+the window. “A nice little brougham and a pair of beauties. A hundred
+and fifty guineas apiece. There’s money in this case, Watson, if there
+is nothing else.”
+
+“I think that I had better go, Holmes.”
+
+“Not a bit, Doctor. Stay where you are. I am lost without my Boswell.
+And this promises to be interesting. It would be a pity to miss it.”
+
+“But your client—”
+
+“Never mind him. I may want your help, and so may he. Here he comes.
+Sit down in that armchair, Doctor, and give us your best attention.”
+
+A slow and heavy step, which had been heard upon the stairs and in the
+passage, paused immediately outside the door. Then there was a loud and
+authoritative tap.
+
+“Come in!” said Holmes.
+
+A man entered who could hardly have been less than six feet six inches
+in height, with the chest and limbs of a Hercules. His dress was rich
+with a richness which would, in England, be looked upon as akin to bad
+taste. Heavy bands of astrakhan were slashed across the sleeves and
+fronts of his double-breasted coat, while the deep blue cloak which was
+thrown over his shoulders was lined with flame-coloured silk and
+secured at the neck with a brooch which consisted of a single flaming
+beryl. Boots which extended halfway up his calves, and which were
+trimmed at the tops with rich brown fur, completed the impression of
+barbaric opulence which was suggested by his whole appearance. He
+carried a broad-brimmed hat in his hand, while he wore across the upper
+part of his face, extending down past the cheekbones, a black vizard
+mask, which he had apparently adjusted that very moment, for his hand
+was still raised to it as he entered. From the lower part of the face
+he appeared to be a man of strong character, with a thick, hanging lip,
+and a long, straight chin suggestive of resolution pushed to the length
+of obstinacy.
+
+“You had my note?” he asked with a deep harsh voice and a strongly
+marked German accent. “I told you that I would call.” He looked from
+one to the other of us, as if uncertain which to address.
+
+“Pray take a seat,” said Holmes. “This is my friend and colleague, Dr.
+Watson, who is occasionally good enough to help me in my cases. Whom
+have I the honour to address?”
+
+“You may address me as the Count Von Kramm, a Bohemian nobleman. I
+understand that this gentleman, your friend, is a man of honour and
+discretion, whom I may trust with a matter of the most extreme
+importance. If not, I should much prefer to communicate with you
+alone.”
+
+I rose to go, but Holmes caught me by the wrist and pushed me back into
+my chair. “It is both, or none,” said he. “You may say before this
+gentleman anything which you may say to me.”
+
+The Count shrugged his broad shoulders. “Then I must begin,” said he,
+“by binding you both to absolute secrecy for two years; at the end of
+that time the matter will be of no importance. At present it is not too
+much to say that it is of such weight it may have an influence upon
+European history.”
+
+“I promise,” said Holmes.
+
+“And I.”
+
+“You will excuse this mask,” continued our strange visitor. “The august
+person who employs me wishes his agent to be unknown to you, and I may
+confess at once that the title by which I have just called myself is
+not exactly my own.”
+
+“I was aware of it,” said Holmes dryly.
+
+“The circumstances are of great delicacy, and every precaution has to
+be taken to quench what might grow to be an immense scandal and
+seriously compromise one of the reigning families of Europe. To speak
+plainly, the matter implicates the great House of Ormstein, hereditary
+kings of Bohemia.”
+
+“I was also aware of that,” murmured Holmes, settling himself down in
+his armchair and closing his eyes.
+
+Our visitor glanced with some apparent surprise at the languid,
+lounging figure of the man who had been no doubt depicted to him as the
+most incisive reasoner and most energetic agent in Europe. Holmes
+slowly reopened his eyes and looked impatiently at his gigantic client.
+
+“If your Majesty would condescend to state your case,” he remarked, “I
+should be better able to advise you.”
+
+The man sprang from his chair and paced up and down the room in
+uncontrollable agitation. Then, with a gesture of desperation, he tore
+the mask from his face and hurled it upon the ground. “You are right,”
+he cried; “I am the King. Why should I attempt to conceal it?”
+
+“Why, indeed?” murmured Holmes. “Your Majesty had not spoken before I
+was aware that I was addressing Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von
+Ormstein, Grand Duke of Cassel-Felstein, and hereditary King of
+Bohemia.”
+
+“But you can understand,” said our strange visitor, sitting down once
+more and passing his hand over his high white forehead, “you can
+understand that I am not accustomed to doing such business in my own
+person. Yet the matter was so delicate that I could not confide it to
+an agent without putting myself in his power. I have come _incognito_
+from Prague for the purpose of consulting you.”
+
+“Then, pray consult,” said Holmes, shutting his eyes once more.
+
+“The facts are briefly these: Some five years ago, during a lengthy
+visit to Warsaw, I made the acquaintance of the well-known adventuress,
+Irene Adler. The name is no doubt familiar to you.”
+
+“Kindly look her up in my index, Doctor,” murmured Holmes without
+opening his eyes. For many years he had adopted a system of docketing
+all paragraphs concerning men and things, so that it was difficult to
+name a subject or a person on which he could not at once furnish
+information. In this case I found her biography sandwiched in between
+that of a Hebrew rabbi and that of a staff-commander who had written a
+monograph upon the deep-sea fishes.
+
+“Let me see!” said Holmes. “Hum! Born in New Jersey in the year 1858.
+Contralto—hum! La Scala, hum! Prima donna Imperial Opera of Warsaw—yes!
+Retired from operatic stage—ha! Living in London—quite so! Your
+Majesty, as I understand, became entangled with this young person,
+wrote her some compromising letters, and is now desirous of getting
+those letters back.”
+
+“Precisely so. But how—”
+
+“Was there a secret marriage?”
+
+“None.”
+
+“No legal papers or certificates?”
+
+“None.”
+
+“Then I fail to follow your Majesty. If this young person should
+produce her letters for blackmailing or other purposes, how is she to
+prove their authenticity?”
+
+“There is the writing.”
+
+“Pooh, pooh! Forgery.”
+
+“My private note-paper.”
+
+“Stolen.”
+
+“My own seal.”
+
+“Imitated.”
+
+“My photograph.”
+
+“Bought.”
+
+“We were both in the photograph.”
+
+“Oh, dear! That is very bad! Your Majesty has indeed committed an
+indiscretion.”
+
+“I was mad—insane.”
+
+“You have compromised yourself seriously.”
+
+“I was only Crown Prince then. I was young. I am but thirty now.”
+
+“It must be recovered.”
+
+“We have tried and failed.”
+
+“Your Majesty must pay. It must be bought.”
+
+“She will not sell.”
+
+“Stolen, then.”
+
+“Five attempts have been made. Twice burglars in my pay ransacked her
+house. Once we diverted her luggage when she travelled. Twice she has
+been waylaid. There has been no result.”
+
+“No sign of it?”
+
+“Absolutely none.”
+
+Holmes laughed. “It is quite a pretty little problem,” said he.
+
+“But a very serious one to me,” returned the King reproachfully.
+
+“Very, indeed. And what does she propose to do with the photograph?”
+
+“To ruin me.”
+
+“But how?”
+
+“I am about to be married.”
+
+“So I have heard.”
+
+“To Clotilde Lothman von Saxe-Meningen, second daughter of the King of
+Scandinavia. You may know the strict principles of her family. She is
+herself the very soul of delicacy. A shadow of a doubt as to my conduct
+would bring the matter to an end.”
+
+“And Irene Adler?”
+
+“Threatens to send them the photograph. And she will do it. I know that
+she will do it. You do not know her, but she has a soul of steel. She
+has the face of the most beautiful of women, and the mind of the most
+resolute of men. Rather than I should marry another woman, there are no
+lengths to which she would not go—none.”
+
+“You are sure that she has not sent it yet?”
+
+“I am sure.”
+
+“And why?”
+
+“Because she has said that she would send it on the day when the
+betrothal was publicly proclaimed. That will be next Monday.”
+
+“Oh, then we have three days yet,” said Holmes with a yawn. “That is
+very fortunate, as I have one or two matters of importance to look into
+just at present. Your Majesty will, of course, stay in London for the
+present?”
+
+“Certainly. You will find me at the Langham under the name of the Count
+Von Kramm.”
+
+“Then I shall drop you a line to let you know how we progress.”
+
+“Pray do so. I shall be all anxiety.”
+
+“Then, as to money?”
+
+“You have _carte blanche_.”
+
+“Absolutely?”
+
+“I tell you that I would give one of the provinces of my kingdom to
+have that photograph.”
+
+“And for present expenses?”
+
+The King took a heavy chamois leather bag from under his cloak and laid
+it on the table.
+
+“There are three hundred pounds in gold and seven hundred in notes,” he
+said.
+
+Holmes scribbled a receipt upon a sheet of his note-book and handed it
+to him.
+
+“And Mademoiselle’s address?” he asked.
+
+“Is Briony Lodge, Serpentine Avenue, St. John’s Wood.”
+
+Holmes took a note of it. “One other question,” said he. “Was the
+photograph a cabinet?”
+
+“It was.”
+
+“Then, good-night, your Majesty, and I trust that we shall soon have
+some good news for you. And good-night, Watson,” he added, as the
+wheels of the royal brougham rolled down the street. “If you will be
+good enough to call to-morrow afternoon at three o’clock I should like
+to chat this little matter over with you.”
+
+
+II.
+
+At three o’clock precisely I was at Baker Street, but Holmes had not
+yet returned. The landlady informed me that he had left the house
+shortly after eight o’clock in the morning. I sat down beside the fire,
+however, with the intention of awaiting him, however long he might be.
+I was already deeply interested in his inquiry, for, though it was
+surrounded by none of the grim and strange features which were
+associated with the two crimes which I have already recorded, still,
+the nature of the case and the exalted station of his client gave it a
+character of its own. Indeed, apart from the nature of the
+investigation which my friend had on hand, there was something in his
+masterly grasp of a situation, and his keen, incisive reasoning, which
+made it a pleasure to me to study his system of work, and to follow the
+quick, subtle methods by which he disentangled the most inextricable
+mysteries. So accustomed was I to his invariable success that the very
+possibility of his failing had ceased to enter into my head.
+
+It was close upon four before the door opened, and a drunken-looking
+groom, ill-kempt and side-whiskered, with an inflamed face and
+disreputable clothes, walked into the room. Accustomed as I was to my
+friend’s amazing powers in the use of disguises, I had to look three
+times before I was certain that it was indeed he. With a nod he
+vanished into the bedroom, whence he emerged in five minutes
+tweed-suited and respectable, as of old. Putting his hands into his
+pockets, he stretched out his legs in front of the fire and laughed
+heartily for some minutes.
+
+“Well, really!” he cried, and then he choked and laughed again until he
+was obliged to lie back, limp and helpless, in the chair.
+
+“What is it?”
+
+“It’s quite too funny. I am sure you could never guess how I employed
+my morning, or what I ended by doing.”
+
+“I can’t imagine. I suppose that you have been watching the habits, and
+perhaps the house, of Miss Irene Adler.”
+
+“Quite so; but the sequel was rather unusual. I will tell you, however.
+I left the house a little after eight o’clock this morning in the
+character of a groom out of work. There is a wonderful sympathy and
+freemasonry among horsey men. Be one of them, and you will know all
+that there is to know. I soon found Briony Lodge. It is a _bijou_
+villa, with a garden at the back, but built out in front right up to
+the road, two stories. Chubb lock to the door. Large sitting-room on
+the right side, well furnished, with long windows almost to the floor,
+and those preposterous English window fasteners which a child could
+open. Behind there was nothing remarkable, save that the passage window
+could be reached from the top of the coach-house. I walked round it and
+examined it closely from every point of view, but without noting
+anything else of interest.
+
+“I then lounged down the street and found, as I expected, that there
+was a mews in a lane which runs down by one wall of the garden. I lent
+the ostlers a hand in rubbing down their horses, and received in
+exchange twopence, a glass of half-and-half, two fills of shag tobacco,
+and as much information as I could desire about Miss Adler, to say
+nothing of half a dozen other people in the neighbourhood in whom I was
+not in the least interested, but whose biographies I was compelled to
+listen to.”
+
+“And what of Irene Adler?” I asked.
+
+“Oh, she has turned all the men’s heads down in that part. She is the
+daintiest thing under a bonnet on this planet. So say the
+Serpentine-mews, to a man. She lives quietly, sings at concerts, drives
+out at five every day, and returns at seven sharp for dinner. Seldom
+goes out at other times, except when she sings. Has only one male
+visitor, but a good deal of him. He is dark, handsome, and dashing,
+never calls less than once a day, and often twice. He is a Mr. Godfrey
+Norton, of the Inner Temple. See the advantages of a cabman as a
+confidant. They had driven him home a dozen times from Serpentine-mews,
+and knew all about him. When I had listened to all they had to tell, I
+began to walk up and down near Briony Lodge once more, and to think
+over my plan of campaign.
+
+“This Godfrey Norton was evidently an important factor in the matter.
+He was a lawyer. That sounded ominous. What was the relation between
+them, and what the object of his repeated visits? Was she his client,
+his friend, or his mistress? If the former, she had probably
+transferred the photograph to his keeping. If the latter, it was less
+likely. On the issue of this question depended whether I should
+continue my work at Briony Lodge, or turn my attention to the
+gentleman’s chambers in the Temple. It was a delicate point, and it
+widened the field of my inquiry. I fear that I bore you with these
+details, but I have to let you see my little difficulties, if you are
+to understand the situation.”
+
+“I am following you closely,” I answered.
+
+“I was still balancing the matter in my mind when a hansom cab drove up
+to Briony Lodge, and a gentleman sprang out. He was a remarkably
+handsome man, dark, aquiline, and moustached—evidently the man of whom
+I had heard. He appeared to be in a great hurry, shouted to the cabman
+to wait, and brushed past the maid who opened the door with the air of
+a man who was thoroughly at home.
+
+“He was in the house about half an hour, and I could catch glimpses of
+him in the windows of the sitting-room, pacing up and down, talking
+excitedly, and waving his arms. Of her I could see nothing. Presently
+he emerged, looking even more flurried than before. As he stepped up to
+the cab, he pulled a gold watch from his pocket and looked at it
+earnestly, ‘Drive like the devil,’ he shouted, ‘first to Gross &
+Hankey’s in Regent Street, and then to the Church of St. Monica in the
+Edgeware Road. Half a guinea if you do it in twenty minutes!’
+
+“Away they went, and I was just wondering whether I should not do well
+to follow them when up the lane came a neat little landau, the coachman
+with his coat only half-buttoned, and his tie under his ear, while all
+the tags of his harness were sticking out of the buckles. It hadn’t
+pulled up before she shot out of the hall door and into it. I only
+caught a glimpse of her at the moment, but she was a lovely woman, with
+a face that a man might die for.
+
+“‘The Church of St. Monica, John,’ she cried, ‘and half a sovereign if
+you reach it in twenty minutes.’
+
+“This was quite too good to lose, Watson. I was just balancing whether
+I should run for it, or whether I should perch behind her landau when a
+cab came through the street. The driver looked twice at such a shabby
+fare, but I jumped in before he could object. ‘The Church of St.
+Monica,’ said I, ‘and half a sovereign if you reach it in twenty
+minutes.’ It was twenty-five minutes to twelve, and of course it was
+clear enough what was in the wind.
+
+“My cabby drove fast. I don’t think I ever drove faster, but the others
+were there before us. The cab and the landau with their steaming horses
+were in front of the door when I arrived. I paid the man and hurried
+into the church. There was not a soul there save the two whom I had
+followed and a surpliced clergyman, who seemed to be expostulating with
+them. They were all three standing in a knot in front of the altar. I
+lounged up the side aisle like any other idler who has dropped into a
+church. Suddenly, to my surprise, the three at the altar faced round to
+me, and Godfrey Norton came running as hard as he could towards me.
+
+“‘Thank God,’ he cried. ‘You’ll do. Come! Come!’
+
+“‘What then?’ I asked.
+
+“‘Come, man, come, only three minutes, or it won’t be legal.’
+
+“I was half-dragged up to the altar, and before I knew where I was I
+found myself mumbling responses which were whispered in my ear, and
+vouching for things of which I knew nothing, and generally assisting in
+the secure tying up of Irene Adler, spinster, to Godfrey Norton,
+bachelor. It was all done in an instant, and there was the gentleman
+thanking me on the one side and the lady on the other, while the
+clergyman beamed on me in front. It was the most preposterous position
+in which I ever found myself in my life, and it was the thought of it
+that started me laughing just now. It seems that there had been some
+informality about their license, that the clergyman absolutely refused
+to marry them without a witness of some sort, and that my lucky
+appearance saved the bridegroom from having to sally out into the
+streets in search of a best man. The bride gave me a sovereign, and I
+mean to wear it on my watch chain in memory of the occasion.”
+
+“This is a very unexpected turn of affairs,” said I; “and what then?”
+
+“Well, I found my plans very seriously menaced. It looked as if the
+pair might take an immediate departure, and so necessitate very prompt
+and energetic measures on my part. At the church door, however, they
+separated, he driving back to the Temple, and she to her own house. ‘I
+shall drive out in the park at five as usual,’ she said as she left
+him. I heard no more. They drove away in different directions, and I
+went off to make my own arrangements.”
+
+“Which are?”
+
+“Some cold beef and a glass of beer,” he answered, ringing the bell. “I
+have been too busy to think of food, and I am likely to be busier still
+this evening. By the way, Doctor, I shall want your co-operation.”
+
+“I shall be delighted.”
+
+“You don’t mind breaking the law?”
+
+“Not in the least.”
+
+“Nor running a chance of arrest?”
+
+“Not in a good cause.”
+
+“Oh, the cause is excellent!”
+
+“Then I am your man.”
+
+“I was sure that I might rely on you.”
+
+“But what is it you wish?”
+
+“When Mrs. Turner has brought in the tray I will make it clear to you.
+Now,” he said as he turned hungrily on the simple fare that our
+landlady had provided, “I must discuss it while I eat, for I have not
+much time. It is nearly five now. In two hours we must be on the scene
+of action. Miss Irene, or Madame, rather, returns from her drive at
+seven. We must be at Briony Lodge to meet her.”
+
+“And what then?”
+
+“You must leave that to me. I have already arranged what is to occur.
+There is only one point on which I must insist. You must not interfere,
+come what may. You understand?”
+
+“I am to be neutral?”
+
+“To do nothing whatever. There will probably be some small
+unpleasantness. Do not join in it. It will end in my being conveyed
+into the house. Four or five minutes afterwards the sitting-room window
+will open. You are to station yourself close to that open window.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“You are to watch me, for I will be visible to you.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“And when I raise my hand—so—you will throw into the room what I give
+you to throw, and will, at the same time, raise the cry of fire. You
+quite follow me?”
+
+“Entirely.”
+
+“It is nothing very formidable,” he said, taking a long cigar-shaped
+roll from his pocket. “It is an ordinary plumber’s smoke-rocket, fitted
+with a cap at either end to make it self-lighting. Your task is
+confined to that. When you raise your cry of fire, it will be taken up
+by quite a number of people. You may then walk to the end of the
+street, and I will rejoin you in ten minutes. I hope that I have made
+myself clear?”
+
+“I am to remain neutral, to get near the window, to watch you, and at
+the signal to throw in this object, then to raise the cry of fire, and
+to wait you at the corner of the street.”
+
+“Precisely.”
+
+“Then you may entirely rely on me.”
+
+“That is excellent. I think, perhaps, it is almost time that I prepare
+for the new role I have to play.”
+
+He disappeared into his bedroom and returned in a few minutes in the
+character of an amiable and simple-minded Nonconformist clergyman. His
+broad black hat, his baggy trousers, his white tie, his sympathetic
+smile, and general look of peering and benevolent curiosity were such
+as Mr. John Hare alone could have equalled. It was not merely that
+Holmes changed his costume. His expression, his manner, his very soul
+seemed to vary with every fresh part that he assumed. The stage lost a
+fine actor, even as science lost an acute reasoner, when he became a
+specialist in crime.
+
+It was a quarter past six when we left Baker Street, and it still
+wanted ten minutes to the hour when we found ourselves in Serpentine
+Avenue. It was already dusk, and the lamps were just being lighted as
+we paced up and down in front of Briony Lodge, waiting for the coming
+of its occupant. The house was just such as I had pictured it from
+Sherlock Holmes’ succinct description, but the locality appeared to be
+less private than I expected. On the contrary, for a small street in a
+quiet neighbourhood, it was remarkably animated. There was a group of
+shabbily dressed men smoking and laughing in a corner, a
+scissors-grinder with his wheel, two guardsmen who were flirting with a
+nurse-girl, and several well-dressed young men who were lounging up and
+down with cigars in their mouths.
+
+“You see,” remarked Holmes, as we paced to and fro in front of the
+house, “this marriage rather simplifies matters. The photograph becomes
+a double-edged weapon now. The chances are that she would be as averse
+to its being seen by Mr. Godfrey Norton, as our client is to its coming
+to the eyes of his princess. Now the question is, Where are we to find
+the photograph?”
+
+“Where, indeed?”
+
+“It is most unlikely that she carries it about with her. It is cabinet
+size. Too large for easy concealment about a woman’s dress. She knows
+that the King is capable of having her waylaid and searched. Two
+attempts of the sort have already been made. We may take it, then, that
+she does not carry it about with her.”
+
+“Where, then?”
+
+“Her banker or her lawyer. There is that double possibility. But I am
+inclined to think neither. Women are naturally secretive, and they like
+to do their own secreting. Why should she hand it over to anyone else?
+She could trust her own guardianship, but she could not tell what
+indirect or political influence might be brought to bear upon a
+business man. Besides, remember that she had resolved to use it within
+a few days. It must be where she can lay her hands upon it. It must be
+in her own house.”
+
+“But it has twice been burgled.”
+
+“Pshaw! They did not know how to look.”
+
+“But how will you look?”
+
+“I will not look.”
+
+“What then?”
+
+“I will get her to show me.”
+
+“But she will refuse.”
+
+“She will not be able to. But I hear the rumble of wheels. It is her
+carriage. Now carry out my orders to the letter.”
+
+As he spoke the gleam of the sidelights of a carriage came round the
+curve of the avenue. It was a smart little landau which rattled up to
+the door of Briony Lodge. As it pulled up, one of the loafing men at
+the corner dashed forward to open the door in the hope of earning a
+copper, but was elbowed away by another loafer, who had rushed up with
+the same intention. A fierce quarrel broke out, which was increased by
+the two guardsmen, who took sides with one of the loungers, and by the
+scissors-grinder, who was equally hot upon the other side. A blow was
+struck, and in an instant the lady, who had stepped from her carriage,
+was the centre of a little knot of flushed and struggling men, who
+struck savagely at each other with their fists and sticks. Holmes
+dashed into the crowd to protect the lady; but, just as he reached her,
+he gave a cry and dropped to the ground, with the blood running freely
+down his face. At his fall the guardsmen took to their heels in one
+direction and the loungers in the other, while a number of better
+dressed people, who had watched the scuffle without taking part in it,
+crowded in to help the lady and to attend to the injured man. Irene
+Adler, as I will still call her, had hurried up the steps; but she
+stood at the top with her superb figure outlined against the lights of
+the hall, looking back into the street.
+
+“Is the poor gentleman much hurt?” she asked.
+
+“He is dead,” cried several voices.
+
+“No, no, there’s life in him!” shouted another. “But he’ll be gone
+before you can get him to hospital.”
+
+“He’s a brave fellow,” said a woman. “They would have had the lady’s
+purse and watch if it hadn’t been for him. They were a gang, and a
+rough one, too. Ah, he’s breathing now.”
+
+“He can’t lie in the street. May we bring him in, marm?”
+
+“Surely. Bring him into the sitting-room. There is a comfortable sofa.
+This way, please!”
+
+Slowly and solemnly he was borne into Briony Lodge and laid out in the
+principal room, while I still observed the proceedings from my post by
+the window. The lamps had been lit, but the blinds had not been drawn,
+so that I could see Holmes as he lay upon the couch. I do not know
+whether he was seized with compunction at that moment for the part he
+was playing, but I know that I never felt more heartily ashamed of
+myself in my life than when I saw the beautiful creature against whom I
+was conspiring, or the grace and kindliness with which she waited upon
+the injured man. And yet it would be the blackest treachery to Holmes
+to draw back now from the part which he had intrusted to me. I hardened
+my heart, and took the smoke-rocket from under my ulster. After all, I
+thought, we are not injuring her. We are but preventing her from
+injuring another.
+
+Holmes had sat up upon the couch, and I saw him motion like a man who
+is in need of air. A maid rushed across and threw open the window. At
+the same instant I saw him raise his hand and at the signal I tossed my
+rocket into the room with a cry of “Fire!” The word was no sooner out
+of my mouth than the whole crowd of spectators, well dressed and
+ill—gentlemen, ostlers, and servant maids—joined in a general shriek of
+“Fire!” Thick clouds of smoke curled through the room and out at the
+open window. I caught a glimpse of rushing figures, and a moment later
+the voice of Holmes from within assuring them that it was a false
+alarm. Slipping through the shouting crowd I made my way to the corner
+of the street, and in ten minutes was rejoiced to find my friend’s arm
+in mine, and to get away from the scene of uproar. He walked swiftly
+and in silence for some few minutes until we had turned down one of the
+quiet streets which lead towards the Edgeware Road.
+
+“You did it very nicely, Doctor,” he remarked. “Nothing could have been
+better. It is all right.”
+
+“You have the photograph?”
+
+“I know where it is.”
+
+“And how did you find out?”
+
+“She showed me, as I told you she would.”
+
+“I am still in the dark.”
+
+“I do not wish to make a mystery,” said he, laughing. “The matter was
+perfectly simple. You, of course, saw that everyone in the street was
+an accomplice. They were all engaged for the evening.”
+
+“I guessed as much.”
+
+“Then, when the row broke out, I had a little moist red paint in the
+palm of my hand. I rushed forward, fell down, clapped my hand to my
+face, and became a piteous spectacle. It is an old trick.”
+
+“That also I could fathom.”
+
+“Then they carried me in. She was bound to have me in. What else could
+she do? And into her sitting-room, which was the very room which I
+suspected. It lay between that and her bedroom, and I was determined to
+see which. They laid me on a couch, I motioned for air, they were
+compelled to open the window, and you had your chance.”
+
+“How did that help you?”
+
+“It was all-important. When a woman thinks that her house is on fire,
+her instinct is at once to rush to the thing which she values most. It
+is a perfectly overpowering impulse, and I have more than once taken
+advantage of it. In the case of the Darlington Substitution Scandal it
+was of use to me, and also in the Arnsworth Castle business. A married
+woman grabs at her baby; an unmarried one reaches for her jewel-box.
+Now it was clear to me that our lady of to-day had nothing in the house
+more precious to her than what we are in quest of. She would rush to
+secure it. The alarm of fire was admirably done. The smoke and shouting
+were enough to shake nerves of steel. She responded beautifully. The
+photograph is in a recess behind a sliding panel just above the right
+bell-pull. She was there in an instant, and I caught a glimpse of it as
+she half drew it out. When I cried out that it was a false alarm, she
+replaced it, glanced at the rocket, rushed from the room, and I have
+not seen her since. I rose, and, making my excuses, escaped from the
+house. I hesitated whether to attempt to secure the photograph at once;
+but the coachman had come in, and as he was watching me narrowly, it
+seemed safer to wait. A little over-precipitance may ruin all.”
+
+“And now?” I asked.
+
+“Our quest is practically finished. I shall call with the King
+to-morrow, and with you, if you care to come with us. We will be shown
+into the sitting-room to wait for the lady, but it is probable that
+when she comes she may find neither us nor the photograph. It might be
+a satisfaction to his Majesty to regain it with his own hands.”
+
+“And when will you call?”
+
+“At eight in the morning. She will not be up, so that we shall have a
+clear field. Besides, we must be prompt, for this marriage may mean a
+complete change in her life and habits. I must wire to the King without
+delay.”
+
+We had reached Baker Street and had stopped at the door. He was
+searching his pockets for the key when someone passing said:
+
+“Good-night, Mister Sherlock Holmes.”
+
+There were several people on the pavement at the time, but the greeting
+appeared to come from a slim youth in an ulster who had hurried by.
+
+“I’ve heard that voice before,” said Holmes, staring down the dimly lit
+street. “Now, I wonder who the deuce that could have been.”
+
+
+III.
+
+I slept at Baker Street that night, and we were engaged upon our toast
+and coffee in the morning when the King of Bohemia rushed into the
+room.
+
+“You have really got it!” he cried, grasping Sherlock Holmes by either
+shoulder and looking eagerly into his face.
+
+“Not yet.”
+
+“But you have hopes?”
+
+“I have hopes.”
+
+“Then, come. I am all impatience to be gone.”
+
+“We must have a cab.”
+
+“No, my brougham is waiting.”
+
+“Then that will simplify matters.” We descended and started off once
+more for Briony Lodge.
+
+“Irene Adler is married,” remarked Holmes.
+
+“Married! When?”
+
+“Yesterday.”
+
+“But to whom?”
+
+“To an English lawyer named Norton.”
+
+“But she could not love him.”
+
+“I am in hopes that she does.”
+
+“And why in hopes?”
+
+“Because it would spare your Majesty all fear of future annoyance. If
+the lady loves her husband, she does not love your Majesty. If she does
+not love your Majesty, there is no reason why she should interfere with
+your Majesty’s plan.”
+
+“It is true. And yet—! Well! I wish she had been of my own station!
+What a queen she would have made!” He relapsed into a moody silence,
+which was not broken until we drew up in Serpentine Avenue.
+
+The door of Briony Lodge was open, and an elderly woman stood upon the
+steps. She watched us with a sardonic eye as we stepped from the
+brougham.
+
+“Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I believe?” said she.
+
+“I am Mr. Holmes,” answered my companion, looking at her with a
+questioning and rather startled gaze.
+
+“Indeed! My mistress told me that you were likely to call. She left
+this morning with her husband by the 5:15 train from Charing Cross for
+the Continent.”
+
+“What!” Sherlock Holmes staggered back, white with chagrin and
+surprise. “Do you mean that she has left England?”
+
+“Never to return.”
+
+“And the papers?” asked the King hoarsely. “All is lost.”
+
+“We shall see.” He pushed past the servant and rushed into the
+drawing-room, followed by the King and myself. The furniture was
+scattered about in every direction, with dismantled shelves and open
+drawers, as if the lady had hurriedly ransacked them before her flight.
+Holmes rushed at the bell-pull, tore back a small sliding shutter, and,
+plunging in his hand, pulled out a photograph and a letter. The
+photograph was of Irene Adler herself in evening dress, the letter was
+superscribed to “Sherlock Holmes, Esq. To be left till called for.” My
+friend tore it open, and we all three read it together. It was dated at
+midnight of the preceding night and ran in this way:
+
+    “MY DEAR MR. SHERLOCK HOLMES,—You really did it very well. You took
+    me in completely. Until after the alarm of fire, I had not a
+    suspicion. But then, when I found how I had betrayed myself, I
+    began to think. I had been warned against you months ago. I had
+    been told that, if the King employed an agent, it would certainly
+    be you. And your address had been given me. Yet, with all this, you
+    made me reveal what you wanted to know. Even after I became
+    suspicious, I found it hard to think evil of such a dear, kind old
+    clergyman. But, you know, I have been trained as an actress myself.
+    Male costume is nothing new to me. I often take advantage of the
+    freedom which it gives. I sent John, the coachman, to watch you,
+    ran upstairs, got into my walking clothes, as I call them, and came
+    down just as you departed.
+
+    “Well, I followed you to your door, and so made sure that I was
+    really an object of interest to the celebrated Mr. Sherlock Holmes.
+    Then I, rather imprudently, wished you good-night, and started for
+    the Temple to see my husband.
+
+    “We both thought the best resource was flight, when pursued by so
+    formidable an antagonist; so you will find the nest empty when you
+    call to-morrow. As to the photograph, your client may rest in
+    peace. I love and am loved by a better man than he. The King may do
+    what he will without hindrance from one whom he has cruelly
+    wronged. I keep it only to safeguard myself, and to preserve a
+    weapon which will always secure me from any steps which he might
+    take in the future. I leave a photograph which he might care to
+    possess; and I remain, dear Mr. Sherlock Holmes,
+
+
+    “Very truly yours,
+
+    “IRENE NORTON, _née_ ADLER.”
+
+
+“What a woman—oh, what a woman!” cried the King of Bohemia, when we had
+all three read this epistle. “Did I not tell you how quick and resolute
+she was? Would she not have made an admirable queen? Is it not a pity
+that she was not on my level?”
+
+“From what I have seen of the lady, she seems, indeed, to be on a very
+different level to your Majesty,” said Holmes coldly. “I am sorry that
+I have not been able to bring your Majesty’s business to a more
+successful conclusion.”
+
+“On the contrary, my dear sir,” cried the King; “nothing could be more
+successful. I know that her word is inviolate. The photograph is now as
+safe as if it were in the fire.”
+
+“I am glad to hear your Majesty say so.”
+
+“I am immensely indebted to you. Pray tell me in what way I can reward
+you. This ring—” He slipped an emerald snake ring from his finger and
+held it out upon the palm of his hand.
+
+“Your Majesty has something which I should value even more highly,”
+said Holmes.
+
+“You have but to name it.”
+
+“This photograph!”
+
+The King stared at him in amazement.
+
+“Irene’s photograph!” he cried. “Certainly, if you wish it.”
+
+“I thank your Majesty. Then there is no more to be done in the matter.
+I have the honour to wish you a very good morning.” He bowed, and,
+turning away without observing the hand which the King had stretched
+out to him, he set off in my company for his chambers.
+
+And that was how a great scandal threatened to affect the kingdom of
+Bohemia, and how the best plans of Mr. Sherlock Holmes were beaten by a
+woman’s wit. He used to make merry over the cleverness of women, but I
+have not heard him do it of late. And when he speaks of Irene Adler, or
+when he refers to her photograph, it is always under the honourable
+title of _the_ woman.
+
+
+
+II. THE RED-HEADED LEAGUE
+
+
+ I had called upon my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, one day in the
+ autumn of last year and found him in deep conversation with a very
+ stout, florid-faced, elderly gentleman with fiery red hair. With an
+ apology for my intrusion, I was about to withdraw when Holmes pulled
+ me abruptly into the room and closed the door behind me.
+
+“You could not possibly have come at a better time, my dear Watson,” he
+said cordially.
+
+“I was afraid that you were engaged.”
+
+“So I am. Very much so.”
+
+“Then I can wait in the next room.”
+
+“Not at all. This gentleman, Mr. Wilson, has been my partner and helper
+in many of my most successful cases, and I have no doubt that he will
+be of the utmost use to me in yours also.”
+
+The stout gentleman half rose from his chair and gave a bob of
+greeting, with a quick little questioning glance from his small
+fat-encircled eyes.
+
+“Try the settee,” said Holmes, relapsing into his armchair and putting
+his fingertips together, as was his custom when in judicial moods. “I
+know, my dear Watson, that you share my love of all that is bizarre and
+outside the conventions and humdrum routine of everyday life. You have
+shown your relish for it by the enthusiasm which has prompted you to
+chronicle, and, if you will excuse my saying so, somewhat to embellish
+so many of my own little adventures.”
+
+“Your cases have indeed been of the greatest interest to me,” I
+observed.
+
+“You will remember that I remarked the other day, just before we went
+into the very simple problem presented by Miss Mary Sutherland, that
+for strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life
+itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the
+imagination.”
+
+“A proposition which I took the liberty of doubting.”
+
+“You did, Doctor, but none the less you must come round to my view, for
+otherwise I shall keep on piling fact upon fact on you until your
+reason breaks down under them and acknowledges me to be right. Now, Mr.
+Jabez Wilson here has been good enough to call upon me this morning,
+and to begin a narrative which promises to be one of the most singular
+which I have listened to for some time. You have heard me remark that
+the strangest and most unique things are very often connected not with
+the larger but with the smaller crimes, and occasionally, indeed, where
+there is room for doubt whether any positive crime has been committed.
+As far as I have heard, it is impossible for me to say whether the
+present case is an instance of crime or not, but the course of events
+is certainly among the most singular that I have ever listened to.
+Perhaps, Mr. Wilson, you would have the great kindness to recommence
+your narrative. I ask you not merely because my friend Dr. Watson has
+not heard the opening part but also because the peculiar nature of the
+story makes me anxious to have every possible detail from your lips. As
+a rule, when I have heard some slight indication of the course of
+events, I am able to guide myself by the thousands of other similar
+cases which occur to my memory. In the present instance I am forced to
+admit that the facts are, to the best of my belief, unique.”
+
+The portly client puffed out his chest with an appearance of some
+little pride and pulled a dirty and wrinkled newspaper from the inside
+pocket of his greatcoat. As he glanced down the advertisement column,
+with his head thrust forward and the paper flattened out upon his knee,
+I took a good look at the man and endeavoured, after the fashion of my
+companion, to read the indications which might be presented by his
+dress or appearance.
+
+I did not gain very much, however, by my inspection. Our visitor bore
+every mark of being an average commonplace British tradesman, obese,
+pompous, and slow. He wore rather baggy grey shepherd’s check trousers,
+a not over-clean black frock-coat, unbuttoned in the front, and a drab
+waistcoat with a heavy brassy Albert chain, and a square pierced bit of
+metal dangling down as an ornament. A frayed top-hat and a faded brown
+overcoat with a wrinkled velvet collar lay upon a chair beside him.
+Altogether, look as I would, there was nothing remarkable about the man
+save his blazing red head, and the expression of extreme chagrin and
+discontent upon his features.
+
+Sherlock Holmes’ quick eye took in my occupation, and he shook his head
+with a smile as he noticed my questioning glances. “Beyond the obvious
+facts that he has at some time done manual labour, that he takes snuff,
+that he is a Freemason, that he has been in China, and that he has done
+a considerable amount of writing lately, I can deduce nothing else.”
+
+Mr. Jabez Wilson started up in his chair, with his forefinger upon the
+paper, but his eyes upon my companion.
+
+“How, in the name of good-fortune, did you know all that, Mr. Holmes?”
+he asked. “How did you know, for example, that I did manual labour.
+It’s as true as gospel, for I began as a ship’s carpenter.”
+
+“Your hands, my dear sir. Your right hand is quite a size larger than
+your left. You have worked with it, and the muscles are more
+developed.”
+
+“Well, the snuff, then, and the Freemasonry?”
+
+“I won’t insult your intelligence by telling you how I read that,
+especially as, rather against the strict rules of your order, you use
+an arc-and-compass breastpin.”
+
+“Ah, of course, I forgot that. But the writing?”
+
+“What else can be indicated by that right cuff so very shiny for five
+inches, and the left one with the smooth patch near the elbow where you
+rest it upon the desk?”
+
+“Well, but China?”
+
+“The fish that you have tattooed immediately above your right wrist
+could only have been done in China. I have made a small study of tattoo
+marks and have even contributed to the literature of the subject. That
+trick of staining the fishes’ scales of a delicate pink is quite
+peculiar to China. When, in addition, I see a Chinese coin hanging from
+your watch-chain, the matter becomes even more simple.”
+
+Mr. Jabez Wilson laughed heavily. “Well, I never!” said he. “I thought
+at first that you had done something clever, but I see that there was
+nothing in it after all.”
+
+“I begin to think, Watson,” said Holmes, “that I make a mistake in
+explaining. ‘_Omne ignotum pro magnifico_,’ you know, and my poor
+little reputation, such as it is, will suffer shipwreck if I am so
+candid. Can you not find the advertisement, Mr. Wilson?”
+
+“Yes, I have got it now,” he answered with his thick red finger planted
+halfway down the column. “Here it is. This is what began it all. You
+just read it for yourself, sir.”
+
+I took the paper from him and read as follows:
+
+“TO THE RED-HEADED LEAGUE: On account of the bequest of the late
+Ezekiah Hopkins, of Lebanon, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., there is now another
+vacancy open which entitles a member of the League to a salary of £ 4 a
+week for purely nominal services. All red-headed men who are sound in
+body and mind and above the age of twenty-one years, are eligible.
+Apply in person on Monday, at eleven o’clock, to Duncan Ross, at the
+offices of the League, 7 Pope’s Court, Fleet Street.”
+
+
+“What on earth does this mean?” I ejaculated after I had twice read
+over the extraordinary announcement.
+
+Holmes chuckled and wriggled in his chair, as was his habit when in
+high spirits. “It is a little off the beaten track, isn’t it?” said he.
+“And now, Mr. Wilson, off you go at scratch and tell us all about
+yourself, your household, and the effect which this advertisement had
+upon your fortunes. You will first make a note, Doctor, of the paper
+and the date.”
+
+“It is _The Morning Chronicle_ of April 27, 1890. Just two months ago.”
+
+“Very good. Now, Mr. Wilson?”
+
+“Well, it is just as I have been telling you, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,”
+said Jabez Wilson, mopping his forehead; “I have a small pawnbroker’s
+business at Coburg Square, near the City. It’s not a very large affair,
+and of late years it has not done more than just give me a living. I
+used to be able to keep two assistants, but now I only keep one; and I
+would have a job to pay him but that he is willing to come for half
+wages so as to learn the business.”
+
+“What is the name of this obliging youth?” asked Sherlock Holmes.
+
+“His name is Vincent Spaulding, and he’s not such a youth, either. It’s
+hard to say his age. I should not wish a smarter assistant, Mr. Holmes;
+and I know very well that he could better himself and earn twice what I
+am able to give him. But, after all, if he is satisfied, why should I
+put ideas in his head?”
+
+“Why, indeed? You seem most fortunate in having an _employé_ who comes
+under the full market price. It is not a common experience among
+employers in this age. I don’t know that your assistant is not as
+remarkable as your advertisement.”
+
+“Oh, he has his faults, too,” said Mr. Wilson. “Never was such a fellow
+for photography. Snapping away with a camera when he ought to be
+improving his mind, and then diving down into the cellar like a rabbit
+into its hole to develop his pictures. That is his main fault, but on
+the whole he’s a good worker. There’s no vice in him.”
+
+“He is still with you, I presume?”
+
+“Yes, sir. He and a girl of fourteen, who does a bit of simple cooking
+and keeps the place clean—that’s all I have in the house, for I am a
+widower and never had any family. We live very quietly, sir, the three
+of us; and we keep a roof over our heads and pay our debts, if we do
+nothing more.
+
+“The first thing that put us out was that advertisement. Spaulding, he
+came down into the office just this day eight weeks, with this very
+paper in his hand, and he says:
+
+“‘I wish to the Lord, Mr. Wilson, that I was a red-headed man.’
+
+“‘Why that?’ I asks.
+
+“‘Why,’ says he, ‘here’s another vacancy on the League of the
+Red-headed Men. It’s worth quite a little fortune to any man who gets
+it, and I understand that there are more vacancies than there are men,
+so that the trustees are at their wits’ end what to do with the money.
+If my hair would only change colour, here’s a nice little crib all
+ready for me to step into.’
+
+“‘Why, what is it, then?’ I asked. You see, Mr. Holmes, I am a very
+stay-at-home man, and as my business came to me instead of my having to
+go to it, I was often weeks on end without putting my foot over the
+door-mat. In that way I didn’t know much of what was going on outside,
+and I was always glad of a bit of news.
+
+“‘Have you never heard of the League of the Red-headed Men?’ he asked
+with his eyes open.
+
+“‘Never.’
+
+“‘Why, I wonder at that, for you are eligible yourself for one of the
+vacancies.’
+
+“‘And what are they worth?’ I asked.
+
+“‘Oh, merely a couple of hundred a year, but the work is slight, and it
+need not interfere very much with one’s other occupations.’
+
+“Well, you can easily think that that made me prick up my ears, for the
+business has not been over good for some years, and an extra couple of
+hundred would have been very handy.
+
+“‘Tell me all about it,’ said I.
+
+“‘Well,’ said he, showing me the advertisement, ‘you can see for
+yourself that the League has a vacancy, and there is the address where
+you should apply for particulars. As far as I can make out, the League
+was founded by an American millionaire, Ezekiah Hopkins, who was very
+peculiar in his ways. He was himself red-headed, and he had a great
+sympathy for all red-headed men; so, when he died, it was found that he
+had left his enormous fortune in the hands of trustees, with
+instructions to apply the interest to the providing of easy berths to
+men whose hair is of that colour. From all I hear it is splendid pay
+and very little to do.’
+
+“‘But,’ said I, ‘there would be millions of red-headed men who would
+apply.’
+
+“‘Not so many as you might think,’ he answered. ‘You see it is really
+confined to Londoners, and to grown men. This American had started from
+London when he was young, and he wanted to do the old town a good turn.
+Then, again, I have heard it is no use your applying if your hair is
+light red, or dark red, or anything but real bright, blazing, fiery
+red. Now, if you cared to apply, Mr. Wilson, you would just walk in;
+but perhaps it would hardly be worth your while to put yourself out of
+the way for the sake of a few hundred pounds.’
+
+“Now, it is a fact, gentlemen, as you may see for yourselves, that my
+hair is of a very full and rich tint, so that it seemed to me that if
+there was to be any competition in the matter I stood as good a chance
+as any man that I had ever met. Vincent Spaulding seemed to know so
+much about it that I thought he might prove useful, so I just ordered
+him to put up the shutters for the day and to come right away with me.
+He was very willing to have a holiday, so we shut the business up and
+started off for the address that was given us in the advertisement.
+
+“I never hope to see such a sight as that again, Mr. Holmes. From
+north, south, east, and west every man who had a shade of red in his
+hair had tramped into the city to answer the advertisement. Fleet
+Street was choked with red-headed folk, and Pope’s Court looked like a
+coster’s orange barrow. I should not have thought there were so many in
+the whole country as were brought together by that single
+advertisement. Every shade of colour they were—straw, lemon, orange,
+brick, Irish-setter, liver, clay; but, as Spaulding said, there were
+not many who had the real vivid flame-coloured tint. When I saw how
+many were waiting, I would have given it up in despair; but Spaulding
+would not hear of it. How he did it I could not imagine, but he pushed
+and pulled and butted until he got me through the crowd, and right up
+to the steps which led to the office. There was a double stream upon
+the stair, some going up in hope, and some coming back dejected; but we
+wedged in as well as we could and soon found ourselves in the office.”
+
+“Your experience has been a most entertaining one,” remarked Holmes as
+his client paused and refreshed his memory with a huge pinch of snuff.
+“Pray continue your very interesting statement.”
+
+“There was nothing in the office but a couple of wooden chairs and a
+deal table, behind which sat a small man with a head that was even
+redder than mine. He said a few words to each candidate as he came up,
+and then he always managed to find some fault in them which would
+disqualify them. Getting a vacancy did not seem to be such a very easy
+matter, after all. However, when our turn came the little man was much
+more favourable to me than to any of the others, and he closed the door
+as we entered, so that he might have a private word with us.
+
+“‘This is Mr. Jabez Wilson,’ said my assistant, ‘and he is willing to
+fill a vacancy in the League.’
+
+“‘And he is admirably suited for it,’ the other answered. ‘He has every
+requirement. I cannot recall when I have seen anything so fine.’ He
+took a step backward, cocked his head on one side, and gazed at my hair
+until I felt quite bashful. Then suddenly he plunged forward, wrung my
+hand, and congratulated me warmly on my success.
+
+“‘It would be injustice to hesitate,’ said he. ‘You will, however, I am
+sure, excuse me for taking an obvious precaution.’ With that he seized
+my hair in both his hands, and tugged until I yelled with the pain.
+‘There is water in your eyes,’ said he as he released me. ‘I perceive
+that all is as it should be. But we have to be careful, for we have
+twice been deceived by wigs and once by paint. I could tell you tales
+of cobbler’s wax which would disgust you with human nature.’ He stepped
+over to the window and shouted through it at the top of his voice that
+the vacancy was filled. A groan of disappointment came up from below,
+and the folk all trooped away in different directions until there was
+not a red-head to be seen except my own and that of the manager.
+
+“‘My name,’ said he, ‘is Mr. Duncan Ross, and I am myself one of the
+pensioners upon the fund left by our noble benefactor. Are you a
+married man, Mr. Wilson? Have you a family?’
+
+“I answered that I had not.
+
+“His face fell immediately.
+
+“‘Dear me!’ he said gravely, ‘that is very serious indeed! I am sorry
+to hear you say that. The fund was, of course, for the propagation and
+spread of the red-heads as well as for their maintenance. It is
+exceedingly unfortunate that you should be a bachelor.’
+
+“My face lengthened at this, Mr. Holmes, for I thought that I was not
+to have the vacancy after all; but after thinking it over for a few
+minutes he said that it would be all right.
+
+“‘In the case of another,’ said he, ‘the objection might be fatal, but
+we must stretch a point in favour of a man with such a head of hair as
+yours. When shall you be able to enter upon your new duties?’
+
+“‘Well, it is a little awkward, for I have a business already,’ said I.
+
+“‘Oh, never mind about that, Mr. Wilson!’ said Vincent Spaulding. ‘I
+should be able to look after that for you.’
+
+“‘What would be the hours?’ I asked.
+
+“‘Ten to two.’
+
+“Now a pawnbroker’s business is mostly done of an evening, Mr. Holmes,
+especially Thursday and Friday evening, which is just before pay-day;
+so it would suit me very well to earn a little in the mornings.
+Besides, I knew that my assistant was a good man, and that he would see
+to anything that turned up.
+
+“‘That would suit me very well,’ said I. ‘And the pay?’
+
+“‘Is £ 4 a week.’
+
+“‘And the work?’
+
+“‘Is purely nominal.’
+
+“‘What do you call purely nominal?’
+
+“‘Well, you have to be in the office, or at least in the building, the
+whole time. If you leave, you forfeit your whole position forever. The
+will is very clear upon that point. You don’t comply with the
+conditions if you budge from the office during that time.’
+
+“‘It’s only four hours a day, and I should not think of leaving,’ said
+I.
+
+“‘No excuse will avail,’ said Mr. Duncan Ross; ‘neither sickness nor
+business nor anything else. There you must stay, or you lose your
+billet.’
+
+“‘And the work?’
+
+“‘Is to copy out the _Encyclopædia Britannica_. There is the first
+volume of it in that press. You must find your own ink, pens, and
+blotting-paper, but we provide this table and chair. Will you be ready
+to-morrow?’
+
+“‘Certainly,’ I answered.
+
+“‘Then, good-bye, Mr. Jabez Wilson, and let me congratulate you once
+more on the important position which you have been fortunate enough to
+gain.’ He bowed me out of the room and I went home with my assistant,
+hardly knowing what to say or do, I was so pleased at my own good
+fortune.
+
+“Well, I thought over the matter all day, and by evening I was in low
+spirits again; for I had quite persuaded myself that the whole affair
+must be some great hoax or fraud, though what its object might be I
+could not imagine. It seemed altogether past belief that anyone could
+make such a will, or that they would pay such a sum for doing anything
+so simple as copying out the _Encyclopædia Britannica_. Vincent
+Spaulding did what he could to cheer me up, but by bedtime I had
+reasoned myself out of the whole thing. However, in the morning I
+determined to have a look at it anyhow, so I bought a penny bottle of
+ink, and with a quill-pen, and seven sheets of foolscap paper, I
+started off for Pope’s Court.
+
+“Well, to my surprise and delight, everything was as right as possible.
+The table was set out ready for me, and Mr. Duncan Ross was there to
+see that I got fairly to work. He started me off upon the letter A, and
+then he left me; but he would drop in from time to time to see that all
+was right with me. At two o’clock he bade me good-day, complimented me
+upon the amount that I had written, and locked the door of the office
+after me.
+
+“This went on day after day, Mr. Holmes, and on Saturday the manager
+came in and planked down four golden sovereigns for my week’s work. It
+was the same next week, and the same the week after. Every morning I
+was there at ten, and every afternoon I left at two. By degrees Mr.
+Duncan Ross took to coming in only once of a morning, and then, after a
+time, he did not come in at all. Still, of course, I never dared to
+leave the room for an instant, for I was not sure when he might come,
+and the billet was such a good one, and suited me so well, that I would
+not risk the loss of it.
+
+“Eight weeks passed away like this, and I had written about Abbots and
+Archery and Armour and Architecture and Attica, and hoped with
+diligence that I might get on to the B’s before very long. It cost me
+something in foolscap, and I had pretty nearly filled a shelf with my
+writings. And then suddenly the whole business came to an end.”
+
+“To an end?”
+
+“Yes, sir. And no later than this morning. I went to my work as usual
+at ten o’clock, but the door was shut and locked, with a little square
+of cardboard hammered on to the middle of the panel with a tack. Here
+it is, and you can read for yourself.”
+
+He held up a piece of white cardboard about the size of a sheet of
+note-paper. It read in this fashion:
+
+“THE RED-HEADED LEAGUE IS DISSOLVED. October 9, 1890.”
+
+
+Sherlock Holmes and I surveyed this curt announcement and the rueful
+face behind it, until the comical side of the affair so completely
+overtopped every other consideration that we both burst out into a roar
+of laughter.
+
+“I cannot see that there is anything very funny,” cried our client,
+flushing up to the roots of his flaming head. “If you can do nothing
+better than laugh at me, I can go elsewhere.”
+
+“No, no,” cried Holmes, shoving him back into the chair from which he
+had half risen. “I really wouldn’t miss your case for the world. It is
+most refreshingly unusual. But there is, if you will excuse my saying
+so, something just a little funny about it. Pray what steps did you
+take when you found the card upon the door?”
+
+“I was staggered, sir. I did not know what to do. Then I called at the
+offices round, but none of them seemed to know anything about it.
+Finally, I went to the landlord, who is an accountant living on the
+ground floor, and I asked him if he could tell me what had become of
+the Red-headed League. He said that he had never heard of any such
+body. Then I asked him who Mr. Duncan Ross was. He answered that the
+name was new to him.
+
+“‘Well,’ said I, ‘the gentleman at No. 4.’
+
+“‘What, the red-headed man?’
+
+“‘Yes.’
+
+“‘Oh,’ said he, ‘his name was William Morris. He was a solicitor and
+was using my room as a temporary convenience until his new premises
+were ready. He moved out yesterday.’
+
+“‘Where could I find him?’
+
+“‘Oh, at his new offices. He did tell me the address. Yes, 17 King
+Edward Street, near St. Paul’s.’
+
+“I started off, Mr. Holmes, but when I got to that address it was a
+manufactory of artificial knee-caps, and no one in it had ever heard of
+either Mr. William Morris or Mr. Duncan Ross.”
+
+“And what did you do then?” asked Holmes.
+
+“I went home to Saxe-Coburg Square, and I took the advice of my
+assistant. But he could not help me in any way. He could only say that
+if I waited I should hear by post. But that was not quite good enough,
+Mr. Holmes. I did not wish to lose such a place without a struggle, so,
+as I had heard that you were good enough to give advice to poor folk
+who were in need of it, I came right away to you.”
+
+“And you did very wisely,” said Holmes. “Your case is an exceedingly
+remarkable one, and I shall be happy to look into it. From what you
+have told me I think that it is possible that graver issues hang from
+it than might at first sight appear.”
+
+“Grave enough!” said Mr. Jabez Wilson. “Why, I have lost four pound a
+week.”
+
+“As far as you are personally concerned,” remarked Holmes, “I do not
+see that you have any grievance against this extraordinary league. On
+the contrary, you are, as I understand, richer by some £ 30, to say
+nothing of the minute knowledge which you have gained on every subject
+which comes under the letter A. You have lost nothing by them.”
+
+“No, sir. But I want to find out about them, and who they are, and what
+their object was in playing this prank—if it was a prank—upon me. It
+was a pretty expensive joke for them, for it cost them two and thirty
+pounds.”
+
+“We shall endeavour to clear up these points for you. And, first, one
+or two questions, Mr. Wilson. This assistant of yours who first called
+your attention to the advertisement—how long had he been with you?”
+
+“About a month then.”
+
+“How did he come?”
+
+“In answer to an advertisement.”
+
+“Was he the only applicant?”
+
+“No, I had a dozen.”
+
+“Why did you pick him?”
+
+“Because he was handy and would come cheap.”
+
+“At half wages, in fact.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“What is he like, this Vincent Spaulding?”
+
+“Small, stout-built, very quick in his ways, no hair on his face,
+though he’s not short of thirty. Has a white splash of acid upon his
+forehead.”
+
+Holmes sat up in his chair in considerable excitement. “I thought as
+much,” said he. “Have you ever observed that his ears are pierced for
+earrings?”
+
+“Yes, sir. He told me that a gipsy had done it for him when he was a
+lad.”
+
+“Hum!” said Holmes, sinking back in deep thought. “He is still with
+you?”
+
+“Oh, yes, sir; I have only just left him.”
+
+“And has your business been attended to in your absence?”
+
+“Nothing to complain of, sir. There’s never very much to do of a
+morning.”
+
+“That will do, Mr. Wilson. I shall be happy to give you an opinion upon
+the subject in the course of a day or two. To-day is Saturday, and I
+hope that by Monday we may come to a conclusion.”
+
+“Well, Watson,” said Holmes when our visitor had left us, “what do you
+make of it all?”
+
+“I make nothing of it,” I answered frankly. “It is a most mysterious
+business.”
+
+“As a rule,” said Holmes, “the more bizarre a thing is the less
+mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes
+which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most
+difficult to identify. But I must be prompt over this matter.”
+
+“What are you going to do, then?” I asked.
+
+“To smoke,” he answered. “It is quite a three pipe problem, and I beg
+that you won’t speak to me for fifty minutes.” He curled himself up in
+his chair, with his thin knees drawn up to his hawk-like nose, and
+there he sat with his eyes closed and his black clay pipe thrusting out
+like the bill of some strange bird. I had come to the conclusion that
+he had dropped asleep, and indeed was nodding myself, when he suddenly
+sprang out of his chair with the gesture of a man who has made up his
+mind and put his pipe down upon the mantelpiece.
+
+“Sarasate plays at the St. James’s Hall this afternoon,” he remarked.
+“What do you think, Watson? Could your patients spare you for a few
+hours?”
+
+“I have nothing to do to-day. My practice is never very absorbing.”
+
+“Then put on your hat and come. I am going through the City first, and
+we can have some lunch on the way. I observe that there is a good deal
+of German music on the programme, which is rather more to my taste than
+Italian or French. It is introspective, and I want to introspect. Come
+along!”
+
+We travelled by the Underground as far as Aldersgate; and a short walk
+took us to Saxe-Coburg Square, the scene of the singular story which we
+had listened to in the morning. It was a poky, little, shabby-genteel
+place, where four lines of dingy two-storied brick houses looked out
+into a small railed-in enclosure, where a lawn of weedy grass and a few
+clumps of faded laurel bushes made a hard fight against a smoke-laden
+and uncongenial atmosphere. Three gilt balls and a brown board with
+“JABEZ WILSON” in white letters, upon a corner house, announced the
+place where our red-headed client carried on his business. Sherlock
+Holmes stopped in front of it with his head on one side and looked it
+all over, with his eyes shining brightly between puckered lids. Then he
+walked slowly up the street, and then down again to the corner, still
+looking keenly at the houses. Finally he returned to the pawnbroker’s,
+and, having thumped vigorously upon the pavement with his stick two or
+three times, he went up to the door and knocked. It was instantly
+opened by a bright-looking, clean-shaven young fellow, who asked him to
+step in.
+
+“Thank you,” said Holmes, “I only wished to ask you how you would go
+from here to the Strand.”
+
+“Third right, fourth left,” answered the assistant promptly, closing
+the door.
+
+“Smart fellow, that,” observed Holmes as we walked away. “He is, in my
+judgment, the fourth smartest man in London, and for daring I am not
+sure that he has not a claim to be third. I have known something of him
+before.”
+
+“Evidently,” said I, “Mr. Wilson’s assistant counts for a good deal in
+this mystery of the Red-headed League. I am sure that you inquired your
+way merely in order that you might see him.”
+
+“Not him.”
+
+“What then?”
+
+“The knees of his trousers.”
+
+“And what did you see?”
+
+“What I expected to see.”
+
+“Why did you beat the pavement?”
+
+“My dear doctor, this is a time for observation, not for talk. We are
+spies in an enemy’s country. We know something of Saxe-Coburg Square.
+Let us now explore the parts which lie behind it.”
+
+The road in which we found ourselves as we turned round the corner from
+the retired Saxe-Coburg Square presented as great a contrast to it as
+the front of a picture does to the back. It was one of the main
+arteries which conveyed the traffic of the City to the north and west.
+The roadway was blocked with the immense stream of commerce flowing in
+a double tide inward and outward, while the footpaths were black with
+the hurrying swarm of pedestrians. It was difficult to realise as we
+looked at the line of fine shops and stately business premises that
+they really abutted on the other side upon the faded and stagnant
+square which we had just quitted.
+
+“Let me see,” said Holmes, standing at the corner and glancing along
+the line, “I should like just to remember the order of the houses here.
+It is a hobby of mine to have an exact knowledge of London. There is
+Mortimer’s, the tobacconist, the little newspaper shop, the Coburg
+branch of the City and Suburban Bank, the Vegetarian Restaurant, and
+McFarlane’s carriage-building depot. That carries us right on to the
+other block. And now, Doctor, we’ve done our work, so it’s time we had
+some play. A sandwich and a cup of coffee, and then off to violin-land,
+where all is sweetness and delicacy and harmony, and there are no
+red-headed clients to vex us with their conundrums.”
+
+My friend was an enthusiastic musician, being himself not only a very
+capable performer but a composer of no ordinary merit. All the
+afternoon he sat in the stalls wrapped in the most perfect happiness,
+gently waving his long, thin fingers in time to the music, while his
+gently smiling face and his languid, dreamy eyes were as unlike those
+of Holmes the sleuth-hound, Holmes the relentless, keen-witted,
+ready-handed criminal agent, as it was possible to conceive. In his
+singular character the dual nature alternately asserted itself, and his
+extreme exactness and astuteness represented, as I have often thought,
+the reaction against the poetic and contemplative mood which
+occasionally predominated in him. The swing of his nature took him from
+extreme languor to devouring energy; and, as I knew well, he was never
+so truly formidable as when, for days on end, he had been lounging in
+his armchair amid his improvisations and his black-letter editions.
+Then it was that the lust of the chase would suddenly come upon him,
+and that his brilliant reasoning power would rise to the level of
+intuition, until those who were unacquainted with his methods would
+look askance at him as on a man whose knowledge was not that of other
+mortals. When I saw him that afternoon so enwrapped in the music at St.
+James’s Hall I felt that an evil time might be coming upon those whom
+he had set himself to hunt down.
+
+“You want to go home, no doubt, Doctor,” he remarked as we emerged.
+
+“Yes, it would be as well.”
+
+“And I have some business to do which will take some hours. This
+business at Coburg Square is serious.”
+
+“Why serious?”
+
+“A considerable crime is in contemplation. I have every reason to
+believe that we shall be in time to stop it. But to-day being Saturday
+rather complicates matters. I shall want your help to-night.”
+
+“At what time?”
+
+“Ten will be early enough.”
+
+“I shall be at Baker Street at ten.”
+
+“Very well. And, I say, Doctor, there may be some little danger, so
+kindly put your army revolver in your pocket.” He waved his hand,
+turned on his heel, and disappeared in an instant among the crowd.
+
+I trust that I am not more dense than my neighbours, but I was always
+oppressed with a sense of my own stupidity in my dealings with Sherlock
+Holmes. Here I had heard what he had heard, I had seen what he had
+seen, and yet from his words it was evident that he saw clearly not
+only what had happened but what was about to happen, while to me the
+whole business was still confused and grotesque. As I drove home to my
+house in Kensington I thought over it all, from the extraordinary story
+of the red-headed copier of the _Encyclopædia_ down to the visit to
+Saxe-Coburg Square, and the ominous words with which he had parted from
+me. What was this nocturnal expedition, and why should I go armed?
+Where were we going, and what were we to do? I had the hint from Holmes
+that this smooth-faced pawnbroker’s assistant was a formidable man—a
+man who might play a deep game. I tried to puzzle it out, but gave it
+up in despair and set the matter aside until night should bring an
+explanation.
+
+It was a quarter-past nine when I started from home and made my way
+across the Park, and so through Oxford Street to Baker Street. Two
+hansoms were standing at the door, and as I entered the passage I heard
+the sound of voices from above. On entering his room, I found Holmes in
+animated conversation with two men, one of whom I recognised as Peter
+Jones, the official police agent, while the other was a long, thin,
+sad-faced man, with a very shiny hat and oppressively respectable
+frock-coat.
+
+“Ha! Our party is complete,” said Holmes, buttoning up his pea-jacket
+and taking his heavy hunting crop from the rack. “Watson, I think you
+know Mr. Jones, of Scotland Yard? Let me introduce you to Mr.
+Merryweather, who is to be our companion in to-night’s adventure.”
+
+“We’re hunting in couples again, Doctor, you see,” said Jones in his
+consequential way. “Our friend here is a wonderful man for starting a
+chase. All he wants is an old dog to help him to do the running down.”
+
+“I hope a wild goose may not prove to be the end of our chase,”
+observed Mr. Merryweather gloomily.
+
+“You may place considerable confidence in Mr. Holmes, sir,” said the
+police agent loftily. “He has his own little methods, which are, if he
+won’t mind my saying so, just a little too theoretical and fantastic,
+but he has the makings of a detective in him. It is not too much to say
+that once or twice, as in that business of the Sholto murder and the
+Agra treasure, he has been more nearly correct than the official
+force.”
+
+“Oh, if you say so, Mr. Jones, it is all right,” said the stranger with
+deference. “Still, I confess that I miss my rubber. It is the first
+Saturday night for seven-and-twenty years that I have not had my
+rubber.”
+
+“I think you will find,” said Sherlock Holmes, “that you will play for
+a higher stake to-night than you have ever done yet, and that the play
+will be more exciting. For you, Mr. Merryweather, the stake will be
+some £ 30,000; and for you, Jones, it will be the man upon whom you
+wish to lay your hands.”
+
+“John Clay, the murderer, thief, smasher, and forger. He’s a young man,
+Mr. Merryweather, but he is at the head of his profession, and I would
+rather have my bracelets on him than on any criminal in London. He’s a
+remarkable man, is young John Clay. His grandfather was a royal duke,
+and he himself has been to Eton and Oxford. His brain is as cunning as
+his fingers, and though we meet signs of him at every turn, we never
+know where to find the man himself. He’ll crack a crib in Scotland one
+week, and be raising money to build an orphanage in Cornwall the next.
+I’ve been on his track for years and have never set eyes on him yet.”
+
+“I hope that I may have the pleasure of introducing you to-night. I’ve
+had one or two little turns also with Mr. John Clay, and I agree with
+you that he is at the head of his profession. It is past ten, however,
+and quite time that we started. If you two will take the first hansom,
+Watson and I will follow in the second.”
+
+Sherlock Holmes was not very communicative during the long drive and
+lay back in the cab humming the tunes which he had heard in the
+afternoon. We rattled through an endless labyrinth of gas-lit streets
+until we emerged into Farrington Street.
+
+“We are close there now,” my friend remarked. “This fellow Merryweather
+is a bank director, and personally interested in the matter. I thought
+it as well to have Jones with us also. He is not a bad fellow, though
+an absolute imbecile in his profession. He has one positive virtue. He
+is as brave as a bulldog and as tenacious as a lobster if he gets his
+claws upon anyone. Here we are, and they are waiting for us.”
+
+We had reached the same crowded thoroughfare in which we had found
+ourselves in the morning. Our cabs were dismissed, and, following the
+guidance of Mr. Merryweather, we passed down a narrow passage and
+through a side door, which he opened for us. Within there was a small
+corridor, which ended in a very massive iron gate. This also was
+opened, and led down a flight of winding stone steps, which terminated
+at another formidable gate. Mr. Merryweather stopped to light a
+lantern, and then conducted us down a dark, earth-smelling passage, and
+so, after opening a third door, into a huge vault or cellar, which was
+piled all round with crates and massive boxes.
+
+“You are not very vulnerable from above,” Holmes remarked as he held up
+the lantern and gazed about him.
+
+“Nor from below,” said Mr. Merryweather, striking his stick upon the
+flags which lined the floor. “Why, dear me, it sounds quite hollow!” he
+remarked, looking up in surprise.
+
+“I must really ask you to be a little more quiet!” said Holmes
+severely. “You have already imperilled the whole success of our
+expedition. Might I beg that you would have the goodness to sit down
+upon one of those boxes, and not to interfere?”
+
+The solemn Mr. Merryweather perched himself upon a crate, with a very
+injured expression upon his face, while Holmes fell upon his knees upon
+the floor and, with the lantern and a magnifying lens, began to examine
+minutely the cracks between the stones. A few seconds sufficed to
+satisfy him, for he sprang to his feet again and put his glass in his
+pocket.
+
+“We have at least an hour before us,” he remarked, “for they can hardly
+take any steps until the good pawnbroker is safely in bed. Then they
+will not lose a minute, for the sooner they do their work the longer
+time they will have for their escape. We are at present, Doctor—as no
+doubt you have divined—in the cellar of the City branch of one of the
+principal London banks. Mr. Merryweather is the chairman of directors,
+and he will explain to you that there are reasons why the more daring
+criminals of London should take a considerable interest in this cellar
+at present.”
+
+“It is our French gold,” whispered the director. “We have had several
+warnings that an attempt might be made upon it.”
+
+“Your French gold?”
+
+“Yes. We had occasion some months ago to strengthen our resources and
+borrowed for that purpose 30,000 napoleons from the Bank of France. It
+has become known that we have never had occasion to unpack the money,
+and that it is still lying in our cellar. The crate upon which I sit
+contains 2,000 napoleons packed between layers of lead foil. Our
+reserve of bullion is much larger at present than is usually kept in a
+single branch office, and the directors have had misgivings upon the
+subject.”
+
+“Which were very well justified,” observed Holmes. “And now it is time
+that we arranged our little plans. I expect that within an hour matters
+will come to a head. In the meantime Mr. Merryweather, we must put the
+screen over that dark lantern.”
+
+“And sit in the dark?”
+
+“I am afraid so. I had brought a pack of cards in my pocket, and I
+thought that, as we were a _partie carrée_, you might have your rubber
+after all. But I see that the enemy’s preparations have gone so far
+that we cannot risk the presence of a light. And, first of all, we must
+choose our positions. These are daring men, and though we shall take
+them at a disadvantage, they may do us some harm unless we are careful.
+I shall stand behind this crate, and do you conceal yourselves behind
+those. Then, when I flash a light upon them, close in swiftly. If they
+fire, Watson, have no compunction about shooting them down.”
+
+I placed my revolver, cocked, upon the top of the wooden case behind
+which I crouched. Holmes shot the slide across the front of his lantern
+and left us in pitch darkness—such an absolute darkness as I have never
+before experienced. The smell of hot metal remained to assure us that
+the light was still there, ready to flash out at a moment’s notice. To
+me, with my nerves worked up to a pitch of expectancy, there was
+something depressing and subduing in the sudden gloom, and in the cold
+dank air of the vault.
+
+“They have but one retreat,” whispered Holmes. “That is back through
+the house into Saxe-Coburg Square. I hope that you have done what I
+asked you, Jones?”
+
+“I have an inspector and two officers waiting at the front door.”
+
+“Then we have stopped all the holes. And now we must be silent and
+wait.”
+
+What a time it seemed! From comparing notes afterwards it was but an
+hour and a quarter, yet it appeared to me that the night must have
+almost gone, and the dawn be breaking above us. My limbs were weary and
+stiff, for I feared to change my position; yet my nerves were worked up
+to the highest pitch of tension, and my hearing was so acute that I
+could not only hear the gentle breathing of my companions, but I could
+distinguish the deeper, heavier in-breath of the bulky Jones from the
+thin, sighing note of the bank director. From my position I could look
+over the case in the direction of the floor. Suddenly my eyes caught
+the glint of a light.
+
+At first it was but a lurid spark upon the stone pavement. Then it
+lengthened out until it became a yellow line, and then, without any
+warning or sound, a gash seemed to open and a hand appeared, a white,
+almost womanly hand, which felt about in the centre of the little area
+of light. For a minute or more the hand, with its writhing fingers,
+protruded out of the floor. Then it was withdrawn as suddenly as it
+appeared, and all was dark again save the single lurid spark which
+marked a chink between the stones.
+
+Its disappearance, however, was but momentary. With a rending, tearing
+sound, one of the broad, white stones turned over upon its side and
+left a square, gaping hole, through which streamed the light of a
+lantern. Over the edge there peeped a clean-cut, boyish face, which
+looked keenly about it, and then, with a hand on either side of the
+aperture, drew itself shoulder-high and waist-high, until one knee
+rested upon the edge. In another instant he stood at the side of the
+hole and was hauling after him a companion, lithe and small like
+himself, with a pale face and a shock of very red hair.
+
+“It’s all clear,” he whispered. “Have you the chisel and the bags?
+Great Scott! Jump, Archie, jump, and I’ll swing for it!”
+
+Sherlock Holmes had sprung out and seized the intruder by the collar.
+The other dived down the hole, and I heard the sound of rending cloth
+as Jones clutched at his skirts. The light flashed upon the barrel of a
+revolver, but Holmes’ hunting crop came down on the man’s wrist, and
+the pistol clinked upon the stone floor.
+
+“It’s no use, John Clay,” said Holmes blandly. “You have no chance at
+all.”
+
+“So I see,” the other answered with the utmost coolness. “I fancy that
+my pal is all right, though I see you have got his coat-tails.”
+
+“There are three men waiting for him at the door,” said Holmes.
+
+“Oh, indeed! You seem to have done the thing very completely. I must
+compliment you.”
+
+“And I you,” Holmes answered. “Your red-headed idea was very new and
+effective.”
+
+“You’ll see your pal again presently,” said Jones. “He’s quicker at
+climbing down holes than I am. Just hold out while I fix the derbies.”
+
+“I beg that you will not touch me with your filthy hands,” remarked our
+prisoner as the handcuffs clattered upon his wrists. “You may not be
+aware that I have royal blood in my veins. Have the goodness, also,
+when you address me always to say ‘sir’ and ‘please.’”
+
+“All right,” said Jones with a stare and a snigger. “Well, would you
+please, sir, march upstairs, where we can get a cab to carry your
+Highness to the police-station?”
+
+“That is better,” said John Clay serenely. He made a sweeping bow to
+the three of us and walked quietly off in the custody of the detective.
+
+“Really, Mr. Holmes,” said Mr. Merryweather as we followed them from
+the cellar, “I do not know how the bank can thank you or repay you.
+There is no doubt that you have detected and defeated in the most
+complete manner one of the most determined attempts at bank robbery
+that have ever come within my experience.”
+
+“I have had one or two little scores of my own to settle with Mr. John
+Clay,” said Holmes. “I have been at some small expense over this
+matter, which I shall expect the bank to refund, but beyond that I am
+amply repaid by having had an experience which is in many ways unique,
+and by hearing the very remarkable narrative of the Red-headed League.”
+
+“You see, Watson,” he explained in the early hours of the morning as we
+sat over a glass of whisky and soda in Baker Street, “it was perfectly
+obvious from the first that the only possible object of this rather
+fantastic business of the advertisement of the League, and the copying
+of the _Encyclopædia_, must be to get this not over-bright pawnbroker
+out of the way for a number of hours every day. It was a curious way of
+managing it, but, really, it would be difficult to suggest a better.
+The method was no doubt suggested to Clay’s ingenious mind by the
+colour of his accomplice’s hair. The £ 4 a week was a lure which must
+draw him, and what was it to them, who were playing for thousands? They
+put in the advertisement, one rogue has the temporary office, the other
+rogue incites the man to apply for it, and together they manage to
+secure his absence every morning in the week. From the time that I
+heard of the assistant having come for half wages, it was obvious to me
+that he had some strong motive for securing the situation.”
+
+“But how could you guess what the motive was?”
+
+“Had there been women in the house, I should have suspected a mere
+vulgar intrigue. That, however, was out of the question. The man’s
+business was a small one, and there was nothing in his house which
+could account for such elaborate preparations, and such an expenditure
+as they were at. It must, then, be something out of the house. What
+could it be? I thought of the assistant’s fondness for photography, and
+his trick of vanishing into the cellar. The cellar! There was the end
+of this tangled clue. Then I made inquiries as to this mysterious
+assistant and found that I had to deal with one of the coolest and most
+daring criminals in London. He was doing something in the
+cellar—something which took many hours a day for months on end. What
+could it be, once more? I could think of nothing save that he was
+running a tunnel to some other building.
+
+“So far I had got when we went to visit the scene of action. I
+surprised you by beating upon the pavement with my stick. I was
+ascertaining whether the cellar stretched out in front or behind. It
+was not in front. Then I rang the bell, and, as I hoped, the assistant
+answered it. We have had some skirmishes, but we had never set eyes
+upon each other before. I hardly looked at his face. His knees were
+what I wished to see. You must yourself have remarked how worn,
+wrinkled, and stained they were. They spoke of those hours of
+burrowing. The only remaining point was what they were burrowing for. I
+walked round the corner, saw the City and Suburban Bank abutted on our
+friend’s premises, and felt that I had solved my problem. When you
+drove home after the concert I called upon Scotland Yard and upon the
+chairman of the bank directors, with the result that you have seen.”
+
+“And how could you tell that they would make their attempt to-night?” I
+asked.
+
+“Well, when they closed their League offices that was a sign that they
+cared no longer about Mr. Jabez Wilson’s presence—in other words, that
+they had completed their tunnel. But it was essential that they should
+use it soon, as it might be discovered, or the bullion might be
+removed. Saturday would suit them better than any other day, as it
+would give them two days for their escape. For all these reasons I
+expected them to come to-night.”
+
+“You reasoned it out beautifully,” I exclaimed in unfeigned admiration.
+“It is so long a chain, and yet every link rings true.”
+
+“It saved me from ennui,” he answered, yawning. “Alas! I already feel
+it closing in upon me. My life is spent in one long effort to escape
+from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do
+so.”
+
+“And you are a benefactor of the race,” said I.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. “Well, perhaps, after all, it is of some
+little use,” he remarked. “‘_L’homme c’est rien—l’œuvre c’est tout_,’
+as Gustave Flaubert wrote to George Sand.”
+
+
+
+III. A CASE OF IDENTITY
+
+“My dear fellow,” said Sherlock Holmes as we sat on either side of the
+fire in his lodgings at Baker Street, “life is infinitely stranger than
+anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to
+conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If
+we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great
+city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer things which
+are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the
+cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through
+generations, and leading to the most _outré_ results, it would make all
+fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale
+and unprofitable.”
+
+“And yet I am not convinced of it,” I answered. “The cases which come
+to light in the papers are, as a rule, bald enough, and vulgar enough.
+We have in our police reports realism pushed to its extreme limits, and
+yet the result is, it must be confessed, neither fascinating nor
+artistic.”
+
+“A certain selection and discretion must be used in producing a
+realistic effect,” remarked Holmes. “This is wanting in the police
+report, where more stress is laid, perhaps, upon the platitudes of the
+magistrate than upon the details, which to an observer contain the
+vital essence of the whole matter. Depend upon it, there is nothing so
+unnatural as the commonplace.”
+
+I smiled and shook my head. “I can quite understand your thinking so,”
+I said. “Of course, in your position of unofficial adviser and helper
+to everybody who is absolutely puzzled, throughout three continents,
+you are brought in contact with all that is strange and bizarre. But
+here”—I picked up the morning paper from the ground—“let us put it to a
+practical test. Here is the first heading upon which I come. ‘A
+husband’s cruelty to his wife.’ There is half a column of print, but I
+know without reading it that it is all perfectly familiar to me. There
+is, of course, the other woman, the drink, the push, the blow, the
+bruise, the sympathetic sister or landlady. The crudest of writers
+could invent nothing more crude.”
+
+“Indeed, your example is an unfortunate one for your argument,” said
+Holmes, taking the paper and glancing his eye down it. “This is the
+Dundas separation case, and, as it happens, I was engaged in clearing
+up some small points in connection with it. The husband was a
+teetotaler, there was no other woman, and the conduct complained of was
+that he had drifted into the habit of winding up every meal by taking
+out his false teeth and hurling them at his wife, which, you will
+allow, is not an action likely to occur to the imagination of the
+average story-teller. Take a pinch of snuff, Doctor, and acknowledge
+that I have scored over you in your example.”
+
+He held out his snuffbox of old gold, with a great amethyst in the
+centre of the lid. Its splendour was in such contrast to his homely
+ways and simple life that I could not help commenting upon it.
+
+“Ah,” said he, “I forgot that I had not seen you for some weeks. It is
+a little souvenir from the King of Bohemia in return for my assistance
+in the case of the Irene Adler papers.”
+
+“And the ring?” I asked, glancing at a remarkable brilliant which
+sparkled upon his finger.
+
+“It was from the reigning family of Holland, though the matter in which
+I served them was of such delicacy that I cannot confide it even to
+you, who have been good enough to chronicle one or two of my little
+problems.”
+
+“And have you any on hand just now?” I asked with interest.
+
+“Some ten or twelve, but none which present any feature of interest.
+They are important, you understand, without being interesting. Indeed,
+I have found that it is usually in unimportant matters that there is a
+field for the observation, and for the quick analysis of cause and
+effect which gives the charm to an investigation. The larger crimes are
+apt to be the simpler, for the bigger the crime the more obvious, as a
+rule, is the motive. In these cases, save for one rather intricate
+matter which has been referred to me from Marseilles, there is nothing
+which presents any features of interest. It is possible, however, that
+I may have something better before very many minutes are over, for this
+is one of my clients, or I am much mistaken.”
+
+He had risen from his chair and was standing between the parted blinds
+gazing down into the dull neutral-tinted London street. Looking over
+his shoulder, I saw that on the pavement opposite there stood a large
+woman with a heavy fur boa round her neck, and a large curling red
+feather in a broad-brimmed hat which was tilted in a coquettish Duchess
+of Devonshire fashion over her ear. From under this great panoply she
+peeped up in a nervous, hesitating fashion at our windows, while her
+body oscillated backward and forward, and her fingers fidgeted with her
+glove buttons. Suddenly, with a plunge, as of the swimmer who leaves
+the bank, she hurried across the road, and we heard the sharp clang of
+the bell.
+
+“I have seen those symptoms before,” said Holmes, throwing his
+cigarette into the fire. “Oscillation upon the pavement always means an
+_affaire de cœur_. She would like advice, but is not sure that the
+matter is not too delicate for communication. And yet even here we may
+discriminate. When a woman has been seriously wronged by a man she no
+longer oscillates, and the usual symptom is a broken bell wire. Here we
+may take it that there is a love matter, but that the maiden is not so
+much angry as perplexed, or grieved. But here she comes in person to
+resolve our doubts.”
+
+As he spoke there was a tap at the door, and the boy in buttons entered
+to announce Miss Mary Sutherland, while the lady herself loomed behind
+his small black figure like a full-sailed merchant-man behind a tiny
+pilot boat. Sherlock Holmes welcomed her with the easy courtesy for
+which he was remarkable, and, having closed the door and bowed her into
+an armchair, he looked her over in the minute and yet abstracted
+fashion which was peculiar to him.
+
+“Do you not find,” he said, “that with your short sight it is a little
+trying to do so much typewriting?”
+
+“I did at first,” she answered, “but now I know where the letters are
+without looking.” Then, suddenly realising the full purport of his
+words, she gave a violent start and looked up, with fear and
+astonishment upon her broad, good-humoured face. “You’ve heard about
+me, Mr. Holmes,” she cried, “else how could you know all that?”
+
+“Never mind,” said Holmes, laughing; “it is my business to know things.
+Perhaps I have trained myself to see what others overlook. If not, why
+should you come to consult me?”
+
+“I came to you, sir, because I heard of you from Mrs. Etherege, whose
+husband you found so easy when the police and everyone had given him up
+for dead. Oh, Mr. Holmes, I wish you would do as much for me. I’m not
+rich, but still I have a hundred a year in my own right, besides the
+little that I make by the machine, and I would give it all to know what
+has become of Mr. Hosmer Angel.”
+
+“Why did you come away to consult me in such a hurry?” asked Sherlock
+Holmes, with his finger-tips together and his eyes to the ceiling.
+
+Again a startled look came over the somewhat vacuous face of Miss Mary
+Sutherland. “Yes, I did bang out of the house,” she said, “for it made
+me angry to see the easy way in which Mr. Windibank—that is, my
+father—took it all. He would not go to the police, and he would not go
+to you, and so at last, as he would do nothing and kept on saying that
+there was no harm done, it made me mad, and I just on with my things
+and came right away to you.”
+
+“Your father,” said Holmes, “your stepfather, surely, since the name is
+different.”
+
+“Yes, my stepfather. I call him father, though it sounds funny, too,
+for he is only five years and two months older than myself.”
+
+“And your mother is alive?”
+
+“Oh, yes, mother is alive and well. I wasn’t best pleased, Mr. Holmes,
+when she married again so soon after father’s death, and a man who was
+nearly fifteen years younger than herself. Father was a plumber in the
+Tottenham Court Road, and he left a tidy business behind him, which
+mother carried on with Mr. Hardy, the foreman; but when Mr. Windibank
+came he made her sell the business, for he was very superior, being a
+traveller in wines. They got £ 4700 for the goodwill and interest,
+which wasn’t near as much as father could have got if he had been
+alive.”
+
+I had expected to see Sherlock Holmes impatient under this rambling and
+inconsequential narrative, but, on the contrary, he had listened with
+the greatest concentration of attention.
+
+“Your own little income,” he asked, “does it come out of the business?”
+
+“Oh, no, sir. It is quite separate and was left me by my uncle Ned in
+Auckland. It is in New Zealand stock, paying 4½ per cent. Two thousand
+five hundred pounds was the amount, but I can only touch the interest.”
+
+“You interest me extremely,” said Holmes. “And since you draw so large
+a sum as a hundred a year, with what you earn into the bargain, you no
+doubt travel a little and indulge yourself in every way. I believe that
+a single lady can get on very nicely upon an income of about £ 60.”
+
+“I could do with much less than that, Mr. Holmes, but you understand
+that as long as I live at home I don’t wish to be a burden to them, and
+so they have the use of the money just while I am staying with them. Of
+course, that is only just for the time. Mr. Windibank draws my interest
+every quarter and pays it over to mother, and I find that I can do
+pretty well with what I earn at typewriting. It brings me twopence a
+sheet, and I can often do from fifteen to twenty sheets in a day.”
+
+“You have made your position very clear to me,” said Holmes. “This is
+my friend, Dr. Watson, before whom you can speak as freely as before
+myself. Kindly tell us now all about your connection with Mr. Hosmer
+Angel.”
+
+A flush stole over Miss Sutherland’s face, and she picked nervously at
+the fringe of her jacket. “I met him first at the gasfitters’ ball,”
+she said. “They used to send father tickets when he was alive, and then
+afterwards they remembered us, and sent them to mother. Mr. Windibank
+did not wish us to go. He never did wish us to go anywhere. He would
+get quite mad if I wanted so much as to join a Sunday-school treat. But
+this time I was set on going, and I would go; for what right had he to
+prevent? He said the folk were not fit for us to know, when all
+father’s friends were to be there. And he said that I had nothing fit
+to wear, when I had my purple plush that I had never so much as taken
+out of the drawer. At last, when nothing else would do, he went off to
+France upon the business of the firm, but we went, mother and I, with
+Mr. Hardy, who used to be our foreman, and it was there I met Mr.
+Hosmer Angel.”
+
+“I suppose,” said Holmes, “that when Mr. Windibank came back from
+France he was very annoyed at your having gone to the ball.”
+
+“Oh, well, he was very good about it. He laughed, I remember, and
+shrugged his shoulders, and said there was no use denying anything to a
+woman, for she would have her way.”
+
+“I see. Then at the gasfitters’ ball you met, as I understand, a
+gentleman called Mr. Hosmer Angel.”
+
+“Yes, sir. I met him that night, and he called next day to ask if we
+had got home all safe, and after that we met him—that is to say, Mr.
+Holmes, I met him twice for walks, but after that father came back
+again, and Mr. Hosmer Angel could not come to the house any more.”
+
+“No?”
+
+“Well, you know father didn’t like anything of the sort. He wouldn’t
+have any visitors if he could help it, and he used to say that a woman
+should be happy in her own family circle. But then, as I used to say to
+mother, a woman wants her own circle to begin with, and I had not got
+mine yet.”
+
+“But how about Mr. Hosmer Angel? Did he make no attempt to see you?”
+
+“Well, father was going off to France again in a week, and Hosmer wrote
+and said that it would be safer and better not to see each other until
+he had gone. We could write in the meantime, and he used to write every
+day. I took the letters in in the morning, so there was no need for
+father to know.”
+
+“Were you engaged to the gentleman at this time?”
+
+“Oh, yes, Mr. Holmes. We were engaged after the first walk that we
+took. Hosmer—Mr. Angel—was a cashier in an office in Leadenhall
+Street—and—”
+
+“What office?”
+
+“That’s the worst of it, Mr. Holmes, I don’t know.”
+
+“Where did he live, then?”
+
+“He slept on the premises.”
+
+“And you don’t know his address?”
+
+“No—except that it was Leadenhall Street.”
+
+“Where did you address your letters, then?”
+
+“To the Leadenhall Street Post Office, to be left till called for. He
+said that if they were sent to the office he would be chaffed by all
+the other clerks about having letters from a lady, so I offered to
+typewrite them, like he did his, but he wouldn’t have that, for he said
+that when I wrote them they seemed to come from me, but when they were
+typewritten he always felt that the machine had come between us. That
+will just show you how fond he was of me, Mr. Holmes, and the little
+things that he would think of.”
+
+“It was most suggestive,” said Holmes. “It has long been an axiom of
+mine that the little things are infinitely the most important. Can you
+remember any other little things about Mr. Hosmer Angel?”
+
+“He was a very shy man, Mr. Holmes. He would rather walk with me in the
+evening than in the daylight, for he said that he hated to be
+conspicuous. Very retiring and gentlemanly he was. Even his voice was
+gentle. He’d had the quinsy and swollen glands when he was young, he
+told me, and it had left him with a weak throat, and a hesitating,
+whispering fashion of speech. He was always well dressed, very neat and
+plain, but his eyes were weak, just as mine are, and he wore tinted
+glasses against the glare.”
+
+“Well, and what happened when Mr. Windibank, your stepfather, returned
+to France?”
+
+“Mr. Hosmer Angel came to the house again and proposed that we should
+marry before father came back. He was in dreadful earnest and made me
+swear, with my hands on the Testament, that whatever happened I would
+always be true to him. Mother said he was quite right to make me swear,
+and that it was a sign of his passion. Mother was all in his favour
+from the first and was even fonder of him than I was. Then, when they
+talked of marrying within the week, I began to ask about father; but
+they both said never to mind about father, but just to tell him
+afterwards, and mother said she would make it all right with him. I
+didn’t quite like that, Mr. Holmes. It seemed funny that I should ask
+his leave, as he was only a few years older than me; but I didn’t want
+to do anything on the sly, so I wrote to father at Bordeaux, where the
+company has its French offices, but the letter came back to me on the
+very morning of the wedding.”
+
+“It missed him, then?”
+
+“Yes, sir; for he had started to England just before it arrived.”
+
+“Ha! that was unfortunate. Your wedding was arranged, then, for the
+Friday. Was it to be in church?”
+
+“Yes, sir, but very quietly. It was to be at St. Saviour’s, near King’s
+Cross, and we were to have breakfast afterwards at the St. Pancras
+Hotel. Hosmer came for us in a hansom, but as there were two of us he
+put us both into it and stepped himself into a four-wheeler, which
+happened to be the only other cab in the street. We got to the church
+first, and when the four-wheeler drove up we waited for him to step
+out, but he never did, and when the cabman got down from the box and
+looked there was no one there! The cabman said that he could not
+imagine what had become of him, for he had seen him get in with his own
+eyes. That was last Friday, Mr. Holmes, and I have never seen or heard
+anything since then to throw any light upon what became of him.”
+
+“It seems to me that you have been very shamefully treated,” said
+Holmes.
+
+“Oh, no, sir! He was too good and kind to leave me so. Why, all the
+morning he was saying to me that, whatever happened, I was to be true;
+and that even if something quite unforeseen occurred to separate us, I
+was always to remember that I was pledged to him, and that he would
+claim his pledge sooner or later. It seemed strange talk for a
+wedding-morning, but what has happened since gives a meaning to it.”
+
+“Most certainly it does. Your own opinion is, then, that some
+unforeseen catastrophe has occurred to him?”
+
+“Yes, sir. I believe that he foresaw some danger, or else he would not
+have talked so. And then I think that what he foresaw happened.”
+
+“But you have no notion as to what it could have been?”
+
+“None.”
+
+“One more question. How did your mother take the matter?”
+
+“She was angry, and said that I was never to speak of the matter
+again.”
+
+“And your father? Did you tell him?”
+
+“Yes; and he seemed to think, with me, that something had happened, and
+that I should hear of Hosmer again. As he said, what interest could
+anyone have in bringing me to the doors of the church, and then leaving
+me? Now, if he had borrowed my money, or if he had married me and got
+my money settled on him, there might be some reason, but Hosmer was
+very independent about money and never would look at a shilling of
+mine. And yet, what could have happened? And why could he not write?
+Oh, it drives me half-mad to think of it, and I can’t sleep a wink at
+night.” She pulled a little handkerchief out of her muff and began to
+sob heavily into it.
+
+“I shall glance into the case for you,” said Holmes, rising, “and I
+have no doubt that we shall reach some definite result. Let the weight
+of the matter rest upon me now, and do not let your mind dwell upon it
+further. Above all, try to let Mr. Hosmer Angel vanish from your
+memory, as he has done from your life.”
+
+“Then you don’t think I’ll see him again?”
+
+“I fear not.”
+
+“Then what has happened to him?”
+
+“You will leave that question in my hands. I should like an accurate
+description of him and any letters of his which you can spare.”
+
+“I advertised for him in last Saturday’s _Chronicle_,” said she. “Here
+is the slip and here are four letters from him.”
+
+“Thank you. And your address?”
+
+“No. 31 Lyon Place, Camberwell.”
+
+“Mr. Angel’s address you never had, I understand. Where is your
+father’s place of business?”
+
+“He travels for Westhouse & Marbank, the great claret importers of
+Fenchurch Street.”
+
+“Thank you. You have made your statement very clearly. You will leave
+the papers here, and remember the advice which I have given you. Let
+the whole incident be a sealed book, and do not allow it to affect your
+life.”
+
+“You are very kind, Mr. Holmes, but I cannot do that. I shall be true
+to Hosmer. He shall find me ready when he comes back.”
+
+For all the preposterous hat and the vacuous face, there was something
+noble in the simple faith of our visitor which compelled our respect.
+She laid her little bundle of papers upon the table and went her way,
+with a promise to come again whenever she might be summoned.
+
+Sherlock Holmes sat silent for a few minutes with his fingertips still
+pressed together, his legs stretched out in front of him, and his gaze
+directed upward to the ceiling. Then he took down from the rack the old
+and oily clay pipe, which was to him as a counsellor, and, having lit
+it, he leaned back in his chair, with the thick blue cloud-wreaths
+spinning up from him, and a look of infinite languor in his face.
+
+“Quite an interesting study, that maiden,” he observed. “I found her
+more interesting than her little problem, which, by the way, is rather
+a trite one. You will find parallel cases, if you consult my index, in
+Andover in ’77, and there was something of the sort at The Hague last
+year. Old as is the idea, however, there were one or two details which
+were new to me. But the maiden herself was most instructive.”
+
+“You appeared to read a good deal upon her which was quite invisible to
+me,” I remarked.
+
+“Not invisible but unnoticed, Watson. You did not know where to look,
+and so you missed all that was important. I can never bring you to
+realise the importance of sleeves, the suggestiveness of thumb-nails,
+or the great issues that may hang from a boot-lace. Now, what did you
+gather from that woman’s appearance? Describe it.”
+
+“Well, she had a slate-coloured, broad-brimmed straw hat, with a
+feather of a brickish red. Her jacket was black, with black beads sewn
+upon it, and a fringe of little black jet ornaments. Her dress was
+brown, rather darker than coffee colour, with a little purple plush at
+the neck and sleeves. Her gloves were greyish and were worn through at
+the right forefinger. Her boots I didn’t observe. She had small round,
+hanging gold earrings, and a general air of being fairly well-to-do in
+a vulgar, comfortable, easy-going way.”
+
+Sherlock Holmes clapped his hands softly together and chuckled.
+
+“’Pon my word, Watson, you are coming along wonderfully. You have
+really done very well indeed. It is true that you have missed
+everything of importance, but you have hit upon the method, and you
+have a quick eye for colour. Never trust to general impressions, my
+boy, but concentrate yourself upon details. My first glance is always
+at a woman’s sleeve. In a man it is perhaps better first to take the
+knee of the trouser. As you observe, this woman had plush upon her
+sleeves, which is a most useful material for showing traces. The double
+line a little above the wrist, where the typewritist presses against
+the table, was beautifully defined. The sewing-machine, of the hand
+type, leaves a similar mark, but only on the left arm, and on the side
+of it farthest from the thumb, instead of being right across the
+broadest part, as this was. I then glanced at her face, and, observing
+the dint of a pince-nez at either side of her nose, I ventured a remark
+upon short sight and typewriting, which seemed to surprise her.”
+
+“It surprised me.”
+
+“But, surely, it was obvious. I was then much surprised and interested
+on glancing down to observe that, though the boots which she was
+wearing were not unlike each other, they were really odd ones; the one
+having a slightly decorated toe-cap, and the other a plain one. One was
+buttoned only in the two lower buttons out of five, and the other at
+the first, third, and fifth. Now, when you see that a young lady,
+otherwise neatly dressed, has come away from home with odd boots,
+half-buttoned, it is no great deduction to say that she came away in a
+hurry.”
+
+“And what else?” I asked, keenly interested, as I always was, by my
+friend’s incisive reasoning.
+
+“I noted, in passing, that she had written a note before leaving home
+but after being fully dressed. You observed that her right glove was
+torn at the forefinger, but you did not apparently see that both glove
+and finger were stained with violet ink. She had written in a hurry and
+dipped her pen too deep. It must have been this morning, or the mark
+would not remain clear upon the finger. All this is amusing, though
+rather elementary, but I must go back to business, Watson. Would you
+mind reading me the advertised description of Mr. Hosmer Angel?”
+
+I held the little printed slip to the light. “Missing,” it said, “on
+the morning of the fourteenth, a gentleman named Hosmer Angel. About
+five ft. seven in. in height; strongly built, sallow complexion, black
+hair, a little bald in the centre, bushy, black side-whiskers and
+moustache; tinted glasses, slight infirmity of speech. Was dressed,
+when last seen, in black frock-coat faced with silk, black waistcoat,
+gold Albert chain, and grey Harris tweed trousers, with brown gaiters
+over elastic-sided boots. Known to have been employed in an office in
+Leadenhall Street. Anybody bringing,” &c, &c.
+
+“That will do,” said Holmes. “As to the letters,” he continued,
+glancing over them, “they are very commonplace. Absolutely no clue in
+them to Mr. Angel, save that he quotes Balzac once. There is one
+remarkable point, however, which will no doubt strike you.”
+
+“They are typewritten,” I remarked.
+
+“Not only that, but the signature is typewritten. Look at the neat
+little ‘Hosmer Angel’ at the bottom. There is a date, you see, but no
+superscription except Leadenhall Street, which is rather vague. The
+point about the signature is very suggestive—in fact, we may call it
+conclusive.”
+
+“Of what?”
+
+“My dear fellow, is it possible you do not see how strongly it bears
+upon the case?”
+
+“I cannot say that I do unless it were that he wished to be able to
+deny his signature if an action for breach of promise were instituted.”
+
+“No, that was not the point. However, I shall write two letters, which
+should settle the matter. One is to a firm in the City, the other is to
+the young lady’s stepfather, Mr. Windibank, asking him whether he could
+meet us here at six o’clock to-morrow evening. It is just as well that
+we should do business with the male relatives. And now, Doctor, we can
+do nothing until the answers to those letters come, so we may put our
+little problem upon the shelf for the interim.”
+
+I had had so many reasons to believe in my friend’s subtle powers of
+reasoning and extraordinary energy in action that I felt that he must
+have some solid grounds for the assured and easy demeanour with which
+he treated the singular mystery which he had been called upon to
+fathom. Once only had I known him to fail, in the case of the King of
+Bohemia and of the Irene Adler photograph; but when I looked back to
+the weird business of the Sign of Four, and the extraordinary
+circumstances connected with the Study in Scarlet, I felt that it would
+be a strange tangle indeed which he could not unravel.
+
+I left him then, still puffing at his black clay pipe, with the
+conviction that when I came again on the next evening I would find that
+he held in his hands all the clues which would lead up to the identity
+of the disappearing bridegroom of Miss Mary Sutherland.
+
+A professional case of great gravity was engaging my own attention at
+the time, and the whole of next day I was busy at the bedside of the
+sufferer. It was not until close upon six o’clock that I found myself
+free and was able to spring into a hansom and drive to Baker Street,
+half afraid that I might be too late to assist at the _dénouement_ of
+the little mystery. I found Sherlock Holmes alone, however, half
+asleep, with his long, thin form curled up in the recesses of his
+armchair. A formidable array of bottles and test-tubes, with the
+pungent cleanly smell of hydrochloric acid, told me that he had spent
+his day in the chemical work which was so dear to him.
+
+“Well, have you solved it?” I asked as I entered.
+
+“Yes. It was the bisulphate of baryta.”
+
+“No, no, the mystery!” I cried.
+
+“Oh, that! I thought of the salt that I have been working upon. There
+was never any mystery in the matter, though, as I said yesterday, some
+of the details are of interest. The only drawback is that there is no
+law, I fear, that can touch the scoundrel.”
+
+“Who was he, then, and what was his object in deserting Miss
+Sutherland?”
+
+The question was hardly out of my mouth, and Holmes had not yet opened
+his lips to reply, when we heard a heavy footfall in the passage and a
+tap at the door.
+
+“This is the girl’s stepfather, Mr. James Windibank,” said Holmes. “He
+has written to me to say that he would be here at six. Come in!”
+
+The man who entered was a sturdy, middle-sized fellow, some thirty
+years of age, clean-shaven, and sallow-skinned, with a bland,
+insinuating manner, and a pair of wonderfully sharp and penetrating
+grey eyes. He shot a questioning glance at each of us, placed his shiny
+top-hat upon the sideboard, and with a slight bow sidled down into the
+nearest chair.
+
+“Good-evening, Mr. James Windibank,” said Holmes. “I think that this
+typewritten letter is from you, in which you made an appointment with
+me for six o’clock?”
+
+“Yes, sir. I am afraid that I am a little late, but I am not quite my
+own master, you know. I am sorry that Miss Sutherland has troubled you
+about this little matter, for I think it is far better not to wash
+linen of the sort in public. It was quite against my wishes that she
+came, but she is a very excitable, impulsive girl, as you may have
+noticed, and she is not easily controlled when she has made up her mind
+on a point. Of course, I did not mind you so much, as you are not
+connected with the official police, but it is not pleasant to have a
+family misfortune like this noised abroad. Besides, it is a useless
+expense, for how could you possibly find this Hosmer Angel?”
+
+“On the contrary,” said Holmes quietly; “I have every reason to believe
+that I will succeed in discovering Mr. Hosmer Angel.”
+
+Mr. Windibank gave a violent start and dropped his gloves. “I am
+delighted to hear it,” he said.
+
+“It is a curious thing,” remarked Holmes, “that a typewriter has really
+quite as much individuality as a man’s handwriting. Unless they are
+quite new, no two of them write exactly alike. Some letters get more
+worn than others, and some wear only on one side. Now, you remark in
+this note of yours, Mr. Windibank, that in every case there is some
+little slurring over of the ‘e,’ and a slight defect in the tail of the
+‘r.’ There are fourteen other characteristics, but those are the more
+obvious.”
+
+“We do all our correspondence with this machine at the office, and no
+doubt it is a little worn,” our visitor answered, glancing keenly at
+Holmes with his bright little eyes.
+
+“And now I will show you what is really a very interesting study, Mr.
+Windibank,” Holmes continued. “I think of writing another little
+monograph some of these days on the typewriter and its relation to
+crime. It is a subject to which I have devoted some little attention. I
+have here four letters which purport to come from the missing man. They
+are all typewritten. In each case, not only are the ‘e’s’ slurred and
+the ‘r’s’ tailless, but you will observe, if you care to use my
+magnifying lens, that the fourteen other characteristics to which I
+have alluded are there as well.”
+
+Mr. Windibank sprang out of his chair and picked up his hat. “I cannot
+waste time over this sort of fantastic talk, Mr. Holmes,” he said. “If
+you can catch the man, catch him, and let me know when you have done
+it.”
+
+“Certainly,” said Holmes, stepping over and turning the key in the
+door. “I let you know, then, that I have caught him!”
+
+“What! where?” shouted Mr. Windibank, turning white to his lips and
+glancing about him like a rat in a trap.
+
+“Oh, it won’t do—really it won’t,” said Holmes suavely. “There is no
+possible getting out of it, Mr. Windibank. It is quite too transparent,
+and it was a very bad compliment when you said that it was impossible
+for me to solve so simple a question. That’s right! Sit down and let us
+talk it over.”
+
+Our visitor collapsed into a chair, with a ghastly face and a glitter
+of moisture on his brow. “It—it’s not actionable,” he stammered.
+
+“I am very much afraid that it is not. But between ourselves,
+Windibank, it was as cruel and selfish and heartless a trick in a petty
+way as ever came before me. Now, let me just run over the course of
+events, and you will contradict me if I go wrong.”
+
+The man sat huddled up in his chair, with his head sunk upon his
+breast, like one who is utterly crushed. Holmes stuck his feet up on
+the corner of the mantelpiece and, leaning back with his hands in his
+pockets, began talking, rather to himself, as it seemed, than to us.
+
+“The man married a woman very much older than himself for her money,”
+said he, “and he enjoyed the use of the money of the daughter as long
+as she lived with them. It was a considerable sum, for people in their
+position, and the loss of it would have made a serious difference. It
+was worth an effort to preserve it. The daughter was of a good, amiable
+disposition, but affectionate and warm-hearted in her ways, so that it
+was evident that with her fair personal advantages, and her little
+income, she would not be allowed to remain single long. Now her
+marriage would mean, of course, the loss of a hundred a year, so what
+does her stepfather do to prevent it? He takes the obvious course of
+keeping her at home and forbidding her to seek the company of people of
+her own age. But soon he found that that would not answer forever. She
+became restive, insisted upon her rights, and finally announced her
+positive intention of going to a certain ball. What does her clever
+stepfather do then? He conceives an idea more creditable to his head
+than to his heart. With the connivance and assistance of his wife he
+disguised himself, covered those keen eyes with tinted glasses, masked
+the face with a moustache and a pair of bushy whiskers, sunk that clear
+voice into an insinuating whisper, and doubly secure on account of the
+girl’s short sight, he appears as Mr. Hosmer Angel, and keeps off other
+lovers by making love himself.”
+
+“It was only a joke at first,” groaned our visitor. “We never thought
+that she would have been so carried away.”
+
+“Very likely not. However that may be, the young lady was very
+decidedly carried away, and, having quite made up her mind that her
+stepfather was in France, the suspicion of treachery never for an
+instant entered her mind. She was flattered by the gentleman’s
+attentions, and the effect was increased by the loudly expressed
+admiration of her mother. Then Mr. Angel began to call, for it was
+obvious that the matter should be pushed as far as it would go if a
+real effect were to be produced. There were meetings, and an
+engagement, which would finally secure the girl’s affections from
+turning towards anyone else. But the deception could not be kept up
+forever. These pretended journeys to France were rather cumbrous. The
+thing to do was clearly to bring the business to an end in such a
+dramatic manner that it would leave a permanent impression upon the
+young lady’s mind and prevent her from looking upon any other suitor
+for some time to come. Hence those vows of fidelity exacted upon a
+Testament, and hence also the allusions to a possibility of something
+happening on the very morning of the wedding. James Windibank wished
+Miss Sutherland to be so bound to Hosmer Angel, and so uncertain as to
+his fate, that for ten years to come, at any rate, she would not listen
+to another man. As far as the church door he brought her, and then, as
+he could go no farther, he conveniently vanished away by the old trick
+of stepping in at one door of a four-wheeler and out at the other. I
+think that was the chain of events, Mr. Windibank!”
+
+Our visitor had recovered something of his assurance while Holmes had
+been talking, and he rose from his chair now with a cold sneer upon his
+pale face.
+
+“It may be so, or it may not, Mr. Holmes,” said he, “but if you are so
+very sharp you ought to be sharp enough to know that it is you who are
+breaking the law now, and not me. I have done nothing actionable from
+the first, but as long as you keep that door locked you lay yourself
+open to an action for assault and illegal constraint.”
+
+“The law cannot, as you say, touch you,” said Holmes, unlocking and
+throwing open the door, “yet there never was a man who deserved
+punishment more. If the young lady has a brother or a friend, he ought
+to lay a whip across your shoulders. By Jove!” he continued, flushing
+up at the sight of the bitter sneer upon the man’s face, “it is not
+part of my duties to my client, but here’s a hunting crop handy, and I
+think I shall just treat myself to—” He took two swift steps to the
+whip, but before he could grasp it there was a wild clatter of steps
+upon the stairs, the heavy hall door banged, and from the window we
+could see Mr. James Windibank running at the top of his speed down the
+road.
+
+“There’s a cold-blooded scoundrel!” said Holmes, laughing, as he threw
+himself down into his chair once more. “That fellow will rise from
+crime to crime until he does something very bad, and ends on a gallows.
+The case has, in some respects, been not entirely devoid of interest.”
+
+“I cannot now entirely see all the steps of your reasoning,” I
+remarked.
+
+“Well, of course it was obvious from the first that this Mr. Hosmer
+Angel must have some strong object for his curious conduct, and it was
+equally clear that the only man who really profited by the incident, as
+far as we could see, was the stepfather. Then the fact that the two men
+were never together, but that the one always appeared when the other
+was away, was suggestive. So were the tinted spectacles and the curious
+voice, which both hinted at a disguise, as did the bushy whiskers. My
+suspicions were all confirmed by his peculiar action in typewriting his
+signature, which, of course, inferred that his handwriting was so
+familiar to her that she would recognise even the smallest sample of
+it. You see all these isolated facts, together with many minor ones,
+all pointed in the same direction.”
+
+“And how did you verify them?”
+
+“Having once spotted my man, it was easy to get corroboration. I knew
+the firm for which this man worked. Having taken the printed
+description. I eliminated everything from it which could be the result
+of a disguise—the whiskers, the glasses, the voice, and I sent it to
+the firm, with a request that they would inform me whether it answered
+to the description of any of their travellers. I had already noticed
+the peculiarities of the typewriter, and I wrote to the man himself at
+his business address asking him if he would come here. As I expected,
+his reply was typewritten and revealed the same trivial but
+characteristic defects. The same post brought me a letter from
+Westhouse & Marbank, of Fenchurch Street, to say that the description
+tallied in every respect with that of their employé, James Windibank.
+_Voilà tout_!”
+
+“And Miss Sutherland?”
+
+“If I tell her she will not believe me. You may remember the old
+Persian saying, ‘There is danger for him who taketh the tiger cub, and
+danger also for whoso snatches a delusion from a woman.’ There is as
+much sense in Hafiz as in Horace, and as much knowledge of the world.”
+
+
+
+ IV. THE BOSCOMBE VALLEY MYSTERY
+
+We were seated at breakfast one morning, my wife and I, when the maid
+brought in a telegram. It was from Sherlock Holmes and ran in this way:
+
+“Have you a couple of days to spare? Have just been wired for from the
+west of England in connection with Boscombe Valley tragedy. Shall be
+glad if you will come with me. Air and scenery perfect. Leave
+Paddington by the 11:15.”
+
+“What do you say, dear?” said my wife, looking across at me. “Will you
+go?”
+
+“I really don’t know what to say. I have a fairly long list at
+present.”
+
+“Oh, Anstruther would do your work for you. You have been looking a
+little pale lately. I think that the change would do you good, and you
+are always so interested in Mr. Sherlock Holmes’ cases.”
+
+“I should be ungrateful if I were not, seeing what I gained through one
+of them,” I answered. “But if I am to go, I must pack at once, for I
+have only half an hour.”
+
+My experience of camp life in Afghanistan had at least had the effect
+of making me a prompt and ready traveller. My wants were few and
+simple, so that in less than the time stated I was in a cab with my
+valise, rattling away to Paddington Station. Sherlock Holmes was pacing
+up and down the platform, his tall, gaunt figure made even gaunter and
+taller by his long grey travelling-cloak and close-fitting cloth cap.
+
+“It is really very good of you to come, Watson,” said he. “It makes a
+considerable difference to me, having someone with me on whom I can
+thoroughly rely. Local aid is always either worthless or else biassed.
+If you will keep the two corner seats I shall get the tickets.”
+
+We had the carriage to ourselves save for an immense litter of papers
+which Holmes had brought with him. Among these he rummaged and read,
+with intervals of note-taking and of meditation, until we were past
+Reading. Then he suddenly rolled them all into a gigantic ball and
+tossed them up onto the rack.
+
+“Have you heard anything of the case?” he asked.
+
+“Not a word. I have not seen a paper for some days.”
+
+“The London press has not had very full accounts. I have just been
+looking through all the recent papers in order to master the
+particulars. It seems, from what I gather, to be one of those simple
+cases which are so extremely difficult.”
+
+“That sounds a little paradoxical.”
+
+“But it is profoundly true. Singularity is almost invariably a clue.
+The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more difficult it
+is to bring it home. In this case, however, they have established a
+very serious case against the son of the murdered man.”
+
+“It is a murder, then?”
+
+“Well, it is conjectured to be so. I shall take nothing for granted
+until I have the opportunity of looking personally into it. I will
+explain the state of things to you, as far as I have been able to
+understand it, in a very few words.
+
+“Boscombe Valley is a country district not very far from Ross, in
+Herefordshire. The largest landed proprietor in that part is a Mr. John
+Turner, who made his money in Australia and returned some years ago to
+the old country. One of the farms which he held, that of Hatherley, was
+let to Mr. Charles McCarthy, who was also an ex-Australian. The men had
+known each other in the colonies, so that it was not unnatural that
+when they came to settle down they should do so as near each other as
+possible. Turner was apparently the richer man, so McCarthy became his
+tenant but still remained, it seems, upon terms of perfect equality, as
+they were frequently together. McCarthy had one son, a lad of eighteen,
+and Turner had an only daughter of the same age, but neither of them
+had wives living. They appear to have avoided the society of the
+neighbouring English families and to have led retired lives, though
+both the McCarthys were fond of sport and were frequently seen at the
+race-meetings of the neighbourhood. McCarthy kept two servants—a man
+and a girl. Turner had a considerable household, some half-dozen at the
+least. That is as much as I have been able to gather about the
+families. Now for the facts.
+
+“On June 3rd, that is, on Monday last, McCarthy left his house at
+Hatherley about three in the afternoon and walked down to the Boscombe
+Pool, which is a small lake formed by the spreading out of the stream
+which runs down the Boscombe Valley. He had been out with his
+serving-man in the morning at Ross, and he had told the man that he
+must hurry, as he had an appointment of importance to keep at three.
+From that appointment he never came back alive.
+
+“From Hatherley Farmhouse to the Boscombe Pool is a quarter of a mile,
+and two people saw him as he passed over this ground. One was an old
+woman, whose name is not mentioned, and the other was William Crowder,
+a game-keeper in the employ of Mr. Turner. Both these witnesses depose
+that Mr. McCarthy was walking alone. The game-keeper adds that within a
+few minutes of his seeing Mr. McCarthy pass he had seen his son, Mr.
+James McCarthy, going the same way with a gun under his arm. To the
+best of his belief, the father was actually in sight at the time, and
+the son was following him. He thought no more of the matter until he
+heard in the evening of the tragedy that had occurred.
+
+“The two McCarthys were seen after the time when William Crowder, the
+game-keeper, lost sight of them. The Boscombe Pool is thickly wooded
+round, with just a fringe of grass and of reeds round the edge. A girl
+of fourteen, Patience Moran, who is the daughter of the lodge-keeper of
+the Boscombe Valley estate, was in one of the woods picking flowers.
+She states that while she was there she saw, at the border of the wood
+and close by the lake, Mr. McCarthy and his son, and that they appeared
+to be having a violent quarrel. She heard Mr. McCarthy the elder using
+very strong language to his son, and she saw the latter raise up his
+hand as if to strike his father. She was so frightened by their
+violence that she ran away and told her mother when she reached home
+that she had left the two McCarthys quarrelling near Boscombe Pool, and
+that she was afraid that they were going to fight. She had hardly said
+the words when young Mr. McCarthy came running up to the lodge to say
+that he had found his father dead in the wood, and to ask for the help
+of the lodge-keeper. He was much excited, without either his gun or his
+hat, and his right hand and sleeve were observed to be stained with
+fresh blood. On following him they found the dead body stretched out
+upon the grass beside the pool. The head had been beaten in by repeated
+blows of some heavy and blunt weapon. The injuries were such as might
+very well have been inflicted by the butt-end of his son’s gun, which
+was found lying on the grass within a few paces of the body. Under
+these circumstances the young man was instantly arrested, and a verdict
+of ‘wilful murder’ having been returned at the inquest on Tuesday, he
+was on Wednesday brought before the magistrates at Ross, who have
+referred the case to the next Assizes. Those are the main facts of the
+case as they came out before the coroner and the police-court.”
+
+“I could hardly imagine a more damning case,” I remarked. “If ever
+circumstantial evidence pointed to a criminal it does so here.”
+
+“Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing,” answered Holmes
+thoughtfully. “It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if
+you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in
+an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different. It
+must be confessed, however, that the case looks exceedingly grave
+against the young man, and it is very possible that he is indeed the
+culprit. There are several people in the neighbourhood, however, and
+among them Miss Turner, the daughter of the neighbouring landowner, who
+believe in his innocence, and who have retained Lestrade, whom you may
+recollect in connection with the Study in Scarlet, to work out the case
+in his interest. Lestrade, being rather puzzled, has referred the case
+to me, and hence it is that two middle-aged gentlemen are flying
+westward at fifty miles an hour instead of quietly digesting their
+breakfasts at home.”
+
+“I am afraid,” said I, “that the facts are so obvious that you will
+find little credit to be gained out of this case.”
+
+“There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact,” he answered,
+laughing. “Besides, we may chance to hit upon some other obvious facts
+which may have been by no means obvious to Mr. Lestrade. You know me
+too well to think that I am boasting when I say that I shall either
+confirm or destroy his theory by means which he is quite incapable of
+employing, or even of understanding. To take the first example to hand,
+I very clearly perceive that in your bedroom the window is upon the
+right-hand side, and yet I question whether Mr. Lestrade would have
+noted even so self-evident a thing as that.”
+
+“How on earth—”
+
+“My dear fellow, I know you well. I know the military neatness which
+characterises you. You shave every morning, and in this season you
+shave by the sunlight; but since your shaving is less and less complete
+as we get farther back on the left side, until it becomes positively
+slovenly as we get round the angle of the jaw, it is surely very clear
+that that side is less illuminated than the other. I could not imagine
+a man of your habits looking at himself in an equal light and being
+satisfied with such a result. I only quote this as a trivial example of
+observation and inference. Therein lies my _métier_, and it is just
+possible that it may be of some service in the investigation which lies
+before us. There are one or two minor points which were brought out in
+the inquest, and which are worth considering.”
+
+“What are they?”
+
+“It appears that his arrest did not take place at once, but after the
+return to Hatherley Farm. On the inspector of constabulary informing
+him that he was a prisoner, he remarked that he was not surprised to
+hear it, and that it was no more than his deserts. This observation of
+his had the natural effect of removing any traces of doubt which might
+have remained in the minds of the coroner’s jury.”
+
+“It was a confession,” I ejaculated.
+
+“No, for it was followed by a protestation of innocence.”
+
+“Coming on the top of such a damning series of events, it was at least
+a most suspicious remark.”
+
+“On the contrary,” said Holmes, “it is the brightest rift which I can
+at present see in the clouds. However innocent he might be, he could
+not be such an absolute imbecile as not to see that the circumstances
+were very black against him. Had he appeared surprised at his own
+arrest, or feigned indignation at it, I should have looked upon it as
+highly suspicious, because such surprise or anger would not be natural
+under the circumstances, and yet might appear to be the best policy to
+a scheming man. His frank acceptance of the situation marks him as
+either an innocent man, or else as a man of considerable self-restraint
+and firmness. As to his remark about his deserts, it was also not
+unnatural if you consider that he stood beside the dead body of his
+father, and that there is no doubt that he had that very day so far
+forgotten his filial duty as to bandy words with him, and even,
+according to the little girl whose evidence is so important, to raise
+his hand as if to strike him. The self-reproach and contrition which
+are displayed in his remark appear to me to be the signs of a healthy
+mind rather than of a guilty one.”
+
+I shook my head. “Many men have been hanged on far slighter evidence,”
+I remarked.
+
+“So they have. And many men have been wrongfully hanged.”
+
+“What is the young man’s own account of the matter?”
+
+“It is, I am afraid, not very encouraging to his supporters, though
+there are one or two points in it which are suggestive. You will find
+it here, and may read it for yourself.”
+
+He picked out from his bundle a copy of the local Herefordshire paper,
+and having turned down the sheet he pointed out the paragraph in which
+the unfortunate young man had given his own statement of what had
+occurred. I settled myself down in the corner of the carriage and read
+it very carefully. It ran in this way:
+
+“Mr. James McCarthy, the only son of the deceased, was then called and
+gave evidence as follows: ‘I had been away from home for three days at
+Bristol, and had only just returned upon the morning of last Monday,
+the 3rd. My father was absent from home at the time of my arrival, and
+I was informed by the maid that he had driven over to Ross with John
+Cobb, the groom. Shortly after my return I heard the wheels of his trap
+in the yard, and, looking out of my window, I saw him get out and walk
+rapidly out of the yard, though I was not aware in which direction he
+was going. I then took my gun and strolled out in the direction of the
+Boscombe Pool, with the intention of visiting the rabbit warren which
+is upon the other side. On my way I saw William Crowder, the
+game-keeper, as he had stated in his evidence; but he is mistaken in
+thinking that I was following my father. I had no idea that he was in
+front of me. When about a hundred yards from the pool I heard a cry of
+“Cooee!” which was a usual signal between my father and myself. I then
+hurried forward, and found him standing by the pool. He appeared to be
+much surprised at seeing me and asked me rather roughly what I was
+doing there. A conversation ensued which led to high words and almost
+to blows, for my father was a man of a very violent temper. Seeing that
+his passion was becoming ungovernable, I left him and returned towards
+Hatherley Farm. I had not gone more than 150 yards, however, when I
+heard a hideous outcry behind me, which caused me to run back again. I
+found my father expiring upon the ground, with his head terribly
+injured. I dropped my gun and held him in my arms, but he almost
+instantly expired. I knelt beside him for some minutes, and then made
+my way to Mr. Turner’s lodge-keeper, his house being the nearest, to
+ask for assistance. I saw no one near my father when I returned, and I
+have no idea how he came by his injuries. He was not a popular man,
+being somewhat cold and forbidding in his manners, but he had, as far
+as I know, no active enemies. I know nothing further of the matter.’
+
+“The Coroner: Did your father make any statement to you before he died?
+
+“Witness: He mumbled a few words, but I could only catch some allusion
+to a rat.
+
+“The Coroner: What did you understand by that?
+
+“Witness: It conveyed no meaning to me. I thought that he was
+delirious.
+
+“The Coroner: What was the point upon which you and your father had
+this final quarrel?
+
+“Witness: I should prefer not to answer.
+
+“The Coroner: I am afraid that I must press it.
+
+“Witness: It is really impossible for me to tell you. I can assure you
+that it has nothing to do with the sad tragedy which followed.
+
+“The Coroner: That is for the court to decide. I need not point out to
+you that your refusal to answer will prejudice your case considerably
+in any future proceedings which may arise.
+
+“Witness: I must still refuse.
+
+“The Coroner: I understand that the cry of ‘Cooee’ was a common signal
+between you and your father?
+
+“Witness: It was.
+
+“The Coroner: How was it, then, that he uttered it before he saw you,
+and before he even knew that you had returned from Bristol?
+
+“Witness (with considerable confusion): I do not know.
+
+“A Juryman: Did you see nothing which aroused your suspicions when you
+returned on hearing the cry and found your father fatally injured?
+
+“Witness: Nothing definite.
+
+“The Coroner: What do you mean?
+
+“Witness: I was so disturbed and excited as I rushed out into the open,
+that I could think of nothing except of my father. Yet I have a vague
+impression that as I ran forward something lay upon the ground to the
+left of me. It seemed to me to be something grey in colour, a coat of
+some sort, or a plaid perhaps. When I rose from my father I looked
+round for it, but it was gone.
+
+“‘Do you mean that it disappeared before you went for help?’
+
+“‘Yes, it was gone.’
+
+“  ‘You cannot say what it was?’
+
+“‘No, I had a feeling something was there.’
+
+“‘How far from the body?’
+
+“‘A dozen yards or so.’
+
+“‘And how far from the edge of the wood?’
+
+“‘About the same.’
+
+“‘Then if it was removed it was while you were within a dozen yards of
+it?’
+
+“‘Yes, but with my back towards it.’
+
+“This concluded the examination of the witness.”
+
+“I see,” said I as I glanced down the column, “that the coroner in his
+concluding remarks was rather severe upon young McCarthy. He calls
+attention, and with reason, to the discrepancy about his father having
+signalled to him before seeing him, also to his refusal to give details
+of his conversation with his father, and his singular account of his
+father’s dying words. They are all, as he remarks, very much against
+the son.”
+
+Holmes laughed softly to himself and stretched himself out upon the
+cushioned seat. “Both you and the coroner have been at some pains,”
+said he, “to single out the very strongest points in the young man’s
+favour. Don’t you see that you alternately give him credit for having
+too much imagination and too little? Too little, if he could not invent
+a cause of quarrel which would give him the sympathy of the jury; too
+much, if he evolved from his own inner consciousness anything so
+_outré_ as a dying reference to a rat, and the incident of the
+vanishing cloth. No, sir, I shall approach this case from the point of
+view that what this young man says is true, and we shall see whither
+that hypothesis will lead us. And now here is my pocket Petrarch, and
+not another word shall I say of this case until we are on the scene of
+action. We lunch at Swindon, and I see that we shall be there in twenty
+minutes.”
+
+It was nearly four o’clock when we at last, after passing through the
+beautiful Stroud Valley, and over the broad gleaming Severn, found
+ourselves at the pretty little country-town of Ross. A lean,
+ferret-like man, furtive and sly-looking, was waiting for us upon the
+platform. In spite of the light brown dustcoat and leather-leggings
+which he wore in deference to his rustic surroundings, I had no
+difficulty in recognising Lestrade, of Scotland Yard. With him we drove
+to the Hereford Arms where a room had already been engaged for us.
+
+“I have ordered a carriage,” said Lestrade as we sat over a cup of tea.
+“I knew your energetic nature, and that you would not be happy until
+you had been on the scene of the crime.”
+
+“It was very nice and complimentary of you,” Holmes answered. “It is
+entirely a question of barometric pressure.”
+
+Lestrade looked startled. “I do not quite follow,” he said.
+
+“How is the glass? Twenty-nine, I see. No wind, and not a cloud in the
+sky. I have a caseful of cigarettes here which need smoking, and the
+sofa is very much superior to the usual country hotel abomination. I do
+not think that it is probable that I shall use the carriage to-night.”
+
+Lestrade laughed indulgently. “You have, no doubt, already formed your
+conclusions from the newspapers,” he said. “The case is as plain as a
+pikestaff, and the more one goes into it the plainer it becomes. Still,
+of course, one can’t refuse a lady, and such a very positive one, too.
+She has heard of you, and would have your opinion, though I repeatedly
+told her that there was nothing which you could do which I had not
+already done. Why, bless my soul! here is her carriage at the door.”
+
+He had hardly spoken before there rushed into the room one of the most
+lovely young women that I have ever seen in my life. Her violet eyes
+shining, her lips parted, a pink flush upon her cheeks, all thought of
+her natural reserve lost in her overpowering excitement and concern.
+
+“Oh, Mr. Sherlock Holmes!” she cried, glancing from one to the other of
+us, and finally, with a woman’s quick intuition, fastening upon my
+companion, “I am so glad that you have come. I have driven down to tell
+you so. I know that James didn’t do it. I know it, and I want you to
+start upon your work knowing it, too. Never let yourself doubt upon
+that point. We have known each other since we were little children, and
+I know his faults as no one else does; but he is too tender-hearted to
+hurt a fly. Such a charge is absurd to anyone who really knows him.”
+
+“I hope we may clear him, Miss Turner,” said Sherlock Holmes. “You may
+rely upon my doing all that I can.”
+
+“But you have read the evidence. You have formed some conclusion? Do
+you not see some loophole, some flaw? Do you not yourself think that he
+is innocent?”
+
+“I think that it is very probable.”
+
+“There, now!” she cried, throwing back her head and looking defiantly
+at Lestrade. “You hear! He gives me hopes.”
+
+Lestrade shrugged his shoulders. “I am afraid that my colleague has
+been a little quick in forming his conclusions,” he said.
+
+“But he is right. Oh! I know that he is right. James never did it. And
+about his quarrel with his father, I am sure that the reason why he
+would not speak about it to the coroner was because I was concerned in
+it.”
+
+“In what way?” asked Holmes.
+
+“It is no time for me to hide anything. James and his father had many
+disagreements about me. Mr. McCarthy was very anxious that there should
+be a marriage between us. James and I have always loved each other as
+brother and sister; but of course he is young and has seen very little
+of life yet, and—and—well, he naturally did not wish to do anything
+like that yet. So there were quarrels, and this, I am sure, was one of
+them.”
+
+“And your father?” asked Holmes. “Was he in favour of such a union?”
+
+“No, he was averse to it also. No one but Mr. McCarthy was in favour of
+it.” A quick blush passed over her fresh young face as Holmes shot one
+of his keen, questioning glances at her.
+
+“Thank you for this information,” said he. “May I see your father if I
+call to-morrow?”
+
+“I am afraid the doctor won’t allow it.”
+
+“The doctor?”
+
+“Yes, have you not heard? Poor father has never been strong for years
+back, but this has broken him down completely. He has taken to his bed,
+and Dr. Willows says that he is a wreck and that his nervous system is
+shattered. Mr. McCarthy was the only man alive who had known dad in the
+old days in Victoria.”
+
+“Ha! In Victoria! That is important.”
+
+“Yes, at the mines.”
+
+“Quite so; at the gold-mines, where, as I understand, Mr. Turner made
+his money.”
+
+“Yes, certainly.”
+
+“Thank you, Miss Turner. You have been of material assistance to me.”
+
+“You will tell me if you have any news to-morrow. No doubt you will go
+to the prison to see James. Oh, if you do, Mr. Holmes, do tell him that
+I know him to be innocent.”
+
+“I will, Miss Turner.”
+
+“I must go home now, for dad is very ill, and he misses me so if I
+leave him. Good-bye, and God help you in your undertaking.” She hurried
+from the room as impulsively as she had entered, and we heard the
+wheels of her carriage rattle off down the street.
+
+“I am ashamed of you, Holmes,” said Lestrade with dignity after a few
+minutes’ silence. “Why should you raise up hopes which you are bound to
+disappoint? I am not over-tender of heart, but I call it cruel.”
+
+“I think that I see my way to clearing James McCarthy,” said Holmes.
+“Have you an order to see him in prison?”
+
+“Yes, but only for you and me.”
+
+“Then I shall reconsider my resolution about going out. We have still
+time to take a train to Hereford and see him to-night?”
+
+“Ample.”
+
+“Then let us do so. Watson, I fear that you will find it very slow, but
+I shall only be away a couple of hours.”
+
+I walked down to the station with them, and then wandered through the
+streets of the little town, finally returning to the hotel, where I lay
+upon the sofa and tried to interest myself in a yellow-backed novel.
+The puny plot of the story was so thin, however, when compared to the
+deep mystery through which we were groping, and I found my attention
+wander so continually from the action to the fact, that I at last flung
+it across the room and gave myself up entirely to a consideration of
+the events of the day. Supposing that this unhappy young man’s story
+were absolutely true, then what hellish thing, what absolutely
+unforeseen and extraordinary calamity could have occurred between the
+time when he parted from his father, and the moment when, drawn back by
+his screams, he rushed into the glade? It was something terrible and
+deadly. What could it be? Might not the nature of the injuries reveal
+something to my medical instincts? I rang the bell and called for the
+weekly county paper, which contained a verbatim account of the inquest.
+In the surgeon’s deposition it was stated that the posterior third of
+the left parietal bone and the left half of the occipital bone had been
+shattered by a heavy blow from a blunt weapon. I marked the spot upon
+my own head. Clearly such a blow must have been struck from behind.
+That was to some extent in favour of the accused, as when seen
+quarrelling he was face to face with his father. Still, it did not go
+for very much, for the older man might have turned his back before the
+blow fell. Still, it might be worth while to call Holmes’ attention to
+it. Then there was the peculiar dying reference to a rat. What could
+that mean? It could not be delirium. A man dying from a sudden blow
+does not commonly become delirious. No, it was more likely to be an
+attempt to explain how he met his fate. But what could it indicate? I
+cudgelled my brains to find some possible explanation. And then the
+incident of the grey cloth seen by young McCarthy. If that were true
+the murderer must have dropped some part of his dress, presumably his
+overcoat, in his flight, and must have had the hardihood to return and
+to carry it away at the instant when the son was kneeling with his back
+turned not a dozen paces off. What a tissue of mysteries and
+improbabilities the whole thing was! I did not wonder at Lestrade’s
+opinion, and yet I had so much faith in Sherlock Holmes’ insight that I
+could not lose hope as long as every fresh fact seemed to strengthen
+his conviction of young McCarthy’s innocence.
+
+It was late before Sherlock Holmes returned. He came back alone, for
+Lestrade was staying in lodgings in the town.
+
+“The glass still keeps very high,” he remarked as he sat down. “It is
+of importance that it should not rain before we are able to go over the
+ground. On the other hand, a man should be at his very best and keenest
+for such nice work as that, and I did not wish to do it when fagged by
+a long journey. I have seen young McCarthy.”
+
+“And what did you learn from him?”
+
+“Nothing.”
+
+“Could he throw no light?”
+
+“None at all. I was inclined to think at one time that he knew who had
+done it and was screening him or her, but I am convinced now that he is
+as puzzled as everyone else. He is not a very quick-witted youth,
+though comely to look at and, I should think, sound at heart.”
+
+“I cannot admire his taste,” I remarked, “if it is indeed a fact that
+he was averse to a marriage with so charming a young lady as this Miss
+Turner.”
+
+“Ah, thereby hangs a rather painful tale. This fellow is madly,
+insanely, in love with her, but some two years ago, when he was only a
+lad, and before he really knew her, for she had been away five years at
+a boarding-school, what does the idiot do but get into the clutches of
+a barmaid in Bristol and marry her at a registry office? No one knows a
+word of the matter, but you can imagine how maddening it must be to him
+to be upbraided for not doing what he would give his very eyes to do,
+but what he knows to be absolutely impossible. It was sheer frenzy of
+this sort which made him throw his hands up into the air when his
+father, at their last interview, was goading him on to propose to Miss
+Turner. On the other hand, he had no means of supporting himself, and
+his father, who was by all accounts a very hard man, would have thrown
+him over utterly had he known the truth. It was with his barmaid wife
+that he had spent the last three days in Bristol, and his father did
+not know where he was. Mark that point. It is of importance. Good has
+come out of evil, however, for the barmaid, finding from the papers
+that he is in serious trouble and likely to be hanged, has thrown him
+over utterly and has written to him to say that she has a husband
+already in the Bermuda Dockyard, so that there is really no tie between
+them. I think that that bit of news has consoled young McCarthy for all
+that he has suffered.”
+
+“But if he is innocent, who has done it?”
+
+“Ah! who? I would call your attention very particularly to two points.
+One is that the murdered man had an appointment with someone at the
+pool, and that the someone could not have been his son, for his son was
+away, and he did not know when he would return. The second is that the
+murdered man was heard to cry ‘Cooee!’ before he knew that his son had
+returned. Those are the crucial points upon which the case depends. And
+now let us talk about George Meredith, if you please, and we shall
+leave all minor matters until to-morrow.”
+
+There was no rain, as Holmes had foretold, and the morning broke bright
+and cloudless. At nine o’clock Lestrade called for us with the
+carriage, and we set off for Hatherley Farm and the Boscombe Pool.
+
+“There is serious news this morning,” Lestrade observed. “It is said
+that Mr. Turner, of the Hall, is so ill that his life is despaired of.”
+
+“An elderly man, I presume?” said Holmes.
+
+“About sixty; but his constitution has been shattered by his life
+abroad, and he has been in failing health for some time. This business
+has had a very bad effect upon him. He was an old friend of McCarthy’s,
+and, I may add, a great benefactor to him, for I have learned that he
+gave him Hatherley Farm rent free.”
+
+“Indeed! That is interesting,” said Holmes.
+
+“Oh, yes! In a hundred other ways he has helped him. Everybody about
+here speaks of his kindness to him.”
+
+“Really! Does it not strike you as a little singular that this
+McCarthy, who appears to have had little of his own, and to have been
+under such obligations to Turner, should still talk of marrying his son
+to Turner’s daughter, who is, presumably, heiress to the estate, and
+that in such a very cocksure manner, as if it were merely a case of a
+proposal and all else would follow? It is the more strange, since we
+know that Turner himself was averse to the idea. The daughter told us
+as much. Do you not deduce something from that?”
+
+“We have got to the deductions and the inferences,” said Lestrade,
+winking at me. “I find it hard enough to tackle facts, Holmes, without
+flying away after theories and fancies.”
+
+“You are right,” said Holmes demurely; “you do find it very hard to
+tackle the facts.”
+
+“Anyhow, I have grasped one fact which you seem to find it difficult to
+get hold of,” replied Lestrade with some warmth.
+
+“And that is—”
+
+“That McCarthy senior met his death from McCarthy junior and that all
+theories to the contrary are the merest moonshine.”
+
+“Well, moonshine is a brighter thing than fog,” said Holmes, laughing.
+“But I am very much mistaken if this is not Hatherley Farm upon the
+left.”
+
+“Yes, that is it.” It was a widespread, comfortable-looking building,
+two-storied, slate-roofed, with great yellow blotches of lichen upon
+the grey walls. The drawn blinds and the smokeless chimneys, however,
+gave it a stricken look, as though the weight of this horror still lay
+heavy upon it. We called at the door, when the maid, at Holmes’
+request, showed us the boots which her master wore at the time of his
+death, and also a pair of the son’s, though not the pair which he had
+then had. Having measured these very carefully from seven or eight
+different points, Holmes desired to be led to the court-yard, from
+which we all followed the winding track which led to Boscombe Pool.
+
+Sherlock Holmes was transformed when he was hot upon such a scent as
+this. Men who had only known the quiet thinker and logician of Baker
+Street would have failed to recognise him. His face flushed and
+darkened. His brows were drawn into two hard black lines, while his
+eyes shone out from beneath them with a steely glitter. His face was
+bent downward, his shoulders bowed, his lips compressed, and the veins
+stood out like whipcord in his long, sinewy neck. His nostrils seemed
+to dilate with a purely animal lust for the chase, and his mind was so
+absolutely concentrated upon the matter before him that a question or
+remark fell unheeded upon his ears, or, at the most, only provoked a
+quick, impatient snarl in reply. Swiftly and silently he made his way
+along the track which ran through the meadows, and so by way of the
+woods to the Boscombe Pool. It was damp, marshy ground, as is all that
+district, and there were marks of many feet, both upon the path and
+amid the short grass which bounded it on either side. Sometimes Holmes
+would hurry on, sometimes stop dead, and once he made quite a little
+detour into the meadow. Lestrade and I walked behind him, the detective
+indifferent and contemptuous, while I watched my friend with the
+interest which sprang from the conviction that every one of his actions
+was directed towards a definite end.
+
+The Boscombe Pool, which is a little reed-girt sheet of water some
+fifty yards across, is situated at the boundary between the Hatherley
+Farm and the private park of the wealthy Mr. Turner. Above the woods
+which lined it upon the farther side we could see the red, jutting
+pinnacles which marked the site of the rich landowner’s dwelling. On
+the Hatherley side of the pool the woods grew very thick, and there was
+a narrow belt of sodden grass twenty paces across between the edge of
+the trees and the reeds which lined the lake. Lestrade showed us the
+exact spot at which the body had been found, and, indeed, so moist was
+the ground, that I could plainly see the traces which had been left by
+the fall of the stricken man. To Holmes, as I could see by his eager
+face and peering eyes, very many other things were to be read upon the
+trampled grass. He ran round, like a dog who is picking up a scent, and
+then turned upon my companion.
+
+“What did you go into the pool for?” he asked.
+
+“I fished about with a rake. I thought there might be some weapon or
+other trace. But how on earth—”
+
+“Oh, tut, tut! I have no time! That left foot of yours with its inward
+twist is all over the place. A mole could trace it, and there it
+vanishes among the reeds. Oh, how simple it would all have been had I
+been here before they came like a herd of buffalo and wallowed all over
+it. Here is where the party with the lodge-keeper came, and they have
+covered all tracks for six or eight feet round the body. But here are
+three separate tracks of the same feet.” He drew out a lens and lay
+down upon his waterproof to have a better view, talking all the time
+rather to himself than to us. “These are young McCarthy’s feet. Twice
+he was walking, and once he ran swiftly, so that the soles are deeply
+marked and the heels hardly visible. That bears out his story. He ran
+when he saw his father on the ground. Then here are the father’s feet
+as he paced up and down. What is this, then? It is the butt-end of the
+gun as the son stood listening. And this? Ha, ha! What have we here?
+Tiptoes! tiptoes! Square, too, quite unusual boots! They come, they go,
+they come again—of course that was for the cloak. Now where did they
+come from?” He ran up and down, sometimes losing, sometimes finding the
+track until we were well within the edge of the wood and under the
+shadow of a great beech, the largest tree in the neighbourhood. Holmes
+traced his way to the farther side of this and lay down once more upon
+his face with a little cry of satisfaction. For a long time he remained
+there, turning over the leaves and dried sticks, gathering up what
+seemed to me to be dust into an envelope and examining with his lens
+not only the ground but even the bark of the tree as far as he could
+reach. A jagged stone was lying among the moss, and this also he
+carefully examined and retained. Then he followed a pathway through the
+wood until he came to the highroad, where all traces were lost.
+
+“It has been a case of considerable interest,” he remarked, returning
+to his natural manner. “I fancy that this grey house on the right must
+be the lodge. I think that I will go in and have a word with Moran, and
+perhaps write a little note. Having done that, we may drive back to our
+luncheon. You may walk to the cab, and I shall be with you presently.”
+
+It was about ten minutes before we regained our cab and drove back into
+Ross, Holmes still carrying with him the stone which he had picked up
+in the wood.
+
+“This may interest you, Lestrade,” he remarked, holding it out. “The
+murder was done with it.”
+
+“I see no marks.”
+
+“There are none.”
+
+“How do you know, then?”
+
+“The grass was growing under it. It had only lain there a few days.
+There was no sign of a place whence it had been taken. It corresponds
+with the injuries. There is no sign of any other weapon.”
+
+“And the murderer?”
+
+“Is a tall man, left-handed, limps with the right leg, wears
+thick-soled shooting-boots and a grey cloak, smokes Indian cigars, uses
+a cigar-holder, and carries a blunt pen-knife in his pocket. There are
+several other indications, but these may be enough to aid us in our
+search.”
+
+Lestrade laughed. “I am afraid that I am still a sceptic,” he said.
+“Theories are all very well, but we have to deal with a hard-headed
+British jury.”
+
+“_Nous verrons_,” answered Holmes calmly. “You work your own method,
+and I shall work mine. I shall be busy this afternoon, and shall
+probably return to London by the evening train.”
+
+“And leave your case unfinished?”
+
+“No, finished.”
+
+“But the mystery?”
+
+“It is solved.”
+
+“Who was the criminal, then?”
+
+“The gentleman I describe.”
+
+“But who is he?”
+
+“Surely it would not be difficult to find out. This is not such a
+populous neighbourhood.”
+
+Lestrade shrugged his shoulders. “I am a practical man,” he said, “and
+I really cannot undertake to go about the country looking for a
+left-handed gentleman with a game leg. I should become the
+laughing-stock of Scotland Yard.”
+
+“All right,” said Holmes quietly. “I have given you the chance. Here
+are your lodgings. Good-bye. I shall drop you a line before I leave.”
+
+Having left Lestrade at his rooms, we drove to our hotel, where we
+found lunch upon the table. Holmes was silent and buried in thought
+with a pained expression upon his face, as one who finds himself in a
+perplexing position.
+
+“Look here, Watson,” he said when the cloth was cleared “just sit down
+in this chair and let me preach to you for a little. I don’t know quite
+what to do, and I should value your advice. Light a cigar and let me
+expound.”
+
+ “Pray do so.”
+
+“Well, now, in considering this case there are two points about young
+McCarthy’s narrative which struck us both instantly, although they
+impressed me in his favour and you against him. One was the fact that
+his father should, according to his account, cry ‘Cooee!’ before seeing
+him. The other was his singular dying reference to a rat. He mumbled
+several words, you understand, but that was all that caught the son’s
+ear. Now from this double point our research must commence, and we will
+begin it by presuming that what the lad says is absolutely true.”
+
+“What of this ‘Cooee!’ then?”
+
+“Well, obviously it could not have been meant for the son. The son, as
+far as he knew, was in Bristol. It was mere chance that he was within
+earshot. The ‘Cooee!’ was meant to attract the attention of whoever it
+was that he had the appointment with. But ‘Cooee’ is a distinctly
+Australian cry, and one which is used between Australians. There is a
+strong presumption that the person whom McCarthy expected to meet him
+at Boscombe Pool was someone who had been in Australia.”
+
+“What of the rat, then?”
+
+Sherlock Holmes took a folded paper from his pocket and flattened it
+out on the table. “This is a map of the Colony of Victoria,” he said.
+“I wired to Bristol for it last night.” He put his hand over part of
+the map. “What do you read?”
+
+“ARAT,” I read.
+
+“And now?” He raised his hand.
+
+“BALLARAT.”
+
+“Quite so. That was the word the man uttered, and of which his son only
+caught the last two syllables. He was trying to utter the name of his
+murderer. So and so, of Ballarat.”
+
+“It is wonderful!” I exclaimed.
+
+“It is obvious. And now, you see, I had narrowed the field down
+considerably. The possession of a grey garment was a third point which,
+granting the son’s statement to be correct, was a certainty. We have
+come now out of mere vagueness to the definite conception of an
+Australian from Ballarat with a grey cloak.”
+
+“Certainly.”
+
+“And one who was at home in the district, for the pool can only be
+approached by the farm or by the estate, where strangers could hardly
+wander.”
+
+“Quite so.”
+
+“Then comes our expedition of to-day. By an examination of the ground I
+gained the trifling details which I gave to that imbecile Lestrade, as
+to the personality of the criminal.”
+
+“But how did you gain them?”
+
+“You know my method. It is founded upon the observation of trifles.”
+
+“His height I know that you might roughly judge from the length of his
+stride. His boots, too, might be told from their traces.”
+
+“Yes, they were peculiar boots.”
+
+“But his lameness?”
+
+“The impression of his right foot was always less distinct than his
+left. He put less weight upon it. Why? Because he limped—he was lame.”
+
+“But his left-handedness.”
+
+“You were yourself struck by the nature of the injury as recorded by
+the surgeon at the inquest. The blow was struck from immediately
+behind, and yet was upon the left side. Now, how can that be unless it
+were by a left-handed man? He had stood behind that tree during the
+interview between the father and son. He had even smoked there. I found
+the ash of a cigar, which my special knowledge of tobacco ashes enables
+me to pronounce as an Indian cigar. I have, as you know, devoted some
+attention to this, and written a little monograph on the ashes of 140
+different varieties of pipe, cigar, and cigarette tobacco. Having found
+the ash, I then looked round and discovered the stump among the moss
+where he had tossed it. It was an Indian cigar, of the variety which
+are rolled in Rotterdam.”
+
+“And the cigar-holder?”
+
+“I could see that the end had not been in his mouth. Therefore he used
+a holder. The tip had been cut off, not bitten off, but the cut was not
+a clean one, so I deduced a blunt pen-knife.”
+
+“Holmes,” I said, “you have drawn a net round this man from which he
+cannot escape, and you have saved an innocent human life as truly as if
+you had cut the cord which was hanging him. I see the direction in
+which all this points. The culprit is—”
+
+“Mr. John Turner,” cried the hotel waiter, opening the door of our
+sitting-room, and ushering in a visitor.
+
+The man who entered was a strange and impressive figure. His slow,
+limping step and bowed shoulders gave the appearance of decrepitude,
+and yet his hard, deep-lined, craggy features, and his enormous limbs
+showed that he was possessed of unusual strength of body and of
+character. His tangled beard, grizzled hair, and outstanding, drooping
+eyebrows combined to give an air of dignity and power to his
+appearance, but his face was of an ashen white, while his lips and the
+corners of his nostrils were tinged with a shade of blue. It was clear
+to me at a glance that he was in the grip of some deadly and chronic
+disease.
+
+“Pray sit down on the sofa,” said Holmes gently. “You had my note?”
+
+“Yes, the lodge-keeper brought it up. You said that you wished to see
+me here to avoid scandal.”
+
+“I thought people would talk if I went to the Hall.”
+
+“And why did you wish to see me?” He looked across at my companion with
+despair in his weary eyes, as though his question was already answered.
+
+“Yes,” said Holmes, answering the look rather than the words. “It is
+so. I know all about McCarthy.”
+
+The old man sank his face in his hands. “God help me!” he cried. “But I
+would not have let the young man come to harm. I give you my word that
+I would have spoken out if it went against him at the Assizes.”
+
+“I am glad to hear you say so,” said Holmes gravely.
+
+“I would have spoken now had it not been for my dear girl. It would
+break her heart—it will break her heart when she hears that I am
+arrested.”
+
+“It may not come to that,” said Holmes.
+
+“What?”
+
+“I am no official agent. I understand that it was your daughter who
+required my presence here, and I am acting in her interests. Young
+McCarthy must be got off, however.”
+
+“I am a dying man,” said old Turner. “I have had diabetes for years. My
+doctor says it is a question whether I shall live a month. Yet I would
+rather die under my own roof than in a gaol.”
+
+Holmes rose and sat down at the table with his pen in his hand and a
+bundle of paper before him. “Just tell us the truth,” he said. “I shall
+jot down the facts. You will sign it, and Watson here can witness it.
+Then I could produce your confession at the last extremity to save
+young McCarthy. I promise you that I shall not use it unless it is
+absolutely needed.”
+
+“It’s as well,” said the old man; “it’s a question whether I shall live
+to the Assizes, so it matters little to me, but I should wish to spare
+Alice the shock. And now I will make the thing clear to you; it has
+been a long time in the acting, but will not take me long to tell.
+
+“You didn’t know this dead man, McCarthy. He was a devil incarnate. I
+tell you that. God keep you out of the clutches of such a man as he.
+His grip has been upon me these twenty years, and he has blasted my
+life. I’ll tell you first how I came to be in his power.
+
+“It was in the early ’60’s at the diggings. I was a young chap then,
+hot-blooded and reckless, ready to turn my hand at anything; I got
+among bad companions, took to drink, had no luck with my claim, took to
+the bush, and in a word became what you would call over here a highway
+robber. There were six of us, and we had a wild, free life of it,
+sticking up a station from time to time, or stopping the wagons on the
+road to the diggings. Black Jack of Ballarat was the name I went under,
+and our party is still remembered in the colony as the Ballarat Gang.
+
+“One day a gold convoy came down from Ballarat to Melbourne, and we lay
+in wait for it and attacked it. There were six troopers and six of us,
+so it was a close thing, but we emptied four of their saddles at the
+first volley. Three of our boys were killed, however, before we got the
+swag. I put my pistol to the head of the wagon-driver, who was this
+very man McCarthy. I wish to the Lord that I had shot him then, but I
+spared him, though I saw his wicked little eyes fixed on my face, as
+though to remember every feature. We got away with the gold, became
+wealthy men, and made our way over to England without being suspected.
+There I parted from my old pals and determined to settle down to a
+quiet and respectable life. I bought this estate, which chanced to be
+in the market, and I set myself to do a little good with my money, to
+make up for the way in which I had earned it. I married, too, and
+though my wife died young she left me my dear little Alice. Even when
+she was just a baby her wee hand seemed to lead me down the right path
+as nothing else had ever done. In a word, I turned over a new leaf and
+did my best to make up for the past. All was going well when McCarthy
+laid his grip upon me.
+
+“I had gone up to town about an investment, and I met him in Regent
+Street with hardly a coat to his back or a boot to his foot.
+
+“‘Here we are, Jack,’ says he, touching me on the arm; ‘we’ll be as
+good as a family to you. There’s two of us, me and my son, and you can
+have the keeping of us. If you don’t—it’s a fine, law-abiding country
+is England, and there’s always a policeman within hail.’
+
+“Well, down they came to the west country, there was no shaking them
+off, and there they have lived rent free on my best land ever since.
+There was no rest for me, no peace, no forgetfulness; turn where I
+would, there was his cunning, grinning face at my elbow. It grew worse
+as Alice grew up, for he soon saw I was more afraid of her knowing my
+past than of the police. Whatever he wanted he must have, and whatever
+it was I gave him without question, land, money, houses, until at last
+he asked a thing which I could not give. He asked for Alice.
+
+“His son, you see, had grown up, and so had my girl, and as I was known
+to be in weak health, it seemed a fine stroke to him that his lad
+should step into the whole property. But there I was firm. I would not
+have his cursed stock mixed with mine; not that I had any dislike to
+the lad, but his blood was in him, and that was enough. I stood firm.
+McCarthy threatened. I braved him to do his worst. We were to meet at
+the pool midway between our houses to talk it over.
+
+“When I went down there I found him talking with his son, so I smoked a
+cigar and waited behind a tree until he should be alone. But as I
+listened to his talk all that was black and bitter in me seemed to come
+uppermost. He was urging his son to marry my daughter with as little
+regard for what she might think as if she were a slut from off the
+streets. It drove me mad to think that I and all that I held most dear
+should be in the power of such a man as this. Could I not snap the
+bond? I was already a dying and a desperate man. Though clear of mind
+and fairly strong of limb, I knew that my own fate was sealed. But my
+memory and my girl! Both could be saved if I could but silence that
+foul tongue. I did it, Mr. Holmes. I would do it again. Deeply as I
+have sinned, I have led a life of martyrdom to atone for it. But that
+my girl should be entangled in the same meshes which held me was more
+than I could suffer. I struck him down with no more compunction than if
+he had been some foul and venomous beast. His cry brought back his son;
+but I had gained the cover of the wood, though I was forced to go back
+to fetch the cloak which I had dropped in my flight. That is the true
+story, gentlemen, of all that occurred.”
+
+“Well, it is not for me to judge you,” said Holmes as the old man
+signed the statement which had been drawn out. “I pray that we may
+never be exposed to such a temptation.”
+
+“I pray not, sir. And what do you intend to do?”
+
+“In view of your health, nothing. You are yourself aware that you will
+soon have to answer for your deed at a higher court than the Assizes. I
+will keep your confession, and if McCarthy is condemned I shall be
+forced to use it. If not, it shall never be seen by mortal eye; and
+your secret, whether you be alive or dead, shall be safe with us.”
+
+“Farewell, then,” said the old man solemnly. “Your own deathbeds, when
+they come, will be the easier for the thought of the peace which you
+have given to mine.” Tottering and shaking in all his giant frame, he
+stumbled slowly from the room.
+
+“God help us!” said Holmes after a long silence. “Why does fate play
+such tricks with poor, helpless worms? I never hear of such a case as
+this that I do not think of Baxter’s words, and say, ‘There, but for
+the grace of God, goes Sherlock Holmes.’”
+
+James McCarthy was acquitted at the Assizes on the strength of a number
+of objections which had been drawn out by Holmes and submitted to the
+defending counsel. Old Turner lived for seven months after our
+interview, but he is now dead; and there is every prospect that the son
+and daughter may come to live happily together in ignorance of the
+black cloud which rests upon their past.
+
+
+
+V. THE FIVE ORANGE PIPS
+
+When I glance over my notes and records of the Sherlock Holmes cases
+between the years ’82 and ’90, I am faced by so many which present
+strange and interesting features that it is no easy matter to know
+which to choose and which to leave. Some, however, have already gained
+publicity through the papers, and others have not offered a field for
+those peculiar qualities which my friend possessed in so high a degree,
+and which it is the object of these papers to illustrate. Some, too,
+have baffled his analytical skill, and would be, as narratives,
+beginnings without an ending, while others have been but partially
+cleared up, and have their explanations founded rather upon conjecture
+and surmise than on that absolute logical proof which was so dear to
+him. There is, however, one of these last which was so remarkable in
+its details and so startling in its results that I am tempted to give
+some account of it in spite of the fact that there are points in
+connection with it which never have been, and probably never will be,
+entirely cleared up.
+
+The year ’87 furnished us with a long series of cases of greater or
+less interest, of which I retain the records. Among my headings under
+this one twelve months I find an account of the adventure of the
+Paradol Chamber, of the Amateur Mendicant Society, who held a luxurious
+club in the lower vault of a furniture warehouse, of the facts
+connected with the loss of the British barque _Sophy Anderson_, of the
+singular adventures of the Grice Patersons in the island of Uffa, and
+finally of the Camberwell poisoning case. In the latter, as may be
+remembered, Sherlock Holmes was able, by winding up the dead man’s
+watch, to prove that it had been wound up two hours before, and that
+therefore the deceased had gone to bed within that time—a deduction
+which was of the greatest importance in clearing up the case. All these
+I may sketch out at some future date, but none of them present such
+singular features as the strange train of circumstances which I have
+now taken up my pen to describe.
+
+It was in the latter days of September, and the equinoctial gales had
+set in with exceptional violence. All day the wind had screamed and the
+rain had beaten against the windows, so that even here in the heart of
+great, hand-made London we were forced to raise our minds for the
+instant from the routine of life and to recognise the presence of those
+great elemental forces which shriek at mankind through the bars of his
+civilisation, like untamed beasts in a cage. As evening drew in, the
+storm grew higher and louder, and the wind cried and sobbed like a
+child in the chimney. Sherlock Holmes sat moodily at one side of the
+fireplace cross-indexing his records of crime, while I at the other was
+deep in one of Clark Russell’s fine sea-stories until the howl of the
+gale from without seemed to blend with the text, and the splash of the
+rain to lengthen out into the long swash of the sea waves. My wife was
+on a visit to her mother’s, and for a few days I was a dweller once
+more in my old quarters at Baker Street.
+
+“Why,” said I, glancing up at my companion, “that was surely the bell.
+Who could come to-night? Some friend of yours, perhaps?”
+
+“Except yourself I have none,” he answered. “I do not encourage
+visitors.”
+
+“A client, then?”
+
+“If so, it is a serious case. Nothing less would bring a man out on
+such a day and at such an hour. But I take it that it is more likely to
+be some crony of the landlady’s.”
+
+Sherlock Holmes was wrong in his conjecture, however, for there came a
+step in the passage and a tapping at the door. He stretched out his
+long arm to turn the lamp away from himself and towards the vacant
+chair upon which a newcomer must sit.
+
+“Come in!” said he.
+
+The man who entered was young, some two-and-twenty at the outside,
+well-groomed and trimly clad, with something of refinement and delicacy
+in his bearing. The streaming umbrella which he held in his hand, and
+his long shining waterproof told of the fierce weather through which he
+had come. He looked about him anxiously in the glare of the lamp, and I
+could see that his face was pale and his eyes heavy, like those of a
+man who is weighed down with some great anxiety.
+
+“I owe you an apology,” he said, raising his golden pince-nez to his
+eyes. “I trust that I am not intruding. I fear that I have brought some
+traces of the storm and rain into your snug chamber.”
+
+“Give me your coat and umbrella,” said Holmes. “They may rest here on
+the hook and will be dry presently. You have come up from the
+south-west, I see.”
+
+“Yes, from Horsham.”
+
+“That clay and chalk mixture which I see upon your toe caps is quite
+distinctive.”
+
+“I have come for advice.”
+
+“That is easily got.”
+
+“And help.”
+
+“That is not always so easy.”
+
+“I have heard of you, Mr. Holmes. I heard from Major Prendergast how
+you saved him in the Tankerville Club scandal.”
+
+“Ah, of course. He was wrongfully accused of cheating at cards.”
+
+“He said that you could solve anything.”
+
+“He said too much.”
+
+“That you are never beaten.”
+
+“I have been beaten four times—three times by men, and once by a
+woman.”
+
+“But what is that compared with the number of your successes?”
+
+“It is true that I have been generally successful.”
+
+“Then you may be so with me.”
+
+“I beg that you will draw your chair up to the fire and favour me with
+some details as to your case.”
+
+“It is no ordinary one.”
+
+“None of those which come to me are. I am the last court of appeal.”
+
+“And yet I question, sir, whether, in all your experience, you have
+ever listened to a more mysterious and inexplicable chain of events
+than those which have happened in my own family.”
+
+“You fill me with interest,” said Holmes. “Pray give us the essential
+facts from the commencement, and I can afterwards question you as to
+those details which seem to me to be most important.”
+
+The young man pulled his chair up and pushed his wet feet out towards
+the blaze.
+
+“My name,” said he, “is John Openshaw, but my own affairs have, as far
+as I can understand, little to do with this awful business. It is a
+hereditary matter; so in order to give you an idea of the facts, I must
+go back to the commencement of the affair.
+
+“You must know that my grandfather had two sons—my uncle Elias and my
+father Joseph. My father had a small factory at Coventry, which he
+enlarged at the time of the invention of bicycling. He was a patentee
+of the Openshaw unbreakable tire, and his business met with such
+success that he was able to sell it and to retire upon a handsome
+competence.
+
+“My uncle Elias emigrated to America when he was a young man and became
+a planter in Florida, where he was reported to have done very well. At
+the time of the war he fought in Jackson’s army, and afterwards under
+Hood, where he rose to be a colonel. When Lee laid down his arms my
+uncle returned to his plantation, where he remained for three or four
+years. About 1869 or 1870 he came back to Europe and took a small
+estate in Sussex, near Horsham. He had made a very considerable fortune
+in the States, and his reason for leaving them was his aversion to the
+negroes, and his dislike of the Republican policy in extending the
+franchise to them. He was a singular man, fierce and quick-tempered,
+very foul-mouthed when he was angry, and of a most retiring
+disposition. During all the years that he lived at Horsham, I doubt if
+ever he set foot in the town. He had a garden and two or three fields
+round his house, and there he would take his exercise, though very
+often for weeks on end he would never leave his room. He drank a great
+deal of brandy and smoked very heavily, but he would see no society and
+did not want any friends, not even his own brother.
+
+“He didn’t mind me; in fact, he took a fancy to me, for at the time
+when he saw me first I was a youngster of twelve or so. This would be
+in the year 1878, after he had been eight or nine years in England. He
+begged my father to let me live with him and he was very kind to me in
+his way. When he was sober he used to be fond of playing backgammon and
+draughts with me, and he would make me his representative both with the
+servants and with the tradespeople, so that by the time that I was
+sixteen I was quite master of the house. I kept all the keys and could
+go where I liked and do what I liked, so long as I did not disturb him
+in his privacy. There was one singular exception, however, for he had a
+single room, a lumber-room up among the attics, which was invariably
+locked, and which he would never permit either me or anyone else to
+enter. With a boy’s curiosity I have peeped through the keyhole, but I
+was never able to see more than such a collection of old trunks and
+bundles as would be expected in such a room.
+
+“One day—it was in March, 1883—a letter with a foreign stamp lay upon
+the table in front of the colonel’s plate. It was not a common thing
+for him to receive letters, for his bills were all paid in ready money,
+and he had no friends of any sort. ‘From India!’ said he as he took it
+up, ‘Pondicherry postmark! What can this be?’ Opening it hurriedly, out
+there jumped five little dried orange pips, which pattered down upon
+his plate. I began to laugh at this, but the laugh was struck from my
+lips at the sight of his face. His lip had fallen, his eyes were
+protruding, his skin the colour of putty, and he glared at the envelope
+which he still held in his trembling hand, ‘K. K. K.!’ he shrieked, and
+then, ‘My God, my God, my sins have overtaken me!’
+
+“‘What is it, uncle?’ I cried.
+
+“‘Death,’ said he, and rising from the table he retired to his room,
+leaving me palpitating with horror. I took up the envelope and saw
+scrawled in red ink upon the inner flap, just above the gum, the letter
+K three times repeated. There was nothing else save the five dried
+pips. What could be the reason of his overpowering terror? I left the
+breakfast-table, and as I ascended the stair I met him coming down with
+an old rusty key, which must have belonged to the attic, in one hand,
+and a small brass box, like a cashbox, in the other.
+
+“‘They may do what they like, but I’ll checkmate them still,’ said he
+with an oath. ‘Tell Mary that I shall want a fire in my room to-day,
+and send down to Fordham, the Horsham lawyer.’
+
+“I did as he ordered, and when the lawyer arrived I was asked to step
+up to the room. The fire was burning brightly, and in the grate there
+was a mass of black, fluffy ashes, as of burned paper, while the brass
+box stood open and empty beside it. As I glanced at the box I noticed,
+with a start, that upon the lid was printed the treble K which I had
+read in the morning upon the envelope.
+
+“‘I wish you, John,’ said my uncle, ‘to witness my will. I leave my
+estate, with all its advantages and all its disadvantages, to my
+brother, your father, whence it will, no doubt, descend to you. If you
+can enjoy it in peace, well and good! If you find you cannot, take my
+advice, my boy, and leave it to your deadliest enemy. I am sorry to
+give you such a two-edged thing, but I can’t say what turn things are
+going to take. Kindly sign the paper where Mr. Fordham shows you.’
+
+“I signed the paper as directed, and the lawyer took it away with him.
+The singular incident made, as you may think, the deepest impression
+upon me, and I pondered over it and turned it every way in my mind
+without being able to make anything of it. Yet I could not shake off
+the vague feeling of dread which it left behind, though the sensation
+grew less keen as the weeks passed and nothing happened to disturb the
+usual routine of our lives. I could see a change in my uncle, however.
+He drank more than ever, and he was less inclined for any sort of
+society. Most of his time he would spend in his room, with the door
+locked upon the inside, but sometimes he would emerge in a sort of
+drunken frenzy and would burst out of the house and tear about the
+garden with a revolver in his hand, screaming out that he was afraid of
+no man, and that he was not to be cooped up, like a sheep in a pen, by
+man or devil. When these hot fits were over, however, he would rush
+tumultuously in at the door and lock and bar it behind him, like a man
+who can brazen it out no longer against the terror which lies at the
+roots of his soul. At such times I have seen his face, even on a cold
+day, glisten with moisture, as though it were new raised from a basin.
+
+“Well, to come to an end of the matter, Mr. Holmes, and not to abuse
+your patience, there came a night when he made one of those drunken
+sallies from which he never came back. We found him, when we went to
+search for him, face downward in a little green-scummed pool, which lay
+at the foot of the garden. There was no sign of any violence, and the
+water was but two feet deep, so that the jury, having regard to his
+known eccentricity, brought in a verdict of ‘suicide.’ But I, who knew
+how he winced from the very thought of death, had much ado to persuade
+myself that he had gone out of his way to meet it. The matter passed,
+however, and my father entered into possession of the estate, and of
+some £ 14,000, which lay to his credit at the bank.”
+
+“One moment,” Holmes interposed, “your statement is, I foresee, one of
+the most remarkable to which I have ever listened. Let me have the date
+of the reception by your uncle of the letter, and the date of his
+supposed suicide.”
+
+“The letter arrived on March 10, 1883. His death was seven weeks later,
+upon the night of May 2nd.”
+
+“Thank you. Pray proceed.”
+
+“When my father took over the Horsham property, he, at my request, made
+a careful examination of the attic, which had been always locked up. We
+found the brass box there, although its contents had been destroyed. On
+the inside of the cover was a paper label, with the initials of K. K.
+K. repeated upon it, and ‘Letters, memoranda, receipts, and a register’
+written beneath. These, we presume, indicated the nature of the papers
+which had been destroyed by Colonel Openshaw. For the rest, there was
+nothing of much importance in the attic save a great many scattered
+papers and note-books bearing upon my uncle’s life in America. Some of
+them were of the war time and showed that he had done his duty well and
+had borne the repute of a brave soldier. Others were of a date during
+the reconstruction of the Southern states, and were mostly concerned
+with politics, for he had evidently taken a strong part in opposing the
+carpet-bag politicians who had been sent down from the North.
+
+“Well, it was the beginning of ’84 when my father came to live at
+Horsham, and all went as well as possible with us until the January of
+’85. On the fourth day after the new year I heard my father give a
+sharp cry of surprise as we sat together at the breakfast-table. There
+he was, sitting with a newly opened envelope in one hand and five dried
+orange pips in the outstretched palm of the other one. He had always
+laughed at what he called my cock-and-bull story about the colonel, but
+he looked very scared and puzzled now that the same thing had come upon
+himself.
+
+“‘Why, what on earth does this mean, John?’ he stammered.
+
+“My heart had turned to lead. ‘It is K. K. K.,’ said I.
+
+“He looked inside the envelope. ‘So it is,’ he cried. ‘Here are the
+very letters. But what is this written above them?’
+
+“‘Put the papers on the sundial,’ I read, peeping over his shoulder.
+
+“‘What papers? What sundial?’ he asked.
+
+“‘The sundial in the garden. There is no other,’ said I; ‘but the
+papers must be those that are destroyed.’
+
+“‘Pooh!’ said he, gripping hard at his courage. ‘We are in a civilised
+land here, and we can’t have tomfoolery of this kind. Where does the
+thing come from?’
+
+“‘From Dundee,’ I answered, glancing at the postmark.
+
+“‘Some preposterous practical joke,’ said he. ‘What have I to do with
+sundials and papers? I shall take no notice of such nonsense.’
+
+“‘I should certainly speak to the police,’ I said.
+
+“‘And be laughed at for my pains. Nothing of the sort.’
+
+“‘Then let me do so?’
+
+“‘No, I forbid you. I won’t have a fuss made about such nonsense.’
+
+“It was in vain to argue with him, for he was a very obstinate man. I
+went about, however, with a heart which was full of forebodings.
+
+“On the third day after the coming of the letter my father went from
+home to visit an old friend of his, Major Freebody, who is in command
+of one of the forts upon Portsdown Hill. I was glad that he should go,
+for it seemed to me that he was farther from danger when he was away
+from home. In that, however, I was in error. Upon the second day of his
+absence I received a telegram from the major, imploring me to come at
+once. My father had fallen over one of the deep chalk-pits which abound
+in the neighbourhood, and was lying senseless, with a shattered skull.
+I hurried to him, but he passed away without having ever recovered his
+consciousness. He had, as it appears, been returning from Fareham in
+the twilight, and as the country was unknown to him, and the chalk-pit
+unfenced, the jury had no hesitation in bringing in a verdict of ‘death
+from accidental causes.’ Carefully as I examined every fact connected
+with his death, I was unable to find anything which could suggest the
+idea of murder. There were no signs of violence, no footmarks, no
+robbery, no record of strangers having been seen upon the roads. And
+yet I need not tell you that my mind was far from at ease, and that I
+was well-nigh certain that some foul plot had been woven round him.
+
+“In this sinister way I came into my inheritance. You will ask me why I
+did not dispose of it? I answer, because I was well convinced that our
+troubles were in some way dependent upon an incident in my uncle’s
+life, and that the danger would be as pressing in one house as in
+another.
+
+“It was in January, ’85, that my poor father met his end, and two years
+and eight months have elapsed since then. During that time I have lived
+happily at Horsham, and I had begun to hope that this curse had passed
+away from the family, and that it had ended with the last generation. I
+had begun to take comfort too soon, however; yesterday morning the blow
+fell in the very shape in which it had come upon my father.”
+
+The young man took from his waistcoat a crumpled envelope, and turning
+to the table he shook out upon it five little dried orange pips.
+
+“This is the envelope,” he continued. “The postmark is London—eastern
+division. Within are the very words which were upon my father’s last
+message: ‘K. K. K.’; and then ‘Put the papers on the sundial.’”
+
+“What have you done?” asked Holmes.
+
+“Nothing.”
+
+“Nothing?”
+
+“To tell the truth”—he sank his face into his thin, white hands—“I have
+felt helpless. I have felt like one of those poor rabbits when the
+snake is writhing towards it. I seem to be in the grasp of some
+resistless, inexorable evil, which no foresight and no precautions can
+guard against.”
+
+“Tut! tut!” cried Sherlock Holmes. “You must act, man, or you are lost.
+Nothing but energy can save you. This is no time for despair.”
+
+“I have seen the police.”
+
+“Ah!”
+
+“But they listened to my story with a smile. I am convinced that the
+inspector has formed the opinion that the letters are all practical
+jokes, and that the deaths of my relations were really accidents, as
+the jury stated, and were not to be connected with the warnings.”
+
+Holmes shook his clenched hands in the air. “Incredible imbecility!” he
+cried.
+
+“They have, however, allowed me a policeman, who may remain in the
+house with me.”
+
+“Has he come with you to-night?”
+
+“No. His orders were to stay in the house.”
+
+Again Holmes raved in the air.
+
+“Why did you come to me?” he said, “and, above all, why did you not
+come at once?”
+
+“I did not know. It was only to-day that I spoke to Major Prendergast
+about my troubles and was advised by him to come to you.”
+
+“It is really two days since you had the letter. We should have acted
+before this. You have no further evidence, I suppose, than that which
+you have placed before us—no suggestive detail which might help us?”
+
+“There is one thing,” said John Openshaw. He rummaged in his coat
+pocket, and, drawing out a piece of discoloured, blue-tinted paper, he
+laid it out upon the table. “I have some remembrance,” said he, “that
+on the day when my uncle burned the papers I observed that the small,
+unburned margins which lay amid the ashes were of this particular
+colour. I found this single sheet upon the floor of his room, and I am
+inclined to think that it may be one of the papers which has, perhaps,
+fluttered out from among the others, and in that way has escaped
+destruction. Beyond the mention of pips, I do not see that it helps us
+much. I think myself that it is a page from some private diary. The
+writing is undoubtedly my uncle’s.”
+
+Holmes moved the lamp, and we both bent over the sheet of paper, which
+showed by its ragged edge that it had indeed been torn from a book. It
+was headed, “March, 1869,” and beneath were the following enigmatical
+notices:
+
+“4th. Hudson came. Same old platform.
+
+“7th. Set the pips on McCauley, Paramore, and John Swain of St.
+Augustine.
+
+“9th. McCauley cleared.
+
+“10th. John Swain cleared.
+
+“12th. Visited Paramore. All well.”
+
+“Thank you!” said Holmes, folding up the paper and returning it to our
+visitor. “And now you must on no account lose another instant. We
+cannot spare time even to discuss what you have told me. You must get
+home instantly and act.”
+
+“What shall I do?”
+
+“There is but one thing to do. It must be done at once. You must put
+this piece of paper which you have shown us into the brass box which
+you have described. You must also put in a note to say that all the
+other papers were burned by your uncle, and that this is the only one
+which remains. You must assert that in such words as will carry
+conviction with them. Having done this, you must at once put the box
+out upon the sundial, as directed. Do you understand?”
+
+“Entirely.”
+
+“Do not think of revenge, or anything of the sort, at present. I think
+that we may gain that by means of the law; but we have our web to
+weave, while theirs is already woven. The first consideration is to
+remove the pressing danger which threatens you. The second is to clear
+up the mystery and to punish the guilty parties.”
+
+“I thank you,” said the young man, rising and pulling on his overcoat.
+“You have given me fresh life and hope. I shall certainly do as you
+advise.”
+
+“Do not lose an instant. And, above all, take care of yourself in the
+meanwhile, for I do not think that there can be a doubt that you are
+threatened by a very real and imminent danger. How do you go back?”
+
+“By train from Waterloo.”
+
+“It is not yet nine. The streets will be crowded, so I trust that you
+may be in safety. And yet you cannot guard yourself too closely.”
+
+“I am armed.”
+
+“That is well. To-morrow I shall set to work upon your case.”
+
+“I shall see you at Horsham, then?”
+
+“No, your secret lies in London. It is there that I shall seek it.”
+
+“Then I shall call upon you in a day, or in two days, with news as to
+the box and the papers. I shall take your advice in every particular.”
+He shook hands with us and took his leave. Outside the wind still
+screamed and the rain splashed and pattered against the windows. This
+strange, wild story seemed to have come to us from amid the mad
+elements—blown in upon us like a sheet of sea-weed in a gale—and now to
+have been reabsorbed by them once more.
+
+Sherlock Holmes sat for some time in silence, with his head sunk
+forward and his eyes bent upon the red glow of the fire. Then he lit
+his pipe, and leaning back in his chair he watched the blue smoke-rings
+as they chased each other up to the ceiling.
+
+“I think, Watson,” he remarked at last, “that of all our cases we have
+had none more fantastic than this.”
+
+“Save, perhaps, the Sign of Four.”
+
+“Well, yes. Save, perhaps, that. And yet this John Openshaw seems to me
+to be walking amid even greater perils than did the Sholtos.”
+
+“But have you,” I asked, “formed any definite conception as to what
+these perils are?”
+
+“There can be no question as to their nature,” he answered.
+
+“Then what are they? Who is this K. K. K., and why does he pursue this
+unhappy family?”
+
+Sherlock Holmes closed his eyes and placed his elbows upon the arms of
+his chair, with his finger-tips together. “The ideal reasoner,” he
+remarked, “would, when he had once been shown a single fact in all its
+bearings, deduce from it not only all the chain of events which led up
+to it but also all the results which would follow from it. As Cuvier
+could correctly describe a whole animal by the contemplation of a
+single bone, so the observer who has thoroughly understood one link in
+a series of incidents should be able to accurately state all the other
+ones, both before and after. We have not yet grasped the results which
+the reason alone can attain to. Problems may be solved in the study
+which have baffled all those who have sought a solution by the aid of
+their senses. To carry the art, however, to its highest pitch, it is
+necessary that the reasoner should be able to utilise all the facts
+which have come to his knowledge; and this in itself implies, as you
+will readily see, a possession of all knowledge, which, even in these
+days of free education and encyclopædias, is a somewhat rare
+accomplishment. It is not so impossible, however, that a man should
+possess all knowledge which is likely to be useful to him in his work,
+and this I have endeavoured in my case to do. If I remember rightly,
+you on one occasion, in the early days of our friendship, defined my
+limits in a very precise fashion.”
+
+“Yes,” I answered, laughing. “It was a singular document. Philosophy,
+astronomy, and politics were marked at zero, I remember. Botany
+variable, geology profound as regards the mud-stains from any region
+within fifty miles of town, chemistry eccentric, anatomy unsystematic,
+sensational literature and crime records unique, violin-player, boxer,
+swordsman, lawyer, and self-poisoner by cocaine and tobacco. Those, I
+think, were the main points of my analysis.”
+
+Holmes grinned at the last item. “Well,” he said, “I say now, as I said
+then, that a man should keep his little brain-attic stocked with all
+the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in
+the lumber-room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.
+Now, for such a case as the one which has been submitted to us
+to-night, we need certainly to muster all our resources. Kindly hand me
+down the letter K of the _American Encyclopædia_ which stands upon the
+shelf beside you. Thank you. Now let us consider the situation and see
+what may be deduced from it. In the first place, we may start with a
+strong presumption that Colonel Openshaw had some very strong reason
+for leaving America. Men at his time of life do not change all their
+habits and exchange willingly the charming climate of Florida for the
+lonely life of an English provincial town. His extreme love of solitude
+in England suggests the idea that he was in fear of someone or
+something, so we may assume as a working hypothesis that it was fear of
+someone or something which drove him from America. As to what it was he
+feared, we can only deduce that by considering the formidable letters
+which were received by himself and his successors. Did you remark the
+postmarks of those letters?”
+
+“The first was from Pondicherry, the second from Dundee, and the third
+from London.”
+
+“From East London. What do you deduce from that?”
+
+“They are all seaports. That the writer was on board of a ship.”
+
+“Excellent. We have already a clue. There can be no doubt that the
+probability—the strong probability—is that the writer was on board of a
+ship. And now let us consider another point. In the case of
+Pondicherry, seven weeks elapsed between the threat and its fulfilment,
+in Dundee it was only some three or four days. Does that suggest
+anything?”
+
+“A greater distance to travel.”
+
+“But the letter had also a greater distance to come.”
+
+“Then I do not see the point.”
+
+“There is at least a presumption that the vessel in which the man or
+men are is a sailing-ship. It looks as if they always send their
+singular warning or token before them when starting upon their mission.
+You see how quickly the deed followed the sign when it came from
+Dundee. If they had come from Pondicherry in a steamer they would have
+arrived almost as soon as their letter. But, as a matter of fact, seven
+weeks elapsed. I think that those seven weeks represented the
+difference between the mail-boat which brought the letter and the
+sailing vessel which brought the writer.”
+
+“It is possible.”
+
+“More than that. It is probable. And now you see the deadly urgency of
+this new case, and why I urged young Openshaw to caution. The blow has
+always fallen at the end of the time which it would take the senders to
+travel the distance. But this one comes from London, and therefore we
+cannot count upon delay.”
+
+“Good God!” I cried. “What can it mean, this relentless persecution?”
+
+“The papers which Openshaw carried are obviously of vital importance to
+the person or persons in the sailing-ship. I think that it is quite
+clear that there must be more than one of them. A single man could not
+have carried out two deaths in such a way as to deceive a coroner’s
+jury. There must have been several in it, and they must have been men
+of resource and determination. Their papers they mean to have, be the
+holder of them who it may. In this way you see K. K. K. ceases to be
+the initials of an individual and becomes the badge of a society.”
+
+“But of what society?”
+
+“Have you never—” said Sherlock Holmes, bending forward and sinking his
+voice—“have you never heard of the Ku Klux Klan?”
+
+“I never have.”
+
+Holmes turned over the leaves of the book upon his knee. “Here it is,”
+said he presently:
+
+“‘Ku Klux Klan. A name derived from the fanciful resemblance to the
+sound produced by cocking a rifle. This terrible secret society was
+formed by some ex-Confederate soldiers in the Southern states after the
+Civil War, and it rapidly formed local branches in different parts of
+the country, notably in Tennessee, Louisiana, the Carolinas, Georgia,
+and Florida. Its power was used for political purposes, principally for
+the terrorising of the negro voters and the murdering and driving from
+the country of those who were opposed to its views. Its outrages were
+usually preceded by a warning sent to the marked man in some fantastic
+but generally recognised shape—a sprig of oak-leaves in some parts,
+melon seeds or orange pips in others. On receiving this the victim
+might either openly abjure his former ways, or might fly from the
+country. If he braved the matter out, death would unfailingly come upon
+him, and usually in some strange and unforeseen manner. So perfect was
+the organisation of the society, and so systematic its methods, that
+there is hardly a case upon record where any man succeeded in braving
+it with impunity, or in which any of its outrages were traced home to
+the perpetrators. For some years the organisation flourished in spite
+of the efforts of the United States government and of the better
+classes of the community in the South. Eventually, in the year 1869,
+the movement rather suddenly collapsed, although there have been
+sporadic outbreaks of the same sort since that date.’
+
+“You will observe,” said Holmes, laying down the volume, “that the
+sudden breaking up of the society was coincident with the disappearance
+of Openshaw from America with their papers. It may well have been cause
+and effect. It is no wonder that he and his family have some of the
+more implacable spirits upon their track. You can understand that this
+register and diary may implicate some of the first men in the South,
+and that there may be many who will not sleep easy at night until it is
+recovered.”
+
+“Then the page we have seen—”
+
+“Is such as we might expect. It ran, if I remember right, ‘sent the
+pips to A, B, and C’—that is, sent the society’s warning to them. Then
+there are successive entries that A and B cleared, or left the country,
+and finally that C was visited, with, I fear, a sinister result for C.
+Well, I think, Doctor, that we may let some light into this dark place,
+and I believe that the only chance young Openshaw has in the meantime
+is to do what I have told him. There is nothing more to be said or to
+be done to-night, so hand me over my violin and let us try to forget
+for half an hour the miserable weather and the still more miserable
+ways of our fellow men.”
+
+It had cleared in the morning, and the sun was shining with a subdued
+brightness through the dim veil which hangs over the great city.
+Sherlock Holmes was already at breakfast when I came down.
+
+“You will excuse me for not waiting for you,” said he; “I have, I
+foresee, a very busy day before me in looking into this case of young
+Openshaw’s.”
+
+“What steps will you take?” I asked.
+
+“It will very much depend upon the results of my first inquiries. I may
+have to go down to Horsham, after all.”
+
+“You will not go there first?”
+
+“No, I shall commence with the City. Just ring the bell and the maid
+will bring up your coffee.”
+
+As I waited, I lifted the unopened newspaper from the table and glanced
+my eye over it. It rested upon a heading which sent a chill to my
+heart.
+
+“Holmes,” I cried, “you are too late.”
+
+“Ah!” said he, laying down his cup, “I feared as much. How was it
+done?” He spoke calmly, but I could see that he was deeply moved.
+
+“My eye caught the name of Openshaw, and the heading ‘Tragedy Near
+Waterloo Bridge.’ Here is the account:
+
+“‘Between nine and ten last night Police-Constable Cook, of the H
+Division, on duty near Waterloo Bridge, heard a cry for help and a
+splash in the water. The night, however, was extremely dark and stormy,
+so that, in spite of the help of several passers-by, it was quite
+impossible to effect a rescue. The alarm, however, was given, and, by
+the aid of the water-police, the body was eventually recovered. It
+proved to be that of a young gentleman whose name, as it appears from
+an envelope which was found in his pocket, was John Openshaw, and whose
+residence is near Horsham. It is conjectured that he may have been
+hurrying down to catch the last train from Waterloo Station, and that
+in his haste and the extreme darkness he missed his path and walked
+over the edge of one of the small landing-places for river steamboats.
+The body exhibited no traces of violence, and there can be no doubt
+that the deceased had been the victim of an unfortunate accident, which
+should have the effect of calling the attention of the authorities to
+the condition of the riverside landing-stages.’”
+
+We sat in silence for some minutes, Holmes more depressed and shaken
+than I had ever seen him.
+
+“That hurts my pride, Watson,” he said at last. “It is a petty feeling,
+no doubt, but it hurts my pride. It becomes a personal matter with me
+now, and, if God sends me health, I shall set my hand upon this gang.
+That he should come to me for help, and that I should send him away to
+his death—!” He sprang from his chair and paced about the room in
+uncontrollable agitation, with a flush upon his sallow cheeks and a
+nervous clasping and unclasping of his long thin hands.
+
+“They must be cunning devils,” he exclaimed at last. “How could they
+have decoyed him down there? The Embankment is not on the direct line
+to the station. The bridge, no doubt, was too crowded, even on such a
+night, for their purpose. Well, Watson, we shall see who will win in
+the long run. I am going out now!”
+
+“To the police?”
+
+“No; I shall be my own police. When I have spun the web they may take
+the flies, but not before.”
+
+All day I was engaged in my professional work, and it was late in the
+evening before I returned to Baker Street. Sherlock Holmes had not come
+back yet. It was nearly ten o’clock before he entered, looking pale and
+worn. He walked up to the sideboard, and tearing a piece from the loaf
+he devoured it voraciously, washing it down with a long draught of
+water.
+
+“You are hungry,” I remarked.
+
+“Starving. It had escaped my memory. I have had nothing since
+breakfast.”
+
+“Nothing?”
+
+“Not a bite. I had no time to think of it.”
+
+“And how have you succeeded?”
+
+“Well.”
+
+“You have a clue?”
+
+“I have them in the hollow of my hand. Young Openshaw shall not long
+remain unavenged. Why, Watson, let us put their own devilish trade-mark
+upon them. It is well thought of!”
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+He took an orange from the cupboard, and tearing it to pieces he
+squeezed out the pips upon the table. Of these he took five and thrust
+them into an envelope. On the inside of the flap he wrote “S. H. for J.
+O.” Then he sealed it and addressed it to “Captain James Calhoun,
+Barque _Lone Star_, Savannah, Georgia.”
+
+“That will await him when he enters port,” said he, chuckling. “It may
+give him a sleepless night. He will find it as sure a precursor of his
+fate as Openshaw did before him.”
+
+“And who is this Captain Calhoun?”
+
+“The leader of the gang. I shall have the others, but he first.”
+
+“How did you trace it, then?”
+
+He took a large sheet of paper from his pocket, all covered with dates
+and names.
+
+“I have spent the whole day,” said he, “over Lloyd’s registers and
+files of the old papers, following the future career of every vessel
+which touched at Pondicherry in January and February in ’83. There were
+thirty-six ships of fair tonnage which were reported there during those
+months. Of these, one, the _Lone Star_, instantly attracted my
+attention, since, although it was reported as having cleared from
+London, the name is that which is given to one of the states of the
+Union.”
+
+“Texas, I think.”
+
+“I was not and am not sure which; but I knew that the ship must have an
+American origin.”
+
+“What then?”
+
+“I searched the Dundee records, and when I found that the barque _Lone
+Star_ was there in January, ’85, my suspicion became a certainty. I
+then inquired as to the vessels which lay at present in the port of
+London.”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“The _Lone Star_ had arrived here last week. I went down to the Albert
+Dock and found that she had been taken down the river by the early tide
+this morning, homeward bound to Savannah. I wired to Gravesend and
+learned that she had passed some time ago, and as the wind is easterly
+I have no doubt that she is now past the Goodwins and not very far from
+the Isle of Wight.”
+
+“What will you do, then?”
+
+“Oh, I have my hand upon him. He and the two mates, are as I learn, the
+only native-born Americans in the ship. The others are Finns and
+Germans. I know, also, that they were all three away from the ship last
+night. I had it from the stevedore who has been loading their cargo. By
+the time that their sailing-ship reaches Savannah the mail-boat will
+have carried this letter, and the cable will have informed the police
+of Savannah that these three gentlemen are badly wanted here upon a
+charge of murder.”
+
+There is ever a flaw, however, in the best laid of human plans, and the
+murderers of John Openshaw were never to receive the orange pips which
+would show them that another, as cunning and as resolute as themselves,
+was upon their track. Very long and very severe were the equinoctial
+gales that year. We waited long for news of the _Lone Star_ of
+Savannah, but none ever reached us. We did at last hear that somewhere
+far out in the Atlantic a shattered stern-post of a boat was seen
+swinging in the trough of a wave, with the letters “L. S.” carved upon
+it, and that is all which we shall ever know of the fate of the _Lone
+Star_.
+
+
+
+VI. THE MAN WITH THE TWISTED LIP
+
+Isa Whitney, brother of the late Elias Whitney, D.D., Principal of the
+Theological College of St. George’s, was much addicted to opium. The
+habit grew upon him, as I understand, from some foolish freak when he
+was at college; for having read De Quincey’s description of his dreams
+and sensations, he had drenched his tobacco with laudanum in an attempt
+to produce the same effects. He found, as so many more have done, that
+the practice is easier to attain than to get rid of, and for many years
+he continued to be a slave to the drug, an object of mingled horror and
+pity to his friends and relatives. I can see him now, with yellow,
+pasty face, drooping lids, and pin-point pupils, all huddled in a
+chair, the wreck and ruin of a noble man.
+
+One night—it was in June, ’89—there came a ring to my bell, about the
+hour when a man gives his first yawn and glances at the clock. I sat up
+in my chair, and my wife laid her needle-work down in her lap and made
+a little face of disappointment.
+
+“A patient!” said she. “You’ll have to go out.”
+
+I groaned, for I was newly come back from a weary day.
+
+We heard the door open, a few hurried words, and then quick steps upon
+the linoleum. Our own door flew open, and a lady, clad in some
+dark-coloured stuff, with a black veil, entered the room.
+
+“You will excuse my calling so late,” she began, and then, suddenly
+losing her self-control, she ran forward, threw her arms about my
+wife’s neck, and sobbed upon her shoulder. “Oh, I’m in such trouble!”
+she cried; “I do so want a little help.”
+
+“Why,” said my wife, pulling up her veil, “it is Kate Whitney. How you
+startled me, Kate! I had not an idea who you were when you came in.”
+
+“I didn’t know what to do, so I came straight to you.” That was always
+the way. Folk who were in grief came to my wife like birds to a
+lighthouse.
+
+“It was very sweet of you to come. Now, you must have some wine and
+water, and sit here comfortably and tell us all about it. Or should you
+rather that I sent James off to bed?”
+
+“Oh, no, no! I want the doctor’s advice and help, too. It’s about Isa.
+He has not been home for two days. I am so frightened about him!”
+
+It was not the first time that she had spoken to us of her husband’s
+trouble, to me as a doctor, to my wife as an old friend and school
+companion. We soothed and comforted her by such words as we could find.
+Did she know where her husband was? Was it possible that we could bring
+him back to her?
+
+It seems that it was. She had the surest information that of late he
+had, when the fit was on him, made use of an opium den in the farthest
+east of the City. Hitherto his orgies had always been confined to one
+day, and he had come back, twitching and shattered, in the evening. But
+now the spell had been upon him eight-and-forty hours, and he lay
+there, doubtless among the dregs of the docks, breathing in the poison
+or sleeping off the effects. There he was to be found, she was sure of
+it, at the Bar of Gold, in Upper Swandam Lane. But what was she to do?
+How could she, a young and timid woman, make her way into such a place
+and pluck her husband out from among the ruffians who surrounded him?
+
+There was the case, and of course there was but one way out of it.
+Might I not escort her to this place? And then, as a second thought,
+why should she come at all? I was Isa Whitney’s medical adviser, and as
+such I had influence over him. I could manage it better if I were
+alone. I promised her on my word that I would send him home in a cab
+within two hours if he were indeed at the address which she had given
+me. And so in ten minutes I had left my armchair and cheery
+sitting-room behind me, and was speeding eastward in a hansom on a
+strange errand, as it seemed to me at the time, though the future only
+could show how strange it was to be.
+
+But there was no great difficulty in the first stage of my adventure.
+Upper Swandam Lane is a vile alley lurking behind the high wharves
+which line the north side of the river to the east of London Bridge.
+Between a slop-shop and a gin-shop, approached by a steep flight of
+steps leading down to a black gap like the mouth of a cave, I found the
+den of which I was in search. Ordering my cab to wait, I passed down
+the steps, worn hollow in the centre by the ceaseless tread of drunken
+feet; and by the light of a flickering oil-lamp above the door I found
+the latch and made my way into a long, low room, thick and heavy with
+the brown opium smoke, and terraced with wooden berths, like the
+forecastle of an emigrant ship.
+
+Through the gloom one could dimly catch a glimpse of bodies lying in
+strange fantastic poses, bowed shoulders, bent knees, heads thrown
+back, and chins pointing upward, with here and there a dark,
+lack-lustre eye turned upon the newcomer. Out of the black shadows
+there glimmered little red circles of light, now bright, now faint, as
+the burning poison waxed or waned in the bowls of the metal pipes. The
+most lay silent, but some muttered to themselves, and others talked
+together in a strange, low, monotonous voice, their conversation coming
+in gushes, and then suddenly tailing off into silence, each mumbling
+out his own thoughts and paying little heed to the words of his
+neighbour. At the farther end was a small brazier of burning charcoal,
+beside which on a three-legged wooden stool there sat a tall, thin old
+man, with his jaw resting upon his two fists, and his elbows upon his
+knees, staring into the fire.
+
+As I entered, a sallow Malay attendant had hurried up with a pipe for
+me and a supply of the drug, beckoning me to an empty berth.
+
+“Thank you. I have not come to stay,” said I. “There is a friend of
+mine here, Mr. Isa Whitney, and I wish to speak with him.”
+
+There was a movement and an exclamation from my right, and peering
+through the gloom, I saw Whitney, pale, haggard, and unkempt, staring
+out at me.
+
+“My God! It’s Watson,” said he. He was in a pitiable state of reaction,
+with every nerve in a twitter. “I say, Watson, what o’clock is it?”
+
+“Nearly eleven.”
+
+“Of what day?”
+
+“Of Friday, June 19th.”
+
+“Good heavens! I thought it was Wednesday. It is Wednesday. What d’you
+want to frighten a chap for?” He sank his face onto his arms and began
+to sob in a high treble key.
+
+“I tell you that it is Friday, man. Your wife has been waiting this two
+days for you. You should be ashamed of yourself!”
+
+“So I am. But you’ve got mixed, Watson, for I have only been here a few
+hours, three pipes, four pipes—I forget how many. But I’ll go home with
+you. I wouldn’t frighten Kate—poor little Kate. Give me your hand! Have
+you a cab?”
+
+“Yes, I have one waiting.”
+
+“Then I shall go in it. But I must owe something. Find what I owe,
+Watson. I am all off colour. I can do nothing for myself.”
+
+I walked down the narrow passage between the double row of sleepers,
+holding my breath to keep out the vile, stupefying fumes of the drug,
+and looking about for the manager. As I passed the tall man who sat by
+the brazier I felt a sudden pluck at my skirt, and a low voice
+whispered, “Walk past me, and then look back at me.” The words fell
+quite distinctly upon my ear. I glanced down. They could only have come
+from the old man at my side, and yet he sat now as absorbed as ever,
+very thin, very wrinkled, bent with age, an opium pipe dangling down
+from between his knees, as though it had dropped in sheer lassitude
+from his fingers. I took two steps forward and looked back. It took all
+my self-control to prevent me from breaking out into a cry of
+astonishment. He had turned his back so that none could see him but I.
+His form had filled out, his wrinkles were gone, the dull eyes had
+regained their fire, and there, sitting by the fire and grinning at my
+surprise, was none other than Sherlock Holmes. He made a slight motion
+to me to approach him, and instantly, as he turned his face half round
+to the company once more, subsided into a doddering, loose-lipped
+senility.
+
+“Holmes!” I whispered, “what on earth are you doing in this den?”
+
+“As low as you can,” he answered; “I have excellent ears. If you would
+have the great kindness to get rid of that sottish friend of yours I
+should be exceedingly glad to have a little talk with you.”
+
+“I have a cab outside.”
+
+“Then pray send him home in it. You may safely trust him, for he
+appears to be too limp to get into any mischief. I should recommend you
+also to send a note by the cabman to your wife to say that you have
+thrown in your lot with me. If you will wait outside, I shall be with
+you in five minutes.”
+
+It was difficult to refuse any of Sherlock Holmes’ requests, for they
+were always so exceedingly definite, and put forward with such a quiet
+air of mastery. I felt, however, that when Whitney was once confined in
+the cab my mission was practically accomplished; and for the rest, I
+could not wish anything better than to be associated with my friend in
+one of those singular adventures which were the normal condition of his
+existence. In a few minutes I had written my note, paid Whitney’s bill,
+led him out to the cab, and seen him driven through the darkness. In a
+very short time a decrepit figure had emerged from the opium den, and I
+was walking down the street with Sherlock Holmes. For two streets he
+shuffled along with a bent back and an uncertain foot. Then, glancing
+quickly round, he straightened himself out and burst into a hearty fit
+of laughter.
+
+“I suppose, Watson,” said he, “that you imagine that I have added
+opium-smoking to cocaine injections, and all the other little
+weaknesses on which you have favoured me with your medical views.”
+
+“I was certainly surprised to find you there.”
+
+“But not more so than I to find you.”
+
+“I came to find a friend.”
+
+“And I to find an enemy.”
+
+“An enemy?”
+
+“Yes; one of my natural enemies, or, shall I say, my natural prey.
+Briefly, Watson, I am in the midst of a very remarkable inquiry, and I
+have hoped to find a clue in the incoherent ramblings of these sots, as
+I have done before now. Had I been recognised in that den my life would
+not have been worth an hour’s purchase; for I have used it before now
+for my own purposes, and the rascally Lascar who runs it has sworn to
+have vengeance upon me. There is a trap-door at the back of that
+building, near the corner of Paul’s Wharf, which could tell some
+strange tales of what has passed through it upon the moonless nights.”
+
+“What! You do not mean bodies?”
+
+“Ay, bodies, Watson. We should be rich men if we had £ 1000 for every
+poor devil who has been done to death in that den. It is the vilest
+murder-trap on the whole riverside, and I fear that Neville St. Clair
+has entered it never to leave it more. But our trap should be here.” He
+put his two forefingers between his teeth and whistled shrilly—a signal
+which was answered by a similar whistle from the distance, followed
+shortly by the rattle of wheels and the clink of horses’ hoofs.
+
+“Now, Watson,” said Holmes, as a tall dog-cart dashed up through the
+gloom, throwing out two golden tunnels of yellow light from its side
+lanterns. “You’ll come with me, won’t you?”
+
+“If I can be of use.”
+
+“Oh, a trusty comrade is always of use; and a chronicler still more so.
+My room at The Cedars is a double-bedded one.”
+
+“The Cedars?”
+
+“Yes; that is Mr. St. Clair’s house. I am staying there while I conduct
+the inquiry.”
+
+“Where is it, then?”
+
+“Near Lee, in Kent. We have a seven-mile drive before us.”
+
+“But I am all in the dark.”
+
+“Of course you are. You’ll know all about it presently. Jump up here.
+All right, John; we shall not need you. Here’s half a crown. Look out
+for me to-morrow, about eleven. Give her her head. So long, then!”
+
+He flicked the horse with his whip, and we dashed away through the
+endless succession of sombre and deserted streets, which widened
+gradually, until we were flying across a broad balustraded bridge, with
+the murky river flowing sluggishly beneath us. Beyond lay another dull
+wilderness of bricks and mortar, its silence broken only by the heavy,
+regular footfall of the policeman, or the songs and shouts of some
+belated party of revellers. A dull wrack was drifting slowly across the
+sky, and a star or two twinkled dimly here and there through the rifts
+of the clouds. Holmes drove in silence, with his head sunk upon his
+breast, and the air of a man who is lost in thought, while I sat beside
+him, curious to learn what this new quest might be which seemed to tax
+his powers so sorely, and yet afraid to break in upon the current of
+his thoughts. We had driven several miles, and were beginning to get to
+the fringe of the belt of suburban villas, when he shook himself,
+shrugged his shoulders, and lit up his pipe with the air of a man who
+has satisfied himself that he is acting for the best.
+
+“You have a grand gift of silence, Watson,” said he. “It makes you
+quite invaluable as a companion. ’Pon my word, it is a great thing for
+me to have someone to talk to, for my own thoughts are not
+over-pleasant. I was wondering what I should say to this dear little
+woman to-night when she meets me at the door.”
+
+“You forget that I know nothing about it.”
+
+“I shall just have time to tell you the facts of the case before we get
+to Lee. It seems absurdly simple, and yet, somehow I can get nothing to
+go upon. There’s plenty of thread, no doubt, but I can’t get the end of
+it into my hand. Now, I’ll state the case clearly and concisely to you,
+Watson, and maybe you can see a spark where all is dark to me.”
+
+“Proceed, then.”
+
+“Some years ago—to be definite, in May, 1884—there came to Lee a
+gentleman, Neville St. Clair by name, who appeared to have plenty of
+money. He took a large villa, laid out the grounds very nicely, and
+lived generally in good style. By degrees he made friends in the
+neighbourhood, and in 1887 he married the daughter of a local brewer,
+by whom he now has two children. He had no occupation, but was
+interested in several companies and went into town as a rule in the
+morning, returning by the 5:14 from Cannon Street every night. Mr. St.
+Clair is now thirty-seven years of age, is a man of temperate habits, a
+good husband, a very affectionate father, and a man who is popular with
+all who know him. I may add that his whole debts at the present moment,
+as far as we have been able to ascertain, amount to £ 88 10_s_., while
+he has £ 220 standing to his credit in the Capital and Counties Bank.
+There is no reason, therefore, to think that money troubles have been
+weighing upon his mind.
+
+“Last Monday Mr. Neville St. Clair went into town rather earlier than
+usual, remarking before he started that he had two important
+commissions to perform, and that he would bring his little boy home a
+box of bricks. Now, by the merest chance, his wife received a telegram
+upon this same Monday, very shortly after his departure, to the effect
+that a small parcel of considerable value which she had been expecting
+was waiting for her at the offices of the Aberdeen Shipping Company.
+Now, if you are well up in your London, you will know that the office
+of the company is in Fresno Street, which branches out of Upper Swandam
+Lane, where you found me to-night. Mrs. St. Clair had her lunch,
+started for the City, did some shopping, proceeded to the company’s
+office, got her packet, and found herself at exactly 4:35 walking
+through Swandam Lane on her way back to the station. Have you followed
+me so far?”
+
+“It is very clear.”
+
+“If you remember, Monday was an exceedingly hot day, and Mrs. St. Clair
+walked slowly, glancing about in the hope of seeing a cab, as she did
+not like the neighbourhood in which she found herself. While she was
+walking in this way down Swandam Lane, she suddenly heard an
+ejaculation or cry, and was struck cold to see her husband looking down
+at her and, as it seemed to her, beckoning to her from a second-floor
+window. The window was open, and she distinctly saw his face, which she
+describes as being terribly agitated. He waved his hands frantically to
+her, and then vanished from the window so suddenly that it seemed to
+her that he had been plucked back by some irresistible force from
+behind. One singular point which struck her quick feminine eye was that
+although he wore some dark coat, such as he had started to town in, he
+had on neither collar nor necktie.
+
+“Convinced that something was amiss with him, she rushed down the
+steps—for the house was none other than the opium den in which you
+found me to-night—and running through the front room she attempted to
+ascend the stairs which led to the first floor. At the foot of the
+stairs, however, she met this Lascar scoundrel of whom I have spoken,
+who thrust her back and, aided by a Dane, who acts as assistant there,
+pushed her out into the street. Filled with the most maddening doubts
+and fears, she rushed down the lane and, by rare good-fortune, met in
+Fresno Street a number of constables with an inspector, all on their
+way to their beat. The inspector and two men accompanied her back, and
+in spite of the continued resistance of the proprietor, they made their
+way to the room in which Mr. St. Clair had last been seen. There was no
+sign of him there. In fact, in the whole of that floor there was no one
+to be found save a crippled wretch of hideous aspect, who, it seems,
+made his home there. Both he and the Lascar stoutly swore that no one
+else had been in the front room during the afternoon. So determined was
+their denial that the inspector was staggered, and had almost come to
+believe that Mrs. St. Clair had been deluded when, with a cry, she
+sprang at a small deal box which lay upon the table and tore the lid
+from it. Out there fell a cascade of children’s bricks. It was the toy
+which he had promised to bring home.
+
+“This discovery, and the evident confusion which the cripple showed,
+made the inspector realise that the matter was serious. The rooms were
+carefully examined, and results all pointed to an abominable crime. The
+front room was plainly furnished as a sitting-room and led into a small
+bedroom, which looked out upon the back of one of the wharves. Between
+the wharf and the bedroom window is a narrow strip, which is dry at low
+tide but is covered at high tide with at least four and a half feet of
+water. The bedroom window was a broad one and opened from below. On
+examination traces of blood were to be seen upon the windowsill, and
+several scattered drops were visible upon the wooden floor of the
+bedroom. Thrust away behind a curtain in the front room were all the
+clothes of Mr. Neville St. Clair, with the exception of his coat. His
+boots, his socks, his hat, and his watch—all were there. There were no
+signs of violence upon any of these garments, and there were no other
+traces of Mr. Neville St. Clair. Out of the window he must apparently
+have gone for no other exit could be discovered, and the ominous
+bloodstains upon the sill gave little promise that he could save
+himself by swimming, for the tide was at its very highest at the moment
+of the tragedy.
+
+“And now as to the villains who seemed to be immediately implicated in
+the matter. The Lascar was known to be a man of the vilest antecedents,
+but as, by Mrs. St. Clair’s story, he was known to have been at the
+foot of the stair within a very few seconds of her husband’s appearance
+at the window, he could hardly have been more than an accessory to the
+crime. His defence was one of absolute ignorance, and he protested that
+he had no knowledge as to the doings of Hugh Boone, his lodger, and
+that he could not account in any way for the presence of the missing
+gentleman’s clothes.
+
+“So much for the Lascar manager. Now for the sinister cripple who lives
+upon the second floor of the opium den, and who was certainly the last
+human being whose eyes rested upon Neville St. Clair. His name is Hugh
+Boone, and his hideous face is one which is familiar to every man who
+goes much to the City. He is a professional beggar, though in order to
+avoid the police regulations he pretends to a small trade in wax
+vestas. Some little distance down Threadneedle Street, upon the
+left-hand side, there is, as you may have remarked, a small angle in
+the wall. Here it is that this creature takes his daily seat,
+cross-legged with his tiny stock of matches on his lap, and as he is a
+piteous spectacle a small rain of charity descends into the greasy
+leather cap which lies upon the pavement beside him. I have watched the
+fellow more than once before ever I thought of making his professional
+acquaintance, and I have been surprised at the harvest which he has
+reaped in a short time. His appearance, you see, is so remarkable that
+no one can pass him without observing him. A shock of orange hair, a
+pale face disfigured by a horrible scar, which, by its contraction, has
+turned up the outer edge of his upper lip, a bulldog chin, and a pair
+of very penetrating dark eyes, which present a singular contrast to the
+colour of his hair, all mark him out from amid the common crowd of
+mendicants and so, too, does his wit, for he is ever ready with a reply
+to any piece of chaff which may be thrown at him by the passers-by.
+This is the man whom we now learn to have been the lodger at the opium
+den, and to have been the last man to see the gentleman of whom we are
+in quest.”
+
+“But a cripple!” said I. “What could he have done single-handed against
+a man in the prime of life?”
+
+“He is a cripple in the sense that he walks with a limp; but in other
+respects he appears to be a powerful and well-nurtured man. Surely your
+medical experience would tell you, Watson, that weakness in one limb is
+often compensated for by exceptional strength in the others.”
+
+“Pray continue your narrative.”
+
+“Mrs. St. Clair had fainted at the sight of the blood upon the window,
+and she was escorted home in a cab by the police, as her presence could
+be of no help to them in their investigations. Inspector Barton, who
+had charge of the case, made a very careful examination of the
+premises, but without finding anything which threw any light upon the
+matter. One mistake had been made in not arresting Boone instantly, as
+he was allowed some few minutes during which he might have communicated
+with his friend the Lascar, but this fault was soon remedied, and he
+was seized and searched, without anything being found which could
+incriminate him. There were, it is true, some blood-stains upon his
+right shirt-sleeve, but he pointed to his ring-finger, which had been
+cut near the nail, and explained that the bleeding came from there,
+adding that he had been to the window not long before, and that the
+stains which had been observed there came doubtless from the same
+source. He denied strenuously having ever seen Mr. Neville St. Clair
+and swore that the presence of the clothes in his room was as much a
+mystery to him as to the police. As to Mrs. St. Clair’s assertion that
+she had actually seen her husband at the window, he declared that she
+must have been either mad or dreaming. He was removed, loudly
+protesting, to the police-station, while the inspector remained upon
+the premises in the hope that the ebbing tide might afford some fresh
+clue.
+
+“And it did, though they hardly found upon the mud-bank what they had
+feared to find. It was Neville St. Clair’s coat, and not Neville St.
+Clair, which lay uncovered as the tide receded. And what do you think
+they found in the pockets?”
+
+“I cannot imagine.”
+
+“No, I don’t think you would guess. Every pocket stuffed with pennies
+and half-pennies—421 pennies and 270 half-pennies. It was no wonder
+that it had not been swept away by the tide. But a human body is a
+different matter. There is a fierce eddy between the wharf and the
+house. It seemed likely enough that the weighted coat had remained when
+the stripped body had been sucked away into the river.”
+
+“But I understand that all the other clothes were found in the room.
+Would the body be dressed in a coat alone?”
+
+“No, sir, but the facts might be met speciously enough. Suppose that
+this man Boone had thrust Neville St. Clair through the window, there
+is no human eye which could have seen the deed. What would he do then?
+It would of course instantly strike him that he must get rid of the
+tell-tale garments. He would seize the coat, then, and be in the act of
+throwing it out, when it would occur to him that it would swim and not
+sink. He has little time, for he has heard the scuffle downstairs when
+the wife tried to force her way up, and perhaps he has already heard
+from his Lascar confederate that the police are hurrying up the street.
+There is not an instant to be lost. He rushes to some secret hoard,
+where he has accumulated the fruits of his beggary, and he stuffs all
+the coins upon which he can lay his hands into the pockets to make sure
+of the coat’s sinking. He throws it out, and would have done the same
+with the other garments had not he heard the rush of steps below, and
+only just had time to close the window when the police appeared.”
+
+“It certainly sounds feasible.”
+
+“Well, we will take it as a working hypothesis for want of a better.
+Boone, as I have told you, was arrested and taken to the station, but
+it could not be shown that there had ever before been anything against
+him. He had for years been known as a professional beggar, but his life
+appeared to have been a very quiet and innocent one. There the matter
+stands at present, and the questions which have to be solved—what
+Neville St. Clair was doing in the opium den, what happened to him when
+there, where is he now, and what Hugh Boone had to do with his
+disappearance—are all as far from a solution as ever. I confess that I
+cannot recall any case within my experience which looked at the first
+glance so simple and yet which presented such difficulties.”
+
+While Sherlock Holmes had been detailing this singular series of
+events, we had been whirling through the outskirts of the great town
+until the last straggling houses had been left behind, and we rattled
+along with a country hedge upon either side of us. Just as he finished,
+however, we drove through two scattered villages, where a few lights
+still glimmered in the windows.
+
+“We are on the outskirts of Lee,” said my companion. “We have touched
+on three English counties in our short drive, starting in Middlesex,
+passing over an angle of Surrey, and ending in Kent. See that light
+among the trees? That is The Cedars, and beside that lamp sits a woman
+whose anxious ears have already, I have little doubt, caught the clink
+of our horse’s feet.”
+
+“But why are you not conducting the case from Baker Street?” I asked.
+
+“Because there are many inquiries which must be made out here. Mrs. St.
+Clair has most kindly put two rooms at my disposal, and you may rest
+assured that she will have nothing but a welcome for my friend and
+colleague. I hate to meet her, Watson, when I have no news of her
+husband. Here we are. Whoa, there, whoa!”
+
+We had pulled up in front of a large villa which stood within its own
+grounds. A stable-boy had run out to the horse’s head, and springing
+down, I followed Holmes up the small, winding gravel-drive which led to
+the house. As we approached, the door flew open, and a little blonde
+woman stood in the opening, clad in some sort of light mousseline de
+soie, with a touch of fluffy pink chiffon at her neck and wrists. She
+stood with her figure outlined against the flood of light, one hand
+upon the door, one half-raised in her eagerness, her body slightly
+bent, her head and face protruded, with eager eyes and parted lips, a
+standing question.
+
+“Well?” she cried, “well?” And then, seeing that there were two of us,
+she gave a cry of hope which sank into a groan as she saw that my
+companion shook his head and shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“No good news?”
+
+“None.”
+
+“No bad?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Thank God for that. But come in. You must be weary, for you have had a
+long day.”
+
+“This is my friend, Dr. Watson. He has been of most vital use to me in
+several of my cases, and a lucky chance has made it possible for me to
+bring him out and associate him with this investigation.”
+
+“I am delighted to see you,” said she, pressing my hand warmly. “You
+will, I am sure, forgive anything that may be wanting in our
+arrangements, when you consider the blow which has come so suddenly
+upon us.”
+
+“My dear madam,” said I, “I am an old campaigner, and if I were not I
+can very well see that no apology is needed. If I can be of any
+assistance, either to you or to my friend here, I shall be indeed
+happy.”
+
+“Now, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” said the lady as we entered a well-lit
+dining-room, upon the table of which a cold supper had been laid out,
+“I should very much like to ask you one or two plain questions, to
+which I beg that you will give a plain answer.”
+
+“Certainly, madam.”
+
+“Do not trouble about my feelings. I am not hysterical, nor given to
+fainting. I simply wish to hear your real, real opinion.”
+
+“Upon what point?”
+
+“In your heart of hearts, do you think that Neville is alive?”
+
+Sherlock Holmes seemed to be embarrassed by the question. “Frankly,
+now!” she repeated, standing upon the rug and looking keenly down at
+him as he leaned back in a basket-chair.
+
+“Frankly, then, madam, I do not.”
+
+“You think that he is dead?”
+
+“I do.”
+
+“Murdered?”
+
+“I don’t say that. Perhaps.”
+
+“And on what day did he meet his death?”
+
+“On Monday.”
+
+“Then perhaps, Mr. Holmes, you will be good enough to explain how it is
+that I have received a letter from him to-day.”
+
+Sherlock Holmes sprang out of his chair as if he had been galvanised.
+
+“What!” he roared.
+
+“Yes, to-day.” She stood smiling, holding up a little slip of paper in
+the air.
+
+“May I see it?”
+
+“Certainly.”
+
+He snatched it from her in his eagerness, and smoothing it out upon the
+table he drew over the lamp and examined it intently. I had left my
+chair and was gazing at it over his shoulder. The envelope was a very
+coarse one and was stamped with the Gravesend postmark and with the
+date of that very day, or rather of the day before, for it was
+considerably after midnight.
+
+“Coarse writing,” murmured Holmes. “Surely this is not your husband’s
+writing, madam.”
+
+“No, but the enclosure is.”
+
+“I perceive also that whoever addressed the envelope had to go and
+inquire as to the address.”
+
+“How can you tell that?”
+
+“The name, you see, is in perfectly black ink, which has dried itself.
+The rest is of the greyish colour, which shows that blotting-paper has
+been used. If it had been written straight off, and then blotted, none
+would be of a deep black shade. This man has written the name, and
+there has then been a pause before he wrote the address, which can only
+mean that he was not familiar with it. It is, of course, a trifle, but
+there is nothing so important as trifles. Let us now see the letter.
+Ha! there has been an enclosure here!”
+
+“Yes, there was a ring. His signet-ring.”
+
+“And you are sure that this is your husband’s hand?”
+
+“One of his hands.”
+
+“One?”
+
+“His hand when he wrote hurriedly. It is very unlike his usual writing,
+and yet I know it well.”
+
+“‘Dearest do not be frightened. All will come well. There is a huge
+error which it may take some little time to rectify. Wait in
+patience.—NEVILLE.’ Written in pencil upon the fly-leaf of a book,
+octavo size, no water-mark. Hum! Posted to-day in Gravesend by a man
+with a dirty thumb. Ha! And the flap has been gummed, if I am not very
+much in error, by a person who had been chewing tobacco. And you have
+no doubt that it is your husband’s hand, madam?”
+
+“None. Neville wrote those words.”
+
+“And they were posted to-day at Gravesend. Well, Mrs. St. Clair, the
+clouds lighten, though I should not venture to say that the danger is
+over.”
+
+“But he must be alive, Mr. Holmes.”
+
+“Unless this is a clever forgery to put us on the wrong scent. The
+ring, after all, proves nothing. It may have been taken from him.”
+
+“No, no; it is, it is his very own writing!”
+
+“Very well. It may, however, have been written on Monday and only
+posted to-day.”
+
+“That is possible.”
+
+“If so, much may have happened between.”
+
+“Oh, you must not discourage me, Mr. Holmes. I know that all is well
+with him. There is so keen a sympathy between us that I should know if
+evil came upon him. On the very day that I saw him last he cut himself
+in the bedroom, and yet I in the dining-room rushed upstairs instantly
+with the utmost certainty that something had happened. Do you think
+that I would respond to such a trifle and yet be ignorant of his
+death?”
+
+“I have seen too much not to know that the impression of a woman may be
+more valuable than the conclusion of an analytical reasoner. And in
+this letter you certainly have a very strong piece of evidence to
+corroborate your view. But if your husband is alive and able to write
+letters, why should he remain away from you?”
+
+“I cannot imagine. It is unthinkable.”
+
+“And on Monday he made no remarks before leaving you?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“And you were surprised to see him in Swandam Lane?”
+
+“Very much so.”
+
+“Was the window open?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Then he might have called to you?”
+
+“He might.”
+
+“He only, as I understand, gave an inarticulate cry?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“A call for help, you thought?”
+
+“Yes. He waved his hands.”
+
+“But it might have been a cry of surprise. Astonishment at the
+unexpected sight of you might cause him to throw up his hands?”
+
+“It is possible.”
+
+“And you thought he was pulled back?”
+
+“He disappeared so suddenly.”
+
+“He might have leaped back. You did not see anyone else in the room?”
+
+“No, but this horrible man confessed to having been there, and the
+Lascar was at the foot of the stairs.”
+
+“Quite so. Your husband, as far as you could see, had his ordinary
+clothes on?”
+
+“But without his collar or tie. I distinctly saw his bare throat.”
+
+“Had he ever spoken of Swandam Lane?”
+
+“Never.”
+
+“Had he ever showed any signs of having taken opium?”
+
+“Never.”
+
+“Thank you, Mrs. St. Clair. Those are the principal points about which
+I wished to be absolutely clear. We shall now have a little supper and
+then retire, for we may have a very busy day to-morrow.”
+
+A large and comfortable double-bedded room had been placed at our
+disposal, and I was quickly between the sheets, for I was weary after
+my night of adventure. Sherlock Holmes was a man, however, who, when he
+had an unsolved problem upon his mind, would go for days, and even for
+a week, without rest, turning it over, rearranging his facts, looking
+at it from every point of view until he had either fathomed it or
+convinced himself that his data were insufficient. It was soon evident
+to me that he was now preparing for an all-night sitting. He took off
+his coat and waistcoat, put on a large blue dressing-gown, and then
+wandered about the room collecting pillows from his bed and cushions
+from the sofa and armchairs. With these he constructed a sort of
+Eastern divan, upon which he perched himself cross-legged, with an
+ounce of shag tobacco and a box of matches laid out in front of him. In
+the dim light of the lamp I saw him sitting there, an old briar pipe
+between his lips, his eyes fixed vacantly upon the corner of the
+ceiling, the blue smoke curling up from him, silent, motionless, with
+the light shining upon his strong-set aquiline features. So he sat as I
+dropped off to sleep, and so he sat when a sudden ejaculation caused me
+to wake up, and I found the summer sun shining into the apartment. The
+pipe was still between his lips, the smoke still curled upward, and the
+room was full of a dense tobacco haze, but nothing remained of the heap
+of shag which I had seen upon the previous night.
+
+“Awake, Watson?” he asked.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Game for a morning drive?”
+
+“Certainly.”
+
+“Then dress. No one is stirring yet, but I know where the stable-boy
+sleeps, and we shall soon have the trap out.” He chuckled to himself as
+he spoke, his eyes twinkled, and he seemed a different man to the
+sombre thinker of the previous night.
+
+As I dressed I glanced at my watch. It was no wonder that no one was
+stirring. It was twenty-five minutes past four. I had hardly finished
+when Holmes returned with the news that the boy was putting in the
+horse.
+
+“I want to test a little theory of mine,” said he, pulling on his
+boots. “I think, Watson, that you are now standing in the presence of
+one of the most absolute fools in Europe. I deserve to be kicked from
+here to Charing Cross. But I think I have the key of the affair now.”
+
+“And where is it?” I asked, smiling.
+
+“In the bathroom,” he answered. “Oh, yes, I am not joking,” he
+continued, seeing my look of incredulity. “I have just been there, and
+I have taken it out, and I have got it in this Gladstone bag. Come on,
+my boy, and we shall see whether it will not fit the lock.”
+
+We made our way downstairs as quietly as possible, and out into the
+bright morning sunshine. In the road stood our horse and trap, with the
+half-clad stable-boy waiting at the head. We both sprang in, and away
+we dashed down the London Road. A few country carts were stirring,
+bearing in vegetables to the metropolis, but the lines of villas on
+either side were as silent and lifeless as some city in a dream.
+
+“It has been in some points a singular case,” said Holmes, flicking the
+horse on into a gallop. “I confess that I have been as blind as a mole,
+but it is better to learn wisdom late than never to learn it at all.”
+
+In town the earliest risers were just beginning to look sleepily from
+their windows as we drove through the streets of the Surrey side.
+Passing down the Waterloo Bridge Road we crossed over the river, and
+dashing up Wellington Street wheeled sharply to the right and found
+ourselves in Bow Street. Sherlock Holmes was well known to the force,
+and the two constables at the door saluted him. One of them held the
+horse’s head while the other led us in.
+
+“Who is on duty?” asked Holmes.
+
+“Inspector Bradstreet, sir.”
+
+“Ah, Bradstreet, how are you?” A tall, stout official had come down the
+stone-flagged passage, in a peaked cap and frogged jacket. “I wish to
+have a quiet word with you, Bradstreet.”
+
+“Certainly, Mr. Holmes. Step into my room here.”
+
+It was a small, office-like room, with a huge ledger upon the table,
+and a telephone projecting from the wall. The inspector sat down at his
+desk.
+
+“What can I do for you, Mr. Holmes?”
+
+“I called about that beggarman, Boone—the one who was charged with
+being concerned in the disappearance of Mr. Neville St. Clair, of Lee.”
+
+“Yes. He was brought up and remanded for further inquiries.”
+
+“So I heard. You have him here?”
+
+“In the cells.”
+
+“Is he quiet?”
+
+“Oh, he gives no trouble. But he is a dirty scoundrel.”
+
+“Dirty?”
+
+“Yes, it is all we can do to make him wash his hands, and his face is
+as black as a tinker’s. Well, when once his case has been settled, he
+will have a regular prison bath; and I think, if you saw him, you would
+agree with me that he needed it.”
+
+“I should like to see him very much.”
+
+“Would you? That is easily done. Come this way. You can leave your
+bag.”
+
+“No, I think that I’ll take it.”
+
+“Very good. Come this way, if you please.” He led us down a passage,
+opened a barred door, passed down a winding stair, and brought us to a
+whitewashed corridor with a line of doors on each side.
+
+“The third on the right is his,” said the inspector. “Here it is!” He
+quietly shot back a panel in the upper part of the door and glanced
+through.
+
+“He is asleep,” said he. “You can see him very well.”
+
+We both put our eyes to the grating. The prisoner lay with his face
+towards us, in a very deep sleep, breathing slowly and heavily. He was
+a middle-sized man, coarsely clad as became his calling, with a
+coloured shirt protruding through the rent in his tattered coat. He
+was, as the inspector had said, extremely dirty, but the grime which
+covered his face could not conceal its repulsive ugliness. A broad
+wheal from an old scar ran right across it from eye to chin, and by its
+contraction had turned up one side of the upper lip, so that three
+teeth were exposed in a perpetual snarl. A shock of very bright red
+hair grew low over his eyes and forehead.
+
+“He’s a beauty, isn’t he?” said the inspector.
+
+“He certainly needs a wash,” remarked Holmes. “I had an idea that he
+might, and I took the liberty of bringing the tools with me.” He opened
+the Gladstone bag as he spoke, and took out, to my astonishment, a very
+large bath-sponge.
+
+“He! he! You are a funny one,” chuckled the inspector.
+
+“Now, if you will have the great goodness to open that door very
+quietly, we will soon make him cut a much more respectable figure.”
+
+“Well, I don’t know why not,” said the inspector. “He doesn’t look a
+credit to the Bow Street cells, does he?” He slipped his key into the
+lock, and we all very quietly entered the cell. The sleeper half
+turned, and then settled down once more into a deep slumber. Holmes
+stooped to the water-jug, moistened his sponge, and then rubbed it
+twice vigorously across and down the prisoner’s face.
+
+“Let me introduce you,” he shouted, “to Mr. Neville St. Clair, of Lee,
+in the county of Kent.”
+
+Never in my life have I seen such a sight. The man’s face peeled off
+under the sponge like the bark from a tree. Gone was the coarse brown
+tint! Gone, too, was the horrid scar which had seamed it across, and
+the twisted lip which had given the repulsive sneer to the face! A
+twitch brought away the tangled red hair, and there, sitting up in his
+bed, was a pale, sad-faced, refined-looking man, black-haired and
+smooth-skinned, rubbing his eyes and staring about him with sleepy
+bewilderment. Then suddenly realising the exposure, he broke into a
+scream and threw himself down with his face to the pillow.
+
+“Great heavens!” cried the inspector, “it is, indeed, the missing man.
+I know him from the photograph.”
+
+The prisoner turned with the reckless air of a man who abandons himself
+to his destiny. “Be it so,” said he. “And pray what am I charged with?”
+
+“With making away with Mr. Neville St.— Oh, come, you can’t be charged
+with that unless they make a case of attempted suicide of it,” said the
+inspector with a grin. “Well, I have been twenty-seven years in the
+force, but this really takes the cake.”
+
+“If I am Mr. Neville St. Clair, then it is obvious that no crime has
+been committed, and that, therefore, I am illegally detained.”
+
+“No crime, but a very great error has been committed,” said Holmes.
+“You would have done better to have trusted your wife.”
+
+“It was not the wife; it was the children,” groaned the prisoner. “God
+help me, I would not have them ashamed of their father. My God! What an
+exposure! What can I do?”
+
+Sherlock Holmes sat down beside him on the couch and patted him kindly
+on the shoulder.
+
+“If you leave it to a court of law to clear the matter up,” said he,
+“of course you can hardly avoid publicity. On the other hand, if you
+convince the police authorities that there is no possible case against
+you, I do not know that there is any reason that the details should
+find their way into the papers. Inspector Bradstreet would, I am sure,
+make notes upon anything which you might tell us and submit it to the
+proper authorities. The case would then never go into court at all.”
+
+“God bless you!” cried the prisoner passionately. “I would have endured
+imprisonment, ay, even execution, rather than have left my miserable
+secret as a family blot to my children.
+
+“You are the first who have ever heard my story. My father was a
+schoolmaster in Chesterfield, where I received an excellent education.
+I travelled in my youth, took to the stage, and finally became a
+reporter on an evening paper in London. One day my editor wished to
+have a series of articles upon begging in the metropolis, and I
+volunteered to supply them. There was the point from which all my
+adventures started. It was only by trying begging as an amateur that I
+could get the facts upon which to base my articles. When an actor I
+had, of course, learned all the secrets of making up, and had been
+famous in the green-room for my skill. I took advantage now of my
+attainments. I painted my face, and to make myself as pitiable as
+possible I made a good scar and fixed one side of my lip in a twist by
+the aid of a small slip of flesh-coloured plaster. Then with a red head
+of hair, and an appropriate dress, I took my station in the business
+part of the city, ostensibly as a match-seller but really as a beggar.
+For seven hours I plied my trade, and when I returned home in the
+evening I found to my surprise that I had received no less than 26_s_.
+4_d_.
+
+“I wrote my articles and thought little more of the matter until, some
+time later, I backed a bill for a friend and had a writ served upon me
+for £ 25. I was at my wit’s end where to get the money, but a sudden
+idea came to me. I begged a fortnight’s grace from the creditor, asked
+for a holiday from my employers, and spent the time in begging in the
+City under my disguise. In ten days I had the money and had paid the
+debt.
+
+“Well, you can imagine how hard it was to settle down to arduous work
+at £ 2 a week when I knew that I could earn as much in a day by
+smearing my face with a little paint, laying my cap on the ground, and
+sitting still. It was a long fight between my pride and the money, but
+the dollars won at last, and I threw up reporting and sat day after day
+in the corner which I had first chosen, inspiring pity by my ghastly
+face and filling my pockets with coppers. Only one man knew my secret.
+He was the keeper of a low den in which I used to lodge in Swandam
+Lane, where I could every morning emerge as a squalid beggar and in the
+evenings transform myself into a well-dressed man about town. This
+fellow, a Lascar, was well paid by me for his rooms, so that I knew
+that my secret was safe in his possession.
+
+“Well, very soon I found that I was saving considerable sums of money.
+I do not mean that any beggar in the streets of London could earn £ 700
+a year—which is less than my average takings—but I had exceptional
+advantages in my power of making up, and also in a facility of
+repartee, which improved by practice and made me quite a recognised
+character in the City. All day a stream of pennies, varied by silver,
+poured in upon me, and it was a very bad day in which I failed to take
+£ 2.
+
+“As I grew richer I grew more ambitious, took a house in the country,
+and eventually married, without anyone having a suspicion as to my real
+occupation. My dear wife knew that I had business in the City. She
+little knew what.
+
+“Last Monday I had finished for the day and was dressing in my room
+above the opium den when I looked out of my window and saw, to my
+horror and astonishment, that my wife was standing in the street, with
+her eyes fixed full upon me. I gave a cry of surprise, threw up my arms
+to cover my face, and, rushing to my confidant, the Lascar, entreated
+him to prevent anyone from coming up to me. I heard her voice
+downstairs, but I knew that she could not ascend. Swiftly I threw off
+my clothes, pulled on those of a beggar, and put on my pigments and
+wig. Even a wife’s eyes could not pierce so complete a disguise. But
+then it occurred to me that there might be a search in the room, and
+that the clothes might betray me. I threw open the window, reopening by
+my violence a small cut which I had inflicted upon myself in the
+bedroom that morning. Then I seized my coat, which was weighted by the
+coppers which I had just transferred to it from the leather bag in
+which I carried my takings. I hurled it out of the window, and it
+disappeared into the Thames. The other clothes would have followed, but
+at that moment there was a rush of constables up the stair, and a few
+minutes after I found, rather, I confess, to my relief, that instead of
+being identified as Mr. Neville St. Clair, I was arrested as his
+murderer.
+
+“I do not know that there is anything else for me to explain. I was
+determined to preserve my disguise as long as possible, and hence my
+preference for a dirty face. Knowing that my wife would be terribly
+anxious, I slipped off my ring and confided it to the Lascar at a
+moment when no constable was watching me, together with a hurried
+scrawl, telling her that she had no cause to fear.”
+
+“That note only reached her yesterday,” said Holmes.
+
+“Good God! What a week she must have spent!”
+
+“The police have watched this Lascar,” said Inspector Bradstreet, “and
+I can quite understand that he might find it difficult to post a letter
+unobserved. Probably he handed it to some sailor customer of his, who
+forgot all about it for some days.”
+
+“That was it,” said Holmes, nodding approvingly; “I have no doubt of
+it. But have you never been prosecuted for begging?”
+
+“Many times; but what was a fine to me?”
+
+“It must stop here, however,” said Bradstreet. “If the police are to
+hush this thing up, there must be no more of Hugh Boone.”
+
+“I have sworn it by the most solemn oaths which a man can take.”
+
+“In that case I think that it is probable that no further steps may be
+taken. But if you are found again, then all must come out. I am sure,
+Mr. Holmes, that we are very much indebted to you for having cleared
+the matter up. I wish I knew how you reach your results.”
+
+“I reached this one,” said my friend, “by sitting upon five pillows and
+consuming an ounce of shag. I think, Watson, that if we drive to Baker
+Street we shall just be in time for breakfast.”
+
+
+
+VII. THE ADVENTURE OF THE BLUE CARBUNCLE
+
+I had called upon my friend Sherlock Holmes upon the second morning
+after Christmas, with the intention of wishing him the compliments of
+the season. He was lounging upon the sofa in a purple dressing-gown, a
+pipe-rack within his reach upon the right, and a pile of crumpled
+morning papers, evidently newly studied, near at hand. Beside the couch
+was a wooden chair, and on the angle of the back hung a very seedy and
+disreputable hard-felt hat, much the worse for wear, and cracked in
+several places. A lens and a forceps lying upon the seat of the chair
+suggested that the hat had been suspended in this manner for the
+purpose of examination.
+
+“You are engaged,” said I; “perhaps I interrupt you.”
+
+“Not at all. I am glad to have a friend with whom I can discuss my
+results. The matter is a perfectly trivial one”—he jerked his thumb in
+the direction of the old hat—“but there are points in connection with
+it which are not entirely devoid of interest and even of instruction.”
+
+I seated myself in his armchair and warmed my hands before his
+crackling fire, for a sharp frost had set in, and the windows were
+thick with the ice crystals. “I suppose,” I remarked, “that, homely as
+it looks, this thing has some deadly story linked on to it—that it is
+the clue which will guide you in the solution of some mystery and the
+punishment of some crime.”
+
+“No, no. No crime,” said Sherlock Holmes, laughing. “Only one of those
+whimsical little incidents which will happen when you have four million
+human beings all jostling each other within the space of a few square
+miles. Amid the action and reaction of so dense a swarm of humanity,
+every possible combination of events may be expected to take place, and
+many a little problem will be presented which may be striking and
+bizarre without being criminal. We have already had experience of
+such.”
+
+“So much so,” I remarked, “that of the last six cases which I have
+added to my notes, three have been entirely free of any legal crime.”
+
+“Precisely. You allude to my attempt to recover the Irene Adler papers,
+to the singular case of Miss Mary Sutherland, and to the adventure of
+the man with the twisted lip. Well, I have no doubt that this small
+matter will fall into the same innocent category. You know Peterson,
+the commissionaire?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“It is to him that this trophy belongs.”
+
+“It is his hat.”
+
+“No, no, he found it. Its owner is unknown. I beg that you will look
+upon it not as a battered billycock but as an intellectual problem.
+And, first, as to how it came here. It arrived upon Christmas morning,
+in company with a good fat goose, which is, I have no doubt, roasting
+at this moment in front of Peterson’s fire. The facts are these: about
+four o’clock on Christmas morning, Peterson, who, as you know, is a
+very honest fellow, was returning from some small jollification and was
+making his way homeward down Tottenham Court Road. In front of him he
+saw, in the gaslight, a tallish man, walking with a slight stagger, and
+carrying a white goose slung over his shoulder. As he reached the
+corner of Goodge Street, a row broke out between this stranger and a
+little knot of roughs. One of the latter knocked off the man’s hat, on
+which he raised his stick to defend himself and, swinging it over his
+head, smashed the shop window behind him. Peterson had rushed forward
+to protect the stranger from his assailants; but the man, shocked at
+having broken the window, and seeing an official-looking person in
+uniform rushing towards him, dropped his goose, took to his heels, and
+vanished amid the labyrinth of small streets which lie at the back of
+Tottenham Court Road. The roughs had also fled at the appearance of
+Peterson, so that he was left in possession of the field of battle, and
+also of the spoils of victory in the shape of this battered hat and a
+most unimpeachable Christmas goose.”
+
+“Which surely he restored to their owner?”
+
+“My dear fellow, there lies the problem. It is true that ‘For Mrs.
+Henry Baker’ was printed upon a small card which was tied to the bird’s
+left leg, and it is also true that the initials ‘H. B.’ are legible
+upon the lining of this hat, but as there are some thousands of Bakers,
+and some hundreds of Henry Bakers in this city of ours, it is not easy
+to restore lost property to any one of them.”
+
+“What, then, did Peterson do?”
+
+“He brought round both hat and goose to me on Christmas morning,
+knowing that even the smallest problems are of interest to me. The
+goose we retained until this morning, when there were signs that, in
+spite of the slight frost, it would be well that it should be eaten
+without unnecessary delay. Its finder has carried it off, therefore, to
+fulfil the ultimate destiny of a goose, while I continue to retain the
+hat of the unknown gentleman who lost his Christmas dinner.”
+
+“Did he not advertise?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Then, what clue could you have as to his identity?”
+
+“Only as much as we can deduce.”
+
+“From his hat?”
+
+“Precisely.”
+
+“But you are joking. What can you gather from this old battered felt?”
+
+“Here is my lens. You know my methods. What can you gather yourself as
+to the individuality of the man who has worn this article?”
+
+I took the tattered object in my hands and turned it over rather
+ruefully. It was a very ordinary black hat of the usual round shape,
+hard and much the worse for wear. The lining had been of red silk, but
+was a good deal discoloured. There was no maker’s name; but, as Holmes
+had remarked, the initials “H. B.” were scrawled upon one side. It was
+pierced in the brim for a hat-securer, but the elastic was missing. For
+the rest, it was cracked, exceedingly dusty, and spotted in several
+places, although there seemed to have been some attempt to hide the
+discoloured patches by smearing them with ink.
+
+“I can see nothing,” said I, handing it back to my friend.
+
+“On the contrary, Watson, you can see everything. You fail, however, to
+reason from what you see. You are too timid in drawing your
+inferences.”
+
+“Then, pray tell me what it is that you can infer from this hat?”
+
+He picked it up and gazed at it in the peculiar introspective fashion
+which was characteristic of him. “It is perhaps less suggestive than it
+might have been,” he remarked, “and yet there are a few inferences
+which are very distinct, and a few others which represent at least a
+strong balance of probability. That the man was highly intellectual is
+of course obvious upon the face of it, and also that he was fairly
+well-to-do within the last three years, although he has now fallen upon
+evil days. He had foresight, but has less now than formerly, pointing
+to a moral retrogression, which, when taken with the decline of his
+fortunes, seems to indicate some evil influence, probably drink, at
+work upon him. This may account also for the obvious fact that his wife
+has ceased to love him.”
+
+“My dear Holmes!”
+
+“He has, however, retained some degree of self-respect,” he continued,
+disregarding my remonstrance. “He is a man who leads a sedentary life,
+goes out little, is out of training entirely, is middle-aged, has
+grizzled hair which he has had cut within the last few days, and which
+he anoints with lime-cream. These are the more patent facts which are
+to be deduced from his hat. Also, by the way, that it is extremely
+improbable that he has gas laid on in his house.”
+
+“You are certainly joking, Holmes.”
+
+“Not in the least. Is it possible that even now, when I give you these
+results, you are unable to see how they are attained?”
+
+“I have no doubt that I am very stupid, but I must confess that I am
+unable to follow you. For example, how did you deduce that this man was
+intellectual?”
+
+For answer Holmes clapped the hat upon his head. It came right over the
+forehead and settled upon the bridge of his nose. “It is a question of
+cubic capacity,” said he; “a man with so large a brain must have
+something in it.”
+
+“The decline of his fortunes, then?”
+
+“This hat is three years old. These flat brims curled at the edge came
+in then. It is a hat of the very best quality. Look at the band of
+ribbed silk and the excellent lining. If this man could afford to buy
+so expensive a hat three years ago, and has had no hat since, then he
+has assuredly gone down in the world.”
+
+“Well, that is clear enough, certainly. But how about the foresight and
+the moral retrogression?”
+
+Sherlock Holmes laughed. “Here is the foresight,” said he putting his
+finger upon the little disc and loop of the hat-securer. “They are
+never sold upon hats. If this man ordered one, it is a sign of a
+certain amount of foresight, since he went out of his way to take this
+precaution against the wind. But since we see that he has broken the
+elastic and has not troubled to replace it, it is obvious that he has
+less foresight now than formerly, which is a distinct proof of a
+weakening nature. On the other hand, he has endeavoured to conceal some
+of these stains upon the felt by daubing them with ink, which is a sign
+that he has not entirely lost his self-respect.”
+
+“Your reasoning is certainly plausible.”
+
+“The further points, that he is middle-aged, that his hair is grizzled,
+that it has been recently cut, and that he uses lime-cream, are all to
+be gathered from a close examination of the lower part of the lining.
+The lens discloses a large number of hair-ends, clean cut by the
+scissors of the barber. They all appear to be adhesive, and there is a
+distinct odour of lime-cream. This dust, you will observe, is not the
+gritty, grey dust of the street but the fluffy brown dust of the house,
+showing that it has been hung up indoors most of the time, while the
+marks of moisture upon the inside are proof positive that the wearer
+perspired very freely, and could therefore, hardly be in the best of
+training.”
+
+“But his wife—you said that she had ceased to love him.”
+
+“This hat has not been brushed for weeks. When I see you, my dear
+Watson, with a week’s accumulation of dust upon your hat, and when your
+wife allows you to go out in such a state, I shall fear that you also
+have been unfortunate enough to lose your wife’s affection.”
+
+“But he might be a bachelor.”
+
+“Nay, he was bringing home the goose as a peace-offering to his wife.
+Remember the card upon the bird’s leg.”
+
+“You have an answer to everything. But how on earth do you deduce that
+the gas is not laid on in his house?”
+
+“One tallow stain, or even two, might come by chance; but when I see no
+less than five, I think that there can be little doubt that the
+individual must be brought into frequent contact with burning
+tallow—walks upstairs at night probably with his hat in one hand and a
+guttering candle in the other. Anyhow, he never got tallow-stains from
+a gas-jet. Are you satisfied?”
+
+“Well, it is very ingenious,” said I, laughing; “but since, as you said
+just now, there has been no crime committed, and no harm done save the
+loss of a goose, all this seems to be rather a waste of energy.”
+
+Sherlock Holmes had opened his mouth to reply, when the door flew open,
+and Peterson, the commissionaire, rushed into the apartment with
+flushed cheeks and the face of a man who is dazed with astonishment.
+
+“The goose, Mr. Holmes! The goose, sir!” he gasped.
+
+“Eh? What of it, then? Has it returned to life and flapped off through
+the kitchen window?” Holmes twisted himself round upon the sofa to get
+a fairer view of the man’s excited face.
+
+“See here, sir! See what my wife found in its crop!” He held out his
+hand and displayed upon the centre of the palm a brilliantly
+scintillating blue stone, rather smaller than a bean in size, but of
+such purity and radiance that it twinkled like an electric point in the
+dark hollow of his hand.
+
+Sherlock Holmes sat up with a whistle. “By Jove, Peterson!” said he,
+“this is treasure trove indeed. I suppose you know what you have got?”
+
+“A diamond, sir? A precious stone. It cuts into glass as though it were
+putty.”
+
+“It’s more than a precious stone. It is _the_ precious stone.”
+
+“Not the Countess of Morcar’s blue carbuncle!” I ejaculated.
+
+“Precisely so. I ought to know its size and shape, seeing that I have
+read the advertisement about it in _The Times_ every day lately. It is
+absolutely unique, and its value can only be conjectured, but the
+reward offered of £ 1000 is certainly not within a twentieth part of
+the market price.”
+
+“A thousand pounds! Great Lord of mercy!” The commissionaire plumped
+down into a chair and stared from one to the other of us.
+
+“That is the reward, and I have reason to know that there are
+sentimental considerations in the background which would induce the
+Countess to part with half her fortune if she could but recover the
+gem.”
+
+“It was lost, if I remember aright, at the Hotel Cosmopolitan,” I
+remarked.
+
+“Precisely so, on December 22nd, just five days ago. John Horner, a
+plumber, was accused of having abstracted it from the lady’s
+jewel-case. The evidence against him was so strong that the case has
+been referred to the Assizes. I have some account of the matter here, I
+believe.” He rummaged amid his newspapers, glancing over the dates,
+until at last he smoothed one out, doubled it over, and read the
+following paragraph:
+
+“Hotel Cosmopolitan Jewel Robbery. John Horner, 26, plumber, was
+brought up upon the charge of having upon the 22nd inst., abstracted
+from the jewel-case of the Countess of Morcar the valuable gem known as
+the blue carbuncle. James Ryder, upper-attendant at the hotel, gave his
+evidence to the effect that he had shown Horner up to the dressing-room
+of the Countess of Morcar upon the day of the robbery in order that he
+might solder the second bar of the grate, which was loose. He had
+remained with Horner some little time, but had finally been called
+away. On returning, he found that Horner had disappeared, that the
+bureau had been forced open, and that the small morocco casket in
+which, as it afterwards transpired, the Countess was accustomed to keep
+her jewel, was lying empty upon the dressing-table. Ryder instantly
+gave the alarm, and Horner was arrested the same evening; but the stone
+could not be found either upon his person or in his rooms. Catherine
+Cusack, maid to the Countess, deposed to having heard Ryder’s cry of
+dismay on discovering the robbery, and to having rushed into the room,
+where she found matters as described by the last witness. Inspector
+Bradstreet, B division, gave evidence as to the arrest of Horner, who
+struggled frantically, and protested his innocence in the strongest
+terms. Evidence of a previous conviction for robbery having been given
+against the prisoner, the magistrate refused to deal summarily with the
+offence, but referred it to the Assizes. Horner, who had shown signs of
+intense emotion during the proceedings, fainted away at the conclusion
+and was carried out of court.”
+
+“Hum! So much for the police-court,” said Holmes thoughtfully, tossing
+aside the paper. “The question for us now to solve is the sequence of
+events leading from a rifled jewel-case at one end to the crop of a
+goose in Tottenham Court Road at the other. You see, Watson, our little
+deductions have suddenly assumed a much more important and less
+innocent aspect. Here is the stone; the stone came from the goose, and
+the goose came from Mr. Henry Baker, the gentleman with the bad hat and
+all the other characteristics with which I have bored you. So now we
+must set ourselves very seriously to finding this gentleman and
+ascertaining what part he has played in this little mystery. To do
+this, we must try the simplest means first, and these lie undoubtedly
+in an advertisement in all the evening papers. If this fail, I shall
+have recourse to other methods.”
+
+“What will you say?”
+
+“Give me a pencil and that slip of paper. Now, then: ‘Found at the
+corner of Goodge Street, a goose and a black felt hat. Mr. Henry Baker
+can have the same by applying at 6:30 this evening at 221B, Baker
+Street.’ That is clear and concise.”
+
+“Very. But will he see it?”
+
+“Well, he is sure to keep an eye on the papers, since, to a poor man,
+the loss was a heavy one. He was clearly so scared by his mischance in
+breaking the window and by the approach of Peterson that he thought of
+nothing but flight, but since then he must have bitterly regretted the
+impulse which caused him to drop his bird. Then, again, the
+introduction of his name will cause him to see it, for everyone who
+knows him will direct his attention to it. Here you are, Peterson, run
+down to the advertising agency and have this put in the evening
+papers.”
+
+“In which, sir?”
+
+“Oh, in the _Globe_, _Star_, _Pall Mall_, _St. James’s Gazette_,
+_Evening News_, _Standard_, _Echo_, and any others that occur to you.”
+
+“Very well, sir. And this stone?”
+
+“Ah, yes, I shall keep the stone. Thank you. And, I say, Peterson, just
+buy a goose on your way back and leave it here with me, for we must
+have one to give to this gentleman in place of the one which your
+family is now devouring.”
+
+When the commissionaire had gone, Holmes took up the stone and held it
+against the light. “It’s a bonny thing,” said he. “Just see how it
+glints and sparkles. Of course it is a nucleus and focus of crime.
+Every good stone is. They are the devil’s pet baits. In the larger and
+older jewels every facet may stand for a bloody deed. This stone is not
+yet twenty years old. It was found in the banks of the Amoy River in
+southern China and is remarkable in having every characteristic of the
+carbuncle, save that it is blue in shade instead of ruby red. In spite
+of its youth, it has already a sinister history. There have been two
+murders, a vitriol-throwing, a suicide, and several robberies brought
+about for the sake of this forty-grain weight of crystallised charcoal.
+Who would think that so pretty a toy would be a purveyor to the gallows
+and the prison? I’ll lock it up in my strong box now and drop a line to
+the Countess to say that we have it.”
+
+“Do you think that this man Horner is innocent?”
+
+“I cannot tell.”
+
+“Well, then, do you imagine that this other one, Henry Baker, had
+anything to do with the matter?”
+
+“It is, I think, much more likely that Henry Baker is an absolutely
+innocent man, who had no idea that the bird which he was carrying was
+of considerably more value than if it were made of solid gold. That,
+however, I shall determine by a very simple test if we have an answer
+to our advertisement.”
+
+“And you can do nothing until then?”
+
+“Nothing.”
+
+“In that case I shall continue my professional round. But I shall come
+back in the evening at the hour you have mentioned, for I should like
+to see the solution of so tangled a business.”
+
+“Very glad to see you. I dine at seven. There is a woodcock, I believe.
+By the way, in view of recent occurrences, perhaps I ought to ask Mrs.
+Hudson to examine its crop.”
+
+I had been delayed at a case, and it was a little after half-past six
+when I found myself in Baker Street once more. As I approached the
+house I saw a tall man in a Scotch bonnet with a coat which was
+buttoned up to his chin waiting outside in the bright semicircle which
+was thrown from the fanlight. Just as I arrived the door was opened,
+and we were shown up together to Holmes’ room.
+
+“Mr. Henry Baker, I believe,” said he, rising from his armchair and
+greeting his visitor with the easy air of geniality which he could so
+readily assume. “Pray take this chair by the fire, Mr. Baker. It is a
+cold night, and I observe that your circulation is more adapted for
+summer than for winter. Ah, Watson, you have just come at the right
+time. Is that your hat, Mr. Baker?”
+
+“Yes, sir, that is undoubtedly my hat.”
+
+He was a large man with rounded shoulders, a massive head, and a broad,
+intelligent face, sloping down to a pointed beard of grizzled brown. A
+touch of red in nose and cheeks, with a slight tremor of his extended
+hand, recalled Holmes’ surmise as to his habits. His rusty black
+frock-coat was buttoned right up in front, with the collar turned up,
+and his lank wrists protruded from his sleeves without a sign of cuff
+or shirt. He spoke in a slow staccato fashion, choosing his words with
+care, and gave the impression generally of a man of learning and
+letters who had had ill-usage at the hands of fortune.
+
+“We have retained these things for some days,” said Holmes, “because we
+expected to see an advertisement from you giving your address. I am at
+a loss to know now why you did not advertise.”
+
+Our visitor gave a rather shamefaced laugh. “Shillings have not been so
+plentiful with me as they once were,” he remarked. “I had no doubt that
+the gang of roughs who assaulted me had carried off both my hat and the
+bird. I did not care to spend more money in a hopeless attempt at
+recovering them.”
+
+“Very naturally. By the way, about the bird, we were compelled to eat
+it.”
+
+“To eat it!” Our visitor half rose from his chair in his excitement.
+
+“Yes, it would have been of no use to anyone had we not done so. But I
+presume that this other goose upon the sideboard, which is about the
+same weight and perfectly fresh, will answer your purpose equally
+well?”
+
+“Oh, certainly, certainly,” answered Mr. Baker with a sigh of relief.
+
+“Of course, we still have the feathers, legs, crop, and so on of your
+own bird, so if you wish—”
+
+The man burst into a hearty laugh. “They might be useful to me as
+relics of my adventure,” said he, “but beyond that I can hardly see
+what use the _disjecta membra_ of my late acquaintance are going to be
+to me. No, sir, I think that, with your permission, I will confine my
+attentions to the excellent bird which I perceive upon the sideboard.”
+
+Sherlock Holmes glanced sharply across at me with a slight shrug of his
+shoulders.
+
+“There is your hat, then, and there your bird,” said he. “By the way,
+would it bore you to tell me where you got the other one from? I am
+somewhat of a fowl fancier, and I have seldom seen a better grown
+goose.”
+
+“Certainly, sir,” said Baker, who had risen and tucked his newly gained
+property under his arm. “There are a few of us who frequent the Alpha
+Inn, near the Museum—we are to be found in the Museum itself during the
+day, you understand. This year our good host, Windigate by name,
+instituted a goose club, by which, on consideration of some few pence
+every week, we were each to receive a bird at Christmas. My pence were
+duly paid, and the rest is familiar to you. I am much indebted to you,
+sir, for a Scotch bonnet is fitted neither to my years nor my gravity.”
+With a comical pomposity of manner he bowed solemnly to both of us and
+strode off upon his way.
+
+“So much for Mr. Henry Baker,” said Holmes when he had closed the door
+behind him. “It is quite certain that he knows nothing whatever about
+the matter. Are you hungry, Watson?”
+
+“Not particularly.”
+
+“Then I suggest that we turn our dinner into a supper and follow up
+this clue while it is still hot.”
+
+“By all means.”
+
+It was a bitter night, so we drew on our ulsters and wrapped cravats
+about our throats. Outside, the stars were shining coldly in a
+cloudless sky, and the breath of the passers-by blew out into smoke
+like so many pistol shots. Our footfalls rang out crisply and loudly as
+we swung through the doctors’ quarter, Wimpole Street, Harley Street,
+and so through Wigmore Street into Oxford Street. In a quarter of an
+hour we were in Bloomsbury at the Alpha Inn, which is a small
+public-house at the corner of one of the streets which runs down into
+Holborn. Holmes pushed open the door of the private bar and ordered two
+glasses of beer from the ruddy-faced, white-aproned landlord.
+
+“Your beer should be excellent if it is as good as your geese,” said
+he.
+
+“My geese!” The man seemed surprised.
+
+“Yes. I was speaking only half an hour ago to Mr. Henry Baker, who was
+a member of your goose club.”
+
+“Ah! yes, I see. But you see, sir, them’s not _our_ geese.”
+
+“Indeed! Whose, then?”
+
+“Well, I got the two dozen from a salesman in Covent Garden.”
+
+“Indeed? I know some of them. Which was it?”
+
+“Breckinridge is his name.”
+
+“Ah! I don’t know him. Well, here’s your good health landlord, and
+prosperity to your house. Good-night.”
+
+“Now for Mr. Breckinridge,” he continued, buttoning up his coat as we
+came out into the frosty air. “Remember, Watson that though we have so
+homely a thing as a goose at one end of this chain, we have at the
+other a man who will certainly get seven years’ penal servitude unless
+we can establish his innocence. It is possible that our inquiry may but
+confirm his guilt; but, in any case, we have a line of investigation
+which has been missed by the police, and which a singular chance has
+placed in our hands. Let us follow it out to the bitter end. Faces to
+the south, then, and quick march!”
+
+We passed across Holborn, down Endell Street, and so through a zigzag
+of slums to Covent Garden Market. One of the largest stalls bore the
+name of Breckinridge upon it, and the proprietor a horsey-looking man,
+with a sharp face and trim side-whiskers was helping a boy to put up
+the shutters.
+
+“Good-evening. It’s a cold night,” said Holmes.
+
+The salesman nodded and shot a questioning glance at my companion.
+
+“Sold out of geese, I see,” continued Holmes, pointing at the bare
+slabs of marble.
+
+“Let you have five hundred to-morrow morning.”
+
+“That’s no good.”
+
+“Well, there are some on the stall with the gas-flare.”
+
+“Ah, but I was recommended to you.”
+
+“Who by?”
+
+“The landlord of the Alpha.”
+
+“Oh, yes; I sent him a couple of dozen.”
+
+“Fine birds they were, too. Now where did you get them from?”
+
+To my surprise the question provoked a burst of anger from the
+salesman.
+
+“Now, then, mister,” said he, with his head cocked and his arms akimbo,
+“what are you driving at? Let’s have it straight, now.”
+
+“It is straight enough. I should like to know who sold you the geese
+which you supplied to the Alpha.”
+
+“Well then, I shan’t tell you. So now!”
+
+“Oh, it is a matter of no importance; but I don’t know why you should
+be so warm over such a trifle.”
+
+“Warm! You’d be as warm, maybe, if you were as pestered as I am. When I
+pay good money for a good article there should be an end of the
+business; but it’s ‘Where are the geese?’ and ‘Who did you sell the
+geese to?’ and ‘What will you take for the geese?’ One would think they
+were the only geese in the world, to hear the fuss that is made over
+them.”
+
+“Well, I have no connection with any other people who have been making
+inquiries,” said Holmes carelessly. “If you won’t tell us the bet is
+off, that is all. But I’m always ready to back my opinion on a matter
+of fowls, and I have a fiver on it that the bird I ate is country
+bred.”
+
+“Well, then, you’ve lost your fiver, for it’s town bred,” snapped the
+salesman.
+
+“It’s nothing of the kind.”
+
+“I say it is.”
+
+“I don’t believe it.”
+
+“D’you think you know more about fowls than I, who have handled them
+ever since I was a nipper? I tell you, all those birds that went to the
+Alpha were town bred.”
+
+“You’ll never persuade me to believe that.”
+
+“Will you bet, then?”
+
+“It’s merely taking your money, for I know that I am right. But I’ll
+have a sovereign on with you, just to teach you not to be obstinate.”
+
+The salesman chuckled grimly. “Bring me the books, Bill,” said he.
+
+The small boy brought round a small thin volume and a great
+greasy-backed one, laying them out together beneath the hanging lamp.
+
+“Now then, Mr. Cocksure,” said the salesman, “I thought that I was out
+of geese, but before I finish you’ll find that there is still one left
+in my shop. You see this little book?”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“That’s the list of the folk from whom I buy. D’you see? Well, then,
+here on this page are the country folk, and the numbers after their
+names are where their accounts are in the big ledger. Now, then! You
+see this other page in red ink? Well, that is a list of my town
+suppliers. Now, look at that third name. Just read it out to me.”
+
+“Mrs. Oakshott, 117, Brixton Road—249,” read Holmes.
+
+“Quite so. Now turn that up in the ledger.”
+
+Holmes turned to the page indicated. “Here you are, ‘Mrs. Oakshott,
+117, Brixton Road, egg and poultry supplier.’”
+
+“Now, then, what’s the last entry?”
+
+“‘December 22nd. Twenty-four geese at 7_s_. 6_d_.’”
+
+“Quite so. There you are. And underneath?”
+
+“‘Sold to Mr. Windigate of the Alpha, at 12_s_.’”
+
+“What have you to say now?”
+
+Sherlock Holmes looked deeply chagrined. He drew a sovereign from his
+pocket and threw it down upon the slab, turning away with the air of a
+man whose disgust is too deep for words. A few yards off he stopped
+under a lamp-post and laughed in the hearty, noiseless fashion which
+was peculiar to him.
+
+“When you see a man with whiskers of that cut and the ‘Pink ’un’
+protruding out of his pocket, you can always draw him by a bet,” said
+he. “I daresay that if I had put £ 100 down in front of him, that man
+would not have given me such complete information as was drawn from him
+by the idea that he was doing me on a wager. Well, Watson, we are, I
+fancy, nearing the end of our quest, and the only point which remains
+to be determined is whether we should go on to this Mrs. Oakshott
+to-night, or whether we should reserve it for to-morrow. It is clear
+from what that surly fellow said that there are others besides
+ourselves who are anxious about the matter, and I should—”
+
+His remarks were suddenly cut short by a loud hubbub which broke out
+from the stall which we had just left. Turning round we saw a little
+rat-faced fellow standing in the centre of the circle of yellow light
+which was thrown by the swinging lamp, while Breckinridge, the
+salesman, framed in the door of his stall, was shaking his fists
+fiercely at the cringing figure.
+
+“I’ve had enough of you and your geese,” he shouted. “I wish you were
+all at the devil together. If you come pestering me any more with your
+silly talk I’ll set the dog at you. You bring Mrs. Oakshott here and
+I’ll answer her, but what have you to do with it? Did I buy the geese
+off you?”
+
+“No; but one of them was mine all the same,” whined the little man.
+
+“Well, then, ask Mrs. Oakshott for it.”
+
+“She told me to ask you.”
+
+“Well, you can ask the King of Proosia, for all I care. I’ve had enough
+of it. Get out of this!” He rushed fiercely forward, and the inquirer
+flitted away into the darkness.
+
+“Ha! this may save us a visit to Brixton Road,” whispered Holmes. “Come
+with me, and we will see what is to be made of this fellow.” Striding
+through the scattered knots of people who lounged round the flaring
+stalls, my companion speedily overtook the little man and touched him
+upon the shoulder. He sprang round, and I could see in the gas-light
+that every vestige of colour had been driven from his face.
+
+“Who are you, then? What do you want?” he asked in a quavering voice.
+
+“You will excuse me,” said Holmes blandly, “but I could not help
+overhearing the questions which you put to the salesman just now. I
+think that I could be of assistance to you.”
+
+“You? Who are you? How could you know anything of the matter?”
+
+“My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other
+people don’t know.”
+
+“But you can know nothing of this?”
+
+“Excuse me, I know everything of it. You are endeavouring to trace some
+geese which were sold by Mrs. Oakshott, of Brixton Road, to a salesman
+named Breckinridge, by him in turn to Mr. Windigate, of the Alpha, and
+by him to his club, of which Mr. Henry Baker is a member.”
+
+“Oh, sir, you are the very man whom I have longed to meet,” cried the
+little fellow with outstretched hands and quivering fingers. “I can
+hardly explain to you how interested I am in this matter.”
+
+Sherlock Holmes hailed a four-wheeler which was passing. “In that case
+we had better discuss it in a cosy room rather than in this wind-swept
+market-place,” said he. “But pray tell me, before we go farther, who it
+is that I have the pleasure of assisting.”
+
+The man hesitated for an instant. “My name is John Robinson,” he
+answered with a sidelong glance.
+
+“No, no; the real name,” said Holmes sweetly. “It is always awkward
+doing business with an alias.”
+
+A flush sprang to the white cheeks of the stranger. “Well then,” said
+he, “my real name is James Ryder.”
+
+“Precisely so. Head attendant at the Hotel Cosmopolitan. Pray step into
+the cab, and I shall soon be able to tell you everything which you
+would wish to know.”
+
+The little man stood glancing from one to the other of us with
+half-frightened, half-hopeful eyes, as one who is not sure whether he
+is on the verge of a windfall or of a catastrophe. Then he stepped into
+the cab, and in half an hour we were back in the sitting-room at Baker
+Street. Nothing had been said during our drive, but the high, thin
+breathing of our new companion, and the claspings and unclaspings of
+his hands, spoke of the nervous tension within him.
+
+“Here we are!” said Holmes cheerily as we filed into the room. “The
+fire looks very seasonable in this weather. You look cold, Mr. Ryder.
+Pray take the basket-chair. I will just put on my slippers before we
+settle this little matter of yours. Now, then! You want to know what
+became of those geese?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Or rather, I fancy, of that goose. It was one bird, I imagine in which
+you were interested—white, with a black bar across the tail.”
+
+Ryder quivered with emotion. “Oh, sir,” he cried, “can you tell me
+where it went to?”
+
+“It came here.”
+
+“Here?”
+
+“Yes, and a most remarkable bird it proved. I don’t wonder that you
+should take an interest in it. It laid an egg after it was dead—the
+bonniest, brightest little blue egg that ever was seen. I have it here
+in my museum.”
+
+Our visitor staggered to his feet and clutched the mantelpiece with his
+right hand. Holmes unlocked his strong-box and held up the blue
+carbuncle, which shone out like a star, with a cold, brilliant,
+many-pointed radiance. Ryder stood glaring with a drawn face, uncertain
+whether to claim or to disown it.
+
+“The game’s up, Ryder,” said Holmes quietly. “Hold up, man, or you’ll
+be into the fire! Give him an arm back into his chair, Watson. He’s not
+got blood enough to go in for felony with impunity. Give him a dash of
+brandy. So! Now he looks a little more human. What a shrimp it is, to
+be sure!”
+
+For a moment he had staggered and nearly fallen, but the brandy brought
+a tinge of colour into his cheeks, and he sat staring with frightened
+eyes at his accuser.
+
+“I have almost every link in my hands, and all the proofs which I could
+possibly need, so there is little which you need tell me. Still, that
+little may as well be cleared up to make the case complete. You had
+heard, Ryder, of this blue stone of the Countess of Morcar’s?”
+
+“It was Catherine Cusack who told me of it,” said he in a crackling
+voice.
+
+“I see—her ladyship’s waiting-maid. Well, the temptation of sudden
+wealth so easily acquired was too much for you, as it has been for
+better men before you; but you were not very scrupulous in the means
+you used. It seems to me, Ryder, that there is the making of a very
+pretty villain in you. You knew that this man Horner, the plumber, had
+been concerned in some such matter before, and that suspicion would
+rest the more readily upon him. What did you do, then? You made some
+small job in my lady’s room—you and your confederate Cusack—and you
+managed that he should be the man sent for. Then, when he had left, you
+rifled the jewel-case, raised the alarm, and had this unfortunate man
+arrested. You then—”
+
+Ryder threw himself down suddenly upon the rug and clutched at my
+companion’s knees. “For God’s sake, have mercy!” he shrieked. “Think of
+my father! Of my mother! It would break their hearts. I never went
+wrong before! I never will again. I swear it. I’ll swear it on a Bible.
+Oh, don’t bring it into court! For Christ’s sake, don’t!”
+
+“Get back into your chair!” said Holmes sternly. “It is very well to
+cringe and crawl now, but you thought little enough of this poor Horner
+in the dock for a crime of which he knew nothing.”
+
+“I will fly, Mr. Holmes. I will leave the country, sir. Then the charge
+against him will break down.”
+
+“Hum! We will talk about that. And now let us hear a true account of
+the next act. How came the stone into the goose, and how came the goose
+into the open market? Tell us the truth, for there lies your only hope
+of safety.”
+
+Ryder passed his tongue over his parched lips. “I will tell you it just
+as it happened, sir,” said he. “When Horner had been arrested, it
+seemed to me that it would be best for me to get away with the stone at
+once, for I did not know at what moment the police might not take it
+into their heads to search me and my room. There was no place about the
+hotel where it would be safe. I went out, as if on some commission, and
+I made for my sister’s house. She had married a man named Oakshott, and
+lived in Brixton Road, where she fattened fowls for the market. All the
+way there every man I met seemed to me to be a policeman or a
+detective; and, for all that it was a cold night, the sweat was pouring
+down my face before I came to the Brixton Road. My sister asked me what
+was the matter, and why I was so pale; but I told her that I had been
+upset by the jewel robbery at the hotel. Then I went into the back yard
+and smoked a pipe and wondered what it would be best to do.
+
+“I had a friend once called Maudsley, who went to the bad, and has just
+been serving his time in Pentonville. One day he had met me, and fell
+into talk about the ways of thieves, and how they could get rid of what
+they stole. I knew that he would be true to me, for I knew one or two
+things about him; so I made up my mind to go right on to Kilburn, where
+he lived, and take him into my confidence. He would show me how to turn
+the stone into money. But how to get to him in safety? I thought of the
+agonies I had gone through in coming from the hotel. I might at any
+moment be seized and searched, and there would be the stone in my
+waistcoat pocket. I was leaning against the wall at the time and
+looking at the geese which were waddling about round my feet, and
+suddenly an idea came into my head which showed me how I could beat the
+best detective that ever lived.
+
+“My sister had told me some weeks before that I might have the pick of
+her geese for a Christmas present, and I knew that she was always as
+good as her word. I would take my goose now, and in it I would carry my
+stone to Kilburn. There was a little shed in the yard, and behind this
+I drove one of the birds—a fine big one, white, with a barred tail. I
+caught it, and prying its bill open, I thrust the stone down its throat
+as far as my finger could reach. The bird gave a gulp, and I felt the
+stone pass along its gullet and down into its crop. But the creature
+flapped and struggled, and out came my sister to know what was the
+matter. As I turned to speak to her the brute broke loose and fluttered
+off among the others.
+
+“‘Whatever were you doing with that bird, Jem?’ says she.
+
+“‘Well,’ said I, ‘you said you’d give me one for Christmas, and I was
+feeling which was the fattest.’
+
+“‘Oh,’ says she, ‘we’ve set yours aside for you—Jem’s bird, we call it.
+It’s the big white one over yonder. There’s twenty-six of them, which
+makes one for you, and one for us, and two dozen for the market.’
+
+“‘Thank you, Maggie,’ says I; ‘but if it is all the same to you, I’d
+rather have that one I was handling just now.’
+
+“‘The other is a good three pound heavier,’ said she, ‘and we fattened
+it expressly for you.’
+
+“‘Never mind. I’ll have the other, and I’ll take it now,’ said I.
+
+“‘Oh, just as you like,’ said she, a little huffed. ‘Which is it you
+want, then?’
+
+“‘That white one with the barred tail, right in the middle of the
+flock.’
+
+“‘Oh, very well. Kill it and take it with you.’
+
+“Well, I did what she said, Mr. Holmes, and I carried the bird all the
+way to Kilburn. I told my pal what I had done, for he was a man that it
+was easy to tell a thing like that to. He laughed until he choked, and
+we got a knife and opened the goose. My heart turned to water, for
+there was no sign of the stone, and I knew that some terrible mistake
+had occurred. I left the bird, rushed back to my sister’s, and hurried
+into the back yard. There was not a bird to be seen there.
+
+“‘Where are they all, Maggie?’ I cried.
+
+“‘Gone to the dealer’s, Jem.’
+
+“‘Which dealer’s?’
+
+“‘Breckinridge, of Covent Garden.’
+
+“‘But was there another with a barred tail?’ I asked, ‘the same as the
+one I chose?’
+
+“‘Yes, Jem; there were two barred-tailed ones, and I could never tell
+them apart.’
+
+“Well, then, of course I saw it all, and I ran off as hard as my feet
+would carry me to this man Breckinridge; but he had sold the lot at
+once, and not one word would he tell me as to where they had gone. You
+heard him yourselves to-night. Well, he has always answered me like
+that. My sister thinks that I am going mad. Sometimes I think that I am
+myself. And now—and now I am myself a branded thief, without ever
+having touched the wealth for which I sold my character. God help me!
+God help me!” He burst into convulsive sobbing, with his face buried in
+his hands.
+
+There was a long silence, broken only by his heavy breathing and by the
+measured tapping of Sherlock Holmes’ finger-tips upon the edge of the
+table. Then my friend rose and threw open the door.
+
+“Get out!” said he.
+
+“What, sir! Oh, Heaven bless you!”
+
+“No more words. Get out!”
+
+And no more words were needed. There was a rush, a clatter upon the
+stairs, the bang of a door, and the crisp rattle of running footfalls
+from the street.
+
+“After all, Watson,” said Holmes, reaching up his hand for his clay
+pipe, “I am not retained by the police to supply their deficiencies. If
+Horner were in danger it would be another thing; but this fellow will
+not appear against him, and the case must collapse. I suppose that I am
+commuting a felony, but it is just possible that I am saving a soul.
+This fellow will not go wrong again; he is too terribly frightened.
+Send him to gaol now, and you make him a gaol-bird for life. Besides,
+it is the season of forgiveness. Chance has put in our way a most
+singular and whimsical problem, and its solution is its own reward. If
+you will have the goodness to touch the bell, Doctor, we will begin
+another investigation, in which, also a bird will be the chief
+feature.”
+
+
+
+VIII. THE ADVENTURE OF THE SPECKLED BAND
+
+On glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have
+during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock
+Holmes, I find many tragic, some comic, a large number merely strange,
+but none commonplace; for, working as he did rather for the love of his
+art than for the acquirement of wealth, he refused to associate himself
+with any investigation which did not tend towards the unusual, and even
+the fantastic. Of all these varied cases, however, I cannot recall any
+which presented more singular features than that which was associated
+with the well-known Surrey family of the Roylotts of Stoke Moran. The
+events in question occurred in the early days of my association with
+Holmes, when we were sharing rooms as bachelors in Baker Street. It is
+possible that I might have placed them upon record before, but a
+promise of secrecy was made at the time, from which I have only been
+freed during the last month by the untimely death of the lady to whom
+the pledge was given. It is perhaps as well that the facts should now
+come to light, for I have reasons to know that there are widespread
+rumours as to the death of Dr. Grimesby Roylott which tend to make the
+matter even more terrible than the truth.
+
+It was early in April in the year ’83 that I woke one morning to find
+Sherlock Holmes standing, fully dressed, by the side of my bed. He was
+a late riser, as a rule, and as the clock on the mantelpiece showed me
+that it was only a quarter-past seven, I blinked up at him in some
+surprise, and perhaps just a little resentment, for I was myself
+regular in my habits.
+
+“Very sorry to knock you up, Watson,” said he, “but it’s the common lot
+this morning. Mrs. Hudson has been knocked up, she retorted upon me,
+and I on you.”
+
+“What is it, then—a fire?”
+
+“No; a client. It seems that a young lady has arrived in a considerable
+state of excitement, who insists upon seeing me. She is waiting now in
+the sitting-room. Now, when young ladies wander about the metropolis at
+this hour of the morning, and knock sleepy people up out of their beds,
+I presume that it is something very pressing which they have to
+communicate. Should it prove to be an interesting case, you would, I am
+sure, wish to follow it from the outset. I thought, at any rate, that I
+should call you and give you the chance.”
+
+“My dear fellow, I would not miss it for anything.”
+
+I had no keener pleasure than in following Holmes in his professional
+investigations, and in admiring the rapid deductions, as swift as
+intuitions, and yet always founded on a logical basis with which he
+unravelled the problems which were submitted to him. I rapidly threw on
+my clothes and was ready in a few minutes to accompany my friend down
+to the sitting-room. A lady dressed in black and heavily veiled, who
+had been sitting in the window, rose as we entered.
+
+“Good-morning, madam,” said Holmes cheerily. “My name is Sherlock
+Holmes. This is my intimate friend and associate, Dr. Watson, before
+whom you can speak as freely as before myself. Ha! I am glad to see
+that Mrs. Hudson has had the good sense to light the fire. Pray draw up
+to it, and I shall order you a cup of hot coffee, for I observe that
+you are shivering.”
+
+“It is not cold which makes me shiver,” said the woman in a low voice,
+changing her seat as requested.
+
+“What, then?”
+
+“It is fear, Mr. Holmes. It is terror.” She raised her veil as she
+spoke, and we could see that she was indeed in a pitiable state of
+agitation, her face all drawn and grey, with restless frightened eyes,
+like those of some hunted animal. Her features and figure were those of
+a woman of thirty, but her hair was shot with premature grey, and her
+expression was weary and haggard. Sherlock Holmes ran her over with one
+of his quick, all-comprehensive glances.
+
+“You must not fear,” said he soothingly, bending forward and patting
+her forearm. “We shall soon set matters right, I have no doubt. You
+have come in by train this morning, I see.”
+
+“You know me, then?”
+
+“No, but I observe the second half of a return ticket in the palm of
+your left glove. You must have started early, and yet you had a good
+drive in a dog-cart, along heavy roads, before you reached the
+station.”
+
+The lady gave a violent start and stared in bewilderment at my
+companion.
+
+“There is no mystery, my dear madam,” said he, smiling. “The left arm
+of your jacket is spattered with mud in no less than seven places. The
+marks are perfectly fresh. There is no vehicle save a dog-cart which
+throws up mud in that way, and then only when you sit on the left-hand
+side of the driver.”
+
+“Whatever your reasons may be, you are perfectly correct,” said she. “I
+started from home before six, reached Leatherhead at twenty past, and
+came in by the first train to Waterloo. Sir, I can stand this strain no
+longer; I shall go mad if it continues. I have no one to turn to—none,
+save only one, who cares for me, and he, poor fellow, can be of little
+aid. I have heard of you, Mr. Holmes; I have heard of you from Mrs.
+Farintosh, whom you helped in the hour of her sore need. It was from
+her that I had your address. Oh, sir, do you not think that you could
+help me, too, and at least throw a little light through the dense
+darkness which surrounds me? At present it is out of my power to reward
+you for your services, but in a month or six weeks I shall be married,
+with the control of my own income, and then at least you shall not find
+me ungrateful.”
+
+Holmes turned to his desk and, unlocking it, drew out a small
+case-book, which he consulted.
+
+“Farintosh,” said he. “Ah yes, I recall the case; it was concerned with
+an opal tiara. I think it was before your time, Watson. I can only say,
+madam, that I shall be happy to devote the same care to your case as I
+did to that of your friend. As to reward, my profession is its own
+reward; but you are at liberty to defray whatever expenses I may be put
+to, at the time which suits you best. And now I beg that you will lay
+before us everything that may help us in forming an opinion upon the
+matter.”
+
+“Alas!” replied our visitor, “the very horror of my situation lies in
+the fact that my fears are so vague, and my suspicions depend so
+entirely upon small points, which might seem trivial to another, that
+even he to whom of all others I have a right to look for help and
+advice looks upon all that I tell him about it as the fancies of a
+nervous woman. He does not say so, but I can read it from his soothing
+answers and averted eyes. But I have heard, Mr. Holmes, that you can
+see deeply into the manifold wickedness of the human heart. You may
+advise me how to walk amid the dangers which encompass me.”
+
+“I am all attention, madam.”
+
+“My name is Helen Stoner, and I am living with my stepfather, who is
+the last survivor of one of the oldest Saxon families in England, the
+Roylotts of Stoke Moran, on the western border of Surrey.”
+
+Holmes nodded his head. “The name is familiar to me,” said he.
+
+“The family was at one time among the richest in England, and the
+estates extended over the borders into Berkshire in the north, and
+Hampshire in the west. In the last century, however, four successive
+heirs were of a dissolute and wasteful disposition, and the family ruin
+was eventually completed by a gambler in the days of the Regency.
+Nothing was left save a few acres of ground, and the
+two-hundred-year-old house, which is itself crushed under a heavy
+mortgage. The last squire dragged out his existence there, living the
+horrible life of an aristocratic pauper; but his only son, my
+stepfather, seeing that he must adapt himself to the new conditions,
+obtained an advance from a relative, which enabled him to take a
+medical degree and went out to Calcutta, where, by his professional
+skill and his force of character, he established a large practice. In a
+fit of anger, however, caused by some robberies which had been
+perpetrated in the house, he beat his native butler to death and
+narrowly escaped a capital sentence. As it was, he suffered a long term
+of imprisonment and afterwards returned to England a morose and
+disappointed man.
+
+“When Dr. Roylott was in India he married my mother, Mrs. Stoner, the
+young widow of Major-General Stoner, of the Bengal Artillery. My sister
+Julia and I were twins, and we were only two years old at the time of
+my mother’s re-marriage. She had a considerable sum of money—not less
+than £ 1000 a year—and this she bequeathed to Dr. Roylott entirely
+while we resided with him, with a provision that a certain annual sum
+should be allowed to each of us in the event of our marriage. Shortly
+after our return to England my mother died—she was killed eight years
+ago in a railway accident near Crewe. Dr. Roylott then abandoned his
+attempts to establish himself in practice in London and took us to live
+with him in the old ancestral house at Stoke Moran. The money which my
+mother had left was enough for all our wants, and there seemed to be no
+obstacle to our happiness.
+
+“But a terrible change came over our stepfather about this time.
+Instead of making friends and exchanging visits with our neighbours,
+who had at first been overjoyed to see a Roylott of Stoke Moran back in
+the old family seat, he shut himself up in his house and seldom came
+out save to indulge in ferocious quarrels with whoever might cross his
+path. Violence of temper approaching to mania has been hereditary in
+the men of the family, and in my stepfather’s case it had, I believe,
+been intensified by his long residence in the tropics. A series of
+disgraceful brawls took place, two of which ended in the police-court,
+until at last he became the terror of the village, and the folks would
+fly at his approach, for he is a man of immense strength, and
+absolutely uncontrollable in his anger.
+
+“Last week he hurled the local blacksmith over a parapet into a stream,
+and it was only by paying over all the money which I could gather
+together that I was able to avert another public exposure. He had no
+friends at all save the wandering gipsies, and he would give these
+vagabonds leave to encamp upon the few acres of bramble-covered land
+which represent the family estate, and would accept in return the
+hospitality of their tents, wandering away with them sometimes for
+weeks on end. He has a passion also for Indian animals, which are sent
+over to him by a correspondent, and he has at this moment a cheetah and
+a baboon, which wander freely over his grounds and are feared by the
+villagers almost as much as their master.
+
+“You can imagine from what I say that my poor sister Julia and I had no
+great pleasure in our lives. No servant would stay with us, and for a
+long time we did all the work of the house. She was but thirty at the
+time of her death, and yet her hair had already begun to whiten, even
+as mine has.”
+
+“Your sister is dead, then?”
+
+“She died just two years ago, and it is of her death that I wish to
+speak to you. You can understand that, living the life which I have
+described, we were little likely to see anyone of our own age and
+position. We had, however, an aunt, my mother’s maiden sister, Miss
+Honoria Westphail, who lives near Harrow, and we were occasionally
+allowed to pay short visits at this lady’s house. Julia went there at
+Christmas two years ago, and met there a half-pay major of marines, to
+whom she became engaged. My stepfather learned of the engagement when
+my sister returned and offered no objection to the marriage; but within
+a fortnight of the day which had been fixed for the wedding, the
+terrible event occurred which has deprived me of my only companion.”
+
+Sherlock Holmes had been leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed
+and his head sunk in a cushion, but he half opened his lids now and
+glanced across at his visitor.
+
+“Pray be precise as to details,” said he.
+
+“It is easy for me to be so, for every event of that dreadful time is
+seared into my memory. The manor-house is, as I have already said, very
+old, and only one wing is now inhabited. The bedrooms in this wing are
+on the ground floor, the sitting-rooms being in the central block of
+the buildings. Of these bedrooms the first is Dr. Roylott’s, the second
+my sister’s, and the third my own. There is no communication between
+them, but they all open out into the same corridor. Do I make myself
+plain?”
+
+“Perfectly so.”
+
+“The windows of the three rooms open out upon the lawn. That fatal
+night Dr. Roylott had gone to his room early, though we knew that he
+had not retired to rest, for my sister was troubled by the smell of the
+strong Indian cigars which it was his custom to smoke. She left her
+room, therefore, and came into mine, where she sat for some time,
+chatting about her approaching wedding. At eleven o’clock she rose to
+leave me, but she paused at the door and looked back.
+
+“‘Tell me, Helen,’ said she, ‘have you ever heard anyone whistle in the
+dead of the night?’
+
+“‘Never,’ said I.
+
+“‘I suppose that you could not possibly whistle, yourself, in your
+sleep?’
+
+“‘Certainly not. But why?’
+
+“‘Because during the last few nights I have always, about three in the
+morning, heard a low, clear whistle. I am a light sleeper, and it has
+awakened me. I cannot tell where it came from—perhaps from the next
+room, perhaps from the lawn. I thought that I would just ask you
+whether you had heard it.’
+
+“‘No, I have not. It must be those wretched gipsies in the plantation.’
+
+“‘Very likely. And yet if it were on the lawn, I wonder that you did
+not hear it also.’
+
+“‘Ah, but I sleep more heavily than you.’
+
+“‘Well, it is of no great consequence, at any rate.’ She smiled back at
+me, closed my door, and a few moments later I heard her key turn in the
+lock.”
+
+“Indeed,” said Holmes. “Was it your custom always to lock yourselves in
+at night?”
+
+“Always.”
+
+“And why?”
+
+“I think that I mentioned to you that the Doctor kept a cheetah and a
+baboon. We had no feeling of security unless our doors were locked.”
+
+“Quite so. Pray proceed with your statement.”
+
+“I could not sleep that night. A vague feeling of impending misfortune
+impressed me. My sister and I, you will recollect, were twins, and you
+know how subtle are the links which bind two souls which are so closely
+allied. It was a wild night. The wind was howling outside, and the rain
+was beating and splashing against the windows. Suddenly, amid all the
+hubbub of the gale, there burst forth the wild scream of a terrified
+woman. I knew that it was my sister’s voice. I sprang from my bed,
+wrapped a shawl round me, and rushed into the corridor. As I opened my
+door I seemed to hear a low whistle, such as my sister described, and a
+few moments later a clanging sound, as if a mass of metal had fallen.
+As I ran down the passage, my sister’s door was unlocked, and revolved
+slowly upon its hinges. I stared at it horror-stricken, not knowing
+what was about to issue from it. By the light of the corridor-lamp I
+saw my sister appear at the opening, her face blanched with terror, her
+hands groping for help, her whole figure swaying to and fro like that
+of a drunkard. I ran to her and threw my arms round her, but at that
+moment her knees seemed to give way and she fell to the ground. She
+writhed as one who is in terrible pain, and her limbs were dreadfully
+convulsed. At first I thought that she had not recognised me, but as I
+bent over her she suddenly shrieked out in a voice which I shall never
+forget, ‘Oh, my God! Helen! It was the band! The speckled band!’ There
+was something else which she would fain have said, and she stabbed with
+her finger into the air in the direction of the Doctor’s room, but a
+fresh convulsion seized her and choked her words. I rushed out, calling
+loudly for my stepfather, and I met him hastening from his room in his
+dressing-gown. When he reached my sister’s side she was unconscious,
+and though he poured brandy down her throat and sent for medical aid
+from the village, all efforts were in vain, for she slowly sank and
+died without having recovered her consciousness. Such was the dreadful
+end of my beloved sister.”
+
+“One moment,” said Holmes, “are you sure about this whistle and
+metallic sound? Could you swear to it?”
+
+“That was what the county coroner asked me at the inquiry. It is my
+strong impression that I heard it, and yet, among the crash of the gale
+and the creaking of an old house, I may possibly have been deceived.”
+
+“Was your sister dressed?”
+
+“No, she was in her night-dress. In her right hand was found the
+charred stump of a match, and in her left a match-box.”
+
+“Showing that she had struck a light and looked about her when the
+alarm took place. That is important. And what conclusions did the
+coroner come to?”
+
+“He investigated the case with great care, for Dr. Roylott’s conduct
+had long been notorious in the county, but he was unable to find any
+satisfactory cause of death. My evidence showed that the door had been
+fastened upon the inner side, and the windows were blocked by
+old-fashioned shutters with broad iron bars, which were secured every
+night. The walls were carefully sounded, and were shown to be quite
+solid all round, and the flooring was also thoroughly examined, with
+the same result. The chimney is wide, but is barred up by four large
+staples. It is certain, therefore, that my sister was quite alone when
+she met her end. Besides, there were no marks of any violence upon
+her.”
+
+“How about poison?”
+
+“The doctors examined her for it, but without success.”
+
+“What do you think that this unfortunate lady died of, then?”
+
+“It is my belief that she died of pure fear and nervous shock, though
+what it was that frightened her I cannot imagine.”
+
+“Were there gipsies in the plantation at the time?”
+
+“Yes, there are nearly always some there.”
+
+“Ah, and what did you gather from this allusion to a band—a speckled
+band?”
+
+“Sometimes I have thought that it was merely the wild talk of delirium,
+sometimes that it may have referred to some band of people, perhaps to
+these very gipsies in the plantation. I do not know whether the spotted
+handkerchiefs which so many of them wear over their heads might have
+suggested the strange adjective which she used.”
+
+Holmes shook his head like a man who is far from being satisfied.
+
+“These are very deep waters,” said he; “pray go on with your
+narrative.”
+
+“Two years have passed since then, and my life has been until lately
+lonelier than ever. A month ago, however, a dear friend, whom I have
+known for many years, has done me the honour to ask my hand in
+marriage. His name is Armitage—Percy Armitage—the second son of Mr.
+Armitage, of Crane Water, near Reading. My stepfather has offered no
+opposition to the match, and we are to be married in the course of the
+spring. Two days ago some repairs were started in the west wing of the
+building, and my bedroom wall has been pierced, so that I have had to
+move into the chamber in which my sister died, and to sleep in the very
+bed in which she slept. Imagine, then, my thrill of terror when last
+night, as I lay awake, thinking over her terrible fate, I suddenly
+heard in the silence of the night the low whistle which had been the
+herald of her own death. I sprang up and lit the lamp, but nothing was
+to be seen in the room. I was too shaken to go to bed again, however,
+so I dressed, and as soon as it was daylight I slipped down, got a
+dog-cart at the Crown Inn, which is opposite, and drove to Leatherhead,
+from whence I have come on this morning with the one object of seeing
+you and asking your advice.”
+
+“You have done wisely,” said my friend. “But have you told me all?”
+
+“Yes, all.”
+
+“Miss Roylott, you have not. You are screening your stepfather.”
+
+“Why, what do you mean?”
+
+For answer Holmes pushed back the frill of black lace which fringed the
+hand that lay upon our visitor’s knee. Five little livid spots, the
+marks of four fingers and a thumb, were printed upon the white wrist.
+
+“You have been cruelly used,” said Holmes.
+
+The lady coloured deeply and covered over her injured wrist. “He is a
+hard man,” she said, “and perhaps he hardly knows his own strength.”
+
+There was a long silence, during which Holmes leaned his chin upon his
+hands and stared into the crackling fire.
+
+“This is a very deep business,” he said at last. “There are a thousand
+details which I should desire to know before I decide upon our course
+of action. Yet we have not a moment to lose. If we were to come to
+Stoke Moran to-day, would it be possible for us to see over these rooms
+without the knowledge of your stepfather?”
+
+“As it happens, he spoke of coming into town to-day upon some most
+important business. It is probable that he will be away all day, and
+that there would be nothing to disturb you. We have a housekeeper now,
+but she is old and foolish, and I could easily get her out of the way.”
+
+“Excellent. You are not averse to this trip, Watson?”
+
+“By no means.”
+
+“Then we shall both come. What are you going to do yourself?”
+
+“I have one or two things which I would wish to do now that I am in
+town. But I shall return by the twelve o’clock train, so as to be there
+in time for your coming.”
+
+“And you may expect us early in the afternoon. I have myself some small
+business matters to attend to. Will you not wait and breakfast?”
+
+“No, I must go. My heart is lightened already since I have confided my
+trouble to you. I shall look forward to seeing you again this
+afternoon.” She dropped her thick black veil over her face and glided
+from the room.
+
+“And what do you think of it all, Watson?” asked Sherlock Holmes,
+leaning back in his chair.
+
+“It seems to me to be a most dark and sinister business.”
+
+“Dark enough and sinister enough.”
+
+“Yet if the lady is correct in saying that the flooring and walls are
+sound, and that the door, window, and chimney are impassable, then her
+sister must have been undoubtedly alone when she met her mysterious
+end.”
+
+“What becomes, then, of these nocturnal whistles, and what of the very
+peculiar words of the dying woman?”
+
+“I cannot think.”
+
+“When you combine the ideas of whistles at night, the presence of a
+band of gipsies who are on intimate terms with this old doctor, the
+fact that we have every reason to believe that the doctor has an
+interest in preventing his stepdaughter’s marriage, the dying allusion
+to a band, and, finally, the fact that Miss Helen Stoner heard a
+metallic clang, which might have been caused by one of those metal bars
+that secured the shutters falling back into its place, I think that
+there is good ground to think that the mystery may be cleared along
+those lines.”
+
+“But what, then, did the gipsies do?”
+
+“I cannot imagine.”
+
+“I see many objections to any such theory.”
+
+“And so do I. It is precisely for that reason that we are going to
+Stoke Moran this day. I want to see whether the objections are fatal,
+or if they may be explained away. But what in the name of the devil!”
+
+The ejaculation had been drawn from my companion by the fact that our
+door had been suddenly dashed open, and that a huge man had framed
+himself in the aperture. His costume was a peculiar mixture of the
+professional and of the agricultural, having a black top-hat, a long
+frock-coat, and a pair of high gaiters, with a hunting-crop swinging in
+his hand. So tall was he that his hat actually brushed the cross bar of
+the doorway, and his breadth seemed to span it across from side to
+side. A large face, seared with a thousand wrinkles, burned yellow with
+the sun, and marked with every evil passion, was turned from one to the
+other of us, while his deep-set, bile-shot eyes, and his high, thin,
+fleshless nose, gave him somewhat the resemblance to a fierce old bird
+of prey.
+
+“Which of you is Holmes?” asked this apparition.
+
+“My name, sir; but you have the advantage of me,” said my companion
+quietly.
+
+“I am Dr. Grimesby Roylott, of Stoke Moran.”
+
+“Indeed, Doctor,” said Holmes blandly. “Pray take a seat.”
+
+“I will do nothing of the kind. My stepdaughter has been here. I have
+traced her. What has she been saying to you?”
+
+“It is a little cold for the time of the year,” said Holmes.
+
+“What has she been saying to you?” screamed the old man furiously.
+
+“But I have heard that the crocuses promise well,” continued my
+companion imperturbably.
+
+“Ha! You put me off, do you?” said our new visitor, taking a step
+forward and shaking his hunting-crop. “I know you, you scoundrel! I
+have heard of you before. You are Holmes, the meddler.”
+
+My friend smiled.
+
+“Holmes, the busybody!”
+
+His smile broadened.
+
+“Holmes, the Scotland Yard Jack-in-office!”
+
+Holmes chuckled heartily. “Your conversation is most entertaining,”
+said he. “When you go out close the door, for there is a decided
+draught.”
+
+“I will go when I have had my say. Don’t you dare to meddle with my
+affairs. I know that Miss Stoner has been here. I traced her! I am a
+dangerous man to fall foul of! See here.” He stepped swiftly forward,
+seized the poker, and bent it into a curve with his huge brown hands.
+
+“See that you keep yourself out of my grip,” he snarled, and hurling
+the twisted poker into the fireplace he strode out of the room.
+
+“He seems a very amiable person,” said Holmes, laughing. “I am not
+quite so bulky, but if he had remained I might have shown him that my
+grip was not much more feeble than his own.” As he spoke he picked up
+the steel poker and, with a sudden effort, straightened it out again.
+
+“Fancy his having the insolence to confound me with the official
+detective force! This incident gives zest to our investigation,
+however, and I only trust that our little friend will not suffer from
+her imprudence in allowing this brute to trace her. And now, Watson, we
+shall order breakfast, and afterwards I shall walk down to Doctors’
+Commons, where I hope to get some data which may help us in this
+matter.”
+
+It was nearly one o’clock when Sherlock Holmes returned from his
+excursion. He held in his hand a sheet of blue paper, scrawled over
+with notes and figures.
+
+“I have seen the will of the deceased wife,” said he. “To determine its
+exact meaning I have been obliged to work out the present prices of the
+investments with which it is concerned. The total income, which at the
+time of the wife’s death was little short of £ 1,100, is now, through
+the fall in agricultural prices, not more than £ 750. Each daughter can
+claim an income of £ 250, in case of marriage. It is evident,
+therefore, that if both girls had married, this beauty would have had a
+mere pittance, while even one of them would cripple him to a very
+serious extent. My morning’s work has not been wasted, since it has
+proved that he has the very strongest motives for standing in the way
+of anything of the sort. And now, Watson, this is too serious for
+dawdling, especially as the old man is aware that we are interesting
+ourselves in his affairs; so if you are ready, we shall call a cab and
+drive to Waterloo. I should be very much obliged if you would slip your
+revolver into your pocket. An Eley’s No. 2 is an excellent argument
+with gentlemen who can twist steel pokers into knots. That and a
+tooth-brush are, I think, all that we need.”
+
+At Waterloo we were fortunate in catching a train for Leatherhead,
+where we hired a trap at the station inn and drove for four or five
+miles through the lovely Surrey lanes. It was a perfect day, with a
+bright sun and a few fleecy clouds in the heavens. The trees and
+wayside hedges were just throwing out their first green shoots, and the
+air was full of the pleasant smell of the moist earth. To me at least
+there was a strange contrast between the sweet promise of the spring
+and this sinister quest upon which we were engaged. My companion sat in
+the front of the trap, his arms folded, his hat pulled down over his
+eyes, and his chin sunk upon his breast, buried in the deepest thought.
+Suddenly, however, he started, tapped me on the shoulder, and pointed
+over the meadows.
+
+“Look there!” said he.
+
+A heavily timbered park stretched up in a gentle slope, thickening into
+a grove at the highest point. From amid the branches there jutted out
+the grey gables and high roof-tree of a very old mansion.
+
+“Stoke Moran?” said he.
+
+“Yes, sir, that be the house of Dr. Grimesby Roylott,” remarked the
+driver.
+
+“There is some building going on there,” said Holmes; “that is where we
+are going.”
+
+“There’s the village,” said the driver, pointing to a cluster of roofs
+some distance to the left; “but if you want to get to the house, you’ll
+find it shorter to get over this stile, and so by the footpath over the
+fields. There it is, where the lady is walking.”
+
+“And the lady, I fancy, is Miss Stoner,” observed Holmes, shading his
+eyes. “Yes, I think we had better do as you suggest.”
+
+We got off, paid our fare, and the trap rattled back on its way to
+Leatherhead.
+
+“I thought it as well,” said Holmes as we climbed the stile, “that this
+fellow should think we had come here as architects, or on some definite
+business. It may stop his gossip. Good-afternoon, Miss Stoner. You see
+that we have been as good as our word.”
+
+Our client of the morning had hurried forward to meet us with a face
+which spoke her joy. “I have been waiting so eagerly for you,” she
+cried, shaking hands with us warmly. “All has turned out splendidly.
+Dr. Roylott has gone to town, and it is unlikely that he will be back
+before evening.”
+
+“We have had the pleasure of making the Doctor’s acquaintance,” said
+Holmes, and in a few words he sketched out what had occurred. Miss
+Stoner turned white to the lips as she listened.
+
+“Good heavens!” she cried, “he has followed me, then.”
+
+“So it appears.”
+
+“He is so cunning that I never know when I am safe from him. What will
+he say when he returns?”
+
+“He must guard himself, for he may find that there is someone more
+cunning than himself upon his track. You must lock yourself up from him
+to-night. If he is violent, we shall take you away to your aunt’s at
+Harrow. Now, we must make the best use of our time, so kindly take us
+at once to the rooms which we are to examine.”
+
+The building was of grey, lichen-blotched stone, with a high central
+portion and two curving wings, like the claws of a crab, thrown out on
+each side. In one of these wings the windows were broken and blocked
+with wooden boards, while the roof was partly caved in, a picture of
+ruin. The central portion was in little better repair, but the
+right-hand block was comparatively modern, and the blinds in the
+windows, with the blue smoke curling up from the chimneys, showed that
+this was where the family resided. Some scaffolding had been erected
+against the end wall, and the stone-work had been broken into, but
+there were no signs of any workmen at the moment of our visit. Holmes
+walked slowly up and down the ill-trimmed lawn and examined with deep
+attention the outsides of the windows.
+
+“This, I take it, belongs to the room in which you used to sleep, the
+centre one to your sister’s, and the one next to the main building to
+Dr. Roylott’s chamber?”
+
+“Exactly so. But I am now sleeping in the middle one.”
+
+“Pending the alterations, as I understand. By the way, there does not
+seem to be any very pressing need for repairs at that end wall.”
+
+“There were none. I believe that it was an excuse to move me from my
+room.”
+
+“Ah! that is suggestive. Now, on the other side of this narrow wing
+runs the corridor from which these three rooms open. There are windows
+in it, of course?”
+
+“Yes, but very small ones. Too narrow for anyone to pass through.”
+
+“As you both locked your doors at night, your rooms were unapproachable
+from that side. Now, would you have the kindness to go into your room
+and bar your shutters?”
+
+Miss Stoner did so, and Holmes, after a careful examination through the
+open window, endeavoured in every way to force the shutter open, but
+without success. There was no slit through which a knife could be
+passed to raise the bar. Then with his lens he tested the hinges, but
+they were of solid iron, built firmly into the massive masonry. “Hum!”
+said he, scratching his chin in some perplexity, “my theory certainly
+presents some difficulties. No one could pass these shutters if they
+were bolted. Well, we shall see if the inside throws any light upon the
+matter.”
+
+A small side door led into the whitewashed corridor from which the
+three bedrooms opened. Holmes refused to examine the third chamber, so
+we passed at once to the second, that in which Miss Stoner was now
+sleeping, and in which her sister had met with her fate. It was a
+homely little room, with a low ceiling and a gaping fireplace, after
+the fashion of old country-houses. A brown chest of drawers stood in
+one corner, a narrow white-counterpaned bed in another, and a
+dressing-table on the left-hand side of the window. These articles,
+with two small wicker-work chairs, made up all the furniture in the
+room save for a square of Wilton carpet in the centre. The boards round
+and the panelling of the walls were of brown, worm-eaten oak, so old
+and discoloured that it may have dated from the original building of
+the house. Holmes drew one of the chairs into a corner and sat silent,
+while his eyes travelled round and round and up and down, taking in
+every detail of the apartment.
+
+“Where does that bell communicate with?” he asked at last pointing to a
+thick bell-rope which hung down beside the bed, the tassel actually
+lying upon the pillow.
+
+“It goes to the housekeeper’s room.”
+
+“It looks newer than the other things?”
+
+“Yes, it was only put there a couple of years ago.”
+
+“Your sister asked for it, I suppose?”
+
+“No, I never heard of her using it. We used always to get what we
+wanted for ourselves.”
+
+“Indeed, it seemed unnecessary to put so nice a bell-pull there. You
+will excuse me for a few minutes while I satisfy myself as to this
+floor.” He threw himself down upon his face with his lens in his hand
+and crawled swiftly backward and forward, examining minutely the cracks
+between the boards. Then he did the same with the wood-work with which
+the chamber was panelled. Finally he walked over to the bed and spent
+some time in staring at it and in running his eye up and down the wall.
+Finally he took the bell-rope in his hand and gave it a brisk tug.
+
+“Why, it’s a dummy,” said he.
+
+“Won’t it ring?”
+
+“No, it is not even attached to a wire. This is very interesting. You
+can see now that it is fastened to a hook just above where the little
+opening for the ventilator is.”
+
+“How very absurd! I never noticed that before.”
+
+“Very strange!” muttered Holmes, pulling at the rope. “There are one or
+two very singular points about this room. For example, what a fool a
+builder must be to open a ventilator into another room, when, with the
+same trouble, he might have communicated with the outside air!”
+
+“That is also quite modern,” said the lady.
+
+“Done about the same time as the bell-rope?” remarked Holmes.
+
+“Yes, there were several little changes carried out about that time.”
+
+“They seem to have been of a most interesting character—dummy
+bell-ropes, and ventilators which do not ventilate. With your
+permission, Miss Stoner, we shall now carry our researches into the
+inner apartment.”
+
+Dr. Grimesby Roylott’s chamber was larger than that of his
+step-daughter, but was as plainly furnished. A camp-bed, a small wooden
+shelf full of books, mostly of a technical character, an armchair
+beside the bed, a plain wooden chair against the wall, a round table,
+and a large iron safe were the principal things which met the eye.
+Holmes walked slowly round and examined each and all of them with the
+keenest interest.
+
+“What’s in here?” he asked, tapping the safe.
+
+“My stepfather’s business papers.”
+
+“Oh! you have seen inside, then?”
+
+“Only once, some years ago. I remember that it was full of papers.”
+
+“There isn’t a cat in it, for example?”
+
+“No. What a strange idea!”
+
+“Well, look at this!” He took up a small saucer of milk which stood on
+the top of it.
+
+“No; we don’t keep a cat. But there is a cheetah and a baboon.”
+
+“Ah, yes, of course! Well, a cheetah is just a big cat, and yet a
+saucer of milk does not go very far in satisfying its wants, I daresay.
+There is one point which I should wish to determine.” He squatted down
+in front of the wooden chair and examined the seat of it with the
+greatest attention.
+
+“Thank you. That is quite settled,” said he, rising and putting his
+lens in his pocket. “Hullo! Here is something interesting!”
+
+The object which had caught his eye was a small dog lash hung on one
+corner of the bed. The lash, however, was curled upon itself and tied
+so as to make a loop of whipcord.
+
+“What do you make of that, Watson?”
+
+“It’s a common enough lash. But I don’t know why it should be tied.”
+
+“That is not quite so common, is it? Ah, me! it’s a wicked world, and
+when a clever man turns his brains to crime it is the worst of all. I
+think that I have seen enough now, Miss Stoner, and with your
+permission we shall walk out upon the lawn.”
+
+I had never seen my friend’s face so grim or his brow so dark as it was
+when we turned from the scene of this investigation. We had walked
+several times up and down the lawn, neither Miss Stoner nor myself
+liking to break in upon his thoughts before he roused himself from his
+reverie.
+
+“It is very essential, Miss Stoner,” said he, “that you should
+absolutely follow my advice in every respect.”
+
+“I shall most certainly do so.”
+
+“The matter is too serious for any hesitation. Your life may depend
+upon your compliance.”
+
+“I assure you that I am in your hands.”
+
+“In the first place, both my friend and I must spend the night in your
+room.”
+
+Both Miss Stoner and I gazed at him in astonishment.
+
+“Yes, it must be so. Let me explain. I believe that that is the village
+inn over there?”
+
+“Yes, that is the Crown.”
+
+“Very good. Your windows would be visible from there?”
+
+“Certainly.”
+
+“You must confine yourself to your room, on pretence of a headache,
+when your stepfather comes back. Then when you hear him retire for the
+night, you must open the shutters of your window, undo the hasp, put
+your lamp there as a signal to us, and then withdraw quietly with
+everything which you are likely to want into the room which you used to
+occupy. I have no doubt that, in spite of the repairs, you could manage
+there for one night.”
+
+“Oh, yes, easily.”
+
+“The rest you will leave in our hands.”
+
+“But what will you do?”
+
+“We shall spend the night in your room, and we shall investigate the
+cause of this noise which has disturbed you.”
+
+“I believe, Mr. Holmes, that you have already made up your mind,” said
+Miss Stoner, laying her hand upon my companion’s sleeve.
+
+“Perhaps I have.”
+
+“Then, for pity’s sake, tell me what was the cause of my sister’s
+death.”
+
+“I should prefer to have clearer proofs before I speak.”
+
+“You can at least tell me whether my own thought is correct, and if she
+died from some sudden fright.”
+
+“No, I do not think so. I think that there was probably some more
+tangible cause. And now, Miss Stoner, we must leave you for if Dr.
+Roylott returned and saw us our journey would be in vain. Good-bye, and
+be brave, for if you will do what I have told you, you may rest assured
+that we shall soon drive away the dangers that threaten you.”
+
+Sherlock Holmes and I had no difficulty in engaging a bedroom and
+sitting-room at the Crown Inn. They were on the upper floor, and from
+our window we could command a view of the avenue gate, and of the
+inhabited wing of Stoke Moran Manor House. At dusk we saw Dr. Grimesby
+Roylott drive past, his huge form looming up beside the little figure
+of the lad who drove him. The boy had some slight difficulty in undoing
+the heavy iron gates, and we heard the hoarse roar of the Doctor’s
+voice and saw the fury with which he shook his clinched fists at him.
+The trap drove on, and a few minutes later we saw a sudden light spring
+up among the trees as the lamp was lit in one of the sitting-rooms.
+
+“Do you know, Watson,” said Holmes as we sat together in the gathering
+darkness, “I have really some scruples as to taking you to-night. There
+is a distinct element of danger.”
+
+“Can I be of assistance?”
+
+“Your presence might be invaluable.”
+
+“Then I shall certainly come.”
+
+“It is very kind of you.”
+
+“You speak of danger. You have evidently seen more in these rooms than
+was visible to me.”
+
+“No, but I fancy that I may have deduced a little more. I imagine that
+you saw all that I did.”
+
+“I saw nothing remarkable save the bell-rope, and what purpose that
+could answer I confess is more than I can imagine.”
+
+“You saw the ventilator, too?”
+
+“Yes, but I do not think that it is such a very unusual thing to have a
+small opening between two rooms. It was so small that a rat could
+hardly pass through.”
+
+“I knew that we should find a ventilator before ever we came to Stoke
+Moran.”
+
+“My dear Holmes!”
+
+“Oh, yes, I did. You remember in her statement she said that her sister
+could smell Dr. Roylott’s cigar. Now, of course that suggested at once
+that there must be a communication between the two rooms. It could only
+be a small one, or it would have been remarked upon at the coroner’s
+inquiry. I deduced a ventilator.”
+
+“But what harm can there be in that?”
+
+“Well, there is at least a curious coincidence of dates. A ventilator
+is made, a cord is hung, and a lady who sleeps in the bed dies. Does
+not that strike you?”
+
+“I cannot as yet see any connection.”
+
+“Did you observe anything very peculiar about that bed?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“It was clamped to the floor. Did you ever see a bed fastened like that
+before?”
+
+“I cannot say that I have.”
+
+“The lady could not move her bed. It must always be in the same
+relative position to the ventilator and to the rope—or so we may call
+it, since it was clearly never meant for a bell-pull.”
+
+“Holmes,” I cried, “I seem to see dimly what you are hinting at. We are
+only just in time to prevent some subtle and horrible crime.”
+
+“Subtle enough and horrible enough. When a doctor does go wrong he is
+the first of criminals. He has nerve and he has knowledge. Palmer and
+Pritchard were among the heads of their profession. This man strikes
+even deeper, but I think, Watson, that we shall be able to strike
+deeper still. But we shall have horrors enough before the night is
+over; for goodness’ sake let us have a quiet pipe and turn our minds
+for a few hours to something more cheerful.”
+
+About nine o’clock the light among the trees was extinguished, and all
+was dark in the direction of the Manor House. Two hours passed slowly
+away, and then, suddenly, just at the stroke of eleven, a single bright
+light shone out right in front of us.
+
+“That is our signal,” said Holmes, springing to his feet; “it comes
+from the middle window.”
+
+As we passed out he exchanged a few words with the landlord, explaining
+that we were going on a late visit to an acquaintance, and that it was
+possible that we might spend the night there. A moment later we were
+out on the dark road, a chill wind blowing in our faces, and one yellow
+light twinkling in front of us through the gloom to guide us on our
+sombre errand.
+
+There was little difficulty in entering the grounds, for unrepaired
+breaches gaped in the old park wall. Making our way among the trees, we
+reached the lawn, crossed it, and were about to enter through the
+window when out from a clump of laurel bushes there darted what seemed
+to be a hideous and distorted child, who threw itself upon the grass
+with writhing limbs and then ran swiftly across the lawn into the
+darkness.
+
+“My God!” I whispered; “did you see it?”
+
+Holmes was for the moment as startled as I. His hand closed like a vice
+upon my wrist in his agitation. Then he broke into a low laugh and put
+his lips to my ear.
+
+“It is a nice household,” he murmured. “That is the baboon.”
+
+I had forgotten the strange pets which the Doctor affected. There was a
+cheetah, too; perhaps we might find it upon our shoulders at any
+moment. I confess that I felt easier in my mind when, after following
+Holmes’ example and slipping off my shoes, I found myself inside the
+bedroom. My companion noiselessly closed the shutters, moved the lamp
+onto the table, and cast his eyes round the room. All was as we had
+seen it in the daytime. Then creeping up to me and making a trumpet of
+his hand, he whispered into my ear again so gently that it was all that
+I could do to distinguish the words:
+
+“The least sound would be fatal to our plans.”
+
+I nodded to show that I had heard.
+
+“We must sit without light. He would see it through the ventilator.”
+
+I nodded again.
+
+“Do not go asleep; your very life may depend upon it. Have your pistol
+ready in case we should need it. I will sit on the side of the bed, and
+you in that chair.”
+
+I took out my revolver and laid it on the corner of the table.
+
+Holmes had brought up a long thin cane, and this he placed upon the bed
+beside him. By it he laid the box of matches and the stump of a candle.
+Then he turned down the lamp, and we were left in darkness.
+
+How shall I ever forget that dreadful vigil? I could not hear a sound,
+not even the drawing of a breath, and yet I knew that my companion sat
+open-eyed, within a few feet of me, in the same state of nervous
+tension in which I was myself. The shutters cut off the least ray of
+light, and we waited in absolute darkness.
+
+From outside came the occasional cry of a night-bird, and once at our
+very window a long drawn catlike whine, which told us that the cheetah
+was indeed at liberty. Far away we could hear the deep tones of the
+parish clock, which boomed out every quarter of an hour. How long they
+seemed, those quarters! Twelve struck, and one and two and three, and
+still we sat waiting silently for whatever might befall.
+
+Suddenly there was the momentary gleam of a light up in the direction
+of the ventilator, which vanished immediately, but was succeeded by a
+strong smell of burning oil and heated metal. Someone in the next room
+had lit a dark-lantern. I heard a gentle sound of movement, and then
+all was silent once more, though the smell grew stronger. For half an
+hour I sat with straining ears. Then suddenly another sound became
+audible—a very gentle, soothing sound, like that of a small jet of
+steam escaping continually from a kettle. The instant that we heard it,
+Holmes sprang from the bed, struck a match, and lashed furiously with
+his cane at the bell-pull.
+
+“You see it, Watson?” he yelled. “You see it?”
+
+But I saw nothing. At the moment when Holmes struck the light I heard a
+low, clear whistle, but the sudden glare flashing into my weary eyes
+made it impossible for me to tell what it was at which my friend lashed
+so savagely. I could, however, see that his face was deadly pale and
+filled with horror and loathing. He had ceased to strike and was gazing
+up at the ventilator when suddenly there broke from the silence of the
+night the most horrible cry to which I have ever listened. It swelled
+up louder and louder, a hoarse yell of pain and fear and anger all
+mingled in the one dreadful shriek. They say that away down in the
+village, and even in the distant parsonage, that cry raised the
+sleepers from their beds. It struck cold to our hearts, and I stood
+gazing at Holmes, and he at me, until the last echoes of it had died
+away into the silence from which it rose.
+
+“What can it mean?” I gasped.
+
+“It means that it is all over,” Holmes answered. “And perhaps, after
+all, it is for the best. Take your pistol, and we will enter Dr.
+Roylott’s room.”
+
+With a grave face he lit the lamp and led the way down the corridor.
+Twice he struck at the chamber door without any reply from within. Then
+he turned the handle and entered, I at his heels, with the cocked
+pistol in my hand.
+
+It was a singular sight which met our eyes. On the table stood a
+dark-lantern with the shutter half open, throwing a brilliant beam of
+light upon the iron safe, the door of which was ajar. Beside this
+table, on the wooden chair, sat Dr. Grimesby Roylott clad in a long
+grey dressing-gown, his bare ankles protruding beneath, and his feet
+thrust into red heelless Turkish slippers. Across his lap lay the short
+stock with the long lash which we had noticed during the day. His chin
+was cocked upward and his eyes were fixed in a dreadful, rigid stare at
+the corner of the ceiling. Round his brow he had a peculiar yellow
+band, with brownish speckles, which seemed to be bound tightly round
+his head. As we entered he made neither sound nor motion.
+
+“The band! the speckled band!” whispered Holmes.
+
+I took a step forward. In an instant his strange headgear began to
+move, and there reared itself from among his hair the squat
+diamond-shaped head and puffed neck of a loathsome serpent.
+
+“It is a swamp adder!” cried Holmes; “the deadliest snake in India. He
+has died within ten seconds of being bitten. Violence does, in truth,
+recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he
+digs for another. Let us thrust this creature back into its den, and we
+can then remove Miss Stoner to some place of shelter and let the county
+police know what has happened.”
+
+As he spoke he drew the dog-whip swiftly from the dead man’s lap, and
+throwing the noose round the reptile’s neck he drew it from its horrid
+perch and, carrying it at arm’s length, threw it into the iron safe,
+which he closed upon it.
+
+Such are the true facts of the death of Dr. Grimesby Roylott, of Stoke
+Moran. It is not necessary that I should prolong a narrative which has
+already run to too great a length by telling how we broke the sad news
+to the terrified girl, how we conveyed her by the morning train to the
+care of her good aunt at Harrow, of how the slow process of official
+inquiry came to the conclusion that the doctor met his fate while
+indiscreetly playing with a dangerous pet. The little which I had yet
+to learn of the case was told me by Sherlock Holmes as we travelled
+back next day.
+
+“I had,” said he, “come to an entirely erroneous conclusion which
+shows, my dear Watson, how dangerous it always is to reason from
+insufficient data. The presence of the gipsies, and the use of the word
+‘band,’ which was used by the poor girl, no doubt, to explain the
+appearance which she had caught a hurried glimpse of by the light of
+her match, were sufficient to put me upon an entirely wrong scent. I
+can only claim the merit that I instantly reconsidered my position
+when, however, it became clear to me that whatever danger threatened an
+occupant of the room could not come either from the window or the door.
+My attention was speedily drawn, as I have already remarked to you, to
+this ventilator, and to the bell-rope which hung down to the bed. The
+discovery that this was a dummy, and that the bed was clamped to the
+floor, instantly gave rise to the suspicion that the rope was there as
+a bridge for something passing through the hole and coming to the bed.
+The idea of a snake instantly occurred to me, and when I coupled it
+with my knowledge that the doctor was furnished with a supply of
+creatures from India, I felt that I was probably on the right track.
+The idea of using a form of poison which could not possibly be
+discovered by any chemical test was just such a one as would occur to a
+clever and ruthless man who had had an Eastern training. The rapidity
+with which such a poison would take effect would also, from his point
+of view, be an advantage. It would be a sharp-eyed coroner, indeed, who
+could distinguish the two little dark punctures which would show where
+the poison fangs had done their work. Then I thought of the whistle. Of
+course he must recall the snake before the morning light revealed it to
+the victim. He had trained it, probably by the use of the milk which we
+saw, to return to him when summoned. He would put it through this
+ventilator at the hour that he thought best, with the certainty that it
+would crawl down the rope and land on the bed. It might or might not
+bite the occupant, perhaps she might escape every night for a week, but
+sooner or later she must fall a victim.
+
+“I had come to these conclusions before ever I had entered his room. An
+inspection of his chair showed me that he had been in the habit of
+standing on it, which of course would be necessary in order that he
+should reach the ventilator. The sight of the safe, the saucer of milk,
+and the loop of whipcord were enough to finally dispel any doubts which
+may have remained. The metallic clang heard by Miss Stoner was
+obviously caused by her stepfather hastily closing the door of his safe
+upon its terrible occupant. Having once made up my mind, you know the
+steps which I took in order to put the matter to the proof. I heard the
+creature hiss as I have no doubt that you did also, and I instantly lit
+the light and attacked it.”
+
+“With the result of driving it through the ventilator.”
+
+“And also with the result of causing it to turn upon its master at the
+other side. Some of the blows of my cane came home and roused its
+snakish temper, so that it flew upon the first person it saw. In this
+way I am no doubt indirectly responsible for Dr. Grimesby Roylott’s
+death, and I cannot say that it is likely to weigh very heavily upon my
+conscience.”
+
+
+
+IX. THE ADVENTURE OF THE ENGINEER’S THUMB
+
+Of all the problems which have been submitted to my friend, Mr.
+Sherlock Holmes, for solution during the years of our intimacy, there
+were only two which I was the means of introducing to his notice—that
+of Mr. Hatherley’s thumb, and that of Colonel Warburton’s madness. Of
+these the latter may have afforded a finer field for an acute and
+original observer, but the other was so strange in its inception and so
+dramatic in its details that it may be the more worthy of being placed
+upon record, even if it gave my friend fewer openings for those
+deductive methods of reasoning by which he achieved such remarkable
+results. The story has, I believe, been told more than once in the
+newspapers, but, like all such narratives, its effect is much less
+striking when set forth _en bloc_ in a single half-column of print than
+when the facts slowly evolve before your own eyes, and the mystery
+clears gradually away as each new discovery furnishes a step which
+leads on to the complete truth. At the time the circumstances made a
+deep impression upon me, and the lapse of two years has hardly served
+to weaken the effect.
+
+It was in the summer of ’89, not long after my marriage, that the
+events occurred which I am now about to summarise. I had returned to
+civil practice and had finally abandoned Holmes in his Baker Street
+rooms, although I continually visited him and occasionally even
+persuaded him to forgo his Bohemian habits so far as to come and visit
+us. My practice had steadily increased, and as I happened to live at no
+very great distance from Paddington Station, I got a few patients from
+among the officials. One of these, whom I had cured of a painful and
+lingering disease, was never weary of advertising my virtues and of
+endeavouring to send me on every sufferer over whom he might have any
+influence.
+
+One morning, at a little before seven o’clock, I was awakened by the
+maid tapping at the door to announce that two men had come from
+Paddington and were waiting in the consulting-room. I dressed
+hurriedly, for I knew by experience that railway cases were seldom
+trivial, and hastened downstairs. As I descended, my old ally, the
+guard, came out of the room and closed the door tightly behind him.
+
+“I’ve got him here,” he whispered, jerking his thumb over his shoulder;
+“he’s all right.”
+
+“What is it, then?” I asked, for his manner suggested that it was some
+strange creature which he had caged up in my room.
+
+“It’s a new patient,” he whispered. “I thought I’d bring him round
+myself; then he couldn’t slip away. There he is, all safe and sound. I
+must go now, Doctor; I have my dooties, just the same as you.” And off
+he went, this trusty tout, without even giving me time to thank him.
+
+I entered my consulting-room and found a gentleman seated by the table.
+He was quietly dressed in a suit of heather tweed with a soft cloth cap
+which he had laid down upon my books. Round one of his hands he had a
+handkerchief wrapped, which was mottled all over with bloodstains. He
+was young, not more than five-and-twenty, I should say, with a strong,
+masculine face; but he was exceedingly pale and gave me the impression
+of a man who was suffering from some strong agitation, which it took
+all his strength of mind to control.
+
+“I am sorry to knock you up so early, Doctor,” said he, “but I have had
+a very serious accident during the night. I came in by train this
+morning, and on inquiring at Paddington as to where I might find a
+doctor, a worthy fellow very kindly escorted me here. I gave the maid a
+card, but I see that she has left it upon the side-table.”
+
+I took it up and glanced at it. “Mr. Victor Hatherley, hydraulic
+engineer, 16A, Victoria Street (3rd floor).” That was the name, style,
+and abode of my morning visitor. “I regret that I have kept you
+waiting,” said I, sitting down in my library-chair. “You are fresh from
+a night journey, I understand, which is in itself a monotonous
+occupation.”
+
+“Oh, my night could not be called monotonous,” said he, and laughed. He
+laughed very heartily, with a high, ringing note, leaning back in his
+chair and shaking his sides. All my medical instincts rose up against
+that laugh.
+
+“Stop it!” I cried; “pull yourself together!” and I poured out some
+water from a caraffe.
+
+It was useless, however. He was off in one of those hysterical
+outbursts which come upon a strong nature when some great crisis is
+over and gone. Presently he came to himself once more, very weary and
+pale-looking.
+
+“I have been making a fool of myself,” he gasped.
+
+“Not at all. Drink this.” I dashed some brandy into the water, and the
+colour began to come back to his bloodless cheeks.
+
+“That’s better!” said he. “And now, Doctor, perhaps you would kindly
+attend to my thumb, or rather to the place where my thumb used to be.”
+
+He unwound the handkerchief and held out his hand. It gave even my
+hardened nerves a shudder to look at it. There were four protruding
+fingers and a horrid red, spongy surface where the thumb should have
+been. It had been hacked or torn right out from the roots.
+
+“Good heavens!” I cried, “this is a terrible injury. It must have bled
+considerably.”
+
+“Yes, it did. I fainted when it was done, and I think that I must have
+been senseless for a long time. When I came to I found that it was
+still bleeding, so I tied one end of my handkerchief very tightly round
+the wrist and braced it up with a twig.”
+
+“Excellent! You should have been a surgeon.”
+
+“It is a question of hydraulics, you see, and came within my own
+province.”
+
+“This has been done,” said I, examining the wound, “by a very heavy and
+sharp instrument.”
+
+“A thing like a cleaver,” said he.
+
+“An accident, I presume?”
+
+“By no means.”
+
+“What! a murderous attack?”
+
+“Very murderous indeed.”
+
+“You horrify me.”
+
+I sponged the wound, cleaned it, dressed it, and finally covered it
+over with cotton wadding and carbolised bandages. He lay back without
+wincing, though he bit his lip from time to time.
+
+“How is that?” I asked when I had finished.
+
+“Capital! Between your brandy and your bandage, I feel a new man. I was
+very weak, but I have had a good deal to go through.”
+
+“Perhaps you had better not speak of the matter. It is evidently trying
+to your nerves.”
+
+“Oh, no, not now. I shall have to tell my tale to the police; but,
+between ourselves, if it were not for the convincing evidence of this
+wound of mine, I should be surprised if they believed my statement, for
+it is a very extraordinary one, and I have not much in the way of proof
+with which to back it up; and, even if they believe me, the clues which
+I can give them are so vague that it is a question whether justice will
+be done.”
+
+“Ha!” cried I, “if it is anything in the nature of a problem which you
+desire to see solved, I should strongly recommend you to come to my
+friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, before you go to the official police.”
+
+“Oh, I have heard of that fellow,” answered my visitor, “and I should
+be very glad if he would take the matter up, though of course I must
+use the official police as well. Would you give me an introduction to
+him?”
+
+“I’ll do better. I’ll take you round to him myself.”
+
+“I should be immensely obliged to you.”
+
+“We’ll call a cab and go together. We shall just be in time to have a
+little breakfast with him. Do you feel equal to it?”
+
+“Yes; I shall not feel easy until I have told my story.”
+
+“Then my servant will call a cab, and I shall be with you in an
+instant.” I rushed upstairs, explained the matter shortly to my wife,
+and in five minutes was inside a hansom, driving with my new
+acquaintance to Baker Street.
+
+Sherlock Holmes was, as I expected, lounging about his sitting-room in
+his dressing-gown, reading the agony column of _The Times_ and smoking
+his before-breakfast pipe, which was composed of all the plugs and
+dottles left from his smokes of the day before, all carefully dried and
+collected on the corner of the mantelpiece. He received us in his
+quietly genial fashion, ordered fresh rashers and eggs, and joined us
+in a hearty meal. When it was concluded he settled our new acquaintance
+upon the sofa, placed a pillow beneath his head, and laid a glass of
+brandy and water within his reach.
+
+“It is easy to see that your experience has been no common one, Mr.
+Hatherley,” said he. “Pray, lie down there and make yourself absolutely
+at home. Tell us what you can, but stop when you are tired and keep up
+your strength with a little stimulant.”
+
+“Thank you,” said my patient, “but I have felt another man since the
+doctor bandaged me, and I think that your breakfast has completed the
+cure. I shall take up as little of your valuable time as possible, so I
+shall start at once upon my peculiar experiences.”
+
+Holmes sat in his big armchair with the weary, heavy-lidded expression
+which veiled his keen and eager nature, while I sat opposite to him,
+and we listened in silence to the strange story which our visitor
+detailed to us.
+
+“You must know,” said he, “that I am an orphan and a bachelor, residing
+alone in lodgings in London. By profession I am a hydraulic engineer,
+and I have had considerable experience of my work during the seven
+years that I was apprenticed to Venner & Matheson, the well-known firm,
+of Greenwich. Two years ago, having served my time, and having also
+come into a fair sum of money through my poor father’s death, I
+determined to start in business for myself and took professional
+chambers in Victoria Street.
+
+“I suppose that everyone finds his first independent start in business
+a dreary experience. To me it has been exceptionally so. During two
+years I have had three consultations and one small job, and that is
+absolutely all that my profession has brought me. My gross takings
+amount to £ 27 10_s_. Every day, from nine in the morning until four in
+the afternoon, I waited in my little den, until at last my heart began
+to sink, and I came to believe that I should never have any practice at
+all.
+
+“Yesterday, however, just as I was thinking of leaving the office, my
+clerk entered to say there was a gentleman waiting who wished to see me
+upon business. He brought up a card, too, with the name of ‘Colonel
+Lysander Stark’ engraved upon it. Close at his heels came the colonel
+himself, a man rather over the middle size, but of an exceeding
+thinness. I do not think that I have ever seen so thin a man. His whole
+face sharpened away into nose and chin, and the skin of his cheeks was
+drawn quite tense over his outstanding bones. Yet this emaciation
+seemed to be his natural habit, and due to no disease, for his eye was
+bright, his step brisk, and his bearing assured. He was plainly but
+neatly dressed, and his age, I should judge, would be nearer forty than
+thirty.
+
+“‘Mr. Hatherley?’ said he, with something of a German accent. ‘You have
+been recommended to me, Mr. Hatherley, as being a man who is not only
+proficient in his profession but is also discreet and capable of
+preserving a secret.’
+
+“I bowed, feeling as flattered as any young man would at such an
+address. ‘May I ask who it was who gave me so good a character?’
+
+“‘Well, perhaps it is better that I should not tell you that just at
+this moment. I have it from the same source that you are both an orphan
+and a bachelor and are residing alone in London.’
+
+“‘That is quite correct,’ I answered; ‘but you will excuse me if I say
+that I cannot see how all this bears upon my professional
+qualifications. I understand that it was on a professional matter that
+you wished to speak to me?’
+
+“‘Undoubtedly so. But you will find that all I say is really to the
+point. I have a professional commission for you, but absolute secrecy
+is quite essential—absolute secrecy, you understand, and of course we
+may expect that more from a man who is alone than from one who lives in
+the bosom of his family.’
+
+“‘If I promise to keep a secret,’ said I, ‘you may absolutely depend
+upon my doing so.’
+
+“He looked very hard at me as I spoke, and it seemed to me that I had
+never seen so suspicious and questioning an eye.
+
+“‘Do you promise, then?’ said he at last.
+
+“‘Yes, I promise.’
+
+“‘Absolute and complete silence before, during, and after? No reference
+to the matter at all, either in word or writing?’
+
+“‘I have already given you my word.’
+
+“‘Very good.’ He suddenly sprang up, and darting like lightning across
+the room he flung open the door. The passage outside was empty.
+
+“‘That’s all right,’ said he, coming back. ‘I know that clerks are
+sometimes curious as to their master’s affairs. Now we can talk in
+safety.’ He drew up his chair very close to mine and began to stare at
+me again with the same questioning and thoughtful look.
+
+“A feeling of repulsion, and of something akin to fear had begun to
+rise within me at the strange antics of this fleshless man. Even my
+dread of losing a client could not restrain me from showing my
+impatience.
+
+“‘I beg that you will state your business, sir,’ said I; ‘my time is of
+value.’ Heaven forgive me for that last sentence, but the words came to
+my lips.
+
+“‘How would fifty guineas for a night’s work suit you?’ he asked.
+
+“‘Most admirably.’
+
+“‘I say a night’s work, but an hour’s would be nearer the mark. I
+simply want your opinion about a hydraulic stamping machine which has
+got out of gear. If you show us what is wrong we shall soon set it
+right ourselves. What do you think of such a commission as that?’
+
+“‘The work appears to be light and the pay munificent.’
+
+“‘Precisely so. We shall want you to come to-night by the last train.’
+
+“‘Where to?’
+
+“‘To Eyford, in Berkshire. It is a little place near the borders of
+Oxfordshire, and within seven miles of Reading. There is a train from
+Paddington which would bring you there at about 11:15.’
+
+“‘Very good.’
+
+“‘I shall come down in a carriage to meet you.’
+
+“‘There is a drive, then?’
+
+“‘Yes, our little place is quite out in the country. It is a good seven
+miles from Eyford Station.’
+
+“‘Then we can hardly get there before midnight. I suppose there would
+be no chance of a train back. I should be compelled to stop the night.’
+
+“‘Yes, we could easily give you a shake-down.’
+
+“‘That is very awkward. Could I not come at some more convenient hour?’
+
+“‘We have judged it best that you should come late. It is to recompense
+you for any inconvenience that we are paying to you, a young and
+unknown man, a fee which would buy an opinion from the very heads of
+your profession. Still, of course, if you would like to draw out of the
+business, there is plenty of time to do so.’
+
+“I thought of the fifty guineas, and of how very useful they would be
+to me. ‘Not at all,’ said I, ‘I shall be very happy to accommodate
+myself to your wishes. I should like, however, to understand a little
+more clearly what it is that you wish me to do.’
+
+“‘Quite so. It is very natural that the pledge of secrecy which we have
+exacted from you should have aroused your curiosity. I have no wish to
+commit you to anything without your having it all laid before you. I
+suppose that we are absolutely safe from eavesdroppers?’
+
+“‘Entirely.’
+
+“‘Then the matter stands thus. You are probably aware that
+fuller’s-earth is a valuable product, and that it is only found in one
+or two places in England?’
+
+“‘I have heard so.’
+
+“‘Some little time ago I bought a small place—a very small place—within
+ten miles of Reading. I was fortunate enough to discover that there was
+a deposit of fuller’s-earth in one of my fields. On examining it,
+however, I found that this deposit was a comparatively small one, and
+that it formed a link between two very much larger ones upon the right
+and left—both of them, however, in the grounds of my neighbours. These
+good people were absolutely ignorant that their land contained that
+which was quite as valuable as a gold-mine. Naturally, it was to my
+interest to buy their land before they discovered its true value, but
+unfortunately I had no capital by which I could do this. I took a few
+of my friends into the secret, however, and they suggested that we
+should quietly and secretly work our own little deposit and that in
+this way we should earn the money which would enable us to buy the
+neighbouring fields. This we have now been doing for some time, and in
+order to help us in our operations we erected a hydraulic press. This
+press, as I have already explained, has got out of order, and we wish
+your advice upon the subject. We guard our secret very jealously,
+however, and if it once became known that we had hydraulic engineers
+coming to our little house, it would soon rouse inquiry, and then, if
+the facts came out, it would be good-bye to any chance of getting these
+fields and carrying out our plans. That is why I have made you promise
+me that you will not tell a human being that you are going to Eyford
+to-night. I hope that I make it all plain?’
+
+“‘I quite follow you,’ said I. ‘The only point which I could not quite
+understand was what use you could make of a hydraulic press in
+excavating fuller’s-earth, which, as I understand, is dug out like
+gravel from a pit.’
+
+“‘Ah!’ said he carelessly, ‘we have our own process. We compress the
+earth into bricks, so as to remove them without revealing what they
+are. But that is a mere detail. I have taken you fully into my
+confidence now, Mr. Hatherley, and I have shown you how I trust you.’
+He rose as he spoke. ‘I shall expect you, then, at Eyford at 11:15.’
+
+“‘I shall certainly be there.’
+
+“‘And not a word to a soul.’ He looked at me with a last long,
+questioning gaze, and then, pressing my hand in a cold, dank grasp, he
+hurried from the room.
+
+“Well, when I came to think it all over in cool blood I was very much
+astonished, as you may both think, at this sudden commission which had
+been intrusted to me. On the one hand, of course, I was glad, for the
+fee was at least tenfold what I should have asked had I set a price
+upon my own services, and it was possible that this order might lead to
+other ones. On the other hand, the face and manner of my patron had
+made an unpleasant impression upon me, and I could not think that his
+explanation of the fuller’s-earth was sufficient to explain the
+necessity for my coming at midnight, and his extreme anxiety lest I
+should tell anyone of my errand. However, I threw all fears to the
+winds, ate a hearty supper, drove to Paddington, and started off,
+having obeyed to the letter the injunction as to holding my tongue.
+
+“At Reading I had to change not only my carriage but my station.
+However, I was in time for the last train to Eyford, and I reached the
+little dim-lit station after eleven o’clock. I was the only passenger
+who got out there, and there was no one upon the platform save a single
+sleepy porter with a lantern. As I passed out through the wicket gate,
+however, I found my acquaintance of the morning waiting in the shadow
+upon the other side. Without a word he grasped my arm and hurried me
+into a carriage, the door of which was standing open. He drew up the
+windows on either side, tapped on the wood-work, and away we went as
+fast as the horse could go.”
+
+“One horse?” interjected Holmes.
+
+“Yes, only one.”
+
+“Did you observe the colour?”
+
+“Yes, I saw it by the side-lights when I was stepping into the
+carriage. It was a chestnut.”
+
+“Tired-looking or fresh?”
+
+“Oh, fresh and glossy.”
+
+“Thank you. I am sorry to have interrupted you. Pray continue your most
+interesting statement.”
+
+“Away we went then, and we drove for at least an hour. Colonel Lysander
+Stark had said that it was only seven miles, but I should think, from
+the rate that we seemed to go, and from the time that we took, that it
+must have been nearer twelve. He sat at my side in silence all the
+time, and I was aware, more than once when I glanced in his direction,
+that he was looking at me with great intensity. The country roads seem
+to be not very good in that part of the world, for we lurched and
+jolted terribly. I tried to look out of the windows to see something of
+where we were, but they were made of frosted glass, and I could make
+out nothing save the occasional bright blur of a passing light. Now and
+then I hazarded some remark to break the monotony of the journey, but
+the colonel answered only in monosyllables, and the conversation soon
+flagged. At last, however, the bumping of the road was exchanged for
+the crisp smoothness of a gravel-drive, and the carriage came to a
+stand. Colonel Lysander Stark sprang out, and, as I followed after him,
+pulled me swiftly into a porch which gaped in front of us. We stepped,
+as it were, right out of the carriage and into the hall, so that I
+failed to catch the most fleeting glance of the front of the house. The
+instant that I had crossed the threshold the door slammed heavily
+behind us, and I heard faintly the rattle of the wheels as the carriage
+drove away.
+
+“It was pitch dark inside the house, and the colonel fumbled about
+looking for matches and muttering under his breath. Suddenly a door
+opened at the other end of the passage, and a long, golden bar of light
+shot out in our direction. It grew broader, and a woman appeared with a
+lamp in her hand, which she held above her head, pushing her face
+forward and peering at us. I could see that she was pretty, and from
+the gloss with which the light shone upon her dark dress I knew that it
+was a rich material. She spoke a few words in a foreign tongue in a
+tone as though asking a question, and when my companion answered in a
+gruff monosyllable she gave such a start that the lamp nearly fell from
+her hand. Colonel Stark went up to her, whispered something in her ear,
+and then, pushing her back into the room from whence she had come, he
+walked towards me again with the lamp in his hand.
+
+“‘Perhaps you will have the kindness to wait in this room for a few
+minutes,’ said he, throwing open another door. It was a quiet, little,
+plainly furnished room, with a round table in the centre, on which
+several German books were scattered. Colonel Stark laid down the lamp
+on the top of a harmonium beside the door. ‘I shall not keep you
+waiting an instant,’ said he, and vanished into the darkness.
+
+“I glanced at the books upon the table, and in spite of my ignorance of
+German I could see that two of them were treatises on science, the
+others being volumes of poetry. Then I walked across to the window,
+hoping that I might catch some glimpse of the country-side, but an oak
+shutter, heavily barred, was folded across it. It was a wonderfully
+silent house. There was an old clock ticking loudly somewhere in the
+passage, but otherwise everything was deadly still. A vague feeling of
+uneasiness began to steal over me. Who were these German people, and
+what were they doing living in this strange, out-of-the-way place? And
+where was the place? I was ten miles or so from Eyford, that was all I
+knew, but whether north, south, east, or west I had no idea. For that
+matter, Reading, and possibly other large towns, were within that
+radius, so the place might not be so secluded, after all. Yet it was
+quite certain, from the absolute stillness, that we were in the
+country. I paced up and down the room, humming a tune under my breath
+to keep up my spirits and feeling that I was thoroughly earning my
+fifty-guinea fee.
+
+“Suddenly, without any preliminary sound in the midst of the utter
+stillness, the door of my room swung slowly open. The woman was
+standing in the aperture, the darkness of the hall behind her, the
+yellow light from my lamp beating upon her eager and beautiful face. I
+could see at a glance that she was sick with fear, and the sight sent a
+chill to my own heart. She held up one shaking finger to warn me to be
+silent, and she shot a few whispered words of broken English at me, her
+eyes glancing back, like those of a frightened horse, into the gloom
+behind her.
+
+“‘I would go,’ said she, trying hard, as it seemed to me, to speak
+calmly; ‘I would go. I should not stay here. There is no good for you
+to do.’
+
+“‘But, madam,’ said I, ‘I have not yet done what I came for. I cannot
+possibly leave until I have seen the machine.’
+
+“‘It is not worth your while to wait,’ she went on. ‘You can pass
+through the door; no one hinders.’ And then, seeing that I smiled and
+shook my head, she suddenly threw aside her constraint and made a step
+forward, with her hands wrung together. ‘For the love of Heaven!’ she
+whispered, ‘get away from here before it is too late!’
+
+“But I am somewhat headstrong by nature, and the more ready to engage
+in an affair when there is some obstacle in the way. I thought of my
+fifty-guinea fee, of my wearisome journey, and of the unpleasant night
+which seemed to be before me. Was it all to go for nothing? Why should
+I slink away without having carried out my commission, and without the
+payment which was my due? This woman might, for all I knew, be a
+monomaniac. With a stout bearing, therefore, though her manner had
+shaken me more than I cared to confess, I still shook my head and
+declared my intention of remaining where I was. She was about to renew
+her entreaties when a door slammed overhead, and the sound of several
+footsteps was heard upon the stairs. She listened for an instant, threw
+up her hands with a despairing gesture, and vanished as suddenly and as
+noiselessly as she had come.
+
+“The newcomers were Colonel Lysander Stark and a short thick man with a
+chinchilla beard growing out of the creases of his double chin, who was
+introduced to me as Mr. Ferguson.
+
+“‘This is my secretary and manager,’ said the colonel. ‘By the way, I
+was under the impression that I left this door shut just now. I fear
+that you have felt the draught.’
+
+“‘On the contrary,’ said I, ‘I opened the door myself because I felt
+the room to be a little close.’
+
+“He shot one of his suspicious looks at me. ‘Perhaps we had better
+proceed to business, then,’ said he. ‘Mr. Ferguson and I will take you
+up to see the machine.’
+
+“‘I had better put my hat on, I suppose.’
+
+“‘Oh, no, it is in the house.’
+
+“‘What, you dig fuller’s-earth in the house?’
+
+“‘No, no. This is only where we compress it. But never mind that. All
+we wish you to do is to examine the machine and to let us know what is
+wrong with it.’
+
+“We went upstairs together, the colonel first with the lamp, the fat
+manager and I behind him. It was a labyrinth of an old house, with
+corridors, passages, narrow winding staircases, and little low doors,
+the thresholds of which were hollowed out by the generations who had
+crossed them. There were no carpets and no signs of any furniture above
+the ground floor, while the plaster was peeling off the walls, and the
+damp was breaking through in green, unhealthy blotches. I tried to put
+on as unconcerned an air as possible, but I had not forgotten the
+warnings of the lady, even though I disregarded them, and I kept a keen
+eye upon my two companions. Ferguson appeared to be a morose and silent
+man, but I could see from the little that he said that he was at least
+a fellow-countryman.
+
+“Colonel Lysander Stark stopped at last before a low door, which he
+unlocked. Within was a small, square room, in which the three of us
+could hardly get at one time. Ferguson remained outside, and the
+colonel ushered me in.
+
+“‘We are now,’ said he, ‘actually within the hydraulic press, and it
+would be a particularly unpleasant thing for us if anyone were to turn
+it on. The ceiling of this small chamber is really the end of the
+descending piston, and it comes down with the force of many tons upon
+this metal floor. There are small lateral columns of water outside
+which receive the force, and which transmit and multiply it in the
+manner which is familiar to you. The machine goes readily enough, but
+there is some stiffness in the working of it, and it has lost a little
+of its force. Perhaps you will have the goodness to look it over and to
+show us how we can set it right.’
+
+“I took the lamp from him, and I examined the machine very thoroughly.
+It was indeed a gigantic one, and capable of exercising enormous
+pressure. When I passed outside, however, and pressed down the levers
+which controlled it, I knew at once by the whishing sound that there
+was a slight leakage, which allowed a regurgitation of water through
+one of the side cylinders. An examination showed that one of the
+india-rubber bands which was round the head of a driving-rod had shrunk
+so as not quite to fill the socket along which it worked. This was
+clearly the cause of the loss of power, and I pointed it out to my
+companions, who followed my remarks very carefully and asked several
+practical questions as to how they should proceed to set it right. When
+I had made it clear to them, I returned to the main chamber of the
+machine and took a good look at it to satisfy my own curiosity. It was
+obvious at a glance that the story of the fuller’s-earth was the merest
+fabrication, for it would be absurd to suppose that so powerful an
+engine could be designed for so inadequate a purpose. The walls were of
+wood, but the floor consisted of a large iron trough, and when I came
+to examine it I could see a crust of metallic deposit all over it. I
+had stooped and was scraping at this to see exactly what it was when I
+heard a muttered exclamation in German and saw the cadaverous face of
+the colonel looking down at me.
+
+“‘What are you doing there?’ he asked.
+
+“I felt angry at having been tricked by so elaborate a story as that
+which he had told me. ‘I was admiring your fuller’s-earth,’ said I; ‘I
+think that I should be better able to advise you as to your machine if
+I knew what the exact purpose was for which it was used.’
+
+“The instant that I uttered the words I regretted the rashness of my
+speech. His face set hard, and a baleful light sprang up in his grey
+eyes.
+
+“‘Very well,’ said he, ‘you shall know all about the machine.’ He took
+a step backward, slammed the little door, and turned the key in the
+lock. I rushed towards it and pulled at the handle, but it was quite
+secure, and did not give in the least to my kicks and shoves. ‘Hullo!’
+I yelled. ‘Hullo! Colonel! Let me out!’
+
+“And then suddenly in the silence I heard a sound which sent my heart
+into my mouth. It was the clank of the levers and the swish of the
+leaking cylinder. He had set the engine at work. The lamp still stood
+upon the floor where I had placed it when examining the trough. By its
+light I saw that the black ceiling was coming down upon me, slowly,
+jerkily, but, as none knew better than myself, with a force which must
+within a minute grind me to a shapeless pulp. I threw myself,
+screaming, against the door, and dragged with my nails at the lock. I
+implored the colonel to let me out, but the remorseless clanking of the
+levers drowned my cries. The ceiling was only a foot or two above my
+head, and with my hand upraised I could feel its hard, rough surface.
+Then it flashed through my mind that the pain of my death would depend
+very much upon the position in which I met it. If I lay on my face the
+weight would come upon my spine, and I shuddered to think of that
+dreadful snap. Easier the other way, perhaps; and yet, had I the nerve
+to lie and look up at that deadly black shadow wavering down upon me?
+Already I was unable to stand erect, when my eye caught something which
+brought a gush of hope back to my heart.
+
+“I have said that though the floor and ceiling were of iron, the walls
+were of wood. As I gave a last hurried glance around, I saw a thin line
+of yellow light between two of the boards, which broadened and
+broadened as a small panel was pushed backward. For an instant I could
+hardly believe that here was indeed a door which led away from death.
+The next instant I threw myself through, and lay half-fainting upon the
+other side. The panel had closed again behind me, but the crash of the
+lamp, and a few moments afterwards the clang of the two slabs of metal,
+told me how narrow had been my escape.
+
+“I was recalled to myself by a frantic plucking at my wrist, and I
+found myself lying upon the stone floor of a narrow corridor, while a
+woman bent over me and tugged at me with her left hand, while she held
+a candle in her right. It was the same good friend whose warning I had
+so foolishly rejected.
+
+“‘Come! come!’ she cried breathlessly. ‘They will be here in a moment.
+They will see that you are not there. Oh, do not waste the so-precious
+time, but come!’
+
+“This time, at least, I did not scorn her advice. I staggered to my
+feet and ran with her along the corridor and down a winding stair. The
+latter led to another broad passage, and just as we reached it we heard
+the sound of running feet and the shouting of two voices, one answering
+the other from the floor on which  we were and from the one beneath. My
+guide stopped and looked about her like one  who is at her wit’s end.
+Then she threw open a door which led into a bedroom, through the window
+of which the moon was shining brightly.
+
+“‘It is your only chance,’ said she. ‘It is high, but it may be that
+you can jump it.’
+
+“As she spoke a light sprang into view at the further end of the
+passage, and I saw the lean figure of Colonel Lysander Stark rushing
+forward with a lantern in one hand and a weapon like a butcher’s
+cleaver in the other. I rushed across the bedroom, flung open the
+window, and looked out. How quiet and sweet and wholesome the garden
+looked in the moonlight, and it could not be more than thirty feet
+down. I clambered out upon the sill, but I hesitated to jump until I
+should have heard what passed between my saviour and the ruffian who
+pursued me. If she were ill-used, then at any risks I was determined to
+go back to her assistance. The thought had hardly flashed through my
+mind before he was at the door, pushing his way past her; but she threw
+her arms round him and tried to hold him back.
+
+“‘Fritz! Fritz!’ she cried in English, ‘remember your promise after the
+last time. You said it should not be again. He will be silent! Oh, he
+will be silent!’
+
+“‘You are mad, Elise!’ he shouted, struggling to break away from her.
+‘You will be the ruin of us. He has seen too much. Let me pass, I say!’
+He dashed her to one side, and, rushing to the window, cut at me with
+his heavy weapon. I had let myself go, and was hanging by the hands to
+the sill, when his blow fell. I was conscious of a dull pain, my grip
+loosened, and I fell into the garden below.
+
+“I was shaken but not hurt by the fall; so I picked myself up and
+rushed off among the bushes as hard as I could run, for I understood
+that I was far from being out of danger yet. Suddenly, however, as I
+ran, a deadly dizziness and sickness came over me. I glanced down at my
+hand, which was throbbing painfully, and then, for the first time, saw
+that my thumb had been cut off and that the blood was pouring from my
+wound. I endeavoured to tie my handkerchief round it, but there came a
+sudden buzzing in my ears, and next moment I fell in a dead faint among
+the rose-bushes.
+
+“How long I remained unconscious I cannot tell. It must have been a
+very long time, for the moon had sunk, and a bright morning was
+breaking when I came to myself. My clothes were all sodden with dew,
+and my coat-sleeve was drenched with blood from my wounded thumb. The
+smarting of it recalled in an instant all the particulars of my night’s
+adventure, and I sprang to my feet with the feeling that I might hardly
+yet be safe from my pursuers. But to my astonishment, when I came to
+look round me, neither house nor garden were to be seen. I had been
+lying in an angle of the hedge close by the highroad, and just a little
+lower down was a long building, which proved, upon my approaching it,
+to be the very station at which I had arrived upon the previous night.
+Were it not for the ugly wound upon my hand, all that had passed during
+those dreadful hours might have been an evil dream.
+
+“Half dazed, I went into the station and asked about the morning train.
+There would be one to Reading in less than an hour. The same porter was
+on duty, I found, as had been there when I arrived. I inquired of him
+whether he had ever heard of Colonel Lysander Stark. The name was
+strange to him. Had he observed a carriage the night before waiting for
+me? No, he had not. Was there a police-station anywhere near? There was
+one about three miles off.
+
+“It was too far for me to go, weak and ill as I was. I determined to
+wait until I got back to town before telling my story to the police. It
+was a little past six when I arrived, so I went first to have my wound
+dressed, and then the doctor was kind enough to bring me along here. I
+put the case into your hands and shall do exactly what you advise.”
+
+We both sat in silence for some little time after listening to this
+extraordinary narrative. Then Sherlock Holmes pulled down from the
+shelf one of the ponderous commonplace books in which he placed his
+cuttings.
+
+“Here is an advertisement which will interest you,” said he. “It
+appeared in all the papers about a year ago. Listen to this: ‘Lost, on
+the 9th inst., Mr. Jeremiah Hayling, aged twenty-six, a hydraulic
+engineer. Left his lodgings at ten o’clock at night, and has not been
+heard of since. Was dressed in,’ etc., etc. Ha! That represents the
+last time that the colonel needed to have his machine overhauled, I
+fancy.”
+
+“Good heavens!” cried my patient. “Then that explains what the girl
+said.”
+
+“Undoubtedly. It is quite clear that the colonel was a cool and
+desperate man, who was absolutely determined that nothing should stand
+in the way of his little game, like those out-and-out pirates who will
+leave no survivor from a captured ship. Well, every moment now is
+precious, so if you feel equal to it we shall go down to Scotland Yard
+at once as a preliminary to starting for Eyford.”
+
+Some three hours or so afterwards we were all in the train together,
+bound from Reading to the little Berkshire village. There were Sherlock
+Holmes, the hydraulic engineer, Inspector Bradstreet, of Scotland Yard,
+a plain-clothes man, and myself. Bradstreet had spread an ordnance map
+of the county out upon the seat and was busy with his compasses drawing
+a circle with Eyford for its centre.
+
+“There you are,” said he. “That circle is drawn at a radius of ten
+miles from the village. The place we want must be somewhere near that
+line. You said ten miles, I think, sir.”
+
+“It was an hour’s good drive.”
+
+“And you think that they brought you back all that way when you were
+unconscious?”
+
+“They must have done so. I have a confused memory, too, of having been
+lifted and conveyed somewhere.”
+
+“What I cannot understand,” said I, “is why they should have spared you
+when they found you lying fainting in the garden. Perhaps the villain
+was softened by the woman’s entreaties.”
+
+“I hardly think that likely. I never saw a more inexorable face in my
+life.”
+
+“Oh, we shall soon clear up all that,” said Bradstreet. “Well, I have
+drawn my circle, and I only wish I knew at what point upon it the folk
+that we are in search of are to be found.”
+
+“I think I could lay my finger on it,” said Holmes quietly.
+
+“Really, now!” cried the inspector, “you have formed your opinion!
+Come, now, we shall see who agrees with you. I say it is south, for the
+country is more deserted there.”
+
+“And I say east,” said my patient.
+
+“I am for west,” remarked the plain-clothes man. “There are several
+quiet little villages up there.”
+
+“And I am for north,” said I, “because there are no hills there, and
+our friend says that he did not notice the carriage go up any.”
+
+“Come,” cried the inspector, laughing; “it’s a very pretty diversity of
+opinion. We have boxed the compass among us. Who do you give your
+casting vote to?”
+
+“You are all wrong.”
+
+“But we can’t all be.”
+
+“Oh, yes, you can. This is my point.” He placed his finger in the
+centre of the circle. “This is where we shall find them.”
+
+“But the twelve-mile drive?” gasped Hatherley.
+
+“Six out and six back. Nothing simpler. You say yourself that the horse
+was fresh and glossy when you got in. How could it be that if it had
+gone twelve miles over heavy roads?”
+
+“Indeed, it is a likely ruse enough,” observed Bradstreet thoughtfully.
+“Of course there can be no doubt as to the nature of this gang.”
+
+“None at all,” said Holmes. “They are coiners on a large scale, and
+have used the machine to form the amalgam which has taken the place of
+silver.”
+
+“We have known for some time that a clever gang was at work,” said the
+inspector. “They have been turning out half-crowns by the thousand. We
+even traced them as far as Reading, but could get no farther, for they
+had covered their traces in a way that showed that they were very old
+hands. But now, thanks to this lucky chance, I think that we have got
+them right enough.”
+
+But the inspector was mistaken, for those criminals were not destined
+to fall into the hands of justice. As we rolled into Eyford Station we
+saw a gigantic column of smoke which streamed up from behind a small
+clump of trees in the neighbourhood and hung like an immense ostrich
+feather over the landscape.
+
+“A house on fire?” asked Bradstreet as the train steamed off again on
+its way.
+
+“Yes, sir!” said the station-master.
+
+“When did it break out?”
+
+“I hear that it was during the night, sir, but it has got worse, and
+the whole place is in a blaze.”
+
+“Whose house is it?”
+
+“Dr. Becher’s.”
+
+“Tell me,” broke in the engineer, “is Dr. Becher a German, very thin,
+with a long, sharp nose?”
+
+The station-master laughed heartily. “No, sir, Dr. Becher is an
+Englishman, and there isn’t a man in the parish who has a better-lined
+waistcoat. But he has a gentleman staying with him, a patient, as I
+understand, who is a foreigner, and he looks as if a little good
+Berkshire beef would do him no harm.”
+
+The station-master had not finished his speech before we were all
+hastening in the direction of the fire. The road topped a low hill, and
+there was a great widespread whitewashed building in front of us,
+spouting fire at every chink and window, while in the garden in front
+three fire-engines were vainly striving to keep the flames under.
+
+“That’s it!” cried Hatherley, in intense excitement. “There is the
+gravel-drive, and there are the rose-bushes where I lay. That second
+window is the one that I jumped from.”
+
+“Well, at least,” said Holmes, “you have had your revenge upon them.
+There can be no question that it was your oil-lamp which, when it was
+crushed in the press, set fire to the wooden walls, though no doubt
+they were too excited in the chase after you to observe it at the time.
+Now keep your eyes open in this crowd for your friends of last night,
+though I very much fear that they are a good hundred miles off by now.”
+
+And Holmes’ fears came to be realised, for from that day to this no
+word has ever been heard either of the beautiful woman, the sinister
+German, or the morose Englishman. Early that morning a peasant had met
+a cart containing several people and some very bulky boxes driving
+rapidly in the direction of Reading, but there all traces of the
+fugitives disappeared, and even Holmes’ ingenuity failed ever to
+discover the least clue as to their whereabouts.
+
+The firemen had been much perturbed at the strange arrangements which
+they had found within, and still more so by discovering a newly severed
+human thumb upon a window-sill of the second floor. About sunset,
+however, their efforts were at last successful, and they subdued the
+flames, but not before the roof had fallen in, and the whole place been
+reduced to such absolute ruin that, save some twisted cylinders and
+iron piping, not a trace remained of the machinery which had cost our
+unfortunate acquaintance so dearly. Large masses of nickel and of tin
+were discovered stored in an out-house, but no coins were to be found,
+which may have explained the presence of those bulky boxes which have
+been already referred to.
+
+How our hydraulic engineer had been conveyed from the garden to the
+spot where he recovered his senses might have remained forever a
+mystery were it not for the soft mould, which told us a very plain
+tale. He had evidently been carried down by two persons, one of whom
+had remarkably small feet and the other unusually large ones. On the
+whole, it was most probable that the silent Englishman, being less bold
+or less murderous than his companion, had assisted the woman to bear
+the unconscious man out of the way of danger.
+
+“Well,” said our engineer ruefully as we took our seats to return once
+more to London, “it has been a pretty business for me! I have lost my
+thumb and I have lost a fifty-guinea fee, and what have I gained?”
+
+“Experience,” said Holmes, laughing. “Indirectly it may be of value,
+you know; you have only to put it into words to gain the reputation of
+being excellent company for the remainder of your existence.”
+
+
+
+X. THE ADVENTURE OF THE NOBLE BACHELOR
+
+The Lord St. Simon marriage, and its curious termination, have long
+ceased to be a subject of interest in those exalted circles in which
+the unfortunate bridegroom moves. Fresh scandals have eclipsed it, and
+their more piquant details have drawn the gossips away from this
+four-year-old drama. As I have reason to believe, however, that the
+full facts have never been revealed to the general public, and as my
+friend Sherlock Holmes had a considerable share in clearing the matter
+up, I feel that no memoir of him would be complete without some little
+sketch of this remarkable episode.
+
+It was a few weeks before my own marriage, during the days when I was
+still sharing rooms with Holmes in Baker Street, that he came home from
+an afternoon stroll to find a letter on the table waiting for him. I
+had remained indoors all day, for the weather had taken a sudden turn
+to rain, with high autumnal winds, and the jezail bullet which I had
+brought back in one of my limbs as a relic of my Afghan campaign
+throbbed with dull persistence. With my body in one easy-chair and my
+legs upon another, I had surrounded myself with a cloud of newspapers
+until at last, saturated with the news of the day, I tossed them all
+aside and lay listless, watching the huge crest and monogram upon the
+envelope upon the table and wondering lazily who my friend’s noble
+correspondent could be.
+
+“Here is a very fashionable epistle,” I remarked as he entered. “Your
+morning letters, if I remember right, were from a fish-monger and a
+tide-waiter.”
+
+“Yes, my correspondence has certainly the charm of variety,” he
+answered, smiling, “and the humbler are usually the more interesting.
+This looks like one of those unwelcome social summonses which call upon
+a man either to be bored or to lie.”
+
+He broke the seal and glanced over the contents.
+
+“Oh, come, it may prove to be something of interest, after all.”
+
+“Not social, then?”
+
+“No, distinctly professional.”
+
+“And from a noble client?”
+
+“One of the highest in England.”
+
+“My dear fellow, I congratulate you.”
+
+“I assure you, Watson, without affectation, that the status of my
+client is a matter of less moment to me than the interest of his case.
+It is just possible, however, that that also may not be wanting in this
+new investigation. You have been reading the papers diligently of late,
+have you not?”
+
+“It looks like it,” said I ruefully, pointing to a huge bundle in the
+corner. “I have had nothing else to do.”
+
+“It is fortunate, for you will perhaps be able to post me up. I read
+nothing except the criminal news and the agony column. The latter is
+always instructive. But if you have followed recent events so closely
+you must have read about Lord St. Simon and his wedding?”
+
+“Oh, yes, with the deepest interest.”
+
+“That is well. The letter which I hold in my hand is from Lord St.
+Simon. I will read it to you, and in return you must turn over these
+papers and let me have whatever bears upon the matter. This is what he
+says:
+
+    “‘MY DEAR MR. SHERLOCK HOLMES,—Lord Backwater tells me that I may
+    place implicit reliance upon your judgment and discretion. I have
+    determined, therefore, to call upon you and to consult you in
+    reference to the very painful event which has occurred in
+    connection with my wedding. Mr. Lestrade, of Scotland Yard, is
+    acting already in the matter, but he assures me that he sees no
+    objection to your co-operation, and that he even thinks that it
+    might be of some assistance. I will call at four o’clock in the
+    afternoon, and, should you have any other engagement at that time,
+    I hope that you will postpone it, as this matter is of paramount
+    importance. Yours faithfully,
+
+
+    “‘ROBERT ST. SIMON.’
+
+
+“It is dated from Grosvenor Mansions, written with a quill pen, and the
+noble lord has had the misfortune to get a smear of ink upon the outer
+side of his right little finger,” remarked Holmes as he folded up the
+epistle.
+
+“He says four o’clock. It is three now. He will be here in an hour.”
+
+“Then I have just time, with your assistance, to get clear upon the
+subject. Turn over those papers and arrange the extracts in their order
+of time, while I take a glance as to who our client is.” He picked a
+red-covered volume from a line of books of reference beside the
+mantelpiece. “Here he is,” said he, sitting down and flattening it out
+upon his knee. “‘Lord Robert Walsingham de Vere St. Simon, second son
+of the Duke of Balmoral.’ Hum! ‘Arms: Azure, three caltrops in chief
+over a fess sable. Born in 1846.’ He’s forty-one years of age, which is
+mature for marriage. Was Under-Secretary for the colonies in a late
+administration. The Duke, his father, was at one time Secretary for
+Foreign Affairs. They inherit Plantagenet blood by direct descent, and
+Tudor on the distaff side. Ha! Well, there is nothing very instructive
+in all this. I think that I must turn to you Watson, for something more
+solid.”
+
+“I have very little difficulty in finding what I want,” said I, “for
+the facts are quite recent, and the matter struck me as remarkable. I
+feared to refer them to you, however, as I knew that you had an inquiry
+on hand and that you disliked the intrusion of other matters.”
+
+“Oh, you mean the little problem of the Grosvenor Square furniture van.
+That is quite cleared up now—though, indeed, it was obvious from the
+first. Pray give me the results of your newspaper selections.”
+
+“Here is the first notice which I can find. It is in the personal
+column of the _Morning Post_, and dates, as you see, some weeks back:
+‘A marriage has been arranged,’ it says, ‘and will, if rumour is
+correct, very shortly take place, between Lord Robert St. Simon, second
+son of the Duke of Balmoral, and Miss Hatty Doran, the only daughter of
+Aloysius Doran. Esq., of San Francisco, Cal., U.S.A.’ That is all.”
+
+“Terse and to the point,” remarked Holmes, stretching his long, thin
+legs towards the fire.
+
+“There was a paragraph amplifying this in one of the society papers of
+the same week. Ah, here it is: ‘There will soon be a call for
+protection in the marriage  market, for the present free-trade
+principle appears to tell heavily against our home product. One by one
+the management of the noble houses of Great Britain is passing into the
+hands of our fair cousins from across the Atlantic. An important
+addition has been made during the last week to the list of the prizes
+which have been borne away by these charming invaders. Lord St. Simon,
+who has shown himself for over twenty years proof against the little
+god’s arrows, has now definitely announced his approaching marriage
+with Miss Hatty Doran, the fascinating daughter of a California
+millionaire. Miss Doran, whose graceful figure and striking face
+attracted much attention at the Westbury House festivities, is an only
+child, and it is currently reported that her dowry will run to
+considerably over the six figures, with expectancies for the future. As
+it is an open secret that the Duke of Balmoral has been compelled to
+sell his pictures within the last few years, and as Lord St. Simon has
+no property of his own save the small estate of Birchmoor, it is
+obvious that the Californian heiress is not the only gainer by an
+alliance which will enable her to make the easy and common transition
+from a Republican lady to a British peeress.’”
+
+“Anything else?” asked Holmes, yawning.
+
+“Oh, yes; plenty. Then there is another note in the _Morning Post_ to
+say that the marriage would be an absolutely quiet one, that it would
+be at St. George’s, Hanover Square, that only half a dozen intimate
+friends would be invited, and that the party would return to the
+furnished house at Lancaster Gate which has been taken by Mr. Aloysius
+Doran. Two days later—that is, on Wednesday last—there is a curt
+announcement that the wedding had taken place, and that the honeymoon
+would be passed at Lord Backwater’s place, near Petersfield. Those are
+all the notices which appeared before the disappearance of the bride.”
+
+“Before the what?” asked Holmes with a start.
+
+“The vanishing of the lady.”
+
+“When did she vanish, then?”
+
+“At the wedding breakfast.”
+
+“Indeed. This is more interesting than it promised to be; quite
+dramatic, in fact.”
+
+“Yes; it struck me as being a little out of the common.”
+
+“They often vanish before the ceremony, and occasionally during the
+honeymoon; but I cannot call to mind anything quite so prompt as this.
+Pray let me have the details.”
+
+“I warn you that they are very incomplete.”
+
+“Perhaps we may make them less so.”
+
+“Such as they are, they are set forth in a single article of a morning
+paper of yesterday, which I will read to you. It is headed, ‘Singular
+Occurrence at a Fashionable Wedding’:
+
+“‘The family of Lord Robert St. Simon has been thrown into the greatest
+consternation by the strange and painful episodes which have taken
+place in connection with his wedding. The ceremony, as shortly
+announced in the papers of yesterday, occurred on the previous morning;
+but it is only now that it has been possible to confirm the strange
+rumours which have been so persistently floating about. In spite of the
+attempts of the friends to hush the matter up, so much public attention
+has now been drawn to it that no good purpose can be served by
+affecting to disregard what is a common subject for conversation.
+
+“‘The ceremony, which was performed at St. George’s, Hanover Square,
+was a very quiet one, no one being present save the father of the
+bride, Mr. Aloysius Doran, the Duchess of Balmoral, Lord Backwater,
+Lord Eustace and Lady Clara St. Simon (the younger brother and sister
+of the bridegroom), and Lady Alicia Whittington. The whole party
+proceeded afterwards to the house of Mr. Aloysius Doran, at Lancaster
+Gate, where breakfast had been prepared. It appears that some little
+trouble was caused by a woman, whose name has not been ascertained, who
+endeavoured to force her way into the house after the bridal party,
+alleging that she had some claim upon Lord St. Simon. It was only after
+a painful and prolonged scene that she was ejected by the butler and
+the footman. The bride, who had fortunately entered the house before
+this unpleasant interruption, had sat down to breakfast with the rest,
+when she complained of a sudden indisposition and retired to her room.
+Her prolonged absence having caused some comment, her father followed
+her, but learned from her maid that she had only come up to her chamber
+for an instant, caught up an ulster and bonnet, and hurried down to the
+passage. One of the footmen declared that he had seen a lady leave the
+house thus apparelled, but had refused to credit that it was his
+mistress, believing her to be with the company. On ascertaining that
+his daughter had disappeared, Mr. Aloysius Doran, in conjunction with
+the bridegroom, instantly put themselves in communication with the
+police, and very energetic inquiries are being made, which will
+probably result in a speedy clearing up of this very singular business.
+Up to a late hour last night, however, nothing had transpired as to the
+whereabouts of the missing lady. There are rumours of foul play in the
+matter, and it is said that the police have caused the arrest of the
+woman who had caused the original disturbance, in the belief that, from
+jealousy or some other motive, she may have been concerned in the
+strange disappearance of the bride.’”
+
+“And is that all?”
+
+“Only one little item in another of the morning papers, but it is a
+suggestive one.”
+
+“And it is—”
+
+“That Miss Flora Millar, the lady who had caused the disturbance, has
+actually been arrested. It appears that she was formerly a _danseuse_
+at the Allegro, and that she has known the bridegroom for some years.
+There are no further particulars, and the whole case is in your hands
+now—so far as it has been set forth in the public press.”
+
+“And an exceedingly interesting case it appears to be. I would not have
+missed it for worlds. But there is a ring at the bell, Watson, and as
+the clock makes it a few minutes after four, I have no doubt that this
+will prove to be our noble client. Do not dream of going, Watson, for I
+very much prefer having a witness, if only as a check to my own
+memory.”
+
+“Lord Robert St. Simon,” announced our page-boy, throwing open the
+door. A gentleman entered, with a pleasant, cultured face, high-nosed
+and pale, with something perhaps of petulance about the mouth, and with
+the steady, well-opened eye of a man whose pleasant lot it had ever
+been to command and to be obeyed. His manner was brisk, and yet his
+general appearance gave an undue impression of age, for he had a slight
+forward stoop and a little bend of the knees as he walked. His hair,
+too, as he swept off his very curly-brimmed hat, was grizzled round the
+edges and thin upon the top. As to his dress, it was careful to the
+verge of foppishness, with high collar, black frock-coat, white
+waistcoat, yellow gloves, patent-leather shoes, and light-coloured
+gaiters. He advanced slowly into the room, turning his head from left
+to right, and swinging in his right hand the cord which held his golden
+eyeglasses.
+
+“Good-day, Lord St. Simon,” said Holmes, rising and bowing. “Pray take
+the basket-chair. This is my friend and colleague, Dr. Watson. Draw up
+a little to the fire, and we will talk this matter over.”
+
+“A most painful matter to me, as you can most readily imagine, Mr.
+Holmes. I have been cut to the quick. I understand that you have
+already managed several delicate cases of this sort, sir, though I
+presume that they were hardly from the same class of society.”
+
+“No, I am descending.”
+
+“I beg pardon.”
+
+“My last client of the sort was a king.”
+
+“Oh, really! I had no idea. And which king?”
+
+“The King of Scandinavia.”
+
+“What! Had he lost his wife?”
+
+“You can understand,” said Holmes suavely, “that I extend to the
+affairs of my other clients the same secrecy which I promise to you in
+yours.”
+
+“Of course! Very right! very right! I’m sure I beg pardon. As to my own
+case, I am ready to give you any information which may assist you in
+forming an opinion.”
+
+“Thank you. I have already learned all that is in the public prints,
+nothing more. I presume that I may take it as correct—this article, for
+example, as to the disappearance of the bride.”
+
+Lord St. Simon glanced over it. “Yes, it is correct, as far as it
+goes.”
+
+“But it needs a great deal of supplementing before anyone could offer
+an opinion. I think that I may arrive at my facts most directly by
+questioning you.”
+
+“Pray do so.”
+
+“When did you first meet Miss Hatty Doran?”
+
+“In San Francisco, a year ago.”
+
+“You were travelling in the States?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Did you become engaged then?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“But you were on a friendly footing?”
+
+“I was amused by her society, and she could see that I was amused.”
+
+“Her father is very rich?”
+
+“He is said to be the richest man on the Pacific slope.”
+
+“And how did he make his money?”
+
+“In mining. He had nothing a few years ago. Then he struck gold,
+invested it, and came up by leaps and bounds.”
+
+“Now, what is your own impression as to the young lady’s—your wife’s
+character?”
+
+The nobleman swung his glasses a little faster and stared down into the
+fire. “You see, Mr. Holmes,” said he, “my wife was twenty before her
+father became a rich man. During that time she ran free in a mining
+camp and wandered through woods or mountains, so that her education has
+come from Nature rather than from the schoolmaster. She is what we call
+in England a tomboy, with a strong nature, wild and free, unfettered by
+any sort of traditions. She is impetuous—volcanic, I was about to say.
+She is swift in making up her mind and fearless in carrying out her
+resolutions. On the other hand, I would not have given her the name
+which I have the honour to bear”—he gave a little stately cough—“had I
+not thought her to be at bottom a noble woman. I believe that she is
+capable of heroic self-sacrifice and that anything dishonourable would
+be repugnant to her.”
+
+“Have you her photograph?”
+
+“I brought this with me.” He opened a locket and showed us the full
+face of a very lovely woman. It was not a photograph but an ivory
+miniature, and the artist had brought out the full effect of the
+lustrous black hair, the large dark eyes, and the exquisite mouth.
+Holmes gazed long and earnestly at it. Then he closed the locket and
+handed it back to Lord St. Simon.
+
+“The young lady came to London, then, and you renewed your
+acquaintance?”
+
+“Yes, her father brought her over for this last London season. I met
+her several times, became engaged to her, and have now married her.”
+
+“She brought, I understand, a considerable dowry?”
+
+“A fair dowry. Not more than is usual in my family.”
+
+“And this, of course, remains to you, since the marriage is a _fait
+accompli_?”
+
+“I really have made no inquiries on the subject.”
+
+“Very naturally not. Did you see Miss Doran on the day before the
+wedding?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Was she in good spirits?”
+
+“Never better. She kept talking of what we should do in our future
+lives.”
+
+“Indeed! That is very interesting. And on the morning of the wedding?”
+
+“She was as bright as possible—at least until after the ceremony.”
+
+“And did you observe any change in her then?”
+
+“Well, to tell the truth, I saw then the first signs that I had ever
+seen that her temper was just a little sharp. The incident however, was
+too trivial to relate and can have no possible bearing upon the case.”
+
+“Pray let us have it, for all that.”
+
+“Oh, it is childish. She dropped her bouquet as we went towards the
+vestry. She was passing the front pew at the time, and it fell over
+into the pew. There was a moment’s delay, but the gentleman in the pew
+handed it up to her again, and it did not appear to be the worse for
+the fall. Yet when I spoke to her of the matter, she answered me
+abruptly; and in the carriage, on our way home, she seemed absurdly
+agitated over this trifling cause.”
+
+“Indeed! You say that there was a gentleman in the pew. Some of the
+general public were present, then?”
+
+“Oh, yes. It is impossible to exclude them when the church is open.”
+
+“This gentleman was not one of your wife’s friends?”
+
+“No, no; I call him a gentleman by courtesy, but he was quite a
+common-looking person. I hardly noticed his appearance. But really I
+think that we are wandering rather far from the point.”
+
+“Lady St. Simon, then, returned from the wedding in a less cheerful
+frame of mind than she had gone to it. What did she do on re-entering
+her father’s house?”
+
+“I saw her in conversation with her maid.”
+
+“And who is her maid?”
+
+“Alice is her name. She is an American and came from California with
+her.”
+
+“A confidential servant?”
+
+“A little too much so. It seemed to me that her mistress allowed her to
+take great liberties. Still, of course, in America they look upon these
+things in a different way.”
+
+“How long did she speak to this Alice?”
+
+“Oh, a few minutes. I had something else to think of.”
+
+“You did not overhear what they said?”
+
+“Lady St. Simon said something about ‘jumping a claim.’ She was
+accustomed to use slang of the kind. I have no idea what she meant.”
+
+“American slang is very expressive sometimes. And what did your wife do
+when she finished speaking to her maid?”
+
+“She walked into the breakfast-room.”
+
+“On your arm?”
+
+“No, alone. She was very independent in little matters like that. Then,
+after we had sat down for ten minutes or so, she rose hurriedly,
+muttered some words of apology, and left the room. She never came
+back.”
+
+“But this maid, Alice, as I understand, deposes that she went to her
+room, covered her bride’s dress with a long ulster, put on a bonnet,
+and went out.”
+
+“Quite so. And she was afterwards seen walking into Hyde Park in
+company with Flora Millar, a woman who is now in custody, and who had
+already made a disturbance at Mr. Doran’s house that morning.”
+
+“Ah, yes. I should like a few particulars as to this young lady, and
+your relations to her.”
+
+Lord St. Simon shrugged his shoulders and raised his eyebrows. “We have
+been on a friendly footing for some years—I may say on a _very_
+friendly footing. She used to be at the Allegro. I have not treated her
+ungenerously, and she had no just cause of complaint against me, but
+you know what women are, Mr. Holmes. Flora was a dear little thing, but
+exceedingly hot-headed and devotedly attached to me. She wrote me
+dreadful letters when she heard that I was about to be married, and, to
+tell the truth, the reason why I had the marriage celebrated so quietly
+was that I feared lest there might be a scandal in the church. She came
+to Mr. Doran’s door just after we returned, and she endeavoured to push
+her way in, uttering very abusive expressions towards my wife, and even
+threatening her, but I had foreseen the possibility of something of the
+sort, and I had two police fellows there in private clothes, who soon
+pushed her out again. She was quiet when she saw that there was no good
+in making a row.”
+
+“Did your wife hear all this?”
+
+“No, thank goodness, she did not.”
+
+“And she was seen walking with this very woman afterwards?”
+
+“Yes. That is what Mr. Lestrade, of Scotland Yard, looks upon as so
+serious. It is thought that Flora decoyed my wife out and laid some
+terrible trap for her.”
+
+“Well, it is a possible supposition.”
+
+“You think so, too?”
+
+“I did not say a probable one. But you do not yourself look upon this
+as likely?”
+
+“I do not think Flora would hurt a fly.”
+
+“Still, jealousy is a strange transformer of characters. Pray what is
+your own theory as to what took place?”
+
+“Well, really, I came to seek a theory, not to propound one. I have
+given you all the facts. Since you ask me, however, I may say that it
+has occurred to me as possible that the excitement of this affair, the
+consciousness that she had made so immense a social stride, had the
+effect of causing some little nervous disturbance in my wife.”
+
+“In short, that she had become suddenly deranged?”
+
+“Well, really, when I consider that she has turned her back—I will not
+say upon me, but upon so much that many have aspired to without
+success—I can hardly explain it in any other fashion.”
+
+“Well, certainly that is also a conceivable hypothesis,” said Holmes,
+smiling. “And now, Lord St. Simon, I think that I have nearly all my
+data. May I ask whether you were seated at the breakfast-table so that
+you could see out of the window?”
+
+“We could see the other side of the road and the Park.”
+
+“Quite so. Then I do not think that I need to detain you longer. I
+shall communicate with you.”
+
+“Should you be fortunate enough to solve this problem,” said our
+client, rising.
+
+“I have solved it.”
+
+“Eh? What was that?”
+
+“I say that I have solved it.”
+
+“Where, then, is my wife?”
+
+“That is a detail which I shall speedily supply.”
+
+Lord St. Simon shook his head. “I am afraid that it will take wiser
+heads than yours or mine,” he remarked, and bowing in a stately,
+old-fashioned manner he departed.
+
+“It is very good of Lord St. Simon to honour my head by putting it on a
+level with his own,” said Sherlock Holmes, laughing. “I think that I
+shall have a whisky and soda and a cigar after all this
+cross-questioning. I had formed my conclusions as to the case before
+our client came into the room.”
+
+“My dear Holmes!”
+
+“I have notes of several similar cases, though none, as I remarked
+before, which were quite as prompt. My whole examination served to turn
+my conjecture into a certainty. Circumstantial evidence is occasionally
+very convincing, as when you find a trout in the milk, to quote
+Thoreau’s example.”
+
+“But I have heard all that you have heard.”
+
+“Without, however, the knowledge of pre-existing cases which serves me
+so well. There was a parallel instance in Aberdeen some years back, and
+something on very much the same lines at Munich the year after the
+Franco-Prussian War. It is one of these cases—but, hullo, here is
+Lestrade! Good-afternoon, Lestrade! You will find an extra tumbler upon
+the sideboard, and there are cigars in the box.”
+
+The official detective was attired in a pea-jacket and cravat, which
+gave him a decidedly nautical appearance, and he carried a black canvas
+bag in his hand. With a short greeting he seated himself and lit the
+cigar which had been offered to him.
+
+“What’s up, then?” asked Holmes with a twinkle in his eye. “You look
+dissatisfied.”
+
+“And I feel dissatisfied. It is this infernal St. Simon marriage case.
+I can make neither head nor tail of the business.”
+
+“Really! You surprise me.”
+
+“Who ever heard of such a mixed affair? Every clue seems to slip
+through my fingers. I have been at work upon it all day.”
+
+“And very wet it seems to have made you,” said Holmes laying his hand
+upon the arm of the pea-jacket.
+
+“Yes, I have been dragging the Serpentine.”
+
+“In Heaven’s name, what for?”
+
+“In search of the body of Lady St. Simon.”
+
+Sherlock Holmes leaned back in his chair and laughed heartily.
+
+“Have you dragged the basin of Trafalgar Square fountain?” he asked.
+
+“Why? What do you mean?”
+
+“Because you have just as good a chance of finding this lady in the one
+as in the other.”
+
+Lestrade shot an angry glance at my companion. “I suppose you know all
+about it,” he snarled.
+
+“Well, I have only just heard the facts, but my mind is made up.”
+
+“Oh, indeed! Then you think that the Serpentine plays no part in the
+matter?”
+
+“I think it very unlikely.”
+
+“Then perhaps you will kindly explain how it is that we found this in
+it?” He opened his bag as he spoke, and tumbled onto the floor a
+wedding-dress of watered silk, a pair of white satin shoes and a
+bride’s wreath and veil, all discoloured and soaked in water. “There,”
+said he, putting a new wedding-ring upon the top of the pile. “There is
+a little nut for you to crack, Master Holmes.”
+
+“Oh, indeed!” said my friend, blowing blue rings into the air. “You
+dragged them from the Serpentine?”
+
+“No. They were found floating near the margin by a park-keeper. They
+have been identified as her clothes, and it seemed to me that if the
+clothes were there the body would not be far off.”
+
+“By the same brilliant reasoning, every man’s body is to be found in
+the neighbourhood of his wardrobe. And pray what did you hope to arrive
+at through this?”
+
+“At some evidence implicating Flora Millar in the disappearance.”
+
+“I am afraid that you will find it difficult.”
+
+“Are you, indeed, now?” cried Lestrade with some bitterness. “I am
+afraid, Holmes, that you are not very practical with your deductions
+and your inferences. You have made two blunders in as many minutes.
+This dress does implicate Miss Flora Millar.”
+
+“And how?”
+
+“In the dress is a pocket. In the pocket is a card-case. In the
+card-case is a note. And here is the very note.” He slapped it down
+upon the table in front of him. “Listen to this: ‘You will see me when
+all is ready. Come at once. F. H. M.’ Now my theory all along has been
+that Lady St. Simon was decoyed away by Flora Millar, and that she,
+with confederates, no doubt, was responsible for her disappearance.
+Here, signed with her initials, is the very note which was no doubt
+quietly slipped into her hand at the door and which lured her within
+their reach.”
+
+“Very good, Lestrade,” said Holmes, laughing. “You really are very fine
+indeed. Let me see it.” He took up the paper in a listless way, but his
+attention instantly became riveted, and he gave a little cry of
+satisfaction. “This is indeed important,” said he.
+
+“Ha! you find it so?”
+
+“Extremely so. I congratulate you warmly.”
+
+Lestrade rose in his triumph and bent his head to look. “Why,” he
+shrieked, “you’re looking at the wrong side!”
+
+“On the contrary, this is the right side.”
+
+“The right side? You’re mad! Here is the note written in pencil over
+here.”
+
+“And over here is what appears to be the fragment of a hotel bill,
+which interests me deeply.”
+
+“There’s nothing in it. I looked at it before,” said Lestrade. “‘Oct.
+4th, rooms 8_s_., breakfast 2_s_. 6_d_., cocktail 1_s_., lunch 2_s_.
+6_d_., glass sherry, 8_d_.’ I see nothing in that.”
+
+“Very likely not. It is most important, all the same. As to the note,
+it is important also, or at least the initials are, so I congratulate
+you again.”
+
+“I’ve wasted time enough,” said Lestrade, rising. “I believe in hard
+work and not in sitting by the fire spinning fine theories. Good-day,
+Mr. Holmes, and we shall see which gets to the bottom of the matter
+first.” He gathered up the garments, thrust them into the bag, and made
+for the door.
+
+“Just one hint to you, Lestrade,” drawled Holmes before his rival
+vanished; “I will tell you the true solution of the matter. Lady St.
+Simon is a myth. There is not, and there never has been, any such
+person.”
+
+Lestrade looked sadly at my companion. Then he turned to me, tapped his
+forehead three times, shook his head solemnly, and hurried away.
+
+He had hardly shut the door behind him when Holmes rose to put on his
+overcoat. “There is something in what the fellow says about outdoor
+work,” he remarked, “so I think, Watson, that I must leave you to your
+papers for a little.”
+
+It was after five o’clock when Sherlock Holmes left me, but I had no
+time to be lonely, for within an hour there arrived a confectioner’s
+man with a very large flat box. This he unpacked with the help of a
+youth whom he had brought with him, and presently, to my very great
+astonishment, a quite epicurean little cold supper began to be laid out
+upon our humble lodging-house mahogany. There were a couple of brace of
+cold woodcock, a pheasant, a _pâté de foie gras_ pie with a group of
+ancient and cobwebby bottles. Having laid out all these luxuries, my
+two visitors vanished away, like the genii of the Arabian Nights, with
+no explanation save that the things had been paid for and were ordered
+to this address.
+
+Just before nine o’clock Sherlock Holmes stepped briskly into the room.
+His features were gravely set, but there was a light in his eye which
+made me think that he had not been disappointed in his conclusions.
+
+“They have laid the supper, then,” he said, rubbing his hands.
+
+“You seem to expect company. They have laid for five.”
+
+“Yes, I fancy we may have some company dropping in,” said he. “I am
+surprised that Lord St. Simon has not already arrived. Ha! I fancy that
+I hear his step now upon the stairs.”
+
+It was indeed our visitor of the afternoon who came bustling in,
+dangling his glasses more vigorously than ever, and with a very
+perturbed expression upon his aristocratic features.
+
+“My messenger reached you, then?” asked Holmes.
+
+“Yes, and I confess that the contents startled me beyond measure. Have
+you good authority for what you say?”
+
+“The best possible.”
+
+Lord St. Simon sank into a chair and passed his hand over his forehead.
+
+“What will the Duke say,” he murmured, “when he hears that one of the
+family has been subjected to such humiliation?”
+
+“It is the purest accident. I cannot allow that there is any
+humiliation.”
+
+“Ah, you look on these things from another standpoint.”
+
+“I fail to see that anyone is to blame. I can hardly see how the lady
+could have acted otherwise, though her abrupt method of doing it was
+undoubtedly to be regretted. Having no mother, she had no one to advise
+her at such a crisis.”
+
+“It was a slight, sir, a public slight,” said Lord St. Simon, tapping
+his fingers upon the table.
+
+“You must make allowance for this poor girl, placed in so unprecedented
+a position.”
+
+“I will make no allowance. I am very angry indeed, and I have been
+shamefully used.”
+
+“I think that I heard a ring,” said Holmes. “Yes, there are steps on
+the landing. If I cannot persuade you to take a lenient view of the
+matter, Lord St. Simon, I have brought an advocate here who may be more
+successful.” He opened the door and ushered in a lady and gentleman.
+“Lord St. Simon,” said he “allow me to introduce you to Mr. and Mrs.
+Francis Hay Moulton. The lady, I think, you have already met.”
+
+At the sight of these newcomers our client had sprung from his seat and
+stood very erect, with his eyes cast down and his hand thrust into the
+breast of his frock-coat, a picture of offended dignity. The lady had
+taken a quick step forward and had held out her hand to him, but he
+still refused to raise his eyes. It was as well for his resolution,
+perhaps, for her pleading face was one which it was hard to resist.
+
+“You’re angry, Robert,” said she. “Well, I guess you have every cause
+to be.”
+
+“Pray make no apology to me,” said Lord St. Simon bitterly.
+
+“Oh, yes, I know that I have treated you real bad and that I should
+have spoken to you before I went; but I was kind of rattled, and from
+the time when I saw Frank here again I just didn’t know what I was
+doing or saying. I only wonder I didn’t fall down and do a faint right
+there before the altar.”
+
+“Perhaps, Mrs. Moulton, you would like my friend and me to leave the
+room while you explain this matter?”
+
+“If I may give an opinion,” remarked the strange gentleman, “we’ve had
+just a little too much secrecy over this business already. For my part,
+I should like all Europe and America to hear the rights of it.” He was
+a small, wiry, sunburnt man, clean-shaven, with a sharp face and alert
+manner.
+
+“Then I’ll tell our story right away,” said the lady. “Frank here and I
+met in ’84, in McQuire’s camp, near the Rockies, where Pa was working a
+claim. We were engaged to each other, Frank and I; but then one day
+father struck a rich pocket and made a pile, while poor Frank here had
+a claim that petered out and came to nothing. The richer Pa grew the
+poorer was Frank; so at last Pa wouldn’t hear of our engagement lasting
+any longer, and he took me away to ’Frisco. Frank wouldn’t throw up his
+hand, though; so he followed me there, and he saw me without Pa knowing
+anything about it. It would only have made him mad to know, so we just
+fixed it all up for ourselves. Frank said that he would go and make his
+pile, too, and never come back to claim me until he had as much as Pa.
+So then I promised to wait for him to the end of time and pledged
+myself not to marry anyone else while he lived. ‘Why shouldn’t we be
+married right away, then,’ said he, ‘and then I will feel sure of you;
+and I won’t claim to be your husband until I come back?’ Well, we
+talked it over, and he had fixed it all up so nicely, with a clergyman
+all ready in waiting, that we just did it right there; and then Frank
+went off to seek his fortune, and I went back to Pa.
+
+“The next I heard of Frank was that he was in Montana, and then he went
+prospecting in Arizona, and then I heard of him from New Mexico. After
+that came a long newspaper story about how a miners’ camp had been
+attacked by Apache Indians, and there was my Frank’s name among the
+killed. I fainted dead away, and I was very sick for months after. Pa
+thought I had a decline and took me to half the doctors in ’Frisco. Not
+a word of news came for a year and more, so that I never doubted that
+Frank was really dead. Then Lord St. Simon came to ’Frisco, and we came
+to London, and a marriage was arranged, and Pa was very pleased, but I
+felt all the time that no man on this earth would ever take the place
+in my heart that had been given to my poor Frank.
+
+“Still, if I had married Lord St. Simon, of course I’d have done my
+duty by him. We can’t command our love, but we can our actions. I went
+to the altar with him with the intention to make him just as good a
+wife as it was in me to be. But you may imagine what I felt when, just
+as I came to the altar rails, I glanced back and saw Frank standing and
+looking at me out of the first pew. I thought it was his ghost at
+first; but when I looked again there he was still, with a kind of
+question in his eyes, as if to ask me whether I were glad or sorry to
+see him. I wonder I didn’t drop. I know that everything was turning
+round, and the words of the clergyman were just like the buzz of a bee
+in my ear. I didn’t know what to do. Should I stop the service and make
+a scene in the church? I glanced at him again, and he seemed to know
+what I was thinking, for he raised his finger to his lips to tell me to
+be still. Then I saw him scribble on a piece of paper, and I knew that
+he was writing me a note. As I passed his pew on the way out I dropped
+my bouquet over to him, and he slipped the note into my hand when he
+returned me the flowers. It was only a line asking me to join him when
+he made the sign to me to do so. Of course I never doubted for a moment
+that my first duty was now to him, and I determined to do just whatever
+he might direct.
+
+“When I got back I told my maid, who had known him in California, and
+had always been his friend. I ordered her to say nothing, but to get a
+few things packed and my ulster ready. I know I ought to have spoken to
+Lord St. Simon, but it was dreadful hard before his mother and all
+those great people. I just made up my mind to run away and explain
+afterwards. I hadn’t been at the table ten minutes before I saw Frank
+out of the window at the other side of the road. He beckoned to me and
+then began walking into the Park. I slipped out, put on my things, and
+followed him. Some woman came talking something or other about Lord St.
+Simon to me—seemed to me from the little I heard as if he had a little
+secret of his own before marriage also—but I managed to get away from
+her and soon overtook Frank. We got into a cab together, and away we
+drove to some lodgings he had taken in Gordon Square, and that was my
+true wedding after all those years of waiting. Frank had been a
+prisoner among the Apaches, had escaped, came on to ’Frisco, found that
+I had given him up for dead and had gone to England, followed me there,
+and had come upon me at last on the very morning of my second wedding.”
+
+“I saw it in a paper,” explained the American. “It gave the name and
+the church but not where the lady lived.”
+
+“Then we had a talk as to what we should do, and Frank was all for
+openness, but I was so ashamed of it all that I felt as if I should
+like to vanish away and never see any of them again—just sending a line
+to Pa, perhaps, to show him that I was alive. It was awful to me to
+think of all those lords and ladies sitting round that breakfast-table
+and waiting for me to come back. So Frank took my wedding-clothes and
+things and made a bundle of them, so that I should not be traced, and
+dropped them away somewhere where no one could find them. It is likely
+that we should have gone on to Paris to-morrow, only that this good
+gentleman, Mr. Holmes, came round to us this evening, though how he
+found us is more than I can think, and he showed us very clearly and
+kindly that I was wrong and that Frank was right, and that we should be
+putting ourselves in the wrong if we were so secret. Then he offered to
+give us a chance of talking to Lord St. Simon alone, and so we came
+right away round to his rooms at once. Now, Robert, you have heard it
+all, and I am very sorry if I have given you pain, and I hope that you
+do not think very meanly of me.”
+
+Lord St. Simon had by no means relaxed his rigid attitude, but had
+listened with a frowning brow and a compressed lip to this long
+narrative.
+
+“Excuse me,” he said, “but it is not my custom to discuss my most
+intimate personal affairs in this public manner.”
+
+“Then you won’t forgive me? You won’t shake hands before I go?”
+
+“Oh, certainly, if it would give you any pleasure.” He put out his hand
+and coldly grasped that which she extended to him.
+
+“I had hoped,” suggested Holmes, “that you would have joined us in a
+friendly supper.”
+
+“I think that there you ask a little too much,” responded his Lordship.
+“I may be forced to acquiesce in these recent developments, but I can
+hardly be expected to make merry over them. I think that with your
+permission I will now wish you all a very good-night.” He included us
+all in a sweeping bow and stalked out of the room.
+
+“Then I trust that you at least will honour me with your company,” said
+Sherlock Holmes. “It is always a joy to meet an American, Mr. Moulton,
+for I am one of those who believe that the folly of a monarch and the
+blundering of a minister in far-gone years will not prevent our
+children from being some day citizens of the same world-wide country
+under a flag which shall be a quartering of the Union Jack with the
+Stars and Stripes.”
+
+“The case has been an interesting one,” remarked Holmes when our
+visitors had left us, “because it serves to show very clearly how
+simple the explanation may be of an affair which at first sight seems
+to be almost inexplicable. Nothing could be more natural than the
+sequence of events as narrated by this lady, and nothing stranger than
+the result when viewed, for instance, by Mr. Lestrade of Scotland
+Yard.”
+
+“You were not yourself at fault at all, then?”
+
+“From the first, two facts were very obvious to me, the one that the
+lady had been quite willing to undergo the wedding ceremony, the other
+that she had repented of it within a few minutes of returning home.
+Obviously something had occurred during the morning, then, to cause her
+to change her mind. What could that something be? She could not have
+spoken to anyone when she was out, for she had been in the company of
+the bridegroom. Had she seen someone, then? If she had, it must be
+someone from America because she had spent so short a time in this
+country that she could hardly have allowed anyone to acquire so deep an
+influence over her that the mere sight of him would induce her to
+change her plans so completely. You see we have already arrived, by a
+process of exclusion, at the idea that she might have seen an American.
+Then who could this American be, and why should he possess so much
+influence over her? It might be a lover; it might be a husband. Her
+young womanhood had, I knew, been spent in rough scenes and under
+strange conditions. So far I had got before I ever heard Lord St.
+Simon’s narrative. When he told us of a man in a pew, of the change in
+the bride’s manner, of so transparent a device for obtaining a note as
+the dropping of a bouquet, of her resort to her confidential maid, and
+of her very significant allusion to claim-jumping—which in miners’
+parlance means taking possession of that which another person has a
+prior claim to—the whole situation became absolutely clear. She had
+gone off with a man, and the man was either a lover or was a previous
+husband—the chances being in favour of the latter.”
+
+“And how in the world did you find them?”
+
+“It might have been difficult, but friend Lestrade held information in
+his hands the value of which he did not himself know. The initials
+were, of course, of the highest importance, but more valuable still was
+it to know that within a week he had settled his bill at one of the
+most select London hotels.”
+
+“How did you deduce the select?”
+
+“By the select prices. Eight shillings for a bed and eightpence for a
+glass of sherry pointed to one of the most expensive hotels. There are
+not many in London which charge at that rate. In the second one which I
+visited in Northumberland Avenue, I learned by an inspection of the
+book that Francis H. Moulton, an American gentleman, had left only the
+day before, and on looking over the entries against him, I came upon
+the very items which I had seen in the duplicate bill. His letters were
+to be forwarded to 226 Gordon Square; so thither I travelled, and being
+fortunate enough to find the loving couple at home, I ventured to give
+them some paternal advice and to point out to them that it would be
+better in every way that they should make their position a little
+clearer both to the general public and to Lord St. Simon in particular.
+I invited them to meet him here, and, as you see, I made him keep the
+appointment.”
+
+“But with no very good result,” I remarked. “His conduct was certainly
+not very gracious.”
+
+“Ah, Watson,” said Holmes, smiling, “perhaps you would not be very
+gracious either, if, after all the trouble of wooing and wedding, you
+found yourself deprived in an instant of wife and of fortune. I think
+that we may judge Lord St. Simon very mercifully and thank our stars
+that we are never likely to find ourselves in the same position. Draw
+your chair up and hand me my violin, for the only problem we have still
+to solve is how to while away these bleak autumnal evenings.”
+
+
+
+XI. THE ADVENTURE OF THE BERYL CORONET
+
+“Holmes,” said I as I stood one morning in our bow-window looking down
+the street, “here is a madman coming along. It seems rather sad that
+his relatives should allow him to come out alone.”
+
+My friend rose lazily from his armchair and stood with his hands in the
+pockets of his dressing-gown, looking over my shoulder. It was a
+bright, crisp February morning, and the snow of the day before still
+lay deep upon the ground, shimmering brightly in the wintry sun. Down
+the centre of Baker Street it had been ploughed into a brown crumbly
+band by the traffic, but at either side and on the heaped-up edges of
+the footpaths it still lay as white as when it fell. The grey pavement
+had been cleaned and scraped, but was still dangerously slippery, so
+that there were fewer passengers than usual. Indeed, from the direction
+of the Metropolitan Station no one was coming save the single gentleman
+whose eccentric conduct had drawn my attention.
+
+He was a man of about fifty, tall, portly, and imposing, with a
+massive, strongly marked face and a commanding figure. He was dressed
+in a sombre yet rich style, in black frock-coat, shining hat, neat
+brown gaiters, and well-cut pearl-grey trousers. Yet his actions were
+in absurd contrast to the dignity of his dress and features, for he was
+running hard, with occasional little springs, such as a weary man gives
+who is little accustomed to set any tax upon his legs. As he ran he
+jerked his hands up and down, waggled his head, and writhed his face
+into the most extraordinary contortions.
+
+“What on earth can be the matter with him?” I asked. “He is looking up
+at the numbers of the houses.”
+
+“I believe that he is coming here,” said Holmes, rubbing his hands.
+
+“Here?”
+
+“Yes; I rather think he is coming to consult me professionally. I think
+that I recognise the symptoms. Ha! did I not tell you?” As he spoke,
+the man, puffing and blowing, rushed at our door and pulled at our bell
+until the whole house resounded with the clanging.
+
+A few moments later he was in our room, still puffing, still
+gesticulating, but with so fixed a look of grief and despair in his
+eyes that our smiles were turned in an instant to horror and pity. For
+a while he could not get his words out, but swayed his body and plucked
+at his hair like one who has been driven to the extreme limits of his
+reason. Then, suddenly springing to his feet, he beat his head against
+the wall with such force that we both rushed upon him and tore him away
+to the centre of the room. Sherlock Holmes pushed him down into the
+easy-chair and, sitting beside him, patted his hand and chatted with
+him in the easy, soothing tones which he knew so well how to employ.
+
+“You have come to me to tell your story, have you not?” said he. “You
+are fatigued with your haste. Pray wait until you have recovered
+yourself, and then I shall be most happy to look into any little
+problem which you may submit to me.”
+
+The man sat for a minute or more with a heaving chest, fighting against
+his emotion. Then he passed his handkerchief over his brow, set his
+lips tight, and turned his face towards us.
+
+“No doubt you think me mad?” said he.
+
+“I see that you have had some great trouble,” responded Holmes.
+
+“God knows I have!—a trouble which is enough to unseat my reason, so
+sudden and so terrible is it. Public disgrace I might have faced,
+although I am a man whose character has never yet borne a stain.
+Private affliction also is the lot of every man; but the two coming
+together, and in so frightful a form, have been enough to shake my very
+soul. Besides, it is not I alone. The very noblest in the land may
+suffer unless some way be found out of this horrible affair.”
+
+“Pray compose yourself, sir,” said Holmes, “and let me have a clear
+account of who you are and what it is that has befallen you.”
+
+“My name,” answered our visitor, “is probably familiar to your ears. I
+am Alexander Holder, of the banking firm of Holder & Stevenson, of
+Threadneedle Street.”
+
+The name was indeed well known to us as belonging to the senior partner
+in the second largest private banking concern in the City of London.
+What could have happened, then, to bring one of the foremost citizens
+of London to this most pitiable pass? We waited, all curiosity, until
+with another effort he braced himself to tell his story.
+
+“I feel that time is of value,” said he; “that is why I hastened here
+when the police inspector suggested that I should secure your
+co-operation. I came to Baker Street by the Underground and hurried
+from there on foot, for the cabs go slowly through this snow. That is
+why I was so out of breath, for I am a man who takes very little
+exercise. I feel better now, and I will put the facts before you as
+shortly and yet as clearly as I can.
+
+“It is, of course, well known to you that in a successful banking
+business as much depends upon our being able to find remunerative
+investments for our funds as upon our increasing our connection and the
+number of our depositors. One of our most lucrative means of laying out
+money is in the shape of loans, where the security is unimpeachable. We
+have done a good deal in this direction during the last few years, and
+there are many noble families to whom we have advanced large sums upon
+the security of their pictures, libraries, or plate.
+
+“Yesterday morning I was seated in my office at the bank when a card
+was brought in to me by one of the clerks. I started when I saw the
+name, for it was that of none other than—well, perhaps even to you I
+had better say no more than that it was a name which is a household
+word all over the earth—one of the highest, noblest, most exalted names
+in England. I was overwhelmed by the honour and attempted, when he
+entered, to say so, but he plunged at once into business with the air
+of a man who wishes to hurry quickly through a disagreeable task.
+
+“‘Mr. Holder,’ said he, ‘I have been informed that you are in the habit
+of advancing money.’
+
+“‘The firm does so when the security is good.’ I answered.
+
+“‘It is absolutely essential to me,’ said he, ‘that I should have £
+50,000 at once. I could, of course, borrow so trifling a sum ten times
+over from my friends, but I much prefer to make it a matter of business
+and to carry out that business myself. In my position you can readily
+understand that it is unwise to place one’s self under obligations.’
+
+“‘For how long, may I ask, do you want this sum?’ I asked.
+
+“‘Next Monday I have a large sum due to me, and I shall then most
+certainly repay what you advance, with whatever interest you think it
+right to charge. But it is very essential to me that the money should
+be paid at once.’
+
+“‘I should be happy to advance it without further parley from my own
+private purse,’ said I, ‘were it not that the strain would be rather
+more than it could bear. If, on the other hand, I am to do it in the
+name of the firm, then in justice to my partner I must insist that,
+even in your case, every businesslike precaution should be taken.’
+
+“‘I should much prefer to have it so,’ said he, raising up a square,
+black morocco case which he had laid beside his chair. ‘You have
+doubtless heard of the Beryl Coronet?’
+
+“‘One of the most precious public possessions of the empire,’ said I.
+
+“‘Precisely.’ He opened the case, and there, imbedded in soft,
+flesh-coloured velvet, lay the magnificent piece of jewellery which he
+had named. ‘There are thirty-nine enormous beryls,’ said he, ‘and the
+price of the gold chasing is incalculable. The lowest estimate would
+put the worth of the coronet at double the sum which I have asked. I am
+prepared to leave it with you as my security.’
+
+“I took the precious case into my hands and looked in some perplexity
+from it to my illustrious client.
+
+“‘You doubt its value?’ he asked.
+
+“‘Not at all. I only doubt—’
+
+“‘The propriety of my leaving it. You may set your mind at rest about
+that. I should not dream of doing so were it not absolutely certain
+that I should be able in four days to reclaim it. It is a pure matter
+of form. Is the security sufficient?’
+
+“‘Ample.’
+
+“‘You understand, Mr. Holder, that I am giving you a strong proof of
+the confidence which I have in you, founded upon all that I have heard
+of you. I rely upon you not only to be discreet and to refrain from all
+gossip upon the matter but, above all, to preserve this coronet with
+every possible precaution because I need not say that a great public
+scandal would be caused if any harm were to befall it. Any injury to it
+would be almost as serious as its complete loss, for there are no
+beryls in the world to match these, and it would be impossible to
+replace them. I leave it with you, however, with every confidence, and
+I shall call for it in person on Monday morning.’
+
+“Seeing that my client was anxious to leave, I said no more but,
+calling for my cashier, I ordered him to pay over fifty £ 1000 notes.
+When I was alone once more, however, with the precious case lying upon
+the table in front of me, I could not but think with some misgivings of
+the immense responsibility which it entailed upon me. There could be no
+doubt that, as it was a national possession, a horrible scandal would
+ensue if any misfortune should occur to it. I already regretted having
+ever consented to take charge of it. However, it was too late to alter
+the matter now, so I locked it up in my private safe and turned once
+more to my work.
+
+“When evening came I felt that it would be an imprudence to leave so
+precious a thing in the office behind me. Bankers’ safes had been
+forced before now, and why should not mine be? If so, how terrible
+would be the position in which I should find myself! I determined,
+therefore, that for the next few days I would always carry the case
+backward and forward with me, so that it might never be really out of
+my reach. With this intention, I called a cab and drove out to my house
+at Streatham, carrying the jewel with me. I did not breathe freely
+until I had taken it upstairs and locked it in the bureau of my
+dressing-room.
+
+“And now a word as to my household, Mr. Holmes, for I wish you to
+thoroughly understand the situation. My groom and my page sleep out of
+the house, and may be set aside altogether. I have three maid-servants
+who have been with me a number of years and whose absolute reliability
+is quite above suspicion. Another, Lucy Parr, the second waiting-maid,
+has only been in my service a few months. She came with an excellent
+character, however, and has always given me satisfaction. She is a very
+pretty girl and has attracted admirers who have occasionally hung about
+the place. That is the only drawback which we have found to her, but we
+believe her to be a thoroughly good girl in every way.
+
+“So much for the servants. My family itself is so small that it will
+not take me long to describe it. I am a widower and have an only son,
+Arthur. He has been a disappointment to me, Mr. Holmes—a grievous
+disappointment. I have no doubt that I am myself to blame. People tell
+me that I have spoiled him. Very likely I have. When my dear wife died
+I felt that he was all I had to love. I could not bear to see the smile
+fade even for a moment from his face. I have never denied him a wish.
+Perhaps it would have been better for both of us had I been sterner,
+but I meant it for the best.
+
+“It was naturally my intention that he should succeed me in my
+business, but he was not of a business turn. He was wild, wayward, and,
+to speak the truth, I could not trust him in the handling of large sums
+of money. When he was young he became a member of an aristocratic club,
+and there, having charming manners, he was soon the intimate of a
+number of men with long purses and expensive habits. He learned to play
+heavily at cards and to squander money on the turf, until he had again
+and again to come to me and implore me to give him an advance upon his
+allowance, that he might settle his debts of honour. He tried more than
+once to break away from the dangerous company which he was keeping, but
+each time the influence of his friend, Sir George Burnwell, was enough
+to draw him back again.
+
+“And, indeed, I could not wonder that such a man as Sir George Burnwell
+should gain an influence over him, for he has frequently brought him to
+my house, and I have found myself that I could hardly resist the
+fascination of his manner. He is older than Arthur, a man of the world
+to his finger-tips, one who had been everywhere, seen everything, a
+brilliant talker, and a man of great personal beauty. Yet when I think
+of him in cold blood, far away from the glamour of his presence, I am
+convinced from his cynical speech and the look which I have caught in
+his eyes that he is one who should be deeply distrusted. So I think,
+and so, too, thinks my little Mary, who has a woman’s quick insight
+into character.
+
+“And now there is only she to be described. She is my niece; but when
+my brother died five years ago and left her alone in the world I
+adopted her, and have looked upon her ever since as my daughter. She is
+a sunbeam in my house—sweet, loving, beautiful, a wonderful manager and
+housekeeper, yet as tender and quiet and gentle as a woman could be.
+She is my right hand. I do not know what I could do without her. In
+only one matter has she ever gone against my wishes. Twice my boy has
+asked her to marry him, for he loves her devotedly, but each time she
+has refused him. I think that if anyone could have drawn him into the
+right path it would have been she, and that his marriage might have
+changed his whole life; but now, alas! it is too late—forever too late!
+
+“Now, Mr. Holmes, you know the people who live under my roof, and I
+shall continue with my miserable story.
+
+“When we were taking coffee in the drawing-room that night after
+dinner, I told Arthur and Mary my experience, and of the precious
+treasure which we had under our roof, suppressing only the name of my
+client. Lucy Parr, who had brought in the coffee, had, I am sure, left
+the room; but I cannot swear that the door was closed. Mary and Arthur
+were much interested and wished to see the famous coronet, but I
+thought it better not to disturb it.
+
+“‘Where have you put it?’ asked Arthur.
+
+“‘In my own bureau.’
+
+“‘Well, I hope to goodness the house won’t be burgled during the
+night.’ said he.
+
+“‘It is locked up,’ I answered.
+
+“‘Oh, any old key will fit that bureau. When I was a youngster I have
+opened it myself with the key of the box-room cupboard.’
+
+“He often had a wild way of talking, so that I thought little of what
+he said. He followed me to my room, however, that night with a very
+grave face.
+
+“‘Look here, dad,’ said he with his eyes cast down, ‘can you let me
+have £ 200?’
+
+“‘No, I cannot!’ I answered sharply. ‘I have been far too generous with
+you in money matters.’
+
+“‘You have been very kind,’ said he, ‘but I must have this money, or
+else I can never show my face inside the club again.’
+
+“‘And a very good thing, too!’ I cried.
+
+“‘Yes, but you would not have me leave it a dishonoured man,’ said he.
+‘I could not bear the disgrace. I must raise the money in some way, and
+if you will not let me have it, then I must try other means.’
+
+“I was very angry, for this was the third demand during the month. ‘You
+shall not have a farthing from me,’ I cried, on which he bowed and left
+the room without another word.
+
+“When he was gone I unlocked my bureau, made sure that my treasure was
+safe, and locked it again. Then I started to go round the house to see
+that all was secure—a duty which I usually leave to Mary but which I
+thought it well to perform myself that night. As I came down the stairs
+I saw Mary herself at the side window of the hall, which she closed and
+fastened as I approached.
+
+“‘Tell me, dad,’ said she, looking, I thought, a little disturbed, ‘did
+you give Lucy, the maid, leave to go out to-night?’
+
+“‘Certainly not.’
+
+“‘She came in just now by the back door. I have no doubt that she has
+only been to the side gate to see someone, but I think that it is
+hardly safe and should be stopped.’
+
+“‘You must speak to her in the morning, or I will if you prefer it. Are
+you sure that everything is fastened?’
+
+“‘Quite sure, dad.’
+
+“‘Then, good-night.’ I kissed her and went up to my bedroom again,
+where I was soon asleep.
+
+“I am endeavouring to tell you everything, Mr. Holmes, which may have
+any bearing upon the case, but I beg that you will question me upon any
+point which I do not make clear.”
+
+“On the contrary, your statement is singularly lucid.”
+
+“I come to a part of my story now in which I should wish to be
+particularly so. I am not a very heavy sleeper, and the anxiety in my
+mind tended, no doubt, to make me even less so than usual. About two in
+the morning, then, I was awakened by some sound in the house. It had
+ceased ere I was wide awake, but it had left an impression behind it as
+though a window had gently closed somewhere. I lay listening with all
+my ears. Suddenly, to my horror, there was a distinct sound of
+footsteps moving softly in the next room. I slipped out of bed, all
+palpitating with fear, and peeped round the corner of my dressing-room
+door.
+
+“‘Arthur!’ I screamed, ‘you villain! you thief! How dare you touch that
+coronet?’
+
+“The gas was half up, as I had left it, and my unhappy boy, dressed
+only in his shirt and trousers, was standing beside the light, holding
+the coronet in his hands. He appeared to be wrenching at it, or bending
+it with all his strength. At my cry he dropped it from his grasp and
+turned as pale as death. I snatched it up and examined it. One of the
+gold corners, with three of the beryls in it, was missing.
+
+“‘You blackguard!’ I shouted, beside myself with rage. ‘You have
+destroyed it! You have dishonoured me forever! Where are the jewels
+which you have stolen?’
+
+“‘Stolen!’ he cried.
+
+“‘Yes, thief!’ I roared, shaking him by the shoulder.
+
+“‘There are none missing. There cannot be any missing,’ said he.
+
+“‘There are three missing. And you know where they are. Must I call you
+a liar as well as a thief? Did I not see you trying to tear off another
+piece?’
+
+“‘You have called me names enough,’ said he, ‘I will not stand it any
+longer. I shall not say another word about this business, since you
+have chosen to insult me. I will leave your house in the morning and
+make my own way in the world.’
+
+“‘You shall leave it in the hands of the police!’ I cried half-mad with
+grief and rage. ‘I shall have this matter probed to the bottom.’
+
+“‘You shall learn nothing from me,’ said he with a passion such as I
+should not have thought was in his nature. ‘If you choose to call the
+police, let the police find what they can.’
+
+“By this time the whole house was astir, for I had raised my voice in
+my anger. Mary was the first to rush into my room, and, at the sight of
+the coronet and of Arthur’s face, she read the whole story and, with a
+scream, fell down senseless on the ground. I sent the housemaid for the
+police and put the investigation into their hands at once. When the
+inspector and a constable entered the house, Arthur, who had stood
+sullenly with his arms folded, asked me whether it was my intention to
+charge him with theft. I answered that it had ceased to be a private
+matter, but had become a public one, since the ruined coronet was
+national property. I was determined that the law should have its way in
+everything.
+
+“‘At least,’ said he, ‘you will not have me arrested at once. It would
+be to your advantage as well as mine if I might leave the house for
+five minutes.’
+
+“‘That you may get away, or perhaps that you may conceal what you have
+stolen,’ said I. And then, realising the dreadful position in which I
+was placed, I implored him to remember that not only my honour but that
+of one who was far greater than I was at stake; and that he threatened
+to raise a scandal which would convulse the nation. He might avert it
+all if he would but tell me what he had done with the three missing
+stones.
+
+“‘You may as well face the matter,’ said I; ‘you have been caught in
+the act, and no confession could make your guilt more heinous. If you
+but make such reparation as is in your power, by telling us where the
+beryls are, all shall be forgiven and forgotten.’
+
+“‘Keep your forgiveness for those who ask for it,’ he answered, turning
+away from me with a sneer. I saw that he was too hardened for any words
+of mine to influence him. There was but one way for it. I called in the
+inspector and gave him into custody. A search was made at once not only
+of his person but of his room and of every portion of the house where
+he could possibly have concealed the gems; but no trace of them could
+be found, nor would the wretched boy open his mouth for all our
+persuasions and our threats. This morning he was removed to a cell, and
+I, after going through all the police formalities, have hurried round
+to you to implore you to use your skill in unravelling the matter. The
+police have openly confessed that they can at present make nothing of
+it. You may go to any expense which you think necessary. I have already
+offered a reward of £ 1000. My God, what shall I do! I have lost my
+honour, my gems, and my son in one night. Oh, what shall I do!”
+
+He put a hand on either side of his head and rocked himself to and fro,
+droning to himself like a child whose grief has got beyond words.
+
+Sherlock Holmes sat silent for some few minutes, with his brows knitted
+and his eyes fixed upon the fire.
+
+“Do you receive much company?” he asked.
+
+“None save my partner with his family and an occasional friend of
+Arthur’s. Sir George Burnwell has been several times lately. No one
+else, I think.”
+
+“Do you go out much in society?”
+
+“Arthur does. Mary and I stay at home. We neither of us care for it.”
+
+“That is unusual in a young girl.”
+
+“She is of a quiet nature. Besides, she is not so very young. She is
+four-and-twenty.”
+
+“This matter, from what you say, seems to have been a shock to her
+also.”
+
+“Terrible! She is even more affected than I.”
+
+“You have neither of you any doubt as to your son’s guilt?”
+
+“How can we have when I saw him with my own eyes with the coronet in
+his hands.”
+
+“I hardly consider that a conclusive proof. Was the remainder of the
+coronet at all injured?”
+
+“Yes, it was twisted.”
+
+“Do you not think, then, that he might have been trying to straighten
+it?”
+
+“God bless you! You are doing what you can for him and for me. But it
+is too heavy a task. What was he doing there at all? If his purpose
+were innocent, why did he not say so?”
+
+“Precisely. And if it were guilty, why did he not invent a lie? His
+silence appears to me to cut both ways. There are several singular
+points about the case. What did the police think of the noise which
+awoke you from your sleep?”
+
+“They considered that it might be caused by Arthur’s closing his
+bedroom door.”
+
+“A likely story! As if a man bent on felony would slam his door so as
+to wake a household. What did they say, then, of the disappearance of
+these gems?”
+
+“They are still sounding the planking and probing the furniture in the
+hope of finding them.”
+
+“Have they thought of looking outside the house?”
+
+“Yes, they have shown extraordinary energy. The whole garden has
+already been minutely examined.”
+
+“Now, my dear sir,” said Holmes, “is it not obvious to you now that
+this matter really strikes very much deeper than either you or the
+police were at first inclined to think? It appeared to you to be a
+simple case; to me it seems exceedingly complex. Consider what is
+involved by your theory. You suppose that your son came down from his
+bed, went, at great risk, to your dressing-room, opened your bureau,
+took out your coronet, broke off by main force a small portion of it,
+went off to some other place, concealed three gems out of the
+thirty-nine, with such skill that nobody can find them, and then
+returned with the other thirty-six into the room in which he exposed
+himself to the greatest danger of being discovered. I ask you now, is
+such a theory tenable?”
+
+“But what other is there?” cried the banker with a gesture of despair.
+“If his motives were innocent, why does he not explain them?”
+
+“It is our task to find that out,” replied Holmes; “so now, if you
+please, Mr. Holder, we will set off for Streatham together, and devote
+an hour to glancing a little more closely into details.”
+
+My friend insisted upon my accompanying them in their expedition, which
+I was eager enough to do, for my curiosity and sympathy were deeply
+stirred by the story to which we had listened. I confess that the guilt
+of the banker’s son appeared to me to be as obvious as it did to his
+unhappy father, but still I had such faith in Holmes’ judgment that I
+felt that there must be some grounds for hope as long as he was
+dissatisfied with the accepted explanation. He hardly spoke a word the
+whole way out to the southern suburb, but sat with his chin upon his
+breast and his hat drawn over his eyes, sunk in the deepest thought.
+Our client appeared to have taken fresh heart at the little glimpse of
+hope which had been presented to him, and he even broke into a
+desultory chat with me over his business affairs. A short railway
+journey and a shorter walk brought us to Fairbank, the modest residence
+of the great financier.
+
+Fairbank was a good-sized square house of white stone, standing back a
+little from the road. A double carriage-sweep, with a snow-clad lawn,
+stretched down in front to two large iron gates which closed the
+entrance. On the right side was a small wooden thicket, which led into
+a narrow path between two neat hedges stretching from the road to the
+kitchen door, and forming the tradesmen’s entrance. On the left ran a
+lane which led to the stables, and was not itself within the grounds at
+all, being a public, though little used, thoroughfare. Holmes left us
+standing at the door and walked slowly all round the house, across the
+front, down the tradesmen’s path, and so round by the garden behind
+into the stable lane. So long was he that Mr. Holder and I went into
+the dining-room and waited by the fire until he should return. We were
+sitting there in silence when the door opened and a young lady came in.
+She was rather above the middle height, slim, with dark hair and eyes,
+which seemed the darker against the absolute pallor of her skin. I do
+not think that I have ever seen such deadly paleness in a woman’s face.
+Her lips, too, were bloodless, but her eyes were flushed with crying.
+As she swept silently into the room she impressed me with a greater
+sense of grief than the banker had done in the morning, and it was the
+more striking in her as she was evidently a woman of strong character,
+with immense capacity for self-restraint. Disregarding my presence, she
+went straight to her uncle and passed her hand over his head with a
+sweet womanly caress.
+
+“You have given orders that Arthur should be liberated, have you not,
+dad?” she asked.
+
+“No, no, my girl, the matter must be probed to the bottom.”
+
+“But I am so sure that he is innocent. You know what woman’s instincts
+are. I know that he has done no harm and that you will be sorry for
+having acted so harshly.”
+
+“Why is he silent, then, if he is innocent?”
+
+“Who knows? Perhaps because he was so angry that you should suspect
+him.”
+
+“How could I help suspecting him, when I actually saw him with the
+coronet in his hand?”
+
+“Oh, but he had only picked it up to look at it. Oh, do, do take my
+word for it that he is innocent. Let the matter drop and say no more.
+It is so dreadful to think of our dear Arthur in prison!”
+
+“I shall never let it drop until the gems are found—never, Mary! Your
+affection for Arthur blinds you as to the awful consequences to me. Far
+from hushing the thing up, I have brought a gentleman down from London
+to inquire more deeply into it.”
+
+“This gentleman?” she asked, facing round to me.
+
+“No, his friend. He wished us to leave him alone. He is round in the
+stable lane now.”
+
+“The stable lane?” She raised her dark eyebrows. “What can he hope to
+find there? Ah! this, I suppose, is he. I trust, sir, that you will
+succeed in proving, what I feel sure is the truth, that my cousin
+Arthur is innocent of this crime.”
+
+“I fully share your opinion, and I trust, with you, that we may prove
+it,” returned Holmes, going back to the mat to knock the snow from his
+shoes. “I believe I have the honour of addressing Miss Mary Holder.
+Might I ask you a question or two?”
+
+“Pray do, sir, if it may help to clear this horrible affair up.”
+
+“You heard nothing yourself last night?”
+
+“Nothing, until my uncle here began to speak loudly. I heard that, and
+I came down.”
+
+“You shut up the windows and doors the night before. Did you fasten all
+the windows?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Were they all fastened this morning?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“You have a maid who has a sweetheart? I think that you remarked to
+your uncle last night that she had been out to see him?”
+
+“Yes, and she was the girl who waited in the drawing-room, and who may
+have heard uncle’s remarks about the coronet.”
+
+“I see. You infer that she may have gone out to tell her sweetheart,
+and that the two may have planned the robbery.”
+
+“But what is the good of all these vague theories,” cried the banker
+impatiently, “when I have told you that I saw Arthur with the coronet
+in his hands?”
+
+“Wait a little, Mr. Holder. We must come back to that. About this girl,
+Miss Holder. You saw her return by the kitchen door, I presume?”
+
+“Yes; when I went to see if the door was fastened for the night I met
+her slipping in. I saw the man, too, in the gloom.”
+
+“Do you know him?”
+
+“Oh, yes! he is the greengrocer who brings our vegetables round. His
+name is Francis Prosper.”
+
+“He stood,” said Holmes, “to the left of the door—that is to say,
+farther up the path than is necessary to reach the door?”
+
+“Yes, he did.”
+
+“And he is a man with a wooden leg?”
+
+Something like fear sprang up in the young lady’s expressive black
+eyes. “Why, you are like a magician,” said she. “How do you know that?”
+She smiled, but there was no answering smile in Holmes’ thin, eager
+face.
+
+“I should be very glad now to go upstairs,” said he. “I shall probably
+wish to go over the outside of the house again. Perhaps I had better
+take a look at the lower windows before I go up.”
+
+He walked swiftly round from one to the other, pausing only at the
+large one which looked from the hall onto the stable lane. This he
+opened and made a very careful examination of the sill with his
+powerful magnifying lens. “Now we shall go upstairs,” said he at last.
+
+The banker’s dressing-room was a plainly furnished little chamber, with
+a grey carpet, a large bureau, and a long mirror. Holmes went to the
+bureau first and looked hard at the lock.
+
+“Which key was used to open it?” he asked.
+
+“That which my son himself indicated—that of the cupboard of the
+lumber-room.”
+
+“Have you it here?”
+
+“That is it on the dressing-table.”
+
+Sherlock Holmes took it up and opened the bureau.
+
+“It is a noiseless lock,” said he. “It is no wonder that it did not
+wake you. This case, I presume, contains the coronet. We must have a
+look at it.” He opened the case, and taking out the diadem he laid it
+upon the table. It was a magnificent specimen of the jeweller’s art,
+and the thirty-six stones were the finest that I have ever seen. At one
+side of the coronet was a cracked edge, where a corner holding three
+gems had been torn away.
+
+“Now, Mr. Holder,” said Holmes, “here is the corner which corresponds
+to that which has been so unfortunately lost. Might I beg that you will
+break it off.”
+
+The banker recoiled in horror. “I should not dream of trying,” said he.
+
+“Then I will.” Holmes suddenly bent his strength upon it, but without
+result. “I feel it give a little,” said he; “but, though I am
+exceptionally strong in the fingers, it would take me all my time to
+break it. An ordinary man could not do it. Now, what do you think would
+happen if I did break it, Mr. Holder? There would be a noise like a
+pistol shot. Do you tell me that all this happened within a few yards
+of your bed and that you heard nothing of it?”
+
+“I do not know what to think. It is all dark to me.”
+
+“But perhaps it may grow lighter as we go. What do you think, Miss
+Holder?”
+
+“I confess that I still share my uncle’s perplexity.”
+
+“Your son had no shoes or slippers on when you saw him?”
+
+“He had nothing on save only his trousers and shirt.”
+
+“Thank you. We have certainly been favoured with extraordinary luck
+during this inquiry, and it will be entirely our own fault if we do not
+succeed in clearing the matter up. With your permission, Mr. Holder, I
+shall now continue my investigations outside.”
+
+He went alone, at his own request, for he explained that any
+unnecessary footmarks might make his task more difficult. For an hour
+or more he was at work, returning at last with his feet heavy with snow
+and his features as inscrutable as ever.
+
+“I think that I have seen now all that there is to see, Mr. Holder,”
+said he; “I can serve you best by returning to my rooms.”
+
+“But the gems, Mr. Holmes. Where are they?”
+
+“I cannot tell.”
+
+The banker wrung his hands. “I shall never see them again!” he cried.
+“And my son? You give me hopes?”
+
+“My opinion is in no way altered.”
+
+“Then, for God’s sake, what was this dark business which was acted in
+my house last night?”
+
+“If you can call upon me at my Baker Street rooms to-morrow morning
+between nine and ten I shall be happy to do what I can to make it
+clearer. I understand that you give me _carte blanche_ to act for you,
+provided only that I get back the gems, and that you place no limit on
+the sum I may draw.”
+
+“I would give my fortune to have them back.”
+
+“Very good. I shall look into the matter between this and then.
+Good-bye; it is just possible that I may have to come over here again
+before evening.”
+
+It was obvious to me that my companion’s mind was now made up about the
+case, although what his conclusions were was more than I could even
+dimly imagine. Several times during our homeward journey I endeavoured
+to sound him upon the point, but he always glided away to some other
+topic, until at last I gave it over in despair. It was not yet three
+when we found ourselves in our rooms once more. He hurried to his
+chamber and was down again in a few minutes dressed as a common loafer.
+With his collar turned up, his shiny, seedy coat, his red cravat, and
+his worn boots, he was a perfect sample of the class.
+
+“I think that this should do,” said he, glancing into the glass above
+the fireplace. “I only wish that you could come with me, Watson, but I
+fear that it won’t do. I may be on the trail in this matter, or I may
+be following a will-o’-the-wisp, but I shall soon know which it is. I
+hope that I may be back in a few hours.” He cut a slice of beef from
+the joint upon the sideboard, sandwiched it between two rounds of
+bread, and thrusting this rude meal into his pocket he started off upon
+his expedition.
+
+I had just finished my tea when he returned, evidently in excellent
+spirits, swinging an old elastic-sided boot in his hand. He chucked it
+down into a corner and helped himself to a cup of tea.
+
+“I only looked in as I passed,” said he. “I am going right on.”
+
+“Where to?”
+
+“Oh, to the other side of the West End. It may be some time before I
+get back. Don’t wait up for me in case I should be late.”
+
+“How are you getting on?”
+
+“Oh, so so. Nothing to complain of. I have been out to Streatham since
+I saw you last, but I did not call at the house. It is a very sweet
+little problem, and I would not have missed it for a good deal.
+However, I must not sit gossiping here, but must get these disreputable
+clothes off and return to my highly respectable self.”
+
+I could see by his manner that he had stronger reasons for satisfaction
+than his words alone would imply. His eyes twinkled, and there was even
+a touch of colour upon his sallow cheeks. He hastened upstairs, and a
+few minutes later I heard the slam of the hall door, which told me that
+he was off once more upon his congenial hunt.
+
+I waited until midnight, but there was no sign of his return, so I
+retired to my room. It was no uncommon thing for him to be away for
+days and nights on end when he was hot upon a scent, so that his
+lateness caused me no surprise. I do not know at what hour he came in,
+but when I came down to breakfast in the morning there he was with a
+cup of coffee in one hand and the paper in the other, as fresh and trim
+as possible.
+
+“You will excuse my beginning without you, Watson,” said he, “but you
+remember that our client has rather an early appointment this morning.”
+
+“Why, it is after nine now,” I answered. “I should not be surprised if
+that were he. I thought I heard a ring.”
+
+It was, indeed, our friend the financier. I was shocked by the change
+which had come over him, for his face which was naturally of a broad
+and massive mould, was now pinched and fallen in, while his hair seemed
+to me at least a shade whiter. He entered with a weariness and lethargy
+which was even more painful than his violence of the morning before,
+and he dropped heavily into the armchair which I pushed forward for
+him.
+
+“I do not know what I have done to be so severely tried,” said he.
+“Only two days ago I was a happy and prosperous man, without a care in
+the world. Now I am left to a lonely and dishonoured age. One sorrow
+comes close upon the heels of another. My niece, Mary, has deserted
+me.”
+
+“Deserted you?”
+
+“Yes. Her bed this morning had not been slept in, her room was empty,
+and a note for me lay upon the hall table. I had said to her last
+night, in sorrow and not in anger, that if she had married my boy all
+might have been well with him. Perhaps it was thoughtless of me to say
+so. It is to that remark that she refers in this note:
+
+    “‘MY DEAREST UNCLE,—I feel that I have brought trouble upon you,
+    and that if I had acted differently this terrible misfortune might
+    never have occurred. I cannot, with this thought in my mind, ever
+    again be happy under your roof, and I feel that I must leave you
+    forever. Do not worry about my future, for that is provided for;
+    and, above all, do not search for me, for it will be fruitless
+    labour and an ill-service to me. In life or in death, I am ever
+    your loving,
+
+
+    “‘MARY.’
+
+
+“What could she mean by that note, Mr. Holmes? Do you think it points
+to suicide?”
+
+“No, no, nothing of the kind. It is perhaps the best possible solution.
+I trust, Mr. Holder, that you are nearing the end of your troubles.”
+
+“Ha! You say so! You have heard something, Mr. Holmes; you have learned
+something! Where are the gems?”
+
+“You would not think £ 1000 apiece an excessive sum for them?”
+
+“I would pay ten.”
+
+“That would be unnecessary. Three thousand will cover the matter. And
+there is a little reward, I fancy. Have you your cheque-book? Here is a
+pen. Better make it out for £ 4000.”
+
+With a dazed face the banker made out the required check. Holmes walked
+over to his desk, took out a little triangular piece of gold with three
+gems in it, and threw it down upon the table.
+
+With a shriek of joy our client clutched it up.
+
+“You have it!” he gasped. “I am saved! I am saved!”
+
+The reaction of joy was as passionate as his grief had been, and he
+hugged his recovered gems to his bosom.
+
+“There is one other thing you owe, Mr. Holder,” said Sherlock Holmes
+rather sternly.
+
+“Owe!” He caught up a pen. “Name the sum, and I will pay it.”
+
+“No, the debt is not to me. You owe a very humble apology to that noble
+lad, your son, who has carried himself in this matter as I should be
+proud to see my own son do, should I ever chance to have one.”
+
+“Then it was not Arthur who took them?”
+
+“I told you yesterday, and I repeat to-day, that it was not.”
+
+“You are sure of it! Then let us hurry to him at once to let him know
+that the truth is known.”
+
+“He knows it already. When I had cleared it all up I had an interview
+with him, and finding that he would not tell me the story, I told it to
+him, on which he had to confess that I was right and to add the very
+few details which were not yet quite clear to me. Your news of this
+morning, however, may open his lips.”
+
+“For Heaven’s sake, tell me, then, what is this extraordinary mystery!”
+
+“I will do so, and I will show you the steps by which I reached it. And
+let me say to you, first, that which it is hardest for me to say and
+for you to hear: there has been an understanding between Sir George
+Burnwell and your niece Mary. They have now fled together.”
+
+“My Mary? Impossible!”
+
+“It is unfortunately more than possible; it is certain. Neither you nor
+your son knew the true character of this man when you admitted him into
+your family circle. He is one of the most dangerous men in England—a
+ruined gambler, an absolutely desperate villain, a man without heart or
+conscience. Your niece knew nothing of such men. When he breathed his
+vows to her, as he had done to a hundred before her, she flattered
+herself that she alone had touched his heart. The devil knows best what
+he said, but at least she became his tool and was in the habit of
+seeing him nearly every evening.”
+
+“I cannot, and I will not, believe it!” cried the banker with an ashen
+face.
+
+“I will tell you, then, what occurred in your house last night. Your
+niece, when you had, as she thought, gone to your room, slipped down
+and talked to her lover through the window which leads into the stable
+lane. His footmarks had pressed right through the snow, so long had he
+stood there. She told him of the coronet. His wicked lust for gold
+kindled at the news, and he bent her to his will. I have no doubt that
+she loved you, but there are women in whom the love of a lover
+extinguishes all other loves, and I think that she must have been one.
+She had hardly listened to his instructions when she saw you coming
+downstairs, on which she closed the window rapidly and told you about
+one of the servants’ escapade with her wooden-legged lover, which was
+all perfectly true.
+
+“Your boy, Arthur, went to bed after his interview with you but he
+slept badly on account of his uneasiness about his club debts. In the
+middle of the night he heard a soft tread pass his door, so he rose
+and, looking out, was surprised to see his cousin walking very
+stealthily along the passage until she disappeared into your
+dressing-room. Petrified with astonishment, the lad slipped on some
+clothes and waited there in the dark to see what would come of this
+strange affair. Presently she emerged from the room again, and in the
+light of the passage-lamp your son saw that she carried the precious
+coronet in her hands. She passed down the stairs, and he, thrilling
+with horror, ran along and slipped behind the curtain near your door,
+whence he could see what passed in the hall beneath. He saw her
+stealthily open the window, hand out the coronet to someone in the
+gloom, and then closing it once more hurry back to her room, passing
+quite close to where he stood hid behind the curtain.
+
+“As long as she was on the scene he could not take any action without a
+horrible exposure of the woman whom he loved. But the instant that she
+was gone he realised how crushing a misfortune this would be for you,
+and how all-important it was to set it right. He rushed down, just as
+he was, in his bare feet, opened the window, sprang out into the snow,
+and ran down the lane, where he could see a dark figure in the
+moonlight. Sir George Burnwell tried to get away, but Arthur caught
+him, and there was a struggle between them, your lad tugging at one
+side of the coronet, and his opponent at the other. In the scuffle,
+your son struck Sir George and cut him over the eye. Then something
+suddenly snapped, and your son, finding that he had the coronet in his
+hands, rushed back, closed the window, ascended to your room, and had
+just observed that the coronet had been twisted in the struggle and was
+endeavouring to straighten it when you appeared upon the scene.”
+
+“Is it possible?” gasped the banker.
+
+“You then roused his anger by calling him names at a moment when he
+felt that he had deserved your warmest thanks. He could not explain the
+true state of affairs without betraying one who certainly deserved
+little enough consideration at his hands. He took the more chivalrous
+view, however, and preserved her secret.”
+
+“And that was why she shrieked and fainted when she saw the coronet,”
+cried Mr. Holder. “Oh, my God! what a blind fool I have been! And his
+asking to be allowed to go out for five minutes! The dear fellow wanted
+to see if the missing piece were at the scene of the struggle. How
+cruelly I have misjudged him!”
+
+“When I arrived at the house,” continued Holmes, “I at once went very
+carefully round it to observe if there were any traces in the snow
+which might help me. I knew that none had fallen since the evening
+before, and also that there had been a strong frost to preserve
+impressions. I passed along the tradesmen’s path, but found it all
+trampled down and indistinguishable. Just beyond it, however, at the
+far side of the kitchen door, a woman had stood and talked with a man,
+whose round impressions on one side showed that he had a wooden leg. I
+could even tell that they had been disturbed, for the woman had run
+back swiftly to the door, as was shown by the deep toe and light heel
+marks, while Wooden-leg had waited a little, and then had gone away. I
+thought at the time that this might be the maid and her sweetheart, of
+whom you had already spoken to me, and inquiry showed it was so. I
+passed round the garden without seeing anything more than random
+tracks, which I took to be the police; but when I got into the stable
+lane a very long and complex story was written in the snow in front of
+me.
+
+“There was a double line of tracks of a booted man, and a second double
+line which I saw with delight belonged to a man with naked feet. I was
+at once convinced from what you had told me that the latter was your
+son. The first had walked both ways, but the other had run swiftly, and
+as his tread was marked in places over the depression of the boot, it
+was obvious that he had passed after the other. I followed them up and
+found they led to the hall window, where Boots had worn all the snow
+away while waiting. Then I walked to the other end, which was a hundred
+yards or more down the lane. I saw where Boots had faced round, where
+the snow was cut up as though there had been a struggle, and, finally,
+where a few drops of blood had fallen, to show me that I was not
+mistaken. Boots had then run down the lane, and another little smudge
+of blood showed that it was he who had been hurt. When he came to the
+highroad at the other end, I found that the pavement had been cleared,
+so there was an end to that clue.
+
+“On entering the house, however, I examined, as you remember, the sill
+and framework of the hall window with my lens, and I could at once see
+that someone had passed out. I could distinguish the outline of an
+instep where the wet foot had been placed in coming in. I was then
+beginning to be able to form an opinion as to what had occurred. A man
+had waited outside the window; someone had brought the gems; the deed
+had been overseen by your son; he had pursued the thief; had struggled
+with him; they had each tugged at the coronet, their united strength
+causing injuries which neither alone could have effected. He had
+returned with the prize, but had left a fragment in the grasp of his
+opponent. So far I was clear. The question now was, who was the man and
+who was it brought him the coronet?
+
+“It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible,
+whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Now, I knew
+that it was not you who had brought it down, so there only remained
+your niece and the maids. But if it were the maids, why should your son
+allow himself to be accused in their place? There could be no possible
+reason. As he loved his cousin, however, there was an excellent
+explanation why he should retain her secret—the more so as the secret
+was a disgraceful one. When I remembered that you had seen her at that
+window, and how she had fainted on seeing the coronet again, my
+conjecture became a certainty.
+
+“And who could it be who was her confederate? A lover evidently, for
+who else could outweigh the love and gratitude which she must feel to
+you? I knew that you went out little, and that your circle of friends
+was a very limited one. But among them was Sir George Burnwell. I had
+heard of him before as being a man of evil reputation among women. It
+must have been he who wore those boots and retained the missing gems.
+Even though he knew that Arthur had discovered him, he might still
+flatter himself that he was safe, for the lad could not say a word
+without compromising his own family.
+
+“Well, your own good sense will suggest what measures I took next. I
+went in the shape of a loafer to Sir George’s house, managed to pick up
+an acquaintance with his valet, learned that his master had cut his
+head the night before, and, finally, at the expense of six shillings,
+made all sure by buying a pair of his cast-off shoes. With these I
+journeyed down to Streatham and saw that they exactly fitted the
+tracks.”
+
+“I saw an ill-dressed vagabond in the lane yesterday evening,” said Mr.
+Holder.
+
+“Precisely. It was I. I found that I had my man, so I came home and
+changed my clothes. It was a delicate part which I had to play then,
+for I saw that a prosecution must be avoided to avert scandal, and I
+knew that so astute a villain would see that our hands were tied in the
+matter. I went and saw him. At first, of course, he denied everything.
+But when I gave him every particular that had occurred, he tried to
+bluster and took down a life-preserver from the wall. I knew my man,
+however, and I clapped a pistol to his head before he could strike.
+Then he became a little more reasonable. I told him that we would give
+him a price for the stones he held—£ 1000 apiece. That brought out the
+first signs of grief that he had shown. ‘Why, dash it all!’ said he,
+‘I’ve let them go at six hundred for the three!’ I soon managed to get
+the address of the receiver who had them, on promising him that there
+would be no prosecution. Off I set to him, and after much chaffering I
+got our stones at £ 1000 apiece. Then I looked in upon your son, told
+him that all was right, and eventually got to my bed about two o’clock,
+after what I may call a really hard day’s work.”
+
+“A day which has saved England from a great public scandal,” said the
+banker, rising. “Sir, I cannot find words to thank you, but you shall
+not find me ungrateful for what you have done. Your skill has indeed
+exceeded all that I have heard of it. And now I must fly to my dear boy
+to apologise to him for the wrong which I have done him. As to what you
+tell me of poor Mary, it goes to my very heart. Not even your skill can
+inform me where she is now.”
+
+“I think that we may safely say,” returned Holmes, “that she is
+wherever Sir George Burnwell is. It is equally certain, too, that
+whatever her sins are, they will soon receive a more than sufficient
+punishment.”
+
+
+
+XII. THE ADVENTURE OF THE COPPER BEECHES
+
+“To the man who loves art for its own sake,” remarked Sherlock Holmes,
+tossing aside the advertisement sheet of _The Daily Telegraph_, “it is
+frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the
+keenest pleasure is to be derived. It is pleasant to me to observe,
+Watson, that you have so far grasped this truth that in these little
+records of our cases which you have been good enough to draw up, and, I
+am bound to say, occasionally to embellish, you have given prominence
+not so much to the many _causes célèbres_ and sensational trials in
+which I have figured but rather to those incidents which may have been
+trivial in themselves, but which have given room for those faculties of
+deduction and of logical synthesis which I have made my special
+province.”
+
+“And yet,” said I, smiling, “I cannot quite hold myself absolved from
+the charge of sensationalism which has been urged against my records.”
+
+“You have erred, perhaps,” he observed, taking up a glowing cinder with
+the tongs and lighting with it the long cherry-wood pipe which was wont
+to replace his clay when he was in a disputatious rather than a
+meditative mood—“you have erred perhaps in attempting to put colour and
+life into each of your statements instead of confining yourself to the
+task of placing upon record that severe reasoning from cause to effect
+which is really the only notable feature about the thing.”
+
+“It seems to me that I have done you full justice in the matter,” I
+remarked with some coldness, for I was repelled by the egotism which I
+had more than once observed to be a strong factor in my friend’s
+singular character.
+
+“No, it is not selfishness or conceit,” said he, answering, as was his
+wont, my thoughts rather than my words. “If I claim full justice for my
+art, it is because it is an impersonal thing—a thing beyond myself.
+Crime is common. Logic is rare. Therefore it is upon the logic rather
+than upon the crime that you should dwell. You have degraded what
+should have been a course of lectures into a series of tales.”
+
+It was a cold morning of the early spring, and we sat after breakfast
+on either side of a cheery fire in the old room at Baker Street. A
+thick fog rolled down between the lines of dun-coloured houses, and the
+opposing windows loomed like dark, shapeless blurs through the heavy
+yellow wreaths. Our gas was lit and shone on the white cloth and
+glimmer of china and metal, for the table had not been cleared yet.
+Sherlock Holmes had been silent all the morning, dipping continuously
+into the advertisement columns of a succession of papers until at last,
+having apparently given up his search, he had emerged in no very sweet
+temper to lecture me upon my literary shortcomings.
+
+“At the same time,” he remarked after a pause, during which he had sat
+puffing at his long pipe and gazing down into the fire, “you can hardly
+be open to a charge of sensationalism, for out of these cases which you
+have been so kind as to interest yourself in, a fair proportion do not
+treat of crime, in its legal sense, at all. The small matter in which I
+endeavoured to help the King of Bohemia, the singular experience of
+Miss Mary Sutherland, the problem connected with the man with the
+twisted lip, and the incident of the noble bachelor, were all matters
+which are outside the pale of the law. But in avoiding the sensational,
+I fear that you may have bordered on the trivial.”
+
+“The end may have been so,” I answered, “but the methods I hold to have
+been novel and of interest.”
+
+“Pshaw, my dear fellow, what do the public, the great unobservant
+public, who could hardly tell a weaver by his tooth or a compositor by
+his left thumb, care about the finer shades of analysis and deduction!
+But, indeed, if you are trivial, I cannot blame you, for the days of
+the great cases are past. Man, or at least criminal man, has lost all
+enterprise and originality. As to my own little practice, it seems to
+be degenerating into an agency for recovering lost lead pencils and
+giving advice to young ladies from boarding-schools. I think that I
+have touched bottom at last, however. This note I had this morning
+marks my zero-point, I fancy. Read it!” He tossed a crumpled letter
+across to me.
+
+It was dated from Montague Place upon the preceding evening, and ran
+thus:
+
+    “DEAR MR. HOLMES,—I am very anxious to consult you as to whether I
+    should or should not accept a situation which has been offered to
+    me as governess. I shall call at half-past ten to-morrow if I do
+    not inconvenience you. Yours faithfully,
+
+
+    “VIOLET HUNTER.”
+
+
+“Do you know the young lady?” I asked.
+
+“Not I.”
+
+“It is half-past ten now.”
+
+“Yes, and I have no doubt that is her ring.”
+
+“It may turn out to be of more interest than you think. You remember
+that the affair of the blue carbuncle, which appeared to be a mere whim
+at first, developed into a serious investigation. It may be so in this
+case, also.”
+
+“Well, let us hope so. But our doubts will very soon be solved, for
+here, unless I am much mistaken, is the person in question.”
+
+As he spoke the door opened and a young lady entered the room. She was
+plainly but neatly dressed, with a bright, quick face, freckled like a
+plover’s egg, and with the brisk manner of a woman who has had her own
+way to make in the world.
+
+“You will excuse my troubling you, I am sure,” said she, as my
+companion rose to greet her, “but I have had a very strange experience,
+and as I have no parents or relations of any sort from whom I could ask
+advice, I thought that perhaps you would be kind enough to tell me what
+I should do.”
+
+“Pray take a seat, Miss Hunter. I shall be happy to do anything that I
+can to serve you.”
+
+I could see that Holmes was favourably impressed by the manner and
+speech of his new client. He looked her over in his searching fashion,
+and then composed himself, with his lids drooping and his finger-tips
+together, to listen to her story.
+
+“I have been a governess for five years,” said she, “in the family of
+Colonel Spence Munro, but two months ago the colonel received an
+appointment at Halifax, in Nova Scotia, and took his children over to
+America with him, so that I found myself without a situation. I
+advertised, and I answered advertisements, but without success. At last
+the little money which I had saved began to run short, and I was at my
+wit’s end as to what I should do.
+
+“There is a well-known agency for governesses in the West End called
+Westaway’s, and there I used to call about once a week in order to see
+whether anything had turned up which might suit me. Westaway was the
+name of the founder of the business, but it is really managed by Miss
+Stoper. She sits in her own little office, and the ladies who are
+seeking employment wait in an anteroom, and are then shown in one by
+one, when she consults her ledgers and sees whether she has anything
+which would suit them.
+
+“Well, when I called last week I was shown into the little office as
+usual, but I found that Miss Stoper was not alone. A prodigiously stout
+man with a very smiling face and a great heavy chin which rolled down
+in fold upon fold over his throat sat at her elbow with a pair of
+glasses on his nose, looking very earnestly at the ladies who entered.
+As I came in he gave quite a jump in his chair and turned quickly to
+Miss Stoper.
+
+“‘That will do,’ said he; ‘I could not ask for anything better.
+Capital! capital!’ He seemed quite enthusiastic and rubbed his hands
+together in the most genial fashion. He was such a comfortable-looking
+man that it was quite a pleasure to look at him.
+
+“‘You are looking for a situation, miss?’ he asked.
+
+“‘Yes, sir.’
+
+“‘As governess?’
+
+“‘Yes, sir.’
+
+“‘And what salary do you ask?’
+
+“‘I had £ 4 a month in my last place with Colonel Spence Munro.’
+
+“‘Oh, tut, tut! sweating—rank sweating!’ he cried, throwing his fat
+hands out into the air like a man who is in a boiling passion. ‘How
+could anyone offer so pitiful a sum to a lady with such attractions and
+accomplishments?’
+
+“‘My accomplishments, sir, may be less than you imagine,’ said I. ‘A
+little French, a little German, music, and drawing—’
+
+“‘Tut, tut!’ he cried. ‘This is all quite beside the question. The
+point is, have you or have you not the bearing and deportment of a
+lady? There it is in a nutshell. If you have not, you are not fitted
+for the rearing of a child who may some day play a considerable part in
+the history of the country. But if you have why, then, how could any
+gentleman ask you to condescend to accept anything under the three
+figures? Your salary with me, madam, would commence at £ 100 a year.’
+
+“You may imagine, Mr. Holmes, that to me, destitute as I was, such an
+offer seemed almost too good to be true. The gentleman, however, seeing
+perhaps the look of incredulity upon my face, opened a pocket-book and
+took out a note.
+
+“‘It is also my custom,’ said he, smiling in the most pleasant fashion
+until his eyes were just two little shining slits amid the white
+creases of his face, ‘to advance to my young ladies half their salary
+beforehand, so that they may meet any little expenses of their journey
+and their wardrobe.’
+
+“It seemed to me that I had never met so fascinating and so thoughtful
+a man. As I was already in debt to my tradesmen, the advance was a
+great convenience, and yet there was something unnatural about the
+whole transaction which made me wish to know a little more before I
+quite committed myself.
+
+“‘May I ask where you live, sir?’ said I.
+
+“‘Hampshire. Charming rural place. The Copper Beeches, five miles on
+the far side of Winchester. It is the most lovely country, my dear
+young lady, and the dearest old country-house.’
+
+“‘And my duties, sir? I should be glad to know what they would be.’
+
+“‘One child—one dear little romper just six years old. Oh, if you could
+see him killing cockroaches with a slipper! Smack! smack! smack! Three
+gone before you could wink!’ He leaned back in his chair and laughed
+his eyes into his head again.
+
+“I was a little startled at the nature of the child’s amusement, but
+the father’s laughter made me think that perhaps he was joking.
+
+“‘My sole duties, then,’ I asked, ‘are to take charge of a single
+child?’
+
+“‘No, no, not the sole, not the sole, my dear young lady,’ he cried.
+‘Your duty would be, as I am sure your good sense would suggest, to
+obey any little commands my wife might give, provided always that they
+were such commands as a lady might with propriety obey. You see no
+difficulty, heh?’
+
+“‘I should be happy to make myself useful.’
+
+“‘Quite so. In dress now, for example. We are faddy people, you
+know—faddy but kind-hearted. If you were asked to wear any dress which
+we might give you, you would not object to our little whim. Heh?’
+
+“‘No,’ said I, considerably astonished at his words.
+
+“‘Or to sit here, or sit there, that would not be offensive to you?’
+
+“‘Oh, no.’
+
+“‘Or to cut your hair quite short before you come to us?’
+
+“I could hardly believe my ears. As you may observe, Mr. Holmes, my
+hair is somewhat luxuriant, and of a rather peculiar tint of chestnut.
+It has been considered artistic. I could not dream of sacrificing it in
+this offhand fashion.
+
+“‘I am afraid that that is quite impossible,’ said I. He had been
+watching me eagerly out of his small eyes, and I could see a shadow
+pass over his face as I spoke.
+
+“‘I am afraid that it is quite essential,’ said he. ‘It is a little
+fancy of my wife’s, and ladies’ fancies, you know, madam, ladies’
+fancies must be consulted. And so you won’t cut your hair?’
+
+“‘No, sir, I really could not,’ I answered firmly.
+
+“‘Ah, very well; then that quite settles the matter. It is a pity,
+because in other respects you would really have done very nicely. In
+that case, Miss Stoper, I had best inspect a few more of your young
+ladies.’
+
+“The manageress had sat all this while busy with her papers without a
+word to either of us, but she glanced at me now with so much annoyance
+upon her face that I could not help suspecting that she had lost a
+handsome commission through my refusal.
+
+“‘Do you desire your name to be kept upon the books?’ she asked.
+
+“‘If you please, Miss Stoper.’
+
+“‘Well, really, it seems rather useless, since you refuse the most
+excellent offers in this fashion,’ said she sharply. ‘You can hardly
+expect us to exert ourselves to find another such opening for you.
+Good-day to you, Miss Hunter.’ She struck a gong upon the table, and I
+was shown out by the page.
+
+“Well, Mr. Holmes, when I got back to my lodgings and found little
+enough in the cupboard, and two or three bills upon the table, I began
+to ask myself whether I had not done a very foolish thing. After all,
+if these people had strange fads and expected obedience on the most
+extraordinary matters, they were at least ready to pay for their
+eccentricity. Very few governesses in England are getting £ 100 a year.
+Besides, what use was my hair to me? Many people are improved by
+wearing it short and perhaps I should be among the number. Next day I
+was inclined to think that I had made a mistake, and by the day after I
+was sure of it. I had almost overcome my pride so far as to go back to
+the agency and inquire whether the place was still open when I received
+this letter from the gentleman himself. I have it here and I will read
+it to you:
+
+“‘The Copper Beeches, near Winchester.
+
+    “‘DEAR MISS HUNTER,—Miss Stoper has very kindly given me your
+    address, and I write from here to ask you whether you have
+    reconsidered your decision. My wife is very anxious that you should
+    come, for she has been much attracted by my description of you. We
+    are willing to give £ 30 a quarter, or £ 120 a year, so as to
+    recompense you for any little inconvenience which our fads may
+    cause you. They are not very exacting, after all. My wife is fond
+    of a particular shade of electric blue and would like you to wear
+    such a dress indoors in the morning. You need not, however, go to
+    the expense of purchasing one, as we have one belonging to my dear
+    daughter Alice (now in Philadelphia), which would, I should think,
+    fit you very well. Then, as to sitting here or there, or amusing
+    yourself in any manner indicated, that need cause you no
+    inconvenience. As regards your hair, it is no doubt a pity,
+    especially as I could not help remarking its beauty during our
+    short interview, but I am afraid that I must remain firm upon this
+    point, and I only hope that the increased salary may recompense you
+    for the loss. Your duties, as far as the child is concerned, are
+    very light. Now do try to come, and I shall meet you with the
+    dog-cart at Winchester. Let me know your train. Yours faithfully,
+
+
+    “‘JEPHRO RUCASTLE.’
+
+
+“That is the letter which I have just received, Mr. Holmes, and my mind
+is made up that I will accept it. I thought, however, that before
+taking the final step I should like to submit the whole matter to your
+consideration.”
+
+“Well, Miss Hunter, if your mind is made up, that settles the
+question,” said Holmes, smiling.
+
+“But you would not advise me to refuse?”
+
+“I confess that it is not the situation which I should like to see a
+sister of mine apply for.”
+
+“What is the meaning of it all, Mr. Holmes?”
+
+“Ah, I have no data. I cannot tell. Perhaps you have yourself formed
+some opinion?”
+
+“Well, there seems to me to be only one possible solution. Mr. Rucastle
+seemed to be a very kind, good-natured man. Is it not possible that his
+wife is a lunatic, that he desires to keep the matter quiet for fear
+she should be taken to an asylum, and that he humours her fancies in
+every way in order to prevent an outbreak?”
+
+“That is a possible solution—in fact, as matters stand, it is the most
+probable one. But in any case it does not seem to be a nice household
+for a young lady.”
+
+“But the money, Mr. Holmes, the money!”
+
+“Well, yes, of course the pay is good—too good. That is what makes me
+uneasy. Why should they give you £ 120 a year, when they could have
+their pick for £ 40? There must be some strong reason behind.”
+
+“I thought that if I told you the circumstances you would understand
+afterwards if I wanted your help. I should feel so much stronger if I
+felt that you were at the back of me.”
+
+“Oh, you may carry that feeling away with you. I assure you that your
+little problem promises to be the most interesting which has come my
+way for some months. There is something distinctly novel about some of
+the features. If you should find yourself in doubt or in danger—”
+
+“Danger! What danger do you foresee?”
+
+Holmes shook his head gravely. “It would cease to be a danger if we
+could define it,” said he. “But at any time, day or night, a telegram
+would bring me down to your help.”
+
+“That is enough.” She rose briskly from her chair with the anxiety all
+swept from her face. “I shall go down to Hampshire quite easy in my
+mind now. I shall write to Mr. Rucastle at once, sacrifice my poor hair
+to-night, and start for Winchester to-morrow.” With a few grateful
+words to Holmes she bade us both good-night and bustled off upon her
+way.
+
+“At least,” said I as we heard her quick, firm steps descending the
+stairs, “she seems to be a young lady who is very well able to take
+care of herself.”
+
+“And she would need to be,” said Holmes gravely. “I am much mistaken if
+we do not hear from her before many days are past.”
+
+It was not very long before my friend’s prediction was fulfilled. A
+fortnight went by, during which I frequently found my thoughts turning
+in her direction and wondering what strange side-alley of human
+experience this lonely woman had strayed into. The unusual salary, the
+curious conditions, the light duties, all pointed to something
+abnormal, though whether a fad or a plot, or whether the man were a
+philanthropist or a villain, it was quite beyond my powers to
+determine. As to Holmes, I observed that he sat frequently for half an
+hour on end, with knitted brows and an abstracted air, but he swept the
+matter away with a wave of his hand when I mentioned it. “Data! data!
+data!” he cried impatiently. “I can’t make bricks without clay.” And
+yet he would always wind up by muttering that no sister of his should
+ever have accepted such a situation.
+
+The telegram which we eventually received came late one night just as I
+was thinking of turning in and Holmes was settling down to one of those
+all-night chemical researches which he frequently indulged in, when I
+would leave him stooping over a retort and a test-tube at night and
+find him in the same position when I came down to breakfast in the
+morning. He opened the yellow envelope, and then, glancing at the
+message, threw it across to me.
+
+“Just look up the trains in Bradshaw,” said he, and turned back to his
+chemical studies.
+
+The summons was a brief and urgent one.
+
+“Please be at the Black Swan Hotel at Winchester at midday to-morrow,”
+it said. “Do come! I am at my wit’s end.
+
+
+“HUNTER.”
+
+
+“Will you come with me?” asked Holmes, glancing up.
+
+“I should wish to.”
+
+“Just look it up, then.”
+
+“There is a train at half-past nine,” said I, glancing over my
+Bradshaw. “It is due at Winchester at 11:30.”
+
+“That will do very nicely. Then perhaps I had better postpone my
+analysis of the acetones, as we may need to be at our best in the
+morning.”
+
+By eleven o’clock the next day we were well upon our way to the old
+English capital. Holmes had been buried in the morning papers all the
+way down, but after we had passed the Hampshire border he threw them
+down and began to admire the scenery. It was an ideal spring day, a
+light blue sky, flecked with little fleecy white clouds drifting across
+from west to east. The sun was shining very brightly, and yet there was
+an exhilarating nip in the air, which set an edge to a man’s energy.
+All over the countryside, away to the rolling hills around Aldershot,
+the little red and grey roofs of the farm-steadings peeped out from
+amid the light green of the new foliage.
+
+“Are they not fresh and beautiful?” I cried with all the enthusiasm of
+a man fresh from the fogs of Baker Street.
+
+But Holmes shook his head gravely.
+
+“Do you know, Watson,” said he, “that it is one of the curses of a mind
+with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with reference to
+my own special subject. You look at these scattered houses, and you are
+impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which
+comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with
+which crime may be committed there.”
+
+“Good heavens!” I cried. “Who would associate crime with these dear old
+homesteads?”
+
+“They always fill me with a certain horror. It is my belief, Watson,
+founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London
+do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and
+beautiful countryside.”
+
+“You horrify me!”
+
+“But the reason is very obvious. The pressure of public opinion can do
+in the town what the law cannot accomplish. There is no lane so vile
+that the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a drunkard’s blow,
+does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbours, and then
+the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of
+complaint can set it going, and there is but a step between the crime
+and the dock. But look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields,
+filled for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the
+law. Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which
+may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser. Had
+this lady who appeals to us for help gone to live in Winchester, I
+should never have had a fear for her. It is the five miles of country
+which makes the danger. Still, it is clear that she is not personally
+threatened.”
+
+“No. If she can come to Winchester to meet us she can get away.”
+
+“Quite so. She has her freedom.”
+
+“What _can_ be the matter, then? Can you suggest no explanation?”
+
+“I have devised seven separate explanations, each of which would cover
+the facts as far as we know them. But which of these is correct can
+only be determined by the fresh information which we shall no doubt
+find waiting for us. Well, there is the tower of the cathedral, and we
+shall soon learn all that Miss Hunter has to tell.”
+
+The Black Swan is an inn of repute in the High Street, at no distance
+from the station, and there we found the young lady waiting for us. She
+had engaged a sitting-room, and our lunch awaited us upon the table.
+
+“I am so delighted that you have come,” she said earnestly. “It is so
+very kind of you both; but indeed I do not know what I should do. Your
+advice will be altogether invaluable to me.”
+
+“Pray tell us what has happened to you.”
+
+“I will do so, and I must be quick, for I have promised Mr. Rucastle to
+be back before three. I got his leave to come into town this morning,
+though he little knew for what purpose.”
+
+“Let us have everything in its due order.” Holmes thrust his long thin
+legs out towards the fire and composed himself to listen.
+
+“In the first place, I may say that I have met, on the whole, with no
+actual ill-treatment from Mr. and Mrs. Rucastle. It is only fair to
+them to say that. But I cannot understand them, and I am not easy in my
+mind about them.”
+
+“What can you not understand?”
+
+“Their reasons for their conduct. But you shall have it all just as it
+occurred. When I came down, Mr. Rucastle met me here and drove me in
+his dog-cart to the Copper Beeches. It is, as he said, beautifully
+situated, but it is not beautiful in itself, for it is a large square
+block of a house, whitewashed, but all stained and streaked with damp
+and bad weather. There are grounds round it, woods on three sides, and
+on the fourth a field which slopes down to the Southampton highroad,
+which curves past about a hundred yards from the front door. This
+ground in front belongs to the house, but the woods all round are part
+of Lord Southerton’s preserves. A clump of copper beeches immediately
+in front of the hall door has given its name to the place.
+
+“I was driven over by my employer, who was as amiable as ever, and was
+introduced by him that evening to his wife and the child. There was no
+truth, Mr. Holmes, in the conjecture which seemed to us to be probable
+in your rooms at Baker Street. Mrs. Rucastle is not mad. I found her to
+be a silent, pale-faced woman, much younger than her husband, not more
+than thirty, I should think, while he can hardly be less than
+forty-five. From their conversation I have gathered that they have been
+married about seven years, that he was a widower, and that his only
+child by the first wife was the daughter who has gone to Philadelphia.
+Mr. Rucastle told me in private that the reason why she had left them
+was that she had an unreasoning aversion to her stepmother. As the
+daughter could not have been less than twenty, I can quite imagine that
+her position must have been uncomfortable with her father’s young wife.
+
+“Mrs. Rucastle seemed to me to be colourless in mind as well as in
+feature. She impressed me neither favourably nor the reverse. She was a
+nonentity. It was easy to see that she was passionately devoted both to
+her husband and to her little son. Her light grey eyes wandered
+continually from one to the other, noting every little want and
+forestalling it if possible. He was kind to her also in his bluff,
+boisterous fashion, and on the whole they seemed to be a happy couple.
+And yet she had some secret sorrow, this woman. She would often be lost
+in deep thought, with the saddest look upon her face. More than once I
+have surprised her in tears. I have thought sometimes that it was the
+disposition of her child which weighed upon her mind, for I have never
+met so utterly spoiled and so ill-natured a little creature. He is
+small for his age, with a head which is quite disproportionately large.
+His whole life appears to be spent in an alternation between savage
+fits of passion and gloomy intervals of sulking. Giving pain to any
+creature weaker than himself seems to be his one idea of amusement, and
+he shows quite remarkable talent in planning the capture of mice,
+little birds, and insects. But I would rather not talk about the
+creature, Mr. Holmes, and, indeed, he has little to do with my story.”
+
+“I am glad of all details,” remarked my friend, “whether they seem to
+you to be relevant or not.”
+
+“I shall try not to miss anything of importance. The one unpleasant
+thing about the house, which struck me at once, was the appearance and
+conduct of the servants. There are only two, a man and his wife.
+Toller, for that is his name, is a rough, uncouth man, with grizzled
+hair and whiskers, and a perpetual smell of drink. Twice since I have
+been with them he has been quite drunk, and yet Mr. Rucastle seemed to
+take no notice of it. His wife is a very tall and strong woman with a
+sour face, as silent as Mrs. Rucastle and much less amiable. They are a
+most unpleasant couple, but fortunately I spend most of my time in the
+nursery and my own room, which are next to each other in one corner of
+the building.
+
+“For two days after my arrival at the Copper Beeches my life was very
+quiet; on the third, Mrs. Rucastle came down just after breakfast and
+whispered something to her husband.
+
+“‘Oh, yes,’ said he, turning to me, ‘we are very much obliged to you,
+Miss Hunter, for falling in with our whims so far as to cut your hair.
+I assure you that it has not detracted in the tiniest iota from your
+appearance. We shall now see how the electric-blue dress will become
+you. You will find it laid out upon the bed in your room, and if you
+would be so good as to put it on we should both be extremely obliged.’
+
+“The dress which I found waiting for me was of a peculiar shade of
+blue. It was of excellent material, a sort of beige, but it bore
+unmistakable signs of having been worn before. It could not have been a
+better fit if I had been measured for it. Both Mr. and Mrs. Rucastle
+expressed a delight at the look of it, which seemed quite exaggerated
+in its vehemence. They were waiting for me in the drawing-room, which
+is a very large room, stretching along the entire front of the house,
+with three long windows reaching down to the floor. A chair had been
+placed close to the central window, with its back turned towards it. In
+this I was asked to sit, and then Mr. Rucastle, walking up and down on
+the other side of the room, began to tell me a series of the funniest
+stories that I have ever listened to. You cannot imagine how comical he
+was, and I laughed until I was quite weary. Mrs. Rucastle, however, who
+has evidently no sense of humour, never so much as smiled, but sat with
+her hands in her lap, and a sad, anxious look upon her face. After an
+hour or so, Mr. Rucastle suddenly remarked that it was time to commence
+the duties of the day, and that I might change my dress and go to
+little Edward in the nursery.
+
+“Two days later this same performance was gone through under exactly
+similar circumstances. Again I changed my dress, again I sat in the
+window, and again I laughed very heartily at the funny stories of which
+my employer had an immense _répertoire_, and which he told inimitably.
+Then he handed me a yellow-backed novel, and moving my chair a little
+sideways, that my own shadow might not fall upon the page, he begged me
+to read aloud to him. I read for about ten minutes, beginning in the
+heart of a chapter, and then suddenly, in the middle of a sentence, he
+ordered me to cease and to change my dress.
+
+“You can easily imagine, Mr. Holmes, how curious I became as to what
+the meaning of this extraordinary performance could possibly be. They
+were always very careful, I observed, to turn my face away from the
+window, so that I became consumed with the desire to see what was going
+on behind my back. At first it seemed to be impossible, but I soon
+devised a means. My hand-mirror had been broken, so a happy thought
+seized me, and I concealed a piece of the glass in my handkerchief. On
+the next occasion, in the midst of my laughter, I put my handkerchief
+up to my eyes, and was able with a little management to see all that
+there was behind me. I confess that I was disappointed. There was
+nothing. At least that was my first impression. At the second glance,
+however, I perceived that there was a man standing in the Southampton
+Road, a small bearded man in a grey suit, who seemed to be looking in
+my direction. The road is an important highway, and there are usually
+people there. This man, however, was leaning against the railings which
+bordered our field and was looking earnestly up. I lowered my
+handkerchief and glanced at Mrs. Rucastle to find her eyes fixed upon
+me with a most searching gaze. She said nothing, but I am convinced
+that she had divined that I had a mirror in my hand and had seen what
+was behind me. She rose at once.
+
+“‘Jephro,’ said she, ‘there is an impertinent fellow upon the road
+there who stares up at Miss Hunter.’
+
+“‘No friend of yours, Miss Hunter?’ he asked.
+
+“‘No, I know no one in these parts.’
+
+“‘Dear me! How very impertinent! Kindly turn round and motion to him to
+go away.’
+
+“‘Surely it would be better to take no notice.’
+
+“‘No, no, we should have him loitering here always. Kindly turn round
+and wave him away like that.’
+
+“I did as I was told, and at the same instant Mrs. Rucastle drew down
+the blind. That was a week ago, and from that time I have not sat again
+in the window, nor have I worn the blue dress, nor seen the man in the
+road.”
+
+“Pray continue,” said Holmes. “Your narrative promises to be a most
+interesting one.”
+
+“You will find it rather disconnected, I fear, and there may prove to
+be little relation between the different incidents of which I speak. On
+the very first day that I was at the Copper Beeches, Mr. Rucastle took
+me to a small outhouse which stands near the kitchen door. As we
+approached it I heard the sharp rattling of a chain, and the sound as
+of a large animal moving about.
+
+“‘Look in here!’ said Mr. Rucastle, showing me a slit between two
+planks. ‘Is he not a beauty?’
+
+“I looked through and was conscious of two glowing eyes, and of a vague
+figure huddled up in the darkness.
+
+“‘Don’t be frightened,’ said my employer, laughing at the start which I
+had given. ‘It’s only Carlo, my mastiff. I call him mine, but really
+old Toller, my groom, is the only man who can do anything with him. We
+feed him once a day, and not too much then, so that he is always as
+keen as mustard. Toller lets him loose every night, and God help the
+trespasser whom he lays his fangs upon. For goodness’ sake don’t you
+ever on any pretext set your foot over the threshold at night, for it’s
+as much as your life is worth.’
+
+“The warning was no idle one, for two nights later I happened to look
+out of my bedroom window about two o’clock in the morning. It was a
+beautiful moonlight night, and the lawn in front of the house was
+silvered over and almost as bright as day. I was standing, rapt in the
+peaceful beauty of the scene, when I was aware that something was
+moving under the shadow of the copper beeches. As it emerged into the
+moonshine I saw what it was. It was a giant dog, as large as a calf,
+tawny tinted, with hanging jowl, black muzzle, and huge projecting
+bones. It walked slowly across the lawn and vanished into the shadow
+upon the other side. That dreadful sentinel sent a chill to my heart
+which I do not think that any burglar could have done.
+
+“And now I have a very strange experience to tell you. I had, as you
+know, cut off my hair in London, and I had placed it in a great coil at
+the bottom of my trunk. One evening, after the child was in bed, I
+began to amuse myself by examining the furniture of my room and by
+rearranging my own little things. There was an old chest of drawers in
+the room, the two upper ones empty and open, the lower one locked. I
+had filled the first two with my linen, and as I had still much to pack
+away I was naturally annoyed at not having the use of the third drawer.
+It struck me that it might have been fastened by a mere oversight, so I
+took out my bunch of keys and tried to open it. The very first key
+fitted to perfection, and I drew the drawer open. There was only one
+thing in it, but I am sure that you would never guess what it was. It
+was my coil of hair.
+
+“I took it up and examined it. It was of the same peculiar tint, and
+the same thickness. But then the impossibility of the thing obtruded
+itself upon me. How could my hair have been locked in the drawer? With
+trembling hands I undid my trunk, turned out the contents, and drew
+from the bottom my own hair. I laid the two tresses together, and I
+assure you that they were identical. Was it not extraordinary? Puzzle
+as I would, I could make nothing at all of what it meant. I returned
+the strange hair to the drawer, and I said nothing of the matter to the
+Rucastles as I felt that I had put myself in the wrong by opening a
+drawer which they had locked.
+
+“I am naturally observant, as you may have remarked, Mr. Holmes, and I
+soon had a pretty good plan of the whole house in my head. There was
+one wing, however, which appeared not to be inhabited at all. A door
+which faced that which led into the quarters of the Tollers opened into
+this suite, but it was invariably locked. One day, however, as I
+ascended the stair, I met Mr. Rucastle coming out through this door,
+his keys in his hand, and a look on his face which made him a very
+different person to the round, jovial man to whom I was accustomed. His
+cheeks were red, his brow was all crinkled with anger, and the veins
+stood out at his temples with passion. He locked the door and hurried
+past me without a word or a look.
+
+“This aroused my curiosity, so when I went out for a walk in the
+grounds with my charge, I strolled round to the side from which I could
+see the windows of this part of the house. There were four of them in a
+row, three of which were simply dirty, while the fourth was shuttered
+up. They were evidently all deserted. As I strolled up and down,
+glancing at them occasionally, Mr. Rucastle came out to me, looking as
+merry and jovial as ever.
+
+“‘Ah!’ said he, ‘you must not think me rude if I passed you without a
+word, my dear young lady. I was preoccupied with business matters.’
+
+“I assured him that I was not offended. ‘By the way,’ said I, ‘you seem
+to have quite a suite of spare rooms up there, and one of them has the
+shutters up.’
+
+“He looked surprised and, as it seemed to me, a little startled at my
+remark.
+
+“‘Photography is one of my hobbies,’ said he. ‘I have made my dark room
+up there. But, dear me! what an observant young lady we have come upon.
+Who would have believed it? Who would have ever believed it?’ He spoke
+in a jesting tone, but there was no jest in his eyes as he looked at
+me. I read suspicion there and annoyance, but no jest.
+
+“Well, Mr. Holmes, from the moment that I understood that there was
+something about that suite of rooms which I was not to know, I was all
+on fire to go over them. It was not mere curiosity, though I have my
+share of that. It was more a feeling of duty—a feeling that some good
+might come from my penetrating to this place. They talk of woman’s
+instinct; perhaps it was woman’s instinct which gave me that feeling.
+At any rate, it was there, and I was keenly on the lookout for any
+chance to pass the forbidden door.
+
+“It was only yesterday that the chance came. I may tell you that,
+besides Mr. Rucastle, both Toller and his wife find something to do in
+these deserted rooms, and I once saw him carrying a large black linen
+bag with him through the door. Recently he has been drinking hard, and
+yesterday evening he was very drunk; and when I came upstairs there was
+the key in the door. I have no doubt at all that he had left it there.
+Mr. and Mrs. Rucastle were both downstairs, and the child was with
+them, so that I had an admirable opportunity. I turned the key gently
+in the lock, opened the door, and slipped through.
+
+“There was a little passage in front of me, unpapered and uncarpeted,
+which turned at a right angle at the farther end. Round this corner
+were three doors in a line, the first and third of which were open.
+They each led into an empty room, dusty and cheerless, with two windows
+in the one and one in the other, so thick with dirt that the evening
+light glimmered dimly through them. The centre door was closed, and
+across the outside of it had been fastened one of the broad bars of an
+iron bed, padlocked at one end to a ring in the wall, and fastened at
+the other with stout cord. The door itself was locked as well, and the
+key was not there. This barricaded door corresponded clearly with the
+shuttered window outside, and yet I could see by the glimmer from
+beneath it that the room was not in darkness. Evidently there was a
+skylight which let in light from above. As I stood in the passage
+gazing at the sinister door and wondering what secret it might veil, I
+suddenly heard the sound of steps within the room and saw a shadow pass
+backward and forward against the little slit of dim light which shone
+out from under the door. A mad, unreasoning terror rose up in me at the
+sight, Mr. Holmes. My overstrung nerves failed me suddenly, and I
+turned and ran—ran as though some dreadful hand were behind me
+clutching at the skirt of my dress. I rushed down the passage, through
+the door, and straight into the arms of Mr. Rucastle, who was waiting
+outside.
+
+“‘So,’ said he, smiling, ‘it was you, then. I thought that it must be
+when I saw the door open.’
+
+“‘Oh, I am so frightened!’ I panted.
+
+“‘My dear young lady! my dear young lady!’—you cannot think how
+caressing and soothing his manner was—‘and what has frightened you, my
+dear young lady?’
+
+“But his voice was just a little too coaxing. He overdid it. I was
+keenly on my guard against him.
+
+“‘I was foolish enough to go into the empty wing,’ I answered. ‘But it
+is so lonely and eerie in this dim light that I was frightened and ran
+out again. Oh, it is so dreadfully still in there!’
+
+“‘Only that?’ said he, looking at me keenly.
+
+“‘Why, what did you think?’ I asked.
+
+“‘Why do you think that I lock this door?’
+
+“‘I am sure that I do not know.’
+
+“‘It is to keep people out who have no business there. Do you see?’ He
+was still smiling in the most amiable manner.
+
+“‘I am sure if I had known—’
+
+“‘Well, then, you know now. And if you ever put your foot over that
+threshold again’—here in an instant the smile hardened into a grin of
+rage, and he glared down at me with the face of a demon—‘I’ll throw you
+to the mastiff.’
+
+“I was so terrified that I do not know what I did. I suppose that I
+must have rushed past him into my room. I remember nothing until I
+found myself lying on my bed trembling all over. Then I thought of you,
+Mr. Holmes. I could not live there longer without some advice. I was
+frightened of the house, of the man, of the woman, of the servants,
+even of the child. They were all horrible to me. If I could only bring
+you down all would be well. Of course I might have fled from the house,
+but my curiosity was almost as strong as my fears. My mind was soon
+made up. I would send you a wire. I put on my hat and cloak, went down
+to the office, which is about half a mile from the house, and then
+returned, feeling very much easier. A horrible doubt came into my mind
+as I approached the door lest the dog might be loose, but I remembered
+that Toller had drunk himself into a state of insensibility that
+evening, and I knew that he was the only one in the household who had
+any influence with the savage creature, or who would venture to set him
+free. I slipped in in safety and lay awake half the night in my joy at
+the thought of seeing you. I had no difficulty in getting leave to come
+into Winchester this morning, but I must be back before three o’clock,
+for Mr. and Mrs. Rucastle are going on a visit, and will be away all
+the evening, so that I must look after the child. Now I have told you
+all my adventures, Mr. Holmes, and I should be very glad if you could
+tell me what it all means, and, above all, what I should do.”
+
+Holmes and I had listened spellbound to this extraordinary story. My
+friend rose now and paced up and down the room, his hands in his
+pockets, and an expression of the most profound gravity upon his face.
+
+“Is Toller still drunk?” he asked.
+
+“Yes. I heard his wife tell Mrs. Rucastle that she could do nothing
+with him.”
+
+“That is well. And the Rucastles go out to-night?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Is there a cellar with a good strong lock?”
+
+“Yes, the wine-cellar.”
+
+“You seem to me to have acted all through this matter like a very brave
+and sensible girl, Miss Hunter. Do you think that you could perform one
+more feat? I should not ask it of you if I did not think you a quite
+exceptional woman.”
+
+“I will try. What is it?”
+
+“We shall be at the Copper Beeches by seven o’clock, my friend and I.
+The Rucastles will be gone by that time, and Toller will, we hope, be
+incapable. There only remains Mrs. Toller, who might give the alarm. If
+you could send her into the cellar on some errand, and then turn the
+key upon her, you would facilitate matters immensely.”
+
+“I will do it.”
+
+“Excellent! We shall then look thoroughly into the affair. Of course
+there is only one feasible explanation. You have been brought there to
+personate someone, and the real person is imprisoned in this chamber.
+That is obvious. As to who this prisoner is, I have no doubt that it is
+the daughter, Miss Alice Rucastle, if I remember right, who was said to
+have gone to America. You were chosen, doubtless, as resembling her in
+height, figure, and the colour of your hair. Hers had been cut off,
+very possibly in some illness through which she has passed, and so, of
+course, yours had to be sacrificed also. By a curious chance you came
+upon her tresses. The man in the road was undoubtedly some friend of
+hers—possibly her _fiancé_—and no doubt, as you wore the girl’s dress
+and were so like her, he was convinced from your laughter, whenever he
+saw you, and afterwards from your gesture, that Miss Rucastle was
+perfectly happy, and that she no longer desired his attentions. The dog
+is let loose at night to prevent him from endeavouring to communicate
+with her. So much is fairly clear. The most serious point in the case
+is the disposition of the child.”
+
+“What on earth has that to do with it?” I ejaculated.
+
+“My dear Watson, you as a medical man are continually gaining light as
+to the tendencies of a child by the study of the parents. Don’t you see
+that the converse is equally valid. I have frequently gained my first
+real insight into the character of parents by studying their children.
+This child’s disposition is abnormally cruel, merely for cruelty’s
+sake, and whether he derives this from his smiling father, as I should
+suspect, or from his mother, it bodes evil for the poor girl who is in
+their power.”
+
+“I am sure that you are right, Mr. Holmes,” cried our client. “A
+thousand things come back to me which make me certain that you have hit
+it. Oh, let us lose not an instant in bringing help to this poor
+creature.”
+
+“We must be circumspect, for we are dealing with a very cunning man. We
+can do nothing until seven o’clock. At that hour we shall be with you,
+and it will not be long before we solve the mystery.”
+
+We were as good as our word, for it was just seven when we reached the
+Copper Beeches, having put up our trap at a wayside public-house. The
+group of trees, with their dark leaves shining like burnished metal in
+the light of the setting sun, were sufficient to mark the house even
+had Miss Hunter not been standing smiling on the door-step.
+
+“Have you managed it?” asked Holmes.
+
+A loud thudding noise came from somewhere downstairs. “That is Mrs.
+Toller in the cellar,” said she. “Her husband lies snoring on the
+kitchen rug. Here are his keys, which are the duplicates of Mr.
+Rucastle’s.”
+
+“You have done well indeed!” cried Holmes with enthusiasm. “Now lead
+the way, and we shall soon see the end of this black business.”
+
+We passed up the stair, unlocked the door, followed on down a passage,
+and found ourselves in front of the barricade which Miss Hunter had
+described. Holmes cut the cord and removed the transverse bar. Then he
+tried the various keys in the lock, but without success. No sound came
+from within, and at the silence Holmes’ face clouded over.
+
+“I trust that we are not too late,” said he. “I think, Miss Hunter,
+that we had better go in without you. Now, Watson, put your shoulder to
+it, and we shall see whether we cannot make our way in.”
+
+It was an old rickety door and gave at once before our united strength.
+Together we rushed into the room. It was empty. There was no furniture
+save a little pallet bed, a small table, and a basketful of linen. The
+skylight above was open, and the prisoner gone.
+
+“There has been some villainy here,” said Holmes; “this beauty has
+guessed Miss Hunter’s intentions and has carried his victim off.”
+
+“But how?”
+
+“Through the skylight. We shall soon see how he managed it.” He swung
+himself up onto the roof. “Ah, yes,” he cried, “here’s the end of a
+long light ladder against the eaves. That is how he did it.”
+
+“But it is impossible,” said Miss Hunter; “the ladder was not there
+when the Rucastles went away.”
+
+“He has come back and done it. I tell you that he is a clever and
+dangerous man. I should not be very much surprised if this were he
+whose step I hear now upon the stair. I think, Watson, that it would be
+as well for you to have your pistol ready.”
+
+The words were hardly out of his mouth before a man appeared at the
+door of the room, a very fat and burly man, with a heavy stick in his
+hand. Miss Hunter screamed and shrunk against the wall at the sight of
+him, but Sherlock Holmes sprang forward and confronted him.
+
+“You villain!” said he, “where’s your daughter?”
+
+The fat man cast his eyes round, and then up at the open skylight.
+
+“It is for me to ask you that,” he shrieked, “you thieves! Spies and
+thieves! I have caught you, have I? You are in my power. I’ll serve
+you!” He turned and clattered down the stairs as hard as he could go.
+
+“He’s gone for the dog!” cried Miss Hunter.
+
+“I have my revolver,” said I.
+
+“Better close the front door,” cried Holmes, and we all rushed down the
+stairs together. We had hardly reached the hall when we heard the
+baying of a hound, and then a scream of agony, with a horrible worrying
+sound which it was dreadful to listen to. An elderly man with a red
+face and shaking limbs came staggering out at a side door.
+
+“My God!” he cried. “Someone has loosed the dog. It’s not been fed for
+two days. Quick, quick, or it’ll be too late!”
+
+Holmes and I rushed out and round the angle of the house, with Toller
+hurrying behind us. There was the huge famished brute, its black muzzle
+buried in Rucastle’s throat, while he writhed and screamed upon the
+ground. Running up, I blew its brains out, and it fell over with its
+keen white teeth still meeting in the great creases of his neck. With
+much labour we separated them and carried him, living but horribly
+mangled, into the house. We laid him upon the drawing-room sofa, and
+having dispatched the sobered Toller to bear the news to his wife, I
+did what I could to relieve his pain. We were all assembled round him
+when the door opened, and a tall, gaunt woman entered the room.
+
+“Mrs. Toller!” cried Miss Hunter.
+
+“Yes, miss. Mr. Rucastle let me out when he came back before he went up
+to you. Ah, miss, it is a pity you didn’t let me know what you were
+planning, for I would have told you that your pains were wasted.”
+
+“Ha!” said Holmes, looking keenly at her. “It is clear that Mrs. Toller
+knows more about this matter than anyone else.”
+
+“Yes, sir, I do, and I am ready enough to tell what I know.”
+
+“Then, pray, sit down, and let us hear it for there are several points
+on which I must confess that I am still in the dark.”
+
+“I will soon make it clear to you,” said she; “and I’d have done so
+before now if I could ha’ got out from the cellar. If there’s
+police-court business over this, you’ll remember that I was the one
+that stood your friend, and that I was Miss Alice’s friend too.
+
+“She was never happy at home, Miss Alice wasn’t, from the time that her
+father married again. She was slighted like and had no say in anything,
+but it never really became bad for her until after she met Mr. Fowler
+at a friend’s house. As well as I could learn, Miss Alice had rights of
+her own by will, but she was so quiet and patient, she was, that she
+never said a word about them but just left everything in Mr. Rucastle’s
+hands. He knew he was safe with her; but when there was a chance of a
+husband coming forward, who would ask for all that the law would give
+him, then her father thought it time to put a stop on it. He wanted her
+to sign a paper, so that whether she married or not, he could use her
+money. When she wouldn’t do it, he kept on worrying her until she got
+brain-fever, and for six weeks was at death’s door. Then she got better
+at last, all worn to a shadow, and with her beautiful hair cut off; but
+that didn’t make no change in her young man, and he stuck to her as
+true as man could be.”
+
+“Ah,” said Holmes, “I think that what you have been good enough to tell
+us makes the matter fairly clear, and that I can deduce all that
+remains. Mr. Rucastle then, I presume, took to this system of
+imprisonment?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“And brought Miss Hunter down from London in order to get rid of the
+disagreeable persistence of Mr. Fowler.”
+
+“That was it, sir.”
+
+“But Mr. Fowler being a persevering man, as a good seaman should be,
+blockaded the house, and having met you succeeded by certain arguments,
+metallic or otherwise, in convincing you that your interests were the
+same as his.”
+
+“Mr. Fowler was a very kind-spoken, free-handed gentleman,” said Mrs.
+Toller serenely.
+
+“And in this way he managed that your good man should have no want of
+drink, and that a ladder should be ready at the moment when your master
+had gone out.”
+
+“You have it, sir, just as it happened.”
+
+“I am sure we owe you an apology, Mrs. Toller,” said Holmes, “for you
+have certainly cleared up everything which puzzled us. And here comes
+the country surgeon and Mrs. Rucastle, so I think, Watson, that we had
+best escort Miss Hunter back to Winchester, as it seems to me that our
+_locus standi_ now is rather a questionable one.”
+
+And thus was solved the mystery of the sinister house with the copper
+beeches in front of the door. Mr. Rucastle survived, but was always a
+broken man, kept alive solely through the care of his devoted wife.
+They still live with their old servants, who probably know so much of
+Rucastle’s past life that he finds it difficult to part from them. Mr.
+Fowler and Miss Rucastle were married, by special license, in
+Southampton the day after their flight, and he is now the holder of a
+government appointment in the island of Mauritius. As to Miss Violet
+Hunter, my friend Holmes, rather to my disappointment, manifested no
+further interest in her when once she had ceased to be the centre of
+one of his problems, and she is now the head of a private school at
+Walsall, where I believe that she has met with considerable success.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by 
+Arthur Conan Doyle
+
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diff --git a/data/train/dickens_-_a_christmas_carol.txt b/data/train/dickens_-_a_christmas_carol.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c2557f6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/data/train/dickens_-_a_christmas_carol.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,4238 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Christmas Carol
+       A Ghost Story of Christmas
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+Release Date: August 11, 2004 [EBook #46]
+Last Updated: March 4, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CHRISTMAS CAROL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jose Menendez
+
+
+
+
+A CHRISTMAS CAROL
+
+IN PROSE
+BEING
+A Ghost Story of Christmas
+
+by Charles Dickens
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+I HAVE endeavoured in this Ghostly little book,
+to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my
+readers out of humour with themselves, with each other,
+with the season, or with me.  May it haunt their houses
+pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.
+
+Their faithful Friend and Servant,
+                                   C. D.
+December, 1843.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+Stave   I: Marley's Ghost
+Stave  II: The First of the Three Spirits
+Stave III: The Second of the Three Spirits
+Stave  IV: The Last of the Spirits
+Stave   V: The End of It
+
+
+
+STAVE I:  MARLEY'S GHOST
+
+MARLEY was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt
+whatever about that. The register of his burial was
+signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker,
+and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and
+Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he
+chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a
+door-nail.
+
+Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my
+own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about
+a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to
+regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery
+in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors
+is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands
+shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You
+will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that
+Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
+
+Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did.
+How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were
+partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge
+was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole
+assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and
+sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully
+cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent
+man of business on the very day of the funeral,
+and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.
+
+The mention of Marley's funeral brings me back to
+the point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley
+was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or
+nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going
+to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that
+Hamlet's Father died before the play began, there
+would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a
+stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts,
+than there would be in any other middle-aged
+gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy
+spot--say Saint Paul's Churchyard for instance--
+literally to astonish his son's weak mind.
+
+Scrooge never painted out Old Marley's name.
+There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse
+door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as
+Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the
+business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley,
+but he answered to both names. It was all the
+same to him.
+
+Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind-stone,
+Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping,
+clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint,
+from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire;
+secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The
+cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed
+nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his
+eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his
+grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his
+eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low
+temperature always about with him; he iced his office in
+the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.
+
+External heat and cold had little influence on
+Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather
+chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he,
+no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no
+pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't
+know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and
+snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage
+over him in only one respect. They often "came down"
+handsomely, and Scrooge never did.
+
+Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with
+gladsome looks, "My dear Scrooge, how are you?
+When will you come to see me?" No beggars implored
+him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him
+what it was o'clock, no man or woman ever once in all
+his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of
+Scrooge. Even the blind men's dogs appeared to
+know him; and when they saw him coming on, would
+tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and
+then would wag their tails as though they said, "No
+eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!"
+
+But what did Scrooge care! It was the very thing
+he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths
+of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance,
+was what the knowing ones call "nuts" to Scrooge.
+
+Once upon a time--of all the good days in the year,
+on Christmas Eve--old Scrooge sat busy in his
+counting-house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy
+withal: and he could hear the people in the court outside,
+go wheezing up and down, beating their hands
+upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the
+pavement stones to warm them. The city clocks had
+only just gone three, but it was quite dark already--
+it had not been light all day--and candles were flaring
+in the windows of the neighbouring offices, like
+ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. The fog
+came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was
+so dense without, that although the court was of the
+narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms.
+To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring
+everything, one might have thought that Nature
+lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale.
+
+The door of Scrooge's counting-house was open
+that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who in a
+dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank, was copying
+letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk's
+fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one
+coal. But he couldn't replenish it, for Scrooge kept
+the coal-box in his own room; and so surely as the
+clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted
+that it would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore
+the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to
+warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being
+a man of a strong imagination, he failed.
+
+"A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!" cried
+a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge's
+nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was
+the first intimation he had of his approach.
+
+"Bah!" said Scrooge, "Humbug!"
+
+He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the
+fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge's, that he was
+all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his
+eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.
+
+"Christmas a humbug, uncle!" said Scrooge's
+nephew. "You don't mean that, I am sure?"
+
+"I do," said Scrooge. "Merry Christmas! What
+right have you to be merry? What reason have you
+to be merry? You're poor enough."
+
+"Come, then," returned the nephew gaily. "What
+right have you to be dismal? What reason have you
+to be morose? You're rich enough."
+
+Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur
+of the moment, said, "Bah!" again; and followed it up
+with "Humbug."
+
+"Don't be cross, uncle!" said the nephew.
+
+"What else can I be," returned the uncle, "when I
+live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas!
+Out upon merry Christmas! What's Christmas
+time to you but a time for paying bills without
+money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but
+not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books
+and having every item in 'em through a round dozen
+of months presented dead against you? If I could
+work my will," said Scrooge indignantly, "every idiot
+who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips,
+should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried
+with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!"
+
+"Uncle!" pleaded the nephew.
+
+"Nephew!" returned the uncle sternly, "keep Christmas
+in your own way, and let me keep it in mine."
+
+"Keep it!" repeated Scrooge's nephew. "But you
+don't keep it."
+
+"Let me leave it alone, then," said Scrooge. "Much
+good may it do you! Much good it has ever done
+you!"
+
+"There are many things from which I might have
+derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare
+say," returned the nephew. "Christmas among the
+rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas
+time, when it has come round--apart from the
+veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything
+belonging to it can be apart from that--as a
+good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant
+time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar
+of the year, when men and women seem by one consent
+to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think
+of people below them as if they really were
+fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race
+of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore,
+uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or
+silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me
+good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!"
+
+The clerk in the Tank involuntarily applauded.
+Becoming immediately sensible of the impropriety,
+he poked the fire, and extinguished the last frail spark
+for ever.
+
+"Let me hear another sound from you," said
+Scrooge, "and you'll keep your Christmas by losing
+your situation! You're quite a powerful speaker,
+sir," he added, turning to his nephew. "I wonder you
+don't go into Parliament."
+
+"Don't be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us to-morrow."
+
+Scrooge said that he would see him--yes, indeed he
+did. He went the whole length of the expression,
+and said that he would see him in that extremity first.
+
+"But why?" cried Scrooge's nephew. "Why?"
+
+"Why did you get married?" said Scrooge.
+
+"Because I fell in love."
+
+"Because you fell in love!" growled Scrooge, as if
+that were the only one thing in the world more ridiculous
+than a merry Christmas. "Good afternoon!"
+
+"Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before
+that happened. Why give it as a reason for not
+coming now?"
+
+"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.
+
+"I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you;
+why cannot we be friends?"
+
+"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.
+
+"I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so
+resolute. We have never had any quarrel, to which I
+have been a party. But I have made the trial in
+homage to Christmas, and I'll keep my Christmas
+humour to the last. So A Merry Christmas, uncle!"
+
+"Good afternoon!" said Scrooge.
+
+"And A Happy New Year!"
+
+"Good afternoon!" said Scrooge.
+
+His nephew left the room without an angry word,
+notwithstanding. He stopped at the outer door to
+bestow the greetings of the season on the clerk, who,
+cold as he was, was warmer than Scrooge; for he returned
+them cordially.
+
+"There's another fellow," muttered Scrooge; who
+overheard him: "my clerk, with fifteen shillings a
+week, and a wife and family, talking about a merry
+Christmas. I'll retire to Bedlam."
+
+This lunatic, in letting Scrooge's nephew out, had
+let two other people in. They were portly gentlemen,
+pleasant to behold, and now stood, with their hats off,
+in Scrooge's office. They had books and papers in
+their hands, and bowed to him.
+
+"Scrooge and Marley's, I believe," said one of the
+gentlemen, referring to his list. "Have I the pleasure
+of addressing Mr. Scrooge, or Mr. Marley?"
+
+"Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years,"
+Scrooge replied. "He died seven years ago, this very
+night."
+
+"We have no doubt his liberality is well represented
+by his surviving partner," said the gentleman, presenting
+his credentials.
+
+It certainly was; for they had been two kindred
+spirits. At the ominous word "liberality," Scrooge
+frowned, and shook his head, and handed the credentials
+back.
+
+"At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,"
+said the gentleman, taking up a pen, "it is more than
+usually desirable that we should make some slight
+provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer
+greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in
+want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands
+are in want of common comforts, sir."
+
+"Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge.
+
+"Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, laying down
+the pen again.
+
+"And the Union workhouses?" demanded Scrooge.
+"Are they still in operation?"
+
+"They are. Still," returned the gentleman, "I wish
+I could say they were not."
+
+"The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour,
+then?" said Scrooge.
+
+"Both very busy, sir."
+
+"Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first,
+that something had occurred to stop them in their
+useful course," said Scrooge. "I'm very glad to
+hear it."
+
+"Under the impression that they scarcely furnish
+Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,"
+returned the gentleman, "a few of us are endeavouring
+to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink,
+and means of warmth. We choose this time, because
+it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt,
+and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down
+for?"
+
+"Nothing!" Scrooge replied.
+
+"You wish to be anonymous?"
+
+"I wish to be left alone," said Scrooge. "Since you
+ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer.
+I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I can't
+afford to make idle people merry. I help to support
+the establishments I have mentioned--they cost
+enough; and those who are badly off must go there."
+
+"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."
+
+"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had
+better do it, and decrease the surplus population.
+Besides--excuse me--I don't know that."
+
+"But you might know it," observed the gentleman.
+
+"It's not my business," Scrooge returned. "It's
+enough for a man to understand his own business, and
+not to interfere with other people's. Mine occupies
+me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!"
+
+Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue
+their point, the gentlemen withdrew. Scrooge resumed
+his labours with an improved opinion of himself,
+and in a more facetious temper than was usual
+with him.
+
+Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that
+people ran about with flaring links, proffering their
+services to go before horses in carriages, and conduct
+them on their way. The ancient tower of a church,
+whose gruff old bell was always peeping slily down
+at Scrooge out of a Gothic window in the wall, became
+invisible, and struck the hours and quarters in the
+clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterwards as if
+its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there.
+The cold became intense. In the main street, at the
+corner of the court, some labourers were repairing
+the gas-pipes, and had lighted a great fire in a brazier,
+round which a party of ragged men and boys were
+gathered: warming their hands and winking their
+eyes before the blaze in rapture. The water-plug
+being left in solitude, its overflowings sullenly congealed,
+and turned to misanthropic ice. The brightness
+of the shops where holly sprigs and berries
+crackled in the lamp heat of the windows, made pale
+faces ruddy as they passed. Poulterers' and grocers'
+trades became a splendid joke: a glorious pageant,
+with which it was next to impossible to believe that
+such dull principles as bargain and sale had anything
+to do. The Lord Mayor, in the stronghold of the
+mighty Mansion House, gave orders to his fifty cooks
+and butlers to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor's
+household should; and even the little tailor, whom he
+had fined five shillings on the previous Monday for
+being drunk and bloodthirsty in the streets, stirred up
+to-morrow's pudding in his garret, while his lean
+wife and the baby sallied out to buy the beef.
+
+Foggier yet, and colder. Piercing, searching, biting
+cold. If the good Saint Dunstan had but nipped
+the Evil Spirit's nose with a touch of such weather
+as that, instead of using his familiar weapons, then
+indeed he would have roared to lusty purpose. The
+owner of one scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled
+by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed by dogs,
+stooped down at Scrooge's keyhole to regale him with
+a Christmas carol: but at the first sound of
+
+        "God bless you, merry gentleman!
+         May nothing you dismay!"
+
+Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action,
+that the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to
+the fog and even more congenial frost.
+
+At length the hour of shutting up the counting-house
+arrived. With an ill-will Scrooge dismounted from his
+stool, and tacitly admitted the fact to the expectant
+clerk in the Tank, who instantly snuffed his candle out,
+and put on his hat.
+
+"You'll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?" said
+Scrooge.
+
+"If quite convenient, sir."
+
+"It's not convenient," said Scrooge, "and it's not
+fair. If I was to stop half-a-crown for it, you'd
+think yourself ill-used, I'll be bound?"
+
+The clerk smiled faintly.
+
+"And yet," said Scrooge, "you don't think me ill-used,
+when I pay a day's wages for no work."
+
+The clerk observed that it was only once a year.
+
+"A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every
+twenty-fifth of December!" said Scrooge, buttoning
+his great-coat to the chin. "But I suppose you must
+have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next
+morning."
+
+The clerk promised that he would; and Scrooge
+walked out with a growl. The office was closed in a
+twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends of his
+white comforter dangling below his waist (for he
+boasted no great-coat), went down a slide on Cornhill,
+at the end of a lane of boys, twenty times, in
+honour of its being Christmas Eve, and then ran home
+to Camden Town as hard as he could pelt, to play
+at blindman's-buff.
+
+Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual
+melancholy tavern; and having read all the newspapers, and
+beguiled the rest of the evening with his
+banker's-book, went home to bed. He lived in
+chambers which had once belonged to his deceased
+partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a
+lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so
+little business to be, that one could scarcely help
+fancying it must have run there when it was a young
+house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses,
+and forgotten the way out again. It was old enough
+now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but
+Scrooge, the other rooms being all let out as offices.
+The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew
+its every stone, was fain to grope with his hands.
+The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway
+of the house, that it seemed as if the Genius of
+the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the
+threshold.
+
+Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all
+particular about the knocker on the door, except that it
+was very large. It is also a fact, that Scrooge had
+seen it, night and morning, during his whole residence
+in that place; also that Scrooge had as little of what
+is called fancy about him as any man in the city of
+London, even including--which is a bold word--the
+corporation, aldermen, and livery. Let it also be
+borne in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed one
+thought on Marley, since his last mention of his
+seven years' dead partner that afternoon. And then
+let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened
+that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door,
+saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate
+process of change--not a knocker, but Marley's face.
+
+Marley's face. It was not in impenetrable shadow
+as the other objects in the yard were, but had a
+dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark
+cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked
+at Scrooge as Marley used to look: with ghostly
+spectacles turned up on its ghostly forehead. The
+hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air;
+and, though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly
+motionless. That, and its livid colour, made it
+horrible; but its horror seemed to be in spite of the
+face and beyond its control, rather than a part of
+its own expression.
+
+As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it
+was a knocker again.
+
+To say that he was not startled, or that his blood
+was not conscious of a terrible sensation to which it
+had been a stranger from infancy, would be untrue.
+But he put his hand upon the key he had relinquished,
+turned it sturdily, walked in, and lighted his candle.
+
+He did pause, with a moment's irresolution, before
+he shut the door; and he did look cautiously behind
+it first, as if he half expected to be terrified with the
+sight of Marley's pigtail sticking out into the hall.
+But there was nothing on the back of the door, except
+the screws and nuts that held the knocker on, so he
+said "Pooh, pooh!" and closed it with a bang.
+
+The sound resounded through the house like thunder.
+Every room above, and every cask in the wine-merchant's
+cellars below, appeared to have a separate peal
+of echoes of its own. Scrooge was not a man to
+be frightened by echoes. He fastened the door, and
+walked across the hall, and up the stairs; slowly too:
+trimming his candle as he went.
+
+You may talk vaguely about driving a coach-and-six
+up a good old flight of stairs, or through a bad
+young Act of Parliament; but I mean to say you
+might have got a hearse up that staircase, and taken
+it broadwise, with the splinter-bar towards the wall
+and the door towards the balustrades: and done it
+easy. There was plenty of width for that, and room
+to spare; which is perhaps the reason why Scrooge
+thought he saw a locomotive hearse going on before
+him in the gloom. Half-a-dozen gas-lamps out of
+the street wouldn't have lighted the entry too well,
+so you may suppose that it was pretty dark with
+Scrooge's dip.
+
+Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for that.
+Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it. But before
+he shut his heavy door, he walked through his rooms
+to see that all was right. He had just enough recollection
+of the face to desire to do that.
+
+Sitting-room, bedroom, lumber-room. All as they
+should be. Nobody under the table, nobody under
+the sofa; a small fire in the grate; spoon and basin
+ready; and the little saucepan of gruel (Scrooge had
+a cold in his head) upon the hob. Nobody under the
+bed; nobody in the closet; nobody in his dressing-gown,
+which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude
+against the wall. Lumber-room as usual. Old fire-guard,
+old shoes, two fish-baskets, washing-stand on three
+legs, and a poker.
+
+Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked
+himself in; double-locked himself in, which was not his
+custom. Thus secured against surprise, he took off
+his cravat; put on his dressing-gown and slippers, and
+his nightcap; and sat down before the fire to take
+his gruel.
+
+It was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such a
+bitter night. He was obliged to sit close to it, and
+brood over it, before he could extract the least
+sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel.
+The fireplace was an old one, built by some Dutch
+merchant long ago, and paved all round with quaint
+Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the Scriptures.
+There were Cains and Abels, Pharaoh's daughters;
+Queens of Sheba, Angelic messengers descending
+through the air on clouds like feather-beds, Abrahams,
+Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in butter-boats,
+hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts;
+and yet that face of Marley, seven years dead, came
+like the ancient Prophet's rod, and swallowed up the
+whole. If each smooth tile had been a blank at first,
+with power to shape some picture on its surface from
+the disjointed fragments of his thoughts, there would
+have been a copy of old Marley's head on every one.
+
+"Humbug!" said Scrooge; and walked across the
+room.
+
+After several turns, he sat down again. As he
+threw his head back in the chair, his glance happened
+to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, that hung in the
+room, and communicated for some purpose now forgotten
+with a chamber in the highest story of the
+building. It was with great astonishment, and with
+a strange, inexplicable dread, that as he looked, he
+saw this bell begin to swing. It swung so softly in
+the outset that it scarcely made a sound; but soon it
+rang out loudly, and so did every bell in the house.
+
+This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute,
+but it seemed an hour. The bells ceased as they had
+begun, together. They were succeeded by a clanking
+noise, deep down below; as if some person were
+dragging a heavy chain over the casks in the
+wine-merchant's cellar. Scrooge then remembered to have
+heard that ghosts in haunted houses were described as
+dragging chains.
+
+The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound,
+and then he heard the noise much louder, on the floors
+below; then coming up the stairs; then coming straight
+towards his door.
+
+"It's humbug still!" said Scrooge. "I won't believe it."
+
+His colour changed though, when, without a pause,
+it came on through the heavy door, and passed into
+the room before his eyes. Upon its coming in, the
+dying flame leaped up, as though it cried, "I know
+him; Marley's Ghost!" and fell again.
+
+The same face: the very same. Marley in his pigtail,
+usual waistcoat, tights and boots; the tassels on
+the latter bristling, like his pigtail, and his coat-skirts,
+and the hair upon his head. The chain he drew was
+clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound
+about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge
+observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks,
+ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel.
+His body was transparent; so that Scrooge, observing him,
+and looking through his waistcoat, could see
+the two buttons on his coat behind.
+
+Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no
+bowels, but he had never believed it until now.
+
+No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he
+looked the phantom through and through, and saw
+it standing before him; though he felt the chilling
+influence of its death-cold eyes; and marked the very
+texture of the folded kerchief bound about its head
+and chin, which wrapper he had not observed before;
+he was still incredulous, and fought against his senses.
+
+"How now!" said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever.
+"What do you want with me?"
+
+"Much!"--Marley's voice, no doubt about it.
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+"Ask me who I was."
+
+"Who were you then?" said Scrooge, raising his
+voice. "You're particular, for a shade." He was going
+to say "to a shade," but substituted this, as more
+appropriate.
+
+"In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley."
+
+"Can you--can you sit down?" asked Scrooge, looking
+doubtfully at him.
+
+"I can."
+
+"Do it, then."
+
+Scrooge asked the question, because he didn't know
+whether a ghost so transparent might find himself in
+a condition to take a chair; and felt that in the event
+of its being impossible, it might involve the necessity
+of an embarrassing explanation. But the ghost sat
+down on the opposite side of the fireplace, as if he
+were quite used to it.
+
+"You don't believe in me," observed the Ghost.
+
+"I don't," said Scrooge.
+
+"What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of
+your senses?"
+
+"I don't know," said Scrooge.
+
+"Why do you doubt your senses?"
+
+"Because," said Scrooge, "a little thing affects them.
+A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may
+be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of
+cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of
+gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!"
+
+Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking
+jokes, nor did he feel, in his heart, by any means
+waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be
+smart, as a means of distracting his own attention,
+and keeping down his terror; for the spectre's voice
+disturbed the very marrow in his bones.
+
+To sit, staring at those fixed glazed eyes, in silence
+for a moment, would play, Scrooge felt, the very
+deuce with him. There was something very awful,
+too, in the spectre's being provided with an infernal
+atmosphere of its own. Scrooge could not feel it
+himself, but this was clearly the case; for though the
+Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its hair, and skirts,
+and tassels, were still agitated as by the hot vapour
+from an oven.
+
+"You see this toothpick?" said Scrooge, returning
+quickly to the charge, for the reason just assigned;
+and wishing, though it were only for a second, to
+divert the vision's stony gaze from himself.
+
+"I do," replied the Ghost.
+
+"You are not looking at it," said Scrooge.
+
+"But I see it," said the Ghost, "notwithstanding."
+
+"Well!" returned Scrooge, "I have but to swallow
+this, and be for the rest of my days persecuted by a
+legion of goblins, all of my own creation. Humbug,
+I tell you! humbug!"
+
+At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook
+its chain with such a dismal and appalling noise, that
+Scrooge held on tight to his chair, to save himself
+from falling in a swoon. But how much greater was
+his horror, when the phantom taking off the bandage
+round its head, as if it were too warm to wear indoors,
+its lower jaw dropped down upon its breast!
+
+Scrooge fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands
+before his face.
+
+"Mercy!" he said. "Dreadful apparition, why do
+you trouble me?"
+
+"Man of the worldly mind!" replied the Ghost, "do
+you believe in me or not?"
+
+"I do," said Scrooge. "I must. But why do spirits
+walk the earth, and why do they come to me?"
+
+"It is required of every man," the Ghost returned,
+"that the spirit within him should walk abroad among
+his fellowmen, and travel far and wide; and if that
+spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so
+after death. It is doomed to wander through the
+world--oh, woe is me!--and witness what it cannot
+share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to
+happiness!"
+
+Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain
+and wrung its shadowy hands.
+
+"You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling. "Tell
+me why?"
+
+"I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost.
+"I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded
+it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I
+wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?"
+
+Scrooge trembled more and more.
+
+"Or would you know," pursued the Ghost, "the
+weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself?
+It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven
+Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it, since.
+It is a ponderous chain!"
+
+Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in the
+expectation of finding himself surrounded by some fifty
+or sixty fathoms of iron cable: but he could see
+nothing.
+
+"Jacob," he said, imploringly. "Old Jacob Marley,
+tell me more. Speak comfort to me, Jacob!"
+
+"I have none to give," the Ghost replied. "It comes
+from other regions, Ebenezer Scrooge, and is conveyed
+by other ministers, to other kinds of men. Nor
+can I tell you what I would. A very little more is
+all permitted to me. I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I
+cannot linger anywhere. My spirit never walked
+beyond our counting-house--mark me!--in life my
+spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our
+money-changing hole; and weary journeys lie before
+me!"
+
+It was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he became
+thoughtful, to put his hands in his breeches pockets.
+Pondering on what the Ghost had said, he did so now,
+but without lifting up his eyes, or getting off his
+knees.
+
+"You must have been very slow about it, Jacob,"
+Scrooge observed, in a business-like manner, though
+with humility and deference.
+
+"Slow!" the Ghost repeated.
+
+"Seven years dead," mused Scrooge. "And travelling
+all the time!"
+
+"The whole time," said the Ghost. "No rest, no
+peace. Incessant torture of remorse."
+
+"You travel fast?" said Scrooge.
+
+"On the wings of the wind," replied the Ghost.
+
+"You might have got over a great quantity of
+ground in seven years," said Scrooge.
+
+The Ghost, on hearing this, set up another cry, and
+clanked its chain so hideously in the dead silence of
+the night, that the Ward would have been justified in
+indicting it for a nuisance.
+
+"Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed," cried the
+phantom, "not to know, that ages of incessant labour
+by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into
+eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is
+all developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit
+working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may
+be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast
+means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of
+regret can make amends for one life's opportunity
+misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!"
+
+"But you were always a good man of business,
+Jacob," faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this
+to himself.
+
+"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands
+again. "Mankind was my business. The common
+welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance,
+and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings
+of my trade were but a drop of water in the
+comprehensive ocean of my business!"
+
+It held up its chain at arm's length, as if that were
+the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it
+heavily upon the ground again.
+
+"At this time of the rolling year," the spectre said,
+"I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of
+fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never
+raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise
+Men to a poor abode! Were there no poor homes to
+which its light would have conducted me!"
+
+Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the
+spectre going on at this rate, and began to quake
+exceedingly.
+
+"Hear me!" cried the Ghost. "My time is nearly
+gone."
+
+"I will," said Scrooge. "But don't be hard upon
+me! Don't be flowery, Jacob! Pray!"
+
+"How it is that I appear before you in a shape that
+you can see, I may not tell. I have sat invisible
+beside you many and many a day."
+
+It was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered,
+and wiped the perspiration from his brow.
+
+"That is no light part of my penance," pursued
+the Ghost. "I am here to-night to warn you, that you
+have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A
+chance and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer."
+
+"You were always a good friend to me," said
+Scrooge. "Thank'ee!"
+
+"You will be haunted," resumed the Ghost, "by
+Three Spirits."
+
+Scrooge's countenance fell almost as low as the
+Ghost's had done.
+
+"Is that the chance and hope you mentioned,
+Jacob?" he demanded, in a faltering voice.
+
+"It is."
+
+"I--I think I'd rather not," said Scrooge.
+
+"Without their visits," said the Ghost, "you cannot
+hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first to-morrow,
+when the bell tolls One."
+
+"Couldn't I take 'em all at once, and have it over,
+Jacob?" hinted Scrooge.
+
+"Expect the second on the next night at the same
+hour. The third upon the next night when the last
+stroke of Twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see
+me no more; and look that, for your own sake, you
+remember what has passed between us!"
+
+When it had said these words, the spectre took its
+wrapper from the table, and bound it round its head,
+as before. Scrooge knew this, by the smart sound its
+teeth made, when the jaws were brought together
+by the bandage. He ventured to raise his eyes again,
+and found his supernatural visitor confronting him
+in an erect attitude, with its chain wound over and
+about its arm.
+
+The apparition walked backward from him; and at
+every step it took, the window raised itself a little,
+so that when the spectre reached it, it was wide open.
+
+It beckoned Scrooge to approach, which he did.
+When they were within two paces of each other,
+Marley's Ghost held up its hand, warning him to
+come no nearer. Scrooge stopped.
+
+Not so much in obedience, as in surprise and fear:
+for on the raising of the hand, he became sensible
+of confused noises in the air; incoherent sounds of
+lamentation and regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and
+self-accusatory. The spectre, after listening for a moment,
+joined in the mournful dirge; and floated out upon the
+bleak, dark night.
+
+Scrooge followed to the window: desperate in his
+curiosity. He looked out.
+
+The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither
+and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they
+went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley's
+Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments)
+were linked together; none were free. Many had
+been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He
+had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white
+waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to
+its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist
+a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below,
+upon a door-step. The misery with them all was,
+clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in
+human matters, and had lost the power for ever.
+
+Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist
+enshrouded them, he could not tell. But they and
+their spirit voices faded together; and the night became
+as it had been when he walked home.
+
+Scrooge closed the window, and examined the door
+by which the Ghost had entered. It was double-locked,
+as he had locked it with his own hands, and
+the bolts were undisturbed. He tried to say "Humbug!"
+but stopped at the first syllable. And being,
+from the emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues
+of the day, or his glimpse of the Invisible World, or
+the dull conversation of the Ghost, or the lateness of
+the hour, much in need of repose; went straight to
+bed, without undressing, and fell asleep upon the
+instant.
+
+
+STAVE II:  THE FIRST OF THE THREE SPIRITS
+
+WHEN Scrooge awoke, it was so dark, that looking out of bed,
+he could scarcely distinguish the transparent window from
+the opaque walls of his chamber. He was endeavouring to
+pierce the darkness with his ferret eyes, when the chimes of a
+neighbouring church struck the four quarters. So he listened
+for the hour.
+
+To his great astonishment the heavy bell went on from
+six to seven, and from seven to eight, and regularly up to
+twelve; then stopped. Twelve! It was past two when he
+went to bed. The clock was wrong. An icicle must have
+got into the works. Twelve!
+
+He touched the spring of his repeater, to correct this most
+preposterous clock. Its rapid little pulse beat twelve:
+and stopped.
+
+"Why, it isn't possible," said Scrooge, "that I can have
+slept through a whole day and far into another night. It
+isn't possible that anything has happened to the sun, and
+this is twelve at noon!"
+
+The idea being an alarming one, he scrambled out of bed,
+and groped his way to the window. He was obliged to rub
+the frost off with the sleeve of his dressing-gown before he
+could see anything; and could see very little then. All he
+could make out was, that it was still very foggy and extremely
+cold, and that there was no noise of people running to and fro,
+and making a great stir, as there unquestionably would have been
+if night had beaten off bright day, and taken possession of the
+world.  This was a great relief, because "three days after sight
+of this First of Exchange pay to Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge or his
+order," and so forth, would have become a mere United States'
+security if there were no days to count by.
+
+Scrooge went to bed again, and thought, and thought, and thought
+it over and over and over, and could make nothing of it.  The more he
+thought, the more perplexed he was; and the more he endeavoured
+not to think, the more he thought.
+
+Marley's Ghost bothered him exceedingly. Every time he resolved
+within himself, after mature inquiry, that it was all a dream, his
+mind flew back again, like a strong spring released, to its first
+position, and presented the same problem to be worked all through,
+"Was it a dream or not?"
+
+Scrooge lay in this state until the chime had gone three quarters
+more, when he remembered, on a sudden, that the Ghost had warned
+him of a visitation when the bell tolled one.  He resolved to lie
+awake until the hour was passed; and, considering that he could
+no more go to sleep than go to Heaven, this was perhaps the
+wisest resolution in his power.
+
+The quarter was so long, that he was more than once convinced he
+must have sunk into a doze unconsciously, and missed the clock.
+At length it broke upon his listening ear.
+
+"Ding, dong!"
+
+"A quarter past," said Scrooge, counting.
+
+"Ding, dong!"
+
+"Half-past!" said Scrooge.
+
+"Ding, dong!"
+
+"A quarter to it," said Scrooge.
+
+"Ding, dong!"
+
+"The hour itself," said Scrooge, triumphantly, "and nothing else!"
+
+He spoke before the hour bell sounded, which it now did with a
+deep, dull, hollow, melancholy ONE.  Light flashed up in the room
+upon the instant, and the curtains of his bed were drawn.
+
+The curtains of his bed were drawn aside, I tell you, by a
+hand. Not the curtains at his feet, nor the curtains at his
+back, but those to which his face was addressed. The curtains
+of his bed were drawn aside; and Scrooge, starting up into a
+half-recumbent attitude, found himself face to face with the
+unearthly visitor who drew them: as close to it as I am now
+to you, and I am standing in the spirit at your elbow.
+
+It was a strange figure--like a child: yet not so like a
+child as like an old man, viewed through some supernatural
+medium, which gave him the appearance of having receded
+from the view, and being diminished to a child's proportions.
+Its hair, which hung about its neck and down its back, was
+white as if with age; and yet the face had not a wrinkle in
+it, and the tenderest bloom was on the skin. The arms were
+very long and muscular; the hands the same, as if its hold
+were of uncommon strength. Its legs and feet, most delicately
+formed, were, like those upper members, bare. It wore a tunic
+of the purest white; and round its waist was bound
+a lustrous belt, the sheen of which was beautiful. It held
+a branch of fresh green holly in its hand; and, in singular
+contradiction of that wintry emblem, had its dress trimmed
+with summer flowers. But the strangest thing about it was,
+that from the crown of its head there sprung a bright clear
+jet of light, by which all this was visible; and which was
+doubtless the occasion of its using, in its duller moments, a
+great extinguisher for a cap, which it now held under its arm.
+
+Even this, though, when Scrooge looked at it with increasing
+steadiness, was not its strangest quality. For as its belt
+sparkled and glittered now in one part and now in another,
+and what was light one instant, at another time was dark, so
+the figure itself fluctuated in its distinctness: being now a
+thing with one arm, now with one leg, now with twenty legs,
+now a pair of legs without a head, now a head without a
+body: of which dissolving parts, no outline would be visible
+in the dense gloom wherein they melted away. And in the
+very wonder of this, it would be itself again; distinct and
+clear as ever.
+
+"Are you the Spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold to
+me?" asked Scrooge.
+
+"I am!"
+
+The voice was soft and gentle. Singularly low, as if
+instead of being so close beside him, it were at a distance.
+
+"Who, and what are you?" Scrooge demanded.
+
+"I am the Ghost of Christmas Past."
+
+"Long Past?" inquired Scrooge: observant of its dwarfish
+stature.
+
+"No. Your past."
+
+Perhaps, Scrooge could not have told anybody why, if
+anybody could have asked him; but he had a special desire
+to see the Spirit in his cap; and begged him to be covered.
+
+"What!" exclaimed the Ghost, "would you so soon put out,
+with worldly hands, the light I give? Is it not enough
+that you are one of those whose passions made this cap, and
+force me through whole trains of years to wear it low upon
+my brow!"
+
+Scrooge reverently disclaimed all intention to offend
+or any knowledge of having wilfully "bonneted" the Spirit at
+any period of his life. He then made bold to inquire what
+business brought him there.
+
+"Your welfare!" said the Ghost.
+
+Scrooge expressed himself much obliged, but could not
+help thinking that a night of unbroken rest would have been
+more conducive to that end. The Spirit must have heard
+him thinking, for it said immediately:
+
+"Your reclamation, then. Take heed!"
+
+It put out its strong hand as it spoke, and clasped him
+gently by the arm.
+
+"Rise! and walk with me!"
+
+It would have been in vain for Scrooge to plead that the
+weather and the hour were not adapted to pedestrian purposes;
+that bed was warm, and the thermometer a long way below
+freezing; that he was clad but lightly in his slippers,
+dressing-gown, and nightcap; and that he had a cold upon him at
+that time. The grasp, though gentle as a woman's hand,
+was not to be resisted. He rose: but finding that the Spirit
+made towards the window, clasped his robe in supplication.
+
+"I am a mortal," Scrooge remonstrated, "and liable to fall."
+
+"Bear but a touch of my hand there," said the Spirit,
+laying it upon his heart, "and you shall be upheld in more
+than this!"
+
+As the words were spoken, they passed through the wall,
+and stood upon an open country road, with fields on either
+hand. The city had entirely vanished. Not a vestige of it
+was to be seen. The darkness and the mist had vanished
+with it, for it was a clear, cold, winter day, with snow upon
+the ground.
+
+"Good Heaven!" said Scrooge, clasping his hands together,
+as he looked about him. "I was bred in this place. I was
+a boy here!"
+
+The Spirit gazed upon him mildly. Its gentle touch,
+though it had been light and instantaneous, appeared still
+present to the old man's sense of feeling. He was conscious
+of a thousand odours floating in the air, each one connected
+with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares
+long, long, forgotten!
+
+"Your lip is trembling," said the Ghost. "And what is
+that upon your cheek?"
+
+Scrooge muttered, with an unusual catching in his voice,
+that it was a pimple; and begged the Ghost to lead him
+where he would.
+
+"You recollect the way?" inquired the Spirit.
+
+"Remember it!" cried Scrooge with fervour; "I could
+walk it blindfold."
+
+"Strange to have forgotten it for so many years!" observed
+the Ghost. "Let us go on."
+
+They walked along the road, Scrooge recognising every
+gate, and post, and tree; until a little market-town appeared
+in the distance, with its bridge, its church, and winding river.
+Some shaggy ponies now were seen trotting towards them
+with boys upon their backs, who called to other boys in
+country gigs and carts, driven by farmers. All these boys
+were in great spirits, and shouted to each other, until the
+broad fields were so full of merry music, that the crisp air
+laughed to hear it!
+
+"These are but shadows of the things that have been," said
+the Ghost. "They have no consciousness of us."
+
+The jocund travellers came on; and as they came, Scrooge
+knew and named them every one. Why was he rejoiced beyond
+all bounds to see them! Why did his cold eye glisten, and
+his heart leap up as they went past! Why was he filled
+with gladness when he heard them give each other Merry
+Christmas, as they parted at cross-roads and bye-ways, for
+their several homes! What was merry Christmas to Scrooge?
+Out upon merry Christmas! What good had it ever done
+to him?
+
+"The school is not quite deserted," said the Ghost. "A
+solitary child, neglected by his friends, is left there still."
+
+Scrooge said he knew it. And he sobbed.
+
+They left the high-road, by a well-remembered lane, and
+soon approached a mansion of dull red brick, with a little
+weathercock-surmounted cupola, on the roof, and a bell
+hanging in it. It was a large house, but one of broken
+fortunes; for the spacious offices were little used, their walls
+were damp and mossy, their windows broken, and their
+gates decayed. Fowls clucked and strutted in the stables;
+and the coach-houses and sheds were over-run with grass.
+Nor was it more retentive of its ancient state, within; for
+entering the dreary hall, and glancing through the open
+doors of many rooms, they found them poorly furnished,
+cold, and vast. There was an earthy savour in the air, a
+chilly bareness in the place, which associated itself somehow
+with too much getting up by candle-light, and not too
+much to eat.
+
+They went, the Ghost and Scrooge, across the hall, to a
+door at the back of the house. It opened before them, and
+disclosed a long, bare, melancholy room, made barer still by
+lines of plain deal forms and desks. At one of these a lonely
+boy was reading near a feeble fire; and Scrooge sat down
+upon a form, and wept to see his poor forgotten self as he
+used to be.
+
+Not a latent echo in the house, not a squeak and scuffle
+from the mice behind the panelling, not a drip from the
+half-thawed water-spout in the dull yard behind, not a sigh among
+the leafless boughs of one despondent poplar, not the idle
+swinging of an empty store-house door, no, not a clicking in
+the fire, but fell upon the heart of Scrooge with a softening
+influence, and gave a freer passage to his tears.
+
+The Spirit touched him on the arm, and pointed to his
+younger self, intent upon his reading. Suddenly a man, in
+foreign garments: wonderfully real and distinct to look at:
+stood outside the window, with an axe stuck in his belt, and
+leading by the bridle an ass laden with wood.
+
+"Why, it's Ali Baba!" Scrooge exclaimed in ecstasy. "It's
+dear old honest Ali Baba! Yes, yes, I know! One Christmas
+time, when yonder solitary child was left here all alone,
+he did come, for the first time, just like that. Poor boy! And
+Valentine," said Scrooge, "and his wild brother, Orson; there
+they go! And what's his name, who was put down in his
+drawers, asleep, at the Gate of Damascus; don't you see him!
+And the Sultan's Groom turned upside down by the Genii;
+there he is upon his head! Serve him right. I'm glad of it.
+What business had he to be married to the Princess!"
+
+To hear Scrooge expending all the earnestness of his nature
+on such subjects, in a most extraordinary voice between
+laughing and crying; and to see his heightened and excited
+face; would have been a surprise to his business friends in
+the city, indeed.
+
+"There's the Parrot!" cried Scrooge. "Green body and
+yellow tail, with a thing like a lettuce growing out of the
+top of his head; there he is! Poor Robin Crusoe, he called
+him, when he came home again after sailing round the
+island. 'Poor Robin Crusoe, where have you been, Robin
+Crusoe?'  The man thought he was dreaming, but he wasn't.
+It was the Parrot, you know. There goes Friday, running
+for his life to the little creek! Halloa! Hoop! Halloo!"
+
+Then, with a rapidity of transition very foreign to his
+usual character, he said, in pity for his former self, "Poor
+boy!" and cried again.
+
+"I wish," Scrooge muttered, putting his hand in his
+pocket, and looking about him, after drying his eyes with his
+cuff: "but it's too late now."
+
+"What is the matter?" asked the Spirit.
+
+"Nothing," said Scrooge. "Nothing. There was a boy
+singing a Christmas Carol at my door last night. I should
+like to have given him something: that's all."
+
+The Ghost smiled thoughtfully, and waved its hand:
+saying as it did so, "Let us see another Christmas!"
+
+Scrooge's former self grew larger at the words, and the
+room became a little darker and more dirty. The panels shrunk,
+the windows cracked; fragments of plaster fell out of the
+ceiling, and the naked laths were shown instead; but how
+all this was brought about, Scrooge knew no more than you
+do. He only knew that it was quite correct; that everything
+had happened so; that there he was, alone again, when all
+the other boys had gone home for the jolly holidays.
+
+He was not reading now, but walking up and down despairingly.
+Scrooge looked at the Ghost, and with a mournful shaking of
+his head, glanced anxiously towards the door.
+
+It opened; and a little girl, much younger than the boy,
+came darting in, and putting her arms about his neck, and
+often kissing him, addressed him as her "Dear, dear
+brother."
+
+"I have come to bring you home, dear brother!" said the
+child, clapping her tiny hands, and bending down to laugh.
+"To bring you home, home, home!"
+
+"Home, little Fan?" returned the boy.
+
+"Yes!" said the child, brimful of glee. "Home, for good
+and all. Home, for ever and ever. Father is so much kinder
+than he used to be, that home's like Heaven! He spoke so
+gently to me one dear night when I was going to bed, that
+I was not afraid to ask him once more if you might come
+home; and he said Yes, you should; and sent me in a coach
+to bring you. And you're to be a man!" said the child,
+opening her eyes, "and are never to come back here; but
+first, we're to be together all the Christmas long, and have
+the merriest time in all the world."
+
+"You are quite a woman, little Fan!" exclaimed the boy.
+
+She clapped her hands and laughed, and tried to touch his
+head; but being too little, laughed again, and stood on
+tiptoe to embrace him. Then she began to drag him, in her
+childish eagerness, towards the door; and he, nothing loth to
+go, accompanied her.
+
+A terrible voice in the hall cried, "Bring down Master
+Scrooge's box, there!" and in the hall appeared the schoolmaster
+himself, who glared on Master Scrooge with a ferocious
+condescension, and threw him into a dreadful state of mind
+by shaking hands with him. He then conveyed him and his
+sister into the veriest old well of a shivering best-parlour that
+ever was seen, where the maps upon the wall, and the celestial
+and terrestrial globes in the windows, were waxy with cold.
+Here he produced a decanter of curiously light wine, and a
+block of curiously heavy cake, and administered instalments
+of those dainties to the young people: at the same time,
+sending out a meagre servant to offer a glass of "something"
+to the postboy, who answered that he thanked the gentleman,
+but if it was the same tap as he had tasted before, he had
+rather not. Master Scrooge's trunk being by this time tied
+on to the top of the chaise, the children bade the schoolmaster
+good-bye right willingly; and getting into it, drove
+gaily down the garden-sweep: the quick wheels dashing the
+hoar-frost and snow from off the dark leaves of the evergreens
+like spray.
+
+"Always a delicate creature, whom a breath might have
+withered," said the Ghost. "But she had a large heart!"
+
+"So she had," cried Scrooge. "You're right. I will not
+gainsay it, Spirit. God forbid!"
+
+"She died a woman," said the Ghost, "and had, as I think,
+children."
+
+"One child," Scrooge returned.
+
+"True," said the Ghost. "Your nephew!"
+
+Scrooge seemed uneasy in his mind; and answered briefly,
+"Yes."
+
+Although they had but that moment left the school behind
+them, they were now in the busy thoroughfares of a city,
+where shadowy passengers passed and repassed; where shadowy
+carts and coaches battled for the way, and all the strife and
+tumult of a real city were. It was made plain enough, by
+the dressing of the shops, that here too it was Christmas
+time again; but it was evening, and the streets were
+lighted up.
+
+The Ghost stopped at a certain warehouse door, and asked
+Scrooge if he knew it.
+
+"Know it!" said Scrooge. "Was I apprenticed here!"
+
+They went in. At sight of an old gentleman in a Welsh
+wig, sitting behind such a high desk, that if he had been two
+inches taller he must have knocked his head against the
+ceiling, Scrooge cried in great excitement:
+
+"Why, it's old Fezziwig! Bless his heart; it's Fezziwig
+alive again!"
+
+Old Fezziwig laid down his pen, and looked up at the
+clock, which pointed to the hour of seven. He rubbed his
+hands; adjusted his capacious waistcoat; laughed all over
+himself, from his shoes to his organ of benevolence; and
+called out in a comfortable, oily, rich, fat, jovial voice:
+
+"Yo ho, there! Ebenezer! Dick!"
+
+Scrooge's former self, now grown a young man, came briskly
+in, accompanied by his fellow-'prentice.
+
+"Dick Wilkins, to be sure!" said Scrooge to the Ghost.
+"Bless me, yes. There he is. He was very much attached
+to me, was Dick. Poor Dick! Dear, dear!"
+
+"Yo ho, my boys!" said Fezziwig. "No more work to-night.
+Christmas Eve, Dick. Christmas, Ebenezer! Let's
+have the shutters up," cried old Fezziwig, with a sharp clap
+of his hands, "before a man can say Jack Robinson!"
+
+You wouldn't believe how those two fellows went at it!
+They charged into the street with the shutters--one, two,
+three--had 'em up in their places--four, five, six--barred
+'em and pinned 'em--seven, eight, nine--and came back
+before you could have got to twelve, panting like race-horses.
+
+"Hilli-ho!" cried old Fezziwig, skipping down from the
+high desk, with wonderful agility. "Clear away, my lads,
+and let's have lots of room here! Hilli-ho, Dick! Chirrup,
+Ebenezer!"
+
+Clear away! There was nothing they wouldn't have cleared
+away, or couldn't have cleared away, with old Fezziwig looking
+on. It was done in a minute. Every movable was packed off, as if
+it were dismissed from public life for evermore; the floor was
+swept and watered, the lamps were trimmed, fuel was heaped upon
+the fire; and the warehouse was as snug, and warm, and dry, and
+bright a ball-room, as you would desire to see upon a winter's
+night.
+
+In came a fiddler with a music-book, and went up to the
+lofty desk, and made an orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty
+stomach-aches. In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial
+smile. In came the three Miss Fezziwigs, beaming and
+lovable. In came the six young followers whose hearts they
+broke. In came all the young men and women employed in
+the business. In came the housemaid, with her cousin, the
+baker. In came the cook, with her brother's particular friend,
+the milkman. In came the boy from over the way, who was
+suspected of not having board enough from his master; trying
+to hide himself behind the girl from next door but one, who
+was proved to have had her ears pulled by her mistress.
+In they all came, one after another; some shyly, some boldly,
+some gracefully, some awkwardly, some pushing, some pulling;
+in they all came, anyhow and everyhow. Away they all went,
+twenty couple at once; hands half round and back again
+the other way; down the middle and up again; round
+and round in various stages of affectionate grouping; old
+top couple always turning up in the wrong place; new top
+couple starting off again, as soon as they got there; all top
+couples at last, and not a bottom one to help them! When
+this result was brought about, old Fezziwig, clapping his
+hands to stop the dance, cried out, "Well done!" and the
+fiddler plunged his hot face into a pot of porter, especially
+provided for that purpose. But scorning rest, upon his
+reappearance, he instantly began again, though there were no
+dancers yet, as if the other fiddler had been carried home,
+exhausted, on a shutter, and he were a bran-new man
+resolved to beat him out of sight, or perish.
+
+There were more dances, and there were forfeits, and more
+dances, and there was cake, and there was negus, and there
+was a great piece of Cold Roast, and there was a great piece
+of Cold Boiled, and there were mince-pies, and plenty of beer.
+But the great effect of the evening came after the Roast
+and Boiled, when the fiddler (an artful dog, mind! The sort
+of man who knew his business better than you or I could
+have told it him!) struck up "Sir Roger de Coverley."  Then
+old Fezziwig stood out to dance with Mrs. Fezziwig. Top
+couple, too; with a good stiff piece of work cut out for them;
+three or four and twenty pair of partners; people who were
+not to be trifled with; people who would dance, and had no
+notion of walking.
+
+But if they had been twice as many--ah, four times--old
+Fezziwig would have been a match for them, and so would
+Mrs. Fezziwig. As to her, she was worthy to be his partner
+in every sense of the term. If that's not high praise, tell me
+higher, and I'll use it. A positive light appeared to issue
+from Fezziwig's calves. They shone in every part of the
+dance like moons. You couldn't have predicted, at any given
+time, what would have become of them next. And when old
+Fezziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig had gone all through the dance;
+advance and retire, both hands to your partner, bow and
+curtsey, corkscrew, thread-the-needle, and back again to
+your place; Fezziwig "cut"--cut so deftly, that he appeared
+to wink with his legs, and came upon his feet again without
+a stagger.
+
+When the clock struck eleven, this domestic ball broke up.
+Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig took their stations, one on either side
+of the door, and shaking hands with every person individually
+as he or she went out, wished him or her a Merry Christmas.
+When everybody had retired but the two 'prentices, they did
+the same to them; and thus the cheerful voices died away,
+and the lads were left to their beds; which were under a
+counter in the back-shop.
+
+During the whole of this time, Scrooge had acted like a
+man out of his wits. His heart and soul were in the scene,
+and with his former self. He corroborated everything,
+remembered everything, enjoyed everything, and underwent
+the strangest agitation. It was not until now, when the
+bright faces of his former self and Dick were turned from
+them, that he remembered the Ghost, and became conscious
+that it was looking full upon him, while the light upon its
+head burnt very clear.
+
+"A small matter," said the Ghost, "to make these silly
+folks so full of gratitude."
+
+"Small!" echoed Scrooge.
+
+The Spirit signed to him to listen to the two apprentices,
+who were pouring out their hearts in praise of Fezziwig:
+and when he had done so, said,
+
+"Why! Is it not? He has spent but a few pounds of
+your mortal money: three or four perhaps. Is that so
+much that he deserves this praise?"
+
+"It isn't that," said Scrooge, heated by the remark, and
+speaking unconsciously like his former, not his latter, self.
+"It isn't that, Spirit. He has the power to render us happy
+or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a
+pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and
+looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is
+impossible to add and count 'em up: what then? The happiness
+he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune."
+
+He felt the Spirit's glance, and stopped.
+
+"What is the matter?" asked the Ghost.
+
+"Nothing particular," said Scrooge.
+
+"Something, I think?" the Ghost insisted.
+
+"No," said Scrooge, "No. I should like to be able to say
+a word or two to my clerk just now. That's all."
+
+His former self turned down the lamps as he gave utterance
+to the wish; and Scrooge and the Ghost again stood side by
+side in the open air.
+
+"My time grows short," observed the Spirit. "Quick!"
+
+This was not addressed to Scrooge, or to any one whom he
+could see, but it produced an immediate effect. For again
+Scrooge saw himself. He was older now; a man in the prime
+of life. His face had not the harsh and rigid lines of later
+years; but it had begun to wear the signs of care and avarice.
+There was an eager, greedy, restless motion in the eye, which
+showed the passion that had taken root, and where the
+shadow of the growing tree would fall.
+
+He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young
+girl in a mourning-dress: in whose eyes there were tears,
+which sparkled in the light that shone out of the Ghost of
+Christmas Past.
+
+"It matters little," she said, softly. "To you, very little.
+Another idol has displaced me; and if it can cheer and comfort
+you in time to come, as I would have tried to do, I have
+no just cause to grieve."
+
+"What Idol has displaced you?" he rejoined.
+
+"A golden one."
+
+"This is the even-handed dealing of the world!" he said.
+"There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and
+there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity
+as the pursuit of wealth!"
+
+"You fear the world too much," she answered, gently.
+"All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being
+beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your
+nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master-passion,
+Gain, engrosses you. Have I not?"
+
+"What then?" he retorted. "Even if I have grown so
+much wiser, what then? I am not changed towards you."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Am I?"
+
+"Our contract is an old one. It was made when we were
+both poor and content to be so, until, in good season, we could
+improve our worldly fortune by our patient industry. You
+are changed. When it was made, you were another man."
+
+"I was a boy," he said impatiently.
+
+"Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you
+are," she returned. "I am. That which promised happiness
+when we were one in heart, is fraught with misery now that
+we are two. How often and how keenly I have thought of
+this, I will not say. It is enough that I have thought of it,
+and can release you."
+
+"Have I ever sought release?"
+
+"In words. No. Never."
+
+"In what, then?"
+
+"In a changed nature; in an altered spirit; in another
+atmosphere of life; another Hope as its great end. In
+everything that made my love of any worth or value in your
+sight. If this had never been between us," said the girl,
+looking mildly, but with steadiness, upon him; "tell me,
+would you seek me out and try to win me now? Ah, no!"
+
+He seemed to yield to the justice of this supposition, in
+spite of himself. But he said with a struggle, "You think
+not."
+
+"I would gladly think otherwise if I could," she answered,
+"Heaven knows! When I have learned a Truth like this,
+I know how strong and irresistible it must be. But if you
+were free to-day, to-morrow, yesterday, can even I believe
+that you would choose a dowerless girl--you who, in your
+very confidence with her, weigh everything by Gain: or,
+choosing her, if for a moment you were false enough to your
+one guiding principle to do so, do I not know that your
+repentance and regret would surely follow? I do; and I
+release you. With a full heart, for the love of him you
+once were."
+
+He was about to speak; but with her head turned from
+him, she resumed.
+
+"You may--the memory of what is past half makes me
+hope you will--have pain in this. A very, very brief time,
+and you will dismiss the recollection of it, gladly, as an
+unprofitable dream, from which it happened well that you
+awoke. May you be happy in the life you have chosen!"
+
+She left him, and they parted.
+
+"Spirit!" said Scrooge, "show me no more! Conduct
+me home. Why do you delight to torture me?"
+
+"One shadow more!" exclaimed the Ghost.
+
+"No more!" cried Scrooge. "No more. I don't wish to
+see it. Show me no more!"
+
+But the relentless Ghost pinioned him in both his arms,
+and forced him to observe what happened next.
+
+They were in another scene and place; a room, not very
+large or handsome, but full of comfort. Near to the winter
+fire sat a beautiful young girl, so like that last that Scrooge
+believed it was the same, until he saw her, now a comely
+matron, sitting opposite her daughter. The noise in this
+room was perfectly tumultuous, for there were more children
+there, than Scrooge in his agitated state of mind could count;
+and, unlike the celebrated herd in the poem, they were not
+forty children conducting themselves like one, but every
+child was conducting itself like forty. The consequences
+were uproarious beyond belief; but no one seemed to care;
+on the contrary, the mother and daughter laughed heartily,
+and enjoyed it very much; and the latter, soon beginning to
+mingle in the sports, got pillaged by the young brigands
+most ruthlessly. What would I not have given to be one of
+them! Though I never could have been so rude, no, no! I
+wouldn't for the wealth of all the world have crushed that
+braided hair, and torn it down; and for the precious little
+shoe, I wouldn't have plucked it off, God bless my soul! to
+save my life. As to measuring her waist in sport, as they
+did, bold young brood, I couldn't have done it; I should
+have expected my arm to have grown round it for a punishment,
+and never come straight again. And yet I should
+have dearly liked, I own, to have touched her lips; to have
+questioned her, that she might have opened them; to have
+looked upon the lashes of her downcast eyes, and never
+raised a blush; to have let loose waves of hair, an inch of
+which would be a keepsake beyond price: in short, I should
+have liked, I do confess, to have had the lightest licence
+of a child, and yet to have been man enough to know its
+value.
+
+But now a knocking at the door was heard, and such a
+rush immediately ensued that she with laughing face and
+plundered dress was borne towards it the centre of a flushed
+and boisterous group, just in time to greet the father, who
+came home attended by a man laden with Christmas toys
+and presents. Then the shouting and the struggling, and
+the onslaught that was made on the defenceless porter!
+The scaling him with chairs for ladders to dive into his
+pockets, despoil him of brown-paper parcels, hold on tight
+by his cravat, hug him round his neck, pommel his back,
+and kick his legs in irrepressible affection! The shouts of
+wonder and delight with which the development of every
+package was received! The terrible announcement that the
+baby had been taken in the act of putting a doll's frying-pan
+into his mouth, and was more than suspected of having
+swallowed a fictitious turkey, glued on a wooden platter!
+The immense relief of finding this a false alarm! The joy,
+and gratitude, and ecstasy! They are all indescribable alike.
+It is enough that by degrees the children and their emotions
+got out of the parlour, and by one stair at a time, up to the
+top of the house; where they went to bed, and so subsided.
+
+And now Scrooge looked on more attentively than ever,
+when the master of the house, having his daughter leaning
+fondly on him, sat down with her and her mother at his
+own fireside; and when he thought that such another
+creature, quite as graceful and as full of promise, might
+have called him father, and been a spring-time in the
+haggard winter of his life, his sight grew very dim indeed.
+
+"Belle," said the husband, turning to his wife with a
+smile, "I saw an old friend of yours this afternoon."
+
+"Who was it?"
+
+"Guess!"
+
+"How can I? Tut, don't I know?" she added in the
+same breath, laughing as he laughed. "Mr. Scrooge."
+
+"Mr. Scrooge it was. I passed his office window; and as
+it was not shut up, and he had a candle inside, I could
+scarcely help seeing him. His partner lies upon the point
+of death, I hear; and there he sat alone. Quite alone in
+the world, I do believe."
+
+"Spirit!" said Scrooge in a broken voice, "remove me
+from this place."
+
+"I told you these were shadows of the things that have
+been," said the Ghost. "That they are what they are, do
+not blame me!"
+
+"Remove me!" Scrooge exclaimed, "I cannot bear it!"
+
+He turned upon the Ghost, and seeing that it looked upon
+him with a face, in which in some strange way there were
+fragments of all the faces it had shown him, wrestled with it.
+
+"Leave me! Take me back. Haunt me no longer!"
+
+In the struggle, if that can be called a struggle in which
+the Ghost with no visible resistance on its own part was
+undisturbed by any effort of its adversary, Scrooge observed
+that its light was burning high and bright; and dimly
+connecting that with its influence over him, he seized the
+extinguisher-cap, and by a sudden action pressed it down
+upon its head.
+
+The Spirit dropped beneath it, so that the extinguisher
+covered its whole form; but though Scrooge pressed it down
+with all his force, he could not hide the light: which streamed
+from under it, in an unbroken flood upon the ground.
+
+He was conscious of being exhausted, and overcome by an
+irresistible drowsiness; and, further, of being in his own
+bedroom.  He gave the cap a parting squeeze, in which his hand
+relaxed; and had barely time to reel to bed, before he sank
+into a heavy sleep.
+
+
+STAVE III:  THE SECOND OF THE THREE SPIRITS
+
+AWAKING in the middle of a prodigiously tough snore, and
+sitting up in bed to get his thoughts together, Scrooge had
+no occasion to be told that the bell was again upon the
+stroke of One. He felt that he was restored to consciousness
+in the right nick of time, for the especial purpose of holding
+a conference with the second messenger despatched to him
+through Jacob Marley's intervention. But finding that he
+turned uncomfortably cold when he began to wonder which
+of his curtains this new spectre would draw back, he put
+them every one aside with his own hands; and lying down
+again, established a sharp look-out all round the bed. For
+he wished to challenge the Spirit on the moment of its
+appearance, and did not wish to be taken by surprise, and
+made nervous.
+
+Gentlemen of the free-and-easy sort, who plume themselves
+on being acquainted with a move or two, and being usually
+equal to the time-of-day, express the wide range of their
+capacity for adventure by observing that they are good for
+anything from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter; between which
+opposite extremes, no doubt, there lies a tolerably wide and
+comprehensive range of subjects. Without venturing for
+Scrooge quite as hardily as this, I don't mind calling on you
+to believe that he was ready for a good broad field of
+strange appearances, and that nothing between a baby and
+rhinoceros would have astonished him very much.
+
+Now, being prepared for almost anything, he was not by
+any means prepared for nothing; and, consequently, when the
+Bell struck One, and no shape appeared, he was taken with a
+violent fit of trembling. Five minutes, ten minutes, a quarter
+of an hour went by, yet nothing came. All this time, he lay
+upon his bed, the very core and centre of a blaze of ruddy
+light, which streamed upon it when the clock proclaimed the
+hour; and which, being only light, was more alarming than
+a dozen ghosts, as he was powerless to make out what it
+meant, or would be at; and was sometimes apprehensive
+that he might be at that very moment an interesting case of
+spontaneous combustion, without having the consolation of
+knowing it. At last, however, he began to think--as you or
+I would have thought at first; for it is always the person not
+in the predicament who knows what ought to have been done
+in it, and would unquestionably have done it too--at last, I
+say, he began to think that the source and secret of this
+ghostly light might be in the adjoining room, from whence,
+on further tracing it, it seemed to shine. This idea taking
+full possession of his mind, he got up softly and shuffled in
+his slippers to the door.
+
+The moment Scrooge's hand was on the lock, a strange
+voice called him by his name, and bade him enter. He
+obeyed.
+
+It was his own room. There was no doubt about that.
+But it had undergone a surprising transformation. The walls
+and ceiling were so hung with living green, that it looked a
+perfect grove; from every part of which, bright gleaming
+berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe, and
+ivy reflected back the light, as if so many little mirrors had
+been scattered there; and such a mighty blaze went roaring
+up the chimney, as that dull petrification of a hearth had
+never known in Scrooge's time, or Marley's, or for many and
+many a winter season gone. Heaped up on the floor, to form
+a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn,
+great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages,
+mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts,
+cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears,
+immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that
+made the chamber dim with their delicious steam. In easy
+state upon this couch, there sat a jolly Giant, glorious to
+see; who bore a glowing torch, in shape not unlike Plenty's
+horn, and held it up, high up, to shed its light on Scrooge,
+as he came peeping round the door.
+
+"Come in!" exclaimed the Ghost. "Come in! and know
+me better, man!"
+
+Scrooge entered timidly, and hung his head before this
+Spirit. He was not the dogged Scrooge he had been; and
+though the Spirit's eyes were clear and kind, he did not like
+to meet them.
+
+"I am the Ghost of Christmas Present," said the Spirit.
+"Look upon me!"
+
+Scrooge reverently did so. It was clothed in one simple
+green robe, or mantle, bordered with white fur. This garment
+hung so loosely on the figure, that its capacious breast was
+bare, as if disdaining to be warded or concealed by any
+artifice. Its feet, observable beneath the ample folds of the
+garment, were also bare; and on its head it wore no other
+covering than a holly wreath, set here and there with shining
+icicles. Its dark brown curls were long and free; free as its
+genial face, its sparkling eye, its open hand, its cheery voice,
+its unconstrained demeanour, and its joyful air. Girded
+round its middle was an antique scabbard; but no sword
+was in it, and the ancient sheath was eaten up with rust.
+
+"You have never seen the like of me before!" exclaimed
+the Spirit.
+
+"Never," Scrooge made answer to it.
+
+"Have never walked forth with the younger members of
+my family; meaning (for I am very young) my elder brothers
+born in these later years?" pursued the Phantom.
+
+"I don't think I have," said Scrooge. "I am afraid I have
+not. Have you had many brothers, Spirit?"
+
+"More than eighteen hundred," said the Ghost.
+
+"A tremendous family to provide for!" muttered Scrooge.
+
+The Ghost of Christmas Present rose.
+
+"Spirit," said Scrooge submissively, "conduct me where
+you will. I went forth last night on compulsion, and I learnt
+a lesson which is working now. To-night, if you have aught
+to teach me, let me profit by it."
+
+"Touch my robe!"
+
+Scrooge did as he was told, and held it fast.
+
+Holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, geese, game,
+poultry, brawn, meat, pigs, sausages, oysters, pies, puddings,
+fruit, and punch, all vanished instantly. So did the room,
+the fire, the ruddy glow, the hour of night, and they stood
+in the city streets on Christmas morning, where (for the
+weather was severe) the people made a rough, but brisk and
+not unpleasant kind of music, in scraping the snow from the
+pavement in front of their dwellings, and from the tops of
+their houses, whence it was mad delight to the boys to see
+it come plumping down into the road below, and splitting
+into artificial little snow-storms.
+
+The house fronts looked black enough, and the windows
+blacker, contrasting with the smooth white sheet of snow
+upon the roofs, and with the dirtier snow upon the ground;
+which last deposit had been ploughed up in deep furrows by
+the heavy wheels of carts and waggons; furrows that crossed
+and re-crossed each other hundreds of times where the great
+streets branched off; and made intricate channels, hard to trace
+in the thick yellow mud and icy water. The sky was gloomy,
+and the shortest streets were choked up with a dingy mist,
+half thawed, half frozen, whose heavier particles descended
+in a shower of sooty atoms, as if all the chimneys in Great
+Britain had, by one consent, caught fire, and were blazing away
+to their dear hearts' content. There was nothing very cheerful
+in the climate or the town, and yet was there an air of
+cheerfulness abroad that the clearest summer air and brightest
+summer sun might have endeavoured to diffuse in vain.
+
+For, the people who were shovelling away on the housetops
+were jovial and full of glee; calling out to one another
+from the parapets, and now and then exchanging a facetious
+snowball--better-natured missile far than many a wordy jest--
+laughing heartily if it went right and not less heartily if it
+went wrong. The poulterers' shops were still half open, and the
+fruiterers' were radiant in their glory. There were great, round,
+pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats
+of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out
+into the street in their apoplectic opulence. There were
+ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish Onions, shining in
+the fatness of their growth like Spanish Friars, and winking
+from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went
+by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were
+pears and apples, clustered high in blooming pyramids; there
+were bunches of grapes, made, in the shopkeepers' benevolence
+to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that people's mouths might
+water gratis as they passed; there were piles of filberts, mossy
+and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient walks among
+the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through withered
+leaves; there were Norfolk Biffins, squat and swarthy, setting
+off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great
+compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and
+beseeching to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after
+dinner. The very gold and silver fish, set forth among
+these choice fruits in a bowl, though members of a dull and
+stagnant-blooded race, appeared to know that there was
+something going on; and, to a fish, went gasping round and
+round their little world in slow and passionless excitement.
+
+The Grocers'! oh, the Grocers'! nearly closed, with perhaps
+two shutters down, or one; but through those gaps such
+glimpses! It was not alone that the scales descending on the
+counter made a merry sound, or that the twine and roller
+parted company so briskly, or that the canisters were rattled
+up and down like juggling tricks, or even that the blended
+scents of tea and coffee were so grateful to the nose, or even
+that the raisins were so plentiful and rare, the almonds so
+extremely white, the sticks of cinnamon so long and straight,
+the other spices so delicious, the candied fruits so caked and
+spotted with molten sugar as to make the coldest lookers-on
+feel faint and subsequently bilious. Nor was it that the figs
+were moist and pulpy, or that the French plums blushed in
+modest tartness from their highly-decorated boxes, or that
+everything was good to eat and in its Christmas dress; but
+the customers were all so hurried and so eager in the hopeful
+promise of the day, that they tumbled up against each other
+at the door, crashing their wicker baskets wildly, and left
+their purchases upon the counter, and came running back to
+fetch them, and committed hundreds of the like mistakes, in
+the best humour possible; while the Grocer and his people
+were so frank and fresh that the polished hearts with which
+they fastened their aprons behind might have been their own,
+worn outside for general inspection, and for Christmas daws
+to peck at if they chose.
+
+But soon the steeples called good people all, to church and
+chapel, and away they came, flocking through the streets in
+their best clothes, and with their gayest faces. And at the
+same time there emerged from scores of bye-streets, lanes, and
+nameless turnings, innumerable people, carrying their dinners
+to the bakers' shops. The sight of these poor revellers
+appeared to interest the Spirit very much, for he stood with
+Scrooge beside him in a baker's doorway, and taking off the
+covers as their bearers passed, sprinkled incense on their
+dinners from his torch. And it was a very uncommon kind
+of torch, for once or twice when there were angry words
+between some dinner-carriers who had jostled each other, he
+shed a few drops of water on them from it, and their good
+humour was restored directly. For they said, it was a shame
+to quarrel upon Christmas Day. And so it was! God love
+it, so it was!
+
+In time the bells ceased, and the bakers were shut up; and
+yet there was a genial shadowing forth of all these dinners
+and the progress of their cooking, in the thawed blotch of
+wet above each baker's oven; where the pavement smoked as
+if its stones were cooking too.
+
+"Is there a peculiar flavour in what you sprinkle from
+your torch?" asked Scrooge.
+
+"There is. My own."
+
+"Would it apply to any kind of dinner on this day?"
+asked Scrooge.
+
+"To any kindly given. To a poor one most."
+
+"Why to a poor one most?" asked Scrooge.
+
+"Because it needs it most."
+
+"Spirit," said Scrooge, after a moment's thought, "I wonder
+you, of all the beings in the many worlds about us, should
+desire to cramp these people's opportunities of innocent
+enjoyment."
+
+"I!" cried the Spirit.
+
+"You would deprive them of their means of dining every
+seventh day, often the only day on which they can be said
+to dine at all," said Scrooge. "Wouldn't you?"
+
+"I!" cried the Spirit.
+
+"You seek to close these places on the Seventh Day?" said
+Scrooge. "And it comes to the same thing."
+
+"I seek!" exclaimed the Spirit.
+
+"Forgive me if I am wrong. It has been done in your
+name, or at least in that of your family," said Scrooge.
+
+"There are some upon this earth of yours," returned the Spirit,
+"who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion,
+pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness
+in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and
+kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge
+their doings on themselves, not us."
+
+Scrooge promised that he would; and they went on,
+invisible, as they had been before, into the suburbs of the
+town. It was a remarkable quality of the Ghost (which
+Scrooge had observed at the baker's), that notwithstanding
+his gigantic size, he could accommodate himself to any place
+with ease; and that he stood beneath a low roof quite as
+gracefully and like a supernatural creature, as it was possible
+he could have done in any lofty hall.
+
+And perhaps it was the pleasure the good Spirit had in
+showing off this power of his, or else it was his own kind,
+generous, hearty nature, and his sympathy with all poor
+men, that led him straight to Scrooge's clerk's; for there he
+went, and took Scrooge with him, holding to his robe; and
+on the threshold of the door the Spirit smiled, and stopped
+to bless Bob Cratchit's dwelling with the sprinkling of his
+torch. Think of that! Bob had but fifteen "Bob" a-week
+himself; he pocketed on Saturdays but fifteen copies of his
+Christian name; and yet the Ghost of Christmas Present
+blessed his four-roomed house!
+
+Then up rose Mrs. Cratchit, Cratchit's wife, dressed out
+but poorly in a twice-turned gown, but brave in ribbons,
+which are cheap and make a goodly show for sixpence; and
+she laid the cloth, assisted by Belinda Cratchit, second of
+her daughters, also brave in ribbons; while Master Peter
+Cratchit plunged a fork into the saucepan of potatoes, and
+getting the corners of his monstrous shirt collar (Bob's private
+property, conferred upon his son and heir in honour of the
+day) into his mouth, rejoiced to find himself so gallantly
+attired, and yearned to show his linen in the fashionable Parks.
+And now two smaller Cratchits, boy and girl, came tearing
+in, screaming that outside the baker's they had smelt the
+goose, and known it for their own; and basking in luxurious
+thoughts of sage and onion, these young Cratchits danced
+about the table, and exalted Master Peter Cratchit to the
+skies, while he (not proud, although his collars nearly choked
+him) blew the fire, until the slow potatoes bubbling up,
+knocked loudly at the saucepan-lid to be let out and
+peeled.
+
+"What has ever got your precious father then?" said Mrs.
+Cratchit. "And your brother, Tiny Tim! And Martha
+warn't as late last Christmas Day by half-an-hour?"
+
+"Here's Martha, mother!" said a girl, appearing as she
+spoke.
+
+"Here's Martha, mother!" cried the two young Cratchits.
+"Hurrah! There's such a goose, Martha!"
+
+"Why, bless your heart alive, my dear, how late you are!"
+said Mrs. Cratchit, kissing her a dozen times, and taking off
+her shawl and bonnet for her with officious zeal.
+
+"We'd a deal of work to finish up last night," replied the
+girl, "and had to clear away this morning, mother!"
+
+"Well! Never mind so long as you are come," said Mrs.
+Cratchit. "Sit ye down before the fire, my dear, and have
+a warm, Lord bless ye!"
+
+"No, no! There's father coming," cried the two young
+Cratchits, who were everywhere at once. "Hide, Martha,
+hide!"
+
+So Martha hid herself, and in came little Bob, the father,
+with at least three feet of comforter exclusive of the fringe,
+hanging down before him; and his threadbare clothes darned
+up and brushed, to look seasonable; and Tiny Tim upon his
+shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a little crutch, and
+had his limbs supported by an iron frame!
+
+"Why, where's our Martha?" cried Bob Cratchit, looking
+round.
+
+"Not coming," said Mrs. Cratchit.
+
+"Not coming!" said Bob, with a sudden declension in his
+high spirits; for he had been Tim's blood horse all the way
+from church, and had come home rampant. "Not coming
+upon Christmas Day!"
+
+Martha didn't like to see him disappointed, if it were only
+in joke; so she came out prematurely from behind the closet
+door, and ran into his arms, while the two young Cratchits
+hustled Tiny Tim, and bore him off into the wash-house,
+that he might hear the pudding singing in the copper.
+
+"And how did little Tim behave?" asked Mrs. Cratchit,
+when she had rallied Bob on his credulity, and Bob had
+hugged his daughter to his heart's content.
+
+"As good as gold," said Bob, "and better. Somehow he
+gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the
+strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home,
+that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he
+was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember
+upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind
+men see."
+
+Bob's voice was tremulous when he told them this, and
+trembled more when he said that Tiny Tim was growing
+strong and hearty.
+
+His active little crutch was heard upon the floor, and back
+came Tiny Tim before another word was spoken, escorted by
+his brother and sister to his stool before the fire; and while
+Bob, turning up his cuffs--as if, poor fellow, they were
+capable of being made more shabby--compounded some hot
+mixture in a jug with gin and lemons, and stirred it round
+and round and put it on the hob to simmer; Master Peter,
+and the two ubiquitous young Cratchits went to fetch the
+goose, with which they soon returned in high procession.
+
+Such a bustle ensued that you might have thought a goose
+the rarest of all birds; a feathered phenomenon, to which a
+black swan was a matter of course--and in truth it was
+something very like it in that house. Mrs. Cratchit made
+the gravy (ready beforehand in a little saucepan) hissing hot;
+Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible vigour;
+Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple-sauce; Martha dusted
+the hot plates; Bob took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny
+corner at the table; the two young Cratchits set chairs for
+everybody, not forgetting themselves, and mounting guard
+upon their posts, crammed spoons into their mouths, lest
+they should shriek for goose before their turn came to be
+helped. At last the dishes were set on, and grace was
+said. It was succeeded by a breathless pause, as Mrs.
+Cratchit, looking slowly all along the carving-knife, prepared
+to plunge it in the breast; but when she did, and when the
+long expected gush of stuffing issued forth, one murmur of
+delight arose all round the board, and even Tiny Tim,
+excited by the two young Cratchits, beat on the table with
+the handle of his knife, and feebly cried Hurrah!
+
+There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn't believe
+there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and
+flavour, size and cheapness, were the themes of universal
+admiration. Eked out by apple-sauce and mashed potatoes,
+it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed, as
+Mrs. Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small
+atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn't ate it all at
+last! Yet every one had had enough, and the youngest
+Cratchits in particular, were steeped in sage and onion to
+the eyebrows! But now, the plates being changed by Miss
+Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the room alone--too nervous to
+bear witnesses--to take the pudding up and bring it in.
+
+Suppose it should not be done enough! Suppose it should
+break in turning out! Suppose somebody should have got
+over the wall of the back-yard, and stolen it, while they
+were merry with the goose--a supposition at which the two
+young Cratchits became livid! All sorts of horrors were
+supposed.
+
+Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of
+the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the
+cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook's next
+door to each other, with a laundress's next door to that!
+That was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit
+entered--flushed, but smiling proudly--with the pudding,
+like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half
+of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with
+Christmas holly stuck into the top.
+
+Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly
+too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by
+Mrs. Cratchit since their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that
+now the weight was off her mind, she would confess she had
+had her doubts about the quantity of flour. Everybody had
+something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it
+was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have
+been flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed
+to hint at such a thing.
+
+At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the
+hearth swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the
+jug being tasted, and considered perfect, apples and oranges
+were put upon the table, and a shovel-full of chestnuts on the
+fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth, in
+what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a one; and
+at Bob Cratchit's elbow stood the family display of glass.
+Two tumblers, and a custard-cup without a handle.
+
+These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as
+golden goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with
+beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and
+cracked noisily. Then Bob proposed:
+
+"A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!"
+
+Which all the family re-echoed.
+
+"God bless us every one!" said Tiny Tim, the last of all.
+
+He sat very close to his father's side upon his little
+stool. Bob held his withered little hand in his, as if he
+loved the child, and wished to keep him by his side, and
+dreaded that he might be taken from him.
+
+"Spirit," said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt
+before, "tell me if Tiny Tim will live."
+
+"I see a vacant seat," replied the Ghost, "in the poor
+chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully
+preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future,
+the child will die."
+
+"No, no," said Scrooge. "Oh, no, kind Spirit! say he
+will be spared."
+
+"If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none
+other of my race," returned the Ghost, "will find him here.
+What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and
+decrease the surplus population."
+
+Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by
+the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief.
+
+"Man," said the Ghost, "if man you be in heart, not
+adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered
+What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what
+men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the
+sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live
+than millions like this poor man's child. Oh God! to hear
+the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life
+among his hungry brothers in the dust!"
+
+Scrooge bent before the Ghost's rebuke, and trembling cast
+his eyes upon the ground. But he raised them speedily, on
+hearing his own name.
+
+"Mr. Scrooge!" said Bob; "I'll give you Mr. Scrooge, the
+Founder of the Feast!"
+
+"The Founder of the Feast indeed!" cried Mrs. Cratchit,
+reddening. "I wish I had him here. I'd give him a piece
+of my mind to feast upon, and I hope he'd have a good
+appetite for it."
+
+"My dear," said Bob, "the children! Christmas Day."
+
+"It should be Christmas Day, I am sure," said she, "on
+which one drinks the health of such an odious, stingy, hard,
+unfeeling man as Mr. Scrooge. You know he is, Robert!
+Nobody knows it better than you do, poor fellow!"
+
+"My dear," was Bob's mild answer, "Christmas Day."
+
+"I'll drink his health for your sake and the Day's," said
+Mrs. Cratchit, "not for his. Long life to him! A merry
+Christmas and a happy new year! He'll be very merry and
+very happy, I have no doubt!"
+
+The children drank the toast after her. It was the first of
+their proceedings which had no heartiness. Tiny Tim drank
+it last of all, but he didn't care twopence for it. Scrooge
+was the Ogre of the family. The mention of his name cast
+a dark shadow on the party, which was not dispelled for full
+five minutes.
+
+After it had passed away, they were ten times merrier than
+before, from the mere relief of Scrooge the Baleful being done
+with. Bob Cratchit told them how he had a situation in his
+eye for Master Peter, which would bring in, if obtained, full
+five-and-sixpence weekly. The two young Cratchits laughed
+tremendously at the idea of Peter's being a man of business;
+and Peter himself looked thoughtfully at the fire from
+between his collars, as if he were deliberating what particular
+investments he should favour when he came into the receipt
+of that bewildering income. Martha, who was a poor
+apprentice at a milliner's, then told them what kind of work
+she had to do, and how many hours she worked at a stretch,
+and how she meant to lie abed to-morrow morning for a
+good long rest; to-morrow being a holiday she passed at
+home. Also how she had seen a countess and a lord some
+days before, and how the lord "was much about as tall as
+Peter;" at which Peter pulled up his collars so high that you
+couldn't have seen his head if you had been there. All this
+time the chestnuts and the jug went round and round; and
+by-and-bye they had a song, about a lost child travelling in
+the snow, from Tiny Tim, who had a plaintive little voice,
+and sang it very well indeed.
+
+There was nothing of high mark in this. They were not
+a handsome family; they were not well dressed; their shoes
+were far from being water-proof; their clothes were scanty;
+and Peter might have known, and very likely did, the inside
+of a pawnbroker's. But, they were happy, grateful, pleased
+with one another, and contented with the time; and when
+they faded, and looked happier yet in the bright sprinklings
+of the Spirit's torch at parting, Scrooge had his eye upon
+them, and especially on Tiny Tim, until the last.
+
+By this time it was getting dark, and snowing pretty
+heavily; and as Scrooge and the Spirit went along the streets,
+the brightness of the roaring fires in kitchens, parlours, and
+all sorts of rooms, was wonderful. Here, the flickering of
+the blaze showed preparations for a cosy dinner, with hot
+plates baking through and through before the fire, and deep
+red curtains, ready to be drawn to shut out cold and darkness.
+There all the children of the house were running out
+into the snow to meet their married sisters, brothers, cousins,
+uncles, aunts, and be the first to greet them. Here, again,
+were shadows on the window-blind of guests assembling; and
+there a group of handsome girls, all hooded and fur-booted,
+and all chattering at once, tripped lightly off to some near
+neighbour's house; where, woe upon the single man who saw
+them enter--artful witches, well they knew it--in a glow!
+
+But, if you had judged from the numbers of people on
+their way to friendly gatherings, you might have thought
+that no one was at home to give them welcome when they
+got there, instead of every house expecting company, and
+piling up its fires half-chimney high. Blessings on it, how
+the Ghost exulted! How it bared its breadth of breast, and
+opened its capacious palm, and floated on, outpouring, with
+a generous hand, its bright and harmless mirth on everything
+within its reach! The very lamplighter, who ran on before,
+dotting the dusky street with specks of light, and who was
+dressed to spend the evening somewhere, laughed out loudly
+as the Spirit passed, though little kenned the lamplighter
+that he had any company but Christmas!
+
+And now, without a word of warning from the Ghost, they
+stood upon a bleak and desert moor, where monstrous masses
+of rude stone were cast about, as though it were the burial-place
+of giants; and water spread itself wheresoever it listed,
+or would have done so, but for the frost that held it prisoner;
+and nothing grew but moss and furze, and coarse rank grass.
+Down in the west the setting sun had left a streak of fiery
+red, which glared upon the desolation for an instant, like a
+sullen eye, and frowning lower, lower, lower yet, was lost in
+the thick gloom of darkest night.
+
+"What place is this?" asked Scrooge.
+
+"A place where Miners live, who labour in the bowels of
+the earth," returned the Spirit. "But they know me. See!"
+
+A light shone from the window of a hut, and swiftly they
+advanced towards it. Passing through the wall of mud and
+stone, they found a cheerful company assembled round a
+glowing fire. An old, old man and woman, with their
+children and their children's children, and another generation
+beyond that, all decked out gaily in their holiday attire.
+The old man, in a voice that seldom rose above the howling
+of the wind upon the barren waste, was singing them a
+Christmas song--it had been a very old song when he was a
+boy--and from time to time they all joined in the chorus.
+So surely as they raised their voices, the old man got quite
+blithe and loud; and so surely as they stopped, his vigour
+sank again.
+
+The Spirit did not tarry here, but bade Scrooge hold his
+robe, and passing on above the moor, sped--whither? Not
+to sea? To sea. To Scrooge's horror, looking back, he saw
+the last of the land, a frightful range of rocks, behind them;
+and his ears were deafened by the thundering of water, as it
+rolled and roared, and raged among the dreadful caverns it
+had worn, and fiercely tried to undermine the earth.
+
+Built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks, some league
+or so from shore, on which the waters chafed and dashed,
+the wild year through, there stood a solitary lighthouse.
+Great heaps of sea-weed clung to its base, and storm-birds
+--born of the wind one might suppose, as sea-weed of the
+water--rose and fell about it, like the waves they skimmed.
+
+But even here, two men who watched the light had made
+a fire, that through the loophole in the thick stone wall shed
+out a ray of brightness on the awful sea. Joining their
+horny hands over the rough table at which they sat, they
+wished each other Merry Christmas in their can of grog; and
+one of them: the elder, too, with his face all damaged and
+scarred with hard weather, as the figure-head of an old ship
+might be: struck up a sturdy song that was like a Gale in
+itself.
+
+Again the Ghost sped on, above the black and heaving sea
+--on, on--until, being far away, as he told Scrooge, from any
+shore, they lighted on a ship. They stood beside the helmsman
+at the wheel, the look-out in the bow, the officers who
+had the watch; dark, ghostly figures in their several stations;
+but every man among them hummed a Christmas tune, or
+had a Christmas thought, or spoke below his breath to his
+companion of some bygone Christmas Day, with homeward
+hopes belonging to it. And every man on board, waking or
+sleeping, good or bad, had had a kinder word for another
+on that day than on any day in the year; and had shared
+to some extent in its festivities; and had remembered those
+he cared for at a distance, and had known that they delighted
+to remember him.
+
+It was a great surprise to Scrooge, while listening to the
+moaning of the wind, and thinking what a solemn thing it
+was to move on through the lonely darkness over an unknown
+abyss, whose depths were secrets as profound as Death: it
+was a great surprise to Scrooge, while thus engaged, to hear
+a hearty laugh. It was a much greater surprise to Scrooge
+to recognise it as his own nephew's and to find himself in a
+bright, dry, gleaming room, with the Spirit standing smiling
+by his side, and looking at that same nephew with approving
+affability!
+
+"Ha, ha!" laughed Scrooge's nephew. "Ha, ha, ha!"
+
+If you should happen, by any unlikely chance, to know a
+man more blest in a laugh than Scrooge's nephew, all I can
+say is, I should like to know him too. Introduce him to me,
+and I'll cultivate his acquaintance.
+
+It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that
+while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing
+in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and
+good-humour. When Scrooge's nephew laughed in this way: holding
+his sides, rolling his head, and twisting his face into the
+most extravagant contortions: Scrooge's niece, by marriage,
+laughed as heartily as he. And their assembled friends being
+not a bit behindhand, roared out lustily.
+
+"Ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha, ha!"
+
+"He said that Christmas was a humbug, as I live!" cried
+Scrooge's nephew. "He believed it too!"
+
+"More shame for him, Fred!" said Scrooge's niece,
+indignantly. Bless those women; they never do anything by
+halves. They are always in earnest.
+
+She was very pretty: exceedingly pretty. With a dimpled,
+surprised-looking, capital face; a ripe little mouth, that
+seemed made to be kissed--as no doubt it was; all kinds of
+good little dots about her chin, that melted into one another
+when she laughed; and the sunniest pair of eyes you ever
+saw in any little creature's head. Altogether she was what
+you would have called provoking, you know; but satisfactory, too.
+Oh, perfectly satisfactory.
+
+"He's a comical old fellow," said Scrooge's nephew, "that's
+the truth: and not so pleasant as he might be. However,
+his offences carry their own punishment, and I have nothing
+to say against him."
+
+"I'm sure he is very rich, Fred," hinted Scrooge's niece.
+"At least you always tell me so."
+
+"What of that, my dear!" said Scrooge's nephew. "His
+wealth is of no use to him. He don't do any good with it.
+He don't make himself comfortable with it. He hasn't the
+satisfaction of thinking--ha, ha, ha!--that he is ever going
+to benefit US with it."
+
+"I have no patience with him," observed Scrooge's niece.
+Scrooge's niece's sisters, and all the other ladies, expressed
+the same opinion.
+
+"Oh, I have!" said Scrooge's nephew. "I am sorry for
+him; I couldn't be angry with him if I tried. Who suffers
+by his ill whims! Himself, always. Here, he takes it into
+his head to dislike us, and he won't come and dine with us.
+What's the consequence? He don't lose much of a dinner."
+
+"Indeed, I think he loses a very good dinner," interrupted
+Scrooge's niece. Everybody else said the same, and they
+must be allowed to have been competent judges, because
+they had just had dinner; and, with the dessert upon the
+table, were clustered round the fire, by lamplight.
+
+"Well! I'm very glad to hear it," said Scrooge's nephew,
+"because I haven't great faith in these young housekeepers.
+What do you say, Topper?"
+
+Topper had clearly got his eye upon one of Scrooge's niece's
+sisters, for he answered that a bachelor was a wretched outcast,
+who had no right to express an opinion on the subject.
+Whereat Scrooge's niece's sister--the plump one with the lace
+tucker: not the one with the roses--blushed.
+
+"Do go on, Fred," said Scrooge's niece, clapping her hands.
+"He never finishes what he begins to say! He is such a
+ridiculous fellow!"
+
+Scrooge's nephew revelled in another laugh, and as it was
+impossible to keep the infection off; though the plump sister
+tried hard to do it with aromatic vinegar; his example was
+unanimously followed.
+
+"I was only going to say," said Scrooge's nephew, "that
+the consequence of his taking a dislike to us, and not making
+merry with us, is, as I think, that he loses some pleasant
+moments, which could do him no harm. I am sure he loses
+pleasanter companions than he can find in his own thoughts,
+either in his mouldy old office, or his dusty chambers. I
+mean to give him the same chance every year, whether he
+likes it or not, for I pity him. He may rail at Christmas
+till he dies, but he can't help thinking better of it--I defy
+him--if he finds me going there, in good temper, year after
+year, and saying Uncle Scrooge, how are you? If it only
+puts him in the vein to leave his poor clerk fifty pounds,
+that's something; and I think I shook him yesterday."
+
+It was their turn to laugh now at the notion of his shaking
+Scrooge. But being thoroughly good-natured, and not much
+caring what they laughed at, so that they laughed at any
+rate, he encouraged them in their merriment, and passed the
+bottle joyously.
+
+After tea, they had some music. For they were a musical
+family, and knew what they were about, when they sung a
+Glee or Catch, I can assure you: especially Topper, who
+could growl away in the bass like a good one, and never
+swell the large veins in his forehead, or get red in the face
+over it. Scrooge's niece played well upon the harp; and
+played among other tunes a simple little air (a mere nothing:
+you might learn to whistle it in two minutes), which had
+been familiar to the child who fetched Scrooge from the
+boarding-school, as he had been reminded by the Ghost of
+Christmas Past. When this strain of music sounded, all the
+things that Ghost had shown him, came upon his mind; he
+softened more and more; and thought that if he could have
+listened to it often, years ago, he might have cultivated the
+kindnesses of life for his own happiness with his own hands,
+without resorting to the sexton's spade that buried Jacob
+Marley.
+
+But they didn't devote the whole evening to music. After
+a while they played at forfeits; for it is good to be children
+sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its
+mighty Founder was a child himself. Stop! There was first
+a game at blind-man's buff. Of course there was. And I
+no more believe Topper was really blind than I believe he
+had eyes in his boots. My opinion is, that it was a done
+thing between him and Scrooge's nephew; and that the
+Ghost of Christmas Present knew it. The way he went after
+that plump sister in the lace tucker, was an outrage on the
+credulity of human nature. Knocking down the fire-irons,
+tumbling over the chairs, bumping against the piano,
+smothering himself among the curtains, wherever she went,
+there went he! He always knew where the plump sister was.
+He wouldn't catch anybody else. If you had fallen up
+against him (as some of them did), on purpose, he would
+have made a feint of endeavouring to seize you, which would
+have been an affront to your understanding, and would instantly
+have sidled off in the direction of the plump sister.
+She often cried out that it wasn't fair; and it really was not.
+But when at last, he caught her; when, in spite of all her
+silken rustlings, and her rapid flutterings past him, he got
+her into a corner whence there was no escape; then his
+conduct was the most execrable. For his pretending not to
+know her; his pretending that it was necessary to touch her
+head-dress, and further to assure himself of her identity by
+pressing a certain ring upon her finger, and a certain chain
+about her neck; was vile, monstrous! No doubt she told
+him her opinion of it, when, another blind-man being in
+office, they were so very confidential together, behind the
+curtains.
+
+Scrooge's niece was not one of the blind-man's buff party,
+but was made comfortable with a large chair and a footstool,
+in a snug corner, where the Ghost and Scrooge were close
+behind her. But she joined in the forfeits, and loved her
+love to admiration with all the letters of the alphabet.
+Likewise at the game of How, When, and Where, she was
+very great, and to the secret joy of Scrooge's nephew, beat
+her sisters hollow: though they were sharp girls too, as Topper
+could have told you. There might have been twenty people there,
+young and old, but they all played, and so did Scrooge; for
+wholly forgetting in the interest he had in what was going on, that
+his voice made no sound in their ears, he sometimes came out with
+his guess quite loud, and very often guessed quite right, too;
+for the sharpest needle, best Whitechapel, warranted not to cut
+in the eye, was not sharper than Scrooge; blunt as he took it in
+his head to be.
+
+The Ghost was greatly pleased to find him in this mood,
+and looked upon him with such favour, that he begged like
+a boy to be allowed to stay until the guests departed. But
+this the Spirit said could not be done.
+
+"Here is a new game," said Scrooge. "One half hour,
+Spirit, only one!"
+
+It was a Game called Yes and No, where Scrooge's nephew
+had to think of something, and the rest must find out what;
+he only answering to their questions yes or no, as the case
+was. The brisk fire of questioning to which he was exposed,
+elicited from him that he was thinking of an animal, a live
+animal, rather a disagreeable animal, a savage animal, an
+animal that growled and grunted sometimes, and talked sometimes,
+and lived in London, and walked about the streets,
+and wasn't made a show of, and wasn't led by anybody, and
+didn't live in a menagerie, and was never killed in a market,
+and was not a horse, or an ass, or a cow, or a bull, or a
+tiger, or a dog, or a pig, or a cat, or a bear. At every fresh
+question that was put to him, this nephew burst into a
+fresh roar of laughter; and was so inexpressibly tickled, that
+he was obliged to get up off the sofa and stamp. At last
+the plump sister, falling into a similar state, cried out:
+
+"I have found it out! I know what it is, Fred! I know
+what it is!"
+
+"What is it?" cried Fred.
+
+"It's your Uncle Scro-o-o-o-oge!"
+
+Which it certainly was. Admiration was the universal
+sentiment, though some objected that the reply to "Is it a
+bear?" ought to have been "Yes;" inasmuch as an answer
+in the negative was sufficient to have diverted their thoughts
+from Mr. Scrooge, supposing they had ever had any tendency
+that way.
+
+"He has given us plenty of merriment, I am sure," said
+Fred, "and it would be ungrateful not to drink his health.
+Here is a glass of mulled wine ready to our hand at the
+moment; and I say, 'Uncle Scrooge!'"
+
+"Well! Uncle Scrooge!" they cried.
+
+"A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to the old
+man, whatever he is!" said Scrooge's nephew. "He wouldn't
+take it from me, but may he have it, nevertheless. Uncle
+Scrooge!"
+
+Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly become so gay and light
+of heart, that he would have pledged the unconscious
+company in return, and thanked them in an inaudible speech,
+if the Ghost had given him time. But the whole scene
+passed off in the breath of the last word spoken by his
+nephew; and he and the Spirit were again upon their travels.
+
+Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes they
+visited, but always with a happy end. The Spirit stood
+beside sick beds, and they were cheerful; on foreign lands,
+and they were close at home; by struggling men, and they
+were patient in their greater hope; by poverty, and it was
+rich. In almshouse, hospital, and jail, in misery's every
+refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority had not
+made fast the door, and barred the Spirit out, he left his
+blessing, and taught Scrooge his precepts.
+
+It was a long night, if it were only a night; but Scrooge
+had his doubts of this, because the Christmas Holidays appeared
+to be condensed into the space of time they passed
+together. It was strange, too, that while Scrooge remained
+unaltered in his outward form, the Ghost grew older, clearly
+older. Scrooge had observed this change, but never spoke of
+it, until they left a children's Twelfth Night party, when,
+looking at the Spirit as they stood together in an open place,
+he noticed that its hair was grey.
+
+"Are spirits' lives so short?" asked Scrooge.
+
+"My life upon this globe, is very brief," replied the Ghost.
+"It ends to-night."
+
+"To-night!" cried Scrooge.
+
+"To-night at midnight. Hark! The time is drawing
+near."
+
+The chimes were ringing the three quarters past eleven at
+that moment.
+
+"Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask," said
+Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit's robe, "but I see
+something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding
+from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw?"
+
+"It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it," was
+the Spirit's sorrowful reply. "Look here."
+
+From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children;
+wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt
+down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.
+
+"Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!" exclaimed
+the Ghost.
+
+They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling,
+wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where
+graceful youth should have filled their features out, and
+touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled
+hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and
+pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat
+enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No
+change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any
+grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has
+monsters half so horrible and dread.
+
+Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to
+him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but
+the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie
+of such enormous magnitude.
+
+"Spirit! are they yours?" Scrooge could say no more.
+
+"They are Man's," said the Spirit, looking down upon
+them. "And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers.
+This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both,
+and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for
+on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the
+writing be erased. Deny it!" cried the Spirit, stretching out
+its hand towards the city. "Slander those who tell it ye!
+Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse.
+And bide the end!"
+
+"Have they no refuge or resource?" cried Scrooge.
+
+"Are there no prisons?" said the Spirit, turning on him
+for the last time with his own words. "Are there no workhouses?"
+
+The bell struck twelve.
+
+Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not.
+As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the
+prediction of old Jacob Marley, and lifting up his eyes,
+beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming, like
+a mist along the ground, towards him.
+
+
+STAVE IV:  THE LAST OF THE SPIRITS
+
+THE Phantom slowly, gravely, silently, approached. When
+it came near him, Scrooge bent down upon his knee; for in
+the very air through which this Spirit moved it seemed to
+scatter gloom and mystery.
+
+It was shrouded in a deep black garment, which concealed
+its head, its face, its form, and left nothing of it visible
+save one outstretched hand. But for this it would have been
+difficult to detach its figure from the night, and separate it
+from the darkness by which it was surrounded.
+
+He felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside
+him, and that its mysterious presence filled him with a
+solemn dread. He knew no more, for the Spirit neither
+spoke nor moved.
+
+"I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To
+Come?" said Scrooge.
+
+The Spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its
+hand.
+
+"You are about to show me shadows of the things that
+have not happened, but will happen in the time before us,"
+Scrooge pursued. "Is that so, Spirit?"
+
+The upper portion of the garment was contracted for an
+instant in its folds, as if the Spirit had inclined its head.
+That was the only answer he received.
+
+Although well used to ghostly company by this time,
+Scrooge feared the silent shape so much that his legs trembled
+beneath him, and he found that he could hardly stand when
+he prepared to follow it. The Spirit paused a moment, as
+observing his condition, and giving him time to recover.
+
+But Scrooge was all the worse for this. It thrilled him
+with a vague uncertain horror, to know that behind the
+dusky shroud, there were ghostly eyes intently fixed upon
+him, while he, though he stretched his own to the utmost,
+could see nothing but a spectral hand and one great heap
+of black.
+
+"Ghost of the Future!" he exclaimed, "I fear you more
+than any spectre I have seen. But as I know your purpose
+is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another
+man from what I was, I am prepared to bear you company,
+and do it with a thankful heart. Will you not speak
+to me?"
+
+It gave him no reply. The hand was pointed straight
+before them.
+
+"Lead on!" said Scrooge. "Lead on! The night is
+waning fast, and it is precious time to me, I know. Lead
+on, Spirit!"
+
+The Phantom moved away as it had come towards him.
+Scrooge followed in the shadow of its dress, which bore him
+up, he thought, and carried him along.
+
+They scarcely seemed to enter the city; for the city rather
+seemed to spring up about them, and encompass them of its
+own act. But there they were, in the heart of it; on
+'Change, amongst the merchants; who hurried up and down,
+and chinked the money in their pockets, and conversed in
+groups, and looked at their watches, and trifled thoughtfully
+with their great gold seals; and so forth, as Scrooge had
+seen them often.
+
+The Spirit stopped beside one little knot of business men.
+Observing that the hand was pointed to them, Scrooge
+advanced to listen to their talk.
+
+"No," said a great fat man with a monstrous chin, "I
+don't know much about it, either way. I only know he's
+dead."
+
+"When did he die?" inquired another.
+
+"Last night, I believe."
+
+"Why, what was the matter with him?" asked a third,
+taking a vast quantity of snuff out of a very large snuff-box.
+"I thought he'd never die."
+
+"God knows," said the first, with a yawn.
+
+"What has he done with his money?" asked a red-faced
+gentleman with a pendulous excrescence on the end of his
+nose, that shook like the gills of a turkey-cock.
+
+"I haven't heard," said the man with the large chin,
+yawning again. "Left it to his company, perhaps. He hasn't
+left it to me. That's all I know."
+
+This pleasantry was received with a general laugh.
+
+"It's likely to be a very cheap funeral," said the same
+speaker; "for upon my life I don't know of anybody to go
+to it. Suppose we make up a party and volunteer?"
+
+"I don't mind going if a lunch is provided," observed the
+gentleman with the excrescence on his nose. "But I must
+be fed, if I make one."
+
+Another laugh.
+
+"Well, I am the most disinterested among you, after all,"
+said the first speaker, "for I never wear black gloves, and I
+never eat lunch. But I'll offer to go, if anybody else will.
+When I come to think of it, I'm not at all sure that I wasn't
+his most particular friend; for we used to stop and speak
+whenever we met. Bye, bye!"
+
+Speakers and listeners strolled away, and mixed with
+other groups. Scrooge knew the men, and looked towards the
+Spirit for an explanation.
+
+The Phantom glided on into a street. Its finger pointed
+to two persons meeting. Scrooge listened again, thinking
+that the explanation might lie here.
+
+He knew these men, also, perfectly. They were men of business:
+very wealthy, and of great importance. He had made a point
+always of standing well in their esteem: in a business point
+of view, that is; strictly in a business point of view.
+
+"How are you?" said one.
+
+"How are you?" returned the other.
+
+"Well!" said the first. "Old Scratch has got his own at
+last, hey?"
+
+"So I am told," returned the second. "Cold, isn't it?"
+
+"Seasonable for Christmas time. You're not a skater, I
+suppose?"
+
+"No. No. Something else to think of. Good morning!"
+
+Not another word. That was their meeting, their
+conversation, and their parting.
+
+Scrooge was at first inclined to be surprised that the
+Spirit should attach importance to conversations apparently so
+trivial; but feeling assured that they must have some hidden
+purpose, he set himself to consider what it was likely to be.
+They could scarcely be supposed to have any bearing on the
+death of Jacob, his old partner, for that was Past, and this
+Ghost's province was the Future. Nor could he think of any
+one immediately connected with himself, to whom he could
+apply them. But nothing doubting that to whomsoever they
+applied they had some latent moral for his own improvement,
+he resolved to treasure up every word he heard,
+and everything he saw; and especially to observe the
+shadow of himself when it appeared. For he had an expectation
+that the conduct of his future self would give him
+the clue he missed, and would render the solution of these
+riddles easy.
+
+He looked about in that very place for his own image; but
+another man stood in his accustomed corner, and though the
+clock pointed to his usual time of day for being there, he
+saw no likeness of himself among the multitudes that poured
+in through the Porch. It gave him little surprise, however;
+for he had been revolving in his mind a change of life, and
+thought and hoped he saw his new-born resolutions carried
+out in this.
+
+Quiet and dark, beside him stood the Phantom, with its
+outstretched hand. When he roused himself from his
+thoughtful quest, he fancied from the turn of the hand, and
+its situation in reference to himself, that the Unseen Eyes
+were looking at him keenly. It made him shudder, and feel
+very cold.
+
+They left the busy scene, and went into an obscure part
+of the town, where Scrooge had never penetrated before,
+although he recognised its situation, and its bad repute. The
+ways were foul and narrow; the shops and houses wretched;
+the people half-naked, drunken, slipshod, ugly. Alleys and
+archways, like so many cesspools, disgorged their offences of
+smell, and dirt, and life, upon the straggling streets; and the
+whole quarter reeked with crime, with filth, and misery.
+
+Far in this den of infamous resort, there was a low-browed,
+beetling shop, below a pent-house roof, where iron, old rags,
+bottles, bones, and greasy offal, were bought. Upon the floor
+within, were piled up heaps of rusty keys, nails, chains, hinges,
+files, scales, weights, and refuse iron of all kinds. Secrets
+that few would like to scrutinise were bred and hidden in
+mountains of unseemly rags, masses of corrupted fat, and
+sepulchres of bones. Sitting in among the wares he dealt in, by a
+charcoal stove, made of old bricks, was a grey-haired rascal,
+nearly seventy years of age; who had screened himself from the
+cold air without, by a frousy curtaining of miscellaneous
+tatters, hung upon a line; and smoked his pipe in all the luxury
+of calm retirement.
+
+Scrooge and the Phantom came into the presence of this
+man, just as a woman with a heavy bundle slunk into the
+shop. But she had scarcely entered, when another woman,
+similarly laden, came in too; and she was closely followed by
+a man in faded black, who was no less startled by the sight
+of them, than they had been upon the recognition of each
+other. After a short period of blank astonishment, in which
+the old man with the pipe had joined them, they all three
+burst into a laugh.
+
+"Let the charwoman alone to be the first!" cried she who
+had entered first. "Let the laundress alone to be the second;
+and let the undertaker's man alone to be the third. Look
+here, old Joe, here's a chance! If we haven't all three met
+here without meaning it!"
+
+"You couldn't have met in a better place," said old Joe,
+removing his pipe from his mouth. "Come into the parlour.
+You were made free of it long ago, you know; and the other
+two an't strangers. Stop till I shut the door of the shop.
+Ah! How it skreeks! There an't such a rusty bit of metal
+in the place as its own hinges, I believe; and I'm sure there's
+no such old bones here, as mine. Ha, ha! We're all suitable
+to our calling, we're well matched. Come into the
+parlour. Come into the parlour."
+
+The parlour was the space behind the screen of rags. The
+old man raked the fire together with an old stair-rod, and
+having trimmed his smoky lamp (for it was night), with the
+stem of his pipe, put it in his mouth again.
+
+While he did this, the woman who had already spoken
+threw her bundle on the floor, and sat down in a flaunting
+manner on a stool; crossing her elbows on her knees, and
+looking with a bold defiance at the other two.
+
+"What odds then! What odds, Mrs. Dilber?" said the
+woman. "Every person has a right to take care of themselves.
+He always did."
+
+"That's true, indeed!" said the laundress. "No man
+more so."
+
+"Why then, don't stand staring as if you was afraid,
+woman; who's the wiser? We're not going to pick holes in
+each other's coats, I suppose?"
+
+"No, indeed!" said Mrs. Dilber and the man together.
+"We should hope not."
+
+"Very well, then!" cried the woman. "That's enough.
+Who's the worse for the loss of a few things like these?
+Not a dead man, I suppose."
+
+"No, indeed," said Mrs. Dilber, laughing.
+
+"If he wanted to keep 'em after he was dead, a wicked old
+screw," pursued the woman, "why wasn't he natural in his
+lifetime? If he had been, he'd have had somebody to look
+after him when he was struck with Death, instead of lying
+gasping out his last there, alone by himself."
+
+"It's the truest word that ever was spoke," said Mrs.
+Dilber. "It's a judgment on him."
+
+"I wish it was a little heavier judgment," replied the
+woman; "and it should have been, you may depend upon it,
+if I could have laid my hands on anything else. Open that
+bundle, old Joe, and let me know the value of it. Speak out
+plain. I'm not afraid to be the first, nor afraid for them to
+see it. We know pretty well that we were helping ourselves,
+before we met here, I believe. It's no sin. Open the bundle,
+Joe."
+
+But the gallantry of her friends would not allow of this;
+and the man in faded black, mounting the breach first,
+produced his plunder. It was not extensive. A seal or two,
+a pencil-case, a pair of sleeve-buttons, and a brooch of no
+great value, were all. They were severally examined and
+appraised by old Joe, who chalked the sums he was disposed
+to give for each, upon the wall, and added them up into a
+total when he found there was nothing more to come.
+
+"That's your account," said Joe, "and I wouldn't give
+another sixpence, if I was to be boiled for not doing it.
+Who's next?"
+
+Mrs. Dilber was next. Sheets and towels, a little wearing
+apparel, two old-fashioned silver teaspoons, a pair of
+sugar-tongs, and a few boots. Her account was stated on the wall
+in the same manner.
+
+"I always give too much to ladies. It's a weakness of mine,
+and that's the way I ruin myself," said old Joe. "That's
+your account. If you asked me for another penny, and made
+it an open question, I'd repent of being so liberal and knock
+off half-a-crown."
+
+"And now undo my bundle, Joe," said the first woman.
+
+Joe went down on his knees for the greater convenience
+of opening it, and having unfastened a great many knots,
+dragged out a large and heavy roll of some dark stuff.
+
+"What do you call this?" said Joe. "Bed-curtains!"
+
+"Ah!" returned the woman, laughing and leaning forward
+on her crossed arms. "Bed-curtains!"
+
+"You don't mean to say you took 'em down, rings and
+all, with him lying there?" said Joe.
+
+"Yes I do," replied the woman. "Why not?"
+
+"You were born to make your fortune," said Joe, "and
+you'll certainly do it."
+
+"I certainly shan't hold my hand, when I can get anything
+in it by reaching it out, for the sake of such a man as He
+was, I promise you, Joe," returned the woman coolly. "Don't
+drop that oil upon the blankets, now."
+
+"His blankets?" asked Joe.
+
+"Whose else's do you think?" replied the woman. "He
+isn't likely to take cold without 'em, I dare say."
+
+"I hope he didn't die of anything catching? Eh?" said
+old Joe, stopping in his work, and looking up.
+
+"Don't you be afraid of that," returned the woman. "I
+an't so fond of his company that I'd loiter about him for
+such things, if he did. Ah! you may look through that
+shirt till your eyes ache; but you won't find a hole in it, nor
+a threadbare place. It's the best he had, and a fine one too.
+They'd have wasted it, if it hadn't been for me."
+
+"What do you call wasting of it?" asked old Joe.
+
+"Putting it on him to be buried in, to be sure," replied
+the woman with a laugh. "Somebody was fool enough to
+do it, but I took it off again. If calico an't good enough for
+such a purpose, it isn't good enough for anything. It's quite
+as becoming to the body. He can't look uglier than he did
+in that one."
+
+Scrooge listened to this dialogue in horror. As they sat
+grouped about their spoil, in the scanty light afforded by
+the old man's lamp, he viewed them with a detestation and
+disgust, which could hardly have been greater, though they
+had been obscene demons, marketing the corpse itself.
+
+"Ha, ha!" laughed the same woman, when old Joe,
+producing a flannel bag with money in it, told out their
+several gains upon the ground. "This is the end of it, you
+see! He frightened every one away from him when he was
+alive, to profit us when he was dead! Ha, ha, ha!"
+
+"Spirit!" said Scrooge, shuddering from head to foot. "I
+see, I see. The case of this unhappy man might be my own.
+My life tends that way, now. Merciful Heaven, what is
+this!"
+
+He recoiled in terror, for the scene had changed, and now
+he almost touched a bed: a bare, uncurtained bed: on which,
+beneath a ragged sheet, there lay a something covered up,
+which, though it was dumb, announced itself in awful
+language.
+
+The room was very dark, too dark to be observed with
+any accuracy, though Scrooge glanced round it in obedience
+to a secret impulse, anxious to know what kind of room it
+was. A pale light, rising in the outer air, fell straight upon
+the bed; and on it, plundered and bereft, unwatched, unwept,
+uncared for, was the body of this man.
+
+Scrooge glanced towards the Phantom. Its steady hand
+was pointed to the head. The cover was so carelessly adjusted
+that the slightest raising of it, the motion of a finger upon
+Scrooge's part, would have disclosed the face. He thought
+of it, felt how easy it would be to do, and longed to do it;
+but had no more power to withdraw the veil than to dismiss
+the spectre at his side.
+
+Oh cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar
+here, and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy
+command: for this is thy dominion! But of the loved,
+revered, and honoured head, thou canst not turn one hair
+to thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious. It is
+not that the hand is heavy and will fall down when released;
+it is not that the heart and pulse are still; but that the
+hand WAS open, generous, and true; the heart brave, warm,
+and tender; and the pulse a man's. Strike, Shadow, strike!
+And see his good deeds springing from the wound, to sow
+the world with life immortal!
+
+No voice pronounced these words in Scrooge's ears, and
+yet he heard them when he looked upon the bed. He
+thought, if this man could be raised up now, what would be
+his foremost thoughts? Avarice, hard-dealing, griping cares?
+They have brought him to a rich end, truly!
+
+He lay, in the dark empty house, with not a man, a
+woman, or a child, to say that he was kind to me in this
+or that, and for the memory of one kind word I will be
+kind to him. A cat was tearing at the door, and there was
+a sound of gnawing rats beneath the hearth-stone. What
+they wanted in the room of death, and why they were so
+restless and disturbed, Scrooge did not dare to think.
+
+"Spirit!" he said, "this is a fearful place. In leaving it,
+I shall not leave its lesson, trust me. Let us go!"
+
+Still the Ghost pointed with an unmoved finger to the
+head.
+
+"I understand you," Scrooge returned, "and I would do
+it, if I could. But I have not the power, Spirit. I have
+not the power."
+
+Again it seemed to look upon him.
+
+"If there is any person in the town, who feels emotion
+caused by this man's death," said Scrooge quite agonised,
+"show that person to me, Spirit, I beseech you!"
+
+The Phantom spread its dark robe before him for a
+moment, like a wing; and withdrawing it, revealed a room
+by daylight, where a mother and her children were.
+
+She was expecting some one, and with anxious eagerness;
+for she walked up and down the room; started at every
+sound; looked out from the window; glanced at the clock;
+tried, but in vain, to work with her needle; and could hardly
+bear the voices of the children in their play.
+
+At length the long-expected knock was heard. She hurried
+to the door, and met her husband; a man whose face was
+careworn and depressed, though he was young. There was
+a remarkable expression in it now; a kind of serious delight
+of which he felt ashamed, and which he struggled to repress.
+
+He sat down to the dinner that had been hoarding for
+him by the fire; and when she asked him faintly what news
+(which was not until after a long silence), he appeared
+embarrassed how to answer.
+
+"Is it good?" she said, "or bad?"--to help him.
+
+"Bad," he answered.
+
+"We are quite ruined?"
+
+"No. There is hope yet, Caroline."
+
+"If he relents," she said, amazed, "there is! Nothing is
+past hope, if such a miracle has happened."
+
+"He is past relenting," said her husband. "He is dead."
+
+She was a mild and patient creature if her face spoke
+truth; but she was thankful in her soul to hear it, and she
+said so, with clasped hands. She prayed forgiveness the next
+moment, and was sorry; but the first was the emotion of
+her heart.
+
+"What the half-drunken woman whom I told you of last
+night, said to me, when I tried to see him and obtain a
+week's delay; and what I thought was a mere excuse to avoid
+me; turns out to have been quite true. He was not only
+very ill, but dying, then."
+
+"To whom will our debt be transferred?"
+
+"I don't know. But before that time we shall be ready
+with the money; and even though we were not, it would be
+a bad fortune indeed to find so merciless a creditor in his
+successor. We may sleep to-night with light hearts, Caroline!"
+
+Yes. Soften it as they would, their hearts were lighter.
+The children's faces, hushed and clustered round to hear what
+they so little understood, were brighter; and it was a happier
+house for this man's death! The only emotion that the
+Ghost could show him, caused by the event, was one of
+pleasure.
+
+"Let me see some tenderness connected with a death," said
+Scrooge; "or that dark chamber, Spirit, which we left just
+now, will be for ever present to me."
+
+The Ghost conducted him through several streets familiar
+to his feet; and as they went along, Scrooge looked here and
+there to find himself, but nowhere was he to be seen. They
+entered poor Bob Cratchit's house; the dwelling he had
+visited before; and found the mother and the children seated
+round the fire.
+
+Quiet. Very quiet. The noisy little Cratchits were as
+still as statues in one corner, and sat looking up at Peter,
+who had a book before him. The mother and her daughters
+were engaged in sewing. But surely they were very quiet!
+
+"'And He took a child, and set him in the midst of
+them.'"
+
+Where had Scrooge heard those words? He had not
+dreamed them. The boy must have read them out, as he
+and the Spirit crossed the threshold. Why did he not
+go on?
+
+The mother laid her work upon the table, and put her
+hand up to her face.
+
+"The colour hurts my eyes," she said.
+
+The colour? Ah, poor Tiny Tim!
+
+"They're better now again," said Cratchit's wife. "It
+makes them weak by candle-light; and I wouldn't show weak
+eyes to your father when he comes home, for the world. It
+must be near his time."
+
+"Past it rather," Peter answered, shutting up his book.
+"But I think he has walked a little slower than he used,
+these few last evenings, mother."
+
+They were very quiet again. At last she said, and in a
+steady, cheerful voice, that only faltered once:
+
+"I have known him walk with--I have known him walk
+with Tiny Tim upon his shoulder, very fast indeed."
+
+"And so have I," cried Peter. "Often."
+
+"And so have I," exclaimed another. So had all.
+
+"But he was very light to carry," she resumed, intent upon
+her work, "and his father loved him so, that it was no
+trouble: no trouble. And there is your father at the door!"
+
+She hurried out to meet him; and little Bob in his comforter
+--he had need of it, poor fellow--came in. His tea
+was ready for him on the hob, and they all tried who should
+help him to it most. Then the two young Cratchits got
+upon his knees and laid, each child a little cheek, against
+his face, as if they said, "Don't mind it, father. Don't be
+grieved!"
+
+Bob was very cheerful with them, and spoke pleasantly to
+all the family. He looked at the work upon the table, and
+praised the industry and speed of Mrs. Cratchit and the girls.
+They would be done long before Sunday, he said.
+
+"Sunday! You went to-day, then, Robert?" said his
+wife.
+
+"Yes, my dear," returned Bob. "I wish you could have
+gone. It would have done you good to see how green a
+place it is. But you'll see it often. I promised him that I
+would walk there on a Sunday. My little, little child!"
+cried Bob. "My little child!"
+
+He broke down all at once. He couldn't help it. If he
+could have helped it, he and his child would have been farther
+apart perhaps than they were.
+
+He left the room, and went up-stairs into the room above,
+which was lighted cheerfully, and hung with Christmas.
+There was a chair set close beside the child, and there were
+signs of some one having been there, lately. Poor Bob sat
+down in it, and when he had thought a little and composed
+himself, he kissed the little face. He was reconciled to what
+had happened, and went down again quite happy.
+
+They drew about the fire, and talked; the girls and mother
+working still. Bob told them of the extraordinary kindness
+of Mr. Scrooge's nephew, whom he had scarcely seen but
+once, and who, meeting him in the street that day, and seeing
+that he looked a little--"just a little down you know," said
+Bob, inquired what had happened to distress him. "On
+which," said Bob, "for he is the pleasantest-spoken gentleman
+you ever heard, I told him. 'I am heartily sorry for it, Mr.
+Cratchit,' he said, 'and heartily sorry for your good wife.'
+By the bye, how he ever knew that, I don't know."
+
+"Knew what, my dear?"
+
+"Why, that you were a good wife," replied Bob.
+
+"Everybody knows that!" said Peter.
+
+"Very well observed, my boy!" cried Bob. "I hope they
+do. 'Heartily sorry,' he said, 'for your good wife. If I
+can be of service to you in any way,' he said, giving me
+his card, 'that's where I live. Pray come to me.' Now, it
+wasn't," cried Bob, "for the sake of anything he might be
+able to do for us, so much as for his kind way, that this was
+quite delightful. It really seemed as if he had known our
+Tiny Tim, and felt with us."
+
+"I'm sure he's a good soul!" said Mrs. Cratchit.
+
+"You would be surer of it, my dear," returned Bob, "if
+you saw and spoke to him. I shouldn't be at all surprised--
+mark what I say!--if he got Peter a better situation."
+
+"Only hear that, Peter," said Mrs. Cratchit.
+
+"And then," cried one of the girls, "Peter will be keeping
+company with some one, and setting up for himself."
+
+"Get along with you!" retorted Peter, grinning.
+
+"It's just as likely as not," said Bob, "one of these days;
+though there's plenty of time for that, my dear. But however
+and whenever we part from one another, I am sure we
+shall none of us forget poor Tiny Tim--shall we--or this
+first parting that there was among us?"
+
+"Never, father!" cried they all.
+
+"And I know," said Bob, "I know, my dears, that when
+we recollect how patient and how mild he was; although he
+was a little, little child; we shall not quarrel easily among
+ourselves, and forget poor Tiny Tim in doing it."
+
+"No, never, father!" they all cried again.
+
+"I am very happy," said little Bob, "I am very happy!"
+
+Mrs. Cratchit kissed him, his daughters kissed him, the
+two young Cratchits kissed him, and Peter and himself shook
+hands. Spirit of Tiny Tim, thy childish essence was from
+God!
+
+"Spectre," said Scrooge, "something informs me that our
+parting moment is at hand. I know it, but I know not
+how. Tell me what man that was whom we saw lying dead?"
+
+The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come conveyed him, as
+before--though at a different time, he thought: indeed, there
+seemed no order in these latter visions, save that they were
+in the Future--into the resorts of business men, but showed
+him not himself. Indeed, the Spirit did not stay for anything,
+but went straight on, as to the end just now desired,
+until besought by Scrooge to tarry for a moment.
+
+"This court," said Scrooge, "through which we hurry now,
+is where my place of occupation is, and has been for a length
+of time. I see the house. Let me behold what I shall be,
+in days to come!"
+
+The Spirit stopped; the hand was pointed elsewhere.
+
+"The house is yonder," Scrooge exclaimed. "Why do you
+point away?"
+
+The inexorable finger underwent no change.
+
+Scrooge hastened to the window of his office, and looked
+in. It was an office still, but not his. The furniture was
+not the same, and the figure in the chair was not himself.
+The Phantom pointed as before.
+
+He joined it once again, and wondering why and whither
+he had gone, accompanied it until they reached an iron gate.
+He paused to look round before entering.
+
+A churchyard. Here, then; the wretched man whose name
+he had now to learn, lay underneath the ground. It was a
+worthy place. Walled in by houses; overrun by grass and
+weeds, the growth of vegetation's death, not life; choked up
+with too much burying; fat with repleted appetite. A
+worthy place!
+
+The Spirit stood among the graves, and pointed down to
+One. He advanced towards it trembling. The Phantom was
+exactly as it had been, but he dreaded that he saw new
+meaning in its solemn shape.
+
+"Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point,"
+said Scrooge, "answer me one question. Are these the
+shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of
+things that May be, only?"
+
+Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which
+it stood.
+
+"Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if
+persevered in, they must lead," said Scrooge. "But if the
+courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is
+thus with what you show me!"
+
+The Spirit was immovable as ever.
+
+Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he went; and
+following the finger, read upon the stone of the neglected
+grave his own name, EBENEZER SCROOGE.
+
+"Am I that man who lay upon the bed?" he cried, upon
+his knees.
+
+The finger pointed from the grave to him, and back again.
+
+"No, Spirit! Oh no, no!"
+
+The finger still was there.
+
+"Spirit!" he cried, tight clutching at its robe, "hear me!
+I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must
+have been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I
+am past all hope!"
+
+For the first time the hand appeared to shake.
+
+"Good Spirit," he pursued, as down upon the ground he
+fell before it: "Your nature intercedes for me, and pities
+me. Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you
+have shown me, by an altered life!"
+
+The kind hand trembled.
+
+"I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it
+all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the
+Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I
+will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I
+may sponge away the writing on this stone!"
+
+In his agony, he caught the spectral hand. It sought to
+free itself, but he was strong in his entreaty, and detained it.
+The Spirit, stronger yet, repulsed him.
+
+Holding up his hands in a last prayer to have his fate
+reversed, he saw an alteration in the Phantom's hood and dress.
+It shrunk, collapsed, and dwindled down into a bedpost.
+
+
+STAVE V:  THE END OF IT
+
+YES! and the bedpost was his own. The bed was his own,
+the room was his own. Best and happiest of all, the Time
+before him was his own, to make amends in!
+
+"I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!"
+Scrooge repeated, as he scrambled out of bed. "The Spirits
+of all Three shall strive within me. Oh Jacob Marley!
+Heaven, and the Christmas Time be praised for this! I say
+it on my knees, old Jacob; on my knees!"
+
+He was so fluttered and so glowing with his good intentions,
+that his broken voice would scarcely answer to his
+call. He had been sobbing violently in his conflict with the
+Spirit, and his face was wet with tears.
+
+"They are not torn down," cried Scrooge, folding one of
+his bed-curtains in his arms, "they are not torn down, rings
+and all. They are here--I am here--the shadows of the
+things that would have been, may be dispelled. They will
+be. I know they will!"
+
+His hands were busy with his garments all this time;
+turning them inside out, putting them on upside down,
+tearing them, mislaying them, making them parties to every
+kind of extravagance.
+
+"I don't know what to do!" cried Scrooge, laughing and
+crying in the same breath; and making a perfect Laocoön of
+himself with his stockings. "I am as light as a feather, I
+am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I
+am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to
+everybody! A happy New Year to all the world. Hallo
+here! Whoop! Hallo!"
+
+He had frisked into the sitting-room, and was now standing
+there: perfectly winded.
+
+"There's the saucepan that the gruel was in!" cried
+Scrooge, starting off again, and going round the fireplace.
+"There's the door, by which the Ghost of Jacob Marley
+entered! There's the corner where the Ghost of Christmas
+Present, sat! There's the window where I saw the wandering
+Spirits! It's all right, it's all true, it all happened.
+Ha ha ha!"
+
+Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so
+many years, it was a splendid laugh, a most illustrious laugh.
+The father of a long, long line of brilliant laughs!
+
+"I don't know what day of the month it is!" said
+Scrooge. "I don't know how long I've been among the
+Spirits. I don't know anything. I'm quite a baby. Never
+mind. I don't care. I'd rather be a baby. Hallo! Whoop!
+Hallo here!"
+
+He was checked in his transports by the churches ringing
+out the lustiest peals he had ever heard. Clash, clang,
+hammer; ding, dong, bell. Bell, dong, ding; hammer, clang,
+clash! Oh, glorious, glorious!
+
+Running to the window, he opened it, and put out his
+head. No fog, no mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold;
+cold, piping for the blood to dance to; Golden sunlight;
+Heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry bells. Oh, glorious!
+Glorious!
+
+"What's to-day!" cried Scrooge, calling downward to a
+boy in Sunday clothes, who perhaps had loitered in to look
+about him.
+
+"EH?" returned the boy, with all his might of wonder.
+
+"What's to-day, my fine fellow?" said Scrooge.
+
+"To-day!" replied the boy. "Why, CHRISTMAS DAY."
+
+"It's Christmas Day!" said Scrooge to himself. "I
+haven't missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night.
+They can do anything they like. Of course they can. Of
+course they can. Hallo, my fine fellow!"
+
+"Hallo!" returned the boy.
+
+"Do you know the Poulterer's, in the next street but one,
+at the corner?" Scrooge inquired.
+
+"I should hope I did," replied the lad.
+
+"An intelligent boy!" said Scrooge. "A remarkable boy!
+Do you know whether they've sold the prize Turkey that
+was hanging up there?--Not the little prize Turkey: the
+big one?"
+
+"What, the one as big as me?" returned the boy.
+
+"What a delightful boy!" said Scrooge. "It's a pleasure
+to talk to him. Yes, my buck!"
+
+"It's hanging there now," replied the boy.
+
+"Is it?" said Scrooge. "Go and buy it."
+
+"Walk-ER!" exclaimed the boy.
+
+"No, no," said Scrooge, "I am in earnest. Go and buy
+it, and tell 'em to bring it here, that I may give them the
+direction where to take it. Come back with the man, and
+I'll give you a shilling. Come back with him in less than
+five minutes and I'll give you half-a-crown!"
+
+The boy was off like a shot. He must have had a steady
+hand at a trigger who could have got a shot off half so fast.
+
+"I'll send it to Bob Cratchit's!" whispered Scrooge,
+rubbing his hands, and splitting with a laugh. "He sha'n't
+know who sends it. It's twice the size of Tiny Tim. Joe
+Miller never made such a joke as sending it to Bob's
+will be!"
+
+The hand in which he wrote the address was not a steady
+one, but write it he did, somehow, and went down-stairs to
+open the street door, ready for the coming of the poulterer's
+man. As he stood there, waiting his arrival, the knocker
+caught his eye.
+
+"I shall love it, as long as I live!" cried Scrooge, patting
+it with his hand. "I scarcely ever looked at it before.
+What an honest expression it has in its face! It's a
+wonderful knocker!--Here's the Turkey! Hallo! Whoop!
+How are you! Merry Christmas!"
+
+It was a Turkey! He never could have stood upon his
+legs, that bird. He would have snapped 'em short off in a
+minute, like sticks of sealing-wax.
+
+"Why, it's impossible to carry that to Camden Town,"
+said Scrooge. "You must have a cab."
+
+The chuckle with which he said this, and the chuckle with
+which he paid for the Turkey, and the chuckle with which
+he paid for the cab, and the chuckle with which he recompensed
+the boy, were only to be exceeded by the chuckle
+with which he sat down breathless in his chair again, and
+chuckled till he cried.
+
+Shaving was not an easy task, for his hand continued to
+shake very much; and shaving requires attention, even when
+you don't dance while you are at it. But if he had cut the
+end of his nose off, he would have put a piece of
+sticking-plaister over it, and been quite satisfied.
+
+He dressed himself "all in his best," and at last got out
+into the streets. The people were by this time pouring forth,
+as he had seen them with the Ghost of Christmas Present;
+and walking with his hands behind him, Scrooge regarded
+every one with a delighted smile. He looked so irresistibly
+pleasant, in a word, that three or four good-humoured fellows
+said, "Good morning, sir! A merry Christmas to you!"
+And Scrooge said often afterwards, that of all the blithe
+sounds he had ever heard, those were the blithest in his ears.
+
+He had not gone far, when coming on towards him he
+beheld the portly gentleman, who had walked into his
+counting-house the day before, and said, "Scrooge and Marley's, I
+believe?"  It sent a pang across his heart to think how this
+old gentleman would look upon him when they met; but he
+knew what path lay straight before him, and he took it.
+
+"My dear sir," said Scrooge, quickening his pace, and
+taking the old gentleman by both his hands. "How do you
+do? I hope you succeeded yesterday. It was very kind of
+you. A merry Christmas to you, sir!"
+
+"Mr. Scrooge?"
+
+"Yes," said Scrooge. "That is my name, and I fear it
+may not be pleasant to you. Allow me to ask your pardon.
+And will you have the goodness"--here Scrooge whispered in
+his ear.
+
+"Lord bless me!" cried the gentleman, as if his breath
+were taken away. "My dear Mr. Scrooge, are you serious?"
+
+"If you please," said Scrooge. "Not a farthing less. A
+great many back-payments are included in it, I assure you.
+Will you do me that favour?"
+
+"My dear sir," said the other, shaking hands with him.
+"I don't know what to say to such munifi--"
+
+"Don't say anything, please," retorted Scrooge. "Come
+and see me. Will you come and see me?"
+
+"I will!" cried the old gentleman. And it was clear he
+meant to do it.
+
+"Thank'ee," said Scrooge. "I am much obliged to you.
+I thank you fifty times. Bless you!"
+
+He went to church, and walked about the streets, and
+watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted children
+on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into
+the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows, and found
+that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never
+dreamed that any walk--that anything--could give him so
+much happiness. In the afternoon he turned his steps
+towards his nephew's house.
+
+He passed the door a dozen times, before he had the
+courage to go up and knock. But he made a dash, and
+did it:
+
+"Is your master at home, my dear?" said Scrooge to the
+girl. Nice girl! Very.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Where is he, my love?" said Scrooge.
+
+"He's in the dining-room, sir, along with mistress. I'll
+show you up-stairs, if you please."
+
+"Thank'ee. He knows me," said Scrooge, with his hand
+already on the dining-room lock. "I'll go in here, my dear."
+
+He turned it gently, and sidled his face in, round the door.
+They were looking at the table (which was spread out in
+great array); for these young housekeepers are always nervous
+on such points, and like to see that everything is right.
+
+"Fred!" said Scrooge.
+
+Dear heart alive, how his niece by marriage started!
+Scrooge had forgotten, for the moment, about her sitting
+in the corner with the footstool, or he wouldn't have done
+it, on any account.
+
+"Why bless my soul!" cried Fred, "who's that?"
+
+"It's I. Your uncle Scrooge. I have come to dinner.
+Will you let me in, Fred?"
+
+Let him in! It is a mercy he didn't shake his arm off.
+He was at home in five minutes. Nothing could be heartier.
+His niece looked just the same. So did Topper when he
+came. So did the plump sister when she came. So did
+every one when they came. Wonderful party, wonderful
+games, wonderful unanimity, won-der-ful happiness!
+
+But he was early at the office next morning. Oh, he was
+early there. If he could only be there first, and catch Bob
+Cratchit coming late! That was the thing he had set his
+heart upon.
+
+And he did it; yes, he did! The clock struck nine. No
+Bob. A quarter past. No Bob. He was full eighteen
+minutes and a half behind his time. Scrooge sat with his
+door wide open, that he might see him come into the Tank.
+
+His hat was off, before he opened the door; his comforter
+too. He was on his stool in a jiffy; driving away with his
+pen, as if he were trying to overtake nine o'clock.
+
+"Hallo!" growled Scrooge, in his accustomed voice, as
+near as he could feign it. "What do you mean by coming
+here at this time of day?"
+
+"I am very sorry, sir," said Bob. "I am behind my time."
+
+"You are?" repeated Scrooge. "Yes. I think you are.
+Step this way, sir, if you please."
+
+"It's only once a year, sir," pleaded Bob, appearing from
+the Tank. "It shall not be repeated. I was making rather
+merry yesterday, sir."
+
+"Now, I'll tell you what, my friend," said Scrooge, "I
+am not going to stand this sort of thing any longer. And
+therefore," he continued, leaping from his stool, and giving
+Bob such a dig in the waistcoat that he staggered back into
+the Tank again; "and therefore I am about to raise your
+salary!"
+
+Bob trembled, and got a little nearer to the ruler. He
+had a momentary idea of knocking Scrooge down with it,
+holding him, and calling to the people in the court for help
+and a strait-waistcoat.
+
+"A merry Christmas, Bob!" said Scrooge, with an earnestness
+that could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the
+back. "A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I
+have given you, for many a year! I'll raise your salary, and
+endeavour to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss
+your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of
+smoking bishop, Bob! Make up the fires, and buy another
+coal-scuttle before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit!"
+
+
+Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and
+infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, he was
+a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a
+master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or
+any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old
+world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him,
+but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was
+wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this
+globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill
+of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these
+would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they
+should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in
+less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was
+quite enough for him.
+
+He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon
+the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was
+always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas
+well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that
+be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim
+observed, God bless Us, Every One!
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens
+
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diff --git a/data/train/dickens_-_bleak_house.txt b/data/train/dickens_-_bleak_house.txt
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@@ -0,0 +1,40234 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Bleak House, by Charles Dickens
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Bleak House
+
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+
+Release Date: August 1, 1997  [eBook #1023]
+Most recently updated: February 21, 2012
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLEAK HOUSE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Donald Lainson, Toronto, Canada,
+and revised by Thomas Berger and Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D.
+
+
+
+BLEAK HOUSE
+
+by
+
+CHARLES DICKENS
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+            Preface
+         I. In Chancery
+        II. In Fashion
+       III. A Progress
+        IV. Telescopic Philanthropy
+         V. A Morning Adventure
+        VI. Quite at Home
+       VII. The Ghost's Walk
+      VIII. Covering a Multitude of Sins
+        IX. Signs and Tokens
+         X. The Law-Writer
+        XI. Our Dear Brother
+       XII. On the Watch
+      XIII. Esther's Narrative
+       XIV. Deportment
+        XV. Bell Yard
+       XVI. Tom-all-Alone's
+      XVII. Esther's Narrative
+     XVIII. Lady Dedlock
+       XIX. Moving On
+        XX. A New Lodger
+       XXI. The Smallweed Family
+      XXII. Mr. Bucket
+     XXIII. Esther's Narrative
+      XXIV. An Appeal Case
+       XXV. Mrs. Snagsby Sees It All
+      XXVI. Sharpshooters
+     XXVII. More Old Soldiers Than One
+    XXVIII. The Ironmaster
+      XXIX. The Young Man
+       XXX. Esther's Narrative
+      XXXI. Nurse and Patient
+     XXXII. The Appointed Time
+    XXXIII. Interlopers
+     XXXIV. A Turn of the Screw
+      XXXV. Esther's Narrative
+     XXXVI. Chesney Wold
+    XXXVII. Jarndyce and Jarndyce
+   XXXVIII. A Struggle
+     XXXIX. Attorney and Client
+        XL. National and Domestic
+       XLI. In Mr. Tulkinghorn's Room
+      XLII. In Mr. Tulkinghorn's Chambers
+     XLIII. Esther's Narrative
+      XLIV. The Letter and the Answer
+       XLV. In Trust
+      XLVI. Stop Him!
+     XLVII. Jo's Will
+    XLVIII. Closing In
+      XLIX. Dutiful Friendship
+         L. Esther's Narrative
+        LI. Enlightened
+       LII. Obstinacy
+      LIII. The Track
+       LIV. Springing a Mine
+        LV. Flight
+       LVI. Pursuit
+      LVII. Esther's Narrative
+     LVIII. A Wintry Day and Night
+       LIX. Esther's Narrative
+        LX. Perspective
+       LXI. A Discovery
+      LXII. Another Discovery
+     LXIII. Steel and Iron
+   LXIV. Esther's Narrative
+   LXV. Beginning the World
+   LXVI. Down in Lincolnshire
+   LXVII. The Close of Esther's Narrative
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+A Chancery judge once had the kindness to inform me, as one of a
+company of some hundred and fifty men and women not labouring under
+any suspicions of lunacy, that the Court of Chancery, though the
+shining subject of much popular prejudice (at which point I thought
+the judge's eye had a cast in my direction), was almost immaculate.
+There had been, he admitted, a trivial blemish or so in its rate of
+progress, but this was exaggerated and had been entirely owing to the
+"parsimony of the public," which guilty public, it appeared, had been
+until lately bent in the most determined manner on by no means
+enlarging the number of Chancery judges appointed--I believe by
+Richard the Second, but any other king will do as well.
+
+This seemed to me too profound a joke to be inserted in the body of
+this book or I should have restored it to Conversation Kenge or to
+Mr. Vholes, with one or other of whom I think it must have
+originated. In such mouths I might have coupled it with an apt
+quotation from one of Shakespeare's sonnets:
+
+                     "My nature is subdued
+   To what it works in, like the dyer's hand:
+   Pity me, then, and wish I were renewed!"
+
+But as it is wholesome that the parsimonious public should know what
+has been doing, and still is doing, in this connexion, I mention here
+that everything set forth in these pages concerning the Court of
+Chancery is substantially true, and within the truth. The case of
+Gridley is in no essential altered from one of actual occurrence,
+made public by a disinterested person who was professionally
+acquainted with the whole of the monstrous wrong from beginning to
+end. At the present moment (August, 1853) there is a suit before the
+court which was commenced nearly twenty years ago, in which from
+thirty to forty counsel have been known to appear at one time, in
+which costs have been incurred to the amount of seventy thousand
+pounds, which is A FRIENDLY SUIT, and which is (I am assured) no
+nearer to its termination now than when it was begun. There is
+another well-known suit in Chancery, not yet decided, which was
+commenced before the close of the last century and in which more than
+double the amount of seventy thousand pounds has been swallowed up in
+costs. If I wanted other authorities for Jarndyce and Jarndyce, I
+could rain them on these pages, to the shame of--a parsimonious
+public.
+
+There is only one other point on which I offer a word of remark. The
+possibility of what is called spontaneous combustion has been denied
+since the death of Mr. Krook; and my good friend Mr. Lewes (quite
+mistaken, as he soon found, in supposing the thing to have been
+abandoned by all authorities) published some ingenious letters to me
+at the time when that event was chronicled, arguing that spontaneous
+combustion could not possibly be. I have no need to observe that I do
+not wilfully or negligently mislead my readers and that before I
+wrote that description I took pains to investigate the subject. There
+are about thirty cases on record, of which the most famous, that of
+the Countess Cornelia de Baudi Cesenate, was minutely investigated
+and described by Giuseppe Bianchini, a prebendary of Verona,
+otherwise distinguished in letters, who published an account of it at
+Verona in 1731, which he afterwards republished at Rome. The
+appearances, beyond all rational doubt, observed in that case are the
+appearances observed in Mr. Krook's case. The next most famous
+instance happened at Rheims six years earlier, and the historian in
+that case is Le Cat, one of the most renowned surgeons produced by
+France. The subject was a woman, whose husband was ignorantly
+convicted of having murdered her; but on solemn appeal to a higher
+court, he was acquitted because it was shown upon the evidence that
+she had died the death of which this name of spontaneous combustion
+is given. I do not think it necessary to add to these notable facts,
+and that general reference to the authorities which will be found at
+page 30, vol. ii.,* the recorded opinions and experiences of
+distinguished medical professors, French, English, and Scotch, in
+more modern days, contenting myself with observing that I shall not
+abandon the facts until there shall have been a considerable
+spontaneous combustion of the testimony on which human occurrences
+are usually received.**
+
+In Bleak House I have purposely dwelt upon the romantic side of
+familiar things.
+
+
+1853
+
+
+   *Transcriber's note. This referred to a specific page in
+    the printed book. In this Project Gutenberg edition the
+    pertinent information is in Chapter XXX, paragraph 90.
+
+   ** Another case, very clearly described by a dentist,
+    occurred at the town of Columbus, in the United States
+    of America, quite recently. The subject was a German who
+    kept a liquor-shop and was an inveterate drunkard.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+In Chancery
+
+
+London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting
+in Lincoln's Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in
+the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of
+the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus,
+forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn
+Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black
+drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown
+snowflakes--gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of
+the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better;
+splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one
+another's umbrellas in a general infection of ill temper, and losing
+their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other
+foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke
+(if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust
+of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and
+accumulating at compound interest.
+
+Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and
+meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers
+of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city.
+Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping
+into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards and
+hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales
+of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient
+Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog
+in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper,
+down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of
+his shivering little 'prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the
+bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog
+all round them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging in the
+misty clouds.
+
+Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as
+the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman
+and ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their
+time--as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling
+look.
+
+The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the
+muddy streets are muddiest near that leaden-headed old obstruction,
+appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old
+corporation, Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln's Inn
+Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in
+his High Court of Chancery.
+
+Never can there come fog too thick, never can there come mud and mire
+too deep, to assort with the groping and floundering condition which
+this High Court of Chancery, most pestilent of hoary sinners, holds
+this day in the sight of heaven and earth.
+
+On such an afternoon, if ever, the Lord High Chancellor ought to be
+sitting here--as here he is--with a foggy glory round his head,
+softly fenced in with crimson cloth and curtains, addressed by a
+large advocate with great whiskers, a little voice, and an
+interminable brief, and outwardly directing his contemplation to the
+lantern in the roof, where he can see nothing but fog. On such an
+afternoon some score of members of the High Court of Chancery bar
+ought to be--as here they are--mistily engaged in one of the ten
+thousand stages of an endless cause, tripping one another up on
+slippery precedents, groping knee-deep in technicalities, running
+their goat-hair and horsehair warded heads against walls of words and
+making a pretence of equity with serious faces, as players might. On
+such an afternoon the various solicitors in the cause, some two or
+three of whom have inherited it from their fathers, who made a
+fortune by it, ought to be--as are they not?--ranged in a line, in a
+long matted well (but you might look in vain for truth at the bottom
+of it) between the registrar's red table and the silk gowns, with
+bills, cross-bills, answers, rejoinders, injunctions, affidavits,
+issues, references to masters, masters' reports, mountains of costly
+nonsense, piled before them. Well may the court be dim, with wasting
+candles here and there; well may the fog hang heavy in it, as if it
+would never get out; well may the stained-glass windows lose their
+colour and admit no light of day into the place; well may the
+uninitiated from the streets, who peep in through the glass panes in
+the door, be deterred from entrance by its owlish aspect and by the
+drawl, languidly echoing to the roof from the padded dais where the
+Lord High Chancellor looks into the lantern that has no light in it
+and where the attendant wigs are all stuck in a fog-bank! This is the
+Court of Chancery, which has its decaying houses and its blighted
+lands in every shire, which has its worn-out lunatic in every
+madhouse and its dead in every churchyard, which has its ruined
+suitor with his slipshod heels and threadbare dress borrowing and
+begging through the round of every man's acquaintance, which gives to
+monied might the means abundantly of wearying out the right, which so
+exhausts finances, patience, courage, hope, so overthrows the brain
+and breaks the heart, that there is not an honourable man among its
+practitioners who would not give--who does not often give--the
+warning, "Suffer any wrong that can be done you rather than come
+here!"
+
+Who happen to be in the Lord Chancellor's court this murky afternoon
+besides the Lord Chancellor, the counsel in the cause, two or three
+counsel who are never in any cause, and the well of solicitors before
+mentioned? There is the registrar below the judge, in wig and gown;
+and there are two or three maces, or petty-bags, or privy purses, or
+whatever they may be, in legal court suits. These are all yawning,
+for no crumb of amusement ever falls from Jarndyce and Jarndyce (the
+cause in hand), which was squeezed dry years upon years ago. The
+short-hand writers, the reporters of the court, and the reporters of
+the newspapers invariably decamp with the rest of the regulars when
+Jarndyce and Jarndyce comes on. Their places are a blank. Standing on
+a seat at the side of the hall, the better to peer into the curtained
+sanctuary, is a little mad old woman in a squeezed bonnet who is
+always in court, from its sitting to its rising, and always expecting
+some incomprehensible judgment to be given in her favour. Some say
+she really is, or was, a party to a suit, but no one knows for
+certain because no one cares. She carries some small litter in a
+reticule which she calls her documents, principally consisting of
+paper matches and dry lavender. A sallow prisoner has come up, in
+custody, for the half-dozenth time to make a personal application "to
+purge himself of his contempt," which, being a solitary surviving
+executor who has fallen into a state of conglomeration about accounts
+of which it is not pretended that he had ever any knowledge, he is
+not at all likely ever to do. In the meantime his prospects in life
+are ended. Another ruined suitor, who periodically appears from
+Shropshire and breaks out into efforts to address the Chancellor at
+the close of the day's business and who can by no means be made to
+understand that the Chancellor is legally ignorant of his existence
+after making it desolate for a quarter of a century, plants himself
+in a good place and keeps an eye on the judge, ready to call out "My
+Lord!" in a voice of sonorous complaint on the instant of his rising.
+A few lawyers' clerks and others who know this suitor by sight linger
+on the chance of his furnishing some fun and enlivening the dismal
+weather a little.
+
+Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on. This scarecrow of a suit has, in
+course of time, become so complicated that no man alive knows what it
+means. The parties to it understand it least, but it has been
+observed that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five
+minutes without coming to a total disagreement as to all the
+premises. Innumerable children have been born into the cause;
+innumerable young people have married into it; innumerable old people
+have died out of it. Scores of persons have deliriously found
+themselves made parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce without knowing how
+or why; whole families have inherited legendary hatreds with the
+suit. The little plaintiff or defendant who was promised a new
+rocking-horse when Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be settled has grown
+up, possessed himself of a real horse, and trotted away into the
+other world. Fair wards of court have faded into mothers and
+grandmothers; a long procession of Chancellors has come in and gone
+out; the legion of bills in the suit have been transformed into mere
+bills of mortality; there are not three Jarndyces left upon the earth
+perhaps since old Tom Jarndyce in despair blew his brains out at a
+coffee-house in Chancery Lane; but Jarndyce and Jarndyce still drags
+its dreary length before the court, perennially hopeless.
+
+Jarndyce and Jarndyce has passed into a joke. That is the only good
+that has ever come of it. It has been death to many, but it is a joke
+in the profession. Every master in Chancery has had a reference out
+of it. Every Chancellor was "in it," for somebody or other, when he
+was counsel at the bar. Good things have been said about it by
+blue-nosed, bulbous-shoed old benchers in select port-wine committee
+after dinner in hall. Articled clerks have been in the habit of
+fleshing their legal wit upon it. The last Lord Chancellor handled it
+neatly, when, correcting Mr. Blowers, the eminent silk gown who said
+that such a thing might happen when the sky rained potatoes, he
+observed, "or when we get through Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Mr.
+Blowers"--a pleasantry that particularly tickled the maces, bags, and
+purses.
+
+How many people out of the suit Jarndyce and Jarndyce has stretched
+forth its unwholesome hand to spoil and corrupt would be a very wide
+question. From the master upon whose impaling files reams of dusty
+warrants in Jarndyce and Jarndyce have grimly writhed into many
+shapes, down to the copying-clerk in the Six Clerks' Office who has
+copied his tens of thousands of Chancery folio-pages under that
+eternal heading, no man's nature has been made better by it. In
+trickery, evasion, procrastination, spoliation, botheration, under
+false pretences of all sorts, there are influences that can never
+come to good. The very solicitors' boys who have kept the wretched
+suitors at bay, by protesting time out of mind that Mr. Chizzle,
+Mizzle, or otherwise was particularly engaged and had appointments
+until dinner, may have got an extra moral twist and shuffle into
+themselves out of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. The receiver in the cause
+has acquired a goodly sum of money by it but has acquired too a
+distrust of his own mother and a contempt for his own kind. Chizzle,
+Mizzle, and otherwise have lapsed into a habit of vaguely promising
+themselves that they will look into that outstanding little matter
+and see what can be done for Drizzle--who was not well used--when
+Jarndyce and Jarndyce shall be got out of the office. Shirking and
+sharking in all their many varieties have been sown broadcast by the
+ill-fated cause; and even those who have contemplated its history
+from the outermost circle of such evil have been insensibly tempted
+into a loose way of letting bad things alone to take their own bad
+course, and a loose belief that if the world go wrong it was in some
+off-hand manner never meant to go right.
+
+Thus, in the midst of the mud and at the heart of the fog, sits the
+Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.
+
+"Mr. Tangle," says the Lord High Chancellor, latterly something
+restless under the eloquence of that learned gentleman.
+
+"Mlud," says Mr. Tangle. Mr. Tangle knows more of Jarndyce and
+Jarndyce than anybody. He is famous for it--supposed never to have
+read anything else since he left school.
+
+"Have you nearly concluded your argument?"
+
+"Mlud, no--variety of points--feel it my duty tsubmit--ludship," is
+the reply that slides out of Mr. Tangle.
+
+"Several members of the bar are still to be heard, I believe?" says
+the Chancellor with a slight smile.
+
+Eighteen of Mr. Tangle's learned friends, each armed with a little
+summary of eighteen hundred sheets, bob up like eighteen hammers in a
+pianoforte, make eighteen bows, and drop into their eighteen places
+of obscurity.
+
+"We will proceed with the hearing on Wednesday fortnight," says the
+Chancellor. For the question at issue is only a question of costs, a
+mere bud on the forest tree of the parent suit, and really will come
+to a settlement one of these days.
+
+The Chancellor rises; the bar rises; the prisoner is brought forward
+in a hurry; the man from Shropshire cries, "My lord!" Maces, bags,
+and purses indignantly proclaim silence and frown at the man from
+Shropshire.
+
+"In reference," proceeds the Chancellor, still on Jarndyce and
+Jarndyce, "to the young girl--"
+
+"Begludship's pardon--boy," says Mr. Tangle prematurely. "In
+reference," proceeds the Chancellor with extra distinctness, "to the
+young girl and boy, the two young people"--Mr. Tangle crushed--"whom
+I directed to be in attendance to-day and who are now in my private
+room, I will see them and satisfy myself as to the expediency of
+making the order for their residing with their uncle."
+
+Mr. Tangle on his legs again. "Begludship's pardon--dead."
+
+"With their"--Chancellor looking through his double eye-glass at the
+papers on his desk--"grandfather."
+
+"Begludship's pardon--victim of rash action--brains."
+
+Suddenly a very little counsel with a terrific bass voice arises,
+fully inflated, in the back settlements of the fog, and says, "Will
+your lordship allow me? I appear for him. He is a cousin, several
+times removed. I am not at the moment prepared to inform the court in
+what exact remove he is a cousin, but he IS a cousin."
+
+Leaving this address (delivered like a sepulchral message) ringing in
+the rafters of the roof, the very little counsel drops, and the fog
+knows him no more. Everybody looks for him. Nobody can see him.
+
+"I will speak with both the young people," says the Chancellor anew,
+"and satisfy myself on the subject of their residing with their
+cousin. I will mention the matter to-morrow morning when I take my
+seat."
+
+The Chancellor is about to bow to the bar when the prisoner is
+presented. Nothing can possibly come of the prisoner's conglomeration
+but his being sent back to prison, which is soon done. The man from
+Shropshire ventures another remonstrative "My lord!" but the
+Chancellor, being aware of him, has dexterously vanished. Everybody
+else quickly vanishes too. A battery of blue bags is loaded with
+heavy charges of papers and carried off by clerks; the little mad old
+woman marches off with her documents; the empty court is locked up.
+If all the injustice it has committed and all the misery it has
+caused could only be locked up with it, and the whole burnt away in a
+great funeral pyre--why so much the better for other parties than the
+parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+In Fashion
+
+
+It is but a glimpse of the world of fashion that we want on this same
+miry afternoon. It is not so unlike the Court of Chancery but that we
+may pass from the one scene to the other, as the crow flies. Both the
+world of fashion and the Court of Chancery are things of precedent
+and usage: oversleeping Rip Van Winkles who have played at strange
+games through a deal of thundery weather; sleeping beauties whom the
+knight will wake one day, when all the stopped spits in the kitchen
+shall begin to turn prodigiously!
+
+It is not a large world. Relatively even to this world of ours, which
+has its limits too (as your Highness shall find when you have made
+the tour of it and are come to the brink of the void beyond), it is a
+very little speck. There is much good in it; there are many good and
+true people in it; it has its appointed place. But the evil of it is
+that it is a world wrapped up in too much jeweller's cotton and fine
+wool, and cannot hear the rushing of the larger worlds, and cannot
+see them as they circle round the sun. It is a deadened world, and
+its growth is sometimes unhealthy for want of air.
+
+My Lady Dedlock has returned to her house in town for a few days
+previous to her departure for Paris, where her ladyship intends to
+stay some weeks, after which her movements are uncertain. The
+fashionable intelligence says so for the comfort of the Parisians,
+and it knows all fashionable things. To know things otherwise were to
+be unfashionable. My Lady Dedlock has been down at what she calls, in
+familiar conversation, her "place" in Lincolnshire. The waters are
+out in Lincolnshire. An arch of the bridge in the park has been
+sapped and sopped away. The adjacent low-lying ground for half a mile
+in breadth is a stagnant river with melancholy trees for islands in
+it and a surface punctured all over, all day long, with falling rain.
+My Lady Dedlock's place has been extremely dreary. The weather for
+many a day and night has been so wet that the trees seem wet through,
+and the soft loppings and prunings of the woodman's axe can make no
+crash or crackle as they fall. The deer, looking soaked, leave
+quagmires where they pass. The shot of a rifle loses its sharpness in
+the moist air, and its smoke moves in a tardy little cloud towards
+the green rise, coppice-topped, that makes a background for the
+falling rain. The view from my Lady Dedlock's own windows is
+alternately a lead-coloured view and a view in Indian ink. The vases
+on the stone terrace in the foreground catch the rain all day; and
+the heavy drops fall--drip, drip, drip--upon the broad flagged
+pavement, called from old time the Ghost's Walk, all night. On
+Sundays the little church in the park is mouldy; the oaken pulpit
+breaks out into a cold sweat; and there is a general smell and taste
+as of the ancient Dedlocks in their graves. My Lady Dedlock (who is
+childless), looking out in the early twilight from her boudoir at a
+keeper's lodge and seeing the light of a fire upon the latticed
+panes, and smoke rising from the chimney, and a child, chased by a
+woman, running out into the rain to meet the shining figure of a
+wrapped-up man coming through the gate, has been put quite out of
+temper. My Lady Dedlock says she has been "bored to death."
+
+Therefore my Lady Dedlock has come away from the place in
+Lincolnshire and has left it to the rain, and the crows, and the
+rabbits, and the deer, and the partridges and pheasants. The pictures
+of the Dedlocks past and gone have seemed to vanish into the damp
+walls in mere lowness of spirits, as the housekeeper has passed along
+the old rooms shutting up the shutters. And when they will next come
+forth again, the fashionable intelligence--which, like the fiend, is
+omniscient of the past and present, but not the future--cannot yet
+undertake to say.
+
+Sir Leicester Dedlock is only a baronet, but there is no mightier
+baronet than he. His family is as old as the hills, and infinitely
+more respectable. He has a general opinion that the world might get
+on without hills but would be done up without Dedlocks. He would on
+the whole admit nature to be a good idea (a little low, perhaps, when
+not enclosed with a park-fence), but an idea dependent for its
+execution on your great county families. He is a gentleman of strict
+conscience, disdainful of all littleness and meanness and ready on
+the shortest notice to die any death you may please to mention rather
+than give occasion for the least impeachment of his integrity. He is
+an honourable, obstinate, truthful, high-spirited, intensely
+prejudiced, perfectly unreasonable man.
+
+Sir Leicester is twenty years, full measure, older than my Lady. He
+will never see sixty-five again, nor perhaps sixty-six, nor yet
+sixty-seven. He has a twist of the gout now and then and walks a
+little stiffly. He is of a worthy presence, with his light-grey hair
+and whiskers, his fine shirt-frill, his pure-white waistcoat, and his
+blue coat with bright buttons always buttoned. He is ceremonious,
+stately, most polite on every occasion to my Lady, and holds her
+personal attractions in the highest estimation. His gallantry to my
+Lady, which has never changed since he courted her, is the one little
+touch of romantic fancy in him.
+
+Indeed, he married her for love. A whisper still goes about that she
+had not even family; howbeit, Sir Leicester had so much family that
+perhaps he had enough and could dispense with any more. But she had
+beauty, pride, ambition, insolent resolve, and sense enough to
+portion out a legion of fine ladies. Wealth and station, added to
+these, soon floated her upward, and for years now my Lady Dedlock has
+been at the centre of the fashionable intelligence and at the top of
+the fashionable tree.
+
+How Alexander wept when he had no more worlds to conquer, everybody
+knows--or has some reason to know by this time, the matter having
+been rather frequently mentioned. My Lady Dedlock, having conquered
+HER world, fell not into the melting, but rather into the freezing,
+mood. An exhausted composure, a worn-out placidity, an equanimity of
+fatigue not to be ruffled by interest or satisfaction, are the
+trophies of her victory. She is perfectly well-bred. If she could be
+translated to heaven to-morrow, she might be expected to ascend
+without any rapture.
+
+She has beauty still, and if it be not in its heyday, it is not yet
+in its autumn. She has a fine face--originally of a character that
+would be rather called very pretty than handsome, but improved into
+classicality by the acquired expression of her fashionable state. Her
+figure is elegant and has the effect of being tall. Not that she is
+so, but that "the most is made," as the Honourable Bob Stables has
+frequently asserted upon oath, "of all her points." The same
+authority observes that she is perfectly got up and remarks in
+commendation of her hair especially that she is the best-groomed
+woman in the whole stud.
+
+With all her perfections on her head, my Lady Dedlock has come up
+from her place in Lincolnshire (hotly pursued by the fashionable
+intelligence) to pass a few days at her house in town previous to her
+departure for Paris, where her ladyship intends to stay some weeks,
+after which her movements are uncertain. And at her house in town,
+upon this muddy, murky afternoon, presents himself an old-fashioned
+old gentleman, attorney-at-law and eke solicitor of the High Court of
+Chancery, who has the honour of acting as legal adviser of the
+Dedlocks and has as many cast-iron boxes in his office with that name
+outside as if the present baronet were the coin of the conjuror's
+trick and were constantly being juggled through the whole set. Across
+the hall, and up the stairs, and along the passages, and through the
+rooms, which are very brilliant in the season and very dismal out of
+it--fairy-land to visit, but a desert to live in--the old gentleman
+is conducted by a Mercury in powder to my Lady's presence.
+
+The old gentleman is rusty to look at, but is reputed to have made
+good thrift out of aristocratic marriage settlements and aristocratic
+wills, and to be very rich. He is surrounded by a mysterious halo of
+family confidences, of which he is known to be the silent depository.
+There are noble mausoleums rooted for centuries in retired glades of
+parks among the growing timber and the fern, which perhaps hold fewer
+noble secrets than walk abroad among men, shut up in the breast of
+Mr. Tulkinghorn. He is of what is called the old school--a phrase
+generally meaning any school that seems never to have been young--and
+wears knee-breeches tied with ribbons, and gaiters or stockings. One
+peculiarity of his black clothes and of his black stockings, be they
+silk or worsted, is that they never shine. Mute, close, irresponsive
+to any glancing light, his dress is like himself. He never converses
+when not professionally consulted. He is found sometimes, speechless
+but quite at home, at corners of dinner-tables in great country
+houses and near doors of drawing-rooms, concerning which the
+fashionable intelligence is eloquent, where everybody knows him and
+where half the Peerage stops to say "How do you do, Mr. Tulkinghorn?"
+He receives these salutations with gravity and buries them along with
+the rest of his knowledge.
+
+Sir Leicester Dedlock is with my Lady and is happy to see Mr.
+Tulkinghorn. There is an air of prescription about him which is
+always agreeable to Sir Leicester; he receives it as a kind of
+tribute. He likes Mr. Tulkinghorn's dress; there is a kind of tribute
+in that too. It is eminently respectable, and likewise, in a general
+way, retainer-like. It expresses, as it were, the steward of the
+legal mysteries, the butler of the legal cellar, of the Dedlocks.
+
+Has Mr. Tulkinghorn any idea of this himself? It may be so, or it may
+not, but there is this remarkable circumstance to be noted in
+everything associated with my Lady Dedlock as one of a class--as one
+of the leaders and representatives of her little world. She supposes
+herself to be an inscrutable Being, quite out of the reach and ken of
+ordinary mortals--seeing herself in her glass, where indeed she looks
+so. Yet every dim little star revolving about her, from her maid to
+the manager of the Italian Opera, knows her weaknesses, prejudices,
+follies, haughtinesses, and caprices and lives upon as accurate a
+calculation and as nice a measure of her moral nature as her
+dressmaker takes of her physical proportions. Is a new dress, a new
+custom, a new singer, a new dancer, a new form of jewellery, a new
+dwarf or giant, a new chapel, a new anything, to be set up? There are
+deferential people in a dozen callings whom my Lady Dedlock suspects
+of nothing but prostration before her, who can tell you how to manage
+her as if she were a baby, who do nothing but nurse her all their
+lives, who, humbly affecting to follow with profound subservience,
+lead her and her whole troop after them; who, in hooking one, hook
+all and bear them off as Lemuel Gulliver bore away the stately fleet
+of the majestic Lilliput. "If you want to address our people, sir,"
+say Blaze and Sparkle, the jewellers--meaning by our people Lady
+Dedlock and the rest--"you must remember that you are not dealing
+with the general public; you must hit our people in their weakest
+place, and their weakest place is such a place." "To make this
+article go down, gentlemen," say Sheen and Gloss, the mercers, to
+their friends the manufacturers, "you must come to us, because we
+know where to have the fashionable people, and we can make it
+fashionable." "If you want to get this print upon the tables of my
+high connexion, sir," says Mr. Sladdery, the librarian, "or if you
+want to get this dwarf or giant into the houses of my high connexion,
+sir, or if you want to secure to this entertainment the patronage of
+my high connexion, sir, you must leave it, if you please, to me, for
+I have been accustomed to study the leaders of my high connexion,
+sir, and I may tell you without vanity that I can turn them round my
+finger"--in which Mr. Sladdery, who is an honest man, does not
+exaggerate at all.
+
+Therefore, while Mr. Tulkinghorn may not know what is passing in the
+Dedlock mind at present, it is very possible that he may.
+
+"My Lady's cause has been again before the Chancellor, has it, Mr.
+Tulkinghorn?" says Sir Leicester, giving him his hand.
+
+"Yes. It has been on again to-day," Mr. Tulkinghorn replies, making
+one of his quiet bows to my Lady, who is on a sofa near the fire,
+shading her face with a hand-screen.
+
+"It would be useless to ask," says my Lady with the dreariness of the
+place in Lincolnshire still upon her, "whether anything has been
+done."
+
+"Nothing that YOU would call anything has been done to-day," replies
+Mr. Tulkinghorn.
+
+"Nor ever will be," says my Lady.
+
+Sir Leicester has no objection to an interminable Chancery suit. It
+is a slow, expensive, British, constitutional kind of thing. To be
+sure, he has not a vital interest in the suit in question, her part
+in which was the only property my Lady brought him; and he has a
+shadowy impression that for his name--the name of Dedlock--to be in a
+cause, and not in the title of that cause, is a most ridiculous
+accident. But he regards the Court of Chancery, even if it should
+involve an occasional delay of justice and a trifling amount of
+confusion, as a something devised in conjunction with a variety of
+other somethings by the perfection of human wisdom for the eternal
+settlement (humanly speaking) of everything. And he is upon the whole
+of a fixed opinion that to give the sanction of his countenance to
+any complaints respecting it would be to encourage some person in the
+lower classes to rise up somewhere--like Wat Tyler.
+
+"As a few fresh affidavits have been put upon the file," says Mr.
+Tulkinghorn, "and as they are short, and as I proceed upon the
+troublesome principle of begging leave to possess my clients with any
+new proceedings in a cause"--cautious man Mr. Tulkinghorn, taking no
+more responsibility than necessary--"and further, as I see you are
+going to Paris, I have brought them in my pocket."
+
+(Sir Leicester was going to Paris too, by the by, but the delight of
+the fashionable intelligence was in his Lady.)
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn takes out his papers, asks permission to place them
+on a golden talisman of a table at my Lady's elbow, puts on his
+spectacles, and begins to read by the light of a shaded lamp.
+
+"'In Chancery. Between John Jarndyce--'"
+
+My Lady interrupts, requesting him to miss as many of the formal
+horrors as he can.
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn glances over his spectacles and begins again lower
+down. My Lady carelessly and scornfully abstracts her attention. Sir
+Leicester in a great chair looks at the file and appears to have a
+stately liking for the legal repetitions and prolixities as ranging
+among the national bulwarks. It happens that the fire is hot where my
+Lady sits and that the hand-screen is more beautiful than useful,
+being priceless but small. My Lady, changing her position, sees the
+papers on the table--looks at them nearer--looks at them nearer
+still--asks impulsively, "Who copied that?"
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn stops short, surprised by my Lady's animation and her
+unusual tone.
+
+"Is it what you people call law-hand?" she asks, looking full at him
+in her careless way again and toying with her screen.
+
+"Not quite. Probably"--Mr. Tulkinghorn examines it as he speaks--"the
+legal character which it has was acquired after the original hand was
+formed. Why do you ask?"
+
+"Anything to vary this detestable monotony. Oh, go on, do!"
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn reads again. The heat is greater; my Lady screens her
+face. Sir Leicester dozes, starts up suddenly, and cries, "Eh? What
+do you say?"
+
+"I say I am afraid," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, who had risen hastily,
+"that Lady Dedlock is ill."
+
+"Faint," my Lady murmurs with white lips, "only that; but it is like
+the faintness of death. Don't speak to me. Ring, and take me to my
+room!"
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn retires into another chamber; bells ring, feet
+shuffle and patter, silence ensues. Mercury at last begs Mr.
+Tulkinghorn to return.
+
+"Better now," quoth Sir Leicester, motioning the lawyer to sit down
+and read to him alone. "I have been quite alarmed. I never knew my
+Lady swoon before. But the weather is extremely trying, and she
+really has been bored to death down at our place in Lincolnshire."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+A Progress
+
+
+I have a great deal of difficulty in beginning to write my portion of
+these pages, for I know I am not clever. I always knew that. I can
+remember, when I was a very little girl indeed, I used to say to my
+doll when we were alone together, "Now, Dolly, I am not clever, you
+know very well, and you must be patient with me, like a dear!" And so
+she used to sit propped up in a great arm-chair, with her beautiful
+complexion and rosy lips, staring at me--or not so much at me, I
+think, as at nothing--while I busily stitched away and told her every
+one of my secrets.
+
+My dear old doll! I was such a shy little thing that I seldom dared
+to open my lips, and never dared to open my heart, to anybody else.
+It almost makes me cry to think what a relief it used to be to me
+when I came home from school of a day to run upstairs to my room and
+say, "Oh, you dear faithful Dolly, I knew you would be expecting me!"
+and then to sit down on the floor, leaning on the elbow of her great
+chair, and tell her all I had noticed since we parted. I had always
+rather a noticing way--not a quick way, oh, no!--a silent way of
+noticing what passed before me and thinking I should like to
+understand it better. I have not by any means a quick understanding.
+When I love a person very tenderly indeed, it seems to brighten. But
+even that may be my vanity.
+
+I was brought up, from my earliest remembrance--like some of the
+princesses in the fairy stories, only I was not charming--by my
+godmother. At least, I only knew her as such. She was a good, good
+woman! She went to church three times every Sunday, and to morning
+prayers on Wednesdays and Fridays, and to lectures whenever there
+were lectures; and never missed. She was handsome; and if she had
+ever smiled, would have been (I used to think) like an angel--but she
+never smiled. She was always grave and strict. She was so very good
+herself, I thought, that the badness of other people made her frown
+all her life. I felt so different from her, even making every
+allowance for the differences between a child and a woman; I felt so
+poor, so trifling, and so far off that I never could be unrestrained
+with her--no, could never even love her as I wished. It made me very
+sorry to consider how good she was and how unworthy of her I was, and
+I used ardently to hope that I might have a better heart; and I
+talked it over very often with the dear old doll, but I never loved
+my godmother as I ought to have loved her and as I felt I must have
+loved her if I had been a better girl.
+
+This made me, I dare say, more timid and retiring than I naturally
+was and cast me upon Dolly as the only friend with whom I felt at
+ease. But something happened when I was still quite a little thing
+that helped it very much.
+
+I had never heard my mama spoken of. I had never heard of my papa
+either, but I felt more interested about my mama. I had never worn a
+black frock, that I could recollect. I had never been shown my mama's
+grave. I had never been told where it was. Yet I had never been
+taught to pray for any relation but my godmother. I had more than
+once approached this subject of my thoughts with Mrs. Rachael, our
+only servant, who took my light away when I was in bed (another very
+good woman, but austere to me), and she had only said, "Esther, good
+night!" and gone away and left me.
+
+Although there were seven girls at the neighbouring school where I
+was a day boarder, and although they called me little Esther
+Summerson, I knew none of them at home. All of them were older than
+I, to be sure (I was the youngest there by a good deal), but there
+seemed to be some other separation between us besides that, and
+besides their being far more clever than I was and knowing much more
+than I did. One of them in the first week of my going to the school
+(I remember it very well) invited me home to a little party, to my
+great joy. But my godmother wrote a stiff letter declining for me,
+and I never went. I never went out at all.
+
+It was my birthday. There were holidays at school on other
+birthdays--none on mine. There were rejoicings at home on other
+birthdays, as I knew from what I heard the girls relate to one
+another--there were none on mine. My birthday was the most melancholy
+day at home in the whole year.
+
+I have mentioned that unless my vanity should deceive me (as I know
+it may, for I may be very vain without suspecting it, though indeed I
+don't), my comprehension is quickened when my affection is. My
+disposition is very affectionate, and perhaps I might still feel such
+a wound if such a wound could be received more than once with the
+quickness of that birthday.
+
+Dinner was over, and my godmother and I were sitting at the table
+before the fire. The clock ticked, the fire clicked; not another
+sound had been heard in the room or in the house for I don't know how
+long. I happened to look timidly up from my stitching, across the
+table at my godmother, and I saw in her face, looking gloomily at me,
+"It would have been far better, little Esther, that you had had no
+birthday, that you had never been born!"
+
+I broke out crying and sobbing, and I said, "Oh, dear godmother, tell
+me, pray do tell me, did Mama die on my birthday?"
+
+"No," she returned. "Ask me no more, child!"
+
+"Oh, do pray tell me something of her. Do now, at last, dear
+godmother, if you please! What did I do to her? How did I lose her?
+Why am I so different from other children, and why is it my fault,
+dear godmother? No, no, no, don't go away. Oh, speak to me!"
+
+I was in a kind of fright beyond my grief, and I caught hold of her
+dress and was kneeling to her. She had been saying all the while,
+"Let me go!" But now she stood still.
+
+Her darkened face had such power over me that it stopped me in the
+midst of my vehemence. I put up my trembling little hand to clasp
+hers or to beg her pardon with what earnestness I might, but withdrew
+it as she looked at me, and laid it on my fluttering heart. She
+raised me, sat in her chair, and standing me before her, said slowly
+in a cold, low voice--I see her knitted brow and pointed
+finger--"Your mother, Esther, is your disgrace, and you were hers.
+The time will come--and soon enough--when you will understand this
+better and will feel it too, as no one save a woman can. I have
+forgiven her"--but her face did not relent--"the wrong she did to me,
+and I say no more of it, though it was greater than you will ever
+know--than any one will ever know but I, the sufferer. For yourself,
+unfortunate girl, orphaned and degraded from the first of these evil
+anniversaries, pray daily that the sins of others be not visited upon
+your head, according to what is written. Forget your mother and leave
+all other people to forget her who will do her unhappy child that
+greatest kindness. Now, go!"
+
+She checked me, however, as I was about to depart from her--so frozen
+as I was!--and added this, "Submission, self-denial, diligent work,
+are the preparations for a life begun with such a shadow on it. You
+are different from other children, Esther, because you were not born,
+like them, in common sinfulness and wrath. You are set apart."
+
+I went up to my room, and crept to bed, and laid my doll's cheek
+against mine wet with tears, and holding that solitary friend upon my
+bosom, cried myself to sleep. Imperfect as my understanding of my
+sorrow was, I knew that I had brought no joy at any time to anybody's
+heart and that I was to no one upon earth what Dolly was to me.
+
+Dear, dear, to think how much time we passed alone together
+afterwards, and how often I repeated to the doll the story of my
+birthday and confided to her that I would try as hard as ever I could
+to repair the fault I had been born with (of which I confessedly felt
+guilty and yet innocent) and would strive as I grew up to be
+industrious, contented, and kind-hearted and to do some good to some
+one, and win some love to myself if I could. I hope it is not
+self-indulgent to shed these tears as I think of it. I am very
+thankful, I am very cheerful, but I cannot quite help their coming to
+my eyes.
+
+There! I have wiped them away now and can go on again properly.
+
+I felt the distance between my godmother and myself so much more
+after the birthday, and felt so sensible of filling a place in her
+house which ought to have been empty, that I found her more difficult
+of approach, though I was fervently grateful to her in my heart, than
+ever. I felt in the same way towards my school companions; I felt in
+the same way towards Mrs. Rachael, who was a widow; and oh, towards
+her daughter, of whom she was proud, who came to see her once a
+fortnight! I was very retired and quiet, and tried to be very
+diligent.
+
+One sunny afternoon when I had come home from school with my books
+and portfolio, watching my long shadow at my side, and as I was
+gliding upstairs to my room as usual, my godmother looked out of the
+parlour-door and called me back. Sitting with her, I found--which was
+very unusual indeed--a stranger. A portly, important-looking
+gentleman, dressed all in black, with a white cravat, large gold
+watch seals, a pair of gold eye-glasses, and a large seal-ring upon
+his little finger.
+
+"This," said my godmother in an undertone, "is the child." Then she
+said in her naturally stern way of speaking, "This is Esther, sir."
+
+The gentleman put up his eye-glasses to look at me and said, "Come
+here, my dear!" He shook hands with me and asked me to take off my
+bonnet, looking at me all the while. When I had complied, he said,
+"Ah!" and afterwards "Yes!" And then, taking off his eye-glasses and
+folding them in a red case, and leaning back in his arm-chair,
+turning the case about in his two hands, he gave my godmother a nod.
+Upon that, my godmother said, "You may go upstairs, Esther!" And I
+made him my curtsy and left him.
+
+It must have been two years afterwards, and I was almost fourteen,
+when one dreadful night my godmother and I sat at the fireside. I was
+reading aloud, and she was listening. I had come down at nine o'clock
+as I always did to read the Bible to her, and was reading from St.
+John how our Saviour stooped down, writing with his finger in the
+dust, when they brought the sinful woman to him.
+
+"So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself and said
+unto them, 'He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a
+stone at her!'"
+
+I was stopped by my godmother's rising, putting her hand to her head,
+and crying out in an awful voice from quite another part of the book,
+"'Watch ye, therefore, lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping. And
+what I say unto you, I say unto all, Watch!'"
+
+In an instant, while she stood before me repeating these words, she
+fell down on the floor. I had no need to cry out; her voice had
+sounded through the house and been heard in the street.
+
+She was laid upon her bed. For more than a week she lay there, little
+altered outwardly, with her old handsome resolute frown that I so
+well knew carved upon her face. Many and many a time, in the day and
+in the night, with my head upon the pillow by her that my whispers
+might be plainer to her, I kissed her, thanked her, prayed for her,
+asked her for her blessing and forgiveness, entreated her to give me
+the least sign that she knew or heard me. No, no, no. Her face was
+immovable. To the very last, and even afterwards, her frown remained
+unsoftened.
+
+On the day after my poor good godmother was buried, the gentleman in
+black with the white neckcloth reappeared. I was sent for by Mrs.
+Rachael, and found him in the same place, as if he had never gone
+away.
+
+"My name is Kenge," he said; "you may remember it, my child; Kenge
+and Carboy, Lincoln's Inn."
+
+I replied that I remembered to have seen him once before.
+
+"Pray be seated--here near me. Don't distress yourself; it's of no
+use. Mrs. Rachael, I needn't inform you who were acquainted with the
+late Miss Barbary's affairs, that her means die with her and that
+this young lady, now her aunt is dead--"
+
+"My aunt, sir!"
+
+"It is really of no use carrying on a deception when no object is to
+be gained by it," said Mr. Kenge smoothly, "Aunt in fact, though not
+in law. Don't distress yourself! Don't weep! Don't tremble! Mrs.
+Rachael, our young friend has no doubt heard of--the--a--Jarndyce and
+Jarndyce."
+
+"Never," said Mrs. Rachael.
+
+"Is it possible," pursued Mr. Kenge, putting up his eye-glasses,
+"that our young friend--I BEG you won't distress yourself!--never
+heard of Jarndyce and Jarndyce!"
+
+I shook my head, wondering even what it was.
+
+"Not of Jarndyce and Jarndyce?" said Mr. Kenge, looking over his
+glasses at me and softly turning the case about and about as if he
+were petting something. "Not of one of the greatest Chancery suits
+known? Not of Jarndyce and Jarndyce--the--a--in itself a monument of
+Chancery practice. In which (I would say) every difficulty, every
+contingency, every masterly fiction, every form of procedure known
+in that court, is represented over and over again? It is a cause
+that could not exist out of this free and great country. I should
+say that the aggregate of costs in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Mrs.
+Rachael"--I was afraid he addressed himself to her because I appeared
+inattentive"--amounts at the present hour to from SIX-ty to SEVEN-ty
+THOUSAND POUNDS!" said Mr. Kenge, leaning back in his chair.
+
+I felt very ignorant, but what could I do? I was so entirely
+unacquainted with the subject that I understood nothing about it even
+then.
+
+"And she really never heard of the cause!" said Mr. Kenge.
+"Surprising!"
+
+"Miss Barbary, sir," returned Mrs. Rachael, "who is now among the
+Seraphim--"
+
+"I hope so, I am sure," said Mr. Kenge politely.
+
+"--Wished Esther only to know what would be serviceable to her. And
+she knows, from any teaching she has had here, nothing more."
+
+"Well!" said Mr. Kenge. "Upon the whole, very proper. Now to the
+point," addressing me. "Miss Barbary, your sole relation (in fact
+that is, for I am bound to observe that in law you had none) being
+deceased and it naturally not being to be expected that Mrs.
+Rachael--"
+
+"Oh, dear no!" said Mrs. Rachael quickly.
+
+"Quite so," assented Mr. Kenge; "--that Mrs. Rachael should charge
+herself with your maintenance and support (I beg you won't distress
+yourself), you are in a position to receive the renewal of an offer
+which I was instructed to make to Miss Barbary some two years ago and
+which, though rejected then, was understood to be renewable under the
+lamentable circumstances that have since occurred. Now, if I avow
+that I represent, in Jarndyce and Jarndyce and otherwise, a highly
+humane, but at the same time singular, man, shall I compromise myself
+by any stretch of my professional caution?" said Mr. Kenge, leaning
+back in his chair again and looking calmly at us both.
+
+He appeared to enjoy beyond everything the sound of his own voice. I
+couldn't wonder at that, for it was mellow and full and gave great
+importance to every word he uttered. He listened to himself with
+obvious satisfaction and sometimes gently beat time to his own music
+with his head or rounded a sentence with his hand. I was very much
+impressed by him--even then, before I knew that he formed himself on
+the model of a great lord who was his client and that he was
+generally called Conversation Kenge.
+
+"Mr. Jarndyce," he pursued, "being aware of the--I would say,
+desolate--position of our young friend, offers to place her at a
+first-rate establishment where her education shall be completed,
+where her comfort shall be secured, where her reasonable wants shall
+be anticipated, where she shall be eminently qualified to discharge
+her duty in that station of life unto which it has pleased--shall I
+say Providence?--to call her."
+
+My heart was filled so full, both by what he said and by his
+affecting manner of saying it, that I was not able to speak, though I
+tried.
+
+"Mr. Jarndyce," he went on, "makes no condition beyond expressing his
+expectation that our young friend will not at any time remove herself
+from the establishment in question without his knowledge and
+concurrence. That she will faithfully apply herself to the
+acquisition of those accomplishments, upon the exercise of which she
+will be ultimately dependent. That she will tread in the paths of
+virtue and honour, and--the--a--so forth."
+
+I was still less able to speak than before.
+
+"Now, what does our young friend say?" proceeded Mr. Kenge. "Take
+time, take time! I pause for her reply. But take time!"
+
+What the destitute subject of such an offer tried to say, I need not
+repeat. What she did say, I could more easily tell, if it were worth
+the telling. What she felt, and will feel to her dying hour, I could
+never relate.
+
+This interview took place at Windsor, where I had passed (as far as I
+knew) my whole life. On that day week, amply provided with all
+necessaries, I left it, inside the stagecoach, for Reading.
+
+Mrs. Rachael was too good to feel any emotion at parting, but I was
+not so good, and wept bitterly. I thought that I ought to have known
+her better after so many years and ought to have made myself enough
+of a favourite with her to make her sorry then. When she gave me one
+cold parting kiss upon my forehead, like a thaw-drop from the stone
+porch--it was a very frosty day--I felt so miserable and
+self-reproachful that I clung to her and told her it was my fault, I
+knew, that she could say good-bye so easily!
+
+"No, Esther!" she returned. "It is your misfortune!"
+
+The coach was at the little lawn-gate--we had not come out until we
+heard the wheels--and thus I left her, with a sorrowful heart. She
+went in before my boxes were lifted to the coach-roof and shut the
+door. As long as I could see the house, I looked back at it from the
+window through my tears. My godmother had left Mrs. Rachael all the
+little property she possessed; and there was to be a sale; and an old
+hearth-rug with roses on it, which always seemed to me the first
+thing in the world I had ever seen, was hanging outside in the frost
+and snow. A day or two before, I had wrapped the dear old doll in her
+own shawl and quietly laid her--I am half ashamed to tell it--in the
+garden-earth under the tree that shaded my old window. I had no
+companion left but my bird, and him I carried with me in his cage.
+
+When the house was out of sight, I sat, with my bird-cage in the
+straw at my feet, forward on the low seat to look out of the high
+window, watching the frosty trees, that were like beautiful pieces of
+spar, and the fields all smooth and white with last night's snow, and
+the sun, so red but yielding so little heat, and the ice, dark like
+metal where the skaters and sliders had brushed the snow away. There
+was a gentleman in the coach who sat on the opposite seat and looked
+very large in a quantity of wrappings, but he sat gazing out of the
+other window and took no notice of me.
+
+I thought of my dead godmother, of the night when I read to her, of
+her frowning so fixedly and sternly in her bed, of the strange place
+I was going to, of the people I should find there, and what they
+would be like, and what they would say to me, when a voice in the
+coach gave me a terrible start.
+
+It said, "What the de-vil are you crying for?"
+
+I was so frightened that I lost my voice and could only answer in a
+whisper, "Me, sir?" For of course I knew it must have been the
+gentleman in the quantity of wrappings, though he was still looking
+out of his window.
+
+"Yes, you," he said, turning round.
+
+"I didn't know I was crying, sir," I faltered.
+
+"But you are!" said the gentleman. "Look here!" He came quite
+opposite to me from the other corner of the coach, brushed one of his
+large furry cuffs across my eyes (but without hurting me), and showed
+me that it was wet.
+
+"There! Now you know you are," he said. "Don't you?"
+
+"Yes, sir," I said.
+
+"And what are you crying for?" said the gentleman, "Don't you want to
+go there?"
+
+"Where, sir?"
+
+"Where? Why, wherever you are going," said the gentleman.
+
+"I am very glad to go there, sir," I answered.
+
+"Well, then! Look glad!" said the gentleman.
+
+I thought he was very strange, or at least that what I could see of
+him was very strange, for he was wrapped up to the chin, and his face
+was almost hidden in a fur cap with broad fur straps at the side of
+his head fastened under his chin; but I was composed again, and not
+afraid of him. So I told him that I thought I must have been crying
+because of my godmother's death and because of Mrs. Rachael's not
+being sorry to part with me.
+
+"Confound Mrs. Rachael!" said the gentleman. "Let her fly away in a
+high wind on a broomstick!"
+
+I began to be really afraid of him now and looked at him with the
+greatest astonishment. But I thought that he had pleasant eyes,
+although he kept on muttering to himself in an angry manner and
+calling Mrs. Rachael names.
+
+After a little while he opened his outer wrapper, which appeared to
+me large enough to wrap up the whole coach, and put his arm down into
+a deep pocket in the side.
+
+"Now, look here!" he said. "In this paper," which was nicely folded,
+"is a piece of the best plum-cake that can be got for money--sugar on
+the outside an inch thick, like fat on mutton chops. Here's a little
+pie (a gem this is, both for size and quality), made in France. And
+what do you suppose it's made of? Livers of fat geese. There's a pie!
+Now let's see you eat 'em."
+
+"Thank you, sir," I replied; "thank you very much indeed, but I hope
+you won't be offended--they are too rich for me."
+
+"Floored again!" said the gentleman, which I didn't at all
+understand, and threw them both out of window.
+
+He did not speak to me any more until he got out of the coach a
+little way short of Reading, when he advised me to be a good girl and
+to be studious, and shook hands with me. I must say I was relieved by
+his departure. We left him at a milestone. I often walked past it
+afterwards, and never for a long time without thinking of him and
+half expecting to meet him. But I never did; and so, as time went on,
+he passed out of my mind.
+
+When the coach stopped, a very neat lady looked up at the window and
+said, "Miss Donny."
+
+"No, ma'am, Esther Summerson."
+
+"That is quite right," said the lady, "Miss Donny."
+
+I now understood that she introduced herself by that name, and begged
+Miss Donny's pardon for my mistake, and pointed out my boxes at her
+request. Under the direction of a very neat maid, they were put
+outside a very small green carriage; and then Miss Donny, the maid,
+and I got inside and were driven away.
+
+"Everything is ready for you, Esther," said Miss Donny, "and the
+scheme of your pursuits has been arranged in exact accordance with
+the wishes of your guardian, Mr. Jarndyce."
+
+"Of--did you say, ma'am?"
+
+"Of your guardian, Mr. Jarndyce," said Miss Donny.
+
+I was so bewildered that Miss Donny thought the cold had been too
+severe for me and lent me her smelling-bottle.
+
+"Do you know my--guardian, Mr. Jarndyce, ma'am?" I asked after a good
+deal of hesitation.
+
+"Not personally, Esther," said Miss Donny; "merely through his
+solicitors, Messrs. Kenge and Carboy, of London. A very superior
+gentleman, Mr. Kenge. Truly eloquent indeed. Some of his periods
+quite majestic!"
+
+I felt this to be very true but was too confused to attend to it. Our
+speedy arrival at our destination, before I had time to recover
+myself, increased my confusion, and I never shall forget the
+uncertain and the unreal air of everything at Greenleaf (Miss Donny's
+house) that afternoon!
+
+But I soon became used to it. I was so adapted to the routine of
+Greenleaf before long that I seemed to have been there a great while
+and almost to have dreamed rather than really lived my old life at my
+godmother's. Nothing could be more precise, exact, and orderly than
+Greenleaf. There was a time for everything all round the dial of the
+clock, and everything was done at its appointed moment.
+
+We were twelve boarders, and there were two Miss Donnys, twins. It
+was understood that I would have to depend, by and by, on my
+qualifications as a governess, and I was not only instructed in
+everything that was taught at Greenleaf, but was very soon engaged in
+helping to instruct others. Although I was treated in every other
+respect like the rest of the school, this single difference was made
+in my case from the first. As I began to know more, I taught more,
+and so in course of time I had plenty to do, which I was very fond of
+doing because it made the dear girls fond of me. At last, whenever a
+new pupil came who was a little downcast and unhappy, she was so
+sure--indeed I don't know why--to make a friend of me that all
+new-comers were confided to my care. They said I was so gentle, but I
+am sure THEY were! I often thought of the resolution I had made on my
+birthday to try to be industrious, contented, and true-hearted and to
+do some good to some one and win some love if I could; and indeed,
+indeed, I felt almost ashamed to have done so little and have won so
+much.
+
+I passed at Greenleaf six happy, quiet years. I never saw in any face
+there, thank heaven, on my birthday, that it would have been better
+if I had never been born. When the day came round, it brought me so
+many tokens of affectionate remembrance that my room was beautiful
+with them from New Year's Day to Christmas.
+
+In those six years I had never been away except on visits at holiday
+time in the neighbourhood. After the first six months or so I had
+taken Miss Donny's advice in reference to the propriety of writing to
+Mr. Kenge to say that I was happy and grateful, and with her approval
+I had written such a letter. I had received a formal answer
+acknowledging its receipt and saying, "We note the contents thereof,
+which shall be duly communicated to our client." After that I
+sometimes heard Miss Donny and her sister mention how regular my
+accounts were paid, and about twice a year I ventured to write a
+similar letter. I always received by return of post exactly the same
+answer in the same round hand, with the signature of Kenge and Carboy
+in another writing, which I supposed to be Mr. Kenge's.
+
+It seems so curious to me to be obliged to write all this about
+myself! As if this narrative were the narrative of MY life! But my
+little body will soon fall into the background now.
+
+Six quiet years (I find I am saying it for the second time) I had
+passed at Greenleaf, seeing in those around me, as it might be in a
+looking-glass, every stage of my own growth and change there, when,
+one November morning, I received this letter. I omit the date.
+
+
+   Old Square, Lincoln's Inn
+
+   Madam,
+
+   Jarndyce and Jarndyce
+
+   Our clt Mr. Jarndyce being abt to rece into his house,
+   under an Order of the Ct of Chy, a Ward of the Ct in this
+   cause, for whom he wishes to secure an elgble compn,
+   directs us to inform you that he will be glad of your
+   serces in the afsd capacity.
+
+   We have arrngd for your being forded, carriage free, pr
+   eight o'clock coach from Reading, on Monday morning next,
+   to White Horse Cellar, Piccadilly, London, where one of
+   our clks will be in waiting to convey you to our offe as
+   above.
+
+   We are, Madam, Your obedt Servts,
+
+   Kenge and Carboy
+
+   Miss Esther Summerson
+
+
+Oh, never, never, never shall I forget the emotion this letter caused
+in the house! It was so tender in them to care so much for me, it was
+so gracious in that father who had not forgotten me to have made my
+orphan way so smooth and easy and to have inclined so many youthful
+natures towards me, that I could hardly bear it. Not that I would
+have had them less sorry--I am afraid not; but the pleasure of it,
+and the pain of it, and the pride and joy of it, and the humble
+regret of it were so blended that my heart seemed almost breaking
+while it was full of rapture.
+
+The letter gave me only five days' notice of my removal. When every
+minute added to the proofs of love and kindness that were given me in
+those five days, and when at last the morning came and when they took
+me through all the rooms that I might see them for the last time, and
+when some cried, "Esther, dear, say good-bye to me here at my
+bedside, where you first spoke so kindly to me!" and when others
+asked me only to write their names, "With Esther's love," and when
+they all surrounded me with their parting presents and clung to me
+weeping and cried, "What shall we do when dear, dear Esther's gone!"
+and when I tried to tell them how forbearing and how good they had
+all been to me and how I blessed and thanked them every one, what a
+heart I had!
+
+And when the two Miss Donnys grieved as much to part with me as the
+least among them, and when the maids said, "Bless you, miss, wherever
+you go!" and when the ugly lame old gardener, who I thought had
+hardly noticed me in all those years, came panting after the coach to
+give me a little nosegay of geraniums and told me I had been the
+light of his eyes--indeed the old man said so!--what a heart I had
+then!
+
+And could I help it if with all this, and the coming to the little
+school, and the unexpected sight of the poor children outside waving
+their hats and bonnets to me, and of a grey-haired gentleman and lady
+whose daughter I had helped to teach and at whose house I had visited
+(who were said to be the proudest people in all that country), caring
+for nothing but calling out, "Good-bye, Esther. May you be very
+happy!"--could I help it if I was quite bowed down in the coach by
+myself and said "Oh, I am so thankful, I am so thankful!" many times
+over!
+
+But of course I soon considered that I must not take tears where I
+was going after all that had been done for me. Therefore, of course,
+I made myself sob less and persuaded myself to be quiet by saying
+very often, "Esther, now you really must! This WILL NOT do!" I
+cheered myself up pretty well at last, though I am afraid I was
+longer about it than I ought to have been; and when I had cooled my
+eyes with lavender water, it was time to watch for London.
+
+I was quite persuaded that we were there when we were ten miles off,
+and when we really were there, that we should never get there.
+However, when we began to jolt upon a stone pavement, and
+particularly when every other conveyance seemed to be running into
+us, and we seemed to be running into every other conveyance, I began
+to believe that we really were approaching the end of our journey.
+Very soon afterwards we stopped.
+
+A young gentleman who had inked himself by accident addressed me from
+the pavement and said, "I am from Kenge and Carboy's, miss, of
+Lincoln's Inn."
+
+"If you please, sir," said I.
+
+He was very obliging, and as he handed me into a fly after
+superintending the removal of my boxes, I asked him whether there was
+a great fire anywhere? For the streets were so full of dense brown
+smoke that scarcely anything was to be seen.
+
+"Oh, dear no, miss," he said. "This is a London particular."
+
+I had never heard of such a thing.
+
+"A fog, miss," said the young gentleman.
+
+"Oh, indeed!" said I.
+
+We drove slowly through the dirtiest and darkest streets that ever
+were seen in the world (I thought) and in such a distracting state of
+confusion that I wondered how the people kept their senses, until we
+passed into sudden quietude under an old gateway and drove on through
+a silent square until we came to an odd nook in a corner, where there
+was an entrance up a steep, broad flight of stairs, like an entrance
+to a church. And there really was a churchyard outside under some
+cloisters, for I saw the gravestones from the staircase window.
+
+This was Kenge and Carboy's. The young gentleman showed me through an
+outer office into Mr. Kenge's room--there was no one in it--and
+politely put an arm-chair for me by the fire. He then called my
+attention to a little looking-glass hanging from a nail on one side
+of the chimney-piece.
+
+"In case you should wish to look at yourself, miss, after the
+journey, as you're going before the Chancellor. Not that it's
+requisite, I am sure," said the young gentleman civilly.
+
+"Going before the Chancellor?" I said, startled for a moment.
+
+"Only a matter of form, miss," returned the young gentleman. "Mr.
+Kenge is in court now. He left his compliments, and would you partake
+of some refreshment"--there were biscuits and a decanter of wine on a
+small table--"and look over the paper," which the young gentleman
+gave me as he spoke. He then stirred the fire and left me.
+
+Everything was so strange--the stranger from its being night in the
+day-time, the candles burning with a white flame, and looking raw and
+cold--that I read the words in the newspaper without knowing what
+they meant and found myself reading the same words repeatedly. As it
+was of no use going on in that way, I put the paper down, took a peep
+at my bonnet in the glass to see if it was neat, and looked at the
+room, which was not half lighted, and at the shabby, dusty tables,
+and at the piles of writings, and at a bookcase full of the most
+inexpressive-looking books that ever had anything to say for
+themselves. Then I went on, thinking, thinking, thinking; and the
+fire went on, burning, burning, burning; and the candles went on
+flickering and guttering, and there were no snuffers--until the young
+gentleman by and by brought a very dirty pair--for two hours.
+
+At last Mr. Kenge came. HE was not altered, but he was surprised to
+see how altered I was and appeared quite pleased. "As you are going
+to be the companion of the young lady who is now in the Chancellor's
+private room, Miss Summerson," he said, "we thought it well that you
+should be in attendance also. You will not be discomposed by the Lord
+Chancellor, I dare say?"
+
+"No, sir," I said, "I don't think I shall," really not seeing on
+consideration why I should be.
+
+So Mr. Kenge gave me his arm and we went round the corner, under a
+colonnade, and in at a side door. And so we came, along a passage,
+into a comfortable sort of room where a young lady and a young
+gentleman were standing near a great, loud-roaring fire. A screen was
+interposed between them and it, and they were leaning on the screen,
+talking.
+
+They both looked up when I came in, and I saw in the young lady, with
+the fire shining upon her, such a beautiful girl! With such rich
+golden hair, such soft blue eyes, and such a bright, innocent,
+trusting face!
+
+"Miss Ada," said Mr. Kenge, "this is Miss Summerson."
+
+She came to meet me with a smile of welcome and her hand extended,
+but seemed to change her mind in a moment and kissed me. In short,
+she had such a natural, captivating, winning manner that in a few
+minutes we were sitting in the window-seat, with the light of the
+fire upon us, talking together as free and happy as could be.
+
+What a load off my mind! It was so delightful to know that she could
+confide in me and like me! It was so good of her, and so encouraging
+to me!
+
+The young gentleman was her distant cousin, she told me, and his name
+Richard Carstone. He was a handsome youth with an ingenuous face and
+a most engaging laugh; and after she had called him up to where we
+sat, he stood by us, in the light of the fire, talking gaily, like a
+light-hearted boy. He was very young, not more than nineteen then, if
+quite so much, but nearly two years older than she was. They were
+both orphans and (what was very unexpected and curious to me) had
+never met before that day. Our all three coming together for the
+first time in such an unusual place was a thing to talk about, and we
+talked about it; and the fire, which had left off roaring, winked its
+red eyes at us--as Richard said--like a drowsy old Chancery lion.
+
+We conversed in a low tone because a full-dressed gentleman in a bag
+wig frequently came in and out, and when he did so, we could hear a
+drawling sound in the distance, which he said was one of the counsel
+in our case addressing the Lord Chancellor. He told Mr. Kenge that
+the Chancellor would be up in five minutes; and presently we heard a
+bustle and a tread of feet, and Mr. Kenge said that the Court had
+risen and his lordship was in the next room.
+
+The gentleman in the bag wig opened the door almost directly and
+requested Mr. Kenge to come in. Upon that, we all went into the next
+room, Mr. Kenge first, with my darling--it is so natural to me now
+that I can't help writing it; and there, plainly dressed in black and
+sitting in an arm-chair at a table near the fire, was his lordship,
+whose robe, trimmed with beautiful gold lace, was thrown upon another
+chair. He gave us a searching look as we entered, but his manner was
+both courtly and kind.
+
+The gentleman in the bag wig laid bundles of papers on his lordship's
+table, and his lordship silently selected one and turned over the
+leaves.
+
+"Miss Clare," said the Lord Chancellor. "Miss Ada Clare?"
+
+Mr. Kenge presented her, and his lordship begged her to sit down near
+him. That he admired her and was interested by her even I could see
+in a moment. It touched me that the home of such a beautiful young
+creature should be represented by that dry, official place. The Lord
+High Chancellor, at his best, appeared so poor a substitute for the
+love and pride of parents.
+
+"The Jarndyce in question," said the Lord Chancellor, still turning
+over leaves, "is Jarndyce of Bleak House."
+
+"Jarndyce of Bleak House, my lord," said Mr. Kenge.
+
+"A dreary name," said the Lord Chancellor.
+
+"But not a dreary place at present, my lord," said Mr. Kenge.
+
+"And Bleak House," said his lordship, "is in--"
+
+"Hertfordshire, my lord."
+
+"Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House is not married?" said his lordship.
+
+"He is not, my lord," said Mr. Kenge.
+
+A pause.
+
+"Young Mr. Richard Carstone is present?" said the Lord Chancellor,
+glancing towards him.
+
+Richard bowed and stepped forward.
+
+"Hum!" said the Lord Chancellor, turning over more leaves.
+
+"Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House, my lord," Mr. Kenge observed in a low
+voice, "if I may venture to remind your lordship, provides a suitable
+companion for--"
+
+"For Mr. Richard Carstone?" I thought (but I am not quite sure) I
+heard his lordship say in an equally low voice and with a smile.
+
+"For Miss Ada Clare. This is the young lady. Miss Summerson."
+
+His lordship gave me an indulgent look and acknowledged my curtsy
+very graciously.
+
+"Miss Summerson is not related to any party in the cause, I think?"
+
+"No, my lord."
+
+Mr. Kenge leant over before it was quite said and whispered. His
+lordship, with his eyes upon his papers, listened, nodded twice or
+thrice, turned over more leaves, and did not look towards me again
+until we were going away.
+
+Mr. Kenge now retired, and Richard with him, to where I was, near the
+door, leaving my pet (it is so natural to me that again I can't help
+it!) sitting near the Lord Chancellor, with whom his lordship spoke a
+little part, asking her, as she told me afterwards, whether she had
+well reflected on the proposed arrangement, and if she thought she
+would be happy under the roof of Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House, and why
+she thought so? Presently he rose courteously and released her, and
+then he spoke for a minute or two with Richard Carstone, not seated,
+but standing, and altogether with more ease and less ceremony, as if
+he still knew, though he WAS Lord Chancellor, how to go straight to
+the candour of a boy.
+
+"Very well!" said his lordship aloud. "I shall make the order. Mr.
+Jarndyce of Bleak House has chosen, so far as I may judge," and this
+was when he looked at me, "a very good companion for the young lady,
+and the arrangement altogether seems the best of which the
+circumstances admit."
+
+He dismissed us pleasantly, and we all went out, very much obliged to
+him for being so affable and polite, by which he had certainly lost
+no dignity but seemed to us to have gained some.
+
+When we got under the colonnade, Mr. Kenge remembered that he must go
+back for a moment to ask a question and left us in the fog, with the
+Lord Chancellor's carriage and servants waiting for him to come out.
+
+"Well!" said Richard Carstone. "THAT'S over! And where do we go next,
+Miss Summerson?"
+
+"Don't you know?" I said.
+
+"Not in the least," said he.
+
+"And don't YOU know, my love?" I asked Ada.
+
+"No!" said she. "Don't you?"
+
+"Not at all!" said I.
+
+We looked at one another, half laughing at our being like the
+children in the wood, when a curious little old woman in a squeezed
+bonnet and carrying a reticule came curtsying and smiling up to us
+with an air of great ceremony.
+
+"Oh!" said she. "The wards in Jarndyce! Ve-ry happy, I am sure, to
+have the honour! It is a good omen for youth, and hope, and beauty
+when they find themselves in this place, and don't know what's to
+come of it."
+
+"Mad!" whispered Richard, not thinking she could hear him.
+
+"Right! Mad, young gentleman," she returned so quickly that he was
+quite abashed. "I was a ward myself. I was not mad at that time,"
+curtsying low and smiling between every little sentence. "I had youth
+and hope. I believe, beauty. It matters very little now. Neither of
+the three served or saved me. I have the honour to attend court
+regularly. With my documents. I expect a judgment. Shortly. On the
+Day of Judgment. I have discovered that the sixth seal mentioned in
+the Revelations is the Great Seal. It has been open a long time! Pray
+accept my blessing."
+
+As Ada was a little frightened, I said, to humour the poor old lady,
+that we were much obliged to her.
+
+"Ye-es!" she said mincingly. "I imagine so. And here is Conversation
+Kenge. With HIS documents! How does your honourable worship do?"
+
+"Quite well, quite well! Now don't be troublesome, that's a good
+soul!" said Mr. Kenge, leading the way back.
+
+"By no means," said the poor old lady, keeping up with Ada and me.
+"Anything but troublesome. I shall confer estates on both--which is
+not being troublesome, I trust? I expect a judgment. Shortly. On the
+Day of Judgment. This is a good omen for you. Accept my blessing!"
+
+She stopped at the bottom of the steep, broad flight of stairs; but
+we looked back as we went up, and she was still there, saying, still
+with a curtsy and a smile between every little sentence, "Youth. And
+hope. And beauty. And Chancery. And Conversation Kenge! Ha! Pray
+accept my blessing!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Telescopic Philanthropy
+
+
+We were to pass the night, Mr. Kenge told us when we arrived in his
+room, at Mrs. Jellyby's; and then he turned to me and said he took it
+for granted I knew who Mrs. Jellyby was.
+
+"I really don't, sir," I returned. "Perhaps Mr. Carstone--or Miss
+Clare--"
+
+But no, they knew nothing whatever about Mrs. Jellyby. "In-deed! Mrs.
+Jellyby," said Mr. Kenge, standing with his back to the fire and
+casting his eyes over the dusty hearth-rug as if it were Mrs.
+Jellyby's biography, "is a lady of very remarkable strength of
+character who devotes herself entirely to the public. She has devoted
+herself to an extensive variety of public subjects at various times
+and is at present (until something else attracts her) devoted to the
+subject of Africa, with a view to the general cultivation of the
+coffee berry--AND the natives--and the happy settlement, on the banks
+of the African rivers, of our superabundant home population. Mr.
+Jarndyce, who is desirous to aid any work that is considered likely
+to be a good work and who is much sought after by philanthropists,
+has, I believe, a very high opinion of Mrs. Jellyby."
+
+Mr. Kenge, adjusting his cravat, then looked at us.
+
+"And Mr. Jellyby, sir?" suggested Richard.
+
+"Ah! Mr. Jellyby," said Mr. Kenge, "is--a--I don't know that I can
+describe him to you better than by saying that he is the husband of
+Mrs. Jellyby."
+
+"A nonentity, sir?" said Richard with a droll look.
+
+"I don't say that," returned Mr. Kenge gravely. "I can't say that,
+indeed, for I know nothing whatever OF Mr. Jellyby. I never, to my
+knowledge, had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Jellyby. He may be a very
+superior man, but he is, so to speak, merged--merged--in the more
+shining qualities of his wife." Mr. Kenge proceeded to tell us that
+as the road to Bleak House would have been very long, dark, and
+tedious on such an evening, and as we had been travelling already,
+Mr. Jarndyce had himself proposed this arrangement. A carriage would
+be at Mrs. Jellyby's to convey us out of town early in the forenoon
+of to-morrow.
+
+He then rang a little bell, and the young gentleman came in.
+Addressing him by the name of Guppy, Mr. Kenge inquired whether Miss
+Summerson's boxes and the rest of the baggage had been "sent round."
+Mr. Guppy said yes, they had been sent round, and a coach was waiting
+to take us round too as soon as we pleased.
+
+"Then it only remains," said Mr. Kenge, shaking hands with us, "for
+me to express my lively satisfaction in (good day, Miss Clare!) the
+arrangement this day concluded and my (GOOD-bye to you, Miss
+Summerson!) lively hope that it will conduce to the happiness, the
+(glad to have had the honour of making your acquaintance, Mr.
+Carstone!) welfare, the advantage in all points of view, of all
+concerned! Guppy, see the party safely there."
+
+"Where IS 'there,' Mr. Guppy?" said Richard as we went downstairs.
+
+"No distance," said Mr. Guppy; "round in Thavies Inn, you know."
+
+"I can't say I know where it is, for I come from Winchester and am
+strange in London."
+
+"Only round the corner," said Mr. Guppy. "We just twist up Chancery
+Lane, and cut along Holborn, and there we are in four minutes' time,
+as near as a toucher. This is about a London particular NOW, ain't
+it, miss?" He seemed quite delighted with it on my account.
+
+"The fog is very dense indeed!" said I.
+
+"Not that it affects you, though, I'm sure," said Mr. Guppy, putting
+up the steps. "On the contrary, it seems to do you good, miss,
+judging from your appearance."
+
+I knew he meant well in paying me this compliment, so I laughed at
+myself for blushing at it when he had shut the door and got upon the
+box; and we all three laughed and chatted about our inexperience and
+the strangeness of London until we turned up under an archway to our
+destination--a narrow street of high houses like an oblong cistern to
+hold the fog. There was a confused little crowd of people,
+principally children, gathered about the house at which we stopped,
+which had a tarnished brass plate on the door with the inscription
+JELLYBY.
+
+"Don't be frightened!" said Mr. Guppy, looking in at the
+coach-window. "One of the young Jellybys been and got his head
+through the area railings!"
+
+"Oh, poor child," said I; "let me out, if you please!"
+
+"Pray be careful of yourself, miss. The young Jellybys are always up
+to something," said Mr. Guppy.
+
+I made my way to the poor child, who was one of the dirtiest little
+unfortunates I ever saw, and found him very hot and frightened and
+crying loudly, fixed by the neck between two iron railings, while a
+milkman and a beadle, with the kindest intentions possible, were
+endeavouring to drag him back by the legs, under a general impression
+that his skull was compressible by those means. As I found (after
+pacifying him) that he was a little boy with a naturally large head,
+I thought that perhaps where his head could go, his body could
+follow, and mentioned that the best mode of extrication might be to
+push him forward. This was so favourably received by the milkman and
+beadle that he would immediately have been pushed into the area if I
+had not held his pinafore while Richard and Mr. Guppy ran down
+through the kitchen to catch him when he should be released. At last
+he was happily got down without any accident, and then he began to
+beat Mr. Guppy with a hoop-stick in quite a frantic manner.
+
+Nobody had appeared belonging to the house except a person in
+pattens, who had been poking at the child from below with a broom; I
+don't know with what object, and I don't think she did. I therefore
+supposed that Mrs. Jellyby was not at home, and was quite surprised
+when the person appeared in the passage without the pattens, and
+going up to the back room on the first floor before Ada and me,
+announced us as, "Them two young ladies, Missis Jellyby!" We passed
+several more children on the way up, whom it was difficult to avoid
+treading on in the dark; and as we came into Mrs. Jellyby's presence,
+one of the poor little things fell downstairs--down a whole flight
+(as it sounded to me), with a great noise.
+
+Mrs. Jellyby, whose face reflected none of the uneasiness which we
+could not help showing in our own faces as the dear child's head
+recorded its passage with a bump on every stair--Richard afterwards
+said he counted seven, besides one for the landing--received us with
+perfect equanimity. She was a pretty, very diminutive, plump woman of
+from forty to fifty, with handsome eyes, though they had a curious
+habit of seeming to look a long way off. As if--I am quoting Richard
+again--they could see nothing nearer than Africa!
+
+"I am very glad indeed," said Mrs. Jellyby in an agreeable voice, "to
+have the pleasure of receiving you. I have a great respect for Mr.
+Jarndyce, and no one in whom he is interested can be an object of
+indifference to me."
+
+We expressed our acknowledgments and sat down behind the door, where
+there was a lame invalid of a sofa. Mrs. Jellyby had very good hair
+but was too much occupied with her African duties to brush it. The
+shawl in which she had been loosely muffled dropped onto her chair
+when she advanced to us; and as she turned to resume her seat, we
+could not help noticing that her dress didn't nearly meet up the back
+and that the open space was railed across with a lattice-work of
+stay-lace--like a summer-house.
+
+The room, which was strewn with papers and nearly filled by a great
+writing-table covered with similar litter, was, I must say, not only
+very untidy but very dirty. We were obliged to take notice of that
+with our sense of sight, even while, with our sense of hearing, we
+followed the poor child who had tumbled downstairs: I think into the
+back kitchen, where somebody seemed to stifle him.
+
+But what principally struck us was a jaded and unhealthy-looking
+though by no means plain girl at the writing-table, who sat biting
+the feather of her pen and staring at us. I suppose nobody ever was
+in such a state of ink. And from her tumbled hair to her pretty feet,
+which were disfigured with frayed and broken satin slippers trodden
+down at heel, she really seemed to have no article of dress upon her,
+from a pin upwards, that was in its proper condition or its right
+place.
+
+"You find me, my dears," said Mrs. Jellyby, snuffing the two great
+office candles in tin candlesticks, which made the room taste
+strongly of hot tallow (the fire had gone out, and there was nothing
+in the grate but ashes, a bundle of wood, and a poker), "you find me,
+my dears, as usual, very busy; but that you will excuse. The African
+project at present employs my whole time. It involves me in
+correspondence with public bodies and with private individuals
+anxious for the welfare of their species all over the country. I am
+happy to say it is advancing. We hope by this time next year to have
+from a hundred and fifty to two hundred healthy families cultivating
+coffee and educating the natives of Borrioboola-Gha, on the left bank
+of the Niger."
+
+As Ada said nothing, but looked at me, I said it must be very
+gratifying.
+
+"It IS gratifying," said Mrs. Jellyby. "It involves the devotion of
+all my energies, such as they are; but that is nothing, so that it
+succeeds; and I am more confident of success every day. Do you know,
+Miss Summerson, I almost wonder that YOU never turned your thoughts
+to Africa."
+
+This application of the subject was really so unexpected to me that I
+was quite at a loss how to receive it. I hinted that the climate--
+
+"The finest climate in the world!" said Mrs. Jellyby.
+
+"Indeed, ma'am?"
+
+"Certainly. With precaution," said Mrs. Jellyby. "You may go into
+Holborn, without precaution, and be run over. You may go into
+Holborn, with precaution, and never be run over. Just so with
+Africa."
+
+I said, "No doubt." I meant as to Holborn.
+
+"If you would like," said Mrs. Jellyby, putting a number of papers
+towards us, "to look over some remarks on that head, and on the
+general subject, which have been extensively circulated, while I
+finish a letter I am now dictating to my eldest daughter, who is my
+amanuensis--"
+
+The girl at the table left off biting her pen and made a return to
+our recognition, which was half bashful and half sulky.
+
+"--I shall then have finished for the present," proceeded Mrs.
+Jellyby with a sweet smile, "though my work is never done. Where are
+you, Caddy?"
+
+"'Presents her compliments to Mr. Swallow, and begs--'" said Caddy.
+
+"'And begs,'" said Mrs. Jellyby, dictating, "'to inform him, in
+reference to his letter of inquiry on the African project--' No,
+Peepy! Not on my account!"
+
+Peepy (so self-named) was the unfortunate child who had fallen
+downstairs, who now interrupted the correspondence by presenting
+himself, with a strip of plaster on his forehead, to exhibit his
+wounded knees, in which Ada and I did not know which to pity
+most--the bruises or the dirt. Mrs. Jellyby merely added, with the
+serene composure with which she said everything, "Go along, you
+naughty Peepy!" and fixed her fine eyes on Africa again.
+
+However, as she at once proceeded with her dictation, and as I
+interrupted nothing by doing it, I ventured quietly to stop poor
+Peepy as he was going out and to take him up to nurse. He looked very
+much astonished at it and at Ada's kissing him, but soon fell fast
+asleep in my arms, sobbing at longer and longer intervals, until he
+was quiet. I was so occupied with Peepy that I lost the letter in
+detail, though I derived such a general impression from it of the
+momentous importance of Africa, and the utter insignificance of all
+other places and things, that I felt quite ashamed to have thought so
+little about it.
+
+"Six o'clock!" said Mrs. Jellyby. "And our dinner hour is nominally
+(for we dine at all hours) five! Caddy, show Miss Clare and Miss
+Summerson their rooms. You will like to make some change, perhaps?
+You will excuse me, I know, being so much occupied. Oh, that very bad
+child! Pray put him down, Miss Summerson!"
+
+I begged permission to retain him, truly saying that he was not at
+all troublesome, and carried him upstairs and laid him on my bed. Ada
+and I had two upper rooms with a door of communication between. They
+were excessively bare and disorderly, and the curtain to my window
+was fastened up with a fork.
+
+"You would like some hot water, wouldn't you?" said Miss Jellyby,
+looking round for a jug with a handle to it, but looking in vain.
+
+"If it is not being troublesome," said we.
+
+"Oh, it's not the trouble," returned Miss Jellyby; "the question is,
+if there IS any."
+
+The evening was so very cold and the rooms had such a marshy smell
+that I must confess it was a little miserable, and Ada was half
+crying. We soon laughed, however, and were busily unpacking when Miss
+Jellyby came back to say that she was sorry there was no hot water,
+but they couldn't find the kettle, and the boiler was out of order.
+
+We begged her not to mention it and made all the haste we could to
+get down to the fire again. But all the little children had come up
+to the landing outside to look at the phenomenon of Peepy lying on my
+bed, and our attention was distracted by the constant apparition of
+noses and fingers in situations of danger between the hinges of the
+doors. It was impossible to shut the door of either room, for my
+lock, with no knob to it, looked as if it wanted to be wound up; and
+though the handle of Ada's went round and round with the greatest
+smoothness, it was attended with no effect whatever on the door.
+Therefore I proposed to the children that they should come in and be
+very good at my table, and I would tell them the story of Little Red
+Riding Hood while I dressed; which they did, and were as quiet as
+mice, including Peepy, who awoke opportunely before the appearance of
+the wolf.
+
+When we went downstairs we found a mug with "A Present from Tunbridge
+Wells" on it lighted up in the staircase window with a floating wick,
+and a young woman, with a swelled face bound up in a flannel bandage
+blowing the fire of the drawing-room (now connected by an open door
+with Mrs. Jellyby's room) and choking dreadfully. It smoked to that
+degree, in short, that we all sat coughing and crying with the
+windows open for half an hour, during which Mrs. Jellyby, with the
+same sweetness of temper, directed letters about Africa. Her being so
+employed was, I must say, a great relief to me, for Richard told us
+that he had washed his hands in a pie-dish and that they had found
+the kettle on his dressing-table, and he made Ada laugh so that they
+made me laugh in the most ridiculous manner.
+
+Soon after seven o'clock we went down to dinner, carefully, by Mrs.
+Jellyby's advice, for the stair-carpets, besides being very deficient
+in stair-wires, were so torn as to be absolute traps. We had a fine
+cod-fish, a piece of roast beef, a dish of cutlets, and a pudding; an
+excellent dinner, if it had had any cooking to speak of, but it was
+almost raw. The young woman with the flannel bandage waited, and
+dropped everything on the table wherever it happened to go, and never
+moved it again until she put it on the stairs. The person I had seen
+in pattens, who I suppose to have been the cook, frequently came and
+skirmished with her at the door, and there appeared to be ill will
+between them.
+
+All through dinner--which was long, in consequence of such accidents
+as the dish of potatoes being mislaid in the coal skuttle and the
+handle of the corkscrew coming off and striking the young woman in
+the chin--Mrs. Jellyby preserved the evenness of her disposition. She
+told us a great deal that was interesting about Borrioboola-Gha and
+the natives, and received so many letters that Richard, who sat by
+her, saw four envelopes in the gravy at once. Some of the letters
+were proceedings of ladies' committees or resolutions of ladies'
+meetings, which she read to us; others were applications from people
+excited in various ways about the cultivation of coffee, and natives;
+others required answers, and these she sent her eldest daughter from
+the table three or four times to write. She was full of business and
+undoubtedly was, as she had told us, devoted to the cause.
+
+I was a little curious to know who a mild bald gentleman in
+spectacles was, who dropped into a vacant chair (there was no top or
+bottom in particular) after the fish was taken away and seemed
+passively to submit himself to Borrioboola-Gha but not to be actively
+interested in that settlement. As he never spoke a word, he might
+have been a native but for his complexion. It was not until we left
+the table and he remained alone with Richard that the possibility of
+his being Mr. Jellyby ever entered my head. But he WAS Mr. Jellyby;
+and a loquacious young man called Mr. Quale, with large shining knobs
+for temples and his hair all brushed to the back of his head, who
+came in the evening, and told Ada he was a philanthropist, also
+informed her that he called the matrimonial alliance of Mrs. Jellyby
+with Mr. Jellyby the union of mind and matter.
+
+This young man, besides having a great deal to say for himself about
+Africa and a project of his for teaching the coffee colonists to
+teach the natives to turn piano-forte legs and establish an export
+trade, delighted in drawing Mrs. Jellyby out by saying, "I believe
+now, Mrs. Jellyby, you have received as many as from one hundred and
+fifty to two hundred letters respecting Africa in a single day, have
+you not?" or, "If my memory does not deceive me, Mrs. Jellyby, you
+once mentioned that you had sent off five thousand circulars from one
+post-office at one time?"--always repeating Mrs. Jellyby's answer to
+us like an interpreter. During the whole evening, Mr. Jellyby sat in
+a corner with his head against the wall as if he were subject to low
+spirits. It seemed that he had several times opened his mouth when
+alone with Richard after dinner, as if he had something on his mind,
+but had always shut it again, to Richard's extreme confusion, without
+saying anything.
+
+Mrs. Jellyby, sitting in quite a nest of waste paper, drank coffee
+all the evening and dictated at intervals to her eldest daughter. She
+also held a discussion with Mr. Quale, of which the subject seemed to
+be--if I understood it--the brotherhood of humanity, and gave
+utterance to some beautiful sentiments. I was not so attentive an
+auditor as I might have wished to be, however, for Peepy and the
+other children came flocking about Ada and me in a corner of the
+drawing-room to ask for another story; so we sat down among them and
+told them in whispers "Puss in Boots" and I don't know what else
+until Mrs. Jellyby, accidentally remembering them, sent them to bed.
+As Peepy cried for me to take him to bed, I carried him upstairs,
+where the young woman with the flannel bandage charged into the midst
+of the little family like a dragon and overturned them into cribs.
+
+After that I occupied myself in making our room a little tidy and in
+coaxing a very cross fire that had been lighted to burn, which at
+last it did, quite brightly. On my return downstairs, I felt that
+Mrs. Jellyby looked down upon me rather for being so frivolous, and I
+was sorry for it, though at the same time I knew that I had no higher
+pretensions.
+
+It was nearly midnight before we found an opportunity of going to
+bed, and even then we left Mrs. Jellyby among her papers drinking
+coffee and Miss Jellyby biting the feather of her pen.
+
+"What a strange house!" said Ada when we got upstairs. "How curious
+of my cousin Jarndyce to send us here!"
+
+"My love," said I, "it quite confuses me. I want to understand it,
+and I can't understand it at all."
+
+"What?" asked Ada with her pretty smile.
+
+"All this, my dear," said I. "It MUST be very good of Mrs. Jellyby to
+take such pains about a scheme for the benefit of natives--and
+yet--Peepy and the housekeeping!"
+
+Ada laughed and put her arm about my neck as I stood looking at the
+fire, and told me I was a quiet, dear, good creature and had won her
+heart. "You are so thoughtful, Esther," she said, "and yet so
+cheerful! And you do so much, so unpretendingly! You would make a
+home out of even this house."
+
+My simple darling! She was quite unconscious that she only praised
+herself and that it was in the goodness of her own heart that she
+made so much of me!
+
+"May I ask you a question?" said I when we had sat before the fire a
+little while.
+
+"Five hundred," said Ada.
+
+"Your cousin, Mr. Jarndyce. I owe so much to him. Would you mind
+describing him to me?"
+
+Shaking her golden hair, Ada turned her eyes upon me with such
+laughing wonder that I was full of wonder too, partly at her beauty,
+partly at her surprise.
+
+"Esther!" she cried.
+
+"My dear!"
+
+"You want a description of my cousin Jarndyce?"
+
+"My dear, I never saw him."
+
+"And I never saw him!" returned Ada.
+
+Well, to be sure!
+
+No, she had never seen him. Young as she was when her mama died, she
+remembered how the tears would come into her eyes when she spoke of
+him and of the noble generosity of his character, which she had said
+was to be trusted above all earthly things; and Ada trusted it. Her
+cousin Jarndyce had written to her a few months ago--"a plain, honest
+letter," Ada said--proposing the arrangement we were now to enter on
+and telling her that "in time it might heal some of the wounds made
+by the miserable Chancery suit." She had replied, gratefully
+accepting his proposal. Richard had received a similar letter and had
+made a similar response. He HAD seen Mr. Jarndyce once, but only
+once, five years ago, at Winchester school. He had told Ada, when
+they were leaning on the screen before the fire where I found them,
+that he recollected him as "a bluff, rosy fellow." This was the
+utmost description Ada could give me.
+
+It set me thinking so that when Ada was asleep, I still remained
+before the fire, wondering and wondering about Bleak House, and
+wondering and wondering that yesterday morning should seem so long
+ago. I don't know where my thoughts had wandered when they were
+recalled by a tap at the door.
+
+I opened it softly and found Miss Jellyby shivering there with a
+broken candle in a broken candlestick in one hand and an egg-cup in
+the other.
+
+"Good night!" she said very sulkily.
+
+"Good night!" said I.
+
+"May I come in?" she shortly and unexpectedly asked me in the same
+sulky way.
+
+"Certainly," said I. "Don't wake Miss Clare."
+
+She would not sit down, but stood by the fire dipping her inky middle
+finger in the egg-cup, which contained vinegar, and smearing it over
+the ink stains on her face, frowning the whole time and looking very
+gloomy.
+
+"I wish Africa was dead!" she said on a sudden.
+
+I was going to remonstrate.
+
+"I do!" she said "Don't talk to me, Miss Summerson. I hate it and
+detest it. It's a beast!"
+
+I told her she was tired, and I was sorry. I put my hand upon her
+head, and touched her forehead, and said it was hot now but would be
+cool to-morrow. She still stood pouting and frowning at me, but
+presently put down her egg-cup and turned softly towards the bed
+where Ada lay.
+
+"She is very pretty!" she said with the same knitted brow and in the
+same uncivil manner.
+
+I assented with a smile.
+
+"An orphan. Ain't she?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But knows a quantity, I suppose? Can dance, and play music, and
+sing? She can talk French, I suppose, and do geography, and globes,
+and needlework, and everything?"
+
+"No doubt," said I.
+
+"I can't," she returned. "I can't do anything hardly, except write.
+I'm always writing for Ma. I wonder you two were not ashamed of
+yourselves to come in this afternoon and see me able to do nothing
+else. It was like your ill nature. Yet you think yourselves very
+fine, I dare say!"
+
+I could see that the poor girl was near crying, and I resumed my
+chair without speaking and looked at her (I hope) as mildly as I felt
+towards her.
+
+"It's disgraceful," she said. "You know it is. The whole house is
+disgraceful. The children are disgraceful. I'M disgraceful. Pa's
+miserable, and no wonder! Priscilla drinks--she's always drinking.
+It's a great shame and a great story of you if you say you didn't
+smell her to-day. It was as bad as a public-house, waiting at dinner;
+you know it was!"
+
+"My dear, I don't know it," said I.
+
+"You do," she said very shortly. "You shan't say you don't. You do!"
+
+"Oh, my dear!" said I. "If you won't let me speak--"
+
+"You're speaking now. You know you are. Don't tell stories, Miss
+Summerson."
+
+"My dear," said I, "as long as you won't hear me out--"
+
+"I don't want to hear you out."
+
+"Oh, yes, I think you do," said I, "because that would be so very
+unreasonable. I did not know what you tell me because the servant did
+not come near me at dinner; but I don't doubt what you tell me, and I
+am sorry to hear it."
+
+"You needn't make a merit of that," said she.
+
+"No, my dear," said I. "That would be very foolish."
+
+She was still standing by the bed, and now stooped down (but still
+with the same discontented face) and kissed Ada. That done, she came
+softly back and stood by the side of my chair. Her bosom was heaving
+in a distressful manner that I greatly pitied, but I thought it
+better not to speak.
+
+"I wish I was dead!" she broke out. "I wish we were all dead. It
+would be a great deal better for us."
+
+In a moment afterwards, she knelt on the ground at my side, hid her
+face in my dress, passionately begged my pardon, and wept. I
+comforted her and would have raised her, but she cried no, no; she
+wanted to stay there!
+
+"You used to teach girls," she said, "If you could only have taught
+me, I could have learnt from you! I am so very miserable, and I like
+you so much!"
+
+I could not persuade her to sit by me or to do anything but move a
+ragged stool to where she was kneeling, and take that, and still hold
+my dress in the same manner. By degrees the poor tired girl fell
+asleep, and then I contrived to raise her head so that it should rest
+on my lap, and to cover us both with shawls. The fire went out, and
+all night long she slumbered thus before the ashy grate. At first I
+was painfully awake and vainly tried to lose myself, with my eyes
+closed, among the scenes of the day. At length, by slow degrees, they
+became indistinct and mingled. I began to lose the identity of the
+sleeper resting on me. Now it was Ada, now one of my old Reading
+friends from whom I could not believe I had so recently parted. Now
+it was the little mad woman worn out with curtsying and smiling, now
+some one in authority at Bleak House. Lastly, it was no one, and I
+was no one.
+
+The purblind day was feebly struggling with the fog when I opened my
+eyes to encounter those of a dirty-faced little spectre fixed upon
+me. Peepy had scaled his crib, and crept down in his bed-gown and
+cap, and was so cold that his teeth were chattering as if he had cut
+them all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+A Morning Adventure
+
+
+Although the morning was raw, and although the fog still seemed
+heavy--I say seemed, for the windows were so encrusted with dirt that
+they would have made midsummer sunshine dim--I was sufficiently
+forewarned of the discomfort within doors at that early hour and
+sufficiently curious about London to think it a good idea on the part
+of Miss Jellyby when she proposed that we should go out for a walk.
+
+"Ma won't be down for ever so long," she said, "and then it's a
+chance if breakfast's ready for an hour afterwards, they dawdle so.
+As to Pa, he gets what he can and goes to the office. He never has
+what you would call a regular breakfast. Priscilla leaves him out the
+loaf and some milk, when there is any, overnight. Sometimes there
+isn't any milk, and sometimes the cat drinks it. But I'm afraid you
+must be tired, Miss Summerson, and perhaps you would rather go to
+bed."
+
+"I am not at all tired, my dear," said I, "and would much prefer to
+go out."
+
+"If you're sure you would," returned Miss Jellyby, "I'll get my
+things on."
+
+Ada said she would go too, and was soon astir. I made a proposal to
+Peepy, in default of being able to do anything better for him, that
+he should let me wash him and afterwards lay him down on my bed
+again. To this he submitted with the best grace possible, staring at
+me during the whole operation as if he never had been, and never
+could again be, so astonished in his life--looking very miserable
+also, certainly, but making no complaint, and going snugly to sleep
+as soon as it was over. At first I was in two minds about taking such
+a liberty, but I soon reflected that nobody in the house was likely
+to notice it.
+
+What with the bustle of dispatching Peepy and the bustle of getting
+myself ready and helping Ada, I was soon quite in a glow. We found
+Miss Jellyby trying to warm herself at the fire in the writing-room,
+which Priscilla was then lighting with a smutty parlour candlestick,
+throwing the candle in to make it burn better. Everything was just as
+we had left it last night and was evidently intended to remain so.
+Below-stairs the dinner-cloth had not been taken away, but had been
+left ready for breakfast. Crumbs, dust, and waste-paper were all over
+the house. Some pewter pots and a milk-can hung on the area railings;
+the door stood open; and we met the cook round the corner coming out
+of a public-house, wiping her mouth. She mentioned, as she passed us,
+that she had been to see what o'clock it was.
+
+But before we met the cook, we met Richard, who was dancing up and
+down Thavies Inn to warm his feet. He was agreeably surprised to see
+us stirring so soon and said he would gladly share our walk. So he
+took care of Ada, and Miss Jellyby and I went first. I may mention
+that Miss Jellyby had relapsed into her sulky manner and that I
+really should not have thought she liked me much unless she had told
+me so.
+
+"Where would you wish to go?" she asked.
+
+"Anywhere, my dear," I replied.
+
+"Anywhere's nowhere," said Miss Jellyby, stopping perversely.
+
+"Let us go somewhere at any rate," said I.
+
+She then walked me on very fast.
+
+"I don't care!" she said. "Now, you are my witness, Miss Summerson, I
+say I don't care--but if he was to come to our house with his great,
+shining, lumpy forehead night after night till he was as old as
+Methuselah, I wouldn't have anything to say to him. Such ASSES as he
+and Ma make of themselves!"
+
+"My dear!" I remonstrated, in allusion to the epithet and the
+vigorous emphasis Miss Jellyby set upon it. "Your duty as a child--"
+
+"Oh! Don't talk of duty as a child, Miss Summerson; where's Ma's duty
+as a parent? All made over to the public and Africa, I suppose! Then
+let the public and Africa show duty as a child; it's much more their
+affair than mine. You are shocked, I dare say! Very well, so am I
+shocked too; so we are both shocked, and there's an end of it!"
+
+She walked me on faster yet.
+
+"But for all that, I say again, he may come, and come, and come, and
+I won't have anything to say to him. I can't bear him. If there's any
+stuff in the world that I hate and detest, it's the stuff he and Ma
+talk. I wonder the very paving-stones opposite our house can have the
+patience to stay there and be a witness of such inconsistencies and
+contradictions as all that sounding nonsense, and Ma's management!"
+
+I could not but understand her to refer to Mr. Quale, the young
+gentleman who had appeared after dinner yesterday. I was saved the
+disagreeable necessity of pursuing the subject by Richard and Ada
+coming up at a round pace, laughing and asking us if we meant to run
+a race. Thus interrupted, Miss Jellyby became silent and walked
+moodily on at my side while I admired the long successions and
+varieties of streets, the quantity of people already going to and
+fro, the number of vehicles passing and repassing, the busy
+preparations in the setting forth of shop windows and the sweeping
+out of shops, and the extraordinary creatures in rags secretly
+groping among the swept-out rubbish for pins and other refuse.
+
+"So, cousin," said the cheerful voice of Richard to Ada behind me.
+"We are never to get out of Chancery! We have come by another way to
+our place of meeting yesterday, and--by the Great Seal, here's the
+old lady again!"
+
+Truly, there she was, immediately in front of us, curtsying, and
+smiling, and saying with her yesterday's air of patronage, "The wards
+in Jarndyce! Ve-ry happy, I am sure!"
+
+"You are out early, ma'am," said I as she curtsied to me.
+
+"Ye-es! I usually walk here early. Before the court sits. It's
+retired. I collect my thoughts here for the business of the day,"
+said the old lady mincingly. "The business of the day requires a
+great deal of thought. Chancery justice is so ve-ry difficult to
+follow."
+
+"Who's this, Miss Summerson?" whispered Miss Jellyby, drawing my arm
+tighter through her own.
+
+The little old lady's hearing was remarkably quick. She answered for
+herself directly.
+
+"A suitor, my child. At your service. I have the honour to attend
+court regularly. With my documents. Have I the pleasure of addressing
+another of the youthful parties in Jarndyce?" said the old lady,
+recovering herself, with her head on one side, from a very low
+curtsy.
+
+Richard, anxious to atone for his thoughtlessness of yesterday,
+good-naturedly explained that Miss Jellyby was not connected with the
+suit.
+
+"Ha!" said the old lady. "She does not expect a judgment? She will
+still grow old. But not so old. Oh, dear, no! This is the garden of
+Lincoln's Inn. I call it my garden. It is quite a bower in the
+summer-time. Where the birds sing melodiously. I pass the greater
+part of the long vacation here. In contemplation. You find the long
+vacation exceedingly long, don't you?"
+
+We said yes, as she seemed to expect us to say so.
+
+"When the leaves are falling from the trees and there are no more
+flowers in bloom to make up into nosegays for the Lord Chancellor's
+court," said the old lady, "the vacation is fulfilled and the sixth
+seal, mentioned in the Revelations, again prevails. Pray come and see
+my lodging. It will be a good omen for me. Youth, and hope, and
+beauty are very seldom there. It is a long, long time since I had a
+visit from either."
+
+She had taken my hand, and leading me and Miss Jellyby away, beckoned
+Richard and Ada to come too. I did not know how to excuse myself and
+looked to Richard for aid. As he was half amused and half curious and
+all in doubt how to get rid of the old lady without offence, she
+continued to lead us away, and he and Ada continued to follow, our
+strange conductress informing us all the time, with much smiling
+condescension, that she lived close by.
+
+It was quite true, as it soon appeared. She lived so close by that we
+had not time to have done humouring her for a few moments before she
+was at home. Slipping us out at a little side gate, the old lady
+stopped most unexpectedly in a narrow back street, part of some
+courts and lanes immediately outside the wall of the inn, and said,
+"This is my lodging. Pray walk up!"
+
+She had stopped at a shop over which was written KROOK, RAG AND
+BOTTLE WAREHOUSE. Also, in long thin letters, KROOK, DEALER IN MARINE
+STORES. In one part of the window was a picture of a red paper mill
+at which a cart was unloading a quantity of sacks of old rags. In
+another was the inscription BONES BOUGHT. In another, KITCHEN-STUFF
+BOUGHT. In another, OLD IRON BOUGHT. In another, WASTE-PAPER BOUGHT.
+In another, LADIES' AND GENTLEMEN'S WARDROBES BOUGHT. Everything
+seemed to be bought and nothing to be sold there. In all parts of the
+window were quantities of dirty bottles--blacking bottles, medicine
+bottles, ginger-beer and soda-water bottles, pickle bottles, wine
+bottles, ink bottles; I am reminded by mentioning the latter that the
+shop had in several little particulars the air of being in a legal
+neighbourhood and of being, as it were, a dirty hanger-on and
+disowned relation of the law. There were a great many ink bottles.
+There was a little tottering bench of shabby old volumes outside the
+door, labelled "Law Books, all at 9d." Some of the inscriptions I
+have enumerated were written in law-hand, like the papers I had seen
+in Kenge and Carboy's office and the letters I had so long received
+from the firm. Among them was one, in the same writing, having
+nothing to do with the business of the shop, but announcing that a
+respectable man aged forty-five wanted engrossing or copying to
+execute with neatness and dispatch: Address to Nemo, care of Mr.
+Krook, within. There were several second-hand bags, blue and red,
+hanging up. A little way within the shop-door lay heaps of old
+crackled parchment scrolls and discoloured and dog's-eared
+law-papers. I could have fancied that all the rusty keys, of which
+there must have been hundreds huddled together as old iron, had once
+belonged to doors of rooms or strong chests in lawyers' offices. The
+litter of rags tumbled partly into and partly out of a one-legged
+wooden scale, hanging without any counterpoise from a beam, might
+have been counsellors' bands and gowns torn up. One had only to
+fancy, as Richard whispered to Ada and me while we all stood looking
+in, that yonder bones in a corner, piled together and picked very
+clean, were the bones of clients, to make the picture complete.
+
+As it was still foggy and dark, and as the shop was blinded besides
+by the wall of Lincoln's Inn, intercepting the light within a couple
+of yards, we should not have seen so much but for a lighted lantern
+that an old man in spectacles and a hairy cap was carrying about in
+the shop. Turning towards the door, he now caught sight of us. He was
+short, cadaverous, and withered, with his head sunk sideways between
+his shoulders and the breath issuing in visible smoke from his mouth
+as if he were on fire within. His throat, chin, and eyebrows were so
+frosted with white hairs and so gnarled with veins and puckered skin
+that he looked from his breast upward like some old root in a fall of
+snow.
+
+"Hi, hi!" said the old man, coming to the door. "Have you anything to
+sell?"
+
+We naturally drew back and glanced at our conductress, who had been
+trying to open the house-door with a key she had taken from her
+pocket, and to whom Richard now said that as we had had the pleasure
+of seeing where she lived, we would leave her, being pressed for
+time. But she was not to be so easily left. She became so
+fantastically and pressingly earnest in her entreaties that we would
+walk up and see her apartment for an instant, and was so bent, in her
+harmless way, on leading me in, as part of the good omen she desired,
+that I (whatever the others might do) saw nothing for it but to
+comply. I suppose we were all more or less curious; at any rate, when
+the old man added his persuasions to hers and said, "Aye, aye! Please
+her! It won't take a minute! Come in, come in! Come in through the
+shop if t'other door's out of order!" we all went in, stimulated by
+Richard's laughing encouragement and relying on his protection.
+
+"My landlord, Krook," said the little old lady, condescending to him
+from her lofty station as she presented him to us. "He is called
+among the neighbours the Lord Chancellor. His shop is called the
+Court of Chancery. He is a very eccentric person. He is very odd. Oh,
+I assure you he is very odd!"
+
+She shook her head a great many times and tapped her forehead with
+her finger to express to us that we must have the goodness to excuse
+him, "For he is a little--you know--M!" said the old lady with great
+stateliness. The old man overheard, and laughed.
+
+"It's true enough," he said, going before us with the lantern, "that
+they call me the Lord Chancellor and call my shop Chancery. And why
+do you think they call me the Lord Chancellor and my shop Chancery?"
+
+"I don't know, I am sure!" said Richard rather carelessly.
+
+"You see," said the old man, stopping and turning round, "they--Hi!
+Here's lovely hair! I have got three sacks of ladies' hair below, but
+none so beautiful and fine as this. What colour, and what texture!"
+
+"That'll do, my good friend!" said Richard, strongly disapproving of
+his having drawn one of Ada's tresses through his yellow hand. "You
+can admire as the rest of us do without taking that liberty."
+
+The old man darted at him a sudden look which even called my
+attention from Ada, who, startled and blushing, was so remarkably
+beautiful that she seemed to fix the wandering attention of the
+little old lady herself. But as Ada interposed and laughingly said
+she could only feel proud of such genuine admiration, Mr. Krook
+shrunk into his former self as suddenly as he had leaped out of it.
+
+"You see, I have so many things here," he resumed, holding up the
+lantern, "of so many kinds, and all as the neighbours think (but THEY
+know nothing), wasting away and going to rack and ruin, that that's
+why they have given me and my place a christening. And I have so many
+old parchmentses and papers in my stock. And I have a liking for rust
+and must and cobwebs. And all's fish that comes to my net. And I
+can't abear to part with anything I once lay hold of (or so my
+neighbours think, but what do THEY know?) or to alter anything, or to
+have any sweeping, nor scouring, nor cleaning, nor repairing going on
+about me. That's the way I've got the ill name of Chancery. I don't
+mind. I go to see my noble and learned brother pretty well every day,
+when he sits in the Inn. He don't notice me, but I notice him.
+There's no great odds betwixt us. We both grub on in a muddle. Hi,
+Lady Jane!"
+
+A large grey cat leaped from some neighbouring shelf on his shoulder
+and startled us all.
+
+"Hi! Show 'em how you scratch. Hi! Tear, my lady!" said her master.
+
+The cat leaped down and ripped at a bundle of rags with her tigerish
+claws, with a sound that it set my teeth on edge to hear.
+
+"She'd do as much for any one I was to set her on," said the old man.
+"I deal in cat-skins among other general matters, and hers was
+offered to me. It's a very fine skin, as you may see, but I didn't
+have it stripped off! THAT warn't like Chancery practice though, says
+you!"
+
+He had by this time led us across the shop, and now opened a door in
+the back part of it, leading to the house-entry. As he stood with his
+hand upon the lock, the little old lady graciously observed to him
+before passing out, "That will do, Krook. You mean well, but are
+tiresome. My young friends are pressed for time. I have none to spare
+myself, having to attend court very soon. My young friends are the
+wards in Jarndyce."
+
+"Jarndyce!" said the old man with a start.
+
+"Jarndyce and Jarndyce. The great suit, Krook," returned his lodger.
+
+"Hi!" exclaimed the old man in a tone of thoughtful amazement and
+with a wider stare than before. "Think of it!"
+
+He seemed so rapt all in a moment and looked so curiously at us that
+Richard said, "Why, you appear to trouble yourself a good deal about
+the causes before your noble and learned brother, the other
+Chancellor!"
+
+"Yes," said the old man abstractedly. "Sure! YOUR name now will be--"
+
+"Richard Carstone."
+
+"Carstone," he repeated, slowly checking off that name upon his
+forefinger; and each of the others he went on to mention upon a
+separate finger. "Yes. There was the name of Barbary, and the name of
+Clare, and the name of Dedlock, too, I think."
+
+"He knows as much of the cause as the real salaried Chancellor!" said
+Richard, quite astonished, to Ada and me.
+
+"Aye!" said the old man, coming slowly out of his abstraction. "Yes!
+Tom Jarndyce--you'll excuse me, being related; but he was never known
+about court by any other name, and was as well known there as--she is
+now," nodding slightly at his lodger. "Tom Jarndyce was often in
+here. He got into a restless habit of strolling about when the cause
+was on, or expected, talking to the little shopkeepers and telling
+'em to keep out of Chancery, whatever they did. 'For,' says he, 'it's
+being ground to bits in a slow mill; it's being roasted at a slow
+fire; it's being stung to death by single bees; it's being drowned by
+drops; it's going mad by grains.' He was as near making away with
+himself, just where the young lady stands, as near could be."
+
+We listened with horror.
+
+"He come in at the door," said the old man, slowly pointing an
+imaginary track along the shop, "on the day he did it--the whole
+neighbourhood had said for months before that he would do it, of a
+certainty sooner or later--he come in at the door that day, and
+walked along there, and sat himself on a bench that stood there, and
+asked me (you'll judge I was a mortal sight younger then) to fetch
+him a pint of wine. 'For,' says he, 'Krook, I am much depressed; my
+cause is on again, and I think I'm nearer judgment than I ever was.'
+I hadn't a mind to leave him alone; and I persuaded him to go to the
+tavern over the way there, t'other side my lane (I mean Chancery
+Lane); and I followed and looked in at the window, and saw him,
+comfortable as I thought, in the arm-chair by the fire, and company
+with him. I hadn't hardly got back here when I heard a shot go
+echoing and rattling right away into the inn. I ran out--neighbours
+ran out--twenty of us cried at once, 'Tom Jarndyce!'"
+
+The old man stopped, looked hard at us, looked down into the lantern,
+blew the light out, and shut the lantern up.
+
+"We were right, I needn't tell the present hearers. Hi! To be sure,
+how the neighbourhood poured into court that afternoon while the
+cause was on! How my noble and learned brother, and all the rest of
+'em, grubbed and muddled away as usual and tried to look as if they
+hadn't heard a word of the last fact in the case or as if they
+had--Oh, dear me!--nothing at all to do with it if they had heard of
+it by any chance!"
+
+Ada's colour had entirely left her, and Richard was scarcely less
+pale. Nor could I wonder, judging even from my emotions, and I was no
+party in the suit, that to hearts so untried and fresh it was a shock
+to come into the inheritance of a protracted misery, attended in the
+minds of many people with such dreadful recollections. I had another
+uneasiness, in the application of the painful story to the poor
+half-witted creature who had brought us there; but, to my surprise,
+she seemed perfectly unconscious of that and only led the way
+upstairs again, informing us with the toleration of a superior
+creature for the infirmities of a common mortal that her landlord was
+"a little M, you know!"
+
+She lived at the top of the house, in a pretty large room, from which
+she had a glimpse of Lincoln's Inn Hall. This seemed to have been her
+principal inducement, originally, for taking up her residence there.
+She could look at it, she said, in the night, especially in the
+moonshine. Her room was clean, but very, very bare. I noticed the
+scantiest necessaries in the way of furniture; a few old prints from
+books, of Chancellors and barristers, wafered against the wall; and
+some half-dozen reticles and work-bags, "containing documents," as
+she informed us. There were neither coals nor ashes in the grate, and
+I saw no articles of clothing anywhere, nor any kind of food. Upon a
+shelf in an open cupboard were a plate or two, a cup or two, and so
+forth, but all dry and empty. There was a more affecting meaning in
+her pinched appearance, I thought as I looked round, than I had
+understood before.
+
+"Extremely honoured, I am sure," said our poor hostess with the
+greatest suavity, "by this visit from the wards in Jarndyce. And very
+much indebted for the omen. It is a retired situation. Considering. I
+am limited as to situation. In consequence of the necessity of
+attending on the Chancellor. I have lived here many years. I pass my
+days in court, my evenings and my nights here. I find the nights
+long, for I sleep but little and think much. That is, of course,
+unavoidable, being in Chancery. I am sorry I cannot offer chocolate.
+I expect a judgment shortly and shall then place my establishment on
+a superior footing. At present, I don't mind confessing to the wards
+in Jarndyce (in strict confidence) that I sometimes find it difficult
+to keep up a genteel appearance. I have felt the cold here. I have
+felt something sharper than cold. It matters very little. Pray excuse
+the introduction of such mean topics."
+
+She partly drew aside the curtain of the long, low garret window and
+called our attention to a number of bird-cages hanging there, some
+containing several birds. There were larks, linnets, and
+goldfinches--I should think at least twenty.
+
+"I began to keep the little creatures," she said, "with an object
+that the wards will readily comprehend. With the intention of
+restoring them to liberty. When my judgment should be given. Ye-es!
+They die in prison, though. Their lives, poor silly things, are so
+short in comparison with Chancery proceedings that, one by one, the
+whole collection has died over and over again. I doubt, do you know,
+whether one of these, though they are all young, will live to be
+free! Ve-ry mortifying, is it not?"
+
+Although she sometimes asked a question, she never seemed to expect a
+reply, but rambled on as if she were in the habit of doing so when no
+one but herself was present.
+
+"Indeed," she pursued, "I positively doubt sometimes, I do assure
+you, whether while matters are still unsettled, and the sixth or
+Great Seal still prevails, I may not one day be found lying stark and
+senseless here, as I have found so many birds!"
+
+Richard, answering what he saw in Ada's compassionate eyes, took the
+opportunity of laying some money, softly and unobserved, on the
+chimney-piece. We all drew nearer to the cages, feigning to examine
+the birds.
+
+"I can't allow them to sing much," said the little old lady, "for
+(you'll think this curious) I find my mind confused by the idea that
+they are singing while I am following the arguments in court. And my
+mind requires to be so very clear, you know! Another time, I'll tell
+you their names. Not at present. On a day of such good omen, they
+shall sing as much as they like. In honour of youth," a smile and
+curtsy, "hope," a smile and curtsy, "and beauty," a smile and curtsy.
+"There! We'll let in the full light."
+
+The birds began to stir and chirp.
+
+"I cannot admit the air freely," said the little old lady--the room
+was close, and would have been the better for it--"because the cat
+you saw downstairs, called Lady Jane, is greedy for their lives. She
+crouches on the parapet outside for hours and hours. I have
+discovered," whispering mysteriously, "that her natural cruelty is
+sharpened by a jealous fear of their regaining their liberty. In
+consequence of the judgment I expect being shortly given. She is sly
+and full of malice. I half believe, sometimes, that she is no cat,
+but the wolf of the old saying. It is so very difficult to keep her
+from the door."
+
+Some neighbouring bells, reminding the poor soul that it was
+half-past nine, did more for us in the way of bringing our visit to
+an end than we could easily have done for ourselves. She hurriedly
+took up her little bag of documents, which she had laid upon the
+table on coming in, and asked if we were also going into court. On
+our answering no, and that we would on no account detain her, she
+opened the door to attend us downstairs.
+
+"With such an omen, it is even more necessary than usual that I
+should be there before the Chancellor comes in," said she, "for he
+might mention my case the first thing. I have a presentiment that he
+WILL mention it the first thing this morning."
+
+She stopped to tell us in a whisper as we were going down that the
+whole house was filled with strange lumber which her landlord had
+bought piecemeal and had no wish to sell, in consequence of being a
+little M. This was on the first floor. But she had made a previous
+stoppage on the second floor and had silently pointed at a dark door
+there.
+
+"The only other lodger," she now whispered in explanation, "a
+law-writer. The children in the lanes here say he has sold himself to
+the devil. I don't know what he can have done with the money. Hush!"
+
+She appeared to mistrust that the lodger might hear her even there,
+and repeating "Hush!" went before us on tiptoe as though even the
+sound of her footsteps might reveal to him what she had said.
+
+Passing through the shop on our way out, as we had passed through it
+on our way in, we found the old man storing a quantity of packets of
+waste-paper in a kind of well in the floor. He seemed to be working
+hard, with the perspiration standing on his forehead, and had a piece
+of chalk by him, with which, as he put each separate package or
+bundle down, he made a crooked mark on the panelling of the wall.
+
+Richard and Ada, and Miss Jellyby, and the little old lady had gone
+by him, and I was going when he touched me on the arm to stay me, and
+chalked the letter J upon the wall--in a very curious manner,
+beginning with the end of the letter and shaping it backward. It was
+a capital letter, not a printed one, but just such a letter as any
+clerk in Messrs. Kenge and Carboy's office would have made.
+
+"Can you read it?" he asked me with a keen glance.
+
+"Surely," said I. "It's very plain."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"J."
+
+With another glance at me, and a glance at the door, he rubbed it out
+and turned an "a" in its place (not a capital letter this time), and
+said, "What's that?"
+
+I told him. He then rubbed that out and turned the letter "r," and
+asked me the same question. He went on quickly until he had formed in
+the same curious manner, beginning at the ends and bottoms of the
+letters, the word Jarndyce, without once leaving two letters on the
+wall together.
+
+"What does that spell?" he asked me.
+
+When I told him, he laughed. In the same odd way, yet with the same
+rapidity, he then produced singly, and rubbed out singly, the letters
+forming the words Bleak House. These, in some astonishment, I also
+read; and he laughed again.
+
+"Hi!" said the old man, laying aside the chalk. "I have a turn for
+copying from memory, you see, miss, though I can neither read nor
+write."
+
+He looked so disagreeable and his cat looked so wickedly at me, as if
+I were a blood-relation of the birds upstairs, that I was quite
+relieved by Richard's appearing at the door and saying, "Miss
+Summerson, I hope you are not bargaining for the sale of your hair.
+Don't be tempted. Three sacks below are quite enough for Mr. Krook!"
+
+I lost no time in wishing Mr. Krook good morning and joining my
+friends outside, where we parted with the little old lady, who gave
+us her blessing with great ceremony and renewed her assurance of
+yesterday in reference to her intention of settling estates on Ada
+and me. Before we finally turned out of those lanes, we looked back
+and saw Mr. Krook standing at his shop-door, in his spectacles,
+looking after us, with his cat upon his shoulder, and her tail
+sticking up on one side of his hairy cap like a tall feather.
+
+"Quite an adventure for a morning in London!" said Richard with a
+sigh. "Ah, cousin, cousin, it's a weary word this Chancery!"
+
+"It is to me, and has been ever since I can remember," returned Ada.
+"I am grieved that I should be the enemy--as I suppose I am--of a
+great number of relations and others, and that they should be my
+enemies--as I suppose they are--and that we should all be ruining one
+another without knowing how or why and be in constant doubt and
+discord all our lives. It seems very strange, as there must be right
+somewhere, that an honest judge in real earnest has not been able to
+find out through all these years where it is."
+
+"Ah, cousin!" said Richard. "Strange, indeed! All this wasteful,
+wanton chess-playing IS very strange. To see that composed court
+yesterday jogging on so serenely and to think of the wretchedness of
+the pieces on the board gave me the headache and the heartache both
+together. My head ached with wondering how it happened, if men were
+neither fools nor rascals; and my heart ached to think they could
+possibly be either. But at all events, Ada--I may call you Ada?"
+
+"Of course you may, cousin Richard."
+
+"At all events, Chancery will work none of its bad influences on US.
+We have happily been brought together, thanks to our good kinsman,
+and it can't divide us now!"
+
+"Never, I hope, cousin Richard!" said Ada gently.
+
+Miss Jellyby gave my arm a squeeze and me a very significant look. I
+smiled in return, and we made the rest of the way back very
+pleasantly.
+
+In half an hour after our arrival, Mrs. Jellyby appeared; and in the
+course of an hour the various things necessary for breakfast
+straggled one by one into the dining-room. I do not doubt that Mrs.
+Jellyby had gone to bed and got up in the usual manner, but she
+presented no appearance of having changed her dress. She was greatly
+occupied during breakfast, for the morning's post brought a heavy
+correspondence relative to Borrioboola-Gha, which would occasion her
+(she said) to pass a busy day. The children tumbled about, and
+notched memoranda of their accidents in their legs, which were
+perfect little calendars of distress; and Peepy was lost for an hour
+and a half, and brought home from Newgate market by a policeman. The
+equable manner in which Mrs. Jellyby sustained both his absence and
+his restoration to the family circle surprised us all.
+
+She was by that time perseveringly dictating to Caddy, and Caddy was
+fast relapsing into the inky condition in which we had found her. At
+one o'clock an open carriage arrived for us, and a cart for our
+luggage. Mrs. Jellyby charged us with many remembrances to her good
+friend Mr. Jarndyce; Caddy left her desk to see us depart, kissed me
+in the passage, and stood biting her pen and sobbing on the steps;
+Peepy, I am happy to say, was asleep and spared the pain of
+separation (I was not without misgivings that he had gone to Newgate
+market in search of me); and all the other children got up behind the
+barouche and fell off, and we saw them, with great concern, scattered
+over the surface of Thavies Inn as we rolled out of its precincts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Quite at Home
+
+
+The day had brightened very much, and still brightened as we went
+westward. We went our way through the sunshine and the fresh air,
+wondering more and more at the extent of the streets, the brilliancy
+of the shops, the great traffic, and the crowds of people whom the
+pleasanter weather seemed to have brought out like many-coloured
+flowers. By and by we began to leave the wonderful city and to
+proceed through suburbs which, of themselves, would have made a
+pretty large town in my eyes; and at last we got into a real country
+road again, with windmills, rick-yards, milestones, farmers' waggons,
+scents of old hay, swinging signs, and horse troughs: trees, fields,
+and hedge-rows. It was delightful to see the green landscape before
+us and the immense metropolis behind; and when a waggon with a train
+of beautiful horses, furnished with red trappings and clear-sounding
+bells, came by us with its music, I believe we could all three have
+sung to the bells, so cheerful were the influences around.
+
+"The whole road has been reminding me of my namesake Whittington,"
+said Richard, "and that waggon is the finishing touch. Halloa! What's
+the matter?"
+
+We had stopped, and the waggon had stopped too. Its music changed as
+the horses came to a stand, and subsided to a gentle tinkling, except
+when a horse tossed his head or shook himself and sprinkled off a
+little shower of bell-ringing.
+
+"Our postilion is looking after the waggoner," said Richard, "and the
+waggoner is coming back after us. Good day, friend!" The waggoner was
+at our coach-door. "Why, here's an extraordinary thing!" added
+Richard, looking closely at the man. "He has got your name, Ada, in
+his hat!"
+
+He had all our names in his hat. Tucked within the band were three
+small notes--one addressed to Ada, one to Richard, one to me. These
+the waggoner delivered to each of us respectively, reading the name
+aloud first. In answer to Richard's inquiry from whom they came, he
+briefly answered, "Master, sir, if you please"; and putting on his
+hat again (which was like a soft bowl), cracked his whip, re-awakened
+his music, and went melodiously away.
+
+"Is that Mr. Jarndyce's waggon?" said Richard, calling to our
+post-boy.
+
+"Yes, sir," he replied. "Going to London."
+
+We opened the notes. Each was a counterpart of the other and
+contained these words in a solid, plain hand.
+
+
+   I look forward, my dear, to our meeting easily and
+   without constraint on either side. I therefore have to
+   propose that we meet as old friends and take the past for
+   granted. It will be a relief to you possibly, and to me
+   certainly, and so my love to you.
+
+   John Jarndyce
+
+
+I had perhaps less reason to be surprised than either of my
+companions, having never yet enjoyed an opportunity of thanking one
+who had been my benefactor and sole earthly dependence through so
+many years. I had not considered how I could thank him, my gratitude
+lying too deep in my heart for that; but I now began to consider how
+I could meet him without thanking him, and felt it would be very
+difficult indeed.
+
+The notes revived in Richard and Ada a general impression that they
+both had, without quite knowing how they came by it, that their
+cousin Jarndyce could never bear acknowledgments for any kindness he
+performed and that sooner than receive any he would resort to the
+most singular expedients and evasions or would even run away. Ada
+dimly remembered to have heard her mother tell, when she was a very
+little child, that he had once done her an act of uncommon generosity
+and that on her going to his house to thank him, he happened to see
+her through a window coming to the door, and immediately escaped by
+the back gate, and was not heard of for three months. This discourse
+led to a great deal more on the same theme, and indeed it lasted us
+all day, and we talked of scarcely anything else. If we did by any
+chance diverge into another subject, we soon returned to this, and
+wondered what the house would be like, and when we should get there,
+and whether we should see Mr. Jarndyce as soon as we arrived or after
+a delay, and what he would say to us, and what we should say to him.
+All of which we wondered about, over and over again.
+
+The roads were very heavy for the horses, but the pathway was
+generally good, so we alighted and walked up all the hills, and liked
+it so well that we prolonged our walk on the level ground when we got
+to the top. At Barnet there were other horses waiting for us, but as
+they had only just been fed, we had to wait for them too, and got a
+long fresh walk over a common and an old battle-field before the
+carriage came up. These delays so protracted the journey that the
+short day was spent and the long night had closed in before we came
+to St. Albans, near to which town Bleak House was, we knew.
+
+By that time we were so anxious and nervous that even Richard
+confessed, as we rattled over the stones of the old street, to
+feeling an irrational desire to drive back again. As to Ada and me,
+whom he had wrapped up with great care, the night being sharp and
+frosty, we trembled from head to foot. When we turned out of the
+town, round a corner, and Richard told us that the post-boy, who had
+for a long time sympathized with our heightened expectation, was
+looking back and nodding, we both stood up in the carriage (Richard
+holding Ada lest she should be jolted down) and gazed round upon the
+open country and the starlight night for our destination. There was a
+light sparkling on the top of a hill before us, and the driver,
+pointing to it with his whip and crying, "That's Bleak House!" put
+his horses into a canter and took us forward at such a rate, uphill
+though it was, that the wheels sent the road drift flying about our
+heads like spray from a water-mill. Presently we lost the light,
+presently saw it, presently lost it, presently saw it, and turned
+into an avenue of trees and cantered up towards where it was beaming
+brightly. It was in a window of what seemed to be an old-fashioned
+house with three peaks in the roof in front and a circular sweep
+leading to the porch. A bell was rung as we drew up, and amidst the
+sound of its deep voice in the still air, and the distant barking of
+some dogs, and a gush of light from the opened door, and the smoking
+and steaming of the heated horses, and the quickened beating of our
+own hearts, we alighted in no inconsiderable confusion.
+
+"Ada, my love, Esther, my dear, you are welcome. I rejoice to see
+you! Rick, if I had a hand to spare at present, I would give it you!"
+
+The gentleman who said these words in a clear, bright, hospitable
+voice had one of his arms round Ada's waist and the other round mine,
+and kissed us both in a fatherly way, and bore us across the hall
+into a ruddy little room, all in a glow with a blazing fire. Here he
+kissed us again, and opening his arms, made us sit down side by side
+on a sofa ready drawn out near the hearth. I felt that if we had been
+at all demonstrative, he would have run away in a moment.
+
+"Now, Rick!" said he. "I have a hand at liberty. A word in earnest is
+as good as a speech. I am heartily glad to see you. You are at home.
+Warm yourself!"
+
+Richard shook him by both hands with an intuitive mixture of respect
+and frankness, and only saying (though with an earnestness that
+rather alarmed me, I was so afraid of Mr. Jarndyce's suddenly
+disappearing), "You are very kind, sir! We are very much obliged to
+you!" laid aside his hat and coat and came up to the fire.
+
+"And how did you like the ride? And how did you like Mrs. Jellyby, my
+dear?" said Mr. Jarndyce to Ada.
+
+While Ada was speaking to him in reply, I glanced (I need not say
+with how much interest) at his face. It was a handsome, lively, quick
+face, full of change and motion; and his hair was a silvered
+iron-grey. I took him to be nearer sixty than fifty, but he was
+upright, hearty, and robust. From the moment of his first speaking to
+us his voice had connected itself with an association in my mind that
+I could not define; but now, all at once, a something sudden in his
+manner and a pleasant expression in his eyes recalled the gentleman
+in the stagecoach six years ago on the memorable day of my journey to
+Reading. I was certain it was he. I never was so frightened in my
+life as when I made the discovery, for he caught my glance, and
+appearing to read my thoughts, gave such a look at the door that I
+thought we had lost him.
+
+However, I am happy to say he remained where he was, and asked me
+what I thought of Mrs. Jellyby.
+
+"She exerts herself very much for Africa, sir," I said.
+
+"Nobly!" returned Mr. Jarndyce. "But you answer like Ada." Whom I had
+not heard. "You all think something else, I see."
+
+"We rather thought," said I, glancing at Richard and Ada, who
+entreated me with their eyes to speak, "that perhaps she was a little
+unmindful of her home."
+
+"Floored!" cried Mr. Jarndyce.
+
+I was rather alarmed again.
+
+"Well! I want to know your real thoughts, my dear. I may have sent
+you there on purpose."
+
+"We thought that, perhaps," said I, hesitating, "it is right to begin
+with the obligations of home, sir; and that, perhaps, while those are
+overlooked and neglected, no other duties can possibly be substituted
+for them."
+
+"The little Jellybys," said Richard, coming to my relief, "are
+really--I can't help expressing myself strongly, sir--in a devil of a
+state."
+
+"She means well," said Mr. Jarndyce hastily. "The wind's in the
+east."
+
+"It was in the north, sir, as we came down," observed Richard.
+
+"My dear Rick," said Mr. Jarndyce, poking the fire, "I'll take an
+oath it's either in the east or going to be. I am always conscious of
+an uncomfortable sensation now and then when the wind is blowing in
+the east."
+
+"Rheumatism, sir?" said Richard.
+
+"I dare say it is, Rick. I believe it is. And so the little Jell--I
+had my doubts about 'em--are in a--oh, Lord, yes, it's easterly!"
+said Mr. Jarndyce.
+
+He had taken two or three undecided turns up and down while uttering
+these broken sentences, retaining the poker in one hand and rubbing
+his hair with the other, with a good-natured vexation at once so
+whimsical and so lovable that I am sure we were more delighted with
+him than we could possibly have expressed in any words. He gave an
+arm to Ada and an arm to me, and bidding Richard bring a candle, was
+leading the way out when he suddenly turned us all back again.
+
+"Those little Jellybys. Couldn't you--didn't you--now, if it had
+rained sugar-plums, or three-cornered raspberry tarts, or anything of
+that sort!" said Mr. Jarndyce.
+
+"Oh, cousin--" Ada hastily began.
+
+"Good, my pretty pet. I like cousin. Cousin John, perhaps, is
+better."
+
+"Then, cousin John--" Ada laughingly began again.
+
+"Ha, ha! Very good indeed!" said Mr. Jarndyce with great enjoyment.
+"Sounds uncommonly natural. Yes, my dear?"
+
+"It did better than that. It rained Esther."
+
+"Aye?" said Mr. Jarndyce. "What did Esther do?"
+
+"Why, cousin John," said Ada, clasping her hands upon his arm and
+shaking her head at me across him--for I wanted her to be
+quiet--"Esther was their friend directly. Esther nursed them, coaxed
+them to sleep, washed and dressed them, told them stories, kept them
+quiet, bought them keepsakes"--My dear girl! I had only gone out with
+Peepy after he was found and given him a little, tiny horse!--"and,
+cousin John, she softened poor Caroline, the eldest one, so much and
+was so thoughtful for me and so amiable! No, no, I won't be
+contradicted, Esther dear! You know, you know, it's true!"
+
+The warm-hearted darling leaned across her cousin John and kissed me,
+and then looking up in his face, boldly said, "At all events, cousin
+John, I WILL thank you for the companion you have given me." I felt
+as if she challenged him to run away. But he didn't.
+
+"Where did you say the wind was, Rick?" asked Mr. Jarndyce.
+
+"In the north as we came down, sir."
+
+"You are right. There's no east in it. A mistake of mine. Come,
+girls, come and see your home!"
+
+It was one of those delightfully irregular houses where you go up and
+down steps out of one room into another, and where you come upon more
+rooms when you think you have seen all there are, and where there is
+a bountiful provision of little halls and passages, and where you
+find still older cottage-rooms in unexpected places with lattice
+windows and green growth pressing through them. Mine, which we
+entered first, was of this kind, with an up-and-down roof that had
+more corners in it than I ever counted afterwards and a chimney
+(there was a wood fire on the hearth) paved all around with pure
+white tiles, in every one of which a bright miniature of the fire was
+blazing. Out of this room, you went down two steps into a charming
+little sitting-room looking down upon a flower-garden, which room was
+henceforth to belong to Ada and me. Out of this you went up three
+steps into Ada's bedroom, which had a fine broad window commanding a
+beautiful view (we saw a great expanse of darkness lying underneath
+the stars), to which there was a hollow window-seat, in which, with a
+spring-lock, three dear Adas might have been lost at once. Out of
+this room you passed into a little gallery, with which the other best
+rooms (only two) communicated, and so, by a little staircase of
+shallow steps with a number of corner stairs in it, considering its
+length, down into the hall. But if instead of going out at Ada's door
+you came back into my room, and went out at the door by which you had
+entered it, and turned up a few crooked steps that branched off in an
+unexpected manner from the stairs, you lost yourself in passages,
+with mangles in them, and three-cornered tables, and a native Hindu
+chair, which was also a sofa, a box, and a bedstead, and looked in
+every form something between a bamboo skeleton and a great bird-cage,
+and had been brought from India nobody knew by whom or when. From
+these you came on Richard's room, which was part library, part
+sitting-room, part bedroom, and seemed indeed a comfortable compound
+of many rooms. Out of that you went straight, with a little interval
+of passage, to the plain room where Mr. Jarndyce slept, all the year
+round, with his window open, his bedstead without any furniture
+standing in the middle of the floor for more air, and his cold bath
+gaping for him in a smaller room adjoining. Out of that you came into
+another passage, where there were back-stairs and where you could
+hear the horses being rubbed down outside the stable and being told
+to "Hold up" and "Get over," as they slipped about very much on the
+uneven stones. Or you might, if you came out at another door (every
+room had at least two doors), go straight down to the hall again by
+half-a-dozen steps and a low archway, wondering how you got back
+there or had ever got out of it.
+
+The furniture, old-fashioned rather than old, like the house, was as
+pleasantly irregular. Ada's sleeping-room was all flowers--in chintz
+and paper, in velvet, in needlework, in the brocade of two stiff
+courtly chairs which stood, each attended by a little page of a stool
+for greater state, on either side of the fire-place. Our sitting-room
+was green and had framed and glazed upon the walls numbers of
+surprising and surprised birds, staring out of pictures at a real
+trout in a case, as brown and shining as if it had been served with
+gravy; at the death of Captain Cook; and at the whole process of
+preparing tea in China, as depicted by Chinese artists. In my room
+there were oval engravings of the months--ladies haymaking in short
+waists and large hats tied under the chin, for June; smooth-legged
+noblemen pointing with cocked-hats to village steeples, for October.
+Half-length portraits in crayons abounded all through the house, but
+were so dispersed that I found the brother of a youthful officer of
+mine in the china-closet and the grey old age of my pretty young
+bride, with a flower in her bodice, in the breakfast-room. As
+substitutes, I had four angels, of Queen Anne's reign, taking a
+complacent gentleman to heaven, in festoons, with some difficulty;
+and a composition in needlework representing fruit, a kettle, and an
+alphabet. All the movables, from the wardrobes to the chairs and
+tables, hangings, glasses, even to the pincushions and scent-bottles
+on the dressing-tables, displayed the same quaint variety. They
+agreed in nothing but their perfect neatness, their display of the
+whitest linen, and their storing-up, wheresoever the existence of a
+drawer, small or large, rendered it possible, of quantities of
+rose-leaves and sweet lavender. Such, with its illuminated windows,
+softened here and there by shadows of curtains, shining out upon the
+starlight night; with its light, and warmth, and comfort; with its
+hospitable jingle, at a distance, of preparations for dinner; with
+the face of its generous master brightening everything we saw; and
+just wind enough without to sound a low accompaniment to everything
+we heard, were our first impressions of Bleak House.
+
+"I am glad you like it," said Mr. Jarndyce when he had brought us
+round again to Ada's sitting-room. "It makes no pretensions, but it
+is a comfortable little place, I hope, and will be more so with such
+bright young looks in it. You have barely half an hour before dinner.
+There's no one here but the finest creature upon earth--a child."
+
+"More children, Esther!" said Ada.
+
+"I don't mean literally a child," pursued Mr. Jarndyce; "not a child
+in years. He is grown up--he is at least as old as I am--but in
+simplicity, and freshness, and enthusiasm, and a fine guileless
+inaptitude for all worldly affairs, he is a perfect child."
+
+We felt that he must be very interesting.
+
+"He knows Mrs. Jellyby," said Mr. Jarndyce. "He is a musical man, an
+amateur, but might have been a professional. He is an artist too, an
+amateur, but might have been a professional. He is a man of
+attainments and of captivating manners. He has been unfortunate in
+his affairs, and unfortunate in his pursuits, and unfortunate in his
+family; but he don't care--he's a child!"
+
+"Did you imply that he has children of his own, sir?" inquired
+Richard.
+
+"Yes, Rick! Half-a-dozen. More! Nearer a dozen, I should think. But
+he has never looked after them. How could he? He wanted somebody to
+look after HIM. He is a child, you know!" said Mr. Jarndyce.
+
+"And have the children looked after themselves at all, sir?" inquired
+Richard.
+
+"Why, just as you may suppose," said Mr. Jarndyce, his countenance
+suddenly falling. "It is said that the children of the very poor are
+not brought up, but dragged up. Harold Skimpole's children have
+tumbled up somehow or other. The wind's getting round again, I am
+afraid. I feel it rather!"
+
+Richard observed that the situation was exposed on a sharp night.
+
+"It IS exposed," said Mr. Jarndyce. "No doubt that's the cause. Bleak
+House has an exposed sound. But you are coming my way. Come along!"
+
+Our luggage having arrived and being all at hand, I was dressed in a
+few minutes and engaged in putting my worldly goods away when a maid
+(not the one in attendance upon Ada, but another, whom I had not
+seen) brought a basket into my room with two bunches of keys in it,
+all labelled.
+
+"For you, miss, if you please," said she.
+
+"For me?" said I.
+
+"The housekeeping keys, miss."
+
+I showed my surprise, for she added with some little surprise on her
+own part, "I was told to bring them as soon as you was alone, miss.
+Miss Summerson, if I don't deceive myself?"
+
+"Yes," said I. "That is my name."
+
+"The large bunch is the housekeeping, and the little bunch is the
+cellars, miss. Any time you was pleased to appoint to-morrow morning,
+I was to show you the presses and things they belong to."
+
+I said I would be ready at half-past six, and after she was gone,
+stood looking at the basket, quite lost in the magnitude of my trust.
+Ada found me thus and had such a delightful confidence in me when I
+showed her the keys and told her about them that it would have been
+insensibility and ingratitude not to feel encouraged. I knew, to be
+sure, that it was the dear girl's kindness, but I liked to be so
+pleasantly cheated.
+
+When we went downstairs, we were presented to Mr. Skimpole, who was
+standing before the fire telling Richard how fond he used to be, in
+his school-time, of football. He was a little bright creature with a
+rather large head, but a delicate face and a sweet voice, and there
+was a perfect charm in him. All he said was so free from effort and
+spontaneous and was said with such a captivating gaiety that it was
+fascinating to hear him talk. Being of a more slender figure than Mr.
+Jarndyce and having a richer complexion, with browner hair, he looked
+younger. Indeed, he had more the appearance in all respects of a
+damaged young man than a well-preserved elderly one. There was an
+easy negligence in his manner and even in his dress (his hair
+carelessly disposed, and his neck-kerchief loose and flowing, as I
+have seen artists paint their own portraits) which I could not
+separate from the idea of a romantic youth who had undergone some
+unique process of depreciation. It struck me as being not at all like
+the manner or appearance of a man who had advanced in life by the
+usual road of years, cares, and experiences.
+
+I gathered from the conversation that Mr. Skimpole had been educated
+for the medical profession and had once lived, in his professional
+capacity, in the household of a German prince. He told us, however,
+that as he had always been a mere child in point of weights and
+measures and had never known anything about them (except that they
+disgusted him), he had never been able to prescribe with the
+requisite accuracy of detail. In fact, he said, he had no head for
+detail. And he told us, with great humour, that when he was wanted to
+bleed the prince or physic any of his people, he was generally found
+lying on his back in bed, reading the newspapers or making
+fancy-sketches in pencil, and couldn't come. The prince, at last,
+objecting to this, "in which," said Mr. Skimpole, in the frankest
+manner, "he was perfectly right," the engagement terminated, and Mr.
+Skimpole having (as he added with delightful gaiety) "nothing to live
+upon but love, fell in love, and married, and surrounded himself with
+rosy cheeks." His good friend Jarndyce and some other of his good
+friends then helped him, in quicker or slower succession, to several
+openings in life, but to no purpose, for he must confess to two of
+the oldest infirmities in the world: one was that he had no idea of
+time, the other that he had no idea of money. In consequence of which
+he never kept an appointment, never could transact any business, and
+never knew the value of anything! Well! So he had got on in life, and
+here he was! He was very fond of reading the papers, very fond of
+making fancy-sketches with a pencil, very fond of nature, very fond
+of art. All he asked of society was to let him live. THAT wasn't
+much. His wants were few. Give him the papers, conversation, music,
+mutton, coffee, landscape, fruit in the season, a few sheets of
+Bristol-board, and a little claret, and he asked no more. He was a
+mere child in the world, but he didn't cry for the moon. He said to
+the world, "Go your several ways in peace! Wear red coats, blue
+coats, lawn sleeves; put pens behind your ears, wear aprons; go after
+glory, holiness, commerce, trade, any object you prefer; only--let
+Harold Skimpole live!"
+
+All this and a great deal more he told us, not only with the
+utmost brilliancy and enjoyment, but with a certain vivacious
+candour--speaking of himself as if he were not at all his own affair,
+as if Skimpole were a third person, as if he knew that Skimpole had
+his singularities but still had his claims too, which were the
+general business of the community and must not be slighted. He was
+quite enchanting. If I felt at all confused at that early time in
+endeavouring to reconcile anything he said with anything I had
+thought about the duties and accountabilities of life (which I am far
+from sure of), I was confused by not exactly understanding why he was
+free of them. That he WAS free of them, I scarcely doubted; he was so
+very clear about it himself.
+
+"I covet nothing," said Mr. Skimpole in the same light way.
+"Possession is nothing to me. Here is my friend Jarndyce's excellent
+house. I feel obliged to him for possessing it. I can sketch it and
+alter it. I can set it to music. When I am here, I have sufficient
+possession of it and have neither trouble, cost, nor responsibility.
+My steward's name, in short, is Jarndyce, and he can't cheat me. We
+have been mentioning Mrs. Jellyby. There is a bright-eyed woman, of a
+strong will and immense power of business detail, who throws herself
+into objects with surprising ardour! I don't regret that I have not a
+strong will and an immense power of business detail to throw myself
+into objects with surprising ardour. I can admire her without envy. I
+can sympathize with the objects. I can dream of them. I can lie down
+on the grass--in fine weather--and float along an African river,
+embracing all the natives I meet, as sensible of the deep silence and
+sketching the dense overhanging tropical growth as accurately as if I
+were there. I don't know that it's of any direct use my doing so, but
+it's all I can do, and I do it thoroughly. Then, for heaven's sake,
+having Harold Skimpole, a confiding child, petitioning you, the
+world, an agglomeration of practical people of business habits, to
+let him live and admire the human family, do it somehow or other,
+like good souls, and suffer him to ride his rocking-horse!"
+
+It was plain enough that Mr. Jarndyce had not been neglectful of the
+adjuration. Mr. Skimpole's general position there would have rendered
+it so without the addition of what he presently said.
+
+"It's only you, the generous creatures, whom I envy," said Mr.
+Skimpole, addressing us, his new friends, in an impersonal manner. "I
+envy you your power of doing what you do. It is what I should revel
+in myself. I don't feel any vulgar gratitude to you. I almost feel as
+if YOU ought to be grateful to ME for giving you the opportunity of
+enjoying the luxury of generosity. I know you like it. For anything I
+can tell, I may have come into the world expressly for the purpose of
+increasing your stock of happiness. I may have been born to be a
+benefactor to you by sometimes giving you an opportunity of assisting
+me in my little perplexities. Why should I regret my incapacity for
+details and worldly affairs when it leads to such pleasant
+consequences? I don't regret it therefore."
+
+Of all his playful speeches (playful, yet always fully meaning what
+they expressed) none seemed to be more to the taste of Mr. Jarndyce
+than this. I had often new temptations, afterwards, to wonder whether
+it was really singular, or only singular to me, that he, who was
+probably the most grateful of mankind upon the least occasion, should
+so desire to escape the gratitude of others.
+
+We were all enchanted. I felt it a merited tribute to the engaging
+qualities of Ada and Richard that Mr. Skimpole, seeing them for the
+first time, should be so unreserved and should lay himself out to be
+so exquisitely agreeable. They (and especially Richard) were
+naturally pleased, for similar reasons, and considered it no common
+privilege to be so freely confided in by such an attractive man. The
+more we listened, the more gaily Mr. Skimpole talked. And what with
+his fine hilarious manner and his engaging candour and his genial way
+of lightly tossing his own weaknesses about, as if he had said, "I am
+a child, you know! You are designing people compared with me" (he
+really made me consider myself in that light) "but I am gay and
+innocent; forget your worldly arts and play with me!" the effect was
+absolutely dazzling.
+
+He was so full of feeling too and had such a delicate sentiment for
+what was beautiful or tender that he could have won a heart by that
+alone. In the evening, when I was preparing to make tea and Ada was
+touching the piano in the adjoining room and softly humming a tune to
+her cousin Richard, which they had happened to mention, he came and
+sat down on the sofa near me and so spoke of Ada that I almost loved
+him.
+
+"She is like the morning," he said. "With that golden hair, those
+blue eyes, and that fresh bloom on her cheek, she is like the summer
+morning. The birds here will mistake her for it. We will not call
+such a lovely young creature as that, who is a joy to all mankind, an
+orphan. She is the child of the universe."
+
+Mr. Jarndyce, I found, was standing near us with his hands behind him
+and an attentive smile upon his face.
+
+"The universe," he observed, "makes rather an indifferent parent, I
+am afraid."
+
+"Oh! I don't know!" cried Mr. Skimpole buoyantly.
+
+"I think I do know," said Mr. Jarndyce.
+
+"Well!" cried Mr. Skimpole. "You know the world (which in your sense
+is the universe), and I know nothing of it, so you shall have your
+way. But if I had mine," glancing at the cousins, "there should be no
+brambles of sordid realities in such a path as that. It should be
+strewn with roses; it should lie through bowers, where there was no
+spring, autumn, nor winter, but perpetual summer. Age or change
+should never wither it. The base word money should never be breathed
+near it!"
+
+Mr. Jarndyce patted him on the head with a smile, as if he had been
+really a child, and passing a step or two on, and stopping a moment,
+glanced at the young cousins. His look was thoughtful, but had a
+benignant expression in it which I often (how often!) saw again,
+which has long been engraven on my heart. The room in which they
+were, communicating with that in which he stood, was only lighted by
+the fire. Ada sat at the piano; Richard stood beside her, bending
+down. Upon the wall, their shadows blended together, surrounded by
+strange forms, not without a ghostly motion caught from the unsteady
+fire, though reflecting from motionless objects. Ada touched the
+notes so softly and sang so low that the wind, sighing away to the
+distant hills, was as audible as the music. The mystery of the future
+and the little clue afforded to it by the voice of the present seemed
+expressed in the whole picture.
+
+But it is not to recall this fancy, well as I remember it, that I
+recall the scene. First, I was not quite unconscious of the contrast
+in respect of meaning and intention between the silent look directed
+that way and the flow of words that had preceded it. Secondly, though
+Mr. Jarndyce's glance as he withdrew it rested for but a moment on
+me, I felt as if in that moment he confided to me--and knew that he
+confided to me and that I received the confidence--his hope that Ada
+and Richard might one day enter on a dearer relationship.
+
+Mr. Skimpole could play on the piano and the violoncello, and he was
+a composer--had composed half an opera once, but got tired of it--and
+played what he composed with taste. After tea we had quite a little
+concert, in which Richard--who was enthralled by Ada's singing and
+told me that she seemed to know all the songs that ever were
+written--and Mr. Jarndyce, and I were the audience. After a little
+while I missed first Mr. Skimpole and afterwards Richard, and while I
+was thinking how could Richard stay away so long and lose so much,
+the maid who had given me the keys looked in at the door, saying, "If
+you please, miss, could you spare a minute?"
+
+When I was shut out with her in the hall, she said, holding up her
+hands, "Oh, if you please, miss, Mr. Carstone says would you come
+upstairs to Mr. Skimpole's room. He has been took, miss!"
+
+"Took?" said I.
+
+"Took, miss. Sudden," said the maid.
+
+I was apprehensive that his illness might be of a dangerous kind, but
+of course I begged her to be quiet and not disturb any one and
+collected myself, as I followed her quickly upstairs, sufficiently to
+consider what were the best remedies to be applied if it should prove
+to be a fit. She threw open a door and I went into a chamber, where,
+to my unspeakable surprise, instead of finding Mr. Skimpole stretched
+upon the bed or prostrate on the floor, I found him standing before
+the fire smiling at Richard, while Richard, with a face of great
+embarrassment, looked at a person on the sofa, in a white great-coat,
+with smooth hair upon his head and not much of it, which he was
+wiping smoother and making less of with a pocket-handkerchief.
+
+"Miss Summerson," said Richard hurriedly, "I am glad you are come.
+You will be able to advise us. Our friend Mr. Skimpole--don't be
+alarmed!--is arrested for debt."
+
+"And really, my dear Miss Summerson," said Mr. Skimpole with his
+agreeable candour, "I never was in a situation in which that
+excellent sense and quiet habit of method and usefulness, which
+anybody must observe in you who has the happiness of being a quarter
+of an hour in your society, was more needed."
+
+The person on the sofa, who appeared to have a cold in his head, gave
+such a very loud snort that he startled me.
+
+"Are you arrested for much, sir?" I inquired of Mr. Skimpole.
+
+"My dear Miss Summerson," said he, shaking his head pleasantly, "I
+don't know. Some pounds, odd shillings, and halfpence, I think, were
+mentioned."
+
+"It's twenty-four pound, sixteen, and sevenpence ha'penny," observed
+the stranger. "That's wot it is."
+
+"And it sounds--somehow it sounds," said Mr. Skimpole, "like a small
+sum?"
+
+The strange man said nothing but made another snort. It was such a
+powerful one that it seemed quite to lift him out of his seat.
+
+"Mr. Skimpole," said Richard to me, "has a delicacy in applying to my
+cousin Jarndyce because he has lately--I think, sir, I understood you
+that you had lately--"
+
+"Oh, yes!" returned Mr. Skimpole, smiling. "Though I forgot how much
+it was and when it was. Jarndyce would readily do it again, but I
+have the epicure-like feeling that I would prefer a novelty in help,
+that I would rather," and he looked at Richard and me, "develop
+generosity in a new soil and in a new form of flower."
+
+"What do you think will be best, Miss Summerson?" said Richard,
+aside.
+
+I ventured to inquire, generally, before replying, what would happen
+if the money were not produced.
+
+"Jail," said the strange man, coolly putting his handkerchief into
+his hat, which was on the floor at his feet. "Or Coavinses."
+
+"May I ask, sir, what is--"
+
+"Coavinses?" said the strange man. "A 'ouse."
+
+Richard and I looked at one another again. It was a most singular
+thing that the arrest was our embarrassment and not Mr. Skimpole's.
+He observed us with a genial interest, but there seemed, if I may
+venture on such a contradiction, nothing selfish in it. He had
+entirely washed his hands of the difficulty, and it had become ours.
+
+"I thought," he suggested, as if good-naturedly to help us out, "that
+being parties in a Chancery suit concerning (as people say) a large
+amount of property, Mr. Richard or his beautiful cousin, or both,
+could sign something, or make over something, or give some sort of
+undertaking, or pledge, or bond? I don't know what the business name
+of it may be, but I suppose there is some instrument within their
+power that would settle this?"
+
+"Not a bit on it," said the strange man.
+
+"Really?" returned Mr. Skimpole. "That seems odd, now, to one who is
+no judge of these things!"
+
+"Odd or even," said the stranger gruffly, "I tell you, not a bit on
+it!"
+
+"Keep your temper, my good fellow, keep your temper!" Mr. Skimpole
+gently reasoned with him as he made a little drawing of his head on
+the fly-leaf of a book. "Don't be ruffled by your occupation. We can
+separate you from your office; we can separate the individual from
+the pursuit. We are not so prejudiced as to suppose that in private
+life you are otherwise than a very estimable man, with a great deal
+of poetry in your nature, of which you may not be conscious."
+
+The stranger only answered with another violent snort, whether in
+acceptance of the poetry-tribute or in disdainful rejection of it, he
+did not express to me.
+
+"Now, my dear Miss Summerson, and my dear Mr. Richard," said Mr.
+Skimpole gaily, innocently, and confidingly as he looked at his
+drawing with his head on one side, "here you see me utterly incapable
+of helping myself, and entirely in your hands! I only ask to be free.
+The butterflies are free. Mankind will surely not deny to Harold
+Skimpole what it concedes to the butterflies!"
+
+"My dear Miss Summerson," said Richard in a whisper, "I have ten
+pounds that I received from Mr. Kenge. I must try what that will do."
+
+I possessed fifteen pounds, odd shillings, which I had saved from my
+quarterly allowance during several years. I had always thought that
+some accident might happen which would throw me suddenly, without any
+relation or any property, on the world and had always tried to keep
+some little money by me that I might not be quite penniless. I told
+Richard of my having this little store and having no present need of
+it, and I asked him delicately to inform Mr. Skimpole, while I should
+be gone to fetch it, that we would have the pleasure of paying his
+debt.
+
+When I came back, Mr. Skimpole kissed my hand and seemed quite
+touched. Not on his own account (I was again aware of that perplexing
+and extraordinary contradiction), but on ours, as if personal
+considerations were impossible with him and the contemplation of our
+happiness alone affected him. Richard, begging me, for the greater
+grace of the transaction, as he said, to settle with Coavinses (as
+Mr. Skimpole now jocularly called him), I counted out the money and
+received the necessary acknowledgment. This, too, delighted Mr.
+Skimpole.
+
+His compliments were so delicately administered that I blushed less
+than I might have done and settled with the stranger in the white
+coat without making any mistakes. He put the money in his pocket and
+shortly said, "Well, then, I'll wish you a good evening, miss.
+
+"My friend," said Mr. Skimpole, standing with his back to the fire
+after giving up the sketch when it was half finished, "I should like
+to ask you something, without offence."
+
+I think the reply was, "Cut away, then!"
+
+"Did you know this morning, now, that you were coming out on this
+errand?" said Mr. Skimpole.
+
+"Know'd it yes'day aft'noon at tea-time," said Coavinses.
+
+"It didn't affect your appetite? Didn't make you at all uneasy?"
+
+"Not a bit," said Coavinses. "I know'd if you wos missed to-day, you
+wouldn't be missed to-morrow. A day makes no such odds."
+
+"But when you came down here," proceeded Mr. Skimpole, "it was a fine
+day. The sun was shining, the wind was blowing, the lights and
+shadows were passing across the fields, the birds were singing."
+
+"Nobody said they warn't, in MY hearing," returned Coavinses.
+
+"No," observed Mr. Skimpole. "But what did you think upon the road?"
+
+"Wot do you mean?" growled Coavinses with an appearance of strong
+resentment. "Think! I've got enough to do, and little enough to get
+for it without thinking. Thinking!" (with profound contempt).
+
+"Then you didn't think, at all events," proceeded Mr. Skimpole, "to
+this effect: 'Harold Skimpole loves to see the sun shine, loves to
+hear the wind blow, loves to watch the changing lights and shadows,
+loves to hear the birds, those choristers in Nature's great
+cathedral. And does it seem to me that I am about to deprive Harold
+Skimpole of his share in such possessions, which are his only
+birthright!' You thought nothing to that effect?"
+
+"I--certainly--did--NOT," said Coavinses, whose doggedness in utterly
+renouncing the idea was of that intense kind that he could only give
+adequate expression to it by putting a long interval between each
+word, and accompanying the last with a jerk that might have
+dislocated his neck.
+
+"Very odd and very curious, the mental process is, in you men of
+business!" said Mr. Skimpole thoughtfully. "Thank you, my friend.
+Good night."
+
+As our absence had been long enough already to seem strange
+downstairs, I returned at once and found Ada sitting at work by the
+fireside talking to her cousin John. Mr. Skimpole presently appeared,
+and Richard shortly after him. I was sufficiently engaged during the
+remainder of the evening in taking my first lesson in backgammon from
+Mr. Jarndyce, who was very fond of the game and from whom I wished of
+course to learn it as quickly as I could in order that I might be of
+the very small use of being able to play when he had no better
+adversary. But I thought, occasionally, when Mr. Skimpole played some
+fragments of his own compositions or when, both at the piano and the
+violoncello, and at our table, he preserved with an absence of all
+effort his delightful spirits and his easy flow of conversation, that
+Richard and I seemed to retain the transferred impression of having
+been arrested since dinner and that it was very curious altogether.
+
+It was late before we separated, for when Ada was going at eleven
+o'clock, Mr. Skimpole went to the piano and rattled hilariously that
+the best of all ways to lengthen our days was to steal a few hours
+from night, my dear! It was past twelve before he took his candle and
+his radiant face out of the room, and I think he might have kept us
+there, if he had seen fit, until daybreak. Ada and Richard were
+lingering for a few moments by the fire, wondering whether Mrs.
+Jellyby had yet finished her dictation for the day, when Mr.
+Jarndyce, who had been out of the room, returned.
+
+"Oh, dear me, what's this, what's this!" he said, rubbing his head
+and walking about with his good-humoured vexation. "What's this they
+tell me? Rick, my boy, Esther, my dear, what have you been doing? Why
+did you do it? How could you do it? How much apiece was it? The
+wind's round again. I feel it all over me!"
+
+We neither of us quite knew what to answer.
+
+"Come, Rick, come! I must settle this before I sleep. How much are
+you out of pocket? You two made the money up, you know! Why did you?
+How could you? Oh, Lord, yes, it's due east--must be!"
+
+"Really, sir," said Richard, "I don't think it would be honourable in
+me to tell you. Mr. Skimpole relied upon us--"
+
+"Lord bless you, my dear boy! He relies upon everybody!" said Mr.
+Jarndyce, giving his head a great rub and stopping short.
+
+"Indeed, sir?"
+
+"Everybody! And he'll be in the same scrape again next week!" said
+Mr. Jarndyce, walking again at a great pace, with a candle in his
+hand that had gone out. "He's always in the same scrape. He was born
+in the same scrape. I verily believe that the announcement in the
+newspapers when his mother was confined was 'On Tuesday last, at her
+residence in Botheration Buildings, Mrs. Skimpole of a son in
+difficulties.'"
+
+Richard laughed heartily but added, "Still, sir, I don't want to
+shake his confidence or to break his confidence, and if I submit to
+your better knowledge again, that I ought to keep his secret, I hope
+you will consider before you press me any more. Of course, if you do
+press me, sir, I shall know I am wrong and will tell you."
+
+"Well!" cried Mr. Jarndyce, stopping again, and making several absent
+endeavours to put his candlestick in his pocket. "I--here! Take it
+away, my dear. I don't know what I am about with it; it's all the
+wind--invariably has that effect--I won't press you, Rick; you may be
+right. But really--to get hold of you and Esther--and to squeeze you
+like a couple of tender young Saint Michael's oranges! It'll blow a
+gale in the course of the night!"
+
+He was now alternately putting his hands into his pockets as if he
+were going to keep them there a long time, and taking them out again
+and vehemently rubbing them all over his head.
+
+I ventured to take this opportunity of hinting that Mr. Skimpole,
+being in all such matters quite a child--
+
+"Eh, my dear?" said Mr. Jarndyce, catching at the word.
+
+"Being quite a child, sir," said I, "and so different from other
+people--"
+
+"You are right!" said Mr. Jarndyce, brightening. "Your woman's wit
+hits the mark. He is a child--an absolute child. I told you he was a
+child, you know, when I first mentioned him."
+
+Certainly! Certainly! we said.
+
+"And he IS a child. Now, isn't he?" asked Mr. Jarndyce, brightening
+more and more.
+
+He was indeed, we said.
+
+"When you come to think of it, it's the height of childishness in
+you--I mean me--" said Mr. Jarndyce, "to regard him for a moment as a
+man. You can't make HIM responsible. The idea of Harold Skimpole with
+designs or plans, or knowledge of consequences! Ha, ha, ha!"
+
+It was so delicious to see the clouds about his bright face clearing,
+and to see him so heartily pleased, and to know, as it was impossible
+not to know, that the source of his pleasure was the goodness which
+was tortured by condemning, or mistrusting, or secretly accusing any
+one, that I saw the tears in Ada's eyes, while she echoed his laugh,
+and felt them in my own.
+
+"Why, what a cod's head and shoulders I am," said Mr. Jarndyce, "to
+require reminding of it! The whole business shows the child from
+beginning to end. Nobody but a child would have thought of singling
+YOU two out for parties in the affair! Nobody but a child would have
+thought of YOUR having the money! If it had been a thousand pounds,
+it would have been just the same!" said Mr. Jarndyce with his whole
+face in a glow.
+
+We all confirmed it from our night's experience.
+
+"To be sure, to be sure!" said Mr. Jarndyce. "However, Rick, Esther,
+and you too, Ada, for I don't know that even your little purse is
+safe from his inexperience--I must have a promise all round that
+nothing of this sort shall ever be done any more. No advances! Not
+even sixpences."
+
+We all promised faithfully, Richard with a merry glance at me
+touching his pocket as if to remind me that there was no danger of
+OUR transgressing.
+
+"As to Skimpole," said Mr. Jarndyce, "a habitable doll's house with
+good board and a few tin people to get into debt with and borrow
+money of would set the boy up in life. He is in a child's sleep by
+this time, I suppose; it's time I should take my craftier head to my
+more worldly pillow. Good night, my dears. God bless you!"
+
+He peeped in again, with a smiling face, before we had lighted our
+candles, and said, "Oh! I have been looking at the weather-cock. I
+find it was a false alarm about the wind. It's in the south!" And
+went away singing to himself.
+
+Ada and I agreed, as we talked together for a little while upstairs,
+that this caprice about the wind was a fiction and that he used the
+pretence to account for any disappointment he could not conceal,
+rather than he would blame the real cause of it or disparage or
+depreciate any one. We thought this very characteristic of his
+eccentric gentleness and of the difference between him and those
+petulant people who make the weather and the winds (particularly that
+unlucky wind which he had chosen for such a different purpose) the
+stalking-horses of their splenetic and gloomy humours.
+
+Indeed, so much affection for him had been added in this one evening
+to my gratitude that I hoped I already began to understand him
+through that mingled feeling. Any seeming inconsistencies in Mr.
+Skimpole or in Mrs. Jellyby I could not expect to be able to
+reconcile, having so little experience or practical knowledge.
+Neither did I try, for my thoughts were busy when I was alone, with
+Ada and Richard and with the confidence I had seemed to receive
+concerning them. My fancy, made a little wild by the wind perhaps,
+would not consent to be all unselfish, either, though I would have
+persuaded it to be so if I could. It wandered back to my godmother's
+house and came along the intervening track, raising up shadowy
+speculations which had sometimes trembled there in the dark as to
+what knowledge Mr. Jarndyce had of my earliest history--even as to
+the possibility of his being my father, though that idle dream was
+quite gone now.
+
+It was all gone now, I remembered, getting up from the fire. It was
+not for me to muse over bygones, but to act with a cheerful spirit
+and a grateful heart. So I said to myself, "Esther, Esther, Esther!
+Duty, my dear!" and gave my little basket of housekeeping keys such a
+shake that they sounded like little bells and rang me hopefully to
+bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+The Ghost's Walk
+
+
+While Esther sleeps, and while Esther wakes, it is still wet weather
+down at the place in Lincolnshire. The rain is ever falling--drip,
+drip, drip--by day and night upon the broad flagged terrace-pavement,
+the Ghost's Walk. The weather is so very bad down in Lincolnshire
+that the liveliest imagination can scarcely apprehend its ever being
+fine again. Not that there is any superabundant life of imagination
+on the spot, for Sir Leicester is not here (and, truly, even if he
+were, would not do much for it in that particular), but is in Paris
+with my Lady; and solitude, with dusky wings, sits brooding upon
+Chesney Wold.
+
+There may be some motions of fancy among the lower animals at Chesney
+Wold. The horses in the stables--the long stables in a barren,
+red-brick court-yard, where there is a great bell in a turret, and a
+clock with a large face, which the pigeons who live near it and who
+love to perch upon its shoulders seem to be always consulting--THEY
+may contemplate some mental pictures of fine weather on occasions,
+and may be better artists at them than the grooms. The old roan, so
+famous for cross-country work, turning his large eyeball to the
+grated window near his rack, may remember the fresh leaves that
+glisten there at other times and the scents that stream in, and may
+have a fine run with the hounds, while the human helper, clearing out
+the next stall, never stirs beyond his pitchfork and birch-broom. The
+grey, whose place is opposite the door and who with an impatient
+rattle of his halter pricks his ears and turns his head so wistfully
+when it is opened, and to whom the opener says, "Woa grey, then,
+steady! Noabody wants you to-day!" may know it quite as well as the
+man. The whole seemingly monotonous and uncompanionable half-dozen,
+stabled together, may pass the long wet hours when the door is shut
+in livelier communication than is held in the servants' hall or at
+the Dedlock Arms, or may even beguile the time by improving (perhaps
+corrupting) the pony in the loose-box in the corner.
+
+So the mastiff, dozing in his kennel in the court-yard with his large
+head on his paws, may think of the hot sunshine when the shadows of
+the stable-buildings tire his patience out by changing and leave him
+at one time of the day no broader refuge than the shadow of his own
+house, where he sits on end, panting and growling short, and very
+much wanting something to worry besides himself and his chain. So
+now, half-waking and all-winking, he may recall the house full of
+company, the coach-houses full of vehicles, the stables full of
+horses, and the out-buildings full of attendants upon horses, until
+he is undecided about the present and comes forth to see how it is.
+Then, with that impatient shake of himself, he may growl in the
+spirit, "Rain, rain, rain! Nothing but rain--and no family here!" as
+he goes in again and lies down with a gloomy yawn.
+
+So with the dogs in the kennel-buildings across the park, who have
+their restless fits and whose doleful voices when the wind has been
+very obstinate have even made it known in the house itself--upstairs,
+downstairs, and in my Lady's chamber. They may hunt the whole
+country-side, while the raindrops are pattering round their
+inactivity. So the rabbits with their self-betraying tails, frisking
+in and out of holes at roots of trees, may be lively with ideas of
+the breezy days when their ears are blown about or of those seasons
+of interest when there are sweet young plants to gnaw. The turkey in
+the poultry-yard, always troubled with a class-grievance (probably
+Christmas), may be reminiscent of that summer morning wrongfully
+taken from him when he got into the lane among the felled trees,
+where there was a barn and barley. The discontented goose, who stoops
+to pass under the old gateway, twenty feet high, may gabble out, if
+we only knew it, a waddling preference for weather when the gateway
+casts its shadow on the ground.
+
+Be this as it may, there is not much fancy otherwise stirring at
+Chesney Wold. If there be a little at any odd moment, it goes, like a
+little noise in that old echoing place, a long way and usually leads
+off to ghosts and mystery.
+
+It has rained so hard and rained so long down in Lincolnshire that
+Mrs. Rouncewell, the old housekeeper at Chesney Wold, has several
+times taken off her spectacles and cleaned them to make certain that
+the drops were not upon the glasses. Mrs. Rouncewell might have been
+sufficiently assured by hearing the rain, but that she is rather
+deaf, which nothing will induce her to believe. She is a fine old
+lady, handsome, stately, wonderfully neat, and has such a back and
+such a stomacher that if her stays should turn out when she dies to
+have been a broad old-fashioned family fire-grate, nobody who knows
+her would have cause to be surprised. Weather affects Mrs. Rouncewell
+little. The house is there in all weathers, and the house, as she
+expresses it, "is what she looks at." She sits in her room (in a side
+passage on the ground floor, with an arched window commanding a
+smooth quadrangle, adorned at regular intervals with smooth round
+trees and smooth round blocks of stone, as if the trees were going to
+play at bowls with the stones), and the whole house reposes on her
+mind. She can open it on occasion and be busy and fluttered, but it
+is shut up now and lies on the breadth of Mrs. Rouncewell's
+iron-bound bosom in a majestic sleep.
+
+It is the next difficult thing to an impossibility to imagine Chesney
+Wold without Mrs. Rouncewell, but she has only been here fifty years.
+Ask her how long, this rainy day, and she shall answer "fifty year,
+three months, and a fortnight, by the blessing of heaven, if I live
+till Tuesday." Mr. Rouncewell died some time before the decease of
+the pretty fashion of pig-tails, and modestly hid his own (if he took
+it with him) in a corner of the churchyard in the park near the
+mouldy porch. He was born in the market-town, and so was his young
+widow. Her progress in the family began in the time of the last Sir
+Leicester and originated in the still-room.
+
+The present representative of the Dedlocks is an excellent master. He
+supposes all his dependents to be utterly bereft of individual
+characters, intentions, or opinions, and is persuaded that he was
+born to supersede the necessity of their having any. If he were to
+make a discovery to the contrary, he would be simply stunned--would
+never recover himself, most likely, except to gasp and die. But he is
+an excellent master still, holding it a part of his state to be so.
+He has a great liking for Mrs. Rouncewell; he says she is a most
+respectable, creditable woman. He always shakes hands with her when
+he comes down to Chesney Wold and when he goes away; and if he were
+very ill, or if he were knocked down by accident, or run over, or
+placed in any situation expressive of a Dedlock at a disadvantage, he
+would say if he could speak, "Leave me, and send Mrs. Rouncewell
+here!" feeling his dignity, at such a pass, safer with her than with
+anybody else.
+
+Mrs. Rouncewell has known trouble. She has had two sons, of whom the
+younger ran wild, and went for a soldier, and never came back. Even
+to this hour, Mrs. Rouncewell's calm hands lose their composure when
+she speaks of him, and unfolding themselves from her stomacher, hover
+about her in an agitated manner as she says what a likely lad, what a
+fine lad, what a gay, good-humoured, clever lad he was! Her second
+son would have been provided for at Chesney Wold and would have been
+made steward in due season, but he took, when he was a schoolboy, to
+constructing steam-engines out of saucepans and setting birds to draw
+their own water with the least possible amount of labour, so
+assisting them with artful contrivance of hydraulic pressure that a
+thirsty canary had only, in a literal sense, to put his shoulder to
+the wheel and the job was done. This propensity gave Mrs. Rouncewell
+great uneasiness. She felt it with a mother's anguish to be a move in
+the Wat Tyler direction, well knowing that Sir Leicester had that
+general impression of an aptitude for any art to which smoke and a
+tall chimney might be considered essential. But the doomed young
+rebel (otherwise a mild youth, and very persevering), showing no sign
+of grace as he got older but, on the contrary, constructing a model
+of a power-loom, she was fain, with many tears, to mention his
+backslidings to the baronet. "Mrs. Rouncewell," said Sir Leicester,
+"I can never consent to argue, as you know, with any one on any
+subject. You had better get rid of your boy; you had better get him
+into some Works. The iron country farther north is, I suppose, the
+congenial direction for a boy with these tendencies." Farther north
+he went, and farther north he grew up; and if Sir Leicester Dedlock
+ever saw him when he came to Chesney Wold to visit his mother, or
+ever thought of him afterwards, it is certain that he only regarded
+him as one of a body of some odd thousand conspirators, swarthy and
+grim, who were in the habit of turning out by torchlight two or three
+nights in the week for unlawful purposes.
+
+Nevertheless, Mrs. Rouncewell's son has, in the course of nature and
+art, grown up, and established himself, and married, and called unto
+him Mrs. Rouncewell's grandson, who, being out of his apprenticeship,
+and home from a journey in far countries, whither he was sent to
+enlarge his knowledge and complete his preparations for the venture
+of this life, stands leaning against the chimney-piece this very day
+in Mrs. Rouncewell's room at Chesney Wold.
+
+"And, again and again, I am glad to see you, Watt! And, once again, I
+am glad to see you, Watt!" says Mrs. Rouncewell. "You are a fine
+young fellow. You are like your poor uncle George. Ah!" Mrs.
+Rouncewell's hands unquiet, as usual, on this reference.
+
+"They say I am like my father, grandmother."
+
+"Like him, also, my dear--but most like your poor uncle George! And
+your dear father." Mrs. Rouncewell folds her hands again. "He is
+well?"
+
+"Thriving, grandmother, in every way."
+
+"I am thankful!" Mrs. Rouncewell is fond of her son but has a
+plaintive feeling towards him, much as if he were a very honourable
+soldier who had gone over to the enemy.
+
+"He is quite happy?" says she.
+
+"Quite."
+
+"I am thankful! So he has brought you up to follow in his ways and
+has sent you into foreign countries and the like? Well, he knows
+best. There may be a world beyond Chesney Wold that I don't
+understand. Though I am not young, either. And I have seen a quantity
+of good company too!"
+
+"Grandmother," says the young man, changing the subject, "what a very
+pretty girl that was I found with you just now. You called her Rosa?"
+
+"Yes, child. She is daughter of a widow in the village. Maids are so
+hard to teach, now-a-days, that I have put her about me young. She's
+an apt scholar and will do well. She shows the house already, very
+pretty. She lives with me at my table here."
+
+"I hope I have not driven her away?"
+
+"She supposes we have family affairs to speak about, I dare say. She
+is very modest. It is a fine quality in a young woman. And scarcer,"
+says Mrs. Rouncewell, expanding her stomacher to its utmost limits,
+"than it formerly was!"
+
+The young man inclines his head in acknowledgment of the precepts of
+experience. Mrs. Rouncewell listens.
+
+"Wheels!" says she. They have long been audible to the younger ears
+of her companion. "What wheels on such a day as this, for gracious
+sake?"
+
+After a short interval, a tap at the door. "Come in!" A dark-eyed,
+dark-haired, shy, village beauty comes in--so fresh in her rosy and
+yet delicate bloom that the drops of rain which have beaten on her
+hair look like the dew upon a flower fresh gathered.
+
+"What company is this, Rosa?" says Mrs. Rouncewell.
+
+"It's two young men in a gig, ma'am, who want to see the house--yes,
+and if you please, I told them so!" in quick reply to a gesture of
+dissent from the housekeeper. "I went to the hall-door and told them
+it was the wrong day and the wrong hour, but the young man who was
+driving took off his hat in the wet and begged me to bring this card
+to you."
+
+"Read it, my dear Watt," says the housekeeper.
+
+Rosa is so shy as she gives it to him that they drop it between them
+and almost knock their foreheads together as they pick it up. Rosa is
+shyer than before.
+
+"Mr. Guppy" is all the information the card yields.
+
+"Guppy!" repeats Mrs. Rouncewell, "MR. Guppy! Nonsense, I never heard
+of him!"
+
+"If you please, he told ME that!" says Rosa. "But he said that he and
+the other young gentleman came from London only last night by the
+mail, on business at the magistrates' meeting, ten miles off, this
+morning, and that as their business was soon over, and they had heard
+a great deal said of Chesney Wold, and really didn't know what to do
+with themselves, they had come through the wet to see it. They are
+lawyers. He says he is not in Mr. Tulkinghorn's office, but he is
+sure he may make use of Mr. Tulkinghorn's name if necessary."
+Finding, now she leaves off, that she has been making quite a long
+speech, Rosa is shyer than ever.
+
+Now, Mr. Tulkinghorn is, in a manner, part and parcel of the place,
+and besides, is supposed to have made Mrs. Rouncewell's will. The old
+lady relaxes, consents to the admission of the visitors as a favour,
+and dismisses Rosa. The grandson, however, being smitten by a sudden
+wish to see the house himself, proposes to join the party. The
+grandmother, who is pleased that he should have that interest,
+accompanies him--though to do him justice, he is exceedingly
+unwilling to trouble her.
+
+"Much obliged to you, ma'am!" says Mr. Guppy, divesting himself of
+his wet dreadnought in the hall. "Us London lawyers don't often get
+an out, and when we do, we like to make the most of it, you know."
+
+The old housekeeper, with a gracious severity of deportment, waves
+her hand towards the great staircase. Mr. Guppy and his friend follow
+Rosa; Mrs. Rouncewell and her grandson follow them; a young gardener
+goes before to open the shutters.
+
+As is usually the case with people who go over houses, Mr. Guppy and
+his friend are dead beat before they have well begun. They straggle
+about in wrong places, look at wrong things, don't care for the right
+things, gape when more rooms are opened, exhibit profound depression
+of spirits, and are clearly knocked up. In each successive chamber
+that they enter, Mrs. Rouncewell, who is as upright as the house
+itself, rests apart in a window-seat or other such nook and listens
+with stately approval to Rosa's exposition. Her grandson is so
+attentive to it that Rosa is shyer than ever--and prettier. Thus they
+pass on from room to room, raising the pictured Dedlocks for a few
+brief minutes as the young gardener admits the light, and
+reconsigning them to their graves as he shuts it out again. It
+appears to the afflicted Mr. Guppy and his inconsolable friend that
+there is no end to the Dedlocks, whose family greatness seems to
+consist in their never having done anything to distinguish themselves
+for seven hundred years.
+
+Even the long drawing-room of Chesney Wold cannot revive Mr. Guppy's
+spirits. He is so low that he droops on the threshold and has hardly
+strength of mind to enter. But a portrait over the chimney-piece,
+painted by the fashionable artist of the day, acts upon him like a
+charm. He recovers in a moment. He stares at it with uncommon
+interest; he seems to be fixed and fascinated by it.
+
+"Dear me!" says Mr. Guppy. "Who's that?"
+
+"The picture over the fire-place," says Rosa, "is the portrait of the
+present Lady Dedlock. It is considered a perfect likeness, and the
+best work of the master."
+
+"Blest," says Mr. Guppy, staring in a kind of dismay at his friend,
+"if I can ever have seen her. Yet I know her! Has the picture been
+engraved, miss?"
+
+"The picture has never been engraved. Sir Leicester has always
+refused permission."
+
+"Well!" says Mr. Guppy in a low voice. "I'll be shot if it ain't very
+curious how well I know that picture! So that's Lady Dedlock, is it!"
+
+"The picture on the right is the present Sir Leicester Dedlock. The
+picture on the left is his father, the late Sir Leicester."
+
+Mr. Guppy has no eyes for either of these magnates. "It's
+unaccountable to me," he says, still staring at the portrait, "how
+well I know that picture! I'm dashed," adds Mr. Guppy, looking round,
+"if I don't think I must have had a dream of that picture, you know!"
+
+As no one present takes any especial interest in Mr. Guppy's dreams,
+the probability is not pursued. But he still remains so absorbed by
+the portrait that he stands immovable before it until the young
+gardener has closed the shutters, when he comes out of the room in a
+dazed state that is an odd though a sufficient substitute for
+interest and follows into the succeeding rooms with a confused stare,
+as if he were looking everywhere for Lady Dedlock again.
+
+He sees no more of her. He sees her rooms, which are the last shown,
+as being very elegant, and he looks out of the windows from which she
+looked out, not long ago, upon the weather that bored her to death.
+All things have an end, even houses that people take infinite pains
+to see and are tired of before they begin to see them. He has come to
+the end of the sight, and the fresh village beauty to the end of her
+description; which is always this: "The terrace below is much
+admired. It is called, from an old story in the family, the Ghost's
+Walk."
+
+"No?" says Mr. Guppy, greedily curious. "What's the story, miss? Is
+it anything about a picture?"
+
+"Pray tell us the story," says Watt in a half whisper.
+
+"I don't know it, sir." Rosa is shyer than ever.
+
+"It is not related to visitors; it is almost forgotten," says the
+housekeeper, advancing. "It has never been more than a family
+anecdote."
+
+"You'll excuse my asking again if it has anything to do with a
+picture, ma'am," observes Mr. Guppy, "because I do assure you that
+the more I think of that picture the better I know it, without
+knowing how I know it!"
+
+The story has nothing to do with a picture; the housekeeper can
+guarantee that. Mr. Guppy is obliged to her for the information and
+is, moreover, generally obliged. He retires with his friend, guided
+down another staircase by the young gardener, and presently is heard
+to drive away. It is now dusk. Mrs. Rouncewell can trust to the
+discretion of her two young hearers and may tell THEM how the terrace
+came to have that ghostly name.
+
+She seats herself in a large chair by the fast-darkening window and
+tells them: "In the wicked days, my dears, of King Charles the
+First--I mean, of course, in the wicked days of the rebels who
+leagued themselves against that excellent king--Sir Morbury Dedlock
+was the owner of Chesney Wold. Whether there was any account of a
+ghost in the family before those days, I can't say. I should think it
+very likely indeed."
+
+Mrs. Rouncewell holds this opinion because she considers that a
+family of such antiquity and importance has a right to a ghost. She
+regards a ghost as one of the privileges of the upper classes, a
+genteel distinction to which the common people have no claim.
+
+"Sir Morbury Dedlock," says Mrs. Rouncewell, "was, I have no occasion
+to say, on the side of the blessed martyr. But it IS supposed that
+his Lady, who had none of the family blood in her veins, favoured the
+bad cause. It is said that she had relations among King Charles's
+enemies, that she was in correspondence with them, and that she gave
+them information. When any of the country gentlemen who followed his
+Majesty's cause met here, it is said that my Lady was always nearer
+to the door of their council-room than they supposed. Do you hear a
+sound like a footstep passing along the terrace, Watt?"
+
+Rosa draws nearer to the housekeeper.
+
+"I hear the rain-drip on the stones," replies the young man, "and I
+hear a curious echo--I suppose an echo--which is very like a halting
+step."
+
+The housekeeper gravely nods and continues: "Partly on account of
+this division between them, and partly on other accounts, Sir Morbury
+and his Lady led a troubled life. She was a lady of a haughty temper.
+They were not well suited to each other in age or character, and they
+had no children to moderate between them. After her favourite
+brother, a young gentleman, was killed in the civil wars (by Sir
+Morbury's near kinsman), her feeling was so violent that she hated
+the race into which she had married. When the Dedlocks were about to
+ride out from Chesney Wold in the king's cause, she is supposed to
+have more than once stolen down into the stables in the dead of night
+and lamed their horses; and the story is that once at such an hour,
+her husband saw her gliding down the stairs and followed her into the
+stall where his own favourite horse stood. There he seized her by the
+wrist, and in a struggle or in a fall or through the horse being
+frightened and lashing out, she was lamed in the hip and from that
+hour began to pine away."
+
+The housekeeper has dropped her voice to a little more than a
+whisper.
+
+"She had been a lady of a handsome figure and a noble carriage. She
+never complained of the change; she never spoke to any one of being
+crippled or of being in pain, but day by day she tried to walk upon
+the terrace, and with the help of the stone balustrade, went up and
+down, up and down, up and down, in sun and shadow, with greater
+difficulty every day. At last, one afternoon her husband (to whom she
+had never, on any persuasion, opened her lips since that night),
+standing at the great south window, saw her drop upon the pavement.
+He hastened down to raise her, but she repulsed him as he bent over
+her, and looking at him fixedly and coldly, said, 'I will die here
+where I have walked. And I will walk here, though I am in my grave. I
+will walk here until the pride of this house is humbled. And when
+calamity or when disgrace is coming to it, let the Dedlocks listen
+for my step!'"
+
+Watt looks at Rosa. Rosa in the deepening gloom looks down upon the
+ground, half frightened and half shy.
+
+"There and then she died. And from those days," says Mrs. Rouncewell,
+"the name has come down--the Ghost's Walk. If the tread is an echo,
+it is an echo that is only heard after dark, and is often unheard for
+a long while together. But it comes back from time to time; and so
+sure as there is sickness or death in the family, it will be heard
+then."
+
+"And disgrace, grandmother--" says Watt.
+
+"Disgrace never comes to Chesney Wold," returns the housekeeper.
+
+Her grandson apologizes with "True. True."
+
+"That is the story. Whatever the sound is, it is a worrying sound,"
+says Mrs. Rouncewell, getting up from her chair; "and what is to be
+noticed in it is that it MUST BE HEARD. My Lady, who is afraid of
+nothing, admits that when it is there, it must be heard. You cannot
+shut it out. Watt, there is a tall French clock behind you (placed
+there, 'a purpose) that has a loud beat when it is in motion and can
+play music. You understand how those things are managed?"
+
+"Pretty well, grandmother, I think."
+
+"Set it a-going."
+
+Watt sets it a-going--music and all.
+
+"Now, come hither," says the housekeeper. "Hither, child, towards my
+Lady's pillow. I am not sure that it is dark enough yet, but listen!
+Can you hear the sound upon the terrace, through the music, and the
+beat, and everything?"
+
+"I certainly can!"
+
+"So my Lady says."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Covering a Multitude of Sins
+
+
+It was interesting when I dressed before daylight to peep out of
+window, where my candles were reflected in the black panes like
+two beacons, and finding all beyond still enshrouded in the
+indistinctness of last night, to watch how it turned out when the day
+came on. As the prospect gradually revealed itself and disclosed the
+scene over which the wind had wandered in the dark, like my memory
+over my life, I had a pleasure in discovering the unknown objects
+that had been around me in my sleep. At first they were faintly
+discernible in the mist, and above them the later stars still
+glimmered. That pale interval over, the picture began to enlarge and
+fill up so fast that at every new peep I could have found enough
+to look at for an hour. Imperceptibly my candles became the only
+incongruous part of the morning, the dark places in my room all
+melted away, and the day shone bright upon a cheerful landscape,
+prominent in which the old Abbey Church, with its massive tower,
+threw a softer train of shadow on the view than seemed compatible
+with its rugged character. But so from rough outsides (I hope I have
+learnt), serene and gentle influences often proceed.
+
+Every part of the house was in such order, and every one was so
+attentive to me, that I had no trouble with my two bunches of keys,
+though what with trying to remember the contents of each little
+store-room drawer and cupboard; and what with making notes on a slate
+about jams, and pickles, and preserves, and bottles, and glass, and
+china, and a great many other things; and what with being generally a
+methodical, old-maidish sort of foolish little person, I was so busy
+that I could not believe it was breakfast-time when I heard the bell
+ring. Away I ran, however, and made tea, as I had already been
+installed into the responsibility of the tea-pot; and then, as they
+were all rather late and nobody was down yet, I thought I would take
+a peep at the garden and get some knowledge of that too. I found it
+quite a delightful place--in front, the pretty avenue and drive by
+which we had approached (and where, by the by, we had cut up the
+gravel so terribly with our wheels that I asked the gardener to roll
+it); at the back, the flower-garden, with my darling at her window up
+there, throwing it open to smile out at me, as if she would have
+kissed me from that distance. Beyond the flower-garden was a
+kitchen-garden, and then a paddock, and then a snug little rick-yard,
+and then a dear little farm-yard. As to the house itself, with its
+three peaks in the roof; its various-shaped windows, some so large,
+some so small, and all so pretty; its trellis-work, against the
+south-front for roses and honey-suckle, and its homely, comfortable,
+welcoming look--it was, as Ada said when she came out to meet me with
+her arm through that of its master, worthy of her cousin John, a bold
+thing to say, though he only pinched her dear cheek for it.
+
+Mr. Skimpole was as agreeable at breakfast as he had been overnight.
+There was honey on the table, and it led him into a discourse about
+bees. He had no objection to honey, he said (and I should think he
+had not, for he seemed to like it), but he protested against the
+overweening assumptions of bees. He didn't at all see why the busy
+bee should be proposed as a model to him; he supposed the bee liked
+to make honey, or he wouldn't do it--nobody asked him. It was not
+necessary for the bee to make such a merit of his tastes. If every
+confectioner went buzzing about the world banging against everything
+that came in his way and egotistically calling upon everybody to take
+notice that he was going to his work and must not be interrupted, the
+world would be quite an unsupportable place. Then, after all, it was
+a ridiculous position to be smoked out of your fortune with brimstone
+as soon as you had made it. You would have a very mean opinion of a
+Manchester man if he spun cotton for no other purpose. He must say he
+thought a drone the embodiment of a pleasanter and wiser idea. The
+drone said unaffectedly, "You will excuse me; I really cannot attend
+to the shop! I find myself in a world in which there is so much to
+see and so short a time to see it in that I must take the liberty of
+looking about me and begging to be provided for by somebody who
+doesn't want to look about him." This appeared to Mr. Skimpole to be
+the drone philosophy, and he thought it a very good philosophy,
+always supposing the drone to be willing to be on good terms with the
+bee, which, so far as he knew, the easy fellow always was, if the
+consequential creature would only let him, and not be so conceited
+about his honey!
+
+He pursued this fancy with the lightest foot over a variety of ground
+and made us all merry, though again he seemed to have as serious a
+meaning in what he said as he was capable of having. I left them
+still listening to him when I withdrew to attend to my new duties.
+They had occupied me for some time, and I was passing through the
+passages on my return with my basket of keys on my arm when Mr.
+Jarndyce called me into a small room next his bed-chamber, which I
+found to be in part a little library of books and papers and in part
+quite a little museum of his boots and shoes and hat-boxes.
+
+"Sit down, my dear," said Mr. Jarndyce. "This, you must know, is the
+growlery. When I am out of humour, I come and growl here."
+
+"You must be here very seldom, sir," said I.
+
+"Oh, you don't know me!" he returned. "When I am deceived or
+disappointed in--the wind, and it's easterly, I take refuge here. The
+growlery is the best-used room in the house. You are not aware of
+half my humours yet. My dear, how you are trembling!"
+
+I could not help it; I tried very hard, but being alone with that
+benevolent presence, and meeting his kind eyes, and feeling so happy
+and so honoured there, and my heart so full--I kissed his hand. I
+don't know what I said, or even that I spoke. He was disconcerted and
+walked to the window; I almost believed with an intention of jumping
+out, until he turned and I was reassured by seeing in his eyes what
+he had gone there to hide. He gently patted me on the head, and I sat
+down.
+
+"There! There!" he said. "That's over. Pooh! Don't be foolish."
+
+"It shall not happen again, sir," I returned, "but at first it is
+difficult--"
+
+"Nonsense!" he said. "It's easy, easy. Why not? I hear of a good
+little orphan girl without a protector, and I take it into my head to
+be that protector. She grows up, and more than justifies my good
+opinion, and I remain her guardian and her friend. What is there in
+all this? So, so! Now, we have cleared off old scores, and I have
+before me thy pleasant, trusting, trusty face again."
+
+I said to myself, "Esther, my dear, you surprise me! This really is
+not what I expected of you!" And it had such a good effect that I
+folded my hands upon my basket and quite recovered myself. Mr.
+Jarndyce, expressing his approval in his face, began to talk to me as
+confidentially as if I had been in the habit of conversing with him
+every morning for I don't know how long. I almost felt as if I had.
+
+"Of course, Esther," he said, "you don't understand this Chancery
+business?"
+
+And of course I shook my head.
+
+"I don't know who does," he returned. "The lawyers have twisted it
+into such a state of bedevilment that the original merits of the case
+have long disappeared from the face of the earth. It's about a will
+and the trusts under a will--or it was once. It's about nothing but
+costs now. We are always appearing, and disappearing, and swearing,
+and interrogating, and filing, and cross-filing, and arguing, and
+sealing, and motioning, and referring, and reporting, and revolving
+about the Lord Chancellor and all his satellites, and equitably
+waltzing ourselves off to dusty death, about costs. That's the great
+question. All the rest, by some extraordinary means, has melted
+away."
+
+"But it was, sir," said I, to bring him back, for he began to rub his
+head, "about a will?"
+
+"Why, yes, it was about a will when it was about anything," he
+returned. "A certain Jarndyce, in an evil hour, made a great fortune,
+and made a great will. In the question how the trusts under that will
+are to be administered, the fortune left by the will is squandered
+away; the legatees under the will are reduced to such a miserable
+condition that they would be sufficiently punished if they had
+committed an enormous crime in having money left them, and the will
+itself is made a dead letter. All through the deplorable cause,
+everything that everybody in it, except one man, knows already is
+referred to that only one man who don't know, it to find out--all
+through the deplorable cause, everybody must have copies, over and
+over again, of everything that has accumulated about it in the way of
+cartloads of papers (or must pay for them without having them, which
+is the usual course, for nobody wants them) and must go down the
+middle and up again through such an infernal country-dance of costs
+and fees and nonsense and corruption as was never dreamed of in the
+wildest visions of a witch's Sabbath. Equity sends questions to law,
+law sends questions back to equity; law finds it can't do this,
+equity finds it can't do that; neither can so much as say it can't
+do anything, without this solicitor instructing and this counsel
+appearing for A, and that solicitor instructing and that counsel
+appearing for B; and so on through the whole alphabet, like the
+history of the apple pie. And thus, through years and years, and
+lives and lives, everything goes on, constantly beginning over and
+over again, and nothing ever ends. And we can't get out of the suit
+on any terms, for we are made parties to it, and MUST BE parties to
+it, whether we like it or not. But it won't do to think of it! When
+my great uncle, poor Tom Jarndyce, began to think of it, it was the
+beginning of the end!"
+
+"The Mr. Jarndyce, sir, whose story I have heard?"
+
+He nodded gravely. "I was his heir, and this was his house, Esther.
+When I came here, it was bleak indeed. He had left the signs of his
+misery upon it."
+
+"How changed it must be now!" I said.
+
+"It had been called, before his time, the Peaks. He gave it its
+present name and lived here shut up, day and night poring over the
+wicked heaps of papers in the suit and hoping against hope to
+disentangle it from its mystification and bring it to a close. In the
+meantime, the place became dilapidated, the wind whistled through the
+cracked walls, the rain fell through the broken roof, the weeds
+choked the passage to the rotting door. When I brought what remained
+of him home here, the brains seemed to me to have been blown out of
+the house too, it was so shattered and ruined."
+
+He walked a little to and fro after saying this to himself with a
+shudder, and then looked at me, and brightened, and came and sat down
+again with his hands in his pockets.
+
+"I told you this was the growlery, my dear. Where was I?"
+
+I reminded him, at the hopeful change he had made in Bleak House.
+
+"Bleak House; true. There is, in that city of London there, some
+property of ours which is much at this day what Bleak House was then;
+I say property of ours, meaning of the suit's, but I ought to call it
+the property of costs, for costs is the only power on earth that will
+ever get anything out of it now or will ever know it for anything but
+an eyesore and a heartsore. It is a street of perishing blind houses,
+with their eyes stoned out, without a pane of glass, without so much
+as a window-frame, with the bare blank shutters tumbling from their
+hinges and falling asunder, the iron rails peeling away in flakes of
+rust, the chimneys sinking in, the stone steps to every door (and
+every door might be death's door) turning stagnant green, the very
+crutches on which the ruins are propped decaying. Although Bleak
+House was not in Chancery, its master was, and it was stamped with
+the same seal. These are the Great Seal's impressions, my dear, all
+over England--the children know them!"
+
+"How changed it is!" I said again.
+
+"Why, so it is," he answered much more cheerfully; "and it is wisdom
+in you to keep me to the bright side of the picture." (The idea of my
+wisdom!) "These are things I never talk about or even think about,
+excepting in the growlery here. If you consider it right to mention
+them to Rick and Ada," looking seriously at me, "you can. I leave it
+to your discretion, Esther."
+
+"I hope, sir--" said I.
+
+"I think you had better call me guardian, my dear."
+
+I felt that I was choking again--I taxed myself with it, "Esther,
+now, you know you are!"--when he feigned to say this slightly, as if
+it were a whim instead of a thoughtful tenderness. But I gave the
+housekeeping keys the least shake in the world as a reminder to
+myself, and folding my hands in a still more determined manner on the
+basket, looked at him quietly.
+
+"I hope, guardian," said I, "that you may not trust too much to my
+discretion. I hope you may not mistake me. I am afraid it will be a
+disappointment to you to know that I am not clever, but it really is
+the truth, and you would soon find it out if I had not the honesty to
+confess it."
+
+He did not seem at all disappointed; quite the contrary. He told me,
+with a smile all over his face, that he knew me very well indeed and
+that I was quite clever enough for him.
+
+"I hope I may turn out so," said I, "but I am much afraid of it,
+guardian."
+
+"You are clever enough to be the good little woman of our lives here,
+my dear," he returned playfully; "the little old woman of the child's
+(I don't mean Skimpole's) rhyme:
+
+
+   "'Little old woman, and whither so high?'
+    'To sweep the cobwebs out of the sky.'
+
+
+"You will sweep them so neatly out of OUR sky in the course of your
+housekeeping, Esther, that one of these days we shall have to abandon
+the growlery and nail up the door."
+
+This was the beginning of my being called Old Woman, and Little Old
+Woman, and Cobweb, and Mrs. Shipton, and Mother Hubbard, and Dame
+Durden, and so many names of that sort that my own name soon became
+quite lost among them.
+
+"However," said Mr. Jarndyce, "to return to our gossip. Here's Rick,
+a fine young fellow full of promise. What's to be done with him?"
+
+Oh, my goodness, the idea of asking my advice on such a point!
+
+"Here he is, Esther," said Mr. Jarndyce, comfortably putting his
+hands into his pockets and stretching out his legs. "He must have a
+profession; he must make some choice for himself. There will be a
+world more wiglomeration about it, I suppose, but it must be done."
+
+"More what, guardian?" said I.
+
+"More wiglomeration," said he. "It's the only name I know for the
+thing. He is a ward in Chancery, my dear. Kenge and Carboy will have
+something to say about it; Master Somebody--a sort of ridiculous
+sexton, digging graves for the merits of causes in a back room at the
+end of Quality Court, Chancery Lane--will have something to say about
+it; counsel will have something to say about it; the Chancellor will
+have something to say about it; the satellites will have something to
+say about it; they will all have to be handsomely feed, all round,
+about it; the whole thing will be vastly ceremonious, wordy,
+unsatisfactory, and expensive, and I call it, in general,
+wiglomeration. How mankind ever came to be afflicted with
+wiglomeration, or for whose sins these young people ever fell into a
+pit of it, I don't know; so it is."
+
+He began to rub his head again and to hint that he felt the wind. But
+it was a delightful instance of his kindness towards me that whether
+he rubbed his head, or walked about, or did both, his face was sure
+to recover its benignant expression as it looked at mine; and he was
+sure to turn comfortable again and put his hands in his pockets and
+stretch out his legs.
+
+"Perhaps it would be best, first of all," said I, "to ask Mr. Richard
+what he inclines to himself."
+
+"Exactly so," he returned. "That's what I mean! You know, just
+accustom yourself to talk it over, with your tact and in your quiet
+way, with him and Ada, and see what you all make of it. We are sure
+to come at the heart of the matter by your means, little woman."
+
+I really was frightened at the thought of the importance I was
+attaining and the number of things that were being confided to me. I
+had not meant this at all; I had meant that he should speak to
+Richard. But of course I said nothing in reply except that I would do
+my best, though I feared (I really felt it necessary to repeat this)
+that he thought me much more sagacious than I was. At which my
+guardian only laughed the pleasantest laugh I ever heard.
+
+"Come!" he said, rising and pushing back his chair. "I think we may
+have done with the growlery for one day! Only a concluding word.
+Esther, my dear, do you wish to ask me anything?"
+
+He looked so attentively at me that I looked attentively at him and
+felt sure I understood him.
+
+"About myself, sir?" said I.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Guardian," said I, venturing to put my hand, which was suddenly
+colder than I could have wished, in his, "nothing! I am quite sure
+that if there were anything I ought to know or had any need to know,
+I should not have to ask you to tell it to me. If my whole reliance
+and confidence were not placed in you, I must have a hard heart
+indeed. I have nothing to ask you, nothing in the world."
+
+He drew my hand through his arm and we went away to look for Ada.
+From that hour I felt quite easy with him, quite unreserved, quite
+content to know no more, quite happy.
+
+We lived, at first, rather a busy life at Bleak House, for we had to
+become acquainted with many residents in and out of the neighbourhood
+who knew Mr. Jarndyce. It seemed to Ada and me that everybody knew
+him who wanted to do anything with anybody else's money. It amazed us
+when we began to sort his letters and to answer some of them for him
+in the growlery of a morning to find how the great object of the
+lives of nearly all his correspondents appeared to be to form
+themselves into committees for getting in and laying out money. The
+ladies were as desperate as the gentlemen; indeed, I think they were
+even more so. They threw themselves into committees in the most
+impassioned manner and collected subscriptions with a vehemence quite
+extraordinary. It appeared to us that some of them must pass their
+whole lives in dealing out subscription-cards to the whole
+post-office directory--shilling cards, half-crown cards,
+half-sovereign cards, penny cards. They wanted everything. They
+wanted wearing apparel, they wanted linen rags, they wanted money,
+they wanted coals, they wanted soup, they wanted interest, they
+wanted autographs, they wanted flannel, they wanted whatever Mr.
+Jarndyce had--or had not. Their objects were as various as their
+demands. They were going to raise new buildings, they were going to
+pay off debts on old buildings, they were going to establish in a
+picturesque building (engraving of proposed west elevation attached)
+the Sisterhood of Mediaeval Marys, they were going to give a
+testimonial to Mrs. Jellyby, they were going to have their
+secretary's portrait painted and presented to his mother-in-law,
+whose deep devotion to him was well known, they were going to get up
+everything, I really believe, from five hundred thousand tracts to an
+annuity and from a marble monument to a silver tea-pot. They took a
+multitude of titles. They were the Women of England, the Daughters of
+Britain, the Sisters of all the cardinal virtues separately, the
+Females of America, the Ladies of a hundred denominations. They
+appeared to be always excited about canvassing and electing. They
+seemed to our poor wits, and according to their own accounts, to be
+constantly polling people by tens of thousands, yet never bringing
+their candidates in for anything. It made our heads ache to think, on
+the whole, what feverish lives they must lead.
+
+Among the ladies who were most distinguished for this rapacious
+benevolence (if I may use the expression) was a Mrs. Pardiggle, who
+seemed, as I judged from the number of her letters to Mr. Jarndyce,
+to be almost as powerful a correspondent as Mrs. Jellyby herself. We
+observed that the wind always changed when Mrs. Pardiggle became the
+subject of conversation and that it invariably interrupted Mr.
+Jarndyce and prevented his going any farther, when he had remarked
+that there were two classes of charitable people; one, the people who
+did a little and made a great deal of noise; the other, the people
+who did a great deal and made no noise at all. We were therefore
+curious to see Mrs. Pardiggle, suspecting her to be a type of the
+former class, and were glad when she called one day with her five
+young sons.
+
+She was a formidable style of lady with spectacles, a prominent nose,
+and a loud voice, who had the effect of wanting a great deal of room.
+And she really did, for she knocked down little chairs with her
+skirts that were quite a great way off. As only Ada and I were at
+home, we received her timidly, for she seemed to come in like cold
+weather and to make the little Pardiggles blue as they followed.
+
+"These, young ladies," said Mrs. Pardiggle with great volubility
+after the first salutations, "are my five boys. You may have seen
+their names in a printed subscription list (perhaps more than one) in
+the possession of our esteemed friend Mr. Jarndyce. Egbert, my eldest
+(twelve), is the boy who sent out his pocket-money, to the amount of
+five and threepence, to the Tockahoopo Indians. Oswald, my second
+(ten and a half), is the child who contributed two and nine-pence to
+the Great National Smithers Testimonial. Francis, my third (nine),
+one and sixpence halfpenny; Felix, my fourth (seven), eightpence to
+the Superannuated Widows; Alfred, my youngest (five), has voluntarily
+enrolled himself in the Infant Bonds of Joy, and is pledged never,
+through life, to use tobacco in any form."
+
+We had never seen such dissatisfied children. It was not merely that
+they were weazened and shrivelled--though they were certainly that
+too--but they looked absolutely ferocious with discontent. At the
+mention of the Tockahoopo Indians, I could really have supposed
+Egbert to be one of the most baleful members of that tribe, he gave
+me such a savage frown. The face of each child, as the amount of his
+contribution was mentioned, darkened in a peculiarly vindictive
+manner, but his was by far the worst. I must except, however, the
+little recruit into the Infant Bonds of Joy, who was stolidly and
+evenly miserable.
+
+"You have been visiting, I understand," said Mrs. Pardiggle, "at Mrs.
+Jellyby's?"
+
+We said yes, we had passed one night there.
+
+"Mrs. Jellyby," pursued the lady, always speaking in the same
+demonstrative, loud, hard tone, so that her voice impressed my fancy
+as if it had a sort of spectacles on too--and I may take the
+opportunity of remarking that her spectacles were made the less
+engaging by her eyes being what Ada called "choking eyes," meaning
+very prominent--"Mrs. Jellyby is a benefactor to society and deserves
+a helping hand. My boys have contributed to the African
+project--Egbert, one and six, being the entire allowance of nine
+weeks; Oswald, one and a penny halfpenny, being the same; the rest,
+according to their little means. Nevertheless, I do not go with Mrs.
+Jellyby in all things. I do not go with Mrs. Jellyby in her treatment
+of her young family. It has been noticed. It has been observed that
+her young family are excluded from participation in the objects to
+which she is devoted. She may be right, she may be wrong; but, right
+or wrong, this is not my course with MY young family. I take them
+everywhere."
+
+I was afterwards convinced (and so was Ada) that from the
+ill-conditioned eldest child, these words extorted a sharp yell. He
+turned it off into a yawn, but it began as a yell.
+
+"They attend matins with me (very prettily done) at half-past six
+o'clock in the morning all the year round, including of course the
+depth of winter," said Mrs. Pardiggle rapidly, "and they are with me
+during the revolving duties of the day. I am a School lady, I am a
+Visiting lady, I am a Reading lady, I am a Distributing lady; I am on
+the local Linen Box Committee and many general committees; and my
+canvassing alone is very extensive--perhaps no one's more so. But
+they are my companions everywhere; and by these means they acquire
+that knowledge of the poor, and that capacity of doing charitable
+business in general--in short, that taste for the sort of
+thing--which will render them in after life a service to their
+neighbours and a satisfaction to themselves. My young family are not
+frivolous; they expend the entire amount of their allowance in
+subscriptions, under my direction; and they have attended as many
+public meetings and listened to as many lectures, orations, and
+discussions as generally fall to the lot of few grown people. Alfred
+(five), who, as I mentioned, has of his own election joined the
+Infant Bonds of Joy, was one of the very few children who manifested
+consciousness on that occasion after a fervid address of two hours
+from the chairman of the evening."
+
+Alfred glowered at us as if he never could, or would, forgive the
+injury of that night.
+
+"You may have observed, Miss Summerson," said Mrs. Pardiggle, "in
+some of the lists to which I have referred, in the possession of our
+esteemed friend Mr. Jarndyce, that the names of my young family are
+concluded with the name of O. A. Pardiggle, F.R.S., one pound. That
+is their father. We usually observe the same routine. I put down my
+mite first; then my young family enrol their contributions, according
+to their ages and their little means; and then Mr. Pardiggle brings
+up the rear. Mr. Pardiggle is happy to throw in his limited donation,
+under my direction; and thus things are made not only pleasant to
+ourselves, but, we trust, improving to others."
+
+Suppose Mr. Pardiggle were to dine with Mr. Jellyby, and suppose Mr.
+Jellyby were to relieve his mind after dinner to Mr. Pardiggle, would
+Mr. Pardiggle, in return, make any confidential communication to Mr.
+Jellyby? I was quite confused to find myself thinking this, but it
+came into my head.
+
+"You are very pleasantly situated here!" said Mrs. Pardiggle.
+
+We were glad to change the subject, and going to the window, pointed
+out the beauties of the prospect, on which the spectacles appeared to
+me to rest with curious indifference.
+
+"You know Mr. Gusher?" said our visitor.
+
+We were obliged to say that we had not the pleasure of Mr. Gusher's
+acquaintance.
+
+"The loss is yours, I assure you," said Mrs. Pardiggle with her
+commanding deportment. "He is a very fervid, impassioned
+speaker--full of fire! Stationed in a waggon on this lawn, now,
+which, from the shape of the land, is naturally adapted to a public
+meeting, he would improve almost any occasion you could mention for
+hours and hours! By this time, young ladies," said Mrs. Pardiggle,
+moving back to her chair and overturning, as if by invisible agency,
+a little round table at a considerable distance with my work-basket
+on it, "by this time you have found me out, I dare say?"
+
+This was really such a confusing question that Ada looked at me in
+perfect dismay. As to the guilty nature of my own consciousness after
+what I had been thinking, it must have been expressed in the colour
+of my cheeks.
+
+"Found out, I mean," said Mrs. Pardiggle, "the prominent point in my
+character. I am aware that it is so prominent as to be discoverable
+immediately. I lay myself open to detection, I know. Well! I freely
+admit, I am a woman of business. I love hard work; I enjoy hard work.
+The excitement does me good. I am so accustomed and inured to hard
+work that I don't know what fatigue is."
+
+We murmured that it was very astonishing and very gratifying, or
+something to that effect. I don't think we knew what it was either,
+but this is what our politeness expressed.
+
+"I do not understand what it is to be tired; you cannot tire me if
+you try!" said Mrs. Pardiggle. "The quantity of exertion (which is no
+exertion to me), the amount of business (which I regard as nothing),
+that I go through sometimes astonishes myself. I have seen my young
+family, and Mr. Pardiggle, quite worn out with witnessing it, when I
+may truly say I have been as fresh as a lark!"
+
+If that dark-visaged eldest boy could look more malicious than he had
+already looked, this was the time when he did it. I observed that he
+doubled his right fist and delivered a secret blow into the crown of
+his cap, which was under his left arm.
+
+"This gives me a great advantage when I am making my rounds," said
+Mrs. Pardiggle. "If I find a person unwilling to hear what I have to
+say, I tell that person directly, 'I am incapable of fatigue, my good
+friend, I am never tired, and I mean to go on until I have done.' It
+answers admirably! Miss Summerson, I hope I shall have your
+assistance in my visiting rounds immediately, and Miss Clare's very
+soon."
+
+At first I tried to excuse myself for the present on the general
+ground of having occupations to attend to which I must not neglect.
+But as this was an ineffectual protest, I then said, more
+particularly, that I was not sure of my qualifications. That I was
+inexperienced in the art of adapting my mind to minds very
+differently situated, and addressing them from suitable points of
+view. That I had not that delicate knowledge of the heart which must
+be essential to such a work. That I had much to learn, myself, before
+I could teach others, and that I could not confide in my good
+intentions alone. For these reasons I thought it best to be as useful
+as I could, and to render what kind services I could to those
+immediately about me, and to try to let that circle of duty gradually
+and naturally expand itself. All this I said with anything but
+confidence, because Mrs. Pardiggle was much older than I, and had
+great experience, and was so very military in her manners.
+
+"You are wrong, Miss Summerson," said she, "but perhaps you are not
+equal to hard work or the excitement of it, and that makes a vast
+difference. If you would like to see how I go through my work, I am
+now about--with my young family--to visit a brickmaker in the
+neighbourhood (a very bad character) and shall be glad to take you
+with me. Miss Clare also, if she will do me the favour."
+
+Ada and I interchanged looks, and as we were going out in any case,
+accepted the offer. When we hastily returned from putting on our
+bonnets, we found the young family languishing in a corner and Mrs.
+Pardiggle sweeping about the room, knocking down nearly all the light
+objects it contained. Mrs. Pardiggle took possession of Ada, and I
+followed with the family.
+
+Ada told me afterwards that Mrs. Pardiggle talked in the same loud
+tone (that, indeed, I overheard) all the way to the brickmaker's
+about an exciting contest which she had for two or three years waged
+against another lady relative to the bringing in of their rival
+candidates for a pension somewhere. There had been a quantity of
+printing, and promising, and proxying, and polling, and it appeared
+to have imparted great liveliness to all concerned, except the
+pensioners--who were not elected yet.
+
+I am very fond of being confided in by children and am happy in being
+usually favoured in that respect, but on this occasion it gave me
+great uneasiness. As soon as we were out of doors, Egbert, with the
+manner of a little footpad, demanded a shilling of me on the ground
+that his pocket-money was "boned" from him. On my pointing out the
+great impropriety of the word, especially in connexion with his
+parent (for he added sulkily "By her!"), he pinched me and said, "Oh,
+then! Now! Who are you! YOU wouldn't like it, I think? What does she
+make a sham for, and pretend to give me money, and take it away
+again? Why do you call it my allowance, and never let me spend it?"
+These exasperating questions so inflamed his mind and the minds of
+Oswald and Francis that they all pinched me at once, and in a
+dreadfully expert way--screwing up such little pieces of my arms that
+I could hardly forbear crying out. Felix, at the same time, stamped
+upon my toes. And the Bond of Joy, who on account of always having
+the whole of his little income anticipated stood in fact pledged to
+abstain from cakes as well as tobacco, so swelled with grief and rage
+when we passed a pastry-cook's shop that he terrified me by becoming
+purple. I never underwent so much, both in body and mind, in the
+course of a walk with young people as from these unnaturally
+constrained children when they paid me the compliment of being
+natural.
+
+I was glad when we came to the brickmaker's house, though it was one
+of a cluster of wretched hovels in a brick-field, with pigsties close
+to the broken windows and miserable little gardens before the doors
+growing nothing but stagnant pools. Here and there an old tub was put
+to catch the droppings of rain-water from a roof, or they were banked
+up with mud into a little pond like a large dirt-pie. At the doors
+and windows some men and women lounged or prowled about, and took
+little notice of us except to laugh to one another or to say
+something as we passed about gentlefolks minding their own business
+and not troubling their heads and muddying their shoes with coming to
+look after other people's.
+
+Mrs. Pardiggle, leading the way with a great show of moral
+determination and talking with much volubility about the untidy
+habits of the people (though I doubted if the best of us could have
+been tidy in such a place), conducted us into a cottage at the
+farthest corner, the ground-floor room of which we nearly filled.
+Besides ourselves, there were in this damp, offensive room a woman
+with a black eye, nursing a poor little gasping baby by the fire; a
+man, all stained with clay and mud and looking very dissipated, lying
+at full length on the ground, smoking a pipe; a powerful young man
+fastening a collar on a dog; and a bold girl doing some kind of
+washing in very dirty water. They all looked up at us as we came in,
+and the woman seemed to turn her face towards the fire as if to hide
+her bruised eye; nobody gave us any welcome.
+
+"Well, my friends," said Mrs. Pardiggle, but her voice had not a
+friendly sound, I thought; it was much too business-like and
+systematic. "How do you do, all of you? I am here again. I told you,
+you couldn't tire me, you know. I am fond of hard work, and am true
+to my word."
+
+"There an't," growled the man on the floor, whose head rested on his
+hand as he stared at us, "any more on you to come in, is there?"
+
+"No, my friend," said Mrs. Pardiggle, seating herself on one stool
+and knocking down another. "We are all here."
+
+"Because I thought there warn't enough of you, perhaps?" said the
+man, with his pipe between his lips as he looked round upon us.
+
+The young man and the girl both laughed. Two friends of the young
+man, whom we had attracted to the doorway and who stood there with
+their hands in their pockets, echoed the laugh noisily.
+
+"You can't tire me, good people," said Mrs. Pardiggle to these
+latter. "I enjoy hard work, and the harder you make mine, the better
+I like it."
+
+"Then make it easy for her!" growled the man upon the floor. "I wants
+it done, and over. I wants a end of these liberties took with my
+place. I wants an end of being drawed like a badger. Now you're
+a-going to poll-pry and question according to custom--I know what
+you're a-going to be up to. Well! You haven't got no occasion to be
+up to it. I'll save you the trouble. Is my daughter a-washin? Yes,
+she IS a-washin. Look at the water. Smell it! That's wot we drinks.
+How do you like it, and what do you think of gin instead! An't my
+place dirty? Yes, it is dirty--it's nat'rally dirty, and it's
+nat'rally onwholesome; and we've had five dirty and onwholesome
+children, as is all dead infants, and so much the better for them,
+and for us besides. Have I read the little book wot you left? No, I
+an't read the little book wot you left. There an't nobody here as
+knows how to read it; and if there wos, it wouldn't be suitable to
+me. It's a book fit for a babby, and I'm not a babby. If you was to
+leave me a doll, I shouldn't nuss it. How have I been conducting of
+myself? Why, I've been drunk for three days; and I'da been drunk four
+if I'da had the money. Don't I never mean for to go to church? No, I
+don't never mean for to go to church. I shouldn't be expected there,
+if I did; the beadle's too gen-teel for me. And how did my wife get
+that black eye? Why, I give it her; and if she says I didn't, she's a
+lie!"
+
+He had pulled his pipe out of his mouth to say all this, and he now
+turned over on his other side and smoked again. Mrs. Pardiggle, who
+had been regarding him through her spectacles with a forcible
+composure, calculated, I could not help thinking, to increase his
+antagonism, pulled out a good book as if it were a constable's staff
+and took the whole family into custody. I mean into religious
+custody, of course; but she really did it as if she were an
+inexorable moral policeman carrying them all off to a station-house.
+
+Ada and I were very uncomfortable. We both felt intrusive and out of
+place, and we both thought that Mrs. Pardiggle would have got on
+infinitely better if she had not had such a mechanical way of taking
+possession of people. The children sulked and stared; the family took
+no notice of us whatever, except when the young man made the dog
+bark, which he usually did when Mrs. Pardiggle was most emphatic. We
+both felt painfully sensible that between us and these people there
+was an iron barrier which could not be removed by our new friend. By
+whom or how it could be removed, we did not know, but we knew that.
+Even what she read and said seemed to us to be ill-chosen for such
+auditors, if it had been imparted ever so modestly and with ever so
+much tact. As to the little book to which the man on the floor had
+referred, we acquired a knowledge of it afterwards, and Mr. Jarndyce
+said he doubted if Robinson Crusoe could have read it, though he had
+had no other on his desolate island.
+
+We were much relieved, under these circumstances, when Mrs. Pardiggle
+left off.
+
+The man on the floor, then turning his head round again, said
+morosely, "Well! You've done, have you?"
+
+"For to-day, I have, my friend. But I am never fatigued. I shall come
+to you again in your regular order," returned Mrs. Pardiggle with
+demonstrative cheerfulness.
+
+"So long as you goes now," said he, folding his arms and shutting his
+eyes with an oath, "you may do wot you like!"
+
+Mrs. Pardiggle accordingly rose and made a little vortex in the
+confined room from which the pipe itself very narrowly escaped.
+Taking one of her young family in each hand, and telling the others
+to follow closely, and expressing her hope that the brickmaker and
+all his house would be improved when she saw them next, she then
+proceeded to another cottage. I hope it is not unkind in me to say
+that she certainly did make, in this as in everything else, a show
+that was not conciliatory of doing charity by wholesale and of
+dealing in it to a large extent.
+
+She supposed that we were following her, but as soon as the space was
+left clear, we approached the woman sitting by the fire to ask if the
+baby were ill.
+
+She only looked at it as it lay on her lap. We had observed before
+that when she looked at it she covered her discoloured eye with her
+hand, as though she wished to separate any association with noise and
+violence and ill treatment from the poor little child.
+
+Ada, whose gentle heart was moved by its appearance, bent down to
+touch its little face. As she did so, I saw what happened and drew
+her back. The child died.
+
+"Oh, Esther!" cried Ada, sinking on her knees beside it. "Look here!
+Oh, Esther, my love, the little thing! The suffering, quiet, pretty
+little thing! I am so sorry for it. I am so sorry for the mother. I
+never saw a sight so pitiful as this before! Oh, baby, baby!"
+
+Such compassion, such gentleness, as that with which she bent down
+weeping and put her hand upon the mother's might have softened any
+mother's heart that ever beat. The woman at first gazed at her in
+astonishment and then burst into tears.
+
+Presently I took the light burden from her lap, did what I could to
+make the baby's rest the prettier and gentler, laid it on a shelf,
+and covered it with my own handkerchief. We tried to comfort the
+mother, and we whispered to her what Our Saviour said of children.
+She answered nothing, but sat weeping--weeping very much.
+
+When I turned, I found that the young man had taken out the dog and
+was standing at the door looking in upon us with dry eyes, but quiet.
+The girl was quiet too and sat in a corner looking on the ground. The
+man had risen. He still smoked his pipe with an air of defiance, but
+he was silent.
+
+An ugly woman, very poorly clothed, hurried in while I was glancing
+at them, and coming straight up to the mother, said, "Jenny! Jenny!"
+The mother rose on being so addressed and fell upon the woman's neck.
+
+She also had upon her face and arms the marks of ill usage. She had
+no kind of grace about her, but the grace of sympathy; but when she
+condoled with the woman, and her own tears fell, she wanted no
+beauty. I say condoled, but her only words were "Jenny! Jenny!" All
+the rest was in the tone in which she said them.
+
+I thought it very touching to see these two women, coarse and shabby
+and beaten, so united; to see what they could be to one another; to
+see how they felt for one another, how the heart of each to each was
+softened by the hard trials of their lives. I think the best side of
+such people is almost hidden from us. What the poor are to the poor
+is little known, excepting to themselves and God.
+
+We felt it better to withdraw and leave them uninterrupted. We stole
+out quietly and without notice from any one except the man. He was
+leaning against the wall near the door, and finding that there was
+scarcely room for us to pass, went out before us. He seemed to want
+to hide that he did this on our account, but we perceived that he
+did, and thanked him. He made no answer.
+
+Ada was so full of grief all the way home, and Richard, whom we found
+at home, was so distressed to see her in tears (though he said to me,
+when she was not present, how beautiful it was too!), that we
+arranged to return at night with some little comforts and repeat our
+visit at the brick-maker's house. We said as little as we could to
+Mr. Jarndyce, but the wind changed directly.
+
+Richard accompanied us at night to the scene of our morning
+expedition. On our way there, we had to pass a noisy drinking-house,
+where a number of men were flocking about the door. Among them, and
+prominent in some dispute, was the father of the little child. At a
+short distance, we passed the young man and the dog, in congenial
+company. The sister was standing laughing and talking with some other
+young women at the corner of the row of cottages, but she seemed
+ashamed and turned away as we went by.
+
+We left our escort within sight of the brickmaker's dwelling and
+proceeded by ourselves. When we came to the door, we found the woman
+who had brought such consolation with her standing there looking
+anxiously out.
+
+"It's you, young ladies, is it?" she said in a whisper. "I'm
+a-watching for my master. My heart's in my mouth. If he was to catch
+me away from home, he'd pretty near murder me."
+
+"Do you mean your husband?" said I.
+
+"Yes, miss, my master. Jenny's asleep, quite worn out. She's scarcely
+had the child off her lap, poor thing, these seven days and nights,
+except when I've been able to take it for a minute or two."
+
+As she gave way for us, she went softly in and put what we had
+brought near the miserable bed on which the mother slept. No effort
+had been made to clean the room--it seemed in its nature almost
+hopeless of being clean; but the small waxen form from which so much
+solemnity diffused itself had been composed afresh, and washed, and
+neatly dressed in some fragments of white linen; and on my
+handkerchief, which still covered the poor baby, a little bunch of
+sweet herbs had been laid by the same rough, scarred hands, so
+lightly, so tenderly!
+
+"May heaven reward you!" we said to her. "You are a good woman."
+
+"Me, young ladies?" she returned with surprise. "Hush! Jenny, Jenny!"
+
+The mother had moaned in her sleep and moved. The sound of the
+familiar voice seemed to calm her again. She was quiet once more.
+
+How little I thought, when I raised my handkerchief to look upon the
+tiny sleeper underneath and seemed to see a halo shine around the
+child through Ada's drooping hair as her pity bent her head--how
+little I thought in whose unquiet bosom that handkerchief would come
+to lie after covering the motionless and peaceful breast! I only
+thought that perhaps the Angel of the child might not be all
+unconscious of the woman who replaced it with so compassionate a
+hand; not all unconscious of her presently, when we had taken leave,
+and left her at the door, by turns looking, and listening in terror
+for herself, and saying in her old soothing manner, "Jenny, Jenny!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Signs and Tokens
+
+
+I don't know how it is I seem to be always writing about myself. I
+mean all the time to write about other people, and I try to think
+about myself as little as possible, and I am sure, when I find myself
+coming into the story again, I am really vexed and say, "Dear, dear,
+you tiresome little creature, I wish you wouldn't!" but it is all of
+no use. I hope any one who may read what I write will understand that
+if these pages contain a great deal about me, I can only suppose it
+must be because I have really something to do with them and can't be
+kept out.
+
+My darling and I read together, and worked, and practised, and found
+so much employment for our time that the winter days flew by us like
+bright-winged birds. Generally in the afternoons, and always in the
+evenings, Richard gave us his company. Although he was one of the
+most restless creatures in the world, he certainly was very fond of
+our society.
+
+He was very, very, very fond of Ada. I mean it, and I had better say
+it at once. I had never seen any young people falling in love before,
+but I found them out quite soon. I could not say so, of course, or
+show that I knew anything about it. On the contrary, I was so demure
+and used to seem so unconscious that sometimes I considered within
+myself while I was sitting at work whether I was not growing quite
+deceitful.
+
+But there was no help for it. All I had to do was to be quiet, and I
+was as quiet as a mouse. They were as quiet as mice too, so far as
+any words were concerned, but the innocent manner in which they
+relied more and more upon me as they took more and more to one
+another was so charming that I had great difficulty in not showing
+how it interested me.
+
+"Our dear little old woman is such a capital old woman," Richard
+would say, coming up to meet me in the garden early, with his
+pleasant laugh and perhaps the least tinge of a blush, "that I can't
+get on without her. Before I begin my harum-scarum day--grinding away
+at those books and instruments and then galloping up hill and down
+dale, all the country round, like a highwayman--it does me so much
+good to come and have a steady walk with our comfortable friend, that
+here I am again!"
+
+"You know, Dame Durden, dear," Ada would say at night, with her head
+upon my shoulder and the firelight shining in her thoughtful eyes, "I
+don't want to talk when we come upstairs here. Only to sit a little
+while thinking, with your dear face for company, and to hear the wind
+and remember the poor sailors at sea--"
+
+Ah! Perhaps Richard was going to be a sailor. We had talked it over
+very often now, and there was some talk of gratifying the inclination
+of his childhood for the sea. Mr. Jarndyce had written to a relation
+of the family, a great Sir Leicester Dedlock, for his interest in
+Richard's favour, generally; and Sir Leicester had replied in a
+gracious manner that he would be happy to advance the prospects of
+the young gentleman if it should ever prove to be within his power,
+which was not at all probable, and that my Lady sent her compliments
+to the young gentleman (to whom she perfectly remembered that she was
+allied by remote consanguinity) and trusted that he would ever do his
+duty in any honourable profession to which he might devote himself.
+
+"So I apprehend it's pretty clear," said Richard to me, "that I shall
+have to work my own way. Never mind! Plenty of people have had to do
+that before now, and have done it. I only wish I had the command of a
+clipping privateer to begin with and could carry off the Chancellor
+and keep him on short allowance until he gave judgment in our cause.
+He'd find himself growing thin, if he didn't look sharp!"
+
+With a buoyancy and hopefulness and a gaiety that hardly ever
+flagged, Richard had a carelessness in his character that quite
+perplexed me, principally because he mistook it, in such a very odd
+way, for prudence. It entered into all his calculations about money
+in a singular manner which I don't think I can better explain than by
+reverting for a moment to our loan to Mr. Skimpole.
+
+Mr. Jarndyce had ascertained the amount, either from Mr. Skimpole
+himself or from Coavinses, and had placed the money in my hands with
+instructions to me to retain my own part of it and hand the rest to
+Richard. The number of little acts of thoughtless expenditure which
+Richard justified by the recovery of his ten pounds, and the number
+of times he talked to me as if he had saved or realized that amount,
+would form a sum in simple addition.
+
+"My prudent Mother Hubbard, why not?" he said to me when he wanted,
+without the least consideration, to bestow five pounds on the
+brickmaker. "I made ten pounds, clear, out of Coavinses' business."
+
+"How was that?" said I.
+
+"Why, I got rid of ten pounds which I was quite content to get rid of
+and never expected to see any more. You don't deny that?"
+
+"No," said I.
+
+"Very well! Then I came into possession of ten pounds--"
+
+"The same ten pounds," I hinted.
+
+"That has nothing to do with it!" returned Richard. "I have got ten
+pounds more than I expected to have, and consequently I can afford to
+spend it without being particular."
+
+In exactly the same way, when he was persuaded out of the sacrifice
+of these five pounds by being convinced that it would do no good, he
+carried that sum to his credit and drew upon it.
+
+"Let me see!" he would say. "I saved five pounds out of the
+brickmaker's affair, so if I have a good rattle to London and back in
+a post-chaise and put that down at four pounds, I shall have saved
+one. And it's a very good thing to save one, let me tell you: a penny
+saved is a penny got!"
+
+I believe Richard's was as frank and generous a nature as there
+possibly can be. He was ardent and brave, and in the midst of all his
+wild restlessness, was so gentle that I knew him like a brother in a
+few weeks. His gentleness was natural to him and would have shown
+itself abundantly even without Ada's influence; but with it, he
+became one of the most winning of companions, always so ready to be
+interested and always so happy, sanguine, and light-hearted. I am
+sure that I, sitting with them, and walking with them, and talking
+with them, and noticing from day to day how they went on, falling
+deeper and deeper in love, and saying nothing about it, and each
+shyly thinking that this love was the greatest of secrets, perhaps
+not yet suspected even by the other--I am sure that I was scarcely
+less enchanted than they were and scarcely less pleased with the
+pretty dream.
+
+We were going on in this way, when one morning at breakfast Mr.
+Jarndyce received a letter, and looking at the superscription, said,
+"From Boythorn? Aye, aye!" and opened and read it with evident
+pleasure, announcing to us in a parenthesis when he was about
+half-way through, that Boythorn was "coming down" on a visit. Now who
+was Boythorn, we all thought. And I dare say we all thought too--I am
+sure I did, for one--would Boythorn at all interfere with what was
+going forward?
+
+"I went to school with this fellow, Lawrence Boythorn," said Mr.
+Jarndyce, tapping the letter as he laid it on the table, "more than
+five and forty years ago. He was then the most impetuous boy in the
+world, and he is now the most impetuous man. He was then the loudest
+boy in the world, and he is now the loudest man. He was then the
+heartiest and sturdiest boy in the world, and he is now the heartiest
+and sturdiest man. He is a tremendous fellow."
+
+"In stature, sir?" asked Richard.
+
+"Pretty well, Rick, in that respect," said Mr. Jarndyce; "being some
+ten years older than I and a couple of inches taller, with his head
+thrown back like an old soldier, his stalwart chest squared, his
+hands like a clean blacksmith's, and his lungs! There's no simile for
+his lungs. Talking, laughing, or snoring, they make the beams of the
+house shake."
+
+As Mr. Jarndyce sat enjoying the image of his friend Boythorn, we
+observed the favourable omen that there was not the least indication
+of any change in the wind.
+
+"But it's the inside of the man, the warm heart of the man, the
+passion of the man, the fresh blood of the man, Rick--and Ada, and
+little Cobweb too, for you are all interested in a visitor--that I
+speak of," he pursued. "His language is as sounding as his voice. He
+is always in extremes, perpetually in the superlative degree. In his
+condemnation he is all ferocity. You might suppose him to be an ogre
+from what he says, and I believe he has the reputation of one with
+some people. There! I tell you no more of him beforehand. You must
+not be surprised to see him take me under his protection, for he has
+never forgotten that I was a low boy at school and that our
+friendship began in his knocking two of my head tyrant's teeth out
+(he says six) before breakfast. Boythorn and his man," to me, "will
+be here this afternoon, my dear."
+
+I took care that the necessary preparations were made for Mr.
+Boythorn's reception, and we looked forward to his arrival with some
+curiosity. The afternoon wore away, however, and he did not appear.
+The dinner-hour arrived, and still he did not appear. The dinner was
+put back an hour, and we were sitting round the fire with no light
+but the blaze when the hall-door suddenly burst open and the hall
+resounded with these words, uttered with the greatest vehemence and
+in a stentorian tone: "We have been misdirected, Jarndyce, by a most
+abandoned ruffian, who told us to take the turning to the right
+instead of to the left. He is the most intolerable scoundrel on the
+face of the earth. His father must have been a most consummate
+villain, ever to have such a son. I would have had that fellow shot
+without the least remorse!"
+
+"Did he do it on purpose?" Mr. Jarndyce inquired.
+
+"I have not the slightest doubt that the scoundrel has passed his
+whole existence in misdirecting travellers!" returned the other. "By
+my soul, I thought him the worst-looking dog I had ever beheld when
+he was telling me to take the turning to the right. And yet I stood
+before that fellow face to face and didn't knock his brains out!"
+
+"Teeth, you mean?" said Mr. Jarndyce.
+
+"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed Mr. Lawrence Boythorn, really making the whole
+house vibrate. "What, you have not forgotten it yet! Ha, ha, ha! And
+that was another most consummate vagabond! By my soul, the
+countenance of that fellow when he was a boy was the blackest image
+of perfidy, cowardice, and cruelty ever set up as a scarecrow in a
+field of scoundrels. If I were to meet that most unparalleled despot
+in the streets to-morrow, I would fell him like a rotten tree!"
+
+"I have no doubt of it," said Mr. Jarndyce. "Now, will you come
+upstairs?"
+
+"By my soul, Jarndyce," returned his guest, who seemed to refer to
+his watch, "if you had been married, I would have turned back at the
+garden-gate and gone away to the remotest summits of the Himalaya
+Mountains sooner than I would have presented myself at this
+unseasonable hour."
+
+"Not quite so far, I hope?" said Mr. Jarndyce.
+
+"By my life and honour, yes!" cried the visitor. "I wouldn't be
+guilty of the audacious insolence of keeping a lady of the house
+waiting all this time for any earthly consideration. I would
+infinitely rather destroy myself--infinitely rather!"
+
+Talking thus, they went upstairs, and presently we heard him in his
+bedroom thundering "Ha, ha, ha!" and again "Ha, ha, ha!" until the
+flattest echo in the neighbourhood seemed to catch the contagion and
+to laugh as enjoyingly as he did or as we did when we heard him
+laugh.
+
+We all conceived a prepossession in his favour, for there was a
+sterling quality in this laugh, and in his vigorous, healthy voice,
+and in the roundness and fullness with which he uttered every word he
+spoke, and in the very fury of his superlatives, which seemed to go
+off like blank cannons and hurt nothing. But we were hardly prepared
+to have it so confirmed by his appearance when Mr. Jarndyce presented
+him. He was not only a very handsome old gentleman--upright and
+stalwart as he had been described to us--with a massive grey head, a
+fine composure of face when silent, a figure that might have become
+corpulent but for his being so continually in earnest that he gave it
+no rest, and a chin that might have subsided into a double chin but
+for the vehement emphasis in which it was constantly required to
+assist; but he was such a true gentleman in his manner, so
+chivalrously polite, his face was lighted by a smile of so much
+sweetness and tenderness, and it seemed so plain that he had nothing
+to hide, but showed himself exactly as he was--incapable, as Richard
+said, of anything on a limited scale, and firing away with those
+blank great guns because he carried no small arms whatever--that
+really I could not help looking at him with equal pleasure as he sat
+at dinner, whether he smilingly conversed with Ada and me, or was led
+by Mr. Jarndyce into some great volley of superlatives, or threw up
+his head like a bloodhound and gave out that tremendous "Ha, ha, ha!"
+
+"You have brought your bird with you, I suppose?" said Mr. Jarndyce.
+
+"By heaven, he is the most astonishing bird in Europe!" replied the
+other. "He IS the most wonderful creature! I wouldn't take ten
+thousand guineas for that bird. I have left an annuity for his sole
+support in case he should outlive me. He is, in sense and attachment,
+a phenomenon. And his father before him was one of the most
+astonishing birds that ever lived!"
+
+The subject of this laudation was a very little canary, who was so
+tame that he was brought down by Mr. Boythorn's man, on his
+forefinger, and after taking a gentle flight round the room, alighted
+on his master's head. To hear Mr. Boythorn presently expressing the
+most implacable and passionate sentiments, with this fragile mite of
+a creature quietly perched on his forehead, was to have a good
+illustration of his character, I thought.
+
+"By my soul, Jarndyce," he said, very gently holding up a bit of
+bread to the canary to peck at, "if I were in your place I would
+seize every master in Chancery by the throat to-morrow morning and
+shake him until his money rolled out of his pockets and his bones
+rattled in his skin. I would have a settlement out of somebody, by
+fair means or by foul. If you would empower me to do it, I would do
+it for you with the greatest satisfaction!" (All this time the very
+small canary was eating out of his hand.)
+
+"I thank you, Lawrence, but the suit is hardly at such a point at
+present," returned Mr. Jarndyce, laughing, "that it would be greatly
+advanced even by the legal process of shaking the bench and the whole
+bar."
+
+"There never was such an infernal cauldron as that Chancery on the
+face of the earth!" said Mr. Boythorn. "Nothing but a mine below it
+on a busy day in term time, with all its records, rules, and
+precedents collected in it and every functionary belonging to it
+also, high and low, upward and downward, from its son the
+Accountant-General to its father the Devil, and the whole blown to
+atoms with ten thousand hundredweight of gunpowder, would reform it
+in the least!"
+
+It was impossible not to laugh at the energetic gravity with which he
+recommended this strong measure of reform. When we laughed, he threw
+up his head and shook his broad chest, and again the whole country
+seemed to echo to his "Ha, ha, ha!" It had not the least effect in
+disturbing the bird, whose sense of security was complete and who
+hopped about the table with its quick head now on this side and now
+on that, turning its bright sudden eye on its master as if he were no
+more than another bird.
+
+"But how do you and your neighbour get on about the disputed right of
+way?" said Mr. Jarndyce. "You are not free from the toils of the law
+yourself!"
+
+"The fellow has brought actions against ME for trespass, and I have
+brought actions against HIM for trespass," returned Mr. Boythorn. "By
+heaven, he is the proudest fellow breathing. It is morally impossible
+that his name can be Sir Leicester. It must be Sir Lucifer."
+
+"Complimentary to our distant relation!" said my guardian laughingly
+to Ada and Richard.
+
+"I would beg Miss Clare's pardon and Mr. Carstone's pardon," resumed
+our visitor, "if I were not reassured by seeing in the fair face of
+the lady and the smile of the gentleman that it is quite unnecessary
+and that they keep their distant relation at a comfortable distance."
+
+"Or he keeps us," suggested Richard.
+
+"By my soul," exclaimed Mr. Boythorn, suddenly firing another volley,
+"that fellow is, and his father was, and his grandfather was, the
+most stiff-necked, arrogant imbecile, pig-headed numskull, ever, by
+some inexplicable mistake of Nature, born in any station of life but
+a walking-stick's! The whole of that family are the most solemnly
+conceited and consummate blockheads! But it's no matter; he should
+not shut up my path if he were fifty baronets melted into one and
+living in a hundred Chesney Wolds, one within another, like the ivory
+balls in a Chinese carving. The fellow, by his agent, or secretary,
+or somebody, writes to me 'Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, presents
+his compliments to Mr. Lawrence Boythorn, and has to call his
+attention to the fact that the green pathway by the old
+parsonage-house, now the property of Mr. Lawrence Boythorn, is Sir
+Leicester's right of way, being in fact a portion of the park of
+Chesney Wold, and that Sir Leicester finds it convenient to close up
+the same.' I write to the fellow, 'Mr. Lawrence Boythorn presents his
+compliments to Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and has to call HIS
+attention to the fact that he totally denies the whole of Sir
+Leicester Dedlock's positions on every possible subject and has to
+add, in reference to closing up the pathway, that he will be glad to
+see the man who may undertake to do it.' The fellow sends a most
+abandoned villain with one eye to construct a gateway. I play upon
+that execrable scoundrel with a fire-engine until the breath is
+nearly driven out of his body. The fellow erects a gate in the night.
+I chop it down and burn it in the morning. He sends his myrmidons to
+come over the fence and pass and repass. I catch them in humane man
+traps, fire split peas at their legs, play upon them with the
+engine--resolve to free mankind from the insupportable burden of the
+existence of those lurking ruffians. He brings actions for trespass;
+I bring actions for trespass. He brings actions for assault and
+battery; I defend them and continue to assault and batter. Ha, ha,
+ha!"
+
+To hear him say all this with unimaginable energy, one might have
+thought him the angriest of mankind. To see him at the very same
+time, looking at the bird now perched upon his thumb and softly
+smoothing its feathers with his forefinger, one might have thought
+him the gentlest. To hear him laugh and see the broad good nature of
+his face then, one might have supposed that he had not a care in the
+world, or a dispute, or a dislike, but that his whole existence was a
+summer joke.
+
+"No, no," he said, "no closing up of my paths by any Dedlock! Though
+I willingly confess," here he softened in a moment, "that Lady
+Dedlock is the most accomplished lady in the world, to whom I would
+do any homage that a plain gentleman, and no baronet with a head
+seven hundred years thick, may. A man who joined his regiment at
+twenty and within a week challenged the most imperious and
+presumptuous coxcomb of a commanding officer that ever drew the
+breath of life through a tight waist--and got broke for it--is not
+the man to be walked over by all the Sir Lucifers, dead or alive,
+locked or unlocked. Ha, ha, ha!"
+
+"Nor the man to allow his junior to be walked over either?" said my
+guardian.
+
+"Most assuredly not!" said Mr. Boythorn, clapping him on the shoulder
+with an air of protection that had something serious in it, though he
+laughed. "He will stand by the low boy, always. Jarndyce, you may
+rely upon him! But speaking of this trespass--with apologies to Miss
+Clare and Miss Summerson for the length at which I have pursued so
+dry a subject--is there nothing for me from your men Kenge and
+Carboy?"
+
+"I think not, Esther?" said Mr. Jarndyce.
+
+"Nothing, guardian."
+
+"Much obliged!" said Mr. Boythorn. "Had no need to ask, after even my
+slight experience of Miss Summerson's forethought for every one about
+her." (They all encouraged me; they were determined to do it.) "I
+inquired because, coming from Lincolnshire, I of course have not yet
+been in town, and I thought some letters might have been sent down
+here. I dare say they will report progress to-morrow morning."
+
+I saw him so often in the course of the evening, which passed very
+pleasantly, contemplate Richard and Ada with an interest and a
+satisfaction that made his fine face remarkably agreeable as he sat
+at a little distance from the piano listening to the music--and he
+had small occasion to tell us that he was passionately fond of music,
+for his face showed it--that I asked my guardian as we sat at the
+backgammon board whether Mr. Boythorn had ever been married.
+
+"No," said he. "No."
+
+"But he meant to be!" said I.
+
+"How did you find out that?" he returned with a smile. "Why,
+guardian," I explained, not without reddening a little at hazarding
+what was in my thoughts, "there is something so tender in his manner,
+after all, and he is so very courtly and gentle to us, and--"
+
+Mr. Jarndyce directed his eyes to where he was sitting as I have just
+described him.
+
+I said no more.
+
+"You are right, little woman," he answered. "He was all but married
+once. Long ago. And once."
+
+"Did the lady die?"
+
+"No--but she died to him. That time has had its influence on all his
+later life. Would you suppose him to have a head and a heart full of
+romance yet?"
+
+"I think, guardian, I might have supposed so. But it is easy to say
+that when you have told me so."
+
+"He has never since been what he might have been," said Mr. Jarndyce,
+"and now you see him in his age with no one near him but his servant
+and his little yellow friend. It's your throw, my dear!"
+
+I felt, from my guardian's manner, that beyond this point I could not
+pursue the subject without changing the wind. I therefore forbore to
+ask any further questions. I was interested, but not curious. I
+thought a little while about this old love story in the night, when I
+was awakened by Mr. Boythorn's lusty snoring; and I tried to do that
+very difficult thing, imagine old people young again and invested
+with the graces of youth. But I fell asleep before I had succeeded,
+and dreamed of the days when I lived in my godmother's house. I am
+not sufficiently acquainted with such subjects to know whether it is
+at all remarkable that I almost always dreamed of that period of my
+life.
+
+With the morning there came a letter from Messrs. Kenge and Carboy to
+Mr. Boythorn informing him that one of their clerks would wait upon
+him at noon. As it was the day of the week on which I paid the bills,
+and added up my books, and made all the household affairs as compact
+as possible, I remained at home while Mr. Jarndyce, Ada, and Richard
+took advantage of a very fine day to make a little excursion, Mr.
+Boythorn was to wait for Kenge and Carboy's clerk and then was to go
+on foot to meet them on their return.
+
+Well! I was full of business, examining tradesmen's books, adding up
+columns, paying money, filing receipts, and I dare say making a great
+bustle about it when Mr. Guppy was announced and shown in. I had had
+some idea that the clerk who was to be sent down might be the young
+gentleman who had met me at the coach-office, and I was glad to see
+him, because he was associated with my present happiness.
+
+I scarcely knew him again, he was so uncommonly smart. He had an
+entirely new suit of glossy clothes on, a shining hat, lilac-kid
+gloves, a neckerchief of a variety of colours, a large hot-house
+flower in his button-hole, and a thick gold ring on his little
+finger. Besides which, he quite scented the dining-room with
+bear's-grease and other perfumery. He looked at me with an attention
+that quite confused me when I begged him to take a seat until the
+servant should return; and as he sat there crossing and uncrossing
+his legs in a corner, and I asked him if he had had a pleasant ride,
+and hoped that Mr. Kenge was well, I never looked at him, but I found
+him looking at me in the same scrutinizing and curious way.
+
+When the request was brought to him that he would go upstairs to Mr.
+Boythorn's room, I mentioned that he would find lunch prepared for
+him when he came down, of which Mr. Jarndyce hoped he would partake.
+He said with some embarrassment, holding the handle of the door,
+"Shall I have the honour of finding you here, miss?" I replied yes, I
+should be there; and he went out with a bow and another look.
+
+I thought him only awkward and shy, for he was evidently much
+embarrassed; and I fancied that the best thing I could do would be to
+wait until I saw that he had everything he wanted and then to leave
+him to himself. The lunch was soon brought, but it remained for some
+time on the table. The interview with Mr. Boythorn was a long one,
+and a stormy one too, I should think, for although his room was at
+some distance I heard his loud voice rising every now and then like a
+high wind, and evidently blowing perfect broadsides of denunciation.
+
+At last Mr. Guppy came back, looking something the worse for the
+conference. "My eye, miss," he said in a low voice, "he's a Tartar!"
+
+"Pray take some refreshment, sir," said I.
+
+Mr. Guppy sat down at the table and began nervously sharpening the
+carving-knife on the carving-fork, still looking at me (as I felt
+quite sure without looking at him) in the same unusual manner. The
+sharpening lasted so long that at last I felt a kind of obligation on
+me to raise my eyes in order that I might break the spell under which
+he seemed to labour, of not being able to leave off.
+
+He immediately looked at the dish and began to carve.
+
+"What will you take yourself, miss? You'll take a morsel of
+something?"
+
+"No, thank you," said I.
+
+"Shan't I give you a piece of anything at all, miss?" said Mr. Guppy,
+hurriedly drinking off a glass of wine.
+
+"Nothing, thank you," said I. "I have only waited to see that you
+have everything you want. Is there anything I can order for you?"
+
+"No, I am much obliged to you, miss, I'm sure. I've everything that I
+can require to make me comfortable--at least I--not comfortable--I'm
+never that." He drank off two more glasses of wine, one after
+another.
+
+I thought I had better go.
+
+"I beg your pardon, miss!" said Mr. Guppy, rising when he saw me
+rise. "But would you allow me the favour of a minute's private
+conversation?"
+
+Not knowing what to say, I sat down again.
+
+"What follows is without prejudice, miss?" said Mr. Guppy, anxiously
+bringing a chair towards my table.
+
+"I don't understand what you mean," said I, wondering.
+
+"It's one of our law terms, miss. You won't make any use of it to my
+detriment at Kenge and Carboy's or elsewhere. If our conversation
+shouldn't lead to anything, I am to be as I was and am not to be
+prejudiced in my situation or worldly prospects. In short, it's in
+total confidence."
+
+"I am at a loss, sir," said I, "to imagine what you can have to
+communicate in total confidence to me, whom you have never seen but
+once; but I should be very sorry to do you any injury."
+
+"Thank you, miss. I'm sure of it--that's quite sufficient." All this
+time Mr. Guppy was either planing his forehead with his handkerchief
+or tightly rubbing the palm of his left hand with the palm of his
+right. "If you would excuse my taking another glass of wine, miss, I
+think it might assist me in getting on without a continual choke that
+cannot fail to be mutually unpleasant."
+
+He did so, and came back again. I took the opportunity of moving well
+behind my table.
+
+"You wouldn't allow me to offer you one, would you miss?" said Mr.
+Guppy, apparently refreshed.
+
+"Not any," said I.
+
+"Not half a glass?" said Mr. Guppy. "Quarter? No! Then, to proceed.
+My present salary, Miss Summerson, at Kenge and Carboy's, is two
+pound a week. When I first had the happiness of looking upon you, it
+was one fifteen, and had stood at that figure for a lengthened
+period. A rise of five has since taken place, and a further rise of
+five is guaranteed at the expiration of a term not exceeding twelve
+months from the present date. My mother has a little property, which
+takes the form of a small life annuity, upon which she lives in an
+independent though unassuming manner in the Old Street Road. She is
+eminently calculated for a mother-in-law. She never interferes, is
+all for peace, and her disposition easy. She has her failings--as who
+has not?--but I never knew her do it when company was present, at
+which time you may freely trust her with wines, spirits, or malt
+liquors. My own abode is lodgings at Penton Place, Pentonville. It is
+lowly, but airy, open at the back, and considered one of the
+'ealthiest outlets. Miss Summerson! In the mildest language, I adore
+you. Would you be so kind as to allow me (as I may say) to file a
+declaration--to make an offer!"
+
+Mr. Guppy went down on his knees. I was well behind my table and not
+much frightened. I said, "Get up from that ridiculous position
+immediately, sir, or you will oblige me to break my implied promise
+and ring the bell!"
+
+"Hear me out, miss!" said Mr. Guppy, folding his hands.
+
+"I cannot consent to hear another word, sir," I returned, "Unless you
+get up from the carpet directly and go and sit down at the table as
+you ought to do if you have any sense at all."
+
+He looked piteously, but slowly rose and did so.
+
+"Yet what a mockery it is, miss," he said with his hand upon his
+heart and shaking his head at me in a melancholy manner over the
+tray, "to be stationed behind food at such a moment. The soul recoils
+from food at such a moment, miss."
+
+"I beg you to conclude," said I; "you have asked me to hear you out,
+and I beg you to conclude."
+
+"I will, miss," said Mr. Guppy. "As I love and honour, so likewise I
+obey. Would that I could make thee the subject of that vow before the
+shrine!"
+
+"That is quite impossible," said I, "and entirely out of the
+question."
+
+"I am aware," said Mr. Guppy, leaning forward over the tray and
+regarding me, as I again strangely felt, though my eyes were not
+directed to him, with his late intent look, "I am aware that in a
+worldly point of view, according to all appearances, my offer is a
+poor one. But, Miss Summerson! Angel! No, don't ring--I have been
+brought up in a sharp school and am accustomed to a variety of
+general practice. Though a young man, I have ferreted out evidence,
+got up cases, and seen lots of life. Blest with your hand, what means
+might I not find of advancing your interests and pushing your
+fortunes! What might I not get to know, nearly concerning you? I know
+nothing now, certainly; but what MIGHT I not if I had your
+confidence, and you set me on?"
+
+I told him that he addressed my interest or what he supposed to be my
+interest quite as unsuccessfully as he addressed my inclination, and
+he would now understand that I requested him, if he pleased, to go
+away immediately.
+
+"Cruel miss," said Mr. Guppy, "hear but another word! I think you
+must have seen that I was struck with those charms on the day when I
+waited at the Whytorseller. I think you must have remarked that I
+could not forbear a tribute to those charms when I put up the steps
+of the 'ackney-coach. It was a feeble tribute to thee, but it was
+well meant. Thy image has ever since been fixed in my breast. I have
+walked up and down of an evening opposite Jellyby's house only to
+look upon the bricks that once contained thee. This out of to-day,
+quite an unnecessary out so far as the attendance, which was its
+pretended object, went, was planned by me alone for thee alone. If I
+speak of interest, it is only to recommend myself and my respectful
+wretchedness. Love was before it, and is before it."
+
+"I should be pained, Mr. Guppy," said I, rising and putting my hand
+upon the bell-rope, "to do you or any one who was sincere the
+injustice of slighting any honest feeling, however disagreeably
+expressed. If you have really meant to give me a proof of your good
+opinion, though ill-timed and misplaced, I feel that I ought to thank
+you. I have very little reason to be proud, and I am not proud. I
+hope," I think I added, without very well knowing what I said, "that
+you will now go away as if you had never been so exceedingly foolish
+and attend to Messrs. Kenge and Carboy's business."
+
+"Half a minute, miss!" cried Mr. Guppy, checking me as I was about to
+ring. "This has been without prejudice?"
+
+"I will never mention it," said I, "unless you should give me future
+occasion to do so."
+
+"A quarter of a minute, miss! In case you should think better at any
+time, however distant--THAT'S no consequence, for my feelings can
+never alter--of anything I have said, particularly what might I not
+do, Mr. William Guppy, eighty-seven, Penton Place, or if removed, or
+dead (of blighted hopes or anything of that sort), care of Mrs.
+Guppy, three hundred and two, Old Street Road, will be sufficient."
+
+I rang the bell, the servant came, and Mr. Guppy, laying his written
+card upon the table and making a dejected bow, departed. Raising my
+eyes as he went out, I once more saw him looking at me after he had
+passed the door.
+
+I sat there for another hour or more, finishing my books and payments
+and getting through plenty of business. Then I arranged my desk, and
+put everything away, and was so composed and cheerful that I thought
+I had quite dismissed this unexpected incident. But, when I went
+upstairs to my own room, I surprised myself by beginning to laugh
+about it and then surprised myself still more by beginning to cry
+about it. In short, I was in a flutter for a little while and felt as
+if an old chord had been more coarsely touched than it ever had been
+since the days of the dear old doll, long buried in the garden.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+The Law-Writer
+
+
+On the eastern borders of Chancery Lane, that is to say, more
+particularly in Cook's Court, Cursitor Street, Mr. Snagsby,
+law-stationer, pursues his lawful calling. In the shade of Cook's
+Court, at most times a shady place, Mr. Snagsby has dealt in
+all sorts of blank forms of legal process; in skins and rolls
+of parchment; in paper--foolscap, brief, draft, brown, white,
+whitey-brown, and blotting; in stamps; in office-quills, pens,
+ink, India-rubber, pounce, pins, pencils, sealing-wax, and
+wafers; in red tape and green ferret; in pocket-books, almanacs,
+diaries, and law lists; in string boxes, rulers, inkstands--glass
+and leaden--pen-knives, scissors, bodkins, and other small
+office-cutlery; in short, in articles too numerous to mention, ever
+since he was out of his time and went into partnership with Peffer.
+On that occasion, Cook's Court was in a manner revolutionized by the
+new inscription in fresh paint, PEFFER AND SNAGSBY, displacing the
+time-honoured and not easily to be deciphered legend PEFFER only. For
+smoke, which is the London ivy, had so wreathed itself round Peffer's
+name and clung to his dwelling-place that the affectionate parasite
+quite overpowered the parent tree.
+
+Peffer is never seen in Cook's Court now. He is not expected there,
+for he has been recumbent this quarter of a century in the churchyard
+of St. Andrews, Holborn, with the waggons and hackney-coaches roaring
+past him all the day and half the night like one great dragon. If he
+ever steal forth when the dragon is at rest to air himself again in
+Cook's Court until admonished to return by the crowing of the
+sanguine cock in the cellar at the little dairy in Cursitor Street,
+whose ideas of daylight it would be curious to ascertain, since he
+knows from his personal observation next to nothing about it--if
+Peffer ever do revisit the pale glimpses of Cook's Court, which no
+law-stationer in the trade can positively deny, he comes invisibly,
+and no one is the worse or wiser.
+
+In his lifetime, and likewise in the period of Snagsby's "time"
+of seven long years, there dwelt with Peffer in the same
+law-stationering premises a niece--a short, shrewd niece, something
+too violently compressed about the waist, and with a sharp nose like
+a sharp autumn evening, inclining to be frosty towards the end. The
+Cook's Courtiers had a rumour flying among them that the mother of
+this niece did, in her daughter's childhood, moved by too jealous a
+solicitude that her figure should approach perfection, lace her
+up every morning with her maternal foot against the bed-post for
+a stronger hold and purchase; and further, that she exhibited
+internally pints of vinegar and lemon-juice, which acids, they held,
+had mounted to the nose and temper of the patient. With whichsoever
+of the many tongues of Rumour this frothy report originated, it
+either never reached or never influenced the ears of young Snagsby,
+who, having wooed and won its fair subject on his arrival at man's
+estate, entered into two partnerships at once. So now, in Cook's
+Court, Cursitor Street, Mr. Snagsby and the niece are one; and the
+niece still cherishes her figure, which, however tastes may differ,
+is unquestionably so far precious that there is mighty little of it.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Snagsby are not only one bone and one flesh, but, to the
+neighbours' thinking, one voice too. That voice, appearing to proceed
+from Mrs. Snagsby alone, is heard in Cook's Court very often. Mr.
+Snagsby, otherwise than as he finds expression through these dulcet
+tones, is rarely heard. He is a mild, bald, timid man with a shining
+head and a scrubby clump of black hair sticking out at the back. He
+tends to meekness and obesity. As he stands at his door in Cook's
+Court in his grey shop-coat and black calico sleeves, looking up at
+the clouds, or stands behind a desk in his dark shop with a heavy
+flat ruler, snipping and slicing at sheepskin in company with his two
+'prentices, he is emphatically a retiring and unassuming man. From
+beneath his feet, at such times, as from a shrill ghost unquiet in
+its grave, there frequently arise complainings and lamentations in
+the voice already mentioned; and haply, on some occasions when these
+reach a sharper pitch than usual, Mr. Snagsby mentions to the
+'prentices, "I think my little woman is a-giving it to Guster!"
+
+This proper name, so used by Mr. Snagsby, has before now sharpened
+the wit of the Cook's Courtiers to remark that it ought to be the
+name of Mrs. Snagsby, seeing that she might with great force and
+expression be termed a Guster, in compliment to her stormy character.
+It is, however, the possession, and the only possession except fifty
+shillings per annum and a very small box indifferently filled with
+clothing, of a lean young woman from a workhouse (by some supposed to
+have been christened Augusta) who, although she was farmed or
+contracted for during her growing time by an amiable benefactor of
+his species resident at Tooting, and cannot fail to have been
+developed under the most favourable circumstances, "has fits," which
+the parish can't account for.
+
+Guster, really aged three or four and twenty, but looking a round ten
+years older, goes cheap with this unaccountable drawback of fits, and
+is so apprehensive of being returned on the hands of her patron saint
+that except when she is found with her head in the pail, or the sink,
+or the copper, or the dinner, or anything else that happens to be
+near her at the time of her seizure, she is always at work. She is a
+satisfaction to the parents and guardians of the 'prentices, who feel
+that there is little danger of her inspiring tender emotions in the
+breast of youth; she is a satisfaction to Mrs. Snagsby, who can
+always find fault with her; she is a satisfaction to Mr. Snagsby, who
+thinks it a charity to keep her. The law-stationer's establishment
+is, in Guster's eyes, a temple of plenty and splendour. She believes
+the little drawing-room upstairs, always kept, as one may say, with
+its hair in papers and its pinafore on, to be the most elegant
+apartment in Christendom. The view it commands of Cook's Court at one
+end (not to mention a squint into Cursitor Street) and of Coavinses'
+the sheriff's officer's backyard at the other she regards as a
+prospect of unequalled beauty. The portraits it displays in oil--and
+plenty of it too--of Mr. Snagsby looking at Mrs. Snagsby and of Mrs.
+Snagsby looking at Mr. Snagsby are in her eyes as achievements of
+Raphael or Titian. Guster has some recompenses for her many
+privations.
+
+Mr. Snagsby refers everything not in the practical mysteries of the
+business to Mrs. Snagsby. She manages the money, reproaches the
+tax-gatherers, appoints the times and places of devotion on Sundays,
+licenses Mr. Snagsby's entertainments, and acknowledges no
+responsibility as to what she thinks fit to provide for dinner,
+insomuch that she is the high standard of comparison among the
+neighbouring wives a long way down Chancery Lane on both sides, and
+even out in Holborn, who in any domestic passages of arms habitually
+call upon their husbands to look at the difference between their (the
+wives') position and Mrs. Snagsby's, and their (the husbands')
+behaviour and Mr. Snagsby's. Rumour, always flying bat-like about
+Cook's Court and skimming in and out at everybody's windows, does say
+that Mrs. Snagsby is jealous and inquisitive and that Mr. Snagsby is
+sometimes worried out of house and home, and that if he had the
+spirit of a mouse he wouldn't stand it. It is even observed that the
+wives who quote him to their self-willed husbands as a shining
+example in reality look down upon him and that nobody does so with
+greater superciliousness than one particular lady whose lord is more
+than suspected of laying his umbrella on her as an instrument of
+correction. But these vague whisperings may arise from Mr. Snagsby's
+being in his way rather a meditative and poetical man, loving to walk
+in Staple Inn in the summer-time and to observe how countrified the
+sparrows and the leaves are, also to lounge about the Rolls Yard of a
+Sunday afternoon and to remark (if in good spirits) that there were
+old times once and that you'd find a stone coffin or two now under
+that chapel, he'll be bound, if you was to dig for it. He solaces his
+imagination, too, by thinking of the many Chancellors and Vices, and
+Masters of the Rolls who are deceased; and he gets such a flavour of
+the country out of telling the two 'prentices how he HAS heard say
+that a brook "as clear as crystal" once ran right down the middle of
+Holborn, when Turnstile really was a turnstile, leading slap away
+into the meadows--gets such a flavour of the country out of this that
+he never wants to go there.
+
+The day is closing in and the gas is lighted, but is not yet fully
+effective, for it is not quite dark. Mr. Snagsby standing at his
+shop-door looking up at the clouds sees a crow who is out late skim
+westward over the slice of sky belonging to Cook's Court. The crow
+flies straight across Chancery Lane and Lincoln's Inn Garden into
+Lincoln's Inn Fields.
+
+Here, in a large house, formerly a house of state, lives Mr.
+Tulkinghorn. It is let off in sets of chambers now, and in those
+shrunken fragments of its greatness, lawyers lie like maggots in
+nuts. But its roomy staircases, passages, and antechambers still
+remain; and even its painted ceilings, where Allegory, in Roman
+helmet and celestial linen, sprawls among balustrades and pillars,
+flowers, clouds, and big-legged boys, and makes the head ache--as
+would seem to be Allegory's object always, more or less. Here, among
+his many boxes labelled with transcendent names, lives Mr.
+Tulkinghorn, when not speechlessly at home in country-houses where
+the great ones of the earth are bored to death. Here he is to-day,
+quiet at his table. An oyster of the old school whom nobody can open.
+
+Like as he is to look at, so is his apartment in the dusk of
+the present afternoon. Rusty, out of date, withdrawing from
+attention, able to afford it. Heavy, broad-backed, old-fashioned,
+mahogany-and-horsehair chairs, not easily lifted; obsolete tables
+with spindle-legs and dusty baize covers; presentation prints of the
+holders of great titles in the last generation or the last but one,
+environ him. A thick and dingy Turkey-carpet muffles the floor where
+he sits, attended by two candles in old-fashioned silver candlesticks
+that give a very insufficient light to his large room. The titles on
+the backs of his books have retired into the binding; everything that
+can have a lock has got one; no key is visible. Very few loose papers
+are about. He has some manuscript near him, but is not referring
+to it. With the round top of an inkstand and two broken bits of
+sealing-wax he is silently and slowly working out whatever train of
+indecision is in his mind. Now the inkstand top is in the middle, now
+the red bit of sealing-wax, now the black bit. That's not it. Mr.
+Tulkinghorn must gather them all up and begin again.
+
+Here, beneath the painted ceiling, with foreshortened Allegory
+staring down at his intrusion as if it meant to swoop upon him, and
+he cutting it dead, Mr. Tulkinghorn has at once his house and office.
+He keeps no staff, only one middle-aged man, usually a little out at
+elbows, who sits in a high pew in the hall and is rarely overburdened
+with business. Mr. Tulkinghorn is not in a common way. He wants no
+clerks. He is a great reservoir of confidences, not to be so tapped.
+His clients want HIM; he is all in all. Drafts that he requires to be
+drawn are drawn by special-pleaders in the temple on mysterious
+instructions; fair copies that he requires to be made are made at the
+stationers', expense being no consideration. The middle-aged man in
+the pew knows scarcely more of the affairs of the peerage than any
+crossing-sweeper in Holborn.
+
+The red bit, the black bit, the inkstand top, the other inkstand top,
+the little sand-box. So! You to the middle, you to the right, you to
+the left. This train of indecision must surely be worked out now or
+never. Now! Mr. Tulkinghorn gets up, adjusts his spectacles, puts on
+his hat, puts the manuscript in his pocket, goes out, tells the
+middle-aged man out at elbows, "I shall be back presently." Very
+rarely tells him anything more explicit.
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn goes, as the crow came--not quite so straight, but
+nearly--to Cook's Court, Cursitor Street. To Snagsby's,
+Law-Stationer's, Deeds engrossed and copied, Law-Writing executed in
+all its branches, &c., &c., &c.
+
+It is somewhere about five or six o'clock in the afternoon, and a
+balmy fragrance of warm tea hovers in Cook's Court. It hovers about
+Snagsby's door. The hours are early there: dinner at half-past one
+and supper at half-past nine. Mr. Snagsby was about to descend into
+the subterranean regions to take tea when he looked out of his door
+just now and saw the crow who was out late.
+
+"Master at home?"
+
+Guster is minding the shop, for the 'prentices take tea in the
+kitchen with Mr. and Mrs. Snagsby; consequently, the robe-maker's two
+daughters, combing their curls at the two glasses in the two
+second-floor windows of the opposite house, are not driving the two
+'prentices to distraction as they fondly suppose, but are merely
+awakening the unprofitable admiration of Guster, whose hair won't
+grow, and never would, and it is confidently thought, never will.
+
+"Master at home?" says Mr. Tulkinghorn.
+
+Master is at home, and Guster will fetch him. Guster disappears, glad
+to get out of the shop, which she regards with mingled dread and
+veneration as a storehouse of awful implements of the great torture
+of the law--a place not to be entered after the gas is turned off.
+
+Mr. Snagsby appears, greasy, warm, herbaceous, and chewing. Bolts a
+bit of bread and butter. Says, "Bless my soul, sir! Mr. Tulkinghorn!"
+
+"I want half a word with you, Snagsby."
+
+"Certainly, sir! Dear me, sir, why didn't you send your young man
+round for me? Pray walk into the back shop, sir." Snagsby has
+brightened in a moment.
+
+The confined room, strong of parchment-grease, is warehouse,
+counting-house, and copying-office. Mr. Tulkinghorn sits, facing
+round, on a stool at the desk.
+
+"Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Snagsby."
+
+"Yes, sir." Mr. Snagsby turns up the gas and coughs behind his hand,
+modestly anticipating profit. Mr. Snagsby, as a timid man, is
+accustomed to cough with a variety of expressions, and so to save
+words.
+
+"You copied some affidavits in that cause for me lately."
+
+"Yes, sir, we did."
+
+"There was one of them," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, carelessly
+feeling--tight, unopenable oyster of the old school!--in the wrong
+coat-pocket, "the handwriting of which is peculiar, and I rather
+like. As I happened to be passing, and thought I had it about me, I
+looked in to ask you--but I haven't got it. No matter, any other time
+will do. Ah! here it is! I looked in to ask you who copied this."
+
+"Who copied this, sir?" says Mr. Snagsby, taking it, laying it flat
+on the desk, and separating all the sheets at once with a twirl and a
+twist of the left hand peculiar to lawstationers. "We gave this out,
+sir. We were giving out rather a large quantity of work just at that
+time. I can tell you in a moment who copied it, sir, by referring to
+my book."
+
+Mr. Snagsby takes his book down from the safe, makes another bolt of
+the bit of bread and butter which seemed to have stopped short, eyes
+the affidavit aside, and brings his right forefinger travelling down
+a page of the book, "Jewby--Packer--Jarndyce."
+
+"Jarndyce! Here we are, sir," says Mr. Snagsby. "To be sure! I might
+have remembered it. This was given out, sir, to a writer who lodges
+just over on the opposite side of the lane."
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn has seen the entry, found it before the
+law-stationer, read it while the forefinger was coming down the hill.
+
+"WHAT do you call him? Nemo?" says Mr. Tulkinghorn. "Nemo, sir. Here
+it is. Forty-two folio. Given out on the Wednesday night at eight
+o'clock, brought in on the Thursday morning at half after nine."
+
+"Nemo!" repeats Mr. Tulkinghorn. "Nemo is Latin for no one."
+
+"It must be English for some one, sir, I think," Mr. Snagsby submits
+with his deferential cough. "It is a person's name. Here it is, you
+see, sir! Forty-two folio. Given out Wednesday night, eight o'clock;
+brought in Thursday morning, half after nine."
+
+The tail of Mr. Snagsby's eye becomes conscious of the head of Mrs.
+Snagsby looking in at the shop-door to know what he means by
+deserting his tea. Mr. Snagsby addresses an explanatory cough to Mrs.
+Snagsby, as who should say, "My dear, a customer!"
+
+"Half after nine, sir," repeats Mr. Snagsby. "Our law-writers, who
+live by job-work, are a queer lot; and this may not be his name, but
+it's the name he goes by. I remember now, sir, that he gives it in a
+written advertisement he sticks up down at the Rule Office, and the
+King's Bench Office, and the Judges' Chambers, and so forth. You know
+the kind of document, sir--wanting employ?"
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn glances through the little window at the back of
+Coavinses', the sheriff's officer's, where lights shine in Coavinses'
+windows. Coavinses' coffee-room is at the back, and the shadows of
+several gentlemen under a cloud loom cloudily upon the blinds. Mr.
+Snagsby takes the opportunity of slightly turning his head to glance
+over his shoulder at his little woman and to make apologetic motions
+with his mouth to this effect: "Tul-king-horn--rich--in-flu-en-tial!"
+
+"Have you given this man work before?" asks Mr. Tulkinghorn.
+
+"Oh, dear, yes, sir! Work of yours."
+
+"Thinking of more important matters, I forget where you said he
+lived?"
+
+"Across the lane, sir. In fact, he lodges at a--" Mr. Snagsby makes
+another bolt, as if the bit of bread and butter were insurmountable
+"--at a rag and bottle shop."
+
+"Can you show me the place as I go back?"
+
+"With the greatest pleasure, sir!"
+
+Mr. Snagsby pulls off his sleeves and his grey coat, pulls on his
+black coat, takes his hat from its peg. "Oh! Here is my little
+woman!" he says aloud. "My dear, will you be so kind as to tell one
+of the lads to look after the shop while I step across the lane with
+Mr. Tulkinghorn? Mrs. Snagsby, sir--I shan't be two minutes, my
+love!"
+
+Mrs. Snagsby bends to the lawyer, retires behind the counter, peeps
+at them through the window-blind, goes softly into the back office,
+refers to the entries in the book still lying open. Is evidently
+curious.
+
+"You will find that the place is rough, sir," says Mr. Snagsby,
+walking deferentially in the road and leaving the narrow pavement to
+the lawyer; "and the party is very rough. But they're a wild lot in
+general, sir. The advantage of this particular man is that he never
+wants sleep. He'll go at it right on end if you want him to, as long
+as ever you like."
+
+It is quite dark now, and the gas-lamps have acquired their full
+effect. Jostling against clerks going to post the day's letters, and
+against counsel and attorneys going home to dinner, and against
+plaintiffs and defendants and suitors of all sorts, and against the
+general crowd, in whose way the forensic wisdom of ages has
+interposed a million of obstacles to the transaction of the commonest
+business of life; diving through law and equity, and through that
+kindred mystery, the street mud, which is made of nobody knows what
+and collects about us nobody knows whence or how--we only knowing in
+general that when there is too much of it we find it necessary to
+shovel it away--the lawyer and the law-stationer come to a rag and
+bottle shop and general emporium of much disregarded merchandise,
+lying and being in the shadow of the wall of Lincoln's Inn, and kept,
+as is announced in paint, to all whom it may concern, by one Krook.
+
+"This is where he lives, sir," says the law-stationer.
+
+"This is where he lives, is it?" says the lawyer unconcernedly.
+"Thank you."
+
+"Are you not going in, sir?"
+
+"No, thank you, no; I am going on to the Fields at present. Good
+evening. Thank you!" Mr. Snagsby lifts his hat and returns to his
+little woman and his tea.
+
+But Mr. Tulkinghorn does not go on to the Fields at present. He goes
+a short way, turns back, comes again to the shop of Mr. Krook, and
+enters it straight. It is dim enough, with a blot-headed candle or so
+in the windows, and an old man and a cat sitting in the back part by
+a fire. The old man rises and comes forward, with another blot-headed
+candle in his hand.
+
+"Pray is your lodger within?"
+
+"Male or female, sir?" says Mr. Krook.
+
+"Male. The person who does copying."
+
+Mr. Krook has eyed his man narrowly. Knows him by sight. Has an
+indistinct impression of his aristocratic repute.
+
+"Did you wish to see him, sir?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"It's what I seldom do myself," says Mr. Krook with a grin. "Shall I
+call him down? But it's a weak chance if he'd come, sir!"
+
+"I'll go up to him, then," says Mr. Tulkinghorn.
+
+"Second floor, sir. Take the candle. Up there!" Mr. Krook, with his
+cat beside him, stands at the bottom of the staircase, looking after
+Mr. Tulkinghorn. "Hi-hi!" he says when Mr. Tulkinghorn has nearly
+disappeared. The lawyer looks down over the hand-rail. The cat
+expands her wicked mouth and snarls at him.
+
+"Order, Lady Jane! Behave yourself to visitors, my lady! You know
+what they say of my lodger?" whispers Krook, going up a step or two.
+
+"What do they say of him?"
+
+"They say he has sold himself to the enemy, but you and I know
+better--he don't buy. I'll tell you what, though; my lodger is so
+black-humoured and gloomy that I believe he'd as soon make that
+bargain as any other. Don't put him out, sir. That's my advice!"
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn with a nod goes on his way. He comes to the dark door
+on the second floor. He knocks, receives no answer, opens it, and
+accidentally extinguishes his candle in doing so.
+
+The air of the room is almost bad enough to have extinguished it if
+he had not. It is a small room, nearly black with soot, and grease,
+and dirt. In the rusty skeleton of a grate, pinched at the middle as
+if poverty had gripped it, a red coke fire burns low. In the corner
+by the chimney stand a deal table and a broken desk, a wilderness
+marked with a rain of ink. In another corner a ragged old portmanteau
+on one of the two chairs serves for cabinet or wardrobe; no larger
+one is needed, for it collapses like the cheeks of a starved man. The
+floor is bare, except that one old mat, trodden to shreds of
+rope-yarn, lies perishing upon the hearth. No curtain veils the
+darkness of the night, but the discoloured shutters are drawn
+together, and through the two gaunt holes pierced in them, famine
+might be staring in--the banshee of the man upon the bed.
+
+For, on a low bed opposite the fire, a confusion of dirty patchwork,
+lean-ribbed ticking, and coarse sacking, the lawyer, hesitating just
+within the doorway, sees a man. He lies there, dressed in shirt and
+trousers, with bare feet. He has a yellow look in the spectral
+darkness of a candle that has guttered down until the whole length of
+its wick (still burning) has doubled over and left a tower of
+winding-sheet above it. His hair is ragged, mingling with his
+whiskers and his beard--the latter, ragged too, and grown, like the
+scum and mist around him, in neglect. Foul and filthy as the room is,
+foul and filthy as the air is, it is not easy to perceive what fumes
+those are which most oppress the senses in it; but through the
+general sickliness and faintness, and the odour of stale tobacco,
+there comes into the lawyer's mouth the bitter, vapid taste of opium.
+
+"Hallo, my friend!" he cries, and strikes his iron candlestick
+against the door.
+
+He thinks he has awakened his friend. He lies a little turned away,
+but his eyes are surely open.
+
+"Hallo, my friend!" he cries again. "Hallo! Hallo!"
+
+As he rattles on the door, the candle which has drooped so long goes
+out and leaves him in the dark, with the gaunt eyes in the shutters
+staring down upon the bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Our Dear Brother
+
+
+A touch on the lawyer's wrinkled hand as he stands in the dark room,
+irresolute, makes him start and say, "What's that?"
+
+"It's me," returns the old man of the house, whose breath is in his
+ear. "Can't you wake him?"
+
+"No."
+
+"What have you done with your candle?"
+
+"It's gone out. Here it is."
+
+Krook takes it, goes to the fire, stoops over the red embers, and
+tries to get a light. The dying ashes have no light to spare, and his
+endeavours are vain. Muttering, after an ineffectual call to his
+lodger, that he will go downstairs and bring a lighted candle from
+the shop, the old man departs. Mr. Tulkinghorn, for some new reason
+that he has, does not await his return in the room, but on the stairs
+outside.
+
+The welcome light soon shines upon the wall, as Krook comes slowly up
+with his green-eyed cat following at his heels. "Does the man
+generally sleep like this?" inquired the lawyer in a low voice. "Hi!
+I don't know," says Krook, shaking his head and lifting his eyebrows.
+"I know next to nothing of his habits except that he keeps himself
+very close."
+
+Thus whispering, they both go in together. As the light goes in, the
+great eyes in the shutters, darkening, seem to close. Not so the eyes
+upon the bed.
+
+"God save us!" exclaims Mr. Tulkinghorn. "He is dead!" Krook drops
+the heavy hand he has taken up so suddenly that the arm swings over
+the bedside.
+
+They look at one another for a moment.
+
+"Send for some doctor! Call for Miss Flite up the stairs, sir. Here's
+poison by the bed! Call out for Flite, will you?" says Krook, with
+his lean hands spread out above the body like a vampire's wings.
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn hurries to the landing and calls, "Miss Flite! Flite!
+Make haste, here, whoever you are! Flite!" Krook follows him with his
+eyes, and while he is calling, finds opportunity to steal to the old
+portmanteau and steal back again.
+
+"Run, Flite, run! The nearest doctor! Run!" So Mr. Krook addresses a
+crazy little woman who is his female lodger, who appears and vanishes
+in a breath, who soon returns accompanied by a testy medical man
+brought from his dinner, with a broad, snuffy upper lip and a broad
+Scotch tongue.
+
+"Ey! Bless the hearts o' ye," says the medical man, looking up at
+them after a moment's examination. "He's just as dead as Phairy!"
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn (standing by the old portmanteau) inquires if he has
+been dead any time.
+
+"Any time, sir?" says the medical gentleman. "It's probable he wull
+have been dead aboot three hours."
+
+"About that time, I should say," observes a dark young man on the
+other side of the bed.
+
+"Air you in the maydickle prayfession yourself, sir?" inquires the
+first.
+
+The dark young man says yes.
+
+"Then I'll just tak' my depairture," replies the other, "for I'm nae
+gude here!" With which remark he finishes his brief attendance and
+returns to finish his dinner.
+
+The dark young surgeon passes the candle across and across the face
+and carefully examines the law-writer, who has established his
+pretensions to his name by becoming indeed No one.
+
+"I knew this person by sight very well," says he. "He has purchased
+opium of me for the last year and a half. Was anybody present related
+to him?" glancing round upon the three bystanders.
+
+"I was his landlord," grimly answers Krook, taking the candle from
+the surgeon's outstretched hand. "He told me once I was the nearest
+relation he had."
+
+"He has died," says the surgeon, "of an over-dose of opium, there is
+no doubt. The room is strongly flavoured with it. There is enough
+here now," taking an old tea-pot from Mr. Krook, "to kill a dozen
+people."
+
+"Do you think he did it on purpose?" asks Krook.
+
+"Took the over-dose?"
+
+"Yes!" Krook almost smacks his lips with the unction of a horrible
+interest.
+
+"I can't say. I should think it unlikely, as he has been in the habit
+of taking so much. But nobody can tell. He was very poor, I suppose?"
+
+"I suppose he was. His room--don't look rich," says Krook, who might
+have changed eyes with his cat, as he casts his sharp glance around.
+"But I have never been in it since he had it, and he was too close to
+name his circumstances to me."
+
+"Did he owe you any rent?"
+
+"Six weeks."
+
+"He will never pay it!" says the young man, resuming his examination.
+"It is beyond a doubt that he is indeed as dead as Pharaoh; and to
+judge from his appearance and condition, I should think it a happy
+release. Yet he must have been a good figure when a youth, and I dare
+say, good-looking." He says this, not unfeelingly, while sitting on
+the bedstead's edge with his face towards that other face and his
+hand upon the region of the heart. "I recollect once thinking there
+was something in his manner, uncouth as it was, that denoted a fall
+in life. Was that so?" he continues, looking round.
+
+Krook replies, "You might as well ask me to describe the ladies whose
+heads of hair I have got in sacks downstairs. Than that he was my
+lodger for a year and a half and lived--or didn't live--by
+law-writing, I know no more of him."
+
+During this dialogue Mr. Tulkinghorn has stood aloof by the old
+portmanteau, with his hands behind him, equally removed, to all
+appearance, from all three kinds of interest exhibited near the
+bed--from the young surgeon's professional interest in death,
+noticeable as being quite apart from his remarks on the deceased as
+an individual; from the old man's unction; and the little crazy
+woman's awe. His imperturbable face has been as inexpressive as his
+rusty clothes. One could not even say he has been thinking all this
+while. He has shown neither patience nor impatience, nor attention
+nor abstraction. He has shown nothing but his shell. As easily might
+the tone of a delicate musical instrument be inferred from its case,
+as the tone of Mr. Tulkinghorn from his case.
+
+He now interposes, addressing the young surgeon in his unmoved,
+professional way.
+
+"I looked in here," he observes, "just before you, with the
+intention of giving this deceased man, whom I never saw alive, some
+employment at his trade of copying. I had heard of him from my
+stationer--Snagsby of Cook's Court. Since no one here knows anything
+about him, it might be as well to send for Snagsby. Ah!" to the
+little crazy woman, who has often seen him in court, and whom he has
+often seen, and who proposes, in frightened dumb-show, to go for the
+law-stationer. "Suppose you do!"
+
+While she is gone, the surgeon abandons his hopeless investigation
+and covers its subject with the patchwork counterpane. Mr. Krook and
+he interchange a word or two. Mr. Tulkinghorn says nothing, but
+stands, ever, near the old portmanteau.
+
+Mr. Snagsby arrives hastily in his grey coat and his black sleeves.
+"Dear me, dear me," he says; "and it has come to this, has it! Bless
+my soul!"
+
+"Can you give the person of the house any information about this
+unfortunate creature, Snagsby?" inquires Mr. Tulkinghorn. "He was in
+arrears with his rent, it seems. And he must be buried, you know."
+
+"Well, sir," says Mr. Snagsby, coughing his apologetic cough behind
+his hand, "I really don't know what advice I could offer, except
+sending for the beadle."
+
+"I don't speak of advice," returns Mr. Tulkinghorn. "I could
+advise--"
+
+"No one better, sir, I am sure," says Mr. Snagsby, with his
+deferential cough.
+
+"I speak of affording some clue to his connexions, or to where he
+came from, or to anything concerning him."
+
+"I assure you, sir," says Mr. Snagsby after prefacing his reply with
+his cough of general propitiation, "that I no more know where he came
+from than I know--"
+
+"Where he has gone to, perhaps," suggests the surgeon to help him
+out.
+
+A pause. Mr. Tulkinghorn looking at the law-stationer. Mr. Krook,
+with his mouth open, looking for somebody to speak next.
+
+"As to his connexions, sir," says Mr. Snagsby, "if a person was to
+say to me, 'Snagsby, here's twenty thousand pound down, ready for you
+in the Bank of England if you'll only name one of 'em,' I couldn't do
+it, sir! About a year and a half ago--to the best of my belief, at
+the time when he first came to lodge at the present rag and bottle
+shop--"
+
+"That was the time!" says Krook with a nod.
+
+"About a year and a half ago," says Mr. Snagsby, strengthened, "he
+came into our place one morning after breakfast, and finding my
+little woman (which I name Mrs. Snagsby when I use that appellation)
+in our shop, produced a specimen of his handwriting and gave her to
+understand that he was in want of copying work to do and was, not to
+put too fine a point upon it," a favourite apology for plain speaking
+with Mr. Snagsby, which he always offers with a sort of argumentative
+frankness, "hard up! My little woman is not in general partial to
+strangers, particular--not to put too fine a point upon it--when they
+want anything. But she was rather took by something about this
+person, whether by his being unshaved, or by his hair being in want
+of attention, or by what other ladies' reasons, I leave you to judge;
+and she accepted of the specimen, and likewise of the address. My
+little woman hasn't a good ear for names," proceeds Mr. Snagsby after
+consulting his cough of consideration behind his hand, "and she
+considered Nemo equally the same as Nimrod. In consequence of which,
+she got into a habit of saying to me at meals, 'Mr. Snagsby, you
+haven't found Nimrod any work yet!' or 'Mr. Snagsby, why didn't you
+give that eight and thirty Chancery folio in Jarndyce to Nimrod?' or
+such like. And that is the way he gradually fell into job-work at our
+place; and that is the most I know of him except that he was a quick
+hand, and a hand not sparing of night-work, and that if you gave him
+out, say, five and forty folio on the Wednesday night, you would have
+it brought in on the Thursday morning. All of which--" Mr. Snagsby
+concludes by politely motioning with his hat towards the bed, as much
+as to add, "I have no doubt my honourable friend would confirm if he
+were in a condition to do it."
+
+"Hadn't you better see," says Mr. Tulkinghorn to Krook, "whether he
+had any papers that may enlighten you? There will be an inquest, and
+you will be asked the question. You can read?"
+
+"No, I can't," returns the old man with a sudden grin.
+
+"Snagsby," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, "look over the room for him. He will
+get into some trouble or difficulty otherwise. Being here, I'll wait
+if you make haste, and then I can testify on his behalf, if it should
+ever be necessary, that all was fair and right. If you will hold the
+candle for Mr. Snagsby, my friend, he'll soon see whether there is
+anything to help you."
+
+"In the first place, here's an old portmanteau, sir," says Snagsby.
+
+Ah, to be sure, so there is! Mr. Tulkinghorn does not appear to have
+seen it before, though he is standing so close to it, and though
+there is very little else, heaven knows.
+
+The marine-store merchant holds the light, and the law-stationer
+conducts the search. The surgeon leans against the corner of the
+chimney-piece; Miss Flite peeps and trembles just within the door.
+The apt old scholar of the old school, with his dull black breeches
+tied with ribbons at the knees, his large black waistcoat, his
+long-sleeved black coat, and his wisp of limp white neckerchief tied
+in the bow the peerage knows so well, stands in exactly the same
+place and attitude.
+
+There are some worthless articles of clothing in the old portmanteau;
+there is a bundle of pawnbrokers' duplicates, those turnpike tickets
+on the road of poverty; there is a crumpled paper, smelling of opium,
+on which are scrawled rough memoranda--as, took, such a day, so many
+grains; took, such another day, so many more--begun some time ago, as
+if with the intention of being regularly continued, but soon left
+off. There are a few dirty scraps of newspapers, all referring to
+coroners' inquests; there is nothing else. They search the cupboard
+and the drawer of the ink-splashed table. There is not a morsel of an
+old letter or of any other writing in either. The young surgeon
+examines the dress on the law-writer. A knife and some odd halfpence
+are all he finds. Mr. Snagsby's suggestion is the practical
+suggestion after all, and the beadle must be called in.
+
+So the little crazy lodger goes for the beadle, and the rest come out
+of the room. "Don't leave the cat there!" says the surgeon; "that
+won't do!" Mr. Krook therefore drives her out before him, and she
+goes furtively downstairs, winding her lithe tail and licking her
+lips.
+
+"Good night!" says Mr. Tulkinghorn, and goes home to Allegory and
+meditation.
+
+By this time the news has got into the court. Groups of its
+inhabitants assemble to discuss the thing, and the outposts of the
+army of observation (principally boys) are pushed forward to Mr.
+Krook's window, which they closely invest. A policeman has already
+walked up to the room, and walked down again to the door, where he
+stands like a tower, only condescending to see the boys at his base
+occasionally; but whenever he does see them, they quail and fall
+back. Mrs. Perkins, who has not been for some weeks on speaking terms
+with Mrs. Piper in consequence for an unpleasantness originating in
+young Perkins' having "fetched" young Piper "a crack," renews her
+friendly intercourse on this auspicious occasion. The potboy at the
+corner, who is a privileged amateur, as possessing official knowledge
+of life and having to deal with drunken men occasionally, exchanges
+confidential communications with the policeman and has the appearance
+of an impregnable youth, unassailable by truncheons and unconfinable
+in station-houses. People talk across the court out of window, and
+bare-headed scouts come hurrying in from Chancery Lane to know what's
+the matter. The general feeling seems to be that it's a blessing Mr.
+Krook warn't made away with first, mingled with a little natural
+disappointment that he was not. In the midst of this sensation, the
+beadle arrives.
+
+The beadle, though generally understood in the neighbourhood to be a
+ridiculous institution, is not without a certain popularity for the
+moment, if it were only as a man who is going to see the body. The
+policeman considers him an imbecile civilian, a remnant of the
+barbarous watchmen times, but gives him admission as something that
+must be borne with until government shall abolish him. The sensation
+is heightened as the tidings spread from mouth to mouth that the
+beadle is on the ground and has gone in.
+
+By and by the beadle comes out, once more intensifying the sensation,
+which has rather languished in the interval. He is understood to be
+in want of witnesses for the inquest to-morrow who can tell the
+coroner and jury anything whatever respecting the deceased. Is
+immediately referred to innumerable people who can tell nothing
+whatever. Is made more imbecile by being constantly informed that
+Mrs. Green's son "was a law-writer his-self and knowed him better
+than anybody," which son of Mrs. Green's appears, on inquiry, to be
+at the present time aboard a vessel bound for China, three months
+out, but considered accessible by telegraph on application to the
+Lords of the Admiralty. Beadle goes into various shops and parlours,
+examining the inhabitants, always shutting the door first, and by
+exclusion, delay, and general idiotcy exasperating the public.
+Policeman seen to smile to potboy. Public loses interest and
+undergoes reaction. Taunts the beadle in shrill youthful voices with
+having boiled a boy, choruses fragments of a popular song to that
+effect and importing that the boy was made into soup for the
+workhouse. Policeman at last finds it necessary to support the law
+and seize a vocalist, who is released upon the flight of the rest on
+condition of his getting out of this then, come, and cutting it--a
+condition he immediately observes. So the sensation dies off for the
+time; and the unmoved policeman (to whom a little opium, more or
+less, is nothing), with his shining hat, stiff stock, inflexible
+great-coat, stout belt and bracelet, and all things fitting, pursues
+his lounging way with a heavy tread, beating the palms of his white
+gloves one against the other and stopping now and then at a
+street-corner to look casually about for anything between a lost
+child and a murder.
+
+Under cover of the night, the feeble-minded beadle comes flitting
+about Chancery Lane with his summonses, in which every juror's name
+is wrongly spelt, and nothing rightly spelt but the beadle's own
+name, which nobody can read or wants to know. The summonses served
+and his witnesses forewarned, the beadle goes to Mr. Krook's to keep
+a small appointment he has made with certain paupers, who, presently
+arriving, are conducted upstairs, where they leave the great eyes in
+the shutter something new to stare at, in that last shape which
+earthly lodgings take for No one--and for Every one.
+
+And all that night the coffin stands ready by the old portmanteau;
+and the lonely figure on the bed, whose path in life has lain through
+five and forty years, lies there with no more track behind him that
+any one can trace than a deserted infant.
+
+Next day the court is all alive--is like a fair, as Mrs. Perkins,
+more than reconciled to Mrs. Piper, says in amicable conversation
+with that excellent woman. The coroner is to sit in the first-floor
+room at the Sol's Arms, where the Harmonic Meetings take place twice
+a week and where the chair is filled by a gentleman of professional
+celebrity, faced by Little Swills, the comic vocalist, who hopes
+(according to the bill in the window) that his friends will rally
+round him and support first-rate talent. The Sol's Arms does a brisk
+stroke of business all the morning. Even children so require
+sustaining under the general excitement that a pieman who has
+established himself for the occasion at the corner of the court says
+his brandy-balls go off like smoke. What time the beadle, hovering
+between the door of Mr. Krook's establishment and the door of the
+Sol's Arms, shows the curiosity in his keeping to a few discreet
+spirits and accepts the compliment of a glass of ale or so in return.
+
+At the appointed hour arrives the coroner, for whom the jurymen are
+waiting and who is received with a salute of skittles from the good
+dry skittle-ground attached to the Sol's Arms. The coroner frequents
+more public-houses than any man alive. The smell of sawdust, beer,
+tobacco-smoke, and spirits is inseparable in his vocation from death
+in its most awful shapes. He is conducted by the beadle and the
+landlord to the Harmonic Meeting Room, where he puts his hat on the
+piano and takes a Windsor-chair at the head of a long table formed of
+several short tables put together and ornamented with glutinous rings
+in endless involutions, made by pots and glasses. As many of the jury
+as can crowd together at the table sit there. The rest get among the
+spittoons and pipes or lean against the piano. Over the coroner's
+head is a small iron garland, the pendant handle of a bell, which
+rather gives the majesty of the court the appearance of going to be
+hanged presently.
+
+Call over and swear the jury! While the ceremony is in progress,
+sensation is created by the entrance of a chubby little man in a
+large shirt-collar, with a moist eye and an inflamed nose, who
+modestly takes a position near the door as one of the general public,
+but seems familiar with the room too. A whisper circulates that this
+is Little Swills. It is considered not unlikely that he will get up
+an imitation of the coroner and make it the principal feature of the
+Harmonic Meeting in the evening.
+
+"Well, gentlemen--" the coroner begins.
+
+"Silence there, will you!" says the beadle. Not to the coroner,
+though it might appear so.
+
+"Well, gentlemen," resumes the coroner. "You are impanelled here to
+inquire into the death of a certain man. Evidence will be given
+before you as to the circumstances attending that death, and you will
+give your verdict according to the--skittles; they must be stopped,
+you know, beadle!--evidence, and not according to anything else. The
+first thing to be done is to view the body."
+
+"Make way there!" cries the beadle.
+
+So they go out in a loose procession, something after the manner of a
+straggling funeral, and make their inspection in Mr. Krook's back
+second floor, from which a few of the jurymen retire pale and
+precipitately. The beadle is very careful that two gentlemen not very
+neat about the cuffs and buttons (for whose accommodation he has
+provided a special little table near the coroner in the Harmonic
+Meeting Room) should see all that is to be seen. For they are the
+public chroniclers of such inquiries by the line; and he is not
+superior to the universal human infirmity, but hopes to read in print
+what "Mooney, the active and intelligent beadle of the district,"
+said and did and even aspires to see the name of Mooney as familiarly
+and patronizingly mentioned as the name of the hangman is, according
+to the latest examples.
+
+Little Swills is waiting for the coroner and jury on their return.
+Mr. Tulkinghorn, also. Mr. Tulkinghorn is received with distinction
+and seated near the coroner between that high judicial officer, a
+bagatelle-board, and the coal-box. The inquiry proceeds. The jury
+learn how the subject of their inquiry died, and learn no more about
+him. "A very eminent solicitor is in attendance, gentlemen," says the
+coroner, "who, I am informed, was accidentally present when discovery
+of the death was made, but he could only repeat the evidence you have
+already heard from the surgeon, the landlord, the lodger, and the
+law-stationer, and it is not necessary to trouble him. Is anybody in
+attendance who knows anything more?"
+
+Mrs. Piper pushed forward by Mrs. Perkins. Mrs. Piper sworn.
+
+Anastasia Piper, gentlemen. Married woman. Now, Mrs. Piper, what have
+you got to say about this?
+
+Why, Mrs. Piper has a good deal to say, chiefly in parentheses and
+without punctuation, but not much to tell. Mrs. Piper lives in the
+court (which her husband is a cabinet-maker), and it has long been
+well beknown among the neighbours (counting from the day next but one
+before the half-baptizing of Alexander James Piper aged eighteen
+months and four days old on accounts of not being expected to live
+such was the sufferings gentlemen of that child in his gums) as the
+plaintive--so Mrs. Piper insists on calling the deceased--was
+reported to have sold himself. Thinks it was the plaintive's air in
+which that report originatinin. See the plaintive often and
+considered as his air was feariocious and not to be allowed to go
+about some children being timid (and if doubted hoping Mrs. Perkins
+may be brought forard for she is here and will do credit to her
+husband and herself and family). Has seen the plaintive wexed and
+worrited by the children (for children they will ever be and you
+cannot expect them specially if of playful dispositions to be
+Methoozellers which you was not yourself). On accounts of this and
+his dark looks has often dreamed as she see him take a pick-axe from
+his pocket and split Johnny's head (which the child knows not fear
+and has repeatually called after him close at his eels). Never
+however see the plaintive take a pick-axe or any other wepping far
+from it. Has seen him hurry away when run and called after as if not
+partial to children and never see him speak to neither child nor
+grown person at any time (excepting the boy that sweeps the crossing
+down the lane over the way round the corner which if he was here
+would tell you that he has been seen a-speaking to him frequent).
+
+Says the coroner, is that boy here? Says the beadle, no, sir, he is
+not here. Says the coroner, go and fetch him then. In the absence of
+the active and intelligent, the coroner converses with Mr.
+Tulkinghorn.
+
+Oh! Here's the boy, gentlemen!
+
+Here he is, very muddy, very hoarse, very ragged. Now, boy! But stop
+a minute. Caution. This boy must be put through a few preliminary
+paces.
+
+Name, Jo. Nothing else that he knows on. Don't know that everybody
+has two names. Never heerd of sich a think. Don't know that Jo is
+short for a longer name. Thinks it long enough for HIM. HE don't find
+no fault with it. Spell it? No. HE can't spell it. No father, no
+mother, no friends. Never been to school. What's home? Knows a
+broom's a broom, and knows it's wicked to tell a lie. Don't recollect
+who told him about the broom or about the lie, but knows both. Can't
+exactly say what'll be done to him arter he's dead if he tells a lie
+to the gentlemen here, but believes it'll be something wery bad to
+punish him, and serve him right--and so he'll tell the truth.
+
+"This won't do, gentlemen!" says the coroner with a melancholy shake
+of the head.
+
+"Don't you think you can receive his evidence, sir?" asks an
+attentive juryman.
+
+"Out of the question," says the coroner. "You have heard the boy.
+'Can't exactly say' won't do, you know. We can't take THAT in a court
+of justice, gentlemen. It's terrible depravity. Put the boy aside."
+
+Boy put aside, to the great edification of the audience, especially
+of Little Swills, the comic vocalist.
+
+Now. Is there any other witness? No other witness.
+
+Very well, gentlemen! Here's a man unknown, proved to have been in
+the habit of taking opium in large quantities for a year and a half,
+found dead of too much opium. If you think you have any evidence to
+lead you to the conclusion that he committed suicide, you will come
+to that conclusion. If you think it is a case of accidental death,
+you will find a verdict accordingly.
+
+Verdict accordingly. Accidental death. No doubt. Gentlemen, you are
+discharged. Good afternoon.
+
+While the coroner buttons his great-coat, Mr. Tulkinghorn and he give
+private audience to the rejected witness in a corner.
+
+That graceless creature only knows that the dead man (whom he
+recognized just now by his yellow face and black hair) was sometimes
+hooted and pursued about the streets. That one cold winter night when
+he, the boy, was shivering in a doorway near his crossing, the man
+turned to look at him, and came back, and having questioned him and
+found that he had not a friend in the world, said, "Neither have I.
+Not one!" and gave him the price of a supper and a night's lodging.
+That the man had often spoken to him since and asked him whether he
+slept sound at night, and how he bore cold and hunger, and whether he
+ever wished to die, and similar strange questions. That when the man
+had no money, he would say in passing, "I am as poor as you to-day,
+Jo," but that when he had any, he had always (as the boy most
+heartily believes) been glad to give him some.
+
+"He was wery good to me," says the boy, wiping his eyes with his
+wretched sleeve. "Wen I see him a-layin' so stritched out just now, I
+wished he could have heerd me tell him so. He wos wery good to me, he
+wos!"
+
+As he shuffles downstairs, Mr. Snagsby, lying in wait for him, puts a
+half-crown in his hand. "If you ever see me coming past your crossing
+with my little woman--I mean a lady--" says Mr. Snagsby with his
+finger on his nose, "don't allude to it!"
+
+For some little time the jurymen hang about the Sol's Arms
+colloquially. In the sequel, half-a-dozen are caught up in a cloud of
+pipe-smoke that pervades the parlour of the Sol's Arms; two stroll to
+Hampstead; and four engage to go half-price to the play at night, and
+top up with oysters. Little Swills is treated on several hands. Being
+asked what he thinks of the proceedings, characterizes them (his
+strength lying in a slangular direction) as "a rummy start." The
+landlord of the Sol's Arms, finding Little Swills so popular,
+commends him highly to the jurymen and public, observing that for a
+song in character he don't know his equal and that that man's
+character-wardrobe would fill a cart.
+
+Thus, gradually the Sol's Arms melts into the shadowy night and then
+flares out of it strong in gas. The Harmonic Meeting hour arriving,
+the gentleman of professional celebrity takes the chair, is faced
+(red-faced) by Little Swills; their friends rally round them and
+support first-rate talent. In the zenith of the evening, Little
+Swills says, "Gentlemen, if you'll permit me, I'll attempt a short
+description of a scene of real life that came off here to-day." Is
+much applauded and encouraged; goes out of the room as Swills; comes
+in as the coroner (not the least in the world like him); describes
+the inquest, with recreative intervals of piano-forte accompaniment,
+to the refrain: With his (the coroner's) tippy tol li doll, tippy tol
+lo doll, tippy tol li doll, Dee!
+
+The jingling piano at last is silent, and the Harmonic friends rally
+round their pillows. Then there is rest around the lonely figure, now
+laid in its last earthly habitation; and it is watched by the gaunt
+eyes in the shutters through some quiet hours of night. If this
+forlorn man could have been prophetically seen lying here by the
+mother at whose breast he nestled, a little child, with eyes upraised
+to her loving face, and soft hand scarcely knowing how to close upon
+the neck to which it crept, what an impossibility the vision would
+have seemed! Oh, if in brighter days the now-extinguished fire within
+him ever burned for one woman who held him in her heart, where is
+she, while these ashes are above the ground!
+
+It is anything but a night of rest at Mr. Snagsby's, in Cook's Court,
+where Guster murders sleep by going, as Mr. Snagsby himself
+allows--not to put too fine a point upon it--out of one fit into
+twenty. The occasion of this seizure is that Guster has a tender
+heart and a susceptible something that possibly might have been
+imagination, but for Tooting and her patron saint. Be it what it may,
+now, it was so direfully impressed at tea-time by Mr. Snagsby's
+account of the inquiry at which he had assisted that at supper-time
+she projected herself into the kitchen, preceded by a flying Dutch
+cheese, and fell into a fit of unusual duration, which she only came
+out of to go into another, and another, and so on through a chain of
+fits, with short intervals between, of which she has pathetically
+availed herself by consuming them in entreaties to Mrs. Snagsby not
+to give her warning "when she quite comes to," and also in appeals to
+the whole establishment to lay her down on the stones and go to bed.
+Hence, Mr. Snagsby, at last hearing the cock at the little dairy in
+Cursitor Street go into that disinterested ecstasy of his on the
+subject of daylight, says, drawing a long breath, though the most
+patient of men, "I thought you was dead, I am sure!"
+
+What question this enthusiastic fowl supposes he settles when he
+strains himself to such an extent, or why he should thus crow (so men
+crow on various triumphant public occasions, however) about what
+cannot be of any moment to him, is his affair. It is enough that
+daylight comes, morning comes, noon comes.
+
+Then the active and intelligent, who has got into the morning papers
+as such, comes with his pauper company to Mr. Krook's and bears off
+the body of our dear brother here departed to a hemmed-in churchyard,
+pestiferous and obscene, whence malignant diseases are communicated
+to the bodies of our dear brothers and sisters who have not departed,
+while our dear brothers and sisters who hang about official
+back-stairs--would to heaven they HAD departed!--are very complacent
+and agreeable. Into a beastly scrap of ground which a Turk would
+reject as a savage abomination and a Caffre would shudder at, they
+bring our dear brother here departed to receive Christian burial.
+
+With houses looking on, on every side, save where a reeking little
+tunnel of a court gives access to the iron gate--with every villainy
+of life in action close on death, and every poisonous element of
+death in action close on life--here they lower our dear brother down
+a foot or two, here sow him in corruption, to be raised in
+corruption: an avenging ghost at many a sick-bedside, a shameful
+testimony to future ages how civilization and barbarism walked this
+boastful island together.
+
+Come night, come darkness, for you cannot come too soon or stay too
+long by such a place as this! Come, straggling lights into the
+windows of the ugly houses; and you who do iniquity therein, do it at
+least with this dread scene shut out! Come, flame of gas, burning so
+sullenly above the iron gate, on which the poisoned air deposits its
+witch-ointment slimy to the touch! It is well that you should call to
+every passerby, "Look here!"
+
+With the night comes a slouching figure through the tunnel-court to
+the outside of the iron gate. It holds the gate with its hands and
+looks in between the bars, stands looking in for a little while.
+
+It then, with an old broom it carries, softly sweeps the step and
+makes the archway clean. It does so very busily and trimly, looks in
+again a little while, and so departs.
+
+Jo, is it thou? Well, well! Though a rejected witness, who "can't
+exactly say" what will be done to him in greater hands than men's,
+thou art not quite in outer darkness. There is something like a
+distant ray of light in thy muttered reason for this: "He wos wery
+good to me, he wos!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+On the Watch
+
+
+It has left off raining down in Lincolnshire at last, and Chesney
+Wold has taken heart. Mrs. Rouncewell is full of hospitable cares,
+for Sir Leicester and my Lady are coming home from Paris. The
+fashionable intelligence has found it out and communicates the glad
+tidings to benighted England. It has also found out that they will
+entertain a brilliant and distinguished circle of the ELITE of the
+BEAU MONDE (the fashionable intelligence is weak in English, but a
+giant refreshed in French) at the ancient and hospitable family seat
+in Lincolnshire.
+
+For the greater honour of the brilliant and distinguished circle, and
+of Chesney Wold into the bargain, the broken arch of the bridge in
+the park is mended; and the water, now retired within its proper
+limits and again spanned gracefully, makes a figure in the prospect
+from the house. The clear, cold sunshine glances into the brittle
+woods and approvingly beholds the sharp wind scattering the leaves
+and drying the moss. It glides over the park after the moving shadows
+of the clouds, and chases them, and never catches them, all day. It
+looks in at the windows and touches the ancestral portraits with bars
+and patches of brightness never contemplated by the painters. Athwart
+the picture of my Lady, over the great chimney-piece, it throws a
+broad bend-sinister of light that strikes down crookedly into the
+hearth and seems to rend it.
+
+Through the same cold sunshine and the same sharp wind, my Lady and
+Sir Leicester, in their travelling chariot (my Lady's woman and Sir
+Leicester's man affectionate in the rumble), start for home. With a
+considerable amount of jingling and whip-cracking, and many plunging
+demonstrations on the part of two bare-backed horses and two centaurs
+with glazed hats, jack-boots, and flowing manes and tails, they
+rattle out of the yard of the Hotel Bristol in the Place Vendome and
+canter between the sun-and-shadow-chequered colonnade of the Rue de
+Rivoli and the garden of the ill-fated palace of a headless king and
+queen, off by the Place of Concord, and the Elysian Fields, and the
+Gate of the Star, out of Paris.
+
+Sooth to say, they cannot go away too fast, for even here my Lady
+Dedlock has been bored to death. Concert, assembly, opera, theatre,
+drive, nothing is new to my Lady under the worn-out heavens. Only
+last Sunday, when poor wretches were gay--within the walls playing
+with children among the clipped trees and the statues in the Palace
+Garden; walking, a score abreast, in the Elysian Fields, made more
+Elysian by performing dogs and wooden horses; between whiles
+filtering (a few) through the gloomy Cathedral of Our Lady to say a
+word or two at the base of a pillar within flare of a rusty little
+gridiron-full of gusty little tapers; without the walls encompassing
+Paris with dancing, love-making, wine-drinking, tobacco-smoking,
+tomb-visiting, billiard card and domino playing, quack-doctoring, and
+much murderous refuse, animate and inanimate--only last Sunday, my
+Lady, in the desolation of Boredom and the clutch of Giant Despair,
+almost hated her own maid for being in spirits.
+
+She cannot, therefore, go too fast from Paris. Weariness of soul lies
+before her, as it lies behind--her Ariel has put a girdle of it round
+the whole earth, and it cannot be unclasped--but the imperfect remedy
+is always to fly from the last place where it has been experienced.
+Fling Paris back into the distance, then, exchanging it for endless
+avenues and cross-avenues of wintry trees! And, when next beheld, let
+it be some leagues away, with the Gate of the Star a white speck
+glittering in the sun, and the city a mere mound in a plain--two dark
+square towers rising out of it, and light and shadow descending on it
+aslant, like the angels in Jacob's dream!
+
+Sir Leicester is generally in a complacent state, and rarely bored.
+When he has nothing else to do, he can always contemplate his own
+greatness. It is a considerable advantage to a man to have so
+inexhaustible a subject. After reading his letters, he leans back in
+his corner of the carriage and generally reviews his importance to
+society.
+
+"You have an unusual amount of correspondence this morning?" says my
+Lady after a long time. She is fatigued with reading. Has almost read
+a page in twenty miles.
+
+"Nothing in it, though. Nothing whatever."
+
+"I saw one of Mr. Tulkinghorn's long effusions, I think?"
+
+"You see everything," says Sir Leicester with admiration.
+
+"Ha!" sighs my Lady. "He is the most tiresome of men!"
+
+"He sends--I really beg your pardon--he sends," says Sir Leicester,
+selecting the letter and unfolding it, "a message to you. Our
+stopping to change horses as I came to his postscript drove it out of
+my memory. I beg you'll excuse me. He says--" Sir Leicester is so
+long in taking out his eye-glass and adjusting it that my Lady looks
+a little irritated. "He says 'In the matter of the right of way--' I
+beg your pardon, that's not the place. He says--yes! Here I have it!
+He says, 'I beg my respectful compliments to my Lady, who, I hope,
+has benefited by the change. Will you do me the favour to mention (as
+it may interest her) that I have something to tell her on her return
+in reference to the person who copied the affidavit in the Chancery
+suit, which so powerfully stimulated her curiosity. I have seen
+him.'"
+
+My Lady, leaning forward, looks out of her window.
+
+"That's the message," observes Sir Leicester.
+
+"I should like to walk a little," says my Lady, still looking out of
+her window.
+
+"Walk?" repeats Sir Leicester in a tone of surprise.
+
+"I should like to walk a little," says my Lady with unmistakable
+distinctness. "Please to stop the carriage."
+
+The carriage is stopped, the affectionate man alights from the
+rumble, opens the door, and lets down the steps, obedient to an
+impatient motion of my Lady's hand. My Lady alights so quickly and
+walks away so quickly that Sir Leicester, for all his scrupulous
+politeness, is unable to assist her, and is left behind. A space of a
+minute or two has elapsed before he comes up with her. She smiles,
+looks very handsome, takes his arm, lounges with him for a quarter of
+a mile, is very much bored, and resumes her seat in the carriage.
+
+The rattle and clatter continue through the greater part of three
+days, with more or less of bell-jingling and whip-cracking, and more
+or less plunging of centaurs and bare-backed horses. Their courtly
+politeness to each other at the hotels where they tarry is the theme
+of general admiration. Though my Lord IS a little aged for my Lady,
+says Madame, the hostess of the Golden Ape, and though he might be
+her amiable father, one can see at a glance that they love each
+other. One observes my Lord with his white hair, standing, hat in
+hand, to help my Lady to and from the carriage. One observes my Lady,
+how recognisant of my Lord's politeness, with an inclination of her
+gracious head and the concession of her so-genteel fingers! It is
+ravishing!
+
+The sea has no appreciation of great men, but knocks them about like
+the small fry. It is habitually hard upon Sir Leicester, whose
+countenance it greenly mottles in the manner of sage-cheese and in
+whose aristocratic system it effects a dismal revolution. It is the
+Radical of Nature to him. Nevertheless, his dignity gets over it
+after stopping to refit, and he goes on with my Lady for Chesney
+Wold, lying only one night in London on the way to Lincolnshire.
+
+Through the same cold sunlight, colder as the day declines, and
+through the same sharp wind, sharper as the separate shadows of bare
+trees gloom together in the woods, and as the Ghost's Walk, touched
+at the western corner by a pile of fire in the sky, resigns itself to
+coming night, they drive into the park. The rooks, swinging in their
+lofty houses in the elm-tree avenue, seem to discuss the question of
+the occupancy of the carriage as it passes underneath, some agreeing
+that Sir Leicester and my Lady are come down, some arguing with
+malcontents who won't admit it, now all consenting to consider the
+question disposed of, now all breaking out again in violent debate,
+incited by one obstinate and drowsy bird who will persist in putting
+in a last contradictory croak. Leaving them to swing and caw, the
+travelling chariot rolls on to the house, where fires gleam warmly
+through some of the windows, though not through so many as to give an
+inhabited expression to the darkening mass of front. But the
+brilliant and distinguished circle will soon do that.
+
+Mrs. Rouncewell is in attendance and receives Sir Leicester's
+customary shake of the hand with a profound curtsy.
+
+"How do you do, Mrs. Rouncewell? I am glad to see you."
+
+"I hope I have the honour of welcoming you in good health, Sir
+Leicester?"
+
+"In excellent health, Mrs. Rouncewell."
+
+"My Lady is looking charmingly well," says Mrs. Rouncewell with
+another curtsy.
+
+My Lady signifies, without profuse expenditure of words, that she is
+as wearily well as she can hope to be.
+
+But Rosa is in the distance, behind the housekeeper; and my Lady, who
+has not subdued the quickness of her observation, whatever else she
+may have conquered, asks, "Who is that girl?"
+
+"A young scholar of mine, my Lady. Rosa."
+
+"Come here, Rosa!" Lady Dedlock beckons her, with even an appearance
+of interest. "Why, do you know how pretty you are, child?" she says,
+touching her shoulder with her two forefingers.
+
+Rosa, very much abashed, says, "No, if you please, my Lady!" and
+glances up, and glances down, and don't know where to look, but looks
+all the prettier.
+
+"How old are you?"
+
+"Nineteen, my Lady."
+
+"Nineteen," repeats my Lady thoughtfully. "Take care they don't spoil
+you by flattery."
+
+"Yes, my Lady."
+
+My Lady taps her dimpled cheek with the same delicate gloved fingers
+and goes on to the foot of the oak staircase, where Sir Leicester
+pauses for her as her knightly escort. A staring old Dedlock in a
+panel, as large as life and as dull, looks as if he didn't know what
+to make of it, which was probably his general state of mind in the
+days of Queen Elizabeth.
+
+That evening, in the housekeeper's room, Rosa can do nothing but
+murmur Lady Dedlock's praises. She is so affable, so graceful, so
+beautiful, so elegant; has such a sweet voice and such a thrilling
+touch that Rosa can feel it yet! Mrs. Rouncewell confirms all this,
+not without personal pride, reserving only the one point of
+affability. Mrs. Rouncewell is not quite sure as to that. Heaven
+forbid that she should say a syllable in dispraise of any member of
+that excellent family, above all, of my Lady, whom the whole world
+admires; but if my Lady would only be "a little more free," not quite
+so cold and distant, Mrs. Rouncewell thinks she would be more
+affable.
+
+"'Tis almost a pity," Mrs. Rouncewell adds--only "almost" because it
+borders on impiety to suppose that anything could be better than it
+is, in such an express dispensation as the Dedlock affairs--"that my
+Lady has no family. If she had had a daughter now, a grown young
+lady, to interest her, I think she would have had the only kind of
+excellence she wants."
+
+"Might not that have made her still more proud, grandmother?" says
+Watt, who has been home and come back again, he is such a good
+grandson.
+
+"More and most, my dear," returns the housekeeper with dignity, "are
+words it's not my place to use--nor so much as to hear--applied to
+any drawback on my Lady."
+
+"I beg your pardon, grandmother. But she is proud, is she not?"
+
+"If she is, she has reason to be. The Dedlock family have always
+reason to be."
+
+"Well," says Watt, "it's to be hoped they line out of their
+prayer-books a certain passage for the common people about pride and
+vainglory. Forgive me, grandmother! Only a joke!"
+
+"Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock, my dear, are not fit subjects for
+joking."
+
+"Sir Leicester is no joke by any means," says Watt, "and I humbly ask
+his pardon. I suppose, grandmother, that even with the family and
+their guests down here, there is no objection to my prolonging my
+stay at the Dedlock Arms for a day or two, as any other traveller
+might?"
+
+"Surely, none in the world, child."
+
+"I am glad of that," says Watt, "because I have an inexpressible
+desire to extend my knowledge of this beautiful neighbourhood."
+
+He happens to glance at Rosa, who looks down and is very shy indeed.
+But according to the old superstition, it should be Rosa's ears that
+burn, and not her fresh bright cheeks, for my Lady's maid is holding
+forth about her at this moment with surpassing energy.
+
+My Lady's maid is a Frenchwoman of two and thirty, from somewhere in
+the southern country about Avignon and Marseilles, a large-eyed brown
+woman with black hair who would be handsome but for a certain feline
+mouth and general uncomfortable tightness of face, rendering the jaws
+too eager and the skull too prominent. There is something indefinably
+keen and wan about her anatomy, and she has a watchful way of looking
+out of the corners of her eyes without turning her head which could
+be pleasantly dispensed with, especially when she is in an ill humour
+and near knives. Through all the good taste of her dress and little
+adornments, these objections so express themselves that she seems to
+go about like a very neat she-wolf imperfectly tamed. Besides being
+accomplished in all the knowledge appertaining to her post, she is
+almost an Englishwoman in her acquaintance with the language;
+consequently, she is in no want of words to shower upon Rosa for
+having attracted my Lady's attention, and she pours them out with
+such grim ridicule as she sits at dinner that her companion, the
+affectionate man, is rather relieved when she arrives at the spoon
+stage of that performance.
+
+Ha, ha, ha! She, Hortense, been in my Lady's service since five years
+and always kept at the distance, and this doll, this puppet,
+caressed--absolutely caressed--by my Lady on the moment of her
+arriving at the house! Ha, ha, ha! "And do you know how pretty you
+are, child?" "No, my Lady." You are right there! "And how old are
+you, child! And take care they do not spoil you by flattery, child!"
+Oh, how droll! It is the BEST thing altogether.
+
+In short, it is such an admirable thing that Mademoiselle Hortense
+can't forget it; but at meals for days afterwards, even among her
+countrywomen and others attached in like capacity to the troop of
+visitors, relapses into silent enjoyment of the joke--an enjoyment
+expressed, in her own convivial manner, by an additional tightness of
+face, thin elongation of compressed lips, and sidewise look, which
+intense appreciation of humour is frequently reflected in my Lady's
+mirrors when my Lady is not among them.
+
+All the mirrors in the house are brought into action now, many of
+them after a long blank. They reflect handsome faces, simpering
+faces, youthful faces, faces of threescore and ten that will not
+submit to be old; the entire collection of faces that have come to
+pass a January week or two at Chesney Wold, and which the fashionable
+intelligence, a mighty hunter before the Lord, hunts with a keen
+scent, from their breaking cover at the Court of St. James's to their
+being run down to death. The place in Lincolnshire is all alive. By
+day guns and voices are heard ringing in the woods, horsemen and
+carriages enliven the park roads, servants and hangers-on pervade the
+village and the Dedlock Arms. Seen by night from distant openings in
+the trees, the row of windows in the long drawing-room, where my
+Lady's picture hangs over the great chimney-piece, is like a row of
+jewels set in a black frame. On Sunday the chill little church is
+almost warmed by so much gallant company, and the general flavour of
+the Dedlock dust is quenched in delicate perfumes.
+
+The brilliant and distinguished circle comprehends within it no
+contracted amount of education, sense, courage, honour, beauty, and
+virtue. Yet there is something a little wrong about it in despite of
+its immense advantages. What can it be?
+
+Dandyism? There is no King George the Fourth now (more the pity) to
+set the dandy fashion; there are no clear-starched jack-towel
+neckcloths, no short-waisted coats, no false calves, no stays. There
+are no caricatures, now, of effeminate exquisites so arrayed,
+swooning in opera boxes with excess of delight and being revived by
+other dainty creatures poking long-necked scent-bottles at their
+noses. There is no beau whom it takes four men at once to shake into
+his buckskins, or who goes to see all the executions, or who is
+troubled with the self-reproach of having once consumed a pea. But is
+there dandyism in the brilliant and distinguished circle
+notwithstanding, dandyism of a more mischievous sort, that has got
+below the surface and is doing less harmless things than
+jack-towelling itself and stopping its own digestion, to which no
+rational person need particularly object?
+
+Why, yes. It cannot be disguised. There ARE at Chesney Wold this
+January week some ladies and gentlemen of the newest fashion, who
+have set up a dandyism--in religion, for instance. Who in mere
+lackadaisical want of an emotion have agreed upon a little dandy talk
+about the vulgar wanting faith in things in general, meaning in the
+things that have been tried and found wanting, as though a low fellow
+should unaccountably lose faith in a bad shilling after finding it
+out! Who would make the vulgar very picturesque and faithful by
+putting back the hands upon the clock of time and cancelling a few
+hundred years of history.
+
+There are also ladies and gentlemen of another fashion, not so new,
+but very elegant, who have agreed to put a smooth glaze on the world
+and to keep down all its realities. For whom everything must be
+languid and pretty. Who have found out the perpetual stoppage. Who
+are to rejoice at nothing and be sorry for nothing. Who are not to be
+disturbed by ideas. On whom even the fine arts, attending in powder
+and walking backward like the Lord Chamberlain, must array themselves
+in the milliners' and tailors' patterns of past generations and be
+particularly careful not to be in earnest or to receive any impress
+from the moving age.
+
+Then there is my Lord Boodle, of considerable reputation with his
+party, who has known what office is and who tells Sir Leicester
+Dedlock with much gravity, after dinner, that he really does not see
+to what the present age is tending. A debate is not what a debate
+used to be; the House is not what the House used to be; even a
+Cabinet is not what it formerly was. He perceives with astonishment
+that supposing the present government to be overthrown, the limited
+choice of the Crown, in the formation of a new ministry, would lie
+between Lord Coodle and Sir Thomas Doodle--supposing it to be
+impossible for the Duke of Foodle to act with Goodle, which may be
+assumed to be the case in consequence of the breach arising out of
+that affair with Hoodle. Then, giving the Home Department and the
+leadership of the House of Commons to Joodle, the Exchequer to
+Koodle, the Colonies to Loodle, and the Foreign Office to Moodle,
+what are you to do with Noodle? You can't offer him the Presidency of
+the Council; that is reserved for Poodle. You can't put him in the
+Woods and Forests; that is hardly good enough for Quoodle. What
+follows? That the country is shipwrecked, lost, and gone to pieces
+(as is made manifest to the patriotism of Sir Leicester Dedlock)
+because you can't provide for Noodle!
+
+On the other hand, the Right Honourable William Buffy, M.P., contends
+across the table with some one else that the shipwreck of the
+country--about which there is no doubt; it is only the manner of it
+that is in question--is attributable to Cuffy. If you had done with
+Cuffy what you ought to have done when he first came into Parliament,
+and had prevented him from going over to Duffy, you would have got
+him into alliance with Fuffy, you would have had with you the weight
+attaching as a smart debater to Guffy, you would have brought to bear
+upon the elections the wealth of Huffy, you would have got in for
+three counties Juffy, Kuffy, and Luffy, and you would have
+strengthened your administration by the official knowledge and the
+business habits of Muffy. All this, instead of being as you now are,
+dependent on the mere caprice of Puffy!
+
+As to this point, and as to some minor topics, there are differences
+of opinion; but it is perfectly clear to the brilliant and
+distinguished circle, all round, that nobody is in question but
+Boodle and his retinue, and Buffy and HIS retinue. These are the
+great actors for whom the stage is reserved. A People there are, no
+doubt--a certain large number of supernumeraries, who are to be
+occasionally addressed, and relied upon for shouts and choruses, as
+on the theatrical stage; but Boodle and Buffy, their followers and
+families, their heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns, are
+the born first-actors, managers, and leaders, and no others can
+appear upon the scene for ever and ever.
+
+In this, too, there is perhaps more dandyism at Chesney Wold than the
+brilliant and distinguished circle will find good for itself in the
+long run. For it is, even with the stillest and politest circles, as
+with the circle the necromancer draws around him--very strange
+appearances may be seen in active motion outside. With this
+difference, that being realities and not phantoms, there is the
+greater danger of their breaking in.
+
+Chesney Wold is quite full anyhow, so full that a burning sense of
+injury arises in the breasts of ill-lodged ladies'-maids, and is not
+to be extinguished. Only one room is empty. It is a turret chamber of
+the third order of merit, plainly but comfortably furnished and
+having an old-fashioned business air. It is Mr. Tulkinghorn's room,
+and is never bestowed on anybody else, for he may come at any time.
+He is not come yet. It is his quiet habit to walk across the park
+from the village in fine weather, to drop into this room as if he had
+never been out of it since he was last seen there, to request a
+servant to inform Sir Leicester that he is arrived in case he should
+be wanted, and to appear ten minutes before dinner in the shadow of
+the library-door. He sleeps in his turret with a complaining
+flag-staff over his head, and has some leads outside on which, any
+fine morning when he is down here, his black figure may be seen
+walking before breakfast like a larger species of rook.
+
+Every day before dinner, my Lady looks for him in the dusk of the
+library, but he is not there. Every day at dinner, my Lady glances
+down the table for the vacant place that would be waiting to receive
+him if he had just arrived, but there is no vacant place. Every night
+my Lady casually asks her maid, "Is Mr. Tulkinghorn come?"
+
+Every night the answer is, "No, my Lady, not yet."
+
+One night, while having her hair undressed, my Lady loses herself in
+deep thought after this reply until she sees her own brooding face in
+the opposite glass, and a pair of black eyes curiously observing her.
+
+"Be so good as to attend," says my Lady then, addressing the
+reflection of Hortense, "to your business. You can contemplate your
+beauty at another time."
+
+"Pardon! It was your Ladyship's beauty."
+
+"That," says my Lady, "you needn't contemplate at all."
+
+At length, one afternoon a little before sunset, when the bright
+groups of figures which have for the last hour or two enlivened the
+Ghost's Walk are all dispersed and only Sir Leicester and my Lady
+remain upon the terrace, Mr. Tulkinghorn appears. He comes towards
+them at his usual methodical pace, which is never quickened, never
+slackened. He wears his usual expressionless mask--if it be a
+mask--and carries family secrets in every limb of his body and every
+crease of his dress. Whether his whole soul is devoted to the great
+or whether he yields them nothing beyond the services he sells is his
+personal secret. He keeps it, as he keeps the secrets of his clients;
+he is his own client in that matter, and will never betray himself.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Tulkinghorn?" says Sir Leicester, giving him his
+hand.
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn is quite well. Sir Leicester is quite well. My Lady
+is quite well. All highly satisfactory. The lawyer, with his hands
+behind him, walks at Sir Leicester's side along the terrace. My Lady
+walks upon the other side.
+
+"We expected you before," says Sir Leicester. A gracious observation.
+As much as to say, "Mr. Tulkinghorn, we remember your existence when
+you are not here to remind us of it by your presence. We bestow a
+fragment of our minds upon you, sir, you see!"
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn, comprehending it, inclines his head and says he is
+much obliged.
+
+"I should have come down sooner," he explains, "but that I have been
+much engaged with those matters in the several suits between yourself
+and Boythorn."
+
+"A man of a very ill-regulated mind," observes Sir Leicester with
+severity. "An extremely dangerous person in any community. A man of a
+very low character of mind."
+
+"He is obstinate," says Mr. Tulkinghorn.
+
+"It is natural to such a man to be so," says Sir Leicester, looking
+most profoundly obstinate himself. "I am not at all surprised to hear
+it."
+
+"The only question is," pursues the lawyer, "whether you will give up
+anything."
+
+"No, sir," replies Sir Leicester. "Nothing. I give up?"
+
+"I don't mean anything of importance. That, of course, I know you
+would not abandon. I mean any minor point."
+
+"Mr. Tulkinghorn," returns Sir Leicester, "there can be no minor
+point between myself and Mr. Boythorn. If I go farther, and observe
+that I cannot readily conceive how ANY right of mine can be a minor
+point, I speak not so much in reference to myself as an individual as
+in reference to the family position I have it in charge to maintain."
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn inclines his head again. "I have now my
+instructions," he says. "Mr. Boythorn will give us a good deal of
+trouble--"
+
+"It is the character of such a mind, Mr. Tulkinghorn," Sir Leicester
+interrupts him, "TO give trouble. An exceedingly ill-conditioned,
+levelling person. A person who, fifty years ago, would probably have
+been tried at the Old Bailey for some demagogue proceeding, and
+severely punished--if not," adds Sir Leicester after a moment's
+pause, "if not hanged, drawn, and quartered."
+
+Sir Leicester appears to discharge his stately breast of a burden in
+passing this capital sentence, as if it were the next satisfactory
+thing to having the sentence executed.
+
+"But night is coming on," says he, "and my Lady will take cold. My
+dear, let us go in."
+
+As they turn towards the hall-door, Lady Dedlock addresses Mr.
+Tulkinghorn for the first time.
+
+"You sent me a message respecting the person whose writing I happened
+to inquire about. It was like you to remember the circumstance; I had
+quite forgotten it. Your message reminded me of it again. I can't
+imagine what association I had with a hand like that, but I surely
+had some."
+
+"You had some?" Mr. Tulkinghorn repeats.
+
+"Oh, yes!" returns my Lady carelessly. "I think I must have had some.
+And did you really take the trouble to find out the writer of that
+actual thing--what is it!--affidavit?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How very odd!"
+
+They pass into a sombre breakfast-room on the ground floor, lighted
+in the day by two deep windows. It is now twilight. The fire glows
+brightly on the panelled wall and palely on the window-glass, where,
+through the cold reflection of the blaze, the colder landscape
+shudders in the wind and a grey mist creeps along, the only traveller
+besides the waste of clouds.
+
+My Lady lounges in a great chair in the chimney-corner, and Sir
+Leicester takes another great chair opposite. The lawyer stands
+before the fire with his hand out at arm's length, shading his face.
+He looks across his arm at my Lady.
+
+"Yes," he says, "I inquired about the man, and found him. And, what
+is very strange, I found him--"
+
+"Not to be any out-of-the-way person, I am afraid!" Lady Dedlock
+languidly anticipates.
+
+"I found him dead."
+
+"Oh, dear me!" remonstrated Sir Leicester. Not so much shocked by the
+fact as by the fact of the fact being mentioned.
+
+"I was directed to his lodging--a miserable, poverty-stricken
+place--and I found him dead."
+
+"You will excuse me, Mr. Tulkinghorn," observes Sir Leicester. "I
+think the less said--"
+
+"Pray, Sir Leicester, let me hear the story out" (it is my Lady
+speaking). "It is quite a story for twilight. How very shocking!
+Dead?"
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn re-asserts it by another inclination of his head.
+"Whether by his own hand--"
+
+"Upon my honour!" cries Sir Leicester. "Really!"
+
+"Do let me hear the story!" says my Lady.
+
+"Whatever you desire, my dear. But, I must say--"
+
+"No, you mustn't say! Go on, Mr. Tulkinghorn."
+
+Sir Leicester's gallantry concedes the point, though he still feels
+that to bring this sort of squalor among the upper classes is
+really--really--
+
+"I was about to say," resumes the lawyer with undisturbed calmness,
+"that whether he had died by his own hand or not, it was beyond my
+power to tell you. I should amend that phrase, however, by saying
+that he had unquestionably died of his own act, though whether by his
+own deliberate intention or by mischance can never certainly be
+known. The coroner's jury found that he took the poison
+accidentally."
+
+"And what kind of man," my Lady asks, "was this deplorable creature?"
+
+"Very difficult to say," returns the lawyer, shaking his head. "He
+had lived so wretchedly and was so neglected, with his gipsy colour
+and his wild black hair and beard, that I should have considered him
+the commonest of the common. The surgeon had a notion that he had
+once been something better, both in appearance and condition."
+
+"What did they call the wretched being?"
+
+"They called him what he had called himself, but no one knew his
+name."
+
+"Not even any one who had attended on him?"
+
+"No one had attended on him. He was found dead. In fact, I found
+him."
+
+"Without any clue to anything more?"
+
+"Without any; there was," says the lawyer meditatively, "an old
+portmanteau, but--No, there were no papers."
+
+During the utterance of every word of this short dialogue, Lady
+Dedlock and Mr. Tulkinghorn, without any other alteration in their
+customary deportment, have looked very steadily at one another--as
+was natural, perhaps, in the discussion of so unusual a subject. Sir
+Leicester has looked at the fire, with the general expression of the
+Dedlock on the staircase. The story being told, he renews his stately
+protest, saying that as it is quite clear that no association in my
+Lady's mind can possibly be traceable to this poor wretch (unless he
+was a begging-letter writer), he trusts to hear no more about a
+subject so far removed from my Lady's station.
+
+"Certainly, a collection of horrors," says my Lady, gathering up her
+mantles and furs, "but they interest one for the moment! Have the
+kindness, Mr. Tulkinghorn, to open the door for me."
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn does so with deference and holds it open while she
+passes out. She passes close to him, with her usual fatigued manner
+and insolent grace. They meet again at dinner--again, next
+day--again, for many days in succession. Lady Dedlock is always the
+same exhausted deity, surrounded by worshippers, and terribly liable
+to be bored to death, even while presiding at her own shrine. Mr.
+Tulkinghorn is always the same speechless repository of noble
+confidences, so oddly out of place and yet so perfectly at home. They
+appear to take as little note of one another as any two people
+enclosed within the same walls could. But whether each evermore
+watches and suspects the other, evermore mistrustful of some great
+reservation; whether each is evermore prepared at all points for the
+other, and never to be taken unawares; what each would give to know
+how much the other knows--all this is hidden, for the time, in their
+own hearts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+Esther's Narrative
+
+
+We held many consultations about what Richard was to be, first
+without Mr. Jarndyce, as he had requested, and afterwards with him,
+but it was a long time before we seemed to make progress. Richard
+said he was ready for anything. When Mr. Jarndyce doubted whether he
+might not already be too old to enter the Navy, Richard said he had
+thought of that, and perhaps he was. When Mr. Jarndyce asked him what
+he thought of the Army, Richard said he had thought of that, too, and
+it wasn't a bad idea. When Mr. Jarndyce advised him to try and decide
+within himself whether his old preference for the sea was an ordinary
+boyish inclination or a strong impulse, Richard answered, Well he
+really HAD tried very often, and he couldn't make out.
+
+"How much of this indecision of character," Mr. Jarndyce said to me,
+"is chargeable on that incomprehensible heap of uncertainty and
+procrastination on which he has been thrown from his birth, I don't
+pretend to say; but that Chancery, among its other sins, is
+responsible for some of it, I can plainly see. It has engendered or
+confirmed in him a habit of putting off--and trusting to this, that,
+and the other chance, without knowing what chance--and dismissing
+everything as unsettled, uncertain, and confused. The character of
+much older and steadier people may be even changed by the
+circumstances surrounding them. It would be too much to expect that a
+boy's, in its formation, should be the subject of such influences and
+escape them."
+
+I felt this to be true; though if I may venture to mention what I
+thought besides, I thought it much to be regretted that Richard's
+education had not counteracted those influences or directed his
+character. He had been eight years at a public school and had learnt,
+I understood, to make Latin verses of several sorts in the most
+admirable manner. But I never heard that it had been anybody's
+business to find out what his natural bent was, or where his failings
+lay, or to adapt any kind of knowledge to HIM. HE had been adapted to
+the verses and had learnt the art of making them to such perfection
+that if he had remained at school until he was of age, I suppose he
+could only have gone on making them over and over again unless he had
+enlarged his education by forgetting how to do it. Still, although I
+had no doubt that they were very beautiful, and very improving, and
+very sufficient for a great many purposes of life, and always
+remembered all through life, I did doubt whether Richard would not
+have profited by some one studying him a little, instead of his
+studying them quite so much.
+
+To be sure, I knew nothing of the subject and do not even now know
+whether the young gentlemen of classic Rome or Greece made verses to
+the same extent--or whether the young gentlemen of any country ever
+did.
+
+"I haven't the least idea," said Richard, musing, "what I had better
+be. Except that I am quite sure I don't want to go into the Church,
+it's a toss-up."
+
+"You have no inclination in Mr. Kenge's way?" suggested Mr. Jarndyce.
+
+"I don't know that, sir!" replied Richard. "I am fond of boating.
+Articled clerks go a good deal on the water. It's a capital
+profession!"
+
+"Surgeon--" suggested Mr. Jarndyce.
+
+"That's the thing, sir!" cried Richard.
+
+I doubt if he had ever once thought of it before.
+
+"That's the thing, sir," repeated Richard with the greatest
+enthusiasm. "We have got it at last. M.R.C.S.!"
+
+He was not to be laughed out of it, though he laughed at it heartily.
+He said he had chosen his profession, and the more he thought of it,
+the more he felt that his destiny was clear; the art of healing was
+the art of all others for him. Mistrusting that he only came to this
+conclusion because, having never had much chance of finding out for
+himself what he was fitted for and having never been guided to the
+discovery, he was taken by the newest idea and was glad to get rid of
+the trouble of consideration, I wondered whether the Latin verses
+often ended in this or whether Richard's was a solitary case.
+
+Mr. Jarndyce took great pains to talk with him seriously and to put
+it to his good sense not to deceive himself in so important a matter.
+Richard was a little grave after these interviews, but invariably
+told Ada and me that it was all right, and then began to talk about
+something else.
+
+"By heaven!" cried Mr. Boythorn, who interested himself strongly in
+the subject--though I need not say that, for he could do nothing
+weakly; "I rejoice to find a young gentleman of spirit and gallantry
+devoting himself to that noble profession! The more spirit there is
+in it, the better for mankind and the worse for those mercenary
+task-masters and low tricksters who delight in putting that
+illustrious art at a disadvantage in the world. By all that is base
+and despicable," cried Mr. Boythorn, "the treatment of surgeons
+aboard ship is such that I would submit the legs--both legs--of every
+member of the Admiralty Board to a compound fracture and render it a
+transportable offence in any qualified practitioner to set them if
+the system were not wholly changed in eight and forty hours!"
+
+"Wouldn't you give them a week?" asked Mr. Jarndyce.
+
+"No!" cried Mr. Boythorn firmly. "Not on any consideration! Eight and
+forty hours! As to corporations, parishes, vestry-boards, and similar
+gatherings of jolter-headed clods who assemble to exchange such
+speeches that, by heaven, they ought to be worked in quicksilver
+mines for the short remainder of their miserable existence, if it
+were only to prevent their detestable English from contaminating a
+language spoken in the presence of the sun--as to those fellows, who
+meanly take advantage of the ardour of gentlemen in the pursuit of
+knowledge to recompense the inestimable services of the best years of
+their lives, their long study, and their expensive education with
+pittances too small for the acceptance of clerks, I would have the
+necks of every one of them wrung and their skulls arranged in
+Surgeons' Hall for the contemplation of the whole profession in order
+that its younger members might understand from actual measurement, in
+early life, HOW thick skulls may become!"
+
+He wound up this vehement declaration by looking round upon us with a
+most agreeable smile and suddenly thundering, "Ha, ha, ha!" over and
+over again, until anybody else might have been expected to be quite
+subdued by the exertion.
+
+As Richard still continued to say that he was fixed in his choice
+after repeated periods for consideration had been recommended by Mr.
+Jarndyce and had expired, and he still continued to assure Ada and me
+in the same final manner that it was "all right," it became advisable
+to take Mr. Kenge into council. Mr. Kenge, therefore, came down to
+dinner one day, and leaned back in his chair, and turned his
+eye-glasses over and over, and spoke in a sonorous voice, and did
+exactly what I remembered to have seen him do when I was a little
+girl.
+
+"Ah!" said Mr. Kenge. "Yes. Well! A very good profession, Mr.
+Jarndyce, a very good profession."
+
+"The course of study and preparation requires to be diligently
+pursued," observed my guardian with a glance at Richard.
+
+"Oh, no doubt," said Mr. Kenge. "Diligently."
+
+"But that being the case, more or less, with all pursuits that are
+worth much," said Mr. Jarndyce, "it is not a special consideration
+which another choice would be likely to escape."
+
+"Truly," said Mr. Kenge. "And Mr. Richard Carstone, who has so
+meritoriously acquitted himself in the--shall I say the classic
+shades?--in which his youth had been passed, will, no doubt, apply
+the habits, if not the principles and practice, of versification in
+that tongue in which a poet was said (unless I mistake) to be born,
+not made, to the more eminently practical field of action on which he
+enters."
+
+"You may rely upon it," said Richard in his off-hand manner, "that I
+shall go at it and do my best."
+
+"Very well, Mr. Jarndyce!" said Mr. Kenge, gently nodding his head.
+"Really, when we are assured by Mr. Richard that he means to go at it
+and to do his best," nodding feelingly and smoothly over those
+expressions, "I would submit to you that we have only to inquire into
+the best mode of carrying out the object of his ambition. Now, with
+reference to placing Mr. Richard with some sufficiently eminent
+practitioner. Is there any one in view at present?"
+
+"No one, Rick, I think?" said my guardian.
+
+"No one, sir," said Richard.
+
+"Quite so!" observed Mr. Kenge. "As to situation, now. Is there any
+particular feeling on that head?"
+
+"N--no," said Richard.
+
+"Quite so!" observed Mr. Kenge again.
+
+"I should like a little variety," said Richard; "I mean a good range
+of experience."
+
+"Very requisite, no doubt," returned Mr. Kenge. "I think this may be
+easily arranged, Mr. Jarndyce? We have only, in the first place, to
+discover a sufficiently eligible practitioner; and as soon as we make
+our want--and shall I add, our ability to pay a premium?--known, our
+only difficulty will be in the selection of one from a large number.
+We have only, in the second place, to observe those little
+formalities which are rendered necessary by our time of life and our
+being under the guardianship of the court. We shall soon be--shall I
+say, in Mr. Richard's own light-hearted manner, 'going at it'--to our
+heart's content. It is a coincidence," said Mr. Kenge with a tinge of
+melancholy in his smile, "one of those coincidences which may or may
+not require an explanation beyond our present limited faculties, that
+I have a cousin in the medical profession. He might be deemed
+eligible by you and might be disposed to respond to this proposal. I
+can answer for him as little as for you, but he MIGHT!"
+
+As this was an opening in the prospect, it was arranged that Mr.
+Kenge should see his cousin. And as Mr. Jarndyce had before proposed
+to take us to London for a few weeks, it was settled next day that we
+should make our visit at once and combine Richard's business with it.
+
+Mr. Boythorn leaving us within a week, we took up our abode at a
+cheerful lodging near Oxford Street over an upholsterer's shop.
+London was a great wonder to us, and we were out for hours and hours
+at a time, seeing the sights, which appeared to be less capable of
+exhaustion than we were. We made the round of the principal theatres,
+too, with great delight, and saw all the plays that were worth
+seeing. I mention this because it was at the theatre that I began to
+be made uncomfortable again by Mr. Guppy.
+
+I was sitting in front of the box one night with Ada, and Richard was
+in the place he liked best, behind Ada's chair, when, happening to
+look down into the pit, I saw Mr. Guppy, with his hair flattened down
+upon his head and woe depicted in his face, looking up at me. I felt
+all through the performance that he never looked at the actors but
+constantly looked at me, and always with a carefully prepared
+expression of the deepest misery and the profoundest dejection.
+
+It quite spoiled my pleasure for that night because it was so very
+embarrassing and so very ridiculous. But from that time forth, we
+never went to the play without my seeing Mr. Guppy in the pit, always
+with his hair straight and flat, his shirt-collar turned down, and a
+general feebleness about him. If he were not there when we went in,
+and I began to hope he would not come and yielded myself for a little
+while to the interest of the scene, I was certain to encounter his
+languishing eyes when I least expected it and, from that time, to be
+quite sure that they were fixed upon me all the evening.
+
+I really cannot express how uneasy this made me. If he would only
+have brushed up his hair or turned up his collar, it would have been
+bad enough; but to know that that absurd figure was always gazing at
+me, and always in that demonstrative state of despondency, put such a
+constraint upon me that I did not like to laugh at the play, or to
+cry at it, or to move, or to speak. I seemed able to do nothing
+naturally. As to escaping Mr. Guppy by going to the back of the box,
+I could not bear to do that because I knew Richard and Ada relied on
+having me next them and that they could never have talked together so
+happily if anybody else had been in my place. So there I sat, not
+knowing where to look--for wherever I looked, I knew Mr. Guppy's eyes
+were following me--and thinking of the dreadful expense to which this
+young man was putting himself on my account.
+
+Sometimes I thought of telling Mr. Jarndyce. Then I feared that the
+young man would lose his situation and that I might ruin him.
+Sometimes I thought of confiding in Richard, but was deterred by the
+possibility of his fighting Mr. Guppy and giving him black eyes.
+Sometimes I thought, should I frown at him or shake my head. Then I
+felt I could not do it. Sometimes I considered whether I should write
+to his mother, but that ended in my being convinced that to open a
+correspondence would be to make the matter worse. I always came to
+the conclusion, finally, that I could do nothing. Mr. Guppy's
+perseverance, all this time, not only produced him regularly at any
+theatre to which we went, but caused him to appear in the crowd as we
+were coming out, and even to get up behind our fly--where I am sure I
+saw him, two or three times, struggling among the most dreadful
+spikes. After we got home, he haunted a post opposite our house. The
+upholsterer's where we lodged being at the corner of two streets, and
+my bedroom window being opposite the post, I was afraid to go near
+the window when I went upstairs, lest I should see him (as I did one
+moonlight night) leaning against the post and evidently catching
+cold. If Mr. Guppy had not been, fortunately for me, engaged in the
+daytime, I really should have had no rest from him.
+
+While we were making this round of gaieties, in which Mr. Guppy so
+extraordinarily participated, the business which had helped to bring
+us to town was not neglected. Mr. Kenge's cousin was a Mr. Bayham
+Badger, who had a good practice at Chelsea and attended a large
+public institution besides. He was quite willing to receive Richard
+into his house and to superintend his studies, and as it seemed that
+those could be pursued advantageously under Mr. Badger's roof, and
+Mr. Badger liked Richard, and as Richard said he liked Mr. Badger
+"well enough," an agreement was made, the Lord Chancellor's consent
+was obtained, and it was all settled.
+
+On the day when matters were concluded between Richard and Mr.
+Badger, we were all under engagement to dine at Mr. Badger's house.
+We were to be "merely a family party," Mrs. Badger's note said; and
+we found no lady there but Mrs. Badger herself. She was surrounded in
+the drawing-room by various objects, indicative of her painting a
+little, playing the piano a little, playing the guitar a little,
+playing the harp a little, singing a little, working a little,
+reading a little, writing poetry a little, and botanizing a little.
+She was a lady of about fifty, I should think, youthfully dressed,
+and of a very fine complexion. If I add to the little list of her
+accomplishments that she rouged a little, I do not mean that there
+was any harm in it.
+
+Mr. Bayham Badger himself was a pink, fresh-faced, crisp-looking
+gentleman with a weak voice, white teeth, light hair, and surprised
+eyes, some years younger, I should say, than Mrs. Bayham Badger. He
+admired her exceedingly, but principally, and to begin with, on the
+curious ground (as it seemed to us) of her having had three husbands.
+We had barely taken our seats when he said to Mr. Jarndyce quite
+triumphantly, "You would hardly suppose that I am Mrs. Bayham
+Badger's third!"
+
+"Indeed?" said Mr. Jarndyce.
+
+"Her third!" said Mr. Badger. "Mrs. Bayham Badger has not the
+appearance, Miss Summerson, of a lady who has had two former
+husbands?"
+
+I said "Not at all!"
+
+"And most remarkable men!" said Mr. Badger in a tone of confidence.
+"Captain Swosser of the Royal Navy, who was Mrs. Badger's first
+husband, was a very distinguished officer indeed. The name of
+Professor Dingo, my immediate predecessor, is one of European
+reputation."
+
+Mrs. Badger overheard him and smiled.
+
+"Yes, my dear!" Mr. Badger replied to the smile, "I was observing to
+Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Summerson that you had had two former
+husbands--both very distinguished men. And they found it, as people
+generally do, difficult to believe."
+
+"I was barely twenty," said Mrs. Badger, "when I married Captain
+Swosser of the Royal Navy. I was in the Mediterranean with him; I am
+quite a sailor. On the twelfth anniversary of my wedding-day, I
+became the wife of Professor Dingo."
+
+"Of European reputation," added Mr. Badger in an undertone.
+
+"And when Mr. Badger and myself were married," pursued Mrs. Badger,
+"we were married on the same day of the year. I had become attached
+to the day."
+
+"So that Mrs. Badger has been married to three husbands--two of them
+highly distinguished men," said Mr. Badger, summing up the facts,
+"and each time upon the twenty-first of March at eleven in the
+forenoon!"
+
+We all expressed our admiration.
+
+"But for Mr. Badger's modesty," said Mr. Jarndyce, "I would take
+leave to correct him and say three distinguished men."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Jarndyce! What I always tell him!" observed Mrs.
+Badger.
+
+"And, my dear," said Mr. Badger, "what do I always tell you? That
+without any affectation of disparaging such professional distinction
+as I may have attained (which our friend Mr. Carstone will have many
+opportunities of estimating), I am not so weak--no, really," said Mr.
+Badger to us generally, "so unreasonable--as to put my reputation on
+the same footing with such first-rate men as Captain Swosser and
+Professor Dingo. Perhaps you may be interested, Mr. Jarndyce,"
+continued Mr. Bayham Badger, leading the way into the next
+drawing-room, "in this portrait of Captain Swosser. It was taken on
+his return home from the African station, where he had suffered from
+the fever of the country. Mrs. Badger considers it too yellow. But
+it's a very fine head. A very fine head!"
+
+We all echoed, "A very fine head!"
+
+"I feel when I look at it," said Mr. Badger, "'That's a man I should
+like to have seen!' It strikingly bespeaks the first-class man that
+Captain Swosser pre-eminently was. On the other side, Professor
+Dingo. I knew him well--attended him in his last illness--a speaking
+likeness! Over the piano, Mrs. Bayham Badger when Mrs. Swosser. Over
+the sofa, Mrs. Bayham Badger when Mrs. Dingo. Of Mrs. Bayham Badger
+IN ESSE, I possess the original and have no copy."
+
+Dinner was now announced, and we went downstairs. It was a very
+genteel entertainment, very handsomely served. But the captain and
+the professor still ran in Mr. Badger's head, and as Ada and I had
+the honour of being under his particular care, we had the full
+benefit of them.
+
+"Water, Miss Summerson? Allow me! Not in that tumbler, pray. Bring me
+the professor's goblet, James!"
+
+Ada very much admired some artificial flowers under a glass.
+
+"Astonishing how they keep!" said Mr. Badger. "They were presented to
+Mrs. Bayham Badger when she was in the Mediterranean."
+
+He invited Mr. Jarndyce to take a glass of claret.
+
+"Not that claret!" he said. "Excuse me! This is an occasion, and ON
+an occasion I produce some very special claret I happen to have.
+(James, Captain Swosser's wine!) Mr. Jarndyce, this is a wine that
+was imported by the captain, we will not say how many years ago. You
+will find it very curious. My dear, I shall be happy to take some of
+this wine with you. (Captain Swosser's claret to your mistress,
+James!) My love, your health!"
+
+After dinner, when we ladies retired, we took Mrs. Badger's first and
+second husband with us. Mrs. Badger gave us in the drawing-room a
+biographical sketch of the life and services of Captain Swosser
+before his marriage and a more minute account of him dating from the
+time when he fell in love with her at a ball on board the Crippler,
+given to the officers of that ship when she lay in Plymouth Harbour.
+
+"The dear old Crippler!" said Mrs. Badger, shaking her head. "She was
+a noble vessel. Trim, ship-shape, all a taunto, as Captain Swosser
+used to say. You must excuse me if I occasionally introduce a
+nautical expression; I was quite a sailor once. Captain Swosser loved
+that craft for my sake. When she was no longer in commission, he
+frequently said that if he were rich enough to buy her old hulk, he
+would have an inscription let into the timbers of the quarter-deck
+where we stood as partners in the dance to mark the spot where he
+fell--raked fore and aft (Captain Swosser used to say) by the fire
+from my tops. It was his naval way of mentioning my eyes."
+
+Mrs. Badger shook her head, sighed, and looked in the glass.
+
+"It was a great change from Captain Swosser to Professor Dingo," she
+resumed with a plaintive smile. "I felt it a good deal at first. Such
+an entire revolution in my mode of life! But custom, combined with
+science--particularly science--inured me to it. Being the professor's
+sole companion in his botanical excursions, I almost forgot that I
+had ever been afloat, and became quite learned. It is singular that
+the professor was the antipodes of Captain Swosser and that Mr.
+Badger is not in the least like either!"
+
+We then passed into a narrative of the deaths of Captain Swosser and
+Professor Dingo, both of whom seem to have had very bad complaints.
+In the course of it, Mrs. Badger signified to us that she had never
+madly loved but once and that the object of that wild affection,
+never to be recalled in its fresh enthusiasm, was Captain Swosser.
+The professor was yet dying by inches in the most dismal manner, and
+Mrs. Badger was giving us imitations of his way of saying, with great
+difficulty, "Where is Laura? Let Laura give me my toast and water!"
+when the entrance of the gentlemen consigned him to the tomb.
+
+Now, I observed that evening, as I had observed for some days past,
+that Ada and Richard were more than ever attached to each other's
+society, which was but natural, seeing that they were going to be
+separated so soon. I was therefore not very much surprised when we
+got home, and Ada and I retired upstairs, to find Ada more silent
+than usual, though I was not quite prepared for her coming into my
+arms and beginning to speak to me, with her face hidden.
+
+"My darling Esther!" murmured Ada. "I have a great secret to tell
+you!"
+
+A mighty secret, my pretty one, no doubt!
+
+"What is it, Ada?"
+
+"Oh, Esther, you would never guess!"
+
+"Shall I try to guess?" said I.
+
+"Oh, no! Don't! Pray don't!" cried Ada, very much startled by the
+idea of my doing so.
+
+"Now, I wonder who it can be about?" said I, pretending to consider.
+
+"It's about--" said Ada in a whisper. "It's about--my cousin
+Richard!"
+
+"Well, my own!" said I, kissing her bright hair, which was all I
+could see. "And what about him?"
+
+"Oh, Esther, you would never guess!"
+
+It was so pretty to have her clinging to me in that way, hiding her
+face, and to know that she was not crying in sorrow but in a little
+glow of joy, and pride, and hope, that I would not help her just yet.
+
+"He says--I know it's very foolish, we are both so young--but he
+says," with a burst of tears, "that he loves me dearly, Esther."
+
+"Does he indeed?" said I. "I never heard of such a thing! Why, my pet
+of pets, I could have told you that weeks and weeks ago!"
+
+To see Ada lift up her flushed face in joyful surprise, and hold me
+round the neck, and laugh, and cry, and blush, was so pleasant!
+
+"Why, my darling," said I, "what a goose you must take me for! Your
+cousin Richard has been loving you as plainly as he could for I don't
+know how long!"
+
+"And yet you never said a word about it!" cried Ada, kissing me.
+
+"No, my love," said I. "I waited to be told."
+
+"But now I have told you, you don't think it wrong of me, do you?"
+returned Ada. She might have coaxed me to say no if I had been the
+hardest-hearted duenna in the world. Not being that yet, I said no
+very freely.
+
+"And now," said I, "I know the worst of it."
+
+"Oh, that's not quite the worst of it, Esther dear!" cried Ada,
+holding me tighter and laying down her face again upon my breast.
+
+"No?" said I. "Not even that?"
+
+"No, not even that!" said Ada, shaking her head.
+
+"Why, you never mean to say--" I was beginning in joke.
+
+But Ada, looking up and smiling through her tears, cried, "Yes, I do!
+You know, you know I do!" And then sobbed out, "With all my heart I
+do! With all my whole heart, Esther!"
+
+I told her, laughing, why I had known that, too, just as well as I
+had known the other! And we sat before the fire, and I had all the
+talking to myself for a little while (though there was not much of
+it); and Ada was soon quiet and happy.
+
+"Do you think my cousin John knows, dear Dame Durden?" she asked.
+
+"Unless my cousin John is blind, my pet," said I, "I should think my
+cousin John knows pretty well as much as we know."
+
+"We want to speak to him before Richard goes," said Ada timidly, "and
+we wanted you to advise us, and to tell him so. Perhaps you wouldn't
+mind Richard's coming in, Dame Durden?"
+
+"Oh! Richard is outside, is he, my dear?" said I.
+
+"I am not quite certain," returned Ada with a bashful simplicity that
+would have won my heart if she had not won it long before, "but I
+think he's waiting at the door."
+
+There he was, of course. They brought a chair on either side of me,
+and put me between them, and really seemed to have fallen in love
+with me instead of one another, they were so confiding, and so
+trustful, and so fond of me. They went on in their own wild way for a
+little while--I never stopped them; I enjoyed it too much myself--and
+then we gradually fell to considering how young they were, and how
+there must be a lapse of several years before this early love could
+come to anything, and how it could come to happiness only if it were
+real and lasting and inspired them with a steady resolution to do
+their duty to each other, with constancy, fortitude, and
+perseverance, each always for the other's sake. Well! Richard said
+that he would work his fingers to the bone for Ada, and Ada said that
+she would work her fingers to the bone for Richard, and they called
+me all sorts of endearing and sensible names, and we sat there,
+advising and talking, half the night. Finally, before we parted, I
+gave them my promise to speak to their cousin John to-morrow.
+
+So, when to-morrow came, I went to my guardian after breakfast, in
+the room that was our town-substitute for the growlery, and told him
+that I had it in trust to tell him something.
+
+"Well, little woman," said he, shutting up his book, "if you have
+accepted the trust, there can be no harm in it."
+
+"I hope not, guardian," said I. "I can guarantee that there is no
+secrecy in it. For it only happened yesterday."
+
+"Aye? And what is it, Esther?"
+
+"Guardian," said I, "you remember the happy night when first we came
+down to Bleak House? When Ada was singing in the dark room?"
+
+I wished to call to his remembrance the look he had given me then.
+Unless I am much mistaken, I saw that I did so.
+
+"Because--" said I with a little hesitation.
+
+"Yes, my dear!" said he. "Don't hurry."
+
+"Because," said I, "Ada and Richard have fallen in love. And have
+told each other so."
+
+"Already!" cried my guardian, quite astonished.
+
+"Yes!" said I. "And to tell you the truth, guardian, I rather
+expected it."
+
+"The deuce you did!" said he.
+
+He sat considering for a minute or two, with his smile, at once so
+handsome and so kind, upon his changing face, and then requested me
+to let them know that he wished to see them. When they came, he
+encircled Ada with one arm in his fatherly way and addressed himself
+to Richard with a cheerful gravity.
+
+"Rick," said Mr. Jarndyce, "I am glad to have won your confidence. I
+hope to preserve it. When I contemplated these relations between us
+four which have so brightened my life and so invested it with new
+interests and pleasures, I certainly did contemplate, afar off, the
+possibility of you and your pretty cousin here (don't be shy, Ada,
+don't be shy, my dear!) being in a mind to go through life together.
+I saw, and do see, many reasons to make it desirable. But that was
+afar off, Rick, afar off!"
+
+"We look afar off, sir," returned Richard.
+
+"Well!" said Mr. Jarndyce. "That's rational. Now, hear me, my dears!
+I might tell you that you don't know your own minds yet, that a
+thousand things may happen to divert you from one another, that it is
+well this chain of flowers you have taken up is very easily broken,
+or it might become a chain of lead. But I will not do that. Such
+wisdom will come soon enough, I dare say, if it is to come at all. I
+will assume that a few years hence you will be in your hearts to one
+another what you are to-day. All I say before speaking to you
+according to that assumption is, if you DO change--if you DO come to
+find that you are more commonplace cousins to each other as man and
+woman than you were as boy and girl (your manhood will excuse me,
+Rick!)--don't be ashamed still to confide in me, for there will be
+nothing monstrous or uncommon in it. I am only your friend and
+distant kinsman. I have no power over you whatever. But I wish and
+hope to retain your confidence if I do nothing to forfeit it."
+
+"I am very sure, sir," returned Richard, "that I speak for Ada too
+when I say that you have the strongest power over us both--rooted in
+respect, gratitude, and affection--strengthening every day."
+
+"Dear cousin John," said Ada, on his shoulder, "my father's place can
+never be empty again. All the love and duty I could ever have
+rendered to him is transferred to you."
+
+"Come!" said Mr. Jarndyce. "Now for our assumption. Now we lift our
+eyes up and look hopefully at the distance! Rick, the world is before
+you; and it is most probable that as you enter it, so it will receive
+you. Trust in nothing but in Providence and your own efforts. Never
+separate the two, like the heathen waggoner. Constancy in love is a
+good thing, but it means nothing, and is nothing, without constancy
+in every kind of effort. If you had the abilities of all the great
+men, past and present, you could do nothing well without sincerely
+meaning it and setting about it. If you entertain the supposition
+that any real success, in great things or in small, ever was or could
+be, ever will or can be, wrested from Fortune by fits and starts,
+leave that wrong idea here or leave your cousin Ada here."
+
+"I will leave IT here, sir," replied Richard smiling, "if I brought
+it here just now (but I hope I did not), and will work my way on to
+my cousin Ada in the hopeful distance."
+
+"Right!" said Mr. Jarndyce. "If you are not to make her happy, why
+should you pursue her?"
+
+"I wouldn't make her unhappy--no, not even for her love," retorted
+Richard proudly.
+
+"Well said!" cried Mr. Jarndyce. "That's well said! She remains here,
+in her home with me. Love her, Rick, in your active life, no less
+than in her home when you revisit it, and all will go well.
+Otherwise, all will go ill. That's the end of my preaching. I think
+you and Ada had better take a walk."
+
+Ada tenderly embraced him, and Richard heartily shook hands with him,
+and then the cousins went out of the room, looking back again
+directly, though, to say that they would wait for me.
+
+The door stood open, and we both followed them with our eyes as they
+passed down the adjoining room, on which the sun was shining, and out
+at its farther end. Richard with his head bent, and her hand drawn
+through his arm, was talking to her very earnestly; and she looked up
+in his face, listening, and seemed to see nothing else. So young, so
+beautiful, so full of hope and promise, they went on lightly through
+the sunlight as their own happy thoughts might then be traversing the
+years to come and making them all years of brightness. So they passed
+away into the shadow and were gone. It was only a burst of light that
+had been so radiant. The room darkened as they went out, and the sun
+was clouded over.
+
+"Am I right, Esther?" said my guardian when they were gone.
+
+He was so good and wise to ask ME whether he was right!
+
+"Rick may gain, out of this, the quality he wants. Wants, at the core
+of so much that is good!" said Mr. Jarndyce, shaking his head. "I
+have said nothing to Ada, Esther. She has her friend and counsellor
+always near." And he laid his hand lovingly upon my head.
+
+I could not help showing that I was a little moved, though I did all
+I could to conceal it.
+
+"Tut tut!" said he. "But we must take care, too, that our little
+woman's life is not all consumed in care for others."
+
+"Care? My dear guardian, I believe I am the happiest creature in the
+world!"
+
+"I believe so, too," said he. "But some one may find out what Esther
+never will--that the little woman is to be held in remembrance above
+all other people!"
+
+I have omitted to mention in its place that there was some one else
+at the family dinner party. It was not a lady. It was a gentleman. It
+was a gentleman of a dark complexion--a young surgeon. He was rather
+reserved, but I thought him very sensible and agreeable. At least,
+Ada asked me if I did not, and I said yes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+Deportment
+
+
+Richard left us on the very next evening to begin his new career, and
+committed Ada to my charge with great love for her and great trust in
+me. It touched me then to reflect, and it touches me now, more
+nearly, to remember (having what I have to tell) how they both
+thought of me, even at that engrossing time. I was a part of all
+their plans, for the present and the future. I was to write Richard
+once a week, making my faithful report of Ada, who was to write to
+him every alternate day. I was to be informed, under his own hand, of
+all his labours and successes; I was to observe how resolute and
+persevering he would be; I was to be Ada's bridesmaid when they were
+married; I was to live with them afterwards; I was to keep all the
+keys of their house; I was to be made happy for ever and a day.
+
+"And if the suit SHOULD make us rich, Esther--which it may, you
+know!" said Richard to crown all.
+
+A shade crossed Ada's face.
+
+"My dearest Ada," asked Richard, "why not?"
+
+"It had better declare us poor at once," said Ada.
+
+"Oh! I don't know about that," returned Richard, "but at all events,
+it won't declare anything at once. It hasn't declared anything in
+heaven knows how many years."
+
+"Too true," said Ada.
+
+"Yes, but," urged Richard, answering what her look suggested rather
+than her words, "the longer it goes on, dear cousin, the nearer it
+must be to a settlement one way or other. Now, is not that
+reasonable?"
+
+"You know best, Richard. But I am afraid if we trust to it, it will
+make us unhappy."
+
+"But, my Ada, we are not going to trust to it!" cried Richard gaily.
+"We know it better than to trust to it. We only say that if it SHOULD
+make us rich, we have no constitutional objection to being rich. The
+court is, by solemn settlement of law, our grim old guardian, and we
+are to suppose that what it gives us (when it gives us anything) is
+our right. It is not necessary to quarrel with our right."
+
+"No," said Ada, "but it may be better to forget all about it."
+
+"Well, well," cried Richard, "then we will forget all about it! We
+consign the whole thing to oblivion. Dame Durden puts on her
+approving face, and it's done!"
+
+"Dame Durden's approving face," said I, looking out of the box in
+which I was packing his books, "was not very visible when you called
+it by that name; but it does approve, and she thinks you can't do
+better."
+
+So, Richard said there was an end of it, and immediately began, on no
+other foundation, to build as many castles in the air as would man
+the Great Wall of China. He went away in high spirits. Ada and I,
+prepared to miss him very much, commenced our quieter career.
+
+On our arrival in London, we had called with Mr. Jarndyce at Mrs.
+Jellyby's but had not been so fortunate as to find her at home. It
+appeared that she had gone somewhere to a tea-drinking and had taken
+Miss Jellyby with her. Besides the tea-drinking, there was to be some
+considerable speech-making and letter-writing on the general merits
+of the cultivation of coffee, conjointly with natives, at the
+Settlement of Borrioboola-Gha. All this involved, no doubt,
+sufficient active exercise of pen and ink to make her daughter's part
+in the proceedings anything but a holiday.
+
+It being now beyond the time appointed for Mrs. Jellyby's return, we
+called again. She was in town, but not at home, having gone to Mile
+End directly after breakfast on some Borrioboolan business, arising
+out of a society called the East London Branch Aid Ramification. As I
+had not seen Peepy on the occasion of our last call (when he was not
+to be found anywhere, and when the cook rather thought he must have
+strolled away with the dustman's cart), I now inquired for him again.
+The oyster shells he had been building a house with were still in the
+passage, but he was nowhere discoverable, and the cook supposed that
+he had "gone after the sheep." When we repeated, with some surprise,
+"The sheep?" she said, Oh, yes, on market days he sometimes followed
+them quite out of town and came back in such a state as never was!
+
+I was sitting at the window with my guardian on the following
+morning, and Ada was busy writing--of course to Richard--when Miss
+Jellyby was announced, and entered, leading the identical Peepy, whom
+she had made some endeavours to render presentable by wiping the dirt
+into corners of his face and hands and making his hair very wet and
+then violently frizzling it with her fingers. Everything the dear
+child wore was either too large for him or too small. Among his other
+contradictory decorations he had the hat of a bishop and the little
+gloves of a baby. His boots were, on a small scale, the boots of a
+ploughman, while his legs, so crossed and recrossed with scratches
+that they looked like maps, were bare below a very short pair of
+plaid drawers finished off with two frills of perfectly different
+patterns. The deficient buttons on his plaid frock had evidently been
+supplied from one of Mr. Jellyby's coats, they were so extremely
+brazen and so much too large. Most extraordinary specimens of
+needlework appeared on several parts of his dress, where it had been
+hastily mended, and I recognized the same hand on Miss Jellyby's. She
+was, however, unaccountably improved in her appearance and looked
+very pretty. She was conscious of poor little Peepy being but a
+failure after all her trouble, and she showed it as she came in by
+the way in which she glanced first at him and then at us.
+
+"Oh, dear me!" said my guardian. "Due east!"
+
+Ada and I gave her a cordial welcome and presented her to Mr.
+Jarndyce, to whom she said as she sat down, "Ma's compliments, and
+she hopes you'll excuse her, because she's correcting proofs of the
+plan. She's going to put out five thousand new circulars, and she
+knows you'll be interested to hear that. I have brought one of them
+with me. Ma's compliments." With which she presented it sulkily
+enough.
+
+"Thank you," said my guardian. "I am much obliged to Mrs. Jellyby.
+Oh, dear me! This is a very trying wind!"
+
+We were busy with Peepy, taking off his clerical hat, asking him if
+he remembered us, and so on. Peepy retired behind his elbow at first,
+but relented at the sight of sponge-cake and allowed me to take him
+on my lap, where he sat munching quietly. Mr. Jarndyce then
+withdrawing into the temporary growlery, Miss Jellyby opened a
+conversation with her usual abruptness.
+
+"We are going on just as bad as ever in Thavies Inn," said she. "I
+have no peace of my life. Talk of Africa! I couldn't be worse off if
+I was a what's-his-name--man and a brother!"
+
+I tried to say something soothing.
+
+"Oh, it's of no use, Miss Summerson," exclaimed Miss Jellyby, "though
+I thank you for the kind intention all the same. I know how I am
+used, and I am not to be talked over. YOU wouldn't be talked over if
+you were used so. Peepy, go and play at Wild Beasts under the piano!"
+
+"I shan't!" said Peepy.
+
+"Very well, you ungrateful, naughty, hard-hearted boy!" returned Miss
+Jellyby with tears in her eyes. "I'll never take pains to dress you
+any more."
+
+"Yes, I will go, Caddy!" cried Peepy, who was really a good child and
+who was so moved by his sister's vexation that he went at once.
+
+"It seems a little thing to cry about," said poor Miss Jellyby
+apologetically, "but I am quite worn out. I was directing the new
+circulars till two this morning. I detest the whole thing so that
+that alone makes my head ache till I can't see out of my eyes. And
+look at that poor unfortunate child! Was there ever such a fright as
+he is!"
+
+Peepy, happily unconscious of the defects in his appearance, sat on
+the carpet behind one of the legs of the piano, looking calmly out of
+his den at us while he ate his cake.
+
+"I have sent him to the other end of the room," observed Miss
+Jellyby, drawing her chair nearer ours, "because I don't want him to
+hear the conversation. Those little things are so sharp! I was going
+to say, we really are going on worse than ever. Pa will be a bankrupt
+before long, and then I hope Ma will be satisfied. There'll he nobody
+but Ma to thank for it."
+
+We said we hoped Mr. Jellyby's affairs were not in so bad a state as
+that.
+
+"It's of no use hoping, though it's very kind of you," returned Miss
+Jellyby, shaking her head. "Pa told me only yesterday morning (and
+dreadfully unhappy he is) that he couldn't weather the storm. I
+should be surprised if he could. When all our tradesmen send into our
+house any stuff they like, and the servants do what they like with
+it, and I have no time to improve things if I knew how, and Ma don't
+care about anything, I should like to make out how Pa is to weather
+the storm. I declare if I was Pa, I'd run away."
+
+"My dear!" said I, smiling. "Your papa, no doubt, considers his
+family."
+
+"Oh, yes, his family is all very fine, Miss Summerson," replied Miss
+Jellyby; "but what comfort is his family to him? His family is
+nothing but bills, dirt, waste, noise, tumbles downstairs, confusion,
+and wretchedness. His scrambling home, from week's end to week's end,
+is like one great washing-day--only nothing's washed!"
+
+Miss Jellyby tapped her foot upon the floor and wiped her eyes.
+
+"I am sure I pity Pa to that degree," she said, "and am so angry with
+Ma that I can't find words to express myself! However, I am not going
+to bear it, I am determined. I won't be a slave all my life, and I
+won't submit to be proposed to by Mr. Quale. A pretty thing, indeed,
+to marry a philanthropist. As if I hadn't had enough of THAT!" said
+poor Miss Jellyby.
+
+I must confess that I could not help feeling rather angry with Mrs.
+Jellyby myself, seeing and hearing this neglected girl and knowing
+how much of bitterly satirical truth there was in what she said.
+
+"If it wasn't that we had been intimate when you stopped at our
+house," pursued Miss Jellyby, "I should have been ashamed to come
+here to-day, for I know what a figure I must seem to you two. But as
+it is, I made up my mind to call, especially as I am not likely to
+see you again the next time you come to town."
+
+She said this with such great significance that Ada and I glanced at
+one another, foreseeing something more.
+
+"No!" said Miss Jellyby, shaking her head. "Not at all likely! I know
+I may trust you two. I am sure you won't betray me. I am engaged."
+
+"Without their knowledge at home?" said I.
+
+"Why, good gracious me, Miss Summerson," she returned, justifying
+herself in a fretful but not angry manner, "how can it be otherwise?
+You know what Ma is--and I needn't make poor Pa more miserable by
+telling HIM."
+
+"But would it not be adding to his unhappiness to marry without his
+knowledge or consent, my dear?" said I.
+
+"No," said Miss Jellyby, softening. "I hope not. I should try to make
+him happy and comfortable when he came to see me, and Peepy and the
+others should take it in turns to come and stay with me, and they
+should have some care taken of them then."
+
+There was a good deal of affection in poor Caddy. She softened more
+and more while saying this and cried so much over the unwonted little
+home-picture she had raised in her mind that Peepy, in his cave under
+the piano, was touched, and turned himself over on his back with loud
+lamentations. It was not until I had brought him to kiss his sister,
+and had restored him to his place on my lap, and had shown him that
+Caddy was laughing (she laughed expressly for the purpose), that we
+could recall his peace of mind; even then it was for some time
+conditional on his taking us in turns by the chin and smoothing our
+faces all over with his hand. At last, as his spirits were not equal
+to the piano, we put him on a chair to look out of window; and Miss
+Jellyby, holding him by one leg, resumed her confidence.
+
+"It began in your coming to our house," she said.
+
+We naturally asked how.
+
+"I felt I was so awkward," she replied, "that I made up my mind to be
+improved in that respect at all events and to learn to dance. I told
+Ma I was ashamed of myself, and I must be taught to dance. Ma looked
+at me in that provoking way of hers as if I wasn't in sight, but I
+was quite determined to be taught to dance, and so I went to Mr.
+Turveydrop's Academy in Newman Street."
+
+"And was it there, my dear--" I began.
+
+"Yes, it was there," said Caddy, "and I am engaged to Mr. Turveydrop.
+There are two Mr. Turveydrops, father and son. My Mr. Turveydrop is
+the son, of course. I only wish I had been better brought up and was
+likely to make him a better wife, for I am very fond of him."
+
+"I am sorry to hear this," said I, "I must confess."
+
+"I don't know why you should be sorry," she retorted a little
+anxiously, "but I am engaged to Mr. Turveydrop, whether or no, and he
+is very fond of me. It's a secret as yet, even on his side, because
+old Mr. Turveydrop has a share in the connexion and it might break
+his heart or give him some other shock if he was told of it abruptly.
+Old Mr. Turveydrop is a very gentlemanly man indeed--very
+gentlemanly."
+
+"Does his wife know of it?" asked Ada.
+
+"Old Mr. Turveydrop's wife, Miss Clare?" returned Miss Jellyby,
+opening her eyes. "There's no such person. He is a widower."
+
+We were here interrupted by Peepy, whose leg had undergone so much on
+account of his sister's unconsciously jerking it like a bell-rope
+whenever she was emphatic that the afflicted child now bemoaned his
+sufferings with a very low-spirited noise. As he appealed to me for
+compassion, and as I was only a listener, I undertook to hold him.
+Miss Jellyby proceeded, after begging Peepy's pardon with a kiss and
+assuring him that she hadn't meant to do it.
+
+"That's the state of the case," said Caddy. "If I ever blame myself,
+I still think it's Ma's fault. We are to be married whenever we can,
+and then I shall go to Pa at the office and write to Ma. It won't
+much agitate Ma; I am only pen and ink to HER. One great comfort is,"
+said Caddy with a sob, "that I shall never hear of Africa after I am
+married. Young Mr. Turveydrop hates it for my sake, and if old Mr.
+Turveydrop knows there is such a place, it's as much as he does."
+
+"It was he who was very gentlemanly, I think!" said I.
+
+"Very gentlemanly indeed," said Caddy. "He is celebrated almost
+everywhere for his deportment."
+
+"Does he teach?" asked Ada.
+
+"No, he don't teach anything in particular," replied Caddy. "But his
+deportment is beautiful."
+
+Caddy went on to say with considerable hesitation and reluctance that
+there was one thing more she wished us to know, and felt we ought to
+know, and which she hoped would not offend us. It was that she had
+improved her acquaintance with Miss Flite, the little crazy old lady,
+and that she frequently went there early in the morning and met her
+lover for a few minutes before breakfast--only for a few minutes. "I
+go there at other times," said Caddy, "but Prince does not come then.
+Young Mr. Turveydrop's name is Prince; I wish it wasn't, because it
+sounds like a dog, but of course he didn't christen himself. Old Mr.
+Turveydrop had him christened Prince in remembrance of the Prince
+Regent. Old Mr. Turveydrop adored the Prince Regent on account of his
+deportment. I hope you won't think the worse of me for having made
+these little appointments at Miss Flite's, where I first went with
+you, because I like the poor thing for her own sake and I believe she
+likes me. If you could see young Mr. Turveydrop, I am sure you would
+think well of him--at least, I am sure you couldn't possibly think
+any ill of him. I am going there now for my lesson. I couldn't ask
+you to go with me, Miss Summerson; but if you would," said Caddy, who
+had said all this earnestly and tremblingly, "I should be very
+glad--very glad."
+
+It happened that we had arranged with my guardian to go to Miss
+Flite's that day. We had told him of our former visit, and our
+account had interested him; but something had always happened to
+prevent our going there again. As I trusted that I might have
+sufficient influence with Miss Jellyby to prevent her taking any very
+rash step if I fully accepted the confidence she was so willing to
+place in me, poor girl, I proposed that she and I and Peepy should go
+to the academy and afterwards meet my guardian and Ada at Miss
+Flite's, whose name I now learnt for the first time. This was on
+condition that Miss Jellyby and Peepy should come back with us to
+dinner. The last article of the agreement being joyfully acceded to
+by both, we smartened Peepy up a little with the assistance of a few
+pins, some soap and water, and a hair-brush, and went out, bending
+our steps towards Newman Street, which was very near.
+
+I found the academy established in a sufficiently dingy house at the
+corner of an archway, with busts in all the staircase windows. In the
+same house there were also established, as I gathered from the plates
+on the door, a drawing-master, a coal-merchant (there was, certainly,
+no room for his coals), and a lithographic artist. On the plate
+which, in size and situation, took precedence of all the rest, I
+read, MR. TURVEYDROP. The door was open, and the hall was blocked up
+by a grand piano, a harp, and several other musical instruments in
+cases, all in progress of removal, and all looking rakish in the
+daylight. Miss Jellyby informed me that the academy had been lent,
+last night, for a concert.
+
+We went upstairs--it had been quite a fine house once, when it was
+anybody's business to keep it clean and fresh, and nobody's business
+to smoke in it all day--and into Mr. Turveydrop's great room, which
+was built out into a mews at the back and was lighted by a skylight.
+It was a bare, resounding room smelling of stables, with cane forms
+along the walls, and the walls ornamented at regular intervals with
+painted lyres and little cut-glass branches for candles, which seemed
+to be shedding their old-fashioned drops as other branches might shed
+autumn leaves. Several young lady pupils, ranging from thirteen or
+fourteen years of age to two or three and twenty, were assembled; and
+I was looking among them for their instructor when Caddy, pinching my
+arm, repeated the ceremony of introduction. "Miss Summerson, Mr.
+Prince Turveydrop!"
+
+I curtsied to a little blue-eyed fair man of youthful appearance with
+flaxen hair parted in the middle and curling at the ends all round
+his head. He had a little fiddle, which we used to call at school a
+kit, under his left arm, and its little bow in the same hand. His
+little dancing-shoes were particularly diminutive, and he had a
+little innocent, feminine manner which not only appealed to me in an
+amiable way, but made this singular effect upon me, that I received
+the impression that he was like his mother and that his mother had
+not been much considered or well used.
+
+"I am very happy to see Miss Jellyby's friend," he said, bowing low
+to me. "I began to fear," with timid tenderness, "as it was past the
+usual time, that Miss Jellyby was not coming."
+
+"I beg you will have the goodness to attribute that to me, who have
+detained her, and to receive my excuses, sir," said I.
+
+"Oh, dear!" said he.
+
+"And pray," I entreated, "do not allow me to be the cause of any more
+delay."
+
+With that apology I withdrew to a seat between Peepy (who, being well
+used to it, had already climbed into a corner place) and an old lady
+of a censorious countenance whose two nieces were in the class and
+who was very indignant with Peepy's boots. Prince Turveydrop then
+tinkled the strings of his kit with his fingers, and the young ladies
+stood up to dance. Just then there appeared from a side-door old Mr.
+Turveydrop, in the full lustre of his deportment.
+
+He was a fat old gentleman with a false complexion, false teeth,
+false whiskers, and a wig. He had a fur collar, and he had a padded
+breast to his coat, which only wanted a star or a broad blue ribbon
+to be complete. He was pinched in, and swelled out, and got up, and
+strapped down, as much as he could possibly bear. He had such a
+neckcloth on (puffing his very eyes out of their natural shape), and
+his chin and even his ears so sunk into it, that it seemed as though
+he must inevitably double up if it were cast loose. He had under his
+arm a hat of great size and weight, shelving downward from the crown
+to the brim, and in his hand a pair of white gloves with which he
+flapped it as he stood poised on one leg in a high-shouldered,
+round-elbowed state of elegance not to be surpassed. He had a cane,
+he had an eye-glass, he had a snuff-box, he had rings, he had
+wristbands, he had everything but any touch of nature; he was not
+like youth, he was not like age, he was not like anything in the
+world but a model of deportment.
+
+"Father! A visitor. Miss Jellyby's friend, Miss Summerson."
+
+"Distinguished," said Mr. Turveydrop, "by Miss Summerson's presence."
+As he bowed to me in that tight state, I almost believe I saw creases
+come into the whites of his eyes.
+
+"My father," said the son, aside, to me with quite an affecting
+belief in him, "is a celebrated character. My father is greatly
+admired."
+
+"Go on, Prince! Go on!" said Mr. Turveydrop, standing with his back
+to the fire and waving his gloves condescendingly. "Go on, my son!"
+
+At this command, or by this gracious permission, the lesson went on.
+Prince Turveydrop sometimes played the kit, dancing; sometimes played
+the piano, standing; sometimes hummed the tune with what little
+breath he could spare, while he set a pupil right; always
+conscientiously moved with the least proficient through every step
+and every part of the figure; and never rested for an instant. His
+distinguished father did nothing whatever but stand before the fire,
+a model of deportment.
+
+"And he never does anything else," said the old lady of the
+censorious countenance. "Yet would you believe that it's HIS name on
+the door-plate?"
+
+"His son's name is the same, you know," said I.
+
+"He wouldn't let his son have any name if he could take it from him,"
+returned the old lady. "Look at the son's dress!" It certainly was
+plain--threadbare--almost shabby. "Yet the father must be garnished
+and tricked out," said the old lady, "because of his deportment. I'd
+deport him! Transport him would be better!"
+
+I felt curious to know more concerning this person. I asked, "Does he
+give lessons in deportment now?"
+
+"Now!" returned the old lady shortly. "Never did."
+
+After a moment's consideration, I suggested that perhaps fencing had
+been his accomplishment.
+
+"I don't believe he can fence at all, ma'am," said the old lady.
+
+I looked surprised and inquisitive. The old lady, becoming more and
+more incensed against the master of deportment as she dwelt upon the
+subject, gave me some particulars of his career, with strong
+assurances that they were mildly stated.
+
+He had married a meek little dancing-mistress, with a tolerable
+connexion (having never in his life before done anything but deport
+himself), and had worked her to death, or had, at the best, suffered
+her to work herself to death, to maintain him in those expenses which
+were indispensable to his position. At once to exhibit his deportment
+to the best models and to keep the best models constantly before
+himself, he had found it necessary to frequent all public places of
+fashionable and lounging resort, to be seen at Brighton and elsewhere
+at fashionable times, and to lead an idle life in the very best
+clothes. To enable him to do this, the affectionate little
+dancing-mistress had toiled and laboured and would have toiled and
+laboured to that hour if her strength had lasted so long. For the
+mainspring of the story was that in spite of the man's absorbing
+selfishness, his wife (overpowered by his deportment) had, to the
+last, believed in him and had, on her death-bed, in the most moving
+terms, confided him to their son as one who had an inextinguishable
+claim upon him and whom he could never regard with too much pride and
+deference. The son, inheriting his mother's belief, and having the
+deportment always before him, had lived and grown in the same faith,
+and now, at thirty years of age, worked for his father twelve hours a
+day and looked up to him with veneration on the old imaginary
+pinnacle.
+
+"The airs the fellow gives himself!" said my informant, shaking her
+head at old Mr. Turveydrop with speechless indignation as he drew on
+his tight gloves, of course unconscious of the homage she was
+rendering. "He fully believes he is one of the aristocracy! And he is
+so condescending to the son he so egregiously deludes that you might
+suppose him the most virtuous of parents. Oh!" said the old lady,
+apostrophizing him with infinite vehemence. "I could bite you!"
+
+I could not help being amused, though I heard the old lady out with
+feelings of real concern. It was difficult to doubt her with the
+father and son before me. What I might have thought of them without
+the old lady's account, or what I might have thought of the old
+lady's account without them, I cannot say. There was a fitness of
+things in the whole that carried conviction with it.
+
+My eyes were yet wandering, from young Mr. Turveydrop working so
+hard, to old Mr. Turveydrop deporting himself so beautifully, when
+the latter came ambling up to me and entered into conversation.
+
+He asked me, first of all, whether I conferred a charm and a
+distinction on London by residing in it? I did not think it necessary
+to reply that I was perfectly aware I should not do that, in any
+case, but merely told him where I did reside.
+
+"A lady so graceful and accomplished," he said, kissing his
+right glove and afterwards extending it towards the pupils,
+"will look leniently on the deficiencies here. We do our best to
+polish--polish--polish!"
+
+He sat down beside me, taking some pains to sit on the form, I
+thought, in imitation of the print of his illustrious model on the
+sofa. And really he did look very like it.
+
+"To polish--polish--polish!" he repeated, taking a pinch of snuff and
+gently fluttering his fingers. "But we are not, if I may say so to
+one formed to be graceful both by Nature and Art--" with the
+high-shouldered bow, which it seemed impossible for him to make
+without lifting up his eyebrows and shutting his eyes "--we are not
+what we used to be in point of deportment."
+
+"Are we not, sir?" said I.
+
+"We have degenerated," he returned, shaking his head, which he could
+do to a very limited extent in his cravat. "A levelling age is not
+favourable to deportment. It develops vulgarity. Perhaps I speak with
+some little partiality. It may not be for me to say that I have been
+called, for some years now, Gentleman Turveydrop, or that his Royal
+Highness the Prince Regent did me the honour to inquire, on my
+removing my hat as he drove out of the Pavilion at Brighton (that
+fine building), 'Who is he? Who the devil is he? Why don't I know
+him? Why hasn't he thirty thousand a year?' But these are little
+matters of anecdote--the general property, ma'am--still repeated
+occasionally among the upper classes."
+
+"Indeed?" said I.
+
+He replied with the high-shouldered bow. "Where what is left among us
+of deportment," he added, "still lingers. England--alas, my
+country!--has degenerated very much, and is degenerating every day.
+She has not many gentlemen left. We are few. I see nothing to succeed
+us but a race of weavers."
+
+"One might hope that the race of gentlemen would be perpetuated
+here," said I.
+
+"You are very good." He smiled with a high-shouldered bow again. "You
+flatter me. But, no--no! I have never been able to imbue my poor boy
+with that part of his art. Heaven forbid that I should disparage my
+dear child, but he has--no deportment."
+
+"He appears to be an excellent master," I observed.
+
+"Understand me, my dear madam, he IS an excellent master. All that
+can be acquired, he has acquired. All that can be imparted, he can
+impart. But there ARE things--" He took another pinch of snuff and
+made the bow again, as if to add, "This kind of thing, for instance."
+
+I glanced towards the centre of the room, where Miss Jellyby's lover,
+now engaged with single pupils, was undergoing greater drudgery than
+ever.
+
+"My amiable child," murmured Mr. Turveydrop, adjusting his cravat.
+
+"Your son is indefatigable," said I.
+
+"It is my reward," said Mr. Turveydrop, "to hear you say so. In some
+respects, he treads in the footsteps of his sainted mother. She was a
+devoted creature. But wooman, lovely wooman," said Mr. Turveydrop
+with very disagreeable gallantry, "what a sex you are!"
+
+I rose and joined Miss Jellyby, who was by this time putting on her
+bonnet. The time allotted to a lesson having fully elapsed, there was
+a general putting on of bonnets. When Miss Jellyby and the
+unfortunate Prince found an opportunity to become betrothed I don't
+know, but they certainly found none on this occasion to exchange a
+dozen words.
+
+"My dear," said Mr. Turveydrop benignly to his son, "do you know the
+hour?"
+
+"No, father." The son had no watch. The father had a handsome gold
+one, which he pulled out with an air that was an example to mankind.
+
+"My son," said he, "it's two o'clock. Recollect your school at
+Kensington at three."
+
+"That's time enough for me, father," said Prince. "I can take a
+morsel of dinner standing and be off."
+
+"My dear boy," returned his father, "you must be very quick. You will
+find the cold mutton on the table."
+
+"Thank you, father. Are YOU off now, father?"
+
+"Yes, my dear. I suppose," said Mr. Turveydrop, shutting his eyes and
+lifting up his shoulders with modest consciousness, "that I must show
+myself, as usual, about town."
+
+"You had better dine out comfortably somewhere," said his son.
+
+"My dear child, I intend to. I shall take my little meal, I think, at
+the French house, in the Opera Colonnade."
+
+"That's right. Good-bye, father!" said Prince, shaking hands.
+
+"Good-bye, my son. Bless you!"
+
+Mr. Turveydrop said this in quite a pious manner, and it seemed to do
+his son good, who, in parting from him, was so pleased with him, so
+dutiful to him, and so proud of him that I almost felt as if it were
+an unkindness to the younger man not to be able to believe implicitly
+in the elder. The few moments that were occupied by Prince in taking
+leave of us (and particularly of one of us, as I saw, being in the
+secret), enhanced my favourable impression of his almost childish
+character. I felt a liking for him and a compassion for him as he put
+his little kit in his pocket--and with it his desire to stay a little
+while with Caddy--and went away good-humouredly to his cold mutton
+and his school at Kensington, that made me scarcely less irate with
+his father than the censorious old lady.
+
+The father opened the room door for us and bowed us out in a manner,
+I must acknowledge, worthy of his shining original. In the same style
+he presently passed us on the other side of the street, on his way to
+the aristocratic part of the town, where he was going to show himself
+among the few other gentlemen left. For some moments, I was so lost
+in reconsidering what I had heard and seen in Newman Street that I
+was quite unable to talk to Caddy or even to fix my attention on what
+she said to me, especially when I began to inquire in my mind whether
+there were, or ever had been, any other gentlemen, not in the dancing
+profession, who lived and founded a reputation entirely on their
+deportment. This became so bewildering and suggested the possibility
+of so many Mr. Turveydrops that I said, "Esther, you must make up
+your mind to abandon this subject altogether and attend to Caddy." I
+accordingly did so, and we chatted all the rest of the way to
+Lincoln's Inn.
+
+Caddy told me that her lover's education had been so neglected that
+it was not always easy to read his notes. She said if he were not so
+anxious about his spelling and took less pains to make it clear, he
+would do better; but he put so many unnecessary letters into short
+words that they sometimes quite lost their English appearance. "He
+does it with the best intention," observed Caddy, "but it hasn't the
+effect he means, poor fellow!" Caddy then went on to reason, how
+could he be expected to be a scholar when he had passed his whole
+life in the dancing-school and had done nothing but teach and fag,
+fag and teach, morning, noon, and night! And what did it matter? She
+could write letters enough for both, as she knew to her cost, and it
+was far better for him to be amiable than learned. "Besides, it's not
+as if I was an accomplished girl who had any right to give herself
+airs," said Caddy. "I know little enough, I am sure, thanks to Ma!
+
+"There's another thing I want to tell you, now we are alone,"
+continued Caddy, "which I should not have liked to mention unless you
+had seen Prince, Miss Summerson. You know what a house ours is. It's
+of no use my trying to learn anything that it would be useful for
+Prince's wife to know in OUR house. We live in such a state of muddle
+that it's impossible, and I have only been more disheartened whenever
+I have tried. So I get a little practice with--who do you think? Poor
+Miss Flite! Early in the morning I help her to tidy her room and
+clean her birds, and I make her cup of coffee for her (of course she
+taught me), and I have learnt to make it so well that Prince says
+it's the very best coffee he ever tasted, and would quite delight old
+Mr. Turveydrop, who is very particular indeed about his coffee. I can
+make little puddings too; and I know how to buy neck of mutton, and
+tea, and sugar, and butter, and a good many housekeeping things. I am
+not clever at my needle, yet," said Caddy, glancing at the repairs on
+Peepy's frock, "but perhaps I shall improve, and since I have been
+engaged to Prince and have been doing all this, I have felt
+better-tempered, I hope, and more forgiving to Ma. It rather put me
+out at first this morning to see you and Miss Clare looking so neat
+and pretty and to feel ashamed of Peepy and myself too, but on the
+whole I hope I am better-tempered than I was and more forgiving to
+Ma."
+
+The poor girl, trying so hard, said it from her heart, and touched
+mine. "Caddy, my love," I replied, "I begin to have a great affection
+for you, and I hope we shall become friends."
+
+"Oh, do you?" cried Caddy. "How happy that would make me!"
+
+"My dear Caddy," said I, "let us be friends from this time, and let
+us often have a chat about these matters and try to find the right
+way through them." Caddy was overjoyed. I said everything I could in
+my old-fashioned way to comfort and encourage her, and I would not
+have objected to old Mr. Turveydrop that day for any smaller
+consideration than a settlement on his daughter-in-law.
+
+By this time we were come to Mr. Krook's, whose private door stood
+open. There was a bill, pasted on the door-post, announcing a room to
+let on the second floor. It reminded Caddy to tell me as we proceeded
+upstairs that there had been a sudden death there and an inquest and
+that our little friend had been ill of the fright. The door and
+window of the vacant room being open, we looked in. It was the room
+with the dark door to which Miss Flite had secretly directed my
+attention when I was last in the house. A sad and desolate place it
+was, a gloomy, sorrowful place that gave me a strange sensation of
+mournfulness and even dread. "You look pale," said Caddy when we came
+out, "and cold!" I felt as if the room had chilled me.
+
+We had walked slowly while we were talking, and my guardian and Ada
+were here before us. We found them in Miss Flite's garret. They were
+looking at the birds, while a medical gentleman who was so good as to
+attend Miss Flite with much solicitude and compassion spoke with her
+cheerfully by the fire.
+
+"I have finished my professional visit," he said, coming forward.
+"Miss Flite is much better and may appear in court (as her mind is
+set upon it) to-morrow. She has been greatly missed there, I
+understand."
+
+Miss Flite received the compliment with complacency and dropped a
+general curtsy to us.
+
+"Honoured, indeed," said she, "by another visit from the wards in
+Jarndyce! Ve-ry happy to receive Jarndyce of Bleak House beneath my
+humble roof!" with a special curtsy. "Fitz-Jarndyce, my dear"--she
+had bestowed that name on Caddy, it appeared, and always called her
+by it--"a double welcome!"
+
+"Has she been very ill?" asked Mr. Jarndyce of the gentleman whom we
+had found in attendance on her. She answered for herself directly,
+though he had put the question in a whisper.
+
+"Oh, decidedly unwell! Oh, very unwell indeed," she said
+confidentially. "Not pain, you know--trouble. Not bodily so much as
+nervous, nervous! The truth is," in a subdued voice and trembling,
+"we have had death here. There was poison in the house. I am very
+susceptible to such horrid things. It frightened me. Only Mr.
+Woodcourt knows how much. My physician, Mr. Woodcourt!" with
+great stateliness. "The wards in Jarndyce--Jarndyce of Bleak
+House--Fitz-Jarndyce!"
+
+"Miss Flite," said Mr. Woodcourt in a grave kind of voice, as if he
+were appealing to her while speaking to us, and laying his hand
+gently on her arm, "Miss Flite describes her illness with her usual
+accuracy. She was alarmed by an occurrence in the house which might
+have alarmed a stronger person, and was made ill by the distress and
+agitation. She brought me here in the first hurry of the discovery,
+though too late for me to be of any use to the unfortunate man. I
+have compensated myself for that disappointment by coming here since
+and being of some small use to her."
+
+"The kindest physician in the college," whispered Miss Flite to me.
+"I expect a judgment. On the day of judgment. And shall then confer
+estates."
+
+"She will be as well in a day or two," said Mr. Woodcourt, looking at
+her with an observant smile, "as she ever will be. In other words,
+quite well of course. Have you heard of her good fortune?"
+
+"Most extraordinary!" said Miss Flite, smiling brightly. "You never
+heard of such a thing, my dear! Every Saturday, Conversation Kenge or
+Guppy (clerk to Conversation K.) places in my hand a paper of
+shillings. Shillings. I assure you! Always the same number in the
+paper. Always one for every day in the week. Now you know, really! So
+well-timed, is it not? Ye-es! From whence do these papers come, you
+say? That is the great question. Naturally. Shall I tell you what I
+think? I think," said Miss Flite, drawing herself back with a very
+shrewd look and shaking her right forefinger in a most significant
+manner, "that the Lord Chancellor, aware of the length of time during
+which the Great Seal has been open (for it has been open a long
+time!), forwards them. Until the judgment I expect is given. Now
+that's very creditable, you know. To confess in that way that he IS a
+little slow for human life. So delicate! Attending court the other
+day--I attend it regularly, with my documents--I taxed him with it,
+and he almost confessed. That is, I smiled at him from my bench, and
+HE smiled at me from his bench. But it's great good fortune, is it
+not? And Fitz-Jarndyce lays the money out for me to great advantage.
+Oh, I assure you to the greatest advantage!"
+
+I congratulated her (as she addressed herself to me) upon this
+fortunate addition to her income and wished her a long continuance of
+it. I did not speculate upon the source from which it came or wonder
+whose humanity was so considerate. My guardian stood before me,
+contemplating the birds, and I had no need to look beyond him.
+
+"And what do you call these little fellows, ma'am?" said he in his
+pleasant voice. "Have they any names?"
+
+"I can answer for Miss Flite that they have," said I, "for she
+promised to tell us what they were. Ada remembers?"
+
+Ada remembered very well.
+
+"Did I?" said Miss Flite. "Who's that at my door? What are you
+listening at my door for, Krook?"
+
+The old man of the house, pushing it open before him, appeared there
+with his fur cap in his hand and his cat at his heels.
+
+"I warn't listening, Miss Flite," he said, "I was going to give a rap
+with my knuckles, only you're so quick!"
+
+"Make your cat go down. Drive her away!" the old lady angrily
+exclaimed.
+
+"Bah, bah! There ain't no danger, gentlefolks," said Mr. Krook,
+looking slowly and sharply from one to another until he had looked at
+all of us; "she'd never offer at the birds when I was here unless I
+told her to it."
+
+"You will excuse my landlord," said the old lady with a dignified
+air. "M, quite M! What do you want, Krook, when I have company?"
+
+"Hi!" said the old man. "You know I am the Chancellor."
+
+"Well?" returned Miss Flite. "What of that?"
+
+"For the Chancellor," said the old man with a chuckle, "not to be
+acquainted with a Jarndyce is queer, ain't it, Miss Flite? Mightn't I
+take the liberty? Your servant, sir. I know Jarndyce and Jarndyce
+a'most as well as you do, sir. I knowed old Squire Tom, sir. I never
+to my knowledge see you afore though, not even in court. Yet, I go
+there a mortal sight of times in the course of the year, taking one
+day with another."
+
+"I never go there," said Mr. Jarndyce (which he never did on any
+consideration). "I would sooner go--somewhere else."
+
+"Would you though?" returned Krook, grinning. "You're bearing hard
+upon my noble and learned brother in your meaning, sir, though
+perhaps it is but nat'ral in a Jarndyce. The burnt child, sir! What,
+you're looking at my lodger's birds, Mr. Jarndyce?" The old man had
+come by little and little into the room until he now touched my
+guardian with his elbow and looked close up into his face with his
+spectacled eyes. "It's one of her strange ways that she'll never tell
+the names of these birds if she can help it, though she named 'em
+all." This was in a whisper. "Shall I run 'em over, Flite?" he asked
+aloud, winking at us and pointing at her as she turned away,
+affecting to sweep the grate.
+
+"If you like," she answered hurriedly.
+
+The old man, looking up at the cages after another look at us, went
+through the list.
+
+"Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin,
+Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags,
+Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and Spinach. That's
+the whole collection," said the old man, "all cooped up together, by
+my noble and learned brother."
+
+"This is a bitter wind!" muttered my guardian.
+
+"When my noble and learned brother gives his judgment, they're to be
+let go free," said Krook, winking at us again. "And then," he added,
+whispering and grinning, "if that ever was to happen--which it
+won't--the birds that have never been caged would kill 'em."
+
+"If ever the wind was in the east," said my guardian, pretending to
+look out of the window for a weathercock, "I think it's there
+to-day!"
+
+We found it very difficult to get away from the house. It was not
+Miss Flite who detained us; she was as reasonable a little creature
+in consulting the convenience of others as there possibly could be.
+It was Mr. Krook. He seemed unable to detach himself from Mr.
+Jarndyce. If he had been linked to him, he could hardly have attended
+him more closely. He proposed to show us his Court of Chancery and
+all the strange medley it contained; during the whole of our
+inspection (prolonged by himself) he kept close to Mr. Jarndyce and
+sometimes detained him under one pretence or other until we had
+passed on, as if he were tormented by an inclination to enter upon
+some secret subject which he could not make up his mind to approach.
+I cannot imagine a countenance and manner more singularly expressive
+of caution and indecision, and a perpetual impulse to do something he
+could not resolve to venture on, than Mr. Krook's was that day. His
+watchfulness of my guardian was incessant. He rarely removed his eyes
+from his face. If he went on beside him, he observed him with the
+slyness of an old white fox. If he went before, he looked back. When
+we stood still, he got opposite to him, and drawing his hand across
+and across his open mouth with a curious expression of a sense of
+power, and turning up his eyes, and lowering his grey eyebrows until
+they appeared to be shut, seemed to scan every lineament of his face.
+
+At last, having been (always attended by the cat) all over the house
+and having seen the whole stock of miscellaneous lumber, which was
+certainly curious, we came into the back part of the shop. Here on
+the head of an empty barrel stood on end were an ink-bottle, some old
+stumps of pens, and some dirty playbills; and against the wall were
+pasted several large printed alphabets in several plain hands.
+
+"What are you doing here?" asked my guardian.
+
+"Trying to learn myself to read and write," said Krook.
+
+"And how do you get on?"
+
+"Slow. Bad," returned the old man impatiently. "It's hard at my time
+of life."
+
+"It would be easier to be taught by some one," said my guardian.
+
+"Aye, but they might teach me wrong!" returned the old man with a
+wonderfully suspicious flash of his eye. "I don't know what I may
+have lost by not being learned afore. I wouldn't like to lose
+anything by being learned wrong now."
+
+"Wrong?" said my guardian with his good-humoured smile. "Who do you
+suppose would teach you wrong?"
+
+"I don't know, Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House!" replied the old man,
+turning up his spectacles on his forehead and rubbing his hands. "I
+don't suppose as anybody would, but I'd rather trust my own self than
+another!"
+
+These answers and his manner were strange enough to cause my guardian
+to inquire of Mr. Woodcourt, as we all walked across Lincoln's Inn
+together, whether Mr. Krook were really, as his lodger represented
+him, deranged. The young surgeon replied, no, he had seen no reason
+to think so. He was exceedingly distrustful, as ignorance usually
+was, and he was always more or less under the influence of raw gin,
+of which he drank great quantities and of which he and his back-shop,
+as we might have observed, smelt strongly; but he did not think him
+mad as yet.
+
+On our way home, I so conciliated Peepy's affections by buying him a
+windmill and two flour-sacks that he would suffer nobody else to take
+off his hat and gloves and would sit nowhere at dinner but at my
+side. Caddy sat upon the other side of me, next to Ada, to whom we
+imparted the whole history of the engagement as soon as we got back.
+We made much of Caddy, and Peepy too; and Caddy brightened
+exceedingly; and my guardian was as merry as we were; and we were all
+very happy indeed until Caddy went home at night in a hackney-coach,
+with Peepy fast asleep, but holding tight to the windmill.
+
+I have forgotten to mention--at least I have not mentioned--that Mr.
+Woodcourt was the same dark young surgeon whom we had met at Mr.
+Badger's. Or that Mr. Jarndyce invited him to dinner that day. Or
+that he came. Or that when they were all gone and I said to Ada,
+"Now, my darling, let us have a little talk about Richard!" Ada
+laughed and said--
+
+But I don't think it matters what my darling said. She was always
+merry.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+Bell Yard
+
+
+While we were in London Mr. Jarndyce was constantly beset by the
+crowd of excitable ladies and gentlemen whose proceedings had so much
+astonished us. Mr. Quale, who presented himself soon after our
+arrival, was in all such excitements. He seemed to project those two
+shining knobs of temples of his into everything that went on and to
+brush his hair farther and farther back, until the very roots were
+almost ready to fly out of his head in inappeasable philanthropy. All
+objects were alike to him, but he was always particularly ready for
+anything in the way of a testimonial to any one. His great power
+seemed to be his power of indiscriminate admiration. He would sit for
+any length of time, with the utmost enjoyment, bathing his temples in
+the light of any order of luminary. Having first seen him perfectly
+swallowed up in admiration of Mrs. Jellyby, I had supposed her to be
+the absorbing object of his devotion. I soon discovered my mistake
+and found him to be train-bearer and organ-blower to a whole
+procession of people.
+
+Mrs. Pardiggle came one day for a subscription to something, and with
+her, Mr. Quale. Whatever Mrs. Pardiggle said, Mr. Quale repeated to
+us; and just as he had drawn Mrs. Jellyby out, he drew Mrs. Pardiggle
+out. Mrs. Pardiggle wrote a letter of introduction to my guardian in
+behalf of her eloquent friend Mr. Gusher. With Mr. Gusher appeared
+Mr. Quale again. Mr. Gusher, being a flabby gentleman with a moist
+surface and eyes so much too small for his moon of a face that they
+seemed to have been originally made for somebody else, was not at
+first sight prepossessing; yet he was scarcely seated before Mr.
+Quale asked Ada and me, not inaudibly, whether he was not a great
+creature--which he certainly was, flabbily speaking, though Mr. Quale
+meant in intellectual beauty--and whether we were not struck by his
+massive configuration of brow. In short, we heard of a great many
+missions of various sorts among this set of people, but nothing
+respecting them was half so clear to us as that it was Mr. Quale's
+mission to be in ecstasies with everybody else's mission and that it
+was the most popular mission of all.
+
+Mr. Jarndyce had fallen into this company in the tenderness of his
+heart and his earnest desire to do all the good in his power; but
+that he felt it to be too often an unsatisfactory company, where
+benevolence took spasmodic forms, where charity was assumed as a
+regular uniform by loud professors and speculators in cheap
+notoriety, vehement in profession, restless and vain in action,
+servile in the last degree of meanness to the great, adulatory of one
+another, and intolerable to those who were anxious quietly to help
+the weak from failing rather than with a great deal of bluster and
+self-laudation to raise them up a little way when they were down, he
+plainly told us. When a testimonial was originated to Mr. Quale by
+Mr. Gusher (who had already got one, originated by Mr. Quale), and
+when Mr. Gusher spoke for an hour and a half on the subject to a
+meeting, including two charity schools of small boys and girls, who
+were specially reminded of the widow's mite, and requested to come
+forward with halfpence and be acceptable sacrifices, I think the wind
+was in the east for three whole weeks.
+
+I mention this because I am coming to Mr. Skimpole again. It seemed
+to me that his off-hand professions of childishness and carelessness
+were a great relief to my guardian, by contrast with such things, and
+were the more readily believed in since to find one perfectly
+undesigning and candid man among many opposites could not fail to
+give him pleasure. I should be sorry to imply that Mr. Skimpole
+divined this and was politic; I really never understood him well
+enough to know. What he was to my guardian, he certainly was to the
+rest of the world.
+
+He had not been very well; and thus, though he lived in London, we
+had seen nothing of him until now. He appeared one morning in his
+usual agreeable way and as full of pleasant spirits as ever.
+
+Well, he said, here he was! He had been bilious, but rich men were
+often bilious, and therefore he had been persuading himself that he
+was a man of property. So he was, in a certain point of view--in his
+expansive intentions. He had been enriching his medical attendant in
+the most lavish manner. He had always doubled, and sometimes
+quadrupled, his fees. He had said to the doctor, "Now, my dear
+doctor, it is quite a delusion on your part to suppose that you
+attend me for nothing. I am overwhelming you with money--in my
+expansive intentions--if you only knew it!" And really (he said) he
+meant it to that degree that he thought it much the same as doing it.
+If he had had those bits of metal or thin paper to which mankind
+attached so much importance to put in the doctor's hand, he would
+have put them in the doctor's hand. Not having them, he substituted
+the will for the deed. Very well! If he really meant it--if his will
+were genuine and real, which it was--it appeared to him that it was
+the same as coin, and cancelled the obligation.
+
+"It may be, partly, because I know nothing of the value of money,"
+said Mr. Skimpole, "but I often feel this. It seems so reasonable! My
+butcher says to me he wants that little bill. It's a part of the
+pleasant unconscious poetry of the man's nature that he always calls
+it a 'little' bill--to make the payment appear easy to both of us. I
+reply to the butcher, 'My good friend, if you knew it, you are paid.
+You haven't had the trouble of coming to ask for the little bill. You
+are paid. I mean it.'"
+
+"But, suppose," said my guardian, laughing, "he had meant the meat in
+the bill, instead of providing it?"
+
+"My dear Jarndyce," he returned, "you surprise me. You take the
+butcher's position. A butcher I once dealt with occupied that very
+ground. Says he, 'Sir, why did you eat spring lamb at eighteen pence
+a pound?' 'Why did I eat spring lamb at eighteen pence a pound, my
+honest friend?' said I, naturally amazed by the question. 'I like
+spring lamb!' This was so far convincing. 'Well, sir,' says he, 'I
+wish I had meant the lamb as you mean the money!' 'My good fellow,'
+said I, 'pray let us reason like intellectual beings. How could that
+be? It was impossible. You HAD got the lamb, and I have NOT got the
+money. You couldn't really mean the lamb without sending it in,
+whereas I can, and do, really mean the money without paying it!' He
+had not a word. There was an end of the subject."
+
+"Did he take no legal proceedings?" inquired my guardian.
+
+"Yes, he took legal proceedings," said Mr. Skimpole. "But in that he
+was influenced by passion, not by reason. Passion reminds me of
+Boythorn. He writes me that you and the ladies have promised him a
+short visit at his bachelor-house in Lincolnshire."
+
+"He is a great favourite with my girls," said Mr. Jarndyce, "and I
+have promised for them."
+
+"Nature forgot to shade him off, I think," observed Mr. Skimpole to
+Ada and me. "A little too boisterous--like the sea. A little too
+vehement--like a bull who has made up his mind to consider every
+colour scarlet. But I grant a sledge-hammering sort of merit in him!"
+
+I should have been surprised if those two could have thought very
+highly of one another, Mr. Boythorn attaching so much importance to
+many things and Mr. Skimpole caring so little for anything. Besides
+which, I had noticed Mr. Boythorn more than once on the point of
+breaking out into some strong opinion when Mr. Skimpole was referred
+to. Of course I merely joined Ada in saying that we had been greatly
+pleased with him.
+
+"He has invited me," said Mr. Skimpole; "and if a child may trust
+himself in such hands--which the present child is encouraged to do,
+with the united tenderness of two angels to guard him--I shall go. He
+proposes to frank me down and back again. I suppose it will cost
+money? Shillings perhaps? Or pounds? Or something of that sort? By
+the by, Coavinses. You remember our friend Coavinses, Miss
+Summerson?"
+
+He asked me as the subject arose in his mind, in his graceful,
+light-hearted manner and without the least embarrassment.
+
+"Oh, yes!" said I.
+
+"Coavinses has been arrested by the Great Bailiff," said Mr.
+Skimpole. "He will never do violence to the sunshine any more."
+
+It quite shocked me to hear it, for I had already recalled with
+anything but a serious association the image of the man sitting on
+the sofa that night wiping his head.
+
+"His successor informed me of it yesterday," said Mr. Skimpole. "His
+successor is in my house now--in possession, I think he calls it. He
+came yesterday, on my blue-eyed daughter's birthday. I put it to him,
+'This is unreasonable and inconvenient. If you had a blue-eyed
+daughter you wouldn't like ME to come, uninvited, on HER birthday?'
+But he stayed."
+
+Mr. Skimpole laughed at the pleasant absurdity and lightly touched
+the piano by which he was seated.
+
+"And he told me," he said, playing little chords where I shall put
+full stops, "The Coavinses had left. Three children. No mother. And
+that Coavinses' profession. Being unpopular. The rising Coavinses.
+Were at a considerable disadvantage."
+
+Mr. Jarndyce got up, rubbing his head, and began to walk about. Mr.
+Skimpole played the melody of one of Ada's favourite songs. Ada and I
+both looked at Mr. Jarndyce, thinking that we knew what was passing
+in his mind.
+
+After walking and stopping, and several times leaving off rubbing his
+head, and beginning again, my guardian put his hand upon the keys and
+stopped Mr. Skimpole's playing. "I don't like this, Skimpole," he
+said thoughtfully.
+
+Mr. Skimpole, who had quite forgotten the subject, looked up
+surprised.
+
+"The man was necessary," pursued my guardian, walking backward and
+forward in the very short space between the piano and the end of the
+room and rubbing his hair up from the back of his head as if a high
+east wind had blown it into that form. "If we make such men necessary
+by our faults and follies, or by our want of worldly knowledge, or by
+our misfortunes, we must not revenge ourselves upon them. There was
+no harm in his trade. He maintained his children. One would like to
+know more about this."
+
+"Oh! Coavinses?" cried Mr. Skimpole, at length perceiving what he
+meant. "Nothing easier. A walk to Coavinses' headquarters, and you
+can know what you will."
+
+Mr. Jarndyce nodded to us, who were only waiting for the signal.
+"Come! We will walk that way, my dears. Why not that way as soon as
+another!" We were quickly ready and went out. Mr. Skimpole went with
+us and quite enjoyed the expedition. It was so new and so refreshing,
+he said, for him to want Coavinses instead of Coavinses wanting him!
+
+He took us, first, to Cursitor Street, Chancery Lane, where there was
+a house with barred windows, which he called Coavinses' Castle. On
+our going into the entry and ringing a bell, a very hideous boy came
+out of a sort of office and looked at us over a spiked wicket.
+
+"Who did you want?" said the boy, fitting two of the spikes into his
+chin.
+
+"There was a follower, or an officer, or something, here," said Mr.
+Jarndyce, "who is dead."
+
+"Yes?" said the boy. "Well?"
+
+"I want to know his name, if you please?"
+
+"Name of Neckett," said the boy.
+
+"And his address?"
+
+"Bell Yard," said the boy. "Chandler's shop, left hand side, name of
+Blinder."
+
+"Was he--I don't know how to shape the question--" murmured my
+guardian, "industrious?"
+
+"Was Neckett?" said the boy. "Yes, wery much so. He was never tired
+of watching. He'd set upon a post at a street corner eight or ten
+hours at a stretch if he undertook to do it."
+
+"He might have done worse," I heard my guardian soliloquize. "He
+might have undertaken to do it and not done it. Thank you. That's all
+I want."
+
+We left the boy, with his head on one side and his arms on the gate,
+fondling and sucking the spikes, and went back to Lincoln's Inn,
+where Mr. Skimpole, who had not cared to remain nearer Coavinses,
+awaited us. Then we all went to Bell Yard, a narrow alley at a very
+short distance. We soon found the chandler's shop. In it was a
+good-natured-looking old woman with a dropsy, or an asthma, or
+perhaps both.
+
+"Neckett's children?" said she in reply to my inquiry. "Yes, Surely,
+miss. Three pair, if you please. Door right opposite the stairs." And
+she handed me the key across the counter.
+
+I glanced at the key and glanced at her, but she took it for granted
+that I knew what to do with it. As it could only be intended for the
+children's door, I came out without asking any more questions and led
+the way up the dark stairs. We went as quietly as we could, but four
+of us made some noise on the aged boards, and when we came to the
+second story we found we had disturbed a man who was standing there
+looking out of his room.
+
+"Is it Gridley that's wanted?" he said, fixing his eyes on me with an
+angry stare.
+
+"No, sir," said I; "I am going higher up."
+
+He looked at Ada, and at Mr. Jarndyce, and at Mr. Skimpole, fixing
+the same angry stare on each in succession as they passed and
+followed me. Mr. Jarndyce gave him good day. "Good day!" he said
+abruptly and fiercely. He was a tall, sallow man with a careworn head
+on which but little hair remained, a deeply lined face, and prominent
+eyes. He had a combative look and a chafing, irritable manner which,
+associated with his figure--still large and powerful, though
+evidently in its decline--rather alarmed me. He had a pen in his
+hand, and in the glimpse I caught of his room in passing, I saw that
+it was covered with a litter of papers.
+
+Leaving him standing there, we went up to the top room. I tapped at
+the door, and a little shrill voice inside said, "We are locked in.
+Mrs. Blinder's got the key!"
+
+I applied the key on hearing this and opened the door. In a poor room
+with a sloping ceiling and containing very little furniture was a
+mite of a boy, some five or six years old, nursing and hushing a
+heavy child of eighteen months. There was no fire, though the weather
+was cold; both children were wrapped in some poor shawls and tippets
+as a substitute. Their clothing was not so warm, however, but that
+their noses looked red and pinched and their small figures shrunken
+as the boy walked up and down nursing and hushing the child with its
+head on his shoulder.
+
+"Who has locked you up here alone?" we naturally asked.
+
+"Charley," said the boy, standing still to gaze at us.
+
+"Is Charley your brother?"
+
+"No. She's my sister, Charlotte. Father called her Charley."
+
+"Are there any more of you besides Charley?"
+
+"Me," said the boy, "and Emma," patting the limp bonnet of the child
+he was nursing. "And Charley."
+
+"Where is Charley now?"
+
+"Out a-washing," said the boy, beginning to walk up and down again
+and taking the nankeen bonnet much too near the bedstead by trying to
+gaze at us at the same time.
+
+We were looking at one another and at these two children when there
+came into the room a very little girl, childish in figure but shrewd
+and older-looking in the face--pretty-faced too--wearing a womanly
+sort of bonnet much too large for her and drying her bare arms on a
+womanly sort of apron. Her fingers were white and wrinkled with
+washing, and the soap-suds were yet smoking which she wiped off her
+arms. But for this, she might have been a child playing at washing
+and imitating a poor working-woman with a quick observation of the
+truth.
+
+She had come running from some place in the neighbourhood and had
+made all the haste she could. Consequently, though she was very
+light, she was out of breath and could not speak at first, as she
+stood panting, and wiping her arms, and looking quietly at us.
+
+"Oh, here's Charley!" said the boy.
+
+The child he was nursing stretched forth its arms and cried out to be
+taken by Charley. The little girl took it, in a womanly sort of
+manner belonging to the apron and the bonnet, and stood looking at us
+over the burden that clung to her most affectionately.
+
+"Is it possible," whispered my guardian as we put a chair for the
+little creature and got her to sit down with her load, the boy
+keeping close to her, holding to her apron, "that this child works
+for the rest? Look at this! For God's sake, look at this!"
+
+It was a thing to look at. The three children close together, and two
+of them relying solely on the third, and the third so young and yet
+with an air of age and steadiness that sat so strangely on the
+childish figure.
+
+"Charley, Charley!" said my guardian. "How old are you?"
+
+"Over thirteen, sir," replied the child.
+
+"Oh! What a great age," said my guardian. "What a great age,
+Charley!"
+
+I cannot describe the tenderness with which he spoke to her, half
+playfully yet all the more compassionately and mournfully.
+
+"And do you live alone here with these babies, Charley?" said my
+guardian.
+
+"Yes, sir," returned the child, looking up into his face with perfect
+confidence, "since father died."
+
+"And how do you live, Charley? Oh! Charley," said my guardian,
+turning his face away for a moment, "how do you live?"
+
+"Since father died, sir, I've gone out to work. I'm out washing
+to-day."
+
+"God help you, Charley!" said my guardian. "You're not tall enough to
+reach the tub!"
+
+"In pattens I am, sir," she said quickly. "I've got a high pair as
+belonged to mother."
+
+"And when did mother die? Poor mother!"
+
+"Mother died just after Emma was born," said the child, glancing at
+the face upon her bosom. "Then father said I was to be as good a
+mother to her as I could. And so I tried. And so I worked at home and
+did cleaning and nursing and washing for a long time before I began
+to go out. And that's how I know how; don't you see, sir?"
+
+"And do you often go out?"
+
+"As often as I can," said Charley, opening her eyes and smiling,
+"because of earning sixpences and shillings!"
+
+"And do you always lock the babies up when you go out?"
+
+"To keep 'em safe, sir, don't you see?" said Charley. "Mrs. Blinder
+comes up now and then, and Mr. Gridley comes up sometimes, and
+perhaps I can run in sometimes, and they can play you know, and Tom
+an't afraid of being locked up, are you, Tom?"
+
+"No-o!" said Tom stoutly.
+
+"When it comes on dark, the lamps are lighted down in the court, and
+they show up here quite bright--almost quite bright. Don't they,
+Tom?"
+
+"Yes, Charley," said Tom, "almost quite bright."
+
+"Then he's as good as gold," said the little creature--Oh, in such a
+motherly, womanly way! "And when Emma's tired, he puts her to bed.
+And when he's tired he goes to bed himself. And when I come home and
+light the candle and has a bit of supper, he sits up again and has it
+with me. Don't you, Tom?"
+
+"Oh, yes, Charley!" said Tom. "That I do!" And either in this glimpse
+of the great pleasure of his life or in gratitude and love for
+Charley, who was all in all to him, he laid his face among the scanty
+folds of her frock and passed from laughing into crying.
+
+It was the first time since our entry that a tear had been shed among
+these children. The little orphan girl had spoken of their father and
+their mother as if all that sorrow were subdued by the necessity of
+taking courage, and by her childish importance in being able to work,
+and by her bustling busy way. But now, when Tom cried, although she
+sat quite tranquil, looking quietly at us, and did not by any
+movement disturb a hair of the head of either of her little charges,
+I saw two silent tears fall down her face.
+
+I stood at the window with Ada, pretending to look at the housetops,
+and the blackened stack of chimneys, and the poor plants, and the
+birds in little cages belonging to the neighbours, when I found that
+Mrs. Blinder, from the shop below, had come in (perhaps it had taken
+her all this time to get upstairs) and was talking to my guardian.
+
+"It's not much to forgive 'em the rent, sir," she said; "who could
+take it from them!"
+
+"Well, well!" said my guardian to us two. "It is enough that the time
+will come when this good woman will find that it WAS much, and that
+forasmuch as she did it unto the least of these--This child," he
+added after a few moments, "could she possibly continue this?"
+
+"Really, sir, I think she might," said Mrs. Blinder, getting her
+heavy breath by painful degrees. "She's as handy as it's possible to
+be. Bless you, sir, the way she tended them two children after the
+mother died was the talk of the yard! And it was a wonder to see her
+with him after he was took ill, it really was! 'Mrs. Blinder,' he
+said to me the very last he spoke--he was lying there--'Mrs.
+Blinder, whatever my calling may have been, I see a angel sitting in
+this room last night along with my child, and I trust her to Our
+Father!'"
+
+"He had no other calling?" said my guardian.
+
+"No, sir," returned Mrs. Blinder, "he was nothing but a follerers.
+When he first came to lodge here, I didn't know what he was, and I
+confess that when I found out I gave him notice. It wasn't liked in
+the yard. It wasn't approved by the other lodgers. It is NOT a
+genteel calling," said Mrs. Blinder, "and most people do object to
+it. Mr. Gridley objected to it very strong, and he is a good lodger,
+though his temper has been hard tried."
+
+"So you gave him notice?" said my guardian.
+
+"So I gave him notice," said Mrs. Blinder. "But really when the time
+came, and I knew no other ill of him, I was in doubts. He was
+punctual and diligent; he did what he had to do, sir," said Mrs.
+Blinder, unconsciously fixing Mr. Skimpole with her eye, "and it's
+something in this world even to do that."
+
+"So you kept him after all?"
+
+"Why, I said that if he could arrange with Mr. Gridley, I could
+arrange it with the other lodgers and should not so much mind its
+being liked or disliked in the yard. Mr. Gridley gave his consent
+gruff--but gave it. He was always gruff with him, but he has been
+kind to the children since. A person is never known till a person is
+proved."
+
+"Have many people been kind to the children?" asked Mr. Jarndyce.
+
+"Upon the whole, not so bad, sir," said Mrs. Blinder; "but certainly
+not so many as would have been if their father's calling had been
+different. Mr. Coavins gave a guinea, and the follerers made up a
+little purse. Some neighbours in the yard that had always joked and
+tapped their shoulders when he went by came forward with a little
+subscription, and--in general--not so bad. Similarly with Charlotte.
+Some people won't employ her because she was a follerer's child; some
+people that do employ her cast it at her; some make a merit of having
+her to work for them, with that and all her draw-backs upon her, and
+perhaps pay her less and put upon her more. But she's patienter than
+others would be, and is clever too, and always willing, up to the
+full mark of her strength and over. So I should say, in general, not
+so bad, sir, but might be better."
+
+Mrs. Blinder sat down to give herself a more favourable opportunity
+of recovering her breath, exhausted anew by so much talking before it
+was fully restored. Mr. Jarndyce was turning to speak to us when his
+attention was attracted by the abrupt entrance into the room of the
+Mr. Gridley who had been mentioned and whom we had seen on our way
+up.
+
+"I don't know what you may be doing here, ladies and gentlemen," he
+said, as if he resented our presence, "but you'll excuse my coming
+in. I don't come in to stare about me. Well, Charley! Well, Tom!
+Well, little one! How is it with us all to-day?"
+
+He bent over the group in a caressing way and clearly was regarded as
+a friend by the children, though his face retained its stern
+character and his manner to us was as rude as it could be. My
+guardian noticed it and respected it.
+
+"No one, surely, would come here to stare about him," he said mildly.
+
+"May be so, sir, may be so," returned the other, taking Tom upon his
+knee and waving him off impatiently. "I don't want to argue with
+ladies and gentlemen. I have had enough of arguing to last one man
+his life."
+
+"You have sufficient reason, I dare say," said Mr. Jarndyce, "for
+being chafed and irritated--"
+
+"There again!" exclaimed the man, becoming violently angry. "I am of
+a quarrelsome temper. I am irascible. I am not polite!"
+
+"Not very, I think."
+
+"Sir," said Gridley, putting down the child and going up to him as if
+he meant to strike him, "do you know anything of Courts of Equity?"
+
+"Perhaps I do, to my sorrow."
+
+"To your sorrow?" said the man, pausing in his wrath, "if so, I beg
+your pardon. I am not polite, I know. I beg your pardon! Sir," with
+renewed violence, "I have been dragged for five and twenty years over
+burning iron, and I have lost the habit of treading upon velvet. Go
+into the Court of Chancery yonder and ask what is one of the standing
+jokes that brighten up their business sometimes, and they will tell
+you that the best joke they have is the man from Shropshire. I," he
+said, beating one hand on the other passionately, "am the man from
+Shropshire."
+
+"I believe I and my family have also had the honour of furnishing
+some entertainment in the same grave place," said my guardian
+composedly. "You may have heard my name--Jarndyce."
+
+"Mr. Jarndyce," said Gridley with a rough sort of salutation, "you
+bear your wrongs more quietly than I can bear mine. More than that, I
+tell you--and I tell this gentleman, and these young ladies, if they
+are friends of yours--that if I took my wrongs in any other way, I
+should be driven mad! It is only by resenting them, and by revenging
+them in my mind, and by angrily demanding the justice I never get,
+that I am able to keep my wits together. It is only that!" he said,
+speaking in a homely, rustic way and with great vehemence. "You may
+tell me that I over-excite myself. I answer that it's in my nature to
+do it, under wrong, and I must do it. There's nothing between doing
+it, and sinking into the smiling state of the poor little mad woman
+that haunts the court. If I was once to sit down under it, I should
+become imbecile."
+
+The passion and heat in which he was, and the manner in which his
+face worked, and the violent gestures with which he accompanied what
+he said, were most painful to see.
+
+"Mr. Jarndyce," he said, "consider my case. As true as there is a
+heaven above us, this is my case. I am one of two brothers. My father
+(a farmer) made a will and left his farm and stock and so forth to my
+mother for her life. After my mother's death, all was to come to me
+except a legacy of three hundred pounds that I was then to pay my
+brother. My mother died. My brother some time afterwards claimed his
+legacy. I and some of my relations said that he had had a part of it
+already in board and lodging and some other things. Now mind! That
+was the question, and nothing else. No one disputed the will; no one
+disputed anything but whether part of that three hundred pounds had
+been already paid or not. To settle that question, my brother filing
+a bill, I was obliged to go into this accursed Chancery; I was forced
+there because the law forced me and would let me go nowhere else.
+Seventeen people were made defendants to that simple suit! It first
+came on after two years. It was then stopped for another two years
+while the master (may his head rot off!) inquired whether I was my
+father's son, about which there was no dispute at all with any mortal
+creature. He then found out that there were not defendants
+enough--remember, there were only seventeen as yet!--but that we must
+have another who had been left out and must begin all over again. The
+costs at that time--before the thing was begun!--were three times the
+legacy. My brother would have given up the legacy, and joyful, to
+escape more costs. My whole estate, left to me in that will of my
+father's, has gone in costs. The suit, still undecided, has fallen
+into rack, and ruin, and despair, with everything else--and here I
+stand, this day! Now, Mr. Jarndyce, in your suit there are thousands
+and thousands involved, where in mine there are hundreds. Is mine
+less hard to bear or is it harder to bear, when my whole living was
+in it and has been thus shamefully sucked away?"
+
+Mr. Jarndyce said that he condoled with him with all his heart and
+that he set up no monopoly himself in being unjustly treated by this
+monstrous system.
+
+"There again!" said Mr. Gridley with no diminution of his rage. "The
+system! I am told on all hands, it's the system. I mustn't look to
+individuals. It's the system. I mustn't go into court and say, 'My
+Lord, I beg to know this from you--is this right or wrong? Have you
+the face to tell me I have received justice and therefore am
+dismissed?' My Lord knows nothing of it. He sits there to administer
+the system. I mustn't go to Mr. Tulkinghorn, the solicitor in
+Lincoln's Inn Fields, and say to him when he makes me furious by
+being so cool and satisfied--as they all do, for I know they gain by
+it while I lose, don't I?--I mustn't say to him, 'I will have
+something out of some one for my ruin, by fair means or foul!' HE is
+not responsible. It's the system. But, if I do no violence to any of
+them, here--I may! I don't know what may happen if I am carried
+beyond myself at last! I will accuse the individual workers of that
+system against me, face to face, before the great eternal bar!"
+
+His passion was fearful. I could not have believed in such rage
+without seeing it.
+
+"I have done!" he said, sitting down and wiping his face. "Mr.
+Jarndyce, I have done! I am violent, I know. I ought to know it. I
+have been in prison for contempt of court. I have been in prison for
+threatening the solicitor. I have been in this trouble, and that
+trouble, and shall be again. I am the man from Shropshire, and I
+sometimes go beyond amusing them, though they have found it amusing,
+too, to see me committed into custody and brought up in custody and
+all that. It would be better for me, they tell me, if I restrained
+myself. I tell them that if I did restrain myself I should become
+imbecile. I was a good-enough-tempered man once, I believe. People in
+my part of the country say they remember me so, but now I must have
+this vent under my sense of injury or nothing could hold my wits
+together. It would be far better for you, Mr. Gridley,' the Lord
+Chancellor told me last week, 'not to waste your time here, and to
+stay, usefully employed, down in Shropshire.' 'My Lord, my Lord, I
+know it would,' said I to him, 'and it would have been far better for
+me never to have heard the name of your high office, but unhappily
+for me, I can't undo the past, and the past drives me here!'
+Besides," he added, breaking fiercely out, "I'll shame them. To the
+last, I'll show myself in that court to its shame. If I knew when I
+was going to die, and could be carried there, and had a voice to
+speak with, I would die there, saying, 'You have brought me here and
+sent me from here many and many a time. Now send me out feet
+foremost!'"
+
+His countenance had, perhaps for years, become so set in its
+contentious expression that it did not soften, even now when he was
+quiet.
+
+"I came to take these babies down to my room for an hour," he said,
+going to them again, "and let them play about. I didn't mean to say
+all this, but it don't much signify. You're not afraid of me, Tom,
+are you?"
+
+"No!" said Tom. "You ain't angry with ME."
+
+"You are right, my child. You're going back, Charley? Aye? Come then,
+little one!" He took the youngest child on his arm, where she was
+willing enough to be carried. "I shouldn't wonder if we found a
+ginger-bread soldier downstairs. Let's go and look for him!"
+
+He made his former rough salutation, which was not deficient in a
+certain respect, to Mr. Jarndyce, and bowing slightly to us, went
+downstairs to his room.
+
+Upon that, Mr. Skimpole began to talk, for the first time since our
+arrival, in his usual gay strain. He said, Well, it was really very
+pleasant to see how things lazily adapted themselves to purposes.
+Here was this Mr. Gridley, a man of a robust will and surprising
+energy--intellectually speaking, a sort of inharmonious
+blacksmith--and he could easily imagine that there Gridley was, years
+ago, wandering about in life for something to expend his superfluous
+combativeness upon--a sort of Young Love among the thorns--when the
+Court of Chancery came in his way and accommodated him with the exact
+thing he wanted. There they were, matched, ever afterwards! Otherwise
+he might have been a great general, blowing up all sorts of towns, or
+he might have been a great politician, dealing in all sorts of
+parliamentary rhetoric; but as it was, he and the Court of Chancery
+had fallen upon each other in the pleasantest way, and nobody was
+much the worse, and Gridley was, so to speak, from that hour provided
+for. Then look at Coavinses! How delightfully poor Coavinses (father
+of these charming children) illustrated the same principle! He, Mr.
+Skimpole, himself, had sometimes repined at the existence of
+Coavinses. He had found Coavinses in his way. He could had dispensed
+with Coavinses. There had been times when, if he had been a sultan,
+and his grand vizier had said one morning, "What does the Commander
+of the Faithful require at the hands of his slave?" he might have
+even gone so far as to reply, "The head of Coavinses!" But what
+turned out to be the case? That, all that time, he had been giving
+employment to a most deserving man, that he had been a benefactor to
+Coavinses, that he had actually been enabling Coavinses to bring up
+these charming children in this agreeable way, developing these
+social virtues! Insomuch that his heart had just now swelled and the
+tears had come into his eyes when he had looked round the room and
+thought, "I was the great patron of Coavinses, and his little
+comforts were MY work!"
+
+There was something so captivating in his light way of touching these
+fantastic strings, and he was such a mirthful child by the side of
+the graver childhood we had seen, that he made my guardian smile even
+as he turned towards us from a little private talk with Mrs. Blinder.
+We kissed Charley, and took her downstairs with us, and stopped
+outside the house to see her run away to her work. I don't know where
+she was going, but we saw her run, such a little, little creature in
+her womanly bonnet and apron, through a covered way at the bottom of
+the court and melt into the city's strife and sound like a dewdrop in
+an ocean.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+Tom-all-Alone's
+
+
+My Lady Dedlock is restless, very restless. The astonished
+fashionable intelligence hardly knows where to have her. To-day she
+is at Chesney Wold; yesterday she was at her house in town; to-morrow
+she may be abroad, for anything the fashionable intelligence can with
+confidence predict. Even Sir Leicester's gallantry has some trouble
+to keep pace with her. It would have more but that his other faithful
+ally, for better and for worse--the gout--darts into the old oak
+bed-chamber at Chesney Wold and grips him by both legs.
+
+Sir Leicester receives the gout as a troublesome demon, but still a
+demon of the patrician order. All the Dedlocks, in the direct male
+line, through a course of time during and beyond which the memory of
+man goeth not to the contrary, have had the gout. It can be proved,
+sir. Other men's fathers may have died of the rheumatism or may have
+taken base contagion from the tainted blood of the sick vulgar, but
+the Dedlock family have communicated something exclusive even to the
+levelling process of dying by dying of their own family gout. It has
+come down through the illustrious line like the plate, or the
+pictures, or the place in Lincolnshire. It is among their dignities.
+Sir Leicester is perhaps not wholly without an impression, though he
+has never resolved it into words, that the angel of death in the
+discharge of his necessary duties may observe to the shades of the
+aristocracy, "My lords and gentlemen, I have the honour to present to
+you another Dedlock certified to have arrived per the family gout."
+
+Hence Sir Leicester yields up his family legs to the family disorder
+as if he held his name and fortune on that feudal tenure. He feels
+that for a Dedlock to be laid upon his back and spasmodically
+twitched and stabbed in his extremities is a liberty taken somewhere,
+but he thinks, "We have all yielded to this; it belongs to us; it has
+for some hundreds of years been understood that we are not to make
+the vaults in the park interesting on more ignoble terms; and I
+submit myself to the compromise."
+
+And a goodly show he makes, lying in a flush of crimson and gold in
+the midst of the great drawing-room before his favourite picture of
+my Lady, with broad strips of sunlight shining in, down the long
+perspective, through the long line of windows, and alternating with
+soft reliefs of shadow. Outside, the stately oaks, rooted for ages in
+the green ground which has never known ploughshare, but was still a
+chase when kings rode to battle with sword and shield and rode
+a-hunting with bow and arrow, bear witness to his greatness. Inside,
+his forefathers, looking on him from the walls, say, "Each of us was
+a passing reality here and left this coloured shadow of himself and
+melted into remembrance as dreamy as the distant voices of the rooks
+now lulling you to rest," and hear their testimony to his greatness
+too. And he is very great this day. And woe to Boythorn or other
+daring wight who shall presumptuously contest an inch with him!
+
+My Lady is at present represented, near Sir Leicester, by her
+portrait. She has flitted away to town, with no intention of
+remaining there, and will soon flit hither again, to the confusion of
+the fashionable intelligence. The house in town is not prepared for
+her reception. It is muffled and dreary. Only one Mercury in powder
+gapes disconsolate at the hall-window; and he mentioned last night to
+another Mercury of his acquaintance, also accustomed to good society,
+that if that sort of thing was to last--which it couldn't, for a man
+of his spirits couldn't bear it, and a man of his figure couldn't be
+expected to bear it--there would be no resource for him, upon his
+honour, but to cut his throat!
+
+What connexion can there be between the place in Lincolnshire, the
+house in town, the Mercury in powder, and the whereabout of Jo the
+outlaw with the broom, who had that distant ray of light upon him
+when he swept the churchyard-step? What connexion can there have been
+between many people in the innumerable histories of this world who
+from opposite sides of great gulfs have, nevertheless, been very
+curiously brought together!
+
+Jo sweeps his crossing all day long, unconscious of the link, if any
+link there be. He sums up his mental condition when asked a question
+by replying that he "don't know nothink." He knows that it's hard to
+keep the mud off the crossing in dirty weather, and harder still to
+live by doing it. Nobody taught him even that much; he found it out.
+
+Jo lives--that is to say, Jo has not yet died--in a ruinous place
+known to the like of him by the name of Tom-all-Alone's. It is a
+black, dilapidated street, avoided by all decent people, where the
+crazy houses were seized upon, when their decay was far advanced, by
+some bold vagrants who after establishing their own possession took
+to letting them out in lodgings. Now, these tumbling tenements
+contain, by night, a swarm of misery. As on the ruined human wretch
+vermin parasites appear, so these ruined shelters have bred a crowd
+of foul existence that crawls in and out of gaps in walls and boards;
+and coils itself to sleep, in maggot numbers, where the rain drips
+in; and comes and goes, fetching and carrying fever and sowing more
+evil in its every footprint than Lord Coodle, and Sir Thomas Doodle,
+and the Duke of Foodle, and all the fine gentlemen in office, down to
+Zoodle, shall set right in five hundred years--though born expressly
+to do it.
+
+Twice lately there has been a crash and a cloud of dust, like the
+springing of a mine, in Tom-all-Alone's; and each time a house has
+fallen. These accidents have made a paragraph in the newspapers and
+have filled a bed or two in the nearest hospital. The gaps remain,
+and there are not unpopular lodgings among the rubbish. As several
+more houses are nearly ready to go, the next crash in Tom-all-Alone's
+may be expected to be a good one.
+
+This desirable property is in Chancery, of course. It would be an
+insult to the discernment of any man with half an eye to tell him so.
+Whether "Tom" is the popular representative of the original plaintiff
+or defendant in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, or whether Tom lived here when
+the suit had laid the street waste, all alone, until other settlers
+came to join him, or whether the traditional title is a comprehensive
+name for a retreat cut off from honest company and put out of the
+pale of hope, perhaps nobody knows. Certainly Jo don't know.
+
+"For I don't," says Jo, "I don't know nothink."
+
+It must be a strange state to be like Jo! To shuffle through the
+streets, unfamiliar with the shapes, and in utter darkness as to the
+meaning, of those mysterious symbols, so abundant over the shops, and
+at the corners of streets, and on the doors, and in the windows! To
+see people read, and to see people write, and to see the postmen
+deliver letters, and not to have the least idea of all that
+language--to be, to every scrap of it, stone blind and dumb! It must
+be very puzzling to see the good company going to the churches on
+Sundays, with their books in their hands, and to think (for perhaps
+Jo DOES think at odd times) what does it all mean, and if it means
+anything to anybody, how comes it that it means nothing to me? To be
+hustled, and jostled, and moved on; and really to feel that it would
+appear to be perfectly true that I have no business here, or there,
+or anywhere; and yet to be perplexed by the consideration that I AM
+here somehow, too, and everybody overlooked me until I became the
+creature that I am! It must be a strange state, not merely to be told
+that I am scarcely human (as in the case of my offering myself for a
+witness), but to feel it of my own knowledge all my life! To see the
+horses, dogs, and cattle go by me and to know that in ignorance I
+belong to them and not to the superior beings in my shape, whose
+delicacy I offend! Jo's ideas of a criminal trial, or a judge, or a
+bishop, or a government, or that inestimable jewel to him (if he only
+knew it) the Constitution, should be strange! His whole material and
+immaterial life is wonderfully strange; his death, the strangest
+thing of all.
+
+Jo comes out of Tom-all-Alone's, meeting the tardy morning which is
+always late in getting down there, and munches his dirty bit of bread
+as he comes along. His way lying through many streets, and the houses
+not yet being open, he sits down to breakfast on the door-step of the
+Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts and gives
+it a brush when he has finished as an acknowledgment of the
+accommodation. He admires the size of the edifice and wonders what
+it's all about. He has no idea, poor wretch, of the spiritual
+destitution of a coral reef in the Pacific or what it costs to look
+up the precious souls among the coco-nuts and bread-fruit.
+
+He goes to his crossing and begins to lay it out for the day. The
+town awakes; the great tee-totum is set up for its daily spin and
+whirl; all that unaccountable reading and writing, which has been
+suspended for a few hours, recommences. Jo and the other lower
+animals get on in the unintelligible mess as they can. It is
+market-day. The blinded oxen, over-goaded, over-driven, never guided,
+run into wrong places and are beaten out, and plunge red-eyed and
+foaming at stone walls, and often sorely hurt the innocent, and often
+sorely hurt themselves. Very like Jo and his order; very, very like!
+
+A band of music comes and plays. Jo listens to it. So does a dog--a
+drover's dog, waiting for his master outside a butcher's shop, and
+evidently thinking about those sheep he has had upon his mind for
+some hours and is happily rid of. He seems perplexed respecting three
+or four, can't remember where he left them, looks up and down the
+street as half expecting to see them astray, suddenly pricks up his
+ears and remembers all about it. A thoroughly vagabond dog,
+accustomed to low company and public-houses; a terrific dog to sheep,
+ready at a whistle to scamper over their backs and tear out mouthfuls
+of their wool; but an educated, improved, developed dog who has been
+taught his duties and knows how to discharge them. He and Jo listen
+to the music, probably with much the same amount of animal
+satisfaction; likewise as to awakened association, aspiration, or
+regret, melancholy or joyful reference to things beyond the senses,
+they are probably upon a par. But, otherwise, how far above the human
+listener is the brute!
+
+Turn that dog's descendants wild, like Jo, and in a very few years
+they will so degenerate that they will lose even their bark--but not
+their bite.
+
+The day changes as it wears itself away and becomes dark and drizzly.
+Jo fights it out at his crossing among the mud and wheels, the
+horses, whips, and umbrellas, and gets but a scanty sum to pay for
+the unsavoury shelter of Tom-all-Alone's. Twilight comes on; gas
+begins to start up in the shops; the lamplighter, with his ladder,
+runs along the margin of the pavement. A wretched evening is
+beginning to close in.
+
+In his chambers Mr. Tulkinghorn sits meditating an application to the
+nearest magistrate to-morrow morning for a warrant. Gridley, a
+disappointed suitor, has been here to-day and has been alarming. We
+are not to be put in bodily fear, and that ill-conditioned fellow
+shall be held to bail again. From the ceiling, foreshortened
+Allegory, in the person of one impossible Roman upside down, points
+with the arm of Samson (out of joint, and an odd one) obtrusively
+toward the window. Why should Mr. Tulkinghorn, for such no reason,
+look out of window? Is the hand not always pointing there? So he does
+not look out of window.
+
+And if he did, what would it be to see a woman going by? There are
+women enough in the world, Mr. Tulkinghorn thinks--too many; they are
+at the bottom of all that goes wrong in it, though, for the matter of
+that, they create business for lawyers. What would it be to see a
+woman going by, even though she were going secretly? They are all
+secret. Mr. Tulkinghorn knows that very well.
+
+But they are not all like the woman who now leaves him and his house
+behind, between whose plain dress and her refined manner there is
+something exceedingly inconsistent. She should be an upper servant by
+her attire, yet in her air and step, though both are hurried and
+assumed--as far as she can assume in the muddy streets, which she
+treads with an unaccustomed foot--she is a lady. Her face is veiled,
+and still she sufficiently betrays herself to make more than one of
+those who pass her look round sharply.
+
+She never turns her head. Lady or servant, she has a purpose in her
+and can follow it. She never turns her head until she comes to the
+crossing where Jo plies with his broom. He crosses with her and begs.
+Still, she does not turn her head until she has landed on the other
+side. Then she slightly beckons to him and says, "Come here!"
+
+Jo follows her a pace or two into a quiet court.
+
+"Are you the boy I've read of in the papers?" she asked behind her
+veil.
+
+"I don't know," says Jo, staring moodily at the veil, "nothink about
+no papers. I don't know nothink about nothink at all."
+
+"Were you examined at an inquest?"
+
+"I don't know nothink about no--where I was took by the beadle, do
+you mean?" says Jo. "Was the boy's name at the inkwhich Jo?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That's me!" says Jo.
+
+"Come farther up."
+
+"You mean about the man?" says Jo, following. "Him as wos dead?"
+
+"Hush! Speak in a whisper! Yes. Did he look, when he was living, so
+very ill and poor?"
+
+"Oh, jist!" says Jo.
+
+"Did he look like--not like YOU?" says the woman with abhorrence.
+
+"Oh, not so bad as me," says Jo. "I'm a reg'lar one I am! You didn't
+know him, did you?"
+
+"How dare you ask me if I knew him?"
+
+"No offence, my lady," says Jo with much humility, for even he has
+got at the suspicion of her being a lady.
+
+"I am not a lady. I am a servant."
+
+"You are a jolly servant!" says Jo without the least idea of saying
+anything offensive, merely as a tribute of admiration.
+
+"Listen and be silent. Don't talk to me, and stand farther from me!
+Can you show me all those places that were spoken of in the account I
+read? The place he wrote for, the place he died at, the place where
+you were taken to, and the place where he was buried? Do you know the
+place where he was buried?"
+
+Jo answers with a nod, having also nodded as each other place was
+mentioned.
+
+"Go before me and show me all those dreadful places. Stop opposite to
+each, and don't speak to me unless I speak to you. Don't look back.
+Do what I want, and I will pay you well."
+
+Jo attends closely while the words are being spoken; tells them off
+on his broom-handle, finding them rather hard; pauses to consider
+their meaning; considers it satisfactory; and nods his ragged head.
+
+"I'm fly," says Jo. "But fen larks, you know. Stow hooking it!"
+
+"What does the horrible creature mean?" exclaims the servant,
+recoiling from him.
+
+"Stow cutting away, you know!" says Jo.
+
+"I don't understand you. Go on before! I will give you more money
+than you ever had in your life."
+
+Jo screws up his mouth into a whistle, gives his ragged head a rub,
+takes his broom under his arm, and leads the way, passing deftly with
+his bare feet over the hard stones and through the mud and mire.
+
+Cook's Court. Jo stops. A pause.
+
+"Who lives here?"
+
+"Him wot give him his writing and give me half a bull," says Jo in a
+whisper without looking over his shoulder.
+
+"Go on to the next."
+
+Krook's house. Jo stops again. A longer pause.
+
+"Who lives here?"
+
+"HE lived here," Jo answers as before.
+
+After a silence he is asked, "In which room?"
+
+"In the back room up there. You can see the winder from this corner.
+Up there! That's where I see him stritched out. This is the
+public-ouse where I was took to."
+
+"Go on to the next!"
+
+It is a longer walk to the next, but Jo, relieved of his first
+suspicions, sticks to the forms imposed upon him and does not look
+round. By many devious ways, reeking with offence of many kinds, they
+come to the little tunnel of a court, and to the gas-lamp (lighted
+now), and to the iron gate.
+
+"He was put there," says Jo, holding to the bars and looking in.
+
+"Where? Oh, what a scene of horror!"
+
+"There!" says Jo, pointing. "Over yinder. Among them piles of bones,
+and close to that there kitchin winder! They put him wery nigh the
+top. They was obliged to stamp upon it to git it in. I could unkiver
+it for you with my broom if the gate was open. That's why they locks
+it, I s'pose," giving it a shake. "It's always locked. Look at the
+rat!" cries Jo, excited. "Hi! Look! There he goes! Ho! Into the
+ground!"
+
+The servant shrinks into a corner, into a corner of that hideous
+archway, with its deadly stains contaminating her dress; and putting
+out her two hands and passionately telling him to keep away from her,
+for he is loathsome to her, so remains for some moments. Jo stands
+staring and is still staring when she recovers herself.
+
+"Is this place of abomination consecrated ground?"
+
+"I don't know nothink of consequential ground," says Jo, still
+staring.
+
+"Is it blessed?"
+
+"Which?" says Jo, in the last degree amazed.
+
+"Is it blessed?"
+
+"I'm blest if I know," says Jo, staring more than ever; "but I
+shouldn't think it warn't. Blest?" repeats Jo, something troubled in
+his mind. "It an't done it much good if it is. Blest? I should think
+it was t'othered myself. But I don't know nothink!"
+
+The servant takes as little heed of what he says as she seems to take
+of what she has said herself. She draws off her glove to get some
+money from her purse. Jo silently notices how white and small her
+hand is and what a jolly servant she must be to wear such sparkling
+rings.
+
+She drops a piece of money in his hand without touching it, and
+shuddering as their hands approach. "Now," she adds, "show me the
+spot again!"
+
+Jo thrusts the handle of his broom between the bars of the gate, and
+with his utmost power of elaboration, points it out. At length,
+looking aside to see if he has made himself intelligible, he finds
+that he is alone.
+
+His first proceeding is to hold the piece of money to the gas-light
+and to be overpowered at finding that it is yellow--gold. His next is
+to give it a one-sided bite at the edge as a test of its quality.
+His next, to put it in his mouth for safety and to sweep the
+step and passage with great care. His job done, he sets off for
+Tom-all-Alone's, stopping in the light of innumerable gas-lamps to
+produce the piece of gold and give it another one-sided bite as a
+reassurance of its being genuine.
+
+The Mercury in powder is in no want of society to-night, for my Lady
+goes to a grand dinner and three or four balls. Sir Leicester is
+fidgety down at Chesney Wold, with no better company than the gout;
+he complains to Mrs. Rouncewell that the rain makes such a monotonous
+pattering on the terrace that he can't read the paper even by the
+fireside in his own snug dressing-room.
+
+"Sir Leicester would have done better to try the other side of the
+house, my dear," says Mrs. Rouncewell to Rosa. "His dressing-room is
+on my Lady's side. And in all these years I never heard the step upon
+the Ghost's Walk more distinct than it is to-night!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+Esther's Narrative
+
+
+Richard very often came to see us while we remained in London (though
+he soon failed in his letter-writing), and with his quick abilities,
+his good spirits, his good temper, his gaiety and freshness, was
+always delightful. But though I liked him more and more the better I
+knew him, I still felt more and more how much it was to be regretted
+that he had been educated in no habits of application and
+concentration. The system which had addressed him in exactly the same
+manner as it had addressed hundreds of other boys, all varying in
+character and capacity, had enabled him to dash through his tasks,
+always with fair credit and often with distinction, but in a fitful,
+dazzling way that had confirmed his reliance on those very qualities
+in himself which it had been most desirable to direct and train. They
+were good qualities, without which no high place can be meritoriously
+won, but like fire and water, though excellent servants, they were
+very bad masters. If they had been under Richard's direction, they
+would have been his friends; but Richard being under their direction,
+they became his enemies.
+
+I write down these opinions not because I believe that this or any
+other thing was so because I thought so, but only because I did think
+so and I want to be quite candid about all I thought and did. These
+were my thoughts about Richard. I thought I often observed besides
+how right my guardian was in what he had said, and that the
+uncertainties and delays of the Chancery suit had imparted to his
+nature something of the careless spirit of a gamester who felt that
+he was part of a great gaming system.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Bayham Badger coming one afternoon when my guardian was
+not at home, in the course of conversation I naturally inquired after
+Richard.
+
+"Why, Mr. Carstone," said Mrs. Badger, "is very well and is, I assure
+you, a great acquisition to our society. Captain Swosser used to say
+of me that I was always better than land a-head and a breeze a-starn
+to the midshipmen's mess when the purser's junk had become as tough
+as the fore-topsel weather earings. It was his naval way of
+mentioning generally that I was an acquisition to any society. I may
+render the same tribute, I am sure, to Mr. Carstone. But I--you won't
+think me premature if I mention it?"
+
+I said no, as Mrs. Badger's insinuating tone seemed to require such
+an answer.
+
+"Nor Miss Clare?" said Mrs. Bayham Badger sweetly.
+
+Ada said no, too, and looked uneasy.
+
+"Why, you see, my dears," said Mrs. Badger, "--you'll excuse me
+calling you my dears?"
+
+We entreated Mrs. Badger not to mention it.
+
+"Because you really are, if I may take the liberty of saying so,"
+pursued Mrs. Badger, "so perfectly charming. You see, my dears, that
+although I am still young--or Mr. Bayham Badger pays me the
+compliment of saying so--"
+
+"No," Mr. Badger called out like some one contradicting at a public
+meeting. "Not at all!"
+
+"Very well," smiled Mrs. Badger, "we will say still young."
+
+"Undoubtedly," said Mr. Badger.
+
+"My dears, though still young, I have had many opportunities of
+observing young men. There were many such on board the dear old
+Crippler, I assure you. After that, when I was with Captain Swosser
+in the Mediterranean, I embraced every opportunity of knowing and
+befriending the midshipmen under Captain Swosser's command. YOU never
+heard them called the young gentlemen, my dears, and probably would
+not understand allusions to their pipe-claying their weekly accounts,
+but it is otherwise with me, for blue water has been a second home to
+me, and I have been quite a sailor. Again, with Professor Dingo."
+
+"A man of European reputation," murmured Mr. Badger.
+
+"When I lost my dear first and became the wife of my dear second,"
+said Mrs. Badger, speaking of her former husbands as if they were
+parts of a charade, "I still enjoyed opportunities of observing
+youth. The class attendant on Professor Dingo's lectures was a large
+one, and it became my pride, as the wife of an eminent scientific man
+seeking herself in science the utmost consolation it could impart, to
+throw our house open to the students as a kind of Scientific
+Exchange. Every Tuesday evening there was lemonade and a mixed
+biscuit for all who chose to partake of those refreshments. And there
+was science to an unlimited extent."
+
+"Remarkable assemblies those, Miss Summerson," said Mr. Badger
+reverentially. "There must have been great intellectual friction
+going on there under the auspices of such a man!"
+
+"And now," pursued Mrs. Badger, "now that I am the wife of my dear
+third, Mr. Badger, I still pursue those habits of observation which
+were formed during the lifetime of Captain Swosser and adapted to new
+and unexpected purposes during the lifetime of Professor Dingo. I
+therefore have not come to the consideration of Mr. Carstone as a
+neophyte. And yet I am very much of the opinion, my dears, that he
+has not chosen his profession advisedly."
+
+Ada looked so very anxious now that I asked Mrs. Badger on what she
+founded her supposition.
+
+"My dear Miss Summerson," she replied, "on Mr. Carstone's character
+and conduct. He is of such a very easy disposition that probably he
+would never think it worth-while to mention how he really feels, but
+he feels languid about the profession. He has not that positive
+interest in it which makes it his vocation. If he has any decided
+impression in reference to it, I should say it was that it is a
+tiresome pursuit. Now, this is not promising. Young men like Mr.
+Allan Woodcourt who take it from a strong interest in all that it can
+do will find some reward in it through a great deal of work for a
+very little money and through years of considerable endurance and
+disappointment. But I am quite convinced that this would never be the
+case with Mr. Carstone."
+
+"Does Mr. Badger think so too?" asked Ada timidly.
+
+"Why," said Mr. Badger, "to tell the truth, Miss Clare, this view of
+the matter had not occurred to me until Mrs. Badger mentioned it. But
+when Mrs. Badger put it in that light, I naturally gave great
+consideration to it, knowing that Mrs. Badger's mind, in addition to
+its natural advantages, has had the rare advantage of being formed by
+two such very distinguished (I will even say illustrious) public men
+as Captain Swosser of the Royal Navy and Professor Dingo. The
+conclusion at which I have arrived is--in short, is Mrs. Badger's
+conclusion."
+
+"It was a maxim of Captain Swosser's," said Mrs. Badger, "speaking in
+his figurative naval manner, that when you make pitch hot, you cannot
+make it too hot; and that if you only have to swab a plank, you
+should swab it as if Davy Jones were after you. It appears to me that
+this maxim is applicable to the medical as well as to the nautical
+profession.
+
+"To all professions," observed Mr. Badger. "It was admirably said by
+Captain Swosser. Beautifully said."
+
+"People objected to Professor Dingo when we were staying in the north
+of Devon after our marriage," said Mrs. Badger, "that he disfigured
+some of the houses and other buildings by chipping off fragments of
+those edifices with his little geological hammer. But the professor
+replied that he knew of no building save the Temple of Science. The
+principle is the same, I think?"
+
+"Precisely the same," said Mr. Badger. "Finely expressed! The
+professor made the same remark, Miss Summerson, in his last illness,
+when (his mind wandering) he insisted on keeping his little hammer
+under the pillow and chipping at the countenances of the attendants.
+The ruling passion!"
+
+Although we could have dispensed with the length at which Mr. and
+Mrs. Badger pursued the conversation, we both felt that it was
+disinterested in them to express the opinion they had communicated to
+us and that there was a great probability of its being sound. We
+agreed to say nothing to Mr. Jarndyce until we had spoken to Richard;
+and as he was coming next evening, we resolved to have a very serious
+talk with him.
+
+So after he had been a little while with Ada, I went in and found my
+darling (as I knew she would be) prepared to consider him thoroughly
+right in whatever he said.
+
+"And how do you get on, Richard?" said I. I always sat down on the
+other side of him. He made quite a sister of me.
+
+"Oh! Well enough!" said Richard.
+
+"He can't say better than that, Esther, can he?" cried my pet
+triumphantly.
+
+I tried to look at my pet in the wisest manner, but of course I
+couldn't.
+
+"Well enough?" I repeated.
+
+"Yes," said Richard, "well enough. It's rather jog-trotty and
+humdrum. But it'll do as well as anything else!"
+
+"Oh! My dear Richard!" I remonstrated.
+
+"What's the matter?" said Richard.
+
+"Do as well as anything else!"
+
+"I don't think there's any harm in that, Dame Durden," said Ada,
+looking so confidingly at me across him; "because if it will do as
+well as anything else, it will do very well, I hope."
+
+"Oh, yes, I hope so," returned Richard, carelessly tossing his hair
+from his forehead. "After all, it may be only a kind of probation
+till our suit is--I forgot though. I am not to mention the suit.
+Forbidden ground! Oh, yes, it's all right enough. Let us talk about
+something else."
+
+Ada would have done so willingly, and with a full persuasion that we
+had brought the question to a most satisfactory state. But I thought
+it would be useless to stop there, so I began again.
+
+"No, but Richard," said I, "and my dear Ada! Consider how important
+it is to you both, and what a point of honour it is towards your
+cousin, that you, Richard, should be quite in earnest without any
+reservation. I think we had better talk about this, really, Ada. It
+will be too late very soon."
+
+"Oh, yes! We must talk about it!" said Ada. "But I think Richard is
+right."
+
+What was the use of my trying to look wise when she was so pretty,
+and so engaging, and so fond of him!
+
+"Mr. and Mrs. Badger were here yesterday, Richard," said I, "and they
+seemed disposed to think that you had no great liking for the
+profession."
+
+"Did they though?" said Richard. "Oh! Well, that rather alters the
+case, because I had no idea that they thought so, and I should not
+have liked to disappoint or inconvenience them. The fact is, I don't
+care much about it. But, oh, it don't matter! It'll do as well as
+anything else!"
+
+"You hear him, Ada!" said I.
+
+"The fact is," Richard proceeded, half thoughtfully and half
+jocosely, "it is not quite in my way. I don't take to it. And I get
+too much of Mrs. Bayham Badger's first and second."
+
+"I am sure THAT'S very natural!" cried Ada, quite delighted. "The
+very thing we both said yesterday, Esther!"
+
+"Then," pursued Richard, "it's monotonous, and to-day is too like
+yesterday, and to-morrow is too like to-day."
+
+"But I am afraid," said I, "this is an objection to all kinds of
+application--to life itself, except under some very uncommon
+circumstances."
+
+"Do you think so?" returned Richard, still considering. "Perhaps! Ha!
+Why, then, you know," he added, suddenly becoming gay again, "we
+travel outside a circle to what I said just now. It'll do as well as
+anything else. Oh, it's all right enough! Let us talk about something
+else."
+
+But even Ada, with her loving face--and if it had seemed innocent and
+trusting when I first saw it in that memorable November fog, how much
+more did it seem now when I knew her innocent and trusting
+heart--even Ada shook her head at this and looked serious. So I
+thought it a good opportunity to hint to Richard that if he were
+sometimes a little careless of himself, I was very sure he never
+meant to be careless of Ada, and that it was a part of his
+affectionate consideration for her not to slight the importance of a
+step that might influence both their lives. This made him almost
+grave.
+
+"My dear Mother Hubbard," he said, "that's the very thing! I have
+thought of that several times and have been quite angry with myself
+for meaning to be so much in earnest and--somehow--not exactly being
+so. I don't know how it is; I seem to want something or other to
+stand by. Even you have no idea how fond I am of Ada (my darling
+cousin, I love you, so much!), but I don't settle down to constancy
+in other things. It's such uphill work, and it takes such a time!"
+said Richard with an air of vexation.
+
+"That may be," I suggested, "because you don't like what you have
+chosen."
+
+"Poor fellow!" said Ada. "I am sure I don't wonder at it!"
+
+No. It was not of the least use my trying to look wise. I tried
+again, but how could I do it, or how could it have any effect if I
+could, while Ada rested her clasped hands upon his shoulder and while
+he looked at her tender blue eyes, and while they looked at him!
+
+"You see, my precious girl," said Richard, passing her golden curls
+through and through his hand, "I was a little hasty perhaps; or I
+misunderstood my own inclinations perhaps. They don't seem to lie in
+that direction. I couldn't tell till I tried. Now the question is
+whether it's worth-while to undo all that has been done. It seems
+like making a great disturbance about nothing particular."
+
+"My dear Richard," said I, "how CAN you say about nothing
+particular?"
+
+"I don't mean absolutely that," he returned. "I mean that it MAY be
+nothing particular because I may never want it."
+
+Both Ada and I urged, in reply, not only that it was decidedly
+worth-while to undo what had been done, but that it must be undone. I
+then asked Richard whether he had thought of any more congenial
+pursuit.
+
+"There, my dear Mrs. Shipton," said Richard, "you touch me home. Yes,
+I have. I have been thinking that the law is the boy for me."
+
+"The law!" repeated Ada as if she were afraid of the name.
+
+"If I went into Kenge's office," said Richard, "and if I were placed
+under articles to Kenge, I should have my eye on the--hum!--the
+forbidden ground--and should be able to study it, and master it, and
+to satisfy myself that it was not neglected and was being properly
+conducted. I should be able to look after Ada's interests and my own
+interests (the same thing!); and I should peg away at Blackstone and
+all those fellows with the most tremendous ardour."
+
+I was not by any means so sure of that, and I saw how his hankering
+after the vague things yet to come of those long-deferred hopes cast
+a shade on Ada's face. But I thought it best to encourage him in any
+project of continuous exertion, and only advised him to be quite sure
+that his mind was made up now.
+
+"My dear Minerva," said Richard, "I am as steady as you are. I made a
+mistake; we are all liable to mistakes; I won't do so any more, and
+I'll become such a lawyer as is not often seen. That is, you know,"
+said Richard, relapsing into doubt, "if it really is worth-while,
+after all, to make such a disturbance about nothing particular!"
+
+This led to our saying again, with a great deal of gravity, all that
+we had said already and to our coming to much the same conclusion
+afterwards. But we so strongly advised Richard to be frank and open
+with Mr. Jarndyce, without a moment's delay, and his disposition was
+naturally so opposed to concealment that he sought him out at once
+(taking us with him) and made a full avowal. "Rick," said my
+guardian, after hearing him attentively, "we can retreat with honour,
+and we will. But we must be careful--for our cousin's sake, Rick, for
+our cousin's sake--that we make no more such mistakes. Therefore, in
+the matter of the law, we will have a good trial before we decide. We
+will look before we leap, and take plenty of time about it."
+
+Richard's energy was of such an impatient and fitful kind that he
+would have liked nothing better than to have gone to Mr. Kenge's
+office in that hour and to have entered into articles with him on the
+spot. Submitting, however, with a good grace to the caution that we
+had shown to be so necessary, he contented himself with sitting down
+among us in his lightest spirits and talking as if his one unvarying
+purpose in life from childhood had been that one which now held
+possession of him. My guardian was very kind and cordial with him,
+but rather grave, enough so to cause Ada, when he had departed and we
+were going upstairs to bed, to say, "Cousin John, I hope you don't
+think the worse of Richard?"
+
+"No, my love," said he.
+
+"Because it was very natural that Richard should be mistaken in such
+a difficult case. It is not uncommon."
+
+"No, no, my love," said he. "Don't look unhappy."
+
+"Oh, I am not unhappy, cousin John!" said Ada, smiling cheerfully,
+with her hand upon his shoulder, where she had put it in bidding him
+good night. "But I should be a little so if you thought at all the
+worse of Richard."
+
+"My dear," said Mr. Jarndyce, "I should think the worse of him only
+if you were ever in the least unhappy through his means. I should be
+more disposed to quarrel with myself even then, than with poor Rick,
+for I brought you together. But, tut, all this is nothing! He has
+time before him, and the race to run. I think the worse of him? Not
+I, my loving cousin! And not you, I swear!"
+
+"No, indeed, cousin John," said Ada, "I am sure I could not--I am
+sure I would not--think any ill of Richard if the whole world did. I
+could, and I would, think better of him then than at any other time!"
+
+So quietly and honestly she said it, with her hands upon his
+shoulders--both hands now--and looking up into his face, like the
+picture of truth!
+
+"I think," said my guardian, thoughtfully regarding her, "I think it
+must be somewhere written that the virtues of the mothers shall
+occasionally be visited on the children, as well as the sins of the
+father. Good night, my rosebud. Good night, little woman. Pleasant
+slumbers! Happy dreams!"
+
+This was the first time I ever saw him follow Ada with his eyes with
+something of a shadow on their benevolent expression. I well
+remembered the look with which he had contemplated her and Richard
+when she was singing in the firelight; it was but a very little while
+since he had watched them passing down the room in which the sun was
+shining, and away into the shade; but his glance was changed, and
+even the silent look of confidence in me which now followed it once
+more was not quite so hopeful and untroubled as it had originally
+been.
+
+Ada praised Richard more to me that night than ever she had praised
+him yet. She went to sleep with a little bracelet he had given her
+clasped upon her arm. I fancied she was dreaming of him when I kissed
+her cheek after she had slept an hour and saw how tranquil and happy
+she looked.
+
+For I was so little inclined to sleep myself that night that I sat up
+working. It would not be worth mentioning for its own sake, but I was
+wakeful and rather low-spirited. I don't know why. At least I don't
+think I know why. At least, perhaps I do, but I don't think it
+matters.
+
+At any rate, I made up my mind to be so dreadfully industrious that I
+would leave myself not a moment's leisure to be low-spirited. For I
+naturally said, "Esther! You to be low-spirited. YOU!" And it really
+was time to say so, for I--yes, I really did see myself in the glass,
+almost crying. "As if you had anything to make you unhappy, instead
+of everything to make you happy, you ungrateful heart!" said I.
+
+If I could have made myself go to sleep, I would have done it
+directly, but not being able to do that, I took out of my basket some
+ornamental work for our house (I mean Bleak House) that I was busy
+with at that time and sat down to it with great determination. It was
+necessary to count all the stitches in that work, and I resolved to
+go on with it until I couldn't keep my eyes open, and then to go to
+bed.
+
+I soon found myself very busy. But I had left some silk downstairs in
+a work-table drawer in the temporary growlery, and coming to a stop
+for want of it, I took my candle and went softly down to get it. To
+my great surprise, on going in I found my guardian still there, and
+sitting looking at the ashes. He was lost in thought, his book lay
+unheeded by his side, his silvered iron-grey hair was scattered
+confusedly upon his forehead as though his hand had been wandering
+among it while his thoughts were elsewhere, and his face looked worn.
+Almost frightened by coming upon him so unexpectedly, I stood still
+for a moment and should have retired without speaking had he not, in
+again passing his hand abstractedly through his hair, seen me and
+started.
+
+"Esther!"
+
+I told him what I had come for.
+
+"At work so late, my dear?"
+
+"I am working late to-night," said I, "because I couldn't sleep and
+wished to tire myself. But, dear guardian, you are late too, and look
+weary. You have no trouble, I hope, to keep you waking?"
+
+"None, little woman, that YOU would readily understand," said he.
+
+He spoke in a regretful tone so new to me that I inwardly repeated,
+as if that would help me to his meaning, "That I could readily
+understand!"
+
+"Remain a moment, Esther," said he, "You were in my thoughts."
+
+"I hope I was not the trouble, guardian?"
+
+He slightly waved his hand and fell into his usual manner. The change
+was so remarkable, and he appeared to make it by dint of so much
+self-command, that I found myself again inwardly repeating, "None
+that I could understand!"
+
+"Little woman," said my guardian, "I was thinking--that is, I have
+been thinking since I have been sitting here--that you ought to know
+of your own history all I know. It is very little. Next to nothing."
+
+"Dear guardian," I replied, "when you spoke to me before on that
+subject--"
+
+"But since then," he gravely interposed, anticipating what I meant to
+say, "I have reflected that your having anything to ask me, and my
+having anything to tell you, are different considerations, Esther. It
+is perhaps my duty to impart to you the little I know."
+
+"If you think so, guardian, it is right."
+
+"I think so," he returned very gently, and kindly, and very
+distinctly. "My dear, I think so now. If any real disadvantage can
+attach to your position in the mind of any man or woman worth a
+thought, it is right that you at least of all the world should not
+magnify it to yourself by having vague impressions of its nature."
+
+I sat down and said after a little effort to be as calm as I ought to
+be, "One of my earliest remembrances, guardian, is of these words:
+'Your mother, Esther, is your disgrace, and you were hers. The time
+will come, and soon enough, when you will understand this better, and
+will feel it too, as no one save a woman can.'" I had covered my face
+with my hands in repeating the words, but I took them away now with a
+better kind of shame, I hope, and told him that to him I owed the
+blessing that I had from my childhood to that hour never, never,
+never felt it. He put up his hand as if to stop me. I well knew that
+he was never to be thanked, and said no more.
+
+"Nine years, my dear," he said after thinking for a little while,
+"have passed since I received a letter from a lady living in
+seclusion, written with a stern passion and power that rendered it
+unlike all other letters I have ever read. It was written to me (as
+it told me in so many words), perhaps because it was the writer's
+idiosyncrasy to put that trust in me, perhaps because it was mine to
+justify it. It told me of a child, an orphan girl then twelve years
+old, in some such cruel words as those which live in your
+remembrance. It told me that the writer had bred her in secrecy from
+her birth, had blotted out all trace of her existence, and that if
+the writer were to die before the child became a woman, she would be
+left entirely friendless, nameless, and unknown. It asked me to
+consider if I would, in that case, finish what the writer had begun."
+
+I listened in silence and looked attentively at him.
+
+"Your early recollection, my dear, will supply the gloomy medium
+through which all this was seen and expressed by the writer, and the
+distorted religion which clouded her mind with impressions of the
+need there was for the child to expiate an offence of which she was
+quite innocent. I felt concerned for the little creature, in her
+darkened life, and replied to the letter."
+
+I took his hand and kissed it.
+
+"It laid the injunction on me that I should never propose to see the
+writer, who had long been estranged from all intercourse with the
+world, but who would see a confidential agent if I would appoint one.
+I accredited Mr. Kenge. The lady said, of her own accord and not of
+his seeking, that her name was an assumed one. That she was, if there
+were any ties of blood in such a case, the child's aunt. That more
+than this she would never (and he was well persuaded of the
+steadfastness of her resolution) for any human consideration
+disclose. My dear, I have told you all."
+
+I held his hand for a little while in mine.
+
+"I saw my ward oftener than she saw me," he added, cheerily making
+light of it, "and I always knew she was beloved, useful, and happy.
+She repays me twenty-thousandfold, and twenty more to that, every
+hour in every day!"
+
+"And oftener still," said I, "she blesses the guardian who is a
+father to her!"
+
+At the word father, I saw his former trouble come into his face. He
+subdued it as before, and it was gone in an instant; but it had been
+there and it had come so swiftly upon my words that I felt as if they
+had given him a shock. I again inwardly repeated, wondering, "That I
+could readily understand. None that I could readily understand!" No,
+it was true. I did not understand it. Not for many and many a day.
+
+"Take a fatherly good night, my dear," said he, kissing me on the
+forehead, "and so to rest. These are late hours for working and
+thinking. You do that for all of us, all day long, little
+housekeeper!"
+
+I neither worked nor thought any more that night. I opened my
+grateful heart to heaven in thankfulness for its providence to me and
+its care of me, and fell asleep.
+
+We had a visitor next day. Mr. Allan Woodcourt came. He came to take
+leave of us; he had settled to do so beforehand. He was going to
+China and to India as a surgeon on board ship. He was to be away a
+long, long time.
+
+I believe--at least I know--that he was not rich. All his widowed
+mother could spare had been spent in qualifying him for his
+profession. It was not lucrative to a young practitioner, with very
+little influence in London; and although he was, night and day, at
+the service of numbers of poor people and did wonders of gentleness
+and skill for them, he gained very little by it in money. He was
+seven years older than I. Not that I need mention it, for it hardly
+seems to belong to anything.
+
+I think--I mean, he told us--that he had been in practice three or
+four years and that if he could have hoped to contend through three
+or four more, he would not have made the voyage on which he was
+bound. But he had no fortune or private means, and so he was going
+away. He had been to see us several times altogether. We thought it a
+pity he should go away. Because he was distinguished in his art among
+those who knew it best, and some of the greatest men belonging to it
+had a high opinion of him.
+
+When he came to bid us good-bye, he brought his mother with him for
+the first time. She was a pretty old lady, with bright black eyes,
+but she seemed proud. She came from Wales and had had, a long time
+ago, an eminent person for an ancestor, of the name of Morgan
+ap-Kerrig--of some place that sounded like Gimlet--who was the most
+illustrious person that ever was known and all of whose relations
+were a sort of royal family. He appeared to have passed his life
+in always getting up into mountains and fighting somebody; and
+a bard whose name sounded like Crumlinwallinwer had sung his
+praises in a piece which was called, as nearly as I could catch it,
+Mewlinnwillinwodd.
+
+Mrs. Woodcourt, after expatiating to us on the fame of her great
+kinsman, said that no doubt wherever her son Allan went he would
+remember his pedigree and would on no account form an alliance below
+it. She told him that there were many handsome English ladies in
+India who went out on speculation, and that there were some to be
+picked up with property, but that neither charms nor wealth would
+suffice for the descendant from such a line without birth, which must
+ever be the first consideration. She talked so much about birth that
+for a moment I half fancied, and with pain--But what an idle fancy to
+suppose that she could think or care what MINE was!
+
+Mr. Woodcourt seemed a little distressed by her prolixity, but he was
+too considerate to let her see it and contrived delicately to bring
+the conversation round to making his acknowledgments to my guardian
+for his hospitality and for the very happy hours--he called them the
+very happy hours--he had passed with us. The recollection of them, he
+said, would go with him wherever he went and would be always
+treasured. And so we gave him our hands, one after another--at least,
+they did--and I did; and so he put his lips to Ada's hand--and to
+mine; and so he went away upon his long, long voyage!
+
+I was very busy indeed all day and wrote directions home to the
+servants, and wrote notes for my guardian, and dusted his books and
+papers, and jingled my housekeeping keys a good deal, one way and
+another. I was still busy between the lights, singing and working by
+the window, when who should come in but Caddy, whom I had no
+expectation of seeing!
+
+"Why, Caddy, my dear," said I, "what beautiful flowers!"
+
+She had such an exquisite little nosegay in her hand.
+
+"Indeed, I think so, Esther," replied Caddy. "They are the loveliest
+I ever saw."
+
+"Prince, my dear?" said I in a whisper.
+
+"No," answered Caddy, shaking her head and holding them to me to
+smell. "Not Prince."
+
+"Well, to be sure, Caddy!" said I. "You must have two lovers!"
+
+"What? Do they look like that sort of thing?" said Caddy.
+
+"Do they look like that sort of thing?" I repeated, pinching her
+cheek.
+
+Caddy only laughed in return, and telling me that she had come for
+half an hour, at the expiration of which time Prince would be waiting
+for her at the corner, sat chatting with me and Ada in the window,
+every now and then handing me the flowers again or trying how they
+looked against my hair. At last, when she was going, she took me into
+my room and put them in my dress.
+
+"For me?" said I, surprised.
+
+"For you," said Caddy with a kiss. "They were left behind by
+somebody."
+
+"Left behind?"
+
+"At poor Miss Flite's," said Caddy. "Somebody who has been very good
+to her was hurrying away an hour ago to join a ship and left these
+flowers behind. No, no! Don't take them out. Let the pretty little
+things lie here," said Caddy, adjusting them with a careful hand,
+"because I was present myself, and I shouldn't wonder if somebody
+left them on purpose!"
+
+"Do they look like that sort of thing?" said Ada, coming laughingly
+behind me and clasping me merrily round the waist. "Oh, yes, indeed
+they do, Dame Durden! They look very, very like that sort of thing.
+Oh, very like it indeed, my dear!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+Lady Dedlock
+
+
+It was not so easy as it had appeared at first to arrange for
+Richard's making a trial of Mr. Kenge's office. Richard himself was
+the chief impediment. As soon as he had it in his power to leave Mr.
+Badger at any moment, he began to doubt whether he wanted to leave
+him at all. He didn't know, he said, really. It wasn't a bad
+profession; he couldn't assert that he disliked it; perhaps he liked
+it as well as he liked any other--suppose he gave it one more chance!
+Upon that, he shut himself up for a few weeks with some books and
+some bones and seemed to acquire a considerable fund of information
+with great rapidity. His fervour, after lasting about a month, began
+to cool, and when it was quite cooled, began to grow warm again. His
+vacillations between law and medicine lasted so long that midsummer
+arrived before he finally separated from Mr. Badger and entered on an
+experimental course of Messrs. Kenge and Carboy. For all his
+waywardness, he took great credit to himself as being determined to
+be in earnest "this time." And he was so good-natured throughout, and
+in such high spirits, and so fond of Ada, that it was very difficult
+indeed to be otherwise than pleased with him.
+
+"As to Mr. Jarndyce," who, I may mention, found the wind much given,
+during this period, to stick in the east; "As to Mr. Jarndyce,"
+Richard would say to me, "he is the finest fellow in the world,
+Esther! I must be particularly careful, if it were only for his
+satisfaction, to take myself well to task and have a regular wind-up
+of this business now."
+
+The idea of his taking himself well to task, with that laughing face
+and heedless manner and with a fancy that everything could catch and
+nothing could hold, was ludicrously anomalous. However, he told us
+between-whiles that he was doing it to such an extent that he
+wondered his hair didn't turn grey. His regular wind-up of the
+business was (as I have said) that he went to Mr. Kenge's about
+midsummer to try how he liked it.
+
+All this time he was, in money affairs, what I have described him in
+a former illustration--generous, profuse, wildly careless, but fully
+persuaded that he was rather calculating and prudent. I happened to
+say to Ada, in his presence, half jestingly, half seriously, about
+the time of his going to Mr. Kenge's, that he needed to have
+Fortunatus' purse, he made so light of money, which he answered in
+this way, "My jewel of a dear cousin, you hear this old woman! Why
+does she say that? Because I gave eight pounds odd (or whatever it
+was) for a certain neat waistcoat and buttons a few days ago. Now, if
+I had stayed at Badger's I should have been obliged to spend twelve
+pounds at a blow for some heart-breaking lecture-fees. So I make four
+pounds--in a lump--by the transaction!"
+
+It was a question much discussed between him and my guardian what
+arrangements should be made for his living in London while he
+experimented on the law, for we had long since gone back to Bleak
+House, and it was too far off to admit of his coming there oftener
+than once a week. My guardian told me that if Richard were to settle
+down at Mr. Kenge's he would take some apartments or chambers where
+we too could occasionally stay for a few days at a time; "but, little
+woman," he added, rubbing his head very significantly, "he hasn't
+settled down there yet!" The discussions ended in our hiring for him,
+by the month, a neat little furnished lodging in a quiet old house
+near Queen Square. He immediately began to spend all the money he had
+in buying the oddest little ornaments and luxuries for this lodging;
+and so often as Ada and I dissuaded him from making any purchase that
+he had in contemplation which was particularly unnecessary and
+expensive, he took credit for what it would have cost and made out
+that to spend anything less on something else was to save the
+difference.
+
+While these affairs were in abeyance, our visit to Mr. Boythorn's was
+postponed. At length, Richard having taken possession of his lodging,
+there was nothing to prevent our departure. He could have gone with
+us at that time of the year very well, but he was in the full novelty
+of his new position and was making most energetic attempts to unravel
+the mysteries of the fatal suit. Consequently we went without him,
+and my darling was delighted to praise him for being so busy.
+
+We made a pleasant journey down into Lincolnshire by the coach and
+had an entertaining companion in Mr. Skimpole. His furniture had been
+all cleared off, it appeared, by the person who took possession of it
+on his blue-eyed daughter's birthday, but he seemed quite relieved to
+think that it was gone. Chairs and table, he said, were wearisome
+objects; they were monotonous ideas, they had no variety of
+expression, they looked you out of countenance, and you looked them
+out of countenance. How pleasant, then, to be bound to no particular
+chairs and tables, but to sport like a butterfly among all the
+furniture on hire, and to flit from rosewood to mahogany, and from
+mahogany to walnut, and from this shape to that, as the humour took
+one!
+
+"The oddity of the thing is," said Mr. Skimpole with a quickened
+sense of the ludicrous, "that my chairs and tables were not paid for,
+and yet my landlord walks off with them as composedly as possible.
+Now, that seems droll! There is something grotesque in it. The chair
+and table merchant never engaged to pay my landlord my rent. Why
+should my landlord quarrel with HIM? If I have a pimple on my nose
+which is disagreeable to my landlord's peculiar ideas of beauty, my
+landlord has no business to scratch my chair and table merchant's
+nose, which has no pimple on it. His reasoning seems defective!"
+
+"Well," said my guardian good-humouredly, "it's pretty clear that
+whoever became security for those chairs and tables will have to pay
+for them."
+
+"Exactly!" returned Mr. Skimpole. "That's the crowning point of
+unreason in the business! I said to my landlord, 'My good man, you
+are not aware that my excellent friend Jarndyce will have to pay for
+those things that you are sweeping off in that indelicate manner.
+Have you no consideration for HIS property?' He hadn't the least."
+
+"And refused all proposals," said my guardian.
+
+"Refused all proposals," returned Mr. Skimpole. "I made him business
+proposals. I had him into my room. I said, 'You are a man of
+business, I believe?' He replied, 'I am,' 'Very well,' said I, 'now
+let us be business-like. Here is an inkstand, here are pens and
+paper, here are wafers. What do you want? I have occupied your house
+for a considerable period, I believe to our mutual satisfaction until
+this unpleasant misunderstanding arose; let us be at once friendly
+and business-like. What do you want?' In reply to this, he made use
+of the figurative expression--which has something Eastern about
+it--that he had never seen the colour of my money. 'My amiable
+friend,' said I, 'I never have any money. I never know anything about
+money.' 'Well, sir,' said he, 'what do you offer if I give you time?'
+'My good fellow,' said I, 'I have no idea of time; but you say you
+are a man of business, and whatever you can suggest to be done in a
+business-like way with pen, and ink, and paper--and wafers--I am
+ready to do. Don't pay yourself at another man's expense (which is
+foolish), but be business-like!' However, he wouldn't be, and there
+was an end of it."
+
+If these were some of the inconveniences of Mr. Skimpole's childhood,
+it assuredly possessed its advantages too. On the journey he had a
+very good appetite for such refreshment as came in our way (including
+a basket of choice hothouse peaches), but never thought of paying for
+anything. So when the coachman came round for his fee, he pleasantly
+asked him what he considered a very good fee indeed, now--a liberal
+one--and on his replying half a crown for a single passenger, said it
+was little enough too, all things considered, and left Mr. Jarndyce
+to give it him.
+
+It was delightful weather. The green corn waved so beautifully, the
+larks sang so joyfully, the hedges were so full of wild flowers, the
+trees were so thickly out in leaf, the bean-fields, with a light wind
+blowing over them, filled the air with such a delicious fragrance!
+Late in the afternoon we came to the market-town where we were to
+alight from the coach--a dull little town with a church-spire, and a
+marketplace, and a market-cross, and one intensely sunny street, and
+a pond with an old horse cooling his legs in it, and a very few men
+sleepily lying and standing about in narrow little bits of shade.
+After the rustling of the leaves and the waving of the corn all along
+the road, it looked as still, as hot, as motionless a little town as
+England could produce.
+
+At the inn we found Mr. Boythorn on horseback, waiting with an open
+carriage to take us to his house, which was a few miles off. He was
+overjoyed to see us and dismounted with great alacrity.
+
+"By heaven!" said he after giving us a courteous greeting. "This a
+most infamous coach. It is the most flagrant example of an abominable
+public vehicle that ever encumbered the face of the earth. It is
+twenty-five minutes after its time this afternoon. The coachman ought
+to be put to death!"
+
+"IS he after his time?" said Mr. Skimpole, to whom he happened to
+address himself. "You know my infirmity."
+
+"Twenty-five minutes! Twenty-six minutes!" replied Mr. Boythorn,
+referring to his watch. "With two ladies in the coach, this scoundrel
+has deliberately delayed his arrival six and twenty minutes.
+Deliberately! It is impossible that it can be accidental! But his
+father--and his uncle--were the most profligate coachmen that ever
+sat upon a box."
+
+While he said this in tones of the greatest indignation, he handed us
+into the little phaeton with the utmost gentleness and was all smiles
+and pleasure.
+
+"I am sorry, ladies," he said, standing bare-headed at the
+carriage-door when all was ready, "that I am obliged to conduct you
+nearly two miles out of the way. But our direct road lies through Sir
+Leicester Dedlock's park, and in that fellow's property I have sworn
+never to set foot of mine, or horse's foot of mine, pending the
+present relations between us, while I breathe the breath of life!"
+And here, catching my guardian's eye, he broke into one of his
+tremendous laughs, which seemed to shake even the motionless little
+market-town.
+
+"Are the Dedlocks down here, Lawrence?" said my guardian as we drove
+along and Mr. Boythorn trotted on the green turf by the roadside.
+
+"Sir Arrogant Numskull is here," replied Mr. Boythorn. "Ha ha ha! Sir
+Arrogant is here, and I am glad to say, has been laid by the heels
+here. My Lady," in naming whom he always made a courtly gesture as if
+particularly to exclude her from any part in the quarrel, "is
+expected, I believe, daily. I am not in the least surprised that she
+postpones her appearance as long as possible. Whatever can have
+induced that transcendent woman to marry that effigy and figure-head
+of a baronet is one of the most impenetrable mysteries that ever
+baffled human inquiry. Ha ha ha ha!"
+
+"I suppose," said my guardian, laughing, "WE may set foot in the park
+while we are here? The prohibition does not extend to us, does it?"
+
+"I can lay no prohibition on my guests," he said, bending his head to
+Ada and me with the smiling politeness which sat so gracefully upon
+him, "except in the matter of their departure. I am only sorry that I
+cannot have the happiness of being their escort about Chesney Wold,
+which is a very fine place! But by the light of this summer day,
+Jarndyce, if you call upon the owner while you stay with me, you are
+likely to have but a cool reception. He carries himself like an
+eight-day clock at all times, like one of a race of eight-day clocks
+in gorgeous cases that never go and never went--Ha ha ha!--but he
+will have some extra stiffness, I can promise you, for the friends of
+his friend and neighbour Boythorn!"
+
+"I shall not put him to the proof," said my guardian. "He is as
+indifferent to the honour of knowing me, I dare say, as I am to the
+honour of knowing him. The air of the grounds and perhaps such a view
+of the house as any other sightseer might get are quite enough for
+me."
+
+"Well!" said Mr. Boythorn. "I am glad of it on the whole. It's in
+better keeping. I am looked upon about here as a second Ajax defying
+the lightning. Ha ha ha ha! When I go into our little church on a
+Sunday, a considerable part of the inconsiderable congregation expect
+to see me drop, scorched and withered, on the pavement under the
+Dedlock displeasure. Ha ha ha ha! I have no doubt he is surprised
+that I don't. For he is, by heaven, the most self-satisfied, and the
+shallowest, and the most coxcombical and utterly brainless ass!"
+
+Our coming to the ridge of a hill we had been ascending enabled our
+friend to point out Chesney Wold itself to us and diverted his
+attention from its master.
+
+It was a picturesque old house in a fine park richly wooded. Among
+the trees and not far from the residence he pointed out the spire of
+the little church of which he had spoken. Oh, the solemn woods over
+which the light and shadow travelled swiftly, as if heavenly wings
+were sweeping on benignant errands through the summer air; the smooth
+green slopes, the glittering water, the garden where the flowers were
+so symmetrically arranged in clusters of the richest colours, how
+beautiful they looked! The house, with gable and chimney, and tower,
+and turret, and dark doorway, and broad terrace-walk, twining among
+the balustrades of which, and lying heaped upon the vases, there was
+one great flush of roses, seemed scarcely real in its light solidity
+and in the serene and peaceful hush that rested on all around it. To
+Ada and to me, that above all appeared the pervading influence. On
+everything, house, garden, terrace, green slopes, water, old oaks,
+fern, moss, woods again, and far away across the openings in the
+prospect to the distance lying wide before us with a purple bloom
+upon it, there seemed to be such undisturbed repose.
+
+When we came into the little village and passed a small inn with the
+sign of the Dedlock Arms swinging over the road in front, Mr.
+Boythorn interchanged greetings with a young gentleman sitting on a
+bench outside the inn-door who had some fishing-tackle lying beside
+him.
+
+"That's the housekeeper's grandson, Mr. Rouncewell by name," said,
+he, "and he is in love with a pretty girl up at the house. Lady
+Dedlock has taken a fancy to the pretty girl and is going to keep her
+about her own fair person--an honour which my young friend himself
+does not at all appreciate. However, he can't marry just yet, even if
+his Rosebud were willing; so he is fain to make the best of it. In
+the meanwhile, he comes here pretty often for a day or two at a time
+to--fish. Ha ha ha ha!"
+
+"Are he and the pretty girl engaged, Mr. Boythorn?" asked Ada.
+
+"Why, my dear Miss Clare," he returned, "I think they may perhaps
+understand each other; but you will see them soon, I dare say, and I
+must learn from you on such a point--not you from me."
+
+Ada blushed, and Mr. Boythorn, trotting forward on his comely grey
+horse, dismounted at his own door and stood ready with extended arm
+and uncovered head to welcome us when we arrived.
+
+He lived in a pretty house, formerly the parsonage house, with a lawn
+in front, a bright flower-garden at the side, and a well-stocked
+orchard and kitchen-garden in the rear, enclosed with a venerable
+wall that had of itself a ripened ruddy look. But, indeed, everything
+about the place wore an aspect of maturity and abundance. The old
+lime-tree walk was like green cloisters, the very shadows of the
+cherry-trees and apple-trees were heavy with fruit, the
+gooseberry-bushes were so laden that their branches arched and rested
+on the earth, the strawberries and raspberries grew in like
+profusion, and the peaches basked by the hundred on the wall. Tumbled
+about among the spread nets and the glass frames sparkling and
+winking in the sun there were such heaps of drooping pods, and
+marrows, and cucumbers, that every foot of ground appeared a
+vegetable treasury, while the smell of sweet herbs and all kinds of
+wholesome growth (to say nothing of the neighbouring meadows where
+the hay was carrying) made the whole air a great nosegay. Such
+stillness and composure reigned within the orderly precincts of the
+old red wall that even the feathers hung in garlands to scare the
+birds hardly stirred; and the wall had such a ripening influence that
+where, here and there high up, a disused nail and scrap of list still
+clung to it, it was easy to fancy that they had mellowed with the
+changing seasons and that they had rusted and decayed according to
+the common fate.
+
+The house, though a little disorderly in comparison with the garden,
+was a real old house with settles in the chimney of the brick-floored
+kitchen and great beams across the ceilings. On one side of it was
+the terrible piece of ground in dispute, where Mr. Boythorn
+maintained a sentry in a smock-frock day and night, whose duty was
+supposed to be, in cases of aggression, immediately to ring a large
+bell hung up there for the purpose, to unchain a great bull-dog
+established in a kennel as his ally, and generally to deal
+destruction on the enemy. Not content with these precautions, Mr.
+Boythorn had himself composed and posted there, on painted boards to
+which his name was attached in large letters, the following solemn
+warnings: "Beware of the bull-dog. He is most ferocious. Lawrence
+Boythorn." "The blunderbus is loaded with slugs. Lawrence Boythorn."
+"Man-traps and spring-guns are set here at all times of the day and
+night. Lawrence Boythorn." "Take notice. That any person or persons
+audaciously presuming to trespass on this property will be punished
+with the utmost severity of private chastisement and prosecuted with
+the utmost rigour of the law. Lawrence Boythorn." These he showed us
+from the drawing-room window, while his bird was hopping about his
+head, and he laughed, "Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha!" to that extent as
+he pointed them out that I really thought he would have hurt himself.
+
+"But this is taking a good deal of trouble," said Mr. Skimpole in his
+light way, "when you are not in earnest after all."
+
+"Not in earnest!" returned Mr. Boythorn with unspeakable warmth. "Not
+in earnest! If I could have hoped to train him, I would have bought a
+lion instead of that dog and would have turned him loose upon the
+first intolerable robber who should dare to make an encroachment on
+my rights. Let Sir Leicester Dedlock consent to come out and decide
+this question by single combat, and I will meet him with any weapon
+known to mankind in any age or country. I am that much in earnest.
+Not more!"
+
+We arrived at his house on a Saturday. On the Sunday morning we all
+set forth to walk to the little church in the park. Entering the
+park, almost immediately by the disputed ground, we pursued a
+pleasant footpath winding among the verdant turf and the beautiful
+trees until it brought us to the church-porch.
+
+The congregation was extremely small and quite a rustic one with the
+exception of a large muster of servants from the house, some of whom
+were already in their seats, while others were yet dropping in. There
+were some stately footmen, and there was a perfect picture of an old
+coachman, who looked as if he were the official representative of all
+the pomps and vanities that had ever been put into his coach. There
+was a very pretty show of young women, and above them, the handsome
+old face and fine responsible portly figure of the housekeeper
+towered pre-eminent. The pretty girl of whom Mr. Boythorn had told us
+was close by her. She was so very pretty that I might have known her
+by her beauty even if I had not seen how blushingly conscious she was
+of the eyes of the young fisherman, whom I discovered not far off.
+One face, and not an agreeable one, though it was handsome, seemed
+maliciously watchful of this pretty girl, and indeed of every one and
+everything there. It was a Frenchwoman's.
+
+As the bell was yet ringing and the great people were not yet come, I
+had leisure to glance over the church, which smelt as earthy as a
+grave, and to think what a shady, ancient, solemn little church it
+was. The windows, heavily shaded by trees, admitted a subdued light
+that made the faces around me pale, and darkened the old brasses in
+the pavement and the time and damp-worn monuments, and rendered the
+sunshine in the little porch, where a monotonous ringer was working
+at the bell, inestimably bright. But a stir in that direction, a
+gathering of reverential awe in the rustic faces, and a blandly
+ferocious assumption on the part of Mr. Boythorn of being resolutely
+unconscious of somebody's existence forewarned me that the great
+people were come and that the service was going to begin.
+
+"'Enter not into judgment with thy servant, O Lord, for in thy
+sight--'"
+
+Shall I ever forget the rapid beating at my heart, occasioned by the
+look I met as I stood up! Shall I ever forget the manner in which
+those handsome proud eyes seemed to spring out of their languor and
+to hold mine! It was only a moment before I cast mine down--released
+again, if I may say so--on my book; but I knew the beautiful face
+quite well in that short space of time.
+
+And, very strangely, there was something quickened within me,
+associated with the lonely days at my godmother's; yes, away even to
+the days when I had stood on tiptoe to dress myself at my little
+glass after dressing my doll. And this, although I had never seen
+this lady's face before in all my life--I was quite sure of
+it--absolutely certain.
+
+It was easy to know that the ceremonious, gouty, grey-haired
+gentleman, the only other occupant of the great pew, was Sir
+Leicester Dedlock, and that the lady was Lady Dedlock. But why her
+face should be, in a confused way, like a broken glass to me, in
+which I saw scraps of old remembrances, and why I should be so
+fluttered and troubled (for I was still) by having casually met her
+eyes, I could not think.
+
+I felt it to be an unmeaning weakness in me and tried to overcome it
+by attending to the words I heard. Then, very strangely, I seemed to
+hear them, not in the reader's voice, but in the well-remembered
+voice of my godmother. This made me think, did Lady Dedlock's face
+accidentally resemble my godmother's? It might be that it did, a
+little; but the expression was so different, and the stern decision
+which had worn into my godmother's face, like weather into rocks, was
+so completely wanting in the face before me that it could not be that
+resemblance which had struck me. Neither did I know the loftiness and
+haughtiness of Lady Dedlock's face, at all, in any one. And yet I--I,
+little Esther Summerson, the child who lived a life apart and on
+whose birthday there was no rejoicing--seemed to arise before my own
+eyes, evoked out of the past by some power in this fashionable lady,
+whom I not only entertained no fancy that I had ever seen, but whom I
+perfectly well knew I had never seen until that hour.
+
+It made me tremble so to be thrown into this unaccountable agitation
+that I was conscious of being distressed even by the observation of
+the French maid, though I knew she had been looking watchfully here,
+and there, and everywhere, from the moment of her coming into the
+church. By degrees, though very slowly, I at last overcame my strange
+emotion. After a long time, I looked towards Lady Dedlock again. It
+was while they were preparing to sing, before the sermon. She took no
+heed of me, and the beating at my heart was gone. Neither did it
+revive for more than a few moments when she once or twice afterwards
+glanced at Ada or at me through her glass.
+
+The service being concluded, Sir Leicester gave his arm with much
+taste and gallantry to Lady Dedlock--though he was obliged to walk by
+the help of a thick stick--and escorted her out of church to the pony
+carriage in which they had come. The servants then dispersed, and so
+did the congregation, whom Sir Leicester had contemplated all along
+(Mr. Skimpole said to Mr. Boythorn's infinite delight) as if he were
+a considerable landed proprietor in heaven.
+
+"He believes he is!" said Mr. Boythorn. "He firmly believes it. So
+did his father, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather!"
+
+"Do you know," pursued Mr. Skimpole very unexpectedly to Mr.
+Boythorn, "it's agreeable to me to see a man of that sort."
+
+"IS it!" said Mr. Boythorn.
+
+"Say that he wants to patronize me," pursued Mr. Skimpole. "Very
+well! I don't object."
+
+"I do," said Mr. Boythorn with great vigour.
+
+"Do you really?" returned Mr. Skimpole in his easy light vein. "But
+that's taking trouble, surely. And why should you take trouble? Here
+am I, content to receive things childishly as they fall out, and I
+never take trouble! I come down here, for instance, and I find a
+mighty potentate exacting homage. Very well! I say 'Mighty potentate,
+here IS my homage! It's easier to give it than to withhold it. Here
+it is. If you have anything of an agreeable nature to show me, I
+shall be happy to see it; if you have anything of an agreeable nature
+to give me, I shall be happy to accept it.' Mighty potentate replies
+in effect, 'This is a sensible fellow. I find him accord with my
+digestion and my bilious system. He doesn't impose upon me the
+necessity of rolling myself up like a hedgehog with my points
+outward. I expand, I open, I turn my silver lining outward like
+Milton's cloud, and it's more agreeable to both of us.' That's my
+view of such things, speaking as a child!"
+
+"But suppose you went down somewhere else to-morrow," said Mr.
+Boythorn, "where there was the opposite of that fellow--or of this
+fellow. How then?"
+
+"How then?" said Mr. Skimpole with an appearance of the utmost
+simplicity and candour. "Just the same then! I should say, 'My
+esteemed Boythorn'--to make you the personification of our imaginary
+friend--'my esteemed Boythorn, you object to the mighty potentate?
+Very good. So do I. I take it that my business in the social system
+is to be agreeable; I take it that everybody's business in the social
+system is to be agreeable. It's a system of harmony, in short.
+Therefore if you object, I object. Now, excellent Boythorn, let us go
+to dinner!'"
+
+"But excellent Boythorn might say," returned our host, swelling and
+growing very red, "I'll be--"
+
+"I understand," said Mr. Skimpole. "Very likely he would."
+
+"--if I WILL go to dinner!" cried Mr. Boythorn in a violent burst and
+stopping to strike his stick upon the ground. "And he would probably
+add, 'Is there such a thing as principle, Mr. Harold Skimpole?'"
+
+"To which Harold Skimpole would reply, you know," he returned in his
+gayest manner and with his most ingenuous smile, "'Upon my life I
+have not the least idea! I don't know what it is you call by that
+name, or where it is, or who possesses it. If you possess it and find
+it comfortable, I am quite delighted and congratulate you heartily.
+But I know nothing about it, I assure you; for I am a mere child, and
+I lay no claim to it, and I don't want it!' So, you see, excellent
+Boythorn and I would go to dinner after all!"
+
+This was one of many little dialogues between them which I always
+expected to end, and which I dare say would have ended under other
+circumstances, in some violent explosion on the part of our host. But
+he had so high a sense of his hospitable and responsible position as
+our entertainer, and my guardian laughed so sincerely at and with Mr.
+Skimpole, as a child who blew bubbles and broke them all day long,
+that matters never went beyond this point. Mr. Skimpole, who always
+seemed quite unconscious of having been on delicate ground, then
+betook himself to beginning some sketch in the park which he never
+finished, or to playing fragments of airs on the piano, or to singing
+scraps of songs, or to lying down on his back under a tree and
+looking at the sky--which he couldn't help thinking, he said, was
+what he was meant for; it suited him so exactly.
+
+"Enterprise and effort," he would say to us (on his back), "are
+delightful to me. I believe I am truly cosmopolitan. I have the
+deepest sympathy with them. I lie in a shady place like this and
+think of adventurous spirits going to the North Pole or penetrating
+to the heart of the Torrid Zone with admiration. Mercenary creatures
+ask, 'What is the use of a man's going to the North Pole? What good
+does it do?' I can't say; but, for anything I CAN say, he may go for
+the purpose--though he don't know it--of employing my thoughts as I
+lie here. Take an extreme case. Take the case of the slaves on
+American plantations. I dare say they are worked hard, I dare say
+they don't altogether like it. I dare say theirs is an unpleasant
+experience on the whole; but they people the landscape for me, they
+give it a poetry for me, and perhaps that is one of the pleasanter
+objects of their existence. I am very sensible of it, if it be, and I
+shouldn't wonder if it were!"
+
+I always wondered on these occasions whether he ever thought of Mrs.
+Skimpole and the children, and in what point of view they presented
+themselves to his cosmopolitan mind. So far as I could understand,
+they rarely presented themselves at all.
+
+The week had gone round to the Saturday following that beating of my
+heart in the church; and every day had been so bright and blue that
+to ramble in the woods, and to see the light striking down among the
+transparent leaves and sparkling in the beautiful interlacings of the
+shadows of the trees, while the birds poured out their songs and the
+air was drowsy with the hum of insects, had been most delightful. We
+had one favourite spot, deep in moss and last year's leaves, where
+there were some felled trees from which the bark was all stripped
+off. Seated among these, we looked through a green vista supported by
+thousands of natural columns, the whitened stems of trees, upon a
+distant prospect made so radiant by its contrast with the shade in
+which we sat and made so precious by the arched perspective through
+which we saw it that it was like a glimpse of the better land. Upon
+the Saturday we sat here, Mr. Jarndyce, Ada, and I, until we heard
+thunder muttering in the distance and felt the large raindrops rattle
+through the leaves.
+
+The weather had been all the week extremely sultry, but the storm
+broke so suddenly--upon us, at least, in that sheltered spot--that
+before we reached the outskirts of the wood the thunder and lightning
+were frequent and the rain came plunging through the leaves as if
+every drop were a great leaden bead. As it was not a time for
+standing among trees, we ran out of the wood, and up and down the
+moss-grown steps which crossed the plantation-fence like two
+broad-staved ladders placed back to back, and made for a keeper's
+lodge which was close at hand. We had often noticed the dark beauty
+of this lodge standing in a deep twilight of trees, and how the ivy
+clustered over it, and how there was a steep hollow near, where we
+had once seen the keeper's dog dive down into the fern as if it were
+water.
+
+The lodge was so dark within, now the sky was overcast, that we only
+clearly saw the man who came to the door when we took shelter there
+and put two chairs for Ada and me. The lattice-windows were all
+thrown open, and we sat just within the doorway watching the storm.
+It was grand to see how the wind awoke, and bent the trees, and drove
+the rain before it like a cloud of smoke; and to hear the solemn
+thunder and to see the lightning; and while thinking with awe of the
+tremendous powers by which our little lives are encompassed, to
+consider how beneficent they are and how upon the smallest flower and
+leaf there was already a freshness poured from all this seeming rage
+which seemed to make creation new again.
+
+"Is it not dangerous to sit in so exposed a place?"
+
+"Oh, no, Esther dear!" said Ada quietly.
+
+Ada said it to me, but I had not spoken.
+
+The beating of my heart came back again. I had never heard the voice,
+as I had never seen the face, but it affected me in the same strange
+way. Again, in a moment, there arose before my mind innumerable
+pictures of myself.
+
+Lady Dedlock had taken shelter in the lodge before our arrival there
+and had come out of the gloom within. She stood behind my chair with
+her hand upon it. I saw her with her hand close to my shoulder when I
+turned my head.
+
+"I have frightened you?" she said.
+
+No. It was not fright. Why should I be frightened!
+
+"I believe," said Lady Dedlock to my guardian, "I have the pleasure
+of speaking to Mr. Jarndyce."
+
+"Your remembrance does me more honour than I had supposed it would,
+Lady Dedlock," he returned.
+
+"I recognized you in church on Sunday. I am sorry that any local
+disputes of Sir Leicester's--they are not of his seeking, however, I
+believe--should render it a matter of some absurd difficulty to show
+you any attention here."
+
+"I am aware of the circumstances," returned my guardian with a smile,
+"and am sufficiently obliged."
+
+She had given him her hand in an indifferent way that seemed habitual
+to her and spoke in a correspondingly indifferent manner, though in a
+very pleasant voice. She was as graceful as she was beautiful,
+perfectly self-possessed, and had the air, I thought, of being able
+to attract and interest any one if she had thought it worth her
+while. The keeper had brought her a chair on which she sat in the
+middle of the porch between us.
+
+"Is the young gentleman disposed of whom you wrote to Sir Leicester
+about and whose wishes Sir Leicester was sorry not to have it in his
+power to advance in any way?" she said over her shoulder to my
+guardian.
+
+"I hope so," said he.
+
+She seemed to respect him and even to wish to conciliate him. There
+was something very winning in her haughty manner, and it became more
+familiar--I was going to say more easy, but that could hardly be--as
+she spoke to him over her shoulder.
+
+"I presume this is your other ward, Miss Clare?"
+
+He presented Ada, in form.
+
+"You will lose the disinterested part of your Don Quixote character,"
+said Lady Dedlock to Mr. Jarndyce over her shoulder again, "if you
+only redress the wrongs of beauty like this. But present me," and she
+turned full upon me, "to this young lady too!"
+
+"Miss Summerson really is my ward," said Mr. Jarndyce. "I am
+responsible to no Lord Chancellor in her case."
+
+"Has Miss Summerson lost both her parents?" said my Lady.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"She is very fortunate in her guardian."
+
+Lady Dedlock looked at me, and I looked at her and said I was indeed.
+All at once she turned from me with a hasty air, almost expressive of
+displeasure or dislike, and spoke to him over her shoulder again.
+
+"Ages have passed since we were in the habit of meeting, Mr.
+Jarndyce."
+
+"A long time. At least I thought it was a long time, until I saw you
+last Sunday," he returned.
+
+"What! Even you are a courtier, or think it necessary to become one
+to me!" she said with some disdain. "I have achieved that reputation,
+I suppose."
+
+"You have achieved so much, Lady Dedlock," said my guardian, "that
+you pay some little penalty, I dare say. But none to me."
+
+"So much!" she repeated, slightly laughing. "Yes!"
+
+With her air of superiority, and power, and fascination, and I know
+not what, she seemed to regard Ada and me as little more than
+children. So, as she slightly laughed and afterwards sat looking at
+the rain, she was as self-possessed and as free to occupy herself
+with her own thoughts as if she had been alone.
+
+"I think you knew my sister when we were abroad together better than
+you know me?" she said, looking at him again.
+
+"Yes, we happened to meet oftener," he returned.
+
+"We went our several ways," said Lady Dedlock, "and had little in
+common even before we agreed to differ. It is to be regretted, I
+suppose, but it could not be helped."
+
+Lady Dedlock again sat looking at the rain. The storm soon began to
+pass upon its way. The shower greatly abated, the lightning ceased,
+the thunder rolled among the distant hills, and the sun began to
+glisten on the wet leaves and the falling rain. As we sat there,
+silently, we saw a little pony phaeton coming towards us at a merry
+pace.
+
+"The messenger is coming back, my Lady," said the keeper, "with the
+carriage."
+
+As it drove up, we saw that there were two people inside. There
+alighted from it, with some cloaks and wrappers, first the
+Frenchwoman whom I had seen in church, and secondly the pretty girl,
+the Frenchwoman with a defiant confidence, the pretty girl confused
+and hesitating.
+
+"What now?" said Lady Dedlock. "Two!"
+
+"I am your maid, my Lady, at the present," said the Frenchwoman. "The
+message was for the attendant."
+
+"I was afraid you might mean me, my Lady," said the pretty girl.
+
+"I did mean you, child," replied her mistress calmly. "Put that shawl
+on me."
+
+She slightly stooped her shoulders to receive it, and the pretty girl
+lightly dropped it in its place. The Frenchwoman stood unnoticed,
+looking on with her lips very tightly set.
+
+"I am sorry," said Lady Dedlock to Mr. Jarndyce, "that we are not
+likely to renew our former acquaintance. You will allow me to send
+the carriage back for your two wards. It shall be here directly."
+
+But as he would on no account accept this offer, she took a graceful
+leave of Ada--none of me--and put her hand upon his proffered arm,
+and got into the carriage, which was a little, low, park carriage
+with a hood.
+
+"Come in, child," she said to the pretty girl; "I shall want you. Go
+on!"
+
+The carriage rolled away, and the Frenchwoman, with the wrappers she
+had brought hanging over her arm, remained standing where she had
+alighted.
+
+I suppose there is nothing pride can so little bear with as pride
+itself, and that she was punished for her imperious manner. Her
+retaliation was the most singular I could have imagined. She remained
+perfectly still until the carriage had turned into the drive, and
+then, without the least discomposure of countenance, slipped off her
+shoes, left them on the ground, and walked deliberately in the same
+direction through the wettest of the wet grass.
+
+"Is that young woman mad?" said my guardian.
+
+"Oh, no, sir!" said the keeper, who, with his wife, was looking after
+her. "Hortense is not one of that sort. She has as good a head-piece
+as the best. But she's mortal high and passionate--powerful high and
+passionate; and what with having notice to leave, and having others
+put above her, she don't take kindly to it."
+
+"But why should she walk shoeless through all that water?" said my
+guardian.
+
+"Why, indeed, sir, unless it is to cool her down!" said the man.
+
+"Or unless she fancies it's blood," said the woman. "She'd as soon
+walk through that as anything else, I think, when her own's up!"
+
+We passed not far from the house a few minutes afterwards. Peaceful
+as it had looked when we first saw it, it looked even more so now,
+with a diamond spray glittering all about it, a light wind blowing,
+the birds no longer hushed but singing strongly, everything refreshed
+by the late rain, and the little carriage shining at the doorway like
+a fairy carriage made of silver. Still, very steadfastly and quietly
+walking towards it, a peaceful figure too in the landscape, went
+Mademoiselle Hortense, shoeless, through the wet grass.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+Moving On
+
+
+It is the long vacation in the regions of Chancery Lane. The good
+ships Law and Equity, those teak-built, copper-bottomed,
+iron-fastened, brazen-faced, and not by any means fast-sailing
+clippers are laid up in ordinary. The Flying Dutchman, with a crew of
+ghostly clients imploring all whom they may encounter to peruse their
+papers, has drifted, for the time being, heaven knows where. The
+courts are all shut up; the public offices lie in a hot sleep.
+Westminster Hall itself is a shady solitude where nightingales might
+sing, and a tenderer class of suitors than is usually found there,
+walk.
+
+The Temple, Chancery Lane, Serjeants' Inn, and Lincoln's Inn even
+unto the Fields are like tidal harbours at low water, where stranded
+proceedings, offices at anchor, idle clerks lounging on lop-sided
+stools that will not recover their perpendicular until the current of
+Term sets in, lie high and dry upon the ooze of the long vacation.
+Outer doors of chambers are shut up by the score, messages and
+parcels are to be left at the Porter's Lodge by the bushel. A crop of
+grass would grow in the chinks of the stone pavement outside
+Lincoln's Inn Hall, but that the ticket-porters, who have nothing to
+do beyond sitting in the shade there, with their white aprons over
+their heads to keep the flies off, grub it up and eat it
+thoughtfully.
+
+There is only one judge in town. Even he only comes twice a week to
+sit in chambers. If the country folks of those assize towns on his
+circuit could see him now! No full-bottomed wig, no red petticoats,
+no fur, no javelin-men, no white wands. Merely a close-shaved
+gentleman in white trousers and a white hat, with sea-bronze on the
+judicial countenance, and a strip of bark peeled by the solar rays
+from the judicial nose, who calls in at the shell-fish shop as he
+comes along and drinks iced ginger-beer!
+
+The bar of England is scattered over the face of the earth. How
+England can get on through four long summer months without its
+bar--which is its acknowledged refuge in adversity and its only
+legitimate triumph in prosperity--is beside the question; assuredly
+that shield and buckler of Britannia are not in present wear. The
+learned gentleman who is always so tremendously indignant at the
+unprecedented outrage committed on the feelings of his client by the
+opposite party that he never seems likely to recover it is doing
+infinitely better than might be expected in Switzerland. The learned
+gentleman who does the withering business and who blights all
+opponents with his gloomy sarcasm is as merry as a grig at a French
+watering-place. The learned gentleman who weeps by the pint on the
+smallest provocation has not shed a tear these six weeks. The very
+learned gentleman who has cooled the natural heat of his gingery
+complexion in pools and fountains of law until he has become great in
+knotty arguments for term-time, when he poses the drowsy bench with
+legal "chaff," inexplicable to the uninitiated and to most of the
+initiated too, is roaming, with a characteristic delight in aridity
+and dust, about Constantinople. Other dispersed fragments of the same
+great palladium are to be found on the canals of Venice, at the
+second cataract of the Nile, in the baths of Germany, and sprinkled
+on the sea-sand all over the English coast. Scarcely one is to be
+encountered in the deserted region of Chancery Lane. If such a lonely
+member of the bar do flit across the waste and come upon a prowling
+suitor who is unable to leave off haunting the scenes of his anxiety,
+they frighten one another and retreat into opposite shades.
+
+It is the hottest long vacation known for many years. All the young
+clerks are madly in love, and according to their various degrees,
+pine for bliss with the beloved object, at Margate, Ramsgate, or
+Gravesend. All the middle-aged clerks think their families too large.
+All the unowned dogs who stray into the Inns of Court and pant about
+staircases and other dry places seeking water give short howls of
+aggravation. All the blind men's dogs in the streets draw their
+masters against pumps or trip them over buckets. A shop with a
+sun-blind, and a watered pavement, and a bowl of gold and silver fish
+in the window, is a sanctuary. Temple Bar gets so hot that it is, to
+the adjacent Strand and Fleet Street, what a heater is in an urn, and
+keeps them simmering all night.
+
+There are offices about the Inns of Court in which a man might be
+cool, if any coolness were worth purchasing at such a price in
+dullness; but the little thoroughfares immediately outside those
+retirements seem to blaze. In Mr. Krook's court, it is so hot that
+the people turn their houses inside out and sit in chairs upon the
+pavement--Mr. Krook included, who there pursues his studies, with his
+cat (who never is too hot) by his side. The Sol's Arms has
+discontinued the Harmonic Meetings for the season, and Little Swills
+is engaged at the Pastoral Gardens down the river, where he comes out
+in quite an innocent manner and sings comic ditties of a juvenile
+complexion calculated (as the bill says) not to wound the feelings of
+the most fastidious mind.
+
+Over all the legal neighbourhood there hangs, like some great veil of
+rust or gigantic cobweb, the idleness and pensiveness of the long
+vacation. Mr. Snagsby, law-stationer of Cook's Court, Cursitor
+Street, is sensible of the influence not only in his mind as a
+sympathetic and contemplative man, but also in his business as a
+law-stationer aforesaid. He has more leisure for musing in Staple Inn
+and in the Rolls Yard during the long vacation than at other seasons,
+and he says to the two 'prentices, what a thing it is in such hot
+weather to think that you live in an island with the sea a-rolling
+and a-bowling right round you.
+
+Guster is busy in the little drawing-room on this present afternoon
+in the long vacation, when Mr. and Mrs. Snagsby have it in
+contemplation to receive company. The expected guests are rather
+select than numerous, being Mr. and Mrs. Chadband and no more. From
+Mr. Chadband's being much given to describe himself, both verbally
+and in writing, as a vessel, he is occasionally mistaken by strangers
+for a gentleman connected with navigation, but he is, as he expresses
+it, "in the ministry." Mr. Chadband is attached to no particular
+denomination and is considered by his persecutors to have nothing so
+very remarkable to say on the greatest of subjects as to render his
+volunteering, on his own account, at all incumbent on his conscience;
+but he has his followers, and Mrs. Snagsby is of the number. Mrs.
+Snagsby has but recently taken a passage upward by the vessel,
+Chadband; and her attention was attracted to that Bark A 1, when she
+was something flushed by the hot weather.
+
+"My little woman," says Mr. Snagsby to the sparrows in Staple Inn,
+"likes to have her religion rather sharp, you see!"
+
+So Guster, much impressed by regarding herself for the time as the
+handmaid of Chadband, whom she knows to be endowed with the gift of
+holding forth for four hours at a stretch, prepares the little
+drawing-room for tea. All the furniture is shaken and dusted, the
+portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Snagsby are touched up with a wet cloth,
+the best tea-service is set forth, and there is excellent provision
+made of dainty new bread, crusty twists, cool fresh butter, thin
+slices of ham, tongue, and German sausage, and delicate little rows
+of anchovies nestling in parsley, not to mention new-laid eggs, to be
+brought up warm in a napkin, and hot buttered toast. For Chadband is
+rather a consuming vessel--the persecutors say a gorging vessel--and
+can wield such weapons of the flesh as a knife and fork remarkably
+well.
+
+Mr. Snagsby in his best coat, looking at all the preparations when
+they are completed and coughing his cough of deference behind his
+hand, says to Mrs. Snagsby, "At what time did you expect Mr. and Mrs.
+Chadband, my love?"
+
+"At six," says Mrs. Snagsby.
+
+Mr. Snagsby observes in a mild and casual way that "it's gone that."
+
+"Perhaps you'd like to begin without them," is Mrs. Snagsby's
+reproachful remark.
+
+Mr. Snagsby does look as if he would like it very much, but he says,
+with his cough of mildness, "No, my dear, no. I merely named the
+time."
+
+"What's time," says Mrs. Snagsby, "to eternity?"
+
+"Very true, my dear," says Mr. Snagsby. "Only when a person lays in
+victuals for tea, a person does it with a view--perhaps--more to
+time. And when a time is named for having tea, it's better to come up
+to it."
+
+"To come up to it!" Mrs. Snagsby repeats with severity. "Up to it! As
+if Mr. Chadband was a fighter!"
+
+"Not at all, my dear," says Mr. Snagsby.
+
+Here, Guster, who had been looking out of the bedroom window, comes
+rustling and scratching down the little staircase like a popular
+ghost, and falling flushed into the drawing-room, announces that Mr.
+and Mrs. Chadband have appeared in the court. The bell at the inner
+door in the passage immediately thereafter tinkling, she is
+admonished by Mrs. Snagsby, on pain of instant reconsignment to her
+patron saint, not to omit the ceremony of announcement. Much
+discomposed in her nerves (which were previously in the best order)
+by this threat, she so fearfully mutilates that point of state as to
+announce "Mr. and Mrs. Cheeseming, least which, Imeantersay,
+whatsername!" and retires conscience-stricken from the presence.
+
+Mr. Chadband is a large yellow man with a fat smile and a general
+appearance of having a good deal of train oil in his system. Mrs.
+Chadband is a stern, severe-looking, silent woman. Mr. Chadband moves
+softly and cumbrously, not unlike a bear who has been taught to walk
+upright. He is very much embarrassed about the arms, as if they were
+inconvenient to him and he wanted to grovel, is very much in a
+perspiration about the head, and never speaks without first putting
+up his great hand, as delivering a token to his hearers that he is
+going to edify them.
+
+"My friends," says Mr. Chadband, "peace be on this house! On the
+master thereof, on the mistress thereof, on the young maidens, and on
+the young men! My friends, why do I wish for peace? What is peace? Is
+it war? No. Is it strife? No. Is it lovely, and gentle, and
+beautiful, and pleasant, and serene, and joyful? Oh, yes! Therefore,
+my friends, I wish for peace, upon you and upon yours."
+
+In consequence of Mrs. Snagsby looking deeply edified, Mr. Snagsby
+thinks it expedient on the whole to say amen, which is well received.
+
+"Now, my friends," proceeds Mr. Chadband, "since I am upon this
+theme--"
+
+Guster presents herself. Mrs. Snagsby, in a spectral bass voice and
+without removing her eyes from Chadband, says with dreadful
+distinctness, "Go away!"
+
+"Now, my friends," says Chadband, "since I am upon this theme, and in
+my lowly path improving it--"
+
+Guster is heard unaccountably to murmur "one thousing seven hundred
+and eighty-two." The spectral voice repeats more solemnly, "Go away!"
+
+"Now, my friends," says Mr. Chadband, "we will inquire in a spirit of
+love--"
+
+Still Guster reiterates "one thousing seven hundred and eighty-two."
+
+Mr. Chadband, pausing with the resignation of a man accustomed to be
+persecuted and languidly folding up his chin into his fat smile,
+says, "Let us hear the maiden! Speak, maiden!"
+
+"One thousing seven hundred and eighty-two, if you please, sir. Which
+he wish to know what the shilling ware for," says Guster, breathless.
+
+"For?" returns Mrs. Chadband. "For his fare!"
+
+Guster replied that "he insistes on one and eightpence or on
+summonsizzing the party." Mrs. Snagsby and Mrs. Chadband are
+proceeding to grow shrill in indignation when Mr. Chadband quiets the
+tumult by lifting up his hand.
+
+"My friends," says he, "I remember a duty unfulfilled yesterday. It
+is right that I should be chastened in some penalty. I ought not to
+murmur. Rachael, pay the eightpence!"
+
+While Mrs. Snagsby, drawing her breath, looks hard at Mr. Snagsby, as
+who should say, "You hear this apostle!" and while Mr. Chadband glows
+with humility and train oil, Mrs. Chadband pays the money. It is Mr.
+Chadband's habit--it is the head and front of his pretensions
+indeed--to keep this sort of debtor and creditor account in the
+smallest items and to post it publicly on the most trivial occasions.
+
+"My friends," says Chadband, "eightpence is not much; it might justly
+have been one and fourpence; it might justly have been half a crown.
+O let us be joyful, joyful! O let us be joyful!"
+
+With which remark, which appears from its sound to be an extract in
+verse, Mr. Chadband stalks to the table, and before taking a chair,
+lifts up his admonitory hand.
+
+"My friends," says he, "what is this which we now behold as being
+spread before us? Refreshment. Do we need refreshment then, my
+friends? We do. And why do we need refreshment, my friends? Because
+we are but mortal, because we are but sinful, because we are but of
+the earth, because we are not of the air. Can we fly, my friends? We
+cannot. Why can we not fly, my friends?"
+
+Mr. Snagsby, presuming on the success of his last point, ventures to
+observe in a cheerful and rather knowing tone, "No wings." But is
+immediately frowned down by Mrs. Snagsby.
+
+"I say, my friends," pursues Mr. Chadband, utterly rejecting and
+obliterating Mr. Snagsby's suggestion, "why can we not fly? Is it
+because we are calculated to walk? It is. Could we walk, my friends,
+without strength? We could not. What should we do without strength,
+my friends? Our legs would refuse to bear us, our knees would double
+up, our ankles would turn over, and we should come to the ground.
+Then from whence, my friends, in a human point of view, do we derive
+the strength that is necessary to our limbs? Is it," says Chadband,
+glancing over the table, "from bread in various forms, from butter
+which is churned from the milk which is yielded unto us by the cow,
+from the eggs which are laid by the fowl, from ham, from tongue, from
+sausage, and from such like? It is. Then let us partake of the good
+things which are set before us!"
+
+The persecutors denied that there was any particular gift in Mr.
+Chadband's piling verbose flights of stairs, one upon another, after
+this fashion. But this can only be received as a proof of their
+determination to persecute, since it must be within everybody's
+experience that the Chadband style of oratory is widely received and
+much admired.
+
+Mr. Chadband, however, having concluded for the present, sits down at
+Mr. Snagsby's table and lays about him prodigiously. The conversion
+of nutriment of any sort into oil of the quality already mentioned
+appears to be a process so inseparable from the constitution of this
+exemplary vessel that in beginning to eat and drink, he may be
+described as always becoming a kind of considerable oil mills or
+other large factory for the production of that article on a wholesale
+scale. On the present evening of the long vacation, in Cook's Court,
+Cursitor Street, he does such a powerful stroke of business that the
+warehouse appears to be quite full when the works cease.
+
+At this period of the entertainment, Guster, who has never recovered
+her first failure, but has neglected no possible or impossible means
+of bringing the establishment and herself into contempt--among which
+may be briefly enumerated her unexpectedly performing clashing
+military music on Mr. Chadband's head with plates, and afterwards
+crowning that gentleman with muffins--at which period of the
+entertainment, Guster whispers Mr. Snagsby that he is wanted.
+
+"And being wanted in the--not to put too fine a point upon it--in the
+shop," says Mr. Snagsby, rising, "perhaps this good company will
+excuse me for half a minute."
+
+Mr. Snagsby descends and finds the two 'prentices intently
+contemplating a police constable, who holds a ragged boy by the arm.
+
+"Why, bless my heart," says Mr. Snagsby, "what's the matter!"
+
+"This boy," says the constable, "although he's repeatedly told to,
+won't move on--"
+
+"I'm always a-moving on, sar," cries the boy, wiping away his grimy
+tears with his arm. "I've always been a-moving and a-moving on, ever
+since I was born. Where can I possibly move to, sir, more nor I do
+move!"
+
+"He won't move on," says the constable calmly, with a slight
+professional hitch of his neck involving its better settlement in his
+stiff stock, "although he has been repeatedly cautioned, and
+therefore I am obliged to take him into custody. He's as obstinate a
+young gonoph as I know. He WON'T move on."
+
+"Oh, my eye! Where can I move to!" cries the boy, clutching quite
+desperately at his hair and beating his bare feet upon the floor of
+Mr. Snagsby's passage.
+
+"Don't you come none of that or I shall make blessed short work of
+you!" says the constable, giving him a passionless shake. "My
+instructions are that you are to move on. I have told you so five
+hundred times."
+
+"But where?" cries the boy.
+
+"Well! Really, constable, you know," says Mr. Snagsby wistfully, and
+coughing behind his hand his cough of great perplexity and doubt,
+"really, that does seem a question. Where, you know?"
+
+"My instructions don't go to that," replies the constable. "My
+instructions are that this boy is to move on."
+
+Do you hear, Jo? It is nothing to you or to any one else that the
+great lights of the parliamentary sky have failed for some few years
+in this business to set you the example of moving on. The one grand
+recipe remains for you--the profound philosophical prescription--the
+be-all and the end-all of your strange existence upon earth. Move on!
+You are by no means to move off, Jo, for the great lights can't at
+all agree about that. Move on!
+
+Mr. Snagsby says nothing to this effect, says nothing at all indeed,
+but coughs his forlornest cough, expressive of no thoroughfare in any
+direction. By this time Mr. and Mrs. Chadband and Mrs. Snagsby,
+hearing the altercation, have appeared upon the stairs. Guster having
+never left the end of the passage, the whole household are assembled.
+
+"The simple question is, sir," says the constable, "whether you know
+this boy. He says you do."
+
+Mrs. Snagsby, from her elevation, instantly cries out, "No he don't!"
+
+"My lit-tle woman!" says Mr. Snagsby, looking up the staircase. "My
+love, permit me! Pray have a moment's patience, my dear. I do know
+something of this lad, and in what I know of him, I can't say that
+there's any harm; perhaps on the contrary, constable." To whom the
+law-stationer relates his Joful and woeful experience, suppressing
+the half-crown fact.
+
+"Well!" says the constable, "so far, it seems, he had grounds for
+what he said. When I took him into custody up in Holborn, he said you
+knew him. Upon that, a young man who was in the crowd said he was
+acquainted with you, and you were a respectable housekeeper, and if
+I'd call and make the inquiry, he'd appear. The young man don't seem
+inclined to keep his word, but--Oh! Here IS the young man!"
+
+Enter Mr. Guppy, who nods to Mr. Snagsby and touches his hat with the
+chivalry of clerkship to the ladies on the stairs.
+
+"I was strolling away from the office just now when I found this row
+going on," says Mr. Guppy to the law-stationer, "and as your name was
+mentioned, I thought it was right the thing should be looked into."
+
+"It was very good-natured of you, sir," says Mr. Snagsby, "and I am
+obliged to you." And Mr. Snagsby again relates his experience, again
+suppressing the half-crown fact.
+
+"Now, I know where you live," says the constable, then, to Jo. "You
+live down in Tom-all-Alone's. That's a nice innocent place to live
+in, ain't it?"
+
+"I can't go and live in no nicer place, sir," replies Jo. "They
+wouldn't have nothink to say to me if I wos to go to a nice innocent
+place fur to live. Who ud go and let a nice innocent lodging to such
+a reg'lar one as me!"
+
+"You are very poor, ain't you?" says the constable.
+
+"Yes, I am indeed, sir, wery poor in gin'ral," replies Jo. "I leave
+you to judge now! I shook these two half-crowns out of him," says the
+constable, producing them to the company, "in only putting my hand
+upon him!"
+
+"They're wot's left, Mr. Snagsby," says Jo, "out of a sov-ring as wos
+give me by a lady in a wale as sed she wos a servant and as come to
+my crossin one night and asked to be showd this 'ere ouse and the
+ouse wot him as you giv the writin to died at, and the berrin-ground
+wot he's berrid in. She ses to me she ses 'are you the boy at the
+inkwhich?' she ses. I ses 'yes' I ses. She ses to me she ses 'can you
+show me all them places?' I ses 'yes I can' I ses. And she ses to me
+'do it' and I dun it and she giv me a sov'ring and hooked it. And I
+an't had much of the sov'ring neither," says Jo, with dirty tears,
+"fur I had to pay five bob, down in Tom-all-Alone's, afore they'd
+square it fur to give me change, and then a young man he thieved
+another five while I was asleep and another boy he thieved ninepence
+and the landlord he stood drains round with a lot more on it."
+
+"You don't expect anybody to believe this, about the lady and the
+sovereign, do you?" says the constable, eyeing him aside with
+ineffable disdain.
+
+"I don't know as I do, sir," replies Jo. "I don't expect nothink at
+all, sir, much, but that's the true hist'ry on it."
+
+"You see what he is!" the constable observes to the audience. "Well,
+Mr. Snagsby, if I don't lock him up this time, will you engage for
+his moving on?"
+
+"No!" cries Mrs. Snagsby from the stairs.
+
+"My little woman!" pleads her husband. "Constable, I have no doubt
+he'll move on. You know you really must do it," says Mr. Snagsby.
+
+"I'm everyways agreeable, sir," says the hapless Jo.
+
+"Do it, then," observes the constable. "You know what you have got to
+do. Do it! And recollect you won't get off so easy next time. Catch
+hold of your money. Now, the sooner you're five mile off, the better
+for all parties."
+
+With this farewell hint and pointing generally to the setting sun as
+a likely place to move on to, the constable bids his auditors good
+afternoon and makes the echoes of Cook's Court perform slow music for
+him as he walks away on the shady side, carrying his iron-bound hat
+in his hand for a little ventilation.
+
+Now, Jo's improbable story concerning the lady and the sovereign has
+awakened more or less the curiosity of all the company. Mr. Guppy,
+who has an inquiring mind in matters of evidence and who has
+been suffering severely from the lassitude of the long vacation,
+takes that interest in the case that he enters on a regular
+cross-examination of the witness, which is found so interesting by
+the ladies that Mrs. Snagsby politely invites him to step upstairs
+and drink a cup of tea, if he will excuse the disarranged state of
+the tea-table, consequent on their previous exertions. Mr. Guppy
+yielding his assent to this proposal, Jo is requested to follow into
+the drawing-room doorway, where Mr. Guppy takes him in hand as a
+witness, patting him into this shape, that shape, and the other shape
+like a butterman dealing with so much butter, and worrying him
+according to the best models. Nor is the examination unlike many such
+model displays, both in respect of its eliciting nothing and of its
+being lengthy, for Mr. Guppy is sensible of his talent, and Mrs.
+Snagsby feels not only that it gratifies her inquisitive disposition,
+but that it lifts her husband's establishment higher up in the law.
+During the progress of this keen encounter, the vessel Chadband,
+being merely engaged in the oil trade, gets aground and waits to be
+floated off.
+
+"Well!" says Mr. Guppy. "Either this boy sticks to it like
+cobbler's-wax or there is something out of the common here that beats
+anything that ever came into my way at Kenge and Carboy's."
+
+Mrs. Chadband whispers Mrs. Snagsby, who exclaims, "You don't say
+so!"
+
+"For years!" replied Mrs. Chadband.
+
+"Has known Kenge and Carboy's office for years," Mrs. Snagsby
+triumphantly explains to Mr. Guppy. "Mrs. Chadband--this gentleman's
+wife--Reverend Mr. Chadband."
+
+"Oh, indeed!" says Mr. Guppy.
+
+"Before I married my present husband," says Mrs. Chadband.
+
+"Was you a party in anything, ma'am?" says Mr. Guppy, transferring
+his cross-examination.
+
+"No."
+
+"NOT a party in anything, ma'am?" says Mr. Guppy.
+
+Mrs. Chadband shakes her head.
+
+"Perhaps you were acquainted with somebody who was a party in
+something, ma'am?" says Mr. Guppy, who likes nothing better than to
+model his conversation on forensic principles.
+
+"Not exactly that, either," replies Mrs. Chadband, humouring the joke
+with a hard-favoured smile.
+
+"Not exactly that, either!" repeats Mr. Guppy. "Very good. Pray,
+ma'am, was it a lady of your acquaintance who had some transactions
+(we will not at present say what transactions) with Kenge and
+Carboy's office, or was it a gentleman of your acquaintance? Take
+time, ma'am. We shall come to it presently. Man or woman, ma'am?"
+
+"Neither," says Mrs. Chadband as before.
+
+"Oh! A child!" says Mr. Guppy, throwing on the admiring Mrs. Snagsby
+the regular acute professional eye which is thrown on British
+jurymen. "Now, ma'am, perhaps you'll have the kindness to tell us
+WHAT child."
+
+"You have got it at last, sir," says Mrs. Chadband with another
+hard-favoured smile. "Well, sir, it was before your time, most
+likely, judging from your appearance. I was left in charge of a child
+named Esther Summerson, who was put out in life by Messrs. Kenge and
+Carboy."
+
+"Miss Summerson, ma'am!" cries Mr. Guppy, excited.
+
+"I call her Esther Summerson," says Mrs. Chadband with austerity.
+"There was no Miss-ing of the girl in my time. It was Esther.
+'Esther, do this! Esther, do that!' and she was made to do it."
+
+"My dear ma'am," returns Mr. Guppy, moving across the small
+apartment, "the humble individual who now addresses you received that
+young lady in London when she first came here from the establishment
+to which you have alluded. Allow me to have the pleasure of taking
+you by the hand."
+
+Mr. Chadband, at last seeing his opportunity, makes his accustomed
+signal and rises with a smoking head, which he dabs with his
+pocket-handkerchief. Mrs. Snagsby whispers "Hush!"
+
+"My friends," says Chadband, "we have partaken in moderation" (which
+was certainly not the case so far as he was concerned) "of the
+comforts which have been provided for us. May this house live upon
+the fatness of the land; may corn and wine be plentiful therein; may
+it grow, may it thrive, may it prosper, may it advance, may it
+proceed, may it press forward! But, my friends, have we partaken of
+anything else? We have. My friends, of what else have we partaken? Of
+spiritual profit? Yes. From whence have we derived that spiritual
+profit? My young friend, stand forth!"
+
+Jo, thus apostrophized, gives a slouch backward, and another slouch
+forward, and another slouch to each side, and confronts the eloquent
+Chadband with evident doubts of his intentions.
+
+"My young friend," says Chadband, "you are to us a pearl, you are to
+us a diamond, you are to us a gem, you are to us a jewel. And why, my
+young friend?"
+
+"I don't know," replies Jo. "I don't know nothink."
+
+"My young friend," says Chadband, "it is because you know nothing
+that you are to us a gem and jewel. For what are you, my young
+friend? Are you a beast of the field? No. A bird of the air? No. A
+fish of the sea or river? No. You are a human boy, my young friend. A
+human boy. O glorious to be a human boy! And why glorious, my young
+friend? Because you are capable of receiving the lessons of wisdom,
+because you are capable of profiting by this discourse which I now
+deliver for your good, because you are not a stick, or a staff, or a
+stock, or a stone, or a post, or a pillar.
+
+   O running stream of sparkling joy
+   To be a soaring human boy!
+
+And do you cool yourself in that stream now, my young friend? No.
+Why do you not cool yourself in that stream now? Because you are in a
+state of darkness, because you are in a state of obscurity, because
+you are in a state of sinfulness, because you are in a state of
+bondage. My young friend, what is bondage? Let us, in a spirit of
+love, inquire."
+
+At this threatening stage of the discourse, Jo, who seems to have
+been gradually going out of his mind, smears his right arm over his
+face and gives a terrible yawn. Mrs. Snagsby indignantly expresses
+her belief that he is a limb of the arch-fiend.
+
+"My friends," says Mr. Chadband with his persecuted chin folding
+itself into its fat smile again as he looks round, "it is right that
+I should be humbled, it is right that I should be tried, it is right
+that I should be mortified, it is right that I should be corrected. I
+stumbled, on Sabbath last, when I thought with pride of my three
+hours' improving. The account is now favourably balanced: my creditor
+has accepted a composition. O let us be joyful, joyful! O let us be
+joyful!"
+
+Great sensation on the part of Mrs. Snagsby.
+
+"My friends," says Chadband, looking round him in conclusion, "I will
+not proceed with my young friend now. Will you come to-morrow, my
+young friend, and inquire of this good lady where I am to be found to
+deliver a discourse unto you, and will you come like the thirsty
+swallow upon the next day, and upon the day after that, and upon the
+day after that, and upon many pleasant days, to hear discourses?"
+(This with a cow-like lightness.)
+
+Jo, whose immediate object seems to be to get away on any terms,
+gives a shuffling nod. Mr. Guppy then throws him a penny, and Mrs.
+Snagsby calls to Guster to see him safely out of the house. But
+before he goes downstairs, Mr. Snagsby loads him with some broken
+meats from the table, which he carries away, hugging in his arms.
+
+So, Mr. Chadband--of whom the persecutors say that it is no wonder he
+should go on for any length of time uttering such abominable
+nonsense, but that the wonder rather is that he should ever leave
+off, having once the audacity to begin--retires into private life
+until he invests a little capital of supper in the oil-trade. Jo
+moves on, through the long vacation, down to Blackfriars Bridge,
+where he finds a baking stony corner wherein to settle to his repast.
+
+And there he sits, munching and gnawing, and looking up at the great
+cross on the summit of St. Paul's Cathedral, glittering above a
+red-and-violet-tinted cloud of smoke. From the boy's face one might
+suppose that sacred emblem to be, in his eyes, the crowning confusion
+of the great, confused city--so golden, so high up, so far out of his
+reach. There he sits, the sun going down, the river running fast, the
+crowd flowing by him in two streams--everything moving on to some
+purpose and to one end--until he is stirred up and told to "move on"
+too.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+A New Lodger
+
+
+The long vacation saunters on towards term-time like an idle river
+very leisurely strolling down a flat country to the sea. Mr. Guppy
+saunters along with it congenially. He has blunted the blade of his
+penknife and broken the point off by sticking that instrument into
+his desk in every direction. Not that he bears the desk any ill will,
+but he must do something, and it must be something of an unexciting
+nature, which will lay neither his physical nor his intellectual
+energies under too heavy contribution. He finds that nothing agrees
+with him so well as to make little gyrations on one leg of his stool,
+and stab his desk, and gape.
+
+Kenge and Carboy are out of town, and the articled clerk has taken
+out a shooting license and gone down to his father's, and Mr. Guppy's
+two fellow-stipendiaries are away on leave. Mr. Guppy and Mr. Richard
+Carstone divide the dignity of the office. But Mr. Carstone is for
+the time being established in Kenge's room, whereat Mr. Guppy chafes.
+So exceedingly that he with biting sarcasm informs his mother, in the
+confidential moments when he sups with her off a lobster and lettuce
+in the Old Street Road, that he is afraid the office is hardly good
+enough for swells, and that if he had known there was a swell coming,
+he would have got it painted.
+
+Mr. Guppy suspects everybody who enters on the occupation of a stool
+in Kenge and Carboy's office of entertaining, as a matter of course,
+sinister designs upon him. He is clear that every such person wants
+to depose him. If he be ever asked how, why, when, or wherefore, he
+shuts up one eye and shakes his head. On the strength of these
+profound views, he in the most ingenious manner takes infinite pains
+to counterplot when there is no plot, and plays the deepest games of
+chess without any adversary.
+
+It is a source of much gratification to Mr. Guppy, therefore, to find
+the new-comer constantly poring over the papers in Jarndyce and
+Jarndyce, for he well knows that nothing but confusion and failure
+can come of that. His satisfaction communicates itself to a third
+saunterer through the long vacation in Kenge and Carboy's office, to
+wit, Young Smallweed.
+
+Whether Young Smallweed (metaphorically called Small and eke Chick
+Weed, as it were jocularly to express a fledgling) was ever a boy is
+much doubted in Lincoln's Inn. He is now something under fifteen and
+an old limb of the law. He is facetiously understood to entertain a
+passion for a lady at a cigar-shop in the neighbourhood of Chancery
+Lane and for her sake to have broken off a contract with another
+lady, to whom he had been engaged some years. He is a town-made
+article, of small stature and weazen features, but may be perceived
+from a considerable distance by means of his very tall hat. To become
+a Guppy is the object of his ambition. He dresses at that gentleman
+(by whom he is patronized), talks at him, walks at him, founds
+himself entirely on him. He is honoured with Mr. Guppy's particular
+confidence and occasionally advises him, from the deep wells of his
+experience, on difficult points in private life.
+
+Mr. Guppy has been lolling out of window all the morning after trying
+all the stools in succession and finding none of them easy, and after
+several times putting his head into the iron safe with a notion of
+cooling it. Mr. Smallweed has been twice dispatched for effervescent
+drinks, and has twice mixed them in the two official tumblers and
+stirred them up with the ruler. Mr. Guppy propounds for Mr.
+Smallweed's consideration the paradox that the more you drink the
+thirstier you are and reclines his head upon the window-sill in a
+state of hopeless languor.
+
+While thus looking out into the shade of Old Square, Lincoln's Inn,
+surveying the intolerable bricks and mortar, Mr. Guppy becomes
+conscious of a manly whisker emerging from the cloistered walk below
+and turning itself up in the direction of his face. At the same time,
+a low whistle is wafted through the Inn and a suppressed voice cries,
+"Hip! Gup-py!"
+
+"Why, you don't mean it!" says Mr. Guppy, aroused. "Small! Here's
+Jobling!" Small's head looks out of window too and nods to Jobling.
+
+"Where have you sprung up from?" inquires Mr. Guppy.
+
+"From the market-gardens down by Deptford. I can't stand it any
+longer. I must enlist. I say! I wish you'd lend me half a crown. Upon
+my soul, I'm hungry."
+
+Jobling looks hungry and also has the appearance of having run to
+seed in the market-gardens down by Deptford.
+
+"I say! Just throw out half a crown if you have got one to spare. I
+want to get some dinner."
+
+"Will you come and dine with me?" says Mr. Guppy, throwing out the
+coin, which Mr. Jobling catches neatly.
+
+"How long should I have to hold out?" says Jobling.
+
+"Not half an hour. I am only waiting here till the enemy goes,
+returns Mr. Guppy, butting inward with his head.
+
+"What enemy?"
+
+"A new one. Going to be articled. Will you wait?"
+
+"Can you give a fellow anything to read in the meantime?" says Mr.
+Jobling.
+
+Smallweed suggests the law list. But Mr. Jobling declares with much
+earnestness that he "can't stand it."
+
+"You shall have the paper," says Mr. Guppy. "He shall bring it down.
+But you had better not be seen about here. Sit on our staircase and
+read. It's a quiet place."
+
+Jobling nods intelligence and acquiescence. The sagacious Smallweed
+supplies him with the newspaper and occasionally drops his eye upon
+him from the landing as a precaution against his becoming disgusted
+with waiting and making an untimely departure. At last the enemy
+retreats, and then Smallweed fetches Mr. Jobling up.
+
+"Well, and how are you?" says Mr. Guppy, shaking hands with him.
+
+"So, so. How are you?"
+
+Mr. Guppy replying that he is not much to boast of, Mr. Jobling
+ventures on the question, "How is SHE?" This Mr. Guppy resents as a
+liberty, retorting, "Jobling, there ARE chords in the human mind--"
+Jobling begs pardon.
+
+"Any subject but that!" says Mr. Guppy with a gloomy enjoyment of his
+injury. "For there ARE chords, Jobling--"
+
+Mr. Jobling begs pardon again.
+
+During this short colloquy, the active Smallweed, who is of the
+dinner party, has written in legal characters on a slip of paper,
+"Return immediately." This notification to all whom it may concern,
+he inserts in the letter-box, and then putting on the tall hat at the
+angle of inclination at which Mr. Guppy wears his, informs his patron
+that they may now make themselves scarce.
+
+Accordingly they betake themselves to a neighbouring dining-house, of
+the class known among its frequenters by the denomination slap-bang,
+where the waitress, a bouncing young female of forty, is supposed to
+have made some impression on the susceptible Smallweed, of whom it
+may be remarked that he is a weird changeling to whom years are
+nothing. He stands precociously possessed of centuries of owlish
+wisdom. If he ever lay in a cradle, it seems as if he must have lain
+there in a tail-coat. He has an old, old eye, has Smallweed; and he
+drinks and smokes in a monkeyish way; and his neck is stiff in his
+collar; and he is never to be taken in; and he knows all about it,
+whatever it is. In short, in his bringing up he has been so nursed by
+Law and Equity that he has become a kind of fossil imp, to account
+for whose terrestrial existence it is reported at the public offices
+that his father was John Doe and his mother the only female member of
+the Roe family, also that his first long-clothes were made from a
+blue bag.
+
+Into the dining-house, unaffected by the seductive show in the window
+of artificially whitened cauliflowers and poultry, verdant baskets of
+peas, coolly blooming cucumbers, and joints ready for the spit, Mr.
+Smallweed leads the way. They know him there and defer to him. He has
+his favourite box, he bespeaks all the papers, he is down upon bald
+patriarchs, who keep them more than ten minutes afterwards. It is of
+no use trying him with anything less than a full-sized "bread" or
+proposing to him any joint in cut unless it is in the very best cut.
+In the matter of gravy he is adamant.
+
+Conscious of his elfin power and submitting to his dread experience,
+Mr. Guppy consults him in the choice of that day's banquet, turning
+an appealing look towards him as the waitress repeats the catalogue
+of viands and saying "What do YOU take, Chick?" Chick, out of the
+profundity of his artfulness, preferring "veal and ham and French
+beans--and don't you forget the stuffing, Polly" (with an unearthly
+cock of his venerable eye), Mr. Guppy and Mr. Jobling give the like
+order. Three pint pots of half-and-half are superadded. Quickly the
+waitress returns bearing what is apparently a model of the Tower of
+Babel but what is really a pile of plates and flat tin dish-covers.
+Mr. Smallweed, approving of what is set before him, conveys
+intelligent benignity into his ancient eye and winks upon her. Then,
+amid a constant coming in, and going out, and running about, and a
+clatter of crockery, and a rumbling up and down of the machine which
+brings the nice cuts from the kitchen, and a shrill crying for more
+nice cuts down the speaking-pipe, and a shrill reckoning of the cost
+of nice cuts that have been disposed of, and a general flush and
+steam of hot joints, cut and uncut, and a considerably heated
+atmosphere in which the soiled knives and tablecloths seem to break
+out spontaneously into eruptions of grease and blotches of beer, the
+legal triumvirate appease their appetites.
+
+Mr. Jobling is buttoned up closer than mere adornment might require.
+His hat presents at the rims a peculiar appearance of a glistening
+nature, as if it had been a favourite snail-promenade. The same
+phenomenon is visible on some parts of his coat, and particularly at
+the seams. He has the faded appearance of a gentleman in embarrassed
+circumstances; even his light whiskers droop with something of a
+shabby air.
+
+His appetite is so vigorous that it suggests spare living for some
+little time back. He makes such a speedy end of his plate of veal and
+ham, bringing it to a close while his companions are yet midway in
+theirs, that Mr. Guppy proposes another. "Thank you, Guppy," says Mr.
+Jobling, "I really don't know but what I WILL take another."
+
+Another being brought, he falls to with great goodwill.
+
+Mr. Guppy takes silent notice of him at intervals until he is half
+way through this second plate and stops to take an enjoying pull at
+his pint pot of half-and-half (also renewed) and stretches out his
+legs and rubs his hands. Beholding him in which glow of contentment,
+Mr. Guppy says, "You are a man again, Tony!"
+
+"Well, not quite yet," says Mr. Jobling. "Say, just born."
+
+"Will you take any other vegetables? Grass? Peas? Summer cabbage?"
+
+"Thank you, Guppy," says Mr. Jobling. "I really don't know but what I
+WILL take summer cabbage."
+
+Order given; with the sarcastic addition (from Mr. Smallweed) of
+"Without slugs, Polly!" And cabbage produced.
+
+"I am growing up, Guppy," says Mr. Jobling, plying his knife and fork
+with a relishing steadiness.
+
+"Glad to hear it."
+
+"In fact, I have just turned into my teens," says Mr. Jobling.
+
+He says no more until he has performed his task, which he achieves as
+Messrs. Guppy and Smallweed finish theirs, thus getting over the
+ground in excellent style and beating those two gentlemen easily by a
+veal and ham and a cabbage.
+
+"Now, Small," says Mr. Guppy, "what would you recommend about
+pastry?"
+
+"Marrow puddings," says Mr. Smallweed instantly.
+
+"Aye, aye!" cries Mr. Jobling with an arch look. "You're there, are
+you? Thank you, Mr. Guppy, I don't know but what I WILL take a marrow
+pudding."
+
+Three marrow puddings being produced, Mr. Jobling adds in a pleasant
+humour that he is coming of age fast. To these succeed, by command of
+Mr. Smallweed, "three Cheshires," and to those "three small rums."
+This apex of the entertainment happily reached, Mr. Jobling puts up
+his legs on the carpeted seat (having his own side of the box to
+himself), leans against the wall, and says, "I am grown up now,
+Guppy. I have arrived at maturity."
+
+"What do you think, now," says Mr. Guppy, "about--you don't mind
+Smallweed?"
+
+"Not the least in the world. I have the pleasure of drinking his good
+health."
+
+"Sir, to you!" says Mr. Smallweed.
+
+"I was saying, what do you think NOW," pursues Mr. Guppy, "of
+enlisting?"
+
+"Why, what I may think after dinner," returns Mr. Jobling, "is one
+thing, my dear Guppy, and what I may think before dinner is another
+thing. Still, even after dinner, I ask myself the question, What am I
+to do? How am I to live? Ill fo manger, you know," says Mr. Jobling,
+pronouncing that word as if he meant a necessary fixture in an
+English stable. "Ill fo manger. That's the French saying, and
+mangering is as necessary to me as it is to a Frenchman. Or more so."
+
+Mr. Smallweed is decidedly of opinion "much more so."
+
+"If any man had told me," pursues Jobling, "even so lately as when
+you and I had the frisk down in Lincolnshire, Guppy, and drove over
+to see that house at Castle Wold--"
+
+Mr. Smallweed corrects him--Chesney Wold.
+
+"Chesney Wold. (I thank my honourable friend for that cheer.) If any
+man had told me then that I should be as hard up at the present time
+as I literally find myself, I should have--well, I should have
+pitched into him," says Mr. Jobling, taking a little rum-and-water
+with an air of desperate resignation; "I should have let fly at his
+head."
+
+"Still, Tony, you were on the wrong side of the post then,"
+remonstrates Mr. Guppy. "You were talking about nothing else in the
+gig."
+
+"Guppy," says Mr. Jobling, "I will not deny it. I was on the wrong
+side of the post. But I trusted to things coming round."
+
+That very popular trust in flat things coming round! Not in their
+being beaten round, or worked round, but in their "coming" round! As
+though a lunatic should trust in the world's "coming" triangular!
+
+"I had confident expectations that things would come round and be all
+square," says Mr. Jobling with some vagueness of expression and
+perhaps of meaning too. "But I was disappointed. They never did. And
+when it came to creditors making rows at the office and to people
+that the office dealt with making complaints about dirty trifles of
+borrowed money, why there was an end of that connexion. And of any
+new professional connexion too, for if I was to give a reference
+to-morrow, it would be mentioned and would sew me up. Then what's a
+fellow to do? I have been keeping out of the way and living cheap
+down about the market-gardens, but what's the use of living cheap
+when you have got no money? You might as well live dear."
+
+"Better," Mr. Smallweed thinks.
+
+"Certainly. It's the fashionable way; and fashion and whiskers have
+been my weaknesses, and I don't care who knows it," says Mr. Jobling.
+"They are great weaknesses--Damme, sir, they are great. Well,"
+proceeds Mr. Jobling after a defiant visit to his rum-and-water,
+"what can a fellow do, I ask you, BUT enlist?"
+
+Mr. Guppy comes more fully into the conversation to state what, in
+his opinion, a fellow can do. His manner is the gravely impressive
+manner of a man who has not committed himself in life otherwise than
+as he has become the victim of a tender sorrow of the heart.
+
+"Jobling," says Mr. Guppy, "myself and our mutual friend Smallweed--"
+
+Mr. Smallweed modestly observes, "Gentlemen both!" and drinks.
+
+"--Have had a little conversation on this matter more than once since
+you--"
+
+"Say, got the sack!" cries Mr. Jobling bitterly. "Say it, Guppy. You
+mean it."
+
+"No-o-o! Left the Inn," Mr. Smallweed delicately suggests.
+
+"Since you left the Inn, Jobling," says Mr. Guppy; "and I have
+mentioned to our mutual friend Smallweed a plan I have lately thought
+of proposing. You know Snagsby the stationer?"
+
+"I know there is such a stationer," returns Mr. Jobling. "He was not
+ours, and I am not acquainted with him."
+
+"He IS ours, Jobling, and I AM acquainted with him," Mr. Guppy
+retorts. "Well, sir! I have lately become better acquainted with him
+through some accidental circumstances that have made me a visitor of
+his in private life. Those circumstances it is not necessary to offer
+in argument. They may--or they may not--have some reference to a
+subject which may--or may not--have cast its shadow on my existence."
+
+As it is Mr. Guppy's perplexing way with boastful misery to tempt his
+particular friends into this subject, and the moment they touch it,
+to turn on them with that trenchant severity about the chords in the
+human mind, both Mr. Jobling and Mr. Smallweed decline the pitfall by
+remaining silent.
+
+"Such things may be," repeats Mr. Guppy, "or they may not be. They
+are no part of the case. It is enough to mention that both Mr. and
+Mrs. Snagsby are very willing to oblige me and that Snagsby has, in
+busy times, a good deal of copying work to give out. He has all
+Tulkinghorn's, and an excellent business besides. I believe if our
+mutual friend Smallweed were put into the box, he could prove this?"
+
+Mr. Smallweed nods and appears greedy to be sworn.
+
+"Now, gentlemen of the jury," says Mr. Guppy, "--I mean, now,
+Jobling--you may say this is a poor prospect of a living. Granted.
+But it's better than nothing, and better than enlistment. You want
+time. There must be time for these late affairs to blow over. You
+might live through it on much worse terms than by writing for
+Snagsby."
+
+Mr. Jobling is about to interrupt when the sagacious Smallweed checks
+him with a dry cough and the words, "Hem! Shakspeare!"
+
+"There are two branches to this subject, Jobling," says Mr. Guppy.
+"That is the first. I come to the second. You know Krook, the
+Chancellor, across the lane. Come, Jobling," says Mr. Guppy in his
+encouraging cross-examination-tone, "I think you know Krook, the
+Chancellor, across the lane?"
+
+"I know him by sight," says Mr. Jobling.
+
+"You know him by sight. Very well. And you know little Flite?"
+
+"Everybody knows her," says Mr. Jobling.
+
+"Everybody knows her. VERY well. Now it has been one of my duties of
+late to pay Flite a certain weekly allowance, deducting from it the
+amount of her weekly rent, which I have paid (in consequence of
+instructions I have received) to Krook himself, regularly in her
+presence. This has brought me into communication with Krook and into
+a knowledge of his house and his habits. I know he has a room to let.
+You may live there at a very low charge under any name you like, as
+quietly as if you were a hundred miles off. He'll ask no questions
+and would accept you as a tenant at a word from me--before the clock
+strikes, if you chose. And I tell you another thing, Jobling," says
+Mr. Guppy, who has suddenly lowered his voice and become familiar
+again, "he's an extraordinary old chap--always rummaging among a
+litter of papers and grubbing away at teaching himself to read and
+write, without getting on a bit, as it seems to me. He is a most
+extraordinary old chap, sir. I don't know but what it might be worth
+a fellow's while to look him up a bit."
+
+"You don't mean--" Mr. Jobling begins.
+
+"I mean," returns Mr. Guppy, shrugging his shoulders with becoming
+modesty, "that I can't make him out. I appeal to our mutual friend
+Smallweed whether he has or has not heard me remark that I can't make
+him out."
+
+Mr. Smallweed bears the concise testimony, "A few!"
+
+"I have seen something of the profession and something of life,
+Tony," says Mr. Guppy, "and it's seldom I can't make a man out, more
+or less. But such an old card as this, so deep, so sly, and secret
+(though I don't believe he is ever sober), I never came across. Now,
+he must be precious old, you know, and he has not a soul about him,
+and he is reported to be immensely rich; and whether he is a
+smuggler, or a receiver, or an unlicensed pawnbroker, or a
+money-lender--all of which I have thought likely at different
+times--it might pay you to knock up a sort of knowledge of him. I
+don't see why you shouldn't go in for it, when everything else
+suits."
+
+Mr. Jobling, Mr. Guppy, and Mr. Smallweed all lean their elbows on
+the table and their chins upon their hands, and look at the ceiling.
+After a time, they all drink, slowly lean back, put their hands in
+their pockets, and look at one another.
+
+"If I had the energy I once possessed, Tony!" says Mr. Guppy with a
+sigh. "But there are chords in the human mind--"
+
+Expressing the remainder of the desolate sentiment in rum-and-water,
+Mr. Guppy concludes by resigning the adventure to Tony Jobling and
+informing him that during the vacation and while things are slack,
+his purse, "as far as three or four or even five pound goes," will be
+at his disposal. "For never shall it be said," Mr. Guppy adds with
+emphasis, "that William Guppy turned his back upon his friend!"
+
+The latter part of the proposal is so directly to the purpose that
+Mr. Jobling says with emotion, "Guppy, my trump, your fist!" Mr.
+Guppy presents it, saying, "Jobling, my boy, there it is!" Mr.
+Jobling returns, "Guppy, we have been pals now for some years!" Mr.
+Guppy replies, "Jobling, we have."
+
+They then shake hands, and Mr. Jobling adds in a feeling manner,
+"Thank you, Guppy, I don't know but what I WILL take another glass
+for old acquaintance sake."
+
+"Krook's last lodger died there," observes Mr. Guppy in an incidental
+way.
+
+"Did he though!" says Mr. Jobling.
+
+"There was a verdict. Accidental death. You don't mind that?"
+
+"No," says Mr. Jobling, "I don't mind it; but he might as well have
+died somewhere else. It's devilish odd that he need go and die at MY
+place!" Mr. Jobling quite resents this liberty, several times
+returning to it with such remarks as, "There are places enough to die
+in, I should think!" or, "He wouldn't have liked my dying at HIS
+place, I dare say!"
+
+However, the compact being virtually made, Mr. Guppy proposes to
+dispatch the trusty Smallweed to ascertain if Mr. Krook is at home,
+as in that case they may complete the negotiation without delay. Mr.
+Jobling approving, Smallweed puts himself under the tall hat and
+conveys it out of the dining-rooms in the Guppy manner. He soon
+returns with the intelligence that Mr. Krook is at home and that he
+has seen him through the shop-door, sitting in the back premises,
+sleeping "like one o'clock."
+
+"Then I'll pay," says Mr. Guppy, "and we'll go and see him. Small,
+what will it be?"
+
+Mr. Smallweed, compelling the attendance of the waitress with one
+hitch of his eyelash, instantly replies as follows: "Four veals and
+hams is three, and four potatoes is three and four, and one summer
+cabbage is three and six, and three marrows is four and six, and six
+breads is five, and three Cheshires is five and three, and four
+half-pints of half-and-half is six and three, and four small rums is
+eight and three, and three Pollys is eight and six. Eight and six in
+half a sovereign, Polly, and eighteenpence out!"
+
+Not at all excited by these stupendous calculations, Smallweed
+dismisses his friends with a cool nod and remains behind to take a
+little admiring notice of Polly, as opportunity may serve, and to
+read the daily papers, which are so very large in proportion to
+himself, shorn of his hat, that when he holds up the Times to run his
+eye over the columns, he seems to have retired for the night and to
+have disappeared under the bedclothes.
+
+Mr. Guppy and Mr. Jobling repair to the rag and bottle shop, where
+they find Krook still sleeping like one o'clock, that is to say,
+breathing stertorously with his chin upon his breast and quite
+insensible to any external sounds or even to gentle shaking. On the
+table beside him, among the usual lumber, stand an empty gin-bottle
+and a glass. The unwholesome air is so stained with this liquor that
+even the green eyes of the cat upon her shelf, as they open and shut
+and glimmer on the visitors, look drunk.
+
+"Hold up here!" says Mr. Guppy, giving the relaxed figure of the old
+man another shake. "Mr. Krook! Halloa, sir!"
+
+But it would seem as easy to wake a bundle of old clothes with a
+spirituous heat smouldering in it. "Did you ever see such a stupor as
+he falls into, between drink and sleep?" says Mr. Guppy.
+
+"If this is his regular sleep," returns Jobling, rather alarmed,
+"it'll last a long time one of these days, I am thinking."
+
+"It's always more like a fit than a nap," says Mr. Guppy, shaking him
+again. "Halloa, your lordship! Why, he might be robbed fifty times
+over! Open your eyes!"
+
+After much ado, he opens them, but without appearing to see his
+visitors or any other objects. Though he crosses one leg on another,
+and folds his hands, and several times closes and opens his parched
+lips, he seems to all intents and purposes as insensible as before.
+
+"He is alive, at any rate," says Mr. Guppy. "How are you, my Lord
+Chancellor. I have brought a friend of mine, sir, on a little matter
+of business."
+
+The old man still sits, often smacking his dry lips without the least
+consciousness. After some minutes he makes an attempt to rise. They
+help him up, and he staggers against the wall and stares at them.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Krook?" says Mr. Guppy in some discomfiture. "How
+do you do, sir? You are looking charming, Mr. Krook. I hope you are
+pretty well?"
+
+The old man, in aiming a purposeless blow at Mr. Guppy, or at
+nothing, feebly swings himself round and comes with his face against
+the wall. So he remains for a minute or two, heaped up against it,
+and then staggers down the shop to the front door. The air, the
+movement in the court, the lapse of time, or the combination of these
+things recovers him. He comes back pretty steadily, adjusting his fur
+cap on his head and looking keenly at them.
+
+"Your servant, gentlemen; I've been dozing. Hi! I am hard to wake,
+odd times."
+
+"Rather so, indeed, sir," responds Mr. Guppy.
+
+"What? You've been a-trying to do it, have you?" says the suspicious
+Krook.
+
+"Only a little," Mr. Guppy explains.
+
+The old man's eye resting on the empty bottle, he takes it up,
+examines it, and slowly tilts it upside down.
+
+"I say!" he cries like the hobgoblin in the story. "Somebody's been
+making free here!"
+
+"I assure you we found it so," says Mr. Guppy. "Would you allow me to
+get it filled for you?"
+
+"Yes, certainly I would!" cries Krook in high glee. "Certainly I
+would! Don't mention it! Get it filled next door--Sol's Arms--the
+Lord Chancellor's fourteenpenny. Bless you, they know ME!"
+
+He so presses the empty bottle upon Mr. Guppy that that gentleman,
+with a nod to his friend, accepts the trust and hurries out and
+hurries in again with the bottle filled. The old man receives it in
+his arms like a beloved grandchild and pats it tenderly.
+
+"But, I say," he whispers, with his eyes screwed up, after tasting
+it, "this ain't the Lord Chancellor's fourteenpenny. This is
+eighteenpenny!"
+
+"I thought you might like that better," says Mr. Guppy.
+
+"You're a nobleman, sir," returns Krook with another taste, and his
+hot breath seems to come towards them like a flame. "You're a baron
+of the land."
+
+Taking advantage of this auspicious moment, Mr. Guppy presents his
+friend under the impromptu name of Mr. Weevle and states the object
+of their visit. Krook, with his bottle under his arm (he never gets
+beyond a certain point of either drunkenness or sobriety), takes time
+to survey his proposed lodger and seems to approve of him. "You'd
+like to see the room, young man?" he says. "Ah! It's a good room!
+Been whitewashed. Been cleaned down with soft soap and soda. Hi! It's
+worth twice the rent, letting alone my company when you want it and
+such a cat to keep the mice away."
+
+Commending the room after this manner, the old man takes them
+upstairs, where indeed they do find it cleaner than it used to be and
+also containing some old articles of furniture which he has dug up
+from his inexhaustible stores. The terms are easily concluded--for
+the Lord Chancellor cannot be hard on Mr. Guppy, associated as he is
+with Kenge and Carboy, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, and other famous claims
+on his professional consideration--and it is agreed that Mr. Weevle
+shall take possession on the morrow. Mr. Weevle and Mr. Guppy then
+repair to Cook's Court, Cursitor Street, where the personal
+introduction of the former to Mr. Snagsby is effected and (more
+important) the vote and interest of Mrs. Snagsby are secured. They
+then report progress to the eminent Smallweed, waiting at the office
+in his tall hat for that purpose, and separate, Mr. Guppy explaining
+that he would terminate his little entertainment by standing treat at
+the play but that there are chords in the human mind which would
+render it a hollow mockery.
+
+On the morrow, in the dusk of evening, Mr. Weevle modestly appears at
+Krook's, by no means incommoded with luggage, and establishes himself
+in his new lodging, where the two eyes in the shutters stare at him
+in his sleep, as if they were full of wonder. On the following day
+Mr. Weevle, who is a handy good-for-nothing kind of young fellow,
+borrows a needle and thread of Miss Flite and a hammer of his
+landlord and goes to work devising apologies for window-curtains, and
+knocking up apologies for shelves, and hanging up his two teacups,
+milkpot, and crockery sundries on a pennyworth of little hooks, like
+a shipwrecked sailor making the best of it.
+
+But what Mr. Weevle prizes most of all his few possessions (next
+after his light whiskers, for which he has an attachment that only
+whiskers can awaken in the breast of man) is a choice collection of
+copper-plate impressions from that truly national work The Divinities
+of Albion, or Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty, representing ladies
+of title and fashion in every variety of smirk that art, combined
+with capital, is capable of producing. With these magnificent
+portraits, unworthily confined in a band-box during his seclusion
+among the market-gardens, he decorates his apartment; and as the
+Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty wears every variety of fancy dress,
+plays every variety of musical instrument, fondles every variety of
+dog, ogles every variety of prospect, and is backed up by every
+variety of flower-pot and balustrade, the result is very imposing.
+
+But fashion is Mr. Weevle's, as it was Tony Jobling's, weakness. To
+borrow yesterday's paper from the Sol's Arms of an evening and read
+about the brilliant and distinguished meteors that are shooting
+across the fashionable sky in every direction is unspeakable
+consolation to him. To know what member of what brilliant and
+distinguished circle accomplished the brilliant and distinguished
+feat of joining it yesterday or contemplates the no less brilliant
+and distinguished feat of leaving it to-morrow gives him a thrill of
+joy. To be informed what the Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty is
+about, and means to be about, and what Galaxy marriages are on the
+tapis, and what Galaxy rumours are in circulation, is to become
+acquainted with the most glorious destinies of mankind. Mr. Weevle
+reverts from this intelligence to the Galaxy portraits implicated,
+and seems to know the originals, and to be known of them.
+
+For the rest he is a quiet lodger, full of handy shifts and devices
+as before mentioned, able to cook and clean for himself as well as to
+carpenter, and developing social inclinations after the shades of
+evening have fallen on the court. At those times, when he is not
+visited by Mr. Guppy or by a small light in his likeness quenched in
+a dark hat, he comes out of his dull room--where he has inherited the
+deal wilderness of desk bespattered with a rain of ink--and talks to
+Krook or is "very free," as they call it in the court, commendingly,
+with any one disposed for conversation. Wherefore, Mrs. Piper, who
+leads the court, is impelled to offer two remarks to Mrs. Perkins:
+firstly, that if her Johnny was to have whiskers, she could wish 'em
+to be identically like that young man's; and secondly, "Mark my
+words, Mrs. Perkins, ma'am, and don't you be surprised, Lord bless
+you, if that young man comes in at last for old Krook's money!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+The Smallweed Family
+
+
+In a rather ill-favoured and ill-savoured neighbourhood, though one
+of its rising grounds bears the name of Mount Pleasant, the Elfin
+Smallweed, christened Bartholomew and known on the domestic hearth as
+Bart, passes that limited portion of his time on which the office and
+its contingencies have no claim. He dwells in a little narrow street,
+always solitary, shady, and sad, closely bricked in on all sides like
+a tomb, but where there yet lingers the stump of an old forest tree
+whose flavour is about as fresh and natural as the Smallweed smack of
+youth.
+
+There has been only one child in the Smallweed family for several
+generations. Little old men and women there have been, but no child,
+until Mr. Smallweed's grandmother, now living, became weak in her
+intellect and fell (for the first time) into a childish state. With
+such infantine graces as a total want of observation, memory,
+understanding, and interest, and an eternal disposition to fall
+asleep over the fire and into it, Mr. Smallweed's grandmother has
+undoubtedly brightened the family.
+
+Mr. Smallweed's grandfather is likewise of the party. He is in a
+helpless condition as to his lower, and nearly so as to his upper,
+limbs, but his mind is unimpaired. It holds, as well as it ever held,
+the first four rules of arithmetic and a certain small collection of
+the hardest facts. In respect of ideality, reverence, wonder, and
+other such phrenological attributes, it is no worse off than it used
+to be. Everything that Mr. Smallweed's grandfather ever put away in
+his mind was a grub at first, and is a grub at last. In all his life
+he has never bred a single butterfly.
+
+The father of this pleasant grandfather, of the neighbourhood of
+Mount Pleasant, was a horny-skinned, two-legged, money-getting
+species of spider who spun webs to catch unwary flies and retired
+into holes until they were entrapped. The name of this old pagan's
+god was Compound Interest. He lived for it, married it, died of it.
+Meeting with a heavy loss in an honest little enterprise in which all
+the loss was intended to have been on the other side, he broke
+something--something necessary to his existence, therefore it
+couldn't have been his heart--and made an end of his career. As his
+character was not good, and he had been bred at a charity school in a
+complete course, according to question and answer, of those ancient
+people the Amorites and Hittites, he was frequently quoted as an
+example of the failure of education.
+
+His spirit shone through his son, to whom he had always preached of
+"going out" early in life and whom he made a clerk in a sharp
+scrivener's office at twelve years old. There the young gentleman
+improved his mind, which was of a lean and anxious character, and
+developing the family gifts, gradually elevated himself into the
+discounting profession. Going out early in life and marrying late, as
+his father had done before him, he too begat a lean and
+anxious-minded son, who in his turn, going out early in life and
+marrying late, became the father of Bartholomew and Judith Smallweed,
+twins. During the whole time consumed in the slow growth of this
+family tree, the house of Smallweed, always early to go out and late
+to marry, has strengthened itself in its practical character, has
+discarded all amusements, discountenanced all story-books,
+fairy-tales, fictions, and fables, and banished all levities
+whatsoever. Hence the gratifying fact that it has had no child born
+to it and that the complete little men and women whom it has produced
+have been observed to bear a likeness to old monkeys with something
+depressing on their minds.
+
+At the present time, in the dark little parlour certain feet below
+the level of the street--a grim, hard, uncouth parlour, only
+ornamented with the coarsest of baize table-covers, and the hardest
+of sheet-iron tea-trays, and offering in its decorative character no
+bad allegorical representation of Grandfather Smallweed's
+mind--seated in two black horsehair porter's chairs, one on each side
+of the fire-place, the superannuated Mr. and Mrs. Smallweed while
+away the rosy hours. On the stove are a couple of trivets for the
+pots and kettles which it is Grandfather Smallweed's usual occupation
+to watch, and projecting from the chimney-piece between them is a
+sort of brass gallows for roasting, which he also superintends when
+it is in action. Under the venerable Mr. Smallweed's seat and guarded
+by his spindle legs is a drawer in his chair, reported to contain
+property to a fabulous amount. Beside him is a spare cushion with
+which he is always provided in order that he may have something to
+throw at the venerable partner of his respected age whenever she
+makes an allusion to money--a subject on which he is particularly
+sensitive.
+
+"And where's Bart?" Grandfather Smallweed inquires of Judy, Bart's
+twin sister.
+
+"He an't come in yet," says Judy.
+
+"It's his tea-time, isn't it?"
+
+"No."
+
+"How much do you mean to say it wants then?"
+
+"Ten minutes."
+
+"Hey?"
+
+"Ten minutes." (Loud on the part of Judy.)
+
+"Ho!" says Grandfather Smallweed. "Ten minutes."
+
+Grandmother Smallweed, who has been mumbling and shaking her head at
+the trivets, hearing figures mentioned, connects them with money and
+screeches like a horrible old parrot without any plumage, "Ten
+ten-pound notes!"
+
+Grandfather Smallweed immediately throws the cushion at her.
+
+"Drat you, be quiet!" says the good old man.
+
+The effect of this act of jaculation is twofold. It not only doubles
+up Mrs. Smallweed's head against the side of her porter's chair and
+causes her to present, when extricated by her granddaughter, a highly
+unbecoming state of cap, but the necessary exertion recoils on Mr.
+Smallweed himself, whom it throws back into HIS porter's chair like a
+broken puppet. The excellent old gentleman being at these times a
+mere clothes-bag with a black skull-cap on the top of it, does not
+present a very animated appearance until he has undergone the two
+operations at the hands of his granddaughter of being shaken up like
+a great bottle and poked and punched like a great bolster. Some
+indication of a neck being developed in him by these means, he and
+the sharer of his life's evening again fronting one another in their
+two porter's chairs, like a couple of sentinels long forgotten on
+their post by the Black Serjeant, Death.
+
+Judy the twin is worthy company for these associates. She is so
+indubitably sister to Mr. Smallweed the younger that the two kneaded
+into one would hardly make a young person of average proportions,
+while she so happily exemplifies the before-mentioned family likeness
+to the monkey tribe that attired in a spangled robe and cap she might
+walk about the table-land on the top of a barrel-organ without
+exciting much remark as an unusual specimen. Under existing
+circumstances, however, she is dressed in a plain, spare gown of
+brown stuff.
+
+Judy never owned a doll, never heard of Cinderella, never played at
+any game. She once or twice fell into children's company when she was
+about ten years old, but the children couldn't get on with Judy, and
+Judy couldn't get on with them. She seemed like an animal of another
+species, and there was instinctive repugnance on both sides. It is
+very doubtful whether Judy knows how to laugh. She has so rarely seen
+the thing done that the probabilities are strong the other way. Of
+anything like a youthful laugh, she certainly can have no conception.
+If she were to try one, she would find her teeth in her way,
+modelling that action of her face, as she has unconsciously modelled
+all its other expressions, on her pattern of sordid age. Such is
+Judy.
+
+And her twin brother couldn't wind up a top for his life. He knows no
+more of Jack the Giant Killer or of Sinbad the Sailor than he knows
+of the people in the stars. He could as soon play at leap-frog or at
+cricket as change into a cricket or a frog himself. But he is so much
+the better off than his sister that on his narrow world of fact an
+opening has dawned into such broader regions as lie within the ken of
+Mr. Guppy. Hence his admiration and his emulation of that shining
+enchanter.
+
+Judy, with a gong-like clash and clatter, sets one of the sheet-iron
+tea-trays on the table and arranges cups and saucers. The bread she
+puts on in an iron basket, and the butter (and not much of it) in a
+small pewter plate. Grandfather Smallweed looks hard after the tea as
+it is served out and asks Judy where the girl is.
+
+"Charley, do you mean?" says Judy.
+
+"Hey?" from Grandfather Smallweed.
+
+"Charley, do you mean?"
+
+This touches a spring in Grandmother Smallweed, who, chuckling as
+usual at the trivets, cries, "Over the water! Charley over the water,
+Charley over the water, over the water to Charley, Charley over the
+water, over the water to Charley!" and becomes quite energetic about
+it. Grandfather looks at the cushion but has not sufficiently
+recovered his late exertion.
+
+"Ha!" he says when there is silence. "If that's her name. She eats a
+deal. It would be better to allow her for her keep."
+
+Judy, with her brother's wink, shakes her head and purses up her
+mouth into no without saying it.
+
+"No?" returns the old man. "Why not?"
+
+"She'd want sixpence a day, and we can do it for less," says Judy.
+
+"Sure?"
+
+Judy answers with a nod of deepest meaning and calls, as she scrapes
+the butter on the loaf with every precaution against waste and cuts
+it into slices, "You, Charley, where are you?" Timidly obedient to
+the summons, a little girl in a rough apron and a large bonnet, with
+her hands covered with soap and water and a scrubbing brush in one of
+them, appears, and curtsys.
+
+"What work are you about now?" says Judy, making an ancient snap at
+her like a very sharp old beldame.
+
+"I'm a-cleaning the upstairs back room, miss," replies Charley.
+
+"Mind you do it thoroughly, and don't loiter. Shirking won't do for
+me. Make haste! Go along!" cries Judy with a stamp upon the ground.
+"You girls are more trouble than you're worth, by half."
+
+On this severe matron, as she returns to her task of scraping the
+butter and cutting the bread, falls the shadow of her brother,
+looking in at the window. For whom, knife and loaf in hand, she opens
+the street-door.
+
+"Aye, aye, Bart!" says Grandfather Smallweed. "Here you are, hey?"
+
+"Here I am," says Bart.
+
+"Been along with your friend again, Bart?"
+
+Small nods.
+
+"Dining at his expense, Bart?"
+
+Small nods again.
+
+"That's right. Live at his expense as much as you can, and take
+warning by his foolish example. That's the use of such a friend. The
+only use you can put him to," says the venerable sage.
+
+His grandson, without receiving this good counsel as dutifully as he
+might, honours it with all such acceptance as may lie in a slight
+wink and a nod and takes a chair at the tea-table. The four old faces
+then hover over teacups like a company of ghastly cherubim, Mrs.
+Smallweed perpetually twitching her head and chattering at the
+trivets and Mr. Smallweed requiring to be repeatedly shaken up like a
+large black draught.
+
+"Yes, yes," says the good old gentleman, reverting to his lesson of
+wisdom. "That's such advice as your father would have given you,
+Bart. You never saw your father. More's the pity. He was my true
+son." Whether it is intended to be conveyed that he was particularly
+pleasant to look at, on that account, does not appear.
+
+"He was my true son," repeats the old gentleman, folding his bread
+and butter on his knee, "a good accountant, and died fifteen years
+ago."
+
+Mrs. Smallweed, following her usual instinct, breaks out with
+"Fifteen hundred pound. Fifteen hundred pound in a black box, fifteen
+hundred pound locked up, fifteen hundred pound put away and hid!" Her
+worthy husband, setting aside his bread and butter, immediately
+discharges the cushion at her, crushes her against the side of her
+chair, and falls back in his own, overpowered. His appearance, after
+visiting Mrs. Smallweed with one of these admonitions, is
+particularly impressive and not wholly prepossessing, firstly because
+the exertion generally twists his black skull-cap over one eye and
+gives him an air of goblin rakishness, secondly because he mutters
+violent imprecations against Mrs. Smallweed, and thirdly because the
+contrast between those powerful expressions and his powerless figure
+is suggestive of a baleful old malignant who would be very wicked if
+he could. All this, however, is so common in the Smallweed family
+circle that it produces no impression. The old gentleman is merely
+shaken and has his internal feathers beaten up, the cushion is
+restored to its usual place beside him, and the old lady, perhaps
+with her cap adjusted and perhaps not, is planted in her chair again,
+ready to be bowled down like a ninepin.
+
+Some time elapses in the present instance before the old gentleman is
+sufficiently cool to resume his discourse, and even then he mixes it
+up with several edifying expletives addressed to the unconscious
+partner of his bosom, who holds communication with nothing on earth
+but the trivets. As thus: "If your father, Bart, had lived longer, he
+might have been worth a deal of money--you brimstone chatterer!--but
+just as he was beginning to build up the house that he had been
+making the foundations for, through many a year--you jade of a
+magpie, jackdaw, and poll-parrot, what do you mean!--he took ill and
+died of a low fever, always being a sparing and a spare man, full of
+business care--I should like to throw a cat at you instead of a
+cushion, and I will too if you make such a confounded fool of
+yourself!--and your mother, who was a prudent woman as dry as a chip,
+just dwindled away like touchwood after you and Judy were born--you
+are an old pig. You are a brimstone pig. You're a head of swine!"
+
+Judy, not interested in what she has often heard, begins to collect
+in a basin various tributary streams of tea, from the bottoms of cups
+and saucers and from the bottom of the tea-pot for the little
+charwoman's evening meal. In like manner she gets together, in the
+iron bread-basket, as many outside fragments and worn-down heels of
+loaves as the rigid economy of the house has left in existence.
+
+"But your father and me were partners, Bart," says the old gentleman,
+"and when I am gone, you and Judy will have all there is. It's rare
+for you both that you went out early in life--Judy to the flower
+business, and you to the law. You won't want to spend it. You'll get
+your living without it, and put more to it. When I am gone, Judy will
+go back to the flower business and you'll still stick to the law."
+
+One might infer from Judy's appearance that her business rather lay
+with the thorns than the flowers, but she has in her time been
+apprenticed to the art and mystery of artificial flower-making. A
+close observer might perhaps detect both in her eye and her
+brother's, when their venerable grandsire anticipates his being gone,
+some little impatience to know when he may be going, and some
+resentful opinion that it is time he went.
+
+"Now, if everybody has done," says Judy, completing her preparations,
+"I'll have that girl in to her tea. She would never leave off if she
+took it by herself in the kitchen."
+
+Charley is accordingly introduced, and under a heavy fire of eyes,
+sits down to her basin and a Druidical ruin of bread and butter. In
+the active superintendence of this young person, Judy Smallweed
+appears to attain a perfectly geological age and to date from the
+remotest periods. Her systematic manner of flying at her and pouncing
+on her, with or without pretence, whether or no, is wonderful,
+evincing an accomplishment in the art of girl-driving seldom reached
+by the oldest practitioners.
+
+"Now, don't stare about you all the afternoon," cries Judy, shaking
+her head and stamping her foot as she happens to catch the glance
+which has been previously sounding the basin of tea, "but take your
+victuals and get back to your work."
+
+"Yes, miss," says Charley.
+
+"Don't say yes," returns Miss Smallweed, "for I know what you girls
+are. Do it without saying it, and then I may begin to believe you."
+
+Charley swallows a great gulp of tea in token of submission and so
+disperses the Druidical ruins that Miss Smallweed charges her not to
+gormandize, which "in you girls," she observes, is disgusting.
+Charley might find some more difficulty in meeting her views on the
+general subject of girls but for a knock at the door.
+
+"See who it is, and don't chew when you open it!" cries Judy.
+
+The object of her attentions withdrawing for the purpose, Miss
+Smallweed takes that opportunity of jumbling the remainder of the
+bread and butter together and launching two or three dirty tea-cups
+into the ebb-tide of the basin of tea as a hint that she considers
+the eating and drinking terminated.
+
+"Now! Who is it, and what's wanted?" says the snappish Judy.
+
+It is one Mr. George, it appears. Without other announcement or
+ceremony, Mr. George walks in.
+
+"Whew!" says Mr. George. "You are hot here. Always a fire, eh? Well!
+Perhaps you do right to get used to one." Mr. George makes the latter
+remark to himself as he nods to Grandfather Smallweed.
+
+"Ho! It's you!" cries the old gentleman. "How de do? How de do?"
+
+"Middling," replies Mr. George, taking a chair. "Your granddaughter I
+have had the honour of seeing before; my service to you, miss."
+
+"This is my grandson," says Grandfather Smallweed. "You ha'n't seen
+him before. He is in the law and not much at home."
+
+"My service to him, too! He is like his sister. He is very like his
+sister. He is devilish like his sister," says Mr. George, laying a
+great and not altogether complimentary stress on his last adjective.
+
+"And how does the world use you, Mr. George?" Grandfather Smallweed
+inquires, slowly rubbing his legs.
+
+"Pretty much as usual. Like a football."
+
+He is a swarthy brown man of fifty, well made, and good looking, with
+crisp dark hair, bright eyes, and a broad chest. His sinewy and
+powerful hands, as sunburnt as his face, have evidently been used to
+a pretty rough life. What is curious about him is that he sits
+forward on his chair as if he were, from long habit, allowing space
+for some dress or accoutrements that he has altogether laid aside.
+His step too is measured and heavy and would go well with a weighty
+clash and jingle of spurs. He is close-shaved now, but his mouth is
+set as if his upper lip had been for years familiar with a great
+moustache; and his manner of occasionally laying the open palm of his
+broad brown hand upon it is to the same effect. Altogether one might
+guess Mr. George to have been a trooper once upon a time.
+
+A special contrast Mr. George makes to the Smallweed family. Trooper
+was never yet billeted upon a household more unlike him. It is a
+broadsword to an oyster-knife. His developed figure and their stunted
+forms, his large manner filling any amount of room and their little
+narrow pinched ways, his sounding voice and their sharp spare tones,
+are in the strongest and the strangest opposition. As he sits in the
+middle of the grim parlour, leaning a little forward, with his hands
+upon his thighs and his elbows squared, he looks as though, if he
+remained there long, he would absorb into himself the whole family
+and the whole four-roomed house, extra little back-kitchen and all.
+
+"Do you rub your legs to rub life into 'em?" he asks of Grandfather
+Smallweed after looking round the room.
+
+"Why, it's partly a habit, Mr. George, and--yes--it partly helps the
+circulation," he replies.
+
+"The cir-cu-la-tion!" repeats Mr. George, folding his arms upon his
+chest and seeming to become two sizes larger. "Not much of that, I
+should think."
+
+"Truly I'm old, Mr. George," says Grandfather Smallweed. "But I can
+carry my years. I'm older than HER," nodding at his wife, "and see
+what she is? You're a brimstone chatterer!" with a sudden revival of
+his late hostility.
+
+"Unlucky old soul!" says Mr. George, turning his head in that
+direction. "Don't scold the old lady. Look at her here, with her poor
+cap half off her head and her poor hair all in a muddle. Hold up,
+ma'am. That's better. There we are! Think of your mother, Mr.
+Smallweed," says Mr. George, coming back to his seat from assisting
+her, "if your wife an't enough."
+
+"I suppose you were an excellent son, Mr. George?" the old man hints
+with a leer.
+
+The colour of Mr. George's face rather deepens as he replies, "Why
+no. I wasn't."
+
+"I am astonished at it."
+
+"So am I. I ought to have been a good son, and I think I meant to
+have been one. But I wasn't. I was a thundering bad son, that's the
+long and the short of it, and never was a credit to anybody."
+
+"Surprising!" cries the old man.
+
+"However," Mr. George resumes, "the less said about it, the better
+now. Come! You know the agreement. Always a pipe out of the two
+months' interest! (Bosh! It's all correct. You needn't be afraid to
+order the pipe. Here's the new bill, and here's the two months'
+interest-money, and a devil-and-all of a scrape it is to get it
+together in my business.)"
+
+Mr. George sits, with his arms folded, consuming the family and the
+parlour while Grandfather Smallweed is assisted by Judy to two black
+leathern cases out of a locked bureau, in one of which he secures the
+document he has just received, and from the other takes another
+similar document which he hands to Mr. George, who twists it up for a
+pipelight. As the old man inspects, through his glasses, every
+up-stroke and down-stroke of both documents before he releases them
+from their leathern prison, and as he counts the money three times
+over and requires Judy to say every word she utters at least twice,
+and is as tremulously slow of speech and action as it is possible to
+be, this business is a long time in progress. When it is quite
+concluded, and not before, he disengages his ravenous eyes and
+fingers from it and answers Mr. George's last remark by saying,
+"Afraid to order the pipe? We are not so mercenary as that, sir.
+Judy, see directly to the pipe and the glass of cold brandy-and-water
+for Mr. George."
+
+The sportive twins, who have been looking straight before them all
+this time except when they have been engrossed by the black leathern
+cases, retire together, generally disdainful of the visitor, but
+leaving him to the old man as two young cubs might leave a traveller
+to the parental bear.
+
+"And there you sit, I suppose, all the day long, eh?" says Mr. George
+with folded arms.
+
+"Just so, just so," the old man nods.
+
+"And don't you occupy yourself at all?"
+
+"I watch the fire--and the boiling and the roasting--"
+
+"When there is any," says Mr. George with great expression.
+
+"Just so. When there is any."
+
+"Don't you read or get read to?"
+
+The old man shakes his head with sharp sly triumph. "No, no. We have
+never been readers in our family. It don't pay. Stuff. Idleness.
+Folly. No, no!"
+
+"There's not much to choose between your two states," says the
+visitor in a key too low for the old man's dull hearing as he looks
+from him to the old woman and back again. "I say!" in a louder voice.
+
+"I hear you."
+
+"You'll sell me up at last, I suppose, when I am a day in arrear."
+
+"My dear friend!" cries Grandfather Smallweed, stretching out both
+hands to embrace him. "Never! Never, my dear friend! But my friend in
+the city that I got to lend you the money--HE might!"
+
+"Oh! You can't answer for him?" says Mr. George, finishing the
+inquiry in his lower key with the words "You lying old rascal!"
+
+"My dear friend, he is not to be depended on. I wouldn't trust him.
+He will have his bond, my dear friend."
+
+"Devil doubt him," says Mr. George. Charley appearing with a
+tray, on which are the pipe, a small paper of tobacco, and the
+brandy-and-water, he asks her, "How do you come here! You haven't got
+the family face."
+
+"I goes out to work, sir," returns Charley.
+
+The trooper (if trooper he be or have been) takes her bonnet off,
+with a light touch for so strong a hand, and pats her on the head.
+"You give the house almost a wholesome look. It wants a bit of youth
+as much as it wants fresh air." Then he dismisses her, lights his
+pipe, and drinks to Mr. Smallweed's friend in the city--the one
+solitary flight of that esteemed old gentleman's imagination.
+
+"So you think he might be hard upon me, eh?"
+
+"I think he might--I am afraid he would. I have known him do it,"
+says Grandfather Smallweed incautiously, "twenty times."
+
+Incautiously, because his stricken better-half, who has been dozing
+over the fire for some time, is instantly aroused and jabbers "Twenty
+thousand pounds, twenty twenty-pound notes in a money-box, twenty
+guineas, twenty million twenty per cent, twenty--" and is then cut
+short by the flying cushion, which the visitor, to whom this singular
+experiment appears to be a novelty, snatches from her face as it
+crushes her in the usual manner.
+
+"You're a brimstone idiot. You're a scorpion--a brimstone scorpion!
+You're a sweltering toad. You're a chattering clattering broomstick
+witch that ought to be burnt!" gasps the old man, prostrate in his
+chair. "My dear friend, will you shake me up a little?"
+
+Mr. George, who has been looking first at one of them and then at the
+other, as if he were demented, takes his venerable acquaintance by
+the throat on receiving this request, and dragging him upright in his
+chair as easily as if he were a doll, appears in two minds whether or
+no to shake all future power of cushioning out of him and shake him
+into his grave. Resisting the temptation, but agitating him violently
+enough to make his head roll like a harlequin's, he puts him smartly
+down in his chair again and adjusts his skull-cap with such a rub
+that the old man winks with both eyes for a minute afterwards.
+
+"O Lord!" gasps Mr. Smallweed. "That'll do. Thank you, my dear
+friend, that'll do. Oh, dear me, I'm out of breath. O Lord!" And Mr.
+Smallweed says it not without evident apprehensions of his dear
+friend, who still stands over him looming larger than ever.
+
+The alarming presence, however, gradually subsides into its chair and
+falls to smoking in long puffs, consoling itself with the
+philosophical reflection, "The name of your friend in the city begins
+with a D, comrade, and you're about right respecting the bond."
+
+"Did you speak, Mr. George?" inquires the old man.
+
+The trooper shakes his head, and leaning forward with his right elbow
+on his right knee and his pipe supported in that hand, while his
+other hand, resting on his left leg, squares his left elbow in a
+martial manner, continues to smoke. Meanwhile he looks at Mr.
+Smallweed with grave attention and now and then fans the cloud of
+smoke away in order that he may see him the more clearly.
+
+"I take it," he says, making just as much and as little change in his
+position as will enable him to reach the glass to his lips with a
+round, full action, "that I am the only man alive (or dead either)
+that gets the value of a pipe out of YOU?"
+
+"Well," returns the old man, "it's true that I don't see company, Mr.
+George, and that I don't treat. I can't afford to it. But as you, in
+your pleasant way, made your pipe a condition--"
+
+"Why, it's not for the value of it; that's no great thing. It was a
+fancy to get it out of you. To have something in for my money."
+
+"Ha! You're prudent, prudent, sir!" cries Grandfather Smallweed,
+rubbing his legs.
+
+"Very. I always was." Puff. "It's a sure sign of my prudence that I
+ever found the way here." Puff. "Also, that I am what I am." Puff. "I
+am well known to be prudent," says Mr. George, composedly smoking. "I
+rose in life that way."
+
+"Don't be down-hearted, sir. You may rise yet."
+
+Mr. George laughs and drinks.
+
+"Ha'n't you no relations, now," asks Grandfather Smallweed with a
+twinkle in his eyes, "who would pay off this little principal or who
+would lend you a good name or two that I could persuade my friend in
+the city to make you a further advance upon? Two good names would be
+sufficient for my friend in the city. Ha'n't you no such relations,
+Mr. George?"
+
+Mr. George, still composedly smoking, replies, "If I had, I shouldn't
+trouble them. I have been trouble enough to my belongings in my day.
+It MAY be a very good sort of penitence in a vagabond, who has wasted
+the best time of his life, to go back then to decent people that he
+never was a credit to and live upon them, but it's not my sort. The
+best kind of amends then for having gone away is to keep away, in my
+opinion."
+
+"But natural affection, Mr. George," hints Grandfather Smallweed.
+
+"For two good names, hey?" says Mr. George, shaking his head and
+still composedly smoking. "No. That's not my sort either."
+
+Grandfather Smallweed has been gradually sliding down in his chair
+since his last adjustment and is now a bundle of clothes with a voice
+in it calling for Judy. That houri, appearing, shakes him up in the
+usual manner and is charged by the old gentleman to remain near him.
+For he seems chary of putting his visitor to the trouble of repeating
+his late attentions.
+
+"Ha!" he observes when he is in trim again. "If you could have traced
+out the captain, Mr. George, it would have been the making of you. If
+when you first came here, in consequence of our advertisement in the
+newspapers--when I say 'our,' I'm alluding to the advertisements of
+my friend in the city, and one or two others who embark their capital
+in the same way, and are so friendly towards me as sometimes to give
+me a lift with my little pittance--if at that time you could have
+helped us, Mr. George, it would have been the making of you."
+
+"I was willing enough to be 'made,' as you call it," says Mr. George,
+smoking not quite so placidly as before, for since the entrance of
+Judy he has been in some measure disturbed by a fascination, not of
+the admiring kind, which obliges him to look at her as she stands by
+her grandfather's chair, "but on the whole, I am glad I wasn't now."
+
+"Why, Mr. George? In the name of--of brimstone, why?" says
+Grandfather Smallweed with a plain appearance of exasperation.
+(Brimstone apparently suggested by his eye lighting on Mrs. Smallweed
+in her slumber.)
+
+"For two reasons, comrade."
+
+"And what two reasons, Mr. George? In the name of the--"
+
+"Of our friend in the city?" suggests Mr. George, composedly
+drinking.
+
+"Aye, if you like. What two reasons?"
+
+"In the first place," returns Mr. George, but still looking at Judy
+as if she being so old and so like her grandfather it is indifferent
+which of the two he addresses, "you gentlemen took me in. You
+advertised that Mr. Hawdon (Captain Hawdon, if you hold to the saying
+'Once a captain, always a captain') was to hear of something to his
+advantage."
+
+"Well?" returns the old man shrilly and sharply.
+
+"Well!" says Mr. George, smoking on. "It wouldn't have been much to
+his advantage to have been clapped into prison by the whole bill and
+judgment trade of London."
+
+"How do you know that? Some of his rich relations might have paid his
+debts or compounded for 'em. Besides, he had taken US in. He owed us
+immense sums all round. I would sooner have strangled him than had no
+return. If I sit here thinking of him," snarls the old man, holding
+up his impotent ten fingers, "I want to strangle him now." And in a
+sudden access of fury, he throws the cushion at the unoffending Mrs.
+Smallweed, but it passes harmlessly on one side of her chair.
+
+"I don't need to be told," returns the trooper, taking his pipe from
+his lips for a moment and carrying his eyes back from following the
+progress of the cushion to the pipe-bowl which is burning low, "that
+he carried on heavily and went to ruin. I have been at his right hand
+many a day when he was charging upon ruin full-gallop. I was with him
+when he was sick and well, rich and poor. I laid this hand upon him
+after he had run through everything and broken down everything
+beneath him--when he held a pistol to his head."
+
+"I wish he had let it off," says the benevolent old man, "and blown
+his head into as many pieces as he owed pounds!"
+
+"That would have been a smash indeed," returns the trooper coolly;
+"any way, he had been young, hopeful, and handsome in the days gone
+by, and I am glad I never found him, when he was neither, to lead to
+a result so much to his advantage. That's reason number one."
+
+"I hope number two's as good?" snarls the old man.
+
+"Why, no. It's more of a selfish reason. If I had found him, I must
+have gone to the other world to look. He was there."
+
+"How do you know he was there?"
+
+"He wasn't here."
+
+"How do you know he wasn't here?"
+
+"Don't lose your temper as well as your money," says Mr. George,
+calmly knocking the ashes out of his pipe. "He was drowned long
+before. I am convinced of it. He went over a ship's side. Whether
+intentionally or accidentally, I don't know. Perhaps your friend in
+the city does. Do you know what that tune is, Mr. Smallweed?" he adds
+after breaking off to whistle one, accompanied on the table with the
+empty pipe.
+
+"Tune!" replied the old man. "No. We never have tunes here."
+
+"That's the Dead March in Saul. They bury soldiers to it,
+so it's the natural end of the subject. Now, if your pretty
+granddaughter--excuse me, miss--will condescend to take care of this
+pipe for two months, we shall save the cost of one next time. Good
+evening, Mr. Smallweed!"
+
+"My dear friend!" the old man gives him both his hands.
+
+"So you think your friend in the city will be hard upon me if I fall
+in a payment?" says the trooper, looking down upon him like a giant.
+
+"My dear friend, I am afraid he will," returns the old man, looking
+up at him like a pygmy.
+
+Mr. George laughs, and with a glance at Mr. Smallweed and a parting
+salutation to the scornful Judy, strides out of the parlour, clashing
+imaginary sabres and other metallic appurtenances as he goes.
+
+"You're a damned rogue," says the old gentleman, making a hideous
+grimace at the door as he shuts it. "But I'll lime you, you dog, I'll
+lime you!"
+
+After this amiable remark, his spirit soars into those enchanting
+regions of reflection which its education and pursuits have opened to
+it, and again he and Mrs. Smallweed while away the rosy hours, two
+unrelieved sentinels forgotten as aforesaid by the Black Serjeant.
+
+While the twain are faithful to their post, Mr. George strides
+through the streets with a massive kind of swagger and a grave-enough
+face. It is eight o'clock now, and the day is fast drawing in. He
+stops hard by Waterloo Bridge and reads a playbill, decides to go to
+Astley's Theatre. Being there, is much delighted with the horses and
+the feats of strength; looks at the weapons with a critical eye;
+disapproves of the combats as giving evidences of unskilful
+swordsmanship; but is touched home by the sentiments. In the last
+scene, when the Emperor of Tartary gets up into a cart and
+condescends to bless the united lovers by hovering over them with the
+Union Jack, his eyelashes are moistened with emotion.
+
+The theatre over, Mr. George comes across the water again and makes
+his way to that curious region lying about the Haymarket and
+Leicester Square which is a centre of attraction to indifferent
+foreign hotels and indifferent foreigners, racket-courts,
+fighting-men, swordsmen, footguards, old china, gaming-houses,
+exhibitions, and a large medley of shabbiness and shrinking out of
+sight. Penetrating to the heart of this region, he arrives by a court
+and a long whitewashed passage at a great brick building composed of
+bare walls, floors, roof-rafters, and skylights, on the front of
+which, if it can be said to have any front, is painted GEORGE'S
+SHOOTING GALLERY, &c.
+
+Into George's Shooting Gallery, &c., he goes; and in it there are
+gaslights (partly turned off now), and two whitened targets for
+rifle-shooting, and archery accommodation, and fencing appliances,
+and all necessaries for the British art of boxing. None of these
+sports or exercises being pursued in George's Shooting Gallery
+to-night, which is so devoid of company that a little grotesque man
+with a large head has it all to himself and lies asleep upon the
+floor.
+
+The little man is dressed something like a gunsmith, in a green-baize
+apron and cap; and his face and hands are dirty with gunpowder and
+begrimed with the loading of guns. As he lies in the light before a
+glaring white target, the black upon him shines again. Not far off is
+the strong, rough, primitive table with a vice upon it at which he
+has been working. He is a little man with a face all crushed
+together, who appears, from a certain blue and speckled appearance
+that one of his cheeks presents, to have been blown up, in the way of
+business, at some odd time or times.
+
+"Phil!" says the trooper in a quiet voice.
+
+"All right!" cries Phil, scrambling to his feet.
+
+"Anything been doing?"
+
+"Flat as ever so much swipes," says Phil. "Five dozen rifle and a
+dozen pistol. As to aim!" Phil gives a howl at the recollection.
+
+"Shut up shop, Phil!"
+
+As Phil moves about to execute this order, it appears that he is
+lame, though able to move very quickly. On the speckled side of his
+face he has no eyebrow, and on the other side he has a bushy black
+one, which want of uniformity gives him a very singular and rather
+sinister appearance. Everything seems to have happened to his hands
+that could possibly take place consistently with the retention of all
+the fingers, for they are notched, and seamed, and crumpled all over.
+He appears to be very strong and lifts heavy benches about as if he
+had no idea what weight was. He has a curious way of limping round
+the gallery with his shoulder against the wall and tacking off at
+objects he wants to lay hold of instead of going straight to them,
+which has left a smear all round the four walls, conventionally
+called "Phil's mark."
+
+This custodian of George's Gallery in George's absence concludes his
+proceedings, when he has locked the great doors and turned out all
+the lights but one, which he leaves to glimmer, by dragging out from
+a wooden cabin in a corner two mattresses and bedding. These being
+drawn to opposite ends of the gallery, the trooper makes his own bed
+and Phil makes his.
+
+"Phil!" says the master, walking towards him without his coat and
+waistcoat, and looking more soldierly than ever in his braces. "You
+were found in a doorway, weren't you?"
+
+"Gutter," says Phil. "Watchman tumbled over me."
+
+"Then vagabondizing came natural to YOU from the beginning."
+
+"As nat'ral as possible," says Phil.
+
+"Good night!"
+
+"Good night, guv'ner."
+
+Phil cannot even go straight to bed, but finds it necessary to
+shoulder round two sides of the gallery and then tack off at his
+mattress. The trooper, after taking a turn or two in the
+rifle-distance and looking up at the moon now shining through the
+skylights, strides to his own mattress by a shorter route and goes to
+bed too.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+Mr. Bucket
+
+
+Allegory looks pretty cool in Lincoln's Inn Fields, though the
+evening is hot, for both Mr. Tulkinghorn's windows are wide open, and
+the room is lofty, gusty, and gloomy. These may not be desirable
+characteristics when November comes with fog and sleet or January
+with ice and snow, but they have their merits in the sultry long
+vacation weather. They enable Allegory, though it has cheeks like
+peaches, and knees like bunches of blossoms, and rosy swellings for
+calves to its legs and muscles to its arms, to look tolerably cool
+to-night.
+
+Plenty of dust comes in at Mr. Tulkinghorn's windows, and plenty more
+has generated among his furniture and papers. It lies thick
+everywhere. When a breeze from the country that has lost its way
+takes fright and makes a blind hurry to rush out again, it flings as
+much dust in the eyes of Allegory as the law--or Mr. Tulkinghorn, one
+of its trustiest representatives--may scatter, on occasion, in the
+eyes of the laity.
+
+In his lowering magazine of dust, the universal article into which
+his papers and himself, and all his clients, and all things of earth,
+animate and inanimate, are resolving, Mr. Tulkinghorn sits at one of
+the open windows enjoying a bottle of old port. Though a hard-grained
+man, close, dry, and silent, he can enjoy old wine with the best. He
+has a priceless bin of port in some artful cellar under the Fields,
+which is one of his many secrets. When he dines alone in chambers, as
+he has dined to-day, and has his bit of fish and his steak or chicken
+brought in from the coffee-house, he descends with a candle to the
+echoing regions below the deserted mansion, and heralded by a remote
+reverberation of thundering doors, comes gravely back encircled by an
+earthy atmosphere and carrying a bottle from which he pours a radiant
+nectar, two score and ten years old, that blushes in the glass to
+find itself so famous and fills the whole room with the fragrance of
+southern grapes.
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn, sitting in the twilight by the open window, enjoys
+his wine. As if it whispered to him of its fifty years of silence and
+seclusion, it shuts him up the closer. More impenetrable than ever,
+he sits, and drinks, and mellows as it were in secrecy, pondering at
+that twilight hour on all the mysteries he knows, associated with
+darkening woods in the country, and vast blank shut-up houses in
+town, and perhaps sparing a thought or two for himself, and his
+family history, and his money, and his will--all a mystery to every
+one--and that one bachelor friend of his, a man of the same mould and
+a lawyer too, who lived the same kind of life until he was
+seventy-five years old, and then suddenly conceiving (as it is
+supposed) an impression that it was too monotonous, gave his gold
+watch to his hair-dresser one summer evening and walked leisurely
+home to the Temple and hanged himself.
+
+But Mr. Tulkinghorn is not alone to-night to ponder at his usual
+length. Seated at the same table, though with his chair modestly and
+uncomfortably drawn a little way from it, sits a bald, mild, shining
+man who coughs respectfully behind his hand when the lawyer bids him
+fill his glass.
+
+"Now, Snagsby," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, "to go over this odd story
+again."
+
+"If you please, sir."
+
+"You told me when you were so good as to step round here last
+night--"
+
+"For which I must ask you to excuse me if it was a liberty, sir; but
+I remember that you had taken a sort of an interest in that person,
+and I thought it possible that you might--just--wish--to--"
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn is not the man to help him to any conclusion or to
+admit anything as to any possibility concerning himself. So Mr.
+Snagsby trails off into saying, with an awkward cough, "I must ask
+you to excuse the liberty, sir, I am sure."
+
+"Not at all," says Mr. Tulkinghorn. "You told me, Snagsby, that you
+put on your hat and came round without mentioning your intention to
+your wife. That was prudent I think, because it's not a matter of
+such importance that it requires to be mentioned."
+
+"Well, sir," returns Mr. Snagsby, "you see, my little woman is--not
+to put too fine a point upon it--inquisitive. She's inquisitive. Poor
+little thing, she's liable to spasms, and it's good for her to have
+her mind employed. In consequence of which she employs it--I should
+say upon every individual thing she can lay hold of, whether it
+concerns her or not--especially not. My little woman has a very
+active mind, sir."
+
+Mr. Snagsby drinks and murmurs with an admiring cough behind his
+hand, "Dear me, very fine wine indeed!"
+
+"Therefore you kept your visit to yourself last night?" says Mr.
+Tulkinghorn. "And to-night too?"
+
+"Yes, sir, and to-night, too. My little woman is at present in--not
+to put too fine a point on it--in a pious state, or in what she
+considers such, and attends the Evening Exertions (which is the name
+they go by) of a reverend party of the name of Chadband. He has a
+great deal of eloquence at his command, undoubtedly, but I am not
+quite favourable to his style myself. That's neither here nor there.
+My little woman being engaged in that way made it easier for me to
+step round in a quiet manner."
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn assents. "Fill your glass, Snagsby."
+
+"Thank you, sir, I am sure," returns the stationer with his cough of
+deference. "This is wonderfully fine wine, sir!"
+
+"It is a rare wine now," says Mr. Tulkinghorn. "It is fifty years
+old."
+
+"Is it indeed, sir? But I am not surprised to hear it, I am sure. It
+might be--any age almost." After rendering this general tribute to
+the port, Mr. Snagsby in his modesty coughs an apology behind his
+hand for drinking anything so precious.
+
+"Will you run over, once again, what the boy said?" asks Mr.
+Tulkinghorn, putting his hands into the pockets of his rusty
+smallclothes and leaning quietly back in his chair.
+
+"With pleasure, sir."
+
+Then, with fidelity, though with some prolixity, the law-stationer
+repeats Jo's statement made to the assembled guests at his house. On
+coming to the end of his narrative, he gives a great start and breaks
+off with, "Dear me, sir, I wasn't aware there was any other gentleman
+present!"
+
+Mr. Snagsby is dismayed to see, standing with an attentive face
+between himself and the lawyer at a little distance from the table, a
+person with a hat and stick in his hand who was not there when he
+himself came in and has not since entered by the door or by either of
+the windows. There is a press in the room, but its hinges have not
+creaked, nor has a step been audible upon the floor. Yet this third
+person stands there with his attentive face, and his hat and stick in
+his hands, and his hands behind him, a composed and quiet listener.
+He is a stoutly built, steady-looking, sharp-eyed man in black, of
+about the middle-age. Except that he looks at Mr. Snagsby as if he
+were going to take his portrait, there is nothing remarkable about
+him at first sight but his ghostly manner of appearing.
+
+"Don't mind this gentleman," says Mr. Tulkinghorn in his quiet way.
+"This is only Mr. Bucket."
+
+"Oh, indeed, sir?" returns the stationer, expressing by a cough that
+he is quite in the dark as to who Mr. Bucket may be.
+
+"I wanted him to hear this story," says the lawyer, "because I have
+half a mind (for a reason) to know more of it, and he is very
+intelligent in such things. What do you say to this, Bucket?"
+
+"It's very plain, sir. Since our people have moved this boy on, and
+he's not to be found on his old lay, if Mr. Snagsby don't object to
+go down with me to Tom-all-Alone's and point him out, we can have him
+here in less than a couple of hours' time. I can do it without Mr.
+Snagsby, of course, but this is the shortest way."
+
+"Mr. Bucket is a detective officer, Snagsby," says the lawyer in
+explanation.
+
+"Is he indeed, sir?" says Mr. Snagsby with a strong tendency in his
+clump of hair to stand on end.
+
+"And if you have no real objection to accompany Mr. Bucket to the
+place in question," pursues the lawyer, "I shall feel obliged to you
+if you will do so."
+
+In a moment's hesitation on the part of Mr. Snagsby, Bucket dips down
+to the bottom of his mind.
+
+"Don't you be afraid of hurting the boy," he says. "You won't do
+that. It's all right as far as the boy's concerned. We shall only
+bring him here to ask him a question or so I want to put to him, and
+he'll be paid for his trouble and sent away again. It'll be a good
+job for him. I promise you, as a man, that you shall see the boy sent
+away all right. Don't you be afraid of hurting him; you an't going to
+do that."
+
+"Very well, Mr. Tulkinghorn!" cries Mr. Snagsby cheerfully. And
+reassured, "Since that's the case--"
+
+"Yes! And lookee here, Mr. Snagsby," resumes Bucket, taking him aside
+by the arm, tapping him familiarly on the breast, and speaking in a
+confidential tone. "You're a man of the world, you know, and a man of
+business, and a man of sense. That's what YOU are."
+
+"I am sure I am much obliged to you for your good opinion," returns
+the stationer with his cough of modesty, "but--"
+
+"That's what YOU are, you know," says Bucket. "Now, it an't necessary
+to say to a man like you, engaged in your business, which is a
+business of trust and requires a person to be wide awake and have his
+senses about him and his head screwed on tight (I had an uncle in
+your business once)--it an't necessary to say to a man like you that
+it's the best and wisest way to keep little matters like this quiet.
+Don't you see? Quiet!"
+
+"Certainly, certainly," returns the other.
+
+"I don't mind telling YOU," says Bucket with an engaging appearance
+of frankness, "that as far as I can understand it, there seems to be
+a doubt whether this dead person wasn't entitled to a little
+property, and whether this female hasn't been up to some games
+respecting that property, don't you see?"
+
+"Oh!" says Mr. Snagsby, but not appearing to see quite distinctly.
+
+"Now, what YOU want," pursues Bucket, again tapping Mr. Snagsby on
+the breast in a comfortable and soothing manner, "is that every
+person should have their rights according to justice. That's what YOU
+want."
+
+"To be sure," returns Mr. Snagsby with a nod.
+
+"On account of which, and at the same time to oblige a--do you call
+it, in your business, customer or client? I forget how my uncle used
+to call it."
+
+"Why, I generally say customer myself," replies Mr. Snagsby.
+
+"You're right!" returns Mr. Bucket, shaking hands with him quite
+affectionately. "--On account of which, and at the same time to
+oblige a real good customer, you mean to go down with me, in
+confidence, to Tom-all-Alone's and to keep the whole thing quiet ever
+afterwards and never mention it to any one. That's about your
+intentions, if I understand you?"
+
+"You are right, sir. You are right," says Mr. Snagsby.
+
+"Then here's your hat," returns his new friend, quite as intimate
+with it as if he had made it; "and if you're ready, I am."
+
+They leave Mr. Tulkinghorn, without a ruffle on the surface of his
+unfathomable depths, drinking his old wine, and go down into the
+streets.
+
+"You don't happen to know a very good sort of person of the name of
+Gridley, do you?" says Bucket in friendly converse as they descend
+the stairs.
+
+"No," says Mr. Snagsby, considering, "I don't know anybody of that
+name. Why?"
+
+"Nothing particular," says Bucket; "only having allowed his temper to
+get a little the better of him and having been threatening some
+respectable people, he is keeping out of the way of a warrant I have
+got against him--which it's a pity that a man of sense should do."
+
+As they walk along, Mr. Snagsby observes, as a novelty, that however
+quick their pace may be, his companion still seems in some
+undefinable manner to lurk and lounge; also, that whenever he is
+going to turn to the right or left, he pretends to have a fixed
+purpose in his mind of going straight ahead, and wheels off, sharply,
+at the very last moment. Now and then, when they pass a
+police-constable on his beat, Mr. Snagsby notices that both the
+constable and his guide fall into a deep abstraction as they come
+towards each other, and appear entirely to overlook each other, and
+to gaze into space. In a few instances, Mr. Bucket, coming behind
+some under-sized young man with a shining hat on, and his sleek hair
+twisted into one flat curl on each side of his head, almost without
+glancing at him touches him with his stick, upon which the young man,
+looking round, instantly evaporates. For the most part Mr. Bucket
+notices things in general, with a face as unchanging as the great
+mourning ring on his little finger or the brooch, composed of not
+much diamond and a good deal of setting, which he wears in his shirt.
+
+When they come at last to Tom-all-Alone's, Mr. Bucket stops for a
+moment at the corner and takes a lighted bull's-eye from the
+constable on duty there, who then accompanies him with his own
+particular bull's-eye at his waist. Between his two conductors, Mr.
+Snagsby passes along the middle of a villainous street, undrained,
+unventilated, deep in black mud and corrupt water--though the roads
+are dry elsewhere--and reeking with such smells and sights that he,
+who has lived in London all his life, can scarce believe his senses.
+Branching from this street and its heaps of ruins are other streets
+and courts so infamous that Mr. Snagsby sickens in body and mind and
+feels as if he were going every moment deeper down into the infernal
+gulf.
+
+"Draw off a bit here, Mr. Snagsby," says Bucket as a kind of shabby
+palanquin is borne towards them, surrounded by a noisy crowd. "Here's
+the fever coming up the street!"
+
+As the unseen wretch goes by, the crowd, leaving that object of
+attraction, hovers round the three visitors like a dream of horrible
+faces and fades away up alleys and into ruins and behind walls, and
+with occasional cries and shrill whistles of warning, thenceforth
+flits about them until they leave the place.
+
+"Are those the fever-houses, Darby?" Mr. Bucket coolly asks as he
+turns his bull's-eye on a line of stinking ruins.
+
+Darby replies that "all them are," and further that in all, for
+months and months, the people "have been down by dozens" and have
+been carried out dead and dying "like sheep with the rot." Bucket
+observing to Mr. Snagsby as they go on again that he looks a little
+poorly, Mr. Snagsby answers that he feels as if he couldn't breathe
+the dreadful air.
+
+There is inquiry made at various houses for a boy named Jo. As few
+people are known in Tom-all-Alone's by any Christian sign, there is
+much reference to Mr. Snagsby whether he means Carrots, or the
+Colonel, or Gallows, or Young Chisel, or Terrier Tip, or Lanky, or
+the Brick. Mr. Snagsby describes over and over again. There are
+conflicting opinions respecting the original of his picture. Some
+think it must be Carrots, some say the Brick. The Colonel is
+produced, but is not at all near the thing. Whenever Mr. Snagsby and
+his conductors are stationary, the crowd flows round, and from its
+squalid depths obsequious advice heaves up to Mr. Bucket. Whenever
+they move, and the angry bull's-eyes glare, it fades away and flits
+about them up the alleys, and in the ruins, and behind the walls, as
+before.
+
+At last there is a lair found out where Toughy, or the Tough Subject,
+lays him down at night; and it is thought that the Tough Subject may
+be Jo. Comparison of notes between Mr. Snagsby and the proprietress
+of the house--a drunken face tied up in a black bundle, and flaring
+out of a heap of rags on the floor of a dog-hutch which is her
+private apartment--leads to the establishment of this conclusion.
+Toughy has gone to the doctor's to get a bottle of stuff for a sick
+woman but will be here anon.
+
+"And who have we got here to-night?" says Mr. Bucket, opening another
+door and glaring in with his bull's-eye. "Two drunken men, eh? And
+two women? The men are sound enough," turning back each sleeper's arm
+from his face to look at him. "Are these your good men, my dears?"
+
+"Yes, sir," returns one of the women. "They are our husbands."
+
+"Brickmakers, eh?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"What are you doing here? You don't belong to London."
+
+"No, sir. We belong to Hertfordshire."
+
+"Whereabouts in Hertfordshire?"
+
+"Saint Albans."
+
+"Come up on the tramp?"
+
+"We walked up yesterday. There's no work down with us at present, but
+we have done no good by coming here, and shall do none, I expect."
+
+"That's not the way to do much good," says Mr. Bucket, turning his
+head in the direction of the unconscious figures on the ground.
+
+"It an't indeed," replies the woman with a sigh. "Jenny and me knows
+it full well."
+
+The room, though two or three feet higher than the door, is so low
+that the head of the tallest of the visitors would touch the
+blackened ceiling if he stood upright. It is offensive to every
+sense; even the gross candle burns pale and sickly in the polluted
+air. There are a couple of benches and a higher bench by way of
+table. The men lie asleep where they stumbled down, but the women sit
+by the candle. Lying in the arms of the woman who has spoken is a
+very young child.
+
+"Why, what age do you call that little creature?" says Bucket. "It
+looks as if it was born yesterday." He is not at all rough about it;
+and as he turns his light gently on the infant, Mr. Snagsby is
+strangely reminded of another infant, encircled with light, that he
+has seen in pictures.
+
+"He is not three weeks old yet, sir," says the woman.
+
+"Is he your child?"
+
+"Mine."
+
+The other woman, who was bending over it when they came in, stoops
+down again and kisses it as it lies asleep.
+
+"You seem as fond of it as if you were the mother yourself," says Mr.
+Bucket.
+
+"I was the mother of one like it, master, and it died."
+
+"Ah, Jenny, Jenny!" says the other woman to her. "Better so. Much
+better to think of dead than alive, Jenny! Much better!"
+
+"Why, you an't such an unnatural woman, I hope," returns Bucket
+sternly, "as to wish your own child dead?"
+
+"God knows you are right, master," she returns. "I am not. I'd stand
+between it and death with my own life if I could, as true as any
+pretty lady."
+
+"Then don't talk in that wrong manner," says Mr. Bucket, mollified
+again. "Why do you do it?"
+
+"It's brought into my head, master," returns the woman, her eyes
+filling with tears, "when I look down at the child lying so. If it
+was never to wake no more, you'd think me mad, I should take on so. I
+know that very well. I was with Jenny when she lost hers--warn't I,
+Jenny?--and I know how she grieved. But look around you at this
+place. Look at them," glancing at the sleepers on the ground. "Look
+at the boy you're waiting for, who's gone out to do me a good turn.
+Think of the children that your business lays with often and often,
+and that YOU see grow up!"
+
+"Well, well," says Mr. Bucket, "you train him respectable, and he'll
+be a comfort to you, and look after you in your old age, you know."
+
+"I mean to try hard," she answers, wiping her eyes. "But I have been
+a-thinking, being over-tired to-night and not well with the ague, of
+all the many things that'll come in his way. My master will be
+against it, and he'll be beat, and see me beat, and made to fear his
+home, and perhaps to stray wild. If I work for him ever so much, and
+ever so hard, there's no one to help me; and if he should be turned
+bad 'spite of all I could do, and the time should come when I should
+sit by him in his sleep, made hard and changed, an't it likely I
+should think of him as he lies in my lap now and wish he had died as
+Jenny's child died!"
+
+"There, there!" says Jenny. "Liz, you're tired and ill. Let me take
+him."
+
+In doing so, she displaces the mother's dress, but quickly readjusts
+it over the wounded and bruised bosom where the baby has been lying.
+
+"It's my dead child," says Jenny, walking up and down as she nurses,
+"that makes me love this child so dear, and it's my dead child that
+makes her love it so dear too, as even to think of its being taken
+away from her now. While she thinks that, I think what fortune would
+I give to have my darling back. But we mean the same thing, if we
+knew how to say it, us two mothers does in our poor hearts!"
+
+As Mr. Snagsby blows his nose and coughs his cough of sympathy, a
+step is heard without. Mr. Bucket throws his light into the doorway
+and says to Mr. Snagsby, "Now, what do you say to Toughy? Will HE
+do?"
+
+"That's Jo," says Mr. Snagsby.
+
+Jo stands amazed in the disk of light, like a ragged figure in a
+magic-lantern, trembling to think that he has offended against the
+law in not having moved on far enough. Mr. Snagsby, however, giving
+him the consolatory assurance, "It's only a job you will be paid for,
+Jo," he recovers; and on being taken outside by Mr. Bucket for a
+little private confabulation, tells his tale satisfactorily, though
+out of breath.
+
+"I have squared it with the lad," says Mr. Bucket, returning, "and
+it's all right. Now, Mr. Snagsby, we're ready for you."
+
+First, Jo has to complete his errand of good nature by handing over
+the physic he has been to get, which he delivers with the laconic
+verbal direction that "it's to be all took d'rectly." Secondly, Mr.
+Snagsby has to lay upon the table half a crown, his usual panacea for
+an immense variety of afflictions. Thirdly, Mr. Bucket has to take Jo
+by the arm a little above the elbow and walk him on before him,
+without which observance neither the Tough Subject nor any other
+Subject could be professionally conducted to Lincoln's Inn Fields.
+These arrangements completed, they give the women good night and come
+out once more into black and foul Tom-all-Alone's.
+
+By the noisome ways through which they descended into that pit, they
+gradually emerge from it, the crowd flitting, and whistling, and
+skulking about them until they come to the verge, where restoration
+of the bull's-eyes is made to Darby. Here the crowd, like a concourse
+of imprisoned demons, turns back, yelling, and is seen no more.
+Through the clearer and fresher streets, never so clear and fresh to
+Mr. Snagsby's mind as now, they walk and ride until they come to Mr.
+Tulkinghorn's gate.
+
+As they ascend the dim stairs (Mr. Tulkinghorn's chambers being on
+the first floor), Mr. Bucket mentions that he has the key of the
+outer door in his pocket and that there is no need to ring. For a man
+so expert in most things of that kind, Bucket takes time to open the
+door and makes some noise too. It may be that he sounds a note of
+preparation.
+
+Howbeit, they come at last into the hall, where a lamp is burning,
+and so into Mr. Tulkinghorn's usual room--the room where he drank his
+old wine to-night. He is not there, but his two old-fashioned
+candlesticks are, and the room is tolerably light.
+
+Mr. Bucket, still having his professional hold of Jo and appearing to
+Mr. Snagsby to possess an unlimited number of eyes, makes a little
+way into this room, when Jo starts and stops.
+
+"What's the matter?" says Bucket in a whisper.
+
+"There she is!" cries Jo.
+
+"Who!"
+
+"The lady!"
+
+A female figure, closely veiled, stands in the middle of the room,
+where the light falls upon it. It is quite still and silent. The
+front of the figure is towards them, but it takes no notice of their
+entrance and remains like a statue.
+
+"Now, tell me," says Bucket aloud, "how you know that to be the
+lady."
+
+"I know the wale," replies Jo, staring, "and the bonnet, and the
+gownd."
+
+"Be quite sure of what you say, Tough," returns Bucket, narrowly
+observant of him. "Look again."
+
+"I am a-looking as hard as ever I can look," says Jo with starting
+eyes, "and that there's the wale, the bonnet, and the gownd."
+
+"What about those rings you told me of?" asks Bucket.
+
+"A-sparkling all over here," says Jo, rubbing the fingers of his left
+hand on the knuckles of his right without taking his eyes from the
+figure.
+
+The figure removes the right-hand glove and shows the hand.
+
+"Now, what do you say to that?" asks Bucket.
+
+Jo shakes his head. "Not rings a bit like them. Not a hand like
+that."
+
+"What are you talking of?" says Bucket, evidently pleased though, and
+well pleased too.
+
+"Hand was a deal whiter, a deal delicater, and a deal smaller,"
+returns Jo.
+
+"Why, you'll tell me I'm my own mother next," says Mr. Bucket. "Do
+you recollect the lady's voice?"
+
+"I think I does," says Jo.
+
+The figure speaks. "Was it at all like this? I will speak as long as
+you like if you are not sure. Was it this voice, or at all like this
+voice?"
+
+Jo looks aghast at Mr. Bucket. "Not a bit!"
+
+"Then, what," retorts that worthy, pointing to the figure, "did you
+say it was the lady for?"
+
+"Cos," says Jo with a perplexed stare but without being at all shaken
+in his certainty, "cos that there's the wale, the bonnet, and the
+gownd. It is her and it an't her. It an't her hand, nor yet her
+rings, nor yet her woice. But that there's the wale, the bonnet, and
+the gownd, and they're wore the same way wot she wore 'em, and it's
+her height wot she wos, and she giv me a sov'ring and hooked it."
+
+"Well!" says Mr. Bucket slightly, "we haven't got much good out of
+YOU. But, however, here's five shillings for you. Take care how you
+spend it, and don't get yourself into trouble." Bucket stealthily
+tells the coins from one hand into the other like counters--which is
+a way he has, his principal use of them being in these games of
+skill--and then puts them, in a little pile, into the boy's hand and
+takes him out to the door, leaving Mr. Snagsby, not by any means
+comfortable under these mysterious circumstances, alone with the
+veiled figure. But on Mr. Tulkinghorn's coming into the room, the
+veil is raised and a sufficiently good-looking Frenchwoman is
+revealed, though her expression is something of the intensest.
+
+"Thank you, Mademoiselle Hortense," says Mr. Tulkinghorn with his
+usual equanimity. "I will give you no further trouble about this
+little wager."
+
+"You will do me the kindness to remember, sir, that I am not at
+present placed?" says mademoiselle.
+
+"Certainly, certainly!"
+
+"And to confer upon me the favour of your distinguished
+recommendation?"
+
+"By all means, Mademoiselle Hortense."
+
+"A word from Mr. Tulkinghorn is so powerful."
+
+"It shall not be wanting, mademoiselle."
+
+"Receive the assurance of my devoted gratitude, dear sir."
+
+"Good night."
+
+Mademoiselle goes out with an air of native gentility; and Mr.
+Bucket, to whom it is, on an emergency, as natural to be groom of the
+ceremonies as it is to be anything else, shows her downstairs, not
+without gallantry.
+
+"Well, Bucket?" quoth Mr. Tulkinghorn on his return.
+
+"It's all squared, you see, as I squared it myself, sir. There an't a
+doubt that it was the other one with this one's dress on. The boy was
+exact respecting colours and everything. Mr. Snagsby, I promised you
+as a man that he should be sent away all right. Don't say it wasn't
+done!"
+
+"You have kept your word, sir," returns the stationer; "and if I can
+be of no further use, Mr. Tulkinghorn, I think, as my little woman
+will be getting anxious--"
+
+"Thank you, Snagsby, no further use," says Mr. Tulkinghorn. "I am
+quite indebted to you for the trouble you have taken already."
+
+"Not at all, sir. I wish you good night."
+
+"You see, Mr. Snagsby," says Mr. Bucket, accompanying him to the door
+and shaking hands with him over and over again, "what I like in you
+is that you're a man it's of no use pumping; that's what YOU are.
+When you know you have done a right thing, you put it away, and it's
+done with and gone, and there's an end of it. That's what YOU do."
+
+"That is certainly what I endeavour to do, sir," returns Mr. Snagsby.
+
+"No, you don't do yourself justice. It an't what you endeavour to
+do," says Mr. Bucket, shaking hands with him and blessing him in the
+tenderest manner, "it's what you DO. That's what I estimate in a man
+in your way of business."
+
+Mr. Snagsby makes a suitable response and goes homeward so confused
+by the events of the evening that he is doubtful of his being awake
+and out--doubtful of the reality of the streets through which he
+goes--doubtful of the reality of the moon that shines above him. He
+is presently reassured on these subjects by the unchallengeable
+reality of Mrs. Snagsby, sitting up with her head in a perfect
+beehive of curl-papers and night-cap, who has dispatched Guster to
+the police-station with official intelligence of her husband's being
+made away with, and who within the last two hours has passed through
+every stage of swooning with the greatest decorum. But as the little
+woman feelingly says, many thanks she gets for it!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+Esther's Narrative
+
+
+We came home from Mr. Boythorn's after six pleasant weeks. We were
+often in the park and in the woods and seldom passed the lodge where
+we had taken shelter without looking in to speak to the keeper's
+wife; but we saw no more of Lady Dedlock, except at church on
+Sundays. There was company at Chesney Wold; and although several
+beautiful faces surrounded her, her face retained the same influence
+on me as at first. I do not quite know even now whether it was
+painful or pleasurable, whether it drew me towards her or made me
+shrink from her. I think I admired her with a kind of fear, and I
+know that in her presence my thoughts always wandered back, as they
+had done at first, to that old time of my life.
+
+I had a fancy, on more than one of these Sundays, that what this lady
+so curiously was to me, I was to her--I mean that I disturbed her
+thoughts as she influenced mine, though in some different way. But
+when I stole a glance at her and saw her so composed and distant and
+unapproachable, I felt this to be a foolish weakness. Indeed, I felt
+the whole state of my mind in reference to her to be weak and
+unreasonable, and I remonstrated with myself about it as much as I
+could.
+
+One incident that occurred before we quitted Mr. Boythorn's house, I
+had better mention in this place.
+
+I was walking in the garden with Ada when I was told that some one
+wished to see me. Going into the breakfast-room where this person was
+waiting, I found it to be the French maid who had cast off her shoes
+and walked through the wet grass on the day when it thundered and
+lightened.
+
+"Mademoiselle," she began, looking fixedly at me with her too-eager
+eyes, though otherwise presenting an agreeable appearance and
+speaking neither with boldness nor servility, "I have taken a great
+liberty in coming here, but you know how to excuse it, being so
+amiable, mademoiselle."
+
+"No excuse is necessary," I returned, "if you wish to speak to me."
+
+"That is my desire, mademoiselle. A thousand thanks for the
+permission. I have your leave to speak. Is it not?" she said in a
+quick, natural way.
+
+"Certainly," said I.
+
+"Mademoiselle, you are so amiable! Listen then, if you please. I have
+left my Lady. We could not agree. My Lady is so high, so very high.
+Pardon! Mademoiselle, you are right!" Her quickness anticipated what
+I might have said presently but as yet had only thought. "It is not
+for me to come here to complain of my Lady. But I say she is so high,
+so very high. I will not say a word more. All the world knows that."
+
+"Go on, if you please," said I.
+
+"Assuredly; mademoiselle, I am thankful for your politeness.
+Mademoiselle, I have an inexpressible desire to find service with a
+young lady who is good, accomplished, beautiful. You are good,
+accomplished, and beautiful as an angel. Ah, could I have the honour
+of being your domestic!"
+
+"I am sorry--" I began.
+
+"Do not dismiss me so soon, mademoiselle!" she said with an
+involuntary contraction of her fine black eyebrows. "Let me hope a
+moment! Mademoiselle, I know this service would be more retired than
+that which I have quitted. Well! I wish that. I know this service
+would be less distinguished than that which I have quitted. Well! I
+wish that, I know that I should win less, as to wages here. Good. I
+am content."
+
+"I assure you," said I, quite embarrassed by the mere idea of having
+such an attendant, "that I keep no maid--"
+
+"Ah, mademoiselle, but why not? Why not, when you can have one so
+devoted to you! Who would be enchanted to serve you; who would be so
+true, so zealous, and so faithful every day! Mademoiselle, I wish
+with all my heart to serve you. Do not speak of money at present.
+Take me as I am. For nothing!"
+
+She was so singularly earnest that I drew back, almost afraid of her.
+Without appearing to notice it, in her ardour she still pressed
+herself upon me, speaking in a rapid subdued voice, though always
+with a certain grace and propriety.
+
+"Mademoiselle, I come from the South country where we are quick and
+where we like and dislike very strong. My Lady was too high for me; I
+was too high for her. It is done--past--finished! Receive me as your
+domestic, and I will serve you well. I will do more for you than you
+figure to yourself now. Chut! Mademoiselle, I will--no matter, I will
+do my utmost possible in all things. If you accept my service, you
+will not repent it. Mademoiselle, you will not repent it, and I will
+serve you well. You don't know how well!"
+
+There was a lowering energy in her face as she stood looking at me
+while I explained the impossibility of my engaging her (without
+thinking it necessary to say how very little I desired to do so),
+which seemed to bring visibly before me some woman from the streets
+of Paris in the reign of terror.
+
+She heard me out without interruption and then said with her pretty
+accent and in her mildest voice, "Hey, mademoiselle, I have received
+my answer! I am sorry of it. But I must go elsewhere and seek what I
+have not found here. Will you graciously let me kiss your hand?"
+
+She looked at me more intently as she took it, and seemed to take
+note, with her momentary touch, of every vein in it. "I fear I
+surprised you, mademoiselle, on the day of the storm?" she said with
+a parting curtsy.
+
+I confessed that she had surprised us all.
+
+"I took an oath, mademoiselle," she said, smiling, "and I wanted to
+stamp it on my mind so that I might keep it faithfully. And I will!
+Adieu, mademoiselle!"
+
+So ended our conference, which I was very glad to bring to a close. I
+supposed she went away from the village, for I saw her no more; and
+nothing else occurred to disturb our tranquil summer pleasures until
+six weeks were out and we returned home as I began just now by
+saying.
+
+At that time, and for a good many weeks after that time, Richard was
+constant in his visits. Besides coming every Saturday or Sunday and
+remaining with us until Monday morning, he sometimes rode out on
+horseback unexpectedly and passed the evening with us and rode back
+again early next day. He was as vivacious as ever and told us he was
+very industrious, but I was not easy in my mind about him. It
+appeared to me that his industry was all misdirected. I could not
+find that it led to anything but the formation of delusive hopes in
+connexion with the suit already the pernicious cause of so much
+sorrow and ruin. He had got at the core of that mystery now, he told
+us, and nothing could be plainer than that the will under which he
+and Ada were to take I don't know how many thousands of pounds must
+be finally established if there were any sense or justice in the
+Court of Chancery--but oh, what a great IF that sounded in my
+ears--and that this happy conclusion could not be much longer
+delayed. He proved this to himself by all the weary arguments on that
+side he had read, and every one of them sunk him deeper in the
+infatuation. He had even begun to haunt the court. He told us how he
+saw Miss Flite there daily, how they talked together, and how he did
+her little kindnesses, and how, while he laughed at her, he pitied
+her from his heart. But he never thought--never, my poor, dear,
+sanguine Richard, capable of so much happiness then, and with such
+better things before him--what a fatal link was riveting between his
+fresh youth and her faded age, between his free hopes and her caged
+birds, and her hungry garret, and her wandering mind.
+
+Ada loved him too well to mistrust him much in anything he said or
+did, and my guardian, though he frequently complained of the east
+wind and read more than usual in the growlery, preserved a strict
+silence on the subject. So I thought one day when I went to London to
+meet Caddy Jellyby, at her solicitation, I would ask Richard to be in
+waiting for me at the coach-office, that we might have a little talk
+together. I found him there when I arrived, and we walked away arm in
+arm.
+
+"Well, Richard," said I as soon as I could begin to be grave with
+him, "are you beginning to feel more settled now?"
+
+"Oh, yes, my dear!" returned Richard. "I'm all right enough."
+
+"But settled?" said I.
+
+"How do you mean, settled?" returned Richard with his gay laugh.
+
+"Settled in the law," said I.
+
+"Oh, aye," replied Richard, "I'm all right enough."
+
+"You said that before, my dear Richard."
+
+"And you don't think it's an answer, eh? Well! Perhaps it's not.
+Settled? You mean, do I feel as if I were settling down?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why, no, I can't say I am settling down," said Richard, strongly
+emphasizing "down," as if that expressed the difficulty, "because one
+can't settle down while this business remains in such an unsettled
+state. When I say this business, of course I mean the--forbidden
+subject."
+
+"Do you think it will ever be in a settled state?" said I.
+
+"Not the least doubt of it," answered Richard.
+
+We walked a little way without speaking, and presently Richard
+addressed me in his frankest and most feeling manner, thus: "My dear
+Esther, I understand you, and I wish to heaven I were a more constant
+sort of fellow. I don't mean constant to Ada, for I love her
+dearly--better and better every day--but constant to myself.
+(Somehow, I mean something that I can't very well express, but you'll
+make it out.) If I were a more constant sort of fellow, I should have
+held on either to Badger or to Kenge and Carboy like grim death, and
+should have begun to be steady and systematic by this time, and
+shouldn't be in debt, and--"
+
+"ARE you in debt, Richard?"
+
+"Yes," said Richard, "I am a little so, my dear. Also, I have taken
+rather too much to billiards and that sort of thing. Now the murder's
+out; you despise me, Esther, don't you?"
+
+"You know I don't," said I.
+
+"You are kinder to me than I often am to myself," he returned. "My
+dear Esther, I am a very unfortunate dog not to be more settled, but
+how CAN I be more settled? If you lived in an unfinished house, you
+couldn't settle down in it; if you were condemned to leave everything
+you undertook unfinished, you would find it hard to apply yourself to
+anything; and yet that's my unhappy case. I was born into this
+unfinished contention with all its chances and changes, and it began
+to unsettle me before I quite knew the difference between a suit at
+law and a suit of clothes; and it has gone on unsettling me ever
+since; and here I am now, conscious sometimes that I am but a
+worthless fellow to love my confiding cousin Ada."
+
+We were in a solitary place, and he put his hands before his eyes and
+sobbed as he said the words.
+
+"Oh, Richard!" said I. "Do not be so moved. You have a noble nature,
+and Ada's love may make you worthier every day."
+
+"I know, my dear," he replied, pressing my arm, "I know all that. You
+mustn't mind my being a little soft now, for I have had all this upon
+my mind for a long time, and have often meant to speak to you, and
+have sometimes wanted opportunity and sometimes courage. I know what
+the thought of Ada ought to do for me, but it doesn't do it. I am too
+unsettled even for that. I love her most devotedly, and yet I do her
+wrong, in doing myself wrong, every day and hour. But it can't last
+for ever. We shall come on for a final hearing and get judgment in
+our favour, and then you and Ada shall see what I can really be!"
+
+It had given me a pang to hear him sob and see the tears start out
+between his fingers, but that was infinitely less affecting to me
+than the hopeful animation with which he said these words.
+
+"I have looked well into the papers, Esther. I have been deep in them
+for months," he continued, recovering his cheerfulness in a moment,
+"and you may rely upon it that we shall come out triumphant. As to
+years of delay, there has been no want of them, heaven knows! And
+there is the greater probability of our bringing the matter to a
+speedy close; in fact, it's on the paper now. It will be all right at
+last, and then you shall see!"
+
+Recalling how he had just now placed Messrs. Kenge and Carboy in the
+same category with Mr. Badger, I asked him when he intended to be
+articled in Lincoln's Inn.
+
+"There again! I think not at all, Esther," he returned with an
+effort. "I fancy I have had enough of it. Having worked at Jarndyce
+and Jarndyce like a galley slave, I have slaked my thirst for the law
+and satisfied myself that I shouldn't like it. Besides, I find it
+unsettles me more and more to be so constantly upon the scene of
+action. So what," continued Richard, confident again by this time,
+"do I naturally turn my thoughts to?"
+
+"I can't imagine," said I.
+
+"Don't look so serious," returned Richard, "because it's the best
+thing I can do, my dear Esther, I am certain. It's not as if I wanted
+a profession for life. These proceedings will come to a termination,
+and then I am provided for. No. I look upon it as a pursuit which is
+in its nature more or less unsettled, and therefore suited to my
+temporary condition--I may say, precisely suited. What is it that I
+naturally turn my thoughts to?"
+
+I looked at him and shook my head.
+
+"What," said Richard, in a tone of perfect conviction, "but the
+army!"
+
+"The army?" said I.
+
+"The army, of course. What I have to do is to get a commission;
+and--there I am, you know!" said Richard.
+
+And then he showed me, proved by elaborate calculations in his
+pocket-book, that supposing he had contracted, say, two hundred
+pounds of debt in six months out of the army; and that he contracted
+no debt at all within a corresponding period in the army--as to which
+he had quite made up his mind; this step must involve a saving of
+four hundred pounds in a year, or two thousand pounds in five years,
+which was a considerable sum. And then he spoke so ingenuously and
+sincerely of the sacrifice he made in withdrawing himself for a time
+from Ada, and of the earnestness with which he aspired--as in thought
+he always did, I know full well--to repay her love, and to ensure her
+happiness, and to conquer what was amiss in himself, and to acquire
+the very soul of decision, that he made my heart ache keenly, sorely.
+For, I thought, how would this end, how could this end, when so soon
+and so surely all his manly qualities were touched by the fatal
+blight that ruined everything it rested on!
+
+I spoke to Richard with all the earnestness I felt, and all the hope
+I could not quite feel then, and implored him for Ada's sake not to
+put any trust in Chancery. To all I said, Richard readily assented,
+riding over the court and everything else in his easy way and drawing
+the brightest pictures of the character he was to settle into--alas,
+when the grievous suit should loose its hold upon him! We had a long
+talk, but it always came back to that, in substance.
+
+At last we came to Soho Square, where Caddy Jellyby had appointed to
+wait for me, as a quiet place in the neighbourhood of Newman Street.
+Caddy was in the garden in the centre and hurried out as soon as I
+appeared. After a few cheerful words, Richard left us together.
+
+"Prince has a pupil over the way, Esther," said Caddy, "and got the
+key for us. So if you will walk round and round here with me, we can
+lock ourselves in and I can tell you comfortably what I wanted to see
+your dear good face about."
+
+"Very well, my dear," said I. "Nothing could be better." So Caddy,
+after affectionately squeezing the dear good face as she called it,
+locked the gate, and took my arm, and we began to walk round the
+garden very cosily.
+
+"You see, Esther," said Caddy, who thoroughly enjoyed a little
+confidence, "after you spoke to me about its being wrong to marry
+without Ma's knowledge, or even to keep Ma long in the dark
+respecting our engagement--though I don't believe Ma cares much for
+me, I must say--I thought it right to mention your opinions to
+Prince. In the first place because I want to profit by everything you
+tell me, and in the second place because I have no secrets from
+Prince."
+
+"I hope he approved, Caddy?"
+
+"Oh, my dear! I assure you he would approve of anything you could
+say. You have no idea what an opinion he has of you!"
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"Esther, it's enough to make anybody but me jealous," said Caddy,
+laughing and shaking her head; "but it only makes me joyful, for you
+are the first friend I ever had, and the best friend I ever can have,
+and nobody can respect and love you too much to please me."
+
+"Upon my word, Caddy," said I, "you are in the general conspiracy to
+keep me in a good humour. Well, my dear?"
+
+"Well! I am going to tell you," replied Caddy, crossing her hands
+confidentially upon my arm. "So we talked a good deal about it, and
+so I said to Prince, 'Prince, as Miss Summerson--'"
+
+"I hope you didn't say 'Miss Summerson'?"
+
+"No. I didn't!" cried Caddy, greatly pleased and with the brightest
+of faces. "I said, 'Esther.' I said to Prince, 'As Esther is
+decidedly of that opinion, Prince, and has expressed it to me, and
+always hints it when she writes those kind notes, which you are so
+fond of hearing me read to you, I am prepared to disclose the truth
+to Ma whenever you think proper. And I think, Prince,' said I, 'that
+Esther thinks that I should be in a better, and truer, and more
+honourable position altogether if you did the same to your papa.'"
+
+"Yes, my dear," said I. "Esther certainly does think so."
+
+"So I was right, you see!" exclaimed Caddy. "Well! This troubled
+Prince a good deal, not because he had the least doubt about it, but
+because he is so considerate of the feelings of old Mr. Turveydrop;
+and he had his apprehensions that old Mr. Turveydrop might break his
+heart, or faint away, or be very much overcome in some affecting
+manner or other if he made such an announcement. He feared old Mr.
+Turveydrop might consider it undutiful and might receive too great a
+shock. For old Mr. Turveydrop's deportment is very beautiful, you
+know, Esther," said Caddy, "and his feelings are extremely
+sensitive."
+
+"Are they, my dear?"
+
+"Oh, extremely sensitive. Prince says so. Now, this has caused my
+darling child--I didn't mean to use the expression to you, Esther,"
+Caddy apologized, her face suffused with blushes, "but I generally
+call Prince my darling child."
+
+I laughed; and Caddy laughed and blushed, and went on.
+
+"This has caused him, Esther--"
+
+"Caused whom, my dear?"
+
+"Oh, you tiresome thing!" said Caddy, laughing, with her pretty face
+on fire. "My darling child, if you insist upon it! This has caused
+him weeks of uneasiness and has made him delay, from day to day, in a
+very anxious manner. At last he said to me, 'Caddy, if Miss
+Summerson, who is a great favourite with my father, could be
+prevailed upon to be present when I broke the subject, I think I
+could do it.' So I promised I would ask you. And I made up my mind,
+besides," said Caddy, looking at me hopefully but timidly, "that if
+you consented, I would ask you afterwards to come with me to Ma. This
+is what I meant when I said in my note that I had a great favour and
+a great assistance to beg of you. And if you thought you could grant
+it, Esther, we should both be very grateful."
+
+"Let me see, Caddy," said I, pretending to consider. "Really, I think
+I could do a greater thing than that if the need were pressing. I am
+at your service and the darling child's, my dear, whenever you like."
+
+Caddy was quite transported by this reply of mine, being, I believe,
+as susceptible to the least kindness or encouragement as any tender
+heart that ever beat in this world; and after another turn or two
+round the garden, during which she put on an entirely new pair of
+gloves and made herself as resplendent as possible that she might do
+no avoidable discredit to the Master of Deportment, we went to Newman
+Street direct.
+
+Prince was teaching, of course. We found him engaged with a not very
+hopeful pupil--a stubborn little girl with a sulky forehead, a deep
+voice, and an inanimate, dissatisfied mama--whose case was certainly
+not rendered more hopeful by the confusion into which we threw her
+preceptor. The lesson at last came to an end, after proceeding as
+discordantly as possible; and when the little girl had changed her
+shoes and had had her white muslin extinguished in shawls, she was
+taken away. After a few words of preparation, we then went in search
+of Mr. Turveydrop, whom we found, grouped with his hat and gloves, as
+a model of deportment, on the sofa in his private apartment--the only
+comfortable room in the house. He appeared to have dressed at his
+leisure in the intervals of a light collation, and his dressing-case,
+brushes, and so forth, all of quite an elegant kind, lay about.
+
+"Father, Miss Summerson; Miss Jellyby."
+
+"Charmed! Enchanted!" said Mr. Turveydrop, rising with his
+high-shouldered bow. "Permit me!" Handing chairs. "Be seated!"
+Kissing the tips of his left fingers. "Overjoyed!" Shutting his eyes
+and rolling. "My little retreat is made a paradise." Recomposing
+himself on the sofa like the second gentleman in Europe.
+
+"Again you find us, Miss Summerson," said he, "using our little arts
+to polish, polish! Again the sex stimulates us and rewards us by the
+condescension of its lovely presence. It is much in these times (and
+we have made an awfully degenerating business of it since the days of
+his Royal Highness the Prince Regent--my patron, if I may presume to
+say so) to experience that deportment is not wholly trodden under
+foot by mechanics. That it can yet bask in the smile of beauty, my
+dear madam."
+
+I said nothing, which I thought a suitable reply; and he took a pinch
+of snuff.
+
+"My dear son," said Mr. Turveydrop, "you have four schools this
+afternoon. I would recommend a hasty sandwich."
+
+"Thank you, father," returned Prince, "I will be sure to be punctual.
+My dear father, may I beg you to prepare your mind for what I am
+going to say?"
+
+"Good heaven!" exclaimed the model, pale and aghast as Prince and
+Caddy, hand in hand, bent down before him. "What is this? Is this
+lunacy! Or what is this?"
+
+"Father," returned Prince with great submission, "I love this young
+lady, and we are engaged."
+
+"Engaged!" cried Mr. Turveydrop, reclining on the sofa and shutting
+out the sight with his hand. "An arrow launched at my brain by my own
+child!"
+
+"We have been engaged for some time, father," faltered Prince, "and
+Miss Summerson, hearing of it, advised that we should declare the
+fact to you and was so very kind as to attend on the present
+occasion. Miss Jellyby is a young lady who deeply respects you,
+father."
+
+Mr. Turveydrop uttered a groan.
+
+"No, pray don't! Pray don't, father," urged his son. "Miss Jellyby is
+a young lady who deeply respects you, and our first desire is to
+consider your comfort."
+
+Mr. Turveydrop sobbed.
+
+"No, pray don't, father!" cried his son.
+
+"Boy," said Mr. Turveydrop, "it is well that your sainted mother is
+spared this pang. Strike deep, and spare not. Strike home, sir,
+strike home!"
+
+"Pray don't say so, father," implored Prince, in tears. "It goes to
+my heart. I do assure you, father, that our first wish and intention
+is to consider your comfort. Caroline and I do not forget our
+duty--what is my duty is Caroline's, as we have often said
+together--and with your approval and consent, father, we will devote
+ourselves to making your life agreeable."
+
+"Strike home," murmured Mr. Turveydrop. "Strike home!" But he seemed
+to listen, I thought, too.
+
+"My dear father," returned Prince, "we well know what little comforts
+you are accustomed to and have a right to, and it will always be our
+study and our pride to provide those before anything. If you will
+bless us with your approval and consent, father, we shall not think
+of being married until it is quite agreeable to you; and when we ARE
+married, we shall always make you--of course--our first
+consideration. You must ever be the head and master here, father; and
+we feel how truly unnatural it would be in us if we failed to know it
+or if we failed to exert ourselves in every possible way to please
+you."
+
+Mr. Turveydrop underwent a severe internal struggle and came upright
+on the sofa again with his cheeks puffing over his stiff cravat, a
+perfect model of parental deportment.
+
+"My son!" said Mr. Turveydrop. "My children! I cannot resist your
+prayer. Be happy!"
+
+His benignity as he raised his future daughter-in-law and stretched
+out his hand to his son (who kissed it with affectionate respect and
+gratitude) was the most confusing sight I ever saw.
+
+"My children," said Mr. Turveydrop, paternally encircling Caddy with
+his left arm as she sat beside him, and putting his right hand
+gracefully on his hip. "My son and daughter, your happiness shall be
+my care. I will watch over you. You shall always live with
+me"--meaning, of course, I will always live with you--"this house is
+henceforth as much yours as mine; consider it your home. May you long
+live to share it with me!"
+
+The power of his deportment was such that they really were as much
+overcome with thankfulness as if, instead of quartering himself upon
+them for the rest of his life, he were making some munificent
+sacrifice in their favour.
+
+"For myself, my children," said Mr. Turveydrop, "I am falling into
+the sear and yellow leaf, and it is impossible to say how long the
+last feeble traces of gentlemanly deportment may linger in this
+weaving and spinning age. But, so long, I will do my duty to society
+and will show myself, as usual, about town. My wants are few and
+simple. My little apartment here, my few essentials for the toilet,
+my frugal morning meal, and my little dinner will suffice. I charge
+your dutiful affection with the supply of these requirements, and I
+charge myself with all the rest."
+
+They were overpowered afresh by his uncommon generosity.
+
+"My son," said Mr. Turveydrop, "for those little points in which you
+are deficient--points of deportment, which are born with a man, which
+may be improved by cultivation, but can never be originated--you may
+still rely on me. I have been faithful to my post since the days of
+his Royal Highness the Prince Regent, and I will not desert it now.
+No, my son. If you have ever contemplated your father's poor position
+with a feeling of pride, you may rest assured that he will do nothing
+to tarnish it. For yourself, Prince, whose character is different (we
+cannot be all alike, nor is it advisable that we should), work, be
+industrious, earn money, and extend the connexion as much as
+possible."
+
+"That you may depend I will do, dear father, with all my heart,"
+replied Prince.
+
+"I have no doubt of it," said Mr. Turveydrop. "Your qualities are not
+shining, my dear child, but they are steady and useful. And to both
+of you, my children, I would merely observe, in the spirit of a
+sainted wooman on whose path I had the happiness of casting, I
+believe, SOME ray of light, take care of the establishment, take care
+of my simple wants, and bless you both!"
+
+Old Mr. Turveydrop then became so very gallant, in honour of the
+occasion, that I told Caddy we must really go to Thavies Inn at once
+if we were to go at all that day. So we took our departure after a
+very loving farewell between Caddy and her betrothed, and during our
+walk she was so happy and so full of old Mr. Turveydrop's praises
+that I would not have said a word in his disparagement for any
+consideration.
+
+The house in Thavies Inn had bills in the windows announcing that it
+was to let, and it looked dirtier and gloomier and ghastlier than
+ever. The name of poor Mr. Jellyby had appeared in the list of
+bankrupts but a day or two before, and he was shut up in the
+dining-room with two gentlemen and a heap of blue bags,
+account-books, and papers, making the most desperate endeavours to
+understand his affairs. They appeared to me to be quite beyond his
+comprehension, for when Caddy took me into the dining-room by mistake
+and we came upon Mr. Jellyby in his spectacles, forlornly fenced into
+a corner by the great dining-table and the two gentlemen, he seemed
+to have given up the whole thing and to be speechless and insensible.
+
+Going upstairs to Mrs. Jellyby's room (the children were all
+screaming in the kitchen, and there was no servant to be seen), we
+found that lady in the midst of a voluminous correspondence, opening,
+reading, and sorting letters, with a great accumulation of torn
+covers on the floor. She was so preoccupied that at first she did not
+know me, though she sat looking at me with that curious, bright-eyed,
+far-off look of hers.
+
+"Ah! Miss Summerson!" she said at last. "I was thinking of something
+so different! I hope you are well. I am happy to see you. Mr.
+Jarndyce and Miss Clare quite well?"
+
+I hoped in return that Mr. Jellyby was quite well.
+
+"Why, not quite, my dear," said Mrs. Jellyby in the calmest manner.
+"He has been unfortunate in his affairs and is a little out of
+spirits. Happily for me, I am so much engaged that I have no time to
+think about it. We have, at the present moment, one hundred and
+seventy families, Miss Summerson, averaging five persons in each,
+either gone or going to the left bank of the Niger."
+
+I thought of the one family so near us who were neither gone nor
+going to the left bank of the Niger, and wondered how she could be so
+placid.
+
+"You have brought Caddy back, I see," observed Mrs. Jellyby with a
+glance at her daughter. "It has become quite a novelty to see her
+here. She has almost deserted her old employment and in fact obliges
+me to employ a boy."
+
+"I am sure, Ma--" began Caddy.
+
+"Now you know, Caddy," her mother mildly interposed, "that I DO
+employ a boy, who is now at his dinner. What is the use of your
+contradicting?"
+
+"I was not going to contradict, Ma," returned Caddy. "I was only
+going to say that surely you wouldn't have me be a mere drudge all my
+life."
+
+"I believe, my dear," said Mrs. Jellyby, still opening her letters,
+casting her bright eyes smilingly over them, and sorting them as she
+spoke, "that you have a business example before you in your mother.
+Besides. A mere drudge? If you had any sympathy with the destinies of
+the human race, it would raise you high above any such idea. But you
+have none. I have often told you, Caddy, you have no such sympathy."
+
+"Not if it's Africa, Ma, I have not."
+
+"Of course you have not. Now, if I were not happily so much engaged,
+Miss Summerson," said Mrs. Jellyby, sweetly casting her eyes for a
+moment on me and considering where to put the particular letter she
+had just opened, "this would distress and disappoint me. But I have
+so much to think of, in connexion with Borrioboola-Gha and it is so
+necessary I should concentrate myself that there is my remedy, you
+see."
+
+As Caddy gave me a glance of entreaty, and as Mrs. Jellyby was
+looking far away into Africa straight through my bonnet and head, I
+thought it a good opportunity to come to the subject of my visit and
+to attract Mrs. Jellyby's attention.
+
+"Perhaps," I began, "you will wonder what has brought me here to
+interrupt you."
+
+"I am always delighted to see Miss Summerson," said Mrs. Jellyby,
+pursuing her employment with a placid smile. "Though I wish," and she
+shook her head, "she was more interested in the Borrioboolan
+project."
+
+"I have come with Caddy," said I, "because Caddy justly thinks she
+ought not to have a secret from her mother and fancies I shall
+encourage and aid her (though I am sure I don't know how) in
+imparting one."
+
+"Caddy," said Mrs. Jellyby, pausing for a moment in her occupation
+and then serenely pursuing it after shaking her head, "you are going
+to tell me some nonsense."
+
+Caddy untied the strings of her bonnet, took her bonnet off, and
+letting it dangle on the floor by the strings, and crying heartily,
+said, "Ma, I am engaged."
+
+"Oh, you ridiculous child!" observed Mrs. Jellyby with an abstracted
+air as she looked over the dispatch last opened; "what a goose you
+are!"
+
+"I am engaged, Ma," sobbed Caddy, "to young Mr. Turveydrop, at the
+academy; and old Mr. Turveydrop (who is a very gentlemanly man
+indeed) has given his consent, and I beg and pray you'll give us
+yours, Ma, because I never could be happy without it. I never, never
+could!" sobbed Caddy, quite forgetful of her general complainings and
+of everything but her natural affection.
+
+"You see again, Miss Summerson," observed Mrs. Jellyby serenely,
+"what a happiness it is to be so much occupied as I am and to have
+this necessity for self-concentration that I have. Here is Caddy
+engaged to a dancing-master's son--mixed up with people who have no
+more sympathy with the destinies of the human race than she has
+herself! This, too, when Mr. Quale, one of the first philanthropists
+of our time, has mentioned to me that he was really disposed to be
+interested in her!"
+
+"Ma, I always hated and detested Mr. Quale!" sobbed Caddy.
+
+"Caddy, Caddy!" returned Mrs. Jellyby, opening another letter with
+the greatest complacency. "I have no doubt you did. How could you do
+otherwise, being totally destitute of the sympathies with which he
+overflows! Now, if my public duties were not a favourite child to me,
+if I were not occupied with large measures on a vast scale, these
+petty details might grieve me very much, Miss Summerson. But can I
+permit the film of a silly proceeding on the part of Caddy (from whom
+I expect nothing else) to interpose between me and the great African
+continent? No. No," repeated Mrs. Jellyby in a calm clear voice, and
+with an agreeable smile, as she opened more letters and sorted them.
+"No, indeed."
+
+I was so unprepared for the perfect coolness of this reception,
+though I might have expected it, that I did not know what to say.
+Caddy seemed equally at a loss. Mrs. Jellyby continued to open and
+sort letters and to repeat occasionally in quite a charming tone of
+voice and with a smile of perfect composure, "No, indeed."
+
+"I hope, Ma," sobbed poor Caddy at last, "you are not angry?"
+
+"Oh, Caddy, you really are an absurd girl," returned Mrs. Jellyby,
+"to ask such questions after what I have said of the preoccupation of
+my mind."
+
+"And I hope, Ma, you give us your consent and wish us well?" said
+Caddy.
+
+"You are a nonsensical child to have done anything of this kind,"
+said Mrs. Jellyby; "and a degenerate child, when you might have
+devoted yourself to the great public measure. But the step is taken,
+and I have engaged a boy, and there is no more to be said. Now, pray,
+Caddy," said Mrs. Jellyby, for Caddy was kissing her, "don't delay me
+in my work, but let me clear off this heavy batch of papers before
+the afternoon post comes in!"
+
+I thought I could not do better than take my leave; I was detained
+for a moment by Caddy's saying, "You won't object to my bringing him
+to see you, Ma?"
+
+"Oh, dear me, Caddy," cried Mrs. Jellyby, who had relapsed into that
+distant contemplation, "have you begun again? Bring whom?"
+
+"Him, Ma."
+
+"Caddy, Caddy!" said Mrs. Jellyby, quite weary of such little
+matters. "Then you must bring him some evening which is not a Parent
+Society night, or a Branch night, or a Ramification night. You must
+accommodate the visit to the demands upon my time. My dear Miss
+Summerson, it was very kind of you to come here to help out this
+silly chit. Good-bye! When I tell you that I have fifty-eight new
+letters from manufacturing families anxious to understand the details
+of the native and coffee-cultivation question this morning, I need
+not apologize for having very little leisure."
+
+I was not surprised by Caddy's being in low spirits when we went
+downstairs, or by her sobbing afresh on my neck, or by her saying she
+would far rather have been scolded than treated with such
+indifference, or by her confiding to me that she was so poor in
+clothes that how she was ever to be married creditably she didn't
+know. I gradually cheered her up by dwelling on the many things she
+would do for her unfortunate father and for Peepy when she had a home
+of her own; and finally we went downstairs into the damp dark
+kitchen, where Peepy and his little brothers and sisters were
+grovelling on the stone floor and where we had such a game of play
+with them that to prevent myself from being quite torn to pieces I
+was obliged to fall back on my fairy-tales. From time to time I heard
+loud voices in the parlour overhead, and occasionally a violent
+tumbling about of the furniture. The last effect I am afraid was
+caused by poor Mr. Jellyby's breaking away from the dining-table and
+making rushes at the window with the intention of throwing himself
+into the area whenever he made any new attempt to understand his
+affairs.
+
+As I rode quietly home at night after the day's bustle, I thought a
+good deal of Caddy's engagement and felt confirmed in my hopes (in
+spite of the elder Mr. Turveydrop) that she would be the happier and
+better for it. And if there seemed to be but a slender chance of her
+and her husband ever finding out what the model of deportment really
+was, why that was all for the best too, and who would wish them to be
+wiser? I did not wish them to be any wiser and indeed was half
+ashamed of not entirely believing in him myself. And I looked up at
+the stars, and thought about travellers in distant countries and the
+stars THEY saw, and hoped I might always be so blest and happy as to
+be useful to some one in my small way.
+
+They were so glad to see me when I got home, as they always were,
+that I could have sat down and cried for joy if that had not been a
+method of making myself disagreeable. Everybody in the house, from
+the lowest to the highest, showed me such a bright face of welcome,
+and spoke so cheerily, and was so happy to do anything for me, that I
+suppose there never was such a fortunate little creature in the
+world.
+
+We got into such a chatty state that night, through Ada and my
+guardian drawing me out to tell them all about Caddy, that I went on
+prose, prose, prosing for a length of time. At last I got up to my
+own room, quite red to think how I had been holding forth, and then I
+heard a soft tap at my door. So I said, "Come in!" and there came in
+a pretty little girl, neatly dressed in mourning, who dropped a
+curtsy.
+
+"If you please, miss," said the little girl in a soft voice, "I am
+Charley."
+
+"Why, so you are," said I, stooping down in astonishment and giving
+her a kiss. "How glad am I to see you, Charley!"
+
+"If you please, miss," pursued Charley in the same soft voice, "I'm
+your maid."
+
+"Charley?"
+
+"If you please, miss, I'm a present to you, with Mr. Jarndyce's
+love."
+
+I sat down with my hand on Charley's neck and looked at Charley.
+
+"And oh, miss," says Charley, clapping her hands, with the tears
+starting down her dimpled cheeks, "Tom's at school, if you please,
+and learning so good! And little Emma, she's with Mrs. Blinder, miss,
+a-being took such care of! And Tom, he would have been at school--and
+Emma, she would have been left with Mrs. Blinder--and me, I should
+have been here--all a deal sooner, miss; only Mr. Jarndyce thought
+that Tom and Emma and me had better get a little used to parting
+first, we was so small. Don't cry, if you please, miss!"
+
+"I can't help it, Charley."
+
+"No, miss, nor I can't help it," says Charley. "And if you please,
+miss, Mr. Jarndyce's love, and he thinks you'll like to teach me now
+and then. And if you please, Tom and Emma and me is to see each other
+once a month. And I'm so happy and so thankful, miss," cried Charley
+with a heaving heart, "and I'll try to be such a good maid!"
+
+"Oh, Charley dear, never forget who did all this!"
+
+"No, miss, I never will. Nor Tom won't. Nor yet Emma. It was all you,
+miss."
+
+"I have known nothing of it. It was Mr. Jarndyce, Charley."
+
+"Yes, miss, but it was all done for the love of you and that you
+might be my mistress. If you please, miss, I am a little present with
+his love, and it was all done for the love of you. Me and Tom was to
+be sure to remember it."
+
+Charley dried her eyes and entered on her functions, going in her
+matronly little way about and about the room and folding up
+everything she could lay her hands upon. Presently Charley came
+creeping back to my side and said, "Oh, don't cry, if you please,
+miss."
+
+And I said again, "I can't help it, Charley."
+
+And Charley said again, "No, miss, nor I can't help it." And so,
+after all, I did cry for joy indeed, and so did she.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+An Appeal Case
+
+
+As soon as Richard and I had held the conversation of which I have
+given an account, Richard communicated the state of his mind to Mr.
+Jarndyce. I doubt if my guardian were altogether taken by surprise
+when he received the representation, though it caused him much
+uneasiness and disappointment. He and Richard were often closeted
+together, late at night and early in the morning, and passed whole
+days in London, and had innumerable appointments with Mr. Kenge, and
+laboured through a quantity of disagreeable business. While they were
+thus employed, my guardian, though he underwent considerable
+inconvenience from the state of the wind and rubbed his head so
+constantly that not a single hair upon it ever rested in its right
+place, was as genial with Ada and me as at any other time, but
+maintained a steady reserve on these matters. And as our utmost
+endeavours could only elicit from Richard himself sweeping assurances
+that everything was going on capitally and that it really was all
+right at last, our anxiety was not much relieved by him.
+
+We learnt, however, as the time went on, that a new application was
+made to the Lord Chancellor on Richard's behalf as an infant and a
+ward, and I don't know what, and that there was a quantity of
+talking, and that the Lord Chancellor described him in open court as
+a vexatious and capricious infant, and that the matter was adjourned
+and readjourned, and referred, and reported on, and petitioned about
+until Richard began to doubt (as he told us) whether, if he entered
+the army at all, it would not be as a veteran of seventy or eighty
+years of age. At last an appointment was made for him to see the Lord
+Chancellor again in his private room, and there the Lord Chancellor
+very seriously reproved him for trifling with time and not knowing
+his mind--"a pretty good joke, I think," said Richard, "from that
+quarter!"--and at last it was settled that his application should be
+granted. His name was entered at the Horse Guards as an applicant for
+an ensign's commission; the purchase-money was deposited at an
+agent's; and Richard, in his usual characteristic way, plunged into a
+violent course of military study and got up at five o'clock every
+morning to practise the broadsword exercise.
+
+Thus, vacation succeeded term, and term succeeded vacation. We
+sometimes heard of Jarndyce and Jarndyce as being in the paper or out
+of the paper, or as being to be mentioned, or as being to be spoken
+to; and it came on, and it went off. Richard, who was now in a
+professor's house in London, was able to be with us less frequently
+than before; my guardian still maintained the same reserve; and so
+time passed until the commission was obtained and Richard received
+directions with it to join a regiment in Ireland.
+
+He arrived post-haste with the intelligence one evening, and had a
+long conference with my guardian. Upwards of an hour elapsed before
+my guardian put his head into the room where Ada and I were sitting
+and said, "Come in, my dears!" We went in and found Richard, whom we
+had last seen in high spirits, leaning on the chimney-piece looking
+mortified and angry.
+
+"Rick and I, Ada," said Mr. Jarndyce, "are not quite of one mind.
+Come, come, Rick, put a brighter face upon it!"
+
+"You are very hard with me, sir," said Richard. "The harder because
+you have been so considerate to me in all other respects and have
+done me kindnesses that I can never acknowledge. I never could have
+been set right without you, sir."
+
+"Well, well!" said Mr. Jarndyce. "I want to set you more right yet. I
+want to set you more right with yourself."
+
+"I hope you will excuse my saying, sir," returned Richard in a fiery
+way, but yet respectfully, "that I think I am the best judge about
+myself."
+
+"I hope you will excuse my saying, my dear Rick," observed Mr.
+Jarndyce with the sweetest cheerfulness and good humour, "that it's
+quite natural in you to think so, but I don't think so. I must do my
+duty, Rick, or you could never care for me in cool blood; and I hope
+you will always care for me, cool and hot."
+
+Ada had turned so pale that he made her sit down in his reading-chair
+and sat beside her.
+
+"It's nothing, my dear," he said, "it's nothing. Rick and I have only
+had a friendly difference, which we must state to you, for you are
+the theme. Now you are afraid of what's coming."
+
+"I am not indeed, cousin John," replied Ada with a smile, "if it is
+to come from you."
+
+"Thank you, my dear. Do you give me a minute's calm attention,
+without looking at Rick. And, little woman, do you likewise. My dear
+girl," putting his hand on hers as it lay on the side of the
+easy-chair, "you recollect the talk we had, we four when the little
+woman told me of a little love affair?"
+
+"It is not likely that either Richard or I can ever forget your
+kindness that day, cousin John."
+
+"I can never forget it," said Richard.
+
+"And I can never forget it," said Ada.
+
+"So much the easier what I have to say, and so much the easier for us
+to agree," returned my guardian, his face irradiated by the
+gentleness and honour of his heart. "Ada, my bird, you should know
+that Rick has now chosen his profession for the last time. All that
+he has of certainty will be expended when he is fully equipped. He
+has exhausted his resources and is bound henceforward to the tree he
+has planted."
+
+"Quite true that I have exhausted my present resources, and I am
+quite content to know it. But what I have of certainty, sir," said
+Richard, "is not all I have."
+
+"Rick, Rick!" cried my guardian with a sudden terror in his manner,
+and in an altered voice, and putting up his hands as if he would have
+stopped his ears. "For the love of God, don't found a hope or
+expectation on the family curse! Whatever you do on this side the
+grave, never give one lingering glance towards the horrible phantom
+that has haunted us so many years. Better to borrow, better to beg,
+better to die!"
+
+We were all startled by the fervour of this warning. Richard bit his
+lip and held his breath, and glanced at me as if he felt, and knew
+that I felt too, how much he needed it.
+
+"Ada, my dear," said Mr. Jarndyce, recovering his cheerfulness,
+"these are strong words of advice, but I live in Bleak House and have
+seen a sight here. Enough of that. All Richard had to start him in
+the race of life is ventured. I recommend to him and you, for his
+sake and your own, that he should depart from us with the
+understanding that there is no sort of contract between you. I must
+go further. I will be plain with you both. You were to confide freely
+in me, and I will confide freely in you. I ask you wholly to
+relinquish, for the present, any tie but your relationship."
+
+"Better to say at once, sir," returned Richard, "that you renounce
+all confidence in me and that you advise Ada to do the same."
+
+"Better to say nothing of the sort, Rick, because I don't mean it."
+
+"You think I have begun ill, sir," retorted Richard. "I HAVE, I
+know."
+
+"How I hoped you would begin, and how go on, I told you when we spoke
+of these things last," said Mr. Jarndyce in a cordial and encouraging
+manner. "You have not made that beginning yet, but there is a time
+for all things, and yours is not gone by; rather, it is just now
+fully come. Make a clear beginning altogether. You two (very young,
+my dears) are cousins. As yet, you are nothing more. What more may
+come must come of being worked out, Rick, and no sooner."
+
+"You are very hard with me, sir," said Richard. "Harder than I could
+have supposed you would be."
+
+"My dear boy," said Mr. Jarndyce, "I am harder with myself when I do
+anything that gives you pain. You have your remedy in your own hands.
+Ada, it is better for him that he should be free and that there
+should be no youthful engagement between you. Rick, it is better for
+her, much better; you owe it to her. Come! Each of you will do what
+is best for the other, if not what is best for yourselves."
+
+"Why is it best, sir?" returned Richard hastily. "It was not when we
+opened our hearts to you. You did not say so then."
+
+"I have had experience since. I don't blame you, Rick, but I have had
+experience since."
+
+"You mean of me, sir."
+
+"Well! Yes, of both of you," said Mr. Jarndyce kindly. "The time is
+not come for your standing pledged to one another. It is not right,
+and I must not recognize it. Come, come, my young cousins, begin
+afresh! Bygones shall be bygones, and a new page turned for you to
+write your lives in."
+
+Richard gave an anxious glance at Ada but said nothing.
+
+"I have avoided saying one word to either of you or to Esther," said
+Mr. Jarndyce, "until now, in order that we might be open as the day,
+and all on equal terms. I now affectionately advise, I now most
+earnestly entreat, you two to part as you came here. Leave all else
+to time, truth, and steadfastness. If you do otherwise, you will do
+wrong, and you will have made me do wrong in ever bringing you
+together."
+
+A long silence succeeded.
+
+"Cousin Richard," said Ada then, raising her blue eyes tenderly to
+his face, "after what our cousin John has said, I think no choice is
+left us. Your mind may be quite at ease about me, for you will leave
+me here under his care and will be sure that I can have nothing to
+wish for--quite sure if I guide myself by his advice. I--I don't
+doubt, cousin Richard," said Ada, a little confused, "that you are
+very fond of me, and I--I don't think you will fall in love with
+anybody else. But I should like you to consider well about it too, as
+I should like you to be in all things very happy. You may trust in
+me, cousin Richard. I am not at all changeable; but I am not
+unreasonable, and should never blame you. Even cousins may be sorry
+to part; and in truth I am very, very sorry, Richard, though I know
+it's for your welfare. I shall always think of you affectionately,
+and often talk of you with Esther, and--and perhaps you will
+sometimes think a little of me, cousin Richard. So now," said Ada,
+going up to him and giving him her trembling hand, "we are only
+cousins again, Richard--for the time perhaps--and I pray for a
+blessing on my dear cousin, wherever he goes!"
+
+It was strange to me that Richard should not be able to forgive my
+guardian for entertaining the very same opinion of him which he
+himself had expressed of himself in much stronger terms to me. But it
+was certainly the case. I observed with great regret that from this
+hour he never was as free and open with Mr. Jarndyce as he had been
+before. He had every reason given him to be so, but he was not; and
+solely on his side, an estrangement began to arise between them.
+
+In the business of preparation and equipment he soon lost himself,
+and even his grief at parting from Ada, who remained in Hertfordshire
+while he, Mr. Jarndyce, and I went up to London for a week. He
+remembered her by fits and starts, even with bursts of tears, and at
+such times would confide to me the heaviest self-reproaches. But in a
+few minutes he would recklessly conjure up some undefinable means by
+which they were both to be made rich and happy for ever, and would
+become as gay as possible.
+
+It was a busy time, and I trotted about with him all day long, buying
+a variety of things of which he stood in need. Of the things he would
+have bought if he had been left to his own ways I say nothing. He was
+perfectly confidential with me, and often talked so sensibly and
+feelingly about his faults and his vigorous resolutions, and dwelt so
+much upon the encouragement he derived from these conversations that
+I could never have been tired if I had tried.
+
+There used, in that week, to come backward and forward to our lodging
+to fence with Richard a person who had formerly been a cavalry
+soldier; he was a fine bluff-looking man, of a frank free bearing,
+with whom Richard had practised for some months. I heard so much
+about him, not only from Richard, but from my guardian too, that I
+was purposely in the room with my work one morning after breakfast
+when he came.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. George," said my guardian, who happened to be
+alone with me. "Mr. Carstone will be here directly. Meanwhile, Miss
+Summerson is very happy to see you, I know. Sit down."
+
+He sat down, a little disconcerted by my presence, I thought, and
+without looking at me, drew his heavy sunburnt hand across and across
+his upper lip.
+
+"You are as punctual as the sun," said Mr. Jarndyce.
+
+"Military time, sir," he replied. "Force of habit. A mere habit in
+me, sir. I am not at all business-like."
+
+"Yet you have a large establishment, too, I am told?" said Mr.
+Jarndyce.
+
+"Not much of a one, sir. I keep a shooting gallery, but not much of a
+one."
+
+"And what kind of a shot and what kind of a swordsman do you make of
+Mr. Carstone?" said my guardian.
+
+"Pretty good, sir," he replied, folding his arms upon his broad chest
+and looking very large. "If Mr. Carstone was to give his full mind to
+it, he would come out very good."
+
+"But he don't, I suppose?" said my guardian.
+
+"He did at first, sir, but not afterwards. Not his full mind. Perhaps
+he has something else upon it--some young lady, perhaps." His bright
+dark eyes glanced at me for the first time.
+
+"He has not me upon his mind, I assure you, Mr. George," said I,
+laughing, "though you seem to suspect me."
+
+He reddened a little through his brown and made me a trooper's bow.
+"No offence, I hope, miss. I am one of the roughs."
+
+"Not at all," said I. "I take it as a compliment."
+
+If he had not looked at me before, he looked at me now in three or
+four quick successive glances. "I beg your pardon, sir," he said to
+my guardian with a manly kind of diffidence, "but you did me the
+honour to mention the young lady's name--"
+
+"Miss Summerson."
+
+"Miss Summerson," he repeated, and looked at me again.
+
+"Do you know the name?" I asked.
+
+"No, miss. To my knowledge I never heard it. I thought I had seen you
+somewhere."
+
+"I think not," I returned, raising my head from my work to look at
+him; and there was something so genuine in his speech and manner that
+I was glad of the opportunity. "I remember faces very well."
+
+"So do I, miss!" he returned, meeting my look with the fullness of
+his dark eyes and broad forehead. "Humph! What set me off, now, upon
+that!"
+
+His once more reddening through his brown and being disconcerted by
+his efforts to remember the association brought my guardian to his
+relief.
+
+"Have you many pupils, Mr. George?"
+
+"They vary in their number, sir. Mostly they're but a small lot to
+live by."
+
+"And what classes of chance people come to practise at your gallery?"
+
+"All sorts, sir. Natives and foreigners. From gentlemen to
+'prentices. I have had Frenchwomen come, before now, and show
+themselves dabs at pistol-shooting. Mad people out of number, of
+course, but THEY go everywhere where the doors stand open."
+
+"People don't come with grudges and schemes of finishing their
+practice with live targets, I hope?" said my guardian, smiling.
+
+"Not much of that, sir, though that HAS happened. Mostly they come
+for skill--or idleness. Six of one, and half-a-dozen of the other. I
+beg your pardon," said Mr. George, sitting stiffly upright and
+squaring an elbow on each knee, "but I believe you're a Chancery
+suitor, if I have heard correct?"
+
+"I am sorry to say I am."
+
+"I have had one of YOUR compatriots in my time, sir."
+
+"A Chancery suitor?" returned my guardian. "How was that?"
+
+"Why, the man was so badgered and worried and tortured by being
+knocked about from post to pillar, and from pillar to post," said Mr.
+George, "that he got out of sorts. I don't believe he had any idea of
+taking aim at anybody, but he was in that condition of resentment and
+violence that he would come and pay for fifty shots and fire away
+till he was red hot. One day I said to him when there was nobody by
+and he had been talking to me angrily about his wrongs, 'If this
+practice is a safety-valve, comrade, well and good; but I don't
+altogether like your being so bent upon it in your present state of
+mind; I'd rather you took to something else.' I was on my guard for a
+blow, he was that passionate; but he received it in very good part
+and left off directly. We shook hands and struck up a sort of
+friendship."
+
+"What was that man?" asked my guardian in a new tone of interest.
+
+"Why, he began by being a small Shropshire farmer before they made a
+baited bull of him," said Mr. George.
+
+"Was his name Gridley?"
+
+"It was, sir."
+
+Mr. George directed another succession of quick bright glances at me
+as my guardian and I exchanged a word or two of surprise at the
+coincidence, and I therefore explained to him how we knew the name.
+He made me another of his soldierly bows in acknowledgment of what he
+called my condescension.
+
+"I don't know," he said as he looked at me, "what it is that sets me
+off again--but--bosh! What's my head running against!" He passed one
+of his heavy hands over his crisp dark hair as if to sweep the broken
+thoughts out of his mind and sat a little forward, with one arm
+akimbo and the other resting on his leg, looking in a brown study at
+the ground.
+
+"I am sorry to learn that the same state of mind has got this Gridley
+into new troubles and that he is in hiding," said my guardian.
+
+"So I am told, sir," returned Mr. George, still musing and looking on
+the ground. "So I am told."
+
+"You don't know where?"
+
+"No, sir," returned the trooper, lifting up his eyes and coming out
+of his reverie. "I can't say anything about him. He will be worn out
+soon, I expect. You may file a strong man's heart away for a good
+many years, but it will tell all of a sudden at last."
+
+Richard's entrance stopped the conversation. Mr. George rose, made me
+another of his soldierly bows, wished my guardian a good day, and
+strode heavily out of the room.
+
+This was the morning of the day appointed for Richard's departure. We
+had no more purchases to make now; I had completed all his packing
+early in the afternoon; and our time was disengaged until night, when
+he was to go to Liverpool for Holyhead. Jarndyce and Jarndyce being
+again expected to come on that day, Richard proposed to me that we
+should go down to the court and hear what passed. As it was his last
+day, and he was eager to go, and I had never been there, I gave my
+consent and we walked down to Westminster, where the court was then
+sitting. We beguiled the way with arrangements concerning the letters
+that Richard was to write to me and the letters that I was to write
+to him and with a great many hopeful projects. My guardian knew where
+we were going and therefore was not with us.
+
+When we came to the court, there was the Lord Chancellor--the same
+whom I had seen in his private room in Lincoln's Inn--sitting in
+great state and gravity on the bench, with the mace and seals on a
+red table below him and an immense flat nosegay, like a little
+garden, which scented the whole court. Below the table, again, was a
+long row of solicitors, with bundles of papers on the matting at
+their feet; and then there were the gentlemen of the bar in wigs and
+gowns--some awake and some asleep, and one talking, and nobody paying
+much attention to what he said. The Lord Chancellor leaned back in
+his very easy chair with his elbow on the cushioned arm and his
+forehead resting on his hand; some of those who were present dozed;
+some read the newspapers; some walked about or whispered in groups:
+all seemed perfectly at their ease, by no means in a hurry, very
+unconcerned, and extremely comfortable.
+
+To see everything going on so smoothly and to think of the roughness
+of the suitors' lives and deaths; to see all that full dress and
+ceremony and to think of the waste, and want, and beggared misery it
+represented; to consider that while the sickness of hope deferred was
+raging in so many hearts this polite show went calmly on from day to
+day, and year to year, in such good order and composure; to behold
+the Lord Chancellor and the whole array of practitioners under him
+looking at one another and at the spectators as if nobody had ever
+heard that all over England the name in which they were assembled was
+a bitter jest, was held in universal horror, contempt, and
+indignation, was known for something so flagrant and bad that little
+short of a miracle could bring any good out of it to any one--this
+was so curious and self-contradictory to me, who had no experience of
+it, that it was at first incredible, and I could not comprehend it. I
+sat where Richard put me, and tried to listen, and looked about me;
+but there seemed to be no reality in the whole scene except poor
+little Miss Flite, the madwoman, standing on a bench and nodding at
+it.
+
+Miss Flite soon espied us and came to where we sat. She gave me a
+gracious welcome to her domain and indicated, with much gratification
+and pride, its principal attractions. Mr. Kenge also came to speak to
+us and did the honours of the place in much the same way, with the
+bland modesty of a proprietor. It was not a very good day for a
+visit, he said; he would have preferred the first day of term; but it
+was imposing, it was imposing.
+
+When we had been there half an hour or so, the case in progress--if I
+may use a phrase so ridiculous in such a connexion--seemed to die out
+of its own vapidity, without coming, or being by anybody expected to
+come, to any result. The Lord Chancellor then threw down a bundle of
+papers from his desk to the gentlemen below him, and somebody said,
+"Jarndyce and Jarndyce." Upon this there was a buzz, and a laugh, and
+a general withdrawal of the bystanders, and a bringing in of great
+heaps, and piles, and bags and bags full of papers.
+
+I think it came on "for further directions"--about some bill of
+costs, to the best of my understanding, which was confused enough.
+But I counted twenty-three gentlemen in wigs who said they were "in
+it," and none of them appeared to understand it much better than I.
+They chatted about it with the Lord Chancellor, and contradicted and
+explained among themselves, and some of them said it was this way,
+and some of them said it was that way, and some of them jocosely
+proposed to read huge volumes of affidavits, and there was more
+buzzing and laughing, and everybody concerned was in a state of idle
+entertainment, and nothing could be made of it by anybody. After an
+hour or so of this, and a good many speeches being begun and cut
+short, it was "referred back for the present," as Mr. Kenge said, and
+the papers were bundled up again before the clerks had finished
+bringing them in.
+
+I glanced at Richard on the termination of these hopeless proceedings
+and was shocked to see the worn look of his handsome young face. "It
+can't last for ever, Dame Durden. Better luck next time!" was all he
+said.
+
+I had seen Mr. Guppy bringing in papers and arranging them for Mr.
+Kenge; and he had seen me and made me a forlorn bow, which rendered
+me desirous to get out of the court. Richard had given me his arm and
+was taking me away when Mr. Guppy came up.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Mr. Carstone," said he in a whisper, "and Miss
+Summerson's also, but there's a lady here, a friend of mine, who
+knows her and wishes to have the pleasure of shaking hands." As he
+spoke, I saw before me, as if she had started into bodily shape from
+my remembrance, Mrs. Rachael of my godmother's house.
+
+"How do you do, Esther?" said she. "Do you recollect me?"
+
+I gave her my hand and told her yes and that she was very little
+altered.
+
+"I wonder you remember those times, Esther," she returned with her
+old asperity. "They are changed now. Well! I am glad to see you, and
+glad you are not too proud to know me." But indeed she seemed
+disappointed that I was not.
+
+"Proud, Mrs. Rachael!" I remonstrated.
+
+"I am married, Esther," she returned, coldly correcting me, "and am
+Mrs. Chadband. Well! I wish you good day, and I hope you'll do well."
+
+Mr. Guppy, who had been attentive to this short dialogue, heaved a
+sigh in my ear and elbowed his own and Mrs. Rachael's way through the
+confused little crowd of people coming in and going out, which we
+were in the midst of and which the change in the business had brought
+together. Richard and I were making our way through it, and I was yet
+in the first chill of the late unexpected recognition when I saw,
+coming towards us, but not seeing us, no less a person than Mr.
+George. He made nothing of the people about him as he tramped on,
+staring over their heads into the body of the court.
+
+"George!" said Richard as I called his attention to him.
+
+"You are well met, sir," he returned. "And you, miss. Could you point
+a person out for me, I want? I don't understand these places."
+
+Turning as he spoke and making an easy way for us, he stopped when we
+were out of the press in a corner behind a great red curtain.
+
+"There's a little cracked old woman," he began, "that--"
+
+I put up my finger, for Miss Flite was close by me, having kept
+beside me all the time and having called the attention of several of
+her legal acquaintance to me (as I had overheard to my confusion) by
+whispering in their ears, "Hush! Fitz Jarndyce on my left!"
+
+"Hem!" said Mr. George. "You remember, miss, that we passed some
+conversation on a certain man this morning? Gridley," in a low
+whisper behind his hand.
+
+"Yes," said I.
+
+"He is hiding at my place. I couldn't mention it. Hadn't his
+authority. He is on his last march, miss, and has a whim to see her.
+He says they can feel for one another, and she has been almost as
+good as a friend to him here. I came down to look for her, for when I
+sat by Gridley this afternoon, I seemed to hear the roll of the
+muffled drums."
+
+"Shall I tell her?" said I.
+
+"Would you be so good?" he returned with a glance of something like
+apprehension at Miss Flite. "It's a providence I met you, miss; I
+doubt if I should have known how to get on with that lady." And he
+put one hand in his breast and stood upright in a martial attitude as
+I informed little Miss Flite, in her ear, of the purport of his kind
+errand.
+
+"My angry friend from Shropshire! Almost as celebrated as myself!"
+she exclaimed. "Now really! My dear, I will wait upon him with the
+greatest pleasure."
+
+"He is living concealed at Mr. George's," said I. "Hush! This is Mr.
+George."
+
+"In--deed!" returned Miss Flite. "Very proud to have the honour! A
+military man, my dear. You know, a perfect general!" she whispered to
+me.
+
+Poor Miss Flite deemed it necessary to be so courtly and polite, as a
+mark of her respect for the army, and to curtsy so very often that it
+was no easy matter to get her out of the court. When this was at last
+done, and addressing Mr. George as "General," she gave him her arm,
+to the great entertainment of some idlers who were looking on, he was
+so discomposed and begged me so respectfully "not to desert him" that
+I could not make up my mind to do it, especially as Miss Flite was
+always tractable with me and as she too said, "Fitz Jarndyce, my
+dear, you will accompany us, of course." As Richard seemed quite
+willing, and even anxious, that we should see them safely to their
+destination, we agreed to do so. And as Mr. George informed us that
+Gridley's mind had run on Mr. Jarndyce all the afternoon after
+hearing of their interview in the morning, I wrote a hasty note in
+pencil to my guardian to say where we were gone and why. Mr. George
+sealed it at a coffee-house, that it might lead to no discovery, and
+we sent it off by a ticket-porter.
+
+We then took a hackney-coach and drove away to the neighbourhood of
+Leicester Square. We walked through some narrow courts, for which Mr.
+George apologized, and soon came to the shooting gallery, the door of
+which was closed. As he pulled a bell-handle which hung by a chain to
+the door-post, a very respectable old gentleman with grey hair,
+wearing spectacles, and dressed in a black spencer and gaiters and a
+broad-brimmed hat, and carrying a large gold-beaded cane, addressed
+him.
+
+"I ask your pardon, my good friend," said he, "but is this George's
+Shooting Gallery?"
+
+"It is, sir," returned Mr. George, glancing up at the great letters
+in which that inscription was painted on the whitewashed wall.
+
+"Oh! To be sure!" said the old gentleman, following his eyes. "Thank
+you. Have you rung the bell?"
+
+"My name is George, sir, and I have rung the bell."
+
+"Oh, indeed?" said the old gentleman. "Your name is George? Then I am
+here as soon as you, you see. You came for me, no doubt?"
+
+"No, sir. You have the advantage of me."
+
+"Oh, indeed?" said the old gentleman. "Then it was your young man who
+came for me. I am a physician and was requested--five minutes ago--to
+come and visit a sick man at George's Shooting Gallery."
+
+"The muffled drums," said Mr. George, turning to Richard and me and
+gravely shaking his head. "It's quite correct, sir. Will you please
+to walk in."
+
+The door being at that moment opened by a very singular-looking
+little man in a green-baize cap and apron, whose face and hands and
+dress were blackened all over, we passed along a dreary passage into
+a large building with bare brick walls where there were targets, and
+guns, and swords, and other things of that kind. When we had all
+arrived here, the physician stopped, and taking off his hat, appeared
+to vanish by magic and to leave another and quite a different man in
+his place.
+
+"Now lookee here, George," said the man, turning quickly round upon
+him and tapping him on the breast with a large forefinger. "You know
+me, and I know you. You're a man of the world, and I'm a man of the
+world. My name's Bucket, as you are aware, and I have got a
+peace-warrant against Gridley. You have kept him out of the way a
+long time, and you have been artful in it, and it does you credit."
+
+Mr. George, looking hard at him, bit his lip and shook his head.
+
+"Now, George," said the other, keeping close to him, "you're a
+sensible man and a well-conducted man; that's what YOU are, beyond a
+doubt. And mind you, I don't talk to you as a common character,
+because you have served your country and you know that when duty
+calls we must obey. Consequently you're very far from wanting to give
+trouble. If I required assistance, you'd assist me; that's what YOU'D
+do. Phil Squod, don't you go a-sidling round the gallery like
+that"--the dirty little man was shuffling about with his shoulder
+against the wall, and his eyes on the intruder, in a manner that
+looked threatening--"because I know you and won't have it."
+
+"Phil!" said Mr. George.
+
+"Yes, guv'ner."
+
+"Be quiet."
+
+The little man, with a low growl, stood still.
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen," said Mr. Bucket, "you'll excuse anything that
+may appear to be disagreeable in this, for my name's Inspector Bucket
+of the Detective, and I have a duty to perform. George, I know where
+my man is because I was on the roof last night and saw him through
+the skylight, and you along with him. He is in there, you know,"
+pointing; "that's where HE is--on a sofy. Now I must see my man, and
+I must tell my man to consider himself in custody; but you know me,
+and you know I don't want to take any uncomfortable measures. You
+give me your word, as from one man to another (and an old soldier,
+mind you, likewise), that it's honourable between us two, and I'll
+accommodate you to the utmost of my power."
+
+"I give it," was the reply. "But it wasn't handsome in you, Mr.
+Bucket."
+
+"Gammon, George! Not handsome?" said Mr. Bucket, tapping him on his
+broad breast again and shaking hands with him. "I don't say it wasn't
+handsome in you to keep my man so close, do I? Be equally
+good-tempered to me, old boy! Old William Tell, Old Shaw, the Life
+Guardsman! Why, he's a model of the whole British army in himself,
+ladies and gentlemen. I'd give a fifty-pun' note to be such a figure
+of a man!"
+
+The affair being brought to this head, Mr. George, after a little
+consideration, proposed to go in first to his comrade (as he called
+him), taking Miss Flite with him. Mr. Bucket agreeing, they went away
+to the further end of the gallery, leaving us sitting and standing by
+a table covered with guns. Mr. Bucket took this opportunity of
+entering into a little light conversation, asking me if I were afraid
+of fire-arms, as most young ladies were; asking Richard if he were a
+good shot; asking Phil Squod which he considered the best of those
+rifles and what it might be worth first-hand, telling him in return
+that it was a pity he ever gave way to his temper, for he was
+naturally so amiable that he might have been a young woman, and
+making himself generally agreeable.
+
+After a time he followed us to the further end of the gallery, and
+Richard and I were going quietly away when Mr. George came after us.
+He said that if we had no objection to see his comrade, he would take
+a visit from us very kindly. The words had hardly passed his lips
+when the bell was rung and my guardian appeared, "on the chance," he
+slightly observed, "of being able to do any little thing for a poor
+fellow involved in the same misfortune as himself." We all four went
+back together and went into the place where Gridley was.
+
+It was a bare room, partitioned off from the gallery with unpainted
+wood. As the screening was not more than eight or ten feet high and
+only enclosed the sides, not the top, the rafters of the high gallery
+roof were overhead, and the skylight through which Mr. Bucket had
+looked down. The sun was low--near setting--and its light came redly
+in above, without descending to the ground. Upon a plain
+canvas-covered sofa lay the man from Shropshire, dressed much as we
+had seen him last, but so changed that at first I recognized no
+likeness in his colourless face to what I recollected.
+
+He had been still writing in his hiding-place, and still dwelling on
+his grievances, hour after hour. A table and some shelves were
+covered with manuscript papers and with worn pens and a medley of
+such tokens. Touchingly and awfully drawn together, he and the little
+mad woman were side by side and, as it were, alone. She sat on a
+chair holding his hand, and none of us went close to them.
+
+His voice had faded, with the old expression of his face, with his
+strength, with his anger, with his resistance to the wrongs that had
+at last subdued him. The faintest shadow of an object full of form
+and colour is such a picture of it as he was of the man from
+Shropshire whom we had spoken with before.
+
+He inclined his head to Richard and me and spoke to my guardian.
+
+"Mr. Jarndyce, it is very kind of you to come to see me. I am not
+long to be seen, I think. I am very glad to take your hand, sir. You
+are a good man, superior to injustice, and God knows I honour you."
+
+They shook hands earnestly, and my guardian said some words of
+comfort to him.
+
+"It may seem strange to you, sir," returned Gridley; "I should not
+have liked to see you if this had been the first time of our meeting.
+But you know I made a fight for it, you know I stood up with my
+single hand against them all, you know I told them the truth to the
+last, and told them what they were, and what they had done to me; so
+I don't mind your seeing me, this wreck."
+
+"You have been courageous with them many and many a time," returned
+my guardian.
+
+"Sir, I have been," with a faint smile. "I told you what would come
+of it when I ceased to be so, and see here! Look at us--look at us!"
+He drew the hand Miss Flite held through her arm and brought her
+something nearer to him.
+
+"This ends it. Of all my old associations, of all my old pursuits and
+hopes, of all the living and the dead world, this one poor soul alone
+comes natural to me, and I am fit for. There is a tie of many
+suffering years between us two, and it is the only tie I ever had on
+earth that Chancery has not broken."
+
+"Accept my blessing, Gridley," said Miss Flite in tears. "Accept my
+blessing!"
+
+"I thought, boastfully, that they never could break my heart, Mr.
+Jarndyce. I was resolved that they should not. I did believe that I
+could, and would, charge them with being the mockery they were until
+I died of some bodily disorder. But I am worn out. How long I have
+been wearing out, I don't know; I seemed to break down in an hour. I
+hope they may never come to hear of it. I hope everybody here will
+lead them to believe that I died defying them, consistently and
+perseveringly, as I did through so many years."
+
+Here Mr. Bucket, who was sitting in a corner by the door,
+good-naturedly offered such consolation as he could administer.
+
+"Come, come!" he said from his corner. "Don't go on in that way, Mr.
+Gridley. You are only a little low. We are all of us a little low
+sometimes. I am. Hold up, hold up! You'll lose your temper with the
+whole round of 'em, again and again; and I shall take you on a score
+of warrants yet, if I have luck."
+
+He only shook his head.
+
+"Don't shake your head," said Mr. Bucket. "Nod it; that's what I want
+to see you do. Why, Lord bless your soul, what times we have had
+together! Haven't I seen you in the Fleet over and over again for
+contempt? Haven't I come into court, twenty afternoons for no other
+purpose than to see you pin the Chancellor like a bull-dog? Don't you
+remember when you first began to threaten the lawyers, and the peace
+was sworn against you two or three times a week? Ask the little old
+lady there; she has been always present. Hold up, Mr. Gridley, hold
+up, sir!"
+
+"What are you going to do about him?" asked George in a low voice.
+
+"I don't know yet," said Bucket in the same tone. Then resuming his
+encouragement, he pursued aloud: "Worn out, Mr. Gridley? After
+dodging me for all these weeks and forcing me to climb the roof here
+like a tom cat and to come to see you as a doctor? That ain't like
+being worn out. I should think not! Now I tell you what you want. You
+want excitement, you know, to keep YOU up; that's what YOU want.
+You're used to it, and you can't do without it. I couldn't myself.
+Very well, then; here's this warrant got by Mr. Tulkinghorn of
+Lincoln's Inn Fields, and backed into half-a-dozen counties since.
+What do you say to coming along with me, upon this warrant, and
+having a good angry argument before the magistrates? It'll do you
+good; it'll freshen you up and get you into training for another turn
+at the Chancellor. Give in? Why, I am surprised to hear a man of your
+energy talk of giving in. You mustn't do that. You're half the fun of
+the fair in the Court of Chancery. George, you lend Mr. Gridley a
+hand, and let's see now whether he won't be better up than down."
+
+"He is very weak," said the trooper in a low voice.
+
+"Is he?" returned Bucket anxiously. "I only want to rouse him. I
+don't like to see an old acquaintance giving in like this. It would
+cheer him up more than anything if I could make him a little waxy
+with me. He's welcome to drop into me, right and left, if he likes. I
+shall never take advantage of it."
+
+The roof rang with a scream from Miss Flite, which still rings in my
+ears.
+
+"Oh, no, Gridley!" she cried as he fell heavily and calmly back from
+before her. "Not without my blessing. After so many years!"
+
+The sun was down, the light had gradually stolen from the roof, and
+the shadow had crept upward. But to me the shadow of that pair, one
+living and one dead, fell heavier on Richard's departure than the
+darkness of the darkest night. And through Richard's farewell words I
+heard it echoed: "Of all my old associations, of all my old pursuits
+and hopes, of all the living and the dead world, this one poor soul
+alone comes natural to me, and I am fit for. There is a tie of many
+suffering years between us two, and it is the only tie I ever had on
+earth that Chancery has not broken!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+Mrs. Snagsby Sees It All
+
+
+There is disquietude in Cook's Court, Cursitor Street. Black
+suspicion hides in that peaceful region. The mass of Cook's Courtiers
+are in their usual state of mind, no better and no worse; but Mr.
+Snagsby is changed, and his little woman knows it.
+
+For Tom-all-Alone's and Lincoln's Inn Fields persist in harnessing
+themselves, a pair of ungovernable coursers, to the chariot of Mr.
+Snagsby's imagination; and Mr. Bucket drives; and the passengers are
+Jo and Mr. Tulkinghorn; and the complete equipage whirls though the
+law-stationery business at wild speed all round the clock. Even in
+the little front kitchen where the family meals are taken, it rattles
+away at a smoking pace from the dinner-table, when Mr. Snagsby pauses
+in carving the first slice of the leg of mutton baked with potatoes
+and stares at the kitchen wall.
+
+Mr. Snagsby cannot make out what it is that he has had to do with.
+Something is wrong somewhere, but what something, what may come of
+it, to whom, when, and from which unthought of and unheard of quarter
+is the puzzle of his life. His remote impressions of the robes and
+coronets, the stars and garters, that sparkle through the
+surface-dust of Mr. Tulkinghorn's chambers; his veneration for the
+mysteries presided over by that best and closest of his customers,
+whom all the Inns of Court, all Chancery Lane, and all the legal
+neighbourhood agree to hold in awe; his remembrance of Detective Mr.
+Bucket with his forefinger and his confidential manner, impossible to
+be evaded or declined, persuade him that he is a party to some
+dangerous secret without knowing what it is. And it is the fearful
+peculiarity of this condition that, at any hour of his daily life, at
+any opening of the shop-door, at any pull of the bell, at any
+entrance of a messenger, or any delivery of a letter, the secret may
+take air and fire, explode, and blow up--Mr. Bucket only knows whom.
+
+For which reason, whenever a man unknown comes into the shop (as many
+men unknown do) and says, "Is Mr. Snagsby in?" or words to that
+innocent effect, Mr. Snagsby's heart knocks hard at his guilty
+breast. He undergoes so much from such inquiries that when they are
+made by boys he revenges himself by flipping at their ears over the
+counter and asking the young dogs what they mean by it and why they
+can't speak out at once? More impracticable men and boys persist in
+walking into Mr. Snagsby's sleep and terrifying him with
+unaccountable questions, so that often when the cock at the little
+dairy in Cursitor Street breaks out in his usual absurd way about the
+morning, Mr. Snagsby finds himself in a crisis of nightmare, with his
+little woman shaking him and saying "What's the matter with the man!"
+
+The little woman herself is not the least item in his difficulty. To
+know that he is always keeping a secret from her, that he has under
+all circumstances to conceal and hold fast a tender double tooth,
+which her sharpness is ever ready to twist out of his head, gives Mr.
+Snagsby, in her dentistical presence, much of the air of a dog who
+has a reservation from his master and will look anywhere rather than
+meet his eye.
+
+These various signs and tokens, marked by the little woman, are not
+lost upon her. They impel her to say, "Snagsby has something on his
+mind!" And thus suspicion gets into Cook's Court, Cursitor Street.
+From suspicion to jealousy, Mrs. Snagsby finds the road as natural
+and short as from Cook's Court to Chancery Lane. And thus jealousy
+gets into Cook's Court, Cursitor Street. Once there (and it was
+always lurking thereabout), it is very active and nimble in Mrs.
+Snagsby's breast, prompting her to nocturnal examinations of Mr.
+Snagsby's pockets; to secret perusals of Mr. Snagsby's letters; to
+private researches in the day book and ledger, till, cash-box, and
+iron safe; to watchings at windows, listenings behind doors, and a
+general putting of this and that together by the wrong end.
+
+Mrs. Snagsby is so perpetually on the alert that the house becomes
+ghostly with creaking boards and rustling garments. The 'prentices
+think somebody may have been murdered there in bygone times. Guster
+holds certain loose atoms of an idea (picked up at Tooting, where
+they were found floating among the orphans) that there is buried
+money underneath the cellar, guarded by an old man with a white
+beard, who cannot get out for seven thousand years because he said
+the Lord's Prayer backwards.
+
+"Who was Nimrod?" Mrs. Snagsby repeatedly inquires of herself. "Who
+was that lady--that creature? And who is that boy?" Now, Nimrod being
+as dead as the mighty hunter whose name Mrs. Snagsby has
+appropriated, and the lady being unproducible, she directs her mental
+eye, for the present, with redoubled vigilance to the boy. "And who,"
+quoth Mrs. Snagsby for the thousand and first time, "is that boy? Who
+is that--!" And there Mrs. Snagsby is seized with an inspiration.
+
+He has no respect for Mr. Chadband. No, to be sure, and he wouldn't
+have, of course. Naturally he wouldn't, under those contagious
+circumstances. He was invited and appointed by Mr. Chadband--why,
+Mrs. Snagsby heard it herself with her own ears!--to come back, and
+be told where he was to go, to be addressed by Mr. Chadband; and he
+never came! Why did he never come? Because he was told not to come.
+Who told him not to come? Who? Ha, ha! Mrs. Snagsby sees it all.
+
+But happily (and Mrs. Snagsby tightly shakes her head and tightly
+smiles) that boy was met by Mr. Chadband yesterday in the streets;
+and that boy, as affording a subject which Mr. Chadband desires to
+improve for the spiritual delight of a select congregation, was
+seized by Mr. Chadband and threatened with being delivered over to
+the police unless he showed the reverend gentleman where he lived and
+unless he entered into, and fulfilled, an undertaking to appear in
+Cook's Court to-morrow night, "to--mor--row--night," Mrs. Snagsby
+repeats for mere emphasis with another tight smile and another tight
+shake of her head; and to-morrow night that boy will be here, and
+to-morrow night Mrs. Snagsby will have her eye upon him and upon some
+one else; and oh, you may walk a long while in your secret ways (says
+Mrs. Snagsby with haughtiness and scorn), but you can't blind ME!
+
+Mrs. Snagsby sounds no timbrel in anybody's ears, but holds her
+purpose quietly, and keeps her counsel. To-morrow comes, the savoury
+preparations for the Oil Trade come, the evening comes. Comes Mr.
+Snagsby in his black coat; come the Chadbands; come (when the gorging
+vessel is replete) the 'prentices and Guster, to be edified; comes at
+last, with his slouching head, and his shuffle backward, and his
+shuffle forward, and his shuffle to the right, and his shuffle to the
+left, and his bit of fur cap in his muddy hand, which he picks as if
+it were some mangy bird he had caught and was plucking before eating
+raw, Jo, the very, very tough subject Mr. Chadband is to improve.
+
+Mrs. Snagsby screws a watchful glance on Jo as he is brought into the
+little drawing-room by Guster. He looks at Mr. Snagsby the moment he
+comes in. Aha! Why does he look at Mr. Snagsby? Mr. Snagsby looks at
+him. Why should he do that, but that Mrs. Snagsby sees it all? Why
+else should that look pass between them, why else should Mr. Snagsby
+be confused and cough a signal cough behind his hand? It is as clear
+as crystal that Mr. Snagsby is that boy's father.
+
+"Peace, my friends," says Chadband, rising and wiping the oily
+exudations from his reverend visage. "Peace be with us! My friends,
+why with us? Because," with his fat smile, "it cannot be against us,
+because it must be for us; because it is not hardening, because it is
+softening; because it does not make war like the hawk, but comes home
+unto us like the dove. Therefore, my friends, peace be with us! My
+human boy, come forward!"
+
+Stretching forth his flabby paw, Mr. Chadband lays the same on Jo's
+arm and considers where to station him. Jo, very doubtful of his
+reverend friend's intentions and not at all clear but that something
+practical and painful is going to be done to him, mutters, "You let
+me alone. I never said nothink to you. You let me alone."
+
+"No, my young friend," says Chadband smoothly, "I will not let you
+alone. And why? Because I am a harvest-labourer, because I am a
+toiler and a moiler, because you are delivered over unto me and are
+become as a precious instrument in my hands. My friends, may I so
+employ this instrument as to use it to your advantage, to your
+profit, to your gain, to your welfare, to your enrichment! My young
+friend, sit upon this stool."
+
+Jo, apparently possessed by an impression that the reverend gentleman
+wants to cut his hair, shields his head with both arms and is got
+into the required position with great difficulty and every possible
+manifestation of reluctance.
+
+When he is at last adjusted like a lay-figure, Mr. Chadband, retiring
+behind the table, holds up his bear's-paw and says, "My friends!"
+This is the signal for a general settlement of the audience. The
+'prentices giggle internally and nudge each other. Guster falls into
+a staring and vacant state, compounded of a stunned admiration of Mr.
+Chadband and pity for the friendless outcast whose condition touches
+her nearly. Mrs. Snagsby silently lays trains of gunpowder. Mrs.
+Chadband composes herself grimly by the fire and warms her knees,
+finding that sensation favourable to the reception of eloquence.
+
+It happens that Mr. Chadband has a pulpit habit of fixing some member
+of his congregation with his eye and fatly arguing his points with
+that particular person, who is understood to be expected to be moved
+to an occasional grunt, groan, gasp, or other audible expression of
+inward working, which expression of inward working, being echoed by
+some elderly lady in the next pew and so communicated like a game of
+forfeits through a circle of the more fermentable sinners present,
+serves the purpose of parliamentary cheering and gets Mr. Chadband's
+steam up. From mere force of habit, Mr. Chadband in saying "My
+friends!" has rested his eye on Mr. Snagsby and proceeds to make that
+ill-starred stationer, already sufficiently confused, the immediate
+recipient of his discourse.
+
+"We have here among us, my friends," says Chadband, "a Gentile and a
+heathen, a dweller in the tents of Tom-all-Alone's and a mover-on
+upon the surface of the earth. We have here among us, my friends,"
+and Mr. Chadband, untwisting the point with his dirty thumb-nail,
+bestows an oily smile on Mr. Snagsby, signifying that he will throw
+him an argumentative back-fall presently if he be not already down,
+"a brother and a boy. Devoid of parents, devoid of relations, devoid
+of flocks and herds, devoid of gold and silver and of precious
+stones. Now, my friends, why do I say he is devoid of these
+possessions? Why? Why is he?" Mr. Chadband states the question as if
+he were propounding an entirely new riddle of much ingenuity and
+merit to Mr. Snagsby and entreating him not to give it up.
+
+Mr. Snagsby, greatly perplexed by the mysterious look he received
+just now from his little woman--at about the period when Mr. Chadband
+mentioned the word parents--is tempted into modestly remarking, "I
+don't know, I'm sure, sir." On which interruption Mrs. Chadband
+glares and Mrs. Snagsby says, "For shame!"
+
+"I hear a voice," says Chadband; "is it a still small voice, my
+friends? I fear not, though I fain would hope so--"
+
+"Ah--h!" from Mrs. Snagsby.
+
+"Which says, 'I don't know.' Then I will tell you why. I say this
+brother present here among us is devoid of parents, devoid of
+relations, devoid of flocks and herds, devoid of gold, of silver, and
+of precious stones because he is devoid of the light that shines in
+upon some of us. What is that light? What is it? I ask you, what is
+that light?"
+
+Mr. Chadband draws back his head and pauses, but Mr. Snagsby is not
+to be lured on to his destruction again. Mr. Chadband, leaning
+forward over the table, pierces what he has got to follow directly
+into Mr. Snagsby with the thumb-nail already mentioned.
+
+"It is," says Chadband, "the ray of rays, the sun of suns, the moon
+of moons, the star of stars. It is the light of Terewth."
+
+Mr. Chadband draws himself up again and looks triumphantly at Mr.
+Snagsby as if he would be glad to know how he feels after that.
+
+"Of Terewth," says Mr. Chadband, hitting him again. "Say not to me
+that it is NOT the lamp of lamps. I say to you it is. I say to you, a
+million of times over, it is. It is! I say to you that I will
+proclaim it to you, whether you like it or not; nay, that the less
+you like it, the more I will proclaim it to you. With a
+speaking-trumpet! I say to you that if you rear yourself against it,
+you shall fall, you shall be bruised, you shall be battered, you
+shall be flawed, you shall be smashed."
+
+The present effect of this flight of oratory--much admired for its
+general power by Mr. Chadband's followers--being not only to make Mr.
+Chadband unpleasantly warm, but to represent the innocent Mr. Snagsby
+in the light of a determined enemy to virtue, with a forehead of
+brass and a heart of adamant, that unfortunate tradesman becomes yet
+more disconcerted and is in a very advanced state of low spirits and
+false position when Mr. Chadband accidentally finishes him.
+
+"My friends," he resumes after dabbing his fat head for some
+time--and it smokes to such an extent that he seems to light his
+pocket-handkerchief at it, which smokes, too, after every dab--"to
+pursue the subject we are endeavouring with our lowly gifts to
+improve, let us in a spirit of love inquire what is that Terewth to
+which I have alluded. For, my young friends," suddenly addressing the
+'prentices and Guster, to their consternation, "if I am told by the
+doctor that calomel or castor-oil is good for me, I may naturally ask
+what is calomel, and what is castor-oil. I may wish to be informed of
+that before I dose myself with either or with both. Now, my young
+friends, what is this Terewth then? Firstly (in a spirit of love),
+what is the common sort of Terewth--the working clothes--the
+every-day wear, my young friends? Is it deception?"
+
+"Ah--h!" from Mrs. Snagsby.
+
+"Is it suppression?"
+
+A shiver in the negative from Mrs. Snagsby.
+
+"Is it reservation?"
+
+A shake of the head from Mrs. Snagsby--very long and very tight.
+
+"No, my friends, it is neither of these. Neither of these names
+belongs to it. When this young heathen now among us--who is now, my
+friends, asleep, the seal of indifference and perdition being set
+upon his eyelids; but do not wake him, for it is right that I should
+have to wrestle, and to combat and to struggle, and to conquer, for
+his sake--when this young hardened heathen told us a story of a cock,
+and of a bull, and of a lady, and of a sovereign, was THAT the
+Terewth? No. Or if it was partly, was it wholly and entirely? No, my
+friends, no!"
+
+If Mr. Snagsby could withstand his little woman's look as it enters
+at his eyes, the windows of his soul, and searches the whole
+tenement, he were other than the man he is. He cowers and droops.
+
+"Or, my juvenile friends," says Chadband, descending to the level of
+their comprehension with a very obtrusive demonstration in his
+greasily meek smile of coming a long way downstairs for the purpose,
+"if the master of this house was to go forth into the city and there
+see an eel, and was to come back, and was to call unto him the
+mistress of this house, and was to say, 'Sarah, rejoice with me, for
+I have seen an elephant!' would THAT be Terewth?"
+
+Mrs. Snagsby in tears.
+
+"Or put it, my juvenile friends, that he saw an elephant, and
+returning said 'Lo, the city is barren, I have seen but an eel,'
+would THAT be Terewth?"
+
+Mrs. Snagsby sobbing loudly.
+
+"Or put it, my juvenile friends," said Chadband, stimulated by the
+sound, "that the unnatural parents of this slumbering heathen--for
+parents he had, my juvenile friends, beyond a doubt--after casting
+him forth to the wolves and the vultures, and the wild dogs and the
+young gazelles, and the serpents, went back to their dwellings and
+had their pipes, and their pots, and their flutings and their
+dancings, and their malt liquors, and their butcher's meat and
+poultry, would THAT be Terewth?"
+
+Mrs. Snagsby replies by delivering herself a prey to spasms, not an
+unresisting prey, but a crying and a tearing one, so that Cook's
+Court re-echoes with her shrieks. Finally, becoming cataleptic, she
+has to be carried up the narrow staircase like a grand piano. After
+unspeakable suffering, productive of the utmost consternation, she is
+pronounced, by expresses from the bedroom, free from pain, though
+much exhausted, in which state of affairs Mr. Snagsby, trampled and
+crushed in the piano-forte removal, and extremely timid and feeble,
+ventures to come out from behind the door in the drawing-room.
+
+All this time Jo has been standing on the spot where he woke up, ever
+picking his cap and putting bits of fur in his mouth. He spits them
+out with a remorseful air, for he feels that it is in his nature to
+be an unimprovable reprobate and that it's no good HIS trying to keep
+awake, for HE won't never know nothink. Though it may be, Jo, that
+there is a history so interesting and affecting even to minds as near
+the brutes as thine, recording deeds done on this earth for common
+men, that if the Chadbands, removing their own persons from the
+light, would but show it thee in simple reverence, would but leave it
+unimproved, would but regard it as being eloquent enough without
+their modest aid--it might hold thee awake, and thou might learn from
+it yet!
+
+Jo never heard of any such book. Its compilers and the Reverend
+Chadband are all one to him, except that he knows the Reverend
+Chadband and would rather run away from him for an hour than hear him
+talk for five minutes. "It an't no good my waiting here no longer,"
+thinks Jo. "Mr. Snagsby an't a-going to say nothink to me to-night."
+And downstairs he shuffles.
+
+But downstairs is the charitable Guster, holding by the handrail of
+the kitchen stairs and warding off a fit, as yet doubtfully, the same
+having been induced by Mrs. Snagsby's screaming. She has her own
+supper of bread and cheese to hand to Jo, with whom she ventures to
+interchange a word or so for the first time.
+
+"Here's something to eat, poor boy," says Guster.
+
+"Thank'ee, mum," says Jo.
+
+"Are you hungry?"
+
+"Jist!" says Jo.
+
+"What's gone of your father and your mother, eh?"
+
+Jo stops in the middle of a bite and looks petrified. For this orphan
+charge of the Christian saint whose shrine was at Tooting has patted
+him on the shoulder, and it is the first time in his life that any
+decent hand has been so laid upon him.
+
+"I never know'd nothink about 'em," says Jo.
+
+"No more didn't I of mine," cries Guster. She is repressing symptoms
+favourable to the fit when she seems to take alarm at something and
+vanishes down the stairs.
+
+"Jo," whispers the law-stationer softly as the boy lingers on the
+step.
+
+"Here I am, Mr. Snagsby!"
+
+"I didn't know you were gone--there's another half-crown, Jo. It was
+quite right of you to say nothing about the lady the other night when
+we were out together. It would breed trouble. You can't be too quiet,
+Jo."
+
+"I am fly, master!"
+
+And so, good night.
+
+A ghostly shade, frilled and night-capped, follows the law-stationer
+to the room he came from and glides higher up. And henceforth he
+begins, go where he will, to be attended by another shadow than his
+own, hardly less constant than his own, hardly less quiet than his
+own. And into whatsoever atmosphere of secrecy his own shadow may
+pass, let all concerned in the secrecy beware! For the watchful Mrs.
+Snagsby is there too--bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, shadow of
+his shadow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+Sharpshooters
+
+
+Wintry morning, looking with dull eyes and sallow face upon the
+neighbourhood of Leicester Square, finds its inhabitants unwilling to
+get out of bed. Many of them are not early risers at the brightest of
+times, being birds of night who roost when the sun is high and are
+wide awake and keen for prey when the stars shine out. Behind dingy
+blind and curtain, in upper story and garret, skulking more or less
+under false names, false hair, false titles, false jewellery, and
+false histories, a colony of brigands lie in their first sleep.
+Gentlemen of the green-baize road who could discourse from personal
+experience of foreign galleys and home treadmills; spies of strong
+governments that eternally quake with weakness and miserable fear,
+broken traitors, cowards, bullies, gamesters, shufflers, swindlers,
+and false witnesses; some not unmarked by the branding-iron beneath
+their dirty braid; all with more cruelty in them than was in Nero,
+and more crime than is in Newgate. For howsoever bad the devil can be
+in fustian or smock-frock (and he can be very bad in both), he is a
+more designing, callous, and intolerable devil when he sticks a pin
+in his shirt-front, calls himself a gentleman, backs a card or
+colour, plays a game or so of billiards, and knows a little about
+bills and promissory notes than in any other form he wears. And in
+such form Mr. Bucket shall find him, when he will, still pervading
+the tributary channels of Leicester Square.
+
+But the wintry morning wants him not and wakes him not. It wakes Mr.
+George of the shooting gallery and his familiar. They arise, roll up
+and stow away their mattresses. Mr. George, having shaved himself
+before a looking-glass of minute proportions, then marches out,
+bare-headed and bare-chested, to the pump in the little yard and anon
+comes back shining with yellow soap, friction, drifting rain, and
+exceedingly cold water. As he rubs himself upon a large jack-towel,
+blowing like a military sort of diver just come up, his hair curling
+tighter and tighter on his sunburnt temples the more he rubs it so
+that it looks as if it never could be loosened by any less coercive
+instrument than an iron rake or a curry-comb--as he rubs, and puffs,
+and polishes, and blows, turning his head from side to side the more
+conveniently to excoriate his throat, and standing with his body well
+bent forward to keep the wet from his martial legs, Phil, on his
+knees lighting a fire, looks round as if it were enough washing for
+him to see all that done, and sufficient renovation for one day to
+take in the superfluous health his master throws off.
+
+When Mr. George is dry, he goes to work to brush his head with two
+hard brushes at once, to that unmerciful degree that Phil,
+shouldering his way round the gallery in the act of sweeping it,
+winks with sympathy. This chafing over, the ornamental part of Mr.
+George's toilet is soon performed. He fills his pipe, lights it, and
+marches up and down smoking, as his custom is, while Phil, raising a
+powerful odour of hot rolls and coffee, prepares breakfast. He smokes
+gravely and marches in slow time. Perhaps this morning's pipe is
+devoted to the memory of Gridley in his grave.
+
+"And so, Phil," says George of the shooting gallery after several
+turns in silence, "you were dreaming of the country last night?"
+
+Phil, by the by, said as much in a tone of surprise as he scrambled
+out of bed.
+
+"Yes, guv'ner."
+
+"What was it like?"
+
+"I hardly know what it was like, guv'ner," said Phil, considering.
+
+"How did you know it was the country?"
+
+"On account of the grass, I think. And the swans upon it," says Phil
+after further consideration.
+
+"What were the swans doing on the grass?"
+
+"They was a-eating of it, I expect," says Phil.
+
+The master resumes his march, and the man resumes his preparation of
+breakfast. It is not necessarily a lengthened preparation, being
+limited to the setting forth of very simple breakfast requisites for
+two and the broiling of a rasher of bacon at the fire in the rusty
+grate; but as Phil has to sidle round a considerable part of the
+gallery for every object he wants, and never brings two objects at
+once, it takes time under the circumstances. At length the breakfast
+is ready. Phil announcing it, Mr. George knocks the ashes out of his
+pipe on the hob, stands his pipe itself in the chimney corner, and
+sits down to the meal. When he has helped himself, Phil follows suit,
+sitting at the extreme end of the little oblong table and taking his
+plate on his knees. Either in humility, or to hide his blackened
+hands, or because it is his natural manner of eating.
+
+"The country," says Mr. George, plying his knife and fork; "why, I
+suppose you never clapped your eyes on the country, Phil?"
+
+"I see the marshes once," says Phil, contentedly eating his
+breakfast.
+
+"What marshes?"
+
+"THE marshes, commander," returns Phil.
+
+"Where are they?"
+
+"I don't know where they are," says Phil; "but I see 'em, guv'ner.
+They was flat. And miste."
+
+Governor and commander are interchangeable terms with Phil,
+expressive of the same respect and deference and applicable to nobody
+but Mr. George.
+
+"I was born in the country, Phil."
+
+"Was you indeed, commander?"
+
+"Yes. And bred there."
+
+Phil elevates his one eyebrow, and after respectfully staring at his
+master to express interest, swallows a great gulp of coffee, still
+staring at him.
+
+"There's not a bird's note that I don't know," says Mr. George. "Not
+many an English leaf or berry that I couldn't name. Not many a tree
+that I couldn't climb yet if I was put to it. I was a real country
+boy, once. My good mother lived in the country."
+
+"She must have been a fine old lady, guv'ner," Phil observes.
+
+"Aye! And not so old either, five and thirty years ago," says Mr.
+George. "But I'll wager that at ninety she would be near as upright
+as me, and near as broad across the shoulders."
+
+"Did she die at ninety, guv'ner?" inquires Phil.
+
+"No. Bosh! Let her rest in peace, God bless her!" says the
+trooper. "What set me on about country boys, and runaways, and
+good-for-nothings? You, to be sure! So you never clapped your eyes
+upon the country--marshes and dreams excepted. Eh?"
+
+Phil shakes his head.
+
+"Do you want to see it?"
+
+"N-no, I don't know as I do, particular," says Phil.
+
+"The town's enough for you, eh?"
+
+"Why, you see, commander," says Phil, "I ain't acquainted with
+anythink else, and I doubt if I ain't a-getting too old to take to
+novelties."
+
+"How old ARE you, Phil?" asks the trooper, pausing as he conveys his
+smoking saucer to his lips.
+
+"I'm something with a eight in it," says Phil. "It can't be eighty.
+Nor yet eighteen. It's betwixt 'em, somewheres."
+
+Mr. George, slowly putting down his saucer without tasting its
+contents, is laughingly beginning, "Why, what the deuce, Phil--" when
+he stops, seeing that Phil is counting on his dirty fingers.
+
+"I was just eight," says Phil, "agreeable to the parish calculation,
+when I went with the tinker. I was sent on a errand, and I see him
+a-sittin under a old buildin with a fire all to himself wery
+comfortable, and he says, 'Would you like to come along a me, my
+man?' I says 'Yes,' and him and me and the fire goes home to
+Clerkenwell together. That was April Fool Day. I was able to count up
+to ten; and when April Fool Day come round again, I says to myself,
+'Now, old chap, you're one and a eight in it.' April Fool Day after
+that, I says, 'Now, old chap, you're two and a eight in it.' In
+course of time, I come to ten and a eight in it; two tens and a eight
+in it. When it got so high, it got the upper hand of me, but this is
+how I always know there's a eight in it."
+
+"Ah!" says Mr. George, resuming his breakfast. "And where's the
+tinker?"
+
+"Drink put him in the hospital, guv'ner, and the hospital put him--in
+a glass-case, I HAVE heerd," Phil replies mysteriously.
+
+"By that means you got promotion? Took the business, Phil?"
+
+"Yes, commander, I took the business. Such as it was. It wasn't much
+of a beat--round Saffron Hill, Hatton Garden, Clerkenwell, Smiffeld,
+and there--poor neighbourhood, where they uses up the kettles till
+they're past mending. Most of the tramping tinkers used to come and
+lodge at our place; that was the best part of my master's earnings.
+But they didn't come to me. I warn't like him. He could sing 'em a
+good song. I couldn't! He could play 'em a tune on any sort of pot
+you please, so as it was iron or block tin. I never could do nothing
+with a pot but mend it or bile it--never had a note of music in me.
+Besides, I was too ill-looking, and their wives complained of me."
+
+"They were mighty particular. You would pass muster in a crowd,
+Phil!" says the trooper with a pleasant smile.
+
+"No, guv'ner," returns Phil, shaking his head. "No, I shouldn't. I
+was passable enough when I went with the tinker, though nothing to
+boast of then; but what with blowing the fire with my mouth when I
+was young, and spileing my complexion, and singeing my hair off, and
+swallering the smoke, and what with being nat'rally unfort'nate in
+the way of running against hot metal and marking myself by sich
+means, and what with having turn-ups with the tinker as I got older,
+almost whenever he was too far gone in drink--which was almost
+always--my beauty was queer, wery queer, even at that time. As to
+since, what with a dozen years in a dark forge where the men was
+given to larking, and what with being scorched in a accident at a
+gas-works, and what with being blowed out of winder case-filling at
+the firework business, I am ugly enough to be made a show on!"
+
+Resigning himself to which condition with a perfectly satisfied
+manner, Phil begs the favour of another cup of coffee. While drinking
+it, he says, "It was after the case-filling blow-up when I first see
+you, commander. You remember?"
+
+"I remember, Phil. You were walking along in the sun."
+
+"Crawling, guv'ner, again a wall--"
+
+"True, Phil--shouldering your way on--"
+
+"In a night-cap!" exclaims Phil, excited.
+
+"In a night-cap--"
+
+"And hobbling with a couple of sticks!" cries Phil, still more
+excited.
+
+"With a couple of sticks. When--"
+
+"When you stops, you know," cries Phil, putting down his cup and
+saucer and hastily removing his plate from his knees, "and says to
+me, 'What, comrade! You have been in the wars!' I didn't say much to
+you, commander, then, for I was took by surprise that a person so
+strong and healthy and bold as you was should stop to speak to such a
+limping bag of bones as I was. But you says to me, says you,
+delivering it out of your chest as hearty as possible, so that it was
+like a glass of something hot, 'What accident have you met with? You
+have been badly hurt. What's amiss, old boy? Cheer up, and tell us
+about it!' Cheer up! I was cheered already! I says as much to you,
+you says more to me, I says more to you, you says more to me, and
+here I am, commander! Here I am, commander!" cries Phil, who has
+started from his chair and unaccountably begun to sidle away. "If a
+mark's wanted, or if it will improve the business, let the customers
+take aim at me. They can't spoil MY beauty. I'M all right. Come on!
+If they want a man to box at, let 'em box at me. Let 'em knock me
+well about the head. I don't mind. If they want a light-weight to be
+throwed for practice, Cornwall, Devonshire, or Lancashire, let 'em
+throw me. They won't hurt ME. I have been throwed, all sorts of
+styles, all my life!"
+
+With this unexpected speech, energetically delivered and accompanied
+by action illustrative of the various exercises referred to, Phil
+Squod shoulders his way round three sides of the gallery, and
+abruptly tacking off at his commander, makes a butt at him with his
+head, intended to express devotion to his service. He then begins to
+clear away the breakfast.
+
+Mr. George, after laughing cheerfully and clapping him on the
+shoulder, assists in these arrangements and helps to get the gallery
+into business order. That done, he takes a turn at the dumb-bells,
+and afterwards weighing himself and opining that he is getting "too
+fleshy," engages with great gravity in solitary broadsword practice.
+Meanwhile Phil has fallen to work at his usual table, where he screws
+and unscrews, and cleans, and files, and whistles into small
+apertures, and blackens himself more and more, and seems to do and
+undo everything that can be done and undone about a gun.
+
+Master and man are at length disturbed by footsteps in the passage,
+where they make an unusual sound, denoting the arrival of unusual
+company. These steps, advancing nearer and nearer to the gallery,
+bring into it a group at first sight scarcely reconcilable with any
+day in the year but the fifth of November.
+
+It consists of a limp and ugly figure carried in a chair by two
+bearers and attended by a lean female with a face like a pinched
+mask, who might be expected immediately to recite the popular verses
+commemorative of the time when they did contrive to blow Old England
+up alive but for her keeping her lips tightly and defiantly closed as
+the chair is put down. At which point the figure in it gasping, "O
+Lord! Oh, dear me! I am shaken!" adds, "How de do, my dear friend,
+how de do?" Mr. George then descries, in the procession, the
+venerable Mr. Smallweed out for an airing, attended by his
+granddaughter Judy as body-guard.
+
+"Mr. George, my dear friend," says Grandfather Smallweed, removing
+his right arm from the neck of one of his bearers, whom he has nearly
+throttled coming along, "how de do? You're surprised to see me, my
+dear friend."
+
+"I should hardly have been more surprised to have seen your friend in
+the city," returns Mr. George.
+
+"I am very seldom out," pants Mr. Smallweed. "I haven't been out for
+many months. It's inconvenient--and it comes expensive. But I longed
+so much to see you, my dear Mr. George. How de do, sir?"
+
+"I am well enough," says Mr. George. "I hope you are the same."
+
+"You can't be too well, my dear friend." Mr. Smallweed takes him by
+both hands. "I have brought my granddaughter Judy. I couldn't keep
+her away. She longed so much to see you."
+
+"Hum! She bears it calmly!" mutters Mr. George.
+
+"So we got a hackney-cab, and put a chair in it, and just round the
+corner they lifted me out of the cab and into the chair, and carried
+me here that I might see my dear friend in his own establishment!
+This," says Grandfather Smallweed, alluding to the bearer, who has
+been in danger of strangulation and who withdraws adjusting his
+windpipe, "is the driver of the cab. He has nothing extra. It is by
+agreement included in his fare. This person," the other bearer, "we
+engaged in the street outside for a pint of beer. Which is twopence.
+Judy, give the person twopence. I was not sure you had a workman of
+your own here, my dear friend, or we needn't have employed this
+person."
+
+Grandfather Smallweed refers to Phil with a glance of considerable
+terror and a half-subdued "O Lord! Oh, dear me!" Nor in his
+apprehension, on the surface of things, without some reason, for
+Phil, who has never beheld the apparition in the black-velvet cap
+before, has stopped short with a gun in his hand with much of the air
+of a dead shot intent on picking Mr. Smallweed off as an ugly old
+bird of the crow species.
+
+"Judy, my child," says Grandfather Smallweed, "give the person his
+twopence. It's a great deal for what he has done."
+
+The person, who is one of those extraordinary specimens of human
+fungus that spring up spontaneously in the western streets of London,
+ready dressed in an old red jacket, with a "mission" for holding
+horses and calling coaches, received his twopence with anything but
+transport, tosses the money into the air, catches it over-handed, and
+retires.
+
+"My dear Mr. George," says Grandfather Smallweed, "would you be so
+kind as help to carry me to the fire? I am accustomed to a fire, and
+I am an old man, and I soon chill. Oh, dear me!"
+
+His closing exclamation is jerked out of the venerable gentleman by
+the suddenness with which Mr. Squod, like a genie, catches him up,
+chair and all, and deposits him on the hearth-stone.
+
+"O Lord!" says Mr. Smallweed, panting. "Oh, dear me! Oh, my stars! My
+dear friend, your workman is very strong--and very prompt. O Lord, he
+is very prompt! Judy, draw me back a little. I'm being scorched in
+the legs," which indeed is testified to the noses of all present by
+the smell of his worsted stockings.
+
+The gentle Judy, having backed her grandfather a little way from the
+fire, and having shaken him up as usual, and having released his
+overshadowed eye from its black-velvet extinguisher, Mr. Smallweed
+again says, "Oh, dear me! O Lord!" and looking about and meeting Mr.
+George's glance, again stretches out both hands.
+
+"My dear friend! So happy in this meeting! And this is your
+establishment? It's a delightful place. It's a picture! You never
+find that anything goes off here accidentally, do you, my dear
+friend?" adds Grandfather Smallweed, very ill at ease.
+
+"No, no. No fear of that."
+
+"And your workman. He--Oh, dear me!--he never lets anything off
+without meaning it, does he, my dear friend?"
+
+"He has never hurt anybody but himself," says Mr. George, smiling.
+
+"But he might, you know. He seems to have hurt himself a good deal,
+and he might hurt somebody else," the old gentleman returns. "He
+mightn't mean it--or he even might. Mr. George, will you order him to
+leave his infernal fire-arms alone and go away?"
+
+Obedient to a nod from the trooper, Phil retires, empty-handed, to
+the other end of the gallery. Mr. Smallweed, reassured, falls to
+rubbing his legs.
+
+"And you're doing well, Mr. George?" he says to the trooper, squarely
+standing faced about towards him with his broadsword in his hand.
+"You are prospering, please the Powers?"
+
+Mr. George answers with a cool nod, adding, "Go on. You have not come
+to say that, I know."
+
+"You are so sprightly, Mr. George," returns the venerable
+grandfather. "You are such good company."
+
+"Ha ha! Go on!" says Mr. George.
+
+"My dear friend! But that sword looks awful gleaming and sharp. It
+might cut somebody, by accident. It makes me shiver, Mr. George.
+Curse him!" says the excellent old gentleman apart to Judy as the
+trooper takes a step or two away to lay it aside. "He owes me money,
+and might think of paying off old scores in this murdering place. I
+wish your brimstone grandmother was here, and he'd shave her head
+off."
+
+Mr. George, returning, folds his arms, and looking down at the old
+man, sliding every moment lower and lower in his chair, says quietly,
+"Now for it!"
+
+"Ho!" cries Mr. Smallweed, rubbing his hands with an artful chuckle.
+"Yes. Now for it. Now for what, my dear friend?"
+
+"For a pipe," says Mr. George, who with great composure sets his
+chair in the chimney-corner, takes his pipe from the grate, fills it
+and lights it, and falls to smoking peacefully.
+
+This tends to the discomfiture of Mr. Smallweed, who finds it so
+difficult to resume his object, whatever it may be, that he becomes
+exasperated and secretly claws the air with an impotent
+vindictiveness expressive of an intense desire to tear and rend the
+visage of Mr. George. As the excellent old gentleman's nails are long
+and leaden, and his hands lean and veinous, and his eyes green and
+watery; and, over and above this, as he continues, while he claws, to
+slide down in his chair and to collapse into a shapeless bundle, he
+becomes such a ghastly spectacle, even in the accustomed eyes of
+Judy, that that young virgin pounces at him with something more than
+the ardour of affection and so shakes him up and pats and pokes him
+in divers parts of his body, but particularly in that part which the
+science of self-defence would call his wind, that in his grievous
+distress he utters enforced sounds like a paviour's rammer.
+
+When Judy has by these means set him up again in his chair, with a
+white face and a frosty nose (but still clawing), she stretches out
+her weazen forefinger and gives Mr. George one poke in the back. The
+trooper raising his head, she makes another poke at her esteemed
+grandfather, and having thus brought them together, stares rigidly at
+the fire.
+
+"Aye, aye! Ho, ho! U--u--u--ugh!" chatters Grandfather Smallweed,
+swallowing his rage. "My dear friend!" (still clawing).
+
+"I tell you what," says Mr. George. "If you want to converse with me,
+you must speak out. I am one of the roughs, and I can't go about and
+about. I haven't the art to do it. I am not clever enough. It don't
+suit me. When you go winding round and round me," says the trooper,
+putting his pipe between his lips again, "damme, if I don't feel as
+if I was being smothered!"
+
+And he inflates his broad chest to its utmost extent as if to assure
+himself that he is not smothered yet.
+
+"If you have come to give me a friendly call," continues Mr. George,
+"I am obliged to you; how are you? If you have come to see whether
+there's any property on the premises, look about you; you are
+welcome. If you want to out with something, out with it!"
+
+The blooming Judy, without removing her gaze from the fire, gives her
+grandfather one ghostly poke.
+
+"You see! It's her opinion too. And why the devil that young woman
+won't sit down like a Christian," says Mr. George with his eyes
+musingly fixed on Judy, "I can't comprehend."
+
+"She keeps at my side to attend to me, sir," says Grandfather
+Smallweed. "I am an old man, my dear Mr. George, and I need some
+attention. I can carry my years; I am not a brimstone poll-parrot"
+(snarling and looking unconsciously for the cushion), "but I need
+attention, my dear friend."
+
+"Well!" returns the trooper, wheeling his chair to face the old man.
+"Now then?"
+
+"My friend in the city, Mr. George, has done a little business with a
+pupil of yours."
+
+"Has he?" says Mr. George. "I am sorry to hear it."
+
+"Yes, sir." Grandfather Smallweed rubs his legs. "He is a fine young
+soldier now, Mr. George, by the name of Carstone. Friends came
+forward and paid it all up, honourable."
+
+"Did they?" returns Mr. George. "Do you think your friend in the city
+would like a piece of advice?"
+
+"I think he would, my dear friend. From you."
+
+"I advise him, then, to do no more business in that quarter. There's
+no more to be got by it. The young gentleman, to my knowledge, is
+brought to a dead halt."
+
+"No, no, my dear friend. No, no, Mr. George. No, no, no, sir,"
+remonstrates Grandfather Smallweed, cunningly rubbing his spare legs.
+"Not quite a dead halt, I think. He has good friends, and he is good
+for his pay, and he is good for the selling price of his commission,
+and he is good for his chance in a lawsuit, and he is good for his
+chance in a wife, and--oh, do you know, Mr. George, I think my friend
+would consider the young gentleman good for something yet?" says
+Grandfather Smallweed, turning up his velvet cap and scratching his
+ear like a monkey.
+
+Mr. George, who has put aside his pipe and sits with an arm on his
+chair-back, beats a tattoo on the ground with his right foot as if he
+were not particularly pleased with the turn the conversation has
+taken.
+
+"But to pass from one subject to another," resumes Mr. Smallweed.
+"'To promote the conversation,' as a joker might say. To pass, Mr.
+George, from the ensign to the captain."
+
+"What are you up to, now?" asks Mr. George, pausing with a frown in
+stroking the recollection of his moustache. "What captain?"
+
+"Our captain. The captain we know of. Captain Hawdon."
+
+"Oh! That's it, is it?" says Mr. George with a low whistle as he sees
+both grandfather and granddaughter looking hard at him. "You are
+there! Well? What about it? Come, I won't be smothered any more.
+Speak!"
+
+"My dear friend," returns the old man, "I was applied--Judy, shake me
+up a little!--I was applied to yesterday about the captain, and my
+opinion still is that the captain is not dead."
+
+"Bosh!" observes Mr. George.
+
+"What was your remark, my dear friend?" inquires the old man with his
+hand to his ear.
+
+"Bosh!"
+
+"Ho!" says Grandfather Smallweed. "Mr. George, of my opinion you can
+judge for yourself according to the questions asked of me and the
+reasons given for asking 'em. Now, what do you think the lawyer
+making the inquiries wants?"
+
+"A job," says Mr. George.
+
+"Nothing of the kind!"
+
+"Can't be a lawyer, then," says Mr. George, folding his arms with an
+air of confirmed resolution.
+
+"My dear friend, he is a lawyer, and a famous one. He wants to see
+some fragment in Captain Hawdon's writing. He don't want to keep it.
+He only wants to see it and compare it with a writing in his
+possession."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, Mr. George. Happening to remember the advertisement concerning
+Captain Hawdon and any information that could be given respecting
+him, he looked it up and came to me--just as you did, my dear friend.
+WILL you shake hands? So glad you came that day! I should have missed
+forming such a friendship if you hadn't come!"
+
+"Well, Mr. Smallweed?" says Mr. George again after going through the
+ceremony with some stiffness.
+
+"I had no such thing. I have nothing but his signature. Plague
+pestilence and famine, battle murder and sudden death upon him," says
+the old man, making a curse out of one of his few remembrances of a
+prayer and squeezing up his velvet cap between his angry hands, "I
+have half a million of his signatures, I think! But you,"
+breathlessly recovering his mildness of speech as Judy re-adjusts the
+cap on his skittle-ball of a head, "you, my dear Mr. George, are
+likely to have some letter or paper that would suit the purpose.
+Anything would suit the purpose, written in the hand."
+
+"Some writing in that hand," says the trooper, pondering; "may be, I
+have."
+
+"My dearest friend!"
+
+"May be, I have not."
+
+"Ho!" says Grandfather Smallweed, crest-fallen.
+
+"But if I had bushels of it, I would not show as much as would make a
+cartridge without knowing why."
+
+"Sir, I have told you why. My dear Mr. George, I have told you why."
+
+"Not enough," says the trooper, shaking his head. "I must know more,
+and approve it."
+
+"Then, will you come to the lawyer? My dear friend, will you come and
+see the gentleman?" urges Grandfather Smallweed, pulling out a lean
+old silver watch with hands like the leg of a skeleton. "I told him
+it was probable I might call upon him between ten and eleven this
+forenoon, and it's now half after ten. Will you come and see the
+gentleman, Mr. George?"
+
+"Hum!" says he gravely. "I don't mind that. Though why this should
+concern you so much, I don't know."
+
+"Everything concerns me that has a chance in it of bringing anything
+to light about him. Didn't he take us all in? Didn't he owe us
+immense sums, all round? Concern me? Who can anything about him
+concern more than me? Not, my dear friend," says Grandfather
+Smallweed, lowering his tone, "that I want YOU to betray anything.
+Far from it. Are you ready to come, my dear friend?"
+
+"Aye! I'll come in a moment. I promise nothing, you know."
+
+"No, my dear Mr. George; no."
+
+"And you mean to say you're going to give me a lift to this place,
+wherever it is, without charging for it?" Mr. George inquires,
+getting his hat and thick wash-leather gloves.
+
+This pleasantry so tickles Mr. Smallweed that he laughs, long and
+low, before the fire. But ever while he laughs, he glances over his
+paralytic shoulder at Mr. George and eagerly watches him as he
+unlocks the padlock of a homely cupboard at the distant end of the
+gallery, looks here and there upon the higher shelves, and ultimately
+takes something out with a rustling of paper, folds it, and puts it
+in his breast. Then Judy pokes Mr. Smallweed once, and Mr. Smallweed
+pokes Judy once.
+
+"I am ready," says the trooper, coming back. "Phil, you can carry
+this old gentleman to his coach, and make nothing of him."
+
+"Oh, dear me! O Lord! Stop a moment!" says Mr. Smallweed. "He's so
+very prompt! Are you sure you can do it carefully, my worthy man?"
+
+Phil makes no reply, but seizing the chair and its load, sidles away,
+tightly hugged by the now speechless Mr. Smallweed, and bolts along
+the passage as if he had an acceptable commission to carry the old
+gentleman to the nearest volcano. His shorter trust, however,
+terminating at the cab, he deposits him there; and the fair Judy
+takes her place beside him, and the chair embellishes the roof, and
+Mr. George takes the vacant place upon the box.
+
+Mr. George is quite confounded by the spectacle he beholds from time
+to time as he peeps into the cab through the window behind him, where
+the grim Judy is always motionless, and the old gentleman with his
+cap over one eye is always sliding off the seat into the straw and
+looking upward at him out of his other eye with a helpless expression
+of being jolted in the back.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+More Old Soldiers Than One
+
+
+Mr. George has not far to ride with folded arms upon the box, for
+their destination is Lincoln's Inn Fields. When the driver stops his
+horses, Mr. George alights, and looking in at the window, says,
+"What, Mr. Tulkinghorn's your man, is he?"
+
+"Yes, my dear friend. Do you know him, Mr. George?"
+
+"Why, I have heard of him--seen him too, I think. But I don't know
+him, and he don't know me."
+
+There ensues the carrying of Mr. Smallweed upstairs, which is done to
+perfection with the trooper's help. He is borne into Mr.
+Tulkinghorn's great room and deposited on the Turkey rug before the
+fire. Mr. Tulkinghorn is not within at the present moment but will be
+back directly. The occupant of the pew in the hall, having said thus
+much, stirs the fire and leaves the triumvirate to warm themselves.
+
+Mr. George is mightily curious in respect of the room. He looks up at
+the painted ceiling, looks round at the old law-books, contemplates
+the portraits of the great clients, reads aloud the names on the
+boxes.
+
+"'Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,'" Mr. George reads thoughtfully.
+"Ha! 'Manor of Chesney Wold.' Humph!" Mr. George stands looking at
+these boxes a long while--as if they were pictures--and comes back to
+the fire repeating, "Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and Manor of
+Chesney Wold, hey?"
+
+"Worth a mint of money, Mr. George!" whispers Grandfather Smallweed,
+rubbing his legs. "Powerfully rich!"
+
+"Who do you mean? This old gentleman, or the Baronet?"
+
+"This gentleman, this gentleman."
+
+"So I have heard; and knows a thing or two, I'll hold a wager. Not
+bad quarters, either," says Mr. George, looking round again. "See the
+strong-box yonder!"
+
+This reply is cut short by Mr. Tulkinghorn's arrival. There is no
+change in him, of course. Rustily drest, with his spectacles in his
+hand, and their very case worn threadbare. In manner, close and dry.
+In voice, husky and low. In face, watchful behind a blind; habitually
+not uncensorious and contemptuous perhaps. The peerage may have
+warmer worshippers and faithfuller believers than Mr. Tulkinghorn,
+after all, if everything were known.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. Smallweed, good morning!" he says as he comes in.
+"You have brought the sergeant, I see. Sit down, sergeant."
+
+As Mr. Tulkinghorn takes off his gloves and puts them in his hat, he
+looks with half-closed eyes across the room to where the trooper
+stands and says within himself perchance, "You'll do, my friend!"
+
+"Sit down, sergeant," he repeats as he comes to his table, which is
+set on one side of the fire, and takes his easy-chair. "Cold and raw
+this morning, cold and raw!" Mr. Tulkinghorn warms before the bars,
+alternately, the palms and knuckles of his hands and looks (from
+behind that blind which is always down) at the trio sitting in a
+little semicircle before him.
+
+"Now, I can feel what I am about" (as perhaps he can in two senses),
+"Mr. Smallweed." The old gentleman is newly shaken up by Judy to bear
+his part in the conversation. "You have brought our good friend the
+sergeant, I see."
+
+"Yes, sir," returns Mr. Smallweed, very servile to the lawyer's
+wealth and influence.
+
+"And what does the sergeant say about this business?"
+
+"Mr. George," says Grandfather Smallweed with a tremulous wave of his
+shrivelled hand, "this is the gentleman, sir."
+
+Mr. George salutes the gentleman but otherwise sits bolt upright and
+profoundly silent--very forward in his chair, as if the full
+complement of regulation appendages for a field-day hung about him.
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn proceeds, "Well, George--I believe your name is
+George?"
+
+"It is so, Sir."
+
+"What do you say, George?"
+
+"I ask your pardon, sir," returns the trooper, "but I should wish to
+know what YOU say?"
+
+"Do you mean in point of reward?"
+
+"I mean in point of everything, sir."
+
+This is so very trying to Mr. Smallweed's temper that he suddenly
+breaks out with "You're a brimstone beast!" and as suddenly asks
+pardon of Mr. Tulkinghorn, excusing himself for this slip of the
+tongue by saying to Judy, "I was thinking of your grandmother, my
+dear."
+
+"I supposed, sergeant," Mr. Tulkinghorn resumes as he leans on one
+side of his chair and crosses his legs, "that Mr. Smallweed might
+have sufficiently explained the matter. It lies in the smallest
+compass, however. You served under Captain Hawdon at one time, and
+were his attendant in illness, and rendered him many little services,
+and were rather in his confidence, I am told. That is so, is it not?"
+
+"Yes, sir, that is so," says Mr. George with military brevity.
+
+"Therefore you may happen to have in your possession
+something--anything, no matter what; accounts, instructions, orders,
+a letter, anything--in Captain Hawdon's writing. I wish to compare
+his writing with some that I have. If you can give me the
+opportunity, you shall be rewarded for your trouble. Three, four,
+five, guineas, you would consider handsome, I dare say."
+
+"Noble, my dear friend!" cries Grandfather Smallweed, screwing up his
+eyes.
+
+"If not, say how much more, in your conscience as a soldier, you can
+demand. There is no need for you to part with the writing, against
+your inclination--though I should prefer to have it."
+
+Mr. George sits squared in exactly the same attitude, looks at the
+painted ceiling, and says never a word. The irascible Mr. Smallweed
+scratches the air.
+
+"The question is," says Mr. Tulkinghorn in his methodical, subdued,
+uninterested way, "first, whether you have any of Captain Hawdon's
+writing?"
+
+"First, whether I have any of Captain Hawdon's writing, sir," repeats
+Mr. George.
+
+"Secondly, what will satisfy you for the trouble of producing it?"
+
+"Secondly, what will satisfy me for the trouble of producing it,
+sir," repeats Mr. George.
+
+"Thirdly, you can judge for yourself whether it is at all like that,"
+says Mr. Tulkinghorn, suddenly handing him some sheets of written
+paper tied together.
+
+"Whether it is at all like that, sir. Just so," repeats Mr. George.
+
+All three repetitions Mr. George pronounces in a mechanical manner,
+looking straight at Mr. Tulkinghorn; nor does he so much as glance at
+the affidavit in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, that has been given to him
+for his inspection (though he still holds it in his hand), but
+continues to look at the lawyer with an air of troubled meditation.
+
+"Well?" says Mr. Tulkinghorn. "What do you say?"
+
+"Well, sir," replies Mr. George, rising erect and looking immense, "I
+would rather, if you'll excuse me, have nothing to do with this."
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn, outwardly quite undisturbed, demands, "Why not?"
+
+"Why, sir," returns the trooper. "Except on military compulsion, I am
+not a man of business. Among civilians I am what they call in
+Scotland a ne'er-do-weel. I have no head for papers, sir. I can stand
+any fire better than a fire of cross questions. I mentioned to Mr.
+Smallweed, only an hour or so ago, that when I come into things of
+this kind I feel as if I was being smothered. And that is my
+sensation," says Mr. George, looking round upon the company, "at the
+present moment."
+
+With that, he takes three strides forward to replace the papers on
+the lawyer's table and three strides backward to resume his former
+station, where he stands perfectly upright, now looking at the ground
+and now at the painted ceiling, with his hands behind him as if to
+prevent himself from accepting any other document whatever.
+
+Under this provocation, Mr. Smallweed's favourite adjective of
+disparagement is so close to his tongue that he begins the words "my
+dear friend" with the monosyllable "brim," thus converting the
+possessive pronoun into brimmy and appearing to have an impediment in
+his speech. Once past this difficulty, however, he exhorts his dear
+friend in the tenderest manner not to be rash, but to do what so
+eminent a gentleman requires, and to do it with a good grace,
+confident that it must be unobjectionable as well as profitable. Mr.
+Tulkinghorn merely utters an occasional sentence, as, "You are the
+best judge of your own interest, sergeant." "Take care you do no harm
+by this." "Please yourself, please yourself." "If you know what you
+mean, that's quite enough." These he utters with an appearance of
+perfect indifference as he looks over the papers on his table and
+prepares to write a letter.
+
+Mr. George looks distrustfully from the painted ceiling to the
+ground, from the ground to Mr. Smallweed, from Mr. Smallweed to Mr.
+Tulkinghorn, and from Mr. Tulkinghorn to the painted ceiling again,
+often in his perplexity changing the leg on which he rests.
+
+"I do assure you, sir," says Mr. George, "not to say it offensively,
+that between you and Mr. Smallweed here, I really am being smothered
+fifty times over. I really am, sir. I am not a match for you
+gentlemen. Will you allow me to ask why you want to see the captain's
+hand, in the case that I could find any specimen of it?"
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn quietly shakes his head. "No. If you were a man of
+business, sergeant, you would not need to be informed that there are
+confidential reasons, very harmless in themselves, for many such
+wants in the profession to which I belong. But if you are afraid of
+doing any injury to Captain Hawdon, you may set your mind at rest
+about that."
+
+"Aye! He is dead, sir."
+
+"IS he?" Mr. Tulkinghorn quietly sits down to write.
+
+"Well, sir," says the trooper, looking into his hat after another
+disconcerted pause, "I am sorry not to have given you more
+satisfaction. If it would be any satisfaction to any one that I
+should be confirmed in my judgment that I would rather have nothing
+to do with this by a friend of mine who has a better head for
+business than I have, and who is an old soldier, I am willing to
+consult with him. I--I really am so completely smothered myself at
+present," says Mr. George, passing his hand hopelessly across his
+brow, "that I don't know but what it might be a satisfaction to me."
+
+Mr. Smallweed, hearing that this authority is an old soldier, so
+strongly inculcates the expediency of the trooper's taking counsel
+with him, and particularly informing him of its being a question of
+five guineas or more, that Mr. George engages to go and see him. Mr.
+Tulkinghorn says nothing either way.
+
+"I'll consult my friend, then, by your leave, sir," says the trooper,
+"and I'll take the liberty of looking in again with the final answer
+in the course of the day. Mr. Smallweed, if you wish to be carried
+downstairs--"
+
+"In a moment, my dear friend, in a moment. Will you first let me
+speak half a word with this gentleman in private?"
+
+"Certainly, sir. Don't hurry yourself on my account." The trooper
+retires to a distant part of the room and resumes his curious
+inspection of the boxes, strong and otherwise.
+
+"If I wasn't as weak as a brimstone baby, sir," whispers Grandfather
+Smallweed, drawing the lawyer down to his level by the lapel of his
+coat and flashing some half-quenched green fire out of his angry
+eyes, "I'd tear the writing away from him. He's got it buttoned in
+his breast. I saw him put it there. Judy saw him put it there. Speak
+up, you crabbed image for the sign of a walking-stick shop, and say
+you saw him put it there!"
+
+This vehement conjuration the old gentleman accompanies with such a
+thrust at his granddaughter that it is too much for his strength, and
+he slips away out of his chair, drawing Mr. Tulkinghorn with him,
+until he is arrested by Judy, and well shaken.
+
+"Violence will not do for me, my friend," Mr. Tulkinghorn then
+remarks coolly.
+
+"No, no, I know, I know, sir. But it's chafing and
+galling--it's--it's worse than your smattering chattering magpie of a
+grandmother," to the imperturbable Judy, who only looks at the fire,
+"to know he has got what's wanted and won't give it up. He, not to
+give it up! HE! A vagabond! But never mind, sir, never mind. At the
+most, he has only his own way for a little while. I have him
+periodically in a vice. I'll twist him, sir. I'll screw him, sir. If
+he won't do it with a good grace, I'll make him do it with a bad one,
+sir! Now, my dear Mr. George," says Grandfather Smallweed, winking at
+the lawyer hideously as he releases him, "I am ready for your kind
+assistance, my excellent friend!"
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn, with some shadowy sign of amusement manifesting
+itself through his self-possession, stands on the hearth-rug with his
+back to the fire, watching the disappearance of Mr. Smallweed and
+acknowledging the trooper's parting salute with one slight nod.
+
+It is more difficult to get rid of the old gentleman, Mr. George
+finds, than to bear a hand in carrying him downstairs, for when he is
+replaced in his conveyance, he is so loquacious on the subject of the
+guineas and retains such an affectionate hold of his button--having,
+in truth, a secret longing to rip his coat open and rob him--that
+some degree of force is necessary on the trooper's part to effect a
+separation. It is accomplished at last, and he proceeds alone in
+quest of his adviser.
+
+By the cloisterly Temple, and by Whitefriars (there, not without a
+glance at Hanging-Sword Alley, which would seem to be something in
+his way), and by Blackfriars Bridge, and Blackfriars Road, Mr. George
+sedately marches to a street of little shops lying somewhere in that
+ganglion of roads from Kent and Surrey, and of streets from the
+bridges of London, centring in the far-famed elephant who has lost
+his castle formed of a thousand four-horse coaches to a stronger iron
+monster than he, ready to chop him into mince-meat any day he dares.
+To one of the little shops in this street, which is a musician's
+shop, having a few fiddles in the window, and some Pan's pipes and a
+tambourine, and a triangle, and certain elongated scraps of music,
+Mr. George directs his massive tread. And halting at a few paces from
+it, as he sees a soldierly looking woman, with her outer skirts
+tucked up, come forth with a small wooden tub, and in that tub
+commence a-whisking and a-splashing on the margin of the pavement,
+Mr. George says to himself, "She's as usual, washing greens. I never
+saw her, except upon a baggage-waggon, when she wasn't washing
+greens!"
+
+The subject of this reflection is at all events so occupied in
+washing greens at present that she remains unsuspicious of Mr.
+George's approach until, lifting up herself and her tub together when
+she has poured the water off into the gutter, she finds him standing
+near her. Her reception of him is not flattering.
+
+"George, I never see you but I wish you was a hundred mile away!"
+
+The trooper, without remarking on this welcome, follows into the
+musical-instrument shop, where the lady places her tub of greens upon
+the counter, and having shaken hands with him, rests her arms upon
+it.
+
+"I never," she says, "George, consider Matthew Bagnet safe a minute
+when you're near him. You are that restless and that roving--"
+
+"Yes! I know I am, Mrs. Bagnet. I know I am."
+
+"You know you are!" says Mrs. Bagnet. "What's the use of that? WHY
+are you?"
+
+"The nature of the animal, I suppose," returns the trooper
+good-humouredly.
+
+"Ah!" cries Mrs. Bagnet, something shrilly. "But what satisfaction
+will the nature of the animal be to me when the animal shall have
+tempted my Mat away from the musical business to New Zealand or
+Australey?"
+
+Mrs. Bagnet is not at all an ill-looking woman. Rather large-boned, a
+little coarse in the grain, and freckled by the sun and wind which
+have tanned her hair upon the forehead, but healthy, wholesome, and
+bright-eyed. A strong, busy, active, honest-faced woman of from
+forty-five to fifty. Clean, hardy, and so economically dressed
+(though substantially) that the only article of ornament of which she
+stands possessed appear's to be her wedding-ring, around which her
+finger has grown to be so large since it was put on that it will
+never come off again until it shall mingle with Mrs. Bagnet's dust.
+
+"Mrs. Bagnet," says the trooper, "I am on my parole with you. Mat
+will get no harm from me. You may trust me so far."
+
+"Well, I think I may. But the very looks of you are unsettling," Mrs.
+Bagnet rejoins. "Ah, George, George! If you had only settled down and
+married Joe Pouch's widow when he died in North America, SHE'D have
+combed your hair for you."
+
+"It was a chance for me, certainly," returns the trooper half
+laughingly, half seriously, "but I shall never settle down into a
+respectable man now. Joe Pouch's widow might have done me good--there
+was something in her, and something of her--but I couldn't make up my
+mind to it. If I had had the luck to meet with such a wife as Mat
+found!"
+
+Mrs. Bagnet, who seems in a virtuous way to be under little reserve
+with a good sort of fellow, but to be another good sort of fellow
+herself for that matter, receives this compliment by flicking Mr.
+George in the face with a head of greens and taking her tub into the
+little room behind the shop.
+
+"Why, Quebec, my poppet," says George, following, on invitation, into
+that department. "And little Malta, too! Come and kiss your Bluffy!"
+
+These young ladies--not supposed to have been actually christened by
+the names applied to them, though always so called in the family from
+the places of their birth in barracks--are respectively employed on
+three-legged stools, the younger (some five or six years old) in
+learning her letters out of a penny primer, the elder (eight or nine
+perhaps) in teaching her and sewing with great assiduity. Both hail
+Mr. George with acclamations as an old friend and after some kissing
+and romping plant their stools beside him.
+
+"And how's young Woolwich?" says Mr. George.
+
+"Ah! There now!" cries Mrs. Bagnet, turning about from her saucepans
+(for she is cooking dinner) with a bright flush on her face. "Would
+you believe it? Got an engagement at the theayter, with his father,
+to play the fife in a military piece."
+
+"Well done, my godson!" cries Mr. George, slapping his thigh.
+
+"I believe you!" says Mrs. Bagnet. "He's a Briton. That's what
+Woolwich is. A Briton!"
+
+"And Mat blows away at his bassoon, and you're respectable civilians
+one and all," says Mr. George. "Family people. Children growing up.
+Mat's old mother in Scotland, and your old father somewhere else,
+corresponded with, and helped a little, and--well, well! To be sure,
+I don't know why I shouldn't be wished a hundred mile away, for I
+have not much to do with all this!"
+
+Mr. George is becoming thoughtful, sitting before the fire in the
+whitewashed room, which has a sanded floor and a barrack smell and
+contains nothing superfluous and has not a visible speck of dirt or
+dust in it, from the faces of Quebec and Malta to the bright tin pots
+and pannikins upon the dresser shelves--Mr. George is becoming
+thoughtful, sitting here while Mrs. Bagnet is busy, when Mr. Bagnet
+and young Woolwich opportunely come home. Mr. Bagnet is an
+ex-artilleryman, tall and upright, with shaggy eyebrows and whiskers
+like the fibres of a coco-nut, not a hair upon his head, and a torrid
+complexion. His voice, short, deep, and resonant, is not at all
+unlike the tones of the instrument to which he is devoted. Indeed
+there may be generally observed in him an unbending, unyielding,
+brass-bound air, as if he were himself the bassoon of the human
+orchestra. Young Woolwich is the type and model of a young drummer.
+
+Both father and son salute the trooper heartily. He saying, in due
+season, that he has come to advise with Mr. Bagnet, Mr. Bagnet
+hospitably declares that he will hear of no business until after
+dinner and that his friend shall not partake of his counsel without
+first partaking of boiled pork and greens. The trooper yielding to
+this invitation, he and Mr. Bagnet, not to embarrass the domestic
+preparations, go forth to take a turn up and down the little street,
+which they promenade with measured tread and folded arms, as if it
+were a rampart.
+
+"George," says Mr. Bagnet. "You know me. It's my old girl that
+advises. She has the head. But I never own to it before her.
+Discipline must be maintained. Wait till the greens is off her mind.
+Then we'll consult. Whatever the old girl says, do--do it!"
+
+"I intend to, Mat," replies the other. "I would sooner take her
+opinion than that of a college."
+
+"College," returns Mr. Bagnet in short sentences, bassoon-like. "What
+college could you leave--in another quarter of the world--with
+nothing but a grey cloak and an umbrella--to make its way home to
+Europe? The old girl would do it to-morrow. Did it once!"
+
+"You are right," says Mr. George.
+
+"What college," pursues Bagnet, "could you set up in life--with two
+penn'orth of white lime--a penn'orth of fuller's earth--a ha'porth of
+sand--and the rest of the change out of sixpence in money? That's
+what the old girl started on. In the present business."
+
+"I am rejoiced to hear it's thriving, Mat."
+
+"The old girl," says Mr. Bagnet, acquiescing, "saves. Has a stocking
+somewhere. With money in it. I never saw it. But I know she's got it.
+Wait till the greens is off her mind. Then she'll set you up."
+
+"She is a treasure!" exclaims Mr. George.
+
+"She's more. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be
+maintained. It was the old girl that brought out my musical
+abilities. I should have been in the artillery now but for the old
+girl. Six years I hammered at the fiddle. Ten at the flute. The old
+girl said it wouldn't do; intention good, but want of flexibility;
+try the bassoon. The old girl borrowed a bassoon from the bandmaster
+of the Rifle Regiment. I practised in the trenches. Got on, got
+another, get a living by it!"
+
+George remarks that she looks as fresh as a rose and as sound as an
+apple.
+
+"The old girl," says Mr. Bagnet in reply, "is a thoroughly fine
+woman. Consequently she is like a thoroughly fine day. Gets finer as
+she gets on. I never saw the old girl's equal. But I never own to it
+before her. Discipline must be maintained!"
+
+Proceeding to converse on indifferent matters, they walk up and down
+the little street, keeping step and time, until summoned by Quebec
+and Malta to do justice to the pork and greens, over which Mrs.
+Bagnet, like a military chaplain, says a short grace. In the
+distribution of these comestibles, as in every other household duty,
+Mrs. Bagnet developes an exact system, sitting with every dish before
+her, allotting to every portion of pork its own portion of
+pot-liquor, greens, potatoes, and even mustard, and serving it out
+complete. Having likewise served out the beer from a can and thus
+supplied the mess with all things necessary, Mrs. Bagnet proceeds to
+satisfy her own hunger, which is in a healthy state. The kit of the
+mess, if the table furniture may be so denominated, is chiefly
+composed of utensils of horn and tin that have done duty in several
+parts of the world. Young Woolwich's knife, in particular, which is
+of the oyster kind, with the additional feature of a strong
+shutting-up movement which frequently balks the appetite of that
+young musician, is mentioned as having gone in various hands the
+complete round of foreign service.
+
+The dinner done, Mrs. Bagnet, assisted by the younger branches (who
+polish their own cups and platters, knives and forks), makes all the
+dinner garniture shine as brightly as before and puts it all away,
+first sweeping the hearth, to the end that Mr. Bagnet and the visitor
+may not be retarded in the smoking of their pipes. These household
+cares involve much pattening and counter-pattening in the backyard
+and considerable use of a pail, which is finally so happy as to
+assist in the ablutions of Mrs. Bagnet herself. That old girl
+reappearing by and by, quite fresh, and sitting down to her
+needlework, then and only then--the greens being only then to be
+considered as entirely off her mind--Mr. Bagnet requests the trooper
+to state his case.
+
+This Mr. George does with great discretion, appearing to address
+himself to Mr. Bagnet, but having an eye solely on the old girl all
+the time, as Bagnet has himself. She, equally discreet, busies
+herself with her needlework. The case fully stated, Mr. Bagnet
+resorts to his standard artifice for the maintenance of discipline.
+
+"That's the whole of it, is it, George?" says he.
+
+"That's the whole of it."
+
+"You act according to my opinion?"
+
+"I shall be guided," replies George, "entirely by it."
+
+"Old girl," says Mr. Bagnet, "give him my opinion. You know it. Tell
+him what it is."
+
+It is that he cannot have too little to do with people who are too
+deep for him and cannot be too careful of interference with matters
+he does not understand--that the plain rule is to do nothing in the
+dark, to be a party to nothing underhanded or mysterious, and never
+to put his foot where he cannot see the ground. This, in effect, is
+Mr. Bagnet's opinion, as delivered through the old girl, and it so
+relieves Mr. George's mind by confirming his own opinion and
+banishing his doubts that he composes himself to smoke another pipe
+on that exceptional occasion and to have a talk over old times with
+the whole Bagnet family, according to their various ranges of
+experience.
+
+Through these means it comes to pass that Mr. George does not again
+rise to his full height in that parlour until the time is drawing on
+when the bassoon and fife are expected by a British public at the
+theatre; and as it takes time even then for Mr. George, in his
+domestic character of Bluffy, to take leave of Quebec and Malta and
+insinuate a sponsorial shilling into the pocket of his godson with
+felicitations on his success in life, it is dark when Mr. George
+again turns his face towards Lincoln's Inn Fields.
+
+"A family home," he ruminates as he marches along, "however small it
+is, makes a man like me look lonely. But it's well I never made that
+evolution of matrimony. I shouldn't have been fit for it. I am such a
+vagabond still, even at my present time of life, that I couldn't hold
+to the gallery a month together if it was a regular pursuit or if I
+didn't camp there, gipsy fashion. Come! I disgrace nobody and cumber
+nobody; that's something. I have not done that for many a long year!"
+
+So he whistles it off and marches on.
+
+Arrived in Lincoln's Inn Fields and mounting Mr. Tulkinghorn's stair,
+he finds the outer door closed and the chambers shut, but the trooper
+not knowing much about outer doors, and the staircase being dark
+besides, he is yet fumbling and groping about, hoping to discover a
+bell-handle or to open the door for himself, when Mr. Tulkinghorn
+comes up the stairs (quietly, of course) and angrily asks, "Who is
+that? What are you doing there?"
+
+"I ask your pardon, sir. It's George. The sergeant."
+
+"And couldn't George, the sergeant, see that my door was locked?"
+
+"Why, no, sir, I couldn't. At any rate, I didn't," says the trooper,
+rather nettled.
+
+"Have you changed your mind? Or are you in the same mind?" Mr.
+Tulkinghorn demands. But he knows well enough at a glance.
+
+"In the same mind, sir."
+
+"I thought so. That's sufficient. You can go. So you are the man,"
+says Mr. Tulkinghorn, opening his door with the key, "in whose
+hiding-place Mr. Gridley was found?"
+
+"Yes, I AM the man," says the trooper, stopping two or three stairs
+down. "What then, sir?"
+
+"What then? I don't like your associates. You should not have seen
+the inside of my door this morning if I had thought of your being
+that man. Gridley? A threatening, murderous, dangerous fellow."
+
+With these words, spoken in an unusually high tone for him, the
+lawyer goes into his rooms and shuts the door with a thundering
+noise.
+
+Mr. George takes his dismissal in great dudgeon, the greater because
+a clerk coming up the stairs has heard the last words of all and
+evidently applies them to him. "A pretty character to bear," the
+trooper growls with a hasty oath as he strides downstairs. "A
+threatening, murderous, dangerous fellow!" And looking up, he sees
+the clerk looking down at him and marking him as he passes a lamp.
+This so intensifies his dudgeon that for five minutes he is in an ill
+humour. But he whistles that off like the rest of it and marches home
+to the shooting gallery.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+The Ironmaster
+
+
+Sir Leicester Dedlock has got the better, for the time being, of the
+family gout and is once more, in a literal no less than in a
+figurative point of view, upon his legs. He is at his place in
+Lincolnshire; but the waters are out again on the low-lying grounds,
+and the cold and damp steal into Chesney Wold, though well defended,
+and eke into Sir Leicester's bones. The blazing fires of faggot and
+coal--Dedlock timber and antediluvian forest--that blaze upon the
+broad wide hearths and wink in the twilight on the frowning woods,
+sullen to see how trees are sacrificed, do not exclude the enemy. The
+hot-water pipes that trail themselves all over the house, the
+cushioned doors and windows, and the screens and curtains fail to
+supply the fires' deficiencies and to satisfy Sir Leicester's need.
+Hence the fashionable intelligence proclaims one morning to the
+listening earth that Lady Dedlock is expected shortly to return to
+town for a few weeks.
+
+It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor
+relations. Indeed great men have often more than their fair share of
+poor relations, inasmuch as very red blood of the superior quality,
+like inferior blood unlawfully shed, WILL cry aloud and WILL be
+heard. Sir Leicester's cousins, in the remotest degree, are so many
+murders in the respect that they "will out." Among whom there are
+cousins who are so poor that one might almost dare to think it would
+have been the happier for them never to have been plated links upon
+the Dedlock chain of gold, but to have been made of common iron at
+first and done base service.
+
+Service, however (with a few limited reservations, genteel but not
+profitable), they may not do, being of the Dedlock dignity. So they
+visit their richer cousins, and get into debt when they can, and live
+but shabbily when they can't, and find--the women no husbands, and
+the men no wives--and ride in borrowed carriages, and sit at feasts
+that are never of their own making, and so go through high life. The
+rich family sum has been divided by so many figures, and they are the
+something over that nobody knows what to do with.
+
+Everybody on Sir Leicester Dedlock's side of the question and of his
+way of thinking would appear to be his cousin more or less. From my
+Lord Boodle, through the Duke of Foodle, down to Noodle, Sir
+Leicester, like a glorious spider, stretches his threads of
+relationship. But while he is stately in the cousinship of the
+Everybodys, he is a kind and generous man, according to his dignified
+way, in the cousinship of the Nobodys; and at the present time, in
+despite of the damp, he stays out the visit of several such cousins
+at Chesney Wold with the constancy of a martyr.
+
+Of these, foremost in the front rank stands Volumnia Dedlock, a young
+lady (of sixty) who is doubly highly related, having the honour to be
+a poor relation, by the mother's side, to another great family. Miss
+Volumnia, displaying in early life a pretty talent for cutting
+ornaments out of coloured paper, and also for singing to the guitar
+in the Spanish tongue, and propounding French conundrums in country
+houses, passed the twenty years of her existence between twenty and
+forty in a sufficiently agreeable manner. Lapsing then out of date
+and being considered to bore mankind by her vocal performances in the
+Spanish language, she retired to Bath, where she lives slenderly on
+an annual present from Sir Leicester and whence she makes occasional
+resurrections in the country houses of her cousins. She has an
+extensive acquaintance at Bath among appalling old gentlemen with
+thin legs and nankeen trousers, and is of high standing in that
+dreary city. But she is a little dreaded elsewhere in consequence of
+an indiscreet profusion in the article of rouge and persistency in an
+obsolete pearl necklace like a rosary of little bird's-eggs.
+
+In any country in a wholesome state, Volumnia would be a clear case
+for the pension list. Efforts have been made to get her on it, and
+when William Buffy came in, it was fully expected that her name would
+be put down for a couple of hundred a year. But William Buffy somehow
+discovered, contrary to all expectation, that these were not the
+times when it could be done, and this was the first clear indication
+Sir Leicester Dedlock had conveyed to him that the country was going
+to pieces.
+
+There is likewise the Honourable Bob Stables, who can make warm
+mashes with the skill of a veterinary surgeon and is a better shot
+than most gamekeepers. He has been for some time particularly
+desirous to serve his country in a post of good emoluments,
+unaccompanied by any trouble or responsibility. In a well-regulated
+body politic this natural desire on the part of a spirited young
+gentleman so highly connected would be speedily recognized, but
+somehow William Buffy found when he came in that these were not times
+in which he could manage that little matter either, and this was the
+second indication Sir Leicester Dedlock had conveyed to him that the
+country was going to pieces.
+
+The rest of the cousins are ladies and gentlemen of various ages and
+capacities, the major part amiable and sensible and likely to have
+done well enough in life if they could have overcome their
+cousinship; as it is, they are almost all a little worsted by it, and
+lounge in purposeless and listless paths, and seem to be quite as
+much at a loss how to dispose of themselves as anybody else can be
+how to dispose of them.
+
+In this society, and where not, my Lady Dedlock reigns supreme.
+Beautiful, elegant, accomplished, and powerful in her little world
+(for the world of fashion does not stretch ALL the way from pole to
+pole), her influence in Sir Leicester's house, however haughty and
+indifferent her manner, is greatly to improve it and refine it. The
+cousins, even those older cousins who were paralysed when Sir
+Leicester married her, do her feudal homage; and the Honourable Bob
+Stables daily repeats to some chosen person between breakfast and
+lunch his favourite original remark, that she is the best-groomed
+woman in the whole stud.
+
+Such the guests in the long drawing-room at Chesney Wold this dismal
+night when the step on the Ghost's Walk (inaudible here, however)
+might be the step of a deceased cousin shut out in the cold. It is
+near bed-time. Bedroom fires blaze brightly all over the house,
+raising ghosts of grim furniture on wall and ceiling. Bedroom
+candlesticks bristle on the distant table by the door, and cousins
+yawn on ottomans. Cousins at the piano, cousins at the soda-water
+tray, cousins rising from the card-table, cousins gathered round the
+fire. Standing on one side of his own peculiar fire (for there are
+two), Sir Leicester. On the opposite side of the broad hearth, my
+Lady at her table. Volumnia, as one of the more privileged cousins,
+in a luxurious chair between them. Sir Leicester glancing, with
+magnificent displeasure, at the rouge and the pearl necklace.
+
+"I occasionally meet on my staircase here," drawls Volumnia, whose
+thoughts perhaps are already hopping up it to bed, after a long
+evening of very desultory talk, "one of the prettiest girls, I think,
+that I ever saw in my life."
+
+"A PROTEGEE of my Lady's," observes Sir Leicester.
+
+"I thought so. I felt sure that some uncommon eye must have picked
+that girl out. She really is a marvel. A dolly sort of beauty
+perhaps," says Miss Volumnia, reserving her own sort, "but in its
+way, perfect; such bloom I never saw!"
+
+Sir Leicester, with his magnificent glance of displeasure at the
+rouge, appears to say so too.
+
+"Indeed," remarks my Lady languidly, "if there is any uncommon eye in
+the case, it is Mrs. Rouncewell's, and not mine. Rosa is her
+discovery."
+
+"Your maid, I suppose?"
+
+"No. My anything; pet--secretary--messenger--I don't know what."
+
+"You like to have her about you, as you would like to have a flower,
+or a bird, or a picture, or a poodle--no, not a poodle, though--or
+anything else that was equally pretty?" says Volumnia, sympathizing.
+"Yes, how charming now! And how well that delightful old soul Mrs.
+Rouncewell is looking. She must be an immense age, and yet she is as
+active and handsome! She is the dearest friend I have, positively!"
+
+Sir Leicester feels it to be right and fitting that the housekeeper
+of Chesney Wold should be a remarkable person. Apart from that, he
+has a real regard for Mrs. Rouncewell and likes to hear her praised.
+So he says, "You are right, Volumnia," which Volumnia is extremely
+glad to hear.
+
+"She has no daughter of her own, has she?"
+
+"Mrs. Rouncewell? No, Volumnia. She has a son. Indeed, she had two."
+
+My Lady, whose chronic malady of boredom has been sadly aggravated by
+Volumnia this evening, glances wearily towards the candlesticks and
+heaves a noiseless sigh.
+
+"And it is a remarkable example of the confusion into which the
+present age has fallen; of the obliteration of landmarks, the opening
+of floodgates, and the uprooting of distinctions," says Sir Leicester
+with stately gloom, "that I have been informed by Mr. Tulkinghorn
+that Mrs. Rouncewell's son has been invited to go into Parliament."
+
+Miss Volumnia utters a little sharp scream.
+
+"Yes, indeed," repeats Sir Leicester. "Into Parliament."
+
+"I never heard of such a thing! Good gracious, what is the man?"
+exclaims Volumnia.
+
+"He is called, I believe--an--ironmaster." Sir Leicester says it
+slowly and with gravity and doubt, as not being sure but that he is
+called a lead-mistress or that the right word may be some other word
+expressive of some other relationship to some other metal.
+
+Volumnia utters another little scream.
+
+"He has declined the proposal, if my information from Mr. Tulkinghorn
+be correct, as I have no doubt it is. Mr. Tulkinghorn being always
+correct and exact; still that does not," says Sir Leicester, "that
+does not lessen the anomaly, which is fraught with strange
+considerations--startling considerations, as it appears to me."
+
+Miss Volumnia rising with a look candlestick-wards, Sir Leicester
+politely performs the grand tour of the drawing-room, brings one, and
+lights it at my Lady's shaded lamp.
+
+"I must beg you, my Lady," he says while doing so, "to remain a few
+moments, for this individual of whom I speak arrived this evening
+shortly before dinner and requested in a very becoming note"--Sir
+Leicester, with his habitual regard to truth, dwells upon it--"I am
+bound to say, in a very becoming and well-expressed note, the favour
+of a short interview with yourself and MYself on the subject of this
+young girl. As it appeared that he wished to depart to-night, I
+replied that we would see him before retiring."
+
+Miss Volumnia with a third little scream takes flight, wishing her
+hosts--O Lud!--well rid of the--what is it?--ironmaster!
+
+The other cousins soon disperse, to the last cousin there. Sir
+Leicester rings the bell, "Make my compliments to Mr. Rouncewell, in
+the housekeeper's apartments, and say I can receive him now."
+
+My Lady, who has heard all this with slight attention outwardly,
+looks towards Mr. Rouncewell as he comes in. He is a little over
+fifty perhaps, of a good figure, like his mother, and has a clear
+voice, a broad forehead from which his dark hair has retired, and a
+shrewd though open face. He is a responsible-looking gentleman
+dressed in black, portly enough, but strong and active. Has a
+perfectly natural and easy air and is not in the least embarrassed by
+the great presence into which he comes.
+
+"Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock, as I have already apologized for
+intruding on you, I cannot do better than be very brief. I thank you,
+Sir Leicester."
+
+The head of the Dedlocks has motioned towards a sofa between himself
+and my Lady. Mr. Rouncewell quietly takes his seat there.
+
+"In these busy times, when so many great undertakings are in
+progress, people like myself have so many workmen in so many places
+that we are always on the flight."
+
+Sir Leicester is content enough that the ironmaster should feel that
+there is no hurry there; there, in that ancient house, rooted in that
+quiet park, where the ivy and the moss have had time to mature, and
+the gnarled and warted elms and the umbrageous oaks stand deep in the
+fern and leaves of a hundred years; and where the sun-dial on the
+terrace has dumbly recorded for centuries that time which was as much
+the property of every Dedlock--while he lasted--as the house and
+lands. Sir Leicester sits down in an easy-chair, opposing his repose
+and that of Chesney Wold to the restless flights of ironmasters.
+
+"Lady Dedlock has been so kind," proceeds Mr. Rouncewell with a
+respectful glance and a bow that way, "as to place near her a young
+beauty of the name of Rosa. Now, my son has fallen in love with Rosa
+and has asked my consent to his proposing marriage to her and to
+their becoming engaged if she will take him--which I suppose she
+will. I have never seen Rosa until to-day, but I have some confidence
+in my son's good sense--even in love. I find her what he represents
+her, to the best of my judgment; and my mother speaks of her with
+great commendation."
+
+"She in all respects deserves it," says my Lady.
+
+"I am happy, Lady Dedlock, that you say so, and I need not comment on
+the value to me of your kind opinion of her."
+
+"That," observes Sir Leicester with unspeakable grandeur, for he
+thinks the ironmaster a little too glib, "must be quite unnecessary."
+
+"Quite unnecessary, Sir Leicester. Now, my son is a very young man,
+and Rosa is a very young woman. As I made my way, so my son must make
+his; and his being married at present is out of the question. But
+supposing I gave my consent to his engaging himself to this pretty
+girl, if this pretty girl will engage herself to him, I think it a
+piece of candour to say at once--I am sure, Sir Leicester and Lady
+Dedlock, you will understand and excuse me--I should make it a
+condition that she did not remain at Chesney Wold. Therefore, before
+communicating further with my son, I take the liberty of saying that
+if her removal would be in any way inconvenient or objectionable, I
+will hold the matter over with him for any reasonable time and leave
+it precisely where it is."
+
+Not remain at Chesney Wold! Make it a condition! All Sir Leicester's
+old misgivings relative to Wat Tyler and the people in the iron
+districts who do nothing but turn out by torchlight come in a shower
+upon his head, the fine grey hair of which, as well as of his
+whiskers, actually stirs with indignation.
+
+"Am I to understand, sir," says Sir Leicester, "and is my Lady to
+understand"--he brings her in thus specially, first as a point of
+gallantry, and next as a point of prudence, having great reliance on
+her sense--"am I to understand, Mr. Rouncewell, and is my Lady to
+understand, sir, that you consider this young woman too good for
+Chesney Wold or likely to be injured by remaining here?"
+
+"Certainly not, Sir Leicester,"
+
+"I am glad to hear it." Sir Leicester very lofty indeed.
+
+"Pray, Mr. Rouncewell," says my Lady, warning Sir Leicester off with
+the slightest gesture of her pretty hand, as if he were a fly,
+"explain to me what you mean."
+
+"Willingly, Lady Dedlock. There is nothing I could desire more."
+
+Addressing her composed face, whose intelligence, however, is too
+quick and active to be concealed by any studied impassiveness,
+however habitual, to the strong Saxon face of the visitor, a picture
+of resolution and perseverance, my Lady listens with attention,
+occasionally slightly bending her head.
+
+"I am the son of your housekeeper, Lady Dedlock, and passed my
+childhood about this house. My mother has lived here half a
+century and will die here I have no doubt. She is one of those
+examples--perhaps as good a one as there is--of love, and attachment,
+and fidelity in such a nation, which England may well be proud of,
+but of which no order can appropriate the whole pride or the whole
+merit, because such an instance bespeaks high worth on two sides--on
+the great side assuredly, on the small one no less assuredly."
+
+Sir Leicester snorts a little to hear the law laid down in this way,
+but in his honour and his love of truth, he freely, though silently,
+admits the justice of the ironmaster's proposition.
+
+"Pardon me for saying what is so obvious, but I wouldn't have it
+hastily supposed," with the least turn of his eyes towards Sir
+Leicester, "that I am ashamed of my mother's position here, or
+wanting in all just respect for Chesney Wold and the family.
+I certainly may have desired--I certainly have desired, Lady
+Dedlock--that my mother should retire after so many years and end
+her days with me. But as I have found that to sever this strong bond
+would be to break her heart, I have long abandoned that idea."
+
+Sir Leicester very magnificent again at the notion of Mrs. Rouncewell
+being spirited off from her natural home to end her days with an
+ironmaster.
+
+"I have been," proceeds the visitor in a modest, clear way, "an
+apprentice and a workman. I have lived on workman's wages, years and
+years, and beyond a certain point have had to educate myself. My wife
+was a foreman's daughter, and plainly brought up. We have three
+daughters besides this son of whom I have spoken, and being
+fortunately able to give them greater advantages than we have had
+ourselves, we have educated them well, very well. It has been one of
+our great cares and pleasures to make them worthy of any station."
+
+A little boastfulness in his fatherly tone here, as if he added in
+his heart, "even of the Chesney Wold station." Not a little more
+magnificence, therefore, on the part of Sir Leicester.
+
+"All this is so frequent, Lady Dedlock, where I live, and among the
+class to which I belong, that what would be generally called unequal
+marriages are not of such rare occurrence with us as elsewhere. A son
+will sometimes make it known to his father that he has fallen in
+love, say, with a young woman in the factory. The father, who once
+worked in a factory himself, will be a little disappointed at first
+very possibly. It may be that he had other views for his son.
+However, the chances are that having ascertained the young woman to
+be of unblemished character, he will say to his son, 'I must be quite
+sure you are in earnest here. This is a serious matter for both of
+you. Therefore I shall have this girl educated for two years,' or it
+may be, 'I shall place this girl at the same school with your sisters
+for such a time, during which you will give me your word and honour
+to see her only so often. If at the expiration of that time, when she
+has so far profited by her advantages as that you may be upon a fair
+equality, you are both in the same mind, I will do my part to make
+you happy.' I know of several cases such as I describe, my Lady, and
+I think they indicate to me my own course now."
+
+Sir Leicester's magnificence explodes. Calmly, but terribly.
+
+"Mr. Rouncewell," says Sir Leicester with his right hand in the
+breast of his blue coat, the attitude of state in which he is painted
+in the gallery, "do you draw a parallel between Chesney Wold and a--"
+Here he resists a disposition to choke, "a factory?"
+
+"I need not reply, Sir Leicester, that the two places are very
+different; but for the purposes of this case, I think a parallel may
+be justly drawn between them."
+
+Sir Leicester directs his majestic glance down one side of the long
+drawing-room and up the other before he can believe that he is awake.
+
+"Are you aware, sir, that this young woman whom my Lady--my Lady--has
+placed near her person was brought up at the village school outside
+the gates?"
+
+"Sir Leicester, I am quite aware of it. A very good school it is, and
+handsomely supported by this family."
+
+"Then, Mr. Rouncewell," returns Sir Leicester, "the application of
+what you have said is, to me, incomprehensible."
+
+"Will it be more comprehensible, Sir Leicester, if I say," the
+ironmaster is reddening a little, "that I do not regard the village
+school as teaching everything desirable to be known by my son's
+wife?"
+
+From the village school of Chesney Wold, intact as it is this minute,
+to the whole framework of society; from the whole framework of
+society, to the aforesaid framework receiving tremendous cracks in
+consequence of people (iron-masters, lead-mistresses, and what not)
+not minding their catechism, and getting out of the station unto
+which they are called--necessarily and for ever, according to Sir
+Leicester's rapid logic, the first station in which they happen to
+find themselves; and from that, to their educating other people out
+of THEIR stations, and so obliterating the landmarks, and opening the
+floodgates, and all the rest of it; this is the swift progress of the
+Dedlock mind.
+
+"My Lady, I beg your pardon. Permit me, for one moment!" She has
+given a faint indication of intending to speak. "Mr. Rouncewell, our
+views of duty, and our views of station, and our views of education,
+and our views of--in short, ALL our views--are so diametrically
+opposed, that to prolong this discussion must be repellent to your
+feelings and repellent to my own. This young woman is honoured with
+my Lady's notice and favour. If she wishes to withdraw herself from
+that notice and favour or if she chooses to place herself under the
+influence of any one who may in his peculiar opinions--you will allow
+me to say, in his peculiar opinions, though I readily admit that he
+is not accountable for them to me--who may, in his peculiar opinions,
+withdraw her from that notice and favour, she is at any time at
+liberty to do so. We are obliged to you for the plainness with which
+you have spoken. It will have no effect of itself, one way or other,
+on the young woman's position here. Beyond this, we can make no
+terms; and here we beg--if you will be so good--to leave the
+subject."
+
+The visitor pauses a moment to give my Lady an opportunity, but she
+says nothing. He then rises and replies, "Sir Leicester and Lady
+Dedlock, allow me to thank you for your attention and only to observe
+that I shall very seriously recommend my son to conquer his present
+inclinations. Good night!"
+
+"Mr. Rouncewell," says Sir Leicester with all the nature of a
+gentleman shining in him, "it is late, and the roads are dark. I hope
+your time is not so precious but that you will allow my Lady and
+myself to offer you the hospitality of Chesney Wold, for to-night at
+least."
+
+"I hope so," adds my Lady.
+
+"I am much obliged to you, but I have to travel all night in order to
+reach a distant part of the country punctually at an appointed time
+in the morning."
+
+Therewith the ironmaster takes his departure, Sir Leicester ringing
+the bell and my Lady rising as he leaves the room.
+
+When my Lady goes to her boudoir, she sits down thoughtfully by the
+fire, and inattentive to the Ghost's Walk, looks at Rosa, writing in
+an inner room. Presently my Lady calls her.
+
+"Come to me, child. Tell me the truth. Are you in love?"
+
+"Oh! My Lady!"
+
+My Lady, looking at the downcast and blushing face, says smiling,
+"Who is it? Is it Mrs. Rouncewell's grandson?"
+
+"Yes, if you please, my Lady. But I don't know that I am in love with
+him--yet."
+
+"Yet, you silly little thing! Do you know that he loves YOU, yet?"
+
+"I think he likes me a little, my Lady." And Rosa bursts into tears.
+
+Is this Lady Dedlock standing beside the village beauty, smoothing
+her dark hair with that motherly touch, and watching her with eyes so
+full of musing interest? Aye, indeed it is!
+
+"Listen to me, child. You are young and true, and I believe you are
+attached to me."
+
+"Indeed I am, my Lady. Indeed there is nothing in the world I
+wouldn't do to show how much."
+
+"And I don't think you would wish to leave me just yet, Rosa, even
+for a lover?"
+
+"No, my Lady! Oh, no!" Rosa looks up for the first time, quite
+frightened at the thought.
+
+"Confide in me, my child. Don't fear me. I wish you to be happy, and
+will make you so--if I can make anybody happy on this earth."
+
+Rosa, with fresh tears, kneels at her feet and kisses her hand. My
+Lady takes the hand with which she has caught it, and standing with
+her eyes fixed on the fire, puts it about and about between her own
+two hands, and gradually lets it fall. Seeing her so absorbed, Rosa
+softly withdraws; but still my Lady's eyes are on the fire.
+
+In search of what? Of any hand that is no more, of any hand that
+never was, of any touch that might have magically changed her life?
+Or does she listen to the Ghost's Walk and think what step does it
+most resemble? A man's? A woman's? The pattering of a little child's
+feet, ever coming on--on--on? Some melancholy influence is upon her,
+or why should so proud a lady close the doors and sit alone upon the
+hearth so desolate?
+
+Volumnia is away next day, and all the cousins are scattered before
+dinner. Not a cousin of the batch but is amazed to hear from Sir
+Leicester at breakfast-time of the obliteration of landmarks, and
+opening of floodgates, and cracking of the framework of society,
+manifested through Mrs. Rouncewell's son. Not a cousin of the batch
+but is really indignant, and connects it with the feebleness of
+William Buffy when in office, and really does feel deprived of a
+stake in the country--or the pension list--or something--by fraud and
+wrong. As to Volumnia, she is handed down the great staircase by Sir
+Leicester, as eloquent upon the theme as if there were a general
+rising in the north of England to obtain her rouge-pot and pearl
+necklace. And thus, with a clatter of maids and valets--for it is one
+appurtenance of their cousinship that however difficult they may find
+it to keep themselves, they MUST keep maids and valets--the cousins
+disperse to the four winds of heaven; and the one wintry wind that
+blows to-day shakes a shower from the trees near the deserted house,
+as if all the cousins had been changed into leaves.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+The Young Man
+
+
+Chesney Wold is shut up, carpets are rolled into great scrolls in
+corners of comfortless rooms, bright damask does penance in brown
+holland, carving and gilding puts on mortification, and the Dedlock
+ancestors retire from the light of day again. Around and around the
+house the leaves fall thick, but never fast, for they come circling
+down with a dead lightness that is sombre and slow. Let the gardener
+sweep and sweep the turf as he will, and press the leaves into full
+barrows, and wheel them off, still they lie ankle-deep. Howls the
+shrill wind round Chesney Wold; the sharp rain beats, the windows
+rattle, and the chimneys growl. Mists hide in the avenues, veil the
+points of view, and move in funeral-wise across the rising grounds.
+On all the house there is a cold, blank smell like the smell of a
+little church, though something dryer, suggesting that the dead and
+buried Dedlocks walk there in the long nights and leave the flavour
+of their graves behind them.
+
+But the house in town, which is rarely in the same mind as Chesney
+Wold at the same time, seldom rejoicing when it rejoices or mourning
+when it mourns, excepting when a Dedlock dies--the house in town
+shines out awakened. As warm and bright as so much state may be, as
+delicately redolent of pleasant scents that bear no trace of winter
+as hothouse flowers can make it, soft and hushed so that the ticking
+of the clocks and the crisp burning of the fires alone disturb the
+stillness in the rooms, it seems to wrap those chilled bones of Sir
+Leicester's in rainbow-coloured wool. And Sir Leicester is glad to
+repose in dignified contentment before the great fire in the library,
+condescendingly perusing the backs of his books or honouring the fine
+arts with a glance of approbation. For he has his pictures, ancient
+and modern. Some of the Fancy Ball School in which art occasionally
+condescends to become a master, which would be best catalogued like
+the miscellaneous articles in a sale. As "Three high-backed chairs, a
+table and cover, long-necked bottle (containing wine), one flask, one
+Spanish female's costume, three-quarter face portrait of Miss Jogg
+the model, and a suit of armour containing Don Quixote." Or "One
+stone terrace (cracked), one gondola in distance, one Venetian
+senator's dress complete, richly embroidered white satin costume with
+profile portrait of Miss Jogg the model, one Scimitar superbly
+mounted in gold with jewelled handle, elaborate Moorish dress (very
+rare), and Othello."
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn comes and goes pretty often, there being estate
+business to do, leases to be renewed, and so on. He sees my Lady
+pretty often, too; and he and she are as composed, and as
+indifferent, and take as little heed of one another, as ever. Yet it
+may be that my Lady fears this Mr. Tulkinghorn and that he knows it.
+It may be that he pursues her doggedly and steadily, with no touch of
+compunction, remorse, or pity. It may be that her beauty and all the
+state and brilliancy surrounding her only gives him the greater zest
+for what he is set upon and makes him the more inflexible in it.
+Whether he be cold and cruel, whether immovable in what he has made
+his duty, whether absorbed in love of power, whether determined
+to have nothing hidden from him in ground where he has burrowed
+among secrets all his life, whether he in his heart despises the
+splendour of which he is a distant beam, whether he is always
+treasuring up slights and offences in the affability of his gorgeous
+clients--whether he be any of this, or all of this, it may be that my
+Lady had better have five thousand pairs of fashionable eyes upon
+her, in distrustful vigilance, than the two eyes of this rusty lawyer
+with his wisp of neckcloth and his dull black breeches tied with
+ribbons at the knees.
+
+Sir Leicester sits in my Lady's room--that room in which Mr.
+Tulkinghorn read the affidavit in Jarndyce and Jarndyce--particularly
+complacent. My Lady, as on that day, sits before the fire with her
+screen in her hand. Sir Leicester is particularly complacent because
+he has found in his newspaper some congenial remarks bearing directly
+on the floodgates and the framework of society. They apply so happily
+to the late case that Sir Leicester has come from the library to my
+Lady's room expressly to read them aloud. "The man who wrote this
+article," he observes by way of preface, nodding at the fire as if he
+were nodding down at the man from a mount, "has a well-balanced
+mind."
+
+The man's mind is not so well balanced but that he bores my Lady,
+who, after a languid effort to listen, or rather a languid
+resignation of herself to a show of listening, becomes distraught and
+falls into a contemplation of the fire as if it were her fire at
+Chesney Wold, and she had never left it. Sir Leicester, quite
+unconscious, reads on through his double eye-glass, occasionally
+stopping to remove his glass and express approval, as "Very true
+indeed," "Very properly put," "I have frequently made the same remark
+myself," invariably losing his place after each observation, and
+going up and down the column to find it again.
+
+Sir Leicester is reading with infinite gravity and state when the
+door opens, and the Mercury in powder makes this strange
+announcement, "The young man, my Lady, of the name of Guppy."
+
+Sir Leicester pauses, stares, repeats in a killing voice, "The young
+man of the name of Guppy?"
+
+Looking round, he beholds the young man of the name of Guppy, much
+discomfited and not presenting a very impressive letter of
+introduction in his manner and appearance.
+
+"Pray," says Sir Leicester to Mercury, "what do you mean by
+announcing with this abruptness a young man of the name of Guppy?"
+
+"I beg your pardon, Sir Leicester, but my Lady said she would see the
+young man whenever he called. I was not aware that you were here, Sir
+Leicester."
+
+With this apology, Mercury directs a scornful and indignant look at
+the young man of the name of Guppy which plainly says, "What do you
+come calling here for and getting ME into a row?"
+
+"It's quite right. I gave him those directions," says my Lady. "Let
+the young man wait."
+
+"By no means, my Lady. Since he has your orders to come, I will not
+interrupt you." Sir Leicester in his gallantry retires, rather
+declining to accept a bow from the young man as he goes out and
+majestically supposing him to be some shoemaker of intrusive
+appearance.
+
+Lady Dedlock looks imperiously at her visitor when the servant has
+left the room, casting her eyes over him from head to foot. She
+suffers him to stand by the door and asks him what he wants.
+
+"That your ladyship would have the kindness to oblige me with a
+little conversation," returns Mr. Guppy, embarrassed.
+
+"You are, of course, the person who has written me so many letters?"
+
+"Several, your ladyship. Several before your ladyship condescended to
+favour me with an answer."
+
+"And could you not take the same means of rendering a Conversation
+unnecessary? Can you not still?"
+
+Mr. Guppy screws his mouth into a silent "No!" and shakes his head.
+
+"You have been strangely importunate. If it should appear, after all,
+that what you have to say does not concern me--and I don't know how
+it can, and don't expect that it will--you will allow me to cut you
+short with but little ceremony. Say what you have to say, if you
+please."
+
+My Lady, with a careless toss of her screen, turns herself towards
+the fire again, sitting almost with her back to the young man of the
+name of Guppy.
+
+"With your ladyship's permission, then," says the young man, "I will
+now enter on my business. Hem! I am, as I told your ladyship in my
+first letter, in the law. Being in the law, I have learnt the habit
+of not committing myself in writing, and therefore I did not mention
+to your ladyship the name of the firm with which I am connected and
+in which my standing--and I may add income--is tolerably good. I may
+now state to your ladyship, in confidence, that the name of that firm
+is Kenge and Carboy, of Lincoln's Inn, which may not be altogether
+unknown to your ladyship in connexion with the case in Chancery of
+Jarndyce and Jarndyce."
+
+My Lady's figure begins to be expressive of some attention. She has
+ceased to toss the screen and holds it as if she were listening.
+
+"Now, I may say to your ladyship at once," says Mr. Guppy, a little
+emboldened, "it is no matter arising out of Jarndyce and Jarndyce
+that made me so desirous to speak to your ladyship, which conduct I
+have no doubt did appear, and does appear, obtrusive--in fact, almost
+blackguardly."
+
+After waiting for a moment to receive some assurance to the contrary,
+and not receiving any, Mr. Guppy proceeds, "If it had been Jarndyce
+and Jarndyce, I should have gone at once to your ladyship's
+solicitor, Mr. Tulkinghorn, of the Fields. I have the pleasure of
+being acquainted with Mr. Tulkinghorn--at least we move when we meet
+one another--and if it had been any business of that sort, I should
+have gone to him."
+
+My Lady turns a little round and says, "You had better sit down."
+
+"Thank your ladyship." Mr. Guppy does so. "Now, your ladyship"--Mr.
+Guppy refers to a little slip of paper on which he has made small
+notes of his line of argument and which seems to involve him in the
+densest obscurity whenever he looks at it--"I--Oh, yes!--I place
+myself entirely in your ladyship's hands. If your ladyship was to
+make any complaint to Kenge and Carboy or to Mr. Tulkinghorn of the
+present visit, I should be placed in a very disagreeable situation.
+That, I openly admit. Consequently, I rely upon your ladyship's
+honour."
+
+My Lady, with a disdainful gesture of the hand that holds the screen,
+assures him of his being worth no complaint from her.
+
+"Thank your ladyship," says Mr. Guppy; "quite satisfactory.
+Now--I--dash it!--The fact is that I put down a head or two here of
+the order of the points I thought of touching upon, and they're
+written short, and I can't quite make out what they mean. If your
+ladyship will excuse me taking it to the window half a moment, I--"
+
+Mr. Guppy, going to the window, tumbles into a pair of love-birds, to
+whom he says in his confusion, "I beg your pardon, I am sure." This
+does not tend to the greater legibility of his notes. He murmurs,
+growing warm and red and holding the slip of paper now close to his
+eyes, now a long way off, "C.S. What's C.S. for? Oh! C.S.! Oh, I
+know! Yes, to be sure!" And comes back enlightened.
+
+"I am not aware," says Mr. Guppy, standing midway between my Lady and
+his chair, "whether your ladyship ever happened to hear of, or to
+see, a young lady of the name of Miss Esther Summerson."
+
+My Lady's eyes look at him full. "I saw a young lady of that name not
+long ago. This past autumn."
+
+"Now, did it strike your ladyship that she was like anybody?" asks
+Mr. Guppy, crossing his arms, holding his head on one side, and
+scratching the corner of his mouth with his memoranda.
+
+My Lady removes her eyes from him no more.
+
+"No."
+
+"Not like your ladyship's family?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I think your ladyship," says Mr. Guppy, "can hardly remember Miss
+Summerson's face?"
+
+"I remember the young lady very well. What has this to do with me?"
+
+"Your ladyship, I do assure you that having Miss Summerson's image
+imprinted on my 'eart--which I mention in confidence--I found, when I
+had the honour of going over your ladyship's mansion of Chesney Wold
+while on a short out in the county of Lincolnshire with a friend,
+such a resemblance between Miss Esther Summerson and your ladyship's
+own portrait that it completely knocked me over, so much so that I
+didn't at the moment even know what it WAS that knocked me over. And
+now I have the honour of beholding your ladyship near (I have often,
+since that, taken the liberty of looking at your ladyship in your
+carriage in the park, when I dare say you was not aware of me, but I
+never saw your ladyship so near), it's really more surprising than I
+thought it."
+
+Young man of the name of Guppy! There have been times, when ladies
+lived in strongholds and had unscrupulous attendants within call,
+when that poor life of yours would NOT have been worth a minute's
+purchase, with those beautiful eyes looking at you as they look at
+this moment.
+
+My Lady, slowly using her little hand-screen as a fan, asks him again
+what he supposes that his taste for likenesses has to do with her.
+
+"Your ladyship," replies Mr. Guppy, again referring to his paper, "I
+am coming to that. Dash these notes! Oh! 'Mrs. Chadband.' Yes." Mr.
+Guppy draws his chair a little forward and seats himself again. My
+Lady reclines in her chair composedly, though with a trifle less of
+graceful ease than usual perhaps, and never falters in her steady
+gaze. "A--stop a minute, though!" Mr. Guppy refers again. "E.S.
+twice? Oh, yes! Yes, I see my way now, right on."
+
+Rolling up the slip of paper as an instrument to point his speech
+with, Mr. Guppy proceeds.
+
+"Your ladyship, there is a mystery about Miss Esther Summerson's
+birth and bringing up. I am informed of that fact because--which I
+mention in confidence--I know it in the way of my profession at Kenge
+and Carboy's. Now, as I have already mentioned to your ladyship, Miss
+Summerson's image is imprinted on my 'eart. If I could clear this
+mystery for her, or prove her to be well related, or find that having
+the honour to be a remote branch of your ladyship's family she had a
+right to be made a party in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, why, I might make
+a sort of a claim upon Miss Summerson to look with an eye of more
+dedicated favour on my proposals than she has exactly done as yet. In
+fact, as yet she hasn't favoured them at all."
+
+A kind of angry smile just dawns upon my Lady's face.
+
+"Now, it's a very singular circumstance, your ladyship," says Mr.
+Guppy, "though one of those circumstances that do fall in the way of
+us professional men--which I may call myself, for though not
+admitted, yet I have had a present of my articles made to me by Kenge
+and Carboy, on my mother's advancing from the principal of her little
+income the money for the stamp, which comes heavy--that I have
+encountered the person who lived as servant with the lady who brought
+Miss Summerson up before Mr. Jarndyce took charge of her. That lady
+was a Miss Barbary, your ladyship."
+
+Is the dead colour on my Lady's face reflected from the screen which
+has a green silk ground and which she holds in her raised hand as if
+she had forgotten it, or is it a dreadful paleness that has fallen on
+her?
+
+"Did your ladyship," says Mr. Guppy, "ever happen to hear of Miss
+Barbary?"
+
+"I don't know. I think so. Yes."
+
+"Was Miss Barbary at all connected with your ladyship's family?"
+
+My Lady's lips move, but they utter nothing. She shakes her head.
+
+"NOT connected?" says Mr. Guppy. "Oh! Not to your ladyship's
+knowledge, perhaps? Ah! But might be? Yes." After each of these
+interrogatories, she has inclined her head. "Very good! Now, this
+Miss Barbary was extremely close--seems to have been extraordinarily
+close for a female, females being generally (in common life at least)
+rather given to conversation--and my witness never had an idea
+whether she possessed a single relative. On one occasion, and only
+one, she seems to have been confidential to my witness on a single
+point, and she then told her that the little girl's real name was not
+Esther Summerson, but Esther Hawdon."
+
+"My God!"
+
+Mr. Guppy stares. Lady Dedlock sits before him looking him through,
+with the same dark shade upon her face, in the same attitude even to
+the holding of the screen, with her lips a little apart, her brow a
+little contracted, but for the moment dead. He sees her consciousness
+return, sees a tremor pass across her frame like a ripple over water,
+sees her lips shake, sees her compose them by a great effort, sees
+her force herself back to the knowledge of his presence and of what
+he has said. All this, so quickly, that her exclamation and her dead
+condition seem to have passed away like the features of those
+long-preserved dead bodies sometimes opened up in tombs, which,
+struck by the air like lightning, vanish in a breath.
+
+"Your ladyship is acquainted with the name of Hawdon?"
+
+"I have heard it before."
+
+"Name of any collateral or remote branch of your ladyship's family?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Now, your ladyship," says Mr. Guppy, "I come to the last point of
+the case, so far as I have got it up. It's going on, and I shall
+gather it up closer and closer as it goes on. Your ladyship must
+know--if your ladyship don't happen, by any chance, to know
+already--that there was found dead at the house of a person named
+Krook, near Chancery Lane, some time ago, a law-writer in great
+distress. Upon which law-writer there was an inquest, and which
+law-writer was an anonymous character, his name being unknown. But,
+your ladyship, I have discovered very lately that that law-writer's
+name was Hawdon."
+
+"And what is THAT to me?"
+
+"Aye, your ladyship, that's the question! Now, your ladyship, a queer
+thing happened after that man's death. A lady started up, a disguised
+lady, your ladyship, who went to look at the scene of action and went
+to look at his grave. She hired a crossing-sweeping boy to show it
+her. If your ladyship would wish to have the boy produced in
+corroboration of this statement, I can lay my hand upon him at any
+time."
+
+The wretched boy is nothing to my Lady, and she does NOT wish to have
+him produced.
+
+"Oh, I assure your ladyship it's a very queer start indeed," says Mr.
+Guppy. "If you was to hear him tell about the rings that sparkled on
+her fingers when she took her glove off, you'd think it quite
+romantic."
+
+There are diamonds glittering on the hand that holds the screen. My
+Lady trifles with the screen and makes them glitter more, again with
+that expression which in other times might have been so dangerous to
+the young man of the name of Guppy.
+
+"It was supposed, your ladyship, that he left no rag or scrap behind
+him by which he could be possibly identified. But he did. He left a
+bundle of old letters."
+
+The screen still goes, as before. All this time her eyes never once
+release him.
+
+"They were taken and secreted. And to-morrow night, your ladyship,
+they will come into my possession."
+
+"Still I ask you, what is this to me?"
+
+"Your ladyship, I conclude with that." Mr. Guppy rises. "If you think
+there's enough in this chain of circumstances put together--in the
+undoubted strong likeness of this young lady to your ladyship, which
+is a positive fact for a jury; in her having been brought up by Miss
+Barbary; in Miss Barbary stating Miss Summerson's real name to be
+Hawdon; in your ladyship's knowing both these names VERY WELL; and in
+Hawdon's dying as he did--to give your ladyship a family interest in
+going further into the case, I will bring these papers here. I don't
+know what they are, except that they are old letters: I have never
+had them in my possession yet. I will bring those papers here as soon
+as I get them and go over them for the first time with your ladyship.
+I have told your ladyship my object. I have told your ladyship that I
+should be placed in a very disagreeable situation if any complaint
+was made, and all is in strict confidence."
+
+Is this the full purpose of the young man of the name of Guppy, or
+has he any other? Do his words disclose the length, breadth, depth,
+of his object and suspicion in coming here; or if not, what do they
+hide? He is a match for my Lady there. She may look at him, but he
+can look at the table and keep that witness-box face of his from
+telling anything.
+
+"You may bring the letters," says my Lady, "if you choose."
+
+"Your ladyship is not very encouraging, upon my word and honour,"
+says Mr. Guppy, a little injured.
+
+"You may bring the letters," she repeats in the same tone, "if
+you--please."
+
+"It shall be done. I wish your ladyship good day."
+
+On a table near her is a rich bauble of a casket, barred and clasped
+like an old strong-chest. She, looking at him still, takes it to her
+and unlocks it.
+
+"Oh! I assure your ladyship I am not actuated by any motives of that
+sort," says Mr. Guppy, "and I couldn't accept anything of the kind. I
+wish your ladyship good day, and am much obliged to you all the
+same."
+
+So the young man makes his bow and goes downstairs, where the
+supercilious Mercury does not consider himself called upon to leave
+his Olympus by the hall-fire to let the young man out.
+
+As Sir Leicester basks in his library and dozes over his newspaper,
+is there no influence in the house to startle him, not to say to make
+the very trees at Chesney Wold fling up their knotted arms, the very
+portraits frown, the very armour stir?
+
+No. Words, sobs, and cries are but air, and air is so shut in and
+shut out throughout the house in town that sounds need be uttered
+trumpet-tongued indeed by my Lady in her chamber to carry any faint
+vibration to Sir Leicester's ears; and yet this cry is in the house,
+going upward from a wild figure on its knees.
+
+"O my child, my child! Not dead in the first hours of her life, as my
+cruel sister told me, but sternly nurtured by her, after she had
+renounced me and my name! O my child, O my child!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+Esther's Narrative
+
+
+Richard had been gone away some time when a visitor came to pass a
+few days with us. It was an elderly lady. It was Mrs. Woodcourt, who,
+having come from Wales to stay with Mrs. Bayham Badger and having
+written to my guardian, "by her son Allan's desire," to report that
+she had heard from him and that he was well "and sent his kind
+remembrances to all of us," had been invited by my guardian to make a
+visit to Bleak House. She stayed with us nearly three weeks. She took
+very kindly to me and was extremely confidential, so much so that
+sometimes she almost made me uncomfortable. I had no right, I knew
+very well, to be uncomfortable because she confided in me, and I felt
+it was unreasonable; still, with all I could do, I could not quite
+help it.
+
+She was such a sharp little lady and used to sit with her hands
+folded in each other looking so very watchful while she talked to me
+that perhaps I found that rather irksome. Or perhaps it was her being
+so upright and trim, though I don't think it was that, because I
+thought that quaintly pleasant. Nor can it have been the general
+expression of her face, which was very sparkling and pretty for an
+old lady. I don't know what it was. Or at least if I do now, I
+thought I did not then. Or at least--but it don't matter.
+
+Of a night when I was going upstairs to bed, she would invite me
+into her room, where she sat before the fire in a great chair;
+and, dear me, she would tell me about Morgan ap-Kerrig until I
+was quite low-spirited! Sometimes she recited a few verses from
+Crumlinwallinwer and the Mewlinnwillinwodd (if those are the right
+names, which I dare say they are not), and would become quite fiery
+with the sentiments they expressed. Though I never knew what they
+were (being in Welsh), further than that they were highly eulogistic
+of the lineage of Morgan ap-Kerrig.
+
+"So, Miss Summerson," she would say to me with stately triumph,
+"this, you see, is the fortune inherited by my son. Wherever my son
+goes, he can claim kindred with Ap-Kerrig. He may not have money, but
+he always has what is much better--family, my dear."
+
+I had my doubts of their caring so very much for Morgan ap-Kerrig in
+India and China, but of course I never expressed them. I used to say
+it was a great thing to be so highly connected.
+
+"It IS, my dear, a great thing," Mrs. Woodcourt would reply. "It has
+its disadvantages; my son's choice of a wife, for instance, is
+limited by it, but the matrimonial choice of the royal family is
+limited in much the same manner."
+
+Then she would pat me on the arm and smooth my dress, as much as to
+assure me that she had a good opinion of me, the distance between us
+notwithstanding.
+
+"Poor Mr. Woodcourt, my dear," she would say, and always with some
+emotion, for with her lofty pedigree she had a very affectionate
+heart, "was descended from a great Highland family, the MacCoorts of
+MacCoort. He served his king and country as an officer in the Royal
+Highlanders, and he died on the field. My son is one of the last
+representatives of two old families. With the blessing of heaven he
+will set them up again and unite them with another old family."
+
+It was in vain for me to try to change the subject, as I used to try,
+only for the sake of novelty or perhaps because--but I need not be so
+particular. Mrs. Woodcourt never would let me change it.
+
+"My dear," she said one night, "you have so much sense and you look
+at the world in a quiet manner so superior to your time of life that
+it is a comfort to me to talk to you about these family matters of
+mine. You don't know much of my son, my dear; but you know enough of
+him, I dare say, to recollect him?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am. I recollect him."
+
+"Yes, my dear. Now, my dear, I think you are a judge of character,
+and I should like to have your opinion of him."
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Woodcourt," said I, "that is so difficult!"
+
+"Why is it so difficult, my dear?" she returned. "I don't see it
+myself."
+
+"To give an opinion--"
+
+"On so slight an acquaintance, my dear. THAT'S true."
+
+I didn't mean that, because Mr. Woodcourt had been at our house a
+good deal altogether and had become quite intimate with my guardian.
+I said so, and added that he seemed to be very clever in his
+profession--we thought--and that his kindness and gentleness to Miss
+Flite were above all praise.
+
+"You do him justice!" said Mrs. Woodcourt, pressing my hand. "You
+define him exactly. Allan is a dear fellow, and in his profession
+faultless. I say it, though I am his mother. Still, I must confess he
+is not without faults, love."
+
+"None of us are," said I.
+
+"Ah! But his really are faults that he might correct, and ought to
+correct," returned the sharp old lady, sharply shaking her head. "I
+am so much attached to you that I may confide in you, my dear, as a
+third party wholly disinterested, that he is fickleness itself."
+
+I said I should have thought it hardly possible that he could have
+been otherwise than constant to his profession and zealous in the
+pursuit of it, judging from the reputation he had earned.
+
+"You are right again, my dear," the old lady retorted, "but I don't
+refer to his profession, look you."
+
+"Oh!" said I.
+
+"No," said she. "I refer, my dear, to his social conduct. He is
+always paying trivial attentions to young ladies, and always has
+been, ever since he was eighteen. Now, my dear, he has never really
+cared for any one of them and has never meant in doing this to do any
+harm or to express anything but politeness and good nature. Still,
+it's not right, you know; is it?"
+
+"No," said I, as she seemed to wait for me.
+
+"And it might lead to mistaken notions, you see, my dear."
+
+I supposed it might.
+
+"Therefore, I have told him many times that he really should be more
+careful, both in justice to himself and in justice to others. And he
+has always said, 'Mother, I will be; but you know me better than
+anybody else does, and you know I mean no harm--in short, mean
+nothing.' All of which is very true, my dear, but is no
+justification. However, as he is now gone so far away and for an
+indefinite time, and as he will have good opportunities and
+introductions, we may consider this past and gone. And you, my dear,"
+said the old lady, who was now all nods and smiles, "regarding your
+dear self, my love?"
+
+"Me, Mrs. Woodcourt?"
+
+"Not to be always selfish, talking of my son, who has gone to seek
+his fortune and to find a wife--when do you mean to seek YOUR fortune
+and to find a husband, Miss Summerson? Hey, look you! Now you blush!"
+
+I don't think I did blush--at all events, it was not important if I
+did--and I said my present fortune perfectly contented me and I had
+no wish to change it.
+
+"Shall I tell you what I always think of you and the fortune yet to
+come for you, my love?" said Mrs. Woodcourt.
+
+"If you believe you are a good prophet," said I.
+
+"Why, then, it is that you will marry some one very rich and very
+worthy, much older--five and twenty years, perhaps--than yourself.
+And you will be an excellent wife, and much beloved, and very happy."
+
+"That is a good fortune," said I. "But why is it to be mine?"
+
+"My dear," she returned, "there's suitability in it--you are so busy,
+and so neat, and so peculiarly situated altogether that there's
+suitability in it, and it will come to pass. And nobody, my love,
+will congratulate you more sincerely on such a marriage than I
+shall."
+
+It was curious that this should make me uncomfortable, but I think it
+did. I know it did. It made me for some part of that night
+uncomfortable. I was so ashamed of my folly that I did not like to
+confess it even to Ada, and that made me more uncomfortable still. I
+would have given anything not to have been so much in the bright old
+lady's confidence if I could have possibly declined it. It gave me
+the most inconsistent opinions of her. At one time I thought she was
+a story-teller, and at another time that she was the pink of truth.
+Now I suspected that she was very cunning, next moment I believed her
+honest Welsh heart to be perfectly innocent and simple. And after
+all, what did it matter to me, and why did it matter to me? Why could
+not I, going up to bed with my basket of keys, stop to sit down by
+her fire and accommodate myself for a little while to her, at least
+as well as to anybody else, and not trouble myself about the harmless
+things she said to me? Impelled towards her, as I certainly was, for
+I was very anxious that she should like me and was very glad indeed
+that she did, why should I harp afterwards, with actual distress and
+pain, on every word she said and weigh it over and over again in
+twenty scales? Why was it so worrying to me to have her in our house,
+and confidential to me every night, when I yet felt that it was
+better and safer somehow that she should be there than anywhere else?
+These were perplexities and contradictions that I could not account
+for. At least, if I could--but I shall come to all that by and by,
+and it is mere idleness to go on about it now.
+
+So when Mrs. Woodcourt went away, I was sorry to lose her but was
+relieved too. And then Caddy Jellyby came down, and Caddy brought
+such a packet of domestic news that it gave us abundant occupation.
+
+First Caddy declared (and would at first declare nothing else) that I
+was the best adviser that ever was known. This, my pet said, was no
+news at all; and this, I said, of course, was nonsense. Then Caddy
+told us that she was going to be married in a month and that if Ada
+and I would be her bridesmaids, she was the happiest girl in the
+world. To be sure, this was news indeed; and I thought we never
+should have done talking about it, we had so much to say to Caddy,
+and Caddy had so much to say to us.
+
+It seemed that Caddy's unfortunate papa had got over his
+bankruptcy--"gone through the Gazette," was the expression Caddy
+used, as if it were a tunnel--with the general clemency and
+commiseration of his creditors, and had got rid of his affairs in
+some blessed manner without succeeding in understanding them, and had
+given up everything he possessed (which was not worth much, I should
+think, to judge from the state of the furniture), and had satisfied
+every one concerned that he could do no more, poor man. So, he had
+been honourably dismissed to "the office" to begin the world again.
+What he did at the office, I never knew; Caddy said he was a
+"custom-house and general agent," and the only thing I ever
+understood about that business was that when he wanted money more
+than usual he went to the docks to look for it, and hardly ever found
+it.
+
+As soon as her papa had tranquillized his mind by becoming this shorn
+lamb, and they had removed to a furnished lodging in Hatton Garden
+(where I found the children, when I afterwards went there, cutting
+the horse hair out of the seats of the chairs and choking themselves
+with it), Caddy had brought about a meeting between him and old Mr.
+Turveydrop; and poor Mr. Jellyby, being very humble and meek, had
+deferred to Mr. Turveydrop's deportment so submissively that they had
+become excellent friends. By degrees, old Mr. Turveydrop, thus
+familiarized with the idea of his son's marriage, had worked up his
+parental feelings to the height of contemplating that event as being
+near at hand and had given his gracious consent to the young couple
+commencing housekeeping at the academy in Newman Street when they
+would.
+
+"And your papa, Caddy. What did he say?"
+
+"Oh! Poor Pa," said Caddy, "only cried and said he hoped we might get
+on better than he and Ma had got on. He didn't say so before Prince,
+he only said so to me. And he said, 'My poor girl, you have not been
+very well taught how to make a home for your husband, but unless you
+mean with all your heart to strive to do it, you had better murder
+him than marry him--if you really love him.'"
+
+"And how did you reassure him, Caddy?"
+
+"Why, it was very distressing, you know, to see poor Pa so low and
+hear him say such terrible things, and I couldn't help crying myself.
+But I told him that I DID mean it with all my heart and that I hoped
+our house would be a place for him to come and find some comfort in
+of an evening and that I hoped and thought I could be a better
+daughter to him there than at home. Then I mentioned Peepy's coming
+to stay with me, and then Pa began to cry again and said the children
+were Indians."
+
+"Indians, Caddy?"
+
+"Yes," said Caddy, "wild Indians. And Pa said"--here she began to
+sob, poor girl, not at all like the happiest girl in the world--"that
+he was sensible the best thing that could happen to them was their
+being all tomahawked together."
+
+Ada suggested that it was comfortable to know that Mr. Jellyby did
+not mean these destructive sentiments.
+
+"No, of course I know Pa wouldn't like his family to be weltering in
+their blood," said Caddy, "but he means that they are very
+unfortunate in being Ma's children and that he is very unfortunate in
+being Ma's husband; and I am sure that's true, though it seems
+unnatural to say so."
+
+I asked Caddy if Mrs. Jellyby knew that her wedding-day was fixed.
+
+"Oh! You know what Ma is, Esther," she returned. "It's impossible to
+say whether she knows it or not. She has been told it often enough;
+and when she IS told it, she only gives me a placid look, as if I was
+I don't know what--a steeple in the distance," said Caddy with a
+sudden idea; "and then she shakes her head and says 'Oh, Caddy,
+Caddy, what a tease you are!' and goes on with the Borrioboola
+letters."
+
+"And about your wardrobe, Caddy?" said I. For she was under no
+restraint with us.
+
+"Well, my dear Esther," she returned, drying her eyes, "I must do the
+best I can and trust to my dear Prince never to have an unkind
+remembrance of my coming so shabbily to him. If the question
+concerned an outfit for Borrioboola, Ma would know all about it and
+would be quite excited. Being what it is, she neither knows nor
+cares."
+
+Caddy was not at all deficient in natural affection for her mother,
+but mentioned this with tears as an undeniable fact, which I am
+afraid it was. We were sorry for the poor dear girl and found so much
+to admire in the good disposition which had survived under such
+discouragement that we both at once (I mean Ada and I) proposed a
+little scheme that made her perfectly joyful. This was her staying
+with us for three weeks, my staying with her for one, and our all
+three contriving and cutting out, and repairing, and sewing, and
+saving, and doing the very best we could think of to make the most of
+her stock. My guardian being as pleased with the idea as Caddy was,
+we took her home next day to arrange the matter and brought her out
+again in triumph with her boxes and all the purchases that could be
+squeezed out of a ten-pound note, which Mr. Jellyby had found in the
+docks I suppose, but which he at all events gave her. What my
+guardian would not have given her if we had encouraged him, it would
+be difficult to say, but we thought it right to compound for no more
+than her wedding-dress and bonnet. He agreed to this compromise, and
+if Caddy had ever been happy in her life, she was happy when we sat
+down to work.
+
+She was clumsy enough with her needle, poor girl, and pricked her
+fingers as much as she had been used to ink them. She could not help
+reddening a little now and then, partly with the smart and partly
+with vexation at being able to do no better, but she soon got over
+that and began to improve rapidly. So day after day she, and my
+darling, and my little maid Charley, and a milliner out of the town,
+and I, sat hard at work, as pleasantly as possible.
+
+Over and above this, Caddy was very anxious "to learn housekeeping,"
+as she said. Now, mercy upon us! The idea of her learning
+housekeeping of a person of my vast experience was such a joke that I
+laughed, and coloured up, and fell into a comical confusion when she
+proposed it. However, I said, "Caddy, I am sure you are very welcome
+to learn anything that you can learn of ME, my dear," and I showed
+her all my books and methods and all my fidgety ways. You would have
+supposed that I was showing her some wonderful inventions, by her
+study of them; and if you had seen her, whenever I jingled my
+housekeeping keys, get up and attend me, certainly you might have
+thought that there never was a greater imposter than I with a blinder
+follower than Caddy Jellyby.
+
+So what with working and housekeeping, and lessons to Charley, and
+backgammon in the evening with my guardian, and duets with Ada, the
+three weeks slipped fast away. Then I went home with Caddy to see
+what could be done there, and Ada and Charley remained behind to take
+care of my guardian.
+
+When I say I went home with Caddy, I mean to the furnished lodging in
+Hatton Garden. We went to Newman Street two or three times, where
+preparations were in progress too--a good many, I observed, for
+enhancing the comforts of old Mr. Turveydrop, and a few for putting
+the newly married couple away cheaply at the top of the house--but
+our great point was to make the furnished lodging decent for the
+wedding-breakfast and to imbue Mrs. Jellyby beforehand with some
+faint sense of the occasion.
+
+The latter was the more difficult thing of the two because Mrs.
+Jellyby and an unwholesome boy occupied the front sitting-room (the
+back one was a mere closet), and it was littered down with
+waste-paper and Borrioboolan documents, as an untidy stable might be
+littered with straw. Mrs. Jellyby sat there all day drinking strong
+coffee, dictating, and holding Borrioboolan interviews by
+appointment. The unwholesome boy, who seemed to me to be going into a
+decline, took his meals out of the house. When Mr. Jellyby came home,
+he usually groaned and went down into the kitchen. There he got
+something to eat if the servant would give him anything, and then,
+feeling that he was in the way, went out and walked about Hatton
+Garden in the wet. The poor children scrambled up and tumbled down
+the house as they had always been accustomed to do.
+
+The production of these devoted little sacrifices in any presentable
+condition being quite out of the question at a week's notice, I
+proposed to Caddy that we should make them as happy as we could on
+her marriage morning in the attic where they all slept, and should
+confine our greatest efforts to her mama and her mama's room, and a
+clean breakfast. In truth Mrs. Jellyby required a good deal of
+attention, the lattice-work up her back having widened considerably
+since I first knew her and her hair looking like the mane of a
+dustman's horse.
+
+Thinking that the display of Caddy's wardrobe would be the best means
+of approaching the subject, I invited Mrs. Jellyby to come and look
+at it spread out on Caddy's bed in the evening after the unwholesome
+boy was gone.
+
+"My dear Miss Summerson," said she, rising from her desk with her
+usual sweetness of temper, "these are really ridiculous preparations,
+though your assisting them is a proof of your kindness. There is
+something so inexpressibly absurd to me in the idea of Caddy being
+married! Oh, Caddy, you silly, silly, silly puss!"
+
+She came upstairs with us notwithstanding and looked at the clothes
+in her customary far-off manner. They suggested one distinct idea to
+her, for she said with her placid smile, and shaking her head, "My
+good Miss Summerson, at half the cost, this weak child might have
+been equipped for Africa!"
+
+On our going downstairs again, Mrs. Jellyby asked me whether this
+troublesome business was really to take place next Wednesday. And on
+my replying yes, she said, "Will my room be required, my dear Miss
+Summerson? For it's quite impossible that I can put my papers away."
+
+I took the liberty of saying that the room would certainly be wanted
+and that I thought we must put the papers away somewhere. "Well, my
+dear Miss Summerson," said Mrs. Jellyby, "you know best, I dare say.
+But by obliging me to employ a boy, Caddy has embarrassed me to that
+extent, overwhelmed as I am with public business, that I don't know
+which way to turn. We have a Ramification meeting, too, on Wednesday
+afternoon, and the inconvenience is very serious."
+
+"It is not likely to occur again," said I, smiling. "Caddy will be
+married but once, probably."
+
+"That's true," Mrs. Jellyby replied; "that's true, my dear. I suppose
+we must make the best of it!"
+
+The next question was how Mrs. Jellyby should be dressed on the
+occasion. I thought it very curious to see her looking on serenely
+from her writing-table while Caddy and I discussed it, occasionally
+shaking her head at us with a half-reproachful smile like a superior
+spirit who could just bear with our trifling.
+
+The state in which her dresses were, and the extraordinary confusion
+in which she kept them, added not a little to our difficulty; but at
+length we devised something not very unlike what a common-place
+mother might wear on such an occasion. The abstracted manner in which
+Mrs. Jellyby would deliver herself up to having this attire tried on
+by the dressmaker, and the sweetness with which she would then
+observe to me how sorry she was that I had not turned my thoughts to
+Africa, were consistent with the rest of her behaviour.
+
+The lodging was rather confined as to space, but I fancied that if
+Mrs. Jellyby's household had been the only lodgers in Saint Paul's or
+Saint Peter's, the sole advantage they would have found in the size
+of the building would have been its affording a great deal of room to
+be dirty in. I believe that nothing belonging to the family which it
+had been possible to break was unbroken at the time of those
+preparations for Caddy's marriage, that nothing which it had been
+possible to spoil in any way was unspoilt, and that no domestic
+object which was capable of collecting dirt, from a dear child's knee
+to the door-plate, was without as much dirt as could well accumulate
+upon it.
+
+Poor Mr. Jellyby, who very seldom spoke and almost always sat when he
+was at home with his head against the wall, became interested when he
+saw that Caddy and I were attempting to establish some order among
+all this waste and ruin and took off his coat to help. But such
+wonderful things came tumbling out of the closets when they were
+opened--bits of mouldy pie, sour bottles, Mrs. Jellyby's caps,
+letters, tea, forks, odd boots and shoes of children, firewood,
+wafers, saucepan-lids, damp sugar in odds and ends of paper bags,
+footstools, blacklead brushes, bread, Mrs. Jellyby's bonnets, books
+with butter sticking to the binding, guttered candle ends put out
+by being turned upside down in broken candlesticks, nutshells,
+heads and tails of shrimps, dinner-mats, gloves, coffee-grounds,
+umbrellas--that he looked frightened, and left off again. But he came
+regularly every evening and sat without his coat, with his head
+against the wall, as though he would have helped us if he had known
+how.
+
+"Poor Pa!" said Caddy to me on the night before the great day, when
+we really had got things a little to rights. "It seems unkind to
+leave him, Esther. But what could I do if I stayed! Since I first
+knew you, I have tidied and tidied over and over again, but it's
+useless. Ma and Africa, together, upset the whole house directly. We
+never have a servant who don't drink. Ma's ruinous to everything."
+
+Mr. Jellyby could not hear what she said, but he seemed very low
+indeed and shed tears, I thought.
+
+"My heart aches for him; that it does!" sobbed Caddy. "I can't help
+thinking to-night, Esther, how dearly I hope to be happy with Prince,
+and how dearly Pa hoped, I dare say, to be happy with Ma. What a
+disappointed life!"
+
+"My dear Caddy!" said Mr. Jellyby, looking slowly round from the
+wail. It was the first time, I think, I ever heard him say three
+words together.
+
+"Yes, Pa!" cried Caddy, going to him and embracing him
+affectionately.
+
+"My dear Caddy," said Mr. Jellyby. "Never have--"
+
+"Not Prince, Pa?" faltered Caddy. "Not have Prince?"
+
+"Yes, my dear," said Mr. Jellyby. "Have him, certainly. But, never
+have--"
+
+I mentioned in my account of our first visit in Thavies Inn that
+Richard described Mr. Jellyby as frequently opening his mouth after
+dinner without saying anything. It was a habit of his. He opened his
+mouth now a great many times and shook his head in a melancholy
+manner.
+
+"What do you wish me not to have? Don't have what, dear Pa?" asked
+Caddy, coaxing him, with her arms round his neck.
+
+"Never have a mission, my dear child."
+
+Mr. Jellyby groaned and laid his head against the wall again, and
+this was the only time I ever heard him make any approach to
+expressing his sentiments on the Borrioboolan question. I suppose he
+had been more talkative and lively once, but he seemed to have been
+completely exhausted long before I knew him.
+
+I thought Mrs. Jellyby never would have left off serenely looking
+over her papers and drinking coffee that night. It was twelve o'clock
+before we could obtain possession of the room, and the clearance it
+required then was so discouraging that Caddy, who was almost tired
+out, sat down in the middle of the dust and cried. But she soon
+cheered up, and we did wonders with it before we went to bed.
+
+In the morning it looked, by the aid of a few flowers and a quantity
+of soap and water and a little arrangement, quite gay. The plain
+breakfast made a cheerful show, and Caddy was perfectly charming. But
+when my darling came, I thought--and I think now--that I never had
+seen such a dear face as my beautiful pet's.
+
+We made a little feast for the children upstairs, and we put Peepy at
+the head of the table, and we showed them Caddy in her bridal dress,
+and they clapped their hands and hurrahed, and Caddy cried to think
+that she was going away from them and hugged them over and over again
+until we brought Prince up to fetch her away--when, I am sorry to
+say, Peepy bit him. Then there was old Mr. Turveydrop downstairs, in
+a state of deportment not to be expressed, benignly blessing Caddy
+and giving my guardian to understand that his son's happiness was his
+own parental work and that he sacrificed personal considerations to
+ensure it. "My dear sir," said Mr. Turveydrop, "these young people
+will live with me; my house is large enough for their accommodation,
+and they shall not want the shelter of my roof. I could have
+wished--you will understand the allusion, Mr. Jarndyce, for you
+remember my illustrious patron the Prince Regent--I could have
+wished that my son had married into a family where there was more
+deportment, but the will of heaven be done!"
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Pardiggle were of the party--Mr. Pardiggle, an
+obstinate-looking man with a large waistcoat and stubbly hair, who
+was always talking in a loud bass voice about his mite, or Mrs.
+Pardiggle's mite, or their five boys' mites. Mr. Quale, with his hair
+brushed back as usual and his knobs of temples shining very much, was
+also there, not in the character of a disappointed lover, but as the
+accepted of a young--at least, an unmarried--lady, a Miss Wisk, who
+was also there. Miss Wisk's mission, my guardian said, was to show
+the world that woman's mission was man's mission and that the only
+genuine mission of both man and woman was to be always moving
+declaratory resolutions about things in general at public meetings.
+The guests were few, but were, as one might expect at Mrs. Jellyby's,
+all devoted to public objects only. Besides those I have mentioned,
+there was an extremely dirty lady with her bonnet all awry and the
+ticketed price of her dress still sticking on it, whose neglected
+home, Caddy told me, was like a filthy wilderness, but whose church
+was like a fancy fair. A very contentious gentleman, who said it was
+his mission to be everybody's brother but who appeared to be on terms
+of coolness with the whole of his large family, completed the party.
+
+A party, having less in common with such an occasion, could hardly
+have been got together by any ingenuity. Such a mean mission as the
+domestic mission was the very last thing to be endured among them;
+indeed, Miss Wisk informed us, with great indignation, before we sat
+down to breakfast, that the idea of woman's mission lying chiefly in
+the narrow sphere of home was an outrageous slander on the part of
+her tyrant, man. One other singularity was that nobody with a
+mission--except Mr. Quale, whose mission, as I think I have formerly
+said, was to be in ecstasies with everybody's mission--cared at all
+for anybody's mission. Mrs. Pardiggle being as clear that the only
+one infallible course was her course of pouncing upon the poor and
+applying benevolence to them like a strait-waistcoat; as Miss Wisk
+was that the only practical thing for the world was the emancipation
+of woman from the thraldom of her tyrant, man. Mrs. Jellyby, all the
+while, sat smiling at the limited vision that could see anything but
+Borrioboola-Gha.
+
+But I am anticipating now the purport of our conversation on the ride
+home instead of first marrying Caddy. We all went to church, and Mr.
+Jellyby gave her away. Of the air with which old Mr. Turveydrop, with
+his hat under his left arm (the inside presented at the clergyman
+like a cannon) and his eyes creasing themselves up into his wig,
+stood stiff and high-shouldered behind us bridesmaids during the
+ceremony, and afterwards saluted us, I could never say enough to do
+it justice. Miss Wisk, whom I cannot report as prepossessing in
+appearance, and whose manner was grim, listened to the proceedings,
+as part of woman's wrongs, with a disdainful face. Mrs. Jellyby, with
+her calm smile and her bright eyes, looked the least concerned of all
+the company.
+
+We duly came back to breakfast, and Mrs. Jellyby sat at the head of
+the table and Mr. Jellyby at the foot. Caddy had previously stolen
+upstairs to hug the children again and tell them that her name was
+Turveydrop. But this piece of information, instead of being an
+agreeable surprise to Peepy, threw him on his back in such transports
+of kicking grief that I could do nothing on being sent for but accede
+to the proposal that he should be admitted to the breakfast table. So
+he came down and sat in my lap; and Mrs. Jellyby, after saying, in
+reference to the state of his pinafore, "Oh, you naughty Peepy, what
+a shocking little pig you are!" was not at all discomposed. He was
+very good except that he brought down Noah with him (out of an ark I
+had given him before we went to church) and WOULD dip him head first
+into the wine-glasses and then put him in his mouth.
+
+My guardian, with his sweet temper and his quick perception and his
+amiable face, made something agreeable even out of the ungenial
+company. None of them seemed able to talk about anything but his, or
+her, own one subject, and none of them seemed able to talk about even
+that as part of a world in which there was anything else; but my
+guardian turned it all to the merry encouragement of Caddy and the
+honour of the occasion, and brought us through the breakfast nobly.
+What we should have done without him, I am afraid to think, for all
+the company despising the bride and bridegroom and old Mr.
+Turveydrop--and old Mr. Thurveydrop, in virtue of his deportment,
+considering himself vastly superior to all the company--it was a very
+unpromising case.
+
+At last the time came when poor Caddy was to go and when all her
+property was packed on the hired coach and pair that was to take her
+and her husband to Gravesend. It affected us to see Caddy clinging,
+then, to her deplorable home and hanging on her mother's neck with
+the greatest tenderness.
+
+"I am very sorry I couldn't go on writing from dictation, Ma," sobbed
+Caddy. "I hope you forgive me now."
+
+"Oh, Caddy, Caddy!" said Mrs. Jellyby. "I have told you over and over
+again that I have engaged a boy, and there's an end of it."
+
+"You are sure you are not the least angry with me, Ma? Say you are
+sure before I go away, Ma?"
+
+"You foolish Caddy," returned Mrs. Jellyby, "do I look angry, or have
+I inclination to be angry, or time to be angry? How CAN you?"
+
+"Take a little care of Pa while I am gone, Mama!"
+
+Mrs. Jellyby positively laughed at the fancy. "You romantic child,"
+said she, lightly patting Caddy's back. "Go along. I am excellent
+friends with you. Now, good-bye, Caddy, and be very happy!"
+
+Then Caddy hung upon her father and nursed his cheek against hers as
+if he were some poor dull child in pain. All this took place in the
+hall. Her father released her, took out his pocket handkerchief, and
+sat down on the stairs with his head against the wall. I hope he
+found some consolation in walls. I almost think he did.
+
+And then Prince took her arm in his and turned with great emotion and
+respect to his father, whose deportment at that moment was
+overwhelming.
+
+"Thank you over and over again, father!" said Prince, kissing his
+hand. "I am very grateful for all your kindness and consideration
+regarding our marriage, and so, I can assure you, is Caddy."
+
+"Very," sobbed Caddy. "Ve-ry!"
+
+"My dear son," said Mr. Turveydrop, "and dear daughter, I have done
+my duty. If the spirit of a sainted wooman hovers above us and looks
+down on the occasion, that, and your constant affection, will be my
+recompense. You will not fail in YOUR duty, my son and daughter, I
+believe?"
+
+"Dear father, never!" cried Prince.
+
+"Never, never, dear Mr. Turveydrop!" said Caddy.
+
+"This," returned Mr. Turveydrop, "is as it should be. My children, my
+home is yours, my heart is yours, my all is yours. I will never leave
+you; nothing but death shall part us. My dear son, you contemplate an
+absence of a week, I think?"
+
+"A week, dear father. We shall return home this day week."
+
+"My dear child," said Mr. Turveydrop, "let me, even under the present
+exceptional circumstances, recommend strict punctuality. It is highly
+important to keep the connexion together; and schools, if at all
+neglected, are apt to take offence."
+
+"This day week, father, we shall be sure to be home to dinner."
+
+"Good!" said Mr. Turveydrop. "You will find fires, my dear Caroline,
+in your own room, and dinner prepared in my apartment. Yes, yes,
+Prince!" anticipating some self-denying objection on his son's part
+with a great air. "You and our Caroline will be strange in the upper
+part of the premises and will, therefore, dine that day in my
+apartment. Now, bless ye!"
+
+They drove away, and whether I wondered most at Mrs. Jellyby or at
+Mr. Turveydrop, I did not know. Ada and my guardian were in the same
+condition when we came to talk it over. But before we drove away too,
+I received a most unexpected and eloquent compliment from Mr.
+Jellyby. He came up to me in the hall, took both my hands, pressed
+them earnestly, and opened his mouth twice. I was so sure of his
+meaning that I said, quite flurried, "You are very welcome, sir. Pray
+don't mention it!"
+
+"I hope this marriage is for the best, guardian," said I when we
+three were on our road home.
+
+"I hope it is, little woman. Patience. We shall see."
+
+"Is the wind in the east to-day?" I ventured to ask him.
+
+He laughed heartily and answered, "No."
+
+"But it must have been this morning, I think," said I.
+
+He answered "No" again, and this time my dear girl confidently
+answered "No" too and shook the lovely head which, with its blooming
+flowers against the golden hair, was like the very spring. "Much YOU
+know of east winds, my ugly darling," said I, kissing her in my
+admiration--I couldn't help it.
+
+Well! It was only their love for me, I know very well, and it is a
+long time ago. I must write it even if I rub it out again, because it
+gives me so much pleasure. They said there could be no east wind
+where Somebody was; they said that wherever Dame Durden went, there
+was sunshine and summer air.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+Nurse and Patient
+
+
+I had not been at home again many days when one evening I went
+upstairs into my own room to take a peep over Charley's shoulder and
+see how she was getting on with her copy-book. Writing was a trying
+business to Charley, who seemed to have no natural power over a pen,
+but in whose hand every pen appeared to become perversely animated,
+and to go wrong and crooked, and to stop, and splash, and sidle into
+corners like a saddle-donkey. It was very odd to see what old letters
+Charley's young hand had made, they so wrinkled, and shrivelled, and
+tottering, it so plump and round. Yet Charley was uncommonly expert
+at other things and had as nimble little fingers as I ever watched.
+
+"Well, Charley," said I, looking over a copy of the letter O in which
+it was represented as square, triangular, pear-shaped, and collapsed
+in all kinds of ways, "we are improving. If we only get to make it
+round, we shall be perfect, Charley."
+
+Then I made one, and Charley made one, and the pen wouldn't join
+Charley's neatly, but twisted it up into a knot.
+
+"Never mind, Charley. We shall do it in time."
+
+Charley laid down her pen, the copy being finished, opened and shut
+her cramped little hand, looked gravely at the page, half in pride
+and half in doubt, and got up, and dropped me a curtsy.
+
+"Thank you, miss. If you please, miss, did you know a poor person of
+the name of Jenny?"
+
+"A brickmaker's wife, Charley? Yes."
+
+"She came and spoke to me when I was out a little while ago, and said
+you knew her, miss. She asked me if I wasn't the young lady's little
+maid--meaning you for the young lady, miss--and I said yes, miss."
+
+"I thought she had left this neighbourhood altogether, Charley."
+
+"So she had, miss, but she's come back again to where she used to
+live--she and Liz. Did you know another poor person of the name of
+Liz, miss?"
+
+"I think I do, Charley, though not by name."
+
+"That's what she said!" returned Charley. "They have both come back,
+miss, and have been tramping high and low."
+
+"Tramping high and low, have they, Charley?"
+
+"Yes, miss." If Charley could only have made the letters in her copy
+as round as the eyes with which she looked into my face, they would
+have been excellent. "And this poor person came about the house three
+or four days, hoping to get a glimpse of you, miss--all she wanted,
+she said--but you were away. That was when she saw me. She saw me
+a-going about, miss," said Charley with a short laugh of the greatest
+delight and pride, "and she thought I looked like your maid!"
+
+"Did she though, really, Charley?"
+
+"Yes, miss!" said Charley. "Really and truly." And Charley, with
+another short laugh of the purest glee, made her eyes very round
+again and looked as serious as became my maid. I was never tired of
+seeing Charley in the full enjoyment of that great dignity, standing
+before me with her youthful face and figure, and her steady manner,
+and her childish exultation breaking through it now and then in the
+pleasantest way.
+
+"And where did you see her, Charley?" said I.
+
+My little maid's countenance fell as she replied, "By the doctor's
+shop, miss." For Charley wore her black frock yet.
+
+I asked if the brickmaker's wife were ill, but Charley said no. It
+was some one else. Some one in her cottage who had tramped down to
+Saint Albans and was tramping he didn't know where. A poor boy,
+Charley said. No father, no mother, no any one. "Like as Tom might
+have been, miss, if Emma and me had died after father," said Charley,
+her round eyes filling with tears.
+
+"And she was getting medicine for him, Charley?"
+
+"She said, miss," returned Charley, "how that he had once done as
+much for her."
+
+My little maid's face was so eager and her quiet hands were folded so
+closely in one another as she stood looking at me that I had no great
+difficulty in reading her thoughts. "Well, Charley," said I, "it
+appears to me that you and I can do no better than go round to
+Jenny's and see what's the matter."
+
+The alacrity with which Charley brought my bonnet and veil, and
+having dressed me, quaintly pinned herself into her warm shawl and
+made herself look like a little old woman, sufficiently expressed her
+readiness. So Charley and I, without saying anything to any one, went
+out.
+
+It was a cold, wild night, and the trees shuddered in the wind. The
+rain had been thick and heavy all day, and with little intermission
+for many days. None was falling just then, however. The sky had
+partly cleared, but was very gloomy--even above us, where a few stars
+were shining. In the north and north-west, where the sun had set
+three hours before, there was a pale dead light both beautiful and
+awful; and into it long sullen lines of cloud waved up like a sea
+stricken immovable as it was heaving. Towards London a lurid glare
+overhung the whole dark waste, and the contrast between these two
+lights, and the fancy which the redder light engendered of an
+unearthly fire, gleaming on all the unseen buildings of the city and
+on all the faces of its many thousands of wondering inhabitants, was
+as solemn as might be.
+
+I had no thought that night--none, I am quite sure--of what was soon
+to happen to me. But I have always remembered since that when we had
+stopped at the garden-gate to look up at the sky, and when we went
+upon our way, I had for a moment an undefinable impression of myself
+as being something different from what I then was. I know it was then
+and there that I had it. I have ever since connected the feeling with
+that spot and time and with everything associated with that spot and
+time, to the distant voices in the town, the barking of a dog, and
+the sound of wheels coming down the miry hill.
+
+It was Saturday night, and most of the people belonging to the place
+where we were going were drinking elsewhere. We found it quieter than
+I had previously seen it, though quite as miserable. The kilns were
+burning, and a stifling vapour set towards us with a pale-blue glare.
+
+We came to the cottage, where there was a feeble candle in the
+patched window. We tapped at the door and went in. The mother of the
+little child who had died was sitting in a chair on one side of the
+poor fire by the bed; and opposite to her, a wretched boy, supported
+by the chimney-piece, was cowering on the floor. He held under his
+arm, like a little bundle, a fragment of a fur cap; and as he tried
+to warm himself, he shook until the crazy door and window shook. The
+place was closer than before and had an unhealthy and a very peculiar
+smell.
+
+I had not lifted my veil when I first spoke to the woman, which was
+at the moment of our going in. The boy staggered up instantly and
+stared at me with a remarkable expression of surprise and terror.
+
+His action was so quick and my being the cause of it was so evident
+that I stood still instead of advancing nearer.
+
+"I won't go no more to the berryin ground," muttered the boy; "I
+ain't a-going there, so I tell you!"
+
+I lifted my veil and spoke to the woman. She said to me in a low
+voice, "Don't mind him, ma'am. He'll soon come back to his head," and
+said to him, "Jo, Jo, what's the matter?"
+
+"I know wot she's come for!" cried the boy.
+
+"Who?"
+
+"The lady there. She's come to get me to go along with her to the
+berryin ground. I won't go to the berryin ground. I don't like the
+name on it. She might go a-berryin ME." His shivering came on again,
+and as he leaned against the wall, he shook the hovel.
+
+"He has been talking off and on about such like all day, ma'am," said
+Jenny softly. "Why, how you stare! This is MY lady, Jo."
+
+"Is it?" returned the boy doubtfully, and surveying me with his arm
+held out above his burning eyes. "She looks to me the t'other one. It
+ain't the bonnet, nor yet it ain't the gownd, but she looks to me the
+t'other one."
+
+My little Charley, with her premature experience of illness and
+trouble, had pulled off her bonnet and shawl and now went quietly up
+to him with a chair and sat him down in it like an old sick nurse.
+Except that no such attendant could have shown him Charley's youthful
+face, which seemed to engage his confidence.
+
+"I say!" said the boy. "YOU tell me. Ain't the lady the t'other
+lady?"
+
+Charley shook her head as she methodically drew his rags about him
+and made him as warm as she could.
+
+"Oh!" the boy muttered. "Then I s'pose she ain't."
+
+"I came to see if I could do you any good," said I. "What is the
+matter with you?"
+
+"I'm a-being froze," returned the boy hoarsely, with his haggard gaze
+wandering about me, "and then burnt up, and then froze, and then
+burnt up, ever so many times in a hour. And my head's all sleepy, and
+all a-going mad-like--and I'm so dry--and my bones isn't half so much
+bones as pain.
+
+"When did he come here?" I asked the woman.
+
+"This morning, ma'am, I found him at the corner of the town. I had
+known him up in London yonder. Hadn't I, Jo?"
+
+"Tom-all-Alone's," the boy replied.
+
+Whenever he fixed his attention or his eyes, it was only for a very
+little while. He soon began to droop his head again, and roll it
+heavily, and speak as if he were half awake.
+
+"When did he come from London?" I asked.
+
+"I come from London yes'day," said the boy himself, now flushed and
+hot. "I'm a-going somewheres."
+
+"Where is he going?" I asked.
+
+"Somewheres," repeated the boy in a louder tone. "I have been moved
+on, and moved on, more nor ever I was afore, since the t'other one
+give me the sov'ring. Mrs. Snagsby, she's always a-watching, and
+a-driving of me--what have I done to her?--and they're all a-watching
+and a-driving of me. Every one of 'em's doing of it, from the time
+when I don't get up, to the time when I don't go to bed. And I'm
+a-going somewheres. That's where I'm a-going. She told me, down in
+Tom-all-Alone's, as she came from Stolbuns, and so I took the
+Stolbuns Road. It's as good as another."
+
+He always concluded by addressing Charley.
+
+"What is to be done with him?" said I, taking the woman aside. "He
+could not travel in this state even if he had a purpose and knew
+where he was going!"
+
+"I know no more, ma'am, than the dead," she replied, glancing
+compassionately at him. "Perhaps the dead know better, if they could
+only tell us. I've kept him here all day for pity's sake, and I've
+given him broth and physic, and Liz has gone to try if any one will
+take him in (here's my pretty in the bed--her child, but I call it
+mine); but I can't keep him long, for if my husband was to come home
+and find him here, he'd be rough in putting him out and might do him
+a hurt. Hark! Here comes Liz back!"
+
+The other woman came hurriedly in as she spoke, and the boy got up
+with a half-obscured sense that he was expected to be going. When the
+little child awoke, and when and how Charley got at it, took it out
+of bed, and began to walk about hushing it, I don't know. There she
+was, doing all this in a quiet motherly manner as if she were living
+in Mrs. Blinder's attic with Tom and Emma again.
+
+The friend had been here and there, and had been played about from
+hand to hand, and had come back as she went. At first it was too
+early for the boy to be received into the proper refuge, and at last
+it was too late. One official sent her to another, and the other sent
+her back again to the first, and so backward and forward, until it
+appeared to me as if both must have been appointed for their skill in
+evading their duties instead of performing them. And now, after all,
+she said, breathing quickly, for she had been running and was
+frightened too, "Jenny, your master's on the road home, and mine's
+not far behind, and the Lord help the boy, for we can do no more for
+him!" They put a few halfpence together and hurried them into his
+hand, and so, in an oblivious, half-thankful, half-insensible way, he
+shuffled out of the house.
+
+"Give me the child, my dear," said its mother to Charley, "and thank
+you kindly too! Jenny, woman dear, good night! Young lady, if my
+master don't fall out with me, I'll look down by the kiln by and by,
+where the boy will be most like, and again in the morning!" She
+hurried off, and presently we passed her hushing and singing to her
+child at her own door and looking anxiously along the road for her
+drunken husband.
+
+I was afraid of staying then to speak to either woman, lest I should
+bring her into trouble. But I said to Charley that we must not leave
+the boy to die. Charley, who knew what to do much better than I did,
+and whose quickness equalled her presence of mind, glided on before
+me, and presently we came up with Jo, just short of the brick-kiln.
+
+I think he must have begun his journey with some small bundle under
+his arm and must have had it stolen or lost it. For he still carried
+his wretched fragment of fur cap like a bundle, though he went
+bare-headed through the rain, which now fell fast. He stopped when we
+called to him and again showed a dread of me when I came up, standing
+with his lustrous eyes fixed upon me, and even arrested in his
+shivering fit.
+
+I asked him to come with us, and we would take care that he had some
+shelter for the night.
+
+"I don't want no shelter," he said; "I can lay amongst the warm
+bricks."
+
+"But don't you know that people die there?" replied Charley.
+
+"They dies everywheres," said the boy. "They dies in their
+lodgings--she knows where; I showed her--and they dies down in
+Tom-all-Alone's in heaps. They dies more than they lives, according
+to what I see." Then he hoarsely whispered Charley, "If she ain't the
+t'other one, she ain't the forrenner. Is there THREE of 'em then?"
+
+Charley looked at me a little frightened. I felt half frightened at
+myself when the boy glared on me so.
+
+But he turned and followed when I beckoned to him, and finding that
+he acknowledged that influence in me, I led the way straight home. It
+was not far, only at the summit of the hill. We passed but one man. I
+doubted if we should have got home without assistance, the boy's
+steps were so uncertain and tremulous. He made no complaint, however,
+and was strangely unconcerned about himself, if I may say so strange
+a thing.
+
+Leaving him in the hall for a moment, shrunk into the corner of the
+window-seat and staring with an indifference that scarcely could be
+called wonder at the comfort and brightness about him, I went into
+the drawing-room to speak to my guardian. There I found Mr. Skimpole,
+who had come down by the coach, as he frequently did without notice,
+and never bringing any clothes with him, but always borrowing
+everything he wanted.
+
+They came out with me directly to look at the boy. The servants had
+gathered in the hall too, and he shivered in the window-seat with
+Charley standing by him, like some wounded animal that had been found
+in a ditch.
+
+"This is a sorrowful case," said my guardian after asking him a
+question or two and touching him and examining his eyes. "What do you
+say, Harold?"
+
+"You had better turn him out," said Mr. Skimpole.
+
+"What do you mean?" inquired my guardian, almost sternly.
+
+"My dear Jarndyce," said Mr. Skimpole, "you know what I am: I am a
+child. Be cross to me if I deserve it. But I have a constitutional
+objection to this sort of thing. I always had, when I was a medical
+man. He's not safe, you know. There's a very bad sort of fever about
+him."
+
+Mr. Skimpole had retreated from the hall to the drawing-room again
+and said this in his airy way, seated on the music-stool as we stood
+by.
+
+"You'll say it's childish," observed Mr. Skimpole, looking gaily at
+us. "Well, I dare say it may be; but I AM a child, and I never
+pretend to be anything else. If you put him out in the road, you only
+put him where he was before. He will be no worse off than he was, you
+know. Even make him better off, if you like. Give him sixpence, or
+five shillings, or five pound ten--you are arithmeticians, and I am
+not--and get rid of him!"
+
+"And what is he to do then?" asked my guardian.
+
+"Upon my life," said Mr. Skimpole, shrugging his shoulders with his
+engaging smile, "I have not the least idea what he is to do then. But
+I have no doubt he'll do it."
+
+"Now, is it not a horrible reflection," said my guardian, to whom I
+had hastily explained the unavailing efforts of the two women, "is it
+not a horrible reflection," walking up and down and rumpling his
+hair, "that if this wretched creature were a convicted prisoner, his
+hospital would be wide open to him, and he would be as well taken
+care of as any sick boy in the kingdom?"
+
+"My dear Jarndyce," returned Mr. Skimpole, "you'll pardon the
+simplicity of the question, coming as it does from a creature who is
+perfectly simple in worldly matters, but why ISN'T he a prisoner
+then?"
+
+My guardian stopped and looked at him with a whimsical mixture of
+amusement and indignation in his face.
+
+"Our young friend is not to be suspected of any delicacy, I should
+imagine," said Mr. Skimpole, unabashed and candid. "It seems to me
+that it would be wiser, as well as in a certain kind of way more
+respectable, if he showed some misdirected energy that got him into
+prison. There would be more of an adventurous spirit in it, and
+consequently more of a certain sort of poetry."
+
+"I believe," returned my guardian, resuming his uneasy walk, "that
+there is not such another child on earth as yourself."
+
+"Do you really?" said Mr. Skimpole. "I dare say! But I confess I
+don't see why our young friend, in his degree, should not seek to
+invest himself with such poetry as is open to him. He is no doubt
+born with an appetite--probably, when he is in a safer state of
+health, he has an excellent appetite. Very well. At our young
+friend's natural dinner hour, most likely about noon, our young
+friend says in effect to society, 'I am hungry; will you have the
+goodness to produce your spoon and feed me?' Society, which has taken
+upon itself the general arrangement of the whole system of spoons and
+professes to have a spoon for our young friend, does NOT produce that
+spoon; and our young friend, therefore, says 'You really must excuse
+me if I seize it.' Now, this appears to me a case of misdirected
+energy, which has a certain amount of reason in it and a certain
+amount of romance; and I don't know but what I should be more
+interested in our young friend, as an illustration of such a case,
+than merely as a poor vagabond--which any one can be."
+
+"In the meantime," I ventured to observe, "he is getting worse."
+
+"In the meantime," said Mr. Skimpole cheerfully, "as Miss Summerson,
+with her practical good sense, observes, he is getting worse.
+Therefore I recommend your turning him out before he gets still
+worse."
+
+The amiable face with which he said it, I think I shall never forget.
+
+"Of course, little woman," observed my guardian, turning to me, "I
+can ensure his admission into the proper place by merely going there
+to enforce it, though it's a bad state of things when, in his
+condition, that is necessary. But it's growing late, and is a very
+bad night, and the boy is worn out already. There is a bed in the
+wholesome loft-room by the stable; we had better keep him there till
+morning, when he can be wrapped up and removed. We'll do that."
+
+"Oh!" said Mr. Skimpole, with his hands upon the keys of the piano as
+we moved away. "Are you going back to our young friend?"
+
+"Yes," said my guardian.
+
+"How I envy you your constitution, Jarndyce!" returned Mr. Skimpole
+with playful admiration. "You don't mind these things; neither does
+Miss Summerson. You are ready at all times to go anywhere, and do
+anything. Such is will! I have no will at all--and no won't--simply
+can't."
+
+"You can't recommend anything for the boy, I suppose?" said my
+guardian, looking back over his shoulder half angrily; only half
+angrily, for he never seemed to consider Mr. Skimpole an accountable
+being.
+
+"My dear Jarndyce, I observed a bottle of cooling medicine in his
+pocket, and it's impossible for him to do better than take it. You
+can tell them to sprinkle a little vinegar about the place where he
+sleeps and to keep it moderately cool and him moderately warm. But it
+is mere impertinence in me to offer any recommendation. Miss
+Summerson has such a knowledge of detail and such a capacity for the
+administration of detail that she knows all about it."
+
+We went back into the hall and explained to Jo what we proposed to
+do, which Charley explained to him again and which he received with
+the languid unconcern I had already noticed, wearily looking on at
+what was done as if it were for somebody else. The servants
+compassionating his miserable state and being very anxious to help,
+we soon got the loft-room ready; and some of the men about the house
+carried him across the wet yard, well wrapped up. It was pleasant to
+observe how kind they were to him and how there appeared to be a
+general impression among them that frequently calling him "Old Chap"
+was likely to revive his spirits. Charley directed the operations and
+went to and fro between the loft-room and the house with such little
+stimulants and comforts as we thought it safe to give him. My
+guardian himself saw him before he was left for the night and
+reported to me when he returned to the growlery to write a letter on
+the boy's behalf, which a messenger was charged to deliver at
+day-light in the morning, that he seemed easier and inclined to
+sleep. They had fastened his door on the outside, he said, in case of
+his being delirious, but had so arranged that he could not make any
+noise without being heard.
+
+Ada being in our room with a cold, Mr. Skimpole was left alone all
+this time and entertained himself by playing snatches of pathetic
+airs and sometimes singing to them (as we heard at a distance) with
+great expression and feeling. When we rejoined him in the
+drawing-room he said he would give us a little ballad which had come
+into his head "apropos of our young friend," and he sang one about a
+peasant boy,
+
+   "Thrown on the wide world, doomed to wander and roam,
+    Bereft of his parents, bereft of a home."
+
+quite exquisitely. It was a song that always made him cry, he told
+us.
+
+He was extremely gay all the rest of the evening, for he absolutely
+chirped--those were his delighted words--when he thought by what a
+happy talent for business he was surrounded. He gave us, in his glass
+of negus, "Better health to our young friend!" and supposed and gaily
+pursued the case of his being reserved like Whittington to become
+Lord Mayor of London. In that event, no doubt, he would establish the
+Jarndyce Institution and the Summerson Almshouses, and a little
+annual Corporation Pilgrimage to St. Albans. He had no doubt, he
+said, that our young friend was an excellent boy in his way, but his
+way was not the Harold Skimpole way; what Harold Skimpole was, Harold
+Skimpole had found himself, to his considerable surprise, when he
+first made his own acquaintance; he had accepted himself with all his
+failings and had thought it sound philosophy to make the best of the
+bargain; and he hoped we would do the same.
+
+Charley's last report was that the boy was quiet. I could see, from
+my window, the lantern they had left him burning quietly; and I went
+to bed very happy to think that he was sheltered.
+
+There was more movement and more talking than usual a little before
+daybreak, and it awoke me. As I was dressing, I looked out of my
+window and asked one of our men who had been among the active
+sympathizers last night whether there was anything wrong about the
+house. The lantern was still burning in the loft-window.
+
+"It's the boy, miss," said he.
+
+"Is he worse?" I inquired.
+
+"Gone, miss.
+
+"Dead!"
+
+"Dead, miss? No. Gone clean off."
+
+At what time of the night he had gone, or how, or why, it seemed
+hopeless ever to divine. The door remaining as it had been left, and
+the lantern standing in the window, it could only be supposed that he
+had got out by a trap in the floor which communicated with an empty
+cart-house below. But he had shut it down again, if that were so; and
+it looked as if it had not been raised. Nothing of any kind was
+missing. On this fact being clearly ascertained, we all yielded to
+the painful belief that delirium had come upon him in the night and
+that, allured by some imaginary object or pursued by some imaginary
+horror, he had strayed away in that worse than helpless state; all of
+us, that is to say, but Mr. Skimpole, who repeatedly suggested, in
+his usual easy light style, that it had occurred to our young friend
+that he was not a safe inmate, having a bad kind of fever upon him,
+and that he had with great natural politeness taken himself off.
+
+Every possible inquiry was made, and every place was searched. The
+brick-kilns were examined, the cottages were visited, the two women
+were particularly questioned, but they knew nothing of him, and
+nobody could doubt that their wonder was genuine. The weather had for
+some time been too wet and the night itself had been too wet to admit
+of any tracing by footsteps. Hedge and ditch, and wall, and rick and
+stack, were examined by our men for a long distance round, lest the
+boy should be lying in such a place insensible or dead; but nothing
+was seen to indicate that he had ever been near. From the time when
+he was left in the loft-room, he vanished.
+
+The search continued for five days. I do not mean that it ceased even
+then, but that my attention was then diverted into a current very
+memorable to me.
+
+As Charley was at her writing again in my room in the evening, and as
+I sat opposite to her at work, I felt the table tremble. Looking up,
+I saw my little maid shivering from head to foot.
+
+"Charley," said I, "are you so cold?"
+
+"I think I am, miss," she replied. "I don't know what it is. I can't
+hold myself still. I felt so yesterday at about this same time, miss.
+Don't be uneasy, I think I'm ill."
+
+I heard Ada's voice outside, and I hurried to the door of
+communication between my room and our pretty sitting-room, and locked
+it. Just in time, for she tapped at it while my hand was yet upon the
+key.
+
+Ada called to me to let her in, but I said, "Not now, my dearest. Go
+away. There's nothing the matter; I will come to you presently." Ah!
+It was a long, long time before my darling girl and I were companions
+again.
+
+Charley fell ill. In twelve hours she was very ill. I moved her to my
+room, and laid her in my bed, and sat down quietly to nurse her. I
+told my guardian all about it, and why I felt it was necessary that I
+should seclude myself, and my reason for not seeing my darling above
+all. At first she came very often to the door, and called to me, and
+even reproached me with sobs and tears; but I wrote her a long letter
+saying that she made me anxious and unhappy and imploring her, as she
+loved me and wished my mind to be at peace, to come no nearer than
+the garden. After that she came beneath the window even oftener than
+she had come to the door, and if I had learnt to love her dear sweet
+voice before when we were hardly ever apart, how did I learn to love
+it then, when I stood behind the window-curtain listening and
+replying, but not so much as looking out! How did I learn to love it
+afterwards, when the harder time came!
+
+They put a bed for me in our sitting-room; and by keeping the door
+wide open, I turned the two rooms into one, now that Ada had vacated
+that part of the house, and kept them always fresh and airy. There
+was not a servant in or about the house but was so good that they
+would all most gladly have come to me at any hour of the day or night
+without the least fear or unwillingness, but I thought it best to
+choose one worthy woman who was never to see Ada and whom I could
+trust to come and go with all precaution. Through her means I got out
+to take the air with my guardian when there was no fear of meeting
+Ada, and wanted for nothing in the way of attendance, any more than
+in any other respect.
+
+And thus poor Charley sickened and grew worse, and fell into heavy
+danger of death, and lay severely ill for many a long round of day
+and night. So patient she was, so uncomplaining, and inspired by such
+a gentle fortitude that very often as I sat by Charley holding her
+head in my arms--repose would come to her, so, when it would come to
+her in no other attitude--I silently prayed to our Father in heaven
+that I might not forget the lesson which this little sister taught
+me.
+
+I was very sorrowful to think that Charley's pretty looks would
+change and be disfigured, even if she recovered--she was such a child
+with her dimpled face--but that thought was, for the greater part,
+lost in her greater peril. When she was at the worst, and her mind
+rambled again to the cares of her father's sick bed and the little
+children, she still knew me so far as that she would be quiet in my
+arms when she could lie quiet nowhere else, and murmur out the
+wanderings of her mind less restlessly. At those times I used to
+think, how should I ever tell the two remaining babies that the baby
+who had learned of her faithful heart to be a mother to them in their
+need was dead!
+
+There were other times when Charley knew me well and talked to me,
+telling me that she sent her love to Tom and Emma and that she was
+sure Tom would grow up to be a good man. At those times Charley would
+speak to me of what she had read to her father as well as she could
+to comfort him, of that young man carried out to be buried who was
+the only son of his mother and she was a widow, of the ruler's
+daughter raised up by the gracious hand upon her bed of death. And
+Charley told me that when her father died she had kneeled down and
+prayed in her first sorrow that he likewise might be raised up and
+given back to his poor children, and that if she should never get
+better and should die too, she thought it likely that it might come
+into Tom's mind to offer the same prayer for her. Then would I show
+Tom how these people of old days had been brought back to life on
+earth, only that we might know our hope to be restored to heaven!
+
+But of all the various times there were in Charley's illness, there
+was not one when she lost the gentle qualities I have spoken of. And
+there were many, many when I thought in the night of the last high
+belief in the watching angel, and the last higher trust in God, on
+the part of her poor despised father.
+
+And Charley did not die. She flutteringly and slowly turned the
+dangerous point, after long lingering there, and then began to mend.
+The hope that never had been given, from the first, of Charley being
+in outward appearance Charley any more soon began to be encouraged;
+and even that prospered, and I saw her growing into her old childish
+likeness again.
+
+It was a great morning when I could tell Ada all this as she stood
+out in the garden; and it was a great evening when Charley and I at
+last took tea together in the next room. But on that same evening, I
+felt that I was stricken cold.
+
+Happily for both of us, it was not until Charley was safe in bed
+again and placidly asleep that I began to think the contagion of her
+illness was upon me. I had been able easily to hide what I felt at
+tea-time, but I was past that already now, and I knew that I was
+rapidly following in Charley's steps.
+
+I was well enough, however, to be up early in the morning, and to
+return my darling's cheerful blessing from the garden, and to talk
+with her as long as usual. But I was not free from an impression that
+I had been walking about the two rooms in the night, a little beside
+myself, though knowing where I was; and I felt confused at
+times--with a curious sense of fullness, as if I were becoming too
+large altogether.
+
+In the evening I was so much worse that I resolved to prepare
+Charley, with which view I said, "You're getting quite strong,
+Charley, are you not?'
+
+"Oh, quite!" said Charley.
+
+"Strong enough to be told a secret, I think, Charley?"
+
+"Quite strong enough for that, miss!" cried Charley. But Charley's
+face fell in the height of her delight, for she saw the secret in MY
+face; and she came out of the great chair, and fell upon my bosom,
+and said "Oh, miss, it's my doing! It's my doing!" and a great deal
+more out of the fullness of her grateful heart.
+
+"Now, Charley," said I after letting her go on for a little while,
+"if I am to be ill, my great trust, humanly speaking, is in you. And
+unless you are as quiet and composed for me as you always were for
+yourself, you can never fulfil it, Charley."
+
+"If you'll let me cry a little longer, miss," said Charley. "Oh, my
+dear, my dear! If you'll only let me cry a little longer. Oh, my
+dear!"--how affectionately and devotedly she poured this out as she
+clung to my neck, I never can remember without tears--"I'll be good."
+
+So I let Charley cry a little longer, and it did us both good.
+
+"Trust in me now, if you please, miss," said Charley quietly. "I am
+listening to everything you say."
+
+"It's very little at present, Charley. I shall tell your doctor
+to-night that I don't think I am well and that you are going to nurse
+me."
+
+For that the poor child thanked me with her whole heart. "And in the
+morning, when you hear Miss Ada in the garden, if I should not be
+quite able to go to the window-curtain as usual, do you go, Charley,
+and say I am asleep--that I have rather tired myself, and am asleep.
+At all times keep the room as I have kept it, Charley, and let no one
+come."
+
+Charley promised, and I lay down, for I was very heavy. I saw the
+doctor that night and asked the favour of him that I wished to ask
+relative to his saying nothing of my illness in the house as yet. I
+have a very indistinct remembrance of that night melting into day,
+and of day melting into night again; but I was just able on the first
+morning to get to the window and speak to my darling.
+
+On the second morning I heard her dear voice--Oh, how dear
+now!--outside; and I asked Charley, with some difficulty (speech
+being painful to me), to go and say I was asleep. I heard her answer
+softly, "Don't disturb her, Charley, for the world!"
+
+"How does my own Pride look, Charley?" I inquired.
+
+"Disappointed, miss," said Charley, peeping through the curtain.
+
+"But I know she is very beautiful this morning."
+
+"She is indeed, miss," answered Charley, peeping. "Still looking up
+at the window."
+
+With her blue clear eyes, God bless them, always loveliest when
+raised like that!
+
+I called Charley to me and gave her her last charge.
+
+"Now, Charley, when she knows I am ill, she will try to make her way
+into the room. Keep her out, Charley, if you love me truly, to the
+last! Charley, if you let her in but once, only to look upon me for
+one moment as I lie here, I shall die."
+
+"I never will! I never will!" she promised me.
+
+"I believe it, my dear Charley. And now come and sit beside me for a
+little while, and touch me with your hand. For I cannot see you,
+Charley; I am blind."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+The Appointed Time
+
+
+It is night in Lincoln's Inn--perplexed and troublous valley of the
+shadow of the law, where suitors generally find but little day--and
+fat candles are snuffed out in offices, and clerks have rattled down
+the crazy wooden stairs and dispersed. The bell that rings at nine
+o'clock has ceased its doleful clangour about nothing; the gates are
+shut; and the night-porter, a solemn warder with a mighty power of
+sleep, keeps guard in his lodge. From tiers of staircase windows
+clogged lamps like the eyes of Equity, bleared Argus with a
+fathomless pocket for every eye and an eye upon it, dimly blink at
+the stars. In dirty upper casements, here and there, hazy little
+patches of candlelight reveal where some wise draughtsman and
+conveyancer yet toils for the entanglement of real estate in meshes
+of sheep-skin, in the average ratio of about a dozen of sheep to an
+acre of land. Over which bee-like industry these benefactors of their
+species linger yet, though office-hours be past, that they may give,
+for every day, some good account at last.
+
+In the neighbouring court, where the Lord Chancellor of the rag and
+bottle shop dwells, there is a general tendency towards beer and
+supper. Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins, whose respective sons, engaged
+with a circle of acquaintance in the game of hide and seek, have been
+lying in ambush about the by-ways of Chancery Lane for some hours and
+scouring the plain of the same thoroughfare to the confusion of
+passengers--Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins have but now exchanged
+congratulations on the children being abed, and they still linger on
+a door-step over a few parting words. Mr. Krook and his lodger, and
+the fact of Mr. Krook's being "continually in liquor," and the
+testamentary prospects of the young man are, as usual, the staple of
+their conversation. But they have something to say, likewise, of the
+Harmonic Meeting at the Sol's Arms, where the sound of the piano
+through the partly opened windows jingles out into the court, and
+where Little Swills, after keeping the lovers of harmony in a roar
+like a very Yorick, may now be heard taking the gruff line in a
+concerted piece and sentimentally adjuring his friends and patrons to
+"Listen, listen, listen, tew the wa-ter fall!" Mrs. Perkins and Mrs.
+Piper compare opinions on the subject of the young lady of
+professional celebrity who assists at the Harmonic Meetings and who
+has a space to herself in the manuscript announcement in the window,
+Mrs. Perkins possessing information that she has been married a year
+and a half, though announced as Miss M. Melvilleson, the noted siren,
+and that her baby is clandestinely conveyed to the Sol's Arms every
+night to receive its natural nourishment during the entertainments.
+"Sooner than which, myself," says Mrs. Perkins, "I would get my
+living by selling lucifers." Mrs. Piper, as in duty bound, is of the
+same opinion, holding that a private station is better than public
+applause, and thanking heaven for her own (and, by implication, Mrs.
+Perkins') respectability. By this time the pot-boy of the Sol's Arms
+appearing with her supper-pint well frothed, Mrs. Piper accepts that
+tankard and retires indoors, first giving a fair good night to Mrs.
+Perkins, who has had her own pint in her hand ever since it was
+fetched from the same hostelry by young Perkins before he was sent to
+bed. Now there is a sound of putting up shop-shutters in the court
+and a smell as of the smoking of pipes; and shooting stars are seen
+in upper windows, further indicating retirement to rest. Now, too,
+the policeman begins to push at doors; to try fastenings; to be
+suspicious of bundles; and to administer his beat, on the hypothesis
+that every one is either robbing or being robbed.
+
+It is a close night, though the damp cold is searching too, and there
+is a laggard mist a little way up in the air. It is a fine steaming
+night to turn the slaughter-houses, the unwholesome trades, the
+sewerage, bad water, and burial-grounds to account, and give the
+registrar of deaths some extra business. It may be something in the
+air--there is plenty in it--or it may be something in himself that is
+in fault; but Mr. Weevle, otherwise Jobling, is very ill at ease. He
+comes and goes between his own room and the open street door twenty
+times an hour. He has been doing so ever since it fell dark. Since
+the Chancellor shut up his shop, which he did very early to-night,
+Mr. Weevle has been down and up, and down and up (with a cheap tight
+velvet skull-cap on his head, making his whiskers look out of all
+proportion), oftener than before.
+
+It is no phenomenon that Mr. Snagsby should be ill at ease too, for
+he always is so, more or less, under the oppressive influence of the
+secret that is upon him. Impelled by the mystery of which he is a
+partaker and yet in which he is not a sharer, Mr. Snagsby haunts what
+seems to be its fountain-head--the rag and bottle shop in the court.
+It has an irresistible attraction for him. Even now, coming round by
+the Sol's Arms with the intention of passing down the court, and out
+at the Chancery Lane end, and so terminating his unpremeditated
+after-supper stroll of ten minutes' long from his own door and back
+again, Mr. Snagsby approaches.
+
+"What, Mr. Weevle?" says the stationer, stopping to speak. "Are YOU
+there?"
+
+"Aye!" says Weevle, "Here I am, Mr. Snagsby."
+
+"Airing yourself, as I am doing, before you go to bed?" the stationer
+inquires.
+
+"Why, there's not much air to be got here; and what there is, is not
+very freshening," Weevle answers, glancing up and down the court.
+
+"Very true, sir. Don't you observe," says Mr. Snagsby, pausing to
+sniff and taste the air a little, "don't you observe, Mr. Weevle,
+that you're--not to put too fine a point upon it--that you're rather
+greasy here, sir?"
+
+"Why, I have noticed myself that there is a queer kind of flavour in
+the place to-night," Mr. Weevle rejoins. "I suppose it's chops at the
+Sol's Arms."
+
+"Chops, do you think? Oh! Chops, eh?" Mr. Snagsby sniffs and tastes
+again. "Well, sir, I suppose it is. But I should say their cook at
+the Sol wanted a little looking after. She has been burning 'em, sir!
+And I don't think"--Mr. Snagsby sniffs and tastes again and then
+spits and wipes his mouth--"I don't think--not to put too fine a
+point upon it--that they were quite fresh when they were shown the
+gridiron."
+
+"That's very likely. It's a tainting sort of weather."
+
+"It IS a tainting sort of weather," says Mr. Snagsby, "and I find it
+sinking to the spirits."
+
+"By George! I find it gives me the horrors," returns Mr. Weevle.
+
+"Then, you see, you live in a lonesome way, and in a lonesome room,
+with a black circumstance hanging over it," says Mr. Snagsby, looking
+in past the other's shoulder along the dark passage and then falling
+back a step to look up at the house. "I couldn't live in that room
+alone, as you do, sir. I should get so fidgety and worried of an
+evening, sometimes, that I should be driven to come to the door and
+stand here sooner than sit there. But then it's very true that you
+didn't see, in your room, what I saw there. That makes a difference."
+
+"I know quite enough about it," returns Tony.
+
+"It's not agreeable, is it?" pursues Mr. Snagsby, coughing his cough
+of mild persuasion behind his hand. "Mr. Krook ought to consider it
+in the rent. I hope he does, I am sure."
+
+"I hope he does," says Tony. "But I doubt it."
+
+"You find the rent too high, do you, sir?" returns the stationer.
+"Rents ARE high about here. I don't know how it is exactly, but the
+law seems to put things up in price. Not," adds Mr. Snagsby with his
+apologetic cough, "that I mean to say a word against the profession I
+get my living by."
+
+Mr. Weevle again glances up and down the court and then looks at the
+stationer. Mr. Snagsby, blankly catching his eye, looks upward for a
+star or so and coughs a cough expressive of not exactly seeing his
+way out of this conversation.
+
+"It's a curious fact, sir," he observes, slowly rubbing his hands,
+"that he should have been--"
+
+"Who's he?" interrupts Mr. Weevle.
+
+"The deceased, you know," says Mr. Snagsby, twitching his head and
+right eyebrow towards the staircase and tapping his acquaintance on
+the button.
+
+"Ah, to be sure!" returns the other as if he were not over-fond of
+the subject. "I thought we had done with him."
+
+"I was only going to say it's a curious fact, sir, that he should
+have come and lived here, and been one of my writers, and then that
+you should come and live here, and be one of my writers too. Which
+there is nothing derogatory, but far from it in the appellation,"
+says Mr. Snagsby, breaking off with a mistrust that he may have
+unpolitely asserted a kind of proprietorship in Mr. Weevle, "because
+I have known writers that have gone into brewers' houses and done
+really very respectable indeed. Eminently respectable, sir," adds Mr.
+Snagsby with a misgiving that he has not improved the matter.
+
+"It's a curious coincidence, as you say," answers Weevle, once more
+glancing up and down the court.
+
+"Seems a fate in it, don't there?" suggests the stationer.
+
+"There does."
+
+"Just so," observes the stationer with his confirmatory cough. "Quite
+a fate in it. Quite a fate. Well, Mr. Weevle, I am afraid I must bid
+you good night"--Mr. Snagsby speaks as if it made him desolate to go,
+though he has been casting about for any means of escape ever since
+he stopped to speak--"my little woman will be looking for me else.
+Good night, sir!"
+
+If Mr. Snagsby hastens home to save his little woman the trouble of
+looking for him, he might set his mind at rest on that score. His
+little woman has had her eye upon him round the Sol's Arms all this
+time and now glides after him with a pocket handkerchief wrapped over
+her head, honouring Mr. Weevle and his doorway with a searching
+glance as she goes past.
+
+"You'll know me again, ma'am, at all events," says Mr. Weevle to
+himself; "and I can't compliment you on your appearance, whoever you
+are, with your head tied up in a bundle. Is this fellow NEVER
+coming!"
+
+This fellow approaches as he speaks. Mr. Weevle softly holds up his
+finger, and draws him into the passage, and closes the street door.
+Then they go upstairs, Mr. Weevle heavily, and Mr. Guppy (for it is
+he) very lightly indeed. When they are shut into the back room, they
+speak low.
+
+"I thought you had gone to Jericho at least instead of coming here,"
+says Tony.
+
+"Why, I said about ten."
+
+"You said about ten," Tony repeats. "Yes, so you did say about ten.
+But according to my count, it's ten times ten--it's a hundred
+o'clock. I never had such a night in my life!"
+
+"What has been the matter?"
+
+"That's it!" says Tony. "Nothing has been the matter. But here have I
+been stewing and fuming in this jolly old crib till I have had the
+horrors falling on me as thick as hail. THERE'S a blessed-looking
+candle!" says Tony, pointing to the heavily burning taper on his
+table with a great cabbage head and a long winding-sheet.
+
+"That's easily improved," Mr. Guppy observes as he takes the snuffers
+in hand.
+
+"IS it?" returns his friend. "Not so easily as you think. It has been
+smouldering like that ever since it was lighted."
+
+"Why, what's the matter with you, Tony?" inquires Mr. Guppy, looking
+at him, snuffers in hand, as he sits down with his elbow on the
+table.
+
+"William Guppy," replies the other, "I am in the downs. It's this
+unbearably dull, suicidal room--and old Boguey downstairs, I
+suppose." Mr. Weevle moodily pushes the snuffers-tray from him with
+his elbow, leans his head on his hand, puts his feet on the fender,
+and looks at the fire. Mr. Guppy, observing him, slightly tosses his
+head and sits down on the other side of the table in an easy
+attitude.
+
+"Wasn't that Snagsby talking to you, Tony?"
+
+"Yes, and he--yes, it was Snagsby," said Mr. Weevle, altering the
+construction of his sentence.
+
+"On business?"
+
+"No. No business. He was only sauntering by and stopped to prose."
+
+"I thought it was Snagsby," says Mr. Guppy, "and thought it as well
+that he shouldn't see me, so I waited till he was gone."
+
+"There we go again, William G.!" cried Tony, looking up for an
+instant. "So mysterious and secret! By George, if we were going to
+commit a murder, we couldn't have more mystery about it!"
+
+Mr. Guppy affects to smile, and with the view of changing the
+conversation, looks with an admiration, real or pretended, round the
+room at the Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty, terminating his survey
+with the portrait of Lady Dedlock over the mantelshelf, in which she
+is represented on a terrace, with a pedestal upon the terrace, and a
+vase upon the pedestal, and her shawl upon the vase, and a prodigious
+piece of fur upon the shawl, and her arm on the prodigious piece of
+fur, and a bracelet on her arm.
+
+"That's very like Lady Dedlock," says Mr. Guppy. "It's a speaking
+likeness."
+
+"I wish it was," growls Tony, without changing his position. "I
+should have some fashionable conversation, here, then."
+
+Finding by this time that his friend is not to be wheedled into a
+more sociable humour, Mr. Guppy puts about upon the ill-used tack and
+remonstrates with him.
+
+"Tony," says he, "I can make allowances for lowness of spirits, for
+no man knows what it is when it does come upon a man better than I
+do, and no man perhaps has a better right to know it than a man who
+has an unrequited image imprinted on his 'eart. But there are bounds
+to these things when an unoffending party is in question, and I will
+acknowledge to you, Tony, that I don't think your manner on the
+present occasion is hospitable or quite gentlemanly."
+
+"This is strong language, William Guppy," returns Mr. Weevle.
+
+"Sir, it may be," retorts Mr. William Guppy, "but I feel strongly
+when I use it."
+
+Mr. Weevle admits that he has been wrong and begs Mr. William Guppy
+to think no more about it. Mr. William Guppy, however, having got the
+advantage, cannot quite release it without a little more injured
+remonstrance.
+
+"No! Dash it, Tony," says that gentleman, "you really ought to be
+careful how you wound the feelings of a man who has an unrequited
+image imprinted on his 'eart and who is NOT altogether happy in those
+chords which vibrate to the tenderest emotions. You, Tony, possess in
+yourself all that is calculated to charm the eye and allure the
+taste. It is not--happily for you, perhaps, and I may wish that I
+could say the same--it is not your character to hover around one
+flower. The ole garden is open to you, and your airy pinions carry
+you through it. Still, Tony, far be it from me, I am sure, to wound
+even your feelings without a cause!"
+
+Tony again entreats that the subject may be no longer pursued, saying
+emphatically, "William Guppy, drop it!" Mr. Guppy acquiesces, with
+the reply, "I never should have taken it up, Tony, of my own accord."
+
+"And now," says Tony, stirring the fire, "touching this same bundle
+of letters. Isn't it an extraordinary thing of Krook to have
+appointed twelve o'clock to-night to hand 'em over to me?"
+
+"Very. What did he do it for?"
+
+"What does he do anything for? HE don't know. Said to-day was his
+birthday and he'd hand 'em over to-night at twelve o'clock. He'll
+have drunk himself blind by that time. He has been at it all day."
+
+"He hasn't forgotten the appointment, I hope?"
+
+"Forgotten? Trust him for that. He never forgets anything. I saw him
+to-night, about eight--helped him to shut up his shop--and he had got
+the letters then in his hairy cap. He pulled it off and showed 'em
+me. When the shop was closed, he took them out of his cap, hung his
+cap on the chair-back, and stood turning them over before the fire. I
+heard him a little while afterwards, through the floor here, humming
+like the wind, the only song he knows--about Bibo, and old Charon,
+and Bibo being drunk when he died, or something or other. He has been
+as quiet since as an old rat asleep in his hole."
+
+"And you are to go down at twelve?"
+
+"At twelve. And as I tell you, when you came it seemed to me a
+hundred."
+
+"Tony," says Mr. Guppy after considering a little with his legs
+crossed, "he can't read yet, can he?"
+
+"Read! He'll never read. He can make all the letters separately, and
+he knows most of them separately when he sees them; he has got on
+that much, under me; but he can't put them together. He's too old to
+acquire the knack of it now--and too drunk."
+
+"Tony," says Mr. Guppy, uncrossing and recrossing his legs, "how do
+you suppose he spelt out that name of Hawdon?"
+
+"He never spelt it out. You know what a curious power of eye he has
+and how he has been used to employ himself in copying things by eye
+alone. He imitated it, evidently from the direction of a letter, and
+asked me what it meant."
+
+"Tony," says Mr. Guppy, uncrossing and recrossing his legs again,
+"should you say that the original was a man's writing or a woman's?"
+
+"A woman's. Fifty to one a lady's--slopes a good deal, and the end of
+the letter 'n,' long and hasty."
+
+Mr. Guppy has been biting his thumb-nail during this dialogue,
+generally changing the thumb when he has changed the cross leg. As he
+is going to do so again, he happens to look at his coat-sleeve. It
+takes his attention. He stares at it, aghast.
+
+"Why, Tony, what on earth is going on in this house to-night? Is
+there a chimney on fire?"
+
+"Chimney on fire!"
+
+"Ah!" returns Mr. Guppy. "See how the soot's falling. See here, on my
+arm! See again, on the table here! Confound the stuff, it won't blow
+off--smears like black fat!"
+
+They look at one another, and Tony goes listening to the door, and a
+little way upstairs, and a little way downstairs. Comes back and says
+it's all right and all quiet, and quotes the remark he lately made to
+Mr. Snagsby about their cooking chops at the Sol's Arms.
+
+"And it was then," resumes Mr. Guppy, still glancing with remarkable
+aversion at the coat-sleeve, as they pursue their conversation before
+the fire, leaning on opposite sides of the table, with their heads
+very near together, "that he told you of his having taken the bundle
+of letters from his lodger's portmanteau?"
+
+"That was the time, sir," answers Tony, faintly adjusting his
+whiskers. "Whereupon I wrote a line to my dear boy, the Honourable
+William Guppy, informing him of the appointment for to-night and
+advising him not to call before, Boguey being a slyboots."
+
+The light vivacious tone of fashionable life which is usually assumed
+by Mr. Weevle sits so ill upon him to-night that he abandons that and
+his whiskers together, and after looking over his shoulder, appears
+to yield himself up a prey to the horrors again.
+
+"You are to bring the letters to your room to read and compare, and
+to get yourself into a position to tell him all about them. That's
+the arrangement, isn't it, Tony?" asks Mr. Guppy, anxiously biting
+his thumb-nail.
+
+"You can't speak too low. Yes. That's what he and I agreed."
+
+"I tell you what, Tony--"
+
+"You can't speak too low," says Tony once more. Mr. Guppy nods his
+sagacious head, advances it yet closer, and drops into a whisper.
+
+"I tell you what. The first thing to be done is to make another
+packet like the real one so that if he should ask to see the real one
+while it's in my possession, you can show him the dummy."
+
+"And suppose he detects the dummy as soon as he sees it, which with
+his biting screw of an eye is about five hundred times more likely
+than not," suggests Tony.
+
+"Then we'll face it out. They don't belong to him, and they never
+did. You found that, and you placed them in my hands--a legal friend
+of yours--for security. If he forces us to it, they'll be producible,
+won't they?"
+
+"Ye-es," is Mr. Weevle's reluctant admission.
+
+"Why, Tony," remonstrates his friend, "how you look! You don't doubt
+William Guppy? You don't suspect any harm?"
+
+"I don't suspect anything more than I know, William," returns the
+other gravely.
+
+"And what do you know?" urges Mr. Guppy, raising his voice a little;
+but on his friend's once more warning him, "I tell you, you can't
+speak too low," he repeats his question without any sound at all,
+forming with his lips only the words, "What do you know?"
+
+"I know three things. First, I know that here we are whispering in
+secrecy, a pair of conspirators."
+
+"Well!" says Mr. Guppy. "And we had better be that than a pair of
+noodles, which we should be if we were doing anything else, for it's
+the only way of doing what we want to do. Secondly?"
+
+"Secondly, it's not made out to me how it's likely to be profitable,
+after all."
+
+Mr. Guppy casts up his eyes at the portrait of Lady Dedlock over the
+mantelshelf and replies, "Tony, you are asked to leave that to the
+honour of your friend. Besides its being calculated to serve that
+friend in those chords of the human mind which--which need not be
+called into agonizing vibration on the present occasion--your friend
+is no fool. What's that?"
+
+"It's eleven o'clock striking by the bell of Saint Paul's. Listen and
+you'll hear all the bells in the city jangling."
+
+Both sit silent, listening to the metal voices, near and distant,
+resounding from towers of various heights, in tones more various than
+their situations. When these at length cease, all seems more
+mysterious and quiet than before. One disagreeable result of
+whispering is that it seems to evoke an atmosphere of silence,
+haunted by the ghosts of sound--strange cracks and tickings, the
+rustling of garments that have no substance in them, and the tread of
+dreadful feet that would leave no mark on the sea-sand or the winter
+snow. So sensitive the two friends happen to be that the air is full
+of these phantoms, and the two look over their shoulders by one
+consent to see that the door is shut.
+
+"Yes, Tony?" says Mr. Guppy, drawing nearer to the fire and biting
+his unsteady thumb-nail. "You were going to say, thirdly?"
+
+"It's far from a pleasant thing to be plotting about a dead man in
+the room where he died, especially when you happen to live in it."
+
+"But we are plotting nothing against him, Tony."
+
+"May be not, still I don't like it. Live here by yourself and see how
+YOU like it."
+
+"As to dead men, Tony," proceeds Mr. Guppy, evading this proposal,
+"there have been dead men in most rooms."
+
+"I know there have, but in most rooms you let them alone, and--and
+they let you alone," Tony answers.
+
+The two look at each other again. Mr. Guppy makes a hurried remark to
+the effect that they may be doing the deceased a service, that he
+hopes so. There is an oppressive blank until Mr. Weevle, by stirring
+the fire suddenly, makes Mr. Guppy start as if his heart had been
+stirred instead.
+
+"Fah! Here's more of this hateful soot hanging about," says he. "Let
+us open the window a bit and get a mouthful of air. It's too close."
+
+He raises the sash, and they both rest on the window-sill, half in
+and half out of the room. The neighbouring houses are too near to
+admit of their seeing any sky without craning their necks and looking
+up, but lights in frowsy windows here and there, and the rolling of
+distant carriages, and the new expression that there is of the stir
+of men, they find to be comfortable. Mr. Guppy, noiselessly tapping
+on the window-sill, resumes his whispering in quite a light-comedy
+tone.
+
+"By the by, Tony, don't forget old Smallweed," meaning the younger of
+that name. "I have not let him into this, you know. That grandfather
+of his is too keen by half. It runs in the family."
+
+"I remember," says Tony. "I am up to all that."
+
+"And as to Krook," resumes Mr. Guppy. "Now, do you suppose he really
+has got hold of any other papers of importance, as he has boasted to
+you, since you have been such allies?"
+
+Tony shakes his head. "I don't know. Can't Imagine. If we get through
+this business without rousing his suspicions, I shall be better
+informed, no doubt. How can I know without seeing them, when he don't
+know himself? He is always spelling out words from them, and chalking
+them over the table and the shop-wall, and asking what this is and
+what that is; but his whole stock from beginning to end may easily be
+the waste-paper he bought it as, for anything I can say. It's a
+monomania with him to think he is possessed of documents. He has been
+going to learn to read them this last quarter of a century, I should
+judge, from what he tells me."
+
+"How did he first come by that idea, though? That's the question,"
+Mr. Guppy suggests with one eye shut, after a little forensic
+meditation. "He may have found papers in something he bought, where
+papers were not supposed to be, and may have got it into his shrewd
+head from the manner and place of their concealment that they are
+worth something."
+
+"Or he may have been taken in, in some pretended bargain. Or he may
+have been muddled altogether by long staring at whatever he HAS got,
+and by drink, and by hanging about the Lord Chancellor's Court and
+hearing of documents for ever," returns Mr. Weevle.
+
+Mr. Guppy sitting on the window-sill, nodding his head and balancing
+all these possibilities in his mind, continues thoughtfully to tap
+it, and clasp it, and measure it with his hand, until he hastily
+draws his hand away.
+
+"What, in the devil's name," he says, "is this! Look at my fingers!"
+
+A thick, yellow liquor defiles them, which is offensive to the touch
+and sight and more offensive to the smell. A stagnant, sickening oil
+with some natural repulsion in it that makes them both shudder.
+
+"What have you been doing here? What have you been pouring out of
+window?"
+
+"I pouring out of window! Nothing, I swear! Never, since I have been
+here!" cries the lodger.
+
+And yet look here--and look here! When he brings the candle here,
+from the corner of the window-sill, it slowly drips and creeps away
+down the bricks, here lies in a little thick nauseous pool.
+
+"This is a horrible house," says Mr. Guppy, shutting down the window.
+"Give me some water or I shall cut my hand off."
+
+He so washes, and rubs, and scrubs, and smells, and washes, that he
+has not long restored himself with a glass of brandy and stood
+silently before the fire when Saint Paul's bell strikes twelve and
+all those other bells strike twelve from their towers of various
+heights in the dark air, and in their many tones. When all is quiet
+again, the lodger says, "It's the appointed time at last. Shall I
+go?"
+
+Mr. Guppy nods and gives him a "lucky touch" on the back, but not
+with the washed hand, though it is his right hand.
+
+He goes downstairs, and Mr. Guppy tries to compose himself before the
+fire for waiting a long time. But in no more than a minute or two the
+stairs creak and Tony comes swiftly back.
+
+"Have you got them?"
+
+"Got them! No. The old man's not there."
+
+He has been so horribly frightened in the short interval that his
+terror seizes the other, who makes a rush at him and asks loudly,
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"I couldn't make him hear, and I softly opened the door and looked
+in. And the burning smell is there--and the soot is there, and the
+oil is there--and he is not there!" Tony ends this with a groan.
+
+Mr. Guppy takes the light. They go down, more dead than alive, and
+holding one another, push open the door of the back shop. The cat has
+retreated close to it and stands snarling, not at them, at something
+on the ground before the fire. There is a very little fire left in
+the grate, but there is a smouldering, suffocating vapour in the room
+and a dark, greasy coating on the walls and ceiling. The chairs and
+table, and the bottle so rarely absent from the table, all stand as
+usual. On one chair-back hang the old man's hairy cap and coat.
+
+"Look!" whispers the lodger, pointing his friend's attention to these
+objects with a trembling finger. "I told you so. When I saw him last,
+he took his cap off, took out the little bundle of old letters, hung
+his cap on the back of the chair--his coat was there already, for he
+had pulled that off before he went to put the shutters up--and I left
+him turning the letters over in his hand, standing just where that
+crumbled black thing is upon the floor."
+
+Is he hanging somewhere? They look up. No.
+
+"See!" whispers Tony. "At the foot of the same chair there lies a
+dirty bit of thin red cord that they tie up pens with. That went
+round the letters. He undid it slowly, leering and laughing at me,
+before he began to turn them over, and threw it there. I saw it
+fall."
+
+"What's the matter with the cat?" says Mr. Guppy. "Look at her!"
+
+"Mad, I think. And no wonder in this evil place."
+
+They advance slowly, looking at all these things. The cat remains
+where they found her, still snarling at the something on the ground
+before the fire and between the two chairs. What is it? Hold up the
+light.
+
+Here is a small burnt patch of flooring; here is the tinder from a
+little bundle of burnt paper, but not so light as usual, seeming to
+be steeped in something; and here is--is it the cinder of a small
+charred and broken log of wood sprinkled with white ashes, or is it
+coal? Oh, horror, he IS here! And this from which we run away,
+striking out the light and overturning one another into the street,
+is all that represents him.
+
+Help, help, help! Come into this house for heaven's sake! Plenty will
+come in, but none can help. The Lord Chancellor of that court, true
+to his title in his last act, has died the death of all lord
+chancellors in all courts and of all authorities in all places under
+all names soever, where false pretences are made, and where injustice
+is done. Call the death by any name your Highness will, attribute
+it to whom you will, or say it might have been prevented how you
+will, it is the same death eternally--inborn, inbred, engendered
+in the corrupted humours of the vicious body itself, and that
+only--spontaneous combustion, and none other of all the deaths that
+can be died.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+Interlopers
+
+
+Now do those two gentlemen not very neat about the cuffs and buttons
+who attended the last coroner's inquest at the Sol's Arms reappear in
+the precincts with surprising swiftness (being, in fact, breathlessly
+fetched by the active and intelligent beadle), and institute
+perquisitions through the court, and dive into the Sol's parlour, and
+write with ravenous little pens on tissue-paper. Now do they note
+down, in the watches of the night, how the neighbourhood of Chancery
+Lane was yesterday, at about midnight, thrown into a state of the
+most intense agitation and excitement by the following alarming and
+horrible discovery. Now do they set forth how it will doubtless be
+remembered that some time back a painful sensation was created in the
+public mind by a case of mysterious death from opium occurring in the
+first floor of the house occupied as a rag, bottle, and general
+marine store shop, by an eccentric individual of intemperate habits,
+far advanced in life, named Krook; and how, by a remarkable
+coincidence, Krook was examined at the inquest, which it may be
+recollected was held on that occasion at the Sol's Arms, a
+well-conducted tavern immediately adjoining the premises in question
+on the west side and licensed to a highly respectable landlord, Mr.
+James George Bogsby. Now do they show (in as many words as possible)
+how during some hours of yesterday evening a very peculiar smell was
+observed by the inhabitants of the court, in which the tragical
+occurrence which forms the subject of that present account
+transpired; and which odour was at one time so powerful that Mr.
+Swills, a comic vocalist professionally engaged by Mr. J. G. Bogsby,
+has himself stated to our reporter that he mentioned to Miss M.
+Melvilleson, a lady of some pretensions to musical ability, likewise
+engaged by Mr. J. G. Bogsby to sing at a series of concerts called
+Harmonic Assemblies, or Meetings, which it would appear are held at
+the Sol's Arms under Mr. Bogsby's direction pursuant to the Act of
+George the Second, that he (Mr. Swills) found his voice seriously
+affected by the impure state of the atmosphere, his jocose expression
+at the time being that he was like an empty post-office, for he
+hadn't a single note in him. How this account of Mr. Swills is
+entirely corroborated by two intelligent married females residing in
+the same court and known respectively by the names of Mrs. Piper and
+Mrs. Perkins, both of whom observed the foetid effluvia and regarded
+them as being emitted from the premises in the occupation of Krook,
+the unfortunate deceased. All this and a great deal more the two
+gentlemen who have formed an amicable partnership in the melancholy
+catastrophe write down on the spot; and the boy population of the
+court (out of bed in a moment) swarm up the shutters of the Sol's
+Arms parlour, to behold the tops of their heads while they are about
+it.
+
+The whole court, adult as well as boy, is sleepless for that night,
+and can do nothing but wrap up its many heads, and talk of the
+ill-fated house, and look at it. Miss Flite has been bravely rescued
+from her chamber, as if it were in flames, and accommodated with a
+bed at the Sol's Arms. The Sol neither turns off its gas nor shuts
+its door all night, for any kind of public excitement makes good for
+the Sol and causes the court to stand in need of comfort. The house
+has not done so much in the stomachic article of cloves or in
+brandy-and-water warm since the inquest. The moment the pot-boy heard
+what had happened, he rolled up his shirt-sleeves tight to his
+shoulders and said, "There'll be a run upon us!" In the first outcry,
+young Piper dashed off for the fire-engines and returned in triumph
+at a jolting gallop perched up aloft on the Phoenix and holding on to
+that fabulous creature with all his might in the midst of helmets and
+torches. One helmet remains behind after careful investigation of all
+chinks and crannies and slowly paces up and down before the house in
+company with one of the two policemen who have likewise been left in
+charge thereof. To this trio everybody in the court possessed of
+sixpence has an insatiate desire to exhibit hospitality in a liquid
+form.
+
+Mr. Weevle and his friend Mr. Guppy are within the bar at the Sol and
+are worth anything to the Sol that the bar contains if they will only
+stay there. "This is not a time," says Mr. Bogsby, "to haggle about
+money," though he looks something sharply after it, over the counter;
+"give your orders, you two gentlemen, and you're welcome to whatever
+you put a name to."
+
+Thus entreated, the two gentlemen (Mr. Weevle especially) put names
+to so many things that in course of time they find it difficult to
+put a name to anything quite distinctly, though they still relate to
+all new-comers some version of the night they have had of it, and of
+what they said, and what they thought, and what they saw. Meanwhile,
+one or other of the policemen often flits about the door, and pushing
+it open a little way at the full length of his arm, looks in from
+outer gloom. Not that he has any suspicions, but that he may as well
+know what they are up to in there.
+
+Thus night pursues its leaden course, finding the court still out of
+bed through the unwonted hours, still treating and being treated,
+still conducting itself similarly to a court that has had a little
+money left it unexpectedly. Thus night at length with slow-retreating
+steps departs, and the lamp-lighter going his rounds, like an
+executioner to a despotic king, strikes off the little heads of fire
+that have aspired to lessen the darkness. Thus the day cometh,
+whether or no.
+
+And the day may discern, even with its dim London eye, that the court
+has been up all night. Over and above the faces that have fallen
+drowsily on tables and the heels that lie prone on hard floors
+instead of beds, the brick and mortar physiognomy of the very court
+itself looks worn and jaded. And now the neighbourhood, waking up and
+beginning to hear of what has happened, comes streaming in, half
+dressed, to ask questions; and the two policemen and the helmet (who
+are far less impressible externally than the court) have enough to do
+to keep the door.
+
+"Good gracious, gentlemen!" says Mr. Snagsby, coming up. "What's this
+I hear!"
+
+"Why, it's true," returns one of the policemen. "That's what it is.
+Now move on here, come!"
+
+"Why, good gracious, gentlemen," says Mr. Snagsby, somewhat promptly
+backed away, "I was at this door last night betwixt ten and eleven
+o'clock in conversation with the young man who lodges here."
+
+"Indeed?" returns the policeman. "You will find the young man next
+door then. Now move on here, some of you."
+
+"Not hurt, I hope?" says Mr. Snagsby.
+
+"Hurt? No. What's to hurt him!"
+
+Mr. Snagsby, wholly unable to answer this or any question in his
+troubled mind, repairs to the Sol's Arms and finds Mr. Weevle
+languishing over tea and toast with a considerable expression on him
+of exhausted excitement and exhausted tobacco-smoke.
+
+"And Mr. Guppy likewise!" quoth Mr. Snagsby. "Dear, dear, dear! What
+a fate there seems in all this! And my lit--"
+
+Mr. Snagsby's power of speech deserts him in the formation of the
+words "my little woman." For to see that injured female walk into the
+Sol's Arms at that hour of the morning and stand before the
+beer-engine, with her eyes fixed upon him like an accusing spirit,
+strikes him dumb.
+
+"My dear," says Mr. Snagsby when his tongue is loosened, "will you
+take anything? A little--not to put too fine a point upon it--drop of
+shrub?"
+
+"No," says Mrs. Snagsby.
+
+"My love, you know these two gentlemen?"
+
+"Yes!" says Mrs. Snagsby, and in a rigid manner acknowledges their
+presence, still fixing Mr. Snagsby with her eye.
+
+The devoted Mr. Snagsby cannot bear this treatment. He takes Mrs.
+Snagsby by the hand and leads her aside to an adjacent cask.
+
+"My little woman, why do you look at me in that way? Pray don't do
+it."
+
+"I can't help my looks," says Mrs. Snagsby, "and if I could I
+wouldn't."
+
+Mr. Snagsby, with his cough of meekness, rejoins, "Wouldn't you
+really, my dear?" and meditates. Then coughs his cough of trouble and
+says, "This is a dreadful mystery, my love!" still fearfully
+disconcerted by Mrs. Snagsby's eye.
+
+"It IS," returns Mrs. Snagsby, shaking her head, "a dreadful
+mystery."
+
+"My little woman," urges Mr. Snagsby in a piteous manner, "don't for
+goodness' sake speak to me with that bitter expression and look at me
+in that searching way! I beg and entreat of you not to do it. Good
+Lord, you don't suppose that I would go spontaneously combusting any
+person, my dear?"
+
+"I can't say," returns Mrs. Snagsby.
+
+On a hasty review of his unfortunate position, Mr. Snagsby "can't
+say" either. He is not prepared positively to deny that he may have
+had something to do with it. He has had something--he don't know
+what--to do with so much in this connexion that is mysterious that it
+is possible he may even be implicated, without knowing it, in the
+present transaction. He faintly wipes his forehead with his
+handkerchief and gasps.
+
+"My life," says the unhappy stationer, "would you have any objections
+to mention why, being in general so delicately circumspect in your
+conduct, you come into a wine-vaults before breakfast?"
+
+"Why do YOU come here?" inquires Mrs. Snagsby.
+
+"My dear, merely to know the rights of the fatal accident which has
+happened to the venerable party who has been--combusted." Mr. Snagsby
+has made a pause to suppress a groan. "I should then have related
+them to you, my love, over your French roll."
+
+"I dare say you would! You relate everything to me, Mr. Snagsby."
+
+"Every--my lit--"
+
+"I should be glad," says Mrs. Snagsby after contemplating his
+increased confusion with a severe and sinister smile, "if you would
+come home with me; I think you may be safer there, Mr. Snagsby, than
+anywhere else."
+
+"My love, I don't know but what I may be, I am sure. I am ready to
+go."
+
+Mr. Snagsby casts his eye forlornly round the bar, gives Messrs.
+Weevle and Guppy good morning, assures them of the satisfaction with
+which he sees them uninjured, and accompanies Mrs. Snagsby from the
+Sol's Arms. Before night his doubt whether he may not be responsible
+for some inconceivable part in the catastrophe which is the talk of
+the whole neighbourhood is almost resolved into certainty by Mrs.
+Snagsby's pertinacity in that fixed gaze. His mental sufferings are
+so great that he entertains wandering ideas of delivering himself up
+to justice and requiring to be cleared if innocent and punished with
+the utmost rigour of the law if guilty.
+
+Mr. Weevle and Mr. Guppy, having taken their breakfast, step into
+Lincoln's Inn to take a little walk about the square and clear as
+many of the dark cobwebs out of their brains as a little walk may.
+
+"There can be no more favourable time than the present, Tony," says
+Mr. Guppy after they have broodingly made out the four sides of the
+square, "for a word or two between us upon a point on which we must,
+with very little delay, come to an understanding."
+
+"Now, I tell you what, William G.!" returns the other, eyeing his
+companion with a bloodshot eye. "If it's a point of conspiracy, you
+needn't take the trouble to mention it. I have had enough of that,
+and I ain't going to have any more. We shall have YOU taking fire
+next or blowing up with a bang."
+
+This supposititious phenomenon is so very disagreeable to Mr. Guppy
+that his voice quakes as he says in a moral way, "Tony, I should have
+thought that what we went through last night would have been a lesson
+to you never to be personal any more as long as you lived." To which
+Mr. Weevle returns, "William, I should have thought it would have
+been a lesson to YOU never to conspire any more as long as you
+lived." To which Mr. Guppy says, "Who's conspiring?" To which Mr.
+Jobling replies, "Why, YOU are!" To which Mr. Guppy retorts, "No, I
+am not." To which Mr. Jobling retorts again, "Yes, you are!" To which
+Mr. Guppy retorts, "Who says so?" To which Mr. Jobling retorts, "I
+say so!" To which Mr. Guppy retorts, "Oh, indeed?" To which Mr.
+Jobling retorts, "Yes, indeed!" And both being now in a heated state,
+they walk on silently for a while to cool down again.
+
+"Tony," says Mr. Guppy then, "if you heard your friend out instead of
+flying at him, you wouldn't fall into mistakes. But your temper is
+hasty and you are not considerate. Possessing in yourself, Tony, all
+that is calculated to charm the eye--"
+
+"Oh! Blow the eye!" cries Mr. Weevle, cutting him short. "Say what
+you have got to say!"
+
+Finding his friend in this morose and material condition, Mr. Guppy
+only expresses the finer feelings of his soul through the tone of
+injury in which he recommences, "Tony, when I say there is a point on
+which we must come to an understanding pretty soon, I say so quite
+apart from any kind of conspiring, however innocent. You know it is
+professionally arranged beforehand in all cases that are tried what
+facts the witnesses are to prove. Is it or is it not desirable that
+we should know what facts we are to prove on the inquiry into the
+death of this unfortunate old mo--gentleman?" (Mr. Guppy was going to
+say "mogul," but thinks "gentleman" better suited to the
+circumstances.)
+
+"What facts? THE facts."
+
+"The facts bearing on that inquiry. Those are"--Mr. Guppy tells them
+off on his fingers--"what we knew of his habits, when you saw him
+last, what his condition was then, the discovery that we made, and
+how we made it."
+
+"Yes," says Mr. Weevle. "Those are about the facts."
+
+"We made the discovery in consequence of his having, in his eccentric
+way, an appointment with you at twelve o'clock at night, when you
+were to explain some writing to him as you had often done before on
+account of his not being able to read. I, spending the evening with
+you, was called down--and so forth. The inquiry being only into the
+circumstances touching the death of the deceased, it's not necessary
+to go beyond these facts, I suppose you'll agree?"
+
+"No!" returns Mr. Weevle. "I suppose not."
+
+"And this is not a conspiracy, perhaps?" says the injured Guppy.
+
+"No," returns his friend; "if it's nothing worse than this, I
+withdraw the observation."
+
+"Now, Tony," says Mr. Guppy, taking his arm again and walking him
+slowly on, "I should like to know, in a friendly way, whether you
+have yet thought over the many advantages of your continuing to live
+at that place?"
+
+"What do you mean?" says Tony, stopping.
+
+"Whether you have yet thought over the many advantages of your
+continuing to live at that place?" repeats Mr. Guppy, walking him on
+again.
+
+"At what place? THAT place?" pointing in the direction of the rag and
+bottle shop.
+
+Mr. Guppy nods.
+
+"Why, I wouldn't pass another night there for any consideration that
+you could offer me," says Mr. Weevle, haggardly staring.
+
+"Do you mean it though, Tony?"
+
+"Mean it! Do I look as if I mean it? I feel as if I do; I know that,"
+says Mr. Weevle with a very genuine shudder.
+
+"Then the possibility or probability--for such it must be
+considered--of your never being disturbed in possession of those
+effects lately belonging to a lone old man who seemed to have no
+relation in the world, and the certainty of your being able to find
+out what he really had got stored up there, don't weigh with you at
+all against last night, Tony, if I understand you?" says Mr. Guppy,
+biting his thumb with the appetite of vexation.
+
+"Certainly not. Talk in that cool way of a fellow's living there?"
+cries Mr. Weevle indignantly. "Go and live there yourself."
+
+"Oh! I, Tony!" says Mr. Guppy, soothing him. "I have never lived
+there and couldn't get a lodging there now, whereas you have got
+one."
+
+"You are welcome to it," rejoins his friend, "and--ugh!--you may make
+yourself at home in it."
+
+"Then you really and truly at this point," says Mr. Guppy, "give up
+the whole thing, if I understand you, Tony?"
+
+"You never," returns Tony with a most convincing steadfastness, "said
+a truer word in all your life. I do!"
+
+While they are so conversing, a hackney-coach drives into the square,
+on the box of which vehicle a very tall hat makes itself manifest to
+the public. Inside the coach, and consequently not so manifest to the
+multitude, though sufficiently so to the two friends, for the coach
+stops almost at their feet, are the venerable Mr. Smallweed and Mrs.
+Smallweed, accompanied by their granddaughter Judy.
+
+An air of haste and excitement pervades the party, and as the tall
+hat (surmounting Mr. Smallweed the younger) alights, Mr. Smallweed
+the elder pokes his head out of window and bawls to Mr. Guppy, "How
+de do, sir! How de do!"
+
+"What do Chick and his family want here at this time of the morning,
+I wonder!" says Mr. Guppy, nodding to his familiar.
+
+"My dear sir," cries Grandfather Smallweed, "would you do me a
+favour? Would you and your friend be so very obleeging as to carry me
+into the public-house in the court, while Bart and his sister bring
+their grandmother along? Would you do an old man that good turn,
+sir?"
+
+Mr. Guppy looks at his friend, repeating inquiringly, "The
+public-house in the court?" And they prepare to bear the venerable
+burden to the Sol's Arms.
+
+"There's your fare!" says the patriarch to the coachman with a fierce
+grin and shaking his incapable fist at him. "Ask me for a penny more,
+and I'll have my lawful revenge upon you. My dear young men, be easy
+with me, if you please. Allow me to catch you round the neck. I won't
+squeeze you tighter than I can help. Oh, Lord! Oh, dear me! Oh, my
+bones!"
+
+It is well that the Sol is not far off, for Mr. Weevle presents an
+apoplectic appearance before half the distance is accomplished. With
+no worse aggravation of his symptoms, however, than the utterance of
+divers croaking sounds expressive of obstructed respiration, he
+fulfils his share of the porterage and the benevolent old gentleman
+is deposited by his own desire in the parlour of the Sol's Arms.
+
+"Oh, Lord!" gasps Mr. Smallweed, looking about him, breathless, from
+an arm-chair. "Oh, dear me! Oh, my bones and back! Oh, my aches and
+pains! Sit down, you dancing, prancing, shambling, scrambling
+poll-parrot! Sit down!"
+
+This little apostrophe to Mrs. Smallweed is occasioned by a
+propensity on the part of that unlucky old lady whenever she finds
+herself on her feet to amble about and "set" to inanimate objects,
+accompanying herself with a chattering noise, as in a witch dance. A
+nervous affection has probably as much to do with these
+demonstrations as any imbecile intention in the poor old woman, but
+on the present occasion they are so particularly lively in connexion
+with the Windsor arm-chair, fellow to that in which Mr. Smallweed is
+seated, that she only quite desists when her grandchildren have held
+her down in it, her lord in the meanwhile bestowing upon her, with
+great volubility, the endearing epithet of "a pig-headed jackdaw,"
+repeated a surprising number of times.
+
+"My dear sir," Grandfather Smallweed then proceeds, addressing Mr.
+Guppy, "there has been a calamity here. Have you heard of it, either
+of you?"
+
+"Heard of it, sir! Why, we discovered it."
+
+"You discovered it. You two discovered it! Bart, THEY discovered it!"
+
+The two discoverers stare at the Smallweeds, who return the
+compliment.
+
+"My dear friends," whines Grandfather Smallweed, putting out both his
+hands, "I owe you a thousand thanks for discharging the melancholy
+office of discovering the ashes of Mrs. Smallweed's brother."
+
+"Eh?" says Mr. Guppy.
+
+"Mrs. Smallweed's brother, my dear friend--her only relation. We were
+not on terms, which is to be deplored now, but he never WOULD be on
+terms. He was not fond of us. He was eccentric--he was very
+eccentric. Unless he has left a will (which is not at all likely) I
+shall take out letters of administration. I have come down to look
+after the property; it must be sealed up, it must be protected. I
+have come down," repeats Grandfather Smallweed, hooking the air
+towards him with all his ten fingers at once, "to look after the
+property."
+
+"I think, Small," says the disconsolate Mr. Guppy, "you might have
+mentioned that the old man was your uncle."
+
+"You two were so close about him that I thought you would like me to
+be the same," returns that old bird with a secretly glistening eye.
+"Besides, I wasn't proud of him."
+
+"Besides which, it was nothing to you, you know, whether he was or
+not," says Judy. Also with a secretly glistening eye.
+
+"He never saw me in his life to know me," observed Small; "I don't
+know why I should introduce HIM, I am sure!"
+
+"No, he never communicated with us, which is to be deplored," the old
+gentleman strikes in, "but I have come to look after the property--to
+look over the papers, and to look after the property. We shall make
+good our title. It is in the hands of my solicitor. Mr. Tulkinghorn,
+of Lincoln's Inn Fields, over the way there, is so good as to act as
+my solicitor; and grass don't grow under HIS feet, I can tell ye.
+Krook was Mrs. Smallweed's only brother; she had no relation but
+Krook, and Krook had no relation but Mrs. Smallweed. I am speaking of
+your brother, you brimstone black-beetle, that was seventy-six years
+of age."
+
+Mrs. Smallweed instantly begins to shake her head and pipe up,
+"Seventy-six pound seven and sevenpence! Seventy-six thousand bags of
+money! Seventy-six hundred thousand million of parcels of
+bank-notes!"
+
+"Will somebody give me a quart pot?" exclaims her exasperated
+husband, looking helplessly about him and finding no missile within
+his reach. "Will somebody obleege me with a spittoon? Will somebody
+hand me anything hard and bruising to pelt at her? You hag, you cat,
+you dog, you brimstone barker!" Here Mr. Smallweed, wrought up to the
+highest pitch by his own eloquence, actually throws Judy at her
+grandmother in default of anything else, by butting that young virgin
+at the old lady with such force as he can muster and then dropping
+into his chair in a heap.
+
+"Shake me up, somebody, if you'll be so good," says the voice from
+within the faintly struggling bundle into which he has collapsed. "I
+have come to look after the property. Shake me up, and call in the
+police on duty at the next house to be explained to about the
+property. My solicitor will be here presently to protect the
+property. Transportation or the gallows for anybody who shall touch
+the property!" As his dutiful grandchildren set him up, panting, and
+putting him through the usual restorative process of shaking and
+punching, he still repeats like an echo, "The--the property! The
+property! Property!"
+
+Mr. Weevle and Mr. Guppy look at each other, the former as having
+relinquished the whole affair, the latter with a discomfited
+countenance as having entertained some lingering expectations yet.
+But there is nothing to be done in opposition to the Smallweed
+interest. Mr. Tulkinghorn's clerk comes down from his official pew in
+the chambers to mention to the police that Mr. Tulkinghorn is
+answerable for its being all correct about the next of kin and that
+the papers and effects will be formally taken possession of in due
+time and course. Mr. Smallweed is at once permitted so far to assert
+his supremacy as to be carried on a visit of sentiment into the next
+house and upstairs into Miss Flite's deserted room, where he looks
+like a hideous bird of prey newly added to her aviary.
+
+The arrival of this unexpected heir soon taking wind in the court
+still makes good for the Sol and keeps the court upon its mettle.
+Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins think it hard upon the young man if there
+really is no will, and consider that a handsome present ought to be
+made him out of the estate. Young Piper and young Perkins, as members
+of that restless juvenile circle which is the terror of the
+foot-passengers in Chancery Lane, crumble into ashes behind the pump
+and under the archway all day long, where wild yells and hootings
+take place over their remains. Little Swills and Miss M. Melvilleson
+enter into affable conversation with their patrons, feeling that
+these unusual occurrences level the barriers between professionals
+and non-professionals. Mr. Bogsby puts up "The popular song of King
+Death, with chorus by the whole strength of the company," as the
+great Harmonic feature of the week and announces in the bill that "J.
+G. B. is induced to do so at a considerable extra expense in
+consequence of a wish which has been very generally expressed at the
+bar by a large body of respectable individuals and in homage to a
+late melancholy event which has aroused so much sensation." There is
+one point connected with the deceased upon which the court is
+particularly anxious, namely, that the fiction of a full-sized coffin
+should be preserved, though there is so little to put in it. Upon the
+undertaker's stating in the Sol's bar in the course of the day that
+he has received orders to construct "a six-footer," the general
+solicitude is much relieved, and it is considered that Mr.
+Smallweed's conduct does him great honour.
+
+Out of the court, and a long way out of it, there is considerable
+excitement too, for men of science and philosophy come to look, and
+carriages set down doctors at the corner who arrive with the same
+intent, and there is more learned talk about inflammable gases and
+phosphuretted hydrogen than the court has ever imagined. Some of
+these authorities (of course the wisest) hold with indignation that
+the deceased had no business to die in the alleged manner; and being
+reminded by other authorities of a certain inquiry into the evidence
+for such deaths reprinted in the sixth volume of the Philosophical
+Transactions; and also of a book not quite unknown on English medical
+jurisprudence; and likewise of the Italian case of the Countess
+Cornelia Baudi as set forth in detail by one Bianchini, prebendary of
+Verona, who wrote a scholarly work or so and was occasionally heard
+of in his time as having gleams of reason in him; and also of the
+testimony of Messrs. Fodere and Mere, two pestilent Frenchmen who
+WOULD investigate the subject; and further, of the corroborative
+testimony of Monsieur Le Cat, a rather celebrated French surgeon once
+upon a time, who had the unpoliteness to live in a house where such a
+case occurred and even to write an account of it--still they regard
+the late Mr. Krook's obstinacy in going out of the world by any such
+by-way as wholly unjustifiable and personally offensive. The less the
+court understands of all this, the more the court likes it, and the
+greater enjoyment it has in the stock in trade of the Sol's Arms.
+Then there comes the artist of a picture newspaper, with a foreground
+and figures ready drawn for anything from a wreck on the Cornish
+coast to a review in Hyde Park or a meeting in Manchester, and in
+Mrs. Perkins' own room, memorable evermore, he then and there throws
+in upon the block Mr. Krook's house, as large as life; in fact,
+considerably larger, making a very temple of it. Similarly, being
+permitted to look in at the door of the fatal chamber, he depicts
+that apartment as three-quarters of a mile long by fifty yards high,
+at which the court is particularly charmed. All this time the two
+gentlemen before mentioned pop in and out of every house and assist
+at the philosophical disputations--go everywhere and listen to
+everybody--and yet are always diving into the Sol's parlour and
+writing with the ravenous little pens on the tissue-paper.
+
+At last come the coroner and his inquiry, like as before, except that
+the coroner cherishes this case as being out of the common way and
+tells the gentlemen of the jury, in his private capacity, that "that
+would seem to be an unlucky house next door, gentlemen, a destined
+house; but so we sometimes find it, and these are mysteries we can't
+account for!" After which the six-footer comes into action and is
+much admired.
+
+In all these proceedings Mr. Guppy has so slight a part, except when
+he gives his evidence, that he is moved on like a private individual
+and can only haunt the secret house on the outside, where he has the
+mortification of seeing Mr. Smallweed padlocking the door, and of
+bitterly knowing himself to be shut out. But before these proceedings
+draw to a close, that is to say, on the night next after the
+catastrophe, Mr. Guppy has a thing to say that must be said to Lady
+Dedlock.
+
+For which reason, with a sinking heart and with that hang-dog sense
+of guilt upon him which dread and watching enfolded in the Sol's Arms
+have produced, the young man of the name of Guppy presents himself at
+the town mansion at about seven o'clock in the evening and requests
+to see her ladyship. Mercury replies that she is going out to dinner;
+don't he see the carriage at the door? Yes, he does see the carriage
+at the door; but he wants to see my Lady too.
+
+Mercury is disposed, as he will presently declare to a
+fellow-gentleman in waiting, "to pitch into the young man"; but his
+instructions are positive. Therefore he sulkily supposes that the
+young man must come up into the library. There he leaves the young
+man in a large room, not over-light, while he makes report of him.
+
+Mr. Guppy looks into the shade in all directions, discovering
+everywhere a certain charred and whitened little heap of coal or
+wood. Presently he hears a rustling. Is it--? No, it's no ghost, but
+fair flesh and blood, most brilliantly dressed.
+
+"I have to beg your ladyship's pardon," Mr. Guppy stammers, very
+downcast. "This is an inconvenient time--"
+
+"I told you, you could come at any time." She takes a chair, looking
+straight at him as on the last occasion.
+
+"Thank your ladyship. Your ladyship is very affable."
+
+"You can sit down." There is not much affability in her tone.
+
+"I don't know, your ladyship, that it's worth while my sitting down
+and detaining you, for I--I have not got the letters that I mentioned
+when I had the honour of waiting on your ladyship."
+
+"Have you come merely to say so?"
+
+"Merely to say so, your ladyship." Mr. Guppy besides being depressed,
+disappointed, and uneasy, is put at a further disadvantage by the
+splendour and beauty of her appearance.
+
+She knows its influence perfectly, has studied it too well to miss a
+grain of its effect on any one. As she looks at him so steadily and
+coldly, he not only feels conscious that he has no guide in the least
+perception of what is really the complexion of her thoughts, but also
+that he is being every moment, as it were, removed further and
+further from her.
+
+She will not speak, it is plain. So he must.
+
+"In short, your ladyship," says Mr. Guppy like a meanly penitent
+thief, "the person I was to have had the letters of, has come to a
+sudden end, and--" He stops. Lady Dedlock calmly finishes the
+sentence.
+
+"And the letters are destroyed with the person?"
+
+Mr. Guppy would say no if he could--as he is unable to hide.
+
+"I believe so, your ladyship."
+
+If he could see the least sparkle of relief in her face now? No, he
+could see no such thing, even if that brave outside did not utterly
+put him away, and he were not looking beyond it and about it.
+
+He falters an awkward excuse or two for his failure.
+
+"Is this all you have to say?" inquires Lady Dedlock, having heard
+him out--or as nearly out as he can stumble.
+
+Mr. Guppy thinks that's all.
+
+"You had better be sure that you wish to say nothing more to me, this
+being the last time you will have the opportunity."
+
+Mr. Guppy is quite sure. And indeed he has no such wish at present,
+by any means.
+
+"That is enough. I will dispense with excuses. Good evening to you!"
+And she rings for Mercury to show the young man of the name of Guppy
+out.
+
+But in that house, in that same moment, there happens to be an old
+man of the name of Tulkinghorn. And that old man, coming with his
+quiet footstep to the library, has his hand at that moment on the
+handle of the door--comes in--and comes face to face with the young
+man as he is leaving the room.
+
+One glance between the old man and the lady, and for an instant the
+blind that is always down flies up. Suspicion, eager and sharp, looks
+out. Another instant, close again.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Lady Dedlock. I beg your pardon a thousand times.
+It is so very unusual to find you here at this hour. I supposed the
+room was empty. I beg your pardon!"
+
+"Stay!" She negligently calls him back. "Remain here, I beg. I am
+going out to dinner. I have nothing more to say to this young man!"
+
+The disconcerted young man bows, as he goes out, and cringingly hopes
+that Mr. Tulkinghorn of the Fields is well.
+
+"Aye, aye?" says the lawyer, looking at him from under his bent
+brows, though he has no need to look again--not he. "From Kenge and
+Carboy's, surely?"
+
+"Kenge and Carboy's, Mr. Tulkinghorn. Name of Guppy, sir."
+
+"To be sure. Why, thank you, Mr. Guppy, I am very well!"
+
+"Happy to hear it, sir. You can't be too well, sir, for the credit of
+the profession."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Guppy!"
+
+Mr. Guppy sneaks away. Mr. Tulkinghorn, such a foil in his
+old-fashioned rusty black to Lady Dedlock's brightness, hands her
+down the staircase to her carriage. He returns rubbing his chin, and
+rubs it a good deal in the course of the evening.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+A Turn of the Screw
+
+
+"Now, what," says Mr. George, "may this be? Is it blank cartridge or
+ball? A flash in the pan or a shot?"
+
+An open letter is the subject of the trooper's speculations, and it
+seems to perplex him mightily. He looks at it at arm's length, brings
+it close to him, holds it in his right hand, holds it in his left
+hand, reads it with his head on this side, with his head on that
+side, contracts his eyebrows, elevates them, still cannot satisfy
+himself. He smooths it out upon the table with his heavy palm, and
+thoughtfully walking up and down the gallery, makes a halt before it
+every now and then to come upon it with a fresh eye. Even that won't
+do. "Is it," Mr. George still muses, "blank cartridge or ball?"
+
+Phil Squod, with the aid of a brush and paint-pot, is employed in the
+distance whitening the targets, softly whistling in quick-march time
+and in drum-and-fife manner that he must and will go back again to
+the girl he left behind him.
+
+"Phil!" The trooper beckons as he calls him.
+
+Phil approaches in his usual way, sidling off at first as if he were
+going anywhere else and then bearing down upon his commander like a
+bayonet-charge. Certain splashes of white show in high relief upon
+his dirty face, and he scrapes his one eyebrow with the handle of the
+brush.
+
+"Attention, Phil! Listen to this."
+
+"Steady, commander, steady."
+
+"'Sir. Allow me to remind you (though there is no legal necessity for
+my doing so, as you are aware) that the bill at two months' date
+drawn on yourself by Mr. Matthew Bagnet, and by you accepted, for the
+sum of ninety-seven pounds four shillings and ninepence, will become
+due to-morrow, when you will please be prepared to take up the same
+on presentation. Yours, Joshua Smallweed.' What do you make of that,
+Phil?"
+
+"Mischief, guv'ner."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I think," replies Phil after pensively tracing out a cross-wrinkle
+in his forehead with the brush-handle, "that mischeevious
+consequences is always meant when money's asked for."
+
+"Lookye, Phil," says the trooper, sitting on the table. "First and
+last, I have paid, I may say, half as much again as this principal in
+interest and one thing and another."
+
+Phil intimates by sidling back a pace or two, with a very
+unaccountable wrench of his wry face, that he does not regard the
+transaction as being made more promising by this incident.
+
+"And lookye further, Phil," says the trooper, staying his premature
+conclusions with a wave of his hand. "There has always been an
+understanding that this bill was to be what they call renewed. And it
+has been renewed no end of times. What do you say now?"
+
+"I say that I think the times is come to a end at last."
+
+"You do? Humph! I am much of the same mind myself."
+
+"Joshua Smallweed is him that was brought here in a chair?"
+
+"The same."
+
+"Guv'ner," says Phil with exceeding gravity, "he's a leech in his
+dispositions, he's a screw and a wice in his actions, a snake in his
+twistings, and a lobster in his claws."
+
+Having thus expressively uttered his sentiments, Mr. Squod, after
+waiting a little to ascertain if any further remark be expected of
+him, gets back by his usual series of movements to the target he has
+in hand and vigorously signifies through his former musical medium
+that he must and he will return to that ideal young lady. George,
+having folded the letter, walks in that direction.
+
+"There IS a way, commander," says Phil, looking cunningly at him, "of
+settling this."
+
+"Paying the money, I suppose? I wish I could."
+
+Phil shakes his head. "No, guv'ner, no; not so bad as that. There IS
+a way," says Phil with a highly artistic turn of his brush; "what I'm
+a-doing at present."
+
+"Whitewashing."
+
+Phil nods.
+
+"A pretty way that would be! Do you know what would become of the
+Bagnets in that case? Do you know they would be ruined to pay off my
+old scores? YOU'RE a moral character," says the trooper, eyeing him
+in his large way with no small indignation; "upon my life you are,
+Phil!"
+
+Phil, on one knee at the target, is in course of protesting
+earnestly, though not without many allegorical scoops of his brush
+and smoothings of the white surface round the rim with his thumb,
+that he had forgotten the Bagnet responsibility and would not so much
+as injure a hair of the head of any member of that worthy family when
+steps are audible in the long passage without, and a cheerful voice
+is heard to wonder whether George is at home. Phil, with a look at
+his master, hobbles up, saying, "Here's the guv'ner, Mrs. Bagnet!
+Here he is!" and the old girl herself, accompanied by Mr. Bagnet,
+appears.
+
+The old girl never appears in walking trim, in any season of the
+year, without a grey cloth cloak, coarse and much worn but very
+clean, which is, undoubtedly, the identical garment rendered so
+interesting to Mr. Bagnet by having made its way home to Europe from
+another quarter of the globe in company with Mrs. Bagnet and an
+umbrella. The latter faithful appendage is also invariably a part of
+the old girl's presence out of doors. It is of no colour known in
+this life and has a corrugated wooden crook for a handle, with a
+metallic object let into its prow, or beak, resembling a little model
+of a fanlight over a street door or one of the oval glasses out of a
+pair of spectacles, which ornamental object has not that tenacious
+capacity of sticking to its post that might be desired in an article
+long associated with the British army. The old girl's umbrella is of
+a flabby habit of waist and seems to be in need of stays--an
+appearance that is possibly referable to its having served through a
+series of years at home as a cupboard and on journeys as a carpet
+bag. She never puts it up, having the greatest reliance on her
+well-proved cloak with its capacious hood, but generally uses the
+instrument as a wand with which to point out joints of meat or
+bunches of greens in marketing or to arrest the attention of
+tradesmen by a friendly poke. Without her market-basket, which is a
+sort of wicker well with two flapping lids, she never stirs abroad.
+Attended by these her trusty companions, therefore, her honest
+sunburnt face looking cheerily out of a rough straw bonnet, Mrs.
+Bagnet now arrives, fresh-coloured and bright, in George's Shooting
+Gallery.
+
+"Well, George, old fellow," says she, "and how do YOU do, this
+sunshiny morning?"
+
+Giving him a friendly shake of the hand, Mrs. Bagnet draws a long
+breath after her walk and sits down to enjoy a rest. Having a
+faculty, matured on the tops of baggage-waggons and in other such
+positions, of resting easily anywhere, she perches on a rough bench,
+unties her bonnet-strings, pushes back her bonnet, crosses her arms,
+and looks perfectly comfortable.
+
+Mr. Bagnet in the meantime has shaken hands with his old comrade and
+with Phil, on whom Mrs. Bagnet likewise bestows a good-humoured nod
+and smile.
+
+"Now, George," said Mrs. Bagnet briskly, "here we are, Lignum and
+myself"--she often speaks of her husband by this appellation, on
+account, as it is supposed, of Lignum Vitae having been his old
+regimental nickname when they first became acquainted, in compliment
+to the extreme hardness and toughness of his physiognomy--"just
+looked in, we have, to make it all correct as usual about that
+security. Give him the new bill to sign, George, and he'll sign it
+like a man."
+
+"I was coming to you this morning," observes the trooper reluctantly.
+
+"Yes, we thought you'd come to us this morning, but we turned out
+early and left Woolwich, the best of boys, to mind his sisters and
+came to you instead--as you see! For Lignum, he's tied so close now,
+and gets so little exercise, that a walk does him good. But what's
+the matter, George?" asks Mrs. Bagnet, stopping in her cheerful talk.
+"You don't look yourself."
+
+"I am not quite myself," returns the trooper; "I have been a little
+put out, Mrs. Bagnet."
+
+Her bright quick eye catches the truth directly. "George!" holding up
+her forefinger. "Don't tell me there's anything wrong about that
+security of Lignum's! Don't do it, George, on account of the
+children!"
+
+The trooper looks at her with a troubled visage.
+
+"George," says Mrs. Bagnet, using both her arms for emphasis and
+occasionally bringing down her open hands upon her knees. "If you
+have allowed anything wrong to come to that security of Lignum's, and
+if you have let him in for it, and if you have put us in danger of
+being sold up--and I see sold up in your face, George, as plain as
+print--you have done a shameful action and have deceived us cruelly.
+I tell you, cruelly, George. There!"
+
+Mr. Bagnet, otherwise as immovable as a pump or a lamp-post, puts his
+large right hand on the top of his bald head as if to defend it from
+a shower-bath and looks with great uneasiness at Mrs. Bagnet.
+
+"George," says that old girl, "I wonder at you! George, I am ashamed
+of you! George, I couldn't have believed you would have done it! I
+always knew you to be a rolling stone that gathered no moss, but I
+never thought you would have taken away what little moss there was
+for Bagnet and the children to lie upon. You know what a
+hard-working, steady-going chap he is. You know what Quebec and Malta
+and Woolwich are, and I never did think you would, or could, have had
+the heart to serve us so. Oh, George!" Mrs. Bagnet gathers up her
+cloak to wipe her eyes on in a very genuine manner, "How could you do
+it?"
+
+Mrs. Bagnet ceasing, Mr. Bagnet removes his hand from his head as if
+the shower-bath were over and looks disconsolately at Mr. George, who
+has turned quite white and looks distressfully at the grey cloak and
+straw bonnet.
+
+"Mat," says the trooper in a subdued voice, addressing him but still
+looking at his wife, "I am sorry you take it so much to heart,
+because I do hope it's not so bad as that comes to. I certainly have,
+this morning, received this letter"--which he reads aloud--"but I
+hope it may be set right yet. As to a rolling stone, why, what you
+say is true. I AM a rolling stone, and I never rolled in anybody's
+way, I fully believe, that I rolled the least good to. But it's
+impossible for an old vagabond comrade to like your wife and family
+better than I like 'em, Mat, and I trust you'll look upon me as
+forgivingly as you can. Don't think I've kept anything from you. I
+haven't had the letter more than a quarter of an hour."
+
+"Old girl," murmurs Mr. Bagnet after a short silence, "will you tell
+him my opinion?"
+
+"Oh! Why didn't he marry," Mrs. Bagnet answers, half laughing and
+half crying, "Joe Pouch's widder in North America? Then he wouldn't
+have got himself into these troubles."
+
+"The old girl," says Mr. Bagnet, "puts it correct--why didn't you?"
+
+"Well, she has a better husband by this time, I hope," returns the
+trooper. "Anyhow, here I stand, this present day, NOT married to Joe
+Pouch's widder. What shall I do? You see all I have got about me.
+It's not mine; it's yours. Give the word, and I'll sell off every
+morsel. If I could have hoped it would have brought in nearly the sum
+wanted, I'd have sold all long ago. Don't believe that I'll leave you
+or yours in the lurch, Mat. I'd sell myself first. I only wish," says
+the trooper, giving himself a disparaging blow in the chest, "that I
+knew of any one who'd buy such a second-hand piece of old stores."
+
+"Old girl," murmurs Mr. Bagnet, "give him another bit of my mind."
+
+"George," says the old girl, "you are not so much to be blamed, on
+full consideration, except for ever taking this business without the
+means."
+
+"And that was like me!" observes the penitent trooper, shaking his
+head. "Like me, I know."
+
+"Silence! The old girl," says Mr. Bagnet, "is correct--in her way of
+giving my opinions--hear me out!"
+
+"That was when you never ought to have asked for the security,
+George, and when you never ought to have got it, all things
+considered. But what's done can't be undone. You are always an
+honourable and straightforward fellow, as far as lays in your power,
+though a little flighty. On the other hand, you can't admit but what
+it's natural in us to be anxious with such a thing hanging over our
+heads. So forget and forgive all round, George. Come! Forget and
+forgive all round!"
+
+Mrs. Bagnet, giving him one of her honest hands and giving her
+husband the other, Mr. George gives each of them one of his and holds
+them while he speaks.
+
+"I do assure you both, there's nothing I wouldn't do to discharge
+this obligation. But whatever I have been able to scrape together has
+gone every two months in keeping it up. We have lived plainly enough
+here, Phil and I. But the gallery don't quite do what was expected of
+it, and it's not--in short, it's not the mint. It was wrong in me to
+take it? Well, so it was. But I was in a manner drawn into that step,
+and I thought it might steady me, and set me up, and you'll try to
+overlook my having such expectations, and upon my soul, I am very
+much obliged to you, and very much ashamed of myself." With these
+concluding words, Mr. George gives a shake to each of the hands he
+holds, and relinquishing them, backs a pace or two in a
+broad-chested, upright attitude, as if he had made a final confession
+and were immediately going to be shot with all military honours.
+
+"George, hear me out!" says Mr. Bagnet, glancing at his wife. "Old
+girl, go on!"
+
+Mr. Bagnet, being in this singular manner heard out, has merely to
+observe that the letter must be attended to without any delay, that
+it is advisable that George and he should immediately wait on Mr.
+Smallweed in person, and that the primary object is to save and hold
+harmless Mr. Bagnet, who had none of the money. Mr. George, entirely
+assenting, puts on his hat and prepares to march with Mr. Bagnet to
+the enemy's camp.
+
+"Don't you mind a woman's hasty word, George," says Mrs. Bagnet,
+patting him on the shoulder. "I trust my old Lignum to you, and I am
+sure you'll bring him through it."
+
+The trooper returns that this is kindly said and that he WILL bring
+Lignum through it somehow. Upon which Mrs. Bagnet, with her cloak,
+basket, and umbrella, goes home, bright-eyed again, to the rest of
+her family, and the comrades sally forth on the hopeful errand of
+mollifying Mr. Smallweed.
+
+Whether there are two people in England less likely to come
+satisfactorily out of any negotiation with Mr. Smallweed than Mr.
+George and Mr. Matthew Bagnet may be very reasonably questioned.
+Also, notwithstanding their martial appearance, broad square
+shoulders, and heavy tread, whether there are within the same limits
+two more simple and unaccustomed children in all the Smallweedy
+affairs of life. As they proceed with great gravity through the
+streets towards the region of Mount Pleasant, Mr. Bagnet, observing
+his companion to be thoughtful, considers it a friendly part to refer
+to Mrs. Bagnet's late sally.
+
+"George, you know the old girl--she's as sweet and as mild as milk.
+But touch her on the children--or myself--and she's off like
+gunpowder."
+
+"It does her credit, Mat!"
+
+"George," says Mr. Bagnet, looking straight before him, "the old
+girl--can't do anything--that don't do her credit. More or less. I
+never say so. Discipline must be maintained."
+
+"She's worth her weight in gold," says the trooper.
+
+"In gold?" says Mr. Bagnet. "I'll tell you what. The old girl's
+weight--is twelve stone six. Would I take that weight--in any
+metal--for the old girl? No. Why not? Because the old girl's metal is
+far more precious--than the preciousest metal. And she's ALL metal!"
+
+"You are right, Mat!"
+
+"When she took me--and accepted of the ring--she 'listed under me and
+the children--heart and head, for life. She's that earnest," says Mr.
+Bagnet, "and true to her colours--that, touch us with a finger--and
+she turns out--and stands to her arms. If the old girl fires
+wide--once in a way--at the call of duty--look over it, George. For
+she's loyal!"
+
+"Why, bless her, Mat," returns the trooper, "I think the higher of
+her for it!"
+
+"You are right!" says Mr. Bagnet with the warmest enthusiasm, though
+without relaxing the rigidity of a single muscle. "Think as high of
+the old girl--as the rock of Gibraltar--and still you'll be thinking
+low--of such merits. But I never own to it before her. Discipline
+must be maintained."
+
+These encomiums bring them to Mount Pleasant and to Grandfather
+Smallweed's house. The door is opened by the perennial Judy, who,
+having surveyed them from top to toe with no particular favour, but
+indeed with a malignant sneer, leaves them standing there while she
+consults the oracle as to their admission. The oracle may be inferred
+to give consent from the circumstance of her returning with the words
+on her honey lips that they can come in if they want to it. Thus
+privileged, they come in and find Mr. Smallweed with his feet in the
+drawer of his chair as if it were a paper foot-bath and Mrs.
+Smallweed obscured with the cushion like a bird that is not to sing.
+
+"My dear friend," says Grandfather Smallweed with those two lean
+affectionate arms of his stretched forth. "How de do? How de do? Who
+is our friend, my dear friend?"
+
+"Why this," returns George, not able to be very conciliatory at
+first, "is Matthew Bagnet, who has obliged me in that matter of ours,
+you know."
+
+"Oh! Mr. Bagnet? Surely!" The old man looks at him under his hand.
+
+"Hope you're well, Mr. Bagnet? Fine man, Mr. George! Military air,
+sir!"
+
+No chairs being offered, Mr. George brings one forward for Bagnet and
+one for himself. They sit down, Mr. Bagnet as if he had no power of
+bending himself, except at the hips, for that purpose.
+
+"Judy," says Mr. Smallweed, "bring the pipe."
+
+"Why, I don't know," Mr. George interposes, "that the young woman
+need give herself that trouble, for to tell you the truth, I am not
+inclined to smoke it to-day."
+
+"Ain't you?" returns the old man. "Judy, bring the pipe."
+
+"The fact is, Mr. Smallweed," proceeds George, "that I find myself in
+rather an unpleasant state of mind. It appears to me, sir, that your
+friend in the city has been playing tricks."
+
+"Oh, dear no!" says Grandfather Smallweed. "He never does that!"
+
+"Don't he? Well, I am glad to hear it, because I thought it might be
+HIS doing. This, you know, I am speaking of. This letter."
+
+Grandfather Smallweed smiles in a very ugly way in recognition of the
+letter.
+
+"What does it mean?" asks Mr. George.
+
+"Judy," says the old man. "Have you got the pipe? Give it to me. Did
+you say what does it mean, my good friend?"
+
+"Aye! Now, come, come, you know, Mr. Smallweed," urges the trooper,
+constraining himself to speak as smoothly and confidentially as he
+can, holding the open letter in one hand and resting the broad
+knuckles of the other on his thigh, "a good lot of money has passed
+between us, and we are face to face at the present moment, and are
+both well aware of the understanding there has always been. I am
+prepared to do the usual thing which I have done regularly and to
+keep this matter going. I never got a letter like this from you
+before, and I have been a little put about by it this morning,
+because here's my friend Matthew Bagnet, who, you know, had none of
+the money--"
+
+"I DON'T know it, you know," says the old man quietly.
+
+"Why, con-found you--it, I mean--I tell you so, don't I?"
+
+"Oh, yes, you tell me so," returns Grandfather Smallweed. "But I
+don't know it."
+
+"Well!" says the trooper, swallowing his fire. "I know it."
+
+Mr. Smallweed replies with excellent temper, "Ah! That's quite
+another thing!" And adds, "But it don't matter. Mr. Bagnet's
+situation is all one, whether or no."
+
+The unfortunate George makes a great effort to arrange the affair
+comfortably and to propitiate Mr. Smallweed by taking him upon his
+own terms.
+
+"That's just what I mean. As you say, Mr. Smallweed, here's Matthew
+Bagnet liable to be fixed whether or no. Now, you see, that makes his
+good lady very uneasy in her mind, and me too, for whereas I'm a
+harum-scarum sort of a good-for-nought that more kicks than halfpence
+come natural to, why he's a steady family man, don't you see? Now,
+Mr. Smallweed," says the trooper, gaining confidence as he proceeds
+in his soldierly mode of doing business, "although you and I are good
+friends enough in a certain sort of a way, I am well aware that I
+can't ask you to let my friend Bagnet off entirely."
+
+"Oh, dear, you are too modest. You can ASK me anything, Mr. George."
+(There is an ogreish kind of jocularity in Grandfather Smallweed
+to-day.)
+
+"And you can refuse, you mean, eh? Or not you so much, perhaps, as
+your friend in the city? Ha ha ha!"
+
+"Ha ha ha!" echoes Grandfather Smallweed. In such a very hard manner
+and with eyes so particularly green that Mr. Bagnet's natural gravity
+is much deepened by the contemplation of that venerable man.
+
+"Come!" says the sanguine George. "I am glad to find we can be
+pleasant, because I want to arrange this pleasantly. Here's my friend
+Bagnet, and here am I. We'll settle the matter on the spot, if you
+please, Mr. Smallweed, in the usual way. And you'll ease my friend
+Bagnet's mind, and his family's mind, a good deal if you'll just
+mention to him what our understanding is."
+
+Here some shrill spectre cries out in a mocking manner, "Oh, good
+gracious! Oh!" Unless, indeed, it be the sportive Judy, who is found
+to be silent when the startled visitors look round, but whose chin
+has received a recent toss, expressive of derision and contempt. Mr.
+Bagnet's gravity becomes yet more profound.
+
+"But I think you asked me, Mr. George"--old Smallweed, who all this
+time has had the pipe in his hand, is the speaker now--"I think you
+asked me, what did the letter mean?"
+
+"Why, yes, I did," returns the trooper in his off-hand way, "but I
+don't care to know particularly, if it's all correct and pleasant."
+
+Mr. Smallweed, purposely balking himself in an aim at the trooper's
+head, throws the pipe on the ground and breaks it to pieces.
+
+"That's what it means, my dear friend. I'll smash you. I'll crumble
+you. I'll powder you. Go to the devil!"
+
+The two friends rise and look at one another. Mr. Bagnet's gravity
+has now attained its profoundest point.
+
+"Go to the devil!" repeats the old man. "I'll have no more of your
+pipe-smokings and swaggerings. What? You're an independent dragoon,
+too! Go to my lawyer (you remember where; you have been there before)
+and show your independence now, will you? Come, my dear friend,
+there's a chance for you. Open the street door, Judy; put these
+blusterers out! Call in help if they don't go. Put 'em out!"
+
+He vociferates this so loudly that Mr. Bagnet, laying his hands on
+the shoulders of his comrade before the latter can recover from his
+amazement, gets him on the outside of the street door, which is
+instantly slammed by the triumphant Judy. Utterly confounded, Mr.
+George awhile stands looking at the knocker. Mr. Bagnet, in a perfect
+abyss of gravity, walks up and down before the little parlour window
+like a sentry and looks in every time he passes, apparently revolving
+something in his mind.
+
+"Come, Mat," says Mr. George when he has recovered himself, "we must
+try the lawyer. Now, what do you think of this rascal?"
+
+Mr. Bagnet, stopping to take a farewell look into the parlour,
+replies with one shake of his head directed at the interior, "If my
+old girl had been here--I'd have told him!" Having so discharged
+himself of the subject of his cogitations, he falls into step and
+marches off with the trooper, shoulder to shoulder.
+
+When they present themselves in Lincoln's Inn Fields, Mr. Tulkinghorn
+is engaged and not to be seen. He is not at all willing to see them,
+for when they have waited a full hour, and the clerk, on his bell
+being rung, takes the opportunity of mentioning as much, he brings
+forth no more encouraging message than that Mr. Tulkinghorn has
+nothing to say to them and they had better not wait. They do wait,
+however, with the perseverance of military tactics, and at last the
+bell rings again and the client in possession comes out of Mr.
+Tulkinghorn's room.
+
+The client is a handsome old lady, no other than Mrs. Rouncewell,
+housekeeper at Chesney Wold. She comes out of the sanctuary with a
+fair old-fashioned curtsy and softly shuts the door. She is treated
+with some distinction there, for the clerk steps out of his pew to
+show her through the outer office and to let her out. The old lady is
+thanking him for his attention when she observes the comrades in
+waiting.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir, but I think those gentlemen are military?"
+
+The clerk referring the question to them with his eye, and Mr. George
+not turning round from the almanac over the fire-place. Mr. Bagnet
+takes upon himself to reply, "Yes, ma'am. Formerly."
+
+"I thought so. I was sure of it. My heart warms, gentlemen, at the
+sight of you. It always does at the sight of such. God bless you,
+gentlemen! You'll excuse an old woman, but I had a son once who went
+for a soldier. A fine handsome youth he was, and good in his bold
+way, though some people did disparage him to his poor mother. I ask
+your pardon for troubling you, sir. God bless you, gentlemen!"
+
+"Same to you, ma'am!" returns Mr. Bagnet with right good will.
+
+There is something very touching in the earnestness of the old lady's
+voice and in the tremble that goes through her quaint old figure. But
+Mr. George is so occupied with the almanac over the fire-place
+(calculating the coming months by it perhaps) that he does not look
+round until she has gone away and the door is closed upon her.
+
+"George," Mr. Bagnet gruffly whispers when he does turn from the
+almanac at last. "Don't be cast down! 'Why, soldiers, why--should we
+be melancholy, boys?' Cheer up, my hearty!"
+
+The clerk having now again gone in to say that they are still there
+and Mr. Tulkinghorn being heard to return with some irascibility,
+"Let 'em come in then!" they pass into the great room with the
+painted ceiling and find him standing before the fire.
+
+"Now, you men, what do you want? Sergeant, I told you the last time I
+saw you that I don't desire your company here."
+
+Sergeant replies--dashed within the last few minutes as to his usual
+manner of speech, and even as to his usual carriage--that he has
+received this letter, has been to Mr. Smallweed about it, and has
+been referred there.
+
+"I have nothing to say to you," rejoins Mr. Tulkinghorn. "If you get
+into debt, you must pay your debts or take the consequences. You have
+no occasion to come here to learn that, I suppose?"
+
+Sergeant is sorry to say that he is not prepared with the money.
+
+"Very well! Then the other man--this man, if this is he--must pay it
+for you."
+
+Sergeant is sorry to add that the other man is not prepared with the
+money either.
+
+"Very well! Then you must pay it between you or you must both be sued
+for it and both suffer. You have had the money and must refund it.
+You are not to pocket other people's pounds, shillings, and pence and
+escape scot-free."
+
+The lawyer sits down in his easy-chair and stirs the fire. Mr. George
+hopes he will have the goodness to--"I tell you, sergeant, I have
+nothing to say to you. I don't like your associates and don't want
+you here. This matter is not at all in my course of practice and is
+not in my office. Mr. Smallweed is good enough to offer these affairs
+to me, but they are not in my way. You must go to Melchisedech's in
+Clifford's Inn."
+
+"I must make an apology to you, sir," says Mr. George, "for pressing
+myself upon you with so little encouragement--which is almost as
+unpleasant to me as it can be to you--but would you let me say a
+private word to you?"
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn rises with his hands in his pockets and walks into
+one of the window recesses. "Now! I have no time to waste." In the
+midst of his perfect assumption of indifference, he directs a sharp
+look at the trooper, taking care to stand with his own back to the
+light and to have the other with his face towards it.
+
+"Well, sir," says Mr. George, "this man with me is the other party
+implicated in this unfortunate affair--nominally, only nominally--and
+my sole object is to prevent his getting into trouble on my account.
+He is a most respectable man with a wife and family, formerly in the
+Royal Artillery--"
+
+"My friend, I don't care a pinch of snuff for the whole Royal
+Artillery establishment--officers, men, tumbrils, waggons, horses,
+guns, and ammunition."
+
+"'Tis likely, sir. But I care a good deal for Bagnet and his wife and
+family being injured on my account. And if I could bring them through
+this matter, I should have no help for it but to give up without any
+other consideration what you wanted of me the other day."
+
+"Have you got it here?"
+
+"I have got it here, sir."
+
+"Sergeant," the lawyer proceeds in his dry passionless manner, far
+more hopeless in the dealing with than any amount of vehemence, "make
+up your mind while I speak to you, for this is final. After I have
+finished speaking I have closed the subject, and I won't re-open it.
+Understand that. You can leave here, for a few days, what you say you
+have brought here if you choose; you can take it away at once if you
+choose. In case you choose to leave it here, I can do this for you--I
+can replace this matter on its old footing, and I can go so far
+besides as to give you a written undertaking that this man Bagnet
+shall never be troubled in any way until you have been proceeded
+against to the utmost, that your means shall be exhausted before the
+creditor looks to his. This is in fact all but freeing him. Have you
+decided?"
+
+The trooper puts his hand into his breast and answers with a long
+breath, "I must do it, sir."
+
+So Mr. Tulkinghorn, putting on his spectacles, sits down and writes
+the undertaking, which he slowly reads and explains to Bagnet, who
+has all this time been staring at the ceiling and who puts his hand
+on his bald head again, under this new verbal shower-bath, and seems
+exceedingly in need of the old girl through whom to express his
+sentiments. The trooper then takes from his breast-pocket a folded
+paper, which he lays with an unwilling hand at the lawyer's elbow.
+"'Tis only a letter of instructions, sir. The last I ever had from
+him."
+
+Look at a millstone, Mr. George, for some change in its expression,
+and you will find it quite as soon as in the face of Mr. Tulkinghorn
+when he opens and reads the letter! He refolds it and lays it in his
+desk with a countenance as unperturbable as death.
+
+Nor has he anything more to say or do but to nod once in the same
+frigid and discourteous manner and to say briefly, "You can go. Show
+these men out, there!" Being shown out, they repair to Mr. Bagnet's
+residence to dine.
+
+Boiled beef and greens constitute the day's variety on the former
+repast of boiled pork and greens, and Mrs. Bagnet serves out the meal
+in the same way and seasons it with the best of temper, being that
+rare sort of old girl that she receives Good to her arms without a
+hint that it might be Better and catches light from any little spot
+of darkness near her. The spot on this occasion is the darkened brow
+of Mr. George; he is unusually thoughtful and depressed. At first
+Mrs. Bagnet trusts to the combined endearments of Quebec and Malta to
+restore him, but finding those young ladies sensible that their
+existing Bluffy is not the Bluffy of their usual frolicsome
+acquaintance, she winks off the light infantry and leaves him to
+deploy at leisure on the open ground of the domestic hearth.
+
+But he does not. He remains in close order, clouded and depressed.
+During the lengthy cleaning up and pattening process, when he and Mr.
+Bagnet are supplied with their pipes, he is no better than he was at
+dinner. He forgets to smoke, looks at the fire and ponders, lets his
+pipe out, fills the breast of Mr. Bagnet with perturbation and dismay
+by showing that he has no enjoyment of tobacco.
+
+Therefore when Mrs. Bagnet at last appears, rosy from the
+invigorating pail, and sits down to her work, Mr. Bagnet growls, "Old
+girl!" and winks monitions to her to find out what's the matter.
+
+"Why, George!" says Mrs. Bagnet, quietly threading her needle. "How
+low you are!"
+
+"Am I? Not good company? Well, I am afraid I am not."
+
+"He ain't at all like Bluffy, mother!" cries little Malta.
+
+"Because he ain't well, I think, mother," adds Quebec.
+
+"Sure that's a bad sign not to be like Bluffy, too!" returns the
+trooper, kissing the young damsels. "But it's true," with a sigh,
+"true, I am afraid. These little ones are always right!"
+
+"George," says Mrs. Bagnet, working busily, "if I thought you cross
+enough to think of anything that a shrill old soldier's wife--who
+could have bitten her tongue off afterwards and ought to have done it
+almost--said this morning, I don't know what I shouldn't say to you
+now."
+
+"My kind soul of a darling," returns the trooper. "Not a morsel of
+it."
+
+"Because really and truly, George, what I said and meant to say was
+that I trusted Lignum to you and was sure you'd bring him through it.
+And you HAVE brought him through it, noble!"
+
+"Thankee, my dear!" says George. "I am glad of your good opinion."
+
+In giving Mrs. Bagnet's hand, with her work in it, a friendly
+shake--for she took her seat beside him--the trooper's attention is
+attracted to her face. After looking at it for a little while as she
+plies her needle, he looks to young Woolwich, sitting on his stool in
+the corner, and beckons that fifer to him.
+
+"See there, my boy," says George, very gently smoothing the mother's
+hair with his hand, "there's a good loving forehead for you! All
+bright with love of you, my boy. A little touched by the sun and the
+weather through following your father about and taking care of you,
+but as fresh and wholesome as a ripe apple on a tree."
+
+Mr. Bagnet's face expresses, so far as in its wooden material lies,
+the highest approbation and acquiescence.
+
+"The time will come, my boy," pursues the trooper, "when this hair of
+your mother's will be grey, and this forehead all crossed and
+re-crossed with wrinkles, and a fine old lady she'll be then. Take
+care, while you are young, that you can think in those days, 'I never
+whitened a hair of her dear head--I never marked a sorrowful line in
+her face!' For of all the many things that you can think of when you
+are a man, you had better have THAT by you, Woolwich!"
+
+Mr. George concludes by rising from his chair, seating the boy beside
+his mother in it, and saying, with something of a hurry about him,
+that he'll smoke his pipe in the street a bit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+Esther's Narrative
+
+
+I lay ill through several weeks, and the usual tenor of my life
+became like an old remembrance. But this was not the effect of time
+so much as of the change in all my habits made by the helplessness
+and inaction of a sick-room. Before I had been confined to it many
+days, everything else seemed to have retired into a remote distance
+where there was little or no separation between the various stages of
+my life which had been really divided by years. In falling ill, I
+seemed to have crossed a dark lake and to have left all my
+experiences, mingled together by the great distance, on the healthy
+shore.
+
+My housekeeping duties, though at first it caused me great anxiety to
+think that they were unperformed, were soon as far off as the oldest
+of the old duties at Greenleaf or the summer afternoons when I went
+home from school with my portfolio under my arm, and my childish
+shadow at my side, to my godmother's house. I had never known before
+how short life really was and into how small a space the mind could
+put it.
+
+While I was very ill, the way in which these divisions of time became
+confused with one another distressed my mind exceedingly. At once a
+child, an elder girl, and the little woman I had been so happy as, I
+was not only oppressed by cares and difficulties adapted to each
+station, but by the great perplexity of endlessly trying to reconcile
+them. I suppose that few who have not been in such a condition can
+quite understand what I mean or what painful unrest arose from this
+source.
+
+For the same reason I am almost afraid to hint at that time in my
+disorder--it seemed one long night, but I believe there were both
+nights and days in it--when I laboured up colossal staircases, ever
+striving to reach the top, and ever turned, as I have seen a worm in
+a garden path, by some obstruction, and labouring again. I knew
+perfectly at intervals, and I think vaguely at most times, that I was
+in my bed; and I talked with Charley, and felt her touch, and knew
+her very well; yet I would find myself complaining, "Oh, more of
+these never-ending stairs, Charley--more and more--piled up to the
+sky', I think!" and labouring on again.
+
+Dare I hint at that worse time when, strung together somewhere in
+great black space, there was a flaming necklace, or ring, or starry
+circle of some kind, of which I was one of the beads! And when my
+only prayer was to be taken off from the rest and when it was such
+inexplicable agony and misery to be a part of the dreadful thing?
+
+Perhaps the less I say of these sick experiences, the less tedious
+and the more intelligible I shall be. I do not recall them to make
+others unhappy or because I am now the least unhappy in remembering
+them. It may be that if we knew more of such strange afflictions we
+might be the better able to alleviate their intensity.
+
+The repose that succeeded, the long delicious sleep, the blissful
+rest, when in my weakness I was too calm to have any care for myself
+and could have heard (or so I think now) that I was dying, with no
+other emotion than with a pitying love for those I left behind--this
+state can be perhaps more widely understood. I was in this state when
+I first shrunk from the light as it twinkled on me once more, and
+knew with a boundless joy for which no words are rapturous enough
+that I should see again.
+
+I had heard my Ada crying at the door, day and night; I had heard her
+calling to me that I was cruel and did not love her; I had heard her
+praying and imploring to be let in to nurse and comfort me and to
+leave my bedside no more; but I had only said, when I could speak,
+"Never, my sweet girl, never!" and I had over and over again reminded
+Charley that she was to keep my darling from the room whether I lived
+or died. Charley had been true to me in that time of need, and with
+her little hand and her great heart had kept the door fast.
+
+But now, my sight strengthening and the glorious light coming every
+day more fully and brightly on me, I could read the letters that my
+dear wrote to me every morning and evening and could put them to my
+lips and lay my cheek upon them with no fear of hurting her. I could
+see my little maid, so tender and so careful, going about the two
+rooms setting everything in order and speaking cheerfully to Ada from
+the open window again. I could understand the stillness in the house
+and the thoughtfulness it expressed on the part of all those who had
+always been so good to me. I could weep in the exquisite felicity of
+my heart and be as happy in my weakness as ever I had been in my
+strength.
+
+By and by my strength began to be restored. Instead of lying, with so
+strange a calmness, watching what was done for me, as if it were done
+for some one else whom I was quietly sorry for, I helped it a little,
+and so on to a little more and much more, until I became useful to
+myself, and interested, and attached to life again.
+
+How well I remember the pleasant afternoon when I was raised in bed
+with pillows for the first time to enjoy a great tea-drinking with
+Charley! The little creature--sent into the world, surely, to
+minister to the weak and sick--was so happy, and so busy, and stopped
+so often in her preparations to lay her head upon my bosom, and
+fondle me, and cry with joyful tears she was so glad, she was so
+glad, that I was obliged to say, "Charley, if you go on in this way,
+I must lie down again, my darling, for I am weaker than I thought I
+was!" So Charley became as quiet as a mouse and took her bright face
+here and there across and across the two rooms, out of the shade into
+the divine sunshine, and out of the sunshine into the shade, while I
+watched her peacefully. When all her preparations were concluded and
+the pretty tea-table with its little delicacies to tempt me, and its
+white cloth, and its flowers, and everything so lovingly and
+beautifully arranged for me by Ada downstairs, was ready at the
+bedside, I felt sure I was steady enough to say something to Charley
+that was not new to my thoughts.
+
+First I complimented Charley on the room, and indeed it was so fresh
+and airy, so spotless and neat, that I could scarce believe I had
+been lying there so long. This delighted Charley, and her face was
+brighter than before.
+
+"Yet, Charley," said I, looking round, "I miss something, surely,
+that I am accustomed to?"
+
+Poor little Charley looked round too and pretended to shake her head
+as if there were nothing absent.
+
+"Are the pictures all as they used to be?" I asked her.
+
+"Every one of them, miss," said Charley.
+
+"And the furniture, Charley?"
+
+"Except where I have moved it about to make more room, miss."
+
+"And yet," said I, "I miss some familiar object. Ah, I know what it
+is, Charley! It's the looking-glass."
+
+Charley got up from the table, making as if she had forgotten
+something, and went into the next room; and I heard her sob there.
+
+I had thought of this very often. I was now certain of it. I could
+thank God that it was not a shock to me now. I called Charley back,
+and when she came--at first pretending to smile, but as she drew
+nearer to me, looking grieved--I took her in my arms and said, "It
+matters very little, Charley. I hope I can do without my old face
+very well."
+
+I was presently so far advanced as to be able to sit up in a great
+chair and even giddily to walk into the adjoining room, leaning on
+Charley. The mirror was gone from its usual place in that room too,
+but what I had to bear was none the harder to bear for that.
+
+My guardian had throughout been earnest to visit me, and there was
+now no good reason why I should deny myself that happiness. He came
+one morning, and when he first came in, could only hold me in his
+embrace and say, "My dear, dear girl!" I had long known--who could
+know better?--what a deep fountain of affection and generosity his
+heart was; and was it not worth my trivial suffering and change to
+fill such a place in it? "Oh, yes!" I thought. "He has seen me, and
+he loves me better than he did; he has seen me and is even fonder of
+me than he was before; and what have I to mourn for!"
+
+He sat down by me on the sofa, supporting me with his arm. For a
+little while he sat with his hand over his face, but when he removed
+it, fell into his usual manner. There never can have been, there
+never can be, a pleasanter manner.
+
+"My little woman," said he, "what a sad time this has been. Such an
+inflexible little woman, too, through all!"
+
+"Only for the best, guardian," said I.
+
+"For the best?" he repeated tenderly. "Of course, for the best. But
+here have Ada and I been perfectly forlorn and miserable; here has
+your friend Caddy been coming and going late and early; here has
+every one about the house been utterly lost and dejected; here has
+even poor Rick been writing--to ME too--in his anxiety for you!"
+
+I had read of Caddy in Ada's letters, but not of Richard. I told him
+so.
+
+"Why, no, my dear," he replied. "I have thought it better not to
+mention it to her."
+
+"And you speak of his writing to YOU," said I, repeating his
+emphasis. "As if it were not natural for him to do so, guardian; as
+if he could write to a better friend!"
+
+"He thinks he could, my love," returned my guardian, "and to many a
+better. The truth is, he wrote to me under a sort of protest while
+unable to write to you with any hope of an answer--wrote coldly,
+haughtily, distantly, resentfully. Well, dearest little woman, we
+must look forbearingly on it. He is not to blame. Jarndyce and
+Jarndyce has warped him out of himself and perverted me in his eyes.
+I have known it do as bad deeds, and worse, many a time. If two
+angels could be concerned in it, I believe it would change their
+nature."
+
+"It has not changed yours, guardian."
+
+"Oh, yes, it has, my dear," he said laughingly. "It has made the
+south wind easterly, I don't know how often. Rick mistrusts and
+suspects me--goes to lawyers, and is taught to mistrust and suspect
+me. Hears I have conflicting interests, claims clashing against his
+and what not. Whereas, heaven knows that if I could get out of the
+mountains of wiglomeration on which my unfortunate name has been so
+long bestowed (which I can't) or could level them by the extinction
+of my own original right (which I can't either, and no human power
+ever can, anyhow, I believe, to such a pass have we got), I would do
+it this hour. I would rather restore to poor Rick his proper nature
+than be endowed with all the money that dead suitors, broken, heart
+and soul, upon the wheel of Chancery, have left unclaimed with the
+Accountant-General--and that's money enough, my dear, to be cast into
+a pyramid, in memory of Chancery's transcendent wickedness."
+
+"IS it possible, guardian," I asked, amazed, "that Richard can be
+suspicious of you?"
+
+"Ah, my love, my love," he said, "it is in the subtle poison of such
+abuses to breed such diseases. His blood is infected, and objects
+lose their natural aspects in his sight. It is not HIS fault."
+
+"But it is a terrible misfortune, guardian."
+
+"It is a terrible misfortune, little woman, to be ever drawn within
+the influences of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. I know none greater. By
+little and little he has been induced to trust in that rotten reed,
+and it communicates some portion of its rottenness to everything
+around him. But again I say with all my soul, we must be patient with
+poor Rick and not blame him. What a troop of fine fresh hearts like
+his have I seen in my time turned by the same means!"
+
+I could not help expressing something of my wonder and regret that
+his benevolent, disinterested intentions had prospered so little.
+
+"We must not say so, Dame Durden," he cheerfully replied; "Ada is the
+happier, I hope, and that is much. I did think that I and both these
+young creatures might be friends instead of distrustful foes and that
+we might so far counter-act the suit and prove too strong for it. But
+it was too much to expect. Jarndyce and Jarndyce was the curtain of
+Rick's cradle."
+
+"But, guardian, may we not hope that a little experience will teach
+him what a false and wretched thing it is?"
+
+"We WILL hope so, my Esther," said Mr. Jarndyce, "and that it may not
+teach him so too late. In any case we must not be hard on him. There
+are not many grown and matured men living while we speak, good men
+too, who if they were thrown into this same court as suitors would
+not be vitally changed and depreciated within three years--within
+two--within one. How can we stand amazed at poor Rick? A young man so
+unfortunate," here he fell into a lower tone, as if he were thinking
+aloud, "cannot at first believe (who could?) that Chancery is what it
+is. He looks to it, flushed and fitfully, to do something with his
+interests and bring them to some settlement. It procrastinates,
+disappoints, tries, tortures him; wears out his sanguine hopes and
+patience, thread by thread; but he still looks to it, and hankers
+after it, and finds his whole world treacherous and hollow. Well,
+well, well! Enough of this, my dear!"
+
+He had supported me, as at first, all this time, and his tenderness
+was so precious to me that I leaned my head upon his shoulder and
+loved him as if he had been my father. I resolved in my own mind in
+this little pause, by some means, to see Richard when I grew strong
+and try to set him right.
+
+"There are better subjects than these," said my guardian, "for such a
+joyful time as the time of our dear girl's recovery. And I had a
+commission to broach one of them as soon as I should begin to talk.
+When shall Ada come to see you, my love?"
+
+I had been thinking of that too. A little in connexion with the
+absent mirrors, but not much, for I knew my loving girl would be
+changed by no change in my looks.
+
+"Dear guardian," said I, "as I have shut her out so long--though
+indeed, indeed, she is like the light to me--"
+
+"I know it well, Dame Durden, well."
+
+He was so good, his touch expressed such endearing compassion and
+affection, and the tone of his voice carried such comfort into my
+heart that I stopped for a little while, quite unable to go on. "Yes,
+yes, you are tired," said he. "Rest a little."
+
+"As I have kept Ada out so long," I began afresh after a short while,
+"I think I should like to have my own way a little longer, guardian.
+It would be best to be away from here before I see her. If Charley
+and I were to go to some country lodging as soon as I can move, and
+if I had a week there in which to grow stronger and to be revived by
+the sweet air and to look forward to the happiness of having Ada with
+me again, I think it would be better for us."
+
+I hope it was not a poor thing in me to wish to be a little more used
+to my altered self before I met the eyes of the dear girl I longed so
+ardently to see, but it is the truth. I did. He understood me, I was
+sure; but I was not afraid of that. If it were a poor thing, I knew
+he would pass it over.
+
+"Our spoilt little woman," said my guardian, "shall have her own way
+even in her inflexibility, though at the price, I know, of tears
+downstairs. And see here! Here is Boythorn, heart of chivalry,
+breathing such ferocious vows as never were breathed on paper before,
+that if you don't go and occupy his whole house, he having already
+turned out of it expressly for that purpose, by heaven and by earth
+he'll pull it down and not leave one brick standing on another!"
+
+And my guardian put a letter in my hand, without any ordinary
+beginning such as "My dear Jarndyce," but rushing at once into the
+words, "I swear if Miss Summerson do not come down and take
+possession of my house, which I vacate for her this day at one
+o'clock, P.M.," and then with the utmost seriousness, and in the most
+emphatic terms, going on to make the extraordinary declaration he had
+quoted. We did not appreciate the writer the less for laughing
+heartily over it, and we settled that I should send him a letter of
+thanks on the morrow and accept his offer. It was a most agreeable
+one to me, for all the places I could have thought of, I should have
+liked to go to none so well as Chesney Wold.
+
+"Now, little housewife," said my guardian, looking at his watch, "I
+was strictly timed before I came upstairs, for you must not be tired
+too soon; and my time has waned away to the last minute. I have one
+other petition. Little Miss Flite, hearing a rumour that you were
+ill, made nothing of walking down here--twenty miles, poor soul, in a
+pair of dancing shoes--to inquire. It was heaven's mercy we were at
+home, or she would have walked back again."
+
+The old conspiracy to make me happy! Everybody seemed to be in it!
+
+"Now, pet," said my guardian, "if it would not be irksome to you to
+admit the harmless little creature one afternoon before you save
+Boythorn's otherwise devoted house from demolition, I believe you
+would make her prouder and better pleased with herself than I--though
+my eminent name is Jarndyce--could do in a lifetime."
+
+I have no doubt he knew there would be something in the simple image
+of the poor afflicted creature that would fall like a gentle lesson
+on my mind at that time. I felt it as he spoke to me. I could not
+tell him heartily enough how ready I was to receive her. I had always
+pitied her, never so much as now. I had always been glad of my little
+power to soothe her under her calamity, but never, never, half so
+glad before.
+
+We arranged a time for Miss Flite to come out by the coach and share
+my early dinner. When my guardian left me, I turned my face away upon
+my couch and prayed to be forgiven if I, surrounded by such
+blessings, had magnified to myself the little trial that I had to
+undergo. The childish prayer of that old birthday when I had aspired
+to be industrious, contented, and true-hearted and to do good to some
+one and win some love to myself if I could came back into my mind
+with a reproachful sense of all the happiness I had since enjoyed and
+all the affectionate hearts that had been turned towards me. If I
+were weak now, what had I profited by those mercies? I repeated the
+old childish prayer in its old childish words and found that its old
+peace had not departed from it.
+
+My guardian now came every day. In a week or so more I could walk
+about our rooms and hold long talks with Ada from behind the
+window-curtain. Yet I never saw her, for I had not as yet the courage
+to look at the dear face, though I could have done so easily without
+her seeing me.
+
+On the appointed day Miss Flite arrived. The poor little creature ran
+into my room quite forgetful of her usual dignity, and crying from
+her very heart of hearts, "My dear Fitz Jarndyce!" fell upon my neck
+and kissed me twenty times.
+
+"Dear me!" said she, putting her hand into her reticule, "I have
+nothing here but documents, my dear Fitz Jarndyce; I must borrow a
+pocket handkerchief."
+
+Charley gave her one, and the good creature certainly made use of it,
+for she held it to her eyes with both hands and sat so, shedding
+tears for the next ten minutes.
+
+"With pleasure, my dear Fitz Jarndyce," she was careful to explain.
+"Not the least pain. Pleasure to see you well again. Pleasure at
+having the honour of being admitted to see you. I am so much fonder
+of you, my love, than of the Chancellor. Though I DO attend court
+regularly. By the by, my dear, mentioning pocket handkerchiefs--"
+
+Miss Flite here looked at Charley, who had been to meet her at the
+place where the coach stopped. Charley glanced at me and looked
+unwilling to pursue the suggestion.
+
+"Ve-ry right!" said Miss Flite, "Ve-ry correct. Truly! Highly
+indiscreet of me to mention it; but my dear Miss Fitz Jarndyce, I am
+afraid I am at times (between ourselves, you wouldn't think it) a
+little--rambling you know," said Miss Flite, touching her forehead.
+"Nothing more."
+
+"What were you going to tell me?" said I, smiling, for I saw she
+wanted to go on. "You have roused my curiosity, and now you must
+gratify it."
+
+Miss Flite looked at Charley for advice in this important crisis, who
+said, "If you please, ma'am, you had better tell then," and therein
+gratified Miss Flite beyond measure.
+
+"So sagacious, our young friend," said she to me in her mysterious
+way. "Diminutive. But ve-ry sagacious! Well, my dear, it's a pretty
+anecdote. Nothing more. Still I think it charming. Who should follow
+us down the road from the coach, my dear, but a poor person in a very
+ungenteel bonnet--"
+
+"Jenny, if you please, miss," said Charley.
+
+"Just so!" Miss Flite acquiesced with the greatest suavity. "Jenny.
+Ye-es! And what does she tell our young friend but that there has
+been a lady with a veil inquiring at her cottage after my dear Fitz
+Jarndyce's health and taking a handkerchief away with her as a little
+keepsake merely because it was my amiable Fitz Jarndyce's! Now, you
+know, so very prepossessing in the lady with the veil!"
+
+"If you please, miss," said Charley, to whom I looked in some
+astonishment, "Jenny says that when her baby died, you left a
+handkerchief there, and that she put it away and kept it with the
+baby's little things. I think, if you please, partly because it was
+yours, miss, and partly because it had covered the baby."
+
+"Diminutive," whispered Miss Flite, making a variety of motions about
+her own forehead to express intellect in Charley. "But exceedingly
+sagacious! And so dear! My love, she's clearer than any counsel I
+ever heard!"
+
+"Yes, Charley," I returned. "I remember it. Well?"
+
+"Well, miss," said Charley, "and that's the handkerchief the lady
+took. And Jenny wants you to know that she wouldn't have made away
+with it herself for a heap of money but that the lady took it and
+left some money instead. Jenny don't know her at all, if you please,
+miss!"
+
+"Why, who can she be?" said I.
+
+"My love," Miss Flite suggested, advancing her lips to my ear with
+her most mysterious look, "in MY opinion--don't mention this to our
+diminutive friend--she's the Lord Chancellor's wife. He's married,
+you know. And I understand she leads him a terrible life. Throws his
+lordship's papers into the fire, my dear, if he won't pay the
+jeweller!"
+
+I did not think very much about this lady then, for I had an
+impression that it might be Caddy. Besides, my attention was diverted
+by my visitor, who was cold after her ride and looked hungry and who,
+our dinner being brought in, required some little assistance in
+arraying herself with great satisfaction in a pitiable old scarf and
+a much-worn and often-mended pair of gloves, which she had brought
+down in a paper parcel. I had to preside, too, over the
+entertainment, consisting of a dish of fish, a roast fowl, a
+sweetbread, vegetables, pudding, and Madeira; and it was so pleasant
+to see how she enjoyed it, and with what state and ceremony she did
+honour to it, that I was soon thinking of nothing else.
+
+When we had finished and had our little dessert before us,
+embellished by the hands of my dear, who would yield the
+superintendence of everything prepared for me to no one, Miss Flite
+was so very chatty and happy that I thought I would lead her to her
+own history, as she was always pleased to talk about herself. I began
+by saying "You have attended on the Lord Chancellor many years, Miss
+Flite?"
+
+"Oh, many, many, many years, my dear. But I expect a judgment.
+Shortly."
+
+There was an anxiety even in her hopefulness that made me doubtful if
+I had done right in approaching the subject. I thought I would say no
+more about it.
+
+"My father expected a judgment," said Miss Flite. "My brother. My
+sister. They all expected a judgment. The same that I expect."
+
+"They are all--"
+
+"Ye-es. Dead of course, my dear," said she.
+
+As I saw she would go on, I thought it best to try to be serviceable
+to her by meeting the theme rather than avoiding it.
+
+"Would it not be wiser," said I, "to expect this judgment no more?"
+
+"Why, my dear," she answered promptly, "of course it would!"
+
+"And to attend the court no more?"
+
+"Equally of course," said she. "Very wearing to be always in
+expectation of what never comes, my dear Fitz Jarndyce! Wearing, I
+assure you, to the bone!"
+
+She slightly showed me her arm, and it was fearfully thin indeed.
+
+"But, my dear," she went on in her mysterious way, "there's a
+dreadful attraction in the place. Hush! Don't mention it to our
+diminutive friend when she comes in. Or it may frighten her. With
+good reason. There's a cruel attraction in the place. You CAN'T leave
+it. And you MUST expect."
+
+I tried to assure her that this was not so. She heard me patiently
+and smilingly, but was ready with her own answer.
+
+"Aye, aye, aye! You think so because I am a little rambling. Ve-ry
+absurd, to be a little rambling, is it not? Ve-ry confusing, too. To
+the head. I find it so. But, my dear, I have been there many years,
+and I have noticed. It's the mace and seal upon the table."
+
+What could they do, did she think? I mildly asked her.
+
+"Draw," returned Miss Flite. "Draw people on, my dear. Draw peace out
+of them. Sense out of them. Good looks out of them. Good qualities
+out of them. I have felt them even drawing my rest away in the night.
+Cold and glittering devils!"
+
+She tapped me several times upon the arm and nodded good-humouredly
+as if she were anxious I should understand that I had no cause to
+fear her, though she spoke so gloomily, and confided these awful
+secrets to me.
+
+"Let me see," said she. "I'll tell you my own case. Before they ever
+drew me--before I had ever seen them--what was it I used to do?
+Tambourine playing? No. Tambour work. I and my sister worked at
+tambour work. Our father and our brother had a builder's business.
+We all lived together. Ve-ry respectably, my dear! First, our father
+was drawn--slowly. Home was drawn with him. In a few years he
+was a fierce, sour, angry bankrupt without a kind word or a kind
+look for any one. He had been so different, Fitz Jarndyce. He was
+drawn to a debtors' prison. There he died. Then our brother was
+drawn--swiftly--to drunkenness. And rags. And death. Then my sister
+was drawn. Hush! Never ask to what! Then I was ill and in misery, and
+heard, as I had often heard before, that this was all the work of
+Chancery. When I got better, I went to look at the monster. And then
+I found out how it was, and I was drawn to stay there."
+
+Having got over her own short narrative, in the delivery of which she
+had spoken in a low, strained voice, as if the shock were fresh upon
+her, she gradually resumed her usual air of amiable importance.
+
+"You don't quite credit me, my dear! Well, well! You will, some day.
+I am a little rambling. But I have noticed. I have seen many new
+faces come, unsuspicious, within the influence of the mace and seal
+in these many years. As my father's came there. As my brother's. As
+my sister's. As my own. I hear Conversation Kenge and the rest of
+them say to the new faces, 'Here's little Miss Flite. Oh, you are new
+here; and you must come and be presented to little Miss Flite!' Ve-ry
+good. Proud I am sure to have the honour! And we all laugh. But, Fitz
+Jarndyce, I know what will happen. I know, far better than they do,
+when the attraction has begun. I know the signs, my dear. I saw them
+begin in Gridley. And I saw them end. Fitz Jarndyce, my love,"
+speaking low again, "I saw them beginning in our friend the ward in
+Jarndyce. Let some one hold him back. Or he'll be drawn to ruin."
+
+She looked at me in silence for some moments, with her face gradually
+softening into a smile. Seeming to fear that she had been too gloomy,
+and seeming also to lose the connexion in her mind, she said politely
+as she sipped her glass of wine, "Yes, my dear, as I was saying, I
+expect a judgment shortly. Then I shall release my birds, you know,
+and confer estates."
+
+I was much impressed by her allusion to Richard and by the sad
+meaning, so sadly illustrated in her poor pinched form, that made its
+way through all her incoherence. But happily for her, she was quite
+complacent again now and beamed with nods and smiles.
+
+"But, my dear," she said, gaily, reaching another hand to put it upon
+mine. "You have not congratulated me on my physician. Positively not
+once, yet!"
+
+I was obliged to confess that I did not quite know what she meant.
+
+"My physician, Mr. Woodcourt, my dear, who was so exceedingly
+attentive to me. Though his services were rendered quite
+gratuitously. Until the Day of Judgment. I mean THE judgment that
+will dissolve the spell upon me of the mace and seal."
+
+"Mr. Woodcourt is so far away, now," said I, "that I thought the time
+for such congratulation was past, Miss Flite."
+
+"But, my child," she returned, "is it possible that you don't know
+what has happened?"
+
+"No," said I.
+
+"Not what everybody has been talking of, my beloved Fitz Jarndyce!"
+
+"No," said I. "You forget how long I have been here."
+
+"True! My dear, for the moment--true. I blame myself. But my memory
+has been drawn out of me, with everything else, by what I mentioned.
+Ve-ry strong influence, is it not? Well, my dear, there has been a
+terrible shipwreck over in those East Indian seas."
+
+"Mr. Woodcourt shipwrecked!"
+
+"Don't be agitated, my dear. He is safe. An awful scene. Death in all
+shapes. Hundreds of dead and dying. Fire, storm, and darkness.
+Numbers of the drowning thrown upon a rock. There, and through it
+all, my dear physician was a hero. Calm and brave through everything.
+Saved many lives, never complained in hunger and thirst, wrapped
+naked people in his spare clothes, took the lead, showed them what to
+do, governed them, tended the sick, buried the dead, and brought the
+poor survivors safely off at last! My dear, the poor emaciated
+creatures all but worshipped him. They fell down at his feet when
+they got to the land and blessed him. The whole country rings with
+it. Stay! Where's my bag of documents? I have got it there, and you
+shall read it, you shall read it!"
+
+And I DID read all the noble history, though very slowly and
+imperfectly then, for my eyes were so dimmed that I could not see the
+words, and I cried so much that I was many times obliged to lay down
+the long account she had cut out of the newspaper. I felt so
+triumphant ever to have known the man who had done such generous and
+gallant deeds, I felt such glowing exultation in his renown, I so
+admired and loved what he had done, that I envied the storm-worn
+people who had fallen at his feet and blessed him as their preserver.
+I could myself have kneeled down then, so far away, and blessed him
+in my rapture that he should be so truly good and brave. I felt that
+no one--mother, sister, wife--could honour him more than I. I did,
+indeed!
+
+My poor little visitor made me a present of the account, and when as
+the evening began to close in she rose to take her leave, lest she
+should miss the coach by which she was to return, she was still full
+of the shipwreck, which I had not yet sufficiently composed myself to
+understand in all its details.
+
+"My dear," said she as she carefully folded up her scarf and gloves,
+"my brave physician ought to have a title bestowed upon him. And no
+doubt he will. You are of that opinion?"
+
+That he well deserved one, yes. That he would ever have one, no.
+
+"Why not, Fitz Jarndyce?" she asked rather sharply.
+
+I said it was not the custom in England to confer titles on men
+distinguished by peaceful services, however good and great, unless
+occasionally when they consisted of the accumulation of some very
+large amount of money.
+
+"Why, good gracious," said Miss Flite, "how can you say that? Surely
+you know, my dear, that all the greatest ornaments of England in
+knowledge, imagination, active humanity, and improvement of every
+sort are added to its nobility! Look round you, my dear, and
+consider. YOU must be rambling a little now, I think, if you don't
+know that this is the great reason why titles will always last in the
+land!"
+
+I am afraid she believed what she said, for there were moments when
+she was very mad indeed.
+
+And now I must part with the little secret I have thus far tried to
+keep. I had thought, sometimes, that Mr. Woodcourt loved me and that
+if he had been richer he would perhaps have told me that he loved me
+before he went away. I had thought, sometimes, that if he had done
+so, I should have been glad of it. But how much better it was now
+that this had never happened! What should I have suffered if I had
+had to write to him and tell him that the poor face he had known as
+mine was quite gone from me and that I freely released him from his
+bondage to one whom he had never seen!
+
+Oh, it was so much better as it was! With a great pang mercifully
+spared me, I could take back to my heart my childish prayer to be all
+he had so brightly shown himself; and there was nothing to be undone:
+no chain for me to break or for him to drag; and I could go, please
+God, my lowly way along the path of duty, and he could go his nobler
+way upon its broader road; and though we were apart upon the journey,
+I might aspire to meet him, unselfishly, innocently, better far than
+he had thought me when I found some favour in his eyes, at the
+journey's end.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+Chesney Wold
+
+
+Charley and I did not set off alone upon our expedition into
+Lincolnshire. My guardian had made up his mind not to lose sight of
+me until I was safe in Mr. Boythorn's house, so he accompanied us,
+and we were two days upon the road. I found every breath of air, and
+every scent, and every flower and leaf and blade of grass, and every
+passing cloud, and everything in nature, more beautiful and wonderful
+to me than I had ever found it yet. This was my first gain from my
+illness. How little I had lost, when the wide world was so full of
+delight for me.
+
+My guardian intending to go back immediately, we appointed, on our
+way down, a day when my dear girl should come. I wrote her a letter,
+of which he took charge, and he left us within half an hour of our
+arrival at our destination, on a delightful evening in the early
+summer-time.
+
+If a good fairy had built the house for me with a wave of her wand,
+and I had been a princess and her favoured god-child, I could not
+have been more considered in it. So many preparations were made for
+me and such an endearing remembrance was shown of all my little
+tastes and likings that I could have sat down, overcome, a dozen
+times before I had revisited half the rooms. I did better than that,
+however, by showing them all to Charley instead. Charley's delight
+calmed mine; and after we had had a walk in the garden, and Charley
+had exhausted her whole vocabulary of admiring expressions, I was as
+tranquilly happy as I ought to have been. It was a great comfort to
+be able to say to myself after tea, "Esther, my dear, I think you are
+quite sensible enough to sit down now and write a note of thanks to
+your host." He had left a note of welcome for me, as sunny as his own
+face, and had confided his bird to my care, which I knew to be his
+highest mark of confidence. Accordingly I wrote a little note to him
+in London, telling him how all his favourite plants and trees were
+looking, and how the most astonishing of birds had chirped the
+honours of the house to me in the most hospitable manner, and how,
+after singing on my shoulder, to the inconceivable rapture of my
+little maid, he was then at roost in the usual corner of his cage,
+but whether dreaming or no I could not report. My note finished and
+sent off to the post, I made myself very busy in unpacking and
+arranging; and I sent Charley to bed in good time and told her I
+should want her no more that night.
+
+For I had not yet looked in the glass and had never asked to have my
+own restored to me. I knew this to be a weakness which must be
+overcome, but I had always said to myself that I would begin afresh
+when I got to where I now was. Therefore I had wanted to be alone,
+and therefore I said, now alone, in my own room, "Esther, if you are
+to be happy, if you are to have any right to pray to be true-hearted,
+you must keep your word, my dear." I was quite resolved to keep it,
+but I sat down for a little while first to reflect upon all my
+blessings. And then I said my prayers and thought a little more.
+
+My hair had not been cut off, though it had been in danger more than
+once. It was long and thick. I let it down, and shook it out, and
+went up to the glass upon the dressing-table. There was a little
+muslin curtain drawn across it. I drew it back and stood for a moment
+looking through such a veil of my own hair that I could see nothing
+else. Then I put my hair aside and looked at the reflection in the
+mirror, encouraged by seeing how placidly it looked at me. I was very
+much changed--oh, very, very much. At first my face was so strange to
+me that I think I should have put my hands before it and started back
+but for the encouragement I have mentioned. Very soon it became more
+familiar, and then I knew the extent of the alteration in it better
+than I had done at first. It was not like what I had expected, but I
+had expected nothing definite, and I dare say anything definite would
+have surprised me.
+
+I had never been a beauty and had never thought myself one, but I had
+been very different from this. It was all gone now. Heaven was so
+good to me that I could let it go with a few not bitter tears and
+could stand there arranging my hair for the night quite thankfully.
+
+One thing troubled me, and I considered it for a long time before I
+went to sleep. I had kept Mr. Woodcourt's flowers. When they were
+withered I had dried them and put them in a book that I was fond of.
+Nobody knew this, not even Ada. I was doubtful whether I had a right
+to preserve what he had sent to one so different--whether it was
+generous towards him to do it. I wished to be generous to him, even
+in the secret depths of my heart, which he would never know, because
+I could have loved him--could have been devoted to him. At last I
+came to the conclusion that I might keep them if I treasured them
+only as a remembrance of what was irrevocably past and gone, never to
+be looked back on any more, in any other light. I hope this may not
+seem trivial. I was very much in earnest.
+
+I took care to be up early in the morning and to be before the glass
+when Charley came in on tiptoe.
+
+"Dear, dear, miss!" cried Charley, starting. "Is that you?"
+
+"Yes, Charley," said I, quietly putting up my hair. "And I am very
+well indeed, and very happy."
+
+I saw it was a weight off Charley's mind, but it was a greater weight
+off mine. I knew the worst now and was composed to it. I shall not
+conceal, as I go on, the weaknesses I could not quite conquer, but
+they always passed from me soon and the happier frame of mind stayed
+by me faithfully.
+
+Wishing to be fully re-established in my strength and my good spirits
+before Ada came, I now laid down a little series of plans with
+Charley for being in the fresh air all day long. We were to be out
+before breakfast, and were to dine early, and were to be out again
+before and after dinner, and were to talk in the garden after tea,
+and were to go to rest betimes, and were to climb every hill and
+explore every road, lane, and field in the neighbourhood. As to
+restoratives and strengthening delicacies, Mr. Boythorn's good
+housekeeper was for ever trotting about with something to eat or
+drink in her hand; I could not even be heard of as resting in the
+park but she would come trotting after me with a basket, her cheerful
+face shining with a lecture on the importance of frequent
+nourishment. Then there was a pony expressly for my riding, a chubby
+pony with a short neck and a mane all over his eyes who could
+canter--when he would--so easily and quietly that he was a treasure.
+In a very few days he would come to me in the paddock when I called
+him, and eat out of my hand, and follow me about. We arrived at such
+a capital understanding that when he was jogging with me lazily, and
+rather obstinately, down some shady lane, if I patted his neck and
+said, "Stubbs, I am surprised you don't canter when you know how much
+I like it; and I think you might oblige me, for you are only getting
+stupid and going to sleep," he would give his head a comical shake or
+two and set off directly, while Charley would stand still and laugh
+with such enjoyment that her laughter was like music. I don't know
+who had given Stubbs his name, but it seemed to belong to him as
+naturally as his rough coat. Once we put him in a little chaise and
+drove him triumphantly through the green lanes for five miles; but
+all at once, as we were extolling him to the skies, he seemed to take
+it ill that he should have been accompanied so far by the circle of
+tantalizing little gnats that had been hovering round and round his
+ears the whole way without appearing to advance an inch, and stopped
+to think about it. I suppose he came to the decision that it was not
+to be borne, for he steadily refused to move until I gave the reins
+to Charley and got out and walked, when he followed me with a sturdy
+sort of good humour, putting his head under my arm and rubbing his
+ear against my sleeve. It was in vain for me to say, "Now, Stubbs, I
+feel quite sure from what I know of you that you will go on if I ride
+a little while," for the moment I left him, he stood stock still
+again. Consequently I was obliged to lead the way, as before; and in
+this order we returned home, to the great delight of the village.
+
+Charley and I had reason to call it the most friendly of villages, I
+am sure, for in a week's time the people were so glad to see us go
+by, though ever so frequently in the course of a day, that there were
+faces of greeting in every cottage. I had known many of the grown
+people before and almost all the children, but now the very steeple
+began to wear a familiar and affectionate look. Among my new friends
+was an old old woman who lived in such a little thatched and
+whitewashed dwelling that when the outside shutter was turned up on
+its hinges, it shut up the whole house-front. This old lady had a
+grandson who was a sailor, and I wrote a letter to him for her and
+drew at the top of it the chimney-corner in which she had brought him
+up and where his old stool yet occupied its old place. This was
+considered by the whole village the most wonderful achievement in the
+world, but when an answer came back all the way from Plymouth, in
+which he mentioned that he was going to take the picture all the way
+to America, and from America would write again, I got all the credit
+that ought to have been given to the post-office and was invested
+with the merit of the whole system.
+
+Thus, what with being so much in the air, playing with so many
+children, gossiping with so many people, sitting on invitation in so
+many cottages, going on with Charley's education, and writing long
+letters to Ada every day, I had scarcely any time to think about that
+little loss of mine and was almost always cheerful. If I did think of
+it at odd moments now and then, I had only to be busy and forget it.
+I felt it more than I had hoped I should once when a child said,
+"Mother, why is the lady not a pretty lady now like she used to be?"
+But when I found the child was not less fond of me, and drew its soft
+hand over my face with a kind of pitying protection in its touch,
+that soon set me up again. There were many little occurrences which
+suggested to me, with great consolation, how natural it is to gentle
+hearts to be considerate and delicate towards any inferiority. One of
+these particularly touched me. I happened to stroll into the little
+church when a marriage was just concluded, and the young couple had
+to sign the register.
+
+The bridegroom, to whom the pen was handed first, made a rude cross
+for his mark; the bride, who came next, did the same. Now, I had
+known the bride when I was last there, not only as the prettiest girl
+in the place, but as having quite distinguished herself in the
+school, and I could not help looking at her with some surprise. She
+came aside and whispered to me, while tears of honest love and
+admiration stood in her bright eyes, "He's a dear good fellow, miss;
+but he can't write yet--he's going to learn of me--and I wouldn't
+shame him for the world!" Why, what had I to fear, I thought, when
+there was this nobility in the soul of a labouring man's daughter!
+
+The air blew as freshly and revivingly upon me as it had ever blown,
+and the healthy colour came into my new face as it had come into my
+old one. Charley was wonderful to see, she was so radiant and so
+rosy; and we both enjoyed the whole day and slept soundly the whole
+night.
+
+There was a favourite spot of mine in the park-woods of Chesney Wold
+where a seat had been erected commanding a lovely view. The wood had
+been cleared and opened to improve this point of sight, and the
+bright sunny landscape beyond was so beautiful that I rested there at
+least once every day. A picturesque part of the Hall, called the
+Ghost's Walk, was seen to advantage from this higher ground; and the
+startling name, and the old legend in the Dedlock family which I had
+heard from Mr. Boythorn accounting for it, mingled with the view and
+gave it something of a mysterious interest in addition to its real
+charms. There was a bank here, too, which was a famous one for
+violets; and as it was a daily delight of Charley's to gather wild
+flowers, she took as much to the spot as I did.
+
+It would be idle to inquire now why I never went close to the house
+or never went inside it. The family were not there, I had heard on my
+arrival, and were not expected. I was far from being incurious or
+uninterested about the building; on the contrary, I often sat in this
+place wondering how the rooms ranged and whether any echo like a
+footstep really did resound at times, as the story said, upon the
+lonely Ghost's Walk. The indefinable feeling with which Lady Dedlock
+had impressed me may have had some influence in keeping me from the
+house even when she was absent. I am not sure. Her face and figure
+were associated with it, naturally; but I cannot say that they
+repelled me from it, though something did. For whatever reason or no
+reason, I had never once gone near it, down to the day at which my
+story now arrives.
+
+I was resting at my favourite point after a long ramble, and Charley
+was gathering violets at a little distance from me. I had been
+looking at the Ghost's Walk lying in a deep shade of masonry afar off
+and picturing to myself the female shape that was said to haunt it
+when I became aware of a figure approaching through the wood. The
+perspective was so long and so darkened by leaves, and the shadows of
+the branches on the ground made it so much more intricate to the eye,
+that at first I could not discern what figure it was. By little and
+little it revealed itself to be a woman's--a lady's--Lady Dedlock's.
+She was alone and coming to where I sat with a much quicker step, I
+observed to my surprise, than was usual with her.
+
+I was fluttered by her being unexpectedly so near (she was almost
+within speaking distance before I knew her) and would have risen to
+continue my walk. But I could not. I was rendered motionless. Not so
+much by her hurried gesture of entreaty, not so much by her quick
+advance and outstretched hands, not so much by the great change in
+her manner and the absence of her haughty self-restraint, as by a
+something in her face that I had pined for and dreamed of when I was
+a little child, something I had never seen in any face, something I
+had never seen in hers before.
+
+A dread and faintness fell upon me, and I called to Charley. Lady
+Dedlock stopped upon the instant and changed back almost to what I
+had known her.
+
+"Miss Summerson, I am afraid I have startled you," she said, now
+advancing slowly. "You can scarcely be strong yet. You have been very
+ill, I know. I have been much concerned to hear it."
+
+I could no more have removed my eyes from her pale face than I could
+have stirred from the bench on which I sat. She gave me her hand, and
+its deadly coldness, so at variance with the enforced composure of
+her features, deepened the fascination that overpowered me. I cannot
+say what was in my whirling thoughts.
+
+"You are recovering again?" she asked kindly.
+
+"I was quite well but a moment ago, Lady Dedlock."
+
+"Is this your young attendant?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Will you send her on before and walk towards your house with me?"
+
+"Charley," said I, "take your flowers home, and I will follow you
+directly."
+
+Charley, with her best curtsy, blushingly tied on her bonnet and went
+her way. When she was gone, Lady Dedlock sat down on the seat beside
+me.
+
+I cannot tell in any words what the state of my mind was when I saw
+in her hand my handkerchief with which I had covered the dead baby.
+
+I looked at her, but I could not see her, I could not hear her, I
+could not draw my breath. The beating of my heart was so violent and
+wild that I felt as if my life were breaking from me. But when she
+caught me to her breast, kissed me, wept over me, compassionated me,
+and called me back to myself; when she fell down on her knees and
+cried to me, "Oh, my child, my child, I am your wicked and unhappy
+mother! Oh, try to forgive me!"--when I saw her at my feet on the
+bare earth in her great agony of mind, I felt, through all my tumult
+of emotion, a burst of gratitude to the providence of God that I was
+so changed as that I never could disgrace her by any trace of
+likeness, as that nobody could ever now look at me and look at her
+and remotely think of any near tie between us.
+
+I raised my mother up, praying and beseeching her not to stoop before
+me in such affliction and humiliation. I did so in broken, incoherent
+words, for besides the trouble I was in, it frightened me to see her
+at MY feet. I told her--or I tried to tell her--that if it were for
+me, her child, under any circumstances to take upon me to forgive
+her, I did it, and had done it, many, many years. I told her that my
+heart overflowed with love for her, that it was natural love which
+nothing in the past had changed or could change. That it was not for
+me, then resting for the first time on my mother's bosom, to take her
+to account for having given me life, but that my duty was to bless
+her and receive her, though the whole world turned from her, and that
+I only asked her leave to do it. I held my mother in my embrace, and
+she held me in hers, and among the still woods in the silence of the
+summer day there seemed to be nothing but our two troubled minds that
+was not at peace.
+
+"To bless and receive me," groaned my mother, "it is far too late. I
+must travel my dark road alone, and it will lead me where it will.
+From day to day, sometimes from hour to hour, I do not see the way
+before my guilty feet. This is the earthly punishment I have brought
+upon myself. I bear it, and I hide it."
+
+Even in the thinking of her endurance, she drew her habitual air of
+proud indifference about her like a veil, though she soon cast it off
+again.
+
+"I must keep this secret, if by any means it can be kept, not wholly
+for myself. I have a husband, wretched and dishonouring creature that
+I am!"
+
+These words she uttered with a suppressed cry of despair, more
+terrible in its sound than any shriek. Covering her face with her
+hands, she shrank down in my embrace as if she were unwilling that I
+should touch her; nor could I, by my utmost persuasions or by any
+endearments I could use, prevail upon her to rise. She said, no, no,
+no, she could only speak to me so; she must be proud and disdainful
+everywhere else; she would be humbled and ashamed there, in the only
+natural moments of her life.
+
+My unhappy mother told me that in my illness she had been nearly
+frantic. She had but then known that her child was living. She could
+not have suspected me to be that child before. She had followed me
+down here to speak to me but once in all her life. We never could
+associate, never could communicate, never probably from that time
+forth could interchange another word on earth. She put into my hands
+a letter she had written for my reading only and said when I had read
+it and destroyed it--but not so much for her sake, since she asked
+nothing, as for her husband's and my own--I must evermore consider
+her as dead. If I could believe that she loved me, in this agony in
+which I saw her, with a mother's love, she asked me to do that, for
+then I might think of her with a greater pity, imagining what she
+suffered. She had put herself beyond all hope and beyond all help.
+Whether she preserved her secret until death or it came to be
+discovered and she brought dishonour and disgrace upon the name she
+had taken, it was her solitary struggle always; and no affection
+could come near her, and no human creature could render her any aid.
+
+"But is the secret safe so far?" I asked. "Is it safe now, dearest
+mother?"
+
+"No," replied my mother. "It has been very near discovery. It was
+saved by an accident. It may be lost by another accident--to-morrow,
+any day."
+
+"Do you dread a particular person?"
+
+"Hush! Do not tremble and cry so much for me. I am not worthy of
+these tears," said my mother, kissing my hands. "I dread one person
+very much."
+
+"An enemy?"
+
+"Not a friend. One who is too passionless to be either. He is Sir
+Leicester Dedlock's lawyer, mechanically faithful without attachment,
+and very jealous of the profit, privilege, and reputation of being
+master of the mysteries of great houses."
+
+"Has he any suspicions?"
+
+"Many."
+
+"Not of you?" I said alarmed.
+
+"Yes! He is always vigilant and always near me. I may keep him at a
+standstill, but I can never shake him off."
+
+"Has he so little pity or compunction?"
+
+"He has none, and no anger. He is indifferent to everything but his
+calling. His calling is the acquisition of secrets and the holding
+possession of such power as they give him, with no sharer or opponent
+in it."
+
+"Could you trust in him?"
+
+"I shall never try. The dark road I have trodden for so many years
+will end where it will. I follow it alone to the end, whatever the
+end be. It may be near, it may be distant; while the road lasts,
+nothing turns me."
+
+"Dear mother, are you so resolved?"
+
+"I AM resolved. I have long outbidden folly with folly, pride with
+pride, scorn with scorn, insolence with insolence, and have outlived
+many vanities with many more. I will outlive this danger, and outdie
+it, if I can. It has closed around me almost as awfully as if these
+woods of Chesney Wold had closed around the house, but my course
+through it is the same. I have but one; I can have but one."
+
+"Mr. Jarndyce--" I was beginning when my mother hurriedly inquired,
+"Does HE suspect?"
+
+"No," said I. "No, indeed! Be assured that he does not!" And I told
+her what he had related to me as his knowledge of my story. "But he
+is so good and sensible," said I, "that perhaps if he knew--"
+
+My mother, who until this time had made no change in her position,
+raised her hand up to my lips and stopped me.
+
+"Confide fully in him," she said after a little while. "You have my
+free consent--a small gift from such a mother to her injured
+child!--but do not tell me of it. Some pride is left in me even yet."
+
+I explained, as nearly as I could then, or can recall now--for my
+agitation and distress throughout were so great that I scarcely
+understood myself, though every word that was uttered in the mother's
+voice, so unfamiliar and so melancholy to me, which in my childhood I
+had never learned to love and recognize, had never been sung to sleep
+with, had never heard a blessing from, had never had a hope inspired
+by, made an enduring impression on my memory--I say I explained, or
+tried to do it, how I had only hoped that Mr. Jarndyce, who had been
+the best of fathers to me, might be able to afford some counsel and
+support to her. But my mother answered no, it was impossible; no one
+could help her. Through the desert that lay before her, she must go
+alone.
+
+"My child, my child!" she said. "For the last time! These kisses for
+the last time! These arms upon my neck for the last time! We shall
+meet no more. To hope to do what I seek to do, I must be what I have
+been so long. Such is my reward and doom. If you hear of Lady
+Dedlock, brilliant, prosperous, and flattered, think of your wretched
+mother, conscience-stricken, underneath that mask! Think that the
+reality is in her suffering, in her useless remorse, in her murdering
+within her breast the only love and truth of which it is capable! And
+then forgive her if you can, and cry to heaven to forgive her, which
+it never can!"
+
+We held one another for a little space yet, but she was so firm that
+she took my hands away, and put them back against my breast, and with
+a last kiss as she held them there, released them, and went from me
+into the wood. I was alone, and calm and quiet below me in the sun
+and shade lay the old house, with its terraces and turrets, on which
+there had seemed to me to be such complete repose when I first saw
+it, but which now looked like the obdurate and unpitying watcher of
+my mother's misery.
+
+Stunned as I was, as weak and helpless at first as I had ever been in
+my sick chamber, the necessity of guarding against the danger of
+discovery, or even of the remotest suspicion, did me service. I took
+such precautions as I could to hide from Charley that I had been
+crying, and I constrained myself to think of every sacred obligation
+that there was upon me to be careful and collected. It was not a
+little while before I could succeed or could even restrain bursts of
+grief, but after an hour or so I was better and felt that I might
+return. I went home very slowly and told Charley, whom I found at the
+gate looking for me, that I had been tempted to extend my walk after
+Lady Dedlock had left me and that I was over-tired and would lie
+down. Safe in my own room, I read the letter. I clearly derived from
+it--and that was much then--that I had not been abandoned by my
+mother. Her elder and only sister, the godmother of my childhood,
+discovering signs of life in me when I had been laid aside as dead,
+had in her stern sense of duty, with no desire or willingness that I
+should live, reared me in rigid secrecy and had never again beheld my
+mother's face from within a few hours of my birth. So strangely did I
+hold my place in this world that until within a short time back I had
+never, to my own mother's knowledge, breathed--had been buried--had
+never been endowed with life--had never borne a name. When she had
+first seen me in the church she had been startled and had thought of
+what would have been like me if it had ever lived, and had lived on,
+but that was all then.
+
+What more the letter told me needs not to be repeated here. It has
+its own times and places in my story.
+
+My first care was to burn what my mother had written and to consume
+even its ashes. I hope it may not appear very unnatural or bad in me
+that I then became heavily sorrowful to think I had ever been reared.
+That I felt as if I knew it would have been better and happier for
+many people if indeed I had never breathed. That I had a terror of
+myself as the danger and the possible disgrace of my own mother and
+of a proud family name. That I was so confused and shaken as to be
+possessed by a belief that it was right and had been intended that I
+should die in my birth, and that it was wrong and not intended that I
+should be then alive.
+
+These are the real feelings that I had. I fell asleep worn out, and
+when I awoke I cried afresh to think that I was back in the world
+with my load of trouble for others. I was more than ever frightened
+of myself, thinking anew of her against whom I was a witness, of the
+owner of Chesney Wold, of the new and terrible meaning of the old
+words now moaning in my ear like a surge upon the shore, "Your
+mother, Esther, was your disgrace, and you are hers. The time will
+come--and soon enough--when you will understand this better, and will
+feel it too, as no one save a woman can." With them, those other
+words returned, "Pray daily that the sins of others be not visited
+upon your head." I could not disentangle all that was about me, and I
+felt as if the blame and the shame were all in me, and the visitation
+had come down.
+
+The day waned into a gloomy evening, overcast and sad, and I still
+contended with the same distress. I went out alone, and after walking
+a little in the park, watching the dark shades falling on the trees
+and the fitful flight of the bats, which sometimes almost touched me,
+was attracted to the house for the first time. Perhaps I might not
+have gone near it if I had been in a stronger frame of mind. As it
+was, I took the path that led close by it.
+
+I did not dare to linger or to look up, but I passed before the
+terrace garden with its fragrant odours, and its broad walks, and its
+well-kept beds and smooth turf; and I saw how beautiful and grave it
+was, and how the old stone balustrades and parapets, and wide flights
+of shallow steps, were seamed by time and weather; and how the
+trained moss and ivy grew about them, and around the old stone
+pedestal of the sun-dial; and I heard the fountain falling. Then the
+way went by long lines of dark windows diversified by turreted towers
+and porches of eccentric shapes, where old stone lions and grotesque
+monsters bristled outside dens of shadow and snarled at the evening
+gloom over the escutcheons they held in their grip. Thence the path
+wound underneath a gateway, and through a court-yard where the
+principal entrance was (I hurried quickly on), and by the stables
+where none but deep voices seemed to be, whether in the murmuring of
+the wind through the strong mass of ivy holding to a high red wall,
+or in the low complaining of the weathercock, or in the barking of
+the dogs, or in the slow striking of a clock. So, encountering
+presently a sweet smell of limes, whose rustling I could hear, I
+turned with the turning of the path to the south front, and there
+above me were the balustrades of the Ghost's Walk and one lighted
+window that might be my mother's.
+
+The way was paved here, like the terrace overhead, and my footsteps
+from being noiseless made an echoing sound upon the flags. Stopping
+to look at nothing, but seeing all I did see as I went, I was passing
+quickly on, and in a few moments should have passed the lighted
+window, when my echoing footsteps brought it suddenly into my mind
+that there was a dreadful truth in the legend of the Ghost's Walk,
+that it was I who was to bring calamity upon the stately house and
+that my warning feet were haunting it even then. Seized with an
+augmented terror of myself which turned me cold, I ran from myself
+and everything, retraced the way by which I had come, and never
+paused until I had gained the lodge-gate, and the park lay sullen and
+black behind me.
+
+Not before I was alone in my own room for the night and had again
+been dejected and unhappy there did I begin to know how wrong and
+thankless this state was. But from my darling who was coming on the
+morrow, I found a joyful letter, full of such loving anticipation
+that I must have been of marble if it had not moved me; from my
+guardian, too, I found another letter, asking me to tell Dame Durden,
+if I should see that little woman anywhere, that they had moped most
+pitiably without her, that the housekeeping was going to rack and
+ruin, that nobody else could manage the keys, and that everybody in
+and about the house declared it was not the same house and was
+becoming rebellious for her return. Two such letters together made me
+think how far beyond my deserts I was beloved and how happy I ought
+to be. That made me think of all my past life; and that brought me,
+as it ought to have done before, into a better condition.
+
+For I saw very well that I could not have been intended to die, or I
+should never have lived; not to say should never have been reserved
+for such a happy life. I saw very well how many things had worked
+together for my welfare, and that if the sins of the fathers were
+sometimes visited upon the children, the phrase did not mean what I
+had in the morning feared it meant. I knew I was as innocent of my
+birth as a queen of hers and that before my Heavenly Father I should
+not be punished for birth nor a queen rewarded for it. I had had
+experience, in the shock of that very day, that I could, even thus
+soon, find comforting reconcilements to the change that had fallen on
+me. I renewed my resolutions and prayed to be strengthened in them,
+pouring out my heart for myself and for my unhappy mother and feeling
+that the darkness of the morning was passing away. It was not upon my
+sleep; and when the next day's light awoke me, it was gone.
+
+My dear girl was to arrive at five o'clock in the afternoon. How to
+help myself through the intermediate time better than by taking a
+long walk along the road by which she was to come, I did not know; so
+Charley and I and Stubbs--Stubbs saddled, for we never drove him
+after the one great occasion--made a long expedition along that road
+and back. On our return, we held a great review of the house and
+garden and saw that everything was in its prettiest condition, and
+had the bird out ready as an important part of the establishment.
+
+There were more than two full hours yet to elapse before she could
+come, and in that interval, which seemed a long one, I must confess I
+was nervously anxious about my altered looks. I loved my darling so
+well that I was more concerned for their effect on her than on any
+one. I was not in this slight distress because I at all repined--I am
+quite certain I did not, that day--but, I thought, would she be
+wholly prepared? When she first saw me, might she not be a little
+shocked and disappointed? Might it not prove a little worse than she
+expected? Might she not look for her old Esther and not find her?
+Might she not have to grow used to me and to begin all over again?
+
+I knew the various expressions of my sweet girl's face so well, and
+it was such an honest face in its loveliness, that I was sure
+beforehand she could not hide that first look from me. And I
+considered whether, if it should signify any one of these meanings,
+which was so very likely, could I quite answer for myself?
+
+Well, I thought I could. After last night, I thought I could. But to
+wait and wait, and expect and expect, and think and think, was such
+bad preparation that I resolved to go along the road again and meet
+her.
+
+So I said to Charley, "Charley, I will go by myself and walk along
+the road until she comes." Charley highly approving of anything that
+pleased me, I went and left her at home.
+
+But before I got to the second milestone, I had been in so many
+palpitations from seeing dust in the distance (though I knew it was
+not, and could not, be the coach yet) that I resolved to turn back
+and go home again. And when I had turned, I was in such fear of the
+coach coming up behind me (though I still knew that it neither would,
+nor could, do any such thing) that I ran the greater part of the way
+to avoid being overtaken.
+
+Then, I considered, when I had got safe back again, this was a nice
+thing to have done! Now I was hot and had made the worst of it
+instead of the best.
+
+At last, when I believed there was at least a quarter of an hour more
+yet, Charley all at once cried out to me as I was trembling in the
+garden, "Here she comes, miss! Here she is!"
+
+I did not mean to do it, but I ran upstairs into my room and hid
+myself behind the door. There I stood trembling, even when I heard my
+darling calling as she came upstairs, "Esther, my dear, my love,
+where are you? Little woman, dear Dame Durden!"
+
+She ran in, and was running out again when she saw me. Ah, my angel
+girl! The old dear look, all love, all fondness, all affection.
+Nothing else in it--no, nothing, nothing!
+
+Oh, how happy I was, down upon the floor, with my sweet beautiful
+girl down upon the floor too, holding my scarred face to her lovely
+cheek, bathing it with tears and kisses, rocking me to and fro like a
+child, calling me by every tender name that she could think of, and
+pressing me to her faithful heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+Jarndyce and Jarndyce
+
+
+If the secret I had to keep had been mine, I must have confided it to
+Ada before we had been long together. But it was not mine, and I did
+not feel that I had a right to tell it, even to my guardian, unless
+some great emergency arose. It was a weight to bear alone; still my
+present duty appeared to be plain, and blest in the attachment of my
+dear, I did not want an impulse and encouragement to do it. Though
+often when she was asleep and all was quiet, the remembrance of my
+mother kept me waking and made the night sorrowful, I did not yield
+to it at another time; and Ada found me what I used to be--except, of
+course, in that particular of which I have said enough and which I
+have no intention of mentioning any more just now, if I can help it.
+
+The difficulty that I felt in being quite composed that first evening
+when Ada asked me, over our work, if the family were at the house,
+and when I was obliged to answer yes, I believed so, for Lady Dedlock
+had spoken to me in the woods the day before yesterday, was great.
+Greater still when Ada asked me what she had said, and when I replied
+that she had been kind and interested, and when Ada, while admitting
+her beauty and elegance, remarked upon her proud manner and her
+imperious chilling air. But Charley helped me through, unconsciously,
+by telling us that Lady Dedlock had only stayed at the house two
+nights on her way from London to visit at some other great house in
+the next county and that she had left early on the morning after we
+had seen her at our view, as we called it. Charley verified the adage
+about little pitchers, I am sure, for she heard of more sayings and
+doings in a day than would have come to my ears in a month.
+
+We were to stay a month at Mr. Boythorn's. My pet had scarcely been
+there a bright week, as I recollect the time, when one evening after
+we had finished helping the gardener in watering his flowers, and
+just as the candles were lighted, Charley, appearing with a very
+important air behind Ada's chair, beckoned me mysteriously out of the
+room.
+
+"Oh! If you please, miss," said Charley in a whisper, with her eyes
+at their roundest and largest. "You're wanted at the Dedlock Arms."
+
+"Why, Charley," said I, "who can possibly want me at the
+public-house?"
+
+"I don't know, miss," returned Charley, putting her head forward and
+folding her hands tight upon the band of her little apron, which she
+always did in the enjoyment of anything mysterious or confidential,
+"but it's a gentleman, miss, and his compliments, and will you please
+to come without saying anything about it."
+
+"Whose compliments, Charley?"
+
+"His'n, miss," returned Charley, whose grammatical education was
+advancing, but not very rapidly.
+
+"And how do you come to be the messenger, Charley?"
+
+"I am not the messenger, if you please, miss," returned my little
+maid. "It was W. Grubble, miss."
+
+"And who is W. Grubble, Charley?"
+
+"Mister Grubble, miss," returned Charley. "Don't you know, miss? The
+Dedlock Arms, by W. Grubble," which Charley delivered as if she were
+slowly spelling out the sign.
+
+"Aye? The landlord, Charley?"
+
+"Yes, miss. If you please, miss, his wife is a beautiful woman, but
+she broke her ankle, and it never joined. And her brother's the
+sawyer that was put in the cage, miss, and they expect he'll drink
+himself to death entirely on beer," said Charley.
+
+Not knowing what might be the matter, and being easily apprehensive
+now, I thought it best to go to this place by myself. I bade Charley
+be quick with my bonnet and veil and my shawl, and having put them
+on, went away down the little hilly street, where I was as much at
+home as in Mr. Boythorn's garden.
+
+Mr. Grubble was standing in his shirt-sleeves at the door of his very
+clean little tavern waiting for me. He lifted off his hat with both
+hands when he saw me coming, and carrying it so, as if it were an
+iron vessel (it looked as heavy), preceded me along the sanded
+passage to his best parlour, a neat carpeted room with more plants in
+it than were quite convenient, a coloured print of Queen Caroline,
+several shells, a good many tea-trays, two stuffed and dried fish in
+glass cases, and either a curious egg or a curious pumpkin (but I
+don't know which, and I doubt if many people did) hanging from his
+ceiling. I knew Mr. Grubble very well by sight, from his often
+standing at his door. A pleasant-looking, stoutish, middle-aged man
+who never seemed to consider himself cozily dressed for his own
+fire-side without his hat and top-boots, but who never wore a coat
+except at church.
+
+He snuffed the candle, and backing away a little to see how it
+looked, backed out of the room--unexpectedly to me, for I was going
+to ask him by whom he had been sent. The door of the opposite parlour
+being then opened, I heard some voices, familiar in my ears I
+thought, which stopped. A quick light step approached the room in
+which I was, and who should stand before me but Richard!
+
+"My dear Esther!" he said. "My best friend!" And he really was so
+warm-hearted and earnest that in the first surprise and pleasure of
+his brotherly greeting I could scarcely find breath to tell him that
+Ada was well.
+
+"Answering my very thoughts--always the same dear girl!" said
+Richard, leading me to a chair and seating himself beside me.
+
+I put my veil up, but not quite.
+
+"Always the same dear girl!" said Richard just as heartily as before.
+
+I put up my veil altogether, and laying my hand on Richard's sleeve
+and looking in his face, told him how much I thanked him for his kind
+welcome and how greatly I rejoiced to see him, the more so because of
+the determination I had made in my illness, which I now conveyed to
+him.
+
+"My love," said Richard, "there is no one with whom I have a greater
+wish to talk than you, for I want you to understand me."
+
+"And I want you, Richard," said I, shaking my head, "to understand
+some one else."
+
+"Since you refer so immediately to John Jarndyce," said Richard, "--I
+suppose you mean him?"
+
+"Of course I do."
+
+"Then I may say at once that I am glad of it, because it is on that
+subject that I am anxious to be understood. By you, mind--you, my
+dear! I am not accountable to Mr. Jarndyce or Mr. Anybody."
+
+I was pained to find him taking this tone, and he observed it.
+
+"Well, well, my dear," said Richard, "we won't go into that now. I
+want to appear quietly in your country-house here, with you under my
+arm, and give my charming cousin a surprise. I suppose your loyalty
+to John Jarndyce will allow that?"
+
+"My dear Richard," I returned, "you know you would be heartily
+welcome at his house--your home, if you will but consider it so; and
+you are as heartily welcome here!"
+
+"Spoken like the best of little women!" cried Richard gaily.
+
+I asked him how he liked his profession.
+
+"Oh, I like it well enough!" said Richard. "It's all right. It does
+as well as anything else, for a time. I don't know that I shall care
+about it when I come to be settled, but I can sell out then
+and--however, never mind all that botheration at present."
+
+So young and handsome, and in all respects so perfectly the opposite
+of Miss Flite! And yet, in the clouded, eager, seeking look that
+passed over him, so dreadfully like her!
+
+"I am in town on leave just now," said Richard.
+
+"Indeed?"
+
+"Yes. I have run over to look after my--my Chancery interests before
+the long vacation," said Richard, forcing a careless laugh. "We are
+beginning to spin along with that old suit at last, I promise you."
+
+No wonder that I shook my head!
+
+"As you say, it's not a pleasant subject." Richard spoke with the
+same shade crossing his face as before. "Let it go to the four winds
+for to-night. Puff! Gone! Who do you suppose is with me?"
+
+"Was it Mr. Skimpole's voice I heard?"
+
+"That's the man! He does me more good than anybody. What a
+fascinating child it is!"
+
+I asked Richard if any one knew of their coming down together. He
+answered, no, nobody. He had been to call upon the dear old
+infant--so he called Mr. Skimpole--and the dear old infant had told
+him where we were, and he had told the dear old infant he was bent on
+coming to see us, and the dear old infant had directly wanted to come
+too; and so he had brought him. "And he is worth--not to say his
+sordid expenses--but thrice his weight in gold," said Richard. "He is
+such a cheery fellow. No worldliness about him. Fresh and
+green-hearted!"
+
+I certainly did not see the proof of Mr. Skimpole's worldliness in
+his having his expenses paid by Richard, but I made no remark about
+that. Indeed, he came in and turned our conversation. He was charmed
+to see me, said he had been shedding delicious tears of joy and
+sympathy at intervals for six weeks on my account, had never been so
+happy as in hearing of my progress, began to understand the mixture
+of good and evil in the world now, felt that he appreciated health
+the more when somebody else was ill, didn't know but what it might be
+in the scheme of things that A should squint to make B happier in
+looking straight or that C should carry a wooden leg to make D better
+satisfied with his flesh and blood in a silk stocking.
+
+"My dear Miss Summerson, here is our friend Richard," said Mr.
+Skimpole, "full of the brightest visions of the future, which he
+evokes out of the darkness of Chancery. Now that's delightful, that's
+inspiriting, that's full of poetry! In old times the woods and
+solitudes were made joyous to the shepherd by the imaginary piping
+and dancing of Pan and the nymphs. This present shepherd, our
+pastoral Richard, brightens the dull Inns of Court by making Fortune
+and her train sport through them to the melodious notes of a judgment
+from the bench. That's very pleasant, you know! Some ill-conditioned
+growling fellow may say to me, 'What's the use of these legal and
+equitable abuses? How do you defend them?' I reply, 'My growling
+friend, I DON'T defend them, but they are very agreeable to me. There
+is a shepherd--youth, a friend of mine, who transmutes them into
+something highly fascinating to my simplicity. I don't say it is for
+this that they exist--for I am a child among you worldly grumblers,
+and not called upon to account to you or myself for anything--but it
+may be so.'"
+
+I began seriously to think that Richard could scarcely have found a
+worse friend than this. It made me uneasy that at such a time when he
+most required some right principle and purpose he should have this
+captivating looseness and putting-off of everything, this airy
+dispensing with all principle and purpose, at his elbow. I thought I
+could understand how such a nature as my guardian's, experienced in
+the world and forced to contemplate the miserable evasions and
+contentions of the family misfortune, found an immense relief in Mr.
+Skimpole's avowal of his weaknesses and display of guileless candour;
+but I could not satisfy myself that it was as artless as it seemed or
+that it did not serve Mr. Skimpole's idle turn quite as well as any
+other part, and with less trouble.
+
+They both walked back with me, and Mr. Skimpole leaving us at the
+gate, I walked softly in with Richard and said, "Ada, my love, I have
+brought a gentleman to visit you." It was not difficult to read the
+blushing, startled face. She loved him dearly, and he knew it, and I
+knew it. It was a very transparent business, that meeting as cousins
+only.
+
+I almost mistrusted myself as growing quite wicked in my suspicions,
+but I was not so sure that Richard loved her dearly. He admired her
+very much--any one must have done that--and I dare say would have
+renewed their youthful engagement with great pride and ardour but
+that he knew how she would respect her promise to my guardian. Still
+I had a tormenting idea that the influence upon him extended even
+here, that he was postponing his best truth and earnestness in this
+as in all things until Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be off his mind.
+Ah me! What Richard would have been without that blight, I never
+shall know now!
+
+He told Ada, in his most ingenuous way, that he had not come to make
+any secret inroad on the terms she had accepted (rather too
+implicitly and confidingly, he thought) from Mr. Jarndyce, that he
+had come openly to see her and to see me and to justify himself for
+the present terms on which he stood with Mr. Jarndyce. As the dear
+old infant would be with us directly, he begged that I would make an
+appointment for the morning, when he might set himself right through
+the means of an unreserved conversation with me. I proposed to walk
+with him in the park at seven o'clock, and this was arranged. Mr.
+Skimpole soon afterwards appeared and made us merry for an hour. He
+particularly requested to see little Coavinses (meaning Charley) and
+told her, with a patriarchal air, that he had given her late father
+all the business in his power and that if one of her little brothers
+would make haste to get set up in the same profession, he hoped he
+should still be able to put a good deal of employment in his way.
+
+"For I am constantly being taken in these nets," said Mr. Skimpole,
+looking beamingly at us over a glass of wine-and-water, "and am
+constantly being bailed out--like a boat. Or paid off--like a ship's
+company. Somebody always does it for me. I can't do it, you know, for
+I never have any money. But somebody does it. I get out by somebody's
+means; I am not like the starling; I get out. If you were to ask me
+who somebody is, upon my word I couldn't tell you. Let us drink to
+somebody. God bless him!"
+
+Richard was a little late in the morning, but I had not to wait for
+him long, and we turned into the park. The air was bright and dewy
+and the sky without a cloud. The birds sang delightfully; the
+sparkles in the fern, the grass, and trees, were exquisite to see;
+the richness of the woods seemed to have increased twenty-fold since
+yesterday, as if, in the still night when they had looked so
+massively hushed in sleep, Nature, through all the minute details of
+every wonderful leaf, had been more wakeful than usual for the glory
+of that day.
+
+"This is a lovely place," said Richard, looking round. "None of the
+jar and discord of law-suits here!"
+
+But there was other trouble.
+
+"I tell you what, my dear girl," said Richard, "when I get affairs in
+general settled, I shall come down here, I think, and rest."
+
+"Would it not be better to rest now?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, as to resting NOW," said Richard, "or as to doing anything very
+definite NOW, that's not easy. In short, it can't be done; I can't do
+it at least."
+
+"Why not?" said I.
+
+"You know why not, Esther. If you were living in an unfinished house,
+liable to have the roof put on or taken off--to be from top to bottom
+pulled down or built up--to-morrow, next day, next week, next month,
+next year--you would find it hard to rest or settle. So do I. Now?
+There's no now for us suitors."
+
+I could almost have believed in the attraction on which my poor
+little wandering friend had expatiated when I saw again the darkened
+look of last night. Terrible to think it had in it also a shade of
+that unfortunate man who had died.
+
+"My dear Richard," said I, "this is a bad beginning of our
+conversation."
+
+"I knew you would tell me so, Dame Durden."
+
+"And not I alone, dear Richard. It was not I who cautioned you once
+never to found a hope or expectation on the family curse."
+
+"There you come back to John Jarndyce!" said Richard impatiently.
+"Well! We must approach him sooner or later, for he is the staple of
+what I have to say, and it's as well at once. My dear Esther, how can
+you be so blind? Don't you see that he is an interested party and
+that it may be very well for him to wish me to know nothing of the
+suit, and care nothing about it, but that it may not be quite so well
+for me?"
+
+"Oh, Richard," I remonstrated, "is it possible that you can ever have
+seen him and heard him, that you can ever have lived under his roof
+and known him, and can yet breathe, even to me in this solitary place
+where there is no one to hear us, such unworthy suspicions?"
+
+He reddened deeply, as if his natural generosity felt a pang of
+reproach. He was silent for a little while before he replied in a
+subdued voice, "Esther, I am sure you know that I am not a mean
+fellow and that I have some sense of suspicion and distrust being
+poor qualities in one of my years."
+
+"I know it very well," said I. "I am not more sure of anything."
+
+"That's a dear girl," retorted Richard, "and like you, because it
+gives me comfort. I had need to get some scrap of comfort out of all
+this business, for it's a bad one at the best, as I have no occasion
+to tell you."
+
+"I know perfectly," said I. "I know as well, Richard--what shall I
+say? as well as you do--that such misconstructions are foreign to
+your nature. And I know, as well as you know, what so changes it."
+
+"Come, sister, come," said Richard a little more gaily, "you will be
+fair with me at all events. If I have the misfortune to be under that
+influence, so has he. If it has a little twisted me, it may have a
+little twisted him too. I don't say that he is not an honourable man,
+out of all this complication and uncertainty; I am sure he is. But it
+taints everybody. You know it taints everybody. You have heard him
+say so fifty times. Then why should HE escape?"
+
+"Because," said I, "his is an uncommon character, and he has
+resolutely kept himself outside the circle, Richard."
+
+"Oh, because and because!" replied Richard in his vivacious way. "I
+am not sure, my dear girl, but that it may be wise and specious to
+preserve that outward indifference. It may cause other parties
+interested to become lax about their interests; and people may die
+off, and points may drag themselves out of memory, and many things
+may smoothly happen that are convenient enough."
+
+I was so touched with pity for Richard that I could not reproach him
+any more, even by a look. I remembered my guardian's gentleness
+towards his errors and with what perfect freedom from resentment he
+had spoken of them.
+
+"Esther," Richard resumed, "you are not to suppose that I have come
+here to make underhanded charges against John Jarndyce. I have only
+come to justify myself. What I say is, it was all very well and we
+got on very well while I was a boy, utterly regardless of this same
+suit; but as soon as I began to take an interest in it and to look
+into it, then it was quite another thing. Then John Jarndyce
+discovers that Ada and I must break off and that if I don't amend
+that very objectionable course, I am not fit for her. Now, Esther, I
+don't mean to amend that very objectionable course: I will not hold
+John Jarndyce's favour on those unfair terms of compromise, which he
+has no right to dictate. Whether it pleases him or displeases him, I
+must maintain my rights and Ada's. I have been thinking about it a
+good deal, and this is the conclusion I have come to."
+
+Poor dear Richard! He had indeed been thinking about it a good deal.
+His face, his voice, his manner, all showed that too plainly.
+
+"So I tell him honourably (you are to know I have written to him
+about all this) that we are at issue and that we had better be at
+issue openly than covertly. I thank him for his goodwill and his
+protection, and he goes his road, and I go mine. The fact is, our
+roads are not the same. Under one of the wills in dispute, I should
+take much more than he. I don't mean to say that it is the one to be
+established, but there it is, and it has its chance."
+
+"I have not to learn from you, my dear Richard," said I, "of your
+letter. I had heard of it already without an offended or angry word."
+
+"Indeed?" replied Richard, softening. "I am glad I said he was an
+honourable man, out of all this wretched affair. But I always say
+that and have never doubted it. Now, my dear Esther, I know these
+views of mine appear extremely harsh to you, and will to Ada when you
+tell her what has passed between us. But if you had gone into the
+case as I have, if you had only applied yourself to the papers as I
+did when I was at Kenge's, if you only knew what an accumulation of
+charges and counter-charges, and suspicions and cross-suspicions,
+they involve, you would think me moderate in comparison."
+
+"Perhaps so," said I. "But do you think that, among those many
+papers, there is much truth and justice, Richard?"
+
+"There is truth and justice somewhere in the case, Esther--"
+
+"Or was once, long ago," said I.
+
+"Is--is--must be somewhere," pursued Richard impetuously, "and must
+be brought out. To allow Ada to be made a bribe and hush-money of is
+not the way to bring it out. You say the suit is changing me; John
+Jarndyce says it changes, has changed, and will change everybody who
+has any share in it. Then the greater right I have on my side when I
+resolve to do all I can to bring it to an end."
+
+"All you can, Richard! Do you think that in these many years no
+others have done all they could? Has the difficulty grown easier
+because of so many failures?"
+
+"It can't last for ever," returned Richard with a fierceness kindling
+in him which again presented to me that last sad reminder. "I am
+young and earnest, and energy and determination have done wonders
+many a time. Others have only half thrown themselves into it. I
+devote myself to it. I make it the object of my life."
+
+"Oh, Richard, my dear, so much the worse, so much the worse!"
+
+"No, no, no, don't you be afraid for me," he returned affectionately.
+"You're a dear, good, wise, quiet, blessed girl; but you have your
+prepossessions. So I come round to John Jarndyce. I tell you, my good
+Esther, when he and I were on those terms which he found so
+convenient, we were not on natural terms."
+
+"Are division and animosity your natural terms, Richard?"
+
+"No, I don't say that. I mean that all this business puts us on
+unnatural terms, with which natural relations are incompatible. See
+another reason for urging it on! I may find out when it's over that I
+have been mistaken in John Jarndyce. My head may be clearer when I am
+free of it, and I may then agree with what you say to-day. Very well.
+Then I shall acknowledge it and make him reparation."
+
+Everything postponed to that imaginary time! Everything held in
+confusion and indecision until then!
+
+"Now, my best of confidantes," said Richard, "I want my cousin Ada to
+understand that I am not captious, fickle, and wilful about John
+Jarndyce, but that I have this purpose and reason at my back. I wish
+to represent myself to her through you, because she has a great
+esteem and respect for her cousin John; and I know you will soften
+the course I take, even though you disapprove of it; and--and in
+short," said Richard, who had been hesitating through these words,
+"I--I don't like to represent myself in this litigious, contentious,
+doubting character to a confiding girl like Ada."
+
+I told him that he was more like himself in those latter words than
+in anything he had said yet.
+
+"Why," acknowledged Richard, "that may be true enough, my love. I
+rather feel it to be so. But I shall be able to give myself fair-play
+by and by. I shall come all right again, then, don't you be afraid."
+
+I asked him if this were all he wished me to tell Ada.
+
+"Not quite," said Richard. "I am bound not to withhold from her that
+John Jarndyce answered my letter in his usual manner, addressing me
+as 'My dear Rick,' trying to argue me out of my opinions, and telling
+me that they should make no difference in him. (All very well of
+course, but not altering the case.) I also want Ada to know that if I
+see her seldom just now, I am looking after her interests as well as
+my own--we two being in the same boat exactly--and that I hope she
+will not suppose from any flying rumours she may hear that I am at
+all light-headed or imprudent; on the contrary, I am always looking
+forward to the termination of the suit, and always planning in that
+direction. Being of age now and having taken the step I have taken, I
+consider myself free from any accountability to John Jarndyce; but
+Ada being still a ward of the court, I don't yet ask her to renew our
+engagement. When she is free to act for herself, I shall be myself
+once more and we shall both be in very different worldly
+circumstances, I believe. If you tell her all this with the advantage
+of your considerate way, you will do me a very great and a very kind
+service, my dear Esther; and I shall knock Jarndyce and Jarndyce on
+the head with greater vigour. Of course I ask for no secrecy at Bleak
+House."
+
+"Richard," said I, "you place great confidence in me, but I fear you
+will not take advice from me?"
+
+"It's impossible that I can on this subject, my dear girl. On any
+other, readily."
+
+As if there were any other in his life! As if his whole career and
+character were not being dyed one colour!
+
+"But I may ask you a question, Richard?"
+
+"I think so," said he, laughing. "I don't know who may not, if you
+may not."
+
+"You say, yourself, you are not leading a very settled life."
+
+"How can I, my dear Esther, with nothing settled!"
+
+"Are you in debt again?"
+
+"Why, of course I am," said Richard, astonished at my simplicity.
+
+"Is it of course?"
+
+"My dear child, certainly. I can't throw myself into an object so
+completely without expense. You forget, or perhaps you don't know,
+that under either of the wills Ada and I take something. It's only a
+question between the larger sum and the smaller. I shall be within
+the mark any way. Bless your heart, my excellent girl," said Richard,
+quite amused with me, "I shall be all right! I shall pull through, my
+dear!"
+
+I felt so deeply sensible of the danger in which he stood that I
+tried, in Ada's name, in my guardian's, in my own, by every fervent
+means that I could think of, to warn him of it and to show him some
+of his mistakes. He received everything I said with patience and
+gentleness, but it all rebounded from him without taking the least
+effect. I could not wonder at this after the reception his
+preoccupied mind had given to my guardian's letter, but I determined
+to try Ada's influence yet.
+
+So when our walk brought us round to the village again, and I went
+home to breakfast, I prepared Ada for the account I was going to give
+her and told her exactly what reason we had to dread that Richard was
+losing himself and scattering his whole life to the winds. It made
+her very unhappy, of course, though she had a far, far greater
+reliance on his correcting his errors than I could have--which was so
+natural and loving in my dear!--and she presently wrote him this
+little letter:
+
+
+   My dearest cousin,
+
+   Esther has told me all you said to her this morning. I
+   write this to repeat most earnestly for myself all that
+   she said to you and to let you know how sure I am that
+   you will sooner or later find our cousin John a pattern
+   of truth, sincerity, and goodness, when you will deeply,
+   deeply grieve to have done him (without intending it) so
+   much wrong.
+
+   I do not quite know how to write what I wish to say next,
+   but I trust you will understand it as I mean it. I have
+   some fears, my dearest cousin, that it may be partly for
+   my sake you are now laying up so much unhappiness for
+   yourself--and if for yourself, for me. In case this should
+   be so, or in case you should entertain much thought of me
+   in what you are doing, I most earnestly entreat and beg
+   you to desist. You can do nothing for my sake that will
+   make me half so happy as for ever turning your back upon
+   the shadow in which we both were born. Do not be angry
+   with me for saying this. Pray, pray, dear Richard, for my
+   sake, and for your own, and in a natural repugnance for
+   that source of trouble which had its share in making us
+   both orphans when we were very young, pray, pray, let it
+   go for ever. We have reason to know by this time that
+   there is no good in it and no hope, that there is nothing
+   to be got from it but sorrow.
+
+   My dearest cousin, it is needless for me to say that you
+   are quite free and that it is very likely you may find
+   some one whom you will love much better than your first
+   fancy. I am quite sure, if you will let me say so, that
+   the object of your choice would greatly prefer to follow
+   your fortunes far and wide, however moderate or poor, and
+   see you happy, doing your duty and pursuing your chosen
+   way, than to have the hope of being, or even to be, very
+   rich with you (if such a thing were possible) at the cost
+   of dragging years of procrastination and anxiety and of
+   your indifference to other aims. You may wonder at my
+   saying this so confidently with so little knowledge or
+   experience, but I know it for a certainty from my own
+   heart.
+
+   Ever, my dearest cousin, your most affectionate
+
+   Ada
+
+
+This note brought Richard to us very soon, but it made little change
+in him if any. We would fairly try, he said, who was right and who
+was wrong--he would show us--we should see! He was animated and
+glowing, as if Ada's tenderness had gratified him; but I could only
+hope, with a sigh, that the letter might have some stronger effect
+upon his mind on re-perusal than it assuredly had then.
+
+As they were to remain with us that day and had taken their places to
+return by the coach next morning, I sought an opportunity of speaking
+to Mr. Skimpole. Our out-of-door life easily threw one in my way, and
+I delicately said that there was a responsibility in encouraging
+Richard.
+
+"Responsibility, my dear Miss Summerson?" he repeated, catching at
+the word with the pleasantest smile. "I am the last man in the world
+for such a thing. I never was responsible in my life--I can't be."
+
+"I am afraid everybody is obliged to be," said I timidly enough, he
+being so much older and more clever than I.
+
+"No, really?" said Mr. Skimpole, receiving this new light with a most
+agreeable jocularity of surprise. "But every man's not obliged to be
+solvent? I am not. I never was. See, my dear Miss Summerson," he took
+a handful of loose silver and halfpence from his pocket, "there's so
+much money. I have not an idea how much. I have not the power of
+counting. Call it four and ninepence--call it four pound nine. They
+tell me I owe more than that. I dare say I do. I dare say I owe as
+much as good-natured people will let me owe. If they don't stop, why
+should I? There you have Harold Skimpole in little. If that's
+responsibility, I am responsible."
+
+The perfect ease of manner with which he put the money up again and
+looked at me with a smile on his refined face, as if he had been
+mentioning a curious little fact about somebody else, almost made me
+feel as if he really had nothing to do with it.
+
+"Now, when you mention responsibility," he resumed, "I am disposed to
+say that I never had the happiness of knowing any one whom I should
+consider so refreshingly responsible as yourself. You appear to me
+to be the very touchstone of responsibility. When I see you, my
+dear Miss Summerson, intent upon the perfect working of the whole
+little orderly system of which you are the centre, I feel inclined
+to say to myself--in fact I do say to myself very often--THAT'S
+responsibility!"
+
+It was difficult, after this, to explain what I meant; but I
+persisted so far as to say that we all hoped he would check and not
+confirm Richard in the sanguine views he entertained just then.
+
+"Most willingly," he retorted, "if I could. But, my dear Miss
+Summerson, I have no art, no disguise. If he takes me by the hand and
+leads me through Westminster Hall in an airy procession after
+fortune, I must go. If he says, 'Skimpole, join the dance!' I must
+join it. Common sense wouldn't, I know, but I have NO common sense."
+
+It was very unfortunate for Richard, I said.
+
+"Do you think so!" returned Mr. Skimpole. "Don't say that, don't say
+that. Let us suppose him keeping company with Common Sense--an
+excellent man--a good deal wrinkled--dreadfully practical--change for
+a ten-pound note in every pocket--ruled account-book in his
+hand--say, upon the whole, resembling a tax-gatherer. Our dear
+Richard, sanguine, ardent, overleaping obstacles, bursting with
+poetry like a young bud, says to this highly respectable companion,
+'I see a golden prospect before me; it's very bright, it's very
+beautiful, it's very joyous; here I go, bounding over the landscape
+to come at it!' The respectable companion instantly knocks him down
+with the ruled account-book; tells him in a literal, prosaic way that
+he sees no such thing; shows him it's nothing but fees, fraud,
+horsehair wigs, and black gowns. Now you know that's a painful
+change--sensible in the last degree, I have no doubt, but
+disagreeable. I can't do it. I haven't got the ruled account-book, I
+have none of the tax-gathering elements in my composition, I am not
+at all respectable, and I don't want to be. Odd perhaps, but so it
+is!"
+
+It was idle to say more, so I proposed that we should join Ada and
+Richard, who were a little in advance, and I gave up Mr. Skimpole in
+despair. He had been over the Hall in the course of the morning and
+whimsically described the family pictures as we walked. There were
+such portentous shepherdesses among the Ladies Dedlock dead and gone,
+he told us, that peaceful crooks became weapons of assault in their
+hands. They tended their flocks severely in buckram and powder and
+put their sticking-plaster patches on to terrify commoners as the
+chiefs of some other tribes put on their war-paint. There was a Sir
+Somebody Dedlock, with a battle, a sprung-mine, volumes of smoke,
+flashes of lightning, a town on fire, and a stormed fort, all in full
+action between his horse's two hind legs, showing, he supposed, how
+little a Dedlock made of such trifles. The whole race he represented
+as having evidently been, in life, what he called "stuffed people"--a
+large collection, glassy eyed, set up in the most approved manner on
+their various twigs and perches, very correct, perfectly free from
+animation, and always in glass cases.
+
+I was not so easy now during any reference to the name but that I
+felt it a relief when Richard, with an exclamation of surprise,
+hurried away to meet a stranger whom he first descried coming slowly
+towards us.
+
+"Dear me!" said Mr. Skimpole. "Vholes!"
+
+We asked if that were a friend of Richard's.
+
+"Friend and legal adviser," said Mr. Skimpole. "Now, my dear Miss
+Summerson, if you want common sense, responsibility, and
+respectability, all united--if you want an exemplary man--Vholes is
+THE man."
+
+We had not known, we said, that Richard was assisted by any gentleman
+of that name.
+
+"When he emerged from legal infancy," returned Mr. Skimpole, "he
+parted from our conversational friend Kenge and took up, I believe,
+with Vholes. Indeed, I know he did, because I introduced him to
+Vholes."
+
+"Had you known him long?" asked Ada.
+
+"Vholes? My dear Miss Clare, I had had that kind of acquaintance with
+him which I have had with several gentlemen of his profession. He had
+done something or other in a very agreeable, civil manner--taken
+proceedings, I think, is the expression--which ended in the
+proceeding of his taking ME. Somebody was so good as to step in and
+pay the money--something and fourpence was the amount; I forget the
+pounds and shillings, but I know it ended with fourpence, because it
+struck me at the time as being so odd that I could owe anybody
+fourpence--and after that I brought them together. Vholes asked me
+for the introduction, and I gave it. Now I come to think of it," he
+looked inquiringly at us with his frankest smile as he made the
+discovery, "Vholes bribed me, perhaps? He gave me something and
+called it commission. Was it a five-pound note? Do you know, I think
+it MUST have been a five-pound note!"
+
+His further consideration of the point was prevented by Richard's
+coming back to us in an excited state and hastily representing Mr.
+Vholes--a sallow man with pinched lips that looked as if they were
+cold, a red eruption here and there upon his face, tall and thin,
+about fifty years of age, high-shouldered, and stooping. Dressed in
+black, black-gloved, and buttoned to the chin, there was nothing so
+remarkable in him as a lifeless manner and a slow, fixed way he had
+of looking at Richard.
+
+"I hope I don't disturb you, ladies," said Mr. Vholes, and now I
+observed that he was further remarkable for an inward manner of
+speaking. "I arranged with Mr. Carstone that he should always know
+when his cause was in the Chancellor's paper, and being informed by
+one of my clerks last night after post time that it stood, rather
+unexpectedly, in the paper for to-morrow, I put myself into the coach
+early this morning and came down to confer with him."
+
+"Yes," said Richard, flushed, and looking triumphantly at Ada and me,
+"we don't do these things in the old slow way now. We spin along now!
+Mr. Vholes, we must hire something to get over to the post town in,
+and catch the mail to-night, and go up by it!"
+
+"Anything you please, sir," returned Mr. Vholes. "I am quite at your
+service."
+
+"Let me see," said Richard, looking at his watch. "If I run down to
+the Dedlock, and get my portmanteau fastened up, and order a gig, or
+a chaise, or whatever's to be got, we shall have an hour then before
+starting. I'll come back to tea. Cousin Ada, will you and Esther take
+care of Mr. Vholes when I am gone?"
+
+He was away directly, in his heat and hurry, and was soon lost in the
+dusk of evening. We who were left walked on towards the house.
+
+"Is Mr. Carstone's presence necessary to-morrow, Sir?" said I. "Can
+it do any good?"
+
+"No, miss," Mr. Vholes replied. "I am not aware that it can."
+
+Both Ada and I expressed our regret that he should go, then, only to
+be disappointed.
+
+"Mr. Carstone has laid down the principle of watching his own
+interests," said Mr. Vholes, "and when a client lays down his own
+principle, and it is not immoral, it devolves upon me to carry it
+out. I wish in business to be exact and open. I am a widower with
+three daughters--Emma, Jane, and Caroline--and my desire is so to
+discharge the duties of life as to leave them a good name. This
+appears to be a pleasant spot, miss."
+
+The remark being made to me in consequence of my being next him as we
+walked, I assented and enumerated its chief attractions.
+
+"Indeed?" said Mr. Vholes. "I have the privilege of supporting an
+aged father in the Vale of Taunton--his native place--and I admire
+that country very much. I had no idea there was anything so
+attractive here."
+
+To keep up the conversation, I asked Mr. Vholes if he would like to
+live altogether in the country.
+
+"There, miss," said he, "you touch me on a tender string. My health
+is not good (my digestion being much impaired), and if I had only
+myself to consider, I should take refuge in rural habits, especially
+as the cares of business have prevented me from ever coming much into
+contact with general society, and particularly with ladies' society,
+which I have most wished to mix in. But with my three daughters,
+Emma, Jane, and Caroline--and my aged father--I cannot afford to be
+selfish. It is true I have no longer to maintain a dear grandmother
+who died in her hundred and second year, but enough remains to render
+it indispensable that the mill should be always going."
+
+It required some attention to hear him on account of his inward
+speaking and his lifeless manner.
+
+"You will excuse my having mentioned my daughters," he said. "They
+are my weak point. I wish to leave the poor girls some little
+independence, as well as a good name."
+
+We now arrived at Mr. Boythorn's house, where the tea-table, all
+prepared, was awaiting us. Richard came in restless and hurried
+shortly afterwards, and leaning over Mr. Vholes's chair, whispered
+something in his ear. Mr. Vholes replied aloud--or as nearly aloud I
+suppose as he had ever replied to anything--"You will drive me, will
+you, sir? It is all the same to me, sir. Anything you please. I am
+quite at your service."
+
+We understood from what followed that Mr. Skimpole was to be left
+until the morning to occupy the two places which had been already
+paid for. As Ada and I were both in low spirits concerning Richard
+and very sorry so to part with him, we made it as plain as we
+politely could that we should leave Mr. Skimpole to the Dedlock Arms
+and retire when the night-travellers were gone.
+
+Richard's high spirits carrying everything before them, we all went
+out together to the top of the hill above the village, where he had
+ordered a gig to wait and where we found a man with a lantern
+standing at the head of the gaunt pale horse that had been harnessed
+to it.
+
+I never shall forget those two seated side by side in the lantern's
+light, Richard all flush and fire and laughter, with the reins in his
+hand; Mr. Vholes quite still, black-gloved, and buttoned up, looking
+at him as if he were looking at his prey and charming it. I have
+before me the whole picture of the warm dark night, the summer
+lightning, the dusty track of road closed in by hedgerows and high
+trees, the gaunt pale horse with his ears pricked up, and the driving
+away at speed to Jarndyce and Jarndyce.
+
+My dear girl told me that night how Richard's being thereafter
+prosperous or ruined, befriended or deserted, could only make this
+difference to her, that the more he needed love from one unchanging
+heart, the more love that unchanging heart would have to give him;
+how he thought of her through his present errors, and she would think
+of him at all times--never of herself if she could devote herself to
+him, never of her own delights if she could minister to his.
+
+And she kept her word?
+
+I look along the road before me, where the distance already shortens
+and the journey's end is growing visible; and true and good above the
+dead sea of the Chancery suit and all the ashy fruit it cast ashore,
+I think I see my darling.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+A Struggle
+
+
+When our time came for returning to Bleak House again, we were
+punctual to the day and were received with an overpowering welcome. I
+was perfectly restored to health and strength, and finding my
+housekeeping keys laid ready for me in my room, rang myself in as if
+I had been a new year, with a merry little peal. "Once more, duty,
+duty, Esther," said I; "and if you are not overjoyed to do it, more
+than cheerfully and contentedly, through anything and everything, you
+ought to be. That's all I have to say to you, my dear!"
+
+The first few mornings were mornings of so much bustle and business,
+devoted to such settlements of accounts, such repeated journeys to
+and fro between the growlery and all other parts of the house, so
+many rearrangements of drawers and presses, and such a general new
+beginning altogether, that I had not a moment's leisure. But when
+these arrangements were completed and everything was in order, I paid
+a visit of a few hours to London, which something in the letter I had
+destroyed at Chesney Wold had induced me to decide upon in my own
+mind.
+
+I made Caddy Jellyby--her maiden name was so natural to me that I
+always called her by it--the pretext for this visit and wrote her a
+note previously asking the favour of her company on a little business
+expedition. Leaving home very early in the morning, I got to London
+by stage-coach in such good time that I got to Newman Street with the
+day before me.
+
+Caddy, who had not seen me since her wedding-day, was so glad and so
+affectionate that I was half inclined to fear I should make her
+husband jealous. But he was, in his way, just as bad--I mean as good;
+and in short it was the old story, and nobody would leave me any
+possibility of doing anything meritorious.
+
+The elder Mr. Turveydrop was in bed, I found, and Caddy was
+milling his chocolate, which a melancholy little boy who was an
+apprentice--it seemed such a curious thing to be apprenticed to the
+trade of dancing--was waiting to carry upstairs. Her father-in-law
+was extremely kind and considerate, Caddy told me, and they lived
+most happily together. (When she spoke of their living together, she
+meant that the old gentleman had all the good things and all the good
+lodging, while she and her husband had what they could get, and were
+poked into two corner rooms over the Mews.)
+
+"And how is your mama, Caddy?" said I.
+
+"Why, I hear of her, Esther," replied Caddy, "through Pa, but I see
+very little of her. We are good friends, I am glad to say, but Ma
+thinks there is something absurd in my having married a
+dancing-master, and she is rather afraid of its extending to her."
+
+It struck me that if Mrs. Jellyby had discharged her own natural
+duties and obligations before she swept the horizon with a telescope
+in search of others, she would have taken the best precautions
+against becoming absurd, but I need scarcely observe that I kept this
+to myself.
+
+"And your papa, Caddy?"
+
+"He comes here every evening," returned Caddy, "and is so fond of
+sitting in the corner there that it's a treat to see him."
+
+Looking at the corner, I plainly perceived the mark of Mr. Jellyby's
+head against the wall. It was consolatory to know that he had found
+such a resting-place for it.
+
+"And you, Caddy," said I, "you are always busy, I'll be bound?"
+
+"Well, my dear," returned Caddy, "I am indeed, for to tell you a
+grand secret, I am qualifying myself to give lessons. Prince's health
+is not strong, and I want to be able to assist him. What with
+schools, and classes here, and private pupils, AND the apprentices,
+he really has too much to do, poor fellow!"
+
+The notion of the apprentices was still so odd to me that I asked
+Caddy if there were many of them.
+
+"Four," said Caddy. "One in-door, and three out. They are
+very good children; only when they get together they WILL
+play--children-like--instead of attending to their work. So the
+little boy you saw just now waltzes by himself in the empty kitchen,
+and we distribute the others over the house as well as we can."
+
+"That is only for their steps, of course?" said I.
+
+"Only for their steps," said Caddy. "In that way they practise, so
+many hours at a time, whatever steps they happen to be upon. They
+dance in the academy, and at this time of year we do figures at five
+every morning."
+
+"Why, what a laborious life!" I exclaimed.
+
+"I assure you, my dear," returned Caddy, smiling, "when the out-door
+apprentices ring us up in the morning (the bell rings into our room,
+not to disturb old Mr. Turveydrop), and when I put up the window and
+see them standing on the door-step with their little pumps under
+their arms, I am actually reminded of the Sweeps."
+
+All this presented the art to me in a singular light, to be sure.
+Caddy enjoyed the effect of her communication and cheerfully
+recounted the particulars of her own studies.
+
+"You see, my dear, to save expense I ought to know something of the
+piano, and I ought to know something of the kit too, and consequently
+I have to practise those two instruments as well as the details of
+our profession. If Ma had been like anybody else, I might have had
+some little musical knowledge to begin upon. However, I hadn't any;
+and that part of the work is, at first, a little discouraging, I must
+allow. But I have a very good ear, and I am used to drudgery--I have
+to thank Ma for that, at all events--and where there's a will there's
+a way, you know, Esther, the world over." Saying these words, Caddy
+laughingly sat down at a little jingling square piano and really
+rattled off a quadrille with great spirit. Then she good-humouredly
+and blushingly got up again, and while she still laughed herself,
+said, "Don't laugh at me, please; that's a dear girl!"
+
+I would sooner have cried, but I did neither. I encouraged her and
+praised her with all my heart. For I conscientiously believed,
+dancing-master's wife though she was, and dancing-mistress though in
+her limited ambition she aspired to be, she had struck out a natural,
+wholesome, loving course of industry and perseverance that was quite
+as good as a mission.
+
+"My dear," said Caddy, delighted, "you can't think how you cheer me.
+I shall owe you, you don't know how much. What changes, Esther, even
+in my small world! You recollect that first night, when I was so
+unpolite and inky? Who would have thought, then, of my ever teaching
+people to dance, of all other possibilities and impossibilities!"
+
+Her husband, who had left us while we had this chat, now coming back,
+preparatory to exercising the apprentices in the ball-room, Caddy
+informed me she was quite at my disposal. But it was not my time yet,
+I was glad to tell her, for I should have been vexed to take her away
+then. Therefore we three adjourned to the apprentices together, and I
+made one in the dance.
+
+The apprentices were the queerest little people. Besides the
+melancholy boy, who, I hoped, had not been made so by waltzing alone
+in the empty kitchen, there were two other boys and one dirty little
+limp girl in a gauzy dress. Such a precocious little girl, with such
+a dowdy bonnet on (that, too, of a gauzy texture), who brought her
+sandalled shoes in an old threadbare velvet reticule. Such mean
+little boys, when they were not dancing, with string, and marbles,
+and cramp-bones in their pockets, and the most untidy legs and
+feet--and heels particularly.
+
+I asked Caddy what had made their parents choose this profession for
+them. Caddy said she didn't know; perhaps they were designed for
+teachers, perhaps for the stage. They were all people in humble
+circumstances, and the melancholy boy's mother kept a ginger-beer
+shop.
+
+We danced for an hour with great gravity, the melancholy child doing
+wonders with his lower extremities, in which there appeared to be
+some sense of enjoyment though it never rose above his waist. Caddy,
+while she was observant of her husband and was evidently founded upon
+him, had acquired a grace and self-possession of her own, which,
+united to her pretty face and figure, was uncommonly agreeable. She
+already relieved him of much of the instruction of these young
+people, and he seldom interfered except to walk his part in the
+figure if he had anything to do in it. He always played the tune. The
+affectation of the gauzy child, and her condescension to the boys,
+was a sight. And thus we danced an hour by the clock.
+
+When the practice was concluded, Caddy's husband made himself ready
+to go out of town to a school, and Caddy ran away to get ready to go
+out with me. I sat in the ball-room in the interval, contemplating
+the apprentices. The two out-door boys went upon the staircase to put
+on their half-boots and pull the in-door boy's hair, as I judged from
+the nature of his objections. Returning with their jackets buttoned
+and their pumps stuck in them, they then produced packets of cold
+bread and meat and bivouacked under a painted lyre on the wall. The
+little gauzy child, having whisked her sandals into the reticule and
+put on a trodden-down pair of shoes, shook her head into the dowdy
+bonnet at one shake, and answering my inquiry whether she liked
+dancing by replying, "Not with boys," tied it across her chin, and
+went home contemptuous.
+
+"Old Mr. Turveydrop is so sorry," said Caddy, "that he has not
+finished dressing yet and cannot have the pleasure of seeing you
+before you go. You are such a favourite of his, Esther."
+
+I expressed myself much obliged to him, but did not think it
+necessary to add that I readily dispensed with this attention.
+
+"It takes him a long time to dress," said Caddy, "because he is very
+much looked up to in such things, you know, and has a reputation to
+support. You can't think how kind he is to Pa. He talks to Pa of an
+evening about the Prince Regent, and I never saw Pa so interested."
+
+There was something in the picture of Mr. Turveydrop bestowing his
+deportment on Mr. Jellyby that quite took my fancy. I asked Caddy if
+he brought her papa out much.
+
+"No," said Caddy, "I don't know that he does that, but he talks to
+Pa, and Pa greatly admires him, and listens, and likes it. Of course
+I am aware that Pa has hardly any claims to deportment, but they get
+on together delightfully. You can't think what good companions they
+make. I never saw Pa take snuff before in my life, but he takes one
+pinch out of Mr. Turveydrop's box regularly and keeps putting it to
+his nose and taking it away again all the evening."
+
+That old Mr. Turveydrop should ever, in the chances and changes of
+life, have come to the rescue of Mr. Jellyby from Borrioboola-Gha
+appeared to me to be one of the pleasantest of oddities.
+
+"As to Peepy," said Caddy with a little hesitation, "whom I was most
+afraid of--next to having any family of my own, Esther--as an
+inconvenience to Mr. Turveydrop, the kindness of the old gentleman to
+that child is beyond everything. He asks to see him, my dear! He lets
+him take the newspaper up to him in bed; he gives him the crusts of
+his toast to eat; he sends him on little errands about the house; he
+tells him to come to me for sixpences. In short," said Caddy
+cheerily, "and not to prose, I am a very fortunate girl and ought to
+be very grateful. Where are we going, Esther?"
+
+"To the Old Street Road," said I, "where I have a few words to say to
+the solicitor's clerk who was sent to meet me at the coach-office on
+the very day when I came to London and first saw you, my dear. Now I
+think of it, the gentleman who brought us to your house."
+
+"Then, indeed, I seem to be naturally the person to go with you,"
+returned Caddy.
+
+To the Old Street Road we went and there inquired at Mrs. Guppy's
+residence for Mrs. Guppy. Mrs. Guppy, occupying the parlours and
+having indeed been visibly in danger of cracking herself like a nut
+in the front-parlour door by peeping out before she was asked for,
+immediately presented herself and requested us to walk in. She was an
+old lady in a large cap, with rather a red nose and rather an
+unsteady eye, but smiling all over. Her close little sitting-room was
+prepared for a visit, and there was a portrait of her son in it
+which, I had almost written here, was more like than life: it
+insisted upon him with such obstinacy, and was so determined not to
+let him off.
+
+Not only was the portrait there, but we found the original there too.
+He was dressed in a great many colours and was discovered at a table
+reading law-papers with his forefinger to his forehead.
+
+"Miss Summerson," said Mr. Guppy, rising, "this is indeed an oasis.
+Mother, will you be so good as to put a chair for the other lady and
+get out of the gangway."
+
+Mrs. Guppy, whose incessant smiling gave her quite a waggish
+appearance, did as her son requested and then sat down in a corner,
+holding her pocket handkerchief to her chest, like a fomentation,
+with both hands.
+
+I presented Caddy, and Mr. Guppy said that any friend of mine was
+more than welcome. I then proceeded to the object of my visit.
+
+"I took the liberty of sending you a note, sir," said I.
+
+Mr. Guppy acknowledged the receipt by taking it out of his
+breast-pocket, putting it to his lips, and returning it to his pocket
+with a bow. Mr. Guppy's mother was so diverted that she rolled her
+head as she smiled and made a silent appeal to Caddy with her elbow.
+
+"Could I speak to you alone for a moment?" said I.
+
+Anything like the jocoseness of Mr. Guppy's mother just now, I think
+I never saw. She made no sound of laughter, but she rolled her head,
+and shook it, and put her handkerchief to her mouth, and appealed to
+Caddy with her elbow, and her hand, and her shoulder, and was so
+unspeakably entertained altogether that it was with some difficulty
+she could marshal Caddy through the little folding-door into her
+bedroom adjoining.
+
+"Miss Summerson," said Mr. Guppy, "you will excuse the waywardness of
+a parent ever mindful of a son's appiness. My mother, though highly
+exasperating to the feelings, is actuated by maternal dictates."
+
+I could hardly have believed that anybody could in a moment have
+turned so red or changed so much as Mr. Guppy did when I now put up
+my veil.
+
+"I asked the favour of seeing you for a few moments here," said I,
+"in preference to calling at Mr. Kenge's because, remembering what
+you said on an occasion when you spoke to me in confidence, I feared
+I might otherwise cause you some embarrassment, Mr. Guppy."
+
+I caused him embarrassment enough as it was, I am sure. I never saw
+such faltering, such confusion, such amazement and apprehension.
+
+"Miss Summerson," stammered Mr. Guppy, "I--I--beg your pardon, but in
+our profession--we--we--find it necessary to be explicit. You have
+referred to an occasion, miss, when I--when I did myself the honour
+of making a declaration which--"
+
+Something seemed to rise in his throat that he could not possibly
+swallow. He put his hand there, coughed, made faces, tried again to
+swallow it, coughed again, made faces again, looked all round the
+room, and fluttered his papers.
+
+"A kind of giddy sensation has come upon me, miss," he explained,
+"which rather knocks me over. I--er--a little subject to this sort of
+thing--er--by George!"
+
+I gave him a little time to recover. He consumed it in putting his
+hand to his forehead and taking it away again, and in backing his
+chair into the corner behind him.
+
+"My intention was to remark, miss," said Mr. Guppy, "dear
+me--something bronchial, I think--hem!--to remark that you was so
+good on that occasion as to repel and repudiate that declaration.
+You--you wouldn't perhaps object to admit that? Though no witnesses
+are present, it might be a satisfaction to--to your mind--if you was
+to put in that admission."
+
+"There can be no doubt," said I, "that I declined your proposal
+without any reservation or qualification whatever, Mr. Guppy."
+
+"Thank you, miss," he returned, measuring the table with his troubled
+hands. "So far that's satisfactory, and it does you credit. Er--this
+is certainly bronchial!--must be in the tubes--er--you wouldn't
+perhaps be offended if I was to mention--not that it's necessary, for
+your own good sense or any person's sense must show 'em that--if I
+was to mention that such declaration on my part was final, and there
+terminated?"
+
+"I quite understand that," said I.
+
+"Perhaps--er--it may not be worth the form, but it might be a
+satisfaction to your mind--perhaps you wouldn't object to admit that,
+miss?" said Mr. Guppy.
+
+"I admit it most fully and freely," said I.
+
+"Thank you," returned Mr. Guppy. "Very honourable, I am sure. I
+regret that my arrangements in life, combined with circumstances over
+which I have no control, will put it out of my power ever to fall
+back upon that offer or to renew it in any shape or form whatever,
+but it will ever be a retrospect entwined--er--with friendship's
+bowers." Mr. Guppy's bronchitis came to his relief and stopped his
+measurement of the table.
+
+"I may now perhaps mention what I wished to say to you?" I began.
+
+"I shall be honoured, I am sure," said Mr. Guppy. "I am so persuaded
+that your own good sense and right feeling, miss, will--will keep you
+as square as possible--that I can have nothing but pleasure, I am
+sure, in hearing any observations you may wish to offer."
+
+"You were so good as to imply, on that occasion--"
+
+"Excuse me, miss," said Mr. Guppy, "but we had better not travel out
+of the record into implication. I cannot admit that I implied
+anything."
+
+"You said on that occasion," I recommenced, "that you might possibly
+have the means of advancing my interests and promoting my fortunes by
+making discoveries of which I should be the subject. I presume that
+you founded that belief upon your general knowledge of my being an
+orphan girl, indebted for everything to the benevolence of Mr.
+Jarndyce. Now, the beginning and the end of what I have come to beg
+of you is, Mr. Guppy, that you will have the kindness to relinquish
+all idea of so serving me. I have thought of this sometimes, and I
+have thought of it most lately--since I have been ill. At length I
+have decided, in case you should at any time recall that purpose and
+act upon it in any way, to come to you and assure you that you are
+altogether mistaken. You could make no discovery in reference to me
+that would do me the least service or give me the least pleasure. I
+am acquainted with my personal history, and I have it in my power to
+assure you that you never can advance my welfare by such means. You
+may, perhaps, have abandoned this project a long time. If so, excuse
+my giving you unnecessary trouble. If not, I entreat you, on the
+assurance I have given you, henceforth to lay it aside. I beg you to
+do this, for my peace."
+
+"I am bound to confess," said Mr. Guppy, "that you express yourself,
+miss, with that good sense and right feeling for which I gave you
+credit. Nothing can be more satisfactory than such right feeling, and
+if I mistook any intentions on your part just now, I am prepared to
+tender a full apology. I should wish to be understood, miss, as
+hereby offering that apology--limiting it, as your own good sense and
+right feeling will point out the necessity of, to the present
+proceedings."
+
+I must say for Mr. Guppy that the snuffling manner he had had upon
+him improved very much. He seemed truly glad to be able to do
+something I asked, and he looked ashamed.
+
+"If you will allow me to finish what I have to say at once so that I
+may have no occasion to resume," I went on, seeing him about to
+speak, "you will do me a kindness, sir. I come to you as privately as
+possible because you announced this impression of yours to me in a
+confidence which I have really wished to respect--and which I always
+have respected, as you remember. I have mentioned my illness. There
+really is no reason why I should hesitate to say that I know very
+well that any little delicacy I might have had in making a request to
+you is quite removed. Therefore I make the entreaty I have now
+preferred, and I hope you will have sufficient consideration for me
+to accede to it."
+
+I must do Mr. Guppy the further justice of saying that he had looked
+more and more ashamed and that he looked most ashamed and very
+earnest when he now replied with a burning face, "Upon my word and
+honour, upon my life, upon my soul, Miss Summerson, as I am a living
+man, I'll act according to your wish! I'll never go another step in
+opposition to it. I'll take my oath to it if it will be any
+satisfaction to you. In what I promise at this present time touching
+the matters now in question," continued Mr. Guppy rapidly, as if he
+were repeating a familiar form of words, "I speak the truth, the
+whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so--"
+
+"I am quite satisfied," said I, rising at this point, "and I thank
+you very much. Caddy, my dear, I am ready!"
+
+Mr. Guppy's mother returned with Caddy (now making me the recipient
+of her silent laughter and her nudges), and we took our leave. Mr.
+Guppy saw us to the door with the air of one who was either
+imperfectly awake or walking in his sleep; and we left him there,
+staring.
+
+But in a minute he came after us down the street without any hat, and
+with his long hair all blown about, and stopped us, saying fervently,
+"Miss Summerson, upon my honour and soul, you may depend upon me!"
+
+"I do," said I, "quite confidently."
+
+"I beg your pardon, miss," said Mr. Guppy, going with one leg and
+staying with the other, "but this lady being present--your own
+witness--it might be a satisfaction to your mind (which I should wish
+to set at rest) if you was to repeat those admissions."
+
+"Well, Caddy," said I, turning to her, "perhaps you will not be
+surprised when I tell you, my dear, that there never has been any
+engagement--"
+
+"No proposal or promise of marriage whatsoever," suggested Mr. Guppy.
+
+"No proposal or promise of marriage whatsoever," said I, "between
+this gentleman--"
+
+"William Guppy, of Penton Place, Pentonville, in the county of
+Middlesex," he murmured.
+
+"Between this gentleman, Mr. William Guppy, of Penton Place,
+Pentonville, in the county of Middlesex, and myself."
+
+"Thank you, miss," said Mr. Guppy. "Very full--er--excuse me--lady's
+name, Christian and surname both?"
+
+I gave them.
+
+"Married woman, I believe?" said Mr. Guppy. "Married woman. Thank
+you. Formerly Caroline Jellyby, spinster, then of Thavies Inn, within
+the city of London, but extra-parochial; now of Newman Street, Oxford
+Street. Much obliged."
+
+He ran home and came running back again.
+
+"Touching that matter, you know, I really and truly am very sorry
+that my arrangements in life, combined with circumstances over which
+I have no control, should prevent a renewal of what was wholly
+terminated some time back," said Mr. Guppy to me forlornly and
+despondently, "but it couldn't be. Now COULD it, you know! I only put
+it to you."
+
+I replied it certainly could not. The subject did not admit of a
+doubt. He thanked me and ran to his mother's again--and back again.
+
+"It's very honourable of you, miss, I am sure," said Mr. Guppy. "If
+an altar could be erected in the bowers of friendship--but, upon my
+soul, you may rely upon me in every respect save and except the
+tender passion only!"
+
+The struggle in Mr. Guppy's breast and the numerous oscillations it
+occasioned him between his mother's door and us were sufficiently
+conspicuous in the windy street (particularly as his hair wanted
+cutting) to make us hurry away. I did so with a lightened heart; but
+when we last looked back, Mr. Guppy was still oscillating in the same
+troubled state of mind.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+Attorney and Client
+
+
+The name of Mr. Vholes, preceded by the legend Ground-Floor, is
+inscribed upon a door-post in Symond's Inn, Chancery Lane--a little,
+pale, wall-eyed, woebegone inn like a large dust-binn of two
+compartments and a sifter. It looks as if Symond were a sparing man
+in his way and constructed his inn of old building materials which
+took kindly to the dry rot and to dirt and all things decaying and
+dismal, and perpetuated Symond's memory with congenial shabbiness.
+Quartered in this dingy hatchment commemorative of Symond are the
+legal bearings of Mr. Vholes.
+
+Mr. Vholes's office, in disposition retiring and in situation
+retired, is squeezed up in a corner and blinks at a dead wall. Three
+feet of knotty-floored dark passage bring the client to Mr. Vholes's
+jet-black door, in an angle profoundly dark on the brightest
+midsummer morning and encumbered by a black bulk-head of cellarage
+staircase against which belated civilians generally strike their
+brows. Mr. Vholes's chambers are on so small a scale that one clerk
+can open the door without getting off his stool, while the other who
+elbows him at the same desk has equal facilities for poking the fire.
+A smell as of unwholesome sheep blending with the smell of must and
+dust is referable to the nightly (and often daily) consumption of
+mutton fat in candles and to the fretting of parchment forms and
+skins in greasy drawers. The atmosphere is otherwise stale and close.
+The place was last painted or whitewashed beyond the memory of man,
+and the two chimneys smoke, and there is a loose outer surface of
+soot everywhere, and the dull cracked windows in their heavy frames
+have but one piece of character in them, which is a determination to
+be always dirty and always shut unless coerced. This accounts for the
+phenomenon of the weaker of the two usually having a bundle of
+firewood thrust between its jaws in hot weather.
+
+Mr. Vholes is a very respectable man. He has not a large business,
+but he is a very respectable man. He is allowed by the greater
+attorneys who have made good fortunes or are making them to be a most
+respectable man. He never misses a chance in his practice, which is a
+mark of respectability. He never takes any pleasure, which is another
+mark of respectability. He is reserved and serious, which is another
+mark of respectability. His digestion is impaired, which is highly
+respectable. And he is making hay of the grass which is flesh, for
+his three daughters. And his father is dependent on him in the Vale
+of Taunton.
+
+The one great principle of the English law is to make business for
+itself. There is no other principle distinctly, certainly, and
+consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings. Viewed by
+this light it becomes a coherent scheme and not the monstrous maze
+the laity are apt to think it. Let them but once clearly perceive
+that its grand principle is to make business for itself at their
+expense, and surely they will cease to grumble.
+
+But not perceiving this quite plainly--only seeing it by halves in a
+confused way--the laity sometimes suffer in peace and pocket, with a
+bad grace, and DO grumble very much. Then this respectability of Mr.
+Vholes is brought into powerful play against them. "Repeal this
+statute, my good sir?" says Mr. Kenge to a smarting client. "Repeal
+it, my dear sir? Never, with my consent. Alter this law, sir, and
+what will be the effect of your rash proceeding on a class of
+practitioners very worthily represented, allow me to say to you, by
+the opposite attorney in the case, Mr. Vholes? Sir, that class of
+practitioners would be swept from the face of the earth. Now you
+cannot afford--I will say, the social system cannot afford--to lose
+an order of men like Mr. Vholes. Diligent, persevering, steady, acute
+in business. My dear sir, I understand your present feelings against
+the existing state of things, which I grant to be a little hard in
+your case; but I can never raise my voice for the demolition of a
+class of men like Mr. Vholes." The respectability of Mr. Vholes has
+even been cited with crushing effect before Parliamentary committees,
+as in the following blue minutes of a distinguished attorney's
+evidence. "Question (number five hundred and seventeen thousand eight
+hundred and sixty-nine): If I understand you, these forms of practice
+indisputably occasion delay? Answer: Yes, some delay. Question: And
+great expense? Answer: Most assuredly they cannot be gone through for
+nothing. Question: And unspeakable vexation? Answer: I am not
+prepared to say that. They have never given ME any vexation; quite
+the contrary. Question: But you think that their abolition would
+damage a class of practitioners? Answer: I have no doubt of it.
+Question: Can you instance any type of that class? Answer: Yes. I
+would unhesitatingly mention Mr. Vholes. He would be ruined.
+Question: Mr. Vholes is considered, in the profession, a respectable
+man? Answer:"--which proved fatal to the inquiry for ten years--"Mr.
+Vholes is considered, in the profession, a MOST respectable man."
+
+So in familiar conversation, private authorities no less
+disinterested will remark that they don't know what this age is
+coming to, that we are plunging down precipices, that now here is
+something else gone, that these changes are death to people like
+Vholes--a man of undoubted respectability, with a father in the Vale
+of Taunton, and three daughters at home. Take a few steps more in
+this direction, say they, and what is to become of Vholes's father?
+Is he to perish? And of Vholes's daughters? Are they to be
+shirt-makers, or governesses? As though, Mr. Vholes and his relations
+being minor cannibal chiefs and it being proposed to abolish
+cannibalism, indignant champions were to put the case thus: Make
+man-eating unlawful, and you starve the Vholeses!
+
+In a word, Mr. Vholes, with his three daughters and his father in the
+Vale of Taunton, is continually doing duty, like a piece of timber,
+to shore up some decayed foundation that has become a pitfall and a
+nuisance. And with a great many people in a great many instances, the
+question is never one of a change from wrong to right (which is quite
+an extraneous consideration), but is always one of injury or
+advantage to that eminently respectable legion, Vholes.
+
+The Chancellor is, within these ten minutes, "up" for the long
+vacation. Mr. Vholes, and his young client, and several blue bags
+hastily stuffed out of all regularity of form, as the larger sort of
+serpents are in their first gorged state, have returned to the
+official den. Mr. Vholes, quiet and unmoved, as a man of so much
+respectability ought to be, takes off his close black gloves as if he
+were skinning his hands, lifts off his tight hat as if he were
+scalping himself, and sits down at his desk. The client throws his
+hat and gloves upon the ground--tosses them anywhere, without looking
+after them or caring where they go; flings himself into a chair, half
+sighing and half groaning; rests his aching head upon his hand and
+looks the portrait of young despair.
+
+"Again nothing done!" says Richard. "Nothing, nothing done!"
+
+"Don't say nothing done, sir," returns the placid Vholes. "That is
+scarcely fair, sir, scarcely fair!"
+
+"Why, what IS done?" says Richard, turning gloomily upon him.
+
+"That may not be the whole question," returns Vholes, "The question
+may branch off into what is doing, what is doing?"
+
+"And what is doing?" asks the moody client.
+
+Vholes, sitting with his arms on the desk, quietly bringing the tips
+of his five right fingers to meet the tips of his five left fingers,
+and quietly separating them again, and fixedly and slowly looking at
+his client, replies, "A good deal is doing, sir. We have put our
+shoulders to the wheel, Mr. Carstone, and the wheel is going round."
+
+"Yes, with Ixion on it. How am I to get through the next four or five
+accursed months?" exclaims the young man, rising from his chair and
+walking about the room.
+
+"Mr. C.," returns Vholes, following him close with his eyes wherever
+he goes, "your spirits are hasty, and I am sorry for it on your
+account. Excuse me if I recommend you not to chafe so much, not to be
+so impetuous, not to wear yourself out so. You should have more
+patience. You should sustain yourself better."
+
+"I ought to imitate you, in fact, Mr. Vholes?" says Richard, sitting
+down again with an impatient laugh and beating the devil's tattoo
+with his boot on the patternless carpet.
+
+"Sir," returns Vholes, always looking at the client as if he were
+making a lingering meal of him with his eyes as well as with his
+professional appetite. "Sir," returns Vholes with his inward manner
+of speech and his bloodless quietude, "I should not have had the
+presumption to propose myself as a model for your imitation or any
+man's. Let me but leave the good name to my three daughters, and that
+is enough for me; I am not a self-seeker. But since you mention me so
+pointedly, I will acknowledge that I should like to impart to you a
+little of my--come, sir, you are disposed to call it insensibility,
+and I am sure I have no objection--say insensibility--a little of my
+insensibility."
+
+"Mr. Vholes," explains the client, somewhat abashed, "I had no
+intention to accuse you of insensibility."
+
+"I think you had, sir, without knowing it," returns the equable
+Vholes. "Very naturally. It is my duty to attend to your interests
+with a cool head, and I can quite understand that to your excited
+feelings I may appear, at such times as the present, insensible. My
+daughters may know me better; my aged father may know me better. But
+they have known me much longer than you have, and the confiding eye
+of affection is not the distrustful eye of business. Not that I
+complain, sir, of the eye of business being distrustful; quite the
+contrary. In attending to your interests, I wish to have all possible
+checks upon me; it is right that I should have them; I court inquiry.
+But your interests demand that I should be cool and methodical, Mr.
+Carstone; and I cannot be otherwise--no, sir, not even to please
+you."
+
+Mr. Vholes, after glancing at the official cat who is patiently
+watching a mouse's hole, fixes his charmed gaze again on his young
+client and proceeds in his buttoned-up, half-audible voice as if
+there were an unclean spirit in him that will neither come out nor
+speak out, "What are you to do, sir, you inquire, during the
+vacation. I should hope you gentlemen of the army may find many means
+of amusing yourselves if you give your minds to it. If you had asked
+me what I was to do during the vacation, I could have answered you
+more readily. I am to attend to your interests. I am to be found
+here, day by day, attending to your interests. That is my duty, Mr.
+C., and term-time or vacation makes no difference to me. If you wish
+to consult me as to your interests, you will find me here at all
+times alike. Other professional men go out of town. I don't. Not that
+I blame them for going; I merely say I don't go. This desk is your
+rock, sir!"
+
+Mr. Vholes gives it a rap, and it sounds as hollow as a coffin. Not
+to Richard, though. There is encouragement in the sound to him.
+Perhaps Mr. Vholes knows there is.
+
+"I am perfectly aware, Mr. Vholes," says Richard, more familiarly and
+good-humouredly, "that you are the most reliable fellow in the world
+and that to have to do with you is to have to do with a man of
+business who is not to be hoodwinked. But put yourself in my case,
+dragging on this dislocated life, sinking deeper and deeper into
+difficulty every day, continually hoping and continually
+disappointed, conscious of change upon change for the worse in
+myself, and of no change for the better in anything else, and you
+will find it a dark-looking case sometimes, as I do."
+
+"You know," says Mr. Vholes, "that I never give hopes, sir. I told
+you from the first, Mr. C., that I never give hopes. Particularly in
+a case like this, where the greater part of the costs comes out of
+the estate, I should not be considerate of my good name if I gave
+hopes. It might seem as if costs were my object. Still, when you say
+there is no change for the better, I must, as a bare matter of fact,
+deny that."
+
+"Aye?" returns Richard, brightening. "But how do you make it out?"
+
+"Mr. Carstone, you are represented by--"
+
+"You said just now--a rock."
+
+"Yes, sir," says Mr. Vholes, gently shaking his head and rapping the
+hollow desk, with a sound as if ashes were falling on ashes, and dust
+on dust, "a rock. That's something. You are separately represented,
+and no longer hidden and lost in the interests of others. THAT'S
+something. The suit does not sleep; we wake it up, we air it, we walk
+it about. THAT'S something. It's not all Jarndyce, in fact as well as
+in name. THAT'S something. Nobody has it all his own way now, sir.
+And THAT'S something, surely."
+
+Richard, his face flushing suddenly, strikes the desk with his
+clenched hand.
+
+"Mr. Vholes! If any man had told me when I first went to John
+Jarndyce's house that he was anything but the disinterested friend he
+seemed--that he was what he has gradually turned out to be--I could
+have found no words strong enough to repel the slander; I could not
+have defended him too ardently. So little did I know of the world!
+Whereas now I do declare to you that he becomes to me the embodiment
+of the suit; that in place of its being an abstraction, it is John
+Jarndyce; that the more I suffer, the more indignant I am with him;
+that every new delay and every new disappointment is only a new
+injury from John Jarndyce's hand."
+
+"No, no," says Vholes. "Don't say so. We ought to have patience, all
+of us. Besides, I never disparage, sir. I never disparage."
+
+"Mr. Vholes," returns the angry client. "You know as well as I that
+he would have strangled the suit if he could."
+
+"He was not active in it," Mr. Vholes admits with an appearance of
+reluctance. "He certainly was not active in it. But however, but
+however, he might have had amiable intentions. Who can read the
+heart, Mr. C.!"
+
+"You can," returns Richard.
+
+"I, Mr. C.?"
+
+"Well enough to know what his intentions were. Are or are not our
+interests conflicting? Tell--me--that!" says Richard, accompanying
+his last three words with three raps on his rock of trust.
+
+"Mr. C.," returns Vholes, immovable in attitude and never winking his
+hungry eyes, "I should be wanting in my duty as your professional
+adviser, I should be departing from my fidelity to your interests, if
+I represented those interests as identical with the interests of Mr.
+Jarndyce. They are no such thing, sir. I never impute motives; I both
+have and am a father, and I never impute motives. But I must not
+shrink from a professional duty, even if it sows dissensions in
+families. I understand you to be now consulting me professionally as
+to your interests? You are so? I reply, then, they are not identical
+with those of Mr. Jarndyce."
+
+"Of course they are not!" cries Richard. "You found that out long
+ago."
+
+"Mr. C.," returns Vholes, "I wish to say no more of any third party
+than is necessary. I wish to leave my good name unsullied, together
+with any little property of which I may become possessed through
+industry and perseverance, to my daughters Emma, Jane, and Caroline.
+I also desire to live in amity with my professional brethren. When
+Mr. Skimpole did me the honour, sir--I will not say the very high
+honour, for I never stoop to flattery--of bringing us together in
+this room, I mentioned to you that I could offer no opinion or advice
+as to your interests while those interests were entrusted to another
+member of the profession. And I spoke in such terms as I was bound to
+speak of Kenge and Carboy's office, which stands high. You, sir,
+thought fit to withdraw your interests from that keeping nevertheless
+and to offer them to me. You brought them with clean hands, sir, and
+I accepted them with clean hands. Those interests are now paramount
+in this office. My digestive functions, as you may have heard me
+mention, are not in a good state, and rest might improve them; but I
+shall not rest, sir, while I am your representative. Whenever you
+want me, you will find me here. Summon me anywhere, and I will come.
+During the long vacation, sir, I shall devote my leisure to studying
+your interests more and more closely and to making arrangements for
+moving heaven and earth (including, of course, the Chancellor) after
+Michaelmas term; and when I ultimately congratulate you, sir," says
+Mr. Vholes with the severity of a determined man, "when I ultimately
+congratulate you, sir, with all my heart, on your accession to
+fortune--which, but that I never give hopes, I might say something
+further about--you will owe me nothing beyond whatever little balance
+may be then outstanding of the costs as between solicitor and client
+not included in the taxed costs allowed out of the estate. I pretend
+to no claim upon you, Mr. C., but for the zealous and active
+discharge--not the languid and routine discharge, sir: that much
+credit I stipulate for--of my professional duty. My duty prosperously
+ended, all between us is ended."
+
+Vholes finally adds, by way of rider to this declaration of his
+principles, that as Mr. Carstone is about to rejoin his regiment,
+perhaps Mr. C. will favour him with an order on his agent for twenty
+pounds on account.
+
+"For there have been many little consultations and attendances of
+late, sir," observes Vholes, turning over the leaves of his diary,
+"and these things mount up, and I don't profess to be a man of
+capital. When we first entered on our present relations I stated to
+you openly--it is a principle of mine that there never can be too
+much openness between solicitor and client--that I was not a man of
+capital and that if capital was your object you had better leave your
+papers in Kenge's office. No, Mr. C., you will find none of the
+advantages or disadvantages of capital here, sir. This," Vholes gives
+the desk one hollow blow again, "is your rock; it pretends to be
+nothing more."
+
+The client, with his dejection insensibly relieved and his vague
+hopes rekindled, takes pen and ink and writes the draft, not without
+perplexed consideration and calculation of the date it may bear,
+implying scant effects in the agent's hands. All the while, Vholes,
+buttoned up in body and mind, looks at him attentively. All the
+while, Vholes's official cat watches the mouse's hole.
+
+Lastly, the client, shaking hands, beseeches Mr. Vholes, for heaven's
+sake and earth's sake, to do his utmost to "pull him through" the
+Court of Chancery. Mr. Vholes, who never gives hopes, lays his palm
+upon the client's shoulder and answers with a smile, "Always here,
+sir. Personally, or by letter, you will always find me here, sir,
+with my shoulder to the wheel." Thus they part, and Vholes, left
+alone, employs himself in carrying sundry little matters out of his
+diary into his draft bill book for the ultimate behoof of his three
+daughters. So might an industrious fox or bear make up his account of
+chickens or stray travellers with an eye to his cubs, not to
+disparage by that word the three raw-visaged, lank, and buttoned-up
+maidens who dwell with the parent Vholes in an earthy cottage
+situated in a damp garden at Kennington.
+
+Richard, emerging from the heavy shade of Symond's Inn into the
+sunshine of Chancery Lane--for there happens to be sunshine there
+to-day--walks thoughtfully on, and turns into Lincoln's Inn, and
+passes under the shadow of the Lincoln's Inn trees. On many such
+loungers have the speckled shadows of those trees often fallen; on
+the like bent head, the bitten nail, the lowering eye, the lingering
+step, the purposeless and dreamy air, the good consuming and
+consumed, the life turned sour. This lounger is not shabby yet, but
+that may come. Chancery, which knows no wisdom but in precedent, is
+very rich in such precedents; and why should one be different from
+ten thousand?
+
+Yet the time is so short since his depreciation began that as he
+saunters away, reluctant to leave the spot for some long months
+together, though he hates it, Richard himself may feel his own case
+as if it were a startling one. While his heart is heavy with
+corroding care, suspense, distrust, and doubt, it may have room for
+some sorrowful wonder when he recalls how different his first visit
+there, how different he, how different all the colours of his mind.
+But injustice breeds injustice; the fighting with shadows and being
+defeated by them necessitates the setting up of substances to combat;
+from the impalpable suit which no man alive can understand, the time
+for that being long gone by, it has become a gloomy relief to turn to
+the palpable figure of the friend who would have saved him from this
+ruin and make HIM his enemy. Richard has told Vholes the truth. Is he
+in a hardened or a softened mood, he still lays his injuries equally
+at that door; he was thwarted, in that quarter, of a set purpose, and
+that purpose could only originate in the one subject that is
+resolving his existence into itself; besides, it is a justification
+to him in his own eyes to have an embodied antagonist and oppressor.
+
+Is Richard a monster in all this, or would Chancery be found rich in
+such precedents too if they could be got for citation from the
+Recording Angel?
+
+Two pairs of eyes not unused to such people look after him, as,
+biting his nails and brooding, he crosses the square and is swallowed
+up by the shadow of the southern gateway. Mr. Guppy and Mr. Weevle
+are the possessors of those eyes, and they have been leaning in
+conversation against the low stone parapet under the trees. He passes
+close by them, seeing nothing but the ground.
+
+"William," says Mr. Weevle, adjusting his whiskers, "there's
+combustion going on there! It's not a case of spontaneous, but it's
+smouldering combustion it is."
+
+"Ah!" says Mr. Guppy. "He wouldn't keep out of Jarndyce, and I
+suppose he's over head and ears in debt. I never knew much of him. He
+was as high as the monument when he was on trial at our place. A good
+riddance to me, whether as clerk or client! Well, Tony, that as I was
+mentioning is what they're up to."
+
+Mr. Guppy, refolding his arms, resettles himself against the parapet,
+as resuming a conversation of interest.
+
+"They are still up to it, sir," says Mr. Guppy, "still taking stock,
+still examining papers, still going over the heaps and heaps of
+rubbish. At this rate they'll be at it these seven years."
+
+"And Small is helping?"
+
+"Small left us at a week's notice. Told Kenge his grandfather's
+business was too much for the old gentleman and he could better
+himself by undertaking it. There had been a coolness between myself
+and Small on account of his being so close. But he said you and I
+began it, and as he had me there--for we did--I put our acquaintance
+on the old footing. That's how I come to know what they're up to."
+
+"You haven't looked in at all?"
+
+"Tony," says Mr. Guppy, a little disconcerted, "to be unreserved with
+you, I don't greatly relish the house, except in your company, and
+therefore I have not; and therefore I proposed this little
+appointment for our fetching away your things. There goes the hour by
+the clock! Tony"--Mr. Guppy becomes mysteriously and tenderly
+eloquent--"it is necessary that I should impress upon your mind once
+more that circumstances over which I have no control have made a
+melancholy alteration in my most cherished plans and in that
+unrequited image which I formerly mentioned to you as a friend. That
+image is shattered, and that idol is laid low. My only wish now in
+connexion with the objects which I had an idea of carrying out in the
+court with your aid as a friend is to let 'em alone and bury 'em in
+oblivion. Do you think it possible, do you think it at all likely (I
+put it to you, Tony, as a friend), from your knowledge of that
+capricious and deep old character who fell a prey to the--spontaneous
+element, do you, Tony, think it at all likely that on second thoughts
+he put those letters away anywhere, after you saw him alive, and that
+they were not destroyed that night?"
+
+Mr. Weevle reflects for some time. Shakes his head. Decidedly thinks
+not.
+
+"Tony," says Mr. Guppy as they walk towards the court, "once again
+understand me, as a friend. Without entering into further
+explanations, I may repeat that the idol is down. I have no purpose
+to serve now but burial in oblivion. To that I have pledged myself. I
+owe it to myself, and I owe it to the shattered image, as also to the
+circumstances over which I have no control. If you was to express to
+me by a gesture, by a wink, that you saw lying anywhere in your late
+lodgings any papers that so much as looked like the papers in
+question, I would pitch them into the fire, sir, on my own
+responsibility."
+
+Mr. Weevle nods. Mr. Guppy, much elevated in his own opinion by
+having delivered these observations, with an air in part forensic and
+in part romantic--this gentleman having a passion for conducting
+anything in the form of an examination, or delivering anything in the
+form of a summing up or a speech--accompanies his friend with dignity
+to the court.
+
+Never since it has been a court has it had such a Fortunatus' purse
+of gossip as in the proceedings at the rag and bottle shop.
+Regularly, every morning at eight, is the elder Mr. Smallweed brought
+down to the corner and carried in, accompanied by Mrs. Smallweed,
+Judy, and Bart; and regularly, all day, do they all remain there
+until nine at night, solaced by gipsy dinners, not abundant in
+quantity, from the cook's shop, rummaging and searching, digging,
+delving, and diving among the treasures of the late lamented. What
+those treasures are they keep so secret that the court is maddened.
+In its delirium it imagines guineas pouring out of tea-pots,
+crown-pieces overflowing punch-bowls, old chairs and mattresses
+stuffed with Bank of England notes. It possesses itself of the
+sixpenny history (with highly coloured folding frontispiece) of Mr.
+Daniel Dancer and his sister, and also of Mr. Elwes, of Suffolk, and
+transfers all the facts from those authentic narratives to Mr. Krook.
+Twice when the dustman is called in to carry off a cartload of old
+paper, ashes, and broken bottles, the whole court assembles and pries
+into the baskets as they come forth. Many times the two gentlemen who
+write with the ravenous little pens on the tissue-paper are seen
+prowling in the neighbourhood--shy of each other, their late
+partnership being dissolved. The Sol skilfully carries a vein of the
+prevailing interest through the Harmonic nights. Little Swills, in
+what are professionally known as "patter" allusions to the subject,
+is received with loud applause; and the same vocalist "gags" in the
+regular business like a man inspired. Even Miss M. Melvilleson, in
+the revived Caledonian melody of "We're a-Nodding," points the
+sentiment that "the dogs love broo" (whatever the nature of that
+refreshment may be) with such archness and such a turn of the head
+towards next door that she is immediately understood to mean Mr.
+Smallweed loves to find money, and is nightly honoured with a double
+encore. For all this, the court discovers nothing; and as Mrs. Piper
+and Mrs. Perkins now communicate to the late lodger whose appearance
+is the signal for a general rally, it is in one continual ferment to
+discover everything, and more.
+
+Mr. Weevle and Mr. Guppy, with every eye in the court's head upon
+them, knock at the closed door of the late lamented's house, in a
+high state of popularity. But being contrary to the court's
+expectation admitted, they immediately become unpopular and are
+considered to mean no good.
+
+The shutters are more or less closed all over the house, and the
+ground-floor is sufficiently dark to require candles. Introduced into
+the back shop by Mr. Smallweed the younger, they, fresh from the
+sunlight, can at first see nothing save darkness and shadows; but
+they gradually discern the elder Mr. Smallweed seated in his chair
+upon the brink of a well or grave of waste-paper, the virtuous Judy
+groping therein like a female sexton, and Mrs. Smallweed on the level
+ground in the vicinity snowed up in a heap of paper fragments, print,
+and manuscript which would appear to be the accumulated compliments
+that have been sent flying at her in the course of the day. The whole
+party, Small included, are blackened with dust and dirt and present a
+fiendish appearance not relieved by the general aspect of the room.
+There is more litter and lumber in it than of old, and it is dirtier
+if possible; likewise, it is ghostly with traces of its dead
+inhabitant and even with his chalked writing on the wall.
+
+On the entrance of visitors, Mr. Smallweed and Judy simultaneously
+fold their arms and stop in their researches.
+
+"Aha!" croaks the old gentleman. "How de do, gentlemen, how de do!
+Come to fetch your property, Mr. Weevle? That's well, that's well.
+Ha! Ha! We should have been forced to sell you up, sir, to pay your
+warehouse room if you had left it here much longer. You feel quite at
+home here again, I dare say? Glad to see you, glad to see you!"
+
+Mr. Weevle, thanking him, casts an eye about. Mr. Guppy's eye follows
+Mr. Weevle's eye. Mr. Weevle's eye comes back without any new
+intelligence in it. Mr. Guppy's eye comes back and meets Mr.
+Smallweed's eye. That engaging old gentleman is still murmuring, like
+some wound-up instrument running down, "How de do, sir--how
+de--how--" And then having run down, he lapses into grinning silence,
+as Mr. Guppy starts at seeing Mr. Tulkinghorn standing in the
+darkness opposite with his hands behind him.
+
+"Gentleman so kind as to act as my solicitor," says Grandfather
+Smallweed. "I am not the sort of client for a gentleman of such note,
+but he is so good!"
+
+Mr. Guppy, slightly nudging his friend to take another look, makes a
+shuffling bow to Mr. Tulkinghorn, who returns it with an easy nod.
+Mr. Tulkinghorn is looking on as if he had nothing else to do and
+were rather amused by the novelty.
+
+"A good deal of property here, sir, I should say," Mr. Guppy observes
+to Mr. Smallweed.
+
+"Principally rags and rubbish, my dear friend! Rags and rubbish! Me
+and Bart and my granddaughter Judy are endeavouring to make out an
+inventory of what's worth anything to sell. But we haven't come to
+much as yet; we--haven't--come--to--hah!"
+
+Mr. Smallweed has run down again, while Mr. Weevle's eye, attended by
+Mr. Guppy's eye, has again gone round the room and come back.
+
+"Well, sir," says Mr. Weevle. "We won't intrude any longer if you'll
+allow us to go upstairs."
+
+"Anywhere, my dear sir, anywhere! You're at home. Make yourself so,
+pray!"
+
+As they go upstairs, Mr. Guppy lifts his eyebrows inquiringly and
+looks at Tony. Tony shakes his head. They find the old room very dull
+and dismal, with the ashes of the fire that was burning on that
+memorable night yet in the discoloured grate. They have a great
+disinclination to touch any object, and carefully blow the dust from
+it first. Nor are they desirous to prolong their visit, packing the
+few movables with all possible speed and never speaking above a
+whisper.
+
+"Look here," says Tony, recoiling. "Here's that horrible cat coming
+in!"
+
+Mr. Guppy retreats behind a chair. "Small told me of her. She went
+leaping and bounding and tearing about that night like a dragon, and
+got out on the house-top, and roamed about up there for a fortnight,
+and then came tumbling down the chimney very thin. Did you ever see
+such a brute? Looks as if she knew all about it, don't she? Almost
+looks as if she was Krook. Shoohoo! Get out, you goblin!"
+
+Lady Jane, in the doorway, with her tiger snarl from ear to ear and
+her club of a tail, shows no intention of obeying; but Mr.
+Tulkinghorn stumbling over her, she spits at his rusty legs, and
+swearing wrathfully, takes her arched back upstairs. Possibly to roam
+the house-tops again and return by the chimney.
+
+"Mr. Guppy," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, "could I have a word with you?"
+
+Mr. Guppy is engaged in collecting the Galaxy Gallery of British
+Beauty from the wall and depositing those works of art in their old
+ignoble band-box. "Sir," he returns, reddening, "I wish to act with
+courtesy towards every member of the profession, and especially, I am
+sure, towards a member of it so well known as yourself--I will truly
+add, sir, so distinguished as yourself. Still, Mr. Tulkinghorn, sir,
+I must stipulate that if you have any word with me, that word is
+spoken in the presence of my friend."
+
+"Oh, indeed?" says Mr. Tulkinghorn.
+
+"Yes, sir. My reasons are not of a personal nature at all, but they
+are amply sufficient for myself."
+
+"No doubt, no doubt." Mr. Tulkinghorn is as imperturbable as the
+hearthstone to which he has quietly walked. "The matter is not of
+that consequence that I need put you to the trouble of making any
+conditions, Mr. Guppy." He pauses here to smile, and his smile is as
+dull and rusty as his pantaloons. "You are to be congratulated, Mr.
+Guppy; you are a fortunate young man, sir."
+
+"Pretty well so, Mr. Tulkinghorn; I don't complain."
+
+"Complain? High friends, free admission to great houses, and access
+to elegant ladies! Why, Mr. Guppy, there are people in London who
+would give their ears to be you."
+
+Mr. Guppy, looking as if he would give his own reddening and still
+reddening ears to be one of those people at present instead of
+himself, replies, "Sir, if I attend to my profession and do what is
+right by Kenge and Carboy, my friends and acquaintances are of no
+consequence to them nor to any member of the profession, not
+excepting Mr. Tulkinghorn of the Fields. I am not under any
+obligation to explain myself further; and with all respect for you,
+sir, and without offence--I repeat, without offence--"
+
+"Oh, certainly!"
+
+"--I don't intend to do it."
+
+"Quite so," says Mr. Tulkinghorn with a calm nod. "Very good; I see
+by these portraits that you take a strong interest in the fashionable
+great, sir?"
+
+He addresses this to the astounded Tony, who admits the soft
+impeachment.
+
+"A virtue in which few Englishmen are deficient," observes Mr.
+Tulkinghorn. He has been standing on the hearthstone with his back to
+the smoked chimney-piece, and now turns round with his glasses to his
+eyes. "Who is this? 'Lady Dedlock.' Ha! A very good likeness in its
+way, but it wants force of character. Good day to you, gentlemen;
+good day!"
+
+When he has walked out, Mr. Guppy, in a great perspiration, nerves
+himself to the hasty completion of the taking down of the Galaxy
+Gallery, concluding with Lady Dedlock.
+
+"Tony," he says hurriedly to his astonished companion, "let us be
+quick in putting the things together and in getting out of this
+place. It were in vain longer to conceal from you, Tony, that between
+myself and one of the members of a swan-like aristocracy whom I now
+hold in my hand, there has been undivulged communication and
+association. The time might have been when I might have revealed it
+to you. It never will be more. It is due alike to the oath I have
+taken, alike to the shattered idol, and alike to circumstances over
+which I have no control, that the whole should be buried in oblivion.
+I charge you as a friend, by the interest you have ever testified in
+the fashionable intelligence, and by any little advances with which I
+may have been able to accommodate you, so to bury it without a word
+of inquiry!"
+
+This charge Mr. Guppy delivers in a state little short of forensic
+lunacy, while his friend shows a dazed mind in his whole head of hair
+and even in his cultivated whiskers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+National and Domestic
+
+
+England has been in a dreadful state for some weeks. Lord Coodle
+would go out, Sir Thomas Doodle wouldn't come in, and there being
+nobody in Great Britain (to speak of) except Coodle and Doodle, there
+has been no government. It is a mercy that the hostile meeting
+between those two great men, which at one time seemed inevitable, did
+not come off, because if both pistols had taken effect, and Coodle
+and Doodle had killed each other, it is to be presumed that England
+must have waited to be governed until young Coodle and young Doodle,
+now in frocks and long stockings, were grown up. This stupendous
+national calamity, however, was averted by Lord Coodle's making the
+timely discovery that if in the heat of debate he had said that he
+scorned and despised the whole ignoble career of Sir Thomas Doodle,
+he had merely meant to say that party differences should never induce
+him to withhold from it the tribute of his warmest admiration; while
+it as opportunely turned out, on the other hand, that Sir Thomas
+Doodle had in his own bosom expressly booked Lord Coodle to go down
+to posterity as the mirror of virtue and honour. Still England has
+been some weeks in the dismal strait of having no pilot (as was well
+observed by Sir Leicester Dedlock) to weather the storm; and the
+marvellous part of the matter is that England has not appeared to
+care very much about it, but has gone on eating and drinking and
+marrying and giving in marriage as the old world did in the days
+before the flood. But Coodle knew the danger, and Doodle knew the
+danger, and all their followers and hangers-on had the clearest
+possible perception of the danger. At last Sir Thomas Doodle has not
+only condescended to come in, but has done it handsomely, bringing in
+with him all his nephews, all his male cousins, and all his
+brothers-in-law. So there is hope for the old ship yet.
+
+Doodle has found that he must throw himself upon the country, chiefly
+in the form of sovereigns and beer. In this metamorphosed state he is
+available in a good many places simultaneously and can throw himself
+upon a considerable portion of the country at one time. Britannia
+being much occupied in pocketing Doodle in the form of sovereigns,
+and swallowing Doodle in the form of beer, and in swearing herself
+black in the face that she does neither--plainly to the advancement
+of her glory and morality--the London season comes to a sudden end,
+through all the Doodleites and Coodleites dispersing to assist
+Britannia in those religious exercises.
+
+Hence Mrs. Rouncewell, housekeeper at Chesney Wold, foresees, though
+no instructions have yet come down, that the family may shortly be
+expected, together with a pretty large accession of cousins and
+others who can in any way assist the great Constitutional work. And
+hence the stately old dame, taking Time by the forelock, leads him up
+and down the staircases, and along the galleries and passages, and
+through the rooms, to witness before he grows any older that
+everything is ready, that floors are rubbed bright, carpets spread,
+curtains shaken out, beds puffed and patted, still-room and kitchen
+cleared for action--all things prepared as beseems the Dedlock
+dignity.
+
+This present summer evening, as the sun goes down, the preparations
+are complete. Dreary and solemn the old house looks, with so many
+appliances of habitation and with no inhabitants except the pictured
+forms upon the walls. So did these come and go, a Dedlock in
+possession might have ruminated passing along; so did they see this
+gallery hushed and quiet, as I see it now; so think, as I think, of
+the gap that they would make in this domain when they were gone; so
+find it, as I find it, difficult to believe that it could be without
+them; so pass from my world, as I pass from theirs, now closing the
+reverberating door; so leave no blank to miss them, and so die.
+
+Through some of the fiery windows beautiful from without, and set, at
+this sunset hour, not in dull-grey stone but in a glorious house of
+gold, the light excluded at other windows pours in rich, lavish,
+overflowing like the summer plenty in the land. Then do the frozen
+Dedlocks thaw. Strange movements come upon their features as the
+shadows of leaves play there. A dense justice in a corner is beguiled
+into a wink. A staring baronet, with a truncheon, gets a dimple in
+his chin. Down into the bosom of a stony shepherdess there steals a
+fleck of light and warmth that would have done it good a hundred
+years ago. One ancestress of Volumnia, in high-heeled shoes, very
+like her--casting the shadow of that virgin event before her full two
+centuries--shoots out into a halo and becomes a saint. A maid of
+honour of the court of Charles the Second, with large round eyes (and
+other charms to correspond), seems to bathe in glowing water, and it
+ripples as it glows.
+
+But the fire of the sun is dying. Even now the floor is dusky, and
+shadow slowly mounts the walls, bringing the Dedlocks down like age
+and death. And now, upon my Lady's picture over the great
+chimney-piece, a weird shade falls from some old tree, that turns it
+pale, and flutters it, and looks as if a great arm held a veil or
+hood, watching an opportunity to draw it over her. Higher and darker
+rises shadow on the wall--now a red gloom on the ceiling--now the
+fire is out.
+
+All that prospect, which from the terrace looked so near, has moved
+solemnly away and changed--not the first nor the last of beautiful
+things that look so near and will so change--into a distant phantom.
+Light mists arise, and the dew falls, and all the sweet scents in the
+garden are heavy in the air. Now the woods settle into great masses
+as if they were each one profound tree. And now the moon rises to
+separate them, and to glimmer here and there in horizontal lines
+behind their stems, and to make the avenue a pavement of light among
+high cathedral arches fantastically broken.
+
+Now the moon is high; and the great house, needing habitation more
+than ever, is like a body without life. Now it is even awful,
+stealing through it, to think of the live people who have slept in
+the solitary bedrooms, to say nothing of the dead. Now is the time
+for shadow, when every corner is a cavern and every downward step a
+pit, when the stained glass is reflected in pale and faded hues upon
+the floors, when anything and everything can be made of the heavy
+staircase beams excepting their own proper shapes, when the armour
+has dull lights upon it not easily to be distinguished from stealthy
+movement, and when barred helmets are frightfully suggestive of heads
+inside. But of all the shadows in Chesney Wold, the shadow in the
+long drawing-room upon my Lady's picture is the first to come, the
+last to be disturbed. At this hour and by this light it changes into
+threatening hands raised up and menacing the handsome face with every
+breath that stirs.
+
+"She is not well, ma'am," says a groom in Mrs. Rouncewell's
+audience-chamber.
+
+"My Lady not well! What's the matter?"
+
+"Why, my Lady has been but poorly, ma'am, since she was last here--I
+don't mean with the family, ma'am, but when she was here as a bird of
+passage like. My Lady has not been out much, for her, and has kept
+her room a good deal."
+
+"Chesney Wold, Thomas," rejoins the housekeeper with proud
+complacency, "will set my Lady up! There is no finer air and no
+healthier soil in the world!"
+
+Thomas may have his own personal opinions on this subject, probably
+hints them in his manner of smoothing his sleek head from the nape of
+his neck to his temples, but he forbears to express them further and
+retires to the servants' hall to regale on cold meat-pie and ale.
+
+This groom is the pilot-fish before the nobler shark. Next evening,
+down come Sir Leicester and my Lady with their largest retinue, and
+down come the cousins and others from all the points of the compass.
+Thenceforth for some weeks backward and forward rush mysterious men
+with no names, who fly about all those particular parts of the
+country on which Doodle is at present throwing himself in an
+auriferous and malty shower, but who are merely persons of a restless
+disposition and never do anything anywhere.
+
+On these national occasions Sir Leicester finds the cousins useful. A
+better man than the Honourable Bob Stables to meet the Hunt at
+dinner, there could not possibly be. Better got up gentlemen than the
+other cousins to ride over to polling-booths and hustings here and
+there, and show themselves on the side of England, it would be hard
+to find. Volumnia is a little dim, but she is of the true descent;
+and there are many who appreciate her sprightly conversation, her
+French conundrums so old as to have become in the cycles of time
+almost new again, the honour of taking the fair Dedlock in to dinner,
+or even the privilege of her hand in the dance. On these national
+occasions dancing may be a patriotic service, and Volumnia is
+constantly seen hopping about for the good of an ungrateful and
+unpensioning country.
+
+My Lady takes no great pains to entertain the numerous guests, and
+being still unwell, rarely appears until late in the day. But at all
+the dismal dinners, leaden lunches, basilisk balls, and other
+melancholy pageants, her mere appearance is a relief. As to Sir
+Leicester, he conceives it utterly impossible that anything can be
+wanting, in any direction, by any one who has the good fortune to be
+received under that roof; and in a state of sublime satisfaction, he
+moves among the company, a magnificent refrigerator.
+
+Daily the cousins trot through dust and canter over roadside turf,
+away to hustings and polling-booths (with leather gloves and
+hunting-whips for the counties and kid gloves and riding-canes for
+the boroughs), and daily bring back reports on which Sir Leicester
+holds forth after dinner. Daily the restless men who have no
+occupation in life present the appearance of being rather busy. Daily
+Volumnia has a little cousinly talk with Sir Leicester on the state
+of the nation, from which Sir Leicester is disposed to conclude that
+Volumnia is a more reflecting woman than he had thought her.
+
+"How are we getting on?" says Miss Volumnia, clasping her hands. "ARE
+we safe?"
+
+The mighty business is nearly over by this time, and Doodle will
+throw himself off the country in a few days more. Sir Leicester has
+just appeared in the long drawing-room after dinner, a bright
+particular star surrounded by clouds of cousins.
+
+"Volumnia," replies Sir Leicester, who has a list in his hand, "we
+are doing tolerably."
+
+"Only tolerably!"
+
+Although it is summer weather, Sir Leicester always has his own
+particular fire in the evening. He takes his usual screened seat near
+it and repeats with much firmness and a little displeasure, as who
+should say, I am not a common man, and when I say tolerably, it must
+not be understood as a common expression, "Volumnia, we are doing
+tolerably."
+
+"At least there is no opposition to YOU," Volumnia asserts with
+confidence.
+
+"No, Volumnia. This distracted country has lost its senses in many
+respects, I grieve to say, but--"
+
+"It is not so mad as that. I am glad to hear it!"
+
+Volumnia's finishing the sentence restores her to favour. Sir
+Leicester, with a gracious inclination of his head, seems to say to
+himself, "A sensible woman this, on the whole, though occasionally
+precipitate."
+
+In fact, as to this question of opposition, the fair Dedlock's
+observation was superfluous, Sir Leicester on these occasions always
+delivering in his own candidateship, as a kind of handsome wholesale
+order to be promptly executed. Two other little seats that belong to
+him he treats as retail orders of less importance, merely sending
+down the men and signifying to the tradespeople, "You will have the
+goodness to make these materials into two members of Parliament and
+to send them home when done."
+
+"I regret to say, Volumnia, that in many places the people have shown
+a bad spirit, and that this opposition to the government has been of
+a most determined and most implacable description."
+
+"W-r-retches!" says Volumnia.
+
+"Even," proceeds Sir Leicester, glancing at the circumjacent cousins
+on sofas and ottomans, "even in many--in fact, in most--of those
+places in which the government has carried it against a faction--"
+
+(Note, by the way, that the Coodleites are always a faction with the
+Doodleites, and that the Doodleites occupy exactly the same position
+towards the Coodleites.)
+
+"--Even in them I am shocked, for the credit of Englishmen, to be
+constrained to inform you that the party has not triumphed without
+being put to an enormous expense. Hundreds," says Sir Leicester,
+eyeing the cousins with increasing dignity and swelling indignation,
+"hundreds of thousands of pounds!"
+
+If Volumnia have a fault, it is the fault of being a trifle too
+innocent, seeing that the innocence which would go extremely well
+with a sash and tucker is a little out of keeping with the rouge and
+pearl necklace. Howbeit, impelled by innocence, she asks, "What for?"
+
+"Volumnia," remonstrates Sir Leicester with his utmost severity.
+"Volumnia!"
+
+"No, no, I don't mean what for," cries Volumnia with her favourite
+little scream. "How stupid I am! I mean what a pity!"
+
+"I am glad," returns Sir Leicester, "that you do mean what a pity."
+
+Volumnia hastens to express her opinion that the shocking people
+ought to be tried as traitors and made to support the party.
+
+"I am glad, Volumnia," repeats Sir Leicester, unmindful of these
+mollifying sentiments, "that you do mean what a pity. It is
+disgraceful to the electors. But as you, though inadvertently and
+without intending so unreasonable a question, asked me 'what for?'
+let me reply to you. For necessary expenses. And I trust to your good
+sense, Volumnia, not to pursue the subject, here or elsewhere."
+
+Sir Leicester feels it incumbent on him to observe a crushing aspect
+towards Volumnia because it is whispered abroad that these necessary
+expenses will, in some two hundred election petitions, be
+unpleasantly connected with the word bribery, and because some
+graceless jokers have consequently suggested the omission from the
+Church service of the ordinary supplication in behalf of the High
+Court of Parliament and have recommended instead that the prayers of
+the congregation be requested for six hundred and fifty-eight
+gentlemen in a very unhealthy state.
+
+"I suppose," observes Volumnia, having taken a little time to recover
+her spirits after her late castigation, "I suppose Mr. Tulkinghorn
+has been worked to death."
+
+"I don't know," says Sir Leicester, opening his eyes, "why Mr.
+Tulkinghorn should be worked to death. I don't know what Mr.
+Tulkinghorn's engagements may be. He is not a candidate."
+
+Volumnia had thought he might have been employed. Sir Leicester could
+desire to know by whom, and what for. Volumnia, abashed again,
+suggests, by somebody--to advise and make arrangements. Sir Leicester
+is not aware that any client of Mr. Tulkinghorn has been in need of
+his assistance.
+
+Lady Dedlock, seated at an open window with her arm upon its
+cushioned ledge and looking out at the evening shadows falling on the
+park, has seemed to attend since the lawyer's name was mentioned.
+
+A languid cousin with a moustache in a state of extreme debility now
+observes from his couch that man told him ya'as'dy that Tulkinghorn
+had gone down t' that iron place t' give legal 'pinion 'bout
+something, and that contest being over t' day, 'twould be highly
+jawlly thing if Tulkinghorn should 'pear with news that Coodle man
+was floored.
+
+Mercury in attendance with coffee informs Sir Leicester, hereupon,
+that Mr. Tulkinghorn has arrived and is taking dinner. My Lady turns
+her head inward for the moment, then looks out again as before.
+
+Volumnia is charmed to hear that her delight is come. He is so
+original, such a stolid creature, such an immense being for knowing
+all sorts of things and never telling them! Volumnia is persuaded
+that he must be a Freemason. Is sure he is at the head of a lodge,
+and wears short aprons, and is made a perfect idol of with
+candlesticks and trowels. These lively remarks the fair Dedlock
+delivers in her youthful manner, while making a purse.
+
+"He has not been here once," she adds, "since I came. I really had
+some thoughts of breaking my heart for the inconstant creature. I had
+almost made up my mind that he was dead."
+
+It may be the gathering gloom of evening, or it may be the darker
+gloom within herself, but a shade is on my Lady's face, as if she
+thought, "I would he were!"
+
+"Mr. Tulkinghorn," says Sir Leicester, "is always welcome here and
+always discreet wheresoever he is. A very valuable person, and
+deservedly respected."
+
+The debilitated cousin supposes he is "'normously rich fler."
+
+"He has a stake in the country," says Sir Leicester, "I have no
+doubt. He is, of course, handsomely paid, and he associates almost on
+a footing of equality with the highest society."
+
+Everybody starts. For a gun is fired close by.
+
+"Good gracious, what's that?" cries Volumnia with her little withered
+scream.
+
+"A rat," says my Lady. "And they have shot him."
+
+Enter Mr. Tulkinghorn, followed by Mercuries with lamps and candles.
+
+"No, no," says Sir Leicester, "I think not. My Lady, do you object to
+the twilight?"
+
+On the contrary, my Lady prefers it.
+
+"Volumnia?"
+
+Oh! Nothing is so delicious to Volumnia as to sit and talk in the
+dark.
+
+"Then take them away," says Sir Leicester. "Tulkinghorn, I beg your
+pardon. How do you do?"
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn with his usual leisurely ease advances, renders his
+passing homage to my Lady, shakes Sir Leicester's hand, and subsides
+into the chair proper to him when he has anything to communicate, on
+the opposite side of the Baronet's little newspaper-table. Sir
+Leicester is apprehensive that my Lady, not being very well, will
+take cold at that open window. My Lady is obliged to him, but would
+rather sit there for the air. Sir Leicester rises, adjusts her scarf
+about her, and returns to his seat. Mr. Tulkinghorn in the meanwhile
+takes a pinch of snuff.
+
+"Now," says Sir Leicester. "How has that contest gone?"
+
+"Oh, hollow from the beginning. Not a chance. They have brought in
+both their people. You are beaten out of all reason. Three to one."
+
+It is a part of Mr. Tulkinghorn's policy and mastery to have no
+political opinions; indeed, NO opinions. Therefore he says "you" are
+beaten, and not "we."
+
+Sir Leicester is majestically wroth. Volumnia never heard of such a
+thing. 'The debilitated cousin holds that it's sort of thing that's
+sure tapn slongs votes--giv'n--Mob.
+
+"It's the place, you know," Mr. Tulkinghorn goes on to say in the
+fast-increasing darkness when there is silence again, "where they
+wanted to put up Mrs. Rouncewell's son."
+
+"A proposal which, as you correctly informed me at the time, he had
+the becoming taste and perception," observes Sir Leicester, "to
+decline. I cannot say that I by any means approve of the sentiments
+expressed by Mr. Rouncewell when he was here for some half-hour in
+this room, but there was a sense of propriety in his decision which I
+am glad to acknowledge."
+
+"Ha!" says Mr. Tulkinghorn. "It did not prevent him from being very
+active in this election, though."
+
+Sir Leicester is distinctly heard to gasp before speaking. "Did I
+understand you? Did you say that Mr. Rouncewell had been very active
+in this election?"
+
+"Uncommonly active."
+
+"Against--"
+
+"Oh, dear yes, against you. He is a very good speaker. Plain and
+emphatic. He made a damaging effect, and has great influence. In the
+business part of the proceedings he carried all before him."
+
+It is evident to the whole company, though nobody can see him, that
+Sir Leicester is staring majestically.
+
+"And he was much assisted," says Mr. Tulkinghorn as a wind-up, "by
+his son."
+
+"By his son, sir?" repeats Sir Leicester with awful politeness.
+
+"By his son."
+
+"The son who wished to marry the young woman in my Lady's service?"
+
+"That son. He has but one."
+
+"Then upon my honour," says Sir Leicester after a terrific pause
+during which he has been heard to snort and felt to stare, "then
+upon my honour, upon my life, upon my reputation and principles,
+the floodgates of society are burst open, and the waters
+have--a--obliterated the landmarks of the framework of the cohesion
+by which things are held together!"
+
+General burst of cousinly indignation. Volumnia thinks it is
+really high time, you know, for somebody in power to step in
+and do something strong. Debilitated cousin thinks--country's
+going--Dayvle--steeple-chase pace.
+
+"I beg," says Sir Leicester in a breathless condition, "that we may
+not comment further on this circumstance. Comment is superfluous. My
+Lady, let me suggest in reference to that young woman--"
+
+"I have no intention," observes my Lady from her window in a low but
+decided tone, "of parting with her."
+
+"That was not my meaning," returns Sir Leicester. "I am glad to hear
+you say so. I would suggest that as you think her worthy of your
+patronage, you should exert your influence to keep her from these
+dangerous hands. You might show her what violence would be done in
+such association to her duties and principles, and you might preserve
+her for a better fate. You might point out to her that she probably
+would, in good time, find a husband at Chesney Wold by whom she would
+not be--" Sir Leicester adds, after a moment's consideration,
+"dragged from the altars of her forefathers."
+
+These remarks he offers with his unvarying politeness and deference
+when he addresses himself to his wife. She merely moves her head in
+reply. The moon is rising, and where she sits there is a little
+stream of cold pale light, in which her head is seen.
+
+"It is worthy of remark," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, "however, that these
+people are, in their way, very proud."
+
+"Proud?" Sir Leicester doubts his hearing.
+
+"I should not be surprised if they all voluntarily abandoned the
+girl--yes, lover and all--instead of her abandoning them, supposing
+she remained at Chesney Wold under such circumstances."
+
+"Well!" says Sir Leicester tremulously. "Well! You should know, Mr.
+Tulkinghorn. You have been among them."
+
+"Really, Sir Leicester," returns the lawyer, "I state the fact. Why,
+I could tell you a story--with Lady Dedlock's permission."
+
+Her head concedes it, and Volumnia is enchanted. A story! Oh, he is
+going to tell something at last! A ghost in it, Volumnia hopes?
+
+"No. Real flesh and blood." Mr. Tulkinghorn stops for an instant and
+repeats with some little emphasis grafted upon his usual monotony,
+"Real flesh and blood, Miss Dedlock. Sir Leicester, these particulars
+have only lately become known to me. They are very brief. They
+exemplify what I have said. I suppress names for the present. Lady
+Dedlock will not think me ill-bred, I hope?"
+
+By the light of the fire, which is low, he can be seen looking
+towards the moonlight. By the light of the moon Lady Dedlock can be
+seen, perfectly still.
+
+"A townsman of this Mrs. Rouncewell, a man in exactly parallel
+circumstances as I am told, had the good fortune to have a daughter
+who attracted the notice of a great lady. I speak of really a great
+lady, not merely great to him, but married to a gentleman of your
+condition, Sir Leicester."
+
+Sir Leicester condescendingly says, "Yes, Mr. Tulkinghorn," implying
+that then she must have appeared of very considerable moral
+dimensions indeed in the eyes of an iron-master.
+
+"The lady was wealthy and beautiful, and had a liking for the girl,
+and treated her with great kindness, and kept her always near her.
+Now this lady preserved a secret under all her greatness, which she
+had preserved for many years. In fact, she had in early life been
+engaged to marry a young rake--he was a captain in the army--nothing
+connected with whom came to any good. She never did marry him, but
+she gave birth to a child of which he was the father."
+
+By the light of the fire he can be seen looking towards the
+moonlight. By the moonlight, Lady Dedlock can be seen in profile,
+perfectly still.
+
+"The captain in the army being dead, she believed herself safe; but a
+train of circumstances with which I need not trouble you led to
+discovery. As I received the story, they began in an imprudence on
+her own part one day when she was taken by surprise, which shows how
+difficult it is for the firmest of us (she was very firm) to be
+always guarded. There was great domestic trouble and amazement, you
+may suppose; I leave you to imagine, Sir Leicester, the husband's
+grief. But that is not the present point. When Mr. Rouncewell's
+townsman heard of the disclosure, he no more allowed the girl to be
+patronized and honoured than he would have suffered her to be trodden
+underfoot before his eyes. Such was his pride, that he indignantly
+took her away, as if from reproach and disgrace. He had no sense of
+the honour done him and his daughter by the lady's condescension; not
+the least. He resented the girl's position, as if the lady had been
+the commonest of commoners. That is the story. I hope Lady Dedlock
+will excuse its painful nature."
+
+There are various opinions on the merits, more or less conflicting
+with Volumnia's. That fair young creature cannot believe there ever
+was any such lady and rejects the whole history on the threshold. The
+majority incline to the debilitated cousin's sentiment, which is in
+few words--"no business--Rouncewell's fernal townsman." Sir Leicester
+generally refers back in his mind to Wat Tyler and arranges a
+sequence of events on a plan of his own.
+
+There is not much conversation in all, for late hours have been kept
+at Chesney Wold since the necessary expenses elsewhere began, and
+this is the first night in many on which the family have been alone.
+It is past ten when Sir Leicester begs Mr. Tulkinghorn to ring for
+candles. Then the stream of moonlight has swelled into a lake, and
+then Lady Dedlock for the first time moves, and rises, and comes
+forward to a table for a glass of water. Winking cousins, bat-like in
+the candle glare, crowd round to give it; Volumnia (always ready for
+something better if procurable) takes another, a very mild sip of
+which contents her; Lady Dedlock, graceful, self-possessed, looked
+after by admiring eyes, passes away slowly down the long perspective
+by the side of that nymph, not at all improving her as a question of
+contrast.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+In Mr. Tulkinghorn's Room
+
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn arrives in his turret-room a little breathed by the
+journey up, though leisurely performed. There is an expression on his
+face as if he had discharged his mind of some grave matter and were,
+in his close way, satisfied. To say of a man so severely and strictly
+self-repressed that he is triumphant would be to do him as great an
+injustice as to suppose him troubled with love or sentiment or any
+romantic weakness. He is sedately satisfied. Perhaps there is a
+rather increased sense of power upon him as he loosely grasps one of
+his veinous wrists with his other hand and holding it behind his back
+walks noiselessly up and down.
+
+There is a capacious writing-table in the room on which is a pretty
+large accumulation of papers. The green lamp is lighted, his
+reading-glasses lie upon the desk, the easy-chair is wheeled up to
+it, and it would seem as though he had intended to bestow an hour or
+so upon these claims on his attention before going to bed. But he
+happens not to be in a business mind. After a glance at the documents
+awaiting his notice--with his head bent low over the table, the old
+man's sight for print or writing being defective at night--he opens
+the French window and steps out upon the leads. There he again walks
+slowly up and down in the same attitude, subsiding, if a man so cool
+may have any need to subside, from the story he has related
+downstairs.
+
+The time was once when men as knowing as Mr. Tulkinghorn would walk
+on turret-tops in the starlight and look up into the sky to read
+their fortunes there. Hosts of stars are visible to-night, though
+their brilliancy is eclipsed by the splendour of the moon. If he be
+seeking his own star as he methodically turns and turns upon the
+leads, it should be but a pale one to be so rustily represented
+below. If he be tracing out his destiny, that may be written in other
+characters nearer to his hand.
+
+As he paces the leads with his eyes most probably as high above his
+thoughts as they are high above the earth, he is suddenly stopped in
+passing the window by two eyes that meet his own. The ceiling of his
+room is rather low; and the upper part of the door, which is opposite
+the window, is of glass. There is an inner baize door, too, but the
+night being warm he did not close it when he came upstairs. These
+eyes that meet his own are looking in through the glass from the
+corridor outside. He knows them well. The blood has not flushed into
+his face so suddenly and redly for many a long year as when he
+recognizes Lady Dedlock.
+
+He steps into the room, and she comes in too, closing both the doors
+behind her. There is a wild disturbance--is it fear or anger?--in her
+eyes. In her carriage and all else she looks as she looked downstairs
+two hours ago.
+
+Is it fear or is it anger now? He cannot be sure. Both might be as
+pale, both as intent.
+
+"Lady Dedlock?"
+
+She does not speak at first, nor even when she has slowly dropped
+into the easy-chair by the table. They look at each other, like two
+pictures.
+
+"Why have you told my story to so many persons?"
+
+"Lady Dedlock, it was necessary for me to inform you that I knew it."
+
+"How long have you known it?"
+
+"I have suspected it a long while--fully known it a little while."
+
+"Months?"
+
+"Days."
+
+He stands before her with one hand on a chair-back and the other in
+his old-fashioned waistcoat and shirt-frill, exactly as he has stood
+before her at any time since her marriage. The same formal
+politeness, the same composed deference that might as well be
+defiance; the whole man the same dark, cold object, at the same
+distance, which nothing has ever diminished.
+
+"Is this true concerning the poor girl?"
+
+He slightly inclines and advances his head as not quite understanding
+the question.
+
+"You know what you related. Is it true? Do her friends know my story
+also? Is it the town-talk yet? Is it chalked upon the walls and cried
+in the streets?"
+
+So! Anger, and fear, and shame. All three contending. What power this
+woman has to keep these raging passions down! Mr. Tulkinghorn's
+thoughts take such form as he looks at her, with his ragged grey
+eyebrows a hair's breadth more contracted than usual under her gaze.
+
+"No, Lady Dedlock. That was a hypothetical case, arising out of Sir
+Leicester's unconsciously carrying the matter with so high a hand.
+But it would be a real case if they knew--what we know."
+
+"Then they do not know it yet?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Can I save the poor girl from injury before they know it?"
+
+"Really, Lady Dedlock," Mr. Tulkinghorn replies, "I cannot give a
+satisfactory opinion on that point."
+
+And he thinks, with the interest of attentive curiosity, as he
+watches the struggle in her breast, "The power and force of this
+woman are astonishing!"
+
+"Sir," she says, for the moment obliged to set her lips with all the
+energy she has, that she may speak distinctly, "I will make it
+plainer. I do not dispute your hypothetical case. I anticipated it,
+and felt its truth as strongly as you can do, when I saw Mr.
+Rouncewell here. I knew very well that if he could have had the power
+of seeing me as I was, he would consider the poor girl tarnished by
+having for a moment been, although most innocently, the subject of my
+great and distinguished patronage. But I have an interest in her, or
+I should rather say--no longer belonging to this place--I had, and if
+you can find so much consideration for the woman under your foot as
+to remember that, she will be very sensible of your mercy."
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn, profoundly attentive, throws this off with a shrug
+of self-depreciation and contracts his eyebrows a little more.
+
+"You have prepared me for my exposure, and I thank you for that too.
+Is there anything that you require of me? Is there any claim that I
+can release or any charge or trouble that I can spare my husband in
+obtaining HIS release by certifying to the exactness of your
+discovery? I will write anything, here and now, that you will
+dictate. I am ready to do it."
+
+And she would do it, thinks the lawyer, watchful of the firm hand
+with which she takes the pen!
+
+"I will not trouble you, Lady Dedlock. Pray spare yourself."
+
+"I have long expected this, as you know. I neither wish to spare
+myself nor to be spared. You can do nothing worse to me than you have
+done. Do what remains now."
+
+"Lady Dedlock, there is nothing to be done. I will take leave to say
+a few words when you have finished."
+
+Their need for watching one another should be over now, but they do
+it all this time, and the stars watch them both through the opened
+window. Away in the moonlight lie the woodland fields at rest, and
+the wide house is as quiet as the narrow one. The narrow one! Where
+are the digger and the spade, this peaceful night, destined to add
+the last great secret to the many secrets of the Tulkinghorn
+existence? Is the man born yet, is the spade wrought yet? Curious
+questions to consider, more curious perhaps not to consider, under
+the watching stars upon a summer night.
+
+"Of repentance or remorse or any feeling of mine," Lady Dedlock
+presently proceeds, "I say not a word. If I were not dumb, you would
+be deaf. Let that go by. It is not for your ears."
+
+He makes a feint of offering a protest, but she sweeps it away with
+her disdainful hand.
+
+"Of other and very different things I come to speak to you. My jewels
+are all in their proper places of keeping. They will be found there.
+So, my dresses. So, all the valuables I have. Some ready money I had
+with me, please to say, but no large amount. I did not wear my own
+dress, in order that I might avoid observation. I went to be
+henceforward lost. Make this known. I leave no other charge with
+you."
+
+"Excuse me, Lady Dedlock," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, quite unmoved. "I am
+not sure that I understand you. You want--"
+
+"To be lost to all here. I leave Chesney Wold to-night. I go this
+hour."
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn shakes his head. She rises, but he, without moving
+hand from chair-back or from old-fashioned waistcoat and shirt-frill,
+shakes his head.
+
+"What? Not go as I have said?"
+
+"No, Lady Dedlock," he very calmly replies.
+
+"Do you know the relief that my disappearance will be? Have you
+forgotten the stain and blot upon this place, and where it is, and
+who it is?"
+
+"No, Lady Dedlock, not by any means."
+
+Without deigning to rejoin, she moves to the inner door and has it in
+her hand when he says to her, without himself stirring hand or foot
+or raising his voice, "Lady Dedlock, have the goodness to stop and
+hear me, or before you reach the staircase I shall ring the
+alarm-bell and rouse the house. And then I must speak out before
+every guest and servant, every man and woman, in it."
+
+He has conquered her. She falters, trembles, and puts her hand
+confusedly to her head. Slight tokens these in any one else, but when
+so practised an eye as Mr. Tulkinghorn's sees indecision for a moment
+in such a subject, he thoroughly knows its value.
+
+He promptly says again, "Have the goodness to hear me, Lady Dedlock,"
+and motions to the chair from which she has risen. She hesitates, but
+he motions again, and she sits down.
+
+"The relations between us are of an unfortunate description, Lady
+Dedlock; but as they are not of my making, I will not apologize for
+them. The position I hold in reference to Sir Leicester is so well
+known to you that I can hardly imagine but that I must long have
+appeared in your eyes the natural person to make this discovery."
+
+"Sir," she returns without looking up from the ground on which her
+eyes are now fixed, "I had better have gone. It would have been far
+better not to have detained me. I have no more to say."
+
+"Excuse me, Lady Dedlock, if I add a little more to hear."
+
+"I wish to hear it at the window, then. I can't breathe where I am."
+
+His jealous glance as she walks that way betrays an instant's
+misgiving that she may have it in her thoughts to leap over, and
+dashing against ledge and cornice, strike her life out upon the
+terrace below. But a moment's observation of her figure as she stands
+in the window without any support, looking out at the stars--not
+up--gloomily out at those stars which are low in the heavens,
+reassures him. By facing round as she has moved, he stands a little
+behind her.
+
+"Lady Dedlock, I have not yet been able to come to a decision
+satisfactory to myself on the course before me. I am not clear what
+to do or how to act next. I must request you, in the meantime, to
+keep your secret as you have kept it so long and not to wonder that I
+keep it too."
+
+He pauses, but she makes no reply.
+
+"Pardon me, Lady Dedlock. This is an important subject. You are
+honouring me with your attention?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"Thank you. I might have known it from what I have seen of your
+strength of character. I ought not to have asked the question, but I
+have the habit of making sure of my ground, step by step, as I go on.
+The sole consideration in this unhappy case is Sir Leicester."
+
+"Then why," she asks in a low voice and without removing her gloomy
+look from those distant stars, "do you detain me in his house?"
+
+"Because he IS the consideration. Lady Dedlock, I have no occasion to
+tell you that Sir Leicester is a very proud man, that his reliance
+upon you is implicit, that the fall of that moon out of the sky would
+not amaze him more than your fall from your high position as his
+wife."
+
+She breathes quickly and heavily, but she stands as unflinchingly as
+ever he has seen her in the midst of her grandest company.
+
+"I declare to you, Lady Dedlock, that with anything short of this
+case that I have, I would as soon have hoped to root up by means of
+my own strength and my own hands the oldest tree on this estate as to
+shake your hold upon Sir Leicester and Sir Leicester's trust and
+confidence in you. And even now, with this case, I hesitate. Not that
+he could doubt (that, even with him, is impossible), but that nothing
+can prepare him for the blow."
+
+"Not my flight?" she returned. "Think of it again."
+
+"Your flight, Lady Dedlock, would spread the whole truth, and a
+hundred times the whole truth, far and wide. It would be impossible
+to save the family credit for a day. It is not to be thought of."
+
+There is a quiet decision in his reply which admits of no
+remonstrance.
+
+"When I speak of Sir Leicester being the sole consideration, he and
+the family credit are one. Sir Leicester and the baronetcy, Sir
+Leicester and Chesney Wold, Sir Leicester and his ancestors and his
+patrimony"--Mr. Tulkinghorn very dry here--"are, I need not say to
+you, Lady Dedlock, inseparable."
+
+"Go on!"
+
+"Therefore," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, pursuing his case in his jog-trot
+style, "I have much to consider. This is to be hushed up if it can
+be. How can it be, if Sir Leicester is driven out of his wits or laid
+upon a death-bed? If I inflicted this shock upon him to-morrow
+morning, how could the immediate change in him be accounted for? What
+could have caused it? What could have divided you? Lady Dedlock, the
+wall-chalking and the street-crying would come on directly, and you
+are to remember that it would not affect you merely (whom I cannot at
+all consider in this business) but your husband, Lady Dedlock, your
+husband."
+
+He gets plainer as he gets on, but not an atom more emphatic or
+animated.
+
+"There is another point of view," he continues, "in which the case
+presents itself. Sir Leicester is devoted to you almost to
+infatuation. He might not be able to overcome that infatuation, even
+knowing what we know. I am putting an extreme case, but it might be
+so. If so, it were better that he knew nothing. Better for common
+sense, better for him, better for me. I must take all this into
+account, and it combines to render a decision very difficult."
+
+She stands looking out at the same stars without a word. They are
+beginning to pale, and she looks as if their coldness froze her.
+
+"My experience teaches me," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, who has by this
+time got his hands in his pockets and is going on in his business
+consideration of the matter like a machine. "My experience teaches
+me, Lady Dedlock, that most of the people I know would do far better
+to leave marriage alone. It is at the bottom of three fourths of
+their troubles. So I thought when Sir Leicester married, and so I
+always have thought since. No more about that. I must now be guided
+by circumstances. In the meanwhile I must beg you to keep your own
+counsel, and I will keep mine."
+
+"I am to drag my present life on, holding its pains at your pleasure,
+day by day?" she asks, still looking at the distant sky.
+
+"Yes, I am afraid so, Lady Dedlock."
+
+"It is necessary, you think, that I should be so tied to the stake?"
+
+"I am sure that what I recommend is necessary."
+
+"I am to remain on this gaudy platform on which my miserable
+deception has been so long acted, and it is to fall beneath me when
+you give the signal?" she said slowly.
+
+"Not without notice, Lady Dedlock. I shall take no step without
+forewarning you."
+
+She asks all her questions as if she were repeating them from memory
+or calling them over in her sleep.
+
+"We are to meet as usual?"
+
+"Precisely as usual, if you please."
+
+"And I am to hide my guilt, as I have done so many years?"
+
+"As you have done so many years. I should not have made that
+reference myself, Lady Dedlock, but I may now remind you that your
+secret can be no heavier to you than it was, and is no worse and no
+better than it was. I know it certainly, but I believe we have never
+wholly trusted each other."
+
+She stands absorbed in the same frozen way for some little time
+before asking, "Is there anything more to be said to-night?"
+
+"Why," Mr. Tulkinghorn returns methodically as he softly rubs his
+hands, "I should like to be assured of your acquiescence in my
+arrangements, Lady Dedlock."
+
+"You may be assured of it."
+
+"Good. And I would wish in conclusion to remind you, as a business
+precaution, in case it should be necessary to recall the fact in any
+communication with Sir Leicester, that throughout our interview I
+have expressly stated my sole consideration to be Sir Leicester's
+feelings and honour and the family reputation. I should have been
+happy to have made Lady Dedlock a prominent consideration, too, if
+the case had admitted of it; but unfortunately it does not."
+
+"I can attest your fidelity, sir."
+
+Both before and after saying it she remains absorbed, but at length
+moves, and turns, unshaken in her natural and acquired presence,
+towards the door. Mr. Tulkinghorn opens both the doors exactly as he
+would have done yesterday, or as he would have done ten years ago,
+and makes his old-fashioned bow as she passes out. It is not an
+ordinary look that he receives from the handsome face as it goes into
+the darkness, and it is not an ordinary movement, though a very
+slight one, that acknowledges his courtesy. But as he reflects when
+he is left alone, the woman has been putting no common constraint
+upon herself.
+
+He would know it all the better if he saw the woman pacing her own
+rooms with her hair wildly thrown from her flung-back face, her hands
+clasped behind her head, her figure twisted as if by pain. He would
+think so all the more if he saw the woman thus hurrying up and down
+for hours, without fatigue, without intermission, followed by the
+faithful step upon the Ghost's Walk. But he shuts out the now chilled
+air, draws the window-curtain, goes to bed, and falls asleep. And
+truly when the stars go out and the wan day peeps into the
+turret-chamber, finding him at his oldest, he looks as if the digger
+and the spade were both commissioned and would soon be digging.
+
+The same wan day peeps in at Sir Leicester pardoning the repentant
+country in a majestically condescending dream; and at the cousins
+entering on various public employments, principally receipt of
+salary; and at the chaste Volumnia, bestowing a dower of fifty
+thousand pounds upon a hideous old general with a mouth of false
+teeth like a pianoforte too full of keys, long the admiration of Bath
+and the terror of every other community. Also into rooms high in the
+roof, and into offices in court-yards, and over stables, where
+humbler ambition dreams of bliss, in keepers' lodges, and in holy
+matrimony with Will or Sally. Up comes the bright sun, drawing
+everything up with it--the Wills and Sallys, the latent vapour in the
+earth, the drooping leaves and flowers, the birds and beasts and
+creeping things, the gardeners to sweep the dewy turf and unfold
+emerald velvet where the roller passes, the smoke of the great
+kitchen fire wreathing itself straight and high into the lightsome
+air. Lastly, up comes the flag over Mr. Tulkinghorn's unconscious
+head cheerfully proclaiming that Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock are
+in their happy home and that there is hospitality at the place in
+Lincolnshire.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+In Mr. Tulkinghorn's Chambers
+
+
+From the verdant undulations and the spreading oaks of the Dedlock
+property, Mr. Tulkinghorn transfers himself to the stale heat and
+dust of London. His manner of coming and going between the two places
+is one of his impenetrabilities. He walks into Chesney Wold as if it
+were next door to his chambers and returns to his chambers as if he
+had never been out of Lincoln's Inn Fields. He neither changes his
+dress before the journey nor talks of it afterwards. He melted out of
+his turret-room this morning, just as now, in the late twilight, he
+melts into his own square.
+
+Like a dingy London bird among the birds at roost in these pleasant
+fields, where the sheep are all made into parchment, the goats into
+wigs, and the pasture into chaff, the lawyer, smoke-dried and faded,
+dwelling among mankind but not consorting with them, aged without
+experience of genial youth, and so long used to make his cramped nest
+in holes and corners of human nature that he has forgotten its
+broader and better range, comes sauntering home. In the oven made by
+the hot pavements and hot buildings, he has baked himself dryer than
+usual; and he has in his thirsty mind his mellowed port-wine half a
+century old.
+
+The lamplighter is skipping up and down his ladder on Mr.
+Tulkinghorn's side of the Fields when that high-priest of noble
+mysteries arrives at his own dull court-yard. He ascends the
+door-steps and is gliding into the dusky hall when he encounters, on
+the top step, a bowing and propitiatory little man.
+
+"Is that Snagsby?"
+
+"Yes, sir. I hope you are well, sir. I was just giving you up, sir,
+and going home."
+
+"Aye? What is it? What do you want with me?"
+
+"Well, sir," says Mr. Snagsby, holding his hat at the side of his
+head in his deference towards his best customer, "I was wishful to
+say a word to you, sir."
+
+"Can you say it here?"
+
+"Perfectly, sir."
+
+"Say it then." The lawyer turns, leans his arms on the iron railing
+at the top of the steps, and looks at the lamplighter lighting the
+court-yard.
+
+"It is relating," says Mr. Snagsby in a mysterious low voice, "it is
+relating--not to put too fine a point upon it--to the foreigner,
+sir!"
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn eyes him with some surprise. "What foreigner?"
+
+"The foreign female, sir. French, if I don't mistake? I am not
+acquainted with that language myself, but I should judge from her
+manners and appearance that she was French; anyways, certainly
+foreign. Her that was upstairs, sir, when Mr. Bucket and me had the
+honour of waiting upon you with the sweeping-boy that night."
+
+"Oh! Yes, yes. Mademoiselle Hortense."
+
+"Indeed, sir?" Mr. Snagsby coughs his cough of submission behind his
+hat. "I am not acquainted myself with the names of foreigners in
+general, but I have no doubt it WOULD be that." Mr. Snagsby appears
+to have set out in this reply with some desperate design of repeating
+the name, but on reflection coughs again to excuse himself.
+
+"And what can you have to say, Snagsby," demands Mr. Tulkinghorn,
+"about her?"
+
+"Well, sir," returns the stationer, shading his communication with
+his hat, "it falls a little hard upon me. My domestic happiness is
+very great--at least, it's as great as can be expected, I'm sure--but
+my little woman is rather given to jealousy. Not to put too fine a
+point upon it, she is very much given to jealousy. And you see, a
+foreign female of that genteel appearance coming into the shop, and
+hovering--I should be the last to make use of a strong expression if
+I could avoid it, but hovering, sir--in the court--you know it
+is--now ain't it? I only put it to yourself, sir."
+
+Mr. Snagsby, having said this in a very plaintive manner, throws in a
+cough of general application to fill up all the blanks.
+
+"Why, what do you mean?" asks Mr. Tulkinghorn.
+
+"Just so, sir," returns Mr. Snagsby; "I was sure you would feel it
+yourself and would excuse the reasonableness of MY feelings when
+coupled with the known excitableness of my little woman. You see, the
+foreign female--which you mentioned her name just now, with quite a
+native sound I am sure--caught up the word Snagsby that night, being
+uncommon quick, and made inquiry, and got the direction and come at
+dinner-time. Now Guster, our young woman, is timid and has fits, and
+she, taking fright at the foreigner's looks--which are fierce--and at
+a grinding manner that she has of speaking--which is calculated to
+alarm a weak mind--gave way to it, instead of bearing up against it,
+and tumbled down the kitchen stairs out of one into another, such
+fits as I do sometimes think are never gone into, or come out of, in
+any house but ours. Consequently there was by good fortune ample
+occupation for my little woman, and only me to answer the shop. When
+she DID say that Mr. Tulkinghorn, being always denied to her by his
+employer (which I had no doubt at the time was a foreign mode of
+viewing a clerk), she would do herself the pleasure of continually
+calling at my place until she was let in here. Since then she has
+been, as I began by saying, hovering, hovering, sir"--Mr. Snagsby
+repeats the word with pathetic emphasis--"in the court. The effects
+of which movement it is impossible to calculate. I shouldn't wonder
+if it might have already given rise to the painfullest mistakes even
+in the neighbours' minds, not mentioning (if such a thing was
+possible) my little woman. Whereas, goodness knows," says Mr.
+Snagsby, shaking his head, "I never had an idea of a foreign female,
+except as being formerly connected with a bunch of brooms and a baby,
+or at the present time with a tambourine and earrings. I never had, I
+do assure you, sir!"
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn had listened gravely to this complaint and inquires
+when the stationer has finished, "And that's all, is it, Snagsby?"
+
+"Why yes, sir, that's all," says Mr. Snagsby, ending with a cough
+that plainly adds, "and it's enough too--for me."
+
+"I don't know what Mademoiselle Hortense may want or mean, unless she
+is mad," says the lawyer.
+
+"Even if she was, you know, sir," Mr. Snagsby pleads, "it wouldn't be
+a consolation to have some weapon or another in the form of a foreign
+dagger planted in the family."
+
+"No," says the other. "Well, well! This shall be stopped. I am sorry
+you have been inconvenienced. If she comes again, send her here."
+
+Mr. Snagsby, with much bowing and short apologetic coughing, takes
+his leave, lightened in heart. Mr. Tulkinghorn goes upstairs, saying
+to himself, "These women were created to give trouble the whole earth
+over. The mistress not being enough to deal with, here's the maid
+now! But I will be short with THIS jade at least!"
+
+So saying, he unlocks his door, gropes his way into his murky rooms,
+lights his candles, and looks about him. It is too dark to see much
+of the Allegory overhead there, but that importunate Roman, who is
+for ever toppling out of the clouds and pointing, is at his old work
+pretty distinctly. Not honouring him with much attention, Mr.
+Tulkinghorn takes a small key from his pocket, unlocks a drawer in
+which there is another key, which unlocks a chest in which there is
+another, and so comes to the cellar-key, with which he prepares to
+descend to the regions of old wine. He is going towards the door with
+a candle in his hand when a knock comes.
+
+"Who's this? Aye, aye, mistress, it's you, is it? You appear at a
+good time. I have just been hearing of you. Now! What do you want?"
+
+He stands the candle on the chimney-piece in the clerk's hall and
+taps his dry cheek with the key as he addresses these words of
+welcome to Mademoiselle Hortense. That feline personage, with her
+lips tightly shut and her eyes looking out at him sideways, softly
+closes the door before replying.
+
+"I have had great deal of trouble to find you, sir."
+
+"HAVE you!"
+
+"I have been here very often, sir. It has always been said to me, he
+is not at home, he is engage, he is this and that, he is not for
+you."
+
+"Quite right, and quite true."
+
+"Not true. Lies!"
+
+At times there is a suddenness in the manner of Mademoiselle Hortense
+so like a bodily spring upon the subject of it that such subject
+involuntarily starts and fails back. It is Mr. Tulkinghorn's case at
+present, though Mademoiselle Hortense, with her eyes almost shut up
+(but still looking out sideways), is only smiling contemptuously and
+shaking her head.
+
+"Now, mistress," says the lawyer, tapping the key hastily upon the
+chimney-piece. "If you have anything to say, say it, say it."
+
+"Sir, you have not use me well. You have been mean and shabby."
+
+"Mean and shabby, eh?" returns the lawyer, rubbing his nose with the
+key.
+
+"Yes. What is it that I tell you? You know you have. You have
+attrapped me--catched me--to give you information; you have asked me
+to show you the dress of mine my Lady must have wore that night, you
+have prayed me to come in it here to meet that boy. Say! Is it not?"
+Mademoiselle Hortense makes another spring.
+
+"You are a vixen, a vixen!" Mr. Tulkinghorn seems to meditate as he
+looks distrustfully at her, then he replies, "Well, wench, well. I
+paid you."
+
+"You paid me!" she repeats with fierce disdain. "Two sovereign! I
+have not change them, I re-fuse them, I des-pise them, I throw them
+from me!" Which she literally does, taking them out of her bosom as
+she speaks and flinging them with such violence on the floor that
+they jerk up again into the light before they roll away into corners
+and slowly settle down there after spinning vehemently.
+
+"Now!" says Mademoiselle Hortense, darkening her large eyes again.
+"You have paid me? Eh, my God, oh yes!"
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn rubs his head with the key while she entertains
+herself with a sarcastic laugh.
+
+"You must be rich, my fair friend," he composedly observes, "to throw
+money about in that way!"
+
+"I AM rich," she returns. "I am very rich in hate. I hate my Lady, of
+all my heart. You know that."
+
+"Know it? How should I know it?"
+
+"Because you have known it perfectly before you prayed me to give you
+that information. Because you have known perfectly that I was
+en-r-r-r-raged!" It appears impossible for mademoiselle to roll the
+letter "r" sufficiently in this word, notwithstanding that she
+assists her energetic delivery by clenching both her hands and
+setting all her teeth.
+
+"Oh! I knew that, did I?" says Mr. Tulkinghorn, examining the wards
+of the key.
+
+"Yes, without doubt. I am not blind. You have made sure of me because
+you knew that. You had reason! I det-est her." Mademoiselle Hortense folds her
+arms and throws this last remark at him over one of her shoulders.
+
+"Having said this, have you anything else to say, mademoiselle?"
+
+"I am not yet placed. Place me well. Find me a good condition! If you
+cannot, or do not choose to do that, employ me to pursue her, to
+chase her, to disgrace and to dishonour her. I will help you well,
+and with a good will. It is what YOU do. Do I not know that?"
+
+"You appear to know a good deal," Mr. Tulkinghorn retorts.
+
+"Do I not? Is it that I am so weak as to believe, like a child, that
+I come here in that dress to rec-eive that boy only to decide a
+little bet, a wager? Eh, my God, oh yes!" In this reply, down to the
+word "wager" inclusive, mademoiselle has been ironically polite and
+tender, then as suddenly dashed into the bitterest and most defiant
+scorn, with her black eyes in one and the same moment very nearly
+shut and staringly wide open.
+
+"Now, let us see," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, tapping his chin with the
+key and looking imperturbably at her, "how this matter stands."
+
+"Ah! Let us see," mademoiselle assents, with many angry and tight
+nods of her head.
+
+"You come here to make a remarkably modest demand, which you have
+just stated, and it not being conceded, you will come again."
+
+"And again," says mademoiselle with more tight and angry nods. "And
+yet again. And yet again. And many times again. In effect, for ever!"
+
+"And not only here, but you will go to Mr. Snagsby's too, perhaps?
+That visit not succeeding either, you will go again perhaps?"
+
+"And again," repeats mademoiselle, cataleptic with determination.
+"And yet again. And yet again. And many times again. In effect, for
+ever!"
+
+"Very well. Now, Mademoiselle Hortense, let me recommend you to take
+the candle and pick up that money of yours. I think you will find it
+behind the clerk's partition in the corner yonder."
+
+She merely throws a laugh over her shoulder and stands her ground
+with folded arms.
+
+"You will not, eh?"
+
+"No, I will not!"
+
+"So much the poorer you; so much the richer I! Look, mistress, this
+is the key of my wine-cellar. It is a large key, but the keys of
+prisons are larger. In this city there are houses of correction
+(where the treadmills are, for women), the gates of which are very
+strong and heavy, and no doubt the keys too. I am afraid a lady of
+your spirit and activity would find it an inconvenience to have one
+of those keys turned upon her for any length of time. What do you
+think?"
+
+"I think," mademoiselle replies without any action and in a clear,
+obliging voice, "that you are a miserable wretch."
+
+"Probably," returns Mr. Tulkinghorn, quietly blowing his nose. "But I
+don't ask what you think of myself; I ask what you think of the
+prison."
+
+"Nothing. What does it matter to me?"
+
+"Why, it matters this much, mistress," says the lawyer, deliberately
+putting away his handkerchief and adjusting his frill; "the law is so
+despotic here that it interferes to prevent any of our good English
+citizens from being troubled, even by a lady's visits against his
+desire. And on his complaining that he is so troubled, it takes hold
+of the troublesome lady and shuts her up in prison under hard
+discipline. Turns the key upon her, mistress." Illustrating with the
+cellar-key.
+
+"Truly?" returns mademoiselle in the same pleasant voice. "That is
+droll! But--my faith!--still what does it matter to me?"
+
+"My fair friend," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, "make another visit here, or
+at Mr. Snagsby's, and you shall learn."
+
+"In that case you will send me to the prison, perhaps?"
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+It would be contradictory for one in mademoiselle's state of
+agreeable jocularity to foam at the mouth, otherwise a tigerish
+expansion thereabouts might look as if a very little more would make
+her do it.
+
+"In a word, mistress," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, "I am sorry to be
+unpolite, but if you ever present yourself uninvited here--or
+there--again, I will give you over to the police. Their gallantry is
+great, but they carry troublesome people through the streets in an
+ignominious manner, strapped down on a board, my good wench."
+
+"I will prove you," whispers mademoiselle, stretching out her hand,
+"I will try if you dare to do it!"
+
+"And if," pursues the lawyer without minding her, "I place you in
+that good condition of being locked up in jail, it will be some time
+before you find yourself at liberty again."
+
+"I will prove you," repeats mademoiselle in her former whisper.
+
+"And now," proceeds the lawyer, still without minding her, "you had
+better go. Think twice before you come here again."
+
+"Think you," she answers, "twice two hundred times!"
+
+"You were dismissed by your lady, you know," Mr. Tulkinghorn
+observes, following her out upon the staircase, "as the most
+implacable and unmanageable of women. Now turn over a new leaf and
+take warning by what I say to you. For what I say, I mean; and what I
+threaten, I will do, mistress."
+
+She goes down without answering or looking behind her. When she is
+gone, he goes down too, and returning with his cobweb-covered bottle,
+devotes himself to a leisurely enjoyment of its contents, now and
+then, as he throws his head back in his chair, catching sight of the
+pertinacious Roman pointing from the ceiling.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+Esther's Narrative
+
+
+It matters little now how much I thought of my living mother who had
+told me evermore to consider her dead. I could not venture to
+approach her or to communicate with her in writing, for my sense of
+the peril in which her life was passed was only to be equalled by my
+fears of increasing it. Knowing that my mere existence as a living
+creature was an unforeseen danger in her way, I could not always
+conquer that terror of myself which had seized me when I first knew
+the secret. At no time did I dare to utter her name. I felt as if I
+did not even dare to hear it. If the conversation anywhere, when I
+was present, took that direction, as it sometimes naturally did, I
+tried not to hear: I mentally counted, repeated something that I
+knew, or went out of the room. I am conscious now that I often did
+these things when there can have been no danger of her being spoken
+of, but I did them in the dread I had of hearing anything that might
+lead to her betrayal, and to her betrayal through me.
+
+It matters little now how often I recalled the tones of my mother's
+voice, wondered whether I should ever hear it again as I so longed to
+do, and thought how strange and desolate it was that it should be so
+new to me. It matters little that I watched for every public mention
+of my mother's name; that I passed and repassed the door of her house
+in town, loving it, but afraid to look at it; that I once sat in the
+theatre when my mother was there and saw me, and when we were so wide
+asunder before the great company of all degrees that any link or
+confidence between us seemed a dream. It is all, all over. My lot has
+been so blest that I can relate little of myself which is not a story
+of goodness and generosity in others. I may well pass that little and
+go on.
+
+When we were settled at home again, Ada and I had many conversations
+with my guardian of which Richard was the theme. My dear girl was
+deeply grieved that he should do their kind cousin so much wrong, but
+she was so faithful to Richard that she could not bear to blame him
+even for that. My guardian was assured of it, and never coupled his
+name with a word of reproof. "Rick is mistaken, my dear," he would
+say to her. "Well, well! We have all been mistaken over and over
+again. We must trust to you and time to set him right."
+
+We knew afterwards what we suspected then, that he did not trust to
+time until he had often tried to open Richard's eyes. That he had
+written to him, gone to him, talked with him, tried every gentle and
+persuasive art his kindness could devise. Our poor devoted Richard
+was deaf and blind to all. If he were wrong, he would make amends
+when the Chancery suit was over. If he were groping in the dark,
+he could not do better than do his utmost to clear away those
+clouds in which so much was confused and obscured. Suspicion and
+misunderstanding were the fault of the suit? Then let him work the
+suit out and come through it to his right mind. This was his
+unvarying reply. Jarndyce and Jarndyce had obtained such possession
+of his whole nature that it was impossible to place any consideration
+before him which he did not, with a distorted kind of reason, make a
+new argument in favour of his doing what he did. "So that it is even
+more mischievous," said my guardian once to me, "to remonstrate with
+the poor dear fellow than to leave him alone."
+
+I took one of these opportunities of mentioning my doubts of Mr.
+Skimpole as a good adviser for Richard.
+
+"Adviser!" returned my guardian, laughing, "My dear, who would advise
+with Skimpole?"
+
+"Encourager would perhaps have been a better word," said I.
+
+"Encourager!" returned my guardian again. "Who could be encouraged by
+Skimpole?"
+
+"Not Richard?" I asked.
+
+"No," he replied. "Such an unworldly, uncalculating, gossamer
+creature is a relief to him and an amusement. But as to advising or
+encouraging or occupying a serious station towards anybody or
+anything, it is simply not to be thought of in such a child as
+Skimpole."
+
+"Pray, cousin John," said Ada, who had just joined us and now looked
+over my shoulder, "what made him such a child?"
+
+"What made him such a child?" inquired my guardian, rubbing his head,
+a little at a loss.
+
+"Yes, cousin John."
+
+"Why," he slowly replied, roughening his head more and more, "he is
+all sentiment, and--and susceptibility, and--and sensibility,
+and--and imagination. And these qualities are not regulated in him,
+somehow. I suppose the people who admired him for them in his youth
+attached too much importance to them and too little to any training
+that would have balanced and adjusted them, and so he became what he
+is. Hey?" said my guardian, stopping short and looking at us
+hopefully. "What do you think, you two?"
+
+Ada, glancing at me, said she thought it was a pity he should be an
+expense to Richard.
+
+"So it is, so it is," returned my guardian hurriedly. "That must not
+be. We must arrange that. I must prevent it. That will never do."
+
+And I said I thought it was to be regretted that he had ever
+introduced Richard to Mr. Vholes for a present of five pounds.
+
+"Did he?" said my guardian with a passing shade of vexation on his
+face. "But there you have the man. There you have the man! There is
+nothing mercenary in that with him. He has no idea of the value of
+money. He introduces Rick, and then he is good friends with Mr.
+Vholes and borrows five pounds of him. He means nothing by it and
+thinks nothing of it. He told you himself, I'll be bound, my dear?"
+
+"Oh, yes!" said I.
+
+"Exactly!" cried my guardian, quite triumphant. "There you have the
+man! If he had meant any harm by it or was conscious of any harm in
+it, he wouldn't tell it. He tells it as he does it in mere
+simplicity. But you shall see him in his own home, and then you'll
+understand him better. We must pay a visit to Harold Skimpole and
+caution him on these points. Lord bless you, my dears, an infant, an
+infant!"
+
+In pursuance of this plan, we went into London on an early day and
+presented ourselves at Mr. Skimpole's door.
+
+He lived in a place called the Polygon, in Somers Town, where there
+were at that time a number of poor Spanish refugees walking about in
+cloaks, smoking little paper cigars. Whether he was a better tenant
+than one might have supposed, in consequence of his friend Somebody
+always paying his rent at last, or whether his inaptitude for
+business rendered it particularly difficult to turn him out, I don't
+know; but he had occupied the same house some years. It was in a
+state of dilapidation quite equal to our expectation. Two or three of
+the area railings were gone, the water-butt was broken, the knocker
+was loose, the bell-handle had been pulled off a long time to judge
+from the rusty state of the wire, and dirty footprints on the steps
+were the only signs of its being inhabited.
+
+A slatternly full-blown girl who seemed to be bursting out at the
+rents in her gown and the cracks in her shoes like an over-ripe berry
+answered our knock by opening the door a very little way and stopping
+up the gap with her figure. As she knew Mr. Jarndyce (indeed Ada and
+I both thought that she evidently associated him with the receipt of
+her wages), she immediately relented and allowed us to pass in. The
+lock of the door being in a disabled condition, she then applied
+herself to securing it with the chain, which was not in good action
+either, and said would we go upstairs?
+
+We went upstairs to the first floor, still seeing no other furniture
+than the dirty footprints. Mr. Jarndyce without further ceremony
+entered a room there, and we followed. It was dingy enough and not at
+all clean, but furnished with an odd kind of shabby luxury, with a
+large footstool, a sofa, and plenty of cushions, an easy-chair, and
+plenty of pillows, a piano, books, drawing materials, music,
+newspapers, and a few sketches and pictures. A broken pane of glass
+in one of the dirty windows was papered and wafered over, but there
+was a little plate of hothouse nectarines on the table, and there was
+another of grapes, and another of sponge-cakes, and there was a
+bottle of light wine. Mr. Skimpole himself reclined upon the sofa in
+a dressing-gown, drinking some fragrant coffee from an old china
+cup--it was then about mid-day--and looking at a collection of
+wallflowers in the balcony.
+
+He was not in the least disconcerted by our appearance, but rose and
+received us in his usual airy manner.
+
+"Here I am, you see!" he said when we were seated, not without some
+little difficulty, the greater part of the chairs being broken. "Here
+I am! This is my frugal breakfast. Some men want legs of beef and
+mutton for breakfast; I don't. Give me my peach, my cup of coffee,
+and my claret; I am content. I don't want them for themselves, but
+they remind me of the sun. There's nothing solar about legs of beef
+and mutton. Mere animal satisfaction!"
+
+"This is our friend's consulting-room (or would be, if he ever
+prescribed), his sanctum, his studio," said my guardian to us.
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Skimpole, turning his bright face about, "this is the
+bird's cage. This is where the bird lives and sings. They pluck his
+feathers now and then and clip his wings, but he sings, he sings!"
+
+He handed us the grapes, repeating in his radiant way, "He sings! Not
+an ambitious note, but still he sings."
+
+"These are very fine," said my guardian. "A present?"
+
+"No," he answered. "No! Some amiable gardener sells them. His man
+wanted to know, when he brought them last evening, whether he should
+wait for the money. 'Really, my friend,' I said, 'I think not--if
+your time is of any value to you.' I suppose it was, for he went
+away."
+
+My guardian looked at us with a smile, as though he asked us, "Is it
+possible to be worldly with this baby?"
+
+"This is a day," said Mr. Skimpole, gaily taking a little claret in a
+tumbler, "that will ever be remembered here. We shall call it Saint
+Clare and Saint Summerson day. You must see my daughters. I have a
+blue-eyed daughter who is my Beauty daughter, I have a Sentiment
+daughter, and I have a Comedy daughter. You must see them all.
+They'll be enchanted."
+
+He was going to summon them when my guardian interposed and asked him
+to pause a moment, as he wished to say a word to him first. "My dear
+Jarndyce," he cheerfully replied, going back to his sofa, "as many
+moments as you please. Time is no object here. We never know what
+o'clock it is, and we never care. Not the way to get on in life,
+you'll tell me? Certainly. But we DON'T get on in life. We don't
+pretend to do it."
+
+My guardian looked at us again, plainly saying, "You hear him?"
+
+"Now, Harold," he began, "the word I have to say relates to Rick."
+
+"The dearest friend I have!" returned Mr. Skimpole cordially. "I
+suppose he ought not to be my dearest friend, as he is not on terms
+with you. But he is, I can't help it; he is full of youthful poetry,
+and I love him. If you don't like it, I can't help it. I love him."
+
+The engaging frankness with which he made this declaration really had
+a disinterested appearance and captivated my guardian, if not, for
+the moment, Ada too.
+
+"You are welcome to love him as much as you like," returned Mr.
+Jarndyce, "but we must save his pocket, Harold."
+
+"Oh!" said Mr. Skimpole. "His pocket? Now you are coming to what I
+don't understand." Taking a little more claret and dipping one of the
+cakes in it, he shook his head and smiled at Ada and me with an
+ingenuous foreboding that he never could be made to understand.
+
+"If you go with him here or there," said my guardian plainly, "you
+must not let him pay for both."
+
+"My dear Jarndyce," returned Mr. Skimpole, his genial face irradiated
+by the comicality of this idea, "what am I to do? If he takes me
+anywhere, I must go. And how can I pay? I never have any money. If I
+had any money, I don't know anything about it. Suppose I say to a
+man, how much? Suppose the man says to me seven and sixpence? I know
+nothing about seven and sixpence. It is impossible for me to pursue
+the subject with any consideration for the man. I don't go about
+asking busy people what seven and sixpence is in Moorish--which I
+don't understand. Why should I go about asking them what seven and
+sixpence is in Money--which I don't understand?"
+
+"Well," said my guardian, by no means displeased with this artless
+reply, "if you come to any kind of journeying with Rick, you must
+borrow the money of me (never breathing the least allusion to that
+circumstance), and leave the calculation to him."
+
+"My dear Jarndyce," returned Mr. Skimpole, "I will do anything to
+give you pleasure, but it seems an idle form--a superstition.
+Besides, I give you my word, Miss Clare and my dear Miss Summerson, I
+thought Mr. Carstone was immensely rich. I thought he had only to
+make over something, or to sign a bond, or a draft, or a cheque, or a
+bill, or to put something on a file somewhere, to bring down a shower
+of money."
+
+"Indeed it is not so, sir," said Ada. "He is poor."
+
+"No, really?" returned Mr. Skimpole with his bright smile. "You
+surprise me.
+
+"And not being the richer for trusting in a rotten reed," said my
+guardian, laying his hand emphatically on the sleeve of Mr.
+Skimpole's dressing-gown, "be you very careful not to encourage him
+in that reliance, Harold."
+
+"My dear good friend," returned Mr. Skimpole, "and my dear Miss
+Simmerson, and my dear Miss Clare, how can I do that? It's business,
+and I don't know business. It is he who encourages me. He emerges
+from great feats of business, presents the brightest prospects before
+me as their result, and calls upon me to admire them. I do admire
+them--as bright prospects. But I know no more about them, and I tell
+him so."
+
+The helpless kind of candour with which he presented this before us,
+the light-hearted manner in which he was amused by his innocence, the
+fantastic way in which he took himself under his own protection and
+argued about that curious person, combined with the delightful ease
+of everything he said exactly to make out my guardian's case. The
+more I saw of him, the more unlikely it seemed to me, when he was
+present, that he could design, conceal, or influence anything; and
+yet the less likely that appeared when he was not present, and the
+less agreeable it was to think of his having anything to do with any
+one for whom I cared.
+
+Hearing that his examination (as he called it) was now over, Mr.
+Skimpole left the room with a radiant face to fetch his daughters
+(his sons had run away at various times), leaving my guardian quite
+delighted by the manner in which he had vindicated his childish
+character. He soon came back, bringing with him the three young
+ladies and Mrs. Skimpole, who had once been a beauty but was now a
+delicate high-nosed invalid suffering under a complication of
+disorders.
+
+"This," said Mr. Skimpole, "is my Beauty daughter, Arethusa--plays
+and sings odds and ends like her father. This is my Sentiment
+daughter, Laura--plays a little but don't sing. This is my Comedy
+daughter, Kitty--sings a little but don't play. We all draw a little
+and compose a little, and none of us have any idea of time or money."
+
+Mrs. Skimpole sighed, I thought, as if she would have been glad to
+strike out this item in the family attainments. I also thought that
+she rather impressed her sigh upon my guardian and that she took
+every opportunity of throwing in another.
+
+"It is pleasant," said Mr. Skimpole, turning his sprightly eyes from
+one to the other of us, "and it is whimsically interesting to trace
+peculiarities in families. In this family we are all children, and I
+am the youngest."
+
+The daughters, who appeared to be very fond of him, were amused by
+this droll fact, particularly the Comedy daughter.
+
+"My dears, it is true," said Mr. Skimpole, "is it not? So it is, and
+so it must be, because like the dogs in the hymn, 'it is our nature
+to.' Now, here is Miss Summerson with a fine administrative capacity
+and a knowledge of details perfectly surprising. It will sound very
+strange in Miss Summerson's ears, I dare say, that we know nothing
+about chops in this house. But we don't, not the least. We can't cook
+anything whatever. A needle and thread we don't know how to use. We
+admire the people who possess the practical wisdom we want, but we
+don't quarrel with them. Then why should they quarrel with us? Live
+and let live, we say to them. Live upon your practical wisdom, and
+let us live upon you!"
+
+He laughed, but as usual seemed quite candid and really to mean what
+he said.
+
+"We have sympathy, my roses," said Mr. Skimpole, "sympathy for
+everything. Have we not?"
+
+"Oh, yes, papa!" cried the three daughters.
+
+"In fact, that is our family department," said Mr. Skimpole, "in this
+hurly-burly of life. We are capable of looking on and of being
+interested, and we DO look on, and we ARE interested. What more can
+we do? Here is my Beauty daughter, married these three years. Now I
+dare say her marrying another child, and having two more, was all
+wrong in point of political economy, but it was very agreeable. We
+had our little festivities on those occasions and exchanged social
+ideas. She brought her young husband home one day, and they and their
+young fledglings have their nest upstairs. I dare say at some time or
+other Sentiment and Comedy will bring THEIR husbands home and have
+THEIR nests upstairs too. So we get on, we don't know how, but
+somehow."
+
+She looked very young indeed to be the mother of two children, and I
+could not help pitying both her and them. It was evident that the
+three daughters had grown up as they could and had had just as little
+haphazard instruction as qualified them to be their father's
+playthings in his idlest hours. His pictorial tastes were consulted,
+I observed, in their respective styles of wearing their hair, the
+Beauty daughter being in the classic manner, the Sentiment daughter
+luxuriant and flowing, and the Comedy daughter in the arch style,
+with a good deal of sprightly forehead, and vivacious little curls
+dotted about the corners of her eyes. They were dressed to
+correspond, though in a most untidy and negligent way.
+
+Ada and I conversed with these young ladies and found them
+wonderfully like their father. In the meanwhile Mr. Jarndyce (who had
+been rubbing his head to a great extent, and hinted at a change in
+the wind) talked with Mrs. Skimpole in a corner, where we could not
+help hearing the chink of money. Mr. Skimpole had previously
+volunteered to go home with us and had withdrawn to dress himself for
+the purpose.
+
+"My roses," he said when he came back, "take care of mama. She is
+poorly to-day. By going home with Mr. Jarndyce for a day or two, I
+shall hear the larks sing and preserve my amiability. It has been
+tried, you know, and would be tried again if I remained at home."
+
+"That bad man!" said the Comedy daughter.
+
+"At the very time when he knew papa was lying ill by his wallflowers,
+looking at the blue sky," Laura complained.
+
+"And when the smell of hay was in the air!" said Arethusa.
+
+"It showed a want of poetry in the man," Mr. Skimpole assented, but
+with perfect good humour. "It was coarse. There was an absence of the
+finer touches of humanity in it! My daughters have taken great
+offence," he explained to us, "at an honest man--"
+
+"Not honest, papa. Impossible!" they all three protested.
+
+"At a rough kind of fellow--a sort of human hedgehog rolled up," said
+Mr. Skimpole, "who is a baker in this neighbourhood and from whom we
+borrowed a couple of arm-chairs. We wanted a couple of arm-chairs,
+and we hadn't got them, and therefore of course we looked to a man
+who HAD got them, to lend them. Well! This morose person lent them,
+and we wore them out. When they were worn out, he wanted them back.
+He had them back. He was contented, you will say. Not at all. He
+objected to their being worn. I reasoned with him, and pointed out
+his mistake. I said, 'Can you, at your time of life, be so
+headstrong, my friend, as to persist that an arm-chair is a thing to
+put upon a shelf and look at? That it is an object to contemplate, to
+survey from a distance, to consider from a point of sight? Don't you
+KNOW that these arm-chairs were borrowed to be sat upon?' He was
+unreasonable and unpersuadable and used intemperate language. Being
+as patient as I am at this minute, I addressed another appeal to him.
+I said, 'Now, my good man, however our business capacities may vary,
+we are all children of one great mother, Nature. On this blooming
+summer morning here you see me' (I was on the sofa) 'with flowers
+before me, fruit upon the table, the cloudless sky above me, the air
+full of fragrance, contemplating Nature. I entreat you, by our common
+brotherhood, not to interpose between me and a subject so sublime,
+the absurd figure of an angry baker!' But he did," said Mr. Skimpole,
+raising his laughing eyes in playful astonishment; "he did interpose
+that ridiculous figure, and he does, and he will again. And therefore
+I am very glad to get out of his way and to go home with my friend
+Jarndyce."
+
+It seemed to escape his consideration that Mrs. Skimpole and the
+daughters remained behind to encounter the baker, but this was so old
+a story to all of them that it had become a matter of course. He took
+leave of his family with a tenderness as airy and graceful as any
+other aspect in which he showed himself and rode away with us in
+perfect harmony of mind. We had an opportunity of seeing through some
+open doors, as we went downstairs, that his own apartment was a
+palace to the rest of the house.
+
+I could have no anticipation, and I had none, that something very
+startling to me at the moment, and ever memorable to me in what
+ensued from it, was to happen before this day was out. Our guest was
+in such spirits on the way home that I could do nothing but listen to
+him and wonder at him; nor was I alone in this, for Ada yielded to
+the same fascination. As to my guardian, the wind, which had
+threatened to become fixed in the east when we left Somers Town,
+veered completely round before we were a couple of miles from it.
+
+Whether of questionable childishness or not in any other matters, Mr.
+Skimpole had a child's enjoyment of change and bright weather. In no
+way wearied by his sallies on the road, he was in the drawing-room
+before any of us; and I heard him at the piano while I was yet
+looking after my housekeeping, singing refrains of barcaroles and
+drinking songs, Italian and German, by the score.
+
+We were all assembled shortly before dinner, and he was still at the
+piano idly picking out in his luxurious way little strains of music,
+and talking between whiles of finishing some sketches of the ruined
+old Verulam wall to-morrow, which he had begun a year or two ago and
+had got tired of, when a card was brought in and my guardian read
+aloud in a surprised voice, "Sir Leicester Dedlock!"
+
+The visitor was in the room while it was yet turning round with me
+and before I had the power to stir. If I had had it, I should have
+hurried away. I had not even the presence of mind, in my giddiness,
+to retire to Ada in the window, or to see the window, or to know
+where it was. I heard my name and found that my guardian was
+presenting me before I could move to a chair.
+
+"Pray be seated, Sir Leicester."
+
+"Mr. Jarndyce," said Sir Leicester in reply as he bowed and seated
+himself, "I do myself the honour of calling here--"
+
+"You do ME the honour, Sir Leicester."
+
+"Thank you--of calling here on my road from Lincolnshire to express
+my regret that any cause of complaint, however strong, that I may
+have against a gentleman who--who is known to you and has been your
+host, and to whom therefore I will make no farther reference, should
+have prevented you, still more ladies under your escort and charge,
+from seeing whatever little there may be to gratify a polite and
+refined taste at my house, Chesney Wold."
+
+"You are exceedingly obliging, Sir Leicester, and on behalf of those
+ladies (who are present) and for myself, I thank you very much."
+
+"It is possible, Mr. Jarndyce, that the gentleman to whom, for the
+reasons I have mentioned, I refrain from making further allusion--it
+is possible, Mr. Jarndyce, that that gentleman may have done me the
+honour so far to misapprehend my character as to induce you to
+believe that you would not have been received by my local
+establishment in Lincolnshire with that urbanity, that courtesy,
+which its members are instructed to show to all ladies and gentlemen
+who present themselves at that house. I merely beg to observe, sir,
+that the fact is the reverse."
+
+My guardian delicately dismissed this remark without making any
+verbal answer.
+
+"It has given me pain, Mr. Jarndyce," Sir Leicester weightily
+proceeded. "I assure you, sir, it has given--me--pain--to learn from
+the housekeeper at Chesney Wold that a gentleman who was in your
+company in that part of the county, and who would appear to possess a
+cultivated taste for the fine arts, was likewise deterred by some
+such cause from examining the family pictures with that leisure, that
+attention, that care, which he might have desired to bestow upon them
+and which some of them might possibly have repaid." Here he produced
+a card and read, with much gravity and a little trouble, through his
+eye-glass, "Mr. Hirrold--Herald--Harold--Skampling--Skumpling--I beg
+your pardon--Skimpole."
+
+"This is Mr. Harold Skimpole," said my guardian, evidently surprised.
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Sir Leicester, "I am happy to meet Mr. Skimpole and
+to have the opportunity of tendering my personal regrets. I hope,
+sir, that when you again find yourself in my part of the county, you
+will be under no similar sense of restraint."
+
+"You are very obliging, Sir Leicester Dedlock. So encouraged, I shall
+certainly give myself the pleasure and advantage of another visit to
+your beautiful house. The owners of such places as Chesney Wold,"
+said Mr. Skimpole with his usual happy and easy air, "are public
+benefactors. They are good enough to maintain a number of delightful
+objects for the admiration and pleasure of us poor men; and not to
+reap all the admiration and pleasure that they yield is to be
+ungrateful to our benefactors."
+
+Sir Leicester seemed to approve of this sentiment highly. "An artist,
+sir?"
+
+"No," returned Mr. Skimpole. "A perfectly idle man. A mere amateur."
+
+Sir Leicester seemed to approve of this even more. He hoped he might
+have the good fortune to be at Chesney Wold when Mr. Skimpole next
+came down into Lincolnshire. Mr. Skimpole professed himself much
+flattered and honoured.
+
+"Mr. Skimpole mentioned," pursued Sir Leicester, addressing himself
+again to my guardian, "mentioned to the housekeeper, who, as he may
+have observed, is an old and attached retainer of the family--"
+
+("That is, when I walked through the house the other day, on the
+occasion of my going down to visit Miss Summerson and Miss Clare,"
+Mr. Skimpole airily explained to us.)
+
+"--That the friend with whom he had formerly been staying there was
+Mr. Jarndyce." Sir Leicester bowed to the bearer of that name. "And
+hence I became aware of the circumstance for which I have professed
+my regret. That this should have occurred to any gentleman, Mr.
+Jarndyce, but especially a gentleman formerly known to Lady Dedlock,
+and indeed claiming some distant connexion with her, and for whom (as
+I learn from my Lady herself) she entertains a high respect, does, I
+assure you, give--me--pain."
+
+"Pray say no more about it, Sir Leicester," returned my guardian. "I
+am very sensible, as I am sure we all are, of your consideration.
+Indeed the mistake was mine, and I ought to apologize for it."
+
+I had not once looked up. I had not seen the visitor and had not even
+appeared to myself to hear the conversation. It surprises me to find
+that I can recall it, for it seemed to make no impression on me as it
+passed. I heard them speaking, but my mind was so confused and my
+instinctive avoidance of this gentleman made his presence so
+distressing to me that I thought I understood nothing, through the
+rushing in my head and the beating of my heart.
+
+"I mentioned the subject to Lady Dedlock," said Sir Leicester,
+rising, "and my Lady informed me that she had had the pleasure of
+exchanging a few words with Mr. Jarndyce and his wards on the
+occasion of an accidental meeting during their sojourn in the
+vicinity. Permit me, Mr. Jarndyce, to repeat to yourself, and to
+these ladies, the assurance I have already tendered to Mr. Skimpole.
+Circumstances undoubtedly prevent my saying that it would afford me
+any gratification to hear that Mr. Boythorn had favoured my house
+with his presence, but those circumstances are confined to that
+gentleman himself and do not extend beyond him."
+
+"You know my old opinion of him," said Mr. Skimpole, lightly
+appealing to us. "An amiable bull who is determined to make every
+colour scarlet!"
+
+Sir Leicester Dedlock coughed as if he could not possibly hear
+another word in reference to such an individual and took his leave
+with great ceremony and politeness. I got to my own room with all
+possible speed and remained there until I had recovered my
+self-command. It had been very much disturbed, but I was thankful to
+find when I went downstairs again that they only rallied me for
+having been shy and mute before the great Lincolnshire baronet.
+
+By that time I had made up my mind that the period was come when I
+must tell my guardian what I knew. The possibility of my being
+brought into contact with my mother, of my being taken to her house,
+even of Mr. Skimpole's, however distantly associated with me,
+receiving kindnesses and obligations from her husband, was so painful
+that I felt I could no longer guide myself without his assistance.
+
+When we had retired for the night, and Ada and I had had our usual
+talk in our pretty room, I went out at my door again and sought my
+guardian among his books. I knew he always read at that hour, and as
+I drew near I saw the light shining out into the passage from his
+reading-lamp.
+
+"May I come in, guardian?"
+
+"Surely, little woman. What's the matter?"
+
+"Nothing is the matter. I thought I would like to take this quiet
+time of saying a word to you about myself."
+
+He put a chair for me, shut his book, and put it by, and turned his
+kind attentive face towards me. I could not help observing that it
+wore that curious expression I had observed in it once before--on
+that night when he had said that he was in no trouble which I could
+readily understand.
+
+"What concerns you, my dear Esther," said he, "concerns us all. You
+cannot be more ready to speak than I am to hear."
+
+"I know that, guardian. But I have such need of your advice and
+support. Oh! You don't know how much need I have to-night."
+
+He looked unprepared for my being so earnest, and even a little
+alarmed.
+
+"Or how anxious I have been to speak to you," said I, "ever since the
+visitor was here to-day."
+
+"The visitor, my dear! Sir Leicester Dedlock?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+He folded his arms and sat looking at me with an air of the
+profoundest astonishment, awaiting what I should say next. I did not
+know how to prepare him.
+
+"Why, Esther," said he, breaking into a smile, "our visitor and you
+are the two last persons on earth I should have thought of connecting
+together!"
+
+"Oh, yes, guardian, I know it. And I too, but a little while ago."
+
+The smile passed from his face, and he became graver than before. He
+crossed to the door to see that it was shut (but I had seen to that)
+and resumed his seat before me.
+
+"Guardian," said I, "do you remember, when we were overtaken by the
+thunder-storm, Lady Dedlock's speaking to you of her sister?"
+
+"Of course. Of course I do."
+
+"And reminding you that she and her sister had differed, had gone
+their several ways?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"Why did they separate, guardian?"
+
+His face quite altered as he looked at me. "My child, what questions
+are these! I never knew. No one but themselves ever did know, I
+believe. Who could tell what the secrets of those two handsome and
+proud women were! You have seen Lady Dedlock. If you had ever seen
+her sister, you would know her to have been as resolute and haughty
+as she."
+
+"Oh, guardian, I have seen her many and many a time!"
+
+"Seen her?"
+
+He paused a little, biting his lip. "Then, Esther, when you spoke to
+me long ago of Boythorn, and when I told you that he was all but
+married once, and that the lady did not die, but died to him, and
+that that time had had its influence on his later life--did you know
+it all, and know who the lady was?"
+
+"No, guardian," I returned, fearful of the light that dimly broke
+upon me. "Nor do I know yet."
+
+"Lady Dedlock's sister."
+
+"And why," I could scarcely ask him, "why, guardian, pray tell me why
+were THEY parted?"
+
+"It was her act, and she kept its motives in her inflexible heart. He
+afterwards did conjecture (but it was mere conjecture) that some
+injury which her haughty spirit had received in her cause of quarrel
+with her sister had wounded her beyond all reason, but she wrote him
+that from the date of that letter she died to him--as in literal
+truth she did--and that the resolution was exacted from her by her
+knowledge of his proud temper and his strained sense of honour, which
+were both her nature too. In consideration for those master points in
+him, and even in consideration for them in herself, she made the
+sacrifice, she said, and would live in it and die in it. She did
+both, I fear; certainly he never saw her, never heard of her from
+that hour. Nor did any one."
+
+"Oh, guardian, what have I done!" I cried, giving way to my grief;
+"what sorrow have I innocently caused!"
+
+"You caused, Esther?"
+
+"Yes, guardian. Innocently, but most surely. That secluded sister is
+my first remembrance."
+
+"No, no!" he cried, starting.
+
+"Yes, guardian, yes! And HER sister is my mother!"
+
+I would have told him all my mother's letter, but he would not hear
+it then. He spoke so tenderly and wisely to me, and he put so plainly
+before me all I had myself imperfectly thought and hoped in my better
+state of mind, that, penetrated as I had been with fervent gratitude
+towards him through so many years, I believed I had never loved him
+so dearly, never thanked him in my heart so fully, as I did that
+night. And when he had taken me to my room and kissed me at the door,
+and when at last I lay down to sleep, my thought was how could I ever
+be busy enough, how could I ever be good enough, how in my little way
+could I ever hope to be forgetful enough of myself, devoted enough to
+him, and useful enough to others, to show him how I blessed and
+honoured him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+The Letter and the Answer
+
+
+My guardian called me into his room next morning, and then I told him
+what had been left untold on the previous night. There was nothing to
+be done, he said, but to keep the secret and to avoid another such
+encounter as that of yesterday. He understood my feeling and entirely
+shared it. He charged himself even with restraining Mr. Skimpole from
+improving his opportunity. One person whom he need not name to me, it
+was not now possible for him to advise or help. He wished it were,
+but no such thing could be. If her mistrust of the lawyer whom she
+had mentioned were well-founded, which he scarcely doubted, he
+dreaded discovery. He knew something of him, both by sight and by
+reputation, and it was certain that he was a dangerous man. Whatever
+happened, he repeatedly impressed upon me with anxious affection and
+kindness, I was as innocent of as himself and as unable to influence.
+
+"Nor do I understand," said he, "that any doubts tend towards you, my
+dear. Much suspicion may exist without that connexion."
+
+"With the lawyer," I returned. "But two other persons have come into
+my mind since I have been anxious. Then I told him all about Mr.
+Guppy, who I feared might have had his vague surmises when I little
+understood his meaning, but in whose silence after our last interview
+I expressed perfect confidence.
+
+"Well," said my guardian. "Then we may dismiss him for the present.
+Who is the other?"
+
+I called to his recollection the French maid and the eager offer of
+herself she had made to me.
+
+"Ha!" he returned thoughtfully. "That is a more alarming person than
+the clerk. But after all, my dear, it was but seeking for a new
+service. She had seen you and Ada a little while before, and it was
+natural that you should come into her head. She merely proposed
+herself for your maid, you know. She did nothing more."
+
+"Her manner was strange," said I.
+
+"Yes, and her manner was strange when she took her shoes off and
+showed that cool relish for a walk that might have ended in her
+death-bed," said my guardian. "It would be useless self-distress and
+torment to reckon up such chances and possibilities. There are very
+few harmless circumstances that would not seem full of perilous
+meaning, so considered. Be hopeful, little woman. You can be nothing
+better than yourself; be that, through this knowledge, as you were
+before you had it. It is the best you can do for everybody's sake. I,
+sharing the secret with you--"
+
+"And lightening it, guardian, so much," said I.
+
+"--will be attentive to what passes in that family, so far as I can
+observe it from my distance. And if the time should come when I can
+stretch out a hand to render the least service to one whom it is
+better not to name even here, I will not fail to do it for her dear
+daughter's sake."
+
+I thanked him with my whole heart. What could I ever do but thank
+him! I was going out at the door when he asked me to stay a moment.
+Quickly turning round, I saw that same expression on his face again;
+and all at once, I don't know how, it flashed upon me as a new and
+far-off possibility that I understood it.
+
+"My dear Esther," said my guardian, "I have long had something in my
+thoughts that I have wished to say to you."
+
+"Indeed?"
+
+"I have had some difficulty in approaching it, and I still have. I
+should wish it to be so deliberately said, and so deliberately
+considered. Would you object to my writing it?"
+
+"Dear guardian, how could I object to your writing anything for ME to
+read?"
+
+"Then see, my love," said he with his cheery smile, "am I at this
+moment quite as plain and easy--do I seem as open, as honest and
+old-fashioned--as I am at any time?"
+
+I answered in all earnestness, "Quite." With the strictest truth, for
+his momentary hesitation was gone (it had not lasted a minute), and
+his fine, sensible, cordial, sterling manner was restored.
+
+"Do I look as if I suppressed anything, meant anything but what I
+said, had any reservation at all, no matter what?" said he with his
+bright clear eyes on mine.
+
+I answered, most assuredly he did not.
+
+"Can you fully trust me, and thoroughly rely on what I profess,
+Esther?"
+
+"Most thoroughly," said I with my whole heart.
+
+"My dear girl," returned my guardian, "give me your hand."
+
+He took it in his, holding me lightly with his arm, and looking down
+into my face with the same genuine freshness and faithfulness of
+manner--the old protecting manner which had made that house my home
+in a moment--said, "You have wrought changes in me, little woman,
+since the winter day in the stage-coach. First and last you have done
+me a world of good since that time."
+
+"Ah, guardian, what have you done for me since that time!"
+
+"But," said he, "that is not to be remembered now."
+
+"It never can be forgotten."
+
+"Yes, Esther," said he with a gentle seriousness, "it is to be
+forgotten now, to be forgotten for a while. You are only to remember
+now that nothing can change me as you know me. Can you feel quite
+assured of that, my dear?"
+
+"I can, and I do," I said.
+
+"That's much," he answered. "That's everything. But I must not take
+that at a word. I will not write this something in my thoughts until
+you have quite resolved within yourself that nothing can change me as
+you know me. If you doubt that in the least degree, I will never
+write it. If you are sure of that, on good consideration, send
+Charley to me this night week--'for the letter.' But if you are not
+quite certain, never send. Mind, I trust to your truth, in this thing
+as in everything. If you are not quite certain on that one point,
+never send!"
+
+"Guardian," said I, "I am already certain, I can no more be changed
+in that conviction than you can be changed towards me. I shall send
+Charley for the letter."
+
+He shook my hand and said no more. Nor was any more said in reference
+to this conversation, either by him or me, through the whole week.
+When the appointed night came, I said to Charley as soon as I was
+alone, "Go and knock at Mr. Jarndyce's door, Charley, and say you
+have come from me--'for the letter.'" Charley went up the stairs, and
+down the stairs, and along the passages--the zig-zag way about the
+old-fashioned house seemed very long in my listening ears that
+night--and so came back, along the passages, and down the stairs, and
+up the stairs, and brought the letter. "Lay it on the table,
+Charley," said I. So Charley laid it on the table and went to bed,
+and I sat looking at it without taking it up, thinking of many
+things.
+
+I began with my overshadowed childhood, and passed through those
+timid days to the heavy time when my aunt lay dead, with her resolute
+face so cold and set, and when I was more solitary with Mrs. Rachael
+than if I had had no one in the world to speak to or to look at. I
+passed to the altered days when I was so blest as to find friends in
+all around me, and to be beloved. I came to the time when I first saw
+my dear girl and was received into that sisterly affection which was
+the grace and beauty of my life. I recalled the first bright gleam of
+welcome which had shone out of those very windows upon our expectant
+faces on that cold bright night, and which had never paled. I lived
+my happy life there over again, I went through my illness and
+recovery, I thought of myself so altered and of those around me so
+unchanged; and all this happiness shone like a light from one central
+figure, represented before me by the letter on the table.
+
+I opened it and read it. It was so impressive in its love for me, and
+in the unselfish caution it gave me, and the consideration it showed
+for me in every word, that my eyes were too often blinded to read
+much at a time. But I read it through three times before I laid it
+down. I had thought beforehand that I knew its purport, and I did. It
+asked me, would I be the mistress of Bleak House.
+
+It was not a love letter, though it expressed so much love, but was
+written just as he would at any time have spoken to me. I saw his
+face, and heard his voice, and felt the influence of his kind
+protecting manner in every line. It addressed me as if our places
+were reversed, as if all the good deeds had been mine and all the
+feelings they had awakened his. It dwelt on my being young, and he
+past the prime of life; on his having attained a ripe age, while I
+was a child; on his writing to me with a silvered head, and knowing
+all this so well as to set it in full before me for mature
+deliberation. It told me that I would gain nothing by such a marriage
+and lose nothing by rejecting it, for no new relation could enhance
+the tenderness in which he held me, and whatever my decision was, he
+was certain it would be right. But he had considered this step anew
+since our late confidence and had decided on taking it, if it only
+served to show me through one poor instance that the whole world
+would readily unite to falsify the stern prediction of my childhood.
+I was the last to know what happiness I could bestow upon him, but of
+that he said no more, for I was always to remember that I owed him
+nothing and that he was my debtor, and for very much. He had often
+thought of our future, and foreseeing that the time must come, and
+fearing that it might come soon, when Ada (now very nearly of age)
+would leave us, and when our present mode of life must be broken up,
+had become accustomed to reflect on this proposal. Thus he made it.
+If I felt that I could ever give him the best right he could have to
+be my protector, and if I felt that I could happily and justly become
+the dear companion of his remaining life, superior to all lighter
+chances and changes than death, even then he could not have me bind
+myself irrevocably while this letter was yet so new to me, but even
+then I must have ample time for reconsideration. In that case, or in
+the opposite case, let him be unchanged in his old relation, in his
+old manner, in the old name by which I called him. And as to his
+bright Dame Durden and little housekeeper, she would ever be the
+same, he knew.
+
+This was the substance of the letter, written throughout with a
+justice and a dignity as if he were indeed my responsible guardian
+impartially representing the proposal of a friend against whom in his
+integrity he stated the full case.
+
+But he did not hint to me that when I had been better looking he had
+had this same proceeding in his thoughts and had refrained from it.
+That when my old face was gone from me, and I had no attractions, he
+could love me just as well as in my fairer days. That the discovery
+of my birth gave him no shock. That his generosity rose above my
+disfigurement and my inheritance of shame. That the more I stood in
+need of such fidelity, the more firmly I might trust in him to the
+last.
+
+But I knew it, I knew it well now. It came upon me as the close of
+the benignant history I had been pursuing, and I felt that I had but
+one thing to do. To devote my life to his happiness was to thank him
+poorly, and what had I wished for the other night but some new means
+of thanking him?
+
+Still I cried very much, not only in the fullness of my heart after
+reading the letter, not only in the strangeness of the prospect--for
+it was strange though I had expected the contents--but as if
+something for which there was no name or distinct idea were
+indefinitely lost to me. I was very happy, very thankful, very
+hopeful; but I cried very much.
+
+By and by I went to my old glass. My eyes were red and swollen, and I
+said, "Oh, Esther, Esther, can that be you!" I am afraid the face in
+the glass was going to cry again at this reproach, but I held up my
+finger at it, and it stopped.
+
+"That is more like the composed look you comforted me with, my dear,
+when you showed me such a change!" said I, beginning to let down my
+hair. "When you are mistress of Bleak House, you are to be as
+cheerful as a bird. In fact, you are always to be cheerful; so let us
+begin for once and for all."
+
+I went on with my hair now, quite comfortably. I sobbed a little
+still, but that was because I had been crying, not because I was
+crying then.
+
+"And so Esther, my dear, you are happy for life. Happy with your best
+friends, happy in your old home, happy in the power of doing a great
+deal of good, and happy in the undeserved love of the best of men."
+
+I thought, all at once, if my guardian had married some one else, how
+should I have felt, and what should I have done! That would have been
+a change indeed. It presented my life in such a new and blank form
+that I rang my housekeeping keys and gave them a kiss before I laid
+them down in their basket again.
+
+Then I went on to think, as I dressed my hair before the glass, how
+often had I considered within myself that the deep traces of my
+illness and the circumstances of my birth were only new reasons why I
+should be busy, busy, busy--useful, amiable, serviceable, in all
+honest, unpretending ways. This was a good time, to be sure, to sit
+down morbidly and cry! As to its seeming at all strange to me at
+first (if that were any excuse for crying, which it was not) that I
+was one day to be the mistress of Bleak House, why should it seem
+strange? Other people had thought of such things, if I had not.
+"Don't you remember, my plain dear," I asked myself, looking at the
+glass, "what Mrs. Woodcourt said before those scars were there about
+your marrying--"
+
+Perhaps the name brought them to my remembrance. The dried remains of
+the flowers. It would be better not to keep them now. They had only
+been preserved in memory of something wholly past and gone, but it
+would be better not to keep them now.
+
+They were in a book, and it happened to be in the next room--our
+sitting-room, dividing Ada's chamber from mine. I took a candle and
+went softly in to fetch it from its shelf. After I had it in my hand,
+I saw my beautiful darling, through the open door, lying asleep, and
+I stole in to kiss her.
+
+It was weak in me, I know, and I could have no reason for crying; but
+I dropped a tear upon her dear face, and another, and another. Weaker
+than that, I took the withered flowers out and put them for a moment
+to her lips. I thought about her love for Richard, though, indeed,
+the flowers had nothing to do with that. Then I took them into my own
+room and burned them at the candle, and they were dust in an instant.
+
+On entering the breakfast-room next morning, I found my guardian just
+as usual, quite as frank, as open, and free. There being not the
+least constraint in his manner, there was none (or I think there was
+none) in mine. I was with him several times in the course of the
+morning, in and out, when there was no one there, and I thought it
+not unlikely that he might speak to me about the letter, but he did
+not say a word.
+
+So, on the next morning, and the next, and for at least a week, over
+which time Mr. Skimpole prolonged his stay. I expected, every day,
+that my guardian might speak to me about the letter, but he never
+did.
+
+I thought then, growing uneasy, that I ought to write an answer. I
+tried over and over again in my own room at night, but I could not
+write an answer that at all began like a good answer, so I thought
+each night I would wait one more day. And I waited seven more days,
+and he never said a word.
+
+At last, Mr. Skimpole having departed, we three were one afternoon
+going out for a ride; and I, being dressed before Ada and going down,
+came upon my guardian, with his back towards me, standing at the
+drawing-room window looking out.
+
+He turned on my coming in and said, smiling, "Aye, it's you, little
+woman, is it?" and looked out again.
+
+I had made up my mind to speak to him now. In short, I had come down
+on purpose. "Guardian," I said, rather hesitating and trembling,
+"when would you like to have the answer to the letter Charley came
+for?"
+
+"When it's ready, my dear," he replied.
+
+"I think it is ready," said I.
+
+"Is Charley to bring it?" he asked pleasantly.
+
+"No. I have brought it myself, guardian," I returned.
+
+I put my two arms round his neck and kissed him, and he said was this
+the mistress of Bleak House, and I said yes; and it made no
+difference presently, and we all went out together, and I said
+nothing to my precious pet about it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV
+
+In Trust
+
+
+One morning when I had done jingling about with my baskets of keys,
+as my beauty and I were walking round and round the garden I happened
+to turn my eyes towards the house and saw a long thin shadow going in
+which looked like Mr. Vholes. Ada had been telling me only that
+morning of her hopes that Richard might exhaust his ardour in the
+Chancery suit by being so very earnest in it; and therefore, not to
+damp my dear girl's spirits, I said nothing about Mr. Vholes's
+shadow.
+
+Presently came Charley, lightly winding among the bushes and tripping
+along the paths, as rosy and pretty as one of Flora's attendants
+instead of my maid, saying, "Oh, if you please, miss, would you step
+and speak to Mr. Jarndyce!"
+
+It was one of Charley's peculiarities that whenever she was charged
+with a message she always began to deliver it as soon as she beheld,
+at any distance, the person for whom it was intended. Therefore I saw
+Charley asking me in her usual form of words to "step and speak" to
+Mr. Jarndyce long before I heard her. And when I did hear her, she
+had said it so often that she was out of breath.
+
+I told Ada I would make haste back and inquired of Charley as we went
+in whether there was not a gentleman with Mr. Jarndyce. To which
+Charley, whose grammar, I confess to my shame, never did any credit
+to my educational powers, replied, "Yes, miss. Him as come down in
+the country with Mr. Richard."
+
+A more complete contrast than my guardian and Mr. Vholes I suppose
+there could not be. I found them looking at one another across a
+table, the one so open and the other so close, the one so broad and
+upright and the other so narrow and stooping, the one giving out what
+he had to say in such a rich ringing voice and the other keeping it
+in in such a cold-blooded, gasping, fish-like manner that I thought I
+never had seen two people so unmatched.
+
+"You know Mr. Vholes, my dear," said my guardian. Not with the
+greatest urbanity, I must say.
+
+Mr. Vholes rose, gloved and buttoned up as usual, and seated himself
+again, just as he had seated himself beside Richard in the gig. Not
+having Richard to look at, he looked straight before him.
+
+"Mr. Vholes," said my guardian, eyeing his black figure as if he were
+a bird of ill omen, "has brought an ugly report of our most
+unfortunate Rick." Laying a marked emphasis on "most unfortunate" as
+if the words were rather descriptive of his connexion with Mr.
+Vholes.
+
+I sat down between them; Mr. Vholes remained immovable, except that
+he secretly picked at one of the red pimples on his yellow face with
+his black glove.
+
+"And as Rick and you are happily good friends, I should like to
+know," said my guardian, "what you think, my dear. Would you be so
+good as to--as to speak up, Mr. Vholes?"
+
+Doing anything but that, Mr. Vholes observed, "I have been saying
+that I have reason to know, Miss Summerson, as Mr. C.'s professional
+adviser, that Mr. C.'s circumstances are at the present moment in an
+embarrassed state. Not so much in point of amount as owing to the
+peculiar and pressing nature of liabilities Mr. C. has incurred and
+the means he has of liquidating or meeting the same. I have staved
+off many little matters for Mr. C., but there is a limit to staving
+off, and we have reached it. I have made some advances out of pocket
+to accommodate these unpleasantnesses, but I necessarily look to
+being repaid, for I do not pretend to be a man of capital, and I have
+a father to support in the Vale of Taunton, besides striving to
+realize some little independence for three dear girls at home. My
+apprehension is, Mr. C.'s circumstances being such, lest it should
+end in his obtaining leave to part with his commission, which at all
+events is desirable to be made known to his connexions."
+
+Mr. Vholes, who had looked at me while speaking, here emerged into
+the silence he could hardly be said to have broken, so stifled was
+his tone, and looked before him again.
+
+"Imagine the poor fellow without even his present resource," said my
+guardian to me. "Yet what can I do? You know him, Esther. He would
+never accept of help from me now. To offer it or hint at it would be
+to drive him to an extremity, if nothing else did."
+
+Mr. Vholes hereupon addressed me again.
+
+"What Mr. Jarndyce remarks, miss, is no doubt the case, and is the
+difficulty. I do not see that anything is to be done. I do not say
+that anything is to be done. Far from it. I merely come down here
+under the seal of confidence and mention it in order that everything
+may be openly carried on and that it may not be said afterwards that
+everything was not openly carried on. My wish is that everything
+should be openly carried on. I desire to leave a good name behind me.
+If I consulted merely my own interests with Mr. C., I should not be
+here. So insurmountable, as you must well know, would be his
+objections. This is not a professional attendance. This can he
+charged to nobody. I have no interest in it except as a member of
+society and a father--AND a son," said Mr. Vholes, who had nearly
+forgotten that point.
+
+It appeared to us that Mr. Vholes said neither more nor less than the
+truth in intimating that he sought to divide the responsibility, such
+as it was, of knowing Richard's situation. I could only suggest that
+I should go down to Deal, where Richard was then stationed, and see
+him, and try if it were possible to avert the worst. Without
+consulting Mr. Vholes on this point, I took my guardian aside to
+propose it, while Mr. Vholes gauntly stalked to the fire and warmed
+his funeral gloves.
+
+The fatigue of the journey formed an immediate objection on my
+guardian's part, but as I saw he had no other, and as I was only too
+happy to go, I got his consent. We had then merely to dispose of Mr.
+Vholes.
+
+"Well, sir," said Mr. Jarndyce, "Miss Summerson will communicate with
+Mr. Carstone, and you can only hope that his position may be yet
+retrievable. You will allow me to order you lunch after your journey,
+sir."
+
+"I thank you, Mr. Jarndyce," said Mr. Vholes, putting out his long
+black sleeve to check the ringing of the bell, "not any. I thank you,
+no, not a morsel. My digestion is much impaired, and I am but a poor
+knife and fork at any time. If I was to partake of solid food at this
+period of the day, I don't know what the consequences might be.
+Everything having been openly carried on, sir, I will now with your
+permission take my leave."
+
+"And I would that you could take your leave, and we could all take
+our leave, Mr. Vholes," returned my guardian bitterly, "of a cause
+you know of."
+
+Mr. Vholes, whose black dye was so deep from head to foot that it had
+quite steamed before the fire, diffusing a very unpleasant perfume,
+made a short one-sided inclination of his head from the neck and
+slowly shook it.
+
+"We whose ambition it is to be looked upon in the light of
+respectable practitioners, sir, can but put our shoulders to the
+wheel. We do it, sir. At least, I do it myself; and I wish to think
+well of my professional brethren, one and all. You are sensible of an
+obligation not to refer to me, miss, in communicating with Mr. C.?"
+
+I said I would be careful not to do it.
+
+"Just so, miss. Good morning. Mr. Jarndyce, good morning, sir." Mr.
+Vholes put his dead glove, which scarcely seemed to have any hand in
+it, on my fingers, and then on my guardian's fingers, and took his
+long thin shadow away. I thought of it on the outside of the coach,
+passing over all the sunny landscape between us and London, chilling
+the seed in the ground as it glided along.
+
+Of course it became necessary to tell Ada where I was going and why I
+was going, and of course she was anxious and distressed. But she was
+too true to Richard to say anything but words of pity and words of
+excuse, and in a more loving spirit still--my dear devoted girl!--she
+wrote him a long letter, of which I took charge.
+
+Charley was to be my travelling companion, though I am sure I wanted
+none and would willingly have left her at home. We all went to London
+that afternoon, and finding two places in the mail, secured them. At
+our usual bed-time, Charley and I were rolling away seaward with the
+Kentish letters.
+
+It was a night's journey in those coach times, but we had the mail to
+ourselves and did not find the night very tedious. It passed with me
+as I suppose it would with most people under such circumstances. At
+one while my journey looked hopeful, and at another hopeless. Now I
+thought I should do some good, and now I wondered how I could ever
+have supposed so. Now it seemed one of the most reasonable things in
+the world that I should have come, and now one of the most
+unreasonable. In what state I should find Richard, what I should say
+to him, and what he would say to me occupied my mind by turns with
+these two states of feeling; and the wheels seemed to play one tune
+(to which the burden of my guardian's letter set itself) over and
+over again all night.
+
+At last we came into the narrow streets of Deal, and very gloomy they
+were upon a raw misty morning. The long flat beach, with its little
+irregular houses, wooden and brick, and its litter of capstans, and
+great boats, and sheds, and bare upright poles with tackle and
+blocks, and loose gravelly waste places overgrown with grass and
+weeds, wore as dull an appearance as any place I ever saw. The sea
+was heaving under a thick white fog; and nothing else was moving but
+a few early ropemakers, who, with the yarn twisted round their
+bodies, looked as if, tired of their present state of existence, they
+were spinning themselves into cordage.
+
+But when we got into a warm room in an excellent hotel and sat down,
+comfortably washed and dressed, to an early breakfast (for it was too
+late to think of going to bed), Deal began to look more cheerful. Our
+little room was like a ship's cabin, and that delighted Charley very
+much. Then the fog began to rise like a curtain, and numbers of ships
+that we had had no idea were near appeared. I don't know how many
+sail the waiter told us were then lying in the downs. Some of these
+vessels were of grand size--one was a large Indiaman just come home;
+and when the sun shone through the clouds, making silvery pools in
+the dark sea, the way in which these ships brightened, and shadowed,
+and changed, amid a bustle of boats pulling off from the shore to
+them and from them to the shore, and a general life and motion in
+themselves and everything around them, was most beautiful.
+
+The large Indiaman was our great attraction because she had come into
+the downs in the night. She was surrounded by boats, and we said how
+glad the people on board of her must be to come ashore. Charley was
+curious, too, about the voyage, and about the heat in India, and the
+serpents and the tigers; and as she picked up such information much
+faster than grammar, I told her what I knew on those points. I told
+her, too, how people in such voyages were sometimes wrecked and cast
+on rocks, where they were saved by the intrepidity and humanity of
+one man. And Charley asking how that could be, I told her how we knew
+at home of such a case.
+
+I had thought of sending Richard a note saying I was there, but it
+seemed so much better to go to him without preparation. As he lived
+in barracks I was a little doubtful whether this was feasible, but we
+went out to reconnoitre. Peeping in at the gate of the barrack-yard,
+we found everything very quiet at that time in the morning, and I
+asked a sergeant standing on the guardhouse-steps where he lived. He
+sent a man before to show me, who went up some bare stairs, and
+knocked with his knuckles at a door, and left us.
+
+"Now then!" cried Richard from within. So I left Charley in the
+little passage, and going on to the half-open door, said, "Can I come
+in, Richard? It's only Dame Durden."
+
+He was writing at a table, with a great confusion of clothes, tin
+cases, books, boots, brushes, and portmanteaus strewn all about the
+floor. He was only half dressed--in plain clothes, I observed, not in
+uniform--and his hair was unbrushed, and he looked as wild as his
+room. All this I saw after he had heartily welcomed me and I was
+seated near him, for he started upon hearing my voice and caught me
+in his arms in a moment. Dear Richard! He was ever the same to me.
+Down to--ah, poor poor fellow!--to the end, he never received me but
+with something of his old merry boyish manner.
+
+"Good heaven, my dear little woman," said he, "how do you come here?
+Who could have thought of seeing you! Nothing the matter? Ada is
+well?"
+
+"Quite well. Lovelier than ever, Richard!"
+
+"Ah!" he said, leaning back in his chair. "My poor cousin! I was
+writing to you, Esther."
+
+So worn and haggard as he looked, even in the fullness of his
+handsome youth, leaning back in his chair and crushing the closely
+written sheet of paper in his hand!
+
+"Have you been at the trouble of writing all that, and am I not to
+read it after all?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, my dear," he returned with a hopeless gesture. "You may read it
+in the whole room. It is all over here."
+
+I mildly entreated him not to be despondent. I told him that I had
+heard by chance of his being in difficulty and had come to consult
+with him what could best be done.
+
+"Like you, Esther, but useless, and so NOT like you!" said he with a
+melancholy smile. "I am away on leave this day--should have been gone
+in another hour--and that is to smooth it over, for my selling out.
+Well! Let bygones be bygones. So this calling follows the rest. I
+only want to have been in the church to have made the round of all
+the professions."
+
+"Richard," I urged, "it is not so hopeless as that?"
+
+"Esther," he returned, "it is indeed. I am just so near disgrace as
+that those who are put in authority over me (as the catechism goes)
+would far rather be without me than with me. And they are right.
+Apart from debts and duns and all such drawbacks, I am not fit even
+for this employment. I have no care, no mind, no heart, no soul, but
+for one thing. Why, if this bubble hadn't broken now," he said,
+tearing the letter he had written into fragments and moodily casting
+them away, by driblets, "how could I have gone abroad? I must have
+been ordered abroad, but how could I have gone? How could I, with my
+experience of that thing, trust even Vholes unless I was at his
+back!"
+
+I suppose he knew by my face what I was about to say, but he caught
+the hand I had laid upon his arm and touched my own lips with it to
+prevent me from going on.
+
+"No, Dame Durden! Two subjects I forbid--must forbid. The first is
+John Jarndyce. The second, you know what. Call it madness, and I tell
+you I can't help it now, and can't be sane. But it is no such thing;
+it is the one object I have to pursue. It is a pity I ever was
+prevailed upon to turn out of my road for any other. It would be
+wisdom to abandon it now, after all the time, anxiety, and pains I
+have bestowed upon it! Oh, yes, true wisdom. It would be very
+agreeable, too, to some people; but I never will."
+
+He was in that mood in which I thought it best not to increase his
+determination (if anything could increase it) by opposing him. I took
+out Ada's letter and put it in his hand.
+
+"Am I to read it now?" he asked.
+
+As I told him yes, he laid it on the table, and resting his head upon
+his hand, began. He had not read far when he rested his head upon his
+two hands--to hide his face from me. In a little while he rose as if
+the light were bad and went to the window. He finished reading it
+there, with his back towards me, and after he had finished and had
+folded it up, stood there for some minutes with the letter in his
+hand. When he came back to his chair, I saw tears in his eyes.
+
+"Of course, Esther, you know what she says here?" He spoke in a
+softened voice and kissed the letter as he asked me.
+
+"Yes, Richard."
+
+"Offers me," he went on, tapping his foot upon the floor, "the little
+inheritance she is certain of so soon--just as little and as much as
+I have wasted--and begs and prays me to take it, set myself right
+with it, and remain in the service."
+
+"I know your welfare to be the dearest wish of her heart," said I.
+"And, oh, my dear Richard, Ada's is a noble heart."
+
+"I am sure it is. I--I wish I was dead!"
+
+He went back to the window, and laying his arm across it, leaned his
+head down on his arm. It greatly affected me to see him so, but I
+hoped he might become more yielding, and I remained silent. My
+experience was very limited; I was not at all prepared for his
+rousing himself out of this emotion to a new sense of injury.
+
+"And this is the heart that the same John Jarndyce, who is not
+otherwise to be mentioned between us, stepped in to estrange from
+me," said he indignantly. "And the dear girl makes me this generous
+offer from under the same John Jarndyce's roof, and with the same
+John Jarndyce's gracious consent and connivance, I dare say, as a new
+means of buying me off."
+
+"Richard!" I cried out, rising hastily. "I will not hear you say such
+shameful words!" I was very angry with him indeed, for the first time
+in my life, but it only lasted a moment. When I saw his worn young
+face looking at me as if he were sorry, I put my hand on his shoulder
+and said, "If you please, my dear Richard, do not speak in such a
+tone to me. Consider!"
+
+He blamed himself exceedingly and told me in the most generous manner
+that he had been very wrong and that he begged my pardon a thousand
+times. At that I laughed, but trembled a little too, for I was rather
+fluttered after being so fiery.
+
+"To accept this offer, my dear Esther," said he, sitting down beside
+me and resuming our conversation, "--once more, pray, pray forgive
+me; I am deeply grieved--to accept my dearest cousin's offer is, I
+need not say, impossible. Besides, I have letters and papers that I
+could show you which would convince you it is all over here. I have
+done with the red coat, believe me. But it is some satisfaction, in
+the midst of my troubles and perplexities, to know that I am pressing
+Ada's interests in pressing my own. Vholes has his shoulder to the
+wheel, and he cannot help urging it on as much for her as for me,
+thank God!"
+
+His sanguine hopes were rising within him and lighting up his
+features, but they made his face more sad to me than it had been
+before.
+
+"No, no!" cried Richard exultingly. "If every farthing of Ada's
+little fortune were mine, no part of it should be spent in retaining
+me in what I am not fit for, can take no interest in, and am weary
+of. It should be devoted to what promises a better return, and should
+be used where she has a larger stake. Don't be uneasy for me! I shall
+now have only one thing on my mind, and Vholes and I will work it. I
+shall not be without means. Free of my commission, I shall be able to
+compound with some small usurers who will hear of nothing but their
+bond now--Vholes says so. I should have a balance in my favour
+anyway, but that would swell it. Come, come! You shall carry a letter
+to Ada from me, Esther, and you must both of you be more hopeful of
+me and not believe that I am quite cast away just yet, my dear."
+
+I will not repeat what I said to Richard. I know it was tiresome, and
+nobody is to suppose for a moment that it was at all wise. It only
+came from my heart. He heard it patiently and feelingly, but I saw
+that on the two subjects he had reserved it was at present hopeless
+to make any representation to him. I saw too, and had experienced in
+this very interview, the sense of my guardian's remark that it was
+even more mischievous to use persuasion with him than to leave him as
+he was.
+
+Therefore I was driven at last to asking Richard if he would mind
+convincing me that it really was all over there, as he had said, and
+that it was not his mere impression. He showed me without hesitation
+a correspondence making it quite plain that his retirement was
+arranged. I found, from what he told me, that Mr. Vholes had copies
+of these papers and had been in consultation with him throughout.
+Beyond ascertaining this, and having been the bearer of Ada's letter,
+and being (as I was going to be) Richard's companion back to London,
+I had done no good by coming down. Admitting this to myself with a
+reluctant heart, I said I would return to the hotel and wait until he
+joined me there, so he threw a cloak over his shoulders and saw me to
+the gate, and Charley and I went back along the beach.
+
+There was a concourse of people in one spot, surrounding some naval
+officers who were landing from a boat, and pressing about them with
+unusual interest. I said to Charley this would be one of the great
+Indiaman's boats now, and we stopped to look.
+
+The gentlemen came slowly up from the waterside, speaking
+good-humouredly to each other and to the people around and glancing
+about them as if they were glad to be in England again. "Charley,
+Charley," said I, "come away!" And I hurried on so swiftly that my
+little maid was surprised.
+
+It was not until we were shut up in our cabin-room and I had had time
+to take breath that I began to think why I had made such haste. In
+one of the sunburnt faces I had recognized Mr. Allan Woodcourt, and I
+had been afraid of his recognizing me. I had been unwilling that he
+should see my altered looks. I had been taken by surprise, and my
+courage had quite failed me.
+
+But I knew this would not do, and I now said to myself, "My dear,
+there is no reason--there is and there can be no reason at all--why
+it should be worse for you now than it ever has been. What you were
+last month, you are to-day; you are no worse, you are no better. This
+is not your resolution; call it up, Esther, call it up!" I was in a
+great tremble--with running--and at first was quite unable to calm
+myself; but I got better, and I was very glad to know it.
+
+The party came to the hotel. I heard them speaking on the staircase.
+I was sure it was the same gentlemen because I knew their voices
+again--I mean I knew Mr. Woodcourt's. It would still have been a
+great relief to me to have gone away without making myself known, but
+I was determined not to do so. "No, my dear, no. No, no, no!"
+
+I untied my bonnet and put my veil half up--I think I mean half down,
+but it matters very little--and wrote on one of my cards that I
+happened to be there with Mr. Richard Carstone, and I sent it in to
+Mr. Woodcourt. He came immediately. I told him I was rejoiced to be
+by chance among the first to welcome him home to England. And I saw
+that he was very sorry for me.
+
+"You have been in shipwreck and peril since you left us, Mr.
+Woodcourt," said I, "but we can hardly call that a misfortune which
+enabled you to be so useful and so brave. We read of it with the
+truest interest. It first came to my knowledge through your old
+patient, poor Miss Flite, when I was recovering from my severe
+illness."
+
+"Ah! Little Miss Flite!" he said. "She lives the same life yet?"
+
+"Just the same."
+
+I was so comfortable with myself now as not to mind the veil and to
+be able to put it aside.
+
+"Her gratitude to you, Mr. Woodcourt, is delightful. She is a most
+affectionate creature, as I have reason to say."
+
+"You--you have found her so?" he returned. "I--I am glad of that." He
+was so very sorry for me that he could scarcely speak.
+
+"I assure you," said I, "that I was deeply touched by her sympathy
+and pleasure at the time I have referred to."
+
+"I was grieved to hear that you had been very ill."
+
+"I was very ill."
+
+"But you have quite recovered?"
+
+"I have quite recovered my health and my cheerfulness," said I. "You
+know how good my guardian is and what a happy life we lead, and I
+have everything to be thankful for and nothing in the world to
+desire."
+
+I felt as if he had greater commiseration for me than I had ever had
+for myself. It inspired me with new fortitude and new calmness to
+find that it was I who was under the necessity of reassuring him. I
+spoke to him of his voyage out and home, and of his future plans, and
+of his probable return to India. He said that was very doubtful. He
+had not found himself more favoured by fortune there than here. He
+had gone out a poor ship's surgeon and had come home nothing better.
+While we were talking, and when I was glad to believe that I had
+alleviated (if I may use such a term) the shock he had had in seeing
+me, Richard came in. He had heard downstairs who was with me, and
+they met with cordial pleasure.
+
+I saw that after their first greetings were over, and when they spoke
+of Richard's career, Mr. Woodcourt had a perception that all was not
+going well with him. He frequently glanced at his face as if there
+were something in it that gave him pain, and more than once he looked
+towards me as though he sought to ascertain whether I knew what the
+truth was. Yet Richard was in one of his sanguine states and in good
+spirits and was thoroughly pleased to see Mr. Woodcourt again, whom
+he had always liked.
+
+Richard proposed that we all should go to London together; but Mr.
+Woodcourt, having to remain by his ship a little longer, could not
+join us. He dined with us, however, at an early hour, and became so
+much more like what he used to be that I was still more at peace to
+think I had been able to soften his regrets. Yet his mind was not
+relieved of Richard. When the coach was almost ready and Richard ran
+down to look after his luggage, he spoke to me about him.
+
+I was not sure that I had a right to lay his whole story open, but I
+referred in a few words to his estrangement from Mr Jarndyce and to
+his being entangled in the ill-fated Chancery suit. Mr. Woodcourt
+listened with interest and expressed his regret.
+
+"I saw you observe him rather closely," said I, "Do you think him so
+changed?"
+
+"He is changed," he returned, shaking his head.
+
+I felt the blood rush into my face for the first time, but it was
+only an instantaneous emotion. I turned my head aside, and it was
+gone.
+
+"It is not," said Mr. Woodcourt, "his being so much younger or older,
+or thinner or fatter, or paler or ruddier, as there being upon his
+face such a singular expression. I never saw so remarkable a look in
+a young person. One cannot say that it is all anxiety or all
+weariness; yet it is both, and like ungrown despair."
+
+"You do not think he is ill?" said I.
+
+No. He looked robust in body.
+
+"That he cannot be at peace in mind, we have too much reason to
+know," I proceeded. "Mr. Woodcourt, you are going to London?"
+
+"To-morrow or the next day."
+
+"There is nothing Richard wants so much as a friend. He always liked
+you. Pray see him when you get there. Pray help him sometimes with
+your companionship if you can. You do not know of what service it
+might be. You cannot think how Ada, and Mr. Jarndyce, and even I--how
+we should all thank you, Mr. Woodcourt!"
+
+"Miss Summerson," he said, more moved than he had been from the
+first, "before heaven, I will be a true friend to him! I will accept
+him as a trust, and it shall be a sacred one!"
+
+"God bless you!" said I, with my eyes filling fast; but I thought
+they might, when it was not for myself. "Ada loves him--we all love
+him, but Ada loves him as we cannot. I will tell her what you say.
+Thank you, and God bless you, in her name!"
+
+Richard came back as we finished exchanging these hurried words and
+gave me his arm to take me to the coach.
+
+"Woodcourt," he said, unconscious with what application, "pray let us
+meet in London!"
+
+"Meet?" returned the other. "I have scarcely a friend there now but
+you. Where shall I find you?"
+
+"Why, I must get a lodging of some sort," said Richard, pondering.
+"Say at Vholes's, Symond's Inn."
+
+"Good! Without loss of time."
+
+They shook hands heartily. When I was seated in the coach and Richard
+was yet standing in the street, Mr. Woodcourt laid his friendly hand
+on Richard's shoulder and looked at me. I understood him and waved
+mine in thanks.
+
+And in his last look as we drove away, I saw that he was very sorry
+for me. I was glad to see it. I felt for my old self as the dead may
+feel if they ever revisit these scenes. I was glad to be tenderly
+remembered, to be gently pitied, not to be quite forgotten.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI
+
+Stop Him!
+
+
+Darkness rests upon Tom-All-Alone's. Dilating and dilating since the
+sun went down last night, it has gradually swelled until it fills
+every void in the place. For a time there were some dungeon lights
+burning, as the lamp of life hums in Tom-all-Alone's, heavily,
+heavily, in the nauseous air, and winking--as that lamp, too, winks
+in Tom-all-Alone's--at many horrible things. But they are blotted
+out. The moon has eyed Tom with a dull cold stare, as admitting some
+puny emulation of herself in his desert region unfit for life and
+blasted by volcanic fires; but she has passed on and is gone. The
+blackest nightmare in the infernal stables grazes on Tom-all-Alone's,
+and Tom is fast asleep.
+
+Much mighty speech-making there has been, both in and out of
+Parliament, concerning Tom, and much wrathful disputation how Tom
+shall be got right. Whether he shall be put into the main road by
+constables, or by beadles, or by bell-ringing, or by force of
+figures, or by correct principles of taste, or by high church, or by
+low church, or by no church; whether he shall be set to splitting
+trusses of polemical straws with the crooked knife of his mind or
+whether he shall be put to stone-breaking instead. In the midst of
+which dust and noise there is but one thing perfectly clear, to wit,
+that Tom only may and can, or shall and will, be reclaimed according
+to somebody's theory but nobody's practice. And in the hopeful
+meantime, Tom goes to perdition head foremost in his old determined
+spirit.
+
+But he has his revenge. Even the winds are his messengers, and they
+serve him in these hours of darkness. There is not a drop of Tom's
+corrupted blood but propagates infection and contagion somewhere. It
+shall pollute, this very night, the choice stream (in which chemists
+on analysis would find the genuine nobility) of a Norman house, and
+his Grace shall not be able to say nay to the infamous alliance.
+There is not an atom of Tom's slime, not a cubic inch of any
+pestilential gas in which he lives, not one obscenity or degradation
+about him, not an ignorance, not a wickedness, not a brutality of his
+committing, but shall work its retribution through every order of
+society up to the proudest of the proud and to the highest of the
+high. Verily, what with tainting, plundering, and spoiling, Tom has
+his revenge.
+
+It is a moot point whether Tom-all-Alone's be uglier by day or by
+night, but on the argument that the more that is seen of it the more
+shocking it must be, and that no part of it left to the imagination
+is at all likely to be made so bad as the reality, day carries it.
+The day begins to break now; and in truth it might be better for the
+national glory even that the sun should sometimes set upon the
+British dominions than that it should ever rise upon so vile a wonder
+as Tom.
+
+A brown sunburnt gentleman, who appears in some inaptitude for sleep
+to be wandering abroad rather than counting the hours on a restless
+pillow, strolls hitherward at this quiet time. Attracted by
+curiosity, he often pauses and looks about him, up and down the
+miserable by-ways. Nor is he merely curious, for in his bright dark
+eye there is compassionate interest; and as he looks here and there,
+he seems to understand such wretchedness and to have studied it
+before.
+
+On the banks of the stagnant channel of mud which is the main street
+of Tom-all-Alone's, nothing is to be seen but the crazy houses, shut
+up and silent. No waking creature save himself appears except in one
+direction, where he sees the solitary figure of a woman sitting on a
+door-step. He walks that way. Approaching, he observes that she has
+journeyed a long distance and is footsore and travel-stained. She
+sits on the door-step in the manner of one who is waiting, with her
+elbow on her knee and her head upon her hand. Beside her is a canvas
+bag, or bundle, she has carried. She is dozing probably, for she
+gives no heed to his steps as he comes toward her.
+
+The broken footway is so narrow that when Allan Woodcourt comes to
+where the woman sits, he has to turn into the road to pass her.
+Looking down at her face, his eye meets hers, and he stops.
+
+"What is the matter?"
+
+"Nothing, sir."
+
+"Can't you make them hear? Do you want to be let in?"
+
+"I'm waiting till they get up at another house--a lodging-house--not
+here," the woman patiently returns. "I'm waiting here because there
+will be sun here presently to warm me."
+
+"I am afraid you are tired. I am sorry to see you sitting in the
+street."
+
+"Thank you, sir. It don't matter."
+
+A habit in him of speaking to the poor and of avoiding patronage or
+condescension or childishness (which is the favourite device, many
+people deeming it quite a subtlety to talk to them like little
+spelling books) has put him on good terms with the woman easily.
+
+"Let me look at your forehead," he says, bending down. "I am a
+doctor. Don't be afraid. I wouldn't hurt you for the world."
+
+He knows that by touching her with his skilful and accustomed hand he
+can soothe her yet more readily. She makes a slight objection,
+saying, "It's nothing"; but he has scarcely laid his fingers on the
+wounded place when she lifts it up to the light.
+
+"Aye! A bad bruise, and the skin sadly broken. This must be very
+sore."
+
+"It do ache a little, sir," returns the woman with a started tear
+upon her cheek.
+
+"Let me try to make it more comfortable. My handkerchief won't hurt
+you."
+
+"Oh, dear no, sir, I'm sure of that!"
+
+He cleanses the injured place and dries it, and having carefully
+examined it and gently pressed it with the palm of his hand, takes a
+small case from his pocket, dresses it, and binds it up. While he is
+thus employed, he says, after laughing at his establishing a surgery
+in the street, "And so your husband is a brickmaker?"
+
+"How do you know that, sir?" asks the woman, astonished.
+
+"Why, I suppose so from the colour of the clay upon your bag and on
+your dress. And I know brickmakers go about working at piecework in
+different places. And I am sorry to say I have known them cruel to
+their wives too."
+
+The woman hastily lifts up her eyes as if she would deny that her
+injury is referable to such a cause. But feeling the hand upon her
+forehead, and seeing his busy and composed face, she quietly drops
+them again.
+
+"Where is he now?" asks the surgeon.
+
+"He got into trouble last night, sir; but he'll look for me at the
+lodging-house."
+
+"He will get into worse trouble if he often misuses his large and
+heavy hand as he has misused it here. But you forgive him, brutal as
+he is, and I say no more of him, except that I wish he deserved it.
+You have no young child?"
+
+The woman shakes her head. "One as I calls mine, sir, but it's
+Liz's."
+
+"Your own is dead. I see! Poor little thing!"
+
+By this time he has finished and is putting up his case. "I suppose
+you have some settled home. Is it far from here?" he asks,
+good-humouredly making light of what he has done as she gets up and
+curtsys.
+
+"It's a good two or three and twenty mile from here, sir. At Saint
+Albans. You know Saint Albans, sir? I thought you gave a start like,
+as if you did."
+
+"Yes, I know something of it. And now I will ask you a question in
+return. Have you money for your lodging?"
+
+"Yes, sir," she says, "really and truly." And she shows it. He tells
+her, in acknowledgment of her many subdued thanks, that she is very
+welcome, gives her good day, and walks away. Tom-all-Alone's is still
+asleep, and nothing is astir.
+
+Yes, something is! As he retraces his way to the point from which he
+descried the woman at a distance sitting on the step, he sees a
+ragged figure coming very cautiously along, crouching close to the
+soiled walls--which the wretchedest figure might as well avoid--and
+furtively thrusting a hand before it. It is the figure of a youth
+whose face is hollow and whose eyes have an emaciated glare. He is so
+intent on getting along unseen that even the apparition of a stranger
+in whole garments does not tempt him to look back. He shades his face
+with his ragged elbow as he passes on the other side of the way, and
+goes shrinking and creeping on with his anxious hand before him and
+his shapeless clothes hanging in shreds. Clothes made for what
+purpose, or of what material, it would be impossible to say. They
+look, in colour and in substance, like a bundle of rank leaves of
+swampy growth that rotted long ago.
+
+Allan Woodcourt pauses to look after him and note all this, with a
+shadowy belief that he has seen the boy before. He cannot recall how
+or where, but there is some association in his mind with such a form.
+He imagines that he must have seen it in some hospital or refuge,
+still, cannot make out why it comes with any special force on his
+remembrance.
+
+He is gradually emerging from Tom-all-Alone's in the morning light,
+thinking about it, when he hears running feet behind him, and looking
+round, sees the boy scouring towards him at great speed, followed by
+the woman.
+
+"Stop him, stop him!" cries the woman, almost breathless. "Stop him,
+sir!"
+
+He darts across the road into the boy's path, but the boy is quicker
+than he, makes a curve, ducks, dives under his hands, comes up
+half-a-dozen yards beyond him, and scours away again. Still the woman
+follows, crying, "Stop him, sir, pray stop him!" Allan, not knowing
+but that he has just robbed her of her money, follows in chase and
+runs so hard that he runs the boy down a dozen times, but each time
+he repeats the curve, the duck, the dive, and scours away again. To
+strike at him on any of these occasions would be to fell and disable
+him, but the pursuer cannot resolve to do that, and so the grimly
+ridiculous pursuit continues. At last the fugitive, hard-pressed,
+takes to a narrow passage and a court which has no thoroughfare.
+Here, against a hoarding of decaying timber, he is brought to bay and
+tumbles down, lying gasping at his pursuer, who stands and gasps at
+him until the woman comes up.
+
+"Oh, you, Jo!" cries the woman. "What? I have found you at last!"
+
+"Jo," repeats Allan, looking at him with attention, "Jo! Stay. To be
+sure! I recollect this lad some time ago being brought before the
+coroner."
+
+"Yes, I see you once afore at the inkwhich," whimpers Jo. "What of
+that? Can't you never let such an unfortnet as me alone? An't I
+unfortnet enough for you yet? How unfortnet do you want me fur to be?
+I've been a-chivied and a-chivied, fust by one on you and nixt by
+another on you, till I'm worritted to skins and bones. The inkwhich
+warn't MY fault. I done nothink. He wos wery good to me, he wos; he
+wos the only one I knowed to speak to, as ever come across my
+crossing. It ain't wery likely I should want him to be inkwhiched. I
+only wish I wos, myself. I don't know why I don't go and make a hole
+in the water, I'm sure I don't."
+
+He says it with such a pitiable air, and his grimy tears appear so
+real, and he lies in the corner up against the hoarding so like a
+growth of fungus or any unwholesome excrescence produced there in
+neglect and impurity, that Allan Woodcourt is softened towards him.
+He says to the woman, "Miserable creature, what has he done?"
+
+To which she only replies, shaking her head at the prostrate figure
+more amazedly than angrily, "Oh, you Jo, you Jo. I have found you at
+last!"
+
+"What has he done?" says Allan. "Has he robbed you?"
+
+"No, sir, no. Robbed me? He did nothing but what was kind-hearted by
+me, and that's the wonder of it."
+
+Allan looks from Jo to the woman, and from the woman to Jo, waiting
+for one of them to unravel the riddle.
+
+"But he was along with me, sir," says the woman. "Oh, you Jo! He was
+along with me, sir, down at Saint Albans, ill, and a young lady, Lord
+bless her for a good friend to me, took pity on him when I durstn't,
+and took him home--"
+
+Allan shrinks back from him with a sudden horror.
+
+"Yes, sir, yes. Took him home, and made him comfortable, and like a
+thankless monster he ran away in the night and never has been seen or
+heard of since till I set eyes on him just now. And that young lady
+that was such a pretty dear caught his illness, lost her beautiful
+looks, and wouldn't hardly be known for the same young lady now if it
+wasn't for her angel temper, and her pretty shape, and her sweet
+voice. Do you know it? You ungrateful wretch, do you know that this
+is all along of you and of her goodness to you?" demands the woman,
+beginning to rage at him as she recalls it and breaking into
+passionate tears.
+
+The boy, in rough sort stunned by what he hears, falls to smearing
+his dirty forehead with his dirty palm, and to staring at the ground,
+and to shaking from head to foot until the crazy hoarding against
+which he leans rattles.
+
+Allan restrains the woman, merely by a quiet gesture, but
+effectually.
+
+"Richard told me--" He falters. "I mean, I have heard of this--don't
+mind me for a moment, I will speak presently."
+
+He turns away and stands for a while looking out at the covered
+passage. When he comes back, he has recovered his composure, except
+that he contends against an avoidance of the boy, which is so very
+remarkable that it absorbs the woman's attention.
+
+"You hear what she says. But get up, get up!"
+
+Jo, shaking and chattering, slowly rises and stands, after the manner
+of his tribe in a difficulty, sideways against the hoarding, resting
+one of his high shoulders against it and covertly rubbing his right
+hand over his left and his left foot over his right.
+
+"You hear what she says, and I know it's true. Have you been here
+ever since?"
+
+"Wishermaydie if I seen Tom-all-Alone's till this blessed morning,"
+replies Jo hoarsely.
+
+"Why have you come here now?"
+
+Jo looks all round the confined court, looks at his questioner no
+higher than the knees, and finally answers, "I don't know how to do
+nothink, and I can't get nothink to do. I'm wery poor and ill, and I
+thought I'd come back here when there warn't nobody about, and lay
+down and hide somewheres as I knows on till arter dark, and then go
+and beg a trifle of Mr. Snagsby. He wos allus willin fur to give me
+somethink he wos, though Mrs. Snagsby she was allus a-chivying on
+me--like everybody everywheres."
+
+"Where have you come from?"
+
+Jo looks all round the court again, looks at his questioner's knees
+again, and concludes by laying his profile against the hoarding in a
+sort of resignation.
+
+"Did you hear me ask you where you have come from?"
+
+"Tramp then," says Jo.
+
+"Now tell me," proceeds Allan, making a strong effort to overcome his
+repugnance, going very near to him, and leaning over him with an
+expression of confidence, "tell me how it came about that you left
+that house when the good young lady had been so unfortunate as to
+pity you and take you home."
+
+Jo suddenly comes out of his resignation and excitedly declares,
+addressing the woman, that he never known about the young lady, that
+he never heern about it, that he never went fur to hurt her, that he
+would sooner have hurt his own self, that he'd sooner have had his
+unfortnet ed chopped off than ever gone a-nigh her, and that she wos
+wery good to him, she wos. Conducting himself throughout as if in his
+poor fashion he really meant it, and winding up with some very
+miserable sobs.
+
+Allan Woodcourt sees that this is not a sham. He constrains himself
+to touch him. "Come, Jo. Tell me."
+
+"No. I dustn't," says Jo, relapsing into the profile state. "I
+dustn't, or I would."
+
+"But I must know," returns the other, "all the same. Come, Jo."
+
+After two or three such adjurations, Jo lifts up his head again,
+looks round the court again, and says in a low voice, "Well, I'll
+tell you something. I was took away. There!"
+
+"Took away? In the night?"
+
+"Ah!" Very apprehensive of being overheard, Jo looks about him and
+even glances up some ten feet at the top of the hoarding and through
+the cracks in it lest the object of his distrust should be looking
+over or hidden on the other side.
+
+"Who took you away?"
+
+"I dustn't name him," says Jo. "I dustn't do it, sir.
+
+"But I want, in the young lady's name, to know. You may trust me. No
+one else shall hear."
+
+"Ah, but I don't know," replies Jo, shaking his head fearfully, "as
+he DON'T hear."
+
+"Why, he is not in this place."
+
+"Oh, ain't he though?" says Jo. "He's in all manner of places, all at
+wanst."
+
+Allan looks at him in perplexity, but discovers some real meaning and
+good faith at the bottom of this bewildering reply. He patiently
+awaits an explicit answer; and Jo, more baffled by his patience than
+by anything else, at last desperately whispers a name in his ear.
+
+"Aye!" says Allan. "Why, what had you been doing?"
+
+"Nothink, sir. Never done nothink to get myself into no trouble,
+'sept in not moving on and the inkwhich. But I'm a-moving on now. I'm
+a-moving on to the berryin ground--that's the move as I'm up to."
+
+"No, no, we will try to prevent that. But what did he do with you?"
+
+"Put me in a horsepittle," replied Jo, whispering, "till I was
+discharged, then giv me a little money--four half-bulls, wot you may
+call half-crowns--and ses 'Hook it! Nobody wants you here,' he ses.
+'You hook it. You go and tramp,' he ses. 'You move on,' he ses.
+'Don't let me ever see you nowheres within forty mile of London, or
+you'll repent it.' So I shall, if ever he doos see me, and he'll see
+me if I'm above ground," concludes Jo, nervously repeating all his
+former precautions and investigations.
+
+Allan considers a little, then remarks, turning to the woman but
+keeping an encouraging eye on Jo, "He is not so ungrateful as you
+supposed. He had a reason for going away, though it was an
+insufficient one."
+
+"Thankee, sir, thankee!" exclaims Jo. "There now! See how hard you
+wos upon me. But ony you tell the young lady wot the genlmn ses, and
+it's all right. For YOU wos wery good to me too, and I knows it."
+
+"Now, Jo," says Allan, keeping his eye upon him, "come with me and I
+will find you a better place than this to lie down and hide in. If I
+take one side of the way and you the other to avoid observation, you
+will not run away, I know very well, if you make me a promise."
+
+"I won't, not unless I wos to see HIM a-coming, sir."
+
+"Very well. I take your word. Half the town is getting up by this
+time, and the whole town will be broad awake in another hour. Come
+along. Good day again, my good woman."
+
+"Good day again, sir, and I thank you kindly many times again."
+
+She has been sitting on her bag, deeply attentive, and now rises and
+takes it up. Jo, repeating, "Ony you tell the young lady as I never
+went fur to hurt her and wot the genlmn ses!" nods and shambles and
+shivers, and smears and blinks, and half laughs and half cries, a
+farewell to her, and takes his creeping way along after Allan
+Woodcourt, close to the houses on the opposite side of the street. In
+this order, the two come up out of Tom-all-Alone's into the broad
+rays of the sunlight and the purer air.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII
+
+Jo's Will
+
+
+As Allan Woodcourt and Jo proceed along the streets where the high
+church spires and the distances are so near and clear in the morning
+light that the city itself seems renewed by rest, Allan revolves in
+his mind how and where he shall bestow his companion. "It surely is a
+strange fact," he considers, "that in the heart of a civilized world
+this creature in human form should be more difficult to dispose of
+than an unowned dog." But it is none the less a fact because of its
+strangeness, and the difficulty remains.
+
+At first he looks behind him often to assure himself that Jo is still
+really following. But look where he will, he still beholds him close
+to the opposite houses, making his way with his wary hand from brick
+to brick and from door to door, and often, as he creeps along,
+glancing over at him watchfully. Soon satisfied that the last thing
+in his thoughts is to give him the slip, Allan goes on, considering
+with a less divided attention what he shall do.
+
+A breakfast-stall at a street-corner suggests the first thing to be
+done. He stops there, looks round, and beckons Jo. Jo crosses and
+comes halting and shuffling up, slowly scooping the knuckles of his
+right hand round and round in the hollowed palm of his left, kneading
+dirt with a natural pestle and mortar. What is a dainty repast to Jo
+is then set before him, and he begins to gulp the coffee and to gnaw
+the bread and butter, looking anxiously about him in all directions
+as he eats and drinks, like a scared animal.
+
+But he is so sick and miserable that even hunger has abandoned him.
+"I thought I was amost a-starvin, sir," says Jo, soon putting down
+his food, "but I don't know nothink--not even that. I don't care for
+eating wittles nor yet for drinking on 'em." And Jo stands shivering
+and looking at the breakfast wonderingly.
+
+Allan Woodcourt lays his hand upon his pulse and on his chest. "Draw
+breath, Jo!" "It draws," says Jo, "as heavy as a cart." He might add,
+"And rattles like it," but he only mutters, "I'm a-moving on, sir."
+
+Allan looks about for an apothecary's shop. There is none at hand,
+but a tavern does as well or better. He obtains a little measure of
+wine and gives the lad a portion of it very carefully. He begins to
+revive almost as soon as it passes his lips. "We may repeat that
+dose, Jo," observes Allan after watching him with his attentive face.
+"So! Now we will take five minutes' rest, and then go on again."
+
+Leaving the boy sitting on the bench of the breakfast-stall, with his
+back against an iron railing, Allan Woodcourt paces up and down in
+the early sunshine, casting an occasional look towards him without
+appearing to watch him. It requires no discernment to perceive that
+he is warmed and refreshed. If a face so shaded can brighten, his
+face brightens somewhat; and by little and little he eats the slice
+of bread he had so hopelessly laid down. Observant of these signs of
+improvement, Allan engages him in conversation and elicits to his no
+small wonder the adventure of the lady in the veil, with all its
+consequences. Jo slowly munches as he slowly tells it. When he has
+finished his story and his bread, they go on again.
+
+Intending to refer his difficulty in finding a temporary place of
+refuge for the boy to his old patient, zealous little Miss Flite,
+Allan leads the way to the court where he and Jo first foregathered.
+But all is changed at the rag and bottle shop; Miss Flite no longer
+lodges there; it is shut up; and a hard-featured female, much
+obscured by dust, whose age is a problem, but who is indeed no other
+than the interesting Judy, is tart and spare in her replies. These
+sufficing, however, to inform the visitor that Miss Flite and her
+birds are domiciled with a Mrs. Blinder, in Bell Yard, he repairs to
+that neighbouring place, where Miss Flite (who rises early that she
+may be punctual at the divan of justice held by her excellent friend
+the Chancellor) comes running downstairs with tears of welcome and
+with open arms.
+
+"My dear physician!" cries Miss Flite. "My meritorious,
+distinguished, honourable officer!" She uses some odd expressions,
+but is as cordial and full of heart as sanity itself can be--more so
+than it often is. Allan, very patient with her, waits until she has
+no more raptures to express, then points out Jo, trembling in a
+doorway, and tells her how he comes there.
+
+"Where can I lodge him hereabouts for the present? Now, you have a
+fund of knowledge and good sense and can advise me."
+
+Miss Flite, mighty proud of the compliment, sets herself to consider;
+but it is long before a bright thought occurs to her. Mrs. Blinder is
+entirely let, and she herself occupies poor Gridley's room.
+"Gridley!" exclaims Miss Flite, clapping her hands after a twentieth
+repetition of this remark. "Gridley! To be sure! Of course! My dear
+physician! General George will help us out."
+
+It is hopeless to ask for any information about General George, and
+would be, though Miss Flite had not already run upstairs to put on
+her pinched bonnet and her poor little shawl and to arm herself with
+her reticule of documents. But as she informs her physician in her
+disjointed manner on coming down in full array that General George,
+whom she often calls upon, knows her dear Fitz Jarndyce and takes a
+great interest in all connected with her, Allan is induced to think
+that they may be in the right way. So he tells Jo, for his
+encouragement, that this walking about will soon be over now; and
+they repair to the general's. Fortunately it is not far.
+
+From the exterior of George's Shooting Gallery, and the long entry,
+and the bare perspective beyond it, Allan Woodcourt augurs well. He
+also descries promise in the figure of Mr. George himself, striding
+towards them in his morning exercise with his pipe in his mouth, no
+stock on, and his muscular arms, developed by broadsword and
+dumbbell, weightily asserting themselves through his light
+shirt-sleeves.
+
+"Your servant, sir," says Mr. George with a military salute.
+Good-humouredly smiling all over his broad forehead up into his crisp
+hair, he then defers to Miss Flite, as, with great stateliness, and
+at some length, she performs the courtly ceremony of presentation. He
+winds it up with another "Your servant, sir!" and another salute.
+
+"Excuse me, sir. A sailor, I believe?" says Mr. George.
+
+"I am proud to find I have the air of one," returns Allan; "but I am
+only a sea-going doctor."
+
+"Indeed, sir! I should have thought you was a regular blue-jacket
+myself."
+
+Allan hopes Mr. George will forgive his intrusion the more readily on
+that account, and particularly that he will not lay aside his pipe,
+which, in his politeness, he has testified some intention of doing.
+"You are very good, sir," returns the trooper. "As I know by
+experience that it's not disagreeable to Miss Flite, and since it's
+equally agreeable to yourself--" and finishes the sentence by putting
+it between his lips again. Allan proceeds to tell him all he knows
+about Jo, unto which the trooper listens with a grave face.
+
+"And that's the lad, sir, is it?" he inquires, looking along the
+entry to where Jo stands staring up at the great letters on the
+whitewashed front, which have no meaning in his eyes.
+
+"That's he," says Allan. "And, Mr. George, I am in this difficulty
+about him. I am unwilling to place him in a hospital, even if I could
+procure him immediate admission, because I foresee that he would not
+stay there many hours if he could be so much as got there. The same
+objection applies to a workhouse, supposing I had the patience to be
+evaded and shirked, and handed about from post to pillar in trying to
+get him into one, which is a system that I don't take kindly to."
+
+"No man does, sir," returns Mr. George.
+
+"I am convinced that he would not remain in either place, because he
+is possessed by an extraordinary terror of this person who ordered
+him to keep out of the way; in his ignorance, he believes this person
+to be everywhere, and cognizant of everything."
+
+"I ask your pardon, sir," says Mr. George. "But you have not
+mentioned that party's name. Is it a secret, sir?"
+
+"The boy makes it one. But his name is Bucket."
+
+"Bucket the detective, sir?"
+
+"The same man."
+
+"The man is known to me, sir," returns the trooper after blowing out
+a cloud of smoke and squaring his chest, "and the boy is so far
+correct that he undoubtedly is a--rum customer." Mr. George smokes
+with a profound meaning after this and surveys Miss Flite in silence.
+
+"Now, I wish Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Summerson at least to know that
+this Jo, who tells so strange a story, has reappeared, and to have it
+in their power to speak with him if they should desire to do so.
+Therefore I want to get him, for the present moment, into any poor
+lodging kept by decent people where he would be admitted. Decent
+people and Jo, Mr. George," says Allan, following the direction of
+the trooper's eyes along the entry, "have not been much acquainted,
+as you see. Hence the difficulty. Do you happen to know any one in
+this neighbourhood who would receive him for a while on my paying for
+him beforehand?"
+
+As he puts the question, he becomes aware of a dirty-faced little man
+standing at the trooper's elbow and looking up, with an oddly twisted
+figure and countenance, into the trooper's face. After a few more
+puffs at his pipe, the trooper looks down askant at the little man,
+and the little man winks up at the trooper.
+
+"Well, sir," says Mr. George, "I can assure you that I would
+willingly be knocked on the head at any time if it would be at all
+agreeable to Miss Summerson, and consequently I esteem it a privilege
+to do that young lady any service, however small. We are naturally in
+the vagabond way here, sir, both myself and Phil. You see what the
+place is. You are welcome to a quiet corner of it for the boy if the
+same would meet your views. No charge made, except for rations. We
+are not in a flourishing state of circumstances here, sir. We are
+liable to be tumbled out neck and crop at a moment's notice. However,
+sir, such as the place is, and so long as it lasts, here it is at
+your service."
+
+With a comprehensive wave of his pipe, Mr. George places the whole
+building at his visitor's disposal.
+
+"I take it for granted, sir," he adds, "you being one of the medical
+staff, that there is no present infection about this unfortunate
+subject?"
+
+Allan is quite sure of it.
+
+"Because, sir," says Mr. George, shaking his head sorrowfully, "we
+have had enough of that."
+
+His tone is no less sorrowfully echoed by his new acquaintance.
+"Still I am bound to tell you," observes Allan after repeating his
+former assurance, "that the boy is deplorably low and reduced and
+that he may be--I do not say that he is--too far gone to recover."
+
+"Do you consider him in present danger, sir?" inquires the trooper.
+
+"Yes, I fear so."
+
+"Then, sir," returns the trooper in a decisive manner, "it appears to
+me--being naturally in the vagabond way myself--that the sooner he
+comes out of the street, the better. You, Phil! Bring him in!"
+
+Mr. Squod tacks out, all on one side, to execute the word of command;
+and the trooper, having smoked his pipe, lays it by. Jo is brought
+in. He is not one of Mrs. Pardiggle's Tockahoopo Indians; he is not
+one of Mrs. Jellyby's lambs, being wholly unconnected with
+Borrioboola-Gha; he is not softened by distance and unfamiliarity; he
+is not a genuine foreign-grown savage; he is the ordinary home-made
+article. Dirty, ugly, disagreeable to all the senses, in body a
+common creature of the common streets, only in soul a heathen. Homely
+filth begrimes him, homely parasites devour him, homely sores are in
+him, homely rags are on him; native ignorance, the growth of English
+soil and climate, sinks his immortal nature lower than the beasts
+that perish. Stand forth, Jo, in uncompromising colours! From the
+sole of thy foot to the crown of thy head, there is nothing
+interesting about thee.
+
+He shuffles slowly into Mr. George's gallery and stands huddled
+together in a bundle, looking all about the floor. He seems to know
+that they have an inclination to shrink from him, partly for what he
+is and partly for what he has caused. He, too, shrinks from them. He
+is not of the same order of things, not of the same place in
+creation. He is of no order and no place, neither of the beasts nor
+of humanity.
+
+"Look here, Jo!" says Allan. "This is Mr. George."
+
+Jo searches the floor for some time longer, then looks up for a
+moment, and then down again.
+
+"He is a kind friend to you, for he is going to give you lodging room
+here."
+
+Jo makes a scoop with one hand, which is supposed to be a bow. After
+a little more consideration and some backing and changing of the foot
+on which he rests, he mutters that he is "wery thankful."
+
+"You are quite safe here. All you have to do at present is to be
+obedient and to get strong. And mind you tell us the truth here,
+whatever you do, Jo."
+
+"Wishermaydie if I don't, sir," says Jo, reverting to his favourite
+declaration. "I never done nothink yit, but wot you knows on, to get
+myself into no trouble. I never was in no other trouble at all, sir,
+'sept not knowin' nothink and starwation."
+
+"I believe it, now attend to Mr. George. I see he is going to speak
+to you."
+
+"My intention merely was, sir," observes Mr. George, amazingly broad
+and upright, "to point out to him where he can lie down and get a
+thorough good dose of sleep. Now, look here." As the trooper speaks,
+he conducts them to the other end of the gallery and opens one of the
+little cabins. "There you are, you see! Here is a mattress, and here
+you may rest, on good behaviour, as long as Mr., I ask your pardon,
+sir"--he refers apologetically to the card Allan has given him--"Mr.
+Woodcourt pleases. Don't you be alarmed if you hear shots; they'll be
+aimed at the target, and not you. Now, there's another thing I would
+recommend, sir," says the trooper, turning to his visitor. "Phil,
+come here!"
+
+Phil bears down upon them according to his usual tactics. "Here is a
+man, sir, who was found, when a baby, in the gutter. Consequently, it
+is to be expected that he takes a natural interest in this poor
+creature. You do, don't you, Phil?"
+
+"Certainly and surely I do, guv'ner," is Phil's reply.
+
+"Now I was thinking, sir," says Mr. George in a martial sort of
+confidence, as if he were giving his opinion in a council of war at a
+drum-head, "that if this man was to take him to a bath and was to lay
+out a few shillings in getting him one or two coarse articles--"
+
+"Mr. George, my considerate friend," returns Allan, taking out his
+purse, "it is the very favour I would have asked."
+
+Phil Squod and Jo are sent out immediately on this work of
+improvement. Miss Flite, quite enraptured by her success, makes the
+best of her way to court, having great fears that otherwise her
+friend the Chancellor may be uneasy about her or may give the
+judgment she has so long expected in her absence, and observing
+"which you know, my dear physician, and general, after so many years,
+would be too absurdly unfortunate!" Allan takes the opportunity of
+going out to procure some restorative medicines, and obtaining them
+near at hand, soon returns to find the trooper walking up and down
+the gallery, and to fall into step and walk with him.
+
+"I take it, sir," says Mr. George, "that you know Miss Summerson
+pretty well?"
+
+Yes, it appears.
+
+"Not related to her, sir?"
+
+No, it appears.
+
+"Excuse the apparent curiosity," says Mr. George. "It seemed to me
+probable that you might take more than a common interest in this poor
+creature because Miss Summerson had taken that unfortunate interest
+in him. 'Tis MY case, sir, I assure you."
+
+"And mine, Mr. George."
+
+The trooper looks sideways at Allan's sunburnt cheek and bright dark
+eye, rapidly measures his height and build, and seems to approve of
+him.
+
+"Since you have been out, sir, I have been thinking that I
+unquestionably know the rooms in Lincoln's Inn Fields, where Bucket
+took the lad, according to his account. Though he is not acquainted
+with the name, I can help you to it. It's Tulkinghorn. That's what it
+is."
+
+Allan looks at him inquiringly, repeating the name.
+
+"Tulkinghorn. That's the name, sir. I know the man, and know him to
+have been in communication with Bucket before, respecting a deceased
+person who had given him offence. I know the man, sir. To my sorrow."
+
+Allan naturally asks what kind of man he is.
+
+"What kind of man! Do you mean to look at?"
+
+"I think I know that much of him. I mean to deal with. Generally,
+what kind of man?"
+
+"Why, then I'll tell you, sir," returns the trooper, stopping short
+and folding his arms on his square chest so angrily that his face
+fires and flushes all over; "he is a confoundedly bad kind of man. He
+is a slow-torturing kind of man. He is no more like flesh and blood
+than a rusty old carbine is. He is a kind of man--by George!--that
+has caused me more restlessness, and more uneasiness, and more
+dissatisfaction with myself than all other men put together. That's
+the kind of man Mr. Tulkinghorn is!"
+
+"I am sorry," says Allan, "to have touched so sore a place."
+
+"Sore?" The trooper plants his legs wider apart, wets the palm of his
+broad right hand, and lays it on the imaginary moustache. "It's no
+fault of yours, sir; but you shall judge. He has got a power over me.
+He is the man I spoke of just now as being able to tumble me out of
+this place neck and crop. He keeps me on a constant see-saw. He won't
+hold off, and he won't come on. If I have a payment to make him, or
+time to ask him for, or anything to go to him about, he don't see me,
+don't hear me--passes me on to Melchisedech's in Clifford's Inn,
+Melchisedech's in Clifford's Inn passes me back again to him--he
+keeps me prowling and dangling about him as if I was made of the same
+stone as himself. Why, I spend half my life now, pretty well,
+loitering and dodging about his door. What does he care? Nothing.
+Just as much as the rusty old carbine I have compared him to. He
+chafes and goads me till--Bah! Nonsense! I am forgetting myself. Mr.
+Woodcourt," the trooper resumes his march, "all I say is, he is an
+old man; but I am glad I shall never have the chance of setting spurs
+to my horse and riding at him in a fair field. For if I had that
+chance, in one of the humours he drives me into--he'd go down, sir!"
+
+Mr. George has been so excited that he finds it necessary to wipe his
+forehead on his shirt-sleeve. Even while he whistles his impetuosity
+away with the national anthem, some involuntary shakings of his head
+and heavings of his chest still linger behind, not to mention an
+occasional hasty adjustment with both hands of his open shirt-collar,
+as if it were scarcely open enough to prevent his being troubled by a
+choking sensation. In short, Allan Woodcourt has not much doubt about
+the going down of Mr. Tulkinghorn on the field referred to.
+
+Jo and his conductor presently return, and Jo is assisted to his
+mattress by the careful Phil, to whom, after due administration of
+medicine by his own hands, Allan confides all needful means and
+instructions. The morning is by this time getting on apace. He
+repairs to his lodgings to dress and breakfast, and then, without
+seeking rest, goes away to Mr. Jarndyce to communicate his discovery.
+
+With him Mr. Jarndyce returns alone, confidentially telling him that
+there are reasons for keeping this matter very quiet indeed and
+showing a serious interest in it. To Mr. Jarndyce, Jo repeats in
+substance what he said in the morning, without any material
+variation. Only that cart of his is heavier to draw, and draws with a
+hollower sound.
+
+"Let me lay here quiet and not be chivied no more," falters Jo, "and
+be so kind any person as is a-passin nigh where I used fur to sleep,
+as jist to say to Mr. Sangsby that Jo, wot he known once, is a-moving
+on right forards with his duty, and I'll be wery thankful. I'd be
+more thankful than I am aready if it wos any ways possible for an
+unfortnet to be it."
+
+He makes so many of these references to the law-stationer in the
+course of a day or two that Allan, after conferring with Mr.
+Jarndyce, good-naturedly resolves to call in Cook's Court, the
+rather, as the cart seems to be breaking down.
+
+To Cook's Court, therefore, he repairs. Mr. Snagsby is behind his
+counter in his grey coat and sleeves, inspecting an indenture of
+several skins which has just come in from the engrosser's, an immense
+desert of law-hand and parchment, with here and there a resting-place
+of a few large letters to break the awful monotony and save the
+traveller from despair. Mr Snagsby puts up at one of these inky wells
+and greets the stranger with his cough of general preparation for
+business.
+
+"You don't remember me, Mr. Snagsby?"
+
+The stationer's heart begins to thump heavily, for his old
+apprehensions have never abated. It is as much as he can do to
+answer, "No, sir, I can't say I do. I should have considered--not to
+put too fine a point upon it--that I never saw you before, sir."
+
+"Twice before," says Allan Woodcourt. "Once at a poor bedside, and
+once--"
+
+"It's come at last!" thinks the afflicted stationer, as recollection
+breaks upon him. "It's got to a head now and is going to burst!" But
+he has sufficient presence of mind to conduct his visitor into the
+little counting-house and to shut the door.
+
+"Are you a married man, sir?"
+
+"No, I am not."
+
+"Would you make the attempt, though single," says Mr. Snagsby in a
+melancholy whisper, "to speak as low as you can? For my little woman
+is a-listening somewheres, or I'll forfeit the business and five
+hundred pound!"
+
+In deep dejection Mr. Snagsby sits down on his stool, with his back
+against his desk, protesting, "I never had a secret of my own, sir. I
+can't charge my memory with ever having once attempted to deceive my
+little woman on my own account since she named the day. I wouldn't
+have done it, sir. Not to put too fine a point upon it, I couldn't
+have done it, I dursn't have done it. Whereas, and nevertheless, I
+find myself wrapped round with secrecy and mystery, till my life is a
+burden to me."
+
+His visitor professes his regret to hear it and asks him does he
+remember Jo. Mr. Snagsby answers with a suppressed groan, oh, don't
+he!
+
+"You couldn't name an individual human being--except myself--that my
+little woman is more set and determined against than Jo," says Mr.
+Snagsby.
+
+Allan asks why.
+
+"Why?" repeats Mr. Snagsby, in his desperation clutching at the clump
+of hair at the back of his bald head. "How should I know why? But you
+are a single person, sir, and may you long be spared to ask a married
+person such a question!"
+
+With this beneficent wish, Mr. Snagsby coughs a cough of dismal
+resignation and submits himself to hear what the visitor has to
+communicate.
+
+"There again!" says Mr. Snagsby, who, between the earnestness of his
+feelings and the suppressed tones of his voice is discoloured in the
+face. "At it again, in a new direction! A certain person charges me,
+in the solemnest way, not to talk of Jo to any one, even my little
+woman. Then comes another certain person, in the person of yourself,
+and charges me, in an equally solemn way, not to mention Jo to that
+other certain person above all other persons. Why, this is a private
+asylum! Why, not to put too fine a point upon it, this is Bedlam,
+sir!" says Mr. Snagsby.
+
+But it is better than he expected after all, being no explosion of
+the mine below him or deepening of the pit into which he has fallen.
+And being tender-hearted and affected by the account he hears of Jo's
+condition, he readily engages to "look round" as early in the evening
+as he can manage it quietly. He looks round very quietly when the
+evening comes, but it may turn out that Mrs. Snagsby is as quiet a
+manager as he.
+
+Jo is very glad to see his old friend and says, when they are left
+alone, that he takes it uncommon kind as Mr. Sangsby should come so
+far out of his way on accounts of sich as him. Mr. Snagsby, touched
+by the spectacle before him, immediately lays upon the table half a
+crown, that magic balsam of his for all kinds of wounds.
+
+"And how do you find yourself, my poor lad?" inquires the stationer
+with his cough of sympathy.
+
+"I am in luck, Mr. Sangsby, I am," returns Jo, "and don't want for
+nothink. I'm more cumfbler nor you can't think. Mr. Sangsby! I'm wery
+sorry that I done it, but I didn't go fur to do it, sir."
+
+The stationer softly lays down another half-crown and asks him what
+it is that he is sorry for having done.
+
+"Mr. Sangsby," says Jo, "I went and giv a illness to the lady as wos
+and yit as warn't the t'other lady, and none of 'em never says
+nothink to me for having done it, on accounts of their being ser good
+and my having been s'unfortnet. The lady come herself and see me
+yesday, and she ses, 'Ah, Jo!' she ses. 'We thought we'd lost you,
+Jo!' she ses. And she sits down a-smilin so quiet, and don't pass a
+word nor yit a look upon me for having done it, she don't, and I
+turns agin the wall, I doos, Mr. Sangsby. And Mr. Jarnders, I see him
+a-forced to turn away his own self. And Mr. Woodcot, he come fur to
+giv me somethink fur to ease me, wot he's allus a-doin' on day and
+night, and wen he come a-bending over me and a-speakin up so bold, I
+see his tears a-fallin, Mr. Sangsby."
+
+The softened stationer deposits another half-crown on the table.
+Nothing less than a repetition of that infallible remedy will relieve
+his feelings.
+
+"Wot I was a-thinkin on, Mr. Sangsby," proceeds Jo, "wos, as you wos
+able to write wery large, p'raps?"
+
+"Yes, Jo, please God," returns the stationer.
+
+"Uncommon precious large, p'raps?" says Jo with eagerness.
+
+"Yes, my poor boy."
+
+Jo laughs with pleasure. "Wot I wos a-thinking on then, Mr. Sangsby,
+wos, that when I wos moved on as fur as ever I could go and couldn't
+be moved no furder, whether you might be so good p'raps as to write
+out, wery large so that any one could see it anywheres, as that I wos
+wery truly hearty sorry that I done it and that I never went fur to
+do it, and that though I didn't know nothink at all, I knowd as Mr.
+Woodcot once cried over it and wos allus grieved over it, and that I
+hoped as he'd be able to forgive me in his mind. If the writin could
+be made to say it wery large, he might."
+
+"It shall say it, Jo. Very large."
+
+Jo laughs again. "Thankee, Mr. Sangsby. It's wery kind of you, sir,
+and it makes me more cumfbler nor I was afore."
+
+The meek little stationer, with a broken and unfinished cough, slips
+down his fourth half-crown--he has never been so close to a case
+requiring so many--and is fain to depart. And Jo and he, upon this
+little earth, shall meet no more. No more.
+
+For the cart so hard to draw is near its journey's end and drags over
+stony ground. All round the clock it labours up the broken steps,
+shattered and worn. Not many times can the sun rise and behold it
+still upon its weary road.
+
+Phil Squod, with his smoky gunpowder visage, at once acts as nurse
+and works as armourer at his little table in a corner, often looking
+round and saying with a nod of his green-baize cap and an encouraging
+elevation of his one eyebrow, "Hold up, my boy! Hold up!" There, too,
+is Mr. Jarndyce many a time, and Allan Woodcourt almost always, both
+thinking, much, how strangely fate has entangled this rough outcast
+in the web of very different lives. There, too, the trooper is a
+frequent visitor, filling the doorway with his athletic figure and,
+from his superfluity of life and strength, seeming to shed down
+temporary vigour upon Jo, who never fails to speak more robustly in
+answer to his cheerful words.
+
+Jo is in a sleep or in a stupor to-day, and Allan Woodcourt, newly
+arrived, stands by him, looking down upon his wasted form. After a
+while he softly seats himself upon the bedside with his face towards
+him--just as he sat in the law-writer's room--and touches his chest
+and heart. The cart had very nearly given up, but labours on a little
+more.
+
+The trooper stands in the doorway, still and silent. Phil has stopped
+in a low clinking noise, with his little hammer in his hand. Mr.
+Woodcourt looks round with that grave professional interest and
+attention on his face, and glancing significantly at the trooper,
+signs to Phil to carry his table out. When the little hammer is next
+used, there will be a speck of rust upon it.
+
+"Well, Jo! What is the matter? Don't be frightened."
+
+"I thought," says Jo, who has started and is looking round, "I
+thought I was in Tom-all-Alone's agin. Ain't there nobody here but
+you, Mr. Woodcot?"
+
+"Nobody."
+
+"And I ain't took back to Tom-all-Alone's. Am I, sir?"
+
+"No." Jo closes his eyes, muttering, "I'm wery thankful."
+
+After watching him closely a little while, Allan puts his mouth very
+near his ear and says to him in a low, distinct voice, "Jo! Did you
+ever know a prayer?"
+
+"Never knowd nothink, sir."
+
+"Not so much as one short prayer?"
+
+"No, sir. Nothink at all. Mr. Chadbands he wos a-prayin wunst at Mr.
+Sangsby's and I heerd him, but he sounded as if he wos a-speakin to
+hisself, and not to me. He prayed a lot, but I couldn't make out
+nothink on it. Different times there was other genlmen come down
+Tom-all-Alone's a-prayin, but they all mostly sed as the t'other
+'wuns prayed wrong, and all mostly sounded to be a-talking to
+theirselves, or a-passing blame on the t'others, and not a-talkin to
+us. WE never knowd nothink. I never knowd what it wos all about."
+
+It takes him a long time to say this, and few but an experienced and
+attentive listener could hear, or, hearing, understand him. After a
+short relapse into sleep or stupor, he makes, of a sudden, a strong
+effort to get out of bed.
+
+"Stay, Jo! What now?"
+
+"It's time for me to go to that there berryin ground, sir," he
+returns with a wild look.
+
+"Lie down, and tell me. What burying ground, Jo?"
+
+"Where they laid him as wos wery good to me, wery good to me indeed,
+he wos. It's time fur me to go down to that there berryin ground,
+sir, and ask to be put along with him. I wants to go there and be
+berried. He used fur to say to me, 'I am as poor as you to-day, Jo,'
+he ses. I wants to tell him that I am as poor as him now and have
+come there to be laid along with him."
+
+"By and by, Jo. By and by."
+
+"Ah! P'raps they wouldn't do it if I wos to go myself. But will you
+promise to have me took there, sir, and laid along with him?"
+
+"I will, indeed."
+
+"Thankee, sir. Thankee, sir. They'll have to get the key of the gate
+afore they can take me in, for it's allus locked. And there's a step
+there, as I used for to clean with my broom. It's turned wery dark,
+sir. Is there any light a-comin?"
+
+"It is coming fast, Jo."
+
+Fast. The cart is shaken all to pieces, and the rugged road is very
+near its end.
+
+"Jo, my poor fellow!"
+
+"I hear you, sir, in the dark, but I'm a-gropin--a-gropin--let me
+catch hold of your hand."
+
+"Jo, can you say what I say?"
+
+"I'll say anythink as you say, sir, for I knows it's good."
+
+"Our Father."
+
+"Our Father! Yes, that's wery good, sir."
+
+"Which art in heaven."
+
+"Art in heaven--is the light a-comin, sir?"
+
+"It is close at hand. Hallowed be thy name!"
+
+"Hallowed be--thy--"
+
+The light is come upon the dark benighted way. Dead!
+
+Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, right
+reverends and wrong reverends of every order. Dead, men and women,
+born with heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around
+us every day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII
+
+Closing In
+
+
+The place in Lincolnshire has shut its many eyes again, and the house
+in town is awake. In Lincolnshire the Dedlocks of the past doze in
+their picture-frames, and the low wind murmurs through the long
+drawing-room as if they were breathing pretty regularly. In town the
+Dedlocks of the present rattle in their fire-eyed carriages through
+the darkness of the night, and the Dedlock Mercuries, with ashes (or
+hair-powder) on their heads, symptomatic of their great humility,
+loll away the drowsy mornings in the little windows of the hall. The
+fashionable world--tremendous orb, nearly five miles round--is in
+full swing, and the solar system works respectfully at its appointed
+distances.
+
+Where the throng is thickest, where the lights are brightest, where
+all the senses are ministered to with the greatest delicacy and
+refinement, Lady Dedlock is. From the shining heights she has scaled
+and taken, she is never absent. Though the belief she of old reposed
+in herself as one able to reserve whatsoever she would under
+her mantle of pride is beaten down, though she has no assurance
+that what she is to those around her she will remain another day,
+it is not in her nature when envious eyes are looking on to
+yield or to droop. They say of her that she has lately grown
+more handsome and more haughty. The debilitated cousin says of
+her that she's beauty nough--tsetup shopofwomen--but rather
+larming kind--remindingmanfact--inconvenient woman--who WILL
+getoutofbedandbawthstahlishment--Shakespeare.
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn says nothing, looks nothing. Now, as heretofore, he
+is to be found in doorways of rooms, with his limp white cravat
+loosely twisted into its old-fashioned tie, receiving patronage from
+the peerage and making no sign. Of all men he is still the last who
+might be supposed to have any influence upon my Lady. Of all women
+she is still the last who might be supposed to have any dread of him.
+
+One thing has been much on her mind since their late interview in his
+turret-room at Chesney Wold. She is now decided, and prepared to
+throw it off.
+
+It is morning in the great world, afternoon according to the little
+sun. The Mercuries, exhausted by looking out of window, are reposing
+in the hall and hang their heavy heads, the gorgeous creatures, like
+overblown sunflowers. Like them, too, they seem to run to a deal of
+seed in their tags and trimmings. Sir Leicester, in the library, has
+fallen asleep for the good of the country over the report of a
+Parliamentary committee. My Lady sits in the room in which she gave
+audience to the young man of the name of Guppy. Rosa is with her and
+has been writing for her and reading to her. Rosa is now at work upon
+embroidery or some such pretty thing, and as she bends her head over
+it, my Lady watches her in silence. Not for the first time to-day.
+
+"Rosa."
+
+The pretty village face looks brightly up. Then, seeing how serious
+my Lady is, looks puzzled and surprised.
+
+"See to the door. Is it shut?"
+
+Yes. She goes to it and returns, and looks yet more surprised.
+
+"I am about to place confidence in you, child, for I know I may trust
+your attachment, if not your judgment. In what I am going to do, I
+will not disguise myself to you at least. But I confide in you. Say
+nothing to any one of what passes between us."
+
+The timid little beauty promises in all earnestness to be
+trustworthy.
+
+"Do you know," Lady Dedlock asks her, signing to her to bring her
+chair nearer, "do you know, Rosa, that I am different to you from
+what I am to any one?"
+
+"Yes, my Lady. Much kinder. But then I often think I know you as you
+really are."
+
+"You often think you know me as I really am? Poor child, poor child!"
+
+She says it with a kind of scorn--though not of Rosa--and sits
+brooding, looking dreamily at her.
+
+"Do you think, Rosa, you are any relief or comfort to me? Do you
+suppose your being young and natural, and fond of me and grateful to
+me, makes it any pleasure to me to have you near me?"
+
+"I don't know, my Lady; I can scarcely hope so. But with all my
+heart, I wish it was so."
+
+"It is so, little one."
+
+The pretty face is checked in its flush of pleasure by the dark
+expression on the handsome face before it. It looks timidly for an
+explanation.
+
+"And if I were to say to-day, 'Go! Leave me!' I should say what would
+give me great pain and disquiet, child, and what would leave me very
+solitary."
+
+"My Lady! Have I offended you?"
+
+"In nothing. Come here."
+
+Rosa bends down on the footstool at my Lady's feet. My Lady, with
+that motherly touch of the famous ironmaster night, lays her hand
+upon her dark hair and gently keeps it there.
+
+"I told you, Rosa, that I wished you to be happy and that I would
+make you so if I could make anybody happy on this earth. I cannot.
+There are reasons now known to me, reasons in which you have no part,
+rendering it far better for you that you should not remain here. You
+must not remain here. I have determined that you shall not. I have
+written to the father of your lover, and he will be here to-day. All
+this I have done for your sake."
+
+The weeping girl covers her hand with kisses and says what shall she
+do, what shall she do, when they are separated! Her mistress kisses
+her on the cheek and makes no other answer.
+
+"Now, be happy, child, under better circumstances. Be beloved and
+happy!"
+
+"Ah, my Lady, I have sometimes thought--forgive my being so
+free--that YOU are not happy."
+
+"I!"
+
+"Will you be more so when you have sent me away? Pray, pray, think
+again. Let me stay a little while!"
+
+"I have said, my child, that what I do, I do for your sake, not my
+own. It is done. What I am towards you, Rosa, is what I am now--not
+what I shall be a little while hence. Remember this, and keep my
+confidence. Do so much for my sake, and thus all ends between us!"
+
+She detaches herself from her simple-hearted companion and leaves the
+room. Late in the afternoon, when she next appears upon the
+staircase, she is in her haughtiest and coldest state. As indifferent
+as if all passion, feeling, and interest had been worn out in the
+earlier ages of the world and had perished from its surface with its
+other departed monsters.
+
+Mercury has announced Mr. Rouncewell, which is the cause of her
+appearance. Mr. Rouncewell is not in the library, but she repairs to
+the library. Sir Leicester is there, and she wishes to speak to him
+first.
+
+"Sir Leicester, I am desirous--but you are engaged."
+
+Oh, dear no! Not at all. Only Mr. Tulkinghorn.
+
+Always at hand. Haunting every place. No relief or security from him
+for a moment.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Lady Dedlock. Will you allow me to retire?"
+
+With a look that plainly says, "You know you have the power to remain
+if you will," she tells him it is not necessary and moves towards a
+chair. Mr. Tulkinghorn brings it a little forward for her with his
+clumsy bow and retires into a window opposite. Interposed between her
+and the fading light of day in the now quiet street, his shadow falls
+upon her, and he darkens all before her. Even so does he darken her
+life.
+
+It is a dull street under the best conditions, where the two long
+rows of houses stare at each other with that severity that
+half-a-dozen of its greatest mansions seem to have been slowly stared
+into stone rather than originally built in that material. It is a
+street of such dismal grandeur, so determined not to condescend to
+liveliness, that the doors and windows hold a gloomy state of their
+own in black paint and dust, and the echoing mews behind have a dry
+and massive appearance, as if they were reserved to stable the stone
+chargers of noble statues. Complicated garnish of iron-work entwines
+itself over the flights of steps in this awful street, and from these
+petrified bowers, extinguishers for obsolete flambeaux gasp at the
+upstart gas. Here and there a weak little iron hoop, through which
+bold boys aspire to throw their friends' caps (its only present use),
+retains its place among the rusty foliage, sacred to the memory of
+departed oil. Nay, even oil itself, yet lingering at long intervals
+in a little absurd glass pot, with a knob in the bottom like an
+oyster, blinks and sulks at newer lights every night, like its high
+and dry master in the House of Lords.
+
+Therefore there is not much that Lady Dedlock, seated in her chair,
+could wish to see through the window in which Mr. Tulkinghorn stands.
+And yet--and yet--she sends a look in that direction as if it were
+her heart's desire to have that figure moved out of the way.
+
+Sir Leicester begs his Lady's pardon. She was about to say?
+
+"Only that Mr. Rouncewell is here (he has called by my appointment)
+and that we had better make an end of the question of that girl. I am
+tired to death of the matter."
+
+"What can I do--to--assist?" demands Sir Leicester in some
+considerable doubt.
+
+"Let us see him here and have done with it. Will you tell them to
+send him up?"
+
+"Mr. Tulkinghorn, be so good as to ring. Thank you. Request," says
+Sir Leicester to Mercury, not immediately remembering the business
+term, "request the iron gentleman to walk this way."
+
+Mercury departs in search of the iron gentleman, finds, and produces
+him. Sir Leicester receives that ferruginous person graciously.
+
+"I hope you are well, Mr. Rouncewell. Be seated. (My solicitor, Mr.
+Tulkinghorn.) My Lady was desirous, Mr. Rouncewell," Sir Leicester
+skilfully transfers him with a solemn wave of his hand, "was desirous
+to speak with you. Hem!"
+
+"I shall be very happy," returns the iron gentleman, "to give my best
+attention to anything Lady Dedlock does me the honour to say."
+
+As he turns towards her, he finds that the impression she makes upon
+him is less agreeable than on the former occasion. A distant
+supercilious air makes a cold atmosphere about her, and there is
+nothing in her bearing, as there was before, to encourage openness.
+
+"Pray, sir," says Lady Dedlock listlessly, "may I be allowed to
+inquire whether anything has passed between you and your son
+respecting your son's fancy?"
+
+It is almost too troublesome to her languid eyes to bestow a look
+upon him as she asks this question.
+
+"If my memory serves me, Lady Dedlock, I said, when I had the
+pleasure of seeing you before, that I should seriously advise my son
+to conquer that--fancy." The ironmaster repeats her expression with a
+little emphasis.
+
+"And did you?"
+
+"Oh! Of course I did."
+
+Sir Leicester gives a nod, approving and confirmatory. Very proper.
+The iron gentleman, having said that he would do it, was bound to do
+it. No difference in this respect between the base metals and the
+precious. Highly proper.
+
+"And pray has he done so?"
+
+"Really, Lady Dedlock, I cannot make you a definite reply. I fear
+not. Probably not yet. In our condition of life, we sometimes couple
+an intention with our--our fancies which renders them not altogether
+easy to throw off. I think it is rather our way to be in earnest."
+
+Sir Leicester has a misgiving that there may be a hidden Wat Tylerish
+meaning in this expression, and fumes a little. Mr. Rouncewell is
+perfectly good-humoured and polite, but within such limits, evidently
+adapts his tone to his reception.
+
+"Because," proceeds my Lady, "I have been thinking of the subject,
+which is tiresome to me."
+
+"I am very sorry, I am sure."
+
+"And also of what Sir Leicester said upon it, in which I quite
+concur"--Sir Leicester flattered--"and if you cannot give us the
+assurance that this fancy is at an end, I have come to the conclusion
+that the girl had better leave me."
+
+"I can give no such assurance, Lady Dedlock. Nothing of the kind."
+
+"Then she had better go."
+
+"Excuse me, my Lady," Sir Leicester considerately interposes, "but
+perhaps this may be doing an injury to the young woman which she has
+not merited. Here is a young woman," says Sir Leicester,
+magnificently laying out the matter with his right hand like a
+service of plate, "whose good fortune it is to have attracted the
+notice and favour of an eminent lady and to live, under the
+protection of that eminent lady, surrounded by the various advantages
+which such a position confers, and which are unquestionably very
+great--I believe unquestionably very great, sir--for a young woman in
+that station of life. The question then arises, should that young
+woman be deprived of these many advantages and that good fortune
+simply because she has"--Sir Leicester, with an apologetic but
+dignified inclination of his head towards the ironmaster, winds up
+his sentence--"has attracted the notice of Mr Rouncewell's son? Now,
+has she deserved this punishment? Is this just towards her? Is this
+our previous understanding?"
+
+"I beg your pardon," interposes Mr. Rouncewell's son's father. "Sir
+Leicester, will you allow me? I think I may shorten the subject. Pray
+dismiss that from your consideration. If you remember anything so
+unimportant--which is not to be expected--you would recollect that my
+first thought in the affair was directly opposed to her remaining
+here."
+
+Dismiss the Dedlock patronage from consideration? Oh! Sir Leicester
+is bound to believe a pair of ears that have been handed down to him
+through such a family, or he really might have mistrusted their
+report of the iron gentleman's observations.
+
+"It is not necessary," observes my Lady in her coldest manner before
+he can do anything but breathe amazedly, "to enter into these matters
+on either side. The girl is a very good girl; I have nothing whatever
+to say against her, but she is so far insensible to her many
+advantages and her good fortune that she is in love--or supposes she
+is, poor little fool--and unable to appreciate them."
+
+Sir Leicester begs to observe that wholly alters the case. He might
+have been sure that my Lady had the best grounds and reasons in
+support of her view. He entirely agrees with my Lady. The young woman
+had better go.
+
+"As Sir Leicester observed, Mr. Rouncewell, on the last occasion when
+we were fatigued by this business," Lady Dedlock languidly proceeds,
+"we cannot make conditions with you. Without conditions, and under
+present circumstances, the girl is quite misplaced here and had
+better go. I have told her so. Would you wish to have her sent back
+to the village, or would you like to take her with you, or what would
+you prefer?"
+
+"Lady Dedlock, if I may speak plainly--"
+
+"By all means."
+
+"--I should prefer the course which will the soonest relieve you of
+the incumbrance and remove her from her present position."
+
+"And to speak as plainly," she returns with the same studied
+carelessness, "so should I. Do I understand that you will take her
+with you?"
+
+The iron gentleman makes an iron bow.
+
+"Sir Leicester, will you ring?" Mr. Tulkinghorn steps forward from
+his window and pulls the bell. "I had forgotten you. Thank you." He
+makes his usual bow and goes quietly back again. Mercury,
+swift-responsive, appears, receives instructions whom to produce,
+skims away, produces the aforesaid, and departs.
+
+Rosa has been crying and is yet in distress. On her coming in, the
+ironmaster leaves his chair, takes her arm in his, and remains with
+her near the door ready to depart.
+
+"You are taken charge of, you see," says my Lady in her weary manner,
+"and are going away well protected. I have mentioned that you are a
+very good girl, and you have nothing to cry for."
+
+"She seems after all," observes Mr. Tulkinghorn, loitering a little
+forward with his hands behind him, "as if she were crying at going
+away."
+
+"Why, she is not well-bred, you see," returns Mr. Rouncewell with
+some quickness in his manner, as if he were glad to have the lawyer
+to retort upon, "and she is an inexperienced little thing and knows
+no better. If she had remained here, sir, she would have improved, no
+doubt."
+
+"No doubt," is Mr. Tulkinghorn's composed reply.
+
+Rosa sobs out that she is very sorry to leave my Lady, and that she
+was happy at Chesney Wold, and has been happy with my Lady, and that
+she thanks my Lady over and over again. "Out, you silly little puss!"
+says the ironmaster, checking her in a low voice, though not angrily.
+"Have a spirit, if you're fond of Watt!" My Lady merely waves her off
+with indifference, saying, "There, there, child! You are a good girl.
+Go away!" Sir Leicester has magnificently disengaged himself from the
+subject and retired into the sanctuary of his blue coat. Mr.
+Tulkinghorn, an indistinct form against the dark street now dotted
+with lamps, looms in my Lady's view, bigger and blacker than before.
+
+"Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock," says Mr. Rouncewell after a pause
+of a few moments, "I beg to take my leave, with an apology for having
+again troubled you, though not of my own act, on this tiresome
+subject. I can very well understand, I assure you, how tiresome so
+small a matter must have become to Lady Dedlock. If I am doubtful of
+my dealing with it, it is only because I did not at first quietly
+exert my influence to take my young friend here away without
+troubling you at all. But it appeared to me--I dare say magnifying
+the importance of the thing--that it was respectful to explain to you
+how the matter stood and candid to consult your wishes and
+convenience. I hope you will excuse my want of acquaintance with the
+polite world."
+
+Sir Leicester considers himself evoked out of the sanctuary by these
+remarks. "Mr. Rouncewell," he returns, "do not mention it.
+Justifications are unnecessary, I hope, on either side."
+
+"I am glad to hear it, Sir Leicester; and if I may, by way of a last
+word, revert to what I said before of my mother's long connexion with
+the family and the worth it bespeaks on both sides, I would point out
+this little instance here on my arm who shows herself so affectionate
+and faithful in parting and in whom my mother, I dare say, has done
+something to awaken such feelings--though of course Lady Dedlock, by
+her heartfelt interest and her genial condescension, has done much
+more."
+
+If he mean this ironically, it may be truer than he thinks. He points
+it, however, by no deviation from his straightforward manner of
+speech, though in saying it he turns towards that part of the dim
+room where my Lady sits. Sir Leicester stands to return his parting
+salutation, Mr. Tulkinghorn again rings, Mercury takes another
+flight, and Mr. Rouncewell and Rosa leave the house.
+
+Then lights are brought in, discovering Mr. Tulkinghorn still
+standing in his window with his hands behind him and my Lady still
+sitting with his figure before her, closing up her view of the night
+as well as of the day. She is very pale. Mr. Tulkinghorn, observing
+it as she rises to retire, thinks, "Well she may be! The power of
+this woman is astonishing. She has been acting a part the whole
+time." But he can act a part too--his one unchanging character--and
+as he holds the door open for this woman, fifty pairs of eyes, each
+fifty times sharper than Sir Leicester's pair, should find no flaw in
+him.
+
+Lady Dedlock dines alone in her own room to-day. Sir Leicester is
+whipped in to the rescue of the Doodle Party and the discomfiture of
+the Coodle Faction. Lady Dedlock asks on sitting down to dinner,
+still deadly pale (and quite an illustration of the debilitated
+cousin's text), whether he is gone out? Yes. Whether Mr. Tulkinghorn
+is gone yet? No. Presently she asks again, is he gone YET? No. What
+is he doing? Mercury thinks he is writing letters in the library.
+Would my Lady wish to see him? Anything but that.
+
+But he wishes to see my Lady. Within a few more minutes he is
+reported as sending his respects, and could my Lady please to receive
+him for a word or two after her dinner? My Lady will receive him now.
+He comes now, apologizing for intruding, even by her permission,
+while she is at table. When they are alone, my Lady waves her hand to
+dispense with such mockeries.
+
+"What do you want, sir?"
+
+"Why, Lady Dedlock," says the lawyer, taking a chair at a little
+distance from her and slowly rubbing his rusty legs up and down, up
+and down, up and down, "I am rather surprised by the course you have
+taken."
+
+"Indeed?"
+
+"Yes, decidedly. I was not prepared for it. I consider it a departure
+from our agreement and your promise. It puts us in a new position,
+Lady Dedlock. I feel myself under the necessity of saying that I
+don't approve of it."
+
+He stops in his rubbing and looks at her, with his hands on his
+knees. Imperturbable and unchangeable as he is, there is still an
+indefinable freedom in his manner which is new and which does not
+escape this woman's observation.
+
+"I do not quite understand you."
+
+"Oh, yes you do, I think. I think you do. Come, come, Lady Dedlock,
+we must not fence and parry now. You know you like this girl."
+
+"Well, sir?"
+
+"And you know--and I know--that you have not sent her away for the
+reasons you have assigned, but for the purpose of separating her as
+much as possible from--excuse my mentioning it as a matter of
+business--any reproach and exposure that impend over yourself."
+
+"Well, sir?"
+
+"Well, Lady Dedlock," returns the lawyer, crossing his legs and
+nursing the uppermost knee. "I object to that. I consider that a
+dangerous proceeding. I know it to be unnecessary and calculated to
+awaken speculation, doubt, rumour, I don't know what, in the house.
+Besides, it is a violation of our agreement. You were to be exactly
+what you were before. Whereas, it must be evident to yourself, as it
+is to me, that you have been this evening very different from what
+you were before. Why, bless my soul, Lady Dedlock, transparently so!"
+
+"If, sir," she begins, "in my knowledge of my secret--" But he
+interrupts her.
+
+"Now, Lady Dedlock, this is a matter of business, and in a matter of
+business the ground cannot be kept too clear. It is no longer your
+secret. Excuse me. That is just the mistake. It is my secret, in
+trust for Sir Leicester and the family. If it were your secret, Lady
+Dedlock, we should not be here holding this conversation."
+
+"That is very true. If in my knowledge of THE secret I do what I can
+to spare an innocent girl (especially, remembering your own reference
+to her when you told my story to the assembled guests at Chesney
+Wold) from the taint of my impending shame, I act upon a resolution I
+have taken. Nothing in the world, and no one in the world, could
+shake it or could move me." This she says with great deliberation and
+distinctness and with no more outward passion than himself. As for
+him, he methodically discusses his matter of business as if she were
+any insensible instrument used in business.
+
+"Really? Then you see, Lady Dedlock," he returns, "you are not to be
+trusted. You have put the case in a perfectly plain way, and
+according to the literal fact; and that being the case, you are not
+to be trusted."
+
+"Perhaps you may remember that I expressed some anxiety on this same
+point when we spoke at night at Chesney Wold?"
+
+"Yes," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, coolly getting up and standing on the
+hearth. "Yes. I recollect, Lady Dedlock, that you certainly referred
+to the girl, but that was before we came to our arrangement, and both
+the letter and the spirit of our arrangement altogether precluded any
+action on your part founded upon my discovery. There can be no doubt
+about that. As to sparing the girl, of what importance or value is
+she? Spare! Lady Dedlock, here is a family name compromised. One
+might have supposed that the course was straight on--over everything,
+neither to the right nor to the left, regardless of all
+considerations in the way, sparing nothing, treading everything under
+foot."
+
+She has been looking at the table. She lifts up her eyes and looks at
+him. There is a stern expression on her face and a part of her lower
+lip is compressed under her teeth. "This woman understands me," Mr.
+Tulkinghorn thinks as she lets her glance fall again. "SHE cannot be
+spared. Why should she spare others?"
+
+For a little while they are silent. Lady Dedlock has eaten no dinner,
+but has twice or thrice poured out water with a steady hand and drunk
+it. She rises from table, takes a lounging-chair, and reclines in it,
+shading her face. There is nothing in her manner to express weakness
+or excite compassion. It is thoughtful, gloomy, concentrated. "This
+woman," thinks Mr. Tulkinghorn, standing on the hearth, again a dark
+object closing up her view, "is a study."
+
+He studies her at his leisure, not speaking for a time. She too
+studies something at her leisure. She is not the first to speak,
+appearing indeed so unlikely to be so, though he stood there until
+midnight, that even he is driven upon breaking silence.
+
+"Lady Dedlock, the most disagreeable part of this business interview
+remains, but it is business. Our agreement is broken. A lady of your
+sense and strength of character will be prepared for my now declaring
+it void and taking my own course."
+
+"I am quite prepared."
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn inclines his head. "That is all I have to trouble you
+with, Lady Dedlock."
+
+She stops him as he is moving out of the room by asking, "This is the
+notice I was to receive? I wish not to misapprehend you."
+
+"Not exactly the notice you were to receive, Lady Dedlock, because
+the contemplated notice supposed the agreement to have been observed.
+But virtually the same, virtually the same. The difference is merely
+in a lawyer's mind."
+
+"You intend to give me no other notice?"
+
+"You are right. No."
+
+"Do you contemplate undeceiving Sir Leicester to-night?"
+
+"A home question!" says Mr. Tulkinghorn with a slight smile and
+cautiously shaking his head at the shaded face. "No, not to-night."
+
+"To-morrow?"
+
+"All things considered, I had better decline answering that question,
+Lady Dedlock. If I were to say I don't know when, exactly, you would
+not believe me, and it would answer no purpose. It may be to-morrow.
+I would rather say no more. You are prepared, and I hold out no
+expectations which circumstances might fail to justify. I wish you
+good evening."
+
+She removes her hand, turns her pale face towards him as he walks
+silently to the door, and stops him once again as he is about to open
+it.
+
+"Do you intend to remain in the house any time? I heard you were
+writing in the library. Are you going to return there?"
+
+"Only for my hat. I am going home."
+
+She bows her eyes rather than her head, the movement is so slight and
+curious, and he withdraws. Clear of the room he looks at his watch
+but is inclined to doubt it by a minute or thereabouts. There is a
+splendid clock upon the staircase, famous, as splendid clocks not
+often are, for its accuracy. "And what do YOU say," Mr. Tulkinghorn
+inquires, referring to it. "What do you say?"
+
+If it said now, "Don't go home!" What a famous clock, hereafter, if
+it said to-night of all the nights that it has counted off, to this
+old man of all the young and old men who have ever stood before it,
+"Don't go home!" With its sharp clear bell it strikes three quarters
+after seven and ticks on again. "Why, you are worse than I thought
+you," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, muttering reproof to his watch. "Two
+minutes wrong? At this rate you won't last my time." What a watch to
+return good for evil if it ticked in answer, "Don't go home!"
+
+He passes out into the streets and walks on, with his hands behind
+him, under the shadow of the lofty houses, many of whose mysteries,
+difficulties, mortgages, delicate affairs of all kinds, are treasured
+up within his old black satin waistcoat. He is in the confidence of
+the very bricks and mortar. The high chimney-stacks telegraph family
+secrets to him. Yet there is not a voice in a mile of them to
+whisper, "Don't go home!"
+
+Through the stir and motion of the commoner streets; through the roar
+and jar of many vehicles, many feet, many voices; with the blazing
+shop-lights lighting him on, the west wind blowing him on, and the
+crowd pressing him on, he is pitilessly urged upon his way, and
+nothing meets him murmuring, "Don't go home!" Arrived at last in his
+dull room to light his candles, and look round and up, and see the
+Roman pointing from the ceiling, there is no new significance in the
+Roman's hand to-night or in the flutter of the attendant groups to
+give him the late warning, "Don't come here!"
+
+It is a moonlight night, but the moon, being past the full, is only
+now rising over the great wilderness of London. The stars are shining
+as they shone above the turret-leads at Chesney Wold. This woman, as
+he has of late been so accustomed to call her, looks out upon them.
+Her soul is turbulent within her; she is sick at heart and restless.
+The large rooms are too cramped and close. She cannot endure their
+restraint and will walk alone in a neighbouring garden.
+
+Too capricious and imperious in all she does to be the cause of much
+surprise in those about her as to anything she does, this woman,
+loosely muffled, goes out into the moonlight. Mercury attends with
+the key. Having opened the garden-gate, he delivers the key into his
+Lady's hands at her request and is bidden to go back. She will walk
+there some time to ease her aching head. She may be an hour, she may
+be more. She needs no further escort. The gate shuts upon its spring
+with a clash, and he leaves her passing on into the dark shade of
+some trees.
+
+A fine night, and a bright large moon, and multitudes of stars. Mr.
+Tulkinghorn, in repairing to his cellar and in opening and shutting
+those resounding doors, has to cross a little prison-like yard. He
+looks up casually, thinking what a fine night, what a bright large
+moon, what multitudes of stars! A quiet night, too.
+
+A very quiet night. When the moon shines very brilliantly, a solitude
+and stillness seem to proceed from her that influence even crowded
+places full of life. Not only is it a still night on dusty high roads
+and on hill-summits, whence a wide expanse of country may be seen in
+repose, quieter and quieter as it spreads away into a fringe of trees
+against the sky with the grey ghost of a bloom upon them; not only is
+it a still night in gardens and in woods, and on the river where the
+water-meadows are fresh and green, and the stream sparkles on among
+pleasant islands, murmuring weirs, and whispering rushes; not only
+does the stillness attend it as it flows where houses cluster thick,
+where many bridges are reflected in it, where wharves and shipping
+make it black and awful, where it winds from these disfigurements
+through marshes whose grim beacons stand like skeletons washed
+ashore, where it expands through the bolder region of rising grounds,
+rich in cornfield wind-mill and steeple, and where it mingles with
+the ever-heaving sea; not only is it a still night on the deep, and
+on the shore where the watcher stands to see the ship with her spread
+wings cross the path of light that appears to be presented to only
+him; but even on this stranger's wilderness of London there is some
+rest. Its steeples and towers and its one great dome grow more
+ethereal; its smoky house-tops lose their grossness in the pale
+effulgence; the noises that arise from the streets are fewer and are
+softened, and the footsteps on the pavements pass more tranquilly
+away. In these fields of Mr. Tulkinghorn's inhabiting, where the
+shepherds play on Chancery pipes that have no stop, and keep their
+sheep in the fold by hook and by crook until they have shorn them
+exceeding close, every noise is merged, this moonlight night, into a
+distant ringing hum, as if the city were a vast glass, vibrating.
+
+What's that? Who fired a gun or pistol? Where was it?
+
+The few foot-passengers start, stop, and stare about them. Some
+windows and doors are opened, and people come out to look. It was a
+loud report and echoed and rattled heavily. It shook one house, or so
+a man says who was passing. It has aroused all the dogs in the
+neighbourhood, who bark vehemently. Terrified cats scamper across the
+road. While the dogs are yet barking and howling--there is one dog
+howling like a demon--the church-clocks, as if they were startled
+too, begin to strike. The hum from the streets, likewise, seems to
+swell into a shout. But it is soon over. Before the last clock begins
+to strike ten, there is a lull. When it has ceased, the fine night,
+the bright large moon, and multitudes of stars, are left at peace
+again.
+
+Has Mr. Tulkinghorn been disturbed? His windows are dark and quiet,
+and his door is shut. It must be something unusual indeed to bring
+him out of his shell. Nothing is heard of him, nothing is seen of
+him. What power of cannon might it take to shake that rusty old man
+out of his immovable composure?
+
+For many years the persistent Roman has been pointing, with no
+particular meaning, from that ceiling. It is not likely that he has
+any new meaning in him to-night. Once pointing, always pointing--like
+any Roman, or even Briton, with a single idea. There he is, no doubt,
+in his impossible attitude, pointing, unavailingly, all night long.
+Moonlight, darkness, dawn, sunrise, day. There he is still, eagerly
+pointing, and no one minds him.
+
+But a little after the coming of the day come people to clean the
+rooms. And either the Roman has some new meaning in him, not
+expressed before, or the foremost of them goes wild, for looking up
+at his outstretched hand and looking down at what is below it, that
+person shrieks and flies. The others, looking in as the first one
+looked, shriek and fly too, and there is an alarm in the street.
+
+What does it mean? No light is admitted into the darkened chamber,
+and people unaccustomed to it enter, and treading softly but heavily,
+carry a weight into the bedroom and lay it down. There is whispering
+and wondering all day, strict search of every corner, careful tracing
+of steps, and careful noting of the disposition of every article of
+furniture. All eyes look up at the Roman, and all voices murmur, "If
+he could only tell what he saw!"
+
+He is pointing at a table with a bottle (nearly full of wine) and a
+glass upon it and two candles that were blown out suddenly soon after
+being lighted. He is pointing at an empty chair and at a stain upon
+the ground before it that might be almost covered with a hand. These
+objects lie directly within his range. An excited imagination might
+suppose that there was something in them so terrific as to drive the
+rest of the composition, not only the attendant big-legged boys, but
+the clouds and flowers and pillars too--in short, the very body and
+soul of Allegory, and all the brains it has--stark mad. It happens
+surely that every one who comes into the darkened room and looks at
+these things looks up at the Roman and that he is invested in all
+eyes with mystery and awe, as if he were a paralysed dumb witness.
+
+So it shall happen surely, through many years to come, that ghostly
+stories shall be told of the stain upon the floor, so easy to be
+covered, so hard to be got out, and that the Roman, pointing from the
+ceiling shall point, so long as dust and damp and spiders spare him,
+with far greater significance than he ever had in Mr. Tulkinghorn's
+time, and with a deadly meaning. For Mr. Tulkinghorn's time is over
+for evermore, and the Roman pointed at the murderous hand uplifted
+against his life, and pointed helplessly at him, from night to
+morning, lying face downward on the floor, shot through the heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX
+
+Dutiful Friendship
+
+
+A great annual occasion has come round in the establishment of Mr.
+Matthew Bagnet, otherwise Lignum Vitae, ex-artilleryman and present
+bassoon-player. An occasion of feasting and festival. The celebration
+of a birthday in the family.
+
+It is not Mr. Bagnet's birthday. Mr. Bagnet merely distinguishes that
+epoch in the musical instrument business by kissing the children with
+an extra smack before breakfast, smoking an additional pipe after
+dinner, and wondering towards evening what his poor old mother is
+thinking about it--a subject of infinite speculation, and rendered so
+by his mother having departed this life twenty years. Some men rarely
+revert to their father, but seem, in the bank-books of their
+remembrance, to have transferred all the stock of filial affection
+into their mother's name. Mr. Bagnet is one of these. Perhaps his
+exalted appreciation of the merits of the old girl causes him usually
+to make the noun-substantive "goodness" of the feminine gender.
+
+It is not the birthday of one of the three children. Those occasions
+are kept with some marks of distinction, but they rarely overleap the
+bounds of happy returns and a pudding. On young Woolwich's last
+birthday, Mr. Bagnet certainly did, after observing on his growth and
+general advancement, proceed, in a moment of profound reflection on
+the changes wrought by time, to examine him in the catechism,
+accomplishing with extreme accuracy the questions number one and two,
+"What is your name?" and "Who gave you that name?" but there failing
+in the exact precision of his memory and substituting for number
+three the question "And how do you like that name?" which he
+propounded with a sense of its importance, in itself so edifying and
+improving as to give it quite an orthodox air. This, however, was a
+speciality on that particular birthday, and not a general solemnity.
+
+It is the old girl's birthday, and that is the greatest holiday and
+reddest-letter day in Mr. Bagnet's calendar. The auspicious event is
+always commemorated according to certain forms settled and prescribed
+by Mr. Bagnet some years since. Mr. Bagnet, being deeply convinced
+that to have a pair of fowls for dinner is to attain the highest
+pitch of imperial luxury, invariably goes forth himself very early in
+the morning of this day to buy a pair; he is, as invariably, taken in
+by the vendor and installed in the possession of the oldest
+inhabitants of any coop in Europe. Returning with these triumphs of
+toughness tied up in a clean blue and white cotton handkerchief
+(essential to the arrangements), he in a casual manner invites Mrs.
+Bagnet to declare at breakfast what she would like for dinner. Mrs.
+Bagnet, by a coincidence never known to fail, replying fowls, Mr.
+Bagnet instantly produces his bundle from a place of concealment
+amidst general amazement and rejoicing. He further requires that the
+old girl shall do nothing all day long but sit in her very best gown
+and be served by himself and the young people. As he is not
+illustrious for his cookery, this may be supposed to be a matter of
+state rather than enjoyment on the old girl's part, but she keeps her
+state with all imaginable cheerfulness.
+
+On this present birthday, Mr. Bagnet has accomplished the usual
+preliminaries. He has bought two specimens of poultry, which, if
+there be any truth in adages, were certainly not caught with chaff,
+to be prepared for the spit; he has amazed and rejoiced the family by
+their unlooked-for production; he is himself directing the roasting
+of the poultry; and Mrs. Bagnet, with her wholesome brown fingers
+itching to prevent what she sees going wrong, sits in her gown of
+ceremony, an honoured guest.
+
+Quebec and Malta lay the cloth for dinner, while Woolwich, serving,
+as beseems him, under his father, keeps the fowls revolving. To these
+young scullions Mrs. Bagnet occasionally imparts a wink, or a shake
+of the head, or a crooked face, as they made mistakes.
+
+"At half after one." Says Mr. Bagnet. "To the minute. They'll be
+done."
+
+Mrs. Bagnet, with anguish, beholds one of them at a standstill before
+the fire and beginning to burn.
+
+"You shall have a dinner, old girl," says Mr. Bagnet. "Fit for a
+queen."
+
+Mrs. Bagnet shows her white teeth cheerfully, but to the perception
+of her son, betrays so much uneasiness of spirit that he is impelled
+by the dictates of affection to ask her, with his eyes, what is the
+matter, thus standing, with his eyes wide open, more oblivious of the
+fowls than before, and not affording the least hope of a return to
+consciousness. Fortunately his elder sister perceives the cause of
+the agitation in Mrs. Bagnet's breast and with an admonitory poke
+recalls him. The stopped fowls going round again, Mrs. Bagnet closes
+her eyes in the intensity of her relief.
+
+"George will look us up," says Mr. Bagnet. "At half after four. To
+the moment. How many years, old girl. Has George looked us up. This
+afternoon?"
+
+"Ah, Lignum, Lignum, as many as make an old woman of a young one, I
+begin to think. Just about that, and no less," returns Mrs. Bagnet,
+laughing and shaking her head.
+
+"Old girl," says Mr. Bagnet, "never mind. You'd be as young as ever
+you was. If you wasn't younger. Which you are. As everybody knows."
+
+Quebec and Malta here exclaim, with clapping of hands, that Bluffy is
+sure to bring mother something, and begin to speculate on what it
+will be.
+
+"Do you know, Lignum," says Mrs. Bagnet, casting a glance on the
+table-cloth, and winking "salt!" at Malta with her right eye, and
+shaking the pepper away from Quebec with her head, "I begin to think
+George is in the roving way again.
+
+"George," returns Mr. Bagnet, "will never desert. And leave his old
+comrade. In the lurch. Don't be afraid of it."
+
+"No, Lignum. No. I don't say he will. I don't think he will. But if
+he could get over this money trouble of his, I believe he would be
+off."
+
+Mr. Bagnet asks why.
+
+"Well," returns his wife, considering, "George seems to me to be
+getting not a little impatient and restless. I don't say but what
+he's as free as ever. Of course he must be free or he wouldn't be
+George, but he smarts and seems put out."
+
+"He's extra-drilled," says Mr. Bagnet. "By a lawyer. Who would put
+the devil out."
+
+"There's something in that," his wife assents; "but so it is,
+Lignum."
+
+Further conversation is prevented, for the time, by the necessity
+under which Mr. Bagnet finds himself of directing the whole force of
+his mind to the dinner, which is a little endangered by the dry
+humour of the fowls in not yielding any gravy, and also by the made
+gravy acquiring no flavour and turning out of a flaxen complexion.
+With a similar perverseness, the potatoes crumble off forks in the
+process of peeling, upheaving from their centres in every direction,
+as if they were subject to earthquakes. The legs of the fowls, too,
+are longer than could be desired, and extremely scaly. Overcoming
+these disadvantages to the best of his ability, Mr. Bagnet at last
+dishes and they sit down at table, Mrs. Bagnet occupying the guest's
+place at his right hand.
+
+It is well for the old girl that she has but one birthday in a year,
+for two such indulgences in poultry might be injurious. Every kind of
+finer tendon and ligament that is in the nature of poultry to possess
+is developed in these specimens in the singular form of
+guitar-strings. Their limbs appear to have struck roots into their
+breasts and bodies, as aged trees strike roots into the earth. Their
+legs are so hard as to encourage the idea that they must have devoted
+the greater part of their long and arduous lives to pedestrian
+exercises and the walking of matches. But Mr. Bagnet, unconscious of
+these little defects, sets his heart on Mrs. Bagnet eating a most
+severe quantity of the delicacies before her; and as that good old
+girl would not cause him a moment's disappointment on any day, least
+of all on such a day, for any consideration, she imperils her
+digestion fearfully. How young Woolwich cleans the drum-sticks
+without being of ostrich descent, his anxious mother is at a loss to
+understand.
+
+The old girl has another trial to undergo after the conclusion of the
+repast in sitting in state to see the room cleared, the hearth swept,
+and the dinner-service washed up and polished in the backyard. The
+great delight and energy with which the two young ladies apply
+themselves to these duties, turning up their skirts in imitation of
+their mother and skating in and out on little scaffolds of pattens,
+inspire the highest hopes for the future, but some anxiety for the
+present. The same causes lead to confusion of tongues, a clattering
+of crockery, a rattling of tin mugs, a whisking of brooms, and an
+expenditure of water, all in excess, while the saturation of the
+young ladies themselves is almost too moving a spectacle for Mrs.
+Bagnet to look upon with the calmness proper to her position. At last
+the various cleansing processes are triumphantly completed; Quebec
+and Malta appear in fresh attire, smiling and dry; pipes, tobacco,
+and something to drink are placed upon the table; and the old girl
+enjoys the first peace of mind she ever knows on the day of this
+delightful entertainment.
+
+When Mr. Bagnet takes his usual seat, the hands of the clock are very
+near to half-past four; as they mark it accurately, Mr. Bagnet
+announces, "George! Military time."
+
+It is George, and he has hearty congratulations for the old girl
+(whom he kisses on the great occasion), and for the children, and for
+Mr. Bagnet. "Happy returns to all!" says Mr. George.
+
+"But, George, old man!" cries Mrs. Bagnet, looking at him curiously.
+"What's come to you?"
+
+"Come to me?"
+
+"Ah! You are so white, George--for you--and look so shocked. Now
+don't he, Lignum?"
+
+"George," says Mr. Bagnet, "tell the old girl. What's the matter."
+
+"I didn't know I looked white," says the trooper, passing his hand
+over his brow, "and I didn't know I looked shocked, and I'm sorry I
+do. But the truth is, that boy who was taken in at my place died
+yesterday afternoon, and it has rather knocked me over."
+
+"Poor creetur!" says Mrs. Bagnet with a mother's pity. "Is he gone?
+Dear, dear!"
+
+"I didn't mean to say anything about it, for it's not birthday talk,
+but you have got it out of me, you see, before I sit down. I should
+have roused up in a minute," says the trooper, making himself speak
+more gaily, "but you're so quick, Mrs. Bagnet."
+
+"You're right. The old girl," says Mr. Bagnet. "Is as quick. As
+powder."
+
+"And what's more, she's the subject of the day, and we'll stick to
+her," cries Mr. George. "See here, I have brought a little brooch
+along with me. It's a poor thing, you know, but it's a keepsake.
+That's all the good it is, Mrs. Bagnet."
+
+Mr. George produces his present, which is greeted with admiring
+leapings and clappings by the young family, and with a species of
+reverential admiration by Mr. Bagnet. "Old girl," says Mr. Bagnet.
+"Tell him my opinion of it."
+
+"Why, it's a wonder, George!" Mrs. Bagnet exclaims. "It's the
+beautifullest thing that ever was seen!"
+
+"Good!" says Mr. Bagnet. "My opinion."
+
+"It's so pretty, George," cries Mrs. Bagnet, turning it on all sides
+and holding it out at arm's length, "that it seems too choice for
+me."
+
+"Bad!" says Mr. Bagnet. "Not my opinion."
+
+"But whatever it is, a hundred thousand thanks, old fellow," says
+Mrs. Bagnet, her eyes sparkling with pleasure and her hand stretched
+out to him; "and though I have been a crossgrained soldier's wife to
+you sometimes, George, we are as strong friends, I am sure, in
+reality, as ever can be. Now you shall fasten it on yourself, for
+good luck, if you will, George."
+
+The children close up to see it done, and Mr. Bagnet looks over young
+Woolwich's head to see it done with an interest so maturely wooden,
+yet pleasantly childish, that Mrs. Bagnet cannot help laughing in her
+airy way and saying, "Oh, Lignum, Lignum, what a precious old chap
+you are!" But the trooper fails to fasten the brooch. His hand
+shakes, he is nervous, and it falls off. "Would any one believe
+this?" says he, catching it as it drops and looking round. "I am so
+out of sorts that I bungle at an easy job like this!"
+
+Mrs. Bagnet concludes that for such a case there is no remedy like a
+pipe, and fastening the brooch herself in a twinkling, causes the
+trooper to be inducted into his usual snug place and the pipes to be
+got into action. "If that don't bring you round, George," says she,
+"just throw your eye across here at your present now and then, and
+the two together MUST do it."
+
+"You ought to do it of yourself," George answers; "I know that very
+well, Mrs. Bagnet. I'll tell you how, one way and another, the blues
+have got to be too many for me. Here was this poor lad. 'Twas dull
+work to see him dying as he did, and not be able to help him."
+
+"What do you mean, George? You did help him. You took him under your
+roof."
+
+"I helped him so far, but that's little. I mean, Mrs. Bagnet, there
+he was, dying without ever having been taught much more than to know
+his right hand from his left. And he was too far gone to be helped
+out of that."
+
+"Ah, poor creetur!" says Mrs. Bagnet.
+
+"Then," says the trooper, not yet lighting his pipe, and passing his
+heavy hand over his hair, "that brought up Gridley in a man's mind.
+His was a bad case too, in a different way. Then the two got mixed up
+in a man's mind with a flinty old rascal who had to do with both. And
+to think of that rusty carbine, stock and barrel, standing up on end
+in his corner, hard, indifferent, taking everything so evenly--it
+made flesh and blood tingle, I do assure you."
+
+"My advice to you," returns Mrs. Bagnet, "is to light your pipe and
+tingle that way. It's wholesomer and comfortabler, and better for the
+health altogether."
+
+"You're right," says the trooper, "and I'll do it."
+
+So he does it, though still with an indignant gravity that impresses
+the young Bagnets, and even causes Mr. Bagnet to defer the ceremony
+of drinking Mrs. Bagnet's health, always given by himself on these
+occasions in a speech of exemplary terseness. But the young ladies
+having composed what Mr. Bagnet is in the habit of calling "the
+mixtur," and George's pipe being now in a glow, Mr. Bagnet considers
+it his duty to proceed to the toast of the evening. He addresses the
+assembled company in the following terms.
+
+"George. Woolwich. Quebec. Malta. This is her birthday. Take a day's
+march. And you won't find such another. Here's towards her!"
+
+The toast having been drunk with enthusiasm, Mrs. Bagnet returns
+thanks in a neat address of corresponding brevity. This model
+composition is limited to the three words "And wishing yours!" which
+the old girl follows up with a nod at everybody in succession and a
+well-regulated swig of the mixture. This she again follows up, on the
+present occasion, by the wholly unexpected exclamation, "Here's a
+man!"
+
+Here IS a man, much to the astonishment of the little company,
+looking in at the parlour-door. He is a sharp-eyed man--a quick keen
+man--and he takes in everybody's look at him, all at once,
+individually and collectively, in a manner that stamps him a
+remarkable man.
+
+"George," says the man, nodding, "how do you find yourself?"
+
+"Why, it's Bucket!" cries Mr. George.
+
+"Yes," says the man, coming in and closing the door. "I was going
+down the street here when I happened to stop and look in at the
+musical instruments in the shop-window--a friend of mine is in want
+of a second-hand wiolinceller of a good tone--and I saw a party
+enjoying themselves, and I thought it was you in the corner; I
+thought I couldn't be mistaken. How goes the world with you, George,
+at the present moment? Pretty smooth? And with you, ma'am? And with
+you, governor? And Lord," says Mr. Bucket, opening his arms, "here's
+children too! You may do anything with me if you only show me
+children. Give us a kiss, my pets. No occasion to inquire who YOUR
+father and mother is. Never saw such a likeness in my life!"
+
+Mr. Bucket, not unwelcome, has sat himself down next to Mr. George
+and taken Quebec and Malta on his knees. "You pretty dears," says Mr.
+Bucket, "give us another kiss; it's the only thing I'm greedy in.
+Lord bless you, how healthy you look! And what may be the ages of
+these two, ma'am? I should put 'em down at the figures of about eight
+and ten."
+
+"You're very near, sir," says Mrs. Bagnet.
+
+"I generally am near," returns Mr. Bucket, "being so fond of
+children. A friend of mine has had nineteen of 'em, ma'am, all by one
+mother, and she's still as fresh and rosy as the morning. Not so much
+so as yourself, but, upon my soul, she comes near you! And what do
+you call these, my darling?" pursues Mr. Bucket, pinching Malta's
+cheeks. "These are peaches, these are. Bless your heart! And what do
+you think about father? Do you think father could recommend a
+second-hand wiolinceller of a good tone for Mr. Bucket's friend, my
+dear? My name's Bucket. Ain't that a funny name?"
+
+These blandishments have entirely won the family heart. Mrs. Bagnet
+forgets the day to the extent of filling a pipe and a glass for Mr.
+Bucket and waiting upon him hospitably. She would be glad to receive
+so pleasant a character under any circumstances, but she tells him
+that as a friend of George's she is particularly glad to see him this
+evening, for George has not been in his usual spirits.
+
+"Not in his usual spirits?" exclaims Mr. Bucket. "Why, I never heard
+of such a thing! What's the matter, George? You don't intend to tell
+me you've been out of spirits. What should you be out of spirits for?
+You haven't got anything on your mind, you know."
+
+"Nothing particular," returns the trooper.
+
+"I should think not," rejoins Mr. Bucket. "What could you have on
+your mind, you know! And have these pets got anything on THEIR minds,
+eh? Not they, but they'll be upon the minds of some of the young
+fellows, some of these days, and make 'em precious low-spirited. I
+ain't much of a prophet, but I can tell you that, ma'am."
+
+Mrs. Bagnet, quite charmed, hopes Mr. Bucket has a family of his own.
+
+"There, ma'am!" says Mr. Bucket. "Would you believe it? No, I
+haven't. My wife and a lodger constitute my family. Mrs. Bucket is as
+fond of children as myself and as wishful to have 'em, but no. So it
+is. Worldly goods are divided unequally, and man must not repine.
+What a very nice backyard, ma'am! Any way out of that yard, now?"
+
+There is no way out of that yard.
+
+"Ain't there really?" says Mr. Bucket. "I should have thought there
+might have been. Well, I don't know as I ever saw a backyard that
+took my fancy more. Would you allow me to look at it? Thank you. No,
+I see there's no way out. But what a very good-proportioned yard it
+is!"
+
+Having cast his sharp eye all about it, Mr. Bucket returns to his
+chair next his friend Mr. George and pats Mr. George affectionately
+on the shoulder.
+
+"How are your spirits now, George?"
+
+"All right now," returns the trooper.
+
+"That's your sort!" says Mr. Bucket. "Why should you ever have been
+otherwise? A man of your fine figure and constitution has no right to
+be out of spirits. That ain't a chest to be out of spirits, is it,
+ma'am? And you haven't got anything on your mind, you know, George;
+what could you have on your mind!"
+
+Somewhat harping on this phrase, considering the extent and variety
+of his conversational powers, Mr. Bucket twice or thrice repeats it
+to the pipe he lights, and with a listening face that is particularly
+his own. But the sun of his sociality soon recovers from this brief
+eclipse and shines again.
+
+"And this is brother, is it, my dears?" says Mr. Bucket, referring to
+Quebec and Malta for information on the subject of young Woolwich.
+"And a nice brother he is--half-brother I mean to say. For he's too
+old to be your boy, ma'am."
+
+"I can certify at all events that he is not anybody else's," returns
+Mrs. Bagnet, laughing.
+
+"Well, you do surprise me! Yet he's like you, there's no denying.
+Lord, he's wonderfully like you! But about what you may call the
+brow, you know, THERE his father comes out!" Mr. Bucket compares the
+faces with one eye shut up, while Mr. Bagnet smokes in stolid
+satisfaction.
+
+This is an opportunity for Mrs. Bagnet to inform him that the boy is
+George's godson.
+
+"George's godson, is he?" rejoins Mr. Bucket with extreme cordiality.
+"I must shake hands over again with George's godson. Godfather and
+godson do credit to one another. And what do you intend to make of
+him, ma'am? Does he show any turn for any musical instrument?"
+
+Mr. Bagnet suddenly interposes, "Plays the fife. Beautiful."
+
+"Would you believe it, governor," says Mr. Bucket, struck by the
+coincidence, "that when I was a boy I played the fife myself? Not in
+a scientific way, as I expect he does, but by ear. Lord bless you!
+'British Grenadiers'--there's a tune to warm an Englishman up! COULD
+you give us 'British Grenadiers,' my fine fellow?"
+
+Nothing could be more acceptable to the little circle than this call
+upon young Woolwich, who immediately fetches his fife and performs
+the stirring melody, during which performance Mr. Bucket, much
+enlivened, beats time and never fails to come in sharp with the
+burden, "British Gra-a-anadeers!" In short, he shows so much musical
+taste that Mr. Bagnet actually takes his pipe from his lips to
+express his conviction that he is a singer. Mr. Bucket receives the
+harmonious impeachment so modestly, confessing how that he did once
+chaunt a little, for the expression of the feelings of his own bosom,
+and with no presumptuous idea of entertaining his friends, that he is
+asked to sing. Not to be behindhand in the sociality of the evening,
+he complies and gives them "Believe Me, if All Those Endearing Young
+Charms." This ballad, he informs Mrs. Bagnet, he considers to have
+been his most powerful ally in moving the heart of Mrs. Bucket when a
+maiden, and inducing her to approach the altar--Mr. Bucket's own
+words are "to come up to the scratch."
+
+This sparkling stranger is such a new and agreeable feature in the
+evening that Mr. George, who testified no great emotions of pleasure
+on his entrance, begins, in spite of himself, to be rather proud of
+him. He is so friendly, is a man of so many resources, and so easy to
+get on with, that it is something to have made him known there. Mr.
+Bagnet becomes, after another pipe, so sensible of the value of his
+acquaintance that he solicits the honour of his company on the old
+girl's next birthday. If anything can more closely cement and
+consolidate the esteem which Mr. Bucket has formed for the family, it
+is the discovery of the nature of the occasion. He drinks to Mrs.
+Bagnet with a warmth approaching to rapture, engages himself for that
+day twelvemonth more than thankfully, makes a memorandum of the day
+in a large black pocket-book with a girdle to it, and breathes a hope
+that Mrs. Bucket and Mrs. Bagnet may before then become, in a manner,
+sisters. As he says himself, what is public life without private
+ties? He is in his humble way a public man, but it is not in that
+sphere that he finds happiness. No, it must be sought within the
+confines of domestic bliss.
+
+It is natural, under these circumstances, that he, in his turn,
+should remember the friend to whom he is indebted for so promising an
+acquaintance. And he does. He keeps very close to him. Whatever the
+subject of the conversation, he keeps a tender eye upon him. He waits
+to walk home with him. He is interested in his very boots and
+observes even them attentively as Mr. George sits smoking
+cross-legged in the chimney-corner.
+
+At length Mr. George rises to depart. At the same moment Mr. Bucket,
+with the secret sympathy of friendship, also rises. He dotes upon the
+children to the last and remembers the commission he has undertaken
+for an absent friend.
+
+"Respecting that second-hand wiolinceller, governor--could you
+recommend me such a thing?"
+
+"Scores," says Mr. Bagnet.
+
+"I am obliged to you," returns Mr. Bucket, squeezing his hand.
+"You're a friend in need. A good tone, mind you! My friend is a
+regular dab at it. Ecod, he saws away at Mozart and Handel and the
+rest of the big-wigs like a thorough workman. And you needn't," says
+Mr. Bucket in a considerate and private voice, "you needn't commit
+yourself to too low a figure, governor. I don't want to pay too large
+a price for my friend, but I want you to have your proper percentage
+and be remunerated for your loss of time. That is but fair. Every man
+must live, and ought to it."
+
+Mr. Bagnet shakes his head at the old girl to the effect that they
+have found a jewel of price.
+
+"Suppose I was to give you a look in, say, at half arter ten
+to-morrow morning. Perhaps you could name the figures of a few
+wiolincellers of a good tone?" says Mr. Bucket.
+
+Nothing easier. Mr. and Mrs. Bagnet both engage to have the requisite
+information ready and even hint to each other at the practicability
+of having a small stock collected there for approval.
+
+"Thank you," says Mr. Bucket, "thank you. Good night, ma'am. Good
+night, governor. Good night, darlings. I am much obliged to you for
+one of the pleasantest evenings I ever spent in my life."
+
+They, on the contrary, are much obliged to him for the pleasure he
+has given them in his company; and so they part with many expressions
+of goodwill on both sides. "Now George, old boy," says Mr. Bucket,
+taking his arm at the shop-door, "come along!" As they go down the
+little street and the Bagnets pause for a minute looking after them,
+Mrs. Bagnet remarks to the worthy Lignum that Mr. Bucket "almost
+clings to George like, and seems to be really fond of him."
+
+The neighbouring streets being narrow and ill-paved, it is a little
+inconvenient to walk there two abreast and arm in arm. Mr. George
+therefore soon proposes to walk singly. But Mr. Bucket, who cannot
+make up his mind to relinquish his friendly hold, replies, "Wait half
+a minute, George. I should wish to speak to you first." Immediately
+afterwards, he twists him into a public-house and into a parlour,
+where he confronts him and claps his own back against the door.
+
+"Now, George," says Mr. Bucket, "duty is duty, and friendship is
+friendship. I never want the two to clash if I can help it. I have
+endeavoured to make things pleasant to-night, and I put it to you
+whether I have done it or not. You must consider yourself in custody,
+George."
+
+"Custody? What for?" returns the trooper, thunderstruck.
+
+"Now, George," says Mr. Bucket, urging a sensible view of the case
+upon him with his fat forefinger, "duty, as you know very well, is
+one thing, and conversation is another. It's my duty to inform you
+that any observations you may make will be liable to be used against
+you. Therefore, George, be careful what you say. You don't happen to
+have heard of a murder?"
+
+"Murder!"
+
+"Now, George," says Mr. Bucket, keeping his forefinger in an
+impressive state of action, "bear in mind what I've said to you. I
+ask you nothing. You've been in low spirits this afternoon. I say,
+you don't happen to have heard of a murder?"
+
+"No. Where has there been a murder?"
+
+"Now, George," says Mr. Bucket, "don't you go and commit yourself.
+I'm a-going to tell you what I want you for. There has been a murder
+in Lincoln's Inn Fields--gentleman of the name of Tulkinghorn. He was
+shot last night. I want you for that."
+
+The trooper sinks upon a seat behind him, and great drops start out
+upon his forehead, and a deadly pallor overspreads his face.
+
+"Bucket! It's not possible that Mr. Tulkinghorn has been killed and
+that you suspect ME?"
+
+"George," returns Mr. Bucket, keeping his forefinger going, "it is
+certainly possible, because it's the case. This deed was done last
+night at ten o'clock. Now, you know where you were last night at ten
+o'clock, and you'll be able to prove it, no doubt."
+
+"Last night! Last night?" repeats the trooper thoughtfully. Then it
+flashes upon him. "Why, great heaven, I was there last night!"
+
+"So I have understood, George," returns Mr. Bucket with great
+deliberation. "So I have understood. Likewise you've been very often
+there. You've been seen hanging about the place, and you've been
+heard more than once in a wrangle with him, and it's possible--I
+don't say it's certainly so, mind you, but it's possible--that he may
+have been heard to call you a threatening, murdering, dangerous
+fellow."
+
+The trooper gasps as if he would admit it all if he could speak.
+
+"Now, George," continues Mr. Bucket, putting his hat upon the table
+with an air of business rather in the upholstery way than otherwise,
+"my wish is, as it has been all the evening, to make things pleasant.
+I tell you plainly there's a reward out, of a hundred guineas,
+offered by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. You and me have always
+been pleasant together; but I have got a duty to discharge; and if
+that hundred guineas is to be made, it may as well be made by me as
+any other man. On all of which accounts, I should hope it was clear
+to you that I must have you, and that I'm damned if I don't have you.
+Am I to call in any assistance, or is the trick done?"
+
+Mr. George has recovered himself and stands up like a soldier.
+"Come," he says; "I am ready."
+
+"George," continues Mr. Bucket, "wait a bit!" With his upholsterer
+manner, as if the trooper were a window to be fitted up, he takes
+from his pocket a pair of handcuffs. "This is a serious charge,
+George, and such is my duty."
+
+The trooper flushes angrily and hesitates a moment, but holds out his
+two hands, clasped together, and says, "There! Put them on!"
+
+Mr. Bucket adjusts them in a moment. "How do you find them? Are they
+comfortable? If not, say so, for I wish to make things as pleasant as
+is consistent with my duty, and I've got another pair in my pocket."
+This remark he offers like a most respectable tradesman anxious to
+execute an order neatly and to the perfect satisfaction of his
+customer. "They'll do as they are? Very well! Now, you see,
+George"--he takes a cloak from a corner and begins adjusting it about
+the trooper's neck--"I was mindful of your feelings when I come out,
+and brought this on purpose. There! Who's the wiser?"
+
+"Only I," returns the trooper, "but as I know it, do me one more good
+turn and pull my hat over my eyes."
+
+"Really, though! Do you mean it? Ain't it a pity? It looks so."
+
+"I can't look chance men in the face with these things on," Mr.
+George hurriedly replies. "Do, for God's sake, pull my hat forward."
+
+So strongly entreated, Mr. Bucket complies, puts his own hat on, and
+conducts his prize into the streets, the trooper marching on as
+steadily as usual, though with his head less erect, and Mr. Bucket
+steering him with his elbow over the crossings and up the turnings.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L
+
+Esther's Narrative
+
+
+It happened that when I came home from Deal I found a note from Caddy
+Jellyby (as we always continued to call her), informing me that her
+health, which had been for some time very delicate, was worse and
+that she would be more glad than she could tell me if I would go to
+see her. It was a note of a few lines, written from the couch on
+which she lay and enclosed to me in another from her husband, in
+which he seconded her entreaty with much solicitude. Caddy was now
+the mother, and I the godmother, of such a poor little baby--such a
+tiny old-faced mite, with a countenance that seemed to be scarcely
+anything but cap-border, and a little lean, long-fingered hand,
+always clenched under its chin. It would lie in this attitude all
+day, with its bright specks of eyes open, wondering (as I used to
+imagine) how it came to be so small and weak. Whenever it was moved
+it cried, but at all other times it was so patient that the sole
+desire of its life appeared to be to lie quiet and think. It had
+curious little dark veins in its face and curious little dark marks
+under its eyes like faint remembrances of poor Caddy's inky days, and
+altogether, to those who were not used to it, it was quite a piteous
+little sight.
+
+But it was enough for Caddy that SHE was used to it. The projects
+with which she beguiled her illness, for little Esther's education,
+and little Esther's marriage, and even for her own old age as the
+grandmother of little Esther's little Esthers, was so prettily
+expressive of devotion to this pride of her life that I should be
+tempted to recall some of them but for the timely remembrance that I
+am getting on irregularly as it is.
+
+To return to the letter. Caddy had a superstition about me which had
+been strengthening in her mind ever since that night long ago when
+she had lain asleep with her head in my lap. She almost--I think I
+must say quite--believed that I did her good whenever I was near her.
+Now although this was such a fancy of the affectionate girl's that I
+am almost ashamed to mention it, still it might have all the force of
+a fact when she was really ill. Therefore I set off to Caddy, with my
+guardian's consent, post-haste; and she and Prince made so much of me
+that there never was anything like it.
+
+Next day I went again to sit with her, and next day I went again. It
+was a very easy journey, for I had only to rise a little earlier in
+the morning, and keep my accounts, and attend to housekeeping matters
+before leaving home.
+
+But when I had made these three visits, my guardian said to me, on my
+return at night, "Now, little woman, little woman, this will never
+do. Constant dropping will wear away a stone, and constant coaching
+will wear out a Dame Durden. We will go to London for a while and
+take possession of our old lodgings."
+
+"Not for me, dear guardian," said I, "for I never feel tired," which
+was strictly true. I was only too happy to be in such request.
+
+"For me then," returned my guardian, "or for Ada, or for both of us.
+It is somebody's birthday to-morrow, I think."
+
+"Truly I think it is," said I, kissing my darling, who would be
+twenty-one to-morrow.
+
+"Well," observed my guardian, half pleasantly, half seriously,
+"that's a great occasion and will give my fair cousin some necessary
+business to transact in assertion of her independence, and will make
+London a more convenient place for all of us. So to London we will
+go. That being settled, there is another thing--how have you left
+Caddy?"
+
+"Very unwell, guardian. I fear it will be some time before she
+regains her health and strength."
+
+"What do you call some time, now?" asked my guardian thoughtfully.
+
+"Some weeks, I am afraid."
+
+"Ah!" He began to walk about the room with his hands in his pockets,
+showing that he had been thinking as much. "Now, what do you say
+about her doctor? Is he a good doctor, my love?"
+
+I felt obliged to confess that I knew nothing to the contrary but
+that Prince and I had agreed only that evening that we would like his
+opinion to be confirmed by some one.
+
+"Well, you know," returned my guardian quickly, "there's Woodcourt."
+
+I had not meant that, and was rather taken by surprise. For a moment
+all that I had had in my mind in connexion with Mr. Woodcourt seemed
+to come back and confuse me.
+
+"You don't object to him, little woman?"
+
+"Object to him, guardian? Oh no!"
+
+"And you don't think the patient would object to him?"
+
+So far from that, I had no doubt of her being prepared to have a
+great reliance on him and to like him very much. I said that he was
+no stranger to her personally, for she had seen him often in his kind
+attendance on Miss Flite.
+
+"Very good," said my guardian. "He has been here to-day, my dear, and
+I will see him about it to-morrow."
+
+I felt in this short conversation--though I did not know how, for she
+was quiet, and we interchanged no look--that my dear girl well
+remembered how merrily she had clasped me round the waist when no
+other hands than Caddy's had brought me the little parting token.
+This caused me to feel that I ought to tell her, and Caddy too, that
+I was going to be the mistress of Bleak House and that if I avoided
+that disclosure any longer I might become less worthy in my own eyes
+of its master's love. Therefore, when we went upstairs and had waited
+listening until the clock struck twelve in order that only I might be
+the first to wish my darling all good wishes on her birthday and to
+take her to my heart, I set before her, just as I had set before
+myself, the goodness and honour of her cousin John and the happy life
+that was in store for me. If ever my darling were fonder of me at
+one time than another in all our intercourse, she was surely fondest
+of me that night. And I was so rejoiced to know it and so comforted
+by the sense of having done right in casting this last idle
+reservation away that I was ten times happier than I had been before.
+I had scarcely thought it a reservation a few hours ago, but now that
+it was gone I felt as if I understood its nature better.
+
+Next day we went to London. We found our old lodging vacant, and in
+half an hour were quietly established there, as if we had never gone
+away. Mr. Woodcourt dined with us to celebrate my darling's birthday,
+and we were as pleasant as we could be with the great blank among us
+that Richard's absence naturally made on such an occasion. After that
+day I was for some weeks--eight or nine as I remember--very much with
+Caddy, and thus it fell out that I saw less of Ada at this time than
+any other since we had first come together, except the time of my own
+illness. She often came to Caddy's, but our function there was to
+amuse and cheer her, and we did not talk in our usual confidential
+manner. Whenever I went home at night we were together, but Caddy's
+rest was broken by pain, and I often remained to nurse her.
+
+With her husband and her poor little mite of a baby to love and their
+home to strive for, what a good creature Caddy was! So self-denying,
+so uncomplaining, so anxious to get well on their account, so afraid
+of giving trouble, and so thoughtful of the unassisted labours of her
+husband and the comforts of old Mr. Turveydrop; I had never known the
+best of her until now. And it seemed so curious that her pale face
+and helpless figure should be lying there day after day where dancing
+was the business of life, where the kit and the apprentices began
+early every morning in the ball-room, and where the untidy little boy
+waltzed by himself in the kitchen all the afternoon.
+
+At Caddy's request I took the supreme direction of her apartment,
+trimmed it up, and pushed her, couch and all, into a lighter and more
+airy and more cheerful corner than she had yet occupied; then, every
+day, when we were in our neatest array, I used to lay my small small
+namesake in her arms and sit down to chat or work or read to her. It
+was at one of the first of these quiet times that I told Caddy about
+Bleak House.
+
+We had other visitors besides Ada. First of all we had Prince, who in
+his hurried intervals of teaching used to come softly in and sit
+softly down, with a face of loving anxiety for Caddy and the very
+little child. Whatever Caddy's condition really was, she never failed
+to declare to Prince that she was all but well--which I, heaven
+forgive me, never failed to confirm. This would put Prince in such
+good spirits that he would sometimes take the kit from his pocket and
+play a chord or two to astonish the baby, which I never knew it to do
+in the least degree, for my tiny namesake never noticed it at all.
+
+Then there was Mrs. Jellyby. She would come occasionally, with her
+usual distraught manner, and sit calmly looking miles beyond her
+grandchild as if her attention were absorbed by a young Borrioboolan
+on its native shores. As bright-eyed as ever, as serene, and as
+untidy, she would say, "Well, Caddy, child, and how do you do
+to-day?" And then would sit amiably smiling and taking no notice of
+the reply or would sweetly glide off into a calculation of the number
+of letters she had lately received and answered or of the
+coffee-bearing power of Borrioboola-Gha. This she would always do
+with a serene contempt for our limited sphere of action, not to be
+disguised.
+
+Then there was old Mr. Turveydrop, who was from morning to night and
+from night to morning the subject of innumerable precautions. If the
+baby cried, it was nearly stifled lest the noise should make him
+uncomfortable. If the fire wanted stirring in the night, it was
+surreptitiously done lest his rest should be broken. If Caddy
+required any little comfort that the house contained, she first
+carefully discussed whether he was likely to require it too. In
+return for this consideration he would come into the room once a day,
+all but blessing it--showing a condescension, and a patronage, and a
+grace of manner in dispensing the light of his high-shouldered
+presence from which I might have supposed him (if I had not known
+better) to have been the benefactor of Caddy's life.
+
+"My Caroline," he would say, making the nearest approach that he
+could to bending over her. "Tell me that you are better to-day."
+
+"Oh, much better, thank you, Mr. Turveydrop," Caddy would reply.
+
+"Delighted! Enchanted! And our dear Miss Summerson. She is not quite
+prostrated by fatigue?" Here he would crease up his eyelids and kiss
+his fingers to me, though I am happy to say he had ceased to be
+particular in his attentions since I had been so altered.
+
+"Not at all," I would assure him.
+
+"Charming! We must take care of our dear Caroline, Miss Summerson. We
+must spare nothing that will restore her. We must nourish her. My
+dear Caroline"--he would turn to his daughter-in-law with infinite
+generosity and protection--"want for nothing, my love. Frame a wish
+and gratify it, my daughter. Everything this house contains,
+everything my room contains, is at your service, my dear. Do not," he
+would sometimes add in a burst of deportment, "even allow my simple
+requirements to be considered if they should at any time interfere
+with your own, my Caroline. Your necessities are greater than mine."
+
+He had established such a long prescriptive right to this deportment
+(his son's inheritance from his mother) that I several times knew
+both Caddy and her husband to be melted to tears by these
+affectionate self-sacrifices.
+
+"Nay, my dears," he would remonstrate; and when I saw Caddy's thin
+arm about his fat neck as he said it, I would be melted too, though
+not by the same process. "Nay, nay! I have promised never to leave
+ye. Be dutiful and affectionate towards me, and I ask no other
+return. Now, bless ye! I am going to the Park."
+
+He would take the air there presently and get an appetite for his
+hotel dinner. I hope I do old Mr. Turveydrop no wrong, but I never
+saw any better traits in him than these I faithfully record, except
+that he certainly conceived a liking for Peepy and would take the
+child out walking with great pomp, always on those occasions sending
+him home before he went to dinner himself, and occasionally with a
+halfpenny in his pocket. But even this disinterestedness was attended
+with no inconsiderable cost, to my knowledge, for before Peepy was
+sufficiently decorated to walk hand in hand with the professor of
+deportment, he had to be newly dressed, at the expense of Caddy and
+her husband, from top to toe.
+
+Last of our visitors, there was Mr. Jellyby. Really when he used to
+come in of an evening, and ask Caddy in his meek voice how she was,
+and then sit down with his head against the wall, and make no attempt
+to say anything more, I liked him very much. If he found me bustling
+about doing any little thing, he sometimes half took his coat off, as
+if with an intention of helping by a great exertion; but he never got
+any further. His sole occupation was to sit with his head against the
+wall, looking hard at the thoughtful baby; and I could not quite
+divest my mind of a fancy that they understood one another.
+
+I have not counted Mr. Woodcourt among our visitors because he was
+now Caddy's regular attendant. She soon began to improve under his
+care, but he was so gentle, so skilful, so unwearying in the pains he
+took that it is not to be wondered at, I am sure. I saw a good deal
+of Mr. Woodcourt during this time, though not so much as might be
+supposed, for knowing Caddy to be safe in his hands, I often slipped
+home at about the hours when he was expected. We frequently met,
+notwithstanding. I was quite reconciled to myself now, but I still
+felt glad to think that he was sorry for me, and he still WAS sorry
+for me I believed. He helped Mr. Badger in his professional
+engagements, which were numerous, and had as yet no settled projects
+for the future.
+
+It was when Caddy began to recover that I began to notice a change in
+my dear girl. I cannot say how it first presented itself to me,
+because I observed it in many slight particulars which were nothing
+in themselves and only became something when they were pieced
+together. But I made it out, by putting them together, that Ada was
+not so frankly cheerful with me as she used to be. Her tenderness for
+me was as loving and true as ever; I did not for a moment doubt that;
+but there was a quiet sorrow about her which she did not confide to
+me, and in which I traced some hidden regret.
+
+Now, I could not understand this, and I was so anxious for the
+happiness of my own pet that it caused me some uneasiness and set me
+thinking often. At length, feeling sure that Ada suppressed this
+something from me lest it should make me unhappy too, it came into my
+head that she was a little grieved--for me--by what I had told her
+about Bleak House.
+
+How I persuaded myself that this was likely, I don't know. I had no
+idea that there was any selfish reference in my doing so. I was not
+grieved for myself: I was quite contented and quite happy. Still,
+that Ada might be thinking--for me, though I had abandoned all such
+thoughts--of what once was, but was now all changed, seemed so easy
+to believe that I believed it.
+
+What could I do to reassure my darling (I considered then) and show
+her that I had no such feelings? Well! I could only be as brisk and
+busy as possible, and that I had tried to be all along. However, as
+Caddy's illness had certainly interfered, more or less, with my home
+duties--though I had always been there in the morning to make my
+guardian's breakfast, and he had a hundred times laughed and said
+there must be two little women, for his little woman was never
+missing--I resolved to be doubly diligent and gay. So I went about
+the house humming all the tunes I knew, and I sat working and working
+in a desperate manner, and I talked and talked, morning, noon, and
+night.
+
+And still there was the same shade between me and my darling.
+
+"So, Dame Trot," observed my guardian, shutting up his book one night
+when we were all three together, "so Woodcourt has restored Caddy
+Jellyby to the full enjoyment of life again?"
+
+"Yes," I said; "and to be repaid by such gratitude as hers is to be
+made rich, guardian."
+
+"I wish it was," he returned, "with all my heart."
+
+So did I too, for that matter. I said so.
+
+"Aye! We would make him as rich as a Jew if we knew how. Would we
+not, little woman?"
+
+I laughed as I worked and replied that I was not sure about that, for
+it might spoil him, and he might not be so useful, and there might be
+many who could ill spare him. As Miss Flite, and Caddy herself, and
+many others.
+
+"True," said my guardian. "I had forgotten that. But we would agree
+to make him rich enough to live, I suppose? Rich enough to work with
+tolerable peace of mind? Rich enough to have his own happy home and
+his own household gods--and household goddess, too, perhaps?"
+
+That was quite another thing, I said. We must all agree in that.
+
+"To be sure," said my guardian. "All of us. I have a great regard for
+Woodcourt, a high esteem for him; and I have been sounding him
+delicately about his plans. It is difficult to offer aid to an
+independent man with that just kind of pride which he possesses. And
+yet I would be glad to do it if I might or if I knew how. He seems
+half inclined for another voyage. But that appears like casting such
+a man away."
+
+"It might open a new world to him," said I.
+
+"So it might, little woman," my guardian assented. "I doubt if he
+expects much of the old world. Do you know I have fancied that he
+sometimes feels some particular disappointment or misfortune
+encountered in it. You never heard of anything of that sort?"
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"Humph," said my guardian. "I am mistaken, I dare say." As there was
+a little pause here, which I thought, for my dear girl's
+satisfaction, had better be filled up, I hummed an air as I worked
+which was a favourite with my guardian.
+
+"And do you think Mr. Woodcourt will make another voyage?" I asked
+him when I had hummed it quietly all through.
+
+"I don't quite know what to think, my dear, but I should say it was
+likely at present that he will give a long trip to another country."
+
+"I am sure he will take the best wishes of all our hearts with him
+wherever he goes," said I; "and though they are not riches, he will
+never be the poorer for them, guardian, at least."
+
+"Never, little woman," he replied.
+
+I was sitting in my usual place, which was now beside my guardian's
+chair. That had not been my usual place before the letter, but it was
+now. I looked up to Ada, who was sitting opposite, and I saw, as she
+looked at me, that her eyes were filled with tears and that tears
+were falling down her face. I felt that I had only to be placid and
+merry once for all to undeceive my dear and set her loving heart at
+rest. I really was so, and I had nothing to do but to be myself.
+
+So I made my sweet girl lean upon my shoulder--how little thinking
+what was heavy on her mind!--and I said she was not quite well, and
+put my arm about her, and took her upstairs. When we were in our own
+room, and when she might perhaps have told me what I was so
+unprepared to hear, I gave her no encouragement to confide in me; I
+never thought she stood in need of it.
+
+"Oh, my dear good Esther," said Ada, "if I could only make up my mind
+to speak to you and my cousin John when you are together!"
+
+"Why, my love!" I remonstrated. "Ada, why should you not speak to
+us!"
+
+Ada only dropped her head and pressed me closer to her heart.
+
+"You surely don't forget, my beauty," said I, smiling, "what quiet,
+old-fashioned people we are and how I have settled down to be the
+discreetest of dames? You don't forget how happily and peacefully my
+life is all marked out for me, and by whom? I am certain that you
+don't forget by what a noble character, Ada. That can never be."
+
+"No, never, Esther."
+
+"Why then, my dear," said I, "there can be nothing amiss--and why
+should you not speak to us?"
+
+"Nothing amiss, Esther?" returned Ada. "Oh, when I think of all these
+years, and of his fatherly care and kindness, and of the old
+relations among us, and of you, what shall I do, what shall I do!"
+
+I looked at my child in some wonder, but I thought it better not to
+answer otherwise than by cheering her, and so I turned off into many
+little recollections of our life together and prevented her from
+saying more. When she lay down to sleep, and not before, I returned
+to my guardian to say good night, and then I came back to Ada and sat
+near her for a little while.
+
+She was asleep, and I thought as I looked at her that she was a
+little changed. I had thought so more than once lately. I could not
+decide, even looking at her while she was unconscious, how she was
+changed, but something in the familiar beauty of her face looked
+different to me. My guardian's old hopes of her and Richard arose
+sorrowfully in my mind, and I said to myself, "She has been anxious
+about him," and I wondered how that love would end.
+
+When I had come home from Caddy's while she was ill, I had often
+found Ada at work, and she had always put her work away, and I had
+never known what it was. Some of it now lay in a drawer near her,
+which was not quite closed. I did not open the drawer, but I still
+rather wondered what the work could be, for it was evidently nothing
+for herself.
+
+And I noticed as I kissed my dear that she lay with one hand under
+her pillow so that it was hidden.
+
+How much less amiable I must have been than they thought me, how much
+less amiable than I thought myself, to be so preoccupied with my own
+cheerfulness and contentment as to think that it only rested with me
+to put my dear girl right and set her mind at peace!
+
+But I lay down, self-deceived, in that belief. And I awoke in it next
+day to find that there was still the same shade between me and my
+darling.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI
+
+Enlightened
+
+
+When Mr. Woodcourt arrived in London, he went, that very same day, to
+Mr. Vholes's in Symond's Inn. For he never once, from the moment when
+I entreated him to be a friend to Richard, neglected or forgot his
+promise. He had told me that he accepted the charge as a sacred
+trust, and he was ever true to it in that spirit.
+
+He found Mr. Vholes in his office and informed Mr. Vholes of his
+agreement with Richard that he should call there to learn his
+address.
+
+"Just so, sir," said Mr. Vholes. "Mr. C.'s address is not a hundred
+miles from here, sir, Mr. C.'s address is not a hundred miles from
+here. Would you take a seat, sir?"
+
+Mr. Woodcourt thanked Mr. Vholes, but he had no business with him
+beyond what he had mentioned.
+
+"Just so, sir. I believe, sir," said Mr. Vholes, still quietly
+insisting on the seat by not giving the address, "that you have
+influence with Mr. C. Indeed I am aware that you have."
+
+"I was not aware of it myself," returned Mr. Woodcourt; "but I
+suppose you know best."
+
+"Sir," rejoined Mr. Vholes, self-contained as usual, voice and all,
+"it is a part of my professional duty to know best. It is a part of
+my professional duty to study and to understand a gentleman who
+confides his interests to me. In my professional duty I shall not be
+wanting, sir, if I know it. I may, with the best intentions, be
+wanting in it without knowing it; but not if I know it, sir."
+
+Mr. Woodcourt again mentioned the address.
+
+"Give me leave, sir," said Mr. Vholes. "Bear with me for a moment.
+Sir, Mr. C. is playing for a considerable stake, and cannot play
+without--need I say what?"
+
+"Money, I presume?"
+
+"Sir," said Mr. Vholes, "to be honest with you (honesty being my
+golden rule, whether I gain by it or lose, and I find that I
+generally lose), money is the word. Now, sir, upon the chances of Mr.
+C.'s game I express to you no opinion, NO opinion. It might be highly
+impolitic in Mr. C., after playing so long and so high, to leave off;
+it might be the reverse; I say nothing. No, sir," said Mr. Vholes,
+bringing his hand flat down upon his desk in a positive manner,
+"nothing."
+
+"You seem to forget," returned Mr. Woodcourt, "that I ask you to say
+nothing and have no interest in anything you say."
+
+"Pardon me, sir!" retorted Mr. Vholes. "You do yourself an injustice.
+No, sir! Pardon me! You shall not--shall not in my office, if I know
+it--do yourself an injustice. You are interested in anything, and in
+everything, that relates to your friend. I know human nature much
+better, sir, than to admit for an instant that a gentleman of your
+appearance is not interested in whatever concerns his friend."
+
+"Well," replied Mr. Woodcourt, "that may be. I am particularly
+interested in his address."
+
+"The number, sir," said Mr. Vholes parenthetically, "I believe I have
+already mentioned. If Mr. C. is to continue to play for this
+considerable stake, sir, he must have funds. Understand me! There are
+funds in hand at present. I ask for nothing; there are funds in hand.
+But for the onward play, more funds must be provided, unless Mr. C.
+is to throw away what he has already ventured, which is wholly and
+solely a point for his consideration. This, sir, I take the
+opportunity of stating openly to you as the friend of Mr. C. Without
+funds I shall always be happy to appear and act for Mr. C. to the
+extent of all such costs as are safe to be allowed out of the estate,
+not beyond that. I could not go beyond that, sir, without wronging
+some one. I must either wrong my three dear girls or my venerable
+father, who is entirely dependent on me, in the Vale of Taunton; or
+some one. Whereas, sir, my resolution is (call it weakness or folly
+if you please) to wrong no one."
+
+Mr. Woodcourt rather sternly rejoined that he was glad to hear it.
+
+"I wish, sir," said Mr. Vholes, "to leave a good name behind me.
+Therefore I take every opportunity of openly stating to a friend of
+Mr. C. how Mr. C. is situated. As to myself, sir, the labourer is
+worthy of his hire. If I undertake to put my shoulder to the wheel, I
+do it, and I earn what I get. I am here for that purpose. My name is
+painted on the door outside, with that object."
+
+"And Mr. Carstone's address, Mr. Vholes?"
+
+"Sir," returned Mr. Vholes, "as I believe I have already mentioned,
+it is next door. On the second story you will find Mr. C.'s
+apartments. Mr. C. desires to be near his professional adviser, and I
+am far from objecting, for I court inquiry."
+
+Upon this Mr. Woodcourt wished Mr. Vholes good day and went in search
+of Richard, the change in whose appearance he began to understand now
+but too well.
+
+He found him in a dull room, fadedly furnished, much as I had found
+him in his barrack-room but a little while before, except that he was
+not writing but was sitting with a book before him, from which his
+eyes and thoughts were far astray. As the door chanced to be standing
+open, Mr. Woodcourt was in his presence for some moments without
+being perceived, and he told me that he never could forget the
+haggardness of his face and the dejection of his manner before he was
+aroused from his dream.
+
+"Woodcourt, my dear fellow," cried Richard, starting up with extended
+hands, "you come upon my vision like a ghost."
+
+"A friendly one," he replied, "and only waiting, as they say ghosts
+do, to be addressed. How does the mortal world go?" They were seated
+now, near together.
+
+"Badly enough, and slowly enough," said Richard, "speaking at least
+for my part of it."
+
+"What part is that?"
+
+"The Chancery part."
+
+"I never heard," returned Mr. Woodcourt, shaking his head, "of its
+going well yet."
+
+"Nor I," said Richard moodily. "Who ever did?" He brightened again in
+a moment and said with his natural openness, "Woodcourt, I should be
+sorry to be misunderstood by you, even if I gained by it in your
+estimation. You must know that I have done no good this long time. I
+have not intended to do much harm, but I seem to have been capable of
+nothing else. It may be that I should have done better by keeping out
+of the net into which my destiny has worked me, but I think not,
+though I dare say you will soon hear, if you have not already heard,
+a very different opinion. To make short of a long story, I am afraid
+I have wanted an object; but I have an object now--or it has me--and
+it is too late to discuss it. Take me as I am, and make the best of
+me."
+
+"A bargain," said Mr. Woodcourt. "Do as much by me in return."
+
+"Oh! You," returned Richard, "you can pursue your art for its own
+sake, and can put your hand upon the plough and never turn, and can
+strike a purpose out of anything. You and I are very different
+creatures."
+
+He spoke regretfully and lapsed for a moment into his weary
+condition.
+
+"Well, well!" he cried, shaking it off. "Everything has an end. We
+shall see! So you will take me as I am, and make the best of me?"
+
+"Aye! Indeed I will." They shook hands upon it laughingly, but in
+deep earnestness. I can answer for one of them with my heart of
+hearts.
+
+"You come as a godsend," said Richard, "for I have seen nobody here
+yet but Vholes. Woodcourt, there is one subject I should like to
+mention, for once and for all, in the beginning of our treaty. You
+can hardly make the best of me if I don't. You know, I dare say, that
+I have an attachment to my cousin Ada?"
+
+Mr. Woodcourt replied that I had hinted as much to him. "Now pray,"
+returned Richard, "don't think me a heap of selfishness. Don't
+suppose that I am splitting my head and half breaking my heart over
+this miserable Chancery suit for my own rights and interests alone.
+Ada's are bound up with mine; they can't be separated; Vholes works
+for both of us. Do think of that!"
+
+He was so very solicitous on this head that Mr. Woodcourt gave him
+the strongest assurances that he did him no injustice.
+
+"You see," said Richard, with something pathetic in his manner of
+lingering on the point, though it was off-hand and unstudied, "to an
+upright fellow like you, bringing a friendly face like yours here, I
+cannot bear the thought of appearing selfish and mean. I want to see
+Ada righted, Woodcourt, as well as myself; I want to do my utmost to
+right her, as well as myself; I venture what I can scrape together to
+extricate her, as well as myself. Do, I beseech you, think of that!"
+
+Afterwards, when Mr. Woodcourt came to reflect on what had passed, he
+was so very much impressed by the strength of Richard's anxiety on
+this point that in telling me generally of his first visit to
+Symond's Inn he particularly dwelt upon it. It revived a fear I had
+had before that my dear girl's little property would be absorbed by
+Mr. Vholes and that Richard's justification to himself would be
+sincerely this. It was just as I began to take care of Caddy that the
+interview took place, and I now return to the time when Caddy had
+recovered and the shade was still between me and my darling.
+
+I proposed to Ada that morning that we should go and see Richard. It
+a little surprised me to find that she hesitated and was not so
+radiantly willing as I had expected.
+
+"My dear," said I, "you have not had any difference with Richard
+since I have been so much away?"
+
+"No, Esther."
+
+"Not heard of him, perhaps?" said I.
+
+"Yes, I have heard of him," said Ada.
+
+Such tears in her eyes, and such love in her face. I could not make
+my darling out. Should I go to Richard's by myself? I said. No, Ada
+thought I had better not go by myself. Would she go with me? Yes, Ada
+thought she had better go with me. Should we go now? Yes, let us go
+now. Well, I could not understand my darling, with the tears in her
+eyes and the love in her face!
+
+We were soon equipped and went out. It was a sombre day, and drops of
+chill rain fell at intervals. It was one of those colourless days
+when everything looks heavy and harsh. The houses frowned at us, the
+dust rose at us, the smoke swooped at us, nothing made any compromise
+about itself or wore a softened aspect. I fancied my beautiful girl
+quite out of place in the rugged streets, and I thought there were
+more funerals passing along the dismal pavements than I had ever seen
+before.
+
+We had first to find out Symond's Inn. We were going to inquire in a
+shop when Ada said she thought it was near Chancery Lane. "We are not
+likely to be far out, my love, if we go in that direction," said I.
+So to Chancery Lane we went, and there, sure enough, we saw it
+written up. Symond's Inn.
+
+We had next to find out the number. "Or Mr. Vholes's office will do,"
+I recollected, "for Mr. Vholes's office is next door." Upon which Ada
+said, perhaps that was Mr. Vholes's office in the corner there. And
+it really was.
+
+Then came the question, which of the two next doors? I was going for
+the one, and my darling was going for the other; and my darling was
+right again. So up we went to the second story, when we came to
+Richard's name in great white letters on a hearse-like panel.
+
+I should have knocked, but Ada said perhaps we had better turn the
+handle and go in. Thus we came to Richard, poring over a table
+covered with dusty bundles of papers which seemed to me like dusty
+mirrors reflecting his own mind. Wherever I looked I saw the ominous
+words that ran in it repeated. Jarndyce and Jarndyce.
+
+He received us very affectionately, and we sat down. "If you had come
+a little earlier," he said, "you would have found Woodcourt here.
+There never was such a good fellow as Woodcourt is. He finds time to
+look in between-whiles, when anybody else with half his work to do
+would be thinking about not being able to come. And he is so cheery,
+so fresh, so sensible, so earnest, so--everything that I am not, that
+the place brightens whenever he comes, and darkens whenever he goes
+again."
+
+"God bless him," I thought, "for his truth to me!"
+
+"He is not so sanguine, Ada," continued Richard, casting his dejected
+look over the bundles of papers, "as Vholes and I are usually, but he
+is only an outsider and is not in the mysteries. We have gone into
+them, and he has not. He can't be expected to know much of such a
+labyrinth."
+
+As his look wandered over the papers again and he passed his two
+hands over his head, I noticed how sunken and how large his eyes
+appeared, how dry his lips were, and how his finger-nails were all
+bitten away.
+
+"Is this a healthy place to live in, Richard, do you think?" said I.
+
+"Why, my dear Minerva," answered Richard with his old gay laugh, "it
+is neither a rural nor a cheerful place; and when the sun shines
+here, you may lay a pretty heavy wager that it is shining brightly in
+an open spot. But it's well enough for the time. It's near the
+offices and near Vholes."
+
+"Perhaps," I hinted, "a change from both--"
+
+"Might do me good?" said Richard, forcing a laugh as he finished the
+sentence. "I shouldn't wonder! But it can only come in one way
+now--in one of two ways, I should rather say. Either the suit must be
+ended, Esther, or the suitor. But it shall be the suit, my dear girl,
+the suit, my dear girl!"
+
+These latter words were addressed to Ada, who was sitting nearest to
+him. Her face being turned away from me and towards him, I could not
+see it.
+
+"We are doing very well," pursued Richard. "Vholes will tell you so.
+We are really spinning along. Ask Vholes. We are giving them no rest.
+Vholes knows all their windings and turnings, and we are upon them
+everywhere. We have astonished them already. We shall rouse up that
+nest of sleepers, mark my words!"
+
+His hopefulness had long been more painful to me than his
+despondency; it was so unlike hopefulness, had something so fierce in
+its determination to be it, was so hungry and eager, and yet so
+conscious of being forced and unsustainable that it had long touched
+me to the heart. But the commentary upon it now indelibly written in
+his handsome face made it far more distressing than it used to be. I
+say indelibly, for I felt persuaded that if the fatal cause could
+have been for ever terminated, according to his brightest visions, in
+that same hour, the traces of the premature anxiety, self-reproach,
+and disappointment it had occasioned him would have remained upon his
+features to the hour of his death.
+
+"The sight of our dear little woman," said Richard, Ada still
+remaining silent and quiet, "is so natural to me, and her
+compassionate face is so like the face of old days--"
+
+Ah! No, no. I smiled and shook my head.
+
+"--So exactly like the face of old days," said Richard in his cordial
+voice, and taking my hand with the brotherly regard which nothing
+ever changed, "that I can't make pretences with her. I fluctuate a
+little; that's the truth. Sometimes I hope, my dear, and sometimes
+I--don't quite despair, but nearly. I get," said Richard,
+relinquishing my hand gently and walking across the room, "so tired!"
+
+He took a few turns up and down and sunk upon the sofa. "I get," he
+repeated gloomily, "so tired. It is such weary, weary work!"
+
+He was leaning on his arm saying these words in a meditative voice
+and looking at the ground when my darling rose, put off her bonnet,
+kneeled down beside him with her golden hair falling like sunlight on
+his head, clasped her two arms round his neck, and turned her face to
+me. Oh, what a loving and devoted face I saw!
+
+"Esther, dear," she said very quietly, "I am not going home again."
+
+A light shone in upon me all at once.
+
+"Never any more. I am going to stay with my dear husband. We have
+been married above two months. Go home without me, my own Esther; I
+shall never go home any more!" With those words my darling drew his
+head down on her breast and held it there. And if ever in my life I
+saw a love that nothing but death could change, I saw it then before
+me.
+
+"Speak to Esther, my dearest," said Richard, breaking the silence
+presently. "Tell her how it was."
+
+I met her before she could come to me and folded her in my arms. We
+neither of us spoke, but with her cheek against my own I wanted to
+hear nothing. "My pet," said I. "My love. My poor, poor girl!" I
+pitied her so much. I was very fond of Richard, but the impulse that
+I had upon me was to pity her so much.
+
+"Esther, will you forgive me? Will my cousin John forgive me?"
+
+"My dear," said I, "to doubt it for a moment is to do him a great
+wrong. And as to me!" Why, as to me, what had I to forgive!
+
+I dried my sobbing darling's eyes and sat beside her on the sofa, and
+Richard sat on my other side; and while I was reminded of that so
+different night when they had first taken me into their confidence
+and had gone on in their own wild happy way, they told me between
+them how it was.
+
+"All I had was Richard's," Ada said; "and Richard would not take it,
+Esther, and what could I do but be his wife when I loved him dearly!"
+
+"And you were so fully and so kindly occupied, excellent Dame
+Durden," said Richard, "that how could we speak to you at such a
+time! And besides, it was not a long-considered step. We went out one
+morning and were married."
+
+"And when it was done, Esther," said my darling, "I was always
+thinking how to tell you and what to do for the best. And sometimes I
+thought you ought to know it directly, and sometimes I thought you
+ought not to know it and keep it from my cousin John; and I could not
+tell what to do, and I fretted very much."
+
+How selfish I must have been not to have thought of this before! I
+don't know what I said now. I was so sorry, and yet I was so fond of
+them and so glad that they were fond of me; I pitied them so much,
+and yet I felt a kind of pride in their loving one another. I never
+had experienced such painful and pleasurable emotion at one time, and
+in my own heart I did not know which predominated. But I was not
+there to darken their way; I did not do that.
+
+When I was less foolish and more composed, my darling took her
+wedding-ring from her bosom, and kissed it, and put it on. Then I
+remembered last night and told Richard that ever since her marriage
+she had worn it at night when there was no one to see. Then Ada
+blushingly asked me how did I know that, my dear. Then I told Ada how
+I had seen her hand concealed under her pillow and had little thought
+why, my dear. Then they began telling me how it was all over again,
+and I began to be sorry and glad again, and foolish again, and to
+hide my plain old face as much as I could lest I should put them out
+of heart.
+
+Thus the time went on until it became necessary for me to think of
+returning. When that time arrived it was the worst of all, for then
+my darling completely broke down. She clung round my neck, calling me
+by every dear name she could think of and saying what should she do
+without me! Nor was Richard much better; and as for me, I should have
+been the worst of the three if I had not severely said to myself,
+"Now Esther, if you do, I'll never speak to you again!"
+
+"Why, I declare," said I, "I never saw such a wife. I don't think she
+loves her husband at all. Here, Richard, take my child, for goodness'
+sake." But I held her tight all the while, and could have wept over
+her I don't know how long.
+
+"I give this dear young couple notice," said I, "that I am only going
+away to come back to-morrow and that I shall be always coming
+backwards and forwards until Symond's Inn is tired of the sight of
+me. So I shall not say good-bye, Richard. For what would be the use
+of that, you know, when I am coming back so soon!"
+
+I had given my darling to him now, and I meant to go; but I lingered
+for one more look of the precious face which it seemed to rive my
+heart to turn from.
+
+So I said (in a merry, bustling manner) that unless they gave me some
+encouragement to come back, I was not sure that I could take that
+liberty, upon which my dear girl looked up, faintly smiling through
+her tears, and I folded her lovely face between my hands, and gave it
+one last kiss, and laughed, and ran away.
+
+And when I got downstairs, oh, how I cried! It almost seemed to me
+that I had lost my Ada for ever. I was so lonely and so blank without
+her, and it was so desolate to be going home with no hope of seeing
+her there, that I could get no comfort for a little while as I walked
+up and down in a dim corner sobbing and crying.
+
+I came to myself by and by, after a little scolding, and took a coach
+home. The poor boy whom I had found at St. Albans had reappeared a
+short time before and was lying at the point of death; indeed, was
+then dead, though I did not know it. My guardian had gone out to
+inquire about him and did not return to dinner. Being quite alone, I
+cried a little again, though on the whole I don't think I behaved so
+very, very ill.
+
+It was only natural that I should not be quite accustomed to the loss
+of my darling yet. Three or four hours were not a long time after
+years. But my mind dwelt so much upon the uncongenial scene in which
+I had left her, and I pictured it as such an overshadowed
+stony-hearted one, and I so longed to be near her and taking some
+sort of care of her, that I determined to go back in the evening only
+to look up at her windows.
+
+It was foolish, I dare say, but it did not then seem at all so to me,
+and it does not seem quite so even now. I took Charley into my
+confidence, and we went out at dusk. It was dark when we came to the
+new strange home of my dear girl, and there was a light behind the
+yellow blinds. We walked past cautiously three or four times, looking
+up, and narrowly missed encountering Mr. Vholes, who came out of his
+office while we were there and turned his head to look up too before
+going home. The sight of his lank black figure and the lonesome air
+of that nook in the dark were favourable to the state of my mind. I
+thought of the youth and love and beauty of my dear girl, shut up in
+such an ill-assorted refuge, almost as if it were a cruel place.
+
+It was very solitary and very dull, and I did not doubt that I might
+safely steal upstairs. I left Charley below and went up with a light
+foot, not distressed by any glare from the feeble oil lanterns on the
+way. I listened for a few moments, and in the musty rotting silence
+of the house believed that I could hear the murmur of their young
+voices. I put my lips to the hearse-like panel of the door as a kiss
+for my dear and came quietly down again, thinking that one of these
+days I would confess to the visit.
+
+And it really did me good, for though nobody but Charley and I knew
+anything about it, I somehow felt as if it had diminished the
+separation between Ada and me and had brought us together again for
+those moments. I went back, not quite accustomed yet to the change,
+but all the better for that hovering about my darling.
+
+My guardian had come home and was standing thoughtfully by the dark
+window. When I went in, his face cleared and he came to his seat, but
+he caught the light upon my face as I took mine.
+
+"Little woman," said he, "You have been crying."
+
+"Why, yes, guardian," said I, "I am afraid I have been, a little. Ada
+has been in such distress, and is so very sorry, guardian."
+
+I put my arm on the back of his chair, and I saw in his glance that
+my words and my look at her empty place had prepared him.
+
+"Is she married, my dear?"
+
+I told him all about it and how her first entreaties had referred to
+his forgiveness.
+
+"She has no need of it," said he. "Heaven bless her and her husband!"
+But just as my first impulse had been to pity her, so was his. "Poor
+girl, poor girl! Poor Rick! Poor Ada!"
+
+Neither of us spoke after that, until he said with a sigh, "Well,
+well, my dear! Bleak House is thinning fast."
+
+"But its mistress remains, guardian." Though I was timid about saying
+it, I ventured because of the sorrowful tone in which he had spoken.
+"She will do all she can to make it happy," said I.
+
+"She will succeed, my love!"
+
+The letter had made no difference between us except that the seat by
+his side had come to be mine; it made none now. He turned his old
+bright fatherly look upon me, laid his hand on my hand in his old
+way, and said again, "She will succeed, my dear. Nevertheless, Bleak
+House is thinning fast, O little woman!"
+
+I was sorry presently that this was all we said about that. I was
+rather disappointed. I feared I might not quite have been all I had
+meant to be since the letter and the answer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII
+
+Obstinacy
+
+
+But one other day had intervened when, early in the morning as we
+were going to breakfast, Mr. Woodcourt came in haste with the
+astounding news that a terrible murder had been committed for which
+Mr. George had been apprehended and was in custody. When he told us
+that a large reward was offered by Sir Leicester Dedlock for the
+murderer's apprehension, I did not in my first consternation
+understand why; but a few more words explained to me that the
+murdered person was Sir Leicester's lawyer, and immediately my
+mother's dread of him rushed into my remembrance.
+
+This unforeseen and violent removal of one whom she had long watched
+and distrusted and who had long watched and distrusted her, one for
+whom she could have had few intervals of kindness, always dreading in
+him a dangerous and secret enemy, appeared so awful that my first
+thoughts were of her. How appalling to hear of such a death and be
+able to feel no pity! How dreadful to remember, perhaps, that she had
+sometimes even wished the old man away who was so swiftly hurried out
+of life!
+
+Such crowding reflections, increasing the distress and fear I always
+felt when the name was mentioned, made me so agitated that I could
+scarcely hold my place at the table. I was quite unable to follow the
+conversation until I had had a little time to recover. But when I
+came to myself and saw how shocked my guardian was and found that
+they were earnestly speaking of the suspected man and recalling every
+favourable impression we had formed of him out of the good we had
+known of him, my interest and my fears were so strongly aroused in
+his behalf that I was quite set up again.
+
+"Guardian, you don't think it possible that he is justly accused?"
+
+"My dear, I CAN'T think so. This man whom we have seen so
+open-hearted and compassionate, who with the might of a giant has the
+gentleness of a child, who looks as brave a fellow as ever lived and
+is so simple and quiet with it, this man justly accused of such a
+crime? I can't believe it. It's not that I don't or I won't. I
+can't!"
+
+"And I can't," said Mr. Woodcourt. "Still, whatever we believe or
+know of him, we had better not forget that some appearances are
+against him. He bore an animosity towards the deceased gentleman. He
+has openly mentioned it in many places. He is said to have expressed
+himself violently towards him, and he certainly did about him, to my
+knowledge. He admits that he was alone on the scene of the murder
+within a few minutes of its commission. I sincerely believe him to be
+as innocent of any participation in it as I am, but these are all
+reasons for suspicion falling upon him."
+
+"True," said my guardian. And he added, turning to me, "It would be
+doing him a very bad service, my dear, to shut our eyes to the truth
+in any of these respects."
+
+I felt, of course, that we must admit, not only to ourselves but to
+others, the full force of the circumstances against him. Yet I knew
+withal (I could not help saying) that their weight would not induce
+us to desert him in his need.
+
+"Heaven forbid!" returned my guardian. "We will stand by him, as he
+himself stood by the two poor creatures who are gone." He meant Mr.
+Gridley and the boy, to both of whom Mr. George had given shelter.
+
+Mr. Woodcourt then told us that the trooper's man had been with him
+before day, after wandering about the streets all night like a
+distracted creature. That one of the trooper's first anxieties was
+that we should not suppose him guilty. That he had charged his
+messenger to represent his perfect innocence with every solemn
+assurance he could send us. That Mr. Woodcourt had only quieted the
+man by undertaking to come to our house very early in the morning
+with these representations. He added that he was now upon his way to
+see the prisoner himself.
+
+My guardian said directly he would go too. Now, besides that I liked
+the retired soldier very much and that he liked me, I had that secret
+interest in what had happened which was only known to my guardian. I
+felt as if it came close and near to me. It seemed to become
+personally important to myself that the truth should be discovered
+and that no innocent people should be suspected, for suspicion, once
+run wild, might run wilder.
+
+In a word, I felt as if it were my duty and obligation to go with
+them. My guardian did not seek to dissuade me, and I went.
+
+It was a large prison with many courts and passages so like one
+another and so uniformly paved that I seemed to gain a new
+comprehension, as I passed along, of the fondness that solitary
+prisoners, shut up among the same staring walls from year to year,
+have had--as I have read--for a weed or a stray blade of grass. In an
+arched room by himself, like a cellar upstairs, with walls so
+glaringly white that they made the massive iron window-bars and
+iron-bound door even more profoundly black than they were, we found
+the trooper standing in a corner. He had been sitting on a bench
+there and had risen when he heard the locks and bolts turn.
+
+When he saw us, he came forward a step with his usual heavy tread,
+and there stopped and made a slight bow. But as I still advanced,
+putting out my hand to him, he understood us in a moment.
+
+"This is a load off my mind, I do assure you, miss and gentlemen,"
+said he, saluting us with great heartiness and drawing a long breath.
+"And now I don't so much care how it ends."
+
+He scarcely seemed to be the prisoner. What with his coolness and his
+soldierly bearing, he looked far more like the prison guard.
+
+"This is even a rougher place than my gallery to receive a lady in,"
+said Mr. George, "but I know Miss Summerson will make the best of
+it." As he handed me to the bench on which he had been sitting, I sat
+down, which seemed to give him great satisfaction.
+
+"I thank you, miss," said he.
+
+"Now, George," observed my guardian, "as we require no new assurances
+on your part, so I believe we need give you none on ours."
+
+"Not at all, sir. I thank you with all my heart. If I was not
+innocent of this crime, I couldn't look at you and keep my secret to
+myself under the condescension of the present visit. I feel the
+present visit very much. I am not one of the eloquent sort, but I
+feel it, Miss Summerson and gentlemen, deeply."
+
+He laid his hand for a moment on his broad chest and bent his head to
+us. Although he squared himself again directly, he expressed a great
+amount of natural emotion by these simple means.
+
+"First," said my guardian, "can we do anything for your personal
+comfort, George?"
+
+"For which, sir?" he inquired, clearing his throat.
+
+"For your personal comfort. Is there anything you want that would
+lessen the hardship of this confinement?"
+
+"Well, sir," replied George, after a little cogitation, "I am equally
+obliged to you, but tobacco being against the rules, I can't say that
+there is."
+
+"You will think of many little things perhaps, by and by. Whenever
+you do, George, let us know."
+
+"Thank you, sir. Howsoever," observed Mr. George with one of his
+sunburnt smiles, "a man who has been knocking about the world in a
+vagabond kind of a way as long as I have gets on well enough in a
+place like the present, so far as that goes."
+
+"Next, as to your case," observed my guardian.
+
+"Exactly so, sir," returned Mr. George, folding his arms upon his
+breast with perfect self-possession and a little curiosity.
+
+"How does it stand now?"
+
+"Why, sir, it is under remand at present. Bucket gives me to
+understand that he will probably apply for a series of remands from
+time to time until the case is more complete. How it is to be made
+more complete I don't myself see, but I dare say Bucket will manage
+it somehow."
+
+"Why, heaven save us, man," exclaimed my guardian, surprised into his
+old oddity and vehemence, "you talk of yourself as if you were
+somebody else!"
+
+"No offence, sir," said Mr. George. "I am very sensible of your
+kindness. But I don't see how an innocent man is to make up his mind
+to this kind of thing without knocking his head against the walls
+unless he takes it in that point of view.
+
+"That is true enough to a certain extent," returned my guardian,
+softened. "But my good fellow, even an innocent man must take
+ordinary precautions to defend himself."
+
+"Certainly, sir. And I have done so. I have stated to the
+magistrates, 'Gentlemen, I am as innocent of this charge as
+yourselves; what has been stated against me in the way of facts is
+perfectly true; I know no more about it.' I intend to continue
+stating that, sir. What more can I do? It's the truth."
+
+"But the mere truth won't do," rejoined my guardian.
+
+"Won't it indeed, sir? Rather a bad look-out for me!" Mr. George
+good-humouredly observed.
+
+"You must have a lawyer," pursued my guardian. "We must engage a good
+one for you."
+
+"I ask your pardon, sir," said Mr. George with a step backward. "I am
+equally obliged. But I must decidedly beg to be excused from anything
+of that sort."
+
+"You won't have a lawyer?"
+
+"No, sir." Mr. George shook his head in the most emphatic manner. "I
+thank you all the same, sir, but--no lawyer!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I don't take kindly to the breed," said Mr. George. "Gridley didn't.
+And--if you'll excuse my saying so much--I should hardly have thought
+you did yourself, sir."
+
+"That's equity," my guardian explained, a little at a loss; "that's
+equity, George."
+
+"Is it, indeed, sir?" returned the trooper in his off-hand manner. "I
+am not acquainted with those shades of names myself, but in a general
+way I object to the breed."
+
+Unfolding his arms and changing his position, he stood with one
+massive hand upon the table and the other on his hip, as complete a
+picture of a man who was not to be moved from a fixed purpose as ever
+I saw. It was in vain that we all three talked to him and endeavoured
+to persuade him; he listened with that gentleness which went so well
+with his bluff bearing, but was evidently no more shaken by our
+representations that his place of confinement was.
+
+"Pray think, once more, Mr. George," said I. "Have you no wish in
+reference to your case?"
+
+"I certainly could wish it to be tried, miss," he returned, "by
+court-martial; but that is out of the question, as I am well aware.
+If you will be so good as to favour me with your attention for a
+couple of minutes, miss, not more, I'll endeavour to explain myself
+as clearly as I can."
+
+He looked at us all three in turn, shook his head a little as if he
+were adjusting it in the stock and collar of a tight uniform, and
+after a moment's reflection went on.
+
+"You see, miss, I have been handcuffed and taken into custody and
+brought here. I am a marked and disgraced man, and here I am. My
+shooting gallery is rummaged, high and low, by Bucket; such property
+as I have--'tis small--is turned this way and that till it don't know
+itself; and (as aforesaid) here I am! I don't particular complain of
+that. Though I am in these present quarters through no immediately
+preceding fault of mine, I can very well understand that if I hadn't
+gone into the vagabond way in my youth, this wouldn't have happened.
+It HAS happened. Then comes the question how to meet it."
+
+He rubbed his swarthy forehead for a moment with a good-humoured look
+and said apologetically, "I am such a short-winded talker that I must
+think a bit." Having thought a bit, he looked up again and resumed.
+
+"How to meet it. Now, the unfortunate deceased was himself a lawyer
+and had a pretty tight hold of me. I don't wish to rake up his ashes,
+but he had, what I should call if he was living, a devil of a tight
+hold of me. I don't like his trade the better for that. If I had kept
+clear of his trade, I should have kept outside this place. But that's
+not what I mean. Now, suppose I had killed him. Suppose I really had
+discharged into his body any one of those pistols recently fired off
+that Bucket has found at my place, and dear me, might have found
+there any day since it has been my place. What should I have done as
+soon as I was hard and fast here? Got a lawyer."
+
+He stopped on hearing some one at the locks and bolts and did not
+resume until the door had been opened and was shut again. For what
+purpose opened, I will mention presently.
+
+"I should have got a lawyer, and he would have said (as I have often
+read in the newspapers), 'My client says nothing, my client reserves
+his defence': my client this, that, and t'other. Well, 'tis not the
+custom of that breed to go straight, according to my opinion, or to
+think that other men do. Say I am innocent and I get a lawyer. He
+would be as likely to believe me guilty as not; perhaps more. What
+would he do, whether or not? Act as if I was--shut my mouth up, tell
+me not to commit myself, keep circumstances back, chop the evidence
+small, quibble, and get me off perhaps! But, Miss Summerson, do I
+care for getting off in that way; or would I rather be hanged in my
+own way--if you'll excuse my mentioning anything so disagreeable to a
+lady?"
+
+He had warmed into his subject now, and was under no further
+necessity to wait a bit.
+
+"I would rather be hanged in my own way. And I mean to be! I don't
+intend to say," looking round upon us with his powerful arms akimbo
+and his dark eyebrows raised, "that I am more partial to being hanged
+than another man. What I say is, I must come off clear and full or
+not at all. Therefore, when I hear stated against me what is true, I
+say it's true; and when they tell me, 'whatever you say will be
+used,' I tell them I don't mind that; I mean it to be used. If they
+can't make me innocent out of the whole truth, they are not likely to
+do it out of anything less, or anything else. And if they are, it's
+worth nothing to me."
+
+Taking a pace or two over the stone floor, he came back to the table
+and finished what he had to say.
+
+"I thank you, miss and gentlemen both, many times for your attention,
+and many times more for your interest. That's the plain state of the
+matter as it points itself out to a mere trooper with a blunt
+broadsword kind of a mind. I have never done well in life beyond my
+duty as a soldier, and if the worst comes after all, I shall reap
+pretty much as I have sown. When I got over the first crash of being
+seized as a murderer--it don't take a rover who has knocked about so
+much as myself so very long to recover from a crash--I worked my way
+round to what you find me now. As such I shall remain. No relations
+will be disgraced by me or made unhappy for me, and--and that's all
+I've got to say."
+
+The door had been opened to admit another soldier-looking man of less
+prepossessing appearance at first sight and a weather-tanned,
+bright-eyed wholesome woman with a basket, who, from her entrance,
+had been exceedingly attentive to all Mr. George had said. Mr. George
+had received them with a familiar nod and a friendly look, but
+without any more particular greeting in the midst of his address. He
+now shook them cordially by the hand and said, "Miss Summerson and
+gentlemen, this is an old comrade of mine, Matthew Bagnet. And this
+is his wife, Mrs. Bagnet."
+
+Mr. Bagnet made us a stiff military bow, and Mrs. Bagnet dropped us a
+curtsy.
+
+"Real good friends of mine, they are," sald Mr. George. "It was at
+their house I was taken."
+
+"With a second-hand wiolinceller," Mr. Bagnet put in, twitching his
+head angrily. "Of a good tone. For a friend. That money was no object
+to."
+
+"Mat," said Mr. George, "you have heard pretty well all I have been
+saying to this lady and these two gentlemen. I know it meets your
+approval?"
+
+Mr. Bagnet, after considering, referred the point to his wife. "Old
+girl," said he. "Tell him. Whether or not. It meets my approval."
+
+"Why, George," exclaimed Mrs. Bagnet, who had been unpacking her
+basket, in which there was a piece of cold pickled pork, a little tea
+and sugar, and a brown loaf, "you ought to know it don't. You ought
+to know it's enough to drive a person wild to hear you. You won't be
+got off this way, and you won't be got off that way--what do you mean
+by such picking and choosing? It's stuff and nonsense, George."
+
+"Don't be severe upon me in my misfortunes, Mrs. Bagnet," said the
+trooper lightly.
+
+"Oh! Bother your misfortunes," cried Mrs. Bagnet, "if they don't make
+you more reasonable than that comes to. I never was so ashamed in my
+life to hear a man talk folly as I have been to hear you talk this
+day to the present company. Lawyers? Why, what but too many cooks
+should hinder you from having a dozen lawyers if the gentleman
+recommended them to you."
+
+"This is a very sensible woman," said my guardian. "I hope you will
+persuade him, Mrs. Bagnet."
+
+"Persuade him, sir?" she returned. "Lord bless you, no. You don't
+know George. Now, there!" Mrs. Bagnet left her basket to point him
+out with both her bare brown hands. "There he stands! As self-willed
+and as determined a man, in the wrong way, as ever put a human
+creature under heaven out of patience! You could as soon take up and
+shoulder an eight and forty pounder by your own strength as turn that
+man when he has got a thing into his head and fixed it there. Why,
+don't I know him!" cried Mrs. Bagnet. "Don't I know you, George! You
+don't mean to set up for a new character with ME after all these
+years, I hope?"
+
+Her friendly indignation had an exemplary effect upon her husband,
+who shook his head at the trooper several times as a silent
+recommendation to him to yield. Between whiles, Mrs. Bagnet looked at
+me; and I understood from the play of her eyes that she wished me to
+do something, though I did not comprehend what.
+
+"But I have given up talking to you, old fellow, years and years,"
+said Mrs. Bagnet as she blew a little dust off the pickled pork,
+looking at me again; "and when ladies and gentlemen know you as well
+as I do, they'll give up talking to you too. If you are not too
+headstrong to accept of a bit of dinner, here it is."
+
+"I accept it with many thanks," returned the trooper.
+
+"Do you though, indeed?" said Mrs. Bagnet, continuing to grumble on
+good-humouredly. "I'm sure I'm surprised at that. I wonder you don't
+starve in your own way also. It would only be like you. Perhaps
+you'll set your mind upon THAT next." Here she again looked at me,
+and I now perceived from her glances at the door and at me, by turns,
+that she wished us to retire and to await her following us outside
+the prison. Communicating this by similar means to my guardian and
+Mr. Woodcourt, I rose.
+
+"We hope you will think better of it, Mr. George," said I, "and we
+shall come to see you again, trusting to find you more reasonable."
+
+"More grateful, Miss Summerson, you can't find me," he returned.
+
+"But more persuadable we can, I hope," said I. "And let me entreat
+you to consider that the clearing up of this mystery and the
+discovery of the real perpetrator of this deed may be of the last
+importance to others besides yourself."
+
+He heard me respectfully but without much heeding these words, which
+I spoke a little turned from him, already on my way to the door; he
+was observing (this they afterwards told me) my height and figure,
+which seemed to catch his attention all at once.
+
+"'Tis curious," said he. "And yet I thought so at the time!"
+
+My guardian asked him what he meant.
+
+"Why, sir," he answered, "when my ill fortune took me to the dead
+man's staircase on the night of his murder, I saw a shape so like
+Miss Summerson's go by me in the dark that I had half a mind to speak
+to it."
+
+For an instant I felt such a shudder as I never felt before or since
+and hope I shall never feel again.
+
+"It came downstairs as I went up," said the trooper, "and crossed the
+moonlighted window with a loose black mantle on; I noticed a deep
+fringe to it. However, it has nothing to do with the present subject,
+excepting that Miss Summerson looked so like it at the moment that it
+came into my head."
+
+I cannot separate and define the feelings that arose in me after
+this; it is enough that the vague duty and obligation I had felt upon
+me from the first of following the investigation was, without my
+distinctly daring to ask myself any question, increased, and that I
+was indignantly sure of there being no possibility of a reason for my
+being afraid.
+
+We three went out of the prison and walked up and down at some short
+distance from the gate, which was in a retired place. We had not
+waited long when Mr. and Mrs. Bagnet came out too and quickly joined
+us.
+
+There was a tear in each of Mrs. Bagnet's eyes, and her face was
+flushed and hurried. "I didn't let George see what I thought about
+it, you know, miss," was her first remark when she came up, "but he's
+in a bad way, poor old fellow!"
+
+"Not with care and prudence and good help," said my guardian.
+
+"A gentleman like you ought to know best, sir," returned Mrs. Bagnet,
+hurriedly drying her eyes on the hem of her grey cloak, "but I am
+uneasy for him. He has been so careless and said so much that he
+never meant. The gentlemen of the juries might not understand him as
+Lignum and me do. And then such a number of circumstances have
+happened bad for him, and such a number of people will be brought
+forward to speak against him, and Bucket is so deep."
+
+"With a second-hand wiolinceller. And said he played the fife. When a
+boy," Mr. Bagnet added with great solemnity.
+
+"Now, I tell you, miss," said Mrs. Bagnet; "and when I say miss, I
+mean all! Just come into the corner of the wall and I'll tell you!"
+
+Mrs. Bagnet hurried us into a more secluded place and was at first
+too breathless to proceed, occasioning Mr. Bagnet to say, "Old girl!
+Tell 'em!"
+
+"Why, then, miss," the old girl proceeded, untying the strings of her
+bonnet for more air, "you could as soon move Dover Castle as move
+George on this point unless you had got a new power to move him with.
+And I have got it!"
+
+"You are a jewel of a woman," said my guardian. "Go on!"
+
+"Now, I tell you, miss," she proceeded, clapping her hands in her
+hurry and agitation a dozen times in every sentence, "that what he
+says concerning no relations is all bosh. They don't know of him, but
+he does know of them. He has said more to me at odd times than to
+anybody else, and it warn't for nothing that he once spoke to my
+Woolwich about whitening and wrinkling mothers' heads. For fifty
+pounds he had seen his mother that day. She's alive and must be
+brought here straight!"
+
+Instantly Mrs. Bagnet put some pins into her mouth and began pinning
+up her skirts all round a little higher than the level of her grey
+cloak, which she accomplished with surpassing dispatch and dexterity.
+
+"Lignum," said Mrs. Bagnet, "you take care of the children, old man,
+and give me the umbrella! I'm away to Lincolnshire to bring that old
+lady here."
+
+"But, bless the woman," cried my guardian with his hand in his
+pocket, "how is she going? What money has she got?"
+
+Mrs. Bagnet made another application to her skirts and brought forth
+a leathern purse in which she hastily counted over a few shillings
+and which she then shut up with perfect satisfaction.
+
+"Never you mind for me, miss. I'm a soldier's wife and accustomed to
+travel my own way. Lignum, old boy," kissing him, "one for yourself,
+three for the children. Now I'm away into Lincolnshire after George's
+mother!"
+
+And she actually set off while we three stood looking at one another
+lost in amazement. She actually trudged away in her grey cloak at a
+sturdy pace, and turned the corner, and was gone.
+
+"Mr. Bagnet," said my guardian. "Do you mean to let her go in that
+way?"
+
+"Can't help it," he returned. "Made her way home once from another
+quarter of the world. With the same grey cloak. And same umbrella.
+Whatever the old girl says, do. Do it! Whenever the old girl says,
+I'LL do it. She does it."
+
+"Then she is as honest and genuine as she looks," rejoined my
+guardian, "and it is impossible to say more for her."
+
+"She's Colour-Sergeant of the Nonpareil battalion," said Mr. Bagnet,
+looking at us over his shoulder as he went his way also. "And there's
+not such another. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must
+be maintained."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII
+
+The Track
+
+
+Mr. Bucket and his fat forefinger are much in consultation together
+under existing circumstances. When Mr. Bucket has a matter of this
+pressing interest under his consideration, the fat forefinger seems
+to rise, to the dignity of a familiar demon. He puts it to his ears,
+and it whispers information; he puts it to his lips, and it enjoins
+him to secrecy; he rubs it over his nose, and it sharpens his scent;
+he shakes it before a guilty man, and it charms him to his
+destruction. The Augurs of the Detective Temple invariably predict
+that when Mr. Bucket and that finger are in much conference, a
+terrible avenger will be heard of before long.
+
+Otherwise mildly studious in his observation of human nature, on the
+whole a benignant philosopher not disposed to be severe upon the
+follies of mankind, Mr. Bucket pervades a vast number of houses and
+strolls about an infinity of streets, to outward appearance rather
+languishing for want of an object. He is in the friendliest condition
+towards his species and will drink with most of them. He is free with
+his money, affable in his manners, innocent in his conversation--but
+through the placid stream of his life there glides an under-current
+of forefinger.
+
+Time and place cannot bind Mr. Bucket. Like man in the abstract, he
+is here to-day and gone to-morrow--but, very unlike man indeed, he is
+here again the next day. This evening he will be casually looking
+into the iron extinguishers at the door of Sir Leicester Dedlock's
+house in town; and to-morrow morning he will be walking on the leads
+at Chesney Wold, where erst the old man walked whose ghost is
+propitiated with a hundred guineas. Drawers, desks, pockets, all
+things belonging to him, Mr. Bucket examines. A few hours afterwards,
+he and the Roman will be alone together comparing forefingers.
+
+It is likely that these occupations are irreconcilable with home
+enjoyment, but it is certain that Mr. Bucket at present does not go
+home. Though in general he highly appreciates the society of Mrs.
+Bucket--a lady of a natural detective genius, which if it had been
+improved by professional exercise, might have done great things, but
+which has paused at the level of a clever amateur--he holds himself
+aloof from that dear solace. Mrs. Bucket is dependent on their lodger
+(fortunately an amiable lady in whom she takes an interest) for
+companionship and conversation.
+
+A great crowd assembles in Lincoln's Inn Fields on the day of the
+funeral. Sir Leicester Dedlock attends the ceremony in person;
+strictly speaking, there are only three other human followers, that
+is to say, Lord Doodle, William Buffy, and the debilitated cousin
+(thrown in as a make-weight), but the amount of inconsolable
+carriages is immense. The peerage contributes more four-wheeled
+affliction than has ever been seen in that neighbourhood. Such is the
+assemblage of armorial bearings on coach panels that the Herald's
+College might be supposed to have lost its father and mother at a
+blow. The Duke of Foodle sends a splendid pile of dust and ashes,
+with silver wheel-boxes, patent axles, all the last improvements, and
+three bereaved worms, six feet high, holding on behind, in a bunch of
+woe. All the state coachmen in London seem plunged into mourning; and
+if that dead old man of the rusty garb be not beyond a taste in
+horseflesh (which appears impossible), it must be highly gratified
+this day.
+
+Quiet among the undertakers and the equipages and the calves of so
+many legs all steeped in grief, Mr. Bucket sits concealed in one of
+the inconsolable carriages and at his ease surveys the crowd through
+the lattice blinds. He has a keen eye for a crowd--as for what
+not?--and looking here and there, now from this side of the carriage,
+now from the other, now up at the house windows, now along the
+people's heads, nothing escapes him.
+
+"And there you are, my partner, eh?" says Mr. Bucket to himself,
+apostrophizing Mrs. Bucket, stationed, by his favour, on the steps of
+the deceased's house. "And so you are. And so you are! And very well
+indeed you are looking, Mrs. Bucket!"
+
+The procession has not started yet, but is waiting for the cause of
+its assemblage to be brought out. Mr. Bucket, in the foremost
+emblazoned carriage, uses his two fat forefingers to hold the lattice
+a hair's breadth open while he looks.
+
+And it says a great deal for his attachment, as a husband, that he is
+still occupied with Mrs. B. "There you are, my partner, eh?" he
+murmuringly repeats. "And our lodger with you. I'm taking notice of
+you, Mrs. Bucket; I hope you're all right in your health, my dear!"
+
+Not another word does Mr. Bucket say, but sits with most attentive
+eyes until the sacked depository of noble secrets is brought
+down--Where are all those secrets now? Does he keep them yet? Did
+they fly with him on that sudden journey?--and until the procession
+moves, and Mr. Bucket's view is changed. After which he composes
+himself for an easy ride and takes note of the fittings of the
+carriage in case he should ever find such knowledge useful.
+
+Contrast enough between Mr. Tulkinghorn shut up in his dark carriage
+and Mr. Bucket shut up in HIS. Between the immeasurable track of
+space beyond the little wound that has thrown the one into the fixed
+sleep which jolts so heavily over the stones of the streets, and the
+narrow track of blood which keeps the other in the watchful state
+expressed in every hair of his head! But it is all one to both;
+neither is troubled about that.
+
+Mr. Bucket sits out the procession in his own easy manner and glides
+from the carriage when the opportunity he has settled with himself
+arrives. He makes for Sir Leicester Dedlock's, which is at present a
+sort of home to him, where he comes and goes as he likes at all
+hours, where he is always welcome and made much of, where he knows
+the whole establishment, and walks in an atmosphere of mysterious
+greatness.
+
+No knocking or ringing for Mr. Bucket. He has caused himself to be
+provided with a key and can pass in at his pleasure. As he is
+crossing the hall, Mercury informs him, "Here's another letter for
+you, Mr. Bucket, come by post," and gives it him.
+
+"Another one, eh?" says Mr. Bucket.
+
+If Mercury should chance to be possessed by any lingering curiosity
+as to Mr. Bucket's letters, that wary person is not the man to
+gratify it. Mr. Bucket looks at him as if his face were a vista of
+some miles in length and he were leisurely contemplating the same.
+
+"Do you happen to carry a box?" says Mr. Bucket.
+
+Unfortunately Mercury is no snuff-taker.
+
+"Could you fetch me a pinch from anywheres?" says Mr. Bucket.
+"Thankee. It don't matter what it is; I'm not particular as to the
+kind. Thankee!"
+
+Having leisurely helped himself from a canister borrowed from
+somebody downstairs for the purpose, and having made a considerable
+show of tasting it, first with one side of his nose and then with the
+other, Mr. Bucket, with much deliberation, pronounces it of the right
+sort and goes on, letter in hand.
+
+Now although Mr. Bucket walks upstairs to the little library within
+the larger one with the face of a man who receives some scores of
+letters every day, it happens that much correspondence is not
+incidental to his life. He is no great scribe, rather handling his
+pen like the pocket-staff he carries about with him always convenient
+to his grasp, and discourages correspondence with himself in others
+as being too artless and direct a way of doing delicate business.
+Further, he often sees damaging letters produced in evidence and has
+occasion to reflect that it was a green thing to write them. For
+these reasons he has very little to do with letters, either as sender
+or receiver. And yet he has received a round half-dozen within the
+last twenty-four hours.
+
+"And this," says Mr. Bucket, spreading it out on the table, "is in
+the same hand, and consists of the same two words."
+
+What two words?
+
+He turns the key in the door, ungirdles his black pocket-book (book
+of fate to many), lays another letter by it, and reads, boldly
+written in each, "Lady Dedlock."
+
+"Yes, yes," says Mr. Bucket. "But I could have made the money without
+this anonymous information."
+
+Having put the letters in his book of fate and girdled it up again,
+he unlocks the door just in time to admit his dinner, which is
+brought upon a goodly tray with a decanter of sherry. Mr. Bucket
+frequently observes, in friendly circles where there is no restraint,
+that he likes a toothful of your fine old brown East Inder sherry
+better than anything you can offer him. Consequently he fills and
+empties his glass with a smack of his lips and is proceeding with his
+refreshment when an idea enters his mind.
+
+Mr. Bucket softly opens the door of communication between that room
+and the next and looks in. The library is deserted, and the fire is
+sinking low. Mr. Bucket's eye, after taking a pigeon-flight round the
+room, alights upon a table where letters are usually put as they
+arrive. Several letters for Sir Leicester are upon it. Mr. Bucket
+draws near and examines the directions. "No," he says, "there's none
+in that hand. It's only me as is written to. I can break it to Sir
+Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, to-morrow."
+
+With that he returns to finish his dinner with a good appetite, and
+after a light nap, is summoned into the drawing-room. Sir Leicester
+has received him there these several evenings past to know whether he
+has anything to report. The debilitated cousin (much exhausted by the
+funeral) and Volumnia are in attendance.
+
+Mr. Bucket makes three distinctly different bows to these three
+people. A bow of homage to Sir Leicester, a bow of gallantry to
+Volumnia, and a bow of recognition to the debilitated Cousin, to whom
+it airily says, "You are a swell about town, and you know me, and I
+know you." Having distributed these little specimens of his tact, Mr.
+Bucket rubs his hands.
+
+"Have you anything new to communicate, officer?" inquires Sir
+Leicester. "Do you wish to hold any conversation with me in private?"
+
+"Why--not to-night, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet."
+
+"Because my time," pursues Sir Leicester, "is wholly at your disposal
+with a view to the vindication of the outraged majesty of the law."
+
+Mr. Bucket coughs and glances at Volumnia, rouged and necklaced, as
+though he would respectfully observe, "I do assure you, you're a
+pretty creetur. I've seen hundreds worse looking at your time of
+life, I have indeed."
+
+The fair Volumnia, not quite unconscious perhaps of the humanizing
+influence of her charms, pauses in the writing of cocked-hat notes
+and meditatively adjusts the pearl necklace. Mr. Bucket prices that
+decoration in his mind and thinks it as likely as not that Volumnia
+is writing poetry.
+
+"If I have not," pursues Sir Leicester, "in the most emphatic manner,
+adjured you, officer, to exercise your utmost skill in this atrocious
+case, I particularly desire to take the present opportunity of
+rectifying any omission I may have made. Let no expense be a
+consideration. I am prepared to defray all charges. You can incur
+none in pursuit of the object you have undertaken that I shall
+hesitate for a moment to bear."
+
+Mr. Bucket made Sir Leicester's bow again as a response to this
+liberality.
+
+"My mind," Sir Leicester adds with a generous warmth, "has not, as
+may be easily supposed, recovered its tone since the late diabolical
+occurrence. It is not likely ever to recover its tone. But it is full
+of indignation to-night after undergoing the ordeal of consigning to
+the tomb the remains of a faithful, a zealous, a devoted adherent."
+
+Sir Leicester's voice trembles and his grey hair stirs upon his head.
+Tears are in his eyes; the best part of his nature is aroused.
+
+"I declare," he says, "I solemnly declare that until this crime is
+discovered and, in the course of justice, punished, I almost feel as
+if there were a stain upon my name. A gentleman who has devoted a
+large portion of his life to me, a gentleman who has devoted the last
+day of his life to me, a gentleman who has constantly sat at my table
+and slept under my roof, goes from my house to his own, and is struck
+down within an hour of his leaving my house. I cannot say but that he
+may have been followed from my house, watched at my house, even first
+marked because of his association with my house--which may have
+suggested his possessing greater wealth and being altogether of
+greater importance than his own retiring demeanour would have
+indicated. If I cannot with my means and influence and my position
+bring all the perpetrators of such a crime to light, I fail in the
+assertion of my respect for that gentleman's memory and of my
+fidelity towards one who was ever faithful to me."
+
+While he makes this protestation with great emotion and earnestness,
+looking round the room as if he were addressing an assembly, Mr.
+Bucket glances at him with an observant gravity in which there might
+be, but for the audacity of the thought, a touch of compassion.
+
+"The ceremony of to-day," continues Sir Leicester, "strikingly
+illustrative of the respect in which my deceased friend"--he lays a
+stress upon the word, for death levels all distinctions--"was held by
+the flower of the land, has, I say, aggravated the shock I have
+received from this most horrible and audacious crime. If it were my
+brother who had committed it, I would not spare him."
+
+Mr. Bucket looks very grave. Volumnia remarks of the deceased that he
+was the trustiest and dearest person!
+
+"You must feel it as a deprivation to you, miss," replies Mr. Bucket
+soothingly, "no doubt. He was calculated to BE a deprivation, I'm
+sure he was."
+
+Volumnia gives Mr. Bucket to understand, in reply, that her sensitive
+mind is fully made up never to get the better of it as long as she
+lives, that her nerves are unstrung for ever, and that she has not
+the least expectation of ever smiling again. Meanwhile she folds up a
+cocked hat for that redoubtable old general at Bath, descriptive of
+her melancholy condition.
+
+"It gives a start to a delicate female," says Mr. Bucket
+sympathetically, "but it'll wear off."
+
+Volumnia wishes of all things to know what is doing? Whether they are
+going to convict, or whatever it is, that dreadful soldier? Whether
+he had any accomplices, or whatever the thing is called in the law?
+And a great deal more to the like artless purpose.
+
+"Why you see, miss," returns Mr. Bucket, bringing the finger into
+persuasive action--and such is his natural gallantry that he had
+almost said "my dear"--"it ain't easy to answer those questions at
+the present moment. Not at the present moment. I've kept myself on
+this case, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," whom Mr. Bucket takes
+into the conversation in right of his importance, "morning, noon, and
+night. But for a glass or two of sherry, I don't think I could have
+had my mind so much upon the stretch as it has been. I COULD answer
+your questions, miss, but duty forbids it. Sir Leicester Dedlock,
+Baronet, will very soon be made acquainted with all that has been
+traced. And I hope that he may find it"--Mr. Bucket again looks
+grave--"to his satisfaction."
+
+The debilitated cousin only hopes some fler'll be executed--zample.
+Thinks more interest's wanted--get man hanged presentime--than get
+man place ten thousand a year. Hasn't a doubt--zample--far better
+hang wrong fler than no fler.
+
+"YOU know life, you know, sir," says Mr. Bucket with a complimentary
+twinkle of his eye and crook of his finger, "and you can confirm what
+I've mentioned to this lady. YOU don't want to be told that from
+information I have received I have gone to work. You're up to what a
+lady can't be expected to be up to. Lord! Especially in your elevated
+station of society, miss," says Mr. Bucket, quite reddening at
+another narrow escape from "my dear."
+
+"The officer, Volumnia," observes Sir Leicester, "is faithful to his
+duty, and perfectly right."
+
+Mr. Bucket murmurs, "Glad to have the honour of your approbation, Sir
+Leicester Dedlock, Baronet."
+
+"In fact, Volumnia," proceeds Sir Leicester, "it is not holding up a
+good model for imitation to ask the officer any such questions as you
+have put to him. He is the best judge of his own responsibility; he
+acts upon his responsibility. And it does not become us, who assist
+in making the laws, to impede or interfere with those who carry them
+into execution. Or," says Sir Leicester somewhat sternly, for
+Volumnia was going to cut in before he had rounded his sentence, "or
+who vindicate their outraged majesty."
+
+Volumnia with all humility explains that she had not merely the plea
+of curiosity to urge (in common with the giddy youth of her sex in
+general) but that she is perfectly dying with regret and interest for
+the darling man whose loss they all deplore.
+
+"Very well, Volumnia," returns Sir Leicester. "Then you cannot be too
+discreet."
+
+Mr. Bucket takes the opportunity of a pause to be heard again.
+
+"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I have no objections to telling this
+lady, with your leave and among ourselves, that I look upon the case
+as pretty well complete. It is a beautiful case--a beautiful
+case--and what little is wanting to complete it, I expect to be able
+to supply in a few hours."
+
+"I am very glad indeed to hear it," says Sir Leicester. "Highly
+creditable to you."
+
+"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," returns Mr. Bucket very seriously,
+"I hope it may at one and the same time do me credit and prove
+satisfactory to all. When I depict it as a beautiful case, you see,
+miss," Mr. Bucket goes on, glancing gravely at Sir Leicester, "I mean
+from my point of view. As considered from other points of view, such
+cases will always involve more or less unpleasantness. Very strange
+things comes to our knowledge in families, miss; bless your heart,
+what you would think to be phenomenons, quite."
+
+Volumnia, with her innocent little scream, supposes so.
+
+"Aye, and even in gen-teel families, in high families, in great
+families," says Mr. Bucket, again gravely eyeing Sir Leicester aside.
+"I have had the honour of being employed in high families before, and
+you have no idea--come, I'll go so far as to say not even YOU have
+any idea, sir," this to the debilitated cousin, "what games goes on!"
+
+The cousin, who has been casting sofa-pillows on his head, in a
+prostration of boredom yawns, "Vayli," being the used-up for "very
+likely."
+
+Sir Leicester, deeming it time to dismiss the officer, here
+majestically interposes with the words, "Very good. Thank you!" and
+also with a wave of his hand, implying not only that there is an end
+of the discourse, but that if high families fall into low habits they
+must take the consequences. "You will not forget, officer," he adds
+with condescension, "that I am at your disposal when you please."
+
+Mr. Bucket (still grave) inquires if to-morrow morning, now, would
+suit, in case he should be as for'ard as he expects to be. Sir
+Leicester replies, "All times are alike to me." Mr. Bucket makes his
+three bows and is withdrawing when a forgotten point occurs to him.
+
+"Might I ask, by the by," he says in a low voice, cautiously
+returning, "who posted the reward-bill on the staircase."
+
+"I ordered it to be put up there," replies Sir Leicester.
+
+"Would it be considered a liberty, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, if
+I was to ask you why?"
+
+"Not at all. I chose it as a conspicuous part of the house. I think
+it cannot be too prominently kept before the whole establishment. I
+wish my people to be impressed with the enormity of the crime, the
+determination to punish it, and the hopelessness of escape. At the
+same time, officer, if you in your better knowledge of the subject
+see any objection--"
+
+Mr. Bucket sees none now; the bill having been put up, had better not
+be taken down. Repeating his three bows he withdraws, closing the
+door on Volumnia's little scream, which is a preliminary to her
+remarking that that charmingly horrible person is a perfect Blue
+Chamber.
+
+In his fondness for society and his adaptability to all grades, Mr.
+Bucket is presently standing before the hall-fire--bright and warm on
+the early winter night--admiring Mercury.
+
+"Why, you're six foot two, I suppose?" says Mr. Bucket.
+
+"Three," says Mercury.
+
+"Are you so much? But then, you see, you're broad in proportion and
+don't look it. You're not one of the weak-legged ones, you ain't. Was
+you ever modelled now?" Mr. Bucket asks, conveying the expression of
+an artist into the turn of his eye and head.
+
+Mercury never was modelled.
+
+"Then you ought to be, you know," says Mr. Bucket; "and a friend of
+mine that you'll hear of one day as a Royal Academy sculptor would
+stand something handsome to make a drawing of your proportions for
+the marble. My Lady's out, ain't she?"
+
+"Out to dinner."
+
+"Goes out pretty well every day, don't she?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Not to be wondered at!" says Mr. Bucket. "Such a fine woman as her,
+so handsome and so graceful and so elegant, is like a fresh lemon on
+a dinner-table, ornamental wherever she goes. Was your father in the
+same way of life as yourself?"
+
+Answer in the negative.
+
+"Mine was," says Mr. Bucket. "My father was first a page, then a
+footman, then a butler, then a steward, then an inn-keeper. Lived
+universally respected, and died lamented. Said with his last breath
+that he considered service the most honourable part of his career,
+and so it was. I've a brother in service, AND a brother-in-law. My
+Lady a good temper?"
+
+Mercury replies, "As good as you can expect."
+
+"Ah!" says Mr. Bucket. "A little spoilt? A little capricious? Lord!
+What can you anticipate when they're so handsome as that? And we like
+'em all the better for it, don't we?"
+
+Mercury, with his hands in the pockets of his bright peach-blossom
+small-clothes, stretches his symmetrical silk legs with the air of a
+man of gallantry and can't deny it. Come the roll of wheels and a
+violent ringing at the bell. "Talk of the angels," says Mr. Bucket.
+"Here she is!"
+
+The doors are thrown open, and she passes through the hall. Still
+very pale, she is dressed in slight mourning and wears two beautiful
+bracelets. Either their beauty or the beauty of her arms is
+particularly attractive to Mr. Bucket. He looks at them with an eager
+eye and rattles something in his pocket--halfpence perhaps.
+
+Noticing him at his distance, she turns an inquiring look on the
+other Mercury who has brought her home.
+
+"Mr. Bucket, my Lady."
+
+Mr. Bucket makes a leg and comes forward, passing his familiar demon
+over the region of his mouth.
+
+"Are you waiting to see Sir Leicester?"
+
+"No, my Lady, I've seen him!"
+
+"Have you anything to say to me?"
+
+"Not just at present, my Lady."
+
+"Have you made any new discoveries?"
+
+"A few, my Lady."
+
+This is merely in passing. She scarcely makes a stop, and sweeps
+upstairs alone. Mr. Bucket, moving towards the staircase-foot,
+watches her as she goes up the steps the old man came down to his
+grave, past murderous groups of statuary repeated with their shadowy
+weapons on the wall, past the printed bill, which she looks at going
+by, out of view.
+
+"She's a lovely woman, too, she really is," says Mr. Bucket, coming
+back to Mercury. "Don't look quite healthy though."
+
+Is not quite healthy, Mercury informs him. Suffers much from
+headaches.
+
+Really? That's a pity! Walking, Mr. Bucket would recommend for that.
+Well, she tries walking, Mercury rejoins. Walks sometimes for two
+hours when she has them bad. By night, too.
+
+"Are you sure you're quite so much as six foot three?" asks Mr.
+Bucket. "Begging your pardon for interrupting you a moment?"
+
+Not a doubt about it.
+
+"You're so well put together that I shouldn't have thought it. But
+the household troops, though considered fine men, are built so
+straggling. Walks by night, does she? When it's moonlight, though?"
+
+Oh, yes. When it's moonlight! Of course. Oh, of course!
+Conversational and acquiescent on both sides.
+
+"I suppose you ain't in the habit of walking yourself?" says Mr.
+Bucket. "Not much time for it, I should say?"
+
+Besides which, Mercury don't like it. Prefers carriage exercise.
+
+"To be sure," says Mr. Bucket. "That makes a difference. Now I think
+of it," says Mr. Bucket, warming his hands and looking pleasantly at
+the blaze, "she went out walking the very night of this business."
+
+"To be sure she did! I let her into the garden over the way."
+
+"And left her there. Certainly you did. I saw you doing it."
+
+"I didn't see YOU," says Mercury.
+
+"I was rather in a hurry," returns Mr. Bucket, "for I was going to
+visit a aunt of mine that lives at Chelsea--next door but two to the
+old original Bun House--ninety year old the old lady is, a single
+woman, and got a little property. Yes, I chanced to be passing at the
+time. Let's see. What time might it be? It wasn't ten."
+
+"Half-past nine."
+
+"You're right. So it was. And if I don't deceive myself, my Lady was
+muffled in a loose black mantle, with a deep fringe to it?"
+
+"Of course she was."
+
+Of course she was. Mr. Bucket must return to a little work he has to
+get on with upstairs, but he must shake hands with Mercury in
+acknowledgment of his agreeable conversation, and will he--this is
+all he asks--will he, when he has a leisure half-hour, think of
+bestowing it on that Royal Academy sculptor, for the advantage of
+both parties?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIV
+
+Springing a Mine
+
+
+Refreshed by sleep, Mr. Bucket rises betimes in the morning and
+prepares for a field-day. Smartened up by the aid of a clean shirt
+and a wet hairbrush, with which instrument, on occasions of ceremony,
+he lubricates such thin locks as remain to him after his life of
+severe study, Mr. Bucket lays in a breakfast of two mutton chops as a
+foundation to work upon, together with tea, eggs, toast, and
+marmalade on a corresponding scale. Having much enjoyed these
+strengthening matters and having held subtle conference with his
+familiar demon, he confidently instructs Mercury "just to mention
+quietly to Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, that whenever he's ready
+for me, I'm ready for him." A gracious message being returned that
+Sir Leicester will expedite his dressing and join Mr. Bucket in the
+library within ten minutes, Mr. Bucket repairs to that apartment and
+stands before the fire with his finger on his chin, looking at the
+blazing coals.
+
+Thoughtful Mr. Bucket is, as a man may be with weighty work to do,
+but composed, sure, confident. From the expression of his face he
+might be a famous whist-player for a large stake--say a hundred
+guineas certain--with the game in his hand, but with a high
+reputation involved in his playing his hand out to the last card in a
+masterly way. Not in the least anxious or disturbed is Mr. Bucket
+when Sir Leicester appears, but he eyes the baronet aside as he comes
+slowly to his easy-chair with that observant gravity of yesterday in
+which there might have been yesterday, but for the audacity of the
+idea, a touch of compassion.
+
+"I am sorry to have kept you waiting, officer, but I am rather later
+than my usual hour this morning. I am not well. The agitation and the
+indignation from which I have recently suffered have been too much
+for me. I am subject to--gout"--Sir Leicester was going to say
+indisposition and would have said it to anybody else, but Mr. Bucket
+palpably knows all about it--"and recent circumstances have brought
+it on."
+
+As he takes his seat with some difficulty and with an air of pain,
+Mr. Bucket draws a little nearer, standing with one of his large
+hands on the library-table.
+
+"I am not aware, officer," Sir Leicester observes; raising his eyes
+to his face, "whether you wish us to be alone, but that is entirely
+as you please. If you do, well and good. If not, Miss Dedlock would
+be interested--"
+
+"Why, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," returns Mr. Bucket with his
+head persuasively on one side and his forefinger pendant at one ear
+like an earring, "we can't be too private just at present. You will
+presently see that we can't be too private. A lady, under the
+circumstances, and especially in Miss Dedlock's elevated station of
+society, can't but be agreeable to me, but speaking without a view to
+myself, I will take the liberty of assuring you that I know we can't
+be too private."
+
+"That is enough."
+
+"So much so, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," Mr. Bucket resumes,
+"that I was on the point of asking your permission to turn the key in
+the door."
+
+"By all means." Mr. Bucket skilfully and softly takes that
+precaution, stooping on his knee for a moment from mere force of
+habit so to adjust the key in the lock as that no one shall peep in
+from the outerside.
+
+"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I mentioned yesterday evening that I
+wanted but a very little to complete this case. I have now completed
+it and collected proof against the person who did this crime."
+
+"Against the soldier?"
+
+"No, Sir Leicester Dedlock; not the soldier."
+
+Sir Leicester looks astounded and inquires, "Is the man in custody?"
+
+Mr. Bucket tells him, after a pause, "It was a woman."
+
+Sir Leicester leans back in his chair, and breathlessly ejaculates,
+"Good heaven!"
+
+"Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," Mr. Bucket begins, standing
+over him with one hand spread out on the library-table and the
+forefinger of the other in impressive use, "it's my duty to prepare
+you for a train of circumstances that may, and I go so far as to say
+that will, give you a shock. But Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, you
+are a gentleman, and I know what a gentleman is and what a gentleman
+is capable of. A gentleman can bear a shock when it must come, boldly
+and steadily. A gentleman can make up his mind to stand up against
+almost any blow. Why, take yourself, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet.
+If there's a blow to be inflicted on you, you naturally think of your
+family. You ask yourself, how would all them ancestors of yours, away
+to Julius Caesar--not to go beyond him at present--have borne that
+blow; you remember scores of them that would have borne it well; and
+you bear it well on their accounts, and to maintain the family
+credit. That's the way you argue, and that's the way you act, Sir
+Leicester Dedlock, Baronet."
+
+Sir Leicester, leaning back in his chair and grasping the elbows,
+sits looking at him with a stony face.
+
+"Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock," proceeds Mr. Bucket, "thus preparing
+you, let me beg of you not to trouble your mind for a moment as to
+anything having come to MY knowledge. I know so much about so many
+characters, high and low, that a piece of information more or less
+don't signify a straw. I don't suppose there's a move on the board
+that would surprise ME, and as to this or that move having taken
+place, why my knowing it is no odds at all, any possible move
+whatever (provided it's in a wrong direction) being a probable move
+according to my experience. Therefore, what I say to you, Sir
+Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, is, don't you go and let yourself be put
+out of the way because of my knowing anything of your family
+affairs."
+
+"I thank you for your preparation," returns Sir Leicester after a
+silence, without moving hand, foot, or feature, "which I hope is not
+necessary; though I give it credit for being well intended. Be so
+good as to go on. Also"--Sir Leicester seems to shrink in the shadow
+of his figure--"also, to take a seat, if you have no objection."
+
+None at all. Mr. Bucket brings a chair and diminishes his shadow.
+"Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, with this short preface I come
+to the point. Lady Dedlock--"
+
+Sir Leicester raises himself in his seat and stares at him fiercely.
+Mr. Bucket brings the finger into play as an emollient.
+
+"Lady Dedlock, you see she's universally admired. That's what her
+ladyship is; she's universally admired," says Mr. Bucket.
+
+"I would greatly prefer, officer," Sir Leicester returns stiffly, "my
+Lady's name being entirely omitted from this discussion."
+
+"So would I, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, but--it's impossible."
+
+"Impossible?"
+
+Mr. Bucket shakes his relentless head.
+
+"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, it's altogether impossible. What I
+have got to say is about her ladyship. She is the pivot it all turns
+on."
+
+"Officer," retorts Sir Leicester with a fiery eye and a quivering
+lip, "you know your duty. Do your duty, but be careful not to
+overstep it. I would not suffer it. I would not endure it. You bring
+my Lady's name into this communication upon your responsibility--upon
+your responsibility. My Lady's name is not a name for common persons
+to trifle with!"
+
+"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I say what I must say, and no more."
+
+"I hope it may prove so. Very well. Go on. Go on, sir!" Glancing at
+the angry eyes which now avoid him and at the angry figure trembling
+from head to foot, yet striving to be still, Mr. Bucket feels his way
+with his forefinger and in a low voice proceeds.
+
+"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, it becomes my duty to tell you that
+the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn long entertained mistrusts and
+suspicions of Lady Dedlock."
+
+"If he had dared to breathe them to me, sir--which he never did--I
+would have killed him myself!" exclaims Sir Leicester, striking his
+hand upon the table. But in the very heat and fury of the act he
+stops, fixed by the knowing eyes of Mr. Bucket, whose forefinger is
+slowly going and who, with mingled confidence and patience, shakes
+his head.
+
+"Sir Leicester Dedlock, the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn was deep and
+close, and what he fully had in his mind in the very beginning I
+can't quite take upon myself to say. But I know from his lips that he
+long ago suspected Lady Dedlock of having discovered, through the
+sight of some handwriting--in this very house, and when you yourself,
+Sir Leicester Dedlock, were present--the existence, in great poverty,
+of a certain person who had been her lover before you courted her and
+who ought to have been her husband." Mr. Bucket stops and
+deliberately repeats, "Ought to have been her husband, not a doubt
+about it. I know from his lips that when that person soon afterwards
+died, he suspected Lady Dedlock of visiting his wretched lodging and
+his wretched grave, alone and in secret. I know from my own inquiries
+and through my eyes and ears that Lady Dedlock did make such visit in
+the dress of her own maid, for the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn employed
+me to reckon up her ladyship--if you'll excuse my making use of the
+term we commonly employ--and I reckoned her up, so far, completely. I
+confronted the maid in the chambers in Lincoln's Inn Fields with a
+witness who had been Lady Dedlock's guide, and there couldn't be the
+shadow of a doubt that she had worn the young woman's dress, unknown
+to her. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I did endeavour to pave the
+way a little towards these unpleasant disclosures yesterday by saying
+that very strange things happened even in high families sometimes.
+All this, and more, has happened in your own family, and to and
+through your own Lady. It's my belief that the deceased Mr.
+Tulkinghorn followed up these inquiries to the hour of his death and
+that he and Lady Dedlock even had bad blood between them upon the
+matter that very night. Now, only you put that to Lady Dedlock, Sir
+Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and ask her ladyship whether, even after
+he had left here, she didn't go down to his chambers with the
+intention of saying something further to him, dressed in a loose
+black mantle with a deep fringe to it."
+
+Sir Leicester sits like a statue, gazing at the cruel finger that is
+probing the life-blood of his heart.
+
+"You put that to her ladyship, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, from
+me, Inspector Bucket of the Detective. And if her ladyship makes any
+difficulty about admitting of it, you tell her that it's no use, that
+Inspector Bucket knows it and knows that she passed the soldier as
+you called him (though he's not in the army now) and knows that she
+knows she passed him on the staircase. Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock,
+Baronet, why do I relate all this?"
+
+Sir Leicester, who has covered his face with his hands, uttering a
+single groan, requests him to pause for a moment. By and by he takes
+his hands away, and so preserves his dignity and outward calmness,
+though there is no more colour in his face than in his white hair,
+that Mr. Bucket is a little awed by him. Something frozen and fixed
+is upon his manner, over and above its usual shell of haughtiness,
+and Mr. Bucket soon detects an unusual slowness in his speech, with
+now and then a curious trouble in beginning, which occasions him to
+utter inarticulate sounds. With such sounds he now breaks silence,
+soon, however, controlling himself to say that he does not comprehend
+why a gentleman so faithful and zealous as the late Mr. Tulkinghorn
+should have communicated to him nothing of this painful, this
+distressing, this unlooked-for, this overwhelming, this incredible
+intelligence.
+
+"Again, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," returns Mr. Bucket, "put it
+to her ladyship to clear that up. Put it to her ladyship, if you
+think it right, from Inspector Bucket of the Detective. You'll find,
+or I'm much mistaken, that the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn had the
+intention of communicating the whole to you as soon as he considered
+it ripe, and further, that he had given her ladyship so to
+understand. Why, he might have been going to reveal it the very
+morning when I examined the body! You don't know what I'm going to
+say and do five minutes from this present time, Sir Leicester
+Dedlock, Baronet; and supposing I was to be picked off now, you might
+wonder why I hadn't done it, don't you see?"
+
+True. Sir Leicester, avoiding, with some trouble those obtrusive
+sounds, says, "True." At this juncture a considerable noise of voices
+is heard in the hall. Mr. Bucket, after listening, goes to the
+library-door, softly unlocks and opens it, and listens again. Then he
+draws in his head and whispers hurriedly but composedly, "Sir
+Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, this unfortunate family affair has taken
+air, as I expected it might, the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn being cut
+down so sudden. The chance to hush it is to let in these people now
+in a wrangle with your footmen. Would you mind sitting quiet--on the
+family account--while I reckon 'em up? And would you just throw in a
+nod when I seem to ask you for it?"
+
+Sir Leicester indistinctly answers, "Officer. The best you can, the
+best you can!" and Mr. Bucket, with a nod and a sagacious crook of
+the forefinger, slips down into the hall, where the voices quickly
+die away. He is not long in returning; a few paces ahead of Mercury
+and a brother deity also powdered and in peach-blossomed smalls, who
+bear between them a chair in which is an incapable old man. Another
+man and two women come behind. Directing the pitching of the chair in
+an affable and easy manner, Mr. Bucket dismisses the Mercuries and
+locks the door again. Sir Leicester looks on at this invasion of the
+sacred precincts with an icy stare.
+
+"Now, perhaps you may know me, ladies and gentlemen," says Mr. Bucket
+in a confidential voice. "I am Inspector Bucket of the Detective, I
+am; and this," producing the tip of his convenient little staff from
+his breast-pocket, "is my authority. Now, you wanted to see Sir
+Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. Well! You do see him, and mind you, it
+ain't every one as is admitted to that honour. Your name, old
+gentleman, is Smallweed; that's what your name is; I know it well."
+
+"Well, and you never heard any harm of it!" cries Mr. Smallweed in a
+shrill loud voice.
+
+"You don't happen to know why they killed the pig, do you?" retorts
+Mr. Bucket with a steadfast look, but without loss of temper.
+
+"No!"
+
+"Why, they killed him," says Mr. Bucket, "on account of his having so
+much cheek. Don't YOU get into the same position, because it isn't
+worthy of you. You ain't in the habit of conversing with a deaf
+person, are you?"
+
+"Yes," snarls Mr. Smallweed, "my wife's deaf."
+
+"That accounts for your pitching your voice so high. But as she ain't
+here; just pitch it an octave or two lower, will you, and I'll not
+only be obliged to you, but it'll do you more credit," says Mr.
+Bucket. "This other gentleman is in the preaching line, I think?"
+
+"Name of Chadband," Mr. Smallweed puts in, speaking henceforth in a
+much lower key.
+
+"Once had a friend and brother serjeant of the same name," says Mr.
+Bucket, offering his hand, "and consequently feel a liking for it.
+Mrs. Chadband, no doubt?"
+
+"And Mrs. Snagsby," Mr. Smallweed introduces.
+
+"Husband a law-stationer and a friend of my own," says Mr. Bucket.
+"Love him like a brother! Now, what's up?"
+
+"Do you mean what business have we come upon?" Mr. Smallweed asks, a
+little dashed by the suddenness of this turn.
+
+"Ah! You know what I mean. Let us hear what it's all about in
+presence of Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. Come."
+
+Mr. Smallweed, beckoning Mr. Chadband, takes a moment's counsel with
+him in a whisper. Mr. Chadband, expressing a considerable amount of
+oil from the pores of his forehead and the palms of his hands, says
+aloud, "Yes. You first!" and retires to his former place.
+
+"I was the client and friend of Mr. Tulkinghorn," pipes Grandfather
+Smallweed then; "I did business with him. I was useful to him, and he
+was useful to me. Krook, dead and gone, was my brother-in-law. He was
+own brother to a brimstone magpie--leastways Mrs. Smallweed. I come
+into Krook's property. I examined all his papers and all his effects.
+They was all dug out under my eyes. There was a bundle of letters
+belonging to a dead and gone lodger as was hid away at the back of a
+shelf in the side of Lady Jane's bed--his cat's bed. He hid all
+manner of things away, everywheres. Mr. Tulkinghorn wanted 'em and
+got 'em, but I looked 'em over first. I'm a man of business, and I
+took a squint at 'em. They was letters from the lodger's sweetheart,
+and she signed Honoria. Dear me, that's not a common name, Honoria,
+is it? There's no lady in this house that signs Honoria is there? Oh,
+no, I don't think so! Oh, no, I don't think so! And not in the same
+hand, perhaps? Oh, no, I don't think so!"
+
+Here Mr. Smallweed, seized with a fit of coughing in the midst of his
+triumph, breaks off to ejaculate, "Oh, dear me! Oh, Lord! I'm shaken
+all to pieces!"
+
+"Now, when you're ready," says Mr. Bucket after awaiting his
+recovery, "to come to anything that concerns Sir Leicester Dedlock,
+Baronet, here the gentleman sits, you know."
+
+"Haven't I come to it, Mr. Bucket?" cries Grandfather Smallweed.
+"Isn't the gentleman concerned yet? Not with Captain Hawdon, and his
+ever affectionate Honoria, and their child into the bargain? Come,
+then, I want to know where those letters are. That concerns me, if it
+don't concern Sir Leicester Dedlock. I will know where they are. I
+won't have 'em disappear so quietly. I handed 'em over to my friend
+and solicitor, Mr. Tulkinghorn, not to anybody else."
+
+"Why, he paid you for them, you know, and handsome too," says Mr.
+Bucket.
+
+"I don't care for that. I want to know who's got 'em. And I tell you
+what we want--what we all here want, Mr. Bucket. We want more
+painstaking and search-making into this murder. We know where the
+interest and the motive was, and you have not done enough. If George
+the vagabond dragoon had any hand in it, he was only an accomplice,
+and was set on. You know what I mean as well as any man."
+
+"Now I tell you what," says Mr. Bucket, instantaneously altering his
+manner, coming close to him, and communicating an extraordinary
+fascination to the forefinger, "I am damned if I am a-going to have
+my case spoilt, or interfered with, or anticipated by so much as half
+a second of time by any human being in creation. YOU want more
+painstaking and search-making! YOU do? Do you see this hand, and do
+you think that I don't know the right time to stretch it out and put
+it on the arm that fired that shot?"
+
+Such is the dread power of the man, and so terribly evident it is
+that he makes no idle boast, that Mr. Smallweed begins to apologize.
+Mr. Bucket, dismissing his sudden anger, checks him.
+
+"The advice I give you is, don't you trouble your head about the
+murder. That's my affair. You keep half an eye on the newspapers, and
+I shouldn't wonder if you was to read something about it before long,
+if you look sharp. I know my business, and that's all I've got to say
+to you on that subject. Now about those letters. You want to know
+who's got 'em. I don't mind telling you. I have got 'em. Is that the
+packet?"
+
+Mr. Smallweed looks, with greedy eyes, at the little bundle Mr.
+Bucket produces from a mysterious part of his coat, and identifies it
+as the same.
+
+"What have you got to say next?" asks Mr. Bucket. "Now, don't open
+your mouth too wide, because you don't look handsome when you do it."
+
+"I want five hundred pound."
+
+"No, you don't; you mean fifty," says Mr. Bucket humorously.
+
+It appears, however, that Mr. Smallweed means five hundred.
+
+"That is, I am deputed by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, to consider
+(without admitting or promising anything) this bit of business," says
+Mr. Bucket--Sir Leicester mechanically bows his head--"and you ask me
+to consider a proposal of five hundred pounds. Why, it's an
+unreasonable proposal! Two fifty would be bad enough, but better than
+that. Hadn't you better say two fifty?"
+
+Mr. Smallweed is quite clear that he had better not.
+
+"Then," says Mr. Bucket, "let's hear Mr. Chadband. Lord! Many a time
+I've heard my old fellow-serjeant of that name; and a moderate man he
+was in all respects, as ever I come across!"
+
+Thus invited, Mr. Chadband steps forth, and after a little sleek
+smiling and a little oil-grinding with the palms of his hands,
+delivers himself as follows, "My friends, we are now--Rachael, my
+wife, and I--in the mansions of the rich and great. Why are we now in
+the mansions of the rich and great, my friends? Is it because we are
+invited? Because we are bidden to feast with them, because we are
+bidden to rejoice with them, because we are bidden to play the lute
+with them, because we are bidden to dance with them? No. Then why are
+we here, my friends? Air we in possession of a sinful secret, and do
+we require corn, and wine, and oil, or what is much the same thing,
+money, for the keeping thereof? Probably so, my friends."
+
+"You're a man of business, you are," returns Mr. Bucket, very
+attentive, "and consequently you're going on to mention what the
+nature of your secret is. You are right. You couldn't do better."
+
+"Let us then, my brother, in a spirit of love," says Mr. Chadband
+with a cunning eye, "proceed unto it. Rachael, my wife, advance!"
+
+Mrs. Chadband, more than ready, so advances as to jostle her husband
+into the background and confronts Mr. Bucket with a hard, frowning
+smile.
+
+"Since you want to know what we know," says she, "I'll tell you. I
+helped to bring up Miss Hawdon, her ladyship's daughter. I was in the
+service of her ladyship's sister, who was very sensitive to the
+disgrace her ladyship brought upon her, and gave out, even to her
+ladyship, that the child was dead--she WAS very nearly so--when she
+was born. But she's alive, and I know her." With these words, and a
+laugh, and laying a bitter stress on the word "ladyship," Mrs.
+Chadband folds her arms and looks implacably at Mr. Bucket.
+
+"I suppose now," returns that officer, "YOU will be expecting a
+twenty-pound note or a present of about that figure?"
+
+Mrs. Chadband merely laughs and contemptuously tells him he can
+"offer" twenty pence.
+
+"My friend the law-stationer's good lady, over there," says Mr.
+Bucket, luring Mrs. Snagsby forward with the finger. "What may YOUR
+game be, ma'am?"
+
+Mrs. Snagsby is at first prevented, by tears and lamentations, from
+stating the nature of her game, but by degrees it confusedly comes to
+light that she is a woman overwhelmed with injuries and wrongs, whom
+Mr. Snagsby has habitually deceived, abandoned, and sought to keep in
+darkness, and whose chief comfort, under her afflictions, has been
+the sympathy of the late Mr. Tulkinghorn, who showed so much
+commiseration for her on one occasion of his calling in Cook's Court
+in the absence of her perjured husband that she has of late
+habitually carried to him all her woes. Everybody it appears, the
+present company excepted, has plotted against Mrs. Snagsby's peace.
+There is Mr. Guppy, clerk to Kenge and Carboy, who was at first as
+open as the sun at noon, but who suddenly shut up as close as
+midnight, under the influence--no doubt--of Mr. Snagsby's suborning
+and tampering. There is Mr. Weevle, friend of Mr. Guppy, who lived
+mysteriously up a court, owing to the like coherent causes. There was
+Krook, deceased; there was Nimrod, deceased; and there was Jo,
+deceased; and they were "all in it." In what, Mrs. Snagsby does not
+with particularity express, but she knows that Jo was Mr. Snagsby's
+son, "as well as if a trumpet had spoken it," and she followed Mr.
+Snagsby when he went on his last visit to the boy, and if he was not
+his son why did he go? The one occupation of her life has been, for
+some time back, to follow Mr. Snagsby to and fro, and up and down,
+and to piece suspicious circumstances together--and every
+circumstance that has happened has been most suspicious; and in this
+way she has pursued her object of detecting and confounding her false
+husband, night and day. Thus did it come to pass that she brought the
+Chadbands and Mr. Tulkinghorn together, and conferred with Mr.
+Tulkinghorn on the change in Mr. Guppy, and helped to turn up the
+circumstances in which the present company are interested, casually,
+by the wayside, being still and ever on the great high road that is
+to terminate in Mr. Snagsby's full exposure and a matrimonial
+separation. All this, Mrs. Snagsby, as an injured woman, and the
+friend of Mrs. Chadband, and the follower of Mr. Chadband, and the
+mourner of the late Mr. Tulkinghorn, is here to certify under the
+seal of confidence, with every possible confusion and involvement
+possible and impossible, having no pecuniary motive whatever, no
+scheme or project but the one mentioned, and bringing here, and
+taking everywhere, her own dense atmosphere of dust, arising from the
+ceaseless working of her mill of jealousy.
+
+While this exordium is in hand--and it takes some time--Mr. Bucket,
+who has seen through the transparency of Mrs. Snagsby's vinegar at a
+glance, confers with his familiar demon and bestows his shrewd
+attention on the Chadbands and Mr. Smallweed. Sir Leicester Dedlock
+remains immovable, with the same icy surface upon him, except that he
+once or twice looks towards Mr. Bucket, as relying on that officer
+alone of all mankind.
+
+"Very good," says Mr. Bucket. "Now I understand you, you know, and
+being deputed by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, to look into this
+little matter," again Sir Leicester mechanically bows in confirmation
+of the statement, "can give it my fair and full attention. Now I
+won't allude to conspiring to extort money or anything of that sort,
+because we are men and women of the world here, and our object is to
+make things pleasant. But I tell you what I DO wonder at; I am
+surprised that you should think of making a noise below in the hall.
+It was so opposed to your interests. That's what I look at."
+
+"We wanted to get in," pleads Mr. Smallweed.
+
+"Why, of course you wanted to get in," Mr. Bucket asserts with
+cheerfulness; "but for a old gentleman at your time of life--what I
+call truly venerable, mind you!--with his wits sharpened, as I have
+no doubt they are, by the loss of the use of his limbs, which
+occasions all his animation to mount up into his head, not to
+consider that if he don't keep such a business as the present as
+close as possible it can't be worth a mag to him, is so curious! You
+see your temper got the better of you; that's where you lost ground,"
+says Mr. Bucket in an argumentative and friendly way.
+
+"I only said I wouldn't go without one of the servants came up to Sir
+Leicester Dedlock," returns Mr. Smallweed.
+
+"That's it! That's where your temper got the better of you. Now, you
+keep it under another time and you'll make money by it. Shall I ring
+for them to carry you down?"
+
+"When are we to hear more of this?" Mrs. Chadband sternly demands.
+
+"Bless your heart for a true woman! Always curious, your delightful
+sex is!" replies Mr. Bucket with gallantry. "I shall have the
+pleasure of giving you a call to-morrow or next day--not forgetting
+Mr. Smallweed and his proposal of two fifty."
+
+"Five hundred!" exclaims Mr. Smallweed.
+
+"All right! Nominally five hundred." Mr. Bucket has his hand on the
+bell-rope. "SHALL I wish you good day for the present on the part of
+myself and the gentleman of the house?" he asks in an insinuating
+tone.
+
+Nobody having the hardihood to object to his doing so, he does it,
+and the party retire as they came up. Mr. Bucket follows them to the
+door, and returning, says with an air of serious business, "Sir
+Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, it's for you to consider whether or not
+to buy this up. I should recommend, on the whole, it's being bought
+up myself; and I think it may be bought pretty cheap. You see, that
+little pickled cowcumber of a Mrs. Snagsby has been used by all sides
+of the speculation and has done a deal more harm in bringing odds and
+ends together than if she had meant it. Mr. Tulkinghorn, deceased, he
+held all these horses in his hand and could have drove 'em his own
+way, I haven't a doubt; but he was fetched off the box head-foremost,
+and now they have got their legs over the traces, and are all
+dragging and pulling their own ways. So it is, and such is life. The
+cat's away, and the mice they play; the frost breaks up, and the
+water runs. Now, with regard to the party to be apprehended."
+
+Sir Leicester seems to wake, though his eyes have been wide open, and
+he looks intently at Mr. Bucket as Mr. Bucket refers to his watch.
+
+"The party to be apprehended is now in this house," proceeds Mr.
+Bucket, putting up his watch with a steady hand and with rising
+spirits, "and I'm about to take her into custody in your presence.
+Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, don't you say a word nor yet stir.
+There'll be no noise and no disturbance at all. I'll come back in the
+course of the evening, if agreeable to you, and endeavour to meet
+your wishes respecting this unfortunate family matter and the
+nobbiest way of keeping it quiet. Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock,
+Baronet, don't you be nervous on account of the apprehension at
+present coming off. You shall see the whole case clear, from first to
+last."
+
+Mr. Bucket rings, goes to the door, briefly whispers Mercury, shuts
+the door, and stands behind it with his arms folded. After a suspense
+of a minute or two the door slowly opens and a Frenchwoman enters.
+Mademoiselle Hortense.
+
+The moment she is in the room Mr. Bucket claps the door to and puts
+his back against it. The suddenness of the noise occasions her to
+turn, and then for the first time she sees Sir Leicester Dedlock in
+his chair.
+
+"I ask you pardon," she mutters hurriedly. "They tell me there was no
+one here."
+
+Her step towards the door brings her front to front with Mr. Bucket.
+Suddenly a spasm shoots across her face and she turns deadly pale.
+
+"This is my lodger, Sir Leicester Dedlock," says Mr. Bucket, nodding
+at her. "This foreign young woman has been my lodger for some weeks
+back."
+
+"What do Sir Leicester care for that, you think, my angel?" returns
+mademoiselle in a jocular strain.
+
+"Why, my angel," returns Mr. Bucket, "we shall see."
+
+Mademoiselle Hortense eyes him with a scowl upon her tight face,
+which gradually changes into a smile of scorn, "You are very
+mysterieuse. Are you drunk?"
+
+"Tolerable sober, my angel," returns Mr. Bucket.
+
+"I come from arriving at this so detestable house with your wife.
+Your wife have left me since some minutes. They tell me downstairs
+that your wife is here. I come here, and your wife is not here. What
+is the intention of this fool's play, say then?" mademoiselle
+demands, with her arms composedly crossed, but with something in her
+dark cheek beating like a clock.
+
+Mr. Bucket merely shakes the finger at her.
+
+"Ah, my God, you are an unhappy idiot!" cries mademoiselle with a
+toss of her head and a laugh. "Leave me to pass downstairs, great
+pig." With a stamp of her foot and a menace.
+
+"Now, mademoiselle," says Mr. Bucket in a cool determined way, "you
+go and sit down upon that sofy."
+
+"I will not sit down upon nothing," she replies with a shower of
+nods.
+
+"Now, mademoiselle," repeats Mr. Bucket, making no demonstration
+except with the finger, "you sit down upon that sofy."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because I take you into custody on a charge of murder, and you don't
+need to be told it. Now, I want to be polite to one of your sex and a
+foreigner if I can. If I can't, I must be rough, and there's rougher
+ones outside. What I am to be depends on you. So I recommend you, as
+a friend, afore another half a blessed moment has passed over your
+head, to go and sit down upon that sofy."
+
+Mademoiselle complies, saying in a concentrated voice while that
+something in her cheek beats fast and hard, "You are a devil."
+
+"Now, you see," Mr. Bucket proceeds approvingly, "you're comfortable
+and conducting yourself as I should expect a foreign young woman of
+your sense to do. So I'll give you a piece of advice, and it's this,
+don't you talk too much. You're not expected to say anything here,
+and you can't keep too quiet a tongue in your head. In short, the
+less you PARLAY, the better, you know." Mr. Bucket is very complacent
+over this French explanation.
+
+Mademoiselle, with that tigerish expansion of the mouth and her black
+eyes darting fire upon him, sits upright on the sofa in a rigid
+state, with her hands clenched--and her feet too, one might
+suppose--muttering, "Oh, you Bucket, you are a devil!"
+
+"Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," says Mr. Bucket, and from this
+time forth the finger never rests, "this young woman, my lodger, was
+her ladyship's maid at the time I have mentioned to you; and this
+young woman, besides being extraordinary vehement and passionate
+against her ladyship after being discharged--"
+
+"Lie!" cries mademoiselle. "I discharge myself."
+
+"Now, why don't you take my advice?" returns Mr. Bucket in an
+impressive, almost in an imploring, tone. "I'm surprised at the
+indiscreetness you commit. You'll say something that'll be used
+against you, you know. You're sure to come to it. Never you mind what
+I say till it's given in evidence. It is not addressed to you."
+
+"Discharge, too," cries mademoiselle furiously, "by her ladyship! Eh,
+my faith, a pretty ladyship! Why, I r-r-r-ruin my character by
+remaining with a ladyship so infame!"
+
+"Upon my soul I wonder at you!" Mr. Bucket remonstrates. "I thought
+the French were a polite nation, I did, really. Yet to hear a female
+going on like that before Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet!"
+
+"He is a poor abused!" cries mademoiselle. "I spit upon his house,
+upon his name, upon his imbecility," all of which she makes the
+carpet represent. "Oh, that he is a great man! Oh, yes, superb! Oh,
+heaven! Bah!"
+
+"Well, Sir Leicester Dedlock," proceeds Mr. Bucket, "this intemperate
+foreigner also angrily took it into her head that she had established
+a claim upon Mr. Tulkinghorn, deceased, by attending on the occasion
+I told you of at his chambers, though she was liberally paid for her
+time and trouble."
+
+"Lie!" cries mademoiselle. "I ref-use his money all togezzer."
+
+"If you WILL PARLAY, you know," says Mr. Bucket parenthetically, "you
+must take the consequences. Now, whether she became my lodger, Sir
+Leicester Dedlock, with any deliberate intention then of doing this
+deed and blinding me, I give no opinion on; but she lived in my house
+in that capacity at the time that she was hovering about the chambers
+of the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn with a view to a wrangle, and
+likewise persecuting and half frightening the life out of an
+unfortunate stationer."
+
+"Lie!" cries mademoiselle. "All lie!"
+
+"The murder was committed, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and you
+know under what circumstances. Now, I beg of you to follow me close
+with your attention for a minute or two. I was sent for, and the case
+was entrusted to me. I examined the place, and the body, and the
+papers, and everything. From information I received (from a clerk in
+the same house) I took George into custody as having been seen
+hanging about there on the night, and at very nigh the time of the
+murder, also as having been overheard in high words with the deceased
+on former occasions--even threatening him, as the witness made out.
+If you ask me, Sir Leicester Dedlock, whether from the first I
+believed George to be the murderer, I tell you candidly no, but he
+might be, notwithstanding, and there was enough against him to make
+it my duty to take him and get him kept under remand. Now, observe!"
+
+As Mr. Bucket bends forward in some excitement--for him--and
+inaugurates what he is going to say with one ghostly beat of his
+forefinger in the air, Mademoiselle Hortense fixes her black eyes
+upon him with a dark frown and sets her dry lips closely and firmly
+together.
+
+"I went home, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, at night and found this
+young woman having supper with my wife, Mrs. Bucket. She had made a
+mighty show of being fond of Mrs. Bucket from her first offering
+herself as our lodger, but that night she made more than ever--in
+fact, overdid it. Likewise she overdid her respect, and all that, for
+the lamented memory of the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn. By the living
+Lord it flashed upon me, as I sat opposite to her at the table and
+saw her with a knife in her hand, that she had done it!"
+
+Mademoiselle is hardly audible in straining through her teeth and
+lips the words, "You are a devil."
+
+"Now where," pursues Mr. Bucket, "had she been on the night of the
+murder? She had been to the theayter. (She really was there, I have
+since found, both before the deed and after it.) I knew I had an
+artful customer to deal with and that proof would be very difficult;
+and I laid a trap for her--such a trap as I never laid yet, and such
+a venture as I never made yet. I worked it out in my mind while I was
+talking to her at supper. When I went upstairs to bed, our house
+being small and this young woman's ears sharp, I stuffed the sheet
+into Mrs. Bucket's mouth that she shouldn't say a word of surprise
+and told her all about it. My dear, don't you give your mind to that
+again, or I shall link your feet together at the ankles." Mr. Bucket,
+breaking off, has made a noiseless descent upon mademoiselle and laid
+his heavy hand upon her shoulder.
+
+"What is the matter with you now?" she asks him.
+
+"Don't you think any more," returns Mr. Bucket with admonitory
+finger, "of throwing yourself out of window. That's what's the matter
+with me. Come! Just take my arm. You needn't get up; I'll sit down by
+you. Now take my arm, will you? I'm a married man, you know; you're
+acquainted with my wife. Just take my arm."
+
+Vainly endeavouring to moisten those dry lips, with a painful sound
+she struggles with herself and complies.
+
+"Now we're all right again. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, this case
+could never have been the case it is but for Mrs. Bucket, who is a
+woman in fifty thousand--in a hundred and fifty thousand! To throw
+this young woman off her guard, I have never set foot in our house
+since, though I've communicated with Mrs. Bucket in the baker's
+loaves and in the milk as often as required. My whispered words to
+Mrs. Bucket when she had the sheet in her mouth were, 'My dear, can
+you throw her off continually with natural accounts of my suspicions
+against George, and this, and that, and t'other? Can you do without
+rest and keep watch upon her night and day? Can you undertake to say,
+'She shall do nothing without my knowledge, she shall be my prisoner
+without suspecting it, she shall no more escape from me than from
+death, and her life shall be my life, and her soul my soul, till I
+have got her, if she did this murder?' Mrs. Bucket says to me, as
+well as she could speak on account of the sheet, 'Bucket, I can!' And
+she has acted up to it glorious!"
+
+"Lies!" mademoiselle interposes. "All lies, my friend!"
+
+"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, how did my calculations come out
+under these circumstances? When I calculated that this impetuous
+young woman would overdo it in new directions, was I wrong or right?
+I was right. What does she try to do? Don't let it give you a turn?
+To throw the murder on her ladyship."
+
+Sir Leicester rises from his chair and staggers down again.
+
+"And she got encouragement in it from hearing that I was always here,
+which was done a-purpose. Now, open that pocket-book of mine, Sir
+Leicester Dedlock, if I may take the liberty of throwing it towards
+you, and look at the letters sent to me, each with the two words
+'Lady Dedlock' in it. Open the one directed to yourself, which I
+stopped this very morning, and read the three words 'Lady Dedlock,
+Murderess' in it. These letters have been falling about like a shower
+of lady-birds. What do you say now to Mrs. Bucket, from her spy-place
+having seen them all 'written by this young woman? What do you say to
+Mrs. Bucket having, within this half-hour, secured the corresponding
+ink and paper, fellow half-sheets and what not? What do you say to
+Mrs. Bucket having watched the posting of 'em every one by this young
+woman, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet?" Mr. Bucket asks, triumphant
+in his admiration of his lady's genius.
+
+Two things are especially observable as Mr. Bucket proceeds to a
+conclusion. First, that he seems imperceptibly to establish a
+dreadful right of property in mademoiselle. Secondly, that the very
+atmosphere she breathes seems to narrow and contract about her as if
+a close net or a pall were being drawn nearer and yet nearer around
+her breathless figure.
+
+"There is no doubt that her ladyship was on the spot at the eventful
+period," says Mr. Bucket, "and my foreign friend here saw her, I
+believe, from the upper part of the staircase. Her ladyship and
+George and my foreign friend were all pretty close on one another's
+heels. But that don't signify any more, so I'll not go into it. I
+found the wadding of the pistol with which the deceased Mr.
+Tulkinghorn was shot. It was a bit of the printed description of your
+house at Chesney Wold. Not much in that, you'll say, Sir Leicester
+Dedlock, Baronet. No. But when my foreign friend here is so
+thoroughly off her guard as to think it a safe time to tear up the
+rest of that leaf, and when Mrs. Bucket puts the pieces together and
+finds the wadding wanting, it begins to look like Queer Street."
+
+"These are very long lies," mademoiselle interposes. "You prose great
+deal. Is it that you have almost all finished, or are you speaking
+always?"
+
+"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," proceeds Mr. Bucket, who delights
+in a full title and does violence to himself when he dispenses with
+any fragment of it, "the last point in the case which I am now going
+to mention shows the necessity of patience in our business, and never
+doing a thing in a hurry. I watched this young woman yesterday
+without her knowledge when she was looking at the funeral, in company
+with my wife, who planned to take her there; and I had so much to
+convict her, and I saw such an expression in her face, and my mind so
+rose against her malice towards her ladyship, and the time was
+altogether such a time for bringing down what you may call
+retribution upon her, that if I had been a younger hand with less
+experience, I should have taken her, certain. Equally, last night,
+when her ladyship, as is so universally admired I am sure, come home
+looking--why, Lord, a man might almost say like Venus rising from the
+ocean--it was so unpleasant and inconsistent to think of her being
+charged with a murder of which she was innocent that I felt quite to
+want to put an end to the job. What should I have lost? Sir Leicester
+Dedlock, Baronet, I should have lost the weapon. My prisoner here
+proposed to Mrs. Bucket, after the departure of the funeral, that
+they should go per bus a little ways into the country and take tea at
+a very decent house of entertainment. Now, near that house of
+entertainment there's a piece of water. At tea, my prisoner got up to
+fetch her pocket handkercher from the bedroom where the bonnets was;
+she was rather a long time gone and came back a little out of wind.
+As soon as they came home this was reported to me by Mrs. Bucket,
+along with her observations and suspicions. I had the piece of water
+dragged by moonlight, in presence of a couple of our men, and the
+pocket pistol was brought up before it had been there half-a-dozen
+hours. Now, my dear, put your arm a little further through mine, and
+hold it steady, and I shan't hurt you!"
+
+In a trice Mr. Bucket snaps a handcuff on her wrist. "That's one,"
+says Mr. Bucket. "Now the other, darling. Two, and all told!"
+
+He rises; she rises too. "Where," she asks him, darkening her large
+eyes until their drooping lids almost conceal them--and yet they
+stare, "where is your false, your treacherous, and cursed wife?"
+
+"She's gone forrard to the Police Office," returns Mr. Bucket.
+"You'll see her there, my dear."
+
+"I would like to kiss her!" exclaims Mademoiselle Hortense, panting
+tigress-like.
+
+"You'd bite her, I suspect," says Mr. Bucket.
+
+"I would!" making her eyes very large. "I would love to tear her limb
+from limb."
+
+"Bless you, darling," says Mr. Bucket with the greatest composure,
+"I'm fully prepared to hear that. Your sex have such a surprising
+animosity against one another when you do differ. You don't mind me
+half so much, do you?"
+
+"No. Though you are a devil still."
+
+"Angel and devil by turns, eh?" cries Mr. Bucket. "But I am in my
+regular employment, you must consider. Let me put your shawl tidy.
+I've been lady's maid to a good many before now. Anything wanting to
+the bonnet? There's a cab at the door."
+
+Mademoiselle Hortense, casting an indignant eye at the glass, shakes
+herself perfectly neat in one shake and looks, to do her justice,
+uncommonly genteel.
+
+"Listen then, my angel," says she after several sarcastic nods. "You
+are very spiritual. But can you restore him back to life?"
+
+Mr. Bucket answers, "Not exactly."
+
+"That is droll. Listen yet one time. You are very spiritual. Can you
+make a honourable lady of her?"
+
+"Don't be so malicious," says Mr. Bucket.
+
+"Or a haughty gentleman of HIM?" cries mademoiselle, referring to Sir
+Leicester with ineffable disdain. "Eh! Oh, then regard him! The poor
+infant! Ha! Ha! Ha!"
+
+"Come, come, why this is worse PARLAYING than the other," says Mr.
+Bucket. "Come along!"
+
+"You cannot do these things? Then you can do as you please with me.
+It is but the death, it is all the same. Let us go, my angel. Adieu,
+you old man, grey. I pity you, and I despise you!"
+
+With these last words she snaps her teeth together as if her mouth
+closed with a spring. It is impossible to describe how Mr. Bucket
+gets her out, but he accomplishes that feat in a manner so peculiar
+to himself, enfolding and pervading her like a cloud, and hovering
+away with her as if he were a homely Jupiter and she the object of
+his affections.
+
+Sir Leicester, left alone, remains in the same attitude, as though he
+were still listening and his attention were still occupied. At length
+he gazes round the empty room, and finding it deserted, rises
+unsteadily to his feet, pushes back his chair, and walks a few steps,
+supporting himself by the table. Then he stops, and with more of
+those inarticulate sounds, lifts up his eyes and seems to stare at
+something.
+
+Heaven knows what he sees. The green, green woods of Chesney Wold,
+the noble house, the pictures of his forefathers, strangers defacing
+them, officers of police coarsely handling his most precious
+heirlooms, thousands of fingers pointing at him, thousands of faces
+sneering at him. But if such shadows flit before him to his
+bewilderment, there is one other shadow which he can name with
+something like distinctness even yet and to which alone he addresses
+his tearing of his white hair and his extended arms.
+
+It is she in association with whom, saving that she has been for
+years a main fibre of the root of his dignity and pride, he has never
+had a selfish thought. It is she whom he has loved, admired,
+honoured, and set up for the world to respect. It is she who, at the
+core of all the constrained formalities and conventionalities of his
+life, has been a stock of living tenderness and love, susceptible as
+nothing else is of being struck with the agony he feels. He sees her,
+almost to the exclusion of himself, and cannot bear to look upon her
+cast down from the high place she has graced so well.
+
+And even to the point of his sinking on the ground, oblivious of his
+suffering, he can yet pronounce her name with something like
+distinctness in the midst of those intrusive sounds, and in a tone of
+mourning and compassion rather than reproach.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LV
+
+Flight
+
+
+Inspector Bucket of the Detective has not yet struck his great blow,
+as just now chronicled, but is yet refreshing himself with sleep
+preparatory to his field-day, when through the night and along the
+freezing wintry roads a chaise and pair comes out of Lincolnshire,
+making its way towards London.
+
+Railroads shall soon traverse all this country, and with a rattle and
+a glare the engine and train shall shoot like a meteor over the wide
+night-landscape, turning the moon paler; but as yet such things are
+non-existent in these parts, though not wholly unexpected.
+Preparations are afoot, measurements are made, ground is staked out.
+Bridges are begun, and their not yet united piers desolately look at
+one another over roads and streams like brick and mortar couples with
+an obstacle to their union; fragments of embankments are thrown up
+and left as precipices with torrents of rusty carts and barrows
+tumbling over them; tripods of tall poles appear on hilltops, where
+there are rumours of tunnels; everything looks chaotic and abandoned
+in full hopelessness. Along the freezing roads, and through the
+night, the post-chaise makes its way without a railroad on its mind.
+
+Mrs. Rouncewell, so many years housekeeper at Chesney Wold, sits
+within the chaise; and by her side sits Mrs. Bagnet with her grey
+cloak and umbrella. The old girl would prefer the bar in front, as
+being exposed to the weather and a primitive sort of perch more in
+accordance with her usual course of travelling, but Mrs. Rouncewell
+is too thoughtful of her comfort to admit of her proposing it. The
+old lady cannot make enough of the old girl. She sits, in her stately
+manner, holding her hand, and regardless of its roughness, puts it
+often to her lips. "You are a mother, my dear soul," says she many
+times, "and you found out my George's mother!"
+
+"Why, George," returns Mrs. Bagnet, "was always free with me, ma'am,
+and when he said at our house to my Woolwich that of all the things
+my Woolwich could have to think of when he grew to be a man, the
+comfortablest would be that he had never brought a sorrowful line
+into his mother's face or turned a hair of her head grey, then I felt
+sure, from his way, that something fresh had brought his own mother
+into his mind. I had often known him say to me, in past times, that
+he had behaved bad to her."
+
+"Never, my dear!" returns Mrs. Rouncewell, bursting into tears. "My
+blessing on him, never! He was always fond of me, and loving to me,
+was my George! But he had a bold spirit, and he ran a little wild and
+went for a soldier. And I know he waited at first, in letting us know
+about himself, till he should rise to be an officer; and when he
+didn't rise, I know he considered himself beneath us, and wouldn't be
+a disgrace to us. For he had a lion heart, had my George, always from
+a baby!"
+
+The old lady's hands stray about her as of yore, while she recalls,
+all in a tremble, what a likely lad, what a fine lad, what a gay
+good-humoured clever lad he was; how they all took to him down at
+Chesney Wold; how Sir Leicester took to him when he was a young
+gentleman; how the dogs took to him; how even the people who had been
+angry with him forgave him the moment he was gone, poor boy. And now
+to see him after all, and in a prison too! And the broad stomacher
+heaves, and the quaint upright old-fashioned figure bends under its
+load of affectionate distress.
+
+Mrs. Bagnet, with the instinctive skill of a good warm heart, leaves
+the old housekeeper to her emotions for a little while--not without
+passing the back of her hand across her own motherly eyes--and
+presently chirps up in her cheery manner, "So I says to George when I
+goes to call him in to tea (he pretended to be smoking his pipe
+outside), 'What ails you this afternoon, George, for gracious sake? I
+have seen all sorts, and I have seen you pretty often in season and
+out of season, abroad and at home, and I never see you so melancholy
+penitent.' 'Why, Mrs. Bagnet,' says George, 'it's because I AM
+melancholy and penitent both, this afternoon, that you see me so.'
+'What have you done, old fellow?' I says. 'Why, Mrs. Bagnet,' says
+George, shaking his head, 'what I have done has been done this many a
+long year, and is best not tried to be undone now. If I ever get to
+heaven it won't be for being a good son to a widowed mother; I say no
+more.' Now, ma'am, when George says to me that it's best not tried to
+be undone now, I have my thoughts as I have often had before, and I
+draw it out of George how he comes to have such things on him that
+afternoon. Then George tells me that he has seen by chance, at the
+lawyer's office, a fine old lady that has brought his mother plain
+before him, and he runs on about that old lady till he quite forgets
+himself and paints her picture to me as she used to be, years upon
+years back. So I says to George when he has done, who is this old
+lady he has seen? And George tells me it's Mrs. Rouncewell,
+housekeeper for more than half a century to the Dedlock family down
+at Chesney Wold in Lincolnshire. George has frequently told me before
+that he's a Lincolnshire man, and I says to my old Lignum that night,
+'Lignum, that's his mother for five and for-ty pound!'"
+
+All this Mrs. Bagnet now relates for the twentieth time at least
+within the last four hours. Trilling it out like a kind of bird, with
+a pretty high note, that it may be audible to the old lady above the
+hum of the wheels.
+
+"Bless you, and thank you," says Mrs. Rouncewell. "Bless you, and
+thank you, my worthy soul!"
+
+"Dear heart!" cries Mrs. Bagnet in the most natural manner. "No
+thanks to me, I am sure. Thanks to yourself, ma'am, for being so
+ready to pay 'em! And mind once more, ma'am, what you had best do
+on finding George to be your own son is to make him--for your
+sake--have every sort of help to put himself in the right and clear
+himself of a charge of which he is as innocent as you or me. It won't
+do to have truth and justice on his side; he must have law and
+lawyers," exclaims the old girl, apparently persuaded that the latter
+form a separate establishment and have dissolved partnership with
+truth and justice for ever and a day.
+
+"He shall have," says Mrs. Rouncewell, "all the help that can be got
+for him in the world, my dear. I will spend all I have, and
+thankfully, to procure it. Sir Leicester will do his best, the whole
+family will do their best. I--I know something, my dear; and will
+make my own appeal, as his mother parted from him all these years,
+and finding him in a jail at last."
+
+The extreme disquietude of the old housekeeper's manner in saying
+this, her broken words, and her wringing of her hands make a powerful
+impression on Mrs. Bagnet and would astonish her but that she refers
+them all to her sorrow for her son's condition. And yet Mrs. Bagnet
+wonders too why Mrs. Rouncewell should murmur so distractedly, "My
+Lady, my Lady, my Lady!" over and over again.
+
+The frosty night wears away, and the dawn breaks, and the post-chaise
+comes rolling on through the early mist like the ghost of a chaise
+departed. It has plenty of spectral company in ghosts of trees and
+hedges, slowly vanishing and giving place to the realities of day.
+London reached, the travellers alight, the old housekeeper in great
+tribulation and confusion, Mrs. Bagnet quite fresh and collected--as
+she would be if her next point, with no new equipage and outfit, were
+the Cape of Good Hope, the Island of Ascension, Hong Kong, or any
+other military station.
+
+But when they set out for the prison where the trooper is
+confined, the old lady has managed to draw about her, with her
+lavender-coloured dress, much of the staid calmness which is its
+usual accompaniment. A wonderfully grave, precise, and handsome piece
+of old china she looks, though her heart beats fast and her stomacher
+is ruffled more than even the remembrance of this wayward son has
+ruffled it these many years.
+
+Approaching the cell, they find the door opening and a warder in the
+act of coming out. The old girl promptly makes a sign of entreaty to
+him to say nothing; assenting with a nod, he suffers them to enter as
+he shuts the door.
+
+So George, who is writing at his table, supposing himself to be
+alone, does not raise his eyes, but remains absorbed. The old
+housekeeper looks at him, and those wandering hands of hers are quite
+enough for Mrs. Bagnet's confirmation, even if she could see the
+mother and the son together, knowing what she knows, and doubt their
+relationship.
+
+Not a rustle of the housekeeper's dress, not a gesture, not a word
+betrays her. She stands looking at him as he writes on, all
+unconscious, and only her fluttering hands give utterance to her
+emotions. But they are very eloquent, very, very eloquent. Mrs.
+Bagnet understands them. They speak of gratitude, of joy, of grief,
+of hope; of inextinguishable affection, cherished with no return
+since this stalwart man was a stripling; of a better son loved less,
+and this son loved so fondly and so proudly; and they speak in such
+touching language that Mrs. Bagnet's eyes brim up with tears and they
+run glistening down her sun-brown face.
+
+"George Rouncewell! Oh, my dear child, turn and look at me!"
+
+The trooper starts up, clasps his mother round the neck, and falls
+down on his knees before her. Whether in a late repentance, whether
+in the first association that comes back upon him, he puts his hands
+together as a child does when it says its prayers, and raising them
+towards her breast, bows down his head, and cries.
+
+"My George, my dearest son! Always my favourite, and my favourite
+still, where have you been these cruel years and years? Grown such a
+man too, grown such a fine strong man. Grown so like what I knew he
+must be, if it pleased God he was alive!"
+
+She can ask, and he can answer, nothing connected for a time. All
+that time the old girl, turned away, leans one arm against the
+whitened wall, leans her honest forehead upon it, wipes her eyes with
+her serviceable grey cloak, and quite enjoys herself like the best of
+old girls as she is.
+
+"Mother," says the trooper when they are more composed, "forgive me
+first of all, for I know my need of it."
+
+Forgive him! She does it with all her heart and soul. She always has
+done it. She tells him how she has had it written in her will, these
+many years, that he was her beloved son George. She has never
+believed any ill of him, never. If she had died without this
+happiness--and she is an old woman now and can't look to live very
+long--she would have blessed him with her last breath, if she had had
+her senses, as her beloved son George.
+
+"Mother, I have been an undutiful trouble to you, and I have my
+reward; but of late years I have had a kind of glimmering of a
+purpose in me too. When I left home I didn't care much, mother--I am
+afraid not a great deal--for leaving; and went away and 'listed,
+harum-scarum, making believe to think that I cared for nobody, no not
+I, and that nobody cared for me."
+
+The trooper has dried his eyes and put away his handkerchief, but
+there is an extraordinary contrast between his habitual manner of
+expressing himself and carrying himself and the softened tone in
+which he speaks, interrupted occasionally by a half-stifled sob.
+
+"So I wrote a line home, mother, as you too well know, to say I had
+'listed under another name, and I went abroad. Abroad, at one time I
+thought I would write home next year, when I might be better off; and
+when that year was out, I thought I would write home next year, when
+I might be better off; and when that year was out again, perhaps I
+didn't think much about it. So on, from year to year, through a
+service of ten years, till I began to get older, and to ask myself
+why should I ever write."
+
+"I don't find any fault, child--but not to ease my mind, George? Not
+a word to your loving mother, who was growing older too?"
+
+This almost overturns the trooper afresh, but he sets himself up with
+a great, rough, sounding clearance of his throat.
+
+"Heaven forgive me, mother, but I thought there would be small
+consolation then in hearing anything about me. There were you,
+respected and esteemed. There was my brother, as I read in chance
+North Country papers now and then, rising to be prosperous and
+famous. There was I a dragoon, roving, unsettled, not self-made like
+him, but self-unmade--all my earlier advantages thrown away, all my
+little learning unlearnt, nothing picked up but what unfitted me for
+most things that I could think of. What business had I to make myself
+known? After letting all that time go by me, what good could come of
+it? The worst was past with you, mother. I knew by that time (being a
+man) how you had mourned for me, and wept for me, and prayed for me;
+and the pain was over, or was softened down, and I was better in your
+mind as it was."
+
+The old lady sorrowfully shakes her head, and taking one of his
+powerful hands, lays it lovingly upon her shoulder.
+
+"No, I don't say that it was so, mother, but that I made it out to be
+so. I said just now, what good could come of it? Well, my dear
+mother, some good might have come of it to myself--and there was the
+meanness of it. You would have sought me out; you would have
+purchased my discharge; you would have taken me down to Chesney Wold;
+you would have brought me and my brother and my brother's family
+together; you would all have considered anxiously how to do something
+for me and set me up as a respectable civilian. But how could any of
+you feel sure of me when I couldn't so much as feel sure of myself?
+How could you help regarding as an incumbrance and a discredit to you
+an idle dragooning chap who was an incumbrance and a discredit to
+himself, excepting under discipline? How could I look my brother's
+children in the face and pretend to set them an example--I, the
+vagabond boy who had run away from home and been the grief and
+unhappiness of my mother's life? 'No, George.' Such were my words,
+mother, when I passed this in review before me: 'You have made your
+bed. Now, lie upon it.'"
+
+Mrs. Rouncewell, drawing up her stately form, shakes her head at the
+old girl with a swelling pride upon her, as much as to say, "I told
+you so!" The old girl relieves her feelings and testifies her
+interest in the conversation by giving the trooper a great poke
+between the shoulders with her umbrella; this action she afterwards
+repeats, at intervals, in a species of affectionate lunacy, never
+failing, after the administration of each of these remonstrances, to
+resort to the whitened wall and the grey cloak again.
+
+"This was the way I brought myself to think, mother, that my best
+amends was to lie upon that bed I had made, and die upon it. And I
+should have done it (though I have been to see you more than once
+down at Chesney Wold, when you little thought of me) but for my old
+comrade's wife here, who I find has been too many for me. But I thank
+her for it. I thank you for it, Mrs. Bagnet, with all my heart and
+might."
+
+To which Mrs. Bagnet responds with two pokes.
+
+And now the old lady impresses upon her son George, her own dear
+recovered boy, her joy and pride, the light of her eyes, the happy
+close of her life, and every fond name she can think of, that he must
+be governed by the best advice obtainable by money and influence,
+that he must yield up his case to the greatest lawyers that can be
+got, that he must act in this serious plight as he shall be advised
+to act and must not be self-willed, however right, but must promise
+to think only of his poor old mother's anxiety and suffering until he
+is released, or he will break her heart.
+
+"Mother, 'tis little enough to consent to," returns the trooper,
+stopping her with a kiss; "tell me what I shall do, and I'll make a
+late beginning and do it. Mrs. Bagnet, you'll take care of my mother,
+I know?"
+
+A very hard poke from the old girl's umbrella.
+
+"If you'll bring her acquainted with Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Summerson,
+she will find them of her way of thinking, and they will give her the
+best advice and assistance."
+
+"And, George," says the old lady, "we must send with all haste for
+your brother. He is a sensible sound man as they tell me--out in the
+world beyond Chesney Wold, my dear, though I don't know much of it
+myself--and will be of great service."
+
+"Mother," returns the trooper, "is it too soon to ask a favour?"
+
+"Surely not, my dear."
+
+"Then grant me this one great favour. Don't let my brother know."
+
+"Not know what, my dear?"
+
+"Not know of me. In fact, mother, I can't bear it; I can't make up my
+mind to it. He has proved himself so different from me and has done
+so much to raise himself while I've been soldiering that I haven't
+brass enough in my composition to see him in this place and under
+this charge. How could a man like him be expected to have any
+pleasure in such a discovery? It's impossible. No, keep my secret
+from him, mother; do me a greater kindness than I deserve and keep my
+secret from my brother, of all men."
+
+"But not always, dear George?"
+
+"Why, mother, perhaps not for good and all--though I may come to ask
+that too--but keep it now, I do entreat you. If it's ever broke to
+him that his rip of a brother has turned up, I could wish," says the
+trooper, shaking his head very doubtfully, "to break it myself and be
+governed as to advancing or retreating by the way in which he seems
+to take it."
+
+As he evidently has a rooted feeling on this point, and as the depth
+of it is recognized in Mrs. Bagnet's face, his mother yields her
+implicit assent to what he asks. For this he thanks her kindly.
+
+"In all other respects, my dear mother, I'll be as tractable and
+obedient as you can wish; on this one alone, I stand out. So now I am
+ready even for the lawyers. I have been drawing up," he glances at
+his writing on the table, "an exact account of what I knew of the
+deceased and how I came to be involved in this unfortunate affair.
+It's entered, plain and regular, like an orderly-book; not a word in
+it but what's wanted for the facts. I did intend to read it, straight
+on end, whensoever I was called upon to say anything in my defence. I
+hope I may be let to do it still; but I have no longer a will of my
+own in this case, and whatever is said or done, I give my promise not
+to have any."
+
+Matters being brought to this so far satisfactory pass, and time
+being on the wane, Mrs. Bagnet proposes a departure. Again and again
+the old lady hangs upon her son's neck, and again and again the
+trooper holds her to his broad chest.
+
+"Where are you going to take my mother, Mrs. Bagnet?"
+
+"I am going to the town house, my dear, the family house. I have some
+business there that must be looked to directly," Mrs. Rouncewell
+answers.
+
+"Will you see my mother safe there in a coach, Mrs. Bagnet? But of
+course I know you will. Why should I ask it!"
+
+Why indeed, Mrs. Bagnet expresses with the umbrella.
+
+"Take her, my old friend, and take my gratitude along with you.
+Kisses to Quebec and Malta, love to my godson, a hearty shake of the
+hand to Lignum, and this for yourself, and I wish it was ten thousand
+pound in gold, my dear!" So saying, the trooper puts his lips to the
+old girl's tanned forehead, and the door shuts upon him in his cell.
+
+No entreaties on the part of the good old housekeeper will induce
+Mrs. Bagnet to retain the coach for her own conveyance home. Jumping
+out cheerfully at the door of the Dedlock mansion and handing Mrs.
+Rouncewell up the steps, the old girl shakes hands and trudges off,
+arriving soon afterwards in the bosom of the Bagnet family and
+falling to washing the greens as if nothing had happened.
+
+My Lady is in that room in which she held her last conference with
+the murdered man, and is sitting where she sat that night, and is
+looking at the spot where he stood upon the hearth studying her so
+leisurely, when a tap comes at the door. Who is it? Mrs. Rouncewell.
+What has brought Mrs. Rouncewell to town so unexpectedly?
+
+"Trouble, my Lady. Sad trouble. Oh, my Lady, may I beg a word with
+you?"
+
+What new occurrence is it that makes this tranquil old woman tremble
+so? Far happier than her Lady, as her Lady has often thought, why
+does she falter in this manner and look at her with such strange
+mistrust?
+
+"What is the matter? Sit down and take your breath."
+
+"Oh, my Lady, my Lady. I have found my son--my youngest, who went
+away for a soldier so long ago. And he is in prison."
+
+"For debt?"
+
+"Oh, no, my Lady; I would have paid any debt, and joyful."
+
+"For what is he in prison then?"
+
+"Charged with a murder, my Lady, of which he is as innocent as--as I
+am. Accused of the murder of Mr. Tulkinghorn."
+
+What does she mean by this look and this imploring gesture? Why does
+she come so close? What is the letter that she holds?
+
+"Lady Dedlock, my dear Lady, my good Lady, my kind Lady! You must
+have a heart to feel for me, you must have a heart to forgive me. I
+was in this family before you were born. I am devoted to it. But
+think of my dear son wrongfully accused."
+
+"I do not accuse him."
+
+"No, my Lady, no. But others do, and he is in prison and in danger.
+Oh, Lady Dedlock, if you can say but a word to help to clear him, say
+it!"
+
+What delusion can this be? What power does she suppose is in the
+person she petitions to avert this unjust suspicion, if it be unjust?
+Her Lady's handsome eyes regard her with astonishment, almost with
+fear.
+
+"My Lady, I came away last night from Chesney Wold to find my son in
+my old age, and the step upon the Ghost's Walk was so constant and so
+solemn that I never heard the like in all these years. Night after
+night, as it has fallen dark, the sound has echoed through your
+rooms, but last night it was awfullest. And as it fell dark last
+night, my Lady, I got this letter."
+
+"What letter is it?"
+
+"Hush! Hush!" The housekeeper looks round and answers in a frightened
+whisper, "My Lady, I have not breathed a word of it, I don't believe
+what's written in it, I know it can't be true, I am sure and certain
+that it is not true. But my son is in danger, and you must have a
+heart to pity me. If you know of anything that is not known to
+others, if you have any suspicion, if you have any clue at all, and
+any reason for keeping it in your own breast, oh, my dear Lady, think
+of me, and conquer that reason, and let it be known! This is the most
+I consider possible. I know you are not a hard lady, but you go your
+own way always without help, and you are not familiar with your
+friends; and all who admire you--and all do--as a beautiful and
+elegant lady, know you to be one far away from themselves who can't
+be approached close. My Lady, you may have some proud or angry
+reasons for disdaining to utter something that you know; if so, pray,
+oh, pray, think of a faithful servant whose whole life has been
+passed in this family which she dearly loves, and relent, and help to
+clear my son! My Lady, my good Lady," the old housekeeper pleads with
+genuine simplicity, "I am so humble in my place and you are by nature
+so high and distant that you may not think what I feel for my child,
+but I feel so much that I have come here to make so bold as to beg
+and pray you not to be scornful of us if you can do us any right or
+justice at this fearful time!"
+
+Lady Dedlock raises her without one word, until she takes the letter
+from her hand.
+
+"Am I to read this?"
+
+"When I am gone, my Lady, if you please, and then remembering the
+most that I consider possible."
+
+"I know of nothing I can do. I know of nothing I reserve that can
+affect your son. I have never accused him."
+
+"My Lady, you may pity him the more under a false accusation after
+reading the letter."
+
+The old housekeeper leaves her with the letter in her hand. In truth
+she is not a hard lady naturally, and the time has been when the
+sight of the venerable figure suing to her with such strong
+earnestness would have moved her to great compassion. But so long
+accustomed to suppress emotion and keep down reality, so long
+schooled for her own purposes in that destructive school which shuts
+up the natural feelings of the heart like flies in amber and spreads
+one uniform and dreary gloss over the good and bad, the feeling and
+the unfeeling, the sensible and the senseless, she had subdued even
+her wonder until now.
+
+She opens the letter. Spread out upon the paper is a printed account
+of the discovery of the body as it lay face downward on the floor,
+shot through the heart; and underneath is written her own name, with
+the word "murderess" attached.
+
+It falls out of her hand. How long it may have lain upon the ground
+she knows not, but it lies where it fell when a servant stands before
+her announcing the young man of the name of Guppy. The words have
+probably been repeated several times, for they are ringing in her
+head before she begins to understand them.
+
+"Let him come in!"
+
+He comes in. Holding the letter in her hand, which she has taken from
+the floor, she tries to collect her thoughts. In the eyes of Mr.
+Guppy she is the same Lady Dedlock, holding the same prepared, proud,
+chilling state.
+
+"Your ladyship may not be at first disposed to excuse this visit from
+one who has never been welcome to your ladyship"--which he don't
+complain of, for he is bound to confess that there never has been any
+particular reason on the face of things why he should be--"but I hope
+when I mention my motives to your ladyship you will not find fault
+with me," says Mr. Guppy.
+
+"Do so."
+
+"Thank your ladyship. I ought first to explain to your ladyship," Mr.
+Guppy sits on the edge of a chair and puts his hat on the carpet at
+his feet, "that Miss Summerson, whose image, as I formerly mentioned
+to your ladyship, was at one period of my life imprinted on my 'eart
+until erased by circumstances over which I had no control,
+communicated to me, after I had the pleasure of waiting on your
+ladyship last, that she particularly wished me to take no steps
+whatever in any manner at all relating to her. And Miss Summerson's
+wishes being to me a law (except as connected with circumstances over
+which I have no control), I consequently never expected to have the
+distinguished honour of waiting on your ladyship again."
+
+And yet he is here now, Lady Dedlock moodily reminds him.
+
+"And yet I am here now," Mr. Guppy admits. "My object being to
+communicate to your ladyship, under the seal of confidence, why I am
+here."
+
+He cannot do so, she tells him, too plainly or too briefly. "Nor can
+I," Mr. Guppy returns with a sense of injury upon him, "too
+particularly request your ladyship to take particular notice that
+it's no personal affair of mine that brings me here. I have no
+interested views of my own to serve in coming here. If it was not for
+my promise to Miss Summerson and my keeping of it sacred--I, in point
+of fact, shouldn't have darkened these doors again, but should have
+seen 'em further first."
+
+Mr. Guppy considers this a favourable moment for sticking up his hair
+with both hands.
+
+"Your ladyship will remember when I mention it that the last time I
+was here I run against a party very eminent in our profession and
+whose loss we all deplore. That party certainly did from that time
+apply himself to cutting in against me in a way that I will call
+sharp practice, and did make it, at every turn and point, extremely
+difficult for me to be sure that I hadn't inadvertently led up to
+something contrary to Miss Summerson's wishes. Self-praise is no
+recommendation, but I may say for myself that I am not so bad a man
+of business neither."
+
+Lady Dedlock looks at him in stern inquiry. Mr. Guppy immediately
+withdraws his eyes from her face and looks anywhere else.
+
+"Indeed, it has been made so hard," he goes on, "to have any idea
+what that party was up to in combination with others that until the
+loss which we all deplore I was gravelled--an expression which your
+ladyship, moving in the higher circles, will be so good as to
+consider tantamount to knocked over. Small likewise--a name by which
+I refer to another party, a friend of mine that your ladyship is not
+acquainted with--got to be so close and double-faced that at times it
+wasn't easy to keep one's hands off his 'ead. However, what with the
+exertion of my humble abilities, and what with the help of a mutual
+friend by the name of Mr. Tony Weevle (who is of a high aristocratic
+turn and has your ladyship's portrait always hanging up in his room),
+I have now reasons for an apprehension as to which I come to put your
+ladyship upon your guard. First, will your ladyship allow me to ask
+you whether you have had any strange visitors this morning? I don't
+mean fashionable visitors, but such visitors, for instance, as Miss
+Barbary's old servant, or as a person without the use of his lower
+extremities, carried upstairs similarly to a guy?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Then I assure your ladyship that such visitors have been here and
+have been received here. Because I saw them at the door, and waited
+at the corner of the square till they came out, and took half an
+hour's turn afterwards to avoid them."
+
+"What have I to do with that, or what have you? I do not understand
+you. What do you mean?"
+
+"Your ladyship, I come to put you on your guard. There may be no
+occasion for it. Very well. Then I have only done my best to keep my
+promise to Miss Summerson. I strongly suspect (from what Small has
+dropped, and from what we have corkscrewed out of him) that those
+letters I was to have brought to your ladyship were not destroyed
+when I supposed they were. That if there was anything to be blown
+upon, it IS blown upon. That the visitors I have alluded to have been
+here this morning to make money of it. And that the money is made, or
+making."
+
+Mr. Guppy picks up his hat and rises.
+
+"Your ladyship, you know best whether there's anything in what I say
+or whether there's nothing. Something or nothing, I have acted up to
+Miss Summerson's wishes in letting things alone and in undoing what I
+had begun to do, as far as possible; that's sufficient for me. In
+case I should be taking a liberty in putting your ladyship on your
+guard when there's no necessity for it, you will endeavour, I should
+hope, to outlive my presumption, and I shall endeavour to outlive
+your disapprobation. I now take my farewell of your ladyship, and
+assure you that there's no danger of your ever being waited on by me
+again."
+
+She scarcely acknowledges these parting words by any look, but when
+he has been gone a little while, she rings her bell.
+
+"Where is Sir Leicester?"
+
+Mercury reports that he is at present shut up in the library alone.
+
+"Has Sir Leicester had any visitors this morning?"
+
+Several, on business. Mercury proceeds to a description of them,
+which has been anticipated by Mr. Guppy. Enough; he may go.
+
+So! All is broken down. Her name is in these many mouths, her husband
+knows his wrongs, her shame will be published--may be spreading while
+she thinks about it--and in addition to the thunderbolt so long
+foreseen by her, so unforeseen by him, she is denounced by an
+invisible accuser as the murderess of her enemy.
+
+Her enemy he was, and she has often, often, often wished him dead.
+Her enemy he is, even in his grave. This dreadful accusation comes
+upon her like a new torment at his lifeless hand. And when she
+recalls how she was secretly at his door that night, and how she may
+be represented to have sent her favourite girl away so soon before
+merely to release herself from observation, she shudders as if the
+hangman's hands were at her neck.
+
+She has thrown herself upon the floor and lies with her hair all
+wildly scattered and her face buried in the cushions of a couch. She
+rises up, hurries to and fro, flings herself down again, and rocks
+and moans. The horror that is upon her is unutterable. If she really
+were the murderess, it could hardly be, for the moment, more intense.
+
+For as her murderous perspective, before the doing of the deed,
+however subtle the precautions for its commission, would have been
+closed up by a gigantic dilatation of the hateful figure, preventing
+her from seeing any consequences beyond it; and as those consequences
+would have rushed in, in an unimagined flood, the moment the figure
+was laid low--which always happens when a murder is done; so, now she
+sees that when he used to be on the watch before her, and she used to
+think, "if some mortal stroke would but fall on this old man and take
+him from my way!" it was but wishing that all he held against her in
+his hand might be flung to the winds and chance-sown in many places.
+So, too, with the wicked relief she has felt in his death. What was
+his death but the key-stone of a gloomy arch removed, and now the
+arch begins to fall in a thousand fragments, each crushing and
+mangling piecemeal!
+
+Thus, a terrible impression steals upon and overshadows her that from
+this pursuer, living or dead--obdurate and imperturbable before her
+in his well-remembered shape, or not more obdurate and imperturbable
+in his coffin-bed--there is no escape but in death. Hunted, she
+flies. The complication of her shame, her dread, remorse, and misery,
+overwhelms her at its height; and even her strength of self-reliance
+is overturned and whirled away like a leaf before a mighty wind.
+
+She hurriedly addresses these lines to her husband, seals, and leaves
+them on her table:
+
+
+   If I am sought for, or accused of, his murder, believe
+   that I am wholly innocent. Believe no other good of me,
+   for I am innocent of nothing else that you have heard,
+   or will hear, laid to my charge. He prepared me, on that
+   fatal night, for his disclosure of my guilt to you. After
+   he had left me, I went out on pretence of walking in the
+   garden where I sometimes walk, but really to follow him
+   and make one last petition that he would not protract the
+   dreadful suspense on which I have been racked by him, you
+   do not know how long, but would mercifully strike next
+   morning.
+
+   I found his house dark and silent. I rang twice at his
+   door, but there was no reply, and I came home.
+
+   I have no home left. I will encumber you no more. May
+   you, in your just resentment, be able to forget the
+   unworthy woman on whom you have wasted a most generous
+   devotion--who avoids you only with a deeper shame than
+   that with which she hurries from herself--and who writes
+   this last adieu.
+
+
+She veils and dresses quickly, leaves all her jewels and her money,
+listens, goes downstairs at a moment when the hall is empty, opens
+and shuts the great door, flutters away in the shrill frosty wind.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVI
+
+Pursuit
+
+
+Impassive, as behoves its high breeding, the Dedlock town house
+stares at the other houses in the street of dismal grandeur and gives
+no outward sign of anything going wrong within. Carriages rattle,
+doors are battered at, the world exchanges calls; ancient charmers
+with skeleton throats and peachy cheeks that have a rather ghastly
+bloom upon them seen by daylight, when indeed these fascinating
+creatures look like Death and the Lady fused together, dazzle the
+eyes of men. Forth from the frigid mews come easily swinging
+carriages guided by short-legged coachmen in flaxen wigs, deep sunk
+into downy hammercloths, and up behind mount luscious Mercuries
+bearing sticks of state and wearing cocked hats broadwise, a
+spectacle for the angels.
+
+The Dedlock town house changes not externally, and hours pass before
+its exalted dullness is disturbed within. But Volumnia the fair,
+being subject to the prevalent complaint of boredom and finding that
+disorder attacking her spirits with some virulence, ventures at
+length to repair to the library for change of scene. Her gentle
+tapping at the door producing no response, she opens it and peeps in;
+seeing no one there, takes possession.
+
+The sprightly Dedlock is reputed, in that grass-grown city of the
+ancients, Bath, to be stimulated by an urgent curiosity which impels
+her on all convenient and inconvenient occasions to sidle about with
+a golden glass at her eye, peering into objects of every description.
+Certain it is that she avails herself of the present opportunity of
+hovering over her kinsman's letters and papers like a bird, taking a
+short peck at this document and a blink with her head on one side at
+that document, and hopping about from table to table with her glass
+at her eye in an inquisitive and restless manner. In the course of
+these researches she stumbles over something, and turning her glass
+in that direction, sees her kinsman lying on the ground like a felled
+tree.
+
+Volumnia's pet little scream acquires a considerable augmentation of
+reality from this surprise, and the house is quickly in commotion.
+Servants tear up and down stairs, bells are violently rung, doctors
+are sent for, and Lady Dedlock is sought in all directions, but not
+found. Nobody has seen or heard her since she last rang her bell. Her
+letter to Sir Leicester is discovered on her table, but it is
+doubtful yet whether he has not received another missive from another
+world requiring to be personally answered, and all the living
+languages, and all the dead, are as one to him.
+
+They lay him down upon his bed, and chafe, and rub, and fan, and put
+ice to his head, and try every means of restoration. Howbeit, the day
+has ebbed away, and it is night in his room before his stertorous
+breathing lulls or his fixed eyes show any consciousness of the
+candle that is occasionally passed before them. But when this change
+begins, it goes on; and by and by he nods or moves his eyes or even
+his hand in token that he hears and comprehends.
+
+He fell down, this morning, a handsome stately gentleman, somewhat
+infirm, but of a fine presence, and with a well-filled face. He lies
+upon his bed, an aged man with sunken cheeks, the decrepit shadow of
+himself. His voice was rich and mellow and he had so long been
+thoroughly persuaded of the weight and import to mankind of any word
+he said that his words really had come to sound as if there were
+something in them. But now he can only whisper, and what he whispers
+sounds like what it is--mere jumble and jargon.
+
+His favourite and faithful housekeeper stands at his bedside. It is
+the first act he notices, and he clearly derives pleasure from it.
+After vainly trying to make himself understood in speech, he makes
+signs for a pencil. So inexpressively that they cannot at first
+understand him; it is his old housekeeper who makes out what he wants
+and brings in a slate.
+
+After pausing for some time, he slowly scrawls upon it in a hand that
+is not his, "Chesney Wold?"
+
+No, she tells him; he is in London. He was taken ill in the library
+this morning. Right thankful she is that she happened to come to
+London and is able to attend upon him.
+
+"It is not an illness of any serious consequence, Sir Leicester. You
+will be much better to-morrow, Sir Leicester. All the gentlemen say
+so." This, with the tears coursing down her fair old face.
+
+After making a survey of the room and looking with particular
+attention all round the bed where the doctors stand, he writes, "My
+Lady."
+
+"My Lady went out, Sir Leicester, before you were taken ill, and
+don't know of your illness yet."
+
+He points again, in great agitation, at the two words. They all try
+to quiet him, but he points again with increased agitation. On their
+looking at one another, not knowing what to say, he takes the slate
+once more and writes "My Lady. For God's sake, where?" And makes an
+imploring moan.
+
+It is thought better that his old housekeeper should give him Lady
+Dedlock's letter, the contents of which no one knows or can surmise.
+She opens it for him and puts it out for his perusal. Having read it
+twice by a great effort, he turns it down so that it shall not be
+seen and lies moaning. He passes into a kind of relapse or into a
+swoon, and it is an hour before he opens his eyes, reclining on his
+faithful and attached old servant's arm. The doctors know that he is
+best with her, and when not actively engaged about him, stand aloof.
+
+The slate comes into requisition again, but the word he wants to
+write he cannot remember. His anxiety, his eagerness, and affliction
+at this pass are pitiable to behold. It seems as if he must go mad in
+the necessity he feels for haste and the inability under which he
+labours of expressing to do what or to fetch whom. He has written the
+letter B, and there stopped. Of a sudden, in the height of his
+misery, he puts Mr. before it. The old housekeeper suggests Bucket.
+Thank heaven! That's his meaning.
+
+Mr. Bucket is found to be downstairs, by appointment. Shall he come
+up?
+
+There is no possibility of misconstruing Sir Leicester's burning wish
+to see him or the desire he signifies to have the room cleared of
+every one but the housekeeper. It is speedily done, and Mr. Bucket
+appears. Of all men upon earth, Sir Leicester seems fallen from his
+high estate to place his sole trust and reliance upon this man.
+
+"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I'm sorry to see you like this. I
+hope you'll cheer up. I'm sure you will, on account of the family
+credit."
+
+Sir Leicester puts her letter in his hands and looks intently in his
+face while he reads it. A new intelligence comes into Mr. Bucket's
+eye as he reads on; with one hook of his finger, while that eye is
+still glancing over the words, he indicates, "Sir Leicester Dedlock,
+Baronet, I understand you."
+
+Sir Leicester writes upon the slate. "Full forgiveness. Find--" Mr.
+Bucket stops his hand.
+
+"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I'll find her. But my search after
+her must be begun out of hand. Not a minute must be lost."
+
+With the quickness of thought, he follows Sir Leicester Dedlock's
+look towards a little box upon a table.
+
+"Bring it here, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet? Certainly. Open it
+with one of these here keys? Certainly. The littlest key? TO be sure.
+Take the notes out? So I will. Count 'em? That's soon done. Twenty
+and thirty's fifty, and twenty's seventy, and fifty's one twenty, and
+forty's one sixty. Take 'em for expenses? That I'll do, and render an
+account of course. Don't spare money? No I won't."
+
+The velocity and certainty of Mr. Bucket's interpretation on all
+these heads is little short of miraculous. Mrs. Rouncewell, who holds
+the light, is giddy with the swiftness of his eyes and hands as he
+starts up, furnished for his journey.
+
+"You're George's mother, old lady; that's about what you are, I
+believe?" says Mr. Bucket aside, with his hat already on and
+buttoning his coat.
+
+"Yes, sir, I am his distressed mother."
+
+"So I thought, according to what he mentioned to me just now. Well,
+then, I'll tell you something. You needn't be distressed no more.
+Your son's all right. Now, don't you begin a-crying, because what
+you've got to do is to take care of Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,
+and you won't do that by crying. As to your son, he's all right, I
+tell you; and he sends his loving duty, and hoping you're the same.
+He's discharged honourable; that's about what HE is; with no more
+imputation on his character than there is on yours, and yours is a
+tidy one, I'LL bet a pound. You may trust me, for I took your son. He
+conducted himself in a game way, too, on that occasion; and he's a
+fine-made man, and you're a fine-made old lady, and you're a mother
+and son, the pair of you, as might be showed for models in a caravan.
+Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, what you've trusted to me I'll go
+through with. Don't you be afraid of my turning out of my way, right
+or left, or taking a sleep, or a wash, or a shave till I have found
+what I go in search of. Say everything as is kind and forgiving on
+your part? Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I will. And I wish you
+better, and these family affairs smoothed over--as, Lord, many other
+family affairs equally has been, and equally will be, to the end of
+time."
+
+With this peroration, Mr. Bucket, buttoned up, goes quietly out,
+looking steadily before him as if he were already piercing the night
+in quest of the fugitive.
+
+His first step is to take himself to Lady Dedlock's rooms and look
+all over them for any trifling indication that may help him. The
+rooms are in darkness now; and to see Mr. Bucket with a wax-light in
+his hand, holding it above his head and taking a sharp mental
+inventory of the many delicate objects so curiously at variance with
+himself, would be to see a sight--which nobody DOES see, as he is
+particular to lock himself in.
+
+"A spicy boudoir, this," says Mr. Bucket, who feels in a manner
+furbished up in his French by the blow of the morning. "Must have
+cost a sight of money. Rum articles to cut away from, these; she must
+have been hard put to it!"
+
+Opening and shutting table-drawers and looking into caskets and
+jewel-cases, he sees the reflection of himself in various mirrors,
+and moralizes thereon.
+
+"One might suppose I was a-moving in the fashionable circles and
+getting myself up for almac's," says Mr. Bucket. "I begin to think I
+must be a swell in the Guards without knowing it."
+
+Ever looking about, he has opened a dainty little chest in an inner
+drawer. His great hand, turning over some gloves which it can
+scarcely feel, they are so light and soft within it, comes upon a
+white handkerchief.
+
+"Hum! Let's have a look at YOU," says Mr. Bucket, putting down the
+light. "What should YOU be kept by yourself for? What's YOUR motive?
+Are you her ladyship's property, or somebody else's? You've got a
+mark upon you somewheres or another, I suppose?"
+
+He finds it as he speaks, "Esther Summerson."
+
+"Oh!" says Mr. Bucket, pausing, with his finger at his ear. "Come,
+I'll take YOU."
+
+He completes his observations as quietly and carefully as he has
+carried them on, leaves everything else precisely as he found it,
+glides away after some five minutes in all, and passes into the
+street. With a glance upward at the dimly lighted windows of Sir
+Leicester's room, he sets off, full-swing, to the nearest
+coach-stand, picks out the horse for his money, and directs to be
+driven to the shooting gallery. Mr. Bucket does not claim to be a
+scientific judge of horses, but he lays out a little money on the
+principal events in that line, and generally sums up his knowledge of
+the subject in the remark that when he sees a horse as can go, he
+knows him.
+
+His knowledge is not at fault in the present instance. Clattering
+over the stones at a dangerous pace, yet thoughtfully bringing his
+keen eyes to bear on every slinking creature whom he passes in the
+midnight streets, and even on the lights in upper windows where
+people are going or gone to bed, and on all the turnings that he
+rattles by, and alike on the heavy sky, and on the earth where the
+snow lies thin--for something may present itself to assist him,
+anywhere--he dashes to his destination at such a speed that when he
+stops the horse half smothers him in a cloud of steam.
+
+"Unbear him half a moment to freshen him up, and I'll be back."
+
+He runs up the long wooden entry and finds the trooper smoking his
+pipe.
+
+"I thought I should, George, after what you have gone through, my
+lad. I haven't a word to spare. Now, honour! All to save a woman.
+Miss Summerson that was here when Gridley died--that was the name, I
+know--all right--where does she live?"
+
+The trooper has just come from there and gives him the address, near
+Oxford Street.
+
+"You won't repent it, George. Good night!"
+
+He is off again, with an impression of having seen Phil sitting by
+the frosty fire staring at him open-mouthed, and gallops away again,
+and gets out in a cloud of steam again.
+
+Mr. Jarndyce, the only person up in the house, is just going to bed,
+rises from his book on hearing the rapid ringing at the bell, and
+comes down to the door in his dressing-gown.
+
+"Don't be alarmed, sir." In a moment his visitor is confidential with
+him in the hall, has shut the door, and stands with his hand upon the
+lock. "I've had the pleasure of seeing you before. Inspector Bucket.
+Look at that handkerchief, sir, Miss Esther Summerson's. Found it
+myself put away in a drawer of Lady Dedlock's, quarter of an hour
+ago. Not a moment to lose. Matter of life or death. You know Lady
+Dedlock?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"There has been a discovery there to-day. Family affairs have come
+out. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, has had a fit--apoplexy or
+paralysis--and couldn't be brought to, and precious time has been
+lost. Lady Dedlock disappeared this afternoon and left a letter for
+him that looks bad. Run your eye over it. Here it is!"
+
+Mr. Jarndyce, having read it, asks him what he thinks.
+
+"I don't know. It looks like suicide. Anyways, there's more and more
+danger, every minute, of its drawing to that. I'd give a hundred
+pound an hour to have got the start of the present time. Now, Mr.
+Jarndyce, I am employed by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, to follow
+her and find her, to save her and take her his forgiveness. I have
+money and full power, but I want something else. I want Miss
+Summerson."
+
+Mr. Jarndyce in a troubled voice repeats, "Miss Summerson?"
+
+"Now, Mr. Jarndyce"--Mr. Bucket has read his face with the greatest
+attention all along--"I speak to you as a gentleman of a humane
+heart, and under such pressing circumstances as don't often happen.
+If ever delay was dangerous, it's dangerous now; and if ever you
+couldn't afterwards forgive yourself for causing it, this is the
+time. Eight or ten hours, worth, as I tell you, a hundred pound
+apiece at least, have been lost since Lady Dedlock disappeared. I am
+charged to find her. I am Inspector Bucket. Besides all the rest
+that's heavy on her, she has upon her, as she believes, suspicion of
+murder. If I follow her alone, she, being in ignorance of what Sir
+Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, has communicated to me, may be driven to
+desperation. But if I follow her in company with a young lady,
+answering to the description of a young lady that she has a
+tenderness for--I ask no question, and I say no more than that--she
+will give me credit for being friendly. Let me come up with her and
+be able to have the hold upon her of putting that young lady for'ard,
+and I'll save her and prevail with her if she is alive. Let me come
+up with her alone--a hard matter--and I'll do my best, but I don't
+answer for what the best may be. Time flies; it's getting on for one
+o'clock. When one strikes, there's another hour gone, and it's worth
+a thousand pound now instead of a hundred."
+
+This is all true, and the pressing nature of the case cannot be
+questioned. Mr. Jarndyce begs him to remain there while he speaks to
+Miss Summerson. Mr. Bucket says he will, but acting on his usual
+principle, does no such thing, following upstairs instead and keeping
+his man in sight. So he remains, dodging and lurking about in the
+gloom of the staircase while they confer. In a very little time Mr.
+Jarndyce comes down and tells him that Miss Summerson will join him
+directly and place herself under his protection to accompany him
+where he pleases. Mr. Bucket, satisfied, expresses high approval and
+awaits her coming at the door.
+
+There he mounts a high tower in his mind and looks out far and wide.
+Many solitary figures he perceives creeping through the streets; many
+solitary figures out on heaths, and roads, and lying under haystacks.
+But the figure that he seeks is not among them. Other solitaries he
+perceives, in nooks of bridges, looking over; and in shadowed places
+down by the river's level; and a dark, dark, shapeless object
+drifting with the tide, more solitary than all, clings with a
+drowning hold on his attention.
+
+Where is she? Living or dead, where is she? If, as he folds the
+handkerchief and carefully puts it up, it were able with an enchanted
+power to bring before him the place where she found it and the
+night-landscape near the cottage where it covered the little child,
+would he descry her there? On the waste where the brick-kilns are
+burning with a pale blue flare, where the straw-roofs of the wretched
+huts in which the bricks are made are being scattered by the wind,
+where the clay and water are hard frozen and the mill in which the
+gaunt blind horse goes round all day looks like an instrument of
+human torture--traversing this deserted, blighted spot there is a
+lonely figure with the sad world to itself, pelted by the snow and
+driven by the wind, and cast out, it would seem, from all
+companionship. It is the figure of a woman, too; but it is miserably
+dressed, and no such clothes ever came through the hall and out at
+the great door of the Dedlock mansion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVII
+
+Esther's Narrative
+
+
+I had gone to bed and fallen asleep when my guardian knocked at the
+door of my room and begged me to get up directly. On my hurrying to
+speak to him and learn what had happened, he told me, after a word or
+two of preparation, that there had been a discovery at Sir Leicester
+Dedlock's. That my mother had fled, that a person was now at our door
+who was empowered to convey to her the fullest assurances of
+affectionate protection and forgiveness if he could possibly find
+her, and that I was sought for to accompany him in the hope that my
+entreaties might prevail upon her if his failed. Something to this
+general purpose I made out, but I was thrown into such a tumult of
+alarm, and hurry and distress, that in spite of every effort I could
+make to subdue my agitation, I did not seem, to myself, fully to
+recover my right mind until hours had passed.
+
+But I dressed and wrapped up expeditiously without waking Charley or
+any one and went down to Mr. Bucket, who was the person entrusted
+with the secret. In taking me to him my guardian told me this, and
+also explained how it was that he had come to think of me. Mr.
+Bucket, in a low voice, by the light of my guardian's candle, read to
+me in the hall a letter that my mother had left upon her table; and I
+suppose within ten minutes of my having been aroused I was sitting
+beside him, rolling swiftly through the streets.
+
+His manner was very keen, and yet considerate when he explained to me
+that a great deal might depend on my being able to answer, without
+confusion, a few questions that he wished to ask me. These were,
+chiefly, whether I had had much communication with my mother (to whom
+he only referred as Lady Dedlock), when and where I had spoken with
+her last, and how she had become possessed of my handkerchief. When I
+had satisfied him on these points, he asked me particularly to
+consider--taking time to think--whether within my knowledge there was
+any one, no matter where, in whom she might be at all likely to
+confide under circumstances of the last necessity. I could think of
+no one but my guardian. But by and by I mentioned Mr. Boythorn. He
+came into my mind as connected with his old chivalrous manner of
+mentioning my mother's name and with what my guardian had informed me
+of his engagement to her sister and his unconscious connexion with
+her unhappy story.
+
+My companion had stopped the driver while we held this conversation,
+that we might the better hear each other. He now told him to go on
+again and said to me, after considering within himself for a few
+moments, that he had made up his mind how to proceed. He was quite
+willing to tell me what his plan was, but I did not feel clear enough
+to understand it.
+
+We had not driven very far from our lodgings when we stopped in a
+by-street at a public-looking place lighted up with gas. Mr. Bucket
+took me in and sat me in an arm-chair by a bright fire. It was now
+past one, as I saw by the clock against the wall. Two police
+officers, looking in their perfectly neat uniform not at all like
+people who were up all night, were quietly writing at a desk; and the
+place seemed very quiet altogether, except for some beating and
+calling out at distant doors underground, to which nobody paid any
+attention.
+
+A third man in uniform, whom Mr. Bucket called and to whom he
+whispered his instructions, went out; and then the two others advised
+together while one wrote from Mr. Bucket's subdued dictation. It was
+a description of my mother that they were busy with, for Mr. Bucket
+brought it to me when it was done and read it in a whisper. It was
+very accurate indeed.
+
+The second officer, who had attended to it closely, then copied it
+out and called in another man in uniform (there were several in an
+outer room), who took it up and went away with it. All this was done
+with the greatest dispatch and without the waste of a moment; yet
+nobody was at all hurried. As soon as the paper was sent out upon its
+travels, the two officers resumed their former quiet work of writing
+with neatness and care. Mr. Bucket thoughtfully came and warmed the
+soles of his boots, first one and then the other, at the fire.
+
+"Are you well wrapped up, Miss Summerson?" he asked me as his eyes
+met mine. "It's a desperate sharp night for a young lady to be out
+in."
+
+I told him I cared for no weather and was warmly clothed.
+
+"It may be a long job," he observed; "but so that it ends well, never
+mind, miss."
+
+"I pray to heaven it may end well!" said I.
+
+He nodded comfortingly. "You see, whatever you do, don't you go and
+fret yourself. You keep yourself cool and equal for anything that may
+happen, and it'll be the better for you, the better for me, the
+better for Lady Dedlock, and the better for Sir Leicester Dedlock,
+Baronet."
+
+He was really very kind and gentle, and as he stood before the fire
+warming his boots and rubbing his face with his forefinger, I felt a
+confidence in his sagacity which reassured me. It was not yet a
+quarter to two when I heard horses' feet and wheels outside. "Now,
+Miss Summerson," said he, "we are off, if you please!"
+
+He gave me his arm, and the two officers courteously bowed me out,
+and we found at the door a phaeton or barouche with a postilion and
+post horses. Mr. Bucket handed me in and took his own seat on the
+box. The man in uniform whom he had sent to fetch this equipage then
+handed him up a dark lantern at his request, and when he had given a
+few directions to the driver, we rattled away.
+
+I was far from sure that I was not in a dream. We rattled with great
+rapidity through such a labyrinth of streets that I soon lost all
+idea where we were, except that we had crossed and re-crossed the
+river, and still seemed to be traversing a low-lying, waterside,
+dense neighbourhood of narrow thoroughfares chequered by docks and
+basins, high piles of warehouses, swing-bridges, and masts of ships.
+At length we stopped at the corner of a little slimy turning, which
+the wind from the river, rushing up it, did not purify; and I saw my
+companion, by the light of his lantern, in conference with several
+men who looked like a mixture of police and sailors. Against the
+mouldering wall by which they stood, there was a bill, on which I
+could discern the words, "Found Drowned"; and this and an inscription
+about drags possessed me with the awful suspicion shadowed forth in
+our visit to that place.
+
+I had no need to remind myself that I was not there by the indulgence
+of any feeling of mine to increase the difficulties of the search, or
+to lessen its hopes, or enhance its delays. I remained quiet, but
+what I suffered in that dreadful spot I never can forget. And still
+it was like the horror of a dream. A man yet dark and muddy, in long
+swollen sodden boots and a hat like them, was called out of a boat
+and whispered with Mr. Bucket, who went away with him down some
+slippery steps--as if to look at something secret that he had to
+show. They came back, wiping their hands upon their coats, after
+turning over something wet; but thank God it was not what I feared!
+
+After some further conference, Mr. Bucket (whom everybody seemed to
+know and defer to) went in with the others at a door and left me in
+the carriage, while the driver walked up and down by his horses to
+warm himself. The tide was coming in, as I judged from the sound it
+made, and I could hear it break at the end of the alley with a little
+rush towards me. It never did so--and I thought it did so, hundreds
+of times, in what can have been at the most a quarter of an hour, and
+probably was less--but the thought shuddered through me that it would
+cast my mother at the horses' feet.
+
+Mr. Bucket came out again, exhorting the others to be vigilant,
+darkened his lantern, and once more took his seat. "Don't you be
+alarmed, Miss Summerson, on account of our coming down here," he
+said, turning to me. "I only want to have everything in train and to
+know that it is in train by looking after it myself. Get on, my lad!"
+
+We appeared to retrace the way we had come. Not that I had taken note
+of any particular objects in my perturbed state of mind, but judging
+from the general character of the streets. We called at another
+office or station for a minute and crossed the river again. During
+the whole of this time, and during the whole search, my companion,
+wrapped up on the box, never relaxed in his vigilance a single
+moment; but when we crossed the bridge he seemed, if possible, to be
+more on the alert than before. He stood up to look over the parapet,
+he alighted and went back after a shadowy female figure that flitted
+past us, and he gazed into the profound black pit of water with a
+face that made my heart die within me. The river had a fearful look,
+so overcast and secret, creeping away so fast between the low flat
+lines of shore--so heavy with indistinct and awful shapes, both of
+substance and shadow; so death-like and mysterious. I have seen it
+many times since then, by sunlight and by moonlight, but never free
+from the impressions of that journey. In my memory the lights upon
+the bridge are always burning dim, the cutting wind is eddying round
+the homeless woman whom we pass, the monotonous wheels are whirling
+on, and the light of the carriage-lamps reflected back looks palely
+in upon me--a face rising out of the dreaded water.
+
+Clattering and clattering through the empty streets, we came at
+length from the pavement on to dark smooth roads and began to leave
+the houses behind us. After a while I recognized the familiar way to
+Saint Albans. At Barnet fresh horses were ready for us, and we
+changed and went on. It was very cold indeed, and the open country
+was white with snow, though none was falling then.
+
+"An old acquaintance of yours, this road, Miss Summerson," said Mr.
+Bucket cheerfully.
+
+"Yes," I returned. "Have you gathered any intelligence?"
+
+"None that can be quite depended on as yet," he answered, "but it's
+early times as yet."
+
+He had gone into every late or early public-house where there
+was a light (they were not a few at that time, the road being
+then much frequented by drovers) and had got down to talk to the
+turnpike-keepers. I had heard him ordering drink, and chinking money,
+and making himself agreeable and merry everywhere; but whenever he
+took his seat upon the box again, his face resumed its watchful
+steady look, and he always said to the driver in the same business
+tone, "Get on, my lad!"
+
+With all these stoppages, it was between five and six o'clock and we
+were yet a few miles short of Saint Albans when he came out of one of
+these houses and handed me in a cup of tea.
+
+"Drink it, Miss Summerson, it'll do you good. You're beginning to get
+more yourself now, ain't you?"
+
+I thanked him and said I hoped so.
+
+"You was what you may call stunned at first," he returned; "and Lord,
+no wonder! Don't speak loud, my dear. It's all right. She's on
+ahead."
+
+I don't know what joyful exclamation I made or was going to make, but
+he put up his finger and I stopped myself.
+
+"Passed through here on foot this evening about eight or nine. I
+heard of her first at the archway toll, over at Highgate, but
+couldn't make quite sure. Traced her all along, on and off. Picked
+her up at one place, and dropped her at another; but she's before us
+now, safe. Take hold of this cup and saucer, ostler. Now, if you
+wasn't brought up to the butter trade, look out and see if you can
+catch half a crown in your t'other hand. One, two, three, and there
+you are! Now, my lad, try a gallop!"
+
+We were soon in Saint Albans and alighted a little before day, when I
+was just beginning to arrange and comprehend the occurrences of the
+night and really to believe that they were not a dream. Leaving the
+carriage at the posting-house and ordering fresh horses to be ready,
+my companion gave me his arm, and we went towards home.
+
+"As this is your regular abode, Miss Summerson, you see," he
+observed, "I should like to know whether you've been asked for by any
+stranger answering the description, or whether Mr. Jarndyce has. I
+don't much expect it, but it might be."
+
+As we ascended the hill, he looked about him with a sharp eye--the
+day was now breaking--and reminded me that I had come down it one
+night, as I had reason for remembering, with my little servant and
+poor Jo, whom he called Toughey.
+
+I wondered how he knew that.
+
+"When you passed a man upon the road, just yonder, you know," said
+Mr. Bucket.
+
+Yes, I remembered that too, very well.
+
+"That was me," said Mr. Bucket.
+
+Seeing my surprise, he went on, "I drove down in a gig that afternoon
+to look after that boy. You might have heard my wheels when you came
+out to look after him yourself, for I was aware of you and your
+little maid going up when I was walking the horse down. Making an
+inquiry or two about him in the town, I soon heard what company he
+was in and was coming among the brick-fields to look for him when I
+observed you bringing him home here."
+
+"Had he committed any crime?" I asked.
+
+"None was charged against him," said Mr. Bucket, coolly lifting off
+his hat, "but I suppose he wasn't over-particular. No. What I wanted
+him for was in connexion with keeping this very matter of Lady
+Dedlock quiet. He had been making his tongue more free than welcome
+as to a small accidental service he had been paid for by the deceased
+Mr. Tulkinghorn; and it wouldn't do, at any sort of price, to have
+him playing those games. So having warned him out of London, I made
+an afternoon of it to warn him to keep out of it now he WAS away, and
+go farther from it, and maintain a bright look-out that I didn't
+catch him coming back again."
+
+"Poor creature!" said I.
+
+"Poor enough," assented Mr. Bucket, "and trouble enough, and well
+enough away from London, or anywhere else. I was regularly turned on
+my back when I found him taken up by your establishment, I do assure
+you."
+
+I asked him why. "Why, my dear?" said Mr. Bucket. "Naturally there
+was no end to his tongue then. He might as well have been born with a
+yard and a half of it, and a remnant over."
+
+Although I remember this conversation now, my head was in confusion
+at the time, and my power of attention hardly did more than enable me
+to understand that he entered into these particulars to divert me.
+With the same kind intention, manifestly, he often spoke to me of
+indifferent things, while his face was busy with the one object that
+we had in view. He still pursued this subject as we turned in at the
+garden-gate.
+
+"Ah!" said Mr. Bucket. "Here we are, and a nice retired place it is.
+Puts a man in mind of the country house in the Woodpecker-tapping,
+that was known by the smoke which so gracefully curled. They're early
+with the kitchen fire, and that denotes good servants. But what
+you've always got to be careful of with servants is who comes to see
+'em; you never know what they're up to if you don't know that. And
+another thing, my dear. Whenever you find a young man behind the
+kitchen-door, you give that young man in charge on suspicion of being
+secreted in a dwelling-house with an unlawful purpose."
+
+We were now in front of the house; he looked attentively and closely
+at the gravel for footprints before he raised his eyes to the
+windows.
+
+"Do you generally put that elderly young gentleman in the same room
+when he's on a visit here, Miss Summerson?" he inquired, glancing at
+Mr. Skimpole's usual chamber.
+
+"You know Mr. Skimpole!" said I.
+
+"What do you call him again?" returned Mr. Bucket, bending down his
+ear. "Skimpole, is it? I've often wondered what his name might be.
+Skimpole. Not John, I should say, nor yet Jacob?"
+
+"Harold," I told him.
+
+"Harold. Yes. He's a queer bird is Harold," said Mr. Bucket, eyeing
+me with great expression.
+
+"He is a singular character," said I.
+
+"No idea of money," observed Mr. Bucket. "He takes it, though!"
+
+I involuntarily returned for answer that I perceived Mr. Bucket knew
+him.
+
+"Why, now I'll tell you, Miss Summerson," he replied. "Your mind will
+be all the better for not running on one point too continually, and
+I'll tell you for a change. It was him as pointed out to me where
+Toughey was. I made up my mind that night to come to the door and ask
+for Toughey, if that was all; but willing to try a move or so first,
+if any such was on the board, I just pitched up a morsel of gravel at
+that window where I saw a shadow. As soon as Harold opens it and I
+have had a look at him, thinks I, you're the man for me. So I
+smoothed him down a bit about not wanting to disturb the family after
+they was gone to bed and about its being a thing to be regretted that
+charitable young ladies should harbour vagrants; and then, when I
+pretty well understood his ways, I said I should consider a fypunnote
+well bestowed if I could relieve the premises of Toughey without
+causing any noise or trouble. Then says he, lifting up his eyebrows
+in the gayest way, 'It's no use mentioning a fypunnote to me, my
+friend, because I'm a mere child in such matters and have no idea of
+money.' Of course I understood what his taking it so easy meant; and
+being now quite sure he was the man for me, I wrapped the note round
+a little stone and threw it up to him. Well! He laughs and beams, and
+looks as innocent as you like, and says, 'But I don't know the value
+of these things. What am I to DO with this?' 'Spend it, sir,' says I.
+'But I shall be taken in,' he says, 'they won't give me the right
+change, I shall lose it, it's no use to me.' Lord, you never saw such
+a face as he carried it with! Of course he told me where to find
+Toughey, and I found him."
+
+I regarded this as very treacherous on the part of Mr. Skimpole
+towards my guardian and as passing the usual bounds of his childish
+innocence.
+
+"Bounds, my dear?" returned Mr. Bucket. "Bounds? Now, Miss Summerson,
+I'll give you a piece of advice that your husband will find useful
+when you are happily married and have got a family about you.
+Whenever a person says to you that they are as innocent as can be in
+all concerning money, look well after your own money, for they are
+dead certain to collar it if they can. Whenever a person proclaims to
+you 'In worldly matters I'm a child,' you consider that that person
+is only a-crying off from being held accountable and that you have
+got that person's number, and it's Number One. Now, I am not a
+poetical man myself, except in a vocal way when it goes round a
+company, but I'm a practical one, and that's my experience. So's this
+rule. Fast and loose in one thing, fast and loose in everything. I
+never knew it fail. No more will you. Nor no one. With which caution
+to the unwary, my dear, I take the liberty of pulling this here bell,
+and so go back to our business."
+
+I believe it had not been for a moment out of his mind, any more than
+it had been out of my mind, or out of his face. The whole household
+were amazed to see me, without any notice, at that time in the
+morning, and so accompanied; and their surprise was not diminished by
+my inquiries. No one, however, had been there. It could not be
+doubted that this was the truth.
+
+"Then, Miss Summerson," said my companion, "we can't be too soon at
+the cottage where those brickmakers are to be found. Most inquiries
+there I leave to you, if you'll be so good as to make 'em. The
+naturalest way is the best way, and the naturalest way is your own
+way."
+
+We set off again immediately. On arriving at the cottage, we found it
+shut up and apparently deserted, but one of the neighbours who knew
+me and who came out when I was trying to make some one hear informed
+me that the two women and their husbands now lived together in
+another house, made of loose rough bricks, which stood on the margin
+of the piece of ground where the kilns were and where the long rows
+of bricks were drying. We lost no time in repairing to this place,
+which was within a few hundred yards; and as the door stood ajar, I
+pushed it open.
+
+There were only three of them sitting at breakfast, the child lying
+asleep on a bed in the corner. It was Jenny, the mother of the dead
+child, who was absent. The other woman rose on seeing me; and the
+men, though they were, as usual, sulky and silent, each gave me a
+morose nod of recognition. A look passed between them when Mr. Bucket
+followed me in, and I was surprised to see that the woman evidently
+knew him.
+
+I had asked leave to enter of course. Liz (the only name by which I
+knew her) rose to give me her own chair, but I sat down on a stool
+near the fire, and Mr. Bucket took a corner of the bedstead. Now that
+I had to speak and was among people with whom I was not familiar, I
+became conscious of being hurried and giddy. It was very difficult to
+begin, and I could not help bursting into tears.
+
+"Liz," said I, "I have come a long way in the night and through the
+snow to inquire after a lady--"
+
+"Who has been here, you know," Mr. Bucket struck in, addressing the
+whole group with a composed propitiatory face; "that's the lady the
+young lady means. The lady that was here last night, you know."
+
+"And who told YOU as there was anybody here?" inquired Jenny's
+husband, who had made a surly stop in his eating to listen and now
+measured him with his eye.
+
+"A person of the name of Michael Jackson, with a blue welveteen
+waistcoat with a double row of mother of pearl buttons," Mr. Bucket
+immediately answered.
+
+"He had as good mind his own business, whoever he is," growled the
+man.
+
+"He's out of employment, I believe," said Mr. Bucket apologetically
+for Michael Jackson, "and so gets talking."
+
+The woman had not resumed her chair, but stood faltering with her
+hand upon its broken back, looking at me. I thought she would have
+spoken to me privately if she had dared. She was still in this
+attitude of uncertainty when her husband, who was eating with a lump
+of bread and fat in one hand and his clasp-knife in the other, struck
+the handle of his knife violently on the table and told her with an
+oath to mind HER own business at any rate and sit down.
+
+"I should like to have seen Jenny very much," said I, "for I am sure
+she would have told me all she could about this lady, whom I am very
+anxious indeed--you cannot think how anxious--to overtake. Will Jenny
+be here soon? Where is she?"
+
+The woman had a great desire to answer, but the man, with another
+oath, openly kicked at her foot with his heavy boot. He left it to
+Jenny's husband to say what he chose, and after a dogged silence the
+latter turned his shaggy head towards me.
+
+"I'm not partial to gentlefolks coming into my place, as you've heerd
+me say afore now, I think, miss. I let their places be, and it's
+curious they can't let my place be. There'd be a pretty shine made if
+I was to go a-wisitin THEM, I think. Howsoever, I don't so much
+complain of you as of some others, and I'm agreeable to make you a
+civil answer, though I give notice that I'm not a-going to be drawed
+like a badger. Will Jenny be here soon? No she won't. Where is she?
+She's gone up to Lunnun."
+
+"Did she go last night?" I asked.
+
+"Did she go last night? Ah! She went last night," he answered with a
+sulky jerk of his head.
+
+"But was she here when the lady came? And what did the lady say to
+her? And where is the lady gone? I beg and pray you to be so kind as
+to tell me," said I, "for I am in great distress to know."
+
+"If my master would let me speak, and not say a word of harm--" the
+woman timidly began.
+
+"Your master," said her husband, muttering an imprecation with slow
+emphasis, "will break your neck if you meddle with wot don't concern
+you."
+
+After another silence, the husband of the absent woman, turning to me
+again, answered me with his usual grumbling unwillingness.
+
+"Wos Jenny here when the lady come? Yes, she wos here when the lady
+come. Wot did the lady say to her? Well, I'll tell you wot the lady
+said to her. She said, 'You remember me as come one time to talk to
+you about the young lady as had been a-wisiting of you? You remember
+me as give you somethink handsome for a handkercher wot she had
+left?' Ah, she remembered. So we all did. Well, then, wos that young
+lady up at the house now? No, she warn't up at the house now. Well,
+then, lookee here. The lady was upon a journey all alone, strange as
+we might think it, and could she rest herself where you're a setten
+for a hour or so. Yes she could, and so she did. Then she went--it
+might be at twenty minutes past eleven, and it might be at twenty
+minutes past twelve; we ain't got no watches here to know the time
+by, nor yet clocks. Where did she go? I don't know where she go'd.
+She went one way, and Jenny went another; one went right to Lunnun,
+and t'other went right from it. That's all about it. Ask this man. He
+heerd it all, and see it all. He knows."
+
+The other man repeated, "That's all about it."
+
+"Was the lady crying?" I inquired.
+
+"Devil a bit," returned the first man. "Her shoes was the worse, and
+her clothes was the worse, but she warn't--not as I see."
+
+The woman sat with her arms crossed and her eyes upon the ground. Her
+husband had turned his seat a little so as to face her and kept his
+hammer-like hand upon the table as if it were in readiness to execute
+his threat if she disobeyed him.
+
+"I hope you will not object to my asking your wife," said I, "how the
+lady looked."
+
+"Come, then!" he gruffly cried to her. "You hear what she says. Cut
+it short and tell her."
+
+"Bad," replied the woman. "Pale and exhausted. Very bad."
+
+"Did she speak much?"
+
+"Not much, but her voice was hoarse."
+
+She answered, looking all the while at her husband for leave.
+
+"Was she faint?" said I. "Did she eat or drink here?"
+
+"Go on!" said the husband in answer to her look. "Tell her and cut it
+short."
+
+"She had a little water, miss, and Jenny fetched her some bread and
+tea. But she hardly touched it."
+
+"And when she went from here," I was proceeding, when Jenny's husband
+impatiently took me up.
+
+"When she went from here, she went right away nor'ard by the high
+road. Ask on the road if you doubt me, and see if it warn't so. Now,
+there's the end. That's all about it."
+
+I glanced at my companion, and finding that he had already risen and
+was ready to depart, thanked them for what they had told me, and took
+my leave. The woman looked full at Mr. Bucket as he went out, and he
+looked full at her.
+
+"Now, Miss Summerson," he said to me as we walked quickly away.
+"They've got her ladyship's watch among 'em. That's a positive fact."
+
+"You saw it?" I exclaimed.
+
+"Just as good as saw it," he returned. "Else why should he talk about
+his 'twenty minutes past' and about his having no watch to tell the
+time by? Twenty minutes! He don't usually cut his time so fine as
+that. If he comes to half-hours, it's as much as HE does. Now, you
+see, either her ladyship gave him that watch or he took it. I think
+she gave it him. Now, what should she give it him for? What should
+she give it him for?"
+
+He repeated this question to himself several times as we hurried on,
+appearing to balance between a variety of answers that arose in his
+mind.
+
+"If time could be spared," said Mr. Bucket, "which is the only thing
+that can't be spared in this case, I might get it out of that woman;
+but it's too doubtful a chance to trust to under present
+circumstances. They are up to keeping a close eye upon her, and any
+fool knows that a poor creetur like her, beaten and kicked and
+scarred and bruised from head to foot, will stand by the husband that
+ill uses her through thick and thin. There's something kept back.
+It's a pity but what we had seen the other woman."
+
+I regretted it exceedingly, for she was very grateful, and I felt
+sure would have resisted no entreaty of mine.
+
+"It's possible, Miss Summerson," said Mr. Bucket, pondering on it,
+"that her ladyship sent her up to London with some word for you, and
+it's possible that her husband got the watch to let her go. It don't
+come out altogether so plain as to please me, but it's on the cards.
+Now, I don't take kindly to laying out the money of Sir Leicester
+Dedlock, Baronet, on these roughs, and I don't see my way to the
+usefulness of it at present. No! So far our road, Miss Summerson, is
+for'ard--straight ahead--and keeping everything quiet!"
+
+We called at home once more that I might send a hasty note to my
+guardian, and then we hurried back to where we had left the carriage.
+The horses were brought out as soon as we were seen coming, and we
+were on the road again in a few minutes.
+
+It had set in snowing at daybreak, and it now snowed hard. The air
+was so thick with the darkness of the day and the density of the fall
+that we could see but a very little way in any direction. Although it
+was extremely cold, the snow was but partially frozen, and it
+churned--with a sound as if it were a beach of small shells--under
+the hoofs of the horses into mire and water. They sometimes slipped
+and floundered for a mile together, and we were obliged to come to a
+standstill to rest them. One horse fell three times in this first
+stage, and trembled so and was so shaken that the driver had to
+dismount from his saddle and lead him at last.
+
+I could eat nothing and could not sleep, and I grew so nervous under
+those delays and the slow pace at which we travelled that I had an
+unreasonable desire upon me to get out and walk. Yielding to my
+companion's better sense, however, I remained where I was. All this
+time, kept fresh by a certain enjoyment of the work in which he was
+engaged, he was up and down at every house we came to, addressing
+people whom he had never beheld before as old acquaintances, running
+in to warm himself at every fire he saw, talking and drinking and
+shaking hands at every bar and tap, friendly with every waggoner,
+wheelwright, blacksmith, and toll-taker, yet never seeming to lose
+time, and always mounting to the box again with his watchful, steady
+face and his business-like "Get on, my lad!"
+
+When we were changing horses the next time, he came from the
+stable-yard, with the wet snow encrusted upon him and dropping off
+him--plashing and crashing through it to his wet knees as he had been
+doing frequently since we left Saint Albans--and spoke to me at the
+carriage side.
+
+"Keep up your spirits. It's certainly true that she came on here,
+Miss Summerson. There's not a doubt of the dress by this time, and
+the dress has been seen here."
+
+"Still on foot?" said I.
+
+"Still on foot. I think the gentleman you mentioned must be the point
+she's aiming at, and yet I don't like his living down in her own part
+of the country neither."
+
+"I know so little," said I. "There may be some one else nearer here,
+of whom I never heard."
+
+"That's true. But whatever you do, don't you fall a-crying, my dear;
+and don't you worry yourself no more than you can help. Get on, my
+lad!"
+
+The sleet fell all that day unceasingly, a thick mist came on early,
+and it never rose or lightened for a moment. Such roads I had never
+seen. I sometimes feared we had missed the way and got into the
+ploughed grounds or the marshes. If I ever thought of the time I had
+been out, it presented itself as an indefinite period of great
+duration, and I seemed, in a strange way, never to have been free
+from the anxiety under which I then laboured.
+
+As we advanced, I began to feel misgivings that my companion lost
+confidence. He was the same as before with all the roadside people,
+but he looked graver when he sat by himself on the box. I saw his
+finger uneasily going across and across his mouth during the whole of
+one long weary stage. I overheard that he began to ask the drivers of
+coaches and other vehicles coming towards us what passengers they had
+seen in other coaches and vehicles that were in advance. Their
+replies did not encourage him. He always gave me a reassuring beck of
+his finger and lift of his eyelid as he got upon the box again, but
+he seemed perplexed now when he said, "Get on, my lad!"
+
+At last, when we were changing, he told me that he had lost the track
+of the dress so long that he began to be surprised. It was nothing,
+he said, to lose such a track for one while, and to take it up for
+another while, and so on; but it had disappeared here in an
+unaccountable manner, and we had not come upon it since. This
+corroborated the apprehensions I had formed, when he began to look at
+direction-posts, and to leave the carriage at cross roads for a
+quarter of an hour at a time while he explored them. But I was not to
+be down-hearted, he told me, for it was as likely as not that the
+next stage might set us right again.
+
+The next stage, however, ended as that one ended; we had no new clue.
+There was a spacious inn here, solitary, but a comfortable
+substantial building, and as we drove in under a large gateway before
+I knew it, where a landlady and her pretty daughters came to the
+carriage-door, entreating me to alight and refresh myself while the
+horses were making ready, I thought it would be uncharitable to
+refuse. They took me upstairs to a warm room and left me there.
+
+It was at the corner of the house, I remember, looking two ways. On
+one side to a stable-yard open to a by-road, where the ostlers were
+unharnessing the splashed and tired horses from the muddy carriage,
+and beyond that to the by-road itself, across which the sign was
+heavily swinging; on the other side to a wood of dark pine-trees.
+Their branches were encumbered with snow, and it silently dropped off
+in wet heaps while I stood at the window. Night was setting in, and
+its bleakness was enhanced by the contrast of the pictured fire
+glowing and gleaming in the window-pane. As I looked among the stems
+of the trees and followed the discoloured marks in the snow where the
+thaw was sinking into it and undermining it, I thought of the
+motherly face brightly set off by daughters that had just now
+welcomed me and of MY mother lying down in such a wood to die.
+
+I was frightened when I found them all about me, but I remembered
+that before I fainted I tried very hard not to do it; and that was
+some little comfort. They cushioned me up on a large sofa by the
+fire, and then the comely landlady told me that I must travel no
+further to-night, but must go to bed. But this put me into such a
+tremble lest they should detain me there that she soon recalled her
+words and compromised for a rest of half an hour.
+
+A good endearing creature she was. She and her three fair girls, all
+so busy about me. I was to take hot soup and broiled fowl, while Mr.
+Bucket dried himself and dined elsewhere; but I could not do it when
+a snug round table was presently spread by the fireside, though I was
+very unwilling to disappoint them. However, I could take some toast
+and some hot negus, and as I really enjoyed that refreshment, it made
+some recompense.
+
+Punctual to the time, at the half-hour's end the carriage came
+rumbling under the gateway, and they took me down, warmed, refreshed,
+comforted by kindness, and safe (I assured them) not to faint any
+more. After I had got in and had taken a grateful leave of them all,
+the youngest daughter--a blooming girl of nineteen, who was to be the
+first married, they had told me--got upon the carriage step, reached
+in, and kissed me. I have never seen her, from that hour, but I think
+of her to this hour as my friend.
+
+The transparent windows with the fire and light, looking so bright
+and warm from the cold darkness out of doors, were soon gone, and
+again we were crushing and churning the loose snow. We went on with
+toil enough, but the dismal roads were not much worse than they had
+been, and the stage was only nine miles. My companion smoking on the
+box--I had thought at the last inn of begging him to do so when I saw
+him standing at a great fire in a comfortable cloud of tobacco--was
+as vigilant as ever and as quickly down and up again when we came to
+any human abode or any human creature. He had lighted his little dark
+lantern, which seemed to be a favourite with him, for we had lamps to
+the carriage; and every now and then he turned it upon me to see that
+I was doing well. There was a folding-window to the carriage-head,
+but I never closed it, for it seemed like shutting out hope.
+
+We came to the end of the stage, and still the lost trace was not
+recovered. I looked at him anxiously when we stopped to change, but I
+knew by his yet graver face as he stood watching the ostlers that he
+had heard nothing. Almost in an instant afterwards, as I leaned back
+in my seat, he looked in, with his lighted lantern in his hand, an
+excited and quite different man.
+
+"What is it?" said I, starting. "Is she here?"
+
+"No, no. Don't deceive yourself, my dear. Nobody's here. But I've got
+it!"
+
+The crystallized snow was in his eyelashes, in his hair, lying in
+ridges on his dress. He had to shake it from his face and get his
+breath before he spoke to me.
+
+"Now, Miss Summerson," said he, beating his finger on the apron,
+"don't you be disappointed at what I'm a-going to do. You know me.
+I'm Inspector Bucket, and you can trust me. We've come a long way;
+never mind. Four horses out there for the next stage up! Quick!"
+
+There was a commotion in the yard, and a man came running out of the
+stables to know if he meant up or down.
+
+"Up, I tell you! Up! Ain't it English? Up!"
+
+"Up?" said I, astonished. "To London! Are we going back?"
+
+"Miss Summerson," he answered, "back. Straight back as a die. You
+know me. Don't be afraid. I'll follow the other, by G----"
+
+"The other?" I repeated. "Who?"
+
+"You called her Jenny, didn't you? I'll follow her. Bring those two
+pair out here for a crown a man. Wake up, some of you!"
+
+"You will not desert this lady we are in search of; you will not
+abandon her on such a night and in such a state of mind as I know her
+to be in!" said I, in an agony, and grasping his hand.
+
+"You are right, my dear, I won't. But I'll follow the other. Look
+alive here with them horses. Send a man for'ard in the saddle to the
+next stage, and let him send another for'ard again, and order four
+on, up, right through. My darling, don't you be afraid!"
+
+These orders and the way in which he ran about the yard urging them
+caused a general excitement that was scarcely less bewildering to me
+than the sudden change. But in the height of the confusion, a mounted
+man galloped away to order the relays, and our horses were put to
+with great speed.
+
+"My dear," said Mr. Bucket, jumping to his seat and looking in again,
+"--you'll excuse me if I'm too familiar--don't you fret and worry
+yourself no more than you can help. I say nothing else at present;
+but you know me, my dear; now, don't you?"
+
+I endeavoured to say that I knew he was far more capable than I of
+deciding what we ought to do, but was he sure that this was right?
+Could I not go forward by myself in search of--I grasped his hand
+again in my distress and whispered it to him--of my own mother.
+
+"My dear," he answered, "I know, I know, and would I put you wrong,
+do you think? Inspector Bucket. Now you know me, don't you?"
+
+What could I say but yes!
+
+"Then you keep up as good a heart as you can, and you rely upon me
+for standing by you, no less than by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet.
+Now, are you right there?"
+
+"All right, sir!"
+
+"Off she goes, then. And get on, my lads!"
+
+We were again upon the melancholy road by which we had come, tearing
+up the miry sleet and thawing snow as if they were torn up by a
+waterwheel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVIII
+
+A Wintry Day and Night
+
+
+Still impassive, as behoves its breeding, the Dedlock town house
+carries itself as usual towards the street of dismal grandeur. There
+are powdered heads from time to time in the little windows of the
+hall, looking out at the untaxed powder falling all day from the sky;
+and in the same conservatory there is peach blossom turning itself
+exotically to the great hall fire from the nipping weather out of
+doors. It is given out that my Lady has gone down into Lincolnshire,
+but is expected to return presently.
+
+Rumour, busy overmuch, however, will not go down into Lincolnshire.
+It persists in flitting and chattering about town. It knows that that
+poor unfortunate man, Sir Leicester, has been sadly used. It hears,
+my dear child, all sorts of shocking things. It makes the world of
+five miles round quite merry. Not to know that there is something
+wrong at the Dedlocks' is to augur yourself unknown. One of the
+peachy-cheeked charmers with the skeleton throats is already apprised
+of all the principal circumstances that will come out before the
+Lords on Sir Leicester's application for a bill of divorce.
+
+At Blaze and Sparkle's the jewellers and at Sheen and Gloss's the
+mercers, it is and will be for several hours the topic of the age,
+the feature of the century. The patronesses of those establishments,
+albeit so loftily inscrutable, being as nicely weighed and measured
+there as any other article of the stock-in-trade, are perfectly
+understood in this new fashion by the rawest hand behind the counter.
+"Our people, Mr. Jones," said Blaze and Sparkle to the hand in
+question on engaging him, "our people, sir, are sheep--mere sheep.
+Where two or three marked ones go, all the rest follow. Keep those
+two or three in your eye, Mr. Jones, and you have the flock." So,
+likewise, Sheen and Gloss to THEIR Jones, in reference to knowing
+where to have the fashionable people and how to bring what they
+(Sheen and Gloss) choose into fashion. On similar unerring
+principles, Mr. Sladdery the librarian, and indeed the great farmer
+of gorgeous sheep, admits this very day, "Why yes, sir, there
+certainly ARE reports concerning Lady Dedlock, very current indeed
+among my high connexion, sir. You see, my high connexion must talk
+about something, sir; and it's only to get a subject into vogue with
+one or two ladies I could name to make it go down with the whole.
+Just what I should have done with those ladies, sir, in the case of
+any novelty you had left to me to bring in, they have done of
+themselves in this case through knowing Lady Dedlock and being
+perhaps a little innocently jealous of her too, sir. You'll find,
+sir, that this topic will be very popular among my high connexion. If
+it had been a speculation, sir, it would have brought money. And when
+I say so, you may trust to my being right, sir, for I have made it my
+business to study my high connexion and to be able to wind it up like
+a clock, sir."
+
+Thus rumour thrives in the capital, and will not go down into
+Lincolnshire. By half-past five, post meridian, Horse Guards' time,
+it has even elicited a new remark from the Honourable Mr. Stables,
+which bids fair to outshine the old one, on which he has so long
+rested his colloquial reputation. This sparkling sally is to the
+effect that although he always knew she was the best-groomed woman in
+the stud, he had no idea she was a bolter. It is immensely received
+in turf-circles.
+
+At feasts and festivals also, in firmaments she has often graced, and
+among constellations she outshone but yesterday, she is still the
+prevalent subject. What is it? Who is it? When was it? Where was it?
+How was it? She is discussed by her dear friends with all the
+genteelest slang in vogue, with the last new word, the last new
+manner, the last new drawl, and the perfection of polite
+indifference. A remarkable feature of the theme is that it is found
+to be so inspiring that several people come out upon it who never
+came out before--positively say things! William Buffy carries one of
+these smartnesses from the place where he dines down to the House,
+where the Whip for his party hands it about with his snuff-box to
+keep men together who want to be off, with such effect that the
+Speaker (who has had it privately insinuated into his own ear under
+the corner of his wig) cries, "Order at the bar!" three times without
+making an impression.
+
+And not the least amazing circumstance connected with her being
+vaguely the town talk is that people hovering on the confines of Mr.
+Sladdery's high connexion, people who know nothing and ever did know
+nothing about her, think it essential to their reputation to pretend
+that she is their topic too, and to retail her at second-hand with
+the last new word and the last new manner, and the last new drawl,
+and the last new polite indifference, and all the rest of it, all at
+second-hand but considered equal to new in inferior systems and to
+fainter stars. If there be any man of letters, art, or science among
+these little dealers, how noble in him to support the feeble sisters
+on such majestic crutches!
+
+So goes the wintry day outside the Dedlock mansion. How within it?
+
+Sir Leicester, lying in his bed, can speak a little, though with
+difficulty and indistinctness. He is enjoined to silence and to rest,
+and they have given him some opiate to lull his pain, for his old
+enemy is very hard with him. He is never asleep, though sometimes he
+seems to fall into a dull waking doze. He caused his bedstead to be
+moved out nearer to the window when he heard it was such inclement
+weather, and his head to be so adjusted that he could see the driving
+snow and sleet. He watches it as it falls, throughout the whole
+wintry day.
+
+Upon the least noise in the house, which is kept hushed, his hand is
+at the pencil. The old housekeeper, sitting by him, knows what he
+would write and whispers, "No, he has not come back yet, Sir
+Leicester. It was late last night when he went. He has been but a
+little time gone yet."
+
+He withdraws his hand and falls to looking at the sleet and snow
+again until they seem, by being long looked at, to fall so thick and
+fast that he is obliged to close his eyes for a minute on the giddy
+whirl of white flakes and icy blots.
+
+He began to look at them as soon as it was light. The day is not yet
+far spent when he conceives it to be necessary that her rooms should
+be prepared for her. It is very cold and wet. Let there be good
+fires. Let them know that she is expected. Please see to it yourself.
+He writes to this purpose on his slate, and Mrs. Rouncewell with a
+heavy heart obeys.
+
+"For I dread, George," the old lady says to her son, who waits below
+to keep her company when she has a little leisure, "I dread, my dear,
+that my Lady will never more set foot within these walls."
+
+"That's a bad presentiment, mother."
+
+"Nor yet within the walls of Chesney Wold, my dear."
+
+"That's worse. But why, mother?"
+
+"When I saw my Lady yesterday, George, she looked to me--and I may
+say at me too--as if the step on the Ghost's Walk had almost walked
+her down."
+
+"Come, come! You alarm yourself with old-story fears, mother."
+
+"No I don't, my dear. No I don't. It's going on for sixty year that I
+have been in this family, and I never had any fears for it before.
+But it's breaking up, my dear; the great old Dedlock family is
+breaking up."
+
+"I hope not, mother."
+
+"I am thankful I have lived long enough to be with Sir Leicester in
+this illness and trouble, for I know I am not too old nor too useless
+to be a welcomer sight to him than anybody else in my place would be.
+But the step on the Ghost's Walk will walk my Lady down, George; it
+has been many a day behind her, and now it will pass her and go on."
+
+"Well, mother dear, I say again, I hope not."
+
+"Ah, so do I, George," the old lady returns, shaking her head and
+parting her folded hands. "But if my fears come true, and he has to
+know it, who will tell him!"
+
+"Are these her rooms?"
+
+"These are my Lady's rooms, just as she left them."
+
+"Why, now," says the trooper, glancing round him and speaking in a
+lower voice, "I begin to understand how you come to think as you do
+think, mother. Rooms get an awful look about them when they are
+fitted up, like these, for one person you are used to see in them,
+and that person is away under any shadow, let alone being God knows
+where."
+
+He is not far out. As all partings foreshadow the great final one,
+so, empty rooms, bereft of a familiar presence, mournfully whisper
+what your room and what mine must one day be. My Lady's state has a
+hollow look, thus gloomy and abandoned; and in the inner apartment,
+where Mr. Bucket last night made his secret perquisition, the traces
+of her dresses and her ornaments, even the mirrors accustomed to
+reflect them when they were a portion of herself, have a desolate and
+vacant air. Dark and cold as the wintry day is, it is darker and
+colder in these deserted chambers than in many a hut that will barely
+exclude the weather; and though the servants heap fires in the grates
+and set the couches and the chairs within the warm glass screens that
+let their ruddy light shoot through to the furthest corners, there is
+a heavy cloud upon the rooms which no light will dispel.
+
+The old housekeeper and her son remain until the preparations are
+complete, and then she returns upstairs. Volumnia has taken Mrs.
+Rouncewell's place in the meantime, though pearl necklaces and rouge
+pots, however calculated to embellish Bath, are but indifferent
+comforts to the invalid under present circumstances. Volumnia, not
+being supposed to know (and indeed not knowing) what is the matter,
+has found it a ticklish task to offer appropriate observations and
+consequently has supplied their place with distracting smoothings of
+the bed-linen, elaborate locomotion on tiptoe, vigilant peeping at
+her kinsman's eyes, and one exasperating whisper to herself of, "He
+is asleep." In disproof of which superfluous remark Sir Leicester has
+indignantly written on the slate, "I am not."
+
+Yielding, therefore, the chair at the bedside to the quaint old
+housekeeper, Volumnia sits at a table a little removed,
+sympathetically sighing. Sir Leicester watches the sleet and snow and
+listens for the returning steps that he expects. In the ears of his
+old servant, looking as if she had stepped out of an old
+picture-frame to attend a summoned Dedlock to another world, the
+silence is fraught with echoes of her own words, "Who will tell him!"
+
+He has been under his valet's hands this morning to be made
+presentable and is as well got up as the circumstances will allow. He
+is propped with pillows, his grey hair is brushed in its usual
+manner, his linen is arranged to a nicety, and he is wrapped in a
+responsible dressing-gown. His eye-glass and his watch are ready to
+his hand. It is necessary--less to his own dignity now perhaps than
+for her sake--that he should be seen as little disturbed and as much
+himself as may be. Women will talk, and Volumnia, though a Dedlock,
+is no exceptional case. He keeps her here, there is little doubt, to
+prevent her talking somewhere else. He is very ill, but he makes his
+present stand against distress of mind and body most courageously.
+
+The fair Volumnia, being one of those sprightly girls who cannot long
+continue silent without imminent peril of seizure by the dragon
+Boredom, soon indicates the approach of that monster with a series of
+undisguisable yawns. Finding it impossible to suppress those yawns by
+any other process than conversation, she compliments Mrs. Rouncewell
+on her son, declaring that he positively is one of the finest figures
+she ever saw and as soldierly a looking person, she should think, as
+what's his name, her favourite Life Guardsman--the man she dotes on,
+the dearest of creatures--who was killed at Waterloo.
+
+Sir Leicester hears this tribute with so much surprise and stares
+about him in such a confused way that Mrs. Rouncewell feels it
+necessary to explain.
+
+"Miss Dedlock don't speak of my eldest son, Sir Leicester, but my
+youngest. I have found him. He has come home."
+
+Sir Leicester breaks silence with a harsh cry. "George? Your son
+George come home, Mrs. Rouncewell?"
+
+The old housekeeper wipes her eyes. "Thank God. Yes, Sir Leicester."
+
+Does this discovery of some one lost, this return of some one so long
+gone, come upon him as a strong confirmation of his hopes? Does he
+think, "Shall I not, with the aid I have, recall her safely after
+this, there being fewer hours in her case than there are years in
+his?"
+
+It is of no use entreating him; he is determined to speak now, and he
+does. In a thick crowd of sounds, but still intelligibly enough to be
+understood.
+
+"Why did you not tell me, Mrs. Rouncewell?"
+
+"It happened only yesterday, Sir Leicester, and I doubted your being
+well enough to be talked to of such things."
+
+Besides, the giddy Volumnia now remembers with her little scream that
+nobody was to have known of his being Mrs. Rouncewell's son and that
+she was not to have told. But Mrs. Rouncewell protests, with warmth
+enough to swell the stomacher, that of course she would have told Sir
+Leicester as soon as he got better.
+
+"Where is your son George, Mrs. Rouncewell?" asks Sir Leicester,
+
+Mrs. Rouncewell, not a little alarmed by his disregard of the
+doctor's injunctions, replies, in London.
+
+"Where in London?"
+
+Mrs. Rouncewell is constrained to admit that he is in the house.
+
+"Bring him here to my room. Bring him directly."
+
+The old lady can do nothing but go in search of him. Sir Leicester,
+with such power of movement as he has, arranges himself a little to
+receive him. When he has done so, he looks out again at the falling
+sleet and snow and listens again for the returning steps. A quantity
+of straw has been tumbled down in the street to deaden the noises
+there, and she might be driven to the door perhaps without his
+hearing wheels.
+
+He is lying thus, apparently forgetful of his newer and minor
+surprise, when the housekeeper returns, accompanied by her trooper
+son. Mr. George approaches softly to the bedside, makes his bow,
+squares his chest, and stands, with his face flushed, very heartily
+ashamed of himself.
+
+"Good heaven, and it is really George Rouncewell!" exclaims Sir
+Leicester. "Do you remember me, George?"
+
+The trooper needs to look at him and to separate this sound from that
+sound before he knows what he has said, but doing this and being a
+little helped by his mother, he replies, "I must have a very bad
+memory, indeed, Sir Leicester, if I failed to remember you."
+
+"When I look at you, George Rouncewell," Sir Leicester observes with
+difficulty, "I see something of a boy at Chesney Wold--I remember
+well--very well."
+
+He looks at the trooper until tears come into his eyes, and then he
+looks at the sleet and snow again.
+
+"I ask your pardon, Sir Leicester," says the trooper, "but would you
+accept of my arms to raise you up? You would lie easier, Sir
+Leicester, if you would allow me to move you."
+
+"If you please, George Rouncewell; if you will be so good."
+
+The trooper takes him in his arms like a child, lightly raises him,
+and turns him with his face more towards the window. "Thank you. You
+have your mother's gentleness," returns Sir Leicester, "and your own
+strength. Thank you."
+
+He signs to him with his hand not to go away. George quietly remains
+at the bedside, waiting to be spoken to.
+
+"Why did you wish for secrecy?" It takes Sir Leicester some time to
+ask this.
+
+"Truly I am not much to boast of, Sir Leicester, and I--I should
+still, Sir Leicester, if you was not so indisposed--which I hope you
+will not be long--I should still hope for the favour of being allowed
+to remain unknown in general. That involves explanations not very
+hard to be guessed at, not very well timed here, and not very
+creditable to myself. However opinions may differ on a variety of
+subjects, I should think it would be universally agreed, Sir
+Leicester, that I am not much to boast of."
+
+"You have been a soldier," observes Sir Leicester, "and a faithful
+one."
+
+George makes his military bow. "As far as that goes, Sir Leicester, I
+have done my duty under discipline, and it was the least I could do."
+
+"You find me," says Sir Leicester, whose eyes are much attracted
+towards him, "far from well, George Rouncewell."
+
+"I am very sorry both to hear it and to see it, Sir Leicester."
+
+"I am sure you are. No. In addition to my older malady, I have had a
+sudden and bad attack. Something that deadens," making an endeavour
+to pass one hand down one side, "and confuses," touching his lips.
+
+George, with a look of assent and sympathy, makes another bow. The
+different times when they were both young men (the trooper much the
+younger of the two) and looked at one another down at Chesney Wold
+arise before them both and soften both.
+
+Sir Leicester, evidently with a great determination to say, in his
+own manner, something that is on his mind before relapsing into
+silence, tries to raise himself among his pillows a little more.
+George, observant of the action, takes him in his arms again and
+places him as he desires to be. "Thank you, George. You are another
+self to me. You have often carried my spare gun at Chesney Wold,
+George. You are familiar to me in these strange circumstances, very
+familiar." He has put Sir Leicester's sounder arm over his shoulder
+in lifting him up, and Sir Leicester is slow in drawing it away again
+as he says these words.
+
+"I was about to add," he presently goes on, "I was about to add,
+respecting this attack, that it was unfortunately simultaneous with a
+slight misunderstanding between my Lady and myself. I do not mean
+that there was any difference between us (for there has been none),
+but that there was a misunderstanding of certain circumstances
+important only to ourselves, which deprives me, for a little while,
+of my Lady's society. She has found it necessary to make a journey--I
+trust will shortly return. Volumnia, do I make myself intelligible?
+The words are not quite under my command in the manner of pronouncing
+them."
+
+Volumnia understands him perfectly, and in truth he delivers himself
+with far greater plainness than could have been supposed possible a
+minute ago. The effort by which he does so is written in the anxious
+and labouring expression of his face. Nothing but the strength of his
+purpose enables him to make it.
+
+"Therefore, Volumnia, I desire to say in your presence--and in the
+presence of my old retainer and friend, Mrs. Rouncewell, whose truth
+and fidelity no one can question, and in the presence of her son
+George, who comes back like a familiar recollection of my youth in
+the home of my ancestors at Chesney Wold--in case I should relapse,
+in case I should not recover, in case I should lose both my speech
+and the power of writing, though I hope for better things--"
+
+The old housekeeper weeping silently; Volumnia in the greatest
+agitation, with the freshest bloom on her cheeks; the trooper with
+his arms folded and his head a little bent, respectfully attentive.
+
+"Therefore I desire to say, and to call you all to
+witness--beginning, Volumnia, with yourself, most solemnly--that I am
+on unaltered terms with Lady Dedlock. That I assert no cause whatever
+of complaint against her. That I have ever had the strongest
+affection for her, and that I retain it undiminished. Say this to
+herself, and to every one. If you ever say less than this, you will
+be guilty of deliberate falsehood to me."
+
+Volumnia tremblingly protests that she will observe his injunctions
+to the letter.
+
+"My Lady is too high in position, too handsome, too accomplished, too
+superior in most respects to the best of those by whom she is
+surrounded, not to have her enemies and traducers, I dare say. Let it
+be known to them, as I make it known to you, that being of sound
+mind, memory, and understanding, I revoke no disposition I have made
+in her favour. I abridge nothing I have ever bestowed upon her. I am
+on unaltered terms with her, and I recall--having the full power to
+do it if I were so disposed, as you see--no act I have done for her
+advantage and happiness."
+
+His formal array of words might have at any other time, as it has
+often had, something ludicrous in it, but at this time it is serious
+and affecting. His noble earnestness, his fidelity, his gallant
+shielding of her, his generous conquest of his own wrong and his own
+pride for her sake, are simply honourable, manly, and true. Nothing
+less worthy can be seen through the lustre of such qualities in the
+commonest mechanic, nothing less worthy can be seen in the best-born
+gentleman. In such a light both aspire alike, both rise alike, both
+children of the dust shine equally.
+
+Overpowered by his exertions, he lays his head back on his pillows
+and closes his eyes for not more than a minute, when he again resumes
+his watching of the weather and his attention to the muffled sounds.
+In the rendering of those little services, and in the manner of their
+acceptance, the trooper has become installed as necessary to him.
+Nothing has been said, but it is quite understood. He falls a step or
+two backward to be out of sight and mounts guard a little behind his
+mother's chair.
+
+The day is now beginning to decline. The mist and the sleet into
+which the snow has all resolved itself are darker, and the blaze
+begins to tell more vividly upon the room walls and furniture. The
+gloom augments; the bright gas springs up in the streets; and the
+pertinacious oil lamps which yet hold their ground there, with their
+source of life half frozen and half thawed, twinkle gaspingly like
+fiery fish out of water--as they are. The world, which has been
+rumbling over the straw and pulling at the bell, "to inquire," begins
+to go home, begins to dress, to dine, to discuss its dear friend with
+all the last new modes, as already mentioned.
+
+Now does Sir Leicester become worse, restless, uneasy, and in great
+pain. Volumnia, lighting a candle (with a predestined aptitude for
+doing something objectionable), is bidden to put it out again, for it
+is not yet dark enough. Yet it is very dark too, as dark as it will
+be all night. By and by she tries again. No! Put it out. It is not
+dark enough yet.
+
+His old housekeeper is the first to understand that he is striving to
+uphold the fiction with himself that it is not growing late.
+
+"Dear Sir Leicester, my honoured master," she softly whispers, "I
+must, for your own good, and my duty, take the freedom of begging and
+praying that you will not lie here in the lone darkness watching and
+waiting and dragging through the time. Let me draw the curtains, and
+light the candles, and make things more comfortable about you. The
+church-clocks will strike the hours just the same, Sir Leicester, and
+the night will pass away just the same. My Lady will come back, just
+the same."
+
+"I know it, Mrs. Rouncewell, but I am weak--and she has been so long
+gone."
+
+"Not so very long, Sir Leicester. Not twenty-four hours yet."
+
+"But that is a long time. Oh, it is a long time!"
+
+He says it with a groan that wrings her heart.
+
+She knows that this is not a period for bringing the rough light upon
+him; she thinks his tears too sacred to be seen, even by her.
+Therefore she sits in the darkness for a while without a word, then
+gently begins to move about, now stirring the fire, now standing at
+the dark window looking out. Finally he tells her, with recovered
+self-command, "As you say, Mrs. Rouncewell, it is no worse for being
+confessed. It is getting late, and they are not come. Light the
+room!" When it is lighted and the weather shut out, it is only left
+to him to listen.
+
+But they find that however dejected and ill he is, he brightens when
+a quiet pretence is made of looking at the fires in her rooms and
+being sure that everything is ready to receive her. Poor pretence as
+it is, these allusions to her being expected keep up hope within him.
+
+Midnight comes, and with it the same blank. The carriages in the
+streets are few, and other late sounds in that neighbourhood there
+are none, unless a man so very nomadically drunk as to stray into the
+frigid zone goes brawling and bellowing along the pavement. Upon this
+wintry night it is so still that listening to the intense silence is
+like looking at intense darkness. If any distant sound be audible in
+this case, it departs through the gloom like a feeble light in that,
+and all is heavier than before.
+
+The corporation of servants are dismissed to bed (not unwilling to
+go, for they were up all last night), and only Mrs. Rouncewell and
+George keep watch in Sir Leicester's room. As the night lags tardily
+on--or rather when it seems to stop altogether, at between two and
+three o'clock--they find a restless craving on him to know more about
+the weather, now he cannot see it. Hence George, patrolling regularly
+every half-hour to the rooms so carefully looked after, extends his
+march to the hall-door, looks about him, and brings back the best
+report he can make of the worst of nights, the sleet still falling
+and even the stone footways lying ankle-deep in icy sludge.
+
+Volumnia, in her room up a retired landing on the staircase--the
+second turning past the end of the carving and gilding, a cousinly
+room containing a fearful abortion of a portrait of Sir Leicester
+banished for its crimes, and commanding in the day a solemn yard
+planted with dried-up shrubs like antediluvian specimens of black
+tea--is a prey to horrors of many kinds. Not last nor least among
+them, possibly, is a horror of what may befall her little income in
+the event, as she expresses it, "of anything happening" to Sir
+Leicester. Anything, in this sense, meaning one thing only; and that
+the last thing that can happen to the consciousness of any baronet in
+the known world.
+
+An effect of these horrors is that Volumnia finds she cannot go to
+bed in her own room or sit by the fire in her own room, but must come
+forth with her fair head tied up in a profusion of shawl, and her
+fair form enrobed in drapery, and parade the mansion like a ghost,
+particularly haunting the rooms, warm and luxurious, prepared for one
+who still does not return. Solitude under such circumstances being
+not to be thought of, Volumnia is attended by her maid, who,
+impressed from her own bed for that purpose, extremely cold, very
+sleepy, and generally an injured maid as condemned by circumstances
+to take office with a cousin, when she had resolved to be maid to
+nothing less than ten thousand a year, has not a sweet expression of
+countenance.
+
+The periodical visits of the trooper to these rooms, however, in the
+course of his patrolling is an assurance of protection and company
+both to mistress and maid, which renders them very acceptable in the
+small hours of the night. Whenever he is heard advancing, they both
+make some little decorative preparation to receive him; at other
+times they divide their watches into short scraps of oblivion and
+dialogues not wholly free from acerbity, as to whether Miss Dedlock,
+sitting with her feet upon the fender, was or was not falling into
+the fire when rescued (to her great displeasure) by her guardian
+genius the maid.
+
+"How is Sir Leicester now, Mr. George?" inquires Volumnia, adjusting
+her cowl over her head.
+
+"Why, Sir Leicester is much the same, miss. He is very low and ill,
+and he even wanders a little sometimes."
+
+"Has he asked for me?" inquires Volumnia tenderly.
+
+"Why, no, I can't say he has, miss. Not within my hearing, that is to
+say."
+
+"This is a truly sad time, Mr. George."
+
+"It is indeed, miss. Hadn't you better go to bed?"
+
+"You had a deal better go to bed, Miss Dedlock," quoth the maid
+sharply.
+
+But Volumnia answers No! No! She may be asked for, she may be wanted
+at a moment's notice. She never should forgive herself "if anything
+was to happen" and she was not on the spot. She declines to enter on
+the question, mooted by the maid, how the spot comes to be there, and
+not in her room (which is nearer to Sir Leicester's), but staunchly
+declares that on the spot she will remain. Volumnia further makes a
+merit of not having "closed an eye"--as if she had twenty or
+thirty--though it is hard to reconcile this statement with her having
+most indisputably opened two within five minutes.
+
+But when it comes to four o'clock, and still the same blank,
+Volumnia's constancy begins to fail her, or rather it begins to
+strengthen, for she now considers that it is her duty to be ready for
+the morrow, when much may be expected of her, that, in fact,
+howsoever anxious to remain upon the spot, it may be required of her,
+as an act of self-devotion, to desert the spot. So when the trooper
+reappears with his, "Hadn't you better go to bed, miss?" and when the
+maid protests, more sharply than before, "You had a deal better go to
+bed, Miss Dedlock!" she meekly rises and says, "Do with me what you
+think best!"
+
+Mr. George undoubtedly thinks it best to escort her on his arm to the
+door of her cousinly chamber, and the maid as undoubtedly thinks it
+best to hustle her into bed with mighty little ceremony. Accordingly,
+these steps are taken; and now the trooper, in his rounds, has the
+house to himself.
+
+There is no improvement in the weather. From the portico, from the
+eaves, from the parapet, from every ledge and post and pillar, drips
+the thawed snow. It has crept, as if for shelter, into the lintels of
+the great door--under it, into the corners of the windows, into every
+chink and crevice of retreat, and there wastes and dies. It is
+falling still; upon the roof, upon the skylight, even through the
+skylight, and drip, drip, drip, with the regularity of the Ghost's
+Walk, on the stone floor below.
+
+The trooper, his old recollections awakened by the solitary grandeur
+of a great house--no novelty to him once at Chesney Wold--goes up the
+stairs and through the chief rooms, holding up his light at arm's
+length. Thinking of his varied fortunes within the last few weeks,
+and of his rustic boyhood, and of the two periods of his life so
+strangely brought together across the wide intermediate space;
+thinking of the murdered man whose image is fresh in his mind;
+thinking of the lady who has disappeared from these very rooms and
+the tokens of whose recent presence are all here; thinking of the
+master of the house upstairs and of the foreboding, "Who will tell
+him!" he looks here and looks there, and reflects how he MIGHT see
+something now, which it would tax his boldness to walk up to, lay his
+hand upon, and prove to be a fancy. But it is all blank, blank as the
+darkness above and below, while he goes up the great staircase again,
+blank as the oppressive silence.
+
+"All is still in readiness, George Rouncewell?"
+
+"Quite orderly and right, Sir Leicester."
+
+"No word of any kind?"
+
+The trooper shakes his head.
+
+"No letter that can possibly have been overlooked?"
+
+But he knows there is no such hope as that and lays his head down
+without looking for an answer.
+
+Very familiar to him, as he said himself some hours ago, George
+Rouncewell lifts him into easier positions through the long remainder
+of the blank wintry night, and equally familiar with his unexpressed
+wish, extinguishes the light and undraws the curtains at the first
+late break of day. The day comes like a phantom. Cold, colourless,
+and vague, it sends a warning streak before it of a deathlike hue, as
+if it cried out, "Look what I am bringing you who watch there! Who
+will tell him!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIX
+
+Esther's Narrative
+
+
+It was three o'clock in the morning when the houses outside London
+did at last begin to exclude the country and to close us in with
+streets. We had made our way along roads in a far worse condition
+than when we had traversed them by daylight, both the fall and the
+thaw having lasted ever since; but the energy of my companion never
+slackened. It had only been, as I thought, of less assistance than
+the horses in getting us on, and it had often aided them. They had
+stopped exhausted half-way up hills, they had been driven through
+streams of turbulent water, they had slipped down and become
+entangled with the harness; but he and his little lantern had been
+always ready, and when the mishap was set right, I had never heard
+any variation in his cool, "Get on, my lads!"
+
+The steadiness and confidence with which he had directed our journey
+back I could not account for. Never wavering, he never even stopped
+to make an inquiry until we were within a few miles of London. A very
+few words, here and there, were then enough for him; and thus we
+came, at between three and four o'clock in the morning, into
+Islington.
+
+I will not dwell on the suspense and anxiety with which I reflected
+all this time that we were leaving my mother farther and farther
+behind every minute. I think I had some strong hope that he must be
+right and could not fail to have a satisfactory object in following
+this woman, but I tormented myself with questioning it and discussing
+it during the whole journey. What was to ensue when we found her and
+what could compensate us for this loss of time were questions also
+that I could not possibly dismiss; my mind was quite tortured by long
+dwelling on such reflections when we stopped.
+
+We stopped in a high-street where there was a coach-stand. My
+companion paid our two drivers, who were as completely covered with
+splashes as if they had been dragged along the roads like the
+carriage itself, and giving them some brief direction where to take
+it, lifted me out of it and into a hackney-coach he had chosen from
+the rest.
+
+"Why, my dear!" he said as he did this. "How wet you are!"
+
+I had not been conscious of it. But the melted snow had found its way
+into the carriage, and I had got out two or three times when a fallen
+horse was plunging and had to be got up, and the wet had penetrated
+my dress. I assured him it was no matter, but the driver, who knew
+him, would not be dissuaded by me from running down the street to his
+stable, whence he brought an armful of clean dry straw. They shook it
+out and strewed it well about me, and I found it warm and
+comfortable.
+
+"Now, my dear," said Mr. Bucket, with his head in at the window after
+I was shut up. "We're a-going to mark this person down. It may take a
+little time, but you don't mind that. You're pretty sure that I've
+got a motive. Ain't you?"
+
+I little thought what it was, little thought in how short a time I
+should understand it better, but I assured him that I had confidence
+in him.
+
+"So you may have, my dear," he returned. "And I tell you what! If you
+only repose half as much confidence in me as I repose in you after
+what I've experienced of you, that'll do. Lord! You're no trouble at
+all. I never see a young woman in any station of society--and I've
+seen many elevated ones too--conduct herself like you have conducted
+yourself since you was called out of your bed. You're a pattern, you
+know, that's what you are," said Mr. Bucket warmly; "you're a
+pattern."
+
+I told him I was very glad, as indeed I was, to have been no
+hindrance to him, and that I hoped I should be none now.
+
+"My dear," he returned, "when a young lady is as mild as she's game,
+and as game as she's mild, that's all I ask, and more than I expect.
+She then becomes a queen, and that's about what you are yourself."
+
+With these encouraging words--they really were encouraging to me
+under those lonely and anxious circumstances--he got upon the box,
+and we once more drove away. Where we drove I neither knew then nor
+have ever known since, but we appeared to seek out the narrowest and
+worst streets in London. Whenever I saw him directing the driver, I
+was prepared for our descending into a deeper complication of such
+streets, and we never failed to do so.
+
+Sometimes we emerged upon a wider thoroughfare or came to a larger
+building than the generality, well lighted. Then we stopped at
+offices like those we had visited when we began our journey, and I
+saw him in consultation with others. Sometimes he would get down by
+an archway or at a street corner and mysteriously show the light of
+his little lantern. This would attract similar lights from various
+dark quarters, like so many insects, and a fresh consultation would
+be held. By degrees we appeared to contract our search within
+narrower and easier limits. Single police-officers on duty could now
+tell Mr. Bucket what he wanted to know and point to him where to go.
+At last we stopped for a rather long conversation between him and one
+of these men, which I supposed to be satisfactory from his manner of
+nodding from time to time. When it was finished he came to me looking
+very busy and very attentive.
+
+"Now, Miss Summerson," he said to me, "you won't be alarmed whatever
+comes off, I know. It's not necessary for me to give you any further
+caution than to tell you that we have marked this person down and
+that you may be of use to me before I know it myself. I don't like to
+ask such a thing, my dear, but would you walk a little way?"
+
+Of course I got out directly and took his arm.
+
+"It ain't so easy to keep your feet," said Mr. Bucket, "but take
+time."
+
+Although I looked about me confusedly and hurriedly as we crossed the
+street, I thought I knew the place. "Are we in Holborn?" I asked him.
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Bucket. "Do you know this turning?"
+
+"It looks like Chancery Lane."
+
+"And was christened so, my dear," said Mr. Bucket.
+
+We turned down it, and as we went shuffling through the sleet, I
+heard the clocks strike half-past five. We passed on in silence and
+as quickly as we could with such a foot-hold, when some one coming
+towards us on the narrow pavement, wrapped in a cloak, stopped and
+stood aside to give me room. In the same moment I heard an
+exclamation of wonder and my own name from Mr. Woodcourt. I knew his
+voice very well.
+
+It was so unexpected and so--I don't know what to call it, whether
+pleasant or painful--to come upon it after my feverish wandering
+journey, and in the midst of the night, that I could not keep back
+the tears from my eyes. It was like hearing his voice in a strange
+country.
+
+"My dear Miss Summerson, that you should be out at this hour, and in
+such weather!"
+
+He had heard from my guardian of my having been called away on some
+uncommon business and said so to dispense with any explanation. I
+told him that we had but just left a coach and were going--but then I
+was obliged to look at my companion.
+
+"Why, you see, Mr. Woodcourt"--he had caught the name from me--"we
+are a-going at present into the next street. Inspector Bucket."
+
+Mr. Woodcourt, disregarding my remonstrances, had hurriedly taken off
+his cloak and was putting it about me. "That's a good move, too,"
+said Mr. Bucket, assisting, "a very good move."
+
+"May I go with you?" said Mr. Woodcourt. I don't know whether to me
+or to my companion.
+
+"Why, Lord!" exclaimed Mr. Bucket, taking the answer on himself. "Of
+course you may."
+
+It was all said in a moment, and they took me between them, wrapped
+in the cloak.
+
+"I have just left Richard," said Mr. Woodcourt. "I have been sitting
+with him since ten o'clock last night."
+
+"Oh, dear me, he is ill!"
+
+"No, no, believe me; not ill, but not quite well. He was depressed
+and faint--you know he gets so worried and so worn sometimes--and Ada
+sent to me of course; and when I came home I found her note and came
+straight here. Well! Richard revived so much after a little while,
+and Ada was so happy and so convinced of its being my doing, though
+God knows I had little enough to do with it, that I remained with him
+until he had been fast asleep some hours. As fast asleep as she is
+now, I hope!"
+
+His friendly and familiar way of speaking of them, his unaffected
+devotion to them, the grateful confidence with which I knew he had
+inspired my darling, and the comfort he was to her; could I separate
+all this from his promise to me? How thankless I must have been if it
+had not recalled the words he said to me when he was so moved by the
+change in my appearance: "I will accept him as a trust, and it shall
+be a sacred one!"
+
+We now turned into another narrow street. "Mr. Woodcourt," said Mr.
+Bucket, who had eyed him closely as we came along, "our business
+takes us to a law-stationer's here, a certain Mr. Snagsby's. What,
+you know him, do you?" He was so quick that he saw it in an instant.
+
+"Yes, I know a little of him and have called upon him at this place."
+
+"Indeed, sir?" said Mr. Bucket. "Then you will be so good as to let
+me leave Miss Summerson with you for a moment while I go and have
+half a word with him?"
+
+The last police-officer with whom he had conferred was standing
+silently behind us. I was not aware of it until he struck in on my
+saying I heard some one crying.
+
+"Don't be alarmed, miss," he returned. "It's Snagsby's servant."
+
+"Why, you see," said Mr. Bucket, "the girl's subject to fits, and has
+'em bad upon her to-night. A most contrary circumstance it is, for I
+want certain information out of that girl, and she must be brought to
+reason somehow."
+
+"At all events, they wouldn't be up yet if it wasn't for her, Mr.
+Bucket," said the other man. "She's been at it pretty well all night,
+sir."
+
+"Well, that's true," he returned. "My light's burnt out. Show yours a
+moment."
+
+All this passed in a whisper a door or two from the house in which I
+could faintly hear crying and moaning. In the little round of light
+produced for the purpose, Mr. Bucket went up to the door and knocked.
+The door was opened after he had knocked twice, and he went in,
+leaving us standing in the street.
+
+"Miss Summerson," said Mr. Woodcourt, "if without obtruding myself on
+your confidence I may remain near you, pray let me do so."
+
+"You are truly kind," I answered. "I need wish to keep no secret of
+my own from you; if I keep any, it is another's."
+
+"I quite understand. Trust me, I will remain near you only so long as
+I can fully respect it."
+
+"I trust implicitly to you," I said. "I know and deeply feel how
+sacredly you keep your promise."
+
+After a short time the little round of light shone out again, and Mr.
+Bucket advanced towards us in it with his earnest face. "Please to
+come in, Miss Summerson," he said, "and sit down by the fire. Mr.
+Woodcourt, from information I have received I understand you are a
+medical man. Would you look to this girl and see if anything can be
+done to bring her round. She has a letter somewhere that I
+particularly want. It's not in her box, and I think it must be about
+her; but she is so twisted and clenched up that she is difficult to
+handle without hurting."
+
+We all three went into the house together; although it was cold and
+raw, it smelt close too from being up all night. In the passage
+behind the door stood a scared, sorrowful-looking little man in a
+grey coat who seemed to have a naturally polite manner and spoke
+meekly.
+
+"Downstairs, if you please, Mr. Bucket," said he. "The lady will
+excuse the front kitchen; we use it as our workaday sitting-room. The
+back is Guster's bedroom, and in it she's a-carrying on, poor thing,
+to a frightful extent!"
+
+We went downstairs, followed by Mr. Snagsby, as I soon found the
+little man to be. In the front kitchen, sitting by the fire, was Mrs.
+Snagsby, with very red eyes and a very severe expression of face.
+
+"My little woman," said Mr. Snagsby, entering behind us, "to
+wave--not to put too fine a point upon it, my dear--hostilities for
+one single moment in the course of this prolonged night, here is
+Inspector Bucket, Mr. Woodcourt, and a lady."
+
+She looked very much astonished, as she had reason for doing, and
+looked particularly hard at me.
+
+"My little woman," said Mr. Snagsby, sitting down in the remotest
+corner by the door, as if he were taking a liberty, "it is not
+unlikely that you may inquire of me why Inspector Bucket, Mr.
+Woodcourt, and a lady call upon us in Cook's Court, Cursitor Street,
+at the present hour. I don't know. I have not the least idea. If I
+was to be informed, I should despair of understanding, and I'd rather
+not be told."
+
+He appeared so miserable, sitting with his head upon his hand, and I
+appeared so unwelcome, that I was going to offer an apology when Mr.
+Bucket took the matter on himself.
+
+"Now, Mr. Snagsby," said he, "the best thing you can do is to go
+along with Mr. Woodcourt to look after your Guster--"
+
+"My Guster, Mr. Bucket!" cried Mr. Snagsby. "Go on, sir, go on. I
+shall be charged with that next."
+
+"And to hold the candle," pursued Mr. Bucket without correcting
+himself, "or hold her, or make yourself useful in any way you're
+asked. Which there's not a man alive more ready to do, for you're a
+man of urbanity and suavity, you know, and you've got the sort of
+heart that can feel for another. Mr. Woodcourt, would you be so good
+as see to her, and if you can get that letter from her, to let me
+have it as soon as ever you can?"
+
+As they went out, Mr. Bucket made me sit down in a corner by the fire
+and take off my wet shoes, which he turned up to dry upon the fender,
+talking all the time.
+
+"Don't you be at all put out, miss, by the want of a hospitable look
+from Mrs. Snagsby there, because she's under a mistake altogether.
+She'll find that out sooner than will be agreeable to a lady of her
+generally correct manner of forming her thoughts, because I'm a-going
+to explain it to her." Here, standing on the hearth with his wet hat
+and shawls in his hand, himself a pile of wet, he turned to Mrs.
+Snagsby. "Now, the first thing that I say to you, as a married woman
+possessing what you may call charms, you know--'Believe Me, if All
+Those Endearing,' and cetrer--you're well acquainted with the song,
+because it's in vain for you to tell me that you and good society are
+strangers--charms--attractions, mind you, that ought to give you
+confidence in yourself--is, that you've done it."
+
+Mrs. Snagsby looked rather alarmed, relented a little and faltered,
+what did Mr. Bucket mean.
+
+"What does Mr. Bucket mean?" he repeated, and I saw by his face that
+all the time he talked he was listening for the discovery of the
+letter, to my own great agitation, for I knew then how important it
+must be; "I'll tell you what he means, ma'am. Go and see Othello
+acted. That's the tragedy for you."
+
+Mrs. Snagsby consciously asked why.
+
+"Why?" said Mr. Bucket. "Because you'll come to that if you don't
+look out. Why, at the very moment while I speak, I know what your
+mind's not wholly free from respecting this young lady. But shall I
+tell you who this young lady is? Now, come, you're what I call an
+intellectual woman--with your soul too large for your body, if you
+come to that, and chafing it--and you know me, and you recollect
+where you saw me last, and what was talked of in that circle. Don't
+you? Yes! Very well. This young lady is that young lady."
+
+Mrs. Snagsby appeared to understand the reference better than I did
+at the time.
+
+"And Toughey--him as you call Jo--was mixed up in the same business,
+and no other; and the law-writer that you know of was mixed up in the
+same business, and no other; and your husband, with no more knowledge
+of it than your great grandfather, was mixed up (by Mr. Tulkinghorn,
+deceased, his best customer) in the same business, and no other; and
+the whole bileing of people was mixed up in the same business, and no
+other. And yet a married woman, possessing your attractions, shuts
+her eyes (and sparklers too), and goes and runs her delicate-formed
+head against a wall. Why, I am ashamed of you! (I expected Mr.
+Woodcourt might have got it by this time.)"
+
+Mrs. Snagsby shook her head and put her handkerchief to her eyes.
+
+"Is that all?" said Mr. Bucket excitedly. "No. See what happens.
+Another person mixed up in that business and no other, a person in a
+wretched state, comes here to-night and is seen a-speaking to your
+maid-servant; and between her and your maid-servant there passes
+a paper that I would give a hundred pound for, down. What do
+you do? You hide and you watch 'em, and you pounce upon that
+maid-servant--knowing what she's subject to and what a little thing
+will bring 'em on--in that surprising manner and with that severity
+that, by the Lord, she goes off and keeps off, when a life may be
+hanging upon that girl's words!"
+
+He so thoroughly meant what he said now that I involuntarily clasped
+my hands and felt the room turning away from me. But it stopped. Mr.
+Woodcourt came in, put a paper into his hand, and went away again.
+
+"Now, Mrs. Snagsby, the only amends you can make," said Mr. Bucket,
+rapidly glancing at it, "is to let me speak a word to this young lady
+in private here. And if you know of any help that you can give to
+that gentleman in the next kitchen there or can think of any one
+thing that's likelier than another to bring the girl round, do your
+swiftest and best!" In an instant she was gone, and he had shut the
+door. "Now my dear, you're steady and quite sure of yourself?"
+
+"Quite," said I.
+
+"Whose writing is that?"
+
+It was my mother's. A pencil-writing, on a crushed and torn piece of
+paper, blotted with wet. Folded roughly like a letter, and directed
+to me at my guardian's.
+
+"You know the hand," he said, "and if you are firm enough to read it
+to me, do! But be particular to a word."
+
+It had been written in portions, at different times. I read what
+follows:
+
+
+   I came to the cottage with two objects. First, to see the
+   dear one, if I could, once more--but only to see her--not
+   to speak to her or let her know that I was near. The other
+   object, to elude pursuit and to be lost. Do not blame the
+   mother for her share. The assistance that she rendered me,
+   she rendered on my strongest assurance that it was for the
+   dear one's good. You remember her dead child. The men's
+   consent I bought, but her help was freely given.
+
+
+"'I came.' That was written," said my companion, "when she rested
+there. It bears out what I made of it. I was right."
+
+The next was written at another time:
+
+
+   I have wandered a long distance, and for many hours, and
+   I know that I must soon die. These streets! I have no
+   purpose but to die. When I left, I had a worse, but I am
+   saved from adding that guilt to the rest. Cold, wet, and
+   fatigue are sufficient causes for my being found dead, but
+   I shall die of others, though I suffer from these. It was
+   right that all that had sustained me should give way at
+   once and that I should die of terror and my conscience.
+
+
+"Take courage," said Mr. Bucket. "There's only a few words more."
+
+Those, too, were written at another time. To all appearance, almost
+in the dark:
+
+
+   I have done all I could do to be lost. I shall be soon
+   forgotten so, and shall disgrace him least. I have nothing
+   about me by which I can be recognized. This paper I part
+   with now. The place where I shall lie down, if I can get
+   so far, has been often in my mind. Farewell. Forgive.
+
+
+Mr. Bucket, supporting me with his arm, lowered me gently into my
+chair. "Cheer up! Don't think me hard with you, my dear, but as soon
+as ever you feel equal to it, get your shoes on and be ready."
+
+I did as he required, but I was left there a long time, praying for
+my unhappy mother. They were all occupied with the poor girl, and I
+heard Mr. Woodcourt directing them and speaking to her often. At
+length he came in with Mr. Bucket and said that as it was important
+to address her gently, he thought it best that I should ask her for
+whatever information we desired to obtain. There was no doubt that
+she could now reply to questions if she were soothed and not alarmed.
+The questions, Mr. Bucket said, were how she came by the letter, what
+passed between her and the person who gave her the letter, and where
+the person went. Holding my mind as steadily as I could to these
+points, I went into the next room with them. Mr. Woodcourt would have
+remained outside, but at my solicitation went in with us.
+
+The poor girl was sitting on the floor where they had laid her down.
+They stood around her, though at a little distance, that she might
+have air. She was not pretty and looked weak and poor, but she had a
+plaintive and a good face, though it was still a little wild. I
+kneeled on the ground beside her and put her poor head upon my
+shoulder, whereupon she drew her arm round my neck and burst into
+tears.
+
+"My poor girl," said I, laying my face against her forehead, for
+indeed I was crying too, and trembling, "it seems cruel to trouble
+you now, but more depends on our knowing something about this letter
+than I could tell you in an hour."
+
+She began piteously declaring that she didn't mean any harm, she
+didn't mean any harm, Mrs. Snagsby!
+
+"We are all sure of that," said I. "But pray tell me how you got it."
+
+"Yes, dear lady, I will, and tell you true. I'll tell true, indeed,
+Mrs. Snagsby."
+
+"I am sure of that," said I. "And how was it?"
+
+"I had been out on an errand, dear lady--long after it was
+dark--quite late; and when I came home, I found a common-looking
+person, all wet and muddy, looking up at our house. When she saw me
+coming in at the door, she called me back and said did I live here.
+And I said yes, and she said she knew only one or two places about
+here, but had lost her way and couldn't find them. Oh, what shall I
+do, what shall I do! They won't believe me! She didn't say any harm
+to me, and I didn't say any harm to her, indeed, Mrs. Snagsby!"
+
+It was necessary for her mistress to comfort her--which she did, I
+must say, with a good deal of contrition--before she could be got
+beyond this.
+
+"She could not find those places," said I.
+
+"No!" cried the girl, shaking her head. "No! Couldn't find them. And
+she was so faint, and lame, and miserable, Oh so wretched, that if
+you had seen her, Mr. Snagsby, you'd have given her half a crown, I
+know!"
+
+"Well, Guster, my girl," said he, at first not knowing what to say.
+"I hope I should."
+
+"And yet she was so well spoken," said the girl, looking at me with
+wide open eyes, "that it made a person's heart bleed. And so she said
+to me, did I know the way to the burying ground? And I asked her
+which burying ground. And she said, the poor burying ground. And so I
+told her I had been a poor child myself, and it was according to
+parishes. But she said she meant a poor burying ground not very far
+from here, where there was an archway, and a step, and an iron gate."
+
+As I watched her face and soothed her to go on, I saw that Mr. Bucket
+received this with a look which I could not separate from one of
+alarm.
+
+"Oh, dear, dear!" cried the girl, pressing her hair back with her
+hands. "What shall I do, what shall I do! She meant the burying
+ground where the man was buried that took the sleeping-stuff--that
+you came home and told us of, Mr. Snagsby--that frightened me so,
+Mrs. Snagsby. Oh, I am frightened again. Hold me!"
+
+"You are so much better now," sald I. "Pray, pray tell me more."
+
+"Yes I will, yes I will! But don't be angry with me, that's a dear
+lady, because I have been so ill."
+
+Angry with her, poor soul!
+
+"There! Now I will, now I will. So she said, could I tell her how to
+find it, and I said yes, and I told her; and she looked at me with
+eyes like almost as if she was blind, and herself all waving back.
+And so she took out the letter, and showed it me, and said if she was
+to put that in the post-office, it would be rubbed out and not minded
+and never sent; and would I take it from her, and send it, and the
+messenger would be paid at the house. And so I said yes, if it was no
+harm, and she said no--no harm. And so I took it from her, and she
+said she had nothing to give me, and I said I was poor myself and
+consequently wanted nothing. And so she said God bless you, and
+went."
+
+"And did she go--"
+
+"Yes," cried the girl, anticipating the inquiry. "Yes! She went the
+way I had shown her. Then I came in, and Mrs. Snagsby came behind me
+from somewhere and laid hold of me, and I was frightened."
+
+Mr. Woodcourt took her kindly from me. Mr. Bucket wrapped me up, and
+immediately we were in the street. Mr. Woodcourt hesitated, but I
+said, "Don't leave me now!" and Mr. Bucket added, "You'll be better
+with us, we may want you; don't lose time!"
+
+I have the most confused impressions of that walk. I recollect that
+it was neither night nor day, that morning was dawning but the
+street-lamps were not yet put out, that the sleet was still falling
+and that all the ways were deep with it. I recollect a few chilled
+people passing in the streets. I recollect the wet house-tops, the
+clogged and bursting gutters and water-spouts, the mounds of
+blackened ice and snow over which we passed, the narrowness of the
+courts by which we went. At the same time I remember that the poor
+girl seemed to be yet telling her story audibly and plainly in my
+hearing, that I could feel her resting on my arm, that the stained
+house-fronts put on human shapes and looked at me, that great
+water-gates seemed to be opening and closing in my head or in the
+air, and that the unreal things were more substantial than the real.
+
+At last we stood under a dark and miserable covered way, where one
+lamp was burning over an iron gate and where the morning faintly
+struggled in. The gate was closed. Beyond it was a burial ground--a
+dreadful spot in which the night was very slowly stirring, but where
+I could dimly see heaps of dishonoured graves and stones, hemmed in
+by filthy houses with a few dull lights in their windows and on whose
+walls a thick humidity broke out like a disease. On the step at the
+gate, drenched in the fearful wet of such a place, which oozed and
+splashed down everywhere, I saw, with a cry of pity and horror, a
+woman lying--Jenny, the mother of the dead child.
+
+I ran forward, but they stopped me, and Mr. Woodcourt entreated me
+with the greatest earnestness, even with tears, before I went up to
+the figure to listen for an instant to what Mr. Bucket said. I did
+so, as I thought. I did so, as I am sure.
+
+"Miss Summerson, you'll understand me, if you think a moment. They
+changed clothes at the cottage."
+
+They changed clothes at the cottage. I could repeat the words in my
+mind, and I knew what they meant of themselves, but I attached no
+meaning to them in any other connexion.
+
+"And one returned," said Mr. Bucket, "and one went on. And the one
+that went on only went on a certain way agreed upon to deceive and
+then turned across country and went home. Think a moment!"
+
+I could repeat this in my mind too, but I had not the least idea what
+it meant. I saw before me, lying on the step, the mother of the dead
+child. She lay there with one arm creeping round a bar of the iron
+gate and seeming to embrace it. She lay there, who had so lately
+spoken to my mother. She lay there, a distressed, unsheltered,
+senseless creature. She who had brought my mother's letter, who could
+give me the only clue to where my mother was; she, who was to guide
+us to rescue and save her whom we had sought so far, who had come to
+this condition by some means connected with my mother that I could
+not follow, and might be passing beyond our reach and help at that
+moment; she lay there, and they stopped me! I saw but did not
+comprehend the solemn and compassionate look in Mr. Woodcourt's face.
+I saw but did not comprehend his touching the other on the breast to
+keep him back. I saw him stand uncovered in the bitter air, with a
+reverence for something. But my understanding for all this was gone.
+
+I even heard it said between them, "Shall she go?"
+
+"She had better go. Her hands should be the first to touch her. They
+have a higher right than ours."
+
+I passed on to the gate and stooped down. I lifted the heavy head,
+put the long dank hair aside, and turned the face. And it was my
+mother, cold and dead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LX
+
+Perspective
+
+
+I proceed to other passages of my narrative. From the goodness of all
+about me I derived such consolation as I can never think of unmoved.
+I have already said so much of myself, and so much still remains,
+that I will not dwell upon my sorrow. I had an illness, but it was
+not a long one; and I would avoid even this mention of it if I could
+quite keep down the recollection of their sympathy.
+
+I proceed to other passages of my narrative.
+
+During the time of my illness, we were still in London, where Mrs.
+Woodcourt had come, on my guardian's invitation, to stay with us.
+When my guardian thought me well and cheerful enough to talk with him
+in our old way--though I could have done that sooner if he would have
+believed me--I resumed my work and my chair beside his. He had
+appointed the time himself, and we were alone.
+
+"Dame Trot," said he, receiving me with a kiss, "welcome to the
+growlery again, my dear. I have a scheme to develop, little woman. I
+propose to remain here, perhaps for six months, perhaps for a longer
+time--as it may be. Quite to settle here for a while, in short."
+
+"And in the meanwhile leave Bleak House?" said I.
+
+"Aye, my dear? Bleak House," he returned, "must learn to take care of
+itself."
+
+I thought his tone sounded sorrowful, but looking at him, I saw his
+kind face lighted up by its pleasantest smile.
+
+"Bleak House," he repeated--and his tone did NOT sound sorrowful, I
+found--"must learn to take care of itself. It is a long way from Ada,
+my dear, and Ada stands much in need of you."
+
+"It's like you, guardian," said I, "to have been taking that into
+consideration for a happy surprise to both of us."
+
+"Not so disinterested either, my dear, if you mean to extol me for
+that virtue, since if you were generally on the road, you could be
+seldom with me. And besides, I wish to hear as much and as often of
+Ada as I can in this condition of estrangement from poor Rick. Not of
+her alone, but of him too, poor fellow."
+
+"Have you seen Mr. Woodcourt, this morning, guardian?"
+
+"I see Mr. Woodcourt every morning, Dame Durden."
+
+"Does he still say the same of Richard?"
+
+"Just the same. He knows of no direct bodily illness that he has; on
+the contrary, he believes that he has none. Yet he is not easy about
+him; who CAN be?"
+
+My dear girl had been to see us lately every day, some times twice in
+a day. But we had foreseen, all along, that this would only last
+until I was quite myself. We knew full well that her fervent heart
+was as full of affection and gratitude towards her cousin John as it
+had ever been, and we acquitted Richard of laying any injunctions
+upon her to stay away; but we knew on the other hand that she felt it
+a part of her duty to him to be sparing of her visits at our house.
+My guardian's delicacy had soon perceived this and had tried to
+convey to her that he thought she was right.
+
+"Dear, unfortunate, mistaken Richard," said I. "When will he awake
+from his delusion!"
+
+"He is not in the way to do so now, my dear," replied my guardian.
+"The more he suffers, the more averse he will be to me, having made
+me the principal representative of the great occasion of his
+suffering."
+
+I could not help adding, "So unreasonably!"
+
+"Ah, Dame Trot, Dame Trot," returned my guardian, "what shall we find
+reasonable in Jarndyce and Jarndyce! Unreason and injustice at the
+top, unreason and injustice at the heart and at the bottom, unreason
+and injustice from beginning to end--if it ever has an end--how
+should poor Rick, always hovering near it, pluck reason out of it? He
+no more gathers grapes from thorns or figs from thistles than older
+men did in old times."
+
+His gentleness and consideration for Richard whenever we spoke of him
+touched me so that I was always silent on this subject very soon.
+
+"I suppose the Lord Chancellor, and the Vice Chancellors, and the
+whole Chancery battery of great guns would be infinitely astonished
+by such unreason and injustice in one of their suitors," pursued my
+guardian. "When those learned gentlemen begin to raise moss-roses
+from the powder they sow in their wigs, I shall begin to be
+astonished too!"
+
+He checked himself in glancing towards the window to look where the
+wind was and leaned on the back of my chair instead.
+
+"Well, well, little woman! To go on, my dear. This rock we must leave
+to time, chance, and hopeful circumstance. We must not shipwreck Ada
+upon it. She cannot afford, and he cannot afford, the remotest chance
+of another separation from a friend. Therefore I have particularly
+begged of Woodcourt, and I now particularly beg of you, my dear, not
+to move this subject with Rick. Let it rest. Next week, next month,
+next year, sooner or later, he will see me with clearer eyes. I can
+wait."
+
+But I had already discussed it with him, I confessed; and so, I
+thought, had Mr. Woodcourt.
+
+"So he tells me," returned my guardian. "Very good. He has made his
+protest, and Dame Durden has made hers, and there is nothing more to
+be said about it. Now I come to Mrs. Woodcourt. How do you like her,
+my dear?"
+
+In answer to this question, which was oddly abrupt, I said I liked
+her very much and thought she was more agreeable than she used to be.
+
+"I think so too," said my guardian. "Less pedigree? Not so much of
+Morgan ap--what's his name?"
+
+That was what I meant, I acknowledged, though he was a very harmless
+person, even when we had had more of him.
+
+"Still, upon the whole, he is as well in his native mountains," said
+my guardian. "I agree with you. Then, little woman, can I do better
+for a time than retain Mrs. Woodcourt here?"
+
+No. And yet--
+
+My guardian looked at me, waiting for what I had to say.
+
+I had nothing to say. At least I had nothing in my mind that I could
+say. I had an undefined impression that it might have been better if
+we had had some other inmate, but I could hardly have explained why
+even to myself. Or, if to myself, certainly not to anybody else.
+
+"You see," said my guardian, "our neighbourhood is in Woodcourt's
+way, and he can come here to see her as often as he likes, which is
+agreeable to them both; and she is familiar to us and fond of you."
+
+Yes. That was undeniable. I had nothing to say against it. I could
+not have suggested a better arrangement, but I was not quite easy in
+my mind. Esther, Esther, why not? Esther, think!
+
+"It is a very good plan indeed, dear guardian, and we could not do
+better."
+
+"Sure, little woman?"
+
+Quite sure. I had had a moment's time to think, since I had urged
+that duty on myself, and I was quite sure.
+
+"Good," said my guardian. "It shall be done. Carried unanimously."
+
+"Carried unanimously," I repeated, going on with my work.
+
+It was a cover for his book-table that I happened to be ornamenting.
+It had been laid by on the night preceding my sad journey and never
+resumed. I showed it to him now, and he admired it highly. After I
+had explained the pattern to him and all the great effects that were
+to come out by and by, I thought I would go back to our last theme.
+
+"You said, dear guardian, when we spoke of Mr. Woodcourt before Ada
+left us, that you thought he would give a long trial to another
+country. Have you been advising him since?"
+
+"Yes, little woman, pretty often."
+
+"Has he decided to do so?"
+
+"I rather think not."
+
+"Some other prospect has opened to him, perhaps?" said I.
+
+"Why--yes--perhaps," returned my guardian, beginning his answer in a
+very deliberate manner. "About half a year hence or so, there is a
+medical attendant for the poor to be appointed at a certain place in
+Yorkshire. It is a thriving place, pleasantly situated--streams and
+streets, town and country, mill and moor--and seems to present an
+opening for such a man. I mean a man whose hopes and aims may
+sometimes lie (as most men's sometimes do, I dare say) above the
+ordinary level, but to whom the ordinary level will be high enough
+after all if it should prove to be a way of usefulness and good
+service leading to no other. All generous spirits are ambitious, I
+suppose, but the ambition that calmly trusts itself to such a road,
+instead of spasmodically trying to fly over it, is of the kind I care
+for. It is Woodcourt's kind."
+
+"And will he get this appointment?" I asked.
+
+"Why, little woman," returned my guardian, smiling, "not being an
+oracle, I cannot confidently say, but I think so. His reputation
+stands very high; there were people from that part of the country in
+the shipwreck; and strange to say, I believe the best man has the
+best chance. You must not suppose it to be a fine endowment. It is a
+very, very commonplace affair, my dear, an appointment to a great
+amount of work and a small amount of pay; but better things will
+gather about it, it may be fairly hoped."
+
+"The poor of that place will have reason to bless the choice if it
+falls on Mr. Woodcourt, guardian."
+
+"You are right, little woman; that I am sure they will."
+
+We said no more about it, nor did he say a word about the future of
+Bleak House. But it was the first time I had taken my seat at his
+side in my mourning dress, and that accounted for it, I considered.
+
+I now began to visit my dear girl every day in the dull dark corner
+where she lived. The morning was my usual time, but whenever I found
+I had an hour or so to spare, I put on my bonnet and bustled off to
+Chancery Lane. They were both so glad to see me at all hours, and
+used to brighten up so when they heard me opening the door and coming
+in (being quite at home, I never knocked), that I had no fear of
+becoming troublesome just yet.
+
+On these occasions I frequently found Richard absent. At other times
+he would be writing or reading papers in the cause at that table of
+his, so covered with papers, which was never disturbed. Sometimes I
+would come upon him lingering at the door of Mr. Vholes's office.
+Sometimes I would meet him in the neighbourhood lounging about and
+biting his nails. I often met him wandering in Lincoln's Inn, near
+the place where I had first seen him, oh how different, how
+different!
+
+That the money Ada brought him was melting away with the candles I
+used to see burning after dark in Mr. Vholes's office I knew very
+well. It was not a large amount in the beginning, he had married in
+debt, and I could not fail to understand, by this time, what was
+meant by Mr. Vholes's shoulder being at the wheel--as I still heard
+it was. My dear made the best of housekeepers and tried hard to save,
+but I knew that they were getting poorer and poorer every day.
+
+She shone in the miserable corner like a beautiful star. She adorned
+and graced it so that it became another place. Paler than she had
+been at home, and a little quieter than I had thought natural when
+she was yet so cheerful and hopeful, her face was so unshadowed that
+I half believed she was blinded by her love for Richard to his
+ruinous career.
+
+I went one day to dine with them while I was under this impression.
+As I turned into Symond's Inn, I met little Miss Flite coming out.
+She had been to make a stately call upon the wards in Jarndyce, as
+she still called them, and had derived the highest gratification from
+that ceremony. Ada had already told me that she called every Monday
+at five o'clock, with one little extra white bow in her bonnet, which
+never appeared there at any other time, and with her largest reticule
+of documents on her arm.
+
+"My dear!" she began. "So delighted! How do you do! So glad to see
+you. And you are going to visit our interesting Jarndyce wards? TO be
+sure! Our beauty is at home, my dear, and will be charmed to see
+you."
+
+"Then Richard is not come in yet?" said I. "I am glad of that, for I
+was afraid of being a little late."
+
+"No, he is not come in," returned Miss Flite. "He has had a long day
+in court. I left him there with Vholes. You don't like Vholes, I
+hope? DON'T like Vholes. Dan-gerous man!"
+
+"I am afraid you see Richard oftener than ever now," said I.
+
+"My dearest," returned Miss Flite, "daily and hourly. You know what I
+told you of the attraction on the Chancellor's table? My dear, next
+to myself he is the most constant suitor in court. He begins quite to
+amuse our little party. Ve-ry friendly little party, are we not?"
+
+It was miserable to hear this from her poor mad lips, though it was
+no surprise.
+
+"In short, my valued friend," pursued Miss Flite, advancing her lips
+to my ear with an air of equal patronage and mystery, "I must tell
+you a secret. I have made him my executor. Nominated, constituted,
+and appointed him. In my will. Ye-es."
+
+"Indeed?" said I.
+
+"Ye-es," repeated Miss Flite in her most genteel accents, "my
+executor, administrator, and assign. (Our Chancery phrases, my love.)
+I have reflected that if I should wear out, he will be able to watch
+that judgment. Being so very regular in his attendance."
+
+It made me sigh to think of him.
+
+"I did at one time mean," said Miss Flite, echoing the sigh, "to
+nominate, constitute, and appoint poor Gridley. Also very regular, my
+charming girl. I assure you, most exemplary! But he wore out, poor
+man, so I have appointed his successor. Don't mention it. This is in
+confidence."
+
+She carefully opened her reticule a little way and showed me a folded
+piece of paper inside as the appointment of which she spoke.
+
+"Another secret, my dear. I have added to my collection of birds."
+
+"Really, Miss Flite?" said I, knowing how it pleased her to have her
+confidence received with an appearance of interest.
+
+She nodded several times, and her face became overcast and gloomy.
+"Two more. I call them the Wards in Jarndyce. They are caged up with
+all the others. With Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust,
+Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin, Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly,
+Words, Wigs, Rags, Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and
+Spinach!"
+
+The poor soul kissed me with the most troubled look I had ever seen
+in her and went her way. Her manner of running over the names of her
+birds, as if she were afraid of hearing them even from her own lips,
+quite chilled me.
+
+This was not a cheering preparation for my visit, and I could have
+dispensed with the company of Mr. Vholes, when Richard (who arrived
+within a minute or two after me) brought him to share our dinner.
+Although it was a very plain one, Ada and Richard were for some
+minutes both out of the room together helping to get ready what we
+were to eat and drink. Mr. Vholes took that opportunity of holding a
+little conversation in a low voice with me. He came to the window
+where I was sitting and began upon Symond's Inn.
+
+"A dull place, Miss Summerson, for a life that is not an official
+one," said Mr. Vholes, smearing the glass with his black glove to
+make it clearer for me.
+
+"There is not much to see here," said I.
+
+"Nor to hear, miss," returned Mr. Vholes. "A little music does
+occasionally stray in, but we are not musical in the law and soon
+eject it. I hope Mr. Jarndyce is as well as his friends could wish
+him?"
+
+I thanked Mr. Vholes and said he was quite well.
+
+"I have not the pleasure to be admitted among the number of his
+friends myself," said Mr. Vholes, "and I am aware that the gentlemen
+of our profession are sometimes regarded in such quarters with an
+unfavourable eye. Our plain course, however, under good report and
+evil report, and all kinds of prejudice (we are the victims of
+prejudice), is to have everything openly carried on. How do you find
+Mr. C. looking, Miss Summerson?"
+
+"He looks very ill. Dreadfully anxious."
+
+"Just so," said Mr. Vholes.
+
+He stood behind me with his long black figure reaching nearly to the
+ceiling of those low rooms, feeling the pimples on his face as if
+they were ornaments and speaking inwardly and evenly as though there
+were not a human passion or emotion in his nature.
+
+"Mr. Woodcourt is in attendance upon Mr. C., I believe?" he resumed.
+
+"Mr. Woodcourt is his disinterested friend," I answered.
+
+"But I mean in professional attendance, medical attendance."
+
+"That can do little for an unhappy mind," said I.
+
+"Just so," said Mr. Vholes.
+
+So slow, so eager, so bloodless and gaunt, I felt as if Richard were
+wasting away beneath the eyes of this adviser and there were
+something of the vampire in him.
+
+"Miss Summerson," said Mr. Vholes, very slowly rubbing his gloved
+hands, as if, to his cold sense of touch, they were much the same in
+black kid or out of it, "this was an ill-advised marriage of Mr.
+C.'s."
+
+I begged he would excuse me from discussing it. They had been engaged
+when they were both very young, I told him (a little indignantly) and
+when the prospect before them was much fairer and brighter. When
+Richard had not yielded himself to the unhappy influence which now
+darkened his life.
+
+"Just so," assented Mr. Vholes again. "Still, with a view to
+everything being openly carried on, I will, with your permission,
+Miss Summerson, observe to you that I consider this a very
+ill-advised marriage indeed. I owe the opinion not only to Mr. C.'s
+connexions, against whom I should naturally wish to protect myself,
+but also to my own reputation--dear to myself as a professional man
+aiming to keep respectable; dear to my three girls at home, for whom
+I am striving to realize some little independence; dear, I will even
+say, to my aged father, whom it is my privilege to support."
+
+"It would become a very different marriage, a much happier and better
+marriage, another marriage altogether, Mr. Vholes," said I, "if
+Richard were persuaded to turn his back on the fatal pursuit in which
+you are engaged with him."
+
+Mr. Vholes, with a noiseless cough--or rather gasp--into one of his
+black gloves, inclined his head as if he did not wholly dispute even
+that.
+
+"Miss Summerson," he said, "it may be so; and I freely admit that the
+young lady who has taken Mr. C.'s name upon herself in so ill-advised
+a manner--you will I am sure not quarrel with me for throwing out
+that remark again, as a duty I owe to Mr. C.'s connexions--is a
+highly genteel young lady. Business has prevented me from mixing much
+with general society in any but a professional character; still I
+trust I am competent to perceive that she is a highly genteel young
+lady. As to beauty, I am not a judge of that myself, and I never did
+give much attention to it from a boy, but I dare say the young lady
+is equally eligible in that point of view. She is considered so (I
+have heard) among the clerks in the Inn, and it is a point more in
+their way than in mine. In reference to Mr. C.'s pursuit of his
+interests--"
+
+"Oh! His interests, Mr. Vholes!"
+
+"Pardon me," returned Mr. Vholes, going on in exactly the same inward
+and dispassionate manner. "Mr. C. takes certain interests under
+certain wills disputed in the suit. It is a term we use. In reference
+to Mr. C,'s pursuit of his interests, I mentioned to you, Miss
+Summerson, the first time I had the pleasure of seeing you, in my
+desire that everything should be openly carried on--I used those
+words, for I happened afterwards to note them in my diary, which is
+producible at any time--I mentioned to you that Mr. C. had laid down
+the principle of watching his own interests, and that when a client
+of mine laid down a principle which was not of an immoral (that is to
+say, unlawful) nature, it devolved upon me to carry it out. I HAVE
+carried it out; I do carry it out. But I will not smooth things over
+to any connexion of Mr. C.'s on any account. As open as I was to Mr.
+Jarndyce, I am to you. I regard it in the light of a professional
+duty to be so, though it can be charged to no one. I openly say,
+unpalatable as it may be, that I consider Mr. C.'s affairs in a very
+bad way, that I consider Mr. C. himself in a very bad way, and that I
+regard this as an exceedingly ill-advised marriage. Am I here, sir?
+Yes, I thank you; I am here, Mr. C., and enjoying the pleasure of
+some agreeable conversation with Miss Summerson, for which I have to
+thank you very much, sir!"
+
+He broke off thus in answer to Richard, who addressed him as he came
+into the room. By this time I too well understood Mr. Vholes's
+scrupulous way of saving himself and his respectability not to feel
+that our worst fears did but keep pace with his client's progress.
+
+We sat down to dinner, and I had an opportunity of observing Richard,
+anxiously. I was not disturbed by Mr. Vholes (who took off his gloves
+to dine), though he sat opposite to me at the small table, for I
+doubt if, looking up at all, he once removed his eyes from his host's
+face. I found Richard thin and languid, slovenly in his dress,
+abstracted in his manner, forcing his spirits now and then, and at
+other intervals relapsing into a dull thoughtfulness. About his large
+bright eyes that used to be so merry there was a wanness and a
+restlessness that changed them altogether. I cannot use the
+expression that he looked old. There is a ruin of youth which is not
+like age, and into such a ruin Richard's youth and youthful beauty
+had all fallen away.
+
+He ate little and seemed indifferent what it was, showed himself to
+be much more impatient than he used to be, and was quick even with
+Ada. I thought at first that his old light-hearted manner was all
+gone, but it shone out of him sometimes as I had occasionally known
+little momentary glimpses of my own old face to look out upon me from
+the glass. His laugh had not quite left him either, but it was like
+the echo of a joyful sound, and that is always sorrowful.
+
+Yet he was as glad as ever, in his old affectionate way, to have me
+there, and we talked of the old times pleasantly. These did not
+appear to be interesting to Mr. Vholes, though he occasionally made a
+gasp which I believe was his smile. He rose shortly after dinner and
+said that with the permission of the ladies he would retire to his
+office.
+
+"Always devoted to business, Vholes!" cried Richard.
+
+"Yes, Mr. C.," he returned, "the interests of clients are never to be
+neglected, sir. They are paramount in the thoughts of a professional
+man like myself, who wishes to preserve a good name among his
+fellow-practitioners and society at large. My denying myself the
+pleasure of the present agreeable conversation may not be wholly
+irrespective of your own interests, Mr. C."
+
+Richard expressed himself quite sure of that and lighted Mr. Vholes
+out. On his return he told us, more than once, that Vholes was a good
+fellow, a safe fellow, a man who did what he pretended to do, a very
+good fellow indeed! He was so defiant about it that it struck me he
+had begun to doubt Mr. Vholes.
+
+Then he threw himself on the sofa, tired out; and Ada and I put
+things to rights, for they had no other servant than the woman who
+attended to the chambers. My dear girl had a cottage piano there and
+quietly sat down to sing some of Richard's favourites, the lamp being
+first removed into the next room, as he complained of its hurting his
+eyes.
+
+I sat between them, at my dear girl's side, and felt very melancholy
+listening to her sweet voice. I think Richard did too; I think he
+darkened the room for that reason. She had been singing some time,
+rising between whiles to bend over him and speak to him, when Mr.
+Woodcourt came in. Then he sat down by Richard and half playfully,
+half earnestly, quite naturally and easily, found out how he felt and
+where he had been all day. Presently he proposed to accompany him in
+a short walk on one of the bridges, as it was a moonlight airy night;
+and Richard readily consenting, they went out together.
+
+They left my dear girl still sitting at the piano and me still
+sitting beside her. When they were gone out, I drew my arm round her
+waist. She put her left hand in mine (I was sitting on that side),
+but kept her right upon the keys, going over and over them without
+striking any note.
+
+"Esther, my dearest," she said, breaking silence, "Richard is never
+so well and I am never so easy about him as when he is with Allan
+Woodcourt. We have to thank you for that."
+
+I pointed out to my darling how this could scarcely be, because Mr.
+Woodcourt had come to her cousin John's house and had known us all
+there, and because he had always liked Richard, and Richard had
+always liked him, and--and so forth.
+
+"All true," said Ada, "but that he is such a devoted friend to us we
+owe to you."
+
+I thought it best to let my dear girl have her way and to say no more
+about it. So I said as much. I said it lightly, because I felt her
+trembling.
+
+"Esther, my dearest, I want to be a good wife, a very, very good wife
+indeed. You shall teach me."
+
+I teach! I said no more, for I noticed the hand that was fluttering
+over the keys, and I knew that it was not I who ought to speak, that
+it was she who had something to say to me.
+
+"When I married Richard I was not insensible to what was before him.
+I had been perfectly happy for a long time with you, and I had never
+known any trouble or anxiety, so loved and cared for, but I
+understood the danger he was in, dear Esther."
+
+"I know, I know, my darling."
+
+"When we were married I had some little hope that I might be able to
+convince him of his mistake, that he might come to regard it in a new
+way as my husband and not pursue it all the more desperately for my
+sake--as he does. But if I had not had that hope, I would have
+married him just the same, Esther. Just the same!"
+
+In the momentary firmness of the hand that was never still--a
+firmness inspired by the utterance of these last words, and dying
+away with them--I saw the confirmation of her earnest tones.
+
+"You are not to think, my dearest Esther, that I fail to see what you
+see and fear what you fear. No one can understand him better than I
+do. The greatest wisdom that ever lived in the world could scarcely
+know Richard better than my love does."
+
+She spoke so modestly and softly and her trembling hand expressed
+such agitation as it moved to and fro upon the silent notes! My dear,
+dear girl!
+
+"I see him at his worst every day. I watch him in his sleep. I know
+every change of his face. But when I married Richard I was quite
+determined, Esther, if heaven would help me, never to show him that I
+grieved for what he did and so to make him more unhappy. I want him,
+when he comes home, to find no trouble in my face. I want him, when
+he looks at me, to see what he loved in me. I married him to do this,
+and this supports me."
+
+I felt her trembling more. I waited for what was yet to come, and I
+now thought I began to know what it was.
+
+"And something else supports me, Esther."
+
+She stopped a minute. Stopped speaking only; her hand was still in
+motion.
+
+"I look forward a little while, and I don't know what great aid may
+come to me. When Richard turns his eyes upon me then, there may be
+something lying on my breast more eloquent than I have been, with
+greater power than mine to show him his true course and win him
+back."
+
+Her hand stopped now. She clasped me in her arms, and I clasped her
+in mine.
+
+"If that little creature should fail too, Esther, I still look
+forward. I look forward a long while, through years and years, and
+think that then, when I am growing old, or when I am dead perhaps, a
+beautiful woman, his daughter, happily married, may be proud of him
+and a blessing to him. Or that a generous brave man, as handsome as
+he used to be, as hopeful, and far more happy, may walk in the
+sunshine with him, honouring his grey head and saying to himself, 'I
+thank God this is my father! Ruined by a fatal inheritance, and
+restored through me!'"
+
+Oh, my sweet girl, what a heart was that which beat so fast against
+me!
+
+"These hopes uphold me, my dear Esther, and I know they will. Though
+sometimes even they depart from me before a dread that arises when I
+look at Richard."
+
+I tried to cheer my darling, and asked her what it was. Sobbing and
+weeping, she replied, "That he may not live to see his child."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXI
+
+A Discovery
+
+
+The days when I frequented that miserable corner which my dear girl
+brightened can never fade in my remembrance. I never see it, and I
+never wish to see it now; I have been there only once since, but in
+my memory there is a mournful glory shining on the place which will
+shine for ever.
+
+Not a day passed without my going there, of course. At first I found
+Mr. Skimpole there, on two or three occasions, idly playing the piano
+and talking in his usual vivacious strain. Now, besides my very much
+mistrusting the probability of his being there without making Richard
+poorer, I felt as if there were something in his careless gaiety too
+inconsistent with what I knew of the depths of Ada's life. I clearly
+perceived, too, that Ada shared my feelings. I therefore resolved,
+after much thinking of it, to make a private visit to Mr. Skimpole
+and try delicately to explain myself. My dear girl was the great
+consideration that made me bold.
+
+I set off one morning, accompanied by Charley, for Somers Town. As I
+approached the house, I was strongly inclined to turn back, for I
+felt what a desperate attempt it was to make an impression on Mr.
+Skimpole and how extremely likely it was that he would signally
+defeat me. However, I thought that being there, I would go through
+with it. I knocked with a trembling hand at Mr. Skimpole's
+door--literally with a hand, for the knocker was gone--and after a
+long parley gained admission from an Irishwoman, who was in the area
+when I knocked, breaking up the lid of a water-butt with a poker to
+light the fire with.
+
+Mr. Skimpole, lying on the sofa in his room, playing the flute a
+little, was enchanted to see me. Now, who should receive me, he
+asked. Who would I prefer for mistress of the ceremonies? Would I
+have his Comedy daughter, his Beauty daughter, or his Sentiment
+daughter? Or would I have all the daughters at once in a perfect
+nosegay?
+
+I replied, half defeated already, that I wished to speak to himself
+only if he would give me leave.
+
+"My dear Miss Summerson, most joyfully! Of course," he said, bringing
+his chair nearer mine and breaking into his fascinating smile, "of
+course it's not business. Then it's pleasure!"
+
+I said it certainly was not business that I came upon, but it was not
+quite a pleasant matter.
+
+"Then, my dear Miss Summerson," said he with the frankest gaiety,
+"don't allude to it. Why should you allude to anything that is NOT a
+pleasant matter? I never do. And you are a much pleasanter creature,
+in every point of view, than I. You are perfectly pleasant; I am
+imperfectly pleasant; then, if I never allude to an unpleasant
+matter, how much less should you! So that's disposed of, and we will
+talk of something else."
+
+Although I was embarrassed, I took courage to intimate that I still
+wished to pursue the subject.
+
+"I should think it a mistake," said Mr. Skimpole with his airy laugh,
+"if I thought Miss Summerson capable of making one. But I don't!"
+
+"Mr. Skimpole," said I, raising my eyes to his, "I have so often
+heard you say that you are unacquainted with the common affairs of
+life--"
+
+"Meaning our three banking-house friends, L, S, and who's the junior
+partner? D?" said Mr. Skimpole, brightly. "Not an idea of them!"
+
+"--That perhaps," I went on, "you will excuse my boldness on that
+account. I think you ought most seriously to know that Richard is
+poorer than he was."
+
+"Dear me!" said Mr. Skimpole. "So am I, they tell me."
+
+"And in very embarrassed circumstances."
+
+"Parallel case, exactly!" said Mr. Skimpole with a delighted
+countenance.
+
+"This at present naturally causes Ada much secret anxiety, and as I
+think she is less anxious when no claims are made upon her by
+visitors, and as Richard has one uneasiness always heavy on his mind,
+it has occurred to me to take the liberty of saying that--if you
+would--not--"
+
+I was coming to the point with great difficulty when he took me by
+both hands and with a radiant face and in the liveliest way
+anticipated it.
+
+"Not go there? Certainly not, my dear Miss Summerson, most assuredly
+not. Why SHOULD I go there? When I go anywhere, I go for pleasure. I
+don't go anywhere for pain, because I was made for pleasure. Pain
+comes to ME when it wants me. Now, I have had very little pleasure at
+our dear Richard's lately, and your practical sagacity demonstrates
+why. Our young friends, losing the youthful poetry which was once so
+captivating in them, begin to think, 'This is a man who wants
+pounds.' So I am; I always want pounds; not for myself, but because
+tradespeople always want them of me. Next, our young friends begin to
+think, becoming mercenary, 'This is the man who HAD pounds, who
+borrowed them,' which I did. I always borrow pounds. So our young
+friends, reduced to prose (which is much to be regretted), degenerate
+in their power of imparting pleasure to me. Why should I go to see
+them, therefore? Absurd!"
+
+Through the beaming smile with which he regarded me as he reasoned
+thus, there now broke forth a look of disinterested benevolence quite
+astonishing.
+
+"Besides," he said, pursuing his argument in his tone of
+light-hearted conviction, "if I don't go anywhere for pain--which
+would be a perversion of the intention of my being, and a monstrous
+thing to do--why should I go anywhere to be the cause of pain? If I
+went to see our young friends in their present ill-regulated state of
+mind, I should give them pain. The associations with me would be
+disagreeable. They might say, 'This is the man who had pounds and who
+can't pay pounds,' which I can't, of course; nothing could be more
+out of the question! Then kindness requires that I shouldn't go near
+them--and I won't."
+
+He finished by genially kissing my hand and thanking me. Nothing but
+Miss Summerson's fine tact, he said, would have found this out for
+him.
+
+I was much disconcerted, but I reflected that if the main point were
+gained, it mattered little how strangely he perverted everything
+leading to it. I had determined to mention something else, however,
+and I thought I was not to be put off in that.
+
+"Mr. Skimpole," said I, "I must take the liberty of saying before I
+conclude my visit that I was much surprised to learn, on the best
+authority, some little time ago, that you knew with whom that poor
+boy left Bleak House and that you accepted a present on that
+occasion. I have not mentioned it to my guardian, for I fear it would
+hurt him unnecessarily; but I may say to you that I was much
+surprised."
+
+"No? Really surprised, my dear Miss Summerson?" he returned
+inquiringly, raising his pleasant eyebrows.
+
+"Greatly surprised."
+
+He thought about it for a little while with a highly agreeable and
+whimsical expression of face, then quite gave it up and said in his
+most engaging manner, "You know what a child I am. Why surprised?"
+
+I was reluctant to enter minutely into that question, but as he
+begged I would, for he was really curious to know, I gave him to
+understand in the gentlest words I could use that his conduct seemed
+to involve a disregard of several moral obligations. He was much
+amused and interested when he heard this and said, "No, really?" with
+ingenuous simplicity.
+
+"You know I don't intend to be responsible. I never could do it.
+Responsibility is a thing that has always been above me--or below
+me," said Mr. Skimpole. "I don't even know which; but as I understand
+the way in which my dear Miss Summerson (always remarkable for her
+practical good sense and clearness) puts this case, I should imagine
+it was chiefly a question of money, do you know?"
+
+I incautiously gave a qualified assent to this.
+
+"Ah! Then you see," said Mr. Skimpole, shaking his head, "I am
+hopeless of understanding it."
+
+I suggested, as I rose to go, that it was not right to betray my
+guardian's confidence for a bribe.
+
+"My dear Miss Summerson," he returned with a candid hilarity that was
+all his own, "I can't be bribed."
+
+"Not by Mr. Bucket?" said I.
+
+"No," said he. "Not by anybody. I don't attach any value to money. I
+don't care about it, I don't know about it, I don't want it, I don't
+keep it--it goes away from me directly. How can I be bribed?"
+
+I showed that I was of a different opinion, though I had not the
+capacity for arguing the question.
+
+"On the contrary," said Mr. Skimpole, "I am exactly the man to be
+placed in a superior position in such a case as that. I am above the
+rest of mankind in such a case as that. I can act with philosophy in
+such a case as that. I am not warped by prejudices, as an Italian
+baby is by bandages. I am as free as the air. I feel myself as far
+above suspicion as Caesar's wife."
+
+Anything to equal the lightness of his manner and the playful
+impartiality with which he seemed to convince himself, as he tossed
+the matter about like a ball of feathers, was surely never seen in
+anybody else!
+
+"Observe the case, my dear Miss Summerson. Here is a boy received
+into the house and put to bed in a state that I strongly object to.
+The boy being in bed, a man arrives--like the house that Jack built.
+Here is the man who demands the boy who is received into the house
+and put to bed in a state that I strongly object to. Here is a
+bank-note produced by the man who demands the boy who is received
+into the house and put to bed in a state that I strongly object to.
+Here is the Skimpole who accepts the bank-note produced by the man
+who demands the boy who is received into the house and put to bed in
+a state that I strongly object to. Those are the facts. Very well.
+Should the Skimpole have refused the note? WHY should the Skimpole
+have refused the note? Skimpole protests to Bucket, 'What's this for?
+I don't understand it, it is of no use to me, take it away.' Bucket
+still entreats Skimpole to accept it. Are there reasons why Skimpole,
+not being warped by prejudices, should accept it? Yes. Skimpole
+perceives them. What are they? Skimpole reasons with himself, this is
+a tamed lynx, an active police-officer, an intelligent man, a person
+of a peculiarly directed energy and great subtlety both of conception
+and execution, who discovers our friends and enemies for us when they
+run away, recovers our property for us when we are robbed, avenges us
+comfortably when we are murdered. This active police-officer and
+intelligent man has acquired, in the exercise of his art, a strong
+faith in money; he finds it very useful to him, and he makes it very
+useful to society. Shall I shake that faith in Bucket because I want
+it myself; shall I deliberately blunt one of Bucket's weapons; shall
+I positively paralyse Bucket in his next detective operation? And
+again. If it is blameable in Skimpole to take the note, it is
+blameable in Bucket to offer the note--much more blameable in Bucket,
+because he is the knowing man. Now, Skimpole wishes to think well of
+Bucket; Skimpole deems it essential, in its little place, to the
+general cohesion of things, that he SHOULD think well of Bucket. The
+state expressly asks him to trust to Bucket. And he does. And that's
+all he does!"
+
+I had nothing to offer in reply to this exposition and therefore took
+my leave. Mr. Skimpole, however, who was in excellent spirits, would
+not hear of my returning home attended only by "Little Coavinses,"
+and accompanied me himself. He entertained me on the way with a
+variety of delightful conversation and assured me, at parting, that
+he should never forget the fine tact with which I had found that out
+for him about our young friends.
+
+As it so happened that I never saw Mr. Skimpole again, I may at once
+finish what I know of his history. A coolness arose between him and
+my guardian, based principally on the foregoing grounds and on his
+having heartlessly disregarded my guardian's entreaties (as we
+afterwards learned from Ada) in reference to Richard. His being
+heavily in my guardian's debt had nothing to do with their
+separation. He died some five years afterwards and left a diary
+behind him, with letters and other materials towards his life, which
+was published and which showed him to have been the victim of a
+combination on the part of mankind against an amiable child. It was
+considered very pleasant reading, but I never read more of it myself
+than the sentence on which I chanced to light on opening the book. It
+was this: "Jarndyce, in common with most other men I have known, is
+the incarnation of selfishness."
+
+And now I come to a part of my story touching myself very nearly
+indeed, and for which I was quite unprepared when the circumstance
+occurred. Whatever little lingerings may have now and then revived in
+my mind associated with my poor old face had only revived as
+belonging to a part of my life that was gone--gone like my infancy or
+my childhood. I have suppressed none of my many weaknesses on that
+subject, but have written them as faithfully as my memory has
+recalled them. And I hope to do, and mean to do, the same down to the
+last words of these pages, which I see now not so very far before me.
+
+The months were gliding away, and my dear girl, sustained by the
+hopes she had confided in me, was the same beautiful star in the
+miserable corner. Richard, more worn and haggard, haunted the court
+day after day, listlessly sat there the whole day long when he knew
+there was no remote chance of the suit being mentioned, and became
+one of the stock sights of the place. I wonder whether any of the
+gentlemen remembered him as he was when he first went there.
+
+So completely was he absorbed in his fixed idea that he used to avow
+in his cheerful moments that he should never have breathed the fresh
+air now "but for Woodcourt." It was only Mr. Woodcourt who could
+occasionally divert his attention for a few hours at a time and rouse
+him, even when he sunk into a lethargy of mind and body that alarmed
+us greatly, and the returns of which became more frequent as the
+months went on. My dear girl was right in saying that he only pursued
+his errors the more desperately for her sake. I have no doubt that
+his desire to retrieve what he had lost was rendered the more intense
+by his grief for his young wife, and became like the madness of a
+gamester.
+
+I was there, as I have mentioned, at all hours. When I was there at
+night, I generally went home with Charley in a coach; sometimes my
+guardian would meet me in the neighbourhood, and we would walk home
+together. One evening he had arranged to meet me at eight o'clock. I
+could not leave, as I usually did, quite punctually at the time, for
+I was working for my dear girl and had a few stitches more to do to
+finish what I was about; but it was within a few minutes of the hour
+when I bundled up my little work-basket, gave my darling my last kiss
+for the night, and hurried downstairs. Mr. Woodcourt went with me, as
+it was dusk.
+
+When we came to the usual place of meeting--it was close by, and Mr.
+Woodcourt had often accompanied me before--my guardian was not there.
+We waited half an hour, walking up and down, but there were no signs
+of him. We agreed that he was either prevented from coming or that he
+had come and gone away, and Mr. Woodcourt proposed to walk home with
+me.
+
+It was the first walk we had ever taken together, except that very
+short one to the usual place of meeting. We spoke of Richard and Ada
+the whole way. I did not thank him in words for what he had done--my
+appreciation of it had risen above all words then--but I hoped he
+might not be without some understanding of what I felt so strongly.
+
+Arriving at home and going upstairs, we found that my guardian was
+out and that Mrs. Woodcourt was out too. We were in the very same
+room into which I had brought my blushing girl when her youthful
+lover, now her so altered husband, was the choice of her young heart,
+the very same room from which my guardian and I had watched them
+going away through the sunlight in the fresh bloom of their hope and
+promise.
+
+We were standing by the opened window looking down into the street
+when Mr. Woodcourt spoke to me. I learned in a moment that he loved
+me. I learned in a moment that my scarred face was all unchanged to
+him. I learned in a moment that what I had thought was pity and
+compassion was devoted, generous, faithful love. Oh, too late to know
+it now, too late, too late. That was the first ungrateful thought I
+had. Too late.
+
+"When I returned," he told me, "when I came back, no richer than when
+I went away, and found you newly risen from a sick bed, yet so
+inspired by sweet consideration for others and so free from a selfish
+thought--"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Woodcourt, forbear, forbear!" I entreated him. "I do not
+deserve your high praise. I had many selfish thoughts at that time,
+many!"
+
+"Heaven knows, beloved of my life," said he, "that my praise is not a
+lover's praise, but the truth. You do not know what all around you
+see in Esther Summerson, how many hearts she touches and awakens,
+what sacred admiration and what love she wins."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Woodcourt," cried I, "it is a great thing to win love, it is
+a great thing to win love! I am proud of it, and honoured by it; and
+the hearing of it causes me to shed these tears of mingled joy and
+sorrow--joy that I have won it, sorrow that I have not deserved it
+better; but I am not free to think of yours."
+
+I said it with a stronger heart, for when he praised me thus and when
+I heard his voice thrill with his belief that what he said was true,
+I aspired to be more worthy of it. It was not too late for that.
+Although I closed this unforeseen page in my life to-night, I could
+be worthier of it all through my life. And it was a comfort to me,
+and an impulse to me, and I felt a dignity rise up within me that was
+derived from him when I thought so.
+
+He broke the silence.
+
+"I should poorly show the trust that I have in the dear one who will
+evermore be as dear to me as now"--and the deep earnestness with
+which he said it at once strengthened me and made me weep--"if, after
+her assurance that she is not free to think of my love, I urged it.
+Dear Esther, let me only tell you that the fond idea of you which I
+took abroad was exalted to the heavens when I came home. I have
+always hoped, in the first hour when I seemed to stand in any ray of
+good fortune, to tell you this. I have always feared that I should
+tell it you in vain. My hopes and fears are both fulfilled to-night.
+I distress you. I have said enough."
+
+Something seemed to pass into my place that was like the angel he
+thought me, and I felt so sorrowful for the loss he had sustained! I
+wished to help him in his trouble, as I had wished to do when he
+showed that first commiseration for me.
+
+"Dear Mr. Woodcourt," said I, "before we part to-night, something is
+left for me to say. I never could say it as I wish--I never
+shall--but--"
+
+I had to think again of being more deserving of his love and his
+affliction before I could go on.
+
+"--I am deeply sensible of your generosity, and I shall treasure its
+remembrance to my dying hour. I know full well how changed I am, I
+know you are not unacquainted with my history, and I know what a
+noble love that is which is so faithful. What you have said to me
+could have affected me so much from no other lips, for there are none
+that could give it such a value to me. It shall not be lost. It shall
+make me better."
+
+He covered his eyes with his hand and turned away his head. How could
+I ever be worthy of those tears?
+
+"If, in the unchanged intercourse we shall have together--in tending
+Richard and Ada, and I hope in many happier scenes of life--you ever
+find anything in me which you can honestly think is better than it
+used to be, believe that it will have sprung up from to-night and
+that I shall owe it to you. And never believe, dear dear Mr.
+Woodcourt, never believe that I forget this night or that while my
+heart beats it can be insensible to the pride and joy of having been
+beloved by you."
+
+He took my hand and kissed it. He was like himself again, and I felt
+still more encouraged.
+
+"I am induced by what you said just now," said I, "to hope that you
+have succeeded in your endeavour."
+
+"I have," he answered. "With such help from Mr. Jarndyce as you who
+know him so well can imagine him to have rendered me, I have
+succeeded."
+
+"Heaven bless him for it," said I, giving him my hand; "and heaven
+bless you in all you do!"
+
+"I shall do it better for the wish," he answered; "it will make me
+enter on these new duties as on another sacred trust from you."
+
+"Ah! Richard!" I exclaimed involuntarily, "What will he do when you
+are gone!"
+
+"I am not required to go yet; I would not desert him, dear Miss
+Summerson, even if I were."
+
+One other thing I felt it needful to touch upon before he left me. I
+knew that I should not be worthier of the love I could not take if I
+reserved it.
+
+"Mr. Woodcourt," said I, "you will be glad to know from my lips
+before I say good night that in the future, which is clear and bright
+before me, I am most happy, most fortunate, have nothing to regret or
+desire."
+
+It was indeed a glad hearing to him, he replied.
+
+"From my childhood I have been," said I, "the object of the untiring
+goodness of the best of human beings, to whom I am so bound by every
+tie of attachment, gratitude, and love, that nothing I could do in
+the compass of a life could express the feelings of a single day."
+
+"I share those feelings," he returned. "You speak of Mr. Jarndyce."
+
+"You know his virtues well," said I, "but few can know the greatness
+of his character as I know it. All its highest and best qualities
+have been revealed to me in nothing more brightly than in the shaping
+out of that future in which I am so happy. And if your highest homage
+and respect had not been his already--which I know they are--they
+would have been his, I think, on this assurance and in the feeling it
+would have awakened in you towards him for my sake."
+
+He fervently replied that indeed indeed they would have been. I gave
+him my hand again.
+
+"Good night," I said, "Good-bye."
+
+"The first until we meet to-morrow, the second as a farewell to this
+theme between us for ever."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Good night; good-bye."
+
+He left me, and I stood at the dark window watching the street. His
+love, in all its constancy and generosity, had come so suddenly upon
+me that he had not left me a minute when my fortitude gave way again
+and the street was blotted out by my rushing tears.
+
+But they were not tears of regret and sorrow. No. He had called me
+the beloved of his life and had said I would be evermore as dear to
+him as I was then, and I felt as if my heart would not hold the
+triumph of having heard those words. My first wild thought had died
+away. It was not too late to hear them, for it was not too late to be
+animated by them to be good, true, grateful, and contented. How easy
+my path, how much easier than his!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXII
+
+Another Discovery
+
+
+I had not the courage to see any one that night. I had not even the
+courage to see myself, for I was afraid that my tears might a little
+reproach me. I went up to my room in the dark, and prayed in the
+dark, and lay down in the dark to sleep. I had no need of any light
+to read my guardian's letter by, for I knew it by heart. I took it
+from the place where I kept it, and repeated its contents by its own
+clear light of integrity and love, and went to sleep with it on my
+pillow.
+
+I was up very early in the morning and called Charley to come for a
+walk. We bought flowers for the breakfast-table, and came back and
+arranged them, and were as busy as possible. We were so early that I
+had a good time still for Charley's lesson before breakfast; Charley
+(who was not in the least improved in the old defective article of
+grammar) came through it with great applause; and we were altogether
+very notable. When my guardian appeared he said, "Why, little woman,
+you look fresher than your flowers!" And Mrs. Woodcourt repeated and
+translated a passage from the Mewlinnwillinwodd expressive of my
+being like a mountain with the sun upon it.
+
+This was all so pleasant that I hope it made me still more like the
+mountain than I had been before. After breakfast I waited my
+opportunity and peeped about a little until I saw my guardian in his
+own room--the room of last night--by himself. Then I made an excuse
+to go in with my housekeeping keys, shutting the door after me.
+
+"Well, Dame Durden?" said my guardian; the post had brought him
+several letters, and he was writing. "You want money?"
+
+"No, indeed, I have plenty in hand."
+
+"There never was such a Dame Durden," said my guardian, "for making
+money last."
+
+He had laid down his pen and leaned back in his chair looking at me.
+I have often spoken of his bright face, but I thought I had never
+seen it look so bright and good. There was a high happiness upon it
+which made me think, "He has been doing some great kindness this
+morning."
+
+"There never was," said my guardian, musing as he smiled upon me,
+"such a Dame Durden for making money last."
+
+He had never yet altered his old manner. I loved it and him so much
+that when I now went up to him and took my usual chair, which was
+always put at his side--for sometimes I read to him, and sometimes I
+talked to him, and sometimes I silently worked by him--I hardly liked
+to disturb it by laying my hand on his breast. But I found I did not
+disturb it at all.
+
+"Dear guardian," said I, "I want to speak to you. Have I been remiss
+in anything?"
+
+"Remiss in anything, my dear!"
+
+"Have I not been what I have meant to be since--I brought the answer
+to your letter, guardian?"
+
+"You have been everything I could desire, my love."
+
+"I am very glad indeed to hear that," I returned. "You know, you said
+to me, was this the mistress of Bleak House. And I said, yes."
+
+"Yes," said my guardian, nodding his head. He had put his arm about
+me as if there were something to protect me from and looked in my
+face, smiling.
+
+"Since then," said I, "we have never spoken on the subject except
+once."
+
+"And then I said Bleak House was thinning fast; and so it was, my
+dear."
+
+"And I said," I timidly reminded him, "but its mistress remained."
+
+He still held me in the same protecting manner and with the same
+bright goodness in his face.
+
+"Dear guardian," said I, "I know how you have felt all that has
+happened, and how considerate you have been. As so much time has
+passed, and as you spoke only this morning of my being so well again,
+perhaps you expect me to renew the subject. Perhaps I ought to do so.
+I will be the mistress of Bleak House when you please."
+
+"See," he returned gaily, "what a sympathy there must be between us!
+I have had nothing else, poor Rick excepted--it's a large
+exception--in my mind. When you came in, I was full of it. When shall
+we give Bleak House its mistress, little woman?"
+
+"When you please."
+
+"Next month?"
+
+"Next month, dear guardian."
+
+"The day on which I take the happiest and best step of my life--the
+day on which I shall be a man more exulting and more enviable than
+any other man in the world--the day on which I give Bleak House its
+little mistress--shall be next month then," said my guardian.
+
+I put my arms round his neck and kissed him just as I had done on the
+day when I brought my answer.
+
+A servant came to the door to announce Mr. Bucket, which was quite
+unnecessary, for Mr. Bucket was already looking in over the servant's
+shoulder. "Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Summerson," said he, rather out of
+breath, "with all apologies for intruding, WILL you allow me to order
+up a person that's on the stairs and that objects to being left there
+in case of becoming the subject of observations in his absence? Thank
+you. Be so good as chair that there member in this direction, will
+you?" said Mr. Bucket, beckoning over the banisters.
+
+This singular request produced an old man in a black skull-cap,
+unable to walk, who was carried up by a couple of bearers and
+deposited in the room near the door. Mr. Bucket immediately got rid
+of the bearers, mysteriously shut the door, and bolted it.
+
+"Now you see, Mr. Jarndyce," he then began, putting down his hat and
+opening his subject with a flourish of his well-remembered finger,
+"you know me, and Miss Summerson knows me. This gentleman likewise
+knows me, and his name is Smallweed. The discounting line is his line
+principally, and he's what you may call a dealer in bills. That's
+about what YOU are, you know, ain't you?" said Mr. Bucket, stopping a
+little to address the gentleman in question, who was exceedingly
+suspicious of him.
+
+He seemed about to dispute this designation of himself when he was
+seized with a violent fit of coughing.
+
+"Now, moral, you know!" said Mr. Bucket, improving the accident.
+"Don't you contradict when there ain't no occasion, and you won't be
+took in that way. Now, Mr. Jarndyce, I address myself to you. I've
+been negotiating with this gentleman on behalf of Sir Leicester
+Dedlock, Baronet, and one way and another I've been in and out and
+about his premises a deal. His premises are the premises formerly
+occupied by Krook, marine store dealer--a relation of this
+gentleman's that you saw in his lifetime if I don't mistake?"
+
+My guardian replied, "Yes."
+
+"Well! You are to understand," said Mr. Bucket, "that this gentleman
+he come into Krook's property, and a good deal of magpie property
+there was. Vast lots of waste-paper among the rest. Lord bless you,
+of no use to nobody!"
+
+The cunning of Mr. Bucket's eye and the masterly manner in which he
+contrived, without a look or a word against which his watchful
+auditor could protest, to let us know that he stated the case
+according to previous agreement and could say much more of Mr.
+Smallweed if he thought it advisable, deprived us of any merit in
+quite understanding him. His difficulty was increased by Mr.
+Smallweed's being deaf as well as suspicious and watching his face
+with the closest attention.
+
+"Among them odd heaps of old papers, this gentleman, when he comes
+into the property, naturally begins to rummage, don't you see?" said
+Mr. Bucket.
+
+"To which? Say that again," cried Mr. Smallweed in a shrill, sharp
+voice.
+
+"To rummage," repeated Mr. Bucket. "Being a prudent man and
+accustomed to take care of your own affairs, you begin to rummage
+among the papers as you have come into; don't you?"
+
+"Of course I do," cried Mr. Smallweed.
+
+"Of course you do," said Mr. Bucket conversationally, "and much to
+blame you would be if you didn't. And so you chance to find, you
+know," Mr. Bucket went on, stooping over him with an air of cheerful
+raillery which Mr. Smallweed by no means reciprocated, "and so you
+chance to find, you know, a paper with the signature of Jarndyce to
+it. Don't you?"
+
+Mr. Smallweed glanced with a troubled eye at us and grudgingly nodded
+assent.
+
+"And coming to look at that paper at your full leisure and
+convenience--all in good time, for you're not curious to read it, and
+why should you be?--what do you find it to be but a will, you see.
+That's the drollery of it," said Mr. Bucket with the same lively air
+of recalling a joke for the enjoyment of Mr. Smallweed, who still had
+the same crest-fallen appearance of not enjoying it at all; "what do
+you find it to be but a will?"
+
+"I don't know that it's good as a will or as anything else," snarled
+Mr. Smallweed.
+
+Mr. Bucket eyed the old man for a moment--he had slipped and shrunk
+down in his chair into a mere bundle--as if he were much disposed to
+pounce upon him; nevertheless, he continued to bend over him with the
+same agreeable air, keeping the corner of one of his eyes upon us.
+
+"Notwithstanding which," said Mr. Bucket, "you get a little doubtful
+and uncomfortable in your mind about it, having a very tender mind of
+your own."
+
+"Eh? What do you say I have got of my own?" asked Mr. Smallweed with
+his hand to his ear.
+
+"A very tender mind."
+
+"Ho! Well, go on," said Mr. Smallweed.
+
+"And as you've heard a good deal mentioned regarding a celebrated
+Chancery will case of the same name, and as you know what a card
+Krook was for buying all manner of old pieces of furniter, and books,
+and papers, and what not, and never liking to part with 'em, and
+always a-going to teach himself to read, you begin to think--and you
+never was more correct in your born days--'Ecod, if I don't look
+about me, I may get into trouble regarding this will.'"
+
+"Now, mind how you put it, Bucket," cried the old man anxiously with
+his hand at his ear. "Speak up; none of your brimstone tricks. Pick
+me up; I want to hear better. Oh, Lord, I am shaken to bits!"
+
+Mr. Bucket had certainly picked him up at a dart. However, as soon as
+he could be heard through Mr. Smallweed's coughing and his vicious
+ejaculations of "Oh, my bones! Oh, dear! I've no breath in my body!
+I'm worse than the chattering, clattering, brimstone pig at home!"
+Mr. Bucket proceeded in the same convivial manner as before.
+
+"So, as I happen to be in the habit of coming about your premises,
+you take me into your confidence, don't you?"
+
+I think it would be impossible to make an admission with more ill
+will and a worse grace than Mr. Smallweed displayed when he admitted
+this, rendering it perfectly evident that Mr. Bucket was the very
+last person he would have thought of taking into his confidence if he
+could by any possibility have kept him out of it.
+
+"And I go into the business with you--very pleasant we are over it;
+and I confirm you in your well-founded fears that you will get
+yourself into a most precious line if you don't come out with that
+there will," said Mr. Bucket emphatically; "and accordingly you
+arrange with me that it shall be delivered up to this present Mr.
+Jarndyce, on no conditions. If it should prove to be valuable, you
+trusting yourself to him for your reward; that's about where it is,
+ain't it?"
+
+"That's what was agreed," Mr. Smallweed assented with the same bad
+grace.
+
+"In consequence of which," said Mr. Bucket, dismissing his agreeable
+manner all at once and becoming strictly business-like, "you've got
+that will upon your person at the present time, and the only thing
+that remains for you to do is just to out with it!"
+
+Having given us one glance out of the watching corner of his eye, and
+having given his nose one triumphant rub with his forefinger, Mr.
+Bucket stood with his eyes fastened on his confidential friend and
+his hand stretched forth ready to take the paper and present it to my
+guardian. It was not produced without much reluctance and many
+declarations on the part of Mr. Smallweed that he was a poor
+industrious man and that he left it to Mr. Jarndyce's honour not to
+let him lose by his honesty. Little by little he very slowly took
+from a breast-pocket a stained, discoloured paper which was much
+singed upon the outside and a little burnt at the edges, as if it had
+long ago been thrown upon a fire and hastily snatched off again. Mr.
+Bucket lost no time in transferring this paper, with the dexterity of
+a conjuror, from Mr. Smallweed to Mr. Jarndyce. As he gave it to my
+guardian, he whispered behind his fingers, "Hadn't settled how to
+make their market of it. Quarrelled and hinted about it. I laid out
+twenty pound upon it. First the avaricious grandchildren split upon
+him on account of their objections to his living so unreasonably
+long, and then they split on one another. Lord! There ain't one of
+the family that wouldn't sell the other for a pound or two, except
+the old lady--and she's only out of it because she's too weak in her
+mind to drive a bargain."
+
+"Mr Bucket," said my guardian aloud, "whatever the worth of this
+paper may be to any one, my obligations are great to you; and if it
+be of any worth, I hold myself bound to see Mr. Smallweed remunerated
+accordingly."
+
+"Not according to your merits, you know," said Mr. Bucket in friendly
+explanation to Mr. Smallweed. "Don't you be afraid of that. According
+to its value."
+
+"That is what I mean," said my guardian. "You may observe, Mr.
+Bucket, that I abstain from examining this paper myself. The plain
+truth is, I have forsworn and abjured the whole business these many
+years, and my soul is sick of it. But Miss Summerson and I will
+immediately place the paper in the hands of my solicitor in the
+cause, and its existence shall be made known without delay to all
+other parties interested."
+
+"Mr. Jarndyce can't say fairer than that, you understand," observed
+Mr. Bucket to his fellow-visitor. "And it being now made clear to you
+that nobody's a-going to be wronged--which must be a great relief to
+YOUR mind--we may proceed with the ceremony of chairing you home
+again."
+
+He unbolted the door, called in the bearers, wished us good morning,
+and with a look full of meaning and a crook of his finger at parting
+went his way.
+
+We went our way too, which was to Lincoln's Inn, as quickly as
+possible. Mr. Kenge was disengaged, and we found him at his table in
+his dusty room with the inexpressive-looking books and the piles of
+papers. Chairs having been placed for us by Mr. Guppy, Mr. Kenge
+expressed the surprise and gratification he felt at the unusual sight
+of Mr. Jarndyce in his office. He turned over his double eye-glass as
+he spoke and was more Conversation Kenge than ever.
+
+"I hope," said Mr. Kenge, "that the genial influence of Miss
+Summerson," he bowed to me, "may have induced Mr. Jarndyce," he bowed
+to him, "to forego some little of his animosity towards a cause and
+towards a court which are--shall I say, which take their place in the
+stately vista of the pillars of our profession?"
+
+"I am inclined to think," returned my guardian, "that Miss Summerson
+has seen too much of the effects of the court and the cause to exert
+any influence in their favour. Nevertheless, they are a part of the
+occasion of my being here. Mr. Kenge, before I lay this paper on your
+desk and have done with it, let me tell you how it has come into my
+hands."
+
+He did so shortly and distinctly.
+
+"It could not, sir," said Mr. Kenge, "have been stated more plainly
+and to the purpose if it had been a case at law."
+
+"Did you ever know English law, or equity either, plain and to the
+purpose?" said my guardian.
+
+"Oh, fie!" said Mr. Kenge.
+
+At first he had not seemed to attach much importance to the paper,
+but when he saw it he appeared more interested, and when he had
+opened and read a little of it through his eye-glass, he became
+amazed. "Mr. Jarndyce," he said, looking off it, "you have perused
+this?"
+
+"Not I!" returned my guardian.
+
+"But, my dear sir," said Mr. Kenge, "it is a will of later date than
+any in the suit. It appears to be all in the testator's handwriting.
+It is duly executed and attested. And even if intended to be
+cancelled, as might possibly be supposed to be denoted by these marks
+of fire, it is NOT cancelled. Here it is, a perfect instrument!"
+
+"Well!" said my guardian. "What is that to me?"
+
+"Mr. Guppy!" cried Mr. Kenge, raising his voice. "I beg your pardon,
+Mr. Jarndyce."
+
+"Sir."
+
+"Mr. Vholes of Symond's Inn. My compliments. Jarndyce and Jarndyce.
+Glad to speak with him."
+
+Mr. Guppy disappeared.
+
+"You ask me what is this to you, Mr. Jarndyce. If you had perused
+this document, you would have seen that it reduces your interest
+considerably, though still leaving it a very handsome one, still
+leaving it a very handsome one," said Mr. Kenge, waving his hand
+persuasively and blandly. "You would further have seen that the
+interests of Mr. Richard Carstone and of Miss Ada Clare, now Mrs.
+Richard Carstone, are very materially advanced by it."
+
+"Kenge," said my guardian, "if all the flourishing wealth that the
+suit brought into this vile court of Chancery could fall to my two
+young cousins, I should be well contented. But do you ask ME to
+believe that any good is to come of Jarndyce and Jarndyce?"
+
+"Oh, really, Mr. Jarndyce! Prejudice, prejudice. My dear sir, this is
+a very great country, a very great country. Its system of equity is a
+very great system, a very great system. Really, really!"
+
+My guardian said no more, and Mr. Vholes arrived. He was modestly
+impressed by Mr. Kenge's professional eminence.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Vholes? Will you be so good as to take a chair
+here by me and look over this paper?"
+
+Mr. Vholes did as he was asked and seemed to read it every word. He
+was not excited by it, but he was not excited by anything. When he
+had well examined it, he retired with Mr. Kenge into a window, and
+shading his mouth with his black glove, spoke to him at some length.
+I was not surprised to observe Mr. Kenge inclined to dispute what
+he said before he had said much, for I knew that no two people ever
+did agree about anything in Jarndyce and Jarndyce. But he seemed
+to get the better of Mr. Kenge too in a conversation that sounded
+as if it were almost composed of the words "Receiver-General,"
+"Accountant-General," "report," "estate," and "costs." When they had
+finished, they came back to Mr. Kenge's table and spoke aloud.
+
+"Well! But this is a very remarkable document, Mr. Vholes," said Mr.
+Kenge.
+
+Mr. Vholes said, "Very much so."
+
+"And a very important document, Mr. Vholes," said Mr. Kenge.
+
+Again Mr. Vholes said, "Very much so."
+
+"And as you say, Mr. Vholes, when the cause is in the paper next
+term, this document will be an unexpected and interesting feature in
+it," said Mr. Kenge, looking loftily at my guardian.
+
+Mr. Vholes was gratified, as a smaller practitioner striving to keep
+respectable, to be confirmed in any opinion of his own by such an
+authority.
+
+"And when," asked my guardian, rising after a pause, during which Mr.
+Kenge had rattled his money and Mr. Vholes had picked his pimples,
+"when is next term?"
+
+"Next term, Mr. Jarndyce, will be next month," said Mr. Kenge. "Of
+course we shall at once proceed to do what is necessary with this
+document and to collect the necessary evidence concerning it; and of
+course you will receive our usual notification of the cause being in
+the paper."
+
+"To which I shall pay, of course, my usual attention."
+
+"Still bent, my dear sir," said Mr. Kenge, showing us through the
+outer office to the door, "still bent, even with your enlarged mind,
+on echoing a popular prejudice? We are a prosperous community, Mr.
+Jarndyce, a very prosperous community. We are a great country, Mr.
+Jarndyce, we are a very great country. This is a great system, Mr.
+Jarndyce, and would you wish a great country to have a little system?
+Now, really, really!"
+
+He said this at the stair-head, gently moving his right hand as if it
+were a silver trowel with which to spread the cement of his words on
+the structure of the system and consolidate it for a thousand ages.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIII
+
+Steel and Iron
+
+
+George's Shooting Gallery is to let, and the stock is sold off, and
+George himself is at Chesney Wold attending on Sir Leicester in his
+rides and riding very near his bridle-rein because of the uncertain
+hand with which he guides his horse. But not to-day is George so
+occupied. He is journeying to-day into the iron country farther north
+to look about him.
+
+As he comes into the iron country farther north, such fresh green
+woods as those of Chesney Wold are left behind; and coal pits and
+ashes, high chimneys and red bricks, blighted verdure, scorching
+fires, and a heavy never-lightening cloud of smoke become the
+features of the scenery. Among such objects rides the trooper,
+looking about him and always looking for something he has come to
+find.
+
+At last, on the black canal bridge of a busy town, with a clang of
+iron in it, and more fires and more smoke than he has seen yet, the
+trooper, swart with the dust of the coal roads, checks his horse and
+asks a workman does he know the name of Rouncewell thereabouts.
+
+"Why, master," quoth the workman, "do I know my own name?"
+
+"'Tis so well known here, is it, comrade?" asks the trooper.
+
+"Rouncewell's? Ah! You're right."
+
+"And where might it be now?" asks the trooper with a glance before
+him.
+
+"The bank, the factory, or the house?" the workman wants to know.
+
+"Hum! Rouncewell's is so great apparently," mutters the trooper,
+stroking his chin, "that I have as good as half a mind to go back
+again. Why, I don't know which I want. Should I find Mr. Rouncewell
+at the factory, do you think?"
+
+"Tain't easy to say where you'd find him--at this time of the day you
+might find either him or his son there, if he's in town; but his
+contracts take him away."
+
+And which is the factory? Why, he sees those chimneys--the tallest
+ones! Yes, he sees THEM. Well! Let him keep his eye on those
+chimneys, going on as straight as ever he can, and presently he'll
+see 'em down a turning on the left, shut in by a great brick wall
+which forms one side of the street. That's Rouncewell's.
+
+The trooper thanks his informant and rides slowly on, looking about
+him. He does not turn back, but puts up his horse (and is much
+disposed to groom him too) at a public-house where some of
+Rouncewell's hands are dining, as the ostler tells him. Some of
+Rouncewell's hands have just knocked off for dinner-time and seem to
+be invading the whole town. They are very sinewy and strong, are
+Rouncewell's hands--a little sooty too.
+
+He comes to a gateway in the brick wall, looks in, and sees a great
+perplexity of iron lying about in every stage and in a vast variety
+of shapes--in bars, in wedges, in sheets; in tanks, in boilers, in
+axles, in wheels, in cogs, in cranks, in rails; twisted and wrenched
+into eccentric and perverse forms as separate parts of machinery;
+mountains of it broken up, and rusty in its age; distant furnaces of
+it glowing and bubbling in its youth; bright fireworks of it
+showering about under the blows of the steam-hammer; red-hot iron,
+white-hot iron, cold-black iron; an iron taste, an iron smell, and a
+Babel of iron sounds.
+
+"This is a place to make a man's head ache too!" says the trooper,
+looking about him for a counting-house. "Who comes here? This is very
+like me before I was set up. This ought to be my nephew, if
+likenesses run in families. Your servant, sir."
+
+"Yours, sir. Are you looking for any one?"
+
+"Excuse me. Young Mr. Rouncewell, I believe?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I was looking for your father, sir. I wish to have a word with him."
+
+The young man, telling him he is fortunate in his choice of a time,
+for his father is there, leads the way to the office where he is to
+be found. "Very like me before I was set up--devilish like me!"
+thinks the trooper as he follows. They come to a building in the yard
+with an office on an upper floor. At sight of the gentleman in the
+office, Mr. George turns very red.
+
+"What name shall I say to my father?" asks the young man.
+
+George, full of the idea of iron, in desperation answers "Steel," and
+is so presented. He is left alone with the gentleman in the office,
+who sits at a table with account-books before him and some sheets of
+paper blotted with hosts of figures and drawings of cunning shapes.
+It is a bare office, with bare windows, looking on the iron view
+below. Tumbled together on the table are some pieces of iron,
+purposely broken to be tested at various periods of their service, in
+various capacities. There is iron-dust on everything; and the smoke
+is seen through the windows rolling heavily out of the tall chimneys
+to mingle with the smoke from a vaporous Babylon of other chimneys.
+
+"I am at your service, Mr. Steel," says the gentleman when his
+visitor has taken a rusty chair.
+
+"Well, Mr. Rouncewell," George replies, leaning forward with his left
+arm on his knee and his hat in his hand, and very chary of meeting
+his brother's eye, "I am not without my expectations that in the
+present visit I may prove to be more free than welcome. I have served
+as a dragoon in my day, and a comrade of mine that I was once rather
+partial to was, if I don't deceive myself, a brother of yours. I
+believe you had a brother who gave his family some trouble, and ran
+away, and never did any good but in keeping away?"
+
+"Are you quite sure," returns the ironmaster in an altered voice,
+"that your name is Steel?"
+
+The trooper falters and looks at him. His brother starts up, calls
+him by his name, and grasps him by both hands.
+
+"You are too quick for me!" cries the trooper with the tears
+springing out of his eyes. "How do you do, my dear old fellow? I
+never could have thought you would have been half so glad to see me
+as all this. How do you do, my dear old fellow, how do you do!"
+
+They shake hands and embrace each other over and over again, the
+trooper still coupling his "How do you do, my dear old fellow!" with
+his protestation that he never thought his brother would have been
+half so glad to see him as all this!
+
+"So far from it," he declares at the end of a full account of what
+has preceded his arrival there, "I had very little idea of making
+myself known. I thought if you took by any means forgivingly to my
+name I might gradually get myself up to the point of writing a
+letter. But I should not have been surprised, brother, if you had
+considered it anything but welcome news to hear of me."
+
+"We will show you at home what kind of news we think it, George,"
+returns his brother. "This is a great day at home, and you could not
+have arrived, you bronzed old soldier, on a better. I make an
+agreement with my son Watt to-day that on this day twelvemonth he
+shall marry as pretty and as good a girl as you have seen in all your
+travels. She goes to Germany to-morrow with one of your nieces for a
+little polishing up in her education. We make a feast of the event,
+and you will be made the hero of it."
+
+Mr. George is so entirely overcome at first by this prospect that he
+resists the proposed honour with great earnestness. Being overborne,
+however, by his brother and his nephew--concerning whom he renews his
+protestations that he never could have thought they would have been
+half so glad to see him--he is taken home to an elegant house in all
+the arrangements of which there is to be observed a pleasant mixture
+of the originally simple habits of the father and mother with such as
+are suited to their altered station and the higher fortunes of their
+children. Here Mr. George is much dismayed by the graces and
+accomplishments of his nieces that are and by the beauty of Rosa, his
+niece that is to be, and by the affectionate salutations of these
+young ladies, which he receives in a sort of dream. He is sorely
+taken aback, too, by the dutiful behaviour of his nephew and has a
+woeful consciousness upon him of being a scapegrace. However, there
+is great rejoicing and a very hearty company and infinite enjoyment,
+and Mr. George comes bluff and martial through it all, and his pledge
+to be present at the marriage and give away the bride is received
+with universal favour. A whirling head has Mr. George that night when
+he lies down in the state-bed of his brother's house to think of all
+these things and to see the images of his nieces (awful all the
+evening in their floating muslins) waltzing, after the German manner,
+over his counterpane.
+
+The brothers are closeted next morning in the ironmaster's room,
+where the elder is proceeding, in his clear sensible way, to show how
+he thinks he may best dispose of George in his business, when George
+squeezes his hand and stops him.
+
+"Brother, I thank you a million times for your more than brotherly
+welcome, and a million times more to that for your more than
+brotherly intentions. But my plans are made. Before I say a word as
+to them, I wish to consult you upon one family point. How," says the
+trooper, folding his arms and looking with indomitable firmness at
+his brother, "how is my mother to be got to scratch me?"
+
+"I am not sure that I understand you, George," replies the
+ironmaster.
+
+"I say, brother, how is my mother to be got to scratch me? She must
+be got to do it somehow."
+
+"Scratch you out of her will, I think you mean?"
+
+"Of course I do. In short," says the trooper, folding his arms more
+resolutely yet, "I mean--TO--scratch me!"
+
+"My dear George," returns his brother, "is it so indispensable that
+you should undergo that process?"
+
+"Quite! Absolutely! I couldn't be guilty of the meanness of coming
+back without it. I should never be safe not to be off again. I have
+not sneaked home to rob your children, if not yourself, brother, of
+your rights. I, who forfeited mine long ago! If I am to remain and
+hold up my head, I must be scratched. Come. You are a man of
+celebrated penetration and intelligence, and you can tell me how it's
+to be brought about."
+
+"I can tell you, George," replies the ironmaster deliberately, "how
+it is not to be brought about, which I hope may answer the purpose as
+well. Look at our mother, think of her, recall her emotion when she
+recovered you. Do you believe there is a consideration in the world
+that would induce her to take such a step against her favourite son?
+Do you believe there is any chance of her consent, to balance against
+the outrage it would be to her (loving dear old lady!) to propose it?
+If you do, you are wrong. No, George! You must make up your mind to
+remain UNscratched, I think." There is an amused smile on the
+ironmaster's face as he watches his brother, who is pondering, deeply
+disappointed. "I think you may manage almost as well as if the thing
+were done, though."
+
+"How, brother?"
+
+"Being bent upon it, you can dispose by will of anything you have the
+misfortune to inherit in any way you like, you know."
+
+"That's true!" says the trooper, pondering again. Then he wistfully
+asks, with his hand on his brother's, "Would you mind mentioning
+that, brother, to your wife and family?"
+
+"Not at all."
+
+"Thank you. You wouldn't object to say, perhaps, that although an
+undoubted vagabond, I am a vagabond of the harum-scarum order, and
+not of the mean sort?"
+
+The ironmaster, repressing his amused smile, assents.
+
+"Thank you. Thank you. It's a weight off my mind," says the trooper
+with a heave of his chest as he unfolds his arms and puts a hand on
+each leg, "though I had set my heart on being scratched, too!"
+
+The brothers are very like each other, sitting face to face; but a
+certain massive simplicity and absence of usage in the ways of the
+world is all on the trooper's side.
+
+"Well," he proceeds, throwing off his disappointment, "next and last,
+those plans of mine. You have been so brotherly as to propose to me
+to fall in here and take my place among the products of your
+perseverance and sense. I thank you heartily. It's more than
+brotherly, as I said before, and I thank you heartily for it,"
+shaking him a long time by the hand. "But the truth is, brother, I am
+a--I am a kind of a weed, and it's too late to plant me in a regular
+garden."
+
+"My dear George," returns the elder, concentrating his strong steady
+brow upon him and smiling confidently, "leave that to me, and let me
+try."
+
+George shakes his head. "You could do it, I have not a doubt, if
+anybody could; but it's not to be done. Not to be done, sir! Whereas
+it so falls out, on the other hand, that I am able to be of some
+trifle of use to Sir Leicester Dedlock since his illness--brought on
+by family sorrows--and that he would rather have that help from our
+mother's son than from anybody else."
+
+"Well, my dear George," returns the other with a very slight shade
+upon his open face, "if you prefer to serve in Sir Leicester
+Dedlock's household brigade--"
+
+"There it is, brother," cries the trooper, checking him, with his
+hand upon his knee again; "there it is! You don't take kindly to that
+idea; I don't mind it. You are not used to being officered; I am.
+Everything about you is in perfect order and discipline; everything
+about me requires to be kept so. We are not accustomed to carry
+things with the same hand or to look at 'em from the same point. I
+don't say much about my garrison manners because I found myself
+pretty well at my ease last night, and they wouldn't be noticed here,
+I dare say, once and away. But I shall get on best at Chesney Wold,
+where there's more room for a weed than there is here; and the dear
+old lady will be made happy besides. Therefore I accept of Sir
+Leicester Dedlock's proposals. When I come over next year to give
+away the bride, or whenever I come, I shall have the sense to keep
+the household brigade in ambuscade and not to manoeuvre it on your
+ground. I thank you heartily again and am proud to think of the
+Rouncewells as they'll be founded by you."
+
+"You know yourself, George," says the elder brother, returning the
+grip of his hand, "and perhaps you know me better than I know myself.
+Take your way. So that we don't quite lose one another again, take
+your way."
+
+"No fear of that!" returns the trooper. "Now, before I turn my
+horse's head homewards, brother, I will ask you--if you'll be so
+good--to look over a letter for me. I brought it with me to send from
+these parts, as Chesney Wold might be a painful name just now to the
+person it's written to. I am not much accustomed to correspondence
+myself, and I am particular respecting this present letter because I
+want it to be both straightforward and delicate."
+
+Herewith he hands a letter, closely written in somewhat pale ink but
+in a neat round hand, to the ironmaster, who reads as follows:
+
+
+   Miss Esther Summerson,
+
+   A communication having been made to me by Inspector Bucket
+   of a letter to myself being found among the papers of a
+   certain person, I take the liberty to make known to you
+   that it was but a few lines of instruction from abroad,
+   when, where, and how to deliver an enclosed letter to a
+   young and beautiful lady, then unmarried, in England. I
+   duly observed the same.
+
+   I further take the liberty to make known to you that it
+   was got from me as a proof of handwriting only and that
+   otherwise I would not have given it up, as appearing to
+   be the most harmless in my possession, without being
+   previously shot through the heart.
+
+   I further take the liberty to mention that if I could have
+   supposed a certain unfortunate gentleman to have been in
+   existence, I never could and never would have rested until
+   I had discovered his retreat and shared my last farthing
+   with him, as my duty and my inclination would have equally
+   been. But he was (officially) reported drowned, and
+   assuredly went over the side of a transport-ship at night
+   in an Irish harbour within a few hours of her arrival from
+   the West Indies, as I have myself heard both from officers
+   and men on board, and know to have been (officially)
+   confirmed.
+
+   I further take the liberty to state that in my humble
+   quality as one of the rank and file, I am, and shall ever
+   continue to be, your thoroughly devoted and admiring
+   servant and that I esteem the qualities you possess above
+   all others far beyond the limits of the present dispatch.
+
+   I have the honour to be,
+
+   GEORGE
+
+
+"A little formal," observes the elder brother, refolding it with a
+puzzled face.
+
+"But nothing that might not be sent to a pattern young lady?" asks
+the younger.
+
+"Nothing at all."
+
+Therefore it is sealed and deposited for posting among the iron
+correspondence of the day. This done, Mr. George takes a hearty
+farewell of the family party and prepares to saddle and mount. His
+brother, however, unwilling to part with him so soon, proposes to
+ride with him in a light open carriage to the place where he will
+bait for the night, and there remain with him until morning, a
+servant riding for so much of the journey on the thoroughbred old
+grey from Chesney Wold. The offer, being gladly accepted, is followed
+by a pleasant ride, a pleasant dinner, and a pleasant breakfast, all
+in brotherly communion. Then they once more shake hands long and
+heartily and part, the ironmaster turning his face to the smoke and
+fires, and the trooper to the green country. Early in the afternoon
+the subdued sound of his heavy military trot is heard on the turf in
+the avenue as he rides on with imaginary clank and jingle of
+accoutrements under the old elm-trees.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIV
+
+Esther's Narrative
+
+
+Soon after I had that conversation with my guardian, he put a sealed
+paper in my hand one morning and said, "This is for next month, my
+dear." I found in it two hundred pounds.
+
+I now began very quietly to make such preparations as I thought were
+necessary. Regulating my purchases by my guardian's taste, which I
+knew very well of course, I arranged my wardrobe to please him and
+hoped I should be highly successful. I did it all so quietly because
+I was not quite free from my old apprehension that Ada would be
+rather sorry and because my guardian was so quiet himself. I had no
+doubt that under all the circumstances we should be married in the
+most private and simple manner. Perhaps I should only have to say to
+Ada, "Would you like to come and see me married to-morrow, my pet?"
+Perhaps our wedding might even be as unpretending as her own, and I
+might not find it necessary to say anything about it until it was
+over. I thought that if I were to choose, I would like this best.
+
+The only exception I made was Mrs. Woodcourt. I told her that I was
+going to be married to my guardian and that we had been engaged some
+time. She highly approved. She could never do enough for me and was
+remarkably softened now in comparison with what she had been when we
+first knew her. There was no trouble she would not have taken to have
+been of use to me, but I need hardly say that I only allowed her to
+take as little as gratified her kindness without tasking it.
+
+Of course this was not a time to neglect my guardian, and of course
+it was not a time for neglecting my darling. So I had plenty of
+occupation, which I was glad of; and as to Charley, she was
+absolutely not to be seen for needlework. To surround herself with
+great heaps of it--baskets full and tables full--and do a little, and
+spend a great deal of time in staring with her round eyes at what
+there was to do, and persuade herself that she was going to do it,
+were Charley's great dignities and delights.
+
+Meanwhile, I must say, I could not agree with my guardian on the
+subject of the will, and I had some sanguine hopes of Jarndyce and
+Jarndyce. Which of us was right will soon appear, but I certainly did
+encourage expectations. In Richard, the discovery gave occasion for a
+burst of business and agitation that buoyed him up for a little time,
+but he had lost the elasticity even of hope now and seemed to me to
+retain only its feverish anxieties. From something my guardian said
+one day when we were talking about this, I understood that my
+marriage would not take place until after the term-time we had been
+told to look forward to; and I thought the more, for that, how
+rejoiced I should be if I could be married when Richard and Ada were
+a little more prosperous.
+
+The term was very near indeed when my guardian was called out of town
+and went down into Yorkshire on Mr. Woodcourt's business. He had told
+me beforehand that his presence there would be necessary. I had just
+come in one night from my dear girl's and was sitting in the midst of
+all my new clothes, looking at them all around me and thinking, when
+a letter from my guardian was brought to me. It asked me to join him
+in the country and mentioned by what stage-coach my place was taken
+and at what time in the morning I should have to leave town. It added
+in a postscript that I would not be many hours from Ada.
+
+I expected few things less than a journey at that time, but I was
+ready for it in half an hour and set off as appointed early next
+morning. I travelled all day, wondering all day what I could be
+wanted for at such a distance; now I thought it might be for this
+purpose, and now I thought it might be for that purpose, but I was
+never, never, never near the truth.
+
+It was night when I came to my journey's end and found my guardian
+waiting for me. This was a great relief, for towards evening I had
+begun to fear (the more so as his letter was a very short one) that
+he might be ill. However, there he was, as well as it was possible to
+be; and when I saw his genial face again at its brightest and best, I
+said to myself, he has been doing some other great kindness. Not that
+it required much penetration to say that, because I knew that his
+being there at all was an act of kindness.
+
+Supper was ready at the hotel, and when we were alone at table he
+said, "Full of curiosity, no doubt, little woman, to know why I have
+brought you here?"
+
+"Well, guardian," said I, "without thinking myself a Fatima or you a
+Blue Beard, I am a little curious about it."
+
+"Then to ensure your night's rest, my love," he returned gaily, "I
+won't wait until to-morrow to tell you. I have very much wished to
+express to Woodcourt, somehow, my sense of his humanity to poor
+unfortunate Jo, his inestimable services to my young cousins, and his
+value to us all. When it was decided that he should settle here, it
+came into my head that I might ask his acceptance of some
+unpretending and suitable little place to lay his own head in. I
+therefore caused such a place to be looked out for, and such a place
+was found on very easy terms, and I have been touching it up for him
+and making it habitable. However, when I walked over it the day
+before yesterday and it was reported ready, I found that I was not
+housekeeper enough to know whether things were all as they ought to
+be. So I sent off for the best little housekeeper that could possibly
+be got to come and give me her advice and opinion. And here she is,"
+said my guardian, "laughing and crying both together!"
+
+Because he was so dear, so good, so admirable. I tried to tell him
+what I thought of him, but I could not articulate a word.
+
+"Tut, tut!" said my guardian. "You make too much of it, little woman.
+Why, how you sob, Dame Durden, how you sob!"
+
+"It is with exquisite pleasure, guardian--with a heart full of
+thanks."
+
+"Well, well," said he. "I am delighted that you approve. I thought
+you would. I meant it as a pleasant surprise for the little mistress
+of Bleak House."
+
+I kissed him and dried my eyes. "I know now!" said I. "I have seen
+this in your face a long while."
+
+"No; have you really, my dear?" said he. "What a Dame Durden it is to
+read a face!"
+
+He was so quaintly cheerful that I could not long be otherwise, and
+was almost ashamed of having been otherwise at all. When I went to
+bed, I cried. I am bound to confess that I cried; but I hope it was
+with pleasure, though I am not quite sure it was with pleasure. I
+repeated every word of the letter twice over.
+
+A most beautiful summer morning succeeded, and after breakfast we
+went out arm in arm to see the house of which I was to give my mighty
+housekeeping opinion. We entered a flower-garden by a gate in a side
+wall, of which he had the key, and the first thing I saw was that the
+beds and flowers were all laid out according to the manner of my beds
+and flowers at home.
+
+"You see, my dear," observed my guardian, standing still with a
+delighted face to watch my looks, "knowing there could be no better
+plan, I borrowed yours."
+
+We went on by a pretty little orchard, where the cherries were
+nestling among the green leaves and the shadows of the apple-trees
+were sporting on the grass, to the house itself--a cottage, quite a
+rustic cottage of doll's rooms; but such a lovely place, so tranquil
+and so beautiful, with such a rich and smiling country spread around
+it; with water sparkling away into the distance, here all overhung
+with summer-growth, there turning a humming mill; at its nearest
+point glancing through a meadow by the cheerful town, where
+cricket-players were assembling in bright groups and a flag was
+flying from a white tent that rippled in the sweet west wind. And
+still, as we went through the pretty rooms, out at the little rustic
+verandah doors, and underneath the tiny wooden colonnades garlanded
+with woodbine, jasmine, and honey-suckle, I saw in the papering on
+the walls, in the colours of the furniture, in the arrangement of all
+the pretty objects, MY little tastes and fancies, MY little methods
+and inventions which they used to laugh at while they praised them,
+my odd ways everywhere.
+
+I could not say enough in admiration of what was all so beautiful,
+but one secret doubt arose in my mind when I saw this, I thought, oh,
+would he be the happier for it! Would it not have been better for his
+peace that I should not have been so brought before him? Because
+although I was not what he thought me, still he loved me very dearly,
+and it might remind him mournfully of what be believed he had lost. I
+did not wish him to forget me--perhaps he might not have done so,
+without these aids to his memory--but my way was easier than his, and
+I could have reconciled myself even to that so that he had been the
+happier for it.
+
+"And now, little woman," said my guardian, whom I had never seen so
+proud and joyful as in showing me these things and watching my
+appreciation of them, "now, last of all, for the name of this house."
+
+"What is it called, dear guardian?"
+
+"My child," said he, "come and see,"
+
+He took me to the porch, which he had hitherto avoided, and said,
+pausing before we went out, "My dear child, don't you guess the
+name?"
+
+"No!" said I.
+
+We went out of the porch and he showed me written over it, Bleak
+House.
+
+He led me to a seat among the leaves close by, and sitting down
+beside me and taking my hand in his, spoke to me thus, "My darling
+girl, in what there has been between us, I have, I hope, been really
+solicitous for your happiness. When I wrote you the letter to which
+you brought the answer," smiling as he referred to it, "I had my own
+too much in view; but I had yours too. Whether, under different
+circumstances, I might ever have renewed the old dream I sometimes
+dreamed when you were very young, of making you my wife one day, I
+need not ask myself. I did renew it, and I wrote my letter, and you
+brought your answer. You are following what I say, my child?"
+
+I was cold, and I trembled violently, but not a word he uttered was
+lost. As I sat looking fixedly at him and the sun's rays descended,
+softly shining through the leaves upon his bare head, I felt as if
+the brightness on him must be like the brightness of the angels.
+
+"Hear me, my love, but do not speak. It is for me to speak now. When
+it was that I began to doubt whether what I had done would really
+make you happy is no matter. Woodcourt came home, and I soon had no
+doubt at all."
+
+I clasped him round the neck and hung my head upon his breast and
+wept. "Lie lightly, confidently here, my child," said he, pressing me
+gently to him. "I am your guardian and your father now. Rest
+confidently here."
+
+Soothingly, like the gentle rustling of the leaves; and genially,
+like the ripening weather; and radiantly and beneficently, like the
+sunshine, he went on.
+
+"Understand me, my dear girl. I had no doubt of your being contented
+and happy with me, being so dutiful and so devoted; but I saw with
+whom you would be happier. That I penetrated his secret when Dame
+Durden was blind to it is no wonder, for I knew the good that could
+never change in her better far than she did. Well! I have long been
+in Allan Woodcourt's confidence, although he was not, until
+yesterday, a few hours before you came here, in mine. But I would not
+have my Esther's bright example lost; I would not have a jot of my
+dear girl's virtues unobserved and unhonoured; I would not have her
+admitted on sufferance into the line of Morgan ap-Kerrig, no, not for
+the weight in gold of all the mountains in Wales!"
+
+He stopped to kiss me on the forehead, and I sobbed and wept afresh.
+For I felt as if I could not bear the painful delight of his praise.
+
+"Hush, little woman! Don't cry; this is to be a day of joy. I have
+looked forward to it," he said exultingly, "for months on months! A
+few words more, Dame Trot, and I have said my say. Determined not to
+throw away one atom of my Esther's worth, I took Mrs. Woodcourt into
+a separate confidence. 'Now, madam,' said I, 'I clearly perceive--and
+indeed I know, to boot--that your son loves my ward. I am further
+very sure that my ward loves your son, but will sacrifice her love to
+a sense of duty and affection, and will sacrifice it so completely,
+so entirely, so religiously, that you should never suspect it though
+you watched her night and day.' Then I told her all our
+story--ours--yours and mine. 'Now, madam,' said I, 'come you, knowing
+this, and live with us. Come you, and see my child from hour to hour;
+set what you see against her pedigree, which is this, and this'--for
+I scorned to mince it--'and tell me what is the true legitimacy when
+you shall have quite made up your mind on that subject.' Why, honour
+to her old Welsh blood, my dear," cried my guardian with enthusiasm,
+"I believe the heart it animates beats no less warmly, no less
+admiringly, no less lovingly, towards Dame Durden than my own!"
+
+He tenderly raised my head, and as I clung to him, kissed me in his
+old fatherly way again and again. What a light, now, on the
+protecting manner I had thought about!
+
+"One more last word. When Allan Woodcourt spoke to you, my dear, he
+spoke with my knowledge and consent--but I gave him no encouragement,
+not I, for these surprises were my great reward, and I was too
+miserly to part with a scrap of it. He was to come and tell me all
+that passed, and he did. I have no more to say. My dearest, Allan
+Woodcourt stood beside your father when he lay dead--stood beside
+your mother. This is Bleak House. This day I give this house its
+little mistress; and before God, it is the brightest day in all my
+life!"
+
+He rose and raised me with him. We were no longer alone. My
+husband--I have called him by that name full seven happy years
+now--stood at my side.
+
+"Allan," said my guardian, "take from me a willing gift, the best
+wife that ever man had. What more can I say for you than that I know
+you deserve her! Take with her the little home she brings you. You
+know what she will make it, Allan; you know what she has made its
+namesake. Let me share its felicity sometimes, and what do I
+sacrifice? Nothing, nothing."
+
+He kissed me once again, and now the tears were in his eyes as he
+said more softly, "Esther, my dearest, after so many years, there is
+a kind of parting in this too. I know that my mistake has caused you
+some distress. Forgive your old guardian, in restoring him to his old
+place in your affections; and blot it out of your memory. Allan, take
+my dear."
+
+He moved away from under the green roof of leaves, and stopping in
+the sunlight outside and turning cheerfully towards us, said, "I
+shall be found about here somewhere. It's a west wind, little woman,
+due west! Let no one thank me any more, for I am going to revert to
+my bachelor habits, and if anybody disregards this warning, I'll run
+away and never come back!"
+
+What happiness was ours that day, what joy, what rest, what hope,
+what gratitude, what bliss! We were to be married before the month
+was out, but when we were to come and take possession of our own
+house was to depend on Richard and Ada.
+
+We all three went home together next day. As soon as we arrived in
+town, Allan went straight to see Richard and to carry our joyful news
+to him and my darling. Late as it was, I meant to go to her for a few
+minutes before lying down to sleep, but I went home with my guardian
+first to make his tea for him and to occupy the old chair by his
+side, for I did not like to think of its being empty so soon.
+
+When we came home we found that a young man had called three times in
+the course of that one day to see me and that having been told on the
+occasion of his third call that I was not expected to return before
+ten o'clock at night, he had left word that he would call about then.
+He had left his card three times. Mr. Guppy.
+
+As I naturally speculated on the object of these visits, and as I
+always associated something ludicrous with the visitor, it fell out
+that in laughing about Mr. Guppy I told my guardian of his old
+proposal and his subsequent retraction. "After that," said my
+guardian, "we will certainly receive this hero." So instructions were
+given that Mr. Guppy should be shown in when he came again, and they
+were scarcely given when he did come again.
+
+He was embarrassed when he found my guardian with me, but recovered
+himself and said, "How de do, sir?"
+
+"How do you do, sir?" returned my guardian.
+
+"Thank you, sir, I am tolerable," returned Mr. Guppy. "Will you allow
+me to introduce my mother, Mrs. Guppy of the Old Street Road, and my
+particular friend, Mr. Weevle. That is to say, my friend has gone by
+the name of Weevle, but his name is really and truly Jobling."
+
+My guardian begged them to be seated, and they all sat down.
+
+"Tony," said Mr. Guppy to his friend after an awkward silence. "Will
+you open the case?"
+
+"Do it yourself," returned the friend rather tartly.
+
+"Well, Mr. Jarndyce, sir," Mr. Guppy, after a moment's consideration,
+began, to the great diversion of his mother, which she displayed by
+nudging Mr. Jobling with her elbow and winking at me in a most
+remarkable manner, "I had an idea that I should see Miss Summerson by
+herself and was not quite prepared for your esteemed presence. But
+Miss Summerson has mentioned to you, perhaps, that something has
+passed between us on former occasions?"
+
+"Miss Summerson," returned my guardian, smiling, "has made a
+communication to that effect to me."
+
+"That," said Mr. Guppy, "makes matters easier. Sir, I have come out
+of my articles at Kenge and Carboy's, and I believe with satisfaction
+to all parties. I am now admitted (after undergoing an examination
+that's enough to badger a man blue, touching a pack of nonsense that
+he don't want to know) on the roll of attorneys and have taken out my
+certificate, if it would be any satisfaction to you to see it."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Guppy," returned my guardian. "I am quite willing--I
+believe I use a legal phrase--to admit the certificate."
+
+Mr. Guppy therefore desisted from taking something out of his pocket
+and proceeded without it.
+
+"I have no capital myself, but my mother has a little property which
+takes the form of an annuity"--here Mr. Guppy's mother rolled her
+head as if she never could sufficiently enjoy the observation, and
+put her handkerchief to her mouth, and again winked at me--"and a few
+pounds for expenses out of pocket in conducting business will never
+be wanting, free of interest, which is an advantage, you know," said
+Mr. Guppy feelingly.
+
+"Certainly an advantage," returned my guardian.
+
+"I HAVE some connexion," pursued Mr. Guppy, "and it lays in the
+direction of Walcot Square, Lambeth. I have therefore taken a 'ouse
+in that locality, which, in the opinion of my friends, is a hollow
+bargain (taxes ridiculous, and use of fixtures included in the rent),
+and intend setting up professionally for myself there forthwith."
+
+Here Mr. Guppy's mother fell into an extraordinary passion of rolling
+her head and smiling waggishly at anybody who would look at her.
+
+"It's a six-roomer, exclusive of kitchens," said Mr. Guppy, "and in
+the opinion of my friends, a commodious tenement. When I mention my
+friends, I refer principally to my friend Jobling, who I believe has
+known me," Mr. Guppy looked at him with a sentimental air, "from
+boyhood's hour."
+
+Mr. Jobling confirmed this with a sliding movement of his legs.
+
+"My friend Jobling will render me his assistance in the capacity of
+clerk and will live in the 'ouse," said Mr. Guppy. "My mother will
+likewise live in the 'ouse when her present quarter in the Old Street
+Road shall have ceased and expired; and consequently there will be no
+want of society. My friend Jobling is naturally aristocratic by
+taste, and besides being acquainted with the movements of the upper
+circles, fully backs me in the intentions I am now developing."
+
+Mr. Jobling said "Certainly" and withdrew a little from the elbow of
+Mr Guppy's mother.
+
+"Now, I have no occasion to mention to you, sir, you being in the
+confidence of Miss Summerson," said Mr. Guppy, "(mother, I wish you'd
+be so good as to keep still), that Miss Summerson's image was
+formerly imprinted on my 'eart and that I made her a proposal of
+marriage."
+
+"That I have heard," returned my guardian.
+
+"Circumstances," pursued Mr. Guppy, "over which I had no control, but
+quite the contrary, weakened the impression of that image for a time.
+At which time Miss Summerson's conduct was highly genteel; I may even
+add, magnanimous."
+
+My guardian patted me on the shoulder and seemed much amused.
+
+"Now, sir," said Mr. Guppy, "I have got into that state of mind
+myself that I wish for a reciprocity of magnanimous behaviour. I wish
+to prove to Miss Summerson that I can rise to a heighth of which
+perhaps she hardly thought me capable. I find that the image which I
+did suppose had been eradicated from my 'eart is NOT eradicated. Its
+influence over me is still tremenjous, and yielding to it, I am
+willing to overlook the circumstances over which none of us have had
+any control and to renew those proposals to Miss Summerson which I
+had the honour to make at a former period. I beg to lay the 'ouse in
+Walcot Square, the business, and myself before Miss Summerson for her
+acceptance."
+
+"Very magnanimous indeed, sir," observed my guardian.
+
+"Well, sir," replied Mr. Guppy with candour, "my wish is to BE
+magnanimous. I do not consider that in making this offer to Miss
+Summerson I am by any means throwing myself away; neither is that the
+opinion of my friends. Still, there are circumstances which I submit
+may be taken into account as a set off against any little drawbacks
+of mine, and so a fair and equitable balance arrived at."
+
+"I take upon myself, sir," said my guardian, laughing as he rang the
+bell, "to reply to your proposals on behalf of Miss Summerson. She is
+very sensible of your handsome intentions, and wishes you good
+evening, and wishes you well."
+
+"Oh!" said Mr. Guppy with a blank look. "Is that tantamount, sir, to
+acceptance, or rejection, or consideration?"
+
+"To decided rejection, if you please," returned my guardian.
+
+Mr. Guppy looked incredulously at his friend, and at his mother, who
+suddenly turned very angry, and at the floor, and at the ceiling.
+
+"Indeed?" said he. "Then, Jobling, if you was the friend you
+represent yourself, I should think you might hand my mother out of
+the gangway instead of allowing her to remain where she ain't
+wanted."
+
+But Mrs. Guppy positively refused to come out of the gangway. She
+wouldn't hear of it. "Why, get along with you," said she to my
+guardian, "what do you mean? Ain't my son good enough for you? You
+ought to be ashamed of yourself. Get out with you!"
+
+"My good lady," returned my guardian, "it is hardly reasonable to ask
+me to get out of my own room."
+
+"I don't care for that," said Mrs. Guppy. "Get out with you. If we
+ain't good enough for you, go and procure somebody that is good
+enough. Go along and find 'em."
+
+I was quite unprepared for the rapid manner in which Mrs. Guppy's
+power of jocularity merged into a power of taking the profoundest
+offence.
+
+"Go along and find somebody that's good enough for you," repeated
+Mrs. Guppy. "Get out!" Nothing seemed to astonish Mr. Guppy's mother
+so much and to make her so very indignant as our not getting out.
+"Why don't you get out?" said Mrs. Guppy. "What are you stopping here
+for?"
+
+"Mother," interposed her son, always getting before her and pushing
+her back with one shoulder as she sidled at my guardian, "WILL you
+hold your tongue?"
+
+"No, William," she returned, "I won't! Not unless he gets out, I
+won't!"
+
+However, Mr. Guppy and Mr. Jobling together closed on Mr. Guppy's
+mother (who began to be quite abusive) and took her, very much
+against her will, downstairs, her voice rising a stair higher every
+time her figure got a stair lower, and insisting that we should
+immediately go and find somebody who was good enough for us, and
+above all things that we should get out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXV
+
+Beginning the World
+
+
+The term had commenced, and my guardian found an intimation from Mr.
+Kenge that the cause would come on in two days. As I had sufficient
+hopes of the will to be in a flutter about it, Allan and I agreed to
+go down to the court that morning. Richard was extremely agitated and
+was so weak and low, though his illness was still of the mind, that
+my dear girl indeed had sore occasion to be supported. But she looked
+forward--a very little way now--to the help that was to come to her,
+and never drooped.
+
+It was at Westminster that the cause was to come on. It had come on
+there, I dare say, a hundred times before, but I could not divest
+myself of an idea that it MIGHT lead to some result now. We left home
+directly after breakfast to be at Westminster Hall in good time and
+walked down there through the lively streets--so happily and
+strangely it seemed!--together.
+
+As we were going along, planning what we should do for Richard and
+Ada, I heard somebody calling "Esther! My dear Esther! Esther!" And
+there was Caddy Jellyby, with her head out of the window of a little
+carriage which she hired now to go about in to her pupils (she had so
+many), as if she wanted to embrace me at a hundred yards' distance. I
+had written her a note to tell her of all that my guardian had done,
+but had not had a moment to go and see her. Of course we turned back,
+and the affectionate girl was in that state of rapture, and was so
+overjoyed to talk about the night when she brought me the flowers,
+and was so determined to squeeze my face (bonnet and all) between her
+hands, and go on in a wild manner altogether, calling me all kinds of
+precious names, and telling Allan I had done I don't know what for
+her, that I was just obliged to get into the little carriage and calm
+her down by letting her say and do exactly what she liked. Allan,
+standing at the window, was as pleased as Caddy; and I was as pleased
+as either of them; and I wonder that I got away as I did, rather than
+that I came off laughing, and red, and anything but tidy, and looking
+after Caddy, who looked after us out of the coach-window as long as
+she could see us.
+
+This made us some quarter of an hour late, and when we came to
+Westminster Hall we found that the day's business was begun. Worse
+than that, we found such an unusual crowd in the Court of Chancery
+that it was full to the door, and we could neither see nor hear what
+was passing within. It appeared to be something droll, for
+occasionally there was a laugh and a cry of "Silence!" It appeared to
+be something interesting, for every one was pushing and striving to
+get nearer. It appeared to be something that made the professional
+gentlemen very merry, for there were several young counsellors in
+wigs and whiskers on the outside of the crowd, and when one of them
+told the others about it, they put their hands in their pockets, and
+quite doubled themselves up with laughter, and went stamping about
+the pavement of the Hall.
+
+We asked a gentleman by us if he knew what cause was on. He told us
+Jarndyce and Jarndyce. We asked him if he knew what was doing in it.
+He said really, no he did not, nobody ever did, but as well as he
+could make out, it was over. Over for the day? we asked him. No, he
+said, over for good.
+
+Over for good!
+
+When we heard this unaccountable answer, we looked at one another
+quite lost in amazement. Could it be possible that the will had set
+things right at last and that Richard and Ada were going to be rich?
+It seemed too good to be true. Alas it was!
+
+Our suspense was short, for a break-up soon took place in the crowd,
+and the people came streaming out looking flushed and hot and
+bringing a quantity of bad air with them. Still they were all
+exceedingly amused and were more like people coming out from a farce
+or a juggler than from a court of justice. We stood aside, watching
+for any countenance we knew, and presently great bundles of paper
+began to be carried out--bundles in bags, bundles too large to be got
+into any bags, immense masses of papers of all shapes and no shapes,
+which the bearers staggered under, and threw down for the time being,
+anyhow, on the Hall pavement, while they went back to bring out more.
+Even these clerks were laughing. We glanced at the papers, and seeing
+Jarndyce and Jarndyce everywhere, asked an official-looking person
+who was standing in the midst of them whether the cause was over.
+Yes, he said, it was all up with it at last, and burst out laughing
+too.
+
+At this juncture we perceived Mr. Kenge coming out of court with an
+affable dignity upon him, listening to Mr. Vholes, who was
+deferential and carried his own bag. Mr. Vholes was the first to see
+us. "Here is Miss Summerson, sir," he said. "And Mr. Woodcourt."
+
+"Oh, indeed! Yes. Truly!" said Mr. Kenge, raising his hat to me with
+polished politeness. "How do you do? Glad to see you. Mr. Jarndyce is
+not here?"
+
+No. He never came there, I reminded him.
+
+"Really," returned Mr. Kenge, "it is as well that he is NOT here
+to-day, for his--shall I say, in my good friend's absence, his
+indomitable singularity of opinion?--might have been strengthened,
+perhaps; not reasonably, but might have been strengthened."
+
+"Pray what has been done to-day?" asked Allan.
+
+"I beg your pardon?" said Mr. Kenge with excessive urbanity.
+
+"What has been done to-day?"
+
+"What has been done," repeated Mr. Kenge. "Quite so. Yes. Why, not
+much has been done; not much. We have been checked--brought up
+suddenly, I would say--upon the--shall I term it threshold?"
+
+"Is this will considered a genuine document, sir?" said Allan. "Will
+you tell us that?"
+
+"Most certainly, if I could," said Mr. Kenge; "but we have not gone
+into that, we have not gone into that."
+
+"We have not gone into that," repeated Mr. Vholes as if his low
+inward voice were an echo.
+
+"You are to reflect, Mr. Woodcourt," observed Mr. Kenge, using his
+silver trowel persuasively and smoothingly, "that this has been a
+great cause, that this has been a protracted cause, that this has
+been a complex cause. Jarndyce and Jarndyce has been termed, not
+inaptly, a monument of Chancery practice."
+
+"And patience has sat upon it a long time," said Allan.
+
+"Very well indeed, sir," returned Mr. Kenge with a certain
+condescending laugh he had. "Very well! You are further to reflect,
+Mr. Woodcourt," becoming dignified almost to severity, "that on the
+numerous difficulties, contingencies, masterly fictions, and forms of
+procedure in this great cause, there has been expended study,
+ability, eloquence, knowledge, intellect, Mr. Woodcourt, high
+intellect. For many years, the--a--I would say the flower of the bar,
+and the--a--I would presume to add, the matured autumnal fruits of
+the woolsack--have been lavished upon Jarndyce and Jarndyce. If the
+public have the benefit, and if the country have the adornment, of
+this great grasp, it must be paid for in money or money's worth,
+sir."
+
+"Mr. Kenge," said Allan, appearing enlightened all in a moment.
+"Excuse me, our time presses. Do I understand that the whole estate
+is found to have been absorbed in costs?"
+
+"Hem! I believe so," returned Mr. Kenge. "Mr. Vholes, what do YOU
+say?"
+
+"I believe so," said Mr. Vholes.
+
+"And that thus the suit lapses and melts away?"
+
+"Probably," returned Mr. Kenge. "Mr. Vholes?"
+
+"Probably," said Mr. Vholes.
+
+"My dearest life," whispered Allan, "this will break Richard's
+heart!"
+
+There was such a shock of apprehension in his face, and he knew
+Richard so perfectly, and I too had seen so much of his gradual
+decay, that what my dear girl had said to me in the fullness of her
+foreboding love sounded like a knell in my ears.
+
+"In case you should be wanting Mr. C., sir," said Mr. Vholes, coming
+after us, "you'll find him in court. I left him there resting himself
+a little. Good day, sir; good day, Miss Summerson." As he gave me
+that slowly devouring look of his, while twisting up the strings of
+his bag before he hastened with it after Mr. Kenge, the benignant
+shadow of whose conversational presence he seemed afraid to leave, he
+gave one gasp as if he had swallowed the last morsel of his client,
+and his black buttoned-up unwholesome figure glided away to the low
+door at the end of the Hall.
+
+"My dear love," said Allan, "leave to me, for a little while, the
+charge you gave me. Go home with this intelligence and come to Ada's
+by and by!"
+
+I would not let him take me to a coach, but entreated him to go to
+Richard without a moment's delay and leave me to do as he wished.
+Hurrying home, I found my guardian and told him gradually with what
+news I had returned. "Little woman," said he, quite unmoved for
+himself, "to have done with the suit on any terms is a greater
+blessing than I had looked for. But my poor young cousins!"
+
+We talked about them all the morning and discussed what it was
+possible to do. In the afternoon my guardian walked with me to
+Symond's Inn and left me at the door. I went upstairs. When my
+darling heard my footsteps, she came out into the small passage and
+threw her arms round my neck, but she composed herself directly and
+said that Richard had asked for me several times. Allan had found him
+sitting in the corner of the court, she told me, like a stone figure.
+On being roused, he had broken away and made as if he would have
+spoken in a fierce voice to the judge. He was stopped by his mouth
+being full of blood, and Allan had brought him home.
+
+He was lying on a sofa with his eyes closed when I went in. There
+were restoratives on the table; the room was made as airy as
+possible, and was darkened, and was very orderly and quiet. Allan
+stood behind him watching him gravely. His face appeared to me to be
+quite destitute of colour, and now that I saw him without his seeing
+me, I fully saw, for the first time, how worn away he was. But he
+looked handsomer than I had seen him look for many a day.
+
+I sat down by his side in silence. Opening his eyes by and by, he
+said in a weak voice, but with his old smile, "Dame Durden, kiss me,
+my dear!"
+
+It was a great comfort and surprise to me to find him in his low
+state cheerful and looking forward. He was happier, he said, in our
+intended marriage than he could find words to tell me. My husband had
+been a guardian angel to him and Ada, and he blessed us both and
+wished us all the joy that life could yield us. I almost felt as if
+my own heart would have broken when I saw him take my husband's hand
+and hold it to his breast.
+
+We spoke of the future as much as possible, and he said several times
+that he must be present at our marriage if he could stand upon his
+feet. Ada would contrive to take him, somehow, he said. "Yes, surely,
+dearest Richard!" But as my darling answered him thus hopefully, so
+serene and beautiful, with the help that was to come to her so
+near--I knew--I knew!
+
+It was not good for him to talk too much, and when he was silent, we
+were silent too. Sitting beside him, I made a pretence of working for
+my dear, as he had always been used to joke about my being busy. Ada
+leaned upon his pillow, holding his head upon her arm. He dozed
+often, and whenever he awoke without seeing him, said first of all,
+"Where is Woodcourt?"
+
+Evening had come on when I lifted up my eyes and saw my guardian
+standing in the little hall. "Who is that, Dame Durden?" Richard
+asked me. The door was behind him, but he had observed in my face
+that some one was there.
+
+I looked to Allan for advice, and as he nodded "Yes," bent over
+Richard and told him. My guardian saw what passed, came softly by me
+in a moment, and laid his hand on Richard's. "Oh, sir," said Richard,
+"you are a good man, you are a good man!" and burst into tears for
+the first time.
+
+My guardian, the picture of a good man, sat down in my place, keeping
+his hand on Richard's.
+
+"My dear Rick," said he, "the clouds have cleared away, and it is
+bright now. We can see now. We were all bewildered, Rick, more or
+less. What matters! And how are you, my dear boy?"
+
+"I am very weak, sir, but I hope I shall be stronger. I have to begin
+the world."
+
+"Aye, truly; well said!" cried my guardian.
+
+"I will not begin it in the old way now," said Richard with a sad
+smile. "I have learned a lesson now, sir. It was a hard one, but you
+shall be assured, indeed, that I have learned it."
+
+"Well, well," said my guardian, comforting him; "well, well, well,
+dear boy!"
+
+"I was thinking, sir," resumed Richard, "that there is nothing on
+earth I should so much like to see as their house--Dame Durden's and
+Woodcourt's house. If I could be removed there when I begin to
+recover my strength, I feel as if I should get well there sooner than
+anywhere."
+
+"Why, so have I been thinking too, Rick," said my guardian, "and our
+little woman likewise; she and I have been talking of it this very
+day. I dare say her husband won't object. What do you think?"
+
+Richard smiled and lifted up his arm to touch him as he stood behind
+the head of the couch.
+
+"I say nothing of Ada," said Richard, "but I think of her, and have
+thought of her very much. Look at her! See her here, sir, bending
+over this pillow when she has so much need to rest upon it herself,
+my dear love, my poor girl!"
+
+He clasped her in his arms, and none of us spoke. He gradually
+released her, and she looked upon us, and looked up to heaven, and
+moved her lips.
+
+"When I get down to Bleak House," said Richard, "I shall have much to
+tell you, sir, and you will have much to show me. You will go, won't
+you?"
+
+"Undoubtedly, dear Rick."
+
+"Thank you; like you, like you," said Richard. "But it's all like
+you. They have been telling me how you planned it and how you
+remembered all Esther's familiar tastes and ways. It will be like
+coming to the old Bleak House again."
+
+"And you will come there too, I hope, Rick. I am a solitary man now,
+you know, and it will be a charity to come to me. A charity to come
+to me, my love!" he repeated to Ada as he gently passed his hand over
+her golden hair and put a lock of it to his lips. (I think he vowed
+within himself to cherish her if she were left alone.)
+
+"It was a troubled dream?" said Richard, clasping both my guardian's
+hands eagerly.
+
+"Nothing more, Rick; nothing more."
+
+"And you, being a good man, can pass it as such, and forgive and pity
+the dreamer, and be lenient and encouraging when he wakes?"
+
+"Indeed I can. What am I but another dreamer, Rick?"
+
+"I will begin the world!" said Richard with a light in his eyes.
+
+My husband drew a little nearer towards Ada, and I saw him solemnly
+lift up his hand to warn my guardian.
+
+"When shall I go from this place to that pleasant country where the
+old times are, where I shall have strength to tell what Ada has been
+to me, where I shall be able to recall my many faults and
+blindnesses, where I shall prepare myself to be a guide to my unborn
+child?" said Richard. "When shall I go?"
+
+"Dear Rick, when you are strong enough," returned my guardian.
+
+"Ada, my darling!"
+
+He sought to raise himself a little. Allan raised him so that she
+could hold him on her bosom, which was what he wanted.
+
+"I have done you many wrongs, my own. I have fallen like a poor stray
+shadow on your way, I have married you to poverty and trouble, I have
+scattered your means to the winds. You will forgive me all this, my
+Ada, before I begin the world?"
+
+A smile irradiated his face as she bent to kiss him. He slowly laid
+his face down upon her bosom, drew his arms closer round her neck,
+and with one parting sob began the world. Not this world, oh, not
+this! The world that sets this right.
+
+When all was still, at a late hour, poor crazed Miss Flite came
+weeping to me and told me she had given her birds their liberty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVI
+
+Down in Lincolnshire
+
+
+There is a hush upon Chesney Wold in these altered days, as there is
+upon a portion of the family history. The story goes that Sir
+Leicester paid some who could have spoken out to hold their peace;
+but it is a lame story, feebly whispering and creeping about, and any
+brighter spark of life it shows soon dies away. It is known for
+certain that the handsome Lady Dedlock lies in the mausoleum in the
+park, where the trees arch darkly overhead, and the owl is heard at
+night making the woods ring; but whence she was brought home to be
+laid among the echoes of that solitary place, or how she died, is all
+mystery. Some of her old friends, principally to be found among the
+peachy-cheeked charmers with the skeleton throats, did once
+occasionally say, as they toyed in a ghastly manner with large
+fans--like charmers reduced to flirting with grim death, after losing
+all their other beaux--did once occasionally say, when the world
+assembled together, that they wondered the ashes of the Dedlocks,
+entombed in the mausoleum, never rose against the profanation of her
+company. But the dead-and-gone Dedlocks take it very calmly and have
+never been known to object.
+
+Up from among the fern in the hollow, and winding by the bridle-road
+among the trees, comes sometimes to this lonely spot the sound of
+horses' hoofs. Then may be seen Sir Leicester--invalided, bent, and
+almost blind, but of worthy presence yet--riding with a stalwart man
+beside him, constant to his bridle-rein. When they come to a certain
+spot before the mausoleum-door, Sir Leicester's accustomed horse
+stops of his own accord, and Sir Leicester, pulling off his hat, is
+still for a few moments before they ride away.
+
+War rages yet with the audacious Boythorn, though at uncertain
+intervals, and now hotly, and now coolly, flickering like an unsteady
+fire. The truth is said to be that when Sir Leicester came down to
+Lincolnshire for good, Mr. Boythorn showed a manifest desire to
+abandon his right of way and do whatever Sir Leicester would, which
+Sir Leicester, conceiving to be a condescension to his illness or
+misfortune, took in such high dudgeon, and was so magnificently
+aggrieved by, that Mr. Boythorn found himself under the necessity of
+committing a flagrant trespass to restore his neighbour to himself.
+Similarly, Mr. Boythorn continues to post tremendous placards on the
+disputed thoroughfare and (with his bird upon his head) to hold forth
+vehemently against Sir Leicester in the sanctuary of his own home;
+similarly, also, he defies him as of old in the little church by
+testifying a bland unconsciousness of his existence. But it is
+whispered that when he is most ferocious towards his old foe, he is
+really most considerate, and that Sir Leicester, in the dignity of
+being implacable, little supposes how much he is humoured. As little
+does he think how near together he and his antagonist have suffered
+in the fortunes of two sisters, and his antagonist, who knows it now,
+is not the man to tell him. So the quarrel goes on to the
+satisfaction of both.
+
+In one of the lodges of the park--that lodge within sight of the
+house where, once upon a time, when the waters were out down in
+Lincolnshire, my Lady used to see the keeper's child--the stalwart
+man, the trooper formerly, is housed. Some relics of his old calling
+hang upon the walls, and these it is the chosen recreation of a
+little lame man about the stable-yard to keep gleaming bright. A busy
+little man he always is, in the polishing at harness-house doors, of
+stirrup-irons, bits, curb-chains, harness bosses, anything in the way
+of a stable-yard that will take a polish, leading a life of friction.
+A shaggy little damaged man, withal, not unlike an old dog of some
+mongrel breed, who has been considerably knocked about. He answers to
+the name of Phil.
+
+A goodly sight it is to see the grand old housekeeper (harder of
+hearing now) going to church on the arm of her son and to
+observe--which few do, for the house is scant of company in these
+times--the relations of both towards Sir Leicester, and his towards
+them. They have visitors in the high summer weather, when a grey
+cloak and umbrella, unknown to Chesney Wold at other periods, are
+seen among the leaves; when two young ladies are occasionally found
+gambolling in sequestered saw-pits and such nooks of the park; and
+when the smoke of two pipes wreathes away into the fragrant evening
+air from the trooper's door. Then is a fife heard trolling within the
+lodge on the inspiring topic of the "British Grenadiers"; and as the
+evening closes in, a gruff inflexible voice is heard to say, while
+two men pace together up and down, "But I never own to it before the
+old girl. Discipline must be maintained."
+
+The greater part of the house is shut up, and it is a show-house no
+longer; yet Sir Leicester holds his shrunken state in the long
+drawing-room for all that, and reposes in his old place before my
+Lady's picture. Closed in by night with broad screens, and illumined
+only in that part, the light of the drawing-room seems gradually
+contracting and dwindling until it shall be no more. A little more,
+in truth, and it will be all extinguished for Sir Leicester; and the
+damp door in the mausoleum which shuts so tight, and looks so
+obdurate, will have opened and received him.
+
+Volumnia, growing with the flight of time pinker as to the red in her
+face, and yellower as to the white, reads to Sir Leicester in the
+long evenings and is driven to various artifices to conceal her
+yawns, of which the chief and most efficacious is the insertion of
+the pearl necklace between her rosy lips. Long-winded treatises on
+the Buffy and Boodle question, showing how Buffy is immaculate and
+Boodle villainous, and how the country is lost by being all Boodle
+and no Buffy, or saved by being all Buffy and no Boodle (it must be
+one of the two, and cannot be anything else), are the staple of her
+reading. Sir Leicester is not particular what it is and does not
+appear to follow it very closely, further than that he always comes
+broad awake the moment Volumnia ventures to leave off, and sonorously
+repeating her last words, begs with some displeasure to know if she
+finds herself fatigued. However, Volumnia, in the course of her
+bird-like hopping about and pecking at papers, has alighted on a
+memorandum concerning herself in the event of "anything happening" to
+her kinsman, which is handsome compensation for an extensive course
+of reading and holds even the dragon Boredom at bay.
+
+The cousins generally are rather shy of Chesney Wold in its dullness,
+but take to it a little in the shooting season, when guns are heard
+in the plantations, and a few scattered beaters and keepers wait at
+the old places of appointment for low-spirited twos and threes of
+cousins. The debilitated cousin, more debilitated by the dreariness
+of the place, gets into a fearful state of depression, groaning under
+penitential sofa-pillows in his gunless hours and protesting that
+such fernal old jail's--nough t'sew fler up--frever.
+
+The only great occasions for Volumnia in this changed aspect of the
+place in Lincolnshire are those occasions, rare and widely separated,
+when something is to be done for the county or the country in the way
+of gracing a public ball. Then, indeed, does the tuckered sylph come
+out in fairy form and proceed with joy under cousinly escort to the
+exhausted old assembly-room, fourteen heavy miles off, which, during
+three hundred and sixty-four days and nights of every ordinary year,
+is a kind of antipodean lumber-room full of old chairs and tables
+upside down. Then, indeed, does she captivate all hearts by her
+condescension, by her girlish vivacity, and by her skipping about as
+in the days when the hideous old general with the mouth too full of
+teeth had not cut one of them at two guineas each. Then does she
+twirl and twine, a pastoral nymph of good family, through the mazes
+of the dance. Then do the swains appear with tea, with lemonade, with
+sandwiches, with homage. Then is she kind and cruel, stately and
+unassuming, various, beautifully wilful. Then is there a singular
+kind of parallel between her and the little glass chandeliers of
+another age embellishing that assembly-room, which, with their meagre
+stems, their spare little drops, their disappointing knobs where no
+drops are, their bare little stalks from which knobs and drops have
+both departed, and their little feeble prismatic twinkling, all seem
+Volumnias.
+
+For the rest, Lincolnshire life to Volumnia is a vast blank of
+overgrown house looking out upon trees, sighing, wringing their
+hands, bowing their heads, and casting their tears upon the
+window-panes in monotonous depressions. A labyrinth of grandeur, less
+the property of an old family of human beings and their ghostly
+likenesses than of an old family of echoings and thunderings which
+start out of their hundred graves at every sound and go resounding
+through the building. A waste of unused passages and staircases in
+which to drop a comb upon a bedroom floor at night is to send a
+stealthy footfall on an errand through the house. A place where few
+people care to go about alone, where a maid screams if an ash drops
+from the fire, takes to crying at all times and seasons, becomes the
+victim of a low disorder of the spirits, and gives warning and
+departs.
+
+Thus Chesney Wold. With so much of itself abandoned to darkness and
+vacancy; with so little change under the summer shining or the wintry
+lowering; so sombre and motionless always--no flag flying now by day,
+no rows of lights sparkling by night; with no family to come and go,
+no visitors to be the souls of pale cold shapes of rooms, no stir of
+life about it--passion and pride, even to the stranger's eye, have
+died away from the place in Lincolnshire and yielded it to dull
+repose.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVII
+
+The Close of Esther's Narrative
+
+
+Full seven happy years I have been the mistress of Bleak House. The
+few words that I have to add to what I have written are soon penned;
+then I and the unknown friend to whom I write will part for ever. Not
+without much dear remembrance on my side. Not without some, I hope,
+on his or hers.
+
+They gave my darling into my arms, and through many weeks I never
+left her. The little child who was to have done so much was born
+before the turf was planted on its father's grave. It was a boy; and
+I, my husband, and my guardian gave him his father's name.
+
+The help that my dear counted on did come to her, though it came, in
+the eternal wisdom, for another purpose. Though to bless and restore
+his mother, not his father, was the errand of this baby, its power
+was mighty to do it. When I saw the strength of the weak little hand
+and how its touch could heal my darling's heart and raised hope
+within her, I felt a new sense of the goodness and the tenderness of
+God.
+
+They throve, and by degrees I saw my dear girl pass into my country
+garden and walk there with her infant in her arms. I was married
+then. I was the happiest of the happy.
+
+It was at this time that my guardian joined us and asked Ada when she
+would come home.
+
+"Both houses are your home, my dear," said he, "but the older Bleak
+House claims priority. When you and my boy are strong enough to do
+it, come and take possession of your home."
+
+Ada called him "her dearest cousin, John." But he said, no, it must
+be guardian now. He was her guardian henceforth, and the boy's; and
+he had an old association with the name. So she called him guardian,
+and has called him guardian ever since. The children know him by no
+other name. I say the children; I have two little daughters.
+
+It is difficult to believe that Charley (round-eyed still, and not at
+all grammatical) is married to a miller in our neighbourhood; yet so
+it is; and even now, looking up from my desk as I write early in the
+morning at my summer window, I see the very mill beginning to go
+round. I hope the miller will not spoil Charley; but he is very fond
+of her, and Charley is rather vain of such a match, for he is well to
+do and was in great request. So far as my small maid is concerned, I
+might suppose time to have stood for seven years as still as the mill
+did half an hour ago, since little Emma, Charley's sister, is exactly
+what Charley used to be. As to Tom, Charley's brother, I am really
+afraid to say what he did at school in ciphering, but I think it was
+decimals. He is apprenticed to the miller, whatever it was, and is a
+good bashful fellow, always falling in love with somebody and being
+ashamed of it.
+
+Caddy Jellyby passed her very last holidays with us and was a dearer
+creature than ever, perpetually dancing in and out of the house with
+the children as if she had never given a dancing-lesson in her life.
+Caddy keeps her own little carriage now instead of hiring one, and
+lives full two miles further westward than Newman Street. She works
+very hard, her husband (an excellent one) being lame and able to do
+very little. Still, she is more than contented and does all she has
+to do with all her heart. Mr. Jellyby spends his evenings at her new
+house with his head against the wall as he used to do in her old one.
+I have heard that Mrs. Jellyby was understood to suffer great
+mortification from her daughter's ignoble marriage and pursuits, but
+I hope she got over it in time. She has been disappointed in
+Borrioboola-Gha, which turned out a failure in consequence of the
+king of Borrioboola wanting to sell everybody--who survived the
+climate--for rum, but she has taken up with the rights of women to
+sit in Parliament, and Caddy tells me it is a mission involving more
+correspondence than the old one. I had almost forgotten Caddy's poor
+little girl. She is not such a mite now, but she is deaf and dumb. I
+believe there never was a better mother than Caddy, who learns, in
+her scanty intervals of leisure, innumerable deaf and dumb arts to
+soften the affliction of her child.
+
+As if I were never to have done with Caddy, I am reminded here of
+Peepy and old Mr. Turveydrop. Peepy is in the Custom House, and doing
+extremely well. Old Mr. Turveydrop, very apoplectic, still exhibits
+his deportment about town, still enjoys himself in the old manner, is
+still believed in in the old way. He is constant in his patronage of
+Peepy and is understood to have bequeathed him a favourite French
+clock in his dressing-room--which is not his property.
+
+With the first money we saved at home, we added to our pretty house
+by throwing out a little growlery expressly for my guardian, which we
+inaugurated with great splendour the next time he came down to see
+us. I try to write all this lightly, because my heart is full in
+drawing to an end, but when I write of him, my tears will have their
+way.
+
+I never look at him but I hear our poor dear Richard calling him a
+good man. To Ada and her pretty boy, he is the fondest father; to me
+he is what he has ever been, and what name can I give to that? He is
+my husband's best and dearest friend, he is our children's darling,
+he is the object of our deepest love and veneration. Yet while I feel
+towards him as if he were a superior being, I am so familiar with him
+and so easy with him that I almost wonder at myself. I have never
+lost my old names, nor has he lost his; nor do I ever, when he is
+with us, sit in any other place than in my old chair at his side,
+Dame Trot, Dame Durden, Little Woman--all just the same as ever; and
+I answer, "Yes, dear guardian!" just the same.
+
+I have never known the wind to be in the east for a single moment
+since the day when he took me to the porch to read the name. I
+remarked to him once that the wind seemed never in the east now, and
+he said, no, truly; it had finally departed from that quarter on that
+very day.
+
+I think my darling girl is more beautiful than ever. The sorrow that
+has been in her face--for it is not there now--seems to have purified
+even its innocent expression and to have given it a diviner quality.
+Sometimes when I raise my eyes and see her in the black dress that
+she still wears, teaching my Richard, I feel--it is difficult to
+express--as if it were so good to know that she remembers her dear
+Esther in her prayers.
+
+I call him my Richard! But he says that he has two mamas, and I am
+one.
+
+We are not rich in the bank, but we have always prospered, and we
+have quite enough. I never walk out with my husband but I hear the
+people bless him. I never go into a house of any degree but I hear
+his praises or see them in grateful eyes. I never lie down at night
+but I know that in the course of that day he has alleviated pain and
+soothed some fellow-creature in the time of need. I know that from
+the beds of those who were past recovery, thanks have often, often
+gone up, in the last hour, for his patient ministration. Is not this
+to be rich?
+
+The people even praise me as the doctor's wife. The people even like
+me as I go about, and make so much of me that I am quite abashed. I
+owe it all to him, my love, my pride! They like me for his sake, as I
+do everything I do in life for his sake.
+
+A night or two ago, after bustling about preparing for my darling and
+my guardian and little Richard, who are coming to-morrow, I was
+sitting out in the porch of all places, that dearly memorable porch,
+when Allan came home. So he said, "My precious little woman, what are
+you doing here?" And I said, "The moon is shining so brightly, Allan,
+and the night is so delicious, that I have been sitting here
+thinking."
+
+"What have you been thinking about, my dear?" said Allan then.
+
+"How curious you are!" said I. "I am almost ashamed to tell you, but
+I will. I have been thinking about my old looks--such as they were."
+
+"And what have you been thinking about THEM, my busy bee?" said
+Allan.
+
+"I have been thinking that I thought it was impossible that you COULD
+have loved me any better, even if I had retained them."
+
+"'Such as they were'?" said Allan, laughing.
+
+"Such as they were, of course."
+
+"My dear Dame Durden," said Allan, drawing my arm through his, "do
+you ever look in the glass?"
+
+"You know I do; you see me do it."
+
+"And don't you know that you are prettier than you ever were?"
+
+"I did not know that; I am not certain that I know it now. But I know
+that my dearest little pets are very pretty, and that my darling is
+very beautiful, and that my husband is very handsome, and that my
+guardian has the brightest and most benevolent face that ever was
+seen, and that they can very well do without much beauty in me--even
+supposing--."
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLEAK HOUSE***
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diff --git a/data/train/dickens_-_david_copperfield.txt b/data/train/dickens_-_david_copperfield.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5fddb6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/data/train/dickens_-_david_copperfield.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,38589 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: David Copperfield
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+Release Date: December, 1996  [Etext #766]
+Posting Date: November 24, 2009
+Last Updated: September 25, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAVID COPPERFIELD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jo Churcher
+
+
+
+
+
+DAVID COPPERFIELD
+
+
+By Charles Dickens
+
+
+
+               AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED TO
+               THE HON.  Mr. AND Mrs. RICHARD WATSON,
+               OF ROCKINGHAM, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+     I.      I Am Born
+     II.     I Observe
+     III.    I Have a Change
+     IV.     I Fall into Disgrace
+     V.      I Am Sent Away
+     VI.     I Enlarge My Circle of Acquaintance
+     VII.    My ‘First Half’ at Salem House
+     VIII.   My Holidays.  Especially One Happy Afternoon
+     IX.     I Have a Memorable Birthday
+     X.      I Become Neglected, and Am Provided For
+     XI.     I Begin Life on My Own Account, and Don’t Like It
+     XII.    Liking Life on My Own Account No Better, I Form a Great Resolution
+     XIII.   The Sequel of My Resolution
+     XIV.    My Aunt Makes up Her Mind About Me
+     XV.     I Make Another Beginning
+     XVI.    I Am a New Boy in More Senses Than One
+     XVII.   Somebody Turns Up
+     XVIII.  A Retrospect
+     XIX.    I Look About Me and Make a Discovery
+     XX.     Steerforth’s Home
+     XXI.    Little Em’ly
+     XXII.   Some Old Scenes, and Some New People
+     XXIII.  I Corroborate Mr. Dick, and Choose a Profession
+     XXIV.   My First Dissipation
+     XXV.    Good and Bad Angels
+     XXVI.   I Fall into Captivity
+     XXVII.  Tommy Traddles
+     XXVIII. Mr. Micawber’s Gauntlet
+     XXIX.   I Visit Steerforth at His Home, Again
+     XXX.    A Loss
+     XXXI.   A Greater Loss
+     XXXII.  The Beginning of a Long Journey
+     XXXIII. Blissful
+     XXXIV.  My Aunt Astonishes Me
+     XXXV.   Depression
+     XXXVI.  Enthusiasm
+     XXXVII.  A Little Cold Water
+     XXXVIII. A Dissolution of Partnership
+     XXXIX.   Wickfield and Heep
+     XL.      The Wanderer
+     XLI.     Dora’s Aunts
+     XLII.    Mischief
+     XLIII.   Another Retrospect
+     XLIV.    Our Housekeeping
+     XLV.     Mr. Dick Fulfils My Aunt’s Predictions
+     XLVI.    Intelligence
+     XLVII.   Martha
+     XLVIII.  Domestic
+     XLIX.    I Am Involved in Mystery
+     L.       Mr. Peggotty’s Dream Comes True
+     LI.      The Beginning of a Longer Journey
+     LII.     I Assist at an Explosion
+     LIII.    Another Retrospect
+     LIV.     Mr. Micawber’s Transactions
+     LV.      Tempest
+     LVI.     The New Wound, and the Old
+     LVII.    The Emigrants
+     LVIII.   Absence
+     LIX.     Return
+     LX.      Agnes
+     LXI.     I Am Shown Two Interesting Penitents
+     LXII.    A Light Shines on My Way
+     LXIII.   A Visitor
+     LXIV.    A Last Retrospect
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO 1850 EDITION
+
+
+I do not find it easy to get sufficiently far away from this Book, in
+the first sensations of having finished it, to refer to it with the
+composure which this formal heading would seem to require. My interest
+in it, is so recent and strong; and my mind is so divided between
+pleasure and regret--pleasure in the achievement of a long design,
+regret in the separation from many companions--that I am in danger of
+wearying the reader whom I love, with personal confidences, and private
+emotions.
+
+Besides which, all that I could say of the Story, to any purpose, I have
+endeavoured to say in it.
+
+It would concern the reader little, perhaps, to know, how sorrowfully
+the pen is laid down at the close of a two-years’ imaginative task; or
+how an Author feels as if he were dismissing some portion of himself
+into the shadowy world, when a crowd of the creatures of his brain
+are going from him for ever. Yet, I have nothing else to tell; unless,
+indeed, I were to confess (which might be of less moment still) that no
+one can ever believe this Narrative, in the reading, more than I have
+believed it in the writing.
+
+Instead of looking back, therefore, I will look forward. I cannot close
+this Volume more agreeably to myself, than with a hopeful glance towards
+the time when I shall again put forth my two green leaves once a month,
+and with a faithful remembrance of the genial sun and showers that have
+fallen on these leaves of David Copperfield, and made me happy.
+
+     London, October, 1850.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO THE CHARLES DICKENS EDITION
+
+
+I REMARKED in the original Preface to this Book, that I did not find it
+easy to get sufficiently far away from it, in the first sensations of
+having finished it, to refer to it with the composure which this formal
+heading would seem to require. My interest in it was so recent and
+strong, and my mind was so divided between pleasure and regret--pleasure
+in the achievement of a long design, regret in the separation from many
+companions--that I was in danger of wearying the reader with personal
+confidences and private emotions.
+
+Besides which, all that I could have said of the Story to any purpose, I
+had endeavoured to say in it.
+
+It would concern the reader little, perhaps, to know how sorrowfully the
+pen is laid down at the close of a two-years’ imaginative task; or how
+an Author feels as if he were dismissing some portion of himself into
+the shadowy world, when a crowd of the creatures of his brain are going
+from him for ever. Yet, I had nothing else to tell; unless, indeed, I
+were to confess (which might be of less moment still), that no one can
+ever believe this Narrative, in the reading, more than I believed it in
+the writing.
+
+So true are these avowals at the present day, that I can now only take
+the reader into one confidence more. Of all my books, I like this the
+best. It will be easily believed that I am a fond parent to every child
+of my fancy, and that no one can ever love that family as dearly as I
+love them. But, like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a
+favourite child. And his name is
+
+DAVID COPPERFIELD.
+
+     1869
+
+
+
+
+THE PERSONAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE OF DAVID COPPERFIELD THE YOUNGER
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1. I AM BORN
+
+
+
+Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that
+station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my
+life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have
+been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o’clock at night.
+It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry,
+simultaneously.
+
+In consideration of the day and hour of my birth, it was declared by
+the nurse, and by some sage women in the neighbourhood who had taken a
+lively interest in me several months before there was any possibility
+of our becoming personally acquainted, first, that I was destined to be
+unlucky in life; and secondly, that I was privileged to see ghosts and
+spirits; both these gifts inevitably attaching, as they believed, to
+all unlucky infants of either gender, born towards the small hours on a
+Friday night.
+
+I need say nothing here, on the first head, because nothing can show
+better than my history whether that prediction was verified or falsified
+by the result. On the second branch of the question, I will only remark,
+that unless I ran through that part of my inheritance while I was still
+a baby, I have not come into it yet. But I do not at all complain of
+having been kept out of this property; and if anybody else should be in
+the present enjoyment of it, he is heartily welcome to keep it.
+
+I was born with a caul, which was advertised for sale, in the
+newspapers, at the low price of fifteen guineas. Whether sea-going
+people were short of money about that time, or were short of faith and
+preferred cork jackets, I don’t know; all I know is, that there was but
+one solitary bidding, and that was from an attorney connected with the
+bill-broking business, who offered two pounds in cash, and the balance
+in sherry, but declined to be guaranteed from drowning on any higher
+bargain. Consequently the advertisement was withdrawn at a dead
+loss--for as to sherry, my poor dear mother’s own sherry was in the
+market then--and ten years afterwards, the caul was put up in a raffle
+down in our part of the country, to fifty members at half-a-crown a
+head, the winner to spend five shillings. I was present myself, and I
+remember to have felt quite uncomfortable and confused, at a part of
+myself being disposed of in that way. The caul was won, I recollect, by
+an old lady with a hand-basket, who, very reluctantly, produced from it
+the stipulated five shillings, all in halfpence, and twopence halfpenny
+short--as it took an immense time and a great waste of arithmetic, to
+endeavour without any effect to prove to her. It is a fact which will
+be long remembered as remarkable down there, that she was never drowned,
+but died triumphantly in bed, at ninety-two. I have understood that it
+was, to the last, her proudest boast, that she never had been on the
+water in her life, except upon a bridge; and that over her tea (to which
+she was extremely partial) she, to the last, expressed her indignation
+at the impiety of mariners and others, who had the presumption to go
+‘meandering’ about the world. It was in vain to represent to her
+that some conveniences, tea perhaps included, resulted from this
+objectionable practice. She always returned, with greater emphasis and
+with an instinctive knowledge of the strength of her objection, ‘Let us
+have no meandering.’
+
+Not to meander myself, at present, I will go back to my birth.
+
+I was born at Blunderstone, in Suffolk, or ‘there by’, as they say in
+Scotland. I was a posthumous child. My father’s eyes had closed upon
+the light of this world six months, when mine opened on it. There is
+something strange to me, even now, in the reflection that he never saw
+me; and something stranger yet in the shadowy remembrance that I have
+of my first childish associations with his white grave-stone in the
+churchyard, and of the indefinable compassion I used to feel for it
+lying out alone there in the dark night, when our little parlour
+was warm and bright with fire and candle, and the doors of our house
+were--almost cruelly, it seemed to me sometimes--bolted and locked
+against it.
+
+An aunt of my father’s, and consequently a great-aunt of mine, of whom
+I shall have more to relate by and by, was the principal magnate of our
+family. Miss Trotwood, or Miss Betsey, as my poor mother always called
+her, when she sufficiently overcame her dread of this formidable
+personage to mention her at all (which was seldom), had been married
+to a husband younger than herself, who was very handsome, except in the
+sense of the homely adage, ‘handsome is, that handsome does’--for he
+was strongly suspected of having beaten Miss Betsey, and even of having
+once, on a disputed question of supplies, made some hasty but determined
+arrangements to throw her out of a two pair of stairs’ window. These
+evidences of an incompatibility of temper induced Miss Betsey to pay him
+off, and effect a separation by mutual consent. He went to India with
+his capital, and there, according to a wild legend in our family, he was
+once seen riding on an elephant, in company with a Baboon; but I think
+it must have been a Baboo--or a Begum. Anyhow, from India tidings of his
+death reached home, within ten years. How they affected my aunt, nobody
+knew; for immediately upon the separation, she took her maiden name
+again, bought a cottage in a hamlet on the sea-coast a long way off,
+established herself there as a single woman with one servant, and
+was understood to live secluded, ever afterwards, in an inflexible
+retirement.
+
+My father had once been a favourite of hers, I believe; but she was
+mortally affronted by his marriage, on the ground that my mother was ‘a
+wax doll’. She had never seen my mother, but she knew her to be not
+yet twenty. My father and Miss Betsey never met again. He was double
+my mother’s age when he married, and of but a delicate constitution. He
+died a year afterwards, and, as I have said, six months before I came
+into the world.
+
+This was the state of matters, on the afternoon of, what I may be
+excused for calling, that eventful and important Friday. I can make no
+claim therefore to have known, at that time, how matters stood; or to
+have any remembrance, founded on the evidence of my own senses, of what
+follows.
+
+My mother was sitting by the fire, but poorly in health, and very low in
+spirits, looking at it through her tears, and desponding heavily about
+herself and the fatherless little stranger, who was already welcomed by
+some grosses of prophetic pins, in a drawer upstairs, to a world not at
+all excited on the subject of his arrival; my mother, I say, was sitting
+by the fire, that bright, windy March afternoon, very timid and sad, and
+very doubtful of ever coming alive out of the trial that was before her,
+when, lifting her eyes as she dried them, to the window opposite, she
+saw a strange lady coming up the garden.
+
+My mother had a sure foreboding at the second glance, that it was
+Miss Betsey. The setting sun was glowing on the strange lady, over the
+garden-fence, and she came walking up to the door with a fell rigidity
+of figure and composure of countenance that could have belonged to
+nobody else.
+
+When she reached the house, she gave another proof of her identity.
+My father had often hinted that she seldom conducted herself like any
+ordinary Christian; and now, instead of ringing the bell, she came and
+looked in at that identical window, pressing the end of her nose against
+the glass to that extent, that my poor dear mother used to say it became
+perfectly flat and white in a moment.
+
+She gave my mother such a turn, that I have always been convinced I am
+indebted to Miss Betsey for having been born on a Friday.
+
+My mother had left her chair in her agitation, and gone behind it in
+the corner. Miss Betsey, looking round the room, slowly and inquiringly,
+began on the other side, and carried her eyes on, like a Saracen’s Head
+in a Dutch clock, until they reached my mother. Then she made a frown
+and a gesture to my mother, like one who was accustomed to be obeyed, to
+come and open the door. My mother went.
+
+‘Mrs. David Copperfield, I think,’ said Miss Betsey; the emphasis
+referring, perhaps, to my mother’s mourning weeds, and her condition.
+
+‘Yes,’ said my mother, faintly.
+
+‘Miss Trotwood,’ said the visitor. ‘You have heard of her, I dare say?’
+
+My mother answered she had had that pleasure. And she had a disagreeable
+consciousness of not appearing to imply that it had been an overpowering
+pleasure.
+
+‘Now you see her,’ said Miss Betsey. My mother bent her head, and begged
+her to walk in.
+
+They went into the parlour my mother had come from, the fire in the best
+room on the other side of the passage not being lighted--not having
+been lighted, indeed, since my father’s funeral; and when they were both
+seated, and Miss Betsey said nothing, my mother, after vainly trying to
+restrain herself, began to cry. ‘Oh tut, tut, tut!’ said Miss Betsey, in
+a hurry. ‘Don’t do that! Come, come!’
+
+My mother couldn’t help it notwithstanding, so she cried until she had
+had her cry out.
+
+‘Take off your cap, child,’ said Miss Betsey, ‘and let me see you.’
+
+My mother was too much afraid of her to refuse compliance with this odd
+request, if she had any disposition to do so. Therefore she did as she
+was told, and did it with such nervous hands that her hair (which was
+luxuriant and beautiful) fell all about her face.
+
+‘Why, bless my heart!’ exclaimed Miss Betsey. ‘You are a very Baby!’
+
+My mother was, no doubt, unusually youthful in appearance even for her
+years; she hung her head, as if it were her fault, poor thing, and said,
+sobbing, that indeed she was afraid she was but a childish widow, and
+would be but a childish mother if she lived. In a short pause which
+ensued, she had a fancy that she felt Miss Betsey touch her hair, and
+that with no ungentle hand; but, looking at her, in her timid hope, she
+found that lady sitting with the skirt of her dress tucked up, her hands
+folded on one knee, and her feet upon the fender, frowning at the fire.
+
+‘In the name of Heaven,’ said Miss Betsey, suddenly, ‘why Rookery?’
+
+‘Do you mean the house, ma’am?’ asked my mother.
+
+‘Why Rookery?’ said Miss Betsey. ‘Cookery would have been more to the
+purpose, if you had had any practical ideas of life, either of you.’
+
+‘The name was Mr. Copperfield’s choice,’ returned my mother. ‘When he
+bought the house, he liked to think that there were rooks about it.’
+
+The evening wind made such a disturbance just now, among some tall old
+elm-trees at the bottom of the garden, that neither my mother nor Miss
+Betsey could forbear glancing that way. As the elms bent to one another,
+like giants who were whispering secrets, and after a few seconds of such
+repose, fell into a violent flurry, tossing their wild arms about, as if
+their late confidences were really too wicked for their peace of mind,
+some weatherbeaten ragged old rooks’-nests, burdening their higher
+branches, swung like wrecks upon a stormy sea.
+
+‘Where are the birds?’ asked Miss Betsey.
+
+‘The--?’ My mother had been thinking of something else.
+
+‘The rooks--what has become of them?’ asked Miss Betsey.
+
+‘There have not been any since we have lived here,’ said my mother. ‘We
+thought--Mr. Copperfield thought--it was quite a large rookery; but
+the nests were very old ones, and the birds have deserted them a long
+while.’
+
+‘David Copperfield all over!’ cried Miss Betsey. ‘David Copperfield from
+head to foot! Calls a house a rookery when there’s not a rook near it,
+and takes the birds on trust, because he sees the nests!’
+
+‘Mr. Copperfield,’ returned my mother, ‘is dead, and if you dare to
+speak unkindly of him to me--’
+
+My poor dear mother, I suppose, had some momentary intention of
+committing an assault and battery upon my aunt, who could easily have
+settled her with one hand, even if my mother had been in far better
+training for such an encounter than she was that evening. But it passed
+with the action of rising from her chair; and she sat down again very
+meekly, and fainted.
+
+When she came to herself, or when Miss Betsey had restored her,
+whichever it was, she found the latter standing at the window. The
+twilight was by this time shading down into darkness; and dimly as they
+saw each other, they could not have done that without the aid of the
+fire.
+
+‘Well?’ said Miss Betsey, coming back to her chair, as if she had only
+been taking a casual look at the prospect; ‘and when do you expect--’
+
+‘I am all in a tremble,’ faltered my mother. ‘I don’t know what’s the
+matter. I shall die, I am sure!’
+
+‘No, no, no,’ said Miss Betsey. ‘Have some tea.’
+
+‘Oh dear me, dear me, do you think it will do me any good?’ cried my
+mother in a helpless manner.
+
+‘Of course it will,’ said Miss Betsey. ‘It’s nothing but fancy. What do
+you call your girl?’
+
+‘I don’t know that it will be a girl, yet, ma’am,’ said my mother
+innocently.
+
+‘Bless the Baby!’ exclaimed Miss Betsey, unconsciously quoting the
+second sentiment of the pincushion in the drawer upstairs, but
+applying it to my mother instead of me, ‘I don’t mean that. I mean your
+servant-girl.’
+
+‘Peggotty,’ said my mother.
+
+‘Peggotty!’ repeated Miss Betsey, with some indignation. ‘Do you mean to
+say, child, that any human being has gone into a Christian church,
+and got herself named Peggotty?’ ‘It’s her surname,’ said my mother,
+faintly. ‘Mr. Copperfield called her by it, because her Christian name
+was the same as mine.’
+
+‘Here! Peggotty!’ cried Miss Betsey, opening the parlour door. ‘Tea.
+Your mistress is a little unwell. Don’t dawdle.’
+
+Having issued this mandate with as much potentiality as if she had been
+a recognized authority in the house ever since it had been a house,
+and having looked out to confront the amazed Peggotty coming along the
+passage with a candle at the sound of a strange voice, Miss Betsey shut
+the door again, and sat down as before: with her feet on the fender, the
+skirt of her dress tucked up, and her hands folded on one knee.
+
+‘You were speaking about its being a girl,’ said Miss Betsey. ‘I have no
+doubt it will be a girl. I have a presentiment that it must be a girl.
+Now child, from the moment of the birth of this girl--’
+
+‘Perhaps boy,’ my mother took the liberty of putting in.
+
+‘I tell you I have a presentiment that it must be a girl,’ returned Miss
+Betsey. ‘Don’t contradict. From the moment of this girl’s birth, child,
+I intend to be her friend. I intend to be her godmother, and I beg
+you’ll call her Betsey Trotwood Copperfield. There must be no mistakes
+in life with THIS Betsey Trotwood. There must be no trifling with HER
+affections, poor dear. She must be well brought up, and well guarded
+from reposing any foolish confidences where they are not deserved. I
+must make that MY care.’
+
+There was a twitch of Miss Betsey’s head, after each of these sentences,
+as if her own old wrongs were working within her, and she repressed any
+plainer reference to them by strong constraint. So my mother suspected,
+at least, as she observed her by the low glimmer of the fire: too
+much scared by Miss Betsey, too uneasy in herself, and too subdued and
+bewildered altogether, to observe anything very clearly, or to know what
+to say.
+
+‘And was David good to you, child?’ asked Miss Betsey, when she had been
+silent for a little while, and these motions of her head had gradually
+ceased. ‘Were you comfortable together?’
+
+‘We were very happy,’ said my mother. ‘Mr. Copperfield was only too good
+to me.’
+
+‘What, he spoilt you, I suppose?’ returned Miss Betsey.
+
+‘For being quite alone and dependent on myself in this rough world
+again, yes, I fear he did indeed,’ sobbed my mother.
+
+‘Well! Don’t cry!’ said Miss Betsey. ‘You were not equally matched,
+child--if any two people can be equally matched--and so I asked the
+question. You were an orphan, weren’t you?’ ‘Yes.’
+
+‘And a governess?’
+
+‘I was nursery-governess in a family where Mr. Copperfield came to
+visit. Mr. Copperfield was very kind to me, and took a great deal of
+notice of me, and paid me a good deal of attention, and at last proposed
+to me. And I accepted him. And so we were married,’ said my mother
+simply.
+
+‘Ha! Poor Baby!’ mused Miss Betsey, with her frown still bent upon the
+fire. ‘Do you know anything?’
+
+‘I beg your pardon, ma’am,’ faltered my mother.
+
+‘About keeping house, for instance,’ said Miss Betsey.
+
+‘Not much, I fear,’ returned my mother. ‘Not so much as I could wish.
+But Mr. Copperfield was teaching me--’
+
+[‘Much he knew about it himself!’) said Miss Betsey in a parenthesis.
+--‘And I hope I should have improved, being very anxious to learn, and
+he very patient to teach me, if the great misfortune of his death’--my
+mother broke down again here, and could get no farther.
+
+‘Well, well!’ said Miss Betsey. --‘I kept my housekeeping-book
+regularly, and balanced it with Mr. Copperfield every night,’ cried my
+mother in another burst of distress, and breaking down again.
+
+‘Well, well!’ said Miss Betsey. ‘Don’t cry any more.’ --‘And I am
+sure we never had a word of difference respecting it, except when Mr.
+Copperfield objected to my threes and fives being too much like each
+other, or to my putting curly tails to my sevens and nines,’ resumed my
+mother in another burst, and breaking down again.
+
+‘You’ll make yourself ill,’ said Miss Betsey, ‘and you know that will
+not be good either for you or for my god-daughter. Come! You mustn’t do
+it!’
+
+This argument had some share in quieting my mother, though her
+increasing indisposition had a larger one. There was an interval of
+silence, only broken by Miss Betsey’s occasionally ejaculating ‘Ha!’ as
+she sat with her feet upon the fender.
+
+‘David had bought an annuity for himself with his money, I know,’ said
+she, by and by. ‘What did he do for you?’
+
+‘Mr. Copperfield,’ said my mother, answering with some difficulty, ‘was
+so considerate and good as to secure the reversion of a part of it to
+me.’
+
+‘How much?’ asked Miss Betsey.
+
+‘A hundred and five pounds a year,’ said my mother.
+
+‘He might have done worse,’ said my aunt.
+
+The word was appropriate to the moment. My mother was so much worse
+that Peggotty, coming in with the teaboard and candles, and seeing at a
+glance how ill she was,--as Miss Betsey might have done sooner if there
+had been light enough,--conveyed her upstairs to her own room with all
+speed; and immediately dispatched Ham Peggotty, her nephew, who had been
+for some days past secreted in the house, unknown to my mother, as a
+special messenger in case of emergency, to fetch the nurse and doctor.
+
+Those allied powers were considerably astonished, when they arrived
+within a few minutes of each other, to find an unknown lady of
+portentous appearance, sitting before the fire, with her bonnet tied
+over her left arm, stopping her ears with jewellers’ cotton. Peggotty
+knowing nothing about her, and my mother saying nothing about her,
+she was quite a mystery in the parlour; and the fact of her having a
+magazine of jewellers’ cotton in her pocket, and sticking the article
+in her ears in that way, did not detract from the solemnity of her
+presence.
+
+The doctor having been upstairs and come down again, and having
+satisfied himself, I suppose, that there was a probability of this
+unknown lady and himself having to sit there, face to face, for some
+hours, laid himself out to be polite and social. He was the meekest of
+his sex, the mildest of little men. He sidled in and out of a room, to
+take up the less space. He walked as softly as the Ghost in Hamlet,
+and more slowly. He carried his head on one side, partly in modest
+depreciation of himself, partly in modest propitiation of everybody
+else. It is nothing to say that he hadn’t a word to throw at a dog. He
+couldn’t have thrown a word at a mad dog. He might have offered him one
+gently, or half a one, or a fragment of one; for he spoke as slowly as
+he walked; but he wouldn’t have been rude to him, and he couldn’t have
+been quick with him, for any earthly consideration.
+
+Mr. Chillip, looking mildly at my aunt with his head on one side, and
+making her a little bow, said, in allusion to the jewellers’ cotton, as
+he softly touched his left ear:
+
+‘Some local irritation, ma’am?’
+
+‘What!’ replied my aunt, pulling the cotton out of one ear like a cork.
+
+Mr. Chillip was so alarmed by her abruptness--as he told my mother
+afterwards--that it was a mercy he didn’t lose his presence of mind. But
+he repeated sweetly:
+
+‘Some local irritation, ma’am?’
+
+‘Nonsense!’ replied my aunt, and corked herself again, at one blow.
+
+Mr. Chillip could do nothing after this, but sit and look at her feebly,
+as she sat and looked at the fire, until he was called upstairs again.
+After some quarter of an hour’s absence, he returned.
+
+‘Well?’ said my aunt, taking the cotton out of the ear nearest to him.
+
+‘Well, ma’am,’ returned Mr. Chillip, ‘we are--we are progressing slowly,
+ma’am.’
+
+‘Ba--a--ah!’ said my aunt, with a perfect shake on the contemptuous
+interjection. And corked herself as before.
+
+Really--really--as Mr. Chillip told my mother, he was almost shocked;
+speaking in a professional point of view alone, he was almost shocked.
+But he sat and looked at her, notwithstanding, for nearly two hours,
+as she sat looking at the fire, until he was again called out. After
+another absence, he again returned.
+
+‘Well?’ said my aunt, taking out the cotton on that side again.
+
+‘Well, ma’am,’ returned Mr. Chillip, ‘we are--we are progressing slowly,
+ma’am.’
+
+‘Ya--a--ah!’ said my aunt. With such a snarl at him, that Mr. Chillip
+absolutely could not bear it. It was really calculated to break his
+spirit, he said afterwards. He preferred to go and sit upon the stairs,
+in the dark and a strong draught, until he was again sent for.
+
+Ham Peggotty, who went to the national school, and was a very dragon at
+his catechism, and who may therefore be regarded as a credible witness,
+reported next day, that happening to peep in at the parlour-door an hour
+after this, he was instantly descried by Miss Betsey, then walking to
+and fro in a state of agitation, and pounced upon before he could make
+his escape. That there were now occasional sounds of feet and voices
+overhead which he inferred the cotton did not exclude, from the
+circumstance of his evidently being clutched by the lady as a victim on
+whom to expend her superabundant agitation when the sounds were loudest.
+That, marching him constantly up and down by the collar (as if he had
+been taking too much laudanum), she, at those times, shook him, rumpled
+his hair, made light of his linen, stopped his ears as if she confounded
+them with her own, and otherwise tousled and maltreated him. This was
+in part confirmed by his aunt, who saw him at half past twelve o’clock,
+soon after his release, and affirmed that he was then as red as I was.
+
+The mild Mr. Chillip could not possibly bear malice at such a time, if
+at any time. He sidled into the parlour as soon as he was at liberty,
+and said to my aunt in his meekest manner:
+
+‘Well, ma’am, I am happy to congratulate you.’
+
+‘What upon?’ said my aunt, sharply.
+
+Mr. Chillip was fluttered again, by the extreme severity of my aunt’s
+manner; so he made her a little bow and gave her a little smile, to
+mollify her.
+
+‘Mercy on the man, what’s he doing!’ cried my aunt, impatiently. ‘Can’t
+he speak?’
+
+‘Be calm, my dear ma’am,’ said Mr. Chillip, in his softest accents.
+
+‘There is no longer any occasion for uneasiness, ma’am. Be calm.’
+
+It has since been considered almost a miracle that my aunt didn’t shake
+him, and shake what he had to say, out of him. She only shook her own
+head at him, but in a way that made him quail.
+
+‘Well, ma’am,’ resumed Mr. Chillip, as soon as he had courage, ‘I am
+happy to congratulate you. All is now over, ma’am, and well over.’
+
+During the five minutes or so that Mr. Chillip devoted to the delivery
+of this oration, my aunt eyed him narrowly.
+
+‘How is she?’ said my aunt, folding her arms with her bonnet still tied
+on one of them.
+
+‘Well, ma’am, she will soon be quite comfortable, I hope,’ returned Mr.
+Chillip. ‘Quite as comfortable as we can expect a young mother to be,
+under these melancholy domestic circumstances. There cannot be any
+objection to your seeing her presently, ma’am. It may do her good.’
+
+‘And SHE. How is SHE?’ said my aunt, sharply.
+
+Mr. Chillip laid his head a little more on one side, and looked at my
+aunt like an amiable bird.
+
+‘The baby,’ said my aunt. ‘How is she?’
+
+‘Ma’am,’ returned Mr. Chillip, ‘I apprehended you had known. It’s a
+boy.’
+
+My aunt said never a word, but took her bonnet by the strings, in the
+manner of a sling, aimed a blow at Mr. Chillip’s head with it, put it on
+bent, walked out, and never came back. She vanished like a discontented
+fairy; or like one of those supernatural beings, whom it was popularly
+supposed I was entitled to see; and never came back any more.
+
+No. I lay in my basket, and my mother lay in her bed; but Betsey
+Trotwood Copperfield was for ever in the land of dreams and shadows, the
+tremendous region whence I had so lately travelled; and the light upon
+the window of our room shone out upon the earthly bourne of all such
+travellers, and the mound above the ashes and the dust that once was he,
+without whom I had never been.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 2. I OBSERVE
+
+
+The first objects that assume a distinct presence before me, as I look
+far back, into the blank of my infancy, are my mother with her pretty
+hair and youthful shape, and Peggotty with no shape at all, and eyes so
+dark that they seemed to darken their whole neighbourhood in her face,
+and cheeks and arms so hard and red that I wondered the birds didn’t
+peck her in preference to apples.
+
+I believe I can remember these two at a little distance apart, dwarfed
+to my sight by stooping down or kneeling on the floor, and I going
+unsteadily from the one to the other. I have an impression on my mind
+which I cannot distinguish from actual remembrance, of the touch of
+Peggotty’s forefinger as she used to hold it out to me, and of its being
+roughened by needlework, like a pocket nutmeg-grater.
+
+This may be fancy, though I think the memory of most of us can go
+farther back into such times than many of us suppose; just as I believe
+the power of observation in numbers of very young children to be quite
+wonderful for its closeness and accuracy. Indeed, I think that most
+grown men who are remarkable in this respect, may with greater propriety
+be said not to have lost the faculty, than to have acquired it; the
+rather, as I generally observe such men to retain a certain freshness,
+and gentleness, and capacity of being pleased, which are also an
+inheritance they have preserved from their childhood.
+
+I might have a misgiving that I am ‘meandering’ in stopping to say this,
+but that it brings me to remark that I build these conclusions, in part
+upon my own experience of myself; and if it should appear from
+anything I may set down in this narrative that I was a child of close
+observation, or that as a man I have a strong memory of my childhood, I
+undoubtedly lay claim to both of these characteristics.
+
+Looking back, as I was saying, into the blank of my infancy, the first
+objects I can remember as standing out by themselves from a confusion of
+things, are my mother and Peggotty. What else do I remember? Let me see.
+
+
+There comes out of the cloud, our house--not new to me, but quite
+familiar, in its earliest remembrance. On the ground-floor is Peggotty’s
+kitchen, opening into a back yard; with a pigeon-house on a pole, in
+the centre, without any pigeons in it; a great dog-kennel in a corner,
+without any dog; and a quantity of fowls that look terribly tall to me,
+walking about, in a menacing and ferocious manner. There is one cock who
+gets upon a post to crow, and seems to take particular notice of me as
+I look at him through the kitchen window, who makes me shiver, he is so
+fierce. Of the geese outside the side-gate who come waddling after
+me with their long necks stretched out when I go that way, I dream at
+night: as a man environed by wild beasts might dream of lions.
+
+Here is a long passage--what an enormous perspective I make of
+it!--leading from Peggotty’s kitchen to the front door. A dark
+store-room opens out of it, and that is a place to be run past at
+night; for I don’t know what may be among those tubs and jars and old
+tea-chests, when there is nobody in there with a dimly-burning light,
+letting a mouldy air come out of the door, in which there is the smell
+of soap, pickles, pepper, candles, and coffee, all at one whiff. Then
+there are the two parlours: the parlour in which we sit of an evening,
+my mother and I and Peggotty--for Peggotty is quite our companion, when
+her work is done and we are alone--and the best parlour where we sit
+on a Sunday; grandly, but not so comfortably. There is something of a
+doleful air about that room to me, for Peggotty has told me--I don’t
+know when, but apparently ages ago--about my father’s funeral, and the
+company having their black cloaks put on. One Sunday night my mother
+reads to Peggotty and me in there, how Lazarus was raised up from the
+dead. And I am so frightened that they are afterwards obliged to take me
+out of bed, and show me the quiet churchyard out of the bedroom window,
+with the dead all lying in their graves at rest, below the solemn moon.
+
+There is nothing half so green that I know anywhere, as the grass of
+that churchyard; nothing half so shady as its trees; nothing half so
+quiet as its tombstones. The sheep are feeding there, when I kneel up,
+early in the morning, in my little bed in a closet within my mother’s
+room, to look out at it; and I see the red light shining on the
+sun-dial, and think within myself, ‘Is the sun-dial glad, I wonder, that
+it can tell the time again?’
+
+Here is our pew in the church. What a high-backed pew! With a window
+near it, out of which our house can be seen, and IS seen many times
+during the morning’s service, by Peggotty, who likes to make herself
+as sure as she can that it’s not being robbed, or is not in flames. But
+though Peggotty’s eye wanders, she is much offended if mine does,
+and frowns to me, as I stand upon the seat, that I am to look at the
+clergyman. But I can’t always look at him--I know him without that white
+thing on, and I am afraid of his wondering why I stare so, and perhaps
+stopping the service to inquire--and what am I to do? It’s a dreadful
+thing to gape, but I must do something. I look at my mother, but she
+pretends not to see me. I look at a boy in the aisle, and he makes faces
+at me. I look at the sunlight coming in at the open door through
+the porch, and there I see a stray sheep--I don’t mean a sinner, but
+mutton--half making up his mind to come into the church. I feel that
+if I looked at him any longer, I might be tempted to say something out
+loud; and what would become of me then! I look up at the monumental
+tablets on the wall, and try to think of Mr. Bodgers late of this
+parish, and what the feelings of Mrs. Bodgers must have been, when
+affliction sore, long time Mr. Bodgers bore, and physicians were in
+vain. I wonder whether they called in Mr. Chillip, and he was in vain;
+and if so, how he likes to be reminded of it once a week. I look from
+Mr. Chillip, in his Sunday neckcloth, to the pulpit; and think what a
+good place it would be to play in, and what a castle it would make, with
+another boy coming up the stairs to attack it, and having the velvet
+cushion with the tassels thrown down on his head. In time my eyes
+gradually shut up; and, from seeming to hear the clergyman singing a
+drowsy song in the heat, I hear nothing, until I fall off the seat with
+a crash, and am taken out, more dead than alive, by Peggotty.
+
+And now I see the outside of our house, with the latticed
+bedroom-windows standing open to let in the sweet-smelling air, and the
+ragged old rooks’-nests still dangling in the elm-trees at the bottom
+of the front garden. Now I am in the garden at the back, beyond the
+yard where the empty pigeon-house and dog-kennel are--a very preserve
+of butterflies, as I remember it, with a high fence, and a gate and
+padlock; where the fruit clusters on the trees, riper and richer than
+fruit has ever been since, in any other garden, and where my
+mother gathers some in a basket, while I stand by, bolting furtive
+gooseberries, and trying to look unmoved. A great wind rises, and the
+summer is gone in a moment. We are playing in the winter twilight,
+dancing about the parlour. When my mother is out of breath and rests
+herself in an elbow-chair, I watch her winding her bright curls round
+her fingers, and straitening her waist, and nobody knows better than I
+do that she likes to look so well, and is proud of being so pretty.
+
+That is among my very earliest impressions. That, and a sense that we
+were both a little afraid of Peggotty, and submitted ourselves in most
+things to her direction, were among the first opinions--if they may be
+so called--that I ever derived from what I saw.
+
+Peggotty and I were sitting one night by the parlour fire, alone. I
+had been reading to Peggotty about crocodiles. I must have read very
+perspicuously, or the poor soul must have been deeply interested, for I
+remember she had a cloudy impression, after I had done, that they were
+a sort of vegetable. I was tired of reading, and dead sleepy; but
+having leave, as a high treat, to sit up until my mother came home from
+spending the evening at a neighbour’s, I would rather have died upon
+my post (of course) than have gone to bed. I had reached that stage of
+sleepiness when Peggotty seemed to swell and grow immensely large.
+I propped my eyelids open with my two forefingers, and looked
+perseveringly at her as she sat at work; at the little bit of wax-candle
+she kept for her thread--how old it looked, being so wrinkled in
+all directions!--at the little house with a thatched roof, where the
+yard-measure lived; at her work-box with a sliding lid, with a view of
+St. Paul’s Cathedral (with a pink dome) painted on the top; at the brass
+thimble on her finger; at herself, whom I thought lovely. I felt so
+sleepy, that I knew if I lost sight of anything for a moment, I was
+gone.
+
+‘Peggotty,’ says I, suddenly, ‘were you ever married?’
+
+‘Lord, Master Davy,’ replied Peggotty. ‘What’s put marriage in your
+head?’
+
+She answered with such a start, that it quite awoke me. And then she
+stopped in her work, and looked at me, with her needle drawn out to its
+thread’s length.
+
+‘But WERE you ever married, Peggotty?’ says I. ‘You are a very handsome
+woman, an’t you?’
+
+I thought her in a different style from my mother, certainly; but of
+another school of beauty, I considered her a perfect example. There
+was a red velvet footstool in the best parlour, on which my mother
+had painted a nosegay. The ground-work of that stool, and Peggotty’s
+complexion appeared to me to be one and the same thing. The stool was
+smooth, and Peggotty was rough, but that made no difference.
+
+‘Me handsome, Davy!’ said Peggotty. ‘Lawk, no, my dear! But what put
+marriage in your head?’
+
+‘I don’t know!--You mustn’t marry more than one person at a time, may
+you, Peggotty?’
+
+‘Certainly not,’ says Peggotty, with the promptest decision.
+
+‘But if you marry a person, and the person dies, why then you may marry
+another person, mayn’t you, Peggotty?’
+
+‘YOU MAY,’ says Peggotty, ‘if you choose, my dear. That’s a matter of
+opinion.’
+
+‘But what is your opinion, Peggotty?’ said I.
+
+I asked her, and looked curiously at her, because she looked so
+curiously at me.
+
+‘My opinion is,’ said Peggotty, taking her eyes from me, after a little
+indecision and going on with her work, ‘that I never was married myself,
+Master Davy, and that I don’t expect to be. That’s all I know about the
+subject.’
+
+‘You an’t cross, I suppose, Peggotty, are you?’ said I, after sitting
+quiet for a minute.
+
+I really thought she was, she had been so short with me; but I was quite
+mistaken: for she laid aside her work (which was a stocking of her own),
+and opening her arms wide, took my curly head within them, and gave it
+a good squeeze. I know it was a good squeeze, because, being very plump,
+whenever she made any little exertion after she was dressed, some of the
+buttons on the back of her gown flew off. And I recollect two bursting
+to the opposite side of the parlour, while she was hugging me.
+
+‘Now let me hear some more about the Crorkindills,’ said Peggotty, who
+was not quite right in the name yet, ‘for I an’t heard half enough.’
+
+I couldn’t quite understand why Peggotty looked so queer, or why she
+was so ready to go back to the crocodiles. However, we returned to those
+monsters, with fresh wakefulness on my part, and we left their eggs in
+the sand for the sun to hatch; and we ran away from them, and baffled
+them by constantly turning, which they were unable to do quickly, on
+account of their unwieldy make; and we went into the water after them,
+as natives, and put sharp pieces of timber down their throats; and in
+short we ran the whole crocodile gauntlet. I did, at least; but I had
+my doubts of Peggotty, who was thoughtfully sticking her needle into
+various parts of her face and arms, all the time.
+
+We had exhausted the crocodiles, and begun with the alligators, when
+the garden-bell rang. We went out to the door; and there was my mother,
+looking unusually pretty, I thought, and with her a gentleman with
+beautiful black hair and whiskers, who had walked home with us from
+church last Sunday.
+
+As my mother stooped down on the threshold to take me in her arms and
+kiss me, the gentleman said I was a more highly privileged little fellow
+than a monarch--or something like that; for my later understanding
+comes, I am sensible, to my aid here.
+
+‘What does that mean?’ I asked him, over her shoulder.
+
+He patted me on the head; but somehow, I didn’t like him or his deep
+voice, and I was jealous that his hand should touch my mother’s in
+touching me--which it did. I put it away, as well as I could.
+
+‘Oh, Davy!’ remonstrated my mother.
+
+‘Dear boy!’ said the gentleman. ‘I cannot wonder at his devotion!’
+
+I never saw such a beautiful colour on my mother’s face before. She
+gently chid me for being rude; and, keeping me close to her shawl,
+turned to thank the gentleman for taking so much trouble as to bring her
+home. She put out her hand to him as she spoke, and, as he met it with
+his own, she glanced, I thought, at me.
+
+‘Let us say “good night”, my fine boy,’ said the gentleman, when he had
+bent his head--I saw him!--over my mother’s little glove.
+
+‘Good night!’ said I.
+
+‘Come! Let us be the best friends in the world!’ said the gentleman,
+laughing. ‘Shake hands!’
+
+My right hand was in my mother’s left, so I gave him the other.
+
+‘Why, that’s the Wrong hand, Davy!’ laughed the gentleman.
+
+My mother drew my right hand forward, but I was resolved, for my former
+reason, not to give it him, and I did not. I gave him the other, and he
+shook it heartily, and said I was a brave fellow, and went away.
+
+At this minute I see him turn round in the garden, and give us a last
+look with his ill-omened black eyes, before the door was shut.
+
+Peggotty, who had not said a word or moved a finger, secured the
+fastenings instantly, and we all went into the parlour. My mother,
+contrary to her usual habit, instead of coming to the elbow-chair by the
+fire, remained at the other end of the room, and sat singing to herself.
+--‘Hope you have had a pleasant evening, ma’am,’ said Peggotty, standing
+as stiff as a barrel in the centre of the room, with a candlestick in
+her hand.
+
+‘Much obliged to you, Peggotty,’ returned my mother, in a cheerful
+voice, ‘I have had a VERY pleasant evening.’
+
+‘A stranger or so makes an agreeable change,’ suggested Peggotty.
+
+‘A very agreeable change, indeed,’ returned my mother.
+
+Peggotty continuing to stand motionless in the middle of the room, and
+my mother resuming her singing, I fell asleep, though I was not so sound
+asleep but that I could hear voices, without hearing what they said.
+When I half awoke from this uncomfortable doze, I found Peggotty and my
+mother both in tears, and both talking.
+
+‘Not such a one as this, Mr. Copperfield wouldn’t have liked,’ said
+Peggotty. ‘That I say, and that I swear!’
+
+‘Good Heavens!’ cried my mother, ‘you’ll drive me mad! Was ever any
+poor girl so ill-used by her servants as I am! Why do I do myself
+the injustice of calling myself a girl? Have I never been married,
+Peggotty?’
+
+‘God knows you have, ma’am,’ returned Peggotty. ‘Then, how can you
+dare,’ said my mother--‘you know I don’t mean how can you dare,
+Peggotty, but how can you have the heart--to make me so uncomfortable
+and say such bitter things to me, when you are well aware that I
+haven’t, out of this place, a single friend to turn to?’
+
+‘The more’s the reason,’ returned Peggotty, ‘for saying that it won’t
+do. No! That it won’t do. No! No price could make it do. No!’--I thought
+Peggotty would have thrown the candlestick away, she was so emphatic
+with it.
+
+‘How can you be so aggravating,’ said my mother, shedding more tears
+than before, ‘as to talk in such an unjust manner! How can you go on as
+if it was all settled and arranged, Peggotty, when I tell you over
+and over again, you cruel thing, that beyond the commonest civilities
+nothing has passed! You talk of admiration. What am I to do? If people
+are so silly as to indulge the sentiment, is it my fault? What am I to
+do, I ask you? Would you wish me to shave my head and black my face, or
+disfigure myself with a burn, or a scald, or something of that sort? I
+dare say you would, Peggotty. I dare say you’d quite enjoy it.’
+
+Peggotty seemed to take this aspersion very much to heart, I thought.
+
+‘And my dear boy,’ cried my mother, coming to the elbow-chair in which
+I was, and caressing me, ‘my own little Davy! Is it to be hinted to me
+that I am wanting in affection for my precious treasure, the dearest
+little fellow that ever was!’
+
+‘Nobody never went and hinted no such a thing,’ said Peggotty.
+
+‘You did, Peggotty!’ returned my mother. ‘You know you did. What else
+was it possible to infer from what you said, you unkind creature,
+when you know as well as I do, that on his account only last quarter I
+wouldn’t buy myself a new parasol, though that old green one is frayed
+the whole way up, and the fringe is perfectly mangy? You know it is,
+Peggotty. You can’t deny it.’ Then, turning affectionately to me, with
+her cheek against mine, ‘Am I a naughty mama to you, Davy? Am I a nasty,
+cruel, selfish, bad mama? Say I am, my child; say “yes”, dear boy, and
+Peggotty will love you; and Peggotty’s love is a great deal better than
+mine, Davy. I don’t love you at all, do I?’
+
+At this, we all fell a-crying together. I think I was the loudest of
+the party, but I am sure we were all sincere about it. I was quite
+heart-broken myself, and am afraid that in the first transports of
+wounded tenderness I called Peggotty a ‘Beast’. That honest creature was
+in deep affliction, I remember, and must have become quite buttonless
+on the occasion; for a little volley of those explosives went off,
+when, after having made it up with my mother, she kneeled down by the
+elbow-chair, and made it up with me.
+
+We went to bed greatly dejected. My sobs kept waking me, for a long
+time; and when one very strong sob quite hoisted me up in bed, I found
+my mother sitting on the coverlet, and leaning over me. I fell asleep in
+her arms, after that, and slept soundly.
+
+Whether it was the following Sunday when I saw the gentleman again,
+or whether there was any greater lapse of time before he reappeared,
+I cannot recall. I don’t profess to be clear about dates. But there he
+was, in church, and he walked home with us afterwards. He came in, too,
+to look at a famous geranium we had, in the parlour-window. It did not
+appear to me that he took much notice of it, but before he went he asked
+my mother to give him a bit of the blossom. She begged him to choose it
+for himself, but he refused to do that--I could not understand why--so
+she plucked it for him, and gave it into his hand. He said he would
+never, never part with it any more; and I thought he must be quite a
+fool not to know that it would fall to pieces in a day or two.
+
+Peggotty began to be less with us, of an evening, than she had always
+been. My mother deferred to her very much--more than usual, it occurred
+to me--and we were all three excellent friends; still we were different
+from what we used to be, and were not so comfortable among ourselves.
+Sometimes I fancied that Peggotty perhaps objected to my mother’s
+wearing all the pretty dresses she had in her drawers, or to her
+going so often to visit at that neighbour’s; but I couldn’t, to my
+satisfaction, make out how it was.
+
+Gradually, I became used to seeing the gentleman with the black
+whiskers. I liked him no better than at first, and had the same uneasy
+jealousy of him; but if I had any reason for it beyond a child’s
+instinctive dislike, and a general idea that Peggotty and I could make
+much of my mother without any help, it certainly was not THE reason that
+I might have found if I had been older. No such thing came into my mind,
+or near it. I could observe, in little pieces, as it were; but as to
+making a net of a number of these pieces, and catching anybody in it,
+that was, as yet, beyond me.
+
+One autumn morning I was with my mother in the front garden, when Mr.
+Murdstone--I knew him by that name now--came by, on horseback. He reined
+up his horse to salute my mother, and said he was going to Lowestoft to
+see some friends who were there with a yacht, and merrily proposed to
+take me on the saddle before him if I would like the ride.
+
+The air was so clear and pleasant, and the horse seemed to like the
+idea of the ride so much himself, as he stood snorting and pawing at the
+garden-gate, that I had a great desire to go. So I was sent upstairs
+to Peggotty to be made spruce; and in the meantime Mr. Murdstone
+dismounted, and, with his horse’s bridle drawn over his arm, walked
+slowly up and down on the outer side of the sweetbriar fence, while my
+mother walked slowly up and down on the inner to keep him company. I
+recollect Peggotty and I peeping out at them from my little window; I
+recollect how closely they seemed to be examining the sweetbriar between
+them, as they strolled along; and how, from being in a perfectly angelic
+temper, Peggotty turned cross in a moment, and brushed my hair the wrong
+way, excessively hard.
+
+Mr. Murdstone and I were soon off, and trotting along on the green turf
+by the side of the road. He held me quite easily with one arm, and I
+don’t think I was restless usually; but I could not make up my mind to
+sit in front of him without turning my head sometimes, and looking up in
+his face. He had that kind of shallow black eye--I want a better word to
+express an eye that has no depth in it to be looked into--which, when
+it is abstracted, seems from some peculiarity of light to be disfigured,
+for a moment at a time, by a cast. Several times when I glanced at him,
+I observed that appearance with a sort of awe, and wondered what he
+was thinking about so closely. His hair and whiskers were blacker and
+thicker, looked at so near, than even I had given them credit for being.
+A squareness about the lower part of his face, and the dotted indication
+of the strong black beard he shaved close every day, reminded me of
+the wax-work that had travelled into our neighbourhood some half-a-year
+before. This, his regular eyebrows, and the rich white, and black, and
+brown, of his complexion--confound his complexion, and his memory!--made
+me think him, in spite of my misgivings, a very handsome man. I have no
+doubt that my poor dear mother thought him so too.
+
+We went to an hotel by the sea, where two gentlemen were smoking cigars
+in a room by themselves. Each of them was lying on at least four chairs,
+and had a large rough jacket on. In a corner was a heap of coats and
+boat-cloaks, and a flag, all bundled up together.
+
+They both rolled on to their feet in an untidy sort of manner, when we
+came in, and said, ‘Halloa, Murdstone! We thought you were dead!’
+
+‘Not yet,’ said Mr. Murdstone.
+
+‘And who’s this shaver?’ said one of the gentlemen, taking hold of me.
+
+‘That’s Davy,’ returned Mr. Murdstone.
+
+‘Davy who?’ said the gentleman. ‘Jones?’
+
+‘Copperfield,’ said Mr. Murdstone.
+
+‘What! Bewitching Mrs. Copperfield’s encumbrance?’ cried the gentleman.
+‘The pretty little widow?’
+
+‘Quinion,’ said Mr. Murdstone, ‘take care, if you please. Somebody’s
+sharp.’
+
+‘Who is?’ asked the gentleman, laughing. I looked up, quickly; being
+curious to know.
+
+‘Only Brooks of Sheffield,’ said Mr. Murdstone.
+
+I was quite relieved to find that it was only Brooks of Sheffield; for,
+at first, I really thought it was I.
+
+There seemed to be something very comical in the reputation of Mr.
+Brooks of Sheffield, for both the gentlemen laughed heartily when he
+was mentioned, and Mr. Murdstone was a good deal amused also. After some
+laughing, the gentleman whom he had called Quinion, said:
+
+‘And what is the opinion of Brooks of Sheffield, in reference to the
+projected business?’
+
+‘Why, I don’t know that Brooks understands much about it at present,’
+replied Mr. Murdstone; ‘but he is not generally favourable, I believe.’
+
+There was more laughter at this, and Mr. Quinion said he would ring the
+bell for some sherry in which to drink to Brooks. This he did; and when
+the wine came, he made me have a little, with a biscuit, and, before
+I drank it, stand up and say, ‘Confusion to Brooks of Sheffield!’ The
+toast was received with great applause, and such hearty laughter that
+it made me laugh too; at which they laughed the more. In short, we quite
+enjoyed ourselves.
+
+We walked about on the cliff after that, and sat on the grass, and
+looked at things through a telescope--I could make out nothing myself
+when it was put to my eye, but I pretended I could--and then we came
+back to the hotel to an early dinner. All the time we were out, the two
+gentlemen smoked incessantly--which, I thought, if I might judge from
+the smell of their rough coats, they must have been doing, ever since
+the coats had first come home from the tailor’s. I must not forget that
+we went on board the yacht, where they all three descended into the
+cabin, and were busy with some papers. I saw them quite hard at work,
+when I looked down through the open skylight. They left me, during this
+time, with a very nice man with a very large head of red hair and a very
+small shiny hat upon it, who had got a cross-barred shirt or waistcoat
+on, with ‘Skylark’ in capital letters across the chest. I thought it was
+his name; and that as he lived on board ship and hadn’t a street door
+to put his name on, he put it there instead; but when I called him Mr.
+Skylark, he said it meant the vessel.
+
+I observed all day that Mr. Murdstone was graver and steadier than the
+two gentlemen. They were very gay and careless. They joked freely with
+one another, but seldom with him. It appeared to me that he was
+more clever and cold than they were, and that they regarded him with
+something of my own feeling. I remarked that, once or twice when Mr.
+Quinion was talking, he looked at Mr. Murdstone sideways, as if to make
+sure of his not being displeased; and that once when Mr. Passnidge (the
+other gentleman) was in high spirits, he trod upon his foot, and gave
+him a secret caution with his eyes, to observe Mr. Murdstone, who was
+sitting stern and silent. Nor do I recollect that Mr. Murdstone laughed
+at all that day, except at the Sheffield joke--and that, by the by, was
+his own.
+
+We went home early in the evening. It was a very fine evening, and my
+mother and he had another stroll by the sweetbriar, while I was sent in
+to get my tea. When he was gone, my mother asked me all about the day I
+had had, and what they had said and done. I mentioned what they had said
+about her, and she laughed, and told me they were impudent fellows who
+talked nonsense--but I knew it pleased her. I knew it quite as well as
+I know it now. I took the opportunity of asking if she was at all
+acquainted with Mr. Brooks of Sheffield, but she answered No, only she
+supposed he must be a manufacturer in the knife and fork way.
+
+Can I say of her face--altered as I have reason to remember it, perished
+as I know it is--that it is gone, when here it comes before me at this
+instant, as distinct as any face that I may choose to look on in a
+crowded street? Can I say of her innocent and girlish beauty, that it
+faded, and was no more, when its breath falls on my cheek now, as it
+fell that night? Can I say she ever changed, when my remembrance brings
+her back to life, thus only; and, truer to its loving youth than I have
+been, or man ever is, still holds fast what it cherished then?
+
+I write of her just as she was when I had gone to bed after this talk,
+and she came to bid me good night. She kneeled down playfully by the
+side of the bed, and laying her chin upon her hands, and laughing, said:
+
+‘What was it they said, Davy? Tell me again. I can’t believe it.’
+
+‘“Bewitching--“’ I began.
+
+My mother put her hands upon my lips to stop me.
+
+‘It was never bewitching,’ she said, laughing. ‘It never could have been
+bewitching, Davy. Now I know it wasn’t!’
+
+‘Yes, it was. “Bewitching Mrs. Copperfield”,’ I repeated stoutly. ‘And,
+“pretty.”’
+
+‘No, no, it was never pretty. Not pretty,’ interposed my mother, laying
+her fingers on my lips again.
+
+‘Yes it was. “Pretty little widow.”’
+
+‘What foolish, impudent creatures!’ cried my mother, laughing and
+covering her face. ‘What ridiculous men! An’t they? Davy dear--’
+
+‘Well, Ma.’
+
+‘Don’t tell Peggotty; she might be angry with them. I am dreadfully
+angry with them myself; but I would rather Peggotty didn’t know.’
+
+I promised, of course; and we kissed one another over and over again,
+and I soon fell fast asleep.
+
+It seems to me, at this distance of time, as if it were the next day
+when Peggotty broached the striking and adventurous proposition I am
+about to mention; but it was probably about two months afterwards.
+
+We were sitting as before, one evening (when my mother was out as
+before), in company with the stocking and the yard-measure, and the bit
+of wax, and the box with St. Paul’s on the lid, and the crocodile book,
+when Peggotty, after looking at me several times, and opening her mouth
+as if she were going to speak, without doing it--which I thought was
+merely gaping, or I should have been rather alarmed--said coaxingly:
+
+‘Master Davy, how should you like to go along with me and spend a
+fortnight at my brother’s at Yarmouth? Wouldn’t that be a treat?’
+
+‘Is your brother an agreeable man, Peggotty?’ I inquired, provisionally.
+
+‘Oh, what an agreeable man he is!’ cried Peggotty, holding up her hands.
+‘Then there’s the sea; and the boats and ships; and the fishermen; and
+the beach; and Am to play with--’
+
+Peggotty meant her nephew Ham, mentioned in my first chapter; but she
+spoke of him as a morsel of English Grammar.
+
+I was flushed by her summary of delights, and replied that it would
+indeed be a treat, but what would my mother say?
+
+‘Why then I’ll as good as bet a guinea,’ said Peggotty, intent upon my
+face, ‘that she’ll let us go. I’ll ask her, if you like, as soon as ever
+she comes home. There now!’
+
+‘But what’s she to do while we’re away?’ said I, putting my small elbows
+on the table to argue the point. ‘She can’t live by herself.’
+
+If Peggotty were looking for a hole, all of a sudden, in the heel of
+that stocking, it must have been a very little one indeed, and not worth
+darning.
+
+‘I say! Peggotty! She can’t live by herself, you know.’
+
+‘Oh, bless you!’ said Peggotty, looking at me again at last. ‘Don’t
+you know? She’s going to stay for a fortnight with Mrs. Grayper. Mrs.
+Grayper’s going to have a lot of company.’
+
+Oh! If that was it, I was quite ready to go. I waited, in the utmost
+impatience, until my mother came home from Mrs. Grayper’s (for it was
+that identical neighbour), to ascertain if we could get leave to carry
+out this great idea. Without being nearly so much surprised as I had
+expected, my mother entered into it readily; and it was all arranged
+that night, and my board and lodging during the visit were to be paid
+for.
+
+The day soon came for our going. It was such an early day that it came
+soon, even to me, who was in a fever of expectation, and half afraid
+that an earthquake or a fiery mountain, or some other great convulsion
+of nature, might interpose to stop the expedition. We were to go in a
+carrier’s cart, which departed in the morning after breakfast. I would
+have given any money to have been allowed to wrap myself up over-night,
+and sleep in my hat and boots.
+
+It touches me nearly now, although I tell it lightly, to recollect how
+eager I was to leave my happy home; to think how little I suspected what
+I did leave for ever.
+
+I am glad to recollect that when the carrier’s cart was at the gate, and
+my mother stood there kissing me, a grateful fondness for her and for
+the old place I had never turned my back upon before, made me cry. I am
+glad to know that my mother cried too, and that I felt her heart beat
+against mine.
+
+I am glad to recollect that when the carrier began to move, my mother
+ran out at the gate, and called to him to stop, that she might kiss me
+once more. I am glad to dwell upon the earnestness and love with which
+she lifted up her face to mine, and did so.
+
+As we left her standing in the road, Mr. Murdstone came up to where
+she was, and seemed to expostulate with her for being so moved. I was
+looking back round the awning of the cart, and wondered what business
+it was of his. Peggotty, who was also looking back on the other side,
+seemed anything but satisfied; as the face she brought back in the cart
+denoted.
+
+I sat looking at Peggotty for some time, in a reverie on this
+supposititious case: whether, if she were employed to lose me like the
+boy in the fairy tale, I should be able to track my way home again by
+the buttons she would shed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3. I HAVE A CHANGE
+
+
+The carrier’s horse was the laziest horse in the world, I should hope,
+and shuffled along, with his head down, as if he liked to keep people
+waiting to whom the packages were directed. I fancied, indeed, that he
+sometimes chuckled audibly over this reflection, but the carrier said
+he was only troubled with a cough. The carrier had a way of keeping his
+head down, like his horse, and of drooping sleepily forward as he drove,
+with one of his arms on each of his knees. I say ‘drove’, but it struck
+me that the cart would have gone to Yarmouth quite as well without him,
+for the horse did all that; and as to conversation, he had no idea of it
+but whistling.
+
+Peggotty had a basket of refreshments on her knee, which would have
+lasted us out handsomely, if we had been going to London by the same
+conveyance. We ate a good deal, and slept a good deal. Peggotty always
+went to sleep with her chin upon the handle of the basket, her hold of
+which never relaxed; and I could not have believed unless I had heard
+her do it, that one defenceless woman could have snored so much.
+
+We made so many deviations up and down lanes, and were such a long time
+delivering a bedstead at a public-house, and calling at other places,
+that I was quite tired, and very glad, when we saw Yarmouth. It looked
+rather spongy and soppy, I thought, as I carried my eye over the great
+dull waste that lay across the river; and I could not help wondering, if
+the world were really as round as my geography book said, how any
+part of it came to be so flat. But I reflected that Yarmouth might be
+situated at one of the poles; which would account for it.
+
+As we drew a little nearer, and saw the whole adjacent prospect lying a
+straight low line under the sky, I hinted to Peggotty that a mound or so
+might have improved it; and also that if the land had been a little more
+separated from the sea, and the town and the tide had not been quite
+so much mixed up, like toast and water, it would have been nicer. But
+Peggotty said, with greater emphasis than usual, that we must take
+things as we found them, and that, for her part, she was proud to call
+herself a Yarmouth Bloater.
+
+When we got into the street (which was strange enough to me) and smelt
+the fish, and pitch, and oakum, and tar, and saw the sailors walking
+about, and the carts jingling up and down over the stones, I felt that I
+had done so busy a place an injustice; and said as much to Peggotty, who
+heard my expressions of delight with great complacency, and told me it
+was well known (I suppose to those who had the good fortune to be born
+Bloaters) that Yarmouth was, upon the whole, the finest place in the
+universe.
+
+‘Here’s my Am!’ screamed Peggotty, ‘growed out of knowledge!’
+
+He was waiting for us, in fact, at the public-house; and asked me how I
+found myself, like an old acquaintance. I did not feel, at first, that
+I knew him as well as he knew me, because he had never come to our house
+since the night I was born, and naturally he had the advantage of me.
+But our intimacy was much advanced by his taking me on his back to carry
+me home. He was, now, a huge, strong fellow of six feet high, broad in
+proportion, and round-shouldered; but with a simpering boy’s face and
+curly light hair that gave him quite a sheepish look. He was dressed in
+a canvas jacket, and a pair of such very stiff trousers that they
+would have stood quite as well alone, without any legs in them. And you
+couldn’t so properly have said he wore a hat, as that he was covered in
+a-top, like an old building, with something pitchy.
+
+Ham carrying me on his back and a small box of ours under his arm,
+and Peggotty carrying another small box of ours, we turned down lanes
+bestrewn with bits of chips and little hillocks of sand, and went
+past gas-works, rope-walks, boat-builders’ yards, shipwrights’ yards,
+ship-breakers’ yards, caulkers’ yards, riggers’ lofts, smiths’ forges,
+and a great litter of such places, until we came out upon the dull waste
+I had already seen at a distance; when Ham said,
+
+‘Yon’s our house, Mas’r Davy!’
+
+I looked in all directions, as far as I could stare over the wilderness,
+and away at the sea, and away at the river, but no house could I make
+out. There was a black barge, or some other kind of superannuated boat,
+not far off, high and dry on the ground, with an iron funnel sticking
+out of it for a chimney and smoking very cosily; but nothing else in the
+way of a habitation that was visible to me.
+
+‘That’s not it?’ said I. ‘That ship-looking thing?’
+
+‘That’s it, Mas’r Davy,’ returned Ham.
+
+If it had been Aladdin’s palace, roc’s egg and all, I suppose I could
+not have been more charmed with the romantic idea of living in it. There
+was a delightful door cut in the side, and it was roofed in, and there
+were little windows in it; but the wonderful charm of it was, that
+it was a real boat which had no doubt been upon the water hundreds of
+times, and which had never been intended to be lived in, on dry land.
+That was the captivation of it to me. If it had ever been meant to be
+lived in, I might have thought it small, or inconvenient, or lonely; but
+never having been designed for any such use, it became a perfect abode.
+
+It was beautifully clean inside, and as tidy as possible. There was a
+table, and a Dutch clock, and a chest of drawers, and on the chest of
+drawers there was a tea-tray with a painting on it of a lady with a
+parasol, taking a walk with a military-looking child who was trundling a
+hoop. The tray was kept from tumbling down, by a bible; and the tray, if
+it had tumbled down, would have smashed a quantity of cups and saucers
+and a teapot that were grouped around the book. On the walls there were
+some common coloured pictures, framed and glazed, of scripture subjects;
+such as I have never seen since in the hands of pedlars, without seeing
+the whole interior of Peggotty’s brother’s house again, at one view.
+Abraham in red going to sacrifice Isaac in blue, and Daniel in yellow
+cast into a den of green lions, were the most prominent of these. Over
+the little mantelshelf, was a picture of the ‘Sarah Jane’ lugger, built
+at Sunderland, with a real little wooden stern stuck on to it; a work of
+art, combining composition with carpentry, which I considered to be one
+of the most enviable possessions that the world could afford. There
+were some hooks in the beams of the ceiling, the use of which I did not
+divine then; and some lockers and boxes and conveniences of that sort,
+which served for seats and eked out the chairs.
+
+All this I saw in the first glance after I crossed the
+threshold--child-like, according to my theory--and then Peggotty opened
+a little door and showed me my bedroom. It was the completest and most
+desirable bedroom ever seen--in the stern of the vessel; with a little
+window, where the rudder used to go through; a little looking-glass,
+just the right height for me, nailed against the wall, and framed with
+oyster-shells; a little bed, which there was just room enough to get
+into; and a nosegay of seaweed in a blue mug on the table. The walls
+were whitewashed as white as milk, and the patchwork counterpane made my
+eyes quite ache with its brightness. One thing I particularly noticed
+in this delightful house, was the smell of fish; which was so searching,
+that when I took out my pocket-handkerchief to wipe my nose, I found it
+smelt exactly as if it had wrapped up a lobster. On my imparting this
+discovery in confidence to Peggotty, she informed me that her brother
+dealt in lobsters, crabs, and crawfish; and I afterwards found that a
+heap of these creatures, in a state of wonderful conglomeration with one
+another, and never leaving off pinching whatever they laid hold of,
+were usually to be found in a little wooden outhouse where the pots and
+kettles were kept.
+
+We were welcomed by a very civil woman in a white apron, whom I had seen
+curtseying at the door when I was on Ham’s back, about a quarter of a
+mile off. Likewise by a most beautiful little girl (or I thought her so)
+with a necklace of blue beads on, who wouldn’t let me kiss her when I
+offered to, but ran away and hid herself. By and by, when we had dined
+in a sumptuous manner off boiled dabs, melted butter, and potatoes, with
+a chop for me, a hairy man with a very good-natured face came home. As
+he called Peggotty ‘Lass’, and gave her a hearty smack on the cheek, I
+had no doubt, from the general propriety of her conduct, that he was her
+brother; and so he turned out--being presently introduced to me as Mr.
+Peggotty, the master of the house.
+
+‘Glad to see you, sir,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘You’ll find us rough, sir,
+but you’ll find us ready.’
+
+I thanked him, and replied that I was sure I should be happy in such a
+delightful place.
+
+‘How’s your Ma, sir?’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘Did you leave her pretty
+jolly?’
+
+I gave Mr. Peggotty to understand that she was as jolly as I could wish,
+and that she desired her compliments--which was a polite fiction on my
+part.
+
+‘I’m much obleeged to her, I’m sure,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘Well, sir,
+if you can make out here, fur a fortnut, ‘long wi’ her,’ nodding at his
+sister, ‘and Ham, and little Em’ly, we shall be proud of your company.’
+
+Having done the honours of his house in this hospitable manner, Mr.
+Peggotty went out to wash himself in a kettleful of hot water, remarking
+that ‘cold would never get his muck off’. He soon returned, greatly
+improved in appearance; but so rubicund, that I couldn’t help
+thinking his face had this in common with the lobsters, crabs, and
+crawfish,--that it went into the hot water very black, and came out very
+red.
+
+After tea, when the door was shut and all was made snug (the nights
+being cold and misty now), it seemed to me the most delicious retreat
+that the imagination of man could conceive. To hear the wind getting
+up out at sea, to know that the fog was creeping over the desolate flat
+outside, and to look at the fire, and think that there was no house near
+but this one, and this one a boat, was like enchantment. Little Em’ly
+had overcome her shyness, and was sitting by my side upon the lowest and
+least of the lockers, which was just large enough for us two, and just
+fitted into the chimney corner. Mrs. Peggotty with the white apron, was
+knitting on the opposite side of the fire. Peggotty at her needlework
+was as much at home with St. Paul’s and the bit of wax-candle, as if
+they had never known any other roof. Ham, who had been giving me my
+first lesson in all-fours, was trying to recollect a scheme of telling
+fortunes with the dirty cards, and was printing off fishy impressions of
+his thumb on all the cards he turned. Mr. Peggotty was smoking his pipe.
+I felt it was a time for conversation and confidence.
+
+‘Mr. Peggotty!’ says I.
+
+‘Sir,’ says he.
+
+‘Did you give your son the name of Ham, because you lived in a sort of
+ark?’
+
+Mr. Peggotty seemed to think it a deep idea, but answered:
+
+‘No, sir. I never giv him no name.’
+
+‘Who gave him that name, then?’ said I, putting question number two of
+the catechism to Mr. Peggotty.
+
+‘Why, sir, his father giv it him,’ said Mr. Peggotty.
+
+‘I thought you were his father!’
+
+‘My brother Joe was his father,’ said Mr. Peggotty.
+
+‘Dead, Mr. Peggotty?’ I hinted, after a respectful pause.
+
+‘Drowndead,’ said Mr. Peggotty.
+
+I was very much surprised that Mr. Peggotty was not Ham’s father, and
+began to wonder whether I was mistaken about his relationship to anybody
+else there. I was so curious to know, that I made up my mind to have it
+out with Mr. Peggotty.
+
+‘Little Em’ly,’ I said, glancing at her. ‘She is your daughter, isn’t
+she, Mr. Peggotty?’
+
+‘No, sir. My brother-in-law, Tom, was her father.’
+
+I couldn’t help it. ‘--Dead, Mr. Peggotty?’ I hinted, after another
+respectful silence.
+
+‘Drowndead,’ said Mr. Peggotty.
+
+I felt the difficulty of resuming the subject, but had not got to the
+bottom of it yet, and must get to the bottom somehow. So I said:
+
+‘Haven’t you ANY children, Mr. Peggotty?’
+
+‘No, master,’ he answered with a short laugh. ‘I’m a bacheldore.’
+
+‘A bachelor!’ I said, astonished. ‘Why, who’s that, Mr. Peggotty?’
+pointing to the person in the apron who was knitting.
+
+‘That’s Missis Gummidge,’ said Mr. Peggotty.
+
+‘Gummidge, Mr. Peggotty?’
+
+But at this point Peggotty--I mean my own peculiar Peggotty--made such
+impressive motions to me not to ask any more questions, that I could
+only sit and look at all the silent company, until it was time to go to
+bed. Then, in the privacy of my own little cabin, she informed me that
+Ham and Em’ly were an orphan nephew and niece, whom my host had
+at different times adopted in their childhood, when they were left
+destitute: and that Mrs. Gummidge was the widow of his partner in
+a boat, who had died very poor. He was but a poor man himself, said
+Peggotty, but as good as gold and as true as steel--those were her
+similes. The only subject, she informed me, on which he ever showed a
+violent temper or swore an oath, was this generosity of his; and if it
+were ever referred to, by any one of them, he struck the table a heavy
+blow with his right hand (had split it on one such occasion), and swore
+a dreadful oath that he would be ‘Gormed’ if he didn’t cut and run
+for good, if it was ever mentioned again. It appeared, in answer to
+my inquiries, that nobody had the least idea of the etymology of this
+terrible verb passive to be gormed; but that they all regarded it as
+constituting a most solemn imprecation.
+
+I was very sensible of my entertainer’s goodness, and listened to the
+women’s going to bed in another little crib like mine at the opposite
+end of the boat, and to him and Ham hanging up two hammocks for
+themselves on the hooks I had noticed in the roof, in a very luxurious
+state of mind, enhanced by my being sleepy. As slumber gradually stole
+upon me, I heard the wind howling out at sea and coming on across the
+flat so fiercely, that I had a lazy apprehension of the great deep
+rising in the night. But I bethought myself that I was in a boat, after
+all; and that a man like Mr. Peggotty was not a bad person to have on
+board if anything did happen.
+
+Nothing happened, however, worse than morning. Almost as soon as it
+shone upon the oyster-shell frame of my mirror I was out of bed, and out
+with little Em’ly, picking up stones upon the beach.
+
+‘You’re quite a sailor, I suppose?’ I said to Em’ly. I don’t know that I
+supposed anything of the kind, but I felt it an act of gallantry to
+say something; and a shining sail close to us made such a pretty little
+image of itself, at the moment, in her bright eye, that it came into my
+head to say this.
+
+‘No,’ replied Em’ly, shaking her head, ‘I’m afraid of the sea.’
+
+‘Afraid!’ I said, with a becoming air of boldness, and looking very big
+at the mighty ocean. ‘I an’t!’
+
+‘Ah! but it’s cruel,’ said Em’ly. ‘I have seen it very cruel to some of
+our men. I have seen it tear a boat as big as our house, all to pieces.’
+
+‘I hope it wasn’t the boat that--’
+
+‘That father was drownded in?’ said Em’ly. ‘No. Not that one, I never
+see that boat.’
+
+‘Nor him?’ I asked her.
+
+Little Em’ly shook her head. ‘Not to remember!’
+
+Here was a coincidence! I immediately went into an explanation how I had
+never seen my own father; and how my mother and I had always lived
+by ourselves in the happiest state imaginable, and lived so then, and
+always meant to live so; and how my father’s grave was in the churchyard
+near our house, and shaded by a tree, beneath the boughs of which I had
+walked and heard the birds sing many a pleasant morning. But there were
+some differences between Em’ly’s orphanhood and mine, it appeared. She
+had lost her mother before her father; and where her father’s grave was
+no one knew, except that it was somewhere in the depths of the sea.
+
+‘Besides,’ said Em’ly, as she looked about for shells and pebbles, ‘your
+father was a gentleman and your mother is a lady; and my father was a
+fisherman and my mother was a fisherman’s daughter, and my uncle Dan is
+a fisherman.’
+
+‘Dan is Mr. Peggotty, is he?’ said I.
+
+‘Uncle Dan--yonder,’ answered Em’ly, nodding at the boat-house.
+
+‘Yes. I mean him. He must be very good, I should think?’
+
+‘Good?’ said Em’ly. ‘If I was ever to be a lady, I’d give him a sky-blue
+coat with diamond buttons, nankeen trousers, a red velvet waistcoat, a
+cocked hat, a large gold watch, a silver pipe, and a box of money.’
+
+I said I had no doubt that Mr. Peggotty well deserved these treasures.
+I must acknowledge that I felt it difficult to picture him quite at his
+ease in the raiment proposed for him by his grateful little niece, and
+that I was particularly doubtful of the policy of the cocked hat; but I
+kept these sentiments to myself.
+
+Little Em’ly had stopped and looked up at the sky in her enumeration
+of these articles, as if they were a glorious vision. We went on again,
+picking up shells and pebbles.
+
+‘You would like to be a lady?’ I said.
+
+Emily looked at me, and laughed and nodded ‘yes’.
+
+‘I should like it very much. We would all be gentlefolks together, then.
+Me, and uncle, and Ham, and Mrs. Gummidge. We wouldn’t mind then, when
+there comes stormy weather.---Not for our own sakes, I mean. We would
+for the poor fishermen’s, to be sure, and we’d help ‘em with money when
+they come to any hurt.’ This seemed to me to be a very satisfactory and
+therefore not at all improbable picture. I expressed my pleasure in the
+contemplation of it, and little Em’ly was emboldened to say, shyly,
+
+‘Don’t you think you are afraid of the sea, now?’
+
+It was quiet enough to reassure me, but I have no doubt if I had seen a
+moderately large wave come tumbling in, I should have taken to my heels,
+with an awful recollection of her drowned relations. However, I said
+‘No,’ and I added, ‘You don’t seem to be either, though you say you
+are,’--for she was walking much too near the brink of a sort of old
+jetty or wooden causeway we had strolled upon, and I was afraid of her
+falling over.
+
+‘I’m not afraid in this way,’ said little Em’ly. ‘But I wake when it
+blows, and tremble to think of Uncle Dan and Ham and believe I hear ‘em
+crying out for help. That’s why I should like so much to be a lady. But
+I’m not afraid in this way. Not a bit. Look here!’
+
+She started from my side, and ran along a jagged timber which protruded
+from the place we stood upon, and overhung the deep water at some
+height, without the least defence. The incident is so impressed on my
+remembrance, that if I were a draughtsman I could draw its form here,
+I dare say, accurately as it was that day, and little Em’ly springing
+forward to her destruction (as it appeared to me), with a look that I
+have never forgotten, directed far out to sea.
+
+The light, bold, fluttering little figure turned and came back safe
+to me, and I soon laughed at my fears, and at the cry I had uttered;
+fruitlessly in any case, for there was no one near. But there have been
+times since, in my manhood, many times there have been, when I have
+thought, Is it possible, among the possibilities of hidden things, that
+in the sudden rashness of the child and her wild look so far off, there
+was any merciful attraction of her into danger, any tempting her towards
+him permitted on the part of her dead father, that her life might have
+a chance of ending that day? There has been a time since when I have
+wondered whether, if the life before her could have been revealed to me
+at a glance, and so revealed as that a child could fully comprehend it,
+and if her preservation could have depended on a motion of my hand, I
+ought to have held it up to save her. There has been a time since--I do
+not say it lasted long, but it has been--when I have asked myself the
+question, would it have been better for little Em’ly to have had the
+waters close above her head that morning in my sight; and when I have
+answered Yes, it would have been.
+
+This may be premature. I have set it down too soon, perhaps. But let it
+stand.
+
+We strolled a long way, and loaded ourselves with things that we thought
+curious, and put some stranded starfish carefully back into the water--I
+hardly know enough of the race at this moment to be quite certain
+whether they had reason to feel obliged to us for doing so, or the
+reverse--and then made our way home to Mr. Peggotty’s dwelling. We
+stopped under the lee of the lobster-outhouse to exchange an innocent
+kiss, and went in to breakfast glowing with health and pleasure.
+
+‘Like two young mavishes,’ Mr. Peggotty said. I knew this meant, in our
+local dialect, like two young thrushes, and received it as a compliment.
+
+Of course I was in love with little Em’ly. I am sure I loved that
+baby quite as truly, quite as tenderly, with greater purity and more
+disinterestedness, than can enter into the best love of a later time
+of life, high and ennobling as it is. I am sure my fancy raised up
+something round that blue-eyed mite of a child, which etherealized,
+and made a very angel of her. If, any sunny forenoon, she had spread
+a little pair of wings and flown away before my eyes, I don’t think I
+should have regarded it as much more than I had had reason to expect.
+
+We used to walk about that dim old flat at Yarmouth in a loving manner,
+hours and hours. The days sported by us, as if Time had not grown up
+himself yet, but were a child too, and always at play. I told Em’ly
+I adored her, and that unless she confessed she adored me I should be
+reduced to the necessity of killing myself with a sword. She said she
+did, and I have no doubt she did.
+
+As to any sense of inequality, or youthfulness, or other difficulty
+in our way, little Em’ly and I had no such trouble, because we had no
+future. We made no more provision for growing older, than we did for
+growing younger. We were the admiration of Mrs. Gummidge and Peggotty,
+who used to whisper of an evening when we sat, lovingly, on our little
+locker side by side, ‘Lor! wasn’t it beautiful!’ Mr. Peggotty smiled at
+us from behind his pipe, and Ham grinned all the evening and did nothing
+else. They had something of the sort of pleasure in us, I suppose, that
+they might have had in a pretty toy, or a pocket model of the Colosseum.
+
+I soon found out that Mrs. Gummidge did not always make herself so
+agreeable as she might have been expected to do, under the circumstances
+of her residence with Mr. Peggotty. Mrs. Gummidge’s was rather a fretful
+disposition, and she whimpered more sometimes than was comfortable for
+other parties in so small an establishment. I was very sorry for
+her; but there were moments when it would have been more agreeable, I
+thought, if Mrs. Gummidge had had a convenient apartment of her own to
+retire to, and had stopped there until her spirits revived.
+
+Mr. Peggotty went occasionally to a public-house called The Willing
+Mind. I discovered this, by his being out on the second or third evening
+of our visit, and by Mrs. Gummidge’s looking up at the Dutch clock,
+between eight and nine, and saying he was there, and that, what was
+more, she had known in the morning he would go there.
+
+Mrs. Gummidge had been in a low state all day, and had burst into tears
+in the forenoon, when the fire smoked. ‘I am a lone lorn creetur’,’ were
+Mrs. Gummidge’s words, when that unpleasant occurrence took place, ‘and
+everythink goes contrary with me.’
+
+‘Oh, it’ll soon leave off,’ said Peggotty--I again mean our
+Peggotty--‘and besides, you know, it’s not more disagreeable to you than
+to us.’
+
+‘I feel it more,’ said Mrs. Gummidge.
+
+It was a very cold day, with cutting blasts of wind. Mrs. Gummidge’s
+peculiar corner of the fireside seemed to me to be the warmest and
+snuggest in the place, as her chair was certainly the easiest, but it
+didn’t suit her that day at all. She was constantly complaining of the
+cold, and of its occasioning a visitation in her back which she called
+‘the creeps’. At last she shed tears on that subject, and said again
+that she was ‘a lone lorn creetur’ and everythink went contrary with
+her’.
+
+‘It is certainly very cold,’ said Peggotty. ‘Everybody must feel it so.’
+
+‘I feel it more than other people,’ said Mrs. Gummidge.
+
+So at dinner; when Mrs. Gummidge was always helped immediately after me,
+to whom the preference was given as a visitor of distinction. The
+fish were small and bony, and the potatoes were a little burnt. We all
+acknowledged that we felt this something of a disappointment; but Mrs.
+Gummidge said she felt it more than we did, and shed tears again, and
+made that former declaration with great bitterness.
+
+Accordingly, when Mr. Peggotty came home about nine o’clock, this
+unfortunate Mrs. Gummidge was knitting in her corner, in a very wretched
+and miserable condition. Peggotty had been working cheerfully. Ham had
+been patching up a great pair of waterboots; and I, with little Em’ly
+by my side, had been reading to them. Mrs. Gummidge had never made any
+other remark than a forlorn sigh, and had never raised her eyes since
+tea.
+
+‘Well, Mates,’ said Mr. Peggotty, taking his seat, ‘and how are you?’
+
+We all said something, or looked something, to welcome him, except Mrs.
+Gummidge, who only shook her head over her knitting.
+
+‘What’s amiss?’ said Mr. Peggotty, with a clap of his hands. ‘Cheer up,
+old Mawther!’ (Mr. Peggotty meant old girl.)
+
+Mrs. Gummidge did not appear to be able to cheer up. She took out an old
+black silk handkerchief and wiped her eyes; but instead of putting it
+in her pocket, kept it out, and wiped them again, and still kept it out,
+ready for use.
+
+‘What’s amiss, dame?’ said Mr. Peggotty.
+
+‘Nothing,’ returned Mrs. Gummidge. ‘You’ve come from The Willing Mind,
+Dan’l?’
+
+‘Why yes, I’ve took a short spell at The Willing Mind tonight,’ said Mr.
+Peggotty.
+
+‘I’m sorry I should drive you there,’ said Mrs. Gummidge.
+
+‘Drive! I don’t want no driving,’ returned Mr. Peggotty with an honest
+laugh. ‘I only go too ready.’
+
+‘Very ready,’ said Mrs. Gummidge, shaking her head, and wiping her eyes.
+‘Yes, yes, very ready. I am sorry it should be along of me that you’re
+so ready.’
+
+‘Along o’ you! It an’t along o’ you!’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘Don’t ye
+believe a bit on it.’
+
+‘Yes, yes, it is,’ cried Mrs. Gummidge. ‘I know what I am. I know that I
+am a lone lorn creetur’, and not only that everythink goes contrary with
+me, but that I go contrary with everybody. Yes, yes. I feel more than
+other people do, and I show it more. It’s my misfortun’.’
+
+I really couldn’t help thinking, as I sat taking in all this, that the
+misfortune extended to some other members of that family besides Mrs.
+Gummidge. But Mr. Peggotty made no such retort, only answering with
+another entreaty to Mrs. Gummidge to cheer up.
+
+‘I an’t what I could wish myself to be,’ said Mrs. Gummidge. ‘I am far
+from it. I know what I am. My troubles has made me contrary. I feel my
+troubles, and they make me contrary. I wish I didn’t feel ‘em, but I
+do. I wish I could be hardened to ‘em, but I an’t. I make the house
+uncomfortable. I don’t wonder at it. I’ve made your sister so all day,
+and Master Davy.’
+
+Here I was suddenly melted, and roared out, ‘No, you haven’t, Mrs.
+Gummidge,’ in great mental distress.
+
+‘It’s far from right that I should do it,’ said Mrs. Gummidge. ‘It an’t
+a fit return. I had better go into the house and die. I am a lone lorn
+creetur’, and had much better not make myself contrary here. If thinks
+must go contrary with me, and I must go contrary myself, let me go
+contrary in my parish. Dan’l, I’d better go into the house, and die and
+be a riddance!’
+
+Mrs. Gummidge retired with these words, and betook herself to bed. When
+she was gone, Mr. Peggotty, who had not exhibited a trace of any feeling
+but the profoundest sympathy, looked round upon us, and nodding his head
+with a lively expression of that sentiment still animating his face,
+said in a whisper:
+
+‘She’s been thinking of the old ‘un!’
+
+I did not quite understand what old one Mrs. Gummidge was supposed to
+have fixed her mind upon, until Peggotty, on seeing me to bed, explained
+that it was the late Mr. Gummidge; and that her brother always took that
+for a received truth on such occasions, and that it always had a moving
+effect upon him. Some time after he was in his hammock that night, I
+heard him myself repeat to Ham, ‘Poor thing! She’s been thinking of the
+old ‘un!’ And whenever Mrs. Gummidge was overcome in a similar manner
+during the remainder of our stay (which happened some few times), he
+always said the same thing in extenuation of the circumstance, and
+always with the tenderest commiseration.
+
+So the fortnight slipped away, varied by nothing but the variation of
+the tide, which altered Mr. Peggotty’s times of going out and coming in,
+and altered Ham’s engagements also. When the latter was unemployed, he
+sometimes walked with us to show us the boats and ships, and once
+or twice he took us for a row. I don’t know why one slight set of
+impressions should be more particularly associated with a place than
+another, though I believe this obtains with most people, in reference
+especially to the associations of their childhood. I never hear the
+name, or read the name, of Yarmouth, but I am reminded of a certain
+Sunday morning on the beach, the bells ringing for church, little Em’ly
+leaning on my shoulder, Ham lazily dropping stones into the water, and
+the sun, away at sea, just breaking through the heavy mist, and showing
+us the ships, like their own shadows.
+
+At last the day came for going home. I bore up against the separation
+from Mr. Peggotty and Mrs. Gummidge, but my agony of mind at leaving
+little Em’ly was piercing. We went arm-in-arm to the public-house where
+the carrier put up, and I promised, on the road, to write to her. (I
+redeemed that promise afterwards, in characters larger than those in
+which apartments are usually announced in manuscript, as being to let.)
+We were greatly overcome at parting; and if ever, in my life, I have had
+a void made in my heart, I had one made that day.
+
+Now, all the time I had been on my visit, I had been ungrateful to my
+home again, and had thought little or nothing about it. But I was no
+sooner turned towards it, than my reproachful young conscience seemed
+to point that way with a ready finger; and I felt, all the more for the
+sinking of my spirits, that it was my nest, and that my mother was my
+comforter and friend.
+
+This gained upon me as we went along; so that the nearer we drew, the
+more familiar the objects became that we passed, the more excited I was
+to get there, and to run into her arms. But Peggotty, instead of sharing
+in those transports, tried to check them (though very kindly), and
+looked confused and out of sorts.
+
+Blunderstone Rookery would come, however, in spite of her, when the
+carrier’s horse pleased--and did. How well I recollect it, on a cold
+grey afternoon, with a dull sky, threatening rain!
+
+The door opened, and I looked, half laughing and half crying in my
+pleasant agitation, for my mother. It was not she, but a strange
+servant.
+
+‘Why, Peggotty!’ I said, ruefully, ‘isn’t she come home?’
+
+‘Yes, yes, Master Davy,’ said Peggotty. ‘She’s come home. Wait a bit,
+Master Davy, and I’ll--I’ll tell you something.’
+
+Between her agitation, and her natural awkwardness in getting out of the
+cart, Peggotty was making a most extraordinary festoon of herself, but
+I felt too blank and strange to tell her so. When she had got down, she
+took me by the hand; led me, wondering, into the kitchen; and shut the
+door.
+
+‘Peggotty!’ said I, quite frightened. ‘What’s the matter?’
+
+‘Nothing’s the matter, bless you, Master Davy dear!’ she answered,
+assuming an air of sprightliness.
+
+‘Something’s the matter, I’m sure. Where’s mama?’
+
+‘Where’s mama, Master Davy?’ repeated Peggotty.
+
+‘Yes. Why hasn’t she come out to the gate, and what have we come in here
+for? Oh, Peggotty!’ My eyes were full, and I felt as if I were going to
+tumble down.
+
+‘Bless the precious boy!’ cried Peggotty, taking hold of me. ‘What is
+it? Speak, my pet!’
+
+‘Not dead, too! Oh, she’s not dead, Peggotty?’
+
+Peggotty cried out No! with an astonishing volume of voice; and then sat
+down, and began to pant, and said I had given her a turn.
+
+I gave her a hug to take away the turn, or to give her another turn
+in the right direction, and then stood before her, looking at her in
+anxious inquiry.
+
+‘You see, dear, I should have told you before now,’ said Peggotty,
+‘but I hadn’t an opportunity. I ought to have made it, perhaps, but
+I couldn’t azackly’--that was always the substitute for exactly, in
+Peggotty’s militia of words--‘bring my mind to it.’
+
+‘Go on, Peggotty,’ said I, more frightened than before.
+
+‘Master Davy,’ said Peggotty, untying her bonnet with a shaking hand,
+and speaking in a breathless sort of way. ‘What do you think? You have
+got a Pa!’
+
+I trembled, and turned white. Something--I don’t know what, or
+how--connected with the grave in the churchyard, and the raising of the
+dead, seemed to strike me like an unwholesome wind.
+
+‘A new one,’ said Peggotty.
+
+‘A new one?’ I repeated.
+
+Peggotty gave a gasp, as if she were swallowing something that was very
+hard, and, putting out her hand, said:
+
+‘Come and see him.’
+
+‘I don’t want to see him.’ --‘And your mama,’ said Peggotty.
+
+I ceased to draw back, and we went straight to the best parlour, where
+she left me. On one side of the fire, sat my mother; on the other, Mr.
+Murdstone. My mother dropped her work, and arose hurriedly, but timidly
+I thought.
+
+‘Now, Clara my dear,’ said Mr. Murdstone. ‘Recollect! control yourself,
+always control yourself! Davy boy, how do you do?’
+
+I gave him my hand. After a moment of suspense, I went and kissed my
+mother: she kissed me, patted me gently on the shoulder, and sat down
+again to her work. I could not look at her, I could not look at him,
+I knew quite well that he was looking at us both; and I turned to the
+window and looked out there, at some shrubs that were drooping their
+heads in the cold.
+
+As soon as I could creep away, I crept upstairs. My old dear bedroom was
+changed, and I was to lie a long way off. I rambled downstairs to find
+anything that was like itself, so altered it all seemed; and roamed into
+the yard. I very soon started back from there, for the empty dog-kennel
+was filled up with a great dog--deep mouthed and black-haired like
+Him--and he was very angry at the sight of me, and sprang out to get at
+me.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 4. I FALL INTO DISGRACE
+
+
+If the room to which my bed was removed were a sentient thing that could
+give evidence, I might appeal to it at this day--who sleeps there now,
+I wonder!--to bear witness for me what a heavy heart I carried to it.
+I went up there, hearing the dog in the yard bark after me all the way
+while I climbed the stairs; and, looking as blank and strange upon the
+room as the room looked upon me, sat down with my small hands crossed,
+and thought.
+
+I thought of the oddest things. Of the shape of the room, of the
+cracks in the ceiling, of the paper on the walls, of the flaws in
+the window-glass making ripples and dimples on the prospect, of the
+washing-stand being rickety on its three legs, and having a discontented
+something about it, which reminded me of Mrs. Gummidge under the
+influence of the old one. I was crying all the time, but, except that I
+was conscious of being cold and dejected, I am sure I never thought
+why I cried. At last in my desolation I began to consider that I was
+dreadfully in love with little Em’ly, and had been torn away from her to
+come here where no one seemed to want me, or to care about me, half as
+much as she did. This made such a very miserable piece of business of
+it, that I rolled myself up in a corner of the counterpane, and cried
+myself to sleep.
+
+I was awoke by somebody saying ‘Here he is!’ and uncovering my hot head.
+My mother and Peggotty had come to look for me, and it was one of them
+who had done it.
+
+‘Davy,’ said my mother. ‘What’s the matter?’
+
+I thought it was very strange that she should ask me, and answered,
+‘Nothing.’ I turned over on my face, I recollect, to hide my trembling
+lip, which answered her with greater truth. ‘Davy,’ said my mother.
+‘Davy, my child!’
+
+I dare say no words she could have uttered would have affected me
+so much, then, as her calling me her child. I hid my tears in the
+bedclothes, and pressed her from me with my hand, when she would have
+raised me up.
+
+‘This is your doing, Peggotty, you cruel thing!’ said my mother. ‘I have
+no doubt at all about it. How can you reconcile it to your conscience,
+I wonder, to prejudice my own boy against me, or against anybody who is
+dear to me? What do you mean by it, Peggotty?’
+
+Poor Peggotty lifted up her hands and eyes, and only answered, in a
+sort of paraphrase of the grace I usually repeated after dinner, ‘Lord
+forgive you, Mrs. Copperfield, and for what you have said this minute,
+may you never be truly sorry!’
+
+‘It’s enough to distract me,’ cried my mother. ‘In my honeymoon, too,
+when my most inveterate enemy might relent, one would think, and not
+envy me a little peace of mind and happiness. Davy, you naughty boy!
+Peggotty, you savage creature! Oh, dear me!’ cried my mother, turning
+from one of us to the other, in her pettish wilful manner, ‘what a
+troublesome world this is, when one has the most right to expect it to
+be as agreeable as possible!’
+
+I felt the touch of a hand that I knew was neither hers nor Peggotty’s,
+and slipped to my feet at the bed-side. It was Mr. Murdstone’s hand, and
+he kept it on my arm as he said:
+
+‘What’s this? Clara, my love, have you forgotten?--Firmness, my dear!’
+
+‘I am very sorry, Edward,’ said my mother. ‘I meant to be very good, but
+I am so uncomfortable.’
+
+‘Indeed!’ he answered. ‘That’s a bad hearing, so soon, Clara.’
+
+‘I say it’s very hard I should be made so now,’ returned my mother,
+pouting; ‘and it is--very hard--isn’t it?’
+
+He drew her to him, whispered in her ear, and kissed her. I knew as
+well, when I saw my mother’s head lean down upon his shoulder, and her
+arm touch his neck--I knew as well that he could mould her pliant nature
+into any form he chose, as I know, now, that he did it.
+
+‘Go you below, my love,’ said Mr. Murdstone. ‘David and I will come
+down, together. My friend,’ turning a darkening face on Peggotty, when
+he had watched my mother out, and dismissed her with a nod and a smile;
+‘do you know your mistress’s name?’
+
+‘She has been my mistress a long time, sir,’ answered Peggotty, ‘I ought
+to know it.’ ‘That’s true,’ he answered. ‘But I thought I heard you, as
+I came upstairs, address her by a name that is not hers. She has taken
+mine, you know. Will you remember that?’
+
+Peggotty, with some uneasy glances at me, curtseyed herself out of the
+room without replying; seeing, I suppose, that she was expected to go,
+and had no excuse for remaining. When we two were left alone, he shut
+the door, and sitting on a chair, and holding me standing before him,
+looked steadily into my eyes. I felt my own attracted, no less steadily,
+to his. As I recall our being opposed thus, face to face, I seem again
+to hear my heart beat fast and high.
+
+‘David,’ he said, making his lips thin, by pressing them together, ‘if I
+have an obstinate horse or dog to deal with, what do you think I do?’
+
+‘I don’t know.’
+
+‘I beat him.’
+
+I had answered in a kind of breathless whisper, but I felt, in my
+silence, that my breath was shorter now.
+
+‘I make him wince, and smart. I say to myself, “I’ll conquer that
+fellow”; and if it were to cost him all the blood he had, I should do
+it. What is that upon your face?’
+
+‘Dirt,’ I said.
+
+He knew it was the mark of tears as well as I. But if he had asked the
+question twenty times, each time with twenty blows, I believe my baby
+heart would have burst before I would have told him so.
+
+‘You have a good deal of intelligence for a little fellow,’ he said,
+with a grave smile that belonged to him, ‘and you understood me very
+well, I see. Wash that face, sir, and come down with me.’
+
+He pointed to the washing-stand, which I had made out to be like Mrs.
+Gummidge, and motioned me with his head to obey him directly. I had
+little doubt then, and I have less doubt now, that he would have knocked
+me down without the least compunction, if I had hesitated.
+
+‘Clara, my dear,’ he said, when I had done his bidding, and he walked me
+into the parlour, with his hand still on my arm; ‘you will not be made
+uncomfortable any more, I hope. We shall soon improve our youthful
+humours.’
+
+God help me, I might have been improved for my whole life, I might have
+been made another creature perhaps, for life, by a kind word at that
+season. A word of encouragement and explanation, of pity for my childish
+ignorance, of welcome home, of reassurance to me that it was home, might
+have made me dutiful to him in my heart henceforth, instead of in my
+hypocritical outside, and might have made me respect instead of hate
+him. I thought my mother was sorry to see me standing in the room so
+scared and strange, and that, presently, when I stole to a chair, she
+followed me with her eyes more sorrowfully still--missing, perhaps, some
+freedom in my childish tread--but the word was not spoken, and the time
+for it was gone.
+
+We dined alone, we three together. He seemed to be very fond of my
+mother--I am afraid I liked him none the better for that--and she was
+very fond of him. I gathered from what they said, that an elder sister
+of his was coming to stay with them, and that she was expected that
+evening. I am not certain whether I found out then, or afterwards, that,
+without being actively concerned in any business, he had some share in,
+or some annual charge upon the profits of, a wine-merchant’s house
+in London, with which his family had been connected from his
+great-grandfather’s time, and in which his sister had a similar
+interest; but I may mention it in this place, whether or no.
+
+After dinner, when we were sitting by the fire, and I was meditating an
+escape to Peggotty without having the hardihood to slip away, lest
+it should offend the master of the house, a coach drove up to the
+garden-gate and he went out to receive the visitor. My mother followed
+him. I was timidly following her, when she turned round at the parlour
+door, in the dusk, and taking me in her embrace as she had been used to
+do, whispered me to love my new father and be obedient to him. She did
+this hurriedly and secretly, as if it were wrong, but tenderly; and,
+putting out her hand behind her, held mine in it, until we came near
+to where he was standing in the garden, where she let mine go, and drew
+hers through his arm.
+
+It was Miss Murdstone who was arrived, and a gloomy-looking lady she
+was; dark, like her brother, whom she greatly resembled in face and
+voice; and with very heavy eyebrows, nearly meeting over her large nose,
+as if, being disabled by the wrongs of her sex from wearing whiskers,
+she had carried them to that account. She brought with her two
+uncompromising hard black boxes, with her initials on the lids in hard
+brass nails. When she paid the coachman she took her money out of a hard
+steel purse, and she kept the purse in a very jail of a bag which hung
+upon her arm by a heavy chain, and shut up like a bite. I had never, at
+that time, seen such a metallic lady altogether as Miss Murdstone was.
+
+She was brought into the parlour with many tokens of welcome, and there
+formally recognized my mother as a new and near relation. Then she
+looked at me, and said:
+
+‘Is that your boy, sister-in-law?’
+
+My mother acknowledged me.
+
+‘Generally speaking,’ said Miss Murdstone, ‘I don’t like boys. How d’ye
+do, boy?’
+
+Under these encouraging circumstances, I replied that I was very well,
+and that I hoped she was the same; with such an indifferent grace, that
+Miss Murdstone disposed of me in two words:
+
+‘Wants manner!’
+
+Having uttered which, with great distinctness, she begged the favour of
+being shown to her room, which became to me from that time forth a place
+of awe and dread, wherein the two black boxes were never seen open or
+known to be left unlocked, and where (for I peeped in once or twice when
+she was out) numerous little steel fetters and rivets, with which Miss
+Murdstone embellished herself when she was dressed, generally hung upon
+the looking-glass in formidable array.
+
+As well as I could make out, she had come for good, and had no intention
+of ever going again. She began to ‘help’ my mother next morning, and was
+in and out of the store-closet all day, putting things to rights, and
+making havoc in the old arrangements. Almost the first remarkable thing
+I observed in Miss Murdstone was, her being constantly haunted by
+a suspicion that the servants had a man secreted somewhere on the
+premises. Under the influence of this delusion, she dived into the
+coal-cellar at the most untimely hours, and scarcely ever opened the
+door of a dark cupboard without clapping it to again, in the belief that
+she had got him.
+
+Though there was nothing very airy about Miss Murdstone, she was a
+perfect Lark in point of getting up. She was up (and, as I believe
+to this hour, looking for that man) before anybody in the house was
+stirring. Peggotty gave it as her opinion that she even slept with one
+eye open; but I could not concur in this idea; for I tried it myself
+after hearing the suggestion thrown out, and found it couldn’t be done.
+
+On the very first morning after her arrival she was up and ringing her
+bell at cock-crow. When my mother came down to breakfast and was going
+to make the tea, Miss Murdstone gave her a kind of peck on the cheek,
+which was her nearest approach to a kiss, and said:
+
+‘Now, Clara, my dear, I am come here, you know, to relieve you of all
+the trouble I can. You’re much too pretty and thoughtless’--my mother
+blushed but laughed, and seemed not to dislike this character--‘to have
+any duties imposed upon you that can be undertaken by me. If you’ll be
+so good as give me your keys, my dear, I’ll attend to all this sort of
+thing in future.’
+
+From that time, Miss Murdstone kept the keys in her own little jail all
+day, and under her pillow all night, and my mother had no more to do
+with them than I had.
+
+My mother did not suffer her authority to pass from her without a shadow
+of protest. One night when Miss Murdstone had been developing certain
+household plans to her brother, of which he signified his approbation,
+my mother suddenly began to cry, and said she thought she might have
+been consulted.
+
+‘Clara!’ said Mr. Murdstone sternly. ‘Clara! I wonder at you.’
+
+‘Oh, it’s very well to say you wonder, Edward!’ cried my mother, ‘and
+it’s very well for you to talk about firmness, but you wouldn’t like it
+yourself.’
+
+Firmness, I may observe, was the grand quality on which both Mr. and
+Miss Murdstone took their stand. However I might have expressed
+my comprehension of it at that time, if I had been called upon, I
+nevertheless did clearly comprehend in my own way, that it was another
+name for tyranny; and for a certain gloomy, arrogant, devil’s humour,
+that was in them both. The creed, as I should state it now, was this.
+Mr. Murdstone was firm; nobody in his world was to be so firm as Mr.
+Murdstone; nobody else in his world was to be firm at all, for everybody
+was to be bent to his firmness. Miss Murdstone was an exception.
+She might be firm, but only by relationship, and in an inferior and
+tributary degree. My mother was another exception. She might be firm,
+and must be; but only in bearing their firmness, and firmly believing
+there was no other firmness upon earth.
+
+‘It’s very hard,’ said my mother, ‘that in my own house--’
+
+‘My own house?’ repeated Mr. Murdstone. ‘Clara!’
+
+‘OUR own house, I mean,’ faltered my mother, evidently frightened--‘I
+hope you must know what I mean, Edward--it’s very hard that in YOUR own
+house I may not have a word to say about domestic matters. I am sure
+I managed very well before we were married. There’s evidence,’ said my
+mother, sobbing; ‘ask Peggotty if I didn’t do very well when I wasn’t
+interfered with!’
+
+‘Edward,’ said Miss Murdstone, ‘let there be an end of this. I go
+tomorrow.’
+
+‘Jane Murdstone,’ said her brother, ‘be silent! How dare you to
+insinuate that you don’t know my character better than your words
+imply?’
+
+‘I am sure,’ my poor mother went on, at a grievous disadvantage, and
+with many tears, ‘I don’t want anybody to go. I should be very
+miserable and unhappy if anybody was to go. I don’t ask much. I am not
+unreasonable. I only want to be consulted sometimes. I am very much
+obliged to anybody who assists me, and I only want to be consulted as a
+mere form, sometimes. I thought you were pleased, once, with my being a
+little inexperienced and girlish, Edward--I am sure you said so--but you
+seem to hate me for it now, you are so severe.’
+
+‘Edward,’ said Miss Murdstone, again, ‘let there be an end of this. I go
+tomorrow.’
+
+‘Jane Murdstone,’ thundered Mr. Murdstone. ‘Will you be silent? How dare
+you?’
+
+Miss Murdstone made a jail-delivery of her pocket-handkerchief, and held
+it before her eyes.
+
+‘Clara,’ he continued, looking at my mother, ‘you surprise me! You
+astound me! Yes, I had a satisfaction in the thought of marrying
+an inexperienced and artless person, and forming her character, and
+infusing into it some amount of that firmness and decision of which
+it stood in need. But when Jane Murdstone is kind enough to come to my
+assistance in this endeavour, and to assume, for my sake, a condition
+something like a housekeeper’s, and when she meets with a base return--’
+
+‘Oh, pray, pray, Edward,’ cried my mother, ‘don’t accuse me of being
+ungrateful. I am sure I am not ungrateful. No one ever said I was
+before. I have many faults, but not that. Oh, don’t, my dear!’
+
+‘When Jane Murdstone meets, I say,’ he went on, after waiting until my
+mother was silent, ‘with a base return, that feeling of mine is chilled
+and altered.’
+
+‘Don’t, my love, say that!’ implored my mother very piteously.
+‘Oh, don’t, Edward! I can’t bear to hear it. Whatever I am, I am
+affectionate. I know I am affectionate. I wouldn’t say it, if I
+wasn’t sure that I am. Ask Peggotty. I am sure she’ll tell you I’m
+affectionate.’
+
+‘There is no extent of mere weakness, Clara,’ said Mr. Murdstone in
+reply, ‘that can have the least weight with me. You lose breath.’
+
+‘Pray let us be friends,’ said my mother, ‘I couldn’t live under
+coldness or unkindness. I am so sorry. I have a great many defects, I
+know, and it’s very good of you, Edward, with your strength of mind, to
+endeavour to correct them for me. Jane, I don’t object to anything. I
+should be quite broken-hearted if you thought of leaving--’ My mother
+was too much overcome to go on.
+
+‘Jane Murdstone,’ said Mr. Murdstone to his sister, ‘any harsh words
+between us are, I hope, uncommon. It is not my fault that so unusual an
+occurrence has taken place tonight. I was betrayed into it by another.
+Nor is it your fault. You were betrayed into it by another. Let us both
+try to forget it. And as this,’ he added, after these magnanimous words,
+‘is not a fit scene for the boy--David, go to bed!’
+
+I could hardly find the door, through the tears that stood in my eyes.
+I was so sorry for my mother’s distress; but I groped my way out, and
+groped my way up to my room in the dark, without even having the heart
+to say good night to Peggotty, or to get a candle from her. When her
+coming up to look for me, an hour or so afterwards, awoke me, she said
+that my mother had gone to bed poorly, and that Mr. and Miss Murdstone
+were sitting alone.
+
+Going down next morning rather earlier than usual, I paused outside the
+parlour door, on hearing my mother’s voice. She was very earnestly and
+humbly entreating Miss Murdstone’s pardon, which that lady granted, and
+a perfect reconciliation took place. I never knew my mother afterwards
+to give an opinion on any matter, without first appealing to Miss
+Murdstone, or without having first ascertained by some sure means, what
+Miss Murdstone’s opinion was; and I never saw Miss Murdstone, when out
+of temper (she was infirm that way), move her hand towards her bag as
+if she were going to take out the keys and offer to resign them to my
+mother, without seeing that my mother was in a terrible fright.
+
+The gloomy taint that was in the Murdstone blood, darkened the Murdstone
+religion, which was austere and wrathful. I have thought, since,
+that its assuming that character was a necessary consequence of Mr.
+Murdstone’s firmness, which wouldn’t allow him to let anybody off from
+the utmost weight of the severest penalties he could find any excuse
+for. Be this as it may, I well remember the tremendous visages with
+which we used to go to church, and the changed air of the place. Again,
+the dreaded Sunday comes round, and I file into the old pew first, like
+a guarded captive brought to a condemned service. Again, Miss Murdstone,
+in a black velvet gown, that looks as if it had been made out of a pall,
+follows close upon me; then my mother; then her husband. There is no
+Peggotty now, as in the old time. Again, I listen to Miss Murdstone
+mumbling the responses, and emphasizing all the dread words with a cruel
+relish. Again, I see her dark eyes roll round the church when she says
+‘miserable sinners’, as if she were calling all the congregation names.
+Again, I catch rare glimpses of my mother, moving her lips timidly
+between the two, with one of them muttering at each ear like low
+thunder. Again, I wonder with a sudden fear whether it is likely that
+our good old clergyman can be wrong, and Mr. and Miss Murdstone right,
+and that all the angels in Heaven can be destroying angels. Again, if I
+move a finger or relax a muscle of my face, Miss Murdstone pokes me with
+her prayer-book, and makes my side ache.
+
+Yes, and again, as we walk home, I note some neighbours looking at my
+mother and at me, and whispering. Again, as the three go on arm-in-arm,
+and I linger behind alone, I follow some of those looks, and wonder if
+my mother’s step be really not so light as I have seen it, and if the
+gaiety of her beauty be really almost worried away. Again, I wonder
+whether any of the neighbours call to mind, as I do, how we used to
+walk home together, she and I; and I wonder stupidly about that, all the
+dreary dismal day.
+
+There had been some talk on occasions of my going to boarding-school.
+Mr. and Miss Murdstone had originated it, and my mother had of course
+agreed with them. Nothing, however, was concluded on the subject yet.
+In the meantime, I learnt lessons at home. Shall I ever forget those
+lessons! They were presided over nominally by my mother, but really by
+Mr. Murdstone and his sister, who were always present, and found them
+a favourable occasion for giving my mother lessons in that miscalled
+firmness, which was the bane of both our lives. I believe I was kept
+at home for that purpose. I had been apt enough to learn, and willing
+enough, when my mother and I had lived alone together. I can faintly
+remember learning the alphabet at her knee. To this day, when I look
+upon the fat black letters in the primer, the puzzling novelty of their
+shapes, and the easy good-nature of O and Q and S, seem to present
+themselves again before me as they used to do. But they recall no
+feeling of disgust or reluctance. On the contrary, I seem to have walked
+along a path of flowers as far as the crocodile-book, and to have been
+cheered by the gentleness of my mother’s voice and manner all the
+way. But these solemn lessons which succeeded those, I remember as the
+death-blow of my peace, and a grievous daily drudgery and misery. They
+were very long, very numerous, very hard--perfectly unintelligible,
+some of them, to me--and I was generally as much bewildered by them as I
+believe my poor mother was herself.
+
+Let me remember how it used to be, and bring one morning back again.
+
+I come into the second-best parlour after breakfast, with my books,
+and an exercise-book, and a slate. My mother is ready for me at her
+writing-desk, but not half so ready as Mr. Murdstone in his easy-chair
+by the window (though he pretends to be reading a book), or as Miss
+Murdstone, sitting near my mother stringing steel beads. The very sight
+of these two has such an influence over me, that I begin to feel the
+words I have been at infinite pains to get into my head, all sliding
+away, and going I don’t know where. I wonder where they do go, by the
+by?
+
+I hand the first book to my mother. Perhaps it is a grammar, perhaps a
+history, or geography. I take a last drowning look at the page as I give
+it into her hand, and start off aloud at a racing pace while I have
+got it fresh. I trip over a word. Mr. Murdstone looks up. I trip
+over another word. Miss Murdstone looks up. I redden, tumble over
+half-a-dozen words, and stop. I think my mother would show me the book
+if she dared, but she does not dare, and she says softly:
+
+‘Oh, Davy, Davy!’
+
+‘Now, Clara,’ says Mr. Murdstone, ‘be firm with the boy. Don’t say, “Oh,
+Davy, Davy!” That’s childish. He knows his lesson, or he does not know
+it.’
+
+‘He does NOT know it,’ Miss Murdstone interposes awfully.
+
+‘I am really afraid he does not,’ says my mother.
+
+‘Then, you see, Clara,’ returns Miss Murdstone, ‘you should just give
+him the book back, and make him know it.’
+
+‘Yes, certainly,’ says my mother; ‘that is what I intend to do, my dear
+Jane. Now, Davy, try once more, and don’t be stupid.’
+
+I obey the first clause of the injunction by trying once more, but am
+not so successful with the second, for I am very stupid. I tumble down
+before I get to the old place, at a point where I was all right before,
+and stop to think. But I can’t think about the lesson. I think of the
+number of yards of net in Miss Murdstone’s cap, or of the price of Mr.
+Murdstone’s dressing-gown, or any such ridiculous problem that I have
+no business with, and don’t want to have anything at all to do with. Mr.
+Murdstone makes a movement of impatience which I have been expecting
+for a long time. Miss Murdstone does the same. My mother glances
+submissively at them, shuts the book, and lays it by as an arrear to be
+worked out when my other tasks are done.
+
+There is a pile of these arrears very soon, and it swells like a rolling
+snowball. The bigger it gets, the more stupid I get. The case is so
+hopeless, and I feel that I am wallowing in such a bog of nonsense, that
+I give up all idea of getting out, and abandon myself to my fate. The
+despairing way in which my mother and I look at each other, as I blunder
+on, is truly melancholy. But the greatest effect in these miserable
+lessons is when my mother (thinking nobody is observing her) tries
+to give me the cue by the motion of her lips. At that instant, Miss
+Murdstone, who has been lying in wait for nothing else all along, says
+in a deep warning voice:
+
+‘Clara!’
+
+My mother starts, colours, and smiles faintly. Mr. Murdstone comes out
+of his chair, takes the book, throws it at me or boxes my ears with it,
+and turns me out of the room by the shoulders.
+
+Even when the lessons are done, the worst is yet to happen, in the shape
+of an appalling sum. This is invented for me, and delivered to me orally
+by Mr. Murdstone, and begins, ‘If I go into a cheesemonger’s shop, and
+buy five thousand double-Gloucester cheeses at fourpence-halfpenny each,
+present payment’--at which I see Miss Murdstone secretly overjoyed.
+I pore over these cheeses without any result or enlightenment until
+dinner-time, when, having made a Mulatto of myself by getting the dirt
+of the slate into the pores of my skin, I have a slice of bread to help
+me out with the cheeses, and am considered in disgrace for the rest of
+the evening.
+
+It seems to me, at this distance of time, as if my unfortunate studies
+generally took this course. I could have done very well if I had been
+without the Murdstones; but the influence of the Murdstones upon me was
+like the fascination of two snakes on a wretched young bird. Even when
+I did get through the morning with tolerable credit, there was not
+much gained but dinner; for Miss Murdstone never could endure to see me
+untasked, and if I rashly made any show of being unemployed, called her
+brother’s attention to me by saying, ‘Clara, my dear, there’s nothing
+like work--give your boy an exercise’; which caused me to be clapped
+down to some new labour, there and then. As to any recreation with other
+children of my age, I had very little of that; for the gloomy theology
+of the Murdstones made all children out to be a swarm of little vipers
+(though there WAS a child once set in the midst of the Disciples), and
+held that they contaminated one another.
+
+The natural result of this treatment, continued, I suppose, for some six
+months or more, was to make me sullen, dull, and dogged. I was not
+made the less so by my sense of being daily more and more shut out and
+alienated from my mother. I believe I should have been almost stupefied
+but for one circumstance.
+
+It was this. My father had left a small collection of books in a little
+room upstairs, to which I had access (for it adjoined my own) and which
+nobody else in our house ever troubled. From that blessed little room,
+Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humphrey Clinker, Tom Jones, the
+Vicar of Wakefield, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and Robinson Crusoe, came
+out, a glorious host, to keep me company. They kept alive my fancy, and
+my hope of something beyond that place and time,--they, and the Arabian
+Nights, and the Tales of the Genii,--and did me no harm; for whatever
+harm was in some of them was not there for me; I knew nothing of it. It
+is astonishing to me now, how I found time, in the midst of my porings
+and blunderings over heavier themes, to read those books as I did. It
+is curious to me how I could ever have consoled myself under my
+small troubles (which were great troubles to me), by impersonating my
+favourite characters in them--as I did--and by putting Mr. and Miss
+Murdstone into all the bad ones--which I did too. I have been Tom Jones
+(a child’s Tom Jones, a harmless creature) for a week together. I have
+sustained my own idea of Roderick Random for a month at a stretch, I
+verily believe. I had a greedy relish for a few volumes of Voyages and
+Travels--I forget what, now--that were on those shelves; and for days
+and days I can remember to have gone about my region of our house,
+armed with the centre-piece out of an old set of boot-trees--the perfect
+realization of Captain Somebody, of the Royal British Navy, in danger of
+being beset by savages, and resolved to sell his life at a great price.
+The Captain never lost dignity, from having his ears boxed with the
+Latin Grammar. I did; but the Captain was a Captain and a hero, in
+despite of all the grammars of all the languages in the world, dead or
+alive.
+
+This was my only and my constant comfort. When I think of it, the
+picture always rises in my mind, of a summer evening, the boys at play
+in the churchyard, and I sitting on my bed, reading as if for life.
+Every barn in the neighbourhood, every stone in the church, and every
+foot of the churchyard, had some association of its own, in my mind,
+connected with these books, and stood for some locality made famous in
+them. I have seen Tom Pipes go climbing up the church-steeple; I have
+watched Strap, with the knapsack on his back, stopping to rest himself
+upon the wicket-gate; and I know that Commodore Trunnion held that club
+with Mr. Pickle, in the parlour of our little village alehouse.
+
+The reader now understands, as well as I do, what I was when I came to
+that point of my youthful history to which I am now coming again.
+
+One morning when I went into the parlour with my books, I found my
+mother looking anxious, Miss Murdstone looking firm, and Mr. Murdstone
+binding something round the bottom of a cane--a lithe and limber cane,
+which he left off binding when I came in, and poised and switched in the
+air.
+
+‘I tell you, Clara,’ said Mr. Murdstone, ‘I have been often flogged
+myself.’
+
+‘To be sure; of course,’ said Miss Murdstone.
+
+‘Certainly, my dear Jane,’ faltered my mother, meekly. ‘But--but do you
+think it did Edward good?’
+
+‘Do you think it did Edward harm, Clara?’ asked Mr. Murdstone, gravely.
+
+‘That’s the point,’ said his sister.
+
+To this my mother returned, ‘Certainly, my dear Jane,’ and said no more.
+
+I felt apprehensive that I was personally interested in this dialogue,
+and sought Mr. Murdstone’s eye as it lighted on mine.
+
+‘Now, David,’ he said--and I saw that cast again as he said it--‘you
+must be far more careful today than usual.’ He gave the cane another
+poise, and another switch; and having finished his preparation of it,
+laid it down beside him, with an impressive look, and took up his book.
+
+This was a good freshener to my presence of mind, as a beginning. I felt
+the words of my lessons slipping off, not one by one, or line by line,
+but by the entire page; I tried to lay hold of them; but they seemed,
+if I may so express it, to have put skates on, and to skim away from me
+with a smoothness there was no checking.
+
+We began badly, and went on worse. I had come in with an idea of
+distinguishing myself rather, conceiving that I was very well prepared;
+but it turned out to be quite a mistake. Book after book was added to
+the heap of failures, Miss Murdstone being firmly watchful of us all the
+time. And when we came at last to the five thousand cheeses (canes he
+made it that day, I remember), my mother burst out crying.
+
+‘Clara!’ said Miss Murdstone, in her warning voice.
+
+‘I am not quite well, my dear Jane, I think,’ said my mother.
+
+I saw him wink, solemnly, at his sister, as he rose and said, taking up
+the cane:
+
+‘Why, Jane, we can hardly expect Clara to bear, with perfect firmness,
+the worry and torment that David has occasioned her today. That would be
+stoical. Clara is greatly strengthened and improved, but we can hardly
+expect so much from her. David, you and I will go upstairs, boy.’
+
+As he took me out at the door, my mother ran towards us. Miss Murdstone
+said, ‘Clara! are you a perfect fool?’ and interfered. I saw my mother
+stop her ears then, and I heard her crying.
+
+He walked me up to my room slowly and gravely--I am certain he had a
+delight in that formal parade of executing justice--and when we got
+there, suddenly twisted my head under his arm.
+
+‘Mr. Murdstone! Sir!’ I cried to him. ‘Don’t! Pray don’t beat me! I have
+tried to learn, sir, but I can’t learn while you and Miss Murdstone are
+by. I can’t indeed!’
+
+‘Can’t you, indeed, David?’ he said. ‘We’ll try that.’
+
+He had my head as in a vice, but I twined round him somehow, and stopped
+him for a moment, entreating him not to beat me. It was only a moment
+that I stopped him, for he cut me heavily an instant afterwards, and in
+the same instant I caught the hand with which he held me in my mouth,
+between my teeth, and bit it through. It sets my teeth on edge to think
+of it.
+
+He beat me then, as if he would have beaten me to death. Above all the
+noise we made, I heard them running up the stairs, and crying out--I
+heard my mother crying out--and Peggotty. Then he was gone; and the
+door was locked outside; and I was lying, fevered and hot, and torn, and
+sore, and raging in my puny way, upon the floor.
+
+How well I recollect, when I became quiet, what an unnatural stillness
+seemed to reign through the whole house! How well I remember, when my
+smart and passion began to cool, how wicked I began to feel!
+
+I sat listening for a long while, but there was not a sound. I crawled
+up from the floor, and saw my face in the glass, so swollen, red, and
+ugly that it almost frightened me. My stripes were sore and stiff, and
+made me cry afresh, when I moved; but they were nothing to the guilt I
+felt. It lay heavier on my breast than if I had been a most atrocious
+criminal, I dare say.
+
+It had begun to grow dark, and I had shut the window (I had been lying,
+for the most part, with my head upon the sill, by turns crying, dozing,
+and looking listlessly out), when the key was turned, and Miss Murdstone
+came in with some bread and meat, and milk. These she put down upon the
+table without a word, glaring at me the while with exemplary firmness,
+and then retired, locking the door after her.
+
+Long after it was dark I sat there, wondering whether anybody else would
+come. When this appeared improbable for that night, I undressed, and
+went to bed; and, there, I began to wonder fearfully what would be done
+to me. Whether it was a criminal act that I had committed? Whether I
+should be taken into custody, and sent to prison? Whether I was at all
+in danger of being hanged?
+
+I never shall forget the waking, next morning; the being cheerful and
+fresh for the first moment, and then the being weighed down by the stale
+and dismal oppression of remembrance. Miss Murdstone reappeared before
+I was out of bed; told me, in so many words, that I was free to walk in
+the garden for half an hour and no longer; and retired, leaving the door
+open, that I might avail myself of that permission.
+
+I did so, and did so every morning of my imprisonment, which lasted five
+days. If I could have seen my mother alone, I should have gone down on
+my knees to her and besought her forgiveness; but I saw no one, Miss
+Murdstone excepted, during the whole time--except at evening prayers in
+the parlour; to which I was escorted by Miss Murdstone after everybody
+else was placed; where I was stationed, a young outlaw, all alone by
+myself near the door; and whence I was solemnly conducted by my jailer,
+before any one arose from the devotional posture. I only observed that
+my mother was as far off from me as she could be, and kept her face
+another way so that I never saw it; and that Mr. Murdstone’s hand was
+bound up in a large linen wrapper.
+
+The length of those five days I can convey no idea of to any one. They
+occupy the place of years in my remembrance. The way in which I listened
+to all the incidents of the house that made themselves audible to me;
+the ringing of bells, the opening and shutting of doors, the murmuring
+of voices, the footsteps on the stairs; to any laughing, whistling, or
+singing, outside, which seemed more dismal than anything else to me in
+my solitude and disgrace--the uncertain pace of the hours, especially
+at night, when I would wake thinking it was morning, and find that the
+family were not yet gone to bed, and that all the length of night had
+yet to come--the depressed dreams and nightmares I had--the return of
+day, noon, afternoon, evening, when the boys played in the churchyard,
+and I watched them from a distance within the room, being ashamed to
+show myself at the window lest they should know I was a prisoner--the
+strange sensation of never hearing myself speak--the fleeting intervals
+of something like cheerfulness, which came with eating and drinking,
+and went away with it--the setting in of rain one evening, with a fresh
+smell, and its coming down faster and faster between me and the church,
+until it and gathering night seemed to quench me in gloom, and fear, and
+remorse--all this appears to have gone round and round for years instead
+of days, it is so vividly and strongly stamped on my remembrance. On the
+last night of my restraint, I was awakened by hearing my own name spoken
+in a whisper. I started up in bed, and putting out my arms in the dark,
+said:
+
+‘Is that you, Peggotty?’
+
+There was no immediate answer, but presently I heard my name again, in a
+tone so very mysterious and awful, that I think I should have gone into
+a fit, if it had not occurred to me that it must have come through the
+keyhole.
+
+I groped my way to the door, and putting my own lips to the keyhole,
+whispered: ‘Is that you, Peggotty dear?’
+
+‘Yes, my own precious Davy,’ she replied. ‘Be as soft as a mouse, or the
+Cat’ll hear us.’
+
+I understood this to mean Miss Murdstone, and was sensible of the
+urgency of the case; her room being close by.
+
+‘How’s mama, dear Peggotty? Is she very angry with me?’
+
+I could hear Peggotty crying softly on her side of the keyhole, as I was
+doing on mine, before she answered. ‘No. Not very.’
+
+‘What is going to be done with me, Peggotty dear? Do you know?’
+
+‘School. Near London,’ was Peggotty’s answer. I was obliged to get her
+to repeat it, for she spoke it the first time quite down my throat,
+in consequence of my having forgotten to take my mouth away from the
+keyhole and put my ear there; and though her words tickled me a good
+deal, I didn’t hear them.
+
+‘When, Peggotty?’
+
+‘Tomorrow.’
+
+‘Is that the reason why Miss Murdstone took the clothes out of my
+drawers?’ which she had done, though I have forgotten to mention it.
+
+‘Yes,’ said Peggotty. ‘Box.’
+
+‘Shan’t I see mama?’
+
+‘Yes,’ said Peggotty. ‘Morning.’
+
+Then Peggotty fitted her mouth close to the keyhole, and delivered these
+words through it with as much feeling and earnestness as a keyhole
+has ever been the medium of communicating, I will venture to assert:
+shooting in each broken little sentence in a convulsive little burst of
+its own.
+
+‘Davy, dear. If I ain’t been azackly as intimate with you. Lately, as I
+used to be. It ain’t because I don’t love you. Just as well and more, my
+pretty poppet. It’s because I thought it better for you. And for someone
+else besides. Davy, my darling, are you listening? Can you hear?’
+
+‘Ye-ye-ye-yes, Peggotty!’ I sobbed.
+
+‘My own!’ said Peggotty, with infinite compassion. ‘What I want to say,
+is. That you must never forget me. For I’ll never forget you. And I’ll
+take as much care of your mama, Davy. As ever I took of you. And I won’t
+leave her. The day may come when she’ll be glad to lay her poor head.
+On her stupid, cross old Peggotty’s arm again. And I’ll write to you,
+my dear. Though I ain’t no scholar. And I’ll--I’ll--’ Peggotty fell to
+kissing the keyhole, as she couldn’t kiss me.
+
+‘Thank you, dear Peggotty!’ said I. ‘Oh, thank you! Thank you! Will you
+promise me one thing, Peggotty? Will you write and tell Mr. Peggotty and
+little Em’ly, and Mrs. Gummidge and Ham, that I am not so bad as they
+might suppose, and that I sent ‘em all my love--especially to little
+Em’ly? Will you, if you please, Peggotty?’
+
+The kind soul promised, and we both of us kissed the keyhole with the
+greatest affection--I patted it with my hand, I recollect, as if it had
+been her honest face--and parted. From that night there grew up in my
+breast a feeling for Peggotty which I cannot very well define. She did
+not replace my mother; no one could do that; but she came into a vacancy
+in my heart, which closed upon her, and I felt towards her something
+I have never felt for any other human being. It was a sort of comical
+affection, too; and yet if she had died, I cannot think what I should
+have done, or how I should have acted out the tragedy it would have been
+to me.
+
+In the morning Miss Murdstone appeared as usual, and told me I was going
+to school; which was not altogether such news to me as she supposed. She
+also informed me that when I was dressed, I was to come downstairs into
+the parlour, and have my breakfast. There, I found my mother, very pale
+and with red eyes: into whose arms I ran, and begged her pardon from my
+suffering soul.
+
+‘Oh, Davy!’ she said. ‘That you could hurt anyone I love! Try to be
+better, pray to be better! I forgive you; but I am so grieved, Davy,
+that you should have such bad passions in your heart.’
+
+They had persuaded her that I was a wicked fellow, and she was more
+sorry for that than for my going away. I felt it sorely. I tried to eat
+my parting breakfast, but my tears dropped upon my bread-and-butter,
+and trickled into my tea. I saw my mother look at me sometimes, and then
+glance at the watchful Miss Murdstone, and than look down, or look away.
+
+‘Master Copperfield’s box there!’ said Miss Murdstone, when wheels were
+heard at the gate.
+
+I looked for Peggotty, but it was not she; neither she nor Mr. Murdstone
+appeared. My former acquaintance, the carrier, was at the door. The box
+was taken out to his cart, and lifted in.
+
+‘Clara!’ said Miss Murdstone, in her warning note.
+
+‘Ready, my dear Jane,’ returned my mother. ‘Good-bye, Davy. You are
+going for your own good. Good-bye, my child. You will come home in the
+holidays, and be a better boy.’
+
+‘Clara!’ Miss Murdstone repeated.
+
+‘Certainly, my dear Jane,’ replied my mother, who was holding me. ‘I
+forgive you, my dear boy. God bless you!’
+
+‘Clara!’ Miss Murdstone repeated.
+
+Miss Murdstone was good enough to take me out to the cart, and to say on
+the way that she hoped I would repent, before I came to a bad end; and
+then I got into the cart, and the lazy horse walked off with it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 5. I AM SENT AWAY FROM HOME
+
+
+We might have gone about half a mile, and my pocket-handkerchief was
+quite wet through, when the carrier stopped short. Looking out to
+ascertain for what, I saw, to My amazement, Peggotty burst from a hedge
+and climb into the cart. She took me in both her arms, and squeezed me
+to her stays until the pressure on my nose was extremely painful, though
+I never thought of that till afterwards when I found it very tender. Not
+a single word did Peggotty speak. Releasing one of her arms, she put
+it down in her pocket to the elbow, and brought out some paper bags of
+cakes which she crammed into my pockets, and a purse which she put into
+my hand, but not one word did she say. After another and a final squeeze
+with both arms, she got down from the cart and ran away; and, my belief
+is, and has always been, without a solitary button on her gown. I
+picked up one, of several that were rolling about, and treasured it as a
+keepsake for a long time.
+
+The carrier looked at me, as if to inquire if she were coming back. I
+shook my head, and said I thought not. ‘Then come up,’ said the carrier
+to the lazy horse; who came up accordingly.
+
+Having by this time cried as much as I possibly could, I began to think
+it was of no use crying any more, especially as neither Roderick Random,
+nor that Captain in the Royal British Navy, had ever cried, that I
+could remember, in trying situations. The carrier, seeing me in this
+resolution, proposed that my pocket-handkerchief should be spread upon
+the horse’s back to dry. I thanked him, and assented; and particularly
+small it looked, under those circumstances.
+
+I had now leisure to examine the purse. It was a stiff leather purse,
+with a snap, and had three bright shillings in it, which Peggotty had
+evidently polished up with whitening, for my greater delight. But its
+most precious contents were two half-crowns folded together in a bit
+of paper, on which was written, in my mother’s hand, ‘For Davy. With my
+love.’ I was so overcome by this, that I asked the carrier to be so good
+as to reach me my pocket-handkerchief again; but he said he thought I
+had better do without it, and I thought I really had, so I wiped my eyes
+on my sleeve and stopped myself.
+
+For good, too; though, in consequence of my previous emotions, I was
+still occasionally seized with a stormy sob. After we had jogged on for
+some little time, I asked the carrier if he was going all the way.
+
+‘All the way where?’ inquired the carrier.
+
+‘There,’ I said.
+
+‘Where’s there?’ inquired the carrier.
+
+‘Near London,’ I said.
+
+‘Why that horse,’ said the carrier, jerking the rein to point him out,
+‘would be deader than pork afore he got over half the ground.’
+
+‘Are you only going to Yarmouth then?’ I asked.
+
+‘That’s about it,’ said the carrier. ‘And there I shall take you to the
+stage-cutch, and the stage-cutch that’ll take you to--wherever it is.’
+
+As this was a great deal for the carrier (whose name was Mr. Barkis)
+to say--he being, as I observed in a former chapter, of a phlegmatic
+temperament, and not at all conversational--I offered him a cake as a
+mark of attention, which he ate at one gulp, exactly like an elephant,
+and which made no more impression on his big face than it would have
+done on an elephant’s.
+
+‘Did SHE make ‘em, now?’ said Mr. Barkis, always leaning forward, in his
+slouching way, on the footboard of the cart with an arm on each knee.
+
+‘Peggotty, do you mean, sir?’
+
+‘Ah!’ said Mr. Barkis. ‘Her.’
+
+‘Yes. She makes all our pastry, and does all our cooking.’
+
+‘Do she though?’ said Mr. Barkis. He made up his mouth as if to whistle,
+but he didn’t whistle. He sat looking at the horse’s ears, as if he saw
+something new there; and sat so, for a considerable time. By and by, he
+said:
+
+‘No sweethearts, I b’lieve?’
+
+‘Sweetmeats did you say, Mr. Barkis?’ For I thought he wanted
+something else to eat, and had pointedly alluded to that description of
+refreshment.
+
+‘Hearts,’ said Mr. Barkis. ‘Sweet hearts; no person walks with her!’
+
+‘With Peggotty?’
+
+‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Her.’
+
+‘Oh, no. She never had a sweetheart.’
+
+‘Didn’t she, though!’ said Mr. Barkis.
+
+Again he made up his mouth to whistle, and again he didn’t whistle, but
+sat looking at the horse’s ears.
+
+‘So she makes,’ said Mr. Barkis, after a long interval of reflection,
+‘all the apple parsties, and doos all the cooking, do she?’
+
+I replied that such was the fact.
+
+‘Well. I’ll tell you what,’ said Mr. Barkis. ‘P’raps you might be
+writin’ to her?’
+
+‘I shall certainly write to her,’ I rejoined.
+
+‘Ah!’ he said, slowly turning his eyes towards me. ‘Well! If you was
+writin’ to her, p’raps you’d recollect to say that Barkis was willin’;
+would you?’
+
+‘That Barkis is willing,’ I repeated, innocently. ‘Is that all the
+message?’
+
+‘Ye-es,’ he said, considering. ‘Ye-es. Barkis is willin’.’
+
+‘But you will be at Blunderstone again tomorrow, Mr. Barkis,’ I said,
+faltering a little at the idea of my being far away from it then, and
+could give your own message so much better.’
+
+As he repudiated this suggestion, however, with a jerk of his head,
+and once more confirmed his previous request by saying, with profound
+gravity, ‘Barkis is willin’. That’s the message,’ I readily undertook
+its transmission. While I was waiting for the coach in the hotel
+at Yarmouth that very afternoon, I procured a sheet of paper and
+an inkstand, and wrote a note to Peggotty, which ran thus: ‘My dear
+Peggotty. I have come here safe. Barkis is willing. My love to mama.
+Yours affectionately. P.S. He says he particularly wants you to
+know--BARKIS IS WILLING.’
+
+When I had taken this commission on myself prospectively, Mr. Barkis
+relapsed into perfect silence; and I, feeling quite worn out by all that
+had happened lately, lay down on a sack in the cart and fell asleep. I
+slept soundly until we got to Yarmouth; which was so entirely new
+and strange to me in the inn-yard to which we drove, that I at once
+abandoned a latent hope I had had of meeting with some of Mr. Peggotty’s
+family there, perhaps even with little Em’ly herself.
+
+The coach was in the yard, shining very much all over, but without any
+horses to it as yet; and it looked in that state as if nothing was
+more unlikely than its ever going to London. I was thinking this, and
+wondering what would ultimately become of my box, which Mr. Barkis had
+put down on the yard-pavement by the pole (he having driven up the yard
+to turn his cart), and also what would ultimately become of me, when a
+lady looked out of a bow-window where some fowls and joints of meat were
+hanging up, and said:
+
+‘Is that the little gentleman from Blunderstone?’
+
+‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said.
+
+‘What name?’ inquired the lady.
+
+‘Copperfield, ma’am,’ I said.
+
+‘That won’t do,’ returned the lady. ‘Nobody’s dinner is paid for here,
+in that name.’
+
+‘Is it Murdstone, ma’am?’ I said.
+
+‘If you’re Master Murdstone,’ said the lady, ‘why do you go and give
+another name, first?’
+
+I explained to the lady how it was, who than rang a bell, and called
+out, ‘William! show the coffee-room!’ upon which a waiter came running
+out of a kitchen on the opposite side of the yard to show it, and seemed
+a good deal surprised when he was only to show it to me.
+
+It was a large long room with some large maps in it. I doubt if I could
+have felt much stranger if the maps had been real foreign countries, and
+I cast away in the middle of them. I felt it was taking a liberty to
+sit down, with my cap in my hand, on the corner of the chair nearest the
+door; and when the waiter laid a cloth on purpose for me, and put a set
+of castors on it, I think I must have turned red all over with modesty.
+
+He brought me some chops, and vegetables, and took the covers off in
+such a bouncing manner that I was afraid I must have given him some
+offence. But he greatly relieved my mind by putting a chair for me at
+the table, and saying, very affably, ‘Now, six-foot! come on!’
+
+I thanked him, and took my seat at the board; but found it extremely
+difficult to handle my knife and fork with anything like dexterity,
+or to avoid splashing myself with the gravy, while he was standing
+opposite, staring so hard, and making me blush in the most dreadful
+manner every time I caught his eye. After watching me into the second
+chop, he said:
+
+‘There’s half a pint of ale for you. Will you have it now?’
+
+I thanked him and said, ‘Yes.’ Upon which he poured it out of a jug
+into a large tumbler, and held it up against the light, and made it look
+beautiful.
+
+‘My eye!’ he said. ‘It seems a good deal, don’t it?’
+
+‘It does seem a good deal,’ I answered with a smile. For it was quite
+delightful to me, to find him so pleasant. He was a twinkling-eyed,
+pimple-faced man, with his hair standing upright all over his head; and
+as he stood with one arm a-kimbo, holding up the glass to the light with
+the other hand, he looked quite friendly.
+
+‘There was a gentleman here, yesterday,’ he said--‘a stout gentleman, by
+the name of Topsawyer--perhaps you know him?’
+
+‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t think--’
+
+‘In breeches and gaiters, broad-brimmed hat, grey coat, speckled
+choker,’ said the waiter.
+
+‘No,’ I said bashfully, ‘I haven’t the pleasure--’
+
+‘He came in here,’ said the waiter, looking at the light through the
+tumbler, ‘ordered a glass of this ale--WOULD order it--I told him
+not--drank it, and fell dead. It was too old for him. It oughtn’t to be
+drawn; that’s the fact.’
+
+I was very much shocked to hear of this melancholy accident, and said I
+thought I had better have some water.
+
+‘Why you see,’ said the waiter, still looking at the light through the
+tumbler, with one of his eyes shut up, ‘our people don’t like things
+being ordered and left. It offends ‘em. But I’ll drink it, if you like.
+I’m used to it, and use is everything. I don’t think it’ll hurt me, if I
+throw my head back, and take it off quick. Shall I?’
+
+I replied that he would much oblige me by drinking it, if he thought
+he could do it safely, but by no means otherwise. When he did throw his
+head back, and take it off quick, I had a horrible fear, I confess,
+of seeing him meet the fate of the lamented Mr. Topsawyer, and fall
+lifeless on the carpet. But it didn’t hurt him. On the contrary, I
+thought he seemed the fresher for it.
+
+‘What have we got here?’ he said, putting a fork into my dish. ‘Not
+chops?’
+
+‘Chops,’ I said.
+
+‘Lord bless my soul!’ he exclaimed, ‘I didn’t know they were chops. Why,
+a chop’s the very thing to take off the bad effects of that beer! Ain’t
+it lucky?’
+
+So he took a chop by the bone in one hand, and a potato in the other,
+and ate away with a very good appetite, to my extreme satisfaction.
+He afterwards took another chop, and another potato; and after that,
+another chop and another potato. When we had done, he brought me a
+pudding, and having set it before me, seemed to ruminate, and to become
+absent in his mind for some moments.
+
+‘How’s the pie?’ he said, rousing himself.
+
+‘It’s a pudding,’ I made answer.
+
+‘Pudding!’ he exclaimed. ‘Why, bless me, so it is! What!’ looking at it
+nearer. ‘You don’t mean to say it’s a batter-pudding!’
+
+‘Yes, it is indeed.’
+
+‘Why, a batter-pudding,’ he said, taking up a table-spoon, ‘is my
+favourite pudding! Ain’t that lucky? Come on, little ‘un, and let’s see
+who’ll get most.’
+
+The waiter certainly got most. He entreated me more than once to come in
+and win, but what with his table-spoon to my tea-spoon, his dispatch to
+my dispatch, and his appetite to my appetite, I was left far behind at
+the first mouthful, and had no chance with him. I never saw anyone enjoy
+a pudding so much, I think; and he laughed, when it was all gone, as if
+his enjoyment of it lasted still.
+
+Finding him so very friendly and companionable, it was then that I asked
+for the pen and ink and paper, to write to Peggotty. He not only brought
+it immediately, but was good enough to look over me while I wrote the
+letter. When I had finished it, he asked me where I was going to school.
+
+I said, ‘Near London,’ which was all I knew.
+
+‘Oh! my eye!’ he said, looking very low-spirited, ‘I am sorry for that.’
+
+‘Why?’ I asked him.
+
+‘Oh, Lord!’ he said, shaking his head, ‘that’s the school where they
+broke the boy’s ribs--two ribs--a little boy he was. I should say he
+was--let me see--how old are you, about?’
+
+I told him between eight and nine.
+
+‘That’s just his age,’ he said. ‘He was eight years and six months old
+when they broke his first rib; eight years and eight months old when
+they broke his second, and did for him.’
+
+I could not disguise from myself, or from the waiter, that this was an
+uncomfortable coincidence, and inquired how it was done. His answer was
+not cheering to my spirits, for it consisted of two dismal words, ‘With
+whopping.’
+
+The blowing of the coach-horn in the yard was a seasonable diversion,
+which made me get up and hesitatingly inquire, in the mingled pride and
+diffidence of having a purse (which I took out of my pocket), if there
+were anything to pay.
+
+‘There’s a sheet of letter-paper,’ he returned. ‘Did you ever buy a
+sheet of letter-paper?’
+
+I could not remember that I ever had.
+
+‘It’s dear,’ he said, ‘on account of the duty. Threepence. That’s
+the way we’re taxed in this country. There’s nothing else, except the
+waiter. Never mind the ink. I lose by that.’
+
+‘What should you--what should I--how much ought I to--what would it be
+right to pay the waiter, if you please?’ I stammered, blushing.
+
+‘If I hadn’t a family, and that family hadn’t the cowpock,’ said the
+waiter, ‘I wouldn’t take a sixpence. If I didn’t support a aged pairint,
+and a lovely sister,’--here the waiter was greatly agitated--‘I wouldn’t
+take a farthing. If I had a good place, and was treated well here, I
+should beg acceptance of a trifle, instead of taking of it. But I live
+on broken wittles--and I sleep on the coals’--here the waiter burst into
+tears.
+
+I was very much concerned for his misfortunes, and felt that any
+recognition short of ninepence would be mere brutality and hardness of
+heart. Therefore I gave him one of my three bright shillings, which he
+received with much humility and veneration, and spun up with his thumb,
+directly afterwards, to try the goodness of.
+
+It was a little disconcerting to me, to find, when I was being helped
+up behind the coach, that I was supposed to have eaten all the dinner
+without any assistance. I discovered this, from overhearing the lady in
+the bow-window say to the guard, ‘Take care of that child, George, or
+he’ll burst!’ and from observing that the women-servants who were about
+the place came out to look and giggle at me as a young phenomenon. My
+unfortunate friend the waiter, who had quite recovered his spirits, did
+not appear to be disturbed by this, but joined in the general admiration
+without being at all confused. If I had any doubt of him, I suppose
+this half awakened it; but I am inclined to believe that with the simple
+confidence of a child, and the natural reliance of a child upon superior
+years (qualities I am very sorry any children should prematurely change
+for worldly wisdom), I had no serious mistrust of him on the whole, even
+then.
+
+I felt it rather hard, I must own, to be made, without deserving it, the
+subject of jokes between the coachman and guard as to the coach drawing
+heavy behind, on account of my sitting there, and as to the greater
+expediency of my travelling by waggon. The story of my supposed appetite
+getting wind among the outside passengers, they were merry upon it
+likewise; and asked me whether I was going to be paid for, at school,
+as two brothers or three, and whether I was contracted for, or went upon
+the regular terms; with other pleasant questions. But the worst of
+it was, that I knew I should be ashamed to eat anything, when an
+opportunity offered, and that, after a rather light dinner, I should
+remain hungry all night--for I had left my cakes behind, at the hotel,
+in my hurry. My apprehensions were realized. When we stopped for supper
+I couldn’t muster courage to take any, though I should have liked it
+very much, but sat by the fire and said I didn’t want anything. This did
+not save me from more jokes, either; for a husky-voiced gentleman with
+a rough face, who had been eating out of a sandwich-box nearly all the
+way, except when he had been drinking out of a bottle, said I was like
+a boa-constrictor who took enough at one meal to last him a long time;
+after which, he actually brought a rash out upon himself with boiled
+beef.
+
+We had started from Yarmouth at three o’clock in the afternoon, and we
+were due in London about eight next morning. It was Mid-summer weather,
+and the evening was very pleasant. When we passed through a village, I
+pictured to myself what the insides of the houses were like, and what
+the inhabitants were about; and when boys came running after us, and
+got up behind and swung there for a little way, I wondered whether their
+fathers were alive, and whether they were happy at home. I had plenty to
+think of, therefore, besides my mind running continually on the kind
+of place I was going to--which was an awful speculation. Sometimes, I
+remember, I resigned myself to thoughts of home and Peggotty; and to
+endeavouring, in a confused blind way, to recall how I had felt, and
+what sort of boy I used to be, before I bit Mr. Murdstone: which I
+couldn’t satisfy myself about by any means, I seemed to have bitten him
+in such a remote antiquity.
+
+The night was not so pleasant as the evening, for it got chilly; and
+being put between two gentlemen (the rough-faced one and another) to
+prevent my tumbling off the coach, I was nearly smothered by their
+falling asleep, and completely blocking me up. They squeezed me so hard
+sometimes, that I could not help crying out, ‘Oh! If you please!’--which
+they didn’t like at all, because it woke them. Opposite me was an
+elderly lady in a great fur cloak, who looked in the dark more like a
+haystack than a lady, she was wrapped up to such a degree. This lady had
+a basket with her, and she hadn’t known what to do with it, for a long
+time, until she found that on account of my legs being short, it could
+go underneath me. It cramped and hurt me so, that it made me perfectly
+miserable; but if I moved in the least, and made a glass that was in the
+basket rattle against something else (as it was sure to do), she gave
+me the cruellest poke with her foot, and said, ‘Come, don’t YOU fidget.
+YOUR bones are young enough, I’m sure!’
+
+At last the sun rose, and then my companions seemed to sleep easier.
+The difficulties under which they had laboured all night, and which had
+found utterance in the most terrific gasps and snorts, are not to be
+conceived. As the sun got higher, their sleep became lighter, and so
+they gradually one by one awoke. I recollect being very much surprised
+by the feint everybody made, then, of not having been to sleep at all,
+and by the uncommon indignation with which everyone repelled the
+charge. I labour under the same kind of astonishment to this day, having
+invariably observed that of all human weaknesses, the one to which our
+common nature is the least disposed to confess (I cannot imagine why) is
+the weakness of having gone to sleep in a coach.
+
+What an amazing place London was to me when I saw it in the distance,
+and how I believed all the adventures of all my favourite heroes to be
+constantly enacting and re-enacting there, and how I vaguely made it
+out in my own mind to be fuller of wonders and wickedness than all the
+cities of the earth, I need not stop here to relate. We approached it by
+degrees, and got, in due time, to the inn in the Whitechapel district,
+for which we were bound. I forget whether it was the Blue Bull, or the
+Blue Boar; but I know it was the Blue Something, and that its likeness
+was painted up on the back of the coach.
+
+The guard’s eye lighted on me as he was getting down, and he said at the
+booking-office door:
+
+‘Is there anybody here for a yoongster booked in the name of Murdstone,
+from Bloonderstone, Sooffolk, to be left till called for?’
+
+Nobody answered.
+
+‘Try Copperfield, if you please, sir,’ said I, looking helplessly down.
+
+‘Is there anybody here for a yoongster, booked in the name of Murdstone,
+from Bloonderstone, Sooffolk, but owning to the name of Copperfield, to
+be left till called for?’ said the guard. ‘Come! IS there anybody?’
+
+No. There was nobody. I looked anxiously around; but the inquiry made no
+impression on any of the bystanders, if I except a man in gaiters, with
+one eye, who suggested that they had better put a brass collar round my
+neck, and tie me up in the stable.
+
+A ladder was brought, and I got down after the lady, who was like a
+haystack: not daring to stir, until her basket was removed. The coach
+was clear of passengers by that time, the luggage was very soon cleared
+out, the horses had been taken out before the luggage, and now the coach
+itself was wheeled and backed off by some hostlers, out of the way.
+Still, nobody appeared, to claim the dusty youngster from Blunderstone,
+Suffolk.
+
+More solitary than Robinson Crusoe, who had nobody to look at him
+and see that he was solitary, I went into the booking-office, and, by
+invitation of the clerk on duty, passed behind the counter, and sat down
+on the scale at which they weighed the luggage. Here, as I sat looking
+at the parcels, packages, and books, and inhaling the smell of stables
+(ever since associated with that morning), a procession of most
+tremendous considerations began to march through my mind. Supposing
+nobody should ever fetch me, how long would they consent to keep me
+there? Would they keep me long enough to spend seven shillings? Should I
+sleep at night in one of those wooden bins, with the other luggage,
+and wash myself at the pump in the yard in the morning; or should I
+be turned out every night, and expected to come again to be left till
+called for, when the office opened next day? Supposing there was no
+mistake in the case, and Mr. Murdstone had devised this plan to get rid
+of me, what should I do? If they allowed me to remain there until my
+seven shillings were spent, I couldn’t hope to remain there when I began
+to starve. That would obviously be inconvenient and unpleasant to the
+customers, besides entailing on the Blue Whatever-it-was, the risk of
+funeral expenses. If I started off at once, and tried to walk back home,
+how could I ever find my way, how could I ever hope to walk so far, how
+could I make sure of anyone but Peggotty, even if I got back? If I
+found out the nearest proper authorities, and offered myself to go for a
+soldier, or a sailor, I was such a little fellow that it was most likely
+they wouldn’t take me in. These thoughts, and a hundred other such
+thoughts, turned me burning hot, and made me giddy with apprehension and
+dismay. I was in the height of my fever when a man entered and whispered
+to the clerk, who presently slanted me off the scale, and pushed me over
+to him, as if I were weighed, bought, delivered, and paid for.
+
+As I went out of the office, hand in hand with this new acquaintance,
+I stole a look at him. He was a gaunt, sallow young man, with hollow
+cheeks, and a chin almost as black as Mr. Murdstone’s; but there the
+likeness ended, for his whiskers were shaved off, and his hair, instead
+of being glossy, was rusty and dry. He was dressed in a suit of black
+clothes which were rather rusty and dry too, and rather short in the
+sleeves and legs; and he had a white neck-kerchief on, that was not
+over-clean. I did not, and do not, suppose that this neck-kerchief was
+all the linen he wore, but it was all he showed or gave any hint of.
+
+‘You’re the new boy?’ he said. ‘Yes, sir,’ I said.
+
+I supposed I was. I didn’t know.
+
+‘I’m one of the masters at Salem House,’ he said.
+
+I made him a bow and felt very much overawed. I was so ashamed to allude
+to a commonplace thing like my box, to a scholar and a master at Salem
+House, that we had gone some little distance from the yard before I had
+the hardihood to mention it. We turned back, on my humbly insinuating
+that it might be useful to me hereafter; and he told the clerk that the
+carrier had instructions to call for it at noon.
+
+‘If you please, sir,’ I said, when we had accomplished about the same
+distance as before, ‘is it far?’
+
+‘It’s down by Blackheath,’ he said.
+
+‘Is that far, sir?’ I diffidently asked.
+
+‘It’s a good step,’ he said. ‘We shall go by the stage-coach. It’s about
+six miles.’
+
+I was so faint and tired, that the idea of holding out for six miles
+more, was too much for me. I took heart to tell him that I had had
+nothing all night, and that if he would allow me to buy something to
+eat, I should be very much obliged to him. He appeared surprised at
+this--I see him stop and look at me now--and after considering for a few
+moments, said he wanted to call on an old person who lived not far off,
+and that the best way would be for me to buy some bread, or whatever I
+liked best that was wholesome, and make my breakfast at her house, where
+we could get some milk.
+
+Accordingly we looked in at a baker’s window, and after I had made a
+series of proposals to buy everything that was bilious in the shop, and
+he had rejected them one by one, we decided in favour of a nice little
+loaf of brown bread, which cost me threepence. Then, at a grocer’s shop,
+we bought an egg and a slice of streaky bacon; which still left what
+I thought a good deal of change, out of the second of the bright
+shillings, and made me consider London a very cheap place. These
+provisions laid in, we went on through a great noise and uproar that
+confused my weary head beyond description, and over a bridge which, no
+doubt, was London Bridge (indeed I think he told me so, but I was half
+asleep), until we came to the poor person’s house, which was a part of
+some alms-houses, as I knew by their look, and by an inscription on a
+stone over the gate which said they were established for twenty-five
+poor women.
+
+The Master at Salem House lifted the latch of one of a number of little
+black doors that were all alike, and had each a little diamond-paned
+window on one side, and another little diamond--paned window above; and
+we went into the little house of one of these poor old women, who was
+blowing a fire to make a little saucepan boil. On seeing the master
+enter, the old woman stopped with the bellows on her knee, and said
+something that I thought sounded like ‘My Charley!’ but on seeing me
+come in too, she got up, and rubbing her hands made a confused sort of
+half curtsey.
+
+‘Can you cook this young gentleman’s breakfast for him, if you please?’
+said the Master at Salem House.
+
+‘Can I?’ said the old woman. ‘Yes can I, sure!’
+
+‘How’s Mrs. Fibbitson today?’ said the Master, looking at another old
+woman in a large chair by the fire, who was such a bundle of clothes
+that I feel grateful to this hour for not having sat upon her by
+mistake.
+
+‘Ah, she’s poorly,’ said the first old woman. ‘It’s one of her bad days.
+If the fire was to go out, through any accident, I verily believe she’d
+go out too, and never come to life again.’
+
+As they looked at her, I looked at her also. Although it was a warm day,
+she seemed to think of nothing but the fire. I fancied she was jealous
+even of the saucepan on it; and I have reason to know that she took its
+impressment into the service of boiling my egg and broiling my bacon, in
+dudgeon; for I saw her, with my own discomfited eyes, shake her fist at
+me once, when those culinary operations were going on, and no one else
+was looking. The sun streamed in at the little window, but she sat with
+her own back and the back of the large chair towards it, screening the
+fire as if she were sedulously keeping IT warm, instead of it keeping
+her warm, and watching it in a most distrustful manner. The completion
+of the preparations for my breakfast, by relieving the fire, gave her
+such extreme joy that she laughed aloud--and a very unmelodious laugh
+she had, I must say.
+
+I sat down to my brown loaf, my egg, and my rasher of bacon, with a
+basin of milk besides, and made a most delicious meal. While I was yet
+in the full enjoyment of it, the old woman of the house said to the
+Master:
+
+‘Have you got your flute with you?’
+
+‘Yes,’ he returned.
+
+‘Have a blow at it,’ said the old woman, coaxingly. ‘Do!’
+
+The Master, upon this, put his hand underneath the skirts of his coat,
+and brought out his flute in three pieces, which he screwed together,
+and began immediately to play. My impression is, after many years of
+consideration, that there never can have been anybody in the world who
+played worse. He made the most dismal sounds I have ever heard produced
+by any means, natural or artificial. I don’t know what the tunes
+were--if there were such things in the performance at all, which I
+doubt--but the influence of the strain upon me was, first, to make me
+think of all my sorrows until I could hardly keep my tears back; then to
+take away my appetite; and lastly, to make me so sleepy that I couldn’t
+keep my eyes open. They begin to close again, and I begin to nod, as the
+recollection rises fresh upon me. Once more the little room, with its
+open corner cupboard, and its square-backed chairs, and its angular
+little staircase leading to the room above, and its three peacock’s
+feathers displayed over the mantelpiece--I remember wondering when I
+first went in, what that peacock would have thought if he had known what
+his finery was doomed to come to--fades from before me, and I nod, and
+sleep. The flute becomes inaudible, the wheels of the coach are heard
+instead, and I am on my journey. The coach jolts, I wake with a start,
+and the flute has come back again, and the Master at Salem House is
+sitting with his legs crossed, playing it dolefully, while the old woman
+of the house looks on delighted. She fades in her turn, and he fades,
+and all fades, and there is no flute, no Master, no Salem House, no
+David Copperfield, no anything but heavy sleep.
+
+I dreamed, I thought, that once while he was blowing into this dismal
+flute, the old woman of the house, who had gone nearer and nearer to him
+in her ecstatic admiration, leaned over the back of his chair and gave
+him an affectionate squeeze round the neck, which stopped his playing
+for a moment. I was in the middle state between sleeping and waking,
+either then or immediately afterwards; for, as he resumed--it was a real
+fact that he had stopped playing--I saw and heard the same old woman ask
+Mrs. Fibbitson if it wasn’t delicious (meaning the flute), to which Mrs.
+Fibbitson replied, ‘Ay, ay! yes!’ and nodded at the fire: to which, I am
+persuaded, she gave the credit of the whole performance.
+
+When I seemed to have been dozing a long while, the Master at Salem
+House unscrewed his flute into the three pieces, put them up as before,
+and took me away. We found the coach very near at hand, and got upon the
+roof; but I was so dead sleepy, that when we stopped on the road to take
+up somebody else, they put me inside where there were no passengers, and
+where I slept profoundly, until I found the coach going at a footpace up
+a steep hill among green leaves. Presently, it stopped, and had come to
+its destination.
+
+A short walk brought us--I mean the Master and me--to Salem House, which
+was enclosed with a high brick wall, and looked very dull. Over a door
+in this wall was a board with SALEM HOUSE upon it; and through a grating
+in this door we were surveyed when we rang the bell by a surly face,
+which I found, on the door being opened, belonged to a stout man with a
+bull-neck, a wooden leg, overhanging temples, and his hair cut close all
+round his head.
+
+‘The new boy,’ said the Master.
+
+The man with the wooden leg eyed me all over--it didn’t take long, for
+there was not much of me--and locked the gate behind us, and took out
+the key. We were going up to the house, among some dark heavy trees,
+when he called after my conductor. ‘Hallo!’
+
+We looked back, and he was standing at the door of a little lodge, where
+he lived, with a pair of boots in his hand.
+
+‘Here! The cobbler’s been,’ he said, ‘since you’ve been out, Mr. Mell,
+and he says he can’t mend ‘em any more. He says there ain’t a bit of the
+original boot left, and he wonders you expect it.’
+
+With these words he threw the boots towards Mr. Mell, who went back a
+few paces to pick them up, and looked at them (very disconsolately,
+I was afraid), as we went on together. I observed then, for the first
+time, that the boots he had on were a good deal the worse for wear, and
+that his stocking was just breaking out in one place, like a bud.
+
+Salem House was a square brick building with wings; of a bare and
+unfurnished appearance. All about it was so very quiet, that I said to
+Mr. Mell I supposed the boys were out; but he seemed surprised at my
+not knowing that it was holiday-time. That all the boys were at their
+several homes. That Mr. Creakle, the proprietor, was down by the
+sea-side with Mrs. and Miss Creakle; and that I was sent in holiday-time
+as a punishment for my misdoing, all of which he explained to me as we
+went along.
+
+I gazed upon the schoolroom into which he took me, as the most forlorn
+and desolate place I had ever seen. I see it now. A long room with three
+long rows of desks, and six of forms, and bristling all round with pegs
+for hats and slates. Scraps of old copy-books and exercises litter the
+dirty floor. Some silkworms’ houses, made of the same materials, are
+scattered over the desks. Two miserable little white mice, left behind
+by their owner, are running up and down in a fusty castle made of
+pasteboard and wire, looking in all the corners with their red eyes
+for anything to eat. A bird, in a cage very little bigger than himself,
+makes a mournful rattle now and then in hopping on his perch, two inches
+high, or dropping from it; but neither sings nor chirps. There is a
+strange unwholesome smell upon the room, like mildewed corduroys, sweet
+apples wanting air, and rotten books. There could not well be more ink
+splashed about it, if it had been roofless from its first construction,
+and the skies had rained, snowed, hailed, and blown ink through the
+varying seasons of the year.
+
+Mr. Mell having left me while he took his irreparable boots upstairs, I
+went softly to the upper end of the room, observing all this as I crept
+along. Suddenly I came upon a pasteboard placard, beautifully written,
+which was lying on the desk, and bore these words: ‘TAKE CARE OF HIM. HE
+BITES.’
+
+I got upon the desk immediately, apprehensive of at least a great dog
+underneath. But, though I looked all round with anxious eyes, I could
+see nothing of him. I was still engaged in peering about, when Mr. Mell
+came back, and asked me what I did up there?
+
+‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ says I, ‘if you please, I’m looking for the
+dog.’
+
+‘Dog?’ he says. ‘What dog?’
+
+‘Isn’t it a dog, sir?’
+
+‘Isn’t what a dog?’
+
+‘That’s to be taken care of, sir; that bites.’
+
+‘No, Copperfield,’ says he, gravely, ‘that’s not a dog. That’s a boy.
+My instructions are, Copperfield, to put this placard on your back. I am
+sorry to make such a beginning with you, but I must do it.’ With that he
+took me down, and tied the placard, which was neatly constructed for
+the purpose, on my shoulders like a knapsack; and wherever I went,
+afterwards, I had the consolation of carrying it.
+
+What I suffered from that placard, nobody can imagine. Whether it was
+possible for people to see me or not, I always fancied that somebody was
+reading it. It was no relief to turn round and find nobody; for wherever
+my back was, there I imagined somebody always to be. That cruel man with
+the wooden leg aggravated my sufferings. He was in authority; and if he
+ever saw me leaning against a tree, or a wall, or the house, he roared
+out from his lodge door in a stupendous voice, ‘Hallo, you sir! You
+Copperfield! Show that badge conspicuous, or I’ll report you!’ The
+playground was a bare gravelled yard, open to all the back of the house
+and the offices; and I knew that the servants read it, and the butcher
+read it, and the baker read it; that everybody, in a word, who came
+backwards and forwards to the house, of a morning when I was ordered to
+walk there, read that I was to be taken care of, for I bit, I recollect
+that I positively began to have a dread of myself, as a kind of wild boy
+who did bite.
+
+There was an old door in this playground, on which the boys had a
+custom of carving their names. It was completely covered with such
+inscriptions. In my dread of the end of the vacation and their coming
+back, I could not read a boy’s name, without inquiring in what tone and
+with what emphasis HE would read, ‘Take care of him. He bites.’ There
+was one boy--a certain J. Steerforth--who cut his name very deep and
+very often, who, I conceived, would read it in a rather strong voice,
+and afterwards pull my hair. There was another boy, one Tommy Traddles,
+who I dreaded would make game of it, and pretend to be dreadfully
+frightened of me. There was a third, George Demple, who I fancied would
+sing it. I have looked, a little shrinking creature, at that door, until
+the owners of all the names--there were five-and-forty of them in the
+school then, Mr. Mell said--seemed to send me to Coventry by general
+acclamation, and to cry out, each in his own way, ‘Take care of him. He
+bites!’
+
+It was the same with the places at the desks and forms. It was the same
+with the groves of deserted bedsteads I peeped at, on my way to, and
+when I was in, my own bed. I remember dreaming night after night, of
+being with my mother as she used to be, or of going to a party at Mr.
+Peggotty’s, or of travelling outside the stage-coach, or of dining again
+with my unfortunate friend the waiter, and in all these circumstances
+making people scream and stare, by the unhappy disclosure that I had
+nothing on but my little night-shirt, and that placard.
+
+In the monotony of my life, and in my constant apprehension of the
+re-opening of the school, it was such an insupportable affliction! I had
+long tasks every day to do with Mr. Mell; but I did them, there being
+no Mr. and Miss Murdstone here, and got through them without disgrace.
+Before, and after them, I walked about--supervised, as I have mentioned,
+by the man with the wooden leg. How vividly I call to mind the damp
+about the house, the green cracked flagstones in the court, an old leaky
+water-butt, and the discoloured trunks of some of the grim trees, which
+seemed to have dripped more in the rain than other trees, and to have
+blown less in the sun! At one we dined, Mr. Mell and I, at the upper end
+of a long bare dining-room, full of deal tables, and smelling of fat.
+Then, we had more tasks until tea, which Mr. Mell drank out of a blue
+teacup, and I out of a tin pot. All day long, and until seven or eight
+in the evening, Mr. Mell, at his own detached desk in the schoolroom,
+worked hard with pen, ink, ruler, books, and writing-paper, making out
+the bills (as I found) for last half-year. When he had put up his things
+for the night he took out his flute, and blew at it, until I almost
+thought he would gradually blow his whole being into the large hole at
+the top, and ooze away at the keys.
+
+I picture my small self in the dimly-lighted rooms, sitting with my
+head upon my hand, listening to the doleful performance of Mr. Mell,
+and conning tomorrow’s lessons. I picture myself with my books shut up,
+still listening to the doleful performance of Mr. Mell, and listening
+through it to what used to be at home, and to the blowing of the wind
+on Yarmouth flats, and feeling very sad and solitary. I picture myself
+going up to bed, among the unused rooms, and sitting on my bed-side
+crying for a comfortable word from Peggotty. I picture myself coming
+downstairs in the morning, and looking through a long ghastly gash of a
+staircase window at the school-bell hanging on the top of an out-house
+with a weathercock above it; and dreading the time when it shall ring J.
+Steerforth and the rest to work: which is only second, in my foreboding
+apprehensions, to the time when the man with the wooden leg shall unlock
+the rusty gate to give admission to the awful Mr. Creakle. I cannot
+think I was a very dangerous character in any of these aspects, but in
+all of them I carried the same warning on my back.
+
+Mr. Mell never said much to me, but he was never harsh to me. I suppose
+we were company to each other, without talking. I forgot to mention that
+he would talk to himself sometimes, and grin, and clench his fist, and
+grind his teeth, and pull his hair in an unaccountable manner. But he
+had these peculiarities: and at first they frightened me, though I soon
+got used to them.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 6. I ENLARGE MY CIRCLE OF ACQUAINTANCE
+
+
+I HAD led this life about a month, when the man with the wooden leg
+began to stump about with a mop and a bucket of water, from which I
+inferred that preparations were making to receive Mr. Creakle and the
+boys. I was not mistaken; for the mop came into the schoolroom before
+long, and turned out Mr. Mell and me, who lived where we could, and got
+on how we could, for some days, during which we were always in the way
+of two or three young women, who had rarely shown themselves before, and
+were so continually in the midst of dust that I sneezed almost as much
+as if Salem House had been a great snuff-box.
+
+One day I was informed by Mr. Mell that Mr. Creakle would be home that
+evening. In the evening, after tea, I heard that he was come. Before
+bedtime, I was fetched by the man with the wooden leg to appear before
+him.
+
+Mr. Creakle’s part of the house was a good deal more comfortable than
+ours, and he had a snug bit of garden that looked pleasant after the
+dusty playground, which was such a desert in miniature, that I thought
+no one but a camel, or a dromedary, could have felt at home in it. It
+seemed to me a bold thing even to take notice that the passage looked
+comfortable, as I went on my way, trembling, to Mr. Creakle’s presence:
+which so abashed me, when I was ushered into it, that I hardly saw
+Mrs. Creakle or Miss Creakle (who were both there, in the parlour), or
+anything but Mr. Creakle, a stout gentleman with a bunch of watch-chain
+and seals, in an arm-chair, with a tumbler and bottle beside him.
+
+‘So!’ said Mr. Creakle. ‘This is the young gentleman whose teeth are to
+be filed! Turn him round.’
+
+The wooden-legged man turned me about so as to exhibit the placard; and
+having afforded time for a full survey of it, turned me about again,
+with my face to Mr. Creakle, and posted himself at Mr. Creakle’s side.
+Mr. Creakle’s face was fiery, and his eyes were small, and deep in his
+head; he had thick veins in his forehead, a little nose, and a large
+chin. He was bald on the top of his head; and had some thin wet-looking
+hair that was just turning grey, brushed across each temple, so that
+the two sides interlaced on his forehead. But the circumstance about
+him which impressed me most, was, that he had no voice, but spoke in a
+whisper. The exertion this cost him, or the consciousness of talking in
+that feeble way, made his angry face so much more angry, and his thick
+veins so much thicker, when he spoke, that I am not surprised, on
+looking back, at this peculiarity striking me as his chief one. ‘Now,’
+said Mr. Creakle. ‘What’s the report of this boy?’
+
+‘There’s nothing against him yet,’ returned the man with the wooden leg.
+‘There has been no opportunity.’
+
+I thought Mr. Creakle was disappointed. I thought Mrs. and Miss Creakle
+(at whom I now glanced for the first time, and who were, both, thin and
+quiet) were not disappointed.
+
+‘Come here, sir!’ said Mr. Creakle, beckoning to me.
+
+‘Come here!’ said the man with the wooden leg, repeating the gesture.
+
+‘I have the happiness of knowing your father-in-law,’ whispered Mr.
+Creakle, taking me by the ear; ‘and a worthy man he is, and a man of
+a strong character. He knows me, and I know him. Do YOU know me? Hey?’
+said Mr. Creakle, pinching my ear with ferocious playfulness.
+
+‘Not yet, sir,’ I said, flinching with the pain.
+
+‘Not yet? Hey?’ repeated Mr. Creakle. ‘But you will soon. Hey?’
+
+‘You will soon. Hey?’ repeated the man with the wooden leg. I afterwards
+found that he generally acted, with his strong voice, as Mr. Creakle’s
+interpreter to the boys.
+
+I was very much frightened, and said, I hoped so, if he pleased. I felt,
+all this while, as if my ear were blazing; he pinched it so hard.
+
+‘I’ll tell you what I am,’ whispered Mr. Creakle, letting it go at last,
+with a screw at parting that brought the water into my eyes. ‘I’m a
+Tartar.’
+
+‘A Tartar,’ said the man with the wooden leg.
+
+‘When I say I’ll do a thing, I do it,’ said Mr. Creakle; ‘and when I say
+I will have a thing done, I will have it done.’
+
+‘--Will have a thing done, I will have it done,’ repeated the man with
+the wooden leg.
+
+‘I am a determined character,’ said Mr. Creakle. ‘That’s what I am. I
+do my duty. That’s what I do. My flesh and blood’--he looked at Mrs.
+Creakle as he said this--‘when it rises against me, is not my flesh
+and blood. I discard it. Has that fellow’--to the man with the wooden
+leg--‘been here again?’
+
+‘No,’ was the answer.
+
+‘No,’ said Mr. Creakle. ‘He knows better. He knows me. Let him keep
+away. I say let him keep away,’ said Mr. Creakle, striking his hand upon
+the table, and looking at Mrs. Creakle, ‘for he knows me. Now you have
+begun to know me too, my young friend, and you may go. Take him away.’
+
+I was very glad to be ordered away, for Mrs. and Miss Creakle were both
+wiping their eyes, and I felt as uncomfortable for them as I did for
+myself. But I had a petition on my mind which concerned me so nearly,
+that I couldn’t help saying, though I wondered at my own courage:
+
+‘If you please, sir--’
+
+Mr. Creakle whispered, ‘Hah! What’s this?’ and bent his eyes upon me, as
+if he would have burnt me up with them.
+
+‘If you please, sir,’ I faltered, ‘if I might be allowed (I am very
+sorry indeed, sir, for what I did) to take this writing off, before the
+boys come back--’
+
+Whether Mr. Creakle was in earnest, or whether he only did it to
+frighten me, I don’t know, but he made a burst out of his chair, before
+which I precipitately retreated, without waiting for the escort of the
+man with the wooden leg, and never once stopped until I reached my own
+bedroom, where, finding I was not pursued, I went to bed, as it was
+time, and lay quaking, for a couple of hours.
+
+Next morning Mr. Sharp came back. Mr. Sharp was the first master, and
+superior to Mr. Mell. Mr. Mell took his meals with the boys, but
+Mr. Sharp dined and supped at Mr. Creakle’s table. He was a limp,
+delicate-looking gentleman, I thought, with a good deal of nose, and a
+way of carrying his head on one side, as if it were a little too heavy
+for him. His hair was very smooth and wavy; but I was informed by the
+very first boy who came back that it was a wig (a second-hand one HE
+said), and that Mr. Sharp went out every Saturday afternoon to get it
+curled.
+
+It was no other than Tommy Traddles who gave me this piece of
+intelligence. He was the first boy who returned. He introduced himself
+by informing me that I should find his name on the right-hand corner of
+the gate, over the top-bolt; upon that I said, ‘Traddles?’ to which he
+replied, ‘The same,’ and then he asked me for a full account of myself
+and family.
+
+It was a happy circumstance for me that Traddles came back first. He
+enjoyed my placard so much, that he saved me from the embarrassment of
+either disclosure or concealment, by presenting me to every other boy
+who came back, great or small, immediately on his arrival, in this form
+of introduction, ‘Look here! Here’s a game!’ Happily, too, the greater
+part of the boys came back low-spirited, and were not so boisterous at
+my expense as I had expected. Some of them certainly did dance about me
+like wild Indians, and the greater part could not resist the temptation
+of pretending that I was a dog, and patting and soothing me, lest I
+should bite, and saying, ‘Lie down, sir!’ and calling me Towzer. This
+was naturally confusing, among so many strangers, and cost me some
+tears, but on the whole it was much better than I had anticipated.
+
+I was not considered as being formally received into the school,
+however, until J. Steerforth arrived. Before this boy, who was
+reputed to be a great scholar, and was very good-looking, and at least
+half-a-dozen years my senior, I was carried as before a magistrate. He
+inquired, under a shed in the playground, into the particulars of my
+punishment, and was pleased to express his opinion that it was ‘a jolly
+shame’; for which I became bound to him ever afterwards.
+
+‘What money have you got, Copperfield?’ he said, walking aside with
+me when he had disposed of my affair in these terms. I told him seven
+shillings.
+
+‘You had better give it to me to take care of,’ he said. ‘At least, you
+can if you like. You needn’t if you don’t like.’
+
+I hastened to comply with his friendly suggestion, and opening
+Peggotty’s purse, turned it upside down into his hand.
+
+‘Do you want to spend anything now?’ he asked me.
+
+‘No thank you,’ I replied.
+
+‘You can, if you like, you know,’ said Steerforth. ‘Say the word.’
+
+‘No, thank you, sir,’ I repeated.
+
+‘Perhaps you’d like to spend a couple of shillings or so, in a bottle of
+currant wine by and by, up in the bedroom?’ said Steerforth. ‘You belong
+to my bedroom, I find.’
+
+It certainly had not occurred to me before, but I said, Yes, I should
+like that.
+
+‘Very good,’ said Steerforth. ‘You’ll be glad to spend another shilling
+or so, in almond cakes, I dare say?’
+
+I said, Yes, I should like that, too.
+
+‘And another shilling or so in biscuits, and another in fruit, eh?’ said
+Steerforth. ‘I say, young Copperfield, you’re going it!’
+
+I smiled because he smiled, but I was a little troubled in my mind, too.
+
+‘Well!’ said Steerforth. ‘We must make it stretch as far as we can;
+that’s all. I’ll do the best in my power for you. I can go out when I
+like, and I’ll smuggle the prog in.’ With these words he put the money
+in his pocket, and kindly told me not to make myself uneasy; he would
+take care it should be all right. He was as good as his word, if that
+were all right which I had a secret misgiving was nearly all wrong--for
+I feared it was a waste of my mother’s two half-crowns--though I had
+preserved the piece of paper they were wrapped in: which was a precious
+saving. When we went upstairs to bed, he produced the whole seven
+shillings’ worth, and laid it out on my bed in the moonlight, saying:
+
+‘There you are, young Copperfield, and a royal spread you’ve got.’
+
+I couldn’t think of doing the honours of the feast, at my time of life,
+while he was by; my hand shook at the very thought of it. I begged him
+to do me the favour of presiding; and my request being seconded by the
+other boys who were in that room, he acceded to it, and sat upon my
+pillow, handing round the viands--with perfect fairness, I must say--and
+dispensing the currant wine in a little glass without a foot, which was
+his own property. As to me, I sat on his left hand, and the rest were
+grouped about us, on the nearest beds and on the floor.
+
+How well I recollect our sitting there, talking in whispers; or their
+talking, and my respectfully listening, I ought rather to say; the
+moonlight falling a little way into the room, through the window,
+painting a pale window on the floor, and the greater part of us in
+shadow, except when Steerforth dipped a match into a phosphorus-box,
+when he wanted to look for anything on the board, and shed a blue glare
+over us that was gone directly! A certain mysterious feeling, consequent
+on the darkness, the secrecy of the revel, and the whisper in which
+everything was said, steals over me again, and I listen to all they tell
+me with a vague feeling of solemnity and awe, which makes me glad that
+they are all so near, and frightens me (though I feign to laugh) when
+Traddles pretends to see a ghost in the corner.
+
+I heard all kinds of things about the school and all belonging to it.
+I heard that Mr. Creakle had not preferred his claim to being a Tartar
+without reason; that he was the sternest and most severe of masters;
+that he laid about him, right and left, every day of his life, charging
+in among the boys like a trooper, and slashing away, unmercifully. That
+he knew nothing himself, but the art of slashing, being more ignorant
+(J. Steerforth said) than the lowest boy in the school; that he had
+been, a good many years ago, a small hop-dealer in the Borough, and had
+taken to the schooling business after being bankrupt in hops, and making
+away with Mrs. Creakle’s money. With a good deal more of that sort,
+which I wondered how they knew.
+
+I heard that the man with the wooden leg, whose name was Tungay, was an
+obstinate barbarian who had formerly assisted in the hop business, but
+had come into the scholastic line with Mr. Creakle, in consequence,
+as was supposed among the boys, of his having broken his leg in Mr.
+Creakle’s service, and having done a deal of dishonest work for him,
+and knowing his secrets. I heard that with the single exception of Mr.
+Creakle, Tungay considered the whole establishment, masters and boys,
+as his natural enemies, and that the only delight of his life was to be
+sour and malicious. I heard that Mr. Creakle had a son, who had not been
+Tungay’s friend, and who, assisting in the school, had once held some
+remonstrance with his father on an occasion when its discipline was very
+cruelly exercised, and was supposed, besides, to have protested against
+his father’s usage of his mother. I heard that Mr. Creakle had turned
+him out of doors, in consequence; and that Mrs. and Miss Creakle had
+been in a sad way, ever since.
+
+But the greatest wonder that I heard of Mr. Creakle was, there being one
+boy in the school on whom he never ventured to lay a hand, and that
+boy being J. Steerforth. Steerforth himself confirmed this when it was
+stated, and said that he should like to begin to see him do it. On being
+asked by a mild boy (not me) how he would proceed if he did begin to see
+him do it, he dipped a match into his phosphorus-box on purpose to shed
+a glare over his reply, and said he would commence by knocking him down
+with a blow on the forehead from the seven-and-sixpenny ink-bottle
+that was always on the mantelpiece. We sat in the dark for some time,
+breathless.
+
+I heard that Mr. Sharp and Mr. Mell were both supposed to be wretchedly
+paid; and that when there was hot and cold meat for dinner at Mr.
+Creakle’s table, Mr. Sharp was always expected to say he preferred cold;
+which was again corroborated by J. Steerforth, the only parlour-boarder.
+I heard that Mr. Sharp’s wig didn’t fit him; and that he needn’t be so
+‘bounceable’--somebody else said ‘bumptious’--about it, because his own
+red hair was very plainly to be seen behind.
+
+I heard that one boy, who was a coal-merchant’s son, came as a set-off
+against the coal-bill, and was called, on that account, ‘Exchange or
+Barter’--a name selected from the arithmetic book as expressing this
+arrangement. I heard that the table beer was a robbery of parents, and
+the pudding an imposition. I heard that Miss Creakle was regarded by the
+school in general as being in love with Steerforth; and I am sure, as I
+sat in the dark, thinking of his nice voice, and his fine face, and his
+easy manner, and his curling hair, I thought it very likely. I heard
+that Mr. Mell was not a bad sort of fellow, but hadn’t a sixpence to
+bless himself with; and that there was no doubt that old Mrs. Mell, his
+mother, was as poor as job. I thought of my breakfast then, and what had
+sounded like ‘My Charley!’ but I was, I am glad to remember, as mute as
+a mouse about it.
+
+The hearing of all this, and a good deal more, outlasted the banquet
+some time. The greater part of the guests had gone to bed as soon as the
+eating and drinking were over; and we, who had remained whispering and
+listening half-undressed, at last betook ourselves to bed, too.
+
+‘Good night, young Copperfield,’ said Steerforth. ‘I’ll take care of
+you.’ ‘You’re very kind,’ I gratefully returned. ‘I am very much obliged
+to you.’
+
+‘You haven’t got a sister, have you?’ said Steerforth, yawning.
+
+‘No,’ I answered.
+
+‘That’s a pity,’ said Steerforth. ‘If you had had one, I should think
+she would have been a pretty, timid, little, bright-eyed sort of girl. I
+should have liked to know her. Good night, young Copperfield.’
+
+‘Good night, sir,’ I replied.
+
+I thought of him very much after I went to bed, and raised myself,
+I recollect, to look at him where he lay in the moonlight, with his
+handsome face turned up, and his head reclining easily on his arm. He
+was a person of great power in my eyes; that was, of course, the reason
+of my mind running on him. No veiled future dimly glanced upon him in
+the moonbeams. There was no shadowy picture of his footsteps, in the
+garden that I dreamed of walking in all night.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7. MY ‘FIRST HALF’ AT SALEM HOUSE
+
+
+School began in earnest next day. A profound impression was made
+upon me, I remember, by the roar of voices in the schoolroom suddenly
+becoming hushed as death when Mr. Creakle entered after breakfast, and
+stood in the doorway looking round upon us like a giant in a story-book
+surveying his captives.
+
+Tungay stood at Mr. Creakle’s elbow. He had no occasion, I thought,
+to cry out ‘Silence!’ so ferociously, for the boys were all struck
+speechless and motionless.
+
+Mr. Creakle was seen to speak, and Tungay was heard, to this effect.
+
+‘Now, boys, this is a new half. Take care what you’re about, in this new
+half. Come fresh up to the lessons, I advise you, for I come fresh up
+to the punishment. I won’t flinch. It will be of no use your rubbing
+yourselves; you won’t rub the marks out that I shall give you. Now get
+to work, every boy!’
+
+When this dreadful exordium was over, and Tungay had stumped out again,
+Mr. Creakle came to where I sat, and told me that if I were famous for
+biting, he was famous for biting, too. He then showed me the cane, and
+asked me what I thought of THAT, for a tooth? Was it a sharp tooth, hey?
+Was it a double tooth, hey? Had it a deep prong, hey? Did it bite, hey?
+Did it bite? At every question he gave me a fleshy cut with it that made
+me writhe; so I was very soon made free of Salem House (as Steerforth
+said), and was very soon in tears also.
+
+Not that I mean to say these were special marks of distinction,
+which only I received. On the contrary, a large majority of the boys
+(especially the smaller ones) were visited with similar instances
+of notice, as Mr. Creakle made the round of the schoolroom. Half the
+establishment was writhing and crying, before the day’s work began; and
+how much of it had writhed and cried before the day’s work was over, I
+am really afraid to recollect, lest I should seem to exaggerate.
+
+I should think there never can have been a man who enjoyed his
+profession more than Mr. Creakle did. He had a delight in cutting at
+the boys, which was like the satisfaction of a craving appetite. I am
+confident that he couldn’t resist a chubby boy, especially; that there
+was a fascination in such a subject, which made him restless in his
+mind, until he had scored and marked him for the day. I was chubby
+myself, and ought to know. I am sure when I think of the fellow now, my
+blood rises against him with the disinterested indignation I should
+feel if I could have known all about him without having ever been in his
+power; but it rises hotly, because I know him to have been an incapable
+brute, who had no more right to be possessed of the great trust he held,
+than to be Lord High Admiral, or Commander-in-Chief--in either of
+which capacities it is probable that he would have done infinitely less
+mischief.
+
+Miserable little propitiators of a remorseless Idol, how abject we were
+to him! What a launch in life I think it now, on looking back, to be so
+mean and servile to a man of such parts and pretensions!
+
+Here I sit at the desk again, watching his eye--humbly watching his eye,
+as he rules a ciphering-book for another victim whose hands have just
+been flattened by that identical ruler, and who is trying to wipe the
+sting out with a pocket-handkerchief. I have plenty to do. I don’t watch
+his eye in idleness, but because I am morbidly attracted to it, in a
+dread desire to know what he will do next, and whether it will be my
+turn to suffer, or somebody else’s. A lane of small boys beyond me, with
+the same interest in his eye, watch it too. I think he knows it,
+though he pretends he don’t. He makes dreadful mouths as he rules the
+ciphering-book; and now he throws his eye sideways down our lane, and we
+all droop over our books and tremble. A moment afterwards we are again
+eyeing him. An unhappy culprit, found guilty of imperfect exercise,
+approaches at his command. The culprit falters excuses, and professes a
+determination to do better tomorrow. Mr. Creakle cuts a joke before he
+beats him, and we laugh at it,--miserable little dogs, we laugh, with
+our visages as white as ashes, and our hearts sinking into our boots.
+
+Here I sit at the desk again, on a drowsy summer afternoon. A buzz and
+hum go up around me, as if the boys were so many bluebottles. A cloggy
+sensation of the lukewarm fat of meat is upon me (we dined an hour or
+two ago), and my head is as heavy as so much lead. I would give the
+world to go to sleep. I sit with my eye on Mr. Creakle, blinking at him
+like a young owl; when sleep overpowers me for a minute, he still looms
+through my slumber, ruling those ciphering-books, until he softly comes
+behind me and wakes me to plainer perception of him, with a red ridge
+across my back.
+
+Here I am in the playground, with my eye still fascinated by him, though
+I can’t see him. The window at a little distance from which I know he is
+having his dinner, stands for him, and I eye that instead. If he shows
+his face near it, mine assumes an imploring and submissive expression.
+If he looks out through the glass, the boldest boy (Steerforth excepted)
+stops in the middle of a shout or yell, and becomes contemplative. One
+day, Traddles (the most unfortunate boy in the world) breaks that window
+accidentally, with a ball. I shudder at this moment with the tremendous
+sensation of seeing it done, and feeling that the ball has bounded on to
+Mr. Creakle’s sacred head.
+
+Poor Traddles! In a tight sky-blue suit that made his arms and legs like
+German sausages, or roly-poly puddings, he was the merriest and most
+miserable of all the boys. He was always being caned--I think he was
+caned every day that half-year, except one holiday Monday when he was
+only ruler’d on both hands--and was always going to write to his uncle
+about it, and never did. After laying his head on the desk for a little
+while, he would cheer up, somehow, begin to laugh again, and draw
+skeletons all over his slate, before his eyes were dry. I used at first
+to wonder what comfort Traddles found in drawing skeletons; and for some
+time looked upon him as a sort of hermit, who reminded himself by those
+symbols of mortality that caning couldn’t last for ever. But I believe
+he only did it because they were easy, and didn’t want any features.
+
+He was very honourable, Traddles was, and held it as a solemn duty
+in the boys to stand by one another. He suffered for this on several
+occasions; and particularly once, when Steerforth laughed in church,
+and the Beadle thought it was Traddles, and took him out. I see him now,
+going away in custody, despised by the congregation. He never said
+who was the real offender, though he smarted for it next day, and was
+imprisoned so many hours that he came forth with a whole churchyard-full
+of skeletons swarming all over his Latin Dictionary. But he had his
+reward. Steerforth said there was nothing of the sneak in Traddles, and
+we all felt that to be the highest praise. For my part, I could have
+gone through a good deal (though I was much less brave than Traddles,
+and nothing like so old) to have won such a recompense.
+
+To see Steerforth walk to church before us, arm-in-arm with Miss
+Creakle, was one of the great sights of my life. I didn’t think Miss
+Creakle equal to little Em’ly in point of beauty, and I didn’t love
+her (I didn’t dare); but I thought her a young lady of extraordinary
+attractions, and in point of gentility not to be surpassed. When
+Steerforth, in white trousers, carried her parasol for her, I felt proud
+to know him; and believed that she could not choose but adore him with
+all her heart. Mr. Sharp and Mr. Mell were both notable personages in my
+eyes; but Steerforth was to them what the sun was to two stars.
+
+Steerforth continued his protection of me, and proved a very useful
+friend; since nobody dared to annoy one whom he honoured with his
+countenance. He couldn’t--or at all events he didn’t--defend me from Mr.
+Creakle, who was very severe with me; but whenever I had been treated
+worse than usual, he always told me that I wanted a little of his pluck,
+and that he wouldn’t have stood it himself; which I felt he intended
+for encouragement, and considered to be very kind of him. There was one
+advantage, and only one that I know of, in Mr. Creakle’s severity. He
+found my placard in his way when he came up or down behind the form on
+which I sat, and wanted to make a cut at me in passing; for this reason
+it was soon taken off, and I saw it no more.
+
+An accidental circumstance cemented the intimacy between Steerforth
+and me, in a manner that inspired me with great pride and satisfaction,
+though it sometimes led to inconvenience. It happened on one occasion,
+when he was doing me the honour of talking to me in the playground, that
+I hazarded the observation that something or somebody--I forget what
+now--was like something or somebody in Peregrine Pickle. He said nothing
+at the time; but when I was going to bed at night, asked me if I had got
+that book?
+
+I told him no, and explained how it was that I had read it, and all
+those other books of which I have made mention.
+
+‘And do you recollect them?’ Steerforth said.
+
+‘Oh yes,’ I replied; I had a good memory, and I believed I recollected
+them very well.
+
+‘Then I tell you what, young Copperfield,’ said Steerforth, ‘you
+shall tell ‘em to me. I can’t get to sleep very early at night, and I
+generally wake rather early in the morning. We’ll go over ‘em one after
+another. We’ll make some regular Arabian Nights of it.’
+
+I felt extremely flattered by this arrangement, and we commenced
+carrying it into execution that very evening. What ravages I committed
+on my favourite authors in the course of my interpretation of them, I am
+not in a condition to say, and should be very unwilling to know; but
+I had a profound faith in them, and I had, to the best of my belief,
+a simple, earnest manner of narrating what I did narrate; and these
+qualities went a long way.
+
+The drawback was, that I was often sleepy at night, or out of spirits
+and indisposed to resume the story; and then it was rather hard work,
+and it must be done; for to disappoint or to displease Steerforth was of
+course out of the question. In the morning, too, when I felt weary, and
+should have enjoyed another hour’s repose very much, it was a tiresome
+thing to be roused, like the Sultana Scheherazade, and forced into a
+long story before the getting-up bell rang; but Steerforth was resolute;
+and as he explained to me, in return, my sums and exercises, and
+anything in my tasks that was too hard for me, I was no loser by the
+transaction. Let me do myself justice, however. I was moved by no
+interested or selfish motive, nor was I moved by fear of him. I admired
+and loved him, and his approval was return enough. It was so precious to
+me that I look back on these trifles, now, with an aching heart.
+
+Steerforth was considerate, too; and showed his consideration, in
+one particular instance, in an unflinching manner that was a little
+tantalizing, I suspect, to poor Traddles and the rest. Peggotty’s
+promised letter--what a comfortable letter it was!--arrived before
+‘the half’ was many weeks old; and with it a cake in a perfect nest
+of oranges, and two bottles of cowslip wine. This treasure, as in duty
+bound, I laid at the feet of Steerforth, and begged him to dispense.
+
+‘Now, I’ll tell you what, young Copperfield,’ said he: ‘the wine shall
+be kept to wet your whistle when you are story-telling.’
+
+I blushed at the idea, and begged him, in my modesty, not to think of
+it. But he said he had observed I was sometimes hoarse--a little roopy
+was his exact expression--and it should be, every drop, devoted to the
+purpose he had mentioned. Accordingly, it was locked up in his box, and
+drawn off by himself in a phial, and administered to me through a
+piece of quill in the cork, when I was supposed to be in want of a
+restorative. Sometimes, to make it a more sovereign specific, he was so
+kind as to squeeze orange juice into it, or to stir it up with ginger,
+or dissolve a peppermint drop in it; and although I cannot assert that
+the flavour was improved by these experiments, or that it was exactly
+the compound one would have chosen for a stomachic, the last thing at
+night and the first thing in the morning, I drank it gratefully and was
+very sensible of his attention.
+
+We seem, to me, to have been months over Peregrine, and months more over
+the other stories. The institution never flagged for want of a story, I
+am certain; and the wine lasted out almost as well as the matter. Poor
+Traddles--I never think of that boy but with a strange disposition to
+laugh, and with tears in my eyes--was a sort of chorus, in general;
+and affected to be convulsed with mirth at the comic parts, and to be
+overcome with fear when there was any passage of an alarming character
+in the narrative. This rather put me out, very often. It was a great
+jest of his, I recollect, to pretend that he couldn’t keep his teeth
+from chattering, whenever mention was made of an Alguazill in connexion
+with the adventures of Gil Blas; and I remember that when Gil Blas met
+the captain of the robbers in Madrid, this unlucky joker counterfeited
+such an ague of terror, that he was overheard by Mr. Creakle, who
+was prowling about the passage, and handsomely flogged for disorderly
+conduct in the bedroom. Whatever I had within me that was romantic and
+dreamy, was encouraged by so much story-telling in the dark; and in that
+respect the pursuit may not have been very profitable to me. But the
+being cherished as a kind of plaything in my room, and the consciousness
+that this accomplishment of mine was bruited about among the boys, and
+attracted a good deal of notice to me though I was the youngest there,
+stimulated me to exertion. In a school carried on by sheer cruelty,
+whether it is presided over by a dunce or not, there is not likely to
+be much learnt. I believe our boys were, generally, as ignorant a set
+as any schoolboys in existence; they were too much troubled and knocked
+about to learn; they could no more do that to advantage, than any one
+can do anything to advantage in a life of constant misfortune, torment,
+and worry. But my little vanity, and Steerforth’s help, urged me on
+somehow; and without saving me from much, if anything, in the way of
+punishment, made me, for the time I was there, an exception to the
+general body, insomuch that I did steadily pick up some crumbs of
+knowledge.
+
+In this I was much assisted by Mr. Mell, who had a liking for me that
+I am grateful to remember. It always gave me pain to observe that
+Steerforth treated him with systematic disparagement, and seldom lost
+an occasion of wounding his feelings, or inducing others to do so.
+This troubled me the more for a long time, because I had soon told
+Steerforth, from whom I could no more keep such a secret, than I could
+keep a cake or any other tangible possession, about the two old women
+Mr. Mell had taken me to see; and I was always afraid that Steerforth
+would let it out, and twit him with it.
+
+We little thought, any one of us, I dare say, when I ate my breakfast
+that first morning, and went to sleep under the shadow of the peacock’s
+feathers to the sound of the flute, what consequences would come of the
+introduction into those alms-houses of my insignificant person. But the
+visit had its unforeseen consequences; and of a serious sort, too, in
+their way.
+
+One day when Mr. Creakle kept the house from indisposition, which
+naturally diffused a lively joy through the school, there was a good
+deal of noise in the course of the morning’s work. The great relief and
+satisfaction experienced by the boys made them difficult to manage; and
+though the dreaded Tungay brought his wooden leg in twice or thrice, and
+took notes of the principal offenders’ names, no great impression was
+made by it, as they were pretty sure of getting into trouble tomorrow,
+do what they would, and thought it wise, no doubt, to enjoy themselves
+today.
+
+It was, properly, a half-holiday; being Saturday. But as the noise in
+the playground would have disturbed Mr. Creakle, and the weather was
+not favourable for going out walking, we were ordered into school in the
+afternoon, and set some lighter tasks than usual, which were made for
+the occasion. It was the day of the week on which Mr. Sharp went out to
+get his wig curled; so Mr. Mell, who always did the drudgery, whatever
+it was, kept school by himself. If I could associate the idea of a bull
+or a bear with anyone so mild as Mr. Mell, I should think of him, in
+connexion with that afternoon when the uproar was at its height, as of
+one of those animals, baited by a thousand dogs. I recall him bending
+his aching head, supported on his bony hand, over the book on his desk,
+and wretchedly endeavouring to get on with his tiresome work, amidst an
+uproar that might have made the Speaker of the House of Commons giddy.
+Boys started in and out of their places, playing at puss in the corner
+with other boys; there were laughing boys, singing boys, talking boys,
+dancing boys, howling boys; boys shuffled with their feet, boys whirled
+about him, grinning, making faces, mimicking him behind his back and
+before his eyes; mimicking his poverty, his boots, his coat, his mother,
+everything belonging to him that they should have had consideration for.
+
+‘Silence!’ cried Mr. Mell, suddenly rising up, and striking his desk
+with the book. ‘What does this mean! It’s impossible to bear it. It’s
+maddening. How can you do it to me, boys?’
+
+It was my book that he struck his desk with; and as I stood beside him,
+following his eye as it glanced round the room, I saw the boys all stop,
+some suddenly surprised, some half afraid, and some sorry perhaps.
+
+Steerforth’s place was at the bottom of the school, at the opposite end
+of the long room. He was lounging with his back against the wall, and
+his hands in his pockets, and looked at Mr. Mell with his mouth shut up
+as if he were whistling, when Mr. Mell looked at him.
+
+‘Silence, Mr. Steerforth!’ said Mr. Mell.
+
+‘Silence yourself,’ said Steerforth, turning red. ‘Whom are you talking
+to?’
+
+‘Sit down,’ said Mr. Mell.
+
+‘Sit down yourself,’ said Steerforth, ‘and mind your business.’
+
+There was a titter, and some applause; but Mr. Mell was so white, that
+silence immediately succeeded; and one boy, who had darted out behind
+him to imitate his mother again, changed his mind, and pretended to want
+a pen mended.
+
+‘If you think, Steerforth,’ said Mr. Mell, ‘that I am not acquainted
+with the power you can establish over any mind here’--he laid his hand,
+without considering what he did (as I supposed), upon my head--‘or that
+I have not observed you, within a few minutes, urging your juniors on to
+every sort of outrage against me, you are mistaken.’
+
+‘I don’t give myself the trouble of thinking at all about you,’ said
+Steerforth, coolly; ‘so I’m not mistaken, as it happens.’
+
+‘And when you make use of your position of favouritism here, sir,’
+pursued Mr. Mell, with his lip trembling very much, ‘to insult a
+gentleman--’
+
+‘A what?--where is he?’ said Steerforth.
+
+Here somebody cried out, ‘Shame, J. Steerforth! Too bad!’ It was
+Traddles; whom Mr. Mell instantly discomfited by bidding him hold his
+tongue. --‘To insult one who is not fortunate in life, sir, and who
+never gave you the least offence, and the many reasons for not insulting
+whom you are old enough and wise enough to understand,’ said Mr. Mell,
+with his lips trembling more and more, ‘you commit a mean and base
+action. You can sit down or stand up as you please, sir. Copperfield, go
+on.’
+
+‘Young Copperfield,’ said Steerforth, coming forward up the room,
+‘stop a bit. I tell you what, Mr. Mell, once for all. When you take the
+liberty of calling me mean or base, or anything of that sort, you are
+an impudent beggar. You are always a beggar, you know; but when you do
+that, you are an impudent beggar.’
+
+I am not clear whether he was going to strike Mr. Mell, or Mr. Mell was
+going to strike him, or there was any such intention on either side.
+I saw a rigidity come upon the whole school as if they had been turned
+into stone, and found Mr. Creakle in the midst of us, with Tungay at his
+side, and Mrs. and Miss Creakle looking in at the door as if they were
+frightened. Mr. Mell, with his elbows on his desk and his face in his
+hands, sat, for some moments, quite still.
+
+‘Mr. Mell,’ said Mr. Creakle, shaking him by the arm; and his whisper
+was so audible now, that Tungay felt it unnecessary to repeat his words;
+‘you have not forgotten yourself, I hope?’
+
+‘No, sir, no,’ returned the Master, showing his face, and shaking his
+head, and rubbing his hands in great agitation. ‘No, sir. No. I have
+remembered myself, I--no, Mr. Creakle, I have not forgotten myself, I--I
+have remembered myself, sir. I--I--could wish you had remembered me a
+little sooner, Mr. Creakle. It--it--would have been more kind, sir, more
+just, sir. It would have saved me something, sir.’
+
+Mr. Creakle, looking hard at Mr. Mell, put his hand on Tungay’s
+shoulder, and got his feet upon the form close by, and sat upon the
+desk. After still looking hard at Mr. Mell from his throne, as he
+shook his head, and rubbed his hands, and remained in the same state of
+agitation, Mr. Creakle turned to Steerforth, and said:
+
+‘Now, sir, as he don’t condescend to tell me, what is this?’
+
+Steerforth evaded the question for a little while; looking in scorn and
+anger on his opponent, and remaining silent. I could not help thinking
+even in that interval, I remember, what a noble fellow he was in
+appearance, and how homely and plain Mr. Mell looked opposed to him.
+
+‘What did he mean by talking about favourites, then?’ said Steerforth at
+length.
+
+‘Favourites?’ repeated Mr. Creakle, with the veins in his forehead
+swelling quickly. ‘Who talked about favourites?’
+
+‘He did,’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘And pray, what did you mean by that, sir?’ demanded Mr. Creakle,
+turning angrily on his assistant.
+
+‘I meant, Mr. Creakle,’ he returned in a low voice, ‘as I said; that
+no pupil had a right to avail himself of his position of favouritism to
+degrade me.’
+
+‘To degrade YOU?’ said Mr. Creakle. ‘My stars! But give me leave to ask
+you, Mr. What’s-your-name’; and here Mr. Creakle folded his arms, cane
+and all, upon his chest, and made such a knot of his brows that his
+little eyes were hardly visible below them; ‘whether, when you talk
+about favourites, you showed proper respect to me? To me, sir,’ said Mr.
+Creakle, darting his head at him suddenly, and drawing it back again,
+‘the principal of this establishment, and your employer.’
+
+‘It was not judicious, sir, I am willing to admit,’ said Mr. Mell. ‘I
+should not have done so, if I had been cool.’
+
+Here Steerforth struck in.
+
+‘Then he said I was mean, and then he said I was base, and then I called
+him a beggar. If I had been cool, perhaps I shouldn’t have called him a
+beggar. But I did, and I am ready to take the consequences of it.’
+
+Without considering, perhaps, whether there were any consequences to
+be taken, I felt quite in a glow at this gallant speech. It made an
+impression on the boys too, for there was a low stir among them, though
+no one spoke a word.
+
+‘I am surprised, Steerforth--although your candour does you honour,’
+said Mr. Creakle, ‘does you honour, certainly--I am surprised,
+Steerforth, I must say, that you should attach such an epithet to any
+person employed and paid in Salem House, sir.’
+
+Steerforth gave a short laugh.
+
+‘That’s not an answer, sir,’ said Mr. Creakle, ‘to my remark. I expect
+more than that from you, Steerforth.’
+
+If Mr. Mell looked homely, in my eyes, before the handsome boy, it would
+be quite impossible to say how homely Mr. Creakle looked. ‘Let him deny
+it,’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘Deny that he is a beggar, Steerforth?’ cried Mr. Creakle. ‘Why, where
+does he go a-begging?’
+
+‘If he is not a beggar himself, his near relation’s one,’ said
+Steerforth. ‘It’s all the same.’
+
+He glanced at me, and Mr. Mell’s hand gently patted me upon the
+shoulder. I looked up with a flush upon my face and remorse in my heart,
+but Mr. Mell’s eyes were fixed on Steerforth. He continued to pat me
+kindly on the shoulder, but he looked at him.
+
+‘Since you expect me, Mr. Creakle, to justify myself,’ said Steerforth,
+‘and to say what I mean,--what I have to say is, that his mother lives
+on charity in an alms-house.’
+
+Mr. Mell still looked at him, and still patted me kindly on the
+shoulder, and said to himself, in a whisper, if I heard right: ‘Yes, I
+thought so.’
+
+Mr. Creakle turned to his assistant, with a severe frown and laboured
+politeness:
+
+‘Now, you hear what this gentleman says, Mr. Mell. Have the goodness, if
+you please, to set him right before the assembled school.’
+
+‘He is right, sir, without correction,’ returned Mr. Mell, in the midst
+of a dead silence; ‘what he has said is true.’
+
+‘Be so good then as declare publicly, will you,’ said Mr. Creakle,
+putting his head on one side, and rolling his eyes round the school,
+‘whether it ever came to my knowledge until this moment?’
+
+‘I believe not directly,’ he returned.
+
+‘Why, you know not,’ said Mr. Creakle. ‘Don’t you, man?’
+
+‘I apprehend you never supposed my worldly circumstances to be very
+good,’ replied the assistant. ‘You know what my position is, and always
+has been, here.’
+
+‘I apprehend, if you come to that,’ said Mr. Creakle, with his veins
+swelling again bigger than ever, ‘that you’ve been in a wrong position
+altogether, and mistook this for a charity school. Mr. Mell, we’ll part,
+if you please. The sooner the better.’
+
+‘There is no time,’ answered Mr. Mell, rising, ‘like the present.’
+
+‘Sir, to you!’ said Mr. Creakle.
+
+‘I take my leave of you, Mr. Creakle, and all of you,’ said Mr. Mell,
+glancing round the room, and again patting me gently on the shoulders.
+‘James Steerforth, the best wish I can leave you is that you may come to
+be ashamed of what you have done today. At present I would prefer to see
+you anything rather than a friend, to me, or to anyone in whom I feel an
+interest.’
+
+Once more he laid his hand upon my shoulder; and then taking his
+flute and a few books from his desk, and leaving the key in it for his
+successor, he went out of the school, with his property under his arm.
+Mr. Creakle then made a speech, through Tungay, in which he thanked
+Steerforth for asserting (though perhaps too warmly) the independence
+and respectability of Salem House; and which he wound up by shaking
+hands with Steerforth, while we gave three cheers--I did not quite know
+what for, but I supposed for Steerforth, and so joined in them ardently,
+though I felt miserable. Mr. Creakle then caned Tommy Traddles for
+being discovered in tears, instead of cheers, on account of Mr. Mell’s
+departure; and went back to his sofa, or his bed, or wherever he had
+come from.
+
+We were left to ourselves now, and looked very blank, I recollect, on
+one another. For myself, I felt so much self-reproach and contrition for
+my part in what had happened, that nothing would have enabled me to keep
+back my tears but the fear that Steerforth, who often looked at me, I
+saw, might think it unfriendly--or, I should rather say, considering our
+relative ages, and the feeling with which I regarded him, undutiful--if
+I showed the emotion which distressed me. He was very angry with
+Traddles, and said he was glad he had caught it.
+
+Poor Traddles, who had passed the stage of lying with his head upon the
+desk, and was relieving himself as usual with a burst of skeletons, said
+he didn’t care. Mr. Mell was ill-used.
+
+‘Who has ill-used him, you girl?’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘Why, you have,’ returned Traddles.
+
+‘What have I done?’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘What have you done?’ retorted Traddles. ‘Hurt his feelings, and lost
+him his situation.’
+
+‘His feelings?’ repeated Steerforth disdainfully. ‘His feelings will
+soon get the better of it, I’ll be bound. His feelings are not like
+yours, Miss Traddles. As to his situation--which was a precious one,
+wasn’t it?--do you suppose I am not going to write home, and take care
+that he gets some money? Polly?’
+
+We thought this intention very noble in Steerforth, whose mother was
+a widow, and rich, and would do almost anything, it was said, that he
+asked her. We were all extremely glad to see Traddles so put down,
+and exalted Steerforth to the skies: especially when he told us, as he
+condescended to do, that what he had done had been done expressly for
+us, and for our cause; and that he had conferred a great boon upon us
+by unselfishly doing it. But I must say that when I was going on with a
+story in the dark that night, Mr. Mell’s old flute seemed more than once
+to sound mournfully in my ears; and that when at last Steerforth was
+tired, and I lay down in my bed, I fancied it playing so sorrowfully
+somewhere, that I was quite wretched.
+
+I soon forgot him in the contemplation of Steerforth, who, in an easy
+amateur way, and without any book (he seemed to me to know everything by
+heart), took some of his classes until a new master was found. The new
+master came from a grammar school; and before he entered on his duties,
+dined in the parlour one day, to be introduced to Steerforth. Steerforth
+approved of him highly, and told us he was a Brick. Without exactly
+understanding what learned distinction was meant by this, I respected
+him greatly for it, and had no doubt whatever of his superior knowledge:
+though he never took the pains with me--not that I was anybody--that Mr.
+Mell had taken.
+
+There was only one other event in this half-year, out of the daily
+school-life, that made an impression upon me which still survives. It
+survives for many reasons.
+
+One afternoon, when we were all harassed into a state of dire confusion,
+and Mr. Creakle was laying about him dreadfully, Tungay came in, and
+called out in his usual strong way: ‘Visitors for Copperfield!’
+
+A few words were interchanged between him and Mr. Creakle, as, who the
+visitors were, and what room they were to be shown into; and then I, who
+had, according to custom, stood up on the announcement being made, and
+felt quite faint with astonishment, was told to go by the back stairs
+and get a clean frill on, before I repaired to the dining-room. These
+orders I obeyed, in such a flutter and hurry of my young spirits as
+I had never known before; and when I got to the parlour door, and the
+thought came into my head that it might be my mother--I had only thought
+of Mr. or Miss Murdstone until then--I drew back my hand from the lock,
+and stopped to have a sob before I went in.
+
+At first I saw nobody; but feeling a pressure against the door, I looked
+round it, and there, to my amazement, were Mr. Peggotty and Ham, ducking
+at me with their hats, and squeezing one another against the wall. I
+could not help laughing; but it was much more in the pleasure of seeing
+them, than at the appearance they made. We shook hands in a very
+cordial way; and I laughed and laughed, until I pulled out my
+pocket-handkerchief and wiped my eyes.
+
+Mr. Peggotty (who never shut his mouth once, I remember, during the
+visit) showed great concern when he saw me do this, and nudged Ham to
+say something.
+
+‘Cheer up, Mas’r Davy bor’!’ said Ham, in his simpering way. ‘Why, how
+you have growed!’
+
+‘Am I grown?’ I said, drying my eyes. I was not crying at anything
+in particular that I know of; but somehow it made me cry, to see old
+friends.
+
+‘Growed, Mas’r Davy bor’? Ain’t he growed!’ said Ham.
+
+‘Ain’t he growed!’ said Mr. Peggotty.
+
+They made me laugh again by laughing at each other, and then we all
+three laughed until I was in danger of crying again.
+
+‘Do you know how mama is, Mr. Peggotty?’ I said. ‘And how my dear, dear,
+old Peggotty is?’
+
+‘Oncommon,’ said Mr. Peggotty.
+
+‘And little Em’ly, and Mrs. Gummidge?’
+
+‘On--common,’ said Mr. Peggotty.
+
+There was a silence. Mr. Peggotty, to relieve it, took two prodigious
+lobsters, and an enormous crab, and a large canvas bag of shrimps, out
+of his pockets, and piled them up in Ham’s arms.
+
+‘You see,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘knowing as you was partial to a little
+relish with your wittles when you was along with us, we took the
+liberty. The old Mawther biled ‘em, she did. Mrs. Gummidge biled ‘em.
+Yes,’ said Mr. Peggotty, slowly, who I thought appeared to stick to the
+subject on account of having no other subject ready, ‘Mrs. Gummidge, I
+do assure you, she biled ‘em.’
+
+I expressed my thanks; and Mr. Peggotty, after looking at Ham, who stood
+smiling sheepishly over the shellfish, without making any attempt to
+help him, said:
+
+‘We come, you see, the wind and tide making in our favour, in one of our
+Yarmouth lugs to Gravesen’. My sister she wrote to me the name of this
+here place, and wrote to me as if ever I chanced to come to Gravesen’,
+I was to come over and inquire for Mas’r Davy and give her dooty,
+humbly wishing him well and reporting of the fam’ly as they was oncommon
+toe-be-sure. Little Em’ly, you see, she’ll write to my sister when I go
+back, as I see you and as you was similarly oncommon, and so we make it
+quite a merry-go-rounder.’
+
+I was obliged to consider a little before I understood what Mr. Peggotty
+meant by this figure, expressive of a complete circle of intelligence. I
+then thanked him heartily; and said, with a consciousness of reddening,
+that I supposed little Em’ly was altered too, since we used to pick up
+shells and pebbles on the beach?
+
+‘She’s getting to be a woman, that’s wot she’s getting to be,’ said Mr.
+Peggotty. ‘Ask HIM.’ He meant Ham, who beamed with delight and assent
+over the bag of shrimps.
+
+‘Her pretty face!’ said Mr. Peggotty, with his own shining like a light.
+
+‘Her learning!’ said Ham.
+
+‘Her writing!’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘Why it’s as black as jet! And so
+large it is, you might see it anywheres.’
+
+It was perfectly delightful to behold with what enthusiasm Mr. Peggotty
+became inspired when he thought of his little favourite. He stands
+before me again, his bluff hairy face irradiating with a joyful love and
+pride, for which I can find no description. His honest eyes fire up, and
+sparkle, as if their depths were stirred by something bright. His broad
+chest heaves with pleasure. His strong loose hands clench themselves,
+in his earnestness; and he emphasizes what he says with a right arm that
+shows, in my pigmy view, like a sledge-hammer.
+
+Ham was quite as earnest as he. I dare say they would have said much
+more about her, if they had not been abashed by the unexpected coming in
+of Steerforth, who, seeing me in a corner speaking with two strangers,
+stopped in a song he was singing, and said: ‘I didn’t know you were
+here, young Copperfield!’ (for it was not the usual visiting room) and
+crossed by us on his way out.
+
+I am not sure whether it was in the pride of having such a friend as
+Steerforth, or in the desire to explain to him how I came to have such a
+friend as Mr. Peggotty, that I called to him as he was going away. But I
+said, modestly--Good Heaven, how it all comes back to me this long time
+afterwards--!
+
+‘Don’t go, Steerforth, if you please. These are two Yarmouth
+boatmen--very kind, good people--who are relations of my nurse, and have
+come from Gravesend to see me.’
+
+‘Aye, aye?’ said Steerforth, returning. ‘I am glad to see them. How are
+you both?’
+
+There was an ease in his manner--a gay and light manner it was, but not
+swaggering--which I still believe to have borne a kind of enchantment
+with it. I still believe him, in virtue of this carriage, his animal
+spirits, his delightful voice, his handsome face and figure, and, for
+aught I know, of some inborn power of attraction besides (which I think
+a few people possess), to have carried a spell with him to which it was
+a natural weakness to yield, and which not many persons could withstand.
+I could not but see how pleased they were with him, and how they seemed
+to open their hearts to him in a moment.
+
+‘You must let them know at home, if you please, Mr. Peggotty,’ I said,
+‘when that letter is sent, that Mr. Steerforth is very kind to me, and
+that I don’t know what I should ever do here without him.’
+
+‘Nonsense!’ said Steerforth, laughing. ‘You mustn’t tell them anything
+of the sort.’
+
+‘And if Mr. Steerforth ever comes into Norfolk or Suffolk, Mr.
+Peggotty,’ I said, ‘while I am there, you may depend upon it I shall
+bring him to Yarmouth, if he will let me, to see your house. You never
+saw such a good house, Steerforth. It’s made out of a boat!’
+
+‘Made out of a boat, is it?’ said Steerforth. ‘It’s the right sort of a
+house for such a thorough-built boatman.’
+
+‘So ‘tis, sir, so ‘tis, sir,’ said Ham, grinning. ‘You’re right, young
+gen’l’m’n! Mas’r Davy bor’, gen’l’m’n’s right. A thorough-built boatman!
+Hor, hor! That’s what he is, too!’
+
+Mr. Peggotty was no less pleased than his nephew, though his modesty
+forbade him to claim a personal compliment so vociferously.
+
+‘Well, sir,’ he said, bowing and chuckling, and tucking in the ends
+of his neckerchief at his breast: ‘I thankee, sir, I thankee! I do my
+endeavours in my line of life, sir.’
+
+‘The best of men can do no more, Mr. Peggotty,’ said Steerforth. He had
+got his name already.
+
+‘I’ll pound it, it’s wot you do yourself, sir,’ said Mr. Peggotty,
+shaking his head, ‘and wot you do well--right well! I thankee, sir. I’m
+obleeged to you, sir, for your welcoming manner of me. I’m rough, sir,
+but I’m ready--least ways, I hope I’m ready, you unnerstand. My house
+ain’t much for to see, sir, but it’s hearty at your service if ever you
+should come along with Mas’r Davy to see it. I’m a reg’lar Dodman,
+I am,’ said Mr. Peggotty, by which he meant snail, and this was in
+allusion to his being slow to go, for he had attempted to go after every
+sentence, and had somehow or other come back again; ‘but I wish you both
+well, and I wish you happy!’
+
+Ham echoed this sentiment, and we parted with them in the heartiest
+manner. I was almost tempted that evening to tell Steerforth about
+pretty little Em’ly, but I was too timid of mentioning her name, and
+too much afraid of his laughing at me. I remember that I thought a good
+deal, and in an uneasy sort of way, about Mr. Peggotty having said that
+she was getting on to be a woman; but I decided that was nonsense.
+
+We transported the shellfish, or the ‘relish’ as Mr. Peggotty had
+modestly called it, up into our room unobserved, and made a great supper
+that evening. But Traddles couldn’t get happily out of it. He was too
+unfortunate even to come through a supper like anybody else. He was
+taken ill in the night--quite prostrate he was--in consequence of Crab;
+and after being drugged with black draughts and blue pills, to an extent
+which Demple (whose father was a doctor) said was enough to undermine
+a horse’s constitution, received a caning and six chapters of Greek
+Testament for refusing to confess.
+
+The rest of the half-year is a jumble in my recollection of the daily
+strife and struggle of our lives; of the waning summer and the changing
+season; of the frosty mornings when we were rung out of bed, and the
+cold, cold smell of the dark nights when we were rung into bed again; of
+the evening schoolroom dimly lighted and indifferently warmed, and the
+morning schoolroom which was nothing but a great shivering-machine; of
+the alternation of boiled beef with roast beef, and boiled mutton with
+roast mutton; of clods of bread-and-butter, dog’s-eared lesson-books,
+cracked slates, tear-blotted copy-books, canings, rulerings,
+hair-cuttings, rainy Sundays, suet-puddings, and a dirty atmosphere of
+ink, surrounding all.
+
+I well remember though, how the distant idea of the holidays, after
+seeming for an immense time to be a stationary speck, began to come
+towards us, and to grow and grow. How from counting months, we came to
+weeks, and then to days; and how I then began to be afraid that I should
+not be sent for and when I learnt from Steerforth that I had been sent
+for, and was certainly to go home, had dim forebodings that I might
+break my leg first. How the breaking-up day changed its place fast, at
+last, from the week after next to next week, this week, the day after
+tomorrow, tomorrow, today, tonight--when I was inside the Yarmouth mail,
+and going home.
+
+I had many a broken sleep inside the Yarmouth mail, and many an
+incoherent dream of all these things. But when I awoke at intervals, the
+ground outside the window was not the playground of Salem House, and the
+sound in my ears was not the sound of Mr. Creakle giving it to Traddles,
+but the sound of the coachman touching up the horses.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 8. MY HOLIDAYS. ESPECIALLY ONE HAPPY AFTERNOON
+
+
+When we arrived before day at the inn where the mail stopped, which was
+not the inn where my friend the waiter lived, I was shown up to a nice
+little bedroom, with DOLPHIN painted on the door. Very cold I was, I
+know, notwithstanding the hot tea they had given me before a large fire
+downstairs; and very glad I was to turn into the Dolphin’s bed, pull the
+Dolphin’s blankets round my head, and go to sleep.
+
+Mr. Barkis the carrier was to call for me in the morning at nine
+o’clock. I got up at eight, a little giddy from the shortness of my
+night’s rest, and was ready for him before the appointed time. He
+received me exactly as if not five minutes had elapsed since we were
+last together, and I had only been into the hotel to get change for
+sixpence, or something of that sort.
+
+As soon as I and my box were in the cart, and the carrier seated, the
+lazy horse walked away with us all at his accustomed pace.
+
+‘You look very well, Mr. Barkis,’ I said, thinking he would like to know
+it.
+
+Mr. Barkis rubbed his cheek with his cuff, and then looked at his cuff
+as if he expected to find some of the bloom upon it; but made no other
+acknowledgement of the compliment.
+
+‘I gave your message, Mr. Barkis,’ I said: ‘I wrote to Peggotty.’
+
+‘Ah!’ said Mr. Barkis.
+
+Mr. Barkis seemed gruff, and answered drily.
+
+‘Wasn’t it right, Mr. Barkis?’ I asked, after a little hesitation.
+
+‘Why, no,’ said Mr. Barkis.
+
+‘Not the message?’
+
+‘The message was right enough, perhaps,’ said Mr. Barkis; ‘but it come
+to an end there.’
+
+Not understanding what he meant, I repeated inquisitively: ‘Came to an
+end, Mr. Barkis?’
+
+‘Nothing come of it,’ he explained, looking at me sideways. ‘No answer.’
+
+‘There was an answer expected, was there, Mr. Barkis?’ said I, opening
+my eyes. For this was a new light to me.
+
+‘When a man says he’s willin’,’ said Mr. Barkis, turning his glance
+slowly on me again, ‘it’s as much as to say, that man’s a-waitin’ for a
+answer.’
+
+‘Well, Mr. Barkis?’
+
+‘Well,’ said Mr. Barkis, carrying his eyes back to his horse’s ears;
+‘that man’s been a-waitin’ for a answer ever since.’
+
+‘Have you told her so, Mr. Barkis?’
+
+‘No--no,’ growled Mr. Barkis, reflecting about it. ‘I ain’t got no call
+to go and tell her so. I never said six words to her myself, I ain’t
+a-goin’ to tell her so.’
+
+‘Would you like me to do it, Mr. Barkis?’ said I, doubtfully. ‘You might
+tell her, if you would,’ said Mr. Barkis, with another slow look at me,
+‘that Barkis was a-waitin’ for a answer. Says you--what name is it?’
+
+‘Her name?’
+
+‘Ah!’ said Mr. Barkis, with a nod of his head.
+
+‘Peggotty.’
+
+‘Chrisen name? Or nat’ral name?’ said Mr. Barkis.
+
+‘Oh, it’s not her Christian name. Her Christian name is Clara.’
+
+‘Is it though?’ said Mr. Barkis.
+
+He seemed to find an immense fund of reflection in this circumstance,
+and sat pondering and inwardly whistling for some time.
+
+‘Well!’ he resumed at length. ‘Says you, “Peggotty! Barkis is waitin’
+for a answer.” Says she, perhaps, “Answer to what?” Says you, “To what I
+told you.” “What is that?” says she. “Barkis is willin’,” says you.’
+
+This extremely artful suggestion Mr. Barkis accompanied with a nudge
+of his elbow that gave me quite a stitch in my side. After that, he
+slouched over his horse in his usual manner; and made no other reference
+to the subject except, half an hour afterwards, taking a piece of chalk
+from his pocket, and writing up, inside the tilt of the cart, ‘Clara
+Peggotty’--apparently as a private memorandum.
+
+Ah, what a strange feeling it was to be going home when it was not home,
+and to find that every object I looked at, reminded me of the happy old
+home, which was like a dream I could never dream again! The days when my
+mother and I and Peggotty were all in all to one another, and there was
+no one to come between us, rose up before me so sorrowfully on the road,
+that I am not sure I was glad to be there--not sure but that I would
+rather have remained away, and forgotten it in Steerforth’s company. But
+there I was; and soon I was at our house, where the bare old elm-trees
+wrung their many hands in the bleak wintry air, and shreds of the old
+rooks’-nests drifted away upon the wind.
+
+The carrier put my box down at the garden-gate, and left me. I walked
+along the path towards the house, glancing at the windows, and fearing
+at every step to see Mr. Murdstone or Miss Murdstone lowering out of
+one of them. No face appeared, however; and being come to the house, and
+knowing how to open the door, before dark, without knocking, I went in
+with a quiet, timid step.
+
+God knows how infantine the memory may have been, that was awakened
+within me by the sound of my mother’s voice in the old parlour, when I
+set foot in the hall. She was singing in a low tone. I think I must have
+lain in her arms, and heard her singing so to me when I was but a baby.
+The strain was new to me, and yet it was so old that it filled my heart
+brim-full; like a friend come back from a long absence.
+
+I believed, from the solitary and thoughtful way in which my mother
+murmured her song, that she was alone. And I went softly into the room.
+She was sitting by the fire, suckling an infant, whose tiny hand she
+held against her neck. Her eyes were looking down upon its face, and she
+sat singing to it. I was so far right, that she had no other companion.
+
+I spoke to her, and she started, and cried out. But seeing me, she
+called me her dear Davy, her own boy! and coming half across the room
+to meet me, kneeled down upon the ground and kissed me, and laid my head
+down on her bosom near the little creature that was nestling there, and
+put its hand to my lips.
+
+I wish I had died. I wish I had died then, with that feeling in my
+heart! I should have been more fit for Heaven than I ever have been
+since.
+
+‘He is your brother,’ said my mother, fondling me. ‘Davy, my pretty boy!
+My poor child!’ Then she kissed me more and more, and clasped me round
+the neck. This she was doing when Peggotty came running in, and bounced
+down on the ground beside us, and went mad about us both for a quarter
+of an hour.
+
+It seemed that I had not been expected so soon, the carrier being much
+before his usual time. It seemed, too, that Mr. and Miss Murdstone had
+gone out upon a visit in the neighbourhood, and would not return before
+night. I had never hoped for this. I had never thought it possible that
+we three could be together undisturbed, once more; and I felt, for the
+time, as if the old days were come back.
+
+We dined together by the fireside. Peggotty was in attendance to wait
+upon us, but my mother wouldn’t let her do it, and made her dine with
+us. I had my own old plate, with a brown view of a man-of-war in full
+sail upon it, which Peggotty had hoarded somewhere all the time I
+had been away, and would not have had broken, she said, for a hundred
+pounds. I had my own old mug with David on it, and my own old little
+knife and fork that wouldn’t cut.
+
+While we were at table, I thought it a favourable occasion to tell
+Peggotty about Mr. Barkis, who, before I had finished what I had to tell
+her, began to laugh, and throw her apron over her face.
+
+‘Peggotty,’ said my mother. ‘What’s the matter?’
+
+Peggotty only laughed the more, and held her apron tight over her face
+when my mother tried to pull it away, and sat as if her head were in a
+bag.
+
+‘What are you doing, you stupid creature?’ said my mother, laughing.
+
+‘Oh, drat the man!’ cried Peggotty. ‘He wants to marry me.’
+
+‘It would be a very good match for you; wouldn’t it?’ said my mother.
+
+‘Oh! I don’t know,’ said Peggotty. ‘Don’t ask me. I wouldn’t have him if
+he was made of gold. Nor I wouldn’t have anybody.’
+
+‘Then, why don’t you tell him so, you ridiculous thing?’ said my mother.
+
+‘Tell him so,’ retorted Peggotty, looking out of her apron. ‘He has
+never said a word to me about it. He knows better. If he was to make so
+bold as say a word to me, I should slap his face.’
+
+Her own was as red as ever I saw it, or any other face, I think; but she
+only covered it again, for a few moments at a time, when she was taken
+with a violent fit of laughter; and after two or three of those attacks,
+went on with her dinner.
+
+I remarked that my mother, though she smiled when Peggotty looked at
+her, became more serious and thoughtful. I had seen at first that she
+was changed. Her face was very pretty still, but it looked careworn, and
+too delicate; and her hand was so thin and white that it seemed to me
+to be almost transparent. But the change to which I now refer was
+superadded to this: it was in her manner, which became anxious and
+fluttered. At last she said, putting out her hand, and laying it
+affectionately on the hand of her old servant,
+
+‘Peggotty, dear, you are not going to be married?’
+
+‘Me, ma’am?’ returned Peggotty, staring. ‘Lord bless you, no!’
+
+‘Not just yet?’ said my mother, tenderly.
+
+‘Never!’ cried Peggotty.
+
+My mother took her hand, and said:
+
+‘Don’t leave me, Peggotty. Stay with me. It will not be for long,
+perhaps. What should I ever do without you!’
+
+‘Me leave you, my precious!’ cried Peggotty. ‘Not for all the world and
+his wife. Why, what’s put that in your silly little head?’--For Peggotty
+had been used of old to talk to my mother sometimes like a child.
+
+But my mother made no answer, except to thank her, and Peggotty went
+running on in her own fashion.
+
+‘Me leave you? I think I see myself. Peggotty go away from you? I should
+like to catch her at it! No, no, no,’ said Peggotty, shaking her head,
+and folding her arms; ‘not she, my dear. It isn’t that there ain’t some
+Cats that would be well enough pleased if she did, but they sha’n’t be
+pleased. They shall be aggravated. I’ll stay with you till I am a cross
+cranky old woman. And when I’m too deaf, and too lame, and too blind,
+and too mumbly for want of teeth, to be of any use at all, even to be
+found fault with, than I shall go to my Davy, and ask him to take me
+in.’
+
+‘And, Peggotty,’ says I, ‘I shall be glad to see you, and I’ll make you
+as welcome as a queen.’
+
+‘Bless your dear heart!’ cried Peggotty. ‘I know you will!’ And she
+kissed me beforehand, in grateful acknowledgement of my hospitality.
+After that, she covered her head up with her apron again and had another
+laugh about Mr. Barkis. After that, she took the baby out of its little
+cradle, and nursed it. After that, she cleared the dinner table;
+after that, came in with another cap on, and her work-box, and the
+yard-measure, and the bit of wax-candle, all just the same as ever.
+
+We sat round the fire, and talked delightfully. I told them what a hard
+master Mr. Creakle was, and they pitied me very much. I told them what a
+fine fellow Steerforth was, and what a patron of mine, and Peggotty said
+she would walk a score of miles to see him. I took the little baby in
+my arms when it was awake, and nursed it lovingly. When it was asleep
+again, I crept close to my mother’s side according to my old custom,
+broken now a long time, and sat with my arms embracing her waist, and my
+little red cheek on her shoulder, and once more felt her beautiful
+hair drooping over me--like an angel’s wing as I used to think, I
+recollect--and was very happy indeed.
+
+While I sat thus, looking at the fire, and seeing pictures in the
+red-hot coals, I almost believed that I had never been away; that Mr.
+and Miss Murdstone were such pictures, and would vanish when the fire
+got low; and that there was nothing real in all that I remembered, save
+my mother, Peggotty, and I.
+
+Peggotty darned away at a stocking as long as she could see, and then
+sat with it drawn on her left hand like a glove, and her needle in her
+right, ready to take another stitch whenever there was a blaze. I cannot
+conceive whose stockings they can have been that Peggotty was always
+darning, or where such an unfailing supply of stockings in want of
+darning can have come from. From my earliest infancy she seems to have
+been always employed in that class of needlework, and never by any
+chance in any other.
+
+‘I wonder,’ said Peggotty, who was sometimes seized with a fit of
+wondering on some most unexpected topic, ‘what’s become of Davy’s
+great-aunt?’ ‘Lor, Peggotty!’ observed my mother, rousing herself from a
+reverie, ‘what nonsense you talk!’
+
+‘Well, but I really do wonder, ma’am,’ said Peggotty.
+
+‘What can have put such a person in your head?’ inquired my mother. ‘Is
+there nobody else in the world to come there?’
+
+‘I don’t know how it is,’ said Peggotty, ‘unless it’s on account of
+being stupid, but my head never can pick and choose its people. They
+come and they go, and they don’t come and they don’t go, just as they
+like. I wonder what’s become of her?’
+
+‘How absurd you are, Peggotty!’ returned my mother. ‘One would suppose
+you wanted a second visit from her.’
+
+‘Lord forbid!’ cried Peggotty.
+
+‘Well then, don’t talk about such uncomfortable things, there’s a good
+soul,’ said my mother. ‘Miss Betsey is shut up in her cottage by the
+sea, no doubt, and will remain there. At all events, she is not likely
+ever to trouble us again.’
+
+‘No!’ mused Peggotty. ‘No, that ain’t likely at all.---I wonder, if she
+was to die, whether she’d leave Davy anything?’
+
+‘Good gracious me, Peggotty,’ returned my mother, ‘what a nonsensical
+woman you are! when you know that she took offence at the poor dear
+boy’s ever being born at all.’
+
+‘I suppose she wouldn’t be inclined to forgive him now,’ hinted
+Peggotty.
+
+‘Why should she be inclined to forgive him now?’ said my mother, rather
+sharply.
+
+‘Now that he’s got a brother, I mean,’ said Peggotty.
+
+My mother immediately began to cry, and wondered how Peggotty dared to
+say such a thing.
+
+‘As if this poor little innocent in its cradle had ever done any harm to
+you or anybody else, you jealous thing!’ said she. ‘You had much better
+go and marry Mr. Barkis, the carrier. Why don’t you?’
+
+‘I should make Miss Murdstone happy, if I was to,’ said Peggotty.
+
+‘What a bad disposition you have, Peggotty!’ returned my mother. ‘You
+are as jealous of Miss Murdstone as it is possible for a ridiculous
+creature to be. You want to keep the keys yourself, and give out all the
+things, I suppose? I shouldn’t be surprised if you did. When you know
+that she only does it out of kindness and the best intentions! You know
+she does, Peggotty--you know it well.’
+
+Peggotty muttered something to the effect of ‘Bother the best
+intentions!’ and something else to the effect that there was a little
+too much of the best intentions going on.
+
+‘I know what you mean, you cross thing,’ said my mother. ‘I understand
+you, Peggotty, perfectly. You know I do, and I wonder you don’t colour
+up like fire. But one point at a time. Miss Murdstone is the point now,
+Peggotty, and you sha’n’t escape from it. Haven’t you heard her
+say, over and over again, that she thinks I am too thoughtless and
+too--a--a--’
+
+‘Pretty,’ suggested Peggotty.
+
+‘Well,’ returned my mother, half laughing, ‘and if she is so silly as to
+say so, can I be blamed for it?’
+
+‘No one says you can,’ said Peggotty.
+
+‘No, I should hope not, indeed!’ returned my mother. ‘Haven’t you heard
+her say, over and over again, that on this account she wished to spare
+me a great deal of trouble, which she thinks I am not suited for, and
+which I really don’t know myself that I AM suited for; and isn’t she up
+early and late, and going to and fro continually--and doesn’t she do
+all sorts of things, and grope into all sorts of places, coal-holes and
+pantries and I don’t know where, that can’t be very agreeable--and do
+you mean to insinuate that there is not a sort of devotion in that?’
+
+‘I don’t insinuate at all,’ said Peggotty.
+
+‘You do, Peggotty,’ returned my mother. ‘You never do anything else,
+except your work. You are always insinuating. You revel in it. And when
+you talk of Mr. Murdstone’s good intentions--’
+
+‘I never talked of ‘em,’ said Peggotty.
+
+‘No, Peggotty,’ returned my mother, ‘but you insinuated. That’s what I
+told you just now. That’s the worst of you. You WILL insinuate. I said,
+at the moment, that I understood you, and you see I did. When you talk
+of Mr. Murdstone’s good intentions, and pretend to slight them (for I
+don’t believe you really do, in your heart, Peggotty), you must be as
+well convinced as I am how good they are, and how they actuate him in
+everything. If he seems to have been at all stern with a certain person,
+Peggotty--you understand, and so I am sure does Davy, that I am not
+alluding to anybody present--it is solely because he is satisfied that
+it is for a certain person’s benefit. He naturally loves a certain
+person, on my account; and acts solely for a certain person’s good. He
+is better able to judge of it than I am; for I very well know that I am
+a weak, light, girlish creature, and that he is a firm, grave, serious
+man. And he takes,’ said my mother, with the tears which were engendered
+in her affectionate nature, stealing down her face, ‘he takes great
+pains with me; and I ought to be very thankful to him, and very
+submissive to him even in my thoughts; and when I am not, Peggotty, I
+worry and condemn myself, and feel doubtful of my own heart, and don’t
+know what to do.’
+
+Peggotty sat with her chin on the foot of the stocking, looking silently
+at the fire.
+
+‘There, Peggotty,’ said my mother, changing her tone, ‘don’t let us fall
+out with one another, for I couldn’t bear it. You are my true friend, I
+know, if I have any in the world. When I call you a ridiculous creature,
+or a vexatious thing, or anything of that sort, Peggotty, I only mean
+that you are my true friend, and always have been, ever since the night
+when Mr. Copperfield first brought me home here, and you came out to the
+gate to meet me.’
+
+Peggotty was not slow to respond, and ratify the treaty of friendship by
+giving me one of her best hugs. I think I had some glimpses of the real
+character of this conversation at the time; but I am sure, now, that
+the good creature originated it, and took her part in it, merely that
+my mother might comfort herself with the little contradictory summary in
+which she had indulged. The design was efficacious; for I remember that
+my mother seemed more at ease during the rest of the evening, and that
+Peggotty observed her less.
+
+When we had had our tea, and the ashes were thrown up, and the candles
+snuffed, I read Peggotty a chapter out of the Crocodile Book, in
+remembrance of old times--she took it out of her pocket: I don’t know
+whether she had kept it there ever since--and then we talked about Salem
+House, which brought me round again to Steerforth, who was my great
+subject. We were very happy; and that evening, as the last of its race,
+and destined evermore to close that volume of my life, will never pass
+out of my memory.
+
+It was almost ten o’clock before we heard the sound of wheels. We all
+got up then; and my mother said hurriedly that, as it was so late, and
+Mr. and Miss Murdstone approved of early hours for young people, perhaps
+I had better go to bed. I kissed her, and went upstairs with my candle
+directly, before they came in. It appeared to my childish fancy, as I
+ascended to the bedroom where I had been imprisoned, that they brought
+a cold blast of air into the house which blew away the old familiar
+feeling like a feather.
+
+I felt uncomfortable about going down to breakfast in the morning, as
+I had never set eyes on Mr. Murdstone since the day when I committed my
+memorable offence. However, as it must be done, I went down, after two
+or three false starts half-way, and as many runs back on tiptoe to my
+own room, and presented myself in the parlour.
+
+He was standing before the fire with his back to it, while Miss
+Murdstone made the tea. He looked at me steadily as I entered, but made
+no sign of recognition whatever. I went up to him, after a moment of
+confusion, and said: ‘I beg your pardon, sir. I am very sorry for what I
+did, and I hope you will forgive me.’
+
+‘I am glad to hear you are sorry, David,’ he replied.
+
+The hand he gave me was the hand I had bitten. I could not restrain my
+eye from resting for an instant on a red spot upon it; but it was not so
+red as I turned, when I met that sinister expression in his face.
+
+‘How do you do, ma’am?’ I said to Miss Murdstone.
+
+‘Ah, dear me!’ sighed Miss Murdstone, giving me the tea-caddy scoop
+instead of her fingers. ‘How long are the holidays?’
+
+‘A month, ma’am.’
+
+‘Counting from when?’
+
+‘From today, ma’am.’
+
+‘Oh!’ said Miss Murdstone. ‘Then here’s one day off.’
+
+She kept a calendar of the holidays in this way, and every morning
+checked a day off in exactly the same manner. She did it gloomily until
+she came to ten, but when she got into two figures she became more
+hopeful, and, as the time advanced, even jocular.
+
+It was on this very first day that I had the misfortune to throw her,
+though she was not subject to such weakness in general, into a state of
+violent consternation. I came into the room where she and my mother
+were sitting; and the baby (who was only a few weeks old) being on
+my mother’s lap, I took it very carefully in my arms. Suddenly Miss
+Murdstone gave such a scream that I all but dropped it.
+
+‘My dear Jane!’ cried my mother.
+
+‘Good heavens, Clara, do you see?’ exclaimed Miss Murdstone.
+
+‘See what, my dear Jane?’ said my mother; ‘where?’
+
+‘He’s got it!’ cried Miss Murdstone. ‘The boy has got the baby!’
+
+She was limp with horror; but stiffened herself to make a dart at me,
+and take it out of my arms. Then, she turned faint; and was so very
+ill that they were obliged to give her cherry brandy. I was solemnly
+interdicted by her, on her recovery, from touching my brother any more
+on any pretence whatever; and my poor mother, who, I could see, wished
+otherwise, meekly confirmed the interdict, by saying: ‘No doubt you are
+right, my dear Jane.’
+
+On another occasion, when we three were together, this same dear
+baby--it was truly dear to me, for our mother’s sake--was the innocent
+occasion of Miss Murdstone’s going into a passion. My mother, who had
+been looking at its eyes as it lay upon her lap, said:
+
+‘Davy! come here!’ and looked at mine.
+
+I saw Miss Murdstone lay her beads down.
+
+‘I declare,’ said my mother, gently, ‘they are exactly alike. I suppose
+they are mine. I think they are the colour of mine. But they are
+wonderfully alike.’
+
+‘What are you talking about, Clara?’ said Miss Murdstone.
+
+‘My dear Jane,’ faltered my mother, a little abashed by the harsh tone
+of this inquiry, ‘I find that the baby’s eyes and Davy’s are exactly
+alike.’
+
+‘Clara!’ said Miss Murdstone, rising angrily, ‘you are a positive fool
+sometimes.’
+
+‘My dear Jane,’ remonstrated my mother.
+
+‘A positive fool,’ said Miss Murdstone. ‘Who else could compare my
+brother’s baby with your boy? They are not at all alike. They are
+exactly unlike. They are utterly dissimilar in all respects. I hope
+they will ever remain so. I will not sit here, and hear such comparisons
+made.’ With that she stalked out, and made the door bang after her.
+
+In short, I was not a favourite with Miss Murdstone. In short, I was not
+a favourite there with anybody, not even with myself; for those who did
+like me could not show it, and those who did not, showed it so plainly
+that I had a sensitive consciousness of always appearing constrained,
+boorish, and dull.
+
+I felt that I made them as uncomfortable as they made me. If I came into
+the room where they were, and they were talking together and my mother
+seemed cheerful, an anxious cloud would steal over her face from the
+moment of my entrance. If Mr. Murdstone were in his best humour, I
+checked him. If Miss Murdstone were in her worst, I intensified it. I
+had perception enough to know that my mother was the victim always; that
+she was afraid to speak to me or to be kind to me, lest she should
+give them some offence by her manner of doing so, and receive a
+lecture afterwards; that she was not only ceaselessly afraid of her own
+offending, but of my offending, and uneasily watched their looks if I
+only moved. Therefore I resolved to keep myself as much out of their way
+as I could; and many a wintry hour did I hear the church clock strike,
+when I was sitting in my cheerless bedroom, wrapped in my little
+great-coat, poring over a book.
+
+In the evening, sometimes, I went and sat with Peggotty in the kitchen.
+There I was comfortable, and not afraid of being myself. But neither of
+these resources was approved of in the parlour. The tormenting humour
+which was dominant there stopped them both. I was still held to be
+necessary to my poor mother’s training, and, as one of her trials, could
+not be suffered to absent myself.
+
+‘David,’ said Mr. Murdstone, one day after dinner when I was going to
+leave the room as usual; ‘I am sorry to observe that you are of a sullen
+disposition.’
+
+‘As sulky as a bear!’ said Miss Murdstone.
+
+I stood still, and hung my head.
+
+‘Now, David,’ said Mr. Murdstone, ‘a sullen obdurate disposition is, of
+all tempers, the worst.’
+
+‘And the boy’s is, of all such dispositions that ever I have seen,’
+remarked his sister, ‘the most confirmed and stubborn. I think, my dear
+Clara, even you must observe it?’
+
+‘I beg your pardon, my dear Jane,’ said my mother, ‘but are you quite
+sure--I am certain you’ll excuse me, my dear Jane--that you understand
+Davy?’
+
+‘I should be somewhat ashamed of myself, Clara,’ returned Miss
+Murdstone, ‘if I could not understand the boy, or any boy. I don’t
+profess to be profound; but I do lay claim to common sense.’
+
+‘No doubt, my dear Jane,’ returned my mother, ‘your understanding is
+very vigorous--’
+
+‘Oh dear, no! Pray don’t say that, Clara,’ interposed Miss Murdstone,
+angrily.
+
+‘But I am sure it is,’ resumed my mother; ‘and everybody knows it is. I
+profit so much by it myself, in many ways--at least I ought to--that no
+one can be more convinced of it than myself; and therefore I speak with
+great diffidence, my dear Jane, I assure you.’
+
+‘We’ll say I don’t understand the boy, Clara,’ returned Miss Murdstone,
+arranging the little fetters on her wrists. ‘We’ll agree, if you please,
+that I don’t understand him at all. He is much too deep for me. But
+perhaps my brother’s penetration may enable him to have some insight
+into his character. And I believe my brother was speaking on the subject
+when we--not very decently--interrupted him.’
+
+‘I think, Clara,’ said Mr. Murdstone, in a low grave voice, ‘that there
+may be better and more dispassionate judges of such a question than
+you.’
+
+‘Edward,’ replied my mother, timidly, ‘you are a far better judge of all
+questions than I pretend to be. Both you and Jane are. I only said--’
+
+‘You only said something weak and inconsiderate,’ he replied. ‘Try not
+to do it again, my dear Clara, and keep a watch upon yourself.’
+
+My mother’s lips moved, as if she answered ‘Yes, my dear Edward,’ but
+she said nothing aloud.
+
+‘I was sorry, David, I remarked,’ said Mr. Murdstone, turning his head
+and his eyes stiffly towards me, ‘to observe that you are of a sullen
+disposition. This is not a character that I can suffer to develop itself
+beneath my eyes without an effort at improvement. You must endeavour,
+sir, to change it. We must endeavour to change it for you.’
+
+‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ I faltered. ‘I have never meant to be sullen
+since I came back.’
+
+‘Don’t take refuge in a lie, sir!’ he returned so fiercely, that I saw
+my mother involuntarily put out her trembling hand as if to interpose
+between us. ‘You have withdrawn yourself in your sullenness to your own
+room. You have kept your own room when you ought to have been here. You
+know now, once for all, that I require you to be here, and not there.
+Further, that I require you to bring obedience here. You know me, David.
+I will have it done.’
+
+Miss Murdstone gave a hoarse chuckle.
+
+‘I will have a respectful, prompt, and ready bearing towards myself,’ he
+continued, ‘and towards Jane Murdstone, and towards your mother. I will
+not have this room shunned as if it were infected, at the pleasure of a
+child. Sit down.’
+
+He ordered me like a dog, and I obeyed like a dog.
+
+‘One thing more,’ he said. ‘I observe that you have an attachment to low
+and common company. You are not to associate with servants. The
+kitchen will not improve you, in the many respects in which you need
+improvement. Of the woman who abets you, I say nothing--since you,
+Clara,’ addressing my mother in a lower voice, ‘from old associations
+and long-established fancies, have a weakness respecting her which is
+not yet overcome.’
+
+‘A most unaccountable delusion it is!’ cried Miss Murdstone.
+
+‘I only say,’ he resumed, addressing me, ‘that I disapprove of your
+preferring such company as Mistress Peggotty, and that it is to be
+abandoned. Now, David, you understand me, and you know what will be the
+consequence if you fail to obey me to the letter.’
+
+I knew well--better perhaps than he thought, as far as my poor mother
+was concerned--and I obeyed him to the letter. I retreated to my own
+room no more; I took refuge with Peggotty no more; but sat wearily in
+the parlour day after day, looking forward to night, and bedtime.
+
+What irksome constraint I underwent, sitting in the same attitude hours
+upon hours, afraid to move an arm or a leg lest Miss Murdstone should
+complain (as she did on the least pretence) of my restlessness, and
+afraid to move an eye lest she should light on some look of dislike
+or scrutiny that would find new cause for complaint in mine! What
+intolerable dulness to sit listening to the ticking of the clock; and
+watching Miss Murdstone’s little shiny steel beads as she strung them;
+and wondering whether she would ever be married, and if so, to what
+sort of unhappy man; and counting the divisions in the moulding of the
+chimney-piece; and wandering away, with my eyes, to the ceiling, among
+the curls and corkscrews in the paper on the wall!
+
+What walks I took alone, down muddy lanes, in the bad winter weather,
+carrying that parlour, and Mr. and Miss Murdstone in it, everywhere: a
+monstrous load that I was obliged to bear, a daymare that there was
+no possibility of breaking in, a weight that brooded on my wits, and
+blunted them!
+
+What meals I had in silence and embarrassment, always feeling that there
+were a knife and fork too many, and that mine; an appetite too many, and
+that mine; a plate and chair too many, and those mine; a somebody too
+many, and that I!
+
+What evenings, when the candles came, and I was expected to employ
+myself, but, not daring to read an entertaining book, pored over some
+hard-headed, harder-hearted treatise on arithmetic; when the tables of
+weights and measures set themselves to tunes, as ‘Rule Britannia’, or
+‘Away with Melancholy’; when they wouldn’t stand still to be learnt, but
+would go threading my grandmother’s needle through my unfortunate head,
+in at one ear and out at the other! What yawns and dozes I lapsed into,
+in spite of all my care; what starts I came out of concealed sleeps
+with; what answers I never got, to little observations that I rarely
+made; what a blank space I seemed, which everybody overlooked, and
+yet was in everybody’s way; what a heavy relief it was to hear Miss
+Murdstone hail the first stroke of nine at night, and order me to bed!
+
+Thus the holidays lagged away, until the morning came when Miss
+Murdstone said: ‘Here’s the last day off!’ and gave me the closing cup
+of tea of the vacation.
+
+I was not sorry to go. I had lapsed into a stupid state; but I was
+recovering a little and looking forward to Steerforth, albeit Mr.
+Creakle loomed behind him. Again Mr. Barkis appeared at the gate, and
+again Miss Murdstone in her warning voice, said: ‘Clara!’ when my mother
+bent over me, to bid me farewell.
+
+I kissed her, and my baby brother, and was very sorry then; but not
+sorry to go away, for the gulf between us was there, and the parting was
+there, every day. And it is not so much the embrace she gave me, that
+lives in my mind, though it was as fervent as could be, as what followed
+the embrace.
+
+I was in the carrier’s cart when I heard her calling to me. I looked
+out, and she stood at the garden-gate alone, holding her baby up in her
+arms for me to see. It was cold still weather; and not a hair of her
+head, nor a fold of her dress, was stirred, as she looked intently at
+me, holding up her child.
+
+So I lost her. So I saw her afterwards, in my sleep at school--a silent
+presence near my bed--looking at me with the same intent face--holding
+up her baby in her arms.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 9. I HAVE A MEMORABLE BIRTHDAY
+
+
+I PASS over all that happened at school, until the anniversary of my
+birthday came round in March. Except that Steerforth was more to be
+admired than ever, I remember nothing. He was going away at the end of
+the half-year, if not sooner, and was more spirited and independent than
+before in my eyes, and therefore more engaging than before; but beyond
+this I remember nothing. The great remembrance by which that time is
+marked in my mind, seems to have swallowed up all lesser recollections,
+and to exist alone.
+
+It is even difficult for me to believe that there was a gap of full
+two months between my return to Salem House and the arrival of that
+birthday. I can only understand that the fact was so, because I know it
+must have been so; otherwise I should feel convinced that there was no
+interval, and that the one occasion trod upon the other’s heels.
+
+How well I recollect the kind of day it was! I smell the fog that hung
+about the place; I see the hoar frost, ghostly, through it; I feel my
+rimy hair fall clammy on my cheek; I look along the dim perspective of
+the schoolroom, with a sputtering candle here and there to light up the
+foggy morning, and the breath of the boys wreathing and smoking in the
+raw cold as they blow upon their fingers, and tap their feet upon the
+floor. It was after breakfast, and we had been summoned in from the
+playground, when Mr. Sharp entered and said:
+
+‘David Copperfield is to go into the parlour.’
+
+I expected a hamper from Peggotty, and brightened at the order. Some
+of the boys about me put in their claim not to be forgotten in the
+distribution of the good things, as I got out of my seat with great
+alacrity.
+
+‘Don’t hurry, David,’ said Mr. Sharp. ‘There’s time enough, my boy,
+don’t hurry.’
+
+I might have been surprised by the feeling tone in which he spoke, if I
+had given it a thought; but I gave it none until afterwards. I hurried
+away to the parlour; and there I found Mr. Creakle, sitting at his
+breakfast with the cane and a newspaper before him, and Mrs. Creakle
+with an opened letter in her hand. But no hamper.
+
+‘David Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Creakle, leading me to a sofa, and
+sitting down beside me. ‘I want to speak to you very particularly. I
+have something to tell you, my child.’
+
+Mr. Creakle, at whom of course I looked, shook his head without looking
+at me, and stopped up a sigh with a very large piece of buttered toast.
+
+‘You are too young to know how the world changes every day,’ said Mrs.
+Creakle, ‘and how the people in it pass away. But we all have to learn
+it, David; some of us when we are young, some of us when we are old,
+some of us at all times of our lives.’
+
+I looked at her earnestly.
+
+‘When you came away from home at the end of the vacation,’ said Mrs.
+Creakle, after a pause, ‘were they all well?’ After another pause, ‘Was
+your mama well?’
+
+I trembled without distinctly knowing why, and still looked at her
+earnestly, making no attempt to answer.
+
+‘Because,’ said she, ‘I grieve to tell you that I hear this morning your
+mama is very ill.’
+
+A mist rose between Mrs. Creakle and me, and her figure seemed to move
+in it for an instant. Then I felt the burning tears run down my face,
+and it was steady again.
+
+‘She is very dangerously ill,’ she added.
+
+I knew all now.
+
+‘She is dead.’
+
+There was no need to tell me so. I had already broken out into a
+desolate cry, and felt an orphan in the wide world.
+
+She was very kind to me. She kept me there all day, and left me alone
+sometimes; and I cried, and wore myself to sleep, and awoke and
+cried again. When I could cry no more, I began to think; and then the
+oppression on my breast was heaviest, and my grief a dull pain that
+there was no ease for.
+
+And yet my thoughts were idle; not intent on the calamity that weighed
+upon my heart, but idly loitering near it. I thought of our house shut
+up and hushed. I thought of the little baby, who, Mrs. Creakle said, had
+been pining away for some time, and who, they believed, would die too. I
+thought of my father’s grave in the churchyard, by our house, and of my
+mother lying there beneath the tree I knew so well. I stood upon a chair
+when I was left alone, and looked into the glass to see how red my eyes
+were, and how sorrowful my face. I considered, after some hours were
+gone, if my tears were really hard to flow now, as they seemed to be,
+what, in connexion with my loss, it would affect me most to think
+of when I drew near home--for I was going home to the funeral. I am
+sensible of having felt that a dignity attached to me among the rest of
+the boys, and that I was important in my affliction.
+
+If ever child were stricken with sincere grief, I was. But I remember
+that this importance was a kind of satisfaction to me, when I walked in
+the playground that afternoon while the boys were in school. When I
+saw them glancing at me out of the windows, as they went up to their
+classes, I felt distinguished, and looked more melancholy, and walked
+slower. When school was over, and they came out and spoke to me, I felt
+it rather good in myself not to be proud to any of them, and to take
+exactly the same notice of them all, as before.
+
+I was to go home next night; not by the mail, but by the heavy
+night-coach, which was called the Farmer, and was principally used by
+country-people travelling short intermediate distances upon the road. We
+had no story-telling that evening, and Traddles insisted on lending me
+his pillow. I don’t know what good he thought it would do me, for I
+had one of my own: but it was all he had to lend, poor fellow, except a
+sheet of letter-paper full of skeletons; and that he gave me at parting,
+as a soother of my sorrows and a contribution to my peace of mind.
+
+I left Salem House upon the morrow afternoon. I little thought then that
+I left it, never to return. We travelled very slowly all night, and
+did not get into Yarmouth before nine or ten o’clock in the morning. I
+looked out for Mr. Barkis, but he was not there; and instead of him a
+fat, short-winded, merry-looking, little old man in black, with rusty
+little bunches of ribbons at the knees of his breeches, black stockings,
+and a broad-brimmed hat, came puffing up to the coach window, and said:
+
+‘Master Copperfield?’
+
+‘Yes, sir.’
+
+‘Will you come with me, young sir, if you please,’ he said, opening the
+door, ‘and I shall have the pleasure of taking you home.’
+
+I put my hand in his, wondering who he was, and we walked away to a
+shop in a narrow street, on which was written OMER, DRAPER, TAILOR,
+HABERDASHER, FUNERAL FURNISHER, &c. It was a close and stifling little
+shop; full of all sorts of clothing, made and unmade, including
+one window full of beaver-hats and bonnets. We went into a little
+back-parlour behind the shop, where we found three young women at work
+on a quantity of black materials, which were heaped upon the table,
+and little bits and cuttings of which were littered all over the floor.
+There was a good fire in the room, and a breathless smell of warm black
+crape--I did not know what the smell was then, but I know now.
+
+The three young women, who appeared to be very industrious and
+comfortable, raised their heads to look at me, and then went on with
+their work. Stitch, stitch, stitch. At the same time there came from
+a workshop across a little yard outside the window, a regular sound
+of hammering that kept a kind of tune: RAT--tat-tat, RAT--tat-tat,
+RAT--tat-tat, without any variation.
+
+‘Well,’ said my conductor to one of the three young women. ‘How do you
+get on, Minnie?’
+
+‘We shall be ready by the trying-on time,’ she replied gaily, without
+looking up. ‘Don’t you be afraid, father.’
+
+Mr. Omer took off his broad-brimmed hat, and sat down and panted. He was
+so fat that he was obliged to pant some time before he could say:
+
+‘That’s right.’
+
+‘Father!’ said Minnie, playfully. ‘What a porpoise you do grow!’
+
+‘Well, I don’t know how it is, my dear,’ he replied, considering about
+it. ‘I am rather so.’
+
+‘You are such a comfortable man, you see,’ said Minnie. ‘You take things
+so easy.’
+
+‘No use taking ‘em otherwise, my dear,’ said Mr. Omer.
+
+‘No, indeed,’ returned his daughter. ‘We are all pretty gay here, thank
+Heaven! Ain’t we, father?’
+
+‘I hope so, my dear,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘As I have got my breath now, I
+think I’ll measure this young scholar. Would you walk into the shop,
+Master Copperfield?’
+
+I preceded Mr. Omer, in compliance with his request; and after showing
+me a roll of cloth which he said was extra super, and too good mourning
+for anything short of parents, he took my various dimensions, and put
+them down in a book. While he was recording them he called my attention
+to his stock in trade, and to certain fashions which he said had ‘just
+come up’, and to certain other fashions which he said had ‘just gone
+out’.
+
+‘And by that sort of thing we very often lose a little mint of money,’
+said Mr. Omer. ‘But fashions are like human beings. They come in, nobody
+knows when, why, or how; and they go out, nobody knows when, why, or
+how. Everything is like life, in my opinion, if you look at it in that
+point of view.’
+
+I was too sorrowful to discuss the question, which would possibly have
+been beyond me under any circumstances; and Mr. Omer took me back into
+the parlour, breathing with some difficulty on the way.
+
+He then called down a little break-neck range of steps behind a door:
+‘Bring up that tea and bread-and-butter!’ which, after some time,
+during which I sat looking about me and thinking, and listening to the
+stitching in the room and the tune that was being hammered across the
+yard, appeared on a tray, and turned out to be for me.
+
+‘I have been acquainted with you,’ said Mr. Omer, after watching me
+for some minutes, during which I had not made much impression on the
+breakfast, for the black things destroyed my appetite, ‘I have been
+acquainted with you a long time, my young friend.’
+
+‘Have you, sir?’
+
+‘All your life,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘I may say before it. I knew your
+father before you. He was five foot nine and a half, and he lays in
+five-and-twen-ty foot of ground.’
+
+‘RAT--tat-tat, RAT--tat-tat, RAT--tat-tat,’ across the yard.
+
+‘He lays in five and twen-ty foot of ground, if he lays in a fraction,’
+said Mr. Omer, pleasantly. ‘It was either his request or her direction,
+I forget which.’
+
+‘Do you know how my little brother is, sir?’ I inquired.
+
+Mr. Omer shook his head.
+
+‘RAT--tat-tat, RAT--tat-tat, RAT--tat-tat.’
+
+‘He is in his mother’s arms,’ said he.
+
+‘Oh, poor little fellow! Is he dead?’
+
+‘Don’t mind it more than you can help,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘Yes. The baby’s
+dead.’
+
+My wounds broke out afresh at this intelligence. I left the
+scarcely-tasted breakfast, and went and rested my head on another table,
+in a corner of the little room, which Minnie hastily cleared, lest I
+should spot the mourning that was lying there with my tears. She was
+a pretty, good-natured girl, and put my hair away from my eyes with a
+soft, kind touch; but she was very cheerful at having nearly finished
+her work and being in good time, and was so different from me!
+
+Presently the tune left off, and a good-looking young fellow came across
+the yard into the room. He had a hammer in his hand, and his mouth was
+full of little nails, which he was obliged to take out before he could
+speak.
+
+‘Well, Joram!’ said Mr. Omer. ‘How do you get on?’
+
+‘All right,’ said Joram. ‘Done, sir.’
+
+Minnie coloured a little, and the other two girls smiled at one another.
+
+‘What! you were at it by candle-light last night, when I was at the
+club, then? Were you?’ said Mr. Omer, shutting up one eye.
+
+‘Yes,’ said Joram. ‘As you said we could make a little trip of it, and
+go over together, if it was done, Minnie and me--and you.’
+
+‘Oh! I thought you were going to leave me out altogether,’ said Mr.
+Omer, laughing till he coughed.
+
+‘--As you was so good as to say that,’ resumed the young man, ‘why I
+turned to with a will, you see. Will you give me your opinion of it?’
+
+‘I will,’ said Mr. Omer, rising. ‘My dear’; and he stopped and turned to
+me: ‘would you like to see your--’
+
+‘No, father,’ Minnie interposed.
+
+‘I thought it might be agreeable, my dear,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘But perhaps
+you’re right.’
+
+I can’t say how I knew it was my dear, dear mother’s coffin that they
+went to look at. I had never heard one making; I had never seen one that
+I know of.--but it came into my mind what the noise was, while it was
+going on; and when the young man entered, I am sure I knew what he had
+been doing.
+
+The work being now finished, the two girls, whose names I had not heard,
+brushed the shreds and threads from their dresses, and went into the
+shop to put that to rights, and wait for customers. Minnie stayed behind
+to fold up what they had made, and pack it in two baskets. This she did
+upon her knees, humming a lively little tune the while. Joram, who I had
+no doubt was her lover, came in and stole a kiss from her while she was
+busy (he didn’t appear to mind me, at all), and said her father was gone
+for the chaise, and he must make haste and get himself ready. Then he
+went out again; and then she put her thimble and scissors in her pocket,
+and stuck a needle threaded with black thread neatly in the bosom of her
+gown, and put on her outer clothing smartly, at a little glass behind
+the door, in which I saw the reflection of her pleased face.
+
+All this I observed, sitting at the table in the corner with my head
+leaning on my hand, and my thoughts running on very different things.
+The chaise soon came round to the front of the shop, and the baskets
+being put in first, I was put in next, and those three followed. I
+remember it as a kind of half chaise-cart, half pianoforte-van, painted
+of a sombre colour, and drawn by a black horse with a long tail. There
+was plenty of room for us all.
+
+I do not think I have ever experienced so strange a feeling in my life
+(I am wiser now, perhaps) as that of being with them, remembering how
+they had been employed, and seeing them enjoy the ride. I was not angry
+with them; I was more afraid of them, as if I were cast away among
+creatures with whom I had no community of nature. They were very
+cheerful. The old man sat in front to drive, and the two young people
+sat behind him, and whenever he spoke to them leaned forward, the one on
+one side of his chubby face and the other on the other, and made a great
+deal of him. They would have talked to me too, but I held back, and
+moped in my corner; scared by their love-making and hilarity, though
+it was far from boisterous, and almost wondering that no judgement came
+upon them for their hardness of heart.
+
+So, when they stopped to bait the horse, and ate and drank and enjoyed
+themselves, I could touch nothing that they touched, but kept my fast
+unbroken. So, when we reached home, I dropped out of the chaise behind,
+as quickly as possible, that I might not be in their company before
+those solemn windows, looking blindly on me like closed eyes once
+bright. And oh, how little need I had had to think what would move me to
+tears when I came back--seeing the window of my mother’s room, and next
+it that which, in the better time, was mine!
+
+I was in Peggotty’s arms before I got to the door, and she took me into
+the house. Her grief burst out when she first saw me; but she controlled
+it soon, and spoke in whispers, and walked softly, as if the dead could
+be disturbed. She had not been in bed, I found, for a long time. She
+sat up at night still, and watched. As long as her poor dear pretty was
+above the ground, she said, she would never desert her.
+
+Mr. Murdstone took no heed of me when I went into the parlour where he
+was, but sat by the fireside, weeping silently, and pondering in his
+elbow-chair. Miss Murdstone, who was busy at her writing-desk, which
+was covered with letters and papers, gave me her cold finger-nails, and
+asked me, in an iron whisper, if I had been measured for my mourning.
+
+I said: ‘Yes.’
+
+‘And your shirts,’ said Miss Murdstone; ‘have you brought ‘em home?’
+
+‘Yes, ma’am. I have brought home all my clothes.’
+
+This was all the consolation that her firmness administered to me. I do
+not doubt that she had a choice pleasure in exhibiting what she called
+her self-command, and her firmness, and her strength of mind, and
+her common sense, and the whole diabolical catalogue of her unamiable
+qualities, on such an occasion. She was particularly proud of her turn
+for business; and she showed it now in reducing everything to pen and
+ink, and being moved by nothing. All the rest of that day, and from
+morning to night afterwards, she sat at that desk, scratching composedly
+with a hard pen, speaking in the same imperturbable whisper to
+everybody; never relaxing a muscle of her face, or softening a tone of
+her voice, or appearing with an atom of her dress astray.
+
+Her brother took a book sometimes, but never read it that I saw. He
+would open it and look at it as if he were reading, but would remain for
+a whole hour without turning the leaf, and then put it down and walk to
+and fro in the room. I used to sit with folded hands watching him, and
+counting his footsteps, hour after hour. He very seldom spoke to her,
+and never to me. He seemed to be the only restless thing, except the
+clocks, in the whole motionless house.
+
+In these days before the funeral, I saw but little of Peggotty, except
+that, in passing up or down stairs, I always found her close to the room
+where my mother and her baby lay, and except that she came to me every
+night, and sat by my bed’s head while I went to sleep. A day or
+two before the burial--I think it was a day or two before, but I am
+conscious of confusion in my mind about that heavy time, with nothing
+to mark its progress--she took me into the room. I only recollect that
+underneath some white covering on the bed, with a beautiful cleanliness
+and freshness all around it, there seemed to me to lie embodied the
+solemn stillness that was in the house; and that when she would have
+turned the cover gently back, I cried: ‘Oh no! oh no!’ and held her
+hand.
+
+If the funeral had been yesterday, I could not recollect it better. The
+very air of the best parlour, when I went in at the door, the bright
+condition of the fire, the shining of the wine in the decanters, the
+patterns of the glasses and plates, the faint sweet smell of cake, the
+odour of Miss Murdstone’s dress, and our black clothes. Mr. Chillip is
+in the room, and comes to speak to me.
+
+‘And how is Master David?’ he says, kindly.
+
+I cannot tell him very well. I give him my hand, which he holds in his.
+
+‘Dear me!’ says Mr. Chillip, meekly smiling, with something shining in
+his eye. ‘Our little friends grow up around us. They grow out of our
+knowledge, ma’am?’ This is to Miss Murdstone, who makes no reply.
+
+‘There is a great improvement here, ma’am?’ says Mr. Chillip.
+
+Miss Murdstone merely answers with a frown and a formal bend: Mr.
+Chillip, discomfited, goes into a corner, keeping me with him, and opens
+his mouth no more.
+
+I remark this, because I remark everything that happens, not because
+I care about myself, or have done since I came home. And now the bell
+begins to sound, and Mr. Omer and another come to make us ready. As
+Peggotty was wont to tell me, long ago, the followers of my father to
+the same grave were made ready in the same room.
+
+There are Mr. Murdstone, our neighbour Mr. Grayper, Mr. Chillip, and
+I. When we go out to the door, the Bearers and their load are in the
+garden; and they move before us down the path, and past the elms, and
+through the gate, and into the churchyard, where I have so often heard
+the birds sing on a summer morning.
+
+We stand around the grave. The day seems different to me from every
+other day, and the light not of the same colour--of a sadder colour.
+Now there is a solemn hush, which we have brought from home with what is
+resting in the mould; and while we stand bareheaded, I hear the voice
+of the clergyman, sounding remote in the open air, and yet distinct and
+plain, saying: ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord!’
+Then I hear sobs; and, standing apart among the lookers-on, I see that
+good and faithful servant, whom of all the people upon earth I love the
+best, and unto whom my childish heart is certain that the Lord will one
+day say: ‘Well done.’
+
+There are many faces that I know, among the little crowd; faces that I
+knew in church, when mine was always wondering there; faces that first
+saw my mother, when she came to the village in her youthful bloom. I do
+not mind them--I mind nothing but my grief--and yet I see and know them
+all; and even in the background, far away, see Minnie looking on, and
+her eye glancing on her sweetheart, who is near me.
+
+It is over, and the earth is filled in, and we turn to come away. Before
+us stands our house, so pretty and unchanged, so linked in my mind with
+the young idea of what is gone, that all my sorrow has been nothing to
+the sorrow it calls forth. But they take me on; and Mr. Chillip talks to
+me; and when we get home, puts some water to my lips; and when I ask his
+leave to go up to my room, dismisses me with the gentleness of a woman.
+
+All this, I say, is yesterday’s event. Events of later date have floated
+from me to the shore where all forgotten things will reappear, but this
+stands like a high rock in the ocean.
+
+I knew that Peggotty would come to me in my room. The Sabbath stillness
+of the time (the day was so like Sunday! I have forgotten that) was
+suited to us both. She sat down by my side upon my little bed; and
+holding my hand, and sometimes putting it to her lips, and sometimes
+smoothing it with hers, as she might have comforted my little brother,
+told me, in her way, all that she had to tell concerning what had
+happened.
+
+‘She was never well,’ said Peggotty, ‘for a long time. She was uncertain
+in her mind, and not happy. When her baby was born, I thought at first
+she would get better, but she was more delicate, and sunk a little every
+day. She used to like to sit alone before her baby came, and then she
+cried; but afterwards she used to sing to it--so soft, that I once
+thought, when I heard her, it was like a voice up in the air, that was
+rising away.
+
+‘I think she got to be more timid, and more frightened-like, of late;
+and that a hard word was like a blow to her. But she was always the same
+to me. She never changed to her foolish Peggotty, didn’t my sweet girl.’
+
+Here Peggotty stopped, and softly beat upon my hand a little while.
+
+‘The last time that I saw her like her own old self, was the night when
+you came home, my dear. The day you went away, she said to me, “I never
+shall see my pretty darling again. Something tells me so, that tells the
+truth, I know.”
+
+‘She tried to hold up after that; and many a time, when they told her
+she was thoughtless and light-hearted, made believe to be so; but it was
+all a bygone then. She never told her husband what she had told me--she
+was afraid of saying it to anybody else--till one night, a little more
+than a week before it happened, when she said to him: “My dear, I think
+I am dying.”
+
+‘“It’s off my mind now, Peggotty,” she told me, when I laid her in her
+bed that night. “He will believe it more and more, poor fellow, every
+day for a few days to come; and then it will be past. I am very tired.
+If this is sleep, sit by me while I sleep: don’t leave me. God bless
+both my children! God protect and keep my fatherless boy!”
+
+‘I never left her afterwards,’ said Peggotty. ‘She often talked to them
+two downstairs--for she loved them; she couldn’t bear not to love anyone
+who was about her--but when they went away from her bed-side, she always
+turned to me, as if there was rest where Peggotty was, and never fell
+asleep in any other way.
+
+‘On the last night, in the evening, she kissed me, and said: “If my baby
+should die too, Peggotty, please let them lay him in my arms, and bury
+us together.” (It was done; for the poor lamb lived but a day beyond
+her.) “Let my dearest boy go with us to our resting-place,” she said,
+“and tell him that his mother, when she lay here, blessed him not once,
+but a thousand times.”’
+
+Another silence followed this, and another gentle beating on my hand.
+
+‘It was pretty far in the night,’ said Peggotty, ‘when she asked me for
+some drink; and when she had taken it, gave me such a patient smile, the
+dear!--so beautiful!
+
+‘Daybreak had come, and the sun was rising, when she said to me, how
+kind and considerate Mr. Copperfield had always been to her, and how
+he had borne with her, and told her, when she doubted herself, that
+a loving heart was better and stronger than wisdom, and that he was a
+happy man in hers. “Peggotty, my dear,” she said then, “put me nearer to
+you,” for she was very weak. “Lay your good arm underneath my neck,” she
+said, “and turn me to you, for your face is going far off, and I want it
+to be near.” I put it as she asked; and oh Davy! the time had come when
+my first parting words to you were true--when she was glad to lay her
+poor head on her stupid cross old Peggotty’s arm--and she died like a
+child that had gone to sleep!’
+
+
+Thus ended Peggotty’s narration. From the moment of my knowing of the
+death of my mother, the idea of her as she had been of late had vanished
+from me. I remembered her, from that instant, only as the young mother
+of my earliest impressions, who had been used to wind her bright curls
+round and round her finger, and to dance with me at twilight in the
+parlour. What Peggotty had told me now, was so far from bringing me back
+to the later period, that it rooted the earlier image in my mind. It may
+be curious, but it is true. In her death she winged her way back to her
+calm untroubled youth, and cancelled all the rest.
+
+The mother who lay in the grave, was the mother of my infancy; the
+little creature in her arms, was myself, as I had once been, hushed for
+ever on her bosom.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 10. I BECOME NEGLECTED, AND AM PROVIDED FOR
+
+
+The first act of business Miss Murdstone performed when the day of the
+solemnity was over, and light was freely admitted into the house, was
+to give Peggotty a month’s warning. Much as Peggotty would have disliked
+such a service, I believe she would have retained it, for my sake, in
+preference to the best upon earth. She told me we must part, and told me
+why; and we condoled with one another, in all sincerity.
+
+As to me or my future, not a word was said, or a step taken. Happy
+they would have been, I dare say, if they could have dismissed me at a
+month’s warning too. I mustered courage once, to ask Miss Murdstone when
+I was going back to school; and she answered dryly, she believed I was
+not going back at all. I was told nothing more. I was very anxious to
+know what was going to be done with me, and so was Peggotty; but neither
+she nor I could pick up any information on the subject.
+
+There was one change in my condition, which, while it relieved me of
+a great deal of present uneasiness, might have made me, if I had been
+capable of considering it closely, yet more uncomfortable about the
+future. It was this. The constraint that had been put upon me, was quite
+abandoned. I was so far from being required to keep my dull post in
+the parlour, that on several occasions, when I took my seat there, Miss
+Murdstone frowned to me to go away. I was so far from being warned off
+from Peggotty’s society, that, provided I was not in Mr. Murdstone’s, I
+was never sought out or inquired for. At first I was in daily dread of
+his taking my education in hand again, or of Miss Murdstone’s
+devoting herself to it; but I soon began to think that such fears were
+groundless, and that all I had to anticipate was neglect.
+
+I do not conceive that this discovery gave me much pain then. I was
+still giddy with the shock of my mother’s death, and in a kind of
+stunned state as to all tributary things. I can recollect, indeed, to
+have speculated, at odd times, on the possibility of my not being taught
+any more, or cared for any more; and growing up to be a shabby, moody
+man, lounging an idle life away, about the village; as well as on the
+feasibility of my getting rid of this picture by going away somewhere,
+like the hero in a story, to seek my fortune: but these were transient
+visions, daydreams I sat looking at sometimes, as if they were faintly
+painted or written on the wall of my room, and which, as they melted
+away, left the wall blank again.
+
+‘Peggotty,’ I said in a thoughtful whisper, one evening, when I was
+warming my hands at the kitchen fire, ‘Mr. Murdstone likes me less than
+he used to. He never liked me much, Peggotty; but he would rather not
+even see me now, if he can help it.’
+
+‘Perhaps it’s his sorrow,’ said Peggotty, stroking my hair.
+
+‘I am sure, Peggotty, I am sorry too. If I believed it was his sorrow,
+I should not think of it at all. But it’s not that; oh, no, it’s not
+that.’
+
+‘How do you know it’s not that?’ said Peggotty, after a silence.
+
+‘Oh, his sorrow is another and quite a different thing. He is sorry at
+this moment, sitting by the fireside with Miss Murdstone; but if I was
+to go in, Peggotty, he would be something besides.’
+
+‘What would he be?’ said Peggotty.
+
+‘Angry,’ I answered, with an involuntary imitation of his dark frown.
+‘If he was only sorry, he wouldn’t look at me as he does. I am only
+sorry, and it makes me feel kinder.’
+
+Peggotty said nothing for a little while; and I warmed my hands, as
+silent as she.
+
+‘Davy,’ she said at length.
+
+‘Yes, Peggotty?’ ‘I have tried, my dear, all ways I could think of--all
+the ways there are, and all the ways there ain’t, in short--to get a
+suitable service here, in Blunderstone; but there’s no such a thing, my
+love.’
+
+‘And what do you mean to do, Peggotty,’ says I, wistfully. ‘Do you mean
+to go and seek your fortune?’
+
+‘I expect I shall be forced to go to Yarmouth,’ replied Peggotty, ‘and
+live there.’
+
+‘You might have gone farther off,’ I said, brightening a little, ‘and
+been as bad as lost. I shall see you sometimes, my dear old Peggotty,
+there. You won’t be quite at the other end of the world, will you?’
+
+‘Contrary ways, please God!’ cried Peggotty, with great animation. ‘As
+long as you are here, my pet, I shall come over every week of my life to
+see you. One day, every week of my life!’
+
+I felt a great weight taken off my mind by this promise: but even this
+was not all, for Peggotty went on to say:
+
+‘I’m a-going, Davy, you see, to my brother’s, first, for another
+fortnight’s visit--just till I have had time to look about me, and
+get to be something like myself again. Now, I have been thinking that
+perhaps, as they don’t want you here at present, you might be let to go
+along with me.’
+
+If anything, short of being in a different relation to every one about
+me, Peggotty excepted, could have given me a sense of pleasure at that
+time, it would have been this project of all others. The idea of being
+again surrounded by those honest faces, shining welcome on me; of
+renewing the peacefulness of the sweet Sunday morning, when the bells
+were ringing, the stones dropping in the water, and the shadowy ships
+breaking through the mist; of roaming up and down with little Em’ly,
+telling her my troubles, and finding charms against them in the shells
+and pebbles on the beach; made a calm in my heart. It was ruffled next
+moment, to be sure, by a doubt of Miss Murdstone’s giving her consent;
+but even that was set at rest soon, for she came out to take an evening
+grope in the store-closet while we were yet in conversation, and
+Peggotty, with a boldness that amazed me, broached the topic on the
+spot.
+
+‘The boy will be idle there,’ said Miss Murdstone, looking into a
+pickle-jar, ‘and idleness is the root of all evil. But, to be sure, he
+would be idle here--or anywhere, in my opinion.’
+
+Peggotty had an angry answer ready, I could see; but she swallowed it
+for my sake, and remained silent.
+
+‘Humph!’ said Miss Murdstone, still keeping her eye on the pickles;
+‘it is of more importance than anything else--it is of paramount
+importance--that my brother should not be disturbed or made
+uncomfortable. I suppose I had better say yes.’
+
+I thanked her, without making any demonstration of joy, lest it should
+induce her to withdraw her assent. Nor could I help thinking this a
+prudent course, since she looked at me out of the pickle-jar, with
+as great an access of sourness as if her black eyes had absorbed its
+contents. However, the permission was given, and was never retracted;
+for when the month was out, Peggotty and I were ready to depart.
+
+Mr. Barkis came into the house for Peggotty’s boxes. I had never known
+him to pass the garden-gate before, but on this occasion he came into
+the house. And he gave me a look as he shouldered the largest box and
+went out, which I thought had meaning in it, if meaning could ever be
+said to find its way into Mr. Barkis’s visage.
+
+Peggotty was naturally in low spirits at leaving what had been her home
+so many years, and where the two strong attachments of her life--for
+my mother and myself--had been formed. She had been walking in the
+churchyard, too, very early; and she got into the cart, and sat in it
+with her handkerchief at her eyes.
+
+So long as she remained in this condition, Mr. Barkis gave no sign
+of life whatever. He sat in his usual place and attitude like a great
+stuffed figure. But when she began to look about her, and to speak to
+me, he nodded his head and grinned several times. I have not the least
+notion at whom, or what he meant by it.
+
+‘It’s a beautiful day, Mr. Barkis!’ I said, as an act of politeness.
+
+‘It ain’t bad,’ said Mr. Barkis, who generally qualified his speech, and
+rarely committed himself.
+
+‘Peggotty is quite comfortable now, Mr. Barkis,’ I remarked, for his
+satisfaction.
+
+‘Is she, though?’ said Mr. Barkis.
+
+After reflecting about it, with a sagacious air, Mr. Barkis eyed her,
+and said:
+
+‘ARE you pretty comfortable?’
+
+Peggotty laughed, and answered in the affirmative.
+
+‘But really and truly, you know. Are you?’ growled Mr. Barkis, sliding
+nearer to her on the seat, and nudging her with his elbow. ‘Are you?
+Really and truly pretty comfortable? Are you? Eh?’
+
+At each of these inquiries Mr. Barkis shuffled nearer to her, and gave
+her another nudge; so that at last we were all crowded together in the
+left-hand corner of the cart, and I was so squeezed that I could hardly
+bear it.
+
+Peggotty calling his attention to my sufferings, Mr. Barkis gave me a
+little more room at once, and got away by degrees. But I could not help
+observing that he seemed to think he had hit upon a wonderful expedient
+for expressing himself in a neat, agreeable, and pointed manner, without
+the inconvenience of inventing conversation. He manifestly chuckled over
+it for some time. By and by he turned to Peggotty again, and repeating,
+‘Are you pretty comfortable though?’ bore down upon us as before, until
+the breath was nearly edged out of my body. By and by he made another
+descent upon us with the same inquiry, and the same result. At length,
+I got up whenever I saw him coming, and standing on the foot-board,
+pretended to look at the prospect; after which I did very well.
+
+He was so polite as to stop at a public-house, expressly on our account,
+and entertain us with broiled mutton and beer. Even when Peggotty was
+in the act of drinking, he was seized with one of those approaches, and
+almost choked her. But as we drew nearer to the end of our journey, he
+had more to do and less time for gallantry; and when we got on Yarmouth
+pavement, we were all too much shaken and jolted, I apprehend, to have
+any leisure for anything else.
+
+Mr. Peggotty and Ham waited for us at the old place. They received me
+and Peggotty in an affectionate manner, and shook hands with Mr. Barkis,
+who, with his hat on the very back of his head, and a shame-faced leer
+upon his countenance, and pervading his very legs, presented but a
+vacant appearance, I thought. They each took one of Peggotty’s trunks,
+and we were going away, when Mr. Barkis solemnly made a sign to me with
+his forefinger to come under an archway.
+
+‘I say,’ growled Mr. Barkis, ‘it was all right.’
+
+I looked up into his face, and answered, with an attempt to be very
+profound: ‘Oh!’
+
+‘It didn’t come to a end there,’ said Mr. Barkis, nodding
+confidentially. ‘It was all right.’
+
+Again I answered, ‘Oh!’
+
+‘You know who was willin’,’ said my friend. ‘It was Barkis, and Barkis
+only.’
+
+I nodded assent.
+
+‘It’s all right,’ said Mr. Barkis, shaking hands; ‘I’m a friend of
+your’n. You made it all right, first. It’s all right.’
+
+In his attempts to be particularly lucid, Mr. Barkis was so extremely
+mysterious, that I might have stood looking in his face for an hour, and
+most assuredly should have got as much information out of it as out
+of the face of a clock that had stopped, but for Peggotty’s calling me
+away. As we were going along, she asked me what he had said; and I told
+her he had said it was all right.
+
+‘Like his impudence,’ said Peggotty, ‘but I don’t mind that! Davy dear,
+what should you think if I was to think of being married?’
+
+‘Why--I suppose you would like me as much then, Peggotty, as you do
+now?’ I returned, after a little consideration.
+
+Greatly to the astonishment of the passengers in the street, as well as
+of her relations going on before, the good soul was obliged to stop and
+embrace me on the spot, with many protestations of her unalterable love.
+
+‘Tell me what should you say, darling?’ she asked again, when this was
+over, and we were walking on.
+
+‘If you were thinking of being married--to Mr. Barkis, Peggotty?’
+
+‘Yes,’ said Peggotty.
+
+‘I should think it would be a very good thing. For then you know,
+Peggotty, you would always have the horse and cart to bring you over to
+see me, and could come for nothing, and be sure of coming.’
+
+‘The sense of the dear!’ cried Peggotty. ‘What I have been thinking
+of, this month back! Yes, my precious; and I think I should be more
+independent altogether, you see; let alone my working with a better
+heart in my own house, than I could in anybody else’s now. I don’t know
+what I might be fit for, now, as a servant to a stranger. And I shall be
+always near my pretty’s resting-place,’ said Peggotty, musing, ‘and be
+able to see it when I like; and when I lie down to rest, I may be laid
+not far off from my darling girl!’
+
+We neither of us said anything for a little while.
+
+‘But I wouldn’t so much as give it another thought,’ said Peggotty,
+cheerily ‘if my Davy was anyways against it--not if I had been asked in
+church thirty times three times over, and was wearing out the ring in my
+pocket.’
+
+‘Look at me, Peggotty,’ I replied; ‘and see if I am not really glad, and
+don’t truly wish it!’ As indeed I did, with all my heart.
+
+‘Well, my life,’ said Peggotty, giving me a squeeze, ‘I have thought of
+it night and day, every way I can, and I hope the right way; but I’ll
+think of it again, and speak to my brother about it, and in the meantime
+we’ll keep it to ourselves, Davy, you and me. Barkis is a good plain
+creature,’ said Peggotty, ‘and if I tried to do my duty by him, I think
+it would be my fault if I wasn’t--if I wasn’t pretty comfortable,’
+said Peggotty, laughing heartily. This quotation from Mr. Barkis was
+so appropriate, and tickled us both so much, that we laughed again and
+again, and were quite in a pleasant humour when we came within view of
+Mr. Peggotty’s cottage.
+
+It looked just the same, except that it may, perhaps, have shrunk a
+little in my eyes; and Mrs. Gummidge was waiting at the door as if she
+had stood there ever since. All within was the same, down to the seaweed
+in the blue mug in my bedroom. I went into the out-house to look about
+me; and the very same lobsters, crabs, and crawfish possessed by the
+same desire to pinch the world in general, appeared to be in the same
+state of conglomeration in the same old corner.
+
+But there was no little Em’ly to be seen, so I asked Mr. Peggotty where
+she was.
+
+‘She’s at school, sir,’ said Mr. Peggotty, wiping the heat consequent
+on the porterage of Peggotty’s box from his forehead; ‘she’ll be home,’
+looking at the Dutch clock, ‘in from twenty minutes to half-an-hour’s
+time. We all on us feel the loss of her, bless ye!’
+
+Mrs. Gummidge moaned.
+
+‘Cheer up, Mawther!’ cried Mr. Peggotty.
+
+‘I feel it more than anybody else,’ said Mrs. Gummidge; ‘I’m a lone
+lorn creetur’, and she used to be a’most the only thing that didn’t go
+contrary with me.’
+
+Mrs. Gummidge, whimpering and shaking her head, applied herself to
+blowing the fire. Mr. Peggotty, looking round upon us while she was so
+engaged, said in a low voice, which he shaded with his hand: ‘The old
+‘un!’ From this I rightly conjectured that no improvement had taken
+place since my last visit in the state of Mrs. Gummidge’s spirits.
+
+Now, the whole place was, or it should have been, quite as delightful
+a place as ever; and yet it did not impress me in the same way. I felt
+rather disappointed with it. Perhaps it was because little Em’ly was
+not at home. I knew the way by which she would come, and presently found
+myself strolling along the path to meet her.
+
+A figure appeared in the distance before long, and I soon knew it to be
+Em’ly, who was a little creature still in stature, though she was grown.
+But when she drew nearer, and I saw her blue eyes looking bluer, and her
+dimpled face looking brighter, and her whole self prettier and gayer, a
+curious feeling came over me that made me pretend not to know her, and
+pass by as if I were looking at something a long way off. I have done
+such a thing since in later life, or I am mistaken.
+
+Little Em’ly didn’t care a bit. She saw me well enough; but instead of
+turning round and calling after me, ran away laughing. This obliged me
+to run after her, and she ran so fast that we were very near the cottage
+before I caught her.
+
+‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’ said little Em’ly.
+
+‘Why, you knew who it was, Em’ly,’ said I.
+
+‘And didn’t YOU know who it was?’ said Em’ly. I was going to kiss her,
+but she covered her cherry lips with her hands, and said she wasn’t a
+baby now, and ran away, laughing more than ever, into the house.
+
+She seemed to delight in teasing me, which was a change in her I
+wondered at very much. The tea table was ready, and our little locker
+was put out in its old place, but instead of coming to sit by me, she
+went and bestowed her company upon that grumbling Mrs. Gummidge: and on
+Mr. Peggotty’s inquiring why, rumpled her hair all over her face to hide
+it, and could do nothing but laugh.
+
+‘A little puss, it is!’ said Mr. Peggotty, patting her with his great
+hand.
+
+‘So sh’ is! so sh’ is!’ cried Ham. ‘Mas’r Davy bor’, so sh’ is!’ and he
+sat and chuckled at her for some time, in a state of mingled admiration
+and delight, that made his face a burning red.
+
+Little Em’ly was spoiled by them all, in fact; and by no one more than
+Mr. Peggotty himself, whom she could have coaxed into anything, by
+only going and laying her cheek against his rough whisker. That was my
+opinion, at least, when I saw her do it; and I held Mr. Peggotty to be
+thoroughly in the right. But she was so affectionate and sweet-natured,
+and had such a pleasant manner of being both sly and shy at once, that
+she captivated me more than ever.
+
+She was tender-hearted, too; for when, as we sat round the fire after
+tea, an allusion was made by Mr. Peggotty over his pipe to the loss
+I had sustained, the tears stood in her eyes, and she looked at me so
+kindly across the table, that I felt quite thankful to her.
+
+‘Ah!’ said Mr. Peggotty, taking up her curls, and running them over his
+hand like water, ‘here’s another orphan, you see, sir. And here,’ said
+Mr. Peggotty, giving Ham a backhanded knock in the chest, ‘is another of
+‘em, though he don’t look much like it.’
+
+‘If I had you for my guardian, Mr. Peggotty,’ said I, shaking my head,
+‘I don’t think I should FEEL much like it.’
+
+‘Well said, Mas’r Davy bor’!’ cried Ham, in an ecstasy. ‘Hoorah! Well
+said! Nor more you wouldn’t! Hor! Hor!’--Here he returned Mr. Peggotty’s
+back-hander, and little Em’ly got up and kissed Mr. Peggotty. ‘And how’s
+your friend, sir?’ said Mr. Peggotty to me.
+
+‘Steerforth?’ said I.
+
+‘That’s the name!’ cried Mr. Peggotty, turning to Ham. ‘I knowed it was
+something in our way.’
+
+‘You said it was Rudderford,’ observed Ham, laughing.
+
+‘Well!’ retorted Mr. Peggotty. ‘And ye steer with a rudder, don’t ye? It
+ain’t fur off. How is he, sir?’
+
+‘He was very well indeed when I came away, Mr. Peggotty.’
+
+‘There’s a friend!’ said Mr. Peggotty, stretching out his pipe. ‘There’s
+a friend, if you talk of friends! Why, Lord love my heart alive, if it
+ain’t a treat to look at him!’
+
+‘He is very handsome, is he not?’ said I, my heart warming with this
+praise.
+
+‘Handsome!’ cried Mr. Peggotty. ‘He stands up to you like--like a--why I
+don’t know what he don’t stand up to you like. He’s so bold!’
+
+‘Yes! That’s just his character,’ said I. ‘He’s as brave as a lion, and
+you can’t think how frank he is, Mr. Peggotty.’
+
+‘And I do suppose, now,’ said Mr. Peggotty, looking at me through the
+smoke of his pipe, ‘that in the way of book-larning he’d take the wind
+out of a’most anything.’
+
+‘Yes,’ said I, delighted; ‘he knows everything. He is astonishingly
+clever.’
+
+‘There’s a friend!’ murmured Mr. Peggotty, with a grave toss of his
+head.
+
+‘Nothing seems to cost him any trouble,’ said I. ‘He knows a task if he
+only looks at it. He is the best cricketer you ever saw. He will give
+you almost as many men as you like at draughts, and beat you easily.’
+
+Mr. Peggotty gave his head another toss, as much as to say: ‘Of course
+he will.’
+
+‘He is such a speaker,’ I pursued, ‘that he can win anybody over; and I
+don’t know what you’d say if you were to hear him sing, Mr. Peggotty.’
+
+Mr. Peggotty gave his head another toss, as much as to say: ‘I have no
+doubt of it.’
+
+‘Then, he’s such a generous, fine, noble fellow,’ said I, quite carried
+away by my favourite theme, ‘that it’s hardly possible to give him as
+much praise as he deserves. I am sure I can never feel thankful enough
+for the generosity with which he has protected me, so much younger and
+lower in the school than himself.’
+
+I was running on, very fast indeed, when my eyes rested on little
+Em’ly’s face, which was bent forward over the table, listening with the
+deepest attention, her breath held, her blue eyes sparkling like jewels,
+and the colour mantling in her cheeks. She looked so extraordinarily
+earnest and pretty, that I stopped in a sort of wonder; and they all
+observed her at the same time, for as I stopped, they laughed and looked
+at her.
+
+‘Em’ly is like me,’ said Peggotty, ‘and would like to see him.’
+
+Em’ly was confused by our all observing her, and hung down her head,
+and her face was covered with blushes. Glancing up presently through her
+stray curls, and seeing that we were all looking at her still (I am sure
+I, for one, could have looked at her for hours), she ran away, and kept
+away till it was nearly bedtime.
+
+I lay down in the old little bed in the stern of the boat, and the wind
+came moaning on across the flat as it had done before. But I could not
+help fancying, now, that it moaned of those who were gone; and instead
+of thinking that the sea might rise in the night and float the boat
+away, I thought of the sea that had risen, since I last heard those
+sounds, and drowned my happy home. I recollect, as the wind and water
+began to sound fainter in my ears, putting a short clause into my
+prayers, petitioning that I might grow up to marry little Em’ly, and so
+dropping lovingly asleep.
+
+The days passed pretty much as they had passed before, except--it was
+a great exception--that little Em’ly and I seldom wandered on the beach
+now. She had tasks to learn, and needle-work to do; and was absent
+during a great part of each day. But I felt that we should not have had
+those old wanderings, even if it had been otherwise. Wild and full of
+childish whims as Em’ly was, she was more of a little woman than I
+had supposed. She seemed to have got a great distance away from me,
+in little more than a year. She liked me, but she laughed at me, and
+tormented me; and when I went to meet her, stole home another way, and
+was laughing at the door when I came back, disappointed. The best times
+were when she sat quietly at work in the doorway, and I sat on the
+wooden step at her feet, reading to her. It seems to me, at this
+hour, that I have never seen such sunlight as on those bright April
+afternoons; that I have never seen such a sunny little figure as I used
+to see, sitting in the doorway of the old boat; that I have never beheld
+such sky, such water, such glorified ships sailing away into golden air.
+
+On the very first evening after our arrival, Mr. Barkis appeared in an
+exceedingly vacant and awkward condition, and with a bundle of oranges
+tied up in a handkerchief. As he made no allusion of any kind to this
+property, he was supposed to have left it behind him by accident when
+he went away; until Ham, running after him to restore it, came back with
+the information that it was intended for Peggotty. After that occasion
+he appeared every evening at exactly the same hour, and always with a
+little bundle, to which he never alluded, and which he regularly put
+behind the door and left there. These offerings of affection were of a
+most various and eccentric description. Among them I remember a double
+set of pigs’ trotters, a huge pin-cushion, half a bushel or so of
+apples, a pair of jet earrings, some Spanish onions, a box of dominoes,
+a canary bird and cage, and a leg of pickled pork.
+
+Mr. Barkis’s wooing, as I remember it, was altogether of a peculiar
+kind. He very seldom said anything; but would sit by the fire in much
+the same attitude as he sat in his cart, and stare heavily at Peggotty,
+who was opposite. One night, being, as I suppose, inspired by love, he
+made a dart at the bit of wax-candle she kept for her thread, and put
+it in his waistcoat-pocket and carried it off. After that, his great
+delight was to produce it when it was wanted, sticking to the lining of
+his pocket, in a partially melted state, and pocket it again when it was
+done with. He seemed to enjoy himself very much, and not to feel at all
+called upon to talk. Even when he took Peggotty out for a walk on the
+flats, he had no uneasiness on that head, I believe; contenting himself
+with now and then asking her if she was pretty comfortable; and I
+remember that sometimes, after he was gone, Peggotty would throw her
+apron over her face, and laugh for half-an-hour. Indeed, we were
+all more or less amused, except that miserable Mrs. Gummidge, whose
+courtship would appear to have been of an exactly parallel nature, she
+was so continually reminded by these transactions of the old one.
+
+At length, when the term of my visit was nearly expired, it was given
+out that Peggotty and Mr. Barkis were going to make a day’s holiday
+together, and that little Em’ly and I were to accompany them. I had but
+a broken sleep the night before, in anticipation of the pleasure of
+a whole day with Em’ly. We were all astir betimes in the morning; and
+while we were yet at breakfast, Mr. Barkis appeared in the distance,
+driving a chaise-cart towards the object of his affections.
+
+Peggotty was dressed as usual, in her neat and quiet mourning; but Mr.
+Barkis bloomed in a new blue coat, of which the tailor had given him
+such good measure, that the cuffs would have rendered gloves unnecessary
+in the coldest weather, while the collar was so high that it pushed his
+hair up on end on the top of his head. His bright buttons, too, were
+of the largest size. Rendered complete by drab pantaloons and a buff
+waistcoat, I thought Mr. Barkis a phenomenon of respectability.
+
+When we were all in a bustle outside the door, I found that Mr. Peggotty
+was prepared with an old shoe, which was to be thrown after us for luck,
+and which he offered to Mrs. Gummidge for that purpose.
+
+‘No. It had better be done by somebody else, Dan’l,’ said Mrs. Gummidge.
+‘I’m a lone lorn creetur’ myself, and everythink that reminds me of
+creetur’s that ain’t lone and lorn, goes contrary with me.’
+
+‘Come, old gal!’ cried Mr. Peggotty. ‘Take and heave it.’
+
+‘No, Dan’l,’ returned Mrs. Gummidge, whimpering and shaking her head.
+‘If I felt less, I could do more. You don’t feel like me, Dan’l; thinks
+don’t go contrary with you, nor you with them; you had better do it
+yourself.’
+
+But here Peggotty, who had been going about from one to another in a
+hurried way, kissing everybody, called out from the cart, in which we
+all were by this time (Em’ly and I on two little chairs, side by side),
+that Mrs. Gummidge must do it. So Mrs. Gummidge did it; and, I am sorry
+to relate, cast a damp upon the festive character of our departure, by
+immediately bursting into tears, and sinking subdued into the arms of
+Ham, with the declaration that she knowed she was a burden, and had
+better be carried to the House at once. Which I really thought was a
+sensible idea, that Ham might have acted on.
+
+Away we went, however, on our holiday excursion; and the first thing
+we did was to stop at a church, where Mr. Barkis tied the horse to some
+rails, and went in with Peggotty, leaving little Em’ly and me alone in
+the chaise. I took that occasion to put my arm round Em’ly’s waist, and
+propose that as I was going away so very soon now, we should determine
+to be very affectionate to one another, and very happy, all day. Little
+Em’ly consenting, and allowing me to kiss her, I became desperate;
+informing her, I recollect, that I never could love another, and that
+I was prepared to shed the blood of anybody who should aspire to her
+affections.
+
+How merry little Em’ly made herself about it! With what a demure
+assumption of being immensely older and wiser than I, the fairy little
+woman said I was ‘a silly boy’; and then laughed so charmingly that
+I forgot the pain of being called by that disparaging name, in the
+pleasure of looking at her.
+
+Mr. Barkis and Peggotty were a good while in the church, but came out at
+last, and then we drove away into the country. As we were going along,
+Mr. Barkis turned to me, and said, with a wink,--by the by, I should
+hardly have thought, before, that he could wink:
+
+‘What name was it as I wrote up in the cart?’
+
+‘Clara Peggotty,’ I answered.
+
+‘What name would it be as I should write up now, if there was a tilt
+here?’
+
+‘Clara Peggotty, again?’ I suggested.
+
+‘Clara Peggotty BARKIS!’ he returned, and burst into a roar of laughter
+that shook the chaise.
+
+In a word, they were married, and had gone into the church for no other
+purpose. Peggotty was resolved that it should be quietly done; and
+the clerk had given her away, and there had been no witnesses of the
+ceremony. She was a little confused when Mr. Barkis made this abrupt
+announcement of their union, and could not hug me enough in token of her
+unimpaired affection; but she soon became herself again, and said she
+was very glad it was over.
+
+We drove to a little inn in a by-road, where we were expected, and
+where we had a very comfortable dinner, and passed the day with great
+satisfaction. If Peggotty had been married every day for the last ten
+years, she could hardly have been more at her ease about it; it made no
+sort of difference in her: she was just the same as ever, and went
+out for a stroll with little Em’ly and me before tea, while Mr. Barkis
+philosophically smoked his pipe, and enjoyed himself, I suppose, with
+the contemplation of his happiness. If so, it sharpened his appetite;
+for I distinctly call to mind that, although he had eaten a good deal of
+pork and greens at dinner, and had finished off with a fowl or two, he
+was obliged to have cold boiled bacon for tea, and disposed of a large
+quantity without any emotion.
+
+I have often thought, since, what an odd, innocent, out-of-the-way kind
+of wedding it must have been! We got into the chaise again soon after
+dark, and drove cosily back, looking up at the stars, and talking about
+them. I was their chief exponent, and opened Mr. Barkis’s mind to
+an amazing extent. I told him all I knew, but he would have believed
+anything I might have taken it into my head to impart to him; for he
+had a profound veneration for my abilities, and informed his wife in my
+hearing, on that very occasion, that I was ‘a young Roeshus’--by which I
+think he meant prodigy.
+
+When we had exhausted the subject of the stars, or rather when I had
+exhausted the mental faculties of Mr. Barkis, little Em’ly and I made a
+cloak of an old wrapper, and sat under it for the rest of the journey.
+Ah, how I loved her! What happiness (I thought) if we were married,
+and were going away anywhere to live among the trees and in the fields,
+never growing older, never growing wiser, children ever, rambling hand
+in hand through sunshine and among flowery meadows, laying down our
+heads on moss at night, in a sweet sleep of purity and peace, and buried
+by the birds when we were dead! Some such picture, with no real world in
+it, bright with the light of our innocence, and vague as the stars afar
+off, was in my mind all the way. I am glad to think there were two such
+guileless hearts at Peggotty’s marriage as little Em’ly’s and mine. I
+am glad to think the Loves and Graces took such airy forms in its homely
+procession.
+
+Well, we came to the old boat again in good time at night; and there
+Mr. and Mrs. Barkis bade us good-bye, and drove away snugly to their
+own home. I felt then, for the first time, that I had lost Peggotty. I
+should have gone to bed with a sore heart indeed under any other roof
+but that which sheltered little Em’ly’s head.
+
+Mr. Peggotty and Ham knew what was in my thoughts as well as I did, and
+were ready with some supper and their hospitable faces to drive it away.
+Little Em’ly came and sat beside me on the locker for the only time in
+all that visit; and it was altogether a wonderful close to a wonderful
+day.
+
+It was a night tide; and soon after we went to bed, Mr. Peggotty and Ham
+went out to fish. I felt very brave at being left alone in the solitary
+house, the protector of Em’ly and Mrs. Gummidge, and only wished that
+a lion or a serpent, or any ill-disposed monster, would make an attack
+upon us, that I might destroy him, and cover myself with glory. But as
+nothing of the sort happened to be walking about on Yarmouth flats that
+night, I provided the best substitute I could by dreaming of dragons
+until morning.
+
+With morning came Peggotty; who called to me, as usual, under my window
+as if Mr. Barkis the carrier had been from first to last a dream too.
+After breakfast she took me to her own home, and a beautiful little
+home it was. Of all the moveables in it, I must have been impressed by
+a certain old bureau of some dark wood in the parlour (the tile-floored
+kitchen was the general sitting-room), with a retreating top which
+opened, let down, and became a desk, within which was a large quarto
+edition of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. This precious volume, of which I do
+not recollect one word, I immediately discovered and immediately applied
+myself to; and I never visited the house afterwards, but I kneeled on
+a chair, opened the casket where this gem was enshrined, spread my arms
+over the desk, and fell to devouring the book afresh. I was chiefly
+edified, I am afraid, by the pictures, which were numerous, and
+represented all kinds of dismal horrors; but the Martyrs and Peggotty’s
+house have been inseparable in my mind ever since, and are now.
+
+I took leave of Mr. Peggotty, and Ham, and Mrs. Gummidge, and little
+Em’ly, that day; and passed the night at Peggotty’s, in a little room
+in the roof (with the Crocodile Book on a shelf by the bed’s head) which
+was to be always mine, Peggotty said, and should always be kept for me
+in exactly the same state.
+
+‘Young or old, Davy dear, as long as I am alive and have this house over
+my head,’ said Peggotty, ‘you shall find it as if I expected you here
+directly minute. I shall keep it every day, as I used to keep your old
+little room, my darling; and if you was to go to China, you might think
+of it as being kept just the same, all the time you were away.’
+
+I felt the truth and constancy of my dear old nurse, with all my heart,
+and thanked her as well as I could. That was not very well, for she
+spoke to me thus, with her arms round my neck, in the morning, and I was
+going home in the morning, and I went home in the morning, with herself
+and Mr. Barkis in the cart. They left me at the gate, not easily or
+lightly; and it was a strange sight to me to see the cart go on, taking
+Peggotty away, and leaving me under the old elm-trees looking at the
+house, in which there was no face to look on mine with love or liking
+any more.
+
+And now I fell into a state of neglect, which I cannot look back upon
+without compassion. I fell at once into a solitary condition,--apart
+from all friendly notice, apart from the society of all other boys of
+my own age, apart from all companionship but my own spiritless
+thoughts,--which seems to cast its gloom upon this paper as I write.
+
+What would I have given, to have been sent to the hardest school that
+ever was kept!--to have been taught something, anyhow, anywhere! No
+such hope dawned upon me. They disliked me; and they sullenly, sternly,
+steadily, overlooked me. I think Mr. Murdstone’s means were straitened
+at about this time; but it is little to the purpose. He could not bear
+me; and in putting me from him he tried, as I believe, to put away the
+notion that I had any claim upon him--and succeeded.
+
+I was not actively ill-used. I was not beaten, or starved; but the wrong
+that was done to me had no intervals of relenting, and was done in a
+systematic, passionless manner. Day after day, week after week, month
+after month, I was coldly neglected. I wonder sometimes, when I think
+of it, what they would have done if I had been taken with an illness;
+whether I should have lain down in my lonely room, and languished
+through it in my usual solitary way, or whether anybody would have
+helped me out.
+
+When Mr. and Miss Murdstone were at home, I took my meals with them; in
+their absence, I ate and drank by myself. At all times I lounged about
+the house and neighbourhood quite disregarded, except that they were
+jealous of my making any friends: thinking, perhaps, that if I did, I
+might complain to someone. For this reason, though Mr. Chillip often
+asked me to go and see him (he was a widower, having, some years before
+that, lost a little small light-haired wife, whom I can just remember
+connecting in my own thoughts with a pale tortoise-shell cat), it was
+but seldom that I enjoyed the happiness of passing an afternoon in his
+closet of a surgery; reading some book that was new to me, with
+the smell of the whole Pharmacopoeia coming up my nose, or pounding
+something in a mortar under his mild directions.
+
+For the same reason, added no doubt to the old dislike of her, I was
+seldom allowed to visit Peggotty. Faithful to her promise, she either
+came to see me, or met me somewhere near, once every week, and never
+empty-handed; but many and bitter were the disappointments I had, in
+being refused permission to pay a visit to her at her house. Some few
+times, however, at long intervals, I was allowed to go there; and then
+I found out that Mr. Barkis was something of a miser, or as Peggotty
+dutifully expressed it, was ‘a little near’, and kept a heap of money
+in a box under his bed, which he pretended was only full of coats
+and trousers. In this coffer, his riches hid themselves with such a
+tenacious modesty, that the smallest instalments could only be tempted
+out by artifice; so that Peggotty had to prepare a long and elaborate
+scheme, a very Gunpowder Plot, for every Saturday’s expenses.
+
+All this time I was so conscious of the waste of any promise I had
+given, and of my being utterly neglected, that I should have been
+perfectly miserable, I have no doubt, but for the old books. They were
+my only comfort; and I was as true to them as they were to me, and read
+them over and over I don’t know how many times more.
+
+I now approach a period of my life, which I can never lose the
+remembrance of, while I remember anything: and the recollection of
+which has often, without my invocation, come before me like a ghost, and
+haunted happier times.
+
+I had been out, one day, loitering somewhere, in the listless,
+meditative manner that my way of life engendered, when, turning the
+corner of a lane near our house, I came upon Mr. Murdstone walking with
+a gentleman. I was confused, and was going by them, when the gentleman
+cried:
+
+‘What! Brooks!’
+
+‘No, sir, David Copperfield,’ I said.
+
+‘Don’t tell me. You are Brooks,’ said the gentleman. ‘You are Brooks of
+Sheffield. That’s your name.’
+
+At these words, I observed the gentleman more attentively. His laugh
+coming to my remembrance too, I knew him to be Mr. Quinion, whom I
+had gone over to Lowestoft with Mr. Murdstone to see, before--it is no
+matter--I need not recall when.
+
+‘And how do you get on, and where are you being educated, Brooks?’ said
+Mr. Quinion.
+
+He had put his hand upon my shoulder, and turned me about, to walk
+with them. I did not know what to reply, and glanced dubiously at Mr.
+Murdstone.
+
+‘He is at home at present,’ said the latter. ‘He is not being educated
+anywhere. I don’t know what to do with him. He is a difficult subject.’
+
+That old, double look was on me for a moment; and then his eyes darkened
+with a frown, as it turned, in its aversion, elsewhere.
+
+‘Humph!’ said Mr. Quinion, looking at us both, I thought. ‘Fine
+weather!’
+
+Silence ensued, and I was considering how I could best disengage my
+shoulder from his hand, and go away, when he said:
+
+‘I suppose you are a pretty sharp fellow still? Eh, Brooks?’
+
+‘Aye! He is sharp enough,’ said Mr. Murdstone, impatiently. ‘You had
+better let him go. He will not thank you for troubling him.’
+
+On this hint, Mr. Quinion released me, and I made the best of my
+way home. Looking back as I turned into the front garden, I saw Mr.
+Murdstone leaning against the wicket of the churchyard, and Mr. Quinion
+talking to him. They were both looking after me, and I felt that they
+were speaking of me.
+
+Mr. Quinion lay at our house that night. After breakfast, the next
+morning, I had put my chair away, and was going out of the room, when
+Mr. Murdstone called me back. He then gravely repaired to another table,
+where his sister sat herself at her desk. Mr. Quinion, with his hands
+in his pockets, stood looking out of window; and I stood looking at them
+all.
+
+‘David,’ said Mr. Murdstone, ‘to the young this is a world for action;
+not for moping and droning in.’ --‘As you do,’ added his sister.
+
+‘Jane Murdstone, leave it to me, if you please. I say, David, to the
+young this is a world for action, and not for moping and droning in. It
+is especially so for a young boy of your disposition, which requires a
+great deal of correcting; and to which no greater service can be done
+than to force it to conform to the ways of the working world, and to
+bend it and break it.’
+
+‘For stubbornness won’t do here,’ said his sister ‘What it wants is, to
+be crushed. And crushed it must be. Shall be, too!’
+
+He gave her a look, half in remonstrance, half in approval, and went on:
+
+‘I suppose you know, David, that I am not rich. At any rate, you know it
+now. You have received some considerable education already. Education is
+costly; and even if it were not, and I could afford it, I am of opinion
+that it would not be at all advantageous to you to be kept at school.
+What is before you, is a fight with the world; and the sooner you begin
+it, the better.’
+
+I think it occurred to me that I had already begun it, in my poor way:
+but it occurs to me now, whether or no.
+
+‘You have heard the “counting-house” mentioned sometimes,’ said Mr.
+Murdstone.
+
+‘The counting-house, sir?’ I repeated. ‘Of Murdstone and Grinby, in the
+wine trade,’ he replied.
+
+I suppose I looked uncertain, for he went on hastily:
+
+‘You have heard the “counting-house” mentioned, or the business, or the
+cellars, or the wharf, or something about it.’
+
+‘I think I have heard the business mentioned, sir,’ I said, remembering
+what I vaguely knew of his and his sister’s resources. ‘But I don’t know
+when.’
+
+‘It does not matter when,’ he returned. ‘Mr. Quinion manages that
+business.’
+
+I glanced at the latter deferentially as he stood looking out of window.
+
+‘Mr. Quinion suggests that it gives employment to some other boys,
+and that he sees no reason why it shouldn’t, on the same terms, give
+employment to you.’
+
+‘He having,’ Mr. Quinion observed in a low voice, and half turning
+round, ‘no other prospect, Murdstone.’
+
+Mr. Murdstone, with an impatient, even an angry gesture, resumed,
+without noticing what he had said:
+
+‘Those terms are, that you will earn enough for yourself to provide for
+your eating and drinking, and pocket-money. Your lodging (which I have
+arranged for) will be paid by me. So will your washing--’
+
+‘--Which will be kept down to my estimate,’ said his sister.
+
+‘Your clothes will be looked after for you, too,’ said Mr. Murdstone;
+‘as you will not be able, yet awhile, to get them for yourself. So you
+are now going to London, David, with Mr. Quinion, to begin the world on
+your own account.’
+
+‘In short, you are provided for,’ observed his sister; ‘and will please
+to do your duty.’
+
+Though I quite understood that the purpose of this announcement was
+to get rid of me, I have no distinct remembrance whether it pleased
+or frightened me. My impression is, that I was in a state of confusion
+about it, and, oscillating between the two points, touched neither. Nor
+had I much time for the clearing of my thoughts, as Mr. Quinion was to
+go upon the morrow.
+
+Behold me, on the morrow, in a much-worn little white hat, with a black
+crape round it for my mother, a black jacket, and a pair of hard, stiff
+corduroy trousers--which Miss Murdstone considered the best armour for
+the legs in that fight with the world which was now to come off. Behold
+me so attired, and with my little worldly all before me in a small
+trunk, sitting, a lone lorn child (as Mrs. Gummidge might have said),
+in the post-chaise that was carrying Mr. Quinion to the London coach at
+Yarmouth! See, how our house and church are lessening in the distance;
+how the grave beneath the tree is blotted out by intervening objects;
+how the spire points upwards from my old playground no more, and the sky
+is empty!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 11. I BEGIN LIFE ON MY OWN ACCOUNT, AND DON’T LIKE IT
+
+
+I know enough of the world now, to have almost lost the capacity of
+being much surprised by anything; but it is matter of some surprise to
+me, even now, that I can have been so easily thrown away at such an age.
+A child of excellent abilities, and with strong powers of observation,
+quick, eager, delicate, and soon hurt bodily or mentally, it seems
+wonderful to me that nobody should have made any sign in my behalf. But
+none was made; and I became, at ten years old, a little labouring hind
+in the service of Murdstone and Grinby.
+
+Murdstone and Grinby’s warehouse was at the waterside. It was down in
+Blackfriars. Modern improvements have altered the place; but it was the
+last house at the bottom of a narrow street, curving down hill to the
+river, with some stairs at the end, where people took boat. It was a
+crazy old house with a wharf of its own, abutting on the water when the
+tide was in, and on the mud when the tide was out, and literally overrun
+with rats. Its panelled rooms, discoloured with the dirt and smoke of
+a hundred years, I dare say; its decaying floors and staircase; the
+squeaking and scuffling of the old grey rats down in the cellars; and
+the dirt and rottenness of the place; are things, not of many years ago,
+in my mind, but of the present instant. They are all before me, just as
+they were in the evil hour when I went among them for the first time,
+with my trembling hand in Mr. Quinion’s.
+
+Murdstone and Grinby’s trade was among a good many kinds of people, but
+an important branch of it was the supply of wines and spirits to certain
+packet ships. I forget now where they chiefly went, but I think there
+were some among them that made voyages both to the East and West Indies.
+I know that a great many empty bottles were one of the consequences of
+this traffic, and that certain men and boys were employed to examine
+them against the light, and reject those that were flawed, and to rinse
+and wash them. When the empty bottles ran short, there were labels to be
+pasted on full ones, or corks to be fitted to them, or seals to be put
+upon the corks, or finished bottles to be packed in casks. All this work
+was my work, and of the boys employed upon it I was one.
+
+There were three or four of us, counting me. My working place was
+established in a corner of the warehouse, where Mr. Quinion could see
+me, when he chose to stand up on the bottom rail of his stool in the
+counting-house, and look at me through a window above the desk. Hither,
+on the first morning of my so auspiciously beginning life on my own
+account, the oldest of the regular boys was summoned to show me my
+business. His name was Mick Walker, and he wore a ragged apron and a
+paper cap. He informed me that his father was a bargeman, and walked, in
+a black velvet head-dress, in the Lord Mayor’s Show. He also informed me
+that our principal associate would be another boy whom he introduced by
+the--to me--extraordinary name of Mealy Potatoes. I discovered, however,
+that this youth had not been christened by that name, but that it had
+been bestowed upon him in the warehouse, on account of his complexion,
+which was pale or mealy. Mealy’s father was a waterman, who had the
+additional distinction of being a fireman, and was engaged as such at
+one of the large theatres; where some young relation of Mealy’s--I think
+his little sister--did Imps in the Pantomimes.
+
+No words can express the secret agony of my soul as I sunk into this
+companionship; compared these henceforth everyday associates with those
+of my happier childhood--not to say with Steerforth, Traddles, and the
+rest of those boys; and felt my hopes of growing up to be a learned
+and distinguished man, crushed in my bosom. The deep remembrance of the
+sense I had, of being utterly without hope now; of the shame I felt in
+my position; of the misery it was to my young heart to believe that day
+by day what I had learned, and thought, and delighted in, and raised my
+fancy and my emulation up by, would pass away from me, little by little,
+never to be brought back any more; cannot be written. As often as Mick
+Walker went away in the course of that forenoon, I mingled my tears with
+the water in which I was washing the bottles; and sobbed as if there
+were a flaw in my own breast, and it were in danger of bursting.
+
+The counting-house clock was at half past twelve, and there was
+general preparation for going to dinner, when Mr. Quinion tapped at the
+counting-house window, and beckoned to me to go in. I went in, and
+found there a stoutish, middle-aged person, in a brown surtout and black
+tights and shoes, with no more hair upon his head (which was a large
+one, and very shining) than there is upon an egg, and with a very
+extensive face, which he turned full upon me. His clothes were shabby,
+but he had an imposing shirt-collar on. He carried a jaunty sort of a
+stick, with a large pair of rusty tassels to it; and a quizzing-glass
+hung outside his coat,--for ornament, I afterwards found, as he very
+seldom looked through it, and couldn’t see anything when he did.
+
+‘This,’ said Mr. Quinion, in allusion to myself, ‘is he.’
+
+‘This,’ said the stranger, with a certain condescending roll in his
+voice, and a certain indescribable air of doing something genteel, which
+impressed me very much, ‘is Master Copperfield. I hope I see you well,
+sir?’
+
+I said I was very well, and hoped he was. I was sufficiently ill at
+ease, Heaven knows; but it was not in my nature to complain much at that
+time of my life, so I said I was very well, and hoped he was.
+
+‘I am,’ said the stranger, ‘thank Heaven, quite well. I have received a
+letter from Mr. Murdstone, in which he mentions that he would desire
+me to receive into an apartment in the rear of my house, which is at
+present unoccupied--and is, in short, to be let as a--in short,’
+said the stranger, with a smile and in a burst of confidence, ‘as a
+bedroom--the young beginner whom I have now the pleasure to--’ and the
+stranger waved his hand, and settled his chin in his shirt-collar.
+
+‘This is Mr. Micawber,’ said Mr. Quinion to me.
+
+‘Ahem!’ said the stranger, ‘that is my name.’
+
+‘Mr. Micawber,’ said Mr. Quinion, ‘is known to Mr. Murdstone. He takes
+orders for us on commission, when he can get any. He has been written to
+by Mr. Murdstone, on the subject of your lodgings, and he will receive
+you as a lodger.’
+
+‘My address,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘is Windsor Terrace, City Road. I--in
+short,’ said Mr. Micawber, with the same genteel air, and in another
+burst of confidence--‘I live there.’
+
+I made him a bow.
+
+‘Under the impression,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘that your peregrinations in
+this metropolis have not as yet been extensive, and that you might have
+some difficulty in penetrating the arcana of the Modern Babylon in the
+direction of the City Road,--in short,’ said Mr. Micawber, in another
+burst of confidence, ‘that you might lose yourself--I shall be happy to
+call this evening, and install you in the knowledge of the nearest way.’
+
+I thanked him with all my heart, for it was friendly in him to offer to
+take that trouble.
+
+‘At what hour,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘shall I--’
+
+‘At about eight,’ said Mr. Quinion.
+
+‘At about eight,’ said Mr. Micawber. ‘I beg to wish you good day, Mr.
+Quinion. I will intrude no longer.’
+
+So he put on his hat, and went out with his cane under his arm: very
+upright, and humming a tune when he was clear of the counting-house.
+
+Mr. Quinion then formally engaged me to be as useful as I could in
+the warehouse of Murdstone and Grinby, at a salary, I think, of six
+shillings a week. I am not clear whether it was six or seven. I am
+inclined to believe, from my uncertainty on this head, that it was six
+at first and seven afterwards. He paid me a week down (from his own
+pocket, I believe), and I gave Mealy sixpence out of it to get my
+trunk carried to Windsor Terrace that night: it being too heavy for my
+strength, small as it was. I paid sixpence more for my dinner, which was
+a meat pie and a turn at a neighbouring pump; and passed the hour which
+was allowed for that meal, in walking about the streets.
+
+At the appointed time in the evening, Mr. Micawber reappeared. I washed
+my hands and face, to do the greater honour to his gentility, and we
+walked to our house, as I suppose I must now call it, together; Mr.
+Micawber impressing the name of streets, and the shapes of corner houses
+upon me, as we went along, that I might find my way back, easily, in the
+morning.
+
+Arrived at this house in Windsor Terrace (which I noticed was shabby
+like himself, but also, like himself, made all the show it could), he
+presented me to Mrs. Micawber, a thin and faded lady, not at all
+young, who was sitting in the parlour (the first floor was altogether
+unfurnished, and the blinds were kept down to delude the neighbours),
+with a baby at her breast. This baby was one of twins; and I may remark
+here that I hardly ever, in all my experience of the family, saw both
+the twins detached from Mrs. Micawber at the same time. One of them was
+always taking refreshment.
+
+There were two other children; Master Micawber, aged about four, and
+Miss Micawber, aged about three. These, and a dark-complexioned young
+woman, with a habit of snorting, who was servant to the family, and
+informed me, before half an hour had expired, that she was ‘a Orfling’,
+and came from St. Luke’s workhouse, in the neighbourhood, completed the
+establishment. My room was at the top of the house, at the back: a close
+chamber; stencilled all over with an ornament which my young imagination
+represented as a blue muffin; and very scantily furnished.
+
+‘I never thought,’ said Mrs. Micawber, when she came up, twin and all,
+to show me the apartment, and sat down to take breath, ‘before I was
+married, when I lived with papa and mama, that I should ever find it
+necessary to take a lodger. But Mr. Micawber being in difficulties, all
+considerations of private feeling must give way.’
+
+I said: ‘Yes, ma’am.’
+
+‘Mr. Micawber’s difficulties are almost overwhelming just at present,’
+said Mrs. Micawber; ‘and whether it is possible to bring him through
+them, I don’t know. When I lived at home with papa and mama, I really
+should have hardly understood what the word meant, in the sense in which
+I now employ it, but experientia does it,--as papa used to say.’
+
+I cannot satisfy myself whether she told me that Mr. Micawber had been
+an officer in the Marines, or whether I have imagined it. I only know
+that I believe to this hour that he WAS in the Marines once upon a time,
+without knowing why. He was a sort of town traveller for a number
+of miscellaneous houses, now; but made little or nothing of it, I am
+afraid.
+
+‘If Mr. Micawber’s creditors will not give him time,’ said Mrs.
+Micawber, ‘they must take the consequences; and the sooner they bring it
+to an issue the better. Blood cannot be obtained from a stone, neither
+can anything on account be obtained at present (not to mention law
+expenses) from Mr. Micawber.’
+
+I never can quite understand whether my precocious self-dependence
+confused Mrs. Micawber in reference to my age, or whether she was so
+full of the subject that she would have talked about it to the very
+twins if there had been nobody else to communicate with, but this was
+the strain in which she began, and she went on accordingly all the time
+I knew her.
+
+Poor Mrs. Micawber! She said she had tried to exert herself, and so,
+I have no doubt, she had. The centre of the street door was perfectly
+covered with a great brass-plate, on which was engraved ‘Mrs. Micawber’s
+Boarding Establishment for Young Ladies’: but I never found that any
+young lady had ever been to school there; or that any young lady ever
+came, or proposed to come; or that the least preparation was ever made
+to receive any young lady. The only visitors I ever saw, or heard of,
+were creditors. THEY used to come at all hours, and some of them were
+quite ferocious. One dirty-faced man, I think he was a boot-maker,
+used to edge himself into the passage as early as seven o’clock in the
+morning, and call up the stairs to Mr. Micawber--‘Come! You ain’t out
+yet, you know. Pay us, will you? Don’t hide, you know; that’s mean. I
+wouldn’t be mean if I was you. Pay us, will you? You just pay us, d’ye
+hear? Come!’ Receiving no answer to these taunts, he would mount in
+his wrath to the words ‘swindlers’ and ‘robbers’; and these being
+ineffectual too, would sometimes go to the extremity of crossing the
+street, and roaring up at the windows of the second floor, where he knew
+Mr. Micawber was. At these times, Mr. Micawber would be transported with
+grief and mortification, even to the length (as I was once made aware by
+a scream from his wife) of making motions at himself with a razor;
+but within half-an-hour afterwards, he would polish up his shoes with
+extraordinary pains, and go out, humming a tune with a greater air of
+gentility than ever. Mrs. Micawber was quite as elastic. I have known
+her to be thrown into fainting fits by the king’s taxes at three
+o’clock, and to eat lamb chops, breaded, and drink warm ale (paid for
+with two tea-spoons that had gone to the pawnbroker’s) at four. On one
+occasion, when an execution had just been put in, coming home through
+some chance as early as six o’clock, I saw her lying (of course with a
+twin) under the grate in a swoon, with her hair all torn about her face;
+but I never knew her more cheerful than she was, that very same night,
+over a veal cutlet before the kitchen fire, telling me stories about her
+papa and mama, and the company they used to keep.
+
+In this house, and with this family, I passed my leisure time. My own
+exclusive breakfast of a penny loaf and a pennyworth of milk, I provided
+myself. I kept another small loaf, and a modicum of cheese, on a
+particular shelf of a particular cupboard, to make my supper on when I
+came back at night. This made a hole in the six or seven shillings, I
+know well; and I was out at the warehouse all day, and had to support
+myself on that money all the week. From Monday morning until Saturday
+night, I had no advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation,
+no assistance, no support, of any kind, from anyone, that I can call to
+mind, as I hope to go to heaven!
+
+I was so young and childish, and so little qualified--how could I be
+otherwise?--to undertake the whole charge of my own existence, that
+often, in going to Murdstone and Grinby’s, of a morning, I could
+not resist the stale pastry put out for sale at half-price at the
+pastrycooks’ doors, and spent in that the money I should have kept for
+my dinner. Then, I went without my dinner, or bought a roll or a slice
+of pudding. I remember two pudding shops, between which I was divided,
+according to my finances. One was in a court close to St. Martin’s
+Church--at the back of the church,--which is now removed altogether.
+The pudding at that shop was made of currants, and was rather a special
+pudding, but was dear, twopennyworth not being larger than a pennyworth
+of more ordinary pudding. A good shop for the latter was in the
+Strand--somewhere in that part which has been rebuilt since. It was a
+stout pale pudding, heavy and flabby, and with great flat raisins in it,
+stuck in whole at wide distances apart. It came up hot at about my time
+every day, and many a day did I dine off it. When I dined regularly and
+handsomely, I had a saveloy and a penny loaf, or a fourpenny plate of
+red beef from a cook’s shop; or a plate of bread and cheese and a
+glass of beer, from a miserable old public-house opposite our place of
+business, called the Lion, or the Lion and something else that I have
+forgotten. Once, I remember carrying my own bread (which I had brought
+from home in the morning) under my arm, wrapped in a piece of paper,
+like a book, and going to a famous alamode beef-house near Drury Lane,
+and ordering a ‘small plate’ of that delicacy to eat with it. What the
+waiter thought of such a strange little apparition coming in all alone,
+I don’t know; but I can see him now, staring at me as I ate my dinner,
+and bringing up the other waiter to look. I gave him a halfpenny for
+himself, and I wish he hadn’t taken it.
+
+We had half-an-hour, I think, for tea. When I had money enough, I used
+to get half-a-pint of ready-made coffee and a slice of bread and butter.
+When I had none, I used to look at a venison shop in Fleet Street; or
+I have strolled, at such a time, as far as Covent Garden Market, and
+stared at the pineapples. I was fond of wandering about the Adelphi,
+because it was a mysterious place, with those dark arches. I see myself
+emerging one evening from some of these arches, on a little public-house
+close to the river, with an open space before it, where some
+coal-heavers were dancing; to look at whom I sat down upon a bench. I
+wonder what they thought of me!
+
+I was such a child, and so little, that frequently when I went into the
+bar of a strange public-house for a glass of ale or porter, to moisten
+what I had had for dinner, they were afraid to give it me. I remember
+one hot evening I went into the bar of a public-house, and said to the
+landlord: ‘What is your best--your very best--ale a glass?’ For it was a
+special occasion. I don’t know what. It may have been my birthday.
+
+‘Twopence-halfpenny,’ says the landlord, ‘is the price of the Genuine
+Stunning ale.’
+
+‘Then,’ says I, producing the money, ‘just draw me a glass of the
+Genuine Stunning, if you please, with a good head to it.’
+
+The landlord looked at me in return over the bar, from head to foot,
+with a strange smile on his face; and instead of drawing the beer,
+looked round the screen and said something to his wife. She came out
+from behind it, with her work in her hand, and joined him in surveying
+me. Here we stand, all three, before me now. The landlord in his
+shirt-sleeves, leaning against the bar window-frame; his wife looking
+over the little half-door; and I, in some confusion, looking up at them
+from outside the partition. They asked me a good many questions; as,
+what my name was, how old I was, where I lived, how I was employed,
+and how I came there. To all of which, that I might commit nobody, I
+invented, I am afraid, appropriate answers. They served me with the ale,
+though I suspect it was not the Genuine Stunning; and the landlord’s
+wife, opening the little half-door of the bar, and bending down, gave
+me my money back, and gave me a kiss that was half admiring and half
+compassionate, but all womanly and good, I am sure.
+
+I know I do not exaggerate, unconsciously and unintentionally, the
+scantiness of my resources or the difficulties of my life. I know that
+if a shilling were given me by Mr. Quinion at any time, I spent it in
+a dinner or a tea. I know that I worked, from morning until night, with
+common men and boys, a shabby child. I know that I lounged about the
+streets, insufficiently and unsatisfactorily fed. I know that, but for
+the mercy of God, I might easily have been, for any care that was taken
+of me, a little robber or a little vagabond.
+
+Yet I held some station at Murdstone and Grinby’s too. Besides that Mr.
+Quinion did what a careless man so occupied, and dealing with a thing so
+anomalous, could, to treat me as one upon a different footing from the
+rest, I never said, to man or boy, how it was that I came to be there,
+or gave the least indication of being sorry that I was there. That I
+suffered in secret, and that I suffered exquisitely, no one ever knew
+but I. How much I suffered, it is, as I have said already, utterly
+beyond my power to tell. But I kept my own counsel, and I did my work.
+I knew from the first, that, if I could not do my work as well as any
+of the rest, I could not hold myself above slight and contempt. I soon
+became at least as expeditious and as skilful as either of the other
+boys. Though perfectly familiar with them, my conduct and manner were
+different enough from theirs to place a space between us. They and
+the men generally spoke of me as ‘the little gent’, or ‘the young
+Suffolker.’ A certain man named Gregory, who was foreman of the packers,
+and another named Tipp, who was the carman, and wore a red jacket, used
+to address me sometimes as ‘David’: but I think it was mostly when we
+were very confidential, and when I had made some efforts to entertain
+them, over our work, with some results of the old readings; which were
+fast perishing out of my remembrance. Mealy Potatoes uprose once, and
+rebelled against my being so distinguished; but Mick Walker settled him
+in no time.
+
+My rescue from this kind of existence I considered quite hopeless, and
+abandoned, as such, altogether. I am solemnly convinced that I never for
+one hour was reconciled to it, or was otherwise than miserably unhappy;
+but I bore it; and even to Peggotty, partly for the love of her and
+partly for shame, never in any letter (though many passed between us)
+revealed the truth.
+
+Mr. Micawber’s difficulties were an addition to the distressed state of
+my mind. In my forlorn state I became quite attached to the family, and
+used to walk about, busy with Mrs. Micawber’s calculations of ways and
+means, and heavy with the weight of Mr. Micawber’s debts. On a Saturday
+night, which was my grand treat,--partly because it was a great thing
+to walk home with six or seven shillings in my pocket, looking into the
+shops and thinking what such a sum would buy, and partly because I went
+home early,--Mrs. Micawber would make the most heart-rending confidences
+to me; also on a Sunday morning, when I mixed the portion of tea or
+coffee I had bought over-night, in a little shaving-pot, and sat late
+at my breakfast. It was nothing at all unusual for Mr. Micawber to sob
+violently at the beginning of one of these Saturday night conversations,
+and sing about Jack’s delight being his lovely Nan, towards the end of
+it. I have known him come home to supper with a flood of tears, and a
+declaration that nothing was now left but a jail; and go to bed making a
+calculation of the expense of putting bow-windows to the house, ‘in
+case anything turned up’, which was his favourite expression. And Mrs.
+Micawber was just the same.
+
+A curious equality of friendship, originating, I suppose, in our
+respective circumstances, sprung up between me and these people,
+notwithstanding the ludicrous disparity in our years. But I never
+allowed myself to be prevailed upon to accept any invitation to eat and
+drink with them out of their stock (knowing that they got on badly with
+the butcher and baker, and had often not too much for themselves),
+until Mrs. Micawber took me into her entire confidence. This she did one
+evening as follows:
+
+‘Master Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘I make no stranger of you,
+and therefore do not hesitate to say that Mr. Micawber’s difficulties
+are coming to a crisis.’
+
+It made me very miserable to hear it, and I looked at Mrs. Micawber’s
+red eyes with the utmost sympathy.
+
+‘With the exception of the heel of a Dutch cheese--which is not adapted
+to the wants of a young family’--said Mrs. Micawber, ‘there is really
+not a scrap of anything in the larder. I was accustomed to speak of
+the larder when I lived with papa and mama, and I use the word almost
+unconsciously. What I mean to express is, that there is nothing to eat
+in the house.’
+
+‘Dear me!’ I said, in great concern.
+
+I had two or three shillings of my week’s money in my pocket--from which
+I presume that it must have been on a Wednesday night when we held this
+conversation--and I hastily produced them, and with heartfelt emotion
+begged Mrs. Micawber to accept of them as a loan. But that lady, kissing
+me, and making me put them back in my pocket, replied that she couldn’t
+think of it.
+
+‘No, my dear Master Copperfield,’ said she, ‘far be it from my thoughts!
+But you have a discretion beyond your years, and can render me another
+kind of service, if you will; and a service I will thankfully accept
+of.’
+
+I begged Mrs. Micawber to name it.
+
+‘I have parted with the plate myself,’ said Mrs. Micawber. ‘Six tea, two
+salt, and a pair of sugars, I have at different times borrowed money on,
+in secret, with my own hands. But the twins are a great tie; and to me,
+with my recollections, of papa and mama, these transactions are very
+painful. There are still a few trifles that we could part with. Mr.
+Micawber’s feelings would never allow him to dispose of them; and
+Clickett’--this was the girl from the workhouse--‘being of a vulgar
+mind, would take painful liberties if so much confidence was reposed in
+her. Master Copperfield, if I might ask you--’
+
+I understood Mrs. Micawber now, and begged her to make use of me to any
+extent. I began to dispose of the more portable articles of property
+that very evening; and went out on a similar expedition almost every
+morning, before I went to Murdstone and Grinby’s.
+
+Mr. Micawber had a few books on a little chiffonier, which he called the
+library; and those went first. I carried them, one after another, to
+a bookstall in the City Road--one part of which, near our house, was
+almost all bookstalls and bird shops then--and sold them for whatever
+they would bring. The keeper of this bookstall, who lived in a little
+house behind it, used to get tipsy every night, and to be violently
+scolded by his wife every morning. More than once, when I went there
+early, I had audience of him in a turn-up bedstead, with a cut in his
+forehead or a black eye, bearing witness to his excesses over-night (I
+am afraid he was quarrelsome in his drink), and he, with a shaking
+hand, endeavouring to find the needful shillings in one or other of the
+pockets of his clothes, which lay upon the floor, while his wife, with a
+baby in her arms and her shoes down at heel, never left off rating him.
+Sometimes he had lost his money, and then he would ask me to call again;
+but his wife had always got some--had taken his, I dare say, while he
+was drunk--and secretly completed the bargain on the stairs, as we went
+down together. At the pawnbroker’s shop, too, I began to be very well
+known. The principal gentleman who officiated behind the counter, took
+a good deal of notice of me; and often got me, I recollect, to decline a
+Latin noun or adjective, or to conjugate a Latin verb, in his ear, while
+he transacted my business. After all these occasions Mrs. Micawber made
+a little treat, which was generally a supper; and there was a peculiar
+relish in these meals which I well remember.
+
+At last Mr. Micawber’s difficulties came to a crisis, and he was
+arrested early one morning, and carried over to the King’s Bench Prison
+in the Borough. He told me, as he went out of the house, that the God
+of day had now gone down upon him--and I really thought his heart was
+broken and mine too. But I heard, afterwards, that he was seen to play a
+lively game at skittles, before noon.
+
+On the first Sunday after he was taken there, I was to go and see him,
+and have dinner with him. I was to ask my way to such a place, and just
+short of that place I should see such another place, and just short of
+that I should see a yard, which I was to cross, and keep straight on
+until I saw a turnkey. All this I did; and when at last I did see a
+turnkey (poor little fellow that I was!), and thought how, when Roderick
+Random was in a debtors’ prison, there was a man there with nothing
+on him but an old rug, the turnkey swam before my dimmed eyes and my
+beating heart.
+
+Mr. Micawber was waiting for me within the gate, and we went up to his
+room (top story but one), and cried very much. He solemnly conjured me,
+I remember, to take warning by his fate; and to observe that if a man
+had twenty pounds a-year for his income, and spent nineteen pounds
+nineteen shillings and sixpence, he would be happy, but that if he
+spent twenty pounds one he would be miserable. After which he borrowed a
+shilling of me for porter, gave me a written order on Mrs. Micawber for
+the amount, and put away his pocket-handkerchief, and cheered up.
+
+We sat before a little fire, with two bricks put within the rusted
+grate, one on each side, to prevent its burning too many coals; until
+another debtor, who shared the room with Mr. Micawber, came in from the
+bakehouse with the loin of mutton which was our joint-stock repast.
+Then I was sent up to ‘Captain Hopkins’ in the room overhead, with Mr.
+Micawber’s compliments, and I was his young friend, and would Captain
+Hopkins lend me a knife and fork.
+
+Captain Hopkins lent me the knife and fork, with his compliments to Mr.
+Micawber. There was a very dirty lady in his little room, and two wan
+girls, his daughters, with shock heads of hair. I thought it was better
+to borrow Captain Hopkins’s knife and fork, than Captain Hopkins’s comb.
+The Captain himself was in the last extremity of shabbiness, with large
+whiskers, and an old, old brown great-coat with no other coat below it.
+I saw his bed rolled up in a corner; and what plates and dishes and pots
+he had, on a shelf; and I divined (God knows how) that though the two
+girls with the shock heads of hair were Captain Hopkins’s children, the
+dirty lady was not married to Captain Hopkins. My timid station on his
+threshold was not occupied more than a couple of minutes at most; but
+I came down again with all this in my knowledge, as surely as the knife
+and fork were in my hand.
+
+There was something gipsy-like and agreeable in the dinner, after all.
+I took back Captain Hopkins’s knife and fork early in the afternoon,
+and went home to comfort Mrs. Micawber with an account of my visit.
+She fainted when she saw me return, and made a little jug of egg-hot
+afterwards to console us while we talked it over.
+
+I don’t know how the household furniture came to be sold for the family
+benefit, or who sold it, except that I did not. Sold it was, however,
+and carried away in a van; except the bed, a few chairs, and the kitchen
+table. With these possessions we encamped, as it were, in the two
+parlours of the emptied house in Windsor Terrace; Mrs. Micawber, the
+children, the Orfling, and myself; and lived in those rooms night and
+day. I have no idea for how long, though it seems to me for a long
+time. At last Mrs. Micawber resolved to move into the prison, where Mr.
+Micawber had now secured a room to himself. So I took the key of the
+house to the landlord, who was very glad to get it; and the beds were
+sent over to the King’s Bench, except mine, for which a little room was
+hired outside the walls in the neighbourhood of that Institution, very
+much to my satisfaction, since the Micawbers and I had become too used
+to one another, in our troubles, to part. The Orfling was likewise
+accommodated with an inexpensive lodging in the same neighbourhood.
+Mine was a quiet back-garret with a sloping roof, commanding a pleasant
+prospect of a timberyard; and when I took possession of it, with the
+reflection that Mr. Micawber’s troubles had come to a crisis at last, I
+thought it quite a paradise.
+
+All this time I was working at Murdstone and Grinby’s in the same common
+way, and with the same common companions, and with the same sense of
+unmerited degradation as at first. But I never, happily for me no doubt,
+made a single acquaintance, or spoke to any of the many boys whom I
+saw daily in going to the warehouse, in coming from it, and in prowling
+about the streets at meal-times. I led the same secretly unhappy life;
+but I led it in the same lonely, self-reliant manner. The only changes
+I am conscious of are, firstly, that I had grown more shabby, and
+secondly, that I was now relieved of much of the weight of Mr. and Mrs.
+Micawber’s cares; for some relatives or friends had engaged to help them
+at their present pass, and they lived more comfortably in the prison
+than they had lived for a long while out of it. I used to breakfast with
+them now, in virtue of some arrangement, of which I have forgotten
+the details. I forget, too, at what hour the gates were opened in the
+morning, admitting of my going in; but I know that I was often up at six
+o’clock, and that my favourite lounging-place in the interval was old
+London Bridge, where I was wont to sit in one of the stone recesses,
+watching the people going by, or to look over the balustrades at the sun
+shining in the water, and lighting up the golden flame on the top of the
+Monument. The Orfling met me here sometimes, to be told some astonishing
+fictions respecting the wharves and the Tower; of which I can say no
+more than that I hope I believed them myself. In the evening I used
+to go back to the prison, and walk up and down the parade with Mr.
+Micawber; or play casino with Mrs. Micawber, and hear reminiscences of
+her papa and mama. Whether Mr. Murdstone knew where I was, I am unable
+to say. I never told them at Murdstone and Grinby’s.
+
+Mr. Micawber’s affairs, although past their crisis, were very much
+involved by reason of a certain ‘Deed’, of which I used to hear a great
+deal, and which I suppose, now, to have been some former composition
+with his creditors, though I was so far from being clear about it
+then, that I am conscious of having confounded it with those demoniacal
+parchments which are held to have, once upon a time, obtained to a great
+extent in Germany. At last this document appeared to be got out of the
+way, somehow; at all events it ceased to be the rock-ahead it had been;
+and Mrs. Micawber informed me that ‘her family’ had decided that Mr.
+Micawber should apply for his release under the Insolvent Debtors Act,
+which would set him free, she expected, in about six weeks.
+
+‘And then,’ said Mr. Micawber, who was present, ‘I have no doubt I
+shall, please Heaven, begin to be beforehand with the world, and to live
+in a perfectly new manner, if--in short, if anything turns up.’
+
+By way of going in for anything that might be on the cards, I call to
+mind that Mr. Micawber, about this time, composed a petition to the
+House of Commons, praying for an alteration in the law of imprisonment
+for debt. I set down this remembrance here, because it is an instance to
+myself of the manner in which I fitted my old books to my altered life,
+and made stories for myself, out of the streets, and out of men and
+women; and how some main points in the character I shall unconsciously
+develop, I suppose, in writing my life, were gradually forming all this
+while.
+
+There was a club in the prison, in which Mr. Micawber, as a gentleman,
+was a great authority. Mr. Micawber had stated his idea of this petition
+to the club, and the club had strongly approved of the same. Wherefore
+Mr. Micawber (who was a thoroughly good-natured man, and as active a
+creature about everything but his own affairs as ever existed, and never
+so happy as when he was busy about something that could never be of any
+profit to him) set to work at the petition, invented it, engrossed it
+on an immense sheet of paper, spread it out on a table, and appointed a
+time for all the club, and all within the walls if they chose, to come
+up to his room and sign it.
+
+When I heard of this approaching ceremony, I was so anxious to see them
+all come in, one after another, though I knew the greater part of
+them already, and they me, that I got an hour’s leave of absence from
+Murdstone and Grinby’s, and established myself in a corner for that
+purpose. As many of the principal members of the club as could be got
+into the small room without filling it, supported Mr. Micawber in front
+of the petition, while my old friend Captain Hopkins (who had washed
+himself, to do honour to so solemn an occasion) stationed himself close
+to it, to read it to all who were unacquainted with its contents. The
+door was then thrown open, and the general population began to come in,
+in a long file: several waiting outside, while one entered, affixed his
+signature, and went out. To everybody in succession, Captain Hopkins
+said: ‘Have you read it?’--‘No.’---‘Would you like to hear it read?’ If
+he weakly showed the least disposition to hear it, Captain Hopkins, in
+a loud sonorous voice, gave him every word of it. The Captain would
+have read it twenty thousand times, if twenty thousand people would have
+heard him, one by one. I remember a certain luscious roll he gave to
+such phrases as ‘The people’s representatives in Parliament assembled,’
+‘Your petitioners therefore humbly approach your honourable house,’ ‘His
+gracious Majesty’s unfortunate subjects,’ as if the words were something
+real in his mouth, and delicious to taste; Mr. Micawber, meanwhile,
+listening with a little of an author’s vanity, and contemplating (not
+severely) the spikes on the opposite wall.
+
+As I walked to and fro daily between Southwark and Blackfriars, and
+lounged about at meal-times in obscure streets, the stones of which
+may, for anything I know, be worn at this moment by my childish feet, I
+wonder how many of these people were wanting in the crowd that used to
+come filing before me in review again, to the echo of Captain Hopkins’s
+voice! When my thoughts go back, now, to that slow agony of my youth, I
+wonder how much of the histories I invented for such people hangs like a
+mist of fancy over well-remembered facts! When I tread the old ground,
+I do not wonder that I seem to see and pity, going on before me, an
+innocent romantic boy, making his imaginative world out of such strange
+experiences and sordid things!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 12. LIKING LIFE ON MY OWN ACCOUNT NO BETTER, I FORM A GREAT RESOLUTION
+
+
+In due time, Mr. Micawber’s petition was ripe for hearing; and that
+gentleman was ordered to be discharged under the Act, to my great joy.
+His creditors were not implacable; and Mrs. Micawber informed me that
+even the revengeful boot-maker had declared in open court that he bore
+him no malice, but that when money was owing to him he liked to be paid.
+He said he thought it was human nature.
+
+Mr. Micawber returned to the King’s Bench when his case was over, as
+some fees were to be settled, and some formalities observed, before he
+could be actually released. The club received him with transport, and
+held an harmonic meeting that evening in his honour; while Mrs. Micawber
+and I had a lamb’s fry in private, surrounded by the sleeping family.
+
+‘On such an occasion I will give you, Master Copperfield,’ said Mrs.
+Micawber, ‘in a little more flip,’ for we had been having some already,
+‘the memory of my papa and mama.’
+
+‘Are they dead, ma’am?’ I inquired, after drinking the toast in a
+wine-glass.
+
+‘My mama departed this life,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘before Mr. Micawber’s
+difficulties commenced, or at least before they became pressing. My papa
+lived to bail Mr. Micawber several times, and then expired, regretted by
+a numerous circle.’
+
+Mrs. Micawber shook her head, and dropped a pious tear upon the twin who
+happened to be in hand.
+
+As I could hardly hope for a more favourable opportunity of putting a
+question in which I had a near interest, I said to Mrs. Micawber:
+
+‘May I ask, ma’am, what you and Mr. Micawber intend to do, now that Mr.
+Micawber is out of his difficulties, and at liberty? Have you settled
+yet?’
+
+‘My family,’ said Mrs. Micawber, who always said those two words with an
+air, though I never could discover who came under the denomination, ‘my
+family are of opinion that Mr. Micawber should quit London, and exert
+his talents in the country. Mr. Micawber is a man of great talent,
+Master Copperfield.’
+
+I said I was sure of that.
+
+‘Of great talent,’ repeated Mrs. Micawber. ‘My family are of opinion,
+that, with a little interest, something might be done for a man of his
+ability in the Custom House. The influence of my family being local, it
+is their wish that Mr. Micawber should go down to Plymouth. They think
+it indispensable that he should be upon the spot.’
+
+‘That he may be ready?’ I suggested.
+
+‘Exactly,’ returned Mrs. Micawber. ‘That he may be ready--in case of
+anything turning up.’
+
+‘And do you go too, ma’am?’
+
+The events of the day, in combination with the twins, if not with the
+flip, had made Mrs. Micawber hysterical, and she shed tears as she
+replied:
+
+‘I never will desert Mr. Micawber. Mr. Micawber may have concealed his
+difficulties from me in the first instance, but his sanguine temper may
+have led him to expect that he would overcome them. The pearl necklace
+and bracelets which I inherited from mama, have been disposed of for
+less than half their value; and the set of coral, which was the wedding
+gift of my papa, has been actually thrown away for nothing. But I never
+will desert Mr. Micawber. No!’ cried Mrs. Micawber, more affected than
+before, ‘I never will do it! It’s of no use asking me!’
+
+I felt quite uncomfortable--as if Mrs. Micawber supposed I had asked her
+to do anything of the sort!--and sat looking at her in alarm.
+
+‘Mr. Micawber has his faults. I do not deny that he is improvident. I
+do not deny that he has kept me in the dark as to his resources and his
+liabilities both,’ she went on, looking at the wall; ‘but I never will
+desert Mr. Micawber!’
+
+Mrs. Micawber having now raised her voice into a perfect scream, I
+was so frightened that I ran off to the club-room, and disturbed Mr.
+Micawber in the act of presiding at a long table, and leading the chorus
+of
+
+     Gee up, Dobbin,
+     Gee ho, Dobbin,
+     Gee up, Dobbin,
+     Gee up, and gee ho--o--o!
+
+with the tidings that Mrs. Micawber was in an alarming state, upon
+which he immediately burst into tears, and came away with me with his
+waistcoat full of the heads and tails of shrimps, of which he had been
+partaking.
+
+‘Emma, my angel!’ cried Mr. Micawber, running into the room; ‘what is
+the matter?’
+
+‘I never will desert you, Micawber!’ she exclaimed.
+
+‘My life!’ said Mr. Micawber, taking her in his arms. ‘I am perfectly
+aware of it.’
+
+‘He is the parent of my children! He is the father of my twins! He is
+the husband of my affections,’ cried Mrs. Micawber, struggling; ‘and I
+ne--ver--will--desert Mr. Micawber!’
+
+Mr. Micawber was so deeply affected by this proof of her devotion (as
+to me, I was dissolved in tears), that he hung over her in a passionate
+manner, imploring her to look up, and to be calm. But the more he asked
+Mrs. Micawber to look up, the more she fixed her eyes on nothing;
+and the more he asked her to compose herself, the more she wouldn’t.
+Consequently Mr. Micawber was soon so overcome, that he mingled his
+tears with hers and mine; until he begged me to do him the favour of
+taking a chair on the staircase, while he got her into bed. I would have
+taken my leave for the night, but he would not hear of my doing that
+until the strangers’ bell should ring. So I sat at the staircase window,
+until he came out with another chair and joined me.
+
+‘How is Mrs. Micawber now, sir?’ I said.
+
+‘Very low,’ said Mr. Micawber, shaking his head; ‘reaction. Ah, this has
+been a dreadful day! We stand alone now--everything is gone from us!’
+
+Mr. Micawber pressed my hand, and groaned, and afterwards shed tears.
+I was greatly touched, and disappointed too, for I had expected that we
+should be quite gay on this happy and long-looked-for occasion. But Mr.
+and Mrs. Micawber were so used to their old difficulties, I think, that
+they felt quite shipwrecked when they came to consider that they were
+released from them. All their elasticity was departed, and I never saw
+them half so wretched as on this night; insomuch that when the bell
+rang, and Mr. Micawber walked with me to the lodge, and parted from me
+there with a blessing, I felt quite afraid to leave him by himself, he
+was so profoundly miserable.
+
+But through all the confusion and lowness of spirits in which we had
+been, so unexpectedly to me, involved, I plainly discerned that Mr. and
+Mrs. Micawber and their family were going away from London, and that a
+parting between us was near at hand. It was in my walk home that night,
+and in the sleepless hours which followed when I lay in bed, that the
+thought first occurred to me--though I don’t know how it came into my
+head--which afterwards shaped itself into a settled resolution.
+
+I had grown to be so accustomed to the Micawbers, and had been so
+intimate with them in their distresses, and was so utterly friendless
+without them, that the prospect of being thrown upon some new shift for
+a lodging, and going once more among unknown people, was like being that
+moment turned adrift into my present life, with such a knowledge of it
+ready made as experience had given me. All the sensitive feelings it
+wounded so cruelly, all the shame and misery it kept alive within my
+breast, became more poignant as I thought of this; and I determined that
+the life was unendurable.
+
+That there was no hope of escape from it, unless the escape was my own
+act, I knew quite well. I rarely heard from Miss Murdstone, and never
+from Mr. Murdstone: but two or three parcels of made or mended clothes
+had come up for me, consigned to Mr. Quinion, and in each there was
+a scrap of paper to the effect that J. M. trusted D. C. was applying
+himself to business, and devoting himself wholly to his duties--not the
+least hint of my ever being anything else than the common drudge into
+which I was fast settling down.
+
+The very next day showed me, while my mind was in the first agitation of
+what it had conceived, that Mrs. Micawber had not spoken of their going
+away without warrant. They took a lodging in the house where I lived,
+for a week; at the expiration of which time they were to start for
+Plymouth. Mr. Micawber himself came down to the counting-house, in the
+afternoon, to tell Mr. Quinion that he must relinquish me on the day
+of his departure, and to give me a high character, which I am sure I
+deserved. And Mr. Quinion, calling in Tipp the carman, who was a married
+man, and had a room to let, quartered me prospectively on him--by our
+mutual consent, as he had every reason to think; for I said nothing,
+though my resolution was now taken.
+
+I passed my evenings with Mr. and Mrs. Micawber, during the remaining
+term of our residence under the same roof; and I think we became fonder
+of one another as the time went on. On the last Sunday, they invited me
+to dinner; and we had a loin of pork and apple sauce, and a pudding. I
+had bought a spotted wooden horse over-night as a parting gift to little
+Wilkins Micawber--that was the boy--and a doll for little Emma. I had
+also bestowed a shilling on the Orfling, who was about to be disbanded.
+
+We had a very pleasant day, though we were all in a tender state about
+our approaching separation.
+
+‘I shall never, Master Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘revert to the
+period when Mr. Micawber was in difficulties, without thinking of
+you. Your conduct has always been of the most delicate and obliging
+description. You have never been a lodger. You have been a friend.’
+
+‘My dear,’ said Mr. Micawber; ‘Copperfield,’ for so he had been
+accustomed to call me, of late, ‘has a heart to feel for the distresses
+of his fellow-creatures when they are behind a cloud, and a head to
+plan, and a hand to--in short, a general ability to dispose of such
+available property as could be made away with.’
+
+I expressed my sense of this commendation, and said I was very sorry we
+were going to lose one another.
+
+‘My dear young friend,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘I am older than you; a man
+of some experience in life, and--and of some experience, in short, in
+difficulties, generally speaking. At present, and until something turns
+up (which I am, I may say, hourly expecting), I have nothing to bestow
+but advice. Still my advice is so far worth taking, that--in short, that
+I have never taken it myself, and am the’--here Mr. Micawber, who had
+been beaming and smiling, all over his head and face, up to the present
+moment, checked himself and frowned--‘the miserable wretch you behold.’
+
+‘My dear Micawber!’ urged his wife.
+
+‘I say,’ returned Mr. Micawber, quite forgetting himself, and smiling
+again, ‘the miserable wretch you behold. My advice is, never do tomorrow
+what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time. Collar
+him!’
+
+‘My poor papa’s maxim,’ Mrs. Micawber observed.
+
+‘My dear,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘your papa was very well in his way, and
+Heaven forbid that I should disparage him. Take him for all in all, we
+ne’er shall--in short, make the acquaintance, probably, of anybody else
+possessing, at his time of life, the same legs for gaiters, and able to
+read the same description of print, without spectacles. But he applied
+that maxim to our marriage, my dear; and that was so far prematurely
+entered into, in consequence, that I never recovered the expense.’ Mr.
+Micawber looked aside at Mrs. Micawber, and added: ‘Not that I am sorry
+for it. Quite the contrary, my love.’ After which, he was grave for a
+minute or so.
+
+‘My other piece of advice, Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘you know.
+Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and
+six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure
+twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. The blossom is blighted,
+the leaf is withered, the god of day goes down upon the dreary scene,
+and--and in short you are for ever floored. As I am!’
+
+To make his example the more impressive, Mr. Micawber drank a glass of
+punch with an air of great enjoyment and satisfaction, and whistled the
+College Hornpipe.
+
+I did not fail to assure him that I would store these precepts in my
+mind, though indeed I had no need to do so, for, at the time, they
+affected me visibly. Next morning I met the whole family at the coach
+office, and saw them, with a desolate heart, take their places outside,
+at the back.
+
+‘Master Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘God bless you! I never can
+forget all that, you know, and I never would if I could.’
+
+‘Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘farewell! Every happiness and
+prosperity! If, in the progress of revolving years, I could persuade
+myself that my blighted destiny had been a warning to you, I should feel
+that I had not occupied another man’s place in existence altogether in
+vain. In case of anything turning up (of which I am rather confident),
+I shall be extremely happy if it should be in my power to improve your
+prospects.’
+
+I think, as Mrs. Micawber sat at the back of the coach, with the
+children, and I stood in the road looking wistfully at them, a mist
+cleared from her eyes, and she saw what a little creature I really was.
+I think so, because she beckoned to me to climb up, with quite a new and
+motherly expression in her face, and put her arm round my neck, and gave
+me just such a kiss as she might have given to her own boy. I had barely
+time to get down again before the coach started, and I could hardly see
+the family for the handkerchiefs they waved. It was gone in a minute.
+The Orfling and I stood looking vacantly at each other in the middle
+of the road, and then shook hands and said good-bye; she going back,
+I suppose, to St. Luke’s workhouse, as I went to begin my weary day at
+Murdstone and Grinby’s.
+
+But with no intention of passing many more weary days there. No. I had
+resolved to run away.---To go, by some means or other, down into the
+country, to the only relation I had in the world, and tell my story to
+my aunt, Miss Betsey. I have already observed that I don’t know how this
+desperate idea came into my brain. But, once there, it remained there;
+and hardened into a purpose than which I have never entertained a more
+determined purpose in my life. I am far from sure that I believed there
+was anything hopeful in it, but my mind was thoroughly made up that it
+must be carried into execution.
+
+Again, and again, and a hundred times again, since the night when the
+thought had first occurred to me and banished sleep, I had gone over
+that old story of my poor mother’s about my birth, which it had been one
+of my great delights in the old time to hear her tell, and which I knew
+by heart. My aunt walked into that story, and walked out of it, a dread
+and awful personage; but there was one little trait in her behaviour
+which I liked to dwell on, and which gave me some faint shadow of
+encouragement. I could not forget how my mother had thought that she
+felt her touch her pretty hair with no ungentle hand; and though it
+might have been altogether my mother’s fancy, and might have had no
+foundation whatever in fact, I made a little picture, out of it, of my
+terrible aunt relenting towards the girlish beauty that I recollected so
+well and loved so much, which softened the whole narrative. It is very
+possible that it had been in my mind a long time, and had gradually
+engendered my determination.
+
+As I did not even know where Miss Betsey lived, I wrote a long letter
+to Peggotty, and asked her, incidentally, if she remembered; pretending
+that I had heard of such a lady living at a certain place I named at
+random, and had a curiosity to know if it were the same. In the course
+of that letter, I told Peggotty that I had a particular occasion for
+half a guinea; and that if she could lend me that sum until I could
+repay it, I should be very much obliged to her, and would tell her
+afterwards what I had wanted it for.
+
+Peggotty’s answer soon arrived, and was, as usual, full of affectionate
+devotion. She enclosed the half guinea (I was afraid she must have had
+a world of trouble to get it out of Mr. Barkis’s box), and told me that
+Miss Betsey lived near Dover, but whether at Dover itself, at Hythe,
+Sandgate, or Folkestone, she could not say. One of our men, however,
+informing me on my asking him about these places, that they were all
+close together, I deemed this enough for my object, and resolved to set
+out at the end of that week.
+
+Being a very honest little creature, and unwilling to disgrace the
+memory I was going to leave behind me at Murdstone and Grinby’s, I
+considered myself bound to remain until Saturday night; and, as I had
+been paid a week’s wages in advance when I first came there, not to
+present myself in the counting-house at the usual hour, to receive my
+stipend. For this express reason, I had borrowed the half-guinea, that
+I might not be without a fund for my travelling-expenses. Accordingly,
+when the Saturday night came, and we were all waiting in the warehouse
+to be paid, and Tipp the carman, who always took precedence, went in
+first to draw his money, I shook Mick Walker by the hand; asked him,
+when it came to his turn to be paid, to say to Mr. Quinion that I had
+gone to move my box to Tipp’s; and, bidding a last good night to Mealy
+Potatoes, ran away.
+
+My box was at my old lodging, over the water, and I had written a
+direction for it on the back of one of our address cards that we nailed
+on the casks: ‘Master David, to be left till called for, at the Coach
+Office, Dover.’ This I had in my pocket ready to put on the box, after I
+should have got it out of the house; and as I went towards my lodging,
+I looked about me for someone who would help me to carry it to the
+booking-office.
+
+There was a long-legged young man with a very little empty donkey-cart,
+standing near the Obelisk, in the Blackfriars Road, whose eye I caught
+as I was going by, and who, addressing me as ‘Sixpenn’orth of bad
+ha’pence,’ hoped ‘I should know him agin to swear to’--in allusion, I
+have no doubt, to my staring at him. I stopped to assure him that I had
+not done so in bad manners, but uncertain whether he might or might not
+like a job.
+
+‘Wot job?’ said the long-legged young man.
+
+‘To move a box,’ I answered.
+
+‘Wot box?’ said the long-legged young man.
+
+I told him mine, which was down that street there, and which I wanted
+him to take to the Dover coach office for sixpence.
+
+‘Done with you for a tanner!’ said the long-legged young man, and
+directly got upon his cart, which was nothing but a large wooden tray on
+wheels, and rattled away at such a rate, that it was as much as I could
+do to keep pace with the donkey.
+
+There was a defiant manner about this young man, and particularly about
+the way in which he chewed straw as he spoke to me, that I did not much
+like; as the bargain was made, however, I took him upstairs to the room
+I was leaving, and we brought the box down, and put it on his cart.
+Now, I was unwilling to put the direction-card on there, lest any of my
+landlord’s family should fathom what I was doing, and detain me; so
+I said to the young man that I would be glad if he would stop for a
+minute, when he came to the dead-wall of the King’s Bench prison. The
+words were no sooner out of my mouth, than he rattled away as if he, my
+box, the cart, and the donkey, were all equally mad; and I was quite out
+of breath with running and calling after him, when I caught him at the
+place appointed.
+
+Being much flushed and excited, I tumbled my half-guinea out of my
+pocket in pulling the card out. I put it in my mouth for safety, and
+though my hands trembled a good deal, had just tied the card on very
+much to my satisfaction, when I felt myself violently chucked under the
+chin by the long-legged young man, and saw my half-guinea fly out of my
+mouth into his hand.
+
+‘Wot!’ said the young man, seizing me by my jacket collar, with a
+frightful grin. ‘This is a pollis case, is it? You’re a-going to bolt,
+are you? Come to the pollis, you young warmin, come to the pollis!’
+
+‘You give me my money back, if you please,’ said I, very much
+frightened; ‘and leave me alone.’
+
+‘Come to the pollis!’ said the young man. ‘You shall prove it yourn to
+the pollis.’
+
+‘Give me my box and money, will you,’ I cried, bursting into tears.
+
+The young man still replied: ‘Come to the pollis!’ and was dragging me
+against the donkey in a violent manner, as if there were any affinity
+between that animal and a magistrate, when he changed his mind, jumped
+into the cart, sat upon my box, and, exclaiming that he would drive to
+the pollis straight, rattled away harder than ever.
+
+I ran after him as fast as I could, but I had no breath to call out
+with, and should not have dared to call out, now, if I had. I narrowly
+escaped being run over, twenty times at least, in half a mile. Now I
+lost him, now I saw him, now I lost him, now I was cut at with a whip,
+now shouted at, now down in the mud, now up again, now running into
+somebody’s arms, now running headlong at a post. At length, confused by
+fright and heat, and doubting whether half London might not by this time
+be turning out for my apprehension, I left the young man to go where
+he would with my box and money; and, panting and crying, but never
+stopping, faced about for Greenwich, which I had understood was on
+the Dover Road: taking very little more out of the world, towards the
+retreat of my aunt, Miss Betsey, than I had brought into it, on the
+night when my arrival gave her so much umbrage.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 13. THE SEQUEL OF MY RESOLUTION
+
+
+For anything I know, I may have had some wild idea of running all the
+way to Dover, when I gave up the pursuit of the young man with the
+donkey-cart, and started for Greenwich. My scattered senses were soon
+collected as to that point, if I had; for I came to a stop in the Kent
+Road, at a terrace with a piece of water before it, and a great foolish
+image in the middle, blowing a dry shell. Here I sat down on a doorstep,
+quite spent and exhausted with the efforts I had already made, and with
+hardly breath enough to cry for the loss of my box and half-guinea.
+
+It was by this time dark; I heard the clocks strike ten, as I sat
+resting. But it was a summer night, fortunately, and fine weather. When
+I had recovered my breath, and had got rid of a stifling sensation in
+my throat, I rose up and went on. In the midst of my distress, I had no
+notion of going back. I doubt if I should have had any, though there had
+been a Swiss snow-drift in the Kent Road.
+
+But my standing possessed of only three-halfpence in the world (and I
+am sure I wonder how they came to be left in my pocket on a Saturday
+night!) troubled me none the less because I went on. I began to picture
+to myself, as a scrap of newspaper intelligence, my being found dead in
+a day or two, under some hedge; and I trudged on miserably, though as
+fast as I could, until I happened to pass a little shop, where it was
+written up that ladies’ and gentlemen’s wardrobes were bought, and that
+the best price was given for rags, bones, and kitchen-stuff. The master
+of this shop was sitting at the door in his shirt-sleeves, smoking; and
+as there were a great many coats and pairs of trousers dangling from
+the low ceiling, and only two feeble candles burning inside to show
+what they were, I fancied that he looked like a man of a revengeful
+disposition, who had hung all his enemies, and was enjoying himself.
+
+My late experiences with Mr. and Mrs. Micawber suggested to me that here
+might be a means of keeping off the wolf for a little while. I went up
+the next by-street, took off my waistcoat, rolled it neatly under my
+arm, and came back to the shop door.
+
+‘If you please, sir,’ I said, ‘I am to sell this for a fair price.’
+
+Mr. Dolloby--Dolloby was the name over the shop door, at least--took the
+waistcoat, stood his pipe on its head, against the door-post, went into
+the shop, followed by me, snuffed the two candles with his fingers,
+spread the waistcoat on the counter, and looked at it there, held it up
+against the light, and looked at it there, and ultimately said:
+
+‘What do you call a price, now, for this here little weskit?’
+
+‘Oh! you know best, sir,’ I returned modestly.
+
+‘I can’t be buyer and seller too,’ said Mr. Dolloby. ‘Put a price on
+this here little weskit.’
+
+‘Would eighteenpence be?’--I hinted, after some hesitation.
+
+Mr. Dolloby rolled it up again, and gave it me back. ‘I should rob my
+family,’ he said, ‘if I was to offer ninepence for it.’
+
+This was a disagreeable way of putting the business; because it imposed
+upon me, a perfect stranger, the unpleasantness of asking Mr. Dolloby to
+rob his family on my account. My circumstances being so very pressing,
+however, I said I would take ninepence for it, if he pleased. Mr.
+Dolloby, not without some grumbling, gave ninepence. I wished him good
+night, and walked out of the shop the richer by that sum, and the
+poorer by a waistcoat. But when I buttoned my jacket, that was not much.
+Indeed, I foresaw pretty clearly that my jacket would go next, and that
+I should have to make the best of my way to Dover in a shirt and a pair
+of trousers, and might deem myself lucky if I got there even in that
+trim. But my mind did not run so much on this as might be supposed.
+Beyond a general impression of the distance before me, and of the young
+man with the donkey-cart having used me cruelly, I think I had no
+very urgent sense of my difficulties when I once again set off with my
+ninepence in my pocket.
+
+A plan had occurred to me for passing the night, which I was going to
+carry into execution. This was, to lie behind the wall at the back of my
+old school, in a corner where there used to be a haystack. I imagined
+it would be a kind of company to have the boys, and the bedroom where
+I used to tell the stories, so near me: although the boys would know
+nothing of my being there, and the bedroom would yield me no shelter.
+
+I had had a hard day’s work, and was pretty well jaded when I came
+climbing out, at last, upon the level of Blackheath. It cost me some
+trouble to find out Salem House; but I found it, and I found a haystack
+in the corner, and I lay down by it; having first walked round the wall,
+and looked up at the windows, and seen that all was dark and silent
+within. Never shall I forget the lonely sensation of first lying down,
+without a roof above my head!
+
+Sleep came upon me as it came on many other outcasts, against whom
+house-doors were locked, and house-dogs barked, that night--and I
+dreamed of lying on my old school-bed, talking to the boys in my room;
+and found myself sitting upright, with Steerforth’s name upon my lips,
+looking wildly at the stars that were glistening and glimmering above
+me. When I remembered where I was at that untimely hour, a feeling
+stole upon me that made me get up, afraid of I don’t know what, and walk
+about. But the fainter glimmering of the stars, and the pale light in
+the sky where the day was coming, reassured me: and my eyes being very
+heavy, I lay down again and slept--though with a knowledge in my sleep
+that it was cold--until the warm beams of the sun, and the ringing of
+the getting-up bell at Salem House, awoke me. If I could have hoped that
+Steerforth was there, I would have lurked about until he came out
+alone; but I knew he must have left long since. Traddles still remained,
+perhaps, but it was very doubtful; and I had not sufficient confidence
+in his discretion or good luck, however strong my reliance was on his
+good nature, to wish to trust him with my situation. So I crept away
+from the wall as Mr. Creakle’s boys were getting up, and struck into the
+long dusty track which I had first known to be the Dover Road when I was
+one of them, and when I little expected that any eyes would ever see me
+the wayfarer I was now, upon it.
+
+What a different Sunday morning from the old Sunday morning at Yarmouth!
+In due time I heard the church-bells ringing, as I plodded on; and I met
+people who were going to church; and I passed a church or two where the
+congregation were inside, and the sound of singing came out into the
+sunshine, while the beadle sat and cooled himself in the shade of the
+porch, or stood beneath the yew-tree, with his hand to his forehead,
+glowering at me going by. But the peace and rest of the old Sunday
+morning were on everything, except me. That was the difference. I felt
+quite wicked in my dirt and dust, with my tangled hair. But for the
+quiet picture I had conjured up, of my mother in her youth and beauty,
+weeping by the fire, and my aunt relenting to her, I hardly think I
+should have had the courage to go on until next day. But it always went
+before me, and I followed.
+
+I got, that Sunday, through three-and-twenty miles on the straight
+road, though not very easily, for I was new to that kind of toil. I
+see myself, as evening closes in, coming over the bridge at Rochester,
+footsore and tired, and eating bread that I had bought for supper.
+One or two little houses, with the notice, ‘Lodgings for Travellers’,
+hanging out, had tempted me; but I was afraid of spending the few pence
+I had, and was even more afraid of the vicious looks of the trampers I
+had met or overtaken. I sought no shelter, therefore, but the sky; and
+toiling into Chatham,--which, in that night’s aspect, is a mere dream of
+chalk, and drawbridges, and mastless ships in a muddy river, roofed
+like Noah’s arks,--crept, at last, upon a sort of grass-grown battery
+overhanging a lane, where a sentry was walking to and fro. Here I
+lay down, near a cannon; and, happy in the society of the sentry’s
+footsteps, though he knew no more of my being above him than the boys
+at Salem House had known of my lying by the wall, slept soundly until
+morning.
+
+Very stiff and sore of foot I was in the morning, and quite dazed by the
+beating of drums and marching of troops, which seemed to hem me in on
+every side when I went down towards the long narrow street. Feeling
+that I could go but a very little way that day, if I were to reserve any
+strength for getting to my journey’s end, I resolved to make the sale
+of my jacket its principal business. Accordingly, I took the jacket off,
+that I might learn to do without it; and carrying it under my arm, began
+a tour of inspection of the various slop-shops.
+
+It was a likely place to sell a jacket in; for the dealers in
+second-hand clothes were numerous, and were, generally speaking, on the
+look-out for customers at their shop doors. But as most of them had,
+hanging up among their stock, an officer’s coat or two, epaulettes and
+all, I was rendered timid by the costly nature of their dealings, and
+walked about for a long time without offering my merchandise to anyone.
+
+This modesty of mine directed my attention to the marine-store shops,
+and such shops as Mr. Dolloby’s, in preference to the regular dealers.
+At last I found one that I thought looked promising, at the corner of a
+dirty lane, ending in an enclosure full of stinging-nettles, against the
+palings of which some second-hand sailors’ clothes, that seemed to have
+overflowed the shop, were fluttering among some cots, and rusty guns,
+and oilskin hats, and certain trays full of so many old rusty keys of so
+many sizes that they seemed various enough to open all the doors in the
+world.
+
+Into this shop, which was low and small, and which was darkened
+rather than lighted by a little window, overhung with clothes, and was
+descended into by some steps, I went with a palpitating heart; which was
+not relieved when an ugly old man, with the lower part of his face all
+covered with a stubbly grey beard, rushed out of a dirty den behind it,
+and seized me by the hair of my head. He was a dreadful old man to look
+at, in a filthy flannel waistcoat, and smelling terribly of rum. His
+bedstead, covered with a tumbled and ragged piece of patchwork, was in
+the den he had come from, where another little window showed a prospect
+of more stinging-nettles, and a lame donkey.
+
+‘Oh, what do you want?’ grinned this old man, in a fierce, monotonous
+whine. ‘Oh, my eyes and limbs, what do you want? Oh, my lungs and liver,
+what do you want? Oh, goroo, goroo!’
+
+I was so much dismayed by these words, and particularly by the
+repetition of the last unknown one, which was a kind of rattle in his
+throat, that I could make no answer; hereupon the old man, still holding
+me by the hair, repeated:
+
+‘Oh, what do you want? Oh, my eyes and limbs, what do you want? Oh, my
+lungs and liver, what do you want? Oh, goroo!’--which he screwed out of
+himself, with an energy that made his eyes start in his head.
+
+‘I wanted to know,’ I said, trembling, ‘if you would buy a jacket.’
+
+‘Oh, let’s see the jacket!’ cried the old man. ‘Oh, my heart on fire,
+show the jacket to us! Oh, my eyes and limbs, bring the jacket out!’
+
+With that he took his trembling hands, which were like the claws of a
+great bird, out of my hair; and put on a pair of spectacles, not at all
+ornamental to his inflamed eyes.
+
+‘Oh, how much for the jacket?’ cried the old man, after examining it.
+‘Oh--goroo!--how much for the jacket?’
+
+‘Half-a-crown,’ I answered, recovering myself.
+
+‘Oh, my lungs and liver,’ cried the old man, ‘no! Oh, my eyes, no! Oh,
+my limbs, no! Eighteenpence. Goroo!’
+
+Every time he uttered this ejaculation, his eyes seemed to be in danger
+of starting out; and every sentence he spoke, he delivered in a sort
+of tune, always exactly the same, and more like a gust of wind, which
+begins low, mounts up high, and falls again, than any other comparison I
+can find for it.
+
+‘Well,’ said I, glad to have closed the bargain, ‘I’ll take
+eighteenpence.’
+
+‘Oh, my liver!’ cried the old man, throwing the jacket on a shelf. ‘Get
+out of the shop! Oh, my lungs, get out of the shop! Oh, my eyes and
+limbs--goroo!--don’t ask for money; make it an exchange.’ I never was
+so frightened in my life, before or since; but I told him humbly that
+I wanted money, and that nothing else was of any use to me, but that I
+would wait for it, as he desired, outside, and had no wish to hurry
+him. So I went outside, and sat down in the shade in a corner. And I sat
+there so many hours, that the shade became sunlight, and the sunlight
+became shade again, and still I sat there waiting for the money.
+
+There never was such another drunken madman in that line of business,
+I hope. That he was well known in the neighbourhood, and enjoyed the
+reputation of having sold himself to the devil, I soon understood from
+the visits he received from the boys, who continually came skirmishing
+about the shop, shouting that legend, and calling to him to bring out
+his gold. ‘You ain’t poor, you know, Charley, as you pretend. Bring out
+your gold. Bring out some of the gold you sold yourself to the devil
+for. Come! It’s in the lining of the mattress, Charley. Rip it open
+and let’s have some!’ This, and many offers to lend him a knife for
+the purpose, exasperated him to such a degree, that the whole day was a
+succession of rushes on his part, and flights on the part of the boys.
+Sometimes in his rage he would take me for one of them, and come at me,
+mouthing as if he were going to tear me in pieces; then, remembering
+me, just in time, would dive into the shop, and lie upon his bed, as I
+thought from the sound of his voice, yelling in a frantic way, to his
+own windy tune, the ‘Death of Nelson’; with an Oh! before every line,
+and innumerable Goroos interspersed. As if this were not bad enough for
+me, the boys, connecting me with the establishment, on account of the
+patience and perseverance with which I sat outside, half-dressed, pelted
+me, and used me very ill all day.
+
+He made many attempts to induce me to consent to an exchange; at one
+time coming out with a fishing-rod, at another with a fiddle, at another
+with a cocked hat, at another with a flute. But I resisted all these
+overtures, and sat there in desperation; each time asking him, with
+tears in my eyes, for my money or my jacket. At last he began to pay me
+in halfpence at a time; and was full two hours getting by easy stages to
+a shilling.
+
+‘Oh, my eyes and limbs!’ he then cried, peeping hideously out of the
+shop, after a long pause, ‘will you go for twopence more?’
+
+‘I can’t,’ I said; ‘I shall be starved.’
+
+‘Oh, my lungs and liver, will you go for threepence?’
+
+‘I would go for nothing, if I could,’ I said, ‘but I want the money
+badly.’
+
+‘Oh, go-roo!’ (it is really impossible to express how he twisted this
+ejaculation out of himself, as he peeped round the door-post at me,
+showing nothing but his crafty old head); ‘will you go for fourpence?’
+
+I was so faint and weary that I closed with this offer; and taking the
+money out of his claw, not without trembling, went away more hungry and
+thirsty than I had ever been, a little before sunset. But at an expense
+of threepence I soon refreshed myself completely; and, being in better
+spirits then, limped seven miles upon my road.
+
+My bed at night was under another haystack, where I rested comfortably,
+after having washed my blistered feet in a stream, and dressed them as
+well as I was able, with some cool leaves. When I took the road again
+next morning, I found that it lay through a succession of hop-grounds
+and orchards. It was sufficiently late in the year for the orchards
+to be ruddy with ripe apples; and in a few places the hop-pickers were
+already at work. I thought it all extremely beautiful, and made up
+my mind to sleep among the hops that night: imagining some cheerful
+companionship in the long perspectives of poles, with the graceful
+leaves twining round them.
+
+The trampers were worse than ever that day, and inspired me with a
+dread that is yet quite fresh in my mind. Some of them were most
+ferocious-looking ruffians, who stared at me as I went by; and stopped,
+perhaps, and called after me to come back and speak to them, and when I
+took to my heels, stoned me. I recollect one young fellow--a tinker, I
+suppose, from his wallet and brazier--who had a woman with him, and
+who faced about and stared at me thus; and then roared to me in such a
+tremendous voice to come back, that I halted and looked round.
+
+‘Come here, when you’re called,’ said the tinker, ‘or I’ll rip your
+young body open.’
+
+I thought it best to go back. As I drew nearer to them, trying to
+propitiate the tinker by my looks, I observed that the woman had a black
+eye.
+
+‘Where are you going?’ said the tinker, gripping the bosom of my shirt
+with his blackened hand.
+
+‘I am going to Dover,’ I said.
+
+‘Where do you come from?’ asked the tinker, giving his hand another turn
+in my shirt, to hold me more securely.
+
+‘I come from London,’ I said.
+
+‘What lay are you upon?’ asked the tinker. ‘Are you a prig?’
+
+‘N-no,’ I said.
+
+‘Ain’t you, by G--? If you make a brag of your honesty to me,’ said the
+tinker, ‘I’ll knock your brains out.’
+
+With his disengaged hand he made a menace of striking me, and then
+looked at me from head to foot.
+
+‘Have you got the price of a pint of beer about you?’ said the tinker.
+‘If you have, out with it, afore I take it away!’
+
+I should certainly have produced it, but that I met the woman’s look,
+and saw her very slightly shake her head, and form ‘No!’ with her lips.
+
+‘I am very poor,’ I said, attempting to smile, ‘and have got no money.’
+
+‘Why, what do you mean?’ said the tinker, looking so sternly at me, that
+I almost feared he saw the money in my pocket.
+
+‘Sir!’ I stammered.
+
+‘What do you mean,’ said the tinker, ‘by wearing my brother’s silk
+handkerchief! Give it over here!’ And he had mine off my neck in a
+moment, and tossed it to the woman.
+
+The woman burst into a fit of laughter, as if she thought this a joke,
+and tossed it back to me, nodded once, as slightly as before, and made
+the word ‘Go!’ with her lips. Before I could obey, however, the tinker
+seized the handkerchief out of my hand with a roughness that threw me
+away like a feather, and putting it loosely round his own neck, turned
+upon the woman with an oath, and knocked her down. I never shall forget
+seeing her fall backward on the hard road, and lie there with her bonnet
+tumbled off, and her hair all whitened in the dust; nor, when I looked
+back from a distance, seeing her sitting on the pathway, which was a
+bank by the roadside, wiping the blood from her face with a corner of
+her shawl, while he went on ahead.
+
+This adventure frightened me so, that, afterwards, when I saw any of
+these people coming, I turned back until I could find a hiding-place,
+where I remained until they had gone out of sight; which happened so
+often, that I was very seriously delayed. But under this difficulty, as
+under all the other difficulties of my journey, I seemed to be sustained
+and led on by my fanciful picture of my mother in her youth, before I
+came into the world. It always kept me company. It was there, among
+the hops, when I lay down to sleep; it was with me on my waking in the
+morning; it went before me all day. I have associated it, ever since,
+with the sunny street of Canterbury, dozing as it were in the hot light;
+and with the sight of its old houses and gateways, and the stately,
+grey Cathedral, with the rooks sailing round the towers. When I came,
+at last, upon the bare, wide downs near Dover, it relieved the solitary
+aspect of the scene with hope; and not until I reached that first great
+aim of my journey, and actually set foot in the town itself, on the
+sixth day of my flight, did it desert me. But then, strange to say,
+when I stood with my ragged shoes, and my dusty, sunburnt, half-clothed
+figure, in the place so long desired, it seemed to vanish like a dream,
+and to leave me helpless and dispirited.
+
+I inquired about my aunt among the boatmen first, and received various
+answers. One said she lived in the South Foreland Light, and had singed
+her whiskers by doing so; another, that she was made fast to the great
+buoy outside the harbour, and could only be visited at half-tide; a
+third, that she was locked up in Maidstone jail for child-stealing; a
+fourth, that she was seen to mount a broom in the last high wind, and
+make direct for Calais. The fly-drivers, among whom I inquired next,
+were equally jocose and equally disrespectful; and the shopkeepers, not
+liking my appearance, generally replied, without hearing what I had
+to say, that they had got nothing for me. I felt more miserable and
+destitute than I had done at any period of my running away. My money was
+all gone, I had nothing left to dispose of; I was hungry, thirsty, and
+worn out; and seemed as distant from my end as if I had remained in
+London.
+
+The morning had worn away in these inquiries, and I was sitting on
+the step of an empty shop at a street corner, near the market-place,
+deliberating upon wandering towards those other places which had been
+mentioned, when a fly-driver, coming by with his carriage, dropped a
+horsecloth. Something good-natured in the man’s face, as I handed it up,
+encouraged me to ask him if he could tell me where Miss Trotwood lived;
+though I had asked the question so often, that it almost died upon my
+lips.
+
+‘Trotwood,’ said he. ‘Let me see. I know the name, too. Old lady?’
+
+‘Yes,’ I said, ‘rather.’
+
+‘Pretty stiff in the back?’ said he, making himself upright.
+
+‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I should think it very likely.’
+
+‘Carries a bag?’ said he--‘bag with a good deal of room in it--is
+gruffish, and comes down upon you, sharp?’
+
+My heart sank within me as I acknowledged the undoubted accuracy of this
+description.
+
+‘Why then, I tell you what,’ said he. ‘If you go up there,’ pointing
+with his whip towards the heights, ‘and keep right on till you come to
+some houses facing the sea, I think you’ll hear of her. My opinion is
+she won’t stand anything, so here’s a penny for you.’
+
+I accepted the gift thankfully, and bought a loaf with it. Dispatching
+this refreshment by the way, I went in the direction my friend had
+indicated, and walked on a good distance without coming to the houses
+he had mentioned. At length I saw some before me; and approaching them,
+went into a little shop (it was what we used to call a general shop,
+at home), and inquired if they could have the goodness to tell me where
+Miss Trotwood lived. I addressed myself to a man behind the counter,
+who was weighing some rice for a young woman; but the latter, taking the
+inquiry to herself, turned round quickly.
+
+‘My mistress?’ she said. ‘What do you want with her, boy?’
+
+‘I want,’ I replied, ‘to speak to her, if you please.’
+
+‘To beg of her, you mean,’ retorted the damsel.
+
+‘No,’ I said, ‘indeed.’ But suddenly remembering that in truth I came
+for no other purpose, I held my peace in confusion, and felt my face
+burn.
+
+My aunt’s handmaid, as I supposed she was from what she had said, put
+her rice in a little basket and walked out of the shop; telling me that
+I could follow her, if I wanted to know where Miss Trotwood lived. I
+needed no second permission; though I was by this time in such a state
+of consternation and agitation, that my legs shook under me. I followed
+the young woman, and we soon came to a very neat little cottage with
+cheerful bow-windows: in front of it, a small square gravelled court or
+garden full of flowers, carefully tended, and smelling deliciously.
+
+‘This is Miss Trotwood’s,’ said the young woman. ‘Now you know; and
+that’s all I have got to say.’ With which words she hurried into the
+house, as if to shake off the responsibility of my appearance; and left
+me standing at the garden-gate, looking disconsolately over the top of
+it towards the parlour window, where a muslin curtain partly undrawn
+in the middle, a large round green screen or fan fastened on to the
+windowsill, a small table, and a great chair, suggested to me that my
+aunt might be at that moment seated in awful state.
+
+My shoes were by this time in a woeful condition. The soles had shed
+themselves bit by bit, and the upper leathers had broken and burst until
+the very shape and form of shoes had departed from them. My hat (which
+had served me for a night-cap, too) was so crushed and bent, that no old
+battered handleless saucepan on a dunghill need have been ashamed to vie
+with it. My shirt and trousers, stained with heat, dew, grass, and
+the Kentish soil on which I had slept--and torn besides--might have
+frightened the birds from my aunt’s garden, as I stood at the gate. My
+hair had known no comb or brush since I left London. My face, neck, and
+hands, from unaccustomed exposure to the air and sun, were burnt to a
+berry-brown. From head to foot I was powdered almost as white with chalk
+and dust, as if I had come out of a lime-kiln. In this plight, and with
+a strong consciousness of it, I waited to introduce myself to, and make
+my first impression on, my formidable aunt.
+
+The unbroken stillness of the parlour window leading me to infer, after
+a while, that she was not there, I lifted up my eyes to the window above
+it, where I saw a florid, pleasant-looking gentleman, with a grey head,
+who shut up one eye in a grotesque manner, nodded his head at me several
+times, shook it at me as often, laughed, and went away.
+
+I had been discomposed enough before; but I was so much the more
+discomposed by this unexpected behaviour, that I was on the point of
+slinking off, to think how I had best proceed, when there came out of
+the house a lady with her handkerchief tied over her cap, and a pair
+of gardening gloves on her hands, wearing a gardening pocket like a
+toll-man’s apron, and carrying a great knife. I knew her immediately
+to be Miss Betsey, for she came stalking out of the house exactly as
+my poor mother had so often described her stalking up our garden at
+Blunderstone Rookery.
+
+‘Go away!’ said Miss Betsey, shaking her head, and making a distant chop
+in the air with her knife. ‘Go along! No boys here!’
+
+I watched her, with my heart at my lips, as she marched to a corner of
+her garden, and stooped to dig up some little root there. Then, without
+a scrap of courage, but with a great deal of desperation, I went softly
+in and stood beside her, touching her with my finger.
+
+‘If you please, ma’am,’ I began.
+
+She started and looked up.
+
+‘If you please, aunt.’
+
+‘EH?’ exclaimed Miss Betsey, in a tone of amazement I have never heard
+approached.
+
+‘If you please, aunt, I am your nephew.’
+
+‘Oh, Lord!’ said my aunt. And sat flat down in the garden-path.
+
+‘I am David Copperfield, of Blunderstone, in Suffolk--where you came,
+on the night when I was born, and saw my dear mama. I have been very
+unhappy since she died. I have been slighted, and taught nothing, and
+thrown upon myself, and put to work not fit for me. It made me run away
+to you. I was robbed at first setting out, and have walked all the
+way, and have never slept in a bed since I began the journey.’ Here
+my self-support gave way all at once; and with a movement of my hands,
+intended to show her my ragged state, and call it to witness that I had
+suffered something, I broke into a passion of crying, which I suppose
+had been pent up within me all the week.
+
+My aunt, with every sort of expression but wonder discharged from her
+countenance, sat on the gravel, staring at me, until I began to cry;
+when she got up in a great hurry, collared me, and took me into the
+parlour. Her first proceeding there was to unlock a tall press, bring
+out several bottles, and pour some of the contents of each into my
+mouth. I think they must have been taken out at random, for I am sure
+I tasted aniseed water, anchovy sauce, and salad dressing. When she had
+administered these restoratives, as I was still quite hysterical, and
+unable to control my sobs, she put me on the sofa, with a shawl under
+my head, and the handkerchief from her own head under my feet, lest I
+should sully the cover; and then, sitting herself down behind the green
+fan or screen I have already mentioned, so that I could not see her
+face, ejaculated at intervals, ‘Mercy on us!’ letting those exclamations
+off like minute guns.
+
+After a time she rang the bell. ‘Janet,’ said my aunt, when her servant
+came in. ‘Go upstairs, give my compliments to Mr. Dick, and say I wish
+to speak to him.’
+
+Janet looked a little surprised to see me lying stiffly on the sofa (I
+was afraid to move lest it should be displeasing to my aunt), but went
+on her errand. My aunt, with her hands behind her, walked up and down
+the room, until the gentleman who had squinted at me from the upper
+window came in laughing.
+
+‘Mr. Dick,’ said my aunt, ‘don’t be a fool, because nobody can be more
+discreet than you can, when you choose. We all know that. So don’t be a
+fool, whatever you are.’
+
+The gentleman was serious immediately, and looked at me, I thought, as
+if he would entreat me to say nothing about the window.
+
+‘Mr. Dick,’ said my aunt, ‘you have heard me mention David Copperfield?
+Now don’t pretend not to have a memory, because you and I know better.’
+
+‘David Copperfield?’ said Mr. Dick, who did not appear to me to
+remember much about it. ‘David Copperfield? Oh yes, to be sure. David,
+certainly.’
+
+‘Well,’ said my aunt, ‘this is his boy--his son. He would be as like his
+father as it’s possible to be, if he was not so like his mother, too.’
+
+‘His son?’ said Mr. Dick. ‘David’s son? Indeed!’
+
+‘Yes,’ pursued my aunt, ‘and he has done a pretty piece of business.
+He has run away. Ah! His sister, Betsey Trotwood, never would have run
+away.’ My aunt shook her head firmly, confident in the character and
+behaviour of the girl who never was born.
+
+‘Oh! you think she wouldn’t have run away?’ said Mr. Dick.
+
+‘Bless and save the man,’ exclaimed my aunt, sharply, ‘how he talks!
+Don’t I know she wouldn’t? She would have lived with her god-mother,
+and we should have been devoted to one another. Where, in the name of
+wonder, should his sister, Betsey Trotwood, have run from, or to?’
+
+‘Nowhere,’ said Mr. Dick.
+
+‘Well then,’ returned my aunt, softened by the reply, ‘how can you
+pretend to be wool-gathering, Dick, when you are as sharp as a surgeon’s
+lancet? Now, here you see young David Copperfield, and the question I
+put to you is, what shall I do with him?’
+
+‘What shall you do with him?’ said Mr. Dick, feebly, scratching his
+head. ‘Oh! do with him?’
+
+‘Yes,’ said my aunt, with a grave look, and her forefinger held up.
+‘Come! I want some very sound advice.’
+
+‘Why, if I was you,’ said Mr. Dick, considering, and looking vacantly
+at me, ‘I should--’ The contemplation of me seemed to inspire him with a
+sudden idea, and he added, briskly, ‘I should wash him!’
+
+‘Janet,’ said my aunt, turning round with a quiet triumph, which I did
+not then understand, ‘Mr. Dick sets us all right. Heat the bath!’
+
+Although I was deeply interested in this dialogue, I could not help
+observing my aunt, Mr. Dick, and Janet, while it was in progress, and
+completing a survey I had already been engaged in making of the room.
+
+My aunt was a tall, hard-featured lady, but by no means ill-looking.
+There was an inflexibility in her face, in her voice, in her gait and
+carriage, amply sufficient to account for the effect she had made upon
+a gentle creature like my mother; but her features were rather handsome
+than otherwise, though unbending and austere. I particularly noticed
+that she had a very quick, bright eye. Her hair, which was grey, was
+arranged in two plain divisions, under what I believe would be called a
+mob-cap; I mean a cap, much more common then than now, with side-pieces
+fastening under the chin. Her dress was of a lavender colour, and
+perfectly neat; but scantily made, as if she desired to be as little
+encumbered as possible. I remember that I thought it, in form, more like
+a riding-habit with the superfluous skirt cut off, than anything else.
+She wore at her side a gentleman’s gold watch, if I might judge from its
+size and make, with an appropriate chain and seals; she had some linen
+at her throat not unlike a shirt-collar, and things at her wrists like
+little shirt-wristbands.
+
+Mr. Dick, as I have already said, was grey-headed, and florid: I should
+have said all about him, in saying so, had not his head been curiously
+bowed--not by age; it reminded me of one of Mr. Creakle’s boys’ heads
+after a beating--and his grey eyes prominent and large, with a strange
+kind of watery brightness in them that made me, in combination with his
+vacant manner, his submission to my aunt, and his childish delight when
+she praised him, suspect him of being a little mad; though, if he were
+mad, how he came to be there puzzled me extremely. He was dressed
+like any other ordinary gentleman, in a loose grey morning coat and
+waistcoat, and white trousers; and had his watch in his fob, and his
+money in his pockets: which he rattled as if he were very proud of it.
+
+Janet was a pretty blooming girl, of about nineteen or twenty, and a
+perfect picture of neatness. Though I made no further observation of
+her at the moment, I may mention here what I did not discover until
+afterwards, namely, that she was one of a series of protegees whom my
+aunt had taken into her service expressly to educate in a renouncement
+of mankind, and who had generally completed their abjuration by marrying
+the baker.
+
+The room was as neat as Janet or my aunt. As I laid down my pen, a
+moment since, to think of it, the air from the sea came blowing
+in again, mixed with the perfume of the flowers; and I saw the
+old-fashioned furniture brightly rubbed and polished, my aunt’s
+inviolable chair and table by the round green fan in the bow-window, the
+drugget-covered carpet, the cat, the kettle-holder, the two canaries,
+the old china, the punchbowl full of dried rose-leaves, the tall press
+guarding all sorts of bottles and pots, and, wonderfully out of keeping
+with the rest, my dusty self upon the sofa, taking note of everything.
+
+Janet had gone away to get the bath ready, when my aunt, to my great
+alarm, became in one moment rigid with indignation, and had hardly voice
+to cry out, ‘Janet! Donkeys!’
+
+Upon which, Janet came running up the stairs as if the house were in
+flames, darted out on a little piece of green in front, and warned off
+two saddle-donkeys, lady-ridden, that had presumed to set hoof upon it;
+while my aunt, rushing out of the house, seized the bridle of a third
+animal laden with a bestriding child, turned him, led him forth from
+those sacred precincts, and boxed the ears of the unlucky urchin in
+attendance who had dared to profane that hallowed ground.
+
+To this hour I don’t know whether my aunt had any lawful right of way
+over that patch of green; but she had settled it in her own mind that
+she had, and it was all the same to her. The one great outrage of her
+life, demanding to be constantly avenged, was the passage of a donkey
+over that immaculate spot. In whatever occupation she was engaged,
+however interesting to her the conversation in which she was taking
+part, a donkey turned the current of her ideas in a moment, and she was
+upon him straight. Jugs of water, and watering-pots, were kept in secret
+places ready to be discharged on the offending boys; sticks were laid
+in ambush behind the door; sallies were made at all hours; and
+incessant war prevailed. Perhaps this was an agreeable excitement to the
+donkey-boys; or perhaps the more sagacious of the donkeys, understanding
+how the case stood, delighted with constitutional obstinacy in coming
+that way. I only know that there were three alarms before the bath was
+ready; and that on the occasion of the last and most desperate of all,
+I saw my aunt engage, single-handed, with a sandy-headed lad of fifteen,
+and bump his sandy head against her own gate, before he seemed to
+comprehend what was the matter. These interruptions were of the more
+ridiculous to me, because she was giving me broth out of a table-spoon
+at the time (having firmly persuaded herself that I was actually
+starving, and must receive nourishment at first in very small
+quantities), and, while my mouth was yet open to receive the spoon, she
+would put it back into the basin, cry ‘Janet! Donkeys!’ and go out to
+the assault.
+
+The bath was a great comfort. For I began to be sensible of acute pains
+in my limbs from lying out in the fields, and was now so tired and low
+that I could hardly keep myself awake for five minutes together. When I
+had bathed, they (I mean my aunt and Janet) enrobed me in a shirt and a
+pair of trousers belonging to Mr. Dick, and tied me up in two or three
+great shawls. What sort of bundle I looked like, I don’t know, but I
+felt a very hot one. Feeling also very faint and drowsy, I soon lay down
+on the sofa again and fell asleep.
+
+It might have been a dream, originating in the fancy which had occupied
+my mind so long, but I awoke with the impression that my aunt had come
+and bent over me, and had put my hair away from my face, and laid my
+head more comfortably, and had then stood looking at me. The words,
+‘Pretty fellow,’ or ‘Poor fellow,’ seemed to be in my ears, too; but
+certainly there was nothing else, when I awoke, to lead me to believe
+that they had been uttered by my aunt, who sat in the bow-window gazing
+at the sea from behind the green fan, which was mounted on a kind of
+swivel, and turned any way.
+
+We dined soon after I awoke, off a roast fowl and a pudding; I sitting
+at table, not unlike a trussed bird myself, and moving my arms with
+considerable difficulty. But as my aunt had swathed me up, I made no
+complaint of being inconvenienced. All this time I was deeply anxious
+to know what she was going to do with me; but she took her dinner in
+profound silence, except when she occasionally fixed her eyes on me
+sitting opposite, and said, ‘Mercy upon us!’ which did not by any means
+relieve my anxiety.
+
+The cloth being drawn, and some sherry put upon the table (of which I
+had a glass), my aunt sent up for Mr. Dick again, who joined us, and
+looked as wise as he could when she requested him to attend to my story,
+which she elicited from me, gradually, by a course of questions. During
+my recital, she kept her eyes on Mr. Dick, who I thought would have gone
+to sleep but for that, and who, whensoever he lapsed into a smile, was
+checked by a frown from my aunt.
+
+‘Whatever possessed that poor unfortunate Baby, that she must go and be
+married again,’ said my aunt, when I had finished, ‘I can’t conceive.’
+
+‘Perhaps she fell in love with her second husband,’ Mr. Dick suggested.
+
+‘Fell in love!’ repeated my aunt. ‘What do you mean? What business had
+she to do it?’
+
+‘Perhaps,’ Mr. Dick simpered, after thinking a little, ‘she did it for
+pleasure.’
+
+‘Pleasure, indeed!’ replied my aunt. ‘A mighty pleasure for the poor
+Baby to fix her simple faith upon any dog of a fellow, certain to
+ill-use her in some way or other. What did she propose to herself,
+I should like to know! She had had one husband. She had seen David
+Copperfield out of the world, who was always running after wax dolls
+from his cradle. She had got a baby--oh, there were a pair of babies
+when she gave birth to this child sitting here, that Friday night!--and
+what more did she want?’
+
+Mr. Dick secretly shook his head at me, as if he thought there was no
+getting over this.
+
+‘She couldn’t even have a baby like anybody else,’ said my aunt. ‘Where
+was this child’s sister, Betsey Trotwood? Not forthcoming. Don’t tell
+me!’
+
+Mr. Dick seemed quite frightened.
+
+‘That little man of a doctor, with his head on one side,’ said my aunt,
+‘Jellips, or whatever his name was, what was he about? All he could do,
+was to say to me, like a robin redbreast--as he is--“It’s a boy.” A boy!
+Yah, the imbecility of the whole set of ‘em!’
+
+The heartiness of the ejaculation startled Mr. Dick exceedingly; and me,
+too, if I am to tell the truth.
+
+‘And then, as if this was not enough, and she had not stood sufficiently
+in the light of this child’s sister, Betsey Trotwood,’ said my aunt,
+‘she marries a second time--goes and marries a Murderer--or a man with
+a name like it--and stands in THIS child’s light! And the natural
+consequence is, as anybody but a baby might have foreseen, that he
+prowls and wanders. He’s as like Cain before he was grown up, as he can
+be.’
+
+Mr. Dick looked hard at me, as if to identify me in this character.
+
+‘And then there’s that woman with the Pagan name,’ said my aunt, ‘that
+Peggotty, she goes and gets married next. Because she has not seen
+enough of the evil attending such things, she goes and gets married
+next, as the child relates. I only hope,’ said my aunt, shaking her
+head, ‘that her husband is one of those Poker husbands who abound in the
+newspapers, and will beat her well with one.’
+
+I could not bear to hear my old nurse so decried, and made the subject
+of such a wish. I told my aunt that indeed she was mistaken. That
+Peggotty was the best, the truest, the most faithful, most devoted, and
+most self-denying friend and servant in the world; who had ever loved
+me dearly, who had ever loved my mother dearly; who had held my mother’s
+dying head upon her arm, on whose face my mother had imprinted her last
+grateful kiss. And my remembrance of them both, choking me, I broke down
+as I was trying to say that her home was my home, and that all she had
+was mine, and that I would have gone to her for shelter, but for her
+humble station, which made me fear that I might bring some trouble on
+her--I broke down, I say, as I was trying to say so, and laid my face in
+my hands upon the table.
+
+‘Well, well!’ said my aunt, ‘the child is right to stand by those who
+have stood by him--Janet! Donkeys!’
+
+I thoroughly believe that but for those unfortunate donkeys, we should
+have come to a good understanding; for my aunt had laid her hand on my
+shoulder, and the impulse was upon me, thus emboldened, to embrace her
+and beseech her protection. But the interruption, and the disorder she
+was thrown into by the struggle outside, put an end to all softer ideas
+for the present, and kept my aunt indignantly declaiming to Mr. Dick
+about her determination to appeal for redress to the laws of her
+country, and to bring actions for trespass against the whole donkey
+proprietorship of Dover, until tea-time.
+
+After tea, we sat at the window--on the look-out, as I imagined, from
+my aunt’s sharp expression of face, for more invaders--until dusk, when
+Janet set candles, and a backgammon-board, on the table, and pulled down
+the blinds.
+
+‘Now, Mr. Dick,’ said my aunt, with her grave look, and her forefinger
+up as before, ‘I am going to ask you another question. Look at this
+child.’
+
+‘David’s son?’ said Mr. Dick, with an attentive, puzzled face.
+
+‘Exactly so,’ returned my aunt. ‘What would you do with him, now?’
+
+‘Do with David’s son?’ said Mr. Dick.
+
+‘Ay,’ replied my aunt, ‘with David’s son.’
+
+‘Oh!’ said Mr. Dick. ‘Yes. Do with--I should put him to bed.’
+
+‘Janet!’ cried my aunt, with the same complacent triumph that I had
+remarked before. ‘Mr. Dick sets us all right. If the bed is ready, we’ll
+take him up to it.’
+
+Janet reporting it to be quite ready, I was taken up to it; kindly, but
+in some sort like a prisoner; my aunt going in front and Janet bringing
+up the rear. The only circumstance which gave me any new hope, was my
+aunt’s stopping on the stairs to inquire about a smell of fire that was
+prevalent there; and janet’s replying that she had been making tinder
+down in the kitchen, of my old shirt. But there were no other clothes in
+my room than the odd heap of things I wore; and when I was left there,
+with a little taper which my aunt forewarned me would burn exactly five
+minutes, I heard them lock my door on the outside. Turning these things
+over in my mind I deemed it possible that my aunt, who could know
+nothing of me, might suspect I had a habit of running away, and took
+precautions, on that account, to have me in safe keeping.
+
+The room was a pleasant one, at the top of the house, overlooking the
+sea, on which the moon was shining brilliantly. After I had said my
+prayers, and the candle had burnt out, I remember how I still sat
+looking at the moonlight on the water, as if I could hope to read my
+fortune in it, as in a bright book; or to see my mother with her child,
+coming from Heaven, along that shining path, to look upon me as she had
+looked when I last saw her sweet face. I remember how the solemn feeling
+with which at length I turned my eyes away, yielded to the sensation of
+gratitude and rest which the sight of the white-curtained bed--and how
+much more the lying softly down upon it, nestling in the snow-white
+sheets!--inspired. I remember how I thought of all the solitary places
+under the night sky where I had slept, and how I prayed that I never
+might be houseless any more, and never might forget the houseless. I
+remember how I seemed to float, then, down the melancholy glory of that
+track upon the sea, away into the world of dreams.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 14. MY AUNT MAKES UP HER MIND ABOUT ME
+
+
+On going down in the morning, I found my aunt musing so profoundly over
+the breakfast table, with her elbow on the tray, that the contents of
+the urn had overflowed the teapot and were laying the whole table-cloth
+under water, when my entrance put her meditations to flight. I felt sure
+that I had been the subject of her reflections, and was more than ever
+anxious to know her intentions towards me. Yet I dared not express my
+anxiety, lest it should give her offence.
+
+My eyes, however, not being so much under control as my tongue, were
+attracted towards my aunt very often during breakfast. I never could
+look at her for a few moments together but I found her looking at me--in
+an odd thoughtful manner, as if I were an immense way off, instead of
+being on the other side of the small round table. When she had finished
+her breakfast, my aunt very deliberately leaned back in her chair,
+knitted her brows, folded her arms, and contemplated me at her leisure,
+with such a fixedness of attention that I was quite overpowered by
+embarrassment. Not having as yet finished my own breakfast, I attempted
+to hide my confusion by proceeding with it; but my knife tumbled over my
+fork, my fork tripped up my knife, I chipped bits of bacon a surprising
+height into the air instead of cutting them for my own eating, and
+choked myself with my tea, which persisted in going the wrong way
+instead of the right one, until I gave in altogether, and sat blushing
+under my aunt’s close scrutiny.
+
+‘Hallo!’ said my aunt, after a long time.
+
+I looked up, and met her sharp bright glance respectfully.
+
+‘I have written to him,’ said my aunt.
+
+‘To--?’
+
+‘To your father-in-law,’ said my aunt. ‘I have sent him a letter that
+I’ll trouble him to attend to, or he and I will fall out, I can tell
+him!’
+
+‘Does he know where I am, aunt?’ I inquired, alarmed.
+
+‘I have told him,’ said my aunt, with a nod.
+
+‘Shall I--be--given up to him?’ I faltered.
+
+‘I don’t know,’ said my aunt. ‘We shall see.’
+
+‘Oh! I can’t think what I shall do,’ I exclaimed, ‘if I have to go back
+to Mr. Murdstone!’
+
+‘I don’t know anything about it,’ said my aunt, shaking her head. ‘I
+can’t say, I am sure. We shall see.’
+
+My spirits sank under these words, and I became very downcast and heavy
+of heart. My aunt, without appearing to take much heed of me, put on a
+coarse apron with a bib, which she took out of the press; washed up the
+teacups with her own hands; and, when everything was washed and set in
+the tray again, and the cloth folded and put on the top of the whole,
+rang for Janet to remove it. She next swept up the crumbs with a little
+broom (putting on a pair of gloves first), until there did not appear
+to be one microscopic speck left on the carpet; next dusted and arranged
+the room, which was dusted and arranged to a hair’s breadth already.
+When all these tasks were performed to her satisfaction, she took off
+the gloves and apron, folded them up, put them in the particular corner
+of the press from which they had been taken, brought out her work-box
+to her own table in the open window, and sat down, with the green fan
+between her and the light, to work.
+
+‘I wish you’d go upstairs,’ said my aunt, as she threaded her needle,
+‘and give my compliments to Mr. Dick, and I’ll be glad to know how he
+gets on with his Memorial.’
+
+I rose with all alacrity, to acquit myself of this commission.
+
+‘I suppose,’ said my aunt, eyeing me as narrowly as she had eyed the
+needle in threading it, ‘you think Mr. Dick a short name, eh?’
+
+‘I thought it was rather a short name, yesterday,’ I confessed.
+
+‘You are not to suppose that he hasn’t got a longer name, if he chose
+to use it,’ said my aunt, with a loftier air. ‘Babley--Mr. Richard
+Babley--that’s the gentleman’s true name.’
+
+I was going to suggest, with a modest sense of my youth and the
+familiarity I had been already guilty of, that I had better give him the
+full benefit of that name, when my aunt went on to say:
+
+‘But don’t you call him by it, whatever you do. He can’t bear his name.
+That’s a peculiarity of his. Though I don’t know that it’s much of a
+peculiarity, either; for he has been ill-used enough, by some that bear
+it, to have a mortal antipathy for it, Heaven knows. Mr. Dick is his
+name here, and everywhere else, now--if he ever went anywhere else,
+which he don’t. So take care, child, you don’t call him anything BUT Mr.
+Dick.’
+
+I promised to obey, and went upstairs with my message; thinking, as I
+went, that if Mr. Dick had been working at his Memorial long, at the
+same rate as I had seen him working at it, through the open door, when
+I came down, he was probably getting on very well indeed. I found him
+still driving at it with a long pen, and his head almost laid upon the
+paper. He was so intent upon it, that I had ample leisure to observe the
+large paper kite in a corner, the confusion of bundles of manuscript,
+the number of pens, and, above all, the quantity of ink (which he seemed
+to have in, in half-gallon jars by the dozen), before he observed my
+being present.
+
+‘Ha! Phoebus!’ said Mr. Dick, laying down his pen. ‘How does the world
+go? I’ll tell you what,’ he added, in a lower tone, ‘I shouldn’t wish it
+to be mentioned, but it’s a--’ here he beckoned to me, and put his lips
+close to my ear--‘it’s a mad world. Mad as Bedlam, boy!’ said Mr. Dick,
+taking snuff from a round box on the table, and laughing heartily.
+
+Without presuming to give my opinion on this question, I delivered my
+message.
+
+‘Well,’ said Mr. Dick, in answer, ‘my compliments to her, and I--I
+believe I have made a start. I think I have made a start,’ said Mr.
+Dick, passing his hand among his grey hair, and casting anything but a
+confident look at his manuscript. ‘You have been to school?’
+
+‘Yes, sir,’ I answered; ‘for a short time.’
+
+‘Do you recollect the date,’ said Mr. Dick, looking earnestly at me, and
+taking up his pen to note it down, ‘when King Charles the First had his
+head cut off?’ I said I believed it happened in the year sixteen hundred
+and forty-nine.
+
+‘Well,’ returned Mr. Dick, scratching his ear with his pen, and looking
+dubiously at me. ‘So the books say; but I don’t see how that can be.
+Because, if it was so long ago, how could the people about him have made
+that mistake of putting some of the trouble out of his head, after it
+was taken off, into mine?’
+
+I was very much surprised by the inquiry; but could give no information
+on this point.
+
+‘It’s very strange,’ said Mr. Dick, with a despondent look upon his
+papers, and with his hand among his hair again, ‘that I never can get
+that quite right. I never can make that perfectly clear. But no matter,
+no matter!’ he said cheerfully, and rousing himself, ‘there’s time
+enough! My compliments to Miss Trotwood, I am getting on very well
+indeed.’
+
+I was going away, when he directed my attention to the kite.
+
+‘What do you think of that for a kite?’ he said.
+
+I answered that it was a beautiful one. I should think it must have been
+as much as seven feet high.
+
+‘I made it. We’ll go and fly it, you and I,’ said Mr. Dick. ‘Do you see
+this?’
+
+He showed me that it was covered with manuscript, very closely and
+laboriously written; but so plainly, that as I looked along the lines,
+I thought I saw some allusion to King Charles the First’s head again, in
+one or two places.
+
+‘There’s plenty of string,’ said Mr. Dick, ‘and when it flies high, it
+takes the facts a long way. That’s my manner of diffusing ‘em. I don’t
+know where they may come down. It’s according to circumstances, and the
+wind, and so forth; but I take my chance of that.’
+
+His face was so very mild and pleasant, and had something so reverend in
+it, though it was hale and hearty, that I was not sure but that he was
+having a good-humoured jest with me. So I laughed, and he laughed, and
+we parted the best friends possible.
+
+‘Well, child,’ said my aunt, when I went downstairs. ‘And what of Mr.
+Dick, this morning?’
+
+I informed her that he sent his compliments, and was getting on very
+well indeed.
+
+‘What do you think of him?’ said my aunt.
+
+I had some shadowy idea of endeavouring to evade the question, by
+replying that I thought him a very nice gentleman; but my aunt was
+not to be so put off, for she laid her work down in her lap, and said,
+folding her hands upon it:
+
+‘Come! Your sister Betsey Trotwood would have told me what she thought
+of anyone, directly. Be as like your sister as you can, and speak out!’
+
+‘Is he--is Mr. Dick--I ask because I don’t know, aunt--is he at all out
+of his mind, then?’ I stammered; for I felt I was on dangerous ground.
+
+‘Not a morsel,’ said my aunt.
+
+‘Oh, indeed!’ I observed faintly.
+
+‘If there is anything in the world,’ said my aunt, with great decision
+and force of manner, ‘that Mr. Dick is not, it’s that.’
+
+I had nothing better to offer, than another timid, ‘Oh, indeed!’
+
+‘He has been CALLED mad,’ said my aunt. ‘I have a selfish pleasure in
+saying he has been called mad, or I should not have had the benefit of
+his society and advice for these last ten years and upwards--in fact,
+ever since your sister, Betsey Trotwood, disappointed me.’
+
+‘So long as that?’ I said.
+
+‘And nice people they were, who had the audacity to call him mad,’
+pursued my aunt. ‘Mr. Dick is a sort of distant connexion of mine--it
+doesn’t matter how; I needn’t enter into that. If it hadn’t been for me,
+his own brother would have shut him up for life. That’s all.’
+
+I am afraid it was hypocritical in me, but seeing that my aunt felt
+strongly on the subject, I tried to look as if I felt strongly too.
+
+‘A proud fool!’ said my aunt. ‘Because his brother was a little
+eccentric--though he is not half so eccentric as a good many people--he
+didn’t like to have him visible about his house, and sent him away to
+some private asylum-place: though he had been left to his particular
+care by their deceased father, who thought him almost a natural. And a
+wise man he must have been to think so! Mad himself, no doubt.’
+
+Again, as my aunt looked quite convinced, I endeavoured to look quite
+convinced also.
+
+‘So I stepped in,’ said my aunt, ‘and made him an offer. I said, “Your
+brother’s sane--a great deal more sane than you are, or ever will be, it
+is to be hoped. Let him have his little income, and come and live with
+me. I am not afraid of him, I am not proud, I am ready to take care
+of him, and shall not ill-treat him as some people (besides the
+asylum-folks) have done.” After a good deal of squabbling,’ said my
+aunt, ‘I got him; and he has been here ever since. He is the most
+friendly and amenable creature in existence; and as for advice!--But
+nobody knows what that man’s mind is, except myself.’
+
+My aunt smoothed her dress and shook her head, as if she smoothed
+defiance of the whole world out of the one, and shook it out of the
+other.
+
+‘He had a favourite sister,’ said my aunt, ‘a good creature, and very
+kind to him. But she did what they all do--took a husband. And HE did
+what they all do--made her wretched. It had such an effect upon the mind
+of Mr. Dick (that’s not madness, I hope!) that, combined with his fear
+of his brother, and his sense of his unkindness, it threw him into a
+fever. That was before he came to me, but the recollection of it is
+oppressive to him even now. Did he say anything to you about King
+Charles the First, child?’
+
+‘Yes, aunt.’
+
+‘Ah!’ said my aunt, rubbing her nose as if she were a little vexed.
+‘That’s his allegorical way of expressing it. He connects his illness
+with great disturbance and agitation, naturally, and that’s the figure,
+or the simile, or whatever it’s called, which he chooses to use. And why
+shouldn’t he, if he thinks proper!’
+
+I said: ‘Certainly, aunt.’
+
+‘It’s not a business-like way of speaking,’ said my aunt, ‘nor a worldly
+way. I am aware of that; and that’s the reason why I insist upon it,
+that there shan’t be a word about it in his Memorial.’
+
+‘Is it a Memorial about his own history that he is writing, aunt?’
+
+‘Yes, child,’ said my aunt, rubbing her nose again. ‘He is memorializing
+the Lord Chancellor, or the Lord Somebody or other--one of those people,
+at all events, who are paid to be memorialized--about his affairs. I
+suppose it will go in, one of these days. He hasn’t been able to draw
+it up yet, without introducing that mode of expressing himself; but it
+don’t signify; it keeps him employed.’
+
+In fact, I found out afterwards that Mr. Dick had been for upwards
+of ten years endeavouring to keep King Charles the First out of the
+Memorial; but he had been constantly getting into it, and was there now.
+
+‘I say again,’ said my aunt, ‘nobody knows what that man’s mind is
+except myself; and he’s the most amenable and friendly creature in
+existence. If he likes to fly a kite sometimes, what of that! Franklin
+used to fly a kite. He was a Quaker, or something of that sort, if I
+am not mistaken. And a Quaker flying a kite is a much more ridiculous
+object than anybody else.’
+
+If I could have supposed that my aunt had recounted these particulars
+for my especial behoof, and as a piece of confidence in me, I should
+have felt very much distinguished, and should have augured favourably
+from such a mark of her good opinion. But I could hardly help observing
+that she had launched into them, chiefly because the question was raised
+in her own mind, and with very little reference to me, though she had
+addressed herself to me in the absence of anybody else.
+
+At the same time, I must say that the generosity of her championship
+of poor harmless Mr. Dick, not only inspired my young breast with
+some selfish hope for myself, but warmed it unselfishly towards her.
+I believe that I began to know that there was something about my aunt,
+notwithstanding her many eccentricities and odd humours, to be honoured
+and trusted in. Though she was just as sharp that day as on the day
+before, and was in and out about the donkeys just as often, and was
+thrown into a tremendous state of indignation, when a young man, going
+by, ogled Janet at a window (which was one of the gravest misdemeanours
+that could be committed against my aunt’s dignity), she seemed to me to
+command more of my respect, if not less of my fear.
+
+The anxiety I underwent, in the interval which necessarily elapsed
+before a reply could be received to her letter to Mr. Murdstone, was
+extreme; but I made an endeavour to suppress it, and to be as agreeable
+as I could in a quiet way, both to my aunt and Mr. Dick. The latter and
+I would have gone out to fly the great kite; but that I had still no
+other clothes than the anything but ornamental garments with which I
+had been decorated on the first day, and which confined me to the house,
+except for an hour after dark, when my aunt, for my health’s sake,
+paraded me up and down on the cliff outside, before going to bed. At
+length the reply from Mr. Murdstone came, and my aunt informed me, to my
+infinite terror, that he was coming to speak to her herself on the next
+day. On the next day, still bundled up in my curious habiliments, I sat
+counting the time, flushed and heated by the conflict of sinking hopes
+and rising fears within me; and waiting to be startled by the sight of
+the gloomy face, whose non-arrival startled me every minute.
+
+My aunt was a little more imperious and stern than usual, but I observed
+no other token of her preparing herself to receive the visitor so much
+dreaded by me. She sat at work in the window, and I sat by, with my
+thoughts running astray on all possible and impossible results of Mr.
+Murdstone’s visit, until pretty late in the afternoon. Our dinner had
+been indefinitely postponed; but it was growing so late, that my aunt
+had ordered it to be got ready, when she gave a sudden alarm of donkeys,
+and to my consternation and amazement, I beheld Miss Murdstone, on a
+side-saddle, ride deliberately over the sacred piece of green, and stop
+in front of the house, looking about her.
+
+‘Go along with you!’ cried my aunt, shaking her head and her fist at the
+window. ‘You have no business there. How dare you trespass? Go along!
+Oh! you bold-faced thing!’
+
+My aunt was so exasperated by the coolness with which Miss Murdstone
+looked about her, that I really believe she was motionless, and unable
+for the moment to dart out according to custom. I seized the opportunity
+to inform her who it was; and that the gentleman now coming near the
+offender (for the way up was very steep, and he had dropped behind), was
+Mr. Murdstone himself.
+
+‘I don’t care who it is!’ cried my aunt, still shaking her head and
+gesticulating anything but welcome from the bow-window. ‘I won’t be
+trespassed upon. I won’t allow it. Go away! Janet, turn him round.
+Lead him off!’ and I saw, from behind my aunt, a sort of hurried
+battle-piece, in which the donkey stood resisting everybody, with all
+his four legs planted different ways, while Janet tried to pull him
+round by the bridle, Mr. Murdstone tried to lead him on, Miss Murdstone
+struck at Janet with a parasol, and several boys, who had come to see
+the engagement, shouted vigorously. But my aunt, suddenly descrying
+among them the young malefactor who was the donkey’s guardian, and who
+was one of the most inveterate offenders against her, though hardly in
+his teens, rushed out to the scene of action, pounced upon him, captured
+him, dragged him, with his jacket over his head, and his heels grinding
+the ground, into the garden, and, calling upon Janet to fetch the
+constables and justices, that he might be taken, tried, and executed on
+the spot, held him at bay there. This part of the business, however, did
+not last long; for the young rascal, being expert at a variety of feints
+and dodges, of which my aunt had no conception, soon went whooping away,
+leaving some deep impressions of his nailed boots in the flower-beds,
+and taking his donkey in triumph with him.
+
+Miss Murdstone, during the latter portion of the contest, had
+dismounted, and was now waiting with her brother at the bottom of the
+steps, until my aunt should be at leisure to receive them. My aunt, a
+little ruffled by the combat, marched past them into the house, with
+great dignity, and took no notice of their presence, until they were
+announced by Janet.
+
+‘Shall I go away, aunt?’ I asked, trembling.
+
+‘No, sir,’ said my aunt. ‘Certainly not!’ With which she pushed me into
+a corner near her, and fenced Me in with a chair, as if it were a prison
+or a bar of justice. This position I continued to occupy during the
+whole interview, and from it I now saw Mr. and Miss Murdstone enter the
+room.
+
+‘Oh!’ said my aunt, ‘I was not aware at first to whom I had the pleasure
+of objecting. But I don’t allow anybody to ride over that turf. I make
+no exceptions. I don’t allow anybody to do it.’
+
+‘Your regulation is rather awkward to strangers,’ said Miss Murdstone.
+
+‘Is it!’ said my aunt.
+
+Mr. Murdstone seemed afraid of a renewal of hostilities, and interposing
+began:
+
+‘Miss Trotwood!’
+
+‘I beg your pardon,’ observed my aunt with a keen look. ‘You are the Mr.
+Murdstone who married the widow of my late nephew, David Copperfield, of
+Blunderstone Rookery!--Though why Rookery, I don’t know!’
+
+‘I am,’ said Mr. Murdstone.
+
+‘You’ll excuse my saying, sir,’ returned my aunt, ‘that I think it would
+have been a much better and happier thing if you had left that poor
+child alone.’
+
+‘I so far agree with what Miss Trotwood has remarked,’ observed Miss
+Murdstone, bridling, ‘that I consider our lamented Clara to have been,
+in all essential respects, a mere child.’
+
+‘It is a comfort to you and me, ma’am,’ said my aunt, ‘who are getting
+on in life, and are not likely to be made unhappy by our personal
+attractions, that nobody can say the same of us.’
+
+‘No doubt!’ returned Miss Murdstone, though, I thought, not with a very
+ready or gracious assent. ‘And it certainly might have been, as you say,
+a better and happier thing for my brother if he had never entered into
+such a marriage. I have always been of that opinion.’
+
+‘I have no doubt you have,’ said my aunt. ‘Janet,’ ringing the bell, ‘my
+compliments to Mr. Dick, and beg him to come down.’
+
+Until he came, my aunt sat perfectly upright and stiff, frowning at the
+wall. When he came, my aunt performed the ceremony of introduction.
+
+‘Mr. Dick. An old and intimate friend. On whose judgement,’ said my
+aunt, with emphasis, as an admonition to Mr. Dick, who was biting his
+forefinger and looking rather foolish, ‘I rely.’
+
+Mr. Dick took his finger out of his mouth, on this hint, and stood among
+the group, with a grave and attentive expression of face.
+
+My aunt inclined her head to Mr. Murdstone, who went on:
+
+‘Miss Trotwood: on the receipt of your letter, I considered it an act of
+greater justice to myself, and perhaps of more respect to you--’
+
+‘Thank you,’ said my aunt, still eyeing him keenly. ‘You needn’t mind
+me.’
+
+‘To answer it in person, however inconvenient the journey,’ pursued Mr.
+Murdstone, ‘rather than by letter. This unhappy boy who has run away
+from his friends and his occupation--’
+
+‘And whose appearance,’ interposed his sister, directing general
+attention to me in my indefinable costume, ‘is perfectly scandalous and
+disgraceful.’
+
+‘Jane Murdstone,’ said her brother, ‘have the goodness not to interrupt
+me. This unhappy boy, Miss Trotwood, has been the occasion of much
+domestic trouble and uneasiness; both during the lifetime of my late
+dear wife, and since. He has a sullen, rebellious spirit; a violent
+temper; and an untoward, intractable disposition. Both my sister and
+myself have endeavoured to correct his vices, but ineffectually. And
+I have felt--we both have felt, I may say; my sister being fully in
+my confidence--that it is right you should receive this grave and
+dispassionate assurance from our lips.’
+
+‘It can hardly be necessary for me to confirm anything stated by my
+brother,’ said Miss Murdstone; ‘but I beg to observe, that, of all the
+boys in the world, I believe this is the worst boy.’
+
+‘Strong!’ said my aunt, shortly.
+
+‘But not at all too strong for the facts,’ returned Miss Murdstone.
+
+‘Ha!’ said my aunt. ‘Well, sir?’
+
+‘I have my own opinions,’ resumed Mr. Murdstone, whose face darkened
+more and more, the more he and my aunt observed each other, which they
+did very narrowly, ‘as to the best mode of bringing him up; they are
+founded, in part, on my knowledge of him, and in part on my knowledge of
+my own means and resources. I am responsible for them to myself, I act
+upon them, and I say no more about them. It is enough that I place this
+boy under the eye of a friend of my own, in a respectable business;
+that it does not please him; that he runs away from it; makes himself a
+common vagabond about the country; and comes here, in rags, to appeal
+to you, Miss Trotwood. I wish to set before you, honourably, the exact
+consequences--so far as they are within my knowledge--of your abetting
+him in this appeal.’
+
+‘But about the respectable business first,’ said my aunt. ‘If he had
+been your own boy, you would have put him to it, just the same, I
+suppose?’
+
+‘If he had been my brother’s own boy,’ returned Miss Murdstone, striking
+in, ‘his character, I trust, would have been altogether different.’
+
+‘Or if the poor child, his mother, had been alive, he would still have
+gone into the respectable business, would he?’ said my aunt.
+
+‘I believe,’ said Mr. Murdstone, with an inclination of his head,
+‘that Clara would have disputed nothing which myself and my sister Jane
+Murdstone were agreed was for the best.’
+
+Miss Murdstone confirmed this with an audible murmur.
+
+‘Humph!’ said my aunt. ‘Unfortunate baby!’
+
+Mr. Dick, who had been rattling his money all this time, was rattling it
+so loudly now, that my aunt felt it necessary to check him with a look,
+before saying:
+
+‘The poor child’s annuity died with her?’
+
+‘Died with her,’ replied Mr. Murdstone.
+
+‘And there was no settlement of the little property--the house and
+garden--the what’s-its-name Rookery without any rooks in it--upon her
+boy?’
+
+‘It had been left to her, unconditionally, by her first husband,’
+Mr. Murdstone began, when my aunt caught him up with the greatest
+irascibility and impatience.
+
+‘Good Lord, man, there’s no occasion to say that. Left to her
+unconditionally! I think I see David Copperfield looking forward to any
+condition of any sort or kind, though it stared him point-blank in the
+face! Of course it was left to her unconditionally. But when she married
+again--when she took that most disastrous step of marrying you, in
+short,’ said my aunt, ‘to be plain--did no one put in a word for the boy
+at that time?’
+
+‘My late wife loved her second husband, ma’am,’ said Mr. Murdstone, ‘and
+trusted implicitly in him.’
+
+‘Your late wife, sir, was a most unworldly, most unhappy, most
+unfortunate baby,’ returned my aunt, shaking her head at him. ‘That’s
+what she was. And now, what have you got to say next?’
+
+‘Merely this, Miss Trotwood,’ he returned. ‘I am here to take David
+back--to take him back unconditionally, to dispose of him as I think
+proper, and to deal with him as I think right. I am not here to make any
+promise, or give any pledge to anybody. You may possibly have some
+idea, Miss Trotwood, of abetting him in his running away, and in his
+complaints to you. Your manner, which I must say does not seem intended
+to propitiate, induces me to think it possible. Now I must caution you
+that if you abet him once, you abet him for good and all; if you step
+in between him and me, now, you must step in, Miss Trotwood, for ever.
+I cannot trifle, or be trifled with. I am here, for the first and last
+time, to take him away. Is he ready to go? If he is not--and you tell me
+he is not; on any pretence; it is indifferent to me what--my doors are
+shut against him henceforth, and yours, I take it for granted, are open
+to him.’
+
+To this address, my aunt had listened with the closest attention,
+sitting perfectly upright, with her hands folded on one knee, and
+looking grimly on the speaker. When he had finished, she turned her
+eyes so as to command Miss Murdstone, without otherwise disturbing her
+attitude, and said:
+
+‘Well, ma’am, have YOU got anything to remark?’
+
+‘Indeed, Miss Trotwood,’ said Miss Murdstone, ‘all that I could say has
+been so well said by my brother, and all that I know to be the fact
+has been so plainly stated by him, that I have nothing to add except my
+thanks for your politeness. For your very great politeness, I am sure,’
+said Miss Murdstone; with an irony which no more affected my aunt, than
+it discomposed the cannon I had slept by at Chatham.
+
+‘And what does the boy say?’ said my aunt. ‘Are you ready to go, David?’
+
+I answered no, and entreated her not to let me go. I said that neither
+Mr. nor Miss Murdstone had ever liked me, or had ever been kind to me.
+That they had made my mama, who always loved me dearly, unhappy about
+me, and that I knew it well, and that Peggotty knew it. I said that I
+had been more miserable than I thought anybody could believe, who only
+knew how young I was. And I begged and prayed my aunt--I forget in
+what terms now, but I remember that they affected me very much then--to
+befriend and protect me, for my father’s sake.
+
+‘Mr. Dick,’ said my aunt, ‘what shall I do with this child?’
+
+Mr. Dick considered, hesitated, brightened, and rejoined, ‘Have him
+measured for a suit of clothes directly.’
+
+‘Mr. Dick,’ said my aunt triumphantly, ‘give me your hand, for your
+common sense is invaluable.’ Having shaken it with great cordiality, she
+pulled me towards her and said to Mr. Murdstone:
+
+‘You can go when you like; I’ll take my chance with the boy. If he’s all
+you say he is, at least I can do as much for him then, as you have done.
+But I don’t believe a word of it.’
+
+‘Miss Trotwood,’ rejoined Mr. Murdstone, shrugging his shoulders, as he
+rose, ‘if you were a gentleman--’
+
+‘Bah! Stuff and nonsense!’ said my aunt. ‘Don’t talk to me!’
+
+‘How exquisitely polite!’ exclaimed Miss Murdstone, rising.
+‘Overpowering, really!’
+
+‘Do you think I don’t know,’ said my aunt, turning a deaf ear to the
+sister, and continuing to address the brother, and to shake her head at
+him with infinite expression, ‘what kind of life you must have led that
+poor, unhappy, misdirected baby? Do you think I don’t know what a woeful
+day it was for the soft little creature when you first came in her
+way--smirking and making great eyes at her, I’ll be bound, as if you
+couldn’t say boh! to a goose!’
+
+‘I never heard anything so elegant!’ said Miss Murdstone.
+
+‘Do you think I can’t understand you as well as if I had seen you,’
+pursued my aunt, ‘now that I DO see and hear you--which, I tell you
+candidly, is anything but a pleasure to me? Oh yes, bless us! who so
+smooth and silky as Mr. Murdstone at first! The poor, benighted innocent
+had never seen such a man. He was made of sweetness. He worshipped her.
+He doted on her boy--tenderly doted on him! He was to be another father
+to him, and they were all to live together in a garden of roses, weren’t
+they? Ugh! Get along with you, do!’ said my aunt.
+
+‘I never heard anything like this person in my life!’ exclaimed Miss
+Murdstone.
+
+‘And when you had made sure of the poor little fool,’ said my aunt--‘God
+forgive me that I should call her so, and she gone where YOU won’t go in
+a hurry--because you had not done wrong enough to her and hers, you
+must begin to train her, must you? begin to break her, like a poor
+caged bird, and wear her deluded life away, in teaching her to sing YOUR
+notes?’
+
+‘This is either insanity or intoxication,’ said Miss Murdstone, in a
+perfect agony at not being able to turn the current of my aunt’s address
+towards herself; ‘and my suspicion is that it’s intoxication.’
+
+Miss Betsey, without taking the least notice of the interruption,
+continued to address herself to Mr. Murdstone as if there had been no
+such thing.
+
+‘Mr. Murdstone,’ she said, shaking her finger at him, ‘you were a tyrant
+to the simple baby, and you broke her heart. She was a loving baby--I
+know that; I knew it, years before you ever saw her--and through the
+best part of her weakness you gave her the wounds she died of. There
+is the truth for your comfort, however you like it. And you and your
+instruments may make the most of it.’
+
+‘Allow me to inquire, Miss Trotwood,’ interposed Miss Murdstone,
+‘whom you are pleased to call, in a choice of words in which I am not
+experienced, my brother’s instruments?’
+
+‘It was clear enough, as I have told you, years before YOU ever saw
+her--and why, in the mysterious dispensations of Providence, you ever
+did see her, is more than humanity can comprehend--it was clear enough
+that the poor soft little thing would marry somebody, at some time or
+other; but I did hope it wouldn’t have been as bad as it has turned out.
+That was the time, Mr. Murdstone, when she gave birth to her boy here,’
+said my aunt; ‘to the poor child you sometimes tormented her through
+afterwards, which is a disagreeable remembrance and makes the sight of
+him odious now. Aye, aye! you needn’t wince!’ said my aunt. ‘I know it’s
+true without that.’
+
+He had stood by the door, all this while, observant of her with a smile
+upon his face, though his black eyebrows were heavily contracted. I
+remarked now, that, though the smile was on his face still, his colour
+had gone in a moment, and he seemed to breathe as if he had been
+running.
+
+‘Good day, sir,’ said my aunt, ‘and good-bye! Good day to you, too,
+ma’am,’ said my aunt, turning suddenly upon his sister. ‘Let me see you
+ride a donkey over my green again, and as sure as you have a head upon
+your shoulders, I’ll knock your bonnet off, and tread upon it!’
+
+It would require a painter, and no common painter too, to depict my
+aunt’s face as she delivered herself of this very unexpected sentiment,
+and Miss Murdstone’s face as she heard it. But the manner of the speech,
+no less than the matter, was so fiery, that Miss Murdstone, without a
+word in answer, discreetly put her arm through her brother’s, and walked
+haughtily out of the cottage; my aunt remaining in the window looking
+after them; prepared, I have no doubt, in case of the donkey’s
+reappearance, to carry her threat into instant execution.
+
+No attempt at defiance being made, however, her face gradually relaxed,
+and became so pleasant, that I was emboldened to kiss and thank her;
+which I did with great heartiness, and with both my arms clasped round
+her neck. I then shook hands with Mr. Dick, who shook hands with me a
+great many times, and hailed this happy close of the proceedings with
+repeated bursts of laughter.
+
+‘You’ll consider yourself guardian, jointly with me, of this child, Mr.
+Dick,’ said my aunt.
+
+‘I shall be delighted,’ said Mr. Dick, ‘to be the guardian of David’s
+son.’
+
+‘Very good,’ returned my aunt, ‘that’s settled. I have been thinking, do
+you know, Mr. Dick, that I might call him Trotwood?’
+
+‘Certainly, certainly. Call him Trotwood, certainly,’ said Mr. Dick.
+‘David’s son’s Trotwood.’
+
+‘Trotwood Copperfield, you mean,’ returned my aunt.
+
+‘Yes, to be sure. Yes. Trotwood Copperfield,’ said Mr. Dick, a little
+abashed.
+
+My aunt took so kindly to the notion, that some ready-made clothes,
+which were purchased for me that afternoon, were marked ‘Trotwood
+Copperfield’, in her own handwriting, and in indelible marking-ink,
+before I put them on; and it was settled that all the other clothes
+which were ordered to be made for me (a complete outfit was bespoke that
+afternoon) should be marked in the same way.
+
+Thus I began my new life, in a new name, and with everything new about
+me. Now that the state of doubt was over, I felt, for many days,
+like one in a dream. I never thought that I had a curious couple of
+guardians, in my aunt and Mr. Dick. I never thought of anything about
+myself, distinctly. The two things clearest in my mind were, that a
+remoteness had come upon the old Blunderstone life--which seemed to lie
+in the haze of an immeasurable distance; and that a curtain had for ever
+fallen on my life at Murdstone and Grinby’s. No one has ever raised that
+curtain since. I have lifted it for a moment, even in this narrative,
+with a reluctant hand, and dropped it gladly. The remembrance of that
+life is fraught with so much pain to me, with so much mental suffering
+and want of hope, that I have never had the courage even to examine how
+long I was doomed to lead it. Whether it lasted for a year, or more, or
+less, I do not know. I only know that it was, and ceased to be; and that
+I have written, and there I leave it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 15. I MAKE ANOTHER BEGINNING
+
+
+Mr. Dick and I soon became the best of friends, and very often, when his
+day’s work was done, went out together to fly the great kite. Every day
+of his life he had a long sitting at the Memorial, which never made the
+least progress, however hard he laboured, for King Charles the First
+always strayed into it, sooner or later, and then it was thrown aside,
+and another one begun. The patience and hope with which he bore these
+perpetual disappointments, the mild perception he had that there was
+something wrong about King Charles the First, the feeble efforts he made
+to keep him out, and the certainty with which he came in, and tumbled
+the Memorial out of all shape, made a deep impression on me. What Mr.
+Dick supposed would come of the Memorial, if it were completed; where he
+thought it was to go, or what he thought it was to do; he knew no more
+than anybody else, I believe. Nor was it at all necessary that he should
+trouble himself with such questions, for if anything were certain under
+the sun, it was certain that the Memorial never would be finished. It
+was quite an affecting sight, I used to think, to see him with the kite
+when it was up a great height in the air. What he had told me, in his
+room, about his belief in its disseminating the statements pasted on it,
+which were nothing but old leaves of abortive Memorials, might have been
+a fancy with him sometimes; but not when he was out, looking up at
+the kite in the sky, and feeling it pull and tug at his hand. He never
+looked so serene as he did then. I used to fancy, as I sat by him of an
+evening, on a green slope, and saw him watch the kite high in the quiet
+air, that it lifted his mind out of its confusion, and bore it (such was
+my boyish thought) into the skies. As he wound the string in and it came
+lower and lower down out of the beautiful light, until it fluttered to
+the ground, and lay there like a dead thing, he seemed to wake gradually
+out of a dream; and I remember to have seen him take it up, and look
+about him in a lost way, as if they had both come down together, so that
+I pitied him with all my heart.
+
+While I advanced in friendship and intimacy with Mr. Dick, I did not
+go backward in the favour of his staunch friend, my aunt. She took
+so kindly to me, that, in the course of a few weeks, she shortened my
+adopted name of Trotwood into Trot; and even encouraged me to hope, that
+if I went on as I had begun, I might take equal rank in her affections
+with my sister Betsey Trotwood.
+
+‘Trot,’ said my aunt one evening, when the backgammon-board was placed
+as usual for herself and Mr. Dick, ‘we must not forget your education.’
+
+This was my only subject of anxiety, and I felt quite delighted by her
+referring to it.
+
+‘Should you like to go to school at Canterbury?’ said my aunt.
+
+I replied that I should like it very much, as it was so near her.
+
+‘Good,’ said my aunt. ‘Should you like to go tomorrow?’
+
+Being already no stranger to the general rapidity of my aunt’s
+evolutions, I was not surprised by the suddenness of the proposal, and
+said: ‘Yes.’
+
+‘Good,’ said my aunt again. ‘Janet, hire the grey pony and chaise
+tomorrow morning at ten o’clock, and pack up Master Trotwood’s clothes
+tonight.’
+
+I was greatly elated by these orders; but my heart smote me for my
+selfishness, when I witnessed their effect on Mr. Dick, who was so
+low-spirited at the prospect of our separation, and played so ill in
+consequence, that my aunt, after giving him several admonitory raps on
+the knuckles with her dice-box, shut up the board, and declined to play
+with him any more. But, on hearing from my aunt that I should sometimes
+come over on a Saturday, and that he could sometimes come and see me
+on a Wednesday, he revived; and vowed to make another kite for those
+occasions, of proportions greatly surpassing the present one. In the
+morning he was downhearted again, and would have sustained himself by
+giving me all the money he had in his possession, gold and silver too,
+if my aunt had not interposed, and limited the gift to five shillings,
+which, at his earnest petition, were afterwards increased to ten. We
+parted at the garden-gate in a most affectionate manner, and Mr. Dick
+did not go into the house until my aunt had driven me out of sight of
+it.
+
+My aunt, who was perfectly indifferent to public opinion, drove the grey
+pony through Dover in a masterly manner; sitting high and stiff like
+a state coachman, keeping a steady eye upon him wherever he went, and
+making a point of not letting him have his own way in any respect. When
+we came into the country road, she permitted him to relax a little,
+however; and looking at me down in a valley of cushion by her side,
+asked me whether I was happy?
+
+‘Very happy indeed, thank you, aunt,’ I said.
+
+She was much gratified; and both her hands being occupied, patted me on
+the head with her whip.
+
+‘Is it a large school, aunt?’ I asked.
+
+‘Why, I don’t know,’ said my aunt. ‘We are going to Mr. Wickfield’s
+first.’
+
+‘Does he keep a school?’ I asked.
+
+‘No, Trot,’ said my aunt. ‘He keeps an office.’
+
+I asked for no more information about Mr. Wickfield, as she offered
+none, and we conversed on other subjects until we came to Canterbury,
+where, as it was market-day, my aunt had a great opportunity of
+insinuating the grey pony among carts, baskets, vegetables, and
+huckster’s goods. The hair-breadth turns and twists we made, drew down
+upon us a variety of speeches from the people standing about, which
+were not always complimentary; but my aunt drove on with perfect
+indifference, and I dare say would have taken her own way with as much
+coolness through an enemy’s country.
+
+At length we stopped before a very old house bulging out over the road;
+a house with long low lattice-windows bulging out still farther, and
+beams with carved heads on the ends bulging out too, so that I fancied
+the whole house was leaning forward, trying to see who was passing on
+the narrow pavement below. It was quite spotless in its cleanliness.
+The old-fashioned brass knocker on the low arched door, ornamented with
+carved garlands of fruit and flowers, twinkled like a star; the two
+stone steps descending to the door were as white as if they had been
+covered with fair linen; and all the angles and corners, and carvings
+and mouldings, and quaint little panes of glass, and quainter little
+windows, though as old as the hills, were as pure as any snow that ever
+fell upon the hills.
+
+When the pony-chaise stopped at the door, and my eyes were intent upon
+the house, I saw a cadaverous face appear at a small window on the
+ground floor (in a little round tower that formed one side of the
+house), and quickly disappear. The low arched door then opened, and
+the face came out. It was quite as cadaverous as it had looked in the
+window, though in the grain of it there was that tinge of red which is
+sometimes to be observed in the skins of red-haired people. It belonged
+to a red-haired person--a youth of fifteen, as I take it now, but
+looking much older--whose hair was cropped as close as the closest
+stubble; who had hardly any eyebrows, and no eyelashes, and eyes of a
+red-brown, so unsheltered and unshaded, that I remember wondering how he
+went to sleep. He was high-shouldered and bony; dressed in decent black,
+with a white wisp of a neckcloth; buttoned up to the throat; and had a
+long, lank, skeleton hand, which particularly attracted my attention, as
+he stood at the pony’s head, rubbing his chin with it, and looking up at
+us in the chaise.
+
+‘Is Mr. Wickfield at home, Uriah Heep?’ said my aunt.
+
+‘Mr. Wickfield’s at home, ma’am,’ said Uriah Heep, ‘if you’ll please to
+walk in there’--pointing with his long hand to the room he meant.
+
+We got out; and leaving him to hold the pony, went into a long low
+parlour looking towards the street, from the window of which I caught a
+glimpse, as I went in, of Uriah Heep breathing into the pony’s nostrils,
+and immediately covering them with his hand, as if he were putting
+some spell upon him. Opposite to the tall old chimney-piece were two
+portraits: one of a gentleman with grey hair (though not by any means
+an old man) and black eyebrows, who was looking over some papers tied
+together with red tape; the other, of a lady, with a very placid and
+sweet expression of face, who was looking at me.
+
+I believe I was turning about in search of Uriah’s picture, when, a door
+at the farther end of the room opening, a gentleman entered, at sight of
+whom I turned to the first-mentioned portrait again, to make quite sure
+that it had not come out of its frame. But it was stationary; and as the
+gentleman advanced into the light, I saw that he was some years older
+than when he had had his picture painted.
+
+‘Miss Betsey Trotwood,’ said the gentleman, ‘pray walk in. I was engaged
+for a moment, but you’ll excuse my being busy. You know my motive. I
+have but one in life.’
+
+Miss Betsey thanked him, and we went into his room, which was furnished
+as an office, with books, papers, tin boxes, and so forth. It looked
+into a garden, and had an iron safe let into the wall; so immediately
+over the mantelshelf, that I wondered, as I sat down, how the sweeps got
+round it when they swept the chimney.
+
+‘Well, Miss Trotwood,’ said Mr. Wickfield; for I soon found that it
+was he, and that he was a lawyer, and steward of the estates of a rich
+gentleman of the county; ‘what wind blows you here? Not an ill wind, I
+hope?’
+
+‘No,’ replied my aunt. ‘I have not come for any law.’
+
+‘That’s right, ma’am,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘You had better come for
+anything else.’ His hair was quite white now, though his eyebrows were
+still black. He had a very agreeable face, and, I thought, was handsome.
+There was a certain richness in his complexion, which I had been long
+accustomed, under Peggotty’s tuition, to connect with port wine; and I
+fancied it was in his voice too, and referred his growing corpulency
+to the same cause. He was very cleanly dressed, in a blue coat, striped
+waistcoat, and nankeen trousers; and his fine frilled shirt and cambric
+neckcloth looked unusually soft and white, reminding my strolling fancy
+(I call to mind) of the plumage on the breast of a swan.
+
+‘This is my nephew,’ said my aunt.
+
+‘Wasn’t aware you had one, Miss Trotwood,’ said Mr. Wickfield.
+
+‘My grand-nephew, that is to say,’ observed my aunt.
+
+‘Wasn’t aware you had a grand-nephew, I give you my word,’ said Mr.
+Wickfield.
+
+‘I have adopted him,’ said my aunt, with a wave of her hand, importing
+that his knowledge and his ignorance were all one to her, ‘and I have
+brought him here, to put to a school where he may be thoroughly well
+taught, and well treated. Now tell me where that school is, and what it
+is, and all about it.’
+
+‘Before I can advise you properly,’ said Mr. Wickfield--‘the old
+question, you know. What’s your motive in this?’
+
+‘Deuce take the man!’ exclaimed my aunt. ‘Always fishing for motives,
+when they’re on the surface! Why, to make the child happy and useful.’
+
+‘It must be a mixed motive, I think,’ said Mr. Wickfield, shaking his
+head and smiling incredulously.
+
+‘A mixed fiddlestick,’ returned my aunt. ‘You claim to have one plain
+motive in all you do yourself. You don’t suppose, I hope, that you are
+the only plain dealer in the world?’
+
+‘Ay, but I have only one motive in life, Miss Trotwood,’ he rejoined,
+smiling. ‘Other people have dozens, scores, hundreds. I have only one.
+There’s the difference. However, that’s beside the question. The best
+school? Whatever the motive, you want the best?’
+
+My aunt nodded assent.
+
+‘At the best we have,’ said Mr. Wickfield, considering, ‘your nephew
+couldn’t board just now.’
+
+‘But he could board somewhere else, I suppose?’ suggested my aunt.
+
+Mr. Wickfield thought I could. After a little discussion, he proposed to
+take my aunt to the school, that she might see it and judge for herself;
+also, to take her, with the same object, to two or three houses where he
+thought I could be boarded. My aunt embracing the proposal, we were all
+three going out together, when he stopped and said:
+
+‘Our little friend here might have some motive, perhaps, for objecting
+to the arrangements. I think we had better leave him behind?’
+
+My aunt seemed disposed to contest the point; but to facilitate matters
+I said I would gladly remain behind, if they pleased; and returned into
+Mr. Wickfield’s office, where I sat down again, in the chair I had first
+occupied, to await their return.
+
+It so happened that this chair was opposite a narrow passage, which
+ended in the little circular room where I had seen Uriah Heep’s pale
+face looking out of the window. Uriah, having taken the pony to a
+neighbouring stable, was at work at a desk in this room, which had a
+brass frame on the top to hang paper upon, and on which the writing he
+was making a copy of was then hanging. Though his face was towards me, I
+thought, for some time, the writing being between us, that he could not
+see me; but looking that way more attentively, it made me uncomfortable
+to observe that, every now and then, his sleepless eyes would come below
+the writing, like two red suns, and stealthily stare at me for I dare
+say a whole minute at a time, during which his pen went, or pretended
+to go, as cleverly as ever. I made several attempts to get out of their
+way--such as standing on a chair to look at a map on the other side of
+the room, and poring over the columns of a Kentish newspaper--but they
+always attracted me back again; and whenever I looked towards those two
+red suns, I was sure to find them, either just rising or just setting.
+
+At length, much to my relief, my aunt and Mr. Wickfield came back,
+after a pretty long absence. They were not so successful as I could have
+wished; for though the advantages of the school were undeniable, my aunt
+had not approved of any of the boarding-houses proposed for me.
+
+‘It’s very unfortunate,’ said my aunt. ‘I don’t know what to do, Trot.’
+
+‘It does happen unfortunately,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘But I’ll tell you
+what you can do, Miss Trotwood.’
+
+‘What’s that?’ inquired my aunt.
+
+‘Leave your nephew here, for the present. He’s a quiet fellow. He
+won’t disturb me at all. It’s a capital house for study. As quiet as a
+monastery, and almost as roomy. Leave him here.’
+
+My aunt evidently liked the offer, though she was delicate of accepting
+it. So did I. ‘Come, Miss Trotwood,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘This is the
+way out of the difficulty. It’s only a temporary arrangement, you know.
+If it don’t act well, or don’t quite accord with our mutual convenience,
+he can easily go to the right-about. There will be time to find some
+better place for him in the meanwhile. You had better determine to leave
+him here for the present!’
+
+‘I am very much obliged to you,’ said my aunt; ‘and so is he, I see;
+but--’
+
+‘Come! I know what you mean,’ cried Mr. Wickfield. ‘You shall not be
+oppressed by the receipt of favours, Miss Trotwood. You may pay for
+him, if you like. We won’t be hard about terms, but you shall pay if you
+will.’
+
+‘On that understanding,’ said my aunt, ‘though it doesn’t lessen the
+real obligation, I shall be very glad to leave him.’
+
+‘Then come and see my little housekeeper,’ said Mr. Wickfield.
+
+We accordingly went up a wonderful old staircase; with a balustrade
+so broad that we might have gone up that, almost as easily; and into
+a shady old drawing-room, lighted by some three or four of the quaint
+windows I had looked up at from the street: which had old oak seats
+in them, that seemed to have come of the same trees as the shining oak
+floor, and the great beams in the ceiling. It was a prettily furnished
+room, with a piano and some lively furniture in red and green, and some
+flowers. It seemed to be all old nooks and corners; and in every nook
+and corner there was some queer little table, or cupboard, or bookcase,
+or seat, or something or other, that made me think there was not such
+another good corner in the room; until I looked at the next one, and
+found it equal to it, if not better. On everything there was the same
+air of retirement and cleanliness that marked the house outside.
+
+Mr. Wickfield tapped at a door in a corner of the panelled wall, and a
+girl of about my own age came quickly out and kissed him. On her face,
+I saw immediately the placid and sweet expression of the lady whose
+picture had looked at me downstairs. It seemed to my imagination as
+if the portrait had grown womanly, and the original remained a child.
+Although her face was quite bright and happy, there was a tranquillity
+about it, and about her--a quiet, good, calm spirit--that I never have
+forgotten; that I shall never forget. This was his little housekeeper,
+his daughter Agnes, Mr. Wickfield said. When I heard how he said it, and
+saw how he held her hand, I guessed what the one motive of his life was.
+
+She had a little basket-trifle hanging at her side, with keys in it; and
+she looked as staid and as discreet a housekeeper as the old house
+could have. She listened to her father as he told her about me, with a
+pleasant face; and when he had concluded, proposed to my aunt that we
+should go upstairs and see my room. We all went together, she before us:
+and a glorious old room it was, with more oak beams, and diamond panes;
+and the broad balustrade going all the way up to it.
+
+I cannot call to mind where or when, in my childhood, I had seen a
+stained glass window in a church. Nor do I recollect its subject. But
+I know that when I saw her turn round, in the grave light of the old
+staircase, and wait for us, above, I thought of that window; and I
+associated something of its tranquil brightness with Agnes Wickfield
+ever afterwards.
+
+My aunt was as happy as I was, in the arrangement made for me; and we
+went down to the drawing-room again, well pleased and gratified. As she
+would not hear of staying to dinner, lest she should by any chance fail
+to arrive at home with the grey pony before dark; and as I apprehend Mr.
+Wickfield knew her too well to argue any point with her; some lunch was
+provided for her there, and Agnes went back to her governess, and Mr.
+Wickfield to his office. So we were left to take leave of one another
+without any restraint.
+
+She told me that everything would be arranged for me by Mr. Wickfield,
+and that I should want for nothing, and gave me the kindest words and
+the best advice.
+
+‘Trot,’ said my aunt in conclusion, ‘be a credit to yourself, to me, and
+Mr. Dick, and Heaven be with you!’
+
+I was greatly overcome, and could only thank her, again and again, and
+send my love to Mr. Dick.
+
+‘Never,’ said my aunt, ‘be mean in anything; never be false; never be
+cruel. Avoid those three vices, Trot, and I can always be hopeful of
+you.’
+
+I promised, as well as I could, that I would not abuse her kindness or
+forget her admonition.
+
+‘The pony’s at the door,’ said my aunt, ‘and I am off! Stay here.’ With
+these words she embraced me hastily, and went out of the room, shutting
+the door after her. At first I was startled by so abrupt a departure,
+and almost feared I had displeased her; but when I looked into the
+street, and saw how dejectedly she got into the chaise, and drove away
+without looking up, I understood her better and did not do her that
+injustice.
+
+By five o’clock, which was Mr. Wickfield’s dinner-hour, I had mustered
+up my spirits again, and was ready for my knife and fork. The cloth was
+only laid for us two; but Agnes was waiting in the drawing-room before
+dinner, went down with her father, and sat opposite to him at table. I
+doubted whether he could have dined without her.
+
+We did not stay there, after dinner, but came upstairs into the
+drawing-room again: in one snug corner of which, Agnes set glasses for
+her father, and a decanter of port wine. I thought he would have missed
+its usual flavour, if it had been put there for him by any other hands.
+
+There he sat, taking his wine, and taking a good deal of it, for two
+hours; while Agnes played on the piano, worked, and talked to him and
+me. He was, for the most part, gay and cheerful with us; but sometimes
+his eyes rested on her, and he fell into a brooding state, and was
+silent. She always observed this quickly, I thought, and always roused
+him with a question or caress. Then he came out of his meditation, and
+drank more wine.
+
+Agnes made the tea, and presided over it; and the time passed away after
+it, as after dinner, until she went to bed; when her father took her
+in his arms and kissed her, and, she being gone, ordered candles in his
+office. Then I went to bed too.
+
+But in the course of the evening I had rambled down to the door, and a
+little way along the street, that I might have another peep at the old
+houses, and the grey Cathedral; and might think of my coming through
+that old city on my journey, and of my passing the very house I lived
+in, without knowing it. As I came back, I saw Uriah Heep shutting up
+the office; and feeling friendly towards everybody, went in and spoke
+to him, and at parting, gave him my hand. But oh, what a clammy hand his
+was! as ghostly to the touch as to the sight! I rubbed mine afterwards,
+to warm it, AND TO RUB HIS OFF.
+
+It was such an uncomfortable hand, that, when I went to my room, it was
+still cold and wet upon my memory. Leaning out of the window, and seeing
+one of the faces on the beam-ends looking at me sideways, I fancied it
+was Uriah Heep got up there somehow, and shut him out in a hurry.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 16. I AM A NEW BOY IN MORE SENSES THAN ONE
+
+
+Next morning, after breakfast, I entered on school life again. I went,
+accompanied by Mr. Wickfield, to the scene of my future studies--a grave
+building in a courtyard, with a learned air about it that seemed very
+well suited to the stray rooks and jackdaws who came down from the
+Cathedral towers to walk with a clerkly bearing on the grass-plot--and
+was introduced to my new master, Doctor Strong.
+
+Doctor Strong looked almost as rusty, to my thinking, as the tall iron
+rails and gates outside the house; and almost as stiff and heavy as the
+great stone urns that flanked them, and were set up, on the top of
+the red-brick wall, at regular distances all round the court, like
+sublimated skittles, for Time to play at. He was in his library (I mean
+Doctor Strong was), with his clothes not particularly well brushed, and
+his hair not particularly well combed; his knee-smalls unbraced; his
+long black gaiters unbuttoned; and his shoes yawning like two caverns on
+the hearth-rug. Turning upon me a lustreless eye, that reminded me of
+a long-forgotten blind old horse who once used to crop the grass, and
+tumble over the graves, in Blunderstone churchyard, he said he was glad
+to see me: and then he gave me his hand; which I didn’t know what to do
+with, as it did nothing for itself.
+
+But, sitting at work, not far from Doctor Strong, was a very pretty
+young lady--whom he called Annie, and who was his daughter, I
+supposed--who got me out of my difficulty by kneeling down to put Doctor
+Strong’s shoes on, and button his gaiters, which she did with great
+cheerfulness and quickness. When she had finished, and we were going
+out to the schoolroom, I was much surprised to hear Mr. Wickfield,
+in bidding her good morning, address her as ‘Mrs. Strong’; and I was
+wondering could she be Doctor Strong’s son’s wife, or could she be Mrs.
+Doctor Strong, when Doctor Strong himself unconsciously enlightened me.
+
+‘By the by, Wickfield,’ he said, stopping in a passage with his hand on
+my shoulder; ‘you have not found any suitable provision for my wife’s
+cousin yet?’
+
+‘No,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘No. Not yet.’
+
+‘I could wish it done as soon as it can be done, Wickfield,’ said
+Doctor Strong, ‘for Jack Maldon is needy, and idle; and of those two
+bad things, worse things sometimes come. What does Doctor Watts say,’ he
+added, looking at me, and moving his head to the time of his quotation,
+‘“Satan finds some mischief still, for idle hands to do.”’
+
+‘Egad, Doctor,’ returned Mr. Wickfield, ‘if Doctor Watts knew mankind,
+he might have written, with as much truth, “Satan finds some mischief
+still, for busy hands to do.” The busy people achieve their full share
+of mischief in the world, you may rely upon it. What have the people
+been about, who have been the busiest in getting money, and in getting
+power, this century or two? No mischief?’
+
+‘Jack Maldon will never be very busy in getting either, I expect,’ said
+Doctor Strong, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.
+
+‘Perhaps not,’ said Mr. Wickfield; ‘and you bring me back to the
+question, with an apology for digressing. No, I have not been able
+to dispose of Mr. Jack Maldon yet. I believe,’ he said this with some
+hesitation, ‘I penetrate your motive, and it makes the thing more
+difficult.’
+
+‘My motive,’ returned Doctor Strong, ‘is to make some suitable provision
+for a cousin, and an old playfellow, of Annie’s.’
+
+‘Yes, I know,’ said Mr. Wickfield; ‘at home or abroad.’
+
+‘Aye!’ replied the Doctor, apparently wondering why he emphasized those
+words so much. ‘At home or abroad.’
+
+‘Your own expression, you know,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘Or abroad.’
+
+‘Surely,’ the Doctor answered. ‘Surely. One or other.’
+
+‘One or other? Have you no choice?’ asked Mr. Wickfield.
+
+‘No,’ returned the Doctor.
+
+‘No?’ with astonishment.
+
+‘Not the least.’
+
+‘No motive,’ said Mr. Wickfield, ‘for meaning abroad, and not at home?’
+
+‘No,’ returned the Doctor.
+
+‘I am bound to believe you, and of course I do believe you,’ said Mr.
+Wickfield. ‘It might have simplified my office very much, if I had known
+it before. But I confess I entertained another impression.’
+
+Doctor Strong regarded him with a puzzled and doubting look,
+which almost immediately subsided into a smile that gave me great
+encouragement; for it was full of amiability and sweetness, and there
+was a simplicity in it, and indeed in his whole manner, when the
+studious, pondering frost upon it was got through, very attractive and
+hopeful to a young scholar like me. Repeating ‘no’, and ‘not the least’,
+and other short assurances to the same purport, Doctor Strong jogged
+on before us, at a queer, uneven pace; and we followed: Mr. Wickfield,
+looking grave, I observed, and shaking his head to himself, without
+knowing that I saw him.
+
+The schoolroom was a pretty large hall, on the quietest side of the
+house, confronted by the stately stare of some half-dozen of the great
+urns, and commanding a peep of an old secluded garden belonging to the
+Doctor, where the peaches were ripening on the sunny south wall. There
+were two great aloes, in tubs, on the turf outside the windows; the
+broad hard leaves of which plant (looking as if they were made of
+painted tin) have ever since, by association, been symbolical to me
+of silence and retirement. About five-and-twenty boys were studiously
+engaged at their books when we went in, but they rose to give the Doctor
+good morning, and remained standing when they saw Mr. Wickfield and me.
+
+‘A new boy, young gentlemen,’ said the Doctor; ‘Trotwood Copperfield.’
+
+One Adams, who was the head-boy, then stepped out of his place and
+welcomed me. He looked like a young clergyman, in his white cravat, but
+he was very affable and good-humoured; and he showed me my place, and
+presented me to the masters, in a gentlemanly way that would have put me
+at my ease, if anything could.
+
+It seemed to me so long, however, since I had been among such boys,
+or among any companions of my own age, except Mick Walker and Mealy
+Potatoes, that I felt as strange as ever I have done in my life. I was
+so conscious of having passed through scenes of which they could have
+no knowledge, and of having acquired experiences foreign to my age,
+appearance, and condition as one of them, that I half believed it was an
+imposture to come there as an ordinary little schoolboy. I had become,
+in the Murdstone and Grinby time, however short or long it may have
+been, so unused to the sports and games of boys, that I knew I was
+awkward and inexperienced in the commonest things belonging to them.
+Whatever I had learnt, had so slipped away from me in the sordid cares
+of my life from day to night, that now, when I was examined about what
+I knew, I knew nothing, and was put into the lowest form of the school.
+But, troubled as I was, by my want of boyish skill, and of book-learning
+too, I was made infinitely more uncomfortable by the consideration,
+that, in what I did know, I was much farther removed from my companions
+than in what I did not. My mind ran upon what they would think, if they
+knew of my familiar acquaintance with the King’s Bench Prison? Was there
+anything about me which would reveal my proceedings in connexion with
+the Micawber family--all those pawnings, and sellings, and suppers--in
+spite of myself? Suppose some of the boys had seen me coming through
+Canterbury, wayworn and ragged, and should find me out? What would they
+say, who made so light of money, if they could know how I had scraped my
+halfpence together, for the purchase of my daily saveloy and beer, or
+my slices of pudding? How would it affect them, who were so innocent of
+London life, and London streets, to discover how knowing I was (and was
+ashamed to be) in some of the meanest phases of both? All this ran in
+my head so much, on that first day at Doctor Strong’s, that I felt
+distrustful of my slightest look and gesture; shrunk within myself
+whensoever I was approached by one of my new schoolfellows; and hurried
+off the minute school was over, afraid of committing myself in my
+response to any friendly notice or advance.
+
+But there was such an influence in Mr. Wickfield’s old house, that when
+I knocked at it, with my new school-books under my arm, I began to feel
+my uneasiness softening away. As I went up to my airy old room, the
+grave shadow of the staircase seemed to fall upon my doubts and fears,
+and to make the past more indistinct. I sat there, sturdily conning my
+books, until dinner-time (we were out of school for good at three); and
+went down, hopeful of becoming a passable sort of boy yet.
+
+Agnes was in the drawing-room, waiting for her father, who was detained
+by someone in his office. She met me with her pleasant smile, and asked
+me how I liked the school. I told her I should like it very much, I
+hoped; but I was a little strange to it at first.
+
+‘You have never been to school,’ I said, ‘have you?’ ‘Oh yes! Every
+day.’
+
+‘Ah, but you mean here, at your own home?’
+
+‘Papa couldn’t spare me to go anywhere else,’ she answered, smiling and
+shaking her head. ‘His housekeeper must be in his house, you know.’
+
+‘He is very fond of you, I am sure,’ I said.
+
+She nodded ‘Yes,’ and went to the door to listen for his coming up, that
+she might meet him on the stairs. But, as he was not there, she came
+back again.
+
+‘Mama has been dead ever since I was born,’ she said, in her quiet way.
+‘I only know her picture, downstairs. I saw you looking at it yesterday.
+Did you think whose it was?’
+
+I told her yes, because it was so like herself.
+
+‘Papa says so, too,’ said Agnes, pleased. ‘Hark! That’s papa now!’
+
+Her bright calm face lighted up with pleasure as she went to meet him,
+and as they came in, hand in hand. He greeted me cordially; and told
+me I should certainly be happy under Doctor Strong, who was one of the
+gentlest of men.
+
+‘There may be some, perhaps--I don’t know that there are--who abuse
+his kindness,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘Never be one of those, Trotwood, in
+anything. He is the least suspicious of mankind; and whether that’s
+a merit, or whether it’s a blemish, it deserves consideration in all
+dealings with the Doctor, great or small.’
+
+He spoke, I thought, as if he were weary, or dissatisfied with
+something; but I did not pursue the question in my mind, for dinner was
+just then announced, and we went down and took the same seats as before.
+
+We had scarcely done so, when Uriah Heep put in his red head and his
+lank hand at the door, and said:
+
+‘Here’s Mr. Maldon begs the favour of a word, sir.’
+
+‘I am but this moment quit of Mr. Maldon,’ said his master.
+
+‘Yes, sir,’ returned Uriah; ‘but Mr. Maldon has come back, and he begs
+the favour of a word.’
+
+As he held the door open with his hand, Uriah looked at me, and looked
+at Agnes, and looked at the dishes, and looked at the plates, and looked
+at every object in the room, I thought,--yet seemed to look at nothing;
+he made such an appearance all the while of keeping his red eyes
+dutifully on his master. ‘I beg your pardon. It’s only to say, on
+reflection,’ observed a voice behind Uriah, as Uriah’s head was
+pushed away, and the speaker’s substituted--‘pray excuse me for this
+intrusion--that as it seems I have no choice in the matter, the sooner
+I go abroad the better. My cousin Annie did say, when we talked of it,
+that she liked to have her friends within reach rather than to have them
+banished, and the old Doctor--’
+
+‘Doctor Strong, was that?’ Mr. Wickfield interposed, gravely.
+
+‘Doctor Strong, of course,’ returned the other; ‘I call him the old
+Doctor; it’s all the same, you know.’
+
+‘I don’t know,’ returned Mr. Wickfield.
+
+‘Well, Doctor Strong,’ said the other--‘Doctor Strong was of the same
+mind, I believed. But as it appears from the course you take with me he
+has changed his mind, why there’s no more to be said, except that the
+sooner I am off, the better. Therefore, I thought I’d come back and say,
+that the sooner I am off the better. When a plunge is to be made into
+the water, it’s of no use lingering on the bank.’
+
+‘There shall be as little lingering as possible, in your case, Mr.
+Maldon, you may depend upon it,’ said Mr. Wickfield.
+
+‘Thank’ee,’ said the other. ‘Much obliged. I don’t want to look a
+gift-horse in the mouth, which is not a gracious thing to do; otherwise,
+I dare say, my cousin Annie could easily arrange it in her own way. I
+suppose Annie would only have to say to the old Doctor--’
+
+‘Meaning that Mrs. Strong would only have to say to her husband--do I
+follow you?’ said Mr. Wickfield.
+
+‘Quite so,’ returned the other, ‘--would only have to say, that she
+wanted such and such a thing to be so and so; and it would be so and so,
+as a matter of course.’
+
+‘And why as a matter of course, Mr. Maldon?’ asked Mr. Wickfield,
+sedately eating his dinner.
+
+‘Why, because Annie’s a charming young girl, and the old Doctor--Doctor
+Strong, I mean--is not quite a charming young boy,’ said Mr. Jack
+Maldon, laughing. ‘No offence to anybody, Mr. Wickfield. I only mean
+that I suppose some compensation is fair and reasonable in that sort of
+marriage.’
+
+‘Compensation to the lady, sir?’ asked Mr. Wickfield gravely.
+
+‘To the lady, sir,’ Mr. Jack Maldon answered, laughing. But appearing
+to remark that Mr. Wickfield went on with his dinner in the same sedate,
+immovable manner, and that there was no hope of making him relax a
+muscle of his face, he added: ‘However, I have said what I came to say,
+and, with another apology for this intrusion, I may take myself off. Of
+course I shall observe your directions, in considering the matter as one
+to be arranged between you and me solely, and not to be referred to, up
+at the Doctor’s.’
+
+‘Have you dined?’ asked Mr. Wickfield, with a motion of his hand towards
+the table.
+
+‘Thank’ee. I am going to dine,’ said Mr. Maldon, ‘with my cousin Annie.
+Good-bye!’
+
+Mr. Wickfield, without rising, looked after him thoughtfully as he went
+out. He was rather a shallow sort of young gentleman, I thought, with
+a handsome face, a rapid utterance, and a confident, bold air. And this
+was the first I ever saw of Mr. Jack Maldon; whom I had not expected to
+see so soon, when I heard the Doctor speak of him that morning.
+
+When we had dined, we went upstairs again, where everything went on
+exactly as on the previous day. Agnes set the glasses and decanters in
+the same corner, and Mr. Wickfield sat down to drink, and drank a good
+deal. Agnes played the piano to him, sat by him, and worked and talked,
+and played some games at dominoes with me. In good time she made tea;
+and afterwards, when I brought down my books, looked into them, and
+showed me what she knew of them (which was no slight matter, though she
+said it was), and what was the best way to learn and understand them.
+I see her, with her modest, orderly, placid manner, and I hear her
+beautiful calm voice, as I write these words. The influence for all
+good, which she came to exercise over me at a later time, begins
+already to descend upon my breast. I love little Em’ly, and I don’t love
+Agnes--no, not at all in that way--but I feel that there are goodness,
+peace, and truth, wherever Agnes is; and that the soft light of the
+coloured window in the church, seen long ago, falls on her always, and
+on me when I am near her, and on everything around.
+
+The time having come for her withdrawal for the night, and she having
+left us, I gave Mr. Wickfield my hand, preparatory to going away myself.
+But he checked me and said: ‘Should you like to stay with us, Trotwood,
+or to go elsewhere?’
+
+‘To stay,’ I answered, quickly.
+
+‘You are sure?’
+
+‘If you please. If I may!’
+
+‘Why, it’s but a dull life that we lead here, boy, I am afraid,’ he
+said.
+
+‘Not more dull for me than Agnes, sir. Not dull at all!’
+
+‘Than Agnes,’ he repeated, walking slowly to the great chimney-piece,
+and leaning against it. ‘Than Agnes!’
+
+He had drank wine that evening (or I fancied it), until his eyes were
+bloodshot. Not that I could see them now, for they were cast down, and
+shaded by his hand; but I had noticed them a little while before.
+
+‘Now I wonder,’ he muttered, ‘whether my Agnes tires of me. When should
+I ever tire of her! But that’s different, that’s quite different.’
+
+He was musing, not speaking to me; so I remained quiet.
+
+‘A dull old house,’ he said, ‘and a monotonous life; but I must have
+her near me. I must keep her near me. If the thought that I may die and
+leave my darling, or that my darling may die and leave me, comes like a
+spectre, to distress my happiest hours, and is only to be drowned in--’
+
+He did not supply the word; but pacing slowly to the place where he had
+sat, and mechanically going through the action of pouring wine from the
+empty decanter, set it down and paced back again.
+
+‘If it is miserable to bear, when she is here,’ he said, ‘what would it
+be, and she away? No, no, no. I cannot try that.’
+
+He leaned against the chimney-piece, brooding so long that I could not
+decide whether to run the risk of disturbing him by going, or to remain
+quietly where I was, until he should come out of his reverie. At length
+he aroused himself, and looked about the room until his eyes encountered
+mine.
+
+‘Stay with us, Trotwood, eh?’ he said in his usual manner, and as if
+he were answering something I had just said. ‘I am glad of it. You are
+company to us both. It is wholesome to have you here. Wholesome for me,
+wholesome for Agnes, wholesome perhaps for all of us.’
+
+‘I am sure it is for me, sir,’ I said. ‘I am so glad to be here.’
+
+‘That’s a fine fellow!’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘As long as you are glad
+to be here, you shall stay here.’ He shook hands with me upon it, and
+clapped me on the back; and told me that when I had anything to do
+at night after Agnes had left us, or when I wished to read for my own
+pleasure, I was free to come down to his room, if he were there and if
+I desired it for company’s sake, and to sit with him. I thanked him for
+his consideration; and, as he went down soon afterwards, and I was
+not tired, went down too, with a book in my hand, to avail myself, for
+half-an-hour, of his permission.
+
+But, seeing a light in the little round office, and immediately feeling
+myself attracted towards Uriah Heep, who had a sort of fascination for
+me, I went in there instead. I found Uriah reading a great fat book,
+with such demonstrative attention, that his lank forefinger followed up
+every line as he read, and made clammy tracks along the page (or so I
+fully believed) like a snail.
+
+‘You are working late tonight, Uriah,’ says I.
+
+‘Yes, Master Copperfield,’ says Uriah.
+
+As I was getting on the stool opposite, to talk to him more
+conveniently, I observed that he had not such a thing as a smile about
+him, and that he could only widen his mouth and make two hard creases
+down his cheeks, one on each side, to stand for one.
+
+‘I am not doing office-work, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah.
+
+‘What work, then?’ I asked.
+
+‘I am improving my legal knowledge, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah. ‘I
+am going through Tidd’s Practice. Oh, what a writer Mr. Tidd is, Master
+Copperfield!’
+
+My stool was such a tower of observation, that as I watched him reading
+on again, after this rapturous exclamation, and following up the lines
+with his forefinger, I observed that his nostrils, which were thin and
+pointed, with sharp dints in them, had a singular and most uncomfortable
+way of expanding and contracting themselves--that they seemed to twinkle
+instead of his eyes, which hardly ever twinkled at all.
+
+‘I suppose you are quite a great lawyer?’ I said, after looking at him
+for some time.
+
+‘Me, Master Copperfield?’ said Uriah. ‘Oh, no! I’m a very umble person.’
+
+It was no fancy of mine about his hands, I observed; for he frequently
+ground the palms against each other as if to squeeze them dry and
+warm, besides often wiping them, in a stealthy way, on his
+pocket-handkerchief.
+
+‘I am well aware that I am the umblest person going,’ said Uriah Heep,
+modestly; ‘let the other be where he may. My mother is likewise a very
+umble person. We live in a numble abode, Master Copperfield, but have
+much to be thankful for. My father’s former calling was umble. He was a
+sexton.’
+
+‘What is he now?’ I asked.
+
+‘He is a partaker of glory at present, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah
+Heep. ‘But we have much to be thankful for. How much have I to be
+thankful for in living with Mr. Wickfield!’
+
+I asked Uriah if he had been with Mr. Wickfield long?
+
+‘I have been with him, going on four year, Master Copperfield,’ said
+Uriah; shutting up his book, after carefully marking the place where he
+had left off. ‘Since a year after my father’s death. How much have I
+to be thankful for, in that! How much have I to be thankful for, in Mr.
+Wickfield’s kind intention to give me my articles, which would otherwise
+not lay within the umble means of mother and self!’
+
+‘Then, when your articled time is over, you’ll be a regular lawyer, I
+suppose?’ said I.
+
+‘With the blessing of Providence, Master Copperfield,’ returned Uriah.
+
+‘Perhaps you’ll be a partner in Mr. Wickfield’s business, one of these
+days,’ I said, to make myself agreeable; ‘and it will be Wickfield and
+Heep, or Heep late Wickfield.’
+
+‘Oh no, Master Copperfield,’ returned Uriah, shaking his head, ‘I am
+much too umble for that!’
+
+He certainly did look uncommonly like the carved face on the beam
+outside my window, as he sat, in his humility, eyeing me sideways, with
+his mouth widened, and the creases in his cheeks.
+
+‘Mr. Wickfield is a most excellent man, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah.
+‘If you have known him long, you know it, I am sure, much better than I
+can inform you.’
+
+I replied that I was certain he was; but that I had not known him long
+myself, though he was a friend of my aunt’s.
+
+‘Oh, indeed, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah. ‘Your aunt is a sweet
+lady, Master Copperfield!’
+
+He had a way of writhing when he wanted to express enthusiasm, which was
+very ugly; and which diverted my attention from the compliment he had
+paid my relation, to the snaky twistings of his throat and body.
+
+‘A sweet lady, Master Copperfield!’ said Uriah Heep. ‘She has a great
+admiration for Miss Agnes, Master Copperfield, I believe?’
+
+I said, ‘Yes,’ boldly; not that I knew anything about it, Heaven forgive
+me!
+
+‘I hope you have, too, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah. ‘But I am sure
+you must have.’
+
+‘Everybody must have,’ I returned.
+
+‘Oh, thank you, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah Heep, ‘for that remark!
+It is so true! Umble as I am, I know it is so true! Oh, thank you,
+Master Copperfield!’ He writhed himself quite off his stool in the
+excitement of his feelings, and, being off, began to make arrangements
+for going home.
+
+‘Mother will be expecting me,’ he said, referring to a pale,
+inexpressive-faced watch in his pocket, ‘and getting uneasy; for though
+we are very umble, Master Copperfield, we are much attached to one
+another. If you would come and see us, any afternoon, and take a cup of
+tea at our lowly dwelling, mother would be as proud of your company as I
+should be.’
+
+I said I should be glad to come.
+
+‘Thank you, Master Copperfield,’ returned Uriah, putting his book
+away upon the shelf--‘I suppose you stop here, some time, Master
+Copperfield?’
+
+I said I was going to be brought up there, I believed, as long as I
+remained at school.
+
+‘Oh, indeed!’ exclaimed Uriah. ‘I should think YOU would come into the
+business at last, Master Copperfield!’
+
+I protested that I had no views of that sort, and that no such scheme
+was entertained in my behalf by anybody; but Uriah insisted on blandly
+replying to all my assurances, ‘Oh, yes, Master Copperfield, I should
+think you would, indeed!’ and, ‘Oh, indeed, Master Copperfield, I should
+think you would, certainly!’ over and over again. Being, at last, ready
+to leave the office for the night, he asked me if it would suit my
+convenience to have the light put out; and on my answering ‘Yes,’
+instantly extinguished it. After shaking hands with me--his hand felt
+like a fish, in the dark--he opened the door into the street a very
+little, and crept out, and shut it, leaving me to grope my way back into
+the house: which cost me some trouble and a fall over his stool. This
+was the proximate cause, I suppose, of my dreaming about him, for what
+appeared to me to be half the night; and dreaming, among other things,
+that he had launched Mr. Peggotty’s house on a piratical expedition,
+with a black flag at the masthead, bearing the inscription ‘Tidd’s
+Practice’, under which diabolical ensign he was carrying me and little
+Em’ly to the Spanish Main, to be drowned.
+
+I got a little the better of my uneasiness when I went to school
+next day, and a good deal the better next day, and so shook it off by
+degrees, that in less than a fortnight I was quite at home, and happy,
+among my new companions. I was awkward enough in their games, and
+backward enough in their studies; but custom would improve me in the
+first respect, I hoped, and hard work in the second. Accordingly, I
+went to work very hard, both in play and in earnest, and gained great
+commendation. And, in a very little while, the Murdstone and Grinby life
+became so strange to me that I hardly believed in it, while my present
+life grew so familiar, that I seemed to have been leading it a long
+time.
+
+Doctor Strong’s was an excellent school; as different from Mr. Creakle’s
+as good is from evil. It was very gravely and decorously ordered, and
+on a sound system; with an appeal, in everything, to the honour and good
+faith of the boys, and an avowed intention to rely on their possession
+of those qualities unless they proved themselves unworthy of it, which
+worked wonders. We all felt that we had a part in the management of
+the place, and in sustaining its character and dignity. Hence, we soon
+became warmly attached to it--I am sure I did for one, and I never knew,
+in all my time, of any other boy being otherwise--and learnt with a good
+will, desiring to do it credit. We had noble games out of hours, and
+plenty of liberty; but even then, as I remember, we were well spoken of
+in the town, and rarely did any disgrace, by our appearance or manner,
+to the reputation of Doctor Strong and Doctor Strong’s boys.
+
+Some of the higher scholars boarded in the Doctor’s house, and through
+them I learned, at second hand, some particulars of the Doctor’s
+history--as, how he had not yet been married twelve months to the
+beautiful young lady I had seen in the study, whom he had married for
+love; for she had not a sixpence, and had a world of poor relations (so
+our fellows said) ready to swarm the Doctor out of house and home. Also,
+how the Doctor’s cogitating manner was attributable to his being always
+engaged in looking out for Greek roots; which, in my innocence and
+ignorance, I supposed to be a botanical furor on the Doctor’s part,
+especially as he always looked at the ground when he walked about,
+until I understood that they were roots of words, with a view to a new
+Dictionary which he had in contemplation. Adams, our head-boy, who had
+a turn for mathematics, had made a calculation, I was informed, of the
+time this Dictionary would take in completing, on the Doctor’s plan, and
+at the Doctor’s rate of going. He considered that it might be done
+in one thousand six hundred and forty-nine years, counting from the
+Doctor’s last, or sixty-second, birthday.
+
+But the Doctor himself was the idol of the whole school: and it must
+have been a badly composed school if he had been anything else, for
+he was the kindest of men; with a simple faith in him that might have
+touched the stone hearts of the very urns upon the wall. As he walked up
+and down that part of the courtyard which was at the side of the house,
+with the stray rooks and jackdaws looking after him with their heads
+cocked slyly, as if they knew how much more knowing they were in worldly
+affairs than he, if any sort of vagabond could only get near enough to
+his creaking shoes to attract his attention to one sentence of a tale
+of distress, that vagabond was made for the next two days. It was so
+notorious in the house, that the masters and head-boys took pains to cut
+these marauders off at angles, and to get out of windows, and turn them
+out of the courtyard, before they could make the Doctor aware of their
+presence; which was sometimes happily effected within a few yards of
+him, without his knowing anything of the matter, as he jogged to and
+fro. Outside his own domain, and unprotected, he was a very sheep for
+the shearers. He would have taken his gaiters off his legs, to give
+away. In fact, there was a story current among us (I have no idea, and
+never had, on what authority, but I have believed it for so many
+years that I feel quite certain it is true), that on a frosty day, one
+winter-time, he actually did bestow his gaiters on a beggar-woman, who
+occasioned some scandal in the neighbourhood by exhibiting a fine infant
+from door to door, wrapped in those garments, which were universally
+recognized, being as well known in the vicinity as the Cathedral. The
+legend added that the only person who did not identify them was the
+Doctor himself, who, when they were shortly afterwards displayed at the
+door of a little second-hand shop of no very good repute, where such
+things were taken in exchange for gin, was more than once observed to
+handle them approvingly, as if admiring some curious novelty in the
+pattern, and considering them an improvement on his own.
+
+It was very pleasant to see the Doctor with his pretty young wife. He
+had a fatherly, benignant way of showing his fondness for her, which
+seemed in itself to express a good man. I often saw them walking in the
+garden where the peaches were, and I sometimes had a nearer observation
+of them in the study or the parlour. She appeared to me to take great
+care of the Doctor, and to like him very much, though I never thought
+her vitally interested in the Dictionary: some cumbrous fragments of
+which work the Doctor always carried in his pockets, and in the lining
+of his hat, and generally seemed to be expounding to her as they walked
+about.
+
+I saw a good deal of Mrs. Strong, both because she had taken a liking
+for me on the morning of my introduction to the Doctor, and was always
+afterwards kind to me, and interested in me; and because she was very
+fond of Agnes, and was often backwards and forwards at our house. There
+was a curious constraint between her and Mr. Wickfield, I thought (of
+whom she seemed to be afraid), that never wore off. When she came there
+of an evening, she always shrunk from accepting his escort home, and ran
+away with me instead. And sometimes, as we were running gaily across
+the Cathedral yard together, expecting to meet nobody, we would meet Mr.
+Jack Maldon, who was always surprised to see us.
+
+Mrs. Strong’s mama was a lady I took great delight in. Her name was Mrs.
+Markleham; but our boys used to call her the Old Soldier, on account of
+her generalship, and the skill with which she marshalled great forces
+of relations against the Doctor. She was a little, sharp-eyed woman,
+who used to wear, when she was dressed, one unchangeable cap, ornamented
+with some artificial flowers, and two artificial butterflies supposed
+to be hovering above the flowers. There was a superstition among us
+that this cap had come from France, and could only originate in the
+workmanship of that ingenious nation: but all I certainly know about it,
+is, that it always made its appearance of an evening, wheresoever Mrs.
+Markleham made HER appearance; that it was carried about to friendly
+meetings in a Hindoo basket; that the butterflies had the gift of
+trembling constantly; and that they improved the shining hours at Doctor
+Strong’s expense, like busy bees.
+
+I observed the Old Soldier--not to adopt the name disrespectfully--to
+pretty good advantage, on a night which is made memorable to me by
+something else I shall relate. It was the night of a little party at the
+Doctor’s, which was given on the occasion of Mr. Jack Maldon’s departure
+for India, whither he was going as a cadet, or something of that kind:
+Mr. Wickfield having at length arranged the business. It happened to be
+the Doctor’s birthday, too. We had had a holiday, had made presents to
+him in the morning, had made a speech to him through the head-boy, and
+had cheered him until we were hoarse, and until he had shed tears. And
+now, in the evening, Mr. Wickfield, Agnes, and I, went to have tea with
+him in his private capacity.
+
+Mr. Jack Maldon was there, before us. Mrs. Strong, dressed in white,
+with cherry-coloured ribbons, was playing the piano, when we went in;
+and he was leaning over her to turn the leaves. The clear red and
+white of her complexion was not so blooming and flower-like as usual, I
+thought, when she turned round; but she looked very pretty, Wonderfully
+pretty.
+
+‘I have forgotten, Doctor,’ said Mrs. Strong’s mama, when we were
+seated, ‘to pay you the compliments of the day--though they are, as you
+may suppose, very far from being mere compliments in my case. Allow me
+to wish you many happy returns.’
+
+‘I thank you, ma’am,’ replied the Doctor.
+
+‘Many, many, many, happy returns,’ said the Old Soldier. ‘Not only
+for your own sake, but for Annie’s, and John Maldon’s, and many other
+people’s. It seems but yesterday to me, John, when you were a little
+creature, a head shorter than Master Copperfield, making baby love to
+Annie behind the gooseberry bushes in the back-garden.’
+
+‘My dear mama,’ said Mrs. Strong, ‘never mind that now.’
+
+‘Annie, don’t be absurd,’ returned her mother. ‘If you are to blush to
+hear of such things now you are an old married woman, when are you not
+to blush to hear of them?’
+
+‘Old?’ exclaimed Mr. Jack Maldon. ‘Annie? Come!’
+
+‘Yes, John,’ returned the Soldier. ‘Virtually, an old married woman.
+Although not old by years--for when did you ever hear me say, or who has
+ever heard me say, that a girl of twenty was old by years!--your cousin
+is the wife of the Doctor, and, as such, what I have described her. It
+is well for you, John, that your cousin is the wife of the Doctor. You
+have found in him an influential and kind friend, who will be kinder
+yet, I venture to predict, if you deserve it. I have no false pride.
+I never hesitate to admit, frankly, that there are some members of our
+family who want a friend. You were one yourself, before your cousin’s
+influence raised up one for you.’
+
+The Doctor, in the goodness of his heart, waved his hand as if to make
+light of it, and save Mr. Jack Maldon from any further reminder. But
+Mrs. Markleham changed her chair for one next the Doctor’s, and putting
+her fan on his coat-sleeve, said:
+
+‘No, really, my dear Doctor, you must excuse me if I appear to dwell
+on this rather, because I feel so very strongly. I call it quite my
+monomania, it is such a subject of mine. You are a blessing to us. You
+really are a Boon, you know.’
+
+‘Nonsense, nonsense,’ said the Doctor.
+
+‘No, no, I beg your pardon,’ retorted the Old Soldier. ‘With nobody
+present, but our dear and confidential friend Mr. Wickfield, I cannot
+consent to be put down. I shall begin to assert the privileges of a
+mother-in-law, if you go on like that, and scold you. I am perfectly
+honest and outspoken. What I am saying, is what I said when you first
+overpowered me with surprise--you remember how surprised I was?--by
+proposing for Annie. Not that there was anything so very much out of
+the way, in the mere fact of the proposal--it would be ridiculous to say
+that!--but because, you having known her poor father, and having known
+her from a baby six months old, I hadn’t thought of you in such a light
+at all, or indeed as a marrying man in any way,--simply that, you know.’
+
+‘Aye, aye,’ returned the Doctor, good-humouredly. ‘Never mind.’
+
+‘But I DO mind,’ said the Old Soldier, laying her fan upon his lips. ‘I
+mind very much. I recall these things that I may be contradicted if I am
+wrong. Well! Then I spoke to Annie, and I told her what had happened.
+I said, “My dear, here’s Doctor Strong has positively been and made you
+the subject of a handsome declaration and an offer.” Did I press it in
+the least? No. I said, “Now, Annie, tell me the truth this moment; is
+your heart free?” “Mama,” she said crying, “I am extremely young”--which
+was perfectly true--“and I hardly know if I have a heart at all.” “Then,
+my dear,” I said, “you may rely upon it, it’s free. At all events, my
+love,” said I, “Doctor Strong is in an agitated state of mind, and
+must be answered. He cannot be kept in his present state of suspense.”
+ “Mama,” said Annie, still crying, “would he be unhappy without me? If he
+would, I honour and respect him so much, that I think I will have him.”
+ So it was settled. And then, and not till then, I said to Annie, “Annie,
+Doctor Strong will not only be your husband, but he will represent your
+late father: he will represent the head of our family, he will represent
+the wisdom and station, and I may say the means, of our family; and will
+be, in short, a Boon to it.” I used the word at the time, and I have
+used it again, today. If I have any merit it is consistency.’
+
+The daughter had sat quite silent and still during this speech, with her
+eyes fixed on the ground; her cousin standing near her, and looking on
+the ground too. She now said very softly, in a trembling voice:
+
+‘Mama, I hope you have finished?’ ‘No, my dear Annie,’ returned the Old
+Soldier, ‘I have not quite finished. Since you ask me, my love, I reply
+that I have not. I complain that you really are a little unnatural
+towards your own family; and, as it is of no use complaining to you. I
+mean to complain to your husband. Now, my dear Doctor, do look at that
+silly wife of yours.’
+
+As the Doctor turned his kind face, with its smile of simplicity and
+gentleness, towards her, she drooped her head more. I noticed that Mr.
+Wickfield looked at her steadily.
+
+‘When I happened to say to that naughty thing, the other day,’ pursued
+her mother, shaking her head and her fan at her, playfully, ‘that there
+was a family circumstance she might mention to you--indeed, I think, was
+bound to mention--she said, that to mention it was to ask a favour;
+and that, as you were too generous, and as for her to ask was always to
+have, she wouldn’t.’
+
+‘Annie, my dear,’ said the Doctor. ‘That was wrong. It robbed me of a
+pleasure.’
+
+‘Almost the very words I said to her!’ exclaimed her mother. ‘Now
+really, another time, when I know what she would tell you but for this
+reason, and won’t, I have a great mind, my dear Doctor, to tell you
+myself.’
+
+‘I shall be glad if you will,’ returned the Doctor.
+
+‘Shall I?’
+
+‘Certainly.’
+
+‘Well, then, I will!’ said the Old Soldier. ‘That’s a bargain.’ And
+having, I suppose, carried her point, she tapped the Doctor’s hand
+several times with her fan (which she kissed first), and returned
+triumphantly to her former station.
+
+Some more company coming in, among whom were the two masters and Adams,
+the talk became general; and it naturally turned on Mr. Jack Maldon, and
+his voyage, and the country he was going to, and his various plans and
+prospects. He was to leave that night, after supper, in a post-chaise,
+for Gravesend; where the ship, in which he was to make the voyage, lay;
+and was to be gone--unless he came home on leave, or for his health--I
+don’t know how many years. I recollect it was settled by general
+consent that India was quite a misrepresented country, and had nothing
+objectionable in it, but a tiger or two, and a little heat in the warm
+part of the day. For my own part, I looked on Mr. Jack Maldon as a
+modern Sindbad, and pictured him the bosom friend of all the Rajahs in
+the East, sitting under canopies, smoking curly golden pipes--a mile
+long, if they could be straightened out.
+
+Mrs. Strong was a very pretty singer: as I knew, who often heard her
+singing by herself. But, whether she was afraid of singing before
+people, or was out of voice that evening, it was certain that she
+couldn’t sing at all. She tried a duet, once, with her cousin Maldon,
+but could not so much as begin; and afterwards, when she tried to sing
+by herself, although she began sweetly, her voice died away on a sudden,
+and left her quite distressed, with her head hanging down over the keys.
+The good Doctor said she was nervous, and, to relieve her, proposed a
+round game at cards; of which he knew as much as of the art of playing
+the trombone. But I remarked that the Old Soldier took him into custody
+directly, for her partner; and instructed him, as the first preliminary
+of initiation, to give her all the silver he had in his pocket.
+
+We had a merry game, not made the less merry by the Doctor’s mistakes,
+of which he committed an innumerable quantity, in spite of the
+watchfulness of the butterflies, and to their great aggravation. Mrs.
+Strong had declined to play, on the ground of not feeling very well; and
+her cousin Maldon had excused himself because he had some packing to
+do. When he had done it, however, he returned, and they sat together,
+talking, on the sofa. From time to time she came and looked over the
+Doctor’s hand, and told him what to play. She was very pale, as she
+bent over him, and I thought her finger trembled as she pointed out
+the cards; but the Doctor was quite happy in her attention, and took no
+notice of this, if it were so.
+
+At supper, we were hardly so gay. Everyone appeared to feel that a
+parting of that sort was an awkward thing, and that the nearer it
+approached, the more awkward it was. Mr. Jack Maldon tried to be very
+talkative, but was not at his ease, and made matters worse. And they
+were not improved, as it appeared to me, by the Old Soldier: who
+continually recalled passages of Mr. Jack Maldon’s youth.
+
+The Doctor, however, who felt, I am sure, that he was making everybody
+happy, was well pleased, and had no suspicion but that we were all at
+the utmost height of enjoyment.
+
+‘Annie, my dear,’ said he, looking at his watch, and filling his glass,
+‘it is past your cousin Jack’s time, and we must not detain him, since
+time and tide--both concerned in this case--wait for no man. Mr. Jack
+Maldon, you have a long voyage, and a strange country, before you; but
+many men have had both, and many men will have both, to the end of time.
+The winds you are going to tempt, have wafted thousands upon thousands
+to fortune, and brought thousands upon thousands happily back.’
+
+‘It’s an affecting thing,’ said Mrs. Markleham--‘however it’s viewed,
+it’s affecting, to see a fine young man one has known from an infant,
+going away to the other end of the world, leaving all he knows behind,
+and not knowing what’s before him. A young man really well deserves
+constant support and patronage,’ looking at the Doctor, ‘who makes such
+sacrifices.’
+
+‘Time will go fast with you, Mr. Jack Maldon,’ pursued the Doctor,
+‘and fast with all of us. Some of us can hardly expect, perhaps, in the
+natural course of things, to greet you on your return. The next best
+thing is to hope to do it, and that’s my case. I shall not weary you
+with good advice. You have long had a good model before you, in your
+cousin Annie. Imitate her virtues as nearly as you can.’
+
+Mrs. Markleham fanned herself, and shook her head.
+
+‘Farewell, Mr. Jack,’ said the Doctor, standing up; on which we all
+stood up. ‘A prosperous voyage out, a thriving career abroad, and a
+happy return home!’
+
+We all drank the toast, and all shook hands with Mr. Jack Maldon; after
+which he hastily took leave of the ladies who were there, and hurried
+to the door, where he was received, as he got into the chaise, with a
+tremendous broadside of cheers discharged by our boys, who had assembled
+on the lawn for the purpose. Running in among them to swell the ranks,
+I was very near the chaise when it rolled away; and I had a lively
+impression made upon me, in the midst of the noise and dust, of having
+seen Mr. Jack Maldon rattle past with an agitated face, and something
+cherry-coloured in his hand.
+
+After another broadside for the Doctor, and another for the Doctor’s
+wife, the boys dispersed, and I went back into the house, where I found
+the guests all standing in a group about the Doctor, discussing how Mr.
+Jack Maldon had gone away, and how he had borne it, and how he had
+felt it, and all the rest of it. In the midst of these remarks, Mrs.
+Markleham cried: ‘Where’s Annie?’
+
+No Annie was there; and when they called to her, no Annie replied. But
+all pressing out of the room, in a crowd, to see what was the matter, we
+found her lying on the hall floor. There was great alarm at first, until
+it was found that she was in a swoon, and that the swoon was yielding
+to the usual means of recovery; when the Doctor, who had lifted her
+head upon his knee, put her curls aside with his hand, and said, looking
+around:
+
+‘Poor Annie! She’s so faithful and tender-hearted! It’s the parting from
+her old playfellow and friend--her favourite cousin--that has done this.
+Ah! It’s a pity! I am very sorry!’
+
+When she opened her eyes, and saw where she was, and that we were all
+standing about her, she arose with assistance: turning her head, as she
+did so, to lay it on the Doctor’s shoulder--or to hide it, I don’t know
+which. We went into the drawing-room, to leave her with the Doctor and
+her mother; but she said, it seemed, that she was better than she had
+been since morning, and that she would rather be brought among us; so
+they brought her in, looking very white and weak, I thought, and sat her
+on a sofa.
+
+‘Annie, my dear,’ said her mother, doing something to her dress. ‘See
+here! You have lost a bow. Will anybody be so good as find a ribbon; a
+cherry-coloured ribbon?’
+
+It was the one she had worn at her bosom. We all looked for it; I myself
+looked everywhere, I am certain--but nobody could find it.
+
+‘Do you recollect where you had it last, Annie?’ said her mother.
+
+I wondered how I could have thought she looked white, or anything but
+burning red, when she answered that she had had it safe, a little while
+ago, she thought, but it was not worth looking for.
+
+Nevertheless, it was looked for again, and still not found. She
+entreated that there might be no more searching; but it was still sought
+for, in a desultory way, until she was quite well, and the company took
+their departure.
+
+We walked very slowly home, Mr. Wickfield, Agnes, and I--Agnes and I
+admiring the moonlight, and Mr. Wickfield scarcely raising his eyes from
+the ground. When we, at last, reached our own door, Agnes discovered
+that she had left her little reticule behind. Delighted to be of any
+service to her, I ran back to fetch it.
+
+I went into the supper-room where it had been left, which was deserted
+and dark. But a door of communication between that and the Doctor’s
+study, where there was a light, being open, I passed on there, to say
+what I wanted, and to get a candle.
+
+The Doctor was sitting in his easy-chair by the fireside, and his young
+wife was on a stool at his feet. The Doctor, with a complacent smile,
+was reading aloud some manuscript explanation or statement of a theory
+out of that interminable Dictionary, and she was looking up at him. But
+with such a face as I never saw. It was so beautiful in its form, it was
+so ashy pale, it was so fixed in its abstraction, it was so full of a
+wild, sleep-walking, dreamy horror of I don’t know what. The eyes
+were wide open, and her brown hair fell in two rich clusters on her
+shoulders, and on her white dress, disordered by the want of the lost
+ribbon. Distinctly as I recollect her look, I cannot say of what it was
+expressive, I cannot even say of what it is expressive to me now, rising
+again before my older judgement. Penitence, humiliation, shame, pride,
+love, and trustfulness--I see them all; and in them all, I see that
+horror of I don’t know what.
+
+My entrance, and my saying what I wanted, roused her. It disturbed the
+Doctor too, for when I went back to replace the candle I had taken from
+the table, he was patting her head, in his fatherly way, and saying he
+was a merciless drone to let her tempt him into reading on; and he would
+have her go to bed.
+
+But she asked him, in a rapid, urgent manner, to let her stay--to let
+her feel assured (I heard her murmur some broken words to this effect)
+that she was in his confidence that night. And, as she turned again
+towards him, after glancing at me as I left the room and went out at the
+door, I saw her cross her hands upon his knee, and look up at him with
+the same face, something quieted, as he resumed his reading.
+
+It made a great impression on me, and I remembered it a long time
+afterwards; as I shall have occasion to narrate when the time comes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 17. SOMEBODY TURNS UP
+
+
+It has not occurred to me to mention Peggotty since I ran away; but, of
+course, I wrote her a letter almost as soon as I was housed at Dover,
+and another, and a longer letter, containing all particulars fully
+related, when my aunt took me formally under her protection. On my being
+settled at Doctor Strong’s I wrote to her again, detailing my happy
+condition and prospects. I never could have derived anything like the
+pleasure from spending the money Mr. Dick had given me, that I felt in
+sending a gold half-guinea to Peggotty, per post, enclosed in this last
+letter, to discharge the sum I had borrowed of her: in which epistle,
+not before, I mentioned about the young man with the donkey-cart.
+
+To these communications Peggotty replied as promptly, if not as
+concisely, as a merchant’s clerk. Her utmost powers of expression (which
+were certainly not great in ink) were exhausted in the attempt to write
+what she felt on the subject of my journey. Four sides of incoherent and
+interjectional beginnings of sentences, that had no end, except blots,
+were inadequate to afford her any relief. But the blots were more
+expressive to me than the best composition; for they showed me that
+Peggotty had been crying all over the paper, and what could I have
+desired more?
+
+I made out, without much difficulty, that she could not take quite
+kindly to my aunt yet. The notice was too short after so long a
+prepossession the other way. We never knew a person, she wrote; but to
+think that Miss Betsey should seem to be so different from what she had
+been thought to be, was a Moral!--that was her word. She was evidently
+still afraid of Miss Betsey, for she sent her grateful duty to her but
+timidly; and she was evidently afraid of me, too, and entertained the
+probability of my running away again soon: if I might judge from the
+repeated hints she threw out, that the coach-fare to Yarmouth was always
+to be had of her for the asking.
+
+She gave me one piece of intelligence which affected me very much,
+namely, that there had been a sale of the furniture at our old home, and
+that Mr. and Miss Murdstone were gone away, and the house was shut up,
+to be let or sold. God knows I had no part in it while they remained
+there, but it pained me to think of the dear old place as altogether
+abandoned; of the weeds growing tall in the garden, and the fallen
+leaves lying thick and wet upon the paths. I imagined how the winds
+of winter would howl round it, how the cold rain would beat upon the
+window-glass, how the moon would make ghosts on the walls of the empty
+rooms, watching their solitude all night. I thought afresh of the grave
+in the churchyard, underneath the tree: and it seemed as if the house
+were dead too, now, and all connected with my father and mother were
+faded away.
+
+There was no other news in Peggotty’s letters. Mr. Barkis was an
+excellent husband, she said, though still a little near; but we all had
+our faults, and she had plenty (though I am sure I don’t know what they
+were); and he sent his duty, and my little bedroom was always ready for
+me. Mr. Peggotty was well, and Ham was well, and Mrs. Gummidge was but
+poorly, and little Em’ly wouldn’t send her love, but said that Peggotty
+might send it, if she liked.
+
+All this intelligence I dutifully imparted to my aunt, only reserving
+to myself the mention of little Em’ly, to whom I instinctively felt
+that she would not very tenderly incline. While I was yet new at Doctor
+Strong’s, she made several excursions over to Canterbury to see me, and
+always at unseasonable hours: with the view, I suppose, of taking me by
+surprise. But, finding me well employed, and bearing a good character,
+and hearing on all hands that I rose fast in the school, she soon
+discontinued these visits. I saw her on a Saturday, every third or
+fourth week, when I went over to Dover for a treat; and I saw Mr. Dick
+every alternate Wednesday, when he arrived by stage-coach at noon, to
+stay until next morning.
+
+On these occasions Mr. Dick never travelled without a leathern
+writing-desk, containing a supply of stationery and the Memorial; in
+relation to which document he had a notion that time was beginning to
+press now, and that it really must be got out of hand.
+
+Mr. Dick was very partial to gingerbread. To render his visits the more
+agreeable, my aunt had instructed me to open a credit for him at a cake
+shop, which was hampered with the stipulation that he should not be
+served with more than one shilling’s-worth in the course of any one day.
+This, and the reference of all his little bills at the county inn where
+he slept, to my aunt, before they were paid, induced me to suspect that
+he was only allowed to rattle his money, and not to spend it. I found
+on further investigation that this was so, or at least there was an
+agreement between him and my aunt that he should account to her for
+all his disbursements. As he had no idea of deceiving her, and always
+desired to please her, he was thus made chary of launching into expense.
+On this point, as well as on all other possible points, Mr. Dick was
+convinced that my aunt was the wisest and most wonderful of women; as he
+repeatedly told me with infinite secrecy, and always in a whisper.
+
+‘Trotwood,’ said Mr. Dick, with an air of mystery, after imparting this
+confidence to me, one Wednesday; ‘who’s the man that hides near our
+house and frightens her?’
+
+‘Frightens my aunt, sir?’
+
+Mr. Dick nodded. ‘I thought nothing would have frightened her,’ he said,
+‘for she’s--’ here he whispered softly, ‘don’t mention it--the wisest
+and most wonderful of women.’ Having said which, he drew back, to
+observe the effect which this description of her made upon me.
+
+‘The first time he came,’ said Mr. Dick, ‘was--let me see--sixteen
+hundred and forty-nine was the date of King Charles’s execution. I think
+you said sixteen hundred and forty-nine?’
+
+‘Yes, sir.’
+
+‘I don’t know how it can be,’ said Mr. Dick, sorely puzzled and shaking
+his head. ‘I don’t think I am as old as that.’
+
+‘Was it in that year that the man appeared, sir?’ I asked.
+
+‘Why, really’ said Mr. Dick, ‘I don’t see how it can have been in that
+year, Trotwood. Did you get that date out of history?’
+
+‘Yes, sir.’
+
+‘I suppose history never lies, does it?’ said Mr. Dick, with a gleam of
+hope.
+
+‘Oh dear, no, sir!’ I replied, most decisively. I was ingenuous and
+young, and I thought so.
+
+‘I can’t make it out,’ said Mr. Dick, shaking his head. ‘There’s
+something wrong, somewhere. However, it was very soon after the mistake
+was made of putting some of the trouble out of King Charles’s head into
+my head, that the man first came. I was walking out with Miss Trotwood
+after tea, just at dark, and there he was, close to our house.’
+
+‘Walking about?’ I inquired.
+
+‘Walking about?’ repeated Mr. Dick. ‘Let me see, I must recollect a bit.
+N-no, no; he was not walking about.’
+
+I asked, as the shortest way to get at it, what he WAS doing.
+
+‘Well, he wasn’t there at all,’ said Mr. Dick, ‘until he came up behind
+her, and whispered. Then she turned round and fainted, and I stood still
+and looked at him, and he walked away; but that he should have
+been hiding ever since (in the ground or somewhere), is the most
+extraordinary thing!’
+
+‘HAS he been hiding ever since?’ I asked.
+
+‘To be sure he has,’ retorted Mr. Dick, nodding his head gravely. ‘Never
+came out, till last night! We were walking last night, and he came up
+behind her again, and I knew him again.’
+
+‘And did he frighten my aunt again?’
+
+‘All of a shiver,’ said Mr. Dick, counterfeiting that affection and
+making his teeth chatter. ‘Held by the palings. Cried. But, Trotwood,
+come here,’ getting me close to him, that he might whisper very softly;
+‘why did she give him money, boy, in the moonlight?’
+
+‘He was a beggar, perhaps.’
+
+Mr. Dick shook his head, as utterly renouncing the suggestion; and
+having replied a great many times, and with great confidence, ‘No
+beggar, no beggar, no beggar, sir!’ went on to say, that from his window
+he had afterwards, and late at night, seen my aunt give this person
+money outside the garden rails in the moonlight, who then slunk
+away--into the ground again, as he thought probable--and was seen no
+more: while my aunt came hurriedly and secretly back into the house, and
+had, even that morning, been quite different from her usual self; which
+preyed on Mr. Dick’s mind.
+
+I had not the least belief, in the outset of this story, that the
+unknown was anything but a delusion of Mr. Dick’s, and one of the line
+of that ill-fated Prince who occasioned him so much difficulty; but
+after some reflection I began to entertain the question whether an
+attempt, or threat of an attempt, might have been twice made to take
+poor Mr. Dick himself from under my aunt’s protection, and whether
+my aunt, the strength of whose kind feeling towards him I knew from
+herself, might have been induced to pay a price for his peace and quiet.
+As I was already much attached to Mr. Dick, and very solicitous for his
+welfare, my fears favoured this supposition; and for a long time his
+Wednesday hardly ever came round, without my entertaining a misgiving
+that he would not be on the coach-box as usual. There he always
+appeared, however, grey-headed, laughing, and happy; and he never had
+anything more to tell of the man who could frighten my aunt.
+
+These Wednesdays were the happiest days of Mr. Dick’s life; they were
+far from being the least happy of mine. He soon became known to every
+boy in the school; and though he never took an active part in any game
+but kite-flying, was as deeply interested in all our sports as anyone
+among us. How often have I seen him, intent upon a match at marbles
+or pegtop, looking on with a face of unutterable interest, and hardly
+breathing at the critical times! How often, at hare and hounds, have
+I seen him mounted on a little knoll, cheering the whole field on
+to action, and waving his hat above his grey head, oblivious of King
+Charles the Martyr’s head, and all belonging to it! How many a
+summer hour have I known to be but blissful minutes to him in
+the cricket-field! How many winter days have I seen him, standing
+blue-nosed, in the snow and east wind, looking at the boys going down
+the long slide, and clapping his worsted gloves in rapture!
+
+He was an universal favourite, and his ingenuity in little things was
+transcendent. He could cut oranges into such devices as none of us had
+an idea of. He could make a boat out of anything, from a skewer upwards.
+He could turn cramp-bones into chessmen; fashion Roman chariots from old
+court cards; make spoked wheels out of cotton reels, and bird-cages of
+old wire. But he was greatest of all, perhaps, in the articles of string
+and straw; with which we were all persuaded he could do anything that
+could be done by hands.
+
+Mr. Dick’s renown was not long confined to us. After a few Wednesdays,
+Doctor Strong himself made some inquiries of me about him, and I told
+him all my aunt had told me; which interested the Doctor so much that
+he requested, on the occasion of his next visit, to be presented to him.
+This ceremony I performed; and the Doctor begging Mr. Dick, whensoever
+he should not find me at the coach office, to come on there, and rest
+himself until our morning’s work was over, it soon passed into a custom
+for Mr. Dick to come on as a matter of course, and, if we were a little
+late, as often happened on a Wednesday, to walk about the courtyard,
+waiting for me. Here he made the acquaintance of the Doctor’s beautiful
+young wife (paler than formerly, all this time; more rarely seen by
+me or anyone, I think; and not so gay, but not less beautiful), and so
+became more and more familiar by degrees, until, at last, he would come
+into the school and wait. He always sat in a particular corner, on a
+particular stool, which was called ‘Dick’, after him; here he would sit,
+with his grey head bent forward, attentively listening to whatever might
+be going on, with a profound veneration for the learning he had never
+been able to acquire.
+
+This veneration Mr. Dick extended to the Doctor, whom he thought the
+most subtle and accomplished philosopher of any age. It was long before
+Mr. Dick ever spoke to him otherwise than bareheaded; and even when he
+and the Doctor had struck up quite a friendship, and would walk together
+by the hour, on that side of the courtyard which was known among us as
+The Doctor’s Walk, Mr. Dick would pull off his hat at intervals to show
+his respect for wisdom and knowledge. How it ever came about that the
+Doctor began to read out scraps of the famous Dictionary, in these
+walks, I never knew; perhaps he felt it all the same, at first, as
+reading to himself. However, it passed into a custom too; and Mr. Dick,
+listening with a face shining with pride and pleasure, in his heart of
+hearts believed the Dictionary to be the most delightful book in the
+world.
+
+As I think of them going up and down before those schoolroom
+windows--the Doctor reading with his complacent smile, an occasional
+flourish of the manuscript, or grave motion of his head; and Mr. Dick
+listening, enchained by interest, with his poor wits calmly wandering
+God knows where, upon the wings of hard words--I think of it as one of
+the pleasantest things, in a quiet way, that I have ever seen. I feel
+as if they might go walking to and fro for ever, and the world might
+somehow be the better for it--as if a thousand things it makes a noise
+about, were not one half so good for it, or me.
+
+Agnes was one of Mr. Dick’s friends, very soon; and in often coming
+to the house, he made acquaintance with Uriah. The friendship between
+himself and me increased continually, and it was maintained on this odd
+footing: that, while Mr. Dick came professedly to look after me as my
+guardian, he always consulted me in any little matter of doubt that
+arose, and invariably guided himself by my advice; not only having a
+high respect for my native sagacity, but considering that I inherited a
+good deal from my aunt.
+
+One Thursday morning, when I was about to walk with Mr. Dick from the
+hotel to the coach office before going back to school (for we had an
+hour’s school before breakfast), I met Uriah in the street, who reminded
+me of the promise I had made to take tea with himself and his mother:
+adding, with a writhe, ‘But I didn’t expect you to keep it, Master
+Copperfield, we’re so very umble.’
+
+I really had not yet been able to make up my mind whether I liked Uriah
+or detested him; and I was very doubtful about it still, as I stood
+looking him in the face in the street. But I felt it quite an affront to
+be supposed proud, and said I only wanted to be asked.
+
+‘Oh, if that’s all, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah, ‘and it really
+isn’t our umbleness that prevents you, will you come this evening?
+But if it is our umbleness, I hope you won’t mind owning to it, Master
+Copperfield; for we are well aware of our condition.’
+
+I said I would mention it to Mr. Wickfield, and if he approved, as I had
+no doubt he would, I would come with pleasure. So, at six o’clock that
+evening, which was one of the early office evenings, I announced myself
+as ready, to Uriah.
+
+‘Mother will be proud, indeed,’ he said, as we walked away together. ‘Or
+she would be proud, if it wasn’t sinful, Master Copperfield.’
+
+‘Yet you didn’t mind supposing I was proud this morning,’ I returned.
+
+‘Oh dear, no, Master Copperfield!’ returned Uriah. ‘Oh, believe me, no!
+Such a thought never came into my head! I shouldn’t have deemed it at
+all proud if you had thought US too umble for you. Because we are so
+very umble.’
+
+‘Have you been studying much law lately?’ I asked, to change the
+subject.
+
+‘Oh, Master Copperfield,’ he said, with an air of self-denial, ‘my
+reading is hardly to be called study. I have passed an hour or two in
+the evening, sometimes, with Mr. Tidd.’
+
+‘Rather hard, I suppose?’ said I. ‘He is hard to me sometimes,’ returned
+Uriah. ‘But I don’t know what he might be to a gifted person.’
+
+After beating a little tune on his chin as he walked on, with the two
+forefingers of his skeleton right hand, he added:
+
+‘There are expressions, you see, Master Copperfield--Latin words
+and terms--in Mr. Tidd, that are trying to a reader of my umble
+attainments.’
+
+‘Would you like to be taught Latin?’ I said briskly. ‘I will teach it
+you with pleasure, as I learn it.’
+
+‘Oh, thank you, Master Copperfield,’ he answered, shaking his head. ‘I
+am sure it’s very kind of you to make the offer, but I am much too umble
+to accept it.’
+
+‘What nonsense, Uriah!’
+
+‘Oh, indeed you must excuse me, Master Copperfield! I am greatly
+obliged, and I should like it of all things, I assure you; but I am far
+too umble. There are people enough to tread upon me in my lowly state,
+without my doing outrage to their feelings by possessing learning.
+Learning ain’t for me. A person like myself had better not aspire. If he
+is to get on in life, he must get on umbly, Master Copperfield!’
+
+I never saw his mouth so wide, or the creases in his cheeks so deep, as
+when he delivered himself of these sentiments: shaking his head all the
+time, and writhing modestly.
+
+‘I think you are wrong, Uriah,’ I said. ‘I dare say there are several
+things that I could teach you, if you would like to learn them.’
+
+‘Oh, I don’t doubt that, Master Copperfield,’ he answered; ‘not in the
+least. But not being umble yourself, you don’t judge well, perhaps, for
+them that are. I won’t provoke my betters with knowledge, thank you. I’m
+much too umble. Here is my umble dwelling, Master Copperfield!’
+
+We entered a low, old-fashioned room, walked straight into from the
+street, and found there Mrs. Heep, who was the dead image of Uriah, only
+short. She received me with the utmost humility, and apologized to me
+for giving her son a kiss, observing that, lowly as they were, they
+had their natural affections, which they hoped would give no offence to
+anyone. It was a perfectly decent room, half parlour and half kitchen,
+but not at all a snug room. The tea-things were set upon the table, and
+the kettle was boiling on the hob. There was a chest of drawers with an
+escritoire top, for Uriah to read or write at of an evening; there was
+Uriah’s blue bag lying down and vomiting papers; there was a company of
+Uriah’s books commanded by Mr. Tidd; there was a corner cupboard: and
+there were the usual articles of furniture. I don’t remember that any
+individual object had a bare, pinched, spare look; but I do remember
+that the whole place had.
+
+It was perhaps a part of Mrs. Heep’s humility, that she still wore
+weeds. Notwithstanding the lapse of time that had occurred since Mr.
+Heep’s decease, she still wore weeds. I think there was some compromise
+in the cap; but otherwise she was as weedy as in the early days of her
+mourning.
+
+‘This is a day to be remembered, my Uriah, I am sure,’ said Mrs. Heep,
+making the tea, ‘when Master Copperfield pays us a visit.’
+
+‘I said you’d think so, mother,’ said Uriah.
+
+‘If I could have wished father to remain among us for any reason,’ said
+Mrs. Heep, ‘it would have been, that he might have known his company
+this afternoon.’
+
+I felt embarrassed by these compliments; but I was sensible, too, of
+being entertained as an honoured guest, and I thought Mrs. Heep an
+agreeable woman.
+
+‘My Uriah,’ said Mrs. Heep, ‘has looked forward to this, sir, a long
+while. He had his fears that our umbleness stood in the way, and I
+joined in them myself. Umble we are, umble we have been, umble we shall
+ever be,’ said Mrs. Heep.
+
+‘I am sure you have no occasion to be so, ma’am,’ I said, ‘unless you
+like.’
+
+‘Thank you, sir,’ retorted Mrs. Heep. ‘We know our station and are
+thankful in it.’
+
+I found that Mrs. Heep gradually got nearer to me, and that Uriah
+gradually got opposite to me, and that they respectfully plied me
+with the choicest of the eatables on the table. There was nothing
+particularly choice there, to be sure; but I took the will for the deed,
+and felt that they were very attentive. Presently they began to talk
+about aunts, and then I told them about mine; and about fathers and
+mothers, and then I told them about mine; and then Mrs. Heep began to
+talk about fathers-in-law, and then I began to tell her about mine--but
+stopped, because my aunt had advised me to observe a silence on that
+subject. A tender young cork, however, would have had no more chance
+against a pair of corkscrews, or a tender young tooth against a pair of
+dentists, or a little shuttlecock against two battledores, than I had
+against Uriah and Mrs. Heep. They did just what they liked with me; and
+wormed things out of me that I had no desire to tell, with a certainty
+I blush to think of, the more especially, as in my juvenile frankness, I
+took some credit to myself for being so confidential and felt that I was
+quite the patron of my two respectful entertainers.
+
+They were very fond of one another: that was certain. I take it, that
+had its effect upon me, as a touch of nature; but the skill with which
+the one followed up whatever the other said, was a touch of art which I
+was still less proof against. When there was nothing more to be got
+out of me about myself (for on the Murdstone and Grinby life, and on my
+journey, I was dumb), they began about Mr. Wickfield and Agnes. Uriah
+threw the ball to Mrs. Heep, Mrs. Heep caught it and threw it back to
+Uriah, Uriah kept it up a little while, then sent it back to Mrs. Heep,
+and so they went on tossing it about until I had no idea who had got it,
+and was quite bewildered. The ball itself was always changing too. Now
+it was Mr. Wickfield, now Agnes, now the excellence of Mr. Wickfield,
+now my admiration of Agnes; now the extent of Mr. Wickfield’s business
+and resources, now our domestic life after dinner; now, the wine that
+Mr. Wickfield took, the reason why he took it, and the pity that it was
+he took so much; now one thing, now another, then everything at once;
+and all the time, without appearing to speak very often, or to do
+anything but sometimes encourage them a little, for fear they should be
+overcome by their humility and the honour of my company, I found myself
+perpetually letting out something or other that I had no business to
+let out and seeing the effect of it in the twinkling of Uriah’s dinted
+nostrils.
+
+I had begun to be a little uncomfortable, and to wish myself well out
+of the visit, when a figure coming down the street passed the door--it
+stood open to air the room, which was warm, the weather being close for
+the time of year--came back again, looked in, and walked in, exclaiming
+loudly, ‘Copperfield! Is it possible?’
+
+It was Mr. Micawber! It was Mr. Micawber, with his eye-glass, and
+his walking-stick, and his shirt-collar, and his genteel air, and the
+condescending roll in his voice, all complete!
+
+‘My dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, putting out his hand, ‘this is
+indeed a meeting which is calculated to impress the mind with a sense
+of the instability and uncertainty of all human--in short, it is a most
+extraordinary meeting. Walking along the street, reflecting upon the
+probability of something turning up (of which I am at present rather
+sanguine), I find a young but valued friend turn up, who is connected
+with the most eventful period of my life; I may say, with the
+turning-point of my existence. Copperfield, my dear fellow, how do you
+do?’
+
+I cannot say--I really cannot say--that I was glad to see Mr. Micawber
+there; but I was glad to see him too, and shook hands with him,
+heartily, inquiring how Mrs. Micawber was.
+
+‘Thank you,’ said Mr. Micawber, waving his hand as of old, and settling
+his chin in his shirt-collar. ‘She is tolerably convalescent. The twins
+no longer derive their sustenance from Nature’s founts--in short,’ said
+Mr. Micawber, in one of his bursts of confidence, ‘they are weaned--and
+Mrs. Micawber is, at present, my travelling companion. She will be
+rejoiced, Copperfield, to renew her acquaintance with one who has
+proved himself in all respects a worthy minister at the sacred altar of
+friendship.’
+
+I said I should be delighted to see her.
+
+‘You are very good,’ said Mr. Micawber.
+
+Mr. Micawber then smiled, settled his chin again, and looked about him.
+
+‘I have discovered my friend Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber genteelly,
+and without addressing himself particularly to anyone, ‘not in solitude,
+but partaking of a social meal in company with a widow lady, and one who
+is apparently her offspring--in short,’ said Mr. Micawber, in another
+of his bursts of confidence, ‘her son. I shall esteem it an honour to be
+presented.’
+
+I could do no less, under these circumstances, than make Mr. Micawber
+known to Uriah Heep and his mother; which I accordingly did. As they
+abased themselves before him, Mr. Micawber took a seat, and waved his
+hand in his most courtly manner.
+
+‘Any friend of my friend Copperfield’s,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘has a
+personal claim upon myself.’
+
+‘We are too umble, sir,’ said Mrs. Heep, ‘my son and me, to be the
+friends of Master Copperfield. He has been so good as take his tea with
+us, and we are thankful to him for his company, also to you, sir, for
+your notice.’
+
+‘Ma’am,’ returned Mr. Micawber, with a bow, ‘you are very obliging: and
+what are you doing, Copperfield? Still in the wine trade?’
+
+I was excessively anxious to get Mr. Micawber away; and replied, with my
+hat in my hand, and a very red face, I have no doubt, that I was a pupil
+at Doctor Strong’s.
+
+‘A pupil?’ said Mr. Micawber, raising his eyebrows. ‘I am extremely
+happy to hear it. Although a mind like my friend Copperfield’s’--to
+Uriah and Mrs. Heep--‘does not require that cultivation which, without
+his knowledge of men and things, it would require, still it is a rich
+soil teeming with latent vegetation--in short,’ said Mr. Micawber,
+smiling, in another burst of confidence, ‘it is an intellect capable of
+getting up the classics to any extent.’
+
+Uriah, with his long hands slowly twining over one another, made a
+ghastly writhe from the waist upwards, to express his concurrence in
+this estimation of me.
+
+‘Shall we go and see Mrs. Micawber, sir?’ I said, to get Mr. Micawber
+away.
+
+‘If you will do her that favour, Copperfield,’ replied Mr. Micawber,
+rising. ‘I have no scruple in saying, in the presence of our friends
+here, that I am a man who has, for some years, contended against the
+pressure of pecuniary difficulties.’ I knew he was certain to say
+something of this kind; he always would be so boastful about his
+difficulties. ‘Sometimes I have risen superior to my difficulties.
+Sometimes my difficulties have--in short, have floored me. There have
+been times when I have administered a succession of facers to them;
+there have been times when they have been too many for me, and I have
+given in, and said to Mrs. Micawber, in the words of Cato, “Plato, thou
+reasonest well. It’s all up now. I can show fight no more.” But at no
+time of my life,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘have I enjoyed a higher degree of
+satisfaction than in pouring my griefs (if I may describe difficulties,
+chiefly arising out of warrants of attorney and promissory notes at two
+and four months, by that word) into the bosom of my friend Copperfield.’
+
+Mr. Micawber closed this handsome tribute by saying, ‘Mr. Heep! Good
+evening. Mrs. Heep! Your servant,’ and then walking out with me in his
+most fashionable manner, making a good deal of noise on the pavement
+with his shoes, and humming a tune as we went.
+
+It was a little inn where Mr. Micawber put up, and he occupied a little
+room in it, partitioned off from the commercial room, and strongly
+flavoured with tobacco-smoke. I think it was over the kitchen, because
+a warm greasy smell appeared to come up through the chinks in the floor,
+and there was a flabby perspiration on the walls. I know it was near the
+bar, on account of the smell of spirits and jingling of glasses. Here,
+recumbent on a small sofa, underneath a picture of a race-horse, with
+her head close to the fire, and her feet pushing the mustard off the
+dumb-waiter at the other end of the room, was Mrs. Micawber, to whom Mr.
+Micawber entered first, saying, ‘My dear, allow me to introduce to you a
+pupil of Doctor Strong’s.’
+
+I noticed, by the by, that although Mr. Micawber was just as much
+confused as ever about my age and standing, he always remembered, as a
+genteel thing, that I was a pupil of Doctor Strong’s.
+
+Mrs. Micawber was amazed, but very glad to see me. I was very glad to
+see her too, and, after an affectionate greeting on both sides, sat down
+on the small sofa near her.
+
+‘My dear,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘if you will mention to Copperfield what
+our present position is, which I have no doubt he will like to know, I
+will go and look at the paper the while, and see whether anything turns
+up among the advertisements.’
+
+‘I thought you were at Plymouth, ma’am,’ I said to Mrs. Micawber, as he
+went out.
+
+‘My dear Master Copperfield,’ she replied, ‘we went to Plymouth.’
+
+‘To be on the spot,’ I hinted.
+
+‘Just so,’ said Mrs. Micawber. ‘To be on the spot. But, the truth is,
+talent is not wanted in the Custom House. The local influence of my
+family was quite unavailing to obtain any employment in that department,
+for a man of Mr. Micawber’s abilities. They would rather NOT have a man
+of Mr. Micawber’s abilities. He would only show the deficiency of the
+others. Apart from which,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘I will not disguise
+from you, my dear Master Copperfield, that when that branch of my
+family which is settled in Plymouth, became aware that Mr. Micawber was
+accompanied by myself, and by little Wilkins and his sister, and by the
+twins, they did not receive him with that ardour which he might have
+expected, being so newly released from captivity. In fact,’ said Mrs.
+Micawber, lowering her voice,--‘this is between ourselves--our reception
+was cool.’
+
+‘Dear me!’ I said.
+
+‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Micawber. ‘It is truly painful to contemplate mankind
+in such an aspect, Master Copperfield, but our reception was, decidedly,
+cool. There is no doubt about it. In fact, that branch of my family
+which is settled in Plymouth became quite personal to Mr. Micawber,
+before we had been there a week.’
+
+I said, and thought, that they ought to be ashamed of themselves.
+
+‘Still, so it was,’ continued Mrs. Micawber. ‘Under such circumstances,
+what could a man of Mr. Micawber’s spirit do? But one obvious course
+was left. To borrow, of that branch of my family, the money to return to
+London, and to return at any sacrifice.’
+
+‘Then you all came back again, ma’am?’ I said.
+
+‘We all came back again,’ replied Mrs. Micawber. ‘Since then, I have
+consulted other branches of my family on the course which it is most
+expedient for Mr. Micawber to take--for I maintain that he must take
+some course, Master Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, argumentatively.
+‘It is clear that a family of six, not including a domestic, cannot live
+upon air.’
+
+‘Certainly, ma’am,’ said I.
+
+‘The opinion of those other branches of my family,’ pursued Mrs.
+Micawber, ‘is, that Mr. Micawber should immediately turn his attention
+to coals.’
+
+‘To what, ma’am?’
+
+‘To coals,’ said Mrs. Micawber. ‘To the coal trade. Mr. Micawber was
+induced to think, on inquiry, that there might be an opening for a
+man of his talent in the Medway Coal Trade. Then, as Mr. Micawber very
+properly said, the first step to be taken clearly was, to come and see
+the Medway. Which we came and saw. I say “we”, Master Copperfield; for
+I never will,’ said Mrs. Micawber with emotion, ‘I never will desert Mr.
+Micawber.’
+
+I murmured my admiration and approbation.
+
+‘We came,’ repeated Mrs. Micawber, ‘and saw the Medway. My opinion of
+the coal trade on that river is, that it may require talent, but that
+it certainly requires capital. Talent, Mr. Micawber has; capital, Mr.
+Micawber has not. We saw, I think, the greater part of the Medway; and
+that is my individual conclusion. Being so near here, Mr. Micawber was
+of opinion that it would be rash not to come on, and see the Cathedral.
+Firstly, on account of its being so well worth seeing, and our never
+having seen it; and secondly, on account of the great probability of
+something turning up in a cathedral town. We have been here,’ said Mrs.
+Micawber, ‘three days. Nothing has, as yet, turned up; and it may
+not surprise you, my dear Master Copperfield, so much as it would a
+stranger, to know that we are at present waiting for a remittance from
+London, to discharge our pecuniary obligations at this hotel. Until the
+arrival of that remittance,’ said Mrs. Micawber with much feeling, ‘I am
+cut off from my home (I allude to lodgings in Pentonville), from my boy
+and girl, and from my twins.’
+
+I felt the utmost sympathy for Mr. and Mrs. Micawber in this anxious
+extremity, and said as much to Mr. Micawber, who now returned: adding
+that I only wished I had money enough, to lend them the amount they
+needed. Mr. Micawber’s answer expressed the disturbance of his mind. He
+said, shaking hands with me, ‘Copperfield, you are a true friend; but
+when the worst comes to the worst, no man is without a friend who is
+possessed of shaving materials.’ At this dreadful hint Mrs. Micawber
+threw her arms round Mr. Micawber’s neck and entreated him to be calm.
+He wept; but so far recovered, almost immediately, as to ring the bell
+for the waiter, and bespeak a hot kidney pudding and a plate of shrimps
+for breakfast in the morning.
+
+When I took my leave of them, they both pressed me so much to come and
+dine before they went away, that I could not refuse. But, as I knew I
+could not come next day, when I should have a good deal to prepare in
+the evening, Mr. Micawber arranged that he would call at Doctor Strong’s
+in the course of the morning (having a presentiment that the remittance
+would arrive by that post), and propose the day after, if it would suit
+me better. Accordingly I was called out of school next forenoon, and
+found Mr. Micawber in the parlour; who had called to say that the dinner
+would take place as proposed. When I asked him if the remittance had
+come, he pressed my hand and departed.
+
+As I was looking out of window that same evening, it surprised me, and
+made me rather uneasy, to see Mr. Micawber and Uriah Heep walk past, arm
+in arm: Uriah humbly sensible of the honour that was done him, and Mr.
+Micawber taking a bland delight in extending his patronage to Uriah. But
+I was still more surprised, when I went to the little hotel next day at
+the appointed dinner-hour, which was four o’clock, to find, from what
+Mr. Micawber said, that he had gone home with Uriah, and had drunk
+brandy-and-water at Mrs. Heep’s.
+
+‘And I’ll tell you what, my dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘your
+friend Heep is a young fellow who might be attorney-general. If I had
+known that young man, at the period when my difficulties came to a
+crisis, all I can say is, that I believe my creditors would have been a
+great deal better managed than they were.’
+
+I hardly understood how this could have been, seeing that Mr. Micawber
+had paid them nothing at all as it was; but I did not like to
+ask. Neither did I like to say, that I hoped he had not been too
+communicative to Uriah; or to inquire if they had talked much about me.
+I was afraid of hurting Mr. Micawber’s feelings, or, at all events, Mrs.
+Micawber’s, she being very sensitive; but I was uncomfortable about it,
+too, and often thought about it afterwards.
+
+We had a beautiful little dinner. Quite an elegant dish of fish; the
+kidney-end of a loin of veal, roasted; fried sausage-meat; a partridge,
+and a pudding. There was wine, and there was strong ale; and after
+dinner Mrs. Micawber made us a bowl of hot punch with her own hands.
+
+Mr. Micawber was uncommonly convivial. I never saw him such good
+company. He made his face shine with the punch, so that it looked as if
+it had been varnished all over. He got cheerfully sentimental about
+the town, and proposed success to it; observing that Mrs. Micawber and
+himself had been made extremely snug and comfortable there and that he
+never should forget the agreeable hours they had passed in Canterbury.
+He proposed me afterwards; and he, and Mrs. Micawber, and I, took a
+review of our past acquaintance, in the course of which we sold the
+property all over again. Then I proposed Mrs. Micawber: or, at least,
+said, modestly, ‘If you’ll allow me, Mrs. Micawber, I shall now have
+the pleasure of drinking your health, ma’am.’ On which Mr. Micawber
+delivered an eulogium on Mrs. Micawber’s character, and said she
+had ever been his guide, philosopher, and friend, and that he would
+recommend me, when I came to a marrying time of life, to marry such
+another woman, if such another woman could be found.
+
+As the punch disappeared, Mr. Micawber became still more friendly and
+convivial. Mrs. Micawber’s spirits becoming elevated, too, we sang ‘Auld
+Lang Syne’. When we came to ‘Here’s a hand, my trusty frere’, we all
+joined hands round the table; and when we declared we would ‘take a
+right gude Willie Waught’, and hadn’t the least idea what it meant, we
+were really affected.
+
+In a word, I never saw anybody so thoroughly jovial as Mr. Micawber
+was, down to the very last moment of the evening, when I took a hearty
+farewell of himself and his amiable wife. Consequently, I was not
+prepared, at seven o’clock next morning, to receive the following
+communication, dated half past nine in the evening; a quarter of an hour
+after I had left him:--
+
+‘My DEAR YOUNG FRIEND,
+
+‘The die is cast--all is over. Hiding the ravages of care with a sickly
+mask of mirth, I have not informed you, this evening, that there is no
+hope of the remittance! Under these circumstances, alike humiliating to
+endure, humiliating to contemplate, and humiliating to relate, I have
+discharged the pecuniary liability contracted at this establishment,
+by giving a note of hand, made payable fourteen days after date, at
+my residence, Pentonville, London. When it becomes due, it will not be
+taken up. The result is destruction. The bolt is impending, and the tree
+must fall.
+
+‘Let the wretched man who now addresses you, my dear Copperfield, be a
+beacon to you through life. He writes with that intention, and in that
+hope. If he could think himself of so much use, one gleam of day might,
+by possibility, penetrate into the cheerless dungeon of his remaining
+existence--though his longevity is, at present (to say the least of it),
+extremely problematical.
+
+‘This is the last communication, my dear Copperfield, you will ever
+receive
+
+                         ‘From
+
+                              ‘The
+
+                                   ‘Beggared Outcast,
+
+                                        ‘WILKINS MICAWBER.’
+
+
+I was so shocked by the contents of this heart-rending letter, that I
+ran off directly towards the little hotel with the intention of taking
+it on my way to Doctor Strong’s, and trying to soothe Mr. Micawber with
+a word of comfort. But, half-way there, I met the London coach with Mr.
+and Mrs. Micawber up behind; Mr. Micawber, the very picture of tranquil
+enjoyment, smiling at Mrs. Micawber’s conversation, eating walnuts out
+of a paper bag, with a bottle sticking out of his breast pocket. As they
+did not see me, I thought it best, all things considered, not to
+see them. So, with a great weight taken off my mind, I turned into a
+by-street that was the nearest way to school, and felt, upon the whole,
+relieved that they were gone; though I still liked them very much,
+nevertheless.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 18. A RETROSPECT
+
+
+My school-days! The silent gliding on of my existence--the unseen,
+unfelt progress of my life--from childhood up to youth! Let me think,
+as I look back upon that flowing water, now a dry channel overgrown with
+leaves, whether there are any marks along its course, by which I can
+remember how it ran.
+
+A moment, and I occupy my place in the Cathedral, where we all went
+together, every Sunday morning, assembling first at school for that
+purpose. The earthy smell, the sunless air, the sensation of the world
+being shut out, the resounding of the organ through the black and white
+arched galleries and aisles, are wings that take me back, and hold me
+hovering above those days, in a half-sleeping and half-waking dream.
+
+I am not the last boy in the school. I have risen in a few months, over
+several heads. But the first boy seems to me a mighty creature, dwelling
+afar off, whose giddy height is unattainable. Agnes says ‘No,’ but I say
+‘Yes,’ and tell her that she little thinks what stores of knowledge have
+been mastered by the wonderful Being, at whose place she thinks I, even
+I, weak aspirant, may arrive in time. He is not my private friend
+and public patron, as Steerforth was, but I hold him in a reverential
+respect. I chiefly wonder what he’ll be, when he leaves Doctor Strong’s,
+and what mankind will do to maintain any place against him.
+
+But who is this that breaks upon me? This is Miss Shepherd, whom I love.
+
+Miss Shepherd is a boarder at the Misses Nettingalls’ establishment. I
+adore Miss Shepherd. She is a little girl, in a spencer, with a round
+face and curly flaxen hair. The Misses Nettingalls’ young ladies come to
+the Cathedral too. I cannot look upon my book, for I must look upon
+Miss Shepherd. When the choristers chaunt, I hear Miss Shepherd. In the
+service I mentally insert Miss Shepherd’s name--I put her in among the
+Royal Family. At home, in my own room, I am sometimes moved to cry out,
+‘Oh, Miss Shepherd!’ in a transport of love.
+
+For some time, I am doubtful of Miss Shepherd’s feelings, but, at
+length, Fate being propitious, we meet at the dancing-school. I have
+Miss Shepherd for my partner. I touch Miss Shepherd’s glove, and feel a
+thrill go up the right arm of my jacket, and come out at my hair. I say
+nothing to Miss Shepherd, but we understand each other. Miss Shepherd
+and myself live but to be united.
+
+Why do I secretly give Miss Shepherd twelve Brazil nuts for a present, I
+wonder? They are not expressive of affection, they are difficult to pack
+into a parcel of any regular shape, they are hard to crack, even in
+room doors, and they are oily when cracked; yet I feel that they are
+appropriate to Miss Shepherd. Soft, seedy biscuits, also, I bestow upon
+Miss Shepherd; and oranges innumerable. Once, I kiss Miss Shepherd in
+the cloak-room. Ecstasy! What are my agony and indignation next day,
+when I hear a flying rumour that the Misses Nettingall have stood Miss
+Shepherd in the stocks for turning in her toes!
+
+Miss Shepherd being the one pervading theme and vision of my life, how
+do I ever come to break with her? I can’t conceive. And yet a coolness
+grows between Miss Shepherd and myself. Whispers reach me of Miss
+Shepherd having said she wished I wouldn’t stare so, and having avowed a
+preference for Master Jones--for Jones! a boy of no merit whatever! The
+gulf between me and Miss Shepherd widens. At last, one day, I meet the
+Misses Nettingalls’ establishment out walking. Miss Shepherd makes
+a face as she goes by, and laughs to her companion. All is over. The
+devotion of a life--it seems a life, it is all the same--is at an end;
+Miss Shepherd comes out of the morning service, and the Royal Family
+know her no more.
+
+I am higher in the school, and no one breaks my peace. I am not at all
+polite, now, to the Misses Nettingalls’ young ladies, and shouldn’t
+dote on any of them, if they were twice as many and twenty times as
+beautiful. I think the dancing-school a tiresome affair, and wonder why
+the girls can’t dance by themselves and leave us alone. I am growing
+great in Latin verses, and neglect the laces of my boots. Doctor Strong
+refers to me in public as a promising young scholar. Mr. Dick is wild
+with joy, and my aunt remits me a guinea by the next post.
+
+The shade of a young butcher rises, like the apparition of an armed head
+in Macbeth. Who is this young butcher? He is the terror of the youth
+of Canterbury. There is a vague belief abroad, that the beef suet with
+which he anoints his hair gives him unnatural strength, and that he is
+a match for a man. He is a broad-faced, bull-necked, young butcher, with
+rough red cheeks, an ill-conditioned mind, and an injurious tongue.
+His main use of this tongue, is, to disparage Doctor Strong’s young
+gentlemen. He says, publicly, that if they want anything he’ll give it
+‘em. He names individuals among them (myself included), whom he could
+undertake to settle with one hand, and the other tied behind him. He
+waylays the smaller boys to punch their unprotected heads, and calls
+challenges after me in the open streets. For these sufficient reasons I
+resolve to fight the butcher.
+
+It is a summer evening, down in a green hollow, at the corner of a wall.
+I meet the butcher by appointment. I am attended by a select body of our
+boys; the butcher, by two other butchers, a young publican, and a sweep.
+The preliminaries are adjusted, and the butcher and myself stand face to
+face. In a moment the butcher lights ten thousand candles out of my left
+eyebrow. In another moment, I don’t know where the wall is, or where
+I am, or where anybody is. I hardly know which is myself and which the
+butcher, we are always in such a tangle and tussle, knocking about upon
+the trodden grass. Sometimes I see the butcher, bloody but confident;
+sometimes I see nothing, and sit gasping on my second’s knee; sometimes
+I go in at the butcher madly, and cut my knuckles open against his face,
+without appearing to discompose him at all. At last I awake, very queer
+about the head, as from a giddy sleep, and see the butcher walking off,
+congratulated by the two other butchers and the sweep and publican, and
+putting on his coat as he goes; from which I augur, justly, that the
+victory is his.
+
+I am taken home in a sad plight, and I have beef-steaks put to my eyes,
+and am rubbed with vinegar and brandy, and find a great puffy place
+bursting out on my upper lip, which swells immoderately. For three or
+four days I remain at home, a very ill-looking subject, with a green
+shade over my eyes; and I should be very dull, but that Agnes is a
+sister to me, and condoles with me, and reads to me, and makes the time
+light and happy. Agnes has my confidence completely, always; I tell her
+all about the butcher, and the wrongs he has heaped upon me; she thinks
+I couldn’t have done otherwise than fight the butcher, while she shrinks
+and trembles at my having fought him.
+
+Time has stolen on unobserved, for Adams is not the head-boy in the days
+that are come now, nor has he been this many and many a day. Adams has
+left the school so long, that when he comes back, on a visit to Doctor
+Strong, there are not many there, besides myself, who know him. Adams is
+going to be called to the bar almost directly, and is to be an advocate,
+and to wear a wig. I am surprised to find him a meeker man than I had
+thought, and less imposing in appearance. He has not staggered the world
+yet, either; for it goes on (as well as I can make out) pretty much the
+same as if he had never joined it.
+
+A blank, through which the warriors of poetry and history march on in
+stately hosts that seem to have no end--and what comes next! I am
+the head-boy, now! I look down on the line of boys below me, with a
+condescending interest in such of them as bring to my mind the boy I was
+myself, when I first came there. That little fellow seems to be no part
+of me; I remember him as something left behind upon the road of life--as
+something I have passed, rather than have actually been--and almost
+think of him as of someone else.
+
+And the little girl I saw on that first day at Mr. Wickfield’s, where
+is she? Gone also. In her stead, the perfect likeness of the picture,
+a child likeness no more, moves about the house; and Agnes--my sweet
+sister, as I call her in my thoughts, my counsellor and friend, the
+better angel of the lives of all who come within her calm, good,
+self-denying influence--is quite a woman.
+
+What other changes have come upon me, besides the changes in my growth
+and looks, and in the knowledge I have garnered all this while? I wear
+a gold watch and chain, a ring upon my little finger, and a long-tailed
+coat; and I use a great deal of bear’s grease--which, taken in
+conjunction with the ring, looks bad. Am I in love again? I am. I
+worship the eldest Miss Larkins.
+
+The eldest Miss Larkins is not a little girl. She is a tall, dark,
+black-eyed, fine figure of a woman. The eldest Miss Larkins is not a
+chicken; for the youngest Miss Larkins is not that, and the eldest must
+be three or four years older. Perhaps the eldest Miss Larkins may be
+about thirty. My passion for her is beyond all bounds.
+
+The eldest Miss Larkins knows officers. It is an awful thing to bear. I
+see them speaking to her in the street. I see them cross the way to meet
+her, when her bonnet (she has a bright taste in bonnets) is seen coming
+down the pavement, accompanied by her sister’s bonnet. She laughs and
+talks, and seems to like it. I spend a good deal of my own spare time in
+walking up and down to meet her. If I can bow to her once in the day (I
+know her to bow to, knowing Mr. Larkins), I am happier. I deserve a bow
+now and then. The raging agonies I suffer on the night of the Race Ball,
+where I know the eldest Miss Larkins will be dancing with the military,
+ought to have some compensation, if there be even-handed justice in the
+world.
+
+My passion takes away my appetite, and makes me wear my newest silk
+neckerchief continually. I have no relief but in putting on my best
+clothes, and having my boots cleaned over and over again. I seem, then,
+to be worthier of the eldest Miss Larkins. Everything that belongs to
+her, or is connected with her, is precious to me. Mr. Larkins (a gruff
+old gentleman with a double chin, and one of his eyes immovable in his
+head) is fraught with interest to me. When I can’t meet his daughter,
+I go where I am likely to meet him. To say ‘How do you do, Mr. Larkins?
+Are the young ladies and all the family quite well?’ seems so pointed,
+that I blush.
+
+I think continually about my age. Say I am seventeen, and say that
+seventeen is young for the eldest Miss Larkins, what of that? Besides,
+I shall be one-and-twenty in no time almost. I regularly take walks
+outside Mr. Larkins’s house in the evening, though it cuts me to the
+heart to see the officers go in, or to hear them up in the drawing-room,
+where the eldest Miss Larkins plays the harp. I even walk, on two or
+three occasions, in a sickly, spoony manner, round and round the house
+after the family are gone to bed, wondering which is the eldest Miss
+Larkins’s chamber (and pitching, I dare say now, on Mr. Larkins’s
+instead); wishing that a fire would burst out; that the assembled crowd
+would stand appalled; that I, dashing through them with a ladder, might
+rear it against her window, save her in my arms, go back for something
+she had left behind, and perish in the flames. For I am generally
+disinterested in my love, and think I could be content to make a figure
+before Miss Larkins, and expire.
+
+Generally, but not always. Sometimes brighter visions rise before me.
+When I dress (the occupation of two hours), for a great ball given at
+the Larkins’s (the anticipation of three weeks), I indulge my fancy with
+pleasing images. I picture myself taking courage to make a declaration
+to Miss Larkins. I picture Miss Larkins sinking her head upon my
+shoulder, and saying, ‘Oh, Mr. Copperfield, can I believe my ears!’ I
+picture Mr. Larkins waiting on me next morning, and saying, ‘My dear
+Copperfield, my daughter has told me all. Youth is no objection. Here
+are twenty thousand pounds. Be happy!’ I picture my aunt relenting,
+and blessing us; and Mr. Dick and Doctor Strong being present at the
+marriage ceremony. I am a sensible fellow, I believe--I believe,
+on looking back, I mean--and modest I am sure; but all this goes on
+notwithstanding. I repair to the enchanted house, where there are
+lights, chattering, music, flowers, officers (I am sorry to see), and
+the eldest Miss Larkins, a blaze of beauty. She is dressed in blue, with
+blue flowers in her hair--forget-me-nots--as if SHE had any need to wear
+forget-me-nots. It is the first really grown-up party that I have ever
+been invited to, and I am a little uncomfortable; for I appear not to
+belong to anybody, and nobody appears to have anything to say to me,
+except Mr. Larkins, who asks me how my schoolfellows are, which he
+needn’t do, as I have not come there to be insulted.
+
+But after I have stood in the doorway for some time, and feasted my eyes
+upon the goddess of my heart, she approaches me--she, the eldest Miss
+Larkins!--and asks me pleasantly, if I dance?
+
+I stammer, with a bow, ‘With you, Miss Larkins.’
+
+‘With no one else?’ inquires Miss Larkins.
+
+‘I should have no pleasure in dancing with anyone else.’
+
+Miss Larkins laughs and blushes (or I think she blushes), and says,
+‘Next time but one, I shall be very glad.’
+
+The time arrives. ‘It is a waltz, I think,’ Miss Larkins doubtfully
+observes, when I present myself. ‘Do you waltz? If not, Captain
+Bailey--’
+
+But I do waltz (pretty well, too, as it happens), and I take Miss
+Larkins out. I take her sternly from the side of Captain Bailey. He
+is wretched, I have no doubt; but he is nothing to me. I have been
+wretched, too. I waltz with the eldest Miss Larkins! I don’t know where,
+among whom, or how long. I only know that I swim about in space, with a
+blue angel, in a state of blissful delirium, until I find myself alone
+with her in a little room, resting on a sofa. She admires a flower (pink
+camellia japonica, price half-a-crown), in my button-hole. I give it
+her, and say:
+
+‘I ask an inestimable price for it, Miss Larkins.’
+
+‘Indeed! What is that?’ returns Miss Larkins.
+
+‘A flower of yours, that I may treasure it as a miser does gold.’
+
+‘You’re a bold boy,’ says Miss Larkins. ‘There.’
+
+She gives it me, not displeased; and I put it to my lips, and then into
+my breast. Miss Larkins, laughing, draws her hand through my arm, and
+says, ‘Now take me back to Captain Bailey.’
+
+I am lost in the recollection of this delicious interview, and the
+waltz, when she comes to me again, with a plain elderly gentleman who
+has been playing whist all night, upon her arm, and says:
+
+‘Oh! here is my bold friend! Mr. Chestle wants to know you, Mr.
+Copperfield.’
+
+I feel at once that he is a friend of the family, and am much gratified.
+
+‘I admire your taste, sir,’ says Mr. Chestle. ‘It does you credit. I
+suppose you don’t take much interest in hops; but I am a pretty
+large grower myself; and if you ever like to come over to our
+neighbourhood--neighbourhood of Ashford--and take a run about our
+place,--we shall be glad for you to stop as long as you like.’
+
+I thank Mr. Chestle warmly, and shake hands. I think I am in a happy
+dream. I waltz with the eldest Miss Larkins once again. She says I
+waltz so well! I go home in a state of unspeakable bliss, and waltz in
+imagination, all night long, with my arm round the blue waist of my dear
+divinity. For some days afterwards, I am lost in rapturous reflections;
+but I neither see her in the street, nor when I call. I am imperfectly
+consoled for this disappointment by the sacred pledge, the perished
+flower.
+
+‘Trotwood,’ says Agnes, one day after dinner. ‘Who do you think is going
+to be married tomorrow? Someone you admire.’
+
+‘Not you, I suppose, Agnes?’
+
+‘Not me!’ raising her cheerful face from the music she is copying. ‘Do
+you hear him, Papa?--The eldest Miss Larkins.’
+
+‘To--to Captain Bailey?’ I have just enough power to ask.
+
+‘No; to no Captain. To Mr. Chestle, a hop-grower.’
+
+I am terribly dejected for about a week or two. I take off my ring, I
+wear my worst clothes, I use no bear’s grease, and I frequently lament
+over the late Miss Larkins’s faded flower. Being, by that time, rather
+tired of this kind of life, and having received new provocation from
+the butcher, I throw the flower away, go out with the butcher, and
+gloriously defeat him.
+
+This, and the resumption of my ring, as well as of the bear’s grease
+in moderation, are the last marks I can discern, now, in my progress to
+seventeen.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 19. I LOOK ABOUT ME, AND MAKE A DISCOVERY
+
+
+I am doubtful whether I was at heart glad or sorry, when my school-days
+drew to an end, and the time came for my leaving Doctor Strong’s. I had
+been very happy there, I had a great attachment for the Doctor, and I
+was eminent and distinguished in that little world. For these reasons
+I was sorry to go; but for other reasons, unsubstantial enough, I
+was glad. Misty ideas of being a young man at my own disposal, of
+the importance attaching to a young man at his own disposal, of the
+wonderful things to be seen and done by that magnificent animal, and the
+wonderful effects he could not fail to make upon society, lured me away.
+So powerful were these visionary considerations in my boyish mind, that
+I seem, according to my present way of thinking, to have left school
+without natural regret. The separation has not made the impression on
+me, that other separations have. I try in vain to recall how I felt
+about it, and what its circumstances were; but it is not momentous in my
+recollection. I suppose the opening prospect confused me. I know that my
+juvenile experiences went for little or nothing then; and that life was
+more like a great fairy story, which I was just about to begin to read,
+than anything else.
+
+My aunt and I had held many grave deliberations on the calling to which
+I should be devoted. For a year or more I had endeavoured to find a
+satisfactory answer to her often-repeated question, ‘What I would like
+to be?’ But I had no particular liking, that I could discover, for
+anything. If I could have been inspired with a knowledge of the science
+of navigation, taken the command of a fast-sailing expedition, and gone
+round the world on a triumphant voyage of discovery, I think I might
+have considered myself completely suited. But, in the absence of any
+such miraculous provision, my desire was to apply myself to some pursuit
+that would not lie too heavily upon her purse; and to do my duty in it,
+whatever it might be.
+
+Mr. Dick had regularly assisted at our councils, with a meditative
+and sage demeanour. He never made a suggestion but once; and on that
+occasion (I don’t know what put it in his head), he suddenly proposed
+that I should be ‘a Brazier’. My aunt received this proposal so very
+ungraciously, that he never ventured on a second; but ever afterwards
+confined himself to looking watchfully at her for her suggestions, and
+rattling his money.
+
+‘Trot, I tell you what, my dear,’ said my aunt, one morning in the
+Christmas season when I left school: ‘as this knotty point is still
+unsettled, and as we must not make a mistake in our decision if we can
+help it, I think we had better take a little breathing-time. In the
+meanwhile, you must try to look at it from a new point of view, and not
+as a schoolboy.’
+
+‘I will, aunt.’
+
+‘It has occurred to me,’ pursued my aunt, ‘that a little change, and a
+glimpse of life out of doors, may be useful in helping you to know your
+own mind, and form a cooler judgement. Suppose you were to go down into
+the old part of the country again, for instance, and see that--that
+out-of-the-way woman with the savagest of names,’ said my aunt, rubbing
+her nose, for she could never thoroughly forgive Peggotty for being so
+called.
+
+‘Of all things in the world, aunt, I should like it best!’
+
+‘Well,’ said my aunt, ‘that’s lucky, for I should like it too. But
+it’s natural and rational that you should like it. And I am very
+well persuaded that whatever you do, Trot, will always be natural and
+rational.’
+
+‘I hope so, aunt.’
+
+‘Your sister, Betsey Trotwood,’ said my aunt, ‘would have been as
+natural and rational a girl as ever breathed. You’ll be worthy of her,
+won’t you?’
+
+‘I hope I shall be worthy of YOU, aunt. That will be enough for me.’
+
+‘It’s a mercy that poor dear baby of a mother of yours didn’t live,’
+said my aunt, looking at me approvingly, ‘or she’d have been so vain
+of her boy by this time, that her soft little head would have been
+completely turned, if there was anything of it left to turn.’ (My aunt
+always excused any weakness of her own in my behalf, by transferring it
+in this way to my poor mother.) ‘Bless me, Trotwood, how you do remind
+me of her!’
+
+‘Pleasantly, I hope, aunt?’ said I.
+
+‘He’s as like her, Dick,’ said my aunt, emphatically, ‘he’s as like her,
+as she was that afternoon before she began to fret--bless my heart, he’s
+as like her, as he can look at me out of his two eyes!’
+
+‘Is he indeed?’ said Mr. Dick.
+
+‘And he’s like David, too,’ said my aunt, decisively.
+
+‘He is very like David!’ said Mr. Dick.
+
+‘But what I want you to be, Trot,’ resumed my aunt, ‘--I don’t mean
+physically, but morally; you are very well physically--is, a firm
+fellow. A fine firm fellow, with a will of your own. With resolution,’
+said my aunt, shaking her cap at me, and clenching her hand. ‘With
+determination. With character, Trot--with strength of character that is
+not to be influenced, except on good reason, by anybody, or by anything.
+That’s what I want you to be. That’s what your father and mother might
+both have been, Heaven knows, and been the better for it.’
+
+I intimated that I hoped I should be what she described.
+
+‘That you may begin, in a small way, to have a reliance upon yourself,
+and to act for yourself,’ said my aunt, ‘I shall send you upon your
+trip, alone. I did think, once, of Mr. Dick’s going with you; but, on
+second thoughts, I shall keep him to take care of me.’
+
+Mr. Dick, for a moment, looked a little disappointed; until the honour
+and dignity of having to take care of the most wonderful woman in the
+world, restored the sunshine to his face.
+
+‘Besides,’ said my aunt, ‘there’s the Memorial--’
+
+‘Oh, certainly,’ said Mr. Dick, in a hurry, ‘I intend, Trotwood, to get
+that done immediately--it really must be done immediately! And then it
+will go in, you know--and then--’ said Mr. Dick, after checking himself,
+and pausing a long time, ‘there’ll be a pretty kettle of fish!’
+
+In pursuance of my aunt’s kind scheme, I was shortly afterwards fitted
+out with a handsome purse of money, and a portmanteau, and tenderly
+dismissed upon my expedition. At parting, my aunt gave me some good
+advice, and a good many kisses; and said that as her object was that I
+should look about me, and should think a little, she would recommend me
+to stay a few days in London, if I liked it, either on my way down into
+Suffolk, or in coming back. In a word, I was at liberty to do what I
+would, for three weeks or a month; and no other conditions were imposed
+upon my freedom than the before-mentioned thinking and looking about me,
+and a pledge to write three times a week and faithfully report myself.
+
+I went to Canterbury first, that I might take leave of Agnes and Mr.
+Wickfield (my old room in whose house I had not yet relinquished), and
+also of the good Doctor. Agnes was very glad to see me, and told me that
+the house had not been like itself since I had left it.
+
+‘I am sure I am not like myself when I am away,’ said I. ‘I seem to
+want my right hand, when I miss you. Though that’s not saying much; for
+there’s no head in my right hand, and no heart. Everyone who knows you,
+consults with you, and is guided by you, Agnes.’
+
+‘Everyone who knows me, spoils me, I believe,’ she answered, smiling.
+
+‘No. It’s because you are like no one else. You are so good, and so
+sweet-tempered. You have such a gentle nature, and you are always
+right.’
+
+‘You talk,’ said Agnes, breaking into a pleasant laugh, as she sat at
+work, ‘as if I were the late Miss Larkins.’
+
+‘Come! It’s not fair to abuse my confidence,’ I answered, reddening at
+the recollection of my blue enslaver. ‘But I shall confide in you, just
+the same, Agnes. I can never grow out of that. Whenever I fall into
+trouble, or fall in love, I shall always tell you, if you’ll let
+me--even when I come to fall in love in earnest.’
+
+‘Why, you have always been in earnest!’ said Agnes, laughing again.
+
+‘Oh! that was as a child, or a schoolboy,’ said I, laughing in my turn,
+not without being a little shame-faced. ‘Times are altering now, and I
+suppose I shall be in a terrible state of earnestness one day or other.
+My wonder is, that you are not in earnest yourself, by this time,
+Agnes.’
+
+Agnes laughed again, and shook her head.
+
+‘Oh, I know you are not!’ said I, ‘because if you had been you would
+have told me. Or at least’--for I saw a faint blush in her face, ‘you
+would have let me find it out for myself. But there is no one that I
+know of, who deserves to love you, Agnes. Someone of a nobler character,
+and more worthy altogether than anyone I have ever seen here, must rise
+up, before I give my consent. In the time to come, I shall have a wary
+eye on all admirers; and shall exact a great deal from the successful
+one, I assure you.’
+
+We had gone on, so far, in a mixture of confidential jest and earnest,
+that had long grown naturally out of our familiar relations, begun as
+mere children. But Agnes, now suddenly lifting up her eyes to mine, and
+speaking in a different manner, said:
+
+‘Trotwood, there is something that I want to ask you, and that I may not
+have another opportunity of asking for a long time, perhaps--something
+I would ask, I think, of no one else. Have you observed any gradual
+alteration in Papa?’
+
+I had observed it, and had often wondered whether she had too. I must
+have shown as much, now, in my face; for her eyes were in a moment cast
+down, and I saw tears in them.
+
+‘Tell me what it is,’ she said, in a low voice.
+
+‘I think--shall I be quite plain, Agnes, liking him so much?’
+
+‘Yes,’ she said.
+
+‘I think he does himself no good by the habit that has increased upon
+him since I first came here. He is often very nervous--or I fancy so.’
+
+‘It is not fancy,’ said Agnes, shaking her head.
+
+‘His hand trembles, his speech is not plain, and his eyes look wild. I
+have remarked that at those times, and when he is least like himself, he
+is most certain to be wanted on some business.’
+
+‘By Uriah,’ said Agnes.
+
+‘Yes; and the sense of being unfit for it, or of not having understood
+it, or of having shown his condition in spite of himself, seems to make
+him so uneasy, that next day he is worse, and next day worse, and so he
+becomes jaded and haggard. Do not be alarmed by what I say, Agnes, but
+in this state I saw him, only the other evening, lay down his head upon
+his desk, and shed tears like a child.’
+
+Her hand passed softly before my lips while I was yet speaking, and in
+a moment she had met her father at the door of the room, and was hanging
+on his shoulder. The expression of her face, as they both looked towards
+me, I felt to be very touching. There was such deep fondness for him,
+and gratitude to him for all his love and care, in her beautiful look;
+and there was such a fervent appeal to me to deal tenderly by him, even
+in my inmost thoughts, and to let no harsh construction find any place
+against him; she was, at once, so proud of him and devoted to him, yet
+so compassionate and sorry, and so reliant upon me to be so, too; that
+nothing she could have said would have expressed more to me, or moved me
+more.
+
+We were to drink tea at the Doctor’s. We went there at the usual hour;
+and round the study fireside found the Doctor, and his young wife, and
+her mother. The Doctor, who made as much of my going away as if I were
+going to China, received me as an honoured guest; and called for a log
+of wood to be thrown on the fire, that he might see the face of his old
+pupil reddening in the blaze.
+
+‘I shall not see many more new faces in Trotwood’s stead, Wickfield,’
+said the Doctor, warming his hands; ‘I am getting lazy, and want ease.
+I shall relinquish all my young people in another six months, and lead a
+quieter life.’
+
+‘You have said so, any time these ten years, Doctor,’ Mr. Wickfield
+answered.
+
+‘But now I mean to do it,’ returned the Doctor. ‘My first master will
+succeed me--I am in earnest at last--so you’ll soon have to arrange our
+contracts, and to bind us firmly to them, like a couple of knaves.’
+
+‘And to take care,’ said Mr. Wickfield, ‘that you’re not imposed on, eh?
+As you certainly would be, in any contract you should make for yourself.
+Well! I am ready. There are worse tasks than that, in my calling.’
+
+‘I shall have nothing to think of then,’ said the Doctor, with a smile,
+‘but my Dictionary; and this other contract-bargain--Annie.’
+
+As Mr. Wickfield glanced towards her, sitting at the tea table by Agnes,
+she seemed to me to avoid his look with such unwonted hesitation and
+timidity, that his attention became fixed upon her, as if something were
+suggested to his thoughts.
+
+‘There is a post come in from India, I observe,’ he said, after a short
+silence.
+
+‘By the by! and letters from Mr. Jack Maldon!’ said the Doctor.
+
+‘Indeed!’ ‘Poor dear Jack!’ said Mrs. Markleham, shaking her head. ‘That
+trying climate!--like living, they tell me, on a sand-heap, underneath
+a burning-glass! He looked strong, but he wasn’t. My dear Doctor, it was
+his spirit, not his constitution, that he ventured on so boldly. Annie,
+my dear, I am sure you must perfectly recollect that your cousin
+never was strong--not what can be called ROBUST, you know,’ said Mrs.
+Markleham, with emphasis, and looking round upon us generally, ‘--from
+the time when my daughter and himself were children together, and
+walking about, arm-in-arm, the livelong day.’
+
+Annie, thus addressed, made no reply.
+
+‘Do I gather from what you say, ma’am, that Mr. Maldon is ill?’ asked
+Mr. Wickfield.
+
+‘Ill!’ replied the Old Soldier. ‘My dear sir, he’s all sorts of things.’
+
+‘Except well?’ said Mr. Wickfield.
+
+‘Except well, indeed!’ said the Old Soldier. ‘He has had dreadful
+strokes of the sun, no doubt, and jungle fevers and agues, and every
+kind of thing you can mention. As to his liver,’ said the Old Soldier
+resignedly, ‘that, of course, he gave up altogether, when he first went
+out!’
+
+‘Does he say all this?’ asked Mr. Wickfield.
+
+‘Say? My dear sir,’ returned Mrs. Markleham, shaking her head and her
+fan, ‘you little know my poor Jack Maldon when you ask that question.
+Say? Not he. You might drag him at the heels of four wild horses first.’
+
+‘Mama!’ said Mrs. Strong.
+
+‘Annie, my dear,’ returned her mother, ‘once for all, I must really beg
+that you will not interfere with me, unless it is to confirm what I say.
+You know as well as I do that your cousin Maldon would be dragged at the
+heels of any number of wild horses--why should I confine myself to four!
+I WON’T confine myself to four--eight, sixteen, two-and-thirty, rather
+than say anything calculated to overturn the Doctor’s plans.’
+
+‘Wickfield’s plans,’ said the Doctor, stroking his face, and looking
+penitently at his adviser. ‘That is to say, our joint plans for him. I
+said myself, abroad or at home.’
+
+‘And I said’ added Mr. Wickfield gravely, ‘abroad. I was the means of
+sending him abroad. It’s my responsibility.’
+
+‘Oh! Responsibility!’ said the Old Soldier. ‘Everything was done for
+the best, my dear Mr. Wickfield; everything was done for the kindest and
+best, we know. But if the dear fellow can’t live there, he can’t live
+there. And if he can’t live there, he’ll die there, sooner than he’ll
+overturn the Doctor’s plans. I know him,’ said the Old Soldier, fanning
+herself, in a sort of calm prophetic agony, ‘and I know he’ll die there,
+sooner than he’ll overturn the Doctor’s plans.’
+
+‘Well, well, ma’am,’ said the Doctor cheerfully, ‘I am not bigoted to
+my plans, and I can overturn them myself. I can substitute some other
+plans. If Mr. Jack Maldon comes home on account of ill health, he must
+not be allowed to go back, and we must endeavour to make some more
+suitable and fortunate provision for him in this country.’
+
+Mrs. Markleham was so overcome by this generous speech--which, I need
+not say, she had not at all expected or led up to--that she could only
+tell the Doctor it was like himself, and go several times through that
+operation of kissing the sticks of her fan, and then tapping his hand
+with it. After which she gently chid her daughter Annie, for not being
+more demonstrative when such kindnesses were showered, for her sake, on
+her old playfellow; and entertained us with some particulars concerning
+other deserving members of her family, whom it was desirable to set on
+their deserving legs.
+
+All this time, her daughter Annie never once spoke, or lifted up her
+eyes. All this time, Mr. Wickfield had his glance upon her as she sat
+by his own daughter’s side. It appeared to me that he never thought of
+being observed by anyone; but was so intent upon her, and upon his own
+thoughts in connexion with her, as to be quite absorbed. He now asked
+what Mr. Jack Maldon had actually written in reference to himself, and
+to whom he had written?
+
+‘Why, here,’ said Mrs. Markleham, taking a letter from the chimney-piece
+above the Doctor’s head, ‘the dear fellow says to the Doctor
+himself--where is it? Oh!--“I am sorry to inform you that my health is
+suffering severely, and that I fear I may be reduced to the necessity
+of returning home for a time, as the only hope of restoration.” That’s
+pretty plain, poor fellow! His only hope of restoration! But Annie’s
+letter is plainer still. Annie, show me that letter again.’
+
+‘Not now, mama,’ she pleaded in a low tone.
+
+‘My dear, you absolutely are, on some subjects, one of the most
+ridiculous persons in the world,’ returned her mother, ‘and perhaps the
+most unnatural to the claims of your own family. We never should have
+heard of the letter at all, I believe, unless I had asked for it myself.
+Do you call that confidence, my love, towards Doctor Strong? I am
+surprised. You ought to know better.’
+
+The letter was reluctantly produced; and as I handed it to the old lady,
+I saw how the unwilling hand from which I took it, trembled.
+
+‘Now let us see,’ said Mrs. Markleham, putting her glass to her eye,
+‘where the passage is. “The remembrance of old times, my dearest
+Annie”--and so forth--it’s not there. “The amiable old Proctor”--who’s
+he? Dear me, Annie, how illegibly your cousin Maldon writes, and how
+stupid I am! “Doctor,” of course. Ah! amiable indeed!’ Here she left
+off, to kiss her fan again, and shake it at the Doctor, who was looking
+at us in a state of placid satisfaction. ‘Now I have found it. “You may
+not be surprised to hear, Annie,”--no, to be sure, knowing that he never
+was really strong; what did I say just now?--“that I have undergone
+so much in this distant place, as to have decided to leave it at all
+hazards; on sick leave, if I can; on total resignation, if that is
+not to be obtained. What I have endured, and do endure here, is
+insupportable.” And but for the promptitude of that best of creatures,’
+said Mrs. Markleham, telegraphing the Doctor as before, and refolding
+the letter, ‘it would be insupportable to me to think of.’
+
+Mr. Wickfield said not one word, though the old lady looked to him as if
+for his commentary on this intelligence; but sat severely silent, with
+his eyes fixed on the ground. Long after the subject was dismissed,
+and other topics occupied us, he remained so; seldom raising his eyes,
+unless to rest them for a moment, with a thoughtful frown, upon the
+Doctor, or his wife, or both.
+
+The Doctor was very fond of music. Agnes sang with great sweetness and
+expression, and so did Mrs. Strong. They sang together, and played duets
+together, and we had quite a little concert. But I remarked two things:
+first, that though Annie soon recovered her composure, and was quite
+herself, there was a blank between her and Mr. Wickfield which separated
+them wholly from each other; secondly, that Mr. Wickfield seemed
+to dislike the intimacy between her and Agnes, and to watch it with
+uneasiness. And now, I must confess, the recollection of what I had seen
+on that night when Mr. Maldon went away, first began to return upon me
+with a meaning it had never had, and to trouble me. The innocent beauty
+of her face was not as innocent to me as it had been; I mistrusted the
+natural grace and charm of her manner; and when I looked at Agnes by her
+side, and thought how good and true Agnes was, suspicions arose within
+me that it was an ill-assorted friendship.
+
+She was so happy in it herself, however, and the other was so happy too,
+that they made the evening fly away as if it were but an hour. It closed
+in an incident which I well remember. They were taking leave of each
+other, and Agnes was going to embrace her and kiss her, when Mr.
+Wickfield stepped between them, as if by accident, and drew Agnes
+quickly away. Then I saw, as though all the intervening time had been
+cancelled, and I were still standing in the doorway on the night of the
+departure, the expression of that night in the face of Mrs. Strong, as
+it confronted his.
+
+I cannot say what an impression this made upon me, or how impossible I
+found it, when I thought of her afterwards, to separate her from this
+look, and remember her face in its innocent loveliness again. It haunted
+me when I got home. I seemed to have left the Doctor’s roof with a dark
+cloud lowering on it. The reverence that I had for his grey head, was
+mingled with commiseration for his faith in those who were treacherous
+to him, and with resentment against those who injured him. The impending
+shadow of a great affliction, and a great disgrace that had no distinct
+form in it yet, fell like a stain upon the quiet place where I had
+worked and played as a boy, and did it a cruel wrong. I had no pleasure
+in thinking, any more, of the grave old broad-leaved aloe-trees, which
+remained shut up in themselves a hundred years together, and of the trim
+smooth grass-plot, and the stone urns, and the Doctor’s walk, and the
+congenial sound of the Cathedral bell hovering above them all. It was as
+if the tranquil sanctuary of my boyhood had been sacked before my face,
+and its peace and honour given to the winds.
+
+But morning brought with it my parting from the old house, which Agnes
+had filled with her influence; and that occupied my mind sufficiently.
+I should be there again soon, no doubt; I might sleep again--perhaps
+often--in my old room; but the days of my inhabiting there were gone,
+and the old time was past. I was heavier at heart when I packed up such
+of my books and clothes as still remained there to be sent to Dover,
+than I cared to show to Uriah Heep; who was so officious to help me,
+that I uncharitably thought him mighty glad that I was going.
+
+I got away from Agnes and her father, somehow, with an indifferent show
+of being very manly, and took my seat upon the box of the London coach.
+I was so softened and forgiving, going through the town, that I had half
+a mind to nod to my old enemy the butcher, and throw him five shillings
+to drink. But he looked such a very obdurate butcher as he stood
+scraping the great block in the shop, and moreover, his appearance was
+so little improved by the loss of a front tooth which I had knocked out,
+that I thought it best to make no advances.
+
+The main object on my mind, I remember, when we got fairly on the road,
+was to appear as old as possible to the coachman, and to speak extremely
+gruff. The latter point I achieved at great personal inconvenience; but
+I stuck to it, because I felt it was a grown-up sort of thing.
+
+‘You are going through, sir?’ said the coachman.
+
+‘Yes, William,’ I said, condescendingly (I knew him); ‘I am going to
+London. I shall go down into Suffolk afterwards.’
+
+‘Shooting, sir?’ said the coachman.
+
+He knew as well as I did that it was just as likely, at that time of
+year, I was going down there whaling; but I felt complimented, too.
+
+‘I don’t know,’ I said, pretending to be undecided, ‘whether I shall
+take a shot or not.’ ‘Birds is got wery shy, I’m told,’ said William.
+
+‘So I understand,’ said I.
+
+‘Is Suffolk your county, sir?’ asked William.
+
+‘Yes,’ I said, with some importance. ‘Suffolk’s my county.’
+
+‘I’m told the dumplings is uncommon fine down there,’ said William.
+
+I was not aware of it myself, but I felt it necessary to uphold the
+institutions of my county, and to evince a familiarity with them; so I
+shook my head, as much as to say, ‘I believe you!’
+
+‘And the Punches,’ said William. ‘There’s cattle! A Suffolk Punch, when
+he’s a good un, is worth his weight in gold. Did you ever breed any
+Suffolk Punches yourself, sir?’
+
+‘N-no,’ I said, ‘not exactly.’
+
+‘Here’s a gen’lm’n behind me, I’ll pound it,’ said William, ‘as has bred
+‘em by wholesale.’
+
+The gentleman spoken of was a gentleman with a very unpromising squint,
+and a prominent chin, who had a tall white hat on with a narrow flat
+brim, and whose close-fitting drab trousers seemed to button all the way
+up outside his legs from his boots to his hips. His chin was cocked over
+the coachman’s shoulder, so near to me, that his breath quite tickled
+the back of my head; and as I looked at him, he leered at the leaders
+with the eye with which he didn’t squint, in a very knowing manner.
+
+‘Ain’t you?’ asked William.
+
+‘Ain’t I what?’ said the gentleman behind.
+
+‘Bred them Suffolk Punches by wholesale?’
+
+‘I should think so,’ said the gentleman. ‘There ain’t no sort of orse
+that I ain’t bred, and no sort of dorg. Orses and dorgs is some
+men’s fancy. They’re wittles and drink to me--lodging, wife, and
+children--reading, writing, and Arithmetic--snuff, tobacker, and sleep.’
+
+‘That ain’t a sort of man to see sitting behind a coach-box, is it
+though?’ said William in my ear, as he handled the reins.
+
+I construed this remark into an indication of a wish that he should have
+my place, so I blushingly offered to resign it.
+
+‘Well, if you don’t mind, sir,’ said William, ‘I think it would be more
+correct.’
+
+I have always considered this as the first fall I had in life. When I
+booked my place at the coach office I had had ‘Box Seat’ written against
+the entry, and had given the book-keeper half-a-crown. I was got up in
+a special great-coat and shawl, expressly to do honour to that
+distinguished eminence; had glorified myself upon it a good deal; and
+had felt that I was a credit to the coach. And here, in the very first
+stage, I was supplanted by a shabby man with a squint, who had no other
+merit than smelling like a livery-stables, and being able to walk across
+me, more like a fly than a human being, while the horses were at a
+canter!
+
+A distrust of myself, which has often beset me in life on small
+occasions, when it would have been better away, was assuredly not
+stopped in its growth by this little incident outside the Canterbury
+coach. It was in vain to take refuge in gruffness of speech. I spoke
+from the pit of my stomach for the rest of the journey, but I felt
+completely extinguished, and dreadfully young.
+
+It was curious and interesting, nevertheless, to be sitting up there
+behind four horses: well educated, well dressed, and with plenty of
+money in my pocket; and to look out for the places where I had slept on
+my weary journey. I had abundant occupation for my thoughts, in every
+conspicuous landmark on the road. When I looked down at the trampers
+whom we passed, and saw that well-remembered style of face turned up,
+I felt as if the tinker’s blackened hand were in the bosom of my shirt
+again. When we clattered through the narrow street of Chatham, and I
+caught a glimpse, in passing, of the lane where the old monster lived
+who had bought my jacket, I stretched my neck eagerly to look for the
+place where I had sat, in the sun and in the shade, waiting for my
+money. When we came, at last, within a stage of London, and passed the
+veritable Salem House where Mr. Creakle had laid about him with a heavy
+hand, I would have given all I had, for lawful permission to get down
+and thrash him, and let all the boys out like so many caged sparrows.
+
+We went to the Golden Cross at Charing Cross, then a mouldy sort of
+establishment in a close neighbourhood. A waiter showed me into the
+coffee-room; and a chambermaid introduced me to my small bedchamber,
+which smelt like a hackney-coach, and was shut up like a family vault.
+I was still painfully conscious of my youth, for nobody stood in any awe
+of me at all: the chambermaid being utterly indifferent to my opinions
+on any subject, and the waiter being familiar with me, and offering
+advice to my inexperience.
+
+‘Well now,’ said the waiter, in a tone of confidence, ‘what would you
+like for dinner? Young gentlemen likes poultry in general: have a fowl!’
+
+I told him, as majestically as I could, that I wasn’t in the humour for
+a fowl.
+
+‘Ain’t you?’ said the waiter. ‘Young gentlemen is generally tired of
+beef and mutton: have a weal cutlet!’
+
+I assented to this proposal, in default of being able to suggest
+anything else.
+
+‘Do you care for taters?’ said the waiter, with an insinuating smile,
+and his head on one side. ‘Young gentlemen generally has been overdosed
+with taters.’
+
+I commanded him, in my deepest voice, to order a veal cutlet and
+potatoes, and all things fitting; and to inquire at the bar if there
+were any letters for Trotwood Copperfield, Esquire--which I knew there
+were not, and couldn’t be, but thought it manly to appear to expect.
+
+He soon came back to say that there were none (at which I was much
+surprised) and began to lay the cloth for my dinner in a box by the
+fire. While he was so engaged, he asked me what I would take with it;
+and on my replying ‘Half a pint of sherry,’ thought it a favourable
+opportunity, I am afraid, to extract that measure of wine from the
+stale leavings at the bottoms of several small decanters. I am of this
+opinion, because, while I was reading the newspaper, I observed him
+behind a low wooden partition, which was his private apartment, very
+busy pouring out of a number of those vessels into one, like a chemist
+and druggist making up a prescription. When the wine came, too, I
+thought it flat; and it certainly had more English crumbs in it, than
+were to be expected in a foreign wine in anything like a pure state, but
+I was bashful enough to drink it, and say nothing.
+
+Being then in a pleasant frame of mind (from which I infer that
+poisoning is not always disagreeable in some stages of the process), I
+resolved to go to the play. It was Covent Garden Theatre that I chose;
+and there, from the back of a centre box, I saw Julius Caesar and the
+new Pantomime. To have all those noble Romans alive before me, and
+walking in and out for my entertainment, instead of being the stern
+taskmasters they had been at school, was a most novel and delightful
+effect. But the mingled reality and mystery of the whole show, the
+influence upon me of the poetry, the lights, the music, the company, the
+smooth stupendous changes of glittering and brilliant scenery, were so
+dazzling, and opened up such illimitable regions of delight, that when I
+came out into the rainy street, at twelve o’clock at night, I felt as if
+I had come from the clouds, where I had been leading a romantic life
+for ages, to a bawling, splashing, link-lighted, umbrella-struggling,
+hackney-coach-jostling, patten-clinking, muddy, miserable world.
+
+I had emerged by another door, and stood in the street for a little
+while, as if I really were a stranger upon earth: but the unceremonious
+pushing and hustling that I received, soon recalled me to myself, and
+put me in the road back to the hotel; whither I went, revolving the
+glorious vision all the way; and where, after some porter and oysters,
+I sat revolving it still, at past one o’clock, with my eyes on the
+coffee-room fire.
+
+I was so filled with the play, and with the past--for it was, in a
+manner, like a shining transparency, through which I saw my earlier
+life moving along--that I don’t know when the figure of a handsome
+well-formed young man dressed with a tasteful easy negligence which I
+have reason to remember very well, became a real presence to me. But
+I recollect being conscious of his company without having noticed his
+coming in--and my still sitting, musing, over the coffee-room fire.
+
+At last I rose to go to bed, much to the relief of the sleepy waiter,
+who had got the fidgets in his legs, and was twisting them, and hitting
+them, and putting them through all kinds of contortions in his small
+pantry. In going towards the door, I passed the person who had come in,
+and saw him plainly. I turned directly, came back, and looked again. He
+did not know me, but I knew him in a moment.
+
+At another time I might have wanted the confidence or the decision to
+speak to him, and might have put it off until next day, and might have
+lost him. But, in the then condition of my mind, where the play was
+still running high, his former protection of me appeared so deserving
+of my gratitude, and my old love for him overflowed my breast so freshly
+and spontaneously, that I went up to him at once, with a fast-beating
+heart, and said:
+
+‘Steerforth! won’t you speak to me?’
+
+He looked at me--just as he used to look, sometimes--but I saw no
+recognition in his face.
+
+‘You don’t remember me, I am afraid,’ said I.
+
+‘My God!’ he suddenly exclaimed. ‘It’s little Copperfield!’
+
+I grasped him by both hands, and could not let them go. But for very
+shame, and the fear that it might displease him, I could have held him
+round the neck and cried.
+
+‘I never, never, never was so glad! My dear Steerforth, I am so
+overjoyed to see you!’
+
+‘And I am rejoiced to see you, too!’ he said, shaking my hands heartily.
+‘Why, Copperfield, old boy, don’t be overpowered!’ And yet he was glad,
+too, I thought, to see how the delight I had in meeting him affected me.
+
+I brushed away the tears that my utmost resolution had not been able to
+keep back, and I made a clumsy laugh of it, and we sat down together,
+side by side.
+
+‘Why, how do you come to be here?’ said Steerforth, clapping me on the
+shoulder.
+
+‘I came here by the Canterbury coach, today. I have been adopted by
+an aunt down in that part of the country, and have just finished my
+education there. How do YOU come to be here, Steerforth?’
+
+‘Well, I am what they call an Oxford man,’ he returned; ‘that is to say,
+I get bored to death down there, periodically--and I am on my way now to
+my mother’s. You’re a devilish amiable-looking fellow, Copperfield. Just
+what you used to be, now I look at you! Not altered in the least!’
+
+‘I knew you immediately,’ I said; ‘but you are more easily remembered.’
+
+He laughed as he ran his hand through the clustering curls of his hair,
+and said gaily:
+
+‘Yes, I am on an expedition of duty. My mother lives a little way out of
+town; and the roads being in a beastly condition, and our house tedious
+enough, I remained here tonight instead of going on. I have not been in
+town half-a-dozen hours, and those I have been dozing and grumbling away
+at the play.’
+
+‘I have been at the play, too,’ said I. ‘At Covent Garden. What a
+delightful and magnificent entertainment, Steerforth!’
+
+Steerforth laughed heartily.
+
+‘My dear young Davy,’ he said, clapping me on the shoulder again, ‘you
+are a very Daisy. The daisy of the field, at sunrise, is not fresher
+than you are. I have been at Covent Garden, too, and there never was a
+more miserable business. Holloa, you sir!’
+
+This was addressed to the waiter, who had been very attentive to our
+recognition, at a distance, and now came forward deferentially.
+
+‘Where have you put my friend, Mr. Copperfield?’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘Beg your pardon, sir?’
+
+‘Where does he sleep? What’s his number? You know what I mean,’ said
+Steerforth.
+
+‘Well, sir,’ said the waiter, with an apologetic air. ‘Mr. Copperfield
+is at present in forty-four, sir.’
+
+‘And what the devil do you mean,’ retorted Steerforth, ‘by putting Mr.
+Copperfield into a little loft over a stable?’
+
+‘Why, you see we wasn’t aware, sir,’ returned the waiter, still
+apologetically, ‘as Mr. Copperfield was anyways particular. We can give
+Mr. Copperfield seventy-two, sir, if it would be preferred. Next you,
+sir.’
+
+‘Of course it would be preferred,’ said Steerforth. ‘And do it at once.’
+The waiter immediately withdrew to make the exchange. Steerforth, very
+much amused at my having been put into forty-four, laughed again, and
+clapped me on the shoulder again, and invited me to breakfast with him
+next morning at ten o’clock--an invitation I was only too proud and
+happy to accept. It being now pretty late, we took our candles and went
+upstairs, where we parted with friendly heartiness at his door, and
+where I found my new room a great improvement on my old one, it not
+being at all musty, and having an immense four-post bedstead in it,
+which was quite a little landed estate. Here, among pillows enough for
+six, I soon fell asleep in a blissful condition, and dreamed of ancient
+Rome, Steerforth, and friendship, until the early morning coaches,
+rumbling out of the archway underneath, made me dream of thunder and the
+gods.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 20. STEERFORTH’S HOME
+
+
+When the chambermaid tapped at my door at eight o’clock, and informed
+me that my shaving-water was outside, I felt severely the having no
+occasion for it, and blushed in my bed. The suspicion that she laughed
+too, when she said it, preyed upon my mind all the time I was dressing;
+and gave me, I was conscious, a sneaking and guilty air when I passed
+her on the staircase, as I was going down to breakfast. I was so
+sensitively aware, indeed, of being younger than I could have wished,
+that for some time I could not make up my mind to pass her at all, under
+the ignoble circumstances of the case; but, hearing her there with
+a broom, stood peeping out of window at King Charles on horseback,
+surrounded by a maze of hackney-coaches, and looking anything but regal
+in a drizzling rain and a dark-brown fog, until I was admonished by the
+waiter that the gentleman was waiting for me.
+
+It was not in the coffee-room that I found Steerforth expecting me, but
+in a snug private apartment, red-curtained and Turkey-carpeted, where
+the fire burnt bright, and a fine hot breakfast was set forth on a table
+covered with a clean cloth; and a cheerful miniature of the room, the
+fire, the breakfast, Steerforth, and all, was shining in the little
+round mirror over the sideboard. I was rather bashful at first,
+Steerforth being so self-possessed, and elegant, and superior to me in
+all respects (age included); but his easy patronage soon put that to
+rights, and made me quite at home. I could not enough admire the change
+he had wrought in the Golden Cross; or compare the dull forlorn state
+I had held yesterday, with this morning’s comfort and this morning’s
+entertainment. As to the waiter’s familiarity, it was quenched as if it
+had never been. He attended on us, as I may say, in sackcloth and ashes.
+
+‘Now, Copperfield,’ said Steerforth, when we were alone, ‘I should like
+to hear what you are doing, and where you are going, and all about you.
+I feel as if you were my property.’ Glowing with pleasure to find that
+he had still this interest in me, I told him how my aunt had proposed
+the little expedition that I had before me, and whither it tended.
+
+‘As you are in no hurry, then,’ said Steerforth, ‘come home with me to
+Highgate, and stay a day or two. You will be pleased with my mother--she
+is a little vain and prosy about me, but that you can forgive her--and
+she will be pleased with you.’
+
+‘I should like to be as sure of that, as you are kind enough to say you
+are,’ I answered, smiling.
+
+‘Oh!’ said Steerforth, ‘everyone who likes me, has a claim on her that
+is sure to be acknowledged.’
+
+‘Then I think I shall be a favourite,’ said I.
+
+‘Good!’ said Steerforth. ‘Come and prove it. We will go and see the
+lions for an hour or two--it’s something to have a fresh fellow like you
+to show them to, Copperfield--and then we’ll journey out to Highgate by
+the coach.’
+
+I could hardly believe but that I was in a dream, and that I should wake
+presently in number forty-four, to the solitary box in the coffee-room
+and the familiar waiter again. After I had written to my aunt and told
+her of my fortunate meeting with my admired old schoolfellow, and my
+acceptance of his invitation, we went out in a hackney-chariot, and saw
+a Panorama and some other sights, and took a walk through the Museum,
+where I could not help observing how much Steerforth knew, on an
+infinite variety of subjects, and of how little account he seemed to
+make his knowledge.
+
+‘You’ll take a high degree at college, Steerforth,’ said I, ‘if you have
+not done so already; and they will have good reason to be proud of you.’
+
+‘I take a degree!’ cried Steerforth. ‘Not I! my dear Daisy--will you
+mind my calling you Daisy?’
+
+‘Not at all!’ said I.
+
+‘That’s a good fellow! My dear Daisy,’ said Steerforth, laughing. ‘I
+have not the least desire or intention to distinguish myself in that
+way. I have done quite sufficient for my purpose. I find that I am heavy
+company enough for myself as I am.’
+
+‘But the fame--’ I was beginning.
+
+‘You romantic Daisy!’ said Steerforth, laughing still more heartily:
+‘why should I trouble myself, that a parcel of heavy-headed fellows may
+gape and hold up their hands? Let them do it at some other man. There’s
+fame for him, and he’s welcome to it.’
+
+I was abashed at having made so great a mistake, and was glad to change
+the subject. Fortunately it was not difficult to do, for Steerforth
+could always pass from one subject to another with a carelessness and
+lightness that were his own.
+
+Lunch succeeded to our sight-seeing, and the short winter day wore away
+so fast, that it was dusk when the stage-coach stopped with us at an
+old brick house at Highgate on the summit of the hill. An elderly lady,
+though not very far advanced in years, with a proud carriage and
+a handsome face, was in the doorway as we alighted; and greeting
+Steerforth as ‘My dearest James,’ folded him in her arms. To this lady
+he presented me as his mother, and she gave me a stately welcome.
+
+It was a genteel old-fashioned house, very quiet and orderly. From the
+windows of my room I saw all London lying in the distance like a great
+vapour, with here and there some lights twinkling through it. I had only
+time, in dressing, to glance at the solid furniture, the framed pieces
+of work (done, I supposed, by Steerforth’s mother when she was a girl),
+and some pictures in crayons of ladies with powdered hair and bodices,
+coming and going on the walls, as the newly-kindled fire crackled and
+sputtered, when I was called to dinner.
+
+There was a second lady in the dining-room, of a slight short figure,
+dark, and not agreeable to look at, but with some appearance of good
+looks too, who attracted my attention: perhaps because I had not
+expected to see her; perhaps because I found myself sitting opposite
+to her; perhaps because of something really remarkable in her. She had
+black hair and eager black eyes, and was thin, and had a scar upon her
+lip. It was an old scar--I should rather call it seam, for it was not
+discoloured, and had healed years ago--which had once cut through her
+mouth, downward towards the chin, but was now barely visible across
+the table, except above and on her upper lip, the shape of which it had
+altered. I concluded in my own mind that she was about thirty years
+of age, and that she wished to be married. She was a little
+dilapidated--like a house--with having been so long to let; yet had, as
+I have said, an appearance of good looks. Her thinness seemed to be the
+effect of some wasting fire within her, which found a vent in her gaunt
+eyes.
+
+She was introduced as Miss Dartle, and both Steerforth and his mother
+called her Rosa. I found that she lived there, and had been for a long
+time Mrs. Steerforth’s companion. It appeared to me that she never said
+anything she wanted to say, outright; but hinted it, and made a great
+deal more of it by this practice. For example, when Mrs. Steerforth
+observed, more in jest than earnest, that she feared her son led but a
+wild life at college, Miss Dartle put in thus:
+
+‘Oh, really? You know how ignorant I am, and that I only ask for
+information, but isn’t it always so? I thought that kind of life was
+on all hands understood to be--eh?’ ‘It is education for a very grave
+profession, if you mean that, Rosa,’ Mrs. Steerforth answered with some
+coldness.
+
+‘Oh! Yes! That’s very true,’ returned Miss Dartle. ‘But isn’t it,
+though?--I want to be put right, if I am wrong--isn’t it, really?’
+
+‘Really what?’ said Mrs. Steerforth.
+
+‘Oh! You mean it’s not!’ returned Miss Dartle. ‘Well, I’m very glad to
+hear it! Now, I know what to do! That’s the advantage of asking. I shall
+never allow people to talk before me about wastefulness and profligacy,
+and so forth, in connexion with that life, any more.’
+
+‘And you will be right,’ said Mrs. Steerforth. ‘My son’s tutor is a
+conscientious gentleman; and if I had not implicit reliance on my son, I
+should have reliance on him.’
+
+‘Should you?’ said Miss Dartle. ‘Dear me! Conscientious, is he? Really
+conscientious, now?’
+
+‘Yes, I am convinced of it,’ said Mrs. Steerforth.
+
+‘How very nice!’ exclaimed Miss Dartle. ‘What a comfort! Really
+conscientious? Then he’s not--but of course he can’t be, if he’s really
+conscientious. Well, I shall be quite happy in my opinion of him, from
+this time. You can’t think how it elevates him in my opinion, to know
+for certain that he’s really conscientious!’
+
+Her own views of every question, and her correction of everything that
+was said to which she was opposed, Miss Dartle insinuated in the same
+way: sometimes, I could not conceal from myself, with great power,
+though in contradiction even of Steerforth. An instance happened before
+dinner was done. Mrs. Steerforth speaking to me about my intention
+of going down into Suffolk, I said at hazard how glad I should be, if
+Steerforth would only go there with me; and explaining to him that I was
+going to see my old nurse, and Mr. Peggotty’s family, I reminded him of
+the boatman whom he had seen at school.
+
+‘Oh! That bluff fellow!’ said Steerforth. ‘He had a son with him, hadn’t
+he?’
+
+‘No. That was his nephew,’ I replied; ‘whom he adopted, though, as
+a son. He has a very pretty little niece too, whom he adopted as a
+daughter. In short, his house--or rather his boat, for he lives in one,
+on dry land--is full of people who are objects of his generosity and
+kindness. You would be delighted to see that household.’
+
+‘Should I?’ said Steerforth. ‘Well, I think I should. I must see what
+can be done. It would be worth a journey (not to mention the pleasure of
+a journey with you, Daisy), to see that sort of people together, and to
+make one of ‘em.’
+
+My heart leaped with a new hope of pleasure. But it was in reference
+to the tone in which he had spoken of ‘that sort of people’, that Miss
+Dartle, whose sparkling eyes had been watchful of us, now broke in
+again.
+
+‘Oh, but, really? Do tell me. Are they, though?’ she said.
+
+‘Are they what? And are who what?’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘That sort of people.---Are they really animals and clods, and beings of
+another order? I want to know SO much.’
+
+‘Why, there’s a pretty wide separation between them and us,’ said
+Steerforth, with indifference. ‘They are not to be expected to be
+as sensitive as we are. Their delicacy is not to be shocked, or hurt
+easily. They are wonderfully virtuous, I dare say--some people contend
+for that, at least; and I am sure I don’t want to contradict them--but
+they have not very fine natures, and they may be thankful that, like
+their coarse rough skins, they are not easily wounded.’
+
+‘Really!’ said Miss Dartle. ‘Well, I don’t know, now, when I have been
+better pleased than to hear that. It’s so consoling! It’s such a delight
+to know that, when they suffer, they don’t feel! Sometimes I have been
+quite uneasy for that sort of people; but now I shall just dismiss the
+idea of them, altogether. Live and learn. I had my doubts, I confess,
+but now they’re cleared up. I didn’t know, and now I do know, and that
+shows the advantage of asking--don’t it?’
+
+I believed that Steerforth had said what he had, in jest, or to draw
+Miss Dartle out; and I expected him to say as much when she was gone,
+and we two were sitting before the fire. But he merely asked me what I
+thought of her.
+
+‘She is very clever, is she not?’ I asked.
+
+‘Clever! She brings everything to a grindstone,’ said Steerforth, and
+sharpens it, as she has sharpened her own face and figure these years
+past. She has worn herself away by constant sharpening. She is all
+edge.’
+
+‘What a remarkable scar that is upon her lip!’ I said.
+
+Steerforth’s face fell, and he paused a moment.
+
+‘Why, the fact is,’ he returned, ‘I did that.’
+
+‘By an unfortunate accident!’
+
+‘No. I was a young boy, and she exasperated me, and I threw a hammer at
+her. A promising young angel I must have been!’ I was deeply sorry to
+have touched on such a painful theme, but that was useless now.
+
+‘She has borne the mark ever since, as you see,’ said Steerforth; ‘and
+she’ll bear it to her grave, if she ever rests in one--though I can
+hardly believe she will ever rest anywhere. She was the motherless child
+of a sort of cousin of my father’s. He died one day. My mother, who was
+then a widow, brought her here to be company to her. She has a couple of
+thousand pounds of her own, and saves the interest of it every year, to
+add to the principal. There’s the history of Miss Rosa Dartle for you.’
+
+‘And I have no doubt she loves you like a brother?’ said I.
+
+‘Humph!’ retorted Steerforth, looking at the fire. ‘Some brothers are
+not loved over much; and some love--but help yourself, Copperfield!
+We’ll drink the daisies of the field, in compliment to you; and the
+lilies of the valley that toil not, neither do they spin, in compliment
+to me--the more shame for me!’ A moody smile that had overspread his
+features cleared off as he said this merrily, and he was his own frank,
+winning self again.
+
+I could not help glancing at the scar with a painful interest when we
+went in to tea. It was not long before I observed that it was the most
+susceptible part of her face, and that, when she turned pale, that mark
+altered first, and became a dull, lead-coloured streak, lengthening out
+to its full extent, like a mark in invisible ink brought to the fire.
+There was a little altercation between her and Steerforth about a cast
+of the dice at backgammon--when I thought her, for one moment, in a
+storm of rage; and then I saw it start forth like the old writing on the
+wall.
+
+It was no matter of wonder to me to find Mrs. Steerforth devoted to her
+son. She seemed to be able to speak or think about nothing else. She
+showed me his picture as an infant, in a locket, with some of his
+baby-hair in it; she showed me his picture as he had been when I first
+knew him; and she wore at her breast his picture as he was now. All the
+letters he had ever written to her, she kept in a cabinet near her own
+chair by the fire; and she would have read me some of them, and I should
+have been very glad to hear them too, if he had not interposed, and
+coaxed her out of the design.
+
+‘It was at Mr. Creakle’s, my son tells me, that you first became
+acquainted,’ said Mrs. Steerforth, as she and I were talking at one
+table, while they played backgammon at another. ‘Indeed, I recollect his
+speaking, at that time, of a pupil younger than himself who had taken
+his fancy there; but your name, as you may suppose, has not lived in my
+memory.’
+
+‘He was very generous and noble to me in those days, I assure you,
+ma’am,’ said I, ‘and I stood in need of such a friend. I should have
+been quite crushed without him.’
+
+‘He is always generous and noble,’ said Mrs. Steerforth, proudly.
+
+I subscribed to this with all my heart, God knows. She knew I did; for
+the stateliness of her manner already abated towards me, except when she
+spoke in praise of him, and then her air was always lofty.
+
+‘It was not a fit school generally for my son,’ said she; ‘far from it;
+but there were particular circumstances to be considered at the time, of
+more importance even than that selection. My son’s high spirit made
+it desirable that he should be placed with some man who felt its
+superiority, and would be content to bow himself before it; and we found
+such a man there.’
+
+I knew that, knowing the fellow. And yet I did not despise him the more
+for it, but thought it a redeeming quality in him if he could be allowed
+any grace for not resisting one so irresistible as Steerforth.
+
+‘My son’s great capacity was tempted on, there, by a feeling of
+voluntary emulation and conscious pride,’ the fond lady went on to say.
+‘He would have risen against all constraint; but he found himself the
+monarch of the place, and he haughtily determined to be worthy of his
+station. It was like himself.’
+
+I echoed, with all my heart and soul, that it was like himself.
+
+‘So my son took, of his own will, and on no compulsion, to the course
+in which he can always, when it is his pleasure, outstrip every
+competitor,’ she pursued. ‘My son informs me, Mr. Copperfield, that
+you were quite devoted to him, and that when you met yesterday you made
+yourself known to him with tears of joy. I should be an affected woman
+if I made any pretence of being surprised by my son’s inspiring such
+emotions; but I cannot be indifferent to anyone who is so sensible of
+his merit, and I am very glad to see you here, and can assure you that
+he feels an unusual friendship for you, and that you may rely on his
+protection.’
+
+Miss Dartle played backgammon as eagerly as she did everything else.
+If I had seen her, first, at the board, I should have fancied that her
+figure had got thin, and her eyes had got large, over that pursuit, and
+no other in the world. But I am very much mistaken if she missed a
+word of this, or lost a look of mine as I received it with the utmost
+pleasure, and honoured by Mrs. Steerforth’s confidence, felt older than
+I had done since I left Canterbury.
+
+When the evening was pretty far spent, and a tray of glasses and
+decanters came in, Steerforth promised, over the fire, that he would
+seriously think of going down into the country with me. There was no
+hurry, he said; a week hence would do; and his mother hospitably said
+the same. While we were talking, he more than once called me Daisy;
+which brought Miss Dartle out again.
+
+‘But really, Mr. Copperfield,’ she asked, ‘is it a nickname? And
+why does he give it you? Is it--eh?--because he thinks you young and
+innocent? I am so stupid in these things.’
+
+I coloured in replying that I believed it was.
+
+‘Oh!’ said Miss Dartle. ‘Now I am glad to know that! I ask for
+information, and I am glad to know it. He thinks you young and innocent;
+and so you are his friend. Well, that’s quite delightful!’
+
+She went to bed soon after this, and Mrs. Steerforth retired too.
+Steerforth and I, after lingering for half-an-hour over the fire,
+talking about Traddles and all the rest of them at old Salem House, went
+upstairs together. Steerforth’s room was next to mine, and I went in to
+look at it. It was a picture of comfort, full of easy-chairs, cushions
+and footstools, worked by his mother’s hand, and with no sort of thing
+omitted that could help to render it complete. Finally, her handsome
+features looked down on her darling from a portrait on the wall, as if
+it were even something to her that her likeness should watch him while
+he slept.
+
+I found the fire burning clear enough in my room by this time, and the
+curtains drawn before the windows and round the bed, giving it a very
+snug appearance. I sat down in a great chair upon the hearth to meditate
+on my happiness; and had enjoyed the contemplation of it for some time,
+when I found a likeness of Miss Dartle looking eagerly at me from above
+the chimney-piece.
+
+It was a startling likeness, and necessarily had a startling look. The
+painter hadn’t made the scar, but I made it; and there it was, coming
+and going; now confined to the upper lip as I had seen it at dinner, and
+now showing the whole extent of the wound inflicted by the hammer, as I
+had seen it when she was passionate.
+
+I wondered peevishly why they couldn’t put her anywhere else instead
+of quartering her on me. To get rid of her, I undressed quickly,
+extinguished my light, and went to bed. But, as I fell asleep, I could
+not forget that she was still there looking, ‘Is it really, though?
+I want to know’; and when I awoke in the night, I found that I was
+uneasily asking all sorts of people in my dreams whether it really was
+or not--without knowing what I meant.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 21. LITTLE EM’LY
+
+
+There was a servant in that house, a man who, I understood, was usually
+with Steerforth, and had come into his service at the University, who
+was in appearance a pattern of respectability. I believe there never
+existed in his station a more respectable-looking man. He was taciturn,
+soft-footed, very quiet in his manner, deferential, observant, always at
+hand when wanted, and never near when not wanted; but his great claim to
+consideration was his respectability. He had not a pliant face, he had
+rather a stiff neck, rather a tight smooth head with short hair clinging
+to it at the sides, a soft way of speaking, with a peculiar habit of
+whispering the letter S so distinctly, that he seemed to use it
+oftener than any other man; but every peculiarity that he had he made
+respectable. If his nose had been upside-down, he would have made that
+respectable. He surrounded himself with an atmosphere of respectability,
+and walked secure in it. It would have been next to impossible to
+suspect him of anything wrong, he was so thoroughly respectable.
+Nobody could have thought of putting him in a livery, he was so highly
+respectable. To have imposed any derogatory work upon him, would have
+been to inflict a wanton insult on the feelings of a most respectable
+man. And of this, I noticed--the women-servants in the household were
+so intuitively conscious, that they always did such work themselves, and
+generally while he read the paper by the pantry fire.
+
+Such a self-contained man I never saw. But in that quality, as in every
+other he possessed, he only seemed to be the more respectable. Even the
+fact that no one knew his Christian name, seemed to form a part of his
+respectability. Nothing could be objected against his surname, Littimer,
+by which he was known. Peter might have been hanged, or Tom transported;
+but Littimer was perfectly respectable.
+
+It was occasioned, I suppose, by the reverend nature of respectability
+in the abstract, but I felt particularly young in this man’s presence.
+How old he was himself, I could not guess--and that again went to his
+credit on the same score; for in the calmness of respectability he might
+have numbered fifty years as well as thirty.
+
+Littimer was in my room in the morning before I was up, to bring me that
+reproachful shaving-water, and to put out my clothes. When I undrew the
+curtains and looked out of bed, I saw him, in an equable temperature
+of respectability, unaffected by the east wind of January, and not
+even breathing frostily, standing my boots right and left in the first
+dancing position, and blowing specks of dust off my coat as he laid it
+down like a baby.
+
+I gave him good morning, and asked him what o’clock it was. He took
+out of his pocket the most respectable hunting-watch I ever saw, and
+preventing the spring with his thumb from opening far, looked in at the
+face as if he were consulting an oracular oyster, shut it up again, and
+said, if I pleased, it was half past eight.
+
+‘Mr. Steerforth will be glad to hear how you have rested, sir.’
+
+‘Thank you,’ said I, ‘very well indeed. Is Mr. Steerforth quite well?’
+
+‘Thank you, sir, Mr. Steerforth is tolerably well.’ Another of his
+characteristics--no use of superlatives. A cool calm medium always.
+
+‘Is there anything more I can have the honour of doing for you, sir? The
+warning-bell will ring at nine; the family take breakfast at half past
+nine.’
+
+‘Nothing, I thank you.’
+
+‘I thank YOU, sir, if you please’; and with that, and with a little
+inclination of his head when he passed the bed-side, as an apology for
+correcting me, he went out, shutting the door as delicately as if I had
+just fallen into a sweet sleep on which my life depended.
+
+Every morning we held exactly this conversation: never any more, and
+never any less: and yet, invariably, however far I might have been
+lifted out of myself over-night, and advanced towards maturer years,
+by Steerforth’s companionship, or Mrs. Steerforth’s confidence, or Miss
+Dartle’s conversation, in the presence of this most respectable man I
+became, as our smaller poets sing, ‘a boy again’.
+
+He got horses for us; and Steerforth, who knew everything, gave me
+lessons in riding. He provided foils for us, and Steerforth gave me
+lessons in fencing--gloves, and I began, of the same master, to improve
+in boxing. It gave me no manner of concern that Steerforth should find
+me a novice in these sciences, but I never could bear to show my want of
+skill before the respectable Littimer. I had no reason to believe
+that Littimer understood such arts himself; he never led me to suppose
+anything of the kind, by so much as the vibration of one of his
+respectable eyelashes; yet whenever he was by, while we were practising,
+I felt myself the greenest and most inexperienced of mortals.
+
+I am particular about this man, because he made a particular effect on
+me at that time, and because of what took place thereafter.
+
+The week passed away in a most delightful manner. It passed rapidly, as
+may be supposed, to one entranced as I was; and yet it gave me so many
+occasions for knowing Steerforth better, and admiring him more in a
+thousand respects, that at its close I seemed to have been with him
+for a much longer time. A dashing way he had of treating me like a
+plaything, was more agreeable to me than any behaviour he could have
+adopted. It reminded me of our old acquaintance; it seemed the natural
+sequel of it; it showed me that he was unchanged; it relieved me of
+any uneasiness I might have felt, in comparing my merits with his, and
+measuring my claims upon his friendship by any equal standard; above
+all, it was a familiar, unrestrained, affectionate demeanour that he
+used towards no one else. As he had treated me at school differently
+from all the rest, I joyfully believed that he treated me in life unlike
+any other friend he had. I believed that I was nearer to his heart than
+any other friend, and my own heart warmed with attachment to him. He
+made up his mind to go with me into the country, and the day arrived for
+our departure. He had been doubtful at first whether to take Littimer
+or not, but decided to leave him at home. The respectable creature,
+satisfied with his lot whatever it was, arranged our portmanteaux on
+the little carriage that was to take us into London, as if they were
+intended to defy the shocks of ages, and received my modestly proffered
+donation with perfect tranquillity.
+
+We bade adieu to Mrs. Steerforth and Miss Dartle, with many thanks on
+my part, and much kindness on the devoted mother’s. The last thing I
+saw was Littimer’s unruffled eye; fraught, as I fancied, with the silent
+conviction that I was very young indeed.
+
+What I felt, in returning so auspiciously to the old familiar places,
+I shall not endeavour to describe. We went down by the Mail. I was
+so concerned, I recollect, even for the honour of Yarmouth, that when
+Steerforth said, as we drove through its dark streets to the inn, that,
+as well as he could make out, it was a good, queer, out-of-the-way kind
+of hole, I was highly pleased. We went to bed on our arrival (I observed
+a pair of dirty shoes and gaiters in connexion with my old friend the
+Dolphin as we passed that door), and breakfasted late in the morning.
+Steerforth, who was in great spirits, had been strolling about the
+beach before I was up, and had made acquaintance, he said, with half the
+boatmen in the place. Moreover, he had seen, in the distance, what he
+was sure must be the identical house of Mr. Peggotty, with smoke coming
+out of the chimney; and had had a great mind, he told me, to walk in and
+swear he was myself grown out of knowledge.
+
+‘When do you propose to introduce me there, Daisy?’ he said. ‘I am at
+your disposal. Make your own arrangements.’
+
+‘Why, I was thinking that this evening would be a good time, Steerforth,
+when they are all sitting round the fire. I should like you to see it
+when it’s snug, it’s such a curious place.’
+
+‘So be it!’ returned Steerforth. ‘This evening.’
+
+‘I shall not give them any notice that we are here, you know,’ said I,
+delighted. ‘We must take them by surprise.’
+
+‘Oh, of course! It’s no fun,’ said Steerforth, ‘unless we take them by
+surprise. Let us see the natives in their aboriginal condition.’
+
+‘Though they ARE that sort of people that you mentioned,’ I returned.
+
+‘Aha! What! you recollect my skirmishes with Rosa, do you?’ he exclaimed
+with a quick look. ‘Confound the girl, I am half afraid of her. She’s
+like a goblin to me. But never mind her. Now what are you going to do?
+You are going to see your nurse, I suppose?’
+
+‘Why, yes,’ I said, ‘I must see Peggotty first of all.’
+
+‘Well,’ replied Steerforth, looking at his watch. ‘Suppose I deliver you
+up to be cried over for a couple of hours. Is that long enough?’
+
+I answered, laughing, that I thought we might get through it in that
+time, but that he must come also; for he would find that his renown had
+preceded him, and that he was almost as great a personage as I was.
+
+‘I’ll come anywhere you like,’ said Steerforth, ‘or do anything you
+like. Tell me where to come to; and in two hours I’ll produce myself in
+any state you please, sentimental or comical.’
+
+I gave him minute directions for finding the residence of Mr. Barkis,
+carrier to Blunderstone and elsewhere; and, on this understanding, went
+out alone. There was a sharp bracing air; the ground was dry; the sea
+was crisp and clear; the sun was diffusing abundance of light, if not
+much warmth; and everything was fresh and lively. I was so fresh and
+lively myself, in the pleasure of being there, that I could have stopped
+the people in the streets and shaken hands with them.
+
+The streets looked small, of course. The streets that we have only seen
+as children always do, I believe, when we go back to them. But I had
+forgotten nothing in them, and found nothing changed, until I came to
+Mr. Omer’s shop. OMER AND Joram was now written up, where OMER used to
+be; but the inscription, DRAPER, TAILOR, HABERDASHER, FUNERAL FURNISHER,
+&c., remained as it was.
+
+My footsteps seemed to tend so naturally to the shop door, after I had
+read these words from over the way, that I went across the road and
+looked in. There was a pretty woman at the back of the shop, dancing
+a little child in her arms, while another little fellow clung to her
+apron. I had no difficulty in recognizing either Minnie or Minnie’s
+children. The glass door of the parlour was not open; but in the
+workshop across the yard I could faintly hear the old tune playing, as
+if it had never left off.
+
+‘Is Mr. Omer at home?’ said I, entering. ‘I should like to see him, for
+a moment, if he is.’
+
+‘Oh yes, sir, he is at home,’ said Minnie; ‘the weather don’t suit his
+asthma out of doors. Joe, call your grandfather!’
+
+The little fellow, who was holding her apron, gave such a lusty shout,
+that the sound of it made him bashful, and he buried his face in her
+skirts, to her great admiration. I heard a heavy puffing and blowing
+coming towards us, and soon Mr. Omer, shorter-winded than of yore, but
+not much older-looking, stood before me.
+
+‘Servant, sir,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘What can I do for you, sir?’ ‘You can
+shake hands with me, Mr. Omer, if you please,’ said I, putting out my
+own. ‘You were very good-natured to me once, when I am afraid I didn’t
+show that I thought so.’
+
+‘Was I though?’ returned the old man. ‘I’m glad to hear it, but I don’t
+remember when. Are you sure it was me?’
+
+‘Quite.’
+
+‘I think my memory has got as short as my breath,’ said Mr. Omer,
+looking at me and shaking his head; ‘for I don’t remember you.’
+
+‘Don’t you remember your coming to the coach to meet me, and my having
+breakfast here, and our riding out to Blunderstone together: you, and I,
+and Mrs. Joram, and Mr. Joram too--who wasn’t her husband then?’
+
+‘Why, Lord bless my soul!’ exclaimed Mr. Omer, after being thrown by his
+surprise into a fit of coughing, ‘you don’t say so! Minnie, my dear, you
+recollect? Dear me, yes; the party was a lady, I think?’
+
+‘My mother,’ I rejoined.
+
+‘To--be--sure,’ said Mr. Omer, touching my waistcoat with his
+forefinger, ‘and there was a little child too! There was two parties.
+The little party was laid along with the other party. Over at
+Blunderstone it was, of course. Dear me! And how have you been since?’
+
+Very well, I thanked him, as I hoped he had been too.
+
+‘Oh! nothing to grumble at, you know,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘I find my breath
+gets short, but it seldom gets longer as a man gets older. I take it as
+it comes, and make the most of it. That’s the best way, ain’t it?’
+
+Mr. Omer coughed again, in consequence of laughing, and was assisted out
+of his fit by his daughter, who now stood close beside us, dancing her
+smallest child on the counter.
+
+‘Dear me!’ said Mr. Omer. ‘Yes, to be sure. Two parties! Why, in that
+very ride, if you’ll believe me, the day was named for my Minnie to
+marry Joram. “Do name it, sir,” says Joram. “Yes, do, father,” says
+Minnie. And now he’s come into the business. And look here! The
+youngest!’
+
+Minnie laughed, and stroked her banded hair upon her temples, as her
+father put one of his fat fingers into the hand of the child she was
+dancing on the counter.
+
+‘Two parties, of course!’ said Mr. Omer, nodding his head
+retrospectively. ‘Ex-actly so! And Joram’s at work, at this minute, on
+a grey one with silver nails, not this measurement’--the measurement of
+the dancing child upon the counter--‘by a good two inches.---Will you
+take something?’
+
+I thanked him, but declined.
+
+‘Let me see,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘Barkis’s the carrier’s wife--Peggotty’s
+the boatman’s sister--she had something to do with your family? She was
+in service there, sure?’
+
+My answering in the affirmative gave him great satisfaction.
+
+‘I believe my breath will get long next, my memory’s getting so much
+so,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘Well, sir, we’ve got a young relation of hers here,
+under articles to us, that has as elegant a taste in the dress-making
+business--I assure you I don’t believe there’s a Duchess in England can
+touch her.’
+
+‘Not little Em’ly?’ said I, involuntarily.
+
+‘Em’ly’s her name,’ said Mr. Omer, ‘and she’s little too. But if you’ll
+believe me, she has such a face of her own that half the women in this
+town are mad against her.’
+
+‘Nonsense, father!’ cried Minnie.
+
+‘My dear,’ said Mr. Omer, ‘I don’t say it’s the case with you,’ winking
+at me, ‘but I say that half the women in Yarmouth--ah! and in five mile
+round--are mad against that girl.’
+
+‘Then she should have kept to her own station in life, father,’ said
+Minnie, ‘and not have given them any hold to talk about her, and then
+they couldn’t have done it.’
+
+‘Couldn’t have done it, my dear!’ retorted Mr. Omer. ‘Couldn’t have
+done it! Is that YOUR knowledge of life? What is there that any woman
+couldn’t do, that she shouldn’t do--especially on the subject of another
+woman’s good looks?’
+
+I really thought it was all over with Mr. Omer, after he had uttered
+this libellous pleasantry. He coughed to that extent, and his breath
+eluded all his attempts to recover it with that obstinacy, that I fully
+expected to see his head go down behind the counter, and his little
+black breeches, with the rusty little bunches of ribbons at the knees,
+come quivering up in a last ineffectual struggle. At length, however,
+he got better, though he still panted hard, and was so exhausted that he
+was obliged to sit on the stool of the shop-desk.
+
+‘You see,’ he said, wiping his head, and breathing with difficulty, ‘she
+hasn’t taken much to any companions here; she hasn’t taken kindly to
+any particular acquaintances and friends, not to mention sweethearts. In
+consequence, an ill-natured story got about, that Em’ly wanted to be a
+lady. Now my opinion is, that it came into circulation principally on
+account of her sometimes saying, at the school, that if she was a lady
+she would like to do so-and-so for her uncle--don’t you see?--and buy
+him such-and-such fine things.’
+
+‘I assure you, Mr. Omer, she has said so to me,’ I returned eagerly,
+‘when we were both children.’
+
+Mr. Omer nodded his head and rubbed his chin. ‘Just so. Then out of a
+very little, she could dress herself, you see, better than most others
+could out of a deal, and that made things unpleasant. Moreover, she was
+rather what might be called wayward--I’ll go so far as to say what I
+should call wayward myself,’ said Mr. Omer; ‘--didn’t know her own mind
+quite--a little spoiled--and couldn’t, at first, exactly bind herself
+down. No more than that was ever said against her, Minnie?’
+
+‘No, father,’ said Mrs. Joram. ‘That’s the worst, I believe.’
+
+‘So when she got a situation,’ said Mr. Omer, ‘to keep a fractious old
+lady company, they didn’t very well agree, and she didn’t stop. At last
+she came here, apprenticed for three years. Nearly two of ‘em are over,
+and she has been as good a girl as ever was. Worth any six! Minnie, is
+she worth any six, now?’
+
+‘Yes, father,’ replied Minnie. ‘Never say I detracted from her!’
+
+‘Very good,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘That’s right. And so, young gentleman,’ he
+added, after a few moments’ further rubbing of his chin, ‘that you may
+not consider me long-winded as well as short-breathed, I believe that’s
+all about it.’
+
+As they had spoken in a subdued tone, while speaking of Em’ly, I had no
+doubt that she was near. On my asking now, if that were not so, Mr.
+Omer nodded yes, and nodded towards the door of the parlour. My hurried
+inquiry if I might peep in, was answered with a free permission; and,
+looking through the glass, I saw her sitting at her work. I saw her, a
+most beautiful little creature, with the cloudless blue eyes, that had
+looked into my childish heart, turned laughingly upon another child
+of Minnie’s who was playing near her; with enough of wilfulness in her
+bright face to justify what I had heard; with much of the old capricious
+coyness lurking in it; but with nothing in her pretty looks, I am sure,
+but what was meant for goodness and for happiness, and what was on a
+good and happy course.
+
+The tune across the yard that seemed as if it never had left off--alas!
+it was the tune that never DOES leave off--was beating, softly, all the
+while.
+
+‘Wouldn’t you like to step in,’ said Mr. Omer, ‘and speak to her? Walk
+in and speak to her, sir! Make yourself at home!’
+
+I was too bashful to do so then--I was afraid of confusing her, and I
+was no less afraid of confusing myself.--but I informed myself of the
+hour at which she left of an evening, in order that our visit might
+be timed accordingly; and taking leave of Mr. Omer, and his pretty
+daughter, and her little children, went away to my dear old Peggotty’s.
+
+Here she was, in the tiled kitchen, cooking dinner! The moment I knocked
+at the door she opened it, and asked me what I pleased to want. I looked
+at her with a smile, but she gave me no smile in return. I had never
+ceased to write to her, but it must have been seven years since we had
+met.
+
+‘Is Mr. Barkis at home, ma’am?’ I said, feigning to speak roughly to
+her.
+
+‘He’s at home, sir,’ returned Peggotty, ‘but he’s bad abed with the
+rheumatics.’
+
+‘Don’t he go over to Blunderstone now?’ I asked.
+
+‘When he’s well he do,’ she answered.
+
+‘Do YOU ever go there, Mrs. Barkis?’
+
+She looked at me more attentively, and I noticed a quick movement of her
+hands towards each other.
+
+‘Because I want to ask a question about a house there, that they call
+the--what is it?--the Rookery,’ said I.
+
+She took a step backward, and put out her hands in an undecided
+frightened way, as if to keep me off.
+
+‘Peggotty!’ I cried to her.
+
+She cried, ‘My darling boy!’ and we both burst into tears, and were
+locked in one another’s arms.
+
+What extravagances she committed; what laughing and crying over me; what
+pride she showed, what joy, what sorrow that she whose pride and joy I
+might have been, could never hold me in a fond embrace; I have not the
+heart to tell. I was troubled with no misgiving that it was young in
+me to respond to her emotions. I had never laughed and cried in all my
+life, I dare say--not even to her--more freely than I did that morning.
+
+‘Barkis will be so glad,’ said Peggotty, wiping her eyes with her apron,
+‘that it’ll do him more good than pints of liniment. May I go and tell
+him you are here? Will you come up and see him, my dear?’
+
+Of course I would. But Peggotty could not get out of the room as easily
+as she meant to, for as often as she got to the door and looked round
+at me, she came back again to have another laugh and another cry upon my
+shoulder. At last, to make the matter easier, I went upstairs with
+her; and having waited outside for a minute, while she said a word of
+preparation to Mr. Barkis, presented myself before that invalid.
+
+He received me with absolute enthusiasm. He was too rheumatic to be
+shaken hands with, but he begged me to shake the tassel on the top of
+his nightcap, which I did most cordially. When I sat down by the side
+of the bed, he said that it did him a world of good to feel as if he
+was driving me on the Blunderstone road again. As he lay in bed, face
+upward, and so covered, with that exception, that he seemed to be
+nothing but a face--like a conventional cherubim--he looked the queerest
+object I ever beheld.
+
+‘What name was it, as I wrote up in the cart, sir?’ said Mr. Barkis,
+with a slow rheumatic smile.
+
+‘Ah! Mr. Barkis, we had some grave talks about that matter, hadn’t we?’
+
+‘I was willin’ a long time, sir?’ said Mr. Barkis.
+
+‘A long time,’ said I.
+
+‘And I don’t regret it,’ said Mr. Barkis. ‘Do you remember what you
+told me once, about her making all the apple parsties and doing all the
+cooking?’
+
+‘Yes, very well,’ I returned.
+
+‘It was as true,’ said Mr. Barkis, ‘as turnips is. It was as true,’ said
+Mr. Barkis, nodding his nightcap, which was his only means of emphasis,
+‘as taxes is. And nothing’s truer than them.’
+
+Mr. Barkis turned his eyes upon me, as if for my assent to this result
+of his reflections in bed; and I gave it.
+
+‘Nothing’s truer than them,’ repeated Mr. Barkis; ‘a man as poor as I
+am, finds that out in his mind when he’s laid up. I’m a very poor man,
+sir!’
+
+‘I am sorry to hear it, Mr. Barkis.’
+
+‘A very poor man, indeed I am,’ said Mr. Barkis.
+
+Here his right hand came slowly and feebly from under the bedclothes,
+and with a purposeless uncertain grasp took hold of a stick which was
+loosely tied to the side of the bed. After some poking about with
+this instrument, in the course of which his face assumed a variety of
+distracted expressions, Mr. Barkis poked it against a box, an end
+of which had been visible to me all the time. Then his face became
+composed.
+
+‘Old clothes,’ said Mr. Barkis.
+
+‘Oh!’ said I.
+
+‘I wish it was Money, sir,’ said Mr. Barkis.
+
+‘I wish it was, indeed,’ said I.
+
+‘But it AIN’T,’ said Mr. Barkis, opening both his eyes as wide as he
+possibly could.
+
+I expressed myself quite sure of that, and Mr. Barkis, turning his eyes
+more gently to his wife, said:
+
+‘She’s the usefullest and best of women, C. P. Barkis. All the praise
+that anyone can give to C. P. Barkis, she deserves, and more! My dear,
+you’ll get a dinner today, for company; something good to eat and drink,
+will you?’
+
+I should have protested against this unnecessary demonstration in
+my honour, but that I saw Peggotty, on the opposite side of the bed,
+extremely anxious I should not. So I held my peace.
+
+‘I have got a trifle of money somewhere about me, my dear,’ said Mr.
+Barkis, ‘but I’m a little tired. If you and Mr. David will leave me for
+a short nap, I’ll try and find it when I wake.’
+
+We left the room, in compliance with this request. When we got outside
+the door, Peggotty informed me that Mr. Barkis, being now ‘a little
+nearer’ than he used to be, always resorted to this same device before
+producing a single coin from his store; and that he endured unheard-of
+agonies in crawling out of bed alone, and taking it from that unlucky
+box. In effect, we presently heard him uttering suppressed groans of the
+most dismal nature, as this magpie proceeding racked him in every joint;
+but while Peggotty’s eyes were full of compassion for him, she said his
+generous impulse would do him good, and it was better not to check it.
+So he groaned on, until he had got into bed again, suffering, I have no
+doubt, a martyrdom; and then called us in, pretending to have just
+woke up from a refreshing sleep, and to produce a guinea from under his
+pillow. His satisfaction in which happy imposition on us, and in
+having preserved the impenetrable secret of the box, appeared to be a
+sufficient compensation to him for all his tortures.
+
+I prepared Peggotty for Steerforth’s arrival and it was not long before
+he came. I am persuaded she knew no difference between his having been a
+personal benefactor of hers, and a kind friend to me, and that she would
+have received him with the utmost gratitude and devotion in any case.
+But his easy, spirited good humour; his genial manner, his handsome
+looks, his natural gift of adapting himself to whomsoever he pleased,
+and making direct, when he cared to do it, to the main point of interest
+in anybody’s heart; bound her to him wholly in five minutes. His
+manner to me, alone, would have won her. But, through all these causes
+combined, I sincerely believe she had a kind of adoration for him before
+he left the house that night.
+
+He stayed there with me to dinner--if I were to say willingly, I should
+not half express how readily and gaily. He went into Mr. Barkis’s room
+like light and air, brightening and refreshing it as if he were healthy
+weather. There was no noise, no effort, no consciousness, in anything
+he did; but in everything an indescribable lightness, a seeming
+impossibility of doing anything else, or doing anything better, which
+was so graceful, so natural, and agreeable, that it overcomes me, even
+now, in the remembrance.
+
+We made merry in the little parlour, where the Book of Martyrs,
+unthumbed since my time, was laid out upon the desk as of old, and where
+I now turned over its terrific pictures, remembering the old sensations
+they had awakened, but not feeling them. When Peggotty spoke of what
+she called my room, and of its being ready for me at night, and of her
+hoping I would occupy it, before I could so much as look at Steerforth,
+hesitating, he was possessed of the whole case.
+
+‘Of course,’ he said. ‘You’ll sleep here, while we stay, and I shall
+sleep at the hotel.’
+
+‘But to bring you so far,’ I returned, ‘and to separate, seems bad
+companionship, Steerforth.’
+
+‘Why, in the name of Heaven, where do you naturally belong?’ he said.
+‘What is “seems”, compared to that?’ It was settled at once.
+
+He maintained all his delightful qualities to the last, until we started
+forth, at eight o’clock, for Mr. Peggotty’s boat. Indeed, they were more
+and more brightly exhibited as the hours went on; for I thought even
+then, and I have no doubt now, that the consciousness of success in his
+determination to please, inspired him with a new delicacy of perception,
+and made it, subtle as it was, more easy to him. If anyone had told me,
+then, that all this was a brilliant game, played for the excitement of
+the moment, for the employment of high spirits, in the thoughtless love
+of superiority, in a mere wasteful careless course of winning what was
+worthless to him, and next minute thrown away--I say, if anyone had told
+me such a lie that night, I wonder in what manner of receiving it my
+indignation would have found a vent! Probably only in an increase, had
+that been possible, of the romantic feelings of fidelity and friendship
+with which I walked beside him, over the dark wintry sands towards the
+old boat; the wind sighing around us even more mournfully, than it had
+sighed and moaned upon the night when I first darkened Mr. Peggotty’s
+door.
+
+‘This is a wild kind of place, Steerforth, is it not?’
+
+‘Dismal enough in the dark,’ he said: ‘and the sea roars as if it were
+hungry for us. Is that the boat, where I see a light yonder?’ ‘That’s
+the boat,’ said I.
+
+‘And it’s the same I saw this morning,’ he returned. ‘I came straight to
+it, by instinct, I suppose.’
+
+We said no more as we approached the light, but made softly for the
+door. I laid my hand upon the latch; and whispering Steerforth to keep
+close to me, went in.
+
+A murmur of voices had been audible on the outside, and, at the
+moment of our entrance, a clapping of hands: which latter noise, I
+was surprised to see, proceeded from the generally disconsolate Mrs.
+Gummidge. But Mrs. Gummidge was not the only person there who was
+unusually excited. Mr. Peggotty, his face lighted up with uncommon
+satisfaction, and laughing with all his might, held his rough arms
+wide open, as if for little Em’ly to run into them; Ham, with a mixed
+expression in his face of admiration, exultation, and a lumbering sort
+of bashfulness that sat upon him very well, held little Em’ly by
+the hand, as if he were presenting her to Mr. Peggotty; little Em’ly
+herself, blushing and shy, but delighted with Mr. Peggotty’s delight, as
+her joyous eyes expressed, was stopped by our entrance (for she saw us
+first) in the very act of springing from Ham to nestle in Mr. Peggotty’s
+embrace. In the first glimpse we had of them all, and at the moment of
+our passing from the dark cold night into the warm light room, this
+was the way in which they were all employed: Mrs. Gummidge in the
+background, clapping her hands like a madwoman.
+
+The little picture was so instantaneously dissolved by our going in,
+that one might have doubted whether it had ever been. I was in the midst
+of the astonished family, face to face with Mr. Peggotty, and holding
+out my hand to him, when Ham shouted:
+
+‘Mas’r Davy! It’s Mas’r Davy!’
+
+In a moment we were all shaking hands with one another, and asking one
+another how we did, and telling one another how glad we were to meet,
+and all talking at once. Mr. Peggotty was so proud and overjoyed to see
+us, that he did not know what to say or do, but kept over and over again
+shaking hands with me, and then with Steerforth, and then with me, and
+then ruffling his shaggy hair all over his head, and laughing with such
+glee and triumph, that it was a treat to see him.
+
+‘Why, that you two gent’lmen--gent’lmen growed--should come to this here
+roof tonight, of all nights in my life,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘is such a
+thing as never happened afore, I do rightly believe! Em’ly, my darling,
+come here! Come here, my little witch! There’s Mas’r Davy’s friend, my
+dear! There’s the gent’lman as you’ve heerd on, Em’ly. He comes to see
+you, along with Mas’r Davy, on the brightest night of your uncle’s life
+as ever was or will be, Gorm the t’other one, and horroar for it!’
+
+After delivering this speech all in a breath, and with extraordinary
+animation and pleasure, Mr. Peggotty put one of his large hands
+rapturously on each side of his niece’s face, and kissing it a dozen
+times, laid it with a gentle pride and love upon his broad chest, and
+patted it as if his hand had been a lady’s. Then he let her go; and as
+she ran into the little chamber where I used to sleep, looked round upon
+us, quite hot and out of breath with his uncommon satisfaction.
+
+‘If you two gent’lmen--gent’lmen growed now, and such gent’lmen--’ said
+Mr. Peggotty.
+
+‘So th’ are, so th’ are!’ cried Ham. ‘Well said! So th’ are. Mas’r Davy
+bor’--gent’lmen growed--so th’ are!’
+
+‘If you two gent’lmen, gent’lmen growed,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘don’t
+ex-cuse me for being in a state of mind, when you understand matters,
+I’ll arks your pardon. Em’ly, my dear!--She knows I’m a going to tell,’
+here his delight broke out again, ‘and has made off. Would you be so
+good as look arter her, Mawther, for a minute?’
+
+Mrs. Gummidge nodded and disappeared.
+
+‘If this ain’t,’ said Mr. Peggotty, sitting down among us by the fire,
+‘the brightest night o’ my life, I’m a shellfish--biled too--and more I
+can’t say. This here little Em’ly, sir,’ in a low voice to Steerforth,
+‘--her as you see a blushing here just now--’
+
+Steerforth only nodded; but with such a pleased expression of interest,
+and of participation in Mr. Peggotty’s feelings, that the latter
+answered him as if he had spoken.
+
+‘To be sure,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘That’s her, and so she is. Thankee,
+sir.’
+
+Ham nodded to me several times, as if he would have said so too.
+
+‘This here little Em’ly of ours,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘has been, in our
+house, what I suppose (I’m a ignorant man, but that’s my belief) no one
+but a little bright-eyed creetur can be in a house. She ain’t my
+child; I never had one; but I couldn’t love her more. You understand! I
+couldn’t do it!’
+
+‘I quite understand,’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘I know you do, sir,’ returned Mr. Peggotty, ‘and thankee again. Mas’r
+Davy, he can remember what she was; you may judge for your own self what
+she is; but neither of you can’t fully know what she has been, is, and
+will be, to my loving art. I am rough, sir,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘I am as
+rough as a Sea Porkypine; but no one, unless, mayhap, it is a woman, can
+know, I think, what our little Em’ly is to me. And betwixt ourselves,’
+sinking his voice lower yet, ‘that woman’s name ain’t Missis Gummidge
+neither, though she has a world of merits.’ Mr. Peggotty ruffled his
+hair again, with both hands, as a further preparation for what he was
+going to say, and went on, with a hand upon each of his knees:
+
+‘There was a certain person as had know’d our Em’ly, from the time when
+her father was drownded; as had seen her constant; when a babby, when
+a young gal, when a woman. Not much of a person to look at, he warn’t,’
+said Mr. Peggotty, ‘something o’ my own build--rough--a good deal o’
+the sou’-wester in him--wery salt--but, on the whole, a honest sort of a
+chap, with his art in the right place.’
+
+I thought I had never seen Ham grin to anything like the extent to which
+he sat grinning at us now.
+
+‘What does this here blessed tarpaulin go and do,’ said Mr. Peggotty,
+with his face one high noon of enjoyment, ‘but he loses that there art
+of his to our little Em’ly. He follers her about, he makes hisself a
+sort o’ servant to her, he loses in a great measure his relish for his
+wittles, and in the long-run he makes it clear to me wot’s amiss. Now I
+could wish myself, you see, that our little Em’ly was in a fair way of
+being married. I could wish to see her, at all ewents, under articles to
+a honest man as had a right to defend her. I don’t know how long I may
+live, or how soon I may die; but I know that if I was capsized, any
+night, in a gale of wind in Yarmouth Roads here, and was to see the
+town-lights shining for the last time over the rollers as I couldn’t
+make no head against, I could go down quieter for thinking “There’s a
+man ashore there, iron-true to my little Em’ly, God bless her, and no
+wrong can touch my Em’ly while so be as that man lives.”’
+
+Mr. Peggotty, in simple earnestness, waved his right arm, as if he were
+waving it at the town-lights for the last time, and then, exchanging a
+nod with Ham, whose eye he caught, proceeded as before.
+
+‘Well! I counsels him to speak to Em’ly. He’s big enough, but he’s
+bashfuller than a little un, and he don’t like. So I speak. “What! Him!”
+ says Em’ly. “Him that I’ve know’d so intimate so many years, and like so
+much. Oh, Uncle! I never can have him. He’s such a good fellow!” I gives
+her a kiss, and I says no more to her than, “My dear, you’re right to
+speak out, you’re to choose for yourself, you’re as free as a little
+bird.” Then I aways to him, and I says, “I wish it could have been so,
+but it can’t. But you can both be as you was, and wot I say to you is,
+Be as you was with her, like a man.” He says to me, a-shaking of my
+hand, “I will!” he says. And he was--honourable and manful--for two year
+going on, and we was just the same at home here as afore.’
+
+Mr. Peggotty’s face, which had varied in its expression with the various
+stages of his narrative, now resumed all its former triumphant delight,
+as he laid a hand upon my knee and a hand upon Steerforth’s (previously
+wetting them both, for the greater emphasis of the action), and divided
+the following speech between us:
+
+‘All of a sudden, one evening--as it might be tonight--comes little
+Em’ly from her work, and him with her! There ain’t so much in that,
+you’ll say. No, because he takes care on her, like a brother, arter
+dark, and indeed afore dark, and at all times. But this tarpaulin chap,
+he takes hold of her hand, and he cries out to me, joyful, “Look here!
+This is to be my little wife!” And she says, half bold and half shy, and
+half a laughing and half a crying, “Yes, Uncle! If you please.”--If I
+please!’ cried Mr. Peggotty, rolling his head in an ecstasy at the idea;
+‘Lord, as if I should do anythink else!--“If you please, I am steadier
+now, and I have thought better of it, and I’ll be as good a little wife
+as I can to him, for he’s a dear, good fellow!” Then Missis Gummidge,
+she claps her hands like a play, and you come in. Theer! the murder’s
+out!’ said Mr. Peggotty--‘You come in! It took place this here present
+hour; and here’s the man that’ll marry her, the minute she’s out of her
+time.’
+
+Ham staggered, as well he might, under the blow Mr. Peggotty dealt
+him in his unbounded joy, as a mark of confidence and friendship; but
+feeling called upon to say something to us, he said, with much faltering
+and great difficulty:
+
+‘She warn’t no higher than you was, Mas’r Davy--when you first
+come--when I thought what she’d grow up to be. I see her grown
+up--gent’lmen--like a flower. I’d lay down my life for
+her--Mas’r Davy--Oh! most content and cheerful! She’s more to
+me--gent’lmen--than--she’s all to me that ever I can want, and more
+than ever I--than ever I could say. I--I love her true. There ain’t a
+gent’lman in all the land--nor yet sailing upon all the sea--that
+can love his lady more than I love her, though there’s many a common
+man--would say better--what he meant.’
+
+I thought it affecting to see such a sturdy fellow as Ham was now,
+trembling in the strength of what he felt for the pretty little creature
+who had won his heart. I thought the simple confidence reposed in us by
+Mr. Peggotty and by himself, was, in itself, affecting. I was affected
+by the story altogether. How far my emotions were influenced by the
+recollections of my childhood, I don’t know. Whether I had come there
+with any lingering fancy that I was still to love little Em’ly, I don’t
+know. I know that I was filled with pleasure by all this; but, at first,
+with an indescribably sensitive pleasure, that a very little would have
+changed to pain.
+
+Therefore, if it had depended upon me to touch the prevailing chord
+among them with any skill, I should have made a poor hand of it. But it
+depended upon Steerforth; and he did it with such address, that in a few
+minutes we were all as easy and as happy as it was possible to be.
+
+‘Mr. Peggotty,’ he said, ‘you are a thoroughly good fellow, and deserve
+to be as happy as you are tonight. My hand upon it! Ham, I give you
+joy, my boy. My hand upon that, too! Daisy, stir the fire, and make it a
+brisk one! and Mr. Peggotty, unless you can induce your gentle niece to
+come back (for whom I vacate this seat in the corner), I shall go.
+Any gap at your fireside on such a night--such a gap least of all--I
+wouldn’t make, for the wealth of the Indies!’
+
+So Mr. Peggotty went into my old room to fetch little Em’ly. At first
+little Em’ly didn’t like to come, and then Ham went. Presently they
+brought her to the fireside, very much confused, and very shy,--but
+she soon became more assured when she found how gently and respectfully
+Steerforth spoke to her; how skilfully he avoided anything that would
+embarrass her; how he talked to Mr. Peggotty of boats, and ships, and
+tides, and fish; how he referred to me about the time when he had seen
+Mr. Peggotty at Salem House; how delighted he was with the boat and all
+belonging to it; how lightly and easily he carried on, until he brought
+us, by degrees, into a charmed circle, and we were all talking away
+without any reserve.
+
+Em’ly, indeed, said little all the evening; but she looked, and
+listened, and her face got animated, and she was charming. Steerforth
+told a story of a dismal shipwreck (which arose out of his talk with Mr.
+Peggotty), as if he saw it all before him--and little Em’ly’s eyes were
+fastened on him all the time, as if she saw it too. He told us a merry
+adventure of his own, as a relief to that, with as much gaiety as if the
+narrative were as fresh to him as it was to us--and little Em’ly
+laughed until the boat rang with the musical sounds, and we all laughed
+(Steerforth too), in irresistible sympathy with what was so pleasant and
+light-hearted. He got Mr. Peggotty to sing, or rather to roar, ‘When
+the stormy winds do blow, do blow, do blow’; and he sang a sailor’s
+song himself, so pathetically and beautifully, that I could have almost
+fancied that the real wind creeping sorrowfully round the house, and
+murmuring low through our unbroken silence, was there to listen.
+
+As to Mrs. Gummidge, he roused that victim of despondency with a success
+never attained by anyone else (so Mr. Peggotty informed me), since
+the decease of the old one. He left her so little leisure for being
+miserable, that she said next day she thought she must have been
+bewitched.
+
+But he set up no monopoly of the general attention, or the conversation.
+When little Em’ly grew more courageous, and talked (but still bashfully)
+across the fire to me, of our old wanderings upon the beach, to pick up
+shells and pebbles; and when I asked her if she recollected how I used
+to be devoted to her; and when we both laughed and reddened, casting
+these looks back on the pleasant old times, so unreal to look at now; he
+was silent and attentive, and observed us thoughtfully. She sat, at this
+time, and all the evening, on the old locker in her old little corner
+by the fire--Ham beside her, where I used to sit. I could not satisfy
+myself whether it was in her own little tormenting way, or in a maidenly
+reserve before us, that she kept quite close to the wall, and away from
+him; but I observed that she did so, all the evening.
+
+As I remember, it was almost midnight when we took our leave. We had had
+some biscuit and dried fish for supper, and Steerforth had produced from
+his pocket a full flask of Hollands, which we men (I may say we men,
+now, without a blush) had emptied. We parted merrily; and as they all
+stood crowded round the door to light us as far as they could upon our
+road, I saw the sweet blue eyes of little Em’ly peeping after us, from
+behind Ham, and heard her soft voice calling to us to be careful how we
+went.
+
+‘A most engaging little Beauty!’ said Steerforth, taking my arm. ‘Well!
+It’s a quaint place, and they are quaint company, and it’s quite a new
+sensation to mix with them.’
+
+‘How fortunate we are, too,’ I returned, ‘to have arrived to witness
+their happiness in that intended marriage! I never saw people so happy.
+How delightful to see it, and to be made the sharers in their honest
+joy, as we have been!’
+
+‘That’s rather a chuckle-headed fellow for the girl; isn’t he?’ said
+Steerforth.
+
+He had been so hearty with him, and with them all, that I felt a shock
+in this unexpected and cold reply. But turning quickly upon him, and
+seeing a laugh in his eyes, I answered, much relieved:
+
+‘Ah, Steerforth! It’s well for you to joke about the poor! You may
+skirmish with Miss Dartle, or try to hide your sympathies in jest from
+me, but I know better. When I see how perfectly you understand them, how
+exquisitely you can enter into happiness like this plain fisherman’s,
+or humour a love like my old nurse’s, I know that there is not a joy or
+sorrow, not an emotion, of such people, that can be indifferent to you.
+And I admire and love you for it, Steerforth, twenty times the more!’
+
+He stopped, and, looking in my face, said, ‘Daisy, I believe you are
+in earnest, and are good. I wish we all were!’ Next moment he was
+gaily singing Mr. Peggotty’s song, as we walked at a round pace back to
+Yarmouth.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 22. SOME OLD SCENES, AND SOME NEW PEOPLE
+
+
+Steerforth and I stayed for more than a fortnight in that part of the
+country. We were very much together, I need not say; but occasionally we
+were asunder for some hours at a time. He was a good sailor, and I was
+but an indifferent one; and when he went out boating with Mr. Peggotty,
+which was a favourite amusement of his, I generally remained ashore. My
+occupation of Peggotty’s spare-room put a constraint upon me, from which
+he was free: for, knowing how assiduously she attended on Mr. Barkis
+all day, I did not like to remain out late at night; whereas Steerforth,
+lying at the Inn, had nothing to consult but his own humour. Thus it
+came about, that I heard of his making little treats for the fishermen
+at Mr. Peggotty’s house of call, ‘The Willing Mind’, after I was in bed,
+and of his being afloat, wrapped in fishermen’s clothes, whole moonlight
+nights, and coming back when the morning tide was at flood. By this
+time, however, I knew that his restless nature and bold spirits
+delighted to find a vent in rough toil and hard weather, as in any other
+means of excitement that presented itself freshly to him; so none of his
+proceedings surprised me.
+
+Another cause of our being sometimes apart, was, that I had naturally an
+interest in going over to Blunderstone, and revisiting the old familiar
+scenes of my childhood; while Steerforth, after being there once, had
+naturally no great interest in going there again. Hence, on three or
+four days that I can at once recall, we went our several ways after an
+early breakfast, and met again at a late dinner. I had no idea how he
+employed his time in the interval, beyond a general knowledge that
+he was very popular in the place, and had twenty means of actively
+diverting himself where another man might not have found one.
+
+For my own part, my occupation in my solitary pilgrimages was to recall
+every yard of the old road as I went along it, and to haunt the old
+spots, of which I never tired. I haunted them, as my memory had often
+done, and lingered among them as my younger thoughts had lingered when I
+was far away. The grave beneath the tree, where both my parents lay--on
+which I had looked out, when it was my father’s only, with such curious
+feelings of compassion, and by which I had stood, so desolate, when it
+was opened to receive my pretty mother and her baby--the grave which
+Peggotty’s own faithful care had ever since kept neat, and made a garden
+of, I walked near, by the hour. It lay a little off the churchyard path,
+in a quiet corner, not so far removed but I could read the names
+upon the stone as I walked to and fro, startled by the sound of the
+church-bell when it struck the hour, for it was like a departed voice to
+me. My reflections at these times were always associated with the figure
+I was to make in life, and the distinguished things I was to do. My
+echoing footsteps went to no other tune, but were as constant to that as
+if I had come home to build my castles in the air at a living mother’s
+side.
+
+There were great changes in my old home. The ragged nests, so long
+deserted by the rooks, were gone; and the trees were lopped and topped
+out of their remembered shapes. The garden had run wild, and half the
+windows of the house were shut up. It was occupied, but only by a poor
+lunatic gentleman, and the people who took care of him. He was always
+sitting at my little window, looking out into the churchyard; and I
+wondered whether his rambling thoughts ever went upon any of the fancies
+that used to occupy mine, on the rosy mornings when I peeped out of
+that same little window in my night-clothes, and saw the sheep quietly
+feeding in the light of the rising sun.
+
+Our old neighbours, Mr. and Mrs. Grayper, were gone to South America,
+and the rain had made its way through the roof of their empty house,
+and stained the outer walls. Mr. Chillip was married again to a tall,
+raw-boned, high-nosed wife; and they had a weazen little baby, with a
+heavy head that it couldn’t hold up, and two weak staring eyes, with
+which it seemed to be always wondering why it had ever been born.
+
+It was with a singular jumble of sadness and pleasure that I used to
+linger about my native place, until the reddening winter sun admonished
+me that it was time to start on my returning walk. But, when the place
+was left behind, and especially when Steerforth and I were happily
+seated over our dinner by a blazing fire, it was delicious to think of
+having been there. So it was, though in a softened degree, when I
+went to my neat room at night; and, turning over the leaves of the
+crocodile-book (which was always there, upon a little table), remembered
+with a grateful heart how blest I was in having such a friend as
+Steerforth, such a friend as Peggotty, and such a substitute for what I
+had lost as my excellent and generous aunt.
+
+MY nearest way to Yarmouth, in coming back from these long walks, was by
+a ferry. It landed me on the flat between the town and the sea, which I
+could make straight across, and so save myself a considerable circuit by
+the high road. Mr. Peggotty’s house being on that waste-place, and not
+a hundred yards out of my track, I always looked in as I went by.
+Steerforth was pretty sure to be there expecting me, and we went on
+together through the frosty air and gathering fog towards the twinkling
+lights of the town.
+
+One dark evening, when I was later than usual--for I had, that day, been
+making my parting visit to Blunderstone, as we were now about to return
+home--I found him alone in Mr. Peggotty’s house, sitting thoughtfully
+before the fire. He was so intent upon his own reflections that he was
+quite unconscious of my approach. This, indeed, he might easily have
+been if he had been less absorbed, for footsteps fell noiselessly on the
+sandy ground outside; but even my entrance failed to rouse him. I was
+standing close to him, looking at him; and still, with a heavy brow, he
+was lost in his meditations.
+
+He gave such a start when I put my hand upon his shoulder, that he made
+me start too.
+
+‘You come upon me,’ he said, almost angrily, ‘like a reproachful ghost!’
+
+‘I was obliged to announce myself, somehow,’ I replied. ‘Have I called
+you down from the stars?’
+
+‘No,’ he answered. ‘No.’
+
+‘Up from anywhere, then?’ said I, taking my seat near him.
+
+‘I was looking at the pictures in the fire,’ he returned.
+
+‘But you are spoiling them for me,’ said I, as he stirred it quickly
+with a piece of burning wood, striking out of it a train of red-hot
+sparks that went careering up the little chimney, and roaring out into
+the air.
+
+‘You would not have seen them,’ he returned. ‘I detest this mongrel
+time, neither day nor night. How late you are! Where have you been?’
+
+‘I have been taking leave of my usual walk,’ said I.
+
+‘And I have been sitting here,’ said Steerforth, glancing round the
+room, ‘thinking that all the people we found so glad on the night of
+our coming down, might--to judge from the present wasted air of the
+place--be dispersed, or dead, or come to I don’t know what harm. David,
+I wish to God I had had a judicious father these last twenty years!’
+
+‘My dear Steerforth, what is the matter?’
+
+‘I wish with all my soul I had been better guided!’ he exclaimed. ‘I
+wish with all my soul I could guide myself better!’
+
+There was a passionate dejection in his manner that quite amazed me. He
+was more unlike himself than I could have supposed possible.
+
+‘It would be better to be this poor Peggotty, or his lout of a nephew,’
+he said, getting up and leaning moodily against the chimney-piece, with
+his face towards the fire, ‘than to be myself, twenty times richer and
+twenty times wiser, and be the torment to myself that I have been, in
+this Devil’s bark of a boat, within the last half-hour!’
+
+I was so confounded by the alteration in him, that at first I could only
+observe him in silence, as he stood leaning his head upon his hand, and
+looking gloomily down at the fire. At length I begged him, with all
+the earnestness I felt, to tell me what had occurred to cross him so
+unusually, and to let me sympathize with him, if I could not hope to
+advise him. Before I had well concluded, he began to laugh--fretfully at
+first, but soon with returning gaiety.
+
+‘Tut, it’s nothing, Daisy! nothing!’ he replied. ‘I told you at the
+inn in London, I am heavy company for myself, sometimes. I have been a
+nightmare to myself, just now--must have had one, I think. At odd dull
+times, nursery tales come up into the memory, unrecognized for what
+they are. I believe I have been confounding myself with the bad boy who
+“didn’t care”, and became food for lions--a grander kind of going to
+the dogs, I suppose. What old women call the horrors, have been creeping
+over me from head to foot. I have been afraid of myself.’
+
+‘You are afraid of nothing else, I think,’ said I.
+
+‘Perhaps not, and yet may have enough to be afraid of too,’ he answered.
+‘Well! So it goes by! I am not about to be hipped again, David; but I
+tell you, my good fellow, once more, that it would have been well for me
+(and for more than me) if I had had a steadfast and judicious father!’
+
+His face was always full of expression, but I never saw it express such
+a dark kind of earnestness as when he said these words, with his glance
+bent on the fire.
+
+‘So much for that!’ he said, making as if he tossed something light
+into the air, with his hand. “‘Why, being gone, I am a man again,” like
+Macbeth. And now for dinner! If I have not (Macbeth-like) broken up the
+feast with most admired disorder, Daisy.’
+
+‘But where are they all, I wonder!’ said I.
+
+‘God knows,’ said Steerforth. ‘After strolling to the ferry looking
+for you, I strolled in here and found the place deserted. That set me
+thinking, and you found me thinking.’
+
+The advent of Mrs. Gummidge with a basket, explained how the house had
+happened to be empty. She had hurried out to buy something that was
+needed, against Mr. Peggotty’s return with the tide; and had left the
+door open in the meanwhile, lest Ham and little Em’ly, with whom it was
+an early night, should come home while she was gone. Steerforth, after
+very much improving Mrs. Gummidge’s spirits by a cheerful salutation and
+a jocose embrace, took my arm, and hurried me away.
+
+He had improved his own spirits, no less than Mrs. Gummidge’s, for
+they were again at their usual flow, and he was full of vivacious
+conversation as we went along.
+
+‘And so,’ he said, gaily, ‘we abandon this buccaneer life tomorrow, do
+we?’
+
+‘So we agreed,’ I returned. ‘And our places by the coach are taken, you
+know.’
+
+‘Ay! there’s no help for it, I suppose,’ said Steerforth. ‘I have
+almost forgotten that there is anything to do in the world but to go out
+tossing on the sea here. I wish there was not.’
+
+‘As long as the novelty should last,’ said I, laughing.
+
+‘Like enough,’ he returned; ‘though there’s a sarcastic meaning in that
+observation for an amiable piece of innocence like my young friend.
+Well! I dare say I am a capricious fellow, David. I know I am; but
+while the iron is hot, I can strike it vigorously too. I could pass
+a reasonably good examination already, as a pilot in these waters, I
+think.’
+
+‘Mr. Peggotty says you are a wonder,’ I returned.
+
+‘A nautical phenomenon, eh?’ laughed Steerforth.
+
+‘Indeed he does, and you know how truly; I know how ardent you are
+in any pursuit you follow, and how easily you can master it. And that
+amazes me most in you, Steerforth--that you should be contented with
+such fitful uses of your powers.’
+
+‘Contented?’ he answered, merrily. ‘I am never contented, except with
+your freshness, my gentle Daisy. As to fitfulness, I have never learnt
+the art of binding myself to any of the wheels on which the Ixions of
+these days are turning round and round. I missed it somehow in a bad
+apprenticeship, and now don’t care about it.---You know I have bought a
+boat down here?’
+
+‘What an extraordinary fellow you are, Steerforth!’ I exclaimed,
+stopping--for this was the first I had heard of it. ‘When you may never
+care to come near the place again!’
+
+‘I don’t know that,’ he returned. ‘I have taken a fancy to the place. At
+all events,’ walking me briskly on, ‘I have bought a boat that was for
+sale--a clipper, Mr. Peggotty says; and so she is--and Mr. Peggotty will
+be master of her in my absence.’
+
+‘Now I understand you, Steerforth!’ said I, exultingly. ‘You pretend
+to have bought it for yourself, but you have really done so to confer
+a benefit on him. I might have known as much at first, knowing you.
+My dear kind Steerforth, how can I tell you what I think of your
+generosity?’
+
+‘Tush!’ he answered, turning red. ‘The less said, the better.’
+
+‘Didn’t I know?’ cried I, ‘didn’t I say that there was not a joy, or
+sorrow, or any emotion of such honest hearts that was indifferent to
+you?’
+
+‘Aye, aye,’ he answered, ‘you told me all that. There let it rest. We
+have said enough!’
+
+Afraid of offending him by pursuing the subject when he made so light
+of it, I only pursued it in my thoughts as we went on at even a quicker
+pace than before.
+
+‘She must be newly rigged,’ said Steerforth, ‘and I shall leave Littimer
+behind to see it done, that I may know she is quite complete. Did I tell
+you Littimer had come down?’
+
+‘No.’
+
+‘Oh yes! came down this morning, with a letter from my mother.’
+
+As our looks met, I observed that he was pale even to his lips, though
+he looked very steadily at me. I feared that some difference between him
+and his mother might have led to his being in the frame of mind in which
+I had found him at the solitary fireside. I hinted so.
+
+‘Oh no!’ he said, shaking his head, and giving a slight laugh. ‘Nothing
+of the sort! Yes. He is come down, that man of mine.’
+
+‘The same as ever?’ said I.
+
+‘The same as ever,’ said Steerforth. ‘Distant and quiet as the North
+Pole. He shall see to the boat being fresh named. She’s the “Stormy
+Petrel” now. What does Mr. Peggotty care for Stormy Petrels! I’ll have
+her christened again.’
+
+‘By what name?’ I asked.
+
+‘The “Little Em’ly”.’
+
+As he had continued to look steadily at me, I took it as a reminder that
+he objected to being extolled for his consideration. I could not help
+showing in my face how much it pleased me, but I said little, and he
+resumed his usual smile, and seemed relieved.
+
+‘But see here,’ he said, looking before us, ‘where the original little
+Em’ly comes! And that fellow with her, eh? Upon my soul, he’s a true
+knight. He never leaves her!’
+
+Ham was a boat-builder in these days, having improved a natural
+ingenuity in that handicraft, until he had become a skilled workman. He
+was in his working-dress, and looked rugged enough, but manly withal,
+and a very fit protector for the blooming little creature at his
+side. Indeed, there was a frankness in his face, an honesty, and an
+undisguised show of his pride in her, and his love for her, which were,
+to me, the best of good looks. I thought, as they came towards us, that
+they were well matched even in that particular.
+
+She withdrew her hand timidly from his arm as we stopped to speak to
+them, and blushed as she gave it to Steerforth and to me. When they
+passed on, after we had exchanged a few words, she did not like to
+replace that hand, but, still appearing timid and constrained, walked
+by herself. I thought all this very pretty and engaging, and Steerforth
+seemed to think so too, as we looked after them fading away in the light
+of a young moon.
+
+Suddenly there passed us--evidently following them--a young woman whose
+approach we had not observed, but whose face I saw as she went by, and
+thought I had a faint remembrance of. She was lightly dressed; looked
+bold, and haggard, and flaunting, and poor; but seemed, for the time, to
+have given all that to the wind which was blowing, and to have nothing
+in her mind but going after them. As the dark distant level, absorbing
+their figures into itself, left but itself visible between us and the
+sea and clouds, her figure disappeared in like manner, still no nearer
+to them than before.
+
+‘That is a black shadow to be following the girl,’ said Steerforth,
+standing still; ‘what does it mean?’
+
+He spoke in a low voice that sounded almost strange to Me.
+
+‘She must have it in her mind to beg of them, I think,’ said I.
+
+‘A beggar would be no novelty,’ said Steerforth; ‘but it is a strange
+thing that the beggar should take that shape tonight.’
+
+‘Why?’ I asked.
+
+‘For no better reason, truly, than because I was thinking,’ he said,
+after a pause, ‘of something like it, when it came by. Where the Devil
+did it come from, I wonder!’
+
+‘From the shadow of this wall, I think,’ said I, as we emerged upon a
+road on which a wall abutted.
+
+‘It’s gone!’ he returned, looking over his shoulder. ‘And all ill go
+with it. Now for our dinner!’
+
+But he looked again over his shoulder towards the sea-line glimmering
+afar off, and yet again. And he wondered about it, in some broken
+expressions, several times, in the short remainder of our walk; and only
+seemed to forget it when the light of fire and candle shone upon us,
+seated warm and merry, at table.
+
+Littimer was there, and had his usual effect upon me. When I said to
+him that I hoped Mrs. Steerforth and Miss Dartle were well, he answered
+respectfully (and of course respectably), that they were tolerably well,
+he thanked me, and had sent their compliments. This was all, and yet he
+seemed to me to say as plainly as a man could say: ‘You are very young,
+sir; you are exceedingly young.’
+
+We had almost finished dinner, when taking a step or two towards the
+table, from the corner where he kept watch upon us, or rather upon me,
+as I felt, he said to his master:
+
+‘I beg your pardon, sir. Miss Mowcher is down here.’
+
+‘Who?’ cried Steerforth, much astonished.
+
+‘Miss Mowcher, sir.’
+
+‘Why, what on earth does she do here?’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘It appears to be her native part of the country, sir. She informs me
+that she makes one of her professional visits here, every year, sir.
+I met her in the street this afternoon, and she wished to know if she
+might have the honour of waiting on you after dinner, sir.’
+
+‘Do you know the Giantess in question, Daisy?’ inquired Steerforth.
+
+I was obliged to confess--I felt ashamed, even of being at this
+disadvantage before Littimer--that Miss Mowcher and I were wholly
+unacquainted.
+
+‘Then you shall know her,’ said Steerforth, ‘for she is one of the seven
+wonders of the world. When Miss Mowcher comes, show her in.’
+
+I felt some curiosity and excitement about this lady, especially as
+Steerforth burst into a fit of laughing when I referred to her, and
+positively refused to answer any question of which I made her the
+subject. I remained, therefore, in a state of considerable expectation
+until the cloth had been removed some half an hour, and we were sitting
+over our decanter of wine before the fire, when the door opened, and
+Littimer, with his habitual serenity quite undisturbed, announced:
+
+‘Miss Mowcher!’
+
+I looked at the doorway and saw nothing. I was still looking at
+the doorway, thinking that Miss Mowcher was a long while making her
+appearance, when, to my infinite astonishment, there came waddling round
+a sofa which stood between me and it, a pursy dwarf, of about forty
+or forty-five, with a very large head and face, a pair of roguish grey
+eyes, and such extremely little arms, that, to enable herself to lay a
+finger archly against her snub nose, as she ogled Steerforth, she was
+obliged to meet the finger half-way, and lay her nose against it.
+Her chin, which was what is called a double chin, was so fat that it
+entirely swallowed up the strings of her bonnet, bow and all. Throat she
+had none; waist she had none; legs she had none, worth mentioning; for
+though she was more than full-sized down to where her waist would have
+been, if she had had any, and though she terminated, as human beings
+generally do, in a pair of feet, she was so short that she stood at a
+common-sized chair as at a table, resting a bag she carried on the seat.
+This lady--dressed in an off-hand, easy style; bringing her nose and her
+forefinger together, with the difficulty I have described; standing with
+her head necessarily on one side, and, with one of her sharp eyes shut
+up, making an uncommonly knowing face--after ogling Steerforth for a few
+moments, broke into a torrent of words.
+
+‘What! My flower!’ she pleasantly began, shaking her large head at him.
+‘You’re there, are you! Oh, you naughty boy, fie for shame, what do you
+do so far away from home? Up to mischief, I’ll be bound. Oh, you’re a
+downy fellow, Steerforth, so you are, and I’m another, ain’t I? Ha, ha,
+ha! You’d have betted a hundred pound to five, now, that you wouldn’t
+have seen me here, wouldn’t you? Bless you, man alive, I’m everywhere.
+I’m here and there, and where not, like the conjurer’s half-crown in the
+lady’s handkercher. Talking of handkerchers--and talking of ladies--what
+a comfort you are to your blessed mother, ain’t you, my dear boy, over
+one of my shoulders, and I don’t say which!’
+
+Miss Mowcher untied her bonnet, at this passage of her discourse, threw
+back the strings, and sat down, panting, on a footstool in front of
+the fire--making a kind of arbour of the dining table, which spread its
+mahogany shelter above her head.
+
+‘Oh my stars and what’s-their-names!’ she went on, clapping a hand on
+each of her little knees, and glancing shrewdly at me, ‘I’m of too full
+a habit, that’s the fact, Steerforth. After a flight of stairs, it gives
+me as much trouble to draw every breath I want, as if it was a bucket of
+water. If you saw me looking out of an upper window, you’d think I was a
+fine woman, wouldn’t you?’
+
+‘I should think that, wherever I saw you,’ replied Steerforth.
+
+‘Go along, you dog, do!’ cried the little creature, making a whisk at
+him with the handkerchief with which she was wiping her face, ‘and don’t
+be impudent! But I give you my word and honour I was at Lady Mithers’s
+last week--THERE’S a woman! How SHE wears!--and Mithers himself came
+into the room where I was waiting for her--THERE’S a man! How HE wears!
+and his wig too, for he’s had it these ten years--and he went on at
+that rate in the complimentary line, that I began to think I should be
+obliged to ring the bell. Ha! ha! ha! He’s a pleasant wretch, but he
+wants principle.’
+
+‘What were you doing for Lady Mithers?’ asked Steerforth.
+
+‘That’s tellings, my blessed infant,’ she retorted, tapping her nose
+again, screwing up her face, and twinkling her eyes like an imp of
+supernatural intelligence. ‘Never YOU mind! You’d like to know whether
+I stop her hair from falling off, or dye it, or touch up her
+complexion, or improve her eyebrows, wouldn’t you? And so you shall, my
+darling--when I tell you! Do you know what my great grandfather’s name
+was?’
+
+‘No,’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘It was Walker, my sweet pet,’ replied Miss Mowcher, ‘and he came of a
+long line of Walkers, that I inherit all the Hookey estates from.’
+
+I never beheld anything approaching to Miss Mowcher’s wink except Miss
+Mowcher’s self-possession. She had a wonderful way too, when listening
+to what was said to her, or when waiting for an answer to what she had
+said herself, of pausing with her head cunningly on one side, and one
+eye turned up like a magpie’s. Altogether I was lost in amazement,
+and sat staring at her, quite oblivious, I am afraid, of the laws of
+politeness.
+
+She had by this time drawn the chair to her side, and was busily engaged
+in producing from the bag (plunging in her short arm to the shoulder, at
+every dive) a number of small bottles, sponges, combs, brushes, bits of
+flannel, little pairs of curling-irons, and other instruments, which
+she tumbled in a heap upon the chair. From this employment she suddenly
+desisted, and said to Steerforth, much to my confusion:
+
+‘Who’s your friend?’
+
+‘Mr. Copperfield,’ said Steerforth; ‘he wants to know you.’
+
+‘Well, then, he shall! I thought he looked as if he did!’ returned Miss
+Mowcher, waddling up to me, bag in hand, and laughing on me as she came.
+‘Face like a peach!’ standing on tiptoe to pinch my cheek as I
+sat. ‘Quite tempting! I’m very fond of peaches. Happy to make your
+acquaintance, Mr. Copperfield, I’m sure.’
+
+I said that I congratulated myself on having the honour to make hers,
+and that the happiness was mutual.
+
+‘Oh, my goodness, how polite we are!’ exclaimed Miss Mowcher, making a
+preposterous attempt to cover her large face with her morsel of a hand.
+‘What a world of gammon and spinnage it is, though, ain’t it!’
+
+This was addressed confidentially to both of us, as the morsel of a
+hand came away from the face, and buried itself, arm and all, in the bag
+again.
+
+‘What do you mean, Miss Mowcher?’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘Ha! ha! ha! What a refreshing set of humbugs we are, to be sure, ain’t
+we, my sweet child?’ replied that morsel of a woman, feeling in the bag
+with her head on one side and her eye in the air. ‘Look here!’ taking
+something out. ‘Scraps of the Russian Prince’s nails. Prince Alphabet
+turned topsy-turvy, I call him, for his name’s got all the letters in
+it, higgledy-piggledy.’
+
+‘The Russian Prince is a client of yours, is he?’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘I believe you, my pet,’ replied Miss Mowcher. ‘I keep his nails in
+order for him. Twice a week! Fingers and toes.’
+
+‘He pays well, I hope?’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘Pays, as he speaks, my dear child--through the nose,’ replied Miss
+Mowcher. ‘None of your close shavers the Prince ain’t. You’d say so, if
+you saw his moustachios. Red by nature, black by art.’
+
+‘By your art, of course,’ said Steerforth.
+
+Miss Mowcher winked assent. ‘Forced to send for me. Couldn’t help it.
+The climate affected his dye; it did very well in Russia, but it was no
+go here. You never saw such a rusty Prince in all your born days as he
+was. Like old iron!’ ‘Is that why you called him a humbug, just now?’
+inquired Steerforth.
+
+‘Oh, you’re a broth of a boy, ain’t you?’ returned Miss Mowcher, shaking
+her head violently. ‘I said, what a set of humbugs we were in general,
+and I showed you the scraps of the Prince’s nails to prove it. The
+Prince’s nails do more for me in private families of the genteel sort,
+than all my talents put together. I always carry ‘em about. They’re the
+best introduction. If Miss Mowcher cuts the Prince’s nails, she must be
+all right. I give ‘em away to the young ladies. They put ‘em in albums,
+I believe. Ha! ha! ha! Upon my life, “the whole social system” (as
+the men call it when they make speeches in Parliament) is a system of
+Prince’s nails!’ said this least of women, trying to fold her short
+arms, and nodding her large head.
+
+Steerforth laughed heartily, and I laughed too. Miss Mowcher continuing
+all the time to shake her head (which was very much on one side), and to
+look into the air with one eye, and to wink with the other.
+
+‘Well, well!’ she said, smiting her small knees, and rising, ‘this is
+not business. Come, Steerforth, let’s explore the polar regions, and
+have it over.’
+
+She then selected two or three of the little instruments, and a
+little bottle, and asked (to my surprise) if the table would bear. On
+Steerforth’s replying in the affirmative, she pushed a chair against it,
+and begging the assistance of my hand, mounted up, pretty nimbly, to the
+top, as if it were a stage.
+
+‘If either of you saw my ankles,’ she said, when she was safely
+elevated, ‘say so, and I’ll go home and destroy myself!’
+
+‘I did not,’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘I did not,’ said I.
+
+‘Well then,’ cried Miss Mowcher, ‘I’ll consent to live. Now, ducky,
+ducky, ducky, come to Mrs. Bond and be killed.’
+
+This was an invocation to Steerforth to place himself under her hands;
+who, accordingly, sat himself down, with his back to the table, and
+his laughing face towards me, and submitted his head to her inspection,
+evidently for no other purpose than our entertainment. To see Miss
+Mowcher standing over him, looking at his rich profusion of brown
+hair through a large round magnifying glass, which she took out of her
+pocket, was a most amazing spectacle.
+
+‘You’re a pretty fellow!’ said Miss Mowcher, after a brief inspection.
+‘You’d be as bald as a friar on the top of your head in twelve months,
+but for me. Just half a minute, my young friend, and we’ll give you a
+polishing that shall keep your curls on for the next ten years!’
+
+With this, she tilted some of the contents of the little bottle on to
+one of the little bits of flannel, and, again imparting some of the
+virtues of that preparation to one of the little brushes, began rubbing
+and scraping away with both on the crown of Steerforth’s head in the
+busiest manner I ever witnessed, talking all the time.
+
+‘There’s Charley Pyegrave, the duke’s son,’ she said. ‘You know
+Charley?’ peeping round into his face.
+
+‘A little,’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘What a man HE is! THERE’S a whisker! As to Charley’s legs, if they
+were only a pair (which they ain’t), they’d defy competition. Would you
+believe he tried to do without me--in the Life-Guards, too?’
+
+‘Mad!’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘It looks like it. However, mad or sane, he tried,’ returned Miss
+Mowcher. ‘What does he do, but, lo and behold you, he goes into a
+perfumer’s shop, and wants to buy a bottle of the Madagascar Liquid.’
+
+‘Charley does?’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘Charley does. But they haven’t got any of the Madagascar Liquid.’
+
+‘What is it? Something to drink?’ asked Steerforth.
+
+‘To drink?’ returned Miss Mowcher, stopping to slap his cheek. ‘To
+doctor his own moustachios with, you know. There was a woman in the
+shop--elderly female--quite a Griffin--who had never even heard of it
+by name. “Begging pardon, sir,” said the Griffin to Charley, “it’s
+not--not--not ROUGE, is it?” “Rouge,” said Charley to the Griffin. “What
+the unmentionable to ears polite, do you think I want with rouge?” “No
+offence, sir,” said the Griffin; “we have it asked for by so many names,
+I thought it might be.” Now that, my child,’ continued Miss Mowcher,
+rubbing all the time as busily as ever, ‘is another instance of
+the refreshing humbug I was speaking of. I do something in that way
+myself--perhaps a good deal--perhaps a little--sharp’s the word, my dear
+boy--never mind!’
+
+‘In what way do you mean? In the rouge way?’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘Put this and that together, my tender pupil,’ returned the wary
+Mowcher, touching her nose, ‘work it by the rule of Secrets in all
+trades, and the product will give you the desired result. I say I do a
+little in that way myself. One Dowager, SHE calls it lip-salve. Another,
+SHE calls it gloves. Another, SHE calls it tucker-edging. Another, SHE
+calls it a fan. I call it whatever THEY call it. I supply it for ‘em,
+but we keep up the trick so, to one another, and make believe with
+such a face, that they’d as soon think of laying it on, before a whole
+drawing-room, as before me. And when I wait upon ‘em, they’ll say to
+me sometimes--WITH IT ON--thick, and no mistake--“How am I looking,
+Mowcher? Am I pale?” Ha! ha! ha! ha! Isn’t THAT refreshing, my young
+friend!’
+
+I never did in my days behold anything like Mowcher as she stood upon
+the dining table, intensely enjoying this refreshment, rubbing busily at
+Steerforth’s head, and winking at me over it.
+
+‘Ah!’ she said. ‘Such things are not much in demand hereabouts. That
+sets me off again! I haven’t seen a pretty woman since I’ve been here,
+jemmy.’
+
+‘No?’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘Not the ghost of one,’ replied Miss Mowcher.
+
+‘We could show her the substance of one, I think?’ said Steerforth,
+addressing his eyes to mine. ‘Eh, Daisy?’
+
+‘Yes, indeed,’ said I.
+
+‘Aha?’ cried the little creature, glancing sharply at my face, and then
+peeping round at Steerforth’s. ‘Umph?’
+
+The first exclamation sounded like a question put to both of us, and the
+second like a question put to Steerforth only. She seemed to have found
+no answer to either, but continued to rub, with her head on one side and
+her eye turned up, as if she were looking for an answer in the air and
+were confident of its appearing presently.
+
+‘A sister of yours, Mr. Copperfield?’ she cried, after a pause, and
+still keeping the same look-out. ‘Aye, aye?’
+
+‘No,’ said Steerforth, before I could reply. ‘Nothing of the sort. On
+the contrary, Mr. Copperfield used--or I am much mistaken--to have a
+great admiration for her.’
+
+‘Why, hasn’t he now?’ returned Miss Mowcher. ‘Is he fickle? Oh, for
+shame! Did he sip every flower, and change every hour, until Polly his
+passion requited?--Is her name Polly?’
+
+The Elfin suddenness with which she pounced upon me with this question,
+and a searching look, quite disconcerted me for a moment.
+
+‘No, Miss Mowcher,’ I replied. ‘Her name is Emily.’
+
+‘Aha?’ she cried exactly as before. ‘Umph? What a rattle I am! Mr.
+Copperfield, ain’t I volatile?’
+
+Her tone and look implied something that was not agreeable to me in
+connexion with the subject. So I said, in a graver manner than any of us
+had yet assumed: ‘She is as virtuous as she is pretty. She is engaged
+to be married to a most worthy and deserving man in her own station of
+life. I esteem her for her good sense, as much as I admire her for her
+good looks.’
+
+‘Well said!’ cried Steerforth. ‘Hear, hear, hear! Now I’ll quench the
+curiosity of this little Fatima, my dear Daisy, by leaving her nothing
+to guess at. She is at present apprenticed, Miss Mowcher, or articled,
+or whatever it may be, to Omer and Joram, Haberdashers, Milliners, and
+so forth, in this town. Do you observe? Omer and Joram. The promise of
+which my friend has spoken, is made and entered into with her cousin;
+Christian name, Ham; surname, Peggotty; occupation, boat-builder;
+also of this town. She lives with a relative; Christian name, unknown;
+surname, Peggotty; occupation, seafaring; also of this town. She is the
+prettiest and most engaging little fairy in the world. I admire her--as
+my friend does--exceedingly. If it were not that I might appear to
+disparage her Intended, which I know my friend would not like, I would
+add, that to me she seems to be throwing herself away; that I am sure
+she might do better; and that I swear she was born to be a lady.’
+
+Miss Mowcher listened to these words, which were very slowly and
+distinctly spoken, with her head on one side, and her eye in the air
+as if she were still looking for that answer. When he ceased she became
+brisk again in an instant, and rattled away with surprising volubility.
+
+‘Oh! And that’s all about it, is it?’ she exclaimed, trimming his
+whiskers with a little restless pair of scissors, that went glancing
+round his head in all directions. ‘Very well: very well! Quite a long
+story. Ought to end “and they lived happy ever afterwards”; oughtn’t
+it? Ah! What’s that game at forfeits? I love my love with an E, because
+she’s enticing; I hate her with an E, because she’s engaged. I took her
+to the sign of the exquisite, and treated her with an elopement, her
+name’s Emily, and she lives in the east? Ha! ha! ha! Mr. Copperfield,
+ain’t I volatile?’
+
+Merely looking at me with extravagant slyness, and not waiting for any
+reply, she continued, without drawing breath:
+
+‘There! If ever any scapegrace was trimmed and touched up to perfection,
+you are, Steerforth. If I understand any noddle in the world, I
+understand yours. Do you hear me when I tell you that, my darling? I
+understand yours,’ peeping down into his face. ‘Now you may mizzle,
+jemmy (as we say at Court), and if Mr. Copperfield will take the chair
+I’ll operate on him.’
+
+‘What do you say, Daisy?’ inquired Steerforth, laughing, and resigning
+his seat. ‘Will you be improved?’
+
+‘Thank you, Miss Mowcher, not this evening.’
+
+‘Don’t say no,’ returned the little woman, looking at me with the aspect
+of a connoisseur; ‘a little bit more eyebrow?’
+
+‘Thank you,’ I returned, ‘some other time.’
+
+‘Have it carried half a quarter of an inch towards the temple,’ said
+Miss Mowcher. ‘We can do it in a fortnight.’
+
+‘No, I thank you. Not at present.’
+
+‘Go in for a tip,’ she urged. ‘No? Let’s get the scaffolding up, then,
+for a pair of whiskers. Come!’
+
+I could not help blushing as I declined, for I felt we were on my weak
+point, now. But Miss Mowcher, finding that I was not at present disposed
+for any decoration within the range of her art, and that I was, for the
+time being, proof against the blandishments of the small bottle which
+she held up before one eye to enforce her persuasions, said we would
+make a beginning on an early day, and requested the aid of my hand to
+descend from her elevated station. Thus assisted, she skipped down with
+much agility, and began to tie her double chin into her bonnet.
+
+‘The fee,’ said Steerforth, ‘is--’
+
+‘Five bob,’ replied Miss Mowcher, ‘and dirt cheap, my chicken. Ain’t I
+volatile, Mr. Copperfield?’
+
+I replied politely: ‘Not at all.’ But I thought she was rather so, when
+she tossed up his two half-crowns like a goblin pieman, caught them,
+dropped them in her pocket, and gave it a loud slap.
+
+‘That’s the Till!’ observed Miss Mowcher, standing at the chair again,
+and replacing in the bag a miscellaneous collection of little objects
+she had emptied out of it. ‘Have I got all my traps? It seems so. It
+won’t do to be like long Ned Beadwood, when they took him to church “to
+marry him to somebody”, as he says, and left the bride behind. Ha! ha!
+ha! A wicked rascal, Ned, but droll! Now, I know I’m going to break
+your hearts, but I am forced to leave you. You must call up all your
+fortitude, and try to bear it. Good-bye, Mr. Copperfield! Take care of
+yourself, jockey of Norfolk! How I have been rattling on! It’s all
+the fault of you two wretches. I forgive you! “Bob swore!”--as the
+Englishman said for “Good night”, when he first learnt French, and
+thought it so like English. “Bob swore,” my ducks!’
+
+With the bag slung over her arm, and rattling as she waddled away, she
+waddled to the door, where she stopped to inquire if she should leave
+us a lock of her hair. ‘Ain’t I volatile?’ she added, as a commentary on
+this offer, and, with her finger on her nose, departed.
+
+Steerforth laughed to that degree, that it was impossible for me to help
+laughing too; though I am not sure I should have done so, but for this
+inducement. When we had had our laugh quite out, which was after some
+time, he told me that Miss Mowcher had quite an extensive connexion, and
+made herself useful to a variety of people in a variety of ways. Some
+people trifled with her as a mere oddity, he said; but she was as
+shrewdly and sharply observant as anyone he knew, and as long-headed as
+she was short-armed. He told me that what she had said of being here,
+and there, and everywhere, was true enough; for she made little darts
+into the provinces, and seemed to pick up customers everywhere, and to
+know everybody. I asked him what her disposition was: whether it was at
+all mischievous, and if her sympathies were generally on the right side
+of things: but, not succeeding in attracting his attention to these
+questions after two or three attempts, I forbore or forgot to repeat
+them. He told me instead, with much rapidity, a good deal about her
+skill, and her profits; and about her being a scientific cupper, if I
+should ever have occasion for her service in that capacity.
+
+She was the principal theme of our conversation during the evening:
+and when we parted for the night Steerforth called after me over the
+banisters, ‘Bob swore!’ as I went downstairs.
+
+I was surprised, when I came to Mr. Barkis’s house, to find Ham walking
+up and down in front of it, and still more surprised to learn from him
+that little Em’ly was inside. I naturally inquired why he was not there
+too, instead of pacing the streets by himself?
+
+‘Why, you see, Mas’r Davy,’ he rejoined, in a hesitating manner, ‘Em’ly,
+she’s talking to some ‘un in here.’
+
+‘I should have thought,’ said I, smiling, ‘that that was a reason for
+your being in here too, Ham.’
+
+‘Well, Mas’r Davy, in a general way, so ‘t would be,’ he returned;
+‘but look’ee here, Mas’r Davy,’ lowering his voice, and speaking very
+gravely. ‘It’s a young woman, sir--a young woman, that Em’ly knowed
+once, and doen’t ought to know no more.’
+
+When I heard these words, a light began to fall upon the figure I had
+seen following them, some hours ago.
+
+‘It’s a poor wurem, Mas’r Davy,’ said Ham, ‘as is trod under foot by all
+the town. Up street and down street. The mowld o’ the churchyard don’t
+hold any that the folk shrink away from, more.’
+
+‘Did I see her tonight, Ham, on the sand, after we met you?’
+
+‘Keeping us in sight?’ said Ham. ‘It’s like you did, Mas’r Davy. Not
+that I know’d then, she was theer, sir, but along of her creeping soon
+arterwards under Em’ly’s little winder, when she see the light come,
+and whispering “Em’ly, Em’ly, for Christ’s sake, have a woman’s heart
+towards me. I was once like you!” Those was solemn words, Mas’r Davy,
+fur to hear!’
+
+‘They were indeed, Ham. What did Em’ly do?’ ‘Says Em’ly, “Martha, is
+it you? Oh, Martha, can it be you?”--for they had sat at work together,
+many a day, at Mr. Omer’s.’
+
+‘I recollect her now!’ cried I, recalling one of the two girls I had
+seen when I first went there. ‘I recollect her quite well!’
+
+‘Martha Endell,’ said Ham. ‘Two or three year older than Em’ly, but was
+at the school with her.’
+
+‘I never heard her name,’ said I. ‘I didn’t mean to interrupt you.’
+
+‘For the matter o’ that, Mas’r Davy,’ replied Ham, ‘all’s told a’most
+in them words, “Em’ly, Em’ly, for Christ’s sake, have a woman’s heart
+towards me. I was once like you!” She wanted to speak to Em’ly. Em’ly
+couldn’t speak to her theer, for her loving uncle was come home, and
+he wouldn’t--no, Mas’r Davy,’ said Ham, with great earnestness, ‘he
+couldn’t, kind-natur’d, tender-hearted as he is, see them two together,
+side by side, for all the treasures that’s wrecked in the sea.’
+
+I felt how true this was. I knew it, on the instant, quite as well as
+Ham.
+
+‘So Em’ly writes in pencil on a bit of paper,’ he pursued, ‘and gives it
+to her out o’ winder to bring here. “Show that,” she says, “to my aunt,
+Mrs. Barkis, and she’ll set you down by her fire, for the love of me,
+till uncle is gone out, and I can come.” By and by she tells me what
+I tell you, Mas’r Davy, and asks me to bring her. What can I do? She
+doen’t ought to know any such, but I can’t deny her, when the tears is
+on her face.’
+
+He put his hand into the breast of his shaggy jacket, and took out with
+great care a pretty little purse.
+
+‘And if I could deny her when the tears was on her face, Mas’r Davy,’
+said Ham, tenderly adjusting it on the rough palm of his hand, ‘how
+could I deny her when she give me this to carry for her--knowing what
+she brought it for? Such a toy as it is!’ said Ham, thoughtfully looking
+on it. ‘With such a little money in it, Em’ly my dear.’
+
+I shook him warmly by the hand when he had put it away again--for that
+was more satisfactory to me than saying anything--and we walked up
+and down, for a minute or two, in silence. The door opened then, and
+Peggotty appeared, beckoning to Ham to come in. I would have kept away,
+but she came after me, entreating me to come in too. Even then, I
+would have avoided the room where they all were, but for its being the
+neat-tiled kitchen I have mentioned more than once. The door opening
+immediately into it, I found myself among them before I considered
+whither I was going.
+
+The girl--the same I had seen upon the sands--was near the fire. She
+was sitting on the ground, with her head and one arm lying on a chair.
+I fancied, from the disposition of her figure, that Em’ly had but newly
+risen from the chair, and that the forlorn head might perhaps have been
+lying on her lap. I saw but little of the girl’s face, over which her
+hair fell loose and scattered, as if she had been disordering it with
+her own hands; but I saw that she was young, and of a fair complexion.
+Peggotty had been crying. So had little Em’ly. Not a word was spoken
+when we first went in; and the Dutch clock by the dresser seemed, in the
+silence, to tick twice as loud as usual. Em’ly spoke first.
+
+‘Martha wants,’ she said to Ham, ‘to go to London.’
+
+‘Why to London?’ returned Ham.
+
+He stood between them, looking on the prostrate girl with a mixture of
+compassion for her, and of jealousy of her holding any companionship
+with her whom he loved so well, which I have always remembered
+distinctly. They both spoke as if she were ill; in a soft, suppressed
+tone that was plainly heard, although it hardly rose above a whisper.
+
+‘Better there than here,’ said a third voice aloud--Martha’s, though she
+did not move. ‘No one knows me there. Everybody knows me here.’
+
+‘What will she do there?’ inquired Ham.
+
+She lifted up her head, and looked darkly round at him for a moment;
+then laid it down again, and curved her right arm about her neck, as
+a woman in a fever, or in an agony of pain from a shot, might twist
+herself.
+
+‘She will try to do well,’ said little Em’ly. ‘You don’t know what she
+has said to us. Does he--do they--aunt?’
+
+Peggotty shook her head compassionately.
+
+‘I’ll try,’ said Martha, ‘if you’ll help me away. I never can do worse
+than I have done here. I may do better. Oh!’ with a dreadful shiver,
+‘take me out of these streets, where the whole town knows me from a
+child!’
+
+As Em’ly held out her hand to Ham, I saw him put in it a little canvas
+bag. She took it, as if she thought it were her purse, and made a step
+or two forward; but finding her mistake, came back to where he had
+retired near me, and showed it to him.
+
+‘It’s all yourn, Em’ly,’ I could hear him say. ‘I haven’t nowt in all
+the wureld that ain’t yourn, my dear. It ain’t of no delight to me,
+except for you!’
+
+The tears rose freshly in her eyes, but she turned away and went to
+Martha. What she gave her, I don’t know. I saw her stooping over her,
+and putting money in her bosom. She whispered something, as she asked
+was that enough? ‘More than enough,’ the other said, and took her hand
+and kissed it.
+
+Then Martha arose, and gathering her shawl about her, covering her
+face with it, and weeping aloud, went slowly to the door. She stopped
+a moment before going out, as if she would have uttered something or
+turned back; but no word passed her lips. Making the same low, dreary,
+wretched moaning in her shawl, she went away.
+
+As the door closed, little Em’ly looked at us three in a hurried manner
+and then hid her face in her hands, and fell to sobbing.
+
+‘Doen’t, Em’ly!’ said Ham, tapping her gently on the shoulder. ‘Doen’t,
+my dear! You doen’t ought to cry so, pretty!’
+
+‘Oh, Ham!’ she exclaimed, still weeping pitifully, ‘I am not so good a
+girl as I ought to be! I know I have not the thankful heart, sometimes,
+I ought to have!’
+
+‘Yes, yes, you have, I’m sure,’ said Ham.
+
+‘No! no! no!’ cried little Em’ly, sobbing, and shaking her head. ‘I am
+not as good a girl as I ought to be. Not near! not near!’ And still she
+cried, as if her heart would break.
+
+‘I try your love too much. I know I do!’ she sobbed. ‘I’m often cross to
+you, and changeable with you, when I ought to be far different. You are
+never so to me. Why am I ever so to you, when I should think of nothing
+but how to be grateful, and to make you happy!’
+
+‘You always make me so,’ said Ham, ‘my dear! I am happy in the sight of
+you. I am happy, all day long, in the thoughts of you.’
+
+‘Ah! that’s not enough!’ she cried. ‘That is because you are good; not
+because I am! Oh, my dear, it might have been a better fortune for
+you, if you had been fond of someone else--of someone steadier and
+much worthier than me, who was all bound up in you, and never vain and
+changeable like me!’
+
+‘Poor little tender-heart,’ said Ham, in a low voice. ‘Martha has
+overset her, altogether.’
+
+‘Please, aunt,’ sobbed Em’ly, ‘come here, and let me lay my head upon
+you. Oh, I am very miserable tonight, aunt! Oh, I am not as good a girl
+as I ought to be. I am not, I know!’
+
+Peggotty had hastened to the chair before the fire. Em’ly, with her
+arms around her neck, kneeled by her, looking up most earnestly into her
+face.
+
+‘Oh, pray, aunt, try to help me! Ham, dear, try to help me! Mr. David,
+for the sake of old times, do, please, try to help me! I want to be a
+better girl than I am. I want to feel a hundred times more thankful than
+I do. I want to feel more, what a blessed thing it is to be the wife of
+a good man, and to lead a peaceful life. Oh me, oh me! Oh my heart, my
+heart!’
+
+She dropped her face on my old nurse’s breast, and, ceasing this
+supplication, which in its agony and grief was half a woman’s, half a
+child’s, as all her manner was (being, in that, more natural, and better
+suited to her beauty, as I thought, than any other manner could have
+been), wept silently, while my old nurse hushed her like an infant.
+
+She got calmer by degrees, and then we soothed her; now talking
+encouragingly, and now jesting a little with her, until she began to
+raise her head and speak to us. So we got on, until she was able to
+smile, and then to laugh, and then to sit up, half ashamed; while
+Peggotty recalled her stray ringlets, dried her eyes, and made her neat
+again, lest her uncle should wonder, when she got home, why his darling
+had been crying.
+
+I saw her do, that night, what I had never seen her do before. I saw her
+innocently kiss her chosen husband on the cheek, and creep close to his
+bluff form as if it were her best support. When they went away together,
+in the waning moonlight, and I looked after them, comparing their
+departure in my mind with Martha’s, I saw that she held his arm with
+both her hands, and still kept close to him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 23. I CORROBORATE Mr. DICK, AND CHOOSE A PROFESSION
+
+
+When I awoke in the morning I thought very much of little Em’ly, and her
+emotion last night, after Martha had left. I felt as if I had come into
+the knowledge of those domestic weaknesses and tendernesses in a sacred
+confidence, and that to disclose them, even to Steerforth, would be
+wrong. I had no gentler feeling towards anyone than towards the
+pretty creature who had been my playmate, and whom I have always been
+persuaded, and shall always be persuaded, to my dying day, I then
+devotedly loved. The repetition to any ears--even to Steerforth’s--of
+what she had been unable to repress when her heart lay open to me by an
+accident, I felt would be a rough deed, unworthy of myself, unworthy of
+the light of our pure childhood, which I always saw encircling her head.
+I made a resolution, therefore, to keep it in my own breast; and there
+it gave her image a new grace.
+
+While we were at breakfast, a letter was delivered to me from my aunt.
+As it contained matter on which I thought Steerforth could advise me
+as well as anyone, and on which I knew I should be delighted to consult
+him, I resolved to make it a subject of discussion on our journey home.
+For the present we had enough to do, in taking leave of all our friends.
+Mr. Barkis was far from being the last among them, in his regret at
+our departure; and I believe would even have opened the box again, and
+sacrificed another guinea, if it would have kept us eight-and-forty
+hours in Yarmouth. Peggotty and all her family were full of grief at our
+going. The whole house of Omer and Joram turned out to bid us good-bye;
+and there were so many seafaring volunteers in attendance on Steerforth,
+when our portmanteaux went to the coach, that if we had had the baggage
+of a regiment with us, we should hardly have wanted porters to carry it.
+In a word, we departed to the regret and admiration of all concerned,
+and left a great many people very sorry behind US.
+
+‘Do you stay long here, Littimer?’ said I, as he stood waiting to see the
+coach start.
+
+‘No, sir,’ he replied; ‘probably not very long, sir.’
+
+‘He can hardly say, just now,’ observed Steerforth, carelessly. ‘He
+knows what he has to do, and he’ll do it.’
+
+‘That I am sure he will,’ said I.
+
+Littimer touched his hat in acknowledgement of my good opinion, and I
+felt about eight years old. He touched it once more, wishing us a good
+journey; and we left him standing on the pavement, as respectable a
+mystery as any pyramid in Egypt.
+
+For some little time we held no conversation, Steerforth being unusually
+silent, and I being sufficiently engaged in wondering, within myself,
+when I should see the old places again, and what new changes might
+happen to me or them in the meanwhile. At length Steerforth, becoming
+gay and talkative in a moment, as he could become anything he liked at
+any moment, pulled me by the arm:
+
+‘Find a voice, David. What about that letter you were speaking of at
+breakfast?’
+
+‘Oh!’ said I, taking it out of my pocket. ‘It’s from my aunt.’
+
+‘And what does she say, requiring consideration?’
+
+‘Why, she reminds me, Steerforth,’ said I, ‘that I came out on this
+expedition to look about me, and to think a little.’
+
+‘Which, of course, you have done?’
+
+‘Indeed I can’t say I have, particularly. To tell you the truth, I am
+afraid I have forgotten it.’
+
+‘Well! look about you now, and make up for your negligence,’ said
+Steerforth. ‘Look to the right, and you’ll see a flat country, with a
+good deal of marsh in it; look to the left, and you’ll see the same.
+Look to the front, and you’ll find no difference; look to the rear,
+and there it is still.’ I laughed, and replied that I saw no suitable
+profession in the whole prospect; which was perhaps to be attributed to
+its flatness.
+
+‘What says our aunt on the subject?’ inquired Steerforth, glancing at
+the letter in my hand. ‘Does she suggest anything?’
+
+‘Why, yes,’ said I. ‘She asks me, here, if I think I should like to be a
+proctor? What do you think of it?’
+
+‘Well, I don’t know,’ replied Steerforth, coolly. ‘You may as well do
+that as anything else, I suppose?’
+
+I could not help laughing again, at his balancing all callings and
+professions so equally; and I told him so.
+
+‘What is a proctor, Steerforth?’ said I.
+
+‘Why, he is a sort of monkish attorney,’ replied Steerforth. ‘He is, to
+some faded courts held in Doctors’ Commons,--a lazy old nook near St.
+Paul’s Churchyard--what solicitors are to the courts of law and equity.
+He is a functionary whose existence, in the natural course of things,
+would have terminated about two hundred years ago. I can tell you best
+what he is, by telling you what Doctors’ Commons is. It’s a
+little out-of-the-way place, where they administer what is called
+ecclesiastical law, and play all kinds of tricks with obsolete old
+monsters of acts of Parliament, which three-fourths of the world know
+nothing about, and the other fourth supposes to have been dug up, in
+a fossil state, in the days of the Edwards. It’s a place that has an
+ancient monopoly in suits about people’s wills and people’s marriages,
+and disputes among ships and boats.’
+
+‘Nonsense, Steerforth!’ I exclaimed. ‘You don’t mean to say that there
+is any affinity between nautical matters and ecclesiastical matters?’
+
+‘I don’t, indeed, my dear boy,’ he returned; ‘but I mean to say that
+they are managed and decided by the same set of people, down in that
+same Doctors’ Commons. You shall go there one day, and find them
+blundering through half the nautical terms in Young’s Dictionary,
+apropos of the “Nancy” having run down the “Sarah Jane”, or Mr. Peggotty
+and the Yarmouth boatmen having put off in a gale of wind with an anchor
+and cable to the “Nelson” Indiaman in distress; and you shall go there
+another day, and find them deep in the evidence, pro and con, respecting
+a clergyman who has misbehaved himself; and you shall find the judge
+in the nautical case, the advocate in the clergyman’s case, or
+contrariwise. They are like actors: now a man’s a judge, and now he is
+not a judge; now he’s one thing, now he’s another; now he’s something
+else, change and change about; but it’s always a very pleasant,
+profitable little affair of private theatricals, presented to an
+uncommonly select audience.’
+
+‘But advocates and proctors are not one and the same?’ said I, a little
+puzzled. ‘Are they?’
+
+‘No,’ returned Steerforth, ‘the advocates are civilians--men who have
+taken a doctor’s degree at college--which is the first reason of my
+knowing anything about it. The proctors employ the advocates. Both get
+very comfortable fees, and altogether they make a mighty snug little
+party. On the whole, I would recommend you to take to Doctors’ Commons
+kindly, David. They plume themselves on their gentility there, I can
+tell you, if that’s any satisfaction.’
+
+I made allowance for Steerforth’s light way of treating the subject,
+and, considering it with reference to the staid air of gravity and
+antiquity which I associated with that ‘lazy old nook near St. Paul’s
+Churchyard’, did not feel indisposed towards my aunt’s suggestion; which
+she left to my free decision, making no scruple of telling me that it
+had occurred to her, on her lately visiting her own proctor in Doctors’
+Commons for the purpose of settling her will in my favour.
+
+‘That’s a laudable proceeding on the part of our aunt, at all events,’
+said Steerforth, when I mentioned it; ‘and one deserving of all
+encouragement. Daisy, my advice is that you take kindly to Doctors’
+Commons.’
+
+I quite made up my mind to do so. I then told Steerforth that my aunt
+was in town awaiting me (as I found from her letter), and that she had
+taken lodgings for a week at a kind of private hotel at Lincoln’s Inn
+Fields, where there was a stone staircase, and a convenient door in
+the roof; my aunt being firmly persuaded that every house in London was
+going to be burnt down every night.
+
+We achieved the rest of our journey pleasantly, sometimes recurring to
+Doctors’ Commons, and anticipating the distant days when I should be a
+proctor there, which Steerforth pictured in a variety of humorous and
+whimsical lights, that made us both merry. When we came to our journey’s
+end, he went home, engaging to call upon me next day but one; and I
+drove to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where I found my aunt up, and waiting
+supper.
+
+If I had been round the world since we parted, we could hardly have been
+better pleased to meet again. My aunt cried outright as she embraced me;
+and said, pretending to laugh, that if my poor mother had been alive,
+that silly little creature would have shed tears, she had no doubt.
+
+‘So you have left Mr. Dick behind, aunt?’ said I. ‘I am sorry for that.
+Ah, Janet, how do you do?’
+
+As Janet curtsied, hoping I was well, I observed my aunt’s visage
+lengthen very much.
+
+‘I am sorry for it, too,’ said my aunt, rubbing her nose. ‘I have had
+no peace of mind, Trot, since I have been here.’ Before I could ask why,
+she told me.
+
+‘I am convinced,’ said my aunt, laying her hand with melancholy firmness
+on the table, ‘that Dick’s character is not a character to keep the
+donkeys off. I am confident he wants strength of purpose. I ought to
+have left Janet at home, instead, and then my mind might perhaps have
+been at ease. If ever there was a donkey trespassing on my green,’ said
+my aunt, with emphasis, ‘there was one this afternoon at four o’clock.
+A cold feeling came over me from head to foot, and I know it was a
+donkey!’
+
+I tried to comfort her on this point, but she rejected consolation.
+
+‘It was a donkey,’ said my aunt; ‘and it was the one with the stumpy
+tail which that Murdering sister of a woman rode, when she came to my
+house.’ This had been, ever since, the only name my aunt knew for Miss
+Murdstone. ‘If there is any Donkey in Dover, whose audacity it is harder
+to me to bear than another’s, that,’ said my aunt, striking the table,
+‘is the animal!’
+
+Janet ventured to suggest that my aunt might be disturbing herself
+unnecessarily, and that she believed the donkey in question was then
+engaged in the sand-and-gravel line of business, and was not available
+for purposes of trespass. But my aunt wouldn’t hear of it.
+
+Supper was comfortably served and hot, though my aunt’s rooms were very
+high up--whether that she might have more stone stairs for her money, or
+might be nearer to the door in the roof, I don’t know--and consisted of
+a roast fowl, a steak, and some vegetables, to all of which I did ample
+justice, and which were all excellent. But my aunt had her own ideas
+concerning London provision, and ate but little.
+
+‘I suppose this unfortunate fowl was born and brought up in a cellar,’
+said my aunt, ‘and never took the air except on a hackney coach-stand. I
+hope the steak may be beef, but I don’t believe it. Nothing’s genuine in
+the place, in my opinion, but the dirt.’
+
+‘Don’t you think the fowl may have come out of the country, aunt?’ I
+hinted.
+
+‘Certainly not,’ returned my aunt. ‘It would be no pleasure to a London
+tradesman to sell anything which was what he pretended it was.’
+
+I did not venture to controvert this opinion, but I made a good supper,
+which it greatly satisfied her to see me do. When the table was cleared,
+Janet assisted her to arrange her hair, to put on her nightcap, which
+was of a smarter construction than usual [‘in case of fire’, my aunt
+said), and to fold her gown back over her knees, these being her usual
+preparations for warming herself before going to bed. I then made her,
+according to certain established regulations from which no deviation,
+however slight, could ever be permitted, a glass of hot wine and
+water, and a slice of toast cut into long thin strips. With these
+accompaniments we were left alone to finish the evening, my aunt sitting
+opposite to me drinking her wine and water; soaking her strips of toast
+in it, one by one, before eating them; and looking benignantly on me,
+from among the borders of her nightcap.
+
+‘Well, Trot,’ she began, ‘what do you think of the proctor plan? Or have
+you not begun to think about it yet?’
+
+‘I have thought a good deal about it, my dear aunt, and I have talked a
+good deal about it with Steerforth. I like it very much indeed. I like
+it exceedingly.’
+
+‘Come!’ said my aunt. ‘That’s cheering!’
+
+‘I have only one difficulty, aunt.’
+
+‘Say what it is, Trot,’ she returned.
+
+‘Why, I want to ask, aunt, as this seems, from what I understand, to
+be a limited profession, whether my entrance into it would not be very
+expensive?’
+
+‘It will cost,’ returned my aunt, ‘to article you, just a thousand
+pounds.’
+
+‘Now, my dear aunt,’ said I, drawing my chair nearer, ‘I am uneasy in
+my mind about that. It’s a large sum of money. You have expended a
+great deal on my education, and have always been as liberal to me in all
+things as it was possible to be. You have been the soul of generosity.
+Surely there are some ways in which I might begin life with hardly any
+outlay, and yet begin with a good hope of getting on by resolution and
+exertion. Are you sure that it would not be better to try that course?
+Are you certain that you can afford to part with so much money, and that
+it is right that it should be so expended? I only ask you, my second
+mother, to consider. Are you certain?’
+
+My aunt finished eating the piece of toast on which she was then
+engaged, looking me full in the face all the while; and then setting
+her glass on the chimney-piece, and folding her hands upon her folded
+skirts, replied as follows:
+
+‘Trot, my child, if I have any object in life, it is to provide for
+your being a good, a sensible, and a happy man. I am bent upon it--so is
+Dick. I should like some people that I know to hear Dick’s conversation
+on the subject. Its sagacity is wonderful. But no one knows the
+resources of that man’s intellect, except myself!’
+
+She stopped for a moment to take my hand between hers, and went on:
+
+‘It’s in vain, Trot, to recall the past, unless it works some influence
+upon the present. Perhaps I might have been better friends with your
+poor father. Perhaps I might have been better friends with that poor
+child your mother, even after your sister Betsey Trotwood disappointed
+me. When you came to me, a little runaway boy, all dusty and way-worn,
+perhaps I thought so. From that time until now, Trot, you have ever been
+a credit to me and a pride and a pleasure. I have no other claim upon
+my means; at least’--here to my surprise she hesitated, and was
+confused--‘no, I have no other claim upon my means--and you are my
+adopted child. Only be a loving child to me in my age, and bear with my
+whims and fancies; and you will do more for an old woman whose prime of
+life was not so happy or conciliating as it might have been, than ever
+that old woman did for you.’
+
+It was the first time I had heard my aunt refer to her past history.
+There was a magnanimity in her quiet way of doing so, and of dismissing
+it, which would have exalted her in my respect and affection, if
+anything could.
+
+‘All is agreed and understood between us, now, Trot,’ said my aunt,
+‘and we need talk of this no more. Give me a kiss, and we’ll go to the
+Commons after breakfast tomorrow.’
+
+We had a long chat by the fire before we went to bed. I slept in a room
+on the same floor with my aunt’s, and was a little disturbed in the
+course of the night by her knocking at my door as often as she was
+agitated by a distant sound of hackney-coaches or market-carts, and
+inquiring, ‘if I heard the engines?’ But towards morning she slept
+better, and suffered me to do so too.
+
+At about mid-day, we set out for the office of Messrs Spenlow and
+Jorkins, in Doctors’ Commons. My aunt, who had this other general
+opinion in reference to London, that every man she saw was a pickpocket,
+gave me her purse to carry for her, which had ten guineas in it and some
+silver.
+
+We made a pause at the toy shop in Fleet Street, to see the giants of
+Saint Dunstan’s strike upon the bells--we had timed our going, so as to
+catch them at it, at twelve o’clock--and then went on towards Ludgate
+Hill, and St. Paul’s Churchyard. We were crossing to the former place,
+when I found that my aunt greatly accelerated her speed, and looked
+frightened. I observed, at the same time, that a lowering ill-dressed
+man who had stopped and stared at us in passing, a little before, was
+coming so close after us as to brush against her.
+
+‘Trot! My dear Trot!’ cried my aunt, in a terrified whisper, and
+pressing my arm. ‘I don’t know what I am to do.’
+
+‘Don’t be alarmed,’ said I. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of. Step into
+a shop, and I’ll soon get rid of this fellow.’
+
+‘No, no, child!’ she returned. ‘Don’t speak to him for the world. I
+entreat, I order you!’
+
+‘Good Heaven, aunt!’ said I. ‘He is nothing but a sturdy beggar.’
+
+‘You don’t know what he is!’ replied my aunt. ‘You don’t know who he is!
+You don’t know what you say!’
+
+We had stopped in an empty door-way, while this was passing, and he had
+stopped too.
+
+‘Don’t look at him!’ said my aunt, as I turned my head indignantly, ‘but
+get me a coach, my dear, and wait for me in St. Paul’s Churchyard.’
+
+‘Wait for you?’ I replied.
+
+‘Yes,’ rejoined my aunt. ‘I must go alone. I must go with him.’
+
+‘With him, aunt? This man?’
+
+‘I am in my senses,’ she replied, ‘and I tell you I must. Get me a
+coach!’
+
+However much astonished I might be, I was sensible that I had no right
+to refuse compliance with such a peremptory command. I hurried away a
+few paces, and called a hackney-chariot which was passing empty. Almost
+before I could let down the steps, my aunt sprang in, I don’t know how,
+and the man followed. She waved her hand to me to go away, so earnestly,
+that, all confounded as I was, I turned from them at once. In doing so,
+I heard her say to the coachman, ‘Drive anywhere! Drive straight on!’
+and presently the chariot passed me, going up the hill.
+
+What Mr. Dick had told me, and what I had supposed to be a delusion of
+his, now came into my mind. I could not doubt that this person was the
+person of whom he had made such mysterious mention, though what the
+nature of his hold upon my aunt could possibly be, I was quite unable
+to imagine. After half an hour’s cooling in the churchyard, I saw the
+chariot coming back. The driver stopped beside me, and my aunt was
+sitting in it alone.
+
+She had not yet sufficiently recovered from her agitation to be quite
+prepared for the visit we had to make. She desired me to get into the
+chariot, and to tell the coachman to drive slowly up and down a little
+while. She said no more, except, ‘My dear child, never ask me what
+it was, and don’t refer to it,’ until she had perfectly regained her
+composure, when she told me she was quite herself now, and we might get
+out. On her giving me her purse to pay the driver, I found that all the
+guineas were gone, and only the loose silver remained.
+
+Doctors’ Commons was approached by a little low archway. Before we had
+taken many paces down the street beyond it, the noise of the city seemed
+to melt, as if by magic, into a softened distance. A few dull courts
+and narrow ways brought us to the sky-lighted offices of Spenlow and
+Jorkins; in the vestibule of which temple, accessible to pilgrims
+without the ceremony of knocking, three or four clerks were at work as
+copyists. One of these, a little dry man, sitting by himself, who wore
+a stiff brown wig that looked as if it were made of gingerbread, rose to
+receive my aunt, and show us into Mr. Spenlow’s room.
+
+‘Mr. Spenlow’s in Court, ma’am,’ said the dry man; ‘it’s an Arches day;
+but it’s close by, and I’ll send for him directly.’
+
+As we were left to look about us while Mr. Spenlow was fetched, I
+availed myself of the opportunity. The furniture of the room was
+old-fashioned and dusty; and the green baize on the top of the
+writing-table had lost all its colour, and was as withered and pale as
+an old pauper. There were a great many bundles of papers on it, some
+endorsed as Allegations, and some (to my surprise) as Libels, and some
+as being in the Consistory Court, and some in the Arches Court, and some
+in the Prerogative Court, and some in the Admiralty Court, and some in
+the Delegates’ Court; giving me occasion to wonder much, how many Courts
+there might be in the gross, and how long it would take to understand
+them all. Besides these, there were sundry immense manuscript Books
+of Evidence taken on affidavit, strongly bound, and tied together in
+massive sets, a set to each cause, as if every cause were a history in
+ten or twenty volumes. All this looked tolerably expensive, I thought,
+and gave me an agreeable notion of a proctor’s business. I was casting
+my eyes with increasing complacency over these and many similar objects,
+when hasty footsteps were heard in the room outside, and Mr. Spenlow,
+in a black gown trimmed with white fur, came hurrying in, taking off his
+hat as he came.
+
+He was a little light-haired gentleman, with undeniable boots, and the
+stiffest of white cravats and shirt-collars. He was buttoned up, mighty
+trim and tight, and must have taken a great deal of pains with his
+whiskers, which were accurately curled. His gold watch-chain was so
+massive, that a fancy came across me, that he ought to have a sinewy
+golden arm, to draw it out with, like those which are put up over the
+goldbeaters’ shops. He was got up with such care, and was so stiff, that
+he could hardly bend himself; being obliged, when he glanced at some
+papers on his desk, after sitting down in his chair, to move his whole
+body, from the bottom of his spine, like Punch.
+
+I had previously been presented by my aunt, and had been courteously
+received. He now said:
+
+‘And so, Mr. Copperfield, you think of entering into our profession?
+I casually mentioned to Miss Trotwood, when I had the pleasure of an
+interview with her the other day,’--with another inclination of his
+body--Punch again--‘that there was a vacancy here. Miss Trotwood was
+good enough to mention that she had a nephew who was her peculiar care,
+and for whom she was seeking to provide genteelly in life. That
+nephew, I believe, I have now the pleasure of’--Punch again. I bowed my
+acknowledgements, and said, my aunt had mentioned to me that there was
+that opening, and that I believed I should like it very much. That I was
+strongly inclined to like it, and had taken immediately to the proposal.
+That I could not absolutely pledge myself to like it, until I knew
+something more about it. That although it was little else than a matter
+of form, I presumed I should have an opportunity of trying how I liked
+it, before I bound myself to it irrevocably.
+
+‘Oh surely! surely!’ said Mr. Spenlow. ‘We always, in this house,
+propose a month--an initiatory month. I should be happy, myself, to
+propose two months--three--an indefinite period, in fact--but I have a
+partner. Mr. Jorkins.’
+
+‘And the premium, sir,’ I returned, ‘is a thousand pounds?’
+
+‘And the premium, Stamp included, is a thousand pounds,’ said Mr.
+Spenlow. ‘As I have mentioned to Miss Trotwood, I am actuated by no
+mercenary considerations; few men are less so, I believe; but Mr.
+Jorkins has his opinions on these subjects, and I am bound to respect
+Mr. Jorkins’s opinions. Mr. Jorkins thinks a thousand pounds too little,
+in short.’
+
+‘I suppose, sir,’ said I, still desiring to spare my aunt, ‘that it is
+not the custom here, if an articled clerk were particularly useful,
+and made himself a perfect master of his profession’--I could not help
+blushing, this looked so like praising myself--‘I suppose it is not the
+custom, in the later years of his time, to allow him any--’
+
+Mr. Spenlow, by a great effort, just lifted his head far enough out of
+his cravat to shake it, and answered, anticipating the word ‘salary’:
+
+‘No. I will not say what consideration I might give to that point
+myself, Mr. Copperfield, if I were unfettered. Mr. Jorkins is
+immovable.’
+
+I was quite dismayed by the idea of this terrible Jorkins. But I found
+out afterwards that he was a mild man of a heavy temperament, whose
+place in the business was to keep himself in the background, and be
+constantly exhibited by name as the most obdurate and ruthless of men.
+If a clerk wanted his salary raised, Mr. Jorkins wouldn’t listen to such
+a proposition. If a client were slow to settle his bill of costs, Mr.
+Jorkins was resolved to have it paid; and however painful these things
+might be (and always were) to the feelings of Mr. Spenlow, Mr. Jorkins
+would have his bond. The heart and hand of the good angel Spenlow would
+have been always open, but for the restraining demon Jorkins. As I have
+grown older, I think I have had experience of some other houses doing
+business on the principle of Spenlow and Jorkins!
+
+It was settled that I should begin my month’s probation as soon as I
+pleased, and that my aunt need neither remain in town nor return at
+its expiration, as the articles of agreement, of which I was to be the
+subject, could easily be sent to her at home for her signature. When
+we had got so far, Mr. Spenlow offered to take me into Court then and
+there, and show me what sort of place it was. As I was willing enough
+to know, we went out with this object, leaving my aunt behind; who would
+trust herself, she said, in no such place, and who, I think, regarded
+all Courts of Law as a sort of powder-mills that might blow up at any
+time.
+
+Mr. Spenlow conducted me through a paved courtyard formed of grave brick
+houses, which I inferred, from the Doctors’ names upon the doors, to be
+the official abiding-places of the learned advocates of whom Steerforth
+had told me; and into a large dull room, not unlike a chapel to my
+thinking, on the left hand. The upper part of this room was fenced off
+from the rest; and there, on the two sides of a raised platform of the
+horse-shoe form, sitting on easy old-fashioned dining-room chairs, were
+sundry gentlemen in red gowns and grey wigs, whom I found to be the
+Doctors aforesaid. Blinking over a little desk like a pulpit-desk, in
+the curve of the horse-shoe, was an old gentleman, whom, if I had seen
+him in an aviary, I should certainly have taken for an owl, but who, I
+learned, was the presiding judge. In the space within the horse-shoe,
+lower than these, that is to say, on about the level of the floor, were
+sundry other gentlemen, of Mr. Spenlow’s rank, and dressed like him in
+black gowns with white fur upon them, sitting at a long green table.
+Their cravats were in general stiff, I thought, and their looks haughty;
+but in this last respect I presently conceived I had done them an
+injustice, for when two or three of them had to rise and answer a
+question of the presiding dignitary, I never saw anything more sheepish.
+The public, represented by a boy with a comforter, and a shabby-genteel
+man secretly eating crumbs out of his coat pockets, was warming itself
+at a stove in the centre of the Court. The languid stillness of the
+place was only broken by the chirping of this fire and by the voice of
+one of the Doctors, who was wandering slowly through a perfect library
+of evidence, and stopping to put up, from time to time, at little
+roadside inns of argument on the journey. Altogether, I have never,
+on any occasion, made one at such a cosey, dosey, old-fashioned,
+time-forgotten, sleepy-headed little family-party in all my life; and
+I felt it would be quite a soothing opiate to belong to it in any
+character--except perhaps as a suitor.
+
+Very well satisfied with the dreamy nature of this retreat, I informed
+Mr. Spenlow that I had seen enough for that time, and we rejoined
+my aunt; in company with whom I presently departed from the Commons,
+feeling very young when I went out of Spenlow and Jorkins’s, on account
+of the clerks poking one another with their pens to point me out.
+
+We arrived at Lincoln’s Inn Fields without any new adventures, except
+encountering an unlucky donkey in a costermonger’s cart, who suggested
+painful associations to my aunt. We had another long talk about my
+plans, when we were safely housed; and as I knew she was anxious to
+get home, and, between fire, food, and pickpockets, could never be
+considered at her ease for half-an-hour in London, I urged her not to be
+uncomfortable on my account, but to leave me to take care of myself.
+
+‘I have not been here a week tomorrow, without considering that too, my
+dear,’ she returned. ‘There is a furnished little set of chambers to be
+let in the Adelphi, Trot, which ought to suit you to a marvel.’
+
+With this brief introduction, she produced from her pocket an
+advertisement, carefully cut out of a newspaper, setting forth that in
+Buckingham Street in the Adelphi there was to be let furnished, with a
+view of the river, a singularly desirable, and compact set of chambers,
+forming a genteel residence for a young gentleman, a member of one
+of the Inns of Court, or otherwise, with immediate possession. Terms
+moderate, and could be taken for a month only, if required.
+
+‘Why, this is the very thing, aunt!’ said I, flushed with the possible
+dignity of living in chambers.
+
+‘Then come,’ replied my aunt, immediately resuming the bonnet she had a
+minute before laid aside. ‘We’ll go and look at ‘em.’
+
+Away we went. The advertisement directed us to apply to Mrs. Crupp
+on the premises, and we rung the area bell, which we supposed to
+communicate with Mrs. Crupp. It was not until we had rung three or four
+times that we could prevail on Mrs. Crupp to communicate with us, but
+at last she appeared, being a stout lady with a flounce of flannel
+petticoat below a nankeen gown.
+
+‘Let us see these chambers of yours, if you please, ma’am,’ said my
+aunt.
+
+‘For this gentleman?’ said Mrs. Crupp, feeling in her pocket for her
+keys.
+
+‘Yes, for my nephew,’ said my aunt.
+
+‘And a sweet set they is for sich!’ said Mrs. Crupp.
+
+So we went upstairs.
+
+They were on the top of the house--a great point with my aunt, being
+near the fire-escape--and consisted of a little half-blind entry where
+you could see hardly anything, a little stone-blind pantry where you
+could see nothing at all, a sitting-room, and a bedroom. The furniture
+was rather faded, but quite good enough for me; and, sure enough, the
+river was outside the windows.
+
+As I was delighted with the place, my aunt and Mrs. Crupp withdrew into
+the pantry to discuss the terms, while I remained on the sitting-room
+sofa, hardly daring to think it possible that I could be destined to
+live in such a noble residence. After a single combat of some duration
+they returned, and I saw, to my joy, both in Mrs. Crupp’s countenance
+and in my aunt’s, that the deed was done.
+
+‘Is it the last occupant’s furniture?’ inquired my aunt.
+
+‘Yes, it is, ma’am,’ said Mrs. Crupp.
+
+‘What’s become of him?’ asked my aunt.
+
+Mrs. Crupp was taken with a troublesome cough, in the midst of which
+she articulated with much difficulty. ‘He was took ill here, ma’am,
+and--ugh! ugh! ugh! dear me!--and he died!’
+
+‘Hey! What did he die of?’ asked my aunt.
+
+‘Well, ma’am, he died of drink,’ said Mrs. Crupp, in confidence. ‘And
+smoke.’
+
+‘Smoke? You don’t mean chimneys?’ said my aunt.
+
+‘No, ma’am,’ returned Mrs. Crupp. ‘Cigars and pipes.’
+
+‘That’s not catching, Trot, at any rate,’ remarked my aunt, turning to
+me.
+
+‘No, indeed,’ said I.
+
+In short, my aunt, seeing how enraptured I was with the premises, took
+them for a month, with leave to remain for twelve months when that
+time was out. Mrs. Crupp was to find linen, and to cook; every other
+necessary was already provided; and Mrs. Crupp expressly intimated that
+she should always yearn towards me as a son. I was to take possession
+the day after tomorrow, and Mrs. Crupp said, thank Heaven she had now
+found summun she could care for!
+
+On our way back, my aunt informed me how she confidently trusted that
+the life I was now to lead would make me firm and self-reliant, which
+was all I wanted. She repeated this several times next day, in the
+intervals of our arranging for the transmission of my clothes and books
+from Mr. Wickfield’s; relative to which, and to all my late holiday, I
+wrote a long letter to Agnes, of which my aunt took charge, as she was
+to leave on the succeeding day. Not to lengthen these particulars, I
+need only add, that she made a handsome provision for all my
+possible wants during my month of trial; that Steerforth, to my great
+disappointment and hers too, did not make his appearance before she went
+away; that I saw her safely seated in the Dover coach, exulting in the
+coming discomfiture of the vagrant donkeys, with Janet at her side; and
+that when the coach was gone, I turned my face to the Adelphi, pondering
+on the old days when I used to roam about its subterranean arches, and
+on the happy changes which had brought me to the surface.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 24. MY FIRST DISSIPATION
+
+
+It was a wonderfully fine thing to have that lofty castle to myself, and
+to feel, when I shut my outer door, like Robinson Crusoe, when he had
+got into his fortification, and pulled his ladder up after him. It was a
+wonderfully fine thing to walk about town with the key of my house in my
+pocket, and to know that I could ask any fellow to come home, and make
+quite sure of its being inconvenient to nobody, if it were not so to me.
+It was a wonderfully fine thing to let myself in and out, and to come
+and go without a word to anyone, and to ring Mrs. Crupp up, gasping,
+from the depths of the earth, when I wanted her--and when she was
+disposed to come. All this, I say, was wonderfully fine; but I must say,
+too, that there were times when it was very dreary.
+
+It was fine in the morning, particularly in the fine mornings. It looked
+a very fresh, free life, by daylight: still fresher, and more free, by
+sunlight. But as the day declined, the life seemed to go down too. I
+don’t know how it was; it seldom looked well by candle-light. I wanted
+somebody to talk to, then. I missed Agnes. I found a tremendous blank,
+in the place of that smiling repository of my confidence. Mrs. Crupp
+appeared to be a long way off. I thought about my predecessor, who had
+died of drink and smoke; and I could have wished he had been so good as
+to live, and not bother me with his decease.
+
+After two days and nights, I felt as if I had lived there for a year,
+and yet I was not an hour older, but was quite as much tormented by my
+own youthfulness as ever.
+
+Steerforth not yet appearing, which induced me to apprehend that he must
+be ill, I left the Commons early on the third day, and walked out to
+Highgate. Mrs. Steerforth was very glad to see me, and said that he had
+gone away with one of his Oxford friends to see another who lived near
+St. Albans, but that she expected him to return tomorrow. I was so fond
+of him, that I felt quite jealous of his Oxford friends.
+
+As she pressed me to stay to dinner, I remained, and I believe we talked
+about nothing but him all day. I told her how much the people liked him
+at Yarmouth, and what a delightful companion he had been. Miss Dartle
+was full of hints and mysterious questions, but took a great interest
+in all our proceedings there, and said, ‘Was it really though?’ and so
+forth, so often, that she got everything out of me she wanted to know.
+Her appearance was exactly what I have described it, when I first saw
+her; but the society of the two ladies was so agreeable, and came so
+natural to me, that I felt myself falling a little in love with her. I
+could not help thinking, several times in the course of the evening, and
+particularly when I walked home at night, what delightful company she
+would be in Buckingham Street.
+
+I was taking my coffee and roll in the morning, before going to the
+Commons--and I may observe in this place that it is surprising how
+much coffee Mrs. Crupp used, and how weak it was, considering--when
+Steerforth himself walked in, to my unbounded joy.
+
+‘My dear Steerforth,’ cried I, ‘I began to think I should never see you
+again!’
+
+‘I was carried off, by force of arms,’ said Steerforth, ‘the very next
+morning after I got home. Why, Daisy, what a rare old bachelor you are
+here!’
+
+I showed him over the establishment, not omitting the pantry, with no
+little pride, and he commended it highly. ‘I tell you what, old boy,’ he
+added, ‘I shall make quite a town-house of this place, unless you give
+me notice to quit.’
+
+This was a delightful hearing. I told him if he waited for that, he
+would have to wait till doomsday.
+
+‘But you shall have some breakfast!’ said I, with my hand on the
+bell-rope, ‘and Mrs. Crupp shall make you some fresh coffee, and I’ll
+toast you some bacon in a bachelor’s Dutch-oven, that I have got here.’
+
+‘No, no!’ said Steerforth. ‘Don’t ring! I can’t! I am going to breakfast
+with one of these fellows who is at the Piazza Hotel, in Covent Garden.’
+
+‘But you’ll come back to dinner?’ said I.
+
+‘I can’t, upon my life. There’s nothing I should like better, but I must
+remain with these two fellows. We are all three off together tomorrow
+morning.’
+
+‘Then bring them here to dinner,’ I returned. ‘Do you think they would
+come?’
+
+‘Oh! they would come fast enough,’ said Steerforth; ‘but we should
+inconvenience you. You had better come and dine with us somewhere.’
+
+I would not by any means consent to this, for it occurred to me that I
+really ought to have a little house-warming, and that there never
+could be a better opportunity. I had a new pride in my rooms after
+his approval of them, and burned with a desire to develop their utmost
+resources. I therefore made him promise positively in the names of his
+two friends, and we appointed six o’clock as the dinner-hour.
+
+When he was gone, I rang for Mrs. Crupp, and acquainted her with my
+desperate design. Mrs. Crupp said, in the first place, of course it was
+well known she couldn’t be expected to wait, but she knew a handy young
+man, who she thought could be prevailed upon to do it, and whose terms
+would be five shillings, and what I pleased. I said, certainly we would
+have him. Next Mrs. Crupp said it was clear she couldn’t be in two
+places at once (which I felt to be reasonable), and that ‘a young gal’
+stationed in the pantry with a bedroom candle, there never to desist
+from washing plates, would be indispensable. I said, what would be
+the expense of this young female? and Mrs. Crupp said she supposed
+eighteenpence would neither make me nor break me. I said I supposed not;
+and THAT was settled. Then Mrs. Crupp said, Now about the dinner.
+
+It was a remarkable instance of want of forethought on the part of the
+ironmonger who had made Mrs. Crupp’s kitchen fireplace, that it was
+capable of cooking nothing but chops and mashed potatoes. As to a
+fish-kittle, Mrs. Crupp said, well! would I only come and look at the
+range? She couldn’t say fairer than that. Would I come and look at
+it? As I should not have been much the wiser if I HAD looked at it, I
+declined, and said, ‘Never mind fish.’ But Mrs. Crupp said, Don’t say
+that; oysters was in, why not them? So THAT was settled. Mrs. Crupp
+then said what she would recommend would be this. A pair of hot
+roast fowls--from the pastry-cook’s; a dish of stewed beef, with
+vegetables--from the pastry-cook’s; two little corner things, as a
+raised pie and a dish of kidneys--from the pastrycook’s; a tart, and (if
+I liked) a shape of jelly--from the pastrycook’s. This, Mrs. Crupp said,
+would leave her at full liberty to concentrate her mind on the potatoes,
+and to serve up the cheese and celery as she could wish to see it done.
+
+I acted on Mrs. Crupp’s opinion, and gave the order at the pastry-cook’s
+myself. Walking along the Strand, afterwards, and observing a hard
+mottled substance in the window of a ham and beef shop, which resembled
+marble, but was labelled ‘Mock Turtle’, I went in and bought a slab of
+it, which I have since seen reason to believe would have sufficed for
+fifteen people. This preparation, Mrs. Crupp, after some difficulty,
+consented to warm up; and it shrunk so much in a liquid state, that we
+found it what Steerforth called ‘rather a tight fit’ for four.
+
+These preparations happily completed, I bought a little dessert in
+Covent Garden Market, and gave a rather extensive order at a retail
+wine-merchant’s in that vicinity. When I came home in the afternoon, and
+saw the bottles drawn up in a square on the pantry floor, they looked
+so numerous (though there were two missing, which made Mrs. Crupp very
+uncomfortable), that I was absolutely frightened at them.
+
+One of Steerforth’s friends was named Grainger, and the other Markham.
+They were both very gay and lively fellows; Grainger, something older
+than Steerforth; Markham, youthful-looking, and I should say not
+more than twenty. I observed that the latter always spoke of himself
+indefinitely, as ‘a man’, and seldom or never in the first person
+singular.
+
+‘A man might get on very well here, Mr. Copperfield,’ said
+Markham--meaning himself.
+
+‘It’s not a bad situation,’ said I, ‘and the rooms are really
+commodious.’
+
+‘I hope you have both brought appetites with you?’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘Upon my honour,’ returned Markham, ‘town seems to sharpen a man’s
+appetite. A man is hungry all day long. A man is perpetually eating.’
+
+Being a little embarrassed at first, and feeling much too young to
+preside, I made Steerforth take the head of the table when dinner was
+announced, and seated myself opposite to him. Everything was very good;
+we did not spare the wine; and he exerted himself so brilliantly to make
+the thing pass off well, that there was no pause in our festivity. I was
+not quite such good company during dinner as I could have wished to be,
+for my chair was opposite the door, and my attention was distracted by
+observing that the handy young man went out of the room very often, and
+that his shadow always presented itself, immediately afterwards, on the
+wall of the entry, with a bottle at its mouth. The ‘young gal’ likewise
+occasioned me some uneasiness: not so much by neglecting to wash the
+plates, as by breaking them. For being of an inquisitive disposition,
+and unable to confine herself (as her positive instructions were) to the
+pantry, she was constantly peering in at us, and constantly imagining
+herself detected; in which belief, she several times retired upon the
+plates (with which she had carefully paved the floor), and did a great
+deal of destruction.
+
+These, however, were small drawbacks, and easily forgotten when the
+cloth was cleared, and the dessert put on the table; at which period of
+the entertainment the handy young man was discovered to be speechless.
+Giving him private directions to seek the society of Mrs. Crupp, and
+to remove the ‘young gal’ to the basement also, I abandoned myself to
+enjoyment.
+
+I began, by being singularly cheerful and light-hearted; all sorts of
+half-forgotten things to talk about, came rushing into my mind, and made
+me hold forth in a most unwonted manner. I laughed heartily at my own
+jokes, and everybody else’s; called Steerforth to order for not passing
+the wine; made several engagements to go to Oxford; announced that
+I meant to have a dinner-party exactly like that, once a week, until
+further notice; and madly took so much snuff out of Grainger’s box, that
+I was obliged to go into the pantry, and have a private fit of sneezing
+ten minutes long.
+
+I went on, by passing the wine faster and faster yet, and continually
+starting up with a corkscrew to open more wine, long before any was
+needed. I proposed Steerforth’s health. I said he was my dearest friend,
+the protector of my boyhood, and the companion of my prime. I said I was
+delighted to propose his health. I said I owed him more obligations than
+I could ever repay, and held him in a higher admiration than I could
+ever express. I finished by saying, ‘I’ll give you Steerforth! God bless
+him! Hurrah!’ We gave him three times three, and another, and a good one
+to finish with. I broke my glass in going round the table to shake
+hands with him, and I said (in two words)
+
+‘Steerforth--you’retheguidingstarofmyexistence.’
+
+I went on, by finding suddenly that somebody was in the middle of a
+song. Markham was the singer, and he sang ‘When the heart of a man is
+depressed with care’. He said, when he had sung it, he would give us
+‘Woman!’ I took objection to that, and I couldn’t allow it. I said
+it was not a respectful way of proposing the toast, and I would never
+permit that toast to be drunk in my house otherwise than as ‘The
+Ladies!’ I was very high with him, mainly I think because I saw
+Steerforth and Grainger laughing at me--or at him--or at both of us. He
+said a man was not to be dictated to. I said a man was. He said a man
+was not to be insulted, then. I said he was right there--never under
+my roof, where the Lares were sacred, and the laws of hospitality
+paramount. He said it was no derogation from a man’s dignity to confess
+that I was a devilish good fellow. I instantly proposed his health.
+
+Somebody was smoking. We were all smoking. I was smoking, and trying
+to suppress a rising tendency to shudder. Steerforth had made a speech
+about me, in the course of which I had been affected almost to tears.
+I returned thanks, and hoped the present company would dine with me
+tomorrow, and the day after--each day at five o’clock, that we might
+enjoy the pleasures of conversation and society through a long evening.
+I felt called upon to propose an individual. I would give them my aunt.
+Miss Betsey Trotwood, the best of her sex!
+
+Somebody was leaning out of my bedroom window, refreshing his forehead
+against the cool stone of the parapet, and feeling the air upon his
+face. It was myself. I was addressing myself as ‘Copperfield’, and
+saying, ‘Why did you try to smoke? You might have known you couldn’t
+do it.’ Now, somebody was unsteadily contemplating his features in the
+looking-glass. That was I too. I was very pale in the looking-glass;
+my eyes had a vacant appearance; and my hair--only my hair, nothing
+else--looked drunk.
+
+Somebody said to me, ‘Let us go to the theatre, Copperfield!’ There was
+no bedroom before me, but again the jingling table covered with glasses;
+the lamp; Grainger on my right hand, Markham on my left, and Steerforth
+opposite--all sitting in a mist, and a long way off. The theatre? To
+be sure. The very thing. Come along! But they must excuse me if I saw
+everybody out first, and turned the lamp off--in case of fire.
+
+Owing to some confusion in the dark, the door was gone. I was feeling
+for it in the window-curtains, when Steerforth, laughing, took me by
+the arm and led me out. We went downstairs, one behind another. Near
+the bottom, somebody fell, and rolled down. Somebody else said it was
+Copperfield. I was angry at that false report, until, finding myself on
+my back in the passage, I began to think there might be some foundation
+for it.
+
+A very foggy night, with great rings round the lamps in the streets!
+There was an indistinct talk of its being wet. I considered it frosty.
+Steerforth dusted me under a lamp-post, and put my hat into shape, which
+somebody produced from somewhere in a most extraordinary manner, for
+I hadn’t had it on before. Steerforth then said, ‘You are all right,
+Copperfield, are you not?’ and I told him, ‘Neverberrer.’
+
+A man, sitting in a pigeon-hole-place, looked out of the fog, and took
+money from somebody, inquiring if I was one of the gentlemen paid for,
+and appearing rather doubtful (as I remember in the glimpse I had of
+him) whether to take the money for me or not. Shortly afterwards, we
+were very high up in a very hot theatre, looking down into a large pit,
+that seemed to me to smoke; the people with whom it was crammed were so
+indistinct. There was a great stage, too, looking very clean and
+smooth after the streets; and there were people upon it, talking about
+something or other, but not at all intelligibly. There was an abundance
+of bright lights, and there was music, and there were ladies down in the
+boxes, and I don’t know what more. The whole building looked to me as if
+it were learning to swim; it conducted itself in such an unaccountable
+manner, when I tried to steady it.
+
+On somebody’s motion, we resolved to go downstairs to the dress-boxes,
+where the ladies were. A gentleman lounging, full dressed, on a sofa,
+with an opera-glass in his hand, passed before my view, and also my own
+figure at full length in a glass. Then I was being ushered into one of
+these boxes, and found myself saying something as I sat down, and people
+about me crying ‘Silence!’ to somebody, and ladies casting indignant
+glances at me, and--what! yes!--Agnes, sitting on the seat before me, in
+the same box, with a lady and gentleman beside her, whom I didn’t
+know. I see her face now, better than I did then, I dare say, with its
+indelible look of regret and wonder turned upon me.
+
+‘Agnes!’ I said, thickly, ‘Lorblessmer! Agnes!’
+
+‘Hush! Pray!’ she answered, I could not conceive why. ‘You disturb the
+company. Look at the stage!’
+
+I tried, on her injunction, to fix it, and to hear something of what was
+going on there, but quite in vain. I looked at her again by and by, and
+saw her shrink into her corner, and put her gloved hand to her forehead.
+
+‘Agnes!’ I said. ‘I’mafraidyou’renorwell.’
+
+‘Yes, yes. Do not mind me, Trotwood,’ she returned. ‘Listen! Are you
+going away soon?’
+
+‘Amigoarawaysoo?’ I repeated.
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+I had a stupid intention of replying that I was going to wait, to hand
+her downstairs. I suppose I expressed it, somehow; for after she had
+looked at me attentively for a little while, she appeared to understand,
+and replied in a low tone:
+
+‘I know you will do as I ask you, if I tell you I am very earnest in
+it. Go away now, Trotwood, for my sake, and ask your friends to take you
+home.’
+
+She had so far improved me, for the time, that though I was angry with
+her, I felt ashamed, and with a short ‘Goori!’ (which I intended for
+‘Good night!’) got up and went away. They followed, and I stepped at
+once out of the box-door into my bedroom, where only Steerforth was with
+me, helping me to undress, and where I was by turns telling him that
+Agnes was my sister, and adjuring him to bring the corkscrew, that I
+might open another bottle of wine.
+
+How somebody, lying in my bed, lay saying and doing all this over again,
+at cross purposes, in a feverish dream all night--the bed a rocking sea
+that was never still! How, as that somebody slowly settled down into
+myself, did I begin to parch, and feel as if my outer covering of skin
+were a hard board; my tongue the bottom of an empty kettle, furred with
+long service, and burning up over a slow fire; the palms of my hands,
+hot plates of metal which no ice could cool!
+
+But the agony of mind, the remorse, and shame I felt when I became
+conscious next day! My horror of having committed a thousand offences I
+had forgotten, and which nothing could ever expiate--my recollection
+of that indelible look which Agnes had given me--the torturing
+impossibility of communicating with her, not knowing, Beast that I was,
+how she came to be in London, or where she stayed--my disgust of
+the very sight of the room where the revel had been held--my racking
+head--the smell of smoke, the sight of glasses, the impossibility of
+going out, or even getting up! Oh, what a day it was!
+
+Oh, what an evening, when I sat down by my fire to a basin of mutton
+broth, dimpled all over with fat, and thought I was going the way of my
+predecessor, and should succeed to his dismal story as well as to his
+chambers, and had half a mind to rush express to Dover and reveal
+all! What an evening, when Mrs. Crupp, coming in to take away the
+broth-basin, produced one kidney on a cheese-plate as the entire remains
+of yesterday’s feast, and I was really inclined to fall upon her nankeen
+breast and say, in heartfelt penitence, ‘Oh, Mrs. Crupp, Mrs. Crupp,
+never mind the broken meats! I am very miserable!’--only that I doubted,
+even at that pass, if Mrs. Crupp were quite the sort of woman to confide
+in!
+
+
+CHAPTER 25. GOOD AND BAD ANGELS
+
+
+I was going out at my door on the morning after that deplorable day of
+headache, sickness, and repentance, with an odd confusion in my mind
+relative to the date of my dinner-party, as if a body of Titans had
+taken an enormous lever and pushed the day before yesterday some months
+back, when I saw a ticket-porter coming upstairs, with a letter in his
+hand. He was taking his time about his errand, then; but when he saw me
+on the top of the staircase, looking at him over the banisters, he swung
+into a trot, and came up panting as if he had run himself into a state
+of exhaustion.
+
+‘T. Copperfield, Esquire,’ said the ticket-porter, touching his hat with
+his little cane.
+
+I could scarcely lay claim to the name: I was so disturbed by the
+conviction that the letter came from Agnes. However, I told him I was T.
+Copperfield, Esquire, and he believed it, and gave me the letter, which
+he said required an answer. I shut him out on the landing to wait for
+the answer, and went into my chambers again, in such a nervous state
+that I was fain to lay the letter down on my breakfast table, and
+familiarize myself with the outside of it a little, before I could
+resolve to break the seal.
+
+I found, when I did open it, that it was a very kind note, containing
+no reference to my condition at the theatre. All it said was, ‘My dear
+Trotwood. I am staying at the house of papa’s agent, Mr. Waterbrook, in
+Ely Place, Holborn. Will you come and see me today, at any time you like
+to appoint? Ever yours affectionately, AGNES.’
+
+It took me such a long time to write an answer at all to my
+satisfaction, that I don’t know what the ticket-porter can have
+thought, unless he thought I was learning to write. I must have written
+half-a-dozen answers at least. I began one, ‘How can I ever hope,
+my dear Agnes, to efface from your remembrance the disgusting
+impression’--there I didn’t like it, and then I tore it up. I began
+another, ‘Shakespeare has observed, my dear Agnes, how strange it is
+that a man should put an enemy into his mouth’--that reminded me of
+Markham, and it got no farther. I even tried poetry. I began one note,
+in a six-syllable line, ‘Oh, do not remember’--but that associated
+itself with the fifth of November, and became an absurdity. After many
+attempts, I wrote, ‘My dear Agnes. Your letter is like you, and what
+could I say of it that would be higher praise than that? I will come at
+four o’clock. Affectionately and sorrowfully, T.C.’ With this missive
+(which I was in twenty minds at once about recalling, as soon as it was
+out of my hands), the ticket-porter at last departed.
+
+If the day were half as tremendous to any other professional gentleman
+in Doctors’ Commons as it was to me, I sincerely believe he made some
+expiation for his share in that rotten old ecclesiastical cheese.
+Although I left the office at half past three, and was prowling about
+the place of appointment within a few minutes afterwards, the appointed
+time was exceeded by a full quarter of an hour, according to the
+clock of St. Andrew’s, Holborn, before I could muster up sufficient
+desperation to pull the private bell-handle let into the left-hand
+door-post of Mr. Waterbrook’s house.
+
+The professional business of Mr. Waterbrook’s establishment was done on
+the ground-floor, and the genteel business (of which there was a good
+deal) in the upper part of the building. I was shown into a pretty but
+rather close drawing-room, and there sat Agnes, netting a purse.
+
+She looked so quiet and good, and reminded me so strongly of my airy
+fresh school days at Canterbury, and the sodden, smoky, stupid wretch
+I had been the other night, that, nobody being by, I yielded to my
+self-reproach and shame, and--in short, made a fool of myself. I cannot
+deny that I shed tears. To this hour I am undecided whether it was upon
+the whole the wisest thing I could have done, or the most ridiculous.
+
+‘If it had been anyone but you, Agnes,’ said I, turning away my head, ‘I
+should not have minded it half so much. But that it should have been you
+who saw me! I almost wish I had been dead, first.’
+
+She put her hand--its touch was like no other hand--upon my arm for a
+moment; and I felt so befriended and comforted, that I could not help
+moving it to my lips, and gratefully kissing it.
+
+‘Sit down,’ said Agnes, cheerfully. ‘Don’t be unhappy, Trotwood. If you
+cannot confidently trust me, whom will you trust?’
+
+‘Ah, Agnes!’ I returned. ‘You are my good Angel!’
+
+She smiled rather sadly, I thought, and shook her head.
+
+‘Yes, Agnes, my good Angel! Always my good Angel!’
+
+‘If I were, indeed, Trotwood,’ she returned, ‘there is one thing that I
+should set my heart on very much.’
+
+I looked at her inquiringly; but already with a foreknowledge of her
+meaning.
+
+‘On warning you,’ said Agnes, with a steady glance, ‘against your bad
+Angel.’
+
+‘My dear Agnes,’ I began, ‘if you mean Steerforth--’
+
+‘I do, Trotwood,’ she returned. ‘Then, Agnes, you wrong him very much.
+He my bad Angel, or anyone’s! He, anything but a guide, a support, and
+a friend to me! My dear Agnes! Now, is it not unjust, and unlike you, to
+judge him from what you saw of me the other night?’
+
+‘I do not judge him from what I saw of you the other night,’ she quietly
+replied.
+
+‘From what, then?’
+
+‘From many things--trifles in themselves, but they do not seem to me to
+be so, when they are put together. I judge him, partly from your account
+of him, Trotwood, and your character, and the influence he has over
+you.’
+
+There was always something in her modest voice that seemed to touch a
+chord within me, answering to that sound alone. It was always earnest;
+but when it was very earnest, as it was now, there was a thrill in it
+that quite subdued me. I sat looking at her as she cast her eyes down on
+her work; I sat seeming still to listen to her; and Steerforth, in spite
+of all my attachment to him, darkened in that tone.
+
+‘It is very bold in me,’ said Agnes, looking up again, ‘who have lived
+in such seclusion, and can know so little of the world, to give you my
+advice so confidently, or even to have this strong opinion. But I know
+in what it is engendered, Trotwood,--in how true a remembrance of our
+having grown up together, and in how true an interest in all relating
+to you. It is that which makes me bold. I am certain that what I say is
+right. I am quite sure it is. I feel as if it were someone else speaking
+to you, and not I, when I caution you that you have made a dangerous
+friend.’
+
+Again I looked at her, again I listened to her after she was silent, and
+again his image, though it was still fixed in my heart, darkened.
+
+‘I am not so unreasonable as to expect,’ said Agnes, resuming her usual
+tone, after a little while, ‘that you will, or that you can, at once,
+change any sentiment that has become a conviction to you; least of all
+a sentiment that is rooted in your trusting disposition. You ought not
+hastily to do that. I only ask you, Trotwood, if you ever think of me--I
+mean,’ with a quiet smile, for I was going to interrupt her, and she
+knew why, ‘as often as you think of me--to think of what I have said. Do
+you forgive me for all this?’
+
+‘I will forgive you, Agnes,’ I replied, ‘when you come to do Steerforth
+justice, and to like him as well as I do.’
+
+‘Not until then?’ said Agnes.
+
+I saw a passing shadow on her face when I made this mention of him, but
+she returned my smile, and we were again as unreserved in our mutual
+confidence as of old.
+
+‘And when, Agnes,’ said I, ‘will you forgive me the other night?’
+
+‘When I recall it,’ said Agnes.
+
+She would have dismissed the subject so, but I was too full of it to
+allow that, and insisted on telling her how it happened that I had
+disgraced myself, and what chain of accidental circumstances had had the
+theatre for its final link. It was a great relief to me to do this, and
+to enlarge on the obligation that I owed to Steerforth for his care of
+me when I was unable to take care of myself.
+
+‘You must not forget,’ said Agnes, calmly changing the conversation as
+soon as I had concluded, ‘that you are always to tell me, not only when
+you fall into trouble, but when you fall in love. Who has succeeded to
+Miss Larkins, Trotwood?’
+
+‘No one, Agnes.’
+
+‘Someone, Trotwood,’ said Agnes, laughing, and holding up her finger.
+
+‘No, Agnes, upon my word! There is a lady, certainly, at Mrs.
+Steerforth’s house, who is very clever, and whom I like to talk to--Miss
+Dartle--but I don’t adore her.’
+
+Agnes laughed again at her own penetration, and told me that if I were
+faithful to her in my confidence she thought she should keep a little
+register of my violent attachments, with the date, duration, and
+termination of each, like the table of the reigns of the kings and
+queens, in the History of England. Then she asked me if I had seen
+Uriah.
+
+‘Uriah Heep?’ said I. ‘No. Is he in London?’
+
+‘He comes to the office downstairs, every day,’ returned Agnes. ‘He
+was in London a week before me. I am afraid on disagreeable business,
+Trotwood.’
+
+‘On some business that makes you uneasy, Agnes, I see,’ said I. ‘What
+can that be?’
+
+Agnes laid aside her work, and replied, folding her hands upon one
+another, and looking pensively at me out of those beautiful soft eyes of
+hers:
+
+‘I believe he is going to enter into partnership with papa.’
+
+‘What? Uriah? That mean, fawning fellow, worm himself into such
+promotion!’ I cried, indignantly. ‘Have you made no remonstrance about
+it, Agnes? Consider what a connexion it is likely to be. You must speak
+out. You must not allow your father to take such a mad step. You must
+prevent it, Agnes, while there’s time.’
+
+Still looking at me, Agnes shook her head while I was speaking, with a
+faint smile at my warmth: and then replied:
+
+‘You remember our last conversation about papa? It was not long after
+that--not more than two or three days--when he gave me the first
+intimation of what I tell you. It was sad to see him struggling between
+his desire to represent it to me as a matter of choice on his part,
+and his inability to conceal that it was forced upon him. I felt very
+sorry.’
+
+‘Forced upon him, Agnes! Who forces it upon him?’
+
+‘Uriah,’ she replied, after a moment’s hesitation, ‘has made himself
+indispensable to papa. He is subtle and watchful. He has mastered papa’s
+weaknesses, fostered them, and taken advantage of them, until--to say
+all that I mean in a word, Trotwood,--until papa is afraid of him.’
+
+There was more that she might have said; more that she knew, or that she
+suspected; I clearly saw. I could not give her pain by asking what it
+was, for I knew that she withheld it from me, to spare her father. It
+had long been going on to this, I was sensible: yes, I could not but
+feel, on the least reflection, that it had been going on to this for a
+long time. I remained silent.
+
+‘His ascendancy over papa,’ said Agnes, ‘is very great. He professes
+humility and gratitude--with truth, perhaps: I hope so--but his position
+is really one of power, and I fear he makes a hard use of his power.’
+
+I said he was a hound, which, at the moment, was a great satisfaction to
+me.
+
+‘At the time I speak of, as the time when papa spoke to me,’ pursued
+Agnes, ‘he had told papa that he was going away; that he was very sorry,
+and unwilling to leave, but that he had better prospects. Papa was very
+much depressed then, and more bowed down by care than ever you or I have
+seen him; but he seemed relieved by this expedient of the partnership,
+though at the same time he seemed hurt by it and ashamed of it.’
+
+‘And how did you receive it, Agnes?’
+
+‘I did, Trotwood,’ she replied, ‘what I hope was right. Feeling sure
+that it was necessary for papa’s peace that the sacrifice should be
+made, I entreated him to make it. I said it would lighten the load
+of his life--I hope it will!--and that it would give me increased
+opportunities of being his companion. Oh, Trotwood!’ cried Agnes,
+putting her hands before her face, as her tears started on it, ‘I almost
+feel as if I had been papa’s enemy, instead of his loving child. For
+I know how he has altered, in his devotion to me. I know how he has
+narrowed the circle of his sympathies and duties, in the concentration
+of his whole mind upon me. I know what a multitude of things he has shut
+out for my sake, and how his anxious thoughts of me have shadowed his
+life, and weakened his strength and energy, by turning them always upon
+one idea. If I could ever set this right! If I could ever work out his
+restoration, as I have so innocently been the cause of his decline!’
+
+I had never before seen Agnes cry. I had seen tears in her eyes when I
+had brought new honours home from school, and I had seen them there when
+we last spoke about her father, and I had seen her turn her gentle head
+aside when we took leave of one another; but I had never seen her grieve
+like this. It made me so sorry that I could only say, in a foolish,
+helpless manner, ‘Pray, Agnes, don’t! Don’t, my dear sister!’
+
+But Agnes was too superior to me in character and purpose, as I know
+well now, whatever I might know or not know then, to be long in need of
+my entreaties. The beautiful, calm manner, which makes her so different
+in my remembrance from everybody else, came back again, as if a cloud
+had passed from a serene sky.
+
+‘We are not likely to remain alone much longer,’ said Agnes, ‘and while
+I have an opportunity, let me earnestly entreat you, Trotwood, to be
+friendly to Uriah. Don’t repel him. Don’t resent (as I think you have a
+general disposition to do) what may be uncongenial to you in him. He may
+not deserve it, for we know no certain ill of him. In any case, think
+first of papa and me!’
+
+Agnes had no time to say more, for the room door opened, and Mrs.
+Waterbrook, who was a large lady--or who wore a large dress: I don’t
+exactly know which, for I don’t know which was dress and which was
+lady--came sailing in. I had a dim recollection of having seen her
+at the theatre, as if I had seen her in a pale magic lantern; but she
+appeared to remember me perfectly, and still to suspect me of being in a
+state of intoxication.
+
+Finding by degrees, however, that I was sober, and (I hope) that I was
+a modest young gentleman, Mrs. Waterbrook softened towards me
+considerably, and inquired, firstly, if I went much into the parks,
+and secondly, if I went much into society. On my replying to both these
+questions in the negative, it occurred to me that I fell again in her
+good opinion; but she concealed the fact gracefully, and invited me to
+dinner next day. I accepted the invitation, and took my leave, making a
+call on Uriah in the office as I went out, and leaving a card for him in
+his absence.
+
+When I went to dinner next day, and on the street door being opened,
+plunged into a vapour-bath of haunch of mutton, I divined that I was
+not the only guest, for I immediately identified the ticket-porter in
+disguise, assisting the family servant, and waiting at the foot of the
+stairs to carry up my name. He looked, to the best of his ability, when
+he asked me for it confidentially, as if he had never seen me before;
+but well did I know him, and well did he know me. Conscience made
+cowards of us both.
+
+I found Mr. Waterbrook to be a middle-aged gentleman, with a short
+throat, and a good deal of shirt-collar, who only wanted a black nose to
+be the portrait of a pug-dog. He told me he was happy to have the
+honour of making my acquaintance; and when I had paid my homage to Mrs.
+Waterbrook, presented me, with much ceremony, to a very awful lady in
+a black velvet dress, and a great black velvet hat, whom I remember as
+looking like a near relation of Hamlet’s--say his aunt.
+
+Mrs. Henry Spiker was this lady’s name; and her husband was there
+too: so cold a man, that his head, instead of being grey, seemed to
+be sprinkled with hoar-frost. Immense deference was shown to the Henry
+Spikers, male and female; which Agnes told me was on account of Mr.
+Henry Spiker being solicitor to something or to somebody, I forget what
+or which, remotely connected with the Treasury.
+
+I found Uriah Heep among the company, in a suit of black, and in deep
+humility. He told me, when I shook hands with him, that he was proud
+to be noticed by me, and that he really felt obliged to me for my
+condescension. I could have wished he had been less obliged to me, for
+he hovered about me in his gratitude all the rest of the evening; and
+whenever I said a word to Agnes, was sure, with his shadowless eyes and
+cadaverous face, to be looking gauntly down upon us from behind.
+
+There were other guests--all iced for the occasion, as it struck me,
+like the wine. But there was one who attracted my attention before he
+came in, on account of my hearing him announced as Mr. Traddles! My mind
+flew back to Salem House; and could it be Tommy, I thought, who used to
+draw the skeletons!
+
+I looked for Mr. Traddles with unusual interest. He was a sober,
+steady-looking young man of retiring manners, with a comic head of hair,
+and eyes that were rather wide open; and he got into an obscure corner
+so soon, that I had some difficulty in making him out. At length I had
+a good view of him, and either my vision deceived me, or it was the old
+unfortunate Tommy.
+
+I made my way to Mr. Waterbrook, and said, that I believed I had the
+pleasure of seeing an old schoolfellow there.
+
+‘Indeed!’ said Mr. Waterbrook, surprised. ‘You are too young to have
+been at school with Mr. Henry Spiker?’
+
+‘Oh, I don’t mean him!’ I returned. ‘I mean the gentleman named
+Traddles.’
+
+‘Oh! Aye, aye! Indeed!’ said my host, with much diminished interest.
+‘Possibly.’
+
+‘If it’s really the same person,’ said I, glancing towards him, ‘it
+was at a place called Salem House where we were together, and he was an
+excellent fellow.’
+
+‘Oh yes. Traddles is a good fellow,’ returned my host nodding his head
+with an air of toleration. ‘Traddles is quite a good fellow.’
+
+‘It’s a curious coincidence,’ said I.
+
+‘It is really,’ returned my host, ‘quite a coincidence, that Traddles
+should be here at all: as Traddles was only invited this morning, when
+the place at table, intended to be occupied by Mrs. Henry Spiker’s
+brother, became vacant, in consequence of his indisposition. A very
+gentlemanly man, Mrs. Henry Spiker’s brother, Mr. Copperfield.’
+
+I murmured an assent, which was full of feeling, considering that I
+knew nothing at all about him; and I inquired what Mr. Traddles was by
+profession.
+
+‘Traddles,’ returned Mr. Waterbrook, ‘is a young man reading for the
+bar. Yes. He is quite a good fellow--nobody’s enemy but his own.’
+
+‘Is he his own enemy?’ said I, sorry to hear this.
+
+‘Well,’ returned Mr. Waterbrook, pursing up his mouth, and playing with
+his watch-chain, in a comfortable, prosperous sort of way. ‘I should say
+he was one of those men who stand in their own light. Yes, I should say
+he would never, for example, be worth five hundred pound. Traddles was
+recommended to me by a professional friend. Oh yes. Yes. He has a kind
+of talent for drawing briefs, and stating a case in writing, plainly. I
+am able to throw something in Traddles’s way, in the course of the year;
+something--for him--considerable. Oh yes. Yes.’
+
+I was much impressed by the extremely comfortable and satisfied manner
+in which Mr. Waterbrook delivered himself of this little word ‘Yes’,
+every now and then. There was wonderful expression in it. It completely
+conveyed the idea of a man who had been born, not to say with a silver
+spoon, but with a scaling-ladder, and had gone on mounting all the
+heights of life one after another, until now he looked, from the top of
+the fortifications, with the eye of a philosopher and a patron, on the
+people down in the trenches.
+
+My reflections on this theme were still in progress when dinner was
+announced. Mr. Waterbrook went down with Hamlet’s aunt. Mr. Henry Spiker
+took Mrs. Waterbrook. Agnes, whom I should have liked to take myself,
+was given to a simpering fellow with weak legs. Uriah, Traddles, and I,
+as the junior part of the company, went down last, how we could. I was
+not so vexed at losing Agnes as I might have been, since it gave me
+an opportunity of making myself known to Traddles on the stairs, who
+greeted me with great fervour; while Uriah writhed with such obtrusive
+satisfaction and self-abasement, that I could gladly have pitched
+him over the banisters. Traddles and I were separated at table, being
+billeted in two remote corners: he in the glare of a red velvet lady;
+I, in the gloom of Hamlet’s aunt. The dinner was very long, and the
+conversation was about the Aristocracy--and Blood. Mrs. Waterbrook
+repeatedly told us, that if she had a weakness, it was Blood.
+
+It occurred to me several times that we should have got on better, if we
+had not been quite so genteel. We were so exceedingly genteel, that our
+scope was very limited. A Mr. and Mrs. Gulpidge were of the party, who
+had something to do at second-hand (at least, Mr. Gulpidge had) with
+the law business of the Bank; and what with the Bank, and what with
+the Treasury, we were as exclusive as the Court Circular. To mend the
+matter, Hamlet’s aunt had the family failing of indulging in soliloquy,
+and held forth in a desultory manner, by herself, on every topic that
+was introduced. These were few enough, to be sure; but as we always fell
+back upon Blood, she had as wide a field for abstract speculation as her
+nephew himself.
+
+We might have been a party of Ogres, the conversation assumed such a
+sanguine complexion.
+
+‘I confess I am of Mrs. Waterbrook’s opinion,’ said Mr. Waterbrook, with
+his wine-glass at his eye. ‘Other things are all very well in their way,
+but give me Blood!’
+
+‘Oh! There is nothing,’ observed Hamlet’s aunt, ‘so satisfactory to one!
+There is nothing that is so much one’s beau-ideal of--of all that sort
+of thing, speaking generally. There are some low minds (not many, I am
+happy to believe, but there are some) that would prefer to do what I
+should call bow down before idols. Positively Idols! Before service,
+intellect, and so on. But these are intangible points. Blood is not so.
+We see Blood in a nose, and we know it. We meet with it in a chin, and
+we say, “There it is! That’s Blood!” It is an actual matter of fact. We
+point it out. It admits of no doubt.’
+
+The simpering fellow with the weak legs, who had taken Agnes down,
+stated the question more decisively yet, I thought.
+
+‘Oh, you know, deuce take it,’ said this gentleman, looking round the
+board with an imbecile smile, ‘we can’t forego Blood, you know. We must
+have Blood, you know. Some young fellows, you know, may be a little
+behind their station, perhaps, in point of education and behaviour, and
+may go a little wrong, you know, and get themselves and other people
+into a variety of fixes--and all that--but deuce take it, it’s
+delightful to reflect that they’ve got Blood in ‘em! Myself, I’d rather
+at any time be knocked down by a man who had got Blood in him, than I’d
+be picked up by a man who hadn’t!’
+
+This sentiment, as compressing the general question into a nutshell,
+gave the utmost satisfaction, and brought the gentleman into great
+notice until the ladies retired. After that, I observed that Mr.
+Gulpidge and Mr. Henry Spiker, who had hitherto been very distant,
+entered into a defensive alliance against us, the common enemy, and
+exchanged a mysterious dialogue across the table for our defeat and
+overthrow.
+
+‘That affair of the first bond for four thousand five hundred pounds has
+not taken the course that was expected, Spiker,’ said Mr. Gulpidge.
+
+‘Do you mean the D. of A.’s?’ said Mr. Spiker.
+
+‘The C. of B.’s!’ said Mr. Gulpidge.
+
+Mr. Spiker raised his eyebrows, and looked much concerned.
+
+‘When the question was referred to Lord--I needn’t name him,’ said Mr.
+Gulpidge, checking himself--
+
+‘I understand,’ said Mr. Spiker, ‘N.’
+
+Mr. Gulpidge darkly nodded--‘was referred to him, his answer was,
+“Money, or no release.”’
+
+‘Lord bless my soul!’ cried Mr. Spiker.
+
+“‘Money, or no release,”’ repeated Mr. Gulpidge, firmly. ‘The next in
+reversion--you understand me?’
+
+‘K.,’ said Mr. Spiker, with an ominous look.
+
+‘--K. then positively refused to sign. He was attended at Newmarket for
+that purpose, and he point-blank refused to do it.’
+
+Mr. Spiker was so interested, that he became quite stony.
+
+‘So the matter rests at this hour,’ said Mr. Gulpidge, throwing himself
+back in his chair. ‘Our friend Waterbrook will excuse me if I forbear to
+explain myself generally, on account of the magnitude of the interests
+involved.’
+
+Mr. Waterbrook was only too happy, as it appeared to me, to have such
+interests, and such names, even hinted at, across his table. He assumed
+an expression of gloomy intelligence (though I am persuaded he knew
+no more about the discussion than I did), and highly approved of the
+discretion that had been observed. Mr. Spiker, after the receipt of such
+a confidence, naturally desired to favour his friend with a confidence
+of his own; therefore the foregoing dialogue was succeeded by another,
+in which it was Mr. Gulpidge’s turn to be surprised, and that by another
+in which the surprise came round to Mr. Spiker’s turn again, and so on,
+turn and turn about. All this time we, the outsiders, remained oppressed
+by the tremendous interests involved in the conversation; and our
+host regarded us with pride, as the victims of a salutary awe and
+astonishment. I was very glad indeed to get upstairs to Agnes, and to
+talk with her in a corner, and to introduce Traddles to her, who was
+shy, but agreeable, and the same good-natured creature still. As he
+was obliged to leave early, on account of going away next morning for
+a month, I had not nearly so much conversation with him as I could have
+wished; but we exchanged addresses, and promised ourselves the pleasure
+of another meeting when he should come back to town. He was greatly
+interested to hear that I knew Steerforth, and spoke of him with such
+warmth that I made him tell Agnes what he thought of him. But Agnes only
+looked at me the while, and very slightly shook her head when only I
+observed her.
+
+As she was not among people with whom I believed she could be very much
+at home, I was almost glad to hear that she was going away within a few
+days, though I was sorry at the prospect of parting from her again
+so soon. This caused me to remain until all the company were gone.
+Conversing with her, and hearing her sing, was such a delightful
+reminder to me of my happy life in the grave old house she had made so
+beautiful, that I could have remained there half the night; but, having
+no excuse for staying any longer, when the lights of Mr. Waterbrook’s
+society were all snuffed out, I took my leave very much against my
+inclination. I felt then, more than ever, that she was my better Angel;
+and if I thought of her sweet face and placid smile, as though they had
+shone on me from some removed being, like an Angel, I hope I thought no
+harm.
+
+I have said that the company were all gone; but I ought to have excepted
+Uriah, whom I don’t include in that denomination, and who had never
+ceased to hover near us. He was close behind me when I went downstairs.
+He was close beside me, when I walked away from the house, slowly
+fitting his long skeleton fingers into the still longer fingers of a
+great Guy Fawkes pair of gloves.
+
+It was in no disposition for Uriah’s company, but in remembrance of the
+entreaty Agnes had made to me, that I asked him if he would come home to
+my rooms, and have some coffee.
+
+‘Oh, really, Master Copperfield,’ he rejoined--‘I beg your pardon,
+Mister Copperfield, but the other comes so natural, I don’t like that
+you should put a constraint upon yourself to ask a numble person like me
+to your ouse.’
+
+‘There is no constraint in the case,’ said I. ‘Will you come?’
+
+‘I should like to, very much,’ replied Uriah, with a writhe.
+
+‘Well, then, come along!’ said I.
+
+I could not help being rather short with him, but he appeared not to
+mind it. We went the nearest way, without conversing much upon the road;
+and he was so humble in respect of those scarecrow gloves, that he
+was still putting them on, and seemed to have made no advance in that
+labour, when we got to my place.
+
+I led him up the dark stairs, to prevent his knocking his head against
+anything, and really his damp cold hand felt so like a frog in mine,
+that I was tempted to drop it and run away. Agnes and hospitality
+prevailed, however, and I conducted him to my fireside. When I lighted
+my candles, he fell into meek transports with the room that was revealed
+to him; and when I heated the coffee in an unassuming block-tin vessel
+in which Mrs. Crupp delighted to prepare it (chiefly, I believe, because
+it was not intended for the purpose, being a shaving-pot, and because
+there was a patent invention of great price mouldering away in the
+pantry), he professed so much emotion, that I could joyfully have
+scalded him.
+
+‘Oh, really, Master Copperfield,--I mean Mister Copperfield,’ said
+Uriah, ‘to see you waiting upon me is what I never could have expected!
+But, one way and another, so many things happen to me which I never
+could have expected, I am sure, in my umble station, that it seems
+to rain blessings on my ed. You have heard something, I des-say, of a
+change in my expectations, Master Copperfield,--I should say, Mister
+Copperfield?’
+
+As he sat on my sofa, with his long knees drawn up under his coffee-cup,
+his hat and gloves upon the ground close to him, his spoon going softly
+round and round, his shadowless red eyes, which looked as if they had
+scorched their lashes off, turned towards me without looking at me, the
+disagreeable dints I have formerly described in his nostrils coming and
+going with his breath, and a snaky undulation pervading his frame from
+his chin to his boots, I decided in my own mind that I disliked him
+intensely. It made me very uncomfortable to have him for a guest, for I
+was young then, and unused to disguise what I so strongly felt.
+
+‘You have heard something, I des-say, of a change in my expectations,
+Master Copperfield,--I should say, Mister Copperfield?’ observed Uriah.
+
+‘Yes,’ said I, ‘something.’
+
+‘Ah! I thought Miss Agnes would know of it!’ he quietly returned. ‘I’m
+glad to find Miss Agnes knows of it. Oh, thank you, Master--Mister
+Copperfield!’
+
+I could have thrown my bootjack at him (it lay ready on the rug), for
+having entrapped me into the disclosure of anything concerning Agnes,
+however immaterial. But I only drank my coffee.
+
+‘What a prophet you have shown yourself, Mister Copperfield!’ pursued
+Uriah. ‘Dear me, what a prophet you have proved yourself to be! Don’t
+you remember saying to me once, that perhaps I should be a partner in
+Mr. Wickfield’s business, and perhaps it might be Wickfield and
+Heep? You may not recollect it; but when a person is umble, Master
+Copperfield, a person treasures such things up!’
+
+‘I recollect talking about it,’ said I, ‘though I certainly did not
+think it very likely then.’ ‘Oh! who would have thought it likely,
+Mister Copperfield!’ returned Uriah, enthusiastically. ‘I am sure I
+didn’t myself. I recollect saying with my own lips that I was much too
+umble. So I considered myself really and truly.’
+
+He sat, with that carved grin on his face, looking at the fire, as I
+looked at him.
+
+‘But the umblest persons, Master Copperfield,’ he presently resumed,
+‘may be the instruments of good. I am glad to think I have been the
+instrument of good to Mr. Wickfield, and that I may be more so. Oh what
+a worthy man he is, Mister Copperfield, but how imprudent he has been!’
+
+‘I am sorry to hear it,’ said I. I could not help adding, rather
+pointedly, ‘on all accounts.’
+
+‘Decidedly so, Mister Copperfield,’ replied Uriah. ‘On all accounts.
+Miss Agnes’s above all! You don’t remember your own eloquent
+expressions, Master Copperfield; but I remember how you said one day
+that everybody must admire her, and how I thanked you for it! You have
+forgot that, I have no doubt, Master Copperfield?’
+
+‘No,’ said I, drily.
+
+‘Oh how glad I am you have not!’ exclaimed Uriah. ‘To think that you
+should be the first to kindle the sparks of ambition in my umble breast,
+and that you’ve not forgot it! Oh!--Would you excuse me asking for a cup
+more coffee?’
+
+Something in the emphasis he laid upon the kindling of those sparks,
+and something in the glance he directed at me as he said it, had made me
+start as if I had seen him illuminated by a blaze of light. Recalled by
+his request, preferred in quite another tone of voice, I did the honours
+of the shaving-pot; but I did them with an unsteadiness of hand, a
+sudden sense of being no match for him, and a perplexed suspicious
+anxiety as to what he might be going to say next, which I felt could not
+escape his observation.
+
+He said nothing at all. He stirred his coffee round and round, he sipped
+it, he felt his chin softly with his grisly hand, he looked at the fire,
+he looked about the room, he gasped rather than smiled at me, he writhed
+and undulated about, in his deferential servility, he stirred and sipped
+again, but he left the renewal of the conversation to me.
+
+‘So, Mr. Wickfield,’ said I, at last, ‘who is worth five hundred of
+you--or me’; for my life, I think, I could not have helped dividing that
+part of the sentence with an awkward jerk; ‘has been imprudent, has he,
+Mr. Heep?’
+
+‘Oh, very imprudent indeed, Master Copperfield,’ returned Uriah, sighing
+modestly. ‘Oh, very much so! But I wish you’d call me Uriah, if you
+please. It’s like old times.’
+
+‘Well! Uriah,’ said I, bolting it out with some difficulty.
+
+‘Thank you,’ he returned, with fervour. ‘Thank you, Master Copperfield!
+It’s like the blowing of old breezes or the ringing of old bellses to
+hear YOU say Uriah. I beg your pardon. Was I making any observation?’
+
+‘About Mr. Wickfield,’ I suggested.
+
+‘Oh! Yes, truly,’ said Uriah. ‘Ah! Great imprudence, Master Copperfield.
+It’s a topic that I wouldn’t touch upon, to any soul but you. Even to
+you I can only touch upon it, and no more. If anyone else had been in
+my place during the last few years, by this time he would have had Mr.
+Wickfield (oh, what a worthy man he is, Master Copperfield, too!) under
+his thumb. Un--der--his thumb,’ said Uriah, very slowly, as he stretched
+out his cruel-looking hand above my table, and pressed his own thumb
+upon it, until it shook, and shook the room.
+
+If I had been obliged to look at him with him splay foot on Mr.
+Wickfield’s head, I think I could scarcely have hated him more.
+
+‘Oh, dear, yes, Master Copperfield,’ he proceeded, in a soft voice,
+most remarkably contrasting with the action of his thumb, which did not
+diminish its hard pressure in the least degree, ‘there’s no doubt of
+it. There would have been loss, disgrace, I don’t know what at all. Mr.
+Wickfield knows it. I am the umble instrument of umbly serving him,
+and he puts me on an eminence I hardly could have hoped to reach. How
+thankful should I be!’ With his face turned towards me, as he finished,
+but without looking at me, he took his crooked thumb off the spot where
+he had planted it, and slowly and thoughtfully scraped his lank jaw with
+it, as if he were shaving himself.
+
+I recollect well how indignantly my heart beat, as I saw his crafty
+face, with the appropriately red light of the fire upon it, preparing
+for something else.
+
+‘Master Copperfield,’ he began--‘but am I keeping you up?’
+
+‘You are not keeping me up. I generally go to bed late.’
+
+‘Thank you, Master Copperfield! I have risen from my umble station since
+first you used to address me, it is true; but I am umble still. I hope I
+never shall be otherwise than umble. You will not think the worse of
+my umbleness, if I make a little confidence to you, Master Copperfield?
+Will you?’
+
+‘Oh no,’ said I, with an effort.
+
+‘Thank you!’ He took out his pocket-handkerchief, and began wiping the
+palms of his hands. ‘Miss Agnes, Master Copperfield--’ ‘Well, Uriah?’
+
+‘Oh, how pleasant to be called Uriah, spontaneously!’ he cried; and gave
+himself a jerk, like a convulsive fish. ‘You thought her looking very
+beautiful tonight, Master Copperfield?’
+
+‘I thought her looking as she always does: superior, in all respects, to
+everyone around her,’ I returned.
+
+‘Oh, thank you! It’s so true!’ he cried. ‘Oh, thank you very much for
+that!’
+
+‘Not at all,’ I said, loftily. ‘There is no reason why you should thank
+me.’
+
+‘Why that, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah, ‘is, in fact, the confidence
+that I am going to take the liberty of reposing. Umble as I am,’ he
+wiped his hands harder, and looked at them and at the fire by turns,
+‘umble as my mother is, and lowly as our poor but honest roof has ever
+been, the image of Miss Agnes (I don’t mind trusting you with my secret,
+Master Copperfield, for I have always overflowed towards you since the
+first moment I had the pleasure of beholding you in a pony-shay) has
+been in my breast for years. Oh, Master Copperfield, with what a pure
+affection do I love the ground my Agnes walks on!’
+
+I believe I had a delirious idea of seizing the red-hot poker out of
+the fire, and running him through with it. It went from me with a shock,
+like a ball fired from a rifle: but the image of Agnes, outraged by so
+much as a thought of this red-headed animal’s, remained in my mind when
+I looked at him, sitting all awry as if his mean soul griped his body,
+and made me giddy. He seemed to swell and grow before my eyes; the room
+seemed full of the echoes of his voice; and the strange feeling (to
+which, perhaps, no one is quite a stranger) that all this had occurred
+before, at some indefinite time, and that I knew what he was going to
+say next, took possession of me.
+
+A timely observation of the sense of power that there was in his face,
+did more to bring back to my remembrance the entreaty of Agnes, in
+its full force, than any effort I could have made. I asked him, with
+a better appearance of composure than I could have thought possible a
+minute before, whether he had made his feelings known to Agnes.
+
+‘Oh no, Master Copperfield!’ he returned; ‘oh dear, no! Not to anyone
+but you. You see I am only just emerging from my lowly station. I rest a
+good deal of hope on her observing how useful I am to her father (for
+I trust to be very useful to him indeed, Master Copperfield), and how I
+smooth the way for him, and keep him straight. She’s so much attached
+to her father, Master Copperfield (oh, what a lovely thing it is in a
+daughter!), that I think she may come, on his account, to be kind to
+me.’
+
+I fathomed the depth of the rascal’s whole scheme, and understood why he
+laid it bare.
+
+‘If you’ll have the goodness to keep my secret, Master Copperfield,’ he
+pursued, ‘and not, in general, to go against me, I shall take it as a
+particular favour. You wouldn’t wish to make unpleasantness. I know
+what a friendly heart you’ve got; but having only known me on my umble
+footing (on my umblest I should say, for I am very umble still), you
+might, unbeknown, go against me rather, with my Agnes. I call her mine,
+you see, Master Copperfield. There’s a song that says, “I’d crowns
+resign, to call her mine!” I hope to do it, one of these days.’
+
+Dear Agnes! So much too loving and too good for anyone that I could
+think of, was it possible that she was reserved to be the wife of such a
+wretch as this!
+
+‘There’s no hurry at present, you know, Master Copperfield,’ Uriah
+proceeded, in his slimy way, as I sat gazing at him, with this thought
+in my mind. ‘My Agnes is very young still; and mother and me will have
+to work our way upwards, and make a good many new arrangements, before
+it would be quite convenient. So I shall have time gradually to make her
+familiar with my hopes, as opportunities offer. Oh, I’m so much obliged
+to you for this confidence! Oh, it’s such a relief, you can’t think, to
+know that you understand our situation, and are certain (as you wouldn’t
+wish to make unpleasantness in the family) not to go against me!’
+
+He took the hand which I dared not withhold, and having given it a damp
+squeeze, referred to his pale-faced watch.
+
+‘Dear me!’ he said, ‘it’s past one. The moments slip away so, in the
+confidence of old times, Master Copperfield, that it’s almost half past
+one!’
+
+I answered that I had thought it was later. Not that I had really
+thought so, but because my conversational powers were effectually
+scattered.
+
+‘Dear me!’ he said, considering. ‘The ouse that I am stopping at--a sort
+of a private hotel and boarding ouse, Master Copperfield, near the New
+River ed--will have gone to bed these two hours.’
+
+‘I am sorry,’ I returned, ‘that there is only one bed here, and that
+I--’
+
+‘Oh, don’t think of mentioning beds, Master Copperfield!’ he rejoined
+ecstatically, drawing up one leg. ‘But would you have any objections to
+my laying down before the fire?’
+
+‘If it comes to that,’ I said, ‘pray take my bed, and I’ll lie down
+before the fire.’
+
+His repudiation of this offer was almost shrill enough, in the excess of
+its surprise and humility, to have penetrated to the ears of Mrs. Crupp,
+then sleeping, I suppose, in a distant chamber, situated at about the
+level of low-water mark, soothed in her slumbers by the ticking of an
+incorrigible clock, to which she always referred me when we had any
+little difference on the score of punctuality, and which was never less
+than three-quarters of an hour too slow, and had always been put right
+in the morning by the best authorities. As no arguments I could urge,
+in my bewildered condition, had the least effect upon his modesty
+in inducing him to accept my bedroom, I was obliged to make the best
+arrangements I could, for his repose before the fire. The mattress of
+the sofa (which was a great deal too short for his lank figure), the
+sofa pillows, a blanket, the table-cover, a clean breakfast-cloth, and
+a great-coat, made him a bed and covering, for which he was more than
+thankful. Having lent him a night-cap, which he put on at once, and in
+which he made such an awful figure, that I have never worn one since, I
+left him to his rest.
+
+I never shall forget that night. I never shall forget how I turned
+and tumbled; how I wearied myself with thinking about Agnes and this
+creature; how I considered what could I do, and what ought I to do; how
+I could come to no other conclusion than that the best course for her
+peace was to do nothing, and to keep to myself what I had heard. If
+I went to sleep for a few moments, the image of Agnes with her tender
+eyes, and of her father looking fondly on her, as I had so often seen
+him look, arose before me with appealing faces, and filled me with vague
+terrors. When I awoke, the recollection that Uriah was lying in the next
+room, sat heavy on me like a waking nightmare; and oppressed me with a
+leaden dread, as if I had had some meaner quality of devil for a lodger.
+
+The poker got into my dozing thoughts besides, and wouldn’t come out. I
+thought, between sleeping and waking, that it was still red hot, and I
+had snatched it out of the fire, and run him through the body. I was so
+haunted at last by the idea, though I knew there was nothing in it, that
+I stole into the next room to look at him. There I saw him, lying on his
+back, with his legs extending to I don’t know where, gurglings taking
+place in his throat, stoppages in his nose, and his mouth open like
+a post-office. He was so much worse in reality than in my distempered
+fancy, that afterwards I was attracted to him in very repulsion, and
+could not help wandering in and out every half-hour or so, and taking
+another look at him. Still, the long, long night seemed heavy and
+hopeless as ever, and no promise of day was in the murky sky.
+
+When I saw him going downstairs early in the morning (for, thank Heaven!
+he would not stay to breakfast), it appeared to me as if the night was
+going away in his person. When I went out to the Commons, I charged
+Mrs. Crupp with particular directions to leave the windows open, that my
+sitting-room might be aired, and purged of his presence.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 26. I FALL INTO CAPTIVITY
+
+
+I saw no more of Uriah Heep, until the day when Agnes left town. I was
+at the coach office to take leave of her and see her go; and there was
+he, returning to Canterbury by the same conveyance. It was some small
+satisfaction to me to observe his spare, short-waisted, high-shouldered,
+mulberry-coloured great-coat perched up, in company with an umbrella
+like a small tent, on the edge of the back seat on the roof, while
+Agnes was, of course, inside; but what I underwent in my efforts to be
+friendly with him, while Agnes looked on, perhaps deserved that little
+recompense. At the coach window, as at the dinner-party, he hovered
+about us without a moment’s intermission, like a great vulture: gorging
+himself on every syllable that I said to Agnes, or Agnes said to me.
+
+In the state of trouble into which his disclosure by my fire had thrown
+me, I had thought very much of the words Agnes had used in reference to
+the partnership. ‘I did what I hope was right. Feeling sure that it
+was necessary for papa’s peace that the sacrifice should be made, I
+entreated him to make it.’ A miserable foreboding that she would
+yield to, and sustain herself by, the same feeling in reference to any
+sacrifice for his sake, had oppressed me ever since. I knew how she
+loved him. I knew what the devotion of her nature was. I knew from her
+own lips that she regarded herself as the innocent cause of his errors,
+and as owing him a great debt she ardently desired to pay. I had no
+consolation in seeing how different she was from this detestable Rufus
+with the mulberry-coloured great-coat, for I felt that in the very
+difference between them, in the self-denial of her pure soul and the
+sordid baseness of his, the greatest danger lay. All this, doubtless, he
+knew thoroughly, and had, in his cunning, considered well.
+
+Yet I was so certain that the prospect of such a sacrifice afar off,
+must destroy the happiness of Agnes; and I was so sure, from her manner,
+of its being unseen by her then, and having cast no shadow on her yet;
+that I could as soon have injured her, as given her any warning of what
+impended. Thus it was that we parted without explanation: she waving
+her hand and smiling farewell from the coach window; her evil genius
+writhing on the roof, as if he had her in his clutches and triumphed.
+
+I could not get over this farewell glimpse of them for a long time. When
+Agnes wrote to tell me of her safe arrival, I was as miserable as when
+I saw her going away. Whenever I fell into a thoughtful state, this
+subject was sure to present itself, and all my uneasiness was sure to be
+redoubled. Hardly a night passed without my dreaming of it. It became a
+part of my life, and as inseparable from my life as my own head.
+
+I had ample leisure to refine upon my uneasiness: for Steerforth was at
+Oxford, as he wrote to me, and when I was not at the Commons, I was
+very much alone. I believe I had at this time some lurking distrust of
+Steerforth. I wrote to him most affectionately in reply to his, but I
+think I was glad, upon the whole, that he could not come to London just
+then. I suspect the truth to be, that the influence of Agnes was upon
+me, undisturbed by the sight of him; and that it was the more powerful
+with me, because she had so large a share in my thoughts and interest.
+
+In the meantime, days and weeks slipped away. I was articled to Spenlow
+and Jorkins. I had ninety pounds a year (exclusive of my house-rent
+and sundry collateral matters) from my aunt. My rooms were engaged
+for twelve months certain: and though I still found them dreary of an
+evening, and the evenings long, I could settle down into a state of
+equable low spirits, and resign myself to coffee; which I seem, on
+looking back, to have taken by the gallon at about this period of my
+existence. At about this time, too, I made three discoveries: first,
+that Mrs. Crupp was a martyr to a curious disorder called ‘the
+spazzums’, which was generally accompanied with inflammation of the
+nose, and required to be constantly treated with peppermint; secondly,
+that something peculiar in the temperature of my pantry, made the
+brandy-bottles burst; thirdly, that I was alone in the world, and much
+given to record that circumstance in fragments of English versification.
+
+On the day when I was articled, no festivity took place, beyond my
+having sandwiches and sherry into the office for the clerks, and going
+alone to the theatre at night. I went to see The Stranger, as a Doctors’
+Commons sort of play, and was so dreadfully cut up, that I hardly knew
+myself in my own glass when I got home. Mr. Spenlow remarked, on this
+occasion, when we concluded our business, that he should have been
+happy to have seen me at his house at Norwood to celebrate our becoming
+connected, but for his domestic arrangements being in some disorder,
+on account of the expected return of his daughter from finishing her
+education at Paris. But, he intimated that when she came home he should
+hope to have the pleasure of entertaining me. I knew that he was a
+widower with one daughter, and expressed my acknowledgements.
+
+Mr. Spenlow was as good as his word. In a week or two, he referred to
+this engagement, and said, that if I would do him the favour to come
+down next Saturday, and stay till Monday, he would be extremely happy.
+Of course I said I would do him the favour; and he was to drive me down
+in his phaeton, and to bring me back.
+
+When the day arrived, my very carpet-bag was an object of veneration
+to the stipendiary clerks, to whom the house at Norwood was a sacred
+mystery. One of them informed me that he had heard that Mr. Spenlow
+ate entirely off plate and china; and another hinted at champagne being
+constantly on draught, after the usual custom of table-beer. The old
+clerk with the wig, whose name was Mr. Tiffey, had been down on business
+several times in the course of his career, and had on each occasion
+penetrated to the breakfast-parlour. He described it as an apartment of
+the most sumptuous nature, and said that he had drunk brown East India
+sherry there, of a quality so precious as to make a man wink. We had
+an adjourned cause in the Consistory that day--about excommunicating a
+baker who had been objecting in a vestry to a paving-rate--and as the
+evidence was just twice the length of Robinson Crusoe, according to a
+calculation I made, it was rather late in the day before we finished.
+However, we got him excommunicated for six weeks, and sentenced in
+no end of costs; and then the baker’s proctor, and the judge, and the
+advocates on both sides (who were all nearly related), went out of town
+together, and Mr. Spenlow and I drove away in the phaeton.
+
+The phaeton was a very handsome affair; the horses arched their necks
+and lifted up their legs as if they knew they belonged to Doctors’
+Commons. There was a good deal of competition in the Commons on all
+points of display, and it turned out some very choice equipages then;
+though I always have considered, and always shall consider, that in my
+time the great article of competition there was starch: which I think
+was worn among the proctors to as great an extent as it is in the nature
+of man to bear.
+
+We were very pleasant, going down, and Mr. Spenlow gave me some hints in
+reference to my profession. He said it was the genteelest profession in
+the world, and must on no account be confounded with the profession of a
+solicitor: being quite another sort of thing, infinitely more exclusive,
+less mechanical, and more profitable. We took things much more easily
+in the Commons than they could be taken anywhere else, he observed, and
+that set us, as a privileged class, apart. He said it was impossible
+to conceal the disagreeable fact, that we were chiefly employed by
+solicitors; but he gave me to understand that they were an inferior race
+of men, universally looked down upon by all proctors of any pretensions.
+
+I asked Mr. Spenlow what he considered the best sort of professional
+business? He replied, that a good case of a disputed will, where there
+was a neat little estate of thirty or forty thousand pounds, was,
+perhaps, the best of all. In such a case, he said, not only were there
+very pretty pickings, in the way of arguments at every stage of the
+proceedings, and mountains upon mountains of evidence on interrogatory
+and counter-interrogatory (to say nothing of an appeal lying, first to
+the Delegates, and then to the Lords), but, the costs being pretty sure
+to come out of the estate at last, both sides went at it in a lively
+and spirited manner, and expense was no consideration. Then, he launched
+into a general eulogium on the Commons. What was to be particularly
+admired (he said) in the Commons, was its compactness. It was the most
+conveniently organized place in the world. It was the complete idea of
+snugness. It lay in a nutshell. For example: You brought a divorce case,
+or a restitution case, into the Consistory. Very good. You tried it in
+the Consistory. You made a quiet little round game of it, among a family
+group, and you played it out at leisure. Suppose you were not satisfied
+with the Consistory, what did you do then? Why, you went into the
+Arches. What was the Arches? The same court, in the same room, with the
+same bar, and the same practitioners, but another judge, for there the
+Consistory judge could plead any court-day as an advocate. Well, you
+played your round game out again. Still you were not satisfied. Very
+good. What did you do then? Why, you went to the Delegates. Who were the
+Delegates? Why, the Ecclesiastical Delegates were the advocates without
+any business, who had looked on at the round game when it was playing in
+both courts, and had seen the cards shuffled, and cut, and played, and
+had talked to all the players about it, and now came fresh, as judges,
+to settle the matter to the satisfaction of everybody! Discontented
+people might talk of corruption in the Commons, closeness in the
+Commons, and the necessity of reforming the Commons, said Mr. Spenlow
+solemnly, in conclusion; but when the price of wheat per bushel had been
+highest, the Commons had been busiest; and a man might lay his hand upon
+his heart, and say this to the whole world,--‘Touch the Commons, and
+down comes the country!’
+
+I listened to all this with attention; and though, I must say, I had my
+doubts whether the country was quite as much obliged to the Commons as
+Mr. Spenlow made out, I respectfully deferred to his opinion. That
+about the price of wheat per bushel, I modestly felt was too much for
+my strength, and quite settled the question. I have never, to this hour,
+got the better of that bushel of wheat. It has reappeared to annihilate
+me, all through my life, in connexion with all kinds of subjects. I
+don’t know now, exactly, what it has to do with me, or what right it has
+to crush me, on an infinite variety of occasions; but whenever I see my
+old friend the bushel brought in by the head and shoulders (as he always
+is, I observe), I give up a subject for lost.
+
+This is a digression. I was not the man to touch the Commons, and
+bring down the country. I submissively expressed, by my silence, my
+acquiescence in all I had heard from my superior in years and knowledge;
+and we talked about The Stranger and the Drama, and the pairs of horses,
+until we came to Mr. Spenlow’s gate.
+
+There was a lovely garden to Mr. Spenlow’s house; and though that was
+not the best time of the year for seeing a garden, it was so beautifully
+kept, that I was quite enchanted. There was a charming lawn, there were
+clusters of trees, and there were perspective walks that I could just
+distinguish in the dark, arched over with trellis-work, on which shrubs
+and flowers grew in the growing season. ‘Here Miss Spenlow walks by
+herself,’ I thought. ‘Dear me!’
+
+We went into the house, which was cheerfully lighted up, and into a hall
+where there were all sorts of hats, caps, great-coats, plaids, gloves,
+whips, and walking-sticks. ‘Where is Miss Dora?’ said Mr. Spenlow to the
+servant. ‘Dora!’ I thought. ‘What a beautiful name!’
+
+We turned into a room near at hand (I think it was the identical
+breakfast-room, made memorable by the brown East Indian sherry), and I
+heard a voice say, ‘Mr. Copperfield, my daughter Dora, and my daughter
+Dora’s confidential friend!’ It was, no doubt, Mr. Spenlow’s voice,
+but I didn’t know it, and I didn’t care whose it was. All was over in a
+moment. I had fulfilled my destiny. I was a captive and a slave. I loved
+Dora Spenlow to distraction!
+
+She was more than human to me. She was a Fairy, a Sylph, I don’t
+know what she was--anything that no one ever saw, and everything that
+everybody ever wanted. I was swallowed up in an abyss of love in an
+instant. There was no pausing on the brink; no looking down, or looking
+back; I was gone, headlong, before I had sense to say a word to her.
+
+‘I,’ observed a well-remembered voice, when I had bowed and murmured
+something, ‘have seen Mr. Copperfield before.’
+
+The speaker was not Dora. No; the confidential friend, Miss Murdstone!
+
+I don’t think I was much astonished. To the best of my judgement,
+no capacity of astonishment was left in me. There was nothing worth
+mentioning in the material world, but Dora Spenlow, to be astonished
+about. I said, ‘How do you do, Miss Murdstone? I hope you are well.’ She
+answered, ‘Very well.’ I said, ‘How is Mr. Murdstone?’ She replied, ‘My
+brother is robust, I am obliged to you.’
+
+Mr. Spenlow, who, I suppose, had been surprised to see us recognize each
+other, then put in his word.
+
+‘I am glad to find,’ he said, ‘Copperfield, that you and Miss Murdstone
+are already acquainted.’
+
+‘Mr. Copperfield and myself,’ said Miss Murdstone, with severe
+composure, ‘are connexions. We were once slightly acquainted. It was in
+his childish days. Circumstances have separated us since. I should not
+have known him.’
+
+I replied that I should have known her, anywhere. Which was true enough.
+
+‘Miss Murdstone has had the goodness,’ said Mr. Spenlow to me, ‘to
+accept the office--if I may so describe it--of my daughter Dora’s
+confidential friend. My daughter Dora having, unhappily, no mother, Miss
+Murdstone is obliging enough to become her companion and protector.’
+
+A passing thought occurred to me that Miss Murdstone, like the pocket
+instrument called a life-preserver, was not so much designed for
+purposes of protection as of assault. But as I had none but passing
+thoughts for any subject save Dora, I glanced at her, directly
+afterwards, and was thinking that I saw, in her prettily pettish manner,
+that she was not very much inclined to be particularly confidential to
+her companion and protector, when a bell rang, which Mr. Spenlow said
+was the first dinner-bell, and so carried me off to dress.
+
+The idea of dressing one’s self, or doing anything in the way of action,
+in that state of love, was a little too ridiculous. I could only sit
+down before my fire, biting the key of my carpet-bag, and think of the
+captivating, girlish, bright-eyed lovely Dora. What a form she had, what
+a face she had, what a graceful, variable, enchanting manner!
+
+The bell rang again so soon that I made a mere scramble of my dressing,
+instead of the careful operation I could have wished under the
+circumstances, and went downstairs. There was some company. Dora was
+talking to an old gentleman with a grey head. Grey as he was--and a
+great-grandfather into the bargain, for he said so--I was madly jealous
+of him.
+
+What a state of mind I was in! I was jealous of everybody. I couldn’t
+bear the idea of anybody knowing Mr. Spenlow better than I did. It was
+torturing to me to hear them talk of occurrences in which I had had no
+share. When a most amiable person, with a highly polished bald head,
+asked me across the dinner table, if that were the first occasion of my
+seeing the grounds, I could have done anything to him that was savage
+and revengeful.
+
+I don’t remember who was there, except Dora. I have not the least idea
+what we had for dinner, besides Dora. My impression is, that I dined off
+Dora, entirely, and sent away half-a-dozen plates untouched. I sat next
+to her. I talked to her. She had the most delightful little voice, the
+gayest little laugh, the pleasantest and most fascinating little
+ways, that ever led a lost youth into hopeless slavery. She was rather
+diminutive altogether. So much the more precious, I thought.
+
+When she went out of the room with Miss Murdstone (no other ladies
+were of the party), I fell into a reverie, only disturbed by the cruel
+apprehension that Miss Murdstone would disparage me to her. The amiable
+creature with the polished head told me a long story, which I think was
+about gardening. I think I heard him say, ‘my gardener’, several times.
+I seemed to pay the deepest attention to him, but I was wandering in a
+garden of Eden all the while, with Dora.
+
+My apprehensions of being disparaged to the object of my engrossing
+affection were revived when we went into the drawing-room, by the grim
+and distant aspect of Miss Murdstone. But I was relieved of them in an
+unexpected manner.
+
+‘David Copperfield,’ said Miss Murdstone, beckoning me aside into a
+window. ‘A word.’
+
+I confronted Miss Murdstone alone.
+
+‘David Copperfield,’ said Miss Murdstone, ‘I need not enlarge upon
+family circumstances. They are not a tempting subject.’ ‘Far from it,
+ma’am,’ I returned.
+
+‘Far from it,’ assented Miss Murdstone. ‘I do not wish to revive
+the memory of past differences, or of past outrages. I have received
+outrages from a person--a female I am sorry to say, for the credit of my
+sex--who is not to be mentioned without scorn and disgust; and therefore
+I would rather not mention her.’
+
+I felt very fiery on my aunt’s account; but I said it would certainly be
+better, if Miss Murdstone pleased, not to mention her. I could not hear
+her disrespectfully mentioned, I added, without expressing my opinion in
+a decided tone.
+
+Miss Murdstone shut her eyes, and disdainfully inclined her head; then,
+slowly opening her eyes, resumed:
+
+‘David Copperfield, I shall not attempt to disguise the fact, that I
+formed an unfavourable opinion of you in your childhood. It may have
+been a mistaken one, or you may have ceased to justify it. That is not
+in question between us now. I belong to a family remarkable, I believe,
+for some firmness; and I am not the creature of circumstance or change.
+I may have my opinion of you. You may have your opinion of me.’
+
+I inclined my head, in my turn.
+
+‘But it is not necessary,’ said Miss Murdstone, ‘that these opinions
+should come into collision here. Under existing circumstances, it is as
+well on all accounts that they should not. As the chances of life have
+brought us together again, and may bring us together on other occasions,
+I would say, let us meet here as distant acquaintances. Family
+circumstances are a sufficient reason for our only meeting on that
+footing, and it is quite unnecessary that either of us should make the
+other the subject of remark. Do you approve of this?’
+
+‘Miss Murdstone,’ I returned, ‘I think you and Mr. Murdstone used me
+very cruelly, and treated my mother with great unkindness. I shall
+always think so, as long as I live. But I quite agree in what you
+propose.’
+
+Miss Murdstone shut her eyes again, and bent her head. Then, just
+touching the back of my hand with the tips of her cold, stiff fingers,
+she walked away, arranging the little fetters on her wrists and round
+her neck; which seemed to be the same set, in exactly the same state,
+as when I had seen her last. These reminded me, in reference to Miss
+Murdstone’s nature, of the fetters over a jail door; suggesting on the
+outside, to all beholders, what was to be expected within.
+
+All I know of the rest of the evening is, that I heard the empress of
+my heart sing enchanted ballads in the French language, generally to the
+effect that, whatever was the matter, we ought always to dance, Ta ra
+la, Ta ra la! accompanying herself on a glorified instrument, resembling
+a guitar. That I was lost in blissful delirium. That I refused
+refreshment. That my soul recoiled from punch particularly. That when
+Miss Murdstone took her into custody and led her away, she smiled and
+gave me her delicious hand. That I caught a view of myself in a mirror,
+looking perfectly imbecile and idiotic. That I retired to bed in a most
+maudlin state of mind, and got up in a crisis of feeble infatuation.
+
+It was a fine morning, and early, and I thought I would go and take a
+stroll down one of those wire-arched walks, and indulge my passion by
+dwelling on her image. On my way through the hall, I encountered her
+little dog, who was called Jip--short for Gipsy. I approached him
+tenderly, for I loved even him; but he showed his whole set of teeth,
+got under a chair expressly to snarl, and wouldn’t hear of the least
+familiarity.
+
+The garden was cool and solitary. I walked about, wondering what my
+feelings of happiness would be, if I could ever become engaged to this
+dear wonder. As to marriage, and fortune, and all that, I believe I was
+almost as innocently undesigning then, as when I loved little Em’ly. To
+be allowed to call her ‘Dora’, to write to her, to dote upon and worship
+her, to have reason to think that when she was with other people she was
+yet mindful of me, seemed to me the summit of human ambition--I am
+sure it was the summit of mine. There is no doubt whatever that I was
+a lackadaisical young spooney; but there was a purity of heart in all
+this, that prevents my having quite a contemptuous recollection of it,
+let me laugh as I may.
+
+I had not been walking long, when I turned a corner, and met her. I
+tingle again from head to foot as my recollection turns that corner, and
+my pen shakes in my hand.
+
+‘You--are--out early, Miss Spenlow,’ said I.
+
+‘It’s so stupid at home,’ she replied, ‘and Miss Murdstone is so absurd!
+She talks such nonsense about its being necessary for the day to be
+aired, before I come out. Aired!’ (She laughed, here, in the most
+melodious manner.) ‘On a Sunday morning, when I don’t practise, I must
+do something. So I told papa last night I must come out. Besides, it’s
+the brightest time of the whole day. Don’t you think so?’
+
+I hazarded a bold flight, and said (not without stammering) that it
+was very bright to me then, though it had been very dark to me a minute
+before.
+
+‘Do you mean a compliment?’ said Dora, ‘or that the weather has really
+changed?’
+
+I stammered worse than before, in replying that I meant no compliment,
+but the plain truth; though I was not aware of any change having taken
+place in the weather. It was in the state of my own feelings, I added
+bashfully: to clench the explanation.
+
+I never saw such curls--how could I, for there never were such
+curls!--as those she shook out to hide her blushes. As to the straw hat
+and blue ribbons which was on the top of the curls, if I could only have
+hung it up in my room in Buckingham Street, what a priceless possession
+it would have been!
+
+‘You have just come home from Paris,’ said I.
+
+‘Yes,’ said she. ‘Have you ever been there?’
+
+‘No.’
+
+‘Oh! I hope you’ll go soon! You would like it so much!’
+
+Traces of deep-seated anguish appeared in my countenance. That she
+should hope I would go, that she should think it possible I could go,
+was insupportable. I depreciated Paris; I depreciated France. I said I
+wouldn’t leave England, under existing circumstances, for any earthly
+consideration. Nothing should induce me. In short, she was shaking the
+curls again, when the little dog came running along the walk to our
+relief.
+
+He was mortally jealous of me, and persisted in barking at me. She took
+him up in her arms--oh my goodness!--and caressed him, but he persisted
+upon barking still. He wouldn’t let me touch him, when I tried; and then
+she beat him. It increased my sufferings greatly to see the pats she
+gave him for punishment on the bridge of his blunt nose, while he winked
+his eyes, and licked her hand, and still growled within himself like a
+little double-bass. At length he was quiet--well he might be with her
+dimpled chin upon his head!--and we walked away to look at a greenhouse.
+
+‘You are not very intimate with Miss Murdstone, are you?’ said Dora.
+--‘My pet.’
+
+(The two last words were to the dog. Oh, if they had only been to me!)
+
+‘No,’ I replied. ‘Not at all so.’
+
+‘She is a tiresome creature,’ said Dora, pouting. ‘I can’t think what
+papa can have been about, when he chose such a vexatious thing to be my
+companion. Who wants a protector? I am sure I don’t want a protector.
+Jip can protect me a great deal better than Miss Murdstone,--can’t you,
+Jip, dear?’
+
+He only winked lazily, when she kissed his ball of a head.
+
+‘Papa calls her my confidential friend, but I am sure she is no such
+thing--is she, Jip? We are not going to confide in any such cross
+people, Jip and I. We mean to bestow our confidence where we like,
+and to find out our own friends, instead of having them found out for
+us--don’t we, Jip?’
+
+Jip made a comfortable noise, in answer, a little like a tea-kettle when
+it sings. As for me, every word was a new heap of fetters, riveted above
+the last.
+
+‘It is very hard, because we have not a kind Mama, that we are to have,
+instead, a sulky, gloomy old thing like Miss Murdstone, always following
+us about--isn’t it, Jip? Never mind, Jip. We won’t be confidential, and
+we’ll make ourselves as happy as we can in spite of her, and we’ll tease
+her, and not please her--won’t we, Jip?’
+
+If it had lasted any longer, I think I must have gone down on my knees
+on the gravel, with the probability before me of grazing them, and of
+being presently ejected from the premises besides. But, by good fortune
+the greenhouse was not far off, and these words brought us to it.
+
+It contained quite a show of beautiful geraniums. We loitered along in
+front of them, and Dora often stopped to admire this one or that one,
+and I stopped to admire the same one, and Dora, laughing, held the dog
+up childishly, to smell the flowers; and if we were not all three in
+Fairyland, certainly I was. The scent of a geranium leaf, at this day,
+strikes me with a half comical half serious wonder as to what change has
+come over me in a moment; and then I see a straw hat and blue ribbons,
+and a quantity of curls, and a little black dog being held up, in two
+slender arms, against a bank of blossoms and bright leaves.
+
+Miss Murdstone had been looking for us. She found us here; and presented
+her uncongenial cheek, the little wrinkles in it filled with hair
+powder, to Dora to be kissed. Then she took Dora’s arm in hers, and
+marched us into breakfast as if it were a soldier’s funeral.
+
+How many cups of tea I drank, because Dora made it, I don’t know. But,
+I perfectly remember that I sat swilling tea until my whole nervous
+system, if I had had any in those days, must have gone by the board. By
+and by we went to church. Miss Murdstone was between Dora and me in the
+pew; but I heard her sing, and the congregation vanished. A sermon was
+delivered--about Dora, of course--and I am afraid that is all I know of
+the service.
+
+We had a quiet day. No company, a walk, a family dinner of four, and an
+evening of looking over books and pictures; Miss Murdstone with a homily
+before her, and her eye upon us, keeping guard vigilantly. Ah! little
+did Mr. Spenlow imagine, when he sat opposite to me after dinner that
+day, with his pocket-handkerchief over his head, how fervently I was
+embracing him, in my fancy, as his son-in-law! Little did he think, when
+I took leave of him at night, that he had just given his full consent to
+my being engaged to Dora, and that I was invoking blessings on his head!
+
+We departed early in the morning, for we had a Salvage case coming on in
+the Admiralty Court, requiring a rather accurate knowledge of the whole
+science of navigation, in which (as we couldn’t be expected to know
+much about those matters in the Commons) the judge had entreated two old
+Trinity Masters, for charity’s sake, to come and help him out. Dora was
+at the breakfast-table to make the tea again, however; and I had the
+melancholy pleasure of taking off my hat to her in the phaeton, as she
+stood on the door-step with Jip in her arms.
+
+What the Admiralty was to me that day; what nonsense I made of our case
+in my mind, as I listened to it; how I saw ‘DORA’ engraved upon the
+blade of the silver oar which they lay upon the table, as the emblem
+of that high jurisdiction; and how I felt when Mr. Spenlow went home
+without me (I had had an insane hope that he might take me back again),
+as if I were a mariner myself, and the ship to which I belonged had
+sailed away and left me on a desert island; I shall make no fruitless
+effort to describe. If that sleepy old court could rouse itself, and
+present in any visible form the daydreams I have had in it about Dora,
+it would reveal my truth.
+
+I don’t mean the dreams that I dreamed on that day alone, but day after
+day, from week to week, and term to term. I went there, not to attend to
+what was going on, but to think about Dora. If ever I bestowed a thought
+upon the cases, as they dragged their slow length before me, it was only
+to wonder, in the matrimonial cases (remembering Dora), how it was
+that married people could ever be otherwise than happy; and, in the
+Prerogative cases, to consider, if the money in question had been left
+to me, what were the foremost steps I should immediately have taken
+in regard to Dora. Within the first week of my passion, I bought four
+sumptuous waistcoats--not for myself; I had no pride in them; for
+Dora--and took to wearing straw-coloured kid gloves in the streets, and
+laid the foundations of all the corns I have ever had. If the boots I
+wore at that period could only be produced and compared with the natural
+size of my feet, they would show what the state of my heart was, in a
+most affecting manner.
+
+And yet, wretched cripple as I made myself by this act of homage to
+Dora, I walked miles upon miles daily in the hope of seeing her. Not
+only was I soon as well known on the Norwood Road as the postmen on that
+beat, but I pervaded London likewise. I walked about the streets where
+the best shops for ladies were, I haunted the Bazaar like an unquiet
+spirit, I fagged through the Park again and again, long after I was
+quite knocked up. Sometimes, at long intervals and on rare occasions, I
+saw her. Perhaps I saw her glove waved in a carriage window; perhaps I
+met her, walked with her and Miss Murdstone a little way, and spoke to
+her. In the latter case I was always very miserable afterwards, to think
+that I had said nothing to the purpose; or that she had no idea of the
+extent of my devotion, or that she cared nothing about me. I was always
+looking out, as may be supposed, for another invitation to Mr. Spenlow’s
+house. I was always being disappointed, for I got none.
+
+Mrs. Crupp must have been a woman of penetration; for when this
+attachment was but a few weeks old, and I had not had the courage
+to write more explicitly even to Agnes, than that I had been to Mr.
+Spenlow’s house, ‘whose family,’ I added, ‘consists of one daughter’;--I
+say Mrs. Crupp must have been a woman of penetration, for, even in that
+early stage, she found it out. She came up to me one evening, when I
+was very low, to ask (she being then afflicted with the disorder I have
+mentioned) if I could oblige her with a little tincture of cardamums
+mixed with rhubarb, and flavoured with seven drops of the essence of
+cloves, which was the best remedy for her complaint;--or, if I had not
+such a thing by me, with a little brandy, which was the next best. It
+was not, she remarked, so palatable to her, but it was the next best. As
+I had never even heard of the first remedy, and always had the second in
+the closet, I gave Mrs. Crupp a glass of the second, which (that I might
+have no suspicion of its being devoted to any improper use) she began to
+take in my presence.
+
+‘Cheer up, sir,’ said Mrs. Crupp. ‘I can’t abear to see you so, sir: I’m
+a mother myself.’
+
+I did not quite perceive the application of this fact to myself, but I
+smiled on Mrs. Crupp, as benignly as was in my power.
+
+‘Come, sir,’ said Mrs. Crupp. ‘Excuse me. I know what it is, sir.
+There’s a lady in the case.’
+
+‘Mrs. Crupp?’ I returned, reddening.
+
+‘Oh, bless you! Keep a good heart, sir!’ said Mrs. Crupp, nodding
+encouragement. ‘Never say die, sir! If She don’t smile upon you,
+there’s a many as will. You are a young gentleman to be smiled on, Mr.
+Copperfull, and you must learn your walue, sir.’
+
+Mrs. Crupp always called me Mr. Copperfull: firstly, no doubt, because
+it was not my name; and secondly, I am inclined to think, in some
+indistinct association with a washing-day.
+
+‘What makes you suppose there is any young lady in the case, Mrs.
+Crupp?’ said I.
+
+‘Mr. Copperfull,’ said Mrs. Crupp, with a great deal of feeling, ‘I’m a
+mother myself.’
+
+For some time Mrs. Crupp could only lay her hand upon her nankeen bosom,
+and fortify herself against returning pain with sips of her medicine. At
+length she spoke again.
+
+‘When the present set were took for you by your dear aunt, Mr.
+Copperfull,’ said Mrs. Crupp, ‘my remark were, I had now found summun
+I could care for. “Thank Ev’in!” were the expression, “I have now found
+summun I can care for!”--You don’t eat enough, sir, nor yet drink.’
+
+‘Is that what you found your supposition on, Mrs. Crupp?’ said I.
+
+‘Sir,’ said Mrs. Crupp, in a tone approaching to severity, ‘I’ve
+laundressed other young gentlemen besides yourself. A young gentleman
+may be over-careful of himself, or he may be under-careful of himself.
+He may brush his hair too regular, or too un-regular. He may wear his
+boots much too large for him, or much too small. That is according as
+the young gentleman has his original character formed. But let him go to
+which extreme he may, sir, there’s a young lady in both of ‘em.’
+
+Mrs. Crupp shook her head in such a determined manner, that I had not an
+inch of vantage-ground left.
+
+‘It was but the gentleman which died here before yourself,’ said Mrs.
+Crupp, ‘that fell in love--with a barmaid--and had his waistcoats took
+in directly, though much swelled by drinking.’
+
+‘Mrs. Crupp,’ said I, ‘I must beg you not to connect the young lady in
+my case with a barmaid, or anything of that sort, if you please.’
+
+‘Mr. Copperfull,’ returned Mrs. Crupp, ‘I’m a mother myself, and not
+likely. I ask your pardon, sir, if I intrude. I should never wish to
+intrude where I were not welcome. But you are a young gentleman, Mr.
+Copperfull, and my adwice to you is, to cheer up, sir, to keep a good
+heart, and to know your own walue. If you was to take to something,
+sir,’ said Mrs. Crupp, ‘if you was to take to skittles, now, which is
+healthy, you might find it divert your mind, and do you good.’
+
+With these words, Mrs. Crupp, affecting to be very careful of the
+brandy--which was all gone--thanked me with a majestic curtsey, and
+retired. As her figure disappeared into the gloom of the entry, this
+counsel certainly presented itself to my mind in the light of a slight
+liberty on Mrs. Crupp’s part; but, at the same time, I was content
+to receive it, in another point of view, as a word to the wise, and a
+warning in future to keep my secret better.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 27. TOMMY TRADDLES
+
+
+It may have been in consequence of Mrs. Crupp’s advice, and, perhaps,
+for no better reason than because there was a certain similarity in the
+sound of the word skittles and Traddles, that it came into my head, next
+day, to go and look after Traddles. The time he had mentioned was more
+than out, and he lived in a little street near the Veterinary College
+at Camden Town, which was principally tenanted, as one of our clerks who
+lived in that direction informed me, by gentlemen students, who bought
+live donkeys, and made experiments on those quadrupeds in their private
+apartments. Having obtained from this clerk a direction to the academic
+grove in question, I set out, the same afternoon, to visit my old
+schoolfellow.
+
+I found that the street was not as desirable a one as I could have
+wished it to be, for the sake of Traddles. The inhabitants appeared to
+have a propensity to throw any little trifles they were not in want of,
+into the road: which not only made it rank and sloppy, but untidy too,
+on account of the cabbage-leaves. The refuse was not wholly vegetable
+either, for I myself saw a shoe, a doubled-up saucepan, a black bonnet,
+and an umbrella, in various stages of decomposition, as I was looking
+out for the number I wanted.
+
+The general air of the place reminded me forcibly of the days when I
+lived with Mr. and Mrs. Micawber. An indescribable character of faded
+gentility that attached to the house I sought, and made it unlike
+all the other houses in the street--though they were all built on one
+monotonous pattern, and looked like the early copies of a blundering boy
+who was learning to make houses, and had not yet got out of his cramped
+brick-and-mortar pothooks--reminded me still more of Mr. and Mrs.
+Micawber. Happening to arrive at the door as it was opened to the
+afternoon milkman, I was reminded of Mr. and Mrs. Micawber more forcibly
+yet.
+
+‘Now,’ said the milkman to a very youthful servant girl. ‘Has that there
+little bill of mine been heerd on?’
+
+‘Oh, master says he’ll attend to it immediate,’ was the reply.
+
+‘Because,’ said the milkman, going on as if he had received no answer,
+and speaking, as I judged from his tone, rather for the edification of
+somebody within the house, than of the youthful servant--an
+impression which was strengthened by his manner of glaring down the
+passage--‘because that there little bill has been running so long, that
+I begin to believe it’s run away altogether, and never won’t be heerd
+of. Now, I’m not a going to stand it, you know!’ said the milkman, still
+throwing his voice into the house, and glaring down the passage.
+
+As to his dealing in the mild article of milk, by the by, there never
+was a greater anomaly. His deportment would have been fierce in a
+butcher or a brandy-merchant.
+
+The voice of the youthful servant became faint, but she seemed to me,
+from the action of her lips, again to murmur that it would be attended
+to immediate.
+
+‘I tell you what,’ said the milkman, looking hard at her for the first
+time, and taking her by the chin, ‘are you fond of milk?’
+
+‘Yes, I likes it,’ she replied. ‘Good,’ said the milkman. ‘Then you
+won’t have none tomorrow. D’ye hear? Not a fragment of milk you won’t
+have tomorrow.’
+
+I thought she seemed, upon the whole, relieved by the prospect of having
+any today. The milkman, after shaking his head at her darkly, released
+her chin, and with anything rather than good-will opened his can, and
+deposited the usual quantity in the family jug. This done, he went away,
+muttering, and uttered the cry of his trade next door, in a vindictive
+shriek.
+
+‘Does Mr. Traddles live here?’ I then inquired.
+
+A mysterious voice from the end of the passage replied ‘Yes.’ Upon which
+the youthful servant replied ‘Yes.’
+
+‘Is he at home?’ said I.
+
+Again the mysterious voice replied in the affirmative, and again the
+servant echoed it. Upon this, I walked in, and in pursuance of the
+servant’s directions walked upstairs; conscious, as I passed the
+back parlour-door, that I was surveyed by a mysterious eye, probably
+belonging to the mysterious voice.
+
+When I got to the top of the stairs--the house was only a story high
+above the ground floor--Traddles was on the landing to meet me. He was
+delighted to see me, and gave me welcome, with great heartiness, to
+his little room. It was in the front of the house, and extremely neat,
+though sparely furnished. It was his only room, I saw; for there was a
+sofa-bedstead in it, and his blacking-brushes and blacking were among
+his books--on the top shelf, behind a dictionary. His table was covered
+with papers, and he was hard at work in an old coat. I looked at
+nothing, that I know of, but I saw everything, even to the prospect of
+a church upon his china inkstand, as I sat down--and this, too, was a
+faculty confirmed in me in the old Micawber times. Various ingenious
+arrangements he had made, for the disguise of his chest of drawers,
+and the accommodation of his boots, his shaving-glass, and so forth,
+particularly impressed themselves upon me, as evidences of the same
+Traddles who used to make models of elephants’ dens in writing-paper to
+put flies in; and to comfort himself under ill usage, with the memorable
+works of art I have so often mentioned.
+
+In a corner of the room was something neatly covered up with a large
+white cloth. I could not make out what that was.
+
+‘Traddles,’ said I, shaking hands with him again, after I had sat down,
+‘I am delighted to see you.’
+
+‘I am delighted to see YOU, Copperfield,’ he returned. ‘I am very glad
+indeed to see you. It was because I was thoroughly glad to see you when
+we met in Ely Place, and was sure you were thoroughly glad to see me,
+that I gave you this address instead of my address at chambers.’ ‘Oh!
+You have chambers?’ said I.
+
+‘Why, I have the fourth of a room and a passage, and the fourth of a
+clerk,’ returned Traddles. ‘Three others and myself unite to have a
+set of chambers--to look business-like--and we quarter the clerk too.
+Half-a-crown a week he costs me.’
+
+His old simple character and good temper, and something of his old
+unlucky fortune also, I thought, smiled at me in the smile with which he
+made this explanation.
+
+‘It’s not because I have the least pride, Copperfield, you understand,’
+said Traddles, ‘that I don’t usually give my address here. It’s only on
+account of those who come to me, who might not like to come here. For
+myself, I am fighting my way on in the world against difficulties, and
+it would be ridiculous if I made a pretence of doing anything else.’
+
+‘You are reading for the bar, Mr. Waterbrook informed me?’ said I.
+
+‘Why, yes,’ said Traddles, rubbing his hands slowly over one another. ‘I
+am reading for the bar. The fact is, I have just begun to keep my terms,
+after rather a long delay. It’s some time since I was articled, but the
+payment of that hundred pounds was a great pull. A great pull!’ said
+Traddles, with a wince, as if he had had a tooth out.
+
+‘Do you know what I can’t help thinking of, Traddles, as I sit here
+looking at you?’ I asked him.
+
+‘No,’ said he.
+
+‘That sky-blue suit you used to wear.’
+
+‘Lord, to be sure!’ cried Traddles, laughing. ‘Tight in the arms and
+legs, you know? Dear me! Well! Those were happy times, weren’t they?’
+
+‘I think our schoolmaster might have made them happier, without doing
+any harm to any of us, I acknowledge,’ I returned.
+
+‘Perhaps he might,’ said Traddles. ‘But dear me, there was a good deal
+of fun going on. Do you remember the nights in the bedroom? When we used
+to have the suppers? And when you used to tell the stories? Ha, ha,
+ha! And do you remember when I got caned for crying about Mr. Mell? Old
+Creakle! I should like to see him again, too!’
+
+‘He was a brute to you, Traddles,’ said I, indignantly; for his good
+humour made me feel as if I had seen him beaten but yesterday.
+
+‘Do you think so?’ returned Traddles. ‘Really? Perhaps he was rather.
+But it’s all over, a long while. Old Creakle!’
+
+‘You were brought up by an uncle, then?’ said I.
+
+‘Of course I was!’ said Traddles. ‘The one I was always going to write
+to. And always didn’t, eh! Ha, ha, ha! Yes, I had an uncle then. He died
+soon after I left school.’
+
+‘Indeed!’
+
+‘Yes. He was a retired--what do you call
+it!--draper--cloth-merchant--and had made me his heir. But he didn’t
+like me when I grew up.’
+
+‘Do you really mean that?’ said I. He was so composed, that I fancied he
+must have some other meaning.
+
+‘Oh dear, yes, Copperfield! I mean it,’ replied Traddles. ‘It was an
+unfortunate thing, but he didn’t like me at all. He said I wasn’t at all
+what he expected, and so he married his housekeeper.’
+
+‘And what did you do?’ I asked.
+
+‘I didn’t do anything in particular,’ said Traddles. ‘I lived with them,
+waiting to be put out in the world, until his gout unfortunately flew
+to his stomach--and so he died, and so she married a young man, and so I
+wasn’t provided for.’
+
+‘Did you get nothing, Traddles, after all?’
+
+‘Oh dear, yes!’ said Traddles. ‘I got fifty pounds. I had never been
+brought up to any profession, and at first I was at a loss what to
+do for myself. However, I began, with the assistance of the son of a
+professional man, who had been to Salem House--Yawler, with his nose on
+one side. Do you recollect him?’
+
+No. He had not been there with me; all the noses were straight in my
+day.
+
+‘It don’t matter,’ said Traddles. ‘I began, by means of his assistance,
+to copy law writings. That didn’t answer very well; and then I began to
+state cases for them, and make abstracts, and that sort of work. For
+I am a plodding kind of fellow, Copperfield, and had learnt the way of
+doing such things pithily. Well! That put it in my head to enter myself
+as a law student; and that ran away with all that was left of the fifty
+pounds. Yawler recommended me to one or two other offices, however--Mr.
+Waterbrook’s for one--and I got a good many jobs. I was fortunate
+enough, too, to become acquainted with a person in the publishing way,
+who was getting up an Encyclopaedia, and he set me to work; and, indeed’
+(glancing at his table), ‘I am at work for him at this minute. I am not
+a bad compiler, Copperfield,’ said Traddles, preserving the same air of
+cheerful confidence in all he said, ‘but I have no invention at all; not
+a particle. I suppose there never was a young man with less originality
+than I have.’
+
+As Traddles seemed to expect that I should assent to this as a matter
+of course, I nodded; and he went on, with the same sprightly patience--I
+can find no better expression--as before.
+
+‘So, by little and little, and not living high, I managed to scrape up
+the hundred pounds at last,’ said Traddles; ‘and thank Heaven that’s
+paid--though it was--though it certainly was,’ said Traddles, wincing
+again as if he had had another tooth out, ‘a pull. I am living by the
+sort of work I have mentioned, still, and I hope, one of these days, to
+get connected with some newspaper: which would almost be the making of
+my fortune. Now, Copperfield, you are so exactly what you used to
+be, with that agreeable face, and it’s so pleasant to see you, that I
+sha’n’t conceal anything. Therefore you must know that I am engaged.’
+
+Engaged! Oh, Dora!
+
+‘She is a curate’s daughter,’ said Traddles; ‘one of ten, down in
+Devonshire. Yes!’ For he saw me glance, involuntarily, at the prospect
+on the inkstand. ‘That’s the church! You come round here to the left,
+out of this gate,’ tracing his finger along the inkstand, ‘and exactly
+where I hold this pen, there stands the house--facing, you understand,
+towards the church.’
+
+The delight with which he entered into these particulars, did not fully
+present itself to me until afterwards; for my selfish thoughts were
+making a ground-plan of Mr. Spenlow’s house and garden at the same
+moment.
+
+‘She is such a dear girl!’ said Traddles; ‘a little older than me, but
+the dearest girl! I told you I was going out of town? I have been down
+there. I walked there, and I walked back, and I had the most delightful
+time! I dare say ours is likely to be a rather long engagement, but our
+motto is “Wait and hope!” We always say that. “Wait and hope,” we always
+say. And she would wait, Copperfield, till she was sixty--any age you
+can mention--for me!’
+
+Traddles rose from his chair, and, with a triumphant smile, put his hand
+upon the white cloth I had observed.
+
+‘However,’ he said, ‘it’s not that we haven’t made a beginning towards
+housekeeping. No, no; we have begun. We must get on by degrees, but we
+have begun. Here,’ drawing the cloth off with great pride and care, ‘are
+two pieces of furniture to commence with. This flower-pot and stand,
+she bought herself. You put that in a parlour window,’ said Traddles,
+falling a little back from it to survey it with the greater admiration,
+‘with a plant in it, and--and there you are! This little round table
+with the marble top (it’s two feet ten in circumference), I bought. You
+want to lay a book down, you know, or somebody comes to see you or your
+wife, and wants a place to stand a cup of tea upon, and--and there you
+are again!’ said Traddles. ‘It’s an admirable piece of workmanship--firm
+as a rock!’ I praised them both, highly, and Traddles replaced the
+covering as carefully as he had removed it.
+
+‘It’s not a great deal towards the furnishing,’ said Traddles, ‘but
+it’s something. The table-cloths, and pillow-cases, and articles of
+that kind, are what discourage me most, Copperfield. So does
+the ironmongery--candle-boxes, and gridirons, and that sort of
+necessaries--because those things tell, and mount up. However, “wait and
+hope!” And I assure you she’s the dearest girl!’
+
+‘I am quite certain of it,’ said I.
+
+‘In the meantime,’ said Traddles, coming back to his chair; ‘and this is
+the end of my prosing about myself, I get on as well as I can. I don’t
+make much, but I don’t spend much. In general, I board with the people
+downstairs, who are very agreeable people indeed. Both Mr. and Mrs.
+Micawber have seen a good deal of life, and are excellent company.’
+
+‘My dear Traddles!’ I quickly exclaimed. ‘What are you talking about?’
+
+Traddles looked at me, as if he wondered what I was talking about.
+
+‘Mr. and Mrs. Micawber!’ I repeated. ‘Why, I am intimately acquainted
+with them!’
+
+An opportune double knock at the door, which I knew well from old
+experience in Windsor Terrace, and which nobody but Mr. Micawber could
+ever have knocked at that door, resolved any doubt in my mind as to
+their being my old friends. I begged Traddles to ask his landlord
+to walk up. Traddles accordingly did so, over the banister; and Mr.
+Micawber, not a bit changed--his tights, his stick, his shirt-collar,
+and his eye-glass, all the same as ever--came into the room with a
+genteel and youthful air.
+
+‘I beg your pardon, Mr. Traddles,’ said Mr. Micawber, with the old roll
+in his voice, as he checked himself in humming a soft tune. ‘I was not
+aware that there was any individual, alien to this tenement, in your
+sanctum.’
+
+Mr. Micawber slightly bowed to me, and pulled up his shirt-collar.
+
+‘How do you do, Mr. Micawber?’ said I.
+
+‘Sir,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘you are exceedingly obliging. I am in statu
+quo.’
+
+‘And Mrs. Micawber?’ I pursued.
+
+‘Sir,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘she is also, thank God, in statu quo.’
+
+‘And the children, Mr. Micawber?’
+
+‘Sir,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘I rejoice to reply that they are, likewise,
+in the enjoyment of salubrity.’
+
+All this time, Mr. Micawber had not known me in the least, though he
+had stood face to face with me. But now, seeing me smile, he examined my
+features with more attention, fell back, cried, ‘Is it possible! Have I
+the pleasure of again beholding Copperfield!’ and shook me by both hands
+with the utmost fervour.
+
+‘Good Heaven, Mr. Traddles!’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘to think that I should
+find you acquainted with the friend of my youth, the companion of
+earlier days! My dear!’ calling over the banisters to Mrs. Micawber,
+while Traddles looked (with reason) not a little amazed at this
+description of me. ‘Here is a gentleman in Mr. Traddles’s apartment,
+whom he wishes to have the pleasure of presenting to you, my love!’
+
+Mr. Micawber immediately reappeared, and shook hands with me again.
+
+‘And how is our good friend the Doctor, Copperfield?’ said Mr. Micawber,
+‘and all the circle at Canterbury?’
+
+‘I have none but good accounts of them,’ said I.
+
+‘I am most delighted to hear it,’ said Mr. Micawber. ‘It was at
+Canterbury where we last met. Within the shadow, I may figuratively say,
+of that religious edifice immortalized by Chaucer, which was anciently
+the resort of Pilgrims from the remotest corners of--in short,’ said Mr.
+Micawber, ‘in the immediate neighbourhood of the Cathedral.’
+
+I replied that it was. Mr. Micawber continued talking as volubly as he
+could; but not, I thought, without showing, by some marks of concern in
+his countenance, that he was sensible of sounds in the next room, as
+of Mrs. Micawber washing her hands, and hurriedly opening and shutting
+drawers that were uneasy in their action.
+
+‘You find us, Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, with one eye on Traddles,
+‘at present established, on what may be designated as a small and
+unassuming scale; but, you are aware that I have, in the course of my
+career, surmounted difficulties, and conquered obstacles. You are no
+stranger to the fact, that there have been periods of my life, when it
+has been requisite that I should pause, until certain expected events
+should turn up; when it has been necessary that I should fall back,
+before making what I trust I shall not be accused of presumption in
+terming--a spring. The present is one of those momentous stages in the
+life of man. You find me, fallen back, FOR a spring; and I have every
+reason to believe that a vigorous leap will shortly be the result.’
+
+I was expressing my satisfaction, when Mrs. Micawber came in; a little
+more slatternly than she used to be, or so she seemed now, to my
+unaccustomed eyes, but still with some preparation of herself for
+company, and with a pair of brown gloves on.
+
+‘My dear,’ said Mr. Micawber, leading her towards me, ‘here is
+a gentleman of the name of Copperfield, who wishes to renew his
+acquaintance with you.’
+
+It would have been better, as it turned out, to have led gently up
+to this announcement, for Mrs. Micawber, being in a delicate state of
+health, was overcome by it, and was taken so unwell, that Mr. Micawber
+was obliged, in great trepidation, to run down to the water-butt in
+the backyard, and draw a basinful to lave her brow with. She
+presently revived, however, and was really pleased to see me. We had
+half-an-hour’s talk, all together; and I asked her about the twins,
+who, she said, were ‘grown great creatures’; and after Master and Miss
+Micawber, whom she described as ‘absolute giants’, but they were not
+produced on that occasion.
+
+Mr. Micawber was very anxious that I should stay to dinner. I should not
+have been averse to do so, but that I imagined I detected trouble, and
+calculation relative to the extent of the cold meat, in Mrs. Micawber’s
+eye. I therefore pleaded another engagement; and observing that Mrs.
+Micawber’s spirits were immediately lightened, I resisted all persuasion
+to forego it.
+
+But I told Traddles, and Mr. and Mrs. Micawber, that before I could
+think of leaving, they must appoint a day when they would come and dine
+with me. The occupations to which Traddles stood pledged, rendered it
+necessary to fix a somewhat distant one; but an appointment was made for
+the purpose, that suited us all, and then I took my leave.
+
+Mr. Micawber, under pretence of showing me a nearer way than that by
+which I had come, accompanied me to the corner of the street; being
+anxious (he explained to me) to say a few words to an old friend, in
+confidence.
+
+‘My dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘I need hardly tell you that
+to have beneath our roof, under existing circumstances, a mind like that
+which gleams--if I may be allowed the expression--which gleams--in your
+friend Traddles, is an unspeakable comfort. With a washerwoman, who
+exposes hard-bake for sale in her parlour-window, dwelling next door,
+and a Bow-street officer residing over the way, you may imagine that his
+society is a source of consolation to myself and to Mrs. Micawber. I
+am at present, my dear Copperfield, engaged in the sale of corn upon
+commission. It is not an avocation of a remunerative description--in
+other words, it does not pay--and some temporary embarrassments of a
+pecuniary nature have been the consequence. I am, however, delighted to
+add that I have now an immediate prospect of something turning up (I am
+not at liberty to say in what direction), which I trust will enable me
+to provide, permanently, both for myself and for your friend Traddles,
+in whom I have an unaffected interest. You may, perhaps, be prepared
+to hear that Mrs. Micawber is in a state of health which renders it
+not wholly improbable that an addition may be ultimately made to those
+pledges of affection which--in short, to the infantine group. Mrs.
+Micawber’s family have been so good as to express their dissatisfaction
+at this state of things. I have merely to observe, that I am not aware
+that it is any business of theirs, and that I repel that exhibition of
+feeling with scorn, and with defiance!’
+
+Mr. Micawber then shook hands with me again, and left me.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 28. Mr. MICAWBER’S GAUNTLET
+
+
+Until the day arrived on which I was to entertain my newly-found
+old friends, I lived principally on Dora and coffee. In my love-lorn
+condition, my appetite languished; and I was glad of it, for I felt
+as though it would have been an act of perfidy towards Dora to have a
+natural relish for my dinner. The quantity of walking exercise I took,
+was not in this respect attended with its usual consequence, as the
+disappointment counteracted the fresh air. I have my doubts, too,
+founded on the acute experience acquired at this period of my life,
+whether a sound enjoyment of animal food can develop itself freely in
+any human subject who is always in torment from tight boots. I think
+the extremities require to be at peace before the stomach will conduct
+itself with vigour.
+
+On the occasion of this domestic little party, I did not repeat my
+former extensive preparations. I merely provided a pair of soles,
+a small leg of mutton, and a pigeon-pie. Mrs. Crupp broke out into
+rebellion on my first bashful hint in reference to the cooking of the
+fish and joint, and said, with a dignified sense of injury, ‘No! No,
+sir! You will not ask me sich a thing, for you are better acquainted
+with me than to suppose me capable of doing what I cannot do with ampial
+satisfaction to my own feelings!’ But, in the end, a compromise was
+effected; and Mrs. Crupp consented to achieve this feat, on condition
+that I dined from home for a fortnight afterwards.
+
+And here I may remark, that what I underwent from Mrs. Crupp, in
+consequence of the tyranny she established over me, was dreadful. I
+never was so much afraid of anyone. We made a compromise of everything.
+If I hesitated, she was taken with that wonderful disorder which was
+always lying in ambush in her system, ready, at the shortest notice, to
+prey upon her vitals. If I rang the bell impatiently, after half-a-dozen
+unavailing modest pulls, and she appeared at last--which was not by any
+means to be relied upon--she would appear with a reproachful aspect,
+sink breathless on a chair near the door, lay her hand upon her nankeen
+bosom, and become so ill, that I was glad, at any sacrifice of brandy or
+anything else, to get rid of her. If I objected to having my bed made at
+five o’clock in the afternoon--which I do still think an uncomfortable
+arrangement--one motion of her hand towards the same nankeen region of
+wounded sensibility was enough to make me falter an apology. In short,
+I would have done anything in an honourable way rather than give Mrs.
+Crupp offence; and she was the terror of my life.
+
+I bought a second-hand dumb-waiter for this dinner-party, in preference
+to re-engaging the handy young man; against whom I had conceived a
+prejudice, in consequence of meeting him in the Strand, one Sunday
+morning, in a waistcoat remarkably like one of mine, which had been
+missing since the former occasion. The ‘young gal’ was re-engaged; but
+on the stipulation that she should only bring in the dishes, and then
+withdraw to the landing-place, beyond the outer door; where a habit of
+sniffing she had contracted would be lost upon the guests, and where her
+retiring on the plates would be a physical impossibility.
+
+Having laid in the materials for a bowl of punch, to be compounded
+by Mr. Micawber; having provided a bottle of lavender-water, two
+wax-candles, a paper of mixed pins, and a pincushion, to assist Mrs.
+Micawber in her toilette at my dressing-table; having also caused the
+fire in my bedroom to be lighted for Mrs. Micawber’s convenience; and
+having laid the cloth with my own hands, I awaited the result with
+composure.
+
+At the appointed time, my three visitors arrived together. Mr. Micawber
+with more shirt-collar than usual, and a new ribbon to his eye-glass;
+Mrs. Micawber with her cap in a whitey-brown paper parcel; Traddles
+carrying the parcel, and supporting Mrs. Micawber on his arm. They were
+all delighted with my residence. When I conducted Mrs. Micawber to my
+dressing-table, and she saw the scale on which it was prepared for her,
+she was in such raptures, that she called Mr. Micawber to come in and
+look.
+
+‘My dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘this is luxurious. This is a
+way of life which reminds me of the period when I was myself in a state
+of celibacy, and Mrs. Micawber had not yet been solicited to plight her
+faith at the Hymeneal altar.’
+
+‘He means, solicited by him, Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber,
+archly. ‘He cannot answer for others.’
+
+‘My dear,’ returned Mr. Micawber with sudden seriousness, ‘I have no
+desire to answer for others. I am too well aware that when, in the
+inscrutable decrees of Fate, you were reserved for me, it is possible
+you may have been reserved for one, destined, after a protracted
+struggle, at length to fall a victim to pecuniary involvements of a
+complicated nature. I understand your allusion, my love. I regret it,
+but I can bear it.’
+
+‘Micawber!’ exclaimed Mrs. Micawber, in tears. ‘Have I deserved this! I,
+who never have deserted you; who never WILL desert you, Micawber!’ ‘My
+love,’ said Mr. Micawber, much affected, ‘you will forgive, and our old
+and tried friend Copperfield will, I am sure, forgive, the momentary
+laceration of a wounded spirit, made sensitive by a recent collision
+with the Minion of Power--in other words, with a ribald Turncock
+attached to the water-works--and will pity, not condemn, its excesses.’
+
+Mr. Micawber then embraced Mrs. Micawber, and pressed my hand; leaving
+me to infer from this broken allusion that his domestic supply of
+water had been cut off that afternoon, in consequence of default in the
+payment of the company’s rates.
+
+To divert his thoughts from this melancholy subject, I informed Mr.
+Micawber that I relied upon him for a bowl of punch, and led him to
+the lemons. His recent despondency, not to say despair, was gone in a
+moment. I never saw a man so thoroughly enjoy himself amid the fragrance
+of lemon-peel and sugar, the odour of burning rum, and the steam of
+boiling water, as Mr. Micawber did that afternoon. It was wonderful to
+see his face shining at us out of a thin cloud of these delicate fumes,
+as he stirred, and mixed, and tasted, and looked as if he were making,
+instead of punch, a fortune for his family down to the latest posterity.
+As to Mrs. Micawber, I don’t know whether it was the effect of the cap,
+or the lavender-water, or the pins, or the fire, or the wax-candles, but
+she came out of my room, comparatively speaking, lovely. And the lark
+was never gayer than that excellent woman.
+
+I suppose--I never ventured to inquire, but I suppose--that Mrs. Crupp,
+after frying the soles, was taken ill. Because we broke down at that
+point. The leg of mutton came up very red within, and very pale without:
+besides having a foreign substance of a gritty nature sprinkled over
+it, as if if had had a fall into the ashes of that remarkable kitchen
+fireplace. But we were not in condition to judge of this fact from the
+appearance of the gravy, forasmuch as the ‘young gal’ had dropped it all
+upon the stairs--where it remained, by the by, in a long train, until it
+was worn out. The pigeon-pie was not bad, but it was a delusive pie: the
+crust being like a disappointing head, phrenologically speaking: full
+of lumps and bumps, with nothing particular underneath. In short, the
+banquet was such a failure that I should have been quite unhappy--about
+the failure, I mean, for I was always unhappy about Dora--if I had not
+been relieved by the great good humour of my company, and by a bright
+suggestion from Mr. Micawber.
+
+‘My dear friend Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘accidents will occur
+in the best-regulated families; and in families not regulated by that
+pervading influence which sanctifies while it enhances the--a--I would
+say, in short, by the influence of Woman, in the lofty character of
+Wife, they may be expected with confidence, and must be borne with
+philosophy. If you will allow me to take the liberty of remarking that
+there are few comestibles better, in their way, than a Devil, and that
+I believe, with a little division of labour, we could accomplish a good
+one if the young person in attendance could produce a gridiron, I would
+put it to you, that this little misfortune may be easily repaired.’
+
+There was a gridiron in the pantry, on which my morning rasher of
+bacon was cooked. We had it in, in a twinkling, and immediately applied
+ourselves to carrying Mr. Micawber’s idea into effect. The division of
+labour to which he had referred was this:--Traddles cut the mutton into
+slices; Mr. Micawber (who could do anything of this sort to perfection)
+covered them with pepper, mustard, salt, and cayenne; I put them on
+the gridiron, turned them with a fork, and took them off, under Mr.
+Micawber’s direction; and Mrs. Micawber heated, and continually stirred,
+some mushroom ketchup in a little saucepan. When we had slices enough
+done to begin upon, we fell-to, with our sleeves still tucked up at the
+wrist, more slices sputtering and blazing on the fire, and our attention
+divided between the mutton on our plates, and the mutton then preparing.
+
+What with the novelty of this cookery, the excellence of it, the bustle
+of it, the frequent starting up to look after it, the frequent sitting
+down to dispose of it as the crisp slices came off the gridiron hot and
+hot, the being so busy, so flushed with the fire, so amused, and in the
+midst of such a tempting noise and savour, we reduced the leg of mutton
+to the bone. My own appetite came back miraculously. I am ashamed to
+record it, but I really believe I forgot Dora for a little while. I am
+satisfied that Mr. and Mrs. Micawber could not have enjoyed the
+feast more, if they had sold a bed to provide it. Traddles laughed as
+heartily, almost the whole time, as he ate and worked. Indeed we all
+did, all at once; and I dare say there was never a greater success.
+
+We were at the height of our enjoyment, and were all busily engaged, in
+our several departments, endeavouring to bring the last batch of slices
+to a state of perfection that should crown the feast, when I was aware
+of a strange presence in the room, and my eyes encountered those of the
+staid Littimer, standing hat in hand before me.
+
+‘What’s the matter?’ I involuntarily asked.
+
+‘I beg your pardon, sir, I was directed to come in. Is my master not
+here, sir?’
+
+‘No.’
+
+‘Have you not seen him, sir?’
+
+‘No; don’t you come from him?’
+
+‘Not immediately so, sir.’
+
+‘Did he tell you you would find him here?’
+
+‘Not exactly so, sir. But I should think he might be here tomorrow, as
+he has not been here today.’ ‘Is he coming up from Oxford?’
+
+‘I beg, sir,’ he returned respectfully, ‘that you will be seated, and
+allow me to do this.’ With which he took the fork from my unresisting
+hand, and bent over the gridiron, as if his whole attention were
+concentrated on it.
+
+We should not have been much discomposed, I dare say, by the appearance
+of Steerforth himself, but we became in a moment the meekest of the meek
+before his respectable serving-man. Mr. Micawber, humming a tune, to
+show that he was quite at ease, subsided into his chair, with the handle
+of a hastily concealed fork sticking out of the bosom of his coat, as
+if he had stabbed himself. Mrs. Micawber put on her brown gloves, and
+assumed a genteel languor. Traddles ran his greasy hands through
+his hair, and stood it bolt upright, and stared in confusion on the
+table-cloth. As for me, I was a mere infant at the head of my own table;
+and hardly ventured to glance at the respectable phenomenon, who had
+come from Heaven knows where, to put my establishment to rights.
+
+Meanwhile he took the mutton off the gridiron, and gravely handed it
+round. We all took some, but our appreciation of it was gone, and we
+merely made a show of eating it. As we severally pushed away our plates,
+he noiselessly removed them, and set on the cheese. He took that off,
+too, when it was done with; cleared the table; piled everything on the
+dumb-waiter; gave us our wine-glasses; and, of his own accord, wheeled
+the dumb-waiter into the pantry. All this was done in a perfect manner,
+and he never raised his eyes from what he was about. Yet his very
+elbows, when he had his back towards me, seemed to teem with the
+expression of his fixed opinion that I was extremely young.
+
+‘Can I do anything more, sir?’
+
+I thanked him and said, No; but would he take no dinner himself?
+
+‘None, I am obliged to you, sir.’
+
+‘Is Mr. Steerforth coming from Oxford?’
+
+‘I beg your pardon, sir?’
+
+‘Is Mr. Steerforth coming from Oxford?’
+
+‘I should imagine that he might be here tomorrow, sir. I rather thought
+he might have been here today, sir. The mistake is mine, no doubt, sir.’
+
+‘If you should see him first--’ said I.
+
+‘If you’ll excuse me, sir, I don’t think I shall see him first.’
+
+‘In case you do,’ said I, ‘pray say that I am sorry he was not here
+today, as an old schoolfellow of his was here.’
+
+‘Indeed, sir!’ and he divided a bow between me and Traddles, with a
+glance at the latter.
+
+He was moving softly to the door, when, in a forlorn hope of saying
+something naturally--which I never could, to this man--I said:
+
+‘Oh! Littimer!’
+
+‘Sir!’
+
+‘Did you remain long at Yarmouth, that time?’
+
+‘Not particularly so, sir.’
+
+‘You saw the boat completed?’
+
+‘Yes, sir. I remained behind on purpose to see the boat completed.’
+
+‘I know!’ He raised his eyes to mine respectfully.
+
+‘Mr. Steerforth has not seen it yet, I suppose?’
+
+‘I really can’t say, sir. I think--but I really can’t say, sir. I wish
+you good night, sir.’
+
+He comprehended everybody present, in the respectful bow with which he
+followed these words, and disappeared. My visitors seemed to breathe
+more freely when he was gone; but my own relief was very great, for
+besides the constraint, arising from that extraordinary sense of
+being at a disadvantage which I always had in this man’s presence, my
+conscience had embarrassed me with whispers that I had mistrusted his
+master, and I could not repress a vague uneasy dread that he might
+find it out. How was it, having so little in reality to conceal, that I
+always DID feel as if this man were finding me out?
+
+Mr. Micawber roused me from this reflection, which was blended with
+a certain remorseful apprehension of seeing Steerforth himself, by
+bestowing many encomiums on the absent Littimer as a most respectable
+fellow, and a thoroughly admirable servant. Mr. Micawber, I may remark,
+had taken his full share of the general bow, and had received it with
+infinite condescension.
+
+‘But punch, my dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, tasting it, ‘like
+time and tide, waits for no man. Ah! it is at the present moment in high
+flavour. My love, will you give me your opinion?’
+
+Mrs. Micawber pronounced it excellent.
+
+‘Then I will drink,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘if my friend Copperfield
+will permit me to take that social liberty, to the days when my friend
+Copperfield and myself were younger, and fought our way in the world
+side by side. I may say, of myself and Copperfield, in words we have
+sung together before now, that
+
+    We twa hae run about the braes
+    And pu’d the gowans’ fine
+--in a figurative point of view--on several occasions. I am not exactly
+aware,’ said Mr. Micawber, with the old roll in his voice, and the old
+indescribable air of saying something genteel, ‘what gowans may be, but
+I have no doubt that Copperfield and myself would frequently have taken
+a pull at them, if it had been feasible.’
+
+Mr. Micawber, at the then present moment, took a pull at his punch. So
+we all did: Traddles evidently lost in wondering at what distant time
+Mr. Micawber and I could have been comrades in the battle of the world.
+
+‘Ahem!’ said Mr. Micawber, clearing his throat, and warming with the
+punch and with the fire. ‘My dear, another glass?’
+
+Mrs. Micawber said it must be very little; but we couldn’t allow that,
+so it was a glassful.
+
+‘As we are quite confidential here, Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mrs.
+Micawber, sipping her punch, ‘Mr. Traddles being a part of our
+domesticity, I should much like to have your opinion on Mr. Micawber’s
+prospects. For corn,’ said Mrs. Micawber argumentatively, ‘as I have
+repeatedly said to Mr. Micawber, may be gentlemanly, but it is not
+remunerative. Commission to the extent of two and ninepence in
+a fortnight cannot, however limited our ideas, be considered
+remunerative.’
+
+We were all agreed upon that.
+
+‘Then,’ said Mrs. Micawber, who prided herself on taking a clear view of
+things, and keeping Mr. Micawber straight by her woman’s wisdom, when he
+might otherwise go a little crooked, ‘then I ask myself this question.
+If corn is not to be relied upon, what is? Are coals to be relied upon?
+Not at all. We have turned our attention to that experiment, on the
+suggestion of my family, and we find it fallacious.’
+
+Mr. Micawber, leaning back in his chair with his hands in his pockets,
+eyed us aside, and nodded his head, as much as to say that the case was
+very clearly put.
+
+‘The articles of corn and coals,’ said Mrs. Micawber, still more
+argumentatively, ‘being equally out of the question, Mr. Copperfield,
+I naturally look round the world, and say, “What is there in which a
+person of Mr. Micawber’s talent is likely to succeed?” And I exclude
+the doing anything on commission, because commission is not a certainty.
+What is best suited to a person of Mr. Micawber’s peculiar temperament
+is, I am convinced, a certainty.’
+
+Traddles and I both expressed, by a feeling murmur, that this great
+discovery was no doubt true of Mr. Micawber, and that it did him much
+credit.
+
+‘I will not conceal from you, my dear Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mrs.
+Micawber, ‘that I have long felt the Brewing business to be particularly
+adapted to Mr. Micawber. Look at Barclay and Perkins! Look at Truman,
+Hanbury, and Buxton! It is on that extensive footing that Mr. Micawber,
+I know from my own knowledge of him, is calculated to shine; and the
+profits, I am told, are e-NOR-MOUS! But if Mr. Micawber cannot get into
+those firms--which decline to answer his letters, when he offers his
+services even in an inferior capacity--what is the use of dwelling upon
+that idea? None. I may have a conviction that Mr. Micawber’s manners--’
+
+‘Hem! Really, my dear,’ interposed Mr. Micawber.
+
+‘My love, be silent,’ said Mrs. Micawber, laying her brown glove on his
+hand. ‘I may have a conviction, Mr. Copperfield, that Mr. Micawber’s
+manners peculiarly qualify him for the Banking business. I may argue
+within myself, that if I had a deposit at a banking-house, the manners
+of Mr. Micawber, as representing that banking-house, would inspire
+confidence, and must extend the connexion. But if the various
+banking-houses refuse to avail themselves of Mr. Micawber’s abilities,
+or receive the offer of them with contumely, what is the use of dwelling
+upon THAT idea? None. As to originating a banking-business, I may know
+that there are members of my family who, if they chose to place their
+money in Mr. Micawber’s hands, might found an establishment of that
+description. But if they do NOT choose to place their money in Mr.
+Micawber’s hands--which they don’t--what is the use of that? Again I
+contend that we are no farther advanced than we were before.’
+
+I shook my head, and said, ‘Not a bit.’ Traddles also shook his head,
+and said, ‘Not a bit.’
+
+‘What do I deduce from this?’ Mrs. Micawber went on to say, still with
+the same air of putting a case lucidly. ‘What is the conclusion, my
+dear Mr. Copperfield, to which I am irresistibly brought? Am I wrong in
+saying, it is clear that we must live?’
+
+I answered ‘Not at all!’ and Traddles answered ‘Not at all!’ and I found
+myself afterwards sagely adding, alone, that a person must either live
+or die.
+
+‘Just so,’ returned Mrs. Micawber, ‘It is precisely that. And the fact
+is, my dear Mr. Copperfield, that we can not live without something
+widely different from existing circumstances shortly turning up. Now
+I am convinced, myself, and this I have pointed out to Mr. Micawber
+several times of late, that things cannot be expected to turn up of
+themselves. We must, in a measure, assist to turn them up. I may be
+wrong, but I have formed that opinion.’
+
+Both Traddles and I applauded it highly.
+
+‘Very well,’ said Mrs. Micawber. ‘Then what do I recommend? Here is Mr.
+Micawber with a variety of qualifications--with great talent--’
+
+‘Really, my love,’ said Mr. Micawber.
+
+‘Pray, my dear, allow me to conclude. Here is Mr. Micawber, with a
+variety of qualifications, with great talent--I should say, with genius,
+but that may be the partiality of a wife--’
+
+Traddles and I both murmured ‘No.’
+
+‘And here is Mr. Micawber without any suitable position or employment.
+Where does that responsibility rest? Clearly on society. Then I would
+make a fact so disgraceful known, and boldly challenge society to set it
+right. It appears to me, my dear Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber,
+forcibly, ‘that what Mr. Micawber has to do, is to throw down the
+gauntlet to society, and say, in effect, “Show me who will take that up.
+Let the party immediately step forward.”’
+
+I ventured to ask Mrs. Micawber how this was to be done.
+
+‘By advertising,’ said Mrs. Micawber--‘in all the papers. It appears to
+me, that what Mr. Micawber has to do, in justice to himself, in justice
+to his family, and I will even go so far as to say in justice to
+society, by which he has been hitherto overlooked, is to advertise in
+all the papers; to describe himself plainly as so-and-so, with such and
+such qualifications and to put it thus: “Now employ me, on remunerative
+terms, and address, post-paid, to W. M., Post Office, Camden Town.”’
+
+‘This idea of Mrs. Micawber’s, my dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber,
+making his shirt-collar meet in front of his chin, and glancing at me
+sideways, ‘is, in fact, the Leap to which I alluded, when I last had the
+pleasure of seeing you.’
+
+‘Advertising is rather expensive,’ I remarked, dubiously.
+
+‘Exactly so!’ said Mrs. Micawber, preserving the same logical air.
+‘Quite true, my dear Mr. Copperfield! I have made the identical
+observation to Mr. Micawber. It is for that reason especially, that I
+think Mr. Micawber ought (as I have already said, in justice to himself,
+in justice to his family, and in justice to society) to raise a certain
+sum of money--on a bill.’
+
+Mr. Micawber, leaning back in his chair, trifled with his eye-glass
+and cast his eyes up at the ceiling; but I thought him observant of
+Traddles, too, who was looking at the fire.
+
+‘If no member of my family,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘is possessed of
+sufficient natural feeling to negotiate that bill--I believe there is a
+better business-term to express what I mean--’
+
+Mr. Micawber, with his eyes still cast up at the ceiling, suggested
+‘Discount.’
+
+‘To discount that bill,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘then my opinion is, that
+Mr. Micawber should go into the City, should take that bill into the
+Money Market, and should dispose of it for what he can get. If the
+individuals in the Money Market oblige Mr. Micawber to sustain a great
+sacrifice, that is between themselves and their consciences. I view
+it, steadily, as an investment. I recommend Mr. Micawber, my dear Mr.
+Copperfield, to do the same; to regard it as an investment which is sure
+of return, and to make up his mind to any sacrifice.’
+
+I felt, but I am sure I don’t know why, that this was self-denying
+and devoted in Mrs. Micawber, and I uttered a murmur to that effect.
+Traddles, who took his tone from me, did likewise, still looking at the
+fire.
+
+‘I will not,’ said Mrs. Micawber, finishing her punch, and gathering her
+scarf about her shoulders, preparatory to her withdrawal to my bedroom:
+‘I will not protract these remarks on the subject of Mr. Micawber’s
+pecuniary affairs. At your fireside, my dear Mr. Copperfield, and in the
+presence of Mr. Traddles, who, though not so old a friend, is quite one
+of ourselves, I could not refrain from making you acquainted with the
+course I advise Mr. Micawber to take. I feel that the time is arrived
+when Mr. Micawber should exert himself and--I will add--assert himself,
+and it appears to me that these are the means. I am aware that I am
+merely a female, and that a masculine judgement is usually considered
+more competent to the discussion of such questions; still I must not
+forget that, when I lived at home with my papa and mama, my papa was in
+the habit of saying, “Emma’s form is fragile, but her grasp of a subject
+is inferior to none.” That my papa was too partial, I well know; but
+that he was an observer of character in some degree, my duty and my
+reason equally forbid me to doubt.’
+
+With these words, and resisting our entreaties that she would grace
+the remaining circulation of the punch with her presence, Mrs. Micawber
+retired to my bedroom. And really I felt that she was a noble woman--the
+sort of woman who might have been a Roman matron, and done all manner of
+heroic things, in times of public trouble.
+
+In the fervour of this impression, I congratulated Mr. Micawber on the
+treasure he possessed. So did Traddles. Mr. Micawber extended his
+hand to each of us in succession, and then covered his face with his
+pocket-handkerchief, which I think had more snuff upon it than he
+was aware of. He then returned to the punch, in the highest state of
+exhilaration.
+
+He was full of eloquence. He gave us to understand that in our children
+we lived again, and that, under the pressure of pecuniary difficulties,
+any accession to their number was doubly welcome. He said that Mrs.
+Micawber had latterly had her doubts on this point, but that he had
+dispelled them, and reassured her. As to her family, they were totally
+unworthy of her, and their sentiments were utterly indifferent to him,
+and they might--I quote his own expression--go to the Devil.
+
+Mr. Micawber then delivered a warm eulogy on Traddles. He said
+Traddles’s was a character, to the steady virtues of which he (Mr.
+Micawber) could lay no claim, but which, he thanked Heaven, he could
+admire. He feelingly alluded to the young lady, unknown, whom Traddles
+had honoured with his affection, and who had reciprocated that affection
+by honouring and blessing Traddles with her affection. Mr. Micawber
+pledged her. So did I. Traddles thanked us both, by saying, with a
+simplicity and honesty I had sense enough to be quite charmed with,
+‘I am very much obliged to you indeed. And I do assure you, she’s the
+dearest girl!--’
+
+Mr. Micawber took an early opportunity, after that, of hinting, with the
+utmost delicacy and ceremony, at the state of my affections. Nothing
+but the serious assurance of his friend Copperfield to the contrary,
+he observed, could deprive him of the impression that his friend
+Copperfield loved and was beloved. After feeling very hot and
+uncomfortable for some time, and after a good deal of blushing,
+stammering, and denying, I said, having my glass in my hand, ‘Well! I
+would give them D.!’ which so excited and gratified Mr. Micawber,
+that he ran with a glass of punch into my bedroom, in order that Mrs.
+Micawber might drink D., who drank it with enthusiasm, crying from
+within, in a shrill voice, ‘Hear, hear! My dear Mr. Copperfield, I am
+delighted. Hear!’ and tapping at the wall, by way of applause.
+
+Our conversation, afterwards, took a more worldly turn; Mr. Micawber
+telling us that he found Camden Town inconvenient, and that the first
+thing he contemplated doing, when the advertisement should have been the
+cause of something satisfactory turning up, was to move. He mentioned
+a terrace at the western end of Oxford Street, fronting Hyde Park, on
+which he had always had his eye, but which he did not expect to attain
+immediately, as it would require a large establishment. There would
+probably be an interval, he explained, in which he should content
+himself with the upper part of a house, over some respectable place of
+business--say in Piccadilly,--which would be a cheerful situation for
+Mrs. Micawber; and where, by throwing out a bow-window, or carrying up
+the roof another story, or making some little alteration of that sort,
+they might live, comfortably and reputably, for a few years. Whatever
+was reserved for him, he expressly said, or wherever his abode might be,
+we might rely on this--there would always be a room for Traddles, and a
+knife and fork for me. We acknowledged his kindness; and he begged us
+to forgive his having launched into these practical and business-like
+details, and to excuse it as natural in one who was making entirely new
+arrangements in life.
+
+Mrs. Micawber, tapping at the wall again to know if tea were ready,
+broke up this particular phase of our friendly conversation. She made
+tea for us in a most agreeable manner; and, whenever I went near her, in
+handing about the tea-cups and bread-and-butter, asked me, in a whisper,
+whether D. was fair, or dark, or whether she was short, or tall: or
+something of that kind; which I think I liked. After tea, we discussed a
+variety of topics before the fire; and Mrs. Micawber was good enough
+to sing us (in a small, thin, flat voice, which I remembered to have
+considered, when I first knew her, the very table-beer of acoustics) the
+favourite ballads of ‘The Dashing White Sergeant’, and ‘Little Tafflin’.
+For both of these songs Mrs. Micawber had been famous when she lived at
+home with her papa and mama. Mr. Micawber told us, that when he heard
+her sing the first one, on the first occasion of his seeing her beneath
+the parental roof, she had attracted his attention in an extraordinary
+degree; but that when it came to Little Tafflin, he had resolved to win
+that woman or perish in the attempt.
+
+It was between ten and eleven o’clock when Mrs. Micawber rose to replace
+her cap in the whitey-brown paper parcel, and to put on her bonnet. Mr.
+Micawber took the opportunity of Traddles putting on his great-coat, to
+slip a letter into my hand, with a whispered request that I would read
+it at my leisure. I also took the opportunity of my holding a candle
+over the banisters to light them down, when Mr. Micawber was going
+first, leading Mrs. Micawber, and Traddles was following with the cap,
+to detain Traddles for a moment on the top of the stairs.
+
+‘Traddles,’ said I, ‘Mr. Micawber don’t mean any harm, poor fellow: but,
+if I were you, I wouldn’t lend him anything.’
+
+‘My dear Copperfield,’ returned Traddles, smiling, ‘I haven’t got
+anything to lend.’
+
+‘You have got a name, you know,’ said I.
+
+‘Oh! You call THAT something to lend?’ returned Traddles, with a
+thoughtful look.
+
+‘Certainly.’
+
+‘Oh!’ said Traddles. ‘Yes, to be sure! I am very much obliged to you,
+Copperfield; but--I am afraid I have lent him that already.’
+
+‘For the bill that is to be a certain investment?’ I inquired.
+
+‘No,’ said Traddles. ‘Not for that one. This is the first I have heard
+of that one. I have been thinking that he will most likely propose that
+one, on the way home. Mine’s another.’
+
+‘I hope there will be nothing wrong about it,’ said I. ‘I hope not,’
+said Traddles. ‘I should think not, though, because he told me, only the
+other day, that it was provided for. That was Mr. Micawber’s expression,
+“Provided for.”’
+
+Mr. Micawber looking up at this juncture to where we were standing, I
+had only time to repeat my caution. Traddles thanked me, and descended.
+But I was much afraid, when I observed the good-natured manner in which
+he went down with the cap in his hand, and gave Mrs. Micawber his arm,
+that he would be carried into the Money Market neck and heels.
+
+I returned to my fireside, and was musing, half gravely and half
+laughing, on the character of Mr. Micawber and the old relations between
+us, when I heard a quick step ascending the stairs. At first, I thought
+it was Traddles coming back for something Mrs. Micawber had left behind;
+but as the step approached, I knew it, and felt my heart beat high, and
+the blood rush to my face, for it was Steerforth’s.
+
+I was never unmindful of Agnes, and she never left that sanctuary in my
+thoughts--if I may call it so--where I had placed her from the first.
+But when he entered, and stood before me with his hand out, the darkness
+that had fallen on him changed to light, and I felt confounded and
+ashamed of having doubted one I loved so heartily. I loved her none the
+less; I thought of her as the same benignant, gentle angel in my life; I
+reproached myself, not her, with having done him an injury; and I would
+have made him any atonement if I had known what to make, and how to make
+it.
+
+‘Why, Daisy, old boy, dumb-foundered!’ laughed Steerforth, shaking
+my hand heartily, and throwing it gaily away. ‘Have I detected you in
+another feast, you Sybarite! These Doctors’ Commons fellows are the
+gayest men in town, I believe, and beat us sober Oxford people all to
+nothing!’ His bright glance went merrily round the room, as he took
+the seat on the sofa opposite to me, which Mrs. Micawber had recently
+vacated, and stirred the fire into a blaze.
+
+‘I was so surprised at first,’ said I, giving him welcome with all
+the cordiality I felt, ‘that I had hardly breath to greet you with,
+Steerforth.’
+
+‘Well, the sight of me is good for sore eyes, as the Scotch say,’
+replied Steerforth, ‘and so is the sight of you, Daisy, in full bloom.
+How are you, my Bacchanal?’
+
+‘I am very well,’ said I; ‘and not at all Bacchanalian tonight, though I
+confess to another party of three.’
+
+‘All of whom I met in the street, talking loud in your praise,’ returned
+Steerforth. ‘Who’s our friend in the tights?’
+
+I gave him the best idea I could, in a few words, of Mr. Micawber. He
+laughed heartily at my feeble portrait of that gentleman, and said he
+was a man to know, and he must know him. ‘But who do you suppose our
+other friend is?’ said I, in my turn.
+
+‘Heaven knows,’ said Steerforth. ‘Not a bore, I hope? I thought he
+looked a little like one.’
+
+‘Traddles!’ I replied, triumphantly.
+
+‘Who’s he?’ asked Steerforth, in his careless way.
+
+‘Don’t you remember Traddles? Traddles in our room at Salem House?’
+
+‘Oh! That fellow!’ said Steerforth, beating a lump of coal on the top
+of the fire, with the poker. ‘Is he as soft as ever? And where the deuce
+did you pick him up?’
+
+I extolled Traddles in reply, as highly as I could; for I felt that
+Steerforth rather slighted him. Steerforth, dismissing the subject with
+a light nod, and a smile, and the remark that he would be glad to see
+the old fellow too, for he had always been an odd fish, inquired if I
+could give him anything to eat? During most of this short dialogue, when
+he had not been speaking in a wild vivacious manner, he had sat idly
+beating on the lump of coal with the poker. I observed that he did the
+same thing while I was getting out the remains of the pigeon-pie, and so
+forth.
+
+‘Why, Daisy, here’s a supper for a king!’ he exclaimed, starting out of
+his silence with a burst, and taking his seat at the table. ‘I shall do
+it justice, for I have come from Yarmouth.’
+
+‘I thought you came from Oxford?’ I returned.
+
+‘Not I,’ said Steerforth. ‘I have been seafaring--better employed.’
+
+‘Littimer was here today, to inquire for you,’ I remarked, ‘and I
+understood him that you were at Oxford; though, now I think of it, he
+certainly did not say so.’
+
+‘Littimer is a greater fool than I thought him, to have been inquiring
+for me at all,’ said Steerforth, jovially pouring out a glass of wine,
+and drinking to me. ‘As to understanding him, you are a cleverer fellow
+than most of us, Daisy, if you can do that.’
+
+‘That’s true, indeed,’ said I, moving my chair to the table. ‘So you
+have been at Yarmouth, Steerforth!’ interested to know all about it.
+‘Have you been there long?’
+
+‘No,’ he returned. ‘An escapade of a week or so.’
+
+‘And how are they all? Of course, little Emily is not married yet?’
+
+‘Not yet. Going to be, I believe--in so many weeks, or months, or
+something or other. I have not seen much of ‘em. By the by’; he laid
+down his knife and fork, which he had been using with great diligence,
+and began feeling in his pockets; ‘I have a letter for you.’
+
+‘From whom?’
+
+‘Why, from your old nurse,’ he returned, taking some papers out of his
+breast pocket. “‘J. Steerforth, Esquire, debtor, to The Willing
+Mind”; that’s not it. Patience, and we’ll find it presently. Old
+what’s-his-name’s in a bad way, and it’s about that, I believe.’
+
+‘Barkis, do you mean?’
+
+‘Yes!’ still feeling in his pockets, and looking over their contents:
+‘it’s all over with poor Barkis, I am afraid. I saw a little apothecary
+there--surgeon, or whatever he is--who brought your worship into the
+world. He was mighty learned about the case, to me; but the upshot of
+his opinion was, that the carrier was making his last journey rather
+fast.---Put your hand into the breast pocket of my great-coat on the
+chair yonder, and I think you’ll find the letter. Is it there?’
+
+‘Here it is!’ said I.
+
+‘That’s right!’
+
+It was from Peggotty; something less legible than usual, and brief. It
+informed me of her husband’s hopeless state, and hinted at his being
+‘a little nearer’ than heretofore, and consequently more difficult
+to manage for his own comfort. It said nothing of her weariness
+and watching, and praised him highly. It was written with a plain,
+unaffected, homely piety that I knew to be genuine, and ended with ‘my
+duty to my ever darling’--meaning myself.
+
+While I deciphered it, Steerforth continued to eat and drink.
+
+‘It’s a bad job,’ he said, when I had done; ‘but the sun sets every day,
+and people die every minute, and we mustn’t be scared by the common lot.
+If we failed to hold our own, because that equal foot at all men’s doors
+was heard knocking somewhere, every object in this world would slip from
+us. No! Ride on! Rough-shod if need be, smooth-shod if that will do, but
+ride on! Ride on over all obstacles, and win the race!’
+
+‘And win what race?’ said I.
+
+‘The race that one has started in,’ said he. ‘Ride on!’
+
+I noticed, I remember, as he paused, looking at me with his handsome
+head a little thrown back, and his glass raised in his hand, that,
+though the freshness of the sea-wind was on his face, and it was ruddy,
+there were traces in it, made since I last saw it, as if he had applied
+himself to some habitual strain of the fervent energy which, when
+roused, was so passionately roused within him. I had it in my thoughts
+to remonstrate with him upon his desperate way of pursuing any fancy
+that he took--such as this buffeting of rough seas, and braving of hard
+weather, for example--when my mind glanced off to the immediate subject
+of our conversation again, and pursued that instead.
+
+‘I tell you what, Steerforth,’ said I, ‘if your high spirits will listen
+to me--’
+
+‘They are potent spirits, and will do whatever you like,’ he answered,
+moving from the table to the fireside again.
+
+‘Then I tell you what, Steerforth. I think I will go down and see my
+old nurse. It is not that I can do her any good, or render her any real
+service; but she is so attached to me that my visit will have as much
+effect on her, as if I could do both. She will take it so kindly that it
+will be a comfort and support to her. It is no great effort to make,
+I am sure, for such a friend as she has been to me. Wouldn’t you go a
+day’s journey, if you were in my place?’
+
+His face was thoughtful, and he sat considering a little before he
+answered, in a low voice, ‘Well! Go. You can do no harm.’
+
+‘You have just come back,’ said I, ‘and it would be in vain to ask you
+to go with me?’
+
+‘Quite,’ he returned. ‘I am for Highgate tonight. I have not seen
+my mother this long time, and it lies upon my conscience, for
+it’s something to be loved as she loves her prodigal son.---Bah!
+Nonsense!--You mean to go tomorrow, I suppose?’ he said, holding me out
+at arm’s length, with a hand on each of my shoulders.
+
+‘Yes, I think so.’
+
+‘Well, then, don’t go till next day. I wanted you to come and stay a
+few days with us. Here I am, on purpose to bid you, and you fly off to
+Yarmouth!’
+
+‘You are a nice fellow to talk of flying off, Steerforth, who are always
+running wild on some unknown expedition or other!’
+
+He looked at me for a moment without speaking, and then rejoined, still
+holding me as before, and giving me a shake:
+
+‘Come! Say the next day, and pass as much of tomorrow as you can with
+us! Who knows when we may meet again, else? Come! Say the next day! I
+want you to stand between Rosa Dartle and me, and keep us asunder.’
+
+‘Would you love each other too much, without me?’
+
+‘Yes; or hate,’ laughed Steerforth; ‘no matter which. Come! Say the next
+day!’
+
+I said the next day; and he put on his great-coat and lighted his cigar,
+and set off to walk home. Finding him in this intention, I put on my own
+great-coat (but did not light my own cigar, having had enough of that
+for one while) and walked with him as far as the open road: a dull road,
+then, at night. He was in great spirits all the way; and when we parted,
+and I looked after him going so gallantly and airily homeward, I thought
+of his saying, ‘Ride on over all obstacles, and win the race!’ and
+wished, for the first time, that he had some worthy race to run.
+
+I was undressing in my own room, when Mr. Micawber’s letter tumbled on
+the floor. Thus reminded of it, I broke the seal and read as follows. It
+was dated an hour and a half before dinner. I am not sure whether I
+have mentioned that, when Mr. Micawber was at any particularly desperate
+crisis, he used a sort of legal phraseology, which he seemed to think
+equivalent to winding up his affairs.
+
+
+‘SIR--for I dare not say my dear Copperfield,
+
+‘It is expedient that I should inform you that the undersigned is
+Crushed. Some flickering efforts to spare you the premature knowledge of
+his calamitous position, you may observe in him this day; but hope has
+sunk beneath the horizon, and the undersigned is Crushed.
+
+‘The present communication is penned within the personal range (I cannot
+call it the society) of an individual, in a state closely bordering
+on intoxication, employed by a broker. That individual is in legal
+possession of the premises, under a distress for rent. His inventory
+includes, not only the chattels and effects of every description
+belonging to the undersigned, as yearly tenant of this habitation, but
+also those appertaining to Mr. Thomas Traddles, lodger, a member of the
+Honourable Society of the Inner Temple.
+
+‘If any drop of gloom were wanting in the overflowing cup, which is now
+“commended” (in the language of an immortal Writer) to the lips of the
+undersigned, it would be found in the fact, that a friendly acceptance
+granted to the undersigned, by the before-mentioned Mr. Thomas Traddles,
+for the sum Of 23l 4s 9 1/2d is over due, and is NOT provided for. Also,
+in the fact that the living responsibilities clinging to the undersigned
+will, in the course of nature, be increased by the sum of one more
+helpless victim; whose miserable appearance may be looked for--in round
+numbers--at the expiration of a period not exceeding six lunar months
+from the present date.
+
+‘After premising thus much, it would be a work of supererogation to add,
+that dust and ashes are for ever scattered
+
+               ‘On
+                    ‘The
+                         ‘Head
+                              ‘Of
+                                   ‘WILKINS MICAWBER.’
+
+
+Poor Traddles! I knew enough of Mr. Micawber by this time, to foresee
+that he might be expected to recover the blow; but my night’s rest was
+sorely distressed by thoughts of Traddles, and of the curate’s daughter,
+who was one of ten, down in Devonshire, and who was such a dear girl,
+and who would wait for Traddles (ominous praise!) until she was sixty,
+or any age that could be mentioned.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 29. I VISIT STEERFORTH AT HIS HOME, AGAIN
+
+
+I mentioned to Mr. Spenlow in the morning, that I wanted leave of
+absence for a short time; and as I was not in the receipt of any salary,
+and consequently was not obnoxious to the implacable Jorkins, there was
+no difficulty about it. I took that opportunity, with my voice sticking
+in my throat, and my sight failing as I uttered the words, to express
+my hope that Miss Spenlow was quite well; to which Mr. Spenlow replied,
+with no more emotion than if he had been speaking of an ordinary human
+being, that he was much obliged to me, and she was very well.
+
+We articled clerks, as germs of the patrician order of proctors, were
+treated with so much consideration, that I was almost my own master at
+all times. As I did not care, however, to get to Highgate before one
+or two o’clock in the day, and as we had another little excommunication
+case in court that morning, which was called The office of the judge
+promoted by Tipkins against Bullock for his soul’s correction, I passed
+an hour or two in attendance on it with Mr. Spenlow very agreeably.
+It arose out of a scuffle between two churchwardens, one of whom was
+alleged to have pushed the other against a pump; the handle of which
+pump projecting into a school-house, which school-house was under a
+gable of the church-roof, made the push an ecclesiastical offence.
+It was an amusing case; and sent me up to Highgate, on the box of the
+stage-coach, thinking about the Commons, and what Mr. Spenlow had said
+about touching the Commons and bringing down the country.
+
+Mrs. Steerforth was pleased to see me, and so was Rosa Dartle. I was
+agreeably surprised to find that Littimer was not there, and that we
+were attended by a modest little parlour-maid, with blue ribbons in her
+cap, whose eye it was much more pleasant, and much less disconcerting,
+to catch by accident, than the eye of that respectable man. But what I
+particularly observed, before I had been half-an-hour in the house, was
+the close and attentive watch Miss Dartle kept upon me; and the lurking
+manner in which she seemed to compare my face with Steerforth’s, and
+Steerforth’s with mine, and to lie in wait for something to come out
+between the two. So surely as I looked towards her, did I see that eager
+visage, with its gaunt black eyes and searching brow, intent on mine; or
+passing suddenly from mine to Steerforth’s; or comprehending both of us
+at once. In this lynx-like scrutiny she was so far from faltering when
+she saw I observed it, that at such a time she only fixed her piercing
+look upon me with a more intent expression still. Blameless as I was,
+and knew that I was, in reference to any wrong she could possibly
+suspect me of, I shrunk before her strange eyes, quite unable to endure
+their hungry lustre.
+
+All day, she seemed to pervade the whole house. If I talked to
+Steerforth in his room, I heard her dress rustle in the little gallery
+outside. When he and I engaged in some of our old exercises on the lawn
+behind the house, I saw her face pass from window to window, like a
+wandering light, until it fixed itself in one, and watched us. When we
+all four went out walking in the afternoon, she closed her thin hand on
+my arm like a spring, to keep me back, while Steerforth and his mother
+went on out of hearing: and then spoke to me.
+
+‘You have been a long time,’ she said, ‘without coming here. Is your
+profession really so engaging and interesting as to absorb your whole
+attention? I ask because I always want to be informed, when I am
+ignorant. Is it really, though?’
+
+I replied that I liked it well enough, but that I certainly could not
+claim so much for it.
+
+‘Oh! I am glad to know that, because I always like to be put right when
+I am wrong,’ said Rosa Dartle. ‘You mean it is a little dry, perhaps?’
+
+‘Well,’ I replied; ‘perhaps it was a little dry.’
+
+‘Oh! and that’s a reason why you want relief and change--excitement and
+all that?’ said she. ‘Ah! very true! But isn’t it a little--Eh?--for
+him; I don’t mean you?’
+
+A quick glance of her eye towards the spot where Steerforth was walking,
+with his mother leaning on his arm, showed me whom she meant; but beyond
+that, I was quite lost. And I looked so, I have no doubt.
+
+‘Don’t it--I don’t say that it does, mind I want to know--don’t it
+rather engross him? Don’t it make him, perhaps, a little more remiss
+than usual in his visits to his blindly-doting--eh?’ With another
+quick glance at them, and such a glance at me as seemed to look into my
+innermost thoughts.
+
+‘Miss Dartle,’ I returned, ‘pray do not think--’
+
+‘I don’t!’ she said. ‘Oh dear me, don’t suppose that I think anything!
+I am not suspicious. I only ask a question. I don’t state any opinion. I
+want to found an opinion on what you tell me. Then, it’s not so? Well! I
+am very glad to know it.’
+
+‘It certainly is not the fact,’ said I, perplexed, ‘that I am
+accountable for Steerforth’s having been away from home longer than
+usual--if he has been: which I really don’t know at this moment, unless
+I understand it from you. I have not seen him this long while, until
+last night.’
+
+‘No?’
+
+‘Indeed, Miss Dartle, no!’
+
+As she looked full at me, I saw her face grow sharper and paler, and the
+marks of the old wound lengthen out until it cut through the disfigured
+lip, and deep into the nether lip, and slanted down the face. There was
+something positively awful to me in this, and in the brightness of her
+eyes, as she said, looking fixedly at me:
+
+‘What is he doing?’
+
+I repeated the words, more to myself than her, being so amazed.
+
+‘What is he doing?’ she said, with an eagerness that seemed enough to
+consume her like a fire. ‘In what is that man assisting him, who never
+looks at me without an inscrutable falsehood in his eyes? If you are
+honourable and faithful, I don’t ask you to betray your friend. I ask
+you only to tell me, is it anger, is it hatred, is it pride, is it
+restlessness, is it some wild fancy, is it love, what is it, that is
+leading him?’
+
+‘Miss Dartle,’ I returned, ‘how shall I tell you, so that you will
+believe me, that I know of nothing in Steerforth different from what
+there was when I first came here? I can think of nothing. I firmly
+believe there is nothing. I hardly understand even what you mean.’
+
+As she still stood looking fixedly at me, a twitching or throbbing,
+from which I could not dissociate the idea of pain, came into that cruel
+mark; and lifted up the corner of her lip as if with scorn, or with a
+pity that despised its object. She put her hand upon it hurriedly--a
+hand so thin and delicate, that when I had seen her hold it up before
+the fire to shade her face, I had compared it in my thoughts to fine
+porcelain--and saying, in a quick, fierce, passionate way, ‘I swear you
+to secrecy about this!’ said not a word more.
+
+Mrs. Steerforth was particularly happy in her son’s society, and
+Steerforth was, on this occasion, particularly attentive and respectful
+to her. It was very interesting to me to see them together, not only on
+account of their mutual affection, but because of the strong personal
+resemblance between them, and the manner in which what was haughty or
+impetuous in him was softened by age and sex, in her, to a gracious
+dignity. I thought, more than once, that it was well no serious cause of
+division had ever come between them; or two such natures--I ought rather
+to express it, two such shades of the same nature--might have been
+harder to reconcile than the two extremest opposites in creation. The
+idea did not originate in my own discernment, I am bound to confess, but
+in a speech of Rosa Dartle’s.
+
+She said at dinner:
+
+‘Oh, but do tell me, though, somebody, because I have been thinking
+about it all day, and I want to know.’
+
+‘You want to know what, Rosa?’ returned Mrs. Steerforth. ‘Pray, pray,
+Rosa, do not be mysterious.’
+
+‘Mysterious!’ she cried. ‘Oh! really? Do you consider me so?’
+
+‘Do I constantly entreat you,’ said Mrs. Steerforth, ‘to speak plainly,
+in your own natural manner?’
+
+‘Oh! then this is not my natural manner?’ she rejoined. ‘Now you must
+really bear with me, because I ask for information. We never know
+ourselves.’
+
+‘It has become a second nature,’ said Mrs. Steerforth, without any
+displeasure; ‘but I remember,--and so must you, I think,--when your
+manner was different, Rosa; when it was not so guarded, and was more
+trustful.’
+
+‘I am sure you are right,’ she returned; ‘and so it is that bad habits
+grow upon one! Really? Less guarded and more trustful? How can I,
+imperceptibly, have changed, I wonder! Well, that’s very odd! I must
+study to regain my former self.’
+
+‘I wish you would,’ said Mrs. Steerforth, with a smile.
+
+‘Oh! I really will, you know!’ she answered. ‘I will learn frankness
+from--let me see--from James.’
+
+‘You cannot learn frankness, Rosa,’ said Mrs. Steerforth quickly--for
+there was always some effect of sarcasm in what Rosa Dartle said,
+though it was said, as this was, in the most unconscious manner in the
+world--‘in a better school.’
+
+‘That I am sure of,’ she answered, with uncommon fervour. ‘If I am sure
+of anything, of course, you know, I am sure of that.’
+
+Mrs. Steerforth appeared to me to regret having been a little nettled;
+for she presently said, in a kind tone:
+
+‘Well, my dear Rosa, we have not heard what it is that you want to be
+satisfied about?’
+
+‘That I want to be satisfied about?’ she replied, with provoking
+coldness. ‘Oh! It was only whether people, who are like each other in
+their moral constitution--is that the phrase?’
+
+‘It’s as good a phrase as another,’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘Thank you:--whether people, who are like each other in their moral
+constitution, are in greater danger than people not so circumstanced,
+supposing any serious cause of variance to arise between them, of being
+divided angrily and deeply?’
+
+‘I should say yes,’ said Steerforth.
+
+‘Should you?’ she retorted. ‘Dear me! Supposing then, for instance--any
+unlikely thing will do for a supposition--that you and your mother were
+to have a serious quarrel.’
+
+‘My dear Rosa,’ interposed Mrs. Steerforth, laughing good-naturedly,
+‘suggest some other supposition! James and I know our duty to each other
+better, I pray Heaven!’
+
+‘Oh!’ said Miss Dartle, nodding her head thoughtfully. ‘To be sure. That
+would prevent it? Why, of course it would. Exactly. Now, I am glad I
+have been so foolish as to put the case, for it is so very good to know
+that your duty to each other would prevent it! Thank you very much.’
+
+One other little circumstance connected with Miss Dartle I must
+not omit; for I had reason to remember it thereafter, when all the
+irremediable past was rendered plain. During the whole of this day, but
+especially from this period of it, Steerforth exerted himself with his
+utmost skill, and that was with his utmost ease, to charm this singular
+creature into a pleasant and pleased companion. That he should succeed,
+was no matter of surprise to me. That she should struggle against the
+fascinating influence of his delightful art--delightful nature I thought
+it then--did not surprise me either; for I knew that she was sometimes
+jaundiced and perverse. I saw her features and her manner slowly change;
+I saw her look at him with growing admiration; I saw her try, more and
+more faintly, but always angrily, as if she condemned a weakness in
+herself, to resist the captivating power that he possessed; and finally,
+I saw her sharp glance soften, and her smile become quite gentle, and I
+ceased to be afraid of her as I had really been all day, and we all sat
+about the fire, talking and laughing together, with as little reserve as
+if we had been children.
+
+Whether it was because we had sat there so long, or because Steerforth
+was resolved not to lose the advantage he had gained, I do not know; but
+we did not remain in the dining-room more than five minutes after her
+departure. ‘She is playing her harp,’ said Steerforth, softly, at the
+drawing-room door, ‘and nobody but my mother has heard her do that, I
+believe, these three years.’ He said it with a curious smile, which was
+gone directly; and we went into the room and found her alone.
+
+‘Don’t get up,’ said Steerforth (which she had already done)’ my dear
+Rosa, don’t! Be kind for once, and sing us an Irish song.’
+
+‘What do you care for an Irish song?’ she returned.
+
+‘Much!’ said Steerforth. ‘Much more than for any other. Here is Daisy,
+too, loves music from his soul. Sing us an Irish song, Rosa! and let me
+sit and listen as I used to do.’
+
+He did not touch her, or the chair from which she had risen, but sat
+himself near the harp. She stood beside it for some little while, in a
+curious way, going through the motion of playing it with her right hand,
+but not sounding it. At length she sat down, and drew it to her with one
+sudden action, and played and sang.
+
+I don’t know what it was, in her touch or voice, that made that song the
+most unearthly I have ever heard in my life, or can imagine. There was
+something fearful in the reality of it. It was as if it had never been
+written, or set to music, but sprung out of passion within her; which
+found imperfect utterance in the low sounds of her voice, and crouched
+again when all was still. I was dumb when she leaned beside the harp
+again, playing it, but not sounding it, with her right hand.
+
+A minute more, and this had roused me from my trance:--Steerforth had
+left his seat, and gone to her, and had put his arm laughingly about
+her, and had said, ‘Come, Rosa, for the future we will love each other
+very much!’ And she had struck him, and had thrown him off with the fury
+of a wild cat, and had burst out of the room.
+
+‘What is the matter with Rosa?’ said Mrs. Steerforth, coming in.
+
+‘She has been an angel, mother,’ returned Steerforth, ‘for a little
+while; and has run into the opposite extreme, since, by way of
+compensation.’
+
+‘You should be careful not to irritate her, James. Her temper has been
+soured, remember, and ought not to be tried.’
+
+Rosa did not come back; and no other mention was made of her, until I
+went with Steerforth into his room to say Good night. Then he laughed
+about her, and asked me if I had ever seen such a fierce little piece of
+incomprehensibility.
+
+I expressed as much of my astonishment as was then capable of
+expression, and asked if he could guess what it was that she had taken
+so much amiss, so suddenly.
+
+‘Oh, Heaven knows,’ said Steerforth. ‘Anything you like--or nothing!
+I told you she took everything, herself included, to a grindstone, and
+sharpened it. She is an edge-tool, and requires great care in dealing
+with. She is always dangerous. Good night!’
+
+‘Good night!’ said I, ‘my dear Steerforth! I shall be gone before you
+wake in the morning. Good night!’
+
+He was unwilling to let me go; and stood, holding me out, with a hand on
+each of my shoulders, as he had done in my own room.
+
+‘Daisy,’ he said, with a smile--‘for though that’s not the name your
+godfathers and godmothers gave you, it’s the name I like best to call
+you by--and I wish, I wish, I wish, you could give it to me!’
+
+‘Why so I can, if I choose,’ said I.
+
+‘Daisy, if anything should ever separate us, you must think of me at my
+best, old boy. Come! Let us make that bargain. Think of me at my best,
+if circumstances should ever part us!’
+
+‘You have no best to me, Steerforth,’ said I, ‘and no worst. You are
+always equally loved, and cherished in my heart.’
+
+So much compunction for having ever wronged him, even by a shapeless
+thought, did I feel within me, that the confession of having done so was
+rising to my lips. But for the reluctance I had to betray the confidence
+of Agnes, but for my uncertainty how to approach the subject with no
+risk of doing so, it would have reached them before he said, ‘God bless
+you, Daisy, and good night!’ In my doubt, it did NOT reach them; and we
+shook hands, and we parted.
+
+I was up with the dull dawn, and, having dressed as quietly as I could,
+looked into his room. He was fast asleep; lying, easily, with his head
+upon his arm, as I had often seen him lie at school.
+
+The time came in its season, and that was very soon, when I almost
+wondered that nothing troubled his repose, as I looked at him. But he
+slept--let me think of him so again--as I had often seen him sleep at
+school; and thus, in this silent hour, I left him. --Never more, oh
+God forgive you, Steerforth! to touch that passive hand in love and
+friendship. Never, never more!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 30. A LOSS
+
+
+I got down to Yarmouth in the evening, and went to the inn. I knew that
+Peggotty’s spare room--my room--was likely to have occupation enough
+in a little while, if that great Visitor, before whose presence all
+the living must give place, were not already in the house; so I betook
+myself to the inn, and dined there, and engaged my bed.
+
+It was ten o’clock when I went out. Many of the shops were shut, and the
+town was dull. When I came to Omer and Joram’s, I found the shutters up,
+but the shop door standing open. As I could obtain a perspective view
+of Mr. Omer inside, smoking his pipe by the parlour door, I entered, and
+asked him how he was.
+
+‘Why, bless my life and soul!’ said Mr. Omer, ‘how do you find yourself?
+Take a seat.---Smoke not disagreeable, I hope?’
+
+‘By no means,’ said I. ‘I like it--in somebody else’s pipe.’
+
+‘What, not in your own, eh?’ Mr. Omer returned, laughing. ‘All the
+better, sir. Bad habit for a young man. Take a seat. I smoke, myself,
+for the asthma.’
+
+Mr. Omer had made room for me, and placed a chair. He now sat down again
+very much out of breath, gasping at his pipe as if it contained a supply
+of that necessary, without which he must perish.
+
+‘I am sorry to have heard bad news of Mr. Barkis,’ said I.
+
+Mr. Omer looked at me, with a steady countenance, and shook his head.
+
+‘Do you know how he is tonight?’ I asked.
+
+‘The very question I should have put to you, sir,’ returned Mr. Omer,
+‘but on account of delicacy. It’s one of the drawbacks of our line of
+business. When a party’s ill, we can’t ask how the party is.’
+
+The difficulty had not occurred to me; though I had had my apprehensions
+too, when I went in, of hearing the old tune. On its being mentioned, I
+recognized it, however, and said as much.
+
+‘Yes, yes, you understand,’ said Mr. Omer, nodding his head. ‘We dursn’t
+do it. Bless you, it would be a shock that the generality of parties
+mightn’t recover, to say “Omer and Joram’s compliments, and how do you
+find yourself this morning?”--or this afternoon--as it may be.’
+
+Mr. Omer and I nodded at each other, and Mr. Omer recruited his wind by
+the aid of his pipe.
+
+‘It’s one of the things that cut the trade off from attentions they
+could often wish to show,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘Take myself. If I have known
+Barkis a year, to move to as he went by, I have known him forty years.
+But I can’t go and say, “how is he?”’
+
+I felt it was rather hard on Mr. Omer, and I told him so.
+
+‘I’m not more self-interested, I hope, than another man,’ said Mr. Omer.
+‘Look at me! My wind may fail me at any moment, and it ain’t
+likely that, to my own knowledge, I’d be self-interested under such
+circumstances. I say it ain’t likely, in a man who knows his wind will
+go, when it DOES go, as if a pair of bellows was cut open; and that man
+a grandfather,’ said Mr. Omer.
+
+I said, ‘Not at all.’
+
+‘It ain’t that I complain of my line of business,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘It
+ain’t that. Some good and some bad goes, no doubt, to all callings. What
+I wish is, that parties was brought up stronger-minded.’
+
+Mr. Omer, with a very complacent and amiable face, took several puffs in
+silence; and then said, resuming his first point:
+
+‘Accordingly we’re obleeged, in ascertaining how Barkis goes on, to
+limit ourselves to Em’ly. She knows what our real objects are, and she
+don’t have any more alarms or suspicions about us, than if we was so
+many lambs. Minnie and Joram have just stepped down to the house, in
+fact (she’s there, after hours, helping her aunt a bit), to ask her how
+he is tonight; and if you was to please to wait till they come back,
+they’d give you full partic’lers. Will you take something? A glass of
+srub and water, now? I smoke on srub and water, myself,’ said Mr. Omer,
+taking up his glass, ‘because it’s considered softening to the passages,
+by which this troublesome breath of mine gets into action. But, Lord
+bless you,’ said Mr. Omer, huskily, ‘it ain’t the passages that’s out of
+order! “Give me breath enough,” said I to my daughter Minnie, “and I’ll
+find passages, my dear.”’
+
+He really had no breath to spare, and it was very alarming to see him
+laugh. When he was again in a condition to be talked to, I thanked
+him for the proffered refreshment, which I declined, as I had just had
+dinner; and, observing that I would wait, since he was so good as to
+invite me, until his daughter and his son-in-law came back, I inquired
+how little Emily was?
+
+‘Well, sir,’ said Mr. Omer, removing his pipe, that he might rub his
+chin: ‘I tell you truly, I shall be glad when her marriage has taken
+place.’
+
+‘Why so?’ I inquired.
+
+‘Well, she’s unsettled at present,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘It ain’t that she’s
+not as pretty as ever, for she’s prettier--I do assure you, she is
+prettier. It ain’t that she don’t work as well as ever, for she does.
+She WAS worth any six, and she IS worth any six. But somehow she wants
+heart. If you understand,’ said Mr. Omer, after rubbing his chin again,
+and smoking a little, ‘what I mean in a general way by the expression,
+“A long pull, and a strong pull, and a pull altogether, my hearties,
+hurrah!” I should say to you, that that was--in a general way--what I
+miss in Em’ly.’
+
+Mr. Omer’s face and manner went for so much, that I could
+conscientiously nod my head, as divining his meaning. My quickness of
+apprehension seemed to please him, and he went on: ‘Now I consider this
+is principally on account of her being in an unsettled state, you
+see. We have talked it over a good deal, her uncle and myself, and her
+sweetheart and myself, after business; and I consider it is principally
+on account of her being unsettled. You must always recollect of Em’ly,’
+said Mr. Omer, shaking his head gently, ‘that she’s a most extraordinary
+affectionate little thing. The proverb says, “You can’t make a silk
+purse out of a sow’s ear.” Well, I don’t know about that. I rather think
+you may, if you begin early in life. She has made a home out of that old
+boat, sir, that stone and marble couldn’t beat.’
+
+‘I am sure she has!’ said I.
+
+‘To see the clinging of that pretty little thing to her uncle,’ said
+Mr. Omer; ‘to see the way she holds on to him, tighter and tighter, and
+closer and closer, every day, is to see a sight. Now, you know, there’s
+a struggle going on when that’s the case. Why should it be made a longer
+one than is needful?’
+
+I listened attentively to the good old fellow, and acquiesced, with all
+my heart, in what he said.
+
+‘Therefore, I mentioned to them,’ said Mr. Omer, in a comfortable,
+easy-going tone, ‘this. I said, “Now, don’t consider Em’ly nailed down
+in point of time, at all. Make it your own time. Her services have been
+more valuable than was supposed; her learning has been quicker than was
+supposed; Omer and Joram can run their pen through what remains; and
+she’s free when you wish. If she likes to make any little arrangement,
+afterwards, in the way of doing any little thing for us at home,
+very well. If she don’t, very well still. We’re no losers, anyhow.”
+ For--don’t you see,’ said Mr. Omer, touching me with his pipe, ‘it ain’t
+likely that a man so short of breath as myself, and a grandfather too,
+would go and strain points with a little bit of a blue-eyed blossom,
+like her?’
+
+‘Not at all, I am certain,’ said I.
+
+‘Not at all! You’re right!’ said Mr. Omer. ‘Well, sir, her cousin--you
+know it’s a cousin she’s going to be married to?’
+
+‘Oh yes,’ I replied. ‘I know him well.’
+
+‘Of course you do,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘Well, sir! Her cousin being, as it
+appears, in good work, and well to do, thanked me in a very manly sort
+of manner for this (conducting himself altogether, I must say, in a way
+that gives me a high opinion of him), and went and took as comfortable
+a little house as you or I could wish to clap eyes on. That little
+house is now furnished right through, as neat and complete as a doll’s
+parlour; and but for Barkis’s illness having taken this bad turn, poor
+fellow, they would have been man and wife--I dare say, by this time. As
+it is, there’s a postponement.’
+
+‘And Emily, Mr. Omer?’ I inquired. ‘Has she become more settled?’
+
+‘Why that, you know,’ he returned, rubbing his double chin again, ‘can’t
+naturally be expected. The prospect of the change and separation, and
+all that, is, as one may say, close to her and far away from her, both
+at once. Barkis’s death needn’t put it off much, but his lingering
+might. Anyway, it’s an uncertain state of matters, you see.’
+
+‘I see,’ said I.
+
+‘Consequently,’ pursued Mr. Omer, ‘Em’ly’s still a little down, and a
+little fluttered; perhaps, upon the whole, she’s more so than she was.
+Every day she seems to get fonder and fonder of her uncle, and more loth
+to part from all of us. A kind word from me brings the tears into her
+eyes; and if you was to see her with my daughter Minnie’s little girl,
+you’d never forget it. Bless my heart alive!’ said Mr. Omer, pondering,
+‘how she loves that child!’
+
+Having so favourable an opportunity, it occurred to me to ask Mr. Omer,
+before our conversation should be interrupted by the return of his
+daughter and her husband, whether he knew anything of Martha.
+
+‘Ah!’ he rejoined, shaking his head, and looking very much dejected.
+‘No good. A sad story, sir, however you come to know it. I never thought
+there was harm in the girl. I wouldn’t wish to mention it before my
+daughter Minnie--for she’d take me up directly--but I never did. None of
+us ever did.’
+
+Mr. Omer, hearing his daughter’s footstep before I heard it, touched me
+with his pipe, and shut up one eye, as a caution. She and her husband
+came in immediately afterwards.
+
+Their report was, that Mr. Barkis was ‘as bad as bad could be’; that he
+was quite unconscious; and that Mr. Chillip had mournfully said in the
+kitchen, on going away just now, that the College of Physicians, the
+College of Surgeons, and Apothecaries’ Hall, if they were all called
+in together, couldn’t help him. He was past both Colleges, Mr. Chillip
+said, and the Hall could only poison him.
+
+Hearing this, and learning that Mr. Peggotty was there, I determined to
+go to the house at once. I bade good night to Mr. Omer, and to Mr. and
+Mrs. Joram; and directed my steps thither, with a solemn feeling, which
+made Mr. Barkis quite a new and different creature.
+
+My low tap at the door was answered by Mr. Peggotty. He was not so much
+surprised to see me as I had expected. I remarked this in Peggotty,
+too, when she came down; and I have seen it since; and I think, in the
+expectation of that dread surprise, all other changes and surprises
+dwindle into nothing.
+
+I shook hands with Mr. Peggotty, and passed into the kitchen, while he
+softly closed the door. Little Emily was sitting by the fire, with her
+hands before her face. Ham was standing near her.
+
+We spoke in whispers; listening, between whiles, for any sound in the
+room above. I had not thought of it on the occasion of my last visit,
+but how strange it was to me, now, to miss Mr. Barkis out of the
+kitchen!
+
+‘This is very kind of you, Mas’r Davy,’ said Mr. Peggotty.
+
+‘It’s oncommon kind,’ said Ham.
+
+‘Em’ly, my dear,’ cried Mr. Peggotty. ‘See here! Here’s Mas’r Davy come!
+What, cheer up, pretty! Not a wured to Mas’r Davy?’
+
+There was a trembling upon her, that I can see now. The coldness of her
+hand when I touched it, I can feel yet. Its only sign of animation was
+to shrink from mine; and then she glided from the chair, and creeping
+to the other side of her uncle, bowed herself, silently and trembling
+still, upon his breast.
+
+‘It’s such a loving art,’ said Mr. Peggotty, smoothing her rich hair
+with his great hard hand, ‘that it can’t abear the sorrer of this.
+It’s nat’ral in young folk, Mas’r Davy, when they’re new to these here
+trials, and timid, like my little bird,--it’s nat’ral.’
+
+She clung the closer to him, but neither lifted up her face, nor spoke a
+word.
+
+‘It’s getting late, my dear,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘and here’s Ham come
+fur to take you home. Theer! Go along with t’other loving art! What’
+Em’ly? Eh, my pretty?’
+
+The sound of her voice had not reached me, but he bent his head as if he
+listened to her, and then said:
+
+‘Let you stay with your uncle? Why, you doen’t mean to ask me that! Stay
+with your uncle, Moppet? When your husband that’ll be so soon, is here
+fur to take you home? Now a person wouldn’t think it, fur to see this
+little thing alongside a rough-weather chap like me,’ said Mr. Peggotty,
+looking round at both of us, with infinite pride; ‘but the sea ain’t
+more salt in it than she has fondness in her for her uncle--a foolish
+little Em’ly!’
+
+‘Em’ly’s in the right in that, Mas’r Davy!’ said Ham. ‘Lookee here! As
+Em’ly wishes of it, and as she’s hurried and frightened, like, besides,
+I’ll leave her till morning. Let me stay too!’
+
+‘No, no,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘You doen’t ought--a married man like
+you--or what’s as good--to take and hull away a day’s work. And you
+doen’t ought to watch and work both. That won’t do. You go home and turn
+in. You ain’t afeerd of Em’ly not being took good care on, I know.’
+
+Ham yielded to this persuasion, and took his hat to go. Even when he
+kissed her--and I never saw him approach her, but I felt that nature
+had given him the soul of a gentleman--she seemed to cling closer to
+her uncle, even to the avoidance of her chosen husband. I shut the
+door after him, that it might cause no disturbance of the quiet that
+prevailed; and when I turned back, I found Mr. Peggotty still talking to
+her.
+
+‘Now, I’m a going upstairs to tell your aunt as Mas’r Davy’s here, and
+that’ll cheer her up a bit,’ he said. ‘Sit ye down by the fire, the
+while, my dear, and warm those mortal cold hands. You doen’t need to be
+so fearsome, and take on so much. What? You’ll go along with me?--Well!
+come along with me--come! If her uncle was turned out of house and home,
+and forced to lay down in a dyke, Mas’r Davy,’ said Mr. Peggotty, with
+no less pride than before, ‘it’s my belief she’d go along with him, now!
+But there’ll be someone else, soon,--someone else, soon, Em’ly!’
+
+Afterwards, when I went upstairs, as I passed the door of my little
+chamber, which was dark, I had an indistinct impression of her being
+within it, cast down upon the floor. But, whether it was really she, or
+whether it was a confusion of the shadows in the room, I don’t know now.
+
+I had leisure to think, before the kitchen fire, of pretty little
+Emily’s dread of death--which, added to what Mr. Omer had told me, I
+took to be the cause of her being so unlike herself--and I had leisure,
+before Peggotty came down, even to think more leniently of the weakness
+of it: as I sat counting the ticking of the clock, and deepening my
+sense of the solemn hush around me. Peggotty took me in her arms, and
+blessed and thanked me over and over again for being such a comfort to
+her (that was what she said) in her distress. She then entreated me to
+come upstairs, sobbing that Mr. Barkis had always liked me and admired
+me; that he had often talked of me, before he fell into a stupor; and
+that she believed, in case of his coming to himself again, he would
+brighten up at sight of me, if he could brighten up at any earthly
+thing.
+
+The probability of his ever doing so, appeared to me, when I saw him, to
+be very small. He was lying with his head and shoulders out of bed, in
+an uncomfortable attitude, half resting on the box which had cost him so
+much pain and trouble. I learned, that, when he was past creeping out of
+bed to open it, and past assuring himself of its safety by means of the
+divining rod I had seen him use, he had required to have it placed on
+the chair at the bed-side, where he had ever since embraced it, night
+and day. His arm lay on it now. Time and the world were slipping from
+beneath him, but the box was there; and the last words he had uttered
+were (in an explanatory tone) ‘Old clothes!’
+
+‘Barkis, my dear!’ said Peggotty, almost cheerfully: bending over him,
+while her brother and I stood at the bed’s foot. ‘Here’s my dear boy--my
+dear boy, Master Davy, who brought us together, Barkis! That you sent
+messages by, you know! Won’t you speak to Master Davy?’
+
+He was as mute and senseless as the box, from which his form derived the
+only expression it had.
+
+‘He’s a going out with the tide,’ said Mr. Peggotty to me, behind his
+hand.
+
+My eyes were dim and so were Mr. Peggotty’s; but I repeated in a
+whisper, ‘With the tide?’
+
+‘People can’t die, along the coast,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘except when
+the tide’s pretty nigh out. They can’t be born, unless it’s pretty nigh
+in--not properly born, till flood. He’s a going out with the tide. It’s
+ebb at half-arter three, slack water half an hour. If he lives till it
+turns, he’ll hold his own till past the flood, and go out with the next
+tide.’
+
+We remained there, watching him, a long time--hours. What mysterious
+influence my presence had upon him in that state of his senses, I shall
+not pretend to say; but when he at last began to wander feebly, it is
+certain he was muttering about driving me to school.
+
+‘He’s coming to himself,’ said Peggotty.
+
+Mr. Peggotty touched me, and whispered with much awe and reverence.
+‘They are both a-going out fast.’
+
+‘Barkis, my dear!’ said Peggotty.
+
+‘C. P. Barkis,’ he cried faintly. ‘No better woman anywhere!’
+
+‘Look! Here’s Master Davy!’ said Peggotty. For he now opened his eyes.
+
+I was on the point of asking him if he knew me, when he tried to stretch
+out his arm, and said to me, distinctly, with a pleasant smile:
+
+‘Barkis is willin’!’
+
+And, it being low water, he went out with the tide.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 31. A GREATER LOSS
+
+
+It was not difficult for me, on Peggotty’s solicitation, to resolve to
+stay where I was, until after the remains of the poor carrier should
+have made their last journey to Blunderstone. She had long ago bought,
+out of her own savings, a little piece of ground in our old churchyard
+near the grave of ‘her sweet girl’, as she always called my mother; and
+there they were to rest.
+
+In keeping Peggotty company, and doing all I could for her (little
+enough at the utmost), I was as grateful, I rejoice to think, as even
+now I could wish myself to have been. But I am afraid I had a supreme
+satisfaction, of a personal and professional nature, in taking charge of
+Mr. Barkis’s will, and expounding its contents.
+
+I may claim the merit of having originated the suggestion that the will
+should be looked for in the box. After some search, it was found in the
+box, at the bottom of a horse’s nose-bag; wherein (besides hay) there
+was discovered an old gold watch, with chain and seals, which Mr. Barkis
+had worn on his wedding-day, and which had never been seen before or
+since; a silver tobacco-stopper, in the form of a leg; an imitation
+lemon, full of minute cups and saucers, which I have some idea Mr.
+Barkis must have purchased to present to me when I was a child, and
+afterwards found himself unable to part with; eighty-seven guineas and
+a half, in guineas and half-guineas; two hundred and ten pounds, in
+perfectly clean Bank notes; certain receipts for Bank of England
+stock; an old horseshoe, a bad shilling, a piece of camphor, and an
+oyster-shell. From the circumstance of the latter article having
+been much polished, and displaying prismatic colours on the inside,
+I conclude that Mr. Barkis had some general ideas about pearls, which
+never resolved themselves into anything definite.
+
+For years and years, Mr. Barkis had carried this box, on all his
+journeys, every day. That it might the better escape notice, he had
+invented a fiction that it belonged to ‘Mr. Blackboy’, and was ‘to be
+left with Barkis till called for’; a fable he had elaborately written on
+the lid, in characters now scarcely legible.
+
+He had hoarded, all these years, I found, to good purpose. His property
+in money amounted to nearly three thousand pounds. Of this he bequeathed
+the interest of one thousand to Mr. Peggotty for his life; on his
+decease, the principal to be equally divided between Peggotty, little
+Emily, and me, or the survivor or survivors of us, share and share
+alike. All the rest he died possessed of, he bequeathed to Peggotty;
+whom he left residuary legatee, and sole executrix of that his last will
+and testament.
+
+I felt myself quite a proctor when I read this document aloud with all
+possible ceremony, and set forth its provisions, any number of times,
+to those whom they concerned. I began to think there was more in the
+Commons than I had supposed. I examined the will with the deepest
+attention, pronounced it perfectly formal in all respects, made a
+pencil-mark or so in the margin, and thought it rather extraordinary
+that I knew so much.
+
+In this abstruse pursuit; in making an account for Peggotty, of all the
+property into which she had come; in arranging all the affairs in an
+orderly manner; and in being her referee and adviser on every point, to
+our joint delight; I passed the week before the funeral. I did not see
+little Emily in that interval, but they told me she was to be quietly
+married in a fortnight.
+
+I did not attend the funeral in character, if I may venture to say so.
+I mean I was not dressed up in a black coat and a streamer, to frighten
+the birds; but I walked over to Blunderstone early in the morning, and
+was in the churchyard when it came, attended only by Peggotty and her
+brother. The mad gentleman looked on, out of my little window; Mr.
+Chillip’s baby wagged its heavy head, and rolled its goggle eyes, at
+the clergyman, over its nurse’s shoulder; Mr. Omer breathed short in
+the background; no one else was there; and it was very quiet. We walked
+about the churchyard for an hour, after all was over; and pulled some
+young leaves from the tree above my mother’s grave.
+
+A dread falls on me here. A cloud is lowering on the distant town,
+towards which I retraced my solitary steps. I fear to approach it. I
+cannot bear to think of what did come, upon that memorable night; of
+what must come again, if I go on.
+
+It is no worse, because I write of it. It would be no better, if I
+stopped my most unwilling hand. It is done. Nothing can undo it; nothing
+can make it otherwise than as it was.
+
+My old nurse was to go to London with me next day, on the business of
+the will. Little Emily was passing that day at Mr. Omer’s. We were all
+to meet in the old boathouse that night. Ham would bring Emily at the
+usual hour. I would walk back at my leisure. The brother and sister
+would return as they had come, and be expecting us, when the day closed
+in, at the fireside.
+
+I parted from them at the wicket-gate, where visionary Strap had rested
+with Roderick Random’s knapsack in the days of yore; and, instead of
+going straight back, walked a little distance on the road to Lowestoft.
+Then I turned, and walked back towards Yarmouth. I stayed to dine at
+a decent alehouse, some mile or two from the Ferry I have mentioned
+before; and thus the day wore away, and it was evening when I reached
+it. Rain was falling heavily by that time, and it was a wild night; but
+there was a moon behind the clouds, and it was not dark.
+
+I was soon within sight of Mr. Peggotty’s house, and of the light within
+it shining through the window. A little floundering across the sand,
+which was heavy, brought me to the door, and I went in.
+
+It looked very comfortable indeed. Mr. Peggotty had smoked his evening
+pipe and there were preparations for some supper by and by. The fire was
+bright, the ashes were thrown up, the locker was ready for little Emily
+in her old place. In her own old place sat Peggotty, once more, looking
+(but for her dress) as if she had never left it. She had fallen back,
+already, on the society of the work-box with St. Paul’s upon the lid,
+the yard-measure in the cottage, and the bit of wax-candle; and there
+they all were, just as if they had never been disturbed. Mrs. Gummidge
+appeared to be fretting a little, in her old corner; and consequently
+looked quite natural, too.
+
+‘You’re first of the lot, Mas’r Davy!’ said Mr. Peggotty with a happy
+face. ‘Doen’t keep in that coat, sir, if it’s wet.’
+
+‘Thank you, Mr. Peggotty,’ said I, giving him my outer coat to hang up.
+‘It’s quite dry.’
+
+‘So ‘tis!’ said Mr. Peggotty, feeling my shoulders. ‘As a chip! Sit ye
+down, sir. It ain’t o’ no use saying welcome to you, but you’re welcome,
+kind and hearty.’
+
+‘Thank you, Mr. Peggotty, I am sure of that. Well, Peggotty!’ said I,
+giving her a kiss. ‘And how are you, old woman?’
+
+‘Ha, ha!’ laughed Mr. Peggotty, sitting down beside us, and rubbing his
+hands in his sense of relief from recent trouble, and in the genuine
+heartiness of his nature; ‘there’s not a woman in the wureld, sir--as I
+tell her--that need to feel more easy in her mind than her! She done her
+dooty by the departed, and the departed know’d it; and the departed
+done what was right by her, as she done what was right by the
+departed;--and--and--and it’s all right!’
+
+Mrs. Gummidge groaned.
+
+‘Cheer up, my pritty mawther!’ said Mr. Peggotty. (But he shook his head
+aside at us, evidently sensible of the tendency of the late occurrences
+to recall the memory of the old one.) ‘Doen’t be down! Cheer up, for
+your own self, on’y a little bit, and see if a good deal more doen’t
+come nat’ral!’
+
+‘Not to me, Dan’l,’ returned Mrs. Gummidge. ‘Nothink’s nat’ral to me but
+to be lone and lorn.’
+
+‘No, no,’ said Mr. Peggotty, soothing her sorrows.
+
+‘Yes, yes, Dan’l!’ said Mrs. Gummidge. ‘I ain’t a person to live with
+them as has had money left. Things go too contrary with me. I had better
+be a riddance.’
+
+‘Why, how should I ever spend it without you?’ said Mr. Peggotty, with
+an air of serious remonstrance. ‘What are you a talking on? Doen’t I
+want you more now, than ever I did?’
+
+‘I know’d I was never wanted before!’ cried Mrs. Gummidge, with a
+pitiable whimper, ‘and now I’m told so! How could I expect to be wanted,
+being so lone and lorn, and so contrary!’
+
+Mr. Peggotty seemed very much shocked at himself for having made a
+speech capable of this unfeeling construction, but was prevented from
+replying, by Peggotty’s pulling his sleeve, and shaking her head. After
+looking at Mrs. Gummidge for some moments, in sore distress of mind, he
+glanced at the Dutch clock, rose, snuffed the candle, and put it in the
+window.
+
+‘Theer!’ said Mr. Peggotty, cheerily. ‘Theer we are, Missis Gummidge!’
+Mrs. Gummidge slightly groaned. ‘Lighted up, accordin’ to custom! You’re
+a wonderin’ what that’s fur, sir! Well, it’s fur our little Em’ly. You
+see, the path ain’t over light or cheerful arter dark; and when I’m
+here at the hour as she’s a comin’ home, I puts the light in the winder.
+That, you see,’ said Mr. Peggotty, bending over me with great glee,
+‘meets two objects. She says, says Em’ly, “Theer’s home!” she says. And
+likewise, says Em’ly, “My uncle’s theer!” Fur if I ain’t theer, I never
+have no light showed.’
+
+‘You’re a baby!’ said Peggotty; very fond of him for it, if she thought
+so.
+
+‘Well,’ returned Mr. Peggotty, standing with his legs pretty wide apart,
+and rubbing his hands up and down them in his comfortable satisfaction,
+as he looked alternately at us and at the fire. ‘I doen’t know but I am.
+Not, you see, to look at.’
+
+‘Not azackly,’ observed Peggotty.
+
+‘No,’ laughed Mr. Peggotty, ‘not to look at, but to--to consider on, you
+know. I doen’t care, bless you! Now I tell you. When I go a looking and
+looking about that theer pritty house of our Em’ly’s, I’m--I’m Gormed,’
+said Mr. Peggotty, with sudden emphasis--‘theer! I can’t say more--if
+I doen’t feel as if the littlest things was her, a’most. I takes ‘em up
+and I put ‘em down, and I touches of ‘em as delicate as if they was our
+Em’ly. So ‘tis with her little bonnets and that. I couldn’t see one on
+‘em rough used a purpose--not fur the whole wureld. There’s a babby fur
+you, in the form of a great Sea Porkypine!’ said Mr. Peggotty, relieving
+his earnestness with a roar of laughter.
+
+Peggotty and I both laughed, but not so loud.
+
+‘It’s my opinion, you see,’ said Mr. Peggotty, with a delighted face,
+after some further rubbing of his legs, ‘as this is along of my havin’
+played with her so much, and made believe as we was Turks, and French,
+and sharks, and every wariety of forinners--bless you, yes; and lions
+and whales, and I doen’t know what all!--when she warn’t no higher than
+my knee. I’ve got into the way on it, you know. Why, this here candle,
+now!’ said Mr. Peggotty, gleefully holding out his hand towards it,
+‘I know wery well that arter she’s married and gone, I shall put that
+candle theer, just the same as now. I know wery well that when I’m
+here o’ nights (and where else should I live, bless your arts, whatever
+fortun’ I come into!) and she ain’t here or I ain’t theer, I shall
+put the candle in the winder, and sit afore the fire, pretending I’m
+expecting of her, like I’m a doing now. THERE’S a babby for you,’ said
+Mr. Peggotty, with another roar, ‘in the form of a Sea Porkypine! Why,
+at the present minute, when I see the candle sparkle up, I says to
+myself, “She’s a looking at it! Em’ly’s a coming!” THERE’S a babby
+for you, in the form of a Sea Porkypine! Right for all that,’ said Mr.
+Peggotty, stopping in his roar, and smiting his hands together; ‘fur
+here she is!’
+
+It was only Ham. The night should have turned more wet since I came in,
+for he had a large sou’wester hat on, slouched over his face.
+
+‘Wheer’s Em’ly?’ said Mr. Peggotty.
+
+Ham made a motion with his head, as if she were outside. Mr. Peggotty
+took the light from the window, trimmed it, put it on the table, and was
+busily stirring the fire, when Ham, who had not moved, said:
+
+‘Mas’r Davy, will you come out a minute, and see what Em’ly and me has
+got to show you?’
+
+We went out. As I passed him at the door, I saw, to my astonishment and
+fright, that he was deadly pale. He pushed me hastily into the open air,
+and closed the door upon us. Only upon us two.
+
+‘Ham! what’s the matter?’
+
+‘Mas’r Davy!--’ Oh, for his broken heart, how dreadfully he wept!
+
+I was paralysed by the sight of such grief. I don’t know what I thought,
+or what I dreaded. I could only look at him.
+
+‘Ham! Poor good fellow! For Heaven’s sake, tell me what’s the matter!’
+
+‘My love, Mas’r Davy--the pride and hope of my art--her that I’d have
+died for, and would die for now--she’s gone!’
+
+‘Gone!’
+
+‘Em’ly’s run away! Oh, Mas’r Davy, think HOW she’s run away, when I
+pray my good and gracious God to kill her (her that is so dear above all
+things) sooner than let her come to ruin and disgrace!’
+
+The face he turned up to the troubled sky, the quivering of his clasped
+hands, the agony of his figure, remain associated with the lonely waste,
+in my remembrance, to this hour. It is always night there, and he is the
+only object in the scene.
+
+‘You’re a scholar,’ he said, hurriedly, ‘and know what’s right and
+best. What am I to say, indoors? How am I ever to break it to him, Mas’r
+Davy?’
+
+I saw the door move, and instinctively tried to hold the latch on the
+outside, to gain a moment’s time. It was too late. Mr. Peggotty thrust
+forth his face; and never could I forget the change that came upon it
+when he saw us, if I were to live five hundred years.
+
+I remember a great wail and cry, and the women hanging about him, and we
+all standing in the room; I with a paper in my hand, which Ham had given
+me; Mr. Peggotty, with his vest torn open, his hair wild, his face and
+lips quite white, and blood trickling down his bosom (it had sprung from
+his mouth, I think), looking fixedly at me.
+
+‘Read it, sir,’ he said, in a low shivering voice. ‘Slow, please. I
+doen’t know as I can understand.’
+
+In the midst of the silence of death, I read thus, from a blotted
+letter:
+
+
+‘“When you, who love me so much better than I ever have deserved, even
+when my mind was innocent, see this, I shall be far away.”’
+
+
+‘I shall be fur away,’ he repeated slowly. ‘Stop! Em’ly fur away. Well!’
+
+
+‘“When I leave my dear home--my dear home--oh, my dear home!--in the
+morning,”’
+
+the letter bore date on the previous night:
+
+
+’”--it will be never to come back, unless he brings me back a lady. This
+will be found at night, many hours after, instead of me. Oh, if you knew
+how my heart is torn. If even you, that I have wronged so much, that
+never can forgive me, could only know what I suffer! I am too wicked to
+write about myself! Oh, take comfort in thinking that I am so bad. Oh,
+for mercy’s sake, tell uncle that I never loved him half so dear as
+now. Oh, don’t remember how affectionate and kind you have all been to
+me--don’t remember we were ever to be married--but try to think as if I
+died when I was little, and was buried somewhere. Pray Heaven that I
+am going away from, have compassion on my uncle! Tell him that I never
+loved him half so dear. Be his comfort. Love some good girl that will
+be what I was once to uncle, and be true to you, and worthy of you, and
+know no shame but me. God bless all! I’ll pray for all, often, on my
+knees. If he don’t bring me back a lady, and I don’t pray for my own
+self, I’ll pray for all. My parting love to uncle. My last tears, and my
+last thanks, for uncle!”’
+
+That was all.
+
+He stood, long after I had ceased to read, still looking at me. At
+length I ventured to take his hand, and to entreat him, as well as
+I could, to endeavour to get some command of himself. He replied, ‘I
+thankee, sir, I thankee!’ without moving.
+
+Ham spoke to him. Mr. Peggotty was so far sensible of HIS affliction,
+that he wrung his hand; but, otherwise, he remained in the same state,
+and no one dared to disturb him.
+
+Slowly, at last, he moved his eyes from my face, as if he were waking
+from a vision, and cast them round the room. Then he said, in a low
+voice:
+
+‘Who’s the man? I want to know his name.’
+
+Ham glanced at me, and suddenly I felt a shock that struck me back.
+
+‘There’s a man suspected,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘Who is it?’
+
+‘Mas’r Davy!’ implored Ham. ‘Go out a bit, and let me tell him what I
+must. You doen’t ought to hear it, sir.’
+
+I felt the shock again. I sank down in a chair, and tried to utter some
+reply; but my tongue was fettered, and my sight was weak.
+
+‘I want to know his name!’ I heard said once more.
+
+‘For some time past,’ Ham faltered, ‘there’s been a servant about here,
+at odd times. There’s been a gen’lm’n too. Both of ‘em belonged to one
+another.’
+
+Mr. Peggotty stood fixed as before, but now looking at him.
+
+‘The servant,’ pursued Ham, ‘was seen along with--our poor girl--last
+night. He’s been in hiding about here, this week or over. He was thought
+to have gone, but he was hiding. Doen’t stay, Mas’r Davy, doen’t!’
+
+I felt Peggotty’s arm round my neck, but I could not have moved if the
+house had been about to fall upon me.
+
+‘A strange chay and hosses was outside town, this morning, on the
+Norwich road, a’most afore the day broke,’ Ham went on. ‘The servant
+went to it, and come from it, and went to it again. When he went to it
+again, Em’ly was nigh him. The t’other was inside. He’s the man.’
+
+‘For the Lord’s love,’ said Mr. Peggotty, falling back, and putting out
+his hand, as if to keep off what he dreaded. ‘Doen’t tell me his name’s
+Steerforth!’
+
+‘Mas’r Davy,’ exclaimed Ham, in a broken voice, ‘it ain’t no fault
+of yourn--and I am far from laying of it to you--but his name is
+Steerforth, and he’s a damned villain!’
+
+Mr. Peggotty uttered no cry, and shed no tear, and moved no more, until
+he seemed to wake again, all at once, and pulled down his rough coat
+from its peg in a corner.
+
+‘Bear a hand with this! I’m struck of a heap, and can’t do it,’ he said,
+impatiently. ‘Bear a hand and help me. Well!’ when somebody had done so.
+‘Now give me that theer hat!’
+
+Ham asked him whither he was going.
+
+‘I’m a going to seek my niece. I’m a going to seek my Em’ly. I’m a
+going, first, to stave in that theer boat, and sink it where I would
+have drownded him, as I’m a living soul, if I had had one thought of
+what was in him! As he sat afore me,’ he said, wildly, holding out his
+clenched right hand, ‘as he sat afore me, face to face, strike me down
+dead, but I’d have drownded him, and thought it right!--I’m a going to
+seek my niece.’
+
+‘Where?’ cried Ham, interposing himself before the door.
+
+‘Anywhere! I’m a going to seek my niece through the wureld. I’m a going
+to find my poor niece in her shame, and bring her back. No one stop me!
+I tell you I’m a going to seek my niece!’
+
+‘No, no!’ cried Mrs. Gummidge, coming between them, in a fit of crying.
+‘No, no, Dan’l, not as you are now. Seek her in a little while, my lone
+lorn Dan’l, and that’ll be but right! but not as you are now. Sit ye
+down, and give me your forgiveness for having ever been a worrit to you,
+Dan’l--what have my contraries ever been to this!--and let us speak a
+word about them times when she was first an orphan, and when Ham was
+too, and when I was a poor widder woman, and you took me in. It’ll
+soften your poor heart, Dan’l,’ laying her head upon his shoulder, ‘and
+you’ll bear your sorrow better; for you know the promise, Dan’l, “As
+you have done it unto one of the least of these, you have done it unto
+me”,--and that can never fail under this roof, that’s been our shelter
+for so many, many year!’
+
+He was quite passive now; and when I heard him crying, the impulse that
+had been upon me to go down upon my knees, and ask their pardon for the
+desolation I had caused, and curse Steerforth, yielded to a better
+feeling. My overcharged heart found the same relief, and I cried too.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 32. THE BEGINNING OF A LONG JOURNEY
+
+
+What is natural in me, is natural in many other men, I infer, and so
+I am not afraid to write that I never had loved Steerforth better than
+when the ties that bound me to him were broken. In the keen distress
+of the discovery of his unworthiness, I thought more of all that was
+brilliant in him, I softened more towards all that was good in him, I
+did more justice to the qualities that might have made him a man of a
+noble nature and a great name, than ever I had done in the height of
+my devotion to him. Deeply as I felt my own unconscious part in his
+pollution of an honest home, I believed that if I had been brought face
+to face with him, I could not have uttered one reproach. I should have
+loved him so well still--though he fascinated me no longer--I should
+have held in so much tenderness the memory of my affection for him, that
+I think I should have been as weak as a spirit-wounded child, in all
+but the entertainment of a thought that we could ever be re-united.
+That thought I never had. I felt, as he had felt, that all was at an end
+between us. What his remembrances of me were, I have never known--they
+were light enough, perhaps, and easily dismissed--but mine of him were
+as the remembrances of a cherished friend, who was dead.
+
+Yes, Steerforth, long removed from the scenes of this poor history! My
+sorrow may bear involuntary witness against you at the judgement Throne;
+but my angry thoughts or my reproaches never will, I know!
+
+The news of what had happened soon spread through the town; insomuch
+that as I passed along the streets next morning, I overheard the people
+speaking of it at their doors. Many were hard upon her, some few were
+hard upon him, but towards her second father and her lover there was
+but one sentiment. Among all kinds of people a respect for them in
+their distress prevailed, which was full of gentleness and delicacy. The
+seafaring men kept apart, when those two were seen early, walking with
+slow steps on the beach; and stood in knots, talking compassionately
+among themselves.
+
+It was on the beach, close down by the sea, that I found them. It would
+have been easy to perceive that they had not slept all last night, even
+if Peggotty had failed to tell me of their still sitting just as I
+left them, when it was broad day. They looked worn; and I thought Mr.
+Peggotty’s head was bowed in one night more than in all the years I had
+known him. But they were both as grave and steady as the sea itself,
+then lying beneath a dark sky, waveless--yet with a heavy roll upon it,
+as if it breathed in its rest--and touched, on the horizon, with a strip
+of silvery light from the unseen sun.
+
+‘We have had a mort of talk, sir,’ said Mr. Peggotty to me, when we had
+all three walked a little while in silence, ‘of what we ought and doen’t
+ought to do. But we see our course now.’
+
+I happened to glance at Ham, then looking out to sea upon the distant
+light, and a frightful thought came into my mind--not that his face
+was angry, for it was not; I recall nothing but an expression of stern
+determination in it--that if ever he encountered Steerforth, he would
+kill him.
+
+‘My dooty here, sir,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘is done. I’m a going to seek
+my--’ he stopped, and went on in a firmer voice: ‘I’m a going to seek
+her. That’s my dooty evermore.’
+
+He shook his head when I asked him where he would seek her, and inquired
+if I were going to London tomorrow? I told him I had not gone today,
+fearing to lose the chance of being of any service to him; but that I
+was ready to go when he would.
+
+‘I’ll go along with you, sir,’ he rejoined, ‘if you’re agreeable,
+tomorrow.’
+
+We walked again, for a while, in silence.
+
+‘Ham,’ he presently resumed, ‘he’ll hold to his present work, and go and
+live along with my sister. The old boat yonder--’
+
+‘Will you desert the old boat, Mr. Peggotty?’ I gently interposed.
+
+‘My station, Mas’r Davy,’ he returned, ‘ain’t there no longer; and if
+ever a boat foundered, since there was darkness on the face of the deep,
+that one’s gone down. But no, sir, no; I doen’t mean as it should be
+deserted. Fur from that.’
+
+We walked again for a while, as before, until he explained:
+
+‘My wishes is, sir, as it shall look, day and night, winter and summer,
+as it has always looked, since she fust know’d it. If ever she should
+come a wandering back, I wouldn’t have the old place seem to cast her
+off, you understand, but seem to tempt her to draw nigher to ‘t, and to
+peep in, maybe, like a ghost, out of the wind and rain, through the old
+winder, at the old seat by the fire. Then, maybe, Mas’r Davy, seein’
+none but Missis Gummidge there, she might take heart to creep in,
+trembling; and might come to be laid down in her old bed, and rest her
+weary head where it was once so gay.’
+
+I could not speak to him in reply, though I tried.
+
+‘Every night,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘as reg’lar as the night comes, the
+candle must be stood in its old pane of glass, that if ever she should
+see it, it may seem to say “Come back, my child, come back!” If ever
+there’s a knock, Ham (partic’ler a soft knock), arter dark, at your
+aunt’s door, doen’t you go nigh it. Let it be her--not you--that sees my
+fallen child!’
+
+He walked a little in front of us, and kept before us for some minutes.
+During this interval, I glanced at Ham again, and observing the same
+expression on his face, and his eyes still directed to the distant
+light, I touched his arm.
+
+Twice I called him by his name, in the tone in which I might have tried
+to rouse a sleeper, before he heeded me. When I at last inquired on what
+his thoughts were so bent, he replied:
+
+‘On what’s afore me, Mas’r Davy; and over yon.’ ‘On the life before you,
+do you mean?’ He had pointed confusedly out to sea.
+
+‘Ay, Mas’r Davy. I doen’t rightly know how ‘tis, but from over yon there
+seemed to me to come--the end of it like,’ looking at me as if he were
+waking, but with the same determined face.
+
+‘What end?’ I asked, possessed by my former fear.
+
+‘I doen’t know,’ he said, thoughtfully; ‘I was calling to mind that the
+beginning of it all did take place here--and then the end come. But it’s
+gone! Mas’r Davy,’ he added; answering, as I think, my look; ‘you han’t
+no call to be afeerd of me: but I’m kiender muddled; I don’t fare to
+feel no matters,’--which was as much as to say that he was not himself,
+and quite confounded.
+
+Mr. Peggotty stopping for us to join him: we did so, and said no more.
+The remembrance of this, in connexion with my former thought, however,
+haunted me at intervals, even until the inexorable end came at its
+appointed time.
+
+We insensibly approached the old boat, and entered. Mrs. Gummidge, no
+longer moping in her especial corner, was busy preparing breakfast.
+She took Mr. Peggotty’s hat, and placed his seat for him, and spoke so
+comfortably and softly, that I hardly knew her.
+
+‘Dan’l, my good man,’ said she, ‘you must eat and drink, and keep up
+your strength, for without it you’ll do nowt. Try, that’s a dear soul!
+An if I disturb you with my clicketten,’ she meant her chattering, ‘tell
+me so, Dan’l, and I won’t.’
+
+When she had served us all, she withdrew to the window, where she
+sedulously employed herself in repairing some shirts and other clothes
+belonging to Mr. Peggotty, and neatly folding and packing them in an old
+oilskin bag, such as sailors carry. Meanwhile, she continued talking, in
+the same quiet manner:
+
+‘All times and seasons, you know, Dan’l,’ said Mrs. Gummidge, ‘I shall
+be allus here, and everythink will look accordin’ to your wishes. I’m a
+poor scholar, but I shall write to you, odd times, when you’re away, and
+send my letters to Mas’r Davy. Maybe you’ll write to me too, Dan’l, odd
+times, and tell me how you fare to feel upon your lone lorn journies.’
+
+‘You’ll be a solitary woman heer, I’m afeerd!’ said Mr. Peggotty.
+
+‘No, no, Dan’l,’ she returned, ‘I shan’t be that. Doen’t you mind me. I
+shall have enough to do to keep a Beein for you’ (Mrs. Gummidge meant a
+home), ‘again you come back--to keep a Beein here for any that may hap
+to come back, Dan’l. In the fine time, I shall set outside the door as I
+used to do. If any should come nigh, they shall see the old widder woman
+true to ‘em, a long way off.’
+
+What a change in Mrs. Gummidge in a little time! She was another woman.
+She was so devoted, she had such a quick perception of what it would
+be well to say, and what it would be well to leave unsaid; she was so
+forgetful of herself, and so regardful of the sorrow about her, that I
+held her in a sort of veneration. The work she did that day! There
+were many things to be brought up from the beach and stored in the
+outhouse--as oars, nets, sails, cordage, spars, lobster-pots, bags of
+ballast, and the like; and though there was abundance of assistance
+rendered, there being not a pair of working hands on all that shore but
+would have laboured hard for Mr. Peggotty, and been well paid in being
+asked to do it, yet she persisted, all day long, in toiling under
+weights that she was quite unequal to, and fagging to and fro on all
+sorts of unnecessary errands. As to deploring her misfortunes, she
+appeared to have entirely lost the recollection of ever having had any.
+She preserved an equable cheerfulness in the midst of her sympathy,
+which was not the least astonishing part of the change that had come
+over her. Querulousness was out of the question. I did not even observe
+her voice to falter, or a tear to escape from her eyes, the whole day
+through, until twilight; when she and I and Mr. Peggotty being alone
+together, and he having fallen asleep in perfect exhaustion, she broke
+into a half-suppressed fit of sobbing and crying, and taking me to the
+door, said, ‘Ever bless you, Mas’r Davy, be a friend to him, poor dear!’
+Then, she immediately ran out of the house to wash her face, in order
+that she might sit quietly beside him, and be found at work there, when
+he should awake. In short I left her, when I went away at night, the
+prop and staff of Mr. Peggotty’s affliction; and I could not meditate
+enough upon the lesson that I read in Mrs. Gummidge, and the new
+experience she unfolded to me.
+
+It was between nine and ten o’clock when, strolling in a melancholy
+manner through the town, I stopped at Mr. Omer’s door. Mr. Omer had
+taken it so much to heart, his daughter told me, that he had been very
+low and poorly all day, and had gone to bed without his pipe.
+
+‘A deceitful, bad-hearted girl,’ said Mrs. Joram. ‘There was no good in
+her, ever!’
+
+‘Don’t say so,’ I returned. ‘You don’t think so.’
+
+‘Yes, I do!’ cried Mrs. Joram, angrily.
+
+‘No, no,’ said I.
+
+Mrs. Joram tossed her head, endeavouring to be very stern and cross; but
+she could not command her softer self, and began to cry. I was young,
+to be sure; but I thought much the better of her for this sympathy, and
+fancied it became her, as a virtuous wife and mother, very well indeed.
+
+‘What will she ever do!’ sobbed Minnie. ‘Where will she go! What will
+become of her! Oh, how could she be so cruel, to herself and him!’
+
+I remembered the time when Minnie was a young and pretty girl; and I was
+glad she remembered it too, so feelingly.
+
+‘My little Minnie,’ said Mrs. Joram, ‘has only just now been got to
+sleep. Even in her sleep she is sobbing for Em’ly. All day long, little
+Minnie has cried for her, and asked me, over and over again, whether
+Em’ly was wicked? What can I say to her, when Em’ly tied a ribbon off
+her own neck round little Minnie’s the last night she was here, and laid
+her head down on the pillow beside her till she was fast asleep! The
+ribbon’s round my little Minnie’s neck now. It ought not to be, perhaps,
+but what can I do? Em’ly is very bad, but they were fond of one another.
+And the child knows nothing!’
+
+Mrs. Joram was so unhappy that her husband came out to take care of
+her. Leaving them together, I went home to Peggotty’s; more melancholy
+myself, if possible, than I had been yet.
+
+That good creature--I mean Peggotty--all untired by her late anxieties
+and sleepless nights, was at her brother’s, where she meant to stay till
+morning. An old woman, who had been employed about the house for some
+weeks past, while Peggotty had been unable to attend to it, was the
+house’s only other occupant besides myself. As I had no occasion for her
+services, I sent her to bed, by no means against her will, and sat down
+before the kitchen fire a little while, to think about all this.
+
+I was blending it with the deathbed of the late Mr. Barkis, and was
+driving out with the tide towards the distance at which Ham had looked
+so singularly in the morning, when I was recalled from my wanderings by
+a knock at the door. There was a knocker upon the door, but it was not
+that which made the sound. The tap was from a hand, and low down upon
+the door, as if it were given by a child.
+
+It made me start as much as if it had been the knock of a footman to a
+person of distinction. I opened the door; and at first looked down,
+to my amazement, on nothing but a great umbrella that appeared to be
+walking about of itself. But presently I discovered underneath it, Miss
+Mowcher.
+
+I might not have been prepared to give the little creature a very kind
+reception, if, on her removing the umbrella, which her utmost efforts
+were unable to shut up, she had shown me the ‘volatile’ expression of
+face which had made so great an impression on me at our first and last
+meeting. But her face, as she turned it up to mine, was so earnest;
+and when I relieved her of the umbrella (which would have been an
+inconvenient one for the Irish Giant), she wrung her little hands in
+such an afflicted manner; that I rather inclined towards her.
+
+‘Miss Mowcher!’ said I, after glancing up and down the empty street,
+without distinctly knowing what I expected to see besides; ‘how do you
+come here? What is the matter?’ She motioned to me with her short right
+arm, to shut the umbrella for her; and passing me hurriedly, went into
+the kitchen. When I had closed the door, and followed, with the umbrella
+in my hand, I found her sitting on the corner of the fender--it was a
+low iron one, with two flat bars at top to stand plates upon--in the
+shadow of the boiler, swaying herself backwards and forwards, and
+chafing her hands upon her knees like a person in pain.
+
+Quite alarmed at being the only recipient of this untimely visit, and
+the only spectator of this portentous behaviour, I exclaimed again,
+‘Pray tell me, Miss Mowcher, what is the matter! are you ill?’
+
+‘My dear young soul,’ returned Miss Mowcher, squeezing her hands upon
+her heart one over the other. ‘I am ill here, I am very ill. To think
+that it should come to this, when I might have known it and perhaps
+prevented it, if I hadn’t been a thoughtless fool!’
+
+Again her large bonnet (very disproportionate to the figure) went
+backwards and forwards, in her swaying of her little body to and fro;
+while a most gigantic bonnet rocked, in unison with it, upon the wall.
+
+‘I am surprised,’ I began, ‘to see you so distressed and serious’--when
+she interrupted me.
+
+‘Yes, it’s always so!’ she said. ‘They are all surprised, these
+inconsiderate young people, fairly and full grown, to see any natural
+feeling in a little thing like me! They make a plaything of me, use me
+for their amusement, throw me away when they are tired, and wonder that
+I feel more than a toy horse or a wooden soldier! Yes, yes, that’s the
+way. The old way!’
+
+‘It may be, with others,’ I returned, ‘but I do assure you it is not
+with me. Perhaps I ought not to be at all surprised to see you as you
+are now: I know so little of you. I said, without consideration, what I
+thought.’
+
+‘What can I do?’ returned the little woman, standing up, and holding out
+her arms to show herself. ‘See! What I am, my father was; and my sister
+is; and my brother is. I have worked for sister and brother these many
+years--hard, Mr. Copperfield--all day. I must live. I do no harm. If
+there are people so unreflecting or so cruel, as to make a jest of
+me, what is left for me to do but to make a jest of myself, them, and
+everything? If I do so, for the time, whose fault is that? Mine?’
+
+No. Not Miss Mowcher’s, I perceived.
+
+‘If I had shown myself a sensitive dwarf to your false friend,’ pursued
+the little woman, shaking her head at me, with reproachful earnestness,
+‘how much of his help or good will do you think I should ever have had?
+If little Mowcher (who had no hand, young gentleman, in the making of
+herself) addressed herself to him, or the like of him, because of her
+misfortunes, when do you suppose her small voice would have been heard?
+Little Mowcher would have as much need to live, if she was the bitterest
+and dullest of pigmies; but she couldn’t do it. No. She might whistle
+for her bread and butter till she died of Air.’
+
+Miss Mowcher sat down on the fender again, and took out her
+handkerchief, and wiped her eyes.
+
+‘Be thankful for me, if you have a kind heart, as I think you have,’ she
+said, ‘that while I know well what I am, I can be cheerful and endure it
+all. I am thankful for myself, at any rate, that I can find my tiny way
+through the world, without being beholden to anyone; and that in return
+for all that is thrown at me, in folly or vanity, as I go along, I can
+throw bubbles back. If I don’t brood over all I want, it is the better
+for me, and not the worse for anyone. If I am a plaything for you
+giants, be gentle with me.’
+
+Miss Mowcher replaced her handkerchief in her pocket, looking at me with
+very intent expression all the while, and pursued:
+
+‘I saw you in the street just now. You may suppose I am not able to
+walk as fast as you, with my short legs and short breath, and I couldn’t
+overtake you; but I guessed where you came, and came after you. I have
+been here before, today, but the good woman wasn’t at home.’
+
+‘Do you know her?’ I demanded.
+
+‘I know of her, and about her,’ she replied, ‘from Omer and Joram. I
+was there at seven o’clock this morning. Do you remember what Steerforth
+said to me about this unfortunate girl, that time when I saw you both at
+the inn?’
+
+The great bonnet on Miss Mowcher’s head, and the greater bonnet on
+the wall, began to go backwards and forwards again when she asked this
+question.
+
+I remembered very well what she referred to, having had it in my
+thoughts many times that day. I told her so.
+
+‘May the Father of all Evil confound him,’ said the little woman,
+holding up her forefinger between me and her sparkling eyes, ‘and ten
+times more confound that wicked servant; but I believed it was YOU who
+had a boyish passion for her!’
+
+‘I?’ I repeated.
+
+‘Child, child! In the name of blind ill-fortune,’ cried Miss Mowcher,
+wringing her hands impatiently, as she went to and fro again upon the
+fender, ‘why did you praise her so, and blush, and look disturbed?’
+
+I could not conceal from myself that I had done this, though for a
+reason very different from her supposition.
+
+‘What did I know?’ said Miss Mowcher, taking out her handkerchief again,
+and giving one little stamp on the ground whenever, at short intervals,
+she applied it to her eyes with both hands at once. ‘He was crossing you
+and wheedling you, I saw; and you were soft wax in his hands, I saw. Had
+I left the room a minute, when his man told me that “Young Innocence”
+ (so he called you, and you may call him “Old Guilt” all the days of your
+life) had set his heart upon her, and she was giddy and liked him, but
+his master was resolved that no harm should come of it--more for your
+sake than for hers--and that that was their business here? How could I
+BUT believe him? I saw Steerforth soothe and please you by his praise
+of her! You were the first to mention her name. You owned to an old
+admiration of her. You were hot and cold, and red and white, all at once
+when I spoke to you of her. What could I think--what DID I think--but
+that you were a young libertine in everything but experience, and had
+fallen into hands that had experience enough, and could manage you
+(having the fancy) for your own good? Oh! oh! oh! They were afraid of my
+finding out the truth,’ exclaimed Miss Mowcher, getting off the
+fender, and trotting up and down the kitchen with her two short arms
+distressfully lifted up, ‘because I am a sharp little thing--I need be,
+to get through the world at all!--and they deceived me altogether, and
+I gave the poor unfortunate girl a letter, which I fully believe was
+the beginning of her ever speaking to Littimer, who was left behind on
+purpose!’
+
+I stood amazed at the revelation of all this perfidy, looking at Miss
+Mowcher as she walked up and down the kitchen until she was out of
+breath: when she sat upon the fender again, and, drying her face with
+her handkerchief, shook her head for a long time, without otherwise
+moving, and without breaking silence.
+
+‘My country rounds,’ she added at length, ‘brought me to Norwich, Mr.
+Copperfield, the night before last. What I happened to find there,
+about their secret way of coming and going, without you--which was
+strange--led to my suspecting something wrong. I got into the coach
+from London last night, as it came through Norwich, and was here this
+morning. Oh, oh, oh! too late!’
+
+Poor little Mowcher turned so chilly after all her crying and fretting,
+that she turned round on the fender, putting her poor little wet feet in
+among the ashes to warm them, and sat looking at the fire, like a large
+doll. I sat in a chair on the other side of the hearth, lost in unhappy
+reflections, and looking at the fire too, and sometimes at her.
+
+‘I must go,’ she said at last, rising as she spoke. ‘It’s late. You
+don’t mistrust me?’
+
+Meeting her sharp glance, which was as sharp as ever when she asked me,
+I could not on that short challenge answer no, quite frankly.
+
+‘Come!’ said she, accepting the offer of my hand to help her over the
+fender, and looking wistfully up into my face, ‘you know you wouldn’t
+mistrust me, if I was a full-sized woman!’
+
+I felt that there was much truth in this; and I felt rather ashamed of
+myself.
+
+‘You are a young man,’ she said, nodding. ‘Take a word of advice,
+even from three foot nothing. Try not to associate bodily defects with
+mental, my good friend, except for a solid reason.’
+
+She had got over the fender now, and I had got over my suspicion. I told
+her that I believed she had given me a faithful account of herself,
+and that we had both been hapless instruments in designing hands. She
+thanked me, and said I was a good fellow.
+
+‘Now, mind!’ she exclaimed, turning back on her way to the door, and
+looking shrewdly at me, with her forefinger up again.--‘I have some
+reason to suspect, from what I have heard--my ears are always open; I
+can’t afford to spare what powers I have--that they are gone abroad. But
+if ever they return, if ever any one of them returns, while I am alive,
+I am more likely than another, going about as I do, to find it out soon.
+Whatever I know, you shall know. If ever I can do anything to serve the
+poor betrayed girl, I will do it faithfully, please Heaven! And Littimer
+had better have a bloodhound at his back, than little Mowcher!’
+
+I placed implicit faith in this last statement, when I marked the look
+with which it was accompanied.
+
+‘Trust me no more, but trust me no less, than you would trust a
+full-sized woman,’ said the little creature, touching me appealingly
+on the wrist. ‘If ever you see me again, unlike what I am now, and like
+what I was when you first saw me, observe what company I am in. Call to
+mind that I am a very helpless and defenceless little thing. Think of
+me at home with my brother like myself and sister like myself, when my
+day’s work is done. Perhaps you won’t, then, be very hard upon me, or
+surprised if I can be distressed and serious. Good night!’
+
+I gave Miss Mowcher my hand, with a very different opinion of her from
+that which I had hitherto entertained, and opened the door to let her
+out. It was not a trifling business to get the great umbrella up, and
+properly balanced in her grasp; but at last I successfully accomplished
+this, and saw it go bobbing down the street through the rain, without
+the least appearance of having anybody underneath it, except when a
+heavier fall than usual from some over-charged water-spout sent it
+toppling over, on one side, and discovered Miss Mowcher struggling
+violently to get it right. After making one or two sallies to her
+relief, which were rendered futile by the umbrella’s hopping on again,
+like an immense bird, before I could reach it, I came in, went to bed,
+and slept till morning.
+
+In the morning I was joined by Mr. Peggotty and by my old nurse, and we
+went at an early hour to the coach office, where Mrs. Gummidge and Ham
+were waiting to take leave of us.
+
+‘Mas’r Davy,’ Ham whispered, drawing me aside, while Mr. Peggotty was
+stowing his bag among the luggage, ‘his life is quite broke up. He
+doen’t know wheer he’s going; he doen’t know--what’s afore him; he’s
+bound upon a voyage that’ll last, on and off, all the rest of his days,
+take my wured for ‘t, unless he finds what he’s a seeking of. I am sure
+you’ll be a friend to him, Mas’r Davy?’
+
+‘Trust me, I will indeed,’ said I, shaking hands with Ham earnestly.
+
+‘Thankee. Thankee, very kind, sir. One thing furder. I’m in good employ,
+you know, Mas’r Davy, and I han’t no way now of spending what I gets.
+Money’s of no use to me no more, except to live. If you can lay it out
+for him, I shall do my work with a better art. Though as to that, sir,’
+and he spoke very steadily and mildly, ‘you’re not to think but I shall
+work at all times, like a man, and act the best that lays in my power!’
+
+I told him I was well convinced of it; and I hinted that I hoped the
+time might even come, when he would cease to lead the lonely life he
+naturally contemplated now.
+
+‘No, sir,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘all that’s past and over with me,
+sir. No one can never fill the place that’s empty. But you’ll bear in
+mind about the money, as theer’s at all times some laying by for him?’
+
+Reminding him of the fact, that Mr. Peggotty derived a steady,
+though certainly a very moderate income from the bequest of his late
+brother-in-law, I promised to do so. We then took leave of each other. I
+cannot leave him even now, without remembering with a pang, at once his
+modest fortitude and his great sorrow.
+
+As to Mrs. Gummidge, if I were to endeavour to describe how she ran down
+the street by the side of the coach, seeing nothing but Mr. Peggotty on
+the roof, through the tears she tried to repress, and dashing herself
+against the people who were coming in the opposite direction, I should
+enter on a task of some difficulty. Therefore I had better leave her
+sitting on a baker’s door-step, out of breath, with no shape at all
+remaining in her bonnet, and one of her shoes off, lying on the pavement
+at a considerable distance.
+
+When we got to our journey’s end, our first pursuit was to look about
+for a little lodging for Peggotty, where her brother could have a
+bed. We were so fortunate as to find one, of a very clean and cheap
+description, over a chandler’s shop, only two streets removed from
+me. When we had engaged this domicile, I bought some cold meat at an
+eating-house, and took my fellow-travellers home to tea; a proceeding,
+I regret to state, which did not meet with Mrs. Crupp’s approval, but
+quite the contrary. I ought to observe, however, in explanation of that
+lady’s state of mind, that she was much offended by Peggotty’s tucking
+up her widow’s gown before she had been ten minutes in the place, and
+setting to work to dust my bedroom. This Mrs. Crupp regarded in the
+light of a liberty, and a liberty, she said, was a thing she never
+allowed.
+
+Mr. Peggotty had made a communication to me on the way to London for
+which I was not unprepared. It was, that he purposed first seeing Mrs.
+Steerforth. As I felt bound to assist him in this, and also to mediate
+between them; with the view of sparing the mother’s feelings as much
+as possible, I wrote to her that night. I told her as mildly as I could
+what his wrong was, and what my own share in his injury. I said he was a
+man in very common life, but of a most gentle and upright character; and
+that I ventured to express a hope that she would not refuse to see him
+in his heavy trouble. I mentioned two o’clock in the afternoon as the
+hour of our coming, and I sent the letter myself by the first coach in
+the morning.
+
+At the appointed time, we stood at the door--the door of that house
+where I had been, a few days since, so happy: where my youthful
+confidence and warmth of heart had been yielded up so freely: which was
+closed against me henceforth: which was now a waste, a ruin.
+
+No Littimer appeared. The pleasanter face which had replaced his, on the
+occasion of my last visit, answered to our summons, and went before
+us to the drawing-room. Mrs. Steerforth was sitting there. Rosa Dartle
+glided, as we went in, from another part of the room and stood behind
+her chair.
+
+I saw, directly, in his mother’s face, that she knew from himself what
+he had done. It was very pale; and bore the traces of deeper emotion
+than my letter alone, weakened by the doubts her fondness would have
+raised upon it, would have been likely to create. I thought her more
+like him than ever I had thought her; and I felt, rather than saw, that
+the resemblance was not lost on my companion.
+
+She sat upright in her arm-chair, with a stately, immovable, passionless
+air, that it seemed as if nothing could disturb. She looked very
+steadfastly at Mr. Peggotty when he stood before her; and he looked
+quite as steadfastly at her. Rosa Dartle’s keen glance comprehended all
+of us. For some moments not a word was spoken.
+
+She motioned to Mr. Peggotty to be seated. He said, in a low voice, ‘I
+shouldn’t feel it nat’ral, ma’am, to sit down in this house. I’d sooner
+stand.’ And this was succeeded by another silence, which she broke thus:
+
+‘I know, with deep regret, what has brought you here. What do you want
+of me? What do you ask me to do?’
+
+He put his hat under his arm, and feeling in his breast for Emily’s
+letter, took it out, unfolded it, and gave it to her. ‘Please to read
+that, ma’am. That’s my niece’s hand!’
+
+She read it, in the same stately and impassive way,--untouched by its
+contents, as far as I could see,--and returned it to him.
+
+‘“Unless he brings me back a lady,”’ said Mr. Peggotty, tracing out that
+part with his finger. ‘I come to know, ma’am, whether he will keep his
+wured?’
+
+‘No,’ she returned.
+
+‘Why not?’ said Mr. Peggotty.
+
+‘It is impossible. He would disgrace himself. You cannot fail to know
+that she is far below him.’
+
+‘Raise her up!’ said Mr. Peggotty.
+
+‘She is uneducated and ignorant.’
+
+‘Maybe she’s not; maybe she is,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘I think not, ma’am;
+but I’m no judge of them things. Teach her better!’
+
+‘Since you oblige me to speak more plainly, which I am very unwilling
+to do, her humble connexions would render such a thing impossible, if
+nothing else did.’
+
+‘Hark to this, ma’am,’ he returned, slowly and quietly. ‘You know what
+it is to love your child. So do I. If she was a hundred times my child,
+I couldn’t love her more. You doen’t know what it is to lose your child.
+I do. All the heaps of riches in the wureld would be nowt to me (if they
+was mine) to buy her back! But, save her from this disgrace, and she
+shall never be disgraced by us. Not one of us that she’s growed up
+among, not one of us that’s lived along with her and had her for their
+all in all, these many year, will ever look upon her pritty face again.
+We’ll be content to let her be; we’ll be content to think of her, far
+off, as if she was underneath another sun and sky; we’ll be content to
+trust her to her husband,--to her little children, p’raps,--and bide the
+time when all of us shall be alike in quality afore our God!’
+
+The rugged eloquence with which he spoke, was not devoid of all effect.
+She still preserved her proud manner, but there was a touch of softness
+in her voice, as she answered:
+
+‘I justify nothing. I make no counter-accusations. But I am sorry to
+repeat, it is impossible. Such a marriage would irretrievably blight my
+son’s career, and ruin his prospects. Nothing is more certain than
+that it never can take place, and never will. If there is any other
+compensation--’
+
+‘I am looking at the likeness of the face,’ interrupted Mr. Peggotty,
+with a steady but a kindling eye, ‘that has looked at me, in my home, at
+my fireside, in my boat--wheer not?---smiling and friendly, when it was
+so treacherous, that I go half wild when I think of it. If the likeness
+of that face don’t turn to burning fire, at the thought of offering
+money to me for my child’s blight and ruin, it’s as bad. I doen’t know,
+being a lady’s, but what it’s worse.’
+
+She changed now, in a moment. An angry flush overspread her features;
+and she said, in an intolerant manner, grasping the arm-chair tightly
+with her hands:
+
+‘What compensation can you make to ME for opening such a pit between me
+and my son? What is your love to mine? What is your separation to ours?’
+
+Miss Dartle softly touched her, and bent down her head to whisper, but
+she would not hear a word.
+
+‘No, Rosa, not a word! Let the man listen to what I say! My son, who has
+been the object of my life, to whom its every thought has been devoted,
+whom I have gratified from a child in every wish, from whom I have had
+no separate existence since his birth,--to take up in a moment with a
+miserable girl, and avoid me! To repay my confidence with systematic
+deception, for her sake, and quit me for her! To set this wretched
+fancy, against his mother’s claims upon his duty, love, respect,
+gratitude--claims that every day and hour of his life should have
+strengthened into ties that nothing could be proof against! Is this no
+injury?’
+
+Again Rosa Dartle tried to soothe her; again ineffectually.
+
+‘I say, Rosa, not a word! If he can stake his all upon the lightest
+object, I can stake my all upon a greater purpose. Let him go where he
+will, with the means that my love has secured to him! Does he think to
+reduce me by long absence? He knows his mother very little if he does.
+Let him put away his whim now, and he is welcome back. Let him not put
+her away now, and he never shall come near me, living or dying, while
+I can raise my hand to make a sign against it, unless, being rid of her
+for ever, he comes humbly to me and begs for my forgiveness. This is my
+right. This is the acknowledgement I WILL HAVE. This is the separation
+that there is between us! And is this,’ she added, looking at her
+visitor with the proud intolerant air with which she had begun, ‘no
+injury?’
+
+While I heard and saw the mother as she said these words, I seemed to
+hear and see the son, defying them. All that I had ever seen in him of
+an unyielding, wilful spirit, I saw in her. All the understanding that
+I had now of his misdirected energy, became an understanding of her
+character too, and a perception that it was, in its strongest springs,
+the same.
+
+She now observed to me, aloud, resuming her former restraint, that it
+was useless to hear more, or to say more, and that she begged to put an
+end to the interview. She rose with an air of dignity to leave the room,
+when Mr. Peggotty signified that it was needless.
+
+‘Doen’t fear me being any hindrance to you, I have no more to say,
+ma’am,’ he remarked, as he moved towards the door. ‘I come heer with no
+hope, and I take away no hope. I have done what I thowt should be done,
+but I never looked fur any good to come of my stan’ning where I do.
+This has been too evil a house fur me and mine, fur me to be in my right
+senses and expect it.’
+
+With this, we departed; leaving her standing by her elbow-chair, a
+picture of a noble presence and a handsome face.
+
+We had, on our way out, to cross a paved hall, with glass sides and
+roof, over which a vine was trained. Its leaves and shoots were green
+then, and the day being sunny, a pair of glass doors leading to the
+garden were thrown open. Rosa Dartle, entering this way with a noiseless
+step, when we were close to them, addressed herself to me:
+
+‘You do well,’ she said, ‘indeed, to bring this fellow here!’
+
+Such a concentration of rage and scorn as darkened her face, and flashed
+in her jet-black eyes, I could not have thought compressible even into
+that face. The scar made by the hammer was, as usual in this excited
+state of her features, strongly marked. When the throbbing I had seen
+before, came into it as I looked at her, she absolutely lifted up her
+hand, and struck it.
+
+‘This is a fellow,’ she said, ‘to champion and bring here, is he not?
+You are a true man!’
+
+‘Miss Dartle,’ I returned, ‘you are surely not so unjust as to condemn
+ME!’
+
+‘Why do you bring division between these two mad creatures?’ she
+returned. ‘Don’t you know that they are both mad with their own
+self-will and pride?’
+
+‘Is it my doing?’ I returned.
+
+‘Is it your doing!’ she retorted. ‘Why do you bring this man here?’
+
+‘He is a deeply-injured man, Miss Dartle,’ I replied. ‘You may not know
+it.’
+
+‘I know that James Steerforth,’ she said, with her hand on her bosom, as
+if to prevent the storm that was raging there, from being loud, ‘has
+a false, corrupt heart, and is a traitor. But what need I know or care
+about this fellow, and his common niece?’
+
+‘Miss Dartle,’ I returned, ‘you deepen the injury. It is sufficient
+already. I will only say, at parting, that you do him a great wrong.’
+
+‘I do him no wrong,’ she returned. ‘They are a depraved, worthless set.
+I would have her whipped!’
+
+Mr. Peggotty passed on, without a word, and went out at the door.
+
+‘Oh, shame, Miss Dartle! shame!’ I said indignantly. ‘How can you bear
+to trample on his undeserved affliction!’
+
+‘I would trample on them all,’ she answered. ‘I would have his house
+pulled down. I would have her branded on the face, dressed in rags,
+and cast out in the streets to starve. If I had the power to sit in
+judgement on her, I would see it done. See it done? I would do it! I
+detest her. If I ever could reproach her with her infamous condition, I
+would go anywhere to do so. If I could hunt her to her grave, I would.
+If there was any word of comfort that would be a solace to her in her
+dying hour, and only I possessed it, I wouldn’t part with it for Life
+itself.’
+
+The mere vehemence of her words can convey, I am sensible, but a weak
+impression of the passion by which she was possessed, and which made
+itself articulate in her whole figure, though her voice, instead of
+being raised, was lower than usual. No description I could give of her
+would do justice to my recollection of her, or to her entire deliverance
+of herself to her anger. I have seen passion in many forms, but I have
+never seen it in such a form as that.
+
+When I joined Mr. Peggotty, he was walking slowly and thoughtfully down
+the hill. He told me, as soon as I came up with him, that having now
+discharged his mind of what he had purposed doing in London, he meant
+‘to set out on his travels’, that night. I asked him where he meant to
+go? He only answered, ‘I’m a going, sir, to seek my niece.’
+
+We went back to the little lodging over the chandler’s shop, and there
+I found an opportunity of repeating to Peggotty what he had said to
+me. She informed me, in return, that he had said the same to her that
+morning. She knew no more than I did, where he was going, but she
+thought he had some project shaped out in his mind.
+
+I did not like to leave him, under such circumstances, and we all three
+dined together off a beefsteak pie--which was one of the many good
+things for which Peggotty was famous--and which was curiously flavoured
+on this occasion, I recollect well, by a miscellaneous taste of tea,
+coffee, butter, bacon, cheese, new loaves, firewood, candles, and walnut
+ketchup, continually ascending from the shop. After dinner we sat for an
+hour or so near the window, without talking much; and then Mr. Peggotty
+got up, and brought his oilskin bag and his stout stick, and laid them
+on the table.
+
+He accepted, from his sister’s stock of ready money, a small sum on
+account of his legacy; barely enough, I should have thought, to keep him
+for a month. He promised to communicate with me, when anything befell
+him; and he slung his bag about him, took his hat and stick, and bade us
+both ‘Good-bye!’
+
+‘All good attend you, dear old woman,’ he said, embracing Peggotty, ‘and
+you too, Mas’r Davy!’ shaking hands with me. ‘I’m a-going to seek her,
+fur and wide. If she should come home while I’m away--but ah, that ain’t
+like to be!--or if I should bring her back, my meaning is, that she
+and me shall live and die where no one can’t reproach her. If any hurt
+should come to me, remember that the last words I left for her was, “My
+unchanged love is with my darling child, and I forgive her!”’
+
+He said this solemnly, bare-headed; then, putting on his hat, he went
+down the stairs, and away. We followed to the door. It was a warm, dusty
+evening, just the time when, in the great main thoroughfare out of which
+that by-way turned, there was a temporary lull in the eternal tread of
+feet upon the pavement, and a strong red sunshine. He turned, alone, at
+the corner of our shady street, into a glow of light, in which we lost
+him.
+
+Rarely did that hour of the evening come, rarely did I wake at night,
+rarely did I look up at the moon, or stars, or watch the falling rain,
+or hear the wind, but I thought of his solitary figure toiling on, poor
+pilgrim, and recalled the words:
+
+‘I’m a going to seek her, fur and wide. If any hurt should come to me,
+remember that the last words I left for her was, “My unchanged love is
+with my darling child, and I forgive her!”’
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 33. BLISSFUL
+
+
+All this time, I had gone on loving Dora, harder than ever. Her idea was
+my refuge in disappointment and distress, and made some amends to me,
+even for the loss of my friend. The more I pitied myself, or pitied
+others, the more I sought for consolation in the image of Dora. The
+greater the accumulation of deceit and trouble in the world, the
+brighter and the purer shone the star of Dora high above the world. I
+don’t think I had any definite idea where Dora came from, or in what
+degree she was related to a higher order of beings; but I am quite sure
+I should have scouted the notion of her being simply human, like any
+other young lady, with indignation and contempt.
+
+If I may so express it, I was steeped in Dora. I was not merely over
+head and ears in love with her, but I was saturated through and through.
+Enough love might have been wrung out of me, metaphorically speaking,
+to drown anybody in; and yet there would have remained enough within me,
+and all over me, to pervade my entire existence.
+
+The first thing I did, on my own account, when I came back, was to take
+a night-walk to Norwood, and, like the subject of a venerable riddle of
+my childhood, to go ‘round and round the house, without ever
+touching the house’, thinking about Dora. I believe the theme of this
+incomprehensible conundrum was the moon. No matter what it was, I, the
+moon-struck slave of Dora, perambulated round and round the house and
+garden for two hours, looking through crevices in the palings, getting
+my chin by dint of violent exertion above the rusty nails on the top,
+blowing kisses at the lights in the windows, and romantically calling
+on the night, at intervals, to shield my Dora--I don’t exactly know what
+from, I suppose from fire. Perhaps from mice, to which she had a great
+objection.
+
+My love was so much in my mind and it was so natural to me to confide in
+Peggotty, when I found her again by my side of an evening with the old
+set of industrial implements, busily making the tour of my wardrobe,
+that I imparted to her, in a sufficiently roundabout way, my great
+secret. Peggotty was strongly interested, but I could not get her into
+my view of the case at all. She was audaciously prejudiced in my favour,
+and quite unable to understand why I should have any misgivings, or be
+low-spirited about it. ‘The young lady might think herself well off,’
+she observed, ‘to have such a beau. And as to her Pa,’ she said, ‘what
+did the gentleman expect, for gracious sake!’
+
+I observed, however, that Mr. Spenlow’s proctorial gown and stiff cravat
+took Peggotty down a little, and inspired her with a greater reverence
+for the man who was gradually becoming more and more etherealized in my
+eyes every day, and about whom a reflected radiance seemed to me to beam
+when he sat erect in Court among his papers, like a little lighthouse in
+a sea of stationery. And by the by, it used to be uncommonly strange
+to me to consider, I remember, as I sat in Court too, how those dim old
+judges and doctors wouldn’t have cared for Dora, if they had known
+her; how they wouldn’t have gone out of their senses with rapture, if
+marriage with Dora had been proposed to them; how Dora might have sung,
+and played upon that glorified guitar, until she led me to the verge of
+madness, yet not have tempted one of those slow-goers an inch out of his
+road!
+
+I despised them, to a man. Frozen-out old gardeners in the flower-beds
+of the heart, I took a personal offence against them all. The Bench
+was nothing to me but an insensible blunderer. The Bar had no more
+tenderness or poetry in it, than the bar of a public-house.
+
+Taking the management of Peggotty’s affairs into my own hands, with
+no little pride, I proved the will, and came to a settlement with the
+Legacy Duty-office, and took her to the Bank, and soon got everything
+into an orderly train. We varied the legal character of these
+proceedings by going to see some perspiring Wax-work, in Fleet Street
+(melted, I should hope, these twenty years); and by visiting Miss
+Linwood’s Exhibition, which I remember as a Mausoleum of needlework,
+favourable to self-examination and repentance; and by inspecting the
+Tower of London; and going to the top of St. Paul’s. All these wonders
+afforded Peggotty as much pleasure as she was able to enjoy, under
+existing circumstances: except, I think, St. Paul’s, which, from her
+long attachment to her work-box, became a rival of the picture on the
+lid, and was, in some particulars, vanquished, she considered, by that
+work of art.
+
+Peggotty’s business, which was what we used to call ‘common-form
+business’ in the Commons (and very light and lucrative the common-form
+business was), being settled, I took her down to the office one morning
+to pay her bill. Mr. Spenlow had stepped out, old Tiffey said, to get a
+gentleman sworn for a marriage licence; but as I knew he would be
+back directly, our place lying close to the Surrogate’s, and to the
+Vicar-General’s office too, I told Peggotty to wait.
+
+We were a little like undertakers, in the Commons, as regarded Probate
+transactions; generally making it a rule to look more or less cut up,
+when we had to deal with clients in mourning. In a similar feeling
+of delicacy, we were always blithe and light-hearted with the licence
+clients. Therefore I hinted to Peggotty that she would find Mr. Spenlow
+much recovered from the shock of Mr. Barkis’s decease; and indeed he
+came in like a bridegroom.
+
+But neither Peggotty nor I had eyes for him, when we saw, in company
+with him, Mr. Murdstone. He was very little changed. His hair looked as
+thick, and was certainly as black, as ever; and his glance was as little
+to be trusted as of old.
+
+‘Ah, Copperfield?’ said Mr. Spenlow. ‘You know this gentleman, I
+believe?’
+
+I made my gentleman a distant bow, and Peggotty barely recognized him.
+He was, at first, somewhat disconcerted to meet us two together; but
+quickly decided what to do, and came up to me.
+
+‘I hope,’ he said, ‘that you are doing well?’
+
+‘It can hardly be interesting to you,’ said I. ‘Yes, if you wish to
+know.’
+
+We looked at each other, and he addressed himself to Peggotty.
+
+‘And you,’ said he. ‘I am sorry to observe that you have lost your
+husband.’
+
+‘It’s not the first loss I have had in my life, Mr. Murdstone,’ replied
+Peggotty, trembling from head to foot. ‘I am glad to hope that there is
+nobody to blame for this one,--nobody to answer for it.’
+
+‘Ha!’ said he; ‘that’s a comfortable reflection. You have done your
+duty?’
+
+‘I have not worn anybody’s life away,’ said Peggotty, ‘I am thankful to
+think! No, Mr. Murdstone, I have not worrited and frightened any sweet
+creetur to an early grave!’
+
+He eyed her gloomily--remorsefully I thought--for an instant; and said,
+turning his head towards me, but looking at my feet instead of my face:
+
+‘We are not likely to encounter soon again;--a source of satisfaction to
+us both, no doubt, for such meetings as this can never be agreeable. I
+do not expect that you, who always rebelled against my just authority,
+exerted for your benefit and reformation, should owe me any good-will
+now. There is an antipathy between us--’
+
+‘An old one, I believe?’ said I, interrupting him.
+
+He smiled, and shot as evil a glance at me as could come from his dark
+eyes.
+
+‘It rankled in your baby breast,’ he said. ‘It embittered the life of
+your poor mother. You are right. I hope you may do better, yet; I hope
+you may correct yourself.’
+
+Here he ended the dialogue, which had been carried on in a low voice,
+in a corner of the outer office, by passing into Mr. Spenlow’s room, and
+saying aloud, in his smoothest manner:
+
+‘Gentlemen of Mr. Spenlow’s profession are accustomed to family
+differences, and know how complicated and difficult they always are!’
+With that, he paid the money for his licence; and, receiving it neatly
+folded from Mr. Spenlow, together with a shake of the hand, and a polite
+wish for his happiness and the lady’s, went out of the office.
+
+I might have had more difficulty in constraining myself to be silent
+under his words, if I had had less difficulty in impressing upon
+Peggotty (who was only angry on my account, good creature!) that we were
+not in a place for recrimination, and that I besought her to hold her
+peace. She was so unusually roused, that I was glad to compound for
+an affectionate hug, elicited by this revival in her mind of our old
+injuries, and to make the best I could of it, before Mr. Spenlow and the
+clerks.
+
+Mr. Spenlow did not appear to know what the connexion between Mr.
+Murdstone and myself was; which I was glad of, for I could not bear to
+acknowledge him, even in my own breast, remembering what I did of the
+history of my poor mother. Mr. Spenlow seemed to think, if he thought
+anything about the matter, that my aunt was the leader of the state
+party in our family, and that there was a rebel party commanded by
+somebody else--so I gathered at least from what he said, while we were
+waiting for Mr. Tiffey to make out Peggotty’s bill of costs.
+
+‘Miss Trotwood,’ he remarked, ‘is very firm, no doubt, and not likely
+to give way to opposition. I have an admiration for her character, and
+I may congratulate you, Copperfield, on being on the right side.
+Differences between relations are much to be deplored--but they are
+extremely general--and the great thing is, to be on the right side’:
+meaning, I take it, on the side of the moneyed interest.
+
+‘Rather a good marriage this, I believe?’ said Mr. Spenlow.
+
+I explained that I knew nothing about it.
+
+‘Indeed!’ he said. ‘Speaking from the few words Mr. Murdstone
+dropped--as a man frequently does on these occasions--and from what Miss
+Murdstone let fall, I should say it was rather a good marriage.’
+
+‘Do you mean that there is money, sir?’ I asked.
+
+‘Yes,’ said Mr. Spenlow, ‘I understand there’s money. Beauty too, I am
+told.’
+
+‘Indeed! Is his new wife young?’
+
+‘Just of age,’ said Mr. Spenlow. ‘So lately, that I should think they
+had been waiting for that.’
+
+‘Lord deliver her!’ said Peggotty. So very emphatically and
+unexpectedly, that we were all three discomposed; until Tiffey came in
+with the bill.
+
+Old Tiffey soon appeared, however, and handed it to Mr. Spenlow, to
+look over. Mr. Spenlow, settling his chin in his cravat and rubbing it
+softly, went over the items with a deprecatory air--as if it were all
+Jorkins’s doing--and handed it back to Tiffey with a bland sigh.
+
+‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s right. Quite right. I should have been extremely
+happy, Copperfield, to have limited these charges to the actual
+expenditure out of pocket, but it is an irksome incident in my
+professional life, that I am not at liberty to consult my own wishes. I
+have a partner--Mr. Jorkins.’
+
+As he said this with a gentle melancholy, which was the next thing to
+making no charge at all, I expressed my acknowledgements on Peggotty’s
+behalf, and paid Tiffey in banknotes. Peggotty then retired to
+her lodging, and Mr. Spenlow and I went into Court, where we had a
+divorce-suit coming on, under an ingenious little statute (repealed
+now, I believe, but in virtue of which I have seen several marriages
+annulled), of which the merits were these. The husband, whose name was
+Thomas Benjamin, had taken out his marriage licence as Thomas only;
+suppressing the Benjamin, in case he should not find himself as
+comfortable as he expected. NOT finding himself as comfortable as he
+expected, or being a little fatigued with his wife, poor fellow, he
+now came forward, by a friend, after being married a year or two, and
+declared that his name was Thomas Benjamin, and therefore he was not
+married at all. Which the Court confirmed, to his great satisfaction.
+
+I must say that I had my doubts about the strict justice of this,
+and was not even frightened out of them by the bushel of wheat which
+reconciles all anomalies. But Mr. Spenlow argued the matter with me. He
+said, Look at the world, there was good and evil in that; look at the
+ecclesiastical law, there was good and evil in THAT. It was all part of
+a system. Very good. There you were!
+
+I had not the hardihood to suggest to Dora’s father that possibly
+we might even improve the world a little, if we got up early in the
+morning, and took off our coats to the work; but I confessed that I
+thought we might improve the Commons. Mr. Spenlow replied that he would
+particularly advise me to dismiss that idea from my mind, as not being
+worthy of my gentlemanly character; but that he would be glad to hear
+from me of what improvement I thought the Commons susceptible?
+
+Taking that part of the Commons which happened to be nearest to us--for
+our man was unmarried by this time, and we were out of Court, and
+strolling past the Prerogative Office--I submitted that I thought the
+Prerogative Office rather a queerly managed institution. Mr. Spenlow
+inquired in what respect? I replied, with all due deference to his
+experience (but with more deference, I am afraid, to his being Dora’s
+father), that perhaps it was a little nonsensical that the Registry of
+that Court, containing the original wills of all persons leaving effects
+within the immense province of Canterbury, for three whole centuries,
+should be an accidental building, never designed for the purpose, leased
+by the registrars for their Own private emolument, unsafe, not even
+ascertained to be fire-proof, choked with the important documents
+it held, and positively, from the roof to the basement, a mercenary
+speculation of the registrars, who took great fees from the public, and
+crammed the public’s wills away anyhow and anywhere, having no other
+object than to get rid of them cheaply. That, perhaps, it was a little
+unreasonable that these registrars in the receipt of profits amounting
+to eight or nine thousand pounds a year (to say nothing of the profits
+of the deputy registrars, and clerks of seats), should not be obliged to
+spend a little of that money, in finding a reasonably safe place for the
+important documents which all classes of people were compelled to hand
+over to them, whether they would or no. That, perhaps, it was a little
+unjust, that all the great offices in this great office should be
+magnificent sinecures, while the unfortunate working-clerks in the cold
+dark room upstairs were the worst rewarded, and the least considered
+men, doing important services, in London. That perhaps it was a little
+indecent that the principal registrar of all, whose duty it was to
+find the public, constantly resorting to this place, all needful
+accommodation, should be an enormous sinecurist in virtue of that post
+(and might be, besides, a clergyman, a pluralist, the holder of a
+staff in a cathedral, and what not),--while the public was put to the
+inconvenience of which we had a specimen every afternoon when the office
+was busy, and which we knew to be quite monstrous. That, perhaps,
+in short, this Prerogative Office of the diocese of Canterbury was
+altogether such a pestilent job, and such a pernicious absurdity, that
+but for its being squeezed away in a corner of St. Paul’s Churchyard,
+which few people knew, it must have been turned completely inside out,
+and upside down, long ago.
+
+Mr. Spenlow smiled as I became modestly warm on the subject, and then
+argued this question with me as he had argued the other. He said, what
+was it after all? It was a question of feeling. If the public felt
+that their wills were in safe keeping, and took it for granted that the
+office was not to be made better, who was the worse for it? Nobody. Who
+was the better for it? All the Sinecurists. Very well. Then the good
+predominated. It might not be a perfect system; nothing was perfect;
+but what he objected to, was, the insertion of the wedge. Under the
+Prerogative Office, the country had been glorious. Insert the wedge into
+the Prerogative Office, and the country would cease to be glorious. He
+considered it the principle of a gentleman to take things as he found
+them; and he had no doubt the Prerogative Office would last our time. I
+deferred to his opinion, though I had great doubts of it myself. I find
+he was right, however; for it has not only lasted to the present moment,
+but has done so in the teeth of a great parliamentary report made (not
+too willingly) eighteen years ago, when all these objections of mine
+were set forth in detail, and when the existing stowage for wills was
+described as equal to the accumulation of only two years and a half
+more. What they have done with them since; whether they have lost many,
+or whether they sell any, now and then, to the butter shops; I don’t
+know. I am glad mine is not there, and I hope it may not go there, yet
+awhile.
+
+I have set all this down, in my present blissful chapter, because here
+it comes into its natural place. Mr. Spenlow and I falling into this
+conversation, prolonged it and our saunter to and fro, until we diverged
+into general topics. And so it came about, in the end, that Mr. Spenlow
+told me this day week was Dora’s birthday, and he would be glad if I
+would come down and join a little picnic on the occasion. I went out of
+my senses immediately; became a mere driveller next day, on receipt of
+a little lace-edged sheet of note-paper, ‘Favoured by papa. To remind’;
+and passed the intervening period in a state of dotage.
+
+I think I committed every possible absurdity in the way of preparation
+for this blessed event. I turn hot when I remember the cravat I bought.
+My boots might be placed in any collection of instruments of torture.
+I provided, and sent down by the Norwood coach the night before, a
+delicate little hamper, amounting in itself, I thought, almost to a
+declaration. There were crackers in it with the tenderest mottoes that
+could be got for money. At six in the morning, I was in Covent Garden
+Market, buying a bouquet for Dora. At ten I was on horseback (I hired a
+gallant grey, for the occasion), with the bouquet in my hat, to keep it
+fresh, trotting down to Norwood.
+
+I suppose that when I saw Dora in the garden and pretended not to see
+her, and rode past the house pretending to be anxiously looking for
+it, I committed two small fooleries which other young gentlemen in my
+circumstances might have committed--because they came so very natural
+to me. But oh! when I DID find the house, and DID dismount at the
+garden-gate, and drag those stony-hearted boots across the lawn to Dora
+sitting on a garden-seat under a lilac tree, what a spectacle she was,
+upon that beautiful morning, among the butterflies, in a white chip
+bonnet and a dress of celestial blue! There was a young lady with
+her--comparatively stricken in years--almost twenty, I should say. Her
+name was Miss Mills. And Dora called her Julia. She was the bosom friend
+of Dora. Happy Miss Mills!
+
+Jip was there, and Jip WOULD bark at me again. When I presented my
+bouquet, he gnashed his teeth with jealousy. Well he might. If he had
+the least idea how I adored his mistress, well he might!
+
+‘Oh, thank you, Mr. Copperfield! What dear flowers!’ said Dora.
+
+I had had an intention of saying (and had been studying the best form of
+words for three miles) that I thought them beautiful before I saw them
+so near HER. But I couldn’t manage it. She was too bewildering. To see
+her lay the flowers against her little dimpled chin, was to lose all
+presence of mind and power of language in a feeble ecstasy. I wonder I
+didn’t say, ‘Kill me, if you have a heart, Miss Mills. Let me die here!’
+
+Then Dora held my flowers to Jip to smell. Then Jip growled, and
+wouldn’t smell them. Then Dora laughed, and held them a little closer
+to Jip, to make him. Then Jip laid hold of a bit of geranium with his
+teeth, and worried imaginary cats in it. Then Dora beat him, and pouted,
+and said, ‘My poor beautiful flowers!’ as compassionately, I thought, as
+if Jip had laid hold of me. I wished he had!
+
+‘You’ll be so glad to hear, Mr. Copperfield,’ said Dora, ‘that that
+cross Miss Murdstone is not here. She has gone to her brother’s
+marriage, and will be away at least three weeks. Isn’t that delightful?’
+
+I said I was sure it must be delightful to her, and all that was
+delightful to her was delightful to me. Miss Mills, with an air of
+superior wisdom and benevolence, smiled upon us.
+
+‘She is the most disagreeable thing I ever saw,’ said Dora. ‘You can’t
+believe how ill-tempered and shocking she is, Julia.’
+
+‘Yes, I can, my dear!’ said Julia.
+
+‘YOU can, perhaps, love,’ returned Dora, with her hand on Julia’s.
+‘Forgive my not excepting you, my dear, at first.’
+
+I learnt, from this, that Miss Mills had had her trials in the course
+of a chequered existence; and that to these, perhaps, I might refer that
+wise benignity of manner which I had already noticed. I found, in
+the course of the day, that this was the case: Miss Mills having been
+unhappy in a misplaced affection, and being understood to have retired
+from the world on her awful stock of experience, but still to take a
+calm interest in the unblighted hopes and loves of youth.
+
+But now Mr. Spenlow came out of the house, and Dora went to him,
+saying, ‘Look, papa, what beautiful flowers!’ And Miss Mills smiled
+thoughtfully, as who should say, ‘Ye Mayflies, enjoy your brief
+existence in the bright morning of life!’ And we all walked from the
+lawn towards the carriage, which was getting ready.
+
+I shall never have such a ride again. I have never had such another.
+There were only those three, their hamper, my hamper, and the
+guitar-case, in the phaeton; and, of course, the phaeton was open; and
+I rode behind it, and Dora sat with her back to the horses, looking
+towards me. She kept the bouquet close to her on the cushion, and
+wouldn’t allow Jip to sit on that side of her at all, for fear he should
+crush it. She often carried it in her hand, often refreshed herself
+with its fragrance. Our eyes at those times often met; and my great
+astonishment is that I didn’t go over the head of my gallant grey into
+the carriage.
+
+There was dust, I believe. There was a good deal of dust, I believe. I
+have a faint impression that Mr. Spenlow remonstrated with me for riding
+in it; but I knew of none. I was sensible of a mist of love and beauty
+about Dora, but of nothing else. He stood up sometimes, and asked me
+what I thought of the prospect. I said it was delightful, and I dare
+say it was; but it was all Dora to me. The sun shone Dora, and the birds
+sang Dora. The south wind blew Dora, and the wild flowers in the hedges
+were all Doras, to a bud. My comfort is, Miss Mills understood me. Miss
+Mills alone could enter into my feelings thoroughly.
+
+I don’t know how long we were going, and to this hour I know as little
+where we went. Perhaps it was near Guildford. Perhaps some Arabian-night
+magician, opened up the place for the day, and shut it up for ever when
+we came away. It was a green spot, on a hill, carpeted with soft turf.
+There were shady trees, and heather, and, as far as the eye could see, a
+rich landscape.
+
+It was a trying thing to find people here, waiting for us; and my
+jealousy, even of the ladies, knew no bounds. But all of my own
+sex--especially one impostor, three or four years my elder, with a red
+whisker, on which he established an amount of presumption not to be
+endured--were my mortal foes.
+
+We all unpacked our baskets, and employed ourselves in getting dinner
+ready. Red Whisker pretended he could make a salad (which I don’t
+believe), and obtruded himself on public notice. Some of the young
+ladies washed the lettuces for him, and sliced them under his
+directions. Dora was among these. I felt that fate had pitted me against
+this man, and one of us must fall.
+
+Red Whisker made his salad (I wondered how they could eat it. Nothing
+should have induced ME to touch it!) and voted himself into the charge
+of the wine-cellar, which he constructed, being an ingenious beast, in
+the hollow trunk of a tree. By and by, I saw him, with the majority of a
+lobster on his plate, eating his dinner at the feet of Dora!
+
+I have but an indistinct idea of what happened for some time after this
+baleful object presented itself to my view. I was very merry, I know;
+but it was hollow merriment. I attached myself to a young creature in
+pink, with little eyes, and flirted with her desperately. She received
+my attentions with favour; but whether on my account solely, or because
+she had any designs on Red Whisker, I can’t say. Dora’s health was
+drunk. When I drank it, I affected to interrupt my conversation for that
+purpose, and to resume it immediately afterwards. I caught Dora’s eye as
+I bowed to her, and I thought it looked appealing. But it looked at me
+over the head of Red Whisker, and I was adamant.
+
+The young creature in pink had a mother in green; and I rather think the
+latter separated us from motives of policy. Howbeit, there was a general
+breaking up of the party, while the remnants of the dinner were being
+put away; and I strolled off by myself among the trees, in a raging and
+remorseful state. I was debating whether I should pretend that I was not
+well, and fly--I don’t know where--upon my gallant grey, when Dora and
+Miss Mills met me.
+
+‘Mr. Copperfield,’ said Miss Mills, ‘you are dull.’
+
+I begged her pardon. Not at all.
+
+‘And Dora,’ said Miss Mills, ‘YOU are dull.’
+
+Oh dear no! Not in the least.
+
+‘Mr. Copperfield and Dora,’ said Miss Mills, with an almost venerable
+air. ‘Enough of this. Do not allow a trivial misunderstanding to wither
+the blossoms of spring, which, once put forth and blighted, cannot be
+renewed. I speak,’ said Miss Mills, ‘from experience of the past--the
+remote, irrevocable past. The gushing fountains which sparkle in the
+sun, must not be stopped in mere caprice; the oasis in the desert of
+Sahara must not be plucked up idly.’
+
+I hardly knew what I did, I was burning all over to that extraordinary
+extent; but I took Dora’s little hand and kissed it--and she let me!
+I kissed Miss Mills’s hand; and we all seemed, to my thinking, to go
+straight up to the seventh heaven. We did not come down again. We stayed
+up there all the evening. At first we strayed to and fro among the
+trees: I with Dora’s shy arm drawn through mine: and Heaven knows,
+folly as it all was, it would have been a happy fate to have been struck
+immortal with those foolish feelings, and have stayed among the trees
+for ever!
+
+But, much too soon, we heard the others laughing and talking, and
+calling ‘where’s Dora?’ So we went back, and they wanted Dora to sing.
+Red Whisker would have got the guitar-case out of the carriage, but Dora
+told him nobody knew where it was, but I. So Red Whisker was done for
+in a moment; and I got it, and I unlocked it, and I took the guitar out,
+and I sat by her, and I held her handkerchief and gloves, and I drank in
+every note of her dear voice, and she sang to ME who loved her, and all
+the others might applaud as much as they liked, but they had nothing to
+do with it!
+
+I was intoxicated with joy. I was afraid it was too happy to be real,
+and that I should wake in Buckingham Street presently, and hear Mrs.
+Crupp clinking the teacups in getting breakfast ready. But Dora sang,
+and others sang, and Miss Mills sang--about the slumbering echoes in the
+caverns of Memory; as if she were a hundred years old--and the evening
+came on; and we had tea, with the kettle boiling gipsy-fashion; and I
+was still as happy as ever.
+
+I was happier than ever when the party broke up, and the other people,
+defeated Red Whisker and all, went their several ways, and we went ours
+through the still evening and the dying light, with sweet scents
+rising up around us. Mr. Spenlow being a little drowsy after the
+champagne--honour to the soil that grew the grape, to the grape that
+made the wine, to the sun that ripened it, and to the merchant who
+adulterated it!--and being fast asleep in a corner of the carriage, I
+rode by the side and talked to Dora. She admired my horse and patted
+him--oh, what a dear little hand it looked upon a horse!--and her shawl
+would not keep right, and now and then I drew it round her with my arm;
+and I even fancied that Jip began to see how it was, and to understand
+that he must make up his mind to be friends with me.
+
+That sagacious Miss Mills, too; that amiable, though quite used up,
+recluse; that little patriarch of something less than twenty, who had
+done with the world, and mustn’t on any account have the slumbering
+echoes in the caverns of Memory awakened; what a kind thing she did!
+
+‘Mr. Copperfield,’ said Miss Mills, ‘come to this side of the carriage a
+moment--if you can spare a moment. I want to speak to you.’
+
+Behold me, on my gallant grey, bending at the side of Miss Mills, with
+my hand upon the carriage door!
+
+‘Dora is coming to stay with me. She is coming home with me the day
+after tomorrow. If you would like to call, I am sure papa would be
+happy to see you.’ What could I do but invoke a silent blessing on Miss
+Mills’s head, and store Miss Mills’s address in the securest corner of
+my memory! What could I do but tell Miss Mills, with grateful looks
+and fervent words, how much I appreciated her good offices, and what an
+inestimable value I set upon her friendship!
+
+Then Miss Mills benignantly dismissed me, saying, ‘Go back to Dora!’ and
+I went; and Dora leaned out of the carriage to talk to me, and we talked
+all the rest of the way; and I rode my gallant grey so close to the
+wheel that I grazed his near fore leg against it, and ‘took the bark
+off’, as his owner told me, ‘to the tune of three pun’ sivin’--which I
+paid, and thought extremely cheap for so much joy. What time Miss Mills
+sat looking at the moon, murmuring verses--and recalling, I suppose, the
+ancient days when she and earth had anything in common.
+
+Norwood was many miles too near, and we reached it many hours too soon;
+but Mr. Spenlow came to himself a little short of it, and said,
+‘You must come in, Copperfield, and rest!’ and I consenting, we had
+sandwiches and wine-and-water. In the light room, Dora blushing looked
+so lovely, that I could not tear myself away, but sat there staring, in
+a dream, until the snoring of Mr. Spenlow inspired me with sufficient
+consciousness to take my leave. So we parted; I riding all the way
+to London with the farewell touch of Dora’s hand still light on mine,
+recalling every incident and word ten thousand times; lying down in my
+own bed at last, as enraptured a young noodle as ever was carried out of
+his five wits by love.
+
+When I awoke next morning, I was resolute to declare my passion to Dora,
+and know my fate. Happiness or misery was now the question. There was no
+other question that I knew of in the world, and only Dora could give the
+answer to it. I passed three days in a luxury of wretchedness, torturing
+myself by putting every conceivable variety of discouraging construction
+on all that ever had taken place between Dora and me. At last, arrayed
+for the purpose at a vast expense, I went to Miss Mills’s, fraught with
+a declaration.
+
+How many times I went up and down the street, and round the
+square--painfully aware of being a much better answer to the old riddle
+than the original one--before I could persuade myself to go up the steps
+and knock, is no matter now. Even when, at last, I had knocked, and was
+waiting at the door, I had some flurried thought of asking if that
+were Mr. Blackboy’s (in imitation of poor Barkis), begging pardon, and
+retreating. But I kept my ground.
+
+Mr. Mills was not at home. I did not expect he would be. Nobody wanted
+HIM. Miss Mills was at home. Miss Mills would do.
+
+I was shown into a room upstairs, where Miss Mills and Dora were. Jip
+was there. Miss Mills was copying music (I recollect, it was a new song,
+called ‘Affection’s Dirge’), and Dora was painting flowers. What were my
+feelings, when I recognized my own flowers; the identical Covent Garden
+Market purchase! I cannot say that they were very like, or that
+they particularly resembled any flowers that have ever come under my
+observation; but I knew from the paper round them which was accurately
+copied, what the composition was.
+
+Miss Mills was very glad to see me, and very sorry her papa was not at
+home: though I thought we all bore that with fortitude. Miss Mills was
+conversational for a few minutes, and then, laying down her pen upon
+‘Affection’s Dirge’, got up, and left the room.
+
+I began to think I would put it off till tomorrow.
+
+‘I hope your poor horse was not tired, when he got home at night,’ said
+Dora, lifting up her beautiful eyes. ‘It was a long way for him.’
+
+I began to think I would do it today.
+
+‘It was a long way for him,’ said I, ‘for he had nothing to uphold him
+on the journey.’
+
+‘Wasn’t he fed, poor thing?’ asked Dora.
+
+I began to think I would put it off till tomorrow.
+
+‘Ye-yes,’ I said, ‘he was well taken care of. I mean he had not the
+unutterable happiness that I had in being so near you.’
+
+Dora bent her head over her drawing and said, after a little while--I
+had sat, in the interval, in a burning fever, and with my legs in a very
+rigid state--
+
+‘You didn’t seem to be sensible of that happiness yourself, at one time
+of the day.’
+
+I saw now that I was in for it, and it must be done on the spot.
+
+‘You didn’t care for that happiness in the least,’ said Dora, slightly
+raising her eyebrows, and shaking her head, ‘when you were sitting by
+Miss Kitt.’
+
+Kitt, I should observe, was the name of the creature in pink, with the
+little eyes.
+
+‘Though certainly I don’t know why you should,’ said Dora, ‘or why you
+should call it a happiness at all. But of course you don’t mean what you
+say. And I am sure no one doubts your being at liberty to do whatever
+you like. Jip, you naughty boy, come here!’
+
+I don’t know how I did it. I did it in a moment. I intercepted Jip.
+I had Dora in my arms. I was full of eloquence. I never stopped for a
+word. I told her how I loved her. I told her I should die without her.
+I told her that I idolized and worshipped her. Jip barked madly all the
+time.
+
+When Dora hung her head and cried, and trembled, my eloquence increased
+so much the more. If she would like me to die for her, she had but to
+say the word, and I was ready. Life without Dora’s love was not a thing
+to have on any terms. I couldn’t bear it, and I wouldn’t. I had loved
+her every minute, day and night, since I first saw her. I loved her at
+that minute to distraction. I should always love her, every minute, to
+distraction. Lovers had loved before, and lovers would love again; but
+no lover had loved, might, could, would, or should ever love, as I loved
+Dora. The more I raved, the more Jip barked. Each of us, in his own way,
+got more mad every moment.
+
+Well, well! Dora and I were sitting on the sofa by and by, quiet enough,
+and Jip was lying in her lap, winking peacefully at me. It was off my
+mind. I was in a state of perfect rapture. Dora and I were engaged.
+
+I suppose we had some notion that this was to end in marriage. We must
+have had some, because Dora stipulated that we were never to be married
+without her papa’s consent. But, in our youthful ecstasy, I don’t think
+that we really looked before us or behind us; or had any aspiration
+beyond the ignorant present. We were to keep our secret from Mr.
+Spenlow; but I am sure the idea never entered my head, then, that there
+was anything dishonourable in that.
+
+Miss Mills was more than usually pensive when Dora, going to find her,
+brought her back;--I apprehend, because there was a tendency in what had
+passed to awaken the slumbering echoes in the caverns of Memory. But she
+gave us her blessing, and the assurance of her lasting friendship, and
+spoke to us, generally, as became a Voice from the Cloister.
+
+What an idle time it was! What an insubstantial, happy, foolish time it
+was!
+
+When I measured Dora’s finger for a ring that was to be made of
+Forget-me-nots, and when the jeweller, to whom I took the measure, found
+me out, and laughed over his order-book, and charged me anything he
+liked for the pretty little toy, with its blue stones--so associated
+in my remembrance with Dora’s hand, that yesterday, when I saw such
+another, by chance, on the finger of my own daughter, there was a
+momentary stirring in my heart, like pain!
+
+When I walked about, exalted with my secret, and full of my own
+interest, and felt the dignity of loving Dora, and of being beloved, so
+much, that if I had walked the air, I could not have been more above the
+people not so situated, who were creeping on the earth!
+
+When we had those meetings in the garden of the square, and sat within
+the dingy summer-house, so happy, that I love the London sparrows to
+this hour, for nothing else, and see the plumage of the tropics in their
+smoky feathers! When we had our first great quarrel (within a week
+of our betrothal), and when Dora sent me back the ring, enclosed in a
+despairing cocked-hat note, wherein she used the terrible expression
+that ‘our love had begun in folly, and ended in madness!’ which dreadful
+words occasioned me to tear my hair, and cry that all was over!
+
+When, under cover of the night, I flew to Miss Mills, whom I saw by
+stealth in a back kitchen where there was a mangle, and implored Miss
+Mills to interpose between us and avert insanity. When Miss Mills
+undertook the office and returned with Dora, exhorting us, from the
+pulpit of her own bitter youth, to mutual concession, and the avoidance
+of the Desert of Sahara!
+
+When we cried, and made it up, and were so blest again, that the back
+kitchen, mangle and all, changed to Love’s own temple, where we arranged
+a plan of correspondence through Miss Mills, always to comprehend at
+least one letter on each side every day!
+
+What an idle time! What an insubstantial, happy, foolish time! Of all
+the times of mine that Time has in his grip, there is none that in one
+retrospect I can smile at half so much, and think of half so tenderly.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 34. MY AUNT ASTONISHES ME
+
+
+I wrote to Agnes as soon as Dora and I were engaged. I wrote her a long
+letter, in which I tried to make her comprehend how blest I was, and
+what a darling Dora was. I entreated Agnes not to regard this as a
+thoughtless passion which could ever yield to any other, or had the
+least resemblance to the boyish fancies that we used to joke about. I
+assured her that its profundity was quite unfathomable, and expressed my
+belief that nothing like it had ever been known.
+
+Somehow, as I wrote to Agnes on a fine evening by my open window, and
+the remembrance of her clear calm eyes and gentle face came stealing
+over me, it shed such a peaceful influence upon the hurry and agitation
+in which I had been living lately, and of which my very happiness
+partook in some degree, that it soothed me into tears. I remember that
+I sat resting my head upon my hand, when the letter was half done,
+cherishing a general fancy as if Agnes were one of the elements of my
+natural home. As if, in the retirement of the house made almost sacred
+to me by her presence, Dora and I must be happier than anywhere. As if,
+in love, joy, sorrow, hope, or disappointment; in all emotions; my heart
+turned naturally there, and found its refuge and best friend.
+
+Of Steerforth I said nothing. I only told her there had been sad grief
+at Yarmouth, on account of Emily’s flight; and that on me it made a
+double wound, by reason of the circumstances attending it. I knew how
+quick she always was to divine the truth, and that she would never be
+the first to breathe his name.
+
+To this letter, I received an answer by return of post. As I read it, I
+seemed to hear Agnes speaking to me. It was like her cordial voice in my
+ears. What can I say more!
+
+While I had been away from home lately, Traddles had called twice or
+thrice. Finding Peggotty within, and being informed by Peggotty (who
+always volunteered that information to whomsoever would receive
+it), that she was my old nurse, he had established a good-humoured
+acquaintance with her, and had stayed to have a little chat with her
+about me. So Peggotty said; but I am afraid the chat was all on her
+own side, and of immoderate length, as she was very difficult indeed to
+stop, God bless her! when she had me for her theme.
+
+This reminds me, not only that I expected Traddles on a certain
+afternoon of his own appointing, which was now come, but that Mrs. Crupp
+had resigned everything appertaining to her office (the salary excepted)
+until Peggotty should cease to present herself. Mrs. Crupp, after
+holding divers conversations respecting Peggotty, in a very high-pitched
+voice, on the staircase--with some invisible Familiar it would appear,
+for corporeally speaking she was quite alone at those times--addressed a
+letter to me, developing her views. Beginning it with that statement
+of universal application, which fitted every occurrence of her life,
+namely, that she was a mother herself, she went on to inform me that
+she had once seen very different days, but that at all periods of her
+existence she had had a constitutional objection to spies, intruders,
+and informers. She named no names, she said; let them the cap fitted,
+wear it; but spies, intruders, and informers, especially in widders’
+weeds (this clause was underlined), she had ever accustomed herself to
+look down upon. If a gentleman was the victim of spies, intruders, and
+informers (but still naming no names), that was his own pleasure. He
+had a right to please himself; so let him do. All that she, Mrs. Crupp,
+stipulated for, was, that she should not be ‘brought in contract’
+with such persons. Therefore she begged to be excused from any further
+attendance on the top set, until things were as they formerly was, and
+as they could be wished to be; and further mentioned that her little
+book would be found upon the breakfast-table every Saturday morning,
+when she requested an immediate settlement of the same, with the
+benevolent view of saving trouble ‘and an ill-conwenience’ to all
+parties.
+
+After this, Mrs. Crupp confined herself to making pitfalls on the
+stairs, principally with pitchers, and endeavouring to delude Peggotty
+into breaking her legs. I found it rather harassing to live in this
+state of siege, but was too much afraid of Mrs. Crupp to see any way out
+of it.
+
+‘My dear Copperfield,’ cried Traddles, punctually appearing at my door,
+in spite of all these obstacles, ‘how do you do?’
+
+‘My dear Traddles,’ said I, ‘I am delighted to see you at last, and very
+sorry I have not been at home before. But I have been so much engaged--’
+
+‘Yes, yes, I know,’ said Traddles, ‘of course. Yours lives in London, I
+think.’
+
+‘What did you say?’
+
+‘She--excuse me--Miss D., you know,’ said Traddles, colouring in his
+great delicacy, ‘lives in London, I believe?’
+
+‘Oh yes. Near London.’
+
+‘Mine, perhaps you recollect,’ said Traddles, with a serious look,
+‘lives down in Devonshire--one of ten. Consequently, I am not so much
+engaged as you--in that sense.’
+
+‘I wonder you can bear,’ I returned, ‘to see her so seldom.’
+
+‘Hah!’ said Traddles, thoughtfully. ‘It does seem a wonder. I suppose it
+is, Copperfield, because there is no help for it?’
+
+‘I suppose so,’ I replied with a smile, and not without a blush. ‘And
+because you have so much constancy and patience, Traddles.’
+
+‘Dear me!’ said Traddles, considering about it, ‘do I strike you in that
+way, Copperfield? Really I didn’t know that I had. But she is such
+an extraordinarily dear girl herself, that it’s possible she may
+have imparted something of those virtues to me. Now you mention it,
+Copperfield, I shouldn’t wonder at all. I assure you she is always
+forgetting herself, and taking care of the other nine.’
+
+‘Is she the eldest?’ I inquired.
+
+‘Oh dear, no,’ said Traddles. ‘The eldest is a Beauty.’
+
+He saw, I suppose, that I could not help smiling at the simplicity of
+this reply; and added, with a smile upon his own ingenuous face:
+
+‘Not, of course, but that my Sophy--pretty name, Copperfield, I always
+think?’
+
+‘Very pretty!’ said I.
+
+‘Not, of course, but that Sophy is beautiful too in my eyes, and would
+be one of the dearest girls that ever was, in anybody’s eyes (I should
+think). But when I say the eldest is a Beauty, I mean she really is
+a--’ he seemed to be describing clouds about himself, with both hands:
+‘Splendid, you know,’ said Traddles, energetically. ‘Indeed!’ said I.
+
+‘Oh, I assure you,’ said Traddles, ‘something very uncommon, indeed!
+Then, you know, being formed for society and admiration, and not being
+able to enjoy much of it in consequence of their limited means, she
+naturally gets a little irritable and exacting, sometimes. Sophy puts
+her in good humour!’
+
+‘Is Sophy the youngest?’ I hazarded.
+
+‘Oh dear, no!’ said Traddles, stroking his chin. ‘The two youngest are
+only nine and ten. Sophy educates ‘em.’
+
+‘The second daughter, perhaps?’ I hazarded.
+
+‘No,’ said Traddles. ‘Sarah’s the second. Sarah has something the matter
+with her spine, poor girl. The malady will wear out by and by, the
+doctors say, but in the meantime she has to lie down for a twelvemonth.
+Sophy nurses her. Sophy’s the fourth.’
+
+‘Is the mother living?’ I inquired.
+
+‘Oh yes,’ said Traddles, ‘she is alive. She is a very superior woman
+indeed, but the damp country is not adapted to her constitution, and--in
+fact, she has lost the use of her limbs.’
+
+‘Dear me!’ said I.
+
+‘Very sad, is it not?’ returned Traddles. ‘But in a merely domestic view
+it is not so bad as it might be, because Sophy takes her place. She is
+quite as much a mother to her mother, as she is to the other nine.’
+
+I felt the greatest admiration for the virtues of this young lady; and,
+honestly with the view of doing my best to prevent the good-nature
+of Traddles from being imposed upon, to the detriment of their joint
+prospects in life, inquired how Mr. Micawber was?
+
+‘He is quite well, Copperfield, thank you,’ said Traddles. ‘I am not
+living with him at present.’
+
+‘No?’
+
+‘No. You see the truth is,’ said Traddles, in a whisper, ‘he had changed
+his name to Mortimer, in consequence of his temporary embarrassments;
+and he don’t come out till after dark--and then in spectacles. There was
+an execution put into our house, for rent. Mrs. Micawber was in such
+a dreadful state that I really couldn’t resist giving my name to that
+second bill we spoke of here. You may imagine how delightful it was to
+my feelings, Copperfield, to see the matter settled with it, and Mrs.
+Micawber recover her spirits.’
+
+‘Hum!’ said I. ‘Not that her happiness was of long duration,’ pursued
+Traddles, ‘for, unfortunately, within a week another execution came
+in. It broke up the establishment. I have been living in a furnished
+apartment since then, and the Mortimers have been very private indeed.
+I hope you won’t think it selfish, Copperfield, if I mention that
+the broker carried off my little round table with the marble top, and
+Sophy’s flower-pot and stand?’
+
+‘What a hard thing!’ I exclaimed indignantly.
+
+‘It was a--it was a pull,’ said Traddles, with his usual wince at that
+expression. ‘I don’t mention it reproachfully, however, but with a
+motive. The fact is, Copperfield, I was unable to repurchase them at the
+time of their seizure; in the first place, because the broker, having an
+idea that I wanted them, ran the price up to an extravagant extent; and,
+in the second place, because I--hadn’t any money. Now, I have kept
+my eye since, upon the broker’s shop,’ said Traddles, with a great
+enjoyment of his mystery, ‘which is up at the top of Tottenham Court
+Road, and, at last, today I find them put out for sale. I have only
+noticed them from over the way, because if the broker saw me, bless you,
+he’d ask any price for them! What has occurred to me, having now the
+money, is, that perhaps you wouldn’t object to ask that good nurse of
+yours to come with me to the shop--I can show it her from round the
+corner of the next street--and make the best bargain for them, as if
+they were for herself, that she can!’
+
+The delight with which Traddles propounded this plan to me, and the
+sense he had of its uncommon artfulness, are among the freshest things
+in my remembrance.
+
+I told him that my old nurse would be delighted to assist him, and that
+we would all three take the field together, but on one condition. That
+condition was, that he should make a solemn resolution to grant no more
+loans of his name, or anything else, to Mr. Micawber.
+
+‘My dear Copperfield,’ said Traddles, ‘I have already done so, because
+I begin to feel that I have not only been inconsiderate, but that I have
+been positively unjust to Sophy. My word being passed to myself, there
+is no longer any apprehension; but I pledge it to you, too, with the
+greatest readiness. That first unlucky obligation, I have paid. I have
+no doubt Mr. Micawber would have paid it if he could, but he could not.
+One thing I ought to mention, which I like very much in Mr. Micawber,
+Copperfield. It refers to the second obligation, which is not yet due.
+He don’t tell me that it is provided for, but he says it WILL BE. Now, I
+think there is something very fair and honest about that!’
+
+I was unwilling to damp my good friend’s confidence, and therefore
+assented. After a little further conversation, we went round to the
+chandler’s shop, to enlist Peggotty; Traddles declining to pass the
+evening with me, both because he endured the liveliest apprehensions
+that his property would be bought by somebody else before he could
+re-purchase it, and because it was the evening he always devoted to
+writing to the dearest girl in the world.
+
+I never shall forget him peeping round the corner of the street in
+Tottenham Court Road, while Peggotty was bargaining for the precious
+articles; or his agitation when she came slowly towards us after vainly
+offering a price, and was hailed by the relenting broker, and went back
+again. The end of the negotiation was, that she bought the property on
+tolerably easy terms, and Traddles was transported with pleasure.
+
+‘I am very much obliged to you, indeed,’ said Traddles, on hearing it
+was to be sent to where he lived, that night. ‘If I might ask one other
+favour, I hope you would not think it absurd, Copperfield?’
+
+I said beforehand, certainly not.
+
+‘Then if you WOULD be good enough,’ said Traddles to Peggotty, ‘to
+get the flower-pot now, I think I should like (it being Sophy’s,
+Copperfield) to carry it home myself!’
+
+Peggotty was glad to get it for him, and he overwhelmed her with thanks,
+and went his way up Tottenham Court Road, carrying the flower-pot
+affectionately in his arms, with one of the most delighted expressions
+of countenance I ever saw.
+
+We then turned back towards my chambers. As the shops had charms for
+Peggotty which I never knew them possess in the same degree for anybody
+else, I sauntered easily along, amused by her staring in at the windows,
+and waiting for her as often as she chose. We were thus a good while in
+getting to the Adelphi.
+
+On our way upstairs, I called her attention to the sudden disappearance
+of Mrs. Crupp’s pitfalls, and also to the prints of recent footsteps. We
+were both very much surprised, coming higher up, to find my outer door
+standing open (which I had shut) and to hear voices inside.
+
+We looked at one another, without knowing what to make of this, and went
+into the sitting-room. What was my amazement to find, of all people upon
+earth, my aunt there, and Mr. Dick! My aunt sitting on a quantity of
+luggage, with her two birds before her, and her cat on her knee, like a
+female Robinson Crusoe, drinking tea. Mr. Dick leaning thoughtfully on
+a great kite, such as we had often been out together to fly, with more
+luggage piled about him!
+
+‘My dear aunt!’ cried I. ‘Why, what an unexpected pleasure!’
+
+We cordially embraced; and Mr. Dick and I cordially shook hands; and
+Mrs. Crupp, who was busy making tea, and could not be too attentive,
+cordially said she had knowed well as Mr. Copperfull would have his
+heart in his mouth, when he see his dear relations.
+
+‘Holloa!’ said my aunt to Peggotty, who quailed before her awful
+presence. ‘How are YOU?’
+
+‘You remember my aunt, Peggotty?’ said I.
+
+‘For the love of goodness, child,’ exclaimed my aunt, ‘don’t call the
+woman by that South Sea Island name! If she married and got rid of
+it, which was the best thing she could do, why don’t you give her the
+benefit of the change? What’s your name now,--P?’ said my aunt, as a
+compromise for the obnoxious appellation.
+
+‘Barkis, ma’am,’ said Peggotty, with a curtsey.
+
+‘Well! That’s human,’ said my aunt. ‘It sounds less as if you wanted a
+missionary. How d’ye do, Barkis? I hope you’re well?’
+
+Encouraged by these gracious words, and by my aunt’s extending her
+hand, Barkis came forward, and took the hand, and curtseyed her
+acknowledgements.
+
+‘We are older than we were, I see,’ said my aunt. ‘We have only met each
+other once before, you know. A nice business we made of it then! Trot,
+my dear, another cup.’
+
+I handed it dutifully to my aunt, who was in her usual inflexible state
+of figure; and ventured a remonstrance with her on the subject of her
+sitting on a box.
+
+‘Let me draw the sofa here, or the easy-chair, aunt,’ said I. ‘Why
+should you be so uncomfortable?’
+
+‘Thank you, Trot,’ replied my aunt, ‘I prefer to sit upon my property.’
+Here my aunt looked hard at Mrs. Crupp, and observed, ‘We needn’t
+trouble you to wait, ma’am.’
+
+‘Shall I put a little more tea in the pot afore I go, ma’am?’ said Mrs.
+Crupp.
+
+‘No, I thank you, ma’am,’ replied my aunt.
+
+‘Would you let me fetch another pat of butter, ma’am?’ said Mrs. Crupp.
+‘Or would you be persuaded to try a new-laid hegg? or should I brile
+a rasher? Ain’t there nothing I could do for your dear aunt, Mr.
+Copperfull?’
+
+‘Nothing, ma’am,’ returned my aunt. ‘I shall do very well, I thank you.’
+
+Mrs. Crupp, who had been incessantly smiling to express sweet temper,
+and incessantly holding her head on one side, to express a general
+feebleness of constitution, and incessantly rubbing her hands, to
+express a desire to be of service to all deserving objects, gradually
+smiled herself, one-sided herself, and rubbed herself, out of the room.
+‘Dick!’ said my aunt. ‘You know what I told you about time-servers and
+wealth-worshippers?’
+
+Mr. Dick--with rather a scared look, as if he had forgotten it--returned
+a hasty answer in the affirmative.
+
+‘Mrs. Crupp is one of them,’ said my aunt. ‘Barkis, I’ll trouble you to
+look after the tea, and let me have another cup, for I don’t fancy that
+woman’s pouring-out!’
+
+I knew my aunt sufficiently well to know that she had something of
+importance on her mind, and that there was far more matter in this
+arrival than a stranger might have supposed. I noticed how her eye
+lighted on me, when she thought my attention otherwise occupied; and
+what a curious process of hesitation appeared to be going on within
+her, while she preserved her outward stiffness and composure. I began
+to reflect whether I had done anything to offend her; and my conscience
+whispered me that I had not yet told her about Dora. Could it by any
+means be that, I wondered!
+
+As I knew she would only speak in her own good time, I sat down near
+her, and spoke to the birds, and played with the cat, and was as easy
+as I could be. But I was very far from being really easy; and I should
+still have been so, even if Mr. Dick, leaning over the great kite behind
+my aunt, had not taken every secret opportunity of shaking his head
+darkly at me, and pointing at her.
+
+‘Trot,’ said my aunt at last, when she had finished her tea, and
+carefully smoothed down her dress, and wiped her lips--‘you needn’t go,
+Barkis!--Trot, have you got to be firm and self-reliant?’
+
+‘I hope so, aunt.’
+
+‘What do you think?’ inquired Miss Betsey.
+
+‘I think so, aunt.’
+
+‘Then why, my love,’ said my aunt, looking earnestly at me, ‘why do you
+think I prefer to sit upon this property of mine tonight?’
+
+I shook my head, unable to guess.
+
+‘Because,’ said my aunt, ‘it’s all I have. Because I’m ruined, my dear!’
+
+If the house, and every one of us, had tumbled out into the river
+together, I could hardly have received a greater shock.
+
+‘Dick knows it,’ said my aunt, laying her hand calmly on my shoulder. ‘I
+am ruined, my dear Trot! All I have in the world is in this room, except
+the cottage; and that I have left Janet to let. Barkis, I want to get a
+bed for this gentleman tonight. To save expense, perhaps you can make
+up something here for myself. Anything will do. It’s only for tonight.
+We’ll talk about this, more, tomorrow.’
+
+I was roused from my amazement, and concern for her--I am sure, for
+her--by her falling on my neck, for a moment, and crying that she only
+grieved for me. In another moment she suppressed this emotion; and said
+with an aspect more triumphant than dejected:
+
+‘We must meet reverses boldly, and not suffer them to frighten us, my
+dear. We must learn to act the play out. We must live misfortune down,
+Trot!’
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 35. DEPRESSION
+
+
+As soon as I could recover my presence of mind, which quite deserted me
+in the first overpowering shock of my aunt’s intelligence, I proposed
+to Mr. Dick to come round to the chandler’s shop, and take possession of
+the bed which Mr. Peggotty had lately vacated. The chandler’s shop being
+in Hungerford Market, and Hungerford Market being a very different place
+in those days, there was a low wooden colonnade before the door (not
+very unlike that before the house where the little man and woman used
+to live, in the old weather-glass), which pleased Mr. Dick mightily. The
+glory of lodging over this structure would have compensated him, I dare
+say, for many inconveniences; but, as there were really few to bear,
+beyond the compound of flavours I have already mentioned, and perhaps
+the want of a little more elbow-room, he was perfectly charmed with his
+accommodation. Mrs. Crupp had indignantly assured him that there wasn’t
+room to swing a cat there; but, as Mr. Dick justly observed to me,
+sitting down on the foot of the bed, nursing his leg, ‘You know,
+Trotwood, I don’t want to swing a cat. I never do swing a cat.
+Therefore, what does that signify to ME!’
+
+I tried to ascertain whether Mr. Dick had any understanding of the
+causes of this sudden and great change in my aunt’s affairs. As I might
+have expected, he had none at all. The only account he could give of it
+was, that my aunt had said to him, the day before yesterday, ‘Now, Dick,
+are you really and truly the philosopher I take you for?’ That then
+he had said, Yes, he hoped so. That then my aunt had said, ‘Dick, I
+am ruined.’ That then he had said, ‘Oh, indeed!’ That then my aunt had
+praised him highly, which he was glad of. And that then they had come to
+me, and had had bottled porter and sandwiches on the road.
+
+Mr. Dick was so very complacent, sitting on the foot of the bed, nursing
+his leg, and telling me this, with his eyes wide open and a surprised
+smile, that I am sorry to say I was provoked into explaining to him
+that ruin meant distress, want, and starvation; but I was soon bitterly
+reproved for this harshness, by seeing his face turn pale, and tears
+course down his lengthened cheeks, while he fixed upon me a look of such
+unutterable woe, that it might have softened a far harder heart than
+mine. I took infinitely greater pains to cheer him up again than I had
+taken to depress him; and I soon understood (as I ought to have known at
+first) that he had been so confident, merely because of his faith in
+the wisest and most wonderful of women, and his unbounded reliance on my
+intellectual resources. The latter, I believe, he considered a match for
+any kind of disaster not absolutely mortal.
+
+‘What can we do, Trotwood?’ said Mr. Dick. ‘There’s the Memorial-’
+
+‘To be sure there is,’ said I. ‘But all we can do just now, Mr. Dick,
+is to keep a cheerful countenance, and not let my aunt see that we are
+thinking about it.’
+
+He assented to this in the most earnest manner; and implored me, if I
+should see him wandering an inch out of the right course, to recall him
+by some of those superior methods which were always at my command. But I
+regret to state that the fright I had given him proved too much for his
+best attempts at concealment. All the evening his eyes wandered to my
+aunt’s face, with an expression of the most dismal apprehension, as if
+he saw her growing thin on the spot. He was conscious of this, and put
+a constraint upon his head; but his keeping that immovable, and sitting
+rolling his eyes like a piece of machinery, did not mend the matter at
+all. I saw him look at the loaf at supper (which happened to be a small
+one), as if nothing else stood between us and famine; and when my aunt
+insisted on his making his customary repast, I detected him in the act
+of pocketing fragments of his bread and cheese; I have no doubt for the
+purpose of reviving us with those savings, when we should have reached
+an advanced stage of attenuation.
+
+My aunt, on the other hand, was in a composed frame of mind, which was
+a lesson to all of us--to me, I am sure. She was extremely gracious
+to Peggotty, except when I inadvertently called her by that name; and,
+strange as I knew she felt in London, appeared quite at home. She was
+to have my bed, and I was to lie in the sitting-room, to keep guard over
+her. She made a great point of being so near the river, in case of a
+conflagration; and I suppose really did find some satisfaction in that
+circumstance.
+
+‘Trot, my dear,’ said my aunt, when she saw me making preparations for
+compounding her usual night-draught, ‘No!’
+
+‘Nothing, aunt?’
+
+‘Not wine, my dear. Ale.’
+
+‘But there is wine here, aunt. And you always have it made of wine.’
+
+‘Keep that, in case of sickness,’ said my aunt. ‘We mustn’t use it
+carelessly, Trot. Ale for me. Half a pint.’
+
+I thought Mr. Dick would have fallen, insensible. My aunt being
+resolute, I went out and got the ale myself. As it was growing late,
+Peggotty and Mr. Dick took that opportunity of repairing to the
+chandler’s shop together. I parted from him, poor fellow, at the corner
+of the street, with his great kite at his back, a very monument of human
+misery.
+
+My aunt was walking up and down the room when I returned, crimping the
+borders of her nightcap with her fingers. I warmed the ale and made the
+toast on the usual infallible principles. When it was ready for her, she
+was ready for it, with her nightcap on, and the skirt of her gown turned
+back on her knees.
+
+‘My dear,’ said my aunt, after taking a spoonful of it; ‘it’s a great
+deal better than wine. Not half so bilious.’
+
+I suppose I looked doubtful, for she added:
+
+‘Tut, tut, child. If nothing worse than Ale happens to us, we are well
+off.’
+
+‘I should think so myself, aunt, I am sure,’ said I.
+
+‘Well, then, why DON’T you think so?’ said my aunt.
+
+‘Because you and I are very different people,’ I returned.
+
+‘Stuff and nonsense, Trot!’ replied my aunt.
+
+My aunt went on with a quiet enjoyment, in which there was very little
+affectation, if any; drinking the warm ale with a tea-spoon, and soaking
+her strips of toast in it.
+
+‘Trot,’ said she, ‘I don’t care for strange faces in general, but I
+rather like that Barkis of yours, do you know!’
+
+‘It’s better than a hundred pounds to hear you say so!’ said I.
+
+‘It’s a most extraordinary world,’ observed my aunt, rubbing her nose;
+‘how that woman ever got into it with that name, is unaccountable to me.
+It would be much more easy to be born a Jackson, or something of that
+sort, one would think.’
+
+‘Perhaps she thinks so, too; it’s not her fault,’ said I.
+
+‘I suppose not,’ returned my aunt, rather grudging the admission; ‘but
+it’s very aggravating. However, she’s Barkis now. That’s some comfort.
+Barkis is uncommonly fond of you, Trot.’
+
+‘There is nothing she would leave undone to prove it,’ said I.
+
+‘Nothing, I believe,’ returned my aunt. ‘Here, the poor fool has been
+begging and praying about handing over some of her money--because she
+has got too much of it. A simpleton!’
+
+My aunt’s tears of pleasure were positively trickling down into the warm
+ale.
+
+‘She’s the most ridiculous creature that ever was born,’ said my aunt.
+‘I knew, from the first moment when I saw her with that poor dear
+blessed baby of a mother of yours, that she was the most ridiculous of
+mortals. But there are good points in Barkis!’
+
+Affecting to laugh, she got an opportunity of putting her hand to
+her eyes. Having availed herself of it, she resumed her toast and her
+discourse together.
+
+‘Ah! Mercy upon us!’ sighed my aunt. ‘I know all about it, Trot! Barkis
+and myself had quite a gossip while you were out with Dick. I know all
+about it. I don’t know where these wretched girls expect to go to, for
+my part. I wonder they don’t knock out their brains against--against
+mantelpieces,’ said my aunt; an idea which was probably suggested to her
+by her contemplation of mine.
+
+‘Poor Emily!’ said I.
+
+‘Oh, don’t talk to me about poor,’ returned my aunt. ‘She should have
+thought of that, before she caused so much misery! Give me a kiss, Trot.
+I am sorry for your early experience.’
+
+As I bent forward, she put her tumbler on my knee to detain me, and
+said:
+
+‘Oh, Trot, Trot! And so you fancy yourself in love! Do you?’
+
+‘Fancy, aunt!’ I exclaimed, as red as I could be. ‘I adore her with my
+whole soul!’
+
+‘Dora, indeed!’ returned my aunt. ‘And you mean to say the little thing
+is very fascinating, I suppose?’
+
+‘My dear aunt,’ I replied, ‘no one can form the least idea what she is!’
+
+‘Ah! And not silly?’ said my aunt.
+
+‘Silly, aunt!’
+
+I seriously believe it had never once entered my head for a single
+moment, to consider whether she was or not. I resented the idea, of
+course; but I was in a manner struck by it, as a new one altogether.
+
+‘Not light-headed?’ said my aunt.
+
+‘Light-headed, aunt!’ I could only repeat this daring speculation
+with the same kind of feeling with which I had repeated the preceding
+question.
+
+‘Well, well!’ said my aunt. ‘I only ask. I don’t depreciate her. Poor
+little couple! And so you think you were formed for one another, and are
+to go through a party-supper-table kind of life, like two pretty pieces
+of confectionery, do you, Trot?’
+
+She asked me this so kindly, and with such a gentle air, half playful
+and half sorrowful, that I was quite touched.
+
+‘We are young and inexperienced, aunt, I know,’ I replied; ‘and I dare
+say we say and think a good deal that is rather foolish. But we love
+one another truly, I am sure. If I thought Dora could ever love anybody
+else, or cease to love me; or that I could ever love anybody else, or
+cease to love her; I don’t know what I should do--go out of my mind, I
+think!’
+
+‘Ah, Trot!’ said my aunt, shaking her head, and smiling gravely; ‘blind,
+blind, blind!’
+
+‘Someone that I know, Trot,’ my aunt pursued, after a pause, ‘though of
+a very pliant disposition, has an earnestness of affection in him that
+reminds me of poor Baby. Earnestness is what that Somebody must look
+for, to sustain him and improve him, Trot. Deep, downright, faithful
+earnestness.’
+
+‘If you only knew the earnestness of Dora, aunt!’ I cried.
+
+‘Oh, Trot!’ she said again; ‘blind, blind!’ and without knowing why,
+I felt a vague unhappy loss or want of something overshadow me like a
+cloud.
+
+‘However,’ said my aunt, ‘I don’t want to put two young creatures out
+of conceit with themselves, or to make them unhappy; so, though it is a
+girl and boy attachment, and girl and boy attachments very often--mind!
+I don’t say always!--come to nothing, still we’ll be serious about it,
+and hope for a prosperous issue one of these days. There’s time enough
+for it to come to anything!’
+
+This was not upon the whole very comforting to a rapturous lover; but
+I was glad to have my aunt in my confidence, and I was mindful of
+her being fatigued. So I thanked her ardently for this mark of her
+affection, and for all her other kindnesses towards me; and after a
+tender good night, she took her nightcap into my bedroom.
+
+How miserable I was, when I lay down! How I thought and thought about my
+being poor, in Mr. Spenlow’s eyes; about my not being what I thought I
+was, when I proposed to Dora; about the chivalrous necessity of
+telling Dora what my worldly condition was, and releasing her from her
+engagement if she thought fit; about how I should contrive to live,
+during the long term of my articles, when I was earning nothing; about
+doing something to assist my aunt, and seeing no way of doing anything;
+about coming down to have no money in my pocket, and to wear a shabby
+coat, and to be able to carry Dora no little presents, and to ride no
+gallant greys, and to show myself in no agreeable light! Sordid and
+selfish as I knew it was, and as I tortured myself by knowing that it
+was, to let my mind run on my own distress so much, I was so devoted
+to Dora that I could not help it. I knew that it was base in me not to
+think more of my aunt, and less of myself; but, so far, selfishness
+was inseparable from Dora, and I could not put Dora on one side for any
+mortal creature. How exceedingly miserable I was, that night!
+
+As to sleep, I had dreams of poverty in all sorts of shapes, but I
+seemed to dream without the previous ceremony of going to sleep. Now I
+was ragged, wanting to sell Dora matches, six bundles for a halfpenny;
+now I was at the office in a nightgown and boots, remonstrated with by
+Mr. Spenlow on appearing before the clients in that airy attire; now
+I was hungrily picking up the crumbs that fell from old Tiffey’s
+daily biscuit, regularly eaten when St. Paul’s struck one; now I was
+hopelessly endeavouring to get a licence to marry Dora, having nothing
+but one of Uriah Heep’s gloves to offer in exchange, which the whole
+Commons rejected; and still, more or less conscious of my own room, I
+was always tossing about like a distressed ship in a sea of bed-clothes.
+
+My aunt was restless, too, for I frequently heard her walking to and
+fro. Two or three times in the course of the night, attired in a long
+flannel wrapper in which she looked seven feet high, she appeared, like
+a disturbed ghost, in my room, and came to the side of the sofa on which
+I lay. On the first occasion I started up in alarm, to learn that she
+inferred from a particular light in the sky, that Westminster Abbey
+was on fire; and to be consulted in reference to the probability of its
+igniting Buckingham Street, in case the wind changed. Lying still, after
+that, I found that she sat down near me, whispering to herself ‘Poor
+boy!’ And then it made me twenty times more wretched, to know how
+unselfishly mindful she was of me, and how selfishly mindful I was of
+myself.
+
+It was difficult to believe that a night so long to me, could be short
+to anybody else. This consideration set me thinking and thinking of an
+imaginary party where people were dancing the hours away, until that
+became a dream too, and I heard the music incessantly playing one tune,
+and saw Dora incessantly dancing one dance, without taking the least
+notice of me. The man who had been playing the harp all night, was
+trying in vain to cover it with an ordinary-sized nightcap, when I
+awoke; or I should rather say, when I left off trying to go to sleep,
+and saw the sun shining in through the window at last.
+
+There was an old Roman bath in those days at the bottom of one of the
+streets out of the Strand--it may be there still--in which I have had
+many a cold plunge. Dressing myself as quietly as I could, and leaving
+Peggotty to look after my aunt, I tumbled head foremost into it,
+and then went for a walk to Hampstead. I had a hope that this brisk
+treatment might freshen my wits a little; and I think it did them good,
+for I soon came to the conclusion that the first step I ought to take
+was, to try if my articles could be cancelled and the premium recovered.
+I got some breakfast on the Heath, and walked back to Doctors’ Commons,
+along the watered roads and through a pleasant smell of summer flowers,
+growing in gardens and carried into town on hucksters’ heads, intent on
+this first effort to meet our altered circumstances.
+
+I arrived at the office so soon, after all, that I had half an hour’s
+loitering about the Commons, before old Tiffey, who was always first,
+appeared with his key. Then I sat down in my shady corner, looking up
+at the sunlight on the opposite chimney-pots, and thinking about Dora;
+until Mr. Spenlow came in, crisp and curly.
+
+‘How are you, Copperfield?’ said he. ‘Fine morning!’
+
+‘Beautiful morning, sir,’ said I. ‘Could I say a word to you before you
+go into Court?’
+
+‘By all means,’ said he. ‘Come into my room.’
+
+I followed him into his room, and he began putting on his gown, and
+touching himself up before a little glass he had, hanging inside a
+closet door.
+
+‘I am sorry to say,’ said I, ‘that I have some rather disheartening
+intelligence from my aunt.’
+
+‘No!’ said he. ‘Dear me! Not paralysis, I hope?’
+
+‘It has no reference to her health, sir,’ I replied. ‘She has met with
+some large losses. In fact, she has very little left, indeed.’
+
+‘You as-tound me, Copperfield!’ cried Mr. Spenlow.
+
+I shook my head. ‘Indeed, sir,’ said I, ‘her affairs are so changed,
+that I wished to ask you whether it would be possible--at a sacrifice on
+our part of some portion of the premium, of course,’ I put in this, on
+the spur of the moment, warned by the blank expression of his face--‘to
+cancel my articles?’
+
+What it cost me to make this proposal, nobody knows. It was like asking,
+as a favour, to be sentenced to transportation from Dora.
+
+‘To cancel your articles, Copperfield? Cancel?’
+
+I explained with tolerable firmness, that I really did not know where
+my means of subsistence were to come from, unless I could earn them for
+myself. I had no fear for the future, I said--and I laid great emphasis
+on that, as if to imply that I should still be decidedly eligible for a
+son-in-law one of these days--but, for the present, I was thrown upon
+my own resources. ‘I am extremely sorry to hear this, Copperfield,’ said
+Mr. Spenlow. ‘Extremely sorry. It is not usual to cancel articles for
+any such reason. It is not a professional course of proceeding. It is
+not a convenient precedent at all. Far from it. At the same time--’
+
+‘You are very good, sir,’ I murmured, anticipating a concession.
+
+‘Not at all. Don’t mention it,’ said Mr. Spenlow. ‘At the same time, I
+was going to say, if it had been my lot to have my hands unfettered--if
+I had not a partner--Mr. Jorkins--’
+
+My hopes were dashed in a moment, but I made another effort.
+
+‘Do you think, sir,’ said I, ‘if I were to mention it to Mr. Jorkins--’
+
+Mr. Spenlow shook his head discouragingly. ‘Heaven forbid, Copperfield,’
+he replied, ‘that I should do any man an injustice: still less, Mr.
+Jorkins. But I know my partner, Copperfield. Mr. Jorkins is not a man
+to respond to a proposition of this peculiar nature. Mr. Jorkins is very
+difficult to move from the beaten track. You know what he is!’
+
+I am sure I knew nothing about him, except that he had originally been
+alone in the business, and now lived by himself in a house near Montagu
+Square, which was fearfully in want of painting; that he came very
+late of a day, and went away very early; that he never appeared to be
+consulted about anything; and that he had a dingy little black-hole of
+his own upstairs, where no business was ever done, and where there was
+a yellow old cartridge-paper pad upon his desk, unsoiled by ink, and
+reported to be twenty years of age.
+
+‘Would you object to my mentioning it to him, sir?’ I asked.
+
+‘By no means,’ said Mr. Spenlow. ‘But I have some experience of Mr.
+Jorkins, Copperfield. I wish it were otherwise, for I should be happy
+to meet your views in any respect. I cannot have the objection to your
+mentioning it to Mr. Jorkins, Copperfield, if you think it worth while.’
+
+Availing myself of this permission, which was given with a warm shake
+of the hand, I sat thinking about Dora, and looking at the sunlight
+stealing from the chimney-pots down the wall of the opposite house,
+until Mr. Jorkins came. I then went up to Mr. Jorkins’s room, and
+evidently astonished Mr. Jorkins very much by making my appearance
+there.
+
+‘Come in, Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mr. Jorkins. ‘Come in!’
+
+I went in, and sat down; and stated my case to Mr. Jorkins pretty much
+as I had stated it to Mr. Spenlow. Mr. Jorkins was not by any means the
+awful creature one might have expected, but a large, mild, smooth-faced
+man of sixty, who took so much snuff that there was a tradition in the
+Commons that he lived principally on that stimulant, having little room
+in his system for any other article of diet.
+
+‘You have mentioned this to Mr. Spenlow, I suppose?’ said Mr. Jorkins;
+when he had heard me, very restlessly, to an end.
+
+I answered Yes, and told him that Mr. Spenlow had introduced his name.
+
+‘He said I should object?’ asked Mr. Jorkins.
+
+I was obliged to admit that Mr. Spenlow had considered it probable.
+
+‘I am sorry to say, Mr. Copperfield, I can’t advance your object,’ said
+Mr. Jorkins, nervously. ‘The fact is--but I have an appointment at the
+Bank, if you’ll have the goodness to excuse me.’
+
+With that he rose in a great hurry, and was going out of the room, when
+I made bold to say that I feared, then, there was no way of arranging
+the matter?
+
+‘No!’ said Mr. Jorkins, stopping at the door to shake his head. ‘Oh, no!
+I object, you know,’ which he said very rapidly, and went out. ‘You must
+be aware, Mr. Copperfield,’ he added, looking restlessly in at the door
+again, ‘if Mr. Spenlow objects--’
+
+‘Personally, he does not object, sir,’ said I.
+
+‘Oh! Personally!’ repeated Mr. Jorkins, in an impatient manner. ‘I
+assure you there’s an objection, Mr. Copperfield. Hopeless! What you
+wish to be done, can’t be done. I--I really have got an appointment
+at the Bank.’ With that he fairly ran away; and to the best of my
+knowledge, it was three days before he showed himself in the Commons
+again.
+
+Being very anxious to leave no stone unturned, I waited until Mr.
+Spenlow came in, and then described what had passed; giving him to
+understand that I was not hopeless of his being able to soften the
+adamantine Jorkins, if he would undertake the task.
+
+‘Copperfield,’ returned Mr. Spenlow, with a gracious smile, ‘you have
+not known my partner, Mr. Jorkins, as long as I have. Nothing is
+farther from my thoughts than to attribute any degree of artifice to Mr.
+Jorkins. But Mr. Jorkins has a way of stating his objections which often
+deceives people. No, Copperfield!’ shaking his head. ‘Mr. Jorkins is not
+to be moved, believe me!’
+
+I was completely bewildered between Mr. Spenlow and Mr. Jorkins, as
+to which of them really was the objecting partner; but I saw with
+sufficient clearness that there was obduracy somewhere in the firm, and
+that the recovery of my aunt’s thousand pounds was out of the
+question. In a state of despondency, which I remember with anything
+but satisfaction, for I know it still had too much reference to myself
+(though always in connexion with Dora), I left the office, and went
+homeward.
+
+I was trying to familiarize my mind with the worst, and to present to
+myself the arrangements we should have to make for the future in their
+sternest aspect, when a hackney-chariot coming after me, and stopping at
+my very feet, occasioned me to look up. A fair hand was stretched forth
+to me from the window; and the face I had never seen without a feeling
+of serenity and happiness, from the moment when it first turned back
+on the old oak staircase with the great broad balustrade, and when I
+associated its softened beauty with the stained-glass window in the
+church, was smiling on me.
+
+‘Agnes!’ I joyfully exclaimed. ‘Oh, my dear Agnes, of all people in the
+world, what a pleasure to see you!’
+
+‘Is it, indeed?’ she said, in her cordial voice.
+
+‘I want to talk to you so much!’ said I. ‘It’s such a lightening of my
+heart, only to look at you! If I had had a conjuror’s cap, there is no
+one I should have wished for but you!’
+
+‘What?’ returned Agnes.
+
+‘Well! perhaps Dora first,’ I admitted, with a blush.
+
+‘Certainly, Dora first, I hope,’ said Agnes, laughing.
+
+‘But you next!’ said I. ‘Where are you going?’
+
+She was going to my rooms to see my aunt. The day being very fine, she
+was glad to come out of the chariot, which smelt (I had my head in it
+all this time) like a stable put under a cucumber-frame. I dismissed the
+coachman, and she took my arm, and we walked on together. She was like
+Hope embodied, to me. How different I felt in one short minute, having
+Agnes at my side!
+
+My aunt had written her one of the odd, abrupt notes--very little longer
+than a Bank note--to which her epistolary efforts were usually limited.
+She had stated therein that she had fallen into adversity, and was
+leaving Dover for good, but had quite made up her mind to it, and was
+so well that nobody need be uncomfortable about her. Agnes had come to
+London to see my aunt, between whom and herself there had been a mutual
+liking these many years: indeed, it dated from the time of my taking up
+my residence in Mr. Wickfield’s house. She was not alone, she said. Her
+papa was with her--and Uriah Heep.
+
+‘And now they are partners,’ said I. ‘Confound him!’
+
+‘Yes,’ said Agnes. ‘They have some business here; and I took advantage
+of their coming, to come too. You must not think my visit all friendly
+and disinterested, Trotwood, for--I am afraid I may be cruelly
+prejudiced--I do not like to let papa go away alone, with him.’ ‘Does he
+exercise the same influence over Mr. Wickfield still, Agnes?’
+
+Agnes shook her head. ‘There is such a change at home,’ said she, ‘that
+you would scarcely know the dear old house. They live with us now.’
+
+‘They?’ said I.
+
+‘Mr. Heep and his mother. He sleeps in your old room,’ said Agnes,
+looking up into my face.
+
+‘I wish I had the ordering of his dreams,’ said I. ‘He wouldn’t sleep
+there long.’
+
+‘I keep my own little room,’ said Agnes, ‘where I used to learn my
+lessons. How the time goes! You remember? The little panelled room that
+opens from the drawing-room?’
+
+‘Remember, Agnes? When I saw you, for the first time, coming out at the
+door, with your quaint little basket of keys hanging at your side?’
+
+‘It is just the same,’ said Agnes, smiling. ‘I am glad you think of it
+so pleasantly. We were very happy.’
+
+‘We were, indeed,’ said I.
+
+‘I keep that room to myself still; but I cannot always desert Mrs. Heep,
+you know. And so,’ said Agnes, quietly, ‘I feel obliged to bear her
+company, when I might prefer to be alone. But I have no other reason to
+complain of her. If she tires me, sometimes, by her praises of her son,
+it is only natural in a mother. He is a very good son to her.’
+
+I looked at Agnes when she said these words, without detecting in her
+any consciousness of Uriah’s design. Her mild but earnest eyes met
+mine with their own beautiful frankness, and there was no change in her
+gentle face.
+
+‘The chief evil of their presence in the house,’ said Agnes, ‘is that I
+cannot be as near papa as I could wish--Uriah Heep being so much between
+us--and cannot watch over him, if that is not too bold a thing to say,
+as closely as I would. But if any fraud or treachery is practising
+against him, I hope that simple love and truth will be strong in the
+end. I hope that real love and truth are stronger in the end than any
+evil or misfortune in the world.’
+
+A certain bright smile, which I never saw on any other face, died away,
+even while I thought how good it was, and how familiar it had once been
+to me; and she asked me, with a quick change of expression (we were
+drawing very near my street), if I knew how the reverse in my aunt’s
+circumstances had been brought about. On my replying no, she had not
+told me yet, Agnes became thoughtful, and I fancied I felt her arm
+tremble in mine.
+
+We found my aunt alone, in a state of some excitement. A difference
+of opinion had arisen between herself and Mrs. Crupp, on an abstract
+question (the propriety of chambers being inhabited by the gentler sex);
+and my aunt, utterly indifferent to spasms on the part of Mrs. Crupp,
+had cut the dispute short, by informing that lady that she smelt of
+my brandy, and that she would trouble her to walk out. Both of these
+expressions Mrs. Crupp considered actionable, and had expressed her
+intention of bringing before a ‘British Judy’--meaning, it was supposed,
+the bulwark of our national liberties.
+
+My aunt, however, having had time to cool, while Peggotty was out
+showing Mr. Dick the soldiers at the Horse Guards--and being, besides,
+greatly pleased to see Agnes--rather plumed herself on the affair than
+otherwise, and received us with unimpaired good humour. When Agnes laid
+her bonnet on the table, and sat down beside her, I could not but think,
+looking on her mild eyes and her radiant forehead, how natural it
+seemed to have her there; how trustfully, although she was so young and
+inexperienced, my aunt confided in her; how strong she was, indeed, in
+simple love and truth.
+
+We began to talk about my aunt’s losses, and I told them what I had
+tried to do that morning.
+
+‘Which was injudicious, Trot,’ said my aunt, ‘but well meant. You are
+a generous boy--I suppose I must say, young man, now--and I am proud of
+you, my dear. So far, so good. Now, Trot and Agnes, let us look the case
+of Betsey Trotwood in the face, and see how it stands.’
+
+I observed Agnes turn pale, as she looked very attentively at my aunt.
+My aunt, patting her cat, looked very attentively at Agnes.
+
+‘Betsey Trotwood,’ said my aunt, who had always kept her money matters
+to herself. ‘--I don’t mean your sister, Trot, my dear, but myself--had
+a certain property. It don’t matter how much; enough to live on. More;
+for she had saved a little, and added to it. Betsey funded her property
+for some time, and then, by the advice of her man of business, laid
+it out on landed security. That did very well, and returned very good
+interest, till Betsey was paid off. I am talking of Betsey as if she
+was a man-of-war. Well! Then, Betsey had to look about her, for a new
+investment. She thought she was wiser, now, than her man of business,
+who was not such a good man of business by this time, as he used to
+be--I am alluding to your father, Agnes--and she took it into her head
+to lay it out for herself. So she took her pigs,’ said my aunt, ‘to a
+foreign market; and a very bad market it turned out to be. First, she
+lost in the mining way, and then she lost in the diving way--fishing up
+treasure, or some such Tom Tiddler nonsense,’ explained my aunt, rubbing
+her nose; ‘and then she lost in the mining way again, and, last of all,
+to set the thing entirely to rights, she lost in the banking way. I
+don’t know what the Bank shares were worth for a little while,’ said my
+aunt; ‘cent per cent was the lowest of it, I believe; but the Bank was
+at the other end of the world, and tumbled into space, for what I know;
+anyhow, it fell to pieces, and never will and never can pay sixpence;
+and Betsey’s sixpences were all there, and there’s an end of them. Least
+said, soonest mended!’
+
+My aunt concluded this philosophical summary, by fixing her eyes with a
+kind of triumph on Agnes, whose colour was gradually returning.
+
+‘Dear Miss Trotwood, is that all the history?’ said Agnes.
+
+‘I hope it’s enough, child,’ said my aunt. ‘If there had been more
+money to lose, it wouldn’t have been all, I dare say. Betsey would have
+contrived to throw that after the rest, and make another chapter, I have
+little doubt. But there was no more money, and there’s no more story.’
+
+Agnes had listened at first with suspended breath. Her colour still came
+and went, but she breathed more freely. I thought I knew why. I thought
+she had had some fear that her unhappy father might be in some way to
+blame for what had happened. My aunt took her hand in hers, and laughed.
+
+‘Is that all?’ repeated my aunt. ‘Why, yes, that’s all, except, “And she
+lived happy ever afterwards.” Perhaps I may add that of Betsey yet, one
+of these days. Now, Agnes, you have a wise head. So have you, Trot, in
+some things, though I can’t compliment you always’; and here my aunt
+shook her own at me, with an energy peculiar to herself. ‘What’s to be
+done? Here’s the cottage, taking one time with another, will produce
+say seventy pounds a year. I think we may safely put it down at
+that. Well!--That’s all we’ve got,’ said my aunt; with whom it was an
+idiosyncrasy, as it is with some horses, to stop very short when she
+appeared to be in a fair way of going on for a long while.
+
+‘Then,’ said my aunt, after a rest, ‘there’s Dick. He’s good for a
+hundred a-year, but of course that must be expended on himself. I would
+sooner send him away, though I know I am the only person who appreciates
+him, than have him, and not spend his money on himself. How can Trot and
+I do best, upon our means? What do you say, Agnes?’
+
+‘I say, aunt,’ I interposed, ‘that I must do something!’
+
+‘Go for a soldier, do you mean?’ returned my aunt, alarmed; ‘or go to
+sea? I won’t hear of it. You are to be a proctor. We’re not going to
+have any knockings on the head in THIS family, if you please, sir.’
+
+I was about to explain that I was not desirous of introducing that mode
+of provision into the family, when Agnes inquired if my rooms were held
+for any long term?
+
+‘You come to the point, my dear,’ said my aunt. ‘They are not to be got
+rid of, for six months at least, unless they could be underlet, and that
+I don’t believe. The last man died here. Five people out of six would
+die--of course--of that woman in nankeen with the flannel petticoat. I
+have a little ready money; and I agree with you, the best thing we can
+do, is, to live the term out here, and get a bedroom hard by.’
+
+I thought it my duty to hint at the discomfort my aunt would sustain,
+from living in a continual state of guerilla warfare with Mrs. Crupp;
+but she disposed of that objection summarily by declaring that, on the
+first demonstration of hostilities, she was prepared to astonish Mrs.
+Crupp for the whole remainder of her natural life.
+
+‘I have been thinking, Trotwood,’ said Agnes, diffidently, ‘that if you
+had time--’
+
+‘I have a good deal of time, Agnes. I am always disengaged after four
+or five o’clock, and I have time early in the morning. In one way and
+another,’ said I, conscious of reddening a little as I thought of the
+hours and hours I had devoted to fagging about town, and to and fro upon
+the Norwood Road, ‘I have abundance of time.’
+
+‘I know you would not mind,’ said Agnes, coming to me, and speaking in
+a low voice, so full of sweet and hopeful consideration that I hear it
+now, ‘the duties of a secretary.’
+
+‘Mind, my dear Agnes?’
+
+‘Because,’ continued Agnes, ‘Doctor Strong has acted on his intention of
+retiring, and has come to live in London; and he asked papa, I know,
+if he could recommend him one. Don’t you think he would rather have his
+favourite old pupil near him, than anybody else?’
+
+‘Dear Agnes!’ said I. ‘What should I do without you! You are always my
+good angel. I told you so. I never think of you in any other light.’
+
+Agnes answered with her pleasant laugh, that one good Angel (meaning
+Dora) was enough; and went on to remind me that the Doctor had been
+used to occupy himself in his study, early in the morning, and in the
+evening--and that probably my leisure would suit his requirements very
+well. I was scarcely more delighted with the prospect of earning my own
+bread, than with the hope of earning it under my old master; in short,
+acting on the advice of Agnes, I sat down and wrote a letter to the
+Doctor, stating my object, and appointing to call on him next day at
+ten in the forenoon. This I addressed to Highgate--for in that place, so
+memorable to me, he lived--and went and posted, myself, without losing a
+minute.
+
+Wherever Agnes was, some agreeable token of her noiseless presence
+seemed inseparable from the place. When I came back, I found my aunt’s
+birds hanging, just as they had hung so long in the parlour window of
+the cottage; and my easy-chair imitating my aunt’s much easier chair in
+its position at the open window; and even the round green fan, which my
+aunt had brought away with her, screwed on to the window-sill. I knew
+who had done all this, by its seeming to have quietly done itself; and I
+should have known in a moment who had arranged my neglected books in the
+old order of my school days, even if I had supposed Agnes to be miles
+away, instead of seeing her busy with them, and smiling at the disorder
+into which they had fallen.
+
+My aunt was quite gracious on the subject of the Thames (it really did
+look very well with the sun upon it, though not like the sea before the
+cottage), but she could not relent towards the London smoke, which, she
+said, ‘peppered everything’. A complete revolution, in which Peggotty
+bore a prominent part, was being effected in every corner of my rooms,
+in regard of this pepper; and I was looking on, thinking how little even
+Peggotty seemed to do with a good deal of bustle, and how much Agnes did
+without any bustle at all, when a knock came at the door.
+
+‘I think,’ said Agnes, turning pale, ‘it’s papa. He promised me that he
+would come.’
+
+I opened the door, and admitted, not only Mr. Wickfield, but Uriah Heep.
+I had not seen Mr. Wickfield for some time. I was prepared for a great
+change in him, after what I had heard from Agnes, but his appearance
+shocked me.
+
+It was not that he looked many years older, though still dressed
+with the old scrupulous cleanliness; or that there was an unwholesome
+ruddiness upon his face; or that his eyes were full and bloodshot; or
+that there was a nervous trembling in his hand, the cause of which I
+knew, and had for some years seen at work. It was not that he had lost
+his good looks, or his old bearing of a gentleman--for that he had
+not--but the thing that struck me most, was, that with the evidences of
+his native superiority still upon him, he should submit himself to that
+crawling impersonation of meanness, Uriah Heep. The reversal of the
+two natures, in their relative positions, Uriah’s of power and Mr.
+Wickfield’s of dependence, was a sight more painful to me than I can
+express. If I had seen an Ape taking command of a Man, I should hardly
+have thought it a more degrading spectacle.
+
+He appeared to be only too conscious of it himself. When he came in, he
+stood still; and with his head bowed, as if he felt it. This was
+only for a moment; for Agnes softly said to him, ‘Papa! Here is Miss
+Trotwood--and Trotwood, whom you have not seen for a long while!’ and
+then he approached, and constrainedly gave my aunt his hand, and shook
+hands more cordially with me. In the moment’s pause I speak of, I saw
+Uriah’s countenance form itself into a most ill-favoured smile. Agnes
+saw it too, I think, for she shrank from him.
+
+What my aunt saw, or did not see, I defy the science of physiognomy
+to have made out, without her own consent. I believe there never was
+anybody with such an imperturbable countenance when she chose. Her face
+might have been a dead-wall on the occasion in question, for any light
+it threw upon her thoughts; until she broke silence with her usual
+abruptness.
+
+‘Well, Wickfield!’ said my aunt; and he looked up at her for the first
+time. ‘I have been telling your daughter how well I have been disposing
+of my money for myself, because I couldn’t trust it to you, as you were
+growing rusty in business matters. We have been taking counsel together,
+and getting on very well, all things considered. Agnes is worth the
+whole firm, in my opinion.’
+
+‘If I may umbly make the remark,’ said Uriah Heep, with a writhe, ‘I
+fully agree with Miss Betsey Trotwood, and should be only too appy if
+Miss Agnes was a partner.’
+
+‘You’re a partner yourself, you know,’ returned my aunt, ‘and that’s
+about enough for you, I expect. How do you find yourself, sir?’
+
+In acknowledgement of this question, addressed to him with extraordinary
+curtness, Mr. Heep, uncomfortably clutching the blue bag he carried,
+replied that he was pretty well, he thanked my aunt, and hoped she was
+the same.
+
+‘And you, Master--I should say, Mister Copperfield,’ pursued Uriah. ‘I
+hope I see you well! I am rejoiced to see you, Mister Copperfield, even
+under present circumstances.’ I believed that; for he seemed to relish
+them very much. ‘Present circumstances is not what your friends would
+wish for you, Mister Copperfield, but it isn’t money makes the man:
+it’s--I am really unequal with my umble powers to express what it is,’
+said Uriah, with a fawning jerk, ‘but it isn’t money!’
+
+Here he shook hands with me: not in the common way, but standing at
+a good distance from me, and lifting my hand up and down like a pump
+handle, that he was a little afraid of.
+
+‘And how do you think we are looking, Master Copperfield,--I should
+say, Mister?’ fawned Uriah. ‘Don’t you find Mr. Wickfield blooming, sir?
+Years don’t tell much in our firm, Master Copperfield, except in raising
+up the umble, namely, mother and self--and in developing,’ he added, as
+an afterthought, ‘the beautiful, namely, Miss Agnes.’
+
+He jerked himself about, after this compliment, in such an intolerable
+manner, that my aunt, who had sat looking straight at him, lost all
+patience.
+
+‘Deuce take the man!’ said my aunt, sternly, ‘what’s he about? Don’t be
+galvanic, sir!’
+
+‘I ask your pardon, Miss Trotwood,’ returned Uriah; ‘I’m aware you’re
+nervous.’
+
+‘Go along with you, sir!’ said my aunt, anything but appeased. ‘Don’t
+presume to say so! I am nothing of the sort. If you’re an eel, sir,
+conduct yourself like one. If you’re a man, control your limbs, sir!
+Good God!’ said my aunt, with great indignation, ‘I am not going to be
+serpentined and corkscrewed out of my senses!’
+
+Mr. Heep was rather abashed, as most people might have been, by this
+explosion; which derived great additional force from the indignant
+manner in which my aunt afterwards moved in her chair, and shook her
+head as if she were making snaps or bounces at him. But he said to me
+aside in a meek voice:
+
+‘I am well aware, Master Copperfield, that Miss Trotwood, though an
+excellent lady, has a quick temper (indeed I think I had the pleasure
+of knowing her, when I was a numble clerk, before you did, Master
+Copperfield), and it’s only natural, I am sure, that it should be made
+quicker by present circumstances. The wonder is, that it isn’t much
+worse! I only called to say that if there was anything we could do, in
+present circumstances, mother or self, or Wickfield and Heep,--we should
+be really glad. I may go so far?’ said Uriah, with a sickly smile at his
+partner.
+
+‘Uriah Heep,’ said Mr. Wickfield, in a monotonous forced way, ‘is active
+in the business, Trotwood. What he says, I quite concur in. You know
+I had an old interest in you. Apart from that, what Uriah says I quite
+concur in!’
+
+‘Oh, what a reward it is,’ said Uriah, drawing up one leg, at the risk
+of bringing down upon himself another visitation from my aunt, ‘to be so
+trusted in! But I hope I am able to do something to relieve him from the
+fatigues of business, Master Copperfield!’
+
+‘Uriah Heep is a great relief to me,’ said Mr. Wickfield, in the same
+dull voice. ‘It’s a load off my mind, Trotwood, to have such a partner.’
+
+The red fox made him say all this, I knew, to exhibit him to me in the
+light he had indicated on the night when he poisoned my rest. I saw the
+same ill-favoured smile upon his face again, and saw how he watched me.
+
+‘You are not going, papa?’ said Agnes, anxiously. ‘Will you not walk
+back with Trotwood and me?’
+
+He would have looked to Uriah, I believe, before replying, if that
+worthy had not anticipated him.
+
+‘I am bespoke myself,’ said Uriah, ‘on business; otherwise I should
+have been appy to have kept with my friends. But I leave my partner to
+represent the firm. Miss Agnes, ever yours! I wish you good-day, Master
+Copperfield, and leave my umble respects for Miss Betsey Trotwood.’
+
+With those words, he retired, kissing his great hand, and leering at us
+like a mask.
+
+We sat there, talking about our pleasant old Canterbury days, an hour
+or two. Mr. Wickfield, left to Agnes, soon became more like his former
+self; though there was a settled depression upon him, which he never
+shook off. For all that, he brightened; and had an evident pleasure in
+hearing us recall the little incidents of our old life, many of which he
+remembered very well. He said it was like those times, to be alone with
+Agnes and me again; and he wished to Heaven they had never changed. I am
+sure there was an influence in the placid face of Agnes, and in the very
+touch of her hand upon his arm, that did wonders for him.
+
+My aunt (who was busy nearly all this while with Peggotty, in the inner
+room) would not accompany us to the place where they were staying, but
+insisted on my going; and I went. We dined together. After dinner, Agnes
+sat beside him, as of old, and poured out his wine. He took what she
+gave him, and no more--like a child--and we all three sat together at a
+window as the evening gathered in. When it was almost dark, he lay down
+on a sofa, Agnes pillowing his head and bending over him a little while;
+and when she came back to the window, it was not so dark but I could see
+tears glittering in her eyes.
+
+I pray Heaven that I never may forget the dear girl in her love and
+truth, at that time of my life; for if I should, I must be drawing near
+the end, and then I would desire to remember her best! She filled my
+heart with such good resolutions, strengthened my weakness so, by her
+example, so directed--I know not how, she was too modest and gentle
+to advise me in many words--the wandering ardour and unsettled purpose
+within me, that all the little good I have done, and all the harm I have
+forborne, I solemnly believe I may refer to her.
+
+And how she spoke to me of Dora, sitting at the window in the dark;
+listened to my praises of her; praised again; and round the little
+fairy-figure shed some glimpses of her own pure light, that made it yet
+more precious and more innocent to me! Oh, Agnes, sister of my boyhood,
+if I had known then, what I knew long afterwards--!
+
+There was a beggar in the street, when I went down; and as I turned my
+head towards the window, thinking of her calm seraphic eyes, he made me
+start by muttering, as if he were an echo of the morning: ‘Blind! Blind!
+Blind!’
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 36. ENTHUSIASM
+
+I began the next day with another dive into the Roman bath, and then
+started for Highgate. I was not dispirited now. I was not afraid of the
+shabby coat, and had no yearnings after gallant greys. My whole manner
+of thinking of our late misfortune was changed. What I had to do, was,
+to show my aunt that her past goodness to me had not been thrown away
+on an insensible, ungrateful object. What I had to do, was, to turn the
+painful discipline of my younger days to account, by going to work with
+a resolute and steady heart. What I had to do, was, to take my woodman’s
+axe in my hand, and clear my own way through the forest of difficulty,
+by cutting down the trees until I came to Dora. And I went on at a
+mighty rate, as if it could be done by walking.
+
+When I found myself on the familiar Highgate road, pursuing such a
+different errand from that old one of pleasure, with which it was
+associated, it seemed as if a complete change had come on my whole life.
+But that did not discourage me. With the new life, came new purpose,
+new intention. Great was the labour; priceless the reward. Dora was the
+reward, and Dora must be won.
+
+I got into such a transport, that I felt quite sorry my coat was not
+a little shabby already. I wanted to be cutting at those trees in the
+forest of difficulty, under circumstances that should prove my strength.
+I had a good mind to ask an old man, in wire spectacles, who was
+breaking stones upon the road, to lend me his hammer for a little while,
+and let me begin to beat a path to Dora out of granite. I stimulated
+myself into such a heat, and got so out of breath, that I felt as if I
+had been earning I don’t know how much.
+
+In this state, I went into a cottage that I saw was to let, and examined
+it narrowly,--for I felt it necessary to be practical. It would do for
+me and Dora admirably: with a little front garden for Jip to run about
+in, and bark at the tradespeople through the railings, and a capital
+room upstairs for my aunt. I came out again, hotter and faster than
+ever, and dashed up to Highgate, at such a rate that I was there an
+hour too early; and, though I had not been, should have been obliged to
+stroll about to cool myself, before I was at all presentable.
+
+My first care, after putting myself under this necessary course of
+preparation, was to find the Doctor’s house. It was not in that part of
+Highgate where Mrs. Steerforth lived, but quite on the opposite side
+of the little town. When I had made this discovery, I went back, in
+an attraction I could not resist, to a lane by Mrs. Steerforth’s, and
+looked over the corner of the garden wall. His room was shut up close.
+The conservatory doors were standing open, and Rosa Dartle was walking,
+bareheaded, with a quick, impetuous step, up and down a gravel walk on
+one side of the lawn. She gave me the idea of some fierce thing, that
+was dragging the length of its chain to and fro upon a beaten track, and
+wearing its heart out.
+
+I came softly away from my place of observation, and avoiding that part
+of the neighbourhood, and wishing I had not gone near it, strolled about
+until it was ten o’clock. The church with the slender spire, that stands
+on the top of the hill now, was not there then to tell me the time. An
+old red-brick mansion, used as a school, was in its place; and a fine
+old house it must have been to go to school at, as I recollect it.
+
+When I approached the Doctor’s cottage--a pretty old place, on which
+he seemed to have expended some money, if I might judge from the
+embellishments and repairs that had the look of being just completed--I
+saw him walking in the garden at the side, gaiters and all, as if he
+had never left off walking since the days of my pupilage. He had his old
+companions about him, too; for there were plenty of high trees in the
+neighbourhood, and two or three rooks were on the grass, looking after
+him, as if they had been written to about him by the Canterbury rooks,
+and were observing him closely in consequence.
+
+Knowing the utter hopelessness of attracting his attention from that
+distance, I made bold to open the gate, and walk after him, so as to
+meet him when he should turn round. When he did, and came towards me, he
+looked at me thoughtfully for a few moments, evidently without thinking
+about me at all; and then his benevolent face expressed extraordinary
+pleasure, and he took me by both hands.
+
+‘Why, my dear Copperfield,’ said the Doctor, ‘you are a man! How do you
+do? I am delighted to see you. My dear Copperfield, how very much you
+have improved! You are quite--yes--dear me!’
+
+I hoped he was well, and Mrs. Strong too.
+
+‘Oh dear, yes!’ said the Doctor; ‘Annie’s quite well, and she’ll be
+delighted to see you. You were always her favourite. She said so,
+last night, when I showed her your letter. And--yes, to be sure--you
+recollect Mr. Jack Maldon, Copperfield?’
+
+‘Perfectly, sir.’
+
+‘Of course,’ said the Doctor. ‘To be sure. He’s pretty well, too.’
+
+‘Has he come home, sir?’ I inquired.
+
+‘From India?’ said the Doctor. ‘Yes. Mr. Jack Maldon couldn’t bear
+the climate, my dear. Mrs. Markleham--you have not forgotten Mrs.
+Markleham?’
+
+Forgotten the Old Soldier! And in that short time!
+
+‘Mrs. Markleham,’ said the Doctor, ‘was quite vexed about him, poor
+thing; so we have got him at home again; and we have bought him a little
+Patent place, which agrees with him much better.’ I knew enough of Mr.
+Jack Maldon to suspect from this account that it was a place where there
+was not much to do, and which was pretty well paid. The Doctor, walking
+up and down with his hand on my shoulder, and his kind face turned
+encouragingly to mine, went on:
+
+‘Now, my dear Copperfield, in reference to this proposal of yours. It’s
+very gratifying and agreeable to me, I am sure; but don’t you think you
+could do better? You achieved distinction, you know, when you were with
+us. You are qualified for many good things. You have laid a foundation
+that any edifice may be raised upon; and is it not a pity that you
+should devote the spring-time of your life to such a poor pursuit as I
+can offer?’
+
+I became very glowing again, and, expressing myself in a rhapsodical
+style, I am afraid, urged my request strongly; reminding the Doctor that
+I had already a profession.
+
+‘Well, well,’ said the Doctor, ‘that’s true. Certainly, your having
+a profession, and being actually engaged in studying it, makes a
+difference. But, my good young friend, what’s seventy pounds a year?’
+
+‘It doubles our income, Doctor Strong,’ said I.
+
+‘Dear me!’ replied the Doctor. ‘To think of that! Not that I mean to
+say it’s rigidly limited to seventy pounds a-year, because I have always
+contemplated making any young friend I might thus employ, a present too.
+Undoubtedly,’ said the Doctor, still walking me up and down with
+his hand on my shoulder. ‘I have always taken an annual present into
+account.’
+
+‘My dear tutor,’ said I (now, really, without any nonsense), ‘to whom I
+owe more obligations already than I ever can acknowledge--’
+
+‘No, no,’ interposed the Doctor. ‘Pardon me!’
+
+‘If you will take such time as I have, and that is my mornings and
+evenings, and can think it worth seventy pounds a year, you will do me
+such a service as I cannot express.’
+
+‘Dear me!’ said the Doctor, innocently. ‘To think that so little should
+go for so much! Dear, dear! And when you can do better, you will? On
+your word, now?’ said the Doctor,--which he had always made a very grave
+appeal to the honour of us boys.
+
+‘On my word, sir!’ I returned, answering in our old school manner.
+
+‘Then be it so,’ said the Doctor, clapping me on the shoulder, and still
+keeping his hand there, as we still walked up and down.
+
+‘And I shall be twenty times happier, sir,’ said I, with a little--I
+hope innocent--flattery, ‘if my employment is to be on the Dictionary.’
+
+The Doctor stopped, smilingly clapped me on the shoulder again, and
+exclaimed, with a triumph most delightful to behold, as if I had
+penetrated to the profoundest depths of mortal sagacity, ‘My dear young
+friend, you have hit it. It IS the Dictionary!’
+
+How could it be anything else! His pockets were as full of it as his
+head. It was sticking out of him in all directions. He told me that
+since his retirement from scholastic life, he had been advancing with
+it wonderfully; and that nothing could suit him better than the proposed
+arrangements for morning and evening work, as it was his custom to walk
+about in the daytime with his considering cap on. His papers were in
+a little confusion, in consequence of Mr. Jack Maldon having lately
+proffered his occasional services as an amanuensis, and not being
+accustomed to that occupation; but we should soon put right what was
+amiss, and go on swimmingly. Afterwards, when we were fairly at our
+work, I found Mr. Jack Maldon’s efforts more troublesome to me than
+I had expected, as he had not confined himself to making numerous
+mistakes, but had sketched so many soldiers, and ladies’ heads, over
+the Doctor’s manuscript, that I often became involved in labyrinths of
+obscurity.
+
+The Doctor was quite happy in the prospect of our going to work together
+on that wonderful performance, and we settled to begin next morning at
+seven o’clock. We were to work two hours every morning, and two or three
+hours every night, except on Saturdays, when I was to rest. On Sundays,
+of course, I was to rest also, and I considered these very easy terms.
+
+Our plans being thus arranged to our mutual satisfaction, the Doctor
+took me into the house to present me to Mrs. Strong, whom we found in
+the Doctor’s new study, dusting his books,--a freedom which he never
+permitted anybody else to take with those sacred favourites.
+
+They had postponed their breakfast on my account, and we sat down to
+table together. We had not been seated long, when I saw an approaching
+arrival in Mrs. Strong’s face, before I heard any sound of it. A
+gentleman on horseback came to the gate, and leading his horse into the
+little court, with the bridle over his arm, as if he were quite at home,
+tied him to a ring in the empty coach-house wall, and came into the
+breakfast parlour, whip in hand. It was Mr. Jack Maldon; and Mr. Jack
+Maldon was not at all improved by India, I thought. I was in a state
+of ferocious virtue, however, as to young men who were not cutting down
+trees in the forest of difficulty; and my impression must be received
+with due allowance.
+
+‘Mr. Jack!’ said the Doctor. ‘Copperfield!’
+
+Mr. Jack Maldon shook hands with me; but not very warmly, I believed;
+and with an air of languid patronage, at which I secretly took great
+umbrage. But his languor altogether was quite a wonderful sight; except
+when he addressed himself to his cousin Annie. ‘Have you breakfasted
+this morning, Mr. Jack?’ said the Doctor.
+
+‘I hardly ever take breakfast, sir,’ he replied, with his head thrown
+back in an easy-chair. ‘I find it bores me.’
+
+‘Is there any news today?’ inquired the Doctor.
+
+‘Nothing at all, sir,’ replied Mr. Maldon. ‘There’s an account about
+the people being hungry and discontented down in the North, but they are
+always being hungry and discontented somewhere.’
+
+The Doctor looked grave, and said, as though he wished to change the
+subject, ‘Then there’s no news at all; and no news, they say, is good
+news.’
+
+‘There’s a long statement in the papers, sir, about a murder,’ observed
+Mr. Maldon. ‘But somebody is always being murdered, and I didn’t read
+it.’
+
+A display of indifference to all the actions and passions of mankind was
+not supposed to be such a distinguished quality at that time, I think,
+as I have observed it to be considered since. I have known it very
+fashionable indeed. I have seen it displayed with such success, that I
+have encountered some fine ladies and gentlemen who might as well have
+been born caterpillars. Perhaps it impressed me the more then, because
+it was new to me, but it certainly did not tend to exalt my opinion of,
+or to strengthen my confidence in, Mr. Jack Maldon.
+
+‘I came out to inquire whether Annie would like to go to the opera
+tonight,’ said Mr. Maldon, turning to her. ‘It’s the last good night
+there will be, this season; and there’s a singer there, whom she really
+ought to hear. She is perfectly exquisite. Besides which, she is so
+charmingly ugly,’ relapsing into languor.
+
+The Doctor, ever pleased with what was likely to please his young wife,
+turned to her and said:
+
+‘You must go, Annie. You must go.’
+
+‘I would rather not,’ she said to the Doctor. ‘I prefer to remain at
+home. I would much rather remain at home.’
+
+Without looking at her cousin, she then addressed me, and asked me about
+Agnes, and whether she should see her, and whether she was not likely to
+come that day; and was so much disturbed, that I wondered how even the
+Doctor, buttering his toast, could be blind to what was so obvious.
+
+But he saw nothing. He told her, good-naturedly, that she was young and
+ought to be amused and entertained, and must not allow herself to be
+made dull by a dull old fellow. Moreover, he said, he wanted to hear her
+sing all the new singer’s songs to him; and how could she do that well,
+unless she went? So the Doctor persisted in making the engagement for
+her, and Mr. Jack Maldon was to come back to dinner. This concluded, he
+went to his Patent place, I suppose; but at all events went away on his
+horse, looking very idle.
+
+I was curious to find out next morning, whether she had been. She had
+not, but had sent into London to put her cousin off; and had gone out in
+the afternoon to see Agnes, and had prevailed upon the Doctor to go with
+her; and they had walked home by the fields, the Doctor told me, the
+evening being delightful. I wondered then, whether she would have gone
+if Agnes had not been in town, and whether Agnes had some good influence
+over her too!
+
+She did not look very happy, I thought; but it was a good face, or a
+very false one. I often glanced at it, for she sat in the window all the
+time we were at work; and made our breakfast, which we took by snatches
+as we were employed. When I left, at nine o’clock, she was kneeling on
+the ground at the Doctor’s feet, putting on his shoes and gaiters for
+him. There was a softened shade upon her face, thrown from some green
+leaves overhanging the open window of the low room; and I thought all
+the way to Doctors’ Commons, of the night when I had seen it looking at
+him as he read.
+
+I was pretty busy now; up at five in the morning, and home at nine
+or ten at night. But I had infinite satisfaction in being so
+closely engaged, and never walked slowly on any account, and felt
+enthusiastically that the more I tired myself, the more I was doing to
+deserve Dora. I had not revealed myself in my altered character to
+Dora yet, because she was coming to see Miss Mills in a few days, and
+I deferred all I had to tell her until then; merely informing her in
+my letters (all our communications were secretly forwarded through Miss
+Mills), that I had much to tell her. In the meantime, I put myself on
+a short allowance of bear’s grease, wholly abandoned scented soap and
+lavender water, and sold off three waistcoats at a prodigious sacrifice,
+as being too luxurious for my stern career.
+
+Not satisfied with all these proceedings, but burning with impatience
+to do something more, I went to see Traddles, now lodging up behind the
+parapet of a house in Castle Street, Holborn. Mr. Dick, who had been
+with me to Highgate twice already, and had resumed his companionship
+with the Doctor, I took with me.
+
+I took Mr. Dick with me, because, acutely sensitive to my aunt’s
+reverses, and sincerely believing that no galley-slave or convict worked
+as I did, he had begun to fret and worry himself out of spirits and
+appetite, as having nothing useful to do. In this condition, he felt
+more incapable of finishing the Memorial than ever; and the harder he
+worked at it, the oftener that unlucky head of King Charles the First
+got into it. Seriously apprehending that his malady would increase,
+unless we put some innocent deception upon him and caused him to believe
+that he was useful, or unless we could put him in the way of being
+really useful (which would be better), I made up my mind to try
+if Traddles could help us. Before we went, I wrote Traddles a full
+statement of all that had happened, and Traddles wrote me back a capital
+answer, expressive of his sympathy and friendship.
+
+We found him hard at work with his inkstand and papers, refreshed by the
+sight of the flower-pot stand and the little round table in a corner of
+the small apartment. He received us cordially, and made friends with
+Mr. Dick in a moment. Mr. Dick professed an absolute certainty of having
+seen him before, and we both said, ‘Very likely.’
+
+The first subject on which I had to consult Traddles was this,--I had
+heard that many men distinguished in various pursuits had begun life
+by reporting the debates in Parliament. Traddles having mentioned
+newspapers to me, as one of his hopes, I had put the two things
+together, and told Traddles in my letter that I wished to know how I
+could qualify myself for this pursuit. Traddles now informed me, as the
+result of his inquiries, that the mere mechanical acquisition necessary,
+except in rare cases, for thorough excellence in it, that is to say,
+a perfect and entire command of the mystery of short-hand writing and
+reading, was about equal in difficulty to the mastery of six languages;
+and that it might perhaps be attained, by dint of perseverance, in the
+course of a few years. Traddles reasonably supposed that this would
+settle the business; but I, only feeling that here indeed were a few
+tall trees to be hewn down, immediately resolved to work my way on to
+Dora through this thicket, axe in hand.
+
+‘I am very much obliged to you, my dear Traddles!’ said I. ‘I’ll begin
+tomorrow.’
+
+Traddles looked astonished, as he well might; but he had no notion as
+yet of my rapturous condition.
+
+‘I’ll buy a book,’ said I, ‘with a good scheme of this art in it; I’ll
+work at it at the Commons, where I haven’t half enough to do; I’ll take
+down the speeches in our court for practice--Traddles, my dear fellow,
+I’ll master it!’
+
+‘Dear me,’ said Traddles, opening his eyes, ‘I had no idea you were such
+a determined character, Copperfield!’
+
+I don’t know how he should have had, for it was new enough to me. I
+passed that off, and brought Mr. Dick on the carpet.
+
+‘You see,’ said Mr. Dick, wistfully, ‘if I could exert myself, Mr.
+Traddles--if I could beat a drum--or blow anything!’
+
+Poor fellow! I have little doubt he would have preferred such an
+employment in his heart to all others. Traddles, who would not have
+smiled for the world, replied composedly:
+
+‘But you are a very good penman, sir. You told me so, Copperfield?’
+‘Excellent!’ said I. And indeed he was. He wrote with extraordinary
+neatness.
+
+‘Don’t you think,’ said Traddles, ‘you could copy writings, sir, if I
+got them for you?’
+
+Mr. Dick looked doubtfully at me. ‘Eh, Trotwood?’
+
+I shook my head. Mr. Dick shook his, and sighed. ‘Tell him about the
+Memorial,’ said Mr. Dick.
+
+I explained to Traddles that there was a difficulty in keeping King
+Charles the First out of Mr. Dick’s manuscripts; Mr. Dick in the
+meanwhile looking very deferentially and seriously at Traddles, and
+sucking his thumb.
+
+‘But these writings, you know, that I speak of, are already drawn up
+and finished,’ said Traddles after a little consideration. ‘Mr. Dick has
+nothing to do with them. Wouldn’t that make a difference, Copperfield?
+At all events, wouldn’t it be well to try?’
+
+This gave us new hope. Traddles and I laying our heads together apart,
+while Mr. Dick anxiously watched us from his chair, we concocted a
+scheme in virtue of which we got him to work next day, with triumphant
+success.
+
+On a table by the window in Buckingham Street, we set out the work
+Traddles procured for him--which was to make, I forget how many copies
+of a legal document about some right of way--and on another table
+we spread the last unfinished original of the great Memorial. Our
+instructions to Mr. Dick were that he should copy exactly what he had
+before him, without the least departure from the original; and that when
+he felt it necessary to make the slightest allusion to King Charles the
+First, he should fly to the Memorial. We exhorted him to be resolute
+in this, and left my aunt to observe him. My aunt reported to us,
+afterwards, that, at first, he was like a man playing the kettle-drums,
+and constantly divided his attentions between the two; but that, finding
+this confuse and fatigue him, and having his copy there, plainly before
+his eyes, he soon sat at it in an orderly business-like manner, and
+postponed the Memorial to a more convenient time. In a word, although we
+took great care that he should have no more to do than was good for him,
+and although he did not begin with the beginning of a week, he earned
+by the following Saturday night ten shillings and nine-pence; and never,
+while I live, shall I forget his going about to all the shops in the
+neighbourhood to change this treasure into sixpences, or his bringing
+them to my aunt arranged in the form of a heart upon a waiter, with
+tears of joy and pride in his eyes. He was like one under the propitious
+influence of a charm, from the moment of his being usefully employed;
+and if there were a happy man in the world, that Saturday night, it was
+the grateful creature who thought my aunt the most wonderful woman in
+existence, and me the most wonderful young man.
+
+‘No starving now, Trotwood,’ said Mr. Dick, shaking hands with me in a
+corner. ‘I’ll provide for her, Sir!’ and he flourished his ten fingers
+in the air, as if they were ten banks.
+
+I hardly know which was the better pleased, Traddles or I. ‘It really,’
+said Traddles, suddenly, taking a letter out of his pocket, and giving
+it to me, ‘put Mr. Micawber quite out of my head!’
+
+The letter (Mr. Micawber never missed any possible opportunity of
+writing a letter) was addressed to me, ‘By the kindness of T. Traddles,
+Esquire, of the Inner Temple.’ It ran thus:--
+
+
+‘MY DEAR COPPERFIELD,
+
+‘You may possibly not be unprepared to receive the intimation that
+something has turned up. I may have mentioned to you on a former
+occasion that I was in expectation of such an event.
+
+‘I am about to establish myself in one of the provincial towns of our
+favoured island (where the society may be described as a happy admixture
+of the agricultural and the clerical), in immediate connexion with
+one of the learned professions. Mrs. Micawber and our offspring will
+accompany me. Our ashes, at a future period, will probably be found
+commingled in the cemetery attached to a venerable pile, for which the
+spot to which I refer has acquired a reputation, shall I say from China
+to Peru?
+
+‘In bidding adieu to the modern Babylon, where we have undergone many
+vicissitudes, I trust not ignobly, Mrs. Micawber and myself cannot
+disguise from our minds that we part, it may be for years and it may be
+for ever, with an individual linked by strong associations to the altar
+of our domestic life. If, on the eve of such a departure, you will
+accompany our mutual friend, Mr. Thomas Traddles, to our present abode,
+and there reciprocate the wishes natural to the occasion, you will
+confer a Boon
+
+               ‘On
+                    ‘One
+                         ‘Who
+                              ‘Is
+                                   ‘Ever yours,
+                                        ‘WILKINS MICAWBER.’
+
+
+I was glad to find that Mr. Micawber had got rid of his dust and ashes,
+and that something really had turned up at last. Learning from Traddles
+that the invitation referred to the evening then wearing away, I
+expressed my readiness to do honour to it; and we went off together to
+the lodging which Mr. Micawber occupied as Mr. Mortimer, and which was
+situated near the top of the Gray’s Inn Road.
+
+The resources of this lodging were so limited, that we found the twins,
+now some eight or nine years old, reposing in a turn-up bedstead in
+the family sitting-room, where Mr. Micawber had prepared, in a
+wash-hand-stand jug, what he called ‘a Brew’ of the agreeable beverage
+for which he was famous. I had the pleasure, on this occasion, of
+renewing the acquaintance of Master Micawber, whom I found a promising
+boy of about twelve or thirteen, very subject to that restlessness of
+limb which is not an unfrequent phenomenon in youths of his age. I also
+became once more known to his sister, Miss Micawber, in whom, as Mr.
+Micawber told us, ‘her mother renewed her youth, like the Phoenix’.
+
+‘My dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘yourself and Mr. Traddles
+find us on the brink of migration, and will excuse any little
+discomforts incidental to that position.’
+
+Glancing round as I made a suitable reply, I observed that the family
+effects were already packed, and that the amount of luggage was by no
+means overwhelming. I congratulated Mrs. Micawber on the approaching
+change.
+
+‘My dear Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘of your friendly
+interest in all our affairs, I am well assured. My family may consider
+it banishment, if they please; but I am a wife and mother, and I never
+will desert Mr. Micawber.’
+
+Traddles, appealed to by Mrs. Micawber’s eye, feelingly acquiesced.
+
+‘That,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘that, at least, is my view, my dear Mr.
+Copperfield and Mr. Traddles, of the obligation which I took upon myself
+when I repeated the irrevocable words, “I, Emma, take thee, Wilkins.” I
+read the service over with a flat-candle on the previous night, and
+the conclusion I derived from it was, that I never could desert Mr.
+Micawber. And,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘though it is possible I may be
+mistaken in my view of the ceremony, I never will!’
+
+‘My dear,’ said Mr. Micawber, a little impatiently, ‘I am not conscious
+that you are expected to do anything of the sort.’
+
+‘I am aware, my dear Mr. Copperfield,’ pursued Mrs. Micawber, ‘that I am
+now about to cast my lot among strangers; and I am also aware that the
+various members of my family, to whom Mr. Micawber has written in the
+most gentlemanly terms, announcing that fact, have not taken the least
+notice of Mr. Micawber’s communication. Indeed I may be superstitious,’
+said Mrs. Micawber, ‘but it appears to me that Mr. Micawber is destined
+never to receive any answers whatever to the great majority of the
+communications he writes. I may augur, from the silence of my family,
+that they object to the resolution I have taken; but I should not allow
+myself to be swerved from the path of duty, Mr. Copperfield, even by my
+papa and mama, were they still living.’
+
+I expressed my opinion that this was going in the right direction. ‘It
+may be a sacrifice,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘to immure one’s-self in a
+Cathedral town; but surely, Mr. Copperfield, if it is a sacrifice in me,
+it is much more a sacrifice in a man of Mr. Micawber’s abilities.’
+
+‘Oh! You are going to a Cathedral town?’ said I.
+
+Mr. Micawber, who had been helping us all, out of the wash-hand-stand
+jug, replied:
+
+‘To Canterbury. In fact, my dear Copperfield, I have entered into
+arrangements, by virtue of which I stand pledged and contracted to our
+friend Heep, to assist and serve him in the capacity of--and to be--his
+confidential clerk.’
+
+I stared at Mr. Micawber, who greatly enjoyed my surprise.
+
+‘I am bound to state to you,’ he said, with an official air, ‘that the
+business habits, and the prudent suggestions, of Mrs. Micawber, have
+in a great measure conduced to this result. The gauntlet, to which Mrs.
+Micawber referred upon a former occasion, being thrown down in the form
+of an advertisement, was taken up by my friend Heep, and led to a mutual
+recognition. Of my friend Heep,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘who is a man of
+remarkable shrewdness, I desire to speak with all possible respect.
+My friend Heep has not fixed the positive remuneration at too high a
+figure, but he has made a great deal, in the way of extrication from
+the pressure of pecuniary difficulties, contingent on the value of
+my services; and on the value of those services I pin my faith. Such
+address and intelligence as I chance to possess,’ said Mr. Micawber,
+boastfully disparaging himself, with the old genteel air, ‘will be
+devoted to my friend Heep’s service. I have already some acquaintance
+with the law--as a defendant on civil process--and I shall immediately
+apply myself to the Commentaries of one of the most eminent and
+remarkable of our English jurists. I believe it is unnecessary to add
+that I allude to Mr. justice Blackstone.’
+
+These observations, and indeed the greater part of the observations
+made that evening, were interrupted by Mrs. Micawber’s discovering that
+Master Micawber was sitting on his boots, or holding his head on with
+both arms as if he felt it loose, or accidentally kicking Traddles under
+the table, or shuffling his feet over one another, or producing them
+at distances from himself apparently outrageous to nature, or lying
+sideways with his hair among the wine-glasses, or developing his
+restlessness of limb in some other form incompatible with the general
+interests of society; and by Master Micawber’s receiving those
+discoveries in a resentful spirit. I sat all the while, amazed by Mr.
+Micawber’s disclosure, and wondering what it meant; until Mrs. Micawber
+resumed the thread of the discourse, and claimed my attention.
+
+‘What I particularly request Mr. Micawber to be careful of, is,’ said
+Mrs. Micawber, ‘that he does not, my dear Mr. Copperfield, in applying
+himself to this subordinate branch of the law, place it out of his power
+to rise, ultimately, to the top of the tree. I am convinced that Mr.
+Micawber, giving his mind to a profession so adapted to his fertile
+resources, and his flow of language, must distinguish himself. Now, for
+example, Mr. Traddles,’ said Mrs. Micawber, assuming a profound air, ‘a
+judge, or even say a Chancellor. Does an individual place himself beyond
+the pale of those preferments by entering on such an office as Mr.
+Micawber has accepted?’
+
+‘My dear,’ observed Mr. Micawber--but glancing inquisitively at
+Traddles, too; ‘we have time enough before us, for the consideration of
+those questions.’
+
+‘Micawber,’ she returned, ‘no! Your mistake in life is, that you do not
+look forward far enough. You are bound, in justice to your family, if
+not to yourself, to take in at a comprehensive glance the extremest
+point in the horizon to which your abilities may lead you.’
+
+Mr. Micawber coughed, and drank his punch with an air of exceeding
+satisfaction--still glancing at Traddles, as if he desired to have his
+opinion.
+
+‘Why, the plain state of the case, Mrs. Micawber,’ said Traddles, mildly
+breaking the truth to her. ‘I mean the real prosaic fact, you know--’
+
+‘Just so,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘my dear Mr. Traddles, I wish to be as
+prosaic and literal as possible on a subject of so much importance.’
+
+‘--Is,’ said Traddles, ‘that this branch of the law, even if Mr.
+Micawber were a regular solicitor--’
+
+‘Exactly so,’ returned Mrs. Micawber. [‘Wilkins, you are squinting, and
+will not be able to get your eyes back.’)
+
+‘--Has nothing,’ pursued Traddles, ‘to do with that. Only a barrister
+is eligible for such preferments; and Mr. Micawber could not be a
+barrister, without being entered at an inn of court as a student, for
+five years.’
+
+‘Do I follow you?’ said Mrs. Micawber, with her most affable air
+of business. ‘Do I understand, my dear Mr. Traddles, that, at the
+expiration of that period, Mr. Micawber would be eligible as a Judge or
+Chancellor?’
+
+‘He would be ELIGIBLE,’ returned Traddles, with a strong emphasis on
+that word.
+
+‘Thank you,’ said Mrs. Micawber. ‘That is quite sufficient. If such is
+the case, and Mr. Micawber forfeits no privilege by entering on these
+duties, my anxiety is set at rest. I speak,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘as a
+female, necessarily; but I have always been of opinion that Mr. Micawber
+possesses what I have heard my papa call, when I lived at home, the
+judicial mind; and I hope Mr. Micawber is now entering on a field where
+that mind will develop itself, and take a commanding station.’
+
+I quite believe that Mr. Micawber saw himself, in his judicial mind’s
+eye, on the woolsack. He passed his hand complacently over his bald
+head, and said with ostentatious resignation:
+
+‘My dear, we will not anticipate the decrees of fortune. If I am
+reserved to wear a wig, I am at least prepared, externally,’ in allusion
+to his baldness, ‘for that distinction. I do not,’ said Mr. Micawber,
+‘regret my hair, and I may have been deprived of it for a specific
+purpose. I cannot say. It is my intention, my dear Copperfield, to
+educate my son for the Church; I will not deny that I should be happy,
+on his account, to attain to eminence.’
+
+‘For the Church?’ said I, still pondering, between whiles, on Uriah
+Heep.
+
+‘Yes,’ said Mr. Micawber. ‘He has a remarkable head-voice, and will
+commence as a chorister. Our residence at Canterbury, and our local
+connexion, will, no doubt, enable him to take advantage of any vacancy
+that may arise in the Cathedral corps.’
+
+On looking at Master Micawber again, I saw that he had a certain
+expression of face, as if his voice were behind his eyebrows; where it
+presently appeared to be, on his singing us (as an alternative between
+that and bed) ‘The Wood-Pecker tapping’. After many compliments on this
+performance, we fell into some general conversation; and as I was too
+full of my desperate intentions to keep my altered circumstances to
+myself, I made them known to Mr. and Mrs. Micawber. I cannot express how
+extremely delighted they both were, by the idea of my aunt’s being in
+difficulties; and how comfortable and friendly it made them.
+
+When we were nearly come to the last round of the punch, I addressed
+myself to Traddles, and reminded him that we must not separate, without
+wishing our friends health, happiness, and success in their new career.
+I begged Mr. Micawber to fill us bumpers, and proposed the toast in
+due form: shaking hands with him across the table, and kissing Mrs.
+Micawber, to commemorate that eventful occasion. Traddles imitated me
+in the first particular, but did not consider himself a sufficiently old
+friend to venture on the second.
+
+‘My dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, rising with one of his thumbs
+in each of his waistcoat pockets, ‘the companion of my youth: if I may
+be allowed the expression--and my esteemed friend Traddles: if I may be
+permitted to call him so--will allow me, on the part of Mrs. Micawber,
+myself, and our offspring, to thank them in the warmest and most
+uncompromising terms for their good wishes. It may be expected that
+on the eve of a migration which will consign us to a perfectly new
+existence,’ Mr. Micawber spoke as if they were going five hundred
+thousand miles, ‘I should offer a few valedictory remarks to two such
+friends as I see before me. But all that I have to say in this way, I
+have said. Whatever station in society I may attain, through the medium
+of the learned profession of which I am about to become an unworthy
+member, I shall endeavour not to disgrace, and Mrs. Micawber will be
+safe to adorn. Under the temporary pressure of pecuniary liabilities,
+contracted with a view to their immediate liquidation, but remaining
+unliquidated through a combination of circumstances, I have been
+under the necessity of assuming a garb from which my natural instincts
+recoil--I allude to spectacles--and possessing myself of a cognomen, to
+which I can establish no legitimate pretensions. All I have to say on
+that score is, that the cloud has passed from the dreary scene, and the
+God of Day is once more high upon the mountain tops. On Monday next, on
+the arrival of the four o’clock afternoon coach at Canterbury, my foot
+will be on my native heath--my name, Micawber!’
+
+Mr. Micawber resumed his seat on the close of these remarks, and
+drank two glasses of punch in grave succession. He then said with much
+solemnity:
+
+‘One thing more I have to do, before this separation is complete, and
+that is to perform an act of justice. My friend Mr. Thomas Traddles
+has, on two several occasions, “put his name”, if I may use a common
+expression, to bills of exchange for my accommodation. On the first
+occasion Mr. Thomas Traddles was left--let me say, in short, in the
+lurch. The fulfilment of the second has not yet arrived. The amount of
+the first obligation,’ here Mr. Micawber carefully referred to papers,
+‘was, I believe, twenty-three, four, nine and a half, of the second,
+according to my entry of that transaction, eighteen, six, two. These
+sums, united, make a total, if my calculation is correct, amounting to
+forty-one, ten, eleven and a half. My friend Copperfield will perhaps do
+me the favour to check that total?’
+
+I did so and found it correct.
+
+‘To leave this metropolis,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘and my friend Mr.
+Thomas Traddles, without acquitting myself of the pecuniary part of this
+obligation, would weigh upon my mind to an insupportable extent. I have,
+therefore, prepared for my friend Mr. Thomas Traddles, and I now hold
+in my hand, a document, which accomplishes the desired object. I beg
+to hand to my friend Mr. Thomas Traddles my I.O.U. for forty-one, ten,
+eleven and a half, and I am happy to recover my moral dignity, and to
+know that I can once more walk erect before my fellow man!’
+
+With this introduction (which greatly affected him), Mr. Micawber placed
+his I.O.U. in the hands of Traddles, and said he wished him well in
+every relation of life. I am persuaded, not only that this was quite
+the same to Mr. Micawber as paying the money, but that Traddles himself
+hardly knew the difference until he had had time to think about it. Mr.
+Micawber walked so erect before his fellow man, on the strength of
+this virtuous action, that his chest looked half as broad again when he
+lighted us downstairs. We parted with great heartiness on both sides;
+and when I had seen Traddles to his own door, and was going home alone,
+I thought, among the other odd and contradictory things I mused upon,
+that, slippery as Mr. Micawber was, I was probably indebted to some
+compassionate recollection he retained of me as his boy-lodger, for
+never having been asked by him for money. I certainly should not have
+had the moral courage to refuse it; and I have no doubt he knew that (to
+his credit be it written), quite as well as I did.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 37. A LITTLE COLD WATER
+
+
+My new life had lasted for more than a week, and I was stronger than
+ever in those tremendous practical resolutions that I felt the crisis
+required. I continued to walk extremely fast, and to have a general idea
+that I was getting on. I made it a rule to take as much out of myself
+as I possibly could, in my way of doing everything to which I applied
+my energies. I made a perfect victim of myself. I even entertained some
+idea of putting myself on a vegetable diet, vaguely conceiving that, in
+becoming a graminivorous animal, I should sacrifice to Dora.
+
+As yet, little Dora was quite unconscious of my desperate firmness,
+otherwise than as my letters darkly shadowed it forth. But another
+Saturday came, and on that Saturday evening she was to be at Miss
+Mills’s; and when Mr. Mills had gone to his whist-club (telegraphed to
+me in the street, by a bird-cage in the drawing-room middle window), I
+was to go there to tea.
+
+By this time, we were quite settled down in Buckingham Street, where Mr.
+Dick continued his copying in a state of absolute felicity. My aunt had
+obtained a signal victory over Mrs. Crupp, by paying her off, throwing
+the first pitcher she planted on the stairs out of window, and
+protecting in person, up and down the staircase, a supernumerary whom
+she engaged from the outer world. These vigorous measures struck such
+terror to the breast of Mrs. Crupp, that she subsided into her own
+kitchen, under the impression that my aunt was mad. My aunt being
+supremely indifferent to Mrs. Crupp’s opinion and everybody else’s, and
+rather favouring than discouraging the idea, Mrs. Crupp, of late the
+bold, became within a few days so faint-hearted, that rather than
+encounter my aunt upon the staircase, she would endeavour to hide her
+portly form behind doors--leaving visible, however, a wide margin of
+flannel petticoat--or would shrink into dark corners. This gave my aunt
+such unspeakable satisfaction, that I believe she took a delight in
+prowling up and down, with her bonnet insanely perched on the top of her
+head, at times when Mrs. Crupp was likely to be in the way.
+
+My aunt, being uncommonly neat and ingenious, made so many little
+improvements in our domestic arrangements, that I seemed to be richer
+instead of poorer. Among the rest, she converted the pantry into a
+dressing-room for me; and purchased and embellished a bedstead for my
+occupation, which looked as like a bookcase in the daytime as a bedstead
+could. I was the object of her constant solicitude; and my poor mother
+herself could not have loved me better, or studied more how to make me
+happy.
+
+Peggotty had considered herself highly privileged in being allowed to
+participate in these labours; and, although she still retained something
+of her old sentiment of awe in reference to my aunt, had received so
+many marks of encouragement and confidence, that they were the best
+friends possible. But the time had now come (I am speaking of the
+Saturday when I was to take tea at Miss Mills’s) when it was necessary
+for her to return home, and enter on the discharge of the duties she had
+undertaken in behalf of Ham. ‘So good-bye, Barkis,’ said my aunt, ‘and
+take care of yourself! I am sure I never thought I could be sorry to
+lose you!’
+
+I took Peggotty to the coach office and saw her off. She cried at
+parting, and confided her brother to my friendship as Ham had done. We
+had heard nothing of him since he went away, that sunny afternoon.
+
+‘And now, my own dear Davy,’ said Peggotty, ‘if, while you’re a
+prentice, you should want any money to spend; or if, when you’re out of
+your time, my dear, you should want any to set you up (and you must do
+one or other, or both, my darling); who has such a good right to ask
+leave to lend it you, as my sweet girl’s own old stupid me!’
+
+I was not so savagely independent as to say anything in reply, but that
+if ever I borrowed money of anyone, I would borrow it of her. Next to
+accepting a large sum on the spot, I believe this gave Peggotty more
+comfort than anything I could have done.
+
+‘And, my dear!’ whispered Peggotty, ‘tell the pretty little angel that
+I should so have liked to see her, only for a minute! And tell her that
+before she marries my boy, I’ll come and make your house so beautiful
+for you, if you’ll let me!’
+
+I declared that nobody else should touch it; and this gave Peggotty such
+delight that she went away in good spirits.
+
+I fatigued myself as much as I possibly could in the Commons all day, by
+a variety of devices, and at the appointed time in the evening repaired
+to Mr. Mills’s street. Mr. Mills, who was a terrible fellow to fall
+asleep after dinner, had not yet gone out, and there was no bird-cage in
+the middle window.
+
+He kept me waiting so long, that I fervently hoped the Club would fine
+him for being late. At last he came out; and then I saw my own Dora hang
+up the bird-cage, and peep into the balcony to look for me, and run
+in again when she saw I was there, while Jip remained behind, to bark
+injuriously at an immense butcher’s dog in the street, who could have
+taken him like a pill.
+
+Dora came to the drawing-room door to meet me; and Jip came scrambling
+out, tumbling over his own growls, under the impression that I was a
+Bandit; and we all three went in, as happy and loving as could be. I
+soon carried desolation into the bosom of our joys--not that I meant to
+do it, but that I was so full of the subject--by asking Dora, without
+the smallest preparation, if she could love a beggar?
+
+My pretty, little, startled Dora! Her only association with the word was
+a yellow face and a nightcap, or a pair of crutches, or a wooden leg, or
+a dog with a decanter-stand in his mouth, or something of that kind; and
+she stared at me with the most delightful wonder.
+
+‘How can you ask me anything so foolish?’ pouted Dora. ‘Love a beggar!’
+
+‘Dora, my own dearest!’ said I. ‘I am a beggar!’
+
+‘How can you be such a silly thing,’ replied Dora, slapping my hand, ‘as
+to sit there, telling such stories? I’ll make Jip bite you!’
+
+Her childish way was the most delicious way in the world to me, but it
+was necessary to be explicit, and I solemnly repeated:
+
+‘Dora, my own life, I am your ruined David!’
+
+‘I declare I’ll make Jip bite you!’ said Dora, shaking her curls, ‘if
+you are so ridiculous.’
+
+But I looked so serious, that Dora left off shaking her curls, and laid
+her trembling little hand upon my shoulder, and first looked scared
+and anxious, then began to cry. That was dreadful. I fell upon my knees
+before the sofa, caressing her, and imploring her not to rend my heart;
+but, for some time, poor little Dora did nothing but exclaim Oh dear! Oh
+dear! And oh, she was so frightened! And where was Julia Mills! And oh,
+take her to Julia Mills, and go away, please! until I was almost beside
+myself.
+
+At last, after an agony of supplication and protestation, I got Dora
+to look at me, with a horrified expression of face, which I gradually
+soothed until it was only loving, and her soft, pretty cheek was lying
+against mine. Then I told her, with my arms clasped round her, how I
+loved her, so dearly, and so dearly; how I felt it right to offer to
+release her from her engagement, because now I was poor; how I never
+could bear it, or recover it, if I lost her; how I had no fears of
+poverty, if she had none, my arm being nerved and my heart inspired by
+her; how I was already working with a courage such as none but lovers
+knew; how I had begun to be practical, and look into the future; how a
+crust well earned was sweeter far than a feast inherited; and much
+more to the same purpose, which I delivered in a burst of passionate
+eloquence quite surprising to myself, though I had been thinking about
+it, day and night, ever since my aunt had astonished me.
+
+‘Is your heart mine still, dear Dora?’ said I, rapturously, for I knew
+by her clinging to me that it was.
+
+‘Oh, yes!’ cried Dora. ‘Oh, yes, it’s all yours. Oh, don’t be dreadful!’
+
+I dreadful! To Dora!
+
+‘Don’t talk about being poor, and working hard!’ said Dora, nestling
+closer to me. ‘Oh, don’t, don’t!’
+
+‘My dearest love,’ said I, ‘the crust well-earned--’
+
+‘Oh, yes; but I don’t want to hear any more about crusts!’ said Dora.
+‘And Jip must have a mutton-chop every day at twelve, or he’ll die.’
+
+I was charmed with her childish, winning way. I fondly explained to Dora
+that Jip should have his mutton-chop with his accustomed regularity.
+I drew a picture of our frugal home, made independent by my
+labour--sketching in the little house I had seen at Highgate, and my
+aunt in her room upstairs.
+
+‘I am not dreadful now, Dora?’ said I, tenderly.
+
+‘Oh, no, no!’ cried Dora. ‘But I hope your aunt will keep in her own
+room a good deal. And I hope she’s not a scolding old thing!’
+
+If it were possible for me to love Dora more than ever, I am sure I did.
+But I felt she was a little impracticable. It damped my new-born ardour,
+to find that ardour so difficult of communication to her. I made another
+trial. When she was quite herself again, and was curling Jip’s ears, as
+he lay upon her lap, I became grave, and said:
+
+‘My own! May I mention something?’
+
+‘Oh, please don’t be practical!’ said Dora, coaxingly. ‘Because it
+frightens me so!’
+
+‘Sweetheart!’ I returned; ‘there is nothing to alarm you in all this. I
+want you to think of it quite differently. I want to make it nerve you,
+and inspire you, Dora!’
+
+‘Oh, but that’s so shocking!’ cried Dora.
+
+‘My love, no. Perseverance and strength of character will enable us to
+bear much worse things.’ ‘But I haven’t got any strength at all,’
+said Dora, shaking her curls. ‘Have I, Jip? Oh, do kiss Jip, and be
+agreeable!’
+
+It was impossible to resist kissing Jip, when she held him up to me for
+that purpose, putting her own bright, rosy little mouth into kissing
+form, as she directed the operation, which she insisted should be
+performed symmetrically, on the centre of his nose. I did as she bade
+me--rewarding myself afterwards for my obedience--and she charmed me out
+of my graver character for I don’t know how long.
+
+‘But, Dora, my beloved!’ said I, at last resuming it; ‘I was going to
+mention something.’
+
+The judge of the Prerogative Court might have fallen in love with her,
+to see her fold her little hands and hold them up, begging and praying
+me not to be dreadful any more.
+
+‘Indeed I am not going to be, my darling!’ I assured her. ‘But, Dora, my
+love, if you will sometimes think,--not despondingly, you know; far from
+that!--but if you will sometimes think--just to encourage yourself--that
+you are engaged to a poor man--’
+
+‘Don’t, don’t! Pray don’t!’ cried Dora. ‘It’s so very dreadful!’
+
+‘My soul, not at all!’ said I, cheerfully. ‘If you will sometimes think
+of that, and look about now and then at your papa’s housekeeping, and
+endeavour to acquire a little habit--of accounts, for instance--’
+
+Poor little Dora received this suggestion with something that was half a
+sob and half a scream.
+
+‘--It would be so useful to us afterwards,’ I went on. ‘And if you would
+promise me to read a little--a little Cookery Book that I would send
+you, it would be so excellent for both of us. For our path in life, my
+Dora,’ said I, warming with the subject, ‘is stony and rugged now, and
+it rests with us to smooth it. We must fight our way onward. We must be
+brave. There are obstacles to be met, and we must meet, and crush them!’
+
+I was going on at a great rate, with a clenched hand, and a most
+enthusiastic countenance; but it was quite unnecessary to proceed. I had
+said enough. I had done it again. Oh, she was so frightened! Oh, where
+was Julia Mills! Oh, take her to Julia Mills, and go away, please!
+So that, in short, I was quite distracted, and raved about the
+drawing-room.
+
+I thought I had killed her, this time. I sprinkled water on her face.
+I went down on my knees. I plucked at my hair. I denounced myself as a
+remorseless brute and a ruthless beast. I implored her forgiveness.
+I besought her to look up. I ravaged Miss Mills’s work-box for a
+smelling-bottle, and in my agony of mind applied an ivory needle-case
+instead, and dropped all the needles over Dora. I shook my fists at Jip,
+who was as frantic as myself. I did every wild extravagance that could
+be done, and was a long way beyond the end of my wits when Miss Mills
+came into the room.
+
+‘Who has done this?’ exclaimed Miss Mills, succouring her friend.
+
+I replied, ‘I, Miss Mills! I have done it! Behold the destroyer!’--or
+words to that effect--and hid my face from the light, in the sofa
+cushion.
+
+At first Miss Mills thought it was a quarrel, and that we were verging
+on the Desert of Sahara; but she soon found out how matters stood, for
+my dear affectionate little Dora, embracing her, began exclaiming that I
+was ‘a poor labourer’; and then cried for me, and embraced me, and asked
+me would I let her give me all her money to keep, and then fell on Miss
+Mills’s neck, sobbing as if her tender heart were broken.
+
+Miss Mills must have been born to be a blessing to us. She ascertained
+from me in a few words what it was all about, comforted Dora, and
+gradually convinced her that I was not a labourer--from my manner of
+stating the case I believe Dora concluded that I was a navigator,
+and went balancing myself up and down a plank all day with a
+wheelbarrow--and so brought us together in peace. When we were quite
+composed, and Dora had gone up-stairs to put some rose-water to her
+eyes, Miss Mills rang for tea. In the ensuing interval, I told Miss
+Mills that she was evermore my friend, and that my heart must cease to
+vibrate ere I could forget her sympathy.
+
+I then expounded to Miss Mills what I had endeavoured, so very
+unsuccessfully, to expound to Dora. Miss Mills replied, on general
+principles, that the Cottage of content was better than the Palace of
+cold splendour, and that where love was, all was.
+
+I said to Miss Mills that this was very true, and who should know
+it better than I, who loved Dora with a love that never mortal had
+experienced yet? But on Miss Mills observing, with despondency, that
+it were well indeed for some hearts if this were so, I explained that
+I begged leave to restrict the observation to mortals of the masculine
+gender.
+
+I then put it to Miss Mills, to say whether she considered that there
+was or was not any practical merit in the suggestion I had been anxious
+to make, concerning the accounts, the housekeeping, and the Cookery
+Book?
+
+Miss Mills, after some consideration, thus replied:
+
+‘Mr. Copperfield, I will be plain with you. Mental suffering and trial
+supply, in some natures, the place of years, and I will be as plain with
+you as if I were a Lady Abbess. No. The suggestion is not appropriate
+to our Dora. Our dearest Dora is a favourite child of nature. She is a
+thing of light, and airiness, and joy. I am free to confess that if it
+could be done, it might be well, but--’ And Miss Mills shook her head.
+
+I was encouraged by this closing admission on the part of Miss Mills to
+ask her, whether, for Dora’s sake, if she had any opportunity of luring
+her attention to such preparations for an earnest life, she would avail
+herself of it? Miss Mills replied in the affirmative so readily, that I
+further asked her if she would take charge of the Cookery Book; and, if
+she ever could insinuate it upon Dora’s acceptance, without frightening
+her, undertake to do me that crowning service. Miss Mills accepted this
+trust, too; but was not sanguine.
+
+And Dora returned, looking such a lovely little creature, that I really
+doubted whether she ought to be troubled with anything so ordinary. And
+she loved me so much, and was so captivating (particularly when she made
+Jip stand on his hind legs for toast, and when she pretended to hold
+that nose of his against the hot teapot for punishment because he
+wouldn’t), that I felt like a sort of Monster who had got into a Fairy’s
+bower, when I thought of having frightened her, and made her cry.
+
+After tea we had the guitar; and Dora sang those same dear old French
+songs about the impossibility of ever on any account leaving off
+dancing, La ra la, La ra la, until I felt a much greater Monster than
+before.
+
+We had only one check to our pleasure, and that happened a little while
+before I took my leave, when, Miss Mills chancing to make some allusion
+to tomorrow morning, I unluckily let out that, being obliged to exert
+myself now, I got up at five o’clock. Whether Dora had any idea that
+I was a Private Watchman, I am unable to say; but it made a great
+impression on her, and she neither played nor sang any more.
+
+It was still on her mind when I bade her adieu; and she said to me, in
+her pretty coaxing way--as if I were a doll, I used to think:
+
+‘Now don’t get up at five o’clock, you naughty boy. It’s so
+nonsensical!’
+
+‘My love,’ said I, ‘I have work to do.’
+
+‘But don’t do it!’ returned Dora. ‘Why should you?’
+
+It was impossible to say to that sweet little surprised face, otherwise
+than lightly and playfully, that we must work to live.
+
+‘Oh! How ridiculous!’ cried Dora.
+
+‘How shall we live without, Dora?’ said I.
+
+‘How? Any how!’ said Dora.
+
+She seemed to think she had quite settled the question, and gave me such
+a triumphant little kiss, direct from her innocent heart, that I would
+hardly have put her out of conceit with her answer, for a fortune.
+
+Well! I loved her, and I went on loving her, most absorbingly, entirely,
+and completely. But going on, too, working pretty hard, and busily
+keeping red-hot all the irons I now had in the fire, I would sit
+sometimes of a night, opposite my aunt, thinking how I had frightened
+Dora that time, and how I could best make my way with a guitar-case
+through the forest of difficulty, until I used to fancy that my head was
+turning quite grey.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 38. A DISSOLUTION OF PARTNERSHIP
+
+
+I did not allow my resolution, with respect to the Parliamentary
+Debates, to cool. It was one of the irons I began to heat immediately,
+and one of the irons I kept hot, and hammered at, with a perseverance
+I may honestly admire. I bought an approved scheme of the noble art and
+mystery of stenography (which cost me ten and sixpence); and plunged
+into a sea of perplexity that brought me, in a few weeks, to the
+confines of distraction. The changes that were rung upon dots, which
+in such a position meant such a thing, and in such another position
+something else, entirely different; the wonderful vagaries that were
+played by circles; the unaccountable consequences that resulted from
+marks like flies’ legs; the tremendous effects of a curve in a wrong
+place; not only troubled my waking hours, but reappeared before me in
+my sleep. When I had groped my way, blindly, through these difficulties,
+and had mastered the alphabet, which was an Egyptian Temple in itself,
+there then appeared a procession of new horrors, called arbitrary
+characters; the most despotic characters I have ever known; who
+insisted, for instance, that a thing like the beginning of a cobweb,
+meant expectation, and that a pen-and-ink sky-rocket, stood for
+disadvantageous. When I had fixed these wretches in my mind, I found
+that they had driven everything else out of it; then, beginning again, I
+forgot them; while I was picking them up, I dropped the other fragments
+of the system; in short, it was almost heart-breaking.
+
+It might have been quite heart-breaking, but for Dora, who was the stay
+and anchor of my tempest-driven bark. Every scratch in the scheme was
+a gnarled oak in the forest of difficulty, and I went on cutting them
+down, one after another, with such vigour, that in three or four months
+I was in a condition to make an experiment on one of our crack speakers
+in the Commons. Shall I ever forget how the crack speaker walked off
+from me before I began, and left my imbecile pencil staggering about the
+paper as if it were in a fit!
+
+This would not do, it was quite clear. I was flying too high, and should
+never get on, so. I resorted to Traddles for advice; who suggested
+that he should dictate speeches to me, at a pace, and with occasional
+stoppages, adapted to my weakness. Very grateful for this friendly aid,
+I accepted the proposal; and night after night, almost every night, for
+a long time, we had a sort of Private Parliament in Buckingham Street,
+after I came home from the Doctor’s.
+
+I should like to see such a Parliament anywhere else! My aunt and Mr.
+Dick represented the Government or the Opposition (as the case might
+be), and Traddles, with the assistance of Enfield’s Speakers, or a
+volume of parliamentary orations, thundered astonishing invectives
+against them. Standing by the table, with his finger in the page to keep
+the place, and his right arm flourishing above his head, Traddles, as
+Mr. Pitt, Mr. Fox, Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Burke, Lord Castlereagh, Viscount
+Sidmouth, or Mr. Canning, would work himself into the most violent
+heats, and deliver the most withering denunciations of the profligacy
+and corruption of my aunt and Mr. Dick; while I used to sit, at a little
+distance, with my notebook on my knee, fagging after him with all my
+might and main. The inconsistency and recklessness of Traddles were not
+to be exceeded by any real politician. He was for any description of
+policy, in the compass of a week; and nailed all sorts of colours to
+every denomination of mast. My aunt, looking very like an immovable
+Chancellor of the Exchequer, would occasionally throw in an interruption
+or two, as ‘Hear!’ or ‘No!’ or ‘Oh!’ when the text seemed to require it:
+which was always a signal to Mr. Dick (a perfect country gentleman)
+to follow lustily with the same cry. But Mr. Dick got taxed with
+such things in the course of his Parliamentary career, and was made
+responsible for such awful consequences, that he became uncomfortable in
+his mind sometimes. I believe he actually began to be afraid he really
+had been doing something, tending to the annihilation of the British
+constitution, and the ruin of the country.
+
+Often and often we pursued these debates until the clock pointed to
+midnight, and the candles were burning down. The result of so much good
+practice was, that by and by I began to keep pace with Traddles pretty
+well, and should have been quite triumphant if I had had the least idea
+what my notes were about. But, as to reading them after I had got them,
+I might as well have copied the Chinese inscriptions of an immense
+collection of tea-chests, or the golden characters on all the great red
+and green bottles in the chemists’ shops!
+
+There was nothing for it, but to turn back and begin all over again. It
+was very hard, but I turned back, though with a heavy heart, and began
+laboriously and methodically to plod over the same tedious ground at a
+snail’s pace; stopping to examine minutely every speck in the way, on
+all sides, and making the most desperate efforts to know these elusive
+characters by sight wherever I met them. I was always punctual at
+the office; at the Doctor’s too: and I really did work, as the common
+expression is, like a cart-horse. One day, when I went to the Commons as
+usual, I found Mr. Spenlow in the doorway looking extremely grave, and
+talking to himself. As he was in the habit of complaining of pains in
+his head--he had naturally a short throat, and I do seriously believe
+he over-starched himself--I was at first alarmed by the idea that he was
+not quite right in that direction; but he soon relieved my uneasiness.
+
+Instead of returning my ‘Good morning’ with his usual affability, he
+looked at me in a distant, ceremonious manner, and coldly requested me
+to accompany him to a certain coffee-house, which, in those days, had
+a door opening into the Commons, just within the little archway in St.
+Paul’s Churchyard. I complied, in a very uncomfortable state, and with a
+warm shooting all over me, as if my apprehensions were breaking out into
+buds. When I allowed him to go on a little before, on account of the
+narrowness of the way, I observed that he carried his head with a lofty
+air that was particularly unpromising; and my mind misgave me that he
+had found out about my darling Dora.
+
+If I had not guessed this, on the way to the coffee-house, I could
+hardly have failed to know what was the matter when I followed him
+into an upstairs room, and found Miss Murdstone there, supported by
+a background of sideboard, on which were several inverted tumblers
+sustaining lemons, and two of those extraordinary boxes, all corners and
+flutings, for sticking knives and forks in, which, happily for mankind,
+are now obsolete.
+
+Miss Murdstone gave me her chilly finger-nails, and sat severely rigid.
+Mr. Spenlow shut the door, motioned me to a chair, and stood on the
+hearth-rug in front of the fireplace.
+
+‘Have the goodness to show Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mr. Spenlow, what you
+have in your reticule, Miss Murdstone.’
+
+I believe it was the old identical steel-clasped reticule of my
+childhood, that shut up like a bite. Compressing her lips, in sympathy
+with the snap, Miss Murdstone opened it--opening her mouth a little
+at the same time--and produced my last letter to Dora, teeming with
+expressions of devoted affection.
+
+‘I believe that is your writing, Mr. Copperfield?’ said Mr. Spenlow.
+
+I was very hot, and the voice I heard was very unlike mine, when I said,
+‘It is, sir!’
+
+‘If I am not mistaken,’ said Mr. Spenlow, as Miss Murdstone brought a
+parcel of letters out of her reticule, tied round with the dearest bit
+of blue ribbon, ‘those are also from your pen, Mr. Copperfield?’
+
+I took them from her with a most desolate sensation; and, glancing at
+such phrases at the top, as ‘My ever dearest and own Dora,’ ‘My best
+beloved angel,’ ‘My blessed one for ever,’ and the like, blushed deeply,
+and inclined my head.
+
+‘No, thank you!’ said Mr. Spenlow, coldly, as I mechanically offered
+them back to him. ‘I will not deprive you of them. Miss Murdstone, be so
+good as to proceed!’
+
+That gentle creature, after a moment’s thoughtful survey of the carpet,
+delivered herself with much dry unction as follows.
+
+‘I must confess to having entertained my suspicions of Miss Spenlow, in
+reference to David Copperfield, for some time. I observed Miss Spenlow
+and David Copperfield, when they first met; and the impression made upon
+me then was not agreeable. The depravity of the human heart is such--’
+
+‘You will oblige me, ma’am,’ interrupted Mr. Spenlow, ‘by confining
+yourself to facts.’
+
+Miss Murdstone cast down her eyes, shook her head as if protesting
+against this unseemly interruption, and with frowning dignity resumed:
+
+‘Since I am to confine myself to facts, I will state them as dryly as I
+can. Perhaps that will be considered an acceptable course of proceeding.
+I have already said, sir, that I have had my suspicions of Miss Spenlow,
+in reference to David Copperfield, for some time. I have frequently
+endeavoured to find decisive corroboration of those suspicions, but
+without effect. I have therefore forborne to mention them to Miss
+Spenlow’s father’; looking severely at him--‘knowing how little
+disposition there usually is in such cases, to acknowledge the
+conscientious discharge of duty.’
+
+Mr. Spenlow seemed quite cowed by the gentlemanly sternness of Miss
+Murdstone’s manner, and deprecated her severity with a conciliatory
+little wave of his hand.
+
+‘On my return to Norwood, after the period of absence occasioned by my
+brother’s marriage,’ pursued Miss Murdstone in a disdainful voice, ‘and
+on the return of Miss Spenlow from her visit to her friend Miss Mills,
+I imagined that the manner of Miss Spenlow gave me greater occasion for
+suspicion than before. Therefore I watched Miss Spenlow closely.’
+
+Dear, tender little Dora, so unconscious of this Dragon’s eye!
+
+‘Still,’ resumed Miss Murdstone, ‘I found no proof until last night.
+It appeared to me that Miss Spenlow received too many letters from her
+friend Miss Mills; but Miss Mills being her friend with her father’s
+full concurrence,’ another telling blow at Mr. Spenlow, ‘it was not
+for me to interfere. If I may not be permitted to allude to the natural
+depravity of the human heart, at least I may--I must--be permitted, so
+far to refer to misplaced confidence.’
+
+Mr. Spenlow apologetically murmured his assent.
+
+‘Last evening after tea,’ pursued Miss Murdstone, ‘I observed the little
+dog starting, rolling, and growling about the drawing-room, worrying
+something. I said to Miss Spenlow, “Dora, what is that the dog has in
+his mouth? It’s paper.” Miss Spenlow immediately put her hand to her
+frock, gave a sudden cry, and ran to the dog. I interposed, and said,
+“Dora, my love, you must permit me.”’
+
+Oh Jip, miserable Spaniel, this wretchedness, then, was your work!
+
+‘Miss Spenlow endeavoured,’ said Miss Murdstone, ‘to bribe me with
+kisses, work-boxes, and small articles of jewellery--that, of course,
+I pass over. The little dog retreated under the sofa on my approaching
+him, and was with great difficulty dislodged by the fire-irons. Even
+when dislodged, he still kept the letter in his mouth; and on my
+endeavouring to take it from him, at the imminent risk of being bitten,
+he kept it between his teeth so pertinaciously as to suffer himself
+to be held suspended in the air by means of the document. At length I
+obtained possession of it. After perusing it, I taxed Miss Spenlow with
+having many such letters in her possession; and ultimately obtained from
+her the packet which is now in David Copperfield’s hand.’
+
+Here she ceased; and snapping her reticule again, and shutting her
+mouth, looked as if she might be broken, but could never be bent.
+
+‘You have heard Miss Murdstone,’ said Mr. Spenlow, turning to me. ‘I beg
+to ask, Mr. Copperfield, if you have anything to say in reply?’
+
+The picture I had before me, of the beautiful little treasure of my
+heart, sobbing and crying all night--of her being alone, frightened,
+and wretched, then--of her having so piteously begged and prayed that
+stony-hearted woman to forgive her--of her having vainly offered her
+those kisses, work-boxes, and trinkets--of her being in such grievous
+distress, and all for me--very much impaired the little dignity I had
+been able to muster. I am afraid I was in a tremulous state for a minute
+or so, though I did my best to disguise it.
+
+‘There is nothing I can say, sir,’ I returned, ‘except that all the
+blame is mine. Dora--’
+
+‘Miss Spenlow, if you please,’ said her father, majestically.
+
+‘--was induced and persuaded by me,’ I went on, swallowing that colder
+designation, ‘to consent to this concealment, and I bitterly regret it.’
+
+‘You are very much to blame, sir,’ said Mr. Spenlow, walking to and fro
+upon the hearth-rug, and emphasizing what he said with his whole body
+instead of his head, on account of the stiffness of his cravat and
+spine. ‘You have done a stealthy and unbecoming action, Mr. Copperfield.
+When I take a gentleman to my house, no matter whether he is nineteen,
+twenty-nine, or ninety, I take him there in a spirit of confidence.
+If he abuses my confidence, he commits a dishonourable action, Mr.
+Copperfield.’
+
+‘I feel it, sir, I assure you,’ I returned. ‘But I never thought so,
+before. Sincerely, honestly, indeed, Mr. Spenlow, I never thought so,
+before. I love Miss Spenlow to that extent--’
+
+‘Pooh! nonsense!’ said Mr. Spenlow, reddening. ‘Pray don’t tell me to my
+face that you love my daughter, Mr. Copperfield!’
+
+‘Could I defend my conduct if I did not, sir?’ I returned, with all
+humility.
+
+‘Can you defend your conduct if you do, sir?’ said Mr. Spenlow, stopping
+short upon the hearth-rug. ‘Have you considered your years, and my
+daughter’s years, Mr. Copperfield? Have you considered what it is to
+undermine the confidence that should subsist between my daughter and
+myself? Have you considered my daughter’s station in life, the projects
+I may contemplate for her advancement, the testamentary intentions I
+may have with reference to her? Have you considered anything, Mr.
+Copperfield?’
+
+‘Very little, sir, I am afraid;’ I answered, speaking to him as
+respectfully and sorrowfully as I felt; ‘but pray believe me, I have
+considered my own worldly position. When I explained it to you, we were
+already engaged--’
+
+‘I BEG,’ said Mr. Spenlow, more like Punch than I had ever seen him,
+as he energetically struck one hand upon the other--I could not help
+noticing that even in my despair; ‘that YOU Will NOT talk to me of
+engagements, Mr. Copperfield!’
+
+The otherwise immovable Miss Murdstone laughed contemptuously in one
+short syllable.
+
+‘When I explained my altered position to you, sir,’ I began again,
+substituting a new form of expression for what was so unpalatable to
+him, ‘this concealment, into which I am so unhappy as to have led Miss
+Spenlow, had begun. Since I have been in that altered position, I have
+strained every nerve, I have exerted every energy, to improve it. I am
+sure I shall improve it in time. Will you grant me time--any length of
+time? We are both so young, sir,--’
+
+‘You are right,’ interrupted Mr. Spenlow, nodding his head a great
+many times, and frowning very much, ‘you are both very young. It’s all
+nonsense. Let there be an end of the nonsense. Take away those letters,
+and throw them in the fire. Give me Miss Spenlow’s letters to throw in
+the fire; and although our future intercourse must, you are aware, be
+restricted to the Commons here, we will agree to make no further mention
+of the past. Come, Mr. Copperfield, you don’t want sense; and this is
+the sensible course.’
+
+No. I couldn’t think of agreeing to it. I was very sorry, but there
+was a higher consideration than sense. Love was above all earthly
+considerations, and I loved Dora to idolatry, and Dora loved me. I
+didn’t exactly say so; I softened it down as much as I could; but I
+implied it, and I was resolute upon it. I don’t think I made myself very
+ridiculous, but I know I was resolute.
+
+‘Very well, Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mr. Spenlow, ‘I must try my influence
+with my daughter.’
+
+Miss Murdstone, by an expressive sound, a long drawn respiration, which
+was neither a sigh nor a moan, but was like both, gave it as her opinion
+that he should have done this at first.
+
+‘I must try,’ said Mr. Spenlow, confirmed by this support, ‘my
+influence with my daughter. Do you decline to take those letters, Mr.
+Copperfield?’ For I had laid them on the table.
+
+Yes. I told him I hoped he would not think it wrong, but I couldn’t
+possibly take them from Miss Murdstone.
+
+‘Nor from me?’ said Mr. Spenlow.
+
+No, I replied with the profoundest respect; nor from him.
+
+‘Very well!’ said Mr. Spenlow.
+
+A silence succeeding, I was undecided whether to go or stay. At length
+I was moving quietly towards the door, with the intention of saying that
+perhaps I should consult his feelings best by withdrawing: when he said,
+with his hands in his coat pockets, into which it was as much as he
+could do to get them; and with what I should call, upon the whole, a
+decidedly pious air:
+
+‘You are probably aware, Mr. Copperfield, that I am not altogether
+destitute of worldly possessions, and that my daughter is my nearest and
+dearest relative?’
+
+I hurriedly made him a reply to the effect, that I hoped the error into
+which I had been betrayed by the desperate nature of my love, did not
+induce him to think me mercenary too?
+
+‘I don’t allude to the matter in that light,’ said Mr. Spenlow. ‘It
+would be better for yourself, and all of us, if you WERE mercenary, Mr.
+Copperfield--I mean, if you were more discreet and less influenced by
+all this youthful nonsense. No. I merely say, with quite another view,
+you are probably aware I have some property to bequeath to my child?’
+
+I certainly supposed so.
+
+‘And you can hardly think,’ said Mr. Spenlow, ‘having experience of what
+we see, in the Commons here, every day, of the various unaccountable
+and negligent proceedings of men, in respect of their testamentary
+arrangements--of all subjects, the one on which perhaps the strangest
+revelations of human inconsistency are to be met with--but that mine are
+made?’
+
+I inclined my head in acquiescence.
+
+‘I should not allow,’ said Mr. Spenlow, with an evident increase of
+pious sentiment, and slowly shaking his head as he poised himself upon
+his toes and heels alternately, ‘my suitable provision for my child to
+be influenced by a piece of youthful folly like the present. It is mere
+folly. Mere nonsense. In a little while, it will weigh lighter than
+any feather. But I might--I might--if this silly business were not
+completely relinquished altogether, be induced in some anxious moment
+to guard her from, and surround her with protections against, the
+consequences of any foolish step in the way of marriage. Now, Mr.
+Copperfield, I hope that you will not render it necessary for me to
+open, even for a quarter of an hour, that closed page in the book of
+life, and unsettle, even for a quarter of an hour, grave affairs long
+since composed.’
+
+There was a serenity, a tranquillity, a calm sunset air about him, which
+quite affected me. He was so peaceful and resigned--clearly had his
+affairs in such perfect train, and so systematically wound up--that he
+was a man to feel touched in the contemplation of. I really think I saw
+tears rise to his eyes, from the depth of his own feeling of all this.
+
+But what could I do? I could not deny Dora and my own heart. When he
+told me I had better take a week to consider of what he had said, how
+could I say I wouldn’t take a week, yet how could I fail to know that no
+amount of weeks could influence such love as mine?
+
+‘In the meantime, confer with Miss Trotwood, or with any person with
+any knowledge of life,’ said Mr. Spenlow, adjusting his cravat with both
+hands. ‘Take a week, Mr. Copperfield.’
+
+I submitted; and, with a countenance as expressive as I was able to
+make it of dejected and despairing constancy, came out of the room. Miss
+Murdstone’s heavy eyebrows followed me to the door--I say her eyebrows
+rather than her eyes, because they were much more important in her
+face--and she looked so exactly as she used to look, at about that
+hour of the morning, in our parlour at Blunderstone, that I could have
+fancied I had been breaking down in my lessons again, and that the
+dead weight on my mind was that horrible old spelling-book, with
+oval woodcuts, shaped, to my youthful fancy, like the glasses out of
+spectacles.
+
+When I got to the office, and, shutting out old Tiffey and the rest of
+them with my hands, sat at my desk, in my own particular nook, thinking
+of this earthquake that had taken place so unexpectedly, and in the
+bitterness of my spirit cursing Jip, I fell into such a state of torment
+about Dora, that I wonder I did not take up my hat and rush insanely to
+Norwood. The idea of their frightening her, and making her cry, and of
+my not being there to comfort her, was so excruciating, that it impelled
+me to write a wild letter to Mr. Spenlow, beseeching him not to visit
+upon her the consequences of my awful destiny. I implored him to spare
+her gentle nature--not to crush a fragile flower--and addressed him
+generally, to the best of my remembrance, as if, instead of being her
+father, he had been an Ogre, or the Dragon of Wantley. This letter I
+sealed and laid upon his desk before he returned; and when he came in,
+I saw him, through the half-opened door of his room, take it up and read
+it.
+
+He said nothing about it all the morning; but before he went away in the
+afternoon he called me in, and told me that I need not make myself at
+all uneasy about his daughter’s happiness. He had assured her, he said,
+that it was all nonsense; and he had nothing more to say to her. He
+believed he was an indulgent father (as indeed he was), and I might
+spare myself any solicitude on her account.
+
+‘You may make it necessary, if you are foolish or obstinate, Mr.
+Copperfield,’ he observed, ‘for me to send my daughter abroad again,
+for a term; but I have a better opinion of you. I hope you will be wiser
+than that, in a few days. As to Miss Murdstone,’ for I had alluded to
+her in the letter, ‘I respect that lady’s vigilance, and feel obliged to
+her; but she has strict charge to avoid the subject. All I desire, Mr.
+Copperfield, is, that it should be forgotten. All you have got to do,
+Mr. Copperfield, is to forget it.’
+
+All! In the note I wrote to Miss Mills, I bitterly quoted this
+sentiment. All I had to do, I said, with gloomy sarcasm, was to forget
+Dora. That was all, and what was that! I entreated Miss Mills to see
+me, that evening. If it could not be done with Mr. Mills’s sanction
+and concurrence, I besought a clandestine interview in the back kitchen
+where the Mangle was. I informed her that my reason was tottering on
+its throne, and only she, Miss Mills, could prevent its being deposed.
+I signed myself, hers distractedly; and I couldn’t help feeling, while
+I read this composition over, before sending it by a porter, that it was
+something in the style of Mr. Micawber.
+
+However, I sent it. At night I repaired to Miss Mills’s street, and
+walked up and down, until I was stealthily fetched in by Miss Mills’s
+maid, and taken the area way to the back kitchen. I have since seen
+reason to believe that there was nothing on earth to prevent my going in
+at the front door, and being shown up into the drawing-room, except Miss
+Mills’s love of the romantic and mysterious.
+
+In the back kitchen, I raved as became me. I went there, I suppose,
+to make a fool of myself, and I am quite sure I did it. Miss Mills had
+received a hasty note from Dora, telling her that all was discovered,
+and saying. ‘Oh pray come to me, Julia, do, do!’ But Miss Mills,
+mistrusting the acceptability of her presence to the higher powers, had
+not yet gone; and we were all benighted in the Desert of Sahara.
+
+Miss Mills had a wonderful flow of words, and liked to pour them out. I
+could not help feeling, though she mingled her tears with mine, that she
+had a dreadful luxury in our afflictions. She petted them, as I may say,
+and made the most of them. A deep gulf, she observed, had opened between
+Dora and me, and Love could only span it with its rainbow. Love must
+suffer in this stern world; it ever had been so, it ever would be so. No
+matter, Miss Mills remarked. Hearts confined by cobwebs would burst at
+last, and then Love was avenged.
+
+This was small consolation, but Miss Mills wouldn’t encourage fallacious
+hopes. She made me much more wretched than I was before, and I felt (and
+told her with the deepest gratitude) that she was indeed a friend. We
+resolved that she should go to Dora the first thing in the morning,
+and find some means of assuring her, either by looks or words, of my
+devotion and misery. We parted, overwhelmed with grief; and I think Miss
+Mills enjoyed herself completely.
+
+I confided all to my aunt when I got home; and in spite of all she could
+say to me, went to bed despairing. I got up despairing, and went out
+despairing. It was Saturday morning, and I went straight to the Commons.
+
+I was surprised, when I came within sight of our office-door, to see the
+ticket-porters standing outside talking together, and some half-dozen
+stragglers gazing at the windows which were shut up. I quickened my
+pace, and, passing among them, wondering at their looks, went hurriedly
+in.
+
+The clerks were there, but nobody was doing anything. Old Tiffey, for
+the first time in his life I should think, was sitting on somebody
+else’s stool, and had not hung up his hat.
+
+‘This is a dreadful calamity, Mr. Copperfield,’ said he, as I entered.
+
+‘What is?’ I exclaimed. ‘What’s the matter?’
+
+‘Don’t you know?’ cried Tiffey, and all the rest of them, coming round
+me.
+
+‘No!’ said I, looking from face to face.
+
+‘Mr. Spenlow,’ said Tiffey.
+
+‘What about him!’
+
+‘Dead!’ I thought it was the office reeling, and not I, as one of
+the clerks caught hold of me. They sat me down in a chair, untied my
+neck-cloth, and brought me some water. I have no idea whether this took
+any time.
+
+‘Dead?’ said I.
+
+‘He dined in town yesterday, and drove down in the phaeton by himself,’
+said Tiffey, ‘having sent his own groom home by the coach, as he
+sometimes did, you know--’
+
+‘Well?’
+
+‘The phaeton went home without him. The horses stopped at the
+stable-gate. The man went out with a lantern. Nobody in the carriage.’
+
+‘Had they run away?’
+
+‘They were not hot,’ said Tiffey, putting on his glasses; ‘no hotter, I
+understand, than they would have been, going down at the usual pace. The
+reins were broken, but they had been dragging on the ground. The house
+was roused up directly, and three of them went out along the road. They
+found him a mile off.’
+
+‘More than a mile off, Mr. Tiffey,’ interposed a junior.
+
+‘Was it? I believe you are right,’ said Tiffey,--‘more than a mile
+off--not far from the church--lying partly on the roadside, and partly
+on the path, upon his face. Whether he fell out in a fit, or got out,
+feeling ill before the fit came on--or even whether he was quite dead
+then, though there is no doubt he was quite insensible--no one appears
+to know. If he breathed, certainly he never spoke. Medical assistance
+was got as soon as possible, but it was quite useless.’
+
+I cannot describe the state of mind into which I was thrown by this
+intelligence. The shock of such an event happening so suddenly, and
+happening to one with whom I had been in any respect at variance--the
+appalling vacancy in the room he had occupied so lately, where his chair
+and table seemed to wait for him, and his handwriting of yesterday was
+like a ghost--the indefinable impossibility of separating him from the
+place, and feeling, when the door opened, as if he might come in--the
+lazy hush and rest there was in the office, and the insatiable relish
+with which our people talked about it, and other people came in and
+out all day, and gorged themselves with the subject--this is easily
+intelligible to anyone. What I cannot describe is, how, in the innermost
+recesses of my own heart, I had a lurking jealousy even of Death. How
+I felt as if its might would push me from my ground in Dora’s thoughts.
+How I was, in a grudging way I have no words for, envious of her grief.
+How it made me restless to think of her weeping to others, or being
+consoled by others. How I had a grasping, avaricious wish to shut out
+everybody from her but myself, and to be all in all to her, at that
+unseasonable time of all times.
+
+In the trouble of this state of mind--not exclusively my own, I hope,
+but known to others--I went down to Norwood that night; and finding from
+one of the servants, when I made my inquiries at the door, that Miss
+Mills was there, got my aunt to direct a letter to her, which I wrote.
+I deplored the untimely death of Mr. Spenlow, most sincerely, and shed
+tears in doing so. I entreated her to tell Dora, if Dora were in a
+state to hear it, that he had spoken to me with the utmost kindness and
+consideration; and had coupled nothing but tenderness, not a single or
+reproachful word, with her name. I know I did this selfishly, to have my
+name brought before her; but I tried to believe it was an act of justice
+to his memory. Perhaps I did believe it.
+
+My aunt received a few lines next day in reply; addressed, outside, to
+her; within, to me. Dora was overcome by grief; and when her friend had
+asked her should she send her love to me, had only cried, as she was
+always crying, ‘Oh, dear papa! oh, poor papa!’ But she had not said No,
+and that I made the most of.
+
+Mr. Jorkins, who had been at Norwood since the occurrence, came to the
+office a few days afterwards. He and Tiffey were closeted together for
+some few moments, and then Tiffey looked out at the door and beckoned me
+in.
+
+‘Oh!’ said Mr. Jorkins. ‘Mr. Tiffey and myself, Mr. Copperfield, are
+about to examine the desks, the drawers, and other such repositories
+of the deceased, with the view of sealing up his private papers, and
+searching for a Will. There is no trace of any, elsewhere. It may be as
+well for you to assist us, if you please.’
+
+I had been in agony to obtain some knowledge of the circumstances
+in which my Dora would be placed--as, in whose guardianship, and so
+forth--and this was something towards it. We began the search at once;
+Mr. Jorkins unlocking the drawers and desks, and we all taking out the
+papers. The office-papers we placed on one side, and the private papers
+(which were not numerous) on the other. We were very grave; and when we
+came to a stray seal, or pencil-case, or ring, or any little article of
+that kind which we associated personally with him, we spoke very low.
+
+We had sealed up several packets; and were still going on dustily and
+quietly, when Mr. Jorkins said to us, applying exactly the same words to
+his late partner as his late partner had applied to him:
+
+‘Mr. Spenlow was very difficult to move from the beaten track. You know
+what he was! I am disposed to think he had made no will.’
+
+‘Oh, I know he had!’ said I.
+
+They both stopped and looked at me. ‘On the very day when I last saw
+him,’ said I, ‘he told me that he had, and that his affairs were long
+since settled.’
+
+Mr. Jorkins and old Tiffey shook their heads with one accord.
+
+‘That looks unpromising,’ said Tiffey.
+
+‘Very unpromising,’ said Mr. Jorkins.
+
+‘Surely you don’t doubt--’ I began.
+
+‘My good Mr. Copperfield!’ said Tiffey, laying his hand upon my arm, and
+shutting up both his eyes as he shook his head: ‘if you had been in the
+Commons as long as I have, you would know that there is no subject on
+which men are so inconsistent, and so little to be trusted.’
+
+‘Why, bless my soul, he made that very remark!’ I replied persistently.
+
+‘I should call that almost final,’ observed Tiffey. ‘My opinion is--no
+will.’
+
+It appeared a wonderful thing to me, but it turned out that there was
+no will. He had never so much as thought of making one, so far as his
+papers afforded any evidence; for there was no kind of hint, sketch, or
+memorandum, of any testamentary intention whatever. What was scarcely
+less astonishing to me, was, that his affairs were in a most disordered
+state. It was extremely difficult, I heard, to make out what he owed, or
+what he had paid, or of what he died possessed. It was considered likely
+that for years he could have had no clear opinion on these subjects
+himself. By little and little it came out, that, in the competition on
+all points of appearance and gentility then running high in the Commons,
+he had spent more than his professional income, which was not a very
+large one, and had reduced his private means, if they ever had been
+great (which was exceedingly doubtful), to a very low ebb indeed. There
+was a sale of the furniture and lease, at Norwood; and Tiffey told me,
+little thinking how interested I was in the story, that, paying all the
+just debts of the deceased, and deducting his share of outstanding bad
+and doubtful debts due to the firm, he wouldn’t give a thousand pounds
+for all the assets remaining.
+
+This was at the expiration of about six weeks. I had suffered tortures
+all the time; and thought I really must have laid violent hands upon
+myself, when Miss Mills still reported to me, that my broken-hearted
+little Dora would say nothing, when I was mentioned, but ‘Oh, poor papa!
+Oh, dear papa!’ Also, that she had no other relations than two aunts,
+maiden sisters of Mr. Spenlow, who lived at Putney, and who had not held
+any other than chance communication with their brother for many years.
+Not that they had ever quarrelled (Miss Mills informed me); but that
+having been, on the occasion of Dora’s christening, invited to tea, when
+they considered themselves privileged to be invited to dinner, they
+had expressed their opinion in writing, that it was ‘better for the
+happiness of all parties’ that they should stay away. Since which they
+had gone their road, and their brother had gone his.
+
+These two ladies now emerged from their retirement, and proposed to
+take Dora to live at Putney. Dora, clinging to them both, and weeping,
+exclaimed, ‘O yes, aunts! Please take Julia Mills and me and Jip to
+Putney!’ So they went, very soon after the funeral.
+
+How I found time to haunt Putney, I am sure I don’t know; but I
+contrived, by some means or other, to prowl about the neighbourhood
+pretty often. Miss Mills, for the more exact discharge of the duties of
+friendship, kept a journal; and she used to meet me sometimes, on the
+Common, and read it, or (if she had not time to do that) lend it to me.
+How I treasured up the entries, of which I subjoin a sample--!
+
+‘Monday. My sweet D. still much depressed. Headache. Called attention to
+J. as being beautifully sleek. D. fondled J. Associations thus awakened,
+opened floodgates of sorrow. Rush of grief admitted. (Are tears the
+dewdrops of the heart? J. M.)
+
+‘Tuesday. D. weak and nervous. Beautiful in pallor. (Do we not remark
+this in moon likewise? J. M.) D., J. M. and J. took airing in carriage.
+J. looking out of window, and barking violently at dustman, occasioned
+smile to overspread features of D. (Of such slight links is chain of
+life composed! J. M.)
+
+‘Wednesday. D. comparatively cheerful. Sang to her, as congenial melody,
+“Evening Bells”. Effect not soothing, but reverse. D. inexpressibly
+affected. Found sobbing afterwards, in own room. Quoted verses
+respecting self and young Gazelle. Ineffectually. Also referred to
+Patience on Monument. (Qy. Why on monument? J. M.)
+
+‘Thursday. D. certainly improved. Better night. Slight tinge of damask
+revisiting cheek. Resolved to mention name of D. C. Introduced same,
+cautiously, in course of airing. D. immediately overcome. “Oh, dear,
+dear Julia! Oh, I have been a naughty and undutiful child!” Soothed
+and caressed. Drew ideal picture of D. C. on verge of tomb. D. again
+overcome. “Oh, what shall I do, what shall I do? Oh, take me somewhere!”
+ Much alarmed. Fainting of D. and glass of water from public-house.
+(Poetical affinity. Chequered sign on door-post; chequered human life.
+Alas! J. M.)
+
+‘Friday. Day of incident. Man appears in kitchen, with blue bag, “for
+lady’s boots left out to heel”. Cook replies, “No such orders.” Man
+argues point. Cook withdraws to inquire, leaving man alone with J. On
+Cook’s return, man still argues point, but ultimately goes. J. missing.
+D. distracted. Information sent to police. Man to be identified by
+broad nose, and legs like balustrades of bridge. Search made in
+every direction. No J. D. weeping bitterly, and inconsolable. Renewed
+reference to young Gazelle. Appropriate, but unavailing. Towards
+evening, strange boy calls. Brought into parlour. Broad nose, but no
+balustrades. Says he wants a pound, and knows a dog. Declines to explain
+further, though much pressed. Pound being produced by D. takes Cook
+to little house, where J. alone tied up to leg of table. Joy of D.
+who dances round J. while he eats his supper. Emboldened by this happy
+change, mention D. C. upstairs. D. weeps afresh, cries piteously, “Oh,
+don’t, don’t, don’t! It is so wicked to think of anything but poor
+papa!”--embraces J. and sobs herself to sleep. (Must not D. C. confine
+himself to the broad pinions of Time? J. M.)’
+
+Miss Mills and her journal were my sole consolation at this period.
+To see her, who had seen Dora but a little while before--to trace the
+initial letter of Dora’s name through her sympathetic pages--to be made
+more and more miserable by her--were my only comforts. I felt as if I
+had been living in a palace of cards, which had tumbled down, leaving
+only Miss Mills and me among the ruins; I felt as if some grim enchanter
+had drawn a magic circle round the innocent goddess of my heart, which
+nothing indeed but those same strong pinions, capable of carrying so
+many people over so much, would enable me to enter!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 39. WICKFIELD AND HEEP
+
+
+My aunt, beginning, I imagine, to be made seriously uncomfortable by my
+prolonged dejection, made a pretence of being anxious that I should go
+to Dover, to see that all was working well at the cottage, which was
+let; and to conclude an agreement, with the same tenant, for a longer
+term of occupation. Janet was drafted into the service of Mrs. Strong,
+where I saw her every day. She had been undecided, on leaving Dover,
+whether or no to give the finishing touch to that renunciation of
+mankind in which she had been educated, by marrying a pilot; but she
+decided against that venture. Not so much for the sake of principle, I
+believe, as because she happened not to like him.
+
+Although it required an effort to leave Miss Mills, I fell rather
+willingly into my aunt’s pretence, as a means of enabling me to pass a
+few tranquil hours with Agnes. I consulted the good Doctor relative
+to an absence of three days; and the Doctor wishing me to take that
+relaxation,--he wished me to take more; but my energy could not bear
+that,--I made up my mind to go.
+
+As to the Commons, I had no great occasion to be particular about my
+duties in that quarter. To say the truth, we were getting in no very
+good odour among the tip-top proctors, and were rapidly sliding down
+to but a doubtful position. The business had been indifferent under Mr.
+Jorkins, before Mr. Spenlow’s time; and although it had been quickened
+by the infusion of new blood, and by the display which Mr. Spenlow made,
+still it was not established on a sufficiently strong basis to bear,
+without being shaken, such a blow as the sudden loss of its active
+manager. It fell off very much. Mr. Jorkins, notwithstanding his
+reputation in the firm, was an easy-going, incapable sort of man, whose
+reputation out of doors was not calculated to back it up. I was turned
+over to him now, and when I saw him take his snuff and let the business
+go, I regretted my aunt’s thousand pounds more than ever.
+
+But this was not the worst of it. There were a number of hangers-on and
+outsiders about the Commons, who, without being proctors themselves,
+dabbled in common-form business, and got it done by real proctors, who
+lent their names in consideration of a share in the spoil;--and there
+were a good many of these too. As our house now wanted business on any
+terms, we joined this noble band; and threw out lures to the hangers-on
+and outsiders, to bring their business to us. Marriage licences and
+small probates were what we all looked for, and what paid us best;
+and the competition for these ran very high indeed. Kidnappers and
+inveiglers were planted in all the avenues of entrance to the Commons,
+with instructions to do their utmost to cut off all persons in mourning,
+and all gentlemen with anything bashful in their appearance, and entice
+them to the offices in which their respective employers were interested;
+which instructions were so well observed, that I myself, before I was
+known by sight, was twice hustled into the premises of our principal
+opponent. The conflicting interests of these touting gentlemen being of
+a nature to irritate their feelings, personal collisions took place;
+and the Commons was even scandalized by our principal inveigler (who
+had formerly been in the wine trade, and afterwards in the sworn brokery
+line) walking about for some days with a black eye. Any one of these
+scouts used to think nothing of politely assisting an old lady in
+black out of a vehicle, killing any proctor whom she inquired for,
+representing his employer as the lawful successor and representative of
+that proctor, and bearing the old lady off (sometimes greatly affected)
+to his employer’s office. Many captives were brought to me in this way.
+As to marriage licences, the competition rose to such a pitch, that a
+shy gentleman in want of one, had nothing to do but submit himself
+to the first inveigler, or be fought for, and become the prey of the
+strongest. One of our clerks, who was an outsider, used, in the height
+of this contest, to sit with his hat on, that he might be ready to rush
+out and swear before a surrogate any victim who was brought in. The
+system of inveigling continues, I believe, to this day. The last time I
+was in the Commons, a civil able-bodied person in a white apron pounced
+out upon me from a doorway, and whispering the word ‘Marriage-licence’
+in my ear, was with great difficulty prevented from taking me up in
+his arms and lifting me into a proctor’s. From this digression, let me
+proceed to Dover.
+
+I found everything in a satisfactory state at the cottage; and was
+enabled to gratify my aunt exceedingly by reporting that the tenant
+inherited her feud, and waged incessant war against donkeys. Having
+settled the little business I had to transact there, and slept there one
+night, I walked on to Canterbury early in the morning. It was now
+winter again; and the fresh, cold windy day, and the sweeping downland,
+brightened up my hopes a little.
+
+Coming into Canterbury, I loitered through the old streets with a sober
+pleasure that calmed my spirits, and eased my heart. There were the old
+signs, the old names over the shops, the old people serving in them. It
+appeared so long, since I had been a schoolboy there, that I wondered
+the place was so little changed, until I reflected how little I
+was changed myself. Strange to say, that quiet influence which was
+inseparable in my mind from Agnes, seemed to pervade even the city where
+she dwelt. The venerable cathedral towers, and the old jackdaws and
+rooks whose airy voices made them more retired than perfect silence
+would have done; the battered gateways, one stuck full with statues,
+long thrown down, and crumbled away, like the reverential pilgrims
+who had gazed upon them; the still nooks, where the ivied growth of
+centuries crept over gabled ends and ruined walls; the ancient houses,
+the pastoral landscape of field, orchard, and garden; everywhere--on
+everything--I felt the same serener air, the same calm, thoughtful,
+softening spirit.
+
+Arrived at Mr. Wickfield’s house, I found, in the little lower room on
+the ground floor, where Uriah Heep had been of old accustomed to sit,
+Mr. Micawber plying his pen with great assiduity. He was dressed in a
+legal-looking suit of black, and loomed, burly and large, in that small
+office.
+
+Mr. Micawber was extremely glad to see me, but a little confused too.
+He would have conducted me immediately into the presence of Uriah, but I
+declined.
+
+‘I know the house of old, you recollect,’ said I, ‘and will find my way
+upstairs. How do you like the law, Mr. Micawber?’
+
+‘My dear Copperfield,’ he replied. ‘To a man possessed of the higher
+imaginative powers, the objection to legal studies is the amount of
+detail which they involve. Even in our professional correspondence,’
+said Mr. Micawber, glancing at some letters he was writing, ‘the mind is
+not at liberty to soar to any exalted form of expression. Still, it is a
+great pursuit. A great pursuit!’
+
+He then told me that he had become the tenant of Uriah Heep’s old house;
+and that Mrs. Micawber would be delighted to receive me, once more,
+under her own roof.
+
+‘It is humble,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘--to quote a favourite expression
+of my friend Heep; but it may prove the stepping-stone to more ambitious
+domiciliary accommodation.’
+
+I asked him whether he had reason, so far, to be satisfied with his
+friend Heep’s treatment of him? He got up to ascertain if the door were
+close shut, before he replied, in a lower voice:
+
+‘My dear Copperfield, a man who labours under the pressure of pecuniary
+embarrassments, is, with the generality of people, at a disadvantage.
+That disadvantage is not diminished, when that pressure necessitates the
+drawing of stipendiary emoluments, before those emoluments are strictly
+due and payable. All I can say is, that my friend Heep has responded
+to appeals to which I need not more particularly refer, in a manner
+calculated to redound equally to the honour of his head, and of his
+heart.’
+
+‘I should not have supposed him to be very free with his money either,’
+I observed.
+
+‘Pardon me!’ said Mr. Micawber, with an air of constraint, ‘I speak of
+my friend Heep as I have experience.’
+
+‘I am glad your experience is so favourable,’ I returned.
+
+‘You are very obliging, my dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber; and
+hummed a tune.
+
+‘Do you see much of Mr. Wickfield?’ I asked, to change the subject.
+
+‘Not much,’ said Mr. Micawber, slightingly. ‘Mr. Wickfield is, I dare
+say, a man of very excellent intentions; but he is--in short, he is
+obsolete.’
+
+‘I am afraid his partner seeks to make him so,’ said I.
+
+‘My dear Copperfield!’ returned Mr. Micawber, after some uneasy
+evolutions on his stool, ‘allow me to offer a remark! I am here, in
+a capacity of confidence. I am here, in a position of trust. The
+discussion of some topics, even with Mrs. Micawber herself (so long the
+partner of my various vicissitudes, and a woman of a remarkable lucidity
+of intellect), is, I am led to consider, incompatible with the functions
+now devolving on me. I would therefore take the liberty of suggesting
+that in our friendly intercourse--which I trust will never be
+disturbed!--we draw a line. On one side of this line,’ said Mr.
+Micawber, representing it on the desk with the office ruler, ‘is the
+whole range of the human intellect, with a trifling exception; on
+the other, IS that exception; that is to say, the affairs of Messrs
+Wickfield and Heep, with all belonging and appertaining thereunto. I
+trust I give no offence to the companion of my youth, in submitting this
+proposition to his cooler judgement?’
+
+Though I saw an uneasy change in Mr. Micawber, which sat tightly on
+him, as if his new duties were a misfit, I felt I had no right to be
+offended. My telling him so, appeared to relieve him; and he shook hands
+with me.
+
+‘I am charmed, Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘let me assure you, with
+Miss Wickfield. She is a very superior young lady, of very remarkable
+attractions, graces, and virtues. Upon my honour,’ said Mr. Micawber,
+indefinitely kissing his hand and bowing with his genteelest air, ‘I do
+Homage to Miss Wickfield! Hem!’ ‘I am glad of that, at least,’ said I.
+
+‘If you had not assured us, my dear Copperfield, on the occasion of that
+agreeable afternoon we had the happiness of passing with you, that D.
+was your favourite letter,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘I should unquestionably
+have supposed that A. had been so.’
+
+We have all some experience of a feeling, that comes over us
+occasionally, of what we are saying and doing having been said and done
+before, in a remote time--of our having been surrounded, dim ages ago,
+by the same faces, objects, and circumstances--of our knowing perfectly
+what will be said next, as if we suddenly remembered it! I never had
+this mysterious impression more strongly in my life, than before he
+uttered those words.
+
+I took my leave of Mr. Micawber, for the time, charging him with my best
+remembrances to all at home. As I left him, resuming his stool and his
+pen, and rolling his head in his stock, to get it into easier writing
+order, I clearly perceived that there was something interposed between
+him and me, since he had come into his new functions, which prevented
+our getting at each other as we used to do, and quite altered the
+character of our intercourse.
+
+There was no one in the quaint old drawing-room, though it presented
+tokens of Mrs. Heep’s whereabouts. I looked into the room still
+belonging to Agnes, and saw her sitting by the fire, at a pretty
+old-fashioned desk she had, writing.
+
+My darkening the light made her look up. What a pleasure to be the cause
+of that bright change in her attentive face, and the object of that
+sweet regard and welcome!
+
+‘Ah, Agnes!’ said I, when we were sitting together, side by side; ‘I
+have missed you so much, lately!’
+
+‘Indeed?’ she replied. ‘Again! And so soon?’
+
+I shook my head.
+
+‘I don’t know how it is, Agnes; I seem to want some faculty of mind that
+I ought to have. You were so much in the habit of thinking for me, in
+the happy old days here, and I came so naturally to you for counsel and
+support, that I really think I have missed acquiring it.’
+
+‘And what is it?’ said Agnes, cheerfully.
+
+‘I don’t know what to call it,’ I replied. ‘I think I am earnest and
+persevering?’
+
+‘I am sure of it,’ said Agnes.
+
+‘And patient, Agnes?’ I inquired, with a little hesitation.
+
+‘Yes,’ returned Agnes, laughing. ‘Pretty well.’
+
+‘And yet,’ said I, ‘I get so miserable and worried, and am so unsteady
+and irresolute in my power of assuring myself, that I know I must
+want--shall I call it--reliance, of some kind?’
+
+‘Call it so, if you will,’ said Agnes.
+
+‘Well!’ I returned. ‘See here! You come to London, I rely on you, and I
+have an object and a course at once. I am driven out of it, I come
+here, and in a moment I feel an altered person. The circumstances that
+distressed me are not changed, since I came into this room; but an
+influence comes over me in that short interval that alters me, oh, how
+much for the better! What is it? What is your secret, Agnes?’
+
+Her head was bent down, looking at the fire.
+
+‘It’s the old story,’ said I. ‘Don’t laugh, when I say it was always
+the same in little things as it is in greater ones. My old troubles were
+nonsense, and now they are serious; but whenever I have gone away from
+my adopted sister--’
+
+Agnes looked up--with such a Heavenly face!--and gave me her hand, which
+I kissed.
+
+‘Whenever I have not had you, Agnes, to advise and approve in the
+beginning, I have seemed to go wild, and to get into all sorts of
+difficulty. When I have come to you, at last (as I have always done),
+I have come to peace and happiness. I come home, now, like a tired
+traveller, and find such a blessed sense of rest!’
+
+I felt so deeply what I said, it affected me so sincerely, that my voice
+failed, and I covered my face with my hand, and broke into tears. I
+write the truth. Whatever contradictions and inconsistencies there were
+within me, as there are within so many of us; whatever might have been
+so different, and so much better; whatever I had done, in which I had
+perversely wandered away from the voice of my own heart; I knew nothing
+of. I only knew that I was fervently in earnest, when I felt the rest
+and peace of having Agnes near me.
+
+In her placid sisterly manner; with her beaming eyes; with her tender
+voice; and with that sweet composure, which had long ago made the house
+that held her quite a sacred place to me; she soon won me from this
+weakness, and led me on to tell all that had happened since our last
+meeting.
+
+‘And there is not another word to tell, Agnes,’ said I, when I had made
+an end of my confidence. ‘Now, my reliance is on you.’
+
+‘But it must not be on me, Trotwood,’ returned Agnes, with a pleasant
+smile. ‘It must be on someone else.’
+
+‘On Dora?’ said I.
+
+‘Assuredly.’
+
+‘Why, I have not mentioned, Agnes,’ said I, a little embarrassed, ‘that
+Dora is rather difficult to--I would not, for the world, say, to rely
+upon, because she is the soul of purity and truth--but rather difficult
+to--I hardly know how to express it, really, Agnes. She is a timid
+little thing, and easily disturbed and frightened. Some time ago, before
+her father’s death, when I thought it right to mention to her--but I’ll
+tell you, if you will bear with me, how it was.’
+
+Accordingly, I told Agnes about my declaration of poverty, about the
+cookery-book, the housekeeping accounts, and all the rest of it.
+
+‘Oh, Trotwood!’ she remonstrated, with a smile. ‘Just your old headlong
+way! You might have been in earnest in striving to get on in the world,
+without being so very sudden with a timid, loving, inexperienced girl.
+Poor Dora!’
+
+I never heard such sweet forbearing kindness expressed in a voice,
+as she expressed in making this reply. It was as if I had seen her
+admiringly and tenderly embracing Dora, and tacitly reproving me, by
+her considerate protection, for my hot haste in fluttering that little
+heart. It was as if I had seen Dora, in all her fascinating artlessness,
+caressing Agnes, and thanking her, and coaxingly appealing against me,
+and loving me with all her childish innocence.
+
+I felt so grateful to Agnes, and admired her so! I saw those two
+together, in a bright perspective, such well-associated friends, each
+adorning the other so much!
+
+‘What ought I to do then, Agnes?’ I inquired, after looking at the fire
+a little while. ‘What would it be right to do?’
+
+‘I think,’ said Agnes, ‘that the honourable course to take, would be to
+write to those two ladies. Don’t you think that any secret course is an
+unworthy one?’
+
+‘Yes. If YOU think so,’ said I.
+
+‘I am poorly qualified to judge of such matters,’ replied Agnes, with
+a modest hesitation, ‘but I certainly feel--in short, I feel that your
+being secret and clandestine, is not being like yourself.’
+
+‘Like myself, in the too high opinion you have of me, Agnes, I am
+afraid,’ said I.
+
+‘Like yourself, in the candour of your nature,’ she returned; ‘and
+therefore I would write to those two ladies. I would relate, as plainly
+and as openly as possible, all that has taken place; and I would ask
+their permission to visit sometimes, at their house. Considering that
+you are young, and striving for a place in life, I think it would be
+well to say that you would readily abide by any conditions they might
+impose upon you. I would entreat them not to dismiss your request,
+without a reference to Dora; and to discuss it with her when they should
+think the time suitable. I would not be too vehement,’ said Agnes,
+gently, ‘or propose too much. I would trust to my fidelity and
+perseverance--and to Dora.’
+
+‘But if they were to frighten Dora again, Agnes, by speaking to her,’
+said I. ‘And if Dora were to cry, and say nothing about me!’
+
+‘Is that likely?’ inquired Agnes, with the same sweet consideration in
+her face.
+
+‘God bless her, she is as easily scared as a bird,’ said I. ‘It might
+be! Or if the two Miss Spenlows (elderly ladies of that sort are odd
+characters sometimes) should not be likely persons to address in that
+way!’
+
+‘I don’t think, Trotwood,’ returned Agnes, raising her soft eyes
+to mine, ‘I would consider that. Perhaps it would be better only to
+consider whether it is right to do this; and, if it is, to do it.’
+
+I had no longer any doubt on the subject. With a lightened heart, though
+with a profound sense of the weighty importance of my task, I devoted
+the whole afternoon to the composition of the draft of this letter; for
+which great purpose, Agnes relinquished her desk to me. But first I went
+downstairs to see Mr. Wickfield and Uriah Heep.
+
+I found Uriah in possession of a new, plaster-smelling office, built out
+in the garden; looking extraordinarily mean, in the midst of a quantity
+of books and papers. He received me in his usual fawning way, and
+pretended not to have heard of my arrival from Mr. Micawber; a
+pretence I took the liberty of disbelieving. He accompanied me into Mr.
+Wickfield’s room, which was the shadow of its former self--having been
+divested of a variety of conveniences, for the accommodation of the new
+partner--and stood before the fire, warming his back, and shaving his
+chin with his bony hand, while Mr. Wickfield and I exchanged greetings.
+
+‘You stay with us, Trotwood, while you remain in Canterbury?’ said Mr.
+Wickfield, not without a glance at Uriah for his approval.
+
+‘Is there room for me?’ said I.
+
+‘I am sure, Master Copperfield--I should say Mister, but the other
+comes so natural,’ said Uriah,--‘I would turn out of your old room with
+pleasure, if it would be agreeable.’
+
+‘No, no,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘Why should you be inconvenienced? There’s
+another room. There’s another room.’ ‘Oh, but you know,’ returned Uriah,
+with a grin, ‘I should really be delighted!’
+
+To cut the matter short, I said I would have the other room or none at
+all; so it was settled that I should have the other room; and, taking my
+leave of the firm until dinner, I went upstairs again.
+
+I had hoped to have no other companion than Agnes. But Mrs. Heep had
+asked permission to bring herself and her knitting near the fire, in
+that room; on pretence of its having an aspect more favourable for
+her rheumatics, as the wind then was, than the drawing-room or
+dining-parlour. Though I could almost have consigned her to the mercies
+of the wind on the topmost pinnacle of the Cathedral, without remorse, I
+made a virtue of necessity, and gave her a friendly salutation.
+
+‘I’m umbly thankful to you, sir,’ said Mrs. Heep, in acknowledgement of
+my inquiries concerning her health, ‘but I’m only pretty well. I haven’t
+much to boast of. If I could see my Uriah well settled in life, I
+couldn’t expect much more I think. How do you think my Ury looking,
+sir?’
+
+I thought him looking as villainous as ever, and I replied that I saw no
+change in him.
+
+‘Oh, don’t you think he’s changed?’ said Mrs. Heep. ‘There I must umbly
+beg leave to differ from you. Don’t you see a thinness in him?’
+
+‘Not more than usual,’ I replied.
+
+‘Don’t you though!’ said Mrs. Heep. ‘But you don’t take notice of him
+with a mother’s eye!’
+
+His mother’s eye was an evil eye to the rest of the world, I thought as
+it met mine, howsoever affectionate to him; and I believe she and her
+son were devoted to one another. It passed me, and went on to Agnes.
+
+‘Don’t YOU see a wasting and a wearing in him, Miss Wickfield?’ inquired
+Mrs. Heep.
+
+‘No,’ said Agnes, quietly pursuing the work on which she was engaged.
+‘You are too solicitous about him. He is very well.’
+
+Mrs. Heep, with a prodigious sniff, resumed her knitting.
+
+She never left off, or left us for a moment. I had arrived early in the
+day, and we had still three or four hours before dinner; but she sat
+there, plying her knitting-needles as monotonously as an hour-glass
+might have poured out its sands. She sat on one side of the fire; I sat
+at the desk in front of it; a little beyond me, on the other side, sat
+Agnes. Whensoever, slowly pondering over my letter, I lifted up my
+eyes, and meeting the thoughtful face of Agnes, saw it clear, and beam
+encouragement upon me, with its own angelic expression, I was conscious
+presently of the evil eye passing me, and going on to her, and coming
+back to me again, and dropping furtively upon the knitting. What the
+knitting was, I don’t know, not being learned in that art; but it looked
+like a net; and as she worked away with those Chinese chopsticks of
+knitting-needles, she showed in the firelight like an ill-looking
+enchantress, baulked as yet by the radiant goodness opposite, but
+getting ready for a cast of her net by and by.
+
+At dinner she maintained her watch, with the same unwinking eyes. After
+dinner, her son took his turn; and when Mr. Wickfield, himself, and I
+were left alone together, leered at me, and writhed until I could hardly
+bear it. In the drawing-room, there was the mother knitting and watching
+again. All the time that Agnes sang and played, the mother sat at the
+piano. Once she asked for a particular ballad, which she said her Ury
+(who was yawning in a great chair) doted on; and at intervals she looked
+round at him, and reported to Agnes that he was in raptures with the
+music. But she hardly ever spoke--I question if she ever did--without
+making some mention of him. It was evident to me that this was the duty
+assigned to her.
+
+This lasted until bedtime. To have seen the mother and son, like two
+great bats hanging over the whole house, and darkening it with their
+ugly forms, made me so uncomfortable, that I would rather have remained
+downstairs, knitting and all, than gone to bed. I hardly got any sleep.
+Next day the knitting and watching began again, and lasted all day.
+
+I had not an opportunity of speaking to Agnes, for ten minutes. I could
+barely show her my letter. I proposed to her to walk out with me; but
+Mrs. Heep repeatedly complaining that she was worse, Agnes charitably
+remained within, to bear her company. Towards the twilight I went out
+by myself, musing on what I ought to do, and whether I was justified
+in withholding from Agnes, any longer, what Uriah Heep had told me in
+London; for that began to trouble me again, very much.
+
+I had not walked out far enough to be quite clear of the town, upon the
+Ramsgate road, where there was a good path, when I was hailed, through
+the dust, by somebody behind me. The shambling figure, and the scanty
+great-coat, were not to be mistaken. I stopped, and Uriah Heep came up.
+
+‘Well?’ said I.
+
+‘How fast you walk!’ said he. ‘My legs are pretty long, but you’ve given
+‘em quite a job.’
+
+‘Where are you going?’ said I.
+
+‘I am going with you, Master Copperfield, if you’ll allow me the
+pleasure of a walk with an old acquaintance.’ Saying this, with a jerk
+of his body, which might have been either propitiatory or derisive, he
+fell into step beside me.
+
+‘Uriah!’ said I, as civilly as I could, after a silence.
+
+‘Master Copperfield!’ said Uriah.
+
+‘To tell you the truth (at which you will not be offended), I came Out
+to walk alone, because I have had so much company.’
+
+He looked at me sideways, and said with his hardest grin, ‘You mean
+mother.’
+
+‘Why yes, I do,’ said I.
+
+‘Ah! But you know we’re so very umble,’ he returned. ‘And having such a
+knowledge of our own umbleness, we must really take care that we’re not
+pushed to the wall by them as isn’t umble. All stratagems are fair in
+love, sir.’
+
+Raising his great hands until they touched his chin, he rubbed them
+softly, and softly chuckled; looking as like a malevolent baboon, I
+thought, as anything human could look.
+
+‘You see,’ he said, still hugging himself in that unpleasant way,
+and shaking his head at me, ‘you’re quite a dangerous rival, Master
+Copperfield. You always was, you know.’
+
+‘Do you set a watch upon Miss Wickfield, and make her home no home,
+because of me?’ said I.
+
+‘Oh! Master Copperfield! Those are very arsh words,’ he replied.
+
+‘Put my meaning into any words you like,’ said I. ‘You know what it is,
+Uriah, as well as I do.’
+
+‘Oh no! You must put it into words,’ he said. ‘Oh, really! I couldn’t
+myself.’
+
+‘Do you suppose,’ said I, constraining myself to be very temperate
+and quiet with him, on account of Agnes, ‘that I regard Miss Wickfield
+otherwise than as a very dear sister?’
+
+‘Well, Master Copperfield,’ he replied, ‘you perceive I am not bound
+to answer that question. You may not, you know. But then, you see, you
+may!’
+
+Anything to equal the low cunning of his visage, and of his shadowless
+eyes without the ghost of an eyelash, I never saw.
+
+‘Come then!’ said I. ‘For the sake of Miss Wickfield--’
+
+‘My Agnes!’ he exclaimed, with a sickly, angular contortion of himself.
+‘Would you be so good as call her Agnes, Master Copperfield!’
+
+‘For the sake of Agnes Wickfield--Heaven bless her!’
+
+‘Thank you for that blessing, Master Copperfield!’ he interposed.
+
+‘I will tell you what I should, under any other circumstances, as soon
+have thought of telling to--Jack Ketch.’
+
+‘To who, sir?’ said Uriah, stretching out his neck, and shading his ear
+with his hand.
+
+‘To the hangman,’ I returned. ‘The most unlikely person I could think
+of,’--though his own face had suggested the allusion quite as a natural
+sequence. ‘I am engaged to another young lady. I hope that contents
+you.’
+
+‘Upon your soul?’ said Uriah.
+
+I was about indignantly to give my assertion the confirmation he
+required, when he caught hold of my hand, and gave it a squeeze.
+
+‘Oh, Master Copperfield!’ he said. ‘If you had only had the
+condescension to return my confidence when I poured out the fulness of
+my art, the night I put you so much out of the way by sleeping before
+your sitting-room fire, I never should have doubted you. As it is, I’m
+sure I’ll take off mother directly, and only too appy. I know you’ll
+excuse the precautions of affection, won’t you? What a pity, Master
+Copperfield, that you didn’t condescend to return my confidence! I’m
+sure I gave you every opportunity. But you never have condescended to
+me, as much as I could have wished. I know you have never liked me, as I
+have liked you!’
+
+All this time he was squeezing my hand with his damp fishy fingers,
+while I made every effort I decently could to get it away. But I was
+quite unsuccessful. He drew it under the sleeve of his mulberry-coloured
+great-coat, and I walked on, almost upon compulsion, arm-in-arm with
+him.
+
+‘Shall we turn?’ said Uriah, by and by wheeling me face about towards
+the town, on which the early moon was now shining, silvering the distant
+windows.
+
+‘Before we leave the subject, you ought to understand,’ said I, breaking
+a pretty long silence, ‘that I believe Agnes Wickfield to be as far
+above you, and as far removed from all your aspirations, as that moon
+herself!’
+
+‘Peaceful! Ain’t she!’ said Uriah. ‘Very! Now confess, Master
+Copperfield, that you haven’t liked me quite as I have liked you. All
+along you’ve thought me too umble now, I shouldn’t wonder?’
+
+‘I am not fond of professions of humility,’ I returned, ‘or professions
+of anything else.’ ‘There now!’ said Uriah, looking flabby and
+lead-coloured in the moonlight. ‘Didn’t I know it! But how little
+you think of the rightful umbleness of a person in my station, Master
+Copperfield! Father and me was both brought up at a foundation school
+for boys; and mother, she was likewise brought up at a public, sort of
+charitable, establishment. They taught us all a deal of umbleness--not
+much else that I know of, from morning to night. We was to be umble to
+this person, and umble to that; and to pull off our caps here, and
+to make bows there; and always to know our place, and abase ourselves
+before our betters. And we had such a lot of betters! Father got the
+monitor-medal by being umble. So did I. Father got made a sexton by
+being umble. He had the character, among the gentlefolks, of being
+such a well-behaved man, that they were determined to bring him in. “Be
+umble, Uriah,” says father to me, “and you’ll get on. It was what was
+always being dinned into you and me at school; it’s what goes down best.
+Be umble,” says father, “and you’ll do!” And really it ain’t done bad!’
+
+It was the first time it had ever occurred to me, that this detestable
+cant of false humility might have originated out of the Heep family. I
+had seen the harvest, but had never thought of the seed.
+
+‘When I was quite a young boy,’ said Uriah, ‘I got to know what
+umbleness did, and I took to it. I ate umble pie with an appetite. I
+stopped at the umble point of my learning, and says I, “Hold hard!” When
+you offered to teach me Latin, I knew better. “People like to be above
+you,” says father, “keep yourself down.” I am very umble to the present
+moment, Master Copperfield, but I’ve got a little power!’
+
+And he said all this--I knew, as I saw his face in the moonlight--that
+I might understand he was resolved to recompense himself by using his
+power. I had never doubted his meanness, his craft and malice; but I
+fully comprehended now, for the first time, what a base, unrelenting,
+and revengeful spirit, must have been engendered by this early, and this
+long, suppression.
+
+His account of himself was so far attended with an agreeable result,
+that it led to his withdrawing his hand in order that he might have
+another hug of himself under the chin. Once apart from him, I was
+determined to keep apart; and we walked back, side by side, saying
+very little more by the way. Whether his spirits were elevated by the
+communication I had made to him, or by his having indulged in this
+retrospect, I don’t know; but they were raised by some influence. He
+talked more at dinner than was usual with him; asked his mother (off
+duty, from the moment of our re-entering the house) whether he was not
+growing too old for a bachelor; and once looked at Agnes so, that I
+would have given all I had, for leave to knock him down.
+
+When we three males were left alone after dinner, he got into a more
+adventurous state. He had taken little or no wine; and I presume it was
+the mere insolence of triumph that was upon him, flushed perhaps by the
+temptation my presence furnished to its exhibition.
+
+I had observed yesterday, that he tried to entice Mr. Wickfield to
+drink; and, interpreting the look which Agnes had given me as she went
+out, had limited myself to one glass, and then proposed that we should
+follow her. I would have done so again today; but Uriah was too quick
+for me.
+
+‘We seldom see our present visitor, sir,’ he said, addressing Mr.
+Wickfield, sitting, such a contrast to him, at the end of the table,
+‘and I should propose to give him welcome in another glass or two
+of wine, if you have no objections. Mr. Copperfield, your elth and
+appiness!’
+
+I was obliged to make a show of taking the hand he stretched across
+to me; and then, with very different emotions, I took the hand of the
+broken gentleman, his partner.
+
+‘Come, fellow-partner,’ said Uriah, ‘if I may take the liberty,--now,
+suppose you give us something or another appropriate to Copperfield!’
+
+I pass over Mr. Wickfield’s proposing my aunt, his proposing Mr. Dick,
+his proposing Doctors’ Commons, his proposing Uriah, his drinking
+everything twice; his consciousness of his own weakness, the ineffectual
+effort that he made against it; the struggle between his shame in
+Uriah’s deportment, and his desire to conciliate him; the manifest
+exultation with which Uriah twisted and turned, and held him up before
+me. It made me sick at heart to see, and my hand recoils from writing
+it.
+
+‘Come, fellow-partner!’ said Uriah, at last, ‘I’ll give you another one,
+and I umbly ask for bumpers, seeing I intend to make it the divinest of
+her sex.’
+
+Her father had his empty glass in his hand. I saw him set it down, look
+at the picture she was so like, put his hand to his forehead, and shrink
+back in his elbow-chair.
+
+‘I’m an umble individual to give you her elth,’ proceeded Uriah, ‘but I
+admire--adore her.’
+
+No physical pain that her father’s grey head could have borne, I think,
+could have been more terrible to me, than the mental endurance I saw
+compressed now within both his hands.
+
+‘Agnes,’ said Uriah, either not regarding him, or not knowing what the
+nature of his action was, ‘Agnes Wickfield is, I am safe to say, the
+divinest of her sex. May I speak out, among friends? To be her father is
+a proud distinction, but to be her usband--’
+
+Spare me from ever again hearing such a cry, as that with which her
+father rose up from the table! ‘What’s the matter?’ said Uriah, turning
+of a deadly colour. ‘You are not gone mad, after all, Mr. Wickfield, I
+hope? If I say I’ve an ambition to make your Agnes my Agnes, I have as
+good a right to it as another man. I have a better right to it than any
+other man!’
+
+I had my arms round Mr. Wickfield, imploring him by everything that I
+could think of, oftenest of all by his love for Agnes, to calm himself
+a little. He was mad for the moment; tearing out his hair, beating his
+head, trying to force me from him, and to force himself from me, not
+answering a word, not looking at or seeing anyone; blindly striving
+for he knew not what, his face all staring and distorted--a frightful
+spectacle.
+
+I conjured him, incoherently, but in the most impassioned manner, not
+to abandon himself to this wildness, but to hear me. I besought him to
+think of Agnes, to connect me with Agnes, to recollect how Agnes and I
+had grown up together, how I honoured her and loved her, how she was his
+pride and joy. I tried to bring her idea before him in any form; I even
+reproached him with not having firmness to spare her the knowledge of
+such a scene as this. I may have effected something, or his wildness may
+have spent itself; but by degrees he struggled less, and began to look
+at me--strangely at first, then with recognition in his eyes. At length
+he said, ‘I know, Trotwood! My darling child and you--I know! But look
+at him!’
+
+He pointed to Uriah, pale and glowering in a corner, evidently very much
+out in his calculations, and taken by surprise.
+
+‘Look at my torturer,’ he replied. ‘Before him I have step by step
+abandoned name and reputation, peace and quiet, house and home.’
+
+‘I have kept your name and reputation for you, and your peace and
+quiet, and your house and home too,’ said Uriah, with a sulky, hurried,
+defeated air of compromise. ‘Don’t be foolish, Mr. Wickfield. If I
+have gone a little beyond what you were prepared for, I can go back, I
+suppose? There’s no harm done.’
+
+‘I looked for single motives in everyone,’ said Mr. Wickfield, ‘and I was
+satisfied I had bound him to me by motives of interest. But see what he
+is--oh, see what he is!’
+
+‘You had better stop him, Copperfield, if you can,’ cried Uriah,
+with his long forefinger pointing towards me. ‘He’ll say something
+presently--mind you!--he’ll be sorry to have said afterwards, and you’ll
+be sorry to have heard!’
+
+‘I’ll say anything!’ cried Mr. Wickfield, with a desperate air. ‘Why
+should I not be in all the world’s power if I am in yours?’
+
+‘Mind! I tell you!’ said Uriah, continuing to warn me. ‘If you don’t
+stop his mouth, you’re not his friend! Why shouldn’t you be in all the
+world’s power, Mr. Wickfield? Because you have got a daughter. You and
+me know what we know, don’t we? Let sleeping dogs lie--who wants to
+rouse ‘em? I don’t. Can’t you see I am as umble as I can be? I tell you,
+if I’ve gone too far, I’m sorry. What would you have, sir?’
+
+‘Oh, Trotwood, Trotwood!’ exclaimed Mr. Wickfield, wringing his hands.
+‘What I have come down to be, since I first saw you in this house! I was
+on my downward way then, but the dreary, dreary road I have traversed
+since! Weak indulgence has ruined me. Indulgence in remembrance, and
+indulgence in forgetfulness. My natural grief for my child’s mother
+turned to disease; my natural love for my child turned to disease. I
+have infected everything I touched. I have brought misery on what I
+dearly love, I know--you know! I thought it possible that I could truly
+love one creature in the world, and not love the rest; I thought it
+possible that I could truly mourn for one creature gone out of the
+world, and not have some part in the grief of all who mourned. Thus the
+lessons of my life have been perverted! I have preyed on my own morbid
+coward heart, and it has preyed on me. Sordid in my grief, sordid in my
+love, sordid in my miserable escape from the darker side of both, oh see
+the ruin I am, and hate me, shun me!’
+
+He dropped into a chair, and weakly sobbed. The excitement into which he
+had been roused was leaving him. Uriah came out of his corner.
+
+‘I don’t know all I have done, in my fatuity,’ said Mr. Wickfield,
+putting out his hands, as if to deprecate my condemnation. ‘He knows
+best,’ meaning Uriah Heep, ‘for he has always been at my elbow,
+whispering me. You see the millstone that he is about my neck. You
+find him in my house, you find him in my business. You heard him, but a
+little time ago. What need have I to say more!’
+
+‘You haven’t need to say so much, nor half so much, nor anything at
+all,’ observed Uriah, half defiant, and half fawning. ‘You wouldn’t have
+took it up so, if it hadn’t been for the wine. You’ll think better of
+it tomorrow, sir. If I have said too much, or more than I meant, what of
+it? I haven’t stood by it!’
+
+The door opened, and Agnes, gliding in, without a vestige of colour in
+her face, put her arm round his neck, and steadily said, ‘Papa, you are
+not well. Come with me!’
+
+He laid his head upon her shoulder, as if he were oppressed with heavy
+shame, and went out with her. Her eyes met mine for but an instant, yet
+I saw how much she knew of what had passed.
+
+‘I didn’t expect he’d cut up so rough, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah.
+‘But it’s nothing. I’ll be friends with him tomorrow. It’s for his good.
+I’m umbly anxious for his good.’
+
+I gave him no answer, and went upstairs into the quiet room where Agnes
+had so often sat beside me at my books. Nobody came near me until late
+at night. I took up a book, and tried to read. I heard the clocks strike
+twelve, and was still reading, without knowing what I read, when Agnes
+touched me.
+
+‘You will be going early in the morning, Trotwood! Let us say good-bye,
+now!’
+
+She had been weeping, but her face then was so calm and beautiful!
+
+‘Heaven bless you!’ she said, giving me her hand.
+
+‘Dearest Agnes!’ I returned, ‘I see you ask me not to speak of
+tonight--but is there nothing to be done?’
+
+‘There is God to trust in!’ she replied.
+
+‘Can I do nothing--I, who come to you with my poor sorrows?’
+
+‘And make mine so much lighter,’ she replied. ‘Dear Trotwood, no!’
+
+‘Dear Agnes,’ I said, ‘it is presumptuous for me, who am so poor in all
+in which you are so rich--goodness, resolution, all noble qualities--to
+doubt or direct you; but you know how much I love you, and how much I
+owe you. You will never sacrifice yourself to a mistaken sense of duty,
+Agnes?’
+
+More agitated for a moment than I had ever seen her, she took her hands
+from me, and moved a step back.
+
+‘Say you have no such thought, dear Agnes! Much more than sister!
+Think of the priceless gift of such a heart as yours, of such a love as
+yours!’
+
+Oh! long, long afterwards, I saw that face rise up before me, with its
+momentary look, not wondering, not accusing, not regretting. Oh, long,
+long afterwards, I saw that look subside, as it did now, into the lovely
+smile, with which she told me she had no fear for herself--I need have
+none for her--and parted from me by the name of Brother, and was gone!
+
+It was dark in the morning, when I got upon the coach at the inn door.
+The day was just breaking when we were about to start, and then, as
+I sat thinking of her, came struggling up the coach side, through the
+mingled day and night, Uriah’s head.
+
+‘Copperfield!’ said he, in a croaking whisper, as he hung by the iron
+on the roof, ‘I thought you’d be glad to hear before you went off, that
+there are no squares broke between us. I’ve been into his room already,
+and we’ve made it all smooth. Why, though I’m umble, I’m useful to him,
+you know; and he understands his interest when he isn’t in liquor! What
+an agreeable man he is, after all, Master Copperfield!’
+
+I obliged myself to say that I was glad he had made his apology.
+
+‘Oh, to be sure!’ said Uriah. ‘When a person’s umble, you know, what’s
+an apology? So easy! I say! I suppose,’ with a jerk, ‘you have sometimes
+plucked a pear before it was ripe, Master Copperfield?’
+
+‘I suppose I have,’ I replied.
+
+‘I did that last night,’ said Uriah; ‘but it’ll ripen yet! It only wants
+attending to. I can wait!’
+
+Profuse in his farewells, he got down again as the coachman got up. For
+anything I know, he was eating something to keep the raw morning
+air out; but he made motions with his mouth as if the pear were ripe
+already, and he were smacking his lips over it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 40. THE WANDERER
+
+
+We had a very serious conversation in Buckingham Street that night,
+about the domestic occurrences I have detailed in the last chapter. My
+aunt was deeply interested in them, and walked up and down the room with
+her arms folded, for more than two hours afterwards. Whenever she was
+particularly discomposed, she always performed one of these pedestrian
+feats; and the amount of her discomposure might always be estimated by
+the duration of her walk. On this occasion she was so much disturbed in
+mind as to find it necessary to open the bedroom door, and make a course
+for herself, comprising the full extent of the bedrooms from wall to
+wall; and while Mr. Dick and I sat quietly by the fire, she kept passing
+in and out, along this measured track, at an unchanging pace, with the
+regularity of a clock-pendulum.
+
+When my aunt and I were left to ourselves by Mr. Dick’s going out to
+bed, I sat down to write my letter to the two old ladies. By that time
+she was tired of walking, and sat by the fire with her dress tucked up
+as usual. But instead of sitting in her usual manner, holding her glass
+upon her knee, she suffered it to stand neglected on the chimney-piece;
+and, resting her left elbow on her right arm, and her chin on her left
+hand, looked thoughtfully at me. As often as I raised my eyes from what
+I was about, I met hers. ‘I am in the lovingest of tempers, my dear,’
+she would assure me with a nod, ‘but I am fidgeted and sorry!’
+
+I had been too busy to observe, until after she was gone to bed, that
+she had left her night-mixture, as she always called it, untasted on
+the chimney-piece. She came to her door, with even more than her usual
+affection of manner, when I knocked to acquaint her with this discovery;
+but only said, ‘I have not the heart to take it, Trot, tonight,’ and
+shook her head, and went in again.
+
+She read my letter to the two old ladies, in the morning, and approved
+of it. I posted it, and had nothing to do then, but wait, as patiently
+as I could, for the reply. I was still in this state of expectation, and
+had been, for nearly a week; when I left the Doctor’s one snowy night,
+to walk home.
+
+It had been a bitter day, and a cutting north-east wind had blown for
+some time. The wind had gone down with the light, and so the snow had
+come on. It was a heavy, settled fall, I recollect, in great flakes; and
+it lay thick. The noise of wheels and tread of people were as hushed, as
+if the streets had been strewn that depth with feathers.
+
+My shortest way home,--and I naturally took the shortest way on such a
+night--was through St. Martin’s Lane. Now, the church which gives its
+name to the lane, stood in a less free situation at that time; there
+being no open space before it, and the lane winding down to the Strand.
+As I passed the steps of the portico, I encountered, at the corner,
+a woman’s face. It looked in mine, passed across the narrow lane,
+and disappeared. I knew it. I had seen it somewhere. But I could not
+remember where. I had some association with it, that struck upon my
+heart directly; but I was thinking of anything else when it came upon
+me, and was confused.
+
+On the steps of the church, there was the stooping figure of a man, who
+had put down some burden on the smooth snow, to adjust it; my seeing the
+face, and my seeing him, were simultaneous. I don’t think I had stopped
+in my surprise; but, in any case, as I went on, he rose, turned, and
+came down towards me. I stood face to face with Mr. Peggotty!
+
+Then I remembered the woman. It was Martha, to whom Emily had given the
+money that night in the kitchen. Martha Endell--side by side with whom,
+he would not have seen his dear niece, Ham had told me, for all the
+treasures wrecked in the sea.
+
+We shook hands heartily. At first, neither of us could speak a word.
+
+‘Mas’r Davy!’ he said, gripping me tight, ‘it do my art good to see you,
+sir. Well met, well met!’
+
+‘Well met, my dear old friend!’ said I.
+
+‘I had my thowts o’ coming to make inquiration for you, sir, tonight,’
+he said, ‘but knowing as your aunt was living along wi’ you--fur I’ve
+been down yonder--Yarmouth way--I was afeerd it was too late. I should
+have come early in the morning, sir, afore going away.’
+
+‘Again?’ said I.
+
+‘Yes, sir,’ he replied, patiently shaking his head, ‘I’m away tomorrow.’
+
+‘Where were you going now?’ I asked.
+
+‘Well!’ he replied, shaking the snow out of his long hair, ‘I was
+a-going to turn in somewheers.’
+
+In those days there was a side-entrance to the stable-yard of the Golden
+Cross, the inn so memorable to me in connexion with his misfortune,
+nearly opposite to where we stood. I pointed out the gateway, put my arm
+through his, and we went across. Two or three public-rooms opened out of
+the stable-yard; and looking into one of them, and finding it empty, and
+a good fire burning, I took him in there.
+
+When I saw him in the light, I observed, not only that his hair was long
+and ragged, but that his face was burnt dark by the sun. He was greyer,
+the lines in his face and forehead were deeper, and he had every
+appearance of having toiled and wandered through all varieties
+of weather; but he looked very strong, and like a man upheld by
+steadfastness of purpose, whom nothing could tire out. He shook the snow
+from his hat and clothes, and brushed it away from his face, while I was
+inwardly making these remarks. As he sat down opposite to me at a table,
+with his back to the door by which we had entered, he put out his rough
+hand again, and grasped mine warmly.
+
+‘I’ll tell you, Mas’r Davy,’ he said,--‘wheer all I’ve been, and
+what-all we’ve heerd. I’ve been fur, and we’ve heerd little; but I’ll
+tell you!’
+
+I rang the bell for something hot to drink. He would have nothing
+stronger than ale; and while it was being brought, and being warmed
+at the fire, he sat thinking. There was a fine, massive gravity in his
+face, I did not venture to disturb.
+
+‘When she was a child,’ he said, lifting up his head soon after we were
+left alone, ‘she used to talk to me a deal about the sea, and about
+them coasts where the sea got to be dark blue, and to lay a-shining and
+a-shining in the sun. I thowt, odd times, as her father being drownded
+made her think on it so much. I doen’t know, you see, but maybe she
+believed--or hoped--he had drifted out to them parts, where the flowers
+is always a-blowing, and the country bright.’
+
+‘It is likely to have been a childish fancy,’ I replied.
+
+‘When she was--lost,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘I know’d in my mind, as he
+would take her to them countries. I know’d in my mind, as he’d have told
+her wonders of ‘em, and how she was to be a lady theer, and how he got
+her to listen to him fust, along o’ sech like. When we see his mother,
+I know’d quite well as I was right. I went across-channel to France, and
+landed theer, as if I’d fell down from the sky.’
+
+I saw the door move, and the snow drift in. I saw it move a little more,
+and a hand softly interpose to keep it open.
+
+‘I found out an English gen’leman as was in authority,’ said Mr.
+Peggotty, ‘and told him I was a-going to seek my niece. He got me them
+papers as I wanted fur to carry me through--I doen’t rightly know how
+they’re called--and he would have give me money, but that I was thankful
+to have no need on. I thank him kind, for all he done, I’m sure! “I’ve
+wrote afore you,” he says to me, “and I shall speak to many as will come
+that way, and many will know you, fur distant from here, when you’re
+a-travelling alone.” I told him, best as I was able, what my gratitoode
+was, and went away through France.’
+
+‘Alone, and on foot?’ said I.
+
+‘Mostly a-foot,’ he rejoined; ‘sometimes in carts along with people
+going to market; sometimes in empty coaches. Many mile a day a-foot, and
+often with some poor soldier or another, travelling to see his friends.
+I couldn’t talk to him,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘nor he to me; but we was
+company for one another, too, along the dusty roads.’
+
+I should have known that by his friendly tone.
+
+‘When I come to any town,’ he pursued, ‘I found the inn, and waited
+about the yard till someone turned up (someone mostly did) as know’d
+English. Then I told how that I was on my way to seek my niece, and they
+told me what manner of gentlefolks was in the house, and I waited to see
+any as seemed like her, going in or out. When it warn’t Em’ly, I went on
+agen. By little and little, when I come to a new village or that, among
+the poor people, I found they know’d about me. They would set me down at
+their cottage doors, and give me what-not fur to eat and drink, and show
+me where to sleep; and many a woman, Mas’r Davy, as has had a daughter
+of about Em’ly’s age, I’ve found a-waiting fur me, at Our Saviour’s
+Cross outside the village, fur to do me sim’lar kindnesses. Some has had
+daughters as was dead. And God only knows how good them mothers was to
+me!’
+
+It was Martha at the door. I saw her haggard, listening face distinctly.
+My dread was lest he should turn his head, and see her too.
+
+‘They would often put their children--particular their little girls,’
+said Mr. Peggotty, ‘upon my knee; and many a time you might have seen
+me sitting at their doors, when night was coming in, a’most as if they’d
+been my Darling’s children. Oh, my Darling!’
+
+Overpowered by sudden grief, he sobbed aloud. I laid my trembling hand
+upon the hand he put before his face. ‘Thankee, sir,’ he said, ‘doen’t
+take no notice.’
+
+In a very little while he took his hand away and put it on his breast,
+and went on with his story. ‘They often walked with me,’ he said, ‘in
+the morning, maybe a mile or two upon my road; and when we parted, and
+I said, “I’m very thankful to you! God bless you!” they always seemed to
+understand, and answered pleasant. At last I come to the sea. It warn’t
+hard, you may suppose, for a seafaring man like me to work his way
+over to Italy. When I got theer, I wandered on as I had done afore. The
+people was just as good to me, and I should have gone from town to town,
+maybe the country through, but that I got news of her being seen among
+them Swiss mountains yonder. One as know’d his servant see ‘em there,
+all three, and told me how they travelled, and where they was. I made
+fur them mountains, Mas’r Davy, day and night. Ever so fur as I went,
+ever so fur the mountains seemed to shift away from me. But I come up
+with ‘em, and I crossed ‘em. When I got nigh the place as I had been
+told of, I began to think within my own self, “What shall I do when I
+see her?”’
+
+The listening face, insensible to the inclement night, still drooped at
+the door, and the hands begged me--prayed me--not to cast it forth.
+
+‘I never doubted her,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘No! Not a bit! On’y let her
+see my face--on’y let her heer my voice--on’y let my stanning still
+afore her bring to her thoughts the home she had fled away from, and the
+child she had been--and if she had growed to be a royal lady, she’d have
+fell down at my feet! I know’d it well! Many a time in my sleep had I
+heerd her cry out, “Uncle!” and seen her fall like death afore me. Many
+a time in my sleep had I raised her up, and whispered to her, “Em’ly, my
+dear, I am come fur to bring forgiveness, and to take you home!”’
+
+He stopped and shook his head, and went on with a sigh.
+
+‘He was nowt to me now. Em’ly was all. I bought a country dress to put
+upon her; and I know’d that, once found, she would walk beside me over
+them stony roads, go where I would, and never, never, leave me more. To
+put that dress upon her, and to cast off what she wore--to take her on
+my arm again, and wander towards home--to stop sometimes upon the road,
+and heal her bruised feet and her worse-bruised heart--was all that I
+thowt of now. I doen’t believe I should have done so much as look at
+him. But, Mas’r Davy, it warn’t to be--not yet! I was too late, and they
+was gone. Wheer, I couldn’t learn. Some said heer, some said theer.
+I travelled heer, and I travelled theer, but I found no Em’ly, and I
+travelled home.’
+
+‘How long ago?’ I asked.
+
+‘A matter o’ fower days,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘I sighted the old boat
+arter dark, and the light a-shining in the winder. When I come nigh and
+looked in through the glass, I see the faithful creetur Missis Gummidge
+sittin’ by the fire, as we had fixed upon, alone. I called out, “Doen’t
+be afeerd! It’s Dan’l!” and I went in. I never could have thowt the old
+boat would have been so strange!’ From some pocket in his breast, he
+took out, with a very careful hand a small paper bundle containing two
+or three letters or little packets, which he laid upon the table.
+
+‘This fust one come,’ he said, selecting it from the rest, ‘afore I had
+been gone a week. A fifty pound Bank note, in a sheet of paper, directed
+to me, and put underneath the door in the night. She tried to hide her
+writing, but she couldn’t hide it from Me!’
+
+He folded up the note again, with great patience and care, in exactly
+the same form, and laid it on one side.
+
+‘This come to Missis Gummidge,’ he said, opening another, ‘two or three
+months ago.’ After looking at it for some moments, he gave it to me, and
+added in a low voice, ‘Be so good as read it, sir.’
+
+I read as follows:
+
+
+‘Oh what will you feel when you see this writing, and know it comes from
+my wicked hand! But try, try--not for my sake, but for uncle’s goodness,
+try to let your heart soften to me, only for a little little time! Try,
+pray do, to relent towards a miserable girl, and write down on a bit of
+paper whether he is well, and what he said about me before you left off
+ever naming me among yourselves--and whether, of a night, when it is my
+old time of coming home, you ever see him look as if he thought of one
+he used to love so dear. Oh, my heart is breaking when I think about
+it! I am kneeling down to you, begging and praying you not to be as
+hard with me as I deserve--as I well, well, know I deserve--but to be so
+gentle and so good, as to write down something of him, and to send it to
+me. You need not call me Little, you need not call me by the name I have
+disgraced; but oh, listen to my agony, and have mercy on me so far as to
+write me some word of uncle, never, never to be seen in this world by my
+eyes again!
+
+‘Dear, if your heart is hard towards me--justly hard, I know--but,
+listen, if it is hard, dear, ask him I have wronged the most--him whose
+wife I was to have been--before you quite decide against my poor poor
+prayer! If he should be so compassionate as to say that you might write
+something for me to read--I think he would, oh, I think he would, if you
+would only ask him, for he always was so brave and so forgiving--tell
+him then (but not else), that when I hear the wind blowing at night,
+I feel as if it was passing angrily from seeing him and uncle, and was
+going up to God against me. Tell him that if I was to die tomorrow (and
+oh, if I was fit, I would be so glad to die!) I would bless him and
+uncle with my last words, and pray for his happy home with my last
+breath!’
+
+
+Some money was enclosed in this letter also. Five pounds. It was
+untouched like the previous sum, and he refolded it in the same way.
+Detailed instructions were added relative to the address of a reply,
+which, although they betrayed the intervention of several hands, and
+made it difficult to arrive at any very probable conclusion in reference
+to her place of concealment, made it at least not unlikely that she had
+written from that spot where she was stated to have been seen.
+
+‘What answer was sent?’ I inquired of Mr. Peggotty.
+
+‘Missis Gummidge,’ he returned, ‘not being a good scholar, sir, Ham
+kindly drawed it out, and she made a copy on it. They told her I was
+gone to seek her, and what my parting words was.’
+
+‘Is that another letter in your hand?’ said I.
+
+‘It’s money, sir,’ said Mr. Peggotty, unfolding it a little way. ‘Ten
+pound, you see. And wrote inside, “From a true friend,” like the fust.
+But the fust was put underneath the door, and this come by the post, day
+afore yesterday. I’m a-going to seek her at the post-mark.’
+
+He showed it to me. It was a town on the Upper Rhine. He had found out,
+at Yarmouth, some foreign dealers who knew that country, and they had
+drawn him a rude map on paper, which he could very well understand. He
+laid it between us on the table; and, with his chin resting on one hand,
+tracked his course upon it with the other.
+
+I asked him how Ham was? He shook his head.
+
+‘He works,’ he said, ‘as bold as a man can. His name’s as good, in all
+that part, as any man’s is, anywheres in the wureld. Anyone’s hand is
+ready to help him, you understand, and his is ready to help them. He’s
+never been heerd fur to complain. But my sister’s belief is [‘twixt
+ourselves) as it has cut him deep.’
+
+‘Poor fellow, I can believe it!’
+
+‘He ain’t no care, Mas’r Davy,’ said Mr. Peggotty in a solemn
+whisper--‘kinder no care no-how for his life. When a man’s wanted for
+rough sarvice in rough weather, he’s theer. When there’s hard duty to
+be done with danger in it, he steps for’ard afore all his mates. And yet
+he’s as gentle as any child. There ain’t a child in Yarmouth that doen’t
+know him.’
+
+He gathered up the letters thoughtfully, smoothing them with his hand;
+put them into their little bundle; and placed it tenderly in his breast
+again. The face was gone from the door. I still saw the snow drifting
+in; but nothing else was there.
+
+‘Well!’ he said, looking to his bag, ‘having seen you tonight, Mas’r
+Davy (and that doos me good!), I shall away betimes tomorrow morning.
+You have seen what I’ve got heer’; putting his hand on where the little
+packet lay; ‘all that troubles me is, to think that any harm might come
+to me, afore that money was give back. If I was to die, and it was lost,
+or stole, or elseways made away with, and it was never know’d by him
+but what I’d took it, I believe the t’other wureld wouldn’t hold me! I
+believe I must come back!’
+
+He rose, and I rose too; we grasped each other by the hand again, before
+going out.
+
+‘I’d go ten thousand mile,’ he said, ‘I’d go till I dropped dead, to lay
+that money down afore him. If I do that, and find my Em’ly, I’m content.
+If I doen’t find her, maybe she’ll come to hear, sometime, as her loving
+uncle only ended his search for her when he ended his life; and if I
+know her, even that will turn her home at last!’
+
+As he went out into the rigorous night, I saw the lonely figure flit
+away before us. I turned him hastily on some pretence, and held him in
+conversation until it was gone.
+
+He spoke of a traveller’s house on the Dover Road, where he knew he
+could find a clean, plain lodging for the night. I went with him over
+Westminster Bridge, and parted from him on the Surrey shore. Everything
+seemed, to my imagination, to be hushed in reverence for him, as he
+resumed his solitary journey through the snow.
+
+I returned to the inn yard, and, impressed by my remembrance of the
+face, looked awfully around for it. It was not there. The snow had
+covered our late footprints; my new track was the only one to be seen;
+and even that began to die away (it snowed so fast) as I looked back
+over my shoulder.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 41. DORA’S AUNTS
+
+
+At last, an answer came from the two old ladies. They presented their
+compliments to Mr. Copperfield, and informed him that they had given his
+letter their best consideration, ‘with a view to the happiness of
+both parties’--which I thought rather an alarming expression, not
+only because of the use they had made of it in relation to the family
+difference before-mentioned, but because I had (and have all my life)
+observed that conventional phrases are a sort of fireworks, easily let
+off, and liable to take a great variety of shapes and colours not at
+all suggested by their original form. The Misses Spenlow added that they
+begged to forbear expressing, ‘through the medium of correspondence’, an
+opinion on the subject of Mr. Copperfield’s communication; but that if
+Mr. Copperfield would do them the favour to call, upon a certain day
+(accompanied, if he thought proper, by a confidential friend), they
+would be happy to hold some conversation on the subject.
+
+To this favour, Mr. Copperfield immediately replied, with his respectful
+compliments, that he would have the honour of waiting on the Misses
+Spenlow, at the time appointed; accompanied, in accordance with their
+kind permission, by his friend Mr. Thomas Traddles of the Inner Temple.
+Having dispatched which missive, Mr. Copperfield fell into a condition
+of strong nervous agitation; and so remained until the day arrived.
+
+It was a great augmentation of my uneasiness to be bereaved, at this
+eventful crisis, of the inestimable services of Miss Mills. But Mr.
+Mills, who was always doing something or other to annoy me--or I felt
+as if he were, which was the same thing--had brought his conduct to a
+climax, by taking it into his head that he would go to India. Why should
+he go to India, except to harass me? To be sure he had nothing to do
+with any other part of the world, and had a good deal to do with that
+part; being entirely in the India trade, whatever that was (I had
+floating dreams myself concerning golden shawls and elephants’ teeth);
+having been at Calcutta in his youth; and designing now to go out there
+again, in the capacity of resident partner. But this was nothing to me.
+However, it was so much to him that for India he was bound, and
+Julia with him; and Julia went into the country to take leave of
+her relations; and the house was put into a perfect suit of bills,
+announcing that it was to be let or sold, and that the furniture (Mangle
+and all) was to be taken at a valuation. So, here was another earthquake
+of which I became the sport, before I had recovered from the shock of
+its predecessor!
+
+I was in several minds how to dress myself on the important day; being
+divided between my desire to appear to advantage, and my apprehensions
+of putting on anything that might impair my severely practical character
+in the eyes of the Misses Spenlow. I endeavoured to hit a happy medium
+between these two extremes; my aunt approved the result; and Mr. Dick
+threw one of his shoes after Traddles and me, for luck, as we went
+downstairs.
+
+Excellent fellow as I knew Traddles to be, and warmly attached to him as
+I was, I could not help wishing, on that delicate occasion, that he had
+never contracted the habit of brushing his hair so very upright. It
+gave him a surprised look--not to say a hearth-broomy kind of
+expression--which, my apprehensions whispered, might be fatal to us.
+
+I took the liberty of mentioning it to Traddles, as we were walking to
+Putney; and saying that if he WOULD smooth it down a little--
+
+‘My dear Copperfield,’ said Traddles, lifting off his hat, and rubbing
+his hair all kinds of ways, ‘nothing would give me greater pleasure. But
+it won’t.’
+
+‘Won’t be smoothed down?’ said I.
+
+‘No,’ said Traddles. ‘Nothing will induce it. If I was to carry a
+half-hundred-weight upon it, all the way to Putney, it would be up again
+the moment the weight was taken off. You have no idea what obstinate
+hair mine is, Copperfield. I am quite a fretful porcupine.’
+
+I was a little disappointed, I must confess, but thoroughly charmed by
+his good-nature too. I told him how I esteemed his good-nature; and said
+that his hair must have taken all the obstinacy out of his character,
+for he had none.
+
+‘Oh!’ returned Traddles, laughing. ‘I assure you, it’s quite an old
+story, my unfortunate hair. My uncle’s wife couldn’t bear it. She said
+it exasperated her. It stood very much in my way, too, when I first fell
+in love with Sophy. Very much!’
+
+‘Did she object to it?’
+
+‘SHE didn’t,’ rejoined Traddles; ‘but her eldest sister--the one that’s
+the Beauty--quite made game of it, I understand. In fact, all the
+sisters laugh at it.’
+
+‘Agreeable!’ said I.
+
+‘Yes,’ returned Traddles with perfect innocence, ‘it’s a joke for us.
+They pretend that Sophy has a lock of it in her desk, and is obliged to
+shut it in a clasped book, to keep it down. We laugh about it.’
+
+‘By the by, my dear Traddles,’ said I, ‘your experience may suggest
+something to me. When you became engaged to the young lady whom you have
+just mentioned, did you make a regular proposal to her family? Was there
+anything like--what we are going through today, for instance?’ I added,
+nervously.
+
+‘Why,’ replied Traddles, on whose attentive face a thoughtful shade had
+stolen, ‘it was rather a painful transaction, Copperfield, in my case.
+You see, Sophy being of so much use in the family, none of them could
+endure the thought of her ever being married. Indeed, they had quite
+settled among themselves that she never was to be married, and they
+called her the old maid. Accordingly, when I mentioned it, with the
+greatest precaution, to Mrs. Crewler--’
+
+‘The mama?’ said I.
+
+‘The mama,’ said Traddles--‘Reverend Horace Crewler--when I mentioned it
+with every possible precaution to Mrs. Crewler, the effect upon her was
+such that she gave a scream and became insensible. I couldn’t approach
+the subject again, for months.’
+
+‘You did at last?’ said I.
+
+‘Well, the Reverend Horace did,’ said Traddles. ‘He is an excellent man,
+most exemplary in every way; and he pointed out to her that she ought,
+as a Christian, to reconcile herself to the sacrifice (especially as it
+was so uncertain), and to bear no uncharitable feeling towards me. As to
+myself, Copperfield, I give you my word, I felt a perfect bird of prey
+towards the family.’
+
+‘The sisters took your part, I hope, Traddles?’
+
+‘Why, I can’t say they did,’ he returned. ‘When we had comparatively
+reconciled Mrs. Crewler to it, we had to break it to Sarah. You
+recollect my mentioning Sarah, as the one that has something the matter
+with her spine?’
+
+‘Perfectly!’
+
+‘She clenched both her hands,’ said Traddles, looking at me in dismay;
+‘shut her eyes; turned lead-colour; became perfectly stiff; and
+took nothing for two days but toast-and-water, administered with a
+tea-spoon.’
+
+‘What a very unpleasant girl, Traddles!’ I remarked.
+
+‘Oh, I beg your pardon, Copperfield!’ said Traddles. ‘She is a very
+charming girl, but she has a great deal of feeling. In fact, they all
+have. Sophy told me afterwards, that the self-reproach she underwent
+while she was in attendance upon Sarah, no words could describe. I know
+it must have been severe, by my own feelings, Copperfield; which were
+like a criminal’s. After Sarah was restored, we still had to break it
+to the other eight; and it produced various effects upon them of a most
+pathetic nature. The two little ones, whom Sophy educates, have only
+just left off de-testing me.’
+
+‘At any rate, they are all reconciled to it now, I hope?’ said I.
+
+‘Ye-yes, I should say they were, on the whole, resigned to it,’ said
+Traddles, doubtfully. ‘The fact is, we avoid mentioning the subject;
+and my unsettled prospects and indifferent circumstances are a great
+consolation to them. There will be a deplorable scene, whenever we
+are married. It will be much more like a funeral, than a wedding. And
+they’ll all hate me for taking her away!’
+
+His honest face, as he looked at me with a serio-comic shake of his
+head, impresses me more in the remembrance than it did in the reality,
+for I was by this time in a state of such excessive trepidation
+and wandering of mind, as to be quite unable to fix my attention on
+anything. On our approaching the house where the Misses Spenlow lived,
+I was at such a discount in respect of my personal looks and presence of
+mind, that Traddles proposed a gentle stimulant in the form of a glass
+of ale. This having been administered at a neighbouring public-house, he
+conducted me, with tottering steps, to the Misses Spenlow’s door.
+
+I had a vague sensation of being, as it were, on view, when the maid
+opened it; and of wavering, somehow, across a hall with a weather-glass
+in it, into a quiet little drawing-room on the ground-floor, commanding
+a neat garden. Also of sitting down here, on a sofa, and seeing
+Traddles’s hair start up, now his hat was removed, like one of those
+obtrusive little figures made of springs, that fly out of fictitious
+snuff-boxes when the lid is taken off. Also of hearing an old-fashioned
+clock ticking away on the chimney-piece, and trying to make it keep time
+to the jerking of my heart,--which it wouldn’t. Also of looking round
+the room for any sign of Dora, and seeing none. Also of thinking that
+Jip once barked in the distance, and was instantly choked by somebody.
+Ultimately I found myself backing Traddles into the fireplace, and
+bowing in great confusion to two dry little elderly ladies, dressed in
+black, and each looking wonderfully like a preparation in chip or tan of
+the late Mr. Spenlow.
+
+‘Pray,’ said one of the two little ladies, ‘be seated.’
+
+When I had done tumbling over Traddles, and had sat upon something which
+was not a cat--my first seat was--I so far recovered my sight, as to
+perceive that Mr. Spenlow had evidently been the youngest of the
+family; that there was a disparity of six or eight years between the
+two sisters; and that the younger appeared to be the manager of the
+conference, inasmuch as she had my letter in her hand--so familiar as
+it looked to me, and yet so odd!--and was referring to it through an
+eye-glass. They were dressed alike, but this sister wore her dress with
+a more youthful air than the other; and perhaps had a trifle more frill,
+or tucker, or brooch, or bracelet, or some little thing of that kind,
+which made her look more lively. They were both upright in their
+carriage, formal, precise, composed, and quiet. The sister who had
+not my letter, had her arms crossed on her breast, and resting on each
+other, like an Idol.
+
+‘Mr. Copperfield, I believe,’ said the sister who had got my letter,
+addressing herself to Traddles.
+
+This was a frightful beginning. Traddles had to indicate that I was Mr.
+Copperfield, and I had to lay claim to myself, and they had to divest
+themselves of a preconceived opinion that Traddles was Mr. Copperfield,
+and altogether we were in a nice condition. To improve it, we all
+distinctly heard Jip give two short barks, and receive another choke.
+
+‘Mr. Copperfield!’ said the sister with the letter.
+
+I did something--bowed, I suppose--and was all attention, when the other
+sister struck in.
+
+‘My sister Lavinia,’ said she ‘being conversant with matters of this
+nature, will state what we consider most calculated to promote the
+happiness of both parties.’
+
+I discovered afterwards that Miss Lavinia was an authority in affairs
+of the heart, by reason of there having anciently existed a certain Mr.
+Pidger, who played short whist, and was supposed to have been enamoured
+of her. My private opinion is, that this was entirely a gratuitous
+assumption, and that Pidger was altogether innocent of any such
+sentiments--to which he had never given any sort of expression that
+I could ever hear of. Both Miss Lavinia and Miss Clarissa had a
+superstition, however, that he would have declared his passion, if he
+had not been cut short in his youth (at about sixty) by over-drinking
+his constitution, and over-doing an attempt to set it right again by
+swilling Bath water. They had a lurking suspicion even, that he died of
+secret love; though I must say there was a picture of him in the house
+with a damask nose, which concealment did not appear to have ever preyed
+upon.
+
+‘We will not,’ said Miss Lavinia, ‘enter on the past history of this
+matter. Our poor brother Francis’s death has cancelled that.’
+
+‘We had not,’ said Miss Clarissa, ‘been in the habit of frequent
+association with our brother Francis; but there was no decided division
+or disunion between us. Francis took his road; we took ours. We
+considered it conducive to the happiness of all parties that it should
+be so. And it was so.’
+
+Each of the sisters leaned a little forward to speak, shook her head
+after speaking, and became upright again when silent. Miss Clarissa
+never moved her arms. She sometimes played tunes upon them with her
+fingers--minuets and marches I should think--but never moved them.
+
+‘Our niece’s position, or supposed position, is much changed by our
+brother Francis’s death,’ said Miss Lavinia; ‘and therefore we consider
+our brother’s opinions as regarded her position as being changed too. We
+have no reason to doubt, Mr. Copperfield, that you are a young gentleman
+possessed of good qualities and honourable character; or that you have
+an affection--or are fully persuaded that you have an affection--for our
+niece.’
+
+I replied, as I usually did whenever I had a chance, that nobody had
+ever loved anybody else as I loved Dora. Traddles came to my assistance
+with a confirmatory murmur.
+
+Miss Lavinia was going on to make some rejoinder, when Miss Clarissa,
+who appeared to be incessantly beset by a desire to refer to her brother
+Francis, struck in again:
+
+‘If Dora’s mama,’ she said, ‘when she married our brother Francis, had
+at once said that there was not room for the family at the dinner-table,
+it would have been better for the happiness of all parties.’
+
+‘Sister Clarissa,’ said Miss Lavinia. ‘Perhaps we needn’t mind that
+now.’
+
+‘Sister Lavinia,’ said Miss Clarissa, ‘it belongs to the subject. With
+your branch of the subject, on which alone you are competent to speak, I
+should not think of interfering. On this branch of the subject I have a
+voice and an opinion. It would have been better for the happiness of
+all parties, if Dora’s mama, when she married our brother Francis, had
+mentioned plainly what her intentions were. We should then have known
+what we had to expect. We should have said “Pray do not invite us,
+at any time”; and all possibility of misunderstanding would have been
+avoided.’
+
+When Miss Clarissa had shaken her head, Miss Lavinia resumed: again
+referring to my letter through her eye-glass. They both had little
+bright round twinkling eyes, by the way, which were like birds’ eyes.
+They were not unlike birds, altogether; having a sharp, brisk, sudden
+manner, and a little short, spruce way of adjusting themselves, like
+canaries.
+
+Miss Lavinia, as I have said, resumed:
+
+‘You ask permission of my sister Clarissa and myself, Mr. Copperfield,
+to visit here, as the accepted suitor of our niece.’
+
+‘If our brother Francis,’ said Miss Clarissa, breaking out again, if I
+may call anything so calm a breaking out, ‘wished to surround himself
+with an atmosphere of Doctors’ Commons, and of Doctors’ Commons only,
+what right or desire had we to object? None, I am sure. We have ever
+been far from wishing to obtrude ourselves on anyone. But why not say
+so? Let our brother Francis and his wife have their society. Let
+my sister Lavinia and myself have our society. We can find it for
+ourselves, I hope.’
+
+As this appeared to be addressed to Traddles and me, both Traddles and
+I made some sort of reply. Traddles was inaudible. I think I observed,
+myself, that it was highly creditable to all concerned. I don’t in the
+least know what I meant.
+
+‘Sister Lavinia,’ said Miss Clarissa, having now relieved her mind, ‘you
+can go on, my dear.’
+
+Miss Lavinia proceeded:
+
+‘Mr. Copperfield, my sister Clarissa and I have been very careful
+indeed in considering this letter; and we have not considered it without
+finally showing it to our niece, and discussing it with our niece. We
+have no doubt that you think you like her very much.’
+
+‘Think, ma’am,’ I rapturously began, ‘oh!--’
+
+But Miss Clarissa giving me a look (just like a sharp canary), as
+requesting that I would not interrupt the oracle, I begged pardon.
+
+‘Affection,’ said Miss Lavinia, glancing at her sister for
+corroboration, which she gave in the form of a little nod to every
+clause, ‘mature affection, homage, devotion, does not easily express
+itself. Its voice is low. It is modest and retiring, it lies in ambush,
+waits and waits. Such is the mature fruit. Sometimes a life glides away,
+and finds it still ripening in the shade.’
+
+Of course I did not understand then that this was an allusion to her
+supposed experience of the stricken Pidger; but I saw, from the gravity
+with which Miss Clarissa nodded her head, that great weight was attached
+to these words.
+
+‘The light--for I call them, in comparison with such sentiments, the
+light--inclinations of very young people,’ pursued Miss Lavinia, ‘are
+dust, compared to rocks. It is owing to the difficulty of knowing
+whether they are likely to endure or have any real foundation, that
+my sister Clarissa and myself have been very undecided how to act, Mr.
+Copperfield, and Mr.--’
+
+‘Traddles,’ said my friend, finding himself looked at.
+
+‘I beg pardon. Of the Inner Temple, I believe?’ said Miss Clarissa,
+again glancing at my letter.
+
+Traddles said ‘Exactly so,’ and became pretty red in the face.
+
+Now, although I had not received any express encouragement as yet, I
+fancied that I saw in the two little sisters, and particularly in Miss
+Lavinia, an intensified enjoyment of this new and fruitful subject of
+domestic interest, a settling down to make the most of it, a disposition
+to pet it, in which there was a good bright ray of hope. I thought
+I perceived that Miss Lavinia would have uncommon satisfaction in
+superintending two young lovers, like Dora and me; and that Miss
+Clarissa would have hardly less satisfaction in seeing her superintend
+us, and in chiming in with her own particular department of the subject
+whenever that impulse was strong upon her. This gave me courage to
+protest most vehemently that I loved Dora better than I could tell, or
+anyone believe; that all my friends knew how I loved her; that my aunt,
+Agnes, Traddles, everyone who knew me, knew how I loved her, and how
+earnest my love had made me. For the truth of this, I appealed to
+Traddles. And Traddles, firing up as if he were plunging into a
+Parliamentary Debate, really did come out nobly: confirming me in good
+round terms, and in a plain sensible practical manner, that evidently
+made a favourable impression.
+
+‘I speak, if I may presume to say so, as one who has some little
+experience of such things,’ said Traddles, ‘being myself engaged to a
+young lady--one of ten, down in Devonshire--and seeing no probability,
+at present, of our engagement coming to a termination.’
+
+‘You may be able to confirm what I have said, Mr. Traddles,’ observed
+Miss Lavinia, evidently taking a new interest in him, ‘of the affection
+that is modest and retiring; that waits and waits?’
+
+‘Entirely, ma’am,’ said Traddles.
+
+Miss Clarissa looked at Miss Lavinia, and shook her head gravely. Miss
+Lavinia looked consciously at Miss Clarissa, and heaved a little sigh.
+‘Sister Lavinia,’ said Miss Clarissa, ‘take my smelling-bottle.’
+
+Miss Lavinia revived herself with a few whiffs of aromatic
+vinegar--Traddles and I looking on with great solicitude the while; and
+then went on to say, rather faintly:
+
+‘My sister and myself have been in great doubt, Mr. Traddles, what
+course we ought to take in reference to the likings, or imaginary
+likings, of such very young people as your friend Mr. Copperfield and
+our niece.’
+
+‘Our brother Francis’s child,’ remarked Miss Clarissa. ‘If our brother
+Francis’s wife had found it convenient in her lifetime (though she had
+an unquestionable right to act as she thought best) to invite the family
+to her dinner-table, we might have known our brother Francis’s child
+better at the present moment. Sister Lavinia, proceed.’
+
+Miss Lavinia turned my letter, so as to bring the superscription towards
+herself, and referred through her eye-glass to some orderly-looking
+notes she had made on that part of it.
+
+‘It seems to us,’ said she, ‘prudent, Mr. Traddles, to bring these
+feelings to the test of our own observation. At present we know nothing
+of them, and are not in a situation to judge how much reality there
+may be in them. Therefore we are inclined so far to accede to Mr.
+Copperfield’s proposal, as to admit his visits here.’
+
+‘I shall never, dear ladies,’ I exclaimed, relieved of an immense load
+of apprehension, ‘forget your kindness!’
+
+‘But,’ pursued Miss Lavinia,--‘but, we would prefer to regard those
+visits, Mr. Traddles, as made, at present, to us. We must guard
+ourselves from recognizing any positive engagement between Mr.
+Copperfield and our niece, until we have had an opportunity--’
+
+‘Until YOU have had an opportunity, sister Lavinia,’ said Miss Clarissa.
+
+‘Be it so,’ assented Miss Lavinia, with a sigh--‘until I have had an
+opportunity of observing them.’
+
+‘Copperfield,’ said Traddles, turning to me, ‘you feel, I am sure, that
+nothing could be more reasonable or considerate.’
+
+‘Nothing!’ cried I. ‘I am deeply sensible of it.’
+
+‘In this position of affairs,’ said Miss Lavinia, again referring to
+her notes, ‘and admitting his visits on this understanding only, we
+must require from Mr. Copperfield a distinct assurance, on his word of
+honour, that no communication of any kind shall take place between him
+and our niece without our knowledge. That no project whatever shall be
+entertained with regard to our niece, without being first submitted to
+us--’ ‘To you, sister Lavinia,’ Miss Clarissa interposed.
+
+‘Be it so, Clarissa!’ assented Miss Lavinia resignedly--‘to me--and
+receiving our concurrence. We must make this a most express and serious
+stipulation, not to be broken on any account. We wished Mr. Copperfield
+to be accompanied by some confidential friend today,’ with an
+inclination of her head towards Traddles, who bowed, ‘in order that
+there might be no doubt or misconception on this subject. If Mr.
+Copperfield, or if you, Mr. Traddles, feel the least scruple, in giving
+this promise, I beg you to take time to consider it.’
+
+I exclaimed, in a state of high ecstatic fervour, that not a moment’s
+consideration could be necessary. I bound myself by the required
+promise, in a most impassioned manner; called upon Traddles to witness
+it; and denounced myself as the most atrocious of characters if I ever
+swerved from it in the least degree.
+
+‘Stay!’ said Miss Lavinia, holding up her hand; ‘we resolved, before we
+had the pleasure of receiving you two gentlemen, to leave you alone
+for a quarter of an hour, to consider this point. You will allow us to
+retire.’
+
+It was in vain for me to say that no consideration was necessary. They
+persisted in withdrawing for the specified time. Accordingly, these
+little birds hopped out with great dignity; leaving me to receive the
+congratulations of Traddles, and to feel as if I were translated to
+regions of exquisite happiness. Exactly at the expiration of the
+quarter of an hour, they reappeared with no less dignity than they had
+disappeared. They had gone rustling away as if their little dresses were
+made of autumn-leaves: and they came rustling back, in like manner.
+
+I then bound myself once more to the prescribed conditions.
+
+‘Sister Clarissa,’ said Miss Lavinia, ‘the rest is with you.’
+
+Miss Clarissa, unfolding her arms for the first time, took the notes and
+glanced at them.
+
+‘We shall be happy,’ said Miss Clarissa, ‘to see Mr. Copperfield to
+dinner, every Sunday, if it should suit his convenience. Our hour is
+three.’
+
+I bowed.
+
+‘In the course of the week,’ said Miss Clarissa, ‘we shall be happy to
+see Mr. Copperfield to tea. Our hour is half-past six.’
+
+I bowed again.
+
+‘Twice in the week,’ said Miss Clarissa, ‘but, as a rule, not oftener.’
+
+I bowed again.
+
+‘Miss Trotwood,’ said Miss Clarissa, ‘mentioned in Mr. Copperfield’s
+letter, will perhaps call upon us. When visiting is better for the
+happiness of all parties, we are glad to receive visits, and return
+them. When it is better for the happiness of all parties that no
+visiting should take place, (as in the case of our brother Francis, and
+his establishment) that is quite different.’
+
+I intimated that my aunt would be proud and delighted to make their
+acquaintance; though I must say I was not quite sure of their getting
+on very satisfactorily together. The conditions being now closed, I
+expressed my acknowledgements in the warmest manner; and, taking the
+hand, first of Miss Clarissa, and then of Miss Lavinia, pressed it, in
+each case, to my lips.
+
+Miss Lavinia then arose, and begging Mr. Traddles to excuse us for a
+minute, requested me to follow her. I obeyed, all in a tremble, and was
+conducted into another room. There I found my blessed darling stopping
+her ears behind the door, with her dear little face against the wall;
+and Jip in the plate-warmer with his head tied up in a towel.
+
+Oh! How beautiful she was in her black frock, and how she sobbed and
+cried at first, and wouldn’t come out from behind the door! How fond we
+were of one another, when she did come out at last; and what a state of
+bliss I was in, when we took Jip out of the plate-warmer, and restored
+him to the light, sneezing very much, and were all three reunited!
+
+‘My dearest Dora! Now, indeed, my own for ever!’
+
+‘Oh, DON’T!’ pleaded Dora. ‘Please!’
+
+‘Are you not my own for ever, Dora?’
+
+‘Oh yes, of course I am!’ cried Dora, ‘but I am so frightened!’
+
+‘Frightened, my own?’
+
+‘Oh yes! I don’t like him,’ said Dora. ‘Why don’t he go?’
+
+‘Who, my life?’
+
+‘Your friend,’ said Dora. ‘It isn’t any business of his. What a stupid
+he must be!’
+
+‘My love!’ (There never was anything so coaxing as her childish ways.)
+‘He is the best creature!’
+
+‘Oh, but we don’t want any best creatures!’ pouted Dora.
+
+‘My dear,’ I argued, ‘you will soon know him well, and like him of all
+things. And here is my aunt coming soon; and you’ll like her of all
+things too, when you know her.’
+
+‘No, please don’t bring her!’ said Dora, giving me a horrified
+little kiss, and folding her hands. ‘Don’t. I know she’s a naughty,
+mischief-making old thing! Don’t let her come here, Doady!’ which was a
+corruption of David.
+
+Remonstrance was of no use, then; so I laughed, and admired, and was
+very much in love and very happy; and she showed me Jip’s new trick of
+standing on his hind legs in a corner--which he did for about the space
+of a flash of lightning, and then fell down--and I don’t know how long I
+should have stayed there, oblivious of Traddles, if Miss Lavinia had not
+come in to take me away. Miss Lavinia was very fond of Dora (she told
+me Dora was exactly like what she had been herself at her age--she must
+have altered a good deal), and she treated Dora just as if she had been
+a toy. I wanted to persuade Dora to come and see Traddles, but on my
+proposing it she ran off to her own room and locked herself in; so I
+went to Traddles without her, and walked away with him on air.
+
+‘Nothing could be more satisfactory,’ said Traddles; ‘and they are very
+agreeable old ladies, I am sure. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if you
+were to be married years before me, Copperfield.’
+
+‘Does your Sophy play on any instrument, Traddles?’ I inquired, in the
+pride of my heart.
+
+‘She knows enough of the piano to teach it to her little sisters,’ said
+Traddles.
+
+‘Does she sing at all?’ I asked.
+
+‘Why, she sings ballads, sometimes, to freshen up the others a little
+when they’re out of spirits,’ said Traddles. ‘Nothing scientific.’
+
+‘She doesn’t sing to the guitar?’ said I.
+
+‘Oh dear no!’ said Traddles.
+
+‘Paint at all?’
+
+‘Not at all,’ said Traddles.
+
+I promised Traddles that he should hear Dora sing, and see some of her
+flower-painting. He said he should like it very much, and we went home
+arm in arm in great good humour and delight. I encouraged him to talk
+about Sophy, on the way; which he did with a loving reliance on her
+that I very much admired. I compared her in my mind with Dora, with
+considerable inward satisfaction; but I candidly admitted to myself that
+she seemed to be an excellent kind of girl for Traddles, too.
+
+Of course my aunt was immediately made acquainted with the successful
+issue of the conference, and with all that had been said and done in the
+course of it. She was happy to see me so happy, and promised to call on
+Dora’s aunts without loss of time. But she took such a long walk up and
+down our rooms that night, while I was writing to Agnes, that I began to
+think she meant to walk till morning.
+
+My letter to Agnes was a fervent and grateful one, narrating all the
+good effects that had resulted from my following her advice. She wrote,
+by return of post, to me. Her letter was hopeful, earnest, and cheerful.
+She was always cheerful from that time.
+
+I had my hands more full than ever, now. My daily journeys to Highgate
+considered, Putney was a long way off; and I naturally wanted to go
+there as often as I could. The proposed tea-drinkings being quite
+impracticable, I compounded with Miss Lavinia for permission to visit
+every Saturday afternoon, without detriment to my privileged Sundays.
+So, the close of every week was a delicious time for me; and I got
+through the rest of the week by looking forward to it.
+
+I was wonderfully relieved to find that my aunt and Dora’s aunts
+rubbed on, all things considered, much more smoothly than I could have
+expected. My aunt made her promised visit within a few days of the
+conference; and within a few more days, Dora’s aunts called upon her,
+in due state and form. Similar but more friendly exchanges took place
+afterwards, usually at intervals of three or four weeks. I know that my
+aunt distressed Dora’s aunts very much, by utterly setting at naught the
+dignity of fly-conveyance, and walking out to Putney at extraordinary
+times, as shortly after breakfast or just before tea; likewise by
+wearing her bonnet in any manner that happened to be comfortable to her
+head, without at all deferring to the prejudices of civilization on that
+subject. But Dora’s aunts soon agreed to regard my aunt as an eccentric
+and somewhat masculine lady, with a strong understanding; and although
+my aunt occasionally ruffled the feathers of Dora’s aunts, by expressing
+heretical opinions on various points of ceremony, she loved me too
+well not to sacrifice some of her little peculiarities to the general
+harmony.
+
+The only member of our small society who positively refused to adapt
+himself to circumstances, was Jip. He never saw my aunt without
+immediately displaying every tooth in his head, retiring under a chair,
+and growling incessantly: with now and then a doleful howl, as if she
+really were too much for his feelings. All kinds of treatment were tried
+with him, coaxing, scolding, slapping, bringing him to Buckingham
+Street (where he instantly dashed at the two cats, to the terror of all
+beholders); but he never could prevail upon himself to bear my
+aunt’s society. He would sometimes think he had got the better of his
+objection, and be amiable for a few minutes; and then would put up his
+snub nose, and howl to that extent, that there was nothing for it but
+to blind him and put him in the plate-warmer. At length, Dora regularly
+muffled him in a towel and shut him up there, whenever my aunt was
+reported at the door.
+
+One thing troubled me much, after we had fallen into this quiet train.
+It was, that Dora seemed by one consent to be regarded like a pretty toy
+or plaything. My aunt, with whom she gradually became familiar, always
+called her Little Blossom; and the pleasure of Miss Lavinia’s life was
+to wait upon her, curl her hair, make ornaments for her, and treat her
+like a pet child. What Miss Lavinia did, her sister did as a matter of
+course. It was very odd to me; but they all seemed to treat Dora, in her
+degree, much as Dora treated Jip in his.
+
+I made up my mind to speak to Dora about this; and one day when we were
+out walking (for we were licensed by Miss Lavinia, after a while, to
+go out walking by ourselves), I said to her that I wished she could get
+them to behave towards her differently.
+
+‘Because you know, my darling,’ I remonstrated, ‘you are not a child.’
+
+‘There!’ said Dora. ‘Now you’re going to be cross!’
+
+‘Cross, my love?’
+
+‘I am sure they’re very kind to me,’ said Dora, ‘and I am very happy--’
+
+‘Well! But my dearest life!’ said I, ‘you might be very happy, and yet
+be treated rationally.’
+
+Dora gave me a reproachful look--the prettiest look!--and then began to
+sob, saying, if I didn’t like her, why had I ever wanted so much to be
+engaged to her? And why didn’t I go away, now, if I couldn’t bear her?
+
+What could I do, but kiss away her tears, and tell her how I doted on
+her, after that!
+
+‘I am sure I am very affectionate,’ said Dora; ‘you oughtn’t to be cruel
+to me, Doady!’
+
+‘Cruel, my precious love! As if I would--or could--be cruel to you, for
+the world!’
+
+‘Then don’t find fault with me,’ said Dora, making a rosebud of her
+mouth; ‘and I’ll be good.’
+
+I was charmed by her presently asking me, of her own accord, to give
+her that cookery-book I had once spoken of, and to show her how to keep
+accounts as I had once promised I would. I brought the volume with me on
+my next visit (I got it prettily bound, first, to make it look less dry
+and more inviting); and as we strolled about the Common, I showed her an
+old housekeeping-book of my aunt’s, and gave her a set of tablets, and
+a pretty little pencil-case and box of leads, to practise housekeeping
+with.
+
+But the cookery-book made Dora’s head ache, and the figures made her
+cry. They wouldn’t add up, she said. So she rubbed them out, and drew
+little nosegays and likenesses of me and Jip, all over the tablets.
+
+Then I playfully tried verbal instruction in domestic matters, as we
+walked about on a Saturday afternoon. Sometimes, for example, when we
+passed a butcher’s shop, I would say:
+
+‘Now suppose, my pet, that we were married, and you were going to buy a
+shoulder of mutton for dinner, would you know how to buy it?’
+
+My pretty little Dora’s face would fall, and she would make her mouth
+into a bud again, as if she would very much prefer to shut mine with a
+kiss.
+
+‘Would you know how to buy it, my darling?’ I would repeat, perhaps, if
+I were very inflexible.
+
+Dora would think a little, and then reply, perhaps, with great triumph:
+
+‘Why, the butcher would know how to sell it, and what need I know? Oh,
+you silly boy!’
+
+So, when I once asked Dora, with an eye to the cookery-book, what she
+would do, if we were married, and I were to say I should like a nice
+Irish stew, she replied that she would tell the servant to make it; and
+then clapped her little hands together across my arm, and laughed in
+such a charming manner that she was more delightful than ever.
+
+Consequently, the principal use to which the cookery-book was devoted,
+was being put down in the corner for Jip to stand upon. But Dora was so
+pleased, when she had trained him to stand upon it without offering to
+come off, and at the same time to hold the pencil-case in his mouth,
+that I was very glad I had bought it.
+
+And we fell back on the guitar-case, and the flower-painting, and the
+songs about never leaving off dancing, Ta ra la! and were as happy as
+the week was long. I occasionally wished I could venture to hint to Miss
+Lavinia, that she treated the darling of my heart a little too much like
+a plaything; and I sometimes awoke, as it were, wondering to find that
+I had fallen into the general fault, and treated her like a plaything
+too--but not often.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 42. MISCHIEF
+
+I feel as if it were not for me to record, even though this manuscript
+is intended for no eyes but mine, how hard I worked at that tremendous
+short-hand, and all improvement appertaining to it, in my sense of
+responsibility to Dora and her aunts. I will only add, to what I have
+already written of my perseverance at this time of my life, and of a
+patient and continuous energy which then began to be matured within me,
+and which I know to be the strong part of my character, if it have any
+strength at all, that there, on looking back, I find the source of my
+success. I have been very fortunate in worldly matters; many men have
+worked much harder, and not succeeded half so well; but I never could
+have done what I have done, without the habits of punctuality, order,
+and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one
+object at a time, no matter how quickly its successor should come upon
+its heels, which I then formed. Heaven knows I write this, in no spirit
+of self-laudation. The man who reviews his own life, as I do mine,
+in going on here, from page to page, had need to have been a good man
+indeed, if he would be spared the sharp consciousness of many talents
+neglected, many opportunities wasted, many erratic and perverted
+feelings constantly at war within his breast, and defeating him. I
+do not hold one natural gift, I dare say, that I have not abused. My
+meaning simply is, that whatever I have tried to do in life, I have
+tried with all my heart to do well; that whatever I have devoted myself
+to, I have devoted myself to completely; that in great aims and in
+small, I have always been thoroughly in earnest. I have never believed
+it possible that any natural or improved ability can claim immunity from
+the companionship of the steady, plain, hard-working qualities, and
+hope to gain its end. There is no such thing as such fulfilment on this
+earth. Some happy talent, and some fortunate opportunity, may form the
+two sides of the ladder on which some men mount, but the rounds of that
+ladder must be made of stuff to stand wear and tear; and there is no
+substitute for thorough-going, ardent, and sincere earnestness. Never
+to put one hand to anything, on which I could throw my whole self; and
+never to affect depreciation of my work, whatever it was; I find, now,
+to have been my golden rules.
+
+How much of the practice I have just reduced to precept, I owe to Agnes,
+I will not repeat here. My narrative proceeds to Agnes, with a thankful
+love.
+
+She came on a visit of a fortnight to the Doctor’s. Mr. Wickfield was
+the Doctor’s old friend, and the Doctor wished to talk with him, and
+do him good. It had been matter of conversation with Agnes when she was
+last in town, and this visit was the result. She and her father came
+together. I was not much surprised to hear from her that she had engaged
+to find a lodging in the neighbourhood for Mrs. Heep, whose rheumatic
+complaint required change of air, and who would be charmed to have it in
+such company. Neither was I surprised when, on the very next day, Uriah,
+like a dutiful son, brought his worthy mother to take possession.
+
+‘You see, Master Copperfield,’ said he, as he forced himself upon my
+company for a turn in the Doctor’s garden, ‘where a person loves, a
+person is a little jealous--leastways, anxious to keep an eye on the
+beloved one.’
+
+‘Of whom are you jealous, now?’ said I.
+
+‘Thanks to you, Master Copperfield,’ he returned, ‘of no one in
+particular just at present--no male person, at least.’
+
+‘Do you mean that you are jealous of a female person?’
+
+He gave me a sidelong glance out of his sinister red eyes, and laughed.
+
+‘Really, Master Copperfield,’ he said, ‘--I should say Mister, but I
+know you’ll excuse the abit I’ve got into--you’re so insinuating, that
+you draw me like a corkscrew! Well, I don’t mind telling you,’ putting
+his fish-like hand on mine, ‘I’m not a lady’s man in general, sir, and I
+never was, with Mrs. Strong.’
+
+His eyes looked green now, as they watched mine with a rascally cunning.
+
+‘What do you mean?’ said I.
+
+‘Why, though I am a lawyer, Master Copperfield,’ he replied, with a dry
+grin, ‘I mean, just at present, what I say.’
+
+‘And what do you mean by your look?’ I retorted, quietly.
+
+‘By my look? Dear me, Copperfield, that’s sharp practice! What do I mean
+by my look?’
+
+‘Yes,’ said I. ‘By your look.’
+
+He seemed very much amused, and laughed as heartily as it was in his
+nature to laugh. After some scraping of his chin with his hand, he went
+on to say, with his eyes cast downward--still scraping, very slowly:
+
+‘When I was but an umble clerk, she always looked down upon me. She was
+for ever having my Agnes backwards and forwards at her ouse, and she was
+for ever being a friend to you, Master Copperfield; but I was too far
+beneath her, myself, to be noticed.’
+
+‘Well?’ said I; ‘suppose you were!’
+
+‘--And beneath him too,’ pursued Uriah, very distinctly, and in a
+meditative tone of voice, as he continued to scrape his chin.
+
+‘Don’t you know the Doctor better,’ said I, ‘than to suppose him
+conscious of your existence, when you were not before him?’
+
+He directed his eyes at me in that sidelong glance again, and he made
+his face very lantern-jawed, for the greater convenience of scraping, as
+he answered:
+
+‘Oh dear, I am not referring to the Doctor! Oh no, poor man! I mean Mr.
+Maldon!’
+
+My heart quite died within me. All my old doubts and apprehensions on
+that subject, all the Doctor’s happiness and peace, all the mingled
+possibilities of innocence and compromise, that I could not unravel, I
+saw, in a moment, at the mercy of this fellow’s twisting.
+
+‘He never could come into the office, without ordering and shoving me
+about,’ said Uriah. ‘One of your fine gentlemen he was! I was very meek
+and umble--and I am. But I didn’t like that sort of thing--and I don’t!’
+
+He left off scraping his chin, and sucked in his cheeks until they
+seemed to meet inside; keeping his sidelong glance upon me all the
+while.
+
+‘She is one of your lovely women, she is,’ he pursued, when he had
+slowly restored his face to its natural form; ‘and ready to be no friend
+to such as me, I know. She’s just the person as would put my Agnes up
+to higher sort of game. Now, I ain’t one of your lady’s men, Master
+Copperfield; but I’ve had eyes in my ed, a pretty long time back. We
+umble ones have got eyes, mostly speaking--and we look out of ‘em.’
+
+I endeavoured to appear unconscious and not disquieted, but, I saw in
+his face, with poor success.
+
+‘Now, I’m not a-going to let myself be run down, Copperfield,’ he
+continued, raising that part of his countenance, where his red eyebrows
+would have been if he had had any, with malignant triumph, ‘and I shall
+do what I can to put a stop to this friendship. I don’t approve of it.
+I don’t mind acknowledging to you that I’ve got rather a grudging
+disposition, and want to keep off all intruders. I ain’t a-going, if I
+know it, to run the risk of being plotted against.’
+
+‘You are always plotting, and delude yourself into the belief that
+everybody else is doing the like, I think,’ said I.
+
+‘Perhaps so, Master Copperfield,’ he replied. ‘But I’ve got a motive, as
+my fellow-partner used to say; and I go at it tooth and nail. I mustn’t
+be put upon, as a numble person, too much. I can’t allow people in my
+way. Really they must come out of the cart, Master Copperfield!’
+
+‘I don’t understand you,’ said I.
+
+‘Don’t you, though?’ he returned, with one of his jerks. ‘I’m astonished
+at that, Master Copperfield, you being usually so quick! I’ll try to be
+plainer, another time.---Is that Mr. Maldon a-norseback, ringing at the
+gate, sir?’
+
+‘It looks like him,’ I replied, as carelessly as I could.
+
+Uriah stopped short, put his hands between his great knobs of knees, and
+doubled himself up with laughter. With perfectly silent laughter. Not
+a sound escaped from him. I was so repelled by his odious behaviour,
+particularly by this concluding instance, that I turned away without any
+ceremony; and left him doubled up in the middle of the garden, like a
+scarecrow in want of support.
+
+It was not on that evening; but, as I well remember, on the next evening
+but one, which was a Sunday; that I took Agnes to see Dora. I had
+arranged the visit, beforehand, with Miss Lavinia; and Agnes was
+expected to tea.
+
+I was in a flutter of pride and anxiety; pride in my dear little
+betrothed, and anxiety that Agnes should like her. All the way to
+Putney, Agnes being inside the stage-coach, and I outside, I pictured
+Dora to myself in every one of the pretty looks I knew so well; now
+making up my mind that I should like her to look exactly as she looked
+at such a time, and then doubting whether I should not prefer her
+looking as she looked at such another time; and almost worrying myself
+into a fever about it.
+
+I was troubled by no doubt of her being very pretty, in any case; but
+it fell out that I had never seen her look so well. She was not in the
+drawing-room when I presented Agnes to her little aunts, but was shyly
+keeping out of the way. I knew where to look for her, now; and sure
+enough I found her stopping her ears again, behind the same dull old
+door.
+
+At first she wouldn’t come at all; and then she pleaded for five minutes
+by my watch. When at length she put her arm through mine, to be taken
+to the drawing-room, her charming little face was flushed, and had never
+been so pretty. But, when we went into the room, and it turned pale, she
+was ten thousand times prettier yet.
+
+Dora was afraid of Agnes. She had told me that she knew Agnes was
+‘too clever’. But when she saw her looking at once so cheerful and so
+earnest, and so thoughtful, and so good, she gave a faint little cry of
+pleased surprise, and just put her affectionate arms round Agnes’s neck,
+and laid her innocent cheek against her face.
+
+I never was so happy. I never was so pleased as when I saw those two sit
+down together, side by side. As when I saw my little darling looking up
+so naturally to those cordial eyes. As when I saw the tender, beautiful
+regard which Agnes cast upon her.
+
+Miss Lavinia and Miss Clarissa partook, in their way, of my joy. It was
+the pleasantest tea-table in the world. Miss Clarissa presided. I cut
+and handed the sweet seed-cake--the little sisters had a bird-like
+fondness for picking up seeds and pecking at sugar; Miss Lavinia looked
+on with benignant patronage, as if our happy love were all her work; and
+we were perfectly contented with ourselves and one another.
+
+The gentle cheerfulness of Agnes went to all their hearts. Her quiet
+interest in everything that interested Dora; her manner of making
+acquaintance with Jip (who responded instantly); her pleasant way, when
+Dora was ashamed to come over to her usual seat by me; her modest grace
+and ease, eliciting a crowd of blushing little marks of confidence from
+Dora; seemed to make our circle quite complete.
+
+‘I am so glad,’ said Dora, after tea, ‘that you like me. I didn’t think
+you would; and I want, more than ever, to be liked, now Julia Mills is
+gone.’
+
+I have omitted to mention it, by the by. Miss Mills had sailed, and Dora
+and I had gone aboard a great East Indiaman at Gravesend to see her;
+and we had had preserved ginger, and guava, and other delicacies of that
+sort for lunch; and we had left Miss Mills weeping on a camp-stool on
+the quarter-deck, with a large new diary under her arm, in which the
+original reflections awakened by the contemplation of Ocean were to be
+recorded under lock and key.
+
+Agnes said she was afraid I must have given her an unpromising
+character; but Dora corrected that directly.
+
+‘Oh no!’ she said, shaking her curls at me; ‘it was all praise. He
+thinks so much of your opinion, that I was quite afraid of it.’
+
+‘My good opinion cannot strengthen his attachment to some people whom he
+knows,’ said Agnes, with a smile; ‘it is not worth their having.’
+
+‘But please let me have it,’ said Dora, in her coaxing way, ‘if you
+can!’
+
+We made merry about Dora’s wanting to be liked, and Dora said I was a
+goose, and she didn’t like me at any rate, and the short evening flew
+away on gossamer-wings. The time was at hand when the coach was to call
+for us. I was standing alone before the fire, when Dora came stealing
+softly in, to give me that usual precious little kiss before I went.
+
+‘Don’t you think, if I had had her for a friend a long time ago, Doady,’
+said Dora, her bright eyes shining very brightly, and her little right
+hand idly busying itself with one of the buttons of my coat, ‘I might
+have been more clever perhaps?’
+
+‘My love!’ said I, ‘what nonsense!’
+
+‘Do you think it is nonsense?’ returned Dora, without looking at me.
+‘Are you sure it is?’
+
+‘Of course I am!’ ‘I have forgotten,’ said Dora, still turning the
+button round and round, ‘what relation Agnes is to you, you dear bad
+boy.’
+
+‘No blood-relation,’ I replied; ‘but we were brought up together, like
+brother and sister.’
+
+‘I wonder why you ever fell in love with me?’ said Dora, beginning on
+another button of my coat.
+
+‘Perhaps because I couldn’t see you, and not love you, Dora!’
+
+‘Suppose you had never seen me at all,’ said Dora, going to another
+button.
+
+‘Suppose we had never been born!’ said I, gaily.
+
+I wondered what she was thinking about, as I glanced in admiring silence
+at the little soft hand travelling up the row of buttons on my coat, and
+at the clustering hair that lay against my breast, and at the lashes of
+her downcast eyes, slightly rising as they followed her idle fingers. At
+length her eyes were lifted up to mine, and she stood on tiptoe to
+give me, more thoughtfully than usual, that precious little kiss--once,
+twice, three times--and went out of the room.
+
+They all came back together within five minutes afterwards, and Dora’s
+unusual thoughtfulness was quite gone then. She was laughingly resolved
+to put Jip through the whole of his performances, before the coach came.
+They took some time (not so much on account of their variety, as Jip’s
+reluctance), and were still unfinished when it was heard at the door.
+There was a hurried but affectionate parting between Agnes and herself;
+and Dora was to write to Agnes (who was not to mind her letters being
+foolish, she said), and Agnes was to write to Dora; and they had a
+second parting at the coach door, and a third when Dora, in spite of
+the remonstrances of Miss Lavinia, would come running out once more to
+remind Agnes at the coach window about writing, and to shake her curls
+at me on the box.
+
+The stage-coach was to put us down near Covent Garden, where we were
+to take another stage-coach for Highgate. I was impatient for the short
+walk in the interval, that Agnes might praise Dora to me. Ah! what
+praise it was! How lovingly and fervently did it commend the pretty
+creature I had won, with all her artless graces best displayed, to my
+most gentle care! How thoughtfully remind me, yet with no pretence of
+doing so, of the trust in which I held the orphan child!
+
+Never, never, had I loved Dora so deeply and truly, as I loved her that
+night. When we had again alighted, and were walking in the starlight
+along the quiet road that led to the Doctor’s house, I told Agnes it was
+her doing.
+
+‘When you were sitting by her,’ said I, ‘you seemed to be no less her
+guardian angel than mine; and you seem so now, Agnes.’
+
+‘A poor angel,’ she returned, ‘but faithful.’
+
+The clear tone of her voice, going straight to my heart, made it natural
+to me to say:
+
+‘The cheerfulness that belongs to you, Agnes (and to no one else that
+ever I have seen), is so restored, I have observed today, that I have
+begun to hope you are happier at home?’
+
+‘I am happier in myself,’ she said; ‘I am quite cheerful and
+light-hearted.’
+
+I glanced at the serene face looking upward, and thought it was the
+stars that made it seem so noble.
+
+‘There has been no change at home,’ said Agnes, after a few moments.
+
+‘No fresh reference,’ said I, ‘to--I wouldn’t distress you, Agnes, but I
+cannot help asking--to what we spoke of, when we parted last?’
+
+‘No, none,’ she answered.
+
+‘I have thought so much about it.’
+
+‘You must think less about it. Remember that I confide in simple love
+and truth at last. Have no apprehensions for me, Trotwood,’ she added,
+after a moment; ‘the step you dread my taking, I shall never take.’
+
+Although I think I had never really feared it, in any season of cool
+reflection, it was an unspeakable relief to me to have this assurance
+from her own truthful lips. I told her so, earnestly.
+
+‘And when this visit is over,’ said I,--‘for we may not be alone another
+time,--how long is it likely to be, my dear Agnes, before you come to
+London again?’
+
+‘Probably a long time,’ she replied; ‘I think it will be best--for
+papa’s sake--to remain at home. We are not likely to meet often, for
+some time to come; but I shall be a good correspondent of Dora’s, and we
+shall frequently hear of one another that way.’
+
+We were now within the little courtyard of the Doctor’s cottage. It was
+growing late. There was a light in the window of Mrs. Strong’s chamber,
+and Agnes, pointing to it, bade me good night.
+
+‘Do not be troubled,’ she said, giving me her hand, ‘by our misfortunes
+and anxieties. I can be happier in nothing than in your happiness. If
+you can ever give me help, rely upon it I will ask you for it. God
+bless you always!’ In her beaming smile, and in these last tones of her
+cheerful voice, I seemed again to see and hear my little Dora in her
+company. I stood awhile, looking through the porch at the stars, with
+a heart full of love and gratitude, and then walked slowly forth. I had
+engaged a bed at a decent alehouse close by, and was going out at the
+gate, when, happening to turn my head, I saw a light in the Doctor’s
+study. A half-reproachful fancy came into my mind, that he had been
+working at the Dictionary without my help. With the view of seeing if
+this were so, and, in any case, of bidding him good night, if he were
+yet sitting among his books, I turned back, and going softly across the
+hall, and gently opening the door, looked in.
+
+The first person whom I saw, to my surprise, by the sober light of the
+shaded lamp, was Uriah. He was standing close beside it, with one of
+his skeleton hands over his mouth, and the other resting on the Doctor’s
+table. The Doctor sat in his study chair, covering his face with his
+hands. Mr. Wickfield, sorely troubled and distressed, was leaning
+forward, irresolutely touching the Doctor’s arm.
+
+For an instant, I supposed that the Doctor was ill. I hastily advanced a
+step under that impression, when I met Uriah’s eye, and saw what was the
+matter. I would have withdrawn, but the Doctor made a gesture to detain
+me, and I remained.
+
+‘At any rate,’ observed Uriah, with a writhe of his ungainly person, ‘we
+may keep the door shut. We needn’t make it known to ALL the town.’
+
+Saying which, he went on his toes to the door, which I had left open,
+and carefully closed it. He then came back, and took up his former
+position. There was an obtrusive show of compassionate zeal in his voice
+and manner, more intolerable--at least to me--than any demeanour he
+could have assumed.
+
+‘I have felt it incumbent upon me, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah, ‘to
+point out to Doctor Strong what you and me have already talked about.
+You didn’t exactly understand me, though?’
+
+I gave him a look, but no other answer; and, going to my good old
+master, said a few words that I meant to be words of comfort and
+encouragement. He put his hand upon my shoulder, as it had been his
+custom to do when I was quite a little fellow, but did not lift his grey
+head.
+
+‘As you didn’t understand me, Master Copperfield,’ resumed Uriah in
+the same officious manner, ‘I may take the liberty of umbly mentioning,
+being among friends, that I have called Doctor Strong’s attention to the
+goings-on of Mrs. Strong. It’s much against the grain with me, I assure
+you, Copperfield, to be concerned in anything so unpleasant; but really,
+as it is, we’re all mixing ourselves up with what oughtn’t to be. That
+was what my meaning was, sir, when you didn’t understand me.’ I wonder
+now, when I recall his leer, that I did not collar him, and try to shake
+the breath out of his body.
+
+‘I dare say I didn’t make myself very clear,’ he went on, ‘nor you
+neither. Naturally, we was both of us inclined to give such a subject
+a wide berth. Hows’ever, at last I have made up my mind to speak plain;
+and I have mentioned to Doctor Strong that--did you speak, sir?’
+
+This was to the Doctor, who had moaned. The sound might have touched any
+heart, I thought, but it had no effect upon Uriah’s.
+
+‘--mentioned to Doctor Strong,’ he proceeded, ‘that anyone may see that
+Mr. Maldon, and the lovely and agreeable lady as is Doctor Strong’s
+wife, are too sweet on one another. Really the time is come (we being at
+present all mixing ourselves up with what oughtn’t to be), when Doctor
+Strong must be told that this was full as plain to everybody as the sun,
+before Mr. Maldon went to India; that Mr. Maldon made excuses to come
+back, for nothing else; and that he’s always here, for nothing else.
+When you come in, sir, I was just putting it to my fellow-partner,’
+towards whom he turned, ‘to say to Doctor Strong upon his word and
+honour, whether he’d ever been of this opinion long ago, or not. Come,
+Mr. Wickfield, sir! Would you be so good as tell us? Yes or no, sir?
+Come, partner!’
+
+‘For God’s sake, my dear Doctor,’ said Mr. Wickfield again laying his
+irresolute hand upon the Doctor’s arm, ‘don’t attach too much weight to
+any suspicions I may have entertained.’
+
+‘There!’ cried Uriah, shaking his head. ‘What a melancholy confirmation:
+ain’t it? Him! Such an old friend! Bless your soul, when I was nothing
+but a clerk in his office, Copperfield, I’ve seen him twenty times, if
+I’ve seen him once, quite in a taking about it--quite put out, you know
+(and very proper in him as a father; I’m sure I can’t blame him), to
+think that Miss Agnes was mixing herself up with what oughtn’t to be.’
+
+‘My dear Strong,’ said Mr. Wickfield in a tremulous voice, ‘my good
+friend, I needn’t tell you that it has been my vice to look for some one
+master motive in everybody, and to try all actions by one narrow test. I
+may have fallen into such doubts as I have had, through this mistake.’
+
+‘You have had doubts, Wickfield,’ said the Doctor, without lifting up
+his head. ‘You have had doubts.’
+
+‘Speak up, fellow-partner,’ urged Uriah.
+
+‘I had, at one time, certainly,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘I--God forgive
+me--I thought YOU had.’
+
+‘No, no, no!’ returned the Doctor, in a tone of most pathetic grief.
+‘I thought, at one time,’ said Mr. Wickfield, ‘that you wished to send
+Maldon abroad to effect a desirable separation.’
+
+‘No, no, no!’ returned the Doctor. ‘To give Annie pleasure, by making
+some provision for the companion of her childhood. Nothing else.’
+
+‘So I found,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘I couldn’t doubt it, when you told
+me so. But I thought--I implore you to remember the narrow construction
+which has been my besetting sin--that, in a case where there was so much
+disparity in point of years--’
+
+‘That’s the way to put it, you see, Master Copperfield!’ observed Uriah,
+with fawning and offensive pity.
+
+‘--a lady of such youth, and such attractions, however real her
+respect for you, might have been influenced in marrying, by worldly
+considerations only. I make no allowance for innumerable feelings
+and circumstances that may have all tended to good. For Heaven’s sake
+remember that!’
+
+‘How kind he puts it!’ said Uriah, shaking his head.
+
+‘Always observing her from one point of view,’ said Mr. Wickfield; ‘but
+by all that is dear to you, my old friend, I entreat you to consider
+what it was; I am forced to confess now, having no escape-’
+
+‘No! There’s no way out of it, Mr. Wickfield, sir,’ observed Uriah,
+‘when it’s got to this.’
+
+‘--that I did,’ said Mr. Wickfield, glancing helplessly and distractedly
+at his partner, ‘that I did doubt her, and think her wanting in her
+duty to you; and that I did sometimes, if I must say all, feel averse
+to Agnes being in such a familiar relation towards her, as to see what I
+saw, or in my diseased theory fancied that I saw. I never mentioned
+this to anyone. I never meant it to be known to anyone. And though it
+is terrible to you to hear,’ said Mr. Wickfield, quite subdued, ‘if you
+knew how terrible it is for me to tell, you would feel compassion for
+me!’
+
+The Doctor, in the perfect goodness of his nature, put out his hand. Mr.
+Wickfield held it for a little while in his, with his head bowed down.
+
+‘I am sure,’ said Uriah, writhing himself into the silence like a
+Conger-eel, ‘that this is a subject full of unpleasantness to everybody.
+But since we have got so far, I ought to take the liberty of mentioning
+that Copperfield has noticed it too.’
+
+I turned upon him, and asked him how he dared refer to me!
+
+‘Oh! it’s very kind of you, Copperfield,’ returned Uriah, undulating all
+over, ‘and we all know what an amiable character yours is; but you know
+that the moment I spoke to you the other night, you knew what I meant.
+You know you knew what I meant, Copperfield. Don’t deny it! You deny it
+with the best intentions; but don’t do it, Copperfield.’
+
+I saw the mild eye of the good old Doctor turned upon me for a moment,
+and I felt that the confession of my old misgivings and remembrances
+was too plainly written in my face to be overlooked. It was of no use
+raging. I could not undo that. Say what I would, I could not unsay it.
+
+We were silent again, and remained so, until the Doctor rose and walked
+twice or thrice across the room. Presently he returned to where his
+chair stood; and, leaning on the back of it, and occasionally putting
+his handkerchief to his eyes, with a simple honesty that did him more
+honour, to my thinking, than any disguise he could have effected, said:
+
+‘I have been much to blame. I believe I have been very much to blame.
+I have exposed one whom I hold in my heart, to trials and aspersions--I
+call them aspersions, even to have been conceived in anybody’s inmost
+mind--of which she never, but for me, could have been the object.’
+
+Uriah Heep gave a kind of snivel. I think to express sympathy.
+
+‘Of which my Annie,’ said the Doctor, ‘never, but for me, could have
+been the object. Gentlemen, I am old now, as you know; I do not feel,
+tonight, that I have much to live for. But my life--my Life--upon the
+truth and honour of the dear lady who has been the subject of this
+conversation!’
+
+I do not think that the best embodiment of chivalry, the realization of
+the handsomest and most romantic figure ever imagined by painter, could
+have said this, with a more impressive and affecting dignity than the
+plain old Doctor did.
+
+‘But I am not prepared,’ he went on, ‘to deny--perhaps I may have been,
+without knowing it, in some degree prepared to admit--that I may have
+unwittingly ensnared that lady into an unhappy marriage. I am a man
+quite unaccustomed to observe; and I cannot but believe that the
+observation of several people, of different ages and positions, all too
+plainly tending in one direction (and that so natural), is better than
+mine.’
+
+I had often admired, as I have elsewhere described, his benignant manner
+towards his youthful wife; but the respectful tenderness he manifested
+in every reference to her on this occasion, and the almost reverential
+manner in which he put away from him the lightest doubt of her
+integrity, exalted him, in my eyes, beyond description.
+
+‘I married that lady,’ said the Doctor, ‘when she was extremely young. I
+took her to myself when her character was scarcely formed. So far as it
+was developed, it had been my happiness to form it. I knew her father
+well. I knew her well. I had taught her what I could, for the love of
+all her beautiful and virtuous qualities. If I did her wrong; as I fear
+I did, in taking advantage (but I never meant it) of her gratitude and
+her affection; I ask pardon of that lady, in my heart!’
+
+He walked across the room, and came back to the same place; holding
+the chair with a grasp that trembled, like his subdued voice, in its
+earnestness.
+
+‘I regarded myself as a refuge, for her, from the dangers and
+vicissitudes of life. I persuaded myself that, unequal though we were in
+years, she would live tranquilly and contentedly with me. I did not shut
+out of my consideration the time when I should leave her free, and still
+young and still beautiful, but with her judgement more matured--no,
+gentlemen--upon my truth!’
+
+His homely figure seemed to be lightened up by his fidelity and
+generosity. Every word he uttered had a force that no other grace could
+have imparted to it.
+
+‘My life with this lady has been very happy. Until tonight, I have
+had uninterrupted occasion to bless the day on which I did her great
+injustice.’
+
+His voice, more and more faltering in the utterance of these words,
+stopped for a few moments; then he went on:
+
+‘Once awakened from my dream--I have been a poor dreamer, in one way or
+other, all my life--I see how natural it is that she should have some
+regretful feeling towards her old companion and her equal. That she does
+regard him with some innocent regret, with some blameless thoughts of
+what might have been, but for me, is, I fear, too true. Much that I have
+seen, but not noted, has come back upon me with new meaning, during
+this last trying hour. But, beyond this, gentlemen, the dear lady’s name
+never must be coupled with a word, a breath, of doubt.’
+
+For a little while, his eye kindled and his voice was firm; for a little
+while he was again silent. Presently, he proceeded as before:
+
+‘It only remains for me, to bear the knowledge of the unhappiness I have
+occasioned, as submissively as I can. It is she who should reproach; not
+I. To save her from misconstruction, cruel misconstruction, that even my
+friends have not been able to avoid, becomes my duty. The more retired
+we live, the better I shall discharge it. And when the time comes--may
+it come soon, if it be His merciful pleasure!--when my death shall
+release her from constraint, I shall close my eyes upon her honoured
+face, with unbounded confidence and love; and leave her, with no sorrow
+then, to happier and brighter days.’
+
+I could not see him for the tears which his earnestness and goodness,
+so adorned by, and so adorning, the perfect simplicity of his manner,
+brought into my eyes. He had moved to the door, when he added:
+
+‘Gentlemen, I have shown you my heart. I am sure you will respect it.
+What we have said tonight is never to be said more. Wickfield, give me
+an old friend’s arm upstairs!’
+
+Mr. Wickfield hastened to him. Without interchanging a word they went
+slowly out of the room together, Uriah looking after them.
+
+‘Well, Master Copperfield!’ said Uriah, meekly turning to me. ‘The thing
+hasn’t took quite the turn that might have been expected, for the old
+Scholar--what an excellent man!--is as blind as a brickbat; but this
+family’s out of the cart, I think!’
+
+I needed but the sound of his voice to be so madly enraged as I never
+was before, and never have been since.
+
+‘You villain,’ said I, ‘what do you mean by entrapping me into your
+schemes? How dare you appeal to me just now, you false rascal, as if we
+had been in discussion together?’
+
+As we stood, front to front, I saw so plainly, in the stealthy
+exultation of his face, what I already so plainly knew; I mean that he
+forced his confidence upon me, expressly to make me miserable, and had
+set a deliberate trap for me in this very matter; that I couldn’t bear
+it. The whole of his lank cheek was invitingly before me, and I struck
+it with my open hand with that force that my fingers tingled as if I had
+burnt them.
+
+He caught the hand in his, and we stood in that connexion, looking at
+each other. We stood so, a long time; long enough for me to see the
+white marks of my fingers die out of the deep red of his cheek, and
+leave it a deeper red.
+
+‘Copperfield,’ he said at length, in a breathless voice, ‘have you taken
+leave of your senses?’
+
+‘I have taken leave of you,’ said I, wresting my hand away. ‘You dog,
+I’ll know no more of you.’
+
+‘Won’t you?’ said he, constrained by the pain of his cheek to put his
+hand there. ‘Perhaps you won’t be able to help it. Isn’t this ungrateful
+of you, now?’
+
+‘I have shown you often enough,’ said I, ‘that I despise you. I have
+shown you now, more plainly, that I do. Why should I dread your doing
+your worst to all about you? What else do you ever do?’
+
+He perfectly understood this allusion to the considerations that had
+hitherto restrained me in my communications with him. I rather think
+that neither the blow, nor the allusion, would have escaped me, but for
+the assurance I had had from Agnes that night. It is no matter.
+
+There was another long pause. His eyes, as he looked at me, seemed to
+take every shade of colour that could make eyes ugly.
+
+‘Copperfield,’ he said, removing his hand from his cheek, ‘you have
+always gone against me. I know you always used to be against me at Mr.
+Wickfield’s.’
+
+‘You may think what you like,’ said I, still in a towering rage. ‘If it
+is not true, so much the worthier you.’
+
+‘And yet I always liked you, Copperfield!’ he rejoined.
+
+I deigned to make him no reply; and, taking up my hat, was going out to
+bed, when he came between me and the door.
+
+‘Copperfield,’ he said, ‘there must be two parties to a quarrel. I won’t
+be one.’
+
+‘You may go to the devil!’ said I.
+
+‘Don’t say that!’ he replied. ‘I know you’ll be sorry afterwards. How
+can you make yourself so inferior to me, as to show such a bad spirit?
+But I forgive you.’
+
+‘You forgive me!’ I repeated disdainfully.
+
+‘I do, and you can’t help yourself,’ replied Uriah. ‘To think of your
+going and attacking me, that have always been a friend to you! But there
+can’t be a quarrel without two parties, and I won’t be one. I will be
+a friend to you, in spite of you. So now you know what you’ve got to
+expect.’
+
+The necessity of carrying on this dialogue (his part in which was
+very slow; mine very quick) in a low tone, that the house might not be
+disturbed at an unseasonable hour, did not improve my temper; though my
+passion was cooling down. Merely telling him that I should expect from
+him what I always had expected, and had never yet been disappointed in,
+I opened the door upon him, as if he had been a great walnut put there
+to be cracked, and went out of the house. But he slept out of the house
+too, at his mother’s lodging; and before I had gone many hundred yards,
+came up with me.
+
+‘You know, Copperfield,’ he said, in my ear (I did not turn my head),
+‘you’re in quite a wrong position’; which I felt to be true, and that
+made me chafe the more; ‘you can’t make this a brave thing, and you
+can’t help being forgiven. I don’t intend to mention it to mother, nor
+to any living soul. I’m determined to forgive you. But I do wonder
+that you should lift your hand against a person that you knew to be so
+umble!’
+
+I felt only less mean than he. He knew me better than I knew myself. If
+he had retorted or openly exasperated me, it would have been a relief
+and a justification; but he had put me on a slow fire, on which I lay
+tormented half the night.
+
+In the morning, when I came out, the early church-bell was ringing,
+and he was walking up and down with his mother. He addressed me as if
+nothing had happened, and I could do no less than reply. I had struck
+him hard enough to give him the toothache, I suppose. At all events
+his face was tied up in a black silk handkerchief, which, with his hat
+perched on the top of it, was far from improving his appearance. I heard
+that he went to a dentist’s in London on the Monday morning, and had a
+tooth out. I hope it was a double one.
+
+The Doctor gave out that he was not quite well; and remained alone, for
+a considerable part of every day, during the remainder of the visit.
+Agnes and her father had been gone a week, before we resumed our usual
+work. On the day preceding its resumption, the Doctor gave me with his
+own hands a folded note not sealed. It was addressed to myself; and laid
+an injunction on me, in a few affectionate words, never to refer to the
+subject of that evening. I had confided it to my aunt, but to no
+one else. It was not a subject I could discuss with Agnes, and Agnes
+certainly had not the least suspicion of what had passed.
+
+Neither, I felt convinced, had Mrs. Strong then. Several weeks elapsed
+before I saw the least change in her. It came on slowly, like a cloud
+when there is no wind. At first, she seemed to wonder at the gentle
+compassion with which the Doctor spoke to her, and at his wish that she
+should have her mother with her, to relieve the dull monotony of her
+life. Often, when we were at work, and she was sitting by, I would see
+her pausing and looking at him with that memorable face. Afterwards, I
+sometimes observed her rise, with her eyes full of tears, and go out
+of the room. Gradually, an unhappy shadow fell upon her beauty, and
+deepened every day. Mrs. Markleham was a regular inmate of the cottage
+then; but she talked and talked, and saw nothing.
+
+As this change stole on Annie, once like sunshine in the Doctor’s house,
+the Doctor became older in appearance, and more grave; but the sweetness
+of his temper, the placid kindness of his manner, and his benevolent
+solicitude for her, if they were capable of any increase, were
+increased. I saw him once, early on the morning of her birthday, when
+she came to sit in the window while we were at work (which she had
+always done, but now began to do with a timid and uncertain air that I
+thought very touching), take her forehead between his hands, kiss it,
+and go hurriedly away, too much moved to remain. I saw her stand where
+he had left her, like a statue; and then bend down her head, and clasp
+her hands, and weep, I cannot say how sorrowfully.
+
+Sometimes, after that, I fancied that she tried to speak even to me,
+in intervals when we were left alone. But she never uttered a word. The
+Doctor always had some new project for her participating in amusements
+away from home, with her mother; and Mrs. Markleham, who was very fond
+of amusements, and very easily dissatisfied with anything else, entered
+into them with great good-will, and was loud in her commendations. But
+Annie, in a spiritless unhappy way, only went whither she was led, and
+seemed to have no care for anything.
+
+I did not know what to think. Neither did my aunt; who must have walked,
+at various times, a hundred miles in her uncertainty. What was strangest
+of all was, that the only real relief which seemed to make its way into
+the secret region of this domestic unhappiness, made its way there in
+the person of Mr. Dick.
+
+What his thoughts were on the subject, or what his observation was, I am
+as unable to explain, as I dare say he would have been to assist me in
+the task. But, as I have recorded in the narrative of my school days,
+his veneration for the Doctor was unbounded; and there is a subtlety of
+perception in real attachment, even when it is borne towards man by one
+of the lower animals, which leaves the highest intellect behind. To this
+mind of the heart, if I may call it so, in Mr. Dick, some bright ray of
+the truth shot straight.
+
+He had proudly resumed his privilege, in many of his spare hours,
+of walking up and down the garden with the Doctor; as he had been
+accustomed to pace up and down The Doctor’s Walk at Canterbury. But
+matters were no sooner in this state, than he devoted all his spare time
+(and got up earlier to make it more) to these perambulations. If he had
+never been so happy as when the Doctor read that marvellous performance,
+the Dictionary, to him; he was now quite miserable unless the Doctor
+pulled it out of his pocket, and began. When the Doctor and I were
+engaged, he now fell into the custom of walking up and down with Mrs.
+Strong, and helping her to trim her favourite flowers, or weed the
+beds. I dare say he rarely spoke a dozen words in an hour: but his quiet
+interest, and his wistful face, found immediate response in both their
+breasts; each knew that the other liked him, and that he loved both; and
+he became what no one else could be--a link between them.
+
+When I think of him, with his impenetrably wise face, walking up and
+down with the Doctor, delighted to be battered by the hard words in the
+Dictionary; when I think of him carrying huge watering-pots after Annie;
+kneeling down, in very paws of gloves, at patient microscopic work among
+the little leaves; expressing as no philosopher could have expressed,
+in everything he did, a delicate desire to be her friend; showering
+sympathy, trustfulness, and affection, out of every hole in the
+watering-pot; when I think of him never wandering in that better mind
+of his to which unhappiness addressed itself, never bringing the
+unfortunate King Charles into the garden, never wavering in his grateful
+service, never diverted from his knowledge that there was something
+wrong, or from his wish to set it right--I really feel almost ashamed
+of having known that he was not quite in his wits, taking account of the
+utmost I have done with mine.
+
+‘Nobody but myself, Trot, knows what that man is!’ my aunt would proudly
+remark, when we conversed about it. ‘Dick will distinguish himself yet!’
+
+I must refer to one other topic before I close this chapter. While the
+visit at the Doctor’s was still in progress, I observed that the postman
+brought two or three letters every morning for Uriah Heep, who remained
+at Highgate until the rest went back, it being a leisure time; and that
+these were always directed in a business-like manner by Mr. Micawber,
+who now assumed a round legal hand. I was glad to infer, from these
+slight premises, that Mr. Micawber was doing well; and consequently was
+much surprised to receive, about this time, the following letter from
+his amiable wife.
+
+
+
+                         ‘CANTERBURY, Monday Evening.
+
+‘You will doubtless be surprised, my dear Mr. Copperfield, to receive
+this communication. Still more so, by its contents. Still more so, by
+the stipulation of implicit confidence which I beg to impose. But my
+feelings as a wife and mother require relief; and as I do not wish to
+consult my family (already obnoxious to the feelings of Mr. Micawber),
+I know no one of whom I can better ask advice than my friend and former
+lodger.
+
+‘You may be aware, my dear Mr. Copperfield, that between myself and Mr.
+Micawber (whom I will never desert), there has always been preserved a
+spirit of mutual confidence. Mr. Micawber may have occasionally given
+a bill without consulting me, or he may have misled me as to the period
+when that obligation would become due. This has actually happened.
+But, in general, Mr. Micawber has had no secrets from the bosom of
+affection--I allude to his wife--and has invariably, on our retirement
+to rest, recalled the events of the day.
+
+‘You will picture to yourself, my dear Mr. Copperfield, what the
+poignancy of my feelings must be, when I inform you that Mr. Micawber is
+entirely changed. He is reserved. He is secret. His life is a mystery to
+the partner of his joys and sorrows--I again allude to his wife--and if
+I should assure you that beyond knowing that it is passed from morning
+to night at the office, I now know less of it than I do of the man in
+the south, connected with whose mouth the thoughtless children repeat
+an idle tale respecting cold plum porridge, I should adopt a popular
+fallacy to express an actual fact.
+
+‘But this is not all. Mr. Micawber is morose. He is severe. He is
+estranged from our eldest son and daughter, he has no pride in his
+twins, he looks with an eye of coldness even on the unoffending stranger
+who last became a member of our circle. The pecuniary means of meeting
+our expenses, kept down to the utmost farthing, are obtained from him
+with great difficulty, and even under fearful threats that he will
+Settle himself (the exact expression); and he inexorably refuses to give
+any explanation whatever of this distracting policy.
+
+‘This is hard to bear. This is heart-breaking. If you will advise me,
+knowing my feeble powers such as they are, how you think it will be best
+to exert them in a dilemma so unwonted, you will add another friendly
+obligation to the many you have already rendered me. With loves from the
+children, and a smile from the happily-unconscious stranger, I remain,
+dear Mr. Copperfield,
+
+                              Your afflicted,
+
+                                   ‘EMMA MICAWBER.’
+
+
+I did not feel justified in giving a wife of Mrs. Micawber’s experience
+any other recommendation, than that she should try to reclaim Mr.
+Micawber by patience and kindness (as I knew she would in any case); but
+the letter set me thinking about him very much.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 43. ANOTHER RETROSPECT
+
+
+Once again, let me pause upon a memorable period of my life. Let me
+stand aside, to see the phantoms of those days go by me, accompanying
+the shadow of myself, in dim procession.
+
+Weeks, months, seasons, pass along. They seem little more than a summer
+day and a winter evening. Now, the Common where I walk with Dora is all
+in bloom, a field of bright gold; and now the unseen heather lies in
+mounds and bunches underneath a covering of snow. In a breath, the river
+that flows through our Sunday walks is sparkling in the summer sun, is
+ruffled by the winter wind, or thickened with drifting heaps of ice.
+Faster than ever river ran towards the sea, it flashes, darkens, and
+rolls away.
+
+Not a thread changes, in the house of the two little bird-like ladies.
+The clock ticks over the fireplace, the weather-glass hangs in the hall.
+Neither clock nor weather-glass is ever right; but we believe in both,
+devoutly.
+
+I have come legally to man’s estate. I have attained the dignity of
+twenty-one. But this is a sort of dignity that may be thrust upon one.
+Let me think what I have achieved.
+
+I have tamed that savage stenographic mystery. I make a respectable
+income by it. I am in high repute for my accomplishment in all
+pertaining to the art, and am joined with eleven others in reporting
+the debates in Parliament for a Morning Newspaper. Night after night, I
+record predictions that never come to pass, professions that are never
+fulfilled, explanations that are only meant to mystify. I wallow in
+words. Britannia, that unfortunate female, is always before me, like a
+trussed fowl: skewered through and through with office-pens, and bound
+hand and foot with red tape. I am sufficiently behind the scenes to know
+the worth of political life. I am quite an Infidel about it, and shall
+never be converted.
+
+My dear old Traddles has tried his hand at the same pursuit, but it
+is not in Traddles’s way. He is perfectly good-humoured respecting his
+failure, and reminds me that he always did consider himself slow. He has
+occasional employment on the same newspaper, in getting up the facts of
+dry subjects, to be written about and embellished by more fertile minds.
+He is called to the bar; and with admirable industry and self-denial
+has scraped another hundred pounds together, to fee a Conveyancer whose
+chambers he attends. A great deal of very hot port wine was consumed at
+his call; and, considering the figure, I should think the Inner Temple
+must have made a profit by it.
+
+I have come out in another way. I have taken with fear and trembling
+to authorship. I wrote a little something, in secret, and sent it to a
+magazine, and it was published in the magazine. Since then, I have taken
+heart to write a good many trifling pieces. Now, I am regularly paid for
+them. Altogether, I am well off, when I tell my income on the fingers
+of my left hand, I pass the third finger and take in the fourth to the
+middle joint.
+
+We have removed, from Buckingham Street, to a pleasant little cottage
+very near the one I looked at, when my enthusiasm first came on. My
+aunt, however (who has sold the house at Dover, to good advantage), is
+not going to remain here, but intends removing herself to a still more
+tiny cottage close at hand. What does this portend? My marriage? Yes!
+
+Yes! I am going to be married to Dora! Miss Lavinia and Miss Clarissa
+have given their consent; and if ever canary birds were in a flutter,
+they are. Miss Lavinia, self-charged with the superintendence of my
+darling’s wardrobe, is constantly cutting out brown-paper cuirasses, and
+differing in opinion from a highly respectable young man, with a long
+bundle, and a yard measure under his arm. A dressmaker, always stabbed
+in the breast with a needle and thread, boards and lodges in the house;
+and seems to me, eating, drinking, or sleeping, never to take her
+thimble off. They make a lay-figure of my dear. They are always sending
+for her to come and try something on. We can’t be happy together for
+five minutes in the evening, but some intrusive female knocks at the
+door, and says, ‘Oh, if you please, Miss Dora, would you step upstairs!’
+
+Miss Clarissa and my aunt roam all over London, to find out articles of
+furniture for Dora and me to look at. It would be better for them to buy
+the goods at once, without this ceremony of inspection; for, when we go
+to see a kitchen fender and meat-screen, Dora sees a Chinese house for
+Jip, with little bells on the top, and prefers that. And it takes a
+long time to accustom Jip to his new residence, after we have bought it;
+whenever he goes in or out, he makes all the little bells ring, and is
+horribly frightened.
+
+Peggotty comes up to make herself useful, and falls to work immediately.
+Her department appears to be, to clean everything over and over again.
+She rubs everything that can be rubbed, until it shines, like her own
+honest forehead, with perpetual friction. And now it is, that I begin to
+see her solitary brother passing through the dark streets at night, and
+looking, as he goes, among the wandering faces. I never speak to him at
+such an hour. I know too well, as his grave figure passes onward, what
+he seeks, and what he dreads.
+
+Why does Traddles look so important when he calls upon me this afternoon
+in the Commons--where I still occasionally attend, for form’s sake, when
+I have time? The realization of my boyish day-dreams is at hand. I am
+going to take out the licence.
+
+It is a little document to do so much; and Traddles contemplates it,
+as it lies upon my desk, half in admiration, half in awe. There are the
+names, in the sweet old visionary connexion, David Copperfield and Dora
+Spenlow; and there, in the corner, is that Parental Institution,
+the Stamp Office, which is so benignantly interested in the various
+transactions of human life, looking down upon our Union; and there is
+the Archbishop of Canterbury invoking a blessing on us in print, and
+doing it as cheap as could possibly be expected.
+
+Nevertheless, I am in a dream, a flustered, happy, hurried dream. I
+can’t believe that it is going to be; and yet I can’t believe but that
+everyone I pass in the street, must have some kind of perception, that I
+am to be married the day after tomorrow. The Surrogate knows me, when
+I go down to be sworn; and disposes of me easily, as if there were a
+Masonic understanding between us. Traddles is not at all wanted, but is
+in attendance as my general backer.
+
+‘I hope the next time you come here, my dear fellow,’ I say to Traddles,
+‘it will be on the same errand for yourself. And I hope it will be
+soon.’
+
+‘Thank you for your good wishes, my dear Copperfield,’ he replies. ‘I
+hope so too. It’s a satisfaction to know that she’ll wait for me any
+length of time, and that she really is the dearest girl--’
+
+‘When are you to meet her at the coach?’ I ask.
+
+‘At seven,’ says Traddles, looking at his plain old silver watch--the
+very watch he once took a wheel out of, at school, to make a water-mill.
+‘That is about Miss Wickfield’s time, is it not?’
+
+‘A little earlier. Her time is half past eight.’ ‘I assure you, my dear
+boy,’ says Traddles, ‘I am almost as pleased as if I were going to
+be married myself, to think that this event is coming to such a happy
+termination. And really the great friendship and consideration of
+personally associating Sophy with the joyful occasion, and inviting
+her to be a bridesmaid in conjunction with Miss Wickfield, demands my
+warmest thanks. I am extremely sensible of it.’
+
+I hear him, and shake hands with him; and we talk, and walk, and dine,
+and so on; but I don’t believe it. Nothing is real.
+
+Sophy arrives at the house of Dora’s aunts, in due course. She has the
+most agreeable of faces,--not absolutely beautiful, but extraordinarily
+pleasant,--and is one of the most genial, unaffected, frank, engaging
+creatures I have ever seen. Traddles presents her to us with great
+pride; and rubs his hands for ten minutes by the clock, with every
+individual hair upon his head standing on tiptoe, when I congratulate
+him in a corner on his choice.
+
+I have brought Agnes from the Canterbury coach, and her cheerful and
+beautiful face is among us for the second time. Agnes has a great liking
+for Traddles, and it is capital to see them meet, and to observe the
+glory of Traddles as he commends the dearest girl in the world to her
+acquaintance.
+
+Still I don’t believe it. We have a delightful evening, and are
+supremely happy; but I don’t believe it yet. I can’t collect myself. I
+can’t check off my happiness as it takes place. I feel in a misty and
+unsettled kind of state; as if I had got up very early in the morning a
+week or two ago, and had never been to bed since. I can’t make out when
+yesterday was. I seem to have been carrying the licence about, in my
+pocket, many months.
+
+Next day, too, when we all go in a flock to see the house--our
+house--Dora’s and mine--I am quite unable to regard myself as its
+master. I seem to be there, by permission of somebody else. I half
+expect the real master to come home presently, and say he is glad to see
+me. Such a beautiful little house as it is, with everything so bright
+and new; with the flowers on the carpets looking as if freshly gathered,
+and the green leaves on the paper as if they had just come out; with the
+spotless muslin curtains, and the blushing rose-coloured furniture, and
+Dora’s garden hat with the blue ribbon--do I remember, now, how I loved
+her in such another hat when I first knew her!--already hanging on its
+little peg; the guitar-case quite at home on its heels in a corner;
+and everybody tumbling over Jip’s pagoda, which is much too big for the
+establishment. Another happy evening, quite as unreal as all the rest
+of it, and I steal into the usual room before going away. Dora is not
+there. I suppose they have not done trying on yet. Miss Lavinia peeps
+in, and tells me mysteriously that she will not be long. She is rather
+long, notwithstanding; but by and by I hear a rustling at the door, and
+someone taps.
+
+I say, ‘Come in!’ but someone taps again.
+
+I go to the door, wondering who it is; there, I meet a pair of bright
+eyes, and a blushing face; they are Dora’s eyes and face, and Miss
+Lavinia has dressed her in tomorrow’s dress, bonnet and all, for me to
+see. I take my little wife to my heart; and Miss Lavinia gives a little
+scream because I tumble the bonnet, and Dora laughs and cries at once,
+because I am so pleased; and I believe it less than ever.
+
+‘Do you think it pretty, Doady?’ says Dora.
+
+Pretty! I should rather think I did.
+
+‘And are you sure you like me very much?’ says Dora.
+
+The topic is fraught with such danger to the bonnet, that Miss Lavinia
+gives another little scream, and begs me to understand that Dora is only
+to be looked at, and on no account to be touched. So Dora stands in a
+delightful state of confusion for a minute or two, to be admired; and
+then takes off her bonnet--looking so natural without it!--and runs away
+with it in her hand; and comes dancing down again in her own familiar
+dress, and asks Jip if I have got a beautiful little wife, and whether
+he’ll forgive her for being married, and kneels down to make him stand
+upon the cookery-book, for the last time in her single life.
+
+I go home, more incredulous than ever, to a lodging that I have hard by;
+and get up very early in the morning, to ride to the Highgate road and
+fetch my aunt.
+
+I have never seen my aunt in such state. She is dressed in
+lavender-coloured silk, and has a white bonnet on, and is amazing. Janet
+has dressed her, and is there to look at me. Peggotty is ready to go to
+church, intending to behold the ceremony from the gallery. Mr. Dick,
+who is to give my darling to me at the altar, has had his hair curled.
+Traddles, whom I have taken up by appointment at the turnpike, presents
+a dazzling combination of cream colour and light blue; and both he and
+Mr. Dick have a general effect about them of being all gloves.
+
+No doubt I see this, because I know it is so; but I am astray, and seem
+to see nothing. Nor do I believe anything whatever. Still, as we drive
+along in an open carriage, this fairy marriage is real enough to fill
+me with a sort of wondering pity for the unfortunate people who have
+no part in it, but are sweeping out the shops, and going to their daily
+occupations.
+
+My aunt sits with my hand in hers all the way. When we stop a little way
+short of the church, to put down Peggotty, whom we have brought on the
+box, she gives it a squeeze, and me a kiss.
+
+‘God bless you, Trot! My own boy never could be dearer. I think of poor
+dear Baby this morning.’ ‘So do I. And of all I owe to you, dear aunt.’
+
+‘Tut, child!’ says my aunt; and gives her hand in overflowing cordiality
+to Traddles, who then gives his to Mr. Dick, who then gives his to me,
+who then gives mine to Traddles, and then we come to the church door.
+
+The church is calm enough, I am sure; but it might be a steam-power loom
+in full action, for any sedative effect it has on me. I am too far gone
+for that.
+
+The rest is all a more or less incoherent dream.
+
+A dream of their coming in with Dora; of the pew-opener arranging us,
+like a drill-sergeant, before the altar rails; of my wondering, even
+then, why pew-openers must always be the most disagreeable females
+procurable, and whether there is any religious dread of a disastrous
+infection of good-humour which renders it indispensable to set those
+vessels of vinegar upon the road to Heaven.
+
+Of the clergyman and clerk appearing; of a few boatmen and some
+other people strolling in; of an ancient mariner behind me, strongly
+flavouring the church with rum; of the service beginning in a deep
+voice, and our all being very attentive.
+
+Of Miss Lavinia, who acts as a semi-auxiliary bridesmaid, being the
+first to cry, and of her doing homage (as I take it) to the memory of
+Pidger, in sobs; of Miss Clarissa applying a smelling-bottle; of Agnes
+taking care of Dora; of my aunt endeavouring to represent herself as
+a model of sternness, with tears rolling down her face; of little Dora
+trembling very much, and making her responses in faint whispers.
+
+Of our kneeling down together, side by side; of Dora’s trembling less
+and less, but always clasping Agnes by the hand; of the service being
+got through, quietly and gravely; of our all looking at each other in an
+April state of smiles and tears, when it is over; of my young wife being
+hysterical in the vestry, and crying for her poor papa, her dear papa.
+
+Of her soon cheering up again, and our signing the register all round.
+Of my going into the gallery for Peggotty to bring her to sign it; of
+Peggotty’s hugging me in a corner, and telling me she saw my own dear
+mother married; of its being over, and our going away.
+
+Of my walking so proudly and lovingly down the aisle with my sweet wife
+upon my arm, through a mist of half-seen people, pulpits, monuments,
+pews, fonts, organs, and church windows, in which there flutter faint
+airs of association with my childish church at home, so long ago.
+
+Of their whispering, as we pass, what a youthful couple we are, and what
+a pretty little wife she is. Of our all being so merry and talkative in
+the carriage going back. Of Sophy telling us that when she saw Traddles
+(whom I had entrusted with the licence) asked for it, she almost
+fainted, having been convinced that he would contrive to lose it, or to
+have his pocket picked. Of Agnes laughing gaily; and of Dora being so
+fond of Agnes that she will not be separated from her, but still keeps
+her hand.
+
+Of there being a breakfast, with abundance of things, pretty and
+substantial, to eat and drink, whereof I partake, as I should do in any
+other dream, without the least perception of their flavour; eating
+and drinking, as I may say, nothing but love and marriage, and no more
+believing in the viands than in anything else.
+
+Of my making a speech in the same dreamy fashion, without having an idea
+of what I want to say, beyond such as may be comprehended in the full
+conviction that I haven’t said it. Of our being very sociably and simply
+happy (always in a dream though); and of Jip’s having wedding cake, and
+its not agreeing with him afterwards.
+
+Of the pair of hired post-horses being ready, and of Dora’s going away
+to change her dress. Of my aunt and Miss Clarissa remaining with us; and
+our walking in the garden; and my aunt, who has made quite a speech at
+breakfast touching Dora’s aunts, being mightily amused with herself, but
+a little proud of it too.
+
+Of Dora’s being ready, and of Miss Lavinia’s hovering about her, loth to
+lose the pretty toy that has given her so much pleasant occupation.
+Of Dora’s making a long series of surprised discoveries that she
+has forgotten all sorts of little things; and of everybody’s running
+everywhere to fetch them.
+
+Of their all closing about Dora, when at last she begins to say
+good-bye, looking, with their bright colours and ribbons, like a bed
+of flowers. Of my darling being almost smothered among the flowers, and
+coming out, laughing and crying both together, to my jealous arms.
+
+Of my wanting to carry Jip (who is to go along with us), and Dora’s
+saying no, that she must carry him, or else he’ll think she don’t like
+him any more, now she is married, and will break his heart. Of our
+going, arm in arm, and Dora stopping and looking back, and saying, ‘If
+I have ever been cross or ungrateful to anybody, don’t remember it!’ and
+bursting into tears.
+
+Of her waving her little hand, and our going away once more. Of her
+once more stopping, and looking back, and hurrying to Agnes, and giving
+Agnes, above all the others, her last kisses and farewells.
+
+We drive away together, and I awake from the dream. I believe it at
+last. It is my dear, dear, little wife beside me, whom I love so well!
+
+‘Are you happy now, you foolish boy?’ says Dora, ‘and sure you don’t
+repent?’
+
+
+I have stood aside to see the phantoms of those days go by me. They are
+gone, and I resume the journey of my story.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 44. OUR HOUSEKEEPING
+
+
+It was a strange condition of things, the honeymoon being over, and the
+bridesmaids gone home, when I found myself sitting down in my own
+small house with Dora; quite thrown out of employment, as I may say, in
+respect of the delicious old occupation of making love.
+
+It seemed such an extraordinary thing to have Dora always there. It was
+so unaccountable not to be obliged to go out to see her, not to have any
+occasion to be tormenting myself about her, not to have to write to her,
+not to be scheming and devising opportunities of being alone with her.
+Sometimes of an evening, when I looked up from my writing, and saw her
+seated opposite, I would lean back in my chair, and think how queer it
+was that there we were, alone together as a matter of course--nobody’s
+business any more--all the romance of our engagement put away upon a
+shelf, to rust--no one to please but one another--one another to please,
+for life.
+
+When there was a debate, and I was kept out very late, it seemed so
+strange to me, as I was walking home, to think that Dora was at home! It
+was such a wonderful thing, at first, to have her coming softly down to
+talk to me as I ate my supper. It was such a stupendous thing to know
+for certain that she put her hair in papers. It was altogether such an
+astonishing event to see her do it!
+
+I doubt whether two young birds could have known less about keeping
+house, than I and my pretty Dora did. We had a servant, of course. She
+kept house for us. I have still a latent belief that she must have been
+Mrs. Crupp’s daughter in disguise, we had such an awful time of it with
+Mary Anne.
+
+Her name was Paragon. Her nature was represented to us, when we engaged
+her, as being feebly expressed in her name. She had a written character,
+as large as a proclamation; and, according to this document, could do
+everything of a domestic nature that ever I heard of, and a great many
+things that I never did hear of. She was a woman in the prime of life;
+of a severe countenance; and subject (particularly in the arms) to
+a sort of perpetual measles or fiery rash. She had a cousin in the
+Life-Guards, with such long legs that he looked like the afternoon
+shadow of somebody else. His shell-jacket was as much too little for him
+as he was too big for the premises. He made the cottage smaller than it
+need have been, by being so very much out of proportion to it. Besides
+which, the walls were not thick, and, whenever he passed the evening at
+our house, we always knew of it by hearing one continual growl in the
+kitchen.
+
+Our treasure was warranted sober and honest. I am therefore willing to
+believe that she was in a fit when we found her under the boiler; and
+that the deficient tea-spoons were attributable to the dustman.
+
+But she preyed upon our minds dreadfully. We felt our inexperience, and
+were unable to help ourselves. We should have been at her mercy, if she
+had had any; but she was a remorseless woman, and had none. She was the
+cause of our first little quarrel.
+
+‘My dearest life,’ I said one day to Dora, ‘do you think Mary Anne has
+any idea of time?’
+
+‘Why, Doady?’ inquired Dora, looking up, innocently, from her drawing.
+
+‘My love, because it’s five, and we were to have dined at four.’
+
+Dora glanced wistfully at the clock, and hinted that she thought it was
+too fast.
+
+‘On the contrary, my love,’ said I, referring to my watch, ‘it’s a few
+minutes too slow.’
+
+My little wife came and sat upon my knee, to coax me to be quiet, and
+drew a line with her pencil down the middle of my nose; but I couldn’t
+dine off that, though it was very agreeable.
+
+‘Don’t you think, my dear,’ said I, ‘it would be better for you to
+remonstrate with Mary Anne?’
+
+‘Oh no, please! I couldn’t, Doady!’ said Dora.
+
+‘Why not, my love?’ I gently asked.
+
+‘Oh, because I am such a little goose,’ said Dora, ‘and she knows I am!’
+
+I thought this sentiment so incompatible with the establishment of any
+system of check on Mary Anne, that I frowned a little.
+
+‘Oh, what ugly wrinkles in my bad boy’s forehead!’ said Dora, and still
+being on my knee, she traced them with her pencil; putting it to her
+rosy lips to make it mark blacker, and working at my forehead with a
+quaint little mockery of being industrious, that quite delighted me in
+spite of myself.
+
+‘There’s a good child,’ said Dora, ‘it makes its face so much prettier
+to laugh.’ ‘But, my love,’ said I.
+
+‘No, no! please!’ cried Dora, with a kiss, ‘don’t be a naughty Blue
+Beard! Don’t be serious!’
+
+‘My precious wife,’ said I, ‘we must be serious sometimes. Come! Sit
+down on this chair, close beside me! Give me the pencil! There! Now let
+us talk sensibly. You know, dear’; what a little hand it was to hold,
+and what a tiny wedding-ring it was to see! ‘You know, my love, it is
+not exactly comfortable to have to go out without one’s dinner. Now, is
+it?’
+
+‘N-n-no!’ replied Dora, faintly.
+
+‘My love, how you tremble!’
+
+‘Because I KNOW you’re going to scold me,’ exclaimed Dora, in a piteous
+voice.
+
+‘My sweet, I am only going to reason.’
+
+‘Oh, but reasoning is worse than scolding!’ exclaimed Dora, in despair.
+‘I didn’t marry to be reasoned with. If you meant to reason with such a
+poor little thing as I am, you ought to have told me so, you cruel boy!’
+
+I tried to pacify Dora, but she turned away her face, and shook her
+curls from side to side, and said, ‘You cruel, cruel boy!’ so many
+times, that I really did not exactly know what to do: so I took a few
+turns up and down the room in my uncertainty, and came back again.
+
+‘Dora, my darling!’
+
+‘No, I am not your darling. Because you must be sorry that you married
+me, or else you wouldn’t reason with me!’ returned Dora.
+
+I felt so injured by the inconsequential nature of this charge, that it
+gave me courage to be grave.
+
+‘Now, my own Dora,’ said I, ‘you are very childish, and are talking
+nonsense. You must remember, I am sure, that I was obliged to go out
+yesterday when dinner was half over; and that, the day before, I was
+made quite unwell by being obliged to eat underdone veal in a hurry;
+today, I don’t dine at all--and I am afraid to say how long we waited
+for breakfast--and then the water didn’t boil. I don’t mean to reproach
+you, my dear, but this is not comfortable.’
+
+‘Oh, you cruel, cruel boy, to say I am a disagreeable wife!’ cried Dora.
+
+‘Now, my dear Dora, you must know that I never said that!’
+
+‘You said, I wasn’t comfortable!’ cried Dora. ‘I said the housekeeping
+was not comfortable!’
+
+‘It’s exactly the same thing!’ cried Dora. And she evidently thought so,
+for she wept most grievously.
+
+I took another turn across the room, full of love for my pretty wife,
+and distracted by self-accusatory inclinations to knock my head against
+the door. I sat down again, and said:
+
+‘I am not blaming you, Dora. We have both a great deal to learn. I am
+only trying to show you, my dear, that you must--you really must’ (I
+was resolved not to give this up)--‘accustom yourself to look after Mary
+Anne. Likewise to act a little for yourself, and me.’
+
+‘I wonder, I do, at your making such ungrateful speeches,’ sobbed Dora.
+‘When you know that the other day, when you said you would like a little
+bit of fish, I went out myself, miles and miles, and ordered it, to
+surprise you.’
+
+‘And it was very kind of you, my own darling,’ said I. ‘I felt it so
+much that I wouldn’t on any account have even mentioned that you
+bought a Salmon--which was too much for two. Or that it cost one pound
+six--which was more than we can afford.’
+
+‘You enjoyed it very much,’ sobbed Dora. ‘And you said I was a Mouse.’
+
+‘And I’ll say so again, my love,’ I returned, ‘a thousand times!’
+
+But I had wounded Dora’s soft little heart, and she was not to be
+comforted. She was so pathetic in her sobbing and bewailing, that I felt
+as if I had said I don’t know what to hurt her. I was obliged to hurry
+away; I was kept out late; and I felt all night such pangs of remorse as
+made me miserable. I had the conscience of an assassin, and was haunted
+by a vague sense of enormous wickedness.
+
+It was two or three hours past midnight when I got home. I found my
+aunt, in our house, sitting up for me.
+
+‘Is anything the matter, aunt?’ said I, alarmed.
+
+‘Nothing, Trot,’ she replied. ‘Sit down, sit down. Little Blossom has
+been rather out of spirits, and I have been keeping her company. That’s
+all.’
+
+I leaned my head upon my hand; and felt more sorry and downcast, as I
+sat looking at the fire, than I could have supposed possible so soon
+after the fulfilment of my brightest hopes. As I sat thinking, I
+happened to meet my aunt’s eyes, which were resting on my face. There
+was an anxious expression in them, but it cleared directly.
+
+‘I assure you, aunt,’ said I, ‘I have been quite unhappy myself all
+night, to think of Dora’s being so. But I had no other intention than to
+speak to her tenderly and lovingly about our home-affairs.’
+
+My aunt nodded encouragement.
+
+‘You must have patience, Trot,’ said she.
+
+‘Of course. Heaven knows I don’t mean to be unreasonable, aunt!’
+
+‘No, no,’ said my aunt. ‘But Little Blossom is a very tender little
+blossom, and the wind must be gentle with her.’
+
+I thanked my good aunt, in my heart, for her tenderness towards my wife;
+and I was sure that she knew I did.
+
+‘Don’t you think, aunt,’ said I, after some further contemplation of the
+fire, ‘that you could advise and counsel Dora a little, for our mutual
+advantage, now and then?’
+
+‘Trot,’ returned my aunt, with some emotion, ‘no! Don’t ask me such a
+thing.’
+
+Her tone was so very earnest that I raised my eyes in surprise.
+
+‘I look back on my life, child,’ said my aunt, ‘and I think of some who
+are in their graves, with whom I might have been on kinder terms. If I
+judged harshly of other people’s mistakes in marriage, it may have been
+because I had bitter reason to judge harshly of my own. Let that pass. I
+have been a grumpy, frumpy, wayward sort of a woman, a good many years.
+I am still, and I always shall be. But you and I have done one another
+some good, Trot,--at all events, you have done me good, my dear; and
+division must not come between us, at this time of day.’
+
+‘Division between us!’ cried I.
+
+‘Child, child!’ said my aunt, smoothing her dress, ‘how soon it might
+come between us, or how unhappy I might make our Little Blossom, if I
+meddled in anything, a prophet couldn’t say. I want our pet to like me,
+and be as gay as a butterfly. Remember your own home, in that second
+marriage; and never do both me and her the injury you have hinted at!’
+
+I comprehended, at once, that my aunt was right; and I comprehended the
+full extent of her generous feeling towards my dear wife.
+
+‘These are early days, Trot,’ she pursued, ‘and Rome was not built in a
+day, nor in a year. You have chosen freely for yourself’; a cloud passed
+over her face for a moment, I thought; ‘and you have chosen a very
+pretty and a very affectionate creature. It will be your duty, and it
+will be your pleasure too--of course I know that; I am not delivering
+a lecture--to estimate her (as you chose her) by the qualities she has,
+and not by the qualities she may not have. The latter you must develop
+in her, if you can. And if you cannot, child,’ here my aunt rubbed her
+nose, ‘you must just accustom yourself to do without ‘em. But remember,
+my dear, your future is between you two. No one can assist you; you are
+to work it out for yourselves. This is marriage, Trot; and Heaven bless
+you both, in it, for a pair of babes in the wood as you are!’
+
+My aunt said this in a sprightly way, and gave me a kiss to ratify the
+blessing.
+
+‘Now,’ said she, ‘light my little lantern, and see me into my bandbox by
+the garden path’; for there was a communication between our cottages in
+that direction. ‘Give Betsey Trotwood’s love to Blossom, when you come
+back; and whatever you do, Trot, never dream of setting Betsey up as a
+scarecrow, for if I ever saw her in the glass, she’s quite grim enough
+and gaunt enough in her private capacity!’
+
+With this my aunt tied her head up in a handkerchief, with which she was
+accustomed to make a bundle of it on such occasions; and I escorted her
+home. As she stood in her garden, holding up her little lantern to light
+me back, I thought her observation of me had an anxious air again; but
+I was too much occupied in pondering on what she had said, and too much
+impressed--for the first time, in reality--by the conviction that Dora
+and I had indeed to work out our future for ourselves, and that no one
+could assist us, to take much notice of it.
+
+Dora came stealing down in her little slippers, to meet me, now that I
+was alone; and cried upon my shoulder, and said I had been hard-hearted
+and she had been naughty; and I said much the same thing in effect, I
+believe; and we made it up, and agreed that our first little difference
+was to be our last, and that we were never to have another if we lived a
+hundred years.
+
+The next domestic trial we went through, was the Ordeal of Servants.
+Mary Anne’s cousin deserted into our coal-hole, and was brought out, to
+our great amazement, by a piquet of his companions in arms, who took
+him away handcuffed in a procession that covered our front-garden with
+ignominy. This nerved me to get rid of Mary Anne, who went so mildly,
+on receipt of wages, that I was surprised, until I found out about the
+tea-spoons, and also about the little sums she had borrowed in my
+name of the tradespeople without authority. After an interval of Mrs.
+Kidgerbury--the oldest inhabitant of Kentish Town, I believe, who went
+out charing, but was too feeble to execute her conceptions of that
+art--we found another treasure, who was one of the most amiable of
+women, but who generally made a point of falling either up or down the
+kitchen stairs with the tray, and almost plunged into the parlour,
+as into a bath, with the tea-things. The ravages committed by this
+unfortunate, rendering her dismissal necessary, she was succeeded (with
+intervals of Mrs. Kidgerbury) by a long line of Incapables; terminating
+in a young person of genteel appearance, who went to Greenwich Fair in
+Dora’s bonnet. After whom I remember nothing but an average equality of
+failure.
+
+Everybody we had anything to do with seemed to cheat us. Our appearance
+in a shop was a signal for the damaged goods to be brought out
+immediately. If we bought a lobster, it was full of water. All our meat
+turned out to be tough, and there was hardly any crust to our loaves.
+In search of the principle on which joints ought to be roasted, to be
+roasted enough, and not too much, I myself referred to the Cookery Book,
+and found it there established as the allowance of a quarter of an hour
+to every pound, and say a quarter over. But the principle always failed
+us by some curious fatality, and we never could hit any medium between
+redness and cinders.
+
+I had reason to believe that in accomplishing these failures we incurred
+a far greater expense than if we had achieved a series of triumphs. It
+appeared to me, on looking over the tradesmen’s books, as if we might
+have kept the basement storey paved with butter, such was the extensive
+scale of our consumption of that article. I don’t know whether the
+Excise returns of the period may have exhibited any increase in the
+demand for pepper; but if our performances did not affect the market,
+I should say several families must have left off using it. And the most
+wonderful fact of all was, that we never had anything in the house.
+
+As to the washerwoman pawning the clothes, and coming in a state of
+penitent intoxication to apologize, I suppose that might have happened
+several times to anybody. Also the chimney on fire, the parish engine,
+and perjury on the part of the Beadle. But I apprehend that we were
+personally fortunate in engaging a servant with a taste for cordials,
+who swelled our running account for porter at the public-house by such
+inexplicable items as ‘quartern rum shrub (Mrs. C.)’; ‘Half-quartern
+gin and cloves (Mrs. C.)’; ‘Glass rum and peppermint (Mrs. C.)’--the
+parentheses always referring to Dora, who was supposed, it appeared on
+explanation, to have imbibed the whole of these refreshments.
+
+One of our first feats in the housekeeping way was a little dinner to
+Traddles. I met him in town, and asked him to walk out with me that
+afternoon. He readily consenting, I wrote to Dora, saying I would bring
+him home. It was pleasant weather, and on the road we made my domestic
+happiness the theme of conversation. Traddles was very full of it; and
+said, that, picturing himself with such a home, and Sophy waiting and
+preparing for him, he could think of nothing wanting to complete his
+bliss.
+
+I could not have wished for a prettier little wife at the opposite end
+of the table, but I certainly could have wished, when we sat down, for a
+little more room. I did not know how it was, but though there were only
+two of us, we were at once always cramped for room, and yet had always
+room enough to lose everything in. I suspect it may have been because
+nothing had a place of its own, except Jip’s pagoda, which invariably
+blocked up the main thoroughfare. On the present occasion, Traddles
+was so hemmed in by the pagoda and the guitar-case, and Dora’s
+flower-painting, and my writing-table, that I had serious doubts of the
+possibility of his using his knife and fork; but he protested, with his
+own good-humour, ‘Oceans of room, Copperfield! I assure you, Oceans!’
+
+There was another thing I could have wished, namely, that Jip had never
+been encouraged to walk about the tablecloth during dinner. I began to
+think there was something disorderly in his being there at all, even
+if he had not been in the habit of putting his foot in the salt or the
+melted butter. On this occasion he seemed to think he was introduced
+expressly to keep Traddles at bay; and he barked at my old friend, and
+made short runs at his plate, with such undaunted pertinacity, that he
+may be said to have engrossed the conversation.
+
+However, as I knew how tender-hearted my dear Dora was, and how
+sensitive she would be to any slight upon her favourite, I hinted no
+objection. For similar reasons I made no allusion to the skirmishing
+plates upon the floor; or to the disreputable appearance of the castors,
+which were all at sixes and sevens, and looked drunk; or to the further
+blockade of Traddles by wandering vegetable dishes and jugs. I could
+not help wondering in my own mind, as I contemplated the boiled leg of
+mutton before me, previous to carving it, how it came to pass that
+our joints of meat were of such extraordinary shapes--and whether our
+butcher contracted for all the deformed sheep that came into the world;
+but I kept my reflections to myself.
+
+‘My love,’ said I to Dora, ‘what have you got in that dish?’
+
+I could not imagine why Dora had been making tempting little faces at
+me, as if she wanted to kiss me.
+
+‘Oysters, dear,’ said Dora, timidly.
+
+‘Was that YOUR thought?’ said I, delighted.
+
+‘Ye-yes, Doady,’ said Dora.
+
+‘There never was a happier one!’ I exclaimed, laying down the
+carving-knife and fork. ‘There is nothing Traddles likes so much!’
+
+‘Ye-yes, Doady,’ said Dora, ‘and so I bought a beautiful little barrel
+of them, and the man said they were very good. But I--I am afraid
+there’s something the matter with them. They don’t seem right.’ Here
+Dora shook her head, and diamonds twinkled in her eyes.
+
+‘They are only opened in both shells,’ said I. ‘Take the top one off, my
+love.’
+
+‘But it won’t come off!’ said Dora, trying very hard, and looking very
+much distressed.
+
+‘Do you know, Copperfield,’ said Traddles, cheerfully examining the
+dish, ‘I think it is in consequence--they are capital oysters, but I
+think it is in consequence--of their never having been opened.’
+
+They never had been opened; and we had no oyster-knives--and couldn’t
+have used them if we had; so we looked at the oysters and ate the
+mutton. At least we ate as much of it as was done, and made up with
+capers. If I had permitted him, I am satisfied that Traddles would have
+made a perfect savage of himself, and eaten a plateful of raw meat, to
+express enjoyment of the repast; but I would hear of no such immolation
+on the altar of friendship, and we had a course of bacon instead; there
+happening, by good fortune, to be cold bacon in the larder.
+
+My poor little wife was in such affliction when she thought I should be
+annoyed, and in such a state of joy when she found I was not, that the
+discomfiture I had subdued, very soon vanished, and we passed a happy
+evening; Dora sitting with her arm on my chair while Traddles and I
+discussed a glass of wine, and taking every opportunity of whispering
+in my ear that it was so good of me not to be a cruel, cross old boy. By
+and by she made tea for us; which it was so pretty to see her do, as if
+she was busying herself with a set of doll’s tea-things, that I was not
+particular about the quality of the beverage. Then Traddles and I played
+a game or two at cribbage; and Dora singing to the guitar the while,
+it seemed to me as if our courtship and marriage were a tender dream
+of mine, and the night when I first listened to her voice were not yet
+over.
+
+When Traddles went away, and I came back into the parlour from seeing
+him out, my wife planted her chair close to mine, and sat down by my
+side. ‘I am very sorry,’ she said. ‘Will you try to teach me, Doady?’
+
+‘I must teach myself first, Dora,’ said I. ‘I am as bad as you, love.’
+
+‘Ah! But you can learn,’ she returned; ‘and you are a clever, clever
+man!’
+
+‘Nonsense, mouse!’ said I.
+
+‘I wish,’ resumed my wife, after a long silence, ‘that I could have gone
+down into the country for a whole year, and lived with Agnes!’
+
+Her hands were clasped upon my shoulder, and her chin rested on them,
+and her blue eyes looked quietly into mine.
+
+‘Why so?’ I asked.
+
+‘I think she might have improved me, and I think I might have learned
+from her,’ said Dora.
+
+‘All in good time, my love. Agnes has had her father to take care of for
+these many years, you should remember. Even when she was quite a child,
+she was the Agnes whom we know,’ said I.
+
+‘Will you call me a name I want you to call me?’ inquired Dora, without
+moving.
+
+‘What is it?’ I asked with a smile.
+
+‘It’s a stupid name,’ she said, shaking her curls for a moment.
+‘Child-wife.’
+
+I laughingly asked my child-wife what her fancy was in desiring to be so
+called. She answered without moving, otherwise than as the arm I twined
+about her may have brought her blue eyes nearer to me:
+
+‘I don’t mean, you silly fellow, that you should use the name instead
+of Dora. I only mean that you should think of me that way. When you are
+going to be angry with me, say to yourself, “it’s only my child-wife!”
+ When I am very disappointing, say, “I knew, a long time ago, that she
+would make but a child-wife!” When you miss what I should like to be,
+and I think can never be, say, “still my foolish child-wife loves me!”
+ For indeed I do.’
+
+I had not been serious with her; having no idea until now, that she was
+serious herself. But her affectionate nature was so happy in what I now
+said to her with my whole heart, that her face became a laughing one
+before her glittering eyes were dry. She was soon my child-wife indeed;
+sitting down on the floor outside the Chinese House, ringing all
+the little bells one after another, to punish Jip for his recent bad
+behaviour; while Jip lay blinking in the doorway with his head out, even
+too lazy to be teased.
+
+This appeal of Dora’s made a strong impression on me. I look back on the
+time I write of; I invoke the innocent figure that I dearly loved, to
+come out from the mists and shadows of the past, and turn its gentle
+head towards me once again; and I can still declare that this one little
+speech was constantly in my memory. I may not have used it to the best
+account; I was young and inexperienced; but I never turned a deaf ear to
+its artless pleading.
+
+Dora told me, shortly afterwards, that she was going to be a wonderful
+housekeeper. Accordingly, she polished the tablets, pointed the pencil,
+bought an immense account-book, carefully stitched up with a needle and
+thread all the leaves of the Cookery Book which Jip had torn, and made
+quite a desperate little attempt ‘to be good’, as she called it. But the
+figures had the old obstinate propensity--they WOULD NOT add up. When
+she had entered two or three laborious items in the account-book, Jip
+would walk over the page, wagging his tail, and smear them all out. Her
+own little right-hand middle finger got steeped to the very bone in ink;
+and I think that was the only decided result obtained.
+
+Sometimes, of an evening, when I was at home and at work--for I wrote
+a good deal now, and was beginning in a small way to be known as a
+writer--I would lay down my pen, and watch my child-wife trying to be
+good. First of all, she would bring out the immense account-book, and
+lay it down upon the table, with a deep sigh. Then she would open it at
+the place where Jip had made it illegible last night, and call Jip
+up, to look at his misdeeds. This would occasion a diversion in Jip’s
+favour, and some inking of his nose, perhaps, as a penalty. Then she
+would tell Jip to lie down on the table instantly, ‘like a lion’--which
+was one of his tricks, though I cannot say the likeness was
+striking--and, if he were in an obedient humour, he would obey. Then she
+would take up a pen, and begin to write, and find a hair in it. Then
+she would take up another pen, and begin to write, and find that it
+spluttered. Then she would take up another pen, and begin to write, and
+say in a low voice, ‘Oh, it’s a talking pen, and will disturb Doady!’
+And then she would give it up as a bad job, and put the account-book
+away, after pretending to crush the lion with it.
+
+Or, if she were in a very sedate and serious state of mind, she would
+sit down with the tablets, and a little basket of bills and other
+documents, which looked more like curl-papers than anything else, and
+endeavour to get some result out of them. After severely comparing one
+with another, and making entries on the tablets, and blotting them
+out, and counting all the fingers of her left hand over and over again,
+backwards and forwards, she would be so vexed and discouraged, and
+would look so unhappy, that it gave me pain to see her bright face
+clouded--and for me!--and I would go softly to her, and say:
+
+‘What’s the matter, Dora?’
+
+Dora would look up hopelessly, and reply, ‘They won’t come right. They
+make my head ache so. And they won’t do anything I want!’
+
+Then I would say, ‘Now let us try together. Let me show you, Dora.’
+
+Then I would commence a practical demonstration, to which Dora would pay
+profound attention, perhaps for five minutes; when she would begin to be
+dreadfully tired, and would lighten the subject by curling my hair,
+or trying the effect of my face with my shirt-collar turned down. If
+I tacitly checked this playfulness, and persisted, she would look so
+scared and disconsolate, as she became more and more bewildered, that
+the remembrance of her natural gaiety when I first strayed into her
+path, and of her being my child-wife, would come reproachfully upon me;
+and I would lay the pencil down, and call for the guitar.
+
+I had a great deal of work to do, and had many anxieties, but the same
+considerations made me keep them to myself. I am far from sure, now,
+that it was right to do this, but I did it for my child-wife’s sake. I
+search my breast, and I commit its secrets, if I know them, without any
+reservation to this paper. The old unhappy loss or want of something
+had, I am conscious, some place in my heart; but not to the embitterment
+of my life. When I walked alone in the fine weather, and thought of the
+summer days when all the air had been filled with my boyish enchantment,
+I did miss something of the realization of my dreams; but I thought it
+was a softened glory of the Past, which nothing could have thrown upon
+the present time. I did feel, sometimes, for a little while, that I
+could have wished my wife had been my counsellor; had had more character
+and purpose, to sustain me and improve me by; had been endowed with
+power to fill up the void which somewhere seemed to be about me; but
+I felt as if this were an unearthly consummation of my happiness, that
+never had been meant to be, and never could have been.
+
+I was a boyish husband as to years. I had known the softening influence
+of no other sorrows or experiences than those recorded in these leaves.
+If I did any wrong, as I may have done much, I did it in mistaken love,
+and in my want of wisdom. I write the exact truth. It would avail me
+nothing to extenuate it now.
+
+Thus it was that I took upon myself the toils and cares of our life,
+and had no partner in them. We lived much as before, in reference to our
+scrambling household arrangements; but I had got used to those, and Dora
+I was pleased to see was seldom vexed now. She was bright and cheerful
+in the old childish way, loved me dearly, and was happy with her old
+trifles.
+
+When the debates were heavy--I mean as to length, not quality, for in
+the last respect they were not often otherwise--and I went home late,
+Dora would never rest when she heard my footsteps, but would always come
+downstairs to meet me. When my evenings were unoccupied by the pursuit
+for which I had qualified myself with so much pains, and I was engaged
+in writing at home, she would sit quietly near me, however late the
+hour, and be so mute, that I would often think she had dropped asleep.
+But generally, when I raised my head, I saw her blue eyes looking at me
+with the quiet attention of which I have already spoken.
+
+‘Oh, what a weary boy!’ said Dora one night, when I met her eyes as I
+was shutting up my desk.
+
+‘What a weary girl!’ said I. ‘That’s more to the purpose. You must go to
+bed another time, my love. It’s far too late for you.’
+
+‘No, don’t send me to bed!’ pleaded Dora, coming to my side. ‘Pray,
+don’t do that!’
+
+‘Dora!’ To my amazement she was sobbing on my neck. ‘Not well, my dear!
+not happy!’
+
+‘Yes! quite well, and very happy!’ said Dora. ‘But say you’ll let me
+stop, and see you write.’
+
+‘Why, what a sight for such bright eyes at midnight!’ I replied.
+
+‘Are they bright, though?’ returned Dora, laughing. ‘I’m so glad they’re
+bright.’ ‘Little Vanity!’ said I.
+
+But it was not vanity; it was only harmless delight in my admiration. I
+knew that very well, before she told me so.
+
+‘If you think them pretty, say I may always stop, and see you write!’
+said Dora. ‘Do you think them pretty?’
+
+‘Very pretty.’
+
+‘Then let me always stop and see you write.’
+
+‘I am afraid that won’t improve their brightness, Dora.’
+
+‘Yes, it will! Because, you clever boy, you’ll not forget me then, while
+you are full of silent fancies. Will you mind it, if I say something
+very, very silly?---more than usual?’ inquired Dora, peeping over my
+shoulder into my face.
+
+‘What wonderful thing is that?’ said I.
+
+‘Please let me hold the pens,’ said Dora. ‘I want to have something to
+do with all those many hours when you are so industrious. May I hold the
+pens?’
+
+The remembrance of her pretty joy when I said yes, brings tears into my
+eyes. The next time I sat down to write, and regularly afterwards,
+she sat in her old place, with a spare bundle of pens at her side. Her
+triumph in this connexion with my work, and her delight when I wanted a
+new pen--which I very often feigned to do--suggested to me a new way of
+pleasing my child-wife. I occasionally made a pretence of wanting a
+page or two of manuscript copied. Then Dora was in her glory. The
+preparations she made for this great work, the aprons she put on, the
+bibs she borrowed from the kitchen to keep off the ink, the time she
+took, the innumerable stoppages she made to have a laugh with Jip as if
+he understood it all, her conviction that her work was incomplete unless
+she signed her name at the end, and the way in which she would bring it
+to me, like a school-copy, and then, when I praised it, clasp me round
+the neck, are touching recollections to me, simple as they might appear
+to other men.
+
+She took possession of the keys soon after this, and went jingling about
+the house with the whole bunch in a little basket, tied to her slender
+waist. I seldom found that the places to which they belonged were
+locked, or that they were of any use except as a plaything for Jip--but
+Dora was pleased, and that pleased me. She was quite satisfied that a
+good deal was effected by this make-belief of housekeeping; and was as
+merry as if we had been keeping a baby-house, for a joke.
+
+So we went on. Dora was hardly less affectionate to my aunt than to me,
+and often told her of the time when she was afraid she was ‘a cross old
+thing’. I never saw my aunt unbend more systematically to anyone. She
+courted Jip, though Jip never responded; listened, day after day, to the
+guitar, though I am afraid she had no taste for music; never attacked
+the Incapables, though the temptation must have been severe; went
+wonderful distances on foot to purchase, as surprises, any trifles that
+she found out Dora wanted; and never came in by the garden, and missed
+her from the room, but she would call out, at the foot of the stairs, in
+a voice that sounded cheerfully all over the house:
+
+‘Where’s Little Blossom?’
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 45. MR. DICK FULFILS MY AUNT’S PREDICTIONS
+
+
+It was some time now, since I had left the Doctor. Living in his
+neighbourhood, I saw him frequently; and we all went to his house on two
+or three occasions to dinner or tea. The Old Soldier was in permanent
+quarters under the Doctor’s roof. She was exactly the same as ever, and
+the same immortal butterflies hovered over her cap.
+
+Like some other mothers, whom I have known in the course of my life,
+Mrs. Markleham was far more fond of pleasure than her daughter was.
+She required a great deal of amusement, and, like a deep old soldier,
+pretended, in consulting her own inclinations, to be devoting herself
+to her child. The Doctor’s desire that Annie should be entertained,
+was therefore particularly acceptable to this excellent parent; who
+expressed unqualified approval of his discretion.
+
+I have no doubt, indeed, that she probed the Doctor’s wound without
+knowing it. Meaning nothing but a certain matured frivolity and
+selfishness, not always inseparable from full-blown years, I think she
+confirmed him in his fear that he was a constraint upon his young
+wife, and that there was no congeniality of feeling between them, by so
+strongly commending his design of lightening the load of her life.
+
+‘My dear soul,’ she said to him one day when I was present, ‘you know
+there is no doubt it would be a little pokey for Annie to be always shut
+up here.’
+
+The Doctor nodded his benevolent head. ‘When she comes to her mother’s
+age,’ said Mrs. Markleham, with a flourish of her fan, ‘then it’ll be
+another thing. You might put ME into a Jail, with genteel society and
+a rubber, and I should never care to come out. But I am not Annie, you
+know; and Annie is not her mother.’
+
+‘Surely, surely,’ said the Doctor.
+
+‘You are the best of creatures--no, I beg your pardon!’ for the Doctor
+made a gesture of deprecation, ‘I must say before your face, as I always
+say behind your back, you are the best of creatures; but of course you
+don’t--now do you?---enter into the same pursuits and fancies as Annie?’
+
+‘No,’ said the Doctor, in a sorrowful tone.
+
+‘No, of course not,’ retorted the Old Soldier. ‘Take your Dictionary,
+for example. What a useful work a Dictionary is! What a necessary work!
+The meanings of words! Without Doctor Johnson, or somebody of that sort,
+we might have been at this present moment calling an Italian-iron,
+a bedstead. But we can’t expect a Dictionary--especially when it’s
+making--to interest Annie, can we?’
+
+The Doctor shook his head.
+
+‘And that’s why I so much approve,’ said Mrs. Markleham, tapping him
+on the shoulder with her shut-up fan, ‘of your thoughtfulness. It shows
+that you don’t expect, as many elderly people do expect, old heads on
+young shoulders. You have studied Annie’s character, and you understand
+it. That’s what I find so charming!’
+
+Even the calm and patient face of Doctor Strong expressed some little
+sense of pain, I thought, under the infliction of these compliments.
+
+‘Therefore, my dear Doctor,’ said the Old Soldier, giving him several
+affectionate taps, ‘you may command me, at all times and seasons. Now,
+do understand that I am entirely at your service. I am ready to go with
+Annie to operas, concerts, exhibitions, all kinds of places; and you
+shall never find that I am tired. Duty, my dear Doctor, before every
+consideration in the universe!’
+
+She was as good as her word. She was one of those people who can bear
+a great deal of pleasure, and she never flinched in her perseverance
+in the cause. She seldom got hold of the newspaper (which she settled
+herself down in the softest chair in the house to read through an
+eye-glass, every day, for two hours), but she found out something that
+she was certain Annie would like to see. It was in vain for Annie to
+protest that she was weary of such things. Her mother’s remonstrance
+always was, ‘Now, my dear Annie, I am sure you know better; and I must
+tell you, my love, that you are not making a proper return for the
+kindness of Doctor Strong.’
+
+This was usually said in the Doctor’s presence, and appeared to me to
+constitute Annie’s principal inducement for withdrawing her objections
+when she made any. But in general she resigned herself to her mother,
+and went where the Old Soldier would.
+
+It rarely happened now that Mr. Maldon accompanied them. Sometimes
+my aunt and Dora were invited to do so, and accepted the invitation.
+Sometimes Dora only was asked. The time had been, when I should have
+been uneasy in her going; but reflection on what had passed that
+former night in the Doctor’s study, had made a change in my mistrust. I
+believed that the Doctor was right, and I had no worse suspicions.
+
+My aunt rubbed her nose sometimes when she happened to be alone with
+me, and said she couldn’t make it out; she wished they were happier; she
+didn’t think our military friend (so she always called the Old Soldier)
+mended the matter at all. My aunt further expressed her opinion, ‘that
+if our military friend would cut off those butterflies, and give ‘em to
+the chimney-sweepers for May-day, it would look like the beginning of
+something sensible on her part.’
+
+But her abiding reliance was on Mr. Dick. That man had evidently an
+idea in his head, she said; and if he could only once pen it up into a
+corner, which was his great difficulty, he would distinguish himself in
+some extraordinary manner.
+
+Unconscious of this prediction, Mr. Dick continued to occupy precisely
+the same ground in reference to the Doctor and to Mrs. Strong. He seemed
+neither to advance nor to recede. He appeared to have settled into his
+original foundation, like a building; and I must confess that my faith
+in his ever Moving, was not much greater than if he had been a building.
+
+But one night, when I had been married some months, Mr. Dick put his
+head into the parlour, where I was writing alone (Dora having gone out
+with my aunt to take tea with the two little birds), and said, with a
+significant cough:
+
+‘You couldn’t speak to me without inconveniencing yourself, Trotwood, I
+am afraid?’
+
+‘Certainly, Mr. Dick,’ said I; ‘come in!’
+
+‘Trotwood,’ said Mr. Dick, laying his finger on the side of his nose,
+after he had shaken hands with me. ‘Before I sit down, I wish to make an
+observation. You know your aunt?’
+
+‘A little,’ I replied.
+
+‘She is the most wonderful woman in the world, sir!’
+
+After the delivery of this communication, which he shot out of himself
+as if he were loaded with it, Mr. Dick sat down with greater gravity
+than usual, and looked at me.
+
+‘Now, boy,’ said Mr. Dick, ‘I am going to put a question to you.’
+
+‘As many as you please,’ said I.
+
+‘What do you consider me, sir?’ asked Mr. Dick, folding his arms.
+
+‘A dear old friend,’ said I. ‘Thank you, Trotwood,’ returned Mr. Dick,
+laughing, and reaching across in high glee to shake hands with me. ‘But
+I mean, boy,’ resuming his gravity, ‘what do you consider me in this
+respect?’ touching his forehead.
+
+I was puzzled how to answer, but he helped me with a word.
+
+‘Weak?’ said Mr. Dick.
+
+‘Well,’ I replied, dubiously. ‘Rather so.’
+
+‘Exactly!’ cried Mr. Dick, who seemed quite enchanted by my reply. ‘That
+is, Trotwood, when they took some of the trouble out of you-know-who’s
+head, and put it you know where, there was a--’ Mr. Dick made his two
+hands revolve very fast about each other a great number of times, and
+then brought them into collision, and rolled them over and over one
+another, to express confusion. ‘There was that sort of thing done to me
+somehow. Eh?’
+
+I nodded at him, and he nodded back again.
+
+‘In short, boy,’ said Mr. Dick, dropping his voice to a whisper, ‘I am
+simple.’
+
+I would have qualified that conclusion, but he stopped me.
+
+‘Yes, I am! She pretends I am not. She won’t hear of it; but I am. I
+know I am. If she hadn’t stood my friend, sir, I should have been shut
+up, to lead a dismal life these many years. But I’ll provide for her!
+I never spend the copying money. I put it in a box. I have made a will.
+I’ll leave it all to her. She shall be rich--noble!’
+
+Mr. Dick took out his pocket-handkerchief, and wiped his eyes. He then
+folded it up with great care, pressed it smooth between his two hands,
+put it in his pocket, and seemed to put my aunt away with it.
+
+‘Now you are a scholar, Trotwood,’ said Mr. Dick. ‘You are a fine
+scholar. You know what a learned man, what a great man, the Doctor is.
+You know what honour he has always done me. Not proud in his wisdom.
+Humble, humble--condescending even to poor Dick, who is simple and knows
+nothing. I have sent his name up, on a scrap of paper, to the kite,
+along the string, when it has been in the sky, among the larks. The kite
+has been glad to receive it, sir, and the sky has been brighter with
+it.’
+
+I delighted him by saying, most heartily, that the Doctor was deserving
+of our best respect and highest esteem.
+
+‘And his beautiful wife is a star,’ said Mr. Dick. ‘A shining star. I
+have seen her shine, sir. But,’ bringing his chair nearer, and laying
+one hand upon my knee--‘clouds, sir--clouds.’
+
+I answered the solicitude which his face expressed, by conveying the
+same expression into my own, and shaking my head.
+
+‘What clouds?’ said Mr. Dick.
+
+He looked so wistfully into my face, and was so anxious to understand,
+that I took great pains to answer him slowly and distinctly, as I might
+have entered on an explanation to a child.
+
+‘There is some unfortunate division between them,’ I replied. ‘Some
+unhappy cause of separation. A secret. It may be inseparable from the
+discrepancy in their years. It may have grown up out of almost nothing.’
+
+Mr. Dick, who had told off every sentence with a thoughtful nod, paused
+when I had done, and sat considering, with his eyes upon my face, and
+his hand upon my knee.
+
+‘Doctor not angry with her, Trotwood?’ he said, after some time.
+
+‘No. Devoted to her.’
+
+‘Then, I have got it, boy!’ said Mr. Dick.
+
+The sudden exultation with which he slapped me on the knee, and leaned
+back in his chair, with his eyebrows lifted up as high as he could
+possibly lift them, made me think him farther out of his wits than
+ever. He became as suddenly grave again, and leaning forward as before,
+said--first respectfully taking out his pocket-handkerchief, as if it
+really did represent my aunt:
+
+‘Most wonderful woman in the world, Trotwood. Why has she done nothing
+to set things right?’
+
+‘Too delicate and difficult a subject for such interference,’ I replied.
+
+‘Fine scholar,’ said Mr. Dick, touching me with his finger. ‘Why has HE
+done nothing?’
+
+‘For the same reason,’ I returned.
+
+‘Then, I have got it, boy!’ said Mr. Dick. And he stood up before me,
+more exultingly than before, nodding his head, and striking himself
+repeatedly upon the breast, until one might have supposed that he had
+nearly nodded and struck all the breath out of his body.
+
+‘A poor fellow with a craze, sir,’ said Mr. Dick, ‘a simpleton, a
+weak-minded person--present company, you know!’ striking himself again,
+‘may do what wonderful people may not do. I’ll bring them together, boy.
+I’ll try. They’ll not blame me. They’ll not object to me. They’ll not
+mind what I do, if it’s wrong. I’m only Mr. Dick. And who minds Dick?
+Dick’s nobody! Whoo!’ He blew a slight, contemptuous breath, as if he
+blew himself away.
+
+It was fortunate he had proceeded so far with his mystery, for we heard
+the coach stop at the little garden gate, which brought my aunt and Dora
+home.
+
+‘Not a word, boy!’ he pursued in a whisper; ‘leave all the blame with
+Dick--simple Dick--mad Dick. I have been thinking, sir, for some time,
+that I was getting it, and now I have got it. After what you have said
+to me, I am sure I have got it. All right!’ Not another word did Mr.
+Dick utter on the subject; but he made a very telegraph of himself for
+the next half-hour (to the great disturbance of my aunt’s mind), to
+enjoin inviolable secrecy on me.
+
+To my surprise, I heard no more about it for some two or three weeks,
+though I was sufficiently interested in the result of his endeavours;
+descrying a strange gleam of good sense--I say nothing of good feeling,
+for that he always exhibited--in the conclusion to which he had come. At
+last I began to believe, that, in the flighty and unsettled state of his
+mind, he had either forgotten his intention or abandoned it.
+
+One fair evening, when Dora was not inclined to go out, my aunt and I
+strolled up to the Doctor’s cottage. It was autumn, when there were no
+debates to vex the evening air; and I remember how the leaves smelt like
+our garden at Blunderstone as we trod them under foot, and how the old,
+unhappy feeling, seemed to go by, on the sighing wind.
+
+It was twilight when we reached the cottage. Mrs. Strong was just coming
+out of the garden, where Mr. Dick yet lingered, busy with his knife,
+helping the gardener to point some stakes. The Doctor was engaged with
+someone in his study; but the visitor would be gone directly, Mrs.
+Strong said, and begged us to remain and see him. We went into the
+drawing-room with her, and sat down by the darkening window. There was
+never any ceremony about the visits of such old friends and neighbours
+as we were.
+
+We had not sat here many minutes, when Mrs. Markleham, who usually
+contrived to be in a fuss about something, came bustling in, with her
+newspaper in her hand, and said, out of breath, ‘My goodness gracious,
+Annie, why didn’t you tell me there was someone in the Study!’
+
+‘My dear mama,’ she quietly returned, ‘how could I know that you desired
+the information?’
+
+‘Desired the information!’ said Mrs. Markleham, sinking on the sofa. ‘I
+never had such a turn in all my life!’
+
+‘Have you been to the Study, then, mama?’ asked Annie.
+
+‘BEEN to the Study, my dear!’ she returned emphatically. ‘Indeed I have!
+I came upon the amiable creature--if you’ll imagine my feelings, Miss
+Trotwood and David--in the act of making his will.’
+
+Her daughter looked round from the window quickly.
+
+‘In the act, my dear Annie,’ repeated Mrs. Markleham, spreading the
+newspaper on her lap like a table-cloth, and patting her hands upon it,
+‘of making his last Will and Testament. The foresight and affection of
+the dear! I must tell you how it was. I really must, in justice to the
+darling--for he is nothing less!--tell you how it was. Perhaps you know,
+Miss Trotwood, that there is never a candle lighted in this house, until
+one’s eyes are literally falling out of one’s head with being stretched
+to read the paper. And that there is not a chair in this house, in which
+a paper can be what I call, read, except one in the Study. This took me
+to the Study, where I saw a light. I opened the door. In company with
+the dear Doctor were two professional people, evidently connected with
+the law, and they were all three standing at the table: the
+darling Doctor pen in hand. “This simply expresses then,” said the
+Doctor--Annie, my love, attend to the very words--“this simply expresses
+then, gentlemen, the confidence I have in Mrs. Strong, and gives her all
+unconditionally?” One of the professional people replied, “And gives her
+all unconditionally.” Upon that, with the natural feelings of a mother,
+I said, “Good God, I beg your pardon!” fell over the door-step, and came
+away through the little back passage where the pantry is.’
+
+Mrs. Strong opened the window, and went out into the verandah, where she
+stood leaning against a pillar.
+
+‘But now isn’t it, Miss Trotwood, isn’t it, David, invigorating,’ said
+Mrs. Markleham, mechanically following her with her eyes, ‘to find a man
+at Doctor Strong’s time of life, with the strength of mind to do this
+kind of thing? It only shows how right I was. I said to Annie, when
+Doctor Strong paid a very flattering visit to myself, and made her the
+subject of a declaration and an offer, I said, “My dear, there is no
+doubt whatever, in my opinion, with reference to a suitable provision
+for you, that Doctor Strong will do more than he binds himself to do.”’
+
+Here the bell rang, and we heard the sound of the visitors’ feet as they
+went out.
+
+‘It’s all over, no doubt,’ said the Old Soldier, after listening; ‘the
+dear creature has signed, sealed, and delivered, and his mind’s at rest.
+Well it may be! What a mind! Annie, my love, I am going to the Study
+with my paper, for I am a poor creature without news. Miss Trotwood,
+David, pray come and see the Doctor.’
+
+I was conscious of Mr. Dick’s standing in the shadow of the room,
+shutting up his knife, when we accompanied her to the Study; and of my
+aunt’s rubbing her nose violently, by the way, as a mild vent for her
+intolerance of our military friend; but who got first into the Study, or
+how Mrs. Markleham settled herself in a moment in her easy-chair, or how
+my aunt and I came to be left together near the door (unless her eyes
+were quicker than mine, and she held me back), I have forgotten, if I
+ever knew. But this I know,--that we saw the Doctor before he saw us,
+sitting at his table, among the folio volumes in which he delighted,
+resting his head calmly on his hand. That, in the same moment, we saw
+Mrs. Strong glide in, pale and trembling. That Mr. Dick supported her on
+his arm. That he laid his other hand upon the Doctor’s arm, causing him
+to look up with an abstracted air. That, as the Doctor moved his head,
+his wife dropped down on one knee at his feet, and, with her hands
+imploringly lifted, fixed upon his face the memorable look I had never
+forgotten. That at this sight Mrs. Markleham dropped the newspaper,
+and stared more like a figure-head intended for a ship to be called The
+Astonishment, than anything else I can think of.
+
+The gentleness of the Doctor’s manner and surprise, the dignity that
+mingled with the supplicating attitude of his wife, the amiable concern
+of Mr. Dick, and the earnestness with which my aunt said to herself,
+‘That man mad!’ (triumphantly expressive of the misery from which she
+had saved him)--I see and hear, rather than remember, as I write about
+it.
+
+‘Doctor!’ said Mr. Dick. ‘What is it that’s amiss? Look here!’
+
+‘Annie!’ cried the Doctor. ‘Not at my feet, my dear!’
+
+‘Yes!’ she said. ‘I beg and pray that no one will leave the room! Oh, my
+husband and father, break this long silence. Let us both know what it is
+that has come between us!’
+
+Mrs. Markleham, by this time recovering the power of speech, and seeming
+to swell with family pride and motherly indignation, here exclaimed,
+‘Annie, get up immediately, and don’t disgrace everybody belonging to
+you by humbling yourself like that, unless you wish to see me go out of
+my mind on the spot!’
+
+‘Mama!’ returned Annie. ‘Waste no words on me, for my appeal is to my
+husband, and even you are nothing here.’
+
+‘Nothing!’ exclaimed Mrs. Markleham. ‘Me, nothing! The child has taken
+leave of her senses. Please to get me a glass of water!’
+
+I was too attentive to the Doctor and his wife, to give any heed to this
+request; and it made no impression on anybody else; so Mrs. Markleham
+panted, stared, and fanned herself.
+
+‘Annie!’ said the Doctor, tenderly taking her in his hands. ‘My dear!
+If any unavoidable change has come, in the sequence of time, upon our
+married life, you are not to blame. The fault is mine, and only mine.
+There is no change in my affection, admiration, and respect. I wish to
+make you happy. I truly love and honour you. Rise, Annie, pray!’
+
+But she did not rise. After looking at him for a little while, she sank
+down closer to him, laid her arm across his knee, and dropping her head
+upon it, said:
+
+‘If I have any friend here, who can speak one word for me, or for my
+husband in this matter; if I have any friend here, who can give a voice
+to any suspicion that my heart has sometimes whispered to me; if I have
+any friend here, who honours my husband, or has ever cared for me, and
+has anything within his knowledge, no matter what it is, that may help
+to mediate between us, I implore that friend to speak!’
+
+There was a profound silence. After a few moments of painful hesitation,
+I broke the silence.
+
+‘Mrs. Strong,’ I said, ‘there is something within my knowledge, which
+I have been earnestly entreated by Doctor Strong to conceal, and have
+concealed until tonight. But, I believe the time has come when it would
+be mistaken faith and delicacy to conceal it any longer, and when your
+appeal absolves me from his injunction.’
+
+She turned her face towards me for a moment, and I knew that I was
+right. I could not have resisted its entreaty, if the assurance that it
+gave me had been less convincing.
+
+‘Our future peace,’ she said, ‘may be in your hands. I trust it
+confidently to your not suppressing anything. I know beforehand that
+nothing you, or anyone, can tell me, will show my husband’s noble heart
+in any other light than one. Howsoever it may seem to you to touch me,
+disregard that. I will speak for myself, before him, and before God
+afterwards.’
+
+Thus earnestly besought, I made no reference to the Doctor for his
+permission, but, without any other compromise of the truth than a little
+softening of the coarseness of Uriah Heep, related plainly what had
+passed in that same room that night. The staring of Mrs. Markleham
+during the whole narration, and the shrill, sharp interjections with
+which she occasionally interrupted it, defy description.
+
+When I had finished, Annie remained, for some few moments, silent, with
+her head bent down, as I have described. Then, she took the Doctor’s
+hand (he was sitting in the same attitude as when we had entered the
+room), and pressed it to her breast, and kissed it. Mr. Dick softly
+raised her; and she stood, when she began to speak, leaning on him, and
+looking down upon her husband--from whom she never turned her eyes.
+
+‘All that has ever been in my mind, since I was married,’ she said in a
+low, submissive, tender voice, ‘I will lay bare before you. I could not
+live and have one reservation, knowing what I know now.’
+
+‘Nay, Annie,’ said the Doctor, mildly, ‘I have never doubted you, my
+child. There is no need; indeed there is no need, my dear.’
+
+‘There is great need,’ she answered, in the same way, ‘that I should
+open my whole heart before the soul of generosity and truth, whom, year
+by year, and day by day, I have loved and venerated more and more, as
+Heaven knows!’
+
+‘Really,’ interrupted Mrs. Markleham, ‘if I have any discretion at
+all--’
+
+[‘Which you haven’t, you Marplot,’ observed my aunt, in an indignant
+whisper.) --‘I must be permitted to observe that it cannot be requisite
+to enter into these details.’
+
+‘No one but my husband can judge of that, mama,’ said Annie without
+removing her eyes from his face, ‘and he will hear me. If I say anything
+to give you pain, mama, forgive me. I have borne pain first, often and
+long, myself.’
+
+‘Upon my word!’ gasped Mrs. Markleham.
+
+‘When I was very young,’ said Annie, ‘quite a little child, my first
+associations with knowledge of any kind were inseparable from a patient
+friend and teacher--the friend of my dead father--who was always dear
+to me. I can remember nothing that I know, without remembering him. He
+stored my mind with its first treasures, and stamped his character upon
+them all. They never could have been, I think, as good as they have been
+to me, if I had taken them from any other hands.’
+
+‘Makes her mother nothing!’ exclaimed Mrs. Markleham.
+
+‘Not so mama,’ said Annie; ‘but I make him what he was. I must do that.
+As I grew up, he occupied the same place still. I was proud of his
+interest: deeply, fondly, gratefully attached to him. I looked up to
+him, I can hardly describe how--as a father, as a guide, as one whose
+praise was different from all other praise, as one in whom I could have
+trusted and confided, if I had doubted all the world. You know, mama,
+how young and inexperienced I was, when you presented him before me, of
+a sudden, as a lover.’
+
+‘I have mentioned the fact, fifty times at least, to everybody here!’
+said Mrs. Markleham.
+
+[‘Then hold your tongue, for the Lord’s sake, and don’t mention it any
+more!’ muttered my aunt.)
+
+‘It was so great a change: so great a loss, I felt it, at first,’ said
+Annie, still preserving the same look and tone, ‘that I was agitated
+and distressed. I was but a girl; and when so great a change came in the
+character in which I had so long looked up to him, I think I was sorry.
+But nothing could have made him what he used to be again; and I was
+proud that he should think me so worthy, and we were married.’ ‘--At
+Saint Alphage, Canterbury,’ observed Mrs. Markleham.
+
+[‘Confound the woman!’ said my aunt, ‘she WON’T be quiet!’)
+
+‘I never thought,’ proceeded Annie, with a heightened colour, ‘of any
+worldly gain that my husband would bring to me. My young heart had no
+room in its homage for any such poor reference. Mama, forgive me when
+I say that it was you who first presented to my mind the thought that
+anyone could wrong me, and wrong him, by such a cruel suspicion.’
+
+‘Me!’ cried Mrs. Markleham.
+
+[‘Ah! You, to be sure!’ observed my aunt, ‘and you can’t fan it away, my
+military friend!’)
+
+‘It was the first unhappiness of my new life,’ said Annie. ‘It was the
+first occasion of every unhappy moment I have known. These moments have
+been more, of late, than I can count; but not--my generous husband!--not
+for the reason you suppose; for in my heart there is not a thought, a
+recollection, or a hope, that any power could separate from you!’
+
+She raised her eyes, and clasped her hands, and looked as beautiful and
+true, I thought, as any Spirit. The Doctor looked on her, henceforth, as
+steadfastly as she on him.
+
+‘Mama is blameless,’ she went on, ‘of having ever urged you for herself,
+and she is blameless in intention every way, I am sure,--but when I saw
+how many importunate claims were pressed upon you in my name; how you
+were traded on in my name; how generous you were, and how Mr. Wickfield,
+who had your welfare very much at heart, resented it; the first sense
+of my exposure to the mean suspicion that my tenderness was bought--and
+sold to you, of all men on earth--fell upon me like unmerited disgrace,
+in which I forced you to participate. I cannot tell you what it
+was--mama cannot imagine what it was--to have this dread and trouble
+always on my mind, yet know in my own soul that on my marriage-day I
+crowned the love and honour of my life!’
+
+‘A specimen of the thanks one gets,’ cried Mrs. Markleham, in tears,
+‘for taking care of one’s family! I wish I was a Turk!’
+
+[‘I wish you were, with all my heart--and in your native country!’ said
+my aunt.)
+
+‘It was at that time that mama was most solicitous about my Cousin
+Maldon. I had liked him’: she spoke softly, but without any hesitation:
+‘very much. We had been little lovers once. If circumstances had not
+happened otherwise, I might have come to persuade myself that I really
+loved him, and might have married him, and been most wretched. There can
+be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.’
+
+I pondered on those words, even while I was studiously attending to
+what followed, as if they had some particular interest, or some strange
+application that I could not divine. ‘There can be no disparity in
+marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose’--‘no disparity in
+marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.’
+
+‘There is nothing,’ said Annie, ‘that we have in common. I have long
+found that there is nothing. If I were thankful to my husband for no
+more, instead of for so much, I should be thankful to him for having
+saved me from the first mistaken impulse of my undisciplined heart.’
+
+She stood quite still, before the Doctor, and spoke with an earnestness
+that thrilled me. Yet her voice was just as quiet as before.
+
+‘When he was waiting to be the object of your munificence, so freely
+bestowed for my sake, and when I was unhappy in the mercenary shape
+I was made to wear, I thought it would have become him better to have
+worked his own way on. I thought that if I had been he, I would have
+tried to do it, at the cost of almost any hardship. But I thought no
+worse of him, until the night of his departure for India. That night I
+knew he had a false and thankless heart. I saw a double meaning, then,
+in Mr. Wickfield’s scrutiny of me. I perceived, for the first time, the
+dark suspicion that shadowed my life.’
+
+‘Suspicion, Annie!’ said the Doctor. ‘No, no, no!’
+
+‘In your mind there was none, I know, my husband!’ she returned. ‘And
+when I came to you, that night, to lay down all my load of shame and
+grief, and knew that I had to tell that, underneath your roof, one of my
+own kindred, to whom you had been a benefactor, for the love of me, had
+spoken to me words that should have found no utterance, even if I had
+been the weak and mercenary wretch he thought me--my mind revolted from
+the taint the very tale conveyed. It died upon my lips, and from that
+hour till now has never passed them.’
+
+Mrs. Markleham, with a short groan, leaned back in her easy-chair; and
+retired behind her fan, as if she were never coming out any more.
+
+‘I have never, but in your presence, interchanged a word with him from
+that time; then, only when it has been necessary for the avoidance of
+this explanation. Years have passed since he knew, from me, what his
+situation here was. The kindnesses you have secretly done for his
+advancement, and then disclosed to me, for my surprise and pleasure,
+have been, you will believe, but aggravations of the unhappiness and
+burden of my secret.’
+
+She sunk down gently at the Doctor’s feet, though he did his utmost to
+prevent her; and said, looking up, tearfully, into his face:
+
+‘Do not speak to me yet! Let me say a little more! Right or wrong, if
+this were to be done again, I think I should do just the same. You never
+can know what it was to be devoted to you, with those old associations;
+to find that anyone could be so hard as to suppose that the truth of my
+heart was bartered away, and to be surrounded by appearances confirming
+that belief. I was very young, and had no adviser. Between mama and
+me, in all relating to you, there was a wide division. If I shrunk into
+myself, hiding the disrespect I had undergone, it was because I honoured
+you so much, and so much wished that you should honour me!’
+
+‘Annie, my pure heart!’ said the Doctor, ‘my dear girl!’
+
+‘A little more! a very few words more! I used to think there were so
+many whom you might have married, who would not have brought such charge
+and trouble on you, and who would have made your home a worthier home. I
+used to be afraid that I had better have remained your pupil, and almost
+your child. I used to fear that I was so unsuited to your learning and
+wisdom. If all this made me shrink within myself (as indeed it did),
+when I had that to tell, it was still because I honoured you so much,
+and hoped that you might one day honour me.’
+
+‘That day has shone this long time, Annie,’ said the Doctor, ‘and can
+have but one long night, my dear.’
+
+‘Another word! I afterwards meant--steadfastly meant, and purposed to
+myself--to bear the whole weight of knowing the unworthiness of one
+to whom you had been so good. And now a last word, dearest and best of
+friends! The cause of the late change in you, which I have seen with
+so much pain and sorrow, and have sometimes referred to my old
+apprehension--at other times to lingering suppositions nearer to the
+truth--has been made clear tonight; and by an accident I have also come
+to know, tonight, the full measure of your noble trust in me, even
+under that mistake. I do not hope that any love and duty I may render in
+return, will ever make me worthy of your priceless confidence; but with
+all this knowledge fresh upon me, I can lift my eyes to this dear
+face, revered as a father’s, loved as a husband’s, sacred to me in
+my childhood as a friend’s, and solemnly declare that in my lightest
+thought I have never wronged you; never wavered in the love and the
+fidelity I owe you!’
+
+She had her arms around the Doctor’s neck, and he leant his head down
+over her, mingling his grey hair with her dark brown tresses.
+
+‘Oh, hold me to your heart, my husband! Never cast me out! Do not think
+or speak of disparity between us, for there is none, except in all my
+many imperfections. Every succeeding year I have known this better, as I
+have esteemed you more and more. Oh, take me to your heart, my husband,
+for my love was founded on a rock, and it endures!’
+
+In the silence that ensued, my aunt walked gravely up to Mr. Dick,
+without at all hurrying herself, and gave him a hug and a sounding kiss.
+And it was very fortunate, with a view to his credit, that she did so;
+for I am confident that I detected him at that moment in the act of
+making preparations to stand on one leg, as an appropriate expression of
+delight.
+
+‘You are a very remarkable man, Dick!’ said my aunt, with an air of
+unqualified approbation; ‘and never pretend to be anything else, for I
+know better!’
+
+With that, my aunt pulled him by the sleeve, and nodded to me; and we
+three stole quietly out of the room, and came away.
+
+‘That’s a settler for our military friend, at any rate,’ said my aunt,
+on the way home. ‘I should sleep the better for that, if there was
+nothing else to be glad of!’
+
+‘She was quite overcome, I am afraid,’ said Mr. Dick, with great
+commiseration.
+
+‘What! Did you ever see a crocodile overcome?’ inquired my aunt.
+
+‘I don’t think I ever saw a crocodile,’ returned Mr. Dick, mildly.
+
+‘There never would have been anything the matter, if it hadn’t been for
+that old Animal,’ said my aunt, with strong emphasis. ‘It’s very much
+to be wished that some mothers would leave their daughters alone after
+marriage, and not be so violently affectionate. They seem to think the
+only return that can be made them for bringing an unfortunate young
+woman into the world--God bless my soul, as if she asked to be brought,
+or wanted to come!--is full liberty to worry her out of it again. What
+are you thinking of, Trot?’
+
+I was thinking of all that had been said. My mind was still running on
+some of the expressions used. ‘There can be no disparity in marriage
+like unsuitability of mind and purpose.’ ‘The first mistaken impulse of
+an undisciplined heart.’ ‘My love was founded on a rock.’ But we were at
+home; and the trodden leaves were lying under-foot, and the autumn wind
+was blowing.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 46. INTELLIGENCE
+
+
+I must have been married, if I may trust to my imperfect memory for
+dates, about a year or so, when one evening, as I was returning from a
+solitary walk, thinking of the book I was then writing--for my success
+had steadily increased with my steady application, and I was engaged at
+that time upon my first work of fiction--I came past Mrs. Steerforth’s
+house. I had often passed it before, during my residence in that
+neighbourhood, though never when I could choose another road. Howbeit,
+it did sometimes happen that it was not easy to find another, without
+making a long circuit; and so I had passed that way, upon the whole,
+pretty often.
+
+I had never done more than glance at the house, as I went by with a
+quickened step. It had been uniformly gloomy and dull. None of the best
+rooms abutted on the road; and the narrow, heavily-framed old-fashioned
+windows, never cheerful under any circumstances, looked very dismal,
+close shut, and with their blinds always drawn down. There was a covered
+way across a little paved court, to an entrance that was never used; and
+there was one round staircase window, at odds with all the rest, and the
+only one unshaded by a blind, which had the same unoccupied blank look.
+I do not remember that I ever saw a light in all the house. If I had
+been a casual passer-by, I should have probably supposed that some
+childless person lay dead in it. If I had happily possessed no knowledge
+of the place, and had seen it often in that changeless state, I should
+have pleased my fancy with many ingenious speculations, I dare say.
+
+As it was, I thought as little of it as I might. But my mind could not
+go by it and leave it, as my body did; and it usually awakened a long
+train of meditations. Coming before me, on this particular evening that
+I mention, mingled with the childish recollections and later fancies,
+the ghosts of half-formed hopes, the broken shadows of disappointments
+dimly seen and understood, the blending of experience and imagination,
+incidental to the occupation with which my thoughts had been busy, it
+was more than commonly suggestive. I fell into a brown study as I walked
+on, and a voice at my side made me start.
+
+It was a woman’s voice, too. I was not long in recollecting Mrs.
+Steerforth’s little parlour-maid, who had formerly worn blue ribbons in
+her cap. She had taken them out now, to adapt herself, I suppose, to
+the altered character of the house; and wore but one or two disconsolate
+bows of sober brown.
+
+‘If you please, sir, would you have the goodness to walk in, and speak
+to Miss Dartle?’
+
+‘Has Miss Dartle sent you for me?’ I inquired.
+
+‘Not tonight, sir, but it’s just the same. Miss Dartle saw you pass a
+night or two ago; and I was to sit at work on the staircase, and when I
+saw you pass again, to ask you to step in and speak to her.’
+
+I turned back, and inquired of my conductor, as we went along, how Mrs.
+Steerforth was. She said her lady was but poorly, and kept her own room
+a good deal.
+
+When we arrived at the house, I was directed to Miss Dartle in the
+garden, and left to make my presence known to her myself. She was
+sitting on a seat at one end of a kind of terrace, overlooking the great
+city. It was a sombre evening, with a lurid light in the sky; and as
+I saw the prospect scowling in the distance, with here and there some
+larger object starting up into the sullen glare, I fancied it was no
+inapt companion to the memory of this fierce woman.
+
+She saw me as I advanced, and rose for a moment to receive me. I thought
+her, then, still more colourless and thin than when I had seen her last;
+the flashing eyes still brighter, and the scar still plainer.
+
+Our meeting was not cordial. We had parted angrily on the last occasion;
+and there was an air of disdain about her, which she took no pains to
+conceal.
+
+‘I am told you wish to speak to me, Miss Dartle,’ said I, standing near
+her, with my hand upon the back of the seat, and declining her gesture
+of invitation to sit down.
+
+‘If you please,’ said she. ‘Pray has this girl been found?’
+
+‘No.’
+
+‘And yet she has run away!’
+
+I saw her thin lips working while she looked at me, as if they were
+eager to load her with reproaches.
+
+‘Run away?’ I repeated.
+
+‘Yes! From him,’ she said, with a laugh. ‘If she is not found, perhaps
+she never will be found. She may be dead!’
+
+The vaunting cruelty with which she met my glance, I never saw expressed
+in any other face that ever I have seen.
+
+‘To wish her dead,’ said I, ‘may be the kindest wish that one of her own
+sex could bestow upon her. I am glad that time has softened you so much,
+Miss Dartle.’
+
+She condescended to make no reply, but, turning on me with another
+scornful laugh, said:
+
+‘The friends of this excellent and much-injured young lady are friends
+of yours. You are their champion, and assert their rights. Do you wish
+to know what is known of her?’
+
+‘Yes,’ said I.
+
+She rose with an ill-favoured smile, and taking a few steps towards
+a wall of holly that was near at hand, dividing the lawn from a
+kitchen-garden, said, in a louder voice, ‘Come here!’--as if she were
+calling to some unclean beast.
+
+‘You will restrain any demonstrative championship or vengeance in this
+place, of course, Mr. Copperfield?’ said she, looking over her shoulder
+at me with the same expression.
+
+I inclined my head, without knowing what she meant; and she said, ‘Come
+here!’ again; and returned, followed by the respectable Mr. Littimer,
+who, with undiminished respectability, made me a bow, and took up his
+position behind her. The air of wicked grace: of triumph, in which,
+strange to say, there was yet something feminine and alluring: with
+which she reclined upon the seat between us, and looked at me, was
+worthy of a cruel Princess in a Legend.
+
+‘Now,’ said she, imperiously, without glancing at him, and touching
+the old wound as it throbbed: perhaps, in this instance, with pleasure
+rather than pain. ‘Tell Mr. Copperfield about the flight.’
+
+‘Mr. James and myself, ma’am--’
+
+‘Don’t address yourself to me!’ she interrupted with a frown.
+
+‘Mr. James and myself, sir--’
+
+‘Nor to me, if you please,’ said I.
+
+Mr. Littimer, without being at all discomposed, signified by a slight
+obeisance, that anything that was most agreeable to us was most
+agreeable to him; and began again.
+
+‘Mr. James and myself have been abroad with the young woman, ever
+since she left Yarmouth under Mr. James’s protection. We have been in a
+variety of places, and seen a deal of foreign country. We have been in
+France, Switzerland, Italy, in fact, almost all parts.’
+
+He looked at the back of the seat, as if he were addressing himself to
+that; and softly played upon it with his hands, as if he were striking
+chords upon a dumb piano.
+
+‘Mr. James took quite uncommonly to the young woman; and was more
+settled, for a length of time, than I have known him to be since I have
+been in his service. The young woman was very improvable, and spoke the
+languages; and wouldn’t have been known for the same country-person. I
+noticed that she was much admired wherever we went.’
+
+Miss Dartle put her hand upon her side. I saw him steal a glance at her,
+and slightly smile to himself.
+
+‘Very much admired, indeed, the young woman was. What with her dress;
+what with the air and sun; what with being made so much of; what with
+this, that, and the other; her merits really attracted general notice.’
+
+He made a short pause. Her eyes wandered restlessly over the distant
+prospect, and she bit her nether lip to stop that busy mouth.
+
+Taking his hands from the seat, and placing one of them within the
+other, as he settled himself on one leg, Mr. Littimer proceeded, with
+his eyes cast down, and his respectable head a little advanced, and a
+little on one side:
+
+‘The young woman went on in this manner for some time, being
+occasionally low in her spirits, until I think she began to weary Mr.
+James by giving way to her low spirits and tempers of that kind; and
+things were not so comfortable. Mr. James he began to be restless again.
+The more restless he got, the worse she got; and I must say, for myself,
+that I had a very difficult time of it indeed between the two. Still
+matters were patched up here, and made good there, over and over again;
+and altogether lasted, I am sure, for a longer time than anybody could
+have expected.’
+
+Recalling her eyes from the distance, she looked at me again now, with
+her former air. Mr. Littimer, clearing his throat behind his hand with a
+respectable short cough, changed legs, and went on:
+
+‘At last, when there had been, upon the whole, a good many words and
+reproaches, Mr. James he set off one morning, from the neighbourhood of
+Naples, where we had a villa (the young woman being very partial to
+the sea), and, under pretence of coming back in a day or so, left it in
+charge with me to break it out, that, for the general happiness of all
+concerned, he was’--here an interruption of the short cough--‘gone. But
+Mr. James, I must say, certainly did behave extremely honourable; for
+he proposed that the young woman should marry a very respectable person,
+who was fully prepared to overlook the past, and who was, at least, as
+good as anybody the young woman could have aspired to in a regular way:
+her connexions being very common.’
+
+He changed legs again, and wetted his lips. I was convinced that the
+scoundrel spoke of himself, and I saw my conviction reflected in Miss
+Dartle’s face.
+
+‘This I also had it in charge to communicate. I was willing to do
+anything to relieve Mr. James from his difficulty, and to restore
+harmony between himself and an affectionate parent, who has undergone
+so much on his account. Therefore I undertook the commission. The
+young woman’s violence when she came to, after I broke the fact of his
+departure, was beyond all expectations. She was quite mad, and had to
+be held by force; or, if she couldn’t have got to a knife, or got to the
+sea, she’d have beaten her head against the marble floor.’
+
+Miss Dartle, leaning back upon the seat, with a light of exultation in
+her face, seemed almost to caress the sounds this fellow had uttered.
+
+‘But when I came to the second part of what had been entrusted to me,’
+said Mr. Littimer, rubbing his hands uneasily, ‘which anybody might
+have supposed would have been, at all events, appreciated as a kind
+intention, then the young woman came out in her true colours. A more
+outrageous person I never did see. Her conduct was surprisingly bad. She
+had no more gratitude, no more feeling, no more patience, no more reason
+in her, than a stock or a stone. If I hadn’t been upon my guard, I am
+convinced she would have had my blood.’
+
+‘I think the better of her for it,’ said I, indignantly.
+
+Mr. Littimer bent his head, as much as to say, ‘Indeed, sir? But you’re
+young!’ and resumed his narrative.
+
+‘It was necessary, in short, for a time, to take away everything nigh
+her, that she could do herself, or anybody else, an injury with, and
+to shut her up close. Notwithstanding which, she got out in the night;
+forced the lattice of a window, that I had nailed up myself; dropped on
+a vine that was trailed below; and never has been seen or heard of, to
+my knowledge, since.’
+
+‘She is dead, perhaps,’ said Miss Dartle, with a smile, as if she could
+have spurned the body of the ruined girl.
+
+‘She may have drowned herself, miss,’ returned Mr. Littimer, catching at
+an excuse for addressing himself to somebody. ‘It’s very possible. Or,
+she may have had assistance from the boatmen, and the boatmen’s wives
+and children. Being given to low company, she was very much in the
+habit of talking to them on the beach, Miss Dartle, and sitting by their
+boats. I have known her do it, when Mr. James has been away, whole days.
+Mr. James was far from pleased to find out, once, that she had told the
+children she was a boatman’s daughter, and that in her own country, long
+ago, she had roamed about the beach, like them.’
+
+Oh, Emily! Unhappy beauty! What a picture rose before me of her sitting
+on the far-off shore, among the children like herself when she was
+innocent, listening to little voices such as might have called her
+Mother had she been a poor man’s wife; and to the great voice of the
+sea, with its eternal ‘Never more!’
+
+‘When it was clear that nothing could be done, Miss Dartle--’
+
+‘Did I tell you not to speak to me?’ she said, with stern contempt.
+
+‘You spoke to me, miss,’ he replied. ‘I beg your pardon. But it is my
+service to obey.’
+
+‘Do your service,’ she returned. ‘Finish your story, and go!’
+
+‘When it was clear,’ he said, with infinite respectability and an
+obedient bow, ‘that she was not to be found, I went to Mr. James, at the
+place where it had been agreed that I should write to him, and informed
+him of what had occurred. Words passed between us in consequence, and
+I felt it due to my character to leave him. I could bear, and I have
+borne, a great deal from Mr. James; but he insulted me too far. He hurt
+me. Knowing the unfortunate difference between himself and his mother,
+and what her anxiety of mind was likely to be, I took the liberty of
+coming home to England, and relating--’
+
+‘For money which I paid him,’ said Miss Dartle to me.
+
+‘Just so, ma’am--and relating what I knew. I am not aware,’ said Mr.
+Littimer, after a moment’s reflection, ‘that there is anything else.
+I am at present out of employment, and should be happy to meet with a
+respectable situation.’
+
+Miss Dartle glanced at me, as though she would inquire if there were
+anything that I desired to ask. As there was something which had
+occurred to my mind, I said in reply:
+
+‘I could wish to know from this--creature,’ I could not bring myself
+to utter any more conciliatory word, ‘whether they intercepted a letter
+that was written to her from home, or whether he supposes that she
+received it.’
+
+He remained calm and silent, with his eyes fixed on the ground, and the
+tip of every finger of his right hand delicately poised against the tip
+of every finger of his left.
+
+Miss Dartle turned her head disdainfully towards him.
+
+‘I beg your pardon, miss,’ he said, awakening from his abstraction,
+‘but, however submissive to you, I have my position, though a servant.
+Mr. Copperfield and you, miss, are different people. If Mr. Copperfield
+wishes to know anything from me, I take the liberty of reminding Mr.
+Copperfield that he can put a question to me. I have a character to
+maintain.’
+
+After a momentary struggle with myself, I turned my eyes upon him, and
+said, ‘You have heard my question. Consider it addressed to yourself, if
+you choose. What answer do you make?’
+
+‘Sir,’ he rejoined, with an occasional separation and reunion of those
+delicate tips, ‘my answer must be qualified; because, to betray Mr.
+James’s confidence to his mother, and to betray it to you, are two
+different actions. It is not probable, I consider, that Mr. James would
+encourage the receipt of letters likely to increase low spirits and
+unpleasantness; but further than that, sir, I should wish to avoid
+going.’
+
+‘Is that all?’ inquired Miss Dartle of me.
+
+I indicated that I had nothing more to say. ‘Except,’ I added, as I
+saw him moving off, ‘that I understand this fellow’s part in the wicked
+story, and that, as I shall make it known to the honest man who has been
+her father from her childhood, I would recommend him to avoid going too
+much into public.’
+
+He had stopped the moment I began, and had listened with his usual
+repose of manner.
+
+‘Thank you, sir. But you’ll excuse me if I say, sir, that there are
+neither slaves nor slave-drivers in this country, and that people are
+not allowed to take the law into their own hands. If they do, it is
+more to their own peril, I believe, than to other people’s. Consequently
+speaking, I am not at all afraid of going wherever I may wish, sir.’
+
+With that, he made a polite bow; and, with another to Miss Dartle, went
+away through the arch in the wall of holly by which he had come. Miss
+Dartle and I regarded each other for a little while in silence; her
+manner being exactly what it was, when she had produced the man.
+
+‘He says besides,’ she observed, with a slow curling of her lip, ‘that
+his master, as he hears, is coasting Spain; and this done, is away
+to gratify his seafaring tastes till he is weary. But this is of no
+interest to you. Between these two proud persons, mother and son, there
+is a wider breach than before, and little hope of its healing, for they
+are one at heart, and time makes each more obstinate and imperious.
+Neither is this of any interest to you; but it introduces what I wish to
+say. This devil whom you make an angel of. I mean this low girl whom he
+picked out of the tide-mud,’ with her black eyes full upon me, and her
+passionate finger up, ‘may be alive,--for I believe some common things
+are hard to die. If she is, you will desire to have a pearl of such
+price found and taken care of. We desire that, too; that he may not
+by any chance be made her prey again. So far, we are united in one
+interest; and that is why I, who would do her any mischief that so
+coarse a wretch is capable of feeling, have sent for you to hear what
+you have heard.’
+
+I saw, by the change in her face, that someone was advancing behind me.
+It was Mrs. Steerforth, who gave me her hand more coldly than of yore,
+and with an augmentation of her former stateliness of manner, but still,
+I perceived--and I was touched by it--with an ineffaceable remembrance
+of my old love for her son. She was greatly altered. Her fine figure was
+far less upright, her handsome face was deeply marked, and her hair was
+almost white. But when she sat down on the seat, she was a handsome lady
+still; and well I knew the bright eye with its lofty look, that had been
+a light in my very dreams at school.
+
+‘Is Mr. Copperfield informed of everything, Rosa?’
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+‘And has he heard Littimer himself?’
+
+‘Yes; I have told him why you wished it.’ ‘You are a good girl. I have
+had some slight correspondence with your former friend, sir,’ addressing
+me, ‘but it has not restored his sense of duty or natural obligation.
+Therefore I have no other object in this, than what Rosa has mentioned.
+If, by the course which may relieve the mind of the decent man you
+brought here (for whom I am sorry--I can say no more), my son may be
+saved from again falling into the snares of a designing enemy, well!’
+
+She drew herself up, and sat looking straight before her, far away.
+
+‘Madam,’ I said respectfully, ‘I understand. I assure you I am in no
+danger of putting any strained construction on your motives. But I must
+say, even to you, having known this injured family from childhood,
+that if you suppose the girl, so deeply wronged, has not been cruelly
+deluded, and would not rather die a hundred deaths than take a cup of
+water from your son’s hand now, you cherish a terrible mistake.’
+
+‘Well, Rosa, well!’ said Mrs. Steerforth, as the other was about to
+interpose, ‘it is no matter. Let it be. You are married, sir, I am
+told?’
+
+I answered that I had been some time married.
+
+‘And are doing well? I hear little in the quiet life I lead, but I
+understand you are beginning to be famous.’
+
+‘I have been very fortunate,’ I said, ‘and find my name connected with
+some praise.’
+
+‘You have no mother?’--in a softened voice.
+
+‘No.’
+
+‘It is a pity,’ she returned. ‘She would have been proud of you. Good
+night!’
+
+I took the hand she held out with a dignified, unbending air, and it
+was as calm in mine as if her breast had been at peace. Her pride could
+still its very pulses, it appeared, and draw the placid veil before
+her face, through which she sat looking straight before her on the far
+distance.
+
+As I moved away from them along the terrace, I could not help observing
+how steadily they both sat gazing on the prospect, and how it thickened
+and closed around them. Here and there, some early lamps were seen to
+twinkle in the distant city; and in the eastern quarter of the sky
+the lurid light still hovered. But, from the greater part of the broad
+valley interposed, a mist was rising like a sea, which, mingling with
+the darkness, made it seem as if the gathering waters would encompass
+them. I have reason to remember this, and think of it with awe; for
+before I looked upon those two again, a stormy sea had risen to their
+feet.
+
+Reflecting on what had been thus told me, I felt it right that it should
+be communicated to Mr. Peggotty. On the following evening I went into
+London in quest of him. He was always wandering about from place to
+place, with his one object of recovering his niece before him; but was
+more in London than elsewhere. Often and often, now, had I seen him in
+the dead of night passing along the streets, searching, among the few
+who loitered out of doors at those untimely hours, for what he dreaded
+to find.
+
+He kept a lodging over the little chandler’s shop in Hungerford Market,
+which I have had occasion to mention more than once, and from which he
+first went forth upon his errand of mercy. Hither I directed my walk. On
+making inquiry for him, I learned from the people of the house that he
+had not gone out yet, and I should find him in his room upstairs.
+
+He was sitting reading by a window in which he kept a few plants. The
+room was very neat and orderly. I saw in a moment that it was always
+kept prepared for her reception, and that he never went out but he
+thought it possible he might bring her home. He had not heard my tap
+at the door, and only raised his eyes when I laid my hand upon his
+shoulder.
+
+‘Mas’r Davy! Thankee, sir! thankee hearty, for this visit! Sit ye down.
+You’re kindly welcome, sir!’
+
+‘Mr. Peggotty,’ said I, taking the chair he handed me, ‘don’t expect
+much! I have heard some news.’
+
+‘Of Em’ly!’
+
+He put his hand, in a nervous manner, on his mouth, and turned pale, as
+he fixed his eyes on mine.
+
+‘It gives no clue to where she is; but she is not with him.’
+
+He sat down, looking intently at me, and listened in profound silence
+to all I had to tell. I well remember the sense of dignity, beauty even,
+with which the patient gravity of his face impressed me, when, having
+gradually removed his eyes from mine, he sat looking downward, leaning
+his forehead on his hand. He offered no interruption, but remained
+throughout perfectly still. He seemed to pursue her figure through
+the narrative, and to let every other shape go by him, as if it were
+nothing.
+
+When I had done, he shaded his face, and continued silent. I looked out
+of the window for a little while, and occupied myself with the plants.
+
+‘How do you fare to feel about it, Mas’r Davy?’ he inquired at length.
+
+‘I think that she is living,’ I replied.
+
+‘I doen’t know. Maybe the first shock was too rough, and in the wildness
+of her art--! That there blue water as she used to speak on. Could she
+have thowt o’ that so many year, because it was to be her grave!’
+
+He said this, musing, in a low, frightened voice; and walked across the
+little room.
+
+‘And yet,’ he added, ‘Mas’r Davy, I have felt so sure as she was
+living--I have know’d, awake and sleeping, as it was so trew that I
+should find her--I have been so led on by it, and held up by it--that I
+doen’t believe I can have been deceived. No! Em’ly’s alive!’
+
+He put his hand down firmly on the table, and set his sunburnt face into
+a resolute expression.
+
+‘My niece, Em’ly, is alive, sir!’ he said, steadfastly. ‘I doen’t know
+wheer it comes from, or how ‘tis, but I am told as she’s alive!’
+
+He looked almost like a man inspired, as he said it. I waited for a
+few moments, until he could give me his undivided attention; and then
+proceeded to explain the precaution, that, it had occurred to me last
+night, it would be wise to take.
+
+‘Now, my dear friend--‘I began.
+
+‘Thankee, thankee, kind sir,’ he said, grasping my hand in both of his.
+
+‘If she should make her way to London, which is likely--for where could
+she lose herself so readily as in this vast city; and what would she
+wish to do, but lose and hide herself, if she does not go home?--’
+
+‘And she won’t go home,’ he interposed, shaking his head mournfully. ‘If
+she had left of her own accord, she might; not as It was, sir.’
+
+‘If she should come here,’ said I, ‘I believe there is one person,
+here, more likely to discover her than any other in the world. Do
+you remember--hear what I say, with fortitude--think of your great
+object!--do you remember Martha?’
+
+‘Of our town?’
+
+I needed no other answer than his face.
+
+‘Do you know that she is in London?’
+
+‘I have seen her in the streets,’ he answered, with a shiver.
+
+‘But you don’t know,’ said I, ‘that Emily was charitable to her, with
+Ham’s help, long before she fled from home. Nor, that, when we met one
+night, and spoke together in the room yonder, over the way, she listened
+at the door.’
+
+‘Mas’r Davy!’ he replied in astonishment. ‘That night when it snew so
+hard?’
+
+‘That night. I have never seen her since. I went back, after parting
+from you, to speak to her, but she was gone. I was unwilling to mention
+her to you then, and I am now; but she is the person of whom I speak,
+and with whom I think we should communicate. Do you understand?’
+
+‘Too well, sir,’ he replied. We had sunk our voices, almost to a
+whisper, and continued to speak in that tone.
+
+‘You say you have seen her. Do you think that you could find her? I
+could only hope to do so by chance.’
+
+‘I think, Mas’r Davy, I know wheer to look.’
+
+‘It is dark. Being together, shall we go out now, and try to find her
+tonight?’
+
+He assented, and prepared to accompany me. Without appearing to observe
+what he was doing, I saw how carefully he adjusted the little room,
+put a candle ready and the means of lighting it, arranged the bed, and
+finally took out of a drawer one of her dresses (I remember to have
+seen her wear it), neatly folded with some other garments, and a bonnet,
+which he placed upon a chair. He made no allusion to these clothes,
+neither did I. There they had been waiting for her, many and many a
+night, no doubt.
+
+‘The time was, Mas’r Davy,’ he said, as we came downstairs, ‘when I
+thowt this girl, Martha, a’most like the dirt underneath my Em’ly’s
+feet. God forgive me, theer’s a difference now!’
+
+As we went along, partly to hold him in conversation, and partly to
+satisfy myself, I asked him about Ham. He said, almost in the same words
+as formerly, that Ham was just the same, ‘wearing away his life with
+kiender no care nohow for ‘t; but never murmuring, and liked by all’.
+
+I asked him what he thought Ham’s state of mind was, in reference to the
+cause of their misfortunes? Whether he believed it was dangerous? What
+he supposed, for example, Ham would do, if he and Steerforth ever should
+encounter?
+
+‘I doen’t know, sir,’ he replied. ‘I have thowt of it oftentimes, but I
+can’t awize myself of it, no matters.’
+
+I recalled to his remembrance the morning after her departure, when we
+were all three on the beach. ‘Do you recollect,’ said I, ‘a certain wild
+way in which he looked out to sea, and spoke about “the end of it”?’
+
+‘Sure I do!’ said he.
+
+‘What do you suppose he meant?’
+
+‘Mas’r Davy,’ he replied, ‘I’ve put the question to myself a mort o’
+times, and never found no answer. And theer’s one curious thing--that,
+though he is so pleasant, I wouldn’t fare to feel comfortable to try and
+get his mind upon ‘t. He never said a wured to me as warn’t as dootiful
+as dootiful could be, and it ain’t likely as he’d begin to speak any
+other ways now; but it’s fur from being fleet water in his mind, where
+them thowts lays. It’s deep, sir, and I can’t see down.’
+
+‘You are right,’ said I, ‘and that has sometimes made me anxious.’
+
+‘And me too, Mas’r Davy,’ he rejoined. ‘Even more so, I do assure you,
+than his ventersome ways, though both belongs to the alteration in him.
+I doen’t know as he’d do violence under any circumstances, but I hope as
+them two may be kep asunders.’
+
+We had come, through Temple Bar, into the city. Conversing no more now,
+and walking at my side, he yielded himself up to the one aim of his
+devoted life, and went on, with that hushed concentration of his
+faculties which would have made his figure solitary in a multitude.
+We were not far from Blackfriars Bridge, when he turned his head and
+pointed to a solitary female figure flitting along the opposite side of
+the street. I knew it, readily, to be the figure that we sought.
+
+We crossed the road, and were pressing on towards her, when it occurred
+to me that she might be more disposed to feel a woman’s interest in the
+lost girl, if we spoke to her in a quieter place, aloof from the crowd,
+and where we should be less observed. I advised my companion, therefore,
+that we should not address her yet, but follow her; consulting in this,
+likewise, an indistinct desire I had, to know where she went.
+
+He acquiescing, we followed at a distance: never losing sight of her,
+but never caring to come very near, as she frequently looked about.
+Once, she stopped to listen to a band of music; and then we stopped too.
+
+She went on a long way. Still we went on. It was evident, from the
+manner in which she held her course, that she was going to some fixed
+destination; and this, and her keeping in the busy streets, and I
+suppose the strange fascination in the secrecy and mystery of so
+following anyone, made me adhere to my first purpose. At length she
+turned into a dull, dark street, where the noise and crowd were lost;
+and I said, ‘We may speak to her now’; and, mending our pace, we went
+after her.
+
+
+CHAPTER 47. MARTHA
+
+
+We were now down in Westminster. We had turned back to follow her,
+having encountered her coming towards us; and Westminster Abbey was
+the point at which she passed from the lights and noise of the leading
+streets. She proceeded so quickly, when she got free of the two currents
+of passengers setting towards and from the bridge, that, between this
+and the advance she had of us when she struck off, we were in the narrow
+water-side street by Millbank before we came up with her. At that moment
+she crossed the road, as if to avoid the footsteps that she heard so
+close behind; and, without looking back, passed on even more rapidly.
+
+A glimpse of the river through a dull gateway, where some waggons were
+housed for the night, seemed to arrest my feet. I touched my companion
+without speaking, and we both forbore to cross after her, and both
+followed on that opposite side of the way; keeping as quietly as we
+could in the shadow of the houses, but keeping very near her.
+
+There was, and is when I write, at the end of that low-lying street,
+a dilapidated little wooden building, probably an obsolete old
+ferry-house. Its position is just at that point where the street ceases,
+and the road begins to lie between a row of houses and the river. As
+soon as she came here, and saw the water, she stopped as if she had come
+to her destination; and presently went slowly along by the brink of the
+river, looking intently at it.
+
+All the way here, I had supposed that she was going to some house;
+indeed, I had vaguely entertained the hope that the house might be in
+some way associated with the lost girl. But that one dark glimpse of the
+river, through the gateway, had instinctively prepared me for her going
+no farther.
+
+The neighbourhood was a dreary one at that time; as oppressive, sad, and
+solitary by night, as any about London. There were neither wharves nor
+houses on the melancholy waste of road near the great blank Prison. A
+sluggish ditch deposited its mud at the prison walls. Coarse grass and
+rank weeds straggled over all the marshy land in the vicinity. In one
+part, carcases of houses, inauspiciously begun and never finished,
+rotted away. In another, the ground was cumbered with rusty iron
+monsters of steam-boilers, wheels, cranks, pipes, furnaces, paddles,
+anchors, diving-bells, windmill-sails, and I know not what strange
+objects, accumulated by some speculator, and grovelling in the dust,
+underneath which--having sunk into the soil of their own weight in wet
+weather--they had the appearance of vainly trying to hide themselves.
+The clash and glare of sundry fiery Works upon the river-side, arose
+by night to disturb everything except the heavy and unbroken smoke that
+poured out of their chimneys. Slimy gaps and causeways, winding among
+old wooden piles, with a sickly substance clinging to the latter, like
+green hair, and the rags of last year’s handbills offering rewards for
+drowned men fluttering above high-water mark, led down through the ooze
+and slush to the ebb-tide. There was a story that one of the pits
+dug for the dead in the time of the Great Plague was hereabout; and
+a blighting influence seemed to have proceeded from it over the whole
+place. Or else it looked as if it had gradually decomposed into that
+nightmare condition, out of the overflowings of the polluted stream.
+
+As if she were a part of the refuse it had cast out, and left to
+corruption and decay, the girl we had followed strayed down to the
+river’s brink, and stood in the midst of this night-picture, lonely and
+still, looking at the water.
+
+There were some boats and barges astrand in the mud, and these enabled
+us to come within a few yards of her without being seen. I then signed
+to Mr. Peggotty to remain where he was, and emerged from their shade to
+speak to her. I did not approach her solitary figure without trembling;
+for this gloomy end to her determined walk, and the way in which she
+stood, almost within the cavernous shadow of the iron bridge, looking
+at the lights crookedly reflected in the strong tide, inspired a dread
+within me.
+
+I think she was talking to herself. I am sure, although absorbed in
+gazing at the water, that her shawl was off her shoulders, and that she
+was muffling her hands in it, in an unsettled and bewildered way, more
+like the action of a sleep-walker than a waking person. I know, and
+never can forget, that there was that in her wild manner which gave me
+no assurance but that she would sink before my eyes, until I had her arm
+within my grasp.
+
+At the same moment I said ‘Martha!’
+
+She uttered a terrified scream, and struggled with me with such strength
+that I doubt if I could have held her alone. But a stronger hand than
+mine was laid upon her; and when she raised her frightened eyes and saw
+whose it was, she made but one more effort and dropped down between us.
+We carried her away from the water to where there were some dry stones,
+and there laid her down, crying and moaning. In a little while she sat
+among the stones, holding her wretched head with both her hands.
+
+‘Oh, the river!’ she cried passionately. ‘Oh, the river!’
+
+‘Hush, hush!’ said I. ‘Calm yourself.’
+
+But she still repeated the same words, continually exclaiming, ‘Oh, the
+river!’ over and over again.
+
+‘I know it’s like me!’ she exclaimed. ‘I know that I belong to it.
+I know that it’s the natural company of such as I am! It comes from
+country places, where there was once no harm in it--and it creeps
+through the dismal streets, defiled and miserable--and it goes away,
+like my life, to a great sea, that is always troubled--and I feel that
+I must go with it!’ I have never known what despair was, except in the
+tone of those words.
+
+‘I can’t keep away from it. I can’t forget it. It haunts me day and
+night. It’s the only thing in all the world that I am fit for, or that’s
+fit for me. Oh, the dreadful river!’
+
+The thought passed through my mind that in the face of my companion,
+as he looked upon her without speech or motion, I might have read his
+niece’s history, if I had known nothing of it. I never saw, in any
+painting or reality, horror and compassion so impressively blended. He
+shook as if he would have fallen; and his hand--I touched it with my
+own, for his appearance alarmed me--was deadly cold.
+
+‘She is in a state of frenzy,’ I whispered to him. ‘She will speak
+differently in a little time.’
+
+I don’t know what he would have said in answer. He made some motion with
+his mouth, and seemed to think he had spoken; but he had only pointed to
+her with his outstretched hand.
+
+A new burst of crying came upon her now, in which she once more hid
+her face among the stones, and lay before us, a prostrate image of
+humiliation and ruin. Knowing that this state must pass, before we could
+speak to her with any hope, I ventured to restrain him when he would
+have raised her, and we stood by in silence until she became more
+tranquil.
+
+‘Martha,’ said I then, leaning down, and helping her to rise--she seemed
+to want to rise as if with the intention of going away, but she was
+weak, and leaned against a boat. ‘Do you know who this is, who is with
+me?’
+
+She said faintly, ‘Yes.’
+
+‘Do you know that we have followed you a long way tonight?’
+
+She shook her head. She looked neither at him nor at me, but stood in
+a humble attitude, holding her bonnet and shawl in one hand, without
+appearing conscious of them, and pressing the other, clenched, against
+her forehead.
+
+‘Are you composed enough,’ said I, ‘to speak on the subject which so
+interested you--I hope Heaven may remember it!--that snowy night?’
+
+Her sobs broke out afresh, and she murmured some inarticulate thanks to
+me for not having driven her away from the door.
+
+‘I want to say nothing for myself,’ she said, after a few moments. ‘I
+am bad, I am lost. I have no hope at all. But tell him, sir,’ she had
+shrunk away from him, ‘if you don’t feel too hard to me to do it, that
+I never was in any way the cause of his misfortune.’ ‘It has never been
+attributed to you,’ I returned, earnestly responding to her earnestness.
+
+‘It was you, if I don’t deceive myself,’ she said, in a broken voice,
+‘that came into the kitchen, the night she took such pity on me; was so
+gentle to me; didn’t shrink away from me like all the rest, and gave me
+such kind help! Was it you, sir?’
+
+‘It was,’ said I.
+
+‘I should have been in the river long ago,’ she said, glancing at it
+with a terrible expression, ‘if any wrong to her had been upon my mind.
+I never could have kept out of it a single winter’s night, if I had not
+been free of any share in that!’
+
+‘The cause of her flight is too well understood,’ I said. ‘You are
+innocent of any part in it, we thoroughly believe,--we know.’
+
+‘Oh, I might have been much the better for her, if I had had a better
+heart!’ exclaimed the girl, with most forlorn regret; ‘for she was
+always good to me! She never spoke a word to me but what was pleasant
+and right. Is it likely I would try to make her what I am myself,
+knowing what I am myself, so well? When I lost everything that makes
+life dear, the worst of all my thoughts was that I was parted for ever
+from her!’
+
+Mr. Peggotty, standing with one hand on the gunwale of the boat, and his
+eyes cast down, put his disengaged hand before his face.
+
+‘And when I heard what had happened before that snowy night, from some
+belonging to our town,’ cried Martha, ‘the bitterest thought in all my
+mind was, that the people would remember she once kept company with me,
+and would say I had corrupted her! When, Heaven knows, I would have died
+to have brought back her good name!’
+
+Long unused to any self-control, the piercing agony of her remorse and
+grief was terrible.
+
+‘To have died, would not have been much--what can I say?---I would
+have lived!’ she cried. ‘I would have lived to be old, in the wretched
+streets--and to wander about, avoided, in the dark--and to see the day
+break on the ghastly line of houses, and remember how the same sun used
+to shine into my room, and wake me once--I would have done even that, to
+save her!’
+
+Sinking on the stones, she took some in each hand, and clenched them
+up, as if she would have ground them. She writhed into some new posture
+constantly: stiffening her arms, twisting them before her face, as
+though to shut out from her eyes the little light there was, and
+drooping her head, as if it were heavy with insupportable recollections.
+
+‘What shall I ever do!’ she said, fighting thus with her despair. ‘How
+can I go on as I am, a solitary curse to myself, a living disgrace to
+everyone I come near!’ Suddenly she turned to my companion. ‘Stamp upon
+me, kill me! When she was your pride, you would have thought I had
+done her harm if I had brushed against her in the street. You can’t
+believe--why should you?---a syllable that comes out of my lips. It
+would be a burning shame upon you, even now, if she and I exchanged a
+word. I don’t complain. I don’t say she and I are alike--I know there
+is a long, long way between us. I only say, with all my guilt and
+wretchedness upon my head, that I am grateful to her from my soul, and
+love her. Oh, don’t think that all the power I had of loving anything is
+quite worn out! Throw me away, as all the world does. Kill me for being
+what I am, and having ever known her; but don’t think that of me!’
+
+He looked upon her, while she made this supplication, in a wild
+distracted manner; and, when she was silent, gently raised her.
+
+‘Martha,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘God forbid as I should judge you. Forbid
+as I, of all men, should do that, my girl! You doen’t know half the
+change that’s come, in course of time, upon me, when you think it
+likely. Well!’ he paused a moment, then went on. ‘You doen’t understand
+how ‘tis that this here gentleman and me has wished to speak to you. You
+doen’t understand what ‘tis we has afore us. Listen now!’
+
+His influence upon her was complete. She stood, shrinkingly, before him,
+as if she were afraid to meet his eyes; but her passionate sorrow was
+quite hushed and mute.
+
+‘If you heerd,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘owt of what passed between Mas’r
+Davy and me, th’ night when it snew so hard, you know as I have
+been--wheer not--fur to seek my dear niece. My dear niece,’ he repeated
+steadily. ‘Fur she’s more dear to me now, Martha, than she was dear
+afore.’
+
+She put her hands before her face; but otherwise remained quiet.
+
+‘I have heerd her tell,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘as you was early left
+fatherless and motherless, with no friend fur to take, in a rough
+seafaring-way, their place. Maybe you can guess that if you’d had such
+a friend, you’d have got into a way of being fond of him in course of
+time, and that my niece was kiender daughter-like to me.’
+
+As she was silently trembling, he put her shawl carefully about her,
+taking it up from the ground for that purpose.
+
+‘Whereby,’ said he, ‘I know, both as she would go to the wureld’s
+furdest end with me, if she could once see me again; and that she would
+fly to the wureld’s furdest end to keep off seeing me. For though she
+ain’t no call to doubt my love, and doen’t--and doen’t,’ he repeated,
+with a quiet assurance of the truth of what he said, ‘there’s shame
+steps in, and keeps betwixt us.’
+
+I read, in every word of his plain impressive way of delivering himself,
+new evidence of his having thought of this one topic, in every feature
+it presented.
+
+‘According to our reckoning,’ he proceeded, ‘Mas’r Davy’s here, and
+mine, she is like, one day, to make her own poor solitary course to
+London. We believe--Mas’r Davy, me, and all of us--that you are as
+innocent of everything that has befell her, as the unborn child. You’ve
+spoke of her being pleasant, kind, and gentle to you. Bless her, I knew
+she was! I knew she always was, to all. You’re thankful to her, and you
+love her. Help us all you can to find her, and may Heaven reward you!’
+
+She looked at him hastily, and for the first time, as if she were
+doubtful of what he had said.
+
+‘Will you trust me?’ she asked, in a low voice of astonishment.
+
+‘Full and free!’ said Mr. Peggotty.
+
+‘To speak to her, if I should ever find her; shelter her, if I have any
+shelter to divide with her; and then, without her knowledge, come to
+you, and bring you to her?’ she asked hurriedly.
+
+We both replied together, ‘Yes!’
+
+She lifted up her eyes, and solemnly declared that she would devote
+herself to this task, fervently and faithfully. That she would never
+waver in it, never be diverted from it, never relinquish it, while there
+was any chance of hope. If she were not true to it, might the object
+she now had in life, which bound her to something devoid of evil, in its
+passing away from her, leave her more forlorn and more despairing, if
+that were possible, than she had been upon the river’s brink that night;
+and then might all help, human and Divine, renounce her evermore!
+
+She did not raise her voice above her breath, or address us, but said
+this to the night sky; then stood profoundly quiet, looking at the
+gloomy water.
+
+We judged it expedient, now, to tell her all we knew; which I recounted
+at length. She listened with great attention, and with a face that often
+changed, but had the same purpose in all its varying expressions. Her
+eyes occasionally filled with tears, but those she repressed. It seemed
+as if her spirit were quite altered, and she could not be too quiet.
+
+She asked, when all was told, where we were to be communicated with, if
+occasion should arise. Under a dull lamp in the road, I wrote our two
+addresses on a leaf of my pocket-book, which I tore out and gave to
+her, and which she put in her poor bosom. I asked her where she lived
+herself. She said, after a pause, in no place long. It were better not
+to know.
+
+Mr. Peggotty suggesting to me, in a whisper, what had already occurred
+to myself, I took out my purse; but I could not prevail upon her to
+accept any money, nor could I exact any promise from her that she would
+do so at another time. I represented to her that Mr. Peggotty could
+not be called, for one in his condition, poor; and that the idea of her
+engaging in this search, while depending on her own resources, shocked
+us both. She continued steadfast. In this particular, his influence
+upon her was equally powerless with mine. She gratefully thanked him but
+remained inexorable.
+
+‘There may be work to be got,’ she said. ‘I’ll try.’
+
+‘At least take some assistance,’ I returned, ‘until you have tried.’
+
+‘I could not do what I have promised, for money,’ she replied. ‘I could
+not take it, if I was starving. To give me money would be to take away
+your trust, to take away the object that you have given me, to take away
+the only certain thing that saves me from the river.’
+
+‘In the name of the great judge,’ said I, ‘before whom you and all of us
+must stand at His dread time, dismiss that terrible idea! We can all do
+some good, if we will.’
+
+She trembled, and her lip shook, and her face was paler, as she
+answered:
+
+‘It has been put into your hearts, perhaps, to save a wretched creature
+for repentance. I am afraid to think so; it seems too bold. If any good
+should come of me, I might begin to hope; for nothing but harm has ever
+come of my deeds yet. I am to be trusted, for the first time in a long
+while, with my miserable life, on account of what you have given me to
+try for. I know no more, and I can say no more.’
+
+Again she repressed the tears that had begun to flow; and, putting out
+her trembling hand, and touching Mr. Peggotty, as if there was some
+healing virtue in him, went away along the desolate road. She had been
+ill, probably for a long time. I observed, upon that closer opportunity
+of observation, that she was worn and haggard, and that her sunken eyes
+expressed privation and endurance.
+
+We followed her at a short distance, our way lying in the same
+direction, until we came back into the lighted and populous streets. I
+had such implicit confidence in her declaration, that I then put it to
+Mr. Peggotty, whether it would not seem, in the onset, like distrusting
+her, to follow her any farther. He being of the same mind, and equally
+reliant on her, we suffered her to take her own road, and took ours,
+which was towards Highgate. He accompanied me a good part of the way;
+and when we parted, with a prayer for the success of this fresh effort,
+there was a new and thoughtful compassion in him that I was at no loss
+to interpret.
+
+It was midnight when I arrived at home. I had reached my own gate, and
+was standing listening for the deep bell of St. Paul’s, the sound
+of which I thought had been borne towards me among the multitude of
+striking clocks, when I was rather surprised to see that the door of my
+aunt’s cottage was open, and that a faint light in the entry was shining
+out across the road.
+
+Thinking that my aunt might have relapsed into one of her old alarms,
+and might be watching the progress of some imaginary conflagration in
+the distance, I went to speak to her. It was with very great surprise
+that I saw a man standing in her little garden.
+
+He had a glass and bottle in his hand, and was in the act of drinking. I
+stopped short, among the thick foliage outside, for the moon was up now,
+though obscured; and I recognized the man whom I had once supposed to be
+a delusion of Mr. Dick’s, and had once encountered with my aunt in the
+streets of the city.
+
+He was eating as well as drinking, and seemed to eat with a hungry
+appetite. He seemed curious regarding the cottage, too, as if it were
+the first time he had seen it. After stooping to put the bottle on the
+ground, he looked up at the windows, and looked about; though with a
+covert and impatient air, as if he was anxious to be gone.
+
+The light in the passage was obscured for a moment, and my aunt came
+out. She was agitated, and told some money into his hand. I heard it
+chink.
+
+‘What’s the use of this?’ he demanded.
+
+‘I can spare no more,’ returned my aunt.
+
+‘Then I can’t go,’ said he. ‘Here! You may take it back!’
+
+‘You bad man,’ returned my aunt, with great emotion; ‘how can you use me
+so? But why do I ask? It is because you know how weak I am! What have
+I to do, to free myself for ever of your visits, but to abandon you to
+your deserts?’
+
+‘And why don’t you abandon me to my deserts?’ said he.
+
+‘You ask me why!’ returned my aunt. ‘What a heart you must have!’
+
+He stood moodily rattling the money, and shaking his head, until at
+length he said:
+
+‘Is this all you mean to give me, then?’
+
+‘It is all I CAN give you,’ said my aunt. ‘You know I have had losses,
+and am poorer than I used to be. I have told you so. Having got it, why
+do you give me the pain of looking at you for another moment, and seeing
+what you have become?’
+
+‘I have become shabby enough, if you mean that,’ he said. ‘I lead the
+life of an owl.’
+
+‘You stripped me of the greater part of all I ever had,’ said my aunt.
+‘You closed my heart against the whole world, years and years. You
+treated me falsely, ungratefully, and cruelly. Go, and repent of it.
+Don’t add new injuries to the long, long list of injuries you have done
+me!’
+
+‘Aye!’ he returned. ‘It’s all very fine--Well! I must do the best I can,
+for the present, I suppose.’
+
+In spite of himself, he appeared abashed by my aunt’s indignant tears,
+and came slouching out of the garden. Taking two or three quick steps,
+as if I had just come up, I met him at the gate, and went in as he came
+out. We eyed one another narrowly in passing, and with no favour.
+
+‘Aunt,’ said I, hurriedly. ‘This man alarming you again! Let me speak to
+him. Who is he?’
+
+‘Child,’ returned my aunt, taking my arm, ‘come in, and don’t speak to
+me for ten minutes.’
+
+We sat down in her little parlour. My aunt retired behind the round
+green fan of former days, which was screwed on the back of a chair, and
+occasionally wiped her eyes, for about a quarter of an hour. Then she
+came out, and took a seat beside me.
+
+‘Trot,’ said my aunt, calmly, ‘it’s my husband.’
+
+‘Your husband, aunt? I thought he had been dead!’
+
+‘Dead to me,’ returned my aunt, ‘but living.’
+
+I sat in silent amazement.
+
+‘Betsey Trotwood don’t look a likely subject for the tender passion,’
+said my aunt, composedly, ‘but the time was, Trot, when she believed in
+that man most entirely. When she loved him, Trot, right well. When there
+was no proof of attachment and affection that she would not have given
+him. He repaid her by breaking her fortune, and nearly breaking her
+heart. So she put all that sort of sentiment, once and for ever, in a
+grave, and filled it up, and flattened it down.’
+
+‘My dear, good aunt!’
+
+‘I left him,’ my aunt proceeded, laying her hand as usual on the back of
+mine, ‘generously. I may say at this distance of time, Trot, that I left
+him generously. He had been so cruel to me, that I might have effected
+a separation on easy terms for myself; but I did not. He soon made ducks
+and drakes of what I gave him, sank lower and lower, married another
+woman, I believe, became an adventurer, a gambler, and a cheat. What he
+is now, you see. But he was a fine-looking man when I married him,’ said
+my aunt, with an echo of her old pride and admiration in her tone; ‘and
+I believed him--I was a fool!--to be the soul of honour!’
+
+She gave my hand a squeeze, and shook her head.
+
+‘He is nothing to me now, Trot--less than nothing. But, sooner than have
+him punished for his offences (as he would be if he prowled about in
+this country), I give him more money than I can afford, at intervals
+when he reappears, to go away. I was a fool when I married him; and I am
+so far an incurable fool on that subject, that, for the sake of what
+I once believed him to be, I wouldn’t have even this shadow of my idle
+fancy hardly dealt with. For I was in earnest, Trot, if ever a woman
+was.’
+
+My aunt dismissed the matter with a heavy sigh, and smoothed her dress.
+
+‘There, my dear!’ she said. ‘Now you know the beginning, middle, and
+end, and all about it. We won’t mention the subject to one another any
+more; neither, of course, will you mention it to anybody else. This is
+my grumpy, frumpy story, and we’ll keep it to ourselves, Trot!’
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 48. DOMESTIC
+
+
+I laboured hard at my book, without allowing it to interfere with the
+punctual discharge of my newspaper duties; and it came out and was very
+successful. I was not stunned by the praise which sounded in my ears,
+notwithstanding that I was keenly alive to it, and thought better of
+my own performance, I have little doubt, than anybody else did. It has
+always been in my observation of human nature, that a man who has any
+good reason to believe in himself never flourishes himself before the
+faces of other people in order that they may believe in him. For this
+reason, I retained my modesty in very self-respect; and the more praise
+I got, the more I tried to deserve.
+
+It is not my purpose, in this record, though in all other essentials
+it is my written memory, to pursue the history of my own fictions. They
+express themselves, and I leave them to themselves. When I refer to
+them, incidentally, it is only as a part of my progress.
+
+Having some foundation for believing, by this time, that nature and
+accident had made me an author, I pursued my vocation with confidence.
+Without such assurance I should certainly have left it alone, and
+bestowed my energy on some other endeavour. I should have tried to find
+out what nature and accident really had made me, and to be that, and
+nothing else. I had been writing, in the newspaper and elsewhere, so
+prosperously, that when my new success was achieved, I considered myself
+reasonably entitled to escape from the dreary debates. One joyful night,
+therefore, I noted down the music of the parliamentary bagpipes for the
+last time, and I have never heard it since; though I still recognize the
+old drone in the newspapers, without any substantial variation (except,
+perhaps, that there is more of it), all the livelong session.
+
+I now write of the time when I had been married, I suppose, about a year
+and a half. After several varieties of experiment, we had given up the
+housekeeping as a bad job. The house kept itself, and we kept a page.
+The principal function of this retainer was to quarrel with the cook;
+in which respect he was a perfect Whittington, without his cat, or the
+remotest chance of being made Lord Mayor.
+
+He appears to me to have lived in a hail of saucepan-lids. His whole
+existence was a scuffle. He would shriek for help on the most improper
+occasions,--as when we had a little dinner-party, or a few friends in
+the evening,--and would come tumbling out of the kitchen, with iron
+missiles flying after him. We wanted to get rid of him, but he was very
+much attached to us, and wouldn’t go. He was a tearful boy, and broke
+into such deplorable lamentations, when a cessation of our connexion
+was hinted at, that we were obliged to keep him. He had no mother--no
+anything in the way of a relative, that I could discover, except a
+sister, who fled to America the moment we had taken him off her hands;
+and he became quartered on us like a horrible young changeling. He had
+a lively perception of his own unfortunate state, and was always rubbing
+his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket, or stooping to blow his nose on
+the extreme corner of a little pocket-handkerchief, which he never would
+take completely out of his pocket, but always economized and secreted.
+
+This unlucky page, engaged in an evil hour at six pounds ten per annum,
+was a source of continual trouble to me. I watched him as he grew--and
+he grew like scarlet beans--with painful apprehensions of the time when
+he would begin to shave; even of the days when he would be bald or grey.
+I saw no prospect of ever getting rid of him; and, projecting myself
+into the future, used to think what an inconvenience he would be when he
+was an old man.
+
+I never expected anything less, than this unfortunate’s manner of
+getting me out of my difficulty. He stole Dora’s watch, which, like
+everything else belonging to us, had no particular place of its own;
+and, converting it into money, spent the produce (he was always a
+weak-minded boy) in incessantly riding up and down between London and
+Uxbridge outside the coach. He was taken to Bow Street, as well as
+I remember, on the completion of his fifteenth journey; when
+four-and-sixpence, and a second-hand fife which he couldn’t play, were
+found upon his person.
+
+The surprise and its consequences would have been much less disagreeable
+to me if he had not been penitent. But he was very penitent indeed, and
+in a peculiar way--not in the lump, but by instalments. For example:
+the day after that on which I was obliged to appear against him, he made
+certain revelations touching a hamper in the cellar, which we believed
+to be full of wine, but which had nothing in it except bottles and
+corks. We supposed he had now eased his mind, and told the worst he knew
+of the cook; but, a day or two afterwards, his conscience sustained a
+new twinge, and he disclosed how she had a little girl, who, early every
+morning, took away our bread; and also how he himself had been suborned
+to maintain the milkman in coals. In two or three days more, I was
+informed by the authorities of his having led to the discovery of
+sirloins of beef among the kitchen-stuff, and sheets in the rag-bag. A
+little while afterwards, he broke out in an entirely new direction, and
+confessed to a knowledge of burglarious intentions as to our premises,
+on the part of the pot-boy, who was immediately taken up. I got to be so
+ashamed of being such a victim, that I would have given him any money
+to hold his tongue, or would have offered a round bribe for his being
+permitted to run away. It was an aggravating circumstance in the case
+that he had no idea of this, but conceived that he was making me amends
+in every new discovery: not to say, heaping obligations on my head.
+
+At last I ran away myself, whenever I saw an emissary of the police
+approaching with some new intelligence; and lived a stealthy life until
+he was tried and ordered to be transported. Even then he couldn’t be
+quiet, but was always writing us letters; and wanted so much to see Dora
+before he went away, that Dora went to visit him, and fainted when she
+found herself inside the iron bars. In short, I had no peace of my life
+until he was expatriated, and made (as I afterwards heard) a shepherd
+of, ‘up the country’ somewhere; I have no geographical idea where.
+
+All this led me into some serious reflections, and presented our
+mistakes in a new aspect; as I could not help communicating to Dora one
+evening, in spite of my tenderness for her.
+
+‘My love,’ said I, ‘it is very painful to me to think that our want of
+system and management, involves not only ourselves (which we have got
+used to), but other people.’
+
+‘You have been silent for a long time, and now you are going to be
+cross!’ said Dora.
+
+‘No, my dear, indeed! Let me explain to you what I mean.’
+
+‘I think I don’t want to know,’ said Dora.
+
+‘But I want you to know, my love. Put Jip down.’
+
+Dora put his nose to mine, and said ‘Boh!’ to drive my seriousness away;
+but, not succeeding, ordered him into his Pagoda, and sat looking at
+me, with her hands folded, and a most resigned little expression of
+countenance.
+
+‘The fact is, my dear,’ I began, ‘there is contagion in us. We infect
+everyone about us.’
+
+I might have gone on in this figurative manner, if Dora’s face had not
+admonished me that she was wondering with all her might whether I was
+going to propose any new kind of vaccination, or other medical remedy,
+for this unwholesome state of ours. Therefore I checked myself, and made
+my meaning plainer.
+
+‘It is not merely, my pet,’ said I, ‘that we lose money and comfort, and
+even temper sometimes, by not learning to be more careful; but that we
+incur the serious responsibility of spoiling everyone who comes into
+our service, or has any dealings with us. I begin to be afraid that the
+fault is not entirely on one side, but that these people all turn out
+ill because we don’t turn out very well ourselves.’
+
+‘Oh, what an accusation,’ exclaimed Dora, opening her eyes wide; ‘to say
+that you ever saw me take gold watches! Oh!’
+
+‘My dearest,’ I remonstrated, ‘don’t talk preposterous nonsense! Who has
+made the least allusion to gold watches?’
+
+‘You did,’ returned Dora. ‘You know you did. You said I hadn’t turned
+out well, and compared me to him.’
+
+‘To whom?’ I asked.
+
+‘To the page,’ sobbed Dora. ‘Oh, you cruel fellow, to compare your
+affectionate wife to a transported page! Why didn’t you tell me
+your opinion of me before we were married? Why didn’t you say,
+you hard-hearted thing, that you were convinced I was worse than a
+transported page? Oh, what a dreadful opinion to have of me! Oh, my
+goodness!’
+
+‘Now, Dora, my love,’ I returned, gently trying to remove the
+handkerchief she pressed to her eyes, ‘this is not only very ridiculous
+of you, but very wrong. In the first place, it’s not true.’
+
+‘You always said he was a story-teller,’ sobbed Dora. ‘And now you say
+the same of me! Oh, what shall I do! What shall I do!’
+
+‘My darling girl,’ I retorted, ‘I really must entreat you to be
+reasonable, and listen to what I did say, and do say. My dear Dora,
+unless we learn to do our duty to those whom we employ, they will never
+learn to do their duty to us. I am afraid we present opportunities to
+people to do wrong, that never ought to be presented. Even if we were
+as lax as we are, in all our arrangements, by choice--which we are
+not--even if we liked it, and found it agreeable to be so--which we
+don’t--I am persuaded we should have no right to go on in this way. We
+are positively corrupting people. We are bound to think of that. I can’t
+help thinking of it, Dora. It is a reflection I am unable to dismiss,
+and it sometimes makes me very uneasy. There, dear, that’s all. Come
+now. Don’t be foolish!’
+
+Dora would not allow me, for a long time, to remove the handkerchief.
+She sat sobbing and murmuring behind it, that, if I was uneasy, why had
+I ever been married? Why hadn’t I said, even the day before we went to
+church, that I knew I should be uneasy, and I would rather not? If I
+couldn’t bear her, why didn’t I send her away to her aunts at Putney, or
+to Julia Mills in India? Julia would be glad to see her, and would not
+call her a transported page; Julia never had called her anything of the
+sort. In short, Dora was so afflicted, and so afflicted me by being
+in that condition, that I felt it was of no use repeating this kind of
+effort, though never so mildly, and I must take some other course.
+
+What other course was left to take? To ‘form her mind’? This was a
+common phrase of words which had a fair and promising sound, and I
+resolved to form Dora’s mind.
+
+I began immediately. When Dora was very childish, and I would
+have infinitely preferred to humour her, I tried to be grave--and
+disconcerted her, and myself too. I talked to her on the subjects which
+occupied my thoughts; and I read Shakespeare to her--and fatigued her
+to the last degree. I accustomed myself to giving her, as it were quite
+casually, little scraps of useful information, or sound opinion--and she
+started from them when I let them off, as if they had been crackers.
+No matter how incidentally or naturally I endeavoured to form my little
+wife’s mind, I could not help seeing that she always had an instinctive
+perception of what I was about, and became a prey to the keenest
+apprehensions. In particular, it was clear to me, that she thought
+Shakespeare a terrible fellow. The formation went on very slowly.
+
+I pressed Traddles into the service without his knowledge; and whenever
+he came to see us, exploded my mines upon him for the edification of
+Dora at second hand. The amount of practical wisdom I bestowed upon
+Traddles in this manner was immense, and of the best quality; but it
+had no other effect upon Dora than to depress her spirits, and make her
+always nervous with the dread that it would be her turn next. I found
+myself in the condition of a schoolmaster, a trap, a pitfall; of always
+playing spider to Dora’s fly, and always pouncing out of my hole to her
+infinite disturbance.
+
+Still, looking forward through this intermediate stage, to the time
+when there should be a perfect sympathy between Dora and me, and when I
+should have ‘formed her mind’ to my entire satisfaction, I persevered,
+even for months. Finding at last, however, that, although I had been
+all this time a very porcupine or hedgehog, bristling all over with
+determination, I had effected nothing, it began to occur to me that
+perhaps Dora’s mind was already formed.
+
+On further consideration this appeared so likely, that I abandoned
+my scheme, which had had a more promising appearance in words than in
+action; resolving henceforth to be satisfied with my child-wife, and to
+try to change her into nothing else by any process. I was heartily tired
+of being sagacious and prudent by myself, and of seeing my darling under
+restraint; so I bought a pretty pair of ear-rings for her, and a collar
+for Jip, and went home one day to make myself agreeable.
+
+Dora was delighted with the little presents, and kissed me joyfully; but
+there was a shadow between us, however slight, and I had made up my mind
+that it should not be there. If there must be such a shadow anywhere, I
+would keep it for the future in my own breast.
+
+I sat down by my wife on the sofa, and put the ear-rings in her ears;
+and then I told her that I feared we had not been quite as good company
+lately, as we used to be, and that the fault was mine. Which I sincerely
+felt, and which indeed it was.
+
+‘The truth is, Dora, my life,’ I said; ‘I have been trying to be wise.’
+
+‘And to make me wise too,’ said Dora, timidly. ‘Haven’t you, Doady?’
+
+I nodded assent to the pretty inquiry of the raised eyebrows, and kissed
+the parted lips.
+
+‘It’s of not a bit of use,’ said Dora, shaking her head, until the
+ear-rings rang again. ‘You know what a little thing I am, and what I
+wanted you to call me from the first. If you can’t do so, I am afraid
+you’ll never like me. Are you sure you don’t think, sometimes, it would
+have been better to have--’
+
+‘Done what, my dear?’ For she made no effort to proceed.
+
+‘Nothing!’ said Dora.
+
+‘Nothing?’ I repeated.
+
+She put her arms round my neck, and laughed, and called herself by her
+favourite name of a goose, and hid her face on my shoulder in such a
+profusion of curls that it was quite a task to clear them away and see
+it.
+
+‘Don’t I think it would have been better to have done nothing, than to
+have tried to form my little wife’s mind?’ said I, laughing at myself.
+‘Is that the question? Yes, indeed, I do.’
+
+‘Is that what you have been trying?’ cried Dora. ‘Oh what a shocking
+boy!’
+
+‘But I shall never try any more,’ said I. ‘For I love her dearly as she
+is.’
+
+‘Without a story--really?’ inquired Dora, creeping closer to me.
+
+‘Why should I seek to change,’ said I, ‘what has been so precious to me
+for so long! You never can show better than as your own natural self, my
+sweet Dora; and we’ll try no conceited experiments, but go back to our
+old way, and be happy.’
+
+‘And be happy!’ returned Dora. ‘Yes! All day! And you won’t mind things
+going a tiny morsel wrong, sometimes?’
+
+‘No, no,’ said I. ‘We must do the best we can.’
+
+‘And you won’t tell me, any more, that we make other people bad,’ coaxed
+Dora; ‘will you? Because you know it’s so dreadfully cross!’
+
+‘No, no,’ said I.
+
+‘It’s better for me to be stupid than uncomfortable, isn’t it?’ said
+Dora.
+
+‘Better to be naturally Dora than anything else in the world.’
+
+‘In the world! Ah, Doady, it’s a large place!’
+
+She shook her head, turned her delighted bright eyes up to mine, kissed
+me, broke into a merry laugh, and sprang away to put on Jip’s new
+collar.
+
+So ended my last attempt to make any change in Dora. I had been unhappy
+in trying it; I could not endure my own solitary wisdom; I could not
+reconcile it with her former appeal to me as my child-wife. I resolved
+to do what I could, in a quiet way, to improve our proceedings myself,
+but I foresaw that my utmost would be very little, or I must degenerate
+into the spider again, and be for ever lying in wait.
+
+And the shadow I have mentioned, that was not to be between us any more,
+but was to rest wholly on my own heart? How did that fall?
+
+The old unhappy feeling pervaded my life. It was deepened, if it were
+changed at all; but it was as undefined as ever, and addressed me like
+a strain of sorrowful music faintly heard in the night. I loved my wife
+dearly, and I was happy; but the happiness I had vaguely anticipated,
+once, was not the happiness I enjoyed, and there was always something
+wanting.
+
+In fulfilment of the compact I have made with myself, to reflect my mind
+on this paper, I again examine it, closely, and bring its secrets to the
+light. What I missed, I still regarded--I always regarded--as something
+that had been a dream of my youthful fancy; that was incapable of
+realization; that I was now discovering to be so, with some natural
+pain, as all men did. But that it would have been better for me if my
+wife could have helped me more, and shared the many thoughts in which I
+had no partner; and that this might have been; I knew.
+
+Between these two irreconcilable conclusions: the one, that what I felt
+was general and unavoidable; the other, that it was particular to me,
+and might have been different: I balanced curiously, with no distinct
+sense of their opposition to each other. When I thought of the airy
+dreams of youth that are incapable of realization, I thought of the
+better state preceding manhood that I had outgrown; and then the
+contented days with Agnes, in the dear old house, arose before me, like
+spectres of the dead, that might have some renewal in another world, but
+never more could be reanimated here.
+
+Sometimes, the speculation came into my thoughts, What might have
+happened, or what would have happened, if Dora and I had never known
+each other? But she was so incorporated with my existence, that it
+was the idlest of all fancies, and would soon rise out of my reach and
+sight, like gossamer floating in the air.
+
+I always loved her. What I am describing, slumbered, and half awoke, and
+slept again, in the innermost recesses of my mind. There was no evidence
+of it in me; I know of no influence it had in anything I said or did. I
+bore the weight of all our little cares, and all my projects; Dora held
+the pens; and we both felt that our shares were adjusted as the case
+required. She was truly fond of me, and proud of me; and when Agnes
+wrote a few earnest words in her letters to Dora, of the pride and
+interest with which my old friends heard of my growing reputation, and
+read my book as if they heard me speaking its contents, Dora read them
+out to me with tears of joy in her bright eyes, and said I was a dear
+old clever, famous boy.
+
+‘The first mistaken impulse of an undisciplined heart.’ Those words of
+Mrs. Strong’s were constantly recurring to me, at this time; were almost
+always present to my mind. I awoke with them, often, in the night; I
+remember to have even read them, in dreams, inscribed upon the walls
+of houses. For I knew, now, that my own heart was undisciplined when it
+first loved Dora; and that if it had been disciplined, it never
+could have felt, when we were married, what it had felt in its secret
+experience.
+
+‘There can be no disparity in marriage, like unsuitability of mind and
+purpose.’ Those words I remembered too. I had endeavoured to adapt
+Dora to myself, and found it impracticable. It remained for me to adapt
+myself to Dora; to share with her what I could, and be happy; to bear
+on my own shoulders what I must, and be happy still. This was the
+discipline to which I tried to bring my heart, when I began to think.
+It made my second year much happier than my first; and, what was better
+still, made Dora’s life all sunshine.
+
+But, as that year wore on, Dora was not strong. I had hoped that lighter
+hands than mine would help to mould her character, and that a baby-smile
+upon her breast might change my child-wife to a woman. It was not to be.
+The spirit fluttered for a moment on the threshold of its little prison,
+and, unconscious of captivity, took wing.
+
+‘When I can run about again, as I used to do, aunt,’ said Dora, ‘I shall
+make Jip race. He is getting quite slow and lazy.’
+
+‘I suspect, my dear,’ said my aunt quietly working by her side, ‘he has
+a worse disorder than that. Age, Dora.’
+
+‘Do you think he is old?’ said Dora, astonished. ‘Oh, how strange it
+seems that Jip should be old!’
+
+‘It’s a complaint we are all liable to, Little One, as we get on in
+life,’ said my aunt, cheerfully; ‘I don’t feel more free from it than I
+used to be, I assure you.’
+
+‘But Jip,’ said Dora, looking at him with compassion, ‘even little Jip!
+Oh, poor fellow!’
+
+‘I dare say he’ll last a long time yet, Blossom,’ said my aunt, patting
+Dora on the cheek, as she leaned out of her couch to look at Jip, who
+responded by standing on his hind legs, and baulking himself in various
+asthmatic attempts to scramble up by the head and shoulders. ‘He must
+have a piece of flannel in his house this winter, and I shouldn’t wonder
+if he came out quite fresh again, with the flowers in the spring. Bless
+the little dog!’ exclaimed my aunt, ‘if he had as many lives as a cat,
+and was on the point of losing ‘em all, he’d bark at me with his last
+breath, I believe!’
+
+Dora had helped him up on the sofa; where he really was defying my aunt
+to such a furious extent, that he couldn’t keep straight, but barked
+himself sideways. The more my aunt looked at him, the more he reproached
+her; for she had lately taken to spectacles, and for some inscrutable
+reason he considered the glasses personal.
+
+Dora made him lie down by her, with a good deal of persuasion; and when
+he was quiet, drew one of his long ears through and through her hand,
+repeating thoughtfully, ‘Even little Jip! Oh, poor fellow!’
+
+‘His lungs are good enough,’ said my aunt, gaily, ‘and his dislikes are
+not at all feeble. He has a good many years before him, no doubt. But if
+you want a dog to race with, Little Blossom, he has lived too well for
+that, and I’ll give you one.’
+
+‘Thank you, aunt,’ said Dora, faintly. ‘But don’t, please!’
+
+‘No?’ said my aunt, taking off her spectacles.
+
+‘I couldn’t have any other dog but Jip,’ said Dora. ‘It would be so
+unkind to Jip! Besides, I couldn’t be such friends with any other dog
+but Jip; because he wouldn’t have known me before I was married,
+and wouldn’t have barked at Doady when he first came to our house. I
+couldn’t care for any other dog but Jip, I am afraid, aunt.’
+
+‘To be sure!’ said my aunt, patting her cheek again. ‘You are right.’
+
+‘You are not offended,’ said Dora. ‘Are you?’
+
+‘Why, what a sensitive pet it is!’ cried my aunt, bending over her
+affectionately. ‘To think that I could be offended!’
+
+‘No, no, I didn’t really think so,’ returned Dora; ‘but I am a little
+tired, and it made me silly for a moment--I am always a silly little
+thing, you know, but it made me more silly--to talk about Jip. He
+has known me in all that has happened to me, haven’t you, Jip? And I
+couldn’t bear to slight him, because he was a little altered--could I,
+Jip?’
+
+Jip nestled closer to his mistress, and lazily licked her hand.
+
+‘You are not so old, Jip, are you, that you’ll leave your mistress yet?’
+said Dora. ‘We may keep one another company a little longer!’
+
+My pretty Dora! When she came down to dinner on the ensuing Sunday, and
+was so glad to see old Traddles (who always dined with us on Sunday), we
+thought she would be ‘running about as she used to do’, in a few days.
+But they said, wait a few days more; and then, wait a few days more; and
+still she neither ran nor walked. She looked very pretty, and was very
+merry; but the little feet that used to be so nimble when they danced
+round Jip, were dull and motionless.
+
+I began to carry her downstairs every morning, and upstairs every night.
+She would clasp me round the neck and laugh, the while, as if I did it
+for a wager. Jip would bark and caper round us, and go on before, and
+look back on the landing, breathing short, to see that we were coming.
+My aunt, the best and most cheerful of nurses, would trudge after us, a
+moving mass of shawls and pillows. Mr. Dick would not have relinquished
+his post of candle-bearer to anyone alive. Traddles would be often at
+the bottom of the staircase, looking on, and taking charge of sportive
+messages from Dora to the dearest girl in the world. We made quite a gay
+procession of it, and my child-wife was the gayest there.
+
+But, sometimes, when I took her up, and felt that she was lighter in
+my arms, a dead blank feeling came upon me, as if I were approaching
+to some frozen region yet unseen, that numbed my life. I avoided the
+recognition of this feeling by any name, or by any communing with
+myself; until one night, when it was very strong upon me, and my aunt
+had left her with a parting cry of ‘Good night, Little Blossom,’ I sat
+down at my desk alone, and tried to think, Oh what a fatal name it was,
+and how the blossom withered in its bloom upon the tree!
+
+
+CHAPTER 49. I AM INVOLVED IN MYSTERY
+
+
+I received one morning by the post, the following letter, dated
+Canterbury, and addressed to me at Doctor’s Commons; which I read with
+some surprise:
+
+
+‘MY DEAR SIR,
+
+‘Circumstances beyond my individual control have, for a considerable
+lapse of time, effected a severance of that intimacy which, in the
+limited opportunities conceded to me in the midst of my professional
+duties, of contemplating the scenes and events of the past, tinged by
+the prismatic hues of memory, has ever afforded me, as it ever must
+continue to afford, gratifying emotions of no common description. This
+fact, my dear sir, combined with the distinguished elevation to which
+your talents have raised you, deters me from presuming to aspire to
+the liberty of addressing the companion of my youth, by the familiar
+appellation of Copperfield! It is sufficient to know that the name to
+which I do myself the honour to refer, will ever be treasured among
+the muniments of our house (I allude to the archives connected with our
+former lodgers, preserved by Mrs. Micawber), with sentiments of personal
+esteem amounting to affection.
+
+‘It is not for one, situated, through his original errors and a
+fortuitous combination of unpropitious events, as is the foundered Bark
+(if he may be allowed to assume so maritime a denomination), who
+now takes up the pen to address you--it is not, I repeat, for one
+so circumstanced, to adopt the language of compliment, or of
+congratulation. That he leaves to abler and to purer hands.
+
+‘If your more important avocations should admit of your ever tracing
+these imperfect characters thus far--which may be, or may not be, as
+circumstances arise--you will naturally inquire by what object am I
+influenced, then, in inditing the present missive? Allow me to say that
+I fully defer to the reasonable character of that inquiry, and proceed
+to develop it; premising that it is not an object of a pecuniary nature.
+
+‘Without more directly referring to any latent ability that may
+possibly exist on my part, of wielding the thunderbolt, or directing
+the devouring and avenging flame in any quarter, I may be permitted
+to observe, in passing, that my brightest visions are for ever
+dispelled--that my peace is shattered and my power of enjoyment
+destroyed--that my heart is no longer in the right place--and that I no
+more walk erect before my fellow man. The canker is in the flower.
+The cup is bitter to the brim. The worm is at his work, and will soon
+dispose of his victim. The sooner the better. But I will not digress.
+‘Placed in a mental position of peculiar painfulness, beyond the
+assuaging reach even of Mrs. Micawber’s influence, though exercised in
+the tripartite character of woman, wife, and mother, it is my intention
+to fly from myself for a short period, and devote a respite of
+eight-and-forty hours to revisiting some metropolitan scenes of past
+enjoyment. Among other havens of domestic tranquillity and peace of
+mind, my feet will naturally tend towards the King’s Bench Prison. In
+stating that I shall be (D. V.) on the outside of the south wall of
+that place of incarceration on civil process, the day after tomorrow,
+at seven in the evening, precisely, my object in this epistolary
+communication is accomplished.
+
+‘I do not feel warranted in soliciting my former friend Mr. Copperfield,
+or my former friend Mr. Thomas Traddles of the Inner Temple, if that
+gentleman is still existent and forthcoming, to condescend to meet me,
+and renew (so far as may be) our past relations of the olden time. I
+confine myself to throwing out the observation, that, at the hour and
+place I have indicated, may be found such ruined vestiges as yet
+
+               ‘Remain,
+                    ‘Of
+                         ‘A
+                              ‘Fallen Tower,
+                                   ‘WILKINS MICAWBER.
+
+‘P.S. It may be advisable to superadd to the above, the statement that
+Mrs. Micawber is not in confidential possession of my intentions.’
+
+
+I read the letter over several times. Making due allowance for Mr.
+Micawber’s lofty style of composition, and for the extraordinary relish
+with which he sat down and wrote long letters on all possible and
+impossible occasions, I still believed that something important lay
+hidden at the bottom of this roundabout communication. I put it down,
+to think about it; and took it up again, to read it once more; and
+was still pursuing it, when Traddles found me in the height of my
+perplexity.
+
+‘My dear fellow,’ said I, ‘I never was better pleased to see you. You
+come to give me the benefit of your sober judgement at a most opportune
+time. I have received a very singular letter, Traddles, from Mr.
+Micawber.’
+
+‘No?’ cried Traddles. ‘You don’t say so? And I have received one from
+Mrs. Micawber!’
+
+With that, Traddles, who was flushed with walking, and whose hair, under
+the combined effects of exercise and excitement, stood on end as if he
+saw a cheerful ghost, produced his letter and made an exchange with me.
+I watched him into the heart of Mr. Micawber’s letter, and returned the
+elevation of eyebrows with which he said “‘Wielding the thunderbolt,
+or directing the devouring and avenging flame!” Bless me,
+Copperfield!’--and then entered on the perusal of Mrs. Micawber’s
+epistle.
+
+It ran thus:
+
+
+‘My best regards to Mr. Thomas Traddles, and if he should still remember
+one who formerly had the happiness of being well acquainted with him,
+may I beg a few moments of his leisure time? I assure Mr. T. T. that I
+would not intrude upon his kindness, were I in any other position than
+on the confines of distraction.
+
+‘Though harrowing to myself to mention, the alienation of Mr. Micawber
+(formerly so domesticated) from his wife and family, is the cause of my
+addressing my unhappy appeal to Mr. Traddles, and soliciting his best
+indulgence. Mr. T. can form no adequate idea of the change in Mr.
+Micawber’s conduct, of his wildness, of his violence. It has gradually
+augmented, until it assumes the appearance of aberration of intellect.
+Scarcely a day passes, I assure Mr. Traddles, on which some paroxysm
+does not take place. Mr. T. will not require me to depict my feelings,
+when I inform him that I have become accustomed to hear Mr. Micawber
+assert that he has sold himself to the D. Mystery and secrecy have
+long been his principal characteristic, have long replaced unlimited
+confidence. The slightest provocation, even being asked if there is
+anything he would prefer for dinner, causes him to express a wish for a
+separation. Last night, on being childishly solicited for twopence, to
+buy ‘lemon-stunners’--a local sweetmeat--he presented an oyster-knife at
+the twins!
+
+‘I entreat Mr. Traddles to bear with me in entering into these details.
+Without them, Mr. T. would indeed find it difficult to form the faintest
+conception of my heart-rending situation.
+
+‘May I now venture to confide to Mr. T. the purport of my letter? Will
+he now allow me to throw myself on his friendly consideration? Oh yes,
+for I know his heart!
+
+‘The quick eye of affection is not easily blinded, when of the female
+sex. Mr. Micawber is going to London. Though he studiously concealed his
+hand, this morning before breakfast, in writing the direction-card which
+he attached to the little brown valise of happier days, the eagle-glance
+of matrimonial anxiety detected, d, o, n, distinctly traced. The
+West-End destination of the coach, is the Golden Cross. Dare I fervently
+implore Mr. T. to see my misguided husband, and to reason with him?
+Dare I ask Mr. T. to endeavour to step in between Mr. Micawber and his
+agonized family? Oh no, for that would be too much!
+
+‘If Mr. Copperfield should yet remember one unknown to fame, will Mr.
+T. take charge of my unalterable regards and similar entreaties? In
+any case, he will have the benevolence to consider this communication
+strictly private, and on no account whatever to be alluded to, however
+distantly, in the presence of Mr. Micawber. If Mr. T. should ever
+reply to it (which I cannot but feel to be most improbable), a letter
+addressed to M. E., Post Office, Canterbury, will be fraught with
+less painful consequences than any addressed immediately to one, who
+subscribes herself, in extreme distress,
+
+‘Mr. Thomas Traddles’s respectful friend and suppliant,
+
+                                   ‘EMMA MICAWBER.’
+
+
+‘What do you think of that letter?’ said Traddles, casting his eyes upon
+me, when I had read it twice.
+
+‘What do you think of the other?’ said I. For he was still reading it
+with knitted brows.
+
+‘I think that the two together, Copperfield,’ replied Traddles,
+‘mean more than Mr. and Mrs. Micawber usually mean in their
+correspondence--but I don’t know what. They are both written in good
+faith, I have no doubt, and without any collusion. Poor thing!’ he was
+now alluding to Mrs. Micawber’s letter, and we were standing side by
+side comparing the two; ‘it will be a charity to write to her, at all
+events, and tell her that we will not fail to see Mr. Micawber.’
+
+I acceded to this the more readily, because I now reproached myself with
+having treated her former letter rather lightly. It had set me thinking
+a good deal at the time, as I have mentioned in its place; but my
+absorption in my own affairs, my experience of the family, and my
+hearing nothing more, had gradually ended in my dismissing the subject.
+I had often thought of the Micawbers, but chiefly to wonder what
+‘pecuniary liabilities’ they were establishing in Canterbury, and to
+recall how shy Mr. Micawber was of me when he became clerk to Uriah
+Heep.
+
+However, I now wrote a comforting letter to Mrs. Micawber, in our
+joint names, and we both signed it. As we walked into town to post it,
+Traddles and I held a long conference, and launched into a number of
+speculations, which I need not repeat. We took my aunt into our counsels
+in the afternoon; but our only decided conclusion was, that we would be
+very punctual in keeping Mr. Micawber’s appointment.
+
+Although we appeared at the stipulated place a quarter of an hour before
+the time, we found Mr. Micawber already there. He was standing with his
+arms folded, over against the wall, looking at the spikes on the top,
+with a sentimental expression, as if they were the interlacing boughs of
+trees that had shaded him in his youth.
+
+When we accosted him, his manner was something more confused, and
+something less genteel, than of yore. He had relinquished his legal suit
+of black for the purposes of this excursion, and wore the old surtout
+and tights, but not quite with the old air. He gradually picked up more
+and more of it as we conversed with him; but, his very eye-glass seemed
+to hang less easily, and his shirt-collar, though still of the old
+formidable dimensions, rather drooped.
+
+‘Gentlemen!’ said Mr. Micawber, after the first salutations, ‘you are
+friends in need, and friends indeed. Allow me to offer my inquiries with
+reference to the physical welfare of Mrs. Copperfield in esse, and
+Mrs. Traddles in posse,--presuming, that is to say, that my friend Mr.
+Traddles is not yet united to the object of his affections, for weal and
+for woe.’
+
+We acknowledged his politeness, and made suitable replies. He then
+directed our attention to the wall, and was beginning, ‘I assure you,
+gentlemen,’ when I ventured to object to that ceremonious form of
+address, and to beg that he would speak to us in the old way.
+
+‘My dear Copperfield,’ he returned, pressing my hand, ‘your cordiality
+overpowers me. This reception of a shattered fragment of the Temple once
+called Man--if I may be permitted so to express myself--bespeaks a heart
+that is an honour to our common nature. I was about to observe that
+I again behold the serene spot where some of the happiest hours of my
+existence fleeted by.’
+
+‘Made so, I am sure, by Mrs. Micawber,’ said I. ‘I hope she is well?’
+
+‘Thank you,’ returned Mr. Micawber, whose face clouded at this
+reference, ‘she is but so-so. And this,’ said Mr. Micawber, nodding
+his head sorrowfully, ‘is the Bench! Where, for the first time in many
+revolving years, the overwhelming pressure of pecuniary liabilities was
+not proclaimed, from day to day, by importune voices declining to vacate
+the passage; where there was no knocker on the door for any creditor
+to appeal to; where personal service of process was not required, and
+detainees were merely lodged at the gate! Gentlemen,’ said Mr. Micawber,
+‘when the shadow of that iron-work on the summit of the brick structure
+has been reflected on the gravel of the Parade, I have seen my children
+thread the mazes of the intricate pattern, avoiding the dark marks. I
+have been familiar with every stone in the place. If I betray weakness,
+you will know how to excuse me.’
+
+‘We have all got on in life since then, Mr. Micawber,’ said I.
+
+‘Mr. Copperfield,’ returned Mr. Micawber, bitterly, ‘when I was an
+inmate of that retreat I could look my fellow-man in the face, and punch
+his head if he offended me. My fellow-man and myself are no longer on
+those glorious terms!’
+
+Turning from the building in a downcast manner, Mr. Micawber accepted
+my proffered arm on one side, and the proffered arm of Traddles on the
+other, and walked away between us.
+
+‘There are some landmarks,’ observed Mr. Micawber, looking fondly back
+over his shoulder, ‘on the road to the tomb, which, but for the impiety
+of the aspiration, a man would wish never to have passed. Such is the
+Bench in my chequered career.’
+
+‘Oh, you are in low spirits, Mr. Micawber,’ said Traddles.
+
+‘I am, sir,’ interposed Mr. Micawber.
+
+‘I hope,’ said Traddles, ‘it is not because you have conceived a dislike
+to the law--for I am a lawyer myself, you know.’
+
+Mr. Micawber answered not a word.
+
+‘How is our friend Heep, Mr. Micawber?’ said I, after a silence.
+
+‘My dear Copperfield,’ returned Mr. Micawber, bursting into a state of
+much excitement, and turning pale, ‘if you ask after my employer as
+YOUR friend, I am sorry for it; if you ask after him as MY friend,
+I sardonically smile at it. In whatever capacity you ask after my
+employer, I beg, without offence to you, to limit my reply to this--that
+whatever his state of health may be, his appearance is foxy: not to
+say diabolical. You will allow me, as a private individual, to
+decline pursuing a subject which has lashed me to the utmost verge of
+desperation in my professional capacity.’
+
+I expressed my regret for having innocently touched upon a theme
+that roused him so much. ‘May I ask,’ said I, ‘without any hazard of
+repeating the mistake, how my old friends Mr. and Miss Wickfield are?’
+
+‘Miss Wickfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, now turning red, ‘is, as she always
+is, a pattern, and a bright example. My dear Copperfield, she is the
+only starry spot in a miserable existence. My respect for that young
+lady, my admiration of her character, my devotion to her for her love
+and truth, and goodness!--Take me,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘down a turning,
+for, upon my soul, in my present state of mind I am not equal to this!’
+
+We wheeled him off into a narrow street, where he took out his
+pocket-handkerchief, and stood with his back to a wall. If I looked as
+gravely at him as Traddles did, he must have found our company by no
+means inspiriting.
+
+‘It is my fate,’ said Mr. Micawber, unfeignedly sobbing, but doing even
+that, with a shadow of the old expression of doing something genteel;
+‘it is my fate, gentlemen, that the finer feelings of our nature have
+become reproaches to me. My homage to Miss Wickfield, is a flight of
+arrows in my bosom. You had better leave me, if you please, to walk the
+earth as a vagabond. The worm will settle my business in double-quick
+time.’
+
+Without attending to this invocation, we stood by, until he put up his
+pocket-handkerchief, pulled up his shirt-collar, and, to delude any
+person in the neighbourhood who might have been observing him, hummed a
+tune with his hat very much on one side. I then mentioned--not knowing
+what might be lost if we lost sight of him yet--that it would give me
+great pleasure to introduce him to my aunt, if he would ride out to
+Highgate, where a bed was at his service.
+
+‘You shall make us a glass of your own punch, Mr. Micawber,’ said
+I, ‘and forget whatever you have on your mind, in pleasanter
+reminiscences.’
+
+‘Or, if confiding anything to friends will be more likely to relieve
+you, you shall impart it to us, Mr. Micawber,’ said Traddles, prudently.
+
+‘Gentlemen,’ returned Mr. Micawber, ‘do with me as you will! I am a
+straw upon the surface of the deep, and am tossed in all directions by
+the elephants--I beg your pardon; I should have said the elements.’
+
+We walked on, arm-in-arm, again; found the coach in the act of starting;
+and arrived at Highgate without encountering any difficulties by the
+way. I was very uneasy and very uncertain in my mind what to say or do
+for the best--so was Traddles, evidently. Mr. Micawber was for the most
+part plunged into deep gloom. He occasionally made an attempt to smarten
+himself, and hum the fag-end of a tune; but his relapses into profound
+melancholy were only made the more impressive by the mockery of a hat
+exceedingly on one side, and a shirt-collar pulled up to his eyes.
+
+We went to my aunt’s house rather than to mine, because of Dora’s not
+being well. My aunt presented herself on being sent for, and welcomed
+Mr. Micawber with gracious cordiality. Mr. Micawber kissed her hand,
+retired to the window, and pulling out his pocket-handkerchief, had a
+mental wrestle with himself.
+
+Mr. Dick was at home. He was by nature so exceedingly compassionate of
+anyone who seemed to be ill at ease, and was so quick to find any such
+person out, that he shook hands with Mr. Micawber, at least half-a-dozen
+times in five minutes. To Mr. Micawber, in his trouble, this warmth, on
+the part of a stranger, was so extremely touching, that he could
+only say, on the occasion of each successive shake, ‘My dear sir, you
+overpower me!’ Which gratified Mr. Dick so much, that he went at it
+again with greater vigour than before.
+
+‘The friendliness of this gentleman,’ said Mr. Micawber to my aunt, ‘if
+you will allow me, ma’am, to cull a figure of speech from the vocabulary
+of our coarser national sports--floors me. To a man who is struggling
+with a complicated burden of perplexity and disquiet, such a reception
+is trying, I assure you.’
+
+‘My friend Mr. Dick,’ replied my aunt proudly, ‘is not a common man.’
+
+‘That I am convinced of,’ said Mr. Micawber. ‘My dear sir!’ for Mr.
+Dick was shaking hands with him again; ‘I am deeply sensible of your
+cordiality!’
+
+‘How do you find yourself?’ said Mr. Dick, with an anxious look.
+
+‘Indifferent, my dear sir,’ returned Mr. Micawber, sighing.
+
+‘You must keep up your spirits,’ said Mr. Dick, ‘and make yourself as
+comfortable as possible.’
+
+Mr. Micawber was quite overcome by these friendly words, and by finding
+Mr. Dick’s hand again within his own. ‘It has been my lot,’ he observed,
+‘to meet, in the diversified panorama of human existence, with an
+occasional oasis, but never with one so green, so gushing, as the
+present!’
+
+At another time I should have been amused by this; but I felt that
+we were all constrained and uneasy, and I watched Mr. Micawber so
+anxiously, in his vacillations between an evident disposition to reveal
+something, and a counter-disposition to reveal nothing, that I was in a
+perfect fever. Traddles, sitting on the edge of his chair, with his eyes
+wide open, and his hair more emphatically erect than ever, stared by
+turns at the ground and at Mr. Micawber, without so much as attempting
+to put in a word. My aunt, though I saw that her shrewdest observation
+was concentrated on her new guest, had more useful possession of her
+wits than either of us; for she held him in conversation, and made it
+necessary for him to talk, whether he liked it or not.
+
+‘You are a very old friend of my nephew’s, Mr. Micawber,’ said my aunt.
+‘I wish I had had the pleasure of seeing you before.’
+
+‘Madam,’ returned Mr. Micawber, ‘I wish I had had the honour of knowing
+you at an earlier period. I was not always the wreck you at present
+behold.’
+
+‘I hope Mrs. Micawber and your family are well, sir,’ said my aunt.
+
+Mr. Micawber inclined his head. ‘They are as well, ma’am,’ he
+desperately observed after a pause, ‘as Aliens and Outcasts can ever
+hope to be.’
+
+‘Lord bless you, sir!’ exclaimed my aunt, in her abrupt way. ‘What are
+you talking about?’
+
+‘The subsistence of my family, ma’am,’ returned Mr. Micawber, ‘trembles
+in the balance. My employer--’
+
+Here Mr. Micawber provokingly left off; and began to peel the lemons
+that had been under my directions set before him, together with all the
+other appliances he used in making punch.
+
+‘Your employer, you know,’ said Mr. Dick, jogging his arm as a gentle
+reminder.
+
+‘My good sir,’ returned Mr. Micawber, ‘you recall me, I am obliged to
+you.’ They shook hands again. ‘My employer, ma’am--Mr. Heep--once did
+me the favour to observe to me, that if I were not in the receipt of the
+stipendiary emoluments appertaining to my engagement with him, I should
+probably be a mountebank about the country, swallowing a sword-blade,
+and eating the devouring element. For anything that I can perceive to
+the contrary, it is still probable that my children may be reduced to
+seek a livelihood by personal contortion, while Mrs. Micawber abets
+their unnatural feats by playing the barrel-organ.’
+
+Mr. Micawber, with a random but expressive flourish of his knife,
+signified that these performances might be expected to take place after
+he was no more; then resumed his peeling with a desperate air.
+
+My aunt leaned her elbow on the little round table that she usually kept
+beside her, and eyed him attentively. Notwithstanding the aversion with
+which I regarded the idea of entrapping him into any disclosure he was
+not prepared to make voluntarily, I should have taken him up at this
+point, but for the strange proceedings in which I saw him engaged;
+whereof his putting the lemon-peel into the kettle, the sugar into the
+snuffer-tray, the spirit into the empty jug, and confidently attempting
+to pour boiling water out of a candlestick, were among the most
+remarkable. I saw that a crisis was at hand, and it came. He clattered
+all his means and implements together, rose from his chair, pulled out
+his pocket-handkerchief, and burst into tears.
+
+‘My dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, behind his handkerchief,
+‘this is an occupation, of all others, requiring an untroubled mind, and
+self-respect. I cannot perform it. It is out of the question.’
+
+‘Mr. Micawber,’ said I, ‘what is the matter? Pray speak out. You are
+among friends.’
+
+‘Among friends, sir!’ repeated Mr. Micawber; and all he had reserved
+came breaking out of him. ‘Good heavens, it is principally because I AM
+among friends that my state of mind is what it is. What is the matter,
+gentlemen? What is NOT the matter? Villainy is the matter; baseness is
+the matter; deception, fraud, conspiracy, are the matter; and the name
+of the whole atrocious mass is--HEEP!’
+
+My aunt clapped her hands, and we all started up as if we were
+possessed.
+
+‘The struggle is over!’ said Mr. Micawber violently gesticulating with
+his pocket-handkerchief, and fairly striking out from time to time with
+both arms, as if he were swimming under superhuman difficulties. ‘I will
+lead this life no longer. I am a wretched being, cut off from everything
+that makes life tolerable. I have been under a Taboo in that infernal
+scoundrel’s service. Give me back my wife, give me back my family,
+substitute Micawber for the petty wretch who walks about in the boots
+at present on my feet, and call upon me to swallow a sword tomorrow, and
+I’ll do it. With an appetite!’
+
+I never saw a man so hot in my life. I tried to calm him, that we might
+come to something rational; but he got hotter and hotter, and wouldn’t
+hear a word.
+
+‘I’ll put my hand in no man’s hand,’ said Mr. Micawber, gasping,
+puffing, and sobbing, to that degree that he was like a man
+fighting with cold water, ‘until I have--blown to
+fragments--the--a--detestable--serpent--HEEP! I’ll partake of no
+one’s hospitality, until I have--a--moved Mount Vesuvius--to
+eruption--on--a--the abandoned rascal--HEEP! Refreshment--a--underneath
+this roof--particularly punch--would--a--choke me--unless--I
+had--previously--choked the eyes--out of the head--a--of--interminable
+cheat, and liar--HEEP! I--a--I’ll know nobody--and--a--say
+nothing--and--a--live nowhere--until I have
+crushed--to--a--undiscoverable atoms--the--transcendent and immortal
+hypocrite and perjurer--HEEP!’
+
+I really had some fear of Mr. Micawber’s dying on the spot. The manner
+in which he struggled through these inarticulate sentences, and,
+whenever he found himself getting near the name of Heep, fought his way
+on to it, dashed at it in a fainting state, and brought it out with a
+vehemence little less than marvellous, was frightful; but now, when
+he sank into a chair, steaming, and looked at us, with every possible
+colour in his face that had no business there, and an endless procession
+of lumps following one another in hot haste up his throat, whence they
+seemed to shoot into his forehead, he had the appearance of being in
+the last extremity. I would have gone to his assistance, but he waved me
+off, and wouldn’t hear a word.
+
+‘No, Copperfield!--No communication--a--until--Miss
+Wickfield--a--redress from wrongs inflicted by consummate
+scoundrel--HEEP!’ (I am quite convinced he could not have uttered three
+words, but for the amazing energy with which this word inspired him when
+he felt it coming.) ‘Inviolable secret--a--from the whole world--a--no
+exceptions--this day week--a--at breakfast-time--a--everybody
+present--including aunt--a--and extremely friendly gentleman--to be at
+the hotel at Canterbury--a--where--Mrs. Micawber and myself--Auld Lang
+Syne in chorus--and--a--will expose intolerable ruffian--HEEP! No more
+to say--a--or listen to persuasion--go immediately--not capable--a--bear
+society--upon the track of devoted and doomed traitor--HEEP!’
+
+With this last repetition of the magic word that had kept him going at
+all, and in which he surpassed all his previous efforts, Mr. Micawber
+rushed out of the house; leaving us in a state of excitement, hope, and
+wonder, that reduced us to a condition little better than his own. But
+even then his passion for writing letters was too strong to be resisted;
+for while we were yet in the height of our excitement, hope, and wonder,
+the following pastoral note was brought to me from a neighbouring
+tavern, at which he had called to write it:--
+
+
+          ‘Most secret and confidential.
+‘MY DEAR SIR,
+
+‘I beg to be allowed to convey, through you, my apologies to your
+excellent aunt for my late excitement. An explosion of a smouldering
+volcano long suppressed, was the result of an internal contest more
+easily conceived than described.
+
+‘I trust I rendered tolerably intelligible my appointment for the
+morning of this day week, at the house of public entertainment at
+Canterbury, where Mrs. Micawber and myself had once the honour of
+uniting our voices to yours, in the well-known strain of the Immortal
+exciseman nurtured beyond the Tweed.
+
+‘The duty done, and act of reparation performed, which can alone enable
+me to contemplate my fellow mortal, I shall be known no more. I shall
+simply require to be deposited in that place of universal resort, where
+
+     Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
+     The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep,
+
+                    ‘--With the plain Inscription,
+
+                         ‘WILKINS MICAWBER.’
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 50. Mr. PEGGOTTY’S DREAM COMES TRUE
+
+
+By this time, some months had passed since our interview on the bank
+of the river with Martha. I had never seen her since, but she had
+communicated with Mr. Peggotty on several occasions. Nothing had come of
+her zealous intervention; nor could I infer, from what he told me, that
+any clue had been obtained, for a moment, to Emily’s fate. I confess
+that I began to despair of her recovery, and gradually to sink deeper
+and deeper into the belief that she was dead.
+
+His conviction remained unchanged. So far as I know--and I believe
+his honest heart was transparent to me--he never wavered again, in his
+solemn certainty of finding her. His patience never tired. And, although
+I trembled for the agony it might one day be to him to have his strong
+assurance shivered at a blow, there was something so religious in it, so
+affectingly expressive of its anchor being in the purest depths of
+his fine nature, that the respect and honour in which I held him were
+exalted every day.
+
+His was not a lazy trustfulness that hoped, and did no more. He had
+been a man of sturdy action all his life, and he knew that in all things
+wherein he wanted help he must do his own part faithfully, and help
+himself. I have known him set out in the night, on a misgiving that the
+light might not be, by some accident, in the window of the old boat,
+and walk to Yarmouth. I have known him, on reading something in the
+newspaper that might apply to her, take up his stick, and go forth on a
+journey of three--or four-score miles. He made his way by sea to Naples,
+and back, after hearing the narrative to which Miss Dartle had assisted
+me. All his journeys were ruggedly performed; for he was always
+steadfast in a purpose of saving money for Emily’s sake, when she should
+be found. In all this long pursuit, I never heard him repine; I never
+heard him say he was fatigued, or out of heart.
+
+Dora had often seen him since our marriage, and was quite fond of him.
+I fancy his figure before me now, standing near her sofa, with his rough
+cap in his hand, and the blue eyes of my child-wife raised, with a timid
+wonder, to his face. Sometimes of an evening, about twilight, when
+he came to talk with me, I would induce him to smoke his pipe in the
+garden, as we slowly paced to and fro together; and then, the picture
+of his deserted home, and the comfortable air it used to have in my
+childish eyes of an evening when the fire was burning, and the wind
+moaning round it, came most vividly into my mind.
+
+One evening, at this hour, he told me that he had found Martha waiting
+near his lodging on the preceding night when he came out, and that she
+had asked him not to leave London on any account, until he should have
+seen her again.
+
+‘Did she tell you why?’ I inquired.
+
+‘I asked her, Mas’r Davy,’ he replied, ‘but it is but few words as she
+ever says, and she on’y got my promise and so went away.’
+
+‘Did she say when you might expect to see her again?’ I demanded.
+
+‘No, Mas’r Davy,’ he returned, drawing his hand thoughtfully down his
+face. ‘I asked that too; but it was more (she said) than she could
+tell.’
+
+As I had long forborne to encourage him with hopes that hung on threads,
+I made no other comment on this information than that I supposed he
+would see her soon. Such speculations as it engendered within me I kept
+to myself, and those were faint enough.
+
+I was walking alone in the garden, one evening, about a fortnight
+afterwards. I remember that evening well. It was the second in Mr.
+Micawber’s week of suspense. There had been rain all day, and there was
+a damp feeling in the air. The leaves were thick upon the trees, and
+heavy with wet; but the rain had ceased, though the sky was still dark;
+and the hopeful birds were singing cheerfully. As I walked to and fro
+in the garden, and the twilight began to close around me, their little
+voices were hushed; and that peculiar silence which belongs to such an
+evening in the country when the lightest trees are quite still, save for
+the occasional droppings from their boughs, prevailed.
+
+There was a little green perspective of trellis-work and ivy at the side
+of our cottage, through which I could see, from the garden where I was
+walking, into the road before the house. I happened to turn my eyes
+towards this place, as I was thinking of many things; and I saw a figure
+beyond, dressed in a plain cloak. It was bending eagerly towards me, and
+beckoning.
+
+‘Martha!’ said I, going to it.
+
+‘Can you come with me?’ she inquired, in an agitated whisper. ‘I have
+been to him, and he is not at home. I wrote down where he was to come,
+and left it on his table with my own hand. They said he would not be out
+long. I have tidings for him. Can you come directly?’
+
+My answer was, to pass out at the gate immediately. She made a hasty
+gesture with her hand, as if to entreat my patience and my silence,
+and turned towards London, whence, as her dress betokened, she had come
+expeditiously on foot.
+
+I asked her if that were not our destination? On her motioning Yes,
+with the same hasty gesture as before, I stopped an empty coach that was
+coming by, and we got into it. When I asked her where the coachman was
+to drive, she answered, ‘Anywhere near Golden Square! And quick!’--then
+shrunk into a corner, with one trembling hand before her face, and the
+other making the former gesture, as if she could not bear a voice.
+
+Now much disturbed, and dazzled with conflicting gleams of hope and
+dread, I looked at her for some explanation. But seeing how strongly
+she desired to remain quiet, and feeling that it was my own natural
+inclination too, at such a time, I did not attempt to break the silence.
+We proceeded without a word being spoken. Sometimes she glanced out of
+the window, as though she thought we were going slowly, though indeed we
+were going fast; but otherwise remained exactly as at first.
+
+We alighted at one of the entrances to the Square she had mentioned,
+where I directed the coach to wait, not knowing but that we might have
+some occasion for it. She laid her hand on my arm, and hurried me on
+to one of the sombre streets, of which there are several in that part,
+where the houses were once fair dwellings in the occupation of single
+families, but have, and had, long degenerated into poor lodgings let off
+in rooms. Entering at the open door of one of these, and releasing my
+arm, she beckoned me to follow her up the common staircase, which was
+like a tributary channel to the street.
+
+The house swarmed with inmates. As we went up, doors of rooms were
+opened and people’s heads put out; and we passed other people on the
+stairs, who were coming down. In glancing up from the outside, before
+we entered, I had seen women and children lolling at the windows over
+flower-pots; and we seemed to have attracted their curiosity, for these
+were principally the observers who looked out of their doors. It was a
+broad panelled staircase, with massive balustrades of some dark wood;
+cornices above the doors, ornamented with carved fruit and flowers; and
+broad seats in the windows. But all these tokens of past grandeur
+were miserably decayed and dirty; rot, damp, and age, had weakened
+the flooring, which in many places was unsound and even unsafe. Some
+attempts had been made, I noticed, to infuse new blood into this
+dwindling frame, by repairing the costly old wood-work here and there
+with common deal; but it was like the marriage of a reduced old noble to
+a plebeian pauper, and each party to the ill-assorted union shrunk away
+from the other. Several of the back windows on the staircase had
+been darkened or wholly blocked up. In those that remained, there was
+scarcely any glass; and, through the crumbling frames by which the bad
+air seemed always to come in, and never to go out, I saw, through other
+glassless windows, into other houses in a similar condition, and looked
+giddily down into a wretched yard, which was the common dust-heap of the
+mansion.
+
+We proceeded to the top-storey of the house. Two or three times, by the
+way, I thought I observed in the indistinct light the skirts of a female
+figure going up before us. As we turned to ascend the last flight of
+stairs between us and the roof, we caught a full view of this figure
+pausing for a moment, at a door. Then it turned the handle, and went in.
+
+‘What’s this!’ said Martha, in a whisper. ‘She has gone into my room. I
+don’t know her!’
+
+I knew her. I had recognized her with amazement, for Miss Dartle.
+
+I said something to the effect that it was a lady whom I had seen
+before, in a few words, to my conductress; and had scarcely done so,
+when we heard her voice in the room, though not, from where we stood,
+what she was saying. Martha, with an astonished look, repeated her
+former action, and softly led me up the stairs; and then, by a little
+back-door which seemed to have no lock, and which she pushed open with a
+touch, into a small empty garret with a low sloping roof, little better
+than a cupboard. Between this, and the room she had called hers,
+there was a small door of communication, standing partly open. Here we
+stopped, breathless with our ascent, and she placed her hand lightly on
+my lips. I could only see, of the room beyond, that it was pretty large;
+that there was a bed in it; and that there were some common pictures of
+ships upon the walls. I could not see Miss Dartle, or the person whom
+we had heard her address. Certainly, my companion could not, for my
+position was the best. A dead silence prevailed for some moments. Martha
+kept one hand on my lips, and raised the other in a listening attitude.
+
+‘It matters little to me her not being at home,’ said Rosa Dartle
+haughtily, ‘I know nothing of her. It is you I come to see.’
+
+‘Me?’ replied a soft voice.
+
+At the sound of it, a thrill went through my frame. For it was Emily’s!
+
+‘Yes,’ returned Miss Dartle, ‘I have come to look at you. What? You are
+not ashamed of the face that has done so much?’
+
+The resolute and unrelenting hatred of her tone, its cold stern
+sharpness, and its mastered rage, presented her before me, as if I had
+seen her standing in the light. I saw the flashing black eyes, and the
+passion-wasted figure; and I saw the scar, with its white track cutting
+through her lips, quivering and throbbing as she spoke.
+
+‘I have come to see,’ she said, ‘James Steerforth’s fancy; the girl who
+ran away with him, and is the town-talk of the commonest people of her
+native place; the bold, flaunting, practised companion of persons like
+James Steerforth. I want to know what such a thing is like.’
+
+There was a rustle, as if the unhappy girl, on whom she heaped these
+taunts, ran towards the door, and the speaker swiftly interposed herself
+before it. It was succeeded by a moment’s pause.
+
+When Miss Dartle spoke again, it was through her set teeth, and with a
+stamp upon the ground.
+
+‘Stay there!’ she said, ‘or I’ll proclaim you to the house, and the
+whole street! If you try to evade me, I’ll stop you, if it’s by the
+hair, and raise the very stones against you!’
+
+A frightened murmur was the only reply that reached my ears. A silence
+succeeded. I did not know what to do. Much as I desired to put an end to
+the interview, I felt that I had no right to present myself; that it was
+for Mr. Peggotty alone to see her and recover her. Would he never come?
+I thought impatiently.
+
+‘So!’ said Rosa Dartle, with a contemptuous laugh, ‘I see her at last!
+Why, he was a poor creature to be taken by that delicate mock-modesty,
+and that hanging head!’
+
+‘Oh, for Heaven’s sake, spare me!’ exclaimed Emily. ‘Whoever you are,
+you know my pitiable story, and for Heaven’s sake spare me, if you would
+be spared yourself!’
+
+‘If I would be spared!’ returned the other fiercely; ‘what is there in
+common between US, do you think!’
+
+‘Nothing but our sex,’ said Emily, with a burst of tears.
+
+‘And that,’ said Rosa Dartle, ‘is so strong a claim, preferred by one
+so infamous, that if I had any feeling in my breast but scorn and
+abhorrence of you, it would freeze it up. Our sex! You are an honour to
+our sex!’
+
+‘I have deserved this,’ said Emily, ‘but it’s dreadful! Dear, dear lady,
+think what I have suffered, and how I am fallen! Oh, Martha, come back!
+Oh, home, home!’
+
+Miss Dartle placed herself in a chair, within view of the door, and
+looked downward, as if Emily were crouching on the floor before her.
+Being now between me and the light, I could see her curled lip, and her
+cruel eyes intently fixed on one place, with a greedy triumph.
+
+‘Listen to what I say!’ she said; ‘and reserve your false arts for your
+dupes. Do you hope to move me by your tears? No more than you could
+charm me by your smiles, you purchased slave.’
+
+‘Oh, have some mercy on me!’ cried Emily. ‘Show me some compassion, or I
+shall die mad!’
+
+‘It would be no great penance,’ said Rosa Dartle, ‘for your crimes. Do
+you know what you have done? Do you ever think of the home you have laid
+waste?’
+
+‘Oh, is there ever night or day, when I don’t think of it!’ cried Emily;
+and now I could just see her, on her knees, with her head thrown back,
+her pale face looking upward, her hands wildly clasped and held out,
+and her hair streaming about her. ‘Has there ever been a single minute,
+waking or sleeping, when it hasn’t been before me, just as it used to
+be in the lost days when I turned my back upon it for ever and for ever!
+Oh, home, home! Oh dear, dear uncle, if you ever could have known the
+agony your love would cause me when I fell away from good, you never
+would have shown it to me so constant, much as you felt it; but would
+have been angry to me, at least once in my life, that I might have had
+some comfort! I have none, none, no comfort upon earth, for all of them
+were always fond of me!’ She dropped on her face, before the imperious
+figure in the chair, with an imploring effort to clasp the skirt of her
+dress.
+
+Rosa Dartle sat looking down upon her, as inflexible as a figure of
+brass. Her lips were tightly compressed, as if she knew that she
+must keep a strong constraint upon herself--I write what I sincerely
+believe--or she would be tempted to strike the beautiful form with
+her foot. I saw her, distinctly, and the whole power of her face and
+character seemed forced into that expression.---Would he never come?
+
+‘The miserable vanity of these earth-worms!’ she said, when she had so
+far controlled the angry heavings of her breast, that she could trust
+herself to speak. ‘YOUR home! Do you imagine that I bestow a thought
+on it, or suppose you could do any harm to that low place, which money
+would not pay for, and handsomely? YOUR home! You were a part of the
+trade of your home, and were bought and sold like any other vendible
+thing your people dealt in.’
+
+‘Oh, not that!’ cried Emily. ‘Say anything of me; but don’t visit
+my disgrace and shame, more than I have done, on folks who are as
+honourable as you! Have some respect for them, as you are a lady, if you
+have no mercy for me.’
+
+‘I speak,’ she said, not deigning to take any heed of this appeal, and
+drawing away her dress from the contamination of Emily’s touch, ‘I speak
+of HIS home--where I live. Here,’ she said, stretching out her hand with
+her contemptuous laugh, and looking down upon the prostrate girl, ‘is a
+worthy cause of division between lady-mother and gentleman-son; of grief
+in a house where she wouldn’t have been admitted as a kitchen-girl; of
+anger, and repining, and reproach. This piece of pollution, picked up
+from the water-side, to be made much of for an hour, and then tossed
+back to her original place!’
+
+‘No! no!’ cried Emily, clasping her hands together. ‘When he first came
+into my way--that the day had never dawned upon me, and he had met me
+being carried to my grave!--I had been brought up as virtuous as you or
+any lady, and was going to be the wife of as good a man as you or any
+lady in the world can ever marry. If you live in his home and know him,
+you know, perhaps, what his power with a weak, vain girl might be. I
+don’t defend myself, but I know well, and he knows well, or he will know
+when he comes to die, and his mind is troubled with it, that he used all
+his power to deceive me, and that I believed him, trusted him, and loved
+him!’
+
+Rosa Dartle sprang up from her seat; recoiled; and in recoiling struck
+at her, with a face of such malignity, so darkened and disfigured by
+passion, that I had almost thrown myself between them. The blow, which
+had no aim, fell upon the air. As she now stood panting, looking at
+her with the utmost detestation that she was capable of expressing, and
+trembling from head to foot with rage and scorn, I thought I had never
+seen such a sight, and never could see such another.
+
+‘YOU love him? You?’ she cried, with her clenched hand, quivering as if
+it only wanted a weapon to stab the object of her wrath.
+
+Emily had shrunk out of my view. There was no reply.
+
+‘And tell that to ME,’ she added, ‘with your shameful lips? Why don’t
+they whip these creatures? If I could order it to be done, I would have
+this girl whipped to death.’
+
+And so she would, I have no doubt. I would not have trusted her with the
+rack itself, while that furious look lasted. She slowly, very slowly,
+broke into a laugh, and pointed at Emily with her hand, as if she were a
+sight of shame for gods and men.
+
+‘SHE love!’ she said. ‘THAT carrion! And he ever cared for her, she’d
+tell me. Ha, ha! The liars that these traders are!’
+
+Her mockery was worse than her undisguised rage. Of the two, I would
+have much preferred to be the object of the latter. But, when she
+suffered it to break loose, it was only for a moment. She had chained
+it up again, and however it might tear her within, she subdued it to
+herself.
+
+‘I came here, you pure fountain of love,’ she said, ‘to see--as I began
+by telling you--what such a thing as you was like. I was curious. I am
+satisfied. Also to tell you, that you had best seek that home of yours,
+with all speed, and hide your head among those excellent people who are
+expecting you, and whom your money will console. When it’s all gone, you
+can believe, and trust, and love again, you know! I thought you a broken
+toy that had lasted its time; a worthless spangle that was tarnished,
+and thrown away. But, finding you true gold, a very lady, and
+an ill-used innocent, with a fresh heart full of love and
+trustfulness--which you look like, and is quite consistent with your
+story!--I have something more to say. Attend to it; for what I say I’ll
+do. Do you hear me, you fairy spirit? What I say, I mean to do!’
+
+Her rage got the better of her again, for a moment; but it passed over
+her face like a spasm, and left her smiling.
+
+‘Hide yourself,’ she pursued, ‘if not at home, somewhere. Let it be
+somewhere beyond reach; in some obscure life--or, better still, in some
+obscure death. I wonder, if your loving heart will not break, you have
+found no way of helping it to be still! I have heard of such means
+sometimes. I believe they may be easily found.’
+
+A low crying, on the part of Emily, interrupted her here. She stopped,
+and listened to it as if it were music.
+
+‘I am of a strange nature, perhaps,’ Rosa Dartle went on; ‘but I can’t
+breathe freely in the air you breathe. I find it sickly. Therefore, I
+will have it cleared; I will have it purified of you. If you live here
+tomorrow, I’ll have your story and your character proclaimed on the
+common stair. There are decent women in the house, I am told; and it
+is a pity such a light as you should be among them, and concealed. If,
+leaving here, you seek any refuge in this town in any character but your
+true one (which you are welcome to bear, without molestation from me),
+the same service shall be done you, if I hear of your retreat. Being
+assisted by a gentleman who not long ago aspired to the favour of your
+hand, I am sanguine as to that.’
+
+Would he never, never come? How long was I to bear this? How long could
+I bear it? ‘Oh me, oh me!’ exclaimed the wretched Emily, in a tone that
+might have touched the hardest heart, I should have thought; but there
+was no relenting in Rosa Dartle’s smile. ‘What, what, shall I do!’
+
+‘Do?’ returned the other. ‘Live happy in your own reflections!
+Consecrate your existence to the recollection of James Steerforth’s
+tenderness--he would have made you his serving-man’s wife, would he
+not?---or to feeling grateful to the upright and deserving creature who
+would have taken you as his gift. Or, if those proud remembrances, and
+the consciousness of your own virtues, and the honourable position to
+which they have raised you in the eyes of everything that wears the
+human shape, will not sustain you, marry that good man, and be happy in
+his condescension. If this will not do either, die! There are doorways
+and dust-heaps for such deaths, and such despair--find one, and take
+your flight to Heaven!’
+
+I heard a distant foot upon the stairs. I knew it, I was certain. It was
+his, thank God!
+
+She moved slowly from before the door when she said this, and passed out
+of my sight.
+
+‘But mark!’ she added, slowly and sternly, opening the other door to
+go away, ‘I am resolved, for reasons that I have and hatreds that
+I entertain, to cast you out, unless you withdraw from my reach
+altogether, or drop your pretty mask. This is what I had to say; and
+what I say, I mean to do!’
+
+The foot upon the stairs came nearer--nearer--passed her as she went
+down--rushed into the room!
+
+‘Uncle!’
+
+A fearful cry followed the word. I paused a moment, and looking in, saw
+him supporting her insensible figure in his arms. He gazed for a few
+seconds in the face; then stooped to kiss it--oh, how tenderly!--and
+drew a handkerchief before it.
+
+‘Mas’r Davy,’ he said, in a low tremulous voice, when it was covered, ‘I
+thank my Heav’nly Father as my dream’s come true! I thank Him hearty for
+having guided of me, in His own ways, to my darling!’
+
+With those words he took her up in his arms; and, with the veiled
+face lying on his bosom, and addressed towards his own, carried her,
+motionless and unconscious, down the stairs.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 51. THE BEGINNING OF A LONGER JOURNEY
+
+
+It was yet early in the morning of the following day, when, as I was
+walking in my garden with my aunt (who took little other exercise
+now, being so much in attendance on my dear Dora), I was told that Mr.
+Peggotty desired to speak with me. He came into the garden to meet me
+half-way, on my going towards the gate; and bared his head, as it was
+always his custom to do when he saw my aunt, for whom he had a high
+respect. I had been telling her all that had happened overnight. Without
+saying a word, she walked up with a cordial face, shook hands with him,
+and patted him on the arm. It was so expressively done, that she had no
+need to say a word. Mr. Peggotty understood her quite as well as if she
+had said a thousand.
+
+‘I’ll go in now, Trot,’ said my aunt, ‘and look after Little Blossom,
+who will be getting up presently.’
+
+‘Not along of my being heer, ma’am, I hope?’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘Unless
+my wits is gone a bahd’s neezing’--by which Mr. Peggotty meant to say,
+bird’s-nesting--‘this morning, ‘tis along of me as you’re a-going to
+quit us?’
+
+‘You have something to say, my good friend,’ returned my aunt, ‘and will
+do better without me.’
+
+‘By your leave, ma’am,’ returned Mr. Peggotty, ‘I should take it kind,
+pervising you doen’t mind my clicketten, if you’d bide heer.’
+
+‘Would you?’ said my aunt, with short good-nature. ‘Then I am sure I
+will!’
+
+So, she drew her arm through Mr. Peggotty’s, and walked with him to a
+leafy little summer-house there was at the bottom of the garden, where
+she sat down on a bench, and I beside her. There was a seat for Mr.
+Peggotty too, but he preferred to stand, leaning his hand on the small
+rustic table. As he stood, looking at his cap for a little while before
+beginning to speak, I could not help observing what power and force
+of character his sinewy hand expressed, and what a good and trusty
+companion it was to his honest brow and iron-grey hair.
+
+‘I took my dear child away last night,’ Mr. Peggotty began, as he
+raised his eyes to ours, ‘to my lodging, wheer I have a long time been
+expecting of her and preparing fur her. It was hours afore she knowed me
+right; and when she did, she kneeled down at my feet, and kiender said
+to me, as if it was her prayers, how it all come to be. You may believe
+me, when I heerd her voice, as I had heerd at home so playful--and see
+her humbled, as it might be in the dust our Saviour wrote in with his
+blessed hand--I felt a wownd go to my ‘art, in the midst of all its
+thankfulness.’
+
+He drew his sleeve across his face, without any pretence of concealing
+why; and then cleared his voice.
+
+‘It warn’t for long as I felt that; for she was found. I had on’y to
+think as she was found, and it was gone. I doen’t know why I do so much
+as mention of it now, I’m sure. I didn’t have it in my mind a minute
+ago, to say a word about myself; but it come up so nat’ral, that I
+yielded to it afore I was aweer.’
+
+‘You are a self-denying soul,’ said my aunt, ‘and will have your
+reward.’
+
+Mr. Peggotty, with the shadows of the leaves playing athwart his
+face, made a surprised inclination of the head towards my aunt, as an
+acknowledgement of her good opinion; then took up the thread he had
+relinquished.
+
+‘When my Em’ly took flight,’ he said, in stern wrath for the moment,
+‘from the house wheer she was made a prisoner by that theer spotted
+snake as Mas’r Davy see,--and his story’s trew, and may GOD confound
+him!--she took flight in the night. It was a dark night, with a many
+stars a-shining. She was wild. She ran along the sea beach, believing
+the old boat was theer; and calling out to us to turn away our faces,
+for she was a-coming by. She heerd herself a-crying out, like as if
+it was another person; and cut herself on them sharp-pinted stones and
+rocks, and felt it no more than if she had been rock herself. Ever so
+fur she run, and there was fire afore her eyes, and roarings in her
+ears. Of a sudden--or so she thowt, you unnerstand--the day broke, wet
+and windy, and she was lying b’low a heap of stone upon the shore, and
+a woman was a-speaking to her, saying, in the language of that country,
+what was it as had gone so much amiss?’
+
+He saw everything he related. It passed before him, as he spoke, so
+vividly, that, in the intensity of his earnestness, he presented what
+he described to me, with greater distinctness than I can express. I can
+hardly believe, writing now long afterwards, but that I was actually
+present in these scenes; they are impressed upon me with such an
+astonishing air of fidelity.
+
+‘As Em’ly’s eyes--which was heavy--see this woman better,’ Mr. Peggotty
+went on, ‘she know’d as she was one of them as she had often talked to
+on the beach. Fur, though she had run (as I have said) ever so fur in
+the night, she had oftentimes wandered long ways, partly afoot, partly
+in boats and carriages, and know’d all that country, ‘long the coast,
+miles and miles. She hadn’t no children of her own, this woman, being
+a young wife; but she was a-looking to have one afore long. And may
+my prayers go up to Heaven that ‘twill be a happiness to her, and a
+comfort, and a honour, all her life! May it love her and be dootiful to
+her, in her old age; helpful of her at the last; a Angel to her heer,
+and heerafter!’
+
+‘Amen!’ said my aunt.
+
+‘She had been summat timorous and down,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘and had sat,
+at first, a little way off, at her spinning, or such work as it was,
+when Em’ly talked to the children. But Em’ly had took notice of her,
+and had gone and spoke to her; and as the young woman was partial to
+the children herself, they had soon made friends. Sermuchser, that when
+Em’ly went that way, she always giv Em’ly flowers. This was her as
+now asked what it was that had gone so much amiss. Em’ly told her,
+and she--took her home. She did indeed. She took her home,’ said Mr.
+Peggotty, covering his face.
+
+He was more affected by this act of kindness, than I had ever seen him
+affected by anything since the night she went away. My aunt and I did
+not attempt to disturb him.
+
+‘It was a little cottage, you may suppose,’ he said, presently, ‘but she
+found space for Em’ly in it,--her husband was away at sea,--and she kep
+it secret, and prevailed upon such neighbours as she had (they was not
+many near) to keep it secret too. Em’ly was took bad with fever,
+and, what is very strange to me is,--maybe ‘tis not so strange to
+scholars,--the language of that country went out of her head, and she
+could only speak her own, that no one unnerstood. She recollects, as if
+she had dreamed it, that she lay there always a-talking her own tongue,
+always believing as the old boat was round the next pint in the bay, and
+begging and imploring of ‘em to send theer and tell how she was dying,
+and bring back a message of forgiveness, if it was on’y a wured. A’most
+the whole time, she thowt,--now, that him as I made mention on just now
+was lurking for her unnerneath the winder; now that him as had brought
+her to this was in the room,--and cried to the good young woman not to
+give her up, and know’d, at the same time, that she couldn’t unnerstand,
+and dreaded that she must be took away. Likewise the fire was afore
+her eyes, and the roarings in her ears; and theer was no today, nor
+yesterday, nor yet tomorrow; but everything in her life as ever had
+been, or as ever could be, and everything as never had been, and as
+never could be, was a crowding on her all at once, and nothing clear nor
+welcome, and yet she sang and laughed about it! How long this lasted, I
+doen’t know; but then theer come a sleep; and in that sleep, from being
+a many times stronger than her own self, she fell into the weakness of
+the littlest child.’
+
+Here he stopped, as if for relief from the terrors of his own
+description. After being silent for a few moments, he pursued his story.
+
+‘It was a pleasant arternoon when she awoke; and so quiet, that there
+warn’t a sound but the rippling of that blue sea without a tide, upon
+the shore. It was her belief, at first, that she was at home upon a
+Sunday morning; but the vine leaves as she see at the winder, and the
+hills beyond, warn’t home, and contradicted of her. Then, come in her
+friend to watch alongside of her bed; and then she know’d as the old
+boat warn’t round that next pint in the bay no more, but was fur off;
+and know’d where she was, and why; and broke out a-crying on that good
+young woman’s bosom, wheer I hope her baby is a-lying now, a-cheering of
+her with its pretty eyes!’
+
+He could not speak of this good friend of Emily’s without a flow of
+tears. It was in vain to try. He broke down again, endeavouring to bless
+her!
+
+‘That done my Em’ly good,’ he resumed, after such emotion as I could
+not behold without sharing in; and as to my aunt, she wept with all her
+heart; ‘that done Em’ly good, and she begun to mend. But, the language
+of that country was quite gone from her, and she was forced to make
+signs. So she went on, getting better from day to day, slow, but sure,
+and trying to learn the names of common things--names as she seemed
+never to have heerd in all her life--till one evening come, when she
+was a-setting at her window, looking at a little girl at play upon the
+beach. And of a sudden this child held out her hand, and said, what
+would be in English, “Fisherman’s daughter, here’s a shell!”--for you
+are to unnerstand that they used at first to call her “Pretty lady”, as
+the general way in that country is, and that she had taught ‘em to
+call her “Fisherman’s daughter” instead. The child says of a sudden,
+“Fisherman’s daughter, here’s a shell!” Then Em’ly unnerstands her; and
+she answers, bursting out a-crying; and it all comes back!
+
+‘When Em’ly got strong again,’ said Mr. Peggotty, after another short
+interval of silence, ‘she cast about to leave that good young creetur,
+and get to her own country. The husband was come home, then; and the two
+together put her aboard a small trader bound to Leghorn, and from that
+to France. She had a little money, but it was less than little as they
+would take for all they done. I’m a’most glad on it, though they was
+so poor! What they done, is laid up wheer neither moth or rust doth
+corrupt, and wheer thieves do not break through nor steal. Mas’r Davy,
+it’ll outlast all the treasure in the wureld.
+
+‘Em’ly got to France, and took service to wait on travelling ladies at a
+inn in the port. Theer, theer come, one day, that snake. --Let him never
+come nigh me. I doen’t know what hurt I might do him!--Soon as she see
+him, without him seeing her, all her fear and wildness returned upon
+her, and she fled afore the very breath he draw’d. She come to England,
+and was set ashore at Dover.
+
+‘I doen’t know,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘for sure, when her ‘art begun to
+fail her; but all the way to England she had thowt to come to her dear
+home. Soon as she got to England she turned her face tow’rds it. But,
+fear of not being forgiv, fear of being pinted at, fear of some of
+us being dead along of her, fear of many things, turned her from it,
+kiender by force, upon the road: “Uncle, uncle,” she says to me, “the
+fear of not being worthy to do what my torn and bleeding breast so
+longed to do, was the most fright’ning fear of all! I turned back, when
+my ‘art was full of prayers that I might crawl to the old door-step, in
+the night, kiss it, lay my wicked face upon it, and theer be found dead
+in the morning.”
+
+‘She come,’ said Mr. Peggotty, dropping his voice to an
+awe-stricken whisper, ‘to London. She--as had never seen it in her
+life--alone--without a penny--young--so pretty--come to London. A’most
+the moment as she lighted heer, all so desolate, she found (as she
+believed) a friend; a decent woman as spoke to her about the needle-work
+as she had been brought up to do, about finding plenty of it fur her,
+about a lodging fur the night, and making secret inquiration concerning
+of me and all at home, tomorrow. When my child,’ he said aloud, and with
+an energy of gratitude that shook him from head to foot, ‘stood upon the
+brink of more than I can say or think on--Martha, trew to her promise,
+saved her.’
+
+I could not repress a cry of joy.
+
+‘Mas’r Davy!’ said he, gripping my hand in that strong hand of his,
+‘it was you as first made mention of her to me. I thankee, sir! She was
+arnest. She had know’d of her bitter knowledge wheer to watch and what
+to do. She had done it. And the Lord was above all! She come, white and
+hurried, upon Em’ly in her sleep. She says to her, “Rise up from worse
+than death, and come with me!” Them belonging to the house would have
+stopped her, but they might as soon have stopped the sea. “Stand away
+from me,” she says, “I am a ghost that calls her from beside her open
+grave!” She told Em’ly she had seen me, and know’d I loved her, and
+forgive her. She wrapped her, hasty, in her clothes. She took her, faint
+and trembling, on her arm. She heeded no more what they said, than if
+she had had no ears. She walked among ‘em with my child, minding only
+her; and brought her safe out, in the dead of the night, from that black
+pit of ruin!
+
+‘She attended on Em’ly,’ said Mr. Peggotty, who had released my hand,
+and put his own hand on his heaving chest; ‘she attended to my Em’ly,
+lying wearied out, and wandering betwixt whiles, till late next day.
+Then she went in search of me; then in search of you, Mas’r Davy. She
+didn’t tell Em’ly what she come out fur, lest her ‘art should fail, and
+she should think of hiding of herself. How the cruel lady know’d of
+her being theer, I can’t say. Whether him as I have spoke so much of,
+chanced to see ‘em going theer, or whether (which is most like, to my
+thinking) he had heerd it from the woman, I doen’t greatly ask myself.
+My niece is found.
+
+‘All night long,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘we have been together, Em’ly
+and me. ‘Tis little (considering the time) as she has said, in wureds,
+through them broken-hearted tears; ‘tis less as I have seen of her dear
+face, as grow’d into a woman’s at my hearth. But, all night long, her
+arms has been about my neck; and her head has laid heer; and we knows
+full well, as we can put our trust in one another, ever more.’
+
+He ceased to speak, and his hand upon the table rested there in perfect
+repose, with a resolution in it that might have conquered lions.
+
+‘It was a gleam of light upon me, Trot,’ said my aunt, drying her eyes,
+‘when I formed the resolution of being godmother to your sister Betsey
+Trotwood, who disappointed me; but, next to that, hardly anything would
+have given me greater pleasure, than to be godmother to that good young
+creature’s baby!’
+
+Mr. Peggotty nodded his understanding of my aunt’s feelings, but could
+not trust himself with any verbal reference to the subject of her
+commendation. We all remained silent, and occupied with our own
+reflections (my aunt drying her eyes, and now sobbing convulsively, and
+now laughing and calling herself a fool); until I spoke.
+
+‘You have quite made up your mind,’ said I to Mr. Peggotty, ‘as to the
+future, good friend? I need scarcely ask you.’
+
+‘Quite, Mas’r Davy,’ he returned; ‘and told Em’ly. Theer’s mighty
+countries, fur from heer. Our future life lays over the sea.’
+
+‘They will emigrate together, aunt,’ said I.
+
+‘Yes!’ said Mr. Peggotty, with a hopeful smile. ‘No one can’t reproach
+my darling in Australia. We will begin a new life over theer!’
+
+I asked him if he yet proposed to himself any time for going away.
+
+‘I was down at the Docks early this morning, sir,’ he returned, ‘to get
+information concerning of them ships. In about six weeks or two
+months from now, there’ll be one sailing--I see her this morning--went
+aboard--and we shall take our passage in her.’
+
+‘Quite alone?’ I asked.
+
+‘Aye, Mas’r Davy!’ he returned. ‘My sister, you see, she’s that fond
+of you and yourn, and that accustomed to think on’y of her own country,
+that it wouldn’t be hardly fair to let her go. Besides which, theer’s
+one she has in charge, Mas’r Davy, as doen’t ought to be forgot.’
+
+‘Poor Ham!’ said I.
+
+‘My good sister takes care of his house, you see, ma’am, and he takes
+kindly to her,’ Mr. Peggotty explained for my aunt’s better information.
+‘He’ll set and talk to her, with a calm spirit, wen it’s like he
+couldn’t bring himself to open his lips to another. Poor fellow!’ said
+Mr. Peggotty, shaking his head, ‘theer’s not so much left him, that he
+could spare the little as he has!’
+
+‘And Mrs. Gummidge?’ said I.
+
+‘Well, I’ve had a mort of consideration, I do tell you,’ returned Mr.
+Peggotty, with a perplexed look which gradually cleared as he went
+on, ‘concerning of Missis Gummidge. You see, wen Missis Gummidge falls
+a-thinking of the old ‘un, she an’t what you may call good company.
+Betwixt you and me, Mas’r Davy--and you, ma’am--wen Mrs. Gummidge takes
+to wimicking,’--our old country word for crying,--‘she’s liable to be
+considered to be, by them as didn’t know the old ‘un, peevish-like. Now
+I DID know the old ‘un,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘and I know’d his merits,
+so I unnerstan’ her; but ‘tan’t entirely so, you see, with
+others--nat’rally can’t be!’
+
+My aunt and I both acquiesced.
+
+‘Wheerby,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘my sister might--I doen’t say she would,
+but might--find Missis Gummidge give her a leetle trouble now-and-again.
+Theerfur ‘tan’t my intentions to moor Missis Gummidge ‘long with them,
+but to find a Beein’ fur her wheer she can fisherate for herself.’
+(A Beein’ signifies, in that dialect, a home, and to fisherate is to
+provide.) ‘Fur which purpose,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘I means to make her
+a ‘lowance afore I go, as’ll leave her pretty comfort’ble. She’s the
+faithfullest of creeturs. ‘Tan’t to be expected, of course, at her
+time of life, and being lone and lorn, as the good old Mawther is to
+be knocked about aboardship, and in the woods and wilds of a new and
+fur-away country. So that’s what I’m a-going to do with her.’
+
+He forgot nobody. He thought of everybody’s claims and strivings, but
+his own.
+
+‘Em’ly,’ he continued, ‘will keep along with me--poor child, she’s sore
+in need of peace and rest!--until such time as we goes upon our voyage.
+She’ll work at them clothes, as must be made; and I hope her troubles
+will begin to seem longer ago than they was, wen she finds herself once
+more by her rough but loving uncle.’
+
+My aunt nodded confirmation of this hope, and imparted great
+satisfaction to Mr. Peggotty.
+
+‘Theer’s one thing furder, Mas’r Davy,’ said he, putting his hand in his
+breast-pocket, and gravely taking out the little paper bundle I had
+seen before, which he unrolled on the table. ‘Theer’s these here
+banknotes--fifty pound, and ten. To them I wish to add the money as she
+come away with. I’ve asked her about that (but not saying why), and have
+added of it up. I an’t a scholar. Would you be so kind as see how ‘tis?’
+
+He handed me, apologetically for his scholarship, a piece of paper, and
+observed me while I looked it over. It was quite right.
+
+‘Thankee, sir,’ he said, taking it back. ‘This money, if you doen’t
+see objections, Mas’r Davy, I shall put up jest afore I go, in a cover
+directed to him; and put that up in another, directed to his mother.
+I shall tell her, in no more wureds than I speak to you, what it’s the
+price on; and that I’m gone, and past receiving of it back.’
+
+I told him that I thought it would be right to do so--that I was
+thoroughly convinced it would be, since he felt it to be right.
+
+‘I said that theer was on’y one thing furder,’ he proceeded with a grave
+smile, when he had made up his little bundle again, and put it in his
+pocket; ‘but theer was two. I warn’t sure in my mind, wen I come out
+this morning, as I could go and break to Ham, of my own self, what had
+so thankfully happened. So I writ a letter while I was out, and put
+it in the post-office, telling of ‘em how all was as ‘tis; and that I
+should come down tomorrow to unload my mind of what little needs a-doing
+of down theer, and, most-like, take my farewell leave of Yarmouth.’
+
+‘And do you wish me to go with you?’ said I, seeing that he left
+something unsaid.
+
+‘If you could do me that kind favour, Mas’r Davy,’ he replied. ‘I know
+the sight on you would cheer ‘em up a bit.’
+
+My little Dora being in good spirits, and very desirous that I should
+go--as I found on talking it over with her--I readily pledged myself to
+accompany him in accordance with his wish. Next morning, consequently,
+we were on the Yarmouth coach, and again travelling over the old ground.
+
+As we passed along the familiar street at night--Mr. Peggotty, in
+despite of all my remonstrances, carrying my bag--I glanced into Omer
+and Joram’s shop, and saw my old friend Mr. Omer there, smoking his
+pipe. I felt reluctant to be present, when Mr. Peggotty first met his
+sister and Ham; and made Mr. Omer my excuse for lingering behind.
+
+‘How is Mr. Omer, after this long time?’ said I, going in.
+
+He fanned away the smoke of his pipe, that he might get a better view of
+me, and soon recognized me with great delight.
+
+‘I should get up, sir, to acknowledge such an honour as this visit,’
+said he, ‘only my limbs are rather out of sorts, and I am wheeled about.
+With the exception of my limbs and my breath, howsoever, I am as hearty
+as a man can be, I’m thankful to say.’
+
+I congratulated him on his contented looks and his good spirits, and
+saw, now, that his easy-chair went on wheels.
+
+‘It’s an ingenious thing, ain’t it?’ he inquired, following the
+direction of my glance, and polishing the elbow with his arm. ‘It runs
+as light as a feather, and tracks as true as a mail-coach. Bless you,
+my little Minnie--my grand-daughter you know, Minnie’s child--puts her
+little strength against the back, gives it a shove, and away we go, as
+clever and merry as ever you see anything! And I tell you what--it’s a
+most uncommon chair to smoke a pipe in.’
+
+I never saw such a good old fellow to make the best of a thing, and
+find out the enjoyment of it, as Mr. Omer. He was as radiant, as if
+his chair, his asthma, and the failure of his limbs, were the various
+branches of a great invention for enhancing the luxury of a pipe.
+
+‘I see more of the world, I can assure you,’ said Mr. Omer, ‘in this
+chair, than ever I see out of it. You’d be surprised at the number of
+people that looks in of a day to have a chat. You really would! There’s
+twice as much in the newspaper, since I’ve taken to this chair, as there
+used to be. As to general reading, dear me, what a lot of it I do get
+through! That’s what I feel so strong, you know! If it had been my eyes,
+what should I have done? If it had been my ears, what should I have
+done? Being my limbs, what does it signify? Why, my limbs only made my
+breath shorter when I used ‘em. And now, if I want to go out into
+the street or down to the sands, I’ve only got to call Dick, Joram’s
+youngest ‘prentice, and away I go in my own carriage, like the Lord
+Mayor of London.’
+
+He half suffocated himself with laughing here.
+
+‘Lord bless you!’ said Mr. Omer, resuming his pipe, ‘a man must take
+the fat with the lean; that’s what he must make up his mind to, in this
+life. Joram does a fine business. Ex-cellent business!’
+
+‘I am very glad to hear it,’ said I.
+
+‘I knew you would be,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘And Joram and Minnie are like
+Valentines. What more can a man expect? What’s his limbs to that!’
+
+His supreme contempt for his own limbs, as he sat smoking, was one of
+the pleasantest oddities I have ever encountered.
+
+‘And since I’ve took to general reading, you’ve took to general writing,
+eh, sir?’ said Mr. Omer, surveying me admiringly. ‘What a lovely work
+that was of yours! What expressions in it! I read it every word--every
+word. And as to feeling sleepy! Not at all!’
+
+I laughingly expressed my satisfaction, but I must confess that I
+thought this association of ideas significant.
+
+‘I give you my word and honour, sir,’ said Mr. Omer, ‘that when I lay
+that book upon the table, and look at it outside; compact in three
+separate and indiwidual wollumes--one, two, three; I am as proud as
+Punch to think that I once had the honour of being connected with
+your family. And dear me, it’s a long time ago, now, ain’t it? Over
+at Blunderstone. With a pretty little party laid along with the other
+party. And you quite a small party then, yourself. Dear, dear!’
+
+I changed the subject by referring to Emily. After assuring him that I
+did not forget how interested he had always been in her, and how
+kindly he had always treated her, I gave him a general account of her
+restoration to her uncle by the aid of Martha; which I knew would please
+the old man. He listened with the utmost attention, and said, feelingly,
+when I had done:
+
+‘I am rejoiced at it, sir! It’s the best news I have heard for many
+a day. Dear, dear, dear! And what’s going to be undertook for that
+unfortunate young woman, Martha, now?’
+
+‘You touch a point that my thoughts have been dwelling on since
+yesterday,’ said I, ‘but on which I can give you no information yet, Mr.
+Omer. Mr. Peggotty has not alluded to it, and I have a delicacy in
+doing so. I am sure he has not forgotten it. He forgets nothing that is
+disinterested and good.’
+
+‘Because you know,’ said Mr. Omer, taking himself up, where he had left
+off, ‘whatever is done, I should wish to be a member of. Put me down for
+anything you may consider right, and let me know. I never could think
+the girl all bad, and I am glad to find she’s not. So will my daughter
+Minnie be. Young women are contradictory creatures in some things--her
+mother was just the same as her--but their hearts are soft and kind.
+It’s all show with Minnie, about Martha. Why she should consider it
+necessary to make any show, I don’t undertake to tell you. But it’s all
+show, bless you. She’d do her any kindness in private. So, put me down
+for whatever you may consider right, will you be so good? and drop me
+a line where to forward it. Dear me!’ said Mr. Omer, ‘when a man is
+drawing on to a time of life, where the two ends of life meet; when he
+finds himself, however hearty he is, being wheeled about for the second
+time, in a speeches of go-cart; he should be over-rejoiced to do a
+kindness if he can. He wants plenty. And I don’t speak of myself,
+particular,’ said Mr. Omer, ‘because, sir, the way I look at it is, that
+we are all drawing on to the bottom of the hill, whatever age we are,
+on account of time never standing still for a single moment. So let us
+always do a kindness, and be over-rejoiced. To be sure!’
+
+He knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and put it on a ledge in the back
+of his chair, expressly made for its reception.
+
+‘There’s Em’ly’s cousin, him that she was to have been married to,’ said
+Mr. Omer, rubbing his hands feebly, ‘as fine a fellow as there is in
+Yarmouth! He’ll come and talk or read to me, in the evening, for an hour
+together sometimes. That’s a kindness, I should call it! All his life’s
+a kindness.’
+
+‘I am going to see him now,’ said I.
+
+‘Are you?’ said Mr. Omer. ‘Tell him I was hearty, and sent my respects.
+Minnie and Joram’s at a ball. They would be as proud to see you as I
+am, if they was at home. Minnie won’t hardly go out at all, you see, “on
+account of father”, as she says. So I swore tonight, that if she didn’t
+go, I’d go to bed at six. In consequence of which,’ Mr. Omer shook
+himself and his chair with laughter at the success of his device, ‘she
+and Joram’s at a ball.’
+
+I shook hands with him, and wished him good night.
+
+‘Half a minute, sir,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘If you was to go without seeing
+my little elephant, you’d lose the best of sights. You never see such
+a sight! Minnie!’ A musical little voice answered, from somewhere
+upstairs, ‘I am coming, grandfather!’ and a pretty little girl with
+long, flaxen, curling hair, soon came running into the shop.
+
+‘This is my little elephant, sir,’ said Mr. Omer, fondling the child.
+‘Siamese breed, sir. Now, little elephant!’
+
+The little elephant set the door of the parlour open, enabling me to see
+that, in these latter days, it was converted into a bedroom for Mr.
+Omer who could not be easily conveyed upstairs; and then hid her pretty
+forehead, and tumbled her long hair, against the back of Mr. Omer’s
+chair.
+
+‘The elephant butts, you know, sir,’ said Mr. Omer, winking, ‘when he
+goes at a object. Once, elephant. Twice. Three times!’
+
+At this signal, the little elephant, with a dexterity that was next to
+marvellous in so small an animal, whisked the chair round with Mr. Omer
+in it, and rattled it off, pell-mell, into the parlour, without touching
+the door-post: Mr. Omer indescribably enjoying the performance, and
+looking back at me on the road as if it were the triumphant issue of his
+life’s exertions.
+
+After a stroll about the town I went to Ham’s house. Peggotty had now
+removed here for good; and had let her own house to the successor of
+Mr. Barkis in the carrying business, who had paid her very well for the
+good-will, cart, and horse. I believe the very same slow horse that Mr.
+Barkis drove was still at work.
+
+I found them in the neat kitchen, accompanied by Mrs. Gummidge, who had
+been fetched from the old boat by Mr. Peggotty himself. I doubt if
+she could have been induced to desert her post, by anyone else. He
+had evidently told them all. Both Peggotty and Mrs. Gummidge had their
+aprons to their eyes, and Ham had just stepped out ‘to take a turn on
+the beach’. He presently came home, very glad to see me; and I hope they
+were all the better for my being there. We spoke, with some approach to
+cheerfulness, of Mr. Peggotty’s growing rich in a new country, and of
+the wonders he would describe in his letters. We said nothing of Emily
+by name, but distantly referred to her more than once. Ham was the
+serenest of the party.
+
+But, Peggotty told me, when she lighted me to a little chamber where the
+Crocodile book was lying ready for me on the table, that he always was
+the same. She believed (she told me, crying) that he was broken-hearted;
+though he was as full of courage as of sweetness, and worked harder and
+better than any boat-builder in any yard in all that part. There were
+times, she said, of an evening, when he talked of their old life in
+the boat-house; and then he mentioned Emily as a child. But, he never
+mentioned her as a woman.
+
+I thought I had read in his face that he would like to speak to me
+alone. I therefore resolved to put myself in his way next evening, as he
+came home from his work. Having settled this with myself, I fell asleep.
+That night, for the first time in all those many nights, the candle was
+taken out of the window, Mr. Peggotty swung in his old hammock in the
+old boat, and the wind murmured with the old sound round his head.
+
+All next day, he was occupied in disposing of his fishing-boat and
+tackle; in packing up, and sending to London by waggon, such of his
+little domestic possessions as he thought would be useful to him; and in
+parting with the rest, or bestowing them on Mrs. Gummidge. She was with
+him all day. As I had a sorrowful wish to see the old place once more,
+before it was locked up, I engaged to meet them there in the evening.
+But I so arranged it, as that I should meet Ham first.
+
+It was easy to come in his way, as I knew where he worked. I met him
+at a retired part of the sands, which I knew he would cross, and turned
+back with him, that he might have leisure to speak to me if he really
+wished. I had not mistaken the expression of his face. We had walked but
+a little way together, when he said, without looking at me:
+
+‘Mas’r Davy, have you seen her?’
+
+‘Only for a moment, when she was in a swoon,’ I softly answered.
+
+We walked a little farther, and he said:
+
+‘Mas’r Davy, shall you see her, d’ye think?’
+
+‘It would be too painful to her, perhaps,’ said I.
+
+‘I have thowt of that,’ he replied. ‘So ‘twould, sir, so ‘twould.’
+
+‘But, Ham,’ said I, gently, ‘if there is anything that I could write
+to her, for you, in case I could not tell it; if there is anything
+you would wish to make known to her through me; I should consider it a
+sacred trust.’
+
+‘I am sure on’t. I thankee, sir, most kind! I think theer is something I
+could wish said or wrote.’
+
+‘What is it?’
+
+We walked a little farther in silence, and then he spoke.
+
+‘’Tan’t that I forgive her. ‘Tan’t that so much. ‘Tis more as I beg of
+her to forgive me, for having pressed my affections upon her. Odd times,
+I think that if I hadn’t had her promise fur to marry me, sir, she was
+that trustful of me, in a friendly way, that she’d have told me what was
+struggling in her mind, and would have counselled with me, and I might
+have saved her.’
+
+I pressed his hand. ‘Is that all?’ ‘Theer’s yet a something else,’ he
+returned, ‘if I can say it, Mas’r Davy.’
+
+We walked on, farther than we had walked yet, before he spoke again. He
+was not crying when he made the pauses I shall express by lines. He was
+merely collecting himself to speak very plainly.
+
+‘I loved her--and I love the mem’ry of her--too deep--to be able to
+lead her to believe of my own self as I’m a happy man. I could only be
+happy--by forgetting of her--and I’m afeerd I couldn’t hardly bear as
+she should be told I done that. But if you, being so full of learning,
+Mas’r Davy, could think of anything to say as might bring her to believe
+I wasn’t greatly hurt: still loving of her, and mourning for her:
+anything as might bring her to believe as I was not tired of my life,
+and yet was hoping fur to see her without blame, wheer the wicked cease
+from troubling and the weary are at rest--anything as would ease her
+sorrowful mind, and yet not make her think as I could ever marry, or as
+‘twas possible that anyone could ever be to me what she was--I should
+ask of you to say that--with my prayers for her--that was so dear.’
+
+I pressed his manly hand again, and told him I would charge myself to do
+this as well as I could.
+
+‘I thankee, sir,’ he answered. ‘’Twas kind of you to meet me. ‘Twas kind
+of you to bear him company down. Mas’r Davy, I unnerstan’ very well,
+though my aunt will come to Lon’on afore they sail, and they’ll unite
+once more, that I am not like to see him agen. I fare to feel sure on’t.
+We doen’t say so, but so ‘twill be, and better so. The last you see on
+him--the very last--will you give him the lovingest duty and thanks of
+the orphan, as he was ever more than a father to?’
+
+This I also promised, faithfully.
+
+‘I thankee agen, sir,’ he said, heartily shaking hands. ‘I know wheer
+you’re a-going. Good-bye!’
+
+With a slight wave of his hand, as though to explain to me that he could
+not enter the old place, he turned away. As I looked after his figure,
+crossing the waste in the moonlight, I saw him turn his face towards a
+strip of silvery light upon the sea, and pass on, looking at it, until
+he was a shadow in the distance.
+
+The door of the boat-house stood open when I approached; and, on
+entering, I found it emptied of all its furniture, saving one of the old
+lockers, on which Mrs. Gummidge, with a basket on her knee, was seated,
+looking at Mr. Peggotty. He leaned his elbow on the rough chimney-piece,
+and gazed upon a few expiring embers in the grate; but he raised his
+head, hopefully, on my coming in, and spoke in a cheery manner.
+
+‘Come, according to promise, to bid farewell to ‘t, eh, Mas’r Davy?’
+he said, taking up the candle. ‘Bare enough, now, an’t it?’ ‘Indeed you
+have made good use of the time,’ said I.
+
+‘Why, we have not been idle, sir. Missis Gummidge has worked like a--I
+doen’t know what Missis Gummidge an’t worked like,’ said Mr. Peggotty,
+looking at her, at a loss for a sufficiently approving simile.
+
+Mrs. Gummidge, leaning on her basket, made no observation.
+
+‘Theer’s the very locker that you used to sit on, ‘long with Em’ly!’
+said Mr. Peggotty, in a whisper. ‘I’m a-going to carry it away with me,
+last of all. And heer’s your old little bedroom, see, Mas’r Davy! A’most
+as bleak tonight, as ‘art could wish!’
+
+In truth, the wind, though it was low, had a solemn sound, and crept
+around the deserted house with a whispered wailing that was very
+mournful. Everything was gone, down to the little mirror with the
+oyster-shell frame. I thought of myself, lying here, when that first
+great change was being wrought at home. I thought of the blue-eyed child
+who had enchanted me. I thought of Steerforth: and a foolish, fearful
+fancy came upon me of his being near at hand, and liable to be met at
+any turn.
+
+‘’Tis like to be long,’ said Mr. Peggotty, in a low voice, ‘afore
+the boat finds new tenants. They look upon ‘t, down heer, as being
+unfortunate now!’
+
+‘Does it belong to anybody in the neighbourhood?’ I asked.
+
+‘To a mast-maker up town,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘I’m a-going to give the
+key to him tonight.’
+
+We looked into the other little room, and came back to Mrs. Gummidge,
+sitting on the locker, whom Mr. Peggotty, putting the light on the
+chimney-piece, requested to rise, that he might carry it outside the
+door before extinguishing the candle.
+
+‘Dan’l,’ said Mrs. Gummidge, suddenly deserting her basket, and clinging
+to his arm ‘my dear Dan’l, the parting words I speak in this house is, I
+mustn’t be left behind. Doen’t ye think of leaving me behind, Dan’l! Oh,
+doen’t ye ever do it!’
+
+Mr. Peggotty, taken aback, looked from Mrs. Gummidge to me, and from me
+to Mrs. Gummidge, as if he had been awakened from a sleep.
+
+‘Doen’t ye, dearest Dan’l, doen’t ye!’ cried Mrs. Gummidge, fervently.
+‘Take me ‘long with you, Dan’l, take me ‘long with you and Em’ly! I’ll
+be your servant, constant and trew. If there’s slaves in them parts
+where you’re a-going, I’ll be bound to you for one, and happy, but
+doen’t ye leave me behind, Dan’l, that’s a deary dear!’
+
+‘My good soul,’ said Mr. Peggotty, shaking his head, ‘you doen’t know
+what a long voyage, and what a hard life ‘tis!’ ‘Yes, I do, Dan’l! I can
+guess!’ cried Mrs. Gummidge. ‘But my parting words under this roof is,
+I shall go into the house and die, if I am not took. I can dig, Dan’l.
+I can work. I can live hard. I can be loving and patient now--more than
+you think, Dan’l, if you’ll on’y try me. I wouldn’t touch the ‘lowance,
+not if I was dying of want, Dan’l Peggotty; but I’ll go with you and
+Em’ly, if you’ll on’y let me, to the world’s end! I know how ‘tis; I
+know you think that I am lone and lorn; but, deary love, ‘tan’t so no
+more! I ain’t sat here, so long, a-watching, and a-thinking of your
+trials, without some good being done me. Mas’r Davy, speak to him for
+me! I knows his ways, and Em’ly’s, and I knows their sorrows, and can be
+a comfort to ‘em, some odd times, and labour for ‘em allus! Dan’l, deary
+Dan’l, let me go ‘long with you!’
+
+And Mrs. Gummidge took his hand, and kissed it with a homely pathos and
+affection, in a homely rapture of devotion and gratitude, that he well
+deserved.
+
+We brought the locker out, extinguished the candle, fastened the door
+on the outside, and left the old boat close shut up, a dark speck in
+the cloudy night. Next day, when we were returning to London outside the
+coach, Mrs. Gummidge and her basket were on the seat behind, and Mrs.
+Gummidge was happy.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 52. I ASSIST AT AN EXPLOSION
+
+
+When the time Mr. Micawber had appointed so mysteriously, was within
+four-and-twenty hours of being come, my aunt and I consulted how we
+should proceed; for my aunt was very unwilling to leave Dora. Ah! how
+easily I carried Dora up and down stairs, now!
+
+We were disposed, notwithstanding Mr. Micawber’s stipulation for my
+aunt’s attendance, to arrange that she should stay at home, and be
+represented by Mr. Dick and me. In short, we had resolved to take this
+course, when Dora again unsettled us by declaring that she never
+would forgive herself, and never would forgive her bad boy, if my aunt
+remained behind, on any pretence.
+
+‘I won’t speak to you,’ said Dora, shaking her curls at my aunt. ‘I’ll
+be disagreeable! I’ll make Jip bark at you all day. I shall be sure that
+you really are a cross old thing, if you don’t go!’
+
+‘Tut, Blossom!’ laughed my aunt. ‘You know you can’t do without me!’
+
+‘Yes, I can,’ said Dora. ‘You are no use to me at all. You never run up
+and down stairs for me, all day long. You never sit and tell me stories
+about Doady, when his shoes were worn out, and he was covered with
+dust--oh, what a poor little mite of a fellow! You never do anything at
+all to please me, do you, dear?’ Dora made haste to kiss my aunt, and
+say, ‘Yes, you do! I’m only joking!’-lest my aunt should think she
+really meant it.
+
+‘But, aunt,’ said Dora, coaxingly, ‘now listen. You must go. I shall
+tease you, ‘till you let me have my own way about it. I shall lead my
+naughty boy such a life, if he don’t make you go. I shall make myself
+so disagreeable--and so will Jip! You’ll wish you had gone, like a good
+thing, for ever and ever so long, if you don’t go. Besides,’ said Dora,
+putting back her hair, and looking wonderingly at my aunt and me, ‘why
+shouldn’t you both go? I am not very ill indeed. Am I?’
+
+‘Why, what a question!’ cried my aunt.
+
+‘What a fancy!’ said I.
+
+‘Yes! I know I am a silly little thing!’ said Dora, slowly looking from
+one of us to the other, and then putting up her pretty lips to kiss us
+as she lay upon her couch. ‘Well, then, you must both go, or I shall not
+believe you; and then I shall cry!’
+
+I saw, in my aunt’s face, that she began to give way now, and Dora
+brightened again, as she saw it too.
+
+‘You’ll come back with so much to tell me, that it’ll take at least
+a week to make me understand!’ said Dora. ‘Because I know I shan’t
+understand, for a length of time, if there’s any business in it. And
+there’s sure to be some business in it! If there’s anything to add up,
+besides, I don’t know when I shall make it out; and my bad boy will look
+so miserable all the time. There! Now you’ll go, won’t you? You’ll only
+be gone one night, and Jip will take care of me while you are gone.
+Doady will carry me upstairs before you go, and I won’t come down again
+till you come back; and you shall take Agnes a dreadfully scolding
+letter from me, because she has never been to see us!’
+
+We agreed, without any more consultation, that we would both go, and
+that Dora was a little Impostor, who feigned to be rather unwell,
+because she liked to be petted. She was greatly pleased, and very merry;
+and we four, that is to say, my aunt, Mr. Dick, Traddles, and I, went
+down to Canterbury by the Dover mail that night.
+
+At the hotel where Mr. Micawber had requested us to await him, which
+we got into, with some trouble, in the middle of the night, I found a
+letter, importing that he would appear in the morning punctually at half
+past nine. After which, we went shivering, at that uncomfortable hour,
+to our respective beds, through various close passages; which smelt as
+if they had been steeped, for ages, in a solution of soup and stables.
+
+Early in the morning, I sauntered through the dear old tranquil streets,
+and again mingled with the shadows of the venerable gateways and
+churches. The rooks were sailing about the cathedral towers; and the
+towers themselves, overlooking many a long unaltered mile of the rich
+country and its pleasant streams, were cutting the bright morning air,
+as if there were no such thing as change on earth. Yet the bells, when
+they sounded, told me sorrowfully of change in everything; told me of
+their own age, and my pretty Dora’s youth; and of the many, never old,
+who had lived and loved and died, while the reverberations of the bells
+had hummed through the rusty armour of the Black Prince hanging up
+within, and, motes upon the deep of Time, had lost themselves in air, as
+circles do in water.
+
+I looked at the old house from the corner of the street, but did not go
+nearer to it, lest, being observed, I might unwittingly do any harm to
+the design I had come to aid. The early sun was striking edgewise on its
+gables and lattice-windows, touching them with gold; and some beams of
+its old peace seemed to touch my heart.
+
+I strolled into the country for an hour or so, and then returned by
+the main street, which in the interval had shaken off its last night’s
+sleep. Among those who were stirring in the shops, I saw my ancient
+enemy the butcher, now advanced to top-boots and a baby, and in business
+for himself. He was nursing the baby, and appeared to be a benignant
+member of society.
+
+We all became very anxious and impatient, when we sat down to breakfast.
+As it approached nearer and nearer to half past nine o’clock, our
+restless expectation of Mr. Micawber increased. At last we made no more
+pretence of attending to the meal, which, except with Mr. Dick, had been
+a mere form from the first; but my aunt walked up and down the room.
+Traddles sat upon the sofa affecting to read the paper with his eyes on
+the ceiling; and I looked out of the window to give early notice of Mr.
+Micawber’s coming. Nor had I long to watch, for, at the first chime of
+the half hour, he appeared in the street.
+
+‘Here he is,’ said I, ‘and not in his legal attire!’
+
+My aunt tied the strings of her bonnet (she had come down to breakfast
+in it), and put on her shawl, as if she were ready for anything that
+was resolute and uncompromising. Traddles buttoned his coat with a
+determined air. Mr. Dick, disturbed by these formidable appearances, but
+feeling it necessary to imitate them, pulled his hat, with both hands,
+as firmly over his ears as he possibly could; and instantly took it off
+again, to welcome Mr. Micawber.
+
+‘Gentlemen, and madam,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘good morning! My dear sir,’
+to Mr. Dick, who shook hands with him violently, ‘you are extremely
+good.’
+
+‘Have you breakfasted?’ said Mr. Dick. ‘Have a chop!’
+
+‘Not for the world, my good sir!’ cried Mr. Micawber, stopping him on
+his way to the bell; ‘appetite and myself, Mr. Dixon, have long been
+strangers.’
+
+Mr. Dixon was so well pleased with his new name, and appeared to think
+it so obliging in Mr. Micawber to confer it upon him, that he shook
+hands with him again, and laughed rather childishly.
+
+‘Dick,’ said my aunt, ‘attention!’
+
+Mr. Dick recovered himself, with a blush.
+
+‘Now, sir,’ said my aunt to Mr. Micawber, as she put on her gloves, ‘we
+are ready for Mount Vesuvius, or anything else, as soon as YOU please.’
+
+‘Madam,’ returned Mr. Micawber, ‘I trust you will shortly witness an
+eruption. Mr. Traddles, I have your permission, I believe, to mention
+here that we have been in communication together?’
+
+‘It is undoubtedly the fact, Copperfield,’ said Traddles, to whom I
+looked in surprise. ‘Mr. Micawber has consulted me in reference to
+what he has in contemplation; and I have advised him to the best of my
+judgement.’
+
+‘Unless I deceive myself, Mr. Traddles,’ pursued Mr. Micawber, ‘what I
+contemplate is a disclosure of an important nature.’
+
+‘Highly so,’ said Traddles.
+
+‘Perhaps, under such circumstances, madam and gentlemen,’ said Mr.
+Micawber, ‘you will do me the favour to submit yourselves, for the
+moment, to the direction of one who, however unworthy to be regarded in
+any other light but as a Waif and Stray upon the shore of human nature,
+is still your fellow-man, though crushed out of his original form
+by individual errors, and the accumulative force of a combination of
+circumstances?’
+
+‘We have perfect confidence in you, Mr. Micawber,’ said I, ‘and will do
+what you please.’
+
+‘Mr. Copperfield,’ returned Mr. Micawber, ‘your confidence is not, at
+the existing juncture, ill-bestowed. I would beg to be allowed a start
+of five minutes by the clock; and then to receive the present company,
+inquiring for Miss Wickfield, at the office of Wickfield and Heep, whose
+Stipendiary I am.’
+
+My aunt and I looked at Traddles, who nodded his approval.
+
+‘I have no more,’ observed Mr. Micawber, ‘to say at present.’
+
+With which, to my infinite surprise, he included us all in a
+comprehensive bow, and disappeared; his manner being extremely distant,
+and his face extremely pale.
+
+Traddles only smiled, and shook his head (with his hair standing upright
+on the top of it), when I looked to him for an explanation; so I took
+out my watch, and, as a last resource, counted off the five minutes. My
+aunt, with her own watch in her hand, did the like. When the time was
+expired, Traddles gave her his arm; and we all went out together to the
+old house, without saying one word on the way.
+
+We found Mr. Micawber at his desk, in the turret office on the
+ground floor, either writing, or pretending to write, hard. The large
+office-ruler was stuck into his waistcoat, and was not so well concealed
+but that a foot or more of that instrument protruded from his bosom,
+like a new kind of shirt-frill.
+
+As it appeared to me that I was expected to speak, I said aloud:
+
+‘How do you do, Mr. Micawber?’
+
+‘Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, gravely, ‘I hope I see you well?’
+
+‘Is Miss Wickfield at home?’ said I.
+
+‘Mr. Wickfield is unwell in bed, sir, of a rheumatic fever,’ he
+returned; ‘but Miss Wickfield, I have no doubt, will be happy to see old
+friends. Will you walk in, sir?’
+
+He preceded us to the dining-room--the first room I had entered in that
+house--and flinging open the door of Mr. Wickfield’s former office,
+said, in a sonorous voice:
+
+‘Miss Trotwood, Mr. David Copperfield, Mr. Thomas Traddles, and Mr.
+Dixon!’
+
+I had not seen Uriah Heep since the time of the blow. Our visit
+astonished him, evidently; not the less, I dare say, because it
+astonished ourselves. He did not gather his eyebrows together, for he
+had none worth mentioning; but he frowned to that degree that he almost
+closed his small eyes, while the hurried raising of his grisly hand to
+his chin betrayed some trepidation or surprise. This was only when we
+were in the act of entering his room, and when I caught a glance at him
+over my aunt’s shoulder. A moment afterwards, he was as fawning and as
+humble as ever.
+
+‘Well, I am sure,’ he said. ‘This is indeed an unexpected pleasure! To
+have, as I may say, all friends round St. Paul’s at once, is a treat
+unlooked for! Mr. Copperfield, I hope I see you well, and--if I may
+umbly express myself so--friendly towards them as is ever your friends,
+whether or not. Mrs. Copperfield, sir, I hope she’s getting on. We have
+been made quite uneasy by the poor accounts we have had of her state,
+lately, I do assure you.’
+
+I felt ashamed to let him take my hand, but I did not know yet what else
+to do.
+
+‘Things are changed in this office, Miss Trotwood, since I was an umble
+clerk, and held your pony; ain’t they?’ said Uriah, with his sickliest
+smile. ‘But I am not changed, Miss Trotwood.’
+
+‘Well, sir,’ returned my aunt, ‘to tell you the truth, I think you are
+pretty constant to the promise of your youth; if that’s any satisfaction
+to you.’
+
+‘Thank you, Miss Trotwood,’ said Uriah, writhing in his ungainly manner,
+‘for your good opinion! Micawber, tell ‘em to let Miss Agnes know--and
+mother. Mother will be quite in a state, when she sees the present
+company!’ said Uriah, setting chairs.
+
+‘You are not busy, Mr. Heep?’ said Traddles, whose eye the cunning red
+eye accidentally caught, as it at once scrutinized and evaded us.
+
+‘No, Mr. Traddles,’ replied Uriah, resuming his official seat, and
+squeezing his bony hands, laid palm to palm between his bony knees. ‘Not
+so much so as I could wish. But lawyers, sharks, and leeches, are not
+easily satisfied, you know! Not but what myself and Micawber have our
+hands pretty full, in general, on account of Mr. Wickfield’s being
+hardly fit for any occupation, sir. But it’s a pleasure as well as a
+duty, I am sure, to work for him. You’ve not been intimate with Mr.
+Wickfield, I think, Mr. Traddles? I believe I’ve only had the honour of
+seeing you once myself?’
+
+‘No, I have not been intimate with Mr. Wickfield,’ returned Traddles;
+‘or I might perhaps have waited on you long ago, Mr. Heep.’
+
+There was something in the tone of this reply, which made Uriah look at
+the speaker again, with a very sinister and suspicious expression. But,
+seeing only Traddles, with his good-natured face, simple manner, and
+hair on end, he dismissed it as he replied, with a jerk of his whole
+body, but especially his throat:
+
+‘I am sorry for that, Mr. Traddles. You would have admired him as much
+as we all do. His little failings would only have endeared him to you
+the more. But if you would like to hear my fellow-partner eloquently
+spoken of, I should refer you to Copperfield. The family is a subject
+he’s very strong upon, if you never heard him.’
+
+I was prevented from disclaiming the compliment (if I should have
+done so, in any case), by the entrance of Agnes, now ushered in by Mr.
+Micawber. She was not quite so self-possessed as usual, I thought; and
+had evidently undergone anxiety and fatigue. But her earnest cordiality,
+and her quiet beauty, shone with the gentler lustre for it.
+
+I saw Uriah watch her while she greeted us; and he reminded me of an
+ugly and rebellious genie watching a good spirit. In the meanwhile,
+some slight sign passed between Mr. Micawber and Traddles; and Traddles,
+unobserved except by me, went out.
+
+‘Don’t wait, Micawber,’ said Uriah.
+
+Mr. Micawber, with his hand upon the ruler in his breast, stood erect
+before the door, most unmistakably contemplating one of his fellow-men,
+and that man his employer.
+
+‘What are you waiting for?’ said Uriah. ‘Micawber! did you hear me tell
+you not to wait?’
+
+‘Yes!’ replied the immovable Mr. Micawber.
+
+‘Then why DO you wait?’ said Uriah.
+
+‘Because I--in short, choose,’ replied Mr. Micawber, with a burst.
+
+Uriah’s cheeks lost colour, and an unwholesome paleness, still faintly
+tinged by his pervading red, overspread them. He looked at Mr. Micawber
+attentively, with his whole face breathing short and quick in every
+feature.
+
+‘You are a dissipated fellow, as all the world knows,’ he said, with an
+effort at a smile, ‘and I am afraid you’ll oblige me to get rid of you.
+Go along! I’ll talk to you presently.’
+
+‘If there is a scoundrel on this earth,’ said Mr. Micawber, suddenly
+breaking out again with the utmost vehemence, ‘with whom I have already
+talked too much, that scoundrel’s name is--HEEP!’
+
+Uriah fell back, as if he had been struck or stung. Looking slowly round
+upon us with the darkest and wickedest expression that his face could
+wear, he said, in a lower voice:
+
+‘Oho! This is a conspiracy! You have met here by appointment! You are
+playing Booty with my clerk, are you, Copperfield? Now, take care.
+You’ll make nothing of this. We understand each other, you and me.
+There’s no love between us. You were always a puppy with a proud
+stomach, from your first coming here; and you envy me my rise, do you?
+None of your plots against me; I’ll counterplot you! Micawber, you be
+off. I’ll talk to you presently.’
+
+‘Mr. Micawber,’ said I, ‘there is a sudden change in this fellow, in
+more respects than the extraordinary one of his speaking the truth in
+one particular, which assures me that he is brought to bay. Deal with
+him as he deserves!’
+
+‘You are a precious set of people, ain’t you?’ said Uriah, in the same
+low voice, and breaking out into a clammy heat, which he wiped from his
+forehead, with his long lean hand, ‘to buy over my clerk, who is the
+very scum of society,--as you yourself were, Copperfield, you know it,
+before anyone had charity on you,--to defame me with his lies? Miss
+Trotwood, you had better stop this; or I’ll stop your husband shorter
+than will be pleasant to you. I won’t know your story professionally,
+for nothing, old lady! Miss Wickfield, if you have any love for your
+father, you had better not join that gang. I’ll ruin him, if you do.
+Now, come! I have got some of you under the harrow. Think twice, before
+it goes over you. Think twice, you, Micawber, if you don’t want to
+be crushed. I recommend you to take yourself off, and be talked to
+presently, you fool! while there’s time to retreat. Where’s mother?’ he
+said, suddenly appearing to notice, with alarm, the absence of Traddles,
+and pulling down the bell-rope. ‘Fine doings in a person’s own house!’
+
+‘Mrs. Heep is here, sir,’ said Traddles, returning with that worthy
+mother of a worthy son. ‘I have taken the liberty of making myself known
+to her.’
+
+‘Who are you to make yourself known?’ retorted Uriah. ‘And what do you
+want here?’
+
+‘I am the agent and friend of Mr. Wickfield, sir,’ said Traddles, in a
+composed and business-like way. ‘And I have a power of attorney from him
+in my pocket, to act for him in all matters.’
+
+‘The old ass has drunk himself into a state of dotage,’ said Uriah,
+turning uglier than before, ‘and it has been got from him by fraud!’
+
+‘Something has been got from him by fraud, I know,’ returned Traddles
+quietly; ‘and so do you, Mr. Heep. We will refer that question, if you
+please, to Mr. Micawber.’
+
+‘Ury--!’ Mrs. Heep began, with an anxious gesture.
+
+‘YOU hold your tongue, mother,’ he returned; ‘least said, soonest
+mended.’
+
+‘But, my Ury--’
+
+‘Will you hold your tongue, mother, and leave it to me?’
+
+Though I had long known that his servility was false, and all his
+pretences knavish and hollow, I had had no adequate conception of the
+extent of his hypocrisy, until I now saw him with his mask off. The
+suddenness with which he dropped it, when he perceived that it was
+useless to him; the malice, insolence, and hatred, he revealed; the leer
+with which he exulted, even at this moment, in the evil he had done--all
+this time being desperate too, and at his wits’ end for the means
+of getting the better of us--though perfectly consistent with the
+experience I had of him, at first took even me by surprise, who had
+known him so long, and disliked him so heartily.
+
+I say nothing of the look he conferred on me, as he stood eyeing us,
+one after another; for I had always understood that he hated me, and I
+remembered the marks of my hand upon his cheek. But when his eyes passed
+on to Agnes, and I saw the rage with which he felt his power over her
+slipping away, and the exhibition, in their disappointment, of the
+odious passions that had led him to aspire to one whose virtues he could
+never appreciate or care for, I was shocked by the mere thought of her
+having lived, an hour, within sight of such a man.
+
+After some rubbing of the lower part of his face, and some looking at us
+with those bad eyes, over his grisly fingers, he made one more address
+to me, half whining, and half abusive.
+
+‘You think it justifiable, do you, Copperfield, you who pride yourself
+so much on your honour and all the rest of it, to sneak about my place,
+eaves-dropping with my clerk? If it had been ME, I shouldn’t have
+wondered; for I don’t make myself out a gentleman (though I never was
+in the streets either, as you were, according to Micawber), but being
+you!--And you’re not afraid of doing this, either? You don’t think at
+all of what I shall do, in return; or of getting yourself into
+trouble for conspiracy and so forth? Very well. We shall see! Mr.
+What’s-your-name, you were going to refer some question to Micawber.
+There’s your referee. Why don’t you make him speak? He has learnt his
+lesson, I see.’
+
+Seeing that what he said had no effect on me or any of us, he sat on the
+edge of his table with his hands in his pockets, and one of his splay
+feet twisted round the other leg, waiting doggedly for what might
+follow.
+
+Mr. Micawber, whose impetuosity I had restrained thus far with the
+greatest difficulty, and who had repeatedly interposed with the first
+syllable of SCOUN-drel! without getting to the second, now burst
+forward, drew the ruler from his breast (apparently as a defensive
+weapon), and produced from his pocket a foolscap document, folded in the
+form of a large letter. Opening this packet, with his old flourish, and
+glancing at the contents, as if he cherished an artistic admiration of
+their style of composition, he began to read as follows:
+
+
+‘“Dear Miss Trotwood and gentlemen--“’
+
+‘Bless and save the man!’ exclaimed my aunt in a low voice. ‘He’d write
+letters by the ream, if it was a capital offence!’
+
+Mr. Micawber, without hearing her, went on.
+
+‘“In appearing before you to denounce probably the most consummate
+Villain that has ever existed,”’ Mr. Micawber, without looking off the
+letter, pointed the ruler, like a ghostly truncheon, at Uriah Heep,
+‘“I ask no consideration for myself. The victim, from my cradle, of
+pecuniary liabilities to which I have been unable to respond, I have
+ever been the sport and toy of debasing circumstances. Ignominy,
+Want, Despair, and Madness, have, collectively or separately, been the
+attendants of my career.”’
+
+The relish with which Mr. Micawber described himself as a prey to these
+dismal calamities, was only to be equalled by the emphasis with which he
+read his letter; and the kind of homage he rendered to it with a roll of
+his head, when he thought he had hit a sentence very hard indeed.
+
+‘“In an accumulation of Ignominy, Want, Despair, and Madness, I entered
+the office--or, as our lively neighbour the Gaul would term it, the
+Bureau--of the Firm, nominally conducted under the appellation of
+Wickfield and--HEEP, but in reality, wielded by--HEEP alone. HEEP, and
+only HEEP, is the mainspring of that machine. HEEP, and only HEEP, is
+the Forger and the Cheat.”’
+
+Uriah, more blue than white at these words, made a dart at the letter,
+as if to tear it in pieces. Mr. Micawber, with a perfect miracle of
+dexterity or luck, caught his advancing knuckles with the ruler, and
+disabled his right hand. It dropped at the wrist, as if it were broken.
+The blow sounded as if it had fallen on wood.
+
+‘The Devil take you!’ said Uriah, writhing in a new way with pain. ‘I’ll
+be even with you.’
+
+‘Approach me again, you--you--you HEEP of infamy,’ gasped Mr. Micawber,
+‘and if your head is human, I’ll break it. Come on, come on!’
+
+I think I never saw anything more ridiculous--I was sensible of it, even
+at the time--than Mr. Micawber making broad-sword guards with the ruler,
+and crying, ‘Come on!’ while Traddles and I pushed him back into a
+corner, from which, as often as we got him into it, he persisted in
+emerging again.
+
+His enemy, muttering to himself, after wringing his wounded hand for
+sometime, slowly drew off his neck-kerchief and bound it up; then
+held it in his other hand, and sat upon his table with his sullen face
+looking down.
+
+Mr. Micawber, when he was sufficiently cool, proceeded with his letter.
+
+‘“The stipendiary emoluments in consideration of which I entered into
+the service of--HEEP,”’ always pausing before that word and uttering
+it with astonishing vigour, ‘“were not defined, beyond the pittance of
+twenty-two shillings and six per week. The rest was left contingent on
+the value of my professional exertions; in other and more expressive
+words, on the baseness of my nature, the cupidity of my motives, the
+poverty of my family, the general moral (or rather immoral) resemblance
+between myself and--HEEP. Need I say, that it soon became necessary for
+me to solicit from--HEEP--pecuniary advances towards the support of
+Mrs. Micawber, and our blighted but rising family? Need I say that this
+necessity had been foreseen by--HEEP? That those advances were secured
+by I.O.U.’s and other similar acknowledgements, known to the legal
+institutions of this country? And that I thus became immeshed in the web
+he had spun for my reception?”’
+
+Mr. Micawber’s enjoyment of his epistolary powers, in describing this
+unfortunate state of things, really seemed to outweigh any pain or
+anxiety that the reality could have caused him. He read on:
+
+‘“Then it was that--HEEP--began to favour me with just so much of his
+confidence, as was necessary to the discharge of his infernal business.
+Then it was that I began, if I may so Shakespearianly express myself, to
+dwindle, peak, and pine. I found that my services were constantly
+called into requisition for the falsification of business, and the
+mystification of an individual whom I will designate as Mr. W. That Mr.
+W. was imposed upon, kept in ignorance, and deluded, in every possible
+way; yet, that all this while, the ruffian--HEEP--was professing
+unbounded gratitude to, and unbounded friendship for, that much-abused
+gentleman. This was bad enough; but, as the philosophic Dane observes,
+with that universal applicability which distinguishes the illustrious
+ornament of the Elizabethan Era, worse remains behind!”’
+
+Mr. Micawber was so very much struck by this happy rounding off with a
+quotation, that he indulged himself, and us, with a second reading of
+the sentence, under pretence of having lost his place.
+
+‘“It is not my intention,”’ he continued reading on, ‘“to enter on a
+detailed list, within the compass of the present epistle (though it
+is ready elsewhere), of the various malpractices of a minor nature,
+affecting the individual whom I have denominated Mr. W., to which I
+have been a tacitly consenting party. My object, when the contest within
+myself between stipend and no stipend, baker and no baker, existence
+and non-existence, ceased, was to take advantage of my opportunities
+to discover and expose the major malpractices committed, to that
+gentleman’s grievous wrong and injury, by--HEEP. Stimulated by the
+silent monitor within, and by a no less touching and appealing monitor
+without--to whom I will briefly refer as Miss W.--I entered on a not
+unlaborious task of clandestine investigation, protracted--now, to the
+best of my knowledge, information, and belief, over a period exceeding
+twelve calendar months.”’
+
+He read this passage as if it were from an Act of Parliament; and
+appeared majestically refreshed by the sound of the words.
+
+‘“My charges against--HEEP,”’ he read on, glancing at him, and drawing
+the ruler into a convenient position under his left arm, in case of
+need, ‘“are as follows.”’
+
+We all held our breath, I think. I am sure Uriah held his.
+
+‘“First,”’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘“When Mr. W.’s faculties and memory
+for business became, through causes into which it is not necessary or
+expedient for me to enter, weakened and confused,--HEEP--designedly
+perplexed and complicated the whole of the official transactions. When
+Mr. W. was least fit to enter on business,--HEEP was always at hand
+to force him to enter on it. He obtained Mr. W.’s signature under such
+circumstances to documents of importance, representing them to be other
+documents of no importance. He induced Mr. W. to empower him to draw
+out, thus, one particular sum of trust-money, amounting to twelve six
+fourteen, two and nine, and employed it to meet pretended business
+charges and deficiencies which were either already provided for, or
+had never really existed. He gave this proceeding, throughout, the
+appearance of having originated in Mr. W.’s own dishonest intention, and
+of having been accomplished by Mr. W.’s own dishonest act; and has used
+it, ever since, to torture and constrain him.”’
+
+‘You shall prove this, you Copperfield!’ said Uriah, with a threatening
+shake of the head. ‘All in good time!’
+
+‘Ask--HEEP--Mr. Traddles, who lived in his house after him,’ said Mr.
+Micawber, breaking off from the letter; ‘will you?’
+
+‘The fool himself--and lives there now,’ said Uriah, disdainfully.
+
+‘Ask--HEEP--if he ever kept a pocket-book in that house,’ said Mr.
+Micawber; ‘will you?’
+
+I saw Uriah’s lank hand stop, involuntarily, in the scraping of his
+chin.
+
+‘Or ask him,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘if he ever burnt one there. If he says
+yes, and asks you where the ashes are, refer him to Wilkins Micawber,
+and he will hear of something not at all to his advantage!’
+
+The triumphant flourish with which Mr. Micawber delivered himself of
+these words, had a powerful effect in alarming the mother; who cried
+out, in much agitation:
+
+‘Ury, Ury! Be umble, and make terms, my dear!’
+
+‘Mother!’ he retorted, ‘will you keep quiet? You’re in a fright, and
+don’t know what you say or mean. Umble!’ he repeated, looking at me,
+with a snarl; ‘I’ve umbled some of ‘em for a pretty long time back,
+umble as I was!’
+
+Mr. Micawber, genteelly adjusting his chin in his cravat, presently
+proceeded with his composition.
+
+‘“Second. HEEP has, on several occasions, to the best of my knowledge,
+information, and belief--“’
+
+‘But that won’t do,’ muttered Uriah, relieved. ‘Mother, you keep quiet.’
+
+‘We will endeavour to provide something that WILL do, and do for you
+finally, sir, very shortly,’ replied Mr. Micawber.
+
+‘“Second. HEEP has, on several occasions, to the best of my knowledge,
+information, and belief, systematically forged, to various entries,
+books, and documents, the signature of Mr. W.; and has distinctly done
+so in one instance, capable of proof by me. To wit, in manner following,
+that is to say:”’
+
+Again, Mr. Micawber had a relish in this formal piling up of words,
+which, however ludicrously displayed in his case, was, I must say, not
+at all peculiar to him. I have observed it, in the course of my life,
+in numbers of men. It seems to me to be a general rule. In the taking of
+legal oaths, for instance, deponents seem to enjoy themselves mightily
+when they come to several good words in succession, for the expression
+of one idea; as, that they utterly detest, abominate, and abjure, or so
+forth; and the old anathemas were made relishing on the same principle.
+We talk about the tyranny of words, but we like to tyrannize over them
+too; we are fond of having a large superfluous establishment of words to
+wait upon us on great occasions; we think it looks important, and sounds
+well. As we are not particular about the meaning of our liveries on
+state occasions, if they be but fine and numerous enough, so, the
+meaning or necessity of our words is a secondary consideration, if there
+be but a great parade of them. And as individuals get into trouble by
+making too great a show of liveries, or as slaves when they are too
+numerous rise against their masters, so I think I could mention a
+nation that has got into many great difficulties, and will get into many
+greater, from maintaining too large a retinue of words.
+
+Mr. Micawber read on, almost smacking his lips:
+
+‘“To wit, in manner following, that is to say. Mr. W. being infirm, and
+it being within the bounds of probability that his decease might lead
+to some discoveries, and to the downfall of--HEEP’S--power over the W.
+family,--as I, Wilkins Micawber, the undersigned, assume--unless the
+filial affection of his daughter could be secretly influenced from
+allowing any investigation of the partnership affairs to be ever made,
+the said--HEEP--deemed it expedient to have a bond ready by him, as from
+Mr. W., for the before-mentioned sum of twelve six fourteen, two and
+nine, with interest, stated therein to have been advanced by--HEEP--to
+Mr. W. to save Mr. W. from dishonour; though really the sum was never
+advanced by him, and has long been replaced. The signatures to this
+instrument purporting to be executed by Mr. W. and attested by Wilkins
+Micawber, are forgeries by--HEEP. I have, in my possession, in his hand
+and pocket-book, several similar imitations of Mr. W.’s signature, here
+and there defaced by fire, but legible to anyone. I never attested any
+such document. And I have the document itself, in my possession.”’ Uriah
+Heep, with a start, took out of his pocket a bunch of keys, and opened
+a certain drawer; then, suddenly bethought himself of what he was about,
+and turned again towards us, without looking in it.
+
+‘“And I have the document,”’ Mr. Micawber read again, looking about as
+if it were the text of a sermon, ‘“in my possession,--that is to say,
+I had, early this morning, when this was written, but have since
+relinquished it to Mr. Traddles.”’
+
+‘It is quite true,’ assented Traddles.
+
+‘Ury, Ury!’ cried the mother, ‘be umble and make terms. I know my
+son will be umble, gentlemen, if you’ll give him time to think. Mr.
+Copperfield, I’m sure you know that he was always very umble, sir!’
+
+It was singular to see how the mother still held to the old trick, when
+the son had abandoned it as useless.
+
+‘Mother,’ he said, with an impatient bite at the handkerchief in which
+his hand was wrapped, ‘you had better take and fire a loaded gun at me.’
+
+‘But I love you, Ury,’ cried Mrs. Heep. And I have no doubt she did; or
+that he loved her, however strange it may appear; though, to be sure,
+they were a congenial couple. ‘And I can’t bear to hear you provoking
+the gentlemen, and endangering of yourself more. I told the gentleman
+at first, when he told me upstairs it was come to light, that I would
+answer for your being umble, and making amends. Oh, see how umble I am,
+gentlemen, and don’t mind him!’
+
+‘Why, there’s Copperfield, mother,’ he angrily retorted, pointing his
+lean finger at me, against whom all his animosity was levelled, as the
+prime mover in the discovery; and I did not undeceive him; ‘there’s
+Copperfield, would have given you a hundred pound to say less than
+you’ve blurted out!’
+
+‘I can’t help it, Ury,’ cried his mother. ‘I can’t see you running into
+danger, through carrying your head so high. Better be umble, as you
+always was.’
+
+He remained for a little, biting the handkerchief, and then said to me
+with a scowl:
+
+‘What more have you got to bring forward? If anything, go on with it.
+What do you look at me for?’
+
+Mr. Micawber promptly resumed his letter, glad to revert to a
+performance with which he was so highly satisfied.
+
+‘“Third. And last. I am now in a condition to show, by--HEEP’S--false
+books, and--HEEP’S--real memoranda, beginning with the partially
+destroyed pocket-book (which I was unable to comprehend, at the time of
+its accidental discovery by Mrs. Micawber, on our taking possession of
+our present abode, in the locker or bin devoted to the reception of the
+ashes calcined on our domestic hearth), that the weaknesses, the faults,
+the very virtues, the parental affections, and the sense of honour, of
+the unhappy Mr. W. have been for years acted on by, and warped to the
+base purposes of--HEEP. That Mr. W. has been for years deluded and
+plundered, in every conceivable manner, to the pecuniary aggrandisement
+of the avaricious, false, and grasping--HEEP. That the engrossing object
+of--HEEP--was, next to gain, to subdue Mr. and Miss W. (of his ulterior
+views in reference to the latter I say nothing) entirely to himself.
+That his last act, completed but a few months since, was to induce Mr.
+W. to execute a relinquishment of his share in the partnership, and even
+a bill of sale on the very furniture of his house, in consideration of a
+certain annuity, to be well and truly paid by--HEEP--on the four common
+quarter-days in each and every year. That these meshes; beginning with
+alarming and falsified accounts of the estate of which Mr. W. is the
+receiver, at a period when Mr. W. had launched into imprudent and
+ill-judged speculations, and may not have had the money, for which he
+was morally and legally responsible, in hand; going on with pretended
+borrowings of money at enormous interest, really coming from--HEEP--and
+by--HEEP--fraudulently obtained or withheld from Mr. W. himself,
+on pretence of such speculations or otherwise; perpetuated by a
+miscellaneous catalogue of unscrupulous chicaneries--gradually
+thickened, until the unhappy Mr. W. could see no world beyond. Bankrupt,
+as he believed, alike in circumstances, in all other hope, and
+in honour, his sole reliance was upon the monster in the garb of
+man,”’--Mr. Micawber made a good deal of this, as a new turn of
+expression,--‘“who, by making himself necessary to him, had achieved his
+destruction. All this I undertake to show. Probably much more!”’
+
+I whispered a few words to Agnes, who was weeping, half joyfully, half
+sorrowfully, at my side; and there was a movement among us, as if Mr.
+Micawber had finished. He said, with exceeding gravity, ‘Pardon me,’
+and proceeded, with a mixture of the lowest spirits and the most intense
+enjoyment, to the peroration of his letter.
+
+‘“I have now concluded. It merely remains for me to substantiate these
+accusations; and then, with my ill-starred family, to disappear from the
+landscape on which we appear to be an encumbrance. That is soon done. It
+may be reasonably inferred that our baby will first expire of inanition,
+as being the frailest member of our circle; and that our twins will
+follow next in order. So be it! For myself, my Canterbury Pilgrimage has
+done much; imprisonment on civil process, and want, will soon do more.
+I trust that the labour and hazard of an investigation--of which the
+smallest results have been slowly pieced together, in the pressure of
+arduous avocations, under grinding penurious apprehensions, at rise of
+morn, at dewy eve, in the shadows of night, under the watchful eye of
+one whom it were superfluous to call Demon--combined with the struggle
+of parental Poverty to turn it, when completed, to the right account,
+may be as the sprinkling of a few drops of sweet water on my funeral
+pyre. I ask no more. Let it be, in justice, merely said of me, as of a
+gallant and eminent naval Hero, with whom I have no pretensions to
+cope, that what I have done, I did, in despite of mercenary and selfish
+objects,
+
+     For England, home, and Beauty.
+
+     ‘“Remaining always, &c.  &c., WILKINS MICAWBER.”’
+
+
+Much affected, but still intensely enjoying himself, Mr. Micawber folded
+up his letter, and handed it with a bow to my aunt, as something she
+might like to keep.
+
+There was, as I had noticed on my first visit long ago, an iron safe in
+the room. The key was in it. A hasty suspicion seemed to strike Uriah;
+and, with a glance at Mr. Micawber, he went to it, and threw the doors
+clanking open. It was empty.
+
+‘Where are the books?’ he cried, with a frightful face. ‘Some thief has
+stolen the books!’
+
+Mr. Micawber tapped himself with the ruler. ‘I did, when I got the key
+from you as usual--but a little earlier--and opened it this morning.’
+
+‘Don’t be uneasy,’ said Traddles. ‘They have come into my possession. I
+will take care of them, under the authority I mentioned.’
+
+‘You receive stolen goods, do you?’ cried Uriah.
+
+‘Under such circumstances,’ answered Traddles, ‘yes.’
+
+What was my astonishment when I beheld my aunt, who had been profoundly
+quiet and attentive, make a dart at Uriah Heep, and seize him by the
+collar with both hands!
+
+‘You know what I want?’ said my aunt.
+
+‘A strait-waistcoat,’ said he.
+
+‘No. My property!’ returned my aunt. ‘Agnes, my dear, as long as
+I believed it had been really made away with by your father, I
+wouldn’t--and, my dear, I didn’t, even to Trot, as he knows--breathe a
+syllable of its having been placed here for investment. But, now I know
+this fellow’s answerable for it, and I’ll have it! Trot, come and take
+it away from him!’
+
+Whether my aunt supposed, for the moment, that he kept her property in
+his neck-kerchief, I am sure I don’t know; but she certainly pulled at
+it as if she thought so. I hastened to put myself between them, and to
+assure her that we would all take care that he should make the utmost
+restitution of everything he had wrongly got. This, and a few moments’
+reflection, pacified her; but she was not at all disconcerted by what
+she had done (though I cannot say as much for her bonnet) and resumed
+her seat composedly.
+
+During the last few minutes, Mrs. Heep had been clamouring to her son
+to be ‘umble’; and had been going down on her knees to all of us in
+succession, and making the wildest promises. Her son sat her down in his
+chair; and, standing sulkily by her, holding her arm with his hand, but
+not rudely, said to me, with a ferocious look:
+
+‘What do you want done?’
+
+‘I will tell you what must be done,’ said Traddles.
+
+‘Has that Copperfield no tongue?’ muttered Uriah, ‘I would do a good
+deal for you if you could tell me, without lying, that somebody had cut
+it out.’
+
+‘My Uriah means to be umble!’ cried his mother. ‘Don’t mind what he
+says, good gentlemen!’
+
+‘What must be done,’ said Traddles, ‘is this. First, the deed of
+relinquishment, that we have heard of, must be given over to me
+now--here.’
+
+‘Suppose I haven’t got it,’ he interrupted.
+
+‘But you have,’ said Traddles; ‘therefore, you know, we won’t suppose
+so.’ And I cannot help avowing that this was the first occasion on
+which I really did justice to the clear head, and the plain, patient,
+practical good sense, of my old schoolfellow. ‘Then,’ said Traddles,
+‘you must prepare to disgorge all that your rapacity has become
+possessed of, and to make restoration to the last farthing. All the
+partnership books and papers must remain in our possession; all your
+books and papers; all money accounts and securities, of both kinds. In
+short, everything here.’
+
+‘Must it? I don’t know that,’ said Uriah. ‘I must have time to think
+about that.’
+
+‘Certainly,’ replied Traddles; ‘but, in the meanwhile, and until
+everything is done to our satisfaction, we shall maintain possession
+of these things; and beg you--in short, compel you--to keep to your own
+room, and hold no communication with anyone.’
+
+‘I won’t do it!’ said Uriah, with an oath.
+
+‘Maidstone jail is a safer place of detention,’ observed Traddles; ‘and
+though the law may be longer in righting us, and may not be able to
+right us so completely as you can, there is no doubt of its punishing
+YOU. Dear me, you know that quite as well as I! Copperfield, will you go
+round to the Guildhall, and bring a couple of officers?’
+
+Here, Mrs. Heep broke out again, crying on her knees to Agnes to
+interfere in their behalf, exclaiming that he was very humble, and it
+was all true, and if he didn’t do what we wanted, she would, and much
+more to the same purpose; being half frantic with fears for her darling.
+To inquire what he might have done, if he had had any boldness, would
+be like inquiring what a mongrel cur might do, if it had the spirit of
+a tiger. He was a coward, from head to foot; and showed his dastardly
+nature through his sullenness and mortification, as much as at any time
+of his mean life.
+
+‘Stop!’ he growled to me; and wiped his hot face with his hand. ‘Mother,
+hold your noise. Well! Let ‘em have that deed. Go and fetch it!’
+
+‘Do you help her, Mr. Dick,’ said Traddles, ‘if you please.’
+
+Proud of his commission, and understanding it, Mr. Dick accompanied her
+as a shepherd’s dog might accompany a sheep. But, Mrs. Heep gave him
+little trouble; for she not only returned with the deed, but with the
+box in which it was, where we found a banker’s book and some other
+papers that were afterwards serviceable.
+
+‘Good!’ said Traddles, when this was brought. ‘Now, Mr. Heep, you can
+retire to think: particularly observing, if you please, that I declare
+to you, on the part of all present, that there is only one thing to be
+done; that it is what I have explained; and that it must be done without
+delay.’
+
+Uriah, without lifting his eyes from the ground, shuffled across the
+room with his hand to his chin, and pausing at the door, said:
+
+‘Copperfield, I have always hated you. You’ve always been an upstart,
+and you’ve always been against me.’
+
+‘As I think I told you once before,’ said I, ‘it is you who have been,
+in your greed and cunning, against all the world. It may be profitable
+to you to reflect, in future, that there never were greed and cunning in
+the world yet, that did not do too much, and overreach themselves. It is
+as certain as death.’
+
+‘Or as certain as they used to teach at school (the same school where I
+picked up so much umbleness), from nine o’clock to eleven, that labour
+was a curse; and from eleven o’clock to one, that it was a blessing and
+a cheerfulness, and a dignity, and I don’t know what all, eh?’ said
+he with a sneer. ‘You preach, about as consistent as they did.
+Won’t umbleness go down? I shouldn’t have got round my gentleman
+fellow-partner without it, I think. --Micawber, you old bully, I’ll pay
+YOU!’
+
+Mr. Micawber, supremely defiant of him and his extended finger, and
+making a great deal of his chest until he had slunk out at the door,
+then addressed himself to me, and proffered me the satisfaction of
+‘witnessing the re-establishment of mutual confidence between himself
+and Mrs. Micawber’. After which, he invited the company generally to the
+contemplation of that affecting spectacle.
+
+‘The veil that has long been interposed between Mrs. Micawber and
+myself, is now withdrawn,’ said Mr. Micawber; ‘and my children and the
+Author of their Being can once more come in contact on equal terms.’
+
+As we were all very grateful to him, and all desirous to show that we
+were, as well as the hurry and disorder of our spirits would permit, I
+dare say we should all have gone, but that it was necessary for Agnes to
+return to her father, as yet unable to bear more than the dawn of
+hope; and for someone else to hold Uriah in safe keeping. So, Traddles
+remained for the latter purpose, to be presently relieved by Mr. Dick;
+and Mr. Dick, my aunt, and I, went home with Mr. Micawber. As I parted
+hurriedly from the dear girl to whom I owed so much, and thought from
+what she had been saved, perhaps, that morning--her better resolution
+notwithstanding--I felt devoutly thankful for the miseries of my younger
+days which had brought me to the knowledge of Mr. Micawber.
+
+His house was not far off; and as the street door opened into the
+sitting-room, and he bolted in with a precipitation quite his own,
+we found ourselves at once in the bosom of the family. Mr. Micawber
+exclaiming, ‘Emma! my life!’ rushed into Mrs. Micawber’s arms. Mrs.
+Micawber shrieked, and folded Mr. Micawber in her embrace. Miss
+Micawber, nursing the unconscious stranger of Mrs. Micawber’s last
+letter to me, was sensibly affected. The stranger leaped. The twins
+testified their joy by several inconvenient but innocent demonstrations.
+Master Micawber, whose disposition appeared to have been soured by
+early disappointment, and whose aspect had become morose, yielded to his
+better feelings, and blubbered.
+
+‘Emma!’ said Mr. Micawber. ‘The cloud is past from my mind. Mutual
+confidence, so long preserved between us once, is restored, to know
+no further interruption. Now, welcome poverty!’ cried Mr. Micawber,
+shedding tears. ‘Welcome misery, welcome houselessness, welcome hunger,
+rags, tempest, and beggary! Mutual confidence will sustain us to the
+end!’
+
+With these expressions, Mr. Micawber placed Mrs. Micawber in a chair,
+and embraced the family all round; welcoming a variety of bleak
+prospects, which appeared, to the best of my judgement, to be anything
+but welcome to them; and calling upon them to come out into Canterbury
+and sing a chorus, as nothing else was left for their support.
+
+But Mrs. Micawber having, in the strength of her emotions, fainted away,
+the first thing to be done, even before the chorus could be considered
+complete, was to recover her. This my aunt and Mr. Micawber did; and
+then my aunt was introduced, and Mrs. Micawber recognized me.
+
+‘Excuse me, dear Mr. Copperfield,’ said the poor lady, giving me her
+hand, ‘but I am not strong; and the removal of the late misunderstanding
+between Mr. Micawber and myself was at first too much for me.’
+
+‘Is this all your family, ma’am?’ said my aunt.
+
+‘There are no more at present,’ returned Mrs. Micawber.
+
+‘Good gracious, I didn’t mean that, ma’am,’ said my aunt. ‘I mean, are
+all these yours?’
+
+‘Madam,’ replied Mr. Micawber, ‘it is a true bill.’
+
+‘And that eldest young gentleman, now,’ said my aunt, musing, ‘what has
+he been brought up to?’
+
+‘It was my hope when I came here,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘to have got
+Wilkins into the Church: or perhaps I shall express my meaning more
+strictly, if I say the Choir. But there was no vacancy for a tenor in
+the venerable Pile for which this city is so justly eminent; and he
+has--in short, he has contracted a habit of singing in public-houses,
+rather than in sacred edifices.’
+
+‘But he means well,’ said Mrs. Micawber, tenderly.
+
+‘I dare say, my love,’ rejoined Mr. Micawber, ‘that he means
+particularly well; but I have not yet found that he carries out his
+meaning, in any given direction whatsoever.’
+
+Master Micawber’s moroseness of aspect returned upon him again, and he
+demanded, with some temper, what he was to do? Whether he had been born
+a carpenter, or a coach-painter, any more than he had been born a bird?
+Whether he could go into the next street, and open a chemist’s shop?
+Whether he could rush to the next assizes, and proclaim himself a
+lawyer? Whether he could come out by force at the opera, and succeed
+by violence? Whether he could do anything, without being brought up to
+something?
+
+My aunt mused a little while, and then said:
+
+‘Mr. Micawber, I wonder you have never turned your thoughts to
+emigration.’
+
+‘Madam,’ returned Mr. Micawber, ‘it was the dream of my youth, and the
+fallacious aspiration of my riper years.’ I am thoroughly persuaded, by
+the by, that he had never thought of it in his life.
+
+‘Aye?’ said my aunt, with a glance at me. ‘Why, what a thing it would
+be for yourselves and your family, Mr. and Mrs. Micawber, if you were to
+emigrate now.’
+
+‘Capital, madam, capital,’ urged Mr. Micawber, gloomily.
+
+‘That is the principal, I may say the only difficulty, my dear Mr.
+Copperfield,’ assented his wife.
+
+‘Capital?’ cried my aunt. ‘But you are doing us a great service--have
+done us a great service, I may say, for surely much will come out of
+the fire--and what could we do for you, that would be half so good as to
+find the capital?’
+
+‘I could not receive it as a gift,’ said Mr. Micawber, full of fire and
+animation, ‘but if a sufficient sum could be advanced, say at five per
+cent interest, per annum, upon my personal liability--say my notes of
+hand, at twelve, eighteen, and twenty-four months, respectively, to
+allow time for something to turn up--’
+
+‘Could be? Can be and shall be, on your own terms,’ returned my aunt,
+‘if you say the word. Think of this now, both of you. Here are some
+people David knows, going out to Australia shortly. If you decide to go,
+why shouldn’t you go in the same ship? You may help each other. Think of
+this now, Mr. and Mrs. Micawber. Take your time, and weigh it well.’
+
+‘There is but one question, my dear ma’am, I could wish to ask,’ said
+Mrs. Micawber. ‘The climate, I believe, is healthy?’
+
+‘Finest in the world!’ said my aunt.
+
+‘Just so,’ returned Mrs. Micawber. ‘Then my question arises. Now, are
+the circumstances of the country such, that a man of Mr. Micawber’s
+abilities would have a fair chance of rising in the social scale? I will
+not say, at present, might he aspire to be Governor, or anything of that
+sort; but would there be a reasonable opening for his talents to
+develop themselves--that would be amply sufficient--and find their own
+expansion?’
+
+‘No better opening anywhere,’ said my aunt, ‘for a man who conducts
+himself well, and is industrious.’
+
+‘For a man who conducts himself well,’ repeated Mrs. Micawber, with her
+clearest business manner, ‘and is industrious. Precisely. It is
+evident to me that Australia is the legitimate sphere of action for Mr.
+Micawber!’
+
+‘I entertain the conviction, my dear madam,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘that
+it is, under existing circumstances, the land, the only land, for myself
+and family; and that something of an extraordinary nature will turn up
+on that shore. It is no distance--comparatively speaking; and though
+consideration is due to the kindness of your proposal, I assure you that
+is a mere matter of form.’
+
+Shall I ever forget how, in a moment, he was the most sanguine of men,
+looking on to fortune; or how Mrs. Micawber presently discoursed
+about the habits of the kangaroo! Shall I ever recall that street of
+Canterbury on a market-day, without recalling him, as he walked
+back with us; expressing, in the hardy roving manner he assumed, the
+unsettled habits of a temporary sojourner in the land; and looking at
+the bullocks, as they came by, with the eye of an Australian farmer!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 53. ANOTHER RETROSPECT
+
+
+I must pause yet once again. O, my child-wife, there is a figure in the
+moving crowd before my memory, quiet and still, saying in its innocent
+love and childish beauty, Stop to think of me--turn to look upon the
+Little Blossom, as it flutters to the ground!
+
+I do. All else grows dim, and fades away. I am again with Dora, in our
+cottage. I do not know how long she has been ill. I am so used to it in
+feeling, that I cannot count the time. It is not really long, in weeks
+or months; but, in my usage and experience, it is a weary, weary while.
+
+They have left off telling me to ‘wait a few days more’. I have begun
+to fear, remotely, that the day may never shine, when I shall see my
+child-wife running in the sunlight with her old friend Jip.
+
+He is, as it were suddenly, grown very old. It may be that he misses in
+his mistress, something that enlivened him and made him younger; but he
+mopes, and his sight is weak, and his limbs are feeble, and my aunt is
+sorry that he objects to her no more, but creeps near her as he lies on
+Dora’s bed--she sitting at the bedside--and mildly licks her hand.
+
+Dora lies smiling on us, and is beautiful, and utters no hasty or
+complaining word. She says that we are very good to her; that her dear
+old careful boy is tiring himself out, she knows; that my aunt has no
+sleep, yet is always wakeful, active, and kind. Sometimes, the
+little bird-like ladies come to see her; and then we talk about our
+wedding-day, and all that happy time.
+
+What a strange rest and pause in my life there seems to be--and in all
+life, within doors and without--when I sit in the quiet, shaded, orderly
+room, with the blue eyes of my child-wife turned towards me, and her
+little fingers twining round my hand! Many and many an hour I sit thus;
+but, of all those times, three times come the freshest on my mind.
+
+
+It is morning; and Dora, made so trim by my aunt’s hands, shows me how
+her pretty hair will curl upon the pillow yet, an how long and bright it
+is, and how she likes to have it loosely gathered in that net she wears.
+
+‘Not that I am vain of it, now, you mocking boy,’ she says, when I
+smile; ‘but because you used to say you thought it so beautiful; and
+because, when I first began to think about you, I used to peep in the
+glass, and wonder whether you would like very much to have a lock of it.
+Oh what a foolish fellow you were, Doady, when I gave you one!’
+
+‘That was on the day when you were painting the flowers I had given you,
+Dora, and when I told you how much in love I was.’
+
+‘Ah! but I didn’t like to tell you,’ says Dora, ‘then, how I had cried
+over them, because I believed you really liked me! When I can run about
+again as I used to do, Doady, let us go and see those places where we
+were such a silly couple, shall we? And take some of the old walks? And
+not forget poor papa?’
+
+‘Yes, we will, and have some happy days. So you must make haste to get
+well, my dear.’
+
+‘Oh, I shall soon do that! I am so much better, you don’t know!’
+
+
+It is evening; and I sit in the same chair, by the same bed, with the
+same face turned towards me. We have been silent, and there is a smile
+upon her face. I have ceased to carry my light burden up and down stairs
+now. She lies here all the day.
+
+‘Doady!’
+
+‘My dear Dora!’
+
+‘You won’t think what I am going to say, unreasonable, after what you
+told me, such a little while ago, of Mr. Wickfield’s not being well? I
+want to see Agnes. Very much I want to see her.’
+
+‘I will write to her, my dear.’
+
+‘Will you?’
+
+‘Directly.’
+
+‘What a good, kind boy! Doady, take me on your arm. Indeed, my dear,
+it’s not a whim. It’s not a foolish fancy. I want, very much indeed, to
+see her!’
+
+‘I am certain of it. I have only to tell her so, and she is sure to
+come.’
+
+‘You are very lonely when you go downstairs, now?’ Dora whispers, with
+her arm about my neck.
+
+‘How can I be otherwise, my own love, when I see your empty chair?’
+
+‘My empty chair!’ She clings to me for a little while, in silence. ‘And
+you really miss me, Doady?’ looking up, and brightly smiling. ‘Even
+poor, giddy, stupid me?’
+
+‘My heart, who is there upon earth that I could miss so much?’
+
+‘Oh, husband! I am so glad, yet so sorry!’ creeping closer to me, and
+folding me in both her arms. She laughs and sobs, and then is quiet, and
+quite happy.
+
+‘Quite!’ she says. ‘Only give Agnes my dear love, and tell her that I
+want very, very, much to see her; and I have nothing left to wish for.’
+
+‘Except to get well again, Dora.’
+
+‘Ah, Doady! Sometimes I think--you know I always was a silly little
+thing!--that that will never be!’
+
+‘Don’t say so, Dora! Dearest love, don’t think so!’
+
+‘I won’t, if I can help it, Doady. But I am very happy; though my dear
+boy is so lonely by himself, before his child-wife’s empty chair!’
+
+
+It is night; and I am with her still. Agnes has arrived; has been among
+us for a whole day and an evening. She, my aunt, and I, have sat with
+Dora since the morning, all together. We have not talked much, but Dora
+has been perfectly contented and cheerful. We are now alone.
+
+Do I know, now, that my child-wife will soon leave me? They have told me
+so; they have told me nothing new to my thoughts--but I am far from
+sure that I have taken that truth to heart. I cannot master it. I have
+withdrawn by myself, many times today, to weep. I have remembered Who
+wept for a parting between the living and the dead. I have bethought me
+of all that gracious and compassionate history. I have tried to resign
+myself, and to console myself; and that, I hope, I may have done
+imperfectly; but what I cannot firmly settle in my mind is, that the end
+will absolutely come. I hold her hand in mine, I hold her heart in mine,
+I see her love for me, alive in all its strength. I cannot shut out a
+pale lingering shadow of belief that she will be spared.
+
+‘I am going to speak to you, Doady. I am going to say something I have
+often thought of saying, lately. You won’t mind?’ with a gentle look.
+
+‘Mind, my darling?’
+
+‘Because I don’t know what you will think, or what you may have thought
+sometimes. Perhaps you have often thought the same. Doady, dear, I am
+afraid I was too young.’
+
+I lay my face upon the pillow by her, and she looks into my eyes, and
+speaks very softly. Gradually, as she goes on, I feel, with a stricken
+heart, that she is speaking of herself as past.
+
+‘I am afraid, dear, I was too young. I don’t mean in years only, but
+in experience, and thoughts, and everything. I was such a silly little
+creature! I am afraid it would have been better, if we had only loved
+each other as a boy and girl, and forgotten it. I have begun to think I
+was not fit to be a wife.’
+
+I try to stay my tears, and to reply, ‘Oh, Dora, love, as fit as I to be
+a husband!’
+
+‘I don’t know,’ with the old shake of her curls. ‘Perhaps! But if I had
+been more fit to be married I might have made you more so, too. Besides,
+you are very clever, and I never was.’
+
+‘We have been very happy, my sweet Dora.’
+
+‘I was very happy, very. But, as years went on, my dear boy would have
+wearied of his child-wife. She would have been less and less a companion
+for him. He would have been more and more sensible of what was wanting
+in his home. She wouldn’t have improved. It is better as it is.’
+
+‘Oh, Dora, dearest, dearest, do not speak to me so. Every word seems a
+reproach!’
+
+‘No, not a syllable!’ she answers, kissing me. ‘Oh, my dear, you never
+deserved it, and I loved you far too well to say a reproachful word to
+you, in earnest--it was all the merit I had, except being pretty--or you
+thought me so. Is it lonely, down-stairs, Doady?’
+
+‘Very! Very!’
+
+‘Don’t cry! Is my chair there?’
+
+‘In its old place.’
+
+‘Oh, how my poor boy cries! Hush, hush! Now, make me one promise. I want
+to speak to Agnes. When you go downstairs, tell Agnes so, and send her
+up to me; and while I speak to her, let no one come--not even aunt.
+I want to speak to Agnes by herself. I want to speak to Agnes, quite
+alone.’
+
+I promise that she shall, immediately; but I cannot leave her, for my
+grief.
+
+‘I said that it was better as it is!’ she whispers, as she holds me in
+her arms. ‘Oh, Doady, after more years, you never could have loved your
+child-wife better than you do; and, after more years, she would so have
+tried and disappointed you, that you might not have been able to love
+her half so well! I know I was too young and foolish. It is much better
+as it is!’
+
+Agnes is downstairs, when I go into the parlour; and I give her the
+message. She disappears, leaving me alone with Jip.
+
+His Chinese house is by the fire; and he lies within it, on his bed of
+flannel, querulously trying to sleep. The bright moon is high and clear.
+As I look out on the night, my tears fall fast, and my undisciplined
+heart is chastened heavily--heavily.
+
+I sit down by the fire, thinking with a blind remorse of all those
+secret feelings I have nourished since my marriage. I think of every
+little trifle between me and Dora, and feel the truth, that trifles
+make the sum of life. Ever rising from the sea of my remembrance, is the
+image of the dear child as I knew her first, graced by my young love,
+and by her own, with every fascination wherein such love is rich. Would
+it, indeed, have been better if we had loved each other as a boy and a
+girl, and forgotten it? Undisciplined heart, reply!
+
+How the time wears, I know not; until I am recalled by my child-wife’s
+old companion. More restless than he was, he crawls out of his house,
+and looks at me, and wanders to the door, and whines to go upstairs.
+
+‘Not tonight, Jip! Not tonight!’
+
+He comes very slowly back to me, licks my hand, and lifts his dim eyes
+to my face.
+
+‘Oh, Jip! It may be, never again!’
+
+He lies down at my feet, stretches himself out as if to sleep, and with
+a plaintive cry, is dead.
+
+‘Oh, Agnes! Look, look, here!’ --That face, so full of pity, and of
+grief, that rain of tears, that awful mute appeal to me, that solemn
+hand upraised towards Heaven!
+
+‘Agnes?’
+
+It is over. Darkness comes before my eyes; and, for a time, all things
+are blotted out of my remembrance.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 54. Mr. MICAWBER’S TRANSACTIONS
+
+
+This is not the time at which I am to enter on the state of my mind
+beneath its load of sorrow. I came to think that the Future was walled
+up before me, that the energy and action of my life were at an end, that
+I never could find any refuge but in the grave. I came to think so, I
+say, but not in the first shock of my grief. It slowly grew to that.
+If the events I go on to relate, had not thickened around me, in the
+beginning to confuse, and in the end to augment, my affliction, it is
+possible (though I think not probable), that I might have fallen at once
+into this condition. As it was, an interval occurred before I fully knew
+my own distress; an interval, in which I even supposed that its sharpest
+pangs were past; and when my mind could soothe itself by resting on
+all that was most innocent and beautiful, in the tender story that was
+closed for ever.
+
+When it was first proposed that I should go abroad, or how it came to be
+agreed among us that I was to seek the restoration of my peace in change
+and travel, I do not, even now, distinctly know. The spirit of Agnes so
+pervaded all we thought, and said, and did, in that time of sorrow, that
+I assume I may refer the project to her influence. But her influence was
+so quiet that I know no more.
+
+And now, indeed, I began to think that in my old association of her with
+the stained-glass window in the church, a prophetic foreshadowing of
+what she would be to me, in the calamity that was to happen in the
+fullness of time, had found a way into my mind. In all that sorrow, from
+the moment, never to be forgotten, when she stood before me with her
+upraised hand, she was like a sacred presence in my lonely house. When
+the Angel of Death alighted there, my child-wife fell asleep--they told
+me so when I could bear to hear it--on her bosom, with a smile. From my
+swoon, I first awoke to a consciousness of her compassionate tears, her
+words of hope and peace, her gentle face bending down as from a purer
+region nearer Heaven, over my undisciplined heart, and softening its
+pain.
+
+Let me go on.
+
+I was to go abroad. That seemed to have been determined among us from
+the first. The ground now covering all that could perish of my
+departed wife, I waited only for what Mr. Micawber called the ‘final
+pulverization of Heep’; and for the departure of the emigrants.
+
+At the request of Traddles, most affectionate and devoted of friends in
+my trouble, we returned to Canterbury: I mean my aunt, Agnes, and I. We
+proceeded by appointment straight to Mr. Micawber’s house; where, and at
+Mr. Wickfield’s, my friend had been labouring ever since our explosive
+meeting. When poor Mrs. Micawber saw me come in, in my black clothes,
+she was sensibly affected. There was a great deal of good in Mrs.
+Micawber’s heart, which had not been dunned out of it in all those many
+years.
+
+‘Well, Mr. and Mrs. Micawber,’ was my aunt’s first salutation after we
+were seated. ‘Pray, have you thought about that emigration proposal of
+mine?’
+
+‘My dear madam,’ returned Mr. Micawber, ‘perhaps I cannot better express
+the conclusion at which Mrs. Micawber, your humble servant, and I may
+add our children, have jointly and severally arrived, than by borrowing
+the language of an illustrious poet, to reply that our Boat is on the
+shore, and our Bark is on the sea.’
+
+‘That’s right,’ said my aunt. ‘I augur all sort of good from your
+sensible decision.’
+
+‘Madam, you do us a great deal of honour,’ he rejoined. He then referred
+to a memorandum. ‘With respect to the pecuniary assistance enabling
+us to launch our frail canoe on the ocean of enterprise, I have
+reconsidered that important business-point; and would beg to propose
+my notes of hand--drawn, it is needless to stipulate, on stamps of the
+amounts respectively required by the various Acts of Parliament applying
+to such securities--at eighteen, twenty-four, and thirty months.
+The proposition I originally submitted, was twelve, eighteen, and
+twenty-four; but I am apprehensive that such an arrangement might not
+allow sufficient time for the requisite amount of--Something--to turn
+up. We might not,’ said Mr. Micawber, looking round the room as if it
+represented several hundred acres of highly cultivated land, ‘on the
+first responsibility becoming due, have been successful in our harvest,
+or we might not have got our harvest in. Labour, I believe, is sometimes
+difficult to obtain in that portion of our colonial possessions where it
+will be our lot to combat with the teeming soil.’
+
+‘Arrange it in any way you please, sir,’ said my aunt.
+
+‘Madam,’ he replied, ‘Mrs. Micawber and myself are deeply sensible of
+the very considerate kindness of our friends and patrons. What I wish
+is, to be perfectly business-like, and perfectly punctual. Turning over,
+as we are about to turn over, an entirely new leaf; and falling back,
+as we are now in the act of falling back, for a Spring of no common
+magnitude; it is important to my sense of self-respect, besides being
+an example to my son, that these arrangements should be concluded as
+between man and man.’
+
+I don’t know that Mr. Micawber attached any meaning to this last phrase;
+I don’t know that anybody ever does, or did; but he appeared to relish
+it uncommonly, and repeated, with an impressive cough, ‘as between man
+and man’.
+
+‘I propose,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘Bills--a convenience to the mercantile
+world, for which, I believe, we are originally indebted to the Jews, who
+appear to me to have had a devilish deal too much to do with them
+ever since--because they are negotiable. But if a Bond, or any other
+description of security, would be preferred, I should be happy to
+execute any such instrument. As between man and man.’
+
+My aunt observed, that in a case where both parties were willing to
+agree to anything, she took it for granted there would be no difficulty
+in settling this point. Mr. Micawber was of her opinion.
+
+‘In reference to our domestic preparations, madam,’ said Mr. Micawber,
+with some pride, ‘for meeting the destiny to which we are now understood
+to be self-devoted, I beg to report them. My eldest daughter attends
+at five every morning in a neighbouring establishment, to acquire
+the process--if process it may be called--of milking cows. My younger
+children are instructed to observe, as closely as circumstances will
+permit, the habits of the pigs and poultry maintained in the poorer
+parts of this city: a pursuit from which they have, on two occasions,
+been brought home, within an inch of being run over. I have myself
+directed some attention, during the past week, to the art of baking; and
+my son Wilkins has issued forth with a walking-stick and driven cattle,
+when permitted, by the rugged hirelings who had them in charge, to
+render any voluntary service in that direction--which I regret to say,
+for the credit of our nature, was not often; he being generally warned,
+with imprecations, to desist.’
+
+‘All very right indeed,’ said my aunt, encouragingly. ‘Mrs. Micawber has
+been busy, too, I have no doubt.’
+
+‘My dear madam,’ returned Mrs. Micawber, with her business-like air.
+‘I am free to confess that I have not been actively engaged in pursuits
+immediately connected with cultivation or with stock, though well aware
+that both will claim my attention on a foreign shore. Such opportunities
+as I have been enabled to alienate from my domestic duties, I have
+devoted to corresponding at some length with my family. For I own it
+seems to me, my dear Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, who always
+fell back on me, I suppose from old habit, to whomsoever else she might
+address her discourse at starting, ‘that the time is come when the past
+should be buried in oblivion; when my family should take Mr. Micawber by
+the hand, and Mr. Micawber should take my family by the hand; when the
+lion should lie down with the lamb, and my family be on terms with Mr.
+Micawber.’
+
+I said I thought so too.
+
+‘This, at least, is the light, my dear Mr. Copperfield,’ pursued Mrs.
+Micawber, ‘in which I view the subject. When I lived at home with my
+papa and mama, my papa was accustomed to ask, when any point was under
+discussion in our limited circle, “In what light does my Emma view the
+subject?” That my papa was too partial, I know; still, on such a point
+as the frigid coldness which has ever subsisted between Mr. Micawber and
+my family, I necessarily have formed an opinion, delusive though it may
+be.’
+
+‘No doubt. Of course you have, ma’am,’ said my aunt.
+
+‘Precisely so,’ assented Mrs. Micawber. ‘Now, I may be wrong in my
+conclusions; it is very likely that I am, but my individual impression
+is, that the gulf between my family and Mr. Micawber may be traced to an
+apprehension, on the part of my family, that Mr. Micawber would require
+pecuniary accommodation. I cannot help thinking,’ said Mrs. Micawber,
+with an air of deep sagacity, ‘that there are members of my family who
+have been apprehensive that Mr. Micawber would solicit them for their
+names.---I do not mean to be conferred in Baptism upon our children,
+but to be inscribed on Bills of Exchange, and negotiated in the Money
+Market.’
+
+The look of penetration with which Mrs. Micawber announced this
+discovery, as if no one had ever thought of it before, seemed rather to
+astonish my aunt; who abruptly replied, ‘Well, ma’am, upon the whole, I
+shouldn’t wonder if you were right!’
+
+‘Mr. Micawber being now on the eve of casting off the pecuniary
+shackles that have so long enthralled him,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘and of
+commencing a new career in a country where there is sufficient range
+for his abilities,--which, in my opinion, is exceedingly important; Mr.
+Micawber’s abilities peculiarly requiring space,--it seems to me that
+my family should signalize the occasion by coming forward. What I could
+wish to see, would be a meeting between Mr. Micawber and my family at
+a festive entertainment, to be given at my family’s expense; where Mr.
+Micawber’s health and prosperity being proposed, by some leading member
+of my family, Mr. Micawber might have an opportunity of developing his
+views.’
+
+‘My dear,’ said Mr. Micawber, with some heat, ‘it may be better for me
+to state distinctly, at once, that if I were to develop my views to that
+assembled group, they would possibly be found of an offensive nature:
+my impression being that your family are, in the aggregate, impertinent
+Snobs; and, in detail, unmitigated Ruffians.’
+
+‘Micawber,’ said Mrs. Micawber, shaking her head, ‘no! You have never
+understood them, and they have never understood you.’
+
+Mr. Micawber coughed.
+
+‘They have never understood you, Micawber,’ said his wife. ‘They may
+be incapable of it. If so, that is their misfortune. I can pity their
+misfortune.’
+
+‘I am extremely sorry, my dear Emma,’ said Mr. Micawber, relenting, ‘to
+have been betrayed into any expressions that might, even remotely, have
+the appearance of being strong expressions. All I would say is, that
+I can go abroad without your family coming forward to favour me,--in
+short, with a parting Shove of their cold shoulders; and that, upon the
+whole, I would rather leave England with such impetus as I possess, than
+derive any acceleration of it from that quarter. At the same time, my
+dear, if they should condescend to reply to your communications--which
+our joint experience renders most improbable--far be it from me to be a
+barrier to your wishes.’
+
+The matter being thus amicably settled, Mr. Micawber gave Mrs. Micawber
+his arm, and glancing at the heap of books and papers lying before
+Traddles on the table, said they would leave us to ourselves; which they
+ceremoniously did.
+
+‘My dear Copperfield,’ said Traddles, leaning back in his chair when
+they were gone, and looking at me with an affection that made his eyes
+red, and his hair all kinds of shapes, ‘I don’t make any excuse for
+troubling you with business, because I know you are deeply interested
+in it, and it may divert your thoughts. My dear boy, I hope you are not
+worn out?’
+
+‘I am quite myself,’ said I, after a pause. ‘We have more cause to think
+of my aunt than of anyone. You know how much she has done.’
+
+‘Surely, surely,’ answered Traddles. ‘Who can forget it!’
+
+‘But even that is not all,’ said I. ‘During the last fortnight, some new
+trouble has vexed her; and she has been in and out of London every day.
+Several times she has gone out early, and been absent until evening.
+Last night, Traddles, with this journey before her, it was almost
+midnight before she came home. You know what her consideration for
+others is. She will not tell me what has happened to distress her.’
+
+My aunt, very pale, and with deep lines in her face, sat immovable until
+I had finished; when some stray tears found their way to her cheeks, and
+she put her hand on mine.
+
+‘It’s nothing, Trot; it’s nothing. There will be no more of it. You
+shall know by and by. Now Agnes, my dear, let us attend to these
+affairs.’
+
+‘I must do Mr. Micawber the justice to say,’ Traddles began, ‘that
+although he would appear not to have worked to any good account for
+himself, he is a most untiring man when he works for other people. I
+never saw such a fellow. If he always goes on in the same way, he must
+be, virtually, about two hundred years old, at present. The heat into
+which he has been continually putting himself; and the distracted and
+impetuous manner in which he has been diving, day and night, among
+papers and books; to say nothing of the immense number of letters he has
+written me between this house and Mr. Wickfield’s, and often across the
+table when he has been sitting opposite, and might much more easily have
+spoken; is quite extraordinary.’
+
+‘Letters!’ cried my aunt. ‘I believe he dreams in letters!’
+
+‘There’s Mr. Dick, too,’ said Traddles, ‘has been doing wonders! As soon
+as he was released from overlooking Uriah Heep, whom he kept in such
+charge as I never saw exceeded, he began to devote himself to Mr.
+Wickfield. And really his anxiety to be of use in the investigations we
+have been making, and his real usefulness in extracting, and copying,
+and fetching, and carrying, have been quite stimulating to us.’
+
+‘Dick is a very remarkable man,’ exclaimed my aunt; ‘and I always said
+he was. Trot, you know it.’
+
+‘I am happy to say, Miss Wickfield,’ pursued Traddles, at once with
+great delicacy and with great earnestness, ‘that in your absence Mr.
+Wickfield has considerably improved. Relieved of the incubus that had
+fastened upon him for so long a time, and of the dreadful apprehensions
+under which he had lived, he is hardly the same person. At times,
+even his impaired power of concentrating his memory and attention on
+particular points of business, has recovered itself very much; and he
+has been able to assist us in making some things clear, that we should
+have found very difficult indeed, if not hopeless, without him. But
+what I have to do is to come to results; which are short enough; not
+to gossip on all the hopeful circumstances I have observed, or I shall
+never have done.’ His natural manner and agreeable simplicity made it
+transparent that he said this to put us in good heart, and to enable
+Agnes to hear her father mentioned with greater confidence; but it was
+not the less pleasant for that.
+
+‘Now, let me see,’ said Traddles, looking among the papers on the
+table. ‘Having counted our funds, and reduced to order a great mass of
+unintentional confusion in the first place, and of wilful confusion and
+falsification in the second, we take it to be clear that Mr. Wickfield
+might now wind up his business, and his agency-trust, and exhibit no
+deficiency or defalcation whatever.’
+
+‘Oh, thank Heaven!’ cried Agnes, fervently.
+
+‘But,’ said Traddles, ‘the surplus that would be left as his means of
+support--and I suppose the house to be sold, even in saying this--would
+be so small, not exceeding in all probability some hundreds of pounds,
+that perhaps, Miss Wickfield, it would be best to consider whether he
+might not retain his agency of the estate to which he has so long been
+receiver. His friends might advise him, you know; now he is free. You
+yourself, Miss Wickfield--Copperfield--I--’
+
+‘I have considered it, Trotwood,’ said Agnes, looking to me, ‘and I feel
+that it ought not to be, and must not be; even on the recommendation of
+a friend to whom I am so grateful, and owe so much.’
+
+‘I will not say that I recommend it,’ observed Traddles. ‘I think it
+right to suggest it. No more.’
+
+‘I am happy to hear you say so,’ answered Agnes, steadily, ‘for it gives
+me hope, almost assurance, that we think alike. Dear Mr. Traddles and
+dear Trotwood, papa once free with honour, what could I wish for! I have
+always aspired, if I could have released him from the toils in which he
+was held, to render back some little portion of the love and care I owe
+him, and to devote my life to him. It has been, for years, the utmost
+height of my hopes. To take our future on myself, will be the next
+great happiness--the next to his release from all trust and
+responsibility--that I can know.’
+
+‘Have you thought how, Agnes?’
+
+‘Often! I am not afraid, dear Trotwood. I am certain of success. So many
+people know me here, and think kindly of me, that I am certain. Don’t
+mistrust me. Our wants are not many. If I rent the dear old house, and
+keep a school, I shall be useful and happy.’
+
+The calm fervour of her cheerful voice brought back so vividly, first
+the dear old house itself, and then my solitary home, that my heart was
+too full for speech. Traddles pretended for a little while to be busily
+looking among the papers.
+
+‘Next, Miss Trotwood,’ said Traddles, ‘that property of yours.’
+
+‘Well, sir,’ sighed my aunt. ‘All I have got to say about it is, that if
+it’s gone, I can bear it; and if it’s not gone, I shall be glad to get
+it back.’
+
+‘It was originally, I think, eight thousand pounds, Consols?’ said
+Traddles.
+
+‘Right!’ replied my aunt.
+
+‘I can’t account for more than five,’ said Traddles, with an air of
+perplexity.
+
+‘--thousand, do you mean?’ inquired my aunt, with uncommon composure,
+‘or pounds?’
+
+‘Five thousand pounds,’ said Traddles.
+
+‘It was all there was,’ returned my aunt. ‘I sold three, myself. One, I
+paid for your articles, Trot, my dear; and the other two I have by me.
+When I lost the rest, I thought it wise to say nothing about that sum,
+but to keep it secretly for a rainy day. I wanted to see how you would
+come out of the trial, Trot; and you came out nobly--persevering,
+self-reliant, self-denying! So did Dick. Don’t speak to me, for I find
+my nerves a little shaken!’
+
+Nobody would have thought so, to see her sitting upright, with her arms
+folded; but she had wonderful self-command.
+
+‘Then I am delighted to say,’ cried Traddles, beaming with joy, ‘that we
+have recovered the whole money!’
+
+‘Don’t congratulate me, anybody!’ exclaimed my aunt. ‘How so, sir?’
+
+‘You believed it had been misappropriated by Mr. Wickfield?’ said
+Traddles.
+
+‘Of course I did,’ said my aunt, ‘and was therefore easily silenced.
+Agnes, not a word!’
+
+‘And indeed,’ said Traddles, ‘it was sold, by virtue of the power of
+management he held from you; but I needn’t say by whom sold, or on whose
+actual signature. It was afterwards pretended to Mr. Wickfield, by that
+rascal,--and proved, too, by figures,--that he had possessed himself of
+the money (on general instructions, he said) to keep other deficiencies
+and difficulties from the light. Mr. Wickfield, being so weak and
+helpless in his hands as to pay you, afterwards, several sums of
+interest on a pretended principal which he knew did not exist, made
+himself, unhappily, a party to the fraud.’
+
+‘And at last took the blame upon himself,’ added my aunt; ‘and wrote me
+a mad letter, charging himself with robbery, and wrong unheard of. Upon
+which I paid him a visit early one morning, called for a candle, burnt
+the letter, and told him if he ever could right me and himself, to
+do it; and if he couldn’t, to keep his own counsel for his daughter’s
+sake.---If anybody speaks to me, I’ll leave the house!’
+
+We all remained quiet; Agnes covering her face.
+
+‘Well, my dear friend,’ said my aunt, after a pause, ‘and you have
+really extorted the money back from him?’
+
+‘Why, the fact is,’ returned Traddles, ‘Mr. Micawber had so completely
+hemmed him in, and was always ready with so many new points if an
+old one failed, that he could not escape from us. A most remarkable
+circumstance is, that I really don’t think he grasped this sum even so
+much for the gratification of his avarice, which was inordinate, as in
+the hatred he felt for Copperfield. He said so to me, plainly. He said
+he would even have spent as much, to baulk or injure Copperfield.’
+
+‘Ha!’ said my aunt, knitting her brows thoughtfully, and glancing at
+Agnes. ‘And what’s become of him?’
+
+‘I don’t know. He left here,’ said Traddles, ‘with his mother, who had
+been clamouring, and beseeching, and disclosing, the whole time. They
+went away by one of the London night coaches, and I know no more about
+him; except that his malevolence to me at parting was audacious. He
+seemed to consider himself hardly less indebted to me, than to Mr.
+Micawber; which I consider (as I told him) quite a compliment.’
+
+‘Do you suppose he has any money, Traddles?’ I asked.
+
+‘Oh dear, yes, I should think so,’ he replied, shaking his head,
+seriously. ‘I should say he must have pocketed a good deal, in one
+way or other. But, I think you would find, Copperfield, if you had an
+opportunity of observing his course, that money would never keep that
+man out of mischief. He is such an incarnate hypocrite, that whatever
+object he pursues, he must pursue crookedly. It’s his only compensation
+for the outward restraints he puts upon himself. Always creeping along
+the ground to some small end or other, he will always magnify every
+object in the way; and consequently will hate and suspect everybody that
+comes, in the most innocent manner, between him and it. So the crooked
+courses will become crookeder, at any moment, for the least reason,
+or for none. It’s only necessary to consider his history here,’ said
+Traddles, ‘to know that.’
+
+‘He’s a monster of meanness!’ said my aunt.
+
+‘Really I don’t know about that,’ observed Traddles thoughtfully. ‘Many
+people can be very mean, when they give their minds to it.’
+
+‘And now, touching Mr. Micawber,’ said my aunt.
+
+‘Well, really,’ said Traddles, cheerfully, ‘I must, once more, give Mr.
+Micawber high praise. But for his having been so patient and persevering
+for so long a time, we never could have hoped to do anything worth
+speaking of. And I think we ought to consider that Mr. Micawber did
+right, for right’s sake, when we reflect what terms he might have made
+with Uriah Heep himself, for his silence.’
+
+‘I think so too,’ said I.
+
+‘Now, what would you give him?’ inquired my aunt.
+
+‘Oh! Before you come to that,’ said Traddles, a little disconcerted,
+‘I am afraid I thought it discreet to omit (not being able to carry
+everything before me) two points, in making this lawless adjustment--for
+it’s perfectly lawless from beginning to end--of a difficult affair.
+Those I.O.U.’s, and so forth, which Mr. Micawber gave him for the
+advances he had--’
+
+‘Well! They must be paid,’ said my aunt.
+
+‘Yes, but I don’t know when they may be proceeded on, or where they
+are,’ rejoined Traddles, opening his eyes; ‘and I anticipate, that,
+between this time and his departure, Mr. Micawber will be constantly
+arrested, or taken in execution.’
+
+‘Then he must be constantly set free again, and taken out of execution,’
+said my aunt. ‘What’s the amount altogether?’
+
+‘Why, Mr. Micawber has entered the transactions--he calls them
+transactions--with great form, in a book,’ rejoined Traddles, smiling;
+‘and he makes the amount a hundred and three pounds, five.’
+
+‘Now, what shall we give him, that sum included?’ said my aunt. ‘Agnes,
+my dear, you and I can talk about division of it afterwards. What should
+it be? Five hundred pounds?’
+
+Upon this, Traddles and I both struck in at once. We both recommended
+a small sum in money, and the payment, without stipulation to Mr.
+Micawber, of the Uriah claims as they came in. We proposed that the
+family should have their passage and their outfit, and a hundred pounds;
+and that Mr. Micawber’s arrangement for the repayment of the advances
+should be gravely entered into, as it might be wholesome for him
+to suppose himself under that responsibility. To this, I added the
+suggestion, that I should give some explanation of his character and
+history to Mr. Peggotty, who I knew could be relied on; and that to Mr.
+Peggotty should be quietly entrusted the discretion of advancing another
+hundred. I further proposed to interest Mr. Micawber in Mr. Peggotty,
+by confiding so much of Mr. Peggotty’s story to him as I might feel
+justified in relating, or might think expedient; and to endeavour to
+bring each of them to bear upon the other, for the common advantage. We
+all entered warmly into these views; and I may mention at once, that the
+principals themselves did so, shortly afterwards, with perfect good will
+and harmony.
+
+Seeing that Traddles now glanced anxiously at my aunt again, I reminded
+him of the second and last point to which he had adverted.
+
+‘You and your aunt will excuse me, Copperfield, if I touch upon a
+painful theme, as I greatly fear I shall,’ said Traddles, hesitating;
+‘but I think it necessary to bring it to your recollection. On the day
+of Mr. Micawber’s memorable denunciation a threatening allusion was made
+by Uriah Heep to your aunt’s--husband.’
+
+My aunt, retaining her stiff position, and apparent composure, assented
+with a nod.
+
+‘Perhaps,’ observed Traddles, ‘it was mere purposeless impertinence?’
+
+‘No,’ returned my aunt.
+
+‘There was--pardon me--really such a person, and at all in his power?’
+hinted Traddles.
+
+‘Yes, my good friend,’ said my aunt.
+
+Traddles, with a perceptible lengthening of his face, explained that he
+had not been able to approach this subject; that it had shared the fate
+of Mr. Micawber’s liabilities, in not being comprehended in the terms he
+had made; that we were no longer of any authority with Uriah Heep; and
+that if he could do us, or any of us, any injury or annoyance, no doubt
+he would.
+
+My aunt remained quiet; until again some stray tears found their way to
+her cheeks. ‘You are quite right,’ she said. ‘It was very thoughtful to
+mention it.’
+
+‘Can I--or Copperfield--do anything?’ asked Traddles, gently.
+
+‘Nothing,’ said my aunt. ‘I thank you many times. Trot, my dear, a vain
+threat! Let us have Mr. and Mrs. Micawber back. And don’t any of you
+speak to me!’ With that she smoothed her dress, and sat, with her
+upright carriage, looking at the door.
+
+‘Well, Mr. and Mrs. Micawber!’ said my aunt, when they entered. ‘We have
+been discussing your emigration, with many apologies to you for keeping
+you out of the room so long; and I’ll tell you what arrangements we
+propose.’
+
+These she explained to the unbounded satisfaction of the
+family,--children and all being then present,--and so much to the
+awakening of Mr. Micawber’s punctual habits in the opening stage of
+all bill transactions, that he could not be dissuaded from immediately
+rushing out, in the highest spirits, to buy the stamps for his notes of
+hand. But, his joy received a sudden check; for within five minutes,
+he returned in the custody of a sheriff ‘s officer, informing us, in
+a flood of tears, that all was lost. We, being quite prepared for this
+event, which was of course a proceeding of Uriah Heep’s, soon paid the
+money; and in five minutes more Mr. Micawber was seated at the table,
+filling up the stamps with an expression of perfect joy, which only
+that congenial employment, or the making of punch, could impart in full
+completeness to his shining face. To see him at work on the stamps, with
+the relish of an artist, touching them like pictures, looking at them
+sideways, taking weighty notes of dates and amounts in his pocket-book,
+and contemplating them when finished, with a high sense of their
+precious value, was a sight indeed.
+
+‘Now, the best thing you can do, sir, if you’ll allow me to advise
+you,’ said my aunt, after silently observing him, ‘is to abjure that
+occupation for evermore.’
+
+‘Madam,’ replied Mr. Micawber, ‘it is my intention to register such a
+vow on the virgin page of the future. Mrs. Micawber will attest it. I
+trust,’ said Mr. Micawber, solemnly, ‘that my son Wilkins will ever bear
+in mind, that he had infinitely better put his fist in the fire, than
+use it to handle the serpents that have poisoned the life-blood of his
+unhappy parent!’ Deeply affected, and changed in a moment to the image
+of despair, Mr. Micawber regarded the serpents with a look of gloomy
+abhorrence (in which his late admiration of them was not quite subdued),
+folded them up and put them in his pocket.
+
+This closed the proceedings of the evening. We were weary with sorrow
+and fatigue, and my aunt and I were to return to London on the morrow.
+It was arranged that the Micawbers should follow us, after effecting a
+sale of their goods to a broker; that Mr. Wickfield’s affairs should be
+brought to a settlement, with all convenient speed, under the direction
+of Traddles; and that Agnes should also come to London, pending those
+arrangements. We passed the night at the old house, which, freed from
+the presence of the Heeps, seemed purged of a disease; and I lay in my
+old room, like a shipwrecked wanderer come home.
+
+We went back next day to my aunt’s house--not to mine--and when she and
+I sat alone, as of old, before going to bed, she said:
+
+‘Trot, do you really wish to know what I have had upon my mind lately?’
+
+‘Indeed I do, aunt. If there ever was a time when I felt unwilling that
+you should have a sorrow or anxiety which I could not share, it is now.’
+
+‘You have had sorrow enough, child,’ said my aunt, affectionately,
+‘without the addition of my little miseries. I could have no other
+motive, Trot, in keeping anything from you.’
+
+‘I know that well,’ said I. ‘But tell me now.’
+
+‘Would you ride with me a little way tomorrow morning?’ asked my aunt.
+
+‘Of course.’
+
+‘At nine,’ said she. ‘I’ll tell you then, my dear.’
+
+At nine, accordingly, we went out in a little chariot, and drove to
+London. We drove a long way through the streets, until we came to one of
+the large hospitals. Standing hard by the building was a plain hearse.
+The driver recognized my aunt, and, in obedience to a motion of her hand
+at the window, drove slowly off; we following.
+
+‘You understand it now, Trot,’ said my aunt. ‘He is gone!’
+
+‘Did he die in the hospital?’
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+She sat immovable beside me; but, again I saw the stray tears on her
+face.
+
+‘He was there once before,’ said my aunt presently. ‘He was ailing a
+long time--a shattered, broken man, these many years. When he knew his
+state in this last illness, he asked them to send for me. He was sorry
+then. Very sorry.’
+
+‘You went, I know, aunt.’
+
+‘I went. I was with him a good deal afterwards.’
+
+‘He died the night before we went to Canterbury?’ said I. My aunt
+nodded. ‘No one can harm him now,’ she said. ‘It was a vain threat.’
+
+We drove away, out of town, to the churchyard at Hornsey. ‘Better here
+than in the streets,’ said my aunt. ‘He was born here.’
+
+We alighted; and followed the plain coffin to a corner I remember well,
+where the service was read consigning it to the dust.
+
+‘Six-and-thirty years ago, this day, my dear,’ said my aunt, as we
+walked back to the chariot, ‘I was married. God forgive us all!’ We took
+our seats in silence; and so she sat beside me for a long time, holding
+my hand. At length she suddenly burst into tears, and said:
+
+‘He was a fine-looking man when I married him, Trot--and he was sadly
+changed!’
+
+It did not last long. After the relief of tears, she soon became
+composed, and even cheerful. Her nerves were a little shaken, she said,
+or she would not have given way to it. God forgive us all!
+
+So we rode back to her little cottage at Highgate, where we found the
+following short note, which had arrived by that morning’s post from Mr.
+Micawber:
+
+
+          ‘Canterbury,
+
+               ‘Friday.
+
+‘My dear Madam, and Copperfield,
+
+‘The fair land of promise lately looming on the horizon is again
+enveloped in impenetrable mists, and for ever withdrawn from the eyes of
+a drifting wretch whose Doom is sealed!
+
+‘Another writ has been issued (in His Majesty’s High Court of King’s
+Bench at Westminster), in another cause of HEEP V. MICAWBER, and
+the defendant in that cause is the prey of the sheriff having legal
+jurisdiction in this bailiwick.
+
+     ‘Now’s the day, and now’s the hour,
+     See the front of battle lower,
+     See approach proud EDWARD’S power--
+     Chains and slavery!
+
+‘Consigned to which, and to a speedy end (for mental torture is not
+supportable beyond a certain point, and that point I feel I have
+attained), my course is run. Bless you, bless you! Some future
+traveller, visiting, from motives of curiosity, not unmingled, let us
+hope, with sympathy, the place of confinement allotted to debtors in
+this city, may, and I trust will, Ponder, as he traces on its wall,
+inscribed with a rusty nail,
+
+                              ‘The obscure initials,
+
+                                   ‘W. M.
+
+‘P.S. I re-open this to say that our common friend, Mr. Thomas Traddles
+(who has not yet left us, and is looking extremely well), has paid the
+debt and costs, in the noble name of Miss Trotwood; and that myself and
+family are at the height of earthly bliss.’
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 55. TEMPEST
+
+
+I now approach an event in my life, so indelible, so awful, so bound by
+an infinite variety of ties to all that has preceded it, in these pages,
+that, from the beginning of my narrative, I have seen it growing larger
+and larger as I advanced, like a great tower in a plain, and throwing
+its fore-cast shadow even on the incidents of my childish days.
+
+For years after it occurred, I dreamed of it often. I have started up so
+vividly impressed by it, that its fury has yet seemed raging in my quiet
+room, in the still night. I dream of it sometimes, though at lengthened
+and uncertain intervals, to this hour. I have an association between it
+and a stormy wind, or the lightest mention of a sea-shore, as strong as
+any of which my mind is conscious. As plainly as I behold what happened,
+I will try to write it down. I do not recall it, but see it done; for it
+happens again before me.
+
+The time drawing on rapidly for the sailing of the emigrant-ship, my
+good old nurse (almost broken-hearted for me, when we first met) came up
+to London. I was constantly with her, and her brother, and the Micawbers
+(they being very much together); but Emily I never saw.
+
+One evening when the time was close at hand, I was alone with Peggotty
+and her brother. Our conversation turned on Ham. She described to us how
+tenderly he had taken leave of her, and how manfully and quietly he
+had borne himself. Most of all, of late, when she believed he was most
+tried. It was a subject of which the affectionate creature never tired;
+and our interest in hearing the many examples which she, who was so much
+with him, had to relate, was equal to hers in relating them.
+
+My aunt and I were at that time vacating the two cottages at Highgate; I
+intending to go abroad, and she to return to her house at Dover. We had
+a temporary lodging in Covent Garden. As I walked home to it, after this
+evening’s conversation, reflecting on what had passed between Ham and
+myself when I was last at Yarmouth, I wavered in the original purpose
+I had formed, of leaving a letter for Emily when I should take leave of
+her uncle on board the ship, and thought it would be better to write to
+her now. She might desire, I thought, after receiving my communication,
+to send some parting word by me to her unhappy lover. I ought to give
+her the opportunity.
+
+I therefore sat down in my room, before going to bed, and wrote to her.
+I told her that I had seen him, and that he had requested me to tell her
+what I have already written in its place in these sheets. I faithfully
+repeated it. I had no need to enlarge upon it, if I had had the right.
+Its deep fidelity and goodness were not to be adorned by me or any
+man. I left it out, to be sent round in the morning; with a line to Mr.
+Peggotty, requesting him to give it to her; and went to bed at daybreak.
+
+I was weaker than I knew then; and, not falling asleep until the sun
+was up, lay late, and unrefreshed, next day. I was roused by the silent
+presence of my aunt at my bedside. I felt it in my sleep, as I suppose
+we all do feel such things.
+
+‘Trot, my dear,’ she said, when I opened my eyes, ‘I couldn’t make up my
+mind to disturb you. Mr. Peggotty is here; shall he come up?’
+
+I replied yes, and he soon appeared.
+
+‘Mas’r Davy,’ he said, when we had shaken hands, ‘I giv Em’ly your
+letter, sir, and she writ this heer; and begged of me fur to ask you
+to read it, and if you see no hurt in’t, to be so kind as take charge
+on’t.’
+
+‘Have you read it?’ said I.
+
+He nodded sorrowfully. I opened it, and read as follows:
+
+
+‘I have got your message. Oh, what can I write, to thank you for your
+good and blessed kindness to me!
+
+‘I have put the words close to my heart. I shall keep them till I die.
+They are sharp thorns, but they are such comfort. I have prayed over
+them, oh, I have prayed so much. When I find what you are, and what
+uncle is, I think what God must be, and can cry to him.
+
+‘Good-bye for ever. Now, my dear, my friend, good-bye for ever in this
+world. In another world, if I am forgiven, I may wake a child and come
+to you. All thanks and blessings. Farewell, evermore.’
+
+
+This, blotted with tears, was the letter.
+
+‘May I tell her as you doen’t see no hurt in’t, and as you’ll be so kind
+as take charge on’t, Mas’r Davy?’ said Mr. Peggotty, when I had read it.
+‘Unquestionably,’ said I--‘but I am thinking--’
+
+‘Yes, Mas’r Davy?’
+
+‘I am thinking,’ said I, ‘that I’ll go down again to Yarmouth. There’s
+time, and to spare, for me to go and come back before the ship sails. My
+mind is constantly running on him, in his solitude; to put this letter
+of her writing in his hand at this time, and to enable you to tell her,
+in the moment of parting, that he has got it, will be a kindness to
+both of them. I solemnly accepted his commission, dear good fellow, and
+cannot discharge it too completely. The journey is nothing to me. I am
+restless, and shall be better in motion. I’ll go down tonight.’
+
+Though he anxiously endeavoured to dissuade me, I saw that he was of my
+mind; and this, if I had required to be confirmed in my intention, would
+have had the effect. He went round to the coach office, at my request,
+and took the box-seat for me on the mail. In the evening I started,
+by that conveyance, down the road I had traversed under so many
+vicissitudes.
+
+‘Don’t you think that,’ I asked the coachman, in the first stage out of
+London, ‘a very remarkable sky? I don’t remember to have seen one like
+it.’
+
+‘Nor I--not equal to it,’ he replied. ‘That’s wind, sir. There’ll be
+mischief done at sea, I expect, before long.’
+
+It was a murky confusion--here and there blotted with a colour like the
+colour of the smoke from damp fuel--of flying clouds, tossed up into
+most remarkable heaps, suggesting greater heights in the clouds than
+there were depths below them to the bottom of the deepest hollows in the
+earth, through which the wild moon seemed to plunge headlong, as if, in
+a dread disturbance of the laws of nature, she had lost her way and were
+frightened. There had been a wind all day; and it was rising then, with
+an extraordinary great sound. In another hour it had much increased, and
+the sky was more overcast, and blew hard.
+
+But, as the night advanced, the clouds closing in and densely
+over-spreading the whole sky, then very dark, it came on to blow, harder
+and harder. It still increased, until our horses could scarcely face
+the wind. Many times, in the dark part of the night (it was then late in
+September, when the nights were not short), the leaders turned about, or
+came to a dead stop; and we were often in serious apprehension that the
+coach would be blown over. Sweeping gusts of rain came up before this
+storm, like showers of steel; and, at those times, when there was any
+shelter of trees or lee walls to be got, we were fain to stop, in a
+sheer impossibility of continuing the struggle.
+
+When the day broke, it blew harder and harder. I had been in Yarmouth
+when the seamen said it blew great guns, but I had never known the like
+of this, or anything approaching to it. We came to Ipswich--very late,
+having had to fight every inch of ground since we were ten miles out of
+London; and found a cluster of people in the market-place, who had
+risen from their beds in the night, fearful of falling chimneys. Some of
+these, congregating about the inn-yard while we changed horses, told us
+of great sheets of lead having been ripped off a high church-tower, and
+flung into a by-street, which they then blocked up. Others had to tell
+of country people, coming in from neighbouring villages, who had seen
+great trees lying torn out of the earth, and whole ricks scattered about
+the roads and fields. Still, there was no abatement in the storm, but it
+blew harder.
+
+As we struggled on, nearer and nearer to the sea, from which this mighty
+wind was blowing dead on shore, its force became more and more terrific.
+Long before we saw the sea, its spray was on our lips, and showered
+salt rain upon us. The water was out, over miles and miles of the flat
+country adjacent to Yarmouth; and every sheet and puddle lashed its
+banks, and had its stress of little breakers setting heavily towards us.
+When we came within sight of the sea, the waves on the horizon, caught
+at intervals above the rolling abyss, were like glimpses of another
+shore with towers and buildings. When at last we got into the town, the
+people came out to their doors, all aslant, and with streaming hair,
+making a wonder of the mail that had come through such a night.
+
+I put up at the old inn, and went down to look at the sea; staggering
+along the street, which was strewn with sand and seaweed, and with
+flying blotches of sea-foam; afraid of falling slates and tiles; and
+holding by people I met, at angry corners. Coming near the beach, I saw,
+not only the boatmen, but half the people of the town, lurking behind
+buildings; some, now and then braving the fury of the storm to look
+away to sea, and blown sheer out of their course in trying to get zigzag
+back.
+
+Joining these groups, I found bewailing women whose husbands were away
+in herring or oyster boats, which there was too much reason to think
+might have foundered before they could run in anywhere for safety.
+Grizzled old sailors were among the people, shaking their heads, as they
+looked from water to sky, and muttering to one another; ship-owners,
+excited and uneasy; children, huddling together, and peering into older
+faces; even stout mariners, disturbed and anxious, levelling their
+glasses at the sea from behind places of shelter, as if they were
+surveying an enemy.
+
+The tremendous sea itself, when I could find sufficient pause to look at
+it, in the agitation of the blinding wind, the flying stones and sand,
+and the awful noise, confounded me. As the high watery walls came
+rolling in, and, at their highest, tumbled into surf, they looked as if
+the least would engulf the town. As the receding wave swept back with a
+hoarse roar, it seemed to scoop out deep caves in the beach, as if its
+purpose were to undermine the earth. When some white-headed billows
+thundered on, and dashed themselves to pieces before they reached the
+land, every fragment of the late whole seemed possessed by the full
+might of its wrath, rushing to be gathered to the composition of another
+monster. Undulating hills were changed to valleys, undulating valleys
+(with a solitary storm-bird sometimes skimming through them) were lifted
+up to hills; masses of water shivered and shook the beach with a booming
+sound; every shape tumultuously rolled on, as soon as made, to change
+its shape and place, and beat another shape and place away; the ideal
+shore on the horizon, with its towers and buildings, rose and fell; the
+clouds fell fast and thick; I seemed to see a rending and upheaving of
+all nature.
+
+Not finding Ham among the people whom this memorable wind--for it is
+still remembered down there, as the greatest ever known to blow upon
+that coast--had brought together, I made my way to his house. It was
+shut; and as no one answered to my knocking, I went, by back ways and
+by-lanes, to the yard where he worked. I learned, there, that he had
+gone to Lowestoft, to meet some sudden exigency of ship-repairing
+in which his skill was required; but that he would be back tomorrow
+morning, in good time.
+
+I went back to the inn; and when I had washed and dressed, and tried to
+sleep, but in vain, it was five o’clock in the afternoon. I had not sat
+five minutes by the coffee-room fire, when the waiter, coming to stir
+it, as an excuse for talking, told me that two colliers had gone down,
+with all hands, a few miles away; and that some other ships had been
+seen labouring hard in the Roads, and trying, in great distress, to keep
+off shore. Mercy on them, and on all poor sailors, said he, if we had
+another night like the last!
+
+I was very much depressed in spirits; very solitary; and felt an
+uneasiness in Ham’s not being there, disproportionate to the occasion. I
+was seriously affected, without knowing how much, by late events; and my
+long exposure to the fierce wind had confused me. There was that jumble
+in my thoughts and recollections, that I had lost the clear arrangement
+of time and distance. Thus, if I had gone out into the town, I should
+not have been surprised, I think, to encounter someone who I knew must
+be then in London. So to speak, there was in these respects a curious
+inattention in my mind. Yet it was busy, too, with all the remembrances
+the place naturally awakened; and they were particularly distinct and
+vivid.
+
+In this state, the waiter’s dismal intelligence about the ships
+immediately connected itself, without any effort of my volition, with my
+uneasiness about Ham. I was persuaded that I had an apprehension of his
+returning from Lowestoft by sea, and being lost. This grew so strong
+with me, that I resolved to go back to the yard before I took my dinner,
+and ask the boat-builder if he thought his attempting to return by sea
+at all likely? If he gave me the least reason to think so, I would go
+over to Lowestoft and prevent it by bringing him with me.
+
+I hastily ordered my dinner, and went back to the yard. I was none too
+soon; for the boat-builder, with a lantern in his hand, was locking
+the yard-gate. He quite laughed when I asked him the question, and said
+there was no fear; no man in his senses, or out of them, would put off
+in such a gale of wind, least of all Ham Peggotty, who had been born to
+seafaring.
+
+So sensible of this, beforehand, that I had really felt ashamed of doing
+what I was nevertheless impelled to do, I went back to the inn. If
+such a wind could rise, I think it was rising. The howl and roar, the
+rattling of the doors and windows, the rumbling in the chimneys, the
+apparent rocking of the very house that sheltered me, and the prodigious
+tumult of the sea, were more fearful than in the morning. But there
+was now a great darkness besides; and that invested the storm with new
+terrors, real and fanciful.
+
+I could not eat, I could not sit still, I could not continue steadfast
+to anything. Something within me, faintly answering to the storm
+without, tossed up the depths of my memory and made a tumult in them.
+Yet, in all the hurry of my thoughts, wild running with the thundering
+sea,--the storm, and my uneasiness regarding Ham were always in the
+fore-ground.
+
+My dinner went away almost untasted, and I tried to refresh myself with
+a glass or two of wine. In vain. I fell into a dull slumber before
+the fire, without losing my consciousness, either of the uproar out of
+doors, or of the place in which I was. Both became overshadowed by a new
+and indefinable horror; and when I awoke--or rather when I shook off
+the lethargy that bound me in my chair--my whole frame thrilled with
+objectless and unintelligible fear.
+
+I walked to and fro, tried to read an old gazetteer, listened to the
+awful noises: looked at faces, scenes, and figures in the fire.
+At length, the steady ticking of the undisturbed clock on the wall
+tormented me to that degree that I resolved to go to bed.
+
+It was reassuring, on such a night, to be told that some of the
+inn-servants had agreed together to sit up until morning. I went to bed,
+exceedingly weary and heavy; but, on my lying down, all such sensations
+vanished, as if by magic, and I was broad awake, with every sense
+refined.
+
+For hours I lay there, listening to the wind and water; imagining, now,
+that I heard shrieks out at sea; now, that I distinctly heard the firing
+of signal guns; and now, the fall of houses in the town. I got up,
+several times, and looked out; but could see nothing, except the
+reflection in the window-panes of the faint candle I had left burning,
+and of my own haggard face looking in at me from the black void.
+
+At length, my restlessness attained to such a pitch, that I hurried on
+my clothes, and went downstairs. In the large kitchen, where I dimly
+saw bacon and ropes of onions hanging from the beams, the watchers were
+clustered together, in various attitudes, about a table, purposely moved
+away from the great chimney, and brought near the door. A pretty girl,
+who had her ears stopped with her apron, and her eyes upon the door,
+screamed when I appeared, supposing me to be a spirit; but the others
+had more presence of mind, and were glad of an addition to their
+company. One man, referring to the topic they had been discussing, asked
+me whether I thought the souls of the collier-crews who had gone down,
+were out in the storm?
+
+I remained there, I dare say, two hours. Once, I opened the yard-gate,
+and looked into the empty street. The sand, the sea-weed, and the flakes
+of foam, were driving by; and I was obliged to call for assistance
+before I could shut the gate again, and make it fast against the wind.
+
+There was a dark gloom in my solitary chamber, when I at length returned
+to it; but I was tired now, and, getting into bed again, fell--off
+a tower and down a precipice--into the depths of sleep. I have an
+impression that for a long time, though I dreamed of being elsewhere and
+in a variety of scenes, it was always blowing in my dream. At length,
+I lost that feeble hold upon reality, and was engaged with two dear
+friends, but who they were I don’t know, at the siege of some town in a
+roar of cannonading.
+
+The thunder of the cannon was so loud and incessant, that I could not
+hear something I much desired to hear, until I made a great exertion
+and awoke. It was broad day--eight or nine o’clock; the storm raging, in
+lieu of the batteries; and someone knocking and calling at my door.
+
+‘What is the matter?’ I cried.
+
+‘A wreck! Close by!’
+
+I sprung out of bed, and asked, what wreck?
+
+‘A schooner, from Spain or Portugal, laden with fruit and wine. Make
+haste, sir, if you want to see her! It’s thought, down on the beach,
+she’ll go to pieces every moment.’
+
+The excited voice went clamouring along the staircase; and I wrapped
+myself in my clothes as quickly as I could, and ran into the street.
+
+Numbers of people were there before me, all running in one direction, to
+the beach. I ran the same way, outstripping a good many, and soon came
+facing the wild sea.
+
+The wind might by this time have lulled a little, though not more
+sensibly than if the cannonading I had dreamed of, had been diminished
+by the silencing of half-a-dozen guns out of hundreds. But the sea,
+having upon it the additional agitation of the whole night, was
+infinitely more terrific than when I had seen it last. Every appearance
+it had then presented, bore the expression of being swelled; and the
+height to which the breakers rose, and, looking over one another,
+bore one another down, and rolled in, in interminable hosts, was most
+appalling. In the difficulty of hearing anything but wind and waves,
+and in the crowd, and the unspeakable confusion, and my first breathless
+efforts to stand against the weather, I was so confused that I looked
+out to sea for the wreck, and saw nothing but the foaming heads of the
+great waves. A half-dressed boatman, standing next me, pointed with his
+bare arm (a tattoo’d arrow on it, pointing in the same direction) to the
+left. Then, O great Heaven, I saw it, close in upon us!
+
+One mast was broken short off, six or eight feet from the deck, and lay
+over the side, entangled in a maze of sail and rigging; and all that
+ruin, as the ship rolled and beat--which she did without a moment’s
+pause, and with a violence quite inconceivable--beat the side as if it
+would stave it in. Some efforts were even then being made, to cut this
+portion of the wreck away; for, as the ship, which was broadside on,
+turned towards us in her rolling, I plainly descried her people at
+work with axes, especially one active figure with long curling hair,
+conspicuous among the rest. But a great cry, which was audible even
+above the wind and water, rose from the shore at this moment; the sea,
+sweeping over the rolling wreck, made a clean breach, and carried men,
+spars, casks, planks, bulwarks, heaps of such toys, into the boiling
+surge.
+
+The second mast was yet standing, with the rags of a rent sail, and
+a wild confusion of broken cordage flapping to and fro. The ship had
+struck once, the same boatman hoarsely said in my ear, and then lifted
+in and struck again. I understood him to add that she was parting
+amidships, and I could readily suppose so, for the rolling and beating
+were too tremendous for any human work to suffer long. As he spoke,
+there was another great cry of pity from the beach; four men arose with
+the wreck out of the deep, clinging to the rigging of the remaining
+mast; uppermost, the active figure with the curling hair.
+
+There was a bell on board; and as the ship rolled and dashed, like a
+desperate creature driven mad, now showing us the whole sweep of her
+deck, as she turned on her beam-ends towards the shore, now nothing but
+her keel, as she sprung wildly over and turned towards the sea, the bell
+rang; and its sound, the knell of those unhappy men, was borne towards
+us on the wind. Again we lost her, and again she rose. Two men were
+gone. The agony on the shore increased. Men groaned, and clasped their
+hands; women shrieked, and turned away their faces. Some ran wildly
+up and down along the beach, crying for help where no help could be. I
+found myself one of these, frantically imploring a knot of sailors whom
+I knew, not to let those two lost creatures perish before our eyes.
+
+They were making out to me, in an agitated way--I don’t know how,
+for the little I could hear I was scarcely composed enough to
+understand--that the lifeboat had been bravely manned an hour ago, and
+could do nothing; and that as no man would be so desperate as to attempt
+to wade off with a rope, and establish a communication with the shore,
+there was nothing left to try; when I noticed that some new sensation
+moved the people on the beach, and saw them part, and Ham come breaking
+through them to the front.
+
+I ran to him--as well as I know, to repeat my appeal for help. But,
+distracted though I was, by a sight so new to me and terrible, the
+determination in his face, and his look out to sea--exactly the same
+look as I remembered in connexion with the morning after Emily’s
+flight--awoke me to a knowledge of his danger. I held him back with both
+arms; and implored the men with whom I had been speaking, not to listen
+to him, not to do murder, not to let him stir from off that sand!
+
+Another cry arose on shore; and looking to the wreck, we saw the cruel
+sail, with blow on blow, beat off the lower of the two men, and fly up
+in triumph round the active figure left alone upon the mast.
+
+Against such a sight, and against such determination as that of the
+calmly desperate man who was already accustomed to lead half the people
+present, I might as hopefully have entreated the wind. ‘Mas’r Davy,’
+he said, cheerily grasping me by both hands, ‘if my time is come, ‘tis
+come. If ‘tan’t, I’ll bide it. Lord above bless you, and bless all!
+Mates, make me ready! I’m a-going off!’
+
+I was swept away, but not unkindly, to some distance, where the people
+around me made me stay; urging, as I confusedly perceived, that he was
+bent on going, with help or without, and that I should endanger the
+precautions for his safety by troubling those with whom they rested. I
+don’t know what I answered, or what they rejoined; but I saw hurry on
+the beach, and men running with ropes from a capstan that was there, and
+penetrating into a circle of figures that hid him from me. Then, I saw
+him standing alone, in a seaman’s frock and trousers: a rope in his
+hand, or slung to his wrist: another round his body: and several of the
+best men holding, at a little distance, to the latter, which he laid out
+himself, slack upon the shore, at his feet.
+
+The wreck, even to my unpractised eye, was breaking up. I saw that she
+was parting in the middle, and that the life of the solitary man upon
+the mast hung by a thread. Still, he clung to it. He had a singular red
+cap on,--not like a sailor’s cap, but of a finer colour; and as the few
+yielding planks between him and destruction rolled and bulged, and his
+anticipative death-knell rung, he was seen by all of us to wave it. I
+saw him do it now, and thought I was going distracted, when his action
+brought an old remembrance to my mind of a once dear friend.
+
+Ham watched the sea, standing alone, with the silence of suspended
+breath behind him, and the storm before, until there was a great
+retiring wave, when, with a backward glance at those who held the rope
+which was made fast round his body, he dashed in after it, and in a
+moment was buffeting with the water; rising with the hills, falling
+with the valleys, lost beneath the foam; then drawn again to land. They
+hauled in hastily.
+
+He was hurt. I saw blood on his face, from where I stood; but he took
+no thought of that. He seemed hurriedly to give them some directions for
+leaving him more free--or so I judged from the motion of his arm--and
+was gone as before.
+
+And now he made for the wreck, rising with the hills, falling with the
+valleys, lost beneath the rugged foam, borne in towards the shore,
+borne on towards the ship, striving hard and valiantly. The distance was
+nothing, but the power of the sea and wind made the strife deadly. At
+length he neared the wreck. He was so near, that with one more of his
+vigorous strokes he would be clinging to it,--when a high, green, vast
+hill-side of water, moving on shoreward, from beyond the ship, he seemed
+to leap up into it with a mighty bound, and the ship was gone!
+
+Some eddying fragments I saw in the sea, as if a mere cask had been
+broken, in running to the spot where they were hauling in. Consternation
+was in every face. They drew him to my very feet--insensible--dead.
+He was carried to the nearest house; and, no one preventing me now, I
+remained near him, busy, while every means of restoration were tried;
+but he had been beaten to death by the great wave, and his generous
+heart was stilled for ever.
+
+As I sat beside the bed, when hope was abandoned and all was done, a
+fisherman, who had known me when Emily and I were children, and ever
+since, whispered my name at the door.
+
+‘Sir,’ said he, with tears starting to his weather-beaten face, which,
+with his trembling lips, was ashy pale, ‘will you come over yonder?’
+
+The old remembrance that had been recalled to me, was in his look. I
+asked him, terror-stricken, leaning on the arm he held out to support
+me:
+
+‘Has a body come ashore?’
+
+He said, ‘Yes.’
+
+‘Do I know it?’ I asked then.
+
+He answered nothing.
+
+But he led me to the shore. And on that part of it where she and I had
+looked for shells, two children--on that part of it where some lighter
+fragments of the old boat, blown down last night, had been scattered by
+the wind--among the ruins of the home he had wronged--I saw him lying
+with his head upon his arm, as I had often seen him lie at school.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 56. THE NEW WOUND, AND THE OLD
+
+No need, O Steerforth, to have said, when we last spoke together, in
+that hour which I so little deemed to be our parting-hour--no need to
+have said, ‘Think of me at my best!’ I had done that ever; and could I
+change now, looking on this sight!
+
+They brought a hand-bier, and laid him on it, and covered him with a
+flag, and took him up and bore him on towards the houses. All the men
+who carried him had known him, and gone sailing with him, and seen him
+merry and bold. They carried him through the wild roar, a hush in the
+midst of all the tumult; and took him to the cottage where Death was
+already.
+
+But when they set the bier down on the threshold, they looked at one
+another, and at me, and whispered. I knew why. They felt as if it were
+not right to lay him down in the same quiet room.
+
+We went into the town, and took our burden to the inn. So soon as I
+could at all collect my thoughts, I sent for Joram, and begged him to
+provide me a conveyance in which it could be got to London in the night.
+I knew that the care of it, and the hard duty of preparing his mother to
+receive it, could only rest with me; and I was anxious to discharge that
+duty as faithfully as I could.
+
+I chose the night for the journey, that there might be less curiosity
+when I left the town. But, although it was nearly midnight when I came
+out of the yard in a chaise, followed by what I had in charge, there
+were many people waiting. At intervals, along the town, and even a
+little way out upon the road, I saw more: but at length only the bleak
+night and the open country were around me, and the ashes of my youthful
+friendship.
+
+Upon a mellow autumn day, about noon, when the ground was perfumed by
+fallen leaves, and many more, in beautiful tints of yellow, red, and
+brown, yet hung upon the trees, through which the sun was shining, I
+arrived at Highgate. I walked the last mile, thinking as I went along of
+what I had to do; and left the carriage that had followed me all through
+the night, awaiting orders to advance.
+
+The house, when I came up to it, looked just the same. Not a blind was
+raised; no sign of life was in the dull paved court, with its covered
+way leading to the disused door. The wind had quite gone down, and
+nothing moved.
+
+I had not, at first, the courage to ring at the gate; and when I did
+ring, my errand seemed to me to be expressed in the very sound of the
+bell. The little parlour-maid came out, with the key in her hand; and
+looking earnestly at me as she unlocked the gate, said:
+
+‘I beg your pardon, sir. Are you ill?’
+
+‘I have been much agitated, and am fatigued.’
+
+‘Is anything the matter, sir?---Mr. James?--’ ‘Hush!’ said I. ‘Yes,
+something has happened, that I have to break to Mrs. Steerforth. She is
+at home?’
+
+The girl anxiously replied that her mistress was very seldom out now,
+even in a carriage; that she kept her room; that she saw no company, but
+would see me. Her mistress was up, she said, and Miss Dartle was with
+her. What message should she take upstairs?
+
+Giving her a strict charge to be careful of her manner, and only to
+carry in my card and say I waited, I sat down in the drawing-room (which
+we had now reached) until she should come back. Its former pleasant air
+of occupation was gone, and the shutters were half closed. The harp had
+not been used for many and many a day. His picture, as a boy, was
+there. The cabinet in which his mother had kept his letters was there. I
+wondered if she ever read them now; if she would ever read them more!
+
+The house was so still that I heard the girl’s light step upstairs. On
+her return, she brought a message, to the effect that Mrs. Steerforth
+was an invalid and could not come down; but that if I would excuse her
+being in her chamber, she would be glad to see me. In a few moments I
+stood before her.
+
+She was in his room; not in her own. I felt, of course, that she had
+taken to occupy it, in remembrance of him; and that the many tokens
+of his old sports and accomplishments, by which she was surrounded,
+remained there, just as he had left them, for the same reason. She
+murmured, however, even in her reception of me, that she was out of her
+own chamber because its aspect was unsuited to her infirmity; and with
+her stately look repelled the least suspicion of the truth.
+
+At her chair, as usual, was Rosa Dartle. From the first moment of
+her dark eyes resting on me, I saw she knew I was the bearer of evil
+tidings. The scar sprung into view that instant. She withdrew herself
+a step behind the chair, to keep her own face out of Mrs. Steerforth’s
+observation; and scrutinized me with a piercing gaze that never
+faltered, never shrunk.
+
+‘I am sorry to observe you are in mourning, sir,’ said Mrs. Steerforth.
+
+‘I am unhappily a widower,’ said I.
+
+‘You are very young to know so great a loss,’ she returned. ‘I am
+grieved to hear it. I am grieved to hear it. I hope Time will be good to
+you.’
+
+‘I hope Time,’ said I, looking at her, ‘will be good to all of us.
+Dear Mrs. Steerforth, we must all trust to that, in our heaviest
+misfortunes.’
+
+The earnestness of my manner, and the tears in my eyes, alarmed her. The
+whole course of her thoughts appeared to stop, and change.
+
+I tried to command my voice in gently saying his name, but it trembled.
+She repeated it to herself, two or three times, in a low tone. Then,
+addressing me, she said, with enforced calmness:
+
+‘My son is ill.’
+
+‘Very ill.’
+
+‘You have seen him?’
+
+‘I have.’
+
+‘Are you reconciled?’
+
+I could not say Yes, I could not say No. She slightly turned her head
+towards the spot where Rosa Dartle had been standing at her elbow, and
+in that moment I said, by the motion of my lips, to Rosa, ‘Dead!’
+
+That Mrs. Steerforth might not be induced to look behind her, and read,
+plainly written, what she was not yet prepared to know, I met her look
+quickly; but I had seen Rosa Dartle throw her hands up in the air with
+vehemence of despair and horror, and then clasp them on her face.
+
+The handsome lady--so like, oh so like!--regarded me with a fixed look,
+and put her hand to her forehead. I besought her to be calm, and prepare
+herself to bear what I had to tell; but I should rather have entreated
+her to weep, for she sat like a stone figure.
+
+‘When I was last here,’ I faltered, ‘Miss Dartle told me he was sailing
+here and there. The night before last was a dreadful one at sea. If he
+were at sea that night, and near a dangerous coast, as it is said he
+was; and if the vessel that was seen should really be the ship which--’
+
+‘Rosa!’ said Mrs. Steerforth, ‘come to me!’
+
+She came, but with no sympathy or gentleness. Her eyes gleamed like fire
+as she confronted his mother, and broke into a frightful laugh.
+
+‘Now,’ she said, ‘is your pride appeased, you madwoman? Now has he made
+atonement to you--with his life! Do you hear?---His life!’
+
+Mrs. Steerforth, fallen back stiffly in her chair, and making no sound
+but a moan, cast her eyes upon her with a wide stare.
+
+‘Aye!’ cried Rosa, smiting herself passionately on the breast, ‘look at
+me! Moan, and groan, and look at me! Look here!’ striking the scar, ‘at
+your dead child’s handiwork!’
+
+The moan the mother uttered, from time to time, went to My heart. Always
+the same. Always inarticulate and stifled. Always accompanied with
+an incapable motion of the head, but with no change of face. Always
+proceeding from a rigid mouth and closed teeth, as if the jaw were
+locked and the face frozen up in pain.
+
+‘Do you remember when he did this?’ she proceeded. ‘Do you remember
+when, in his inheritance of your nature, and in your pampering of his
+pride and passion, he did this, and disfigured me for life? Look at me,
+marked until I die with his high displeasure; and moan and groan for
+what you made him!’
+
+‘Miss Dartle,’ I entreated her. ‘For Heaven’s sake--’
+
+‘I WILL speak!’ she said, turning on me with her lightning eyes. ‘Be
+silent, you! Look at me, I say, proud mother of a proud, false son! Moan
+for your nurture of him, moan for your corruption of him, moan for your
+loss of him, moan for mine!’
+
+She clenched her hand, and trembled through her spare, worn figure, as
+if her passion were killing her by inches.
+
+‘You, resent his self-will!’ she exclaimed. ‘You, injured by his haughty
+temper! You, who opposed to both, when your hair was grey, the qualities
+which made both when you gave him birth! YOU, who from his cradle reared
+him to be what he was, and stunted what he should have been! Are you
+rewarded, now, for your years of trouble?’
+
+‘Oh, Miss Dartle, shame! Oh cruel!’
+
+‘I tell you,’ she returned, ‘I WILL speak to her. No power on earth
+should stop me, while I was standing here! Have I been silent all these
+years, and shall I not speak now? I loved him better than you ever loved
+him!’ turning on her fiercely. ‘I could have loved him, and asked no
+return. If I had been his wife, I could have been the slave of his
+caprices for a word of love a year. I should have been. Who knows it
+better than I? You were exacting, proud, punctilious, selfish. My love
+would have been devoted--would have trod your paltry whimpering under
+foot!’
+
+With flashing eyes, she stamped upon the ground as if she actually did
+it.
+
+‘Look here!’ she said, striking the scar again, with a relentless hand.
+‘When he grew into the better understanding of what he had done, he saw
+it, and repented of it! I could sing to him, and talk to him, and show
+the ardour that I felt in all he did, and attain with labour to such
+knowledge as most interested him; and I attracted him. When he was
+freshest and truest, he loved me. Yes, he did! Many a time, when you
+were put off with a slight word, he has taken Me to his heart!’
+
+She said it with a taunting pride in the midst of her frenzy--for it
+was little less--yet with an eager remembrance of it, in which the
+smouldering embers of a gentler feeling kindled for the moment.
+
+‘I descended--as I might have known I should, but that he fascinated me
+with his boyish courtship--into a doll, a trifle for the occupation
+of an idle hour, to be dropped, and taken up, and trifled with, as the
+inconstant humour took him. When he grew weary, I grew weary. As his
+fancy died out, I would no more have tried to strengthen any power I
+had, than I would have married him on his being forced to take me for
+his wife. We fell away from one another without a word. Perhaps you saw
+it, and were not sorry. Since then, I have been a mere disfigured piece
+of furniture between you both; having no eyes, no ears, no feelings,
+no remembrances. Moan? Moan for what you made him; not for your love. I
+tell you that the time was, when I loved him better than you ever did!’
+
+She stood with her bright angry eyes confronting the wide stare, and the
+set face; and softened no more, when the moaning was repeated, than if
+the face had been a picture.
+
+‘Miss Dartle,’ said I, ‘if you can be so obdurate as not to feel for
+this afflicted mother--’
+
+‘Who feels for me?’ she sharply retorted. ‘She has sown this. Let her
+moan for the harvest that she reaps today!’
+
+‘And if his faults--’ I began.
+
+‘Faults!’ she cried, bursting into passionate tears. ‘Who dares malign
+him? He had a soul worth millions of the friends to whom he stooped!’
+
+‘No one can have loved him better, no one can hold him in dearer
+remembrance than I,’ I replied. ‘I meant to say, if you have no
+compassion for his mother; or if his faults--you have been bitter on
+them--’
+
+‘It’s false,’ she cried, tearing her black hair; ‘I loved him!’
+
+‘--if his faults cannot,’ I went on, ‘be banished from your remembrance,
+in such an hour; look at that figure, even as one you have never seen
+before, and render it some help!’
+
+All this time, the figure was unchanged, and looked unchangeable.
+Motionless, rigid, staring; moaning in the same dumb way from time to
+time, with the same helpless motion of the head; but giving no other
+sign of life. Miss Dartle suddenly kneeled down before it, and began to
+loosen the dress.
+
+‘A curse upon you!’ she said, looking round at me, with a mingled
+expression of rage and grief. ‘It was in an evil hour that you ever came
+here! A curse upon you! Go!’
+
+After passing out of the room, I hurried back to ring the bell, the
+sooner to alarm the servants. She had then taken the impassive figure
+in her arms, and, still upon her knees, was weeping over it, kissing it,
+calling to it, rocking it to and fro upon her bosom like a child, and
+trying every tender means to rouse the dormant senses. No longer afraid
+of leaving her, I noiselessly turned back again; and alarmed the house
+as I went out.
+
+Later in the day, I returned, and we laid him in his mother’s room. She
+was just the same, they told me; Miss Dartle never left her; doctors
+were in attendance, many things had been tried; but she lay like a
+statue, except for the low sound now and then.
+
+I went through the dreary house, and darkened the windows. The windows
+of the chamber where he lay, I darkened last. I lifted up the leaden
+hand, and held it to my heart; and all the world seemed death and
+silence, broken only by his mother’s moaning.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 57. THE EMIGRANTS
+
+
+One thing more, I had to do, before yielding myself to the shock of
+these emotions. It was, to conceal what had occurred, from those who
+were going away; and to dismiss them on their voyage in happy ignorance.
+In this, no time was to be lost.
+
+I took Mr. Micawber aside that same night, and confided to him the
+task of standing between Mr. Peggotty and intelligence of the late
+catastrophe. He zealously undertook to do so, and to intercept any
+newspaper through which it might, without such precautions, reach him.
+
+‘If it penetrates to him, sir,’ said Mr. Micawber, striking himself on
+the breast, ‘it shall first pass through this body!’
+
+Mr. Micawber, I must observe, in his adaptation of himself to a new
+state of society, had acquired a bold buccaneering air, not absolutely
+lawless, but defensive and prompt. One might have supposed him a child
+of the wilderness, long accustomed to live out of the confines of
+civilization, and about to return to his native wilds.
+
+He had provided himself, among other things, with a complete suit of
+oilskin, and a straw hat with a very low crown, pitched or caulked on
+the outside. In this rough clothing, with a common mariner’s telescope
+under his arm, and a shrewd trick of casting up his eye at the sky
+as looking out for dirty weather, he was far more nautical, after his
+manner, than Mr. Peggotty. His whole family, if I may so express it,
+were cleared for action. I found Mrs. Micawber in the closest and most
+uncompromising of bonnets, made fast under the chin; and in a shawl
+which tied her up (as I had been tied up, when my aunt first received
+me) like a bundle, and was secured behind at the waist, in a strong
+knot. Miss Micawber I found made snug for stormy weather, in the same
+manner; with nothing superfluous about her. Master Micawber was hardly
+visible in a Guernsey shirt, and the shaggiest suit of slops I ever
+saw; and the children were done up, like preserved meats, in impervious
+cases. Both Mr. Micawber and his eldest son wore their sleeves loosely
+turned back at the wrists, as being ready to lend a hand in any
+direction, and to ‘tumble up’, or sing out, ‘Yeo--Heave--Yeo!’ on the
+shortest notice.
+
+Thus Traddles and I found them at nightfall, assembled on the wooden
+steps, at that time known as Hungerford Stairs, watching the departure
+of a boat with some of their property on board. I had told Traddles of
+the terrible event, and it had greatly shocked him; but there could be
+no doubt of the kindness of keeping it a secret, and he had come to help
+me in this last service. It was here that I took Mr. Micawber aside, and
+received his promise.
+
+The Micawber family were lodged in a little, dirty, tumble-down
+public-house, which in those days was close to the stairs, and whose
+protruding wooden rooms overhung the river. The family, as emigrants,
+being objects of some interest in and about Hungerford, attracted so
+many beholders, that we were glad to take refuge in their room. It was
+one of the wooden chambers upstairs, with the tide flowing underneath.
+My aunt and Agnes were there, busily making some little extra comforts,
+in the way of dress, for the children. Peggotty was quietly assisting,
+with the old insensible work-box, yard-measure, and bit of wax-candle
+before her, that had now outlived so much.
+
+It was not easy to answer her inquiries; still less to whisper Mr.
+Peggotty, when Mr. Micawber brought him in, that I had given the letter,
+and all was well. But I did both, and made them happy. If I showed any
+trace of what I felt, my own sorrows were sufficient to account for it.
+
+‘And when does the ship sail, Mr. Micawber?’ asked my aunt.
+
+Mr. Micawber considered it necessary to prepare either my aunt or his
+wife, by degrees, and said, sooner than he had expected yesterday.
+
+‘The boat brought you word, I suppose?’ said my aunt.
+
+‘It did, ma’am,’ he returned.
+
+‘Well?’ said my aunt. ‘And she sails--’
+
+‘Madam,’ he replied, ‘I am informed that we must positively be on board
+before seven tomorrow morning.’
+
+‘Heyday!’ said my aunt, ‘that’s soon. Is it a sea-going fact, Mr.
+Peggotty?’ ‘’Tis so, ma’am. She’ll drop down the river with that theer
+tide. If Mas’r Davy and my sister comes aboard at Gravesen’, arternoon
+o’ next day, they’ll see the last on us.’
+
+‘And that we shall do,’ said I, ‘be sure!’
+
+‘Until then, and until we are at sea,’ observed Mr. Micawber, with a
+glance of intelligence at me, ‘Mr. Peggotty and myself will constantly
+keep a double look-out together, on our goods and chattels. Emma, my
+love,’ said Mr. Micawber, clearing his throat in his magnificent way,
+‘my friend Mr. Thomas Traddles is so obliging as to solicit, in my ear,
+that he should have the privilege of ordering the ingredients necessary
+to the composition of a moderate portion of that Beverage which is
+peculiarly associated, in our minds, with the Roast Beef of Old England.
+I allude to--in short, Punch. Under ordinary circumstances, I should
+scruple to entreat the indulgence of Miss Trotwood and Miss Wickfield,
+but-’
+
+‘I can only say for myself,’ said my aunt, ‘that I will drink all
+happiness and success to you, Mr. Micawber, with the utmost pleasure.’
+
+‘And I too!’ said Agnes, with a smile.
+
+Mr. Micawber immediately descended to the bar, where he appeared to be
+quite at home; and in due time returned with a steaming jug. I could
+not but observe that he had been peeling the lemons with his own
+clasp-knife, which, as became the knife of a practical settler, was
+about a foot long; and which he wiped, not wholly without ostentation,
+on the sleeve of his coat. Mrs. Micawber and the two elder members
+of the family I now found to be provided with similar formidable
+instruments, while every child had its own wooden spoon attached to its
+body by a strong line. In a similar anticipation of life afloat, and in
+the Bush, Mr. Micawber, instead of helping Mrs. Micawber and his eldest
+son and daughter to punch, in wine-glasses, which he might easily have
+done, for there was a shelf-full in the room, served it out to them in a
+series of villainous little tin pots; and I never saw him enjoy anything
+so much as drinking out of his own particular pint pot, and putting it
+in his pocket at the close of the evening.
+
+‘The luxuries of the old country,’ said Mr. Micawber, with an intense
+satisfaction in their renouncement, ‘we abandon. The denizens of the
+forest cannot, of course, expect to participate in the refinements of
+the land of the Free.’
+
+Here, a boy came in to say that Mr. Micawber was wanted downstairs.
+
+‘I have a presentiment,’ said Mrs. Micawber, setting down her tin pot,
+‘that it is a member of my family!’
+
+‘If so, my dear,’ observed Mr. Micawber, with his usual suddenness of
+warmth on that subject, ‘as the member of your family--whoever he, she,
+or it, may be--has kept us waiting for a considerable period, perhaps
+the Member may now wait MY convenience.’
+
+‘Micawber,’ said his wife, in a low tone, ‘at such a time as this--’
+
+‘“It is not meet,”’ said Mr. Micawber, rising, ‘“that every nice offence
+should bear its comment!” Emma, I stand reproved.’
+
+‘The loss, Micawber,’ observed his wife, ‘has been my family’s, not
+yours. If my family are at length sensible of the deprivation to which
+their own conduct has, in the past, exposed them, and now desire to
+extend the hand of fellowship, let it not be repulsed.’
+
+‘My dear,’ he returned, ‘so be it!’
+
+‘If not for their sakes; for mine, Micawber,’ said his wife.
+
+‘Emma,’ he returned, ‘that view of the question is, at such a moment,
+irresistible. I cannot, even now, distinctly pledge myself to fall
+upon your family’s neck; but the member of your family, who is now in
+attendance, shall have no genial warmth frozen by me.’
+
+Mr. Micawber withdrew, and was absent some little time; in the course of
+which Mrs. Micawber was not wholly free from an apprehension that words
+might have arisen between him and the Member. At length the same boy
+reappeared, and presented me with a note written in pencil, and headed,
+in a legal manner, ‘Heep v. Micawber’. From this document, I learned
+that Mr. Micawber being again arrested, ‘Was in a final paroxysm of
+despair; and that he begged me to send him his knife and pint pot, by
+bearer, as they might prove serviceable during the brief remainder of
+his existence, in jail. He also requested, as a last act of friendship,
+that I would see his family to the Parish Workhouse, and forget that
+such a Being ever lived.
+
+Of course I answered this note by going down with the boy to pay the
+money, where I found Mr. Micawber sitting in a corner, looking darkly at
+the Sheriff ‘s Officer who had effected the capture. On his release,
+he embraced me with the utmost fervour; and made an entry of the
+transaction in his pocket-book--being very particular, I recollect,
+about a halfpenny I inadvertently omitted from my statement of the
+total.
+
+This momentous pocket-book was a timely reminder to him of another
+transaction. On our return to the room upstairs (where he accounted for
+his absence by saying that it had been occasioned by circumstances over
+which he had no control), he took out of it a large sheet of paper,
+folded small, and quite covered with long sums, carefully worked. From
+the glimpse I had of them, I should say that I never saw such sums
+out of a school ciphering-book. These, it seemed, were calculations of
+compound interest on what he called ‘the principal amount of forty-one,
+ten, eleven and a half’, for various periods. After a careful
+consideration of these, and an elaborate estimate of his resources,
+he had come to the conclusion to select that sum which represented the
+amount with compound interest to two years, fifteen calendar months, and
+fourteen days, from that date. For this he had drawn a note-of-hand
+with great neatness, which he handed over to Traddles on the spot,
+a discharge of his debt in full (as between man and man), with many
+acknowledgements.
+
+‘I have still a presentiment,’ said Mrs. Micawber, pensively shaking her
+head, ‘that my family will appear on board, before we finally depart.’
+
+Mr. Micawber evidently had his presentiment on the subject too, but he
+put it in his tin pot and swallowed it.
+
+‘If you have any opportunity of sending letters home, on your passage,
+Mrs. Micawber,’ said my aunt, ‘you must let us hear from you, you know.’
+
+‘My dear Miss Trotwood,’ she replied, ‘I shall only be too happy
+to think that anyone expects to hear from us. I shall not fail to
+correspond. Mr. Copperfield, I trust, as an old and familiar friend,
+will not object to receive occasional intelligence, himself, from one
+who knew him when the twins were yet unconscious?’
+
+I said that I should hope to hear, whenever she had an opportunity of
+writing.
+
+‘Please Heaven, there will be many such opportunities,’ said Mr.
+Micawber. ‘The ocean, in these times, is a perfect fleet of ships; and
+we can hardly fail to encounter many, in running over. It is merely
+crossing,’ said Mr. Micawber, trifling with his eye-glass, ‘merely
+crossing. The distance is quite imaginary.’
+
+I think, now, how odd it was, but how wonderfully like Mr. Micawber,
+that, when he went from London to Canterbury, he should have talked as
+if he were going to the farthest limits of the earth; and, when he went
+from England to Australia, as if he were going for a little trip across
+the channel.
+
+‘On the voyage, I shall endeavour,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘occasionally
+to spin them a yarn; and the melody of my son Wilkins will, I trust,
+be acceptable at the galley-fire. When Mrs. Micawber has her
+sea-legs on--an expression in which I hope there is no conventional
+impropriety--she will give them, I dare say, “Little Tafflin”. Porpoises
+and dolphins, I believe, will be frequently observed athwart our
+Bows; and, either on the starboard or the larboard quarter, objects of
+interest will be continually descried. In short,’ said Mr. Micawber,
+with the old genteel air, ‘the probability is, all will be found so
+exciting, alow and aloft, that when the lookout, stationed in the
+main-top, cries Land-oh! we shall be very considerably astonished!’
+
+With that he flourished off the contents of his little tin pot, as if he
+had made the voyage, and had passed a first-class examination before the
+highest naval authorities.
+
+‘What I chiefly hope, my dear Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber,
+‘is, that in some branches of our family we may live again in the old
+country. Do not frown, Micawber! I do not now refer to my own family,
+but to our children’s children. However vigorous the sapling,’ said Mrs.
+Micawber, shaking her head, ‘I cannot forget the parent-tree; and when
+our race attains to eminence and fortune, I own I should wish that
+fortune to flow into the coffers of Britannia.’
+
+‘My dear,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘Britannia must take her chance. I am
+bound to say that she has never done much for me, and that I have no
+particular wish upon the subject.’
+
+‘Micawber,’ returned Mrs. Micawber, ‘there, you are wrong. You are going
+out, Micawber, to this distant clime, to strengthen, not to weaken, the
+connexion between yourself and Albion.’
+
+‘The connexion in question, my love,’ rejoined Mr. Micawber, ‘has not
+laid me, I repeat, under that load of personal obligation, that I am at
+all sensitive as to the formation of another connexion.’
+
+‘Micawber,’ returned Mrs. Micawber. ‘There, I again say, you are wrong.
+You do not know your power, Micawber. It is that which will strengthen,
+even in this step you are about to take, the connexion between yourself
+and Albion.’
+
+Mr. Micawber sat in his elbow-chair, with his eyebrows raised; half
+receiving and half repudiating Mrs. Micawber’s views as they were
+stated, but very sensible of their foresight.
+
+‘My dear Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘I wish Mr. Micawber to
+feel his position. It appears to me highly important that Mr. Micawber
+should, from the hour of his embarkation, feel his position. Your old
+knowledge of me, my dear Mr. Copperfield, will have told you that I have
+not the sanguine disposition of Mr. Micawber. My disposition is, if I
+may say so, eminently practical. I know that this is a long voyage. I
+know that it will involve many privations and inconveniences. I cannot
+shut my eyes to those facts. But I also know what Mr. Micawber is.
+I know the latent power of Mr. Micawber. And therefore I consider it
+vitally important that Mr. Micawber should feel his position.’
+
+‘My love,’ he observed, ‘perhaps you will allow me to remark that it is
+barely possible that I DO feel my position at the present moment.’
+
+‘I think not, Micawber,’ she rejoined. ‘Not fully. My dear Mr.
+Copperfield, Mr. Micawber’s is not a common case. Mr. Micawber is going
+to a distant country expressly in order that he may be fully understood
+and appreciated for the first time. I wish Mr. Micawber to take his
+stand upon that vessel’s prow, and firmly say, “This country I am
+come to conquer! Have you honours? Have you riches? Have you posts of
+profitable pecuniary emolument? Let them be brought forward. They are
+mine!”’
+
+Mr. Micawber, glancing at us all, seemed to think there was a good deal
+in this idea.
+
+‘I wish Mr. Micawber, if I make myself understood,’ said Mrs. Micawber,
+in her argumentative tone, ‘to be the Caesar of his own fortunes. That,
+my dear Mr. Copperfield, appears to me to be his true position. From
+the first moment of this voyage, I wish Mr. Micawber to stand upon
+that vessel’s prow and say, “Enough of delay: enough of disappointment:
+enough of limited means. That was in the old country. This is the new.
+Produce your reparation. Bring it forward!”’
+
+Mr. Micawber folded his arms in a resolute manner, as if he were then
+stationed on the figure-head.
+
+‘And doing that,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘--feeling his position--am I not
+right in saying that Mr. Micawber will strengthen, and not weaken, his
+connexion with Britain? An important public character arising in that
+hemisphere, shall I be told that its influence will not be felt at home?
+Can I be so weak as to imagine that Mr. Micawber, wielding the rod of
+talent and of power in Australia, will be nothing in England? I am but
+a woman; but I should be unworthy of myself and of my papa, if I were
+guilty of such absurd weakness.’
+
+Mrs. Micawber’s conviction that her arguments were unanswerable, gave
+a moral elevation to her tone which I think I had never heard in it
+before.
+
+‘And therefore it is,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘that I the more wish, that,
+at a future period, we may live again on the parent soil. Mr. Micawber
+may be--I cannot disguise from myself that the probability is, Mr.
+Micawber will be--a page of History; and he ought then to be represented
+in the country which gave him birth, and did NOT give him employment!’
+
+‘My love,’ observed Mr. Micawber, ‘it is impossible for me not to be
+touched by your affection. I am always willing to defer to your good
+sense. What will be--will be. Heaven forbid that I should grudge my
+native country any portion of the wealth that may be accumulated by our
+descendants!’
+
+‘That’s well,’ said my aunt, nodding towards Mr. Peggotty, ‘and I drink
+my love to you all, and every blessing and success attend you!’
+
+Mr. Peggotty put down the two children he had been nursing, one on each
+knee, to join Mr. and Mrs. Micawber in drinking to all of us in return;
+and when he and the Micawbers cordially shook hands as comrades, and his
+brown face brightened with a smile, I felt that he would make his way,
+establish a good name, and be beloved, go where he would.
+
+Even the children were instructed, each to dip a wooden spoon into Mr.
+Micawber’s pot, and pledge us in its contents. When this was done, my
+aunt and Agnes rose, and parted from the emigrants. It was a sorrowful
+farewell. They were all crying; the children hung about Agnes to the
+last; and we left poor Mrs. Micawber in a very distressed condition,
+sobbing and weeping by a dim candle, that must have made the room look,
+from the river, like a miserable light-house.
+
+I went down again next morning to see that they were away. They had
+departed, in a boat, as early as five o’clock. It was a wonderful
+instance to me of the gap such partings make, that although my
+association of them with the tumble-down public-house and the wooden
+stairs dated only from last night, both seemed dreary and deserted, now
+that they were gone.
+
+In the afternoon of the next day, my old nurse and I went down to
+Gravesend. We found the ship in the river, surrounded by a crowd
+of boats; a favourable wind blowing; the signal for sailing at her
+mast-head. I hired a boat directly, and we put off to her; and getting
+through the little vortex of confusion of which she was the centre, went
+on board.
+
+Mr. Peggotty was waiting for us on deck. He told me that Mr. Micawber
+had just now been arrested again (and for the last time) at the suit of
+Heep, and that, in compliance with a request I had made to him, he had
+paid the money, which I repaid him. He then took us down between decks;
+and there, any lingering fears I had of his having heard any rumours of
+what had happened, were dispelled by Mr. Micawber’s coming out of the
+gloom, taking his arm with an air of friendship and protection, and
+telling me that they had scarcely been asunder for a moment, since the
+night before last.
+
+It was such a strange scene to me, and so confined and dark, that, at
+first, I could make out hardly anything; but, by degrees, it cleared, as
+my eyes became more accustomed to the gloom, and I seemed to stand in
+a picture by OSTADE. Among the great beams, bulks, and ringbolts of the
+ship, and the emigrant-berths, and chests, and bundles, and barrels, and
+heaps of miscellaneous baggage--‘lighted up, here and there, by dangling
+lanterns; and elsewhere by the yellow daylight straying down a windsail
+or a hatchway--were crowded groups of people, making new friendships,
+taking leave of one another, talking, laughing, crying, eating and
+drinking; some, already settled down into the possession of their few
+feet of space, with their little households arranged, and tiny children
+established on stools, or in dwarf elbow-chairs; others, despairing of
+a resting-place, and wandering disconsolately. From babies who had but a
+week or two of life behind them, to crooked old men and women who seemed
+to have but a week or two of life before them; and from ploughmen bodily
+carrying out soil of England on their boots, to smiths taking away
+samples of its soot and smoke upon their skins; every age and occupation
+appeared to be crammed into the narrow compass of the ‘tween decks.
+
+As my eye glanced round this place, I thought I saw sitting, by an open
+port, with one of the Micawber children near her, a figure like Emily’s;
+it first attracted my attention, by another figure parting from it with
+a kiss; and as it glided calmly away through the disorder, reminding
+me of--Agnes! But in the rapid motion and confusion, and in the
+unsettlement of my own thoughts, I lost it again; and only knew that
+the time was come when all visitors were being warned to leave the ship;
+that my nurse was crying on a chest beside me; and that Mrs. Gummidge,
+assisted by some younger stooping woman in black, was busily arranging
+Mr. Peggotty’s goods.
+
+‘Is there any last wured, Mas’r Davy?’ said he. ‘Is there any one
+forgotten thing afore we parts?’
+
+‘One thing!’ said I. ‘Martha!’
+
+He touched the younger woman I have mentioned on the shoulder, and
+Martha stood before me.
+
+‘Heaven bless you, you good man!’ cried I. ‘You take her with you!’
+
+She answered for him, with a burst of tears. I could speak no more at
+that time, but I wrung his hand; and if ever I have loved and honoured
+any man, I loved and honoured that man in my soul.
+
+The ship was clearing fast of strangers. The greatest trial that I had,
+remained. I told him what the noble spirit that was gone, had given me
+in charge to say at parting. It moved him deeply. But when he charged
+me, in return, with many messages of affection and regret for those deaf
+ears, he moved me more.
+
+The time was come. I embraced him, took my weeping nurse upon my arm,
+and hurried away. On deck, I took leave of poor Mrs. Micawber. She was
+looking distractedly about for her family, even then; and her last words
+to me were, that she never would desert Mr. Micawber.
+
+We went over the side into our boat, and lay at a little distance, to
+see the ship wafted on her course. It was then calm, radiant sunset.
+She lay between us, and the red light; and every taper line and spar was
+visible against the glow. A sight at once so beautiful, so mournful, and
+so hopeful, as the glorious ship, lying, still, on the flushed water,
+with all the life on board her crowded at the bulwarks, and there
+clustering, for a moment, bare-headed and silent, I never saw.
+
+Silent, only for a moment. As the sails rose to the wind, and the ship
+began to move, there broke from all the boats three resounding cheers,
+which those on board took up, and echoed back, and which were echoed
+and re-echoed. My heart burst out when I heard the sound, and beheld the
+waving of the hats and handkerchiefs--and then I saw her!
+
+Then I saw her, at her uncle’s side, and trembling on his shoulder. He
+pointed to us with an eager hand; and she saw us, and waved her last
+good-bye to me. Aye, Emily, beautiful and drooping, cling to him with
+the utmost trust of thy bruised heart; for he has clung to thee, with
+all the might of his great love!
+
+Surrounded by the rosy light, and standing high upon the deck, apart
+together, she clinging to him, and he holding her, they solemnly passed
+away. The night had fallen on the Kentish hills when we were rowed
+ashore--and fallen darkly upon me.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 58. ABSENCE
+
+
+It was a long and gloomy night that gathered on me, haunted by the
+ghosts of many hopes, of many dear remembrances, many errors, many
+unavailing sorrows and regrets.
+
+I went away from England; not knowing, even then, how great the shock
+was, that I had to bear. I left all who were dear to me, and went away;
+and believed that I had borne it, and it was past. As a man upon a
+field of battle will receive a mortal hurt, and scarcely know that he is
+struck, so I, when I was left alone with my undisciplined heart, had no
+conception of the wound with which it had to strive.
+
+The knowledge came upon me, not quickly, but little by little, and grain
+by grain. The desolate feeling with which I went abroad, deepened
+and widened hourly. At first it was a heavy sense of loss and sorrow,
+wherein I could distinguish little else. By imperceptible degrees,
+it became a hopeless consciousness of all that I had lost--love,
+friendship, interest; of all that had been shattered--my first trust,
+my first affection, the whole airy castle of my life; of all that
+remained--a ruined blank and waste, lying wide around me, unbroken, to
+the dark horizon.
+
+If my grief were selfish, I did not know it to be so. I mourned for my
+child-wife, taken from her blooming world, so young. I mourned for him
+who might have won the love and admiration of thousands, as he had won
+mine long ago. I mourned for the broken heart that had found rest in the
+stormy sea; and for the wandering remnants of the simple home, where I
+had heard the night-wind blowing, when I was a child.
+
+From the accumulated sadness into which I fell, I had at length no hope
+of ever issuing again. I roamed from place to place, carrying my burden
+with me everywhere. I felt its whole weight now; and I drooped beneath
+it, and I said in my heart that it could never be lightened.
+
+When this despondency was at its worst, I believed that I should die.
+Sometimes, I thought that I would like to die at home; and actually
+turned back on my road, that I might get there soon. At other times, I
+passed on farther away,--from city to city, seeking I know not what, and
+trying to leave I know not what behind.
+
+It is not in my power to retrace, one by one, all the weary phases of
+distress of mind through which I passed. There are some dreams that can
+only be imperfectly and vaguely described; and when I oblige myself to
+look back on this time of my life, I seem to be recalling such a dream.
+I see myself passing on among the novelties of foreign towns, palaces,
+cathedrals, temples, pictures, castles, tombs, fantastic streets--the
+old abiding places of History and Fancy--as a dreamer might; bearing my
+painful load through all, and hardly conscious of the objects as they
+fade before me. Listlessness to everything, but brooding sorrow, was the
+night that fell on my undisciplined heart. Let me look up from it--as
+at last I did, thank Heaven!--and from its long, sad, wretched dream, to
+dawn.
+
+For many months I travelled with this ever-darkening cloud upon my
+mind. Some blind reasons that I had for not returning home--reasons then
+struggling within me, vainly, for more distinct expression--kept me
+on my pilgrimage. Sometimes, I had proceeded restlessly from place to
+place, stopping nowhere; sometimes, I had lingered long in one spot. I
+had had no purpose, no sustaining soul within me, anywhere.
+
+I was in Switzerland. I had come out of Italy, over one of the great
+passes of the Alps, and had since wandered with a guide among the
+by-ways of the mountains. If those awful solitudes had spoken to my
+heart, I did not know it. I had found sublimity and wonder in the dread
+heights and precipices, in the roaring torrents, and the wastes of ice
+and snow; but as yet, they had taught me nothing else.
+
+I came, one evening before sunset, down into a valley, where I was to
+rest. In the course of my descent to it, by the winding track along
+the mountain-side, from which I saw it shining far below, I think some
+long-unwonted sense of beauty and tranquillity, some softening influence
+awakened by its peace, moved faintly in my breast. I remember pausing
+once, with a kind of sorrow that was not all oppressive, not quite
+despairing. I remember almost hoping that some better change was
+possible within me.
+
+I came into the valley, as the evening sun was shining on the remote
+heights of snow, that closed it in, like eternal clouds. The bases of
+the mountains forming the gorge in which the little village lay, were
+richly green; and high above this gentler vegetation, grew forests of
+dark fir, cleaving the wintry snow-drift, wedge-like, and stemming the
+avalanche. Above these, were range upon range of craggy steeps, grey
+rock, bright ice, and smooth verdure-specks of pasture, all gradually
+blending with the crowning snow. Dotted here and there on the
+mountain’s-side, each tiny dot a home, were lonely wooden cottages, so
+dwarfed by the towering heights that they appeared too small for toys.
+So did even the clustered village in the valley, with its wooden bridge
+across the stream, where the stream tumbled over broken rocks, and
+roared away among the trees. In the quiet air, there was a sound of
+distant singing--shepherd voices; but, as one bright evening cloud
+floated midway along the mountain’s-side, I could almost have believed
+it came from there, and was not earthly music. All at once, in this
+serenity, great Nature spoke to me; and soothed me to lay down my weary
+head upon the grass, and weep as I had not wept yet, since Dora died!
+
+I had found a packet of letters awaiting me but a few minutes before,
+and had strolled out of the village to read them while my supper was
+making ready. Other packets had missed me, and I had received none for a
+long time. Beyond a line or two, to say that I was well, and had arrived
+at such a place, I had not had fortitude or constancy to write a letter
+since I left home.
+
+The packet was in my hand. I opened it, and read the writing of Agnes.
+
+She was happy and useful, was prospering as she had hoped. That was all
+she told me of herself. The rest referred to me.
+
+She gave me no advice; she urged no duty on me; she only told me, in her
+own fervent manner, what her trust in me was. She knew (she said) how
+such a nature as mine would turn affliction to good. She knew how trial
+and emotion would exalt and strengthen it. She was sure that in my every
+purpose I should gain a firmer and a higher tendency, through the grief
+I had undergone. She, who so gloried in my fame, and so looked forward
+to its augmentation, well knew that I would labour on. She knew that in
+me, sorrow could not be weakness, but must be strength. As the endurance
+of my childish days had done its part to make me what I was, so greater
+calamities would nerve me on, to be yet better than I was; and so, as
+they had taught me, would I teach others. She commended me to God, who
+had taken my innocent darling to His rest; and in her sisterly affection
+cherished me always, and was always at my side go where I would; proud
+of what I had done, but infinitely prouder yet of what I was reserved to
+do.
+
+I put the letter in my breast, and thought what had I been an hour ago!
+When I heard the voices die away, and saw the quiet evening cloud grow
+dim, and all the colours in the valley fade, and the golden snow upon
+the mountain-tops become a remote part of the pale night sky, yet felt
+that the night was passing from my mind, and all its shadows clearing,
+there was no name for the love I bore her, dearer to me, henceforward,
+than ever until then.
+
+I read her letter many times. I wrote to her before I slept. I told her
+that I had been in sore need of her help; that without her I was not,
+and I never had been, what she thought me; but that she inspired me to
+be that, and I would try.
+
+I did try. In three months more, a year would have passed since the
+beginning of my sorrow. I determined to make no resolutions until the
+expiration of those three months, but to try. I lived in that valley,
+and its neighbourhood, all the time.
+
+The three months gone, I resolved to remain away from home for some
+time longer; to settle myself for the present in Switzerland, which was
+growing dear to me in the remembrance of that evening; to resume my pen;
+to work.
+
+I resorted humbly whither Agnes had commended me; I sought out Nature,
+never sought in vain; and I admitted to my breast the human interest
+I had lately shrunk from. It was not long, before I had almost as many
+friends in the valley as in Yarmouth: and when I left it, before the
+winter set in, for Geneva, and came back in the spring, their cordial
+greetings had a homely sound to me, although they were not conveyed in
+English words.
+
+I worked early and late, patiently and hard. I wrote a Story, with a
+purpose growing, not remotely, out of my experience, and sent it to
+Traddles, and he arranged for its publication very advantageously for
+me; and the tidings of my growing reputation began to reach me from
+travellers whom I encountered by chance. After some rest and change, I
+fell to work, in my old ardent way, on a new fancy, which took strong
+possession of me. As I advanced in the execution of this task, I felt it
+more and more, and roused my utmost energies to do it well. This was my
+third work of fiction. It was not half written, when, in an interval of
+rest, I thought of returning home.
+
+For a long time, though studying and working patiently, I had accustomed
+myself to robust exercise. My health, severely impaired when I left
+England, was quite restored. I had seen much. I had been in many
+countries, and I hope I had improved my store of knowledge.
+
+I have now recalled all that I think it needful to recall here, of this
+term of absence--with one reservation. I have made it, thus far, with
+no purpose of suppressing any of my thoughts; for, as I have elsewhere
+said, this narrative is my written memory. I have desired to keep the
+most secret current of my mind apart, and to the last. I enter on it
+now. I cannot so completely penetrate the mystery of my own heart, as
+to know when I began to think that I might have set its earliest and
+brightest hopes on Agnes. I cannot say at what stage of my grief
+it first became associated with the reflection, that, in my wayward
+boyhood, I had thrown away the treasure of her love. I believe I may
+have heard some whisper of that distant thought, in the old unhappy loss
+or want of something never to be realized, of which I had been sensible.
+But the thought came into my mind as a new reproach and new regret, when
+I was left so sad and lonely in the world.
+
+If, at that time, I had been much with her, I should, in the weakness of
+my desolation, have betrayed this. It was what I remotely dreaded when I
+was first impelled to stay away from England. I could not have borne
+to lose the smallest portion of her sisterly affection; yet, in that
+betrayal, I should have set a constraint between us hitherto unknown.
+
+I could not forget that the feeling with which she now regarded me had
+grown up in my own free choice and course. That if she had ever loved me
+with another love--and I sometimes thought the time was when she might
+have done so--I had cast it away. It was nothing, now, that I had
+accustomed myself to think of her, when we were both mere children,
+as one who was far removed from my wild fancies. I had bestowed my
+passionate tenderness upon another object; and what I might have done,
+I had not done; and what Agnes was to me, I and her own noble heart had
+made her.
+
+In the beginning of the change that gradually worked in me, when I
+tried to get a better understanding of myself and be a better man, I
+did glance, through some indefinite probation, to a period when I might
+possibly hope to cancel the mistaken past, and to be so blessed as
+to marry her. But, as time wore on, this shadowy prospect faded, and
+departed from me. If she had ever loved me, then, I should hold her
+the more sacred; remembering the confidences I had reposed in her, her
+knowledge of my errant heart, the sacrifice she must have made to be my
+friend and sister, and the victory she had won. If she had never loved
+me, could I believe that she would love me now?
+
+I had always felt my weakness, in comparison with her constancy and
+fortitude; and now I felt it more and more. Whatever I might have been
+to her, or she to me, if I had been more worthy of her long ago, I was
+not now, and she was not. The time was past. I had let it go by, and had
+deservedly lost her.
+
+That I suffered much in these contentions, that they filled me with
+unhappiness and remorse, and yet that I had a sustaining sense that it
+was required of me, in right and honour, to keep away from myself, with
+shame, the thought of turning to the dear girl in the withering of my
+hopes, from whom I had frivolously turned when they were bright and
+fresh--which consideration was at the root of every thought I had
+concerning her--is all equally true. I made no effort to conceal from
+myself, now, that I loved her, that I was devoted to her; but I brought
+the assurance home to myself, that it was now too late, and that our
+long-subsisting relation must be undisturbed.
+
+I had thought, much and often, of my Dora’s shadowing out to me what
+might have happened, in those years that were destined not to try us;
+I had considered how the things that never happen, are often as much
+realities to us, in their effects, as those that are accomplished. The
+very years she spoke of, were realities now, for my correction; and
+would have been, one day, a little later perhaps, though we had parted
+in our earliest folly. I endeavoured to convert what might have been
+between myself and Agnes, into a means of making me more self-denying,
+more resolved, more conscious of myself, and my defects and errors.
+Thus, through the reflection that it might have been, I arrived at the
+conviction that it could never be.
+
+These, with their perplexities and inconsistencies, were the shifting
+quicksands of my mind, from the time of my departure to the time of my
+return home, three years afterwards. Three years had elapsed since the
+sailing of the emigrant ship; when, at that same hour of sunset, and in
+the same place, I stood on the deck of the packet vessel that brought me
+home, looking on the rosy water where I had seen the image of that ship
+reflected.
+
+Three years. Long in the aggregate, though short as they went by. And
+home was very dear to me, and Agnes too--but she was not mine--she was
+never to be mine. She might have been, but that was past!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 59. RETURN
+
+
+I landed in London on a wintry autumn evening. It was dark and raining,
+and I saw more fog and mud in a minute than I had seen in a year. I
+walked from the Custom House to the Monument before I found a coach;
+and although the very house-fronts, looking on the swollen gutters, were
+like old friends to me, I could not but admit that they were very dingy
+friends.
+
+I have often remarked--I suppose everybody has--that one’s going away
+from a familiar place, would seem to be the signal for change in it.
+As I looked out of the coach window, and observed that an old house on
+Fish-street Hill, which had stood untouched by painter, carpenter, or
+bricklayer, for a century, had been pulled down in my absence; and that
+a neighbouring street, of time-honoured insalubrity and inconvenience,
+was being drained and widened; I half expected to find St. Paul’s
+Cathedral looking older.
+
+For some changes in the fortunes of my friends, I was prepared. My aunt
+had long been re-established at Dover, and Traddles had begun to get
+into some little practice at the Bar, in the very first term after my
+departure. He had chambers in Gray’s Inn, now; and had told me, in his
+last letters, that he was not without hopes of being soon united to the
+dearest girl in the world.
+
+They expected me home before Christmas; but had no idea of my returning
+so soon. I had purposely misled them, that I might have the pleasure of
+taking them by surprise. And yet, I was perverse enough to feel a chill
+and disappointment in receiving no welcome, and rattling, alone and
+silent, through the misty streets.
+
+The well-known shops, however, with their cheerful lights, did something
+for me; and when I alighted at the door of the Gray’s Inn Coffee-house,
+I had recovered my spirits. It recalled, at first, that so-different
+time when I had put up at the Golden Cross, and reminded me of the
+changes that had come to pass since then; but that was natural.
+
+‘Do you know where Mr. Traddles lives in the Inn?’ I asked the waiter,
+as I warmed myself by the coffee-room fire.
+
+‘Holborn Court, sir. Number two.’
+
+‘Mr. Traddles has a rising reputation among the lawyers, I believe?’
+said I.
+
+‘Well, sir,’ returned the waiter, ‘probably he has, sir; but I am not
+aware of it myself.’
+
+This waiter, who was middle-aged and spare, looked for help to a waiter
+of more authority--a stout, potential old man, with a double chin,
+in black breeches and stockings, who came out of a place like a
+churchwarden’s pew, at the end of the coffee-room, where he kept company
+with a cash-box, a Directory, a Law-list, and other books and papers.
+
+‘Mr. Traddles,’ said the spare waiter. ‘Number two in the Court.’
+
+The potential waiter waved him away, and turned, gravely, to me.
+
+‘I was inquiring,’ said I, ‘whether Mr. Traddles, at number two in the
+Court, has not a rising reputation among the lawyers?’
+
+‘Never heard his name,’ said the waiter, in a rich husky voice.
+
+I felt quite apologetic for Traddles.
+
+‘He’s a young man, sure?’ said the portentous waiter, fixing his eyes
+severely on me. ‘How long has he been in the Inn?’
+
+‘Not above three years,’ said I.
+
+The waiter, who I supposed had lived in his churchwarden’s pew for forty
+years, could not pursue such an insignificant subject. He asked me what
+I would have for dinner?
+
+I felt I was in England again, and really was quite cast down on
+Traddles’s account. There seemed to be no hope for him. I meekly ordered
+a bit of fish and a steak, and stood before the fire musing on his
+obscurity.
+
+As I followed the chief waiter with my eyes, I could not help thinking
+that the garden in which he had gradually blown to be the flower he
+was, was an arduous place to rise in. It had such a prescriptive,
+stiff-necked, long-established, solemn, elderly air. I glanced about the
+room, which had had its sanded floor sanded, no doubt, in exactly the
+same manner when the chief waiter was a boy--if he ever was a boy,
+which appeared improbable; and at the shining tables, where I saw
+myself reflected, in unruffled depths of old mahogany; and at the lamps,
+without a flaw in their trimming or cleaning; and at the comfortable
+green curtains, with their pure brass rods, snugly enclosing the boxes;
+and at the two large coal fires, brightly burning; and at the rows of
+decanters, burly as if with the consciousness of pipes of expensive old
+port wine below; and both England, and the law, appeared to me to be
+very difficult indeed to be taken by storm. I went up to my bedroom
+to change my wet clothes; and the vast extent of that old wainscoted
+apartment (which was over the archway leading to the Inn, I remember),
+and the sedate immensity of the four-post bedstead, and the indomitable
+gravity of the chests of drawers, all seemed to unite in sternly
+frowning on the fortunes of Traddles, or on any such daring youth. I
+came down again to my dinner; and even the slow comfort of the meal,
+and the orderly silence of the place--which was bare of guests, the Long
+Vacation not yet being over--were eloquent on the audacity of Traddles,
+and his small hopes of a livelihood for twenty years to come.
+
+I had seen nothing like this since I went away, and it quite dashed my
+hopes for my friend. The chief waiter had had enough of me. He came near
+me no more; but devoted himself to an old gentleman in long gaiters, to
+meet whom a pint of special port seemed to come out of the cellar of its
+own accord, for he gave no order. The second waiter informed me, in a
+whisper, that this old gentleman was a retired conveyancer living in the
+Square, and worth a mint of money, which it was expected he would leave
+to his laundress’s daughter; likewise that it was rumoured that he had
+a service of plate in a bureau, all tarnished with lying by, though more
+than one spoon and a fork had never yet been beheld in his chambers
+by mortal vision. By this time, I quite gave Traddles up for lost; and
+settled in my own mind that there was no hope for him.
+
+Being very anxious to see the dear old fellow, nevertheless, I
+dispatched my dinner, in a manner not at all calculated to raise me in
+the opinion of the chief waiter, and hurried out by the back way. Number
+two in the Court was soon reached; and an inscription on the door-post
+informing me that Mr. Traddles occupied a set of chambers on the top
+storey, I ascended the staircase. A crazy old staircase I found it to
+be, feebly lighted on each landing by a club-headed little oil wick,
+dying away in a little dungeon of dirty glass.
+
+In the course of my stumbling upstairs, I fancied I heard a pleasant
+sound of laughter; and not the laughter of an attorney or barrister, or
+attorney’s clerk or barrister’s clerk, but of two or three merry girls.
+Happening, however, as I stopped to listen, to put my foot in a hole
+where the Honourable Society of Gray’s Inn had left a plank deficient,
+I fell down with some noise, and when I recovered my footing all was
+silent.
+
+Groping my way more carefully, for the rest of the journey, my heart
+beat high when I found the outer door, which had Mr. TRADDLES painted on
+it, open. I knocked. A considerable scuffling within ensued, but nothing
+else. I therefore knocked again.
+
+A small sharp-looking lad, half-footboy and half-clerk, who was very
+much out of breath, but who looked at me as if he defied me to prove it
+legally, presented himself.
+
+‘Is Mr. Traddles within?’ I said.
+
+‘Yes, sir, but he’s engaged.’
+
+‘I want to see him.’
+
+After a moment’s survey of me, the sharp-looking lad decided to let me
+in; and opening the door wider for that purpose, admitted me, first,
+into a little closet of a hall, and next into a little sitting-room;
+where I came into the presence of my old friend (also out of breath),
+seated at a table, and bending over papers.
+
+‘Good God!’ cried Traddles, looking up. ‘It’s Copperfield!’ and rushed
+into my arms, where I held him tight.
+
+‘All well, my dear Traddles?’
+
+‘All well, my dear, dear Copperfield, and nothing but good news!’
+
+We cried with pleasure, both of us.
+
+‘My dear fellow,’ said Traddles, rumpling his hair in his excitement,
+which was a most unnecessary operation, ‘my dearest Copperfield, my
+long-lost and most welcome friend, how glad I am to see you! How
+brown you are! How glad I am! Upon my life and honour, I never was so
+rejoiced, my beloved Copperfield, never!’
+
+I was equally at a loss to express my emotions. I was quite unable to
+speak, at first.
+
+‘My dear fellow!’ said Traddles. ‘And grown so famous! My glorious
+Copperfield! Good gracious me, WHEN did you come, WHERE have you come
+from, WHAT have you been doing?’
+
+Never pausing for an answer to anything he said, Traddles, who had
+clapped me into an easy-chair by the fire, all this time impetuously
+stirred the fire with one hand, and pulled at my neck-kerchief with
+the other, under some wild delusion that it was a great-coat. Without
+putting down the poker, he now hugged me again; and I hugged him; and,
+both laughing, and both wiping our eyes, we both sat down, and shook
+hands across the hearth.
+
+‘To think,’ said Traddles, ‘that you should have been so nearly coming
+home as you must have been, my dear old boy, and not at the ceremony!’
+
+‘What ceremony, my dear Traddles?’
+
+‘Good gracious me!’ cried Traddles, opening his eyes in his old way.
+‘Didn’t you get my last letter?’
+
+‘Certainly not, if it referred to any ceremony.’
+
+‘Why, my dear Copperfield,’ said Traddles, sticking his hair upright
+with both hands, and then putting his hands on my knees, ‘I am married!’
+
+‘Married!’ I cried joyfully.
+
+‘Lord bless me, yes!’ said Traddles--‘by the Reverend Horace--to
+Sophy--down in Devonshire. Why, my dear boy, she’s behind the window
+curtain! Look here!’
+
+To my amazement, the dearest girl in the world came at that same
+instant, laughing and blushing, from her place of concealment. And a
+more cheerful, amiable, honest, happy, bright-looking bride, I believe
+(as I could not help saying on the spot) the world never saw. I kissed
+her as an old acquaintance should, and wished them joy with all my might
+of heart.
+
+‘Dear me,’ said Traddles, ‘what a delightful re-union this is! You are
+so extremely brown, my dear Copperfield! God bless my soul, how happy I
+am!’
+
+‘And so am I,’ said I.
+
+‘And I am sure I am!’ said the blushing and laughing Sophy.
+
+‘We are all as happy as possible!’ said Traddles. ‘Even the girls are
+happy. Dear me, I declare I forgot them!’
+
+‘Forgot?’ said I.
+
+‘The girls,’ said Traddles. ‘Sophy’s sisters. They are staying with us.
+They have come to have a peep at London. The fact is, when--was it you
+that tumbled upstairs, Copperfield?’
+
+‘It was,’ said I, laughing.
+
+‘Well then, when you tumbled upstairs,’ said Traddles, ‘I was romping
+with the girls. In point of fact, we were playing at Puss in the Corner.
+But as that wouldn’t do in Westminster Hall, and as it wouldn’t look
+quite professional if they were seen by a client, they decamped. And
+they are now--listening, I have no doubt,’ said Traddles, glancing at
+the door of another room.
+
+‘I am sorry,’ said I, laughing afresh, ‘to have occasioned such a
+dispersion.’
+
+‘Upon my word,’ rejoined Traddles, greatly delighted, ‘if you had seen
+them running away, and running back again, after you had knocked, to
+pick up the combs they had dropped out of their hair, and going on in
+the maddest manner, you wouldn’t have said so. My love, will you fetch
+the girls?’
+
+Sophy tripped away, and we heard her received in the adjoining room with
+a peal of laughter.
+
+‘Really musical, isn’t it, my dear Copperfield?’ said Traddles. ‘It’s
+very agreeable to hear. It quite lights up these old rooms. To an
+unfortunate bachelor of a fellow who has lived alone all his life, you
+know, it’s positively delicious. It’s charming. Poor things, they have
+had a great loss in Sophy--who, I do assure you, Copperfield is, and
+ever was, the dearest girl!--and it gratifies me beyond expression
+to find them in such good spirits. The society of girls is a very
+delightful thing, Copperfield. It’s not professional, but it’s very
+delightful.’
+
+Observing that he slightly faltered, and comprehending that in the
+goodness of his heart he was fearful of giving me some pain by what he
+had said, I expressed my concurrence with a heartiness that evidently
+relieved and pleased him greatly.
+
+‘But then,’ said Traddles, ‘our domestic arrangements are, to say
+the truth, quite unprofessional altogether, my dear Copperfield. Even
+Sophy’s being here, is unprofessional. And we have no other place of
+abode. We have put to sea in a cockboat, but we are quite prepared to
+rough it. And Sophy’s an extraordinary manager! You’ll be surprised how
+those girls are stowed away. I am sure I hardly know how it’s done!’
+
+‘Are many of the young ladies with you?’ I inquired.
+
+‘The eldest, the Beauty is here,’ said Traddles, in a low confidential
+voice, ‘Caroline. And Sarah’s here--the one I mentioned to you as having
+something the matter with her spine, you know. Immensely better! And the
+two youngest that Sophy educated are with us. And Louisa’s here.’
+
+‘Indeed!’ cried I.
+
+‘Yes,’ said Traddles. ‘Now the whole set--I mean the chambers--is only
+three rooms; but Sophy arranges for the girls in the most wonderful way,
+and they sleep as comfortably as possible. Three in that room,’ said
+Traddles, pointing. ‘Two in that.’
+
+I could not help glancing round, in search of the accommodation
+remaining for Mr. and Mrs. Traddles. Traddles understood me.
+
+‘Well!’ said Traddles, ‘we are prepared to rough it, as I said just now,
+and we did improvise a bed last week, upon the floor here. But there’s
+a little room in the roof--a very nice room, when you’re up there--which
+Sophy papered herself, to surprise me; and that’s our room at present.
+It’s a capital little gipsy sort of place. There’s quite a view from
+it.’
+
+‘And you are happily married at last, my dear Traddles!’ said I. ‘How
+rejoiced I am!’
+
+‘Thank you, my dear Copperfield,’ said Traddles, as we shook hands
+once more. ‘Yes, I am as happy as it’s possible to be. There’s your old
+friend, you see,’ said Traddles, nodding triumphantly at the flower-pot
+and stand; ‘and there’s the table with the marble top! All the other
+furniture is plain and serviceable, you perceive. And as to plate, Lord
+bless you, we haven’t so much as a tea-spoon.’
+
+‘All to be earned?’ said I, cheerfully.
+
+‘Exactly so,’ replied Traddles, ‘all to be earned. Of course we have
+something in the shape of tea-spoons, because we stir our tea. But
+they’re Britannia metal.’
+
+‘The silver will be the brighter when it comes,’ said I.
+
+‘The very thing we say!’ cried Traddles. ‘You see, my dear Copperfield,’
+falling again into the low confidential tone, ‘after I had delivered my
+argument in DOE dem. JIPES versus WIGZIELL, which did me great service
+with the profession, I went down into Devonshire, and had some serious
+conversation in private with the Reverend Horace. I dwelt upon the fact
+that Sophy--who I do assure you, Copperfield, is the dearest girl!--’
+
+‘I am certain she is!’ said I.
+
+‘She is, indeed!’ rejoined Traddles. ‘But I am afraid I am wandering
+from the subject. Did I mention the Reverend Horace?’
+
+‘You said that you dwelt upon the fact--’
+
+‘True! Upon the fact that Sophy and I had been engaged for a long
+period, and that Sophy, with the permission of her parents, was more
+than content to take me--in short,’ said Traddles, with his old frank
+smile, ‘on our present Britannia-metal footing. Very well. I then
+proposed to the Reverend Horace--who is a most excellent clergyman,
+Copperfield, and ought to be a Bishop; or at least ought to have enough
+to live upon, without pinching himself--that if I could turn the corner,
+say of two hundred and fifty pounds, in one year; and could see my
+way pretty clearly to that, or something better, next year; and could
+plainly furnish a little place like this, besides; then, and in that
+case, Sophy and I should be united. I took the liberty of representing
+that we had been patient for a good many years; and that the
+circumstance of Sophy’s being extraordinarily useful at home, ought not
+to operate with her affectionate parents, against her establishment in
+life--don’t you see?’
+
+‘Certainly it ought not,’ said I.
+
+‘I am glad you think so, Copperfield,’ rejoined Traddles, ‘because,
+without any imputation on the Reverend Horace, I do think parents, and
+brothers, and so forth, are sometimes rather selfish in such cases.
+Well! I also pointed out, that my most earnest desire was, to be useful
+to the family; and that if I got on in the world, and anything should
+happen to him--I refer to the Reverend Horace--’
+
+‘I understand,’ said I.
+
+‘--Or to Mrs. Crewler--it would be the utmost gratification of my
+wishes, to be a parent to the girls. He replied in a most admirable
+manner, exceedingly flattering to my feelings, and undertook to obtain
+the consent of Mrs. Crewler to this arrangement. They had a dreadful
+time of it with her. It mounted from her legs into her chest, and then
+into her head--’
+
+‘What mounted?’ I asked.
+
+‘Her grief,’ replied Traddles, with a serious look. ‘Her feelings
+generally. As I mentioned on a former occasion, she is a very superior
+woman, but has lost the use of her limbs. Whatever occurs to harass
+her, usually settles in her legs; but on this occasion it mounted to the
+chest, and then to the head, and, in short, pervaded the whole system
+in a most alarming manner. However, they brought her through it by
+unremitting and affectionate attention; and we were married yesterday
+six weeks. You have no idea what a Monster I felt, Copperfield, when I
+saw the whole family crying and fainting away in every direction! Mrs.
+Crewler couldn’t see me before we left--couldn’t forgive me, then, for
+depriving her of her child--but she is a good creature, and has done so
+since. I had a delightful letter from her, only this morning.’
+
+‘And in short, my dear friend,’ said I, ‘you feel as blest as you
+deserve to feel!’
+
+‘Oh! That’s your partiality!’ laughed Traddles. ‘But, indeed, I am in a
+most enviable state. I work hard, and read Law insatiably. I get up at
+five every morning, and don’t mind it at all. I hide the girls in the
+daytime, and make merry with them in the evening. And I assure you I am
+quite sorry that they are going home on Tuesday, which is the day before
+the first day of Michaelmas Term. But here,’ said Traddles, breaking off
+in his confidence, and speaking aloud, ‘ARE the girls! Mr. Copperfield,
+Miss Crewler--Miss Sarah--Miss Louisa--Margaret and Lucy!’
+
+They were a perfect nest of roses; they looked so wholesome and fresh.
+They were all pretty, and Miss Caroline was very handsome; but there was
+a loving, cheerful, fireside quality in Sophy’s bright looks, which was
+better than that, and which assured me that my friend had chosen well.
+We all sat round the fire; while the sharp boy, who I now divined had
+lost his breath in putting the papers out, cleared them away again, and
+produced the tea-things. After that, he retired for the night, shutting
+the outer door upon us with a bang. Mrs. Traddles, with perfect pleasure
+and composure beaming from her household eyes, having made the tea, then
+quietly made the toast as she sat in a corner by the fire.
+
+She had seen Agnes, she told me while she was toasting. ‘Tom’ had taken
+her down into Kent for a wedding trip, and there she had seen my aunt,
+too; and both my aunt and Agnes were well, and they had all talked of
+nothing but me. ‘Tom’ had never had me out of his thoughts, she really
+believed, all the time I had been away. ‘Tom’ was the authority for
+everything. ‘Tom’ was evidently the idol of her life; never to be shaken
+on his pedestal by any commotion; always to be believed in, and done
+homage to with the whole faith of her heart, come what might.
+
+The deference which both she and Traddles showed towards the Beauty,
+pleased me very much. I don’t know that I thought it very reasonable;
+but I thought it very delightful, and essentially a part of their
+character. If Traddles ever for an instant missed the tea-spoons that
+were still to be won, I have no doubt it was when he handed the Beauty
+her tea. If his sweet-tempered wife could have got up any self-assertion
+against anyone, I am satisfied it could only have been because she was
+the Beauty’s sister. A few slight indications of a rather petted and
+capricious manner, which I observed in the Beauty, were manifestly
+considered, by Traddles and his wife, as her birthright and natural
+endowment. If she had been born a Queen Bee, and they labouring Bees,
+they could not have been more satisfied of that.
+
+But their self-forgetfulness charmed me. Their pride in these girls, and
+their submission of themselves to all their whims, was the pleasantest
+little testimony to their own worth I could have desired to see. If
+Traddles were addressed as ‘a darling’, once in the course of that
+evening; and besought to bring something here, or carry something there,
+or take something up, or put something down, or find something, or fetch
+something, he was so addressed, by one or other of his sisters-in-law,
+at least twelve times in an hour. Neither could they do anything without
+Sophy. Somebody’s hair fell down, and nobody but Sophy could put it up.
+Somebody forgot how a particular tune went, and nobody but Sophy could
+hum that tune right. Somebody wanted to recall the name of a place in
+Devonshire, and only Sophy knew it. Something was wanted to be written
+home, and Sophy alone could be trusted to write before breakfast in
+the morning. Somebody broke down in a piece of knitting, and no one but
+Sophy was able to put the defaulter in the right direction. They were
+entire mistresses of the place, and Sophy and Traddles waited on them.
+How many children Sophy could have taken care of in her time, I can’t
+imagine; but she seemed to be famous for knowing every sort of song that
+ever was addressed to a child in the English tongue; and she sang dozens
+to order with the clearest little voice in the world, one after another
+(every sister issuing directions for a different tune, and the Beauty
+generally striking in last), so that I was quite fascinated. The best
+of all was, that, in the midst of their exactions, all the sisters had
+a great tenderness and respect both for Sophy and Traddles. I am sure,
+when I took my leave, and Traddles was coming out to walk with me to the
+coffee-house, I thought I had never seen an obstinate head of hair, or
+any other head of hair, rolling about in such a shower of kisses.
+
+Altogether, it was a scene I could not help dwelling on with pleasure,
+for a long time after I got back and had wished Traddles good night. If
+I had beheld a thousand roses blowing in a top set of chambers, in that
+withered Gray’s Inn, they could not have brightened it half so much.
+The idea of those Devonshire girls, among the dry law-stationers and the
+attorneys’ offices; and of the tea and toast, and children’s songs, in
+that grim atmosphere of pounce and parchment, red-tape, dusty wafers,
+ink-jars, brief and draft paper, law reports, writs, declarations, and
+bills of costs; seemed almost as pleasantly fanciful as if I had
+dreamed that the Sultan’s famous family had been admitted on the roll of
+attorneys, and had brought the talking bird, the singing tree, and the
+golden water into Gray’s Inn Hall. Somehow, I found that I had taken
+leave of Traddles for the night, and come back to the coffee-house, with
+a great change in my despondency about him. I began to think he would
+get on, in spite of all the many orders of chief waiters in England.
+
+Drawing a chair before one of the coffee-room fires to think about him
+at my leisure, I gradually fell from the consideration of his happiness
+to tracing prospects in the live-coals, and to thinking, as they broke
+and changed, of the principal vicissitudes and separations that had
+marked my life. I had not seen a coal fire, since I had left England
+three years ago: though many a wood fire had I watched, as it crumbled
+into hoary ashes, and mingled with the feathery heap upon the hearth,
+which not inaptly figured to me, in my despondency, my own dead hopes.
+
+I could think of the past now, gravely, but not bitterly; and could
+contemplate the future in a brave spirit. Home, in its best sense, was
+for me no more. She in whom I might have inspired a dearer love, I had
+taught to be my sister. She would marry, and would have new claimants on
+her tenderness; and in doing it, would never know the love for her that
+had grown up in my heart. It was right that I should pay the forfeit of
+my headlong passion. What I reaped, I had sown.
+
+I was thinking. And had I truly disciplined my heart to this, and could
+I resolutely bear it, and calmly hold the place in her home which she
+had calmly held in mine,--when I found my eyes resting on a countenance
+that might have arisen out of the fire, in its association with my early
+remembrances.
+
+Little Mr. Chillip the Doctor, to whose good offices I was indebted in
+the very first chapter of this history, sat reading a newspaper in the
+shadow of an opposite corner. He was tolerably stricken in years by this
+time; but, being a mild, meek, calm little man, had worn so easily, that
+I thought he looked at that moment just as he might have looked when he
+sat in our parlour, waiting for me to be born.
+
+Mr. Chillip had left Blunderstone six or seven years ago, and I had
+never seen him since. He sat placidly perusing the newspaper, with his
+little head on one side, and a glass of warm sherry negus at his
+elbow. He was so extremely conciliatory in his manner that he seemed to
+apologize to the very newspaper for taking the liberty of reading it.
+
+I walked up to where he was sitting, and said, ‘How do you do, Mr.
+Chillip?’
+
+He was greatly fluttered by this unexpected address from a stranger, and
+replied, in his slow way, ‘I thank you, sir, you are very good. Thank
+you, sir. I hope YOU are well.’
+
+‘You don’t remember me?’ said I.
+
+‘Well, sir,’ returned Mr. Chillip, smiling very meekly, and shaking his
+head as he surveyed me, ‘I have a kind of an impression that something
+in your countenance is familiar to me, sir; but I couldn’t lay my hand
+upon your name, really.’
+
+‘And yet you knew it, long before I knew it myself,’ I returned.
+
+‘Did I indeed, sir?’ said Mr. Chillip. ‘Is it possible that I had the
+honour, sir, of officiating when--?’
+
+‘Yes,’ said I.
+
+‘Dear me!’ cried Mr. Chillip. ‘But no doubt you are a good deal changed
+since then, sir?’
+
+‘Probably,’ said I.
+
+‘Well, sir,’ observed Mr. Chillip, ‘I hope you’ll excuse me, if I am
+compelled to ask the favour of your name?’
+
+On my telling him my name, he was really moved. He quite shook hands
+with me--which was a violent proceeding for him, his usual course being
+to slide a tepid little fish-slice, an inch or two in advance of his
+hip, and evince the greatest discomposure when anybody grappled with
+it. Even now, he put his hand in his coat-pocket as soon as he could
+disengage it, and seemed relieved when he had got it safe back.
+
+‘Dear me, sir!’ said Mr. Chillip, surveying me with his head on one
+side. ‘And it’s Mr. Copperfield, is it? Well, sir, I think I should have
+known you, if I had taken the liberty of looking more closely at you.
+There’s a strong resemblance between you and your poor father, sir.’
+
+‘I never had the happiness of seeing my father,’ I observed.
+
+‘Very true, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip, in a soothing tone. ‘And very much
+to be deplored it was, on all accounts! We are not ignorant, sir,’ said
+Mr. Chillip, slowly shaking his little head again, ‘down in our part of
+the country, of your fame. There must be great excitement here, sir,’
+said Mr. Chillip, tapping himself on the forehead with his forefinger.
+‘You must find it a trying occupation, sir!’
+
+‘What is your part of the country now?’ I asked, seating myself near
+him.
+
+‘I am established within a few miles of Bury St. Edmund’s, sir,’ said
+Mr. Chillip. ‘Mrs. Chillip, coming into a little property in that
+neighbourhood, under her father’s will, I bought a practice down there,
+in which you will be glad to hear I am doing well. My daughter is
+growing quite a tall lass now, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip, giving his little
+head another little shake. ‘Her mother let down two tucks in her frocks
+only last week. Such is time, you see, sir!’
+
+As the little man put his now empty glass to his lips, when he made this
+reflection, I proposed to him to have it refilled, and I would keep him
+company with another. ‘Well, sir,’ he returned, in his slow way, ‘it’s
+more than I am accustomed to; but I can’t deny myself the pleasure
+of your conversation. It seems but yesterday that I had the honour of
+attending you in the measles. You came through them charmingly, sir!’
+
+I acknowledged this compliment, and ordered the negus, which was soon
+produced. ‘Quite an uncommon dissipation!’ said Mr. Chillip, stirring
+it, ‘but I can’t resist so extraordinary an occasion. You have no
+family, sir?’
+
+I shook my head.
+
+‘I was aware that you sustained a bereavement, sir, some time ago,’ said
+Mr. Chillip. ‘I heard it from your father-in-law’s sister. Very decided
+character there, sir?’
+
+‘Why, yes,’ said I, ‘decided enough. Where did you see her, Mr.
+Chillip?’
+
+‘Are you not aware, sir,’ returned Mr. Chillip, with his placidest
+smile, ‘that your father-in-law is again a neighbour of mine?’
+
+‘No,’ said I.
+
+‘He is indeed, sir!’ said Mr. Chillip. ‘Married a young lady of that
+part, with a very good little property, poor thing.---And this action
+of the brain now, sir? Don’t you find it fatigue you?’ said Mr. Chillip,
+looking at me like an admiring Robin.
+
+I waived that question, and returned to the Murdstones. ‘I was aware of
+his being married again. Do you attend the family?’ I asked.
+
+‘Not regularly. I have been called in,’ he replied. ‘Strong
+phrenological developments of the organ of firmness, in Mr. Murdstone
+and his sister, sir.’
+
+I replied with such an expressive look, that Mr. Chillip was emboldened
+by that, and the negus together, to give his head several short shakes,
+and thoughtfully exclaim, ‘Ah, dear me! We remember old times, Mr.
+Copperfield!’
+
+‘And the brother and sister are pursuing their old course, are they?’
+said I.
+
+‘Well, sir,’ replied Mr. Chillip, ‘a medical man, being so much in
+families, ought to have neither eyes nor ears for anything but his
+profession. Still, I must say, they are very severe, sir: both as to
+this life and the next.’
+
+‘The next will be regulated without much reference to them, I dare say,’
+I returned: ‘what are they doing as to this?’
+
+Mr. Chillip shook his head, stirred his negus, and sipped it.
+
+‘She was a charming woman, sir!’ he observed in a plaintive manner.
+
+‘The present Mrs. Murdstone?’
+
+‘A charming woman indeed, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip; ‘as amiable, I am sure,
+as it was possible to be! Mrs. Chillip’s opinion is, that her spirit
+has been entirely broken since her marriage, and that she is all but
+melancholy mad. And the ladies,’ observed Mr. Chillip, timorously, ‘are
+great observers, sir.’
+
+‘I suppose she was to be subdued and broken to their detestable mould,
+Heaven help her!’ said I. ‘And she has been.’
+
+‘Well, sir, there were violent quarrels at first, I assure you,’ said
+Mr. Chillip; ‘but she is quite a shadow now. Would it be considered
+forward if I was to say to you, sir, in confidence, that since the
+sister came to help, the brother and sister between them have nearly
+reduced her to a state of imbecility?’
+
+I told him I could easily believe it.
+
+‘I have no hesitation in saying,’ said Mr. Chillip, fortifying himself
+with another sip of negus, ‘between you and me, sir, that her mother
+died of it--or that tyranny, gloom, and worry have made Mrs. Murdstone
+nearly imbecile. She was a lively young woman, sir, before marriage, and
+their gloom and austerity destroyed her. They go about with her, now,
+more like her keepers than her husband and sister-in-law. That was
+Mrs. Chillip’s remark to me, only last week. And I assure you, sir, the
+ladies are great observers. Mrs. Chillip herself is a great observer!’
+
+‘Does he gloomily profess to be (I am ashamed to use the word in such
+association) religious still?’ I inquired.
+
+‘You anticipate, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip, his eyelids getting quite
+red with the unwonted stimulus in which he was indulging. ‘One of Mrs.
+Chillip’s most impressive remarks. Mrs. Chillip,’ he proceeded, in the
+calmest and slowest manner, ‘quite electrified me, by pointing out
+that Mr. Murdstone sets up an image of himself, and calls it the Divine
+Nature. You might have knocked me down on the flat of my back, sir,
+with the feather of a pen, I assure you, when Mrs. Chillip said so. The
+ladies are great observers, sir?’
+
+‘Intuitively,’ said I, to his extreme delight.
+
+‘I am very happy to receive such support in my opinion, sir,’ he
+rejoined. ‘It is not often that I venture to give a non-medical opinion,
+I assure you. Mr. Murdstone delivers public addresses sometimes, and it
+is said,--in short, sir, it is said by Mrs. Chillip,--that the darker
+tyrant he has lately been, the more ferocious is his doctrine.’
+
+‘I believe Mrs. Chillip to be perfectly right,’ said I.
+
+‘Mrs. Chillip does go so far as to say,’ pursued the meekest of little
+men, much encouraged, ‘that what such people miscall their religion, is
+a vent for their bad humours and arrogance. And do you know I must say,
+sir,’ he continued, mildly laying his head on one side, ‘that I DON’T
+find authority for Mr. and Miss Murdstone in the New Testament?’
+
+‘I never found it either!’ said I.
+
+‘In the meantime, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip, ‘they are much disliked;
+and as they are very free in consigning everybody who dislikes them
+to perdition, we really have a good deal of perdition going on in
+our neighbourhood! However, as Mrs. Chillip says, sir, they undergo a
+continual punishment; for they are turned inward, to feed upon their own
+hearts, and their own hearts are very bad feeding. Now, sir, about that
+brain of yours, if you’ll excuse my returning to it. Don’t you expose it
+to a good deal of excitement, sir?’
+
+I found it not difficult, in the excitement of Mr. Chillip’s own brain,
+under his potations of negus, to divert his attention from this topic
+to his own affairs, on which, for the next half-hour, he was quite
+loquacious; giving me to understand, among other pieces of information,
+that he was then at the Gray’s Inn Coffee-house to lay his professional
+evidence before a Commission of Lunacy, touching the state of mind of a
+patient who had become deranged from excessive drinking. ‘And I assure
+you, sir,’ he said, ‘I am extremely nervous on such occasions. I could
+not support being what is called Bullied, sir. It would quite unman
+me. Do you know it was some time before I recovered the conduct of that
+alarming lady, on the night of your birth, Mr. Copperfield?’
+
+I told him that I was going down to my aunt, the Dragon of that night,
+early in the morning; and that she was one of the most tender-hearted
+and excellent of women, as he would know full well if he knew her
+better. The mere notion of the possibility of his ever seeing her again,
+appeared to terrify him. He replied with a small pale smile, ‘Is she so,
+indeed, sir? Really?’ and almost immediately called for a candle, and
+went to bed, as if he were not quite safe anywhere else. He did not
+actually stagger under the negus; but I should think his placid little
+pulse must have made two or three more beats in a minute, than it had
+done since the great night of my aunt’s disappointment, when she struck
+at him with her bonnet.
+
+Thoroughly tired, I went to bed too, at midnight; passed the next day on
+the Dover coach; burst safe and sound into my aunt’s old parlour while
+she was at tea (she wore spectacles now); and was received by her, and
+Mr. Dick, and dear old Peggotty, who acted as housekeeper, with open
+arms and tears of joy. My aunt was mightily amused, when we began to
+talk composedly, by my account of my meeting with Mr. Chillip, and of
+his holding her in such dread remembrance; and both she and Peggotty
+had a great deal to say about my poor mother’s second husband, and ‘that
+murdering woman of a sister’,--on whom I think no pain or penalty would
+have induced my aunt to bestow any Christian or Proper Name, or any
+other designation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 60. AGNES
+
+
+My aunt and I, when we were left alone, talked far into the night. How
+the emigrants never wrote home, otherwise than cheerfully and hopefully;
+how Mr. Micawber had actually remitted divers small sums of money, on
+account of those ‘pecuniary liabilities’, in reference to which he had
+been so business-like as between man and man; how Janet, returning into
+my aunt’s service when she came back to Dover, had finally carried out
+her renunciation of mankind by entering into wedlock with a thriving
+tavern-keeper; and how my aunt had finally set her seal on the same
+great principle, by aiding and abetting the bride, and crowning the
+marriage-ceremony with her presence; were among our topics--already
+more or less familiar to me through the letters I had had. Mr. Dick,
+as usual, was not forgotten. My aunt informed me how he incessantly
+occupied himself in copying everything he could lay his hands on, and
+kept King Charles the First at a respectful distance by that semblance
+of employment; how it was one of the main joys and rewards of her life
+that he was free and happy, instead of pining in monotonous restraint;
+and how (as a novel general conclusion) nobody but she could ever fully
+know what he was.
+
+‘And when, Trot,’ said my aunt, patting the back of my hand, as we sat
+in our old way before the fire, ‘when are you going over to Canterbury?’
+
+‘I shall get a horse, and ride over tomorrow morning, aunt, unless you
+will go with me?’
+
+‘No!’ said my aunt, in her short abrupt way. ‘I mean to stay where I
+am.’
+
+Then, I should ride, I said. I could not have come through Canterbury
+today without stopping, if I had been coming to anyone but her.
+
+She was pleased, but answered, ‘Tut, Trot; MY old bones would have
+kept till tomorrow!’ and softly patted my hand again, as I sat looking
+thoughtfully at the fire.
+
+Thoughtfully, for I could not be here once more, and so near Agnes,
+without the revival of those regrets with which I had so long been
+occupied. Softened regrets they might be, teaching me what I had failed
+to learn when my younger life was all before me, but not the less
+regrets. ‘Oh, Trot,’ I seemed to hear my aunt say once more; and I
+understood her better now--‘Blind, blind, blind!’
+
+We both kept silence for some minutes. When I raised my eyes, I found
+that she was steadily observant of me. Perhaps she had followed the
+current of my mind; for it seemed to me an easy one to track now, wilful
+as it had been once.
+
+‘You will find her father a white-haired old man,’ said my aunt, ‘though
+a better man in all other respects--a reclaimed man. Neither will you
+find him measuring all human interests, and joys, and sorrows, with his
+one poor little inch-rule now. Trust me, child, such things must shrink
+very much, before they can be measured off in that way.’
+
+‘Indeed they must,’ said I.
+
+‘You will find her,’ pursued my aunt, ‘as good, as beautiful, as
+earnest, as disinterested, as she has always been. If I knew higher
+praise, Trot, I would bestow it on her.’
+
+There was no higher praise for her; no higher reproach for me. Oh, how
+had I strayed so far away!
+
+‘If she trains the young girls whom she has about her, to be like
+herself,’ said my aunt, earnest even to the filling of her eyes with
+tears, ‘Heaven knows, her life will be well employed! Useful and happy,
+as she said that day! How could she be otherwise than useful and happy!’
+
+‘Has Agnes any--’ I was thinking aloud, rather than speaking.
+
+‘Well? Hey? Any what?’ said my aunt, sharply.
+
+‘Any lover,’ said I.
+
+‘A score,’ cried my aunt, with a kind of indignant pride. ‘She might
+have married twenty times, my dear, since you have been gone!’
+
+‘No doubt,’ said I. ‘No doubt. But has she any lover who is worthy of
+her? Agnes could care for no other.’
+
+My aunt sat musing for a little while, with her chin upon her hand.
+Slowly raising her eyes to mine, she said:
+
+‘I suspect she has an attachment, Trot.’
+
+‘A prosperous one?’ said I.
+
+‘Trot,’ returned my aunt gravely, ‘I can’t say. I have no right to tell
+you even so much. She has never confided it to me, but I suspect it.’
+
+She looked so attentively and anxiously at me (I even saw her tremble),
+that I felt now, more than ever, that she had followed my late thoughts.
+I summoned all the resolutions I had made, in all those many days and
+nights, and all those many conflicts of my heart.
+
+‘If it should be so,’ I began, ‘and I hope it is-’
+
+‘I don’t know that it is,’ said my aunt curtly. ‘You must not be ruled
+by my suspicions. You must keep them secret. They are very slight,
+perhaps. I have no right to speak.’
+
+‘If it should be so,’ I repeated, ‘Agnes will tell me at her own good
+time. A sister to whom I have confided so much, aunt, will not be
+reluctant to confide in me.’
+
+My aunt withdrew her eyes from mine, as slowly as she had turned them
+upon me; and covered them thoughtfully with her hand. By and by she
+put her other hand on my shoulder; and so we both sat, looking into the
+past, without saying another word, until we parted for the night.
+
+I rode away, early in the morning, for the scene of my old school-days.
+I cannot say that I was yet quite happy, in the hope that I was gaining
+a victory over myself; even in the prospect of so soon looking on her
+face again.
+
+The well-remembered ground was soon traversed, and I came into the quiet
+streets, where every stone was a boy’s book to me. I went on foot to the
+old house, and went away with a heart too full to enter. I returned; and
+looking, as I passed, through the low window of the turret-room where
+first Uriah Heep, and afterwards Mr. Micawber, had been wont to sit,
+saw that it was a little parlour now, and that there was no office.
+Otherwise the staid old house was, as to its cleanliness and order,
+still just as it had been when I first saw it. I requested the new maid
+who admitted me, to tell Miss Wickfield that a gentleman who waited on
+her from a friend abroad, was there; and I was shown up the grave old
+staircase (cautioned of the steps I knew so well), into the unchanged
+drawing-room. The books that Agnes and I had read together, were on
+their shelves; and the desk where I had laboured at my lessons, many
+a night, stood yet at the same old corner of the table. All the little
+changes that had crept in when the Heeps were there, were changed again.
+Everything was as it used to be, in the happy time.
+
+I stood in a window, and looked across the ancient street at the
+opposite houses, recalling how I had watched them on wet afternoons,
+when I first came there; and how I had used to speculate about the
+people who appeared at any of the windows, and had followed them with my
+eyes up and down stairs, while women went clicking along the pavement in
+pattens, and the dull rain fell in slanting lines, and poured out of the
+water-spout yonder, and flowed into the road. The feeling with which
+I used to watch the tramps, as they came into the town on those wet
+evenings, at dusk, and limped past, with their bundles drooping over
+their shoulders at the ends of sticks, came freshly back to me; fraught,
+as then, with the smell of damp earth, and wet leaves and briar, and the
+sensation of the very airs that blew upon me in my own toilsome journey.
+
+The opening of the little door in the panelled wall made me start and
+turn. Her beautiful serene eyes met mine as she came towards me. She
+stopped and laid her hand upon her bosom, and I caught her in my arms.
+
+‘Agnes! my dear girl! I have come too suddenly upon you.’
+
+‘No, no! I am so rejoiced to see you, Trotwood!’
+
+‘Dear Agnes, the happiness it is to me, to see you once again!’
+
+I folded her to my heart, and, for a little while, we were both silent.
+Presently we sat down, side by side; and her angel-face was turned upon
+me with the welcome I had dreamed of, waking and sleeping, for whole
+years.
+
+She was so true, she was so beautiful, she was so good,--I owed her so
+much gratitude, she was so dear to me, that I could find no utterance
+for what I felt. I tried to bless her, tried to thank her, tried to tell
+her (as I had often done in letters) what an influence she had upon me;
+but all my efforts were in vain. My love and joy were dumb.
+
+With her own sweet tranquillity, she calmed my agitation; led me back to
+the time of our parting; spoke to me of Emily, whom she had visited,
+in secret, many times; spoke to me tenderly of Dora’s grave. With the
+unerring instinct of her noble heart, she touched the chords of my
+memory so softly and harmoniously, that not one jarred within me; I
+could listen to the sorrowful, distant music, and desire to shrink from
+nothing it awoke. How could I, when, blended with it all, was her dear
+self, the better angel of my life?
+
+‘And you, Agnes,’ I said, by and by. ‘Tell me of yourself. You have
+hardly ever told me of your own life, in all this lapse of time!’
+
+‘What should I tell?’ she answered, with her radiant smile. ‘Papa is
+well. You see us here, quiet in our own home; our anxieties set at rest,
+our home restored to us; and knowing that, dear Trotwood, you know all.’
+
+‘All, Agnes?’ said I.
+
+She looked at me, with some fluttering wonder in her face.
+
+‘Is there nothing else, Sister?’ I said.
+
+Her colour, which had just now faded, returned, and faded again. She
+smiled; with a quiet sadness, I thought; and shook her head.
+
+I had sought to lead her to what my aunt had hinted at; for, sharply
+painful to me as it must be to receive that confidence, I was to
+discipline my heart, and do my duty to her. I saw, however, that she was
+uneasy, and I let it pass.
+
+‘You have much to do, dear Agnes?’
+
+‘With my school?’ said she, looking up again, in all her bright
+composure.
+
+‘Yes. It is laborious, is it not?’
+
+‘The labour is so pleasant,’ she returned, ‘that it is scarcely grateful
+in me to call it by that name.’
+
+‘Nothing good is difficult to you,’ said I.
+
+Her colour came and went once more; and once more, as she bent her head,
+I saw the same sad smile.
+
+‘You will wait and see papa,’ said Agnes, cheerfully, ‘and pass the
+day with us? Perhaps you will sleep in your own room? We always call it
+yours.’
+
+I could not do that, having promised to ride back to my aunt’s at night;
+but I would pass the day there, joyfully.
+
+‘I must be a prisoner for a little while,’ said Agnes, ‘but here are the
+old books, Trotwood, and the old music.’
+
+‘Even the old flowers are here,’ said I, looking round; ‘or the old
+kinds.’
+
+‘I have found a pleasure,’ returned Agnes, smiling, ‘while you have been
+absent, in keeping everything as it used to be when we were children.
+For we were very happy then, I think.’
+
+‘Heaven knows we were!’ said I.
+
+‘And every little thing that has reminded me of my brother,’ said Agnes,
+with her cordial eyes turned cheerfully upon me, ‘has been a welcome
+companion. Even this,’ showing me the basket-trifle, full of keys, still
+hanging at her side, ‘seems to jingle a kind of old tune!’
+
+She smiled again, and went out at the door by which she had come.
+
+It was for me to guard this sisterly affection with religious care. It
+was all that I had left myself, and it was a treasure. If I once shook
+the foundations of the sacred confidence and usage, in virtue of which
+it was given to me, it was lost, and could never be recovered. I set
+this steadily before myself. The better I loved her, the more it behoved
+me never to forget it.
+
+I walked through the streets; and, once more seeing my old adversary the
+butcher--now a constable, with his staff hanging up in the shop--went
+down to look at the place where I had fought him; and there meditated
+on Miss Shepherd and the eldest Miss Larkins, and all the idle loves and
+likings, and dislikings, of that time. Nothing seemed to have survived
+that time but Agnes; and she, ever a star above me, was brighter and
+higher.
+
+When I returned, Mr. Wickfield had come home, from a garden he had, a
+couple of miles or so out of town, where he now employed himself almost
+every day. I found him as my aunt had described him. We sat down to
+dinner, with some half-dozen little girls; and he seemed but the shadow
+of his handsome picture on the wall.
+
+The tranquillity and peace belonging, of old, to that quiet ground in my
+memory, pervaded it again. When dinner was done, Mr. Wickfield taking no
+wine, and I desiring none, we went up-stairs; where Agnes and her little
+charges sang and played, and worked. After tea the children left us; and
+we three sat together, talking of the bygone days.
+
+‘My part in them,’ said Mr. Wickfield, shaking his white head, ‘has much
+matter for regret--for deep regret, and deep contrition, Trotwood, you
+well know. But I would not cancel it, if it were in my power.’
+
+I could readily believe that, looking at the face beside him.
+
+‘I should cancel with it,’ he pursued, ‘such patience and devotion, such
+fidelity, such a child’s love, as I must not forget, no! even to forget
+myself.’
+
+‘I understand you, sir,’ I softly said. ‘I hold it--I have always held
+it--in veneration.’
+
+‘But no one knows, not even you,’ he returned, ‘how much she has done,
+how much she has undergone, how hard she has striven. Dear Agnes!’
+
+She had put her hand entreatingly on his arm, to stop him; and was very,
+very pale.
+
+‘Well, well!’ he said with a sigh, dismissing, as I then saw, some trial
+she had borne, or was yet to bear, in connexion with what my aunt had
+told me. ‘Well! I have never told you, Trotwood, of her mother. Has
+anyone?’
+
+‘Never, sir.’
+
+‘It’s not much--though it was much to suffer. She married me in
+opposition to her father’s wish, and he renounced her. She prayed him
+to forgive her, before my Agnes came into this world. He was a very hard
+man, and her mother had long been dead. He repulsed her. He broke her
+heart.’
+
+Agnes leaned upon his shoulder, and stole her arm about his neck.
+
+‘She had an affectionate and gentle heart,’ he said; ‘and it was broken.
+I knew its tender nature very well. No one could, if I did not. She
+loved me dearly, but was never happy. She was always labouring, in
+secret, under this distress; and being delicate and downcast at the time
+of his last repulse--for it was not the first, by many--pined away
+and died. She left me Agnes, two weeks old; and the grey hair that you
+recollect me with, when you first came.’ He kissed Agnes on her cheek.
+
+‘My love for my dear child was a diseased love, but my mind was all
+unhealthy then. I say no more of that. I am not speaking of myself,
+Trotwood, but of her mother, and of her. If I give you any clue to what
+I am, or to what I have been, you will unravel it, I know. What Agnes
+is, I need not say. I have always read something of her poor mother’s
+story, in her character; and so I tell it you tonight, when we three are
+again together, after such great changes. I have told it all.’
+
+His bowed head, and her angel-face and filial duty, derived a more
+pathetic meaning from it than they had had before. If I had wanted
+anything by which to mark this night of our re-union, I should have
+found it in this.
+
+Agnes rose up from her father’s side, before long; and going softly to
+her piano, played some of the old airs to which we had often listened in
+that place.
+
+‘Have you any intention of going away again?’ Agnes asked me, as I was
+standing by.
+
+‘What does my sister say to that?’
+
+‘I hope not.’
+
+‘Then I have no such intention, Agnes.’
+
+‘I think you ought not, Trotwood, since you ask me,’ she said, mildly.
+‘Your growing reputation and success enlarge your power of doing good;
+and if I could spare my brother,’ with her eyes upon me, ‘perhaps the
+time could not.’
+
+‘What I am, you have made me, Agnes. You should know best.’
+
+‘I made you, Trotwood?’
+
+‘Yes! Agnes, my dear girl!’ I said, bending over her. ‘I tried to tell
+you, when we met today, something that has been in my thoughts since
+Dora died. You remember, when you came down to me in our little
+room--pointing upward, Agnes?’
+
+‘Oh, Trotwood!’ she returned, her eyes filled with tears. ‘So loving, so
+confiding, and so young! Can I ever forget?’
+
+‘As you were then, my sister, I have often thought since, you have ever
+been to me. Ever pointing upward, Agnes; ever leading me to something
+better; ever directing me to higher things!’
+
+She only shook her head; through her tears I saw the same sad quiet
+smile.
+
+‘And I am so grateful to you for it, Agnes, so bound to you, that there
+is no name for the affection of my heart. I want you to know, yet don’t
+know how to tell you, that all my life long I shall look up to you,
+and be guided by you, as I have been through the darkness that is past.
+Whatever betides, whatever new ties you may form, whatever changes may
+come between us, I shall always look to you, and love you, as I do now,
+and have always done. You will always be my solace and resource, as you
+have always been. Until I die, my dearest sister, I shall see you always
+before me, pointing upward!’
+
+She put her hand in mine, and told me she was proud of me, and of what I
+said; although I praised her very far beyond her worth. Then she went
+on softly playing, but without removing her eyes from me. ‘Do you know,
+what I have heard tonight, Agnes,’ said I, strangely seems to be a part
+of the feeling with which I regarded you when I saw you first--with
+which I sat beside you in my rough school-days?’
+
+‘You knew I had no mother,’ she replied with a smile, ‘and felt kindly
+towards me.’
+
+‘More than that, Agnes, I knew, almost as if I had known this story,
+that there was something inexplicably gentle and softened, surrounding
+you; something that might have been sorrowful in someone else (as I can
+now understand it was), but was not so in you.’
+
+She softly played on, looking at me still.
+
+‘Will you laugh at my cherishing such fancies, Agnes?’
+
+‘No!’
+
+‘Or at my saying that I really believe I felt, even then, that you could
+be faithfully affectionate against all discouragement, and never cease
+to be so, until you ceased to live?---Will you laugh at such a dream?’
+
+‘Oh, no! Oh, no!’
+
+For an instant, a distressful shadow crossed her face; but, even in the
+start it gave me, it was gone; and she was playing on, and looking at me
+with her own calm smile.
+
+As I rode back in the lonely night, the wind going by me like a restless
+memory, I thought of this, and feared she was not happy. I was not
+happy; but, thus far, I had faithfully set the seal upon the Past, and,
+thinking of her, pointing upward, thought of her as pointing to that
+sky above me, where, in the mystery to come, I might yet love her with
+a love unknown on earth, and tell her what the strife had been within me
+when I loved her here.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 61. I AM SHOWN TWO INTERESTING PENITENTS
+
+
+For a time--at all events until my book should be completed, which would
+be the work of several months--I took up my abode in my aunt’s house at
+Dover; and there, sitting in the window from which I had looked out at
+the moon upon the sea, when that roof first gave me shelter, I quietly
+pursued my task.
+
+In pursuance of my intention of referring to my own fictions only when
+their course should incidentally connect itself with the progress of my
+story, I do not enter on the aspirations, the delights, anxieties, and
+triumphs of my art. That I truly devoted myself to it with my strongest
+earnestness, and bestowed upon it every energy of my soul, I have
+already said. If the books I have written be of any worth, they will
+supply the rest. I shall otherwise have written to poor purpose, and the
+rest will be of interest to no one.
+
+Occasionally, I went to London; to lose myself in the swarm of life
+there, or to consult with Traddles on some business point. He had
+managed for me, in my absence, with the soundest judgement; and my
+worldly affairs were prospering. As my notoriety began to bring upon
+me an enormous quantity of letters from people of whom I had no
+knowledge--chiefly about nothing, and extremely difficult to answer--I
+agreed with Traddles to have my name painted up on his door. There, the
+devoted postman on that beat delivered bushels of letters for me; and
+there, at intervals, I laboured through them, like a Home Secretary of
+State without the salary.
+
+Among this correspondence, there dropped in, every now and then, an
+obliging proposal from one of the numerous outsiders always lurking
+about the Commons, to practise under cover of my name (if I would take
+the necessary steps remaining to make a proctor of myself), and pay me
+a percentage on the profits. But I declined these offers; being already
+aware that there were plenty of such covert practitioners in existence,
+and considering the Commons quite bad enough, without my doing anything
+to make it worse.
+
+The girls had gone home, when my name burst into bloom on Traddles’s
+door; and the sharp boy looked, all day, as if he had never heard of
+Sophy, shut up in a back room, glancing down from her work into a sooty
+little strip of garden with a pump in it. But there I always found her,
+the same bright housewife; often humming her Devonshire ballads when no
+strange foot was coming up the stairs, and blunting the sharp boy in his
+official closet with melody.
+
+I wondered, at first, why I so often found Sophy writing in a copy-book;
+and why she always shut it up when I appeared, and hurried it into the
+table-drawer. But the secret soon came out. One day, Traddles (who had
+just come home through the drizzling sleet from Court) took a paper out
+of his desk, and asked me what I thought of that handwriting?
+
+‘Oh, DON’T, Tom!’ cried Sophy, who was warming his slippers before the
+fire.
+
+‘My dear,’ returned Tom, in a delighted state, ‘why not? What do you say
+to that writing, Copperfield?’
+
+‘It’s extraordinarily legal and formal,’ said I. ‘I don’t think I ever
+saw such a stiff hand.’
+
+‘Not like a lady’s hand, is it?’ said Traddles.
+
+‘A lady’s!’ I repeated. ‘Bricks and mortar are more like a lady’s hand!’
+
+Traddles broke into a rapturous laugh, and informed me that it was
+Sophy’s writing; that Sophy had vowed and declared he would need a
+copying-clerk soon, and she would be that clerk; that she had acquired
+this hand from a pattern; and that she could throw off--I forget how
+many folios an hour. Sophy was very much confused by my being told all
+this, and said that when ‘Tom’ was made a judge he wouldn’t be so ready
+to proclaim it. Which ‘Tom’ denied; averring that he should always be
+equally proud of it, under all circumstances.
+
+‘What a thoroughly good and charming wife she is, my dear Traddles!’
+said I, when she had gone away, laughing.
+
+‘My dear Copperfield,’ returned Traddles, ‘she is, without any
+exception, the dearest girl! The way she manages this place; her
+punctuality, domestic knowledge, economy, and order; her cheerfulness,
+Copperfield!’
+
+‘Indeed, you have reason to commend her!’ I returned. ‘You are a happy
+fellow. I believe you make yourselves, and each other, two of the
+happiest people in the world.’
+
+‘I am sure we ARE two of the happiest people,’ returned Traddles. ‘I
+admit that, at all events. Bless my soul, when I see her getting up
+by candle-light on these dark mornings, busying herself in the day’s
+arrangements, going out to market before the clerks come into the Inn,
+caring for no weather, devising the most capital little dinners out of
+the plainest materials, making puddings and pies, keeping everything in
+its right place, always so neat and ornamental herself, sitting up
+at night with me if it’s ever so late, sweet-tempered and encouraging
+always, and all for me, I positively sometimes can’t believe it,
+Copperfield!’
+
+He was tender of the very slippers she had been warming, as he put them
+on, and stretched his feet enjoyingly upon the fender.
+
+‘I positively sometimes can’t believe it,’ said Traddles. ‘Then our
+pleasures! Dear me, they are inexpensive, but they are quite wonderful!
+When we are at home here, of an evening, and shut the outer door, and
+draw those curtains--which she made--where could we be more snug? When
+it’s fine, and we go out for a walk in the evening, the streets
+abound in enjoyment for us. We look into the glittering windows of the
+jewellers’ shops; and I show Sophy which of the diamond-eyed serpents,
+coiled up on white satin rising grounds, I would give her if I could
+afford it; and Sophy shows me which of the gold watches that are
+capped and jewelled and engine-turned, and possessed of the horizontal
+lever-escape-movement, and all sorts of things, she would buy for me if
+she could afford it; and we pick out the spoons and forks, fish-slices,
+butter-knives, and sugar-tongs, we should both prefer if we could both
+afford it; and really we go away as if we had got them! Then, when we
+stroll into the squares, and great streets, and see a house to let,
+sometimes we look up at it, and say, how would THAT do, if I was made
+a judge? And we parcel it out--such a room for us, such rooms for the
+girls, and so forth; until we settle to our satisfaction that it
+would do, or it wouldn’t do, as the case may be. Sometimes, we go at
+half-price to the pit of the theatre--the very smell of which is cheap,
+in my opinion, at the money--and there we thoroughly enjoy the play:
+which Sophy believes every word of, and so do I. In walking home,
+perhaps we buy a little bit of something at a cook’s-shop, or a little
+lobster at the fishmongers, and bring it here, and make a splendid
+supper, chatting about what we have seen. Now, you know, Copperfield, if
+I was Lord Chancellor, we couldn’t do this!’
+
+‘You would do something, whatever you were, my dear Traddles,’ thought
+I, ‘that would be pleasant and amiable. And by the way,’ I said aloud,
+‘I suppose you never draw any skeletons now?’
+
+‘Really,’ replied Traddles, laughing, and reddening, ‘I can’t wholly
+deny that I do, my dear Copperfield. For being in one of the back rows
+of the King’s Bench the other day, with a pen in my hand, the fancy came
+into my head to try how I had preserved that accomplishment. And I am
+afraid there’s a skeleton--in a wig--on the ledge of the desk.’
+
+After we had both laughed heartily, Traddles wound up by looking with a
+smile at the fire, and saying, in his forgiving way, ‘Old Creakle!’
+
+‘I have a letter from that old--Rascal here,’ said I. For I never was
+less disposed to forgive him the way he used to batter Traddles, than
+when I saw Traddles so ready to forgive him himself.
+
+‘From Creakle the schoolmaster?’ exclaimed Traddles. ‘No!’
+
+‘Among the persons who are attracted to me in my rising fame and
+fortune,’ said I, looking over my letters, ‘and who discover that they
+were always much attached to me, is the self-same Creakle. He is not
+a schoolmaster now, Traddles. He is retired. He is a Middlesex
+Magistrate.’
+
+I thought Traddles might be surprised to hear it, but he was not so at
+all.
+
+‘How do you suppose he comes to be a Middlesex Magistrate?’ said I.
+
+‘Oh dear me!’ replied Traddles, ‘it would be very difficult to answer
+that question. Perhaps he voted for somebody, or lent money to somebody,
+or bought something of somebody, or otherwise obliged somebody, or
+jobbed for somebody, who knew somebody who got the lieutenant of the
+county to nominate him for the commission.’
+
+‘On the commission he is, at any rate,’ said I. ‘And he writes to me
+here, that he will be glad to show me, in operation, the only true
+system of prison discipline; the only unchallengeable way of making
+sincere and lasting converts and penitents--which, you know, is by
+solitary confinement. What do you say?’
+
+‘To the system?’ inquired Traddles, looking grave.
+
+‘No. To my accepting the offer, and your going with me?’
+
+‘I don’t object,’ said Traddles.
+
+‘Then I’ll write to say so. You remember (to say nothing of our
+treatment) this same Creakle turning his son out of doors, I suppose,
+and the life he used to lead his wife and daughter?’
+
+‘Perfectly,’ said Traddles.
+
+‘Yet, if you’ll read his letter, you’ll find he is the tenderest of
+men to prisoners convicted of the whole calendar of felonies,’ said I;
+‘though I can’t find that his tenderness extends to any other class of
+created beings.’
+
+Traddles shrugged his shoulders, and was not at all surprised. I had not
+expected him to be, and was not surprised myself; or my observation of
+similar practical satires would have been but scanty. We arranged the
+time of our visit, and I wrote accordingly to Mr. Creakle that evening.
+
+On the appointed day--I think it was the next day, but no
+matter--Traddles and I repaired to the prison where Mr. Creakle was
+powerful. It was an immense and solid building, erected at a vast
+expense. I could not help thinking, as we approached the gate, what
+an uproar would have been made in the country, if any deluded man had
+proposed to spend one half the money it had cost, on the erection of an
+industrial school for the young, or a house of refuge for the deserving
+old.
+
+In an office that might have been on the ground-floor of the Tower of
+Babel, it was so massively constructed, we were presented to our old
+schoolmaster; who was one of a group, composed of two or three of the
+busier sort of magistrates, and some visitors they had brought. He
+received me, like a man who had formed my mind in bygone years, and
+had always loved me tenderly. On my introducing Traddles, Mr. Creakle
+expressed, in like manner, but in an inferior degree, that he had always
+been Traddles’s guide, philosopher, and friend. Our venerable instructor
+was a great deal older, and not improved in appearance. His face was
+as fiery as ever; his eyes were as small, and rather deeper set. The
+scanty, wet-looking grey hair, by which I remembered him, was almost
+gone; and the thick veins in his bald head were none the more agreeable
+to look at.
+
+After some conversation among these gentlemen, from which I might have
+supposed that there was nothing in the world to be legitimately taken
+into account but the supreme comfort of prisoners, at any expense, and
+nothing on the wide earth to be done outside prison-doors, we began
+our inspection. It being then just dinner-time, we went, first into the
+great kitchen, where every prisoner’s dinner was in course of being set
+out separately (to be handed to him in his cell), with the regularity
+and precision of clock-work. I said aside, to Traddles, that I wondered
+whether it occurred to anybody, that there was a striking contrast
+between these plentiful repasts of choice quality, and the dinners, not
+to say of paupers, but of soldiers, sailors, labourers, the great bulk
+of the honest, working community; of whom not one man in five hundred
+ever dined half so well. But I learned that the ‘system’ required high
+living; and, in short, to dispose of the system, once for all, I found
+that on that head and on all others, ‘the system’ put an end to all
+doubts, and disposed of all anomalies. Nobody appeared to have the least
+idea that there was any other system, but THE system, to be considered.
+
+As we were going through some of the magnificent passages, I inquired of
+Mr. Creakle and his friends what were supposed to be the main advantages
+of this all-governing and universally over-riding system? I found
+them to be the perfect isolation of prisoners--so that no one man in
+confinement there, knew anything about another; and the reduction of
+prisoners to a wholesome state of mind, leading to sincere contrition
+and repentance.
+
+Now, it struck me, when we began to visit individuals in their cells,
+and to traverse the passages in which those cells were, and to have the
+manner of the going to chapel and so forth, explained to us, that there
+was a strong probability of the prisoners knowing a good deal about each
+other, and of their carrying on a pretty complete system of intercourse.
+This, at the time I write, has been proved, I believe, to be the case;
+but, as it would have been flat blasphemy against the system to have
+hinted such a doubt then, I looked out for the penitence as diligently
+as I could.
+
+And here again, I had great misgivings. I found as prevalent a fashion
+in the form of the penitence, as I had left outside in the forms of the
+coats and waistcoats in the windows of the tailors’ shops. I found a
+vast amount of profession, varying very little in character: varying
+very little (which I thought exceedingly suspicious), even in words. I
+found a great many foxes, disparaging whole vineyards of inaccessible
+grapes; but I found very few foxes whom I would have trusted within
+reach of a bunch. Above all, I found that the most professing men were
+the greatest objects of interest; and that their conceit, their vanity,
+their want of excitement, and their love of deception (which many
+of them possessed to an almost incredible extent, as their histories
+showed), all prompted to these professions, and were all gratified by
+them.
+
+However, I heard so repeatedly, in the course of our goings to and fro,
+of a certain Number Twenty Seven, who was the Favourite, and who really
+appeared to be a Model Prisoner, that I resolved to suspend my judgement
+until I should see Twenty Seven. Twenty Eight, I understood, was also
+a bright particular star; but it was his misfortune to have his glory
+a little dimmed by the extraordinary lustre of Twenty Seven. I heard so
+much of Twenty Seven, of his pious admonitions to everybody around him,
+and of the beautiful letters he constantly wrote to his mother (whom he
+seemed to consider in a very bad way), that I became quite impatient to
+see him.
+
+I had to restrain my impatience for some time, on account of Twenty
+Seven being reserved for a concluding effect. But, at last, we came to
+the door of his cell; and Mr. Creakle, looking through a little hole in
+it, reported to us, in a state of the greatest admiration, that he was
+reading a Hymn Book.
+
+There was such a rush of heads immediately, to see Number Twenty Seven
+reading his Hymn Book, that the little hole was blocked up, six or seven
+heads deep. To remedy this inconvenience, and give us an opportunity of
+conversing with Twenty Seven in all his purity, Mr. Creakle directed the
+door of the cell to be unlocked, and Twenty Seven to be invited out into
+the passage. This was done; and whom should Traddles and I then behold,
+to our amazement, in this converted Number Twenty Seven, but Uriah Heep!
+
+He knew us directly; and said, as he came out--with the old writhe,--
+
+‘How do you do, Mr. Copperfield? How do you do, Mr. Traddles?’
+
+This recognition caused a general admiration in the party. I rather
+thought that everyone was struck by his not being proud, and taking
+notice of us.
+
+‘Well, Twenty Seven,’ said Mr. Creakle, mournfully admiring him. ‘How do
+you find yourself today?’
+
+‘I am very umble, sir!’ replied Uriah Heep.
+
+‘You are always so, Twenty Seven,’ said Mr. Creakle.
+
+Here, another gentleman asked, with extreme anxiety: ‘Are you quite
+comfortable?’
+
+‘Yes, I thank you, sir!’ said Uriah Heep, looking in that direction.
+‘Far more comfortable here, than ever I was outside. I see my follies,
+now, sir. That’s what makes me comfortable.’
+
+Several gentlemen were much affected; and a third questioner, forcing
+himself to the front, inquired with extreme feeling: ‘How do you find
+the beef?’
+
+‘Thank you, sir,’ replied Uriah, glancing in the new direction of this
+voice, ‘it was tougher yesterday than I could wish; but it’s my duty to
+bear. I have committed follies, gentlemen,’ said Uriah, looking round
+with a meek smile, ‘and I ought to bear the consequences without
+repining.’ A murmur, partly of gratification at Twenty Seven’s celestial
+state of mind, and partly of indignation against the Contractor who had
+given him any cause of complaint (a note of which was immediately made
+by Mr. Creakle), having subsided, Twenty Seven stood in the midst of
+us, as if he felt himself the principal object of merit in a highly
+meritorious museum. That we, the neophytes, might have an excess of
+light shining upon us all at once, orders were given to let out Twenty
+Eight.
+
+I had been so much astonished already, that I only felt a kind of
+resigned wonder when Mr. Littimer walked forth, reading a good book!
+
+‘Twenty Eight,’ said a gentleman in spectacles, who had not yet spoken,
+‘you complained last week, my good fellow, of the cocoa. How has it been
+since?’
+
+‘I thank you, sir,’ said Mr. Littimer, ‘it has been better made. If I
+might take the liberty of saying so, sir, I don’t think the milk which
+is boiled with it is quite genuine; but I am aware, sir, that there is
+a great adulteration of milk, in London, and that the article in a pure
+state is difficult to be obtained.’
+
+It appeared to me that the gentleman in spectacles backed his Twenty
+Eight against Mr. Creakle’s Twenty Seven, for each of them took his own
+man in hand.
+
+‘What is your state of mind, Twenty Eight?’ said the questioner in
+spectacles.
+
+‘I thank you, sir,’ returned Mr. Littimer; ‘I see my follies now, sir.
+I am a good deal troubled when I think of the sins of my former
+companions, sir; but I trust they may find forgiveness.’
+
+‘You are quite happy yourself?’ said the questioner, nodding
+encouragement.
+
+‘I am much obliged to you, sir,’ returned Mr. Littimer. ‘Perfectly so.’
+
+‘Is there anything at all on your mind now?’ said the questioner. ‘If
+so, mention it, Twenty Eight.’
+
+‘Sir,’ said Mr. Littimer, without looking up, ‘if my eyes have not
+deceived me, there is a gentleman present who was acquainted with me
+in my former life. It may be profitable to that gentleman to know, sir,
+that I attribute my past follies, entirely to having lived a thoughtless
+life in the service of young men; and to having allowed myself to be led
+by them into weaknesses, which I had not the strength to resist. I hope
+that gentleman will take warning, sir, and will not be offended at my
+freedom. It is for his good. I am conscious of my own past follies. I
+hope he may repent of all the wickedness and sin to which he has been a
+party.’
+
+I observed that several gentlemen were shading their eyes, each with one
+hand, as if they had just come into church.
+
+‘This does you credit, Twenty Eight,’ returned the questioner. ‘I should
+have expected it of you. Is there anything else?’
+
+‘Sir,’ returned Mr. Littimer, slightly lifting up his eyebrows, but not
+his eyes, ‘there was a young woman who fell into dissolute courses, that
+I endeavoured to save, sir, but could not rescue. I beg that gentleman,
+if he has it in his power, to inform that young woman from me that
+I forgive her her bad conduct towards myself, and that I call her to
+repentance--if he will be so good.’
+
+‘I have no doubt, Twenty Eight,’ returned the questioner, ‘that the
+gentleman you refer to feels very strongly--as we all must--what you
+have so properly said. We will not detain you.’
+
+‘I thank you, sir,’ said Mr. Littimer. ‘Gentlemen, I wish you a good
+day, and hoping you and your families will also see your wickedness, and
+amend!’
+
+With this, Number Twenty Eight retired, after a glance between him and
+Uriah; as if they were not altogether unknown to each other, through
+some medium of communication; and a murmur went round the group, as his
+door shut upon him, that he was a most respectable man, and a beautiful
+case.
+
+‘Now, Twenty Seven,’ said Mr. Creakle, entering on a clear stage with
+his man, ‘is there anything that anyone can do for you? If so, mention
+it.’
+
+‘I would umbly ask, sir,’ returned Uriah, with a jerk of his malevolent
+head, ‘for leave to write again to mother.’
+
+‘It shall certainly be granted,’ said Mr. Creakle.
+
+‘Thank you, sir! I am anxious about mother. I am afraid she ain’t safe.’
+
+Somebody incautiously asked, what from? But there was a scandalized
+whisper of ‘Hush!’
+
+‘Immortally safe, sir,’ returned Uriah, writhing in the direction of
+the voice. ‘I should wish mother to be got into my state. I never should
+have been got into my present state if I hadn’t come here. I wish mother
+had come here. It would be better for everybody, if they got took up,
+and was brought here.’
+
+This sentiment gave unbounded satisfaction--greater satisfaction, I
+think, than anything that had passed yet.
+
+‘Before I come here,’ said Uriah, stealing a look at us, as if he would
+have blighted the outer world to which we belonged, if he could, ‘I was
+given to follies; but now I am sensible of my follies. There’s a deal
+of sin outside. There’s a deal of sin in mother. There’s nothing but sin
+everywhere--except here.’
+
+‘You are quite changed?’ said Mr. Creakle.
+
+‘Oh dear, yes, sir!’ cried this hopeful penitent.
+
+‘You wouldn’t relapse, if you were going out?’ asked somebody else.
+
+‘Oh de-ar no, sir!’
+
+‘Well!’ said Mr. Creakle, ‘this is very gratifying. You have addressed
+Mr. Copperfield, Twenty Seven. Do you wish to say anything further to
+him?’
+
+‘You knew me, a long time before I came here and was changed, Mr.
+Copperfield,’ said Uriah, looking at me; and a more villainous look
+I never saw, even on his visage. ‘You knew me when, in spite of my
+follies, I was umble among them that was proud, and meek among them that
+was violent--you was violent to me yourself, Mr. Copperfield. Once, you
+struck me a blow in the face, you know.’
+
+General commiseration. Several indignant glances directed at me.
+
+‘But I forgive you, Mr. Copperfield,’ said Uriah, making his forgiving
+nature the subject of a most impious and awful parallel, which I shall
+not record. ‘I forgive everybody. It would ill become me to bear malice.
+I freely forgive you, and I hope you’ll curb your passions in future. I
+hope Mr. W. will repent, and Miss W., and all of that sinful lot. You’ve
+been visited with affliction, and I hope it may do you good; but you’d
+better have come here. Mr. W. had better have come here, and Miss W.
+too. The best wish I could give you, Mr. Copperfield, and give all of
+you gentlemen, is, that you could be took up and brought here. When I
+think of my past follies, and my present state, I am sure it would be
+best for you. I pity all who ain’t brought here!’
+
+He sneaked back into his cell, amidst a little chorus of approbation;
+and both Traddles and I experienced a great relief when he was locked
+in.
+
+It was a characteristic feature in this repentance, that I was fain to
+ask what these two men had done, to be there at all. That appeared to be
+the last thing about which they had anything to say. I addressed
+myself to one of the two warders, who, I suspected from certain latent
+indications in their faces, knew pretty well what all this stir was
+worth.
+
+‘Do you know,’ said I, as we walked along the passage, ‘what felony was
+Number Twenty Seven’s last “folly”?’
+
+The answer was that it was a Bank case.
+
+‘A fraud on the Bank of England?’ I asked. ‘Yes, sir. Fraud, forgery,
+and conspiracy. He and some others. He set the others on. It was a deep
+plot for a large sum. Sentence, transportation for life. Twenty Seven
+was the knowingest bird of the lot, and had very nearly kept himself
+safe; but not quite. The Bank was just able to put salt upon his
+tail--and only just.’
+
+‘Do you know Twenty Eight’s offence?’
+
+‘Twenty Eight,’ returned my informant, speaking throughout in a low
+tone, and looking over his shoulder as we walked along the passage, to
+guard himself from being overheard, in such an unlawful reference
+to these Immaculates, by Creakle and the rest; ‘Twenty Eight (also
+transportation) got a place, and robbed a young master of a matter of
+two hundred and fifty pounds in money and valuables, the night before
+they were going abroad. I particularly recollect his case, from his
+being took by a dwarf.’
+
+‘A what?’
+
+‘A little woman. I have forgot her name?’
+
+‘Not Mowcher?’
+
+‘That’s it! He had eluded pursuit, and was going to America in a flaxen
+wig, and whiskers, and such a complete disguise as never you see in all
+your born days; when the little woman, being in Southampton, met
+him walking along the street--picked him out with her sharp eye in a
+moment--ran betwixt his legs to upset him--and held on to him like grim
+Death.’
+
+‘Excellent Miss Mowcher!’ cried I.
+
+‘You’d have said so, if you had seen her, standing on a chair in the
+witness-box at the trial, as I did,’ said my friend. ‘He cut her face
+right open, and pounded her in the most brutal manner, when she took
+him; but she never loosed her hold till he was locked up. She held so
+tight to him, in fact, that the officers were obliged to take ‘em
+both together. She gave her evidence in the gamest way, and was highly
+complimented by the Bench, and cheered right home to her lodgings. She
+said in Court that she’d have took him single-handed (on account of what
+she knew concerning him), if he had been Samson. And it’s my belief she
+would!’
+
+It was mine too, and I highly respected Miss Mowcher for it.
+
+We had now seen all there was to see. It would have been in vain to
+represent to such a man as the Worshipful Mr. Creakle, that Twenty Seven
+and Twenty Eight were perfectly consistent and unchanged; that exactly
+what they were then, they had always been; that the hypocritical knaves
+were just the subjects to make that sort of profession in such a place;
+that they knew its market-value at least as well as we did, in the
+immediate service it would do them when they were expatriated; in
+a word, that it was a rotten, hollow, painfully suggestive piece of
+business altogether. We left them to their system and themselves, and
+went home wondering.
+
+‘Perhaps it’s a good thing, Traddles,’ said I, ‘to have an unsound Hobby
+ridden hard; for it’s the sooner ridden to death.’
+
+‘I hope so,’ replied Traddles.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 62. A LIGHT SHINES ON MY WAY
+
+
+The year came round to Christmas-time, and I had been at home above
+two months. I had seen Agnes frequently. However loud the general voice
+might be in giving me encouragement, and however fervent the emotions
+and endeavours to which it roused me, I heard her lightest word of
+praise as I heard nothing else.
+
+At least once a week, and sometimes oftener, I rode over there, and
+passed the evening. I usually rode back at night; for the old unhappy
+sense was always hovering about me now--most sorrowfully when I left
+her--and I was glad to be up and out, rather than wandering over the
+past in weary wakefulness or miserable dreams. I wore away the longest
+part of many wild sad nights, in those rides; reviving, as I went, the
+thoughts that had occupied me in my long absence.
+
+Or, if I were to say rather that I listened to the echoes of those
+thoughts, I should better express the truth. They spoke to me from afar
+off. I had put them at a distance, and accepted my inevitable place.
+When I read to Agnes what I wrote; when I saw her listening face; moved
+her to smiles or tears; and heard her cordial voice so earnest on the
+shadowy events of that imaginative world in which I lived; I thought
+what a fate mine might have been--but only thought so, as I had thought
+after I was married to Dora, what I could have wished my wife to be.
+
+My duty to Agnes, who loved me with a love, which, if I disquieted, I
+wronged most selfishly and poorly, and could never restore; my matured
+assurance that I, who had worked out my own destiny, and won what I
+had impetuously set my heart on, had no right to murmur, and must bear;
+comprised what I felt and what I had learned. But I loved her: and now
+it even became some consolation to me, vaguely to conceive a distant day
+when I might blamelessly avow it; when all this should be over; when I
+could say ‘Agnes, so it was when I came home; and now I am old, and I
+never have loved since!’
+
+She did not once show me any change in herself. What she always had been
+to me, she still was; wholly unaltered.
+
+Between my aunt and me there had been something, in this connexion,
+since the night of my return, which I cannot call a restraint, or an
+avoidance of the subject, so much as an implied understanding that we
+thought of it together, but did not shape our thoughts into words. When,
+according to our old custom, we sat before the fire at night, we often
+fell into this train; as naturally, and as consciously to each other, as
+if we had unreservedly said so. But we preserved an unbroken silence. I
+believed that she had read, or partly read, my thoughts that night; and
+that she fully comprehended why I gave mine no more distinct expression.
+
+This Christmas-time being come, and Agnes having reposed no new
+confidence in me, a doubt that had several times arisen in my
+mind--whether she could have that perception of the true state of
+my breast, which restrained her with the apprehension of giving me
+pain--began to oppress me heavily. If that were so, my sacrifice was
+nothing; my plainest obligation to her unfulfilled; and every poor
+action I had shrunk from, I was hourly doing. I resolved to set this
+right beyond all doubt;--if such a barrier were between us, to break it
+down at once with a determined hand.
+
+It was--what lasting reason have I to remember it!--a cold, harsh,
+winter day. There had been snow, some hours before; and it lay, not
+deep, but hard-frozen on the ground. Out at sea, beyond my window, the
+wind blew ruggedly from the north. I had been thinking of it, sweeping
+over those mountain wastes of snow in Switzerland, then inaccessible to
+any human foot; and had been speculating which was the lonelier, those
+solitary regions, or a deserted ocean.
+
+‘Riding today, Trot?’ said my aunt, putting her head in at the door.
+
+‘Yes,’ said I, ‘I am going over to Canterbury. It’s a good day for a
+ride.’
+
+‘I hope your horse may think so too,’ said my aunt; ‘but at present he
+is holding down his head and his ears, standing before the door there,
+as if he thought his stable preferable.’
+
+My aunt, I may observe, allowed my horse on the forbidden ground, but
+had not at all relented towards the donkeys.
+
+‘He will be fresh enough, presently!’ said I.
+
+‘The ride will do his master good, at all events,’ observed my aunt,
+glancing at the papers on my table. ‘Ah, child, you pass a good many
+hours here! I never thought, when I used to read books, what work it was
+to write them.’
+
+‘It’s work enough to read them, sometimes,’ I returned. ‘As to the
+writing, it has its own charms, aunt.’
+
+‘Ah! I see!’ said my aunt. ‘Ambition, love of approbation, sympathy, and
+much more, I suppose? Well: go along with you!’
+
+‘Do you know anything more,’ said I, standing composedly before her--she
+had patted me on the shoulder, and sat down in my chair--‘of that
+attachment of Agnes?’
+
+She looked up in my face a little while, before replying:
+
+‘I think I do, Trot.’
+
+‘Are you confirmed in your impression?’ I inquired.
+
+‘I think I am, Trot.’
+
+She looked so steadfastly at me: with a kind of doubt, or pity, or
+suspense in her affection: that I summoned the stronger determination to
+show her a perfectly cheerful face.
+
+‘And what is more, Trot--’ said my aunt.
+
+‘Yes!’
+
+‘I think Agnes is going to be married.’
+
+‘God bless her!’ said I, cheerfully.
+
+‘God bless her!’ said my aunt, ‘and her husband too!’
+
+I echoed it, parted from my aunt, and went lightly downstairs, mounted,
+and rode away. There was greater reason than before to do what I had
+resolved to do.
+
+How well I recollect the wintry ride! The frozen particles of ice,
+brushed from the blades of grass by the wind, and borne across my face;
+the hard clatter of the horse’s hoofs, beating a tune upon the ground;
+the stiff-tilled soil; the snowdrift, lightly eddying in the chalk-pit
+as the breeze ruffled it; the smoking team with the waggon of old hay,
+stopping to breathe on the hill-top, and shaking their bells musically;
+the whitened slopes and sweeps of Down-land lying against the dark sky,
+as if they were drawn on a huge slate!
+
+I found Agnes alone. The little girls had gone to their own homes now,
+and she was alone by the fire, reading. She put down her book on seeing
+me come in; and having welcomed me as usual, took her work-basket and
+sat in one of the old-fashioned windows.
+
+I sat beside her on the window-seat, and we talked of what I was doing,
+and when it would be done, and of the progress I had made since my last
+visit. Agnes was very cheerful; and laughingly predicted that I should
+soon become too famous to be talked to, on such subjects.
+
+‘So I make the most of the present time, you see,’ said Agnes, ‘and talk
+to you while I may.’
+
+As I looked at her beautiful face, observant of her work, she raised her
+mild clear eyes, and saw that I was looking at her.
+
+‘You are thoughtful today, Trotwood!’
+
+‘Agnes, shall I tell you what about? I came to tell you.’
+
+She put aside her work, as she was used to do when we were seriously
+discussing anything; and gave me her whole attention.
+
+‘My dear Agnes, do you doubt my being true to you?’
+
+‘No!’ she answered, with a look of astonishment.
+
+‘Do you doubt my being what I always have been to you?’
+
+‘No!’ she answered, as before.
+
+‘Do you remember that I tried to tell you, when I came home, what a debt
+of gratitude I owed you, dearest Agnes, and how fervently I felt towards
+you?’
+
+‘I remember it,’ she said, gently, ‘very well.’
+
+‘You have a secret,’ said I. ‘Let me share it, Agnes.’
+
+She cast down her eyes, and trembled.
+
+‘I could hardly fail to know, even if I had not heard--but from other
+lips than yours, Agnes, which seems strange--that there is someone upon
+whom you have bestowed the treasure of your love. Do not shut me out of
+what concerns your happiness so nearly! If you can trust me, as you say
+you can, and as I know you may, let me be your friend, your brother, in
+this matter, of all others!’
+
+With an appealing, almost a reproachful, glance, she rose from the
+window; and hurrying across the room as if without knowing where, put
+her hands before her face, and burst into such tears as smote me to the
+heart.
+
+And yet they awakened something in me, bringing promise to my heart.
+Without my knowing why, these tears allied themselves with the quietly
+sad smile which was so fixed in my remembrance, and shook me more with
+hope than fear or sorrow.
+
+‘Agnes! Sister! Dearest! What have I done?’
+
+‘Let me go away, Trotwood. I am not well. I am not myself. I will speak
+to you by and by--another time. I will write to you. Don’t speak to me
+now. Don’t! don’t!’
+
+I sought to recollect what she had said, when I had spoken to her on
+that former night, of her affection needing no return. It seemed a very
+world that I must search through in a moment. ‘Agnes, I cannot bear
+to see you so, and think that I have been the cause. My dearest girl,
+dearer to me than anything in life, if you are unhappy, let me share
+your unhappiness. If you are in need of help or counsel, let me try to
+give it to you. If you have indeed a burden on your heart, let me try to
+lighten it. For whom do I live now, Agnes, if it is not for you!’
+
+‘Oh, spare me! I am not myself! Another time!’ was all I could
+distinguish.
+
+Was it a selfish error that was leading me away? Or, having once a clue
+to hope, was there something opening to me that I had not dared to think
+of?
+
+‘I must say more. I cannot let you leave me so! For Heaven’s sake,
+Agnes, let us not mistake each other after all these years, and all
+that has come and gone with them! I must speak plainly. If you have any
+lingering thought that I could envy the happiness you will confer; that
+I could not resign you to a dearer protector, of your own choosing; that
+I could not, from my removed place, be a contented witness of your joy;
+dismiss it, for I don’t deserve it! I have not suffered quite in vain.
+You have not taught me quite in vain. There is no alloy of self in what
+I feel for you.’
+
+She was quiet now. In a little time, she turned her pale face towards
+me, and said in a low voice, broken here and there, but very clear:
+
+‘I owe it to your pure friendship for me, Trotwood--which, indeed, I do
+not doubt--to tell you, you are mistaken. I can do no more. If I have
+sometimes, in the course of years, wanted help and counsel, they have
+come to me. If I have sometimes been unhappy, the feeling has passed
+away. If I have ever had a burden on my heart, it has been lightened
+for me. If I have any secret, it is--no new one; and is--not what you
+suppose. I cannot reveal it, or divide it. It has long been mine, and
+must remain mine.’
+
+‘Agnes! Stay! A moment!’
+
+She was going away, but I detained her. I clasped my arm about her
+waist. ‘In the course of years!’ ‘It is not a new one!’ New thoughts and
+hopes were whirling through my mind, and all the colours of my life were
+changing.
+
+‘Dearest Agnes! Whom I so respect and honour--whom I so devotedly love!
+When I came here today, I thought that nothing could have wrested this
+confession from me. I thought I could have kept it in my bosom all our
+lives, till we were old. But, Agnes, if I have indeed any new-born hope
+that I may ever call you something more than Sister, widely different
+from Sister!--’
+
+Her tears fell fast; but they were not like those she had lately shed,
+and I saw my hope brighten in them.
+
+‘Agnes! Ever my guide, and best support! If you had been more mindful
+of yourself, and less of me, when we grew up here together, I think my
+heedless fancy never would have wandered from you. But you were so
+much better than I, so necessary to me in every boyish hope and
+disappointment, that to have you to confide in, and rely upon in
+everything, became a second nature, supplanting for the time the first
+and greater one of loving you as I do!’
+
+Still weeping, but not sadly--joyfully! And clasped in my arms as she
+had never been, as I had thought she never was to be!
+
+‘When I loved Dora--fondly, Agnes, as you know--’
+
+‘Yes!’ she cried, earnestly. ‘I am glad to know it!’
+
+‘When I loved her--even then, my love would have been incomplete,
+without your sympathy. I had it, and it was perfected. And when I lost
+her, Agnes, what should I have been without you, still!’
+
+Closer in my arms, nearer to my heart, her trembling hand upon my
+shoulder, her sweet eyes shining through her tears, on mine!
+
+‘I went away, dear Agnes, loving you. I stayed away, loving you. I
+returned home, loving you!’
+
+And now, I tried to tell her of the struggle I had had, and the
+conclusion I had come to. I tried to lay my mind before her, truly, and
+entirely. I tried to show her how I had hoped I had come into the better
+knowledge of myself and of her; how I had resigned myself to what that
+better knowledge brought; and how I had come there, even that day, in my
+fidelity to this. If she did so love me (I said) that she could take me
+for her husband, she could do so, on no deserving of mine, except upon
+the truth of my love for her, and the trouble in which it had ripened to
+be what it was; and hence it was that I revealed it. And O, Agnes, even
+out of thy true eyes, in that same time, the spirit of my child-wife
+looked upon me, saying it was well; and winning me, through thee, to
+tenderest recollections of the Blossom that had withered in its bloom!
+
+‘I am so blest, Trotwood--my heart is so overcharged--but there is one
+thing I must say.’
+
+‘Dearest, what?’
+
+She laid her gentle hands upon my shoulders, and looked calmly in my
+face.
+
+‘Do you know, yet, what it is?’
+
+‘I am afraid to speculate on what it is. Tell me, my dear.’
+
+‘I have loved you all my life!’
+
+O, we were happy, we were happy! Our tears were not for the trials (hers
+so much the greater) through which we had come to be thus, but for the
+rapture of being thus, never to be divided more!
+
+We walked, that winter evening, in the fields together; and the blessed
+calm within us seemed to be partaken by the frosty air. The early stars
+began to shine while we were lingering on, and looking up to them, we
+thanked our GOD for having guided us to this tranquillity.
+
+We stood together in the same old-fashioned window at night, when the
+moon was shining; Agnes with her quiet eyes raised up to it; I following
+her glance. Long miles of road then opened out before my mind; and,
+toiling on, I saw a ragged way-worn boy, forsaken and neglected, who
+should come to call even the heart now beating against mine, his own.
+
+
+It was nearly dinner-time next day when we appeared before my aunt. She
+was up in my study, Peggotty said: which it was her pride to keep in
+readiness and order for me. We found her, in her spectacles, sitting by
+the fire.
+
+‘Goodness me!’ said my aunt, peering through the dusk, ‘who’s this
+you’re bringing home?’
+
+‘Agnes,’ said I.
+
+As we had arranged to say nothing at first, my aunt was not a little
+discomfited. She darted a hopeful glance at me, when I said ‘Agnes’; but
+seeing that I looked as usual, she took off her spectacles in despair,
+and rubbed her nose with them.
+
+She greeted Agnes heartily, nevertheless; and we were soon in the
+lighted parlour downstairs, at dinner. My aunt put on her spectacles
+twice or thrice, to take another look at me, but as often took them
+off again, disappointed, and rubbed her nose with them. Much to the
+discomfiture of Mr. Dick, who knew this to be a bad symptom.
+
+‘By the by, aunt,’ said I, after dinner; ‘I have been speaking to Agnes
+about what you told me.’
+
+‘Then, Trot,’ said my aunt, turning scarlet, ‘you did wrong, and broke
+your promise.’
+
+‘You are not angry, aunt, I trust? I am sure you won’t be, when you
+learn that Agnes is not unhappy in any attachment.’
+
+‘Stuff and nonsense!’ said my aunt.
+
+As my aunt appeared to be annoyed, I thought the best way was to cut her
+annoyance short. I took Agnes in my arm to the back of her chair, and we
+both leaned over her. My aunt, with one clap of her hands, and one look
+through her spectacles, immediately went into hysterics, for the first
+and only time in all my knowledge of her.
+
+The hysterics called up Peggotty. The moment my aunt was restored, she
+flew at Peggotty, and calling her a silly old creature, hugged her with
+all her might. After that, she hugged Mr. Dick (who was highly honoured,
+but a good deal surprised); and after that, told them why. Then, we were
+all happy together.
+
+I could not discover whether my aunt, in her last short conversation
+with me, had fallen on a pious fraud, or had really mistaken the state
+of my mind. It was quite enough, she said, that she had told me Agnes
+was going to be married; and that I now knew better than anyone how true
+it was.
+
+
+We were married within a fortnight. Traddles and Sophy, and Doctor and
+Mrs. Strong, were the only guests at our quiet wedding. We left them
+full of joy; and drove away together. Clasped in my embrace, I held the
+source of every worthy aspiration I had ever had; the centre of myself,
+the circle of my life, my own, my wife; my love of whom was founded on a
+rock!
+
+‘Dearest husband!’ said Agnes. ‘Now that I may call you by that name, I
+have one thing more to tell you.’
+
+‘Let me hear it, love.’
+
+‘It grows out of the night when Dora died. She sent you for me.’
+
+‘She did.’
+
+‘She told me that she left me something. Can you think what it was?’
+
+I believed I could. I drew the wife who had so long loved me, closer to
+my side.
+
+‘She told me that she made a last request to me, and left me a last
+charge.’
+
+‘And it was--’
+
+‘That only I would occupy this vacant place.’
+
+And Agnes laid her head upon my breast, and wept; and I wept with her,
+though we were so happy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 63. A VISITOR
+
+What I have purposed to record is nearly finished; but there is yet an
+incident conspicuous in my memory, on which it often rests with delight,
+and without which one thread in the web I have spun would have a
+ravelled end.
+
+I had advanced in fame and fortune, my domestic joy was perfect, I had
+been married ten happy years. Agnes and I were sitting by the fire, in
+our house in London, one night in spring, and three of our children were
+playing in the room, when I was told that a stranger wished to see me.
+
+He had been asked if he came on business, and had answered No; he had
+come for the pleasure of seeing me, and had come a long way. He was an
+old man, my servant said, and looked like a farmer.
+
+As this sounded mysterious to the children, and moreover was like the
+beginning of a favourite story Agnes used to tell them, introductory
+to the arrival of a wicked old Fairy in a cloak who hated everybody, it
+produced some commotion. One of our boys laid his head in his mother’s
+lap to be out of harm’s way, and little Agnes (our eldest child) left
+her doll in a chair to represent her, and thrust out her little heap
+of golden curls from between the window-curtains, to see what happened
+next.
+
+‘Let him come in here!’ said I.
+
+There soon appeared, pausing in the dark doorway as he entered, a hale,
+grey-haired old man. Little Agnes, attracted by his looks, had run to
+bring him in, and I had not yet clearly seen his face, when my wife,
+starting up, cried out to me, in a pleased and agitated voice, that it
+was Mr. Peggotty!
+
+It WAS Mr. Peggotty. An old man now, but in a ruddy, hearty, strong old
+age. When our first emotion was over, and he sat before the fire with
+the children on his knees, and the blaze shining on his face, he looked,
+to me, as vigorous and robust, withal as handsome, an old man, as ever I
+had seen.
+
+‘Mas’r Davy,’ said he. And the old name in the old tone fell so
+naturally on my ear! ‘Mas’r Davy, ‘tis a joyful hour as I see you, once
+more, ‘long with your own trew wife!’
+
+‘A joyful hour indeed, old friend!’ cried I.
+
+‘And these heer pretty ones,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘To look at these heer
+flowers! Why, Mas’r Davy, you was but the heighth of the littlest of
+these, when I first see you! When Em’ly warn’t no bigger, and our poor
+lad were BUT a lad!’
+
+‘Time has changed me more than it has changed you since then,’ said I.
+‘But let these dear rogues go to bed; and as no house in England but
+this must hold you, tell me where to send for your luggage (is the old
+black bag among it, that went so far, I wonder!), and then, over a glass
+of Yarmouth grog, we will have the tidings of ten years!’
+
+‘Are you alone?’ asked Agnes.
+
+‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said, kissing her hand, ‘quite alone.’
+
+We sat him between us, not knowing how to give him welcome enough; and
+as I began to listen to his old familiar voice, I could have fancied he
+was still pursuing his long journey in search of his darling niece.
+
+‘It’s a mort of water,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘fur to come across, and
+on’y stay a matter of fower weeks. But water [‘specially when ‘tis salt)
+comes nat’ral to me; and friends is dear, and I am heer. --Which is
+verse,’ said Mr. Peggotty, surprised to find it out, ‘though I hadn’t
+such intentions.’
+
+‘Are you going back those many thousand miles, so soon?’ asked Agnes.
+
+‘Yes, ma’am,’ he returned. ‘I giv the promise to Em’ly, afore I come
+away. You see, I doen’t grow younger as the years comes round, and if
+I hadn’t sailed as ‘twas, most like I shouldn’t never have done ‘t. And
+it’s allus been on my mind, as I must come and see Mas’r Davy and your
+own sweet blooming self, in your wedded happiness, afore I got to be too
+old.’
+
+He looked at us, as if he could never feast his eyes on us sufficiently.
+Agnes laughingly put back some scattered locks of his grey hair, that he
+might see us better.
+
+‘And now tell us,’ said I, ‘everything relating to your fortunes.’
+
+‘Our fortuns, Mas’r Davy,’ he rejoined, ‘is soon told. We haven’t fared
+nohows, but fared to thrive. We’ve allus thrived. We’ve worked as we
+ought to ‘t, and maybe we lived a leetle hard at first or so, but
+we have allus thrived. What with sheep-farming, and what with
+stock-farming, and what with one thing and what with t’other, we are as
+well to do, as well could be. Theer’s been kiender a blessing fell upon
+us,’ said Mr. Peggotty, reverentially inclining his head, ‘and we’ve
+done nowt but prosper. That is, in the long run. If not yesterday, why
+then today. If not today, why then tomorrow.’
+
+‘And Emily?’ said Agnes and I, both together.
+
+‘Em’ly,’ said he, ‘arter you left her, ma’am--and I never heerd her
+saying of her prayers at night, t’other side the canvas screen, when we
+was settled in the Bush, but what I heerd your name--and arter she and
+me lost sight of Mas’r Davy, that theer shining sundown--was that low,
+at first, that, if she had know’d then what Mas’r Davy kep from us so
+kind and thowtful, ‘tis my opinion she’d have drooped away. But theer
+was some poor folks aboard as had illness among ‘em, and she took care
+of them; and theer was the children in our company, and she took care of
+them; and so she got to be busy, and to be doing good, and that helped
+her.’
+
+‘When did she first hear of it?’ I asked.
+
+‘I kep it from her arter I heerd on ‘t,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘going
+on nigh a year. We was living then in a solitary place, but among the
+beautifullest trees, and with the roses a-covering our Beein to the
+roof. Theer come along one day, when I was out a-working on the land, a
+traveller from our own Norfolk or Suffolk in England (I doen’t rightly
+mind which), and of course we took him in, and giv him to eat and drink,
+and made him welcome. We all do that, all the colony over. He’d got an
+old newspaper with him, and some other account in print of the storm.
+That’s how she know’d it. When I came home at night, I found she know’d
+it.’
+
+He dropped his voice as he said these words, and the gravity I so well
+remembered overspread his face.
+
+‘Did it change her much?’ we asked.
+
+‘Aye, for a good long time,’ he said, shaking his head; ‘if not to this
+present hour. But I think the solitoode done her good. And she had a
+deal to mind in the way of poultry and the like, and minded of it, and
+come through. I wonder,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘if you could see my
+Em’ly now, Mas’r Davy, whether you’d know her!’
+
+‘Is she so altered?’ I inquired.
+
+‘I doen’t know. I see her ev’ry day, and doen’t know; But, odd-times, I
+have thowt so. A slight figure,’ said Mr. Peggotty, looking at the fire,
+‘kiender worn; soft, sorrowful, blue eyes; a delicate face; a pritty
+head, leaning a little down; a quiet voice and way--timid a’most. That’s
+Em’ly!’
+
+We silently observed him as he sat, still looking at the fire.
+
+‘Some thinks,’ he said, ‘as her affection was ill-bestowed; some, as her
+marriage was broken off by death. No one knows how ‘tis. She might have
+married well, a mort of times, “but, uncle,” she says to me, “that’s
+gone for ever.” Cheerful along with me; retired when others is by;
+fond of going any distance fur to teach a child, or fur to tend a sick
+person, or fur to do some kindness tow’rds a young girl’s wedding (and
+she’s done a many, but has never seen one); fondly loving of her uncle;
+patient; liked by young and old; sowt out by all that has any trouble.
+That’s Em’ly!’
+
+He drew his hand across his face, and with a half-suppressed sigh looked
+up from the fire.
+
+‘Is Martha with you yet?’ I asked.
+
+‘Martha,’ he replied, ‘got married, Mas’r Davy, in the second year. A
+young man, a farm-labourer, as come by us on his way to market with his
+mas’r’s drays--a journey of over five hundred mile, theer and back--made
+offers fur to take her fur his wife (wives is very scarce theer), and
+then to set up fur their two selves in the Bush. She spoke to me fur to
+tell him her trew story. I did. They was married, and they live fower
+hundred mile away from any voices but their own and the singing birds.’
+
+‘Mrs. Gummidge?’ I suggested.
+
+It was a pleasant key to touch, for Mr. Peggotty suddenly burst into a
+roar of laughter, and rubbed his hands up and down his legs, as he had
+been accustomed to do when he enjoyed himself in the long-shipwrecked
+boat.
+
+‘Would you believe it!’ he said. ‘Why, someun even made offer fur to
+marry her! If a ship’s cook that was turning settler, Mas’r Davy, didn’t
+make offers fur to marry Missis Gummidge, I’m Gormed--and I can’t say no
+fairer than that!’
+
+I never saw Agnes laugh so. This sudden ecstasy on the part of Mr.
+Peggotty was so delightful to her, that she could not leave off
+laughing; and the more she laughed the more she made me laugh, and the
+greater Mr. Peggotty’s ecstasy became, and the more he rubbed his legs.
+
+‘And what did Mrs. Gummidge say?’ I asked, when I was grave enough.
+
+‘If you’ll believe me,’ returned Mr. Peggotty, ‘Missis Gummidge, ‘stead
+of saying “thank you, I’m much obleeged to you, I ain’t a-going fur
+to change my condition at my time of life,” up’d with a bucket as was
+standing by, and laid it over that theer ship’s cook’s head ‘till he
+sung out fur help, and I went in and reskied of him.’
+
+Mr. Peggotty burst into a great roar of laughter, and Agnes and I both
+kept him company.
+
+‘But I must say this, for the good creetur,’ he resumed, wiping his
+face, when we were quite exhausted; ‘she has been all she said she’d
+be to us, and more. She’s the willingest, the trewest, the
+honestest-helping woman, Mas’r Davy, as ever draw’d the breath of life.
+I have never know’d her to be lone and lorn, for a single minute,
+not even when the colony was all afore us, and we was new to it. And
+thinking of the old ‘un is a thing she never done, I do assure you,
+since she left England!’
+
+‘Now, last, not least, Mr. Micawber,’ said I. ‘He has paid off every
+obligation he incurred here--even to Traddles’s bill, you remember my
+dear Agnes--and therefore we may take it for granted that he is doing
+well. But what is the latest news of him?’
+
+Mr. Peggotty, with a smile, put his hand in his breast-pocket, and
+produced a flat-folded, paper parcel, from which he took out, with much
+care, a little odd-looking newspaper.
+
+‘You are to understan’, Mas’r Davy,’ said he, ‘as we have left the
+Bush now, being so well to do; and have gone right away round to Port
+Middlebay Harbour, wheer theer’s what we call a town.’
+
+‘Mr. Micawber was in the Bush near you?’ said I.
+
+‘Bless you, yes,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘and turned to with a will. I never
+wish to meet a better gen’l’man for turning to with a will. I’ve seen
+that theer bald head of his a perspiring in the sun, Mas’r Davy, till I
+a’most thowt it would have melted away. And now he’s a Magistrate.’
+
+‘A Magistrate, eh?’ said I.
+
+Mr. Peggotty pointed to a certain paragraph in the newspaper, where I
+read aloud as follows, from the Port Middlebay Times:
+
+
+‘The public dinner to our distinguished fellow-colonist and townsman,
+WILKINS MICAWBER, ESQUIRE, Port Middlebay District Magistrate, came
+off yesterday in the large room of the Hotel, which was crowded to
+suffocation. It is estimated that not fewer than forty-seven persons
+must have been accommodated with dinner at one time, exclusive of the
+company in the passage and on the stairs. The beauty, fashion, and
+exclusiveness of Port Middlebay, flocked to do honour to one so
+deservedly esteemed, so highly talented, and so widely popular. Doctor
+Mell (of Colonial Salem-House Grammar School, Port Middlebay) presided,
+and on his right sat the distinguished guest. After the removal of the
+cloth, and the singing of Non Nobis (beautifully executed, and in which
+we were at no loss to distinguish the bell-like notes of that gifted
+amateur, WILKINS MICAWBER, ESQUIRE, JUNIOR), the usual loyal and
+patriotic toasts were severally given and rapturously received. Doctor
+Mell, in a speech replete with feeling, then proposed “Our distinguished
+Guest, the ornament of our town. May he never leave us but to better
+himself, and may his success among us be such as to render his bettering
+himself impossible!” The cheering with which the toast was received
+defies description. Again and again it rose and fell, like the waves
+of ocean. At length all was hushed, and WILKINS MICAWBER, ESQUIRE,
+presented himself to return thanks. Far be it from us, in the present
+comparatively imperfect state of the resources of our establishment,
+to endeavour to follow our distinguished townsman through the
+smoothly-flowing periods of his polished and highly-ornate address!
+Suffice it to observe, that it was a masterpiece of eloquence; and that
+those passages in which he more particularly traced his own successful
+career to its source, and warned the younger portion of his auditory
+from the shoals of ever incurring pecuniary liabilities which they were
+unable to liquidate, brought a tear into the manliest eye present. The
+remaining toasts were DOCTOR MELL; Mrs. MICAWBER (who gracefully bowed
+her acknowledgements from the side-door, where a galaxy of beauty was
+elevated on chairs, at once to witness and adorn the gratifying scene),
+Mrs. RIDGER BEGS (late Miss Micawber); Mrs. MELL; WILKINS MICAWBER,
+ESQUIRE, JUNIOR (who convulsed the assembly by humorously remarking that
+he found himself unable to return thanks in a speech, but would do so,
+with their permission, in a song); Mrs. MICAWBER’S FAMILY (well known,
+it is needless to remark, in the mother-country), &c. &c. &c. At the
+conclusion of the proceedings the tables were cleared as if by art-magic
+for dancing. Among the votaries of TERPSICHORE, who disported themselves
+until Sol gave warning for departure, Wilkins Micawber, Esquire, Junior,
+and the lovely and accomplished Miss Helena, fourth daughter of Doctor
+Mell, were particularly remarkable.’
+
+
+I was looking back to the name of Doctor Mell, pleased to have
+discovered, in these happier circumstances, Mr. Mell, formerly poor
+pinched usher to my Middlesex magistrate, when Mr. Peggotty pointing
+to another part of the paper, my eyes rested on my own name, and I read
+thus:
+
+
+‘TO DAVID COPPERFIELD, ESQUIRE,
+
+‘THE EMINENT AUTHOR.
+
+‘My Dear Sir,
+
+‘Years have elapsed, since I had an opportunity of ocularly perusing the
+lineaments, now familiar to the imaginations of a considerable portion
+of the civilized world.
+
+‘But, my dear Sir, though estranged (by the force of circumstances over
+which I have had no control) from the personal society of the friend and
+companion of my youth, I have not been unmindful of his soaring flight.
+Nor have I been debarred,
+
+     Though seas between us braid ha’ roared,
+
+(BURNS) from participating in the intellectual feasts he has spread
+before us.
+
+‘I cannot, therefore, allow of the departure from this place of an
+individual whom we mutually respect and esteem, without, my dear Sir,
+taking this public opportunity of thanking you, on my own behalf, and,
+I may undertake to add, on that of the whole of the Inhabitants of Port
+Middlebay, for the gratification of which you are the ministering agent.
+
+‘Go on, my dear Sir! You are not unknown here, you are not
+unappreciated. Though “remote”, we are neither “unfriended”,
+“melancholy”, nor (I may add) “slow”. Go on, my dear Sir, in your Eagle
+course! The inhabitants of Port Middlebay may at least aspire to watch
+it, with delight, with entertainment, with instruction!
+
+‘Among the eyes elevated towards you from this portion of the globe,
+will ever be found, while it has light and life,
+
+               ‘The
+                    ‘Eye
+                         ‘Appertaining to
+
+                              ‘WILKINS MICAWBER,
+                                   ‘Magistrate.’
+
+
+I found, on glancing at the remaining contents of the newspaper, that
+Mr. Micawber was a diligent and esteemed correspondent of that journal.
+There was another letter from him in the same paper, touching a bridge;
+there was an advertisement of a collection of similar letters by him, to
+be shortly republished, in a neat volume, ‘with considerable additions’;
+and, unless I am very much mistaken, the Leading Article was his also.
+
+We talked much of Mr. Micawber, on many other evenings while Mr.
+Peggotty remained with us. He lived with us during the whole term of his
+stay,--which, I think, was something less than a month,--and his sister
+and my aunt came to London to see him. Agnes and I parted from him
+aboard-ship, when he sailed; and we shall never part from him more, on
+earth.
+
+But before he left, he went with me to Yarmouth, to see a little tablet
+I had put up in the churchyard to the memory of Ham. While I was copying
+the plain inscription for him at his request, I saw him stoop, and
+gather a tuft of grass from the grave and a little earth.
+
+‘For Em’ly,’ he said, as he put it in his breast. ‘I promised, Mas’r
+Davy.’
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 64. A LAST RETROSPECT
+
+
+And now my written story ends. I look back, once more--for the last
+time--before I close these leaves.
+
+I see myself, with Agnes at my side, journeying along the road of life.
+I see our children and our friends around us; and I hear the roar of
+many voices, not indifferent to me as I travel on.
+
+What faces are the most distinct to me in the fleeting crowd? Lo, these;
+all turning to me as I ask my thoughts the question!
+
+Here is my aunt, in stronger spectacles, an old woman of four-score
+years and more, but upright yet, and a steady walker of six miles at a
+stretch in winter weather.
+
+Always with her, here comes Peggotty, my good old nurse, likewise in
+spectacles, accustomed to do needle-work at night very close to the
+lamp, but never sitting down to it without a bit of wax candle, a
+yard-measure in a little house, and a work-box with a picture of St.
+Paul’s upon the lid.
+
+The cheeks and arms of Peggotty, so hard and red in my childish days,
+when I wondered why the birds didn’t peck her in preference to apples,
+are shrivelled now; and her eyes, that used to darken their whole
+neighbourhood in her face, are fainter (though they glitter still);
+but her rough forefinger, which I once associated with a pocket
+nutmeg-grater, is just the same, and when I see my least child catching
+at it as it totters from my aunt to her, I think of our little parlour
+at home, when I could scarcely walk. My aunt’s old disappointment is set
+right, now. She is godmother to a real living Betsey Trotwood; and Dora
+(the next in order) says she spoils her.
+
+There is something bulky in Peggotty’s pocket. It is nothing smaller
+than the Crocodile Book, which is in rather a dilapidated condition by
+this time, with divers of the leaves torn and stitched across, but which
+Peggotty exhibits to the children as a precious relic. I find it very
+curious to see my own infant face, looking up at me from the Crocodile
+stories; and to be reminded by it of my old acquaintance Brooks of
+Sheffield.
+
+Among my boys, this summer holiday time, I see an old man making giant
+kites, and gazing at them in the air, with a delight for which there
+are no words. He greets me rapturously, and whispers, with many nods
+and winks, ‘Trotwood, you will be glad to hear that I shall finish the
+Memorial when I have nothing else to do, and that your aunt’s the most
+extraordinary woman in the world, sir!’
+
+Who is this bent lady, supporting herself by a stick, and showing me
+a countenance in which there are some traces of old pride and beauty,
+feebly contending with a querulous, imbecile, fretful wandering of the
+mind? She is in a garden; and near her stands a sharp, dark, withered
+woman, with a white scar on her lip. Let me hear what they say.
+
+‘Rosa, I have forgotten this gentleman’s name.’
+
+Rosa bends over her, and calls to her, ‘Mr. Copperfield.’
+
+‘I am glad to see you, sir. I am sorry to observe you are in mourning. I
+hope Time will be good to you.’
+
+Her impatient attendant scolds her, tells her I am not in mourning, bids
+her look again, tries to rouse her.
+
+‘You have seen my son, sir,’ says the elder lady. ‘Are you reconciled?’
+
+Looking fixedly at me, she puts her hand to her forehead, and moans.
+Suddenly, she cries, in a terrible voice, ‘Rosa, come to me. He is
+dead!’ Rosa kneeling at her feet, by turns caresses her, and quarrels
+with her; now fiercely telling her, ‘I loved him better than you ever
+did!’--now soothing her to sleep on her breast, like a sick child. Thus
+I leave them; thus I always find them; thus they wear their time away,
+from year to year.
+
+What ship comes sailing home from India, and what English lady is this,
+married to a growling old Scotch Croesus with great flaps of ears? Can
+this be Julia Mills?
+
+Indeed it is Julia Mills, peevish and fine, with a black man to carry
+cards and letters to her on a golden salver, and a copper-coloured woman
+in linen, with a bright handkerchief round her head, to serve her Tiffin
+in her dressing-room. But Julia keeps no diary in these days; never
+sings Affection’s Dirge; eternally quarrels with the old Scotch Croesus,
+who is a sort of yellow bear with a tanned hide. Julia is steeped in
+money to the throat, and talks and thinks of nothing else. I liked her
+better in the Desert of Sahara.
+
+Or perhaps this IS the Desert of Sahara! For, though Julia has a stately
+house, and mighty company, and sumptuous dinners every day, I see no
+green growth near her; nothing that can ever come to fruit or flower.
+What Julia calls ‘society’, I see; among it Mr. Jack Maldon, from his
+Patent Place, sneering at the hand that gave it him, and speaking to me
+of the Doctor as ‘so charmingly antique’. But when society is the name
+for such hollow gentlemen and ladies, Julia, and when its breeding is
+professed indifference to everything that can advance or can retard
+mankind, I think we must have lost ourselves in that same Desert of
+Sahara, and had better find the way out.
+
+And lo, the Doctor, always our good friend, labouring at his Dictionary
+(somewhere about the letter D), and happy in his home and wife. Also
+the Old Soldier, on a considerably reduced footing, and by no means so
+influential as in days of yore!
+
+Working at his chambers in the Temple, with a busy aspect, and his hair
+(where he is not bald) made more rebellious than ever by the constant
+friction of his lawyer’s-wig, I come, in a later time, upon my dear old
+Traddles. His table is covered with thick piles of papers; and I say, as
+I look around me:
+
+‘If Sophy were your clerk, now, Traddles, she would have enough to do!’
+
+‘You may say that, my dear Copperfield! But those were capital days,
+too, in Holborn Court! Were they not?’
+
+‘When she told you you would be a judge? But it was not the town talk
+then!’
+
+‘At all events,’ says Traddles, ‘if I ever am one--’ ‘Why, you know you
+will be.’
+
+‘Well, my dear Copperfield, WHEN I am one, I shall tell the story, as I
+said I would.’
+
+We walk away, arm in arm. I am going to have a family dinner with
+Traddles. It is Sophy’s birthday; and, on our road, Traddles discourses
+to me of the good fortune he has enjoyed.
+
+‘I really have been able, my dear Copperfield, to do all that I had most
+at heart. There’s the Reverend Horace promoted to that living at four
+hundred and fifty pounds a year; there are our two boys receiving the
+very best education, and distinguishing themselves as steady scholars
+and good fellows; there are three of the girls married very comfortably;
+there are three more living with us; there are three more keeping house
+for the Reverend Horace since Mrs. Crewler’s decease; and all of them
+happy.’
+
+‘Except--’ I suggest.
+
+‘Except the Beauty,’ says Traddles. ‘Yes. It was very unfortunate that
+she should marry such a vagabond. But there was a certain dash and glare
+about him that caught her. However, now we have got her safe at our
+house, and got rid of him, we must cheer her up again.’
+
+Traddles’s house is one of the very houses--or it easily may have
+been--which he and Sophy used to parcel out, in their evening walks. It
+is a large house; but Traddles keeps his papers in his dressing-room
+and his boots with his papers; and he and Sophy squeeze themselves into
+upper rooms, reserving the best bedrooms for the Beauty and the girls.
+There is no room to spare in the house; for more of ‘the girls’ are
+here, and always are here, by some accident or other, than I know how
+to count. Here, when we go in, is a crowd of them, running down to
+the door, and handing Traddles about to be kissed, until he is out of
+breath. Here, established in perpetuity, is the poor Beauty, a widow
+with a little girl; here, at dinner on Sophy’s birthday, are the three
+married girls with their three husbands, and one of the husband’s
+brothers, and another husband’s cousin, and another husband’s sister,
+who appears to me to be engaged to the cousin. Traddles, exactly the
+same simple, unaffected fellow as he ever was, sits at the foot of the
+large table like a Patriarch; and Sophy beams upon him, from the head,
+across a cheerful space that is certainly not glittering with Britannia
+metal.
+
+And now, as I close my task, subduing my desire to linger yet, these
+faces fade away. But one face, shining on me like a Heavenly light by
+which I see all other objects, is above them and beyond them all. And
+that remains.
+
+I turn my head, and see it, in its beautiful serenity, beside me.
+
+My lamp burns low, and I have written far into the night; but the dear
+presence, without which I were nothing, bears me company.
+
+O Agnes, O my soul, so may thy face be by me when I close my life
+indeed; so may I, when realities are melting from me, like the shadows
+which I now dismiss, still find thee near me, pointing upward!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens
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diff --git a/data/train/dickens_-_great_expectations.txt b/data/train/dickens_-_great_expectations.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+Title: Great Expectations
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+Release Date: July, 1998 [EBook #1400]
+[Most recently updated: April 27, 2020]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GREAT EXPECTATIONS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer, and David Widger
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+Great Expectations
+
+[1867 Edition]
+
+by Charles Dickens
+
+
+Contents
+
+ Chapter I.
+ Chapter II.
+ Chapter III.
+ Chapter IV.
+ Chapter V.
+ Chapter VI.
+ Chapter VII.
+ Chapter VIII.
+ Chapter IX.
+ Chapter X.
+ Chapter XI.
+ Chapter XII.
+ Chapter XIII.
+ Chapter XIV.
+ Chapter XV.
+ Chapter XVI.
+ Chapter XVII.
+ Chapter XVIII.
+ Chapter XIX.
+ Chapter XX.
+ Chapter XXI.
+ Chapter XXII.
+ Chapter XXIII.
+ Chapter XXIV.
+ Chapter XXV.
+ Chapter XXVI.
+ Chapter XXVII.
+ Chapter XXVIII.
+ Chapter XXIX.
+ Chapter XXX.
+ Chapter XXXI.
+ Chapter XXXII.
+ Chapter XXXIII.
+ Chapter XXXIV.
+ Chapter XXXV.
+ Chapter XXXVI.
+ Chapter XXXVII.
+ Chapter XXXVIII.
+ Chapter XXXIX.
+ Chapter XL.
+ Chapter XLI.
+ Chapter XLII.
+ Chapter XLIII.
+ Chapter XLIV.
+ Chapter XLV.
+ Chapter XLVI.
+ Chapter XLVII.
+ Chapter XLVIII.
+ Chapter XLIX.
+ Chapter L.
+ Chapter LI.
+ Chapter LII.
+ Chapter LIII.
+ Chapter LIV.
+ Chapter LV.
+ Chapter LVI.
+ Chapter LVII.
+ Chapter LVIII.
+ Chapter LIX.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I.
+
+
+My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my
+infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit
+than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.
+
+I give Pirrip as my father’s family name, on the authority of his
+tombstone and my sister,—Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith.
+As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of
+either of them (for their days were long before the days of
+photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like were
+unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on
+my father’s, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man,
+with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription,
+“_Also Georgiana Wife of the Above_,” I drew a childish conclusion that
+my mother was freckled and sickly. To five little stone lozenges, each
+about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside
+their grave, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of
+mine,—who gave up trying to get a living, exceedingly early in that
+universal struggle,—I am indebted for a belief I religiously
+entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands
+in their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out in this state
+of existence.
+
+Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river
+wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad
+impression of the identity of things seems to me to have been gained on
+a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out
+for certain that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the
+churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also
+Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander,
+Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the
+aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness
+beyond the churchyard, intersected with dikes and mounds and gates,
+with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low
+leaden line beyond was the river; and that the distant savage lair from
+which the wind was rushing was the sea; and that the small bundle of
+shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip.
+
+“Hold your noise!” cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from
+among the graves at the side of the church porch. “Keep still, you
+little devil, or I’ll cut your throat!”
+
+A fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg. A man
+with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his
+head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and
+lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by
+briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared, and growled; and whose
+teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin.
+
+“Oh! Don’t cut my throat, sir,” I pleaded in terror. “Pray don’t do it,
+sir.”
+
+“Tell us your name!” said the man. “Quick!”
+
+“Pip, sir.”
+
+“Once more,” said the man, staring at me. “Give it mouth!”
+
+“Pip. Pip, sir.”
+
+“Show us where you live,” said the man. “Pint out the place!”
+
+I pointed to where our village lay, on the flat in-shore among the
+alder-trees and pollards, a mile or more from the church.
+
+The man, after looking at me for a moment, turned me upside down, and
+emptied my pockets. There was nothing in them but a piece of bread.
+When the church came to itself,—for he was so sudden and strong that he
+made it go head over heels before me, and I saw the steeple under my
+feet,—when the church came to itself, I say, I was seated on a high
+tombstone, trembling while he ate the bread ravenously.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+“You young dog,” said the man, licking his lips, “what fat cheeks you
+ha’ got.”
+
+I believe they were fat, though I was at that time undersized for my
+years, and not strong.
+
+“Darn me if I couldn’t eat ’em,” said the man, with a threatening shake
+of his head, “and if I han’t half a mind to’t!”
+
+I earnestly expressed my hope that he wouldn’t, and held tighter to the
+tombstone on which he had put me; partly, to keep myself upon it;
+partly, to keep myself from crying.
+
+“Now lookee here!” said the man. “Where’s your mother?”
+
+“There, sir!” said I.
+
+He started, made a short run, and stopped and looked over his shoulder.
+
+“There, sir!” I timidly explained. “Also Georgiana. That’s my mother.”
+
+“Oh!” said he, coming back. “And is that your father alonger your
+mother?”
+
+“Yes, sir,” said I; “him too; late of this parish.”
+
+“Ha!” he muttered then, considering. “Who d’ye live with,—supposin’
+you’re kindly let to live, which I han’t made up my mind about?”
+
+“My sister, sir,—Mrs. Joe Gargery,—wife of Joe Gargery, the blacksmith,
+sir.”
+
+“Blacksmith, eh?” said he. And looked down at his leg.
+
+After darkly looking at his leg and me several times, he came closer to
+my tombstone, took me by both arms, and tilted me back as far as he
+could hold me; so that his eyes looked most powerfully down into mine,
+and mine looked most helplessly up into his.
+
+“Now lookee here,” he said, “the question being whether you’re to be
+let to live. You know what a file is?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“And you know what wittles is?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+After each question he tilted me over a little more, so as to give me a
+greater sense of helplessness and danger.
+
+“You get me a file.” He tilted me again. “And you get me wittles.” He
+tilted me again. “You bring ’em both to me.” He tilted me again. “Or
+I’ll have your heart and liver out.” He tilted me again.
+
+I was dreadfully frightened, and so giddy that I clung to him with both
+hands, and said, “If you would kindly please to let me keep upright,
+sir, perhaps I shouldn’t be sick, and perhaps I could attend more.”
+
+He gave me a most tremendous dip and roll, so that the church jumped
+over its own weathercock. Then, he held me by the arms, in an upright
+position on the top of the stone, and went on in these fearful terms:—
+
+“You bring me, to-morrow morning early, that file and them wittles. You
+bring the lot to me, at that old Battery over yonder. You do it, and
+you never dare to say a word or dare to make a sign concerning your
+having seen such a person as me, or any person sumever, and you shall
+be let to live. You fail, or you go from my words in any partickler, no
+matter how small it is, and your heart and your liver shall be tore
+out, roasted, and ate. Now, I ain’t alone, as you may think I am.
+There’s a young man hid with me, in comparison with which young man I
+am a Angel. That young man hears the words I speak. That young man has
+a secret way pecooliar to himself, of getting at a boy, and at his
+heart, and at his liver. It is in wain for a boy to attempt to hide
+himself from that young man. A boy may lock his door, may be warm in
+bed, may tuck himself up, may draw the clothes over his head, may think
+himself comfortable and safe, but that young man will softly creep and
+creep his way to him and tear him open. I am a keeping that young man
+from harming of you at the present moment, with great difficulty. I
+find it wery hard to hold that young man off of your inside. Now, what
+do you say?”
+
+I said that I would get him the file, and I would get him what broken
+bits of food I could, and I would come to him at the Battery, early in
+the morning.
+
+“Say Lord strike you dead if you don’t!” said the man.
+
+I said so, and he took me down.
+
+“Now,” he pursued, “you remember what you’ve undertook, and you
+remember that young man, and you get home!”
+
+“Goo-good night, sir,” I faltered.
+
+“Much of that!” said he, glancing about him over the cold wet flat. “I
+wish I was a frog. Or a eel!”
+
+At the same time, he hugged his shuddering body in both his
+arms,—clasping himself, as if to hold himself together,—and limped
+towards the low church wall. As I saw him go, picking his way among the
+nettles, and among the brambles that bound the green mounds, he looked
+in my young eyes as if he were eluding the hands of the dead people,
+stretching up cautiously out of their graves, to get a twist upon his
+ankle and pull him in.
+
+When he came to the low church wall, he got over it, like a man whose
+legs were numbed and stiff, and then turned round to look for me. When
+I saw him turning, I set my face towards home, and made the best use of
+my legs. But presently I looked over my shoulder, and saw him going on
+again towards the river, still hugging himself in both arms, and
+picking his way with his sore feet among the great stones dropped into
+the marshes here and there, for stepping-places when the rains were
+heavy or the tide was in.
+
+The marshes were just a long black horizontal line then, as I stopped
+to look after him; and the river was just another horizontal line, not
+nearly so broad nor yet so black; and the sky was just a row of long
+angry red lines and dense black lines intermixed. On the edge of the
+river I could faintly make out the only two black things in all the
+prospect that seemed to be standing upright; one of these was the
+beacon by which the sailors steered,—like an unhooped cask upon a
+pole,—an ugly thing when you were near it; the other, a gibbet, with
+some chains hanging to it which had once held a pirate. The man was
+limping on towards this latter, as if he were the pirate come to life,
+and come down, and going back to hook himself up again. It gave me a
+terrible turn when I thought so; and as I saw the cattle lifting their
+heads to gaze after him, I wondered whether they thought so too. I
+looked all round for the horrible young man, and could see no signs of
+him. But now I was frightened again, and ran home without stopping.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II.
+
+
+My sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, was more than twenty years older than I,
+and had established a great reputation with herself and the neighbours
+because she had brought me up “by hand.” Having at that time to find
+out for myself what the expression meant, and knowing her to have a
+hard and heavy hand, and to be much in the habit of laying it upon her
+husband as well as upon me, I supposed that Joe Gargery and I were both
+brought up by hand.
+
+She was not a good-looking woman, my sister; and I had a general
+impression that she must have made Joe Gargery marry her by hand. Joe
+was a fair man, with curls of flaxen hair on each side of his smooth
+face, and with eyes of such a very undecided blue that they seemed to
+have somehow got mixed with their own whites. He was a mild,
+good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy-going, foolish, dear fellow,—a sort
+of Hercules in strength, and also in weakness.
+
+My sister, Mrs. Joe, with black hair and eyes, had such a prevailing
+redness of skin that I sometimes used to wonder whether it was possible
+she washed herself with a nutmeg-grater instead of soap. She was tall
+and bony, and almost always wore a coarse apron, fastened over her
+figure behind with two loops, and having a square impregnable bib in
+front, that was stuck full of pins and needles. She made it a powerful
+merit in herself, and a strong reproach against Joe, that she wore this
+apron so much. Though I really see no reason why she should have worn
+it at all; or why, if she did wear it at all, she should not have taken
+it off, every day of her life.
+
+Joe’s forge adjoined our house, which was a wooden house, as many of
+the dwellings in our country were,—most of them, at that time. When I
+ran home from the churchyard, the forge was shut up, and Joe was
+sitting alone in the kitchen. Joe and I being fellow-sufferers, and
+having confidences as such, Joe imparted a confidence to me, the moment
+I raised the latch of the door and peeped in at him opposite to it,
+sitting in the chimney corner.
+
+“Mrs. Joe has been out a dozen times, looking for you, Pip. And she’s
+out now, making it a baker’s dozen.”
+
+“Is she?”
+
+“Yes, Pip,” said Joe; “and what’s worse, she’s got Tickler with her.”
+
+At this dismal intelligence, I twisted the only button on my waistcoat
+round and round, and looked in great depression at the fire. Tickler
+was a wax-ended piece of cane, worn smooth by collision with my tickled
+frame.
+
+“She sot down,” said Joe, “and she got up, and she made a grab at
+Tickler, and she Ram-paged out. That’s what she did,” said Joe, slowly
+clearing the fire between the lower bars with the poker, and looking at
+it; “she Ram-paged out, Pip.”
+
+“Has she been gone long, Joe?” I always treated him as a larger species
+of child, and as no more than my equal.
+
+“Well,” said Joe, glancing up at the Dutch clock, “she’s been on the
+Ram-page, this last spell, about five minutes, Pip. She’s a-coming! Get
+behind the door, old chap, and have the jack-towel betwixt you.”
+
+I took the advice. My sister, Mrs. Joe, throwing the door wide open,
+and finding an obstruction behind it, immediately divined the cause,
+and applied Tickler to its further investigation. She concluded by
+throwing me—I often served as a connubial missile—at Joe, who, glad to
+get hold of me on any terms, passed me on into the chimney and quietly
+fenced me up there with his great leg.
+
+“Where have you been, you young monkey?” said Mrs. Joe, stamping her
+foot. “Tell me directly what you’ve been doing to wear me away with
+fret and fright and worrit, or I’d have you out of that corner if you
+was fifty Pips, and he was five hundred Gargerys.”
+
+“I have only been to the churchyard,” said I, from my stool, crying and
+rubbing myself.
+
+“Churchyard!” repeated my sister. “If it warn’t for me you’d have been
+to the churchyard long ago, and stayed there. Who brought you up by
+hand?”
+
+“You did,” said I.
+
+“And why did I do it, I should like to know?” exclaimed my sister.
+
+I whimpered, “I don’t know.”
+
+“_I_ don’t!” said my sister. “I’d never do it again! I know that. I may
+truly say I’ve never had this apron of mine off since born you were.
+It’s bad enough to be a blacksmith’s wife (and him a Gargery) without
+being your mother.”
+
+My thoughts strayed from that question as I looked disconsolately at
+the fire. For the fugitive out on the marshes with the ironed leg, the
+mysterious young man, the file, the food, and the dreadful pledge I was
+under to commit a larceny on those sheltering premises, rose before me
+in the avenging coals.
+
+“Hah!” said Mrs. Joe, restoring Tickler to his station. “Churchyard,
+indeed! You may well say churchyard, you two.” One of us, by the by,
+had not said it at all. “You’ll drive _me_ to the churchyard betwixt
+you, one of these days, and O, a pr-r-recious pair you’d be without
+me!”
+
+As she applied herself to set the tea-things, Joe peeped down at me
+over his leg, as if he were mentally casting me and himself up, and
+calculating what kind of pair we practically should make, under the
+grievous circumstances foreshadowed. After that, he sat feeling his
+right-side flaxen curls and whisker, and following Mrs. Joe about with
+his blue eyes, as his manner always was at squally times.
+
+My sister had a trenchant way of cutting our bread and butter for us,
+that never varied. First, with her left hand she jammed the loaf hard
+and fast against her bib,—where it sometimes got a pin into it, and
+sometimes a needle, which we afterwards got into our mouths. Then she
+took some butter (not too much) on a knife and spread it on the loaf,
+in an apothecary kind of way, as if she were making a plaster,—using
+both sides of the knife with a slapping dexterity, and trimming and
+moulding the butter off round the crust. Then, she gave the knife a
+final smart wipe on the edge of the plaster, and then sawed a very
+thick round off the loaf: which she finally, before separating from the
+loaf, hewed into two halves, of which Joe got one, and I the other.
+
+On the present occasion, though I was hungry, I dared not eat my slice.
+I felt that I must have something in reserve for my dreadful
+acquaintance, and his ally the still more dreadful young man. I knew
+Mrs. Joe’s housekeeping to be of the strictest kind, and that my
+larcenous researches might find nothing available in the safe.
+Therefore I resolved to put my hunk of bread and butter down the leg of
+my trousers.
+
+The effort of resolution necessary to the achievement of this purpose I
+found to be quite awful. It was as if I had to make up my mind to leap
+from the top of a high house, or plunge into a great depth of water.
+And it was made the more difficult by the unconscious Joe. In our
+already-mentioned freemasonry as fellow-sufferers, and in his
+good-natured companionship with me, it was our evening habit to compare
+the way we bit through our slices, by silently holding them up to each
+other’s admiration now and then,—which stimulated us to new exertions.
+To-night, Joe several times invited me, by the display of his fast
+diminishing slice, to enter upon our usual friendly competition; but he
+found me, each time, with my yellow mug of tea on one knee, and my
+untouched bread and butter on the other. At last, I desperately
+considered that the thing I contemplated must be done, and that it had
+best be done in the least improbable manner consistent with the
+circumstances. I took advantage of a moment when Joe had just looked at
+me, and got my bread and butter down my leg.
+
+Joe was evidently made uncomfortable by what he supposed to be my loss
+of appetite, and took a thoughtful bite out of his slice, which he
+didn’t seem to enjoy. He turned it about in his mouth much longer than
+usual, pondering over it a good deal, and after all gulped it down like
+a pill. He was about to take another bite, and had just got his head on
+one side for a good purchase on it, when his eye fell on me, and he saw
+that my bread and butter was gone.
+
+The wonder and consternation with which Joe stopped on the threshold of
+his bite and stared at me, were too evident to escape my sister’s
+observation.
+
+“What’s the matter _now_?” said she, smartly, as she put down her cup.
+
+“I say, you know!” muttered Joe, shaking his head at me in very serious
+remonstrance. “Pip, old chap! You’ll do yourself a mischief. It’ll
+stick somewhere. You can’t have chawed it, Pip.”
+
+“What’s the matter now?” repeated my sister, more sharply than before.
+
+“If you can cough any trifle on it up, Pip, I’d recommend you to do
+it,” said Joe, all aghast. “Manners is manners, but still your elth’s
+your elth.”
+
+By this time, my sister was quite desperate, so she pounced on Joe,
+and, taking him by the two whiskers, knocked his head for a little
+while against the wall behind him, while I sat in the corner, looking
+guiltily on.
+
+“Now, perhaps you’ll mention what’s the matter,” said my sister, out of
+breath, “you staring great stuck pig.”
+
+Joe looked at her in a helpless way, then took a helpless bite, and
+looked at me again.
+
+“You know, Pip,” said Joe, solemnly, with his last bite in his cheek,
+and speaking in a confidential voice, as if we two were quite alone,
+“you and me is always friends, and I’d be the last to tell upon you,
+any time. But such a—” he moved his chair and looked about the floor
+between us, and then again at me—“such a most oncommon Bolt as that!”
+
+“Been bolting his food, has he?” cried my sister.
+
+“You know, old chap,” said Joe, looking at me, and not at Mrs. Joe,
+with his bite still in his cheek, “I Bolted, myself, when I was your
+age—frequent—and as a boy I’ve been among a many Bolters; but I never
+see your Bolting equal yet, Pip, and it’s a mercy you ain’t Bolted
+dead.”
+
+My sister made a dive at me, and fished me up by the hair, saying
+nothing more than the awful words, “You come along and be dosed.”
+
+Some medical beast had revived Tar-water in those days as a fine
+medicine, and Mrs. Joe always kept a supply of it in the cupboard;
+having a belief in its virtues correspondent to its nastiness. At the
+best of times, so much of this elixir was administered to me as a
+choice restorative, that I was conscious of going about, smelling like
+a new fence. On this particular evening the urgency of my case demanded
+a pint of this mixture, which was poured down my throat, for my greater
+comfort, while Mrs. Joe held my head under her arm, as a boot would be
+held in a bootjack. Joe got off with half a pint; but was made to
+swallow that (much to his disturbance, as he sat slowly munching and
+meditating before the fire), “because he had had a turn.” Judging from
+myself, I should say he certainly had a turn afterwards, if he had had
+none before.
+
+Conscience is a dreadful thing when it accuses man or boy; but when, in
+the case of a boy, that secret burden co-operates with another secret
+burden down the leg of his trousers, it is (as I can testify) a great
+punishment. The guilty knowledge that I was going to rob Mrs. Joe—I
+never thought I was going to rob Joe, for I never thought of any of the
+housekeeping property as his—united to the necessity of always keeping
+one hand on my bread and butter as I sat, or when I was ordered about
+the kitchen on any small errand, almost drove me out of my mind. Then,
+as the marsh winds made the fire glow and flare, I thought I heard the
+voice outside, of the man with the iron on his leg who had sworn me to
+secrecy, declaring that he couldn’t and wouldn’t starve until
+to-morrow, but must be fed now. At other times, I thought, What if the
+young man who was with so much difficulty restrained from imbruing his
+hands in me should yield to a constitutional impatience, or should
+mistake the time, and should think himself accredited to my heart and
+liver to-night, instead of to-morrow! If ever anybody’s hair stood on
+end with terror, mine must have done so then. But, perhaps, nobody’s
+ever did?
+
+It was Christmas Eve, and I had to stir the pudding for next day, with
+a copper-stick, from seven to eight by the Dutch clock. I tried it with
+the load upon my leg (and that made me think afresh of the man with the
+load on _his_ leg), and found the tendency of exercise to bring the
+bread and butter out at my ankle, quite unmanageable. Happily I slipped
+away, and deposited that part of my conscience in my garret bedroom.
+
+“Hark!” said I, when I had done my stirring, and was taking a final
+warm in the chimney corner before being sent up to bed; “was that great
+guns, Joe?”
+
+“Ah!” said Joe. “There’s another conwict off.”
+
+“What does that mean, Joe?” said I.
+
+Mrs. Joe, who always took explanations upon herself, said, snappishly,
+“Escaped. Escaped.” Administering the definition like Tar-water.
+
+While Mrs. Joe sat with her head bending over her needlework, I put my
+mouth into the forms of saying to Joe, “What’s a convict?” Joe put
+_his_ mouth into the forms of returning such a highly elaborate answer,
+that I could make out nothing of it but the single word “Pip.”
+
+“There was a conwict off last night,” said Joe, aloud, “after
+sunset-gun. And they fired warning of him. And now it appears they’re
+firing warning of another.”
+
+“_Who’s_ firing?” said I.
+
+“Drat that boy,” interposed my sister, frowning at me over her work,
+“what a questioner he is. Ask no questions, and you’ll be told no
+lies.”
+
+It was not very polite to herself, I thought, to imply that I should be
+told lies by her even if I did ask questions. But she never was polite
+unless there was company.
+
+At this point Joe greatly augmented my curiosity by taking the utmost
+pains to open his mouth very wide, and to put it into the form of a
+word that looked to me like “sulks.” Therefore, I naturally pointed to
+Mrs. Joe, and put my mouth into the form of saying, “her?” But Joe
+wouldn’t hear of that, at all, and again opened his mouth very wide,
+and shook the form of a most emphatic word out of it. But I could make
+nothing of the word.
+
+“Mrs. Joe,” said I, as a last resort, “I should like to know—if you
+wouldn’t much mind—where the firing comes from?”
+
+“Lord bless the boy!” exclaimed my sister, as if she didn’t quite mean
+that but rather the contrary. “From the Hulks!”
+
+“Oh-h!” said I, looking at Joe. “Hulks!”
+
+Joe gave a reproachful cough, as much as to say, “Well, I told you so.”
+
+“And please, what’s Hulks?” said I.
+
+“That’s the way with this boy!” exclaimed my sister, pointing me out
+with her needle and thread, and shaking her head at me. “Answer him one
+question, and he’ll ask you a dozen directly. Hulks are prison-ships,
+right ’cross th’ meshes.” We always used that name for marshes, in our
+country.
+
+“I wonder who’s put into prison-ships, and why they’re put there?” said
+I, in a general way, and with quiet desperation.
+
+It was too much for Mrs. Joe, who immediately rose. “I tell you what,
+young fellow,” said she, “I didn’t bring you up by hand to badger
+people’s lives out. It would be blame to me and not praise, if I had.
+People are put in the Hulks because they murder, and because they rob,
+and forge, and do all sorts of bad; and they always begin by asking
+questions. Now, you get along to bed!”
+
+I was never allowed a candle to light me to bed, and, as I went
+upstairs in the dark, with my head tingling,—from Mrs. Joe’s thimble
+having played the tambourine upon it, to accompany her last words,—I
+felt fearfully sensible of the great convenience that the hulks were
+handy for me. I was clearly on my way there. I had begun by asking
+questions, and I was going to rob Mrs. Joe.
+
+Since that time, which is far enough away now, I have often thought
+that few people know what secrecy there is in the young under terror.
+No matter how unreasonable the terror, so that it be terror. I was in
+mortal terror of the young man who wanted my heart and liver; I was in
+mortal terror of my interlocutor with the iron leg; I was in mortal
+terror of myself, from whom an awful promise had been extracted; I had
+no hope of deliverance through my all-powerful sister, who repulsed me
+at every turn; I am afraid to think of what I might have done on
+requirement, in the secrecy of my terror.
+
+If I slept at all that night, it was only to imagine myself drifting
+down the river on a strong spring-tide, to the Hulks; a ghostly pirate
+calling out to me through a speaking-trumpet, as I passed the
+gibbet-station, that I had better come ashore and be hanged there at
+once, and not put it off. I was afraid to sleep, even if I had been
+inclined, for I knew that at the first faint dawn of morning I must rob
+the pantry. There was no doing it in the night, for there was no
+getting a light by easy friction then; to have got one I must have
+struck it out of flint and steel, and have made a noise like the very
+pirate himself rattling his chains.
+
+As soon as the great black velvet pall outside my little window was
+shot with grey, I got up and went downstairs; every board upon the way,
+and every crack in every board calling after me, “Stop thief!” and “Get
+up, Mrs. Joe!” In the pantry, which was far more abundantly supplied
+than usual, owing to the season, I was very much alarmed by a hare
+hanging up by the heels, whom I rather thought I caught, when my back
+was half turned, winking. I had no time for verification, no time for
+selection, no time for anything, for I had no time to spare. I stole
+some bread, some rind of cheese, about half a jar of mincemeat (which I
+tied up in my pocket-handkerchief with my last night’s slice), some
+brandy from a stone bottle (which I decanted into a glass bottle I had
+secretly used for making that intoxicating fluid,
+Spanish-liquorice-water, up in my room: diluting the stone bottle from
+a jug in the kitchen cupboard), a meat bone with very little on it, and
+a beautiful round compact pork pie. I was nearly going away without the
+pie, but I was tempted to mount upon a shelf, to look what it was that
+was put away so carefully in a covered earthenware dish in a corner,
+and I found it was the pie, and I took it in the hope that it was not
+intended for early use, and would not be missed for some time.
+
+There was a door in the kitchen, communicating with the forge; I
+unlocked and unbolted that door, and got a file from among Joe’s tools.
+Then I put the fastenings as I had found them, opened the door at which
+I had entered when I ran home last night, shut it, and ran for the
+misty marshes.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III.
+
+
+It was a rimy morning, and very damp. I had seen the damp lying on the
+outside of my little window, as if some goblin had been crying there
+all night, and using the window for a pocket-handkerchief. Now, I saw
+the damp lying on the bare hedges and spare grass, like a coarser sort
+of spiders’ webs; hanging itself from twig to twig and blade to blade.
+On every rail and gate, wet lay clammy, and the marsh mist was so
+thick, that the wooden finger on the post directing people to our
+village—a direction which they never accepted, for they never came
+there—was invisible to me until I was quite close under it. Then, as I
+looked up at it, while it dripped, it seemed to my oppressed conscience
+like a phantom devoting me to the Hulks.
+
+The mist was heavier yet when I got out upon the marshes, so that
+instead of my running at everything, everything seemed to run at me.
+This was very disagreeable to a guilty mind. The gates and dikes and
+banks came bursting at me through the mist, as if they cried as plainly
+as could be, “A boy with somebody else’s pork pie! Stop him!” The
+cattle came upon me with like suddenness, staring out of their eyes,
+and steaming out of their nostrils, “Halloa, young thief!” One black
+ox, with a white cravat on,—who even had to my awakened conscience
+something of a clerical air,—fixed me so obstinately with his eyes, and
+moved his blunt head round in such an accusatory manner as I moved
+round, that I blubbered out to him, “I couldn’t help it, sir! It wasn’t
+for myself I took it!” Upon which he put down his head, blew a cloud of
+smoke out of his nose, and vanished with a kick-up of his hind-legs and
+a flourish of his tail.
+
+All this time, I was getting on towards the river; but however fast I
+went, I couldn’t warm my feet, to which the damp cold seemed riveted,
+as the iron was riveted to the leg of the man I was running to meet. I
+knew my way to the Battery, pretty straight, for I had been down there
+on a Sunday with Joe, and Joe, sitting on an old gun, had told me that
+when I was ’prentice to him, regularly bound, we would have such Larks
+there! However, in the confusion of the mist, I found myself at last
+too far to the right, and consequently had to try back along the
+river-side, on the bank of loose stones above the mud and the stakes
+that staked the tide out. Making my way along here with all despatch, I
+had just crossed a ditch which I knew to be very near the Battery, and
+had just scrambled up the mound beyond the ditch, when I saw the man
+sitting before me. His back was towards me, and he had his arms folded,
+and was nodding forward, heavy with sleep.
+
+I thought he would be more glad if I came upon him with his breakfast,
+in that unexpected manner, so I went forward softly and touched him on
+the shoulder. He instantly jumped up, and it was not the same man, but
+another man!
+
+And yet this man was dressed in coarse grey, too, and had a great iron
+on his leg, and was lame, and hoarse, and cold, and was everything that
+the other man was; except that he had not the same face, and had a flat
+broad-brimmed low-crowned felt hat on. All this I saw in a moment, for
+I had only a moment to see it in: he swore an oath at me, made a hit at
+me,—it was a round weak blow that missed me and almost knocked himself
+down, for it made him stumble,—and then he ran into the mist, stumbling
+twice as he went, and I lost him.
+
+“It’s the young man!” I thought, feeling my heart shoot as I identified
+him. I dare say I should have felt a pain in my liver, too, if I had
+known where it was.
+
+I was soon at the Battery after that, and there was the right
+man,—hugging himself and limping to and fro, as if he had never all
+night left off hugging and limping,—waiting for me. He was awfully
+cold, to be sure. I half expected to see him drop down before my face
+and die of deadly cold. His eyes looked so awfully hungry too, that
+when I handed him the file and he laid it down on the grass, it
+occurred to me he would have tried to eat it, if he had not seen my
+bundle. He did not turn me upside down this time to get at what I had,
+but left me right side upwards while I opened the bundle and emptied my
+pockets.
+
+“What’s in the bottle, boy?” said he.
+
+“Brandy,” said I.
+
+He was already handing mincemeat down his throat in the most curious
+manner,—more like a man who was putting it away somewhere in a violent
+hurry, than a man who was eating it,—but he left off to take some of
+the liquor. He shivered all the while so violently, that it was quite
+as much as he could do to keep the neck of the bottle between his
+teeth, without biting it off.
+
+“I think you have got the ague,” said I.
+
+“I’m much of your opinion, boy,” said he.
+
+“It’s bad about here,” I told him. “You’ve been lying out on the
+meshes, and they’re dreadful aguish. Rheumatic too.”
+
+“I’ll eat my breakfast afore they’re the death of me,” said he. “I’d do
+that, if I was going to be strung up to that there gallows as there is
+over there, directly afterwards. I’ll beat the shivers so far, I’ll bet
+you.”
+
+He was gobbling mincemeat, meatbone, bread, cheese, and pork pie, all
+at once: staring distrustfully while he did so at the mist all round
+us, and often stopping—even stopping his jaws—to listen. Some real or
+fancied sound, some clink upon the river or breathing of beast upon the
+marsh, now gave him a start, and he said, suddenly,—
+
+“You’re not a deceiving imp? You brought no one with you?”
+
+“No, sir! No!”
+
+“Nor giv’ no one the office to follow you?”
+
+“No!”
+
+“Well,” said he, “I believe you. You’d be but a fierce young hound
+indeed, if at your time of life you could help to hunt a wretched
+warmint hunted as near death and dunghill as this poor wretched warmint
+is!”
+
+Something clicked in his throat as if he had works in him like a clock,
+and was going to strike. And he smeared his ragged rough sleeve over
+his eyes.
+
+Pitying his desolation, and watching him as he gradually settled down
+upon the pie, I made bold to say, “I am glad you enjoy it.”
+
+“Did you speak?”
+
+“I said I was glad you enjoyed it.”
+
+“Thankee, my boy. I do.”
+
+I had often watched a large dog of ours eating his food; and I now
+noticed a decided similarity between the dog’s way of eating, and the
+man’s. The man took strong sharp sudden bites, just like the dog. He
+swallowed, or rather snapped up, every mouthful, too soon and too fast;
+and he looked sideways here and there while he ate, as if he thought
+there was danger in every direction of somebody’s coming to take the
+pie away. He was altogether too unsettled in his mind over it, to
+appreciate it comfortably I thought, or to have anybody to dine with
+him, without making a chop with his jaws at the visitor. In all of
+which particulars he was very like the dog.
+
+“I am afraid you won’t leave any of it for him,” said I, timidly; after
+a silence during which I had hesitated as to the politeness of making
+the remark. “There’s no more to be got where that came from.” It was
+the certainty of this fact that impelled me to offer the hint.
+
+“Leave any for him? Who’s him?” said my friend, stopping in his
+crunching of pie-crust.
+
+“The young man. That you spoke of. That was hid with you.”
+
+“Oh ah!” he returned, with something like a gruff laugh. “Him? Yes,
+yes! _He_ don’t want no wittles.”
+
+“I thought he looked as if he did,” said I.
+
+The man stopped eating, and regarded me with the keenest scrutiny and
+the greatest surprise.
+
+“Looked? When?”
+
+“Just now.”
+
+“Where?”
+
+“Yonder,” said I, pointing; “over there, where I found him nodding
+asleep, and thought it was you.”
+
+He held me by the collar and stared at me so, that I began to think his
+first idea about cutting my throat had revived.
+
+“Dressed like you, you know, only with a hat,” I explained, trembling;
+“and—and”—I was very anxious to put this delicately—“and with—the same
+reason for wanting to borrow a file. Didn’t you hear the cannon last
+night?”
+
+“Then there _was_ firing!” he said to himself.
+
+“I wonder you shouldn’t have been sure of that,” I returned, “for we
+heard it up at home, and that’s farther away, and we were shut in
+besides.”
+
+“Why, see now!” said he. “When a man’s alone on these flats, with a
+light head and a light stomach, perishing of cold and want, he hears
+nothin’ all night, but guns firing, and voices calling. Hears? He sees
+the soldiers, with their red coats lighted up by the torches carried
+afore, closing in round him. Hears his number called, hears himself
+challenged, hears the rattle of the muskets, hears the orders ‘Make
+ready! Present! Cover him steady, men!’ and is laid hands on—and
+there’s nothin’! Why, if I see one pursuing party last night—coming up
+in order, Damn ’em, with their tramp, tramp—I see a hundred. And as to
+firing! Why, I see the mist shake with the cannon, arter it was broad
+day,—But this man”; he had said all the rest, as if he had forgotten my
+being there; “did you notice anything in him?”
+
+“He had a badly bruised face,” said I, recalling what I hardly knew I
+knew.
+
+“Not here?” exclaimed the man, striking his left cheek mercilessly,
+with the flat of his hand.
+
+“Yes, there!”
+
+“Where is he?” He crammed what little food was left, into the breast of
+his grey jacket. “Show me the way he went. I’ll pull him down, like a
+bloodhound. Curse this iron on my sore leg! Give us hold of the file,
+boy.”
+
+I indicated in what direction the mist had shrouded the other man, and
+he looked up at it for an instant. But he was down on the rank wet
+grass, filing at his iron like a madman, and not minding me or minding
+his own leg, which had an old chafe upon it and was bloody, but which
+he handled as roughly as if it had no more feeling in it than the file.
+I was very much afraid of him again, now that he had worked himself
+into this fierce hurry, and I was likewise very much afraid of keeping
+away from home any longer. I told him I must go, but he took no notice,
+so I thought the best thing I could do was to slip off. The last I saw
+of him, his head was bent over his knee and he was working hard at his
+fetter, muttering impatient imprecations at it and at his leg. The last
+I heard of him, I stopped in the mist to listen, and the file was still
+going.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV.
+
+
+I fully expected to find a Constable in the kitchen, waiting to take me
+up. But not only was there no Constable there, but no discovery had yet
+been made of the robbery. Mrs. Joe was prodigiously busy in getting the
+house ready for the festivities of the day, and Joe had been put upon
+the kitchen doorstep to keep him out of the dust-pan,—an article into
+which his destiny always led him, sooner or later, when my sister was
+vigorously reaping the floors of her establishment.
+
+“And where the deuce ha’ _you_ been?” was Mrs. Joe’s Christmas
+salutation, when I and my conscience showed ourselves.
+
+I said I had been down to hear the Carols. “Ah! well!” observed Mrs.
+Joe. “You might ha’ done worse.” Not a doubt of that I thought.
+
+“Perhaps if I warn’t a blacksmith’s wife, and (what’s the same thing) a
+slave with her apron never off, _I_ should have been to hear the
+Carols,” said Mrs. Joe. “I’m rather partial to Carols, myself, and
+that’s the best of reasons for my never hearing any.”
+
+Joe, who had ventured into the kitchen after me as the dustpan had
+retired before us, drew the back of his hand across his nose with a
+conciliatory air, when Mrs. Joe darted a look at him, and, when her
+eyes were withdrawn, secretly crossed his two forefingers, and
+exhibited them to me, as our token that Mrs. Joe was in a cross temper.
+This was so much her normal state, that Joe and I would often, for
+weeks together, be, as to our fingers, like monumental Crusaders as to
+their legs.
+
+We were to have a superb dinner, consisting of a leg of pickled pork
+and greens, and a pair of roast stuffed fowls. A handsome mince-pie had
+been made yesterday morning (which accounted for the mincemeat not
+being missed), and the pudding was already on the boil. These extensive
+arrangements occasioned us to be cut off unceremoniously in respect of
+breakfast; “for I ain’t,” said Mrs. Joe,—“I ain’t a-going to have no
+formal cramming and busting and washing up now, with what I’ve got
+before me, I promise you!”
+
+So, we had our slices served out, as if we were two thousand troops on
+a forced march instead of a man and boy at home; and we took gulps of
+milk and water, with apologetic countenances, from a jug on the
+dresser. In the meantime, Mrs. Joe put clean white curtains up, and
+tacked a new flowered flounce across the wide chimney to replace the
+old one, and uncovered the little state parlour across the passage,
+which was never uncovered at any other time, but passed the rest of the
+year in a cool haze of silver paper, which even extended to the four
+little white crockery poodles on the mantel-shelf, each with a black
+nose and a basket of flowers in his mouth, and each the counterpart of
+the other. Mrs. Joe was a very clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite
+art of making her cleanliness more uncomfortable and unacceptable than
+dirt itself. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and some people do the
+same by their religion.
+
+My sister, having so much to do, was going to church vicariously, that
+is to say, Joe and I were going. In his working-clothes, Joe was a
+well-knit characteristic-looking blacksmith; in his holiday clothes, he
+was more like a scarecrow in good circumstances, than anything else.
+Nothing that he wore then fitted him or seemed to belong to him; and
+everything that he wore then grazed him. On the present festive
+occasion he emerged from his room, when the blithe bells were going,
+the picture of misery, in a full suit of Sunday penitentials. As to me,
+I think my sister must have had some general idea that I was a young
+offender whom an Accoucheur Policeman had taken up (on my birthday) and
+delivered over to her, to be dealt with according to the outraged
+majesty of the law. I was always treated as if I had insisted on being
+born in opposition to the dictates of reason, religion, and morality,
+and against the dissuading arguments of my best friends. Even when I
+was taken to have a new suit of clothes, the tailor had orders to make
+them like a kind of Reformatory, and on no account to let me have the
+free use of my limbs.
+
+Joe and I going to church, therefore, must have been a moving spectacle
+for compassionate minds. Yet, what I suffered outside was nothing to
+what I underwent within. The terrors that had assailed me whenever Mrs.
+Joe had gone near the pantry, or out of the room, were only to be
+equalled by the remorse with which my mind dwelt on what my hands had
+done. Under the weight of my wicked secret, I pondered whether the
+Church would be powerful enough to shield me from the vengeance of the
+terrible young man, if I divulged to that establishment. I conceived
+the idea that the time when the banns were read and when the clergyman
+said, “Ye are now to declare it!” would be the time for me to rise and
+propose a private conference in the vestry. I am far from being sure
+that I might not have astonished our small congregation by resorting to
+this extreme measure, but for its being Christmas Day and no Sunday.
+
+Mr. Wopsle, the clerk at church, was to dine with us; and Mr. Hubble
+the wheelwright and Mrs. Hubble; and Uncle Pumblechook (Joe’s uncle,
+but Mrs. Joe appropriated him), who was a well-to-do cornchandler in
+the nearest town, and drove his own chaise-cart. The dinner hour was
+half-past one. When Joe and I got home, we found the table laid, and
+Mrs. Joe dressed, and the dinner dressing, and the front door unlocked
+(it never was at any other time) for the company to enter by, and
+everything most splendid. And still, not a word of the robbery.
+
+The time came, without bringing with it any relief to my feelings, and
+the company came. Mr. Wopsle, united to a Roman nose and a large
+shining bald forehead, had a deep voice which he was uncommonly proud
+of; indeed it was understood among his acquaintance that if you could
+only give him his head, he would read the clergyman into fits; he
+himself confessed that if the Church was “thrown open,” meaning to
+competition, he would not despair of making his mark in it. The Church
+not being “thrown open,” he was, as I have said, our clerk. But he
+punished the Amens tremendously; and when he gave out the psalm,—always
+giving the whole verse,—he looked all round the congregation first, as
+much as to say, “You have heard my friend overhead; oblige me with your
+opinion of this style!”
+
+I opened the door to the company,—making believe that it was a habit of
+ours to open that door,—and I opened it first to Mr. Wopsle, next to
+Mr. and Mrs. Hubble, and last of all to Uncle Pumblechook. N.B. _I_ was
+not allowed to call him uncle, under the severest penalties.
+
+“Mrs. Joe,” said Uncle Pumblechook, a large hard-breathing middle-aged
+slow man, with a mouth like a fish, dull staring eyes, and sandy hair
+standing upright on his head, so that he looked as if he had just been
+all but choked, and had that moment come to, “I have brought you as the
+compliments of the season—I have brought you, Mum, a bottle of sherry
+wine—and I have brought you, Mum, a bottle of port wine.”
+
+Every Christmas Day he presented himself, as a profound novelty, with
+exactly the same words, and carrying the two bottles like dumb-bells.
+Every Christmas Day, Mrs. Joe replied, as she now replied, “O, Un—cle
+Pum-ble—chook! This _is_ kind!” Every Christmas Day, he retorted, as he
+now retorted, “It’s no more than your merits. And now are you all
+bobbish, and how’s Sixpennorth of halfpence?” meaning me.
+
+We dined on these occasions in the kitchen, and adjourned, for the nuts
+and oranges and apples to the parlour; which was a change very like
+Joe’s change from his working-clothes to his Sunday dress. My sister
+was uncommonly lively on the present occasion, and indeed was generally
+more gracious in the society of Mrs. Hubble than in other company. I
+remember Mrs. Hubble as a little curly sharp-edged person in sky-blue,
+who held a conventionally juvenile position, because she had married
+Mr. Hubble,—I don’t know at what remote period,—when she was much
+younger than he. I remember Mr Hubble as a tough, high-shouldered,
+stooping old man, of a sawdusty fragrance, with his legs
+extraordinarily wide apart: so that in my short days I always saw some
+miles of open country between them when I met him coming up the lane.
+
+Among this good company I should have felt myself, even if I hadn’t
+robbed the pantry, in a false position. Not because I was squeezed in
+at an acute angle of the tablecloth, with the table in my chest, and
+the Pumblechookian elbow in my eye, nor because I was not allowed to
+speak (I didn’t want to speak), nor because I was regaled with the
+scaly tips of the drumsticks of the fowls, and with those obscure
+corners of pork of which the pig, when living, had had the least reason
+to be vain. No; I should not have minded that, if they would only have
+left me alone. But they wouldn’t leave me alone. They seemed to think
+the opportunity lost, if they failed to point the conversation at me,
+every now and then, and stick the point into me. I might have been an
+unfortunate little bull in a Spanish arena, I got so smartingly touched
+up by these moral goads.
+
+It began the moment we sat down to dinner. Mr. Wopsle said grace with
+theatrical declamation,—as it now appears to me, something like a
+religious cross of the Ghost in Hamlet with Richard the Third,—and
+ended with the very proper aspiration that we might be truly grateful.
+Upon which my sister fixed me with her eye, and said, in a low
+reproachful voice, “Do you hear that? Be grateful.”
+
+“Especially,” said Mr. Pumblechook, “be grateful, boy, to them which
+brought you up by hand.”
+
+Mrs. Hubble shook her head, and contemplating me with a mournful
+presentiment that I should come to no good, asked, “Why is it that the
+young are never grateful?” This moral mystery seemed too much for the
+company until Mr. Hubble tersely solved it by saying, “Naterally
+wicious.” Everybody then murmured “True!” and looked at me in a
+particularly unpleasant and personal manner.
+
+Joe’s station and influence were something feebler (if possible) when
+there was company than when there was none. But he always aided and
+comforted me when he could, in some way of his own, and he always did
+so at dinner-time by giving me gravy, if there were any. There being
+plenty of gravy to-day, Joe spooned into my plate, at this point, about
+half a pint.
+
+A little later on in the dinner, Mr. Wopsle reviewed the sermon with
+some severity, and intimated—in the usual hypothetical case of the
+Church being “thrown open”—what kind of sermon _he_ would have given
+them. After favouring them with some heads of that discourse, he
+remarked that he considered the subject of the day’s homily, ill
+chosen; which was the less excusable, he added, when there were so many
+subjects “going about.”
+
+“True again,” said Uncle Pumblechook. “You’ve hit it, sir! Plenty of
+subjects going about, for them that know how to put salt upon their
+tails. That’s what’s wanted. A man needn’t go far to find a subject, if
+he’s ready with his salt-box.” Mr. Pumblechook added, after a short
+interval of reflection, “Look at Pork alone. There’s a subject! If you
+want a subject, look at Pork!”
+
+“True, sir. Many a moral for the young,” returned Mr. Wopsle,—and I
+knew he was going to lug me in, before he said it; “might be deduced
+from that text.”
+
+(“You listen to this,” said my sister to me, in a severe parenthesis.)
+
+Joe gave me some more gravy.
+
+“Swine,” pursued Mr. Wopsle, in his deepest voice, and pointing his
+fork at my blushes, as if he were mentioning my Christian name,—“swine
+were the companions of the prodigal. The gluttony of Swine is put
+before us, as an example to the young.” (I thought this pretty well in
+him who had been praising up the pork for being so plump and juicy.)
+“What is detestable in a pig is more detestable in a boy.”
+
+“Or girl,” suggested Mr. Hubble.
+
+“Of course, or girl, Mr. Hubble,” assented Mr. Wopsle, rather
+irritably, “but there is no girl present.”
+
+“Besides,” said Mr. Pumblechook, turning sharp on me, “think what
+you’ve got to be grateful for. If you’d been born a Squeaker—”
+
+“He _was_, if ever a child was,” said my sister, most emphatically.
+
+Joe gave me some more gravy.
+
+“Well, but I mean a four-footed Squeaker,” said Mr. Pumblechook. “If
+you had been born such, would you have been here now? Not you—”
+
+“Unless in that form,” said Mr. Wopsle, nodding towards the dish.
+
+“But I don’t mean in that form, sir,” returned Mr. Pumblechook, who had
+an objection to being interrupted; “I mean, enjoying himself with his
+elders and betters, and improving himself with their conversation, and
+rolling in the lap of luxury. Would he have been doing that? No, he
+wouldn’t. And what would have been your destination?” turning on me
+again. “You would have been disposed of for so many shillings according
+to the market price of the article, and Dunstable the butcher would
+have come up to you as you lay in your straw, and he would have whipped
+you under his left arm, and with his right he would have tucked up his
+frock to get a penknife from out of his waistcoat-pocket, and he would
+have shed your blood and had your life. No bringing up by hand then.
+Not a bit of it!”
+
+Joe offered me more gravy, which I was afraid to take.
+
+“He was a world of trouble to you, ma’am,” said Mrs. Hubble,
+commiserating my sister.
+
+“Trouble?” echoed my sister; “trouble?” and then entered on a fearful
+catalogue of all the illnesses I had been guilty of, and all the acts
+of sleeplessness I had committed, and all the high places I had tumbled
+from, and all the low places I had tumbled into, and all the injuries I
+had done myself, and all the times she had wished me in my grave, and I
+had contumaciously refused to go there.
+
+I think the Romans must have aggravated one another very much, with
+their noses. Perhaps, they became the restless people they were, in
+consequence. Anyhow, Mr. Wopsle’s Roman nose so aggravated me, during
+the recital of my misdemeanours, that I should have liked to pull it
+until he howled. But, all I had endured up to this time was nothing in
+comparison with the awful feelings that took possession of me when the
+pause was broken which ensued upon my sister’s recital, and in which
+pause everybody had looked at me (as I felt painfully conscious) with
+indignation and abhorrence.
+
+“Yet,” said Mr. Pumblechook, leading the company gently back to the
+theme from which they had strayed, “Pork—regarded as biled—is rich,
+too; ain’t it?”
+
+“Have a little brandy, uncle,” said my sister.
+
+O Heavens, it had come at last! He would find it was weak, he would say
+it was weak, and I was lost! I held tight to the leg of the table under
+the cloth, with both hands, and awaited my fate.
+
+My sister went for the stone bottle, came back with the stone bottle,
+and poured his brandy out: no one else taking any. The wretched man
+trifled with his glass,—took it up, looked at it through the light, put
+it down,—prolonged my misery. All this time Mrs. Joe and Joe were
+briskly clearing the table for the pie and pudding.
+
+I couldn’t keep my eyes off him. Always holding tight by the leg of the
+table with my hands and feet, I saw the miserable creature finger his
+glass playfully, take it up, smile, throw his head back, and drink the
+brandy off. Instantly afterwards, the company were seized with
+unspeakable consternation, owing to his springing to his feet, turning
+round several times in an appalling spasmodic whooping-cough dance, and
+rushing out at the door; he then became visible through the window,
+violently plunging and expectorating, making the most hideous faces,
+and apparently out of his mind.
+
+I held on tight, while Mrs. Joe and Joe ran to him. I didn’t know how I
+had done it, but I had no doubt I had murdered him somehow. In my
+dreadful situation, it was a relief when he was brought back, and
+surveying the company all round as if _they_ had disagreed with him,
+sank down into his chair with the one significant gasp, “Tar!”
+
+I had filled up the bottle from the tar-water jug. I knew he would be
+worse by and by. I moved the table, like a Medium of the present day,
+by the vigor of my unseen hold upon it.
+
+“Tar!” cried my sister, in amazement. “Why, how ever could Tar come
+there?”
+
+But, Uncle Pumblechook, who was omnipotent in that kitchen, wouldn’t
+hear the word, wouldn’t hear of the subject, imperiously waved it all
+away with his hand, and asked for hot gin and water. My sister, who had
+begun to be alarmingly meditative, had to employ herself actively in
+getting the gin, the hot water, the sugar, and the lemon-peel, and
+mixing them. For the time being at least, I was saved. I still held on
+to the leg of the table, but clutched it now with the fervor of
+gratitude.
+
+By degrees, I became calm enough to release my grasp and partake of
+pudding. Mr. Pumblechook partook of pudding. All partook of pudding.
+The course terminated, and Mr. Pumblechook had begun to beam under the
+genial influence of gin and water. I began to think I should get over
+the day, when my sister said to Joe, “Clean plates,—cold.”
+
+I clutched the leg of the table again immediately, and pressed it to my
+bosom as if it had been the companion of my youth and friend of my
+soul. I foresaw what was coming, and I felt that this time I really was
+gone.
+
+“You must taste,” said my sister, addressing the guests with her best
+grace—“you must taste, to finish with, such a delightful and delicious
+present of Uncle Pumblechook’s!”
+
+Must they! Let them not hope to taste it!
+
+“You must know,” said my sister, rising, “it’s a pie; a savory pork
+pie.”
+
+The company murmured their compliments. Uncle Pumblechook, sensible of
+having deserved well of his fellow-creatures, said,—quite vivaciously,
+all things considered,—“Well, Mrs. Joe, we’ll do our best endeavours;
+let us have a cut at this same pie.”
+
+My sister went out to get it. I heard her steps proceed to the pantry.
+I saw Mr. Pumblechook balance his knife. I saw reawakening appetite in
+the Roman nostrils of Mr. Wopsle. I heard Mr. Hubble remark that “a bit
+of savory pork pie would lay atop of anything you could mention, and do
+no harm,” and I heard Joe say, “You shall have some, Pip.” I have never
+been absolutely certain whether I uttered a shrill yell of terror,
+merely in spirit, or in the bodily hearing of the company. I felt that
+I could bear no more, and that I must run away. I released the leg of
+the table, and ran for my life.
+
+But I ran no farther than the house door, for there I ran head-foremost
+into a party of soldiers with their muskets, one of whom held out a
+pair of handcuffs to me, saying, “Here you are, look sharp, come on!”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V.
+
+
+The apparition of a file of soldiers ringing down the but-ends of their
+loaded muskets on our door-step, caused the dinner-party to rise from
+table in confusion, and caused Mrs. Joe re-entering the kitchen
+empty-handed, to stop short and stare, in her wondering lament of
+“Gracious goodness gracious me, what’s gone—with the—pie!”
+
+The sergeant and I were in the kitchen when Mrs. Joe stood staring; at
+which crisis I partially recovered the use of my senses. It was the
+sergeant who had spoken to me, and he was now looking round at the
+company, with his handcuffs invitingly extended towards them in his
+right hand, and his left on my shoulder.
+
+“Excuse me, ladies and gentleman,” said the sergeant, “but as I have
+mentioned at the door to this smart young shaver,” (which he hadn’t),
+“I am on a chase in the name of the king, and I want the blacksmith.”
+
+“And pray what might you want with _him_?” retorted my sister, quick to
+resent his being wanted at all.
+
+“Missis,” returned the gallant sergeant, “speaking for myself, I should
+reply, the honour and pleasure of his fine wife’s acquaintance;
+speaking for the king, I answer, a little job done.”
+
+This was received as rather neat in the sergeant; insomuch that Mr.
+Pumblechook cried audibly, “Good again!”
+
+“You see, blacksmith,” said the sergeant, who had by this time picked
+out Joe with his eye, “we have had an accident with these, and I find
+the lock of one of ’em goes wrong, and the coupling don’t act pretty.
+As they are wanted for immediate service, will you throw your eye over
+them?”
+
+Joe threw his eye over them, and pronounced that the job would
+necessitate the lighting of his forge fire, and would take nearer two
+hours than one. “Will it? Then will you set about it at once,
+blacksmith?” said the off-hand sergeant, “as it’s on his Majesty’s
+service. And if my men can bear a hand anywhere, they’ll make
+themselves useful.” With that, he called to his men, who came trooping
+into the kitchen one after another, and piled their arms in a corner.
+And then they stood about, as soldiers do; now, with their hands
+loosely clasped before them; now, resting a knee or a shoulder; now,
+easing a belt or a pouch; now, opening the door to spit stiffly over
+their high stocks, out into the yard.
+
+All these things I saw without then knowing that I saw them, for I was
+in an agony of apprehension. But beginning to perceive that the
+handcuffs were not for me, and that the military had so far got the
+better of the pie as to put it in the background, I collected a little
+more of my scattered wits.
+
+“Would you give me the time?” said the sergeant, addressing himself to
+Mr. Pumblechook, as to a man whose appreciative powers justified the
+inference that he was equal to the time.
+
+“It’s just gone half past two.”
+
+“That’s not so bad,” said the sergeant, reflecting; “even if I was
+forced to halt here nigh two hours, that’ll do. How far might you call
+yourselves from the marshes, hereabouts? Not above a mile, I reckon?”
+
+“Just a mile,” said Mrs. Joe.
+
+“That’ll do. We begin to close in upon ’em about dusk. A little before
+dusk, my orders are. That’ll do.”
+
+“Convicts, sergeant?” asked Mr. Wopsle, in a matter-of-course way.
+
+“Ay!” returned the sergeant, “two. They’re pretty well known to be out
+on the marshes still, and they won’t try to get clear of ’em before
+dusk. Anybody here seen anything of any such game?”
+
+Everybody, myself excepted, said no, with confidence. Nobody thought of
+me.
+
+“Well!” said the sergeant, “they’ll find themselves trapped in a
+circle, I expect, sooner than they count on. Now, blacksmith! If you’re
+ready, his Majesty the King is.”
+
+Joe had got his coat and waistcoat and cravat off, and his leather
+apron on, and passed into the forge. One of the soldiers opened its
+wooden windows, another lighted the fire, another turned to at the
+bellows, the rest stood round the blaze, which was soon roaring. Then
+Joe began to hammer and clink, hammer and clink, and we all looked on.
+
+The interest of the impending pursuit not only absorbed the general
+attention, but even made my sister liberal. She drew a pitcher of beer
+from the cask for the soldiers, and invited the sergeant to take a
+glass of brandy. But Mr. Pumblechook said, sharply, “Give him wine,
+Mum. I’ll engage there’s no tar in that:” so, the sergeant thanked him
+and said that as he preferred his drink without tar, he would take
+wine, if it was equally convenient. When it was given him, he drank his
+Majesty’s health and compliments of the season, and took it all at a
+mouthful and smacked his lips.
+
+“Good stuff, eh, sergeant?” said Mr. Pumblechook.
+
+“I’ll tell you something,” returned the sergeant; “I suspect that
+stuff’s of _your_ providing.”
+
+Mr. Pumblechook, with a fat sort of laugh, said, “Ay, ay? Why?”
+
+“Because,” returned the sergeant, clapping him on the shoulder, “you’re
+a man that knows what’s what.”
+
+“D’ye think so?” said Mr. Pumblechook, with his former laugh. “Have
+another glass!”
+
+“With you. Hob and nob,” returned the sergeant. “The top of mine to the
+foot of yours,—the foot of yours to the top of mine,—Ring once, ring
+twice,—the best tune on the Musical Glasses! Your health. May you live
+a thousand years, and never be a worse judge of the right sort than you
+are at the present moment of your life!”
+
+The sergeant tossed off his glass again and seemed quite ready for
+another glass. I noticed that Mr. Pumblechook in his hospitality
+appeared to forget that he had made a present of the wine, but took the
+bottle from Mrs. Joe and had all the credit of handing it about in a
+gush of joviality. Even I got some. And he was so very free of the wine
+that he even called for the other bottle, and handed that about with
+the same liberality, when the first was gone.
+
+As I watched them while they all stood clustering about the forge,
+enjoying themselves so much, I thought what terrible good sauce for a
+dinner my fugitive friend on the marshes was. They had not enjoyed
+themselves a quarter so much, before the entertainment was brightened
+with the excitement he furnished. And now, when they were all in lively
+anticipation of “the two villains” being taken, and when the bellows
+seemed to roar for the fugitives, the fire to flare for them, the smoke
+to hurry away in pursuit of them, Joe to hammer and clink for them, and
+all the murky shadows on the wall to shake at them in menace as the
+blaze rose and sank, and the red-hot sparks dropped and died, the pale
+afternoon outside almost seemed in my pitying young fancy to have
+turned pale on their account, poor wretches.
+
+At last, Joe’s job was done, and the ringing and roaring stopped. As
+Joe got on his coat, he mustered courage to propose that some of us
+should go down with the soldiers and see what came of the hunt. Mr.
+Pumblechook and Mr. Hubble declined, on the plea of a pipe and ladies’
+society; but Mr. Wopsle said he would go, if Joe would. Joe said he was
+agreeable, and would take me, if Mrs. Joe approved. We never should
+have got leave to go, I am sure, but for Mrs. Joe’s curiosity to know
+all about it and how it ended. As it was, she merely stipulated, “If
+you bring the boy back with his head blown to bits by a musket, don’t
+look to me to put it together again.”
+
+The sergeant took a polite leave of the ladies, and parted from Mr.
+Pumblechook as from a comrade; though I doubt if he were quite as fully
+sensible of that gentleman’s merits under arid conditions, as when
+something moist was going. His men resumed their muskets and fell in.
+Mr. Wopsle, Joe, and I, received strict charge to keep in the rear, and
+to speak no word after we reached the marshes. When we were all out in
+the raw air and were steadily moving towards our business, I
+treasonably whispered to Joe, “I hope, Joe, we shan’t find them.” and
+Joe whispered to me, “I’d give a shilling if they had cut and run,
+Pip.”
+
+We were joined by no stragglers from the village, for the weather was
+cold and threatening, the way dreary, the footing bad, darkness coming
+on, and the people had good fires in-doors and were keeping the day. A
+few faces hurried to glowing windows and looked after us, but none came
+out. We passed the finger-post, and held straight on to the churchyard.
+There we were stopped a few minutes by a signal from the sergeant’s
+hand, while two or three of his men dispersed themselves among the
+graves, and also examined the porch. They came in again without finding
+anything, and then we struck out on the open marshes, through the gate
+at the side of the churchyard. A bitter sleet came rattling against us
+here on the east wind, and Joe took me on his back.
+
+Now that we were out upon the dismal wilderness where they little
+thought I had been within eight or nine hours and had seen both men
+hiding, I considered for the first time, with great dread, if we should
+come upon them, would my particular convict suppose that it was I who
+had brought the soldiers there? He had asked me if I was a deceiving
+imp, and he had said I should be a fierce young hound if I joined the
+hunt against him. Would he believe that I was both imp and hound in
+treacherous earnest, and had betrayed him?
+
+It was of no use asking myself this question now. There I was, on Joe’s
+back, and there was Joe beneath me, charging at the ditches like a
+hunter, and stimulating Mr. Wopsle not to tumble on his Roman nose, and
+to keep up with us. The soldiers were in front of us, extending into a
+pretty wide line with an interval between man and man. We were taking
+the course I had begun with, and from which I had diverged in the mist.
+Either the mist was not out again yet, or the wind had dispelled it.
+Under the low red glare of sunset, the beacon, and the gibbet, and the
+mound of the Battery, and the opposite shore of the river, were plain,
+though all of a watery lead colour.
+
+With my heart thumping like a blacksmith at Joe’s broad shoulder, I
+looked all about for any sign of the convicts. I could see none, I
+could hear none. Mr. Wopsle had greatly alarmed me more than once, by
+his blowing and hard breathing; but I knew the sounds by this time, and
+could dissociate them from the object of pursuit. I got a dreadful
+start, when I thought I heard the file still going; but it was only a
+sheep-bell. The sheep stopped in their eating and looked timidly at us;
+and the cattle, their heads turned from the wind and sleet, stared
+angrily as if they held us responsible for both annoyances; but, except
+these things, and the shudder of the dying day in every blade of grass,
+there was no break in the bleak stillness of the marshes.
+
+The soldiers were moving on in the direction of the old Battery, and we
+were moving on a little way behind them, when, all of a sudden, we all
+stopped. For there had reached us on the wings of the wind and rain, a
+long shout. It was repeated. It was at a distance towards the east, but
+it was long and loud. Nay, there seemed to be two or more shouts raised
+together,—if one might judge from a confusion in the sound.
+
+To this effect the sergeant and the nearest men were speaking under
+their breath, when Joe and I came up. After another moment’s listening,
+Joe (who was a good judge) agreed, and Mr. Wopsle (who was a bad judge)
+agreed. The sergeant, a decisive man, ordered that the sound should not
+be answered, but that the course should be changed, and that his men
+should make towards it “at the double.” So we slanted to the right
+(where the East was), and Joe pounded away so wonderfully, that I had
+to hold on tight to keep my seat.
+
+It was a run indeed now, and what Joe called, in the only two words he
+spoke all the time, “a Winder.” Down banks and up banks, and over
+gates, and splashing into dikes, and breaking among coarse rushes: no
+man cared where he went. As we came nearer to the shouting, it became
+more and more apparent that it was made by more than one voice.
+Sometimes, it seemed to stop altogether, and then the soldiers stopped.
+When it broke out again, the soldiers made for it at a greater rate
+than ever, and we after them. After a while, we had so run it down,
+that we could hear one voice calling “Murder!” and another voice,
+“Convicts! Runaways! Guard! This way for the runaway convicts!” Then
+both voices would seem to be stifled in a struggle, and then would
+break out again. And when it had come to this, the soldiers ran like
+deer, and Joe too.
+
+The sergeant ran in first, when we had run the noise quite down, and
+two of his men ran in close upon him. Their pieces were cocked and
+levelled when we all ran in.
+
+“Here are both men!” panted the sergeant, struggling at the bottom of a
+ditch. “Surrender, you two! and confound you for two wild beasts! Come
+asunder!”
+
+Water was splashing, and mud was flying, and oaths were being sworn,
+and blows were being struck, when some more men went down into the
+ditch to help the sergeant, and dragged out, separately, my convict and
+the other one. Both were bleeding and panting and execrating and
+struggling; but of course I knew them both directly.
+
+“Mind!” said my convict, wiping blood from his face with his ragged
+sleeves, and shaking torn hair from his fingers: “_I_ took him! _I_
+give him up to you! Mind that!”
+
+“It’s not much to be particular about,” said the sergeant; “it’ll do
+you small good, my man, being in the same plight yourself. Handcuffs
+there!”
+
+“I don’t expect it to do me any good. I don’t want it to do me more
+good than it does now,” said my convict, with a greedy laugh. “I took
+him. He knows it. That’s enough for me.”
+
+The other convict was livid to look at, and, in addition to the old
+bruised left side of his face, seemed to be bruised and torn all over.
+He could not so much as get his breath to speak, until they were both
+separately handcuffed, but leaned upon a soldier to keep himself from
+falling.
+
+“Take notice, guard,—he tried to murder me,” were his first words.
+
+“Tried to murder him?” said my convict, disdainfully. “Try, and not do
+it? I took him, and giv’ him up; that’s what I done. I not only
+prevented him getting off the marshes, but I dragged him here,—dragged
+him this far on his way back. He’s a gentleman, if you please, this
+villain. Now, the Hulks has got its gentleman again, through me. Murder
+him? Worth my while, too, to murder him, when I could do worse and drag
+him back!”
+
+The other one still gasped, “He tried—he tried-to—murder me. Bear—bear
+witness.”
+
+“Lookee here!” said my convict to the sergeant. “Single-handed I got
+clear of the prison-ship; I made a dash and I done it. I could ha’ got
+clear of these death-cold flats likewise—look at my leg: you won’t find
+much iron on it—if I hadn’t made the discovery that _he_ was here. Let
+_him_ go free? Let _him_ profit by the means as I found out? Let _him_
+make a tool of me afresh and again? Once more? No, no, no. If I had
+died at the bottom there,” and he made an emphatic swing at the ditch
+with his manacled hands, “I’d have held to him with that grip, that you
+should have been safe to find him in my hold.”
+
+The other fugitive, who was evidently in extreme horror of his
+companion, repeated, “He tried to murder me. I should have been a dead
+man if you had not come up.”
+
+“He lies!” said my convict, with fierce energy. “He’s a liar born, and
+he’ll die a liar. Look at his face; ain’t it written there? Let him
+turn those eyes of his on me. I defy him to do it.”
+
+The other, with an effort at a scornful smile, which could not,
+however, collect the nervous working of his mouth into any set
+expression, looked at the soldiers, and looked about at the marshes and
+at the sky, but certainly did not look at the speaker.
+
+“Do you see him?” pursued my convict. “Do you see what a villain he is?
+Do you see those grovelling and wandering eyes? That’s how he looked
+when we were tried together. He never looked at me.”
+
+The other, always working and working his dry lips and turning his eyes
+restlessly about him far and near, did at last turn them for a moment
+on the speaker, with the words, “You are not much to look at,” and with
+a half-taunting glance at the bound hands. At that point, my convict
+became so frantically exasperated, that he would have rushed upon him
+but for the interposition of the soldiers. “Didn’t I tell you,” said
+the other convict then, “that he would murder me, if he could?” And any
+one could see that he shook with fear, and that there broke out upon
+his lips curious white flakes, like thin snow.
+
+“Enough of this parley,” said the sergeant. “Light those torches.”
+
+As one of the soldiers, who carried a basket in lieu of a gun, went
+down on his knee to open it, my convict looked round him for the first
+time, and saw me. I had alighted from Joe’s back on the brink of the
+ditch when we came up, and had not moved since. I looked at him eagerly
+when he looked at me, and slightly moved my hands and shook my head. I
+had been waiting for him to see me that I might try to assure him of my
+innocence. It was not at all expressed to me that he even comprehended
+my intention, for he gave me a look that I did not understand, and it
+all passed in a moment. But if he had looked at me for an hour or for a
+day, I could not have remembered his face ever afterwards, as having
+been more attentive.
+
+The soldier with the basket soon got a light, and lighted three or four
+torches, and took one himself and distributed the others. It had been
+almost dark before, but now it seemed quite dark, and soon afterwards
+very dark. Before we departed from that spot, four soldiers standing in
+a ring, fired twice into the air. Presently we saw other torches
+kindled at some distance behind us, and others on the marshes on the
+opposite bank of the river. “All right,” said the sergeant. “March.”
+
+We had not gone far when three cannon were fired ahead of us with a
+sound that seemed to burst something inside my ear. “You are expected
+on board,” said the sergeant to my convict; “they know you are coming.
+Don’t straggle, my man. Close up here.”
+
+The two were kept apart, and each walked surrounded by a separate
+guard. I had hold of Joe’s hand now, and Joe carried one of the
+torches. Mr. Wopsle had been for going back, but Joe was resolved to
+see it out, so we went on with the party. There was a reasonably good
+path now, mostly on the edge of the river, with a divergence here and
+there where a dike came, with a miniature windmill on it and a muddy
+sluice-gate. When I looked round, I could see the other lights coming
+in after us. The torches we carried dropped great blotches of fire upon
+the track, and I could see those, too, lying smoking and flaring. I
+could see nothing else but black darkness. Our lights warmed the air
+about us with their pitchy blaze, and the two prisoners seemed rather
+to like that, as they limped along in the midst of the muskets. We
+could not go fast, because of their lameness; and they were so spent,
+that two or three times we had to halt while they rested.
+
+After an hour or so of this travelling, we came to a rough wooden hut
+and a landing-place. There was a guard in the hut, and they challenged,
+and the sergeant answered. Then, we went into the hut, where there was
+a smell of tobacco and whitewash, and a bright fire, and a lamp, and a
+stand of muskets, and a drum, and a low wooden bedstead, like an
+overgrown mangle without the machinery, capable of holding about a
+dozen soldiers all at once. Three or four soldiers who lay upon it in
+their great-coats were not much interested in us, but just lifted their
+heads and took a sleepy stare, and then lay down again. The sergeant
+made some kind of report, and some entry in a book, and then the
+convict whom I call the other convict was drafted off with his guard,
+to go on board first.
+
+My convict never looked at me, except that once. While we stood in the
+hut, he stood before the fire looking thoughtfully at it, or putting up
+his feet by turns upon the hob, and looking thoughtfully at them as if
+he pitied them for their recent adventures. Suddenly, he turned to the
+sergeant, and remarked,—
+
+“I wish to say something respecting this escape. It may prevent some
+persons laying under suspicion alonger me.”
+
+“You can say what you like,” returned the sergeant, standing coolly
+looking at him with his arms folded, “but you have no call to say it
+here. You’ll have opportunity enough to say about it, and hear about
+it, before it’s done with, you know.”
+
+“I know, but this is another pint, a separate matter. A man can’t
+starve; at least _I_ can’t. I took some wittles, up at the willage over
+yonder,—where the church stands a’most out on the marshes.”
+
+“You mean stole,” said the sergeant.
+
+“And I’ll tell you where from. From the blacksmith’s.”
+
+“Halloa!” said the sergeant, staring at Joe.
+
+“Halloa, Pip!” said Joe, staring at me.
+
+“It was some broken wittles—that’s what it was—and a dram of liquor,
+and a pie.”
+
+“Have you happened to miss such an article as a pie, blacksmith?” asked
+the sergeant, confidentially.
+
+“My wife did, at the very moment when you came in. Don’t you know,
+Pip?”
+
+“So,” said my convict, turning his eyes on Joe in a moody manner, and
+without the least glance at me,—“so you’re the blacksmith, are you?
+Than I’m sorry to say, I’ve eat your pie.”
+
+“God knows you’re welcome to it,—so far as it was ever mine,” returned
+Joe, with a saving remembrance of Mrs. Joe. “We don’t know what you
+have done, but we wouldn’t have you starved to death for it, poor
+miserable fellow-creatur.—Would us, Pip?”
+
+The something that I had noticed before, clicked in the man’s throat
+again, and he turned his back. The boat had returned, and his guard
+were ready, so we followed him to the landing-place made of rough
+stakes and stones, and saw him put into the boat, which was rowed by a
+crew of convicts like himself. No one seemed surprised to see him, or
+interested in seeing him, or glad to see him, or sorry to see him, or
+spoke a word, except that somebody in the boat growled as if to dogs,
+“Give way, you!” which was the signal for the dip of the oars. By the
+light of the torches, we saw the black Hulk lying out a little way from
+the mud of the shore, like a wicked Noah’s ark. Cribbed and barred and
+moored by massive rusty chains, the prison-ship seemed in my young eyes
+to be ironed like the prisoners. We saw the boat go alongside, and we
+saw him taken up the side and disappear. Then, the ends of the torches
+were flung hissing into the water, and went out, as if it were all over
+with him.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI.
+
+
+My state of mind regarding the pilfering from which I had been so
+unexpectedly exonerated did not impel me to frank disclosure; but I
+hope it had some dregs of good at the bottom of it.
+
+I do not recall that I felt any tenderness of conscience in reference
+to Mrs. Joe, when the fear of being found out was lifted off me. But I
+loved Joe,—perhaps for no better reason in those early days than
+because the dear fellow let me love him,—and, as to him, my inner self
+was not so easily composed. It was much upon my mind (particularly when
+I first saw him looking about for his file) that I ought to tell Joe
+the whole truth. Yet I did not, and for the reason that I mistrusted
+that if I did, he would think me worse than I was. The fear of losing
+Joe’s confidence, and of thenceforth sitting in the chimney corner at
+night staring drearily at my forever lost companion and friend, tied up
+my tongue. I morbidly represented to myself that if Joe knew it, I
+never afterwards could see him at the fireside feeling his fair
+whisker, without thinking that he was meditating on it. That, if Joe
+knew it, I never afterwards could see him glance, however casually, at
+yesterday’s meat or pudding when it came on to-day’s table, without
+thinking that he was debating whether I had been in the pantry. That,
+if Joe knew it, and at any subsequent period of our joint domestic life
+remarked that his beer was flat or thick, the conviction that he
+suspected tar in it, would bring a rush of blood to my face. In a word,
+I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too
+cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong. I had had no
+intercourse with the world at that time, and I imitated none of its
+many inhabitants who act in this manner. Quite an untaught genius, I
+made the discovery of the line of action for myself.
+
+As I was sleepy before we were far away from the prison-ship, Joe took
+me on his back again and carried me home. He must have had a tiresome
+journey of it, for Mr. Wopsle, being knocked up, was in such a very bad
+temper that if the Church had been thrown open, he would probably have
+excommunicated the whole expedition, beginning with Joe and myself. In
+his lay capacity, he persisted in sitting down in the damp to such an
+insane extent, that when his coat was taken off to be dried at the
+kitchen fire, the circumstantial evidence on his trousers would have
+hanged him, if it had been a capital offence.
+
+By that time, I was staggering on the kitchen floor like a little
+drunkard, through having been newly set upon my feet, and through
+having been fast asleep, and through waking in the heat and lights and
+noise of tongues. As I came to myself (with the aid of a heavy thump
+between the shoulders, and the restorative exclamation “Yah! Was there
+ever such a boy as this!” from my sister,) I found Joe telling them
+about the convict’s confession, and all the visitors suggesting
+different ways by which he had got into the pantry. Mr. Pumblechook
+made out, after carefully surveying the premises, that he had first got
+upon the roof of the forge, and had then got upon the roof of the
+house, and had then let himself down the kitchen chimney by a rope made
+of his bedding cut into strips; and as Mr. Pumblechook was very
+positive and drove his own chaise-cart—over everybody—it was agreed
+that it must be so. Mr. Wopsle, indeed, wildly cried out, “No!” with
+the feeble malice of a tired man; but, as he had no theory, and no coat
+on, he was unanimously set at naught,—not to mention his smoking hard
+behind, as he stood with his back to the kitchen fire to draw the damp
+out: which was not calculated to inspire confidence.
+
+This was all I heard that night before my sister clutched me, as a
+slumberous offence to the company’s eyesight, and assisted me up to bed
+with such a strong hand that I seemed to have fifty boots on, and to be
+dangling them all against the edges of the stairs. My state of mind, as
+I have described it, began before I was up in the morning, and lasted
+long after the subject had died out, and had ceased to be mentioned
+saving on exceptional occasions.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII.
+
+
+At the time when I stood in the churchyard reading the family
+tombstones, I had just enough learning to be able to spell them out. My
+construction even of their simple meaning was not very correct, for I
+read “wife of the Above” as a complimentary reference to my father’s
+exaltation to a better world; and if any one of my deceased relations
+had been referred to as “Below,” I have no doubt I should have formed
+the worst opinions of that member of the family. Neither were my
+notions of the theological positions to which my Catechism bound me, at
+all accurate; for, I have a lively remembrance that I supposed my
+declaration that I was to “walk in the same all the days of my life,”
+laid me under an obligation always to go through the village from our
+house in one particular direction, and never to vary it by turning down
+by the wheelwright’s or up by the mill.
+
+When I was old enough, I was to be apprenticed to Joe, and until I
+could assume that dignity I was not to be what Mrs. Joe called
+“Pompeyed,” or (as I render it) pampered. Therefore, I was not only
+odd-boy about the forge, but if any neighbour happened to want an extra
+boy to frighten birds, or pick up stones, or do any such job, I was
+favoured with the employment. In order, however, that our superior
+position might not be compromised thereby, a money-box was kept on the
+kitchen mantel-shelf, into which it was publicly made known that all my
+earnings were dropped. I have an impression that they were to be
+contributed eventually towards the liquidation of the National Debt,
+but I know I had no hope of any personal participation in the treasure.
+
+Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt kept an evening school in the village; that is
+to say, she was a ridiculous old woman of limited means and unlimited
+infirmity, who used to go to sleep from six to seven every evening, in
+the society of youth who paid two pence per week each, for the
+improving opportunity of seeing her do it. She rented a small cottage,
+and Mr. Wopsle had the room upstairs, where we students used to
+overhear him reading aloud in a most dignified and terrific manner, and
+occasionally bumping on the ceiling. There was a fiction that Mr.
+Wopsle “examined” the scholars once a quarter. What he did on those
+occasions was to turn up his cuffs, stick up his hair, and give us Mark
+Antony’s oration over the body of Caesar. This was always followed by
+Collins’s Ode on the Passions, wherein I particularly venerated Mr.
+Wopsle as Revenge throwing his blood-stained sword in thunder down, and
+taking the War-denouncing trumpet with a withering look. It was not
+with me then, as it was in later life, when I fell into the society of
+the Passions, and compared them with Collins and Wopsle, rather to the
+disadvantage of both gentlemen.
+
+Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt, besides keeping this Educational Institution,
+kept in the same room—a little general shop. She had no idea what stock
+she had, or what the price of anything in it was; but there was a
+little greasy memorandum-book kept in a drawer, which served as a
+Catalogue of Prices, and by this oracle Biddy arranged all the shop
+transactions. Biddy was Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt’s granddaughter; I
+confess myself quite unequal to the working out of the problem, what
+relation she was to Mr. Wopsle. She was an orphan like myself; like me,
+too, had been brought up by hand. She was most noticeable, I thought,
+in respect of her extremities; for, her hair always wanted brushing,
+her hands always wanted washing, and her shoes always wanted mending
+and pulling up at heel. This description must be received with a
+week-day limitation. On Sundays, she went to church elaborated.
+
+Much of my unassisted self, and more by the help of Biddy than of Mr.
+Wopsle’s great-aunt, I struggled through the alphabet as if it had been
+a bramble-bush; getting considerably worried and scratched by every
+letter. After that I fell among those thieves, the nine figures, who
+seemed every evening to do something new to disguise themselves and
+baffle recognition. But, at last I began, in a purblind groping way, to
+read, write, and cipher, on the very smallest scale.
+
+One night I was sitting in the chimney corner with my slate, expending
+great efforts on the production of a letter to Joe. I think it must
+have been a full year after our hunt upon the marshes, for it was a
+long time after, and it was winter and a hard frost. With an alphabet
+on the hearth at my feet for reference, I contrived in an hour or two
+to print and smear this epistle:—
+
+“MI DEER JO i OPE U R KRWITE WELL i OPE i SHAL SON B HABELL 4 2 TEEDGE
+U JO AN THEN WE SHORL B SO GLODD AN WEN i M PRENGTD 2 U JO WOT LARX AN
+BLEVE ME INF XN PIP.”
+
+
+There was no indispensable necessity for my communicating with Joe by
+letter, inasmuch as he sat beside me and we were alone. But I delivered
+this written communication (slate and all) with my own hand, and Joe
+received it as a miracle of erudition.
+
+“I say, Pip, old chap!” cried Joe, opening his blue eyes wide, “what a
+scholar you are! An’t you?”
+
+“I should like to be,” said I, glancing at the slate as he held it;
+with a misgiving that the writing was rather hilly.
+
+“Why, here’s a J,” said Joe, “and a O equal to anythink! Here’s a J and
+a O, Pip, and a J-O, Joe.”
+
+[Illustration]
+
+I had never heard Joe read aloud to any greater extent than this
+monosyllable, and I had observed at church last Sunday, when I
+accidentally held our Prayer-Book upside down, that it seemed to suit
+his convenience quite as well as if it had been all right. Wishing to
+embrace the present occasion of finding out whether in teaching Joe, I
+should have to begin quite at the beginning, I said, “Ah! But read the
+rest, Jo.”
+
+“The rest, eh, Pip?” said Joe, looking at it with a slow, searching
+eye, “One, two, three. Why, here’s three Js, and three Os, and three
+J-O, Joes in it, Pip!”
+
+I leaned over Joe, and, with the aid of my forefinger read him the
+whole letter.
+
+“Astonishing!” said Joe, when I had finished. “You ARE a scholar.”
+
+“How do you spell Gargery, Joe?” I asked him, with a modest patronage.
+
+“I don’t spell it at all,” said Joe.
+
+“But supposing you did?”
+
+“It _can’t_ be supposed,” said Joe. “Tho’ I’m uncommon fond of reading,
+too.”
+
+“Are you, Joe?”
+
+“On-common. Give me,” said Joe, “a good book, or a good newspaper, and
+sit me down afore a good fire, and I ask no better. Lord!” he
+continued, after rubbing his knees a little, “when you _do_ come to a J
+and a O, and says you, ‘Here, at last, is a J-O, Joe,’ how interesting
+reading is!”
+
+I derived from this, that Joe’s education, like Steam, was yet in its
+infancy. Pursuing the subject, I inquired,—
+
+“Didn’t you ever go to school, Joe, when you were as little as me?”
+
+“No, Pip.”
+
+“Why didn’t you ever go to school, Joe, when you were as little as me?”
+
+“Well, Pip,” said Joe, taking up the poker, and settling himself to his
+usual occupation when he was thoughtful, of slowly raking the fire
+between the lower bars; “I’ll tell you. My father, Pip, he were given
+to drink, and when he were overtook with drink, he hammered away at my
+mother, most onmerciful. It were a’most the only hammering he did,
+indeed, ’xcepting at myself. And he hammered at me with a wigor only to
+be equalled by the wigor with which he didn’t hammer at his
+anwil.—You’re a listening and understanding, Pip?”
+
+“Yes, Joe.”
+
+“Consequence, my mother and me we ran away from my father several
+times; and then my mother she’d go out to work, and she’d say, “Joe,”
+she’d say, “now, please God, you shall have some schooling, child,” and
+she’d put me to school. But my father were that good in his hart that
+he couldn’t abear to be without us. So, he’d come with a most
+tremenjous crowd and make such a row at the doors of the houses where
+we was, that they used to be obligated to have no more to do with us
+and to give us up to him. And then he took us home and hammered us.
+Which, you see, Pip,” said Joe, pausing in his meditative raking of the
+fire, and looking at me, “were a drawback on my learning.”
+
+“Certainly, poor Joe!”
+
+“Though mind you, Pip,” said Joe, with a judicial touch or two of the
+poker on the top bar, “rendering unto all their doo, and maintaining
+equal justice betwixt man and man, my father were that good in his
+hart, don’t you see?”
+
+I didn’t see; but I didn’t say so.
+
+“Well!” Joe pursued, “somebody must keep the pot a-biling, Pip, or the
+pot won’t bile, don’t you know?”
+
+I saw that, and said so.
+
+“Consequence, my father didn’t make objections to my going to work; so
+I went to work at my present calling, which were his too, if he would
+have followed it, and I worked tolerable hard, I assure _you_, Pip. In
+time I were able to keep him, and I kep him till he went off in a
+purple leptic fit. And it were my intentions to have had put upon his
+tombstone that, Whatsume’er the failings on his part, Remember reader
+he were that good in his heart.”
+
+Joe recited this couplet with such manifest pride and careful
+perspicuity, that I asked him if he had made it himself.
+
+“I made it,” said Joe, “my own self. I made it in a moment. It was like
+striking out a horseshoe complete, in a single blow. I never was so
+much surprised in all my life,—couldn’t credit my own ed,—to tell you
+the truth, hardly believed it _were_ my own ed. As I was saying, Pip,
+it were my intentions to have had it cut over him; but poetry costs
+money, cut it how you will, small or large, and it were not done. Not
+to mention bearers, all the money that could be spared were wanted for
+my mother. She were in poor elth, and quite broke. She weren’t long of
+following, poor soul, and her share of peace come round at last.”
+
+Joe’s blue eyes turned a little watery; he rubbed first one of them,
+and then the other, in a most uncongenial and uncomfortable manner,
+with the round knob on the top of the poker.
+
+“It were but lonesome then,” said Joe, “living here alone, and I got
+acquainted with your sister. Now, Pip,”—Joe looked firmly at me as if
+he knew I was not going to agree with him;—“your sister is a fine
+figure of a woman.”
+
+I could not help looking at the fire, in an obvious state of doubt.
+
+“Whatever family opinions, or whatever the world’s opinions, on that
+subject may be, Pip, your sister is,” Joe tapped the top bar with the
+poker after every word following, “a-fine-figure—of—a—woman!”
+
+I could think of nothing better to say than “I am glad you think so,
+Joe.”
+
+“So am I,” returned Joe, catching me up. “_I_ am glad I think so, Pip.
+A little redness or a little matter of Bone, here or there, what does
+it signify to Me?”
+
+I sagaciously observed, if it didn’t signify to him, to whom did it
+signify?
+
+“Certainly!” assented Joe. “That’s it. You’re right, old chap! When I
+got acquainted with your sister, it were the talk how she was bringing
+you up by hand. Very kind of her too, all the folks said, and I said,
+along with all the folks. As to you,” Joe pursued with a countenance
+expressive of seeing something very nasty indeed, “if you could have
+been aware how small and flabby and mean you was, dear me, you’d have
+formed the most contemptible opinion of yourself!”
+
+Not exactly relishing this, I said, “Never mind me, Joe.”
+
+“But I did mind you, Pip,” he returned with tender simplicity. “When I
+offered to your sister to keep company, and to be asked in church at
+such times as she was willing and ready to come to the forge, I said to
+her, ‘And bring the poor little child. God bless the poor little
+child,’ I said to your sister, ‘there’s room for _him_ at the forge!’”
+
+I broke out crying and begging pardon, and hugged Joe round the neck:
+who dropped the poker to hug me, and to say, “Ever the best of friends;
+an’t us, Pip? Don’t cry, old chap!”
+
+When this little interruption was over, Joe resumed:—
+
+“Well, you see, Pip, and here we are! That’s about where it lights;
+here we are! Now, when you take me in hand in my learning, Pip (and I
+tell you beforehand I am awful dull, most awful dull), Mrs. Joe mustn’t
+see too much of what we’re up to. It must be done, as I may say, on the
+sly. And why on the sly? I’ll tell you why, Pip.”
+
+He had taken up the poker again; without which, I doubt if he could
+have proceeded in his demonstration.
+
+“Your sister is given to government.”
+
+“Given to government, Joe?” I was startled, for I had some shadowy idea
+(and I am afraid I must add, hope) that Joe had divorced her in a
+favour of the Lords of the Admiralty, or Treasury.
+
+“Given to government,” said Joe. “Which I meantersay the government of
+you and myself.”
+
+“Oh!”
+
+“And she an’t over partial to having scholars on the premises,” Joe
+continued, “and in partickler would not be over partial to my being a
+scholar, for fear as I might rise. Like a sort of rebel, don’t you
+see?”
+
+I was going to retort with an inquiry, and had got as far as “Why—”
+when Joe stopped me.
+
+“Stay a bit. I know what you’re a-going to say, Pip; stay a bit! I
+don’t deny that your sister comes the Mo-gul over us, now and again. I
+don’t deny that she do throw us back-falls, and that she do drop down
+upon us heavy. At such times as when your sister is on the Ram-page,
+Pip,” Joe sank his voice to a whisper and glanced at the door, “candour
+compels fur to admit that she is a Buster.”
+
+Joe pronounced this word, as if it began with at least twelve capital
+Bs.
+
+“Why don’t I rise? That were your observation when I broke it off,
+Pip?”
+
+“Yes, Joe.”
+
+“Well,” said Joe, passing the poker into his left hand, that he might
+feel his whisker; and I had no hope of him whenever he took to that
+placid occupation; “your sister’s a master-mind. A master-mind.”
+
+“What’s that?” I asked, in some hope of bringing him to a stand. But
+Joe was readier with his definition than I had expected, and completely
+stopped me by arguing circularly, and answering with a fixed look,
+“Her.”
+
+“And I ain’t a master-mind,” Joe resumed, when he had unfixed his look,
+and got back to his whisker. “And last of all, Pip,—and this I want to
+say very serious to you, old chap,—I see so much in my poor mother, of
+a woman drudging and slaving and breaking her honest hart and never
+getting no peace in her mortal days, that I’m dead afeerd of going
+wrong in the way of not doing what’s right by a woman, and I’d fur
+rather of the two go wrong the t’other way, and be a little
+ill-conwenienced myself. I wish it was only me that got put out, Pip; I
+wish there warn’t no Tickler for you, old chap; I wish I could take it
+all on myself; but this is the up-and-down-and-straight on it, Pip, and
+I hope you’ll overlook shortcomings.”
+
+Young as I was, I believe that I dated a new admiration of Joe from
+that night. We were equals afterwards, as we had been before; but,
+afterwards at quiet times when I sat looking at Joe and thinking about
+him, I had a new sensation of feeling conscious that I was looking up
+to Joe in my heart.
+
+“However,” said Joe, rising to replenish the fire; “here’s the
+Dutch-clock a-working himself up to being equal to strike Eight of ’em,
+and she’s not come home yet! I hope Uncle Pumblechook’s mare mayn’t
+have set a forefoot on a piece o’ ice, and gone down.”
+
+Mrs. Joe made occasional trips with Uncle Pumblechook on market-days,
+to assist him in buying such household stuffs and goods as required a
+woman’s judgment; Uncle Pumblechook being a bachelor and reposing no
+confidences in his domestic servant. This was market-day, and Mrs. Joe
+was out on one of these expeditions.
+
+Joe made the fire and swept the hearth, and then we went to the door to
+listen for the chaise-cart. It was a dry cold night, and the wind blew
+keenly, and the frost was white and hard. A man would die to-night of
+lying out on the marshes, I thought. And then I looked at the stars,
+and considered how awful it would be for a man to turn his face up to
+them as he froze to death, and see no help or pity in all the
+glittering multitude.
+
+“Here comes the mare,” said Joe, “ringing like a peal of bells!”
+
+The sound of her iron shoes upon the hard road was quite musical, as
+she came along at a much brisker trot than usual. We got a chair out,
+ready for Mrs. Joe’s alighting, and stirred up the fire that they might
+see a bright window, and took a final survey of the kitchen that
+nothing might be out of its place. When we had completed these
+preparations, they drove up, wrapped to the eyes. Mrs. Joe was soon
+landed, and Uncle Pumblechook was soon down too, covering the mare with
+a cloth, and we were soon all in the kitchen, carrying so much cold air
+in with us that it seemed to drive all the heat out of the fire.
+
+“Now,” said Mrs. Joe, unwrapping herself with haste and excitement, and
+throwing her bonnet back on her shoulders where it hung by the strings,
+“if this boy ain’t grateful this night, he never will be!”
+
+I looked as grateful as any boy possibly could, who was wholly
+uninformed why he ought to assume that expression.
+
+“It’s only to be hoped,” said my sister, “that he won’t be Pompeyed.
+But I have my fears.”
+
+“She ain’t in that line, Mum,” said Mr. Pumblechook. “She knows
+better.”
+
+She? I looked at Joe, making the motion with my lips and eyebrows,
+“She?” Joe looked at me, making the motion with _his_ lips and
+eyebrows, “She?” My sister catching him in the act, he drew the back of
+his hand across his nose with his usual conciliatory air on such
+occasions, and looked at her.
+
+“Well?” said my sister, in her snappish way. “What are you staring at?
+Is the house afire?”
+
+“—Which some individual,” Joe politely hinted, “mentioned—she.”
+
+“And she is a she, I suppose?” said my sister. “Unless you call Miss
+Havisham a he. And I doubt if even you’ll go so far as that.”
+
+“Miss Havisham, up town?” said Joe.
+
+“Is there any Miss Havisham down town?” returned my sister.
+
+“She wants this boy to go and play there. And of course he’s going. And
+he had better play there,” said my sister, shaking her head at me as an
+encouragement to be extremely light and sportive, “or I’ll work him.”
+
+I had heard of Miss Havisham up town,—everybody for miles round had
+heard of Miss Havisham up town,—as an immensely rich and grim lady who
+lived in a large and dismal house barricaded against robbers, and who
+led a life of seclusion.
+
+“Well to be sure!” said Joe, astounded. “I wonder how she come to know
+Pip!”
+
+“Noodle!” cried my sister. “Who said she knew him?”
+
+“—Which some individual,” Joe again politely hinted, “mentioned that
+she wanted him to go and play there.”
+
+“And couldn’t she ask Uncle Pumblechook if he knew of a boy to go and
+play there? Isn’t it just barely possible that Uncle Pumblechook may be
+a tenant of hers, and that he may sometimes—we won’t say quarterly or
+half-yearly, for that would be requiring too much of you—but
+sometimes—go there to pay his rent? And couldn’t she then ask Uncle
+Pumblechook if he knew of a boy to go and play there? And couldn’t
+Uncle Pumblechook, being always considerate and thoughtful for
+us—though you may not think it, Joseph,” in a tone of the deepest
+reproach, as if he were the most callous of nephews, “then mention this
+boy, standing Prancing here”—which I solemnly declare I was not
+doing—“that I have for ever been a willing slave to?”
+
+“Good again!” cried Uncle Pumblechook. “Well put! Prettily pointed!
+Good indeed! Now Joseph, you know the case.”
+
+“No, Joseph,” said my sister, still in a reproachful manner, while Joe
+apologetically drew the back of his hand across and across his nose,
+“you do not yet—though you may not think it—know the case. You may
+consider that you do, but you do _not_, Joseph. For you do not know
+that Uncle Pumblechook, being sensible that for anything we can tell,
+this boy’s fortune may be made by his going to Miss Havisham’s, has
+offered to take him into town to-night in his own chaise-cart, and to
+keep him to-night, and to take him with his own hands to Miss
+Havisham’s to-morrow morning. And Lor-a-mussy me!” cried my sister,
+casting off her bonnet in sudden desperation, “here I stand talking to
+mere Mooncalfs, with Uncle Pumblechook waiting, and the mare catching
+cold at the door, and the boy grimed with crock and dirt from the hair
+of his head to the sole of his foot!”
+
+With that, she pounced upon me, like an eagle on a lamb, and my face
+was squeezed into wooden bowls in sinks, and my head was put under taps
+of water-butts, and I was soaped, and kneaded, and towelled, and
+thumped, and harrowed, and rasped, until I really was quite beside
+myself. (I may here remark that I suppose myself to be better
+acquainted than any living authority, with the ridgy effect of a
+wedding-ring, passing unsympathetically over the human countenance.)
+
+When my ablutions were completed, I was put into clean linen of the
+stiffest character, like a young penitent into sackcloth, and was
+trussed up in my tightest and fearfullest suit. I was then delivered
+over to Mr. Pumblechook, who formally received me as if he were the
+Sheriff, and who let off upon me the speech that I knew he had been
+dying to make all along: “Boy, be forever grateful to all friends, but
+especially unto them which brought you up by hand!”
+
+“Good-bye, Joe!”
+
+“God bless you, Pip, old chap!”
+
+I had never parted from him before, and what with my feelings and what
+with soapsuds, I could at first see no stars from the chaise-cart. But
+they twinkled out one by one, without throwing any light on the
+questions why on earth I was going to play at Miss Havisham’s, and what
+on earth I was expected to play at.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII.
+
+
+Mr. Pumblechook’s premises in the High Street of the market town, were
+of a peppercorny and farinaceous character, as the premises of a
+cornchandler and seedsman should be. It appeared to me that he must be
+a very happy man indeed, to have so many little drawers in his shop;
+and I wondered when I peeped into one or two on the lower tiers, and
+saw the tied-up brown paper packets inside, whether the flower-seeds
+and bulbs ever wanted of a fine day to break out of those jails, and
+bloom.
+
+It was in the early morning after my arrival that I entertained this
+speculation. On the previous night, I had been sent straight to bed in
+an attic with a sloping roof, which was so low in the corner where the
+bedstead was, that I calculated the tiles as being within a foot of my
+eyebrows. In the same early morning, I discovered a singular affinity
+between seeds and corduroys. Mr. Pumblechook wore corduroys, and so did
+his shopman; and somehow, there was a general air and flavour about the
+corduroys, so much in the nature of seeds, and a general air and
+flavour about the seeds, so much in the nature of corduroys, that I
+hardly knew which was which. The same opportunity served me for
+noticing that Mr. Pumblechook appeared to conduct his business by
+looking across the street at the saddler, who appeared to transact
+_his_ business by keeping his eye on the coachmaker, who appeared to
+get on in life by putting his hands in his pockets and contemplating
+the baker, who in his turn folded his arms and stared at the grocer,
+who stood at his door and yawned at the chemist. The watchmaker, always
+poring over a little desk with a magnifying-glass at his eye, and
+always inspected by a group of smock-frocks poring over him through the
+glass of his shop-window, seemed to be about the only person in the
+High Street whose trade engaged his attention.
+
+Mr. Pumblechook and I breakfasted at eight o’clock in the parlour
+behind the shop, while the shopman took his mug of tea and hunch of
+bread and butter on a sack of peas in the front premises. I considered
+Mr. Pumblechook wretched company. Besides being possessed by my
+sister’s idea that a mortifying and penitential character ought to be
+imparted to my diet,—besides giving me as much crumb as possible in
+combination with as little butter, and putting such a quantity of warm
+water into my milk that it would have been more candid to have left the
+milk out altogether,—his conversation consisted of nothing but
+arithmetic. On my politely bidding him Good-morning, he said,
+pompously, “Seven times nine, boy?” And how should _I_ be able to
+answer, dodged in that way, in a strange place, on an empty stomach! I
+was hungry, but before I had swallowed a morsel, he began a running sum
+that lasted all through the breakfast. “Seven?” “And four?” “And
+eight?” “And six?” “And two?” “And ten?” And so on. And after each
+figure was disposed of, it was as much as I could do to get a bite or a
+sup, before the next came; while he sat at his ease guessing nothing,
+and eating bacon and hot roll, in (if I may be allowed the expression)
+a gorging and gormandizing manner.
+
+For such reasons, I was very glad when ten o’clock came and we started
+for Miss Havisham’s; though I was not at all at my ease regarding the
+manner in which I should acquit myself under that lady’s roof. Within a
+quarter of an hour we came to Miss Havisham’s house, which was of old
+brick, and dismal, and had a great many iron bars to it. Some of the
+windows had been walled up; of those that remained, all the lower were
+rustily barred. There was a courtyard in front, and that was barred; so
+we had to wait, after ringing the bell, until some one should come to
+open it. While we waited at the gate, I peeped in (even then Mr.
+Pumblechook said, “And fourteen?” but I pretended not to hear him), and
+saw that at the side of the house there was a large brewery. No brewing
+was going on in it, and none seemed to have gone on for a long long
+time.
+
+A window was raised, and a clear voice demanded “What name?” To which
+my conductor replied, “Pumblechook.” The voice returned, “Quite right,”
+and the window was shut again, and a young lady came across the
+court-yard, with keys in her hand.
+
+“This,” said Mr. Pumblechook, “is Pip.”
+
+“This is Pip, is it?” returned the young lady, who was very pretty and
+seemed very proud; “come in, Pip.”
+
+Mr. Pumblechook was coming in also, when she stopped him with the gate.
+
+“Oh!” she said. “Did you wish to see Miss Havisham?”
+
+“If Miss Havisham wished to see me,” returned Mr. Pumblechook,
+discomfited.
+
+“Ah!” said the girl; “but you see she don’t.”
+
+She said it so finally, and in such an undiscussible way, that Mr.
+Pumblechook, though in a condition of ruffled dignity, could not
+protest. But he eyed me severely,—as if _I_ had done anything to
+him!—and departed with the words reproachfully delivered: “Boy! Let
+your behaviour here be a credit unto them which brought you up by
+hand!” I was not free from apprehension that he would come back to
+propound through the gate, “And sixteen?” But he didn’t.
+
+My young conductress locked the gate, and we went across the courtyard.
+It was paved and clean, but grass was growing in every crevice. The
+brewery buildings had a little lane of communication with it, and the
+wooden gates of that lane stood open, and all the brewery beyond stood
+open, away to the high enclosing wall; and all was empty and disused.
+The cold wind seemed to blow colder there than outside the gate; and it
+made a shrill noise in howling in and out at the open sides of the
+brewery, like the noise of wind in the rigging of a ship at sea.
+
+She saw me looking at it, and she said, “You could drink without hurt
+all the strong beer that’s brewed there now, boy.”
+
+“I should think I could, miss,” said I, in a shy way.
+
+“Better not try to brew beer there now, or it would turn out sour, boy;
+don’t you think so?”
+
+“It looks like it, miss.”
+
+“Not that anybody means to try,” she added, “for that’s all done with,
+and the place will stand as idle as it is till it falls. As to strong
+beer, there’s enough of it in the cellars already, to drown the Manor
+House.”
+
+[Illustration]
+
+“Is that the name of this house, miss?”
+
+“One of its names, boy.”
+
+“It has more than one, then, miss?”
+
+“One more. Its other name was Satis; which is Greek, or Latin, or
+Hebrew, or all three—or all one to me—for enough.”
+
+“Enough House,” said I; “that’s a curious name, miss.”
+
+“Yes,” she replied; “but it meant more than it said. It meant, when it
+was given, that whoever had this house could want nothing else. They
+must have been easily satisfied in those days, I should think. But
+don’t loiter, boy.”
+
+Though she called me “boy” so often, and with a carelessness that was
+far from complimentary, she was of about my own age. She seemed much
+older than I, of course, being a girl, and beautiful and
+self-possessed; and she was as scornful of me as if she had been
+one-and-twenty, and a queen.
+
+We went into the house by a side door, the great front entrance had two
+chains across it outside,—and the first thing I noticed was, that the
+passages were all dark, and that she had left a candle burning there.
+She took it up, and we went through more passages and up a staircase,
+and still it was all dark, and only the candle lighted us.
+
+At last we came to the door of a room, and she said, “Go in.”
+
+I answered, more in shyness than politeness, “After you, miss.”
+
+To this she returned: “Don’t be ridiculous, boy; I am not going in.”
+And scornfully walked away, and—what was worse—took the candle with
+her.
+
+This was very uncomfortable, and I was half afraid. However, the only
+thing to be done being to knock at the door, I knocked, and was told
+from within to enter. I entered, therefore, and found myself in a
+pretty large room, well lighted with wax candles. No glimpse of
+daylight was to be seen in it. It was a dressing-room, as I supposed
+from the furniture, though much of it was of forms and uses then quite
+unknown to me. But prominent in it was a draped table with a gilded
+looking-glass, and that I made out at first sight to be a fine lady’s
+dressing-table.
+
+Whether I should have made out this object so soon if there had been no
+fine lady sitting at it, I cannot say. In an arm-chair, with an elbow
+resting on the table and her head leaning on that hand, sat the
+strangest lady I have ever seen, or shall ever see.
+
+She was dressed in rich materials,—satins, and lace, and silks,—all of
+white. Her shoes were white. And she had a long white veil dependent
+from her hair, and she had bridal flowers in her hair, but her hair was
+white. Some bright jewels sparkled on her neck and on her hands, and
+some other jewels lay sparkling on the table. Dresses, less splendid
+than the dress she wore, and half-packed trunks, were scattered about.
+She had not quite finished dressing, for she had but one shoe on,—the
+other was on the table near her hand,—her veil was but half arranged,
+her watch and chain were not put on, and some lace for her bosom lay
+with those trinkets, and with her handkerchief, and gloves, and some
+flowers, and a Prayer-Book all confusedly heaped about the
+looking-glass.
+
+It was not in the first few moments that I saw all these things, though
+I saw more of them in the first moments than might be supposed. But I
+saw that everything within my view which ought to be white, had been
+white long ago, and had lost its lustre and was faded and yellow. I saw
+that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and
+like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her
+sunken eyes. I saw that the dress had been put upon the rounded figure
+of a young woman, and that the figure upon which it now hung loose had
+shrunk to skin and bone. Once, I had been taken to see some ghastly
+waxwork at the Fair, representing I know not what impossible personage
+lying in state. Once, I had been taken to one of our old marsh churches
+to see a skeleton in the ashes of a rich dress that had been dug out of
+a vault under the church pavement. Now, waxwork and skeleton seemed to
+have dark eyes that moved and looked at me. I should have cried out, if
+I could.
+
+“Who is it?” said the lady at the table.
+
+“Pip, ma’am.”
+
+“Pip?”
+
+“Mr. Pumblechook’s boy, ma’am. Come—to play.”
+
+“Come nearer; let me look at you. Come close.”
+
+It was when I stood before her, avoiding her eyes, that I took note of
+the surrounding objects in detail, and saw that her watch had stopped
+at twenty minutes to nine, and that a clock in the room had stopped at
+twenty minutes to nine.
+
+“Look at me,” said Miss Havisham. “You are not afraid of a woman who
+has never seen the sun since you were born?”
+
+I regret to state that I was not afraid of telling the enormous lie
+comprehended in the answer “No.”
+
+“Do you know what I touch here?” she said, laying her hands, one upon
+the other, on her left side.
+
+“Yes, ma’am.” (It made me think of the young man.)
+
+“What do I touch?”
+
+“Your heart.”
+
+“Broken!”
+
+She uttered the word with an eager look, and with strong emphasis, and
+with a weird smile that had a kind of boast in it. Afterwards she kept
+her hands there for a little while, and slowly took them away as if
+they were heavy.
+
+“I am tired,” said Miss Havisham. “I want diversion, and I have done
+with men and women. Play.”
+
+I think it will be conceded by my most disputatious reader, that she
+could hardly have directed an unfortunate boy to do anything in the
+wide world more difficult to be done under the circumstances.
+
+“I sometimes have sick fancies,” she went on, “and I have a sick fancy
+that I want to see some play. There, there!” with an impatient movement
+of the fingers of her right hand; “play, play, play!”
+
+For a moment, with the fear of my sister’s working me before my eyes, I
+had a desperate idea of starting round the room in the assumed
+character of Mr. Pumblechook’s chaise-cart. But I felt myself so
+unequal to the performance that I gave it up, and stood looking at Miss
+Havisham in what I suppose she took for a dogged manner, inasmuch as
+she said, when we had taken a good look at each other,—
+
+“Are you sullen and obstinate?”
+
+“No, ma’am, I am very sorry for you, and very sorry I can’t play just
+now. If you complain of me I shall get into trouble with my sister, so
+I would do it if I could; but it’s so new here, and so strange, and so
+fine,—and melancholy—.” I stopped, fearing I might say too much, or had
+already said it, and we took another look at each other.
+
+Before she spoke again, she turned her eyes from me, and looked at the
+dress she wore, and at the dressing-table, and finally at herself in
+the looking-glass.
+
+“So new to him,” she muttered, “so old to me; so strange to him, so
+familiar to me; so melancholy to both of us! Call Estella.”
+
+As she was still looking at the reflection of herself, I thought she
+was still talking to herself, and kept quiet.
+
+“Call Estella,” she repeated, flashing a look at me. “You can do that.
+Call Estella. At the door.”
+
+To stand in the dark in a mysterious passage of an unknown house,
+bawling Estella to a scornful young lady neither visible nor
+responsive, and feeling it a dreadful liberty so to roar out her name,
+was almost as bad as playing to order. But she answered at last, and
+her light came along the dark passage like a star.
+
+Miss Havisham beckoned her to come close, and took up a jewel from the
+table, and tried its effect upon her fair young bosom and against her
+pretty brown hair. “Your own, one day, my dear, and you will use it
+well. Let me see you play cards with this boy.”
+
+“With this boy? Why, he is a common labouring-boy!”
+
+I thought I overheard Miss Havisham answer,—only it seemed so
+unlikely,—“Well? You can break his heart.”
+
+“What do you play, boy?” asked Estella of myself, with the greatest
+disdain.
+
+“Nothing but beggar my neighbour, miss.”
+
+“Beggar him,” said Miss Havisham to Estella. So we sat down to cards.
+
+It was then I began to understand that everything in the room had
+stopped, like the watch and the clock, a long time ago. I noticed that
+Miss Havisham put down the jewel exactly on the spot from which she had
+taken it up. As Estella dealt the cards, I glanced at the
+dressing-table again, and saw that the shoe upon it, once white, now
+yellow, had never been worn. I glanced down at the foot from which the
+shoe was absent, and saw that the silk stocking on it, once white, now
+yellow, had been trodden ragged. Without this arrest of everything,
+this standing still of all the pale decayed objects, not even the
+withered bridal dress on the collapsed form could have looked so like
+grave-clothes, or the long veil so like a shroud.
+
+So she sat, corpse-like, as we played at cards; the frillings and
+trimmings on her bridal dress, looking like earthy paper. I knew
+nothing then of the discoveries that are occasionally made of bodies
+buried in ancient times, which fall to powder in the moment of being
+distinctly seen; but, I have often thought since, that she must have
+looked as if the admission of the natural light of day would have
+struck her to dust.
+
+“He calls the knaves Jacks, this boy!” said Estella with disdain,
+before our first game was out. “And what coarse hands he has! And what
+thick boots!”
+
+I had never thought of being ashamed of my hands before; but I began to
+consider them a very indifferent pair. Her contempt for me was so
+strong, that it became infectious, and I caught it.
+
+She won the game, and I dealt. I misdealt, as was only natural, when I
+knew she was lying in wait for me to do wrong; and she denounced me for
+a stupid, clumsy labouring-boy.
+
+“You say nothing of her,” remarked Miss Havisham to me, as she looked
+on. “She says many hard things of you, but you say nothing of her. What
+do you think of her?”
+
+“I don’t like to say,” I stammered.
+
+“Tell me in my ear,” said Miss Havisham, bending down.
+
+“I think she is very proud,” I replied, in a whisper.
+
+“Anything else?”
+
+“I think she is very pretty.”
+
+“Anything else?”
+
+“I think she is very insulting.” (She was looking at me then with a
+look of supreme aversion.)
+
+“Anything else?”
+
+“I think I should like to go home.”
+
+“And never see her again, though she is so pretty?”
+
+“I am not sure that I shouldn’t like to see her again, but I should
+like to go home now.”
+
+“You shall go soon,” said Miss Havisham, aloud. “Play the game out.”
+
+Saving for the one weird smile at first, I should have felt almost sure
+that Miss Havisham’s face could not smile. It had dropped into a
+watchful and brooding expression,—most likely when all the things about
+her had become transfixed,—and it looked as if nothing could ever lift
+it up again. Her chest had dropped, so that she stooped; and her voice
+had dropped, so that she spoke low, and with a dead lull upon her;
+altogether, she had the appearance of having dropped body and soul,
+within and without, under the weight of a crushing blow.
+
+I played the game to an end with Estella, and she beggared me. She
+threw the cards down on the table when she had won them all, as if she
+despised them for having been won of me.
+
+“When shall I have you here again?” said Miss Havisham. “Let me think.”
+
+I was beginning to remind her that to-day was Wednesday, when she
+checked me with her former impatient movement of the fingers of her
+right hand.
+
+“There, there! I know nothing of days of the week; I know nothing of
+weeks of the year. Come again after six days. You hear?”
+
+“Yes, ma’am.”
+
+“Estella, take him down. Let him have something to eat, and let him
+roam and look about him while he eats. Go, Pip.”
+
+I followed the candle down, as I had followed the candle up, and she
+stood it in the place where we had found it. Until she opened the side
+entrance, I had fancied, without thinking about it, that it must
+necessarily be night-time. The rush of the daylight quite confounded
+me, and made me feel as if I had been in the candlelight of the strange
+room many hours.
+
+“You are to wait here, you boy,” said Estella; and disappeared and
+closed the door.
+
+I took the opportunity of being alone in the courtyard to look at my
+coarse hands and my common boots. My opinion of those accessories was
+not favourable. They had never troubled me before, but they troubled me
+now, as vulgar appendages. I determined to ask Joe why he had ever
+taught me to call those picture-cards Jacks, which ought to be called
+knaves. I wished Joe had been rather more genteelly brought up, and
+then I should have been so too.
+
+She came back, with some bread and meat and a little mug of beer. She
+put the mug down on the stones of the yard, and gave me the bread and
+meat without looking at me, as insolently as if I were a dog in
+disgrace. I was so humiliated, hurt, spurned, offended, angry, sorry,—I
+cannot hit upon the right name for the smart—God knows what its name
+was,—that tears started to my eyes. The moment they sprang there, the
+girl looked at me with a quick delight in having been the cause of
+them. This gave me power to keep them back and to look at her: so, she
+gave a contemptuous toss—but with a sense, I thought, of having made
+too sure that I was so wounded—and left me.
+
+But when she was gone, I looked about me for a place to hide my face
+in, and got behind one of the gates in the brewery-lane, and leaned my
+sleeve against the wall there, and leaned my forehead on it and cried.
+As I cried, I kicked the wall, and took a hard twist at my hair; so
+bitter were my feelings, and so sharp was the smart without a name,
+that needed counteraction.
+
+My sister’s bringing up had made me sensitive. In the little world in
+which children have their existence whosoever brings them up, there is
+nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt as injustice. It may be
+only small injustice that the child can be exposed to; but the child is
+small, and its world is small, and its rocking-horse stands as many
+hands high, according to scale, as a big-boned Irish hunter. Within
+myself, I had sustained, from my babyhood, a perpetual conflict with
+injustice. I had known, from the time when I could speak, that my
+sister, in her capricious and violent coercion, was unjust to me. I had
+cherished a profound conviction that her bringing me up by hand gave
+her no right to bring me up by jerks. Through all my punishments,
+disgraces, fasts, and vigils, and other penitential performances, I had
+nursed this assurance; and to my communing so much with it, in a
+solitary and unprotected way, I in great part refer the fact that I was
+morally timid and very sensitive.
+
+I got rid of my injured feelings for the time by kicking them into the
+brewery wall, and twisting them out of my hair, and then I smoothed my
+face with my sleeve, and came from behind the gate. The bread and meat
+were acceptable, and the beer was warming and tingling, and I was soon
+in spirits to look about me.
+
+To be sure, it was a deserted place, down to the pigeon-house in the
+brewery-yard, which had been blown crooked on its pole by some high
+wind, and would have made the pigeons think themselves at sea, if there
+had been any pigeons there to be rocked by it. But there were no
+pigeons in the dove-cot, no horses in the stable, no pigs in the sty,
+no malt in the storehouse, no smells of grains and beer in the copper
+or the vat. All the uses and scents of the brewery might have
+evaporated with its last reek of smoke. In a by-yard, there was a
+wilderness of empty casks, which had a certain sour remembrance of
+better days lingering about them; but it was too sour to be accepted as
+a sample of the beer that was gone,—and in this respect I remember
+those recluses as being like most others.
+
+Behind the furthest end of the brewery, was a rank garden with an old
+wall; not so high but that I could struggle up and hold on long enough
+to look over it, and see that the rank garden was the garden of the
+house, and that it was overgrown with tangled weeds, but that there was
+a track upon the green and yellow paths, as if some one sometimes
+walked there, and that Estella was walking away from me even then. But
+she seemed to be everywhere. For when I yielded to the temptation
+presented by the casks, and began to walk on them, I saw _her_ walking
+on them at the end of the yard of casks. She had her back towards me,
+and held her pretty brown hair spread out in her two hands, and never
+looked round, and passed out of my view directly. So, in the brewery
+itself,—by which I mean the large paved lofty place in which they used
+to make the beer, and where the brewing utensils still were. When I
+first went into it, and, rather oppressed by its gloom, stood near the
+door looking about me, I saw her pass among the extinguished fires, and
+ascend some light iron stairs, and go out by a gallery high overhead,
+as if she were going out into the sky.
+
+It was in this place, and at this moment, that a strange thing happened
+to my fancy. I thought it a strange thing then, and I thought it a
+stranger thing long afterwards. I turned my eyes—a little dimmed by
+looking up at the frosty light—towards a great wooden beam in a low
+nook of the building near me on my right hand, and I saw a figure
+hanging there by the neck. A figure all in yellow white, with but one
+shoe to the feet; and it hung so, that I could see that the faded
+trimmings of the dress were like earthy paper, and that the face was
+Miss Havisham’s, with a movement going over the whole countenance as if
+she were trying to call to me. In the terror of seeing the figure, and
+in the terror of being certain that it had not been there a moment
+before, I at first ran from it, and then ran towards it. And my terror
+was greatest of all when I found no figure there.
+
+Nothing less than the frosty light of the cheerful sky, the sight of
+people passing beyond the bars of the court-yard gate, and the reviving
+influence of the rest of the bread and meat and beer, would have
+brought me round. Even with those aids, I might not have come to myself
+as soon as I did, but that I saw Estella approaching with the keys, to
+let me out. She would have some fair reason for looking down upon me, I
+thought, if she saw me frightened; and she would have no fair reason.
+
+She gave me a triumphant glance in passing me, as if she rejoiced that
+my hands were so coarse and my boots were so thick, and she opened the
+gate, and stood holding it. I was passing out without looking at her,
+when she touched me with a taunting hand.
+
+“Why don’t you cry?”
+
+“Because I don’t want to.”
+
+“You do,” said she. “You have been crying till you are half blind, and
+you are near crying again now.”
+
+She laughed contemptuously, pushed me out, and locked the gate upon me.
+I went straight to Mr. Pumblechook’s, and was immensely relieved to
+find him not at home. So, leaving word with the shopman on what day I
+was wanted at Miss Havisham’s again, I set off on the four-mile walk to
+our forge; pondering, as I went along, on all I had seen, and deeply
+revolving that I was a common labouring-boy; that my hands were coarse;
+that my boots were thick; that I had fallen into a despicable habit of
+calling knaves Jacks; that I was much more ignorant than I had
+considered myself last night, and generally that I was in a low-lived
+bad way.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX.
+
+
+When I reached home, my sister was very curious to know all about Miss
+Havisham’s, and asked a number of questions. And I soon found myself
+getting heavily bumped from behind in the nape of the neck and the
+small of the back, and having my face ignominiously shoved against the
+kitchen wall, because I did not answer those questions at sufficient
+length.
+
+If a dread of not being understood be hidden in the breasts of other
+young people to anything like the extent to which it used to be hidden
+in mine,—which I consider probable, as I have no particular reason to
+suspect myself of having been a monstrosity,—it is the key to many
+reservations. I felt convinced that if I described Miss Havisham’s as
+my eyes had seen it, I should not be understood. Not only that, but I
+felt convinced that Miss Havisham too would not be understood; and
+although she was perfectly incomprehensible to me, I entertained an
+impression that there would be something coarse and treacherous in my
+dragging her as she really was (to say nothing of Miss Estella) before
+the contemplation of Mrs. Joe. Consequently, I said as little as I
+could, and had my face shoved against the kitchen wall.
+
+The worst of it was that that bullying old Pumblechook, preyed upon by
+a devouring curiosity to be informed of all I had seen and heard, came
+gaping over in his chaise-cart at tea-time, to have the details
+divulged to him. And the mere sight of the torment, with his fishy eyes
+and mouth open, his sandy hair inquisitively on end, and his waistcoat
+heaving with windy arithmetic, made me vicious in my reticence.
+
+“Well, boy,” Uncle Pumblechook began, as soon as he was seated in the
+chair of honour by the fire. “How did you get on up town?”
+
+I answered, “Pretty well, sir,” and my sister shook her fist at me.
+
+“Pretty well?” Mr. Pumblechook repeated. “Pretty well is no answer.
+Tell us what you mean by pretty well, boy?”
+
+Whitewash on the forehead hardens the brain into a state of obstinacy
+perhaps. Anyhow, with whitewash from the wall on my forehead, my
+obstinacy was adamantine. I reflected for some time, and then answered
+as if I had discovered a new idea, “I mean pretty well.”
+
+My sister with an exclamation of impatience was going to fly at me,—I
+had no shadow of defence, for Joe was busy in the forge,—when Mr.
+Pumblechook interposed with “No! Don’t lose your temper. Leave this lad
+to me, ma’am; leave this lad to me.” Mr. Pumblechook then turned me
+towards him, as if he were going to cut my hair, and said,—
+
+“First (to get our thoughts in order): Forty-three pence?”
+
+I calculated the consequences of replying “Four Hundred Pound,” and
+finding them against me, went as near the answer as I could—which was
+somewhere about eightpence off. Mr. Pumblechook then put me through my
+pence-table from “twelve pence make one shilling,” up to “forty pence
+make three and fourpence,” and then triumphantly demanded, as if he had
+done for me, “_Now!_ How much is forty-three pence?” To which I
+replied, after a long interval of reflection, “I don’t know.” And I was
+so aggravated that I almost doubt if I did know.
+
+Mr. Pumblechook worked his head like a screw to screw it out of me, and
+said, “Is forty-three pence seven and sixpence three fardens, for
+instance?”
+
+“Yes!” said I. And although my sister instantly boxed my ears, it was
+highly gratifying to me to see that the answer spoilt his joke, and
+brought him to a dead stop.
+
+“Boy! What like is Miss Havisham?” Mr. Pumblechook began again when he
+had recovered; folding his arms tight on his chest and applying the
+screw.
+
+“Very tall and dark,” I told him.
+
+“Is she, uncle?” asked my sister.
+
+Mr. Pumblechook winked assent; from which I at once inferred that he
+had never seen Miss Havisham, for she was nothing of the kind.
+
+“Good!” said Mr. Pumblechook conceitedly. (“This is the way to have
+him! We are beginning to hold our own, I think, Mum?”)
+
+“I am sure, uncle,” returned Mrs. Joe, “I wish you had him always; you
+know so well how to deal with him.”
+
+“Now, boy! What was she a-doing of, when you went in today?” asked Mr.
+Pumblechook.
+
+“She was sitting,” I answered, “in a black velvet coach.”
+
+Mr. Pumblechook and Mrs. Joe stared at one another—as they well
+might—and both repeated, “In a black velvet coach?”
+
+“Yes,” said I. “And Miss Estella—that’s her niece, I think—handed her
+in cake and wine at the coach-window, on a gold plate. And we all had
+cake and wine on gold plates. And I got up behind the coach to eat
+mine, because she told me to.”
+
+“Was anybody else there?” asked Mr. Pumblechook.
+
+“Four dogs,” said I.
+
+“Large or small?”
+
+“Immense,” said I. “And they fought for veal-cutlets out of a silver
+basket.”
+
+Mr. Pumblechook and Mrs. Joe stared at one another again, in utter
+amazement. I was perfectly frantic,—a reckless witness under the
+torture,—and would have told them anything.
+
+“Where _was_ this coach, in the name of gracious?” asked my sister.
+
+“In Miss Havisham’s room.” They stared again. “But there weren’t any
+horses to it.” I added this saving clause, in the moment of rejecting
+four richly caparisoned coursers which I had had wild thoughts of
+harnessing.
+
+“Can this be possible, uncle?” asked Mrs. Joe. “What can the boy mean?”
+
+“I’ll tell you, Mum,” said Mr. Pumblechook. “My opinion is, it’s a
+sedan-chair. She’s flighty, you know,—very flighty,—quite flighty
+enough to pass her days in a sedan-chair.”
+
+“Did you ever see her in it, uncle?” asked Mrs. Joe.
+
+“How could I,” he returned, forced to the admission, “when I never see
+her in my life? Never clapped eyes upon her!”
+
+“Goodness, uncle! And yet you have spoken to her?”
+
+“Why, don’t you know,” said Mr. Pumblechook, testily, “that when I have
+been there, I have been took up to the outside of her door, and the
+door has stood ajar, and she has spoke to me that way. Don’t say you
+don’t know _that_, Mum. Howsever, the boy went there to play. What did
+you play at, boy?”
+
+“We played with flags,” I said. (I beg to observe that I think of
+myself with amazement, when I recall the lies I told on this occasion.)
+
+“Flags!” echoed my sister.
+
+“Yes,” said I. “Estella waved a blue flag, and I waved a red one, and
+Miss Havisham waved one sprinkled all over with little gold stars, out
+at the coach-window. And then we all waved our swords and hurrahed.”
+
+“Swords!” repeated my sister. “Where did you get swords from?”
+
+“Out of a cupboard,” said I. “And I saw pistols in it,—and jam,—and
+pills. And there was no daylight in the room, but it was all lighted up
+with candles.”
+
+“That’s true, Mum,” said Mr. Pumblechook, with a grave nod. “That’s the
+state of the case, for that much I’ve seen myself.” And then they both
+stared at me, and I, with an obtrusive show of artlessness on my
+countenance, stared at them, and plaited the right leg of my trousers
+with my right hand.
+
+If they had asked me any more questions, I should undoubtedly have
+betrayed myself, for I was even then on the point of mentioning that
+there was a balloon in the yard, and should have hazarded the statement
+but for my invention being divided between that phenomenon and a bear
+in the brewery. They were so much occupied, however, in discussing the
+marvels I had already presented for their consideration, that I
+escaped. The subject still held them when Joe came in from his work to
+have a cup of tea. To whom my sister, more for the relief of her own
+mind than for the gratification of his, related my pretended
+experiences.
+
+Now, when I saw Joe open his blue eyes and roll them all round the
+kitchen in helpless amazement, I was overtaken by penitence; but only
+as regarded him,—not in the least as regarded the other two. Towards
+Joe, and Joe only, I considered myself a young monster, while they sat
+debating what results would come to me from Miss Havisham’s
+acquaintance and favour. They had no doubt that Miss Havisham would “do
+something” for me; their doubts related to the form that something
+would take. My sister stood out for “property.” Mr. Pumblechook was in
+favour of a handsome premium for binding me apprentice to some genteel
+trade,—say, the corn and seed trade, for instance. Joe fell into the
+deepest disgrace with both, for offering the bright suggestion that I
+might only be presented with one of the dogs who had fought for the
+veal-cutlets. “If a fool’s head can’t express better opinions than
+that,” said my sister, “and you have got any work to do, you had better
+go and do it.” So he went.
+
+After Mr. Pumblechook had driven off, and when my sister was washing
+up, I stole into the forge to Joe, and remained by him until he had
+done for the night. Then I said, “Before the fire goes out, Joe, I
+should like to tell you something.”
+
+“Should you, Pip?” said Joe, drawing his shoeing-stool near the forge.
+“Then tell us. What is it, Pip?”
+
+“Joe,” said I, taking hold of his rolled-up shirt sleeve, and twisting
+it between my finger and thumb, “you remember all that about Miss
+Havisham’s?”
+
+“Remember?” said Joe. “I believe you! Wonderful!”
+
+“It’s a terrible thing, Joe; it ain’t true.”
+
+“What are you telling of, Pip?” cried Joe, falling back in the greatest
+amazement. “You don’t mean to say it’s—”
+
+“Yes I do; it’s lies, Joe.”
+
+“But not all of it? Why sure you don’t mean to say, Pip, that there was
+no black welwet co—eh?” For, I stood shaking my head. “But at least
+there was dogs, Pip? Come, Pip,” said Joe, persuasively, “if there
+warn’t no weal-cutlets, at least there was dogs?”
+
+“No, Joe.”
+
+“A dog?” said Joe. “A puppy? Come?”
+
+“No, Joe, there was nothing at all of the kind.”
+
+As I fixed my eyes hopelessly on Joe, Joe contemplated me in dismay.
+“Pip, old chap! This won’t do, old fellow! I say! Where do you expect
+to go to?”
+
+“It’s terrible, Joe; ain’t it?”
+
+“Terrible?” cried Joe. “Awful! What possessed you?”
+
+“I don’t know what possessed me, Joe,” I replied, letting his shirt
+sleeve go, and sitting down in the ashes at his feet, hanging my head;
+“but I wish you hadn’t taught me to call Knaves at cards Jacks; and I
+wish my boots weren’t so thick nor my hands so coarse.”
+
+And then I told Joe that I felt very miserable, and that I hadn’t been
+able to explain myself to Mrs. Joe and Pumblechook, who were so rude to
+me, and that there had been a beautiful young lady at Miss Havisham’s
+who was dreadfully proud, and that she had said I was common, and that
+I knew I was common, and that I wished I was not common, and that the
+lies had come of it somehow, though I didn’t know how.
+
+This was a case of metaphysics, at least as difficult for Joe to deal
+with as for me. But Joe took the case altogether out of the region of
+metaphysics, and by that means vanquished it.
+
+“There’s one thing you may be sure of, Pip,” said Joe, after some
+rumination, “namely, that lies is lies. Howsever they come, they didn’t
+ought to come, and they come from the father of lies, and work round to
+the same. Don’t you tell no more of ’em, Pip. _That_ ain’t the way to
+get out of being common, old chap. And as to being common, I don’t make
+it out at all clear. You are oncommon in some things. You’re oncommon
+small. Likewise you’re a oncommon scholar.”
+
+“No, I am ignorant and backward, Joe.”
+
+“Why, see what a letter you wrote last night! Wrote in print even! I’ve
+seen letters—Ah! and from gentlefolks!—that I’ll swear weren’t wrote in
+print,” said Joe.
+
+“I have learnt next to nothing, Joe. You think much of me. It’s only
+that.”
+
+“Well, Pip,” said Joe, “be it so or be it son’t, you must be a common
+scholar afore you can be a oncommon one, I should hope! The king upon
+his throne, with his crown upon his ed, can’t sit and write his acts of
+Parliament in print, without having begun, when he were a unpromoted
+Prince, with the alphabet.—Ah!” added Joe, with a shake of the head
+that was full of meaning, “and begun at A too, and worked his way to Z.
+And _I_ know what that is to do, though I can’t say I’ve exactly done
+it.”
+
+There was some hope in this piece of wisdom, and it rather encouraged
+me.
+
+“Whether common ones as to callings and earnings,” pursued Joe,
+reflectively, “mightn’t be the better of continuing for to keep company
+with common ones, instead of going out to play with oncommon
+ones,—which reminds me to hope that there were a flag, perhaps?”
+
+“No, Joe.”
+
+“(I’m sorry there weren’t a flag, Pip). Whether that might be or
+mightn’t be, is a thing as can’t be looked into now, without putting
+your sister on the Rampage; and that’s a thing not to be thought of as
+being done intentional. Lookee here, Pip, at what is said to you by a
+true friend. Which this to you the true friend say. If you can’t get to
+be oncommon through going straight, you’ll never get to do it through
+going crooked. So don’t tell no more on ’em, Pip, and live well and die
+happy.”
+
+“You are not angry with me, Joe?”
+
+“No, old chap. But bearing in mind that them were which I meantersay of
+a stunning and outdacious sort,—alluding to them which bordered on
+weal-cutlets and dog-fighting,—a sincere well-wisher would adwise, Pip,
+their being dropped into your meditations, when you go upstairs to bed.
+That’s all, old chap, and don’t never do it no more.”
+
+When I got up to my little room and said my prayers, I did not forget
+Joe’s recommendation, and yet my young mind was in that disturbed and
+unthankful state, that I thought long after I laid me down, how common
+Estella would consider Joe, a mere blacksmith; how thick his boots, and
+how coarse his hands. I thought how Joe and my sister were then sitting
+in the kitchen, and how I had come up to bed from the kitchen, and how
+Miss Havisham and Estella never sat in a kitchen, but were far above
+the level of such common doings. I fell asleep recalling what I “used
+to do” when I was at Miss Havisham’s; as though I had been there weeks
+or months, instead of hours; and as though it were quite an old subject
+of remembrance, instead of one that had arisen only that day.
+
+That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But it
+is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it,
+and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read
+this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of
+thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the
+formation of the first link on one memorable day.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X.
+
+
+The felicitous idea occurred to me a morning or two later when I woke,
+that the best step I could take towards making myself uncommon was to
+get out of Biddy everything she knew. In pursuance of this luminous
+conception I mentioned to Biddy when I went to Mr. Wopsle’s
+great-aunt’s at night, that I had a particular reason for wishing to
+get on in life, and that I should feel very much obliged to her if she
+would impart all her learning to me. Biddy, who was the most obliging
+of girls, immediately said she would, and indeed began to carry out her
+promise within five minutes.
+
+The Educational scheme or Course established by Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt
+may be resolved into the following synopsis. The pupils ate apples and
+put straws down one another’s backs, until Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt
+collected her energies, and made an indiscriminate totter at them with
+a birch-rod. After receiving the charge with every mark of derision,
+the pupils formed in line and buzzingly passed a ragged book from hand
+to hand. The book had an alphabet in it, some figures and tables, and a
+little spelling,—that is to say, it had had once. As soon as this
+volume began to circulate, Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt fell into a state of
+coma, arising either from sleep or a rheumatic paroxysm. The pupils
+then entered among themselves upon a competitive examination on the
+subject of Boots, with the view of ascertaining who could tread the
+hardest upon whose toes. This mental exercise lasted until Biddy made a
+rush at them and distributed three defaced Bibles (shaped as if they
+had been unskilfully cut off the chump end of something), more
+illegibly printed at the best than any curiosities of literature I have
+since met with, speckled all over with ironmould, and having various
+specimens of the insect world smashed between their leaves. This part
+of the Course was usually lightened by several single combats between
+Biddy and refractory students. When the fights were over, Biddy gave
+out the number of a page, and then we all read aloud what we could,—or
+what we couldn’t—in a frightful chorus; Biddy leading with a high,
+shrill, monotonous voice, and none of us having the least notion of, or
+reverence for, what we were reading about. When this horrible din had
+lasted a certain time, it mechanically awoke Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt,
+who staggered at a boy fortuitously, and pulled his ears. This was
+understood to terminate the Course for the evening, and we emerged into
+the air with shrieks of intellectual victory. It is fair to remark that
+there was no prohibition against any pupil’s entertaining himself with
+a slate or even with the ink (when there was any), but that it was not
+easy to pursue that branch of study in the winter season, on account of
+the little general shop in which the classes were holden—and which was
+also Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt’s sitting-room and bedchamber—being but
+faintly illuminated through the agency of one low-spirited dip-candle
+and no snuffers.
+
+It appeared to me that it would take time to become uncommon, under
+these circumstances: nevertheless, I resolved to try it, and that very
+evening Biddy entered on our special agreement, by imparting some
+information from her little catalogue of Prices, under the head of
+moist sugar, and lending me, to copy at home, a large old English D
+which she had imitated from the heading of some newspaper, and which I
+supposed, until she told me what it was, to be a design for a buckle.
+
+Of course there was a public-house in the village, and of course Joe
+liked sometimes to smoke his pipe there. I had received strict orders
+from my sister to call for him at the Three Jolly Bargemen, that
+evening, on my way from school, and bring him home at my peril. To the
+Three Jolly Bargemen, therefore, I directed my steps.
+
+There was a bar at the Jolly Bargemen, with some alarmingly long chalk
+scores in it on the wall at the side of the door, which seemed to me to
+be never paid off. They had been there ever since I could remember, and
+had grown more than I had. But there was a quantity of chalk about our
+country, and perhaps the people neglected no opportunity of turning it
+to account.
+
+It being Saturday night, I found the landlord looking rather grimly at
+these records; but as my business was with Joe and not with him, I
+merely wished him good evening, and passed into the common room at the
+end of the passage, where there was a bright large kitchen fire, and
+where Joe was smoking his pipe in company with Mr. Wopsle and a
+stranger. Joe greeted me as usual with “Halloa, Pip, old chap!” and the
+moment he said that, the stranger turned his head and looked at me.
+
+He was a secret-looking man whom I had never seen before. His head was
+all on one side, and one of his eyes was half shut up, as if he were
+taking aim at something with an invisible gun. He had a pipe in his
+mouth, and he took it out, and, after slowly blowing all his smoke away
+and looking hard at me all the time, nodded. So, I nodded, and then he
+nodded again, and made room on the settle beside him that I might sit
+down there.
+
+But as I was used to sit beside Joe whenever I entered that place of
+resort, I said “No, thank you, sir,” and fell into the space Joe made
+for me on the opposite settle. The strange man, after glancing at Joe,
+and seeing that his attention was otherwise engaged, nodded to me again
+when I had taken my seat, and then rubbed his leg—in a very odd way, as
+it struck me.
+
+“You was saying,” said the strange man, turning to Joe, “that you was a
+blacksmith.”
+
+“Yes. I said it, you know,” said Joe.
+
+“What’ll you drink, Mr.—? You didn’t mention your name, by the bye.”
+
+Joe mentioned it now, and the strange man called him by it. “What’ll
+you drink, Mr. Gargery? At my expense? To top up with?”
+
+“Well,” said Joe, “to tell you the truth, I ain’t much in the habit of
+drinking at anybody’s expense but my own.”
+
+“Habit? No,” returned the stranger, “but once and away, and on a
+Saturday night too. Come! Put a name to it, Mr. Gargery.”
+
+“I wouldn’t wish to be stiff company,” said Joe. “Rum.”
+
+“Rum,” repeated the stranger. “And will the other gentleman originate a
+sentiment.”
+
+“Rum,” said Mr. Wopsle.
+
+“Three Rums!” cried the stranger, calling to the landlord. “Glasses
+round!”
+
+“This other gentleman,” observed Joe, by way of introducing Mr. Wopsle,
+“is a gentleman that you would like to hear give it out. Our clerk at
+church.”
+
+“Aha!” said the stranger, quickly, and cocking his eye at me. “The
+lonely church, right out on the marshes, with graves round it!”
+
+“That’s it,” said Joe.
+
+The stranger, with a comfortable kind of grunt over his pipe, put his
+legs up on the settle that he had to himself. He wore a flapping
+broad-brimmed traveller’s hat, and under it a handkerchief tied over
+his head in the manner of a cap: so that he showed no hair. As he
+looked at the fire, I thought I saw a cunning expression, followed by a
+half-laugh, come into his face.
+
+“I am not acquainted with this country, gentlemen, but it seems a
+solitary country towards the river.”
+
+“Most marshes is solitary,” said Joe.
+
+“No doubt, no doubt. Do you find any gypsies, now, or tramps, or
+vagrants of any sort, out there?”
+
+“No,” said Joe; “none but a runaway convict now and then. And we don’t
+find _them_, easy. Eh, Mr. Wopsle?”
+
+Mr. Wopsle, with a majestic remembrance of old discomfiture, assented;
+but not warmly.
+
+“Seems you have been out after such?” asked the stranger.
+
+“Once,” returned Joe. “Not that we wanted to take them, you understand;
+we went out as lookers on; me, and Mr. Wopsle, and Pip. Didn’t us,
+Pip?”
+
+“Yes, Joe.”
+
+The stranger looked at me again,—still cocking his eye, as if he were
+expressly taking aim at me with his invisible gun,—and said, “He’s a
+likely young parcel of bones that. What is it you call him?”
+
+“Pip,” said Joe.
+
+“Christened Pip?”
+
+“No, not christened Pip.”
+
+“Surname Pip?”
+
+“No,” said Joe, “it’s a kind of family name what he gave himself when a
+infant, and is called by.”
+
+“Son of yours?”
+
+“Well,” said Joe, meditatively, not, of course, that it could be in
+anywise necessary to consider about it, but because it was the way at
+the Jolly Bargemen to seem to consider deeply about everything that was
+discussed over pipes,—“well—no. No, he ain’t.”
+
+“Nevvy?” said the strange man.
+
+“Well,” said Joe, with the same appearance of profound cogitation, “he
+is not—no, not to deceive you, he is _not_—my nevvy.”
+
+“What the Blue Blazes is he?” asked the stranger. Which appeared to me
+to be an inquiry of unnecessary strength.
+
+Mr. Wopsle struck in upon that; as one who knew all about
+relationships, having professional occasion to bear in mind what female
+relations a man might not marry; and expounded the ties between me and
+Joe. Having his hand in, Mr. Wopsle finished off with a most
+terrifically snarling passage from Richard the Third, and seemed to
+think he had done quite enough to account for it when he added, “—as
+the poet says.”
+
+And here I may remark that when Mr. Wopsle referred to me, he
+considered it a necessary part of such reference to rumple my hair and
+poke it into my eyes. I cannot conceive why everybody of his standing
+who visited at our house should always have put me through the same
+inflammatory process under similar circumstances. Yet I do not call to
+mind that I was ever in my earlier youth the subject of remark in our
+social family circle, but some large-handed person took some such
+ophthalmic steps to patronise me.
+
+All this while, the strange man looked at nobody but me, and looked at
+me as if he were determined to have a shot at me at last, and bring me
+down. But he said nothing after offering his Blue Blazes observation,
+until the glasses of rum and water were brought; and then he made his
+shot, and a most extraordinary shot it was.
+
+It was not a verbal remark, but a proceeding in dumb-show, and was
+pointedly addressed to me. He stirred his rum and water pointedly at
+me, and he tasted his rum and water pointedly at me. And he stirred it
+and he tasted it; not with a spoon that was brought to him, but _with a
+file_.
+
+He did this so that nobody but I saw the file; and when he had done it
+he wiped the file and put it in a breast-pocket. I knew it to be Joe’s
+file, and I knew that he knew my convict, the moment I saw the
+instrument. I sat gazing at him, spell-bound. But he now reclined on
+his settle, taking very little notice of me, and talking principally
+about turnips.
+
+There was a delicious sense of cleaning-up and making a quiet pause
+before going on in life afresh, in our village on Saturday nights,
+which stimulated Joe to dare to stay out half an hour longer on
+Saturdays than at other times. The half-hour and the rum and water
+running out together, Joe got up to go, and took me by the hand.
+
+“Stop half a moment, Mr. Gargery,” said the strange man. “I think I’ve
+got a bright new shilling somewhere in my pocket, and if I have, the
+boy shall have it.”
+
+He looked it out from a handful of small change, folded it in some
+crumpled paper, and gave it to me. “Yours!” said he. “Mind! Your own.”
+
+I thanked him, staring at him far beyond the bounds of good manners,
+and holding tight to Joe. He gave Joe good-night, and he gave Mr.
+Wopsle good-night (who went out with us), and he gave me only a look
+with his aiming eye,—no, not a look, for he shut it up, but wonders may
+be done with an eye by hiding it.
+
+On the way home, if I had been in a humour for talking, the talk must
+have been all on my side, for Mr. Wopsle parted from us at the door of
+the Jolly Bargemen, and Joe went all the way home with his mouth wide
+open, to rinse the rum out with as much air as possible. But I was in a
+manner stupefied by this turning up of my old misdeed and old
+acquaintance, and could think of nothing else.
+
+My sister was not in a very bad temper when we presented ourselves in
+the kitchen, and Joe was encouraged by that unusual circumstance to
+tell her about the bright shilling. “A bad un, I’ll be bound,” said
+Mrs. Joe triumphantly, “or he wouldn’t have given it to the boy! Let’s
+look at it.”
+
+I took it out of the paper, and it proved to be a good one. “But what’s
+this?” said Mrs. Joe, throwing down the shilling and catching up the
+paper. “Two One-Pound notes?”
+
+Nothing less than two fat sweltering one-pound notes that seemed to
+have been on terms of the warmest intimacy with all the cattle-markets
+in the county. Joe caught up his hat again, and ran with them to the
+Jolly Bargemen to restore them to their owner. While he was gone, I sat
+down on my usual stool and looked vacantly at my sister, feeling pretty
+sure that the man would not be there.
+
+Presently, Joe came back, saying that the man was gone, but that he,
+Joe, had left word at the Three Jolly Bargemen concerning the notes.
+Then my sister sealed them up in a piece of paper, and put them under
+some dried rose-leaves in an ornamental teapot on the top of a press in
+the state parlour. There they remained, a nightmare to me, many and
+many a night and day.
+
+I had sadly broken sleep when I got to bed, through thinking of the
+strange man taking aim at me with his invisible gun, and of the
+guiltily coarse and common thing it was, to be on secret terms of
+conspiracy with convicts,—a feature in my low career that I had
+previously forgotten. I was haunted by the file too. A dread possessed
+me that when I least expected it, the file would reappear. I coaxed
+myself to sleep by thinking of Miss Havisham’s, next Wednesday; and in
+my sleep I saw the file coming at me out of a door, without seeing who
+held it, and I screamed myself awake.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XI.
+
+
+At the appointed time I returned to Miss Havisham’s, and my hesitating
+ring at the gate brought out Estella. She locked it after admitting me,
+as she had done before, and again preceded me into the dark passage
+where her candle stood. She took no notice of me until she had the
+candle in her hand, when she looked over her shoulder, superciliously
+saying, “You are to come this way to-day,” and took me to quite another
+part of the house.
+
+The passage was a long one, and seemed to pervade the whole square
+basement of the Manor House. We traversed but one side of the square,
+however, and at the end of it she stopped, and put her candle down and
+opened a door. Here, the daylight reappeared, and I found myself in a
+small paved courtyard, the opposite side of which was formed by a
+detached dwelling-house, that looked as if it had once belonged to the
+manager or head clerk of the extinct brewery. There was a clock in the
+outer wall of this house. Like the clock in Miss Havisham’s room, and
+like Miss Havisham’s watch, it had stopped at twenty minutes to nine.
+
+We went in at the door, which stood open, and into a gloomy room with a
+low ceiling, on the ground-floor at the back. There was some company in
+the room, and Estella said to me as she joined it, “You are to go and
+stand there boy, till you are wanted.” “There”, being the window, I
+crossed to it, and stood “there,” in a very uncomfortable state of
+mind, looking out.
+
+It opened to the ground, and looked into a most miserable corner of the
+neglected garden, upon a rank ruin of cabbage-stalks, and one box-tree
+that had been clipped round long ago, like a pudding, and had a new
+growth at the top of it, out of shape and of a different colour, as if
+that part of the pudding had stuck to the saucepan and got burnt. This
+was my homely thought, as I contemplated the box-tree. There had been
+some light snow, overnight, and it lay nowhere else to my knowledge;
+but, it had not quite melted from the cold shadow of this bit of
+garden, and the wind caught it up in little eddies and threw it at the
+window, as if it pelted me for coming there.
+
+I divined that my coming had stopped conversation in the room, and that
+its other occupants were looking at me. I could see nothing of the room
+except the shining of the fire in the window-glass, but I stiffened in
+all my joints with the consciousness that I was under close inspection.
+
+There were three ladies in the room and one gentleman. Before I had
+been standing at the window five minutes, they somehow conveyed to me
+that they were all toadies and humbugs, but that each of them pretended
+not to know that the others were toadies and humbugs: because the
+admission that he or she did know it, would have made him or her out to
+be a toady and humbug.
+
+They all had a listless and dreary air of waiting somebody’s pleasure,
+and the most talkative of the ladies had to speak quite rigidly to
+repress a yawn. This lady, whose name was Camilla, very much reminded
+me of my sister, with the difference that she was older, and (as I
+found when I caught sight of her) of a blunter cast of features.
+Indeed, when I knew her better I began to think it was a Mercy she had
+any features at all, so very blank and high was the dead wall of her
+face.
+
+“Poor dear soul!” said this lady, with an abruptness of manner quite my
+sister’s. “Nobody’s enemy but his own!”
+
+“It would be much more commendable to be somebody else’s enemy,” said
+the gentleman; “far more natural.”
+
+“Cousin Raymond,” observed another lady, “we are to love our
+neighbour.”
+
+“Sarah Pocket,” returned Cousin Raymond, “if a man is not his own
+neighbour, who is?”
+
+Miss Pocket laughed, and Camilla laughed and said (checking a yawn),
+“The idea!” But I thought they seemed to think it rather a good idea
+too. The other lady, who had not spoken yet, said gravely and
+emphatically, “_Very_ true!”
+
+“Poor soul!” Camilla presently went on (I knew they had all been
+looking at me in the mean time), “he is so very strange! Would anyone
+believe that when Tom’s wife died, he actually could not be induced to
+see the importance of the children’s having the deepest of trimmings to
+their mourning? ‘Good Lord!’ says he, ‘Camilla, what can it signify so
+long as the poor bereaved little things are in black?’ So like Matthew!
+The idea!”
+
+“Good points in him, good points in him,” said Cousin Raymond; “Heaven
+forbid I should deny good points in him; but he never had, and he never
+will have, any sense of the proprieties.”
+
+“You know I was obliged,” said Camilla,—“I was obliged to be firm. I
+said, ‘It WILL NOT DO, for the credit of the family.’ I told him that,
+without deep trimmings, the family was disgraced. I cried about it from
+breakfast till dinner. I injured my digestion. And at last he flung out
+in his violent way, and said, with a D, ‘Then do as you like.’ Thank
+Goodness it will always be a consolation to me to know that I instantly
+went out in a pouring rain and bought the things.”
+
+“_He_ paid for them, did he not?” asked Estella.
+
+“It’s not the question, my dear child, who paid for them,” returned
+Camilla. “_I_ bought them. And I shall often think of that with peace,
+when I wake up in the night.”
+
+The ringing of a distant bell, combined with the echoing of some cry or
+call along the passage by which I had come, interrupted the
+conversation and caused Estella to say to me, “Now, boy!” On my turning
+round, they all looked at me with the utmost contempt, and, as I went
+out, I heard Sarah Pocket say, “Well I am sure! What next!” and Camilla
+add, with indignation, “Was there ever such a fancy! The i-d_e_-a!”
+
+As we were going with our candle along the dark passage, Estella
+stopped all of a sudden, and, facing round, said in her taunting
+manner, with her face quite close to mine,—
+
+“Well?”
+
+“Well, miss?” I answered, almost falling over her and checking myself.
+
+She stood looking at me, and, of course, I stood looking at her.
+
+“Am I pretty?”
+
+“Yes; I think you are very pretty.”
+
+“Am I insulting?”
+
+“Not so much so as you were last time,” said I.
+
+“Not so much so?”
+
+“No.”
+
+She fired when she asked the last question, and she slapped my face
+with such force as she had, when I answered it.
+
+“Now?” said she. “You little coarse monster, what do you think of me
+now?”
+
+“I shall not tell you.”
+
+“Because you are going to tell upstairs. Is that it?”
+
+“No,” said I, “that’s not it.”
+
+“Why don’t you cry again, you little wretch?”
+
+“Because I’ll never cry for you again,” said I. Which was, I suppose,
+as false a declaration as ever was made; for I was inwardly crying for
+her then, and I know what I know of the pain she cost me afterwards.
+
+We went on our way upstairs after this episode; and, as we were going
+up, we met a gentleman groping his way down.
+
+“Whom have we here?” asked the gentleman, stopping and looking at me.
+
+“A boy,” said Estella.
+
+He was a burly man of an exceedingly dark complexion, with an
+exceedingly large head, and a corresponding large hand. He took my chin
+in his large hand and turned up my face to have a look at me by the
+light of the candle. He was prematurely bald on the top of his head,
+and had bushy black eyebrows that wouldn’t lie down but stood up
+bristling. His eyes were set very deep in his head, and were
+disagreeably sharp and suspicious. He had a large watch-chain, and
+strong black dots where his beard and whiskers would have been if he
+had let them. He was nothing to me, and I could have had no foresight
+then, that he ever would be anything to me, but it happened that I had
+this opportunity of observing him well.
+
+“Boy of the neighbourhood? Hey?” said he.
+
+“Yes, sir,” said I.
+
+“How do _you_ come here?”
+
+“Miss Havisham sent for me, sir,” I explained.
+
+“Well! Behave yourself. I have a pretty large experience of boys, and
+you’re a bad set of fellows. Now mind!” said he, biting the side of his
+great forefinger as he frowned at me, “you behave yourself!”
+
+With those words, he released me—which I was glad of, for his hand
+smelt of scented soap—and went his way downstairs. I wondered whether
+he could be a doctor; but no, I thought; he couldn’t be a doctor, or he
+would have a quieter and more persuasive manner. There was not much
+time to consider the subject, for we were soon in Miss Havisham’s room,
+where she and everything else were just as I had left them. Estella
+left me standing near the door, and I stood there until Miss Havisham
+cast her eyes upon me from the dressing-table.
+
+“So!” she said, without being startled or surprised: “the days have
+worn away, have they?”
+
+“Yes, ma’am. To-day is—”
+
+“There, there, there!” with the impatient movement of her fingers. “I
+don’t want to know. Are you ready to play?”
+
+I was obliged to answer in some confusion, “I don’t think I am, ma’am.”
+
+“Not at cards again?” she demanded, with a searching look.
+
+“Yes, ma’am; I could do that, if I was wanted.”
+
+“Since this house strikes you old and grave, boy,” said Miss Havisham,
+impatiently, “and you are unwilling to play, are you willing to work?”
+
+I could answer this inquiry with a better heart than I had been able to
+find for the other question, and I said I was quite willing.
+
+“Then go into that opposite room,” said she, pointing at the door
+behind me with her withered hand, “and wait there till I come.”
+
+I crossed the staircase landing, and entered the room she indicated.
+From that room, too, the daylight was completely excluded, and it had
+an airless smell that was oppressive. A fire had been lately kindled in
+the damp old-fashioned grate, and it was more disposed to go out than
+to burn up, and the reluctant smoke which hung in the room seemed
+colder than the clearer air,—like our own marsh mist. Certain wintry
+branches of candles on the high chimney-piece faintly lighted the
+chamber; or it would be more expressive to say, faintly troubled its
+darkness. It was spacious, and I dare say had once been handsome, but
+every discernible thing in it was covered with dust and mould, and
+dropping to pieces. The most prominent object was a long table with a
+tablecloth spread on it, as if a feast had been in preparation when the
+house and the clocks all stopped together. An epergne or centre-piece
+of some kind was in the middle of this cloth; it was so heavily
+overhung with cobwebs that its form was quite undistinguishable; and,
+as I looked along the yellow expanse out of which I remember its
+seeming to grow, like a black fungus, I saw speckle-legged spiders with
+blotchy bodies running home to it, and running out from it, as if some
+circumstances of the greatest public importance had just transpired in
+the spider community.
+
+I heard the mice too, rattling behind the panels, as if the same
+occurrence were important to their interests. But the black beetles
+took no notice of the agitation, and groped about the hearth in a
+ponderous elderly way, as if they were short-sighted and hard of
+hearing, and not on terms with one another.
+
+These crawling things had fascinated my attention, and I was watching
+them from a distance, when Miss Havisham laid a hand upon my shoulder.
+In her other hand she had a crutch-headed stick on which she leaned,
+and she looked like the Witch of the place.
+
+“This,” said she, pointing to the long table with her stick, “is where
+I will be laid when I am dead. They shall come and look at me here.”
+
+With some vague misgiving that she might get upon the table then and
+there and die at once, the complete realisation of the ghastly waxwork
+at the Fair, I shrank under her touch.
+
+“What do you think that is?” she asked me, again pointing with her
+stick; “that, where those cobwebs are?”
+
+“I can’t guess what it is, ma’am.”
+
+“It’s a great cake. A bride-cake. Mine!”
+
+She looked all round the room in a glaring manner, and then said,
+leaning on me while her hand twitched my shoulder, “Come, come, come!
+Walk me, walk me!”
+
+I made out from this, that the work I had to do, was to walk Miss
+Havisham round and round the room. Accordingly, I started at once, and
+she leaned upon my shoulder, and we went away at a pace that might have
+been an imitation (founded on my first impulse under that roof) of Mr.
+Pumblechook’s chaise-cart.
+
+She was not physically strong, and after a little time said, “Slower!”
+Still, we went at an impatient fitful speed, and as we went, she
+twitched the hand upon my shoulder, and worked her mouth, and led me to
+believe that we were going fast because her thoughts went fast. After a
+while she said, “Call Estella!” so I went out on the landing and roared
+that name as I had done on the previous occasion. When her light
+appeared, I returned to Miss Havisham, and we started away again round
+and round the room.
+
+If only Estella had come to be a spectator of our proceedings, I should
+have felt sufficiently discontented; but as she brought with her the
+three ladies and the gentleman whom I had seen below, I didn’t know
+what to do. In my politeness, I would have stopped; but Miss Havisham
+twitched my shoulder, and we posted on,—with a shame-faced
+consciousness on my part that they would think it was all my doing.
+
+“Dear Miss Havisham,” said Miss Sarah Pocket. “How well you look!”
+
+“I do not,” returned Miss Havisham. “I am yellow skin and bone.”
+
+Camilla brightened when Miss Pocket met with this rebuff; and she
+murmured, as she plaintively contemplated Miss Havisham, “Poor dear
+soul! Certainly not to be expected to look well, poor thing. The idea!”
+
+“And how are _you_?” said Miss Havisham to Camilla. As we were close to
+Camilla then, I would have stopped as a matter of course, only Miss
+Havisham wouldn’t stop. We swept on, and I felt that I was highly
+obnoxious to Camilla.
+
+“Thank you, Miss Havisham,” she returned, “I am as well as can be
+expected.”
+
+“Why, what’s the matter with you?” asked Miss Havisham, with exceeding
+sharpness.
+
+“Nothing worth mentioning,” replied Camilla. “I don’t wish to make a
+display of my feelings, but I have habitually thought of you more in
+the night than I am quite equal to.”
+
+“Then don’t think of me,” retorted Miss Havisham.
+
+“Very easily said!” remarked Camilla, amiably repressing a sob, while a
+hitch came into her upper lip, and her tears overflowed. “Raymond is a
+witness what ginger and sal volatile I am obliged to take in the night.
+Raymond is a witness what nervous jerkings I have in my legs. Chokings
+and nervous jerkings, however, are nothing new to me when I think with
+anxiety of those I love. If I could be less affectionate and sensitive,
+I should have a better digestion and an iron set of nerves. I am sure I
+wish it could be so. But as to not thinking of you in the night—The
+idea!” Here, a burst of tears.
+
+The Raymond referred to, I understood to be the gentleman present, and
+him I understood to be Mr. Camilla. He came to the rescue at this
+point, and said in a consolatory and complimentary voice, “Camilla, my
+dear, it is well known that your family feelings are gradually
+undermining you to the extent of making one of your legs shorter than
+the other.”
+
+“I am not aware,” observed the grave lady whose voice I had heard but
+once, “that to think of any person is to make a great claim upon that
+person, my dear.”
+
+Miss Sarah Pocket, whom I now saw to be a little dry, brown, corrugated
+old woman, with a small face that might have been made of
+walnut-shells, and a large mouth like a cat’s without the whiskers,
+supported this position by saying, “No, indeed, my dear. Hem!”
+
+“Thinking is easy enough,” said the grave lady.
+
+“What is easier, you know?” assented Miss Sarah Pocket.
+
+“Oh, yes, yes!” cried Camilla, whose fermenting feelings appeared to
+rise from her legs to her bosom. “It’s all very true! It’s a weakness
+to be so affectionate, but I can’t help it. No doubt my health would be
+much better if it was otherwise, still I wouldn’t change my disposition
+if I could. It’s the cause of much suffering, but it’s a consolation to
+know I posses it, when I wake up in the night.” Here another burst of
+feeling.
+
+Miss Havisham and I had never stopped all this time, but kept going
+round and round the room; now brushing against the skirts of the
+visitors, now giving them the whole length of the dismal chamber.
+
+“There’s Matthew!” said Camilla. “Never mixing with any natural ties,
+never coming here to see how Miss Havisham is! I have taken to the sofa
+with my staylace cut, and have lain there hours insensible, with my
+head over the side, and my hair all down, and my feet I don’t know
+where—”
+
+(“Much higher than your head, my love,” said Mr. Camilla.)
+
+“I have gone off into that state, hours and hours, on account of
+Matthew’s strange and inexplicable conduct, and nobody has thanked me.”
+
+“Really I must say I should think not!” interposed the grave lady.
+
+“You see, my dear,” added Miss Sarah Pocket (a blandly vicious
+personage), “the question to put to yourself is, who did you expect to
+thank you, my love?”
+
+“Without expecting any thanks, or anything of the sort,” resumed
+Camilla, “I have remained in that state, hours and hours, and Raymond
+is a witness of the extent to which I have choked, and what the total
+inefficacy of ginger has been, and I have been heard at the piano-forte
+tuner’s across the street, where the poor mistaken children have even
+supposed it to be pigeons cooing at a distance,—and now to be told—”
+Here Camilla put her hand to her throat, and began to be quite chemical
+as to the formation of new combinations there.
+
+When this same Matthew was mentioned, Miss Havisham stopped me and
+herself, and stood looking at the speaker. This change had a great
+influence in bringing Camilla’s chemistry to a sudden end.
+
+“Matthew will come and see me at last,” said Miss Havisham, sternly,
+“when I am laid on that table. That will be his place,—there,” striking
+the table with her stick, “at my head! And yours will be there! And
+your husband’s there! And Sarah Pocket’s there! And Georgiana’s there!
+Now you all know where to take your stations when you come to feast
+upon me. And now go!”
+
+At the mention of each name, she had struck the table with her stick in
+a new place. She now said, “Walk me, walk me!” and we went on again.
+
+“I suppose there’s nothing to be done,” exclaimed Camilla, “but comply
+and depart. It’s something to have seen the object of one’s love and
+duty for even so short a time. I shall think of it with a melancholy
+satisfaction when I wake up in the night. I wish Matthew could have
+that comfort, but he sets it at defiance. I am determined not to make a
+display of my feelings, but it’s very hard to be told one wants to
+feast on one’s relations,—as if one was a Giant,—and to be told to go.
+The bare idea!”
+
+Mr. Camilla interposing, as Mrs. Camilla laid her hand upon her heaving
+bosom, that lady assumed an unnatural fortitude of manner which I
+supposed to be expressive of an intention to drop and choke when out of
+view, and kissing her hand to Miss Havisham, was escorted forth. Sarah
+Pocket and Georgiana contended who should remain last; but Sarah was
+too knowing to be outdone, and ambled round Georgiana with that artful
+slipperiness that the latter was obliged to take precedence. Sarah
+Pocket then made her separate effect of departing with, “Bless you,
+Miss Havisham dear!” and with a smile of forgiving pity on her
+walnut-shell countenance for the weaknesses of the rest.
+
+While Estella was away lighting them down, Miss Havisham still walked
+with her hand on my shoulder, but more and more slowly. At last she
+stopped before the fire, and said, after muttering and looking at it
+some seconds,—
+
+“This is my birthday, Pip.”
+
+I was going to wish her many happy returns, when she lifted her stick.
+
+“I don’t suffer it to be spoken of. I don’t suffer those who were here
+just now, or any one to speak of it. They come here on the day, but
+they dare not refer to it.”
+
+Of course _I_ made no further effort to refer to it.
+
+“On this day of the year, long before you were born, this heap of
+decay,” stabbing with her crutched stick at the pile of cobwebs on the
+table, but not touching it, “was brought here. It and I have worn away
+together. The mice have gnawed at it, and sharper teeth than teeth of
+mice have gnawed at me.”
+
+She held the head of her stick against her heart as she stood looking
+at the table; she in her once white dress, all yellow and withered; the
+once white cloth all yellow and withered; everything around in a state
+to crumble under a touch.
+
+“When the ruin is complete,” said she, with a ghastly look, “and when
+they lay me dead, in my bride’s dress on the bride’s table,—which shall
+be done, and which will be the finished curse upon him,—so much the
+better if it is done on this day!”
+
+She stood looking at the table as if she stood looking at her own
+figure lying there. I remained quiet. Estella returned, and she too
+remained quiet. It seemed to me that we continued thus for a long time.
+In the heavy air of the room, and the heavy darkness that brooded in
+its remoter corners, I even had an alarming fancy that Estella and I
+might presently begin to decay.
+
+At length, not coming out of her distraught state by degrees, but in an
+instant, Miss Havisham said, “Let me see you two play cards; why have
+you not begun?” With that, we returned to her room, and sat down as
+before; I was beggared, as before; and again, as before, Miss Havisham
+watched us all the time, directed my attention to Estella’s beauty, and
+made me notice it the more by trying her jewels on Estella’s breast and
+hair.
+
+Estella, for her part, likewise treated me as before, except that she
+did not condescend to speak. When we had played some half-dozen games,
+a day was appointed for my return, and I was taken down into the yard
+to be fed in the former dog-like manner. There, too, I was again left
+to wander about as I liked.
+
+It is not much to the purpose whether a gate in that garden wall which
+I had scrambled up to peep over on the last occasion was, on that last
+occasion, open or shut. Enough that I saw no gate then, and that I saw
+one now. As it stood open, and as I knew that Estella had let the
+visitors out,—for she had returned with the keys in her hand,—I
+strolled into the garden, and strolled all over it. It was quite a
+wilderness, and there were old melon-frames and cucumber-frames in it,
+which seemed in their decline to have produced a spontaneous growth of
+weak attempts at pieces of old hats and boots, with now and then a
+weedy offshoot into the likeness of a battered saucepan.
+
+When I had exhausted the garden and a greenhouse with nothing in it but
+a fallen-down grape-vine and some bottles, I found myself in the dismal
+corner upon which I had looked out of the window. Never questioning for
+a moment that the house was now empty, I looked in at another window,
+and found myself, to my great surprise, exchanging a broad stare with a
+pale young gentleman with red eyelids and light hair.
+
+This pale young gentleman quickly disappeared, and reappeared beside
+me. He had been at his books when I had found myself staring at him,
+and I now saw that he was inky.
+
+“Halloa!” said he, “young fellow!”
+
+Halloa being a general observation which I had usually observed to be
+best answered by itself, _I_ said, “Halloa!” politely omitting young
+fellow.
+
+“Who let _you_ in?” said he.
+
+“Miss Estella.”
+
+“Who gave you leave to prowl about?”
+
+“Miss Estella.”
+
+“Come and fight,” said the pale young gentleman.
+
+What could I do but follow him? I have often asked myself the question
+since; but what else could I do? His manner was so final, and I was so
+astonished, that I followed where he led, as if I had been under a
+spell.
+
+“Stop a minute, though,” he said, wheeling round before we had gone
+many paces. “I ought to give you a reason for fighting, too. There it
+is!” In a most irritating manner he instantly slapped his hands against
+one another, daintily flung one of his legs up behind him, pulled my
+hair, slapped his hands again, dipped his head, and butted it into my
+stomach.
+
+The bull-like proceeding last mentioned, besides that it was
+unquestionably to be regarded in the light of a liberty, was
+particularly disagreeable just after bread and meat. I therefore hit
+out at him and was going to hit out again, when he said, “Aha! Would
+you?” and began dancing backwards and forwards in a manner quite
+unparalleled within my limited experience.
+
+“Laws of the game!” said he. Here, he skipped from his left leg on to
+his right. “Regular rules!” Here, he skipped from his right leg on to
+his left. “Come to the ground, and go through the preliminaries!” Here,
+he dodged backwards and forwards, and did all sorts of things while I
+looked helplessly at him.
+
+I was secretly afraid of him when I saw him so dexterous; but I felt
+morally and physically convinced that his light head of hair could have
+had no business in the pit of my stomach, and that I had a right to
+consider it irrelevant when so obtruded on my attention. Therefore, I
+followed him without a word, to a retired nook of the garden, formed by
+the junction of two walls and screened by some rubbish. On his asking
+me if I was satisfied with the ground, and on my replying Yes, he
+begged my leave to absent himself for a moment, and quickly returned
+with a bottle of water and a sponge dipped in vinegar. “Available for
+both,” he said, placing these against the wall. And then fell to
+pulling off, not only his jacket and waistcoat, but his shirt too, in a
+manner at once light-hearted, business-like, and bloodthirsty.
+
+Although he did not look very healthy,—having pimples on his face, and
+a breaking out at his mouth,—these dreadful preparations quite appalled
+me. I judged him to be about my own age, but he was much taller, and he
+had a way of spinning himself about that was full of appearance. For
+the rest, he was a young gentleman in a grey suit (when not denuded for
+battle), with his elbows, knees, wrists, and heels considerably in
+advance of the rest of him as to development.
+
+My heart failed me when I saw him squaring at me with every
+demonstration of mechanical nicety, and eyeing my anatomy as if he were
+minutely choosing his bone. I never have been so surprised in my life,
+as I was when I let out the first blow, and saw him lying on his back,
+looking up at me with a bloody nose and his face exceedingly
+fore-shortened.
+
+But, he was on his feet directly, and after sponging himself with a
+great show of dexterity began squaring again. The second greatest
+surprise I have ever had in my life was seeing him on his back again,
+looking up at me out of a black eye.
+
+His spirit inspired me with great respect. He seemed to have no
+strength, and he never once hit me hard, and he was always knocked
+down; but he would be up again in a moment, sponging himself or
+drinking out of the water-bottle, with the greatest satisfaction in
+seconding himself according to form, and then came at me with an air
+and a show that made me believe he really was going to do for me at
+last. He got heavily bruised, for I am sorry to record that the more I
+hit him, the harder I hit him; but he came up again and again and
+again, until at last he got a bad fall with the back of his head
+against the wall. Even after that crisis in our affairs, he got up and
+turned round and round confusedly a few times, not knowing where I was;
+but finally went on his knees to his sponge and threw it up: at the
+same time panting out, “That means you have won.”
+
+He seemed so brave and innocent, that although I had not proposed the
+contest, I felt but a gloomy satisfaction in my victory. Indeed, I go
+so far as to hope that I regarded myself while dressing as a species of
+savage young wolf or other wild beast. However, I got dressed, darkly
+wiping my sanguinary face at intervals, and I said, “Can I help you?”
+and he said “No thankee,” and I said “Good afternoon,” and _he_ said
+“Same to you.”
+
+When I got into the courtyard, I found Estella waiting with the keys.
+But she neither asked me where I had been, nor why I had kept her
+waiting; and there was a bright flush upon her face, as though
+something had happened to delight her. Instead of going straight to the
+gate, too, she stepped back into the passage, and beckoned me.
+
+“Come here! You may kiss me, if you like.”
+
+I kissed her cheek as she turned it to me. I think I would have gone
+through a great deal to kiss her cheek. But I felt that the kiss was
+given to the coarse common boy as a piece of money might have been, and
+that it was worth nothing.
+
+What with the birthday visitors, and what with the cards, and what with
+the fight, my stay had lasted so long, that when I neared home the
+light on the spit of sand off the point on the marshes was gleaming
+against a black night-sky, and Joe’s furnace was flinging a path of
+fire across the road.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XII.
+
+
+My mind grew very uneasy on the subject of the pale young gentleman.
+The more I thought of the fight, and recalled the pale young gentleman
+on his back in various stages of puffy and incrimsoned countenance, the
+more certain it appeared that something would be done to me. I felt
+that the pale young gentleman’s blood was on my head, and that the Law
+would avenge it. Without having any definite idea of the penalties I
+had incurred, it was clear to me that village boys could not go
+stalking about the country, ravaging the houses of gentlefolks and
+pitching into the studious youth of England, without laying themselves
+open to severe punishment. For some days, I even kept close at home,
+and looked out at the kitchen door with the greatest caution and
+trepidation before going on an errand, lest the officers of the County
+Jail should pounce upon me. The pale young gentleman’s nose had stained
+my trousers, and I tried to wash out that evidence of my guilt in the
+dead of night. I had cut my knuckles against the pale young gentleman’s
+teeth, and I twisted my imagination into a thousand tangles, as I
+devised incredible ways of accounting for that damnatory circumstance
+when I should be haled before the Judges.
+
+When the day came round for my return to the scene of the deed of
+violence, my terrors reached their height. Whether myrmidons of
+Justice, especially sent down from London, would be lying in ambush
+behind the gate;—whether Miss Havisham, preferring to take personal
+vengeance for an outrage done to her house, might rise in those
+grave-clothes of hers, draw a pistol, and shoot me dead:—whether
+suborned boys—a numerous band of mercenaries—might be engaged to fall
+upon me in the brewery, and cuff me until I was no more;—it was high
+testimony to my confidence in the spirit of the pale young gentleman,
+that I never imagined _him_ accessory to these retaliations; they
+always came into my mind as the acts of injudicious relatives of his,
+goaded on by the state of his visage and an indignant sympathy with the
+family features.
+
+However, go to Miss Havisham’s I must, and go I did. And behold!
+nothing came of the late struggle. It was not alluded to in any way,
+and no pale young gentleman was to be discovered on the premises. I
+found the same gate open, and I explored the garden, and even looked in
+at the windows of the detached house; but my view was suddenly stopped
+by the closed shutters within, and all was lifeless. Only in the corner
+where the combat had taken place could I detect any evidence of the
+young gentleman’s existence. There were traces of his gore in that
+spot, and I covered them with garden-mould from the eye of man.
+
+On the broad landing between Miss Havisham’s own room and that other
+room in which the long table was laid out, I saw a garden-chair,—a
+light chair on wheels, that you pushed from behind. It had been placed
+there since my last visit, and I entered, that same day, on a regular
+occupation of pushing Miss Havisham in this chair (when she was tired
+of walking with her hand upon my shoulder) round her own room, and
+across the landing, and round the other room. Over and over and over
+again, we would make these journeys, and sometimes they would last as
+long as three hours at a stretch. I insensibly fall into a general
+mention of these journeys as numerous, because it was at once settled
+that I should return every alternate day at noon for these purposes,
+and because I am now going to sum up a period of at least eight or ten
+months.
+
+As we began to be more used to one another, Miss Havisham talked more
+to me, and asked me such questions as what had I learnt and what was I
+going to be? I told her I was going to be apprenticed to Joe, I
+believed; and I enlarged upon my knowing nothing and wanting to know
+everything, in the hope that she might offer some help towards that
+desirable end. But she did not; on the contrary, she seemed to prefer
+my being ignorant. Neither did she ever give me any money,—or anything
+but my daily dinner,—nor ever stipulate that I should be paid for my
+services.
+
+Estella was always about, and always let me in and out, but never told
+me I might kiss her again. Sometimes, she would coldly tolerate me;
+sometimes, she would condescend to me; sometimes, she would be quite
+familiar with me; sometimes, she would tell me energetically that she
+hated me. Miss Havisham would often ask me in a whisper, or when we
+were alone, “Does she grow prettier and prettier, Pip?” And when I said
+yes (for indeed she did), would seem to enjoy it greedily. Also, when
+we played at cards Miss Havisham would look on, with a miserly relish
+of Estella’s moods, whatever they were. And sometimes, when her moods
+were so many and so contradictory of one another that I was puzzled
+what to say or do, Miss Havisham would embrace her with lavish
+fondness, murmuring something in her ear that sounded like “Break their
+hearts my pride and hope, break their hearts and have no mercy!”
+
+There was a song Joe used to hum fragments of at the forge, of which
+the burden was Old Clem. This was not a very ceremonious way of
+rendering homage to a patron saint, but I believe Old Clem stood in
+that relation towards smiths. It was a song that imitated the measure
+of beating upon iron, and was a mere lyrical excuse for the
+introduction of Old Clem’s respected name. Thus, you were to hammer
+boys round—Old Clem! With a thump and a sound—Old Clem! Beat it out,
+beat it out—Old Clem! With a clink for the stout—Old Clem! Blow the
+fire, blow the fire—Old Clem! Roaring dryer, soaring higher—Old Clem!
+One day soon after the appearance of the chair, Miss Havisham suddenly
+saying to me, with the impatient movement of her fingers, “There,
+there, there! Sing!” I was surprised into crooning this ditty as I
+pushed her over the floor. It happened so to catch her fancy that she
+took it up in a low brooding voice as if she were singing in her sleep.
+After that, it became customary with us to have it as we moved about,
+and Estella would often join in; though the whole strain was so
+subdued, even when there were three of us, that it made less noise in
+the grim old house than the lightest breath of wind.
+
+What could I become with these surroundings? How could my character
+fail to be influenced by them? Is it to be wondered at if my thoughts
+were dazed, as my eyes were, when I came out into the natural light
+from the misty yellow rooms?
+
+Perhaps I might have told Joe about the pale young gentleman, if I had
+not previously been betrayed into those enormous inventions to which I
+had confessed. Under the circumstances, I felt that Joe could hardly
+fail to discern in the pale young gentleman, an appropriate passenger
+to be put into the black velvet coach; therefore, I said nothing of
+him. Besides, that shrinking from having Miss Havisham and Estella
+discussed, which had come upon me in the beginning, grew much more
+potent as time went on. I reposed complete confidence in no one but
+Biddy; but I told poor Biddy everything. Why it came natural to me to
+do so, and why Biddy had a deep concern in everything I told her, I did
+not know then, though I think I know now.
+
+Meanwhile, councils went on in the kitchen at home, fraught with almost
+insupportable aggravation to my exasperated spirit. That ass,
+Pumblechook, used often to come over of a night for the purpose of
+discussing my prospects with my sister; and I really do believe (to
+this hour with less penitence than I ought to feel), that if these
+hands could have taken a linchpin out of his chaise-cart, they would
+have done it. The miserable man was a man of that confined stolidity of
+mind, that he could not discuss my prospects without having me before
+him,—as it were, to operate upon,—and he would drag me up from my stool
+(usually by the collar) where I was quiet in a corner, and, putting me
+before the fire as if I were going to be cooked, would begin by saying,
+“Now, Mum, here is this boy! Here is this boy which you brought up by
+hand. Hold up your head, boy, and be forever grateful unto them which
+so did do. Now, Mum, with respections to this boy!” And then he would
+rumple my hair the wrong way,—which from my earliest remembrance, as
+already hinted, I have in my soul denied the right of any
+fellow-creature to do,—and would hold me before him by the sleeve,—a
+spectacle of imbecility only to be equalled by himself.
+
+Then, he and my sister would pair off in such nonsensical speculations
+about Miss Havisham, and about what she would do with me and for me,
+that I used to want—quite painfully—to burst into spiteful tears, fly
+at Pumblechook, and pummel him all over. In these dialogues, my sister
+spoke to me as if she were morally wrenching one of my teeth out at
+every reference; while Pumblechook himself, self-constituted my patron,
+would sit supervising me with a depreciatory eye, like the architect of
+my fortunes who thought himself engaged on a very unremunerative job.
+
+In these discussions, Joe bore no part. But he was often talked at,
+while they were in progress, by reason of Mrs. Joe’s perceiving that he
+was not favourable to my being taken from the forge. I was fully old
+enough now to be apprenticed to Joe; and when Joe sat with the poker on
+his knees thoughtfully raking out the ashes between the lower bars, my
+sister would so distinctly construe that innocent action into
+opposition on his part, that she would dive at him, take the poker out
+of his hands, shake him, and put it away. There was a most irritating
+end to every one of these debates. All in a moment, with nothing to
+lead up to it, my sister would stop herself in a yawn, and catching
+sight of me as it were incidentally, would swoop upon me with, “Come!
+there’s enough of _you_! _You_ get along to bed; _you_’ve given trouble
+enough for one night, I hope!” As if I had besought them as a favour to
+bother my life out.
+
+We went on in this way for a long time, and it seemed likely that we
+should continue to go on in this way for a long time, when one day Miss
+Havisham stopped short as she and I were walking, she leaning on my
+shoulder; and said with some displeasure,—
+
+“You are growing tall, Pip!”
+
+I thought it best to hint, through the medium of a meditative look,
+that this might be occasioned by circumstances over which I had no
+control.
+
+She said no more at the time; but she presently stopped and looked at
+me again; and presently again; and after that, looked frowning and
+moody. On the next day of my attendance, when our usual exercise was
+over, and I had landed her at her dressing-table, she stayed me with a
+movement of her impatient fingers:—
+
+“Tell me the name again of that blacksmith of yours.”
+
+“Joe Gargery, ma’am.”
+
+“Meaning the master you were to be apprenticed to?”
+
+“Yes, Miss Havisham.”
+
+“You had better be apprenticed at once. Would Gargery come here with
+you, and bring your indentures, do you think?”
+
+I signified that I had no doubt he would take it as an honour to be
+asked.
+
+“Then let him come.”
+
+“At any particular time, Miss Havisham?”
+
+“There, there! I know nothing about times. Let him come soon, and come
+along with you.”
+
+When I got home at night, and delivered this message for Joe, my sister
+“went on the Rampage,” in a more alarming degree than at any previous
+period. She asked me and Joe whether we supposed she was door-mats
+under our feet, and how we dared to use her so, and what company we
+graciously thought she _was_ fit for? When she had exhausted a torrent
+of such inquiries, she threw a candlestick at Joe, burst into a loud
+sobbing, got out the dustpan,—which was always a very bad sign,—put on
+her coarse apron, and began cleaning up to a terrible extent. Not
+satisfied with a dry cleaning, she took to a pail and scrubbing-brush,
+and cleaned us out of house and home, so that we stood shivering in the
+back-yard. It was ten o’clock at night before we ventured to creep in
+again, and then she asked Joe why he hadn’t married a Negress Slave at
+once? Joe offered no answer, poor fellow, but stood feeling his whisker
+and looking dejectedly at me, as if he thought it really might have
+been a better speculation.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII.
+
+
+It was a trial to my feelings, on the next day but one, to see Joe
+arraying himself in his Sunday clothes to accompany me to Miss
+Havisham’s. However, as he thought his court-suit necessary to the
+occasion, it was not for me to tell him that he looked far better in
+his working-dress; the rather, because I knew he made himself so
+dreadfully uncomfortable, entirely on my account, and that it was for
+me he pulled up his shirt-collar so very high behind, that it made the
+hair on the crown of his head stand up like a tuft of feathers.
+
+At breakfast-time my sister declared her intention of going to town
+with us, and being left at Uncle Pumblechook’s and called for “when we
+had done with our fine ladies”—a way of putting the case, from which
+Joe appeared inclined to augur the worst. The forge was shut up for the
+day, and Joe inscribed in chalk upon the door (as it was his custom to
+do on the very rare occasions when he was not at work) the monosyllable
+HOUT, accompanied by a sketch of an arrow supposed to be flying in the
+direction he had taken.
+
+We walked to town, my sister leading the way in a very large beaver
+bonnet, and carrying a basket like the Great Seal of England in plaited
+Straw, a pair of pattens, a spare shawl, and an umbrella, though it was
+a fine bright day. I am not quite clear whether these articles were
+carried penitentially or ostentatiously; but I rather think they were
+displayed as articles of property,—much as Cleopatra or any other
+sovereign lady on the Rampage might exhibit her wealth in a pageant or
+procession.
+
+When we came to Pumblechook’s, my sister bounced in and left us. As it
+was almost noon, Joe and I held straight on to Miss Havisham’s house.
+Estella opened the gate as usual, and, the moment she appeared, Joe
+took his hat off and stood weighing it by the brim in both his hands;
+as if he had some urgent reason in his mind for being particular to
+half a quarter of an ounce.
+
+Estella took no notice of either of us, but led us the way that I knew
+so well. I followed next to her, and Joe came last. When I looked back
+at Joe in the long passage, he was still weighing his hat with the
+greatest care, and was coming after us in long strides on the tips of
+his toes.
+
+Estella told me we were both to go in, so I took Joe by the coat-cuff
+and conducted him into Miss Havisham’s presence. She was seated at her
+dressing-table, and looked round at us immediately.
+
+“Oh!” said she to Joe. “You are the husband of the sister of this boy?”
+
+I could hardly have imagined dear old Joe looking so unlike himself or
+so like some extraordinary bird; standing as he did speechless, with
+his tuft of feathers ruffled, and his mouth open as if he wanted a
+worm.
+
+“You are the husband,” repeated Miss Havisham, “of the sister of this
+boy?”
+
+It was very aggravating; but, throughout the interview, Joe persisted
+in addressing Me instead of Miss Havisham.
+
+“Which I meantersay, Pip,” Joe now observed in a manner that was at
+once expressive of forcible argumentation, strict confidence, and great
+politeness, “as I hup and married your sister, and I were at the time
+what you might call (if you was anyways inclined) a single man.”
+
+“Well!” said Miss Havisham. “And you have reared the boy, with the
+intention of taking him for your apprentice; is that so, Mr. Gargery?”
+
+“You know, Pip,” replied Joe, “as you and me were ever friends, and it
+were looked for’ard to betwixt us, as being calc’lated to lead to
+larks. Not but what, Pip, if you had ever made objections to the
+business,—such as its being open to black and sut, or such-like,—not
+but what they would have been attended to, don’t you see?”
+
+“Has the boy,” said Miss Havisham, “ever made any objection? Does he
+like the trade?”
+
+“Which it is well beknown to yourself, Pip,” returned Joe,
+strengthening his former mixture of argumentation, confidence, and
+politeness, “that it were the wish of your own hart.” (I saw the idea
+suddenly break upon him that he would adapt his epitaph to the
+occasion, before he went on to say) “And there weren’t no objection on
+your part, and Pip it were the great wish of your hart!”
+
+It was quite in vain for me to endeavour to make him sensible that he
+ought to speak to Miss Havisham. The more I made faces and gestures to
+him to do it, the more confidential, argumentative, and polite, he
+persisted in being to Me.
+
+“Have you brought his indentures with you?” asked Miss Havisham.
+
+“Well, Pip, you know,” replied Joe, as if that were a little
+unreasonable, “you yourself see me put ’em in my ’at, and therefore you
+know as they are here.” With which he took them out, and gave them, not
+to Miss Havisham, but to me. I am afraid I was ashamed of the dear good
+fellow,—I _know_ I was ashamed of him,—when I saw that Estella stood at
+the back of Miss Havisham’s chair, and that her eyes laughed
+mischievously. I took the indentures out of his hand and gave them to
+Miss Havisham.
+
+“You expected,” said Miss Havisham, as she looked them over, “no
+premium with the boy?”
+
+“Joe!” I remonstrated, for he made no reply at all. “Why don’t you
+answer—”
+
+“Pip,” returned Joe, cutting me short as if he were hurt, “which I
+meantersay that were not a question requiring a answer betwixt yourself
+and me, and which you know the answer to be full well No. You know it
+to be No, Pip, and wherefore should I say it?”
+
+Miss Havisham glanced at him as if she understood what he really was
+better than I had thought possible, seeing what he was there; and took
+up a little bag from the table beside her.
+
+“Pip has earned a premium here,” she said, “and here it is. There are
+five-and-twenty guineas in this bag. Give it to your master, Pip.”
+
+As if he were absolutely out of his mind with the wonder awakened in
+him by her strange figure and the strange room, Joe, even at this pass,
+persisted in addressing me.
+
+“This is wery liberal on your part, Pip,” said Joe, “and it is as such
+received and grateful welcome, though never looked for, far nor near,
+nor nowheres. And now, old chap,” said Joe, conveying to me a
+sensation, first of burning and then of freezing, for I felt as if that
+familiar expression were applied to Miss Havisham,—“and now, old chap,
+may we do our duty! May you and me do our duty, both on us, by one and
+another, and by them which your liberal present—have-conweyed—to be—for
+the satisfaction of mind-of—them as never—” here Joe showed that he
+felt he had fallen into frightful difficulties, until he triumphantly
+rescued himself with the words, “and from myself far be it!” These
+words had such a round and convincing sound for him that he said them
+twice.
+
+“Good-bye, Pip!” said Miss Havisham. “Let them out, Estella.”
+
+“Am I to come again, Miss Havisham?” I asked.
+
+“No. Gargery is your master now. Gargery! One word!”
+
+Thus calling him back as I went out of the door, I heard her say to Joe
+in a distinct emphatic voice, “The boy has been a good boy here, and
+that is his reward. Of course, as an honest man, you will expect no
+other and no more.”
+
+How Joe got out of the room, I have never been able to determine; but I
+know that when he did get out he was steadily proceeding upstairs
+instead of coming down, and was deaf to all remonstrances until I went
+after him and laid hold of him. In another minute we were outside the
+gate, and it was locked, and Estella was gone. When we stood in the
+daylight alone again, Joe backed up against a wall, and said to me,
+“Astonishing!” And there he remained so long saying, “Astonishing” at
+intervals, so often, that I began to think his senses were never coming
+back. At length he prolonged his remark into “Pip, I do assure _you_
+this is as-TON-ishing!” and so, by degrees, became conversational and
+able to walk away.
+
+I have reason to think that Joe’s intellects were brightened by the
+encounter they had passed through, and that on our way to Pumblechook’s
+he invented a subtle and deep design. My reason is to be found in what
+took place in Mr. Pumblechook’s parlour: where, on our presenting
+ourselves, my sister sat in conference with that detested seedsman.
+
+“Well?” cried my sister, addressing us both at once. “And what’s
+happened to _you_? I wonder you condescend to come back to such poor
+society as this, I am sure I do!”
+
+“Miss Havisham,” said Joe, with a fixed look at me, like an effort of
+remembrance, “made it wery partick’ler that we should give her—were it
+compliments or respects, Pip?”
+
+“Compliments,” I said.
+
+“Which that were my own belief,” answered Joe; “her compliments to Mrs.
+J. Gargery—”
+
+“Much good they’ll do me!” observed my sister; but rather gratified
+too.
+
+“And wishing,” pursued Joe, with another fixed look at me, like another
+effort of remembrance, “that the state of Miss Havisham’s elth were
+sitch as would have—allowed, were it, Pip?”
+
+“Of her having the pleasure,” I added.
+
+“Of ladies’ company,” said Joe. And drew a long breath.
+
+“Well!” cried my sister, with a mollified glance at Mr. Pumblechook.
+“She might have had the politeness to send that message at first, but
+it’s better late than never. And what did she give young Rantipole
+here?”
+
+“She giv’ him,” said Joe, “nothing.”
+
+Mrs. Joe was going to break out, but Joe went on.
+
+“What she giv’,” said Joe, “she giv’ to his friends. ‘And by his
+friends,’ were her explanation, ‘I mean into the hands of his sister
+Mrs. J. Gargery.’ Them were her words; ‘Mrs. J. Gargery.’ She mayn’t
+have know’d,” added Joe, with an appearance of reflection, “whether it
+were Joe, or Jorge.”
+
+My sister looked at Pumblechook: who smoothed the elbows of his wooden
+arm-chair, and nodded at her and at the fire, as if he had known all
+about it beforehand.
+
+“And how much have you got?” asked my sister, laughing. Positively
+laughing!
+
+“What would present company say to ten pound?” demanded Joe.
+
+“They’d say,” returned my sister, curtly, “pretty well. Not too much,
+but pretty well.”
+
+“It’s more than that, then,” said Joe.
+
+That fearful Impostor, Pumblechook, immediately nodded, and said, as he
+rubbed the arms of his chair, “It’s more than that, Mum.”
+
+“Why, you don’t mean to say—” began my sister.
+
+“Yes I do, Mum,” said Pumblechook; “but wait a bit. Go on, Joseph. Good
+in you! Go on!”
+
+“What would present company say,” proceeded Joe, “to twenty pound?”
+
+“Handsome would be the word,” returned my sister.
+
+“Well, then,” said Joe, “It’s more than twenty pound.”
+
+That abject hypocrite, Pumblechook, nodded again, and said, with a
+patronizing laugh, “It’s more than that, Mum. Good again! Follow her
+up, Joseph!”
+
+“Then to make an end of it,” said Joe, delightedly handing the bag to
+my sister; “it’s five-and-twenty pound.”
+
+“It’s five-and-twenty pound, Mum,” echoed that basest of swindlers,
+Pumblechook, rising to shake hands with her; “and it’s no more than
+your merits (as I said when my opinion was asked), and I wish you joy
+of the money!”
+
+If the villain had stopped here, his case would have been sufficiently
+awful, but he blackened his guilt by proceeding to take me into
+custody, with a right of patronage that left all his former criminality
+far behind.
+
+“Now you see, Joseph and wife,” said Pumblechook, as he took me by the
+arm above the elbow, “I am one of them that always go right through
+with what they’ve begun. This boy must be bound, out of hand. That’s
+_my_ way. Bound out of hand.”
+
+“Goodness knows, Uncle Pumblechook,” said my sister (grasping the
+money), “we’re deeply beholden to you.”
+
+“Never mind me, Mum,” returned that diabolical cornchandler. “A
+pleasure’s a pleasure all the world over. But this boy, you know; we
+must have him bound. I said I’d see to it—to tell you the truth.”
+
+The Justices were sitting in the Town Hall near at hand, and we at once
+went over to have me bound apprentice to Joe in the Magisterial
+presence. I say we went over, but I was pushed over by Pumblechook,
+exactly as if I had that moment picked a pocket or fired a rick;
+indeed, it was the general impression in Court that I had been taken
+red-handed; for, as Pumblechook shoved me before him through the crowd,
+I heard some people say, “What’s he done?” and others, “He’s a young
+’un, too, but looks bad, don’t he?” One person of mild and benevolent
+aspect even gave me a tract ornamented with a woodcut of a malevolent
+young man fitted up with a perfect sausage-shop of fetters, and
+entitled TO BE READ IN MY CELL.
+
+The Hall was a queer place, I thought, with higher pews in it than a
+church,—and with people hanging over the pews looking on,—and with
+mighty Justices (one with a powdered head) leaning back in chairs, with
+folded arms, or taking snuff, or going to sleep, or writing, or reading
+the newspapers,—and with some shining black portraits on the walls,
+which my unartistic eye regarded as a composition of hardbake and
+sticking-plaster. Here, in a corner my indentures were duly signed and
+attested, and I was “bound”; Mr. Pumblechook holding me all the while
+as if we had looked in on our way to the scaffold, to have those little
+preliminaries disposed of.
+
+When we had come out again, and had got rid of the boys who had been
+put into great spirits by the expectation of seeing me publicly
+tortured, and who were much disappointed to find that my friends were
+merely rallying round me, we went back to Pumblechook’s. And there my
+sister became so excited by the twenty-five guineas, that nothing would
+serve her but we must have a dinner out of that windfall at the Blue
+Boar, and that Pumblechook must go over in his chaise-cart, and bring
+the Hubbles and Mr. Wopsle.
+
+It was agreed to be done; and a most melancholy day I passed. For, it
+inscrutably appeared to stand to reason, in the minds of the whole
+company, that I was an excrescence on the entertainment. And to make it
+worse, they all asked me from time to time,—in short, whenever they had
+nothing else to do,—why I didn’t enjoy myself? And what could I
+possibly do then, but say I _was_ enjoying myself,—when I wasn’t!
+
+However, they were grown up and had their own way, and they made the
+most of it. That swindling Pumblechook, exalted into the beneficent
+contriver of the whole occasion, actually took the top of the table;
+and, when he addressed them on the subject of my being bound, and had
+fiendishly congratulated them on my being liable to imprisonment if I
+played at cards, drank strong liquors, kept late hours or bad company,
+or indulged in other vagaries which the form of my indentures appeared
+to contemplate as next to inevitable, he placed me standing on a chair
+beside him to illustrate his remarks.
+
+My only other remembrances of the great festival are, That they
+wouldn’t let me go to sleep, but whenever they saw me dropping off,
+woke me up and told me to enjoy myself. That, rather late in the
+evening Mr. Wopsle gave us Collins’s ode, and threw his bloodstained
+sword in thunder down, with such effect, that a waiter came in and
+said, “The Commercials underneath sent up their compliments, and it
+wasn’t the Tumblers’ Arms.” That, they were all in excellent spirits on
+the road home, and sang, O Lady Fair! Mr. Wopsle taking the bass, and
+asserting with a tremendously strong voice (in reply to the inquisitive
+bore who leads that piece of music in a most impertinent manner, by
+wanting to know all about everybody’s private affairs) that _he_ was
+the man with his white locks flowing, and that he was upon the whole
+the weakest pilgrim going.
+
+Finally, I remember that when I got into my little bedroom, I was truly
+wretched, and had a strong conviction on me that I should never like
+Joe’s trade. I had liked it once, but once was not now.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV.
+
+
+It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home. There may be
+black ingratitude in the thing, and the punishment may be retributive
+and well deserved; but that it is a miserable thing, I can testify.
+
+Home had never been a very pleasant place to me, because of my sister’s
+temper. But, Joe had sanctified it, and I had believed in it. I had
+believed in the best parlour as a most elegant saloon; I had believed
+in the front door, as a mysterious portal of the Temple of State whose
+solemn opening was attended with a sacrifice of roast fowls; I had
+believed in the kitchen as a chaste though not magnificent apartment; I
+had believed in the forge as the glowing road to manhood and
+independence. Within a single year all this was changed. Now it was all
+coarse and common, and I would not have had Miss Havisham and Estella
+see it on any account.
+
+How much of my ungracious condition of mind may have been my own fault,
+how much Miss Havisham’s, how much my sister’s, is now of no moment to
+me or to any one. The change was made in me; the thing was done. Well
+or ill done, excusably or inexcusably, it was done.
+
+Once, it had seemed to me that when I should at last roll up my
+shirt-sleeves and go into the forge, Joe’s ’prentice, I should be
+distinguished and happy. Now the reality was in my hold, I only felt
+that I was dusty with the dust of small-coal, and that I had a weight
+upon my daily remembrance to which the anvil was a feather. There have
+been occasions in my later life (I suppose as in most lives) when I
+have felt for a time as if a thick curtain had fallen on all its
+interest and romance, to shut me out from anything save dull endurance
+any more. Never has that curtain dropped so heavy and blank, as when my
+way in life lay stretched out straight before me through the newly
+entered road of apprenticeship to Joe.
+
+I remember that at a later period of my “time,” I used to stand about
+the churchyard on Sunday evenings when night was falling, comparing my
+own perspective with the windy marsh view, and making out some likeness
+between them by thinking how flat and low both were, and how on both
+there came an unknown way and a dark mist and then the sea. I was quite
+as dejected on the first working-day of my apprenticeship as in that
+after-time; but I am glad to know that I never breathed a murmur to Joe
+while my indentures lasted. It is about the only thing I _am_ glad to
+know of myself in that connection.
+
+For, though it includes what I proceed to add, all the merit of what I
+proceed to add was Joe’s. It was not because I was faithful, but
+because Joe was faithful, that I never ran away and went for a soldier
+or a sailor. It was not because I had a strong sense of the virtue of
+industry, but because Joe had a strong sense of the virtue of industry,
+that I worked with tolerable zeal against the grain. It is not possible
+to know how far the influence of any amiable honest-hearted duty-doing
+man flies out into the world; but it is very possible to know how it
+has touched one’s self in going by, and I know right well that any good
+that intermixed itself with my apprenticeship came of plain contented
+Joe, and not of restlessly aspiring discontented me.
+
+What I wanted, who can say? How can _I_ say, when I never knew? What I
+dreaded was, that in some unlucky hour I, being at my grimiest and
+commonest, should lift up my eyes and see Estella looking in at one of
+the wooden windows of the forge. I was haunted by the fear that she
+would, sooner or later, find me out, with a black face and hands, doing
+the coarsest part of my work, and would exult over me and despise me.
+Often after dark, when I was pulling the bellows for Joe, and we were
+singing Old Clem, and when the thought how we used to sing it at Miss
+Havisham’s would seem to show me Estella’s face in the fire, with her
+pretty hair fluttering in the wind and her eyes scorning me,—often at
+such a time I would look towards those panels of black night in the
+wall which the wooden windows then were, and would fancy that I saw her
+just drawing her face away, and would believe that she had come at
+last.
+
+After that, when we went in to supper, the place and the meal would
+have a more homely look than ever, and I would feel more ashamed of
+home than ever, in my own ungracious breast.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XV.
+
+
+As I was getting too big for Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt’s room, my
+education under that preposterous female terminated. Not, however,
+until Biddy had imparted to me everything she knew, from the little
+catalogue of prices, to a comic song she had once bought for a
+half-penny. Although the only coherent part of the latter piece of
+literature were the opening lines,
+
+     When I went to Lunnon town sirs,
+     Too rul loo rul
+     Too rul loo rul
+     Wasn’t I done very brown sirs?
+     Too rul loo rul
+     Too rul loo rul
+
+
+—still, in my desire to be wiser, I got this composition by heart with
+the utmost gravity; nor do I recollect that I questioned its merit,
+except that I thought (as I still do) the amount of Too rul somewhat in
+excess of the poetry. In my hunger for information, I made proposals to
+Mr. Wopsle to bestow some intellectual crumbs upon me, with which he
+kindly complied. As it turned out, however, that he only wanted me for
+a dramatic lay-figure, to be contradicted and embraced and wept over
+and bullied and clutched and stabbed and knocked about in a variety of
+ways, I soon declined that course of instruction; though not until Mr.
+Wopsle in his poetic fury had severely mauled me.
+
+Whatever I acquired, I tried to impart to Joe. This statement sounds so
+well, that I cannot in my conscience let it pass unexplained. I wanted
+to make Joe less ignorant and common, that he might be worthier of my
+society and less open to Estella’s reproach.
+
+The old Battery out on the marshes was our place of study, and a broken
+slate and a short piece of slate-pencil were our educational
+implements: to which Joe always added a pipe of tobacco. I never knew
+Joe to remember anything from one Sunday to another, or to acquire,
+under my tuition, any piece of information whatever. Yet he would smoke
+his pipe at the Battery with a far more sagacious air than anywhere
+else,—even with a learned air,—as if he considered himself to be
+advancing immensely. Dear fellow, I hope he did.
+
+It was pleasant and quiet, out there with the sails on the river
+passing beyond the earthwork, and sometimes, when the tide was low,
+looking as if they belonged to sunken ships that were still sailing on
+at the bottom of the water. Whenever I watched the vessels standing out
+to sea with their white sails spread, I somehow thought of Miss
+Havisham and Estella; and whenever the light struck aslant, afar off,
+upon a cloud or sail or green hillside or water-line, it was just the
+same.—Miss Havisham and Estella and the strange house and the strange
+life appeared to have something to do with everything that was
+picturesque.
+
+One Sunday when Joe, greatly enjoying his pipe, had so plumed himself
+on being “most awful dull,” that I had given him up for the day, I lay
+on the earthwork for some time with my chin on my hand, descrying
+traces of Miss Havisham and Estella all over the prospect, in the sky
+and in the water, until at last I resolved to mention a thought
+concerning them that had been much in my head.
+
+“Joe,” said I; “don’t you think I ought to make Miss Havisham a visit?”
+
+“Well, Pip,” returned Joe, slowly considering. “What for?”
+
+“What for, Joe? What is any visit made for?”
+
+“There is some wisits p’r’aps,” said Joe, “as for ever remains open to
+the question, Pip. But in regard to wisiting Miss Havisham. She might
+think you wanted something,—expected something of her.”
+
+“Don’t you think I might say that I did not, Joe?”
+
+“You might, old chap,” said Joe. “And she might credit it. Similarly
+she mightn’t.”
+
+Joe felt, as I did, that he had made a point there, and he pulled hard
+at his pipe to keep himself from weakening it by repetition.
+
+“You see, Pip,” Joe pursued, as soon as he was past that danger, “Miss
+Havisham done the handsome thing by you. When Miss Havisham done the
+handsome thing by you, she called me back to say to me as that were
+all.”
+
+“Yes, Joe. I heard her.”
+
+“ALL,” Joe repeated, very emphatically.
+
+“Yes, Joe. I tell you, I heard her.”
+
+“Which I meantersay, Pip, it might be that her meaning were,—Make a end
+on it!—As you was!—Me to the North, and you to the South!—Keep in
+sunders!”
+
+I had thought of that too, and it was very far from comforting to me to
+find that he had thought of it; for it seemed to render it more
+probable.
+
+“But, Joe.”
+
+“Yes, old chap.”
+
+“Here am I, getting on in the first year of my time, and, since the day
+of my being bound, I have never thanked Miss Havisham, or asked after
+her, or shown that I remember her.”
+
+“That’s true, Pip; and unless you was to turn her out a set of shoes
+all four round,—and which I meantersay as even a set of shoes all four
+round might not be acceptable as a present, in a total wacancy of
+hoofs—”
+
+“I don’t mean that sort of remembrance, Joe; I don’t mean a present.”
+
+But Joe had got the idea of a present in his head and must harp upon
+it. “Or even,” said he, “if you was helped to knocking her up a new
+chain for the front door,—or say a gross or two of shark-headed screws
+for general use,—or some light fancy article, such as a toasting-fork
+when she took her muffins,—or a gridiron when she took a sprat or such
+like—”
+
+“I don’t mean any present at all, Joe,” I interposed.
+
+“Well,” said Joe, still harping on it as though I had particularly
+pressed it, “if I was yourself, Pip, I wouldn’t. No, I would _not_. For
+what’s a door-chain when she’s got one always up? And shark-headers is
+open to misrepresentations. And if it was a toasting-fork, you’d go
+into brass and do yourself no credit. And the oncommonest workman can’t
+show himself oncommon in a gridiron,—for a gridiron IS a gridiron,”
+said Joe, steadfastly impressing it upon me, as if he were endeavouring
+to rouse me from a fixed delusion, “and you may haim at what you like,
+but a gridiron it will come out, either by your leave or again your
+leave, and you can’t help yourself—”
+
+“My dear Joe,” I cried, in desperation, taking hold of his coat, “don’t
+go on in that way. I never thought of making Miss Havisham any
+present.”
+
+“No, Pip,” Joe assented, as if he had been contending for that, all
+along; “and what I say to you is, you are right, Pip.”
+
+“Yes, Joe; but what I wanted to say, was, that as we are rather slack
+just now, if you would give me a half-holiday to-morrow, I think I
+would go uptown and make a call on Miss Est—Havisham.”
+
+“Which her name,” said Joe, gravely, “ain’t Estavisham, Pip, unless she
+have been rechris’ened.”
+
+“I know, Joe, I know. It was a slip of mine. What do you think of it,
+Joe?”
+
+In brief, Joe thought that if I thought well of it, he thought well of
+it. But, he was particular in stipulating that if I were not received
+with cordiality, or if I were not encouraged to repeat my visit as a
+visit which had no ulterior object but was simply one of gratitude for
+a favour received, then this experimental trip should have no
+successor. By these conditions I promised to abide.
+
+Now, Joe kept a journeyman at weekly wages whose name was Orlick. He
+pretended that his Christian name was Dolge,—a clear Impossibility,—but
+he was a fellow of that obstinate disposition that I believe him to
+have been the prey of no delusion in this particular, but wilfully to
+have imposed that name upon the village as an affront to its
+understanding. He was a broadshouldered loose-limbed swarthy fellow of
+great strength, never in a hurry, and always slouching. He never even
+seemed to come to his work on purpose, but would slouch in as if by
+mere accident; and when he went to the Jolly Bargemen to eat his
+dinner, or went away at night, he would slouch out, like Cain or the
+Wandering Jew, as if he had no idea where he was going and no intention
+of ever coming back. He lodged at a sluice-keeper’s out on the marshes,
+and on working-days would come slouching from his hermitage, with his
+hands in his pockets and his dinner loosely tied in a bundle round his
+neck and dangling on his back. On Sundays he mostly lay all day on the
+sluice-gates, or stood against ricks and barns. He always slouched,
+locomotively, with his eyes on the ground; and, when accosted or
+otherwise required to raise them, he looked up in a half-resentful,
+half-puzzled way, as though the only thought he ever had was, that it
+was rather an odd and injurious fact that he should never be thinking.
+
+This morose journeyman had no liking for me. When I was very small and
+timid, he gave me to understand that the Devil lived in a black corner
+of the forge, and that he knew the fiend very well: also that it was
+necessary to make up the fire, once in seven years, with a live boy,
+and that I might consider myself fuel. When I became Joe’s ’prentice,
+Orlick was perhaps confirmed in some suspicion that I should displace
+him; howbeit, he liked me still less. Not that he ever said anything,
+or did anything, openly importing hostility; I only noticed that he
+always beat his sparks in my direction, and that whenever I sang Old
+Clem, he came in out of time.
+
+Dolge Orlick was at work and present, next day, when I reminded Joe of
+my half-holiday. He said nothing at the moment, for he and Joe had just
+got a piece of hot iron between them, and I was at the bellows; but by
+and by he said, leaning on his hammer,—
+
+“Now, master! Sure you’re not a-going to favour only one of us. If
+Young Pip has a half-holiday, do as much for Old Orlick.” I suppose he
+was about five-and-twenty, but he usually spoke of himself as an
+ancient person.
+
+“Why, what’ll you do with a half-holiday, if you get it?” said Joe.
+
+“What’ll _I_ do with it! What’ll _he_ do with it? I’ll do as much with
+it as _him_,” said Orlick.
+
+“As to Pip, he’s going up town,” said Joe.
+
+“Well then, as to Old Orlick, _he_’s a-going up town,” retorted that
+worthy. “Two can go up town. Tain’t only one wot can go up town.
+
+“Don’t lose your temper,” said Joe.
+
+“Shall if I like,” growled Orlick. “Some and their uptowning! Now,
+master! Come. No favouring in this shop. Be a man!”
+
+The master refusing to entertain the subject until the journeyman was
+in a better temper, Orlick plunged at the furnace, drew out a red-hot
+bar, made at me with it as if he were going to run it through my body,
+whisked it round my head, laid it on the anvil, hammered it out,—as if
+it were I, I thought, and the sparks were my spirting blood,—and
+finally said, when he had hammered himself hot and the iron cold, and
+he again leaned on his hammer,—
+
+“Now, master!”
+
+“Are you all right now?” demanded Joe.
+
+“Ah! I am all right,” said gruff Old Orlick.
+
+“Then, as in general you stick to your work as well as most men,” said
+Joe, “let it be a half-holiday for all.”
+
+My sister had been standing silent in the yard, within hearing,—she was
+a most unscrupulous spy and listener,—and she instantly looked in at
+one of the windows.
+
+“Like you, you fool!” said she to Joe, “giving holidays to great idle
+hulkers like that. You are a rich man, upon my life, to waste wages in
+that way. I wish _I_ was his master!”
+
+“You’d be everybody’s master, if you durst,” retorted Orlick, with an
+ill-favoured grin.
+
+(“Let her alone,” said Joe.)
+
+“I’d be a match for all noodles and all rogues,” returned my sister,
+beginning to work herself into a mighty rage. “And I couldn’t be a
+match for the noodles, without being a match for your master, who’s the
+dunder-headed king of the noodles. And I couldn’t be a match for the
+rogues, without being a match for you, who are the blackest-looking and
+the worst rogue between this and France. Now!”
+
+“You’re a foul shrew, Mother Gargery,” growled the journeyman. “If that
+makes a judge of rogues, you ought to be a good’un.”
+
+(“Let her alone, will you?” said Joe.)
+
+“What did you say?” cried my sister, beginning to scream. “What did you
+say? What did that fellow Orlick say to me, Pip? What did he call me,
+with my husband standing by? Oh! oh! oh!” Each of these exclamations
+was a shriek; and I must remark of my sister, what is equally true of
+all the violent women I have ever seen, that passion was no excuse for
+her, because it is undeniable that instead of lapsing into passion, she
+consciously and deliberately took extraordinary pains to force herself
+into it, and became blindly furious by regular stages; “what was the
+name he gave me before the base man who swore to defend me? Oh! Hold
+me! Oh!”
+
+“Ah-h-h!” growled the journeyman, between his teeth, “I’d hold you, if
+you was my wife. I’d hold you under the pump, and choke it out of you.”
+
+(“I tell you, let her alone,” said Joe.)
+
+“Oh! To hear him!” cried my sister, with a clap of her hands and a
+scream together,—which was her next stage. “To hear the names he’s
+giving me! That Orlick! In my own house! Me, a married woman! With my
+husband standing by! Oh! Oh!” Here my sister, after a fit of clappings
+and screamings, beat her hands upon her bosom and upon her knees, and
+threw her cap off, and pulled her hair down,—which were the last stages
+on her road to frenzy. Being by this time a perfect Fury and a complete
+success, she made a dash at the door which I had fortunately locked.
+
+What could the wretched Joe do now, after his disregarded parenthetical
+interruptions, but stand up to his journeyman, and ask him what he
+meant by interfering betwixt himself and Mrs. Joe; and further whether
+he was man enough to come on? Old Orlick felt that the situation
+admitted of nothing less than coming on, and was on his defence
+straightway; so, without so much as pulling off their singed and burnt
+aprons, they went at one another, like two giants. But, if any man in
+that neighbourhood could stand uplong against Joe, I never saw the man.
+Orlick, as if he had been of no more account than the pale young
+gentleman, was very soon among the coal-dust, and in no hurry to come
+out of it. Then Joe unlocked the door and picked up my sister, who had
+dropped insensible at the window (but who had seen the fight first, I
+think), and who was carried into the house and laid down, and who was
+recommended to revive, and would do nothing but struggle and clench her
+hands in Joe’s hair. Then came that singular calm and silence which
+succeed all uproars; and then, with the vague sensation which I have
+always connected with such a lull,—namely, that it was Sunday, and
+somebody was dead,—I went upstairs to dress myself.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+When I came down again, I found Joe and Orlick sweeping up, without any
+other traces of discomposure than a slit in one of Orlick’s nostrils,
+which was neither expressive nor ornamental. A pot of beer had appeared
+from the Jolly Bargemen, and they were sharing it by turns in a
+peaceable manner. The lull had a sedative and philosophical influence
+on Joe, who followed me out into the road to say, as a parting
+observation that might do me good, “On the Rampage, Pip, and off the
+Rampage, Pip:—such is Life!”
+
+With what absurd emotions (for we think the feelings that are very
+serious in a man quite comical in a boy) I found myself again going to
+Miss Havisham’s, matters little here. Nor, how I passed and repassed
+the gate many times before I could make up my mind to ring. Nor, how I
+debated whether I should go away without ringing; nor, how I should
+undoubtedly have gone, if my time had been my own, to come back.
+
+Miss Sarah Pocket came to the gate. No Estella.
+
+“How, then? You here again?” said Miss Pocket. “What do you want?”
+
+When I said that I only came to see how Miss Havisham was, Sarah
+evidently deliberated whether or no she should send me about my
+business. But unwilling to hazard the responsibility, she let me in,
+and presently brought the sharp message that I was to “come up.”
+
+Everything was unchanged, and Miss Havisham was alone.
+
+“Well?” said she, fixing her eyes upon me. “I hope you want nothing?
+You’ll get nothing.”
+
+“No indeed, Miss Havisham. I only wanted you to know that I am doing
+very well in my apprenticeship, and am always much obliged to you.”
+
+“There, there!” with the old restless fingers. “Come now and then; come
+on your birthday.—Ay!” she cried suddenly, turning herself and her
+chair towards me, “You are looking round for Estella? Hey?”
+
+I had been looking round,—in fact, for Estella,—and I stammered that I
+hoped she was well.
+
+“Abroad,” said Miss Havisham; “educating for a lady; far out of reach;
+prettier than ever; admired by all who see her. Do you feel that you
+have lost her?”
+
+There was such a malignant enjoyment in her utterance of the last
+words, and she broke into such a disagreeable laugh, that I was at a
+loss what to say. She spared me the trouble of considering, by
+dismissing me. When the gate was closed upon me by Sarah of the
+walnut-shell countenance, I felt more than ever dissatisfied with my
+home and with my trade and with everything; and that was all I took by
+_that_ motion.
+
+As I was loitering along the High Street, looking in disconsolately at
+the shop windows, and thinking what I would buy if I were a gentleman,
+who should come out of the bookshop but Mr. Wopsle. Mr. Wopsle had in
+his hand the affecting tragedy of George Barnwell, in which he had that
+moment invested sixpence, with the view of heaping every word of it on
+the head of Pumblechook, with whom he was going to drink tea. No sooner
+did he see me, than he appeared to consider that a special Providence
+had put a ’prentice in his way to be read at; and he laid hold of me,
+and insisted on my accompanying him to the Pumblechookian parlour. As I
+knew it would be miserable at home, and as the nights were dark and the
+way was dreary, and almost any companionship on the road was better
+than none, I made no great resistance; consequently, we turned into
+Pumblechook’s just as the street and the shops were lighting up.
+
+As I never assisted at any other representation of George Barnwell, I
+don’t know how long it may usually take; but I know very well that it
+took until half-past nine o’ clock that night, and that when Mr. Wopsle
+got into Newgate, I thought he never would go to the scaffold, he
+became so much slower than at any former period of his disgraceful
+career. I thought it a little too much that he should complain of being
+cut short in his flower after all, as if he had not been running to
+seed, leaf after leaf, ever since his course began. This, however, was
+a mere question of length and wearisomeness. What stung me, was the
+identification of the whole affair with my unoffending self. When
+Barnwell began to go wrong, I declare that I felt positively
+apologetic, Pumblechook’s indignant stare so taxed me with it. Wopsle,
+too, took pains to present me in the worst light. At once ferocious and
+maudlin, I was made to murder my uncle with no extenuating
+circumstances whatever; Millwood put me down in argument, on every
+occasion; it became sheer monomania in my master’s daughter to care a
+button for me; and all I can say for my gasping and procrastinating
+conduct on the fatal morning, is, that it was worthy of the general
+feebleness of my character. Even after I was happily hanged and Wopsle
+had closed the book, Pumblechook sat staring at me, and shaking his
+head, and saying, “Take warning, boy, take warning!” as if it were a
+well-known fact that I contemplated murdering a near relation, provided
+I could only induce one to have the weakness to become my benefactor.
+
+It was a very dark night when it was all over, and when I set out with
+Mr. Wopsle on the walk home. Beyond town, we found a heavy mist out,
+and it fell wet and thick. The turnpike lamp was a blur, quite out of
+the lamp’s usual place apparently, and its rays looked solid substance
+on the fog. We were noticing this, and saying how that the mist rose
+with a change of wind from a certain quarter of our marshes, when we
+came upon a man, slouching under the lee of the turnpike house.
+
+“Halloa!” we said, stopping. “Orlick there?”
+
+“Ah!” he answered, slouching out. “I was standing by a minute, on the
+chance of company.”
+
+“You are late,” I remarked.
+
+Orlick not unnaturally answered, “Well? And _you_’re late.”
+
+“We have been,” said Mr. Wopsle, exalted with his late performance,—“we
+have been indulging, Mr. Orlick, in an intellectual evening.”
+
+Old Orlick growled, as if he had nothing to say about that, and we all
+went on together. I asked him presently whether he had been spending
+his half-holiday up and down town?
+
+“Yes,” said he, “all of it. I come in behind yourself. I didn’t see
+you, but I must have been pretty close behind you. By the by, the guns
+is going again.”
+
+“At the Hulks?” said I.
+
+“Ay! There’s some of the birds flown from the cages. The guns have been
+going since dark, about. You’ll hear one presently.”
+
+In effect, we had not walked many yards further, when the
+well-remembered boom came towards us, deadened by the mist, and heavily
+rolled away along the low grounds by the river, as if it were pursuing
+and threatening the fugitives.
+
+“A good night for cutting off in,” said Orlick. “We’d be puzzled how to
+bring down a jail-bird on the wing, to-night.”
+
+The subject was a suggestive one to me, and I thought about it in
+silence. Mr. Wopsle, as the ill-requited uncle of the evening’s
+tragedy, fell to meditating aloud in his garden at Camberwell. Orlick,
+with his hands in his pockets, slouched heavily at my side. It was very
+dark, very wet, very muddy, and so we splashed along. Now and then, the
+sound of the signal cannon broke upon us again, and again rolled
+sulkily along the course of the river. I kept myself to myself and my
+thoughts. Mr. Wopsle died amiably at Camberwell, and exceedingly game
+on Bosworth Field, and in the greatest agonies at Glastonbury. Orlick
+sometimes growled, “Beat it out, beat it out,—Old Clem! With a clink
+for the stout,—Old Clem!” I thought he had been drinking, but he was
+not drunk.
+
+Thus, we came to the village. The way by which we approached it took us
+past the Three Jolly Bargemen, which we were surprised to find—it being
+eleven o’clock—in a state of commotion, with the door wide open, and
+unwonted lights that had been hastily caught up and put down scattered
+about. Mr. Wopsle dropped in to ask what was the matter (surmising that
+a convict had been taken), but came running out in a great hurry.
+
+“There’s something wrong,” said he, without stopping, “up at your
+place, Pip. Run all!”
+
+“What is it?” I asked, keeping up with him. So did Orlick, at my side.
+
+“I can’t quite understand. The house seems to have been violently
+entered when Joe Gargery was out. Supposed by convicts. Somebody has
+been attacked and hurt.”
+
+We were running too fast to admit of more being said, and we made no
+stop until we got into our kitchen. It was full of people; the whole
+village was there, or in the yard; and there was a surgeon, and there
+was Joe, and there were a group of women, all on the floor in the midst
+of the kitchen. The unemployed bystanders drew back when they saw me,
+and so I became aware of my sister,—lying without sense or movement on
+the bare boards where she had been knocked down by a tremendous blow on
+the back of the head, dealt by some unknown hand when her face was
+turned towards the fire,—destined never to be on the Rampage again,
+while she was the wife of Joe.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVI.
+
+
+With my head full of George Barnwell, I was at first disposed to
+believe that _I_ must have had some hand in the attack upon my sister,
+or at all events that as her near relation, popularly known to be under
+obligations to her, I was a more legitimate object of suspicion than
+any one else. But when, in the clearer light of next morning, I began
+to reconsider the matter and to hear it discussed around me on all
+sides, I took another view of the case, which was more reasonable.
+
+Joe had been at the Three Jolly Bargemen, smoking his pipe, from a
+quarter after eight o’clock to a quarter before ten. While he was
+there, my sister had been seen standing at the kitchen door, and had
+exchanged Good Night with a farm-labourer going home. The man could not
+be more particular as to the time at which he saw her (he got into
+dense confusion when he tried to be), than that it must have been
+before nine. When Joe went home at five minutes before ten, he found
+her struck down on the floor, and promptly called in assistance. The
+fire had not then burnt unusually low, nor was the snuff of the candle
+very long; the candle, however, had been blown out.
+
+Nothing had been taken away from any part of the house. Neither, beyond
+the blowing out of the candle,—which stood on a table between the door
+and my sister, and was behind her when she stood facing the fire and
+was struck,—was there any disarrangement of the kitchen, excepting such
+as she herself had made, in falling and bleeding. But, there was one
+remarkable piece of evidence on the spot. She had been struck with
+something blunt and heavy, on the head and spine; after the blows were
+dealt, something heavy had been thrown down at her with considerable
+violence, as she lay on her face. And on the ground beside her, when
+Joe picked her up, was a convict’s leg-iron which had been filed
+asunder.
+
+Now, Joe, examining this iron with a smith’s eye, declared it to have
+been filed asunder some time ago. The hue and cry going off to the
+Hulks, and people coming thence to examine the iron, Joe’s opinion was
+corroborated. They did not undertake to say when it had left the
+prison-ships to which it undoubtedly had once belonged; but they
+claimed to know for certain that that particular manacle had not been
+worn by either of the two convicts who had escaped last night. Further,
+one of those two was already retaken, and had not freed himself of his
+iron.
+
+Knowing what I knew, I set up an inference of my own here. I believed
+the iron to be my convict’s iron,—the iron I had seen and heard him
+filing at, on the marshes,—but my mind did not accuse him of having put
+it to its latest use. For I believed one of two other persons to have
+become possessed of it, and to have turned it to this cruel account.
+Either Orlick, or the strange man who had shown me the file.
+
+Now, as to Orlick; he had gone to town exactly as he told us when we
+picked him up at the turnpike, he had been seen about town all the
+evening, he had been in divers companies in several public-houses, and
+he had come back with myself and Mr. Wopsle. There was nothing against
+him, save the quarrel; and my sister had quarrelled with him, and with
+everybody else about her, ten thousand times. As to the strange man; if
+he had come back for his two bank-notes there could have been no
+dispute about them, because my sister was fully prepared to restore
+them. Besides, there had been no altercation; the assailant had come in
+so silently and suddenly, that she had been felled before she could
+look round.
+
+It was horrible to think that I had provided the weapon, however
+undesignedly, but I could hardly think otherwise. I suffered
+unspeakable trouble while I considered and reconsidered whether I
+should at last dissolve that spell of my childhood and tell Joe all the
+story. For months afterwards, I every day settled the question finally
+in the negative, and reopened and reargued it next morning. The
+contention came, after all, to this;—the secret was such an old one
+now, had so grown into me and become a part of myself, that I could not
+tear it away. In addition to the dread that, having led up to so much
+mischief, it would be now more likely than ever to alienate Joe from me
+if he believed it, I had a further restraining dread that he would not
+believe it, but would assort it with the fabulous dogs and veal-cutlets
+as a monstrous invention. However, I temporized with myself, of
+course—for, was I not wavering between right and wrong, when the thing
+is always done?—and resolved to make a full disclosure if I should see
+any such new occasion as a new chance of helping in the discovery of
+the assailant.
+
+The Constables and the Bow Street men from London—for, this happened in
+the days of the extinct red-waistcoated police—were about the house for
+a week or two, and did pretty much what I have heard and read of like
+authorities doing in other such cases. They took up several obviously
+wrong people, and they ran their heads very hard against wrong ideas,
+and persisted in trying to fit the circumstances to the ideas, instead
+of trying to extract ideas from the circumstances. Also, they stood
+about the door of the Jolly Bargemen, with knowing and reserved looks
+that filled the whole neighbourhood with admiration; and they had a
+mysterious manner of taking their drink, that was almost as good as
+taking the culprit. But not quite, for they never did it.
+
+Long after these constitutional powers had dispersed, my sister lay
+very ill in bed. Her sight was disturbed, so that she saw objects
+multiplied, and grasped at visionary teacups and wineglasses instead of
+the realities; her hearing was greatly impaired; her memory also; and
+her speech was unintelligible. When, at last, she came round so far as
+to be helped downstairs, it was still necessary to keep my slate always
+by her, that she might indicate in writing what she could not indicate
+in speech. As she was (very bad handwriting apart) a more than
+indifferent speller, and as Joe was a more than indifferent reader,
+extraordinary complications arose between them which I was always
+called in to solve. The administration of mutton instead of medicine,
+the substitution of Tea for Joe, and the baker for bacon, were among
+the mildest of my own mistakes.
+
+However, her temper was greatly improved, and she was patient. A
+tremulous uncertainty of the action of all her limbs soon became a part
+of her regular state, and afterwards, at intervals of two or three
+months, she would often put her hands to her head, and would then
+remain for about a week at a time in some gloomy aberration of mind. We
+were at a loss to find a suitable attendant for her, until a
+circumstance happened conveniently to relieve us. Mr. Wopsle’s
+great-aunt conquered a confirmed habit of living into which she had
+fallen, and Biddy became a part of our establishment.
+
+It may have been about a month after my sister’s reappearance in the
+kitchen, when Biddy came to us with a small speckled box containing the
+whole of her worldly effects, and became a blessing to the household.
+Above all, she was a blessing to Joe, for the dear old fellow was sadly
+cut up by the constant contemplation of the wreck of his wife, and had
+been accustomed, while attending on her of an evening, to turn to me
+every now and then and say, with his blue eyes moistened, “Such a fine
+figure of a woman as she once were, Pip!” Biddy instantly taking the
+cleverest charge of her as though she had studied her from infancy; Joe
+became able in some sort to appreciate the greater quiet of his life,
+and to get down to the Jolly Bargemen now and then for a change that
+did him good. It was characteristic of the police people that they had
+all more or less suspected poor Joe (though he never knew it), and that
+they had to a man concurred in regarding him as one of the deepest
+spirits they had ever encountered.
+
+Biddy’s first triumph in her new office, was to solve a difficulty that
+had completely vanquished me. I had tried hard at it, but had made
+nothing of it. Thus it was:—
+
+Again and again and again, my sister had traced upon the slate, a
+character that looked like a curious T, and then with the utmost
+eagerness had called our attention to it as something she particularly
+wanted. I had in vain tried everything producible that began with a T,
+from tar to toast and tub. At length it had come into my head that the
+sign looked like a hammer, and on my lustily calling that word in my
+sister’s ear, she had begun to hammer on the table and had expressed a
+qualified assent. Thereupon, I had brought in all our hammers, one
+after another, but without avail. Then I bethought me of a crutch, the
+shape being much the same, and I borrowed one in the village, and
+displayed it to my sister with considerable confidence. But she shook
+her head to that extent when she was shown it, that we were terrified
+lest in her weak and shattered state she should dislocate her neck.
+
+When my sister found that Biddy was very quick to understand her, this
+mysterious sign reappeared on the slate. Biddy looked thoughtfully at
+it, heard my explanation, looked thoughtfully at my sister, looked
+thoughtfully at Joe (who was always represented on the slate by his
+initial letter), and ran into the forge, followed by Joe and me.
+
+“Why, of course!” cried Biddy, with an exultant face. “Don’t you see?
+It’s _him_!”
+
+Orlick, without a doubt! She had lost his name, and could only signify
+him by his hammer. We told him why we wanted him to come into the
+kitchen, and he slowly laid down his hammer, wiped his brow with his
+arm, took another wipe at it with his apron, and came slouching out,
+with a curious loose vagabond bend in the knees that strongly
+distinguished him.
+
+I confess that I expected to see my sister denounce him, and that I was
+disappointed by the different result. She manifested the greatest
+anxiety to be on good terms with him, was evidently much pleased by his
+being at length produced, and motioned that she would have him given
+something to drink. She watched his countenance as if she were
+particularly wishful to be assured that he took kindly to his
+reception, she showed every possible desire to conciliate him, and
+there was an air of humble propitiation in all she did, such as I have
+seen pervade the bearing of a child towards a hard master. After that
+day, a day rarely passed without her drawing the hammer on her slate,
+and without Orlick’s slouching in and standing doggedly before her, as
+if he knew no more than I did what to make of it.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVII.
+
+
+I now fell into a regular routine of apprenticeship life, which was
+varied beyond the limits of the village and the marshes, by no more
+remarkable circumstance than the arrival of my birthday and my paying
+another visit to Miss Havisham. I found Miss Sarah Pocket still on duty
+at the gate; I found Miss Havisham just as I had left her, and she
+spoke of Estella in the very same way, if not in the very same words.
+The interview lasted but a few minutes, and she gave me a guinea when I
+was going, and told me to come again on my next birthday. I may mention
+at once that this became an annual custom. I tried to decline taking
+the guinea on the first occasion, but with no better effect than
+causing her to ask me very angrily, if I expected more? Then, and after
+that, I took it.
+
+So unchanging was the dull old house, the yellow light in the darkened
+room, the faded spectre in the chair by the dressing-table glass, that
+I felt as if the stopping of the clocks had stopped Time in that
+mysterious place, and, while I and everything else outside it grew
+older, it stood still. Daylight never entered the house as to my
+thoughts and remembrances of it, any more than as to the actual fact.
+It bewildered me, and under its influence I continued at heart to hate
+my trade and to be ashamed of home.
+
+Imperceptibly I became conscious of a change in Biddy, however. Her
+shoes came up at the heel, her hair grew bright and neat, her hands
+were always clean. She was not beautiful,—she was common, and could not
+be like Estella,—but she was pleasant and wholesome and sweet-tempered.
+She had not been with us more than a year (I remember her being newly
+out of mourning at the time it struck me), when I observed to myself
+one evening that she had curiously thoughtful and attentive eyes; eyes
+that were very pretty and very good.
+
+It came of my lifting up my own eyes from a task I was poring
+at—writing some passages from a book, to improve myself in two ways at
+once by a sort of stratagem—and seeing Biddy observant of what I was
+about. I laid down my pen, and Biddy stopped in her needlework without
+laying it down.
+
+“Biddy,” said I, “how do you manage it? Either I am very stupid, or you
+are very clever.”
+
+“What is it that I manage? I don’t know,” returned Biddy, smiling.
+
+She managed our whole domestic life, and wonderfully too; but I did not
+mean that, though that made what I did mean more surprising.
+
+“How do you manage, Biddy,” said I, “to learn everything that I learn,
+and always to keep up with me?” I was beginning to be rather vain of my
+knowledge, for I spent my birthday guineas on it, and set aside the
+greater part of my pocket-money for similar investment; though I have
+no doubt, now, that the little I knew was extremely dear at the price.
+
+“I might as well ask you,” said Biddy, “how _you_ manage?”
+
+“No; because when I come in from the forge of a night, any one can see
+me turning to at it. But you never turn to at it, Biddy.”
+
+“I suppose I must catch it like a cough,” said Biddy, quietly; and went
+on with her sewing.
+
+Pursuing my idea as I leaned back in my wooden chair, and looked at
+Biddy sewing away with her head on one side, I began to think her
+rather an extraordinary girl. For I called to mind now, that she was
+equally accomplished in the terms of our trade, and the names of our
+different sorts of work, and our various tools. In short, whatever I
+knew, Biddy knew. Theoretically, she was already as good a blacksmith
+as I, or better.
+
+“You are one of those, Biddy,” said I, “who make the most of every
+chance. You never had a chance before you came here, and see how
+improved you are!”
+
+Biddy looked at me for an instant, and went on with her sewing. “I was
+your first teacher though; wasn’t I?” said she, as she sewed.
+
+“Biddy!” I exclaimed, in amazement. “Why, you are crying!”
+
+“No I am not,” said Biddy, looking up and laughing. “What put that in
+your head?”
+
+What could have put it in my head but the glistening of a tear as it
+dropped on her work? I sat silent, recalling what a drudge she had been
+until Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt successfully overcame that bad habit of
+living, so highly desirable to be got rid of by some people. I recalled
+the hopeless circumstances by which she had been surrounded in the
+miserable little shop and the miserable little noisy evening school,
+with that miserable old bundle of incompetence always to be dragged and
+shouldered. I reflected that even in those untoward times there must
+have been latent in Biddy what was now developing, for, in my first
+uneasiness and discontent I had turned to her for help, as a matter of
+course. Biddy sat quietly sewing, shedding no more tears, and while I
+looked at her and thought about it all, it occurred to me that perhaps
+I had not been sufficiently grateful to Biddy. I might have been too
+reserved, and should have patronised her more (though I did not use
+that precise word in my meditations) with my confidence.
+
+“Yes, Biddy,” I observed, when I had done turning it over, “you were my
+first teacher, and that at a time when we little thought of ever being
+together like this, in this kitchen.”
+
+“Ah, poor thing!” replied Biddy. It was like her self-forgetfulness to
+transfer the remark to my sister, and to get up and be busy about her,
+making her more comfortable; “that’s sadly true!”
+
+“Well!” said I, “we must talk together a little more, as we used to do.
+And I must consult you a little more, as I used to do. Let us have a
+quiet walk on the marshes next Sunday, Biddy, and a long chat.”
+
+My sister was never left alone now; but Joe more than readily undertook
+the care of her on that Sunday afternoon, and Biddy and I went out
+together. It was summer-time, and lovely weather. When we had passed
+the village and the church and the churchyard, and were out on the
+marshes and began to see the sails of the ships as they sailed on, I
+began to combine Miss Havisham and Estella with the prospect, in my
+usual way. When we came to the river-side and sat down on the bank,
+with the water rippling at our feet, making it all more quiet than it
+would have been without that sound, I resolved that it was a good time
+and place for the admission of Biddy into my inner confidence.
+
+“Biddy,” said I, after binding her to secrecy, “I want to be a
+gentleman.”
+
+“O, I wouldn’t, if I was you!” she returned. “I don’t think it would
+answer.”
+
+“Biddy,” said I, with some severity, “I have particular reasons for
+wanting to be a gentleman.”
+
+“You know best, Pip; but don’t you think you are happier as you are?”
+
+“Biddy,” I exclaimed, impatiently, “I am not at all happy as I am. I am
+disgusted with my calling and with my life. I have never taken to
+either, since I was bound. Don’t be absurd.”
+
+“Was I absurd?” said Biddy, quietly raising her eyebrows; “I am sorry
+for that; I didn’t mean to be. I only want you to do well, and to be
+comfortable.”
+
+“Well, then, understand once for all that I never shall or can be
+comfortable—or anything but miserable—there, Biddy!—unless I can lead a
+very different sort of life from the life I lead now.”
+
+“That’s a pity!” said Biddy, shaking her head with a sorrowful air.
+
+Now, I too had so often thought it a pity, that, in the singular kind
+of quarrel with myself which I was always carrying on, I was half
+inclined to shed tears of vexation and distress when Biddy gave
+utterance to her sentiment and my own. I told her she was right, and I
+knew it was much to be regretted, but still it was not to be helped.
+
+“If I could have settled down,” I said to Biddy, plucking up the short
+grass within reach, much as I had once upon a time pulled my feelings
+out of my hair and kicked them into the brewery wall,—“if I could have
+settled down and been but half as fond of the forge as I was when I was
+little, I know it would have been much better for me. You and I and Joe
+would have wanted nothing then, and Joe and I would perhaps have gone
+partners when I was out of my time, and I might even have grown up to
+keep company with you, and we might have sat on this very bank on a
+fine Sunday, quite different people. I should have been good enough for
+_you_; shouldn’t I, Biddy?”
+
+Biddy sighed as she looked at the ships sailing on, and returned for
+answer, “Yes; I am not over-particular.” It scarcely sounded
+flattering, but I knew she meant well.
+
+“Instead of that,” said I, plucking up more grass and chewing a blade
+or two, “see how I am going on. Dissatisfied, and uncomfortable,
+and—what would it signify to me, being coarse and common, if nobody had
+told me so!”
+
+Biddy turned her face suddenly towards mine, and looked far more
+attentively at me than she had looked at the sailing ships.
+
+“It was neither a very true nor a very polite thing to say,” she
+remarked, directing her eyes to the ships again. “Who said it?”
+
+I was disconcerted, for I had broken away without quite seeing where I
+was going to. It was not to be shuffled off now, however, and I
+answered, “The beautiful young lady at Miss Havisham’s, and she’s more
+beautiful than anybody ever was, and I admire her dreadfully, and I
+want to be a gentleman on her account.” Having made this lunatic
+confession, I began to throw my torn-up grass into the river, as if I
+had some thoughts of following it.
+
+“Do you want to be a gentleman, to spite her or to gain her over?”
+Biddy quietly asked me, after a pause.
+
+“I don’t know,” I moodily answered.
+
+“Because, if it is to spite her,” Biddy pursued, “I should think—but
+you know best—that might be better and more independently done by
+caring nothing for her words. And if it is to gain her over, I should
+think—but you know best—she was not worth gaining over.”
+
+Exactly what I myself had thought, many times. Exactly what was
+perfectly manifest to me at the moment. But how could I, a poor dazed
+village lad, avoid that wonderful inconsistency into which the best and
+wisest of men fall every day?
+
+“It may be all quite true,” said I to Biddy, “but I admire her
+dreadfully.”
+
+In short, I turned over on my face when I came to that, and got a good
+grasp on the hair on each side of my head, and wrenched it well. All
+the while knowing the madness of my heart to be so very mad and
+misplaced, that I was quite conscious it would have served my face
+right, if I had lifted it up by my hair, and knocked it against the
+pebbles as a punishment for belonging to such an idiot.
+
+Biddy was the wisest of girls, and she tried to reason no more with me.
+She put her hand, which was a comfortable hand though roughened by
+work, upon my hands, one after another, and gently took them out of my
+hair. Then she softly patted my shoulder in a soothing way, while with
+my face upon my sleeve I cried a little,—exactly as I had done in the
+brewery yard,—and felt vaguely convinced that I was very much ill-used
+by somebody, or by everybody; I can’t say which.
+
+“I am glad of one thing,” said Biddy, “and that is, that you have felt
+you could give me your confidence, Pip. And I am glad of another thing,
+and that is, that of course you know you may depend upon my keeping it
+and always so far deserving it. If your first teacher (dear! such a
+poor one, and so much in need of being taught herself!) had been your
+teacher at the present time, she thinks she knows what lesson she would
+set. But it would be a hard one to learn, and you have got beyond her,
+and it’s of no use now.” So, with a quiet sigh for me, Biddy rose from
+the bank, and said, with a fresh and pleasant change of voice, “Shall
+we walk a little farther, or go home?”
+
+“Biddy,” I cried, getting up, putting my arm round her neck, and giving
+her a kiss, “I shall always tell you everything.”
+
+“Till you’re a gentleman,” said Biddy.
+
+“You know I never shall be, so that’s always. Not that I have any
+occasion to tell you anything, for you know everything I know,—as I
+told you at home the other night.”
+
+“Ah!” said Biddy, quite in a whisper, as she looked away at the ships.
+And then repeated, with her former pleasant change, “shall we walk a
+little farther, or go home?”
+
+I said to Biddy we would walk a little farther, and we did so, and the
+summer afternoon toned down into the summer evening, and it was very
+beautiful. I began to consider whether I was not more naturally and
+wholesomely situated, after all, in these circumstances, than playing
+beggar my neighbour by candle-light in the room with the stopped
+clocks, and being despised by Estella. I thought it would be very good
+for me if I could get her out of my head, with all the rest of those
+remembrances and fancies, and could go to work determined to relish
+what I had to do, and stick to it, and make the best of it. I asked
+myself the question whether I did not surely know that if Estella were
+beside me at that moment instead of Biddy, she would make me miserable?
+I was obliged to admit that I did know it for a certainty, and I said
+to myself, “Pip, what a fool you are!”
+
+We talked a good deal as we walked, and all that Biddy said seemed
+right. Biddy was never insulting, or capricious, or Biddy to-day and
+somebody else to-morrow; she would have derived only pain, and no
+pleasure, from giving me pain; she would far rather have wounded her
+own breast than mine. How could it be, then, that I did not like her
+much the better of the two?
+
+“Biddy,” said I, when we were walking homeward, “I wish you could put
+me right.”
+
+“I wish I could!” said Biddy.
+
+“If I could only get myself to fall in love with you,—you don’t mind my
+speaking so openly to such an old acquaintance?”
+
+“Oh dear, not at all!” said Biddy. “Don’t mind me.”
+
+“If I could only get myself to do it, _that_ would be the thing for
+me.”
+
+“But you never will, you see,” said Biddy.
+
+It did not appear quite so unlikely to me that evening, as it would
+have done if we had discussed it a few hours before. I therefore
+observed I was not quite sure of that. But Biddy said she _was_, and
+she said it decisively. In my heart I believed her to be right; and yet
+I took it rather ill, too, that she should be so positive on the point.
+
+When we came near the churchyard, we had to cross an embankment, and
+get over a stile near a sluice-gate. There started up, from the gate,
+or from the rushes, or from the ooze (which was quite in his stagnant
+way), Old Orlick.
+
+“Halloa!” he growled, “where are you two going?”
+
+“Where should we be going, but home?”
+
+“Well, then,” said he, “I’m jiggered if I don’t see you home!”
+
+This penalty of being jiggered was a favourite supposititious case of
+his. He attached no definite meaning to the word that I am aware of,
+but used it, like his own pretended Christian name, to affront mankind,
+and convey an idea of something savagely damaging. When I was younger,
+I had had a general belief that if he had jiggered me personally, he
+would have done it with a sharp and twisted hook.
+
+Biddy was much against his going with us, and said to me in a whisper,
+“Don’t let him come; I don’t like him.” As I did not like him either, I
+took the liberty of saying that we thanked him, but we didn’t want
+seeing home. He received that piece of information with a yell of
+laughter, and dropped back, but came slouching after us at a little
+distance.
+
+Curious to know whether Biddy suspected him of having had a hand in
+that murderous attack of which my sister had never been able to give
+any account, I asked her why she did not like him.
+
+“Oh!” she replied, glancing over her shoulder as he slouched after us,
+“because I—I am afraid he likes me.”
+
+“Did he ever tell you he liked you?” I asked indignantly.
+
+“No,” said Biddy, glancing over her shoulder again, “he never told me
+so; but he dances at me, whenever he can catch my eye.”
+
+However novel and peculiar this testimony of attachment, I did not
+doubt the accuracy of the interpretation. I was very hot indeed upon
+Old Orlick’s daring to admire her; as hot as if it were an outrage on
+myself.
+
+“But it makes no difference to you, you know,” said Biddy, calmly.
+
+“No, Biddy, it makes no difference to me; only I don’t like it; I don’t
+approve of it.”
+
+“Nor I neither,” said Biddy. “Though _that_ makes no difference to
+you.”
+
+“Exactly,” said I; “but I must tell you I should have no opinion of
+you, Biddy, if he danced at you with your own consent.”
+
+I kept an eye on Orlick after that night, and, whenever circumstances
+were favourable to his dancing at Biddy, got before him to obscure that
+demonstration. He had struck root in Joe’s establishment, by reason of
+my sister’s sudden fancy for him, or I should have tried to get him
+dismissed. He quite understood and reciprocated my good intentions, as
+I had reason to know thereafter.
+
+And now, because my mind was not confused enough before, I complicated
+its confusion fifty thousand-fold, by having states and seasons when I
+was clear that Biddy was immeasurably better than Estella, and that the
+plain honest working life to which I was born had nothing in it to be
+ashamed of, but offered me sufficient means of self-respect and
+happiness. At those times, I would decide conclusively that my
+disaffection to dear old Joe and the forge was gone, and that I was
+growing up in a fair way to be partners with Joe and to keep company
+with Biddy,—when all in a moment some confounding remembrance of the
+Havisham days would fall upon me like a destructive missile, and
+scatter my wits again. Scattered wits take a long time picking up; and
+often before I had got them well together, they would be dispersed in
+all directions by one stray thought, that perhaps after all Miss
+Havisham was going to make my fortune when my time was out.
+
+If my time had run out, it would have left me still at the height of my
+perplexities, I dare say. It never did run out, however, but was
+brought to a premature end, as I proceed to relate.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVIII.
+
+
+It was in the fourth year of my apprenticeship to Joe, and it was a
+Saturday night. There was a group assembled round the fire at the Three
+Jolly Bargemen, attentive to Mr. Wopsle as he read the newspaper aloud.
+Of that group I was one.
+
+A highly popular murder had been committed, and Mr. Wopsle was imbrued
+in blood to the eyebrows. He gloated over every abhorrent adjective in
+the description, and identified himself with every witness at the
+Inquest. He faintly moaned, “I am done for,” as the victim, and he
+barbarously bellowed, “I’ll serve you out,” as the murderer. He gave
+the medical testimony, in pointed imitation of our local practitioner;
+and he piped and shook, as the aged turnpike-keeper who had heard
+blows, to an extent so very paralytic as to suggest a doubt regarding
+the mental competency of that witness. The coroner, in Mr. Wopsle’s
+hands, became Timon of Athens; the beadle, Coriolanus. He enjoyed
+himself thoroughly, and we all enjoyed ourselves, and were delightfully
+comfortable. In this cosey state of mind we came to the verdict Wilful
+Murder.
+
+Then, and not sooner, I became aware of a strange gentleman leaning
+over the back of the settle opposite me, looking on. There was an
+expression of contempt on his face, and he bit the side of a great
+forefinger as he watched the group of faces.
+
+“Well!” said the stranger to Mr. Wopsle, when the reading was done,
+“you have settled it all to your own satisfaction, I have no doubt?”
+
+Everybody started and looked up, as if it were the murderer. He looked
+at everybody coldly and sarcastically.
+
+“Guilty, of course?” said he. “Out with it. Come!”
+
+“Sir,” returned Mr. Wopsle, “without having the honour of your
+acquaintance, I do say Guilty.” Upon this we all took courage to unite
+in a confirmatory murmur.
+
+“I know you do,” said the stranger; “I knew you would. I told you so.
+But now I’ll ask you a question. Do you know, or do you not know, that
+the law of England supposes every man to be innocent, until he is
+proved—proved—to be guilty?”
+
+“Sir,” Mr. Wopsle began to reply, “as an Englishman myself, I—”
+
+“Come!” said the stranger, biting his forefinger at him. “Don’t evade
+the question. Either you know it, or you don’t know it. Which is it to
+be?”
+
+He stood with his head on one side and himself on one side, in a
+bullying, interrogative manner, and he threw his forefinger at Mr.
+Wopsle,—as it were to mark him out—before biting it again.
+
+“Now!” said he. “Do you know it, or don’t you know it?”
+
+“Certainly I know it,” replied Mr. Wopsle.
+
+“Certainly you know it. Then why didn’t you say so at first? Now, I’ll
+ask you another question,”—taking possession of Mr. Wopsle, as if he
+had a right to him,—“_do_ you know that none of these witnesses have
+yet been cross-examined?”
+
+Mr. Wopsle was beginning, “I can only say—” when the stranger stopped
+him.
+
+“What? You won’t answer the question, yes or no? Now, I’ll try you
+again.” Throwing his finger at him again. “Attend to me. Are you aware,
+or are you not aware, that none of these witnesses have yet been
+cross-examined? Come, I only want one word from you. Yes, or no?”
+
+Mr. Wopsle hesitated, and we all began to conceive rather a poor
+opinion of him.
+
+“Come!” said the stranger, “I’ll help you. You don’t deserve help, but
+I’ll help you. Look at that paper you hold in your hand. What is it?”
+
+“What is it?” repeated Mr. Wopsle, eyeing it, much at a loss.
+
+“Is it,” pursued the stranger in his most sarcastic and suspicious
+manner, “the printed paper you have just been reading from?”
+
+“Undoubtedly.”
+
+“Undoubtedly. Now, turn to that paper, and tell me whether it
+distinctly states that the prisoner expressly said that his legal
+advisers instructed him altogether to reserve his defence?”
+
+“I read that just now,” Mr. Wopsle pleaded.
+
+“Never mind what you read just now, sir; I don’t ask you what you read
+just now. You may read the Lord’s Prayer backwards, if you like,—and,
+perhaps, have done it before to-day. Turn to the paper. No, no, no my
+friend; not to the top of the column; you know better than that; to the
+bottom, to the bottom.” (We all began to think Mr. Wopsle full of
+subterfuge.) “Well? Have you found it?”
+
+“Here it is,” said Mr. Wopsle.
+
+“Now, follow that passage with your eye, and tell me whether it
+distinctly states that the prisoner expressly said that he was
+instructed by his legal advisers wholly to reserve his defence? Come!
+Do you make that of it?”
+
+Mr. Wopsle answered, “Those are not the exact words.”
+
+“Not the exact words!” repeated the gentleman bitterly. “Is that the
+exact substance?”
+
+“Yes,” said Mr. Wopsle.
+
+“Yes,” repeated the stranger, looking round at the rest of the company
+with his right hand extended towards the witness, Wopsle. “And now I
+ask you what you say to the conscience of that man who, with that
+passage before his eyes, can lay his head upon his pillow after having
+pronounced a fellow-creature guilty, unheard?”
+
+We all began to suspect that Mr. Wopsle was not the man we had thought
+him, and that he was beginning to be found out.
+
+“And that same man, remember,” pursued the gentleman, throwing his
+finger at Mr. Wopsle heavily,—“that same man might be summoned as a
+juryman upon this very trial, and, having thus deeply committed
+himself, might return to the bosom of his family and lay his head upon
+his pillow, after deliberately swearing that he would well and truly
+try the issue joined between Our Sovereign Lord the King and the
+prisoner at the bar, and would a true verdict give according to the
+evidence, so help him God!”
+
+We were all deeply persuaded that the unfortunate Wopsle had gone too
+far, and had better stop in his reckless career while there was yet
+time.
+
+The strange gentleman, with an air of authority not to be disputed, and
+with a manner expressive of knowing something secret about every one of
+us that would effectually do for each individual if he chose to
+disclose it, left the back of the settle, and came into the space
+between the two settles, in front of the fire, where he remained
+standing, his left hand in his pocket, and he biting the forefinger of
+his right.
+
+“From information I have received,” said he, looking round at us as we
+all quailed before him, “I have reason to believe there is a blacksmith
+among you, by name Joseph—or Joe—Gargery. Which is the man?”
+
+“Here is the man,” said Joe.
+
+The strange gentleman beckoned him out of his place, and Joe went.
+
+“You have an apprentice,” pursued the stranger, “commonly known as Pip?
+Is he here?”
+
+“I am here!” I cried.
+
+The stranger did not recognise me, but I recognised him as the
+gentleman I had met on the stairs, on the occasion of my second visit
+to Miss Havisham. I had known him the moment I saw him looking over the
+settle, and now that I stood confronting him with his hand upon my
+shoulder, I checked off again in detail his large head, his dark
+complexion, his deep-set eyes, his bushy black eyebrows, his large
+watch-chain, his strong black dots of beard and whisker, and even the
+smell of scented soap on his great hand.
+
+“I wish to have a private conference with you two,” said he, when he
+had surveyed me at his leisure. “It will take a little time. Perhaps we
+had better go to your place of residence. I prefer not to anticipate my
+communication here; you will impart as much or as little of it as you
+please to your friends afterwards; I have nothing to do with that.”
+
+Amidst a wondering silence, we three walked out of the Jolly Bargemen,
+and in a wondering silence walked home. While going along, the strange
+gentleman occasionally looked at me, and occasionally bit the side of
+his finger. As we neared home, Joe vaguely acknowledging the occasion
+as an impressive and ceremonious one, went on ahead to open the front
+door. Our conference was held in the state parlour, which was feebly
+lighted by one candle.
+
+It began with the strange gentleman’s sitting down at the table,
+drawing the candle to him, and looking over some entries in his
+pocket-book. He then put up the pocket-book and set the candle a little
+aside, after peering round it into the darkness at Joe and me, to
+ascertain which was which.
+
+“My name,” he said, “is Jaggers, and I am a lawyer in London. I am
+pretty well known. I have unusual business to transact with you, and I
+commence by explaining that it is not of my originating. If my advice
+had been asked, I should not have been here. It was not asked, and you
+see me here. What I have to do as the confidential agent of another, I
+do. No less, no more.”
+
+Finding that he could not see us very well from where he sat, he got
+up, and threw one leg over the back of a chair and leaned upon it; thus
+having one foot on the seat of the chair, and one foot on the ground.
+
+“Now, Joseph Gargery, I am the bearer of an offer to relieve you of
+this young fellow your apprentice. You would not object to cancel his
+indentures at his request and for his good? You would want nothing for
+so doing?”
+
+“Lord forbid that I should want anything for not standing in Pip’s
+way,” said Joe, staring.
+
+“Lord forbidding is pious, but not to the purpose,” returned Mr.
+Jaggers. “The question is, Would you want anything? Do you want
+anything?”
+
+“The answer is,” returned Joe, sternly, “No.”
+
+I thought Mr. Jaggers glanced at Joe, as if he considered him a fool
+for his disinterestedness. But I was too much bewildered between
+breathless curiosity and surprise, to be sure of it.
+
+“Very well,” said Mr. Jaggers. “Recollect the admission you have made,
+and don’t try to go from it presently.”
+
+“Who’s a-going to try?” retorted Joe.
+
+“I don’t say anybody is. Do you keep a dog?”
+
+“Yes, I do keep a dog.”
+
+“Bear in mind then, that Brag is a good dog, but Holdfast is a better.
+Bear that in mind, will you?” repeated Mr. Jaggers, shutting his eyes
+and nodding his head at Joe, as if he were forgiving him something.
+“Now, I return to this young fellow. And the communication I have got
+to make is, that he has great expectations.”
+
+Joe and I gasped, and looked at one another.
+
+“I am instructed to communicate to him,” said Mr. Jaggers, throwing his
+finger at me sideways, “that he will come into a handsome property.
+Further, that it is the desire of the present possessor of that
+property, that he be immediately removed from his present sphere of
+life and from this place, and be brought up as a gentleman,—in a word,
+as a young fellow of great expectations.”
+
+My dream was out; my wild fancy was surpassed by sober reality; Miss
+Havisham was going to make my fortune on a grand scale.
+
+“Now, Mr. Pip,” pursued the lawyer, “I address the rest of what I have
+to say, to you. You are to understand, first, that it is the request of
+the person from whom I take my instructions that you always bear the
+name of Pip. You will have no objection, I dare say, to your great
+expectations being encumbered with that easy condition. But if you have
+any objection, this is the time to mention it.”
+
+My heart was beating so fast, and there was such a singing in my ears,
+that I could scarcely stammer I had no objection.
+
+“I should think not! Now you are to understand, secondly, Mr. Pip, that
+the name of the person who is your liberal benefactor remains a
+profound secret, until the person chooses to reveal it. I am empowered
+to mention that it is the intention of the person to reveal it at first
+hand by word of mouth to yourself. When or where that intention may be
+carried out, I cannot say; no one can say. It may be years hence. Now,
+you are distinctly to understand that you are most positively
+prohibited from making any inquiry on this head, or any allusion or
+reference, however distant, to any individual whomsoever as _the_
+individual, in all the communications you may have with me. If you have
+a suspicion in your own breast, keep that suspicion in your own breast.
+It is not the least to the purpose what the reasons of this prohibition
+are; they may be the strongest and gravest reasons, or they may be mere
+whim. This is not for you to inquire into. The condition is laid down.
+Your acceptance of it, and your observance of it as binding, is the
+only remaining condition that I am charged with, by the person from
+whom I take my instructions, and for whom I am not otherwise
+responsible. That person is the person from whom you derive your
+expectations, and the secret is solely held by that person and by me.
+Again, not a very difficult condition with which to encumber such a
+rise in fortune; but if you have any objection to it, this is the time
+to mention it. Speak out.”
+
+Once more, I stammered with difficulty that I had no objection.
+
+“I should think not! Now, Mr. Pip, I have done with stipulations.”
+Though he called me Mr. Pip, and began rather to make up to me, he
+still could not get rid of a certain air of bullying suspicion; and
+even now he occasionally shut his eyes and threw his finger at me while
+he spoke, as much as to express that he knew all kinds of things to my
+disparagement, if he only chose to mention them. “We come next, to mere
+details of arrangement. You must know that, although I have used the
+term ‘expectations’ more than once, you are not endowed with
+expectations only. There is already lodged in my hands a sum of money
+amply sufficient for your suitable education and maintenance. You will
+please consider me your guardian. Oh!” for I was going to thank him, “I
+tell you at once, I am paid for my services, or I shouldn’t render
+them. It is considered that you must be better educated, in accordance
+with your altered position, and that you will be alive to the
+importance and necessity of at once entering on that advantage.”
+
+I said I had always longed for it.
+
+“Never mind what you have always longed for, Mr. Pip,” he retorted;
+“keep to the record. If you long for it now, that’s enough. Am I
+answered that you are ready to be placed at once under some proper
+tutor? Is that it?”
+
+I stammered yes, that was it.
+
+“Good. Now, your inclinations are to be consulted. I don’t think that
+wise, mind, but it’s my trust. Have you ever heard of any tutor whom
+you would prefer to another?”
+
+I had never heard of any tutor but Biddy and Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt;
+so, I replied in the negative.
+
+“There is a certain tutor, of whom I have some knowledge, who I think
+might suit the purpose,” said Mr. Jaggers. “I don’t recommend him,
+observe; because I never recommend anybody. The gentleman I speak of is
+one Mr. Matthew Pocket.”
+
+Ah! I caught at the name directly. Miss Havisham’s relation. The
+Matthew whom Mr. and Mrs. Camilla had spoken of. The Matthew whose
+place was to be at Miss Havisham’s head, when she lay dead, in her
+bride’s dress on the bride’s table.
+
+“You know the name?” said Mr. Jaggers, looking shrewdly at me, and then
+shutting up his eyes while he waited for my answer.
+
+My answer was, that I had heard of the name.
+
+“Oh!” said he. “You have heard of the name. But the question is, what
+do you say of it?”
+
+I said, or tried to say, that I was much obliged to him for his
+recommendation—
+
+“No, my young friend!” he interrupted, shaking his great head very
+slowly. “Recollect yourself!”
+
+Not recollecting myself, I began again that I was much obliged to him
+for his recommendation—
+
+“No, my young friend,” he interrupted, shaking his head and frowning
+and smiling both at once,—“no, no, no; it’s very well done, but it
+won’t do; you are too young to fix me with it. Recommendation is not
+the word, Mr. Pip. Try another.”
+
+Correcting myself, I said that I was much obliged to him for his
+mention of Mr. Matthew Pocket—
+
+“_That_’s more like it!” cried Mr. Jaggers.—And (I added), I would
+gladly try that gentleman.
+
+“Good. You had better try him in his own house. The way shall be
+prepared for you, and you can see his son first, who is in London. When
+will you come to London?”
+
+I said (glancing at Joe, who stood looking on, motionless), that I
+supposed I could come directly.
+
+“First,” said Mr. Jaggers, “you should have some new clothes to come
+in, and they should not be working-clothes. Say this day week. You’ll
+want some money. Shall I leave you twenty guineas?”
+
+He produced a long purse, with the greatest coolness, and counted them
+out on the table and pushed them over to me. This was the first time he
+had taken his leg from the chair. He sat astride of the chair when he
+had pushed the money over, and sat swinging his purse and eyeing Joe.
+
+“Well, Joseph Gargery? You look dumbfoundered?”
+
+“I _am_!” said Joe, in a very decided manner.
+
+“It was understood that you wanted nothing for yourself, remember?”
+
+“It were understood,” said Joe. “And it are understood. And it ever
+will be similar according.”
+
+“But what,” said Mr. Jaggers, swinging his purse,—“what if it was in my
+instructions to make you a present, as compensation?”
+
+“As compensation what for?” Joe demanded.
+
+“For the loss of his services.”
+
+Joe laid his hand upon my shoulder with the touch of a woman. I have
+often thought him since, like the steam-hammer that can crush a man or
+pat an egg-shell, in his combination of strength with gentleness. “Pip
+is that hearty welcome,” said Joe, “to go free with his services, to
+honour and fortun’, as no words can tell him. But if you think as Money
+can make compensation to me for the loss of the little child—what come
+to the forge—and ever the best of friends!—”
+
+O dear good Joe, whom I was so ready to leave and so unthankful to, I
+see you again, with your muscular blacksmith’s arm before your eyes,
+and your broad chest heaving, and your voice dying away. O dear good
+faithful tender Joe, I feel the loving tremble of your hand upon my
+arm, as solemnly this day as if it had been the rustle of an angel’s
+wing!
+
+But I encouraged Joe at the time. I was lost in the mazes of my future
+fortunes, and could not retrace the by-paths we had trodden together. I
+begged Joe to be comforted, for (as he said) we had ever been the best
+of friends, and (as I said) we ever would be so. Joe scooped his eyes
+with his disengaged wrist, as if he were bent on gouging himself, but
+said not another word.
+
+Mr. Jaggers had looked on at this, as one who recognised in Joe the
+village idiot, and in me his keeper. When it was over, he said,
+weighing in his hand the purse he had ceased to swing:—
+
+“Now, Joseph Gargery, I warn you this is your last chance. No half
+measures with me. If you mean to take a present that I have it in
+charge to make you, speak out, and you shall have it. If on the
+contrary you mean to say—” Here, to his great amazement, he was stopped
+by Joe’s suddenly working round him with every demonstration of a fell
+pugilistic purpose.
+
+“Which I meantersay,” cried Joe, “that if you come into my place
+bull-baiting and badgering me, come out! Which I meantersay as sech if
+you’re a man, come on! Which I meantersay that what I say, I meantersay
+and stand or fall by!”
+
+I drew Joe away, and he immediately became placable; merely stating to
+me, in an obliging manner and as a polite expostulatory notice to any
+one whom it might happen to concern, that he were not a-going to be
+bull-baited and badgered in his own place. Mr. Jaggers had risen when
+Joe demonstrated, and had backed near the door. Without evincing any
+inclination to come in again, he there delivered his valedictory
+remarks. They were these.
+
+“Well, Mr. Pip, I think the sooner you leave here—as you are to be a
+gentleman—the better. Let it stand for this day week, and you shall
+receive my printed address in the meantime. You can take a
+hackney-coach at the stage-coach office in London, and come straight to
+me. Understand, that I express no opinion, one way or other, on the
+trust I undertake. I am paid for undertaking it, and I do so. Now,
+understand that, finally. Understand that!”
+
+He was throwing his finger at both of us, and I think would have gone
+on, but for his seeming to think Joe dangerous, and going off.
+
+Something came into my head which induced me to run after him, as he
+was going down to the Jolly Bargemen, where he had left a hired
+carriage.
+
+“I beg your pardon, Mr. Jaggers.”
+
+“Halloa!” said he, facing round, “what’s the matter?”
+
+“I wish to be quite right, Mr. Jaggers, and to keep to your directions;
+so I thought I had better ask. Would there be any objection to my
+taking leave of any one I know, about here, before I go away?”
+
+“No,” said he, looking as if he hardly understood me.
+
+“I don’t mean in the village only, but up town?”
+
+“No,” said he. “No objection.”
+
+I thanked him and ran home again, and there I found that Joe had
+already locked the front door and vacated the state parlour, and was
+seated by the kitchen fire with a hand on each knee, gazing intently at
+the burning coals. I too sat down before the fire and gazed at the
+coals, and nothing was said for a long time.
+
+My sister was in her cushioned chair in her corner, and Biddy sat at
+her needle-work before the fire, and Joe sat next Biddy, and I sat next
+Joe in the corner opposite my sister. The more I looked into the
+glowing coals, the more incapable I became of looking at Joe; the
+longer the silence lasted, the more unable I felt to speak.
+
+At length I got out, “Joe, have you told Biddy?”
+
+“No, Pip,” returned Joe, still looking at the fire, and holding his
+knees tight, as if he had private information that they intended to
+make off somewhere, “which I left it to yourself, Pip.”
+
+“I would rather you told, Joe.”
+
+“Pip’s a gentleman of fortun’ then,” said Joe, “and God bless him in
+it!”
+
+Biddy dropped her work, and looked at me. Joe held his knees and looked
+at me. I looked at both of them. After a pause, they both heartily
+congratulated me; but there was a certain touch of sadness in their
+congratulations that I rather resented.
+
+I took it upon myself to impress Biddy (and through Biddy, Joe) with
+the grave obligation I considered my friends under, to know nothing and
+say nothing about the maker of my fortune. It would all come out in
+good time, I observed, and in the meanwhile nothing was to be said,
+save that I had come into great expectations from a mysterious patron.
+Biddy nodded her head thoughtfully at the fire as she took up her work
+again, and said she would be very particular; and Joe, still detaining
+his knees, said, “Ay, ay, I’ll be ekervally partickler, Pip;” and then
+they congratulated me again, and went on to express so much wonder at
+the notion of my being a gentleman that I didn’t half like it.
+
+Infinite pains were then taken by Biddy to convey to my sister some
+idea of what had happened. To the best of my belief, those efforts
+entirely failed. She laughed and nodded her head a great many times,
+and even repeated after Biddy, the words “Pip” and “Property.” But I
+doubt if they had more meaning in them than an election cry, and I
+cannot suggest a darker picture of her state of mind.
+
+I never could have believed it without experience, but as Joe and Biddy
+became more at their cheerful ease again, I became quite gloomy.
+Dissatisfied with my fortune, of course I could not be; but it is
+possible that I may have been, without quite knowing it, dissatisfied
+with myself.
+
+Anyhow, I sat with my elbow on my knee and my face upon my hand,
+looking into the fire, as those two talked about my going away, and
+about what they should do without me, and all that. And whenever I
+caught one of them looking at me, though never so pleasantly (and they
+often looked at me,—particularly Biddy), I felt offended: as if they
+were expressing some mistrust of me. Though Heaven knows they never did
+by word or sign.
+
+At those times I would get up and look out at the door; for our kitchen
+door opened at once upon the night, and stood open on summer evenings
+to air the room. The very stars to which I then raised my eyes, I am
+afraid I took to be but poor and humble stars for glittering on the
+rustic objects among which I had passed my life.
+
+“Saturday night,” said I, when we sat at our supper of bread and cheese
+and beer. “Five more days, and then the day before _the_ day! They’ll
+soon go.”
+
+“Yes, Pip,” observed Joe, whose voice sounded hollow in his beer-mug.
+“They’ll soon go.”
+
+“Soon, soon go,” said Biddy.
+
+“I have been thinking, Joe, that when I go down town on Monday, and
+order my new clothes, I shall tell the tailor that I’ll come and put
+them on there, or that I’ll have them sent to Mr. Pumblechook’s. It
+would be very disagreeable to be stared at by all the people here.”
+
+“Mr. and Mrs. Hubble might like to see you in your new gen-teel figure
+too, Pip,” said Joe, industriously cutting his bread, with his cheese
+on it, in the palm of his left hand, and glancing at my untasted supper
+as if he thought of the time when we used to compare slices. “So might
+Wopsle. And the Jolly Bargemen might take it as a compliment.”
+
+“That’s just what I don’t want, Joe. They would make such a business of
+it,—such a coarse and common business,—that I couldn’t bear myself.”
+
+“Ah, that indeed, Pip!” said Joe. “If you couldn’t abear yourself—”
+
+Biddy asked me here, as she sat holding my sister’s plate, “Have you
+thought about when you’ll show yourself to Mr. Gargery, and your sister
+and me? You will show yourself to us; won’t you?”
+
+“Biddy,” I returned with some resentment, “you are so exceedingly quick
+that it’s difficult to keep up with you.”
+
+(“She always were quick,” observed Joe.)
+
+“If you had waited another moment, Biddy, you would have heard me say
+that I shall bring my clothes here in a bundle one evening,—most likely
+on the evening before I go away.”
+
+Biddy said no more. Handsomely forgiving her, I soon exchanged an
+affectionate good night with her and Joe, and went up to bed. When I
+got into my little room, I sat down and took a long look at it, as a
+mean little room that I should soon be parted from and raised above,
+for ever. It was furnished with fresh young remembrances too, and even
+at the same moment I fell into much the same confused division of mind
+between it and the better rooms to which I was going, as I had been in
+so often between the forge and Miss Havisham’s, and Biddy and Estella.
+
+The sun had been shining brightly all day on the roof of my attic, and
+the room was warm. As I put the window open and stood looking out, I
+saw Joe come slowly forth at the dark door, below, and take a turn or
+two in the air; and then I saw Biddy come, and bring him a pipe and
+light it for him. He never smoked so late, and it seemed to hint to me
+that he wanted comforting, for some reason or other.
+
+He presently stood at the door immediately beneath me, smoking his
+pipe, and Biddy stood there too, quietly talking to him, and I knew
+that they talked of me, for I heard my name mentioned in an endearing
+tone by both of them more than once. I would not have listened for
+more, if I could have heard more; so I drew away from the window, and
+sat down in my one chair by the bedside, feeling it very sorrowful and
+strange that this first night of my bright fortunes should be the
+loneliest I had ever known.
+
+Looking towards the open window, I saw light wreaths from Joe’s pipe
+floating there, and I fancied it was like a blessing from Joe,—not
+obtruded on me or paraded before me, but pervading the air we shared
+together. I put my light out, and crept into bed; and it was an uneasy
+bed now, and I never slept the old sound sleep in it any more.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIX.
+
+
+Morning made a considerable difference in my general prospect of Life,
+and brightened it so much that it scarcely seemed the same. What lay
+heaviest on my mind was, the consideration that six days intervened
+between me and the day of departure; for I could not divest myself of a
+misgiving that something might happen to London in the meanwhile, and
+that, when I got there, it would be either greatly deteriorated or
+clean gone.
+
+Joe and Biddy were very sympathetic and pleasant when I spoke of our
+approaching separation; but they only referred to it when I did. After
+breakfast, Joe brought out my indentures from the press in the best
+parlour, and we put them in the fire, and I felt that I was free. With
+all the novelty of my emancipation on me, I went to church with Joe,
+and thought perhaps the clergyman wouldn’t have read that about the
+rich man and the kingdom of Heaven, if he had known all.
+
+After our early dinner, I strolled out alone, purposing to finish off
+the marshes at once, and get them done with. As I passed the church, I
+felt (as I had felt during service in the morning) a sublime compassion
+for the poor creatures who were destined to go there, Sunday after
+Sunday, all their lives through, and to lie obscurely at last among the
+low green mounds. I promised myself that I would do something for them
+one of these days, and formed a plan in outline for bestowing a dinner
+of roast-beef and plum-pudding, a pint of ale, and a gallon of
+condescension, upon everybody in the village.
+
+If I had often thought before, with something allied to shame, of my
+companionship with the fugitive whom I had once seen limping among
+those graves, what were my thoughts on this Sunday, when the place
+recalled the wretch, ragged and shivering, with his felon iron and
+badge! My comfort was, that it happened a long time ago, and that he
+had doubtless been transported a long way off, and that he was dead to
+me, and might be veritably dead into the bargain.
+
+No more low, wet grounds, no more dikes and sluices, no more of these
+grazing cattle,—though they seemed, in their dull manner, to wear a
+more respectful air now, and to face round, in order that they might
+stare as long as possible at the possessor of such great
+expectations,—farewell, monotonous acquaintances of my childhood,
+henceforth I was for London and greatness; not for smith’s work in
+general, and for you! I made my exultant way to the old Battery, and,
+lying down there to consider the question whether Miss Havisham
+intended me for Estella, fell asleep.
+
+When I awoke, I was much surprised to find Joe sitting beside me,
+smoking his pipe. He greeted me with a cheerful smile on my opening my
+eyes, and said,—
+
+“As being the last time, Pip, I thought I’d foller.”
+
+“And Joe, I am very glad you did so.”
+
+“Thankee, Pip.”
+
+“You may be sure, dear Joe,” I went on, after we had shaken hands,
+“that I shall never forget you.”
+
+“No, no, Pip!” said Joe, in a comfortable tone, “_I_’m sure of that.
+Ay, ay, old chap! Bless you, it were only necessary to get it well
+round in a man’s mind, to be certain on it. But it took a bit of time
+to get it well round, the change come so oncommon plump; didn’t it?”
+
+Somehow, I was not best pleased with Joe’s being so mightily secure of
+me. I should have liked him to have betrayed emotion, or to have said,
+“It does you credit, Pip,” or something of that sort. Therefore, I made
+no remark on Joe’s first head; merely saying as to his second, that the
+tidings had indeed come suddenly, but that I had always wanted to be a
+gentleman, and had often and often speculated on what I would do, if I
+were one.
+
+“Have you though?” said Joe. “Astonishing!”
+
+“It’s a pity now, Joe,” said I, “that you did not get on a little more,
+when we had our lessons here; isn’t it?”
+
+“Well, I don’t know,” returned Joe. “I’m so awful dull. I’m only master
+of my own trade. It were always a pity as I was so awful dull; but it’s
+no more of a pity now, than it was—this day twelvemonth—don’t you see?”
+
+What I had meant was, that when I came into my property and was able to
+do something for Joe, it would have been much more agreeable if he had
+been better qualified for a rise in station. He was so perfectly
+innocent of my meaning, however, that I thought I would mention it to
+Biddy in preference.
+
+So, when we had walked home and had had tea, I took Biddy into our
+little garden by the side of the lane, and, after throwing out in a
+general way for the elevation of her spirits, that I should never
+forget her, said I had a favour to ask of her.
+
+“And it is, Biddy,” said I, “that you will not omit any opportunity of
+helping Joe on, a little.”
+
+“How helping him on?” asked Biddy, with a steady sort of glance.
+
+“Well! Joe is a dear good fellow,—in fact, I think he is the dearest
+fellow that ever lived,—but he is rather backward in some things. For
+instance, Biddy, in his learning and his manners.”
+
+Although I was looking at Biddy as I spoke, and although she opened her
+eyes very wide when I had spoken, she did not look at me.
+
+“O, his manners! won’t his manners do then?” asked Biddy, plucking a
+black-currant leaf.
+
+“My dear Biddy, they do very well here—”
+
+“O! they _do_ very well here?” interrupted Biddy, looking closely at
+the leaf in her hand.
+
+“Hear me out,—but if I were to remove Joe into a higher sphere, as I
+shall hope to remove him when I fully come into my property, they would
+hardly do him justice.”
+
+“And don’t you think he knows that?” asked Biddy.
+
+It was such a very provoking question (for it had never in the most
+distant manner occurred to me), that I said, snappishly,—
+
+“Biddy, what do you mean?”
+
+Biddy, having rubbed the leaf to pieces between her hands,—and the
+smell of a black-currant bush has ever since recalled to me that
+evening in the little garden by the side of the lane,—said, “Have you
+never considered that he may be proud?”
+
+“Proud?” I repeated, with disdainful emphasis.
+
+“O! there are many kinds of pride,” said Biddy, looking full at me and
+shaking her head; “pride is not all of one kind—”
+
+“Well? What are you stopping for?” said I.
+
+“Not all of one kind,” resumed Biddy. “He may be too proud to let any
+one take him out of a place that he is competent to fill, and fills
+well and with respect. To tell you the truth, I think he is; though it
+sounds bold in me to say so, for you must know him far better than I
+do.”
+
+“Now, Biddy,” said I, “I am very sorry to see this in you. I did not
+expect to see this in you. You are envious, Biddy, and grudging. You
+are dissatisfied on account of my rise in fortune, and you can’t help
+showing it.”
+
+“If you have the heart to think so,” returned Biddy, “say so. Say so
+over and over again, if you have the heart to think so.”
+
+“If you have the heart to be so, you mean, Biddy,” said I, in a
+virtuous and superior tone; “don’t put it off upon me. I am very sorry
+to see it, and it’s a—it’s a bad side of human nature. I did intend to
+ask you to use any little opportunities you might have after I was
+gone, of improving dear Joe. But after this I ask you nothing. I am
+extremely sorry to see this in you, Biddy,” I repeated. “It’s a—it’s a
+bad side of human nature.”
+
+“Whether you scold me or approve of me,” returned poor Biddy, “you may
+equally depend upon my trying to do all that lies in my power, here, at
+all times. And whatever opinion you take away of me, shall make no
+difference in my remembrance of you. Yet a gentleman should not be
+unjust neither,” said Biddy, turning away her head.
+
+I again warmly repeated that it was a bad side of human nature (in
+which sentiment, waiving its application, I have since seen reason to
+think I was right), and I walked down the little path away from Biddy,
+and Biddy went into the house, and I went out at the garden gate and
+took a dejected stroll until supper-time; again feeling it very
+sorrowful and strange that this, the second night of my bright
+fortunes, should be as lonely and unsatisfactory as the first.
+
+But, morning once more brightened my view, and I extended my clemency
+to Biddy, and we dropped the subject. Putting on the best clothes I
+had, I went into town as early as I could hope to find the shops open,
+and presented myself before Mr. Trabb, the tailor, who was having his
+breakfast in the parlour behind his shop, and who did not think it
+worth his while to come out to me, but called me in to him.
+
+“Well!” said Mr. Trabb, in a hail-fellow-well-met kind of way. “How are
+you, and what can I do for you?”
+
+Mr. Trabb had sliced his hot roll into three feather-beds, and was
+slipping butter in between the blankets, and covering it up. He was a
+prosperous old bachelor, and his open window looked into a prosperous
+little garden and orchard, and there was a prosperous iron safe let
+into the wall at the side of his fireplace, and I did not doubt that
+heaps of his prosperity were put away in it in bags.
+
+“Mr. Trabb,” said I, “it’s an unpleasant thing to have to mention,
+because it looks like boasting; but I have come into a handsome
+property.”
+
+A change passed over Mr. Trabb. He forgot the butter in bed, got up
+from the bedside, and wiped his fingers on the tablecloth, exclaiming,
+“Lord bless my soul!”
+
+“I am going up to my guardian in London,” said I, casually drawing some
+guineas out of my pocket and looking at them; “and I want a fashionable
+suit of clothes to go in. I wish to pay for them,” I added—otherwise I
+thought he might only pretend to make them, “with ready money.”
+
+“My dear sir,” said Mr. Trabb, as he respectfully bent his body, opened
+his arms, and took the liberty of touching me on the outside of each
+elbow, “don’t hurt me by mentioning that. May I venture to congratulate
+you? Would you do me the favour of stepping into the shop?”
+
+Mr. Trabb’s boy was the most audacious boy in all that country-side.
+When I had entered he was sweeping the shop, and he had sweetened his
+labours by sweeping over me. He was still sweeping when I came out into
+the shop with Mr. Trabb, and he knocked the broom against all possible
+corners and obstacles, to express (as I understood it) equality with
+any blacksmith, alive or dead.
+
+“Hold that noise,” said Mr. Trabb, with the greatest sternness, “or
+I’ll knock your head off!—Do me the favour to be seated, sir. Now,
+this,” said Mr. Trabb, taking down a roll of cloth, and tiding it out
+in a flowing manner over the counter, preparatory to getting his hand
+under it to show the gloss, “is a very sweet article. I can recommend
+it for your purpose, sir, because it really is extra super. But you
+shall see some others. Give me Number Four, you!” (To the boy, and with
+a dreadfully severe stare; foreseeing the danger of that miscreant’s
+brushing me with it, or making some other sign of familiarity.)
+
+Mr. Trabb never removed his stern eye from the boy until he had
+deposited number four on the counter and was at a safe distance again.
+Then he commanded him to bring number five, and number eight. “And let
+me have none of your tricks here,” said Mr. Trabb, “or you shall repent
+it, you young scoundrel, the longest day you have to live.”
+
+Mr. Trabb then bent over number four, and in a sort of deferential
+confidence recommended it to me as a light article for summer wear, an
+article much in vogue among the nobility and gentry, an article that it
+would ever be an honour to him to reflect upon a distinguished
+fellow-townsman’s (if he might claim me for a fellow-townsman) having
+worn. “Are you bringing numbers five and eight, you vagabond,” said Mr.
+Trabb to the boy after that, “or shall I kick you out of the shop and
+bring them myself?”
+
+I selected the materials for a suit, with the assistance of Mr. Trabb’s
+judgment, and re-entered the parlour to be measured. For although Mr.
+Trabb had my measure already, and had previously been quite contented
+with it, he said apologetically that it “wouldn’t do under existing
+circumstances, sir,—wouldn’t do at all.” So, Mr. Trabb measured and
+calculated me in the parlour, as if I were an estate and he the finest
+species of surveyor, and gave himself such a world of trouble that I
+felt that no suit of clothes could possibly remunerate him for his
+pains. When he had at last done and had appointed to send the articles
+to Mr. Pumblechook’s on the Thursday evening, he said, with his hand
+upon the parlour lock, “I know, sir, that London gentlemen cannot be
+expected to patronise local work, as a rule; but if you would give me a
+turn now and then in the quality of a townsman, I should greatly esteem
+it. Good-morning, sir, much obliged.—Door!”
+
+The last word was flung at the boy, who had not the least notion what
+it meant. But I saw him collapse as his master rubbed me out with his
+hands, and my first decided experience of the stupendous power of money
+was, that it had morally laid upon his back Trabb’s boy.
+
+After this memorable event, I went to the hatter’s, and the
+bootmaker’s, and the hosier’s, and felt rather like Mother Hubbard’s
+dog whose outfit required the services of so many trades. I also went
+to the coach-office and took my place for seven o’clock on Saturday
+morning. It was not necessary to explain everywhere that I had come
+into a handsome property; but whenever I said anything to that effect,
+it followed that the officiating tradesman ceased to have his attention
+diverted through the window by the High Street, and concentrated his
+mind upon me. When I had ordered everything I wanted, I directed my
+steps towards Pumblechook’s, and, as I approached that gentleman’s
+place of business, I saw him standing at his door.
+
+He was waiting for me with great impatience. He had been out early with
+the chaise-cart, and had called at the forge and heard the news. He had
+prepared a collation for me in the Barnwell parlour, and he too ordered
+his shopman to “come out of the gangway” as my sacred person passed.
+
+“My dear friend,” said Mr. Pumblechook, taking me by both hands, when
+he and I and the collation were alone, “I give you joy of your good
+fortune. Well deserved, well deserved!”
+
+This was coming to the point, and I thought it a sensible way of
+expressing himself.
+
+“To think,” said Mr. Pumblechook, after snorting admiration at me for
+some moments, “that I should have been the humble instrument of leading
+up to this, is a proud reward.”
+
+I begged Mr. Pumblechook to remember that nothing was to be ever said
+or hinted, on that point.
+
+“My dear young friend,” said Mr. Pumblechook; “if you will allow me to
+call you so—”
+
+I murmured “Certainly,” and Mr. Pumblechook took me by both hands
+again, and communicated a movement to his waistcoat, which had an
+emotional appearance, though it was rather low down, “My dear young
+friend, rely upon my doing my little all in your absence, by keeping
+the fact before the mind of Joseph.—Joseph!” said Mr. Pumblechook, in
+the way of a compassionate adjuration. “Joseph!! Joseph!!!” Thereupon
+he shook his head and tapped it, expressing his sense of deficiency in
+Joseph.
+
+“But my dear young friend,” said Mr. Pumblechook, “you must be hungry,
+you must be exhausted. Be seated. Here is a chicken had round from the
+Boar, here is a tongue had round from the Boar, here’s one or two
+little things had round from the Boar, that I hope you may not despise.
+But do I,” said Mr. Pumblechook, getting up again the moment after he
+had sat down, “see afore me, him as I ever sported with in his times of
+happy infancy? And may I—_may_ I—?”
+
+This May I, meant might he shake hands? I consented, and he was
+fervent, and then sat down again.
+
+“Here is wine,” said Mr. Pumblechook. “Let us drink, Thanks to Fortune,
+and may she ever pick out her favourites with equal judgment! And yet I
+cannot,” said Mr. Pumblechook, getting up again, “see afore me One—and
+likewise drink to One—without again expressing—May I—_may_ I—?”
+
+I said he might, and he shook hands with me again, and emptied his
+glass and turned it upside down. I did the same; and if I had turned
+myself upside down before drinking, the wine could not have gone more
+direct to my head.
+
+Mr. Pumblechook helped me to the liver wing, and to the best slice of
+tongue (none of those out-of-the-way No Thoroughfares of Pork now), and
+took, comparatively speaking, no care of himself at all. “Ah! poultry,
+poultry! You little thought,” said Mr. Pumblechook, apostrophising the
+fowl in the dish, “when you was a young fledgling, what was in store
+for you. You little thought you was to be refreshment beneath this
+humble roof for one as—Call it a weakness, if you will,” said Mr.
+Pumblechook, getting up again, “but may I? _may_ I—?”
+
+It began to be unnecessary to repeat the form of saying he might, so he
+did it at once. How he ever did it so often without wounding himself
+with my knife, I don’t know.
+
+“And your sister,” he resumed, after a little steady eating, “which had
+the honour of bringing you up by hand! It’s a sad picter, to reflect
+that she’s no longer equal to fully understanding the honour. May—”
+
+I saw he was about to come at me again, and I stopped him.
+
+“We’ll drink her health,” said I.
+
+“Ah!” cried Mr. Pumblechook, leaning back in his chair, quite flaccid
+with admiration, “that’s the way you know ’em, sir!” (I don’t know who
+Sir was, but he certainly was not I, and there was no third person
+present); “that’s the way you know the noble-minded, sir! Ever
+forgiving and ever affable. It might,” said the servile Pumblechook,
+putting down his untasted glass in a hurry and getting up again, “to a
+common person, have the appearance of repeating—but _may_ I—?”
+
+When he had done it, he resumed his seat and drank to my sister. “Let
+us never be blind,” said Mr. Pumblechook, “to her faults of temper, but
+it is to be hoped she meant well.”
+
+At about this time, I began to observe that he was getting flushed in
+the face; as to myself, I felt all face, steeped in wine and smarting.
+
+I mentioned to Mr. Pumblechook that I wished to have my new clothes
+sent to his house, and he was ecstatic on my so distinguishing him. I
+mentioned my reason for desiring to avoid observation in the village,
+and he lauded it to the skies. There was nobody but himself, he
+intimated, worthy of my confidence, and—in short, might he? Then he
+asked me tenderly if I remembered our boyish games at sums, and how we
+had gone together to have me bound apprentice, and, in effect, how he
+had ever been my favourite fancy and my chosen friend? If I had taken
+ten times as many glasses of wine as I had, I should have known that he
+never had stood in that relation towards me, and should in my heart of
+hearts have repudiated the idea. Yet for all that, I remember feeling
+convinced that I had been much mistaken in him, and that he was a
+sensible, practical, good-hearted prime fellow.
+
+By degrees he fell to reposing such great confidence in me, as to ask
+my advice in reference to his own affairs. He mentioned that there was
+an opportunity for a great amalgamation and monopoly of the corn and
+seed trade on those premises, if enlarged, such as had never occurred
+before in that or any other neighbourhood. What alone was wanting to
+the realisation of a vast fortune, he considered to be More Capital.
+Those were the two little words, more capital. Now it appeared to him
+(Pumblechook) that if that capital were got into the business, through
+a sleeping partner, sir,—which sleeping partner would have nothing to
+do but walk in, by self or deputy, whenever he pleased, and examine the
+books,—and walk in twice a year and take his profits away in his
+pocket, to the tune of fifty per cent,—it appeared to him that that
+might be an opening for a young gentleman of spirit combined with
+property, which would be worthy of his attention. But what did I think?
+He had great confidence in my opinion, and what did I think? I gave it
+as my opinion. “Wait a bit!” The united vastness and distinctness of
+this view so struck him, that he no longer asked if he might shake
+hands with me, but said he really must,—and did.
+
+We drank all the wine, and Mr. Pumblechook pledged himself over and
+over again to keep Joseph up to the mark (I don’t know what mark), and
+to render me efficient and constant service (I don’t know what
+service). He also made known to me for the first time in my life, and
+certainly after having kept his secret wonderfully well, that he had
+always said of me, “That boy is no common boy, and mark me, his fortun’
+will be no common fortun’.” He said with a tearful smile that it was a
+singular thing to think of now, and I said so too. Finally, I went out
+into the air, with a dim perception that there was something unwonted
+in the conduct of the sunshine, and found that I had slumberously got
+to the turnpike without having taken any account of the road.
+
+There, I was roused by Mr. Pumblechook’s hailing me. He was a long way
+down the sunny street, and was making expressive gestures for me to
+stop. I stopped, and he came up breathless.
+
+“No, my dear friend,” said he, when he had recovered wind for speech.
+“Not if I can help it. This occasion shall not entirely pass without
+that affability on your part.—May I, as an old friend and well-wisher?
+_May_ I?”
+
+We shook hands for the hundredth time at least, and he ordered a young
+carter out of my way with the greatest indignation. Then, he blessed me
+and stood waving his hand to me until I had passed the crook in the
+road; and then I turned into a field and had a long nap under a hedge
+before I pursued my way home.
+
+I had scant luggage to take with me to London, for little of the little
+I possessed was adapted to my new station. But I began packing that
+same afternoon, and wildly packed up things that I knew I should want
+next morning, in a fiction that there was not a moment to be lost.
+
+So, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, passed; and on Friday morning I
+went to Mr. Pumblechook’s, to put on my new clothes and pay my visit to
+Miss Havisham. Mr. Pumblechook’s own room was given up to me to dress
+in, and was decorated with clean towels expressly for the event. My
+clothes were rather a disappointment, of course. Probably every new and
+eagerly expected garment ever put on since clothes came in, fell a
+trifle short of the wearer’s expectation. But after I had had my new
+suit on some half an hour, and had gone through an immensity of
+posturing with Mr. Pumblechook’s very limited dressing-glass, in the
+futile endeavour to see my legs, it seemed to fit me better. It being
+market morning at a neighbouring town some ten miles off, Mr.
+Pumblechook was not at home. I had not told him exactly when I meant to
+leave, and was not likely to shake hands with him again before
+departing. This was all as it should be, and I went out in my new
+array, fearfully ashamed of having to pass the shopman, and suspicious
+after all that I was at a personal disadvantage, something like Joe’s
+in his Sunday suit.
+
+I went circuitously to Miss Havisham’s by all the back ways, and rang
+at the bell constrainedly, on account of the stiff long fingers of my
+gloves. Sarah Pocket came to the gate, and positively reeled back when
+she saw me so changed; her walnut-shell countenance likewise turned
+from brown to green and yellow.
+
+“You?” said she. “You? Good gracious! What do you want?”
+
+“I am going to London, Miss Pocket,” said I, “and want to say good-bye
+to Miss Havisham.”
+
+I was not expected, for she left me locked in the yard, while she went
+to ask if I were to be admitted. After a very short delay, she returned
+and took me up, staring at me all the way.
+
+Miss Havisham was taking exercise in the room with the long spread
+table, leaning on her crutch stick. The room was lighted as of yore,
+and at the sound of our entrance, she stopped and turned. She was then
+just abreast of the rotted bride-cake.
+
+“Don’t go, Sarah,” she said. “Well, Pip?”
+
+“I start for London, Miss Havisham, to-morrow,” I was exceedingly
+careful what I said, “and I thought you would kindly not mind my taking
+leave of you.”
+
+“This is a gay figure, Pip,” said she, making her crutch stick play
+round me, as if she, the fairy godmother who had changed me, were
+bestowing the finishing gift.
+
+“I have come into such good fortune since I saw you last, Miss
+Havisham,” I murmured. “And I am so grateful for it, Miss Havisham!”
+
+“Ay, ay!” said she, looking at the discomfited and envious Sarah, with
+delight. “I have seen Mr. Jaggers. _I_ have heard about it, Pip. So you
+go to-morrow?”
+
+“Yes, Miss Havisham.”
+
+“And you are adopted by a rich person?”
+
+“Yes, Miss Havisham.”
+
+“Not named?”
+
+“No, Miss Havisham.”
+
+“And Mr. Jaggers is made your guardian?”
+
+“Yes, Miss Havisham.”
+
+She quite gloated on these questions and answers, so keen was her
+enjoyment of Sarah Pocket’s jealous dismay. “Well!” she went on; “you
+have a promising career before you. Be good—deserve it—and abide by Mr.
+Jaggers’s instructions.” She looked at me, and looked at Sarah, and
+Sarah’s countenance wrung out of her watchful face a cruel smile.
+“Good-bye, Pip!—you will always keep the name of Pip, you know.”
+
+“Yes, Miss Havisham.”
+
+“Good-bye, Pip!”
+
+She stretched out her hand, and I went down on my knee and put it to my
+lips. I had not considered how I should take leave of her; it came
+naturally to me at the moment to do this. She looked at Sarah Pocket
+with triumph in her weird eyes, and so I left my fairy godmother, with
+both her hands on her crutch stick, standing in the midst of the dimly
+lighted room beside the rotten bride-cake that was hidden in cobwebs.
+
+Sarah Pocket conducted me down, as if I were a ghost who must be seen
+out. She could not get over my appearance, and was in the last degree
+confounded. I said “Good-bye, Miss Pocket;” but she merely stared, and
+did not seem collected enough to know that I had spoken. Clear of the
+house, I made the best of my way back to Pumblechook’s, took off my new
+clothes, made them into a bundle, and went back home in my older dress,
+carrying it—to speak the truth—much more at my ease too, though I had
+the bundle to carry.
+
+And now, those six days which were to have run out so slowly, had run
+out fast and were gone, and to-morrow looked me in the face more
+steadily than I could look at it. As the six evenings had dwindled
+away, to five, to four, to three, to two, I had become more and more
+appreciative of the society of Joe and Biddy. On this last evening, I
+dressed myself out in my new clothes for their delight, and sat in my
+splendour	 until bedtime. We had a hot supper on the occasion,
+graced by the inevitable roast fowl, and we had some flip to finish
+with. We were all very low, and none the higher for pretending to be in
+spirits.
+
+I was to leave our village at five in the morning, carrying my little
+hand-portmanteau, and I had told Joe that I wished to walk away all
+alone. I am afraid—sore afraid—that this purpose originated in my sense
+of the contrast there would be between me and Joe, if we went to the
+coach together. I had pretended with myself that there was nothing of
+this taint in the arrangement; but when I went up to my little room on
+this last night, I felt compelled to admit that it might be so, and had
+an impulse upon me to go down again and entreat Joe to walk with me in
+the morning. I did not.
+
+All night there were coaches in my broken sleep, going to wrong places
+instead of to London, and having in the traces, now dogs, now cats, now
+pigs, now men,—never horses. Fantastic failures of journeys occupied me
+until the day dawned and the birds were singing. Then, I got up and
+partly dressed, and sat at the window to take a last look out, and in
+taking it fell asleep.
+
+Biddy was astir so early to get my breakfast, that, although I did not
+sleep at the window an hour, I smelt the smoke of the kitchen fire when
+I started up with a terrible idea that it must be late in the
+afternoon. But long after that, and long after I had heard the clinking
+of the teacups and was quite ready, I wanted the resolution to go
+downstairs. After all, I remained up there, repeatedly unlocking and
+unstrapping my small portmanteau and locking and strapping it up again,
+until Biddy called to me that I was late.
+
+It was a hurried breakfast with no taste in it. I got up from the meal,
+saying with a sort of briskness, as if it had only just occurred to me,
+“Well! I suppose I must be off!” and then I kissed my sister who was
+laughing and nodding and shaking in her usual chair, and kissed Biddy,
+and threw my arms around Joe’s neck. Then I took up my little
+portmanteau and walked out. The last I saw of them was, when I
+presently heard a scuffle behind me, and looking back, saw Joe throwing
+an old shoe after me and Biddy throwing another old shoe. I stopped
+then, to wave my hat, and dear old Joe waved his strong right arm above
+his head, crying huskily “Hooroar!” and Biddy put her apron to her
+face.
+
+I walked away at a good pace, thinking it was easier to go than I had
+supposed it would be, and reflecting that it would never have done to
+have had an old shoe thrown after the coach, in sight of all the High
+Street. I whistled and made nothing of going. But the village was very
+peaceful and quiet, and the light mists were solemnly rising, as if to
+show me the world, and I had been so innocent and little there, and all
+beyond was so unknown and great, that in a moment with a strong heave
+and sob I broke into tears. It was by the finger-post at the end of the
+village, and I laid my hand upon it, and said, “Good-bye, O my dear,
+dear friend!”
+
+Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain
+upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was
+better after I had cried than before,—more sorry, more aware of my own
+ingratitude, more gentle. If I had cried before, I should have had Joe
+with me then.
+
+So subdued I was by those tears, and by their breaking out again in the
+course of the quiet walk, that when I was on the coach, and it was
+clear of the town, I deliberated with an aching heart whether I would
+not get down when we changed horses and walk back, and have another
+evening at home, and a better parting. We changed, and I had not made
+up my mind, and still reflected for my comfort that it would be quite
+practicable to get down and walk back, when we changed again. And while
+I was occupied with these deliberations, I would fancy an exact
+resemblance to Joe in some man coming along the road towards us, and my
+heart would beat high.—As if he could possibly be there!
+
+We changed again, and yet again, and it was now too late and too far to
+go back, and I went on. And the mists had all solemnly risen now, and
+the world lay spread before me.
+
+This is the end of the first stage of Pip’s expectations.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XX.
+
+
+The journey from our town to the metropolis was a journey of about five
+hours. It was a little past midday when the four-horse stage-coach by
+which I was a passenger, got into the ravel of traffic frayed out about
+the Cross Keys, Wood Street, Cheapside, London.
+
+We Britons had at that time particularly settled that it was
+treasonable to doubt our having and our being the best of everything:
+otherwise, while I was scared by the immensity of London, I think I
+might have had some faint doubts whether it was not rather ugly,
+crooked, narrow, and dirty.
+
+Mr. Jaggers had duly sent me his address; it was, Little Britain, and
+he had written after it on his card, “just out of Smithfield, and close
+by the coach-office.” Nevertheless, a hackney-coachman, who seemed to
+have as many capes to his greasy great-coat as he was years old, packed
+me up in his coach and hemmed me in with a folding and jingling barrier
+of steps, as if he were going to take me fifty miles. His getting on
+his box, which I remember to have been decorated with an old
+weather-stained pea-green hammercloth moth-eaten into rags, was quite a
+work of time. It was a wonderful equipage, with six great coronets
+outside, and ragged things behind for I don’t know how many footmen to
+hold on by, and a harrow below them, to prevent amateur footmen from
+yielding to the temptation.
+
+I had scarcely had time to enjoy the coach and to think how like a
+straw-yard it was, and yet how like a rag-shop, and to wonder why the
+horses’ nose-bags were kept inside, when I observed the coachman
+beginning to get down, as if we were going to stop presently. And stop
+we presently did, in a gloomy street, at certain offices with an open
+door, whereon was painted MR. JAGGERS.
+
+“How much?” I asked the coachman.
+
+The coachman answered, “A shilling—unless you wish to make it more.”
+
+I naturally said I had no wish to make it more.
+
+“Then it must be a shilling,” observed the coachman. “I don’t want to
+get into trouble. _I_ know _him_!” He darkly closed an eye at Mr.
+Jaggers’s name, and shook his head.
+
+When he had got his shilling, and had in course of time completed the
+ascent to his box, and had got away (which appeared to relieve his
+mind), I went into the front office with my little portmanteau in my
+hand and asked, Was Mr. Jaggers at home?
+
+“He is not,” returned the clerk. “He is in Court at present. Am I
+addressing Mr. Pip?”
+
+I signified that he was addressing Mr. Pip.
+
+“Mr. Jaggers left word, would you wait in his room. He couldn’t say how
+long he might be, having a case on. But it stands to reason, his time
+being valuable, that he won’t be longer than he can help.”
+
+With those words, the clerk opened a door, and ushered me into an inner
+chamber at the back. Here, we found a gentleman with one eye, in a
+velveteen suit and knee-breeches, who wiped his nose with his sleeve on
+being interrupted in the perusal of the newspaper.
+
+“Go and wait outside, Mike,” said the clerk.
+
+I began to say that I hoped I was not interrupting, when the clerk
+shoved this gentleman out with as little ceremony as I ever saw used,
+and tossing his fur cap out after him, left me alone.
+
+Mr. Jaggers’s room was lighted by a skylight only, and was a most
+dismal place; the skylight, eccentrically pitched like a broken head,
+and the distorted adjoining houses looking as if they had twisted
+themselves to peep down at me through it. There were not so many papers
+about, as I should have expected to see; and there were some odd
+objects about, that I should not have expected to see,—such as an old
+rusty pistol, a sword in a scabbard, several strange-looking boxes and
+packages, and two dreadful casts on a shelf, of faces peculiarly
+swollen, and twitchy about the nose. Mr. Jaggers’s own high-backed
+chair was of deadly black horsehair, with rows of brass nails round it,
+like a coffin; and I fancied I could see how he leaned back in it, and
+bit his forefinger at the clients. The room was but small, and the
+clients seemed to have had a habit of backing up against the wall; the
+wall, especially opposite to Mr. Jaggers’s chair, being greasy with
+shoulders. I recalled, too, that the one-eyed gentleman had shuffled
+forth against the wall when I was the innocent cause of his being
+turned out.
+
+I sat down in the cliental chair placed over against Mr. Jaggers’s
+chair, and became fascinated by the dismal atmosphere of the place. I
+called to mind that the clerk had the same air of knowing something to
+everybody else’s disadvantage, as his master had. I wondered how many
+other clerks there were upstairs, and whether they all claimed to have
+the same detrimental mastery of their fellow-creatures. I wondered what
+was the history of all the odd litter about the room, and how it came
+there. I wondered whether the two swollen faces were of Mr. Jaggers’s
+family, and, if he were so unfortunate as to have had a pair of such
+ill-looking relations, why he stuck them on that dusty perch for the
+blacks and flies to settle on, instead of giving them a place at home.
+Of course I had no experience of a London summer day, and my spirits
+may have been oppressed by the hot exhausted air, and by the dust and
+grit that lay thick on everything. But I sat wondering and waiting in
+Mr. Jaggers’s close room, until I really could not bear the two casts
+on the shelf above Mr. Jaggers’s chair, and got up and went out.
+
+When I told the clerk that I would take a turn in the air while I
+waited, he advised me to go round the corner and I should come into
+Smithfield. So I came into Smithfield; and the shameful place, being
+all asmear with filth and fat and blood and foam, seemed to stick to
+me. So, I rubbed it off with all possible speed by turning into a
+street where I saw the great black dome of Saint Paul’s bulging at me
+from behind a grim stone building which a bystander said was Newgate
+Prison. Following the wall of the jail, I found the roadway covered
+with straw to deaden the noise of passing vehicles; and from this, and
+from the quantity of people standing about smelling strongly of spirits
+and beer, I inferred that the trials were on.
+
+While I looked about me here, an exceedingly dirty and partially drunk
+minister of justice asked me if I would like to step in and hear a
+trial or so: informing me that he could give me a front place for half
+a crown, whence I should command a full view of the Lord Chief Justice
+in his wig and robes,—mentioning that awful personage like waxwork, and
+presently offering him at the reduced price of eighteen-pence. As I
+declined the proposal on the plea of an appointment, he was so good as
+to take me into a yard and show me where the gallows was kept, and also
+where people were publicly whipped, and then he showed me the Debtors’
+Door, out of which culprits came to be hanged; heightening the interest
+of that dreadful portal by giving me to understand that “four on ’em”
+would come out at that door the day after to-morrow at eight in the
+morning, to be killed in a row. This was horrible, and gave me a
+sickening idea of London; the more so as the Lord Chief Justice’s
+proprietor wore (from his hat down to his boots and up again to his
+pocket-handkerchief inclusive) mildewed clothes which had evidently not
+belonged to him originally, and which I took it into my head he had
+bought cheap of the executioner. Under these circumstances I thought
+myself well rid of him for a shilling.
+
+I dropped into the office to ask if Mr. Jaggers had come in yet, and I
+found he had not, and I strolled out again. This time, I made the tour
+of Little Britain, and turned into Bartholomew Close; and now I became
+aware that other people were waiting about for Mr. Jaggers, as well as
+I. There were two men of secret appearance lounging in Bartholomew
+Close, and thoughtfully fitting their feet into the cracks of the
+pavement as they talked together, one of whom said to the other when
+they first passed me, that “Jaggers would do it if it was to be done.”
+There was a knot of three men and two women standing at a corner, and
+one of the women was crying on her dirty shawl, and the other comforted
+her by saying, as she pulled her own shawl over her shoulders, “Jaggers
+is for him, ’Melia, and what more _could_ you have?” There was a
+red-eyed little Jew who came into the Close while I was loitering
+there, in company with a second little Jew whom he sent upon an errand;
+and while the messenger was gone, I remarked this Jew, who was of a
+highly excitable temperament, performing a jig of anxiety under a
+lamp-post and accompanying himself, in a kind of frenzy, with the
+words, “O Jaggerth, Jaggerth, Jaggerth! all otherth ith Cag-Maggerth,
+give me Jaggerth!” These testimonies to the popularity of my guardian
+made a deep impression on me, and I admired and wondered more than
+ever.
+
+At length, as I was looking out at the iron gate of Bartholomew Close
+into Little Britain, I saw Mr. Jaggers coming across the road towards
+me. All the others who were waiting saw him at the same time, and there
+was quite a rush at him. Mr. Jaggers, putting a hand on my shoulder and
+walking me on at his side without saying anything to me, addressed
+himself to his followers.
+
+First, he took the two secret men.
+
+“Now, I have nothing to say to _you_,” said Mr. Jaggers, throwing his
+finger at them. “I want to know no more than I know. As to the result,
+it’s a toss-up. I told you from the first it was a toss-up. Have you
+paid Wemmick?”
+
+“We made the money up this morning, sir,” said one of the men,
+submissively, while the other perused Mr. Jaggers’s face.
+
+“I don’t ask you when you made it up, or where, or whether you made it
+up at all. Has Wemmick got it?”
+
+“Yes, sir,” said both the men together.
+
+“Very well; then you may go. Now, I won’t have it!” said Mr Jaggers,
+waving his hand at them to put them behind him. “If you say a word to
+me, I’ll throw up the case.”
+
+“We thought, Mr. Jaggers—” one of the men began, pulling off his hat.
+
+“That’s what I told you not to do,” said Mr. Jaggers. “_You_ thought! I
+think for you; that’s enough for you. If I want you, I know where to
+find you; I don’t want you to find me. Now I won’t have it. I won’t
+hear a word.”
+
+The two men looked at one another as Mr. Jaggers waved them behind
+again, and humbly fell back and were heard no more.
+
+“And now _you_!” said Mr. Jaggers, suddenly stopping, and turning on
+the two women with the shawls, from whom the three men had meekly
+separated,—“Oh! Amelia, is it?”
+
+“Yes, Mr. Jaggers.”
+
+“And do you remember,” retorted Mr. Jaggers, “that but for me you
+wouldn’t be here and couldn’t be here?”
+
+“O yes, sir!” exclaimed both women together. “Lord bless you, sir, well
+we knows that!”
+
+“Then why,” said Mr. Jaggers, “do you come here?”
+
+“My Bill, sir!” the crying woman pleaded.
+
+“Now, I tell you what!” said Mr. Jaggers. “Once for all. If you don’t
+know that your Bill’s in good hands, I know it. And if you come here
+bothering about your Bill, I’ll make an example of both your Bill and
+you, and let him slip through my fingers. Have you paid Wemmick?”
+
+“O yes, sir! Every farden.”
+
+“Very well. Then you have done all you have got to do. Say another
+word—one single word—and Wemmick shall give you your money back.”
+
+This terrible threat caused the two women to fall off immediately. No
+one remained now but the excitable Jew, who had already raised the
+skirts of Mr. Jaggers’s coat to his lips several times.
+
+“I don’t know this man!” said Mr. Jaggers, in the same devastating
+strain: “What does this fellow want?”
+
+“Ma thear Mithter Jaggerth. Hown brother to Habraham Latharuth?”
+
+“Who’s he?” said Mr. Jaggers. “Let go of my coat.”
+
+The suitor, kissing the hem of the garment again before relinquishing
+it, replied, “Habraham Latharuth, on thuthpithion of plate.”
+
+“You’re too late,” said Mr. Jaggers. “I am over the way.”
+
+“Holy father, Mithter Jaggerth!” cried my excitable acquaintance,
+turning white, “don’t thay you’re again Habraham Latharuth!”
+
+“I am,” said Mr. Jaggers, “and there’s an end of it. Get out of the
+way.”
+
+“Mithter Jaggerth! Half a moment! My hown cuthen’th gone to Mithter
+Wemmick at thith prethent minute, to hoffer him hany termth. Mithter
+Jaggerth! Half a quarter of a moment! If you’d have the condethenthun
+to be bought off from the t’other thide—at hany thuperior prithe!—money
+no object!—Mithter Jaggerth—Mithter—!”
+
+My guardian threw his supplicant off with supreme indifference, and
+left him dancing on the pavement as if it were red hot. Without further
+interruption, we reached the front office, where we found the clerk and
+the man in velveteen with the fur cap.
+
+“Here’s Mike,” said the clerk, getting down from his stool, and
+approaching Mr. Jaggers confidentially.
+
+“Oh!” said Mr. Jaggers, turning to the man, who was pulling a lock of
+hair in the middle of his forehead, like the Bull in Cock Robin pulling
+at the bell-rope; “your man comes on this afternoon. Well?”
+
+“Well, Mas’r Jaggers,” returned Mike, in the voice of a sufferer from a
+constitutional cold; “arter a deal o’ trouble, I’ve found one, sir, as
+might do.”
+
+“What is he prepared to swear?”
+
+“Well, Mas’r Jaggers,” said Mike, wiping his nose on his fur cap this
+time; “in a general way, anythink.”
+
+Mr. Jaggers suddenly became most irate. “Now, I warned you before,”
+said he, throwing his forefinger at the terrified client, “that if you
+ever presumed to talk in that way here, I’d make an example of you. You
+infernal scoundrel, how dare you tell ME that?”
+
+The client looked scared, but bewildered too, as if he were unconscious
+what he had done.
+
+“Spooney!” said the clerk, in a low voice, giving him a stir with his
+elbow. “Soft Head! Need you say it face to face?”
+
+“Now, I ask you, you blundering booby,” said my guardian, very sternly,
+“once more and for the last time, what the man you have brought here is
+prepared to swear?”
+
+Mike looked hard at my guardian, as if he were trying to learn a lesson
+from his face, and slowly replied, “Ayther to character, or to having
+been in his company and never left him all the night in question.”
+
+“Now, be careful. In what station of life is this man?”
+
+Mike looked at his cap, and looked at the floor, and looked at the
+ceiling, and looked at the clerk, and even looked at me, before
+beginning to reply in a nervous manner, “We’ve dressed him up like—”
+when my guardian blustered out,—
+
+“What? You WILL, will you?”
+
+(“Spooney!” added the clerk again, with another stir.)
+
+After some helpless casting about, Mike brightened and began again:—
+
+“He is dressed like a ’spectable pieman. A sort of a pastry-cook.”
+
+“Is he here?” asked my guardian.
+
+“I left him,” said Mike, “a setting on some doorsteps round the
+corner.”
+
+“Take him past that window, and let me see him.”
+
+The window indicated was the office window. We all three went to it,
+behind the wire blind, and presently saw the client go by in an
+accidental manner, with a murderous-looking tall individual, in a short
+suit of white linen and a paper cap. This guileless confectioner was
+not by any means sober, and had a black eye in the green stage of
+recovery, which was painted over.
+
+“Tell him to take his witness away directly,” said my guardian to the
+clerk, in extreme disgust, “and ask him what he means by bringing such
+a fellow as that.”
+
+My guardian then took me into his own room, and while he lunched,
+standing, from a sandwich-box and a pocket-flask of sherry (he seemed
+to bully his very sandwich as he ate it), informed me what arrangements
+he had made for me. I was to go to “Barnard’s Inn,” to young Mr.
+Pocket’s rooms, where a bed had been sent in for my accommodation; I
+was to remain with young Mr. Pocket until Monday; on Monday I was to go
+with him to his father’s house on a visit, that I might try how I liked
+it. Also, I was told what my allowance was to be,—it was a very liberal
+one,—and had handed to me from one of my guardian’s drawers, the cards
+of certain tradesmen with whom I was to deal for all kinds of clothes,
+and such other things as I could in reason want. “You will find your
+credit good, Mr. Pip,” said my guardian, whose flask of sherry smelt
+like a whole caskful, as he hastily refreshed himself, “but I shall by
+this means be able to check your bills, and to pull you up if I find
+you outrunning the constable. Of course you’ll go wrong somehow, but
+that’s no fault of mine.”
+
+After I had pondered a little over this encouraging sentiment, I asked
+Mr. Jaggers if I could send for a coach? He said it was not worth
+while, I was so near my destination; Wemmick should walk round with me,
+if I pleased.
+
+I then found that Wemmick was the clerk in the next room. Another clerk
+was rung down from upstairs to take his place while he was out, and I
+accompanied him into the street, after shaking hands with my guardian.
+We found a new set of people lingering outside, but Wemmick made a way
+among them by saying coolly yet decisively, “I tell you it’s no use; he
+won’t have a word to say to one of you;” and we soon got clear of them,
+and went on side by side.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXI.
+
+
+Casting my eyes on Mr. Wemmick as we went along, to see what he was
+like in the light of day, I found him to be a dry man, rather short in
+stature, with a square wooden face, whose expression seemed to have
+been imperfectly chipped out with a dull-edged chisel. There were some
+marks in it that might have been dimples, if the material had been
+softer and the instrument finer, but which, as it was, were only dints.
+The chisel had made three or four of these attempts at embellishment
+over his nose, but had given them up without an effort to smooth them
+off. I judged him to be a bachelor from the frayed condition of his
+linen, and he appeared to have sustained a good many bereavements; for
+he wore at least four mourning rings, besides a brooch representing a
+lady and a weeping willow at a tomb with an urn on it. I noticed, too,
+that several rings and seals hung at his watch-chain, as if he were
+quite laden with remembrances of departed friends. He had glittering
+eyes,—small, keen, and black,—and thin wide mottled lips. He had had
+them, to the best of my belief, from forty to fifty years.
+
+“So you were never in London before?” said Mr. Wemmick to me.
+
+“No,” said I.
+
+“_I_ was new here once,” said Mr. Wemmick. “Rum to think of now!”
+
+“You are well acquainted with it now?”
+
+“Why, yes,” said Mr. Wemmick. “I know the moves of it.”
+
+“Is it a very wicked place?” I asked, more for the sake of saying
+something than for information.
+
+“You may get cheated, robbed, and murdered in London. But there are
+plenty of people anywhere, who’ll do that for you.”
+
+“If there is bad blood between you and them,” said I, to soften it off
+a little.
+
+“O! I don’t know about bad blood,” returned Mr. Wemmick; “there’s not
+much bad blood about. They’ll do it, if there’s anything to be got by
+it.”
+
+“That makes it worse.”
+
+“You think so?” returned Mr. Wemmick. “Much about the same, I should
+say.”
+
+He wore his hat on the back of his head, and looked straight before
+him: walking in a self-contained way as if there were nothing in the
+streets to claim his attention. His mouth was such a post-office of a
+mouth that he had a mechanical appearance of smiling. We had got to the
+top of Holborn Hill before I knew that it was merely a mechanical
+appearance, and that he was not smiling at all.
+
+“Do you know where Mr. Matthew Pocket lives?” I asked Mr. Wemmick.
+
+“Yes,” said he, nodding in the direction. “At Hammersmith, west of
+London.”
+
+“Is that far?”
+
+“Well! Say five miles.”
+
+“Do you know him?”
+
+“Why, you’re a regular cross-examiner!” said Mr. Wemmick, looking at me
+with an approving air. “Yes, I know him. _I_ know him!”
+
+There was an air of toleration or depreciation about his utterance of
+these words that rather depressed me; and I was still looking sideways
+at his block of a face in search of any encouraging note to the text,
+when he said here we were at Barnard’s Inn. My depression was not
+alleviated by the announcement, for, I had supposed that establishment
+to be an hotel kept by Mr. Barnard, to which the Blue Boar in our town
+was a mere public-house. Whereas I now found Barnard to be a
+disembodied spirit, or a fiction, and his inn the dingiest collection
+of shabby buildings ever squeezed together in a rank corner as a club
+for Tom-cats.
+
+We entered this haven through a wicket-gate, and were disgorged by an
+introductory passage into a melancholy little square that looked to me
+like a flat burying-ground. I thought it had the most dismal trees in
+it, and the most dismal sparrows, and the most dismal cats, and the
+most dismal houses (in number half a dozen or so), that I had ever
+seen. I thought the windows of the sets of chambers into which those
+houses were divided were in every stage of dilapidated blind and
+curtain, crippled flower-pot, cracked glass, dusty decay, and miserable
+makeshift; while To Let, To Let, To Let, glared at me from empty rooms,
+as if no new wretches ever came there, and the vengeance of the soul of
+Barnard were being slowly appeased by the gradual suicide of the
+present occupants and their unholy interment under the gravel. A frowzy
+mourning of soot and smoke attired this forlorn creation of Barnard,
+and it had strewn ashes on its head, and was undergoing penance and
+humiliation as a mere dust-hole. Thus far my sense of sight; while dry
+rot and wet rot and all the silent rots that rot in neglected roof and
+cellar,—rot of rat and mouse and bug and coaching-stables near at hand
+besides—addressed themselves faintly to my sense of smell, and moaned,
+“Try Barnard’s Mixture.”
+
+So imperfect was this realisation of the first of my great
+expectations, that I looked in dismay at Mr. Wemmick. “Ah!” said he,
+mistaking me; “the retirement reminds you of the country. So it does
+me.”
+
+He led me into a corner and conducted me up a flight of stairs,—which
+appeared to me to be slowly collapsing into sawdust, so that one of
+those days the upper lodgers would look out at their doors and find
+themselves without the means of coming down,—to a set of chambers on
+the top floor. MR. POCKET, JUN., was painted on the door, and there was
+a label on the letter-box, “Return shortly.”
+
+“He hardly thought you’d come so soon,” Mr. Wemmick explained. “You
+don’t want me any more?”
+
+“No, thank you,” said I.
+
+“As I keep the cash,” Mr. Wemmick observed, “we shall most likely meet
+pretty often. Good day.”
+
+“Good day.”
+
+I put out my hand, and Mr. Wemmick at first looked at it as if he
+thought I wanted something. Then he looked at me, and said, correcting
+himself,—
+
+“To be sure! Yes. You’re in the habit of shaking hands?”
+
+I was rather confused, thinking it must be out of the London fashion,
+but said yes.
+
+“I have got so out of it!” said Mr. Wemmick,—“except at last. Very
+glad, I’m sure, to make your acquaintance. Good day!”
+
+When we had shaken hands and he was gone, I opened the staircase window
+and had nearly beheaded myself, for, the lines had rotted away, and it
+came down like the guillotine. Happily it was so quick that I had not
+put my head out. After this escape, I was content to take a foggy view
+of the Inn through the window’s encrusting dirt, and to stand dolefully
+looking out, saying to myself that London was decidedly overrated.
+
+Mr. Pocket, Junior’s, idea of Shortly was not mine, for I had nearly
+maddened myself with looking out for half an hour, and had written my
+name with my finger several times in the dirt of every pane in the
+window, before I heard footsteps on the stairs. Gradually there arose
+before me the hat, head, neckcloth, waistcoat, trousers, boots, of a
+member of society of about my own standing. He had a paper-bag under
+each arm and a pottle of strawberries in one hand, and was out of
+breath.
+
+“Mr. Pip?” said he.
+
+“Mr. Pocket?” said I.
+
+“Dear me!” he exclaimed. “I am extremely sorry; but I knew there was a
+coach from your part of the country at midday, and I thought you would
+come by that one. The fact is, I have been out on your account,—not
+that that is any excuse,—for I thought, coming from the country, you
+might like a little fruit after dinner, and I went to Covent Garden
+Market to get it good.”
+
+For a reason that I had, I felt as if my eyes would start out of my
+head. I acknowledged his attention incoherently, and began to think
+this was a dream.
+
+“Dear me!” said Mr. Pocket, Junior. “This door sticks so!”
+
+As he was fast making jam of his fruit by wrestling with the door while
+the paper-bags were under his arms, I begged him to allow me to hold
+them. He relinquished them with an agreeable smile, and combated with
+the door as if it were a wild beast. It yielded so suddenly at last,
+that he staggered back upon me, and I staggered back upon the opposite
+door, and we both laughed. But still I felt as if my eyes must start
+out of my head, and as if this must be a dream.
+
+“Pray come in,” said Mr. Pocket, Junior. “Allow me to lead the way. I
+am rather bare here, but I hope you’ll be able to make out tolerably
+well till Monday. My father thought you would get on more agreeably
+through to-morrow with me than with him, and might like to take a walk
+about London. I am sure I shall be very happy to show London to you. As
+to our table, you won’t find that bad, I hope, for it will be supplied
+from our coffee-house here, and (it is only right I should add) at your
+expense, such being Mr. Jaggers’s directions. As to our lodging, it’s
+not by any means splendid, because I have my own bread to earn, and my
+father hasn’t anything to give me, and I shouldn’t be willing to take
+it, if he had. This is our sitting-room,—just such chairs and tables
+and carpet and so forth, you see, as they could spare from home. You
+mustn’t give me credit for the tablecloth and spoons and castors,
+because they come for you from the coffee-house. This is my little
+bedroom; rather musty, but Barnard’s _is_ musty. This is your bedroom;
+the furniture’s hired for the occasion, but I trust it will answer the
+purpose; if you should want anything, I’ll go and fetch it. The
+chambers are retired, and we shall be alone together, but we shan’t
+fight, I dare say. But dear me, I beg your pardon, you’re holding the
+fruit all this time. Pray let me take these bags from you. I am quite
+ashamed.”
+
+As I stood opposite to Mr. Pocket, Junior, delivering him the bags,
+One, Two, I saw the starting appearance come into his own eyes that I
+knew to be in mine, and he said, falling back,—
+
+“Lord bless me, you’re the prowling boy!”
+
+“And you,” said I, “are the pale young gentleman!”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXII.
+
+
+The pale young gentleman and I stood contemplating one another in
+Barnard’s Inn, until we both burst out laughing. “The idea of its being
+you!” said he. “The idea of its being _you_!” said I. And then we
+contemplated one another afresh, and laughed again. “Well!” said the
+pale young gentleman, reaching out his hand good-humouredly, “it’s all
+over now, I hope, and it will be magnanimous in you if you’ll forgive
+me for having knocked you about so.”
+
+I derived from this speech that Mr. Herbert Pocket (for Herbert was the
+pale young gentleman’s name) still rather confounded his intention with
+his execution. But I made a modest reply, and we shook hands warmly.
+
+“You hadn’t come into your good fortune at that time?” said Herbert
+Pocket.
+
+“No,” said I.
+
+“No,” he acquiesced: “I heard it had happened very lately. _I_ was
+rather on the lookout for good fortune then.”
+
+“Indeed?”
+
+“Yes. Miss Havisham had sent for me, to see if she could take a fancy
+to me. But she couldn’t,—at all events, she didn’t.”
+
+I thought it polite to remark that I was surprised to hear that.
+
+“Bad taste,” said Herbert, laughing, “but a fact. Yes, she had sent for
+me on a trial visit, and if I had come out of it successfully, I
+suppose I should have been provided for; perhaps I should have been
+what-you-may-called it to Estella.”
+
+“What’s that?” I asked, with sudden gravity.
+
+He was arranging his fruit in plates while we talked, which divided his
+attention, and was the cause of his having made this lapse of a word.
+“Affianced,” he explained, still busy with the fruit. “Betrothed.
+Engaged. What’s-his-named. Any word of that sort.”
+
+“How did you bear your disappointment?” I asked.
+
+“Pooh!” said he, “I didn’t care much for it. _She’s_ a Tartar.”
+
+“Miss Havisham?”
+
+“I don’t say no to that, but I meant Estella. That girl’s hard and
+haughty and capricious to the last degree, and has been brought up by
+Miss Havisham to wreak revenge on all the male sex.”
+
+“What relation is she to Miss Havisham?”
+
+“None,” said he. “Only adopted.”
+
+“Why should she wreak revenge on all the male sex? What revenge?”
+
+“Lord, Mr. Pip!” said he. “Don’t you know?”
+
+“No,” said I.
+
+“Dear me! It’s quite a story, and shall be saved till dinner-time. And
+now let me take the liberty of asking you a question. How did you come
+there, that day?”
+
+I told him, and he was attentive until I had finished, and then burst
+out laughing again, and asked me if I was sore afterwards? I didn’t ask
+him if _he_ was, for my conviction on that point was perfectly
+established.
+
+“Mr. Jaggers is your guardian, I understand?” he went on.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“You know he is Miss Havisham’s man of business and solicitor, and has
+her confidence when nobody else has?”
+
+This was bringing me (I felt) towards dangerous ground. I answered with
+a constraint I made no attempt to disguise, that I had seen Mr. Jaggers
+in Miss Havisham’s house on the very day of our combat, but never at
+any other time, and that I believed he had no recollection of having
+ever seen me there.
+
+“He was so obliging as to suggest my father for your tutor, and he
+called on my father to propose it. Of course he knew about my father
+from his connection with Miss Havisham. My father is Miss Havisham’s
+cousin; not that that implies familiar intercourse between them, for he
+is a bad courtier and will not propitiate her.”
+
+Herbert Pocket had a frank and easy way with him that was very taking.
+I had never seen any one then, and I have never seen any one since, who
+more strongly expressed to me, in every look and tone, a natural
+incapacity to do anything secret and mean. There was something
+wonderfully hopeful about his general air, and something that at the
+same time whispered to me he would never be very successful or rich. I
+don’t know how this was. I became imbued with the notion on that first
+occasion before we sat down to dinner, but I cannot define by what
+means.
+
+He was still a pale young gentleman, and had a certain conquered
+languor about him in the midst of his spirits and briskness, that did
+not seem indicative of natural strength. He had not a handsome face,
+but it was better than handsome: being extremely amiable and cheerful.
+His figure was a little ungainly, as in the days when my knuckles had
+taken such liberties with it, but it looked as if it would always be
+light and young. Whether Mr. Trabb’s local work would have sat more
+gracefully on him than on me, may be a question; but I am conscious
+that he carried off his rather old clothes much better than I carried
+off my new suit.
+
+As he was so communicative, I felt that reserve on my part would be a
+bad return unsuited to our years. I therefore told him my small story,
+and laid stress on my being forbidden to inquire who my benefactor was.
+I further mentioned that as I had been brought up a blacksmith in a
+country place, and knew very little of the ways of politeness, I would
+take it as a great kindness in him if he would give me a hint whenever
+he saw me at a loss or going wrong.
+
+“With pleasure,” said he, “though I venture to prophesy that you’ll
+want very few hints. I dare say we shall be often together, and I
+should like to banish any needless restraint between us. Will you do me
+the favour to begin at once to call me by my Christian name, Herbert?”
+
+I thanked him and said I would. I informed him in exchange that my
+Christian name was Philip.
+
+“I don’t take to Philip,” said he, smiling, “for it sounds like a moral
+boy out of the spelling-book, who was so lazy that he fell into a pond,
+or so fat that he couldn’t see out of his eyes, or so avaricious that
+he locked up his cake till the mice ate it, or so determined to go a
+bird’s-nesting that he got himself eaten by bears who lived handy in
+the neighbourhood. I tell you what I should like. We are so harmonious,
+and you have been a blacksmith,—would you mind it?”
+
+“I shouldn’t mind anything that you propose,” I answered, “but I don’t
+understand you.”
+
+“Would you mind Handel for a familiar name? There’s a charming piece of
+music by Handel, called the Harmonious Blacksmith.”
+
+“I should like it very much.”
+
+“Then, my dear Handel,” said he, turning round as the door opened,
+“here is the dinner, and I must beg of you to take the top of the
+table, because the dinner is of your providing.”
+
+This I would not hear of, so he took the top, and I faced him. It was a
+nice little dinner,—seemed to me then a very Lord Mayor’s Feast,—and it
+acquired additional relish from being eaten under those independent
+circumstances, with no old people by, and with London all around us.
+This again was heightened by a certain gypsy character that set the
+banquet off; for while the table was, as Mr. Pumblechook might have
+said, the lap of luxury,—being entirely furnished forth from the
+coffee-house,—the circumjacent region of sitting-room was of a
+comparatively pastureless and shifty character; imposing on the waiter
+the wandering habits of putting the covers on the floor (where he fell
+over them), the melted butter in the arm-chair, the bread on the
+bookshelves, the cheese in the coal-scuttle, and the boiled fowl into
+my bed in the next room,—where I found much of its parsley and butter
+in a state of congelation when I retired for the night. All this made
+the feast delightful, and when the waiter was not there to watch me, my
+pleasure was without alloy.
+
+We had made some progress in the dinner, when I reminded Herbert of his
+promise to tell me about Miss Havisham.
+
+“True,” he replied. “I’ll redeem it at once. Let me introduce the
+topic, Handel, by mentioning that in London it is not the custom to put
+the knife in the mouth,—for fear of accidents,—and that while the fork
+is reserved for that use, it is not put further in than necessary. It
+is scarcely worth mentioning, only it’s as well to do as other people
+do. Also, the spoon is not generally used over-hand, but under. This
+has two advantages. You get at your mouth better (which after all is
+the object), and you save a good deal of the attitude of opening
+oysters, on the part of the right elbow.”
+
+He offered these friendly suggestions in such a lively way, that we
+both laughed and I scarcely blushed.
+
+“Now,” he pursued, “concerning Miss Havisham. Miss Havisham, you must
+know, was a spoilt child. Her mother died when she was a baby, and her
+father denied her nothing. Her father was a country gentleman down in
+your part of the world, and was a brewer. I don’t know why it should be
+a crack thing to be a brewer; but it is indisputable that while you
+cannot possibly be genteel and bake, you may be as genteel as never was
+and brew. You see it every day.”
+
+“Yet a gentleman may not keep a public-house; may he?” said I.
+
+“Not on any account,” returned Herbert; “but a public-house may keep a
+gentleman. Well! Mr. Havisham was very rich and very proud. So was his
+daughter.”
+
+“Miss Havisham was an only child?” I hazarded.
+
+“Stop a moment, I am coming to that. No, she was not an only child; she
+had a half-brother. Her father privately married again—his cook, I
+rather think.”
+
+“I thought he was proud,” said I.
+
+“My good Handel, so he was. He married his second wife privately,
+because he was proud, and in course of time _she_ died. When she was
+dead, I apprehend he first told his daughter what he had done, and then
+the son became a part of the family, residing in the house you are
+acquainted with. As the son grew a young man, he turned out riotous,
+extravagant, undutiful,—altogether bad. At last his father disinherited
+him; but he softened when he was dying, and left him well off, though
+not nearly so well off as Miss Havisham.—Take another glass of wine,
+and excuse my mentioning that society as a body does not expect one to
+be so strictly conscientious in emptying one’s glass, as to turn it
+bottom upwards with the rim on one’s nose.”
+
+I had been doing this, in an excess of attention to his recital. I
+thanked him, and apologised. He said, “Not at all,” and resumed.
+
+“Miss Havisham was now an heiress, and you may suppose was looked after
+as a great match. Her half-brother had now ample means again, but what
+with debts and what with new madness wasted them most fearfully again.
+There were stronger differences between him and her than there had been
+between him and his father, and it is suspected that he cherished a
+deep and mortal grudge against her as having influenced the father’s
+anger. Now, I come to the cruel part of the story,—merely breaking off,
+my dear Handel, to remark that a dinner-napkin will not go into a
+tumbler.”
+
+Why I was trying to pack mine into my tumbler, I am wholly unable to
+say. I only know that I found myself, with a perseverance worthy of a
+much better cause, making the most strenuous exertions to compress it
+within those limits. Again I thanked him and apologised, and again he
+said in the cheerfullest manner, “Not at all, I am sure!” and resumed.
+
+“There appeared upon the scene—say at the races, or the public balls,
+or anywhere else you like—a certain man, who made love to Miss
+Havisham. I never saw him (for this happened five-and-twenty years ago,
+before you and I were, Handel), but I have heard my father mention that
+he was a showy man, and the kind of man for the purpose. But that he
+was not to be, without ignorance or prejudice, mistaken for a
+gentleman, my father most strongly asseverates; because it is a
+principle of his that no man who was not a true gentleman at heart ever
+was, since the world began, a true gentleman in manner. He says, no
+varnish can hide the grain of the wood; and that the more varnish you
+put on, the more the grain will express itself. Well! This man pursued
+Miss Havisham closely, and professed to be devoted to her. I believe
+she had not shown much susceptibility up to that time; but all the
+susceptibility she possessed certainly came out then, and she
+passionately loved him. There is no doubt that she perfectly idolized
+him. He practised on her affection in that systematic way, that he got
+great sums of money from her, and he induced her to buy her brother out
+of a share in the brewery (which had been weakly left him by his
+father) at an immense price, on the plea that when he was her husband
+he must hold and manage it all. Your guardian was not at that time in
+Miss Havisham’s counsels, and she was too haughty and too much in love
+to be advised by any one. Her relations were poor and scheming, with
+the exception of my father; he was poor enough, but not time-serving or
+jealous. The only independent one among them, he warned her that she
+was doing too much for this man, and was placing herself too
+unreservedly in his power. She took the first opportunity of angrily
+ordering my father out of the house, in his presence, and my father has
+never seen her since.”
+
+I thought of her having said, “Matthew will come and see me at last
+when I am laid dead upon that table;” and I asked Herbert whether his
+father was so inveterate against her?
+
+“It’s not that,” said he, “but she charged him, in the presence of her
+intended husband, with being disappointed in the hope of fawning upon
+her for his own advancement, and, if he were to go to her now, it would
+look true—even to him—and even to her. To return to the man and make an
+end of him. The marriage day was fixed, the wedding dresses were
+bought, the wedding tour was planned out, the wedding guests were
+invited. The day came, but not the bridegroom. He wrote her a letter—”
+
+“Which she received,” I struck in, “when she was dressing for her
+marriage? At twenty minutes to nine?”
+
+“At the hour and minute,” said Herbert, nodding, “at which she
+afterwards stopped all the clocks. What was in it, further than that it
+most heartlessly broke the marriage off, I can’t tell you, because I
+don’t know. When she recovered from a bad illness that she had, she
+laid the whole place waste, as you have seen it, and she has never
+since looked upon the light of day.”
+
+“Is that all the story?” I asked, after considering it.
+
+“All I know of it; and indeed I only know so much, through piecing it
+out for myself; for my father always avoids it, and, even when Miss
+Havisham invited me to go there, told me no more of it than it was
+absolutely requisite I should understand. But I have forgotten one
+thing. It has been supposed that the man to whom she gave her misplaced
+confidence acted throughout in concert with her half-brother; that it
+was a conspiracy between them; and that they shared the profits.”
+
+“I wonder he didn’t marry her and get all the property,” said I.
+
+“He may have been married already, and her cruel mortification may have
+been a part of her half-brother’s scheme,” said Herbert. “Mind! I don’t
+know that.”
+
+“What became of the two men?” I asked, after again considering the
+subject.
+
+“They fell into deeper shame and degradation—if there can be deeper—and
+ruin.”
+
+“Are they alive now?”
+
+“I don’t know.”
+
+“You said just now that Estella was not related to Miss Havisham, but
+adopted. When adopted?”
+
+Herbert shrugged his shoulders. “There has always been an Estella,
+since I have heard of a Miss Havisham. I know no more. And now,
+Handel,” said he, finally throwing off the story as it were, “there is
+a perfectly open understanding between us. All that I know about Miss
+Havisham, you know.”
+
+“And all that I know,” I retorted, “you know.”
+
+“I fully believe it. So there can be no competition or perplexity
+between you and me. And as to the condition on which you hold your
+advancement in life,—namely, that you are not to inquire or discuss to
+whom you owe it,—you may be very sure that it will never be encroached
+upon, or even approached, by me, or by any one belonging to me.”
+
+In truth, he said this with so much delicacy, that I felt the subject
+done with, even though I should be under his father’s roof for years
+and years to come. Yet he said it with so much meaning, too, that I
+felt he as perfectly understood Miss Havisham to be my benefactress, as
+I understood the fact myself.
+
+It had not occurred to me before, that he had led up to the theme for
+the purpose of clearing it out of our way; but we were so much the
+lighter and easier for having broached it, that I now perceived this to
+be the case. We were very gay and sociable, and I asked him, in the
+course of conversation, what he was? He replied, “A capitalist,—an
+Insurer of Ships.” I suppose he saw me glancing about the room in
+search of some tokens of Shipping, or capital, for he added, “In the
+City.”
+
+I had grand ideas of the wealth and importance of Insurers of Ships in
+the City, and I began to think with awe of having laid a young Insurer
+on his back, blackened his enterprising eye, and cut his responsible
+head open. But again there came upon me, for my relief, that odd
+impression that Herbert Pocket would never be very successful or rich.
+
+“I shall not rest satisfied with merely employing my capital in
+insuring ships. I shall buy up some good Life Assurance shares, and cut
+into the Direction. I shall also do a little in the mining way. None of
+these things will interfere with my chartering a few thousand tons on
+my own account. I think I shall trade,” said he, leaning back in his
+chair, “to the East Indies, for silks, shawls, spices, dyes, drugs, and
+precious woods. It’s an interesting trade.”
+
+“And the profits are large?” said I.
+
+“Tremendous!” said he.
+
+I wavered again, and began to think here were greater expectations than
+my own.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+“I think I shall trade, also,” said he, putting his thumbs in his
+waist-coat pockets, “to the West Indies, for sugar, tobacco, and rum.
+Also to Ceylon, especially for elephants’ tusks.”
+
+“You will want a good many ships,” said I.
+
+“A perfect fleet,” said he.
+
+Quite overpowered by the magnificence of these transactions, I asked
+him where the ships he insured mostly traded to at present?
+
+“I haven’t begun insuring yet,” he replied. “I am looking about me.”
+
+Somehow, that pursuit seemed more in keeping with Barnard’s Inn. I said
+(in a tone of conviction), “Ah-h!”
+
+“Yes. I am in a counting-house, and looking about me.”
+
+“Is a counting-house profitable?” I asked.
+
+“To—do you mean to the young fellow who’s in it?” he asked, in reply.
+
+“Yes; to you.”
+
+“Why, n-no; not to me.” He said this with the air of one carefully
+reckoning up and striking a balance. “Not directly profitable. That is,
+it doesn’t pay me anything, and I have to—keep myself.”
+
+This certainly had not a profitable appearance, and I shook my head as
+if I would imply that it would be difficult to lay by much accumulative
+capital from such a source of income.
+
+“But the thing is,” said Herbert Pocket, “that you look about you.
+_That’s_ the grand thing. You are in a counting-house, you know, and
+you look about you.”
+
+It struck me as a singular implication that you couldn’t be out of a
+counting-house, you know, and look about you; but I silently deferred
+to his experience.
+
+“Then the time comes,” said Herbert, “when you see your opening. And
+you go in, and you swoop upon it and you make your capital, and then
+there you are! When you have once made your capital, you have nothing
+to do but employ it.”
+
+This was very like his way of conducting that encounter in the garden;
+very like. His manner of bearing his poverty, too, exactly corresponded
+to his manner of bearing that defeat. It seemed to me that he took all
+blows and buffets now with just the same air as he had taken mine then.
+It was evident that he had nothing around him but the simplest
+necessaries, for everything that I remarked upon turned out to have
+been sent in on my account from the coffee-house or somewhere else.
+
+Yet, having already made his fortune in his own mind, he was so
+unassuming with it that I felt quite grateful to him for not being
+puffed up. It was a pleasant addition to his naturally pleasant ways,
+and we got on famously. In the evening we went out for a walk in the
+streets, and went half-price to the Theatre; and next day we went to
+church at Westminster Abbey, and in the afternoon we walked in the
+Parks; and I wondered who shod all the horses there, and wished Joe
+did.
+
+On a moderate computation, it was many months, that Sunday, since I had
+left Joe and Biddy. The space interposed between myself and them
+partook of that expansion, and our marshes were any distance off. That
+I could have been at our old church in my old church-going clothes, on
+the very last Sunday that ever was, seemed a combination of
+impossibilities, geographical and social, solar and lunar. Yet in the
+London streets so crowded with people and so brilliantly lighted in the
+dusk of evening, there were depressing hints of reproaches for that I
+had put the poor old kitchen at home so far away; and in the dead of
+night, the footsteps of some incapable impostor of a porter mooning
+about Barnard’s Inn, under pretence of watching it, fell hollow on my
+heart.
+
+On the Monday morning at a quarter before nine, Herbert went to the
+counting-house to report himself,—to look about him, too, I
+suppose,—and I bore him company. He was to come away in an hour or two
+to attend me to Hammersmith, and I was to wait about for him. It
+appeared to me that the eggs from which young Insurers were hatched
+were incubated in dust and heat, like the eggs of ostriches, judging
+from the places to which those incipient giants repaired on a Monday
+morning. Nor did the counting-house where Herbert assisted, show in my
+eyes as at all a good Observatory; being a back second floor up a yard,
+of a grimy presence in all particulars, and with a look into another
+back second floor, rather than a look out.
+
+I waited about until it was noon, and I went upon ’Change, and I saw
+fluey men sitting there under the bills about shipping, whom I took to
+be great merchants, though I couldn’t understand why they should all be
+out of spirits. When Herbert came, we went and had lunch at a
+celebrated house which I then quite venerated, but now believe to have
+been the most abject superstition in Europe, and where I could not help
+noticing, even then, that there was much more gravy on the tablecloths
+and knives and waiters’ clothes, than in the steaks. This collation
+disposed of at a moderate price (considering the grease, which was not
+charged for), we went back to Barnard’s Inn and got my little
+portmanteau, and then took coach for Hammersmith. We arrived there at
+two or three o’clock in the afternoon, and had very little way to walk
+to Mr. Pocket’s house. Lifting the latch of a gate, we passed direct
+into a little garden overlooking the river, where Mr. Pocket’s children
+were playing about. And unless I deceive myself on a point where my
+interests or prepossessions are certainly not concerned, I saw that Mr.
+and Mrs. Pocket’s children were not growing up or being brought up, but
+were tumbling up.
+
+Mrs. Pocket was sitting on a garden chair under a tree, reading, with
+her legs upon another garden chair; and Mrs. Pocket’s two nurse-maids
+were looking about them while the children played. “Mamma,” said
+Herbert, “this is young Mr. Pip.” Upon which Mrs. Pocket received me
+with an appearance of amiable dignity.
+
+“Master Alick and Miss Jane,” cried one of the nurses to two of the
+children, “if you go a bouncing up against them bushes you’ll fall over
+into the river and be drownded, and what’ll your pa say then?”
+
+At the same time this nurse picked up Mrs. Pocket’s handkerchief, and
+said, “If that don’t make six times you’ve dropped it, Mum!” Upon which
+Mrs. Pocket laughed and said, “Thank you, Flopson,” and settling
+herself in one chair only, resumed her book. Her countenance
+immediately assumed a knitted and intent expression as if she had been
+reading for a week, but before she could have read half a dozen lines,
+she fixed her eyes upon me, and said, “I hope your mamma is quite
+well?” This unexpected inquiry put me into such a difficulty that I
+began saying in the absurdest way that if there had been any such
+person I had no doubt she would have been quite well and would have
+been very much obliged and would have sent her compliments, when the
+nurse came to my rescue.
+
+“Well!” she cried, picking up the pocket-handkerchief, “if that don’t
+make seven times! What ARE you a-doing of this afternoon, Mum!” Mrs.
+Pocket received her property, at first with a look of unutterable
+surprise as if she had never seen it before, and then with a laugh of
+recognition, and said, “Thank you, Flopson,” and forgot me, and went on
+reading.
+
+I found, now I had leisure to count them, that there were no fewer than
+six little Pockets present, in various stages of tumbling up. I had
+scarcely arrived at the total when a seventh was heard, as in the
+region of air, wailing dolefully.
+
+“If there ain’t Baby!” said Flopson, appearing to think it most
+surprising. “Make haste up, Millers.”
+
+Millers, who was the other nurse, retired into the house, and by
+degrees the child’s wailing was hushed and stopped, as if it were a
+young ventriloquist with something in its mouth. Mrs. Pocket read all
+the time, and I was curious to know what the book could be.
+
+We were waiting, I supposed, for Mr. Pocket to come out to us; at any
+rate we waited there, and so I had an opportunity of observing the
+remarkable family phenomenon that whenever any of the children strayed
+near Mrs. Pocket in their play, they always tripped themselves up and
+tumbled over her,—always very much to her momentary astonishment, and
+their own more enduring lamentation. I was at a loss to account for
+this surprising circumstance, and could not help giving my mind to
+speculations about it, until by and by Millers came down with the baby,
+which baby was handed to Flopson, which Flopson was handing it to Mrs.
+Pocket, when she too went fairly head foremost over Mrs. Pocket, baby
+and all, and was caught by Herbert and myself.
+
+“Gracious me, Flopson!” said Mrs. Pocket, looking off her book for a
+moment, “everybody’s tumbling!”
+
+“Gracious you, indeed, Mum!” returned Flopson, very red in the face;
+“what have you got there?”
+
+“_I_ got here, Flopson?” asked Mrs. Pocket.
+
+“Why, if it ain’t your footstool!” cried Flopson. “And if you keep it
+under your skirts like that, who’s to help tumbling? Here! Take the
+baby, Mum, and give me your book.”
+
+Mrs. Pocket acted on the advice, and inexpertly danced the infant a
+little in her lap, while the other children played about it. This had
+lasted but a very short time, when Mrs. Pocket issued summary orders
+that they were all to be taken into the house for a nap. Thus I made
+the second discovery on that first occasion, that the nurture of the
+little Pockets consisted of alternately tumbling up and lying down.
+
+Under these circumstances, when Flopson and Millers had got the
+children into the house, like a little flock of sheep, and Mr. Pocket
+came out of it to make my acquaintance, I was not much surprised to
+find that Mr. Pocket was a gentleman with a rather perplexed expression
+of face, and with his very grey hair disordered on his head, as if he
+didn’t quite see his way to putting anything straight.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIII.
+
+
+Mr. Pocket said he was glad to see me, and he hoped I was not sorry to
+see him. “For, I really am not,” he added, with his son’s smile, “an
+alarming personage.” He was a young-looking man, in spite of his
+perplexities and his very grey hair, and his manner seemed quite
+natural. I use the word natural, in the sense of its being unaffected;
+there was something comic in his distraught way, as though it would
+have been downright ludicrous but for his own perception that it was
+very near being so. When he had talked with me a little, he said to
+Mrs. Pocket, with a rather anxious contraction of his eyebrows, which
+were black and handsome, “Belinda, I hope you have welcomed Mr. Pip?”
+And she looked up from her book, and said, “Yes.” She then smiled upon
+me in an absent state of mind, and asked me if I liked the taste of
+orange-flower water? As the question had no bearing, near or remote, on
+any foregone or subsequent transaction, I consider it to have been
+thrown out, like her previous approaches, in general conversational
+condescension.
+
+I found out within a few hours, and may mention at once, that Mrs.
+Pocket was the only daughter of a certain quite accidental deceased
+Knight, who had invented for himself a conviction that his deceased
+father would have been made a Baronet but for somebody’s determined
+opposition arising out of entirely personal motives,—I forget whose, if
+I ever knew,—the Sovereign’s, the Prime Minister’s, the Lord
+Chancellor’s, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s, anybody’s,—and had tacked
+himself on to the nobles of the earth in right of this quite
+supposititious fact. I believe he had been knighted himself for
+storming the English grammar at the point of the pen, in a desperate
+address engrossed on vellum, on the occasion of the laying of the first
+stone of some building or other, and for handing some Royal Personage
+either the trowel or the mortar. Be that as it may, he had directed
+Mrs. Pocket to be brought up from her cradle as one who in the nature
+of things must marry a title, and who was to be guarded from the
+acquisition of plebeian domestic knowledge.
+
+So successful a watch and ward had been established over the young lady
+by this judicious parent, that she had grown up highly ornamental, but
+perfectly helpless and useless. With her character thus happily formed,
+in the first bloom of her youth she had encountered Mr. Pocket: who was
+also in the first bloom of youth, and not quite decided whether to
+mount to the Woolsack, or to roof himself in with a mitre. As his doing
+the one or the other was a mere question of time, he and Mrs. Pocket
+had taken Time by the forelock (when, to judge from its length, it
+would seem to have wanted cutting), and had married without the
+knowledge of the judicious parent. The judicious parent, having nothing
+to bestow or withhold but his blessing, had handsomely settled that
+dower upon them after a short struggle, and had informed Mr. Pocket
+that his wife was “a treasure for a Prince.” Mr. Pocket had invested
+the Prince’s treasure in the ways of the world ever since, and it was
+supposed to have brought him in but indifferent interest. Still, Mrs.
+Pocket was in general the object of a queer sort of respectful pity,
+because she had not married a title; while Mr. Pocket was the object of
+a queer sort of forgiving reproach, because he had never got one.
+
+Mr. Pocket took me into the house and showed me my room: which was a
+pleasant one, and so furnished as that I could use it with comfort for
+my own private sitting-room. He then knocked at the doors of two other
+similar rooms, and introduced me to their occupants, by name Drummle
+and Startop. Drummle, an old-looking young man of a heavy order of
+architecture, was whistling. Startop, younger in years and appearance,
+was reading and holding his head, as if he thought himself in danger of
+exploding it with too strong a charge of knowledge.
+
+Both Mr. and Mrs. Pocket had such a noticeable air of being in somebody
+else’s hands, that I wondered who really was in possession of the house
+and let them live there, until I found this unknown power to be the
+servants. It was a smooth way of going on, perhaps, in respect of
+saving trouble; but it had the appearance of being expensive, for the
+servants felt it a duty they owed to themselves to be nice in their
+eating and drinking, and to keep a deal of company downstairs. They
+allowed a very liberal table to Mr. and Mrs. Pocket, yet it always
+appeared to me that by far the best part of the house to have boarded
+in would have been the kitchen,—always supposing the boarder capable of
+self-defence, for, before I had been there a week, a neighbouring lady
+with whom the family were personally unacquainted, wrote in to say that
+she had seen Millers slapping the baby. This greatly distressed Mrs.
+Pocket, who burst into tears on receiving the note, and said that it
+was an extraordinary thing that the neighbours couldn’t mind their own
+business.
+
+By degrees I learnt, and chiefly from Herbert, that Mr. Pocket had been
+educated at Harrow and at Cambridge, where he had distinguished
+himself; but that when he had had the happiness of marrying Mrs. Pocket
+very early in life, he had impaired his prospects and taken up the
+calling of a Grinder. After grinding a number of dull blades,—of whom
+it was remarkable that their fathers, when influential, were always
+going to help him to preferment, but always forgot to do it when the
+blades had left the Grindstone,—he had wearied of that poor work and
+had come to London. Here, after gradually failing in loftier hopes, he
+had “read” with divers who had lacked opportunities or neglected them,
+and had refurbished divers others for special occasions, and had turned
+his acquirements to the account of literary compilation and correction,
+and on such means, added to some very moderate private resources, still
+maintained the house I saw.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Pocket had a toady neighbour; a widow lady of that highly
+sympathetic nature that she agreed with everybody, blessed everybody,
+and shed smiles and tears on everybody, according to circumstances.
+This lady’s name was Mrs. Coiler, and I had the honour of taking her
+down to dinner on the day of my installation. She gave me to understand
+on the stairs, that it was a blow to dear Mrs. Pocket that dear Mr.
+Pocket should be under the necessity of receiving gentlemen to read
+with him. That did not extend to me, she told me in a gush of love and
+confidence (at that time, I had known her something less than five
+minutes); if they were all like Me, it would be quite another thing.
+
+“But dear Mrs. Pocket,” said Mrs. Coiler, “after her early
+disappointment (not that dear Mr. Pocket was to blame in that),
+requires so much luxury and elegance—”
+
+“Yes, ma’am,” I said, to stop her, for I was afraid she was going to
+cry.
+
+“And she is of so aristocratic a disposition—”
+
+“Yes, ma’am,” I said again, with the same object as before.
+
+“—That it _is_ hard,” said Mrs. Coiler, “to have dear Mr. Pocket’s time
+and attention diverted from dear Mrs. Pocket.”
+
+I could not help thinking that it might be harder if the butcher’s time
+and attention were diverted from dear Mrs. Pocket; but I said nothing,
+and indeed had enough to do in keeping a bashful watch upon my company
+manners.
+
+It came to my knowledge, through what passed between Mrs. Pocket and
+Drummle while I was attentive to my knife and fork, spoon, glasses, and
+other instruments of self-destruction, that Drummle, whose Christian
+name was Bentley, was actually the next heir but one to a baronetcy. It
+further appeared that the book I had seen Mrs. Pocket reading in the
+garden was all about titles, and that she knew the exact date at which
+her grandpapa would have come into the book, if he ever had come at
+all. Drummle didn’t say much, but in his limited way (he struck me as a
+sulky kind of fellow) he spoke as one of the elect, and recognised Mrs.
+Pocket as a woman and a sister. No one but themselves and Mrs. Coiler
+the toady neighbour showed any interest in this part of the
+conversation, and it appeared to me that it was painful to Herbert; but
+it promised to last a long time, when the page came in with the
+announcement of a domestic affliction. It was, in effect, that the cook
+had mislaid the beef. To my unutterable amazement, I now, for the first
+time, saw Mr. Pocket relieve his mind by going through a performance
+that struck me as very extraordinary, but which made no impression on
+anybody else, and with which I soon became as familiar as the rest. He
+laid down the carving-knife and fork,—being engaged in carving, at the
+moment,—put his two hands into his disturbed hair, and appeared to make
+an extraordinary effort to lift himself up by it. When he had done
+this, and had not lifted himself up at all, he quietly went on with
+what he was about.
+
+Mrs. Coiler then changed the subject and began to flatter me. I liked
+it for a few moments, but she flattered me so very grossly that the
+pleasure was soon over. She had a serpentine way of coming close at me
+when she pretended to be vitally interested in the friends and
+localities I had left, which was altogether snaky and fork-tongued; and
+when she made an occasional bounce upon Startop (who said very little
+to her), or upon Drummle (who said less), I rather envied them for
+being on the opposite side of the table.
+
+After dinner the children were introduced, and Mrs. Coiler made
+admiring comments on their eyes, noses, and legs,—a sagacious way of
+improving their minds. There were four little girls, and two little
+boys, besides the baby who might have been either, and the baby’s next
+successor who was as yet neither. They were brought in by Flopson and
+Millers, much as though those two non-commissioned officers had been
+recruiting somewhere for children and had enlisted these, while Mrs.
+Pocket looked at the young Nobles that ought to have been as if she
+rather thought she had had the pleasure of inspecting them before, but
+didn’t quite know what to make of them.
+
+“Here! Give me your fork, Mum, and take the baby,” said Flopson. “Don’t
+take it that way, or you’ll get its head under the table.”
+
+Thus advised, Mrs. Pocket took it the other way, and got its head upon
+the table; which was announced to all present by a prodigious
+concussion.
+
+“Dear, dear! Give it me back, Mum,” said Flopson; “and Miss Jane, come
+and dance to baby, do!”
+
+One of the little girls, a mere mite who seemed to have prematurely
+taken upon herself some charge of the others, stepped out of her place
+by me, and danced to and from the baby until it left off crying, and
+laughed. Then, all the children laughed, and Mr. Pocket (who in the
+meantime had twice endeavoured to lift himself up by the hair) laughed,
+and we all laughed and were glad.
+
+Flopson, by dint of doubling the baby at the joints like a Dutch doll,
+then got it safely into Mrs. Pocket’s lap, and gave it the nut-crackers
+to play with; at the same time recommending Mrs. Pocket to take notice
+that the handles of that instrument were not likely to agree with its
+eyes, and sharply charging Miss Jane to look after the same. Then, the
+two nurses left the room, and had a lively scuffle on the staircase
+with a dissipated page who had waited at dinner, and who had clearly
+lost half his buttons at the gaming-table.
+
+I was made very uneasy in my mind by Mrs. Pocket’s falling into a
+discussion with Drummle respecting two baronetcies, while she ate a
+sliced orange steeped in sugar and wine, and, forgetting all about the
+baby on her lap, who did most appalling things with the nut-crackers.
+At length little Jane, perceiving its young brains to be imperilled,
+softly left her place, and with many small artifices coaxed the
+dangerous weapon away. Mrs. Pocket finishing her orange at about the
+same time, and not approving of this, said to Jane,—
+
+“You naughty child, how dare you? Go and sit down this instant!”
+
+“Mamma dear,” lisped the little girl, “baby ood have put hith eyeth
+out.”
+
+“How dare you tell me so?” retorted Mrs. Pocket. “Go and sit down in
+your chair this moment!”
+
+Mrs. Pocket’s dignity was so crushing, that I felt quite abashed, as if
+I myself had done something to rouse it.
+
+“Belinda,” remonstrated Mr. Pocket, from the other end of the table,
+“how can you be so unreasonable? Jane only interfered for the
+protection of baby.”
+
+“I will not allow anybody to interfere,” said Mrs. Pocket. “I am
+surprised, Matthew, that you should expose me to the affront of
+interference.”
+
+“Good God!” cried Mr. Pocket, in an outbreak of desolate desperation.
+“Are infants to be nut-crackered into their tombs, and is nobody to
+save them?”
+
+“I will not be interfered with by Jane,” said Mrs. Pocket, with a
+majestic glance at that innocent little offender. “I hope I know my
+poor grandpapa’s position. Jane, indeed!”
+
+Mr. Pocket got his hands in his hair again, and this time really did
+lift himself some inches out of his chair. “Hear this!” he helplessly
+exclaimed to the elements. “Babies are to be nut-crackered dead, for
+people’s poor grandpapa’s positions!” Then he let himself down again,
+and became silent.
+
+We all looked awkwardly at the tablecloth while this was going on. A
+pause succeeded, during which the honest and irrepressible baby made a
+series of leaps and crows at little Jane, who appeared to me to be the
+only member of the family (irrespective of servants) with whom it had
+any decided acquaintance.
+
+“Mr. Drummle,” said Mrs. Pocket, “will you ring for Flopson? Jane, you
+undutiful little thing, go and lie down. Now, baby darling, come with
+ma!”
+
+The baby was the soul of honour, and protested with all its might. It
+doubled itself up the wrong way over Mrs. Pocket’s arm, exhibited a
+pair of knitted shoes and dimpled ankles to the company in lieu of its
+soft face, and was carried out in the highest state of mutiny. And it
+gained its point after all, for I saw it through the window within a
+few minutes, being nursed by little Jane.
+
+It happened that the other five children were left behind at the
+dinner-table, through Flopson’s having some private engagement, and
+their not being anybody else’s business. I thus became aware of the
+mutual relations between them and Mr. Pocket, which were exemplified in
+the following manner. Mr. Pocket, with the normal perplexity of his
+face heightened and his hair rumpled, looked at them for some minutes,
+as if he couldn’t make out how they came to be boarding and lodging in
+that establishment, and why they hadn’t been billeted by Nature on
+somebody else. Then, in a distant Missionary way he asked them certain
+questions,—as why little Joe had that hole in his frill, who said, Pa,
+Flopson was going to mend it when she had time,—and how little Fanny
+came by that whitlow, who said, Pa, Millers was going to poultice it
+when she didn’t forget. Then, he melted into parental tenderness, and
+gave them a shilling apiece and told them to go and play; and then as
+they went out, with one very strong effort to lift himself up by the
+hair he dismissed the hopeless subject.
+
+In the evening there was rowing on the river. As Drummle and Startop
+had each a boat, I resolved to set up mine, and to cut them both out. I
+was pretty good at most exercises in which country boys are adepts, but
+as I was conscious of wanting elegance of style for the Thames,—not to
+say for other waters,—I at once engaged to place myself under the
+tuition of the winner of a prize-wherry who plied at our stairs, and to
+whom I was introduced by my new allies. This practical authority
+confused me very much by saying I had the arm of a blacksmith. If he
+could have known how nearly the compliment lost him his pupil, I doubt
+if he would have paid it.
+
+There was a supper-tray after we got home at night, and I think we
+should all have enjoyed ourselves, but for a rather disagreeable
+domestic occurrence. Mr. Pocket was in good spirits, when a housemaid
+came in, and said, “If you please, sir, I should wish to speak to you.”
+
+“Speak to your master?” said Mrs. Pocket, whose dignity was roused
+again. “How can you think of such a thing? Go and speak to Flopson. Or
+speak to me—at some other time.”
+
+“Begging your pardon, ma’am,” returned the housemaid, “I should wish to
+speak at once, and to speak to master.”
+
+Hereupon, Mr. Pocket went out of the room, and we made the best of
+ourselves until he came back.
+
+“This is a pretty thing, Belinda!” said Mr. Pocket, returning with a
+countenance expressive of grief and despair. “Here’s the cook lying
+insensibly drunk on the kitchen floor, with a large bundle of fresh
+butter made up in the cupboard ready to sell for grease!”
+
+Mrs. Pocket instantly showed much amiable emotion, and said, “This is
+that odious Sophia’s doing!”
+
+“What do you mean, Belinda?” demanded Mr. Pocket.
+
+“Sophia has told you,” said Mrs. Pocket. “Did I not see her with my own
+eyes and hear her with my own ears, come into the room just now and ask
+to speak to you?”
+
+“But has she not taken me downstairs, Belinda,” returned Mr. Pocket,
+“and shown me the woman, and the bundle too?”
+
+“And do you defend her, Matthew,” said Mrs. Pocket, “for making
+mischief?”
+
+Mr. Pocket uttered a dismal groan.
+
+“Am I, grandpapa’s granddaughter, to be nothing in the house?” said
+Mrs. Pocket. “Besides, the cook has always been a very nice respectful
+woman, and said in the most natural manner when she came to look after
+the situation, that she felt I was born to be a Duchess.”
+
+There was a sofa where Mr. Pocket stood, and he dropped upon it in the
+attitude of the Dying Gladiator. Still in that attitude he said, with a
+hollow voice, “Good night, Mr. Pip,” when I deemed it advisable to go
+to bed and leave him.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIV.
+
+
+After two or three days, when I had established myself in my room and
+had gone backwards and forwards to London several times, and had
+ordered all I wanted of my tradesmen, Mr. Pocket and I had a long talk
+together. He knew more of my intended career than I knew myself, for he
+referred to his having been told by Mr. Jaggers that I was not designed
+for any profession, and that I should be well enough educated for my
+destiny if I could “hold my own” with the average of young men in
+prosperous circumstances. I acquiesced, of course, knowing nothing to
+the contrary.
+
+He advised my attending certain places in London, for the acquisition
+of such mere rudiments as I wanted, and my investing him with the
+functions of explainer and director of all my studies. He hoped that
+with intelligent assistance I should meet with little to discourage me,
+and should soon be able to dispense with any aid but his. Through his
+way of saying this, and much more to similar purpose, he placed himself
+on confidential terms with me in an admirable manner; and I may state
+at once that he was always so zealous and honourable in fulfilling his
+compact with me, that he made me zealous and honourable in fulfilling
+mine with him. If he had shown indifference as a master, I have no
+doubt I should have returned the compliment as a pupil; he gave me no
+such excuse, and each of us did the other justice. Nor did I ever
+regard him as having anything ludicrous about him—or anything but what
+was serious, honest, and good—in his tutor communication with me.
+
+When these points were settled, and so far carried out as that I had
+begun to work in earnest, it occurred to me that if I could retain my
+bedroom in Barnard’s Inn, my life would be agreeably varied, while my
+manners would be none the worse for Herbert’s society. Mr. Pocket did
+not object to this arrangement, but urged that before any step could
+possibly be taken in it, it must be submitted to my guardian. I felt
+that this delicacy arose out of the consideration that the plan would
+save Herbert some expense, so I went off to Little Britain and imparted
+my wish to Mr. Jaggers.
+
+“If I could buy the furniture now hired for me,” said I, “and one or
+two other little things, I should be quite at home there.”
+
+“Go it!” said Mr. Jaggers, with a short laugh. “I told you you’d get
+on. Well! How much do you want?”
+
+I said I didn’t know how much.
+
+“Come!” retorted Mr. Jaggers. “How much? Fifty pounds?”
+
+“O, not nearly so much.”
+
+“Five pounds?” said Mr. Jaggers.
+
+This was such a great fall, that I said in discomfiture, “O, more than
+that.”
+
+“More than that, eh!” retorted Mr. Jaggers, lying in wait for me, with
+his hands in his pockets, his head on one side, and his eyes on the
+wall behind me; “how much more?”
+
+“It is so difficult to fix a sum,” said I, hesitating.
+
+“Come!” said Mr. Jaggers. “Let’s get at it. Twice five; will that do?
+Three times five; will that do? Four times five; will that do?”
+
+I said I thought that would do handsomely.
+
+“Four times five will do handsomely, will it?” said Mr. Jaggers,
+knitting his brows. “Now, what do you make of four times five?”
+
+“What do I make of it?”
+
+“Ah!” said Mr. Jaggers; “how much?”
+
+“I suppose you make it twenty pounds,” said I, smiling.
+
+“Never mind what _I_ make it, my friend,” observed Mr. Jaggers, with a
+knowing and contradictory toss of his head. “I want to know what _you_
+make it.”
+
+“Twenty pounds, of course.”
+
+“Wemmick!” said Mr. Jaggers, opening his office door. “Take Mr. Pip’s
+written order, and pay him twenty pounds.”
+
+This strongly marked way of doing business made a strongly marked
+impression on me, and that not of an agreeable kind. Mr. Jaggers never
+laughed; but he wore great bright creaking boots, and, in poising
+himself on these boots, with his large head bent down and his eyebrows
+joined together, awaiting an answer, he sometimes caused the boots to
+creak, as if _they_ laughed in a dry and suspicious way. As he happened
+to go out now, and as Wemmick was brisk and talkative, I said to
+Wemmick that I hardly knew what to make of Mr. Jaggers’s manner.
+
+“Tell him that, and he’ll take it as a compliment,” answered Wemmick;
+“he don’t mean that you _should_ know what to make of it.—Oh!” for I
+looked surprised, “it’s not personal; it’s professional: only
+professional.”
+
+Wemmick was at his desk, lunching—and crunching—on a dry hard biscuit;
+pieces of which he threw from time to time into his slit of a mouth, as
+if he were posting them.
+
+“Always seems to me,” said Wemmick, “as if he had set a man-trap and
+was watching it. Suddenly—click—you’re caught!”
+
+Without remarking that man-traps were not among the amenities of life,
+I said I supposed he was very skilful?
+
+“Deep,” said Wemmick, “as Australia.” Pointing with his pen at the
+office floor, to express that Australia was understood, for the
+purposes of the figure, to be symmetrically on the opposite spot of the
+globe. “If there was anything deeper,” added Wemmick, bringing his pen
+to paper, “he’d be it.”
+
+Then, I said I supposed he had a fine business, and Wemmick said,
+“Ca-pi-tal!” Then I asked if there were many clerks? to which he
+replied,—
+
+“We don’t run much into clerks, because there’s only one Jaggers, and
+people won’t have him at second hand. There are only four of us. Would
+you like to see ’em? You are one of us, as I may say.”
+
+I accepted the offer. When Mr. Wemmick had put all the biscuit into the
+post, and had paid me my money from a cash-box in a safe, the key of
+which safe he kept somewhere down his back and produced from his
+coat-collar like an iron-pigtail, we went upstairs. The house was dark
+and shabby, and the greasy shoulders that had left their mark in Mr.
+Jaggers’s room seemed to have been shuffling up and down the staircase
+for years. In the front first floor, a clerk who looked something
+between a publican and a rat-catcher—a large pale, puffed, swollen
+man—was attentively engaged with three or four people of shabby
+appearance, whom he treated as unceremoniously as everybody seemed to
+be treated who contributed to Mr. Jaggers’s coffers. “Getting evidence
+together,” said Mr. Wemmick, as we came out, “for the Bailey.” In the
+room over that, a little flabby terrier of a clerk with dangling hair
+(his cropping seemed to have been forgotten when he was a puppy) was
+similarly engaged with a man with weak eyes, whom Mr. Wemmick presented
+to me as a smelter who kept his pot always boiling, and who would melt
+me anything I pleased,—and who was in an excessive white-perspiration,
+as if he had been trying his art on himself. In a back room, a
+high-shouldered man with a face-ache tied up in dirty flannel, who was
+dressed in old black clothes that bore the appearance of having been
+waxed, was stooping over his work of making fair copies of the notes of
+the other two gentlemen, for Mr. Jaggers’s own use.
+
+This was all the establishment. When we went downstairs again, Wemmick
+led me into my guardian’s room, and said, “This you’ve seen already.”
+
+“Pray,” said I, as the two odious casts with the twitchy leer upon them
+caught my sight again, “whose likenesses are those?”
+
+“These?” said Wemmick, getting upon a chair, and blowing the dust off
+the horrible heads before bringing them down. “These are two celebrated
+ones. Famous clients of ours that got us a world of credit. This chap
+(why you must have come down in the night and been peeping into the
+inkstand, to get this blot upon your eyebrow, you old rascal!) murdered
+his master, and, considering that he wasn’t brought up to evidence,
+didn’t plan it badly.”
+
+“Is it like him?” I asked, recoiling from the brute, as Wemmick spat
+upon his eyebrow and gave it a rub with his sleeve.
+
+“Like him? It’s himself, you know. The cast was made in Newgate,
+directly after he was taken down. You had a particular fancy for me,
+hadn’t you, Old Artful?” said Wemmick. He then explained this
+affectionate apostrophe, by touching his brooch representing the lady
+and the weeping willow at the tomb with the urn upon it, and saying,
+“Had it made for me, express!”
+
+“Is the lady anybody?” said I.
+
+“No,” returned Wemmick. “Only his game. (You liked your bit of game,
+didn’t you?) No; deuce a bit of a lady in the case, Mr. Pip, except
+one,—and she wasn’t of this slender lady-like sort, and you wouldn’t
+have caught _her_ looking after this urn, unless there was something to
+drink in it.” Wemmick’s attention being thus directed to his brooch, he
+put down the cast, and polished the brooch with his
+pocket-handkerchief.
+
+“Did that other creature come to the same end?” I asked. “He has the
+same look.”
+
+“You’re right,” said Wemmick; “it’s the genuine look. Much as if one
+nostril was caught up with a horse-hair and a little fish-hook. Yes, he
+came to the same end; quite the natural end here, I assure you. He
+forged wills, this blade did, if he didn’t also put the supposed
+testators to sleep too. You were a gentlemanly Cove, though” (Mr.
+Wemmick was again apostrophising), “and you said you could write Greek.
+Yah, Bounceable! What a liar you were! I never met such a liar as you!”
+Before putting his late friend on his shelf again, Wemmick touched the
+largest of his mourning rings and said, “Sent out to buy it for me,
+only the day before.”
+
+While he was putting up the other cast and coming down from the chair,
+the thought crossed my mind that all his personal jewelry was derived
+from like sources. As he had shown no diffidence on the subject, I
+ventured on the liberty of asking him the question, when he stood
+before me, dusting his hands.
+
+“O yes,” he returned, “these are all gifts of that kind. One brings
+another, you see; that’s the way of it. I always take ’em. They’re
+curiosities. And they’re property. They may not be worth much, but,
+after all, they’re property and portable. It don’t signify to you with
+your brilliant lookout, but as to myself, my guiding-star always is,
+‘Get hold of portable property’.”
+
+When I had rendered homage to this light, he went on to say, in a
+friendly manner:—
+
+“If at any odd time when you have nothing better to do, you wouldn’t
+mind coming over to see me at Walworth, I could offer you a bed, and I
+should consider it an honour. I have not much to show you; but such two
+or three curiosities as I have got you might like to look over; and I
+am fond of a bit of garden and a summer-house.”
+
+I said I should be delighted to accept his hospitality.
+
+“Thankee,” said he; “then we’ll consider that it’s to come off, when
+convenient to you. Have you dined with Mr. Jaggers yet?”
+
+“Not yet.”
+
+“Well,” said Wemmick, “he’ll give you wine, and good wine. I’ll give
+you punch, and not bad punch. And now I’ll tell you something. When you
+go to dine with Mr. Jaggers, look at his housekeeper.”
+
+“Shall I see something very uncommon?”
+
+“Well,” said Wemmick, “you’ll see a wild beast tamed. Not so very
+uncommon, you’ll tell me. I reply, that depends on the original
+wildness of the beast, and the amount of taming. It won’t lower your
+opinion of Mr. Jaggers’s powers. Keep your eye on it.”
+
+I told him I would do so, with all the interest and curiosity that his
+preparation awakened. As I was taking my departure, he asked me if I
+would like to devote five minutes to seeing Mr. Jaggers “at it?”
+
+For several reasons, and not least because I didn’t clearly know what
+Mr. Jaggers would be found to be “at,” I replied in the affirmative. We
+dived into the City, and came up in a crowded police-court, where a
+blood-relation (in the murderous sense) of the deceased, with the
+fanciful taste in brooches, was standing at the bar, uncomfortably
+chewing something; while my guardian had a woman under examination or
+cross-examination,—I don’t know which,—and was striking her, and the
+bench, and everybody present, with awe. If anybody, of whatsoever
+degree, said a word that he didn’t approve of, he instantly required to
+have it “taken down.” If anybody wouldn’t make an admission, he said,
+“I’ll have it out of you!” and if anybody made an admission, he said,
+“Now I have got you!” The magistrates shivered under a single bite of
+his finger. Thieves and thief-takers hung in dread rapture on his
+words, and shrank when a hair of his eyebrows turned in their
+direction. Which side he was on I couldn’t make out, for he seemed to
+me to be grinding the whole place in a mill; I only know that when I
+stole out on tiptoe, he was not on the side of the bench; for, he was
+making the legs of the old gentleman who presided, quite convulsive
+under the table, by his denunciations of his conduct as the
+representative of British law and justice in that chair that day.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXV.
+
+
+Bentley Drummle, who was so sulky a fellow that he even took up a book
+as if its writer had done him an injury, did not take up an
+acquaintance in a more agreeable spirit. Heavy in figure, movement, and
+comprehension,—in the sluggish complexion of his face, and in the
+large, awkward tongue that seemed to loll about in his mouth as he
+himself lolled about in a room,—he was idle, proud, niggardly,
+reserved, and suspicious. He came of rich people down in Somersetshire,
+who had nursed this combination of qualities until they made the
+discovery that it was just of age and a blockhead. Thus, Bentley
+Drummle had come to Mr. Pocket when he was a head taller than that
+gentleman, and half a dozen heads thicker than most gentlemen.
+
+Startop had been spoilt by a weak mother and kept at home when he ought
+to have been at school, but he was devotedly attached to her, and
+admired her beyond measure. He had a woman’s delicacy of feature, and
+was—“as you may see, though you never saw her,” said Herbert to
+me—“exactly like his mother.” It was but natural that I should take to
+him much more kindly than to Drummle, and that, even in the earliest
+evenings of our boating, he and I should pull homeward abreast of one
+another, conversing from boat to boat, while Bentley Drummle came up in
+our wake alone, under the overhanging banks and among the rushes. He
+would always creep in-shore like some uncomfortable amphibious
+creature, even when the tide would have sent him fast upon his way; and
+I always think of him as coming after us in the dark or by the
+back-water, when our own two boats were breaking the sunset or the
+moonlight in mid-stream.
+
+Herbert was my intimate companion and friend. I presented him with a
+half-share in my boat, which was the occasion of his often coming down
+to Hammersmith; and my possession of a half-share in his chambers often
+took me up to London. We used to walk between the two places at all
+hours. I have an affection for the road yet (though it is not so
+pleasant a road as it was then), formed in the impressibility of
+untried youth and hope.
+
+When I had been in Mr. Pocket’s family a month or two, Mr. and Mrs.
+Camilla turned up. Camilla was Mr. Pocket’s sister. Georgiana, whom I
+had seen at Miss Havisham’s on the same occasion, also turned up. She
+was a cousin,—an indigestive single woman, who called her rigidity
+religion, and her liver love. These people hated me with the hatred of
+cupidity and disappointment. As a matter of course, they fawned upon me
+in my prosperity with the basest meanness. Towards Mr. Pocket, as a
+grown-up infant with no notion of his own interests, they showed the
+complacent forbearance I had heard them express. Mrs. Pocket they held
+in contempt; but they allowed the poor soul to have been heavily
+disappointed in life, because that shed a feeble reflected light upon
+themselves.
+
+These were the surroundings among which I settled down, and applied
+myself to my education. I soon contracted expensive habits, and began
+to spend an amount of money that within a few short months I should
+have thought almost fabulous; but through good and evil I stuck to my
+books. There was no other merit in this, than my having sense enough to
+feel my deficiencies. Between Mr. Pocket and Herbert I got on fast;
+and, with one or the other always at my elbow to give me the start I
+wanted, and clear obstructions out of my road, I must have been as
+great a dolt as Drummle if I had done less.
+
+I had not seen Mr. Wemmick for some weeks, when I thought I would write
+him a note and propose to go home with him on a certain evening. He
+replied that it would give him much pleasure, and that he would expect
+me at the office at six o’clock. Thither I went, and there I found him,
+putting the key of his safe down his back as the clock struck.
+
+“Did you think of walking down to Walworth?” said he.
+
+“Certainly,” said I, “if you approve.”
+
+“Very much,” was Wemmick’s reply, “for I have had my legs under the
+desk all day, and shall be glad to stretch them. Now, I’ll tell you
+what I have got for supper, Mr. Pip. I have got a stewed steak,—which
+is of home preparation,—and a cold roast fowl,—which is from the
+cook’s-shop. I think it’s tender, because the master of the shop was a
+Juryman in some cases of ours the other day, and we let him down easy.
+I reminded him of it when I bought the fowl, and I said, “Pick us out a
+good one, old Briton, because if we had chosen to keep you in the box
+another day or two, we could easily have done it.” He said to that,
+“Let me make you a present of the best fowl in the shop.” I let him, of
+course. As far as it goes, it’s property and portable. You don’t object
+to an aged parent, I hope?”
+
+I really thought he was still speaking of the fowl, until he added,
+“Because I have got an aged parent at my place.” I then said what
+politeness required.
+
+“So, you haven’t dined with Mr. Jaggers yet?” he pursued, as we walked
+along.
+
+“Not yet.”
+
+“He told me so this afternoon when he heard you were coming. I expect
+you’ll have an invitation to-morrow. He’s going to ask your pals, too.
+Three of ’em; ain’t there?”
+
+Although I was not in the habit of counting Drummle as one of my
+intimate associates, I answered, “Yes.”
+
+“Well, he’s going to ask the whole gang,”—I hardly felt complimented by
+the word,—“and whatever he gives you, he’ll give you good. Don’t look
+forward to variety, but you’ll have excellence. And there’s another rum
+thing in his house,” proceeded Wemmick, after a moment’s pause, as if
+the remark followed on the housekeeper understood; “he never lets a
+door or window be fastened at night.”
+
+“Is he never robbed?”
+
+“That’s it!” returned Wemmick. “He says, and gives it out publicly, “I
+want to see the man who’ll rob _me_.” Lord bless you, I have heard him,
+a hundred times, if I have heard him once, say to regular cracksmen in
+our front office, “You know where I live; now, no bolt is ever drawn
+there; why don’t you do a stroke of business with me? Come; can’t I
+tempt you?” Not a man of them, sir, would be bold enough to try it on,
+for love or money.”
+
+“They dread him so much?” said I.
+
+“Dread him,” said Wemmick. “I believe you they dread him. Not but what
+he’s artful, even in his defiance of them. No silver, sir. Britannia
+metal, every spoon.”
+
+“So they wouldn’t have much,” I observed, “even if they—”
+
+“Ah! But _he_ would have much,” said Wemmick, cutting me short, “and
+they know it. He’d have their lives, and the lives of scores of ’em.
+He’d have all he could get. And it’s impossible to say what he couldn’t
+get, if he gave his mind to it.”
+
+I was falling into meditation on my guardian’s greatness, when Wemmick
+remarked:—
+
+“As to the absence of plate, that’s only his natural depth, you know. A
+river’s its natural depth, and he’s his natural depth. Look at his
+watch-chain. That’s real enough.”
+
+“It’s very massive,” said I.
+
+“Massive?” repeated Wemmick. “I think so. And his watch is a gold
+repeater, and worth a hundred pound if it’s worth a penny. Mr. Pip,
+there are about seven hundred thieves in this town who know all about
+that watch; there’s not a man, a woman, or a child, among them, who
+wouldn’t identify the smallest link in that chain, and drop it as if it
+was red hot, if inveigled into touching it.”
+
+At first with such discourse, and afterwards with conversation of a
+more general nature, did Mr. Wemmick and I beguile the time and the
+road, until he gave me to understand that we had arrived in the
+district of Walworth.
+
+It appeared to be a collection of back lanes, ditches, and little
+gardens, and to present the aspect of a rather dull retirement.
+Wemmick’s house was a little wooden cottage in the midst of plots of
+garden, and the top of it was cut out and painted like a battery
+mounted with guns.
+
+“My own doing,” said Wemmick. “Looks pretty; don’t it?”
+
+I highly commended it, I think it was the smallest house I ever saw;
+with the queerest gothic windows (by far the greater part of them
+sham), and a gothic door almost too small to get in at.
+
+“That’s a real flagstaff, you see,” said Wemmick, “and on Sundays I run
+up a real flag. Then look here. After I have crossed this bridge, I
+hoist it up—so—and cut off the communication.”
+
+The bridge was a plank, and it crossed a chasm about four feet wide and
+two deep. But it was very pleasant to see the pride with which he
+hoisted it up and made it fast; smiling as he did so, with a relish and
+not merely mechanically.
+
+“At nine o’clock every night, Greenwich time,” said Wemmick, “the gun
+fires. There he is, you see! And when you hear him go, I think you’ll
+say he’s a Stinger.”
+
+The piece of ordnance referred to, was mounted in a separate fortress,
+constructed of lattice-work. It was protected from the weather by an
+ingenious little tarpaulin contrivance in the nature of an umbrella.
+
+“Then, at the back,” said Wemmick, “out of sight, so as not to impede
+the idea of fortifications,—for it’s a principle with me, if you have
+an idea, carry it out and keep it up,—I don’t know whether that’s your
+opinion—”
+
+I said, decidedly.
+
+“—At the back, there’s a pig, and there are fowls and rabbits; then, I
+knock together my own little frame, you see, and grow cucumbers; and
+you’ll judge at supper what sort of a salad I can raise. So, sir,” said
+Wemmick, smiling again, but seriously too, as he shook his head, “if
+you can suppose the little place besieged, it would hold out a devil of
+a time in point of provisions.”
+
+Then, he conducted me to a bower about a dozen yards off, but which was
+approached by such ingenious twists of path that it took quite a long
+time to get at; and in this retreat our glasses were already set forth.
+Our punch was cooling in an ornamental lake, on whose margin the bower
+was raised. This piece of water (with an island in the middle which
+might have been the salad for supper) was of a circular form, and he
+had constructed a fountain in it, which, when you set a little mill
+going and took a cork out of a pipe, played to that powerful extent
+that it made the back of your hand quite wet.
+
+“I am my own engineer, and my own carpenter, and my own plumber, and my
+own gardener, and my own Jack of all Trades,” said Wemmick, in
+acknowledging my compliments. “Well; it’s a good thing, you know. It
+brushes the Newgate cobwebs away, and pleases the Aged. You wouldn’t
+mind being at once introduced to the Aged, would you? It wouldn’t put
+you out?”
+
+I expressed the readiness I felt, and we went into the castle. There we
+found, sitting by a fire, a very old man in a flannel coat: clean,
+cheerful, comfortable, and well cared for, but intensely deaf.
+
+“Well aged parent,” said Wemmick, shaking hands with him in a cordial
+and jocose way, “how am you?”
+
+“All right, John; all right!” replied the old man.
+
+“Here’s Mr. Pip, aged parent,” said Wemmick, “and I wish you could hear
+his name. Nod away at him, Mr. Pip; that’s what he likes. Nod away at
+him, if you please, like winking!”
+
+“This is a fine place of my son’s, sir,” cried the old man, while I
+nodded as hard as I possibly could. “This is a pretty pleasure-ground,
+sir. This spot and these beautiful works upon it ought to be kept
+together by the Nation, after my son’s time, for the people’s
+enjoyment.”
+
+“You’re as proud of it as Punch; ain’t you, Aged?” said Wemmick,
+contemplating the old man, with his hard face really softened;
+“_there’s_ a nod for you;” giving him a tremendous one; “_there’s_
+another for you;” giving him a still more tremendous one; “you like
+that, don’t you? If you’re not tired, Mr. Pip—though I know it’s tiring
+to strangers—will you tip him one more? You can’t think how it pleases
+him.”
+
+I tipped him several more, and he was in great spirits. We left him
+bestirring himself to feed the fowls, and we sat down to our punch in
+the arbour; where Wemmick told me, as he smoked a pipe, that it had
+taken him a good many years to bring the property up to its present
+pitch of perfection.
+
+“Is it your own, Mr. Wemmick?”
+
+“O yes,” said Wemmick, “I have got hold of it, a bit at a time. It’s a
+freehold, by George!”
+
+“Is it indeed? I hope Mr. Jaggers admires it?”
+
+“Never seen it,” said Wemmick. “Never heard of it. Never seen the Aged.
+Never heard of him. No; the office is one thing, and private life is
+another. When I go into the office, I leave the Castle behind me, and
+when I come into the Castle, I leave the office behind me. If it’s not
+in any way disagreeable to you, you’ll oblige me by doing the same. I
+don’t wish it professionally spoken about.”
+
+Of course I felt my good faith involved in the observance of his
+request. The punch being very nice, we sat there drinking it and
+talking, until it was almost nine o’clock. “Getting near gun-fire,”
+said Wemmick then, as he laid down his pipe; “it’s the Aged’s treat.”
+
+Proceeding into the Castle again, we found the Aged heating the poker,
+with expectant eyes, as a preliminary to the performance of this great
+nightly ceremony. Wemmick stood with his watch in his hand until the
+moment was come for him to take the red-hot poker from the Aged, and
+repair to the battery. He took it, and went out, and presently the
+Stinger went off with a Bang that shook the crazy little box of a
+cottage as if it must fall to pieces, and made every glass and teacup
+in it ring. Upon this, the Aged—who I believe would have been blown out
+of his arm-chair but for holding on by the elbows—cried out exultingly,
+“He’s fired! I heerd him!” and I nodded at the old gentleman until it
+is no figure of speech to declare that I absolutely could not see him.
+
+The interval between that time and supper Wemmick devoted to showing me
+his collection of curiosities. They were mostly of a felonious
+character; comprising the pen with which a celebrated forgery had been
+committed, a distinguished razor or two, some locks of hair, and
+several manuscript confessions written under condemnation,—upon which
+Mr. Wemmick set particular value as being, to use his own words, “every
+one of ’em Lies, sir.” These were agreeably dispersed among small
+specimens of china and glass, various neat trifles made by the
+proprietor of the museum, and some tobacco-stoppers carved by the Aged.
+They were all displayed in that chamber of the Castle into which I had
+been first inducted, and which served, not only as the general
+sitting-room but as the kitchen too, if I might judge from a saucepan
+on the hob, and a brazen bijou over the fireplace designed for the
+suspension of a roasting-jack.
+
+There was a neat little girl in attendance, who looked after the Aged
+in the day. When she had laid the supper-cloth, the bridge was lowered
+to give her means of egress, and she withdrew for the night. The supper
+was excellent; and though the Castle was rather subject to dry-rot
+insomuch that it tasted like a bad nut, and though the pig might have
+been farther off, I was heartily pleased with my whole entertainment.
+Nor was there any drawback on my little turret bedroom, beyond there
+being such a very thin ceiling between me and the flagstaff, that when
+I lay down on my back in bed, it seemed as if I had to balance that
+pole on my forehead all night.
+
+Wemmick was up early in the morning, and I am afraid I heard him
+cleaning my boots. After that, he fell to gardening, and I saw him from
+my gothic window pretending to employ the Aged, and nodding at him in a
+most devoted manner. Our breakfast was as good as the supper, and at
+half-past eight precisely we started for Little Britain. By degrees,
+Wemmick got dryer and harder as we went along, and his mouth tightened
+into a post-office again. At last, when we got to his place of business
+and he pulled out his key from his coat-collar, he looked as
+unconscious of his Walworth property as if the Castle and the
+drawbridge and the arbour and the lake and the fountain and the Aged,
+had all been blown into space together by the last discharge of the
+Stinger.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVI.
+
+
+It fell out as Wemmick had told me it would, that I had an early
+opportunity of comparing my guardian’s establishment with that of his
+cashier and clerk. My guardian was in his room, washing his hands with
+his scented soap, when I went into the office from Walworth; and he
+called me to him, and gave me the invitation for myself and friends
+which Wemmick had prepared me to receive. “No ceremony,” he stipulated,
+“and no dinner dress, and say to-morrow.” I asked him where we should
+come to (for I had no idea where he lived), and I believe it was in his
+general objection to make anything like an admission, that he replied,
+“Come here, and I’ll take you home with me.” I embrace this opportunity
+of remarking that he washed his clients off, as if he were a surgeon or
+a dentist. He had a closet in his room, fitted up for the purpose,
+which smelt of the scented soap like a perfumer’s shop. It had an
+unusually large jack-towel on a roller inside the door, and he would
+wash his hands, and wipe them and dry them all over this towel,
+whenever he came in from a police court or dismissed a client from his
+room. When I and my friends repaired to him at six o’clock next day, he
+seemed to have been engaged on a case of a darker complexion than
+usual, for we found him with his head butted into this closet, not only
+washing his hands, but laving his face and gargling his throat. And
+even when he had done all that, and had gone all round the jack-towel,
+he took out his penknife and scraped the case out of his nails before
+he put his coat on.
+
+There were some people slinking about as usual when we passed out into
+the street, who were evidently anxious to speak with him; but there was
+something so conclusive in the halo of scented soap which encircled his
+presence, that they gave it up for that day. As we walked along
+westward, he was recognised ever and again by some face in the crowd of
+the streets, and whenever that happened he talked louder to me; but he
+never otherwise recognised anybody, or took notice that anybody
+recognised him.
+
+He conducted us to Gerrard Street, Soho, to a house on the south side
+of that street. Rather a stately house of its kind, but dolefully in
+want of painting, and with dirty windows. He took out his key and
+opened the door, and we all went into a stone hall, bare, gloomy, and
+little used. So, up a dark brown staircase into a series of three dark
+brown rooms on the first floor. There were carved garlands on the
+panelled walls, and as he stood among them giving us welcome, I know
+what kind of loops I thought they looked like.
+
+Dinner was laid in the best of these rooms; the second was his
+dressing-room; the third, his bedroom. He told us that he held the
+whole house, but rarely used more of it than we saw. The table was
+comfortably laid—no silver in the service, of course—and at the side of
+his chair was a capacious dumb-waiter, with a variety of bottles and
+decanters on it, and four dishes of fruit for dessert. I noticed
+throughout, that he kept everything under his own hand, and distributed
+everything himself.
+
+There was a bookcase in the room; I saw from the backs of the books,
+that they were about evidence, criminal law, criminal biography,
+trials, acts of Parliament, and such things. The furniture was all very
+solid and good, like his watch-chain. It had an official look, however,
+and there was nothing merely ornamental to be seen. In a corner was a
+little table of papers with a shaded lamp: so that he seemed to bring
+the office home with him in that respect too, and to wheel it out of an
+evening and fall to work.
+
+As he had scarcely seen my three companions until now,—for he and I had
+walked together,—he stood on the hearth-rug, after ringing the bell,
+and took a searching look at them. To my surprise, he seemed at once to
+be principally if not solely interested in Drummle.
+
+“Pip,” said he, putting his large hand on my shoulder and moving me to
+the window, “I don’t know one from the other. Who’s the Spider?”
+
+“The spider?” said I.
+
+“The blotchy, sprawly, sulky fellow.”
+
+“That’s Bentley Drummle,” I replied; “the one with the delicate face is
+Startop.”
+
+Not making the least account of “the one with the delicate face,” he
+returned, “Bentley Drummle is his name, is it? I like the look of that
+fellow.”
+
+He immediately began to talk to Drummle: not at all deterred by his
+replying in his heavy reticent way, but apparently led on by it to
+screw discourse out of him. I was looking at the two, when there came
+between me and them the housekeeper, with the first dish for the table.
+
+She was a woman of about forty, I supposed,—but I may have thought her
+younger than she was. Rather tall, of a lithe nimble figure, extremely
+pale, with large faded eyes, and a quantity of streaming hair. I cannot
+say whether any diseased affection of the heart caused her lips to be
+parted as if she were panting, and her face to bear a curious
+expression of suddenness and flutter; but I know that I had been to see
+Macbeth at the theatre, a night or two before, and that her face looked
+to me as if it were all disturbed by fiery air, like the faces I had
+seen rise out of the Witches’ caldron.
+
+She set the dish on, touched my guardian quietly on the arm with a
+finger to notify that dinner was ready, and vanished. We took our seats
+at the round table, and my guardian kept Drummle on one side of him,
+while Startop sat on the other. It was a noble dish of fish that the
+housekeeper had put on table, and we had a joint of equally choice
+mutton afterwards, and then an equally choice bird. Sauces, wines, all
+the accessories we wanted, and all of the best, were given out by our
+host from his dumb-waiter; and when they had made the circuit of the
+table, he always put them back again. Similarly, he dealt us clean
+plates and knives and forks, for each course, and dropped those just
+disused into two baskets on the ground by his chair. No other attendant
+than the housekeeper appeared. She set on every dish; and I always saw
+in her face, a face rising out of the caldron. Years afterwards, I made
+a dreadful likeness of that woman, by causing a face that had no other
+natural resemblance to it than it derived from flowing hair to pass
+behind a bowl of flaming spirits in a dark room.
+
+Induced to take particular notice of the housekeeper, both by her own
+striking appearance and by Wemmick’s preparation, I observed that
+whenever she was in the room she kept her eyes attentively on my
+guardian, and that she would remove her hands from any dish she put
+before him, hesitatingly, as if she dreaded his calling her back, and
+wanted him to speak when she was nigh, if he had anything to say. I
+fancied that I could detect in his manner a consciousness of this, and
+a purpose of always holding her in suspense.
+
+Dinner went off gayly, and although my guardian seemed to follow rather
+than originate subjects, I knew that he wrenched the weakest part of
+our dispositions out of us. For myself, I found that I was expressing
+my tendency to lavish expenditure, and to patronise Herbert, and to
+boast of my great prospects, before I quite knew that I had opened my
+lips. It was so with all of us, but with no one more than Drummle: the
+development of whose inclination to gird in a grudging and suspicious
+way at the rest, was screwed out of him before the fish was taken off.
+
+It was not then, but when we had got to the cheese, that our
+conversation turned upon our rowing feats, and that Drummle was rallied
+for coming up behind of a night in that slow amphibious way of his.
+Drummle upon this, informed our host that he much preferred our room to
+our company, and that as to skill he was more than our master, and that
+as to strength he could scatter us like chaff. By some invisible
+agency, my guardian wound him up to a pitch little short of ferocity
+about this trifle; and he fell to baring and spanning his arm to show
+how muscular it was, and we all fell to baring and spanning our arms in
+a ridiculous manner.
+
+Now the housekeeper was at that time clearing the table; my guardian,
+taking no heed of her, but with the side of his face turned from her,
+was leaning back in his chair biting the side of his forefinger and
+showing an interest in Drummle, that, to me, was quite inexplicable.
+Suddenly, he clapped his large hand on the housekeeper’s, like a trap,
+as she stretched it across the table. So suddenly and smartly did he do
+this, that we all stopped in our foolish contention.
+
+“If you talk of strength,” said Mr. Jaggers, “_I_’ll show you a wrist.
+Molly, let them see your wrist.”
+
+Her entrapped hand was on the table, but she had already put her other
+hand behind her waist. “Master,” she said, in a low voice, with her
+eyes attentively and entreatingly fixed upon him. “Don’t.”
+
+“_I_’ll show you a wrist,” repeated Mr. Jaggers, with an immovable
+determination to show it. “Molly, let them see your wrist.”
+
+“Master,” she again murmured. “Please!”
+
+“Molly,” said Mr. Jaggers, not looking at her, but obstinately looking
+at the opposite side of the room, “let them see _both_ your wrists.
+Show them. Come!”
+
+He took his hand from hers, and turned that wrist up on the table. She
+brought her other hand from behind her, and held the two out side by
+side. The last wrist was much disfigured,—deeply scarred and scarred
+across and across. When she held her hands out she took her eyes from
+Mr. Jaggers, and turned them watchfully on every one of the rest of us
+in succession.
+
+“There’s power here,” said Mr. Jaggers, coolly tracing out the sinews
+with his forefinger. “Very few men have the power of wrist that this
+woman has. It’s remarkable what mere force of grip there is in these
+hands. I have had occasion to notice many hands; but I never saw
+stronger in that respect, man’s or woman’s, than these.”
+
+While he said these words in a leisurely, critical style, she continued
+to look at every one of us in regular succession as we sat. The moment
+he ceased, she looked at him again. “That’ll do, Molly,” said Mr.
+Jaggers, giving her a slight nod; “you have been admired, and can go.”
+She withdrew her hands and went out of the room, and Mr. Jaggers,
+putting the decanters on from his dumb-waiter, filled his glass and
+passed round the wine.
+
+“At half-past nine, gentlemen,” said he, “we must break up. Pray make
+the best use of your time. I am glad to see you all. Mr. Drummle, I
+drink to you.”
+
+If his object in singling out Drummle were to bring him out still more,
+it perfectly succeeded. In a sulky triumph, Drummle showed his morose
+depreciation of the rest of us, in a more and more offensive degree,
+until he became downright intolerable. Through all his stages, Mr.
+Jaggers followed him with the same strange interest. He actually seemed
+to serve as a zest to Mr. Jaggers’s wine.
+
+In our boyish want of discretion I dare say we took too much to drink,
+and I know we talked too much. We became particularly hot upon some
+boorish sneer of Drummle’s, to the effect that we were too free with
+our money. It led to my remarking, with more zeal than discretion, that
+it came with a bad grace from him, to whom Startop had lent money in my
+presence but a week or so before.
+
+“Well,” retorted Drummle; “he’ll be paid.”
+
+“I don’t mean to imply that he won’t,” said I, “but it might make you
+hold your tongue about us and our money, I should think.”
+
+“_You_ should think!” retorted Drummle. “Oh Lord!”
+
+“I dare say,” I went on, meaning to be very severe, “that you wouldn’t
+lend money to any of us if we wanted it.”
+
+“You are right,” said Drummle. “I wouldn’t lend one of you a sixpence.
+I wouldn’t lend anybody a sixpence.”
+
+“Rather mean to borrow under those circumstances, I should say.”
+
+“_You_ should say,” repeated Drummle. “Oh Lord!”
+
+This was so very aggravating—the more especially as I found myself
+making no way against his surly obtuseness—that I said, disregarding
+Herbert’s efforts to check me,—
+
+“Come, Mr. Drummle, since we are on the subject, I’ll tell you what
+passed between Herbert here and me, when you borrowed that money.”
+
+“_I_ don’t want to know what passed between Herbert there and you,”
+growled Drummle. And I think he added in a lower growl, that we might
+both go to the devil and shake ourselves.
+
+“I’ll tell you, however,” said I, “whether you want to know or not. We
+said that as you put it in your pocket very glad to get it, you seemed
+to be immensely amused at his being so weak as to lend it.”
+
+Drummle laughed outright, and sat laughing in our faces, with his hands
+in his pockets and his round shoulders raised; plainly signifying that
+it was quite true, and that he despised us as asses all.
+
+Hereupon Startop took him in hand, though with a much better grace than
+I had shown, and exhorted him to be a little more agreeable. Startop,
+being a lively, bright young fellow, and Drummle being the exact
+opposite, the latter was always disposed to resent him as a direct
+personal affront. He now retorted in a coarse, lumpish way, and Startop
+tried to turn the discussion aside with some small pleasantry that made
+us all laugh. Resenting this little success more than anything,
+Drummle, without any threat or warning, pulled his hands out of his
+pockets, dropped his round shoulders, swore, took up a large glass, and
+would have flung it at his adversary’s head, but for our entertainer’s
+dexterously seizing it at the instant when it was raised for that
+purpose.
+
+“Gentlemen,” said Mr. Jaggers, deliberately putting down the glass, and
+hauling out his gold repeater by its massive chain, “I am exceedingly
+sorry to announce that it’s half past nine.”
+
+On this hint we all rose to depart. Before we got to the street door,
+Startop was cheerily calling Drummle “old boy,” as if nothing had
+happened. But the old boy was so far from responding, that he would not
+even walk to Hammersmith on the same side of the way; so Herbert and I,
+who remained in town, saw them going down the street on opposite sides;
+Startop leading, and Drummle lagging behind in the shadow of the
+houses, much as he was wont to follow in his boat.
+
+As the door was not yet shut, I thought I would leave Herbert there for
+a moment, and run upstairs again to say a word to my guardian. I found
+him in his dressing-room surrounded by his stock of boots, already hard
+at it, washing his hands of us.
+
+I told him I had come up again to say how sorry I was that anything
+disagreeable should have occurred, and that I hoped he would not blame
+me much.
+
+“Pooh!” said he, sluicing his face, and speaking through the
+water-drops; “it’s nothing, Pip. I like that Spider though.”
+
+He had turned towards me now, and was shaking his head, and blowing,
+and towelling himself.
+
+“I am glad you like him, sir,” said I—“but I don’t.”
+
+“No, no,” my guardian assented; “don’t have too much to do with him.
+Keep as clear of him as you can. But I like the fellow, Pip; he is one
+of the true sort. Why, if I was a fortune-teller—”
+
+Looking out of the towel, he caught my eye.
+
+“But I am not a fortune-teller,” he said, letting his head drop into a
+festoon of towel, and towelling away at his two ears. “You know what I
+am, don’t you? Good night, Pip.”
+
+“Good night, sir.”
+
+In about a month after that, the Spider’s time with Mr. Pocket was up
+for good, and, to the great relief of all the house but Mrs. Pocket, he
+went home to the family hole.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVII.
+
+
+“MY DEAR MR PIP:—
+
+“I write this by request of Mr. Gargery, for to let you know that he is
+going to London in company with Mr. Wopsle and would be glad if
+agreeable to be allowed to see you. He would call at Barnard’s Hotel
+Tuesday morning at nine o’clock, when if not agreeable please leave
+word. Your poor sister is much the same as when you left. We talk of
+you in the kitchen every night, and wonder what you are saying and
+doing. If now considered in the light of a liberty, excuse it for the
+love of poor old days. No more, dear Mr. Pip, from
+
+“Your ever obliged, and affectionate servant,
+“BIDDY.”
+
+
+“P.S. He wishes me most particular to write _what larks_. He says you
+will understand. I hope and do not doubt it will be agreeable to see
+him, even though a gentleman, for you had ever a good heart, and he is
+a worthy, worthy man. I have read him all, excepting only the last
+little sentence, and he wishes me most particular to write again _what
+larks_.”
+
+I received this letter by the post on Monday morning, and therefore its
+appointment was for next day. Let me confess exactly with what feelings
+I looked forward to Joe’s coming.
+
+Not with pleasure, though I was bound to him by so many ties; no; with
+considerable disturbance, some mortification, and a keen sense of
+incongruity. If I could have kept him away by paying money, I certainly
+would have paid money. My greatest reassurance was that he was coming
+to Barnard’s Inn, not to Hammersmith, and consequently would not fall
+in Bentley Drummle’s way. I had little objection to his being seen by
+Herbert or his father, for both of whom I had a respect; but I had the
+sharpest sensitiveness as to his being seen by Drummle, whom I held in
+contempt. So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are
+usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise.
+
+I had begun to be always decorating the chambers in some quite
+unnecessary and inappropriate way or other, and very expensive those
+wrestles with Barnard proved to be. By this time, the rooms were vastly
+different from what I had found them, and I enjoyed the honour of
+occupying a few prominent pages in the books of a neighbouring
+upholsterer. I had got on so fast of late, that I had even started a
+boy in boots,—top boots,—in bondage and slavery to whom I might have
+been said to pass my days. For, after I had made the monster (out of
+the refuse of my washerwoman’s family), and had clothed him with a blue
+coat, canary waistcoat, white cravat, creamy breeches, and the boots
+already mentioned, I had to find him a little to do and a great deal to
+eat; and with both of those horrible requirements he haunted my
+existence.
+
+This avenging phantom was ordered to be on duty at eight on Tuesday
+morning in the hall, (it was two feet square, as charged for
+floorcloth,) and Herbert suggested certain things for breakfast that he
+thought Joe would like. While I felt sincerely obliged to him for being
+so interested and considerate, I had an odd half-provoked sense of
+suspicion upon me, that if Joe had been coming to see _him_, he
+wouldn’t have been quite so brisk about it.
+
+However, I came into town on the Monday night to be ready for Joe, and
+I got up early in the morning, and caused the sitting-room and
+breakfast-table to assume their most splendid appearance. Unfortunately
+the morning was drizzly, and an angel could not have concealed the fact
+that Barnard was shedding sooty tears outside the window, like some
+weak giant of a Sweep.
+
+As the time approached I should have liked to run away, but the Avenger
+pursuant to orders was in the hall, and presently I heard Joe on the
+staircase. I knew it was Joe, by his clumsy manner of coming
+upstairs,—his state boots being always too big for him,—and by the time
+it took him to read the names on the other floors in the course of his
+ascent. When at last he stopped outside our door, I could hear his
+finger tracing over the painted letters of my name, and I afterwards
+distinctly heard him breathing in at the keyhole. Finally he gave a
+faint single rap, and Pepper—such was the compromising name of the
+avenging boy—announced “Mr. Gargery!” I thought he never would have
+done wiping his feet, and that I must have gone out to lift him off the
+mat, but at last he came in.
+
+“Joe, how are you, Joe?”
+
+“Pip, how AIR you, Pip?”
+
+With his good honest face all glowing and shining, and his hat put down
+on the floor between us, he caught both my hands and worked them
+straight up and down, as if I had been the last-patented Pump.
+
+“I am glad to see you, Joe. Give me your hat.”
+
+But Joe, taking it up carefully with both hands, like a bird’s-nest
+with eggs in it, wouldn’t hear of parting with that piece of property,
+and persisted in standing talking over it in a most uncomfortable way.
+
+“Which you have that growed,” said Joe, “and that swelled, and that
+gentle-folked;” Joe considered a little before he discovered this word;
+“as to be sure you are a honour to your king and country.”
+
+“And you, Joe, look wonderfully well.”
+
+“Thank God,” said Joe, “I’m ekerval to most. And your sister, she’s no
+worse than she were. And Biddy, she’s ever right and ready. And all
+friends is no backerder, if not no forarder. ’Ceptin Wopsle; he’s had a
+drop.”
+
+All this time (still with both hands taking great care of the
+bird’s-nest), Joe was rolling his eyes round and round the room, and
+round and round the flowered pattern of my dressing-gown.
+
+“Had a drop, Joe?”
+
+“Why yes,” said Joe, lowering his voice, “he’s left the Church and went
+into the playacting. Which the playacting have likeways brought him to
+London along with me. And his wish were,” said Joe, getting the
+bird’s-nest under his left arm for the moment, and groping in it for an
+egg with his right; “if no offence, as I would ’and you that.”
+
+I took what Joe gave me, and found it to be the crumpled play-bill of a
+small metropolitan theatre, announcing the first appearance, in that
+very week, of “the celebrated Provincial Amateur of Roscian renown,
+whose unique performance in the highest tragic walk of our National
+Bard has lately occasioned so great a sensation in local dramatic
+circles.”
+
+“Were you at his performance, Joe?” I inquired.
+
+“I _were_,” said Joe, with emphasis and solemnity.
+
+“Was there a great sensation?”
+
+“Why,” said Joe, “yes, there certainly were a peck of orange-peel.
+Partickler when he see the ghost. Though I put it to yourself, sir,
+whether it were calc’lated to keep a man up to his work with a good
+hart, to be continiwally cutting in betwixt him and the Ghost with
+“Amen!” A man may have had a misfortun’ and been in the Church,” said
+Joe, lowering his voice to an argumentative and feeling tone, “but that
+is no reason why you should put him out at such a time. Which I
+meantersay, if the ghost of a man’s own father cannot be allowed to
+claim his attention, what can, Sir? Still more, when his mourning ’at
+is unfortunately made so small as that the weight of the black feathers
+brings it off, try to keep it on how you may.”
+
+A ghost-seeing effect in Joe’s own countenance informed me that Herbert
+had entered the room. So, I presented Joe to Herbert, who held out his
+hand; but Joe backed from it, and held on by the bird’s-nest.
+
+“Your servant, Sir,” said Joe, “which I hope as you and Pip”—here his
+eye fell on the Avenger, who was putting some toast on table, and so
+plainly denoted an intention to make that young gentleman one of the
+family, that I frowned it down and confused him more—“I meantersay, you
+two gentlemen,—which I hope as you get your elths in this close spot?
+For the present may be a werry good inn, according to London opinions,”
+said Joe, confidentially, “and I believe its character do stand it; but
+I wouldn’t keep a pig in it myself,—not in the case that I wished him
+to fatten wholesome and to eat with a meller flavour on him.”
+
+Having borne this flattering testimony to the merits of our
+dwelling-place, and having incidentally shown this tendency to call me
+“sir,” Joe, being invited to sit down to table, looked all round the
+room for a suitable spot on which to deposit his hat,—as if it were
+only on some very few rare substances in nature that it could find a
+resting place,—and ultimately stood it on an extreme corner of the
+chimney-piece, from which it ever afterwards fell off at intervals.
+
+“Do you take tea, or coffee, Mr. Gargery?” asked Herbert, who always
+presided of a morning.
+
+“Thankee, Sir,” said Joe, stiff from head to foot, “I’ll take whichever
+is most agreeable to yourself.”
+
+“What do you say to coffee?”
+
+“Thankee, Sir,” returned Joe, evidently dispirited by the proposal,
+“since you _are_ so kind as make chice of coffee, I will not run
+contrairy to your own opinions. But don’t you never find it a little
+’eating?”
+
+“Say tea then,” said Herbert, pouring it out.
+
+Here Joe’s hat tumbled off the mantel-piece, and he started out of his
+chair and picked it up, and fitted it to the same exact spot. As if it
+were an absolute point of good breeding that it should tumble off again
+soon.
+
+“When did you come to town, Mr. Gargery?”
+
+“Were it yesterday afternoon?” said Joe, after coughing behind his
+hand, as if he had had time to catch the whooping-cough since he came.
+“No it were not. Yes it were. Yes. It were yesterday afternoon” (with
+an appearance of mingled wisdom, relief, and strict impartiality).
+
+“Have you seen anything of London yet?”
+
+“Why, yes, Sir,” said Joe, “me and Wopsle went off straight to look at
+the Blacking Ware’us. But we didn’t find that it come up to its
+likeness in the red bills at the shop doors; which I meantersay,” added
+Joe, in an explanatory manner, “as it is there drawd too
+architectooralooral.”
+
+I really believe Joe would have prolonged this word (mightily
+expressive to my mind of some architecture that I know) into a perfect
+Chorus, but for his attention being providentially attracted by his
+hat, which was toppling. Indeed, it demanded from him a constant
+attention, and a quickness of eye and hand, very like that exacted by
+wicket-keeping. He made extraordinary play with it, and showed the
+greatest skill; now, rushing at it and catching it neatly as it
+dropped; now, merely stopping it midway, beating it up, and humouring
+it in various parts of the room and against a good deal of the pattern
+of the paper on the wall, before he felt it safe to close with it;
+finally splashing it into the slop-basin, where I took the liberty of
+laying hands upon it.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+As to his shirt-collar, and his coat-collar, they were perplexing to
+reflect upon,—insoluble mysteries both. Why should a man scrape himself
+to that extent, before he could consider himself full dressed? Why
+should he suppose it necessary to be purified by suffering for his
+holiday clothes? Then he fell into such unaccountable fits of
+meditation, with his fork midway between his plate and his mouth; had
+his eyes attracted in such strange directions; was afflicted with such
+remarkable coughs; sat so far from the table, and dropped so much more
+than he ate, and pretended that he hadn’t dropped it; that I was
+heartily glad when Herbert left us for the City.
+
+I had neither the good sense nor the good feeling to know that this was
+all my fault, and that if I had been easier with Joe, Joe would have
+been easier with me. I felt impatient of him and out of temper with
+him; in which condition he heaped coals of fire on my head.
+
+“Us two being now alone, sir,”—began Joe.
+
+“Joe,” I interrupted, pettishly, “how can you call me, sir?”
+
+Joe looked at me for a single instant with something faintly like
+reproach. Utterly preposterous as his cravat was, and as his collars
+were, I was conscious of a sort of dignity in the look.
+
+“Us two being now alone,” resumed Joe, “and me having the intentions
+and abilities to stay not many minutes more, I will now
+conclude—leastways begin—to mention what have led to my having had the
+present honour. For was it not,” said Joe, with his old air of lucid
+exposition, “that my only wish were to be useful to you, I should not
+have had the honour of breaking wittles in the company and abode of
+gentlemen.”
+
+I was so unwilling to see the look again, that I made no remonstrance
+against this tone.
+
+“Well, sir,” pursued Joe, “this is how it were. I were at the Bargemen
+t’other night, Pip;”—whenever he subsided into affection, he called me
+Pip, and whenever he relapsed into politeness he called me sir; “when
+there come up in his shay-cart, Pumblechook. Which that same
+identical,” said Joe, going down a new track, “do comb my ’air the
+wrong way sometimes, awful, by giving out up and down town as it were
+him which ever had your infant companionation and were looked upon as a
+playfellow by yourself.”
+
+“Nonsense. It was you, Joe.”
+
+“Which I fully believed it were, Pip,” said Joe, slightly tossing his
+head, “though it signify little now, sir. Well, Pip; this same
+identical, which his manners is given to blusterous, come to me at the
+Bargemen (wot a pipe and a pint of beer do give refreshment to the
+workingman, sir, and do not over stimilate), and his word were,
+‘Joseph, Miss Havisham she wish to speak to you.’”
+
+“Miss Havisham, Joe?”
+
+“‘She wish,’ were Pumblechook’s word, ‘to speak to you.’” Joe sat and
+rolled his eyes at the ceiling.
+
+“Yes, Joe? Go on, please.”
+
+“Next day, sir,” said Joe, looking at me as if I were a long way off,
+“having cleaned myself, I go and I see Miss A.”
+
+“Miss A., Joe? Miss Havisham?”
+
+“Which I say, sir,” replied Joe, with an air of legal formality, as if
+he were making his will, “Miss A., or otherways Havisham. Her
+expression air then as follering: ‘Mr. Gargery. You air in
+correspondence with Mr. Pip?’ Having had a letter from you, I were able
+to say ‘I am.’ (When I married your sister, sir, I said ‘I will;’ and
+when I answered your friend, Pip, I said ‘I am.’) ‘Would you tell him,
+then,’ said she, ‘that which Estella has come home and would be glad to
+see him.’”
+
+I felt my face fire up as I looked at Joe. I hope one remote cause of
+its firing may have been my consciousness that if I had known his
+errand, I should have given him more encouragement.
+
+“Biddy,” pursued Joe, “when I got home and asked her fur to write the
+message to you, a little hung back. Biddy says, ‘I know he will be very
+glad to have it by word of mouth, it is holiday time, you want to see
+him, go!’ I have now concluded, sir,” said Joe, rising from his chair,
+“and, Pip, I wish you ever well and ever prospering to a greater and a
+greater height.”
+
+“But you are not going now, Joe?”
+
+“Yes I am,” said Joe.
+
+“But you are coming back to dinner, Joe?”
+
+“No I am not,” said Joe.
+
+Our eyes met, and all the “Sir” melted out of that manly heart as he
+gave me his hand.
+
+“Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded
+together, as I may say, and one man’s a blacksmith, and one’s a
+whitesmith, and one’s a goldsmith, and one’s a coppersmith. Diwisions
+among such must come, and must be met as they come. If there’s been any
+fault at all to-day, it’s mine. You and me is not two figures to be
+together in London; nor yet anywheres else but what is private, and
+beknown, and understood among friends. It ain’t that I am proud, but
+that I want to be right, as you shall never see me no more in these
+clothes. I’m wrong in these clothes. I’m wrong out of the forge, the
+kitchen, or off th’ meshes. You won’t find half so much fault in me if
+you think of me in my forge dress, with my hammer in my hand, or even
+my pipe. You won’t find half so much fault in me if, supposing as you
+should ever wish to see me, you come and put your head in at the forge
+window and see Joe the blacksmith, there, at the old anvil, in the old
+burnt apron, sticking to the old work. I’m awful dull, but I hope I’ve
+beat out something nigh the rights of this at last. And so GOD bless
+you, dear old Pip, old chap, GOD bless you!”
+
+I had not been mistaken in my fancy that there was a simple dignity in
+him. The fashion of his dress could no more come in its way when he
+spoke these words than it could come in its way in Heaven. He touched
+me gently on the forehead, and went out. As soon as I could recover
+myself sufficiently, I hurried out after him and looked for him in the
+neighbouring streets; but he was gone.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVIII.
+
+
+It was clear that I must repair to our town next day, and in the first
+flow of my repentance, it was equally clear that I must stay at Joe’s.
+But, when I had secured my box-place by to-morrow’s coach, and had been
+down to Mr. Pocket’s and back, I was not by any means convinced on the
+last point, and began to invent reasons and make excuses for putting up
+at the Blue Boar. I should be an inconvenience at Joe’s; I was not
+expected, and my bed would not be ready; I should be too far from Miss
+Havisham’s, and she was exacting and mightn’t like it. All other
+swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such
+pretences did I cheat myself. Surely a curious thing. That I should
+innocently take a bad half-crown of somebody else’s manufacture is
+reasonable enough; but that I should knowingly reckon the spurious coin
+of my own make as good money! An obliging stranger, under pretence of
+compactly folding up my bank-notes for security’s sake, abstracts the
+notes and gives me nutshells; but what is his sleight of hand to mine,
+when I fold up my own nutshells and pass them on myself as notes!
+
+Having settled that I must go to the Blue Boar, my mind was much
+disturbed by indecision whether or not to take the Avenger. It was
+tempting to think of that expensive Mercenary publicly airing his boots
+in the archway of the Blue Boar’s posting-yard; it was almost solemn to
+imagine him casually produced in the tailor’s shop, and confounding the
+disrespectful senses of Trabb’s boy. On the other hand, Trabb’s boy
+might worm himself into his intimacy and tell him things; or, reckless
+and desperate wretch as I knew he could be, might hoot him in the High
+Street. My patroness, too, might hear of him, and not approve. On the
+whole, I resolved to leave the Avenger behind.
+
+It was the afternoon coach by which I had taken my place, and, as
+winter had now come round, I should not arrive at my destination until
+two or three hours after dark. Our time of starting from the Cross Keys
+was two o’clock. I arrived on the ground with a quarter of an hour to
+spare, attended by the Avenger,—if I may connect that expression with
+one who never attended on me if he could possibly help it.
+
+At that time it was customary to carry Convicts down to the dock-yards
+by stage-coach. As I had often heard of them in the capacity of outside
+passengers, and had more than once seen them on the high road dangling
+their ironed legs over the coach roof, I had no cause to be surprised
+when Herbert, meeting me in the yard, came up and told me there were
+two convicts going down with me. But I had a reason that was an old
+reason now for constitutionally faltering whenever I heard the word
+“convict.”
+
+“You don’t mind them, Handel?” said Herbert.
+
+“O no!”
+
+“I thought you seemed as if you didn’t like them?”
+
+“I can’t pretend that I do like them, and I suppose you don’t
+particularly. But I don’t mind them.”
+
+“See! There they are,” said Herbert, “coming out of the Tap. What a
+degraded and vile sight it is!”
+
+They had been treating their guard, I suppose, for they had a gaoler
+with them, and all three came out wiping their mouths on their hands.
+The two convicts were handcuffed together, and had irons on their
+legs,—irons of a pattern that I knew well. They wore the dress that I
+likewise knew well. Their keeper had a brace of pistols, and carried a
+thick-knobbed bludgeon under his arm; but he was on terms of good
+understanding with them, and stood with them beside him, looking on at
+the putting-to of the horses, rather with an air as if the convicts
+were an interesting Exhibition not formally open at the moment, and he
+the Curator. One was a taller and stouter man than the other, and
+appeared as a matter of course, according to the mysterious ways of the
+world, both convict and free, to have had allotted to him the smaller
+suit of clothes. His arms and legs were like great pincushions of those
+shapes, and his attire disguised him absurdly; but I knew his
+half-closed eye at one glance. There stood the man whom I had seen on
+the settle at the Three Jolly Bargemen on a Saturday night, and who had
+brought me down with his invisible gun!
+
+It was easy to make sure that as yet he knew me no more than if he had
+never seen me in his life. He looked across at me, and his eye
+appraised my watch-chain, and then he incidentally spat and said
+something to the other convict, and they laughed and slued themselves
+round with a clink of their coupling manacle, and looked at something
+else. The great numbers on their backs, as if they were street doors;
+their coarse mangy ungainly outer surface, as if they were lower
+animals; their ironed legs, apologetically garlanded with
+pocket-handkerchiefs; and the way in which all present looked at them
+and kept from them; made them (as Herbert had said) a most disagreeable
+and degraded spectacle.
+
+But this was not the worst of it. It came out that the whole of the
+back of the coach had been taken by a family removing from London, and
+that there were no places for the two prisoners but on the seat in
+front behind the coachman. Hereupon, a choleric gentleman, who had
+taken the fourth place on that seat, flew into a most violent passion,
+and said that it was a breach of contract to mix him up with such
+villainous company, and that it was poisonous, and pernicious, and
+infamous, and shameful, and I don’t know what else. At this time the
+coach was ready and the coachman impatient, and we were all preparing
+to get up, and the prisoners had come over with their keeper,—bringing
+with them that curious flavour of bread-poultice, baize, rope-yarn, and
+hearthstone, which attends the convict presence.
+
+“Don’t take it so much amiss, sir,” pleaded the keeper to the angry
+passenger; “I’ll sit next you myself. I’ll put ’em on the outside of
+the row. They won’t interfere with you, sir. You needn’t know they’re
+there.”
+
+“And don’t blame _me_,” growled the convict I had recognised. “_I_
+don’t want to go. _I_ am quite ready to stay behind. As fur as I am
+concerned any one’s welcome to _my_ place.”
+
+“Or mine,” said the other, gruffly. “_I_ wouldn’t have incommoded none
+of you, if I’d had _my_ way.” Then they both laughed, and began
+cracking nuts, and spitting the shells about.—As I really think I
+should have liked to do myself, if I had been in their place and so
+despised.
+
+At length, it was voted that there was no help for the angry gentleman,
+and that he must either go in his chance company or remain behind. So
+he got into his place, still making complaints, and the keeper got into
+the place next him, and the convicts hauled themselves up as well as
+they could, and the convict I had recognised sat behind me with his
+breath on the hair of my head.
+
+“Good-bye, Handel!” Herbert called out as we started. I thought what a
+blessed fortune it was, that he had found another name for me than Pip.
+
+It is impossible to express with what acuteness I felt the convict’s
+breathing, not only on the back of my head, but all along my spine. The
+sensation was like being touched in the marrow with some pungent and
+searching acid, it set my very teeth on edge. He seemed to have more
+breathing business to do than another man, and to make more noise in
+doing it; and I was conscious of growing high-shouldered on one side,
+in my shrinking endeavours to fend him off.
+
+The weather was miserably raw, and the two cursed the cold. It made us
+all lethargic before we had gone far, and when we had left the Half-way
+House behind, we habitually dozed and shivered and were silent. I dozed
+off, myself, in considering the question whether I ought to restore a
+couple of pounds sterling to this creature before losing sight of him,
+and how it could best be done. In the act of dipping forward as if I
+were going to bathe among the horses, I woke in a fright and took the
+question up again.
+
+But I must have lost it longer than I had thought, since, although I
+could recognise nothing in the darkness and the fitful lights and
+shadows of our lamps, I traced marsh country in the cold damp wind that
+blew at us. Cowering forward for warmth and to make me a screen against
+the wind, the convicts were closer to me than before. The very first
+words I heard them interchange as I became conscious, were the words of
+my own thought, “Two One Pound notes.”
+
+“How did he get ’em?” said the convict I had never seen.
+
+“How should I know?” returned the other. “He had ’em stowed away
+somehows. Giv him by friends, I expect.”
+
+“I wish,” said the other, with a bitter curse upon the cold, “that I
+had ’em here.”
+
+“Two one pound notes, or friends?”
+
+“Two one pound notes. I’d sell all the friends I ever had for one, and
+think it a blessed good bargain. Well? So he says—?”
+
+“So he says,” resumed the convict I had recognised,—“it was all said
+and done in half a minute, behind a pile of timber in the
+Dock-yard,—‘You’re a-going to be discharged?’ Yes, I was. Would I find
+out that boy that had fed him and kep his secret, and give him them two
+one pound notes? Yes, I would. And I did.”
+
+“More fool you,” growled the other. “I’d have spent ’em on a Man, in
+wittles and drink. He must have been a green one. Mean to say he knowed
+nothing of you?”
+
+“Not a ha’porth. Different gangs and different ships. He was tried
+again for prison breaking, and got made a Lifer.”
+
+“And was that—Honour!—the only time you worked out, in this part of the
+country?”
+
+“The only time.”
+
+“What might have been your opinion of the place?”
+
+“A most beastly place. Mudbank, mist, swamp, and work; work, swamp,
+mist, and mudbank.”
+
+They both execrated the place in very strong language, and gradually
+growled themselves out, and had nothing left to say.
+
+After overhearing this dialogue, I should assuredly have got down and
+been left in the solitude and darkness of the highway, but for feeling
+certain that the man had no suspicion of my identity. Indeed, I was not
+only so changed in the course of nature, but so differently dressed and
+so differently circumstanced, that it was not at all likely he could
+have known me without accidental help. Still, the coincidence of our
+being together on the coach, was sufficiently strange to fill me with a
+dread that some other coincidence might at any moment connect me, in
+his hearing, with my name. For this reason, I resolved to alight as
+soon as we touched the town, and put myself out of his hearing. This
+device I executed successfully. My little portmanteau was in the boot
+under my feet; I had but to turn a hinge to get it out; I threw it down
+before me, got down after it, and was left at the first lamp on the
+first stones of the town pavement. As to the convicts, they went their
+way with the coach, and I knew at what point they would be spirited off
+to the river. In my fancy, I saw the boat with its convict crew waiting
+for them at the slime-washed stairs,—again heard the gruff “Give way,
+you!” like and order to dogs,—again saw the wicked Noah’s Ark lying out
+on the black water.
+
+I could not have said what I was afraid of, for my fear was altogether
+undefined and vague, but there was great fear upon me. As I walked on
+to the hotel, I felt that a dread, much exceeding the mere apprehension
+of a painful or disagreeable recognition, made me tremble. I am
+confident that it took no distinctness of shape, and that it was the
+revival for a few minutes of the terror of childhood.
+
+The coffee-room at the Blue Boar was empty, and I had not only ordered
+my dinner there, but had sat down to it, before the waiter knew me. As
+soon as he had apologised for the remissness of his memory, he asked me
+if he should send Boots for Mr. Pumblechook?
+
+“No,” said I, “certainly not.”
+
+The waiter (it was he who had brought up the Great Remonstrance from
+the Commercials, on the day when I was bound) appeared surprised, and
+took the earliest opportunity of putting a dirty old copy of a local
+newspaper so directly in my way, that I took it up and read this
+paragraph:—
+
+Our readers will learn, not altogether without interest, in reference
+to the recent romantic rise in fortune of a young artificer in iron of
+this neighbourhood (what a theme, by the way, for the magic pen of our
+as yet not universally acknowledged townsman TOOBY, the poet of our
+columns!) that the youth’s earliest patron, companion, and friend, was
+a highly respected individual not entirely unconnected with the corn
+and seed trade, and whose eminently convenient and commodious business
+premises are situate within a hundred miles of the High Street. It is
+not wholly irrespective of our personal feelings that we record HIM as
+the Mentor of our young Telemachus, for it is good to know that our
+town produced the founder of the latter’s fortunes. Does the
+thought-contracted brow of the local Sage or the lustrous eye of local
+Beauty inquire whose fortunes? We believe that Quintin Matsys was the
+BLACKSMITH of Antwerp. VERB. SAP.
+
+I entertain a conviction, based upon large experience, that if in the
+days of my prosperity I had gone to the North Pole, I should have met
+somebody there, wandering Esquimaux or civilized man, who would have
+told me that Pumblechook was my earliest patron and the founder of my
+fortunes.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIX.
+
+
+Betimes in the morning I was up and out. It was too early yet to go to
+Miss Havisham’s, so I loitered into the country on Miss Havisham’s side
+of town,—which was not Joe’s side; I could go there to-morrow,—thinking
+about my patroness, and painting brilliant pictures of her plans for
+me.
+
+She had adopted Estella, she had as good as adopted me, and it could
+not fail to be her intention to bring us together. She reserved it for
+me to restore the desolate house, admit the sunshine into the dark
+rooms, set the clocks a-going and the cold hearths a-blazing, tear down
+the cobwebs, destroy the vermin,—in short, do all the shining deeds of
+the young Knight of romance, and marry the Princess. I had stopped to
+look at the house as I passed; and its seared red brick walls, blocked
+windows, and strong green ivy clasping even the stacks of chimneys with
+its twigs and tendons, as if with sinewy old arms, had made up a rich
+attractive mystery, of which I was the hero. Estella was the
+inspiration of it, and the heart of it, of course. But, though she had
+taken such strong possession of me, though my fancy and my hope were so
+set upon her, though her influence on my boyish life and character had
+been all-powerful, I did not, even that romantic morning, invest her
+with any attributes save those she possessed. I mention this in this
+place, of a fixed purpose, because it is the clue by which I am to be
+followed into my poor labyrinth. According to my experience, the
+conventional notion of a lover cannot be always true. The unqualified
+truth is, that when I loved Estella with the love of a man, I loved her
+simply because I found her irresistible. Once for all; I knew to my
+sorrow, often and often, if not always, that I loved her against
+reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against
+happiness, against all discouragement that could be. Once for all; I
+loved her none the less because I knew it, and it had no more influence
+in restraining me than if I had devoutly believed her to be human
+perfection.
+
+I so shaped out my walk as to arrive at the gate at my old time. When I
+had rung at the bell with an unsteady hand, I turned my back upon the
+gate, while I tried to get my breath and keep the beating of my heart
+moderately quiet. I heard the side-door open, and steps come across the
+courtyard; but I pretended not to hear, even when the gate swung on its
+rusty hinges.
+
+Being at last touched on the shoulder, I started and turned. I started
+much more naturally then, to find myself confronted by a man in a sober
+grey dress. The last man I should have expected to see in that place of
+porter at Miss Havisham’s door.
+
+“Orlick!”
+
+“Ah, young master, there’s more changes than yours. But come in, come
+in. It’s opposed to my orders to hold the gate open.”
+
+I entered and he swung it, and locked it, and took the key out. “Yes!”
+said he, facing round, after doggedly preceding me a few steps towards
+the house. “Here I am!”
+
+“How did you come here?”
+
+“I come here,” he retorted, “on my legs. I had my box brought alongside
+me in a barrow.”
+
+“Are you here for good?”
+
+“I ain’t here for harm, young master, I suppose?”
+
+I was not so sure of that. I had leisure to entertain the retort in my
+mind, while he slowly lifted his heavy glance from the pavement, up my
+legs and arms, to my face.
+
+“Then you have left the forge?” I said.
+
+“Do this look like a forge?” replied Orlick, sending his glance all
+round him with an air of injury. “Now, do it look like it?”
+
+I asked him how long he had left Gargery’s forge?
+
+“One day is so like another here,” he replied, “that I don’t know
+without casting it up. However, I come here some time since you left.”
+
+“I could have told you that, Orlick.”
+
+“Ah!” said he, dryly. “But then you’ve got to be a scholar.”
+
+By this time we had come to the house, where I found his room to be one
+just within the side-door, with a little window in it looking on the
+courtyard. In its small proportions, it was not unlike the kind of
+place usually assigned to a gate-porter in Paris. Certain keys were
+hanging on the wall, to which he now added the gate key; and his
+patchwork-covered bed was in a little inner division or recess. The
+whole had a slovenly, confined, and sleepy look, like a cage for a
+human dormouse; while he, looming dark and heavy in the shadow of a
+corner by the window, looked like the human dormouse for whom it was
+fitted up,—as indeed he was.
+
+“I never saw this room before,” I remarked; “but there used to be no
+Porter here.”
+
+“No,” said he; “not till it got about that there was no protection on
+the premises, and it come to be considered dangerous, with convicts and
+Tag and Rag and Bobtail going up and down. And then I was recommended
+to the place as a man who could give another man as good as he brought,
+and I took it. It’s easier than bellowsing and hammering.—That’s
+loaded, that is.”
+
+My eye had been caught by a gun with a brass-bound stock over the
+chimney-piece, and his eye had followed mine.
+
+“Well,” said I, not desirous of more conversation, “shall I go up to
+Miss Havisham?”
+
+“Burn me, if I know!” he retorted, first stretching himself and then
+shaking himself; “my orders ends here, young master. I give this here
+bell a rap with this here hammer, and you go on along the passage till
+you meet somebody.”
+
+“I am expected, I believe?”
+
+“Burn me twice over, if I can say!” said he.
+
+Upon that, I turned down the long passage which I had first trodden in
+my thick boots, and he made his bell sound. At the end of the passage,
+while the bell was still reverberating, I found Sarah Pocket, who
+appeared to have now become constitutionally green and yellow by reason
+of me.
+
+“Oh!” said she. “You, is it, Mr. Pip?”
+
+“It is, Miss Pocket. I am glad to tell you that Mr. Pocket and family
+are all well.”
+
+“Are they any wiser?” said Sarah, with a dismal shake of the head;
+“they had better be wiser, than well. Ah, Matthew, Matthew! You know
+your way, sir?”
+
+Tolerably, for I had gone up the staircase in the dark, many a time. I
+ascended it now, in lighter boots than of yore, and tapped in my old
+way at the door of Miss Havisham’s room. “Pip’s rap,” I heard her say,
+immediately; “come in, Pip.”
+
+She was in her chair near the old table, in the old dress, with her two
+hands crossed on her stick, her chin resting on them, and her eyes on
+the fire. Sitting near her, with the white shoe, that had never been
+worn, in her hand, and her head bent as she looked at it, was an
+elegant lady whom I had never seen.
+
+“Come in, Pip,” Miss Havisham continued to mutter, without looking
+round or up; “come in, Pip, how do you do, Pip? so you kiss my hand as
+if I were a queen, eh?—Well?”
+
+She looked up at me suddenly, only moving her eyes, and repeated in a
+grimly playful manner,—
+
+“Well?”
+
+“I heard, Miss Havisham,” said I, rather at a loss, “that you were so
+kind as to wish me to come and see you, and I came directly.”
+
+“Well?”
+
+The lady whom I had never seen before, lifted up her eyes and looked
+archly at me, and then I saw that the eyes were Estella’s eyes. But she
+was so much changed, was so much more beautiful, so much more womanly,
+in all things winning admiration, had made such wonderful advance, that
+I seemed to have made none. I fancied, as I looked at her, that I
+slipped hopelessly back into the coarse and common boy again. O the
+sense of distance and disparity that came upon me, and the
+inaccessibility that came about her!
+
+She gave me her hand. I stammered something about the pleasure I felt
+in seeing her again, and about my having looked forward to it, for a
+long, long time.
+
+“Do you find her much changed, Pip?” asked Miss Havisham, with her
+greedy look, and striking her stick upon a chair that stood between
+them, as a sign to me to sit down there.
+
+“When I came in, Miss Havisham, I thought there was nothing of Estella
+in the face or figure; but now it all settles down so curiously into
+the old—”
+
+“What? You are not going to say into the old Estella?” Miss Havisham
+interrupted. “She was proud and insulting, and you wanted to go away
+from her. Don’t you remember?”
+
+I said confusedly that that was long ago, and that I knew no better
+then, and the like. Estella smiled with perfect composure, and said she
+had no doubt of my having been quite right, and of her having been very
+disagreeable.
+
+“Is _he_ changed?” Miss Havisham asked her.
+
+“Very much,” said Estella, looking at me.
+
+“Less coarse and common?” said Miss Havisham, playing with Estella’s
+hair.
+
+Estella laughed, and looked at the shoe in her hand, and laughed again,
+and looked at me, and put the shoe down. She treated me as a boy still,
+but she lured me on.
+
+We sat in the dreamy room among the old strange influences which had so
+wrought upon me, and I learnt that she had but just come home from
+France, and that she was going to London. Proud and wilful as of old,
+she had brought those qualities into such subjection to her beauty that
+it was impossible and out of nature—or I thought so—to separate them
+from her beauty. Truly it was impossible to dissociate her presence
+from all those wretched hankerings after money and gentility that had
+disturbed my boyhood,—from all those ill-regulated aspirations that had
+first made me ashamed of home and Joe,—from all those visions that had
+raised her face in the glowing fire, struck it out of the iron on the
+anvil, extracted it from the darkness of night to look in at the wooden
+window of the forge, and flit away. In a word, it was impossible for me
+to separate her, in the past or in the present, from the innermost life
+of my life.
+
+It was settled that I should stay there all the rest of the day, and
+return to the hotel at night, and to London to-morrow. When we had
+conversed for a while, Miss Havisham sent us two out to walk in the
+neglected garden: on our coming in by and by, she said, I should wheel
+her about a little, as in times of yore.
+
+So, Estella and I went out into the garden by the gate through which I
+had strayed to my encounter with the pale young gentleman, now Herbert;
+I, trembling in spirit and worshipping the very hem of her dress; she,
+quite composed and most decidedly not worshipping the hem of mine. As
+we drew near to the place of encounter, she stopped and said,—
+
+“I must have been a singular little creature to hide and see that fight
+that day; but I did, and I enjoyed it very much.”
+
+“You rewarded me very much.”
+
+“Did I?” she replied, in an incidental and forgetful way. “I remember I
+entertained a great objection to your adversary, because I took it ill
+that he should be brought here to pester me with his company.”
+
+“He and I are great friends now.”
+
+“Are you? I think I recollect though, that you read with his father?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+I made the admission with reluctance, for it seemed to have a boyish
+look, and she already treated me more than enough like a boy.
+
+“Since your change of fortune and prospects, you have changed your
+companions,” said Estella.
+
+“Naturally,” said I.
+
+“And necessarily,” she added, in a haughty tone; “what was fit company
+for you once, would be quite unfit company for you now.”
+
+In my conscience, I doubt very much whether I had any lingering
+intention left of going to see Joe; but if I had, this observation put
+it to flight.
+
+“You had no idea of your impending good fortune, in those times?” said
+Estella, with a slight wave of her hand, signifying in the fighting
+times.
+
+“Not the least.”
+
+The air of completeness and superiority with which she walked at my
+side, and the air of youthfulness and submission with which I walked at
+hers, made a contrast that I strongly felt. It would have rankled in me
+more than it did, if I had not regarded myself as eliciting it by being
+so set apart for her and assigned to her.
+
+The garden was too overgrown and rank for walking in with ease, and
+after we had made the round of it twice or thrice, we came out again
+into the brewery yard. I showed her to a nicety where I had seen her
+walking on the casks, that first old day, and she said, with a cold and
+careless look in that direction, “Did I?” I reminded her where she had
+come out of the house and given me my meat and drink, and she said, “I
+don’t remember.” “Not remember that you made me cry?” said I. “No,”
+said she, and shook her head and looked about her. I verily believe
+that her not remembering and not minding in the least, made me cry
+again, inwardly,—and that is the sharpest crying of all.
+
+“You must know,” said Estella, condescending to me as a brilliant and
+beautiful woman might, “that I have no heart,—if that has anything to
+do with my memory.”
+
+I got through some jargon to the effect that I took the liberty of
+doubting that. That I knew better. That there could be no such beauty
+without it.
+
+“Oh! I have a heart to be stabbed in or shot in, I have no doubt,” said
+Estella, “and of course if it ceased to beat I should cease to be. But
+you know what I mean. I have no softness there,
+no—sympathy—sentiment—nonsense.”
+
+What _was_ it that was borne in upon my mind when she stood still and
+looked attentively at me? Anything that I had seen in Miss Havisham?
+No. In some of her looks and gestures there was that tinge of
+resemblance to Miss Havisham which may often be noticed to have been
+acquired by children, from grown person with whom they have been much
+associated and secluded, and which, when childhood is passed, will
+produce a remarkable occasional likeness of expression between faces
+that are otherwise quite different. And yet I could not trace this to
+Miss Havisham. I looked again, and though she was still looking at me,
+the suggestion was gone.
+
+What _was_ it?
+
+“I am serious,” said Estella, not so much with a frown (for her brow
+was smooth) as with a darkening of her face; “if we are to be thrown
+much together, you had better believe it at once. No!” imperiously
+stopping me as I opened my lips. “I have not bestowed my tenderness
+anywhere. I have never had any such thing.”
+
+In another moment we were in the brewery, so long disused, and she
+pointed to the high gallery where I had seen her going out on that same
+first day, and told me she remembered to have been up there, and to
+have seen me standing scared below. As my eyes followed her white hand,
+again the same dim suggestion that I could not possibly grasp crossed
+me. My involuntary start occasioned her to lay her hand upon my arm.
+Instantly the ghost passed once more and was gone.
+
+What _was_ it?
+
+“What is the matter?” asked Estella. “Are you scared again?”
+
+“I should be, if I believed what you said just now,” I replied, to turn
+it off.
+
+“Then you don’t? Very well. It is said, at any rate. Miss Havisham will
+soon be expecting you at your old post, though I think that might be
+laid aside now, with other old belongings. Let us make one more round
+of the garden, and then go in. Come! You shall not shed tears for my
+cruelty to-day; you shall be my Page, and give me your shoulder.”
+
+Her handsome dress had trailed upon the ground. She held it in one hand
+now, and with the other lightly touched my shoulder as we walked. We
+walked round the ruined garden twice or thrice more, and it was all in
+bloom for me. If the green and yellow growth of weed in the chinks of
+the old wall had been the most precious flowers that ever blew, it
+could not have been more cherished in my remembrance.
+
+There was no discrepancy of years between us to remove her far from me;
+we were of nearly the same age, though of course the age told for more
+in her case than in mine; but the air of inaccessibility which her
+beauty and her manner gave her, tormented me in the midst of my
+delight, and at the height of the assurance I felt that our patroness
+had chosen us for one another. Wretched boy!
+
+At last we went back into the house, and there I heard, with surprise,
+that my guardian had come down to see Miss Havisham on business, and
+would come back to dinner. The old wintry branches of chandeliers in
+the room where the mouldering table was spread had been lighted while
+we were out, and Miss Havisham was in her chair and waiting for me.
+
+It was like pushing the chair itself back into the past, when we began
+the old slow circuit round about the ashes of the bridal feast. But, in
+the funereal room, with that figure of the grave fallen back in the
+chair fixing its eyes upon her, Estella looked more bright and
+beautiful than before, and I was under stronger enchantment.
+
+The time so melted away, that our early dinner-hour drew close at hand,
+and Estella left us to prepare herself. We had stopped near the centre
+of the long table, and Miss Havisham, with one of her withered arms
+stretched out of the chair, rested that clenched hand upon the yellow
+cloth. As Estella looked back over her shoulder before going out at the
+door, Miss Havisham kissed that hand to her, with a ravenous intensity
+that was of its kind quite dreadful.
+
+Then, Estella being gone and we two left alone, she turned to me, and
+said in a whisper,—
+
+“Is she beautiful, graceful, well-grown? Do you admire her?”
+
+“Everybody must who sees her, Miss Havisham.”
+
+She drew an arm round my neck, and drew my head close down to hers as
+she sat in the chair. “Love her, love her, love her! How does she use
+you?”
+
+Before I could answer (if I could have answered so difficult a question
+at all) she repeated, “Love her, love her, love her! If she favours
+you, love her. If she wounds you, love her. If she tears your heart to
+pieces,—and as it gets older and stronger it will tear deeper,—love
+her, love her, love her!”
+
+Never had I seen such passionate eagerness as was joined to her
+utterance of these words. I could feel the muscles of the thin arm
+round my neck swell with the vehemence that possessed her.
+
+“Hear me, Pip! I adopted her, to be loved. I bred her and educated her,
+to be loved. I developed her into what she is, that she might be loved.
+Love her!”
+
+She said the word often enough, and there could be no doubt that she
+meant to say it; but if the often repeated word had been hate instead
+of love—despair—revenge—dire death—it could not have sounded from her
+lips more like a curse.
+
+“I’ll tell you,” said she, in the same hurried passionate whisper,
+“what real love is. It is blind devotion, unquestioning
+self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself
+and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the
+smiter—as I did!”
+
+When she came to that, and to a wild cry that followed that, I caught
+her round the waist. For she rose up in the chair, in her shroud of a
+dress, and struck at the air as if she would as soon have struck
+herself against the wall and fallen dead.
+
+All this passed in a few seconds. As I drew her down into her chair, I
+was conscious of a scent that I knew, and turning, saw my guardian in
+the room.
+
+He always carried (I have not yet mentioned it, I think) a
+pocket-handkerchief of rich silk and of imposing proportions, which was
+of great value to him in his profession. I have seen him so terrify a
+client or a witness by ceremoniously unfolding this pocket-handkerchief
+as if he were immediately going to blow his nose, and then pausing, as
+if he knew he should not have time to do it before such client or
+witness committed himself, that the self-committal has followed
+directly, quite as a matter of course. When I saw him in the room he
+had this expressive pocket-handkerchief in both hands, and was looking
+at us. On meeting my eye, he said plainly, by a momentary and silent
+pause in that attitude, “Indeed? Singular!” and then put the
+handkerchief to its right use with wonderful effect.
+
+Miss Havisham had seen him as soon as I, and was (like everybody else)
+afraid of him. She made a strong attempt to compose herself, and
+stammered that he was as punctual as ever.
+
+“As punctual as ever,” he repeated, coming up to us. “(How do you do,
+Pip? Shall I give you a ride, Miss Havisham? Once round?) And so you
+are here, Pip?”
+
+I told him when I had arrived, and how Miss Havisham had wished me to
+come and see Estella. To which he replied, “Ah! Very fine young lady!”
+Then he pushed Miss Havisham in her chair before him, with one of his
+large hands, and put the other in his trousers-pocket as if the pocket
+were full of secrets.
+
+“Well, Pip! How often have you seen Miss Estella before?” said he, when
+he came to a stop.
+
+“How often?”
+
+“Ah! How many times? Ten thousand times?”
+
+“Oh! Certainly not so many.”
+
+“Twice?”
+
+“Jaggers,” interposed Miss Havisham, much to my relief, “leave my Pip
+alone, and go with him to your dinner.”
+
+He complied, and we groped our way down the dark stairs together. While
+we were still on our way to those detached apartments across the paved
+yard at the back, he asked me how often I had seen Miss Havisham eat
+and drink; offering me a breadth of choice, as usual, between a hundred
+times and once.
+
+I considered, and said, “Never.”
+
+“And never will, Pip,” he retorted, with a frowning smile. “She has
+never allowed herself to be seen doing either, since she lived this
+present life of hers. She wanders about in the night, and then lays
+hands on such food as she takes.”
+
+“Pray, sir,” said I, “may I ask you a question?”
+
+“You may,” said he, “and I may decline to answer it. Put your
+question.”
+
+“Estella’s name. Is it Havisham or—?” I had nothing to add.
+
+“Or what?” said he.
+
+“Is it Havisham?”
+
+“It is Havisham.”
+
+This brought us to the dinner-table, where she and Sarah Pocket awaited
+us. Mr. Jaggers presided, Estella sat opposite to him, I faced my green
+and yellow friend. We dined very well, and were waited on by a
+maid-servant whom I had never seen in all my comings and goings, but
+who, for anything I know, had been in that mysterious house the whole
+time. After dinner a bottle of choice old port was placed before my
+guardian (he was evidently well acquainted with the vintage), and the
+two ladies left us.
+
+Anything to equal the determined reticence of Mr. Jaggers under that
+roof I never saw elsewhere, even in him. He kept his very looks to
+himself, and scarcely directed his eyes to Estella’s face once during
+dinner. When she spoke to him, he listened, and in due course answered,
+but never looked at her, that I could see. On the other hand, she often
+looked at him, with interest and curiosity, if not distrust, but his
+face never showed the least consciousness. Throughout dinner he took a
+dry delight in making Sarah Pocket greener and yellower, by often
+referring in conversation with me to my expectations; but here, again,
+he showed no consciousness, and even made it appear that he
+extorted—and even did extort, though I don’t know how—those references
+out of my innocent self.
+
+And when he and I were left alone together, he sat with an air upon him
+of general lying by in consequence of information he possessed, that
+really was too much for me. He cross-examined his very wine when he had
+nothing else in hand. He held it between himself and the candle, tasted
+the port, rolled it in his mouth, swallowed it, looked at his glass
+again, smelt the port, tried it, drank it, filled again, and
+cross-examined the glass again, until I was as nervous as if I had
+known the wine to be telling him something to my disadvantage. Three or
+four times I feebly thought I would start conversation; but whenever he
+saw me going to ask him anything, he looked at me with his glass in his
+hand, and rolling his wine about in his mouth, as if requesting me to
+take notice that it was of no use, for he couldn’t answer.
+
+I think Miss Pocket was conscious that the sight of me involved her in
+the danger of being goaded to madness, and perhaps tearing off her
+cap,—which was a very hideous one, in the nature of a muslin mop,—and
+strewing the ground with her hair,—which assuredly had never grown on
+_her_ head. She did not appear when we afterwards went up to Miss
+Havisham’s room, and we four played at whist. In the interval, Miss
+Havisham, in a fantastic way, had put some of the most beautiful jewels
+from her dressing-table into Estella’s hair, and about her bosom and
+arms; and I saw even my guardian look at her from under his thick
+eyebrows, and raise them a little, when her loveliness was before him,
+with those rich flushes of glitter and colour in it.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Of the manner and extent to which he took our trumps into custody, and
+came out with mean little cards at the ends of hands, before which the
+glory of our Kings and Queens was utterly abased, I say nothing; nor,
+of the feeling that I had, respecting his looking upon us personally in
+the light of three very obvious and poor riddles that he had found out
+long ago. What I suffered from, was the incompatibility between his
+cold presence and my feelings towards Estella. It was not that I knew I
+could never bear to speak to him about her, that I knew I could never
+bear to hear him creak his boots at her, that I knew I could never bear
+to see him wash his hands of her; it was, that my admiration should be
+within a foot or two of him,—it was, that my feelings should be in the
+same place with him,—_that_, was the agonizing circumstance.
+
+We played until nine o’clock, and then it was arranged that when
+Estella came to London I should be forewarned of her coming and should
+meet her at the coach; and then I took leave of her, and touched her
+and left her.
+
+My guardian lay at the Boar in the next room to mine. Far into the
+night, Miss Havisham’s words, “Love her, love her, love her!” sounded
+in my ears. I adapted them for my own repetition, and said to my
+pillow, “I love her, I love her, I love her!” hundreds of times. Then,
+a burst of gratitude came upon me, that she should be destined for me,
+once the blacksmith’s boy. Then I thought if she were, as I feared, by
+no means rapturously grateful for that destiny yet, when would she
+begin to be interested in me? When should I awaken the heart within her
+that was mute and sleeping now?
+
+Ah me! I thought those were high and great emotions. But I never
+thought there was anything low and small in my keeping away from Joe,
+because I knew she would be contemptuous of him. It was but a day gone,
+and Joe had brought the tears into my eyes; they had soon dried, God
+forgive me! soon dried.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXX.
+
+
+After well considering the matter while I was dressing at the Blue Boar
+in the morning, I resolved to tell my guardian that I doubted Orlick’s
+being the right sort of man to fill a post of trust at Miss Havisham’s.
+“Why of course he is not the right sort of man, Pip,” said my guardian,
+comfortably satisfied beforehand on the general head, “because the man
+who fills the post of trust never is the right sort of man.” It seemed
+quite to put him into spirits to find that this particular post was not
+exceptionally held by the right sort of man, and he listened in a
+satisfied manner while I told him what knowledge I had of Orlick. “Very
+good, Pip,” he observed, when I had concluded, “I’ll go round
+presently, and pay our friend off.” Rather alarmed by this summary
+action, I was for a little delay, and even hinted that our friend
+himself might be difficult to deal with. “Oh no he won’t,” said my
+guardian, making his pocket-handkerchief-point, with perfect
+confidence; “I should like to see him argue the question with _me_.”
+
+As we were going back together to London by the midday coach, and as I
+breakfasted under such terrors of Pumblechook that I could scarcely
+hold my cup, this gave me an opportunity of saying that I wanted a
+walk, and that I would go on along the London road while Mr. Jaggers
+was occupied, if he would let the coachman know that I would get into
+my place when overtaken. I was thus enabled to fly from the Blue Boar
+immediately after breakfast. By then making a loop of about a couple of
+miles into the open country at the back of Pumblechook’s premises, I
+got round into the High Street again, a little beyond that pitfall, and
+felt myself in comparative security.
+
+It was interesting to be in the quiet old town once more, and it was
+not disagreeable to be here and there suddenly recognised and stared
+after. One or two of the tradespeople even darted out of their shops
+and went a little way down the street before me, that they might turn,
+as if they had forgotten something, and pass me face to face,—on which
+occasions I don’t know whether they or I made the worse pretence; they
+of not doing it, or I of not seeing it. Still my position was a
+distinguished one, and I was not at all dissatisfied with it, until
+Fate threw me in the way of that unlimited miscreant, Trabb’s boy.
+
+Casting my eyes along the street at a certain point of my progress, I
+beheld Trabb’s boy approaching, lashing himself with an empty blue bag.
+Deeming that a serene and unconscious contemplation of him would best
+beseem me, and would be most likely to quell his evil mind, I advanced
+with that expression of countenance, and was rather congratulating
+myself on my success, when suddenly the knees of Trabb’s boy smote
+together, his hair uprose, his cap fell off, he trembled violently in
+every limb, staggered out into the road, and crying to the populace,
+“Hold me! I’m so frightened!” feigned to be in a paroxysm of terror and
+contrition, occasioned by the dignity of my appearance. As I passed
+him, his teeth loudly chattered in his head, and with every mark of
+extreme humiliation, he prostrated himself in the dust.
+
+This was a hard thing to bear, but this was nothing. I had not advanced
+another two hundred yards when, to my inexpressible terror, amazement,
+and indignation, I again beheld Trabb’s boy approaching. He was coming
+round a narrow corner. His blue bag was slung over his shoulder, honest
+industry beamed in his eyes, a determination to proceed to Trabb’s with
+cheerful briskness was indicated in his gait. With a shock he became
+aware of me, and was severely visited as before; but this time his
+motion was rotatory, and he staggered round and round me with knees
+more afflicted, and with uplifted hands as if beseeching for mercy. His
+sufferings were hailed with the greatest joy by a knot of spectators,
+and I felt utterly confounded.
+
+I had not got as much further down the street as the post-office, when
+I again beheld Trabb’s boy shooting round by a back way. This time, he
+was entirely changed. He wore the blue bag in the manner of my
+great-coat, and was strutting along the pavement towards me on the
+opposite side of the street, attended by a company of delighted young
+friends to whom he from time to time exclaimed, with a wave of his
+hand, “Don’t know yah!” Words cannot state the amount of aggravation
+and injury wreaked upon me by Trabb’s boy, when passing abreast of me,
+he pulled up his shirt-collar, twined his side-hair, stuck an arm
+akimbo, and smirked extravagantly by, wriggling his elbows and body,
+and drawling to his attendants, “Don’t know yah, don’t know yah, ’pon
+my soul don’t know yah!” The disgrace attendant on his immediately
+afterwards taking to crowing and pursuing me across the bridge with
+crows, as from an exceedingly dejected fowl who had known me when I was
+a blacksmith, culminated the disgrace with which I left the town, and
+was, so to speak, ejected by it into the open country.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+But unless I had taken the life of Trabb’s boy on that occasion, I
+really do not even now see what I could have done save endure. To have
+struggled with him in the street, or to have exacted any lower
+recompense from him than his heart’s best blood, would have been futile
+and degrading. Moreover, he was a boy whom no man could hurt; an
+invulnerable and dodging serpent who, when chased into a corner, flew
+out again between his captor’s legs, scornfully yelping. I wrote,
+however, to Mr. Trabb by next day’s post, to say that Mr. Pip must
+decline to deal further with one who could so far forget what he owed
+to the best interests of society, as to employ a boy who excited
+Loathing in every respectable mind.
+
+The coach, with Mr. Jaggers inside, came up in due time, and I took my
+box-seat again, and arrived in London safe,—but not sound, for my heart
+was gone. As soon as I arrived, I sent a penitential codfish and barrel
+of oysters to Joe (as reparation for not having gone myself), and then
+went on to Barnard’s Inn.
+
+I found Herbert dining on cold meat, and delighted to welcome me back.
+Having despatched The Avenger to the coffee-house for an addition to
+the dinner, I felt that I must open my breast that very evening to my
+friend and chum. As confidence was out of the question with The Avenger
+in the hall, which could merely be regarded in the light of an
+antechamber to the keyhole, I sent him to the Play. A better proof of
+the severity of my bondage to that taskmaster could scarcely be
+afforded, than the degrading shifts to which I was constantly driven to
+find him employment. So mean is extremity, that I sometimes sent him to
+Hyde Park corner to see what o’clock it was.
+
+Dinner done and we sitting with our feet upon the fender, I said to
+Herbert, “My dear Herbert, I have something very particular to tell
+you.”
+
+“My dear Handel,” he returned, “I shall esteem and respect your
+confidence.”
+
+“It concerns myself, Herbert,” said I, “and one other person.”
+
+Herbert crossed his feet, looked at the fire with his head on one side,
+and having looked at it in vain for some time, looked at me because I
+didn’t go on.
+
+“Herbert,” said I, laying my hand upon his knee, “I love—I
+adore—Estella.”
+
+Instead of being transfixed, Herbert replied in an easy
+matter-of-course way, “Exactly. Well?”
+
+“Well, Herbert? Is that all you say? Well?”
+
+“What next, I mean?” said Herbert. “Of course I know _that_.”
+
+“How do you know it?” said I.
+
+“How do I know it, Handel? Why, from you.”
+
+“I never told you.”
+
+“Told me! You have never told me when you have got your hair cut, but I
+have had senses to perceive it. You have always adored her, ever since
+I have known you. You brought your adoration and your portmanteau here
+together. Told me! Why, you have always told me all day long. When you
+told me your own story, you told me plainly that you began adoring her
+the first time you saw her, when you were very young indeed.”
+
+“Very well, then,” said I, to whom this was a new and not unwelcome
+light, “I have never left off adoring her. And she has come back, a
+most beautiful and most elegant creature. And I saw her yesterday. And
+if I adored her before, I now doubly adore her.”
+
+“Lucky for you then, Handel,” said Herbert, “that you are picked out
+for her and allotted to her. Without encroaching on forbidden ground,
+we may venture to say that there can be no doubt between ourselves of
+that fact. Have you any idea yet, of Estella’s views on the adoration
+question?”
+
+I shook my head gloomily. “Oh! She is thousands of miles away, from
+me,” said I.
+
+“Patience, my dear Handel: time enough, time enough. But you have
+something more to say?”
+
+“I am ashamed to say it,” I returned, “and yet it’s no worse to say it
+than to think it. You call me a lucky fellow. Of course, I am. I was a
+blacksmith’s boy but yesterday; I am—what shall I say I am—to-day?”
+
+“Say a good fellow, if you want a phrase,” returned Herbert, smiling,
+and clapping his hand on the back of mine—“a good fellow, with
+impetuosity and hesitation, boldness and diffidence, action and
+dreaming, curiously mixed in him.”
+
+I stopped for a moment to consider whether there really was this
+mixture in my character. On the whole, I by no means recognised the
+analysis, but thought it not worth disputing.
+
+“When I ask what I am to call myself to-day, Herbert,” I went on, “I
+suggest what I have in my thoughts. You say I am lucky. I know I have
+done nothing to raise myself in life, and that Fortune alone has raised
+me; that is being very lucky. And yet, when I think of Estella—”
+
+(“And when don’t you, you know?” Herbert threw in, with his eyes on the
+fire; which I thought kind and sympathetic of him.)
+
+“—Then, my dear Herbert, I cannot tell you how dependent and uncertain
+I feel, and how exposed to hundreds of chances. Avoiding forbidden
+ground, as you did just now, I may still say that on the constancy of
+one person (naming no person) all my expectations depend. And at the
+best, how indefinite and unsatisfactory, only to know so vaguely what
+they are!” In saying this, I relieved my mind of what had always been
+there, more or less, though no doubt most since yesterday.
+
+“Now, Handel,” Herbert replied, in his gay, hopeful way, “it seems to
+me that in the despondency of the tender passion, we are looking into
+our gift-horse’s mouth with a magnifying-glass. Likewise, it seems to
+me that, concentrating our attention on the examination, we altogether
+overlook one of the best points of the animal. Didn’t you tell me that
+your guardian, Mr. Jaggers, told you in the beginning, that you were
+not endowed with expectations only? And even if he had not told you
+so,—though that is a very large If, I grant,—could you believe that of
+all men in London, Mr. Jaggers is the man to hold his present relations
+towards you unless he were sure of his ground?”
+
+I said I could not deny that this was a strong point. I said it (people
+often do so, in such cases) like a rather reluctant concession to truth
+and justice;—as if I wanted to deny it!
+
+“I should think it _was_ a strong point,” said Herbert, “and I should
+think you would be puzzled to imagine a stronger; as to the rest, you
+must bide your guardian’s time, and he must bide his client’s time.
+You’ll be one-and-twenty before you know where you are, and then
+perhaps you’ll get some further enlightenment. At all events, you’ll be
+nearer getting it, for it must come at last.”
+
+“What a hopeful disposition you have!” said I, gratefully admiring his
+cheery ways.
+
+“I ought to have,” said Herbert, “for I have not much else. I must
+acknowledge, by the by, that the good sense of what I have just said is
+not my own, but my father’s. The only remark I ever heard him make on
+your story, was the final one, “The thing is settled and done, or Mr.
+Jaggers would not be in it.” And now before I say anything more about
+my father, or my father’s son, and repay confidence with confidence, I
+want to make myself seriously disagreeable to you for a
+moment,—positively repulsive.”
+
+“You won’t succeed,” said I.
+
+“O yes I shall!” said he. “One, two, three, and now I am in for it.
+Handel, my good fellow;”—though he spoke in this light tone, he was
+very much in earnest,—“I have been thinking since we have been talking
+with our feet on this fender, that Estella surely cannot be a condition
+of your inheritance, if she was never referred to by your guardian. Am
+I right in so understanding what you have told me, as that he never
+referred to her, directly or indirectly, in any way? Never even hinted,
+for instance, that your patron might have views as to your marriage
+ultimately?”
+
+“Never.”
+
+“Now, Handel, I am quite free from the flavour of sour grapes, upon my
+soul and honour! Not being bound to her, can you not detach yourself
+from her?—I told you I should be disagreeable.”
+
+I turned my head aside, for, with a rush and a sweep, like the old
+marsh winds coming up from the sea, a feeling like that which had
+subdued me on the morning when I left the forge, when the mists were
+solemnly rising, and when I laid my hand upon the village finger-post,
+smote upon my heart again. There was silence between us for a little
+while.
+
+“Yes; but my dear Handel,” Herbert went on, as if we had been talking,
+instead of silent, “its having been so strongly rooted in the breast of
+a boy whom nature and circumstances made so romantic, renders it very
+serious. Think of her bringing-up, and think of Miss Havisham. Think of
+what she is herself (now I am repulsive and you abominate me). This may
+lead to miserable things.”
+
+“I know it, Herbert,” said I, with my head still turned away, “but I
+can’t help it.”
+
+“You can’t detach yourself?”
+
+“No. Impossible!”
+
+“You can’t try, Handel?”
+
+“No. Impossible!”
+
+“Well!” said Herbert, getting up with a lively shake as if he had been
+asleep, and stirring the fire, “now I’ll endeavour to make myself
+agreeable again!”
+
+So he went round the room and shook the curtains out, put the chairs in
+their places, tidied the books and so forth that were lying about,
+looked into the hall, peeped into the letter-box, shut the door, and
+came back to his chair by the fire: where he sat down, nursing his left
+leg in both arms.
+
+“I was going to say a word or two, Handel, concerning my father and my
+father’s son. I am afraid it is scarcely necessary for my father’s son
+to remark that my father’s establishment is not particularly brilliant
+in its housekeeping.”
+
+“There is always plenty, Herbert,” said I, to say something
+encouraging.
+
+“O yes! and so the dustman says, I believe, with the strongest
+approval, and so does the marine-store shop in the back street.
+Gravely, Handel, for the subject is grave enough, you know how it is as
+well as I do. I suppose there was a time once when my father had not
+given matters up; but if ever there was, the time is gone. May I ask
+you if you have ever had an opportunity of remarking, down in your part
+of the country, that the children of not exactly suitable marriages are
+always most particularly anxious to be married?”
+
+This was such a singular question, that I asked him in return, “Is it
+so?”
+
+“I don’t know,” said Herbert, “that’s what I want to know. Because it
+is decidedly the case with us. My poor sister Charlotte, who was next
+me and died before she was fourteen, was a striking example. Little
+Jane is the same. In her desire to be matrimonially established, you
+might suppose her to have passed her short existence in the perpetual
+contemplation of domestic bliss. Little Alick in a frock has already
+made arrangements for his union with a suitable young person at Kew.
+And indeed, I think we are all engaged, except the baby.”
+
+“Then you are?” said I.
+
+“I am,” said Herbert; “but it’s a secret.”
+
+I assured him of my keeping the secret, and begged to be favoured with
+further particulars. He had spoken so sensibly and feelingly of my
+weakness that I wanted to know something about his strength.
+
+“May I ask the name?” I said.
+
+“Name of Clara,” said Herbert.
+
+“Live in London?”
+
+“Yes, perhaps I ought to mention,” said Herbert, who had become
+curiously crestfallen and meek, since we entered on the interesting
+theme, “that she is rather below my mother’s nonsensical family
+notions. Her father had to do with the victualling of passenger-ships.
+I think he was a species of purser.”
+
+“What is he now?” said I.
+
+“He’s an invalid now,” replied Herbert.
+
+“Living on—?”
+
+“On the first floor,” said Herbert. Which was not at all what I meant,
+for I had intended my question to apply to his means. “I have never
+seen him, for he has always kept his room overhead, since I have known
+Clara. But I have heard him constantly. He makes tremendous
+rows,—roars, and pegs at the floor with some frightful instrument.” In
+looking at me and then laughing heartily, Herbert for the time
+recovered his usual lively manner.
+
+“Don’t you expect to see him?” said I.
+
+“O yes, I constantly expect to see him,” returned Herbert, “because I
+never hear him, without expecting him to come tumbling through the
+ceiling. But I don’t know how long the rafters may hold.”
+
+When he had once more laughed heartily, he became meek again, and told
+me that the moment he began to realise Capital, it was his intention to
+marry this young lady. He added as a self-evident proposition,
+engendering low spirits, “But you _can’t_ marry, you know, while you’re
+looking about you.”
+
+As we contemplated the fire, and as I thought what a difficult vision
+to realise this same Capital sometimes was, I put my hands in my
+pockets. A folded piece of paper in one of them attracting my
+attention, I opened it and found it to be the play-bill I had received
+from Joe, relative to the celebrated provincial amateur of Roscian
+renown. “And bless my heart,” I involuntarily added aloud, “it’s
+to-night!”
+
+This changed the subject in an instant, and made us hurriedly resolve
+to go to the play. So, when I had pledged myself to comfort and abet
+Herbert in the affair of his heart by all practicable and impracticable
+means, and when Herbert had told me that his affianced already knew me
+by reputation and that I should be presented to her, and when we had
+warmly shaken hands upon our mutual confidence, we blew out our
+candles, made up our fire, locked our door, and issued forth in quest
+of Mr. Wopsle and Denmark.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXI.
+
+
+On our arrival in Denmark, we found the king and queen of that country
+elevated in two arm-chairs on a kitchen-table, holding a Court. The
+whole of the Danish nobility were in attendance; consisting of a noble
+boy in the wash-leather boots of a gigantic ancestor, a venerable Peer
+with a dirty face who seemed to have risen from the people late in
+life, and the Danish chivalry with a comb in its hair and a pair of
+white silk legs, and presenting on the whole a feminine appearance. My
+gifted townsman stood gloomily apart, with folded arms, and I could
+have wished that his curls and forehead had been more probable.
+
+Several curious little circumstances transpired as the action
+proceeded. The late king of the country not only appeared to have been
+troubled with a cough at the time of his decease, but to have taken it
+with him to the tomb, and to have brought it back. The royal phantom
+also carried a ghostly manuscript round its truncheon, to which it had
+the appearance of occasionally referring, and that too, with an air of
+anxiety and a tendency to lose the place of reference which were
+suggestive of a state of mortality. It was this, I conceive, which led
+to the Shade’s being advised by the gallery to “turn over!”—a
+recommendation which it took extremely ill. It was likewise to be noted
+of this majestic spirit, that whereas it always appeared with an air of
+having been out a long time and walked an immense distance, it
+perceptibly came from a closely contiguous wall. This occasioned its
+terrors to be received derisively. The Queen of Denmark, a very buxom
+lady, though no doubt historically brazen, was considered by the public
+to have too much brass about her; her chin being attached to her diadem
+by a broad band of that metal (as if she had a gorgeous toothache), her
+waist being encircled by another, and each of her arms by another, so
+that she was openly mentioned as “the kettle-drum.” The noble boy in
+the ancestral boots was inconsistent, representing himself, as it were
+in one breath, as an able seaman, a strolling actor, a grave-digger, a
+clergyman, and a person of the utmost importance at a Court
+fencing-match, on the authority of whose practised eye and nice
+discrimination the finest strokes were judged. This gradually led to a
+want of toleration for him, and even—on his being detected in holy
+orders, and declining to perform the funeral service—to the general
+indignation taking the form of nuts. Lastly, Ophelia was a prey to such
+slow musical madness, that when, in course of time, she had taken off
+her white muslin scarf, folded it up, and buried it, a sulky man who
+had been long cooling his impatient nose against an iron bar in the
+front row of the gallery, growled, “Now the baby’s put to bed let’s
+have supper!” Which, to say the least of it, was out of keeping.
+
+Upon my unfortunate townsman all these incidents accumulated with
+playful effect. Whenever that undecided Prince had to ask a question or
+state a doubt, the public helped him out with it. As for example; on
+the question whether ’twas nobler in the mind to suffer, some roared
+yes, and some no, and some inclining to both opinions said “Toss up for
+it;” and quite a Debating Society arose. When he asked what should such
+fellows as he do crawling between earth and heaven, he was encouraged
+with loud cries of “Hear, hear!” When he appeared with his stocking
+disordered (its disorder expressed, according to usage, by one very
+neat fold in the top, which I suppose to be always got up with a flat
+iron), a conversation took place in the gallery respecting the paleness
+of his leg, and whether it was occasioned by the turn the ghost had
+given him. On his taking the recorders,—very like a little black flute
+that had just been played in the orchestra and handed out at the
+door,—he was called upon unanimously for Rule Britannia. When he
+recommended the player not to saw the air thus, the sulky man said,
+“And don’t _you_ do it, neither; you’re a deal worse than _him_!” And I
+grieve to add that peals of laughter greeted Mr. Wopsle on every one of
+these occasions.
+
+But his greatest trials were in the churchyard, which had the
+appearance of a primeval forest, with a kind of small ecclesiastical
+wash-house on one side, and a turnpike gate on the other. Mr. Wopsle in
+a comprehensive black cloak, being descried entering at the turnpike,
+the gravedigger was admonished in a friendly way, “Look out! Here’s the
+undertaker a coming, to see how you’re a getting on with your work!” I
+believe it is well known in a constitutional country that Mr. Wopsle
+could not possibly have returned the skull, after moralizing over it,
+without dusting his fingers on a white napkin taken from his breast;
+but even that innocent and indispensable action did not pass without
+the comment, “Wai-ter!” The arrival of the body for interment (in an
+empty black box with the lid tumbling open), was the signal for a
+general joy, which was much enhanced by the discovery, among the
+bearers, of an individual obnoxious to identification. The joy attended
+Mr. Wopsle through his struggle with Laertes on the brink of the
+orchestra and the grave, and slackened no more until he had tumbled the
+king off the kitchen-table, and had died by inches from the ankles
+upward.
+
+We had made some pale efforts in the beginning to applaud Mr. Wopsle;
+but they were too hopeless to be persisted in. Therefore we had sat,
+feeling keenly for him, but laughing, nevertheless, from ear to ear. I
+laughed in spite of myself all the time, the whole thing was so droll;
+and yet I had a latent impression that there was something decidedly
+fine in Mr. Wopsle’s elocution,—not for old associations’ sake, I am
+afraid, but because it was very slow, very dreary, very uphill and
+downhill, and very unlike any way in which any man in any natural
+circumstances of life or death ever expressed himself about anything.
+When the tragedy was over, and he had been called for and hooted, I
+said to Herbert, “Let us go at once, or perhaps we shall meet him.”
+
+We made all the haste we could downstairs, but we were not quick enough
+either. Standing at the door was a Jewish man with an unnatural heavy
+smear of eyebrow, who caught my eyes as we advanced, and said, when we
+came up with him,—
+
+“Mr. Pip and friend?”
+
+Identity of Mr. Pip and friend confessed.
+
+“Mr. Waldengarver,” said the man, “would be glad to have the honour.”
+
+“Waldengarver?” I repeated—when Herbert murmured in my ear, “Probably
+Wopsle.”
+
+“Oh!” said I. “Yes. Shall we follow you?”
+
+“A few steps, please.” When we were in a side alley, he turned and
+asked, “How did you think he looked?—I dressed him.”
+
+I don’t know what he had looked like, except a funeral; with the
+addition of a large Danish sun or star hanging round his neck by a blue
+ribbon, that had given him the appearance of being insured in some
+extraordinary Fire Office. But I said he had looked very nice.
+
+“When he come to the grave,” said our conductor, “he showed his cloak
+beautiful. But, judging from the wing, it looked to me that when he see
+the ghost in the queen’s apartment, he might have made more of his
+stockings.”
+
+I modestly assented, and we all fell through a little dirty swing door,
+into a sort of hot packing-case immediately behind it. Here Mr. Wopsle
+was divesting himself of his Danish garments, and here there was just
+room for us to look at him over one another’s shoulders, by keeping the
+packing-case door, or lid, wide open.
+
+“Gentlemen,” said Mr. Wopsle, “I am proud to see you. I hope, Mr. Pip,
+you will excuse my sending round. I had the happiness to know you in
+former times, and the Drama has ever had a claim which has ever been
+acknowledged, on the noble and the affluent.”
+
+Meanwhile, Mr. Waldengarver, in a frightful perspiration, was trying to
+get himself out of his princely sables.
+
+“Skin the stockings off Mr. Waldengarver,” said the owner of that
+property, “or you’ll bust ’em. Bust ’em, and you’ll bust
+five-and-thirty shillings. Shakspeare never was complimented with a
+finer pair. Keep quiet in your chair now, and leave ’em to me.”
+
+With that, he went upon his knees, and began to flay his victim; who,
+on the first stocking coming off, would certainly have fallen over
+backward with his chair, but for there being no room to fall anyhow.
+
+I had been afraid until then to say a word about the play. But then,
+Mr. Waldengarver looked up at us complacently, and said,—
+
+“Gentlemen, how did it seem to you, to go, in front?”
+
+Herbert said from behind (at the same time poking me), “Capitally.” So
+I said “Capitally.”
+
+“How did you like my reading of the character, gentlemen?” said Mr.
+Waldengarver, almost, if not quite, with patronage.
+
+Herbert said from behind (again poking me), “Massive and concrete.” So
+I said boldly, as if I had originated it, and must beg to insist upon
+it, “Massive and concrete.”
+
+“I am glad to have your approbation, gentlemen,” said Mr. Waldengarver,
+with an air of dignity, in spite of his being ground against the wall
+at the time, and holding on by the seat of the chair.
+
+“But I’ll tell you one thing, Mr. Waldengarver,” said the man who was
+on his knees, “in which you’re out in your reading. Now mind! I don’t
+care who says contrairy; I tell you so. You’re out in your reading of
+Hamlet when you get your legs in profile. The last Hamlet as I dressed,
+made the same mistakes in his reading at rehearsal, till I got him to
+put a large red wafer on each of his shins, and then at that rehearsal
+(which was the last) I went in front, sir, to the back of the pit, and
+whenever his reading brought him into profile, I called out “I don’t
+see no wafers!” And at night his reading was lovely.”
+
+Mr. Waldengarver smiled at me, as much as to say “a faithful
+Dependent—I overlook his folly;” and then said aloud, “My view is a
+little classic and thoughtful for them here; but they will improve,
+they will improve.”
+
+Herbert and I said together, O, no doubt they would improve.
+
+“Did you observe, gentlemen,” said Mr. Waldengarver, “that there was a
+man in the gallery who endeavoured to cast derision on the service,—I
+mean, the representation?”
+
+We basely replied that we rather thought we had noticed such a man. I
+added, “He was drunk, no doubt.”
+
+“O dear no, sir,” said Mr. Wopsle, “not drunk. His employer would see
+to that, sir. His employer would not allow him to be drunk.”
+
+“You know his employer?” said I.
+
+Mr. Wopsle shut his eyes, and opened them again; performing both
+ceremonies very slowly. “You must have observed, gentlemen,” said he,
+“an ignorant and a blatant ass, with a rasping throat and a countenance
+expressive of low malignity, who went through—I will not say
+sustained—the rôle (if I may use a French expression) of Claudius, King
+of Denmark. That is his employer, gentlemen. Such is the profession!”
+
+Without distinctly knowing whether I should have been more sorry for
+Mr. Wopsle if he had been in despair, I was so sorry for him as it was,
+that I took the opportunity of his turning round to have his braces put
+on,—which jostled us out at the doorway,—to ask Herbert what he thought
+of having him home to supper? Herbert said he thought it would be kind
+to do so; therefore I invited him, and he went to Barnard’s with us,
+wrapped up to the eyes, and we did our best for him, and he sat until
+two o’clock in the morning, reviewing his success and developing his
+plans. I forget in detail what they were, but I have a general
+recollection that he was to begin with reviving the Drama, and to end
+with crushing it; inasmuch as his decease would leave it utterly bereft
+and without a chance or hope.
+
+Miserably I went to bed after all, and miserably thought of Estella,
+and miserably dreamed that my expectations were all cancelled, and that
+I had to give my hand in marriage to Herbert’s Clara, or play Hamlet to
+Miss Havisham’s Ghost, before twenty thousand people, without knowing
+twenty words of it.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXII.
+
+
+One day when I was busy with my books and Mr. Pocket, I received a note
+by the post, the mere outside of which threw me into a great flutter;
+for, though I had never seen the handwriting in which it was addressed,
+I divined whose hand it was. It had no set beginning, as Dear Mr. Pip,
+or Dear Pip, or Dear Sir, or Dear Anything, but ran thus:—
+
+“I am to come to London the day after to-morrow by the midday coach. I
+believe it was settled you should meet me? At all events Miss Havisham
+has that impression, and I write in obedience to it. She sends you her
+regard.
+
+
+“Yours, ESTELLA.”
+
+
+If there had been time, I should probably have ordered several suits of
+clothes for this occasion; but as there was not, I was fain to be
+content with those I had. My appetite vanished instantly, and I knew no
+peace or rest until the day arrived. Not that its arrival brought me
+either; for, then I was worse than ever, and began haunting the
+coach-office in Wood Street, Cheapside, before the coach had left the
+Blue Boar in our town. For all that I knew this perfectly well, I still
+felt as if it were not safe to let the coach-office be out of my sight
+longer than five minutes at a time; and in this condition of unreason I
+had performed the first half-hour of a watch of four or five hours,
+when Wemmick ran against me.
+
+“Halloa, Mr. Pip,” said he; “how do you do? I should hardly have
+thought this was _your_ beat.”
+
+I explained that I was waiting to meet somebody who was coming up by
+coach, and I inquired after the Castle and the Aged.
+
+“Both flourishing thankye,” said Wemmick, “and particularly the Aged.
+He’s in wonderful feather. He’ll be eighty-two next birthday. I have a
+notion of firing eighty-two times, if the neighbourhood shouldn’t
+complain, and that cannon of mine should prove equal to the pressure.
+However, this is not London talk. Where do you think I am going to?”
+
+“To the office?” said I, for he was tending in that direction.
+
+“Next thing to it,” returned Wemmick, “I am going to Newgate. We are in
+a banker’s-parcel case just at present, and I have been down the road
+taking a squint at the scene of action, and thereupon must have a word
+or two with our client.”
+
+“Did your client commit the robbery?” I asked.
+
+“Bless your soul and body, no,” answered Wemmick, very drily. “But he
+is accused of it. So might you or I be. Either of us might be accused
+of it, you know.”
+
+“Only neither of us is,” I remarked.
+
+“Yah!” said Wemmick, touching me on the breast with his forefinger;
+“you’re a deep one, Mr. Pip! Would you like to have a look at Newgate?
+Have you time to spare?”
+
+I had so much time to spare, that the proposal came as a relief,
+notwithstanding its irreconcilability with my latent desire to keep my
+eye on the coach-office. Muttering that I would make the inquiry
+whether I had time to walk with him, I went into the office, and
+ascertained from the clerk with the nicest precision and much to the
+trying of his temper, the earliest moment at which the coach could be
+expected,—which I knew beforehand, quite as well as he. I then rejoined
+Mr. Wemmick, and affecting to consult my watch, and to be surprised by
+the information I had received, accepted his offer.
+
+We were at Newgate in a few minutes, and we passed through the lodge
+where some fetters were hanging up on the bare walls among the prison
+rules, into the interior of the jail. At that time jails were much
+neglected, and the period of exaggerated reaction consequent on all
+public wrongdoing—and which is always its heaviest and longest
+punishment—was still far off. So, felons were not lodged and fed better
+than soldiers (to say nothing of paupers), and seldom set fire to their
+prisons with the excusable object of improving the flavour of their
+soup. It was visiting time when Wemmick took me in, and a potman was
+going his rounds with beer; and the prisoners, behind bars in yards,
+were buying beer, and talking to friends; and a frowzy, ugly,
+disorderly, depressing scene it was.
+
+It struck me that Wemmick walked among the prisoners much as a gardener
+might walk among his plants. This was first put into my head by his
+seeing a shoot that had come up in the night, and saying, “What,
+Captain Tom? Are _you_ there? Ah, indeed!” and also, “Is that Black
+Bill behind the cistern? Why I didn’t look for you these two months;
+how do you find yourself?” Equally in his stopping at the bars and
+attending to anxious whisperers,—always singly,—Wemmick with his
+post-office in an immovable state, looked at them while in conference,
+as if he were taking particular notice of the advance they had made,
+since last observed, towards coming out in full blow at their trial.
+
+He was highly popular, and I found that he took the familiar department
+of Mr. Jaggers’s business; though something of the state of Mr. Jaggers
+hung about him too, forbidding approach beyond certain limits. His
+personal recognition of each successive client was comprised in a nod,
+and in his settling his hat a little easier on his head with both
+hands, and then tightening the post-office, and putting his hands in
+his pockets. In one or two instances there was a difficulty respecting
+the raising of fees, and then Mr. Wemmick, backing as far as possible
+from the insufficient money produced, said, “it’s no use, my boy. I’m
+only a subordinate. I can’t take it. Don’t go on in that way with a
+subordinate. If you are unable to make up your quantum, my boy, you had
+better address yourself to a principal; there are plenty of principals
+in the profession, you know, and what is not worth the while of one,
+may be worth the while of another; that’s my recommendation to you,
+speaking as a subordinate. Don’t try on useless measures. Why should
+you? Now, who’s next?”
+
+Thus, we walked through Wemmick’s greenhouse, until he turned to me and
+said, “Notice the man I shall shake hands with.” I should have done so,
+without the preparation, as he had shaken hands with no one yet.
+
+Almost as soon as he had spoken, a portly upright man (whom I can see
+now, as I write) in a well-worn olive-coloured frock-coat, with a
+peculiar pallor overspreading the red in his complexion, and eyes that
+went wandering about when he tried to fix them, came up to a corner of
+the bars, and put his hand to his hat—which had a greasy and fatty
+surface like cold broth—with a half-serious and half-jocose military
+salute.
+
+“Colonel, to you!” said Wemmick; “how are you, Colonel?”
+
+“All right, Mr. Wemmick.”
+
+“Everything was done that could be done, but the evidence was too
+strong for us, Colonel.”
+
+“Yes, it was too strong, sir,—but _I_ don’t care.”
+
+“No, no,” said Wemmick, coolly, “_you_ don’t care.” Then, turning to
+me, “Served His Majesty this man. Was a soldier in the line and bought
+his discharge.”
+
+I said, “Indeed?” and the man’s eyes looked at me, and then looked over
+my head, and then looked all round me, and then he drew his hand across
+his lips and laughed.
+
+“I think I shall be out of this on Monday, sir,” he said to Wemmick.
+
+“Perhaps,” returned my friend, “but there’s no knowing.”
+
+“I am glad to have the chance of bidding you good-bye, Mr. Wemmick,”
+said the man, stretching out his hand between two bars.
+
+“Thankye,” said Wemmick, shaking hands with him. “Same to you,
+Colonel.”
+
+“If what I had upon me when taken had been real, Mr. Wemmick,” said the
+man, unwilling to let his hand go, “I should have asked the favour of
+your wearing another ring—in acknowledgment of your attentions.”
+
+“I’ll accept the will for the deed,” said Wemmick. “By the by; you were
+quite a pigeon-fancier.” The man looked up at the sky. “I am told you
+had a remarkable breed of tumblers. _Could_ you commission any friend
+of yours to bring me a pair, if you’ve no further use for ’em?”
+
+“It shall be done, sir.”
+
+“All right,” said Wemmick, “they shall be taken care of.
+Good-afternoon, Colonel. Good-bye!” They shook hands again, and as we
+walked away Wemmick said to me, “A Coiner, a very good workman. The
+Recorder’s report is made to-day, and he is sure to be executed on
+Monday. Still you see, as far as it goes, a pair of pigeons are
+portable property all the same.” With that, he looked back, and nodded
+at this dead plant, and then cast his eyes about him in walking out of
+the yard, as if he were considering what other pot would go best in its
+place.
+
+As we came out of the prison through the lodge, I found that the great
+importance of my guardian was appreciated by the turnkeys, no less than
+by those whom they held in charge. “Well, Mr. Wemmick,” said the
+turnkey, who kept us between the two studded and spiked lodge gates,
+and who carefully locked one before he unlocked the other, “what’s Mr.
+Jaggers going to do with that water-side murder? Is he going to make it
+manslaughter, or what’s he going to make of it?”
+
+“Why don’t you ask him?” returned Wemmick.
+
+“O yes, I dare say!” said the turnkey.
+
+“Now, that’s the way with them here, Mr. Pip,” remarked Wemmick,
+turning to me with his post-office elongated. “They don’t mind what
+they ask of me, the subordinate; but you’ll never catch ’em asking any
+questions of my principal.”
+
+“Is this young gentleman one of the ’prentices or articled ones of your
+office?” asked the turnkey, with a grin at Mr. Wemmick’s humour.
+
+“There he goes again, you see!” cried Wemmick, “I told you so! Asks
+another question of the subordinate before his first is dry! Well,
+supposing Mr. Pip is one of them?”
+
+“Why then,” said the turnkey, grinning again, “he knows what Mr.
+Jaggers is.”
+
+“Yah!” cried Wemmick, suddenly hitting out at the turnkey in a
+facetious way, “you’re dumb as one of your own keys when you have to do
+with my principal, you know you are. Let us out, you old fox, or I’ll
+get him to bring an action against you for false imprisonment.”
+
+The turnkey laughed, and gave us good day, and stood laughing at us
+over the spikes of the wicket when we descended the steps into the
+street.
+
+“Mind you, Mr. Pip,” said Wemmick, gravely in my ear, as he took my arm
+to be more confidential; “I don’t know that Mr. Jaggers does a better
+thing than the way in which he keeps himself so high. He’s always so
+high. His constant height is of a piece with his immense abilities.
+That Colonel durst no more take leave of _him_, than that turnkey durst
+ask him his intentions respecting a case. Then, between his height and
+them, he slips in his subordinate,—don’t you see?—and so he has ’em,
+soul and body.”
+
+I was very much impressed, and not for the first time, by my guardian’s
+subtlety. To confess the truth, I very heartily wished, and not for the
+first time, that I had had some other guardian of minor abilities.
+
+Mr. Wemmick and I parted at the office in Little Britain, where
+suppliants for Mr. Jaggers’s notice were lingering about as usual, and
+I returned to my watch in the street of the coach-office, with some
+three hours on hand. I consumed the whole time in thinking how strange
+it was that I should be encompassed by all this taint of prison and
+crime; that, in my childhood out on our lonely marshes on a winter
+evening, I should have first encountered it; that, it should have
+reappeared on two occasions, starting out like a stain that was faded
+but not gone; that, it should in this new way pervade my fortune and
+advancement. While my mind was thus engaged, I thought of the beautiful
+young Estella, proud and refined, coming towards me, and I thought with
+absolute abhorrence of the contrast between the jail and her. I wished
+that Wemmick had not met me, or that I had not yielded to him and gone
+with him, so that, of all days in the year on this day, I might not
+have had Newgate in my breath and on my clothes. I beat the prison dust
+off my feet as I sauntered to and fro, and I shook it out of my dress,
+and I exhaled its air from my lungs. So contaminated did I feel,
+remembering who was coming, that the coach came quickly after all, and
+I was not yet free from the soiling consciousness of Mr. Wemmick’s
+conservatory, when I saw her face at the coach window and her hand
+waving to me.
+
+What _was_ the nameless shadow which again in that one instant had
+passed?
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXIII.
+
+
+In her furred travelling-dress, Estella seemed more delicately
+beautiful than she had ever seemed yet, even in my eyes. Her manner was
+more winning than she had cared to let it be to me before, and I
+thought I saw Miss Havisham’s influence in the change.
+
+We stood in the Inn Yard while she pointed out her luggage to me, and
+when it was all collected I remembered—having forgotten everything but
+herself in the meanwhile—that I knew nothing of her destination.
+
+“I am going to Richmond,” she told me. “Our lesson is, that there are
+two Richmonds, one in Surrey and one in Yorkshire, and that mine is the
+Surrey Richmond. The distance is ten miles. I am to have a carriage,
+and you are to take me. This is my purse, and you are to pay my charges
+out of it. O, you must take the purse! We have no choice, you and I,
+but to obey our instructions. We are not free to follow our own
+devices, you and I.”
+
+As she looked at me in giving me the purse, I hoped there was an inner
+meaning in her words. She said them slightingly, but not with
+displeasure.
+
+“A carriage will have to be sent for, Estella. Will you rest here a
+little?”
+
+“Yes, I am to rest here a little, and I am to drink some tea, and you
+are to take care of me the while.”
+
+She drew her arm through mine, as if it must be done, and I requested a
+waiter who had been staring at the coach like a man who had never seen
+such a thing in his life, to show us a private sitting-room. Upon that,
+he pulled out a napkin, as if it were a magic clue without which he
+couldn’t find the way upstairs, and led us to the black hole of the
+establishment, fitted up with a diminishing mirror (quite a superfluous
+article, considering the hole’s proportions), an anchovy sauce-cruet,
+and somebody’s pattens. On my objecting to this retreat, he took us
+into another room with a dinner-table for thirty, and in the grate a
+scorched leaf of a copy-book under a bushel of coal-dust. Having looked
+at this extinct conflagration and shaken his head, he took my order;
+which, proving to be merely, “Some tea for the lady,” sent him out of
+the room in a very low state of mind.
+
+I was, and I am, sensible that the air of this chamber, in its strong
+combination of stable with soup-stock, might have led one to infer that
+the coaching department was not doing well, and that the enterprising
+proprietor was boiling down the horses for the refreshment department.
+Yet the room was all in all to me, Estella being in it. I thought that
+with her I could have been happy there for life. (I was not at all
+happy there at the time, observe, and I knew it well.)
+
+“Where are you going to, at Richmond?” I asked Estella.
+
+“I am going to live,” said she, “at a great expense, with a lady there,
+who has the power—or says she has—of taking me about, and introducing
+me, and showing people to me and showing me to people.”
+
+“I suppose you will be glad of variety and admiration?”
+
+“Yes, I suppose so.”
+
+She answered so carelessly, that I said, “You speak of yourself as if
+you were some one else.”
+
+“Where did you learn how I speak of others? Come, come,” said Estella,
+smiling delightfully, “you must not expect me to go to school to _you_;
+I must talk in my own way. How do you thrive with Mr. Pocket?”
+
+“I live quite pleasantly there; at least—” It appeared to me that I was
+losing a chance.
+
+“At least?” repeated Estella.
+
+“As pleasantly as I could anywhere, away from you.”
+
+“You silly boy,” said Estella, quite composedly, “how can you talk such
+nonsense? Your friend Mr. Matthew, I believe, is superior to the rest
+of his family?”
+
+“Very superior indeed. He is nobody’s enemy—”
+
+“Don’t add but his own,” interposed Estella, “for I hate that class of
+man. But he really is disinterested, and above small jealousy and
+spite, I have heard?”
+
+“I am sure I have every reason to say so.”
+
+“You have not every reason to say so of the rest of his people,” said
+Estella, nodding at me with an expression of face that was at once
+grave and rallying, “for they beset Miss Havisham with reports and
+insinuations to your disadvantage. They watch you, misrepresent you,
+write letters about you (anonymous sometimes), and you are the torment
+and the occupation of their lives. You can scarcely realise to yourself
+the hatred those people feel for you.”
+
+“They do me no harm, I hope?”
+
+Instead of answering, Estella burst out laughing. This was very
+singular to me, and I looked at her in considerable perplexity. When
+she left off—and she had not laughed languidly, but with real
+enjoyment—I said, in my diffident way with her,—
+
+“I hope I may suppose that you would not be amused if they did me any
+harm.”
+
+“No, no you may be sure of that,” said Estella. “You may be certain
+that I laugh because they fail. O, those people with Miss Havisham, and
+the tortures they undergo!” She laughed again, and even now when she
+had told me why, her laughter was very singular to me, for I could not
+doubt its being genuine, and yet it seemed too much for the occasion. I
+thought there must really be something more here than I knew; she saw
+the thought in my mind, and answered it.
+
+“It is not easy for even you.” said Estella, “to know what satisfaction
+it gives me to see those people thwarted, or what an enjoyable sense of
+the ridiculous I have when they are made ridiculous. For you were not
+brought up in that strange house from a mere baby. I was. You had not
+your little wits sharpened by their intriguing against you, suppressed
+and defenceless, under the mask of sympathy and pity and what not that
+is soft and soothing. I had. You did not gradually open your round
+childish eyes wider and wider to the discovery of that impostor of a
+woman who calculates her stores of peace of mind for when she wakes up
+in the night. I did.”
+
+It was no laughing matter with Estella now, nor was she summoning these
+remembrances from any shallow place. I would not have been the cause of
+that look of hers for all my expectations in a heap.
+
+“Two things I can tell you,” said Estella. “First, notwithstanding the
+proverb that constant dropping will wear away a stone, you may set your
+mind at rest that these people never will—never would in a hundred
+years—impair your ground with Miss Havisham, in any particular, great
+or small. Second, I am beholden to you as the cause of their being so
+busy and so mean in vain, and there is my hand upon it.”
+
+As she gave it to me playfully,—for her darker mood had been but
+momentary—I held it and put it to my lips. “You ridiculous boy,” said
+Estella, “will you never take warning? Or do you kiss my hand in the
+same spirit in which I once let you kiss my cheek?”
+
+“What spirit was that?” said I.
+
+“I must think a moment. A spirit of contempt for the fawners and
+plotters.”
+
+“If I say yes, may I kiss the cheek again?”
+
+“You should have asked before you touched the hand. But, yes, if you
+like.”
+
+I leaned down, and her calm face was like a statue’s. “Now,” said
+Estella, gliding away the instant I touched her cheek, “you are to take
+care that I have some tea, and you are to take me to Richmond.”
+
+Her reverting to this tone as if our association were forced upon us,
+and we were mere puppets, gave me pain; but everything in our
+intercourse did give me pain. Whatever her tone with me happened to be,
+I could put no trust in it, and build no hope on it; and yet I went on
+against trust and against hope. Why repeat it a thousand times? So it
+always was.
+
+I rang for the tea, and the waiter, reappearing with his magic clue,
+brought in by degrees some fifty adjuncts to that refreshment, but of
+tea not a glimpse. A teaboard, cups and saucers, plates, knives and
+forks (including carvers), spoons (various), salt-cellars, a meek
+little muffin confined with the utmost precaution under a strong iron
+cover, Moses in the bulrushes typified by a soft bit of butter in a
+quantity of parsley, a pale loaf with a powdered head, two proof
+impressions of the bars of the kitchen fireplace on triangular bits of
+bread, and ultimately a fat family urn; which the waiter staggered in
+with, expressing in his countenance burden and suffering. After a
+prolonged absence at this stage of the entertainment, he at length came
+back with a casket of precious appearance containing twigs. These I
+steeped in hot water, and so from the whole of these appliances
+extracted one cup of I don’t know what for Estella.
+
+The bill paid, and the waiter remembered, and the ostler not forgotten,
+and the chambermaid taken into consideration,—in a word, the whole
+house bribed into a state of contempt and animosity, and Estella’s
+purse much lightened,—we got into our post-coach and drove away.
+Turning into Cheapside and rattling up Newgate Street, we were soon
+under the walls of which I was so ashamed.
+
+“What place is that?” Estella asked me.
+
+I made a foolish pretence of not at first recognising it, and then told
+her. As she looked at it, and drew in her head again, murmuring,
+“Wretches!” I would not have confessed to my visit for any
+consideration.
+
+“Mr. Jaggers,” said I, by way of putting it neatly on somebody else,
+“has the reputation of being more in the secrets of that dismal place
+than any man in London.”
+
+“He is more in the secrets of every place, I think,” said Estella, in a
+low voice.
+
+“You have been accustomed to see him often, I suppose?”
+
+“I have been accustomed to see him at uncertain intervals, ever since I
+can remember. But I know him no better now, than I did before I could
+speak plainly. What is your own experience of him? Do you advance with
+him?”
+
+“Once habituated to his distrustful manner,” said I, “I have done very
+well.”
+
+“Are you intimate?”
+
+“I have dined with him at his private house.”
+
+“I fancy,” said Estella, shrinking “that must be a curious place.”
+
+“It is a curious place.”
+
+I should have been chary of discussing my guardian too freely even with
+her; but I should have gone on with the subject so far as to describe
+the dinner in Gerrard Street, if we had not then come into a sudden
+glare of gas. It seemed, while it lasted, to be all alight and alive
+with that inexplicable feeling I had had before; and when we were out
+of it, I was as much dazed for a few moments as if I had been in
+lightning.
+
+So we fell into other talk, and it was principally about the way by
+which we were travelling, and about what parts of London lay on this
+side of it, and what on that. The great city was almost new to her, she
+told me, for she had never left Miss Havisham’s neighbourhood until she
+had gone to France, and she had merely passed through London then in
+going and returning. I asked her if my guardian had any charge of her
+while she remained here? To that she emphatically said “God forbid!”
+and no more.
+
+It was impossible for me to avoid seeing that she cared to attract me;
+that she made herself winning, and would have won me even if the task
+had needed pains. Yet this made me none the happier, for even if she
+had not taken that tone of our being disposed of by others, I should
+have felt that she held my heart in her hand because she wilfully chose
+to do it, and not because it would have wrung any tenderness in her to
+crush it and throw it away.
+
+When we passed through Hammersmith, I showed her where Mr. Matthew
+Pocket lived, and said it was no great way from Richmond, and that I
+hoped I should see her sometimes.
+
+“O yes, you are to see me; you are to come when you think proper; you
+are to be mentioned to the family; indeed you are already mentioned.”
+
+I inquired was it a large household she was going to be a member of?
+
+“No; there are only two; mother and daughter. The mother is a lady of
+some station, though not averse to increasing her income.”
+
+“I wonder Miss Havisham could part with you again so soon.”
+
+“It is a part of Miss Havisham’s plans for me, Pip,” said Estella, with
+a sigh, as if she were tired; “I am to write to her constantly and see
+her regularly and report how I go on,—I and the jewels,—for they are
+nearly all mine now.”
+
+It was the first time she had ever called me by my name. Of course she
+did so purposely, and knew that I should treasure it up.
+
+We came to Richmond all too soon, and our destination there was a house
+by the green,—a staid old house, where hoops and powder and patches,
+embroidered coats, rolled stockings, ruffles and swords, had had their
+court days many a time. Some ancient trees before the house were still
+cut into fashions as formal and unnatural as the hoops and wigs and
+stiff skirts; but their own allotted places in the great procession of
+the dead were not far off, and they would soon drop into them and go
+the silent way of the rest.
+
+A bell with an old voice—which I dare say in its time had often said to
+the house, Here is the green farthingale, Here is the diamond-hilted
+sword, Here are the shoes with red heels and the blue solitaire—sounded
+gravely in the moonlight, and two cherry-coloured maids came fluttering
+out to receive Estella. The doorway soon absorbed her boxes, and she
+gave me her hand and a smile, and said good-night, and was absorbed
+likewise. And still I stood looking at the house, thinking how happy I
+should be if I lived there with her, and knowing that I never was happy
+with her, but always miserable.
+
+I got into the carriage to be taken back to Hammersmith, and I got in
+with a bad heart-ache, and I got out with a worse heart-ache. At our
+own door, I found little Jane Pocket coming home from a little party
+escorted by her little lover; and I envied her little lover, in spite
+of his being subject to Flopson.
+
+Mr. Pocket was out lecturing; for, he was a most delightful lecturer on
+domestic economy, and his treatises on the management of children and
+servants were considered the very best text-books on those themes. But
+Mrs. Pocket was at home, and was in a little difficulty, on account of
+the baby’s having been accommodated with a needle-case to keep him
+quiet during the unaccountable absence (with a relative in the Foot
+Guards) of Millers. And more needles were missing than it could be
+regarded as quite wholesome for a patient of such tender years either
+to apply externally or to take as a tonic.
+
+Mr. Pocket being justly celebrated for giving most excellent practical
+advice, and for having a clear and sound perception of things and a
+highly judicious mind, I had some notion in my heart-ache of begging
+him to accept my confidence. But happening to look up at Mrs. Pocket as
+she sat reading her book of dignities after prescribing Bed as a
+sovereign remedy for baby, I thought—Well—No, I wouldn’t.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXIV.
+
+
+As I had grown accustomed to my expectations, I had insensibly begun to
+notice their effect upon myself and those around me. Their influence on
+my own character I disguised from my recognition as much as possible,
+but I knew very well that it was not all good. I lived in a state of
+chronic uneasiness respecting my behaviour to Joe. My conscience was
+not by any means comfortable about Biddy. When I woke up in the
+night,—like Camilla,—I used to think, with a weariness on my spirits,
+that I should have been happier and better if I had never seen Miss
+Havisham’s face, and had risen to manhood content to be partners with
+Joe in the honest old forge. Many a time of an evening, when I sat
+alone looking at the fire, I thought, after all there was no fire like
+the forge fire and the kitchen fire at home.
+
+Yet Estella was so inseparable from all my restlessness and disquiet of
+mind, that I really fell into confusion as to the limits of my own part
+in its production. That is to say, supposing I had had no expectations,
+and yet had had Estella to think of, I could not make out to my
+satisfaction that I should have done much better. Now, concerning the
+influence of my position on others, I was in no such difficulty, and so
+I perceived—though dimly enough perhaps—that it was not beneficial to
+anybody, and, above all, that it was not beneficial to Herbert. My
+lavish habits led his easy nature into expenses that he could not
+afford, corrupted the simplicity of his life, and disturbed his peace
+with anxieties and regrets. I was not at all remorseful for having
+unwittingly set those other branches of the Pocket family to the poor
+arts they practised; because such littlenesses were their natural bent,
+and would have been evoked by anybody else, if I had left them
+slumbering. But Herbert’s was a very different case, and it often
+caused me a twinge to think that I had done him evil service in
+crowding his sparely furnished chambers with incongruous upholstery
+work, and placing the Canary-breasted Avenger at his disposal.
+
+So now, as an infallible way of making little ease great ease, I began
+to contract a quantity of debt. I could hardly begin but Herbert must
+begin too, so he soon followed. At Startop’s suggestion, we put
+ourselves down for election into a club called The Finches of the
+Grove: the object of which institution I have never divined, if it were
+not that the members should dine expensively once a fortnight, to
+quarrel among themselves as much as possible after dinner, and to cause
+six waiters to get drunk on the stairs. I know that these gratifying
+social ends were so invariably accomplished, that Herbert and I
+understood nothing else to be referred to in the first standing toast
+of the society: which ran “Gentlemen, may the present promotion of good
+feeling ever reign predominant among the Finches of the Grove.”
+
+The Finches spent their money foolishly (the Hotel we dined at was in
+Covent Garden), and the first Finch I saw when I had the honour of
+joining the Grove was Bentley Drummle, at that time floundering about
+town in a cab of his own, and doing a great deal of damage to the posts
+at the street corners. Occasionally, he shot himself out of his
+equipage headforemost over the apron; and I saw him on one occasion
+deliver himself at the door of the Grove in this unintentional way—like
+coals. But here I anticipate a little, for I was not a Finch, and could
+not be, according to the sacred laws of the society, until I came of
+age.
+
+In my confidence in my own resources, I would willingly have taken
+Herbert’s expenses on myself; but Herbert was proud, and I could make
+no such proposal to him. So he got into difficulties in every
+direction, and continued to look about him. When we gradually fell into
+keeping late hours and late company, I noticed that he looked about him
+with a desponding eye at breakfast-time; that he began to look about
+him more hopefully about midday; that he drooped when he came into
+dinner; that he seemed to descry Capital in the distance, rather
+clearly, after dinner; that he all but realised Capital towards
+midnight; and that at about two o’clock in the morning, he became so
+deeply despondent again as to talk of buying a rifle and going to
+America, with a general purpose of compelling buffaloes to make his
+fortune.
+
+I was usually at Hammersmith about half the week, and when I was at
+Hammersmith I haunted Richmond, whereof separately by and by. Herbert
+would often come to Hammersmith when I was there, and I think at those
+seasons his father would occasionally have some passing perception that
+the opening he was looking for, had not appeared yet. But in the
+general tumbling up of the family, his tumbling out in life somewhere,
+was a thing to transact itself somehow. In the meantime Mr. Pocket grew
+greyer, and tried oftener to lift himself out of his perplexities by
+the hair. While Mrs. Pocket tripped up the family with her footstool,
+read her book of dignities, lost her pocket-handkerchief, told us about
+her grandpapa, and taught the young idea how to shoot, by shooting it
+into bed whenever it attracted her notice.
+
+As I am now generalising a period of my life with the object of
+clearing my way before me, I can scarcely do so better than by at once
+completing the description of our usual manners and customs at
+Barnard’s Inn.
+
+We spent as much money as we could, and got as little for it as people
+could make up their minds to give us. We were always more or less
+miserable, and most of our acquaintance were in the same condition.
+There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying
+ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the best of my
+belief, our case was in the last aspect a rather common one.
+
+Every morning, with an air ever new, Herbert went into the City to look
+about him. I often paid him a visit in the dark back-room in which he
+consorted with an ink-jar, a hat-peg, a coal-box, a string-box, an
+almanac, a desk and stool, and a ruler; and I do not remember that I
+ever saw him do anything else but look about him. If we all did what we
+undertake to do, as faithfully as Herbert did, we might live in a
+Republic of the Virtues. He had nothing else to do, poor fellow, except
+at a certain hour of every afternoon to “go to Lloyd’s”—in observance
+of a ceremony of seeing his principal, I think. He never did anything
+else in connection with Lloyd’s that I could find out, except come back
+again. When he felt his case unusually serious, and that he positively
+must find an opening, he would go on ’Change at a busy time, and walk
+in and out, in a kind of gloomy country dance figure, among the
+assembled magnates. “For,” says Herbert to me, coming home to dinner on
+one of those special occasions, “I find the truth to be, Handel, that
+an opening won’t come to one, but one must go to it,—so I have been.”
+
+If we had been less attached to one another, I think we must have hated
+one another regularly every morning. I detested the chambers beyond
+expression at that period of repentance, and could not endure the sight
+of the Avenger’s livery; which had a more expensive and a less
+remunerative appearance then than at any other time in the
+four-and-twenty hours. As we got more and more into debt, breakfast
+became a hollower and hollower form, and, being on one occasion at
+breakfast-time threatened (by letter) with legal proceedings, “not
+unwholly unconnected,” as my local paper might put it, “with jewelery,”
+I went so far as to seize the Avenger by his blue collar and shake him
+off his feet,—so that he was actually in the air, like a booted
+Cupid,—for presuming to suppose that we wanted a roll.
+
+At certain times—meaning at uncertain times, for they depended on our
+humour—I would say to Herbert, as if it were a remarkable discovery,—
+
+“My dear Herbert, we are getting on badly.”
+
+“My dear Handel,” Herbert would say to me, in all sincerity, “if you
+will believe me, those very words were on my lips, by a strange
+coincidence.”
+
+“Then, Herbert,” I would respond, “let us look into our affairs.”
+
+We always derived profound satisfaction from making an appointment for
+this purpose. I always thought this was business, this was the way to
+confront the thing, this was the way to take the foe by the throat. And
+I know Herbert thought so too.
+
+We ordered something rather special for dinner, with a bottle of
+something similarly out of the common way, in order that our minds
+might be fortified for the occasion, and we might come well up to the
+mark. Dinner over, we produced a bundle of pens, a copious supply of
+ink, and a goodly show of writing and blotting paper. For there was
+something very comfortable in having plenty of stationery.
+
+I would then take a sheet of paper, and write across the top of it, in
+a neat hand, the heading, “Memorandum of Pip’s debts”; with Barnard’s
+Inn and the date very carefully added. Herbert would also take a sheet
+of paper, and write across it with similar formalities, “Memorandum of
+Herbert’s debts.”
+
+Each of us would then refer to a confused heap of papers at his side,
+which had been thrown into drawers, worn into holes in pockets, half
+burnt in lighting candles, stuck for weeks into the looking-glass, and
+otherwise damaged. The sound of our pens going refreshed us
+exceedingly, insomuch that I sometimes found it difficult to
+distinguish between this edifying business proceeding and actually
+paying the money. In point of meritorious character, the two things
+seemed about equal.
+
+When we had written a little while, I would ask Herbert how he got on?
+Herbert probably would have been scratching his head in a most rueful
+manner at the sight of his accumulating figures.
+
+“They are mounting up, Handel,” Herbert would say; “upon my life, they
+are mounting up.”
+
+“Be firm, Herbert,” I would retort, plying my own pen with great
+assiduity. “Look the thing in the face. Look into your affairs. Stare
+them out of countenance.”
+
+“So I would, Handel, only they are staring _me_ out of countenance.”
+
+However, my determined manner would have its effect, and Herbert would
+fall to work again. After a time he would give up once more, on the
+plea that he had not got Cobbs’s bill, or Lobbs’s, or Nobbs’s, as the
+case might be.
+
+“Then, Herbert, estimate; estimate it in round numbers, and put it
+down.”
+
+“What a fellow of resource you are!” my friend would reply, with
+admiration. “Really your business powers are very remarkable.”
+
+I thought so too. I established with myself, on these occasions, the
+reputation of a first-rate man of business,—prompt, decisive,
+energetic, clear, cool-headed. When I had got all my responsibilities
+down upon my list, I compared each with the bill, and ticked it off. My
+self-approval when I ticked an entry was quite a luxurious sensation.
+When I had no more ticks to make, I folded all my bills up uniformly,
+docketed each on the back, and tied the whole into a symmetrical
+bundle. Then I did the same for Herbert (who modestly said he had not
+my administrative genius), and felt that I had brought his affairs into
+a focus for him.
+
+My business habits had one other bright feature, which I called
+“leaving a Margin.” For example; supposing Herbert’s debts to be one
+hundred and sixty-four pounds four-and-twopence, I would say, “Leave a
+margin, and put them down at two hundred.” Or, supposing my own to be
+four times as much, I would leave a margin, and put them down at seven
+hundred. I had the highest opinion of the wisdom of this same Margin,
+but I am bound to acknowledge that on looking back, I deem it to have
+been an expensive device. For, we always ran into new debt immediately,
+to the full extent of the margin, and sometimes, in the sense of
+freedom and solvency it imparted, got pretty far on into another
+margin.
+
+But there was a calm, a rest, a virtuous hush, consequent on these
+examinations of our affairs that gave me, for the time, an admirable
+opinion of myself. Soothed by my exertions, my method, and Herbert’s
+compliments, I would sit with his symmetrical bundle and my own on the
+table before me among the stationery, and feel like a Bank of some
+sort, rather than a private individual.
+
+We shut our outer door on these solemn occasions, in order that we
+might not be interrupted. I had fallen into my serene state one
+evening, when we heard a letter dropped through the slit in the said
+door, and fall on the ground. “It’s for you, Handel,” said Herbert,
+going out and coming back with it, “and I hope there is nothing the
+matter.” This was in allusion to its heavy black seal and border.
+
+The letter was signed Trabb & Co., and its contents were simply, that I
+was an honoured sir, and that they begged to inform me that Mrs. J.
+Gargery had departed this life on Monday last at twenty minutes past
+six in the evening, and that my attendance was requested at the
+interment on Monday next at three o’clock in the afternoon.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXV.
+
+
+It was the first time that a grave had opened in my road of life, and
+the gap it made in the smooth ground was wonderful. The figure of my
+sister in her chair by the kitchen fire, haunted me night and day. That
+the place could possibly be, without her, was something my mind seemed
+unable to compass; and whereas she had seldom or never been in my
+thoughts of late, I had now the strangest ideas that she was coming
+towards me in the street, or that she would presently knock at the
+door. In my rooms too, with which she had never been at all associated,
+there was at once the blankness of death and a perpetual suggestion of
+the sound of her voice or the turn of her face or figure, as if she
+were still alive and had been often there.
+
+Whatever my fortunes might have been, I could scarcely have recalled my
+sister with much tenderness. But I suppose there is a shock of regret
+which may exist without much tenderness. Under its influence (and
+perhaps to make up for the want of the softer feeling) I was seized
+with a violent indignation against the assailant from whom she had
+suffered so much; and I felt that on sufficient proof I could have
+revengefully pursued Orlick, or any one else, to the last extremity.
+
+Having written to Joe, to offer him consolation, and to assure him that
+I would come to the funeral, I passed the intermediate days in the
+curious state of mind I have glanced at. I went down early in the
+morning, and alighted at the Blue Boar in good time to walk over to the
+forge.
+
+It was fine summer weather again, and, as I walked along, the times
+when I was a little helpless creature, and my sister did not spare me,
+vividly returned. But they returned with a gentle tone upon them that
+softened even the edge of Tickler. For now, the very breath of the
+beans and clover whispered to my heart that the day must come when it
+would be well for my memory that others walking in the sunshine should
+be softened as they thought of me.
+
+At last I came within sight of the house, and saw that Trabb and Co.
+had put in a funereal execution and taken possession. Two dismally
+absurd persons, each ostentatiously exhibiting a crutch done up in a
+black bandage,—as if that instrument could possibly communicate any
+comfort to anybody,—were posted at the front door; and in one of them I
+recognised a postboy discharged from the Boar for turning a young
+couple into a sawpit on their bridal morning, in consequence of
+intoxication rendering it necessary for him to ride his horse clasped
+round the neck with both arms. All the children of the village, and
+most of the women, were admiring these sable warders and the closed
+windows of the house and forge; and as I came up, one of the two
+warders (the postboy) knocked at the door,—implying that I was far too
+much exhausted by grief to have strength remaining to knock for myself.
+
+Another sable warder (a carpenter, who had once eaten two geese for a
+wager) opened the door, and showed me into the best parlour. Here, Mr.
+Trabb had taken unto himself the best table, and had got all the leaves
+up, and was holding a kind of black Bazaar, with the aid of a quantity
+of black pins. At the moment of my arrival, he had just finished
+putting somebody’s hat into black long-clothes, like an African baby;
+so he held out his hand for mine. But I, misled by the action, and
+confused by the occasion, shook hands with him with every testimony of
+warm affection.
+
+Poor dear Joe, entangled in a little black cloak tied in a large bow
+under his chin, was seated apart at the upper end of the room; where,
+as chief mourner, he had evidently been stationed by Trabb. When I bent
+down and said to him, “Dear Joe, how are you?” he said, “Pip, old chap,
+you knowed her when she were a fine figure of a—” and clasped my hand
+and said no more.
+
+Biddy, looking very neat and modest in her black dress, went quietly
+here and there, and was very helpful. When I had spoken to Biddy, as I
+thought it not a time for talking I went and sat down near Joe, and
+there began to wonder in what part of the house it—she—my sister—was.
+The air of the parlour being faint with the smell of sweet-cake, I
+looked about for the table of refreshments; it was scarcely visible
+until one had got accustomed to the gloom, but there was a cut-up plum
+cake upon it, and there were cut-up oranges, and sandwiches, and
+biscuits, and two decanters that I knew very well as ornaments, but had
+never seen used in all my life; one full of port, and one of sherry.
+Standing at this table, I became conscious of the servile Pumblechook
+in a black cloak and several yards of hatband, who was alternately
+stuffing himself, and making obsequious movements to catch my
+attention. The moment he succeeded, he came over to me (breathing
+sherry and crumbs), and said in a subdued voice, “May I, dear sir?” and
+did. I then descried Mr. and Mrs. Hubble; the last-named in a decent
+speechless paroxysm in a corner. We were all going to “follow,” and
+were all in course of being tied up separately (by Trabb) into
+ridiculous bundles.
+
+“Which I meantersay, Pip,” Joe whispered me, as we were being what Mr.
+Trabb called “formed” in the parlour, two and two,—and it was
+dreadfully like a preparation for some grim kind of dance; “which I
+meantersay, sir, as I would in preference have carried her to the
+church myself, along with three or four friendly ones wot come to it
+with willing harts and arms, but it were considered wot the neighbours
+would look down on such and would be of opinions as it were wanting in
+respect.”
+
+“Pocket-handkerchiefs out, all!” cried Mr. Trabb at this point, in a
+depressed business-like voice. “Pocket-handkerchiefs out! We are
+ready!”
+
+So we all put our pocket-handkerchiefs to our faces, as if our noses
+were bleeding, and filed out two and two; Joe and I; Biddy and
+Pumblechook; Mr. and Mrs. Hubble. The remains of my poor sister had
+been brought round by the kitchen door, and, it being a point of
+Undertaking ceremony that the six bearers must be stifled and blinded
+under a horrible black velvet housing with a white border, the whole
+looked like a blind monster with twelve human legs, shuffling and
+blundering along, under the guidance of two keepers,—the postboy and
+his comrade.
+
+The neighbourhood, however, highly approved of these arrangements, and
+we were much admired as we went through the village; the more youthful
+and vigorous part of the community making dashes now and then to cut us
+off, and lying in wait to intercept us at points of vantage. At such
+times the more exuberant among them called out in an excited manner on
+our emergence round some corner of expectancy, “_Here_ they come!”
+“_Here_ they are!” and we were all but cheered. In this progress I was
+much annoyed by the abject Pumblechook, who, being behind me, persisted
+all the way as a delicate attention in arranging my streaming hatband,
+and smoothing my cloak. My thoughts were further distracted by the
+excessive pride of Mr. and Mrs. Hubble, who were surpassingly conceited
+and vainglorious in being members of so distinguished a procession.
+
+And now the range of marshes lay clear before us, with the sails of the
+ships on the river growing out of it; and we went into the churchyard,
+close to the graves of my unknown parents, Philip Pirrip, late of this
+parish, and Also Georgiana, Wife of the Above. And there, my sister was
+laid quietly in the earth, while the larks sang high above it, and the
+light wind strewed it with beautiful shadows of clouds and trees.
+
+Of the conduct of the worldly minded Pumblechook while this was doing,
+I desire to say no more than it was all addressed to me; and that even
+when those noble passages were read which remind humanity how it
+brought nothing into the world and can take nothing out, and how it
+fleeth like a shadow and never continueth long in one stay, I heard him
+cough a reservation of the case of a young gentleman who came
+unexpectedly into large property. When we got back, he had the
+hardihood to tell me that he wished my sister could have known I had
+done her so much honour, and to hint that she would have considered it
+reasonably purchased at the price of her death. After that, he drank
+all the rest of the sherry, and Mr. Hubble drank the port, and the two
+talked (which I have since observed to be customary in such cases) as
+if they were of quite another race from the deceased, and were
+notoriously immortal. Finally, he went away with Mr. and Mrs.
+Hubble,—to make an evening of it, I felt sure, and to tell the Jolly
+Bargemen that he was the founder of my fortunes and my earliest
+benefactor.
+
+When they were all gone, and when Trabb and his men—but not his Boy; I
+looked for him—had crammed their mummery into bags, and were gone too,
+the house felt wholesomer. Soon afterwards, Biddy, Joe, and I, had a
+cold dinner together; but we dined in the best parlour, not in the old
+kitchen, and Joe was so exceedingly particular what he did with his
+knife and fork and the saltcellar and what not, that there was great
+restraint upon us. But after dinner, when I made him take his pipe, and
+when I had loitered with him about the forge, and when we sat down
+together on the great block of stone outside it, we got on better. I
+noticed that after the funeral Joe changed his clothes so far, as to
+make a compromise between his Sunday dress and working dress; in which
+the dear fellow looked natural, and like the Man he was.
+
+He was very much pleased by my asking if I might sleep in my own little
+room, and I was pleased too; for I felt that I had done rather a great
+thing in making the request. When the shadows of evening were closing
+in, I took an opportunity of getting into the garden with Biddy for a
+little talk.
+
+“Biddy,” said I, “I think you might have written to me about these sad
+matters.”
+
+“Do you, Mr. Pip?” said Biddy. “I should have written if I had thought
+that.”
+
+“Don’t suppose that I mean to be unkind, Biddy, when I say I consider
+that you ought to have thought that.”
+
+“Do you, Mr. Pip?”
+
+She was so quiet, and had such an orderly, good, and pretty way with
+her, that I did not like the thought of making her cry again. After
+looking a little at her downcast eyes as she walked beside me, I gave
+up that point.
+
+“I suppose it will be difficult for you to remain here now, Biddy
+dear?”
+
+“Oh! I can’t do so, Mr. Pip,” said Biddy, in a tone of regret but still
+of quiet conviction. “I have been speaking to Mrs. Hubble, and I am
+going to her to-morrow. I hope we shall be able to take some care of
+Mr. Gargery, together, until he settles down.”
+
+“How are you going to live, Biddy? If you want any mo—”
+
+“How am I going to live?” repeated Biddy, striking in, with a momentary
+flush upon her face. “I’ll tell you, Mr. Pip. I am going to try to get
+the place of mistress in the new school nearly finished here. I can be
+well recommended by all the neighbours, and I hope I can be industrious
+and patient, and teach myself while I teach others. You know, Mr. Pip,”
+pursued Biddy, with a smile, as she raised her eyes to my face, “the
+new schools are not like the old, but I learnt a good deal from you
+after that time, and have had time since then to improve.”
+
+“I think you would always improve, Biddy, under any circumstances.”
+
+“Ah! Except in my bad side of human nature,” murmured Biddy.
+
+It was not so much a reproach as an irresistible thinking aloud. Well!
+I thought I would give up that point too. So, I walked a little further
+with Biddy, looking silently at her downcast eyes.
+
+“I have not heard the particulars of my sister’s death, Biddy.”
+
+“They are very slight, poor thing. She had been in one of her bad
+states—though they had got better of late, rather than worse—for four
+days, when she came out of it in the evening, just at tea-time, and
+said quite plainly, ‘Joe.’ As she had never said any word for a long
+while, I ran and fetched in Mr. Gargery from the forge. She made signs
+to me that she wanted him to sit down close to her, and wanted me to
+put her arms round his neck. So I put them round his neck, and she laid
+her head down on his shoulder quite content and satisfied. And so she
+presently said ‘Joe’ again, and once ‘Pardon,’ and once ‘Pip.’ And so
+she never lifted her head up any more, and it was just an hour later
+when we laid it down on her own bed, because we found she was gone.”
+
+Biddy cried; the darkening garden, and the lane, and the stars that
+were coming out, were blurred in my own sight.
+
+“Nothing was ever discovered, Biddy?”
+
+“Nothing.”
+
+“Do you know what is become of Orlick?”
+
+“I should think from the colour of his clothes that he is working in
+the quarries.”
+
+“Of course you have seen him then?—Why are you looking at that dark
+tree in the lane?”
+
+“I saw him there, on the night she died.”
+
+“That was not the last time either, Biddy?”
+
+“No; I have seen him there, since we have been walking here.—It is of
+no use,” said Biddy, laying her hand upon my arm, as I was for running
+out, “you know I would not deceive you; he was not there a minute, and
+he is gone.”
+
+It revived my utmost indignation to find that she was still pursued by
+this fellow, and I felt inveterate against him. I told her so, and told
+her that I would spend any money or take any pains to drive him out of
+that country. By degrees she led me into more temperate talk, and she
+told me how Joe loved me, and how Joe never complained of anything,—she
+didn’t say, of me; she had no need; I knew what she meant,—but ever did
+his duty in his way of life, with a strong hand, a quiet tongue, and a
+gentle heart.
+
+“Indeed, it would be hard to say too much for him,” said I; “and Biddy,
+we must often speak of these things, for of course I shall be often
+down here now. I am not going to leave poor Joe alone.”
+
+Biddy said never a single word.
+
+“Biddy, don’t you hear me?”
+
+“Yes, Mr. Pip.”
+
+“Not to mention your calling me Mr. Pip,—which appears to me to be in
+bad taste, Biddy,—what do you mean?”
+
+“What do I mean?” asked Biddy, timidly.
+
+“Biddy,” said I, in a virtuously self-asserting manner, “I must request
+to know what you mean by this?”
+
+“By this?” said Biddy.
+
+“Now, don’t echo,” I retorted. “You used not to echo, Biddy.”
+
+“Used not!” said Biddy. “O Mr. Pip! Used!”
+
+Well! I rather thought I would give up that point too. After another
+silent turn in the garden, I fell back on the main position.
+
+“Biddy,” said I, “I made a remark respecting my coming down here often,
+to see Joe, which you received with a marked silence. Have the
+goodness, Biddy, to tell me why.”
+
+“Are you quite sure, then, that you WILL come to see him often?” asked
+Biddy, stopping in the narrow garden walk, and looking at me under the
+stars with a clear and honest eye.
+
+“O dear me!” said I, as if I found myself compelled to give up Biddy in
+despair. “This really is a very bad side of human nature! Don’t say any
+more, if you please, Biddy. This shocks me very much.”
+
+For which cogent reason I kept Biddy at a distance during supper, and
+when I went up to my own old little room, took as stately a leave of
+her as I could, in my murmuring soul, deem reconcilable with the
+churchyard and the event of the day. As often as I was restless in the
+night, and that was every quarter of an hour, I reflected what an
+unkindness, what an injury, what an injustice, Biddy had done me.
+
+Early in the morning I was to go. Early in the morning I was out, and
+looking in, unseen, at one of the wooden windows of the forge. There I
+stood, for minutes, looking at Joe, already at work with a glow of
+health and strength upon his face that made it show as if the bright
+sun of the life in store for him were shining on it.
+
+“Good-bye, dear Joe!—No, don’t wipe it off—for God’s sake, give me your
+blackened hand!—I shall be down soon and often.”
+
+[Illustration]
+
+“Never too soon, sir,” said Joe, “and never too often, Pip!”
+
+Biddy was waiting for me at the kitchen door, with a mug of new milk
+and a crust of bread. “Biddy,” said I, when I gave her my hand at
+parting, “I am not angry, but I am hurt.”
+
+“No, don’t be hurt,” she pleaded quite pathetically; “let only me be
+hurt, if I have been ungenerous.”
+
+Once more, the mists were rising as I walked away. If they disclosed to
+me, as I suspect they did, that I should _not_ come back, and that
+Biddy was quite right, all I can say is,—they were quite right too.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVI.
+
+
+Herbert and I went on from bad to worse, in the way of increasing our
+debts, looking into our affairs, leaving Margins, and the like
+exemplary transactions; and Time went on, whether or no, as he has a
+way of doing; and I came of age,—in fulfilment of Herbert’s prediction,
+that I should do so before I knew where I was.
+
+Herbert himself had come of age eight months before me. As he had
+nothing else than his majority to come into, the event did not make a
+profound sensation in Barnard’s Inn. But we had looked forward to my
+one-and-twentieth birthday, with a crowd of speculations and
+anticipations, for we had both considered that my guardian could hardly
+help saying something definite on that occasion.
+
+I had taken care to have it well understood in Little Britain when my
+birthday was. On the day before it, I received an official note from
+Wemmick, informing me that Mr. Jaggers would be glad if I would call
+upon him at five in the afternoon of the auspicious day. This convinced
+us that something great was to happen, and threw me into an unusual
+flutter when I repaired to my guardian’s office, a model of
+punctuality.
+
+In the outer office Wemmick offered me his congratulations, and
+incidentally rubbed the side of his nose with a folded piece of
+tissue-paper that I liked the look of. But he said nothing respecting
+it, and motioned me with a nod into my guardian’s room. It was
+November, and my guardian was standing before his fire leaning his back
+against the chimney-piece, with his hands under his coattails.
+
+“Well, Pip,” said he, “I must call you Mr. Pip to-day. Congratulations,
+Mr. Pip.”
+
+We shook hands,—he was always a remarkably short shaker,—and I thanked
+him.
+
+“Take a chair, Mr. Pip,” said my guardian.
+
+As I sat down, and he preserved his attitude and bent his brows at his
+boots, I felt at a disadvantage, which reminded me of that old time
+when I had been put upon a tombstone. The two ghastly casts on the
+shelf were not far from him, and their expression was as if they were
+making a stupid apoplectic attempt to attend to the conversation.
+
+“Now my young friend,” my guardian began, as if I were a witness in the
+box, “I am going to have a word or two with you.”
+
+“If you please, sir.”
+
+“What do you suppose,” said Mr. Jaggers, bending forward to look at the
+ground, and then throwing his head back to look at the ceiling,—“what
+do you suppose you are living at the rate of?”
+
+“At the rate of, sir?”
+
+“At,” repeated Mr. Jaggers, still looking at the ceiling,
+“the—rate—of?” And then looked all round the room, and paused with his
+pocket-handkerchief in his hand, half-way to his nose.
+
+I had looked into my affairs so often, that I had thoroughly destroyed
+any slight notion I might ever have had of their bearings. Reluctantly,
+I confessed myself quite unable to answer the question. This reply
+seemed agreeable to Mr. Jaggers, who said, “I thought so!” and blew his
+nose with an air of satisfaction.
+
+“Now, I have asked _you_ a question, my friend,” said Mr. Jaggers.
+“Have you anything to ask _me_?”
+
+“Of course it would be a great relief to me to ask you several
+questions, sir; but I remember your prohibition.”
+
+“Ask one,” said Mr. Jaggers.
+
+“Is my benefactor to be made known to me to-day?”
+
+“No. Ask another.”
+
+“Is that confidence to be imparted to me soon?”
+
+“Waive that, a moment,” said Mr. Jaggers, “and ask another.”
+
+I looked about me, but there appeared to be now no possible escape from
+the inquiry, “Have-I—anything to receive, sir?” On that, Mr. Jaggers
+said, triumphantly, “I thought we should come to it!” and called to
+Wemmick to give him that piece of paper. Wemmick appeared, handed it
+in, and disappeared.
+
+“Now, Mr. Pip,” said Mr. Jaggers, “attend, if you please. You have been
+drawing pretty freely here; your name occurs pretty often in Wemmick’s
+cash-book; but you are in debt, of course?”
+
+“I am afraid I must say yes, sir.”
+
+“You know you must say yes; don’t you?” said Mr. Jaggers.
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“I don’t ask you what you owe, because you don’t know; and if you did
+know, you wouldn’t tell me; you would say less. Yes, yes, my friend,”
+cried Mr. Jaggers, waving his forefinger to stop me as I made a show of
+protesting: “it’s likely enough that you think you wouldn’t, but you
+would. You’ll excuse me, but I know better than you. Now, take this
+piece of paper in your hand. You have got it? Very good. Now, unfold it
+and tell me what it is.”
+
+“This is a bank-note,” said I, “for five hundred pounds.”
+
+“That is a bank-note,” repeated Mr. Jaggers, “for five hundred pounds.
+And a very handsome sum of money too, I think. You consider it so?”
+
+“How could I do otherwise!”
+
+“Ah! But answer the question,” said Mr. Jaggers.
+
+“Undoubtedly.”
+
+“You consider it, undoubtedly, a handsome sum of money. Now, that
+handsome sum of money, Pip, is your own. It is a present to you on this
+day, in earnest of your expectations. And at the rate of that handsome
+sum of money per annum, and at no higher rate, you are to live until
+the donor of the whole appears. That is to say, you will now take your
+money affairs entirely into your own hands, and you will draw from
+Wemmick one hundred and twenty-five pounds per quarter, until you are
+in communication with the fountain-head, and no longer with the mere
+agent. As I have told you before, I am the mere agent. I execute my
+instructions, and I am paid for doing so. I think them injudicious, but
+I am not paid for giving any opinion on their merits.”
+
+I was beginning to express my gratitude to my benefactor for the great
+liberality with which I was treated, when Mr. Jaggers stopped me. “I am
+not paid, Pip,” said he, coolly, “to carry your words to any one;” and
+then gathered up his coat-tails, as he had gathered up the subject, and
+stood frowning at his boots as if he suspected them of designs against
+him.
+
+After a pause, I hinted,—
+
+“There was a question just now, Mr. Jaggers, which you desired me to
+waive for a moment. I hope I am doing nothing wrong in asking it
+again?”
+
+“What is it?” said he.
+
+I might have known that he would never help me out; but it took me
+aback to have to shape the question afresh, as if it were quite new.
+“Is it likely,” I said, after hesitating, “that my patron, the
+fountain-head you have spoken of, Mr. Jaggers, will soon—” there I
+delicately stopped.
+
+“Will soon what?” asked Mr. Jaggers. “That’s no question as it stands,
+you know.”
+
+“Will soon come to London,” said I, after casting about for a precise
+form of words, “or summon me anywhere else?”
+
+“Now, here,” replied Mr. Jaggers, fixing me for the first time with his
+dark deep-set eyes, “we must revert to the evening when we first
+encountered one another in your village. What did I tell you then,
+Pip?”
+
+“You told me, Mr. Jaggers, that it might be years hence when that
+person appeared.”
+
+“Just so,” said Mr. Jaggers, “that’s my answer.”
+
+As we looked full at one another, I felt my breath come quicker in my
+strong desire to get something out of him. And as I felt that it came
+quicker, and as I felt that he saw that it came quicker, I felt that I
+had less chance than ever of getting anything out of him.
+
+“Do you suppose it will still be years hence, Mr. Jaggers?”
+
+Mr. Jaggers shook his head,—not in negativing the question, but in
+altogether negativing the notion that he could anyhow be got to answer
+it,—and the two horrible casts of the twitched faces looked, when my
+eyes strayed up to them, as if they had come to a crisis in their
+suspended attention, and were going to sneeze.
+
+“Come!” said Mr. Jaggers, warming the backs of his legs with the backs
+of his warmed hands, “I’ll be plain with you, my friend Pip. That’s a
+question I must not be asked. You’ll understand that better, when I
+tell you it’s a question that might compromise _me_. Come! I’ll go a
+little further with you; I’ll say something more.”
+
+He bent down so low to frown at his boots, that he was able to rub the
+calves of his legs in the pause he made.
+
+“When that person discloses,” said Mr. Jaggers, straightening himself,
+“you and that person will settle your own affairs. When that person
+discloses, my part in this business will cease and determine. When that
+person discloses, it will not be necessary for me to know anything
+about it. And that’s all I have got to say.”
+
+We looked at one another until I withdrew my eyes, and looked
+thoughtfully at the floor. From this last speech I derived the notion
+that Miss Havisham, for some reason or no reason, had not taken him
+into her confidence as to her designing me for Estella; that he
+resented this, and felt a jealousy about it; or that he really did
+object to that scheme, and would have nothing to do with it. When I
+raised my eyes again, I found that he had been shrewdly looking at me
+all the time, and was doing so still.
+
+“If that is all you have to say, sir,” I remarked, “there can be
+nothing left for me to say.”
+
+He nodded assent, and pulled out his thief-dreaded watch, and asked me
+where I was going to dine? I replied at my own chambers, with Herbert.
+As a necessary sequence, I asked him if he would favour us with his
+company, and he promptly accepted the invitation. But he insisted on
+walking home with me, in order that I might make no extra preparation
+for him, and first he had a letter or two to write, and (of course) had
+his hands to wash. So I said I would go into the outer office and talk
+to Wemmick.
+
+The fact was, that when the five hundred pounds had come into my
+pocket, a thought had come into my head which had been often there
+before; and it appeared to me that Wemmick was a good person to advise
+with concerning such thought.
+
+He had already locked up his safe, and made preparations for going
+home. He had left his desk, brought out his two greasy office
+candlesticks and stood them in line with the snuffers on a slab near
+the door, ready to be extinguished; he had raked his fire low, put his
+hat and great-coat ready, and was beating himself all over the chest
+with his safe-key, as an athletic exercise after business.
+
+“Mr. Wemmick,” said I, “I want to ask your opinion. I am very desirous
+to serve a friend.”
+
+Wemmick tightened his post-office and shook his head, as if his opinion
+were dead against any fatal weakness of that sort.
+
+“This friend,” I pursued, “is trying to get on in commercial life, but
+has no money, and finds it difficult and disheartening to make a
+beginning. Now I want somehow to help him to a beginning.”
+
+“With money down?” said Wemmick, in a tone drier than any sawdust.
+
+“With _some_ money down,” I replied, for an uneasy remembrance shot
+across me of that symmetrical bundle of papers at home—“with _some_
+money down, and perhaps some anticipation of my expectations.”
+
+“Mr. Pip,” said Wemmick, “I should like just to run over with you on my
+fingers, if you please, the names of the various bridges up as high as
+Chelsea Reach. Let’s see; there’s London, one; Southwark, two;
+Blackfriars, three; Waterloo, four; Westminster, five; Vauxhall, six.”
+He had checked off each bridge in its turn, with the handle of his
+safe-key on the palm of his hand. “There’s as many as six, you see, to
+choose from.”
+
+“I don’t understand you,” said I.
+
+“Choose your bridge, Mr. Pip,” returned Wemmick, “and take a walk upon
+your bridge, and pitch your money into the Thames over the centre arch
+of your bridge, and you know the end of it. Serve a friend with it, and
+you may know the end of it too,—but it’s a less pleasant and profitable
+end.”
+
+I could have posted a newspaper in his mouth, he made it so wide after
+saying this.
+
+“This is very discouraging,” said I.
+
+“Meant to be so,” said Wemmick.
+
+“Then is it your opinion,” I inquired, with some little indignation,
+“that a man should never—”
+
+“—Invest portable property in a friend?” said Wemmick. “Certainly he
+should not. Unless he wants to get rid of the friend,—and then it
+becomes a question how much portable property it may be worth to get
+rid of him.”
+
+“And that,” said I, “is your deliberate opinion, Mr. Wemmick?”
+
+“That,” he returned, “is my deliberate opinion in this office.”
+
+“Ah!” said I, pressing him, for I thought I saw him near a loophole
+here; “but would that be your opinion at Walworth?”
+
+“Mr. Pip,” he replied, with gravity, “Walworth is one place, and this
+office is another. Much as the Aged is one person, and Mr. Jaggers is
+another. They must not be confounded together. My Walworth sentiments
+must be taken at Walworth; none but my official sentiments can be taken
+in this office.”
+
+“Very well,” said I, much relieved, “then I shall look you up at
+Walworth, you may depend upon it.”
+
+“Mr. Pip,” he returned, “you will be welcome there, in a private and
+personal capacity.”
+
+We had held this conversation in a low voice, well knowing my
+guardian’s ears to be the sharpest of the sharp. As he now appeared in
+his doorway, towelling his hands, Wemmick got on his great-coat and
+stood by to snuff out the candles. We all three went into the street
+together, and from the door-step Wemmick turned his way, and Mr.
+Jaggers and I turned ours.
+
+I could not help wishing more than once that evening, that Mr. Jaggers
+had had an Aged in Gerrard Street, or a Stinger, or a Something, or a
+Somebody, to unbend his brows a little. It was an uncomfortable
+consideration on a twenty-first birthday, that coming of age at all
+seemed hardly worth while in such a guarded and suspicious world as he
+made of it. He was a thousand times better informed and cleverer than
+Wemmick, and yet I would a thousand times rather have had Wemmick to
+dinner. And Mr. Jaggers made not me alone intensely melancholy,
+because, after he was gone, Herbert said of himself, with his eyes
+fixed on the fire, that he thought he must have committed a felony and
+forgotten the details of it, he felt so dejected and guilty.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVII.
+
+
+Deeming Sunday the best day for taking Mr. Wemmick’s Walworth
+sentiments, I devoted the next ensuing Sunday afternoon to a pilgrimage
+to the Castle. On arriving before the battlements, I found the Union
+Jack flying and the drawbridge up; but undeterred by this show of
+defiance and resistance, I rang at the gate, and was admitted in a most
+pacific manner by the Aged.
+
+“My son, sir,” said the old man, after securing the drawbridge, “rather
+had it in his mind that you might happen to drop in, and he left word
+that he would soon be home from his afternoon’s walk. He is very
+regular in his walks, is my son. Very regular in everything, is my
+son.”
+
+I nodded at the old gentleman as Wemmick himself might have nodded, and
+we went in and sat down by the fireside.
+
+“You made acquaintance with my son, sir,” said the old man, in his
+chirping way, while he warmed his hands at the blaze, “at his office, I
+expect?” I nodded. “Hah! I have heerd that my son is a wonderful hand
+at his business, sir?” I nodded hard. “Yes; so they tell me. His
+business is the Law?” I nodded harder. “Which makes it more surprising
+in my son,” said the old man, “for he was not brought up to the Law,
+but to the Wine-Coopering.”
+
+Curious to know how the old gentleman stood informed concerning the
+reputation of Mr. Jaggers, I roared that name at him. He threw me into
+the greatest confusion by laughing heartily and replying in a very
+sprightly manner, “No, to be sure; you’re right.” And to this hour I
+have not the faintest notion what he meant, or what joke he thought I
+had made.
+
+As I could not sit there nodding at him perpetually, without making
+some other attempt to interest him, I shouted at inquiry whether his
+own calling in life had been “the Wine-Coopering.” By dint of straining
+that term out of myself several times and tapping the old gentleman on
+the chest to associate it with him, I at last succeeded in making my
+meaning understood.
+
+“No,” said the old gentleman; “the warehousing, the warehousing. First,
+over yonder;” he appeared to mean up the chimney, but I believe he
+intended to refer me to Liverpool; “and then in the City of London
+here. However, having an infirmity—for I am hard of hearing, sir—”
+
+I expressed in pantomime the greatest astonishment.
+
+“—Yes, hard of hearing; having that infirmity coming upon me, my son he
+went into the Law, and he took charge of me, and he by little and
+little made out this elegant and beautiful property. But returning to
+what you said, you know,” pursued the old man, again laughing heartily,
+“what I say is, No to be sure; you’re right.”
+
+I was modestly wondering whether my utmost ingenuity would have enabled
+me to say anything that would have amused him half as much as this
+imaginary pleasantry, when I was startled by a sudden click in the wall
+on one side of the chimney, and the ghostly tumbling open of a little
+wooden flap with “JOHN” upon it. The old man, following my eyes, cried
+with great triumph, “My son’s come home!” and we both went out to the
+drawbridge.
+
+It was worth any money to see Wemmick waving a salute to me from the
+other side of the moat, when we might have shaken hands across it with
+the greatest ease. The Aged was so delighted to work the drawbridge,
+that I made no offer to assist him, but stood quiet until Wemmick had
+come across, and had presented me to Miss Skiffins; a lady by whom he
+was accompanied.
+
+Miss Skiffins was of a wooden appearance, and was, like her escort, in
+the post-office branch of the service. She might have been some two or
+three years younger than Wemmick, and I judged her to stand possessed
+of portable property. The cut of her dress from the waist upward, both
+before and behind, made her figure very like a boy’s kite; and I might
+have pronounced her gown a little too decidedly orange, and her gloves
+a little too intensely green. But she seemed to be a good sort of
+fellow, and showed a high regard for the Aged. I was not long in
+discovering that she was a frequent visitor at the Castle; for, on our
+going in, and my complimenting Wemmick on his ingenious contrivance for
+announcing himself to the Aged, he begged me to give my attention for a
+moment to the other side of the chimney, and disappeared. Presently
+another click came, and another little door tumbled open with “Miss
+Skiffins” on it; then Miss Skiffins shut up and John tumbled open; then
+Miss Skiffins and John both tumbled open together, and finally shut up
+together. On Wemmick’s return from working these mechanical appliances,
+I expressed the great admiration with which I regarded them, and he
+said, “Well, you know, they’re both pleasant and useful to the Aged.
+And by George, sir, it’s a thing worth mentioning, that of all the
+people who come to this gate, the secret of those pulls is only known
+to the Aged, Miss Skiffins, and me!”
+
+“And Mr. Wemmick made them,” added Miss Skiffins, “with his own hands
+out of his own head.”
+
+While Miss Skiffins was taking off her bonnet (she retained her green
+gloves during the evening as an outward and visible sign that there was
+company), Wemmick invited me to take a walk with him round the
+property, and see how the island looked in wintertime. Thinking that he
+did this to give me an opportunity of taking his Walworth sentiments, I
+seized the opportunity as soon as we were out of the Castle.
+
+Having thought of the matter with care, I approached my subject as if I
+had never hinted at it before. I informed Wemmick that I was anxious in
+behalf of Herbert Pocket, and I told him how we had first met, and how
+we had fought. I glanced at Herbert’s home, and at his character, and
+at his having no means but such as he was dependent on his father for;
+those, uncertain and unpunctual. I alluded to the advantages I had
+derived in my first rawness and ignorance from his society, and I
+confessed that I feared I had but ill repaid them, and that he might
+have done better without me and my expectations. Keeping Miss Havisham
+in the background at a great distance, I still hinted at the
+possibility of my having competed with him in his prospects, and at the
+certainty of his possessing a generous soul, and being far above any
+mean distrusts, retaliations, or designs. For all these reasons (I told
+Wemmick), and because he was my young companion and friend, and I had a
+great affection for him, I wished my own good fortune to reflect some
+rays upon him, and therefore I sought advice from Wemmick’s experience
+and knowledge of men and affairs, how I could best try with my
+resources to help Herbert to some present income,—say of a hundred a
+year, to keep him in good hope and heart,—and gradually to buy him on
+to some small partnership. I begged Wemmick, in conclusion, to
+understand that my help must always be rendered without Herbert’s
+knowledge or suspicion, and that there was no one else in the world
+with whom I could advise. I wound up by laying my hand upon his
+shoulder, and saying, “I can’t help confiding in you, though I know it
+must be troublesome to you; but that is your fault, in having ever
+brought me here.”
+
+Wemmick was silent for a little while, and then said with a kind of
+start, “Well you know, Mr. Pip, I must tell you one thing. This is
+devilish good of you.”
+
+“Say you’ll help me to be good then,” said I.
+
+“Ecod,” replied Wemmick, shaking his head, “that’s not my trade.”
+
+“Nor is this your trading-place,” said I.
+
+“You are right,” he returned. “You hit the nail on the head. Mr. Pip,
+I’ll put on my considering-cap, and I think all you want to do may be
+done by degrees. Skiffins (that’s her brother) is an accountant and
+agent. I’ll look him up and go to work for you.”
+
+“I thank you ten thousand times.”
+
+“On the contrary,” said he, “I thank you, for though we are strictly in
+our private and personal capacity, still it may be mentioned that there
+_are_ Newgate cobwebs about, and it brushes them away.”
+
+After a little further conversation to the same effect, we returned
+into the Castle where we found Miss Skiffins preparing tea. The
+responsible duty of making the toast was delegated to the Aged, and
+that excellent old gentleman was so intent upon it that he seemed to me
+in some danger of melting his eyes. It was no nominal meal that we were
+going to make, but a vigorous reality. The Aged prepared such a
+hay-stack of buttered toast, that I could scarcely see him over it as
+it simmered on an iron stand hooked on to the top-bar; while Miss
+Skiffins brewed such a jorum of tea, that the pig in the back premises
+became strongly excited, and repeatedly expressed his desire to
+participate in the entertainment.
+
+The flag had been struck, and the gun had been fired, at the right
+moment of time, and I felt as snugly cut off from the rest of Walworth
+as if the moat were thirty feet wide by as many deep. Nothing disturbed
+the tranquillity of the Castle, but the occasional tumbling open of
+John and Miss Skiffins: which little doors were a prey to some
+spasmodic infirmity that made me sympathetically uncomfortable until I
+got used to it. I inferred from the methodical nature of Miss
+Skiffins’s arrangements that she made tea there every Sunday night; and
+I rather suspected that a classic brooch she wore, representing the
+profile of an undesirable female with a very straight nose and a very
+new moon, was a piece of portable property that had been given her by
+Wemmick.
+
+We ate the whole of the toast, and drank tea in proportion, and it was
+delightful to see how warm and greasy we all got after it. The Aged
+especially, might have passed for some clean old chief of a savage
+tribe, just oiled. After a short pause of repose, Miss Skiffins—in the
+absence of the little servant who, it seemed, retired to the bosom of
+her family on Sunday afternoons—washed up the tea-things, in a trifling
+lady-like amateur manner that compromised none of us. Then, she put on
+her gloves again, and we drew round the fire, and Wemmick said, “Now,
+Aged Parent, tip us the paper.”
+
+Wemmick explained to me while the Aged got his spectacles out, that
+this was according to custom, and that it gave the old gentleman
+infinite satisfaction to read the news aloud. “I won’t offer an
+apology,” said Wemmick, “for he isn’t capable of many pleasures—are
+you, Aged P.?”
+
+“All right, John, all right,” returned the old man, seeing himself
+spoken to.
+
+“Only tip him a nod every now and then when he looks off his paper,”
+said Wemmick, “and he’ll be as happy as a king. We are all attention,
+Aged One.”
+
+“All right, John, all right!” returned the cheerful old man, so busy
+and so pleased, that it really was quite charming.
+
+The Aged’s reading reminded me of the classes at Mr. Wopsle’s
+great-aunt’s, with the pleasanter peculiarity that it seemed to come
+through a keyhole. As he wanted the candles close to him, and as he was
+always on the verge of putting either his head or the newspaper into
+them, he required as much watching as a powder-mill. But Wemmick was
+equally untiring and gentle in his vigilance, and the Aged read on,
+quite unconscious of his many rescues. Whenever he looked at us, we all
+expressed the greatest interest and amazement, and nodded until he
+resumed again.
+
+As Wemmick and Miss Skiffins sat side by side, and as I sat in a
+shadowy corner, I observed a slow and gradual elongation of Mr.
+Wemmick’s mouth, powerfully suggestive of his slowly and gradually
+stealing his arm round Miss Skiffins’s waist. In course of time I saw
+his hand appear on the other side of Miss Skiffins; but at that moment
+Miss Skiffins neatly stopped him with the green glove, unwound his arm
+again as if it were an article of dress, and with the greatest
+deliberation laid it on the table before her. Miss Skiffins’s composure
+while she did this was one of the most remarkable sights I have ever
+seen, and if I could have thought the act consistent with abstraction
+of mind, I should have deemed that Miss Skiffins performed it
+mechanically.
+
+By and by, I noticed Wemmick’s arm beginning to disappear again, and
+gradually fading out of view. Shortly afterwards, his mouth began to
+widen again. After an interval of suspense on my part that was quite
+enthralling and almost painful, I saw his hand appear on the other side
+of Miss Skiffins. Instantly, Miss Skiffins stopped it with the neatness
+of a placid boxer, took off that girdle or cestus as before, and laid
+it on the table. Taking the table to represent the path of virtue, I am
+justified in stating that during the whole time of the Aged’s reading,
+Wemmick’s arm was straying from the path of virtue and being recalled
+to it by Miss Skiffins.
+
+At last, the Aged read himself into a light slumber. This was the time
+for Wemmick to produce a little kettle, a tray of glasses, and a black
+bottle with a porcelain-topped cork, representing some clerical
+dignitary of a rubicund and social aspect. With the aid of these
+appliances we all had something warm to drink, including the Aged, who
+was soon awake again. Miss Skiffins mixed, and I observed that she and
+Wemmick drank out of one glass. Of course I knew better than to offer
+to see Miss Skiffins home, and under the circumstances I thought I had
+best go first; which I did, taking a cordial leave of the Aged, and
+having passed a pleasant evening.
+
+Before a week was out, I received a note from Wemmick, dated Walworth,
+stating that he hoped he had made some advance in that matter
+appertaining to our private and personal capacities, and that he would
+be glad if I could come and see him again upon it. So, I went out to
+Walworth again, and yet again, and yet again, and I saw him by
+appointment in the City several times, but never held any communication
+with him on the subject in or near Little Britain. The upshot was, that
+we found a worthy young merchant or shipping-broker, not long
+established in business, who wanted intelligent help, and who wanted
+capital, and who in due course of time and receipt would want a
+partner. Between him and me, secret articles were signed of which
+Herbert was the subject, and I paid him half of my five hundred pounds
+down, and engaged for sundry other payments: some, to fall due at
+certain dates out of my income: some, contingent on my coming into my
+property. Miss Skiffins’s brother conducted the negotiation. Wemmick
+pervaded it throughout, but never appeared in it.
+
+The whole business was so cleverly managed, that Herbert had not the
+least suspicion of my hand being in it. I never shall forget the
+radiant face with which he came home one afternoon, and told me, as a
+mighty piece of news, of his having fallen in with one Clarriker (the
+young merchant’s name), and of Clarriker’s having shown an
+extraordinary inclination towards him, and of his belief that the
+opening had come at last. Day by day as his hopes grew stronger and his
+face brighter, he must have thought me a more and more affectionate
+friend, for I had the greatest difficulty in restraining my tears of
+triumph when I saw him so happy. At length, the thing being done, and
+he having that day entered Clarriker’s House, and he having talked to
+me for a whole evening in a flush of pleasure and success, I did really
+cry in good earnest when I went to bed, to think that my expectations
+had done some good to somebody.
+
+A great event in my life, the turning point of my life, now opens on my
+view. But, before I proceed to narrate it, and before I pass on to all
+the changes it involved, I must give one chapter to Estella. It is not
+much to give to the theme that so long filled my heart.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVIII.
+
+
+If that staid old house near the Green at Richmond should ever come to
+be haunted when I am dead, it will be haunted, surely, by my ghost. O
+the many, many nights and days through which the unquiet spirit within
+me haunted that house when Estella lived there! Let my body be where it
+would, my spirit was always wandering, wandering, wandering, about that
+house.
+
+The lady with whom Estella was placed, Mrs. Brandley by name, was a
+widow, with one daughter several years older than Estella. The mother
+looked young, and the daughter looked old; the mother’s complexion was
+pink, and the daughter’s was yellow; the mother set up for frivolity,
+and the daughter for theology. They were in what is called a good
+position, and visited, and were visited by, numbers of people. Little,
+if any, community of feeling subsisted between them and Estella, but
+the understanding was established that they were necessary to her, and
+that she was necessary to them. Mrs. Brandley had been a friend of Miss
+Havisham’s before the time of her seclusion.
+
+In Mrs. Brandley’s house and out of Mrs. Brandley’s house, I suffered
+every kind and degree of torture that Estella could cause me. The
+nature of my relations with her, which placed me on terms of
+familiarity without placing me on terms of favour, conduced to my
+distraction. She made use of me to tease other admirers, and she turned
+the very familiarity between herself and me to the account of putting a
+constant slight on my devotion to her. If I had been her secretary,
+steward, half-brother, poor relation,—if I had been a younger brother
+of her appointed husband,—I could not have seemed to myself further
+from my hopes when I was nearest to her. The privilege of calling her
+by her name and hearing her call me by mine became, under the
+circumstances an aggravation of my trials; and while I think it likely
+that it almost maddened her other lovers, I know too certainly that it
+almost maddened me.
+
+She had admirers without end. No doubt my jealousy made an admirer of
+every one who went near her; but there were more than enough of them
+without that.
+
+I saw her often at Richmond, I heard of her often in town, and I used
+often to take her and the Brandleys on the water; there were picnics,
+fête days, plays, operas, concerts, parties, all sorts of pleasures,
+through which I pursued her,—and they were all miseries to me. I never
+had one hour’s happiness in her society, and yet my mind all round the
+four-and-twenty hours was harping on the happiness of having her with
+me unto death.
+
+Throughout this part of our intercourse,—and it lasted, as will
+presently be seen, for what I then thought a long time,—she habitually
+reverted to that tone which expressed that our association was forced
+upon us. There were other times when she would come to a sudden check
+in this tone and in all her many tones, and would seem to pity me.
+
+“Pip, Pip,” she said one evening, coming to such a check, when we sat
+apart at a darkening window of the house in Richmond; “will you never
+take warning?”
+
+“Of what?”
+
+“Of me.”
+
+“Warning not to be attracted by you, do you mean, Estella?”
+
+“Do I mean! If you don’t know what I mean, you are blind.”
+
+I should have replied that Love was commonly reputed blind, but for the
+reason that I always was restrained—and this was not the least of my
+miseries—by a feeling that it was ungenerous to press myself upon her,
+when she knew that she could not choose but obey Miss Havisham. My
+dread always was, that this knowledge on her part laid me under a heavy
+disadvantage with her pride, and made me the subject of a rebellious
+struggle in her bosom.
+
+“At any rate,” said I, “I have no warning given me just now, for you
+wrote to me to come to you, this time.”
+
+“That’s true,” said Estella, with a cold careless smile that always
+chilled me.
+
+After looking at the twilight without, for a little while, she went on
+to say:—
+
+“The time has come round when Miss Havisham wishes to have me for a day
+at Satis. You are to take me there, and bring me back, if you will. She
+would rather I did not travel alone, and objects to receiving my maid,
+for she has a sensitive horror of being talked of by such people. Can
+you take me?”
+
+“Can I take you, Estella!”
+
+“You can then? The day after to-morrow, if you please. You are to pay
+all charges out of my purse. You hear the condition of your going?”
+
+“And must obey,” said I.
+
+This was all the preparation I received for that visit, or for others
+like it; Miss Havisham never wrote to me, nor had I ever so much as
+seen her handwriting. We went down on the next day but one, and we
+found her in the room where I had first beheld her, and it is needless
+to add that there was no change in Satis House.
+
+She was even more dreadfully fond of Estella than she had been when I
+last saw them together; I repeat the word advisedly, for there was
+something positively dreadful in the energy of her looks and embraces.
+She hung upon Estella’s beauty, hung upon her words, hung upon her
+gestures, and sat mumbling her own trembling fingers while she looked
+at her, as though she were devouring the beautiful creature she had
+reared.
+
+From Estella she looked at me, with a searching glance that seemed to
+pry into my heart and probe its wounds. “How does she use you, Pip; how
+does she use you?” she asked me again, with her witch-like eagerness,
+even in Estella’s hearing. But, when we sat by her flickering fire at
+night, she was most weird; for then, keeping Estella’s hand drawn
+through her arm and clutched in her own hand, she extorted from her, by
+dint of referring back to what Estella had told her in her regular
+letters, the names and conditions of the men whom she had fascinated;
+and as Miss Havisham dwelt upon this roll, with the intensity of a mind
+mortally hurt and diseased, she sat with her other hand on her crutch
+stick, and her chin on that, and her wan bright eyes glaring at me, a
+very spectre.
+
+I saw in this, wretched though it made me, and bitter the sense of
+dependence and even of degradation that it awakened,—I saw in this that
+Estella was set to wreak Miss Havisham’s revenge on men, and that she
+was not to be given to me until she had gratified it for a term. I saw
+in this, a reason for her being beforehand assigned to me. Sending her
+out to attract and torment and do mischief, Miss Havisham sent her with
+the malicious assurance that she was beyond the reach of all admirers,
+and that all who staked upon that cast were secured to lose. I saw in
+this that I, too, was tormented by a perversion of ingenuity, even
+while the prize was reserved for me. I saw in this the reason for my
+being staved off so long and the reason for my late guardian’s
+declining to commit himself to the formal knowledge of such a scheme.
+In a word, I saw in this Miss Havisham as I had her then and there
+before my eyes, and always had had her before my eyes; and I saw in
+this, the distinct shadow of the darkened and unhealthy house in which
+her life was hidden from the sun.
+
+The candles that lighted that room of hers were placed in sconces on
+the wall. They were high from the ground, and they burnt with the
+steady dulness of artificial light in air that is seldom renewed. As I
+looked round at them, and at the pale gloom they made, and at the
+stopped clock, and at the withered articles of bridal dress upon the
+table and the ground, and at her own awful figure with its ghostly
+reflection thrown large by the fire upon the ceiling and the wall, I
+saw in everything the construction that my mind had come to, repeated
+and thrown back to me. My thoughts passed into the great room across
+the landing where the table was spread, and I saw it written, as it
+were, in the falls of the cobwebs from the centre-piece, in the
+crawlings of the spiders on the cloth, in the tracks of the mice as
+they betook their little quickened hearts behind the panels, and in the
+gropings and pausings of the beetles on the floor.
+
+It happened on the occasion of this visit that some sharp words arose
+between Estella and Miss Havisham. It was the first time I had ever
+seen them opposed.
+
+We were seated by the fire, as just now described, and Miss Havisham
+still had Estella’s arm drawn through her own, and still clutched
+Estella’s hand in hers, when Estella gradually began to detach herself.
+She had shown a proud impatience more than once before, and had rather
+endured that fierce affection than accepted or returned it.
+
+“What!” said Miss Havisham, flashing her eyes upon her, “are you tired
+of me?”
+
+“Only a little tired of myself,” replied Estella, disengaging her arm,
+and moving to the great chimney-piece, where she stood looking down at
+the fire.
+
+“Speak the truth, you ingrate!” cried Miss Havisham, passionately
+striking her stick upon the floor; “you are tired of me.”
+
+Estella looked at her with perfect composure, and again looked down at
+the fire. Her graceful figure and her beautiful face expressed a
+self-possessed indifference to the wild heat of the other, that was
+almost cruel.
+
+“You stock and stone!” exclaimed Miss Havisham. “You cold, cold heart!”
+
+“What?” said Estella, preserving her attitude of indifference as she
+leaned against the great chimney-piece and only moving her eyes; “do
+you reproach me for being cold? You?”
+
+“Are you not?” was the fierce retort.
+
+“You should know,” said Estella. “I am what you have made me. Take all
+the praise, take all the blame; take all the success, take all the
+failure; in short, take me.”
+
+“O, look at her, look at her!” cried Miss Havisham, bitterly; “Look at
+her so hard and thankless, on the hearth where she was reared! Where I
+took her into this wretched breast when it was first bleeding from its
+stabs, and where I have lavished years of tenderness upon her!”
+
+[Illustration]
+
+“At least I was no party to the compact,” said Estella, “for if I could
+walk and speak, when it was made, it was as much as I could do. But
+what would you have? You have been very good to me, and I owe
+everything to you. What would you have?”
+
+“Love,” replied the other.
+
+“You have it.”
+
+“I have not,” said Miss Havisham.
+
+“Mother by adoption,” retorted Estella, never departing from the easy
+grace of her attitude, never raising her voice as the other did, never
+yielding either to anger or tenderness,—“mother by adoption, I have
+said that I owe everything to you. All I possess is freely yours. All
+that you have given me, is at your command to have again. Beyond that,
+I have nothing. And if you ask me to give you, what you never gave me,
+my gratitude and duty cannot do impossibilities.”
+
+“Did I never give her love!” cried Miss Havisham, turning wildly to me.
+“Did I never give her a burning love, inseparable from jealousy at all
+times, and from sharp pain, while she speaks thus to me! Let her call
+me mad, let her call me mad!”
+
+“Why should I call you mad,” returned Estella, “I, of all people? Does
+any one live, who knows what set purposes you have, half as well as I
+do? Does any one live, who knows what a steady memory you have, half as
+well as I do? I who have sat on this same hearth on the little stool
+that is even now beside you there, learning your lessons and looking up
+into your face, when your face was strange and frightened me!”
+
+“Soon forgotten!” moaned Miss Havisham. “Times soon forgotten!”
+
+“No, not forgotten,” retorted Estella,—“not forgotten, but treasured up
+in my memory. When have you found me false to your teaching? When have
+you found me unmindful of your lessons? When have you found me giving
+admission here,” she touched her bosom with her hand, “to anything that
+you excluded? Be just to me.”
+
+“So proud, so proud!” moaned Miss Havisham, pushing away her grey hair
+with both her hands.
+
+“Who taught me to be proud?” returned Estella. “Who praised me when I
+learnt my lesson?”
+
+“So hard, so hard!” moaned Miss Havisham, with her former action.
+
+“Who taught me to be hard?” returned Estella. “Who praised me when I
+learnt my lesson?”
+
+“But to be proud and hard to _me_!” Miss Havisham quite shrieked, as
+she stretched out her arms. “Estella, Estella, Estella, to be proud and
+hard to _me_!”
+
+Estella looked at her for a moment with a kind of calm wonder, but was
+not otherwise disturbed; when the moment was past, she looked down at
+the fire again.
+
+“I cannot think,” said Estella, raising her eyes after a silence “why
+you should be so unreasonable when I come to see you after a
+separation. I have never forgotten your wrongs and their causes. I have
+never been unfaithful to you or your schooling. I have never shown any
+weakness that I can charge myself with.”
+
+“Would it be weakness to return my love?” exclaimed Miss Havisham. “But
+yes, yes, she would call it so!”
+
+“I begin to think,” said Estella, in a musing way, after another moment
+of calm wonder, “that I almost understand how this comes about. If you
+had brought up your adopted daughter wholly in the dark confinement of
+these rooms, and had never let her know that there was such a thing as
+the daylight by which she had never once seen your face,—if you had
+done that, and then, for a purpose had wanted her to understand the
+daylight and know all about it, you would have been disappointed and
+angry?”
+
+Miss Havisham, with her head in her hands, sat making a low moaning,
+and swaying herself on her chair, but gave no answer.
+
+“Or,” said Estella,—“which is a nearer case,—if you had taught her,
+from the dawn of her intelligence, with your utmost energy and might,
+that there was such a thing as daylight, but that it was made to be her
+enemy and destroyer, and she must always turn against it, for it had
+blighted you and would else blight her;—if you had done this, and then,
+for a purpose, had wanted her to take naturally to the daylight and she
+could not do it, you would have been disappointed and angry?”
+
+Miss Havisham sat listening (or it seemed so, for I could not see her
+face), but still made no answer.
+
+“So,” said Estella, “I must be taken as I have been made. The success
+is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.”
+
+Miss Havisham had settled down, I hardly knew how, upon the floor,
+among the faded bridal relics with which it was strewn. I took
+advantage of the moment—I had sought one from the first—to leave the
+room, after beseeching Estella’s attention to her, with a movement of
+my hand. When I left, Estella was yet standing by the great
+chimney-piece, just as she had stood throughout. Miss Havisham’s grey
+hair was all adrift upon the ground, among the other bridal wrecks, and
+was a miserable sight to see.
+
+It was with a depressed heart that I walked in the starlight for an
+hour and more, about the courtyard, and about the brewery, and about
+the ruined garden. When I at last took courage to return to the room, I
+found Estella sitting at Miss Havisham’s knee, taking up some stitches
+in one of those old articles of dress that were dropping to pieces, and
+of which I have often been reminded since by the faded tatters of old
+banners that I have seen hanging up in cathedrals. Afterwards, Estella
+and I played at cards, as of yore,—only we were skilful now, and played
+French games,—and so the evening wore away, and I went to bed.
+
+I lay in that separate building across the courtyard. It was the first
+time I had ever lain down to rest in Satis House, and sleep refused to
+come near me. A thousand Miss Havishams haunted me. She was on this
+side of my pillow, on that, at the head of the bed, at the foot, behind
+the half-opened door of the dressing-room, in the dressing-room, in the
+room overhead, in the room beneath,—everywhere. At last, when the night
+was slow to creep on towards two o’clock, I felt that I absolutely
+could no longer bear the place as a place to lie down in, and that I
+must get up. I therefore got up and put on my clothes, and went out
+across the yard into the long stone passage, designing to gain the
+outer courtyard and walk there for the relief of my mind. But I was no
+sooner in the passage than I extinguished my candle; for I saw Miss
+Havisham going along it in a ghostly manner, making a low cry. I
+followed her at a distance, and saw her go up the staircase. She
+carried a bare candle in her hand, which she had probably taken from
+one of the sconces in her own room, and was a most unearthly object by
+its light. Standing at the bottom of the staircase, I felt the mildewed
+air of the feast-chamber, without seeing her open the door, and I heard
+her walking there, and so across into her own room, and so across again
+into that, never ceasing the low cry. After a time, I tried in the dark
+both to get out, and to go back, but I could do neither until some
+streaks of day strayed in and showed me where to lay my hands. During
+the whole interval, whenever I went to the bottom of the staircase, I
+heard her footstep, saw her light pass above, and heard her ceaseless
+low cry.
+
+Before we left next day, there was no revival of the difference between
+her and Estella, nor was it ever revived on any similar occasion; and
+there were four similar occasions, to the best of my remembrance. Nor,
+did Miss Havisham’s manner towards Estella in anywise change, except
+that I believed it to have something like fear infused among its former
+characteristics.
+
+It is impossible to turn this leaf of my life, without putting Bentley
+Drummle’s name upon it; or I would, very gladly.
+
+On a certain occasion when the Finches were assembled in force, and
+when good feeling was being promoted in the usual manner by nobody’s
+agreeing with anybody else, the presiding Finch called the Grove to
+order, forasmuch as Mr. Drummle had not yet toasted a lady; which,
+according to the solemn constitution of the society, it was the brute’s
+turn to do that day. I thought I saw him leer in an ugly way at me
+while the decanters were going round, but as there was no love lost
+between us, that might easily be. What was my indignant surprise when
+he called upon the company to pledge him to “Estella!”
+
+“Estella who?” said I.
+
+“Never you mind,” retorted Drummle.
+
+“Estella of where?” said I. “You are bound to say of where.” Which he
+was, as a Finch.
+
+“Of Richmond, gentlemen,” said Drummle, putting me out of the question,
+“and a peerless beauty.”
+
+Much he knew about peerless beauties, a mean, miserable idiot! I
+whispered Herbert.
+
+“I know that lady,” said Herbert, across the table, when the toast had
+been honoured.
+
+“_Do_ you?” said Drummle.
+
+“And so do I,” I added, with a scarlet face.
+
+“_Do_ you?” said Drummle. “_O_, Lord!”
+
+This was the only retort—except glass or crockery—that the heavy
+creature was capable of making; but, I became as highly incensed by it
+as if it had been barbed with wit, and I immediately rose in my place
+and said that I could not but regard it as being like the honourable
+Finch’s impudence to come down to that Grove,—we always talked about
+coming down to that Grove, as a neat Parliamentary turn of
+expression,—down to that Grove, proposing a lady of whom he knew
+nothing. Mr. Drummle, upon this, starting up, demanded what I meant by
+that? Whereupon I made him the extreme reply that I believed he knew
+where I was to be found.
+
+Whether it was possible in a Christian country to get on without blood,
+after this, was a question on which the Finches were divided. The
+debate upon it grew so lively, indeed, that at least six more
+honourable members told six more, during the discussion, that they
+believed _they_ knew where _they_ were to be found. However, it was
+decided at last (the Grove being a Court of Honour) that if Mr. Drummle
+would bring never so slight a certificate from the lady, importing that
+he had the honour of her acquaintance, Mr. Pip must express his regret,
+as a gentleman and a Finch, for “having been betrayed into a warmth
+which.” Next day was appointed for the production (lest our honour
+should take cold from delay), and next day Drummle appeared with a
+polite little avowal in Estella’s hand, that she had had the honour of
+dancing with him several times. This left me no course but to regret
+that I had been “betrayed into a warmth which,” and on the whole to
+repudiate, as untenable, the idea that I was to be found anywhere.
+Drummle and I then sat snorting at one another for an hour, while the
+Grove engaged in indiscriminate contradiction, and finally the
+promotion of good feeling was declared to have gone ahead at an amazing
+rate.
+
+I tell this lightly, but it was no light thing to me. For, I cannot
+adequately express what pain it gave me to think that Estella should
+show any favour to a contemptible, clumsy, sulky booby, so very far
+below the average. To the present moment, I believe it to have been
+referable to some pure fire of generosity and disinterestedness in my
+love for her, that I could not endure the thought of her stooping to
+that hound. No doubt I should have been miserable whomsoever she had
+favoured; but a worthier object would have caused me a different kind
+and degree of distress.
+
+It was easy for me to find out, and I did soon find out, that Drummle
+had begun to follow her closely, and that she allowed him to do it. A
+little while, and he was always in pursuit of her, and he and I crossed
+one another every day. He held on, in a dull persistent way, and
+Estella held him on; now with encouragement, now with discouragement,
+now almost flattering him, now openly despising him, now knowing him
+very well, now scarcely remembering who he was.
+
+The Spider, as Mr. Jaggers had called him, was used to lying in wait,
+however, and had the patience of his tribe. Added to that, he had a
+blockhead confidence in his money and in his family greatness, which
+sometimes did him good service,—almost taking the place of
+concentration and determined purpose. So, the Spider, doggedly watching
+Estella, outwatched many brighter insects, and would often uncoil
+himself and drop at the right nick of time.
+
+At a certain Assembly Ball at Richmond (there used to be Assembly Balls
+at most places then), where Estella had outshone all other beauties,
+this blundering Drummle so hung about her, and with so much toleration
+on her part, that I resolved to speak to her concerning him. I took the
+next opportunity; which was when she was waiting for Mrs. Blandley to
+take her home, and was sitting apart among some flowers, ready to go. I
+was with her, for I almost always accompanied them to and from such
+places.
+
+“Are you tired, Estella?”
+
+“Rather, Pip.”
+
+“You should be.”
+
+“Say rather, I should not be; for I have my letter to Satis House to
+write, before I go to sleep.”
+
+“Recounting to-night’s triumph?” said I. “Surely a very poor one,
+Estella.”
+
+“What do you mean? I didn’t know there had been any.”
+
+“Estella,” said I, “do look at that fellow in the corner yonder, who is
+looking over here at us.”
+
+“Why should I look at him?” returned Estella, with her eyes on me
+instead. “What is there in that fellow in the corner yonder,—to use
+your words,—that I need look at?”
+
+“Indeed, that is the very question I want to ask you,” said I. “For he
+has been hovering about you all night.”
+
+“Moths, and all sorts of ugly creatures,” replied Estella, with a
+glance towards him, “hover about a lighted candle. Can the candle help
+it?”
+
+“No,” I returned; “but cannot the Estella help it?”
+
+“Well!” said she, laughing, after a moment, “perhaps. Yes. Anything you
+like.”
+
+“But, Estella, do hear me speak. It makes me wretched that you should
+encourage a man so generally despised as Drummle. You know he is
+despised.”
+
+“Well?” said she.
+
+“You know he is as ungainly within as without. A deficient,
+ill-tempered, lowering, stupid fellow.”
+
+“Well?” said she.
+
+“You know he has nothing to recommend him but money and a ridiculous
+roll of addle-headed predecessors; now, don’t you?”
+
+“Well?” said she again; and each time she said it, she opened her
+lovely eyes the wider.
+
+To overcome the difficulty of getting past that monosyllable, I took it
+from her, and said, repeating it with emphasis, “Well! Then, that is
+why it makes me wretched.”
+
+Now, if I could have believed that she favoured Drummle with any idea
+of making me—me—wretched, I should have been in better heart about it;
+but in that habitual way of hers, she put me so entirely out of the
+question, that I could believe nothing of the kind.
+
+“Pip,” said Estella, casting her glance over the room, “don’t be
+foolish about its effect on you. It may have its effect on others, and
+may be meant to have. It’s not worth discussing.”
+
+“Yes it is,” said I, “because I cannot bear that people should say,
+‘she throws away her graces and attractions on a mere boor, the lowest
+in the crowd.’”
+
+“I can bear it,” said Estella.
+
+“Oh! don’t be so proud, Estella, and so inflexible.”
+
+“Calls me proud and inflexible in this breath!” said Estella, opening
+her hands. “And in his last breath reproached me for stooping to a
+boor!”
+
+“There is no doubt you do,” said I, something hurriedly, “for I have
+seen you give him looks and smiles this very night, such as you never
+give to—me.”
+
+“Do you want me then,” said Estella, turning suddenly with a fixed and
+serious, if not angry, look, “to deceive and entrap you?”
+
+“Do you deceive and entrap him, Estella?”
+
+“Yes, and many others,—all of them but you. Here is Mrs. Brandley. I’ll
+say no more.”
+
+
+
+
+And now that I have given the one chapter to the theme that so filled
+my heart, and so often made it ache and ache again, I pass on
+unhindered, to the event that had impended over me longer yet; the
+event that had begun to be prepared for, before I knew that the world
+held Estella, and in the days when her baby intelligence was receiving
+its first distortions from Miss Havisham’s wasting hands.
+
+In the Eastern story, the heavy slab that was to fall on the bed of
+state in the flush of conquest was slowly wrought out of the quarry,
+the tunnel for the rope to hold it in its place was slowly carried
+through the leagues of rock, the slab was slowly raised and fitted in
+the roof, the rope was rove to it and slowly taken through the miles of
+hollow to the great iron ring. All being made ready with much labour,
+and the hour come, the sultan was aroused in the dead of the night, and
+the sharpened axe that was to sever the rope from the great iron ring
+was put into his hand, and he struck with it, and the rope parted and
+rushed away, and the ceiling fell. So, in my case; all the work, near
+and afar, that tended to the end, had been accomplished; and in an
+instant the blow was struck, and the roof of my stronghold dropped upon
+me.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXIX.
+
+
+I was three-and-twenty years of age. Not another word had I heard to
+enlighten me on the subject of my expectations, and my twenty-third
+birthday was a week gone. We had left Barnard’s Inn more than a year,
+and lived in the Temple. Our chambers were in Garden-court, down by the
+river.
+
+Mr. Pocket and I had for some time parted company as to our original
+relations, though we continued on the best terms. Notwithstanding my
+inability to settle to anything,—which I hope arose out of the restless
+and incomplete tenure on which I held my means,—I had a taste for
+reading, and read regularly so many hours a day. That matter of
+Herbert’s was still progressing, and everything with me was as I have
+brought it down to the close of the last preceding chapter.
+
+Business had taken Herbert on a journey to Marseilles. I was alone, and
+had a dull sense of being alone. Dispirited and anxious, long hoping
+that to-morrow or next week would clear my way, and long disappointed,
+I sadly missed the cheerful face and ready response of my friend.
+
+It was wretched weather; stormy and wet, stormy and wet; and mud, mud,
+mud, deep in all the streets. Day after day, a vast heavy veil had been
+driving over London from the East, and it drove still, as if in the
+East there were an eternity of cloud and wind. So furious had been the
+gusts, that high buildings in town had had the lead stripped off their
+roofs; and in the country, trees had been torn up, and sails of
+windmills carried away; and gloomy accounts had come in from the coast,
+of shipwreck and death. Violent blasts of rain had accompanied these
+rages of wind, and the day just closed as I sat down to read had been
+the worst of all.
+
+Alterations have been made in that part of the Temple since that time,
+and it has not now so lonely a character as it had then, nor is it so
+exposed to the river. We lived at the top of the last house, and the
+wind rushing up the river shook the house that night, like discharges
+of cannon, or breakings of a sea. When the rain came with it and dashed
+against the windows, I thought, raising my eyes to them as they rocked,
+that I might have fancied myself in a storm-beaten lighthouse.
+Occasionally, the smoke came rolling down the chimney as though it
+could not bear to go out into such a night; and when I set the doors
+open and looked down the staircase, the staircase lamps were blown out;
+and when I shaded my face with my hands and looked through the black
+windows (opening them ever so little was out of the question in the
+teeth of such wind and rain), I saw that the lamps in the court were
+blown out, and that the lamps on the bridges and the shore were
+shuddering, and that the coal-fires in barges on the river were being
+carried away before the wind like red-hot splashes in the rain.
+
+I read with my watch upon the table, purposing to close my book at
+eleven o’clock. As I shut it, Saint Paul’s, and all the many
+church-clocks in the City—some leading, some accompanying, some
+following—struck that hour. The sound was curiously flawed by the wind;
+and I was listening, and thinking how the wind assailed and tore it,
+when I heard a footstep on the stair.
+
+What nervous folly made me start, and awfully connect it with the
+footstep of my dead sister, matters not. It was past in a moment, and I
+listened again, and heard the footstep stumble in coming on.
+Remembering then, that the staircase-lights were blown out, I took up
+my reading-lamp and went out to the stair-head. Whoever was below had
+stopped on seeing my lamp, for all was quiet.
+
+“There is some one down there, is there not?” I called out, looking
+down.
+
+“Yes,” said a voice from the darkness beneath.
+
+“What floor do you want?”
+
+“The top. Mr. Pip.”
+
+“That is my name.—There is nothing the matter?”
+
+“Nothing the matter,” returned the voice. And the man came on.
+
+I stood with my lamp held out over the stair-rail, and he came slowly
+within its light. It was a shaded lamp, to shine upon a book, and its
+circle of light was very contracted; so that he was in it for a mere
+instant, and then out of it. In the instant, I had seen a face that was
+strange to me, looking up with an incomprehensible air of being touched
+and pleased by the sight of me.
+
+Moving the lamp as the man moved, I made out that he was substantially
+dressed, but roughly, like a voyager by sea. That he had long iron-grey
+hair. That his age was about sixty. That he was a muscular man, strong
+on his legs, and that he was browned and hardened by exposure to
+weather. As he ascended the last stair or two, and the light of my lamp
+included us both, I saw, with a stupid kind of amazement, that he was
+holding out both his hands to me.
+
+“Pray what is your business?” I asked him.
+
+“My business?” he repeated, pausing. “Ah! Yes. I will explain my
+business, by your leave.”
+
+“Do you wish to come in?”
+
+“Yes,” he replied; “I wish to come in, master.”
+
+I had asked him the question inhospitably enough, for I resented the
+sort of bright and gratified recognition that still shone in his face.
+I resented it, because it seemed to imply that he expected me to
+respond to it. But I took him into the room I had just left, and,
+having set the lamp on the table, asked him as civilly as I could to
+explain himself.
+
+He looked about him with the strangest air,—an air of wondering
+pleasure, as if he had some part in the things he admired,—and he
+pulled off a rough outer coat, and his hat. Then, I saw that his head
+was furrowed and bald, and that the long iron-grey hair grew only on
+its sides. But, I saw nothing that in the least explained him. On the
+contrary, I saw him next moment, once more holding out both his hands
+to me.
+
+“What do you mean?” said I, half suspecting him to be mad.
+
+He stopped in his looking at me, and slowly rubbed his right hand over
+his head. “It’s disapinting to a man,” he said, in a coarse broken
+voice, “arter having looked for’ard so distant, and come so fur; but
+you’re not to blame for that,—neither on us is to blame for that. I’ll
+speak in half a minute. Give me half a minute, please.”
+
+He sat down on a chair that stood before the fire, and covered his
+forehead with his large brown veinous hands. I looked at him
+attentively then, and recoiled a little from him; but I did not know
+him.
+
+“There’s no one nigh,” said he, looking over his shoulder; “is there?”
+
+“Why do you, a stranger coming into my rooms at this time of the night,
+ask that question?” said I.
+
+“You’re a game one,” he returned, shaking his head at me with a
+deliberate affection, at once most unintelligible and most
+exasperating; “I’m glad you’ve grow’d up, a game one! But don’t catch
+hold of me. You’d be sorry arterwards to have done it.”
+
+I relinquished the intention he had detected, for I knew him! Even yet
+I could not recall a single feature, but I knew him! If the wind and
+the rain had driven away the intervening years, had scattered all the
+intervening objects, had swept us to the churchyard where we first
+stood face to face on such different levels, I could not have known my
+convict more distinctly than I knew him now as he sat in the chair
+before the fire. No need to take a file from his pocket and show it to
+me; no need to take the handkerchief from his neck and twist it round
+his head; no need to hug himself with both his arms, and take a
+shivering turn across the room, looking back at me for recognition. I
+knew him before he gave me one of those aids, though, a moment before,
+I had not been conscious of remotely suspecting his identity.
+
+He came back to where I stood, and again held out both his hands. Not
+knowing what to do,—for, in my astonishment I had lost my
+self-possession,—I reluctantly gave him my hands. He grasped them
+heartily, raised them to his lips, kissed them, and still held them.
+
+“You acted noble, my boy,” said he. “Noble, Pip! And I have never
+forgot it!”
+
+At a change in his manner as if he were even going to embrace me, I
+laid a hand upon his breast and put him away.
+
+“Stay!” said I. “Keep off! If you are grateful to me for what I did
+when I was a little child, I hope you have shown your gratitude by
+mending your way of life. If you have come here to thank me, it was not
+necessary. Still, however you have found me out, there must be
+something good in the feeling that has brought you here, and I will not
+repulse you; but surely you must understand that—I—”
+
+My attention was so attracted by the singularity of his fixed look at
+me, that the words died away on my tongue.
+
+“You was a-saying,” he observed, when we had confronted one another in
+silence, “that surely I must understand. What, surely must I
+understand?”
+
+“That I cannot wish to renew that chance intercourse with you of long
+ago, under these different circumstances. I am glad to believe you have
+repented and recovered yourself. I am glad to tell you so. I am glad
+that, thinking I deserve to be thanked, you have come to thank me. But
+our ways are different ways, none the less. You are wet, and you look
+weary. Will you drink something before you go?”
+
+He had replaced his neckerchief loosely, and had stood, keenly
+observant of me, biting a long end of it. “I think,” he answered, still
+with the end at his mouth and still observant of me, “that I _will_
+drink (I thank you) afore I go.”
+
+There was a tray ready on a side-table. I brought it to the table near
+the fire, and asked him what he would have? He touched one of the
+bottles without looking at it or speaking, and I made him some hot rum
+and water. I tried to keep my hand steady while I did so, but his look
+at me as he leaned back in his chair with the long draggled end of his
+neckerchief between his teeth—evidently forgotten—made my hand very
+difficult to master. When at last I put the glass to him, I saw with
+amazement that his eyes were full of tears.
+
+Up to this time I had remained standing, not to disguise that I wished
+him gone. But I was softened by the softened aspect of the man, and
+felt a touch of reproach. “I hope,” said I, hurriedly putting something
+into a glass for myself, and drawing a chair to the table, “that you
+will not think I spoke harshly to you just now. I had no intention of
+doing it, and I am sorry for it if I did. I wish you well and happy!”
+
+As I put my glass to my lips, he glanced with surprise at the end of
+his neckerchief, dropping from his mouth when he opened it, and
+stretched out his hand. I gave him mine, and then he drank, and drew
+his sleeve across his eyes and forehead.
+
+“How are you living?” I asked him.
+
+“I’ve been a sheep-farmer, stock-breeder, other trades besides, away in
+the new world,” said he; “many a thousand mile of stormy water off from
+this.”
+
+“I hope you have done well?”
+
+“I’ve done wonderfully well. There’s others went out alonger me as has
+done well too, but no man has done nigh as well as me. I’m famous for
+it.”
+
+“I am glad to hear it.”
+
+“I hope to hear you say so, my dear boy.”
+
+Without stopping to try to understand those words or the tone in which
+they were spoken, I turned off to a point that had just come into my
+mind.
+
+“Have you ever seen a messenger you once sent to me,” I inquired,
+“since he undertook that trust?”
+
+“Never set eyes upon him. I warn’t likely to it.”
+
+“He came faithfully, and he brought me the two one-pound notes. I was a
+poor boy then, as you know, and to a poor boy they were a little
+fortune. But, like you, I have done well since, and you must let me pay
+them back. You can put them to some other poor boy’s use.” I took out
+my purse.
+
+He watched me as I laid my purse upon the table and opened it, and he
+watched me as I separated two one-pound notes from its contents. They
+were clean and new, and I spread them out and handed them over to him.
+Still watching me, he laid them one upon the other, folded them
+long-wise, gave them a twist, set fire to them at the lamp, and dropped
+the ashes into the tray.
+
+“May I make so bold,” he said then, with a smile that was like a frown,
+and with a frown that was like a smile, “as ask you _how_ you have done
+well, since you and me was out on them lone shivering marshes?”
+
+“How?”
+
+“Ah!”
+
+He emptied his glass, got up, and stood at the side of the fire, with
+his heavy brown hand on the mantel-shelf. He put a foot up to the bars,
+to dry and warm it, and the wet boot began to steam; but, he neither
+looked at it, nor at the fire, but steadily looked at me. It was only
+now that I began to tremble.
+
+When my lips had parted, and had shaped some words that were without
+sound, I forced myself to tell him (though I could not do it
+distinctly), that I had been chosen to succeed to some property.
+
+“Might a mere warmint ask what property?” said he.
+
+I faltered, “I don’t know.”
+
+“Might a mere warmint ask whose property?” said he.
+
+I faltered again, “I don’t know.”
+
+“Could I make a guess, I wonder,” said the Convict, “at your income
+since you come of age! As to the first figure now. Five?”
+
+With my heart beating like a heavy hammer of disordered action, I rose
+out of my chair, and stood with my hand upon the back of it, looking
+wildly at him.
+
+“Concerning a guardian,” he went on. “There ought to have been some
+guardian, or such-like, whiles you was a minor. Some lawyer, maybe. As
+to the first letter of that lawyer’s name now. Would it be J?”
+
+All the truth of my position came flashing on me; and its
+disappointments, dangers, disgraces, consequences of all kinds, rushed
+in in such a multitude that I was borne down by them and had to
+struggle for every breath I drew.
+
+“Put it,” he resumed, “as the employer of that lawyer whose name begun
+with a J, and might be Jaggers,—put it as he had come over sea to
+Portsmouth, and had landed there, and had wanted to come on to you.
+‘However, you have found me out,’ you says just now. Well! However, did
+I find you out? Why, I wrote from Portsmouth to a person in London, for
+particulars of your address. That person’s name? Why, Wemmick.”
+
+I could not have spoken one word, though it had been to save my life. I
+stood, with a hand on the chair-back and a hand on my breast, where I
+seemed to be suffocating,—I stood so, looking wildly at him, until I
+grasped at the chair, when the room began to surge and turn. He caught
+me, drew me to the sofa, put me up against the cushions, and bent on
+one knee before me, bringing the face that I now well remembered, and
+that I shuddered at, very near to mine.
+
+“Yes, Pip, dear boy, I’ve made a gentleman on you! It’s me wot has done
+it! I swore that time, sure as ever I earned a guinea, that guinea
+should go to you. I swore arterwards, sure as ever I spec’lated and got
+rich, you should get rich. I lived rough, that you should live smooth;
+I worked hard, that you should be above work. What odds, dear boy? Do I
+tell it, fur you to feel a obligation? Not a bit. I tell it, fur you to
+know as that there hunted dunghill dog wot you kep life in, got his
+head so high that he could make a gentleman,—and, Pip, you’re him!”
+
+The abhorrence in which I held the man, the dread I had of him, the
+repugnance with which I shrank from him, could not have been exceeded
+if he had been some terrible beast.
+
+“Look’ee here, Pip. I’m your second father. You’re my son,—more to me
+nor any son. I’ve put away money, only for you to spend. When I was a
+hired-out shepherd in a solitary hut, not seeing no faces but faces of
+sheep till I half forgot wot men’s and women’s faces wos like, I see
+yourn. I drops my knife many a time in that hut when I was a-eating my
+dinner or my supper, and I says, ‘Here’s the boy again, a looking at me
+whiles I eats and drinks!’ I see you there a many times, as plain as
+ever I see you on them misty marshes. ‘Lord strike me dead!’ I says
+each time,—and I goes out in the air to say it under the open
+heavens,—‘but wot, if I gets liberty and money, I’ll make that boy a
+gentleman!’ And I done it. Why, look at you, dear boy! Look at these
+here lodgings of yourn, fit for a lord! A lord? Ah! You shall show
+money with lords for wagers, and beat ’em!”
+
+In his heat and triumph, and in his knowledge that I had been nearly
+fainting, he did not remark on my reception of all this. It was the one
+grain of relief I had.
+
+“Look’ee here!” he went on, taking my watch out of my pocket, and
+turning towards him a ring on my finger, while I recoiled from his
+touch as if he had been a snake, “a gold ’un and a beauty: _that’s_ a
+gentleman’s, I hope! A diamond all set round with rubies; _that’s_ a
+gentleman’s, I hope! Look at your linen; fine and beautiful! Look at
+your clothes; better ain’t to be got! And your books too,” turning his
+eyes round the room, “mounting up, on their shelves, by hundreds! And
+you read ’em; don’t you? I see you’d been a reading of ’em when I come
+in. Ha, ha, ha! You shall read ’em to me, dear boy! And if they’re in
+foreign languages wot I don’t understand, I shall be just as proud as
+if I did.”
+
+Again he took both my hands and put them to his lips, while my blood
+ran cold within me.
+
+“Don’t you mind talking, Pip,” said he, after again drawing his sleeve
+over his eyes and forehead, as the click came in his throat which I
+well remembered,—and he was all the more horrible to me that he was so
+much in earnest; “you can’t do better nor keep quiet, dear boy. You
+ain’t looked slowly forward to this as I have; you wosn’t prepared for
+this as I wos. But didn’t you never think it might be me?”
+
+“O no, no, no,” I returned, “Never, never!”
+
+“Well, you see it _wos_ me, and single-handed. Never a soul in it but
+my own self and Mr. Jaggers.”
+
+“Was there no one else?” I asked.
+
+“No,” said he, with a glance of surprise: “who else should there be?
+And, dear boy, how good looking you have growed! There’s bright eyes
+somewheres—eh? Isn’t there bright eyes somewheres, wot you love the
+thoughts on?”
+
+O Estella, Estella!
+
+“They shall be yourn, dear boy, if money can buy ’em. Not that a
+gentleman like you, so well set up as you, can’t win ’em off of his own
+game; but money shall back you! Let me finish wot I was a telling you,
+dear boy. From that there hut and that there hiring-out, I got money
+left me by my master (which died, and had been the same as me), and got
+my liberty and went for myself. In every single thing I went for, I
+went for you. ‘Lord strike a blight upon it,’ I says, wotever it was I
+went for, ‘if it ain’t for him!’ It all prospered wonderful. As I giv’
+you to understand just now, I’m famous for it. It was the money left
+me, and the gains of the first few year wot I sent home to Mr.
+Jaggers—all for you—when he first come arter you, agreeable to my
+letter.”
+
+O that he had never come! That he had left me at the forge,—far from
+contented, yet, by comparison happy!
+
+“And then, dear boy, it was a recompense to me, look’ee here, to know
+in secret that I was making a gentleman. The blood horses of them
+colonists might fling up the dust over me as I was walking; what do I
+say? I says to myself, ‘I’m making a better gentleman nor ever _you_’ll
+be!’ When one of ’em says to another, ‘He was a convict, a few year
+ago, and is a ignorant common fellow now, for all he’s lucky,’ what do
+I say? I says to myself, ‘If I ain’t a gentleman, nor yet ain’t got no
+learning, I’m the owner of such. All on you owns stock and land; which
+on you owns a brought-up London gentleman?’ This way I kep myself
+a-going. And this way I held steady afore my mind that I would for
+certain come one day and see my boy, and make myself known to him, on
+his own ground.”
+
+He laid his hand on my shoulder. I shuddered at the thought that for
+anything I knew, his hand might be stained with blood.
+
+“It warn’t easy, Pip, for me to leave them parts, nor yet it warn’t
+safe. But I held to it, and the harder it was, the stronger I held, for
+I was determined, and my mind firm made up. At last I done it. Dear
+boy, I done it!”
+
+I tried to collect my thoughts, but I was stunned. Throughout, I had
+seemed to myself to attend more to the wind and the rain than to him;
+even now, I could not separate his voice from those voices, though
+those were loud and his was silent.
+
+“Where will you put me?” he asked, presently. “I must be put
+somewheres, dear boy.”
+
+“To sleep?” said I.
+
+“Yes. And to sleep long and sound,” he answered; “for I’ve been
+sea-tossed and sea-washed, months and months.”
+
+“My friend and companion,” said I, rising from the sofa, “is absent;
+you must have his room.”
+
+“He won’t come back to-morrow; will he?”
+
+“No,” said I, answering almost mechanically, in spite of my utmost
+efforts; “not to-morrow.”
+
+“Because, look’ee here, dear boy,” he said, dropping his voice, and
+laying a long finger on my breast in an impressive manner, “caution is
+necessary.”
+
+“How do you mean? Caution?”
+
+“By G——, it’s Death!”
+
+“What’s death?”
+
+“I was sent for life. It’s death to come back. There’s been overmuch
+coming back of late years, and I should of a certainty be hanged if
+took.”
+
+Nothing was needed but this; the wretched man, after loading wretched
+me with his gold and silver chains for years, had risked his life to
+come to me, and I held it there in my keeping! If I had loved him
+instead of abhorring him; if I had been attracted to him by the
+strongest admiration and affection, instead of shrinking from him with
+the strongest repugnance; it could have been no worse. On the contrary,
+it would have been better, for his preservation would then have
+naturally and tenderly addressed my heart.
+
+My first care was to close the shutters, so that no light might be seen
+from without, and then to close and make fast the doors. While I did
+so, he stood at the table drinking rum and eating biscuit; and when I
+saw him thus engaged, I saw my convict on the marshes at his meal
+again. It almost seemed to me as if he must stoop down presently, to
+file at his leg.
+
+When I had gone into Herbert’s room, and had shut off any other
+communication between it and the staircase than through the room in
+which our conversation had been held, I asked him if he would go to
+bed? He said yes, but asked me for some of my “gentleman’s linen” to
+put on in the morning. I brought it out, and laid it ready for him, and
+my blood again ran cold when he again took me by both hands to give me
+good-night.
+
+I got away from him, without knowing how I did it, and mended the fire
+in the room where we had been together, and sat down by it, afraid to
+go to bed. For an hour or more, I remained too stunned to think; and it
+was not until I began to think, that I began fully to know how wrecked
+I was, and how the ship in which I had sailed was gone to pieces.
+
+Miss Havisham’s intentions towards me, all a mere dream; Estella not
+designed for me; I only suffered in Satis House as a convenience, a
+sting for the greedy relations, a model with a mechanical heart to
+practise on when no other practice was at hand; those were the first
+smarts I had. But, sharpest and deepest pain of all,—it was for the
+convict, guilty of I knew not what crimes, and liable to be taken out
+of those rooms where I sat thinking, and hanged at the Old Bailey door,
+that I had deserted Joe.
+
+I would not have gone back to Joe now, I would not have gone back to
+Biddy now, for any consideration; simply, I suppose, because my sense
+of my own worthless conduct to them was greater than every
+consideration. No wisdom on earth could have given me the comfort that
+I should have derived from their simplicity and fidelity; but I could
+never, never, undo what I had done.
+
+In every rage of wind and rush of rain, I heard pursuers. Twice, I
+could have sworn there was a knocking and whispering at the outer door.
+With these fears upon me, I began either to imagine or recall that I
+had had mysterious warnings of this man’s approach. That, for weeks
+gone by, I had passed faces in the streets which I had thought like
+his. That these likenesses had grown more numerous, as he, coming over
+the sea, had drawn nearer. That his wicked spirit had somehow sent
+these messengers to mine, and that now on this stormy night he was as
+good as his word, and with me.
+
+Crowding up with these reflections came the reflection that I had seen
+him with my childish eyes to be a desperately violent man; that I had
+heard that other convict reiterate that he had tried to murder him;
+that I had seen him down in the ditch tearing and fighting like a wild
+beast. Out of such remembrances I brought into the light of the fire a
+half-formed terror that it might not be safe to be shut up there with
+him in the dead of the wild solitary night. This dilated until it
+filled the room, and impelled me to take a candle and go in and look at
+my dreadful burden.
+
+He had rolled a handkerchief round his head, and his face was set and
+lowering in his sleep. But he was asleep, and quietly too, though he
+had a pistol lying on the pillow. Assured of this, I softly removed the
+key to the outside of his door, and turned it on him before I again sat
+down by the fire. Gradually I slipped from the chair and lay on the
+floor. When I awoke without having parted in my sleep with the
+perception of my wretchedness, the clocks of the Eastward churches were
+striking five, the candles were wasted out, the fire was dead, and the
+wind and rain intensified the thick black darkness.
+
+THIS IS THE END OF THE SECOND STAGE OF PIP’S EXPECTATIONS.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XL.
+
+
+It was fortunate for me that I had to take precautions to ensure (so
+far as I could) the safety of my dreaded visitor; for, this thought
+pressing on me when I awoke, held other thoughts in a confused
+concourse at a distance.
+
+The impossibility of keeping him concealed in the chambers was
+self-evident. It could not be done, and the attempt to do it would
+inevitably engender suspicion. True, I had no Avenger in my service
+now, but I was looked after by an inflammatory old female, assisted by
+an animated rag-bag whom she called her niece, and to keep a room
+secret from them would be to invite curiosity and exaggeration. They
+both had weak eyes, which I had long attributed to their chronically
+looking in at keyholes, and they were always at hand when not wanted;
+indeed that was their only reliable quality besides larceny. Not to get
+up a mystery with these people, I resolved to announce in the morning
+that my uncle had unexpectedly come from the country.
+
+This course I decided on while I was yet groping about in the darkness
+for the means of getting a light. Not stumbling on the means after all,
+I was fain to go out to the adjacent Lodge and get the watchman there
+to come with his lantern. Now, in groping my way down the black
+staircase I fell over something, and that something was a man crouching
+in a corner.
+
+As the man made no answer when I asked him what he did there, but
+eluded my touch in silence, I ran to the Lodge and urged the watchman
+to come quickly; telling him of the incident on the way back. The wind
+being as fierce as ever, we did not care to endanger the light in the
+lantern by rekindling the extinguished lamps on the staircase, but we
+examined the staircase from the bottom to the top and found no one
+there. It then occurred to me as possible that the man might have
+slipped into my rooms; so, lighting my candle at the watchman’s, and
+leaving him standing at the door, I examined them carefully, including
+the room in which my dreaded guest lay asleep. All was quiet, and
+assuredly no other man was in those chambers.
+
+It troubled me that there should have been a lurker on the stairs, on
+that night of all nights in the year, and I asked the watchman, on the
+chance of eliciting some hopeful explanation as I handed him a dram at
+the door, whether he had admitted at his gate any gentleman who had
+perceptibly been dining out? Yes, he said; at different times of the
+night, three. One lived in Fountain Court, and the other two lived in
+the Lane, and he had seen them all go home. Again, the only other man
+who dwelt in the house of which my chambers formed a part had been in
+the country for some weeks, and he certainly had not returned in the
+night, because we had seen his door with his seal on it as we came
+upstairs.
+
+“The night being so bad, sir,” said the watchman, as he gave me back my
+glass, “uncommon few have come in at my gate. Besides them three
+gentlemen that I have named, I don’t call to mind another since about
+eleven o’clock, when a stranger asked for you.”
+
+“My uncle,” I muttered. “Yes.”
+
+“You saw him, sir?”
+
+“Yes. Oh yes.”
+
+“Likewise the person with him?”
+
+“Person with him!” I repeated.
+
+“I judged the person to be with him,” returned the watchman. “The
+person stopped, when he stopped to make inquiry of me, and the person
+took this way when he took this way.”
+
+“What sort of person?”
+
+The watchman had not particularly noticed; he should say a working
+person; to the best of his belief, he had a dust-coloured kind of
+clothes on, under a dark coat. The watchman made more light of the
+matter than I did, and naturally; not having my reason for attaching
+weight to it.
+
+When I had got rid of him, which I thought it well to do without
+prolonging explanations, my mind was much troubled by these two
+circumstances taken together. Whereas they were easy of innocent
+solution apart,—as, for instance, some diner out or diner at home, who
+had not gone near this watchman’s gate, might have strayed to my
+staircase and dropped asleep there,—and my nameless visitor might have
+brought some one with him to show him the way,—still, joined, they had
+an ugly look to one as prone to distrust and fear as the changes of a
+few hours had made me.
+
+I lighted my fire, which burnt with a raw pale flare at that time of
+the morning, and fell into a doze before it. I seemed to have been
+dozing a whole night when the clocks struck six. As there was full an
+hour and a half between me and daylight, I dozed again; now, waking up
+uneasily, with prolix conversations about nothing, in my ears; now,
+making thunder of the wind in the chimney; at length, falling off into
+a profound sleep from which the daylight woke me with a start.
+
+All this time I had never been able to consider my own situation, nor
+could I do so yet. I had not the power to attend to it. I was greatly
+dejected and distressed, but in an incoherent wholesale sort of way. As
+to forming any plan for the future, I could as soon have formed an
+elephant. When I opened the shutters and looked out at the wet wild
+morning, all of a leaden hue; when I walked from room to room; when I
+sat down again shivering, before the fire, waiting for my laundress to
+appear; I thought how miserable I was, but hardly knew why, or how long
+I had been so, or on what day of the week I made the reflection, or
+even who I was that made it.
+
+At last, the old woman and the niece came in,—the latter with a head
+not easily distinguishable from her dusty broom,—and testified surprise
+at sight of me and the fire. To whom I imparted how my uncle had come
+in the night and was then asleep, and how the breakfast preparations
+were to be modified accordingly. Then I washed and dressed while they
+knocked the furniture about and made a dust; and so, in a sort of dream
+or sleep-waking, I found myself sitting by the fire again, waiting
+for—Him—to come to breakfast.
+
+By and by, his door opened and he came out. I could not bring myself to
+bear the sight of him, and I thought he had a worse look by daylight.
+
+“I do not even know,” said I, speaking low as he took his seat at the
+table, “by what name to call you. I have given out that you are my
+uncle.”
+
+“That’s it, dear boy! Call me uncle.”
+
+“You assumed some name, I suppose, on board ship?”
+
+“Yes, dear boy. I took the name of Provis.”
+
+“Do you mean to keep that name?”
+
+“Why, yes, dear boy, it’s as good as another,—unless you’d like
+another.”
+
+“What is your real name?” I asked him in a whisper.
+
+“Magwitch,” he answered, in the same tone; “chrisen’d Abel.”
+
+“What were you brought up to be?”
+
+“A warmint, dear boy.”
+
+He answered quite seriously, and used the word as if it denoted some
+profession.
+
+“When you came into the Temple last night—” said I, pausing to wonder
+whether that could really have been last night, which seemed so long
+ago.
+
+“Yes, dear boy?”
+
+“When you came in at the gate and asked the watchman the way here, had
+you any one with you?”
+
+“With me? No, dear boy.”
+
+“But there was some one there?”
+
+“I didn’t take particular notice,” he said, dubiously, “not knowing the
+ways of the place. But I think there _was_ a person, too, come in
+alonger me.”
+
+“Are you known in London?”
+
+“I hope not!” said he, giving his neck a jerk with his forefinger that
+made me turn hot and sick.
+
+“Were you known in London, once?”
+
+“Not over and above, dear boy. I was in the provinces mostly.”
+
+“Were you—tried—in London?”
+
+“Which time?” said he, with a sharp look.
+
+“The last time.”
+
+He nodded. “First knowed Mr. Jaggers that way. Jaggers was for me.”
+
+It was on my lips to ask him what he was tried for, but he took up a
+knife, gave it a flourish, and with the words, “And what I done is
+worked out and paid for!” fell to at his breakfast.
+
+He ate in a ravenous way that was very disagreeable, and all his
+actions were uncouth, noisy, and greedy. Some of his teeth had failed
+him since I saw him eat on the marshes, and as he turned his food in
+his mouth, and turned his head sideways to bring his strongest fangs to
+bear upon it, he looked terribly like a hungry old dog. If I had begun
+with any appetite, he would have taken it away, and I should have sat
+much as I did,—repelled from him by an insurmountable aversion, and
+gloomily looking at the cloth.
+
+“I’m a heavy grubber, dear boy,” he said, as a polite kind of apology
+when he made an end of his meal, “but I always was. If it had been in
+my constitution to be a lighter grubber, I might ha’ got into lighter
+trouble. Similarly, I must have my smoke. When I was first hired out as
+shepherd t’other side the world, it’s my belief I should ha’ turned
+into a molloncolly-mad sheep myself, if I hadn’t a had my smoke.”
+
+As he said so, he got up from table, and putting his hand into the
+breast of the pea-coat he wore, brought out a short black pipe, and a
+handful of loose tobacco of the kind that is called Negro-head. Having
+filled his pipe, he put the surplus tobacco back again, as if his
+pocket were a drawer. Then, he took a live coal from the fire with the
+tongs, and lighted his pipe at it, and then turned round on the
+hearth-rug with his back to the fire, and went through his favourite
+action of holding out both his hands for mine.
+
+“And this,” said he, dandling my hands up and down in his, as he puffed
+at his pipe,—“and this is the gentleman what I made! The real genuine
+One! It does me good fur to look at you, Pip. All I stip’late, is, to
+stand by and look at you, dear boy!”
+
+I released my hands as soon as I could, and found that I was beginning
+slowly to settle down to the contemplation of my condition. What I was
+chained to, and how heavily, became intelligible to me, as I heard his
+hoarse voice, and sat looking up at his furrowed bald head with its
+iron grey hair at the sides.
+
+“I mustn’t see my gentleman a footing it in the mire of the streets;
+there mustn’t be no mud on _his_ boots. My gentleman must have horses,
+Pip! Horses to ride, and horses to drive, and horses for his servant to
+ride and drive as well. Shall colonists have their horses (and blood
+’uns, if you please, good Lord!) and not my London gentleman? No, no.
+We’ll show ’em another pair of shoes than that, Pip; won’t us?”
+
+He took out of his pocket a great thick pocket-book, bursting with
+papers, and tossed it on the table.
+
+“There’s something worth spending in that there book, dear boy. It’s
+yourn. All I’ve got ain’t mine; it’s yourn. Don’t you be afeerd on it.
+There’s more where that come from. I’ve come to the old country fur to
+see my gentleman spend his money _like_ a gentleman. That’ll be _my_
+pleasure. _My_ pleasure ’ull be fur to see him do it. And blast you
+all!” he wound up, looking round the room and snapping his fingers once
+with a loud snap, “blast you every one, from the judge in his wig, to
+the colonist a stirring up the dust, I’ll show a better gentleman than
+the whole kit on you put together!”
+
+“Stop!” said I, almost in a frenzy of fear and dislike, “I want to
+speak to you. I want to know what is to be done. I want to know how you
+are to be kept out of danger, how long you are going to stay, what
+projects you have.”
+
+“Look’ee here, Pip,” said he, laying his hand on my arm in a suddenly
+altered and subdued manner; “first of all, look’ee here. I forgot
+myself half a minute ago. What I said was low; that’s what it was; low.
+Look’ee here, Pip. Look over it. I ain’t a-going to be low.”
+
+“First,” I resumed, half groaning, “what precautions can be taken
+against your being recognised and seized?”
+
+“No, dear boy,” he said, in the same tone as before, “that don’t go
+first. Lowness goes first. I ain’t took so many year to make a
+gentleman, not without knowing what’s due to him. Look’ee here, Pip. I
+was low; that’s what I was; low. Look over it, dear boy.”
+
+Some sense of the grimly-ludicrous moved me to a fretful laugh, as I
+replied, “I _have_ looked over it. In Heaven’s name, don’t harp upon
+it!”
+
+“Yes, but look’ee here,” he persisted. “Dear boy, I ain’t come so fur,
+not fur to be low. Now, go on, dear boy. You was a saying—”
+
+“How are you to be guarded from the danger you have incurred?”
+
+“Well, dear boy, the danger ain’t so great. Without I was informed
+agen, the danger ain’t so much to signify. There’s Jaggers, and there’s
+Wemmick, and there’s you. Who else is there to inform?”
+
+“Is there no chance person who might identify you in the street?” said
+I.
+
+“Well,” he returned, “there ain’t many. Nor yet I don’t intend to
+advertise myself in the newspapers by the name of A.M. come back from
+Botany Bay; and years have rolled away, and who’s to gain by it? Still,
+look’ee here, Pip. If the danger had been fifty times as great, I
+should ha’ come to see you, mind you, just the same.”
+
+“And how long do you remain?”
+
+“How long?” said he, taking his black pipe from his mouth, and dropping
+his jaw as he stared at me. “I’m not a-going back. I’ve come for good.”
+
+“Where are you to live?” said I. “What is to be done with you? Where
+will you be safe?”
+
+“Dear boy,” he returned, “there’s disguising wigs can be bought for
+money, and there’s hair powder, and spectacles, and black
+clothes,—shorts and what not. Others has done it safe afore, and what
+others has done afore, others can do agen. As to the where and how of
+living, dear boy, give me your own opinions on it.”
+
+“You take it smoothly now,” said I, “but you were very serious last
+night, when you swore it was Death.”
+
+“And so I swear it is Death,” said he, putting his pipe back in his
+mouth, “and Death by the rope, in the open street not fur from this,
+and it’s serious that you should fully understand it to be so. What
+then, when that’s once done? Here I am. To go back now ’ud be as bad as
+to stand ground—worse. Besides, Pip, I’m here, because I’ve meant it by
+you, years and years. As to what I dare, I’m a old bird now, as has
+dared all manner of traps since first he was fledged, and I’m not
+afeerd to perch upon a scarecrow. If there’s Death hid inside of it,
+there is, and let him come out, and I’ll face him, and then I’ll
+believe in him and not afore. And now let me have a look at my
+gentleman agen.”
+
+Once more, he took me by both hands and surveyed me with an air of
+admiring proprietorship: smoking with great complacency all the while.
+
+It appeared to me that I could do no better than secure him some quiet
+lodging hard by, of which he might take possession when Herbert
+returned: whom I expected in two or three days. That the secret must be
+confided to Herbert as a matter of unavoidable necessity, even if I
+could have put the immense relief I should derive from sharing it with
+him out of the question, was plain to me. But it was by no means so
+plain to Mr. Provis (I resolved to call him by that name), who reserved
+his consent to Herbert’s participation until he should have seen him
+and formed a favourable judgment of his physiognomy. “And even then,
+dear boy,” said he, pulling a greasy little clasped black Testament out
+of his pocket, “we’ll have him on his oath.”
+
+To state that my terrible patron carried this little black book about
+the world solely to swear people on in cases of emergency, would be to
+state what I never quite established; but this I can say, that I never
+knew him put it to any other use. The book itself had the appearance of
+having been stolen from some court of justice, and perhaps his
+knowledge of its antecedents, combined with his own experience in that
+wise, gave him a reliance on its powers as a sort of legal spell or
+charm. On this first occasion of his producing it, I recalled how he
+had made me swear fidelity in the churchyard long ago, and how he had
+described himself last night as always swearing to his resolutions in
+his solitude.
+
+As he was at present dressed in a seafaring slop suit, in which he
+looked as if he had some parrots and cigars to dispose of, I next
+discussed with him what dress he should wear. He cherished an
+extraordinary belief in the virtues of “shorts” as a disguise, and had
+in his own mind sketched a dress for himself that would have made him
+something between a dean and a dentist. It was with considerable
+difficulty that I won him over to the assumption of a dress more like a
+prosperous farmer’s; and we arranged that he should cut his hair close,
+and wear a little powder. Lastly, as he had not yet been seen by the
+laundress or her niece, he was to keep himself out of their view until
+his change of dress was made.
+
+It would seem a simple matter to decide on these precautions; but in my
+dazed, not to say distracted, state, it took so long, that I did not
+get out to further them until two or three in the afternoon. He was to
+remain shut up in the chambers while I was gone, and was on no account
+to open the door.
+
+There being to my knowledge a respectable lodging-house in Essex
+Street, the back of which looked into the Temple, and was almost within
+hail of my windows, I first of all repaired to that house, and was so
+fortunate as to secure the second floor for my uncle, Mr. Provis. I
+then went from shop to shop, making such purchases as were necessary to
+the change in his appearance. This business transacted, I turned my
+face, on my own account, to Little Britain. Mr. Jaggers was at his
+desk, but, seeing me enter, got up immediately and stood before his
+fire.
+
+“Now, Pip,” said he, “be careful.”
+
+“I will, sir,” I returned. For, coming along I had thought well of what
+I was going to say.
+
+“Don’t commit yourself,” said Mr. Jaggers, “and don’t commit any one.
+You understand—any one. Don’t tell me anything: I don’t want to know
+anything; I am not curious.”
+
+Of course I saw that he knew the man was come.
+
+“I merely want, Mr. Jaggers,” said I, “to assure myself that what I
+have been told is true. I have no hope of its being untrue, but at
+least I may verify it.”
+
+Mr. Jaggers nodded. “But did you say ‘told’ or ‘informed’?” he asked
+me, with his head on one side, and not looking at me, but looking in a
+listening way at the floor. “Told would seem to imply verbal
+communication. You can’t have verbal communication with a man in New
+South Wales, you know.”
+
+“I will say, informed, Mr. Jaggers.”
+
+“Good.”
+
+“I have been informed by a person named Abel Magwitch, that he is the
+benefactor so long unknown to me.”
+
+“That is the man,” said Mr. Jaggers, “in New South Wales.”
+
+“And only he?” said I.
+
+“And only he,” said Mr. Jaggers.
+
+“I am not so unreasonable, sir, as to think you at all responsible for
+my mistakes and wrong conclusions; but I always supposed it was Miss
+Havisham.”
+
+“As you say, Pip,” returned Mr. Jaggers, turning his eyes upon me
+coolly, and taking a bite at his forefinger, “I am not at all
+responsible for that.”
+
+“And yet it looked so like it, sir,” I pleaded with a downcast heart.
+
+“Not a particle of evidence, Pip,” said Mr. Jaggers, shaking his head
+and gathering up his skirts. “Take nothing on its looks; take
+everything on evidence. There’s no better rule.”
+
+“I have no more to say,” said I, with a sigh, after standing silent for
+a little while. “I have verified my information, and there’s an end.”
+
+“And Magwitch—in New South Wales—having at last disclosed himself,”
+said Mr. Jaggers, “you will comprehend, Pip, how rigidly throughout my
+communication with you, I have always adhered to the strict line of
+fact. There has never been the least departure from the strict line of
+fact. You are quite aware of that?”
+
+“Quite, sir.”
+
+“I communicated to Magwitch—in New South Wales—when he first wrote to
+me—from New South Wales—the caution that he must not expect me ever to
+deviate from the strict line of fact. I also communicated to him
+another caution. He appeared to me to have obscurely hinted in his
+letter at some distant idea he had of seeing you in England here. I
+cautioned him that I must hear no more of that; that he was not at all
+likely to obtain a pardon; that he was expatriated for the term of his
+natural life; and that his presenting himself in this country would be
+an act of felony, rendering him liable to the extreme penalty of the
+law. I gave Magwitch that caution,” said Mr. Jaggers, looking hard at
+me; “I wrote it to New South Wales. He guided himself by it, no doubt.”
+
+“No doubt,” said I.
+
+“I have been informed by Wemmick,” pursued Mr. Jaggers, still looking
+hard at me, “that he has received a letter, under date Portsmouth, from
+a colonist of the name of Purvis, or—”
+
+“Or Provis,” I suggested.
+
+“Or Provis—thank you, Pip. Perhaps it _is_ Provis? Perhaps you know
+it’s Provis?”
+
+“Yes,” said I.
+
+“You know it’s Provis. A letter, under date Portsmouth, from a colonist
+of the name of Provis, asking for the particulars of your address, on
+behalf of Magwitch. Wemmick sent him the particulars, I understand, by
+return of post. Probably it is through Provis that you have received
+the explanation of Magwitch—in New South Wales?”
+
+“It came through Provis,” I replied.
+
+“Good day, Pip,” said Mr. Jaggers, offering his hand; “glad to have
+seen you. In writing by post to Magwitch—in New South Wales—or in
+communicating with him through Provis, have the goodness to mention
+that the particulars and vouchers of our long account shall be sent to
+you, together with the balance; for there is still a balance remaining.
+Good-day, Pip!”
+
+We shook hands, and he looked hard at me as long as he could see me. I
+turned at the door, and he was still looking hard at me, while the two
+vile casts on the shelf seemed to be trying to get their eyelids open,
+and to force out of their swollen throats, “O, what a man he is!”
+
+Wemmick was out, and though he had been at his desk he could have done
+nothing for me. I went straight back to the Temple, where I found the
+terrible Provis drinking rum and water and smoking negro-head, in
+safety.
+
+Next day the clothes I had ordered all came home, and he put them on.
+Whatever he put on, became him less (it dismally seemed to me) than
+what he had worn before. To my thinking, there was something in him
+that made it hopeless to attempt to disguise him. The more I dressed
+him and the better I dressed him, the more he looked like the slouching
+fugitive on the marshes. This effect on my anxious fancy was partly
+referable, no doubt, to his old face and manner growing more familiar
+to me; but I believe too that he dragged one of his legs as if there
+were still a weight of iron on it, and that from head to foot there was
+Convict in the very grain of the man.
+
+The influences of his solitary hut-life were upon him besides, and gave
+him a savage air that no dress could tame; added to these were the
+influences of his subsequent branded life among men, and, crowning all,
+his consciousness that he was dodging and hiding now. In all his ways
+of sitting and standing, and eating and drinking,—of brooding about in
+a high-shouldered reluctant style,—of taking out his great horn-handled
+jackknife and wiping it on his legs and cutting his food,—of lifting
+light glasses and cups to his lips, as if they were clumsy
+pannikins,—of chopping a wedge off his bread, and soaking up with it
+the last fragments of gravy round and round his plate, as if to make
+the most of an allowance, and then drying his finger-ends on it, and
+then swallowing it,—in these ways and a thousand other small nameless
+instances arising every minute in the day, there was Prisoner, Felon,
+Bondsman, plain as plain could be.
+
+It had been his own idea to wear that touch of powder, and I had
+conceded the powder after overcoming the shorts. But I can compare the
+effect of it, when on, to nothing but the probable effect of rouge upon
+the dead; so awful was the manner in which everything in him that it
+was most desirable to repress, started through that thin layer of
+pretence, and seemed to come blazing out at the crown of his head. It
+was abandoned as soon as tried, and he wore his grizzled hair cut
+short.
+
+Words cannot tell what a sense I had, at the same time, of the dreadful
+mystery that he was to me. When he fell asleep of an evening, with his
+knotted hands clenching the sides of the easy-chair, and his bald head
+tattooed with deep wrinkles falling forward on his breast, I would sit
+and look at him, wondering what he had done, and loading him with all
+the crimes in the Calendar, until the impulse was powerful on me to
+start up and fly from him. Every hour so increased my abhorrence of
+him, that I even think I might have yielded to this impulse in the
+first agonies of being so haunted, notwithstanding all he had done for
+me and the risk he ran, but for the knowledge that Herbert must soon
+come back. Once, I actually did start out of bed in the night, and
+begin to dress myself in my worst clothes, hurriedly intending to leave
+him there with everything else I possessed, and enlist for India as a
+private soldier.
+
+I doubt if a ghost could have been more terrible to me, up in those
+lonely rooms in the long evenings and long nights, with the wind and
+the rain always rushing by. A ghost could not have been taken and
+hanged on my account, and the consideration that he could be, and the
+dread that he would be, were no small addition to my horrors. When he
+was not asleep, or playing a complicated kind of Patience with a ragged
+pack of cards of his own,—a game that I never saw before or since, and
+in which he recorded his winnings by sticking his jackknife into the
+table,—when he was not engaged in either of these pursuits, he would
+ask me to read to him,—“Foreign language, dear boy!” While I complied,
+he, not comprehending a single word, would stand before the fire
+surveying me with the air of an Exhibitor, and I would see him, between
+the fingers of the hand with which I shaded my face, appealing in dumb
+show to the furniture to take notice of my proficiency. The imaginary
+student pursued by the misshapen creature he had impiously made, was
+not more wretched than I, pursued by the creature who had made me, and
+recoiling from him with a stronger repulsion, the more he admired me
+and the fonder he was of me.
+
+This is written of, I am sensible, as if it had lasted a year. It
+lasted about five days. Expecting Herbert all the time, I dared not go
+out, except when I took Provis for an airing after dark. At length, one
+evening when dinner was over and I had dropped into a slumber quite
+worn out,—for my nights had been agitated and my rest broken by fearful
+dreams,—I was roused by the welcome footstep on the staircase. Provis,
+who had been asleep too, staggered up at the noise I made, and in an
+instant I saw his jackknife shining in his hand.
+
+“Quiet! It’s Herbert!” I said; and Herbert came bursting in, with the
+airy freshness of six hundred miles of France upon him.
+
+“Handel, my dear fellow, how are you, and again how are you, and again
+how are you? I seem to have been gone a twelvemonth! Why, so I must
+have been, for you have grown quite thin and pale! Handel, my—Halloa! I
+beg your pardon.”
+
+He was stopped in his running on and in his shaking hands with me, by
+seeing Provis. Provis, regarding him with a fixed attention, was slowly
+putting up his jackknife, and groping in another pocket for something
+else.
+
+“Herbert, my dear friend,” said I, shutting the double doors, while
+Herbert stood staring and wondering, “something very strange has
+happened. This is—a visitor of mine.”
+
+“It’s all right, dear boy!” said Provis coming forward, with his little
+clasped black book, and then addressing himself to Herbert. “Take it in
+your right hand. Lord strike you dead on the spot, if ever you split in
+any way sumever! Kiss it!”
+
+“Do so, as he wishes it,” I said to Herbert. So, Herbert, looking at me
+with a friendly uneasiness and amazement, complied, and Provis
+immediately shaking hands with him, said, “Now you’re on your oath, you
+know. And never believe me on mine, if Pip shan’t make a gentleman on
+you!”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLI.
+
+
+In vain should I attempt to describe the astonishment and disquiet of
+Herbert, when he and I and Provis sat down before the fire, and I
+recounted the whole of the secret. Enough, that I saw my own feelings
+reflected in Herbert’s face, and not least among them, my repugnance
+towards the man who had done so much for me.
+
+What would alone have set a division between that man and us, if there
+had been no other dividing circumstance, was his triumph in my story.
+Saving his troublesome sense of having been “low” on one occasion since
+his return,—on which point he began to hold forth to Herbert, the
+moment my revelation was finished,—he had no perception of the
+possibility of my finding any fault with my good fortune. His boast
+that he had made me a gentleman, and that he had come to see me support
+the character on his ample resources, was made for me quite as much as
+for himself. And that it was a highly agreeable boast to both of us,
+and that we must both be very proud of it, was a conclusion quite
+established in his own mind.
+
+“Though, look’ee here, Pip’s comrade,” he said to Herbert, after having
+discoursed for some time, “I know very well that once since I come
+back—for half a minute—I’ve been low. I said to Pip, I knowed as I had
+been low. But don’t you fret yourself on that score. I ain’t made Pip a
+gentleman, and Pip ain’t a-going to make you a gentleman, not fur me
+not to know what’s due to ye both. Dear boy, and Pip’s comrade, you two
+may count upon me always having a genteel muzzle on. Muzzled I have
+been since that half a minute when I was betrayed into lowness, muzzled
+I am at the present time, muzzled I ever will be.”
+
+Herbert said, “Certainly,” but looked as if there were no specific
+consolation in this, and remained perplexed and dismayed. We were
+anxious for the time when he would go to his lodging and leave us
+together, but he was evidently jealous of leaving us together, and sat
+late. It was midnight before I took him round to Essex Street, and saw
+him safely in at his own dark door. When it closed upon him, I
+experienced the first moment of relief I had known since the night of
+his arrival.
+
+Never quite free from an uneasy remembrance of the man on the stairs, I
+had always looked about me in taking my guest out after dark, and in
+bringing him back; and I looked about me now. Difficult as it is in a
+large city to avoid the suspicion of being watched, when the mind is
+conscious of danger in that regard, I could not persuade myself that
+any of the people within sight cared about my movements. The few who
+were passing passed on their several ways, and the street was empty
+when I turned back into the Temple. Nobody had come out at the gate
+with us, nobody went in at the gate with me. As I crossed by the
+fountain, I saw his lighted back windows looking bright and quiet, and,
+when I stood for a few moments in the doorway of the building where I
+lived, before going up the stairs, Garden Court was as still and
+lifeless as the staircase was when I ascended it.
+
+Herbert received me with open arms, and I had never felt before so
+blessedly what it is to have a friend. When he had spoken some sound
+words of sympathy and encouragement, we sat down to consider the
+question, What was to be done?
+
+The chair that Provis had occupied still remaining where it had
+stood,—for he had a barrack way with him of hanging about one spot, in
+one unsettled manner, and going through one round of observances with
+his pipe and his negro-head and his jackknife and his pack of cards,
+and what not, as if it were all put down for him on a slate,—I say his
+chair remaining where it had stood, Herbert unconsciously took it, but
+next moment started out of it, pushed it away, and took another. He had
+no occasion to say after that that he had conceived an aversion for my
+patron, neither had I occasion to confess my own. We interchanged that
+confidence without shaping a syllable.
+
+“What,” said I to Herbert, when he was safe in another chair,—“what is
+to be done?”
+
+“My poor dear Handel,” he replied, holding his head, “I am too stunned
+to think.”
+
+“So was I, Herbert, when the blow first fell. Still, something must be
+done. He is intent upon various new expenses,—horses, and carriages,
+and lavish appearances of all kinds. He must be stopped somehow.”
+
+“You mean that you can’t accept—”
+
+“How can I?” I interposed, as Herbert paused. “Think of him! Look at
+him!”
+
+An involuntary shudder passed over both of us.
+
+“Yet I am afraid the dreadful truth is, Herbert, that he is attached to
+me, strongly attached to me. Was there ever such a fate!”
+
+“My poor dear Handel,” Herbert repeated.
+
+“Then,” said I, “after all, stopping short here, never taking another
+penny from him, think what I owe him already! Then again: I am heavily
+in debt,—very heavily for me, who have now no expectations,—and I have
+been bred to no calling, and I am fit for nothing.”
+
+“Well, well, well!” Herbert remonstrated. “Don’t say fit for nothing.”
+
+“What am I fit for? I know only one thing that I am fit for, and that
+is, to go for a soldier. And I might have gone, my dear Herbert, but
+for the prospect of taking counsel with your friendship and affection.”
+
+Of course I broke down there: and of course Herbert, beyond seizing a
+warm grip of my hand, pretended not to know it.
+
+“Anyhow, my dear Handel,” said he presently, “soldiering won’t do. If
+you were to renounce this patronage and these favours, I suppose you
+would do so with some faint hope of one day repaying what you have
+already had. Not very strong, that hope, if you went soldiering!
+Besides, it’s absurd. You would be infinitely better in Clarriker’s
+house, small as it is. I am working up towards a partnership, you
+know.”
+
+Poor fellow! He little suspected with whose money.
+
+“But there is another question,” said Herbert. “This is an ignorant,
+determined man, who has long had one fixed idea. More than that, he
+seems to me (I may misjudge him) to be a man of a desperate and fierce
+character.”
+
+“I know he is,” I returned. “Let me tell you what evidence I have seen
+of it.” And I told him what I had not mentioned in my narrative, of
+that encounter with the other convict.
+
+“See, then,” said Herbert; “think of this! He comes here at the peril
+of his life, for the realisation of his fixed idea. In the moment of
+realisation, after all his toil and waiting, you cut the ground from
+under his feet, destroy his idea, and make his gains worthless to him.
+Do you see nothing that he might do, under the disappointment?”
+
+“I have seen it, Herbert, and dreamed of it, ever since the fatal night
+of his arrival. Nothing has been in my thoughts so distinctly as his
+putting himself in the way of being taken.”
+
+“Then you may rely upon it,” said Herbert, “that there would be great
+danger of his doing it. That is his power over you as long as he
+remains in England, and that would be his reckless course if you
+forsook him.”
+
+I was so struck by the horror of this idea, which had weighed upon me
+from the first, and the working out of which would make me regard
+myself, in some sort, as his murderer, that I could not rest in my
+chair, but began pacing to and fro. I said to Herbert, meanwhile, that
+even if Provis were recognised and taken, in spite of himself, I should
+be wretched as the cause, however innocently. Yes; even though I was so
+wretched in having him at large and near me, and even though I would
+far rather have worked at the forge all the days of my life than I
+would ever have come to this!
+
+But there was no staving off the question, What was to be done?
+
+“The first and the main thing to be done,” said Herbert, “is to get him
+out of England. You will have to go with him, and then he may be
+induced to go.”
+
+“But get him where I will, could I prevent his coming back?”
+
+“My good Handel, is it not obvious that with Newgate in the next
+street, there must be far greater hazard in your breaking your mind to
+him and making him reckless, here, than elsewhere? If a pretext to get
+him away could be made out of that other convict, or out of anything
+else in his life, now.”
+
+“There, again!” said I, stopping before Herbert, with my open hands
+held out, as if they contained the desperation of the case. “I know
+nothing of his life. It has almost made me mad to sit here of a night
+and see him before me, so bound up with my fortunes and misfortunes,
+and yet so unknown to me, except as the miserable wretch who terrified
+me two days in my childhood!”
+
+Herbert got up, and linked his arm in mine, and we slowly walked to and
+fro together, studying the carpet.
+
+“Handel,” said Herbert, stopping, “you feel convinced that you can take
+no further benefits from him; do you?”
+
+“Fully. Surely you would, too, if you were in my place?”
+
+“And you feel convinced that you must break with him?”
+
+“Herbert, can you ask me?”
+
+“And you have, and are bound to have, that tenderness for the life he
+has risked on your account, that you must save him, if possible, from
+throwing it away. Then you must get him out of England before you stir
+a finger to extricate yourself. That done, extricate yourself, in
+Heaven’s name, and we’ll see it out together, dear old boy.”
+
+It was a comfort to shake hands upon it, and walk up and down again,
+with only that done.
+
+“Now, Herbert,” said I, “with reference to gaining some knowledge of
+his history. There is but one way that I know of. I must ask him point
+blank.”
+
+“Yes. Ask him,” said Herbert, “when we sit at breakfast in the
+morning.” For he had said, on taking leave of Herbert, that he would
+come to breakfast with us.
+
+With this project formed, we went to bed. I had the wildest dreams
+concerning him, and woke unrefreshed; I woke, too, to recover the fear
+which I had lost in the night, of his being found out as a returned
+transport. Waking, I never lost that fear.
+
+He came round at the appointed time, took out his jackknife, and sat
+down to his meal. He was full of plans “for his gentleman’s coming out
+strong, and like a gentleman,” and urged me to begin speedily upon the
+pocket-book which he had left in my possession. He considered the
+chambers and his own lodging as temporary residences, and advised me to
+look out at once for a “fashionable crib” near Hyde Park, in which he
+could have “a shake-down.” When he had made an end of his breakfast,
+and was wiping his knife on his leg, I said to him, without a word of
+preface,—
+
+“After you were gone last night, I told my friend of the struggle that
+the soldiers found you engaged in on the marshes, when we came up. You
+remember?”
+
+“Remember!” said he. “I think so!”
+
+“We want to know something about that man—and about you. It is strange
+to know no more about either, and particularly you, than I was able to
+tell last night. Is not this as good a time as another for our knowing
+more?”
+
+“Well!” he said, after consideration. “You’re on your oath, you know,
+Pip’s comrade?”
+
+“Assuredly,” replied Herbert.
+
+“As to anything I say, you know,” he insisted. “The oath applies to
+all.”
+
+“I understand it to do so.”
+
+“And look’ee here! Wotever I done is worked out and paid for,” he
+insisted again.
+
+“So be it.”
+
+He took out his black pipe and was going to fill it with negro-head,
+when, looking at the tangle of tobacco in his hand, he seemed to think
+it might perplex the thread of his narrative. He put it back again,
+stuck his pipe in a button-hole of his coat, spread a hand on each
+knee, and after turning an angry eye on the fire for a few silent
+moments, looked round at us and said what follows.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLII.
+
+
+“Dear boy and Pip’s comrade. I am not a-going fur to tell you my life
+like a song, or a story-book. But to give it you short and handy, I’ll
+put it at once into a mouthful of English. In jail and out of jail, in
+jail and out of jail, in jail and out of jail. There, you’ve got it.
+That’s _my_ life pretty much, down to such times as I got shipped off,
+arter Pip stood my friend.
+
+“I’ve been done everything to, pretty well—except hanged. I’ve been
+locked up as much as a silver tea-kittle. I’ve been carted here and
+carted there, and put out of this town, and put out of that town, and
+stuck in the stocks, and whipped and worried and drove. I’ve no more
+notion where I was born than you have—if so much. I first become aware
+of myself down in Essex, a thieving turnips for my living. Summun had
+run away from me—a man—a tinker—and he’d took the fire with him, and
+left me wery cold.
+
+“I know’d my name to be Magwitch, chrisen’d Abel. How did I know it?
+Much as I know’d the birds’ names in the hedges to be chaffinch,
+sparrer, thrush. I might have thought it was all lies together, only as
+the birds’ names come out true, I supposed mine did.
+
+“So fur as I could find, there warn’t a soul that see young Abel
+Magwitch, with us little on him as in him, but wot caught fright at
+him, and either drove him off, or took him up. I was took up, took up,
+took up, to that extent that I reg’larly grow’d up took up.
+
+“This is the way it was, that when I was a ragged little creetur as
+much to be pitied as ever I see (not that I looked in the glass, for
+there warn’t many insides of furnished houses known to me), I got the
+name of being hardened. ‘This is a terrible hardened one,’ they says to
+prison wisitors, picking out me. ‘May be said to live in jails, this
+boy.’ Then they looked at me, and I looked at them, and they measured
+my head, some on ’em,—they had better a measured my stomach,—and others
+on ’em giv me tracts what I couldn’t read, and made me speeches what I
+couldn’t understand. They always went on agen me about the Devil. But
+what the Devil was I to do? I must put something into my stomach,
+mustn’t I?—Howsomever, I’m a getting low, and I know what’s due. Dear
+boy and Pip’s comrade, don’t you be afeerd of me being low.
+
+“Tramping, begging, thieving, working sometimes when I could,—though
+that warn’t as often as you may think, till you put the question
+whether you would ha’ been over-ready to give me work yourselves,—a bit
+of a poacher, a bit of a labourer, a bit of a wagoner, a bit of a
+haymaker, a bit of a hawker, a bit of most things that don’t pay and
+lead to trouble, I got to be a man. A deserting soldier in a
+Traveller’s Rest, what lay hid up to the chin under a lot of taturs,
+learnt me to read; and a travelling Giant what signed his name at a
+penny a time learnt me to write. I warn’t locked up as often now as
+formerly, but I wore out my good share of key-metal still.
+
+“At Epsom races, a matter of over twenty years ago, I got acquainted
+wi’ a man whose skull I’d crack wi’ this poker, like the claw of a
+lobster, if I’d got it on this hob. His right name was Compeyson; and
+that’s the man, dear boy, what you see me a pounding in the ditch,
+according to what you truly told your comrade arter I was gone last
+night.
+
+“He set up fur a gentleman, this Compeyson, and he’d been to a public
+boarding-school and had learning. He was a smooth one to talk, and was
+a dab at the ways of gentlefolks. He was good-looking too. It was the
+night afore the great race, when I found him on the heath, in a booth
+that I know’d on. Him and some more was a sitting among the tables when
+I went in, and the landlord (which had a knowledge of me, and was a
+sporting one) called him out, and said, ‘I think this is a man that
+might suit you,’—meaning I was.
+
+“Compeyson, he looks at me very noticing, and I look at him. He has a
+watch and a chain and a ring and a breast-pin and a handsome suit of
+clothes.
+
+“‘To judge from appearances, you’re out of luck,’ says Compeyson to me.
+
+“‘Yes, master, and I’ve never been in it much.’ (I had come out of
+Kingston Jail last on a vagrancy committal. Not but what it might have
+been for something else; but it warn’t.)
+
+“‘Luck changes,’ says Compeyson; ‘perhaps yours is going to change.’
+
+“I says, ‘I hope it may be so. There’s room.’
+
+“‘What can you do?’ says Compeyson.
+
+“‘Eat and drink,’ I says; ‘if you’ll find the materials.’
+
+“Compeyson laughed, looked at me again very noticing, giv me five
+shillings, and appointed me for next night. Same place.
+
+“I went to Compeyson next night, same place, and Compeyson took me on
+to be his man and pardner. And what was Compeyson’s business in which
+we was to go pardners? Compeyson’s business was the swindling,
+handwriting forging, stolen bank-note passing, and such-like. All sorts
+of traps as Compeyson could set with his head, and keep his own legs
+out of and get the profits from and let another man in for, was
+Compeyson’s business. He’d no more heart than a iron file, he was as
+cold as death, and he had the head of the Devil afore mentioned.
+
+“There was another in with Compeyson, as was called Arthur,—not as
+being so chrisen’d, but as a surname. He was in a Decline, and was a
+shadow to look at. Him and Compeyson had been in a bad thing with a
+rich lady some years afore, and they’d made a pot of money by it; but
+Compeyson betted and gamed, and he’d have run through the king’s taxes.
+So, Arthur was a dying, and a dying poor and with the horrors on him,
+and Compeyson’s wife (which Compeyson kicked mostly) was a having pity
+on him when she could, and Compeyson was a having pity on nothing and
+nobody.
+
+“I might a took warning by Arthur, but I didn’t; and I won’t pretend I
+was partick’ler—for where ’ud be the good on it, dear boy and comrade?
+So I begun wi’ Compeyson, and a poor tool I was in his hands. Arthur
+lived at the top of Compeyson’s house (over nigh Brentford it was), and
+Compeyson kept a careful account agen him for board and lodging, in
+case he should ever get better to work it out. But Arthur soon settled
+the account. The second or third time as ever I see him, he come a
+tearing down into Compeyson’s parlour late at night, in only a flannel
+gown, with his hair all in a sweat, and he says to Compeyson’s wife,
+‘Sally, she really is upstairs alonger me, now, and I can’t get rid of
+her. She’s all in white,’ he says, ‘wi’ white flowers in her hair, and
+she’s awful mad, and she’s got a shroud hanging over her arm, and she
+says she’ll put it on me at five in the morning.’
+
+“Says Compeyson: ‘Why, you fool, don’t you know she’s got a living
+body? And how should she be up there, without coming through the door,
+or in at the window, and up the stairs?’
+
+“‘I don’t know how she’s there,’ says Arthur, shivering dreadful with
+the horrors, ‘but she’s standing in the corner at the foot of the bed,
+awful mad. And over where her heart’s broke—_you_ broke it!—there’s
+drops of blood.’
+
+“Compeyson spoke hardy, but he was always a coward. ‘Go up alonger this
+drivelling sick man,’ he says to his wife, ‘and Magwitch, lend her a
+hand, will you?’ But he never come nigh himself.
+
+“Compeyson’s wife and me took him up to bed agen, and he raved most
+dreadful. ‘Why look at her!’ he cries out. ‘She’s a shaking the shroud
+at me! Don’t you see her? Look at her eyes! Ain’t it awful to see her
+so mad?’ Next he cries, ‘She’ll put it on me, and then I’m done for!
+Take it away from her, take it away!’ And then he catched hold of us,
+and kep on a talking to her, and answering of her, till I half believed
+I see her myself.
+
+“Compeyson’s wife, being used to him, giv him some liquor to get the
+horrors off, and by and by he quieted. ‘O, she’s gone! Has her keeper
+been for her?’ he says. ‘Yes,’ says Compeyson’s wife. ‘Did you tell him
+to lock her and bar her in?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And to take that ugly thing away
+from her?’ ‘Yes, yes, all right.’ ‘You’re a good creetur,’ he says,
+‘don’t leave me, whatever you do, and thank you!’
+
+“He rested pretty quiet till it might want a few minutes of five, and
+then he starts up with a scream, and screams out, ‘Here she is! She’s
+got the shroud again. She’s unfolding it. She’s coming out of the
+corner. She’s coming to the bed. Hold me, both on you—one of each
+side—don’t let her touch me with it. Hah! she missed me that time.
+Don’t let her throw it over my shoulders. Don’t let her lift me up to
+get it round me. She’s lifting me up. Keep me down!’ Then he lifted
+himself up hard, and was dead.
+
+“Compeyson took it easy as a good riddance for both sides. Him and me
+was soon busy, and first he swore me (being ever artful) on my own
+book,—this here little black book, dear boy, what I swore your comrade
+on.
+
+“Not to go into the things that Compeyson planned, and I done—which ’ud
+take a week—I’ll simply say to you, dear boy, and Pip’s comrade, that
+that man got me into such nets as made me his black slave. I was always
+in debt to him, always under his thumb, always a working, always a
+getting into danger. He was younger than me, but he’d got craft, and
+he’d got learning, and he overmatched me five hundred times told and no
+mercy. My Missis as I had the hard time wi’—Stop though! I ain’t
+brought _her_ in—”
+
+He looked about him in a confused way, as if he had lost his place in
+the book of his remembrance; and he turned his face to the fire, and
+spread his hands broader on his knees, and lifted them off and put them
+on again.
+
+“There ain’t no need to go into it,” he said, looking round once more.
+“The time wi’ Compeyson was a’most as hard a time as ever I had; that
+said, all’s said. Did I tell you as I was tried, alone, for
+misdemeanor, while with Compeyson?”
+
+I answered, No.
+
+“Well!” he said, “I _was_, and got convicted. As to took up on
+suspicion, that was twice or three times in the four or five year that
+it lasted; but evidence was wanting. At last, me and Compeyson was both
+committed for felony,—on a charge of putting stolen notes in
+circulation,—and there was other charges behind. Compeyson says to me,
+‘Separate defences, no communication,’ and that was all. And I was so
+miserable poor, that I sold all the clothes I had, except what hung on
+my back, afore I could get Jaggers.
+
+“When we was put in the dock, I noticed first of all what a gentleman
+Compeyson looked, wi’ his curly hair and his black clothes and his
+white pocket-handkercher, and what a common sort of a wretch I looked.
+When the prosecution opened and the evidence was put short, aforehand,
+I noticed how heavy it all bore on me, and how light on him. When the
+evidence was giv in the box, I noticed how it was always me that had
+come for’ard, and could be swore to, how it was always me that the
+money had been paid to, how it was always me that had seemed to work
+the thing and get the profit. But when the defence come on, then I see
+the plan plainer; for, says the counsellor for Compeyson, ‘My lord and
+gentlemen, here you has afore you, side by side, two persons as your
+eyes can separate wide; one, the younger, well brought up, who will be
+spoke to as such; one, the elder, ill brought up, who will be spoke to
+as such; one, the younger, seldom if ever seen in these here
+transactions, and only suspected; t’other, the elder, always seen in
+’em and always wi’ his guilt brought home. Can you doubt, if there is
+but one in it, which is the one, and, if there is two in it, which is
+much the worst one?’ And such-like. And when it come to character,
+warn’t it Compeyson as had been to the school, and warn’t it his
+schoolfellows as was in this position and in that, and warn’t it him as
+had been know’d by witnesses in such clubs and societies, and nowt to
+his disadvantage? And warn’t it me as had been tried afore, and as had
+been know’d up hill and down dale in Bridewells and Lock-Ups! And when
+it come to speech-making, warn’t it Compeyson as could speak to ’em wi’
+his face dropping every now and then into his white
+pocket-handkercher,—ah! and wi’ verses in his speech, too,—and warn’t
+it me as could only say, ‘Gentlemen, this man at my side is a most
+precious rascal’? And when the verdict come, warn’t it Compeyson as was
+recommended to mercy on account of good character and bad company, and
+giving up all the information he could agen me, and warn’t it me as got
+never a word but Guilty? And when I says to Compeyson, ‘Once out of
+this court, I’ll smash that face of yourn!’ ain’t it Compeyson as prays
+the Judge to be protected, and gets two turnkeys stood betwixt us? And
+when we’re sentenced, ain’t it him as gets seven year, and me fourteen,
+and ain’t it him as the Judge is sorry for, because he might a done so
+well, and ain’t it me as the Judge perceives to be a old offender of
+wiolent passion, likely to come to worse?”
+
+He had worked himself into a state of great excitement, but he checked
+it, took two or three short breaths, swallowed as often, and stretching
+out his hand towards me said, in a reassuring manner, “I ain’t a-going
+to be low, dear boy!”
+
+He had so heated himself that he took out his handkerchief and wiped
+his face and head and neck and hands, before he could go on.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+“I had said to Compeyson that I’d smash that face of his, and I swore
+Lord smash mine! to do it. We was in the same prison-ship, but I
+couldn’t get at him for long, though I tried. At last I come behind him
+and hit him on the cheek to turn him round and get a smashing one at
+him, when I was seen and seized. The black-hole of that ship warn’t a
+strong one, to a judge of black-holes that could swim and dive. I
+escaped to the shore, and I was a hiding among the graves there,
+envying them as was in ’em and all over, when I first see my boy!”
+
+He regarded me with a look of affection that made him almost abhorrent
+to me again, though I had felt great pity for him.
+
+“By my boy, I was giv to understand as Compeyson was out on them
+marshes too. Upon my soul, I half believe he escaped in his terror, to
+get quit of me, not knowing it was me as had got ashore. I hunted him
+down. I smashed his face. ‘And now,’ says I ‘as the worst thing I can
+do, caring nothing for myself, I’ll drag you back.’ And I’d have swum
+off, towing him by the hair, if it had come to that, and I’d a got him
+aboard without the soldiers.
+
+“Of course he’d much the best of it to the last,—his character was so
+good. He had escaped when he was made half wild by me and my murderous
+intentions; and his punishment was light. I was put in irons, brought
+to trial again, and sent for life. I didn’t stop for life, dear boy and
+Pip’s comrade, being here.”
+
+He wiped himself again, as he had done before, and then slowly took his
+tangle of tobacco from his pocket, and plucked his pipe from his
+button-hole, and slowly filled it, and began to smoke.
+
+“Is he dead?” I asked, after a silence.
+
+“Is who dead, dear boy?”
+
+“Compeyson.”
+
+“He hopes _I_ am, if he’s alive, you may be sure,” with a fierce look.
+“I never heerd no more of him.”
+
+Herbert had been writing with his pencil in the cover of a book. He
+softly pushed the book over to me, as Provis stood smoking with his
+eyes on the fire, and I read in it:—
+
+“Young Havisham’s name was Arthur. Compeyson is the man who professed
+to be Miss Havisham’s lover.”
+
+I shut the book and nodded slightly to Herbert, and put the book by;
+but we neither of us said anything, and both looked at Provis as he
+stood smoking by the fire.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLIII.
+
+
+Why should I pause to ask how much of my shrinking from Provis might be
+traced to Estella? Why should I loiter on my road, to compare the state
+of mind in which I had tried to rid myself of the stain of the prison
+before meeting her at the coach-office, with the state of mind in which
+I now reflected on the abyss between Estella in her pride and beauty,
+and the returned transport whom I harboured? The road would be none the
+smoother for it, the end would be none the better for it, he would not
+be helped, nor I extenuated.
+
+A new fear had been engendered in my mind by his narrative; or rather,
+his narrative had given form and purpose to the fear that was already
+there. If Compeyson were alive and should discover his return, I could
+hardly doubt the consequence. That Compeyson stood in mortal fear of
+him, neither of the two could know much better than I; and that any
+such man as that man had been described to be would hesitate to release
+himself for good from a dreaded enemy by the safe means of becoming an
+informer was scarcely to be imagined.
+
+Never had I breathed, and never would I breathe—or so I resolved—a word
+of Estella to Provis. But, I said to Herbert that, before I could go
+abroad, I must see both Estella and Miss Havisham. This was when we
+were left alone on the night of the day when Provis told us his story.
+I resolved to go out to Richmond next day, and I went.
+
+On my presenting myself at Mrs. Brandley’s, Estella’s maid was called
+to tell that Estella had gone into the country. Where? To Satis House,
+as usual. Not as usual, I said, for she had never yet gone there
+without me; when was she coming back? There was an air of reservation
+in the answer which increased my perplexity, and the answer was, that
+her maid believed she was only coming back at all for a little while. I
+could make nothing of this, except that it was meant that I should make
+nothing of it, and I went home again in complete discomfiture.
+
+Another night consultation with Herbert after Provis was gone home (I
+always took him home, and always looked well about me), led us to the
+conclusion that nothing should be said about going abroad until I came
+back from Miss Havisham’s. In the mean time, Herbert and I were to
+consider separately what it would be best to say; whether we should
+devise any pretence of being afraid that he was under suspicious
+observation; or whether I, who had never yet been abroad, should
+propose an expedition. We both knew that I had but to propose anything,
+and he would consent. We agreed that his remaining many days in his
+present hazard was not to be thought of.
+
+Next day I had the meanness to feign that I was under a binding promise
+to go down to Joe; but I was capable of almost any meanness towards Joe
+or his name. Provis was to be strictly careful while I was gone, and
+Herbert was to take the charge of him that I had taken. I was to be
+absent only one night, and, on my return, the gratification of his
+impatience for my starting as a gentleman on a greater scale was to be
+begun. It occurred to me then, and as I afterwards found to Herbert
+also, that he might be best got away across the water, on that
+pretence,—as, to make purchases, or the like.
+
+Having thus cleared the way for my expedition to Miss Havisham’s, I set
+off by the early morning coach before it was yet light, and was out on
+the open country road when the day came creeping on, halting and
+whimpering and shivering, and wrapped in patches of cloud and rags of
+mist, like a beggar. When we drove up to the Blue Boar after a drizzly
+ride, whom should I see come out under the gateway, toothpick in hand,
+to look at the coach, but Bentley Drummle!
+
+As he pretended not to see me, I pretended not to see him. It was a
+very lame pretence on both sides; the lamer, because we both went into
+the coffee-room, where he had just finished his breakfast, and where I
+ordered mine. It was poisonous to me to see him in the town, for I very
+well knew why he had come there.
+
+Pretending to read a smeary newspaper long out of date, which had
+nothing half so legible in its local news, as the foreign matter of
+coffee, pickles, fish sauces, gravy, melted butter, and wine with which
+it was sprinkled all over, as if it had taken the measles in a highly
+irregular form, I sat at my table while he stood before the fire. By
+degrees it became an enormous injury to me that he stood before the
+fire. And I got up, determined to have my share of it. I had to put my
+hand behind his legs for the poker when I went up to the fireplace to
+stir the fire, but still pretended not to know him.
+
+“Is this a cut?” said Mr. Drummle.
+
+“Oh!” said I, poker in hand; “it’s you, is it? How do you do? I was
+wondering who it was, who kept the fire off.”
+
+With that, I poked tremendously, and having done so, planted myself
+side by side with Mr. Drummle, my shoulders squared and my back to the
+fire.
+
+“You have just come down?” said Mr. Drummle, edging me a little away
+with his shoulder.
+
+“Yes,” said I, edging _him_ a little away with _my_ shoulder.
+
+“Beastly place,” said Drummle. “Your part of the country, I think?”
+
+“Yes,” I assented. “I am told it’s very like your Shropshire.”
+
+“Not in the least like it,” said Drummle.
+
+Here Mr. Drummle looked at his boots and I looked at mine, and then Mr.
+Drummle looked at my boots, and I looked at his.
+
+“Have you been here long?” I asked, determined not to yield an inch of
+the fire.
+
+“Long enough to be tired of it,” returned Drummle, pretending to yawn,
+but equally determined.
+
+“Do you stay here long?”
+
+“Can’t say,” answered Mr. Drummle. “Do you?”
+
+“Can’t say,” said I.
+
+I felt here, through a tingling in my blood, that if Mr. Drummle’s
+shoulder had claimed another hair’s breadth of room, I should have
+jerked him into the window; equally, that if my own shoulder had urged
+a similar claim, Mr. Drummle would have jerked me into the nearest box.
+He whistled a little. So did I.
+
+“Large tract of marshes about here, I believe?” said Drummle.
+
+“Yes. What of that?” said I.
+
+Mr. Drummle looked at me, and then at my boots, and then said, “Oh!”
+and laughed.
+
+“Are you amused, Mr. Drummle?”
+
+“No,” said he, “not particularly. I am going out for a ride in the
+saddle. I mean to explore those marshes for amusement. Out-of-the-way
+villages there, they tell me. Curious little public-houses—and
+smithies—and that. Waiter!”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Is that horse of mine ready?”
+
+“Brought round to the door, sir.”
+
+“I say. Look here, you sir. The lady won’t ride to-day; the weather
+won’t do.”
+
+“Very good, sir.”
+
+“And I don’t dine, because I’m going to dine at the lady’s.”
+
+“Very good, sir.”
+
+Then, Drummle glanced at me, with an insolent triumph on his
+great-jowled face that cut me to the heart, dull as he was, and so
+exasperated me, that I felt inclined to take him in my arms (as the
+robber in the story-book is said to have taken the old lady) and seat
+him on the fire.
+
+One thing was manifest to both of us, and that was, that until relief
+came, neither of us could relinquish the fire. There we stood, well
+squared up before it, shoulder to shoulder and foot to foot, with our
+hands behind us, not budging an inch. The horse was visible outside in
+the drizzle at the door, my breakfast was put on the table, Drummle’s
+was cleared away, the waiter invited me to begin, I nodded, we both
+stood our ground.
+
+“Have you been to the Grove since?” said Drummle.
+
+“No,” said I, “I had quite enough of the Finches the last time I was
+there.”
+
+“Was that when we had a difference of opinion?”
+
+“Yes,” I replied, very shortly.
+
+“Come, come! They let you off easily enough,” sneered Drummle. “You
+shouldn’t have lost your temper.”
+
+“Mr. Drummle,” said I, “you are not competent to give advice on that
+subject. When I lose my temper (not that I admit having done so on that
+occasion), I don’t throw glasses.”
+
+“I do,” said Drummle.
+
+After glancing at him once or twice, in an increased state of
+smouldering ferocity, I said,—
+
+“Mr. Drummle, I did not seek this conversation, and I don’t think it an
+agreeable one.”
+
+“I am sure it’s not,” said he, superciliously over his shoulder; “I
+don’t think anything about it.”
+
+“And therefore,” I went on, “with your leave, I will suggest that we
+hold no kind of communication in future.”
+
+“Quite my opinion,” said Drummle, “and what I should have suggested
+myself, or done—more likely—without suggesting. But don’t lose your
+temper. Haven’t you lost enough without that?”
+
+“What do you mean, sir?”
+
+“Waiter!” said Drummle, by way of answering me.
+
+The waiter reappeared.
+
+“Look here, you sir. You quite understand that the young lady don’t
+ride to-day, and that I dine at the young lady’s?”
+
+“Quite so, sir!”
+
+When the waiter had felt my fast-cooling teapot with the palm of his
+hand, and had looked imploringly at me, and had gone out, Drummle,
+careful not to move the shoulder next me, took a cigar from his pocket
+and bit the end off, but showed no sign of stirring. Choking and
+boiling as I was, I felt that we could not go a word further, without
+introducing Estella’s name, which I could not endure to hear him utter;
+and therefore I looked stonily at the opposite wall, as if there were
+no one present, and forced myself to silence. How long we might have
+remained in this ridiculous position it is impossible to say, but for
+the incursion of three thriving farmers—laid on by the waiter, I
+think—who came into the coffee-room unbuttoning their great-coats and
+rubbing their hands, and before whom, as they charged at the fire, we
+were obliged to give way.
+
+I saw him through the window, seizing his horse’s mane, and mounting in
+his blundering brutal manner, and sidling and backing away. I thought
+he was gone, when he came back, calling for a light for the cigar in
+his mouth, which he had forgotten. A man in a dust-coloured dress
+appeared with what was wanted,—I could not have said from where:
+whether from the inn yard, or the street, or where not,—and as Drummle
+leaned down from the saddle and lighted his cigar and laughed, with a
+jerk of his head towards the coffee-room windows, the slouching
+shoulders and ragged hair of this man whose back was towards me
+reminded me of Orlick.
+
+Too heavily out of sorts to care much at the time whether it were he or
+no, or after all to touch the breakfast, I washed the weather and the
+journey from my face and hands, and went out to the memorable old house
+that it would have been so much the better for me never to have
+entered, never to have seen.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLIV.
+
+
+In the room where the dressing-table stood, and where the wax-candles
+burnt on the wall, I found Miss Havisham and Estella; Miss Havisham
+seated on a settee near the fire, and Estella on a cushion at her feet.
+Estella was knitting, and Miss Havisham was looking on. They both
+raised their eyes as I went in, and both saw an alteration in me. I
+derived that, from the look they interchanged.
+
+“And what wind,” said Miss Havisham, “blows you here, Pip?”
+
+Though she looked steadily at me, I saw that she was rather confused.
+Estella, pausing a moment in her knitting with her eyes upon me, and
+then going on, I fancied that I read in the action of her fingers, as
+plainly as if she had told me in the dumb alphabet, that she perceived
+I had discovered my real benefactor.
+
+“Miss Havisham,” said I, “I went to Richmond yesterday, to speak to
+Estella; and finding that some wind had blown _her_ here, I followed.”
+
+Miss Havisham motioning to me for the third or fourth time to sit down,
+I took the chair by the dressing-table, which I had often seen her
+occupy. With all that ruin at my feet and about me, it seemed a natural
+place for me, that day.
+
+“What I had to say to Estella, Miss Havisham, I will say before you,
+presently—in a few moments. It will not surprise you, it will not
+displease you. I am as unhappy as you can ever have meant me to be.”
+
+Miss Havisham continued to look steadily at me. I could see in the
+action of Estella’s fingers as they worked that she attended to what I
+said; but she did not look up.
+
+“I have found out who my patron is. It is not a fortunate discovery,
+and is not likely ever to enrich me in reputation, station, fortune,
+anything. There are reasons why I must say no more of that. It is not
+my secret, but another’s.”
+
+As I was silent for a while, looking at Estella and considering how to
+go on, Miss Havisham repeated, “It is not your secret, but another’s.
+Well?”
+
+“When you first caused me to be brought here, Miss Havisham, when I
+belonged to the village over yonder, that I wish I had never left, I
+suppose I did really come here, as any other chance boy might have
+come,—as a kind of servant, to gratify a want or a whim, and to be paid
+for it?”
+
+“Ay, Pip,” replied Miss Havisham, steadily nodding her head; “you did.”
+
+“And that Mr. Jaggers—”
+
+“Mr. Jaggers,” said Miss Havisham, taking me up in a firm tone, “had
+nothing to do with it, and knew nothing of it. His being my lawyer, and
+his being the lawyer of your patron is a coincidence. He holds the same
+relation towards numbers of people, and it might easily arise. Be that
+as it may, it did arise, and was not brought about by any one.”
+
+Any one might have seen in her haggard face that there was no
+suppression or evasion so far.
+
+“But when I fell into the mistake I have so long remained in, at least
+you led me on?” said I.
+
+“Yes,” she returned, again nodding steadily, “I let you go on.”
+
+“Was that kind?”
+
+“Who am I,” cried Miss Havisham, striking her stick upon the floor and
+flashing into wrath so suddenly that Estella glanced up at her in
+surprise,—“who am I, for God’s sake, that I should be kind?”
+
+It was a weak complaint to have made, and I had not meant to make it. I
+told her so, as she sat brooding after this outburst.
+
+“Well, well, well!” she said. “What else?”
+
+“I was liberally paid for my old attendance here,” I said, to soothe
+her, “in being apprenticed, and I have asked these questions only for
+my own information. What follows has another (and I hope more
+disinterested) purpose. In humouring my mistake, Miss Havisham, you
+punished—practised on—perhaps you will supply whatever term expresses
+your intention, without offence—your self-seeking relations?”
+
+“I did. Why, they would have it so! So would you. What has been my
+history, that I should be at the pains of entreating either them or you
+not to have it so! You made your own snares. _I_ never made them.”
+
+Waiting until she was quiet again,—for this, too, flashed out of her in
+a wild and sudden way,—I went on.
+
+“I have been thrown among one family of your relations, Miss Havisham,
+and have been constantly among them since I went to London. I know them
+to have been as honestly under my delusion as I myself. And I should be
+false and base if I did not tell you, whether it is acceptable to you
+or no, and whether you are inclined to give credence to it or no, that
+you deeply wrong both Mr. Matthew Pocket and his son Herbert, if you
+suppose them to be otherwise than generous, upright, open, and
+incapable of anything designing or mean.”
+
+“They are your friends,” said Miss Havisham.
+
+“They made themselves my friends,” said I, “when they supposed me to
+have superseded them; and when Sarah Pocket, Miss Georgiana, and
+Mistress Camilla were not my friends, I think.”
+
+This contrasting of them with the rest seemed, I was glad to see, to do
+them good with her. She looked at me keenly for a little while, and
+then said quietly,—
+
+“What do you want for them?”
+
+“Only,” said I, “that you would not confound them with the others. They
+may be of the same blood, but, believe me, they are not of the same
+nature.”
+
+Still looking at me keenly, Miss Havisham repeated,—
+
+“What do you want for them?”
+
+“I am not so cunning, you see,” I said, in answer, conscious that I
+reddened a little, “as that I could hide from you, even if I desired,
+that I do want something. Miss Havisham, if you would spare the money
+to do my friend Herbert a lasting service in life, but which from the
+nature of the case must be done without his knowledge, I could show you
+how.”
+
+“Why must it be done without his knowledge?” she asked, settling her
+hands upon her stick, that she might regard me the more attentively.
+
+“Because,” said I, “I began the service myself, more than two years
+ago, without his knowledge, and I don’t want to be betrayed. Why I fail
+in my ability to finish it, I cannot explain. It is a part of the
+secret which is another person’s and not mine.”
+
+She gradually withdrew her eyes from me, and turned them on the fire.
+After watching it for what appeared in the silence and by the light of
+the slowly wasting candles to be a long time, she was roused by the
+collapse of some of the red coals, and looked towards me again—at
+first, vacantly—then, with a gradually concentrating attention. All
+this time Estella knitted on. When Miss Havisham had fixed her
+attention on me, she said, speaking as if there had been no lapse in
+our dialogue,—
+
+“What else?”
+
+“Estella,” said I, turning to her now, and trying to command my
+trembling voice, “you know I love you. You know that I have loved you
+long and dearly.”
+
+She raised her eyes to my face, on being thus addressed, and her
+fingers plied their work, and she looked at me with an unmoved
+countenance. I saw that Miss Havisham glanced from me to her, and from
+her to me.
+
+“I should have said this sooner, but for my long mistake. It induced me
+to hope that Miss Havisham meant us for one another. While I thought
+you could not help yourself, as it were, I refrained from saying it.
+But I must say it now.”
+
+Preserving her unmoved countenance, and with her fingers still going,
+Estella shook her head.
+
+“I know,” said I, in answer to that action,—“I know. I have no hope
+that I shall ever call you mine, Estella. I am ignorant what may become
+of me very soon, how poor I may be, or where I may go. Still, I love
+you. I have loved you ever since I first saw you in this house.”
+
+Looking at me perfectly unmoved and with her fingers busy, she shook
+her head again.
+
+“It would have been cruel in Miss Havisham, horribly cruel, to practise
+on the susceptibility of a poor boy, and to torture me through all
+these years with a vain hope and an idle pursuit, if she had reflected
+on the gravity of what she did. But I think she did not. I think that,
+in the endurance of her own trial, she forgot mine, Estella.”
+
+I saw Miss Havisham put her hand to her heart and hold it there, as she
+sat looking by turns at Estella and at me.
+
+“It seems,” said Estella, very calmly, “that there are sentiments,
+fancies,—I don’t know how to call them,—which I am not able to
+comprehend. When you say you love me, I know what you mean, as a form
+of words; but nothing more. You address nothing in my breast, you touch
+nothing there. I don’t care for what you say at all. I have tried to
+warn you of this; now, have I not?”
+
+I said in a miserable manner, “Yes.”
+
+“Yes. But you would not be warned, for you thought I did not mean it.
+Now, did you not think so?”
+
+“I thought and hoped you could not mean it. You, so young, untried, and
+beautiful, Estella! Surely it is not in Nature.”
+
+“It is in _my_ nature,” she returned. And then she added, with a stress
+upon the words, “It is in the nature formed within me. I make a great
+difference between you and all other people when I say so much. I can
+do no more.”
+
+“Is it not true,” said I, “that Bentley Drummle is in town here, and
+pursuing you?”
+
+“It is quite true,” she replied, referring to him with the indifference
+of utter contempt.
+
+“That you encourage him, and ride out with him, and that he dines with
+you this very day?”
+
+She seemed a little surprised that I should know it, but again replied,
+“Quite true.”
+
+“You cannot love him, Estella!”
+
+Her fingers stopped for the first time, as she retorted rather angrily,
+“What have I told you? Do you still think, in spite of it, that I do
+not mean what I say?”
+
+“You would never marry him, Estella?”
+
+She looked towards Miss Havisham, and considered for a moment with her
+work in her hands. Then she said, “Why not tell you the truth? I am
+going to be married to him.”
+
+I dropped my face into my hands, but was able to control myself better
+than I could have expected, considering what agony it gave me to hear
+her say those words. When I raised my face again, there was such a
+ghastly look upon Miss Havisham’s, that it impressed me, even in my
+passionate hurry and grief.
+
+“Estella, dearest Estella, do not let Miss Havisham lead you into this
+fatal step. Put me aside for ever,—you have done so, I well know,—but
+bestow yourself on some worthier person than Drummle. Miss Havisham
+gives you to him, as the greatest slight and injury that could be done
+to the many far better men who admire you, and to the few who truly
+love you. Among those few there may be one who loves you even as
+dearly, though he has not loved you as long, as I. Take him, and I can
+bear it better, for your sake!”
+
+My earnestness awoke a wonder in her that seemed as if it would have
+been touched with compassion, if she could have rendered me at all
+intelligible to her own mind.
+
+“I am going,” she said again, in a gentler voice, “to be married to
+him. The preparations for my marriage are making, and I shall be
+married soon. Why do you injuriously introduce the name of my mother by
+adoption? It is my own act.”
+
+“Your own act, Estella, to fling yourself away upon a brute?”
+
+“On whom should I fling myself away?” she retorted, with a smile.
+“Should I fling myself away upon the man who would the soonest feel (if
+people do feel such things) that I took nothing to him? There! It is
+done. I shall do well enough, and so will my husband. As to leading me
+into what you call this fatal step, Miss Havisham would have had me
+wait, and not marry yet; but I am tired of the life I have led, which
+has very few charms for me, and I am willing enough to change it. Say
+no more. We shall never understand each other.”
+
+“Such a mean brute, such a stupid brute!” I urged, in despair.
+
+“Don’t be afraid of my being a blessing to him,” said Estella; “I shall
+not be that. Come! Here is my hand. Do we part on this, you visionary
+boy—or man?”
+
+“O Estella!” I answered, as my bitter tears fell fast on her hand, do
+what I would to restrain them; “even if I remained in England and could
+hold my head up with the rest, how could I see you Drummle’s wife?”
+
+“Nonsense,” she returned,—“nonsense. This will pass in no time.”
+
+“Never, Estella!”
+
+“You will get me out of your thoughts in a week.”
+
+“Out of my thoughts! You are part of my existence, part of myself. You
+have been in every line I have ever read since I first came here, the
+rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been
+in every prospect I have ever seen since,—on the river, on the sails of
+the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the
+darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You
+have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever
+become acquainted with. The stones of which the strongest London
+buildings are made are not more real, or more impossible to be
+displaced by your hands, than your presence and influence have been to
+me, there and everywhere, and will be. Estella, to the last hour of my
+life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the
+little good in me, part of the evil. But, in this separation, I
+associate you only with the good; and I will faithfully hold you to
+that always, for you must have done me far more good than harm, let me
+feel now what sharp distress I may. O God bless you, God forgive you!”
+
+In what ecstasy of unhappiness I got these broken words out of myself,
+I don’t know. The rhapsody welled up within me, like blood from an
+inward wound, and gushed out. I held her hand to my lips some lingering
+moments, and so I left her. But ever afterwards, I remembered,—and soon
+afterwards with stronger reason,—that while Estella looked at me merely
+with incredulous wonder, the spectral figure of Miss Havisham, her hand
+still covering her heart, seemed all resolved into a ghastly stare of
+pity and remorse.
+
+All done, all gone! So much was done and gone, that when I went out at
+the gate, the light of the day seemed of a darker colour than when I
+went in. For a while, I hid myself among some lanes and by-paths, and
+then struck off to walk all the way to London. For, I had by that time
+come to myself so far as to consider that I could not go back to the
+inn and see Drummle there; that I could not bear to sit upon the coach
+and be spoken to; that I could do nothing half so good for myself as
+tire myself out.
+
+It was past midnight when I crossed London Bridge. Pursuing the narrow
+intricacies of the streets which at that time tended westward near the
+Middlesex shore of the river, my readiest access to the Temple was
+close by the river-side, through Whitefriars. I was not expected till
+to-morrow; but I had my keys, and, if Herbert were gone to bed, could
+get to bed myself without disturbing him.
+
+As it seldom happened that I came in at that Whitefriars gate after the
+Temple was closed, and as I was very muddy and weary, I did not take it
+ill that the night-porter examined me with much attention as he held
+the gate a little way open for me to pass in. To help his memory I
+mentioned my name.
+
+“I was not quite sure, sir, but I thought so. Here’s a note, sir. The
+messenger that brought it, said would you be so good as read it by my
+lantern?”
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Much surprised by the request, I took the note. It was directed to
+Philip Pip, Esquire, and on the top of the superscription were the
+words, “PLEASE READ THIS, HERE.” I opened it, the watchman holding up
+his light, and read inside, in Wemmick’s writing,—
+
+“DON’T GO HOME.”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLV.
+
+
+Turning from the Temple gate as soon as I had read the warning, I made
+the best of my way to Fleet Street, and there got a late hackney
+chariot and drove to the Hummums in Covent Garden. In those times a bed
+was always to be got there at any hour of the night, and the
+chamberlain, letting me in at his ready wicket, lighted the candle next
+in order on his shelf, and showed me straight into the bedroom next in
+order on his list. It was a sort of vault on the ground floor at the
+back, with a despotic monster of a four-post bedstead in it, straddling
+over the whole place, putting one of his arbitrary legs into the
+fireplace and another into the doorway, and squeezing the wretched
+little washing-stand in quite a Divinely Righteous manner.
+
+As I had asked for a night-light, the chamberlain had brought me in,
+before he left me, the good old constitutional rushlight of those
+virtuous days—an object like the ghost of a walking-cane, which
+instantly broke its back if it were touched, which nothing could ever
+be lighted at, and which was placed in solitary confinement at the
+bottom of a high tin tower, perforated with round holes that made a
+staringly wide-awake pattern on the walls. When I had got into bed, and
+lay there footsore, weary, and wretched, I found that I could no more
+close my own eyes than I could close the eyes of this foolish Argus.
+And thus, in the gloom and death of the night, we stared at one
+another.
+
+What a doleful night! How anxious, how dismal, how long! There was an
+inhospitable smell in the room, of cold soot and hot dust; and, as I
+looked up into the corners of the tester over my head, I thought what a
+number of blue-bottle flies from the butchers’, and earwigs from the
+market, and grubs from the country, must be holding on up there, lying
+by for next summer. This led me to speculate whether any of them ever
+tumbled down, and then I fancied that I felt light falls on my face,—a
+disagreeable turn of thought, suggesting other and more objectionable
+approaches up my back. When I had lain awake a little while, those
+extraordinary voices with which silence teems began to make themselves
+audible. The closet whispered, the fireplace sighed, the little
+washing-stand ticked, and one guitar-string played occasionally in the
+chest of drawers. At about the same time, the eyes on the wall acquired
+a new expression, and in every one of those staring rounds I saw
+written, DON’T GO HOME.
+
+Whatever night-fancies and night-noises crowded on me, they never
+warded off this DON’T GO HOME. It plaited itself into whatever I
+thought of, as a bodily pain would have done. Not long before, I had
+read in the newspapers, how a gentleman unknown had come to the Hummums
+in the night, and had gone to bed, and had destroyed himself, and had
+been found in the morning weltering in blood. It came into my head that
+he must have occupied this very vault of mine, and I got out of bed to
+assure myself that there were no red marks about; then opened the door
+to look out into the passages, and cheer myself with the companionship
+of a distant light, near which I knew the chamberlain to be dozing. But
+all this time, why I was not to go home, and what had happened at home,
+and when I should go home, and whether Provis was safe at home, were
+questions occupying my mind so busily, that one might have supposed
+there could be no more room in it for any other theme. Even when I
+thought of Estella, and how we had parted that day forever, and when I
+recalled all the circumstances of our parting, and all her looks and
+tones, and the action of her fingers while she knitted,—even then I was
+pursuing, here and there and everywhere, the caution, Don’t go home.
+When at last I dozed, in sheer exhaustion of mind and body, it became a
+vast shadowy verb which I had to conjugate. Imperative mood, present
+tense: Do not thou go home, let him not go home, let us not go home, do
+not ye or you go home, let not them go home. Then potentially: I may
+not and I cannot go home; and I might not, could not, would not, and
+should not go home; until I felt that I was going distracted, and
+rolled over on the pillow, and looked at the staring rounds upon the
+wall again.
+
+I had left directions that I was to be called at seven; for it was
+plain that I must see Wemmick before seeing any one else, and equally
+plain that this was a case in which his Walworth sentiments only could
+be taken. It was a relief to get out of the room where the night had
+been so miserable, and I needed no second knocking at the door to
+startle me from my uneasy bed.
+
+The Castle battlements arose upon my view at eight o’clock. The little
+servant happening to be entering the fortress with two hot rolls, I
+passed through the postern and crossed the drawbridge in her company,
+and so came without announcement into the presence of Wemmick as he was
+making tea for himself and the Aged. An open door afforded a
+perspective view of the Aged in bed.
+
+“Halloa, Mr. Pip!” said Wemmick. “You did come home, then?”
+
+“Yes,” I returned; “but I didn’t go home.”
+
+“That’s all right,” said he, rubbing his hands. “I left a note for you
+at each of the Temple gates, on the chance. Which gate did you come
+to?”
+
+I told him.
+
+“I’ll go round to the others in the course of the day and destroy the
+notes,” said Wemmick; “it’s a good rule never to leave documentary
+evidence if you can help it, because you don’t know when it may be put
+in. I’m going to take a liberty with you. _Would_ you mind toasting
+this sausage for the Aged P.?”
+
+I said I should be delighted to do it.
+
+“Then you can go about your work, Mary Anne,” said Wemmick to the
+little servant; “which leaves us to ourselves, don’t you see, Mr. Pip?”
+he added, winking, as she disappeared.
+
+I thanked him for his friendship and caution, and our discourse
+proceeded in a low tone, while I toasted the Aged’s sausage and he
+buttered the crumb of the Aged’s roll.
+
+“Now, Mr. Pip, you know,” said Wemmick, “you and I understand one
+another. We are in our private and personal capacities, and we have
+been engaged in a confidential transaction before to-day. Official
+sentiments are one thing. We are extra official.”
+
+I cordially assented. I was so very nervous, that I had already lighted
+the Aged’s sausage like a torch, and been obliged to blow it out.
+
+“I accidentally heard, yesterday morning,” said Wemmick, “being in a
+certain place where I once took you,—even between you and me, it’s as
+well not to mention names when avoidable—”
+
+“Much better not,” said I. “I understand you.”
+
+“I heard there by chance, yesterday morning,” said Wemmick, “that a
+certain person not altogether of uncolonial pursuits, and not
+unpossessed of portable property,—I don’t know who it may really be,—we
+won’t name this person—”
+
+“Not necessary,” said I.
+
+“—Had made some little stir in a certain part of the world where a good
+many people go, not always in gratification of their own inclinations,
+and not quite irrespective of the government expense—”
+
+In watching his face, I made quite a firework of the Aged’s sausage,
+and greatly discomposed both my own attention and Wemmick’s; for which
+I apologised.
+
+“—By disappearing from such place, and being no more heard of
+thereabouts. From which,” said Wemmick, “conjectures had been raised
+and theories formed. I also heard that you at your chambers in Garden
+Court, Temple, had been watched, and might be watched again.”
+
+“By whom?” said I.
+
+“I wouldn’t go into that,” said Wemmick, evasively, “it might clash
+with official responsibilities. I heard it, as I have in my time heard
+other curious things in the same place. I don’t tell it you on
+information received. I heard it.”
+
+He took the toasting-fork and sausage from me as he spoke, and set
+forth the Aged’s breakfast neatly on a little tray. Previous to placing
+it before him, he went into the Aged’s room with a clean white cloth,
+and tied the same under the old gentleman’s chin, and propped him up,
+and put his nightcap on one side, and gave him quite a rakish air. Then
+he placed his breakfast before him with great care, and said, “All
+right, ain’t you, Aged P.?” To which the cheerful Aged replied, “All
+right, John, my boy, all right!” As there seemed to be a tacit
+understanding that the Aged was not in a presentable state, and was
+therefore to be considered invisible, I made a pretence of being in
+complete ignorance of these proceedings.
+
+“This watching of me at my chambers (which I have once had reason to
+suspect),” I said to Wemmick when he came back, “is inseparable from
+the person to whom you have adverted; is it?”
+
+Wemmick looked very serious. “I couldn’t undertake to say that, of my
+own knowledge. I mean, I couldn’t undertake to say it was at first. But
+it either is, or it will be, or it’s in great danger of being.”
+
+As I saw that he was restrained by fealty to Little Britain from saying
+as much as he could, and as I knew with thankfulness to him how far out
+of his way he went to say what he did, I could not press him. But I
+told him, after a little meditation over the fire, that I would like to
+ask him a question, subject to his answering or not answering, as he
+deemed right, and sure that his course would be right. He paused in his
+breakfast, and crossing his arms, and pinching his shirt-sleeves (his
+notion of in-door comfort was to sit without any coat), he nodded to me
+once, to put my question.
+
+“You have heard of a man of bad character, whose true name is
+Compeyson?”
+
+He answered with one other nod.
+
+“Is he living?”
+
+One other nod.
+
+“Is he in London?”
+
+He gave me one other nod, compressed the post-office exceedingly, gave
+me one last nod, and went on with his breakfast.
+
+“Now,” said Wemmick, “questioning being over,” which he emphasised and
+repeated for my guidance, “I come to what I did, after hearing what I
+heard. I went to Garden Court to find you; not finding you, I went to
+Clarriker’s to find Mr. Herbert.”
+
+“And him you found?” said I, with great anxiety.
+
+“And him I found. Without mentioning any names or going into any
+details, I gave him to understand that if he was aware of anybody—Tom,
+Jack, or Richard—being about the chambers, or about the immediate
+neighbourhood, he had better get Tom, Jack, or Richard out of the way
+while you were out of the way.”
+
+“He would be greatly puzzled what to do?”
+
+“He _was_ puzzled what to do; not the less, because I gave him my
+opinion that it was not safe to try to get Tom, Jack, or Richard too
+far out of the way at present. Mr. Pip, I’ll tell you something. Under
+existing circumstances, there is no place like a great city when you
+are once in it. Don’t break cover too soon. Lie close. Wait till things
+slacken, before you try the open, even for foreign air.”
+
+I thanked him for his valuable advice, and asked him what Herbert had
+done?
+
+“Mr. Herbert,” said Wemmick, “after being all of a heap for half an
+hour, struck out a plan. He mentioned to me as a secret, that he is
+courting a young lady who has, as no doubt you are aware, a bedridden
+Pa. Which Pa, having been in the Purser line of life, lies a-bed in a
+bow-window where he can see the ships sail up and down the river. You
+are acquainted with the young lady, most probably?”
+
+“Not personally,” said I.
+
+The truth was, that she had objected to me as an expensive companion
+who did Herbert no good, and that, when Herbert had first proposed to
+present me to her, she had received the proposal with such very
+moderate warmth, that Herbert had felt himself obliged to confide the
+state of the case to me, with a view to the lapse of a little time
+before I made her acquaintance. When I had begun to advance Herbert’s
+prospects by stealth, I had been able to bear this with cheerful
+philosophy: he and his affianced, for their part, had naturally not
+been very anxious to introduce a third person into their interviews;
+and thus, although I was assured that I had risen in Clara’s esteem,
+and although the young lady and I had long regularly interchanged
+messages and remembrances by Herbert, I had never seen her. However, I
+did not trouble Wemmick with these particulars.
+
+“The house with the bow-window,” said Wemmick, “being by the
+river-side, down the Pool there between Limehouse and Greenwich, and
+being kept, it seems, by a very respectable widow who has a furnished
+upper floor to let, Mr. Herbert put it to me, what did I think of that
+as a temporary tenement for Tom, Jack, or Richard? Now, I thought very
+well of it, for three reasons I’ll give you. That is to say: _Firstly_.
+It’s altogether out of all your beats, and is well away from the usual
+heap of streets great and small. _Secondly_. Without going near it
+yourself, you could always hear of the safety of Tom, Jack, or Richard,
+through Mr. Herbert. _Thirdly_. After a while and when it might be
+prudent, if you should want to slip Tom, Jack, or Richard on board a
+foreign packet-boat, there he is—ready.”
+
+Much comforted by these considerations, I thanked Wemmick again and
+again, and begged him to proceed.
+
+“Well, sir! Mr. Herbert threw himself into the business with a will,
+and by nine o’clock last night he housed Tom, Jack, or
+Richard,—whichever it may be,—you and I don’t want to know,—quite
+successfully. At the old lodgings it was understood that he was
+summoned to Dover, and, in fact, he was taken down the Dover road and
+cornered out of it. Now, another great advantage of all this is, that
+it was done without you, and when, if any one was concerning himself
+about your movements, you must be known to be ever so many miles off
+and quite otherwise engaged. This diverts suspicion and confuses it;
+and for the same reason I recommended that, even if you came back last
+night, you should not go home. It brings in more confusion, and you
+want confusion.”
+
+Wemmick, having finished his breakfast, here looked at his watch, and
+began to get his coat on.
+
+“And now, Mr. Pip,” said he, with his hands still in the sleeves, “I
+have probably done the most I can do; but if I can ever do more,—from a
+Walworth point of view, and in a strictly private and personal
+capacity,—I shall be glad to do it. Here’s the address. There can be no
+harm in your going here to-night, and seeing for yourself that all is
+well with Tom, Jack, or Richard, before you go home,—which is another
+reason for your not going home last night. But, after you have gone
+home, don’t go back here. You are very welcome, I am sure, Mr. Pip”;
+his hands were now out of his sleeves, and I was shaking them; “and let
+me finally impress one important point upon you.” He laid his hands
+upon my shoulders, and added in a solemn whisper: “Avail yourself of
+this evening to lay hold of his portable property. You don’t know what
+may happen to him. Don’t let anything happen to the portable property.”
+
+Quite despairing of making my mind clear to Wemmick on this point, I
+forbore to try.
+
+“Time’s up,” said Wemmick, “and I must be off. If you had nothing more
+pressing to do than to keep here till dark, that’s what I should
+advise. You look very much worried, and it would do you good to have a
+perfectly quiet day with the Aged,—he’ll be up presently,—and a little
+bit of—you remember the pig?”
+
+“Of course,” said I.
+
+“Well; and a little bit of _him_. That sausage you toasted was his, and
+he was in all respects a first-rater. Do try him, if it is only for old
+acquaintance sake. Good-bye, Aged Parent!” in a cheery shout.
+
+“All right, John; all right, my boy!” piped the old man from within.
+
+I soon fell asleep before Wemmick’s fire, and the Aged and I enjoyed
+one another’s society by falling asleep before it more or less all day.
+We had loin of pork for dinner, and greens grown on the estate; and I
+nodded at the Aged with a good intention whenever I failed to do it
+drowsily. When it was quite dark, I left the Aged preparing the fire
+for toast; and I inferred from the number of teacups, as well as from
+his glances at the two little doors in the wall, that Miss Skiffins was
+expected.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLVI.
+
+
+Eight o’clock had struck before I got into the air, that was scented,
+not disagreeably, by the chips and shavings of the long-shore
+boat-builders, and mast, oar, and block makers. All that water-side
+region of the upper and lower Pool below Bridge was unknown ground to
+me; and when I struck down by the river, I found that the spot I wanted
+was not where I had supposed it to be, and was anything but easy to
+find. It was called Mill Pond Bank, Chinks’s Basin; and I had no other
+guide to Chinks’s Basin than the Old Green Copper Rope-walk.
+
+It matters not what stranded ships repairing in dry docks I lost myself
+among, what old hulls of ships in course of being knocked to pieces,
+what ooze and slime and other dregs of tide, what yards of
+ship-builders and ship-breakers, what rusty anchors blindly biting into
+the ground, though for years off duty, what mountainous country of
+accumulated casks and timber, how many rope-walks that were not the Old
+Green Copper. After several times falling short of my destination and
+as often overshooting it, I came unexpectedly round a corner, upon Mill
+Pond Bank. It was a fresh kind of place, all circumstances considered,
+where the wind from the river had room to turn itself round; and there
+were two or three trees in it, and there was the stump of a ruined
+windmill, and there was the Old Green Copper Rope-walk,—whose long and
+narrow vista I could trace in the moonlight, along a series of wooden
+frames set in the ground, that looked like superannuated
+haymaking-rakes which had grown old and lost most of their teeth.
+
+Selecting from the few queer houses upon Mill Pond Bank a house with a
+wooden front and three stories of bow-window (not bay-window, which is
+another thing), I looked at the plate upon the door, and read there,
+Mrs. Whimple. That being the name I wanted, I knocked, and an elderly
+woman of a pleasant and thriving appearance responded. She was
+immediately deposed, however, by Herbert, who silently led me into the
+parlour and shut the door. It was an odd sensation to see his very
+familiar face established quite at home in that very unfamiliar room
+and region; and I found myself looking at him, much as I looked at the
+corner-cupboard with the glass and china, the shells upon the
+chimney-piece, and the coloured engravings on the wall, representing
+the death of Captain Cook, a ship-launch, and his Majesty King George
+the Third in a state coachman’s wig, leather-breeches, and top-boots,
+on the terrace at Windsor.
+
+“All is well, Handel,” said Herbert, “and he is quite satisfied, though
+eager to see you. My dear girl is with her father; and if you’ll wait
+till she comes down, I’ll make you known to her, and then we’ll go
+upstairs. _That’s_ her father.”
+
+I had become aware of an alarming growling overhead, and had probably
+expressed the fact in my countenance.
+
+“I am afraid he is a sad old rascal,” said Herbert, smiling, “but I
+have never seen him. Don’t you smell rum? He is always at it.”
+
+“At rum?” said I.
+
+“Yes,” returned Herbert, “and you may suppose how mild it makes his
+gout. He persists, too, in keeping all the provisions upstairs in his
+room, and serving them out. He keeps them on shelves over his head, and
+_will_ weigh them all. His room must be like a chandler’s shop.”
+
+While he thus spoke, the growling noise became a prolonged roar, and
+then died away.
+
+“What else can be the consequence,” said Herbert, in explanation, “if
+he _will_ cut the cheese? A man with the gout in his right hand—and
+everywhere else—can’t expect to get through a Double Gloucester without
+hurting himself.”
+
+He seemed to have hurt himself very much, for he gave another furious
+roar.
+
+“To have Provis for an upper lodger is quite a godsend to Mrs.
+Whimple,” said Herbert, “for of course people in general won’t stand
+that noise. A curious place, Handel; isn’t it?”
+
+It was a curious place, indeed; but remarkably well kept and clean.
+
+“Mrs. Whimple,” said Herbert, when I told him so, “is the best of
+housewives, and I really do not know what my Clara would do without her
+motherly help. For, Clara has no mother of her own, Handel, and no
+relation in the world but old Gruffandgrim.”
+
+“Surely that’s not his name, Herbert?”
+
+“No, no,” said Herbert, “that’s my name for him. His name is Mr.
+Barley. But what a blessing it is for the son of my father and mother
+to love a girl who has no relations, and who can never bother herself
+or anybody else about her family!”
+
+Herbert had told me on former occasions, and now reminded me, that he
+first knew Miss Clara Barley when she was completing her education at
+an establishment at Hammersmith, and that on her being recalled home to
+nurse her father, he and she had confided their affection to the
+motherly Mrs. Whimple, by whom it had been fostered and regulated with
+equal kindness and discretion, ever since. It was understood that
+nothing of a tender nature could possibly be confided to old Barley, by
+reason of his being totally unequal to the consideration of any subject
+more psychological than Gout, Rum, and Purser’s stores.
+
+As we were thus conversing in a low tone while Old Barley’s sustained
+growl vibrated in the beam that crossed the ceiling, the room door
+opened, and a very pretty, slight, dark-eyed girl of twenty or so came
+in with a basket in her hand: whom Herbert tenderly relieved of the
+basket, and presented, blushing, as “Clara.” She really was a most
+charming girl, and might have passed for a captive fairy, whom that
+truculent Ogre, Old Barley, had pressed into his service.
+
+“Look here,” said Herbert, showing me the basket, with a compassionate
+and tender smile, after we had talked a little; “here’s poor Clara’s
+supper, served out every night. Here’s her allowance of bread, and
+here’s her slice of cheese, and here’s her rum,—which I drink. This is
+Mr. Barley’s breakfast for to-morrow, served out to be cooked. Two
+mutton-chops, three potatoes, some split peas, a little flour, two
+ounces of butter, a pinch of salt, and all this black pepper. It’s
+stewed up together, and taken hot, and it’s a nice thing for the gout,
+I should think!”
+
+There was something so natural and winning in Clara’s resigned way of
+looking at these stores in detail, as Herbert pointed them out; and
+something so confiding, loving, and innocent in her modest manner of
+yielding herself to Herbert’s embracing arm; and something so gentle in
+her, so much needing protection on Mill Pond Bank, by Chinks’s Basin,
+and the Old Green Copper Rope-walk, with Old Barley growling in the
+beam,—that I would not have undone the engagement between her and
+Herbert for all the money in the pocket-book I had never opened.
+
+I was looking at her with pleasure and admiration, when suddenly the
+growl swelled into a roar again, and a frightful bumping noise was
+heard above, as if a giant with a wooden leg were trying to bore it
+through the ceiling to come at us. Upon this Clara said to Herbert,
+“Papa wants me, darling!” and ran away.
+
+“There is an unconscionable old shark for you!” said Herbert. “What do
+you suppose he wants now, Handel?”
+
+“I don’t know,” said I. “Something to drink?”
+
+“That’s it!” cried Herbert, as if I had made a guess of extraordinary
+merit. “He keeps his grog ready mixed in a little tub on the table.
+Wait a moment, and you’ll hear Clara lift him up to take some. There he
+goes!” Another roar, with a prolonged shake at the end. “Now,” said
+Herbert, as it was succeeded by silence, “he’s drinking. Now,” said
+Herbert, as the growl resounded in the beam once more, “he’s down again
+on his back!”
+
+Clara returned soon afterwards, and Herbert accompanied me upstairs to
+see our charge. As we passed Mr. Barley’s door, he was heard hoarsely
+muttering within, in a strain that rose and fell like wind, the
+following Refrain, in which I substitute good wishes for something
+quite the reverse:—
+
+“Ahoy! Bless your eyes, here’s old Bill Barley. Here’s old Bill Barley,
+bless your eyes. Here’s old Bill Barley on the flat of his back, by the
+Lord. Lying on the flat of his back like a drifting old dead flounder,
+here’s your old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Ahoy! Bless you.”
+
+In this strain of consolation, Herbert informed me the invisible Barley
+would commune with himself by the day and night together; Often, while
+it was light, having, at the same time, one eye at a telescope which
+was fitted on his bed for the convenience of sweeping the river.
+
+In his two cabin rooms at the top of the house, which were fresh and
+airy, and in which Mr. Barley was less audible than below, I found
+Provis comfortably settled. He expressed no alarm, and seemed to feel
+none that was worth mentioning; but it struck me that he was
+softened,—indefinably, for I could not have said how, and could never
+afterwards recall how when I tried, but certainly.
+
+The opportunity that the day’s rest had given me for reflection had
+resulted in my fully determining to say nothing to him respecting
+Compeyson. For anything I knew, his animosity towards the man might
+otherwise lead to his seeking him out and rushing on his own
+destruction. Therefore, when Herbert and I sat down with him by his
+fire, I asked him first of all whether he relied on Wemmick’s judgment
+and sources of information?
+
+“Ay, ay, dear boy!” he answered, with a grave nod, “Jaggers knows.”
+
+“Then, I have talked with Wemmick,” said I, “and have come to tell you
+what caution he gave me and what advice.”
+
+This I did accurately, with the reservation just mentioned; and I told
+him how Wemmick had heard, in Newgate prison (whether from officers or
+prisoners I could not say), that he was under some suspicion, and that
+my chambers had been watched; how Wemmick had recommended his keeping
+close for a time, and my keeping away from him; and what Wemmick had
+said about getting him abroad. I added, that of course, when the time
+came, I should go with him, or should follow close upon him, as might
+be safest in Wemmick’s judgment. What was to follow that I did not
+touch upon; neither, indeed, was I at all clear or comfortable about it
+in my own mind, now that I saw him in that softer condition, and in
+declared peril for my sake. As to altering my way of living by
+enlarging my expenses, I put it to him whether in our present unsettled
+and difficult circumstances, it would not be simply ridiculous, if it
+were no worse?
+
+He could not deny this, and indeed was very reasonable throughout. His
+coming back was a venture, he said, and he had always known it to be a
+venture. He would do nothing to make it a desperate venture, and he had
+very little fear of his safety with such good help.
+
+Herbert, who had been looking at the fire and pondering, here said that
+something had come into his thoughts arising out of Wemmick’s
+suggestion, which it might be worth while to pursue. “We are both good
+watermen, Handel, and could take him down the river ourselves when the
+right time comes. No boat would then be hired for the purpose, and no
+boatmen; that would save at least a chance of suspicion, and any chance
+is worth saving. Never mind the season; don’t you think it might be a
+good thing if you began at once to keep a boat at the Temple stairs,
+and were in the habit of rowing up and down the river? You fall into
+that habit, and then who notices or minds? Do it twenty or fifty times,
+and there is nothing special in your doing it the twenty-first or
+fifty-first.”
+
+I liked this scheme, and Provis was quite elated by it. We agreed that
+it should be carried into execution, and that Provis should never
+recognise us if we came below Bridge, and rowed past Mill Pond Bank.
+But we further agreed that he should pull down the blind in that part
+of his window which gave upon the east, whenever he saw us and all was
+right.
+
+Our conference being now ended, and everything arranged, I rose to go;
+remarking to Herbert that he and I had better not go home together, and
+that I would take half an hour’s start of him. “I don’t like to leave
+you here,” I said to Provis, “though I cannot doubt your being safer
+here than near me. Good-bye!”
+
+“Dear boy,” he answered, clasping my hands, “I don’t know when we may
+meet again, and I don’t like good-bye. Say good-night!”
+
+“Good-night! Herbert will go regularly between us, and when the time
+comes you may be certain I shall be ready. Good-night, good-night!”
+
+We thought it best that he should stay in his own rooms; and we left
+him on the landing outside his door, holding a light over the
+stair-rail to light us downstairs. Looking back at him, I thought of
+the first night of his return, when our positions were reversed, and
+when I little supposed my heart could ever be as heavy and anxious at
+parting from him as it was now.
+
+Old Barley was growling and swearing when we repassed his door, with no
+appearance of having ceased or of meaning to cease. When we got to the
+foot of the stairs, I asked Herbert whether he had preserved the name
+of Provis. He replied, certainly not, and that the lodger was Mr.
+Campbell. He also explained that the utmost known of Mr. Campbell there
+was, that he (Herbert) had Mr. Campbell consigned to him, and felt a
+strong personal interest in his being well cared for, and living a
+secluded life. So, when we went into the parlour where Mrs. Whimple and
+Clara were seated at work, I said nothing of my own interest in Mr.
+Campbell, but kept it to myself.
+
+When I had taken leave of the pretty, gentle, dark-eyed girl, and of
+the motherly woman who had not outlived her honest sympathy with a
+little affair of true love, I felt as if the Old Green Copper Rope-walk
+had grown quite a different place. Old Barley might be as old as the
+hills, and might swear like a whole field of troopers, but there were
+redeeming youth and trust and hope enough in Chinks’s Basin to fill it
+to overflowing. And then I thought of Estella, and of our parting, and
+went home very sadly.
+
+All things were as quiet in the Temple as ever I had seen them. The
+windows of the rooms on that side, lately occupied by Provis, were dark
+and still, and there was no lounger in Garden Court. I walked past the
+fountain twice or thrice before I descended the steps that were between
+me and my rooms, but I was quite alone. Herbert, coming to my bedside
+when he came in,—for I went straight to bed, dispirited and
+fatigued,—made the same report. Opening one of the windows after that,
+he looked out into the moonlight, and told me that the pavement was as
+solemnly empty as the pavement of any cathedral at that same hour.
+
+Next day I set myself to get the boat. It was soon done, and the boat
+was brought round to the Temple stairs, and lay where I could reach her
+within a minute or two. Then, I began to go out as for training and
+practice: sometimes alone, sometimes with Herbert. I was often out in
+cold, rain, and sleet, but nobody took much note of me after I had been
+out a few times. At first, I kept above Blackfriars Bridge; but as the
+hours of the tide changed, I took towards London Bridge. It was Old
+London Bridge in those days, and at certain states of the tide there
+was a race and fall of water there which gave it a bad reputation. But
+I knew well enough how to ‘shoot’ the bridge after seeing it done, and
+so began to row about among the shipping in the Pool, and down to
+Erith. The first time I passed Mill Pond Bank, Herbert and I were
+pulling a pair of oars; and, both in going and returning, we saw the
+blind towards the east come down. Herbert was rarely there less
+frequently than three times in a week, and he never brought me a single
+word of intelligence that was at all alarming. Still, I knew that there
+was cause for alarm, and I could not get rid of the notion of being
+watched. Once received, it is a haunting idea; how many undesigning
+persons I suspected of watching me, it would be hard to calculate.
+
+In short, I was always full of fears for the rash man who was in
+hiding. Herbert had sometimes said to me that he found it pleasant to
+stand at one of our windows after dark, when the tide was running down,
+and to think that it was flowing, with everything it bore, towards
+Clara. But I thought with dread that it was flowing towards Magwitch,
+and that any black mark on its surface might be his pursuers, going
+swiftly, silently, and surely, to take him.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLVII.
+
+
+Some weeks passed without bringing any change. We waited for Wemmick,
+and he made no sign. If I had never known him out of Little Britain,
+and had never enjoyed the privilege of being on a familiar footing at
+the Castle, I might have doubted him; not so for a moment, knowing him
+as I did.
+
+My worldly affairs began to wear a gloomy appearance, and I was pressed
+for money by more than one creditor. Even I myself began to know the
+want of money (I mean of ready money in my own pocket), and to relieve
+it by converting some easily spared articles of jewelery into cash. But
+I had quite determined that it would be a heartless fraud to take more
+money from my patron in the existing state of my uncertain thoughts and
+plans. Therefore, I had sent him the unopened pocket-book by Herbert,
+to hold in his own keeping, and I felt a kind of satisfaction—whether
+it was a false kind or a true, I hardly know—in not having profited by
+his generosity since his revelation of himself.
+
+As the time wore on, an impression settled heavily upon me that Estella
+was married. Fearful of having it confirmed, though it was all but a
+conviction, I avoided the newspapers, and begged Herbert (to whom I had
+confided the circumstances of our last interview) never to speak of her
+to me. Why I hoarded up this last wretched little rag of the robe of
+hope that was rent and given to the winds, how do I know? Why did you
+who read this, commit that not dissimilar inconsistency of your own
+last year, last month, last week?
+
+It was an unhappy life that I lived; and its one dominant anxiety,
+towering over all its other anxieties, like a high mountain above a
+range of mountains, never disappeared from my view. Still, no new cause
+for fear arose. Let me start from my bed as I would, with the terror
+fresh upon me that he was discovered; let me sit listening, as I would
+with dread, for Herbert’s returning step at night, lest it should be
+fleeter than ordinary, and winged with evil news,—for all that, and
+much more to like purpose, the round of things went on. Condemned to
+inaction and a state of constant restlessness and suspense, I rowed
+about in my boat, and waited, waited, waited, as I best could.
+
+There were states of the tide when, having been down the river, I could
+not get back through the eddy-chafed arches and starlings of old London
+Bridge; then, I left my boat at a wharf near the Custom House, to be
+brought up afterwards to the Temple stairs. I was not averse to doing
+this, as it served to make me and my boat a commoner incident among the
+water-side people there. From this slight occasion sprang two meetings
+that I have now to tell of.
+
+One afternoon, late in the month of February, I came ashore at the
+wharf at dusk. I had pulled down as far as Greenwich with the ebb tide,
+and had turned with the tide. It had been a fine bright day, but had
+become foggy as the sun dropped, and I had had to feel my way back
+among the shipping, pretty carefully. Both in going and returning, I
+had seen the signal in his window, All well.
+
+As it was a raw evening, and I was cold, I thought I would comfort
+myself with dinner at once; and as I had hours of dejection and
+solitude before me if I went home to the Temple, I thought I would
+afterwards go to the play. The theatre where Mr. Wopsle had achieved
+his questionable triumph was in that water-side neighbourhood (it is
+nowhere now), and to that theatre I resolved to go. I was aware that
+Mr. Wopsle had not succeeded in reviving the Drama, but, on the
+contrary, had rather partaken of its decline. He had been ominously
+heard of, through the play-bills, as a faithful Black, in connection
+with a little girl of noble birth, and a monkey. And Herbert had seen
+him as a predatory Tartar of comic propensities, with a face like a red
+brick, and an outrageous hat all over bells.
+
+I dined at what Herbert and I used to call a geographical chop-house,
+where there were maps of the world in porter-pot rims on every
+half-yard of the tablecloths, and charts of gravy on every one of the
+knives,—to this day there is scarcely a single chop-house within the
+Lord Mayor’s dominions which is not geographical,—and wore out the time
+in dozing over crumbs, staring at gas, and baking in a hot blast of
+dinners. By and by, I roused myself, and went to the play.
+
+There, I found a virtuous boatswain in His Majesty’s service,—a most
+excellent man, though I could have wished his trousers not quite so
+tight in some places, and not quite so loose in others,—who knocked all
+the little men’s hats over their eyes, though he was very generous and
+brave, and who wouldn’t hear of anybody’s paying taxes, though he was
+very patriotic. He had a bag of money in his pocket, like a pudding in
+the cloth, and on that property married a young person in
+bed-furniture, with great rejoicings; the whole population of
+Portsmouth (nine in number at the last census) turning out on the beach
+to rub their own hands and shake everybody else’s, and sing “Fill,
+fill!” A certain dark-complexioned Swab, however, who wouldn’t fill, or
+do anything else that was proposed to him, and whose heart was openly
+stated (by the boatswain) to be as black as his figure-head, proposed
+to two other Swabs to get all mankind into difficulties; which was so
+effectually done (the Swab family having considerable political
+influence) that it took half the evening to set things right, and then
+it was only brought about through an honest little grocer with a white
+hat, black gaiters, and red nose, getting into a clock, with a
+gridiron, and listening, and coming out, and knocking everybody down
+from behind with the gridiron whom he couldn’t confute with what he had
+overheard. This led to Mr. Wopsle’s (who had never been heard of
+before) coming in with a star and garter on, as a plenipotentiary of
+great power direct from the Admiralty, to say that the Swabs were all
+to go to prison on the spot, and that he had brought the boatswain down
+the Union Jack, as a slight acknowledgment of his public services. The
+boatswain, unmanned for the first time, respectfully dried his eyes on
+the Jack, and then cheering up, and addressing Mr. Wopsle as Your
+Honour, solicited permission to take him by the fin. Mr. Wopsle,
+conceding his fin with a gracious dignity, was immediately shoved into
+a dusty corner, while everybody danced a hornpipe; and from that
+corner, surveying the public with a discontented eye, became aware of
+me.
+
+The second piece was the last new grand comic Christmas pantomime, in
+the first scene of which, it pained me to suspect that I detected Mr.
+Wopsle with red worsted legs under a highly magnified phosphoric
+countenance and a shock of red curtain-fringe for his hair, engaged in
+the manufacture of thunderbolts in a mine, and displaying great
+cowardice when his gigantic master came home (very hoarse) to dinner.
+But he presently presented himself under worthier circumstances; for,
+the Genius of Youthful Love being in want of assistance,—on account of
+the parental brutality of an ignorant farmer who opposed the choice of
+his daughter’s heart, by purposely falling upon the object, in a
+flour-sack, out of the first-floor window,—summoned a sententious
+Enchanter; and he, coming up from the antipodes rather unsteadily,
+after an apparently violent journey, proved to be Mr. Wopsle in a
+high-crowned hat, with a necromantic work in one volume under his arm.
+The business of this enchanter on earth being principally to be talked
+at, sung at, butted at, danced at, and flashed at with fires of various
+colours, he had a good deal of time on his hands. And I observed, with
+great surprise, that he devoted it to staring in my direction as if he
+were lost in amazement.
+
+There was something so remarkable in the increasing glare of Mr.
+Wopsle’s eye, and he seemed to be turning so many things over in his
+mind and to grow so confused, that I could not make it out. I sat
+thinking of it long after he had ascended to the clouds in a large
+watch-case, and still I could not make it out. I was still thinking of
+it when I came out of the theatre an hour afterwards, and found him
+waiting for me near the door.
+
+“How do you do?” said I, shaking hands with him as we turned down the
+street together. “I saw that you saw me.”
+
+“Saw you, Mr. Pip!” he returned. “Yes, of course I saw you. But who
+else was there?”
+
+“Who else?”
+
+“It is the strangest thing,” said Mr. Wopsle, drifting into his lost
+look again; “and yet I could swear to him.”
+
+Becoming alarmed, I entreated Mr. Wopsle to explain his meaning.
+
+“Whether I should have noticed him at first but for your being there,”
+said Mr. Wopsle, going on in the same lost way, “I can’t be positive;
+yet I think I should.”
+
+Involuntarily I looked round me, as I was accustomed to look round me
+when I went home; for these mysterious words gave me a chill.
+
+“Oh! He can’t be in sight,” said Mr. Wopsle. “He went out before I went
+off. I saw him go.”
+
+Having the reason that I had for being suspicious, I even suspected
+this poor actor. I mistrusted a design to entrap me into some
+admission. Therefore I glanced at him as we walked on together, but
+said nothing.
+
+“I had a ridiculous fancy that he must be with you, Mr. Pip, till I saw
+that you were quite unconscious of him, sitting behind you there like a
+ghost.”
+
+My former chill crept over me again, but I was resolved not to speak
+yet, for it was quite consistent with his words that he might be set on
+to induce me to connect these references with Provis. Of course, I was
+perfectly sure and safe that Provis had not been there.
+
+“I dare say you wonder at me, Mr. Pip; indeed, I see you do. But it is
+so very strange! You’ll hardly believe what I am going to tell you. I
+could hardly believe it myself, if you told me.”
+
+“Indeed?” said I.
+
+“No, indeed. Mr. Pip, you remember in old times a certain Christmas
+Day, when you were quite a child, and I dined at Gargery’s, and some
+soldiers came to the door to get a pair of handcuffs mended?”
+
+“I remember it very well.”
+
+“And you remember that there was a chase after two convicts, and that
+we joined in it, and that Gargery took you on his back, and that I took
+the lead, and you kept up with me as well as you could?”
+
+“I remember it all very well.” Better than he thought,—except the last
+clause.
+
+“And you remember that we came up with the two in a ditch, and that
+there was a scuffle between them, and that one of them had been
+severely handled and much mauled about the face by the other?”
+
+“I see it all before me.”
+
+“And that the soldiers lighted torches, and put the two in the centre,
+and that we went on to see the last of them, over the black marshes,
+with the torchlight shining on their faces,—I am particular about
+that,—with the torchlight shining on their faces, when there was an
+outer ring of dark night all about us?”
+
+“Yes,” said I. “I remember all that.”
+
+“Then, Mr. Pip, one of those two prisoners sat behind you tonight. I
+saw him over your shoulder.”
+
+“Steady!” I thought. I asked him then, “Which of the two do you suppose
+you saw?”
+
+“The one who had been mauled,” he answered readily, “and I’ll swear I
+saw him! The more I think of him, the more certain I am of him.”
+
+“This is very curious!” said I, with the best assumption I could put on
+of its being nothing more to me. “Very curious indeed!”
+
+I cannot exaggerate the enhanced disquiet into which this conversation
+threw me, or the special and peculiar terror I felt at Compeyson’s
+having been behind me “like a ghost.” For if he had ever been out of my
+thoughts for a few moments together since the hiding had begun, it was
+in those very moments when he was closest to me; and to think that I
+should be so unconscious and off my guard after all my care was as if I
+had shut an avenue of a hundred doors to keep him out, and then had
+found him at my elbow. I could not doubt, either, that he was there,
+because I was there, and that, however slight an appearance of danger
+there might be about us, danger was always near and active.
+
+I put such questions to Mr. Wopsle as, When did the man come in? He
+could not tell me that; he saw me, and over my shoulder he saw the man.
+It was not until he had seen him for some time that he began to
+identify him; but he had from the first vaguely associated him with me,
+and known him as somehow belonging to me in the old village time. How
+was he dressed? Prosperously, but not noticeably otherwise; he thought,
+in black. Was his face at all disfigured? No, he believed not. I
+believed not too, for, although in my brooding state I had taken no
+especial notice of the people behind me, I thought it likely that a
+face at all disfigured would have attracted my attention.
+
+When Mr. Wopsle had imparted to me all that he could recall or I
+extract, and when I had treated him to a little appropriate
+refreshment, after the fatigues of the evening, we parted. It was
+between twelve and one o’clock when I reached the Temple, and the gates
+were shut. No one was near me when I went in and went home.
+
+Herbert had come in, and we held a very serious council by the fire.
+But there was nothing to be done, saving to communicate to Wemmick what
+I had that night found out, and to remind him that we waited for his
+hint. As I thought that I might compromise him if I went too often to
+the Castle, I made this communication by letter. I wrote it before I
+went to bed, and went out and posted it; and again no one was near me.
+Herbert and I agreed that we could do nothing else but be very
+cautious. And we were very cautious indeed,—more cautious than before,
+if that were possible,—and I for my part never went near Chinks’s
+Basin, except when I rowed by, and then I only looked at Mill Pond Bank
+as I looked at anything else.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLVIII.
+
+
+The second of the two meetings referred to in the last chapter occurred
+about a week after the first. I had again left my boat at the wharf
+below Bridge; the time was an hour earlier in the afternoon; and,
+undecided where to dine, I had strolled up into Cheapside, and was
+strolling along it, surely the most unsettled person in all the busy
+concourse, when a large hand was laid upon my shoulder by some one
+overtaking me. It was Mr. Jaggers’s hand, and he passed it through my
+arm.
+
+“As we are going in the same direction, Pip, we may walk together.
+Where are you bound for?”
+
+“For the Temple, I think,” said I.
+
+“Don’t you know?” said Mr. Jaggers.
+
+“Well,” I returned, glad for once to get the better of him in
+cross-examination, “I do _not_ know, for I have not made up my mind.”
+
+“You are going to dine?” said Mr. Jaggers. “You don’t mind admitting
+that, I suppose?”
+
+“No,” I returned, “I don’t mind admitting that.”
+
+“And are not engaged?”
+
+“I don’t mind admitting also that I am not engaged.”
+
+“Then,” said Mr. Jaggers, “come and dine with me.”
+
+I was going to excuse myself, when he added, “Wemmick’s coming.” So I
+changed my excuse into an acceptance,—the few words I had uttered,
+serving for the beginning of either,—and we went along Cheapside and
+slanted off to Little Britain, while the lights were springing up
+brilliantly in the shop windows, and the street lamp-lighters, scarcely
+finding ground enough to plant their ladders on in the midst of the
+afternoon’s bustle, were skipping up and down and running in and out,
+opening more red eyes in the gathering fog than my rushlight tower at
+the Hummums had opened white eyes in the ghostly wall.
+
+At the office in Little Britain there was the usual letter-writing,
+hand-washing, candle-snuffing, and safe-locking, that closed the
+business of the day. As I stood idle by Mr. Jaggers’s fire, its rising
+and falling flame made the two casts on the shelf look as if they were
+playing a diabolical game at bo-peep with me; while the pair of coarse,
+fat office candles that dimly lighted Mr. Jaggers as he wrote in a
+corner were decorated with dirty winding-sheets, as if in remembrance
+of a host of hanged clients.
+
+We went to Gerrard Street, all three together, in a hackney-coach: And,
+as soon as we got there, dinner was served. Although I should not have
+thought of making, in that place, the most distant reference by so much
+as a look to Wemmick’s Walworth sentiments, yet I should have had no
+objection to catching his eye now and then in a friendly way. But it
+was not to be done. He turned his eyes on Mr. Jaggers whenever he
+raised them from the table, and was as dry and distant to me as if
+there were twin Wemmicks, and this was the wrong one.
+
+“Did you send that note of Miss Havisham’s to Mr. Pip, Wemmick?” Mr.
+Jaggers asked, soon after we began dinner.
+
+“No, sir,” returned Wemmick; “it was going by post, when you brought
+Mr. Pip into the office. Here it is.” He handed it to his principal
+instead of to me.
+
+“It’s a note of two lines, Pip,” said Mr. Jaggers, handing it on, “sent
+up to me by Miss Havisham on account of her not being sure of your
+address. She tells me that she wants to see you on a little matter of
+business you mentioned to her. You’ll go down?”
+
+“Yes,” said I, casting my eyes over the note, which was exactly in
+those terms.
+
+“When do you think of going down?”
+
+“I have an impending engagement,” said I, glancing at Wemmick, who was
+putting fish into the post-office, “that renders me rather uncertain of
+my time. At once, I think.”
+
+“If Mr. Pip has the intention of going at once,” said Wemmick to Mr.
+Jaggers, “he needn’t write an answer, you know.”
+
+Receiving this as an intimation that it was best not to delay, I
+settled that I would go to-morrow, and said so. Wemmick drank a glass
+of wine, and looked with a grimly satisfied air at Mr. Jaggers, but not
+at me.
+
+“So, Pip! Our friend the Spider,” said Mr. Jaggers, “has played his
+cards. He has won the pool.”
+
+It was as much as I could do to assent.
+
+“Hah! He is a promising fellow—in his way—but he may not have it all
+his own way. The stronger will win in the end, but the stronger has to
+be found out first. If he should turn to, and beat her—”
+
+“Surely,” I interrupted, with a burning face and heart, “you do not
+seriously think that he is scoundrel enough for that, Mr. Jaggers?”
+
+“I didn’t say so, Pip. I am putting a case. If he should turn to and
+beat her, he may possibly get the strength on his side; if it should be
+a question of intellect, he certainly will not. It would be chance work
+to give an opinion how a fellow of that sort will turn out in such
+circumstances, because it’s a toss-up between two results.”
+
+“May I ask what they are?”
+
+“A fellow like our friend the Spider,” answered Mr. Jaggers, “either
+beats or cringes. He may cringe and growl, or cringe and not growl; but
+he either beats or cringes. Ask Wemmick _his_ opinion.”
+
+“Either beats or cringes,” said Wemmick, not at all addressing himself
+to me.
+
+“So here’s to Mrs. Bentley Drummle,” said Mr. Jaggers, taking a
+decanter of choicer wine from his dumb-waiter, and filling for each of
+us and for himself, “and may the question of supremacy be settled to
+the lady’s satisfaction! To the satisfaction of the lady _and_ the
+gentleman, it never will be. Now, Molly, Molly, Molly, Molly, how slow
+you are to-day!”
+
+She was at his elbow when he addressed her, putting a dish upon the
+table. As she withdrew her hands from it, she fell back a step or two,
+nervously muttering some excuse. And a certain action of her fingers,
+as she spoke, arrested my attention.
+
+“What’s the matter?” said Mr. Jaggers.
+
+“Nothing. Only the subject we were speaking of,” said I, “was rather
+painful to me.”
+
+The action of her fingers was like the action of knitting. She stood
+looking at her master, not understanding whether she was free to go, or
+whether he had more to say to her and would call her back if she did
+go. Her look was very intent. Surely, I had seen exactly such eyes and
+such hands on a memorable occasion very lately!
+
+He dismissed her, and she glided out of the room. But she remained
+before me as plainly as if she were still there. I looked at those
+hands, I looked at those eyes, I looked at that flowing hair; and I
+compared them with other hands, other eyes, other hair, that I knew of,
+and with what those might be after twenty years of a brutal husband and
+a stormy life. I looked again at those hands and eyes of the
+housekeeper, and thought of the inexplicable feeling that had come over
+me when I last walked—not alone—in the ruined garden, and through the
+deserted brewery. I thought how the same feeling had come back when I
+saw a face looking at me, and a hand waving to me from a stage-coach
+window; and how it had come back again and had flashed about me like
+lightning, when I had passed in a carriage—not alone—through a sudden
+glare of light in a dark street. I thought how one link of association
+had helped that identification in the theatre, and how such a link,
+wanting before, had been riveted for me now, when I had passed by a
+chance swift from Estella’s name to the fingers with their knitting
+action, and the attentive eyes. And I felt absolutely certain that this
+woman was Estella’s mother.
+
+Mr. Jaggers had seen me with Estella, and was not likely to have missed
+the sentiments I had been at no pains to conceal. He nodded when I said
+the subject was painful to me, clapped me on the back, put round the
+wine again, and went on with his dinner.
+
+Only twice more did the housekeeper reappear, and then her stay in the
+room was very short, and Mr. Jaggers was sharp with her. But her hands
+were Estella’s hands, and her eyes were Estella’s eyes, and if she had
+reappeared a hundred times I could have been neither more sure nor less
+sure that my conviction was the truth.
+
+It was a dull evening, for Wemmick drew his wine, when it came round,
+quite as a matter of business,—just as he might have drawn his salary
+when that came round,—and with his eyes on his chief, sat in a state of
+perpetual readiness for cross-examination. As to the quantity of wine,
+his post-office was as indifferent and ready as any other post-office
+for its quantity of letters. From my point of view, he was the wrong
+twin all the time, and only externally like the Wemmick of Walworth.
+
+We took our leave early, and left together. Even when we were groping
+among Mr. Jaggers’s stock of boots for our hats, I felt that the right
+twin was on his way back; and we had not gone half a dozen yards down
+Gerrard Street in the Walworth direction, before I found that I was
+walking arm in arm with the right twin, and that the wrong twin had
+evaporated into the evening air.
+
+“Well!” said Wemmick, “that’s over! He’s a wonderful man, without his
+living likeness; but I feel that I have to screw myself up when I dine
+with him,—and I dine more comfortably unscrewed.”
+
+I felt that this was a good statement of the case, and told him so.
+
+“Wouldn’t say it to anybody but yourself,” he answered. “I know that
+what is said between you and me goes no further.”
+
+I asked him if he had ever seen Miss Havisham’s adopted daughter, Mrs.
+Bentley Drummle. He said no. To avoid being too abrupt, I then spoke of
+the Aged and of Miss Skiffins. He looked rather sly when I mentioned
+Miss Skiffins, and stopped in the street to blow his nose, with a roll
+of the head, and a flourish not quite free from latent boastfulness.
+
+“Wemmick,” said I, “do you remember telling me, before I first went to
+Mr. Jaggers’s private house, to notice that housekeeper?”
+
+“Did I?” he replied. “Ah, I dare say I did. Deuce take me,” he added,
+suddenly, “I know I did. I find I am not quite unscrewed yet.”
+
+“A wild beast tamed, you called her.”
+
+“And what do _you_ call her?”
+
+“The same. How did Mr. Jaggers tame her, Wemmick?”
+
+“That’s his secret. She has been with him many a long year.”
+
+“I wish you would tell me her story. I feel a particular interest in
+being acquainted with it. You know that what is said between you and me
+goes no further.”
+
+“Well!” Wemmick replied, “I don’t know her story,—that is, I don’t know
+all of it. But what I do know I’ll tell you. We are in our private and
+personal capacities, of course.”
+
+“Of course.”
+
+“A score or so of years ago, that woman was tried at the Old Bailey for
+murder, and was acquitted. She was a very handsome young woman, and I
+believe had some gypsy blood in her. Anyhow, it was hot enough when it
+was up, as you may suppose.”
+
+“But she was acquitted.”
+
+“Mr. Jaggers was for her,” pursued Wemmick, with a look full of
+meaning, “and worked the case in a way quite astonishing. It was a
+desperate case, and it was comparatively early days with him then, and
+he worked it to general admiration; in fact, it may almost be said to
+have made him. He worked it himself at the police-office, day after day
+for many days, contending against even a committal; and at the trial
+where he couldn’t work it himself, sat under counsel, and—every one
+knew—put in all the salt and pepper. The murdered person was a woman,—a
+woman a good ten years older, very much larger, and very much stronger.
+It was a case of jealousy. They both led tramping lives, and this woman
+in Gerrard Street here had been married very young, over the broomstick
+(as we say), to a tramping man, and was a perfect fury in point of
+jealousy. The murdered woman,—more a match for the man, certainly, in
+point of years—was found dead in a barn near Hounslow Heath. There had
+been a violent struggle, perhaps a fight. She was bruised and scratched
+and torn, and had been held by the throat, at last, and choked. Now,
+there was no reasonable evidence to implicate any person but this
+woman, and on the improbabilities of her having been able to do it Mr.
+Jaggers principally rested his case. You may be sure,” said Wemmick,
+touching me on the sleeve, “that he never dwelt upon the strength of
+her hands then, though he sometimes does now.”
+
+I had told Wemmick of his showing us her wrists, that day of the dinner
+party.
+
+“Well, sir!” Wemmick went on; “it happened—happened, don’t you
+see?—that this woman was so very artfully dressed from the time of her
+apprehension, that she looked much slighter than she really was; in
+particular, her sleeves are always remembered to have been so skilfully
+contrived that her arms had quite a delicate look. She had only a
+bruise or two about her,—nothing for a tramp,—but the backs of her
+hands were lacerated, and the question was, Was it with finger-nails?
+Now, Mr. Jaggers showed that she had struggled through a great lot of
+brambles which were not as high as her face; but which she could not
+have got through and kept her hands out of; and bits of those brambles
+were actually found in her skin and put in evidence, as well as the
+fact that the brambles in question were found on examination to have
+been broken through, and to have little shreds of her dress and little
+spots of blood upon them here and there. But the boldest point he made
+was this: it was attempted to be set up, in proof of her jealousy, that
+she was under strong suspicion of having, at about the time of the
+murder, frantically destroyed her child by this man—some three years
+old—to revenge herself upon him. Mr. Jaggers worked that in this way:
+“We say these are not marks of finger-nails, but marks of brambles, and
+we show you the brambles. You say they are marks of finger-nails, and
+you set up the hypothesis that she destroyed her child. You must accept
+all consequences of that hypothesis. For anything we know, she may have
+destroyed her child, and the child in clinging to her may have
+scratched her hands. What then? You are not trying her for the murder
+of her child; why don’t you? As to this case, if you _will_ have
+scratches, we say that, for anything we know, you may have accounted
+for them, assuming for the sake of argument that you have not invented
+them?” “To sum up, sir,” said Wemmick, “Mr. Jaggers was altogether too
+many for the jury, and they gave in.”
+
+“Has she been in his service ever since?”
+
+“Yes; but not only that,” said Wemmick, “she went into his service
+immediately after her acquittal, tamed as she is now. She has since
+been taught one thing and another in the way of her duties, but she was
+tamed from the beginning.”
+
+“Do you remember the sex of the child?”
+
+“Said to have been a girl.”
+
+“You have nothing more to say to me to-night?”
+
+“Nothing. I got your letter and destroyed it. Nothing.”
+
+We exchanged a cordial good-night, and I went home, with new matter for
+my thoughts, though with no relief from the old.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLIX.
+
+
+Putting Miss Havisham’s note in my pocket, that it might serve as my
+credentials for so soon reappearing at Satis House, in case her
+waywardness should lead her to express any surprise at seeing me, I
+went down again by the coach next day. But I alighted at the Halfway
+House, and breakfasted there, and walked the rest of the distance; for
+I sought to get into the town quietly by the unfrequented ways, and to
+leave it in the same manner.
+
+The best light of the day was gone when I passed along the quiet
+echoing courts behind the High Street. The nooks of ruin where the old
+monks had once had their refectories and gardens, and where the strong
+walls were now pressed into the service of humble sheds and stables,
+were almost as silent as the old monks in their graves. The cathedral
+chimes had at once a sadder and a more remote sound to me, as I hurried
+on avoiding observation, than they had ever had before; so, the swell
+of the old organ was borne to my ears like funeral music; and the
+rooks, as they hovered about the grey tower and swung in the bare high
+trees of the priory garden, seemed to call to me that the place was
+changed, and that Estella was gone out of it for ever.
+
+An elderly woman, whom I had seen before as one of the servants who
+lived in the supplementary house across the back courtyard, opened the
+gate. The lighted candle stood in the dark passage within, as of old,
+and I took it up and ascended the staircase alone. Miss Havisham was
+not in her own room, but was in the larger room across the landing.
+Looking in at the door, after knocking in vain, I saw her sitting on
+the hearth in a ragged chair, close before, and lost in the
+contemplation of, the ashy fire.
+
+Doing as I had often done, I went in, and stood touching the old
+chimney-piece, where she could see me when she raised her eyes. There
+was an air of utter loneliness upon her, that would have moved me to
+pity though she had wilfully done me a deeper injury than I could
+charge her with. As I stood compassionating her, and thinking how, in
+the progress of time, I too had come to be a part of the wrecked
+fortunes of that house, her eyes rested on me. She stared, and said in
+a low voice, “Is it real?”
+
+“It is I, Pip. Mr. Jaggers gave me your note yesterday, and I have lost
+no time.”
+
+“Thank you. Thank you.”
+
+As I brought another of the ragged chairs to the hearth and sat down, I
+remarked a new expression on her face, as if she were afraid of me.
+
+“I want,” she said, “to pursue that subject you mentioned to me when
+you were last here, and to show you that I am not all stone. But
+perhaps you can never believe, now, that there is anything human in my
+heart?”
+
+When I said some reassuring words, she stretched out her tremulous
+right hand, as though she was going to touch me; but she recalled it
+again before I understood the action, or knew how to receive it.
+
+“You said, speaking for your friend, that you could tell me how to do
+something useful and good. Something that you would like done, is it
+not?”
+
+“Something that I would like done very much.”
+
+“What is it?”
+
+I began explaining to her that secret history of the partnership. I had
+not got far into it, when I judged from her looks that she was thinking
+in a discursive way of me, rather than of what I said. It seemed to be
+so; for, when I stopped speaking, many moments passed before she showed
+that she was conscious of the fact.
+
+“Do you break off,” she asked then, with her former air of being afraid
+of me, “because you hate me too much to bear to speak to me?”
+
+“No, no,” I answered, “how can you think so, Miss Havisham! I stopped
+because I thought you were not following what I said.”
+
+“Perhaps I was not,” she answered, putting a hand to her head. “Begin
+again, and let me look at something else. Stay! Now tell me.”
+
+She set her hand upon her stick in the resolute way that sometimes was
+habitual to her, and looked at the fire with a strong expression of
+forcing herself to attend. I went on with my explanation, and told her
+how I had hoped to complete the transaction out of my means, but how in
+this I was disappointed. That part of the subject (I reminded her)
+involved matters which could form no part of my explanation, for they
+were the weighty secrets of another.
+
+“So!” said she, assenting with her head, but not looking at me. “And
+how much money is wanting to complete the purchase?”
+
+I was rather afraid of stating it, for it sounded a large sum. “Nine
+hundred pounds.”
+
+“If I give you the money for this purpose, will you keep my secret as
+you have kept your own?”
+
+“Quite as faithfully.”
+
+“And your mind will be more at rest?”
+
+“Much more at rest.”
+
+“Are you very unhappy now?”
+
+She asked this question, still without looking at me, but in an
+unwonted tone of sympathy. I could not reply at the moment, for my
+voice failed me. She put her left arm across the head of her stick, and
+softly laid her forehead on it.
+
+“I am far from happy, Miss Havisham; but I have other causes of
+disquiet than any you know of. They are the secrets I have mentioned.”
+
+After a little while, she raised her head, and looked at the fire
+again.
+
+“It is noble in you to tell me that you have other causes of
+unhappiness. Is it true?”
+
+“Too true.”
+
+“Can I only serve you, Pip, by serving your friend? Regarding that as
+done, is there nothing I can do for you yourself?”
+
+“Nothing. I thank you for the question. I thank you even more for the
+tone of the question. But there is nothing.”
+
+She presently rose from her seat, and looked about the blighted room
+for the means of writing. There were none there, and she took from her
+pocket a yellow set of ivory tablets, mounted in tarnished gold, and
+wrote upon them with a pencil in a case of tarnished gold that hung
+from her neck.
+
+“You are still on friendly terms with Mr. Jaggers?”
+
+“Quite. I dined with him yesterday.”
+
+“This is an authority to him to pay you that money, to lay out at your
+irresponsible discretion for your friend. I keep no money here; but if
+you would rather Mr. Jaggers knew nothing of the matter, I will send it
+to you.”
+
+“Thank you, Miss Havisham; I have not the least objection to receiving
+it from him.”
+
+She read me what she had written; and it was direct and clear, and
+evidently intended to absolve me from any suspicion of profiting by the
+receipt of the money. I took the tablets from her hand, and it trembled
+again, and it trembled more as she took off the chain to which the
+pencil was attached, and put it in mine. All this she did without
+looking at me.
+
+“My name is on the first leaf. If you can ever write under my name, “I
+forgive her,” though ever so long after my broken heart is dust pray do
+it!”
+
+“O Miss Havisham,” said I, “I can do it now. There have been sore
+mistakes; and my life has been a blind and thankless one; and I want
+forgiveness and direction far too much, to be bitter with you.”
+
+She turned her face to me for the first time since she had averted it,
+and, to my amazement, I may even add to my terror, dropped on her knees
+at my feet; with her folded hands raised to me in the manner in which,
+when her poor heart was young and fresh and whole, they must often have
+been raised to heaven from her mother’s side.
+
+To see her with her white hair and her worn face kneeling at my feet
+gave me a shock through all my frame. I entreated her to rise, and got
+my arms about her to help her up; but she only pressed that hand of
+mine which was nearest to her grasp, and hung her head over it and
+wept. I had never seen her shed a tear before, and, in the hope that
+the relief might do her good, I bent over her without speaking. She was
+not kneeling now, but was down upon the ground.
+
+“O!” she cried, despairingly. “What have I done! What have I done!”
+
+“If you mean, Miss Havisham, what have you done to injure me, let me
+answer. Very little. I should have loved her under any circumstances.
+Is she married?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+It was a needless question, for a new desolation in the desolate house
+had told me so.
+
+“What have I done! What have I done!” She wrung her hands, and crushed
+her white hair, and returned to this cry over and over again. “What
+have I done!”
+
+I knew not how to answer, or how to comfort her. That she had done a
+grievous thing in taking an impressionable child to mould into the form
+that her wild resentment, spurned affection, and wounded pride found
+vengeance in, I knew full well. But that, in shutting out the light of
+day, she had shut out infinitely more; that, in seclusion, she had
+secluded herself from a thousand natural and healing influences; that,
+her mind, brooding solitary, had grown diseased, as all minds do and
+must and will that reverse the appointed order of their Maker, I knew
+equally well. And could I look upon her without compassion, seeing her
+punishment in the ruin she was, in her profound unfitness for this
+earth on which she was placed, in the vanity of sorrow which had become
+a master mania, like the vanity of penitence, the vanity of remorse,
+the vanity of unworthiness, and other monstrous vanities that have been
+curses in this world?
+
+“Until you spoke to her the other day, and until I saw in you a
+looking-glass that showed me what I once felt myself, I did not know
+what I had done. What have I done! What have I done!” And so again,
+twenty, fifty times over, What had she done!
+
+“Miss Havisham,” I said, when her cry had died away, “you may dismiss
+me from your mind and conscience. But Estella is a different case, and
+if you can ever undo any scrap of what you have done amiss in keeping a
+part of her right nature away from her, it will be better to do that
+than to bemoan the past through a hundred years.”
+
+“Yes, yes, I know it. But, Pip—my dear!” There was an earnest womanly
+compassion for me in her new affection. “My dear! Believe this: when
+she first came to me, I meant to save her from misery like my own. At
+first, I meant no more.”
+
+“Well, well!” said I. “I hope so.”
+
+“But as she grew, and promised to be very beautiful, I gradually did
+worse, and with my praises, and with my jewels, and with my teachings,
+and with this figure of myself always before her, a warning to back and
+point my lessons, I stole her heart away, and put ice in its place.”
+
+“Better,” I could not help saying, “to have left her a natural heart,
+even to be bruised or broken.”
+
+With that, Miss Havisham looked distractedly at me for a while, and
+then burst out again, What had she done!
+
+“If you knew all my story,” she pleaded, “you would have some
+compassion for me and a better understanding of me.”
+
+“Miss Havisham,” I answered, as delicately as I could, “I believe I may
+say that I do know your story, and have known it ever since I first
+left this neighbourhood. It has inspired me with great commiseration,
+and I hope I understand it and its influences. Does what has passed
+between us give me any excuse for asking you a question relative to
+Estella? Not as she is, but as she was when she first came here?”
+
+She was seated on the ground, with her arms on the ragged chair, and
+her head leaning on them. She looked full at me when I said this, and
+replied, “Go on.”
+
+“Whose child was Estella?”
+
+She shook her head.
+
+“You don’t know?”
+
+She shook her head again.
+
+“But Mr. Jaggers brought her here, or sent her here?”
+
+“Brought her here.”
+
+“Will you tell me how that came about?”
+
+She answered in a low whisper and with caution: “I had been shut up in
+these rooms a long time (I don’t know how long; you know what time the
+clocks keep here), when I told him that I wanted a little girl to rear
+and love, and save from my fate. I had first seen him when I sent for
+him to lay this place waste for me; having read of him in the
+newspapers, before I and the world parted. He told me that he would
+look about him for such an orphan child. One night he brought her here
+asleep, and I called her Estella.”
+
+“Might I ask her age then?”
+
+“Two or three. She herself knows nothing, but that she was left an
+orphan and I adopted her.”
+
+So convinced I was of that woman’s being her mother, that I wanted no
+evidence to establish the fact in my own mind. But, to any mind, I
+thought, the connection here was clear and straight.
+
+What more could I hope to do by prolonging the interview? I had
+succeeded on behalf of Herbert, Miss Havisham had told me all she knew
+of Estella, I had said and done what I could to ease her mind. No
+matter with what other words we parted; we parted.
+
+Twilight was closing in when I went downstairs into the natural air. I
+called to the woman who had opened the gate when I entered, that I
+would not trouble her just yet, but would walk round the place before
+leaving. For I had a presentiment that I should never be there again,
+and I felt that the dying light was suited to my last view of it.
+
+By the wilderness of casks that I had walked on long ago, and on which
+the rain of years had fallen since, rotting them in many places, and
+leaving miniature swamps and pools of water upon those that stood on
+end, I made my way to the ruined garden. I went all round it; round by
+the corner where Herbert and I had fought our battle; round by the
+paths where Estella and I had walked. So cold, so lonely, so dreary
+all!
+
+Taking the brewery on my way back, I raised the rusty latch of a little
+door at the garden end of it, and walked through. I was going out at
+the opposite door,—not easy to open now, for the damp wood had started
+and swelled, and the hinges were yielding, and the threshold was
+encumbered with a growth of fungus,—when I turned my head to look back.
+A childish association revived with wonderful force in the moment of
+the slight action, and I fancied that I saw Miss Havisham hanging to
+the beam. So strong was the impression, that I stood under the beam
+shuddering from head to foot before I knew it was a fancy,—though to be
+sure I was there in an instant.
+
+The mournfulness of the place and time, and the great terror of this
+illusion, though it was but momentary, caused me to feel an
+indescribable awe as I came out between the open wooden gates where I
+had once wrung my hair after Estella had wrung my heart. Passing on
+into the front courtyard, I hesitated whether to call the woman to let
+me out at the locked gate of which she had the key, or first to go
+upstairs and assure myself that Miss Havisham was as safe and well as I
+had left her. I took the latter course and went up.
+
+I looked into the room where I had left her, and I saw her seated in
+the ragged chair upon the hearth close to the fire, with her back
+towards me. In the moment when I was withdrawing my head to go quietly
+away, I saw a great flaming light spring up. In the same moment I saw
+her running at me, shrieking, with a whirl of fire blazing all about
+her, and soaring at least as many feet above her head as she was high.
+
+I had a double-caped great-coat on, and over my arm another thick coat.
+That I got them off, closed with her, threw her down, and got them over
+her; that I dragged the great cloth from the table for the same
+purpose, and with it dragged down the heap of rottenness in the midst,
+and all the ugly things that sheltered there; that we were on the
+ground struggling like desperate enemies, and that the closer I covered
+her, the more wildly she shrieked and tried to free herself,—that this
+occurred I knew through the result, but not through anything I felt, or
+thought, or knew I did. I knew nothing until I knew that we were on the
+floor by the great table, and that patches of tinder yet alight were
+floating in the smoky air, which, a moment ago, had been her faded
+bridal dress.
+
+Then, I looked round and saw the disturbed beetles and spiders running
+away over the floor, and the servants coming in with breathless cries
+at the door. I still held her forcibly down with all my strength, like
+a prisoner who might escape; and I doubt if I even knew who she was, or
+why we had struggled, or that she had been in flames, or that the
+flames were out, until I saw the patches of tinder that had been her
+garments no longer alight but falling in a black shower around us.
+
+She was insensible, and I was afraid to have her moved, or even
+touched. Assistance was sent for, and I held her until it came, as if I
+unreasonably fancied (I think I did) that, if I let her go, the fire
+would break out again and consume her. When I got up, on the surgeon’s
+coming to her with other aid, I was astonished to see that both my
+hands were burnt; for, I had no knowledge of it through the sense of
+feeling.
+
+On examination it was pronounced that she had received serious hurts,
+but that they of themselves were far from hopeless; the danger lay
+mainly in the nervous shock. By the surgeon’s directions, her bed was
+carried into that room and laid upon the great table, which happened to
+be well suited to the dressing of her injuries. When I saw her again,
+an hour afterwards, she lay, indeed, where I had seen her strike her
+stick, and had heard her say that she would lie one day.
+
+Though every vestige of her dress was burnt, as they told me, she still
+had something of her old ghastly bridal appearance; for, they had
+covered her to the throat with white cotton-wool, and as she lay with a
+white sheet loosely overlying that, the phantom air of something that
+had been and was changed was still upon her.
+
+I found, on questioning the servants, that Estella was in Paris, and I
+got a promise from the surgeon that he would write to her by the next
+post. Miss Havisham’s family I took upon myself; intending to
+communicate with Mr. Matthew Pocket only, and leave him to do as he
+liked about informing the rest. This I did next day, through Herbert,
+as soon as I returned to town.
+
+There was a stage, that evening, when she spoke collectedly of what had
+happened, though with a certain terrible vivacity. Towards midnight she
+began to wander in her speech; and after that it gradually set in that
+she said innumerable times in a low solemn voice, “What have I done!”
+And then, “When she first came, I meant to save her from misery like
+mine.” And then, “Take the pencil and write under my name, ‘I forgive
+her!’” She never changed the order of these three sentences, but she
+sometimes left out a word in one or other of them; never putting in
+another word, but always leaving a blank and going on to the next word.
+
+As I could do no service there, and as I had, nearer home, that
+pressing reason for anxiety and fear which even her wanderings could
+not drive out of my mind, I decided, in the course of the night that I
+would return by the early morning coach, walking on a mile or so, and
+being taken up clear of the town. At about six o’clock of the morning,
+therefore, I leaned over her and touched her lips with mine, just as
+they said, not stopping for being touched, “Take the pencil and write
+under my name, ‘I forgive her.’”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter L.
+
+
+My hands had been dressed twice or thrice in the night, and again in
+the morning. My left arm was a good deal burned to the elbow, and, less
+severely, as high as the shoulder; it was very painful, but the flames
+had set in that direction, and I felt thankful it was no worse. My
+right hand was not so badly burnt but that I could move the fingers. It
+was bandaged, of course, but much less inconveniently than my left hand
+and arm; those I carried in a sling; and I could only wear my coat like
+a cloak, loose over my shoulders and fastened at the neck. My hair had
+been caught by the fire, but not my head or face.
+
+When Herbert had been down to Hammersmith and seen his father, he came
+back to me at our chambers, and devoted the day to attending on me. He
+was the kindest of nurses, and at stated times took off the bandages,
+and steeped them in the cooling liquid that was kept ready, and put
+them on again, with a patient tenderness that I was deeply grateful
+for.
+
+At first, as I lay quiet on the sofa, I found it painfully difficult, I
+might say impossible, to get rid of the impression of the glare of the
+flames, their hurry and noise, and the fierce burning smell. If I dozed
+for a minute, I was awakened by Miss Havisham’s cries, and by her
+running at me with all that height of fire above her head. This pain of
+the mind was much harder to strive against than any bodily pain I
+suffered; and Herbert, seeing that, did his utmost to hold my attention
+engaged.
+
+Neither of us spoke of the boat, but we both thought of it. That was
+made apparent by our avoidance of the subject, and by our
+agreeing—without agreement—to make my recovery of the use of my hands a
+question of so many hours, not of so many weeks.
+
+My first question when I saw Herbert had been of course, whether all
+was well down the river? As he replied in the affirmative, with perfect
+confidence and cheerfulness, we did not resume the subject until the
+day was wearing away. But then, as Herbert changed the bandages, more
+by the light of the fire than by the outer light, he went back to it
+spontaneously.
+
+“I sat with Provis last night, Handel, two good hours.”
+
+“Where was Clara?”
+
+“Dear little thing!” said Herbert. “She was up and down with
+Gruffandgrim all the evening. He was perpetually pegging at the floor
+the moment she left his sight. I doubt if he can hold out long, though.
+What with rum and pepper,—and pepper and rum,—I should think his
+pegging must be nearly over.”
+
+“And then you will be married, Herbert?”
+
+“How can I take care of the dear child otherwise?—Lay your arm out upon
+the back of the sofa, my dear boy, and I’ll sit down here, and get the
+bandage off so gradually that you shall not know when it comes. I was
+speaking of Provis. Do you know, Handel, he improves?”
+
+“I said to you I thought he was softened when I last saw him.”
+
+“So you did. And so he is. He was very communicative last night, and
+told me more of his life. You remember his breaking off here about some
+woman that he had had great trouble with.—Did I hurt you?”
+
+I had started, but not under his touch. His words had given me a start.
+
+“I had forgotten that, Herbert, but I remember it now you speak of it.”
+
+“Well! He went into that part of his life, and a dark wild part it is.
+Shall I tell you? Or would it worry you just now?”
+
+“Tell me by all means. Every word.”
+
+Herbert bent forward to look at me more nearly, as if my reply had been
+rather more hurried or more eager than he could quite account for.
+“Your head is cool?” he said, touching it.
+
+“Quite,” said I. “Tell me what Provis said, my dear Herbert.”
+
+“It seems,” said Herbert, “—there’s a bandage off most charmingly, and
+now comes the cool one,—makes you shrink at first, my poor dear fellow,
+don’t it? but it will be comfortable presently,—it seems that the woman
+was a young woman, and a jealous woman, and a revengeful woman;
+revengeful, Handel, to the last degree.”
+
+“To what last degree?”
+
+“Murder.—Does it strike too cold on that sensitive place?”
+
+“I don’t feel it. How did she murder? Whom did she murder?”
+
+“Why, the deed may not have merited quite so terrible a name,” said
+Herbert, “but, she was tried for it, and Mr. Jaggers defended her, and
+the reputation of that defence first made his name known to Provis. It
+was another and a stronger woman who was the victim, and there had been
+a struggle—in a barn. Who began it, or how fair it was, or how unfair,
+may be doubtful; but how it ended is certainly not doubtful, for the
+victim was found throttled.”
+
+“Was the woman brought in guilty?”
+
+“No; she was acquitted.—My poor Handel, I hurt you!”
+
+“It is impossible to be gentler, Herbert. Yes? What else?”
+
+“This acquitted young woman and Provis had a little child; a little
+child of whom Provis was exceedingly fond. On the evening of the very
+night when the object of her jealousy was strangled as I tell you, the
+young woman presented herself before Provis for one moment, and swore
+that she would destroy the child (which was in her possession), and he
+should never see it again; then she vanished.—There’s the worst arm
+comfortably in the sling once more, and now there remains but the right
+hand, which is a far easier job. I can do it better by this light than
+by a stronger, for my hand is steadiest when I don’t see the poor
+blistered patches too distinctly.—You don’t think your breathing is
+affected, my dear boy? You seem to breathe quickly.”
+
+“Perhaps I do, Herbert. Did the woman keep her oath?”
+
+“There comes the darkest part of Provis’s life. She did.”
+
+“That is, he says she did.”
+
+“Why, of course, my dear boy,” returned Herbert, in a tone of surprise,
+and again bending forward to get a nearer look at me. “He says it all.
+I have no other information.”
+
+“No, to be sure.”
+
+“Now, whether,” pursued Herbert, “he had used the child’s mother ill,
+or whether he had used the child’s mother well, Provis doesn’t say; but
+she had shared some four or five years of the wretched life he
+described to us at this fireside, and he seems to have felt pity for
+her, and forbearance towards her. Therefore, fearing he should be
+called upon to depose about this destroyed child, and so be the cause
+of her death, he hid himself (much as he grieved for the child), kept
+himself dark, as he says, out of the way and out of the trial, and was
+only vaguely talked of as a certain man called Abel, out of whom the
+jealousy arose. After the acquittal she disappeared, and thus he lost
+the child and the child’s mother.”
+
+“I want to ask—”
+
+“A moment, my dear boy, and I have done. That evil genius, Compeyson,
+the worst of scoundrels among many scoundrels, knowing of his keeping
+out of the way at that time and of his reasons for doing so, of course
+afterwards held the knowledge over his head as a means of keeping him
+poorer and working him harder. It was clear last night that this barbed
+the point of Provis’s animosity.”
+
+“I want to know,” said I, “and particularly, Herbert, whether he told
+you when this happened?”
+
+“Particularly? Let me remember, then, what he said as to that. His
+expression was, ‘a round score o’ year ago, and a’most directly after I
+took up wi’ Compeyson.’ How old were you when you came upon him in the
+little churchyard?”
+
+“I think in my seventh year.”
+
+“Ay. It had happened some three or four years then, he said, and you
+brought into his mind the little girl so tragically lost, who would
+have been about your age.”
+
+“Herbert,” said I, after a short silence, in a hurried way, “can you
+see me best by the light of the window, or the light of the fire?”
+
+“By the firelight,” answered Herbert, coming close again.
+
+“Look at me.”
+
+“I do look at you, my dear boy.”
+
+“Touch me.”
+
+“I do touch you, my dear boy.”
+
+“You are not afraid that I am in any fever, or that my head is much
+disordered by the accident of last night?”
+
+“N-no, my dear boy,” said Herbert, after taking time to examine me.
+“You are rather excited, but you are quite yourself.”
+
+“I know I am quite myself. And the man we have in hiding down the
+river, is Estella’s Father.”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LI.
+
+
+What purpose I had in view when I was hot on tracing out and proving
+Estella’s parentage, I cannot say. It will presently be seen that the
+question was not before me in a distinct shape until it was put before
+me by a wiser head than my own.
+
+But when Herbert and I had held our momentous conversation, I was
+seized with a feverish conviction that I ought to hunt the matter
+down,—that I ought not to let it rest, but that I ought to see Mr.
+Jaggers, and come at the bare truth. I really do not know whether I
+felt that I did this for Estella’s sake, or whether I was glad to
+transfer to the man in whose preservation I was so much concerned some
+rays of the romantic interest that had so long surrounded me. Perhaps
+the latter possibility may be the nearer to the truth.
+
+Any way, I could scarcely be withheld from going out to Gerrard Street
+that night. Herbert’s representations that, if I did, I should probably
+be laid up and stricken useless, when our fugitive’s safety would
+depend upon me, alone restrained my impatience. On the understanding,
+again and again reiterated, that, come what would, I was to go to Mr.
+Jaggers to-morrow, I at length submitted to keep quiet, and to have my
+hurts looked after, and to stay at home. Early next morning we went out
+together, and at the corner of Giltspur Street by Smithfield, I left
+Herbert to go his way into the City, and took my way to Little Britain.
+
+There were periodical occasions when Mr. Jaggers and Wemmick went over
+the office accounts, and checked off the vouchers, and put all things
+straight. On these occasions, Wemmick took his books and papers into
+Mr. Jaggers’s room, and one of the upstairs clerks came down into the
+outer office. Finding such clerk on Wemmick’s post that morning, I knew
+what was going on; but I was not sorry to have Mr. Jaggers and Wemmick
+together, as Wemmick would then hear for himself that I said nothing to
+compromise him.
+
+My appearance, with my arm bandaged and my coat loose over my
+shoulders, favoured my object. Although I had sent Mr. Jaggers a brief
+account of the accident as soon as I had arrived in town, yet I had to
+give him all the details now; and the speciality of the occasion caused
+our talk to be less dry and hard, and less strictly regulated by the
+rules of evidence, than it had been before. While I described the
+disaster, Mr. Jaggers stood, according to his wont, before the fire.
+Wemmick leaned back in his chair, staring at me, with his hands in the
+pockets of his trousers, and his pen put horizontally into the post.
+The two brutal casts, always inseparable in my mind from the official
+proceedings, seemed to be congestively considering whether they didn’t
+smell fire at the present moment.
+
+My narrative finished, and their questions exhausted, I then produced
+Miss Havisham’s authority to receive the nine hundred pounds for
+Herbert. Mr. Jaggers’s eyes retired a little deeper into his head when
+I handed him the tablets, but he presently handed them over to Wemmick,
+with instructions to draw the check for his signature. While that was
+in course of being done, I looked on at Wemmick as he wrote, and Mr.
+Jaggers, poising and swaying himself on his well-polished boots, looked
+on at me. “I am sorry, Pip,” said he, as I put the check in my pocket,
+when he had signed it, “that we do nothing for _you_.”
+
+“Miss Havisham was good enough to ask me,” I returned, “whether she
+could do nothing for me, and I told her No.”
+
+“Everybody should know his own business,” said Mr. Jaggers. And I saw
+Wemmick’s lips form the words “portable property.”
+
+“I should _not_ have told her No, if I had been you,” said Mr Jaggers;
+“but every man ought to know his own business best.”
+
+“Every man’s business,” said Wemmick, rather reproachfully towards me,
+“is portable property.”
+
+As I thought the time was now come for pursuing the theme I had at
+heart, I said, turning on Mr. Jaggers:—
+
+“I did ask something of Miss Havisham, however, sir. I asked her to
+give me some information relative to her adopted daughter, and she gave
+me all she possessed.”
+
+“Did she?” said Mr. Jaggers, bending forward to look at his boots and
+then straightening himself. “Hah! I don’t think I should have done so,
+if I had been Miss Havisham. But _she_ ought to know her own business
+best.”
+
+“I know more of the history of Miss Havisham’s adopted child than Miss
+Havisham herself does, sir. I know her mother.”
+
+Mr. Jaggers looked at me inquiringly, and repeated “Mother?”
+
+“I have seen her mother within these three days.”
+
+“Yes?” said Mr. Jaggers.
+
+“And so have you, sir. And you have seen her still more recently.”
+
+“Yes?” said Mr. Jaggers.
+
+“Perhaps I know more of Estella’s history than even you do,” said I. “I
+know her father too.”
+
+A certain stop that Mr. Jaggers came to in his manner—he was too
+self-possessed to change his manner, but he could not help its being
+brought to an indefinably attentive stop—assured me that he did not
+know who her father was. This I had strongly suspected from Provis’s
+account (as Herbert had repeated it) of his having kept himself dark;
+which I pieced on to the fact that he himself was not Mr. Jaggers’s
+client until some four years later, and when he could have no reason
+for claiming his identity. But, I could not be sure of this
+unconsciousness on Mr. Jaggers’s part before, though I was quite sure
+of it now.
+
+“So! You know the young lady’s father, Pip?” said Mr. Jaggers.
+
+“Yes,” I replied, “and his name is Provis—from New South Wales.”
+
+Even Mr. Jaggers started when I said those words. It was the slightest
+start that could escape a man, the most carefully repressed and the
+sooner checked, but he did start, though he made it a part of the
+action of taking out his pocket-handkerchief. How Wemmick received the
+announcement I am unable to say; for I was afraid to look at him just
+then, lest Mr. Jaggers’s sharpness should detect that there had been
+some communication unknown to him between us.
+
+“And on what evidence, Pip,” asked Mr. Jaggers, very coolly, as he
+paused with his handkerchief half way to his nose, “does Provis make
+this claim?”
+
+“He does not make it,” said I, “and has never made it, and has no
+knowledge or belief that his daughter is in existence.”
+
+For once, the powerful pocket-handkerchief failed. My reply was so
+unexpected, that Mr. Jaggers put the handkerchief back into his pocket
+without completing the usual performance, folded his arms, and looked
+with stern attention at me, though with an immovable face.
+
+Then I told him all I knew, and how I knew it; with the one reservation
+that I left him to infer that I knew from Miss Havisham what I in fact
+knew from Wemmick. I was very careful indeed as to that. Nor did I look
+towards Wemmick until I had finished all I had to tell, and had been
+for some time silently meeting Mr. Jaggers’s look. When I did at last
+turn my eyes in Wemmick’s direction, I found that he had unposted his
+pen, and was intent upon the table before him.
+
+“Hah!” said Mr. Jaggers at last, as he moved towards the papers on the
+table. “What item was it you were at, Wemmick, when Mr. Pip came in?”
+
+But I could not submit to be thrown off in that way, and I made a
+passionate, almost an indignant appeal, to him to be more frank and
+manly with me. I reminded him of the false hopes into which I had
+lapsed, the length of time they had lasted, and the discovery I had
+made: and I hinted at the danger that weighed upon my spirits. I
+represented myself as being surely worthy of some little confidence
+from him, in return for the confidence I had just now imparted. I said
+that I did not blame him, or suspect him, or mistrust him, but I wanted
+assurance of the truth from him. And if he asked me why I wanted it,
+and why I thought I had any right to it, I would tell him, little as he
+cared for such poor dreams, that I had loved Estella dearly and long,
+and that although I had lost her, and must live a bereaved life,
+whatever concerned her was still nearer and dearer to me than anything
+else in the world. And seeing that Mr. Jaggers stood quite still and
+silent, and apparently quite obdurate, under this appeal, I turned to
+Wemmick, and said, “Wemmick, I know you to be a man with a gentle
+heart. I have seen your pleasant home, and your old father, and all the
+innocent, cheerful playful ways with which you refresh your business
+life. And I entreat you to say a word for me to Mr. Jaggers, and to
+represent to him that, all circumstances considered, he ought to be
+more open with me!”
+
+I have never seen two men look more oddly at one another than Mr.
+Jaggers and Wemmick did after this apostrophe. At first, a misgiving
+crossed me that Wemmick would be instantly dismissed from his
+employment; but it melted as I saw Mr. Jaggers relax into something
+like a smile, and Wemmick become bolder.
+
+“What’s all this?” said Mr. Jaggers. “You with an old father, and you
+with pleasant and playful ways?”
+
+“Well!” returned Wemmick. “If I don’t bring ’em here, what does it
+matter?”
+
+“Pip,” said Mr. Jaggers, laying his hand upon my arm, and smiling
+openly, “this man must be the most cunning impostor in all London.”
+
+“Not a bit of it,” returned Wemmick, growing bolder and bolder. “I
+think you’re another.”
+
+Again they exchanged their former odd looks, each apparently still
+distrustful that the other was taking him in.
+
+“_You_ with a pleasant home?” said Mr. Jaggers.
+
+“Since it don’t interfere with business,” returned Wemmick, “let it be
+so. Now, I look at you, sir, I shouldn’t wonder if _you_ might be
+planning and contriving to have a pleasant home of your own one of
+these days, when you’re tired of all this work.”
+
+Mr. Jaggers nodded his head retrospectively two or three times, and
+actually drew a sigh. “Pip,” said he, “we won’t talk about ‘poor
+dreams;’ you know more about such things than I, having much fresher
+experience of that kind. But now about this other matter. I’ll put a
+case to you. Mind! I admit nothing.”
+
+He waited for me to declare that I quite understood that he expressly
+said that he admitted nothing.
+
+“Now, Pip,” said Mr. Jaggers, “put this case. Put the case that a
+woman, under such circumstances as you have mentioned, held her child
+concealed, and was obliged to communicate the fact to her legal
+adviser, on his representing to her that he must know, with an eye to
+the latitude of his defence, how the fact stood about that child. Put
+the case that, at the same time he held a trust to find a child for an
+eccentric rich lady to adopt and bring up.”
+
+“I follow you, sir.”
+
+“Put the case that he lived in an atmosphere of evil, and that all he
+saw of children was their being generated in great numbers for certain
+destruction. Put the case that he often saw children solemnly tried at
+a criminal bar, where they were held up to be seen; put the case that
+he habitually knew of their being imprisoned, whipped, transported,
+neglected, cast out, qualified in all ways for the hangman, and growing
+up to be hanged. Put the case that pretty nigh all the children he saw
+in his daily business life he had reason to look upon as so much spawn,
+to develop into the fish that were to come to his net,—to be
+prosecuted, defended, forsworn, made orphans, bedevilled somehow.”
+
+“I follow you, sir.”
+
+“Put the case, Pip, that here was one pretty little child out of the
+heap who could be saved; whom the father believed dead, and dared make
+no stir about; as to whom, over the mother, the legal adviser had this
+power: “I know what you did, and how you did it. You came so and so,
+you did such and such things to divert suspicion. I have tracked you
+through it all, and I tell it you all. Part with the child, unless it
+should be necessary to produce it to clear you, and then it shall be
+produced. Give the child into my hands, and I will do my best to bring
+you off. If you are saved, your child is saved too; if you are lost,
+your child is still saved.” Put the case that this was done, and that
+the woman was cleared.”
+
+“I understand you perfectly.”
+
+“But that I make no admissions?”
+
+“That you make no admissions.” And Wemmick repeated, “No admissions.”
+
+“Put the case, Pip, that passion and the terror of death had a little
+shaken the woman’s intellects, and that when she was set at liberty,
+she was scared out of the ways of the world, and went to him to be
+sheltered. Put the case that he took her in, and that he kept down the
+old, wild, violent nature whenever he saw an inkling of its breaking
+out, by asserting his power over her in the old way. Do you comprehend
+the imaginary case?”
+
+“Quite.”
+
+“Put the case that the child grew up, and was married for money. That
+the mother was still living. That the father was still living. That the
+mother and father, unknown to one another, were dwelling within so many
+miles, furlongs, yards if you like, of one another. That the secret was
+still a secret, except that you had got wind of it. Put that last case
+to yourself very carefully.”
+
+“I do.”
+
+“I ask Wemmick to put it to _him_self very carefully.”
+
+And Wemmick said, “I do.”
+
+“For whose sake would you reveal the secret? For the father’s? I think
+he would not be much the better for the mother. For the mother’s? I
+think if she had done such a deed she would be safer where she was. For
+the daughter’s? I think it would hardly serve her to establish her
+parentage for the information of her husband, and to drag her back to
+disgrace, after an escape of twenty years, pretty secure to last for
+life. But add the case that you had loved her, Pip, and had made her
+the subject of those ‘poor dreams’ which have, at one time or another,
+been in the heads of more men than you think likely, then I tell you
+that you had better—and would much sooner when you had thought well of
+it—chop off that bandaged left hand of yours with your bandaged right
+hand, and then pass the chopper on to Wemmick there, to cut _that_ off
+too.”
+
+I looked at Wemmick, whose face was very grave. He gravely touched his
+lips with his forefinger. I did the same. Mr. Jaggers did the same.
+“Now, Wemmick,” said the latter then, resuming his usual manner, “what
+item was it you were at when Mr. Pip came in?”
+
+Standing by for a little, while they were at work, I observed that the
+odd looks they had cast at one another were repeated several times:
+with this difference now, that each of them seemed suspicious, not to
+say conscious, of having shown himself in a weak and unprofessional
+light to the other. For this reason, I suppose, they were now
+inflexible with one another; Mr. Jaggers being highly dictatorial, and
+Wemmick obstinately justifying himself whenever there was the smallest
+point in abeyance for a moment. I had never seen them on such ill
+terms; for generally they got on very well indeed together.
+
+But they were both happily relieved by the opportune appearance of
+Mike, the client with the fur cap and the habit of wiping his nose on
+his sleeve, whom I had seen on the very first day of my appearance
+within those walls. This individual, who, either in his own person or
+in that of some member of his family, seemed to be always in trouble
+(which in that place meant Newgate), called to announce that his eldest
+daughter was taken up on suspicion of shoplifting. As he imparted this
+melancholy circumstance to Wemmick, Mr. Jaggers standing magisterially
+before the fire and taking no share in the proceedings, Mike’s eye
+happened to twinkle with a tear.
+
+“What are you about?” demanded Wemmick, with the utmost indignation.
+“What do you come snivelling here for?”
+
+“I didn’t go to do it, Mr. Wemmick.”
+
+“You did,” said Wemmick. “How dare you? You’re not in a fit state to
+come here, if you can’t come here without spluttering like a bad pen.
+What do you mean by it?”
+
+“A man can’t help his feelings, Mr. Wemmick,” pleaded Mike.
+
+“His what?” demanded Wemmick, quite savagely. “Say that again!”
+
+“Now look here my man,” said Mr. Jaggers, advancing a step, and
+pointing to the door. “Get out of this office. I’ll have no feelings
+here. Get out.”
+
+“It serves you right,” said Wemmick, “Get out.”
+
+So, the unfortunate Mike very humbly withdrew, and Mr. Jaggers and
+Wemmick appeared to have re-established their good understanding, and
+went to work again with an air of refreshment upon them as if they had
+just had lunch.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LII.
+
+
+From Little Britain I went, with my check in my pocket, to Miss
+Skiffins’s brother, the accountant; and Miss Skiffins’s brother, the
+accountant, going straight to Clarriker’s and bringing Clarriker to me,
+I had the great satisfaction of concluding that arrangement. It was the
+only good thing I had done, and the only completed thing I had done,
+since I was first apprised of my great expectations.
+
+Clarriker informing me on that occasion that the affairs of the House
+were steadily progressing, that he would now be able to establish a
+small branch-house in the East which was much wanted for the extension
+of the business, and that Herbert in his new partnership capacity would
+go out and take charge of it, I found that I must have prepared for a
+separation from my friend, even though my own affairs had been more
+settled. And now, indeed, I felt as if my last anchor were loosening
+its hold, and I should soon be driving with the winds and waves.
+
+But there was recompense in the joy with which Herbert would come home
+of a night and tell me of these changes, little imagining that he told
+me no news, and would sketch airy pictures of himself conducting Clara
+Barley to the land of the Arabian Nights, and of me going out to join
+them (with a caravan of camels, I believe), and of our all going up the
+Nile and seeing wonders. Without being sanguine as to my own part in
+those bright plans, I felt that Herbert’s way was clearing fast, and
+that old Bill Barley had but to stick to his pepper and rum, and his
+daughter would soon be happily provided for.
+
+We had now got into the month of March. My left arm, though it
+presented no bad symptoms, took, in the natural course, so long to heal
+that I was still unable to get a coat on. My right arm was tolerably
+restored; disfigured, but fairly serviceable.
+
+On a Monday morning, when Herbert and I were at breakfast, I received
+the following letter from Wemmick by the post.
+
+“Walworth. Burn this as soon as read. Early in the week, or say
+Wednesday, you might do what you know of, if you felt disposed to try
+it. Now burn.”
+
+When I had shown this to Herbert and had put it in the fire—but not
+before we had both got it by heart—we considered what to do. For, of
+course my being disabled could now be no longer kept out of view.
+
+“I have thought it over again and again,” said Herbert, “and I think I
+know a better course than taking a Thames waterman. Take Startop. A
+good fellow, a skilled hand, fond of us, and enthusiastic and
+honourable.”
+
+I had thought of him more than once.
+
+“But how much would you tell him, Herbert?”
+
+“It is necessary to tell him very little. Let him suppose it a mere
+freak, but a secret one, until the morning comes: then let him know
+that there is urgent reason for your getting Provis aboard and away.
+You go with him?”
+
+“No doubt.”
+
+“Where?”
+
+It had seemed to me, in the many anxious considerations I had given the
+point, almost indifferent what port we made for,—Hamburg, Rotterdam,
+Antwerp,—the place signified little, so that he was out of England. Any
+foreign steamer that fell in our way and would take us up would do. I
+had always proposed to myself to get him well down the river in the
+boat; certainly well beyond Gravesend, which was a critical place for
+search or inquiry if suspicion were afoot. As foreign steamers would
+leave London at about the time of high-water, our plan would be to get
+down the river by a previous ebb-tide, and lie by in some quiet spot
+until we could pull off to one. The time when one would be due where we
+lay, wherever that might be, could be calculated pretty nearly, if we
+made inquiries beforehand.
+
+Herbert assented to all this, and we went out immediately after
+breakfast to pursue our investigations. We found that a steamer for
+Hamburg was likely to suit our purpose best, and we directed our
+thoughts chiefly to that vessel. But we noted down what other foreign
+steamers would leave London with the same tide, and we satisfied
+ourselves that we knew the build and colour of each. We then separated
+for a few hours: I, to get at once such passports as were necessary;
+Herbert, to see Startop at his lodgings. We both did what we had to do
+without any hindrance, and when we met again at one o’clock reported it
+done. I, for my part, was prepared with passports; Herbert had seen
+Startop, and he was more than ready to join.
+
+Those two should pull a pair of oars, we settled, and I would steer;
+our charge would be sitter, and keep quiet; as speed was not our
+object, we should make way enough. We arranged that Herbert should not
+come home to dinner before going to Mill Pond Bank that evening; that
+he should not go there at all to-morrow evening, Tuesday; that he
+should prepare Provis to come down to some stairs hard by the house, on
+Wednesday, when he saw us approach, and not sooner; that all the
+arrangements with him should be concluded that Monday night; and that
+he should be communicated with no more in any way, until we took him on
+board.
+
+These precautions well understood by both of us, I went home.
+
+On opening the outer door of our chambers with my key, I found a letter
+in the box, directed to me; a very dirty letter, though not
+ill-written. It had been delivered by hand (of course, since I left
+home), and its contents were these:—
+
+“If you are not afraid to come to the old marshes to-night or to-morrow
+night at nine, and to come to the little sluice-house by the limekiln,
+you had better come. If you want information regarding _your uncle
+Provis_, you had much better come and tell no one, and lose no time.
+_You must come alone_. Bring this with you.”
+
+I had had load enough upon my mind before the receipt of this strange
+letter. What to do now, I could not tell. And the worst was, that I
+must decide quickly, or I should miss the afternoon coach, which would
+take me down in time for to-night. To-morrow night I could not think of
+going, for it would be too close upon the time of the flight. And
+again, for anything I knew, the proffered information might have some
+important bearing on the flight itself.
+
+If I had had ample time for consideration, I believe I should still
+have gone. Having hardly any time for consideration,—my watch showing
+me that the coach started within half an hour,—I resolved to go. I
+should certainly not have gone, but for the reference to my Uncle
+Provis. That, coming on Wemmick’s letter and the morning’s busy
+preparation, turned the scale.
+
+It is so difficult to become clearly possessed of the contents of
+almost any letter, in a violent hurry, that I had to read this
+mysterious epistle again twice, before its injunction to me to be
+secret got mechanically into my mind. Yielding to it in the same
+mechanical kind of way, I left a note in pencil for Herbert, telling
+him that as I should be so soon going away, I knew not for how long, I
+had decided to hurry down and back, to ascertain for myself how Miss
+Havisham was faring. I had then barely time to get my great-coat, lock
+up the chambers, and make for the coach-office by the short by-ways. If
+I had taken a hackney-chariot and gone by the streets, I should have
+missed my aim; going as I did, I caught the coach just as it came out
+of the yard. I was the only inside passenger, jolting away knee-deep in
+straw, when I came to myself.
+
+For I really had not been myself since the receipt of the letter; it
+had so bewildered me, ensuing on the hurry of the morning. The morning
+hurry and flutter had been great; for, long and anxiously as I had
+waited for Wemmick, his hint had come like a surprise at last. And now
+I began to wonder at myself for being in the coach, and to doubt
+whether I had sufficient reason for being there, and to consider
+whether I should get out presently and go back, and to argue against
+ever heeding an anonymous communication, and, in short, to pass through
+all those phases of contradiction and indecision to which I suppose
+very few hurried people are strangers. Still, the reference to Provis
+by name mastered everything. I reasoned as I had reasoned already
+without knowing it,—if that be reasoning,—in case any harm should
+befall him through my not going, how could I ever forgive myself!
+
+It was dark before we got down, and the journey seemed long and dreary
+to me, who could see little of it inside, and who could not go outside
+in my disabled state. Avoiding the Blue Boar, I put up at an inn of
+minor reputation down the town, and ordered some dinner. While it was
+preparing, I went to Satis House and inquired for Miss Havisham; she
+was still very ill, though considered something better.
+
+My inn had once been a part of an ancient ecclesiastical house, and I
+dined in a little octagonal common-room, like a font. As I was not able
+to cut my dinner, the old landlord with a shining bald head did it for
+me. This bringing us into conversation, he was so good as to entertain
+me with my own story,—of course with the popular feature that
+Pumblechook was my earliest benefactor and the founder of my fortunes.
+
+“Do you know the young man?” said I.
+
+“Know him!” repeated the landlord. “Ever since he was—no height at
+all.”
+
+“Does he ever come back to this neighbourhood?”
+
+“Ay, he comes back,” said the landlord, “to his great friends, now and
+again, and gives the cold shoulder to the man that made him.”
+
+“What man is that?”
+
+“Him that I speak of,” said the landlord. “Mr. Pumblechook.”
+
+“Is he ungrateful to no one else?”
+
+“No doubt he would be, if he could,” returned the landlord, “but he
+can’t. And why? Because Pumblechook done everything for him.”
+
+“Does Pumblechook say so?”
+
+“Say so!” replied the landlord. “He han’t no call to say so.”
+
+“But does he say so?”
+
+“It would turn a man’s blood to white wine winegar to hear him tell of
+it, sir,” said the landlord.
+
+I thought, “Yet Joe, dear Joe, _you_ never tell of it. Long-suffering
+and loving Joe, _you_ never complain. Nor you, sweet-tempered Biddy!”
+
+“Your appetite’s been touched like by your accident,” said the
+landlord, glancing at the bandaged arm under my coat. “Try a tenderer
+bit.”
+
+“No, thank you,” I replied, turning from the table to brood over the
+fire. “I can eat no more. Please take it away.”
+
+I had never been struck at so keenly, for my thanklessness to Joe, as
+through the brazen impostor Pumblechook. The falser he, the truer Joe;
+the meaner he, the nobler Joe.
+
+My heart was deeply and most deservedly humbled as I mused over the
+fire for an hour or more. The striking of the clock aroused me, but not
+from my dejection or remorse, and I got up and had my coat fastened
+round my neck, and went out. I had previously sought in my pockets for
+the letter, that I might refer to it again; but I could not find it,
+and was uneasy to think that it must have been dropped in the straw of
+the coach. I knew very well, however, that the appointed place was the
+little sluice-house by the limekiln on the marshes, and the hour nine.
+Towards the marshes I now went straight, having no time to spare.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LIII.
+
+
+It was a dark night, though the full moon rose as I left the enclosed
+lands, and passed out upon the marshes. Beyond their dark line there
+was a ribbon of clear sky, hardly broad enough to hold the red large
+moon. In a few minutes she had ascended out of that clear field, in
+among the piled mountains of cloud.
+
+There was a melancholy wind, and the marshes were very dismal. A
+stranger would have found them insupportable, and even to me they were
+so oppressive that I hesitated, half inclined to go back. But I knew
+them well, and could have found my way on a far darker night, and had
+no excuse for returning, being there. So, having come there against my
+inclination, I went on against it.
+
+The direction that I took was not that in which my old home lay, nor
+that in which we had pursued the convicts. My back was turned towards
+the distant Hulks as I walked on, and, though I could see the old
+lights away on the spits of sand, I saw them over my shoulder. I knew
+the limekiln as well as I knew the old Battery, but they were miles
+apart; so that, if a light had been burning at each point that night,
+there would have been a long strip of the blank horizon between the two
+bright specks.
+
+At first, I had to shut some gates after me, and now and then to stand
+still while the cattle that were lying in the banked-up pathway arose
+and blundered down among the grass and reeds. But after a little while
+I seemed to have the whole flats to myself.
+
+It was another half-hour before I drew near to the kiln. The lime was
+burning with a sluggish stifling smell, but the fires were made up and
+left, and no workmen were visible. Hard by was a small stone-quarry. It
+lay directly in my way, and had been worked that day, as I saw by the
+tools and barrows that were lying about.
+
+Coming up again to the marsh level out of this excavation,—for the rude
+path lay through it,—I saw a light in the old sluice-house. I quickened
+my pace, and knocked at the door with my hand. Waiting for some reply,
+I looked about me, noticing how the sluice was abandoned and broken,
+and how the house—of wood with a tiled roof—would not be proof against
+the weather much longer, if it were so even now, and how the mud and
+ooze were coated with lime, and how the choking vapour of the kiln
+crept in a ghostly way towards me. Still there was no answer, and I
+knocked again. No answer still, and I tried the latch.
+
+It rose under my hand, and the door yielded. Looking in, I saw a
+lighted candle on a table, a bench, and a mattress on a truckle
+bedstead. As there was a loft above, I called, “Is there any one here?”
+but no voice answered. Then I looked at my watch, and, finding that it
+was past nine, called again, “Is there any one here?” There being still
+no answer, I went out at the door, irresolute what to do.
+
+It was beginning to rain fast. Seeing nothing save what I had seen
+already, I turned back into the house, and stood just within the
+shelter of the doorway, looking out into the night. While I was
+considering that some one must have been there lately and must soon be
+coming back, or the candle would not be burning, it came into my head
+to look if the wick were long. I turned round to do so, and had taken
+up the candle in my hand, when it was extinguished by some violent
+shock; and the next thing I comprehended was, that I had been caught in
+a strong running noose, thrown over my head from behind.
+
+“Now,” said a suppressed voice with an oath, “I’ve got you!”
+
+“What is this?” I cried, struggling. “Who is it? Help, help, help!”
+
+Not only were my arms pulled close to my sides, but the pressure on my
+bad arm caused me exquisite pain. Sometimes, a strong man’s hand,
+sometimes a strong man’s breast, was set against my mouth to deaden my
+cries, and with a hot breath always close to me, I struggled
+ineffectually in the dark, while I was fastened tight to the wall. “And
+now,” said the suppressed voice with another oath, “call out again, and
+I’ll make short work of you!”
+
+Faint and sick with the pain of my injured arm, bewildered by the
+surprise, and yet conscious how easily this threat could be put in
+execution, I desisted, and tried to ease my arm were it ever so little.
+But, it was bound too tight for that. I felt as if, having been burnt
+before, it were now being boiled.
+
+The sudden exclusion of the night, and the substitution of black
+darkness in its place, warned me that the man had closed a shutter.
+After groping about for a little, he found the flint and steel he
+wanted, and began to strike a light. I strained my sight upon the
+sparks that fell among the tinder, and upon which he breathed and
+breathed, match in hand, but I could only see his lips, and the blue
+point of the match; even those but fitfully. The tinder was damp,—no
+wonder there,—and one after another the sparks died out.
+
+The man was in no hurry, and struck again with the flint and steel. As
+the sparks fell thick and bright about him, I could see his hands, and
+touches of his face, and could make out that he was seated and bending
+over the table; but nothing more. Presently I saw his blue lips again,
+breathing on the tinder, and then a flare of light flashed up, and
+showed me Orlick.
+
+Whom I had looked for, I don’t know. I had not looked for him. Seeing
+him, I felt that I was in a dangerous strait indeed, and I kept my eyes
+upon him.
+
+He lighted the candle from the flaring match with great deliberation,
+and dropped the match, and trod it out. Then he put the candle away
+from him on the table, so that he could see me, and sat with his arms
+folded on the table and looked at me. I made out that I was fastened to
+a stout perpendicular ladder a few inches from the wall,—a fixture
+there,—the means of ascent to the loft above.
+
+“Now,” said he, when we had surveyed one another for some time, “I’ve
+got you.”
+
+“Unbind me. Let me go!”
+
+“Ah!” he returned, “_I_’ll let you go. I’ll let you go to the moon,
+I’ll let you go to the stars. All in good time.”
+
+“Why have you lured me here?”
+
+“Don’t you know?” said he, with a deadly look.
+
+“Why have you set upon me in the dark?”
+
+“Because I mean to do it all myself. One keeps a secret better than
+two. O you enemy, you enemy!”
+
+His enjoyment of the spectacle I furnished, as he sat with his arms
+folded on the table, shaking his head at me and hugging himself, had a
+malignity in it that made me tremble. As I watched him in silence, he
+put his hand into the corner at his side, and took up a gun with a
+brass-bound stock.
+
+“Do you know this?” said he, making as if he would take aim at me. “Do
+you know where you saw it afore? Speak, wolf!”
+
+“Yes,” I answered.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+“You cost me that place. You did. Speak!”
+
+“What else could I do?”
+
+“You did that, and that would be enough, without more. How dared you to
+come betwixt me and a young woman I liked?”
+
+“When did I?”
+
+“When didn’t you? It was you as always give Old Orlick a bad name to
+her.”
+
+“You gave it to yourself; you gained it for yourself. I could have done
+you no harm, if you had done yourself none.”
+
+“You’re a liar. And you’ll take any pains, and spend any money, to
+drive me out of this country, will you?” said he, repeating my words to
+Biddy in the last interview I had with her. “Now, I’ll tell you a piece
+of information. It was never so well worth your while to get me out of
+this country as it is to-night. Ah! If it was all your money twenty
+times told, to the last brass farden!” As he shook his heavy hand at
+me, with his mouth snarling like a tiger’s, I felt that it was true.
+
+“What are you going to do to me?”
+
+“I’m a-going,” said he, bringing his fist down upon the table with a
+heavy blow, and rising as the blow fell to give it greater force,—“I’m
+a-going to have your life!”
+
+He leaned forward staring at me, slowly unclenched his hand and drew it
+across his mouth as if his mouth watered for me, and sat down again.
+
+“You was always in Old Orlick’s way since ever you was a child. You
+goes out of his way this present night. He’ll have no more on you.
+You’re dead.”
+
+I felt that I had come to the brink of my grave. For a moment I looked
+wildly round my trap for any chance of escape; but there was none.
+
+“More than that,” said he, folding his arms on the table again, “I
+won’t have a rag of you, I won’t have a bone of you, left on earth.
+I’ll put your body in the kiln,—I’d carry two such to it, on my
+shoulders—and, let people suppose what they may of you, they shall
+never know nothing.”
+
+My mind, with inconceivable rapidity followed out all the consequences
+of such a death. Estella’s father would believe I had deserted him,
+would be taken, would die accusing me; even Herbert would doubt me,
+when he compared the letter I had left for him with the fact that I had
+called at Miss Havisham’s gate for only a moment; Joe and Biddy would
+never know how sorry I had been that night, none would ever know what I
+had suffered, how true I had meant to be, what an agony I had passed
+through. The death close before me was terrible, but far more terrible
+than death was the dread of being misremembered after death. And so
+quick were my thoughts, that I saw myself despised by unborn
+generations,—Estella’s children, and their children,—while the wretch’s
+words were yet on his lips.
+
+“Now, wolf,” said he, “afore I kill you like any other beast,—which is
+wot I mean to do and wot I have tied you up for,—I’ll have a good look
+at you and a good goad at you. O you enemy!”
+
+It had passed through my thoughts to cry out for help again; though few
+could know better than I, the solitary nature of the spot, and the
+hopelessness of aid. But as he sat gloating over me, I was supported by
+a scornful detestation of him that sealed my lips. Above all things, I
+resolved that I would not entreat him, and that I would die making some
+last poor resistance to him. Softened as my thoughts of all the rest of
+men were in that dire extremity; humbly beseeching pardon, as I did, of
+Heaven; melted at heart, as I was, by the thought that I had taken no
+farewell, and never now could take farewell of those who were dear to
+me, or could explain myself to them, or ask for their compassion on my
+miserable errors,—still, if I could have killed him, even in dying, I
+would have done it.
+
+He had been drinking, and his eyes were red and bloodshot. Around his
+neck was slung a tin bottle, as I had often seen his meat and drink
+slung about him in other days. He brought the bottle to his lips, and
+took a fiery drink from it; and I smelt the strong spirits that I saw
+flash into his face.
+
+“Wolf!” said he, folding his arms again, “Old Orlick’s a-going to tell
+you somethink. It was you as did for your shrew sister.”
+
+Again my mind, with its former inconceivable rapidity, had exhausted
+the whole subject of the attack upon my sister, her illness, and her
+death, before his slow and hesitating speech had formed these words.
+
+“It was you, villain,” said I.
+
+“I tell you it was your doing,—I tell you it was done through you,” he
+retorted, catching up the gun, and making a blow with the stock at the
+vacant air between us. “I come upon her from behind, as I come upon you
+to-night. _I_ giv’ it her! I left her for dead, and if there had been a
+limekiln as nigh her as there is now nigh you, she shouldn’t have come
+to life again. But it warn’t Old Orlick as did it; it was you. You was
+favoured, and he was bullied and beat. Old Orlick bullied and beat, eh?
+Now you pays for it. You done it; now you pays for it.”
+
+He drank again, and became more ferocious. I saw by his tilting of the
+bottle that there was no great quantity left in it. I distinctly
+understood that he was working himself up with its contents to make an
+end of me. I knew that every drop it held was a drop of my life. I knew
+that when I was changed into a part of the vapour that had crept
+towards me but a little while before, like my own warning ghost, he
+would do as he had done in my sister’s case,—make all haste to the
+town, and be seen slouching about there drinking at the alehouses. My
+rapid mind pursued him to the town, made a picture of the street with
+him in it, and contrasted its lights and life with the lonely marsh and
+the white vapour creeping over it, into which I should have dissolved.
+
+It was not only that I could have summed up years and years and years
+while he said a dozen words, but that what he did say presented
+pictures to me, and not mere words. In the excited and exalted state of
+my brain, I could not think of a place without seeing it, or of persons
+without seeing them. It is impossible to overstate the vividness of
+these images, and yet I was so intent, all the time, upon him
+himself,—who would not be intent on the tiger crouching to spring!—that
+I knew of the slightest action of his fingers.
+
+When he had drunk this second time, he rose from the bench on which he
+sat, and pushed the table aside. Then, he took up the candle, and,
+shading it with his murderous hand so as to throw its light on me,
+stood before me, looking at me and enjoying the sight.
+
+“Wolf, I’ll tell you something more. It was Old Orlick as you tumbled
+over on your stairs that night.”
+
+I saw the staircase with its extinguished lamps. I saw the shadows of
+the heavy stair-rails, thrown by the watchman’s lantern on the wall. I
+saw the rooms that I was never to see again; here, a door half open;
+there, a door closed; all the articles of furniture around.
+
+“And why was Old Orlick there? I’ll tell you something more, wolf. You
+and her _have_ pretty well hunted me out of this country, so far as
+getting a easy living in it goes, and I’ve took up with new companions,
+and new masters. Some of ’em writes my letters when I wants ’em
+wrote,—do you mind?—writes my letters, wolf! They writes fifty hands;
+they’re not like sneaking you, as writes but one. I’ve had a firm mind
+and a firm will to have your life, since you was down here at your
+sister’s burying. I han’t seen a way to get you safe, and I’ve looked
+arter you to know your ins and outs. For, says Old Orlick to himself,
+‘Somehow or another I’ll have him!’ What! When I looks for you, I finds
+your uncle Provis, eh?”
+
+Mill Pond Bank, and Chinks’s Basin, and the Old Green Copper Rope-walk,
+all so clear and plain! Provis in his rooms, the signal whose use was
+over, pretty Clara, the good motherly woman, old Bill Barley on his
+back, all drifting by, as on the swift stream of my life fast running
+out to sea!
+
+“_You_ with a uncle too! Why, I know’d you at Gargery’s when you was so
+small a wolf that I could have took your weazen betwixt this finger and
+thumb and chucked you away dead (as I’d thoughts o’ doing, odd times,
+when I see you loitering amongst the pollards on a Sunday), and you
+hadn’t found no uncles then. No, not you! But when Old Orlick come for
+to hear that your uncle Provis had most like wore the leg-iron wot Old
+Orlick had picked up, filed asunder, on these meshes ever so many year
+ago, and wot he kep by him till he dropped your sister with it, like a
+bullock, as he means to drop you—hey?—when he come for to hear
+that—hey?”
+
+In his savage taunting, he flared the candle so close at me that I
+turned my face aside to save it from the flame.
+
+“Ah!” he cried, laughing, after doing it again, “the burnt child dreads
+the fire! Old Orlick knowed you was burnt, Old Orlick knowed you was
+smuggling your uncle Provis away, Old Orlick’s a match for you and
+know’d you’d come to-night! Now I’ll tell you something more, wolf, and
+this ends it. There’s them that’s as good a match for your uncle Provis
+as Old Orlick has been for you. Let him ’ware them, when he’s lost his
+nevvy! Let him ’ware them, when no man can’t find a rag of his dear
+relation’s clothes, nor yet a bone of his body. There’s them that can’t
+and that won’t have Magwitch,—yes, _I_ know the name!—alive in the same
+land with them, and that’s had such sure information of him when he was
+alive in another land, as that he couldn’t and shouldn’t leave it
+unbeknown and put them in danger. P’raps it’s them that writes fifty
+hands, and that’s not like sneaking you as writes but one. ’Ware
+Compeyson, Magwitch, and the gallows!”
+
+He flared the candle at me again, smoking my face and hair, and for an
+instant blinding me, and turned his powerful back as he replaced the
+light on the table. I had thought a prayer, and had been with Joe and
+Biddy and Herbert, before he turned towards me again.
+
+There was a clear space of a few feet between the table and the
+opposite wall. Within this space, he now slouched backwards and
+forwards. His great strength seemed to sit stronger upon him than ever
+before, as he did this with his hands hanging loose and heavy at his
+sides, and with his eyes scowling at me. I had no grain of hope left.
+Wild as my inward hurry was, and wonderful the force of the pictures
+that rushed by me instead of thoughts, I could yet clearly understand
+that, unless he had resolved that I was within a few moments of surely
+perishing out of all human knowledge, he would never have told me what
+he had told.
+
+Of a sudden, he stopped, took the cork out of his bottle, and tossed it
+away. Light as it was, I heard it fall like a plummet. He swallowed
+slowly, tilting up the bottle by little and little, and now he looked
+at me no more. The last few drops of liquor he poured into the palm of
+his hand, and licked up. Then, with a sudden hurry of violence and
+swearing horribly, he threw the bottle from him, and stooped; and I saw
+in his hand a stone-hammer with a long heavy handle.
+
+The resolution I had made did not desert me, for, without uttering one
+vain word of appeal to him, I shouted out with all my might, and
+struggled with all my might. It was only my head and my legs that I
+could move, but to that extent I struggled with all the force, until
+then unknown, that was within me. In the same instant I heard
+responsive shouts, saw figures and a gleam of light dash in at the
+door, heard voices and tumult, and saw Orlick emerge from a struggle of
+men, as if it were tumbling water, clear the table at a leap, and fly
+out into the night.
+
+After a blank, I found that I was lying unbound, on the floor, in the
+same place, with my head on some one’s knee. My eyes were fixed on the
+ladder against the wall, when I came to myself,—had opened on it before
+my mind saw it,—and thus as I recovered consciousness, I knew that I
+was in the place where I had lost it.
+
+Too indifferent at first, even to look round and ascertain who
+supported me, I was lying looking at the ladder, when there came
+between me and it a face. The face of Trabb’s boy!
+
+“I think he’s all right!” said Trabb’s boy, in a sober voice; “but
+ain’t he just pale though!”
+
+At these words, the face of him who supported me looked over into mine,
+and I saw my supporter to be—
+
+“Herbert! Great Heaven!”
+
+“Softly,” said Herbert. “Gently, Handel. Don’t be too eager.”
+
+“And our old comrade, Startop!” I cried, as he too bent over me.
+
+“Remember what he is going to assist us in,” said Herbert, “and be
+calm.”
+
+The allusion made me spring up; though I dropped again from the pain in
+my arm. “The time has not gone by, Herbert, has it? What night is
+to-night? How long have I been here?” For, I had a strange and strong
+misgiving that I had been lying there a long time—a day and a
+night,—two days and nights,—more.
+
+“The time has not gone by. It is still Monday night.”
+
+“Thank God!”
+
+“And you have all to-morrow, Tuesday, to rest in,” said Herbert. “But
+you can’t help groaning, my dear Handel. What hurt have you got? Can
+you stand?”
+
+“Yes, yes,” said I, “I can walk. I have no hurt but in this throbbing
+arm.”
+
+They laid it bare, and did what they could. It was violently swollen
+and inflamed, and I could scarcely endure to have it touched. But, they
+tore up their handkerchiefs to make fresh bandages, and carefully
+replaced it in the sling, until we could get to the town and obtain
+some cooling lotion to put upon it. In a little while we had shut the
+door of the dark and empty sluice-house, and were passing through the
+quarry on our way back. Trabb’s boy—Trabb’s overgrown young man
+now—went before us with a lantern, which was the light I had seen come
+in at the door. But, the moon was a good two hours higher than when I
+had last seen the sky, and the night, though rainy, was much lighter.
+The white vapour of the kiln was passing from us as we went by, and as
+I had thought a prayer before, I thought a thanksgiving now.
+
+Entreating Herbert to tell me how he had come to my rescue,—which at
+first he had flatly refused to do, but had insisted on my remaining
+quiet,—I learnt that I had in my hurry dropped the letter, open, in our
+chambers, where he, coming home to bring with him Startop whom he had
+met in the street on his way to me, found it, very soon after I was
+gone. Its tone made him uneasy, and the more so because of the
+inconsistency between it and the hasty letter I had left for him. His
+uneasiness increasing instead of subsiding, after a quarter of an
+hour’s consideration, he set off for the coach-office with Startop, who
+volunteered his company, to make inquiry when the next coach went down.
+Finding that the afternoon coach was gone, and finding that his
+uneasiness grew into positive alarm, as obstacles came in his way, he
+resolved to follow in a post-chaise. So he and Startop arrived at the
+Blue Boar, fully expecting there to find me, or tidings of me; but,
+finding neither, went on to Miss Havisham’s, where they lost me.
+Hereupon they went back to the hotel (doubtless at about the time when
+I was hearing the popular local version of my own story) to refresh
+themselves and to get some one to guide them out upon the marshes.
+Among the loungers under the Boar’s archway happened to be Trabb’s
+Boy,—true to his ancient habit of happening to be everywhere where he
+had no business,—and Trabb’s boy had seen me passing from Miss
+Havisham’s in the direction of my dining-place. Thus Trabb’s boy became
+their guide, and with him they went out to the sluice-house, though by
+the town way to the marshes, which I had avoided. Now, as they went
+along, Herbert reflected, that I might, after all, have been brought
+there on some genuine and serviceable errand tending to Provis’s
+safety, and, bethinking himself that in that case interruption must be
+mischievous, left his guide and Startop on the edge of the quarry, and
+went on by himself, and stole round the house two or three times,
+endeavouring to ascertain whether all was right within. As he could
+hear nothing but indistinct sounds of one deep rough voice (this was
+while my mind was so busy), he even at last began to doubt whether I
+was there, when suddenly I cried out loudly, and he answered the cries,
+and rushed in, closely followed by the other two.
+
+When I told Herbert what had passed within the house, he was for our
+immediately going before a magistrate in the town, late at night as it
+was, and getting out a warrant. But, I had already considered that such
+a course, by detaining us there, or binding us to come back, might be
+fatal to Provis. There was no gainsaying this difficulty, and we
+relinquished all thoughts of pursuing Orlick at that time. For the
+present, under the circumstances, we deemed it prudent to make rather
+light of the matter to Trabb’s boy; who, I am convinced, would have
+been much affected by disappointment, if he had known that his
+intervention saved me from the limekiln. Not that Trabb’s boy was of a
+malignant nature, but that he had too much spare vivacity, and that it
+was in his constitution to want variety and excitement at anybody’s
+expense. When we parted, I presented him with two guineas (which seemed
+to meet his views), and told him that I was sorry ever to have had an
+ill opinion of him (which made no impression on him at all).
+
+Wednesday being so close upon us, we determined to go back to London
+that night, three in the post-chaise; the rather, as we should then be
+clear away before the night’s adventure began to be talked of. Herbert
+got a large bottle of stuff for my arm; and by dint of having this
+stuff dropped over it all the night through, I was just able to bear
+its pain on the journey. It was daylight when we reached the Temple,
+and I went at once to bed, and lay in bed all day.
+
+My terror, as I lay there, of falling ill, and being unfitted for
+to-morrow, was so besetting, that I wonder it did not disable me of
+itself. It would have done so, pretty surely, in conjunction with the
+mental wear and tear I had suffered, but for the unnatural strain upon
+me that to-morrow was. So anxiously looked forward to, charged with
+such consequences, its results so impenetrably hidden, though so near.
+
+No precaution could have been more obvious than our refraining from
+communication with him that day; yet this again increased my
+restlessness. I started at every footstep and every sound, believing
+that he was discovered and taken, and this was the messenger to tell me
+so. I persuaded myself that I knew he was taken; that there was
+something more upon my mind than a fear or a presentiment; that the
+fact had occurred, and I had a mysterious knowledge of it. As the days
+wore on, and no ill news came, as the day closed in and darkness fell,
+my overshadowing dread of being disabled by illness before to-morrow
+morning altogether mastered me. My burning arm throbbed, and my burning
+head throbbed, and I fancied I was beginning to wander. I counted up to
+high numbers, to make sure of myself, and repeated passages that I knew
+in prose and verse. It happened sometimes that in the mere escape of a
+fatigued mind, I dozed for some moments or forgot; then I would say to
+myself with a start, “Now it has come, and I am turning delirious!”
+
+They kept me very quiet all day, and kept my arm constantly dressed,
+and gave me cooling drinks. Whenever I fell asleep, I awoke with the
+notion I had had in the sluice-house, that a long time had elapsed and
+the opportunity to save him was gone. About midnight I got out of bed
+and went to Herbert, with the conviction that I had been asleep for
+four-and-twenty hours, and that Wednesday was past. It was the last
+self-exhausting effort of my fretfulness, for after that I slept
+soundly.
+
+Wednesday morning was dawning when I looked out of window. The winking
+lights upon the bridges were already pale, the coming sun was like a
+marsh of fire on the horizon. The river, still dark and mysterious, was
+spanned by bridges that were turning coldly grey, with here and there
+at top a warm touch from the burning in the sky. As I looked along the
+clustered roofs, with church-towers and spires shooting into the
+unusually clear air, the sun rose up, and a veil seemed to be drawn
+from the river, and millions of sparkles burst out upon its waters.
+From me too, a veil seemed to be drawn, and I felt strong and well.
+
+Herbert lay asleep in his bed, and our old fellow-student lay asleep on
+the sofa. I could not dress myself without help; but I made up the
+fire, which was still burning, and got some coffee ready for them. In
+good time they too started up strong and well, and we admitted the
+sharp morning air at the windows, and looked at the tide that was still
+flowing towards us.
+
+“When it turns at nine o’clock,” said Herbert, cheerfully, “look out
+for us, and stand ready, you over there at Mill Pond Bank!”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LIV.
+
+
+It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind
+blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade. We
+had our pea-coats with us, and I took a bag. Of all my worldly
+possessions I took no more than the few necessaries that filled the
+bag. Where I might go, what I might do, or when I might return, were
+questions utterly unknown to me; nor did I vex my mind with them, for
+it was wholly set on Provis’s safety. I only wondered for the passing
+moment, as I stopped at the door and looked back, under what altered
+circumstances I should next see those rooms, if ever.
+
+We loitered down to the Temple stairs, and stood loitering there, as if
+we were not quite decided to go upon the water at all. Of course, I had
+taken care that the boat should be ready and everything in order. After
+a little show of indecision, which there were none to see but the two
+or three amphibious creatures belonging to our Temple stairs, we went
+on board and cast off; Herbert in the bow, I steering. It was then
+about high-water,—half-past eight.
+
+Our plan was this. The tide, beginning to run down at nine, and being
+with us until three, we intended still to creep on after it had turned,
+and row against it until dark. We should then be well in those long
+reaches below Gravesend, between Kent and Essex, where the river is
+broad and solitary, where the water-side inhabitants are very few, and
+where lone public-houses are scattered here and there, of which we
+could choose one for a resting-place. There, we meant to lie by all
+night. The steamer for Hamburg and the steamer for Rotterdam would
+start from London at about nine on Thursday morning. We should know at
+what time to expect them, according to where we were, and would hail
+the first; so that, if by any accident we were not taken abroad, we
+should have another chance. We knew the distinguishing marks of each
+vessel.
+
+The relief of being at last engaged in the execution of the purpose was
+so great to me that I felt it difficult to realise the condition in
+which I had been a few hours before. The crisp air, the sunlight, the
+movement on the river, and the moving river itself,—the road that ran
+with us, seeming to sympathise with us, animate us, and encourage us
+on,—freshened me with new hope. I felt mortified to be of so little use
+in the boat; but, there were few better oarsmen than my two friends,
+and they rowed with a steady stroke that was to last all day.
+
+At that time, the steam-traffic on the Thames was far below its present
+extent, and watermen’s boats were far more numerous. Of barges, sailing
+colliers, and coasting-traders, there were perhaps, as many as now; but
+of steam-ships, great and small, not a tithe or a twentieth part so
+many. Early as it was, there were plenty of scullers going here and
+there that morning, and plenty of barges dropping down with the tide;
+the navigation of the river between bridges, in an open boat, was a
+much easier and commoner matter in those days than it is in these; and
+we went ahead among many skiffs and wherries briskly.
+
+Old London Bridge was soon passed, and old Billingsgate Market with its
+oyster-boats and Dutchmen, and the White Tower and Traitor’s Gate, and
+we were in among the tiers of shipping. Here were the Leith, Aberdeen,
+and Glasgow steamers, loading and unloading goods, and looking
+immensely high out of the water as we passed alongside; here, were
+colliers by the score and score, with the coal-whippers plunging off
+stages on deck, as counterweights to measures of coal swinging up,
+which were then rattled over the side into barges; here, at her
+moorings was to-morrow’s steamer for Rotterdam, of which we took good
+notice; and here to-morrow’s for Hamburg, under whose bowsprit we
+crossed. And now I, sitting in the stern, could see, with a faster
+beating heart, Mill Pond Bank and Mill Pond stairs.
+
+“Is he there?” said Herbert.
+
+“Not yet.”
+
+“Right! He was not to come down till he saw us. Can you see his
+signal?”
+
+“Not well from here; but I think I see it.—Now I see him! Pull both.
+Easy, Herbert. Oars!”
+
+We touched the stairs lightly for a single moment, and he was on board,
+and we were off again. He had a boat-cloak with him, and a black canvas
+bag; and he looked as like a river-pilot as my heart could have wished.
+
+“Dear boy!” he said, putting his arm on my shoulder, as he took his
+seat. “Faithful dear boy, well done. Thankye, thankye!”
+
+Again among the tiers of shipping, in and out, avoiding rusty
+chain-cables frayed hempen hawsers and bobbing buoys, sinking for the
+moment floating broken baskets, scattering floating chips of wood and
+shaving, cleaving floating scum of coal, in and out, under the
+figure-head of the _John of Sunderland_ making a speech to the winds
+(as is done by many Johns), and the _Betsy of Yarmouth_ with a firm
+formality of bosom and her knobby eyes starting two inches out of her
+head; in and out, hammers going in ship-builders’ yards, saws going at
+timber, clashing engines going at things unknown, pumps going in leaky
+ships, capstans going, ships going out to sea, and unintelligible
+sea-creatures roaring curses over the bulwarks at respondent
+lightermen, in and out,—out at last upon the clearer river, where the
+ships’ boys might take their fenders in, no longer fishing in troubled
+waters with them over the side, and where the festooned sails might fly
+out to the wind.
+
+At the stairs where we had taken him abroad, and ever since, I had
+looked warily for any token of our being suspected. I had seen none. We
+certainly had not been, and at that time as certainly we were not
+either attended or followed by any boat. If we had been waited on by
+any boat, I should have run in to shore, and have obliged her to go on,
+or to make her purpose evident. But we held our own without any
+appearance of molestation.
+
+He had his boat-cloak on him, and looked, as I have said, a natural
+part of the scene. It was remarkable (but perhaps the wretched life he
+had led accounted for it) that he was the least anxious of any of us.
+He was not indifferent, for he told me that he hoped to live to see his
+gentleman one of the best of gentlemen in a foreign country; he was not
+disposed to be passive or resigned, as I understood it; but he had no
+notion of meeting danger half way. When it came upon him, he confronted
+it, but it must come before he troubled himself.
+
+“If you knowed, dear boy,” he said to me, “what it is to sit here
+alonger my dear boy and have my smoke, arter having been day by day
+betwixt four walls, you’d envy me. But you don’t know what it is.”
+
+“I think I know the delights of freedom,” I answered.
+
+“Ah,” said he, shaking his head gravely. “But you don’t know it equal
+to me. You must have been under lock and key, dear boy, to know it
+equal to me,—but I ain’t a-going to be low.”
+
+It occurred to me as inconsistent, that, for any mastering idea, he
+should have endangered his freedom, and even his life. But I reflected
+that perhaps freedom without danger was too much apart from all the
+habit of his existence to be to him what it would be to another man. I
+was not far out, since he said, after smoking a little:—
+
+“You see, dear boy, when I was over yonder, t’other side the world, I
+was always a looking to this side; and it come flat to be there, for
+all I was a growing rich. Everybody knowed Magwitch, and Magwitch could
+come, and Magwitch could go, and nobody’s head would be troubled about
+him. They ain’t so easy concerning me here, dear boy,—wouldn’t be,
+leastwise, if they knowed where I was.”
+
+“If all goes well,” said I, “you will be perfectly free and safe again
+within a few hours.”
+
+“Well,” he returned, drawing a long breath, “I hope so.”
+
+“And think so?”
+
+He dipped his hand in the water over the boat’s gunwale, and said,
+smiling with that softened air upon him which was not new to me:—
+
+“Ay, I s’pose I think so, dear boy. We’d be puzzled to be more quiet
+and easy-going than we are at present. But—it’s a flowing so soft and
+pleasant through the water, p’raps, as makes me think it—I was a
+thinking through my smoke just then, that we can no more see to the
+bottom of the next few hours than we can see to the bottom of this
+river what I catches hold of. Nor yet we can’t no more hold their tide
+than I can hold this. And it’s run through my fingers and gone, you
+see!” holding up his dripping hand.
+
+“But for your face I should think you were a little despondent,” said
+I.
+
+“Not a bit on it, dear boy! It comes of flowing on so quiet, and of
+that there rippling at the boat’s head making a sort of a Sunday tune.
+Maybe I’m a growing a trifle old besides.”
+
+He put his pipe back in his mouth with an undisturbed expression of
+face, and sat as composed and contented as if we were already out of
+England. Yet he was as submissive to a word of advice as if he had been
+in constant terror; for, when we ran ashore to get some bottles of beer
+into the boat, and he was stepping out, I hinted that I thought he
+would be safest where he was, and he said. “Do you, dear boy?” and
+quietly sat down again.
+
+The air felt cold upon the river, but it was a bright day, and the
+sunshine was very cheering. The tide ran strong, I took care to lose
+none of it, and our steady stroke carried us on thoroughly well. By
+imperceptible degrees, as the tide ran out, we lost more and more of
+the nearer woods and hills, and dropped lower and lower between the
+muddy banks, but the tide was yet with us when we were off Gravesend.
+As our charge was wrapped in his cloak, I purposely passed within a
+boat or two’s length of the floating Custom House, and so out to catch
+the stream, alongside of two emigrant ships, and under the bows of a
+large transport with troops on the forecastle looking down at us. And
+soon the tide began to slacken, and the craft lying at anchor to swing,
+and presently they had all swung round, and the ships that were taking
+advantage of the new tide to get up to the Pool began to crowd upon us
+in a fleet, and we kept under the shore, as much out of the strength of
+the tide now as we could, standing carefully off from low shallows and
+mudbanks.
+
+Our oarsmen were so fresh, by dint of having occasionally let her drive
+with the tide for a minute or two, that a quarter of an hour’s rest
+proved full as much as they wanted. We got ashore among some slippery
+stones while we ate and drank what we had with us, and looked about. It
+was like my own marsh country, flat and monotonous, and with a dim
+horizon; while the winding river turned and turned, and the great
+floating buoys upon it turned and turned, and everything else seemed
+stranded and still. For now the last of the fleet of ships was round
+the last low point we had headed; and the last green barge,
+straw-laden, with a brown sail, had followed; and some
+ballast-lighters, shaped like a child’s first rude imitation of a boat,
+lay low in the mud; and a little squat shoal-lighthouse on open piles
+stood crippled in the mud on stilts and crutches; and slimy stakes
+stuck out of the mud, and slimy stones stuck out of the mud, and red
+landmarks and tidemarks stuck out of the mud, and an old landing-stage
+and an old roofless building slipped into the mud, and all about us was
+stagnation and mud.
+
+We pushed off again, and made what way we could. It was much harder
+work now, but Herbert and Startop persevered, and rowed and rowed and
+rowed until the sun went down. By that time the river had lifted us a
+little, so that we could see above the bank. There was the red sun, on
+the low level of the shore, in a purple haze, fast deepening into
+black; and there was the solitary flat marsh; and far away there were
+the rising grounds, between which and us there seemed to be no life,
+save here and there in the foreground a melancholy gull.
+
+As the night was fast falling, and as the moon, being past the full,
+would not rise early, we held a little council; a short one, for
+clearly our course was to lie by at the first lonely tavern we could
+find. So, they plied their oars once more, and I looked out for
+anything like a house. Thus we held on, speaking little, for four or
+five dull miles. It was very cold, and, a collier coming by us, with
+her galley-fire smoking and flaring, looked like a comfortable home.
+The night was as dark by this time as it would be until morning; and
+what light we had, seemed to come more from the river than the sky, as
+the oars in their dipping struck at a few reflected stars.
+
+At this dismal time we were evidently all possessed by the idea that we
+were followed. As the tide made, it flapped heavily at irregular
+intervals against the shore; and whenever such a sound came, one or
+other of us was sure to start, and look in that direction. Here and
+there, the set of the current had worn down the bank into a little
+creek, and we were all suspicious of such places, and eyed them
+nervously. Sometimes, “What was that ripple?” one of us would say in a
+low voice. Or another, “Is that a boat yonder?” And afterwards we would
+fall into a dead silence, and I would sit impatiently thinking with
+what an unusual amount of noise the oars worked in the thowels.
+
+At length we descried a light and a roof, and presently afterwards ran
+alongside a little causeway made of stones that had been picked up hard
+by. Leaving the rest in the boat, I stepped ashore, and found the light
+to be in a window of a public-house. It was a dirty place enough, and I
+dare say not unknown to smuggling adventurers; but there was a good
+fire in the kitchen, and there were eggs and bacon to eat, and various
+liquors to drink. Also, there were two double-bedded rooms,—“such as
+they were,” the landlord said. No other company was in the house than
+the landlord, his wife, and a grizzled male creature, the “Jack” of the
+little causeway, who was as slimy and smeary as if he had been
+low-water mark too.
+
+With this assistant, I went down to the boat again, and we all came
+ashore, and brought out the oars, and rudder and boat-hook, and all
+else, and hauled her up for the night. We made a very good meal by the
+kitchen fire, and then apportioned the bedrooms: Herbert and Startop
+were to occupy one; I and our charge the other. We found the air as
+carefully excluded from both, as if air were fatal to life; and there
+were more dirty clothes and bandboxes under the beds than I should have
+thought the family possessed. But we considered ourselves well off,
+notwithstanding, for a more solitary place we could not have found.
+
+While we were comforting ourselves by the fire after our meal, the
+Jack—who was sitting in a corner, and who had a bloated pair of shoes
+on, which he had exhibited while we were eating our eggs and bacon, as
+interesting relics that he had taken a few days ago from the feet of a
+drowned seaman washed ashore—asked me if we had seen a four-oared
+galley going up with the tide? When I told him No, he said she must
+have gone down then, and yet she “took up too,” when she left there.
+
+“They must ha’ thought better on’t for some reason or another,” said
+the Jack, “and gone down.”
+
+“A four-oared galley, did you say?” said I.
+
+“A four,” said the Jack, “and two sitters.”
+
+“Did they come ashore here?”
+
+“They put in with a stone two-gallon jar for some beer. I’d ha’ been
+glad to pison the beer myself,” said the Jack, “or put some rattling
+physic in it.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“_I_ know why,” said the Jack. He spoke in a slushy voice, as if much
+mud had washed into his throat.
+
+“He thinks,” said the landlord, a weakly meditative man with a pale
+eye, who seemed to rely greatly on his Jack,—“he thinks they was, what
+they wasn’t.”
+
+“_I_ knows what I thinks,” observed the Jack.
+
+“_You_ thinks Custom ’Us, Jack?” said the landlord.
+
+“I do,” said the Jack.
+
+“Then you’re wrong, Jack.”
+
+“AM I!”
+
+In the infinite meaning of his reply and his boundless confidence in
+his views, the Jack took one of his bloated shoes off, looked into it,
+knocked a few stones out of it on the kitchen floor, and put it on
+again. He did this with the air of a Jack who was so right that he
+could afford to do anything.
+
+“Why, what do you make out that they done with their buttons then,
+Jack?” asked the landlord, vacillating weakly.
+
+“Done with their buttons?” returned the Jack. “Chucked ’em overboard.
+Swallered ’em. Sowed ’em, to come up small salad. Done with their
+buttons!”
+
+“Don’t be cheeky, Jack,” remonstrated the landlord, in a melancholy and
+pathetic way.
+
+“A Custom ’Us officer knows what to do with his Buttons,” said the
+Jack, repeating the obnoxious word with the greatest contempt, “when
+they comes betwixt him and his own light. A four and two sitters don’t
+go hanging and hovering, up with one tide and down with another, and
+both with and against another, without there being Custom ’Us at the
+bottom of it.” Saying which he went out in disdain; and the landlord,
+having no one to reply upon, found it impracticable to pursue the
+subject.
+
+This dialogue made us all uneasy, and me very uneasy. The dismal wind
+was muttering round the house, the tide was flapping at the shore, and
+I had a feeling that we were caged and threatened. A four-oared galley
+hovering about in so unusual a way as to attract this notice was an
+ugly circumstance that I could not get rid of. When I had induced
+Provis to go up to bed, I went outside with my two companions (Startop
+by this time knew the state of the case), and held another council.
+Whether we should remain at the house until near the steamer’s time,
+which would be about one in the afternoon, or whether we should put off
+early in the morning, was the question we discussed. On the whole we
+deemed it the better course to lie where we were, until within an hour
+or so of the steamer’s time, and then to get out in her track, and
+drift easily with the tide. Having settled to do this, we returned into
+the house and went to bed.
+
+I lay down with the greater part of my clothes on, and slept well for a
+few hours. When I awoke, the wind had risen, and the sign of the house
+(the Ship) was creaking and banging about, with noises that startled
+me. Rising softly, for my charge lay fast asleep, I looked out of the
+window. It commanded the causeway where we had hauled up our boat, and,
+as my eyes adapted themselves to the light of the clouded moon, I saw
+two men looking into her. They passed by under the window, looking at
+nothing else, and they did not go down to the landing-place which I
+could discern to be empty, but struck across the marsh in the direction
+of the Nore.
+
+My first impulse was to call up Herbert, and show him the two men going
+away. But reflecting, before I got into his room, which was at the back
+of the house and adjoined mine, that he and Startop had had a harder
+day than I, and were fatigued, I forbore. Going back to my window, I
+could see the two men moving over the marsh. In that light, however, I
+soon lost them, and, feeling very cold, lay down to think of the
+matter, and fell asleep again.
+
+We were up early. As we walked to and fro, all four together, before
+breakfast, I deemed it right to recount what I had seen. Again our
+charge was the least anxious of the party. It was very likely that the
+men belonged to the Custom House, he said quietly, and that they had no
+thought of us. I tried to persuade myself that it was so,—as, indeed,
+it might easily be. However, I proposed that he and I should walk away
+together to a distant point we could see, and that the boat should take
+us aboard there, or as near there as might prove feasible, at about
+noon. This being considered a good precaution, soon after breakfast he
+and I set forth, without saying anything at the tavern.
+
+He smoked his pipe as we went along, and sometimes stopped to clap me
+on the shoulder. One would have supposed that it was I who was in
+danger, not he, and that he was reassuring me. We spoke very little. As
+we approached the point, I begged him to remain in a sheltered place,
+while I went on to reconnoitre; for it was towards it that the men had
+passed in the night. He complied, and I went on alone. There was no
+boat off the point, nor any boat drawn up anywhere near it, nor were
+there any signs of the men having embarked there. But, to be sure, the
+tide was high, and there might have been some footprints under water.
+
+When he looked out from his shelter in the distance, and saw that I
+waved my hat to him to come up, he rejoined me, and there we waited;
+sometimes lying on the bank, wrapped in our coats, and sometimes moving
+about to warm ourselves, until we saw our boat coming round. We got
+aboard easily, and rowed out into the track of the steamer. By that
+time it wanted but ten minutes of one o’clock, and we began to look out
+for her smoke.
+
+But, it was half-past one before we saw her smoke, and soon afterwards
+we saw behind it the smoke of another steamer. As they were coming on
+at full speed, we got the two bags ready, and took that opportunity of
+saying good-bye to Herbert and Startop. We had all shaken hands
+cordially, and neither Herbert’s eyes nor mine were quite dry, when I
+saw a four-oared galley shoot out from under the bank but a little way
+ahead of us, and row out into the same track.
+
+A stretch of shore had been as yet between us and the steamer’s smoke,
+by reason of the bend and wind of the river; but now she was visible,
+coming head on. I called to Herbert and Startop to keep before the
+tide, that she might see us lying by for her, and I adjured Provis to
+sit quite still, wrapped in his cloak. He answered cheerily, “Trust to
+me, dear boy,” and sat like a statue. Meantime the galley, which was
+very skilfully handled, had crossed us, let us come up with her, and
+fallen alongside. Leaving just room enough for the play of the oars,
+she kept alongside, drifting when we drifted, and pulling a stroke or
+two when we pulled. Of the two sitters one held the rudder-lines, and
+looked at us attentively,—as did all the rowers; the other sitter was
+wrapped up, much as Provis was, and seemed to shrink, and whisper some
+instruction to the steerer as he looked at us. Not a word was spoken in
+either boat.
+
+Startop could make out, after a few minutes, which steamer was first,
+and gave me the word “Hamburg,” in a low voice, as we sat face to face.
+She was nearing us very fast, and the beating of her peddles grew
+louder and louder. I felt as if her shadow were absolutely upon us,
+when the galley hailed us. I answered.
+
+“You have a returned Transport there,” said the man who held the lines.
+“That’s the man, wrapped in the cloak. His name is Abel Magwitch,
+otherwise Provis. I apprehend that man, and call upon him to surrender,
+and you to assist.”
+
+At the same moment, without giving any audible direction to his crew,
+he ran the galley abroad of us. They had pulled one sudden stroke
+ahead, had got their oars in, had run athwart us, and were holding on
+to our gunwale, before we knew what they were doing. This caused great
+confusion on board the steamer, and I heard them calling to us, and
+heard the order given to stop the paddles, and heard them stop, but
+felt her driving down upon us irresistibly. In the same moment, I saw
+the steersman of the galley lay his hand on his prisoner’s shoulder,
+and saw that both boats were swinging round with the force of the tide,
+and saw that all hands on board the steamer were running forward quite
+frantically. Still, in the same moment, I saw the prisoner start up,
+lean across his captor, and pull the cloak from the neck of the
+shrinking sitter in the galley. Still in the same moment, I saw that
+the face disclosed, was the face of the other convict of long ago.
+Still, in the same moment, I saw the face tilt backward with a white
+terror on it that I shall never forget, and heard a great cry on board
+the steamer, and a loud splash in the water, and felt the boat sink
+from under me.
+
+It was but for an instant that I seemed to struggle with a thousand
+mill-weirs and a thousand flashes of light; that instant past, I was
+taken on board the galley. Herbert was there, and Startop was there;
+but our boat was gone, and the two convicts were gone.
+
+What with the cries aboard the steamer, and the furious blowing off of
+her steam, and her driving on, and our driving on, I could not at first
+distinguish sky from water or shore from shore; but the crew of the
+galley righted her with great speed, and, pulling certain swift strong
+strokes ahead, lay upon their oars, every man looking silently and
+eagerly at the water astern. Presently a dark object was seen in it,
+bearing towards us on the tide. No man spoke, but the steersman held up
+his hand, and all softly backed water, and kept the boat straight and
+true before it. As it came nearer, I saw it to be Magwitch, swimming,
+but not swimming freely. He was taken on board, and instantly manacled
+at the wrists and ankles.
+
+The galley was kept steady, and the silent, eager look-out at the water
+was resumed. But, the Rotterdam steamer now came up, and apparently not
+understanding what had happened, came on at speed. By the time she had
+been hailed and stopped, both steamers were drifting away from us, and
+we were rising and falling in a troubled wake of water. The look-out
+was kept, long after all was still again and the two steamers were
+gone; but everybody knew that it was hopeless now.
+
+At length we gave it up, and pulled under the shore towards the tavern
+we had lately left, where we were received with no little surprise.
+Here I was able to get some comforts for Magwitch,—Provis no
+longer,—who had received some very severe injury in the chest, and a
+deep cut in the head.
+
+He told me that he believed himself to have gone under the keel of the
+steamer, and to have been struck on the head in rising. The injury to
+his chest (which rendered his breathing extremely painful) he thought
+he had received against the side of the galley. He added that he did
+not pretend to say what he might or might not have done to Compeyson,
+but that, in the moment of his laying his hand on his cloak to identify
+him, that villain had staggered up and staggered back, and they had
+both gone overboard together, when the sudden wrenching of him
+(Magwitch) out of our boat, and the endeavour of his captor to keep him
+in it, had capsized us. He told me in a whisper that they had gone down
+fiercely locked in each other’s arms, and that there had been a
+struggle under water, and that he had disengaged himself, struck out,
+and swum away.
+
+I never had any reason to doubt the exact truth of what he thus told
+me. The officer who steered the galley gave the same account of their
+going overboard.
+
+When I asked this officer’s permission to change the prisoner’s wet
+clothes by purchasing any spare garments I could get at the
+public-house, he gave it readily: merely observing that he must take
+charge of everything his prisoner had about him. So the pocket-book
+which had once been in my hands passed into the officer’s. He further
+gave me leave to accompany the prisoner to London; but declined to
+accord that grace to my two friends.
+
+The Jack at the Ship was instructed where the drowned man had gone
+down, and undertook to search for the body in the places where it was
+likeliest to come ashore. His interest in its recovery seemed to me to
+be much heightened when he heard that it had stockings on. Probably, it
+took about a dozen drowned men to fit him out completely; and that may
+have been the reason why the different articles of his dress were in
+various stages of decay.
+
+We remained at the public-house until the tide turned, and then
+Magwitch was carried down to the galley and put on board. Herbert and
+Startop were to get to London by land, as soon as they could. We had a
+doleful parting, and when I took my place by Magwitch’s side, I felt
+that that was my place henceforth while he lived.
+
+For now, my repugnance to him had all melted away; and in the hunted,
+wounded, shackled creature who held my hand in his, I only saw a man
+who had meant to be my benefactor, and who had felt affectionately,
+gratefully, and generously, towards me with great constancy through a
+series of years. I only saw in him a much better man than I had been to
+Joe.
+
+His breathing became more difficult and painful as the night drew on,
+and often he could not repress a groan. I tried to rest him on the arm
+I could use, in any easy position; but it was dreadful to think that I
+could not be sorry at heart for his being badly hurt, since it was
+unquestionably best that he should die. That there were, still living,
+people enough who were able and willing to identify him, I could not
+doubt. That he would be leniently treated, I could not hope. He who had
+been presented in the worst light at his trial, who had since broken
+prison and had been tried again, who had returned from transportation
+under a life sentence, and who had occasioned the death of the man who
+was the cause of his arrest.
+
+As we returned towards the setting sun we had yesterday left behind us,
+and as the stream of our hopes seemed all running back, I told him how
+grieved I was to think that he had come home for my sake.
+
+“Dear boy,” he answered, “I’m quite content to take my chance. I’ve
+seen my boy, and he can be a gentleman without me.”
+
+No. I had thought about that, while we had been there side by side. No.
+Apart from any inclinations of my own, I understood Wemmick’s hint now.
+I foresaw that, being convicted, his possessions would be forfeited to
+the Crown.
+
+“Lookee here, dear boy,” said he “It’s best as a gentleman should not
+be knowed to belong to me now. Only come to see me as if you come by
+chance alonger Wemmick. Sit where I can see you when I am swore to, for
+the last o’ many times, and I don’t ask no more.”
+
+“I will never stir from your side,” said I, “when I am suffered to be
+near you. Please God, I will be as true to you as you have been to me!”
+
+I felt his hand tremble as it held mine, and he turned his face away as
+he lay in the bottom of the boat, and I heard that old sound in his
+throat,—softened now, like all the rest of him. It was a good thing
+that he had touched this point, for it put into my mind what I might
+not otherwise have thought of until too late,—that he need never know
+how his hopes of enriching me had perished.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LV.
+
+
+He was taken to the Police Court next day, and would have been
+immediately committed for trial, but that it was necessary to send down
+for an old officer of the prison-ship from which he had once escaped,
+to speak to his identity. Nobody doubted it; but Compeyson, who had
+meant to depose to it, was tumbling on the tides, dead, and it happened
+that there was not at that time any prison officer in London who could
+give the required evidence. I had gone direct to Mr. Jaggers at his
+private house, on my arrival over night, to retain his assistance, and
+Mr. Jaggers on the prisoner’s behalf would admit nothing. It was the
+sole resource; for he told me that the case must be over in five
+minutes when the witness was there, and that no power on earth could
+prevent its going against us.
+
+I imparted to Mr. Jaggers my design of keeping him in ignorance of the
+fate of his wealth. Mr. Jaggers was querulous and angry with me for
+having “let it slip through my fingers,” and said we must memorialise
+by and by, and try at all events for some of it. But he did not conceal
+from me that, although there might be many cases in which the
+forfeiture would not be exacted, there were no circumstances in this
+case to make it one of them. I understood that very well. I was not
+related to the outlaw, or connected with him by any recognisable tie;
+he had put his hand to no writing or settlement in my favour before his
+apprehension, and to do so now would be idle. I had no claim, and I
+finally resolved, and ever afterwards abided by the resolution, that my
+heart should never be sickened with the hopeless task of attempting to
+establish one.
+
+There appeared to be reason for supposing that the drowned informer had
+hoped for a reward out of this forfeiture, and had obtained some
+accurate knowledge of Magwitch’s affairs. When his body was found, many
+miles from the scene of his death, and so horribly disfigured that he
+was only recognisable by the contents of his pockets, notes were still
+legible, folded in a case he carried. Among these were the name of a
+banking-house in New South Wales, where a sum of money was, and the
+designation of certain lands of considerable value. Both these heads of
+information were in a list that Magwitch, while in prison, gave to Mr.
+Jaggers, of the possessions he supposed I should inherit. His
+ignorance, poor fellow, at last served him; he never mistrusted but
+that my inheritance was quite safe, with Mr. Jaggers’s aid.
+
+After three days’ delay, during which the crown prosecution stood over
+for the production of the witness from the prison-ship, the witness
+came, and completed the easy case. He was committed to take his trial
+at the next Sessions, which would come on in a month.
+
+It was at this dark time of my life that Herbert returned home one
+evening, a good deal cast down, and said,—
+
+“My dear Handel, I fear I shall soon have to leave you.”
+
+His partner having prepared me for that, I was less surprised than he
+thought.
+
+“We shall lose a fine opportunity if I put off going to Cairo, and I am
+very much afraid I must go, Handel, when you most need me.”
+
+“Herbert, I shall always need you, because I shall always love you; but
+my need is no greater now than at another time.”
+
+“You will be so lonely.”
+
+“I have not leisure to think of that,” said I. “You know that I am
+always with him to the full extent of the time allowed, and that I
+should be with him all day long, if I could. And when I come away from
+him, you know that my thoughts are with him.”
+
+The dreadful condition to which he was brought, was so appalling to
+both of us, that we could not refer to it in plainer words.
+
+“My dear fellow,” said Herbert, “let the near prospect of our
+separation—for, it is very near—be my justification for troubling you
+about yourself. Have you thought of your future?”
+
+“No, for I have been afraid to think of any future.”
+
+“But yours cannot be dismissed; indeed, my dear dear Handel, it must
+not be dismissed. I wish you would enter on it now, as far as a few
+friendly words go, with me.”
+
+“I will,” said I.
+
+“In this branch house of ours, Handel, we must have a—”
+
+I saw that his delicacy was avoiding the right word, so I said, “A
+clerk.”
+
+“A clerk. And I hope it is not at all unlikely that he may expand (as a
+clerk of your acquaintance has expanded) into a partner. Now,
+Handel,—in short, my dear boy, will you come to me?”
+
+There was something charmingly cordial and engaging in the manner in
+which after saying “Now, Handel,” as if it were the grave beginning of
+a portentous business exordium, he had suddenly given up that tone,
+stretched out his honest hand, and spoken like a schoolboy.
+
+“Clara and I have talked about it again and again,” Herbert pursued,
+“and the dear little thing begged me only this evening, with tears in
+her eyes, to say to you that, if you will live with us when we come
+together, she will do her best to make you happy, and to convince her
+husband’s friend that he is her friend too. We should get on so well,
+Handel!”
+
+I thanked her heartily, and I thanked him heartily, but said I could
+not yet make sure of joining him as he so kindly offered. Firstly, my
+mind was too preoccupied to be able to take in the subject clearly.
+Secondly,—Yes! Secondly, there was a vague something lingering in my
+thoughts that will come out very near the end of this slight narrative.
+
+“But if you thought, Herbert, that you could, without doing any injury
+to your business, leave the question open for a little while—”
+
+“For any while,” cried Herbert. “Six months, a year!”
+
+“Not so long as that,” said I. “Two or three months at most.”
+
+Herbert was highly delighted when we shook hands on this arrangement,
+and said he could now take courage to tell me that he believed he must
+go away at the end of the week.
+
+“And Clara?” said I.
+
+“The dear little thing,” returned Herbert, “holds dutifully to her
+father as long as he lasts; but he won’t last long. Mrs. Whimple
+confides to me that he is certainly going.”
+
+“Not to say an unfeeling thing,” said I, “he cannot do better than go.”
+
+“I am afraid that must be admitted,” said Herbert; “and then I shall
+come back for the dear little thing, and the dear little thing and I
+will walk quietly into the nearest church. Remember! The blessed
+darling comes of no family, my dear Handel, and never looked into the
+red book, and hasn’t a notion about her grandpapa. What a fortune for
+the son of my mother!”
+
+On the Saturday in that same week, I took my leave of Herbert,—full of
+bright hope, but sad and sorry to leave me,—as he sat on one of the
+seaport mail coaches. I went into a coffee-house to write a little note
+to Clara, telling her he had gone off, sending his love to her over and
+over again, and then went to my lonely home,—if it deserved the name;
+for it was now no home to me, and I had no home anywhere.
+
+On the stairs I encountered Wemmick, who was coming down, after an
+unsuccessful application of his knuckles to my door. I had not seen him
+alone since the disastrous issue of the attempted flight; and he had
+come, in his private and personal capacity, to say a few words of
+explanation in reference to that failure.
+
+“The late Compeyson,” said Wemmick, “had by little and little got at
+the bottom of half of the regular business now transacted; and it was
+from the talk of some of his people in trouble (some of his people
+being always in trouble) that I heard what I did. I kept my ears open,
+seeming to have them shut, until I heard that he was absent, and I
+thought that would be the best time for making the attempt. I can only
+suppose now, that it was a part of his policy, as a very clever man,
+habitually to deceive his own instruments. You don’t blame me, I hope,
+Mr. Pip? I am sure I tried to serve you, with all my heart.”
+
+“I am as sure of that, Wemmick, as you can be, and I thank you most
+earnestly for all your interest and friendship.”
+
+“Thank you, thank you very much. It’s a bad job,” said Wemmick,
+scratching his head, “and I assure you I haven’t been so cut up for a
+long time. What I look at is the sacrifice of so much portable
+property. Dear me!”
+
+“What _I_ think of, Wemmick, is the poor owner of the property.”
+
+“Yes, to be sure,” said Wemmick. “Of course, there can be no objection
+to your being sorry for him, and I’d put down a five-pound note myself
+to get him out of it. But what I look at is this. The late Compeyson
+having been beforehand with him in intelligence of his return, and
+being so determined to bring him to book, I do not think he could have
+been saved. Whereas, the portable property certainly could have been
+saved. That’s the difference between the property and the owner, don’t
+you see?”
+
+I invited Wemmick to come upstairs, and refresh himself with a glass of
+grog before walking to Walworth. He accepted the invitation. While he
+was drinking his moderate allowance, he said, with nothing to lead up
+to it, and after having appeared rather fidgety,—
+
+“What do you think of my meaning to take a holiday on Monday, Mr. Pip?”
+
+“Why, I suppose you have not done such a thing these twelve months.”
+
+“These twelve years, more likely,” said Wemmick. “Yes. I’m going to
+take a holiday. More than that; I’m going to take a walk. More than
+that; I’m going to ask you to take a walk with me.”
+
+I was about to excuse myself, as being but a bad companion just then,
+when Wemmick anticipated me.
+
+“I know your engagements,” said he, “and I know you are out of sorts,
+Mr. Pip. But if you _could_ oblige me, I should take it as a kindness.
+It ain’t a long walk, and it’s an early one. Say it might occupy you
+(including breakfast on the walk) from eight to twelve. Couldn’t you
+stretch a point and manage it?”
+
+He had done so much for me at various times, that this was very little
+to do for him. I said I could manage it,—would manage it,—and he was so
+very much pleased by my acquiescence, that I was pleased too. At his
+particular request, I appointed to call for him at the Castle at half
+past eight on Monday morning, and so we parted for the time.
+
+Punctual to my appointment, I rang at the Castle gate on the Monday
+morning, and was received by Wemmick himself, who struck me as looking
+tighter than usual, and having a sleeker hat on. Within, there were two
+glasses of rum and milk prepared, and two biscuits. The Aged must have
+been stirring with the lark, for, glancing into the perspective of his
+bedroom, I observed that his bed was empty.
+
+When we had fortified ourselves with the rum and milk and biscuits, and
+were going out for the walk with that training preparation on us, I was
+considerably surprised to see Wemmick take up a fishing-rod, and put it
+over his shoulder. “Why, we are not going fishing!” said I. “No,”
+returned Wemmick, “but I like to walk with one.”
+
+I thought this odd; however, I said nothing, and we set off. We went
+towards Camberwell Green, and when we were thereabouts, Wemmick said
+suddenly,—
+
+“Halloa! Here’s a church!”
+
+There was nothing very surprising in that; but again, I was rather
+surprised, when he said, as if he were animated by a brilliant idea,—
+
+“Let’s go in!”
+
+We went in, Wemmick leaving his fishing-rod in the porch, and looked
+all round. In the mean time, Wemmick was diving into his coat-pockets,
+and getting something out of paper there.
+
+“Halloa!” said he. “Here’s a couple of pair of gloves! Let’s put ’em
+on!”
+
+As the gloves were white kid gloves, and as the post-office was widened
+to its utmost extent, I now began to have my strong suspicions. They
+were strengthened into certainty when I beheld the Aged enter at a side
+door, escorting a lady.
+
+“Halloa!” said Wemmick. “Here’s Miss Skiffins! Let’s have a wedding.”
+
+That discreet damsel was attired as usual, except that she was now
+engaged in substituting for her green kid gloves a pair of white. The
+Aged was likewise occupied in preparing a similar sacrifice for the
+altar of Hymen. The old gentleman, however, experienced so much
+difficulty in getting his gloves on, that Wemmick found it necessary to
+put him with his back against a pillar, and then to get behind the
+pillar himself and pull away at them, while I for my part held the old
+gentleman round the waist, that he might present an equal and safe
+resistance. By dint of this ingenious scheme, his gloves were got on to
+perfection.
+
+The clerk and clergyman then appearing, we were ranged in order at
+those fatal rails. True to his notion of seeming to do it all without
+preparation, I heard Wemmick say to himself, as he took something out
+of his waistcoat-pocket before the service began, “Halloa! Here’s a
+ring!”
+
+I acted in the capacity of backer, or best-man, to the bridegroom;
+while a little limp pew-opener in a soft bonnet like a baby’s, made a
+feint of being the bosom friend of Miss Skiffins. The responsibility of
+giving the lady away devolved upon the Aged, which led to the
+clergyman’s being unintentionally scandalised, and it happened thus.
+When he said, “Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?” the
+old gentleman, not in the least knowing what point of the ceremony we
+had arrived at, stood most amiably beaming at the ten commandments.
+Upon which, the clergyman said again, “WHO giveth this woman to be
+married to this man?” The old gentleman being still in a state of most
+estimable unconsciousness, the bridegroom cried out in his accustomed
+voice, “Now Aged P. you know; who giveth?” To which the Aged replied
+with great briskness, before saying that _he_ gave, “All right, John,
+all right, my boy!” And the clergyman came to so gloomy a pause upon
+it, that I had doubts for the moment whether we should get completely
+married that day.
+
+It was completely done, however, and when we were going out of church
+Wemmick took the cover off the font, and put his white gloves in it,
+and put the cover on again. Mrs. Wemmick, more heedful of the future,
+put her white gloves in her pocket and assumed her green. “_Now_, Mr.
+Pip,” said Wemmick, triumphantly shouldering the fishing-rod as we came
+out, “let me ask you whether anybody would suppose this to be a
+wedding-party!”
+
+Breakfast had been ordered at a pleasant little tavern, a mile or so
+away upon the rising ground beyond the green; and there was a bagatelle
+board in the room, in case we should desire to unbend our minds after
+the solemnity. It was pleasant to observe that Mrs. Wemmick no longer
+unwound Wemmick’s arm when it adapted itself to her figure, but sat in
+a high-backed chair against the wall, like a violoncello in its case,
+and submitted to be embraced as that melodious instrument might have
+done.
+
+We had an excellent breakfast, and when any one declined anything on
+table, Wemmick said, “Provided by contract, you know; don’t be afraid
+of it!” I drank to the new couple, drank to the Aged, drank to the
+Castle, saluted the bride at parting, and made myself as agreeable as I
+could.
+
+Wemmick came down to the door with me, and I again shook hands with
+him, and wished him joy.
+
+“Thankee!” said Wemmick, rubbing his hands. “She’s such a manager of
+fowls, you have no idea. You shall have some eggs, and judge for
+yourself. I say, Mr. Pip!” calling me back, and speaking low. “This is
+altogether a Walworth sentiment, please.”
+
+“I understand. Not to be mentioned in Little Britain,” said I.
+
+Wemmick nodded. “After what you let out the other day, Mr. Jaggers may
+as well not know of it. He might think my brain was softening, or
+something of the kind.”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LVI.
+
+
+He lay in prison very ill, during the whole interval between his
+committal for trial and the coming round of the Sessions. He had broken
+two ribs, they had wounded one of his lungs, and he breathed with great
+pain and difficulty, which increased daily. It was a consequence of his
+hurt that he spoke so low as to be scarcely audible; therefore he spoke
+very little. But he was ever ready to listen to me; and it became the
+first duty of my life to say to him, and read to him, what I knew he
+ought to hear.
+
+Being far too ill to remain in the common prison, he was removed, after
+the first day or so, into the infirmary. This gave me opportunities of
+being with him that I could not otherwise have had. And but for his
+illness he would have been put in irons, for he was regarded as a
+determined prison-breaker, and I know not what else.
+
+Although I saw him every day, it was for only a short time; hence, the
+regularly recurring spaces of our separation were long enough to record
+on his face any slight changes that occurred in his physical state. I
+do not recollect that I once saw any change in it for the better; he
+wasted, and became slowly weaker and worse, day by day, from the day
+when the prison door closed upon him.
+
+The kind of submission or resignation that he showed was that of a man
+who was tired out. I sometimes derived an impression, from his manner
+or from a whispered word or two which escaped him, that he pondered
+over the question whether he might have been a better man under better
+circumstances. But he never justified himself by a hint tending that
+way, or tried to bend the past out of its eternal shape.
+
+It happened on two or three occasions in my presence, that his
+desperate reputation was alluded to by one or other of the people in
+attendance on him. A smile crossed his face then, and he turned his
+eyes on me with a trustful look, as if he were confident that I had
+seen some small redeeming touch in him, even so long ago as when I was
+a little child. As to all the rest, he was humble and contrite, and I
+never knew him complain.
+
+When the Sessions came round, Mr. Jaggers caused an application to be
+made for the postponement of his trial until the following Sessions. It
+was obviously made with the assurance that he could not live so long,
+and was refused. The trial came on at once, and, when he was put to the
+bar, he was seated in a chair. No objection was made to my getting
+close to the dock, on the outside of it, and holding the hand that he
+stretched forth to me.
+
+The trial was very short and very clear. Such things as could be said
+for him were said,—how he had taken to industrious habits, and had
+thriven lawfully and reputably. But nothing could unsay the fact that
+he had returned, and was there in presence of the Judge and Jury. It
+was impossible to try him for that, and do otherwise than find him
+guilty.
+
+At that time, it was the custom (as I learnt from my terrible
+experience of that Sessions) to devote a concluding day to the passing
+of Sentences, and to make a finishing effect with the Sentence of
+Death. But for the indelible picture that my remembrance now holds
+before me, I could scarcely believe, even as I write these words, that
+I saw two-and-thirty men and women put before the Judge to receive that
+sentence together. Foremost among the two-and-thirty was he; seated,
+that he might get breath enough to keep life in him.
+
+The whole scene starts out again in the vivid colours of the moment,
+down to the drops of April rain on the windows of the court, glittering
+in the rays of April sun. Penned in the dock, as I again stood outside
+it at the corner with his hand in mine, were the two-and-thirty men and
+women; some defiant, some stricken with terror, some sobbing and
+weeping, some covering their faces, some staring gloomily about. There
+had been shrieks from among the women convicts; but they had been
+stilled, and a hush had succeeded. The sheriffs with their great chains
+and nosegays, other civic gewgaws and monsters, criers, ushers, a great
+gallery full of people,—a large theatrical audience,—looked on, as the
+two-and-thirty and the Judge were solemnly confronted. Then the Judge
+addressed them. Among the wretched creatures before him whom he must
+single out for special address was one who almost from his infancy had
+been an offender against the laws; who, after repeated imprisonments
+and punishments, had been at length sentenced to exile for a term of
+years; and who, under circumstances of great violence and daring, had
+made his escape and been re-sentenced to exile for life. That miserable
+man would seem for a time to have become convinced of his errors, when
+far removed from the scenes of his old offences, and to have lived a
+peaceable and honest life. But in a fatal moment, yielding to those
+propensities and passions, the indulgence of which had so long rendered
+him a scourge to society, he had quitted his haven of rest and
+repentance, and had come back to the country where he was proscribed.
+Being here presently denounced, he had for a time succeeded in evading
+the officers of Justice, but being at length seized while in the act of
+flight, he had resisted them, and had—he best knew whether by express
+design, or in the blindness of his hardihood—caused the death of his
+denouncer, to whom his whole career was known. The appointed punishment
+for his return to the land that had cast him out, being Death, and his
+case being this aggravated case, he must prepare himself to Die.
+
+The sun was striking in at the great windows of the court, through the
+glittering drops of rain upon the glass, and it made a broad shaft of
+light between the two-and-thirty and the Judge, linking both together,
+and perhaps reminding some among the audience how both were passing on,
+with absolute equality, to the greater Judgment that knoweth all
+things, and cannot err. Rising for a moment, a distinct speck of face
+in this way of light, the prisoner said, “My Lord, I have received my
+sentence of Death from the Almighty, but I bow to yours,” and sat down
+again. There was some hushing, and the Judge went on with what he had
+to say to the rest. Then they were all formally doomed, and some of
+them were supported out, and some of them sauntered out with a haggard
+look of bravery, and a few nodded to the gallery, and two or three
+shook hands, and others went out chewing the fragments of herb they had
+taken from the sweet herbs lying about. He went last of all, because of
+having to be helped from his chair, and to go very slowly; and he held
+my hand while all the others were removed, and while the audience got
+up (putting their dresses right, as they might at church or elsewhere),
+and pointed down at this criminal or at that, and most of all at him
+and me.
+
+I earnestly hoped and prayed that he might die before the Recorder’s
+Report was made; but, in the dread of his lingering on, I began that
+night to write out a petition to the Home Secretary of State, setting
+forth my knowledge of him, and how it was that he had come back for my
+sake. I wrote it as fervently and pathetically as I could; and when I
+had finished it and sent it in, I wrote out other petitions to such men
+in authority as I hoped were the most merciful, and drew up one to the
+Crown itself. For several days and nights after he was sentenced I took
+no rest except when I fell asleep in my chair, but was wholly absorbed
+in these appeals. And after I had sent them in, I could not keep away
+from the places where they were, but felt as if they were more hopeful
+and less desperate when I was near them. In this unreasonable
+restlessness and pain of mind I would roam the streets of an evening,
+wandering by those offices and houses where I had left the petitions.
+To the present hour, the weary western streets of London on a cold,
+dusty spring night, with their ranges of stern, shut-up mansions, and
+their long rows of lamps, are melancholy to me from this association.
+
+The daily visits I could make him were shortened now, and he was more
+strictly kept. Seeing, or fancying, that I was suspected of an
+intention of carrying poison to him, I asked to be searched before I
+sat down at his bedside, and told the officer who was always there,
+that I was willing to do anything that would assure him of the
+singleness of my designs. Nobody was hard with him or with me. There
+was duty to be done, and it was done, but not harshly. The officer
+always gave me the assurance that he was worse, and some other sick
+prisoners in the room, and some other prisoners who attended on them as
+sick nurses, (malefactors, but not incapable of kindness, God be
+thanked!) always joined in the same report.
+
+As the days went on, I noticed more and more that he would lie placidly
+looking at the white ceiling, with an absence of light in his face
+until some word of mine brightened it for an instant, and then it would
+subside again. Sometimes he was almost or quite unable to speak, then
+he would answer me with slight pressures on my hand, and I grew to
+understand his meaning very well.
+
+The number of the days had risen to ten, when I saw a greater change in
+him than I had seen yet. His eyes were turned towards the door, and
+lighted up as I entered.
+
+“Dear boy,” he said, as I sat down by his bed: “I thought you was late.
+But I knowed you couldn’t be that.”
+
+“It is just the time,” said I. “I waited for it at the gate.”
+
+“You always waits at the gate; don’t you, dear boy?”
+
+“Yes. Not to lose a moment of the time.”
+
+“Thank’ee dear boy, thank’ee. God bless you! You’ve never deserted me,
+dear boy.”
+
+I pressed his hand in silence, for I could not forget that I had once
+meant to desert him.
+
+“And what’s the best of all,” he said, “you’ve been more comfortable
+alonger me, since I was under a dark cloud, than when the sun shone.
+That’s best of all.”
+
+He lay on his back, breathing with great difficulty. Do what he would,
+and love me though he did, the light left his face ever and again, and
+a film came over the placid look at the white ceiling.
+
+“Are you in much pain to-day?”
+
+“I don’t complain of none, dear boy.”
+
+“You never do complain.”
+
+He had spoken his last words. He smiled, and I understood his touch to
+mean that he wished to lift my hand, and lay it on his breast. I laid
+it there, and he smiled again, and put both his hands upon it.
+
+The allotted time ran out, while we were thus; but, looking round, I
+found the governor of the prison standing near me, and he whispered,
+“You needn’t go yet.” I thanked him gratefully, and asked, “Might I
+speak to him, if he can hear me?”
+
+The governor stepped aside, and beckoned the officer away. The change,
+though it was made without noise, drew back the film from the placid
+look at the white ceiling, and he looked most affectionately at me.
+
+“Dear Magwitch, I must tell you now, at last. You understand what I
+say?”
+
+A gentle pressure on my hand.
+
+“You had a child once, whom you loved and lost.”
+
+A stronger pressure on my hand.
+
+“She lived, and found powerful friends. She is living now. She is a
+lady and very beautiful. And I love her!”
+
+With a last faint effort, which would have been powerless but for my
+yielding to it and assisting it, he raised my hand to his lips. Then,
+he gently let it sink upon his breast again, with his own hands lying
+on it. The placid look at the white ceiling came back, and passed away,
+and his head dropped quietly on his breast.
+
+Mindful, then, of what we had read together, I thought of the two men
+who went up into the Temple to pray, and I knew there were no better
+words that I could say beside his bed, than “O Lord, be merciful to him
+a sinner!”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LVII.
+
+
+Now that I was left wholly to myself, I gave notice of my intention to
+quit the chambers in the Temple as soon as my tenancy could legally
+determine, and in the meanwhile to underlet them. At once I put bills
+up in the windows; for, I was in debt, and had scarcely any money, and
+began to be seriously alarmed by the state of my affairs. I ought
+rather to write that I should have been alarmed if I had had energy and
+concentration enough to help me to the clear perception of any truth
+beyond the fact that I was falling very ill. The late stress upon me
+had enabled me to put off illness, but not to put it away; I knew that
+it was coming on me now, and I knew very little else, and was even
+careless as to that.
+
+For a day or two, I lay on the sofa, or on the floor,—anywhere,
+according as I happened to sink down,—with a heavy head and aching
+limbs, and no purpose, and no power. Then there came, one night which
+appeared of great duration, and which teemed with anxiety and horror;
+and when in the morning I tried to sit up in my bed and think of it, I
+found I could not do so.
+
+Whether I really had been down in Garden Court in the dead of the
+night, groping about for the boat that I supposed to be there; whether
+I had two or three times come to myself on the staircase with great
+terror, not knowing how I had got out of bed; whether I had found
+myself lighting the lamp, possessed by the idea that he was coming up
+the stairs, and that the lights were blown out; whether I had been
+inexpressibly harassed by the distracted talking, laughing, and
+groaning of some one, and had half suspected those sounds to be of my
+own making; whether there had been a closed iron furnace in a dark
+corner of the room, and a voice had called out, over and over again,
+that Miss Havisham was consuming within it,—these were things that I
+tried to settle with myself and get into some order, as I lay that
+morning on my bed. But the vapour of a limekiln would come between me
+and them, disordering them all, and it was through the vapour at last
+that I saw two men looking at me.
+
+“What do you want?” I asked, starting; “I don’t know you.”
+
+“Well, sir,” returned one of them, bending down and touching me on the
+shoulder, “this is a matter that you’ll soon arrange, I dare say, but
+you’re arrested.”
+
+“What is the debt?”
+
+“Hundred and twenty-three pound, fifteen, six. Jeweller’s account, I
+think.”
+
+“What is to be done?”
+
+“You had better come to my house,” said the man. “I keep a very nice
+house.”
+
+I made some attempt to get up and dress myself. When I next attended to
+them, they were standing a little off from the bed, looking at me. I
+still lay there.
+
+“You see my state,” said I. “I would come with you if I could; but
+indeed I am quite unable. If you take me from here, I think I shall die
+by the way.”
+
+Perhaps they replied, or argued the point, or tried to encourage me to
+believe that I was better than I thought. Forasmuch as they hang in my
+memory by only this one slender thread, I don’t know what they did,
+except that they forbore to remove me.
+
+That I had a fever and was avoided, that I suffered greatly, that I
+often lost my reason, that the time seemed interminable, that I
+confounded impossible existences with my own identity; that I was a
+brick in the house-wall, and yet entreating to be released from the
+giddy place where the builders had set me; that I was a steel beam of a
+vast engine, clashing and whirling over a gulf, and yet that I implored
+in my own person to have the engine stopped, and my part in it hammered
+off; that I passed through these phases of disease, I know of my own
+remembrance, and did in some sort know at the time. That I sometimes
+struggled with real people, in the belief that they were murderers, and
+that I would all at once comprehend that they meant to do me good, and
+would then sink exhausted in their arms, and suffer them to lay me
+down, I also knew at the time. But, above all, I knew that there was a
+constant tendency in all these people,—who, when I was very ill, would
+present all kinds of extraordinary transformations of the human face,
+and would be much dilated in size,—above all, I say, I knew that there
+was an extraordinary tendency in all these people, sooner or later, to
+settle down into the likeness of Joe.
+
+After I had turned the worst point of my illness, I began to notice
+that while all its other features changed, this one consistent feature
+did not change. Whoever came about me, still settled down into Joe. I
+opened my eyes in the night, and I saw, in the great chair at the
+bedside, Joe. I opened my eyes in the day, and, sitting on the
+window-seat, smoking his pipe in the shaded open window, still I saw
+Joe. I asked for cooling drink, and the dear hand that gave it me was
+Joe’s. I sank back on my pillow after drinking, and the face that
+looked so hopefully and tenderly upon me was the face of Joe.
+
+At last, one day, I took courage, and said, “_Is_ it Joe?”
+
+And the dear old home-voice answered, “Which it air, old chap.”
+
+“O Joe, you break my heart! Look angry at me, Joe. Strike me, Joe. Tell
+me of my ingratitude. Don’t be so good to me!”
+
+For Joe had actually laid his head down on the pillow at my side, and
+put his arm round my neck, in his joy that I knew him.
+
+“Which dear old Pip, old chap,” said Joe, “you and me was ever friends.
+And when you’re well enough to go out for a ride—what larks!”
+
+After which, Joe withdrew to the window, and stood with his back
+towards me, wiping his eyes. And as my extreme weakness prevented me
+from getting up and going to him, I lay there, penitently whispering,
+“O God bless him! O God bless this gentle Christian man!”
+
+Joe’s eyes were red when I next found him beside me; but I was holding
+his hand, and we both felt happy.
+
+“How long, dear Joe?”
+
+“Which you meantersay, Pip, how long have your illness lasted, dear old
+chap?”
+
+“Yes, Joe.”
+
+“It’s the end of May, Pip. To-morrow is the first of June.”
+
+“And have you been here all that time, dear Joe?”
+
+“Pretty nigh, old chap. For, as I says to Biddy when the news of your
+being ill were brought by letter, which it were brought by the post,
+and being formerly single he is now married though underpaid for a deal
+of walking and shoe-leather, but wealth were not a object on his part,
+and marriage were the great wish of his hart—”
+
+“It is so delightful to hear you, Joe! But I interrupt you in what you
+said to Biddy.”
+
+“Which it were,” said Joe, “that how you might be amongst strangers,
+and that how you and me having been ever friends, a wisit at such a
+moment might not prove unacceptabobble. And Biddy, her word were, ‘Go
+to him, without loss of time.’ That,” said Joe, summing up with his
+judicial air, “were the word of Biddy. ‘Go to him,’ Biddy say, ‘without
+loss of time.’ In short, I shouldn’t greatly deceive you,” Joe added,
+after a little grave reflection, “if I represented to you that the word
+of that young woman were, ‘without a minute’s loss of time.’”
+
+There Joe cut himself short, and informed me that I was to be talked to
+in great moderation, and that I was to take a little nourishment at
+stated frequent times, whether I felt inclined for it or not, and that
+I was to submit myself to all his orders. So I kissed his hand, and lay
+quiet, while he proceeded to indite a note to Biddy, with my love in
+it.
+
+Evidently Biddy had taught Joe to write. As I lay in bed looking at
+him, it made me, in my weak state, cry again with pleasure to see the
+pride with which he set about his letter. My bedstead, divested of its
+curtains, had been removed, with me upon it, into the sitting-room, as
+the airiest and largest, and the carpet had been taken away, and the
+room kept always fresh and wholesome night and day. At my own
+writing-table, pushed into a corner and cumbered with little bottles,
+Joe now sat down to his great work, first choosing a pen from the
+pen-tray as if it were a chest of large tools, and tucking up his
+sleeves as if he were going to wield a crow-bar or sledgehammer. It was
+necessary for Joe to hold on heavily to the table with his left elbow,
+and to get his right leg well out behind him, before he could begin;
+and when he did begin he made every downstroke so slowly that it might
+have been six feet long, while at every upstroke I could hear his pen
+spluttering extensively. He had a curious idea that the inkstand was on
+the side of him where it was not, and constantly dipped his pen into
+space, and seemed quite satisfied with the result. Occasionally, he was
+tripped up by some orthographical stumbling-block; but on the whole he
+got on very well indeed; and when he had signed his name, and had
+removed a finishing blot from the paper to the crown of his head with
+his two forefingers, he got up and hovered about the table, trying the
+effect of his performance from various points of view, as it lay there,
+with unbounded satisfaction.
+
+Not to make Joe uneasy by talking too much, even if I had been able to
+talk much, I deferred asking him about Miss Havisham until next day. He
+shook his head when I then asked him if she had recovered.
+
+“Is she dead, Joe?”
+
+“Why you see, old chap,” said Joe, in a tone of remonstrance, and by
+way of getting at it by degrees, “I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,
+for that’s a deal to say; but she ain’t—”
+
+“Living, Joe?”
+
+“That’s nigher where it is,” said Joe; “she ain’t living.”
+
+“Did she linger long, Joe?”
+
+“Arter you was took ill, pretty much about what you might call (if you
+was put to it) a week,” said Joe; still determined, on my account, to
+come at everything by degrees.
+
+“Dear Joe, have you heard what becomes of her property?”
+
+“Well, old chap,” said Joe, “it do appear that she had settled the most
+of it, which I meantersay tied it up, on Miss Estella. But she had
+wrote out a little coddleshell in her own hand a day or two afore the
+accident, leaving a cool four thousand to Mr. Matthew Pocket. And why,
+do you suppose, above all things, Pip, she left that cool four thousand
+unto him? ‘Because of Pip’s account of him, the said Matthew.’ I am
+told by Biddy, that air the writing,” said Joe, repeating the legal
+turn as if it did him infinite good, “‘account of him the said
+Matthew.’ And a cool four thousand, Pip!”
+
+I never discovered from whom Joe derived the conventional temperature
+of the four thousand pounds; but it appeared to make the sum of money
+more to him, and he had a manifest relish in insisting on its being
+cool.
+
+This account gave me great joy, as it perfected the only good thing I
+had done. I asked Joe whether he had heard if any of the other
+relations had any legacies?
+
+“Miss Sarah,” said Joe, “she have twenty-five pound perannium fur to
+buy pills, on account of being bilious. Miss Georgiana, she have twenty
+pound down. Mrs.—what’s the name of them wild beasts with humps, old
+chap?”
+
+“Camels?” said I, wondering why he could possibly want to know.
+
+Joe nodded. “Mrs. Camels,” by which I presently understood he meant
+Camilla, “she have five pound fur to buy rushlights to put her in
+spirits when she wake up in the night.”
+
+The accuracy of these recitals was sufficiently obvious to me, to give
+me great confidence in Joe’s information. “And now,” said Joe, “you
+ain’t that strong yet, old chap, that you can take in more nor one
+additional shovelful to-day. Old Orlick he’s been a bustin’ open a
+dwelling-ouse.”
+
+“Whose?” said I.
+
+“Not, I grant you, but what his manners is given to blusterous,” said
+Joe, apologetically; “still, a Englishman’s ouse is his Castle, and
+castles must not be busted ’cept when done in war time. And wotsume’er
+the failings on his part, he were a corn and seedsman in his hart.”
+
+“Is it Pumblechook’s house that has been broken into, then?”
+
+“That’s it, Pip,” said Joe; “and they took his till, and they took his
+cash-box, and they drinked his wine, and they partook of his wittles,
+and they slapped his face, and they pulled his nose, and they tied him
+up to his bedpust, and they giv’ him a dozen, and they stuffed his
+mouth full of flowering annuals to prewent his crying out. But he
+knowed Orlick, and Orlick’s in the county jail.”
+
+By these approaches we arrived at unrestricted conversation. I was slow
+to gain strength, but I did slowly and surely become less weak, and Joe
+stayed with me, and I fancied I was little Pip again.
+
+For the tenderness of Joe was so beautifully proportioned to my need,
+that I was like a child in his hands. He would sit and talk to me in
+the old confidence, and with the old simplicity, and in the old
+unassertive protecting way, so that I would half believe that all my
+life since the days of the old kitchen was one of the mental troubles
+of the fever that was gone. He did everything for me except the
+household work, for which he had engaged a very decent woman, after
+paying off the laundress on his first arrival. “Which I do assure you,
+Pip,” he would often say, in explanation of that liberty; “I found her
+a tapping the spare bed, like a cask of beer, and drawing off the
+feathers in a bucket, for sale. Which she would have tapped yourn next,
+and draw’d it off with you a laying on it, and was then a carrying away
+the coals gradiwally in the soup-tureen and wegetable-dishes, and the
+wine and spirits in your Wellington boots.”
+
+We looked forward to the day when I should go out for a ride, as we had
+once looked forward to the day of my apprenticeship. And when the day
+came, and an open carriage was got into the Lane, Joe wrapped me up,
+took me in his arms, carried me down to it, and put me in, as if I were
+still the small helpless creature to whom he had so abundantly given of
+the wealth of his great nature.
+
+And Joe got in beside me, and we drove away together into the country,
+where the rich summer growth was already on the trees and on the grass,
+and sweet summer scents filled all the air. The day happened to be
+Sunday, and when I looked on the loveliness around me, and thought how
+it had grown and changed, and how the little wild-flowers had been
+forming, and the voices of the birds had been strengthening, by day and
+by night, under the sun and under the stars, while poor I lay burning
+and tossing on my bed, the mere remembrance of having burned and tossed
+there came like a check upon my peace. But when I heard the Sunday
+bells, and looked around a little more upon the outspread beauty, I
+felt that I was not nearly thankful enough,—that I was too weak yet to
+be even that,—and I laid my head on Joe’s shoulder, as I had laid it
+long ago when he had taken me to the Fair or where not, and it was too
+much for my young senses.
+
+More composure came to me after a while, and we talked as we used to
+talk, lying on the grass at the old Battery. There was no change
+whatever in Joe. Exactly what he had been in my eyes then, he was in my
+eyes still; just as simply faithful, and as simply right.
+
+When we got back again, and he lifted me out, and carried me—so
+easily!—across the court and up the stairs, I thought of that eventful
+Christmas Day when he had carried me over the marshes. We had not yet
+made any allusion to my change of fortune, nor did I know how much of
+my late history he was acquainted with. I was so doubtful of myself
+now, and put so much trust in him, that I could not satisfy myself
+whether I ought to refer to it when he did not.
+
+“Have you heard, Joe,” I asked him that evening, upon further
+consideration, as he smoked his pipe at the window, “who my patron
+was?”
+
+“I heerd,” returned Joe, “as it were not Miss Havisham, old chap.”
+
+“Did you hear who it was, Joe?”
+
+“Well! I heerd as it were a person what sent the person what giv’ you
+the bank-notes at the Jolly Bargemen, Pip.”
+
+“So it was.”
+
+“Astonishing!” said Joe, in the placidest way.
+
+“Did you hear that he was dead, Joe?” I presently asked, with
+increasing diffidence.
+
+“Which? Him as sent the bank-notes, Pip?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I think,” said Joe, after meditating a long time, and looking rather
+evasively at the window-seat, “as I _did_ hear tell that how he were
+something or another in a general way in that direction.”
+
+“Did you hear anything of his circumstances, Joe?”
+
+“Not partickler, Pip.”
+
+“If you would like to hear, Joe—” I was beginning, when Joe got up and
+came to my sofa.
+
+“Lookee here, old chap,” said Joe, bending over me. “Ever the best of
+friends; ain’t us, Pip?”
+
+I was ashamed to answer him.
+
+“Wery good, then,” said Joe, as if I _had_ answered; “that’s all right;
+that’s agreed upon. Then why go into subjects, old chap, which as
+betwixt two sech must be for ever onnecessary? There’s subjects enough
+as betwixt two sech, without onnecessary ones. Lord! To think of your
+poor sister and her Rampages! And don’t you remember Tickler?”
+
+“I do indeed, Joe.”
+
+“Lookee here, old chap,” said Joe. “I done what I could to keep you and
+Tickler in sunders, but my power were not always fully equal to my
+inclinations. For when your poor sister had a mind to drop into you, it
+were not so much,” said Joe, in his favourite argumentative way, “that
+she dropped into me too, if I put myself in opposition to her, but that
+she dropped into you always heavier for it. I noticed that. It ain’t a
+grab at a man’s whisker, not yet a shake or two of a man (to which your
+sister was quite welcome), that ’ud put a man off from getting a little
+child out of punishment. But when that little child is dropped into
+heavier for that grab of whisker or shaking, then that man naterally up
+and says to himself, ‘Where is the good as you are a-doing? I grant you
+I see the ’arm,’ says the man, ‘but I don’t see the good. I call upon
+you, sir, therefore, to pint out the good.’”
+
+“The man says?” I observed, as Joe waited for me to speak.
+
+“The man says,” Joe assented. “Is he right, that man?”
+
+“Dear Joe, he is always right.”
+
+“Well, old chap,” said Joe, “then abide by your words. If he’s always
+right (which in general he’s more likely wrong), he’s right when he
+says this: Supposing ever you kep any little matter to yourself, when
+you was a little child, you kep it mostly because you know’d as J.
+Gargery’s power to part you and Tickler in sunders were not fully equal
+to his inclinations. Theerfore, think no more of it as betwixt two
+sech, and do not let us pass remarks upon onnecessary subjects. Biddy
+giv’ herself a deal o’ trouble with me afore I left (for I am almost
+awful dull), as I should view it in this light, and, viewing it in this
+light, as I should so put it. Both of which,” said Joe, quite charmed
+with his logical arrangement, “being done, now this to you a true
+friend, say. Namely. You mustn’t go a overdoing on it, but you must
+have your supper and your wine and water, and you must be put betwixt
+the sheets.”
+
+The delicacy with which Joe dismissed this theme, and the sweet tact
+and kindness with which Biddy—who with her woman’s wit had found me out
+so soon—had prepared him for it, made a deep impression on my mind. But
+whether Joe knew how poor I was, and how my great expectations had all
+dissolved, like our own marsh mists before the sun, I could not
+understand.
+
+Another thing in Joe that I could not understand when it first began to
+develop itself, but which I soon arrived at a sorrowful comprehension
+of, was this: As I became stronger and better, Joe became a little less
+easy with me. In my weakness and entire dependence on him, the dear
+fellow had fallen into the old tone, and called me by the old names,
+the dear “old Pip, old chap,” that now were music in my ears. I too had
+fallen into the old ways, only happy and thankful that he let me. But,
+imperceptibly, though I held by them fast, Joe’s hold upon them began
+to slacken; and whereas I wondered at this, at first, I soon began to
+understand that the cause of it was in me, and that the fault of it was
+all mine.
+
+Ah! Had I given Joe no reason to doubt my constancy, and to think that
+in prosperity I should grow cold to him and cast him off? Had I given
+Joe’s innocent heart no cause to feel instinctively that as I got
+stronger, his hold upon me would be weaker, and that he had better
+loosen it in time and let me go, before I plucked myself away?
+
+It was on the third or fourth occasion of my going out walking in the
+Temple Gardens leaning on Joe’s arm, that I saw this change in him very
+plainly. We had been sitting in the bright warm sunlight, looking at
+the river, and I chanced to say as we got up,—
+
+“See, Joe! I can walk quite strongly. Now, you shall see me walk back
+by myself.”
+
+“Which do not overdo it, Pip,” said Joe; “but I shall be happy fur to
+see you able, sir.”
+
+The last word grated on me; but how could I remonstrate! I walked no
+further than the gate of the gardens, and then pretended to be weaker
+than I was, and asked Joe for his arm. Joe gave it me, but was
+thoughtful.
+
+I, for my part, was thoughtful too; for, how best to check this growing
+change in Joe was a great perplexity to my remorseful thoughts. That I
+was ashamed to tell him exactly how I was placed, and what I had come
+down to, I do not seek to conceal; but I hope my reluctance was not
+quite an unworthy one. He would want to help me out of his little
+savings, I knew, and I knew that he ought not to help me, and that I
+must not suffer him to do it.
+
+It was a thoughtful evening with both of us. But, before we went to
+bed, I had resolved that I would wait over to-morrow,—to-morrow being
+Sunday,—and would begin my new course with the new week. On Monday
+morning I would speak to Joe about this change, I would lay aside this
+last vestige of reserve, I would tell him what I had in my thoughts
+(that Secondly, not yet arrived at), and why I had not decided to go
+out to Herbert, and then the change would be conquered for ever. As I
+cleared, Joe cleared, and it seemed as though he had sympathetically
+arrived at a resolution too.
+
+We had a quiet day on the Sunday, and we rode out into the country, and
+then walked in the fields.
+
+“I feel thankful that I have been ill, Joe,” I said.
+
+“Dear old Pip, old chap, you’re a’most come round, sir.”
+
+“It has been a memorable time for me, Joe.”
+
+“Likeways for myself, sir,” Joe returned.
+
+“We have had a time together, Joe, that I can never forget. There were
+days once, I know, that I did for a while forget; but I never shall
+forget these.”
+
+“Pip,” said Joe, appearing a little hurried and troubled, “there has
+been larks. And, dear sir, what have been betwixt us—have been.”
+
+At night, when I had gone to bed, Joe came into my room, as he had done
+all through my recovery. He asked me if I felt sure that I was as well
+as in the morning?
+
+“Yes, dear Joe, quite.”
+
+“And are always a getting stronger, old chap?”
+
+“Yes, dear Joe, steadily.”
+
+Joe patted the coverlet on my shoulder with his great good hand, and
+said, in what I thought a husky voice, “Good night!”
+
+When I got up in the morning, refreshed and stronger yet, I was full of
+my resolution to tell Joe all, without delay. I would tell him before
+breakfast. I would dress at once and go to his room and surprise him;
+for, it was the first day I had been up early. I went to his room, and
+he was not there. Not only was he not there, but his box was gone.
+
+I hurried then to the breakfast-table, and on it found a letter. These
+were its brief contents:—
+
+“Not wishful to intrude I have departured fur you are well again dear
+Pip and will do better without
+
+
+JO.
+
+
+“P.S. Ever the best of friends.”
+
+
+Enclosed in the letter was a receipt for the debt and costs on which I
+had been arrested. Down to that moment, I had vainly supposed that my
+creditor had withdrawn, or suspended proceedings until I should be
+quite recovered. I had never dreamed of Joe’s having paid the money;
+but Joe had paid it, and the receipt was in his name.
+
+What remained for me now, but to follow him to the dear old forge, and
+there to have out my disclosure to him, and my penitent remonstrance
+with him, and there to relieve my mind and heart of that reserved
+Secondly, which had begun as a vague something lingering in my
+thoughts, and had formed into a settled purpose?
+
+The purpose was, that I would go to Biddy, that I would show her how
+humbled and repentant I came back, that I would tell her how I had lost
+all I once hoped for, that I would remind her of our old confidences in
+my first unhappy time. Then I would say to her, “Biddy, I think you
+once liked me very well, when my errant heart, even while it strayed
+away from you, was quieter and better with you than it ever has been
+since. If you can like me only half as well once more, if you can take
+me with all my faults and disappointments on my head, if you can
+receive me like a forgiven child (and indeed I am as sorry, Biddy, and
+have as much need of a hushing voice and a soothing hand), I hope I am
+a little worthier of you that I was,—not much, but a little. And,
+Biddy, it shall rest with you to say whether I shall work at the forge
+with Joe, or whether I shall try for any different occupation down in
+this country, or whether we shall go away to a distant place where an
+opportunity awaits me which I set aside, when it was offered, until I
+knew your answer. And now, dear Biddy, if you can tell me that you will
+go through the world with me, you will surely make it a better world
+for me, and me a better man for it, and I will try hard to make it a
+better world for you.”
+
+Such was my purpose. After three days more of recovery, I went down to
+the old place to put it in execution. And how I sped in it is all I
+have left to tell.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LVIII.
+
+
+The tidings of my high fortunes having had a heavy fall had got down to
+my native place and its neighbourhood before I got there. I found the
+Blue Boar in possession of the intelligence, and I found that it made a
+great change in the Boar’s demeanour. Whereas the Boar had cultivated
+my good opinion with warm assiduity when I was coming into property,
+the Boar was exceedingly cool on the subject now that I was going out
+of property.
+
+It was evening when I arrived, much fatigued by the journey I had so
+often made so easily. The Boar could not put me into my usual bedroom,
+which was engaged (probably by some one who had expectations), and
+could only assign me a very indifferent chamber among the pigeons and
+post-chaises up the yard. But I had as sound a sleep in that lodging as
+in the most superior accommodation the Boar could have given me, and
+the quality of my dreams was about the same as in the best bedroom.
+
+Early in the morning, while my breakfast was getting ready, I strolled
+round by Satis House. There were printed bills on the gate and on bits
+of carpet hanging out of the windows, announcing a sale by auction of
+the Household Furniture and Effects, next week. The House itself was to
+be sold as old building materials, and pulled down. LOT 1 was marked in
+whitewashed knock-knee letters on the brew house; LOT 2 on that part of
+the main building which had been so long shut up. Other lots were
+marked off on other parts of the structure, and the ivy had been torn
+down to make room for the inscriptions, and much of it trailed low in
+the dust and was withered already. Stepping in for a moment at the open
+gate, and looking around me with the uncomfortable air of a stranger
+who had no business there, I saw the auctioneer’s clerk walking on the
+casks and telling them off for the information of a catalogue-compiler,
+pen in hand, who made a temporary desk of the wheeled chair I had so
+often pushed along to the tune of Old Clem.
+
+When I got back to my breakfast in the Boar’s coffee-room, I found Mr.
+Pumblechook conversing with the landlord. Mr. Pumblechook (not improved
+in appearance by his late nocturnal adventure) was waiting for me, and
+addressed me in the following terms:—
+
+“Young man, I am sorry to see you brought low. But what else could be
+expected! what else could be expected!”
+
+As he extended his hand with a magnificently forgiving air, and as I
+was broken by illness and unfit to quarrel, I took it.
+
+“William,” said Mr. Pumblechook to the waiter, “put a muffin on table.
+And has it come to this! Has it come to this!”
+
+I frowningly sat down to my breakfast. Mr. Pumblechook stood over me
+and poured out my tea—before I could touch the teapot—with the air of a
+benefactor who was resolved to be true to the last.
+
+“William,” said Mr. Pumblechook, mournfully, “put the salt on. In
+happier times,” addressing me, “I think you took sugar? And did you
+take milk? You did. Sugar and milk. William, bring a watercress.”
+
+“Thank you,” said I, shortly, “but I don’t eat watercresses.”
+
+“You don’t eat ’em,” returned Mr. Pumblechook, sighing and nodding his
+head several times, as if he might have expected that, and as if
+abstinence from watercresses were consistent with my downfall. “True.
+The simple fruits of the earth. No. You needn’t bring any, William.”
+
+I went on with my breakfast, and Mr. Pumblechook continued to stand
+over me, staring fishily and breathing noisily, as he always did.
+
+“Little more than skin and bone!” mused Mr. Pumblechook, aloud. “And
+yet when he went from here (I may say with my blessing), and I spread
+afore him my humble store, like the Bee, he was as plump as a Peach!”
+
+This reminded me of the wonderful difference between the servile manner
+in which he had offered his hand in my new prosperity, saying, “May I?”
+and the ostentatious clemency with which he had just now exhibited the
+same fat five fingers.
+
+“Hah!” he went on, handing me the bread and butter. “And air you
+a-going to Joseph?”
+
+“In heaven’s name,” said I, firing in spite of myself, “what does it
+matter to you where I am going? Leave that teapot alone.”
+
+It was the worst course I could have taken, because it gave Pumblechook
+the opportunity he wanted.
+
+“Yes, young man,” said he, releasing the handle of the article in
+question, retiring a step or two from my table, and speaking for the
+behoof of the landlord and waiter at the door, “I _will_ leave that
+teapot alone. You are right, young man. For once you are right. I
+forgit myself when I take such an interest in your breakfast, as to
+wish your frame, exhausted by the debilitating effects of
+prodigygality, to be stimilated by the ’olesome nourishment of your
+forefathers. And yet,” said Pumblechook, turning to the landlord and
+waiter, and pointing me out at arm’s length, “this is him as I ever
+sported with in his days of happy infancy! Tell me not it cannot be; I
+tell you this is him!”
+
+A low murmur from the two replied. The waiter appeared to be
+particularly affected.
+
+“This is him,” said Pumblechook, “as I have rode in my shay-cart. This
+is him as I have seen brought up by hand. This is him untoe the sister
+of which I was uncle by marriage, as her name was Georgiana M’ria from
+her own mother, let him deny it if he can!”
+
+The waiter seemed convinced that I could not deny it, and that it gave
+the case a black look.
+
+“Young man,” said Pumblechook, screwing his head at me in the old
+fashion, “you air a-going to Joseph. What does it matter to me, you ask
+me, where you air a-going? I say to you, Sir, you air a-going to
+Joseph.”
+
+The waiter coughed, as if he modestly invited me to get over that.
+
+“Now,” said Pumblechook, and all this with a most exasperating air of
+saying in the cause of virtue what was perfectly convincing and
+conclusive, “I will tell you what to say to Joseph. Here is Squires of
+the Boar present, known and respected in this town, and here is
+William, which his father’s name was Potkins if I do not deceive
+myself.”
+
+“You do not, sir,” said William.
+
+“In their presence,” pursued Pumblechook, “I will tell you, young man,
+what to say to Joseph. Says you, “Joseph, I have this day seen my
+earliest benefactor and the founder of my fortun’s. I will name no
+names, Joseph, but so they are pleased to call him up town, and I have
+seen that man.”
+
+“I swear I don’t see him here,” said I.
+
+“Say that likewise,” retorted Pumblechook. “Say you said that, and even
+Joseph will probably betray surprise.”
+
+“There you quite mistake him,” said I. “I know better.”
+
+“Says you,” Pumblechook went on, “‘Joseph, I have seen that man, and
+that man bears you no malice and bears me no malice. He knows your
+character, Joseph, and is well acquainted with your pig-headedness and
+ignorance; and he knows my character, Joseph, and he knows my want of
+gratitoode. Yes, Joseph,’ says you,” here Pumblechook shook his head
+and hand at me, “‘he knows my total deficiency of common human
+gratitoode. _He_ knows it, Joseph, as none can. _You_ do not know it,
+Joseph, having no call to know it, but that man do.’”
+
+Windy donkey as he was, it really amazed me that he could have the face
+to talk thus to mine.
+
+“Says you, ‘Joseph, he gave me a little message, which I will now
+repeat. It was that, in my being brought low, he saw the finger of
+Providence. He knowed that finger when he saw Joseph, and he saw it
+plain. It pinted out this writing, Joseph. _Reward of ingratitoode to
+his earliest benefactor, and founder of fortun’s_. But that man said he
+did not repent of what he had done, Joseph. Not at all. It was right to
+do it, it was kind to do it, it was benevolent to do it, and he would
+do it again.’”
+
+“It’s pity,” said I, scornfully, as I finished my interrupted
+breakfast, “that the man did not say what he had done and would do
+again.”
+
+“Squires of the Boar!” Pumblechook was now addressing the landlord,
+“and William! I have no objections to your mentioning, either up town
+or down town, if such should be your wishes, that it was right to do
+it, kind to do it, benevolent to do it, and that I would do it again.”
+
+With those words the Impostor shook them both by the hand, with an air,
+and left the house; leaving me much more astonished than delighted by
+the virtues of that same indefinite “it.” I was not long after him in
+leaving the house too, and when I went down the High Street I saw him
+holding forth (no doubt to the same effect) at his shop door to a
+select group, who honoured me with very unfavourable glances as I
+passed on the opposite side of the way.
+
+But, it was only the pleasanter to turn to Biddy and to Joe, whose
+great forbearance shone more brightly than before, if that could be,
+contrasted with this brazen pretender. I went towards them slowly, for
+my limbs were weak, but with a sense of increasing relief as I drew
+nearer to them, and a sense of leaving arrogance and untruthfulness
+further and further behind.
+
+The June weather was delicious. The sky was blue, the larks were
+soaring high over the green corn, I thought all that countryside more
+beautiful and peaceful by far than I had ever known it to be yet. Many
+pleasant pictures of the life that I would lead there, and of the
+change for the better that would come over my character when I had a
+guiding spirit at my side whose simple faith and clear home wisdom I
+had proved, beguiled my way. They awakened a tender emotion in me; for
+my heart was softened by my return, and such a change had come to pass,
+that I felt like one who was toiling home barefoot from distant travel,
+and whose wanderings had lasted many years.
+
+The schoolhouse where Biddy was mistress I had never seen; but, the
+little roundabout lane by which I entered the village, for quietness’
+sake, took me past it. I was disappointed to find that the day was a
+holiday; no children were there, and Biddy’s house was closed. Some
+hopeful notion of seeing her, busily engaged in her daily duties,
+before she saw me, had been in my mind and was defeated.
+
+But the forge was a very short distance off, and I went towards it
+under the sweet green limes, listening for the clink of Joe’s hammer.
+Long after I ought to have heard it, and long after I had fancied I
+heard it and found it but a fancy, all was still. The limes were there,
+and the white thorns were there, and the chestnut-trees were there, and
+their leaves rustled harmoniously when I stopped to listen; but, the
+clink of Joe’s hammer was not in the midsummer wind.
+
+Almost fearing, without knowing why, to come in view of the forge, I
+saw it at last, and saw that it was closed. No gleam of fire, no
+glittering shower of sparks, no roar of bellows; all shut up, and
+still.
+
+But the house was not deserted, and the best parlour seemed to be in
+use, for there were white curtains fluttering in its window, and the
+window was open and gay with flowers. I went softly towards it, meaning
+to peep over the flowers, when Joe and Biddy stood before me, arm in
+arm.
+
+At first Biddy gave a cry, as if she thought it was my apparition, but
+in another moment she was in my embrace. I wept to see her, and she
+wept to see me; I, because she looked so fresh and pleasant; she,
+because I looked so worn and white.
+
+“But dear Biddy, how smart you are!”
+
+“Yes, dear Pip.”
+
+“And Joe, how smart _you_ are!”
+
+“Yes, dear old Pip, old chap.”
+
+I looked at both of them, from one to the other, and then—
+
+“It’s my wedding-day!” cried Biddy, in a burst of happiness, “and I am
+married to Joe!”
+
+They had taken me into the kitchen, and I had laid my head down on the
+old deal table. Biddy held one of my hands to her lips, and Joe’s
+restoring touch was on my shoulder. “Which he warn’t strong enough, my
+dear, fur to be surprised,” said Joe. And Biddy said, “I ought to have
+thought of it, dear Joe, but I was too happy.” They were both so
+overjoyed to see me, so proud to see me, so touched by my coming to
+them, so delighted that I should have come by accident to make their
+day complete!
+
+My first thought was one of great thankfulness that I had never
+breathed this last baffled hope to Joe. How often, while he was with me
+in my illness, had it risen to my lips! How irrevocable would have been
+his knowledge of it, if he had remained with me but another hour!
+
+“Dear Biddy,” said I, “you have the best husband in the whole world,
+and if you could have seen him by my bed you would have—But no, you
+couldn’t love him better than you do.”
+
+“No, I couldn’t indeed,” said Biddy.
+
+“And, dear Joe, you have the best wife in the whole world, and she will
+make you as happy as even you deserve to be, you dear, good, noble
+Joe!”
+
+Joe looked at me with a quivering lip, and fairly put his sleeve before
+his eyes.
+
+“And Joe and Biddy both, as you have been to church to-day, and are in
+charity and love with all mankind, receive my humble thanks for all you
+have done for me, and all I have so ill repaid! And when I say that I
+am going away within the hour, for I am soon going abroad, and that I
+shall never rest until I have worked for the money with which you have
+kept me out of prison, and have sent it to you, don’t think, dear Joe
+and Biddy, that if I could repay it a thousand times over, I suppose I
+could cancel a farthing of the debt I owe you, or that I would do so if
+I could!”
+
+They were both melted by these words, and both entreated me to say no
+more.
+
+“But I must say more. Dear Joe, I hope you will have children to love,
+and that some little fellow will sit in this chimney-corner of a winter
+night, who may remind you of another little fellow gone out of it for
+ever. Don’t tell him, Joe, that I was thankless; don’t tell him, Biddy,
+that I was ungenerous and unjust; only tell him that I honoured you
+both, because you were both so good and true, and that, as your child,
+I said it would be natural to him to grow up a much better man than I
+did.”
+
+“I ain’t a-going,” said Joe, from behind his sleeve, “to tell him
+nothink o’ that natur, Pip. Nor Biddy ain’t. Nor yet no one ain’t.”
+
+“And now, though I know you have already done it in your own kind
+hearts, pray tell me, both, that you forgive me! Pray let me hear you
+say the words, that I may carry the sound of them away with me, and
+then I shall be able to believe that you can trust me, and think better
+of me, in the time to come!”
+
+“O dear old Pip, old chap,” said Joe. “God knows as I forgive you, if I
+have anythink to forgive!”
+
+“Amen! And God knows I do!” echoed Biddy.
+
+“Now let me go up and look at my old little room, and rest there a few
+minutes by myself. And then, when I have eaten and drunk with you, go
+with me as far as the finger-post, dear Joe and Biddy, before we say
+good-bye!”
+
+
+
+
+I sold all I had, and put aside as much as I could, for a composition
+with my creditors,—who gave me ample time to pay them in full,—and I
+went out and joined Herbert. Within a month, I had quitted England, and
+within two months I was clerk to Clarriker and Co., and within four
+months I assumed my first undivided responsibility. For the beam across
+the parlour ceiling at Mill Pond Bank had then ceased to tremble under
+old Bill Barley’s growls and was at peace, and Herbert had gone away to
+marry Clara, and I was left in sole charge of the Eastern Branch until
+he brought her back.
+
+Many a year went round before I was a partner in the House; but I lived
+happily with Herbert and his wife, and lived frugally, and paid my
+debts, and maintained a constant correspondence with Biddy and Joe. It
+was not until I became third in the Firm, that Clarriker betrayed me to
+Herbert; but he then declared that the secret of Herbert’s partnership
+had been long enough upon his conscience, and he must tell it. So he
+told it, and Herbert was as much moved as amazed, and the dear fellow
+and I were not the worse friends for the long concealment. I must not
+leave it to be supposed that we were ever a great House, or that we
+made mints of money. We were not in a grand way of business, but we had
+a good name, and worked for our profits, and did very well. We owed so
+much to Herbert’s ever cheerful industry and readiness, that I often
+wondered how I had conceived that old idea of his inaptitude, until I
+was one day enlightened by the reflection, that perhaps the inaptitude
+had never been in him at all, but had been in me.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LIX.
+
+
+For eleven years, I had not seen Joe nor Biddy with my bodily
+eyes,—though they had both been often before my fancy in the
+East,—when, upon an evening in December, an hour or two after dark, I
+laid my hand softly on the latch of the old kitchen door. I touched it
+so softly that I was not heard, and looked in unseen. There, smoking
+his pipe in the old place by the kitchen firelight, as hale and as
+strong as ever, though a little grey, sat Joe; and there, fenced into
+the corner with Joe’s leg, and sitting on my own little stool looking
+at the fire, was—I again!
+
+“We giv’ him the name of Pip for your sake, dear old chap,” said Joe,
+delighted, when I took another stool by the child’s side (but I did
+_not_ rumple his hair), “and we hoped he might grow a little bit like
+you, and we think he do.”
+
+I thought so too, and I took him out for a walk next morning, and we
+talked immensely, understanding one another to perfection. And I took
+him down to the churchyard, and set him on a certain tombstone there,
+and he showed me from that elevation which stone was sacred to the
+memory of Philip Pirrip, late of this Parish, and Also Georgiana, Wife
+of the Above.
+
+“Biddy,” said I, when I talked with her after dinner, as her little
+girl lay sleeping in her lap, “you must give Pip to me one of these
+days; or lend him, at all events.”
+
+“No, no,” said Biddy, gently. “You must marry.”
+
+“So Herbert and Clara say, but I don’t think I shall, Biddy. I have so
+settled down in their home, that it’s not at all likely. I am already
+quite an old bachelor.”
+
+Biddy looked down at her child, and put its little hand to her lips,
+and then put the good matronly hand with which she had touched it into
+mine. There was something in the action, and in the light pressure of
+Biddy’s wedding-ring, that had a very pretty eloquence in it.
+
+“Dear Pip,” said Biddy, “you are sure you don’t fret for her?”
+
+“O no,—I think not, Biddy.”
+
+“Tell me as an old, old friend. Have you quite forgotten her?
+
+“My dear Biddy, I have forgotten nothing in my life that ever had a
+foremost place there, and little that ever had any place there. But
+that poor dream, as I once used to call it, has all gone by, Biddy,—all
+gone by!”
+
+Nevertheless, I knew, while I said those words, that I secretly
+intended to revisit the site of the old house that evening, alone, for
+her sake. Yes, even so. For Estella’s sake.
+
+I had heard of her as leading a most unhappy life, and as being
+separated from her husband, who had used her with great cruelty, and
+who had become quite renowned as a compound of pride, avarice,
+brutality, and meanness. And I had heard of the death of her husband,
+from an accident consequent on his ill-treatment of a horse. This
+release had befallen her some two years before; for anything I knew,
+she was married again.
+
+The early dinner hour at Joe’s, left me abundance of time, without
+hurrying my talk with Biddy, to walk over to the old spot before dark.
+But, what with loitering on the way to look at old objects and to think
+of old times, the day had quite declined when I came to the place.
+
+There was no house now, no brewery, no building whatever left, but the
+wall of the old garden. The cleared space had been enclosed with a
+rough fence, and looking over it, I saw that some of the old ivy had
+struck root anew, and was growing green on low quiet mounds of ruin. A
+gate in the fence standing ajar, I pushed it open, and went in.
+
+A cold silvery mist had veiled the afternoon, and the moon was not yet
+up to scatter it. But, the stars were shining beyond the mist, and the
+moon was coming, and the evening was not dark. I could trace out where
+every part of the old house had been, and where the brewery had been,
+and where the gates, and where the casks. I had done so, and was
+looking along the desolate garden walk, when I beheld a solitary figure
+in it.
+
+The figure showed itself aware of me, as I advanced. It had been moving
+towards me, but it stood still. As I drew nearer, I saw it to be the
+figure of a woman. As I drew nearer yet, it was about to turn away,
+when it stopped, and let me come up with it. Then, it faltered, as if
+much surprised, and uttered my name, and I cried out,—
+
+“Estella!”
+
+“I am greatly changed. I wonder you know me.”
+
+The freshness of her beauty was indeed gone, but its indescribable
+majesty and its indescribable charm remained. Those attractions in it,
+I had seen before; what I had never seen before, was the saddened,
+softened light of the once proud eyes; what I had never felt before was
+the friendly touch of the once insensible hand.
+
+We sat down on a bench that was near, and I said, “After so many years,
+it is strange that we should thus meet again, Estella, here where our
+first meeting was! Do you often come back?”
+
+“I have never been here since.”
+
+“Nor I.”
+
+The moon began to rise, and I thought of the placid look at the white
+ceiling, which had passed away. The moon began to rise, and I thought
+of the pressure on my hand when I had spoken the last words he had
+heard on earth.
+
+Estella was the next to break the silence that ensued between us.
+
+“I have very often hoped and intended to come back, but have been
+prevented by many circumstances. Poor, poor old place!”
+
+The silvery mist was touched with the first rays of the moonlight, and
+the same rays touched the tears that dropped from her eyes. Not knowing
+that I saw them, and setting herself to get the better of them, she
+said quietly,—
+
+“Were you wondering, as you walked along, how it came to be left in
+this condition?”
+
+“Yes, Estella.”
+
+“The ground belongs to me. It is the only possession I have not
+relinquished. Everything else has gone from me, little by little, but I
+have kept this. It was the subject of the only determined resistance I
+made in all the wretched years.”
+
+“Is it to be built on?”
+
+“At last, it is. I came here to take leave of it before its change. And
+you,” she said, in a voice of touching interest to a wanderer,—“you
+live abroad still?”
+
+“Still.”
+
+“And do well, I am sure?”
+
+“I work pretty hard for a sufficient living, and therefore—yes, I do
+well.”
+
+“I have often thought of you,” said Estella.
+
+“Have you?”
+
+“Of late, very often. There was a long hard time when I kept far from
+me the remembrance of what I had thrown away when I was quite ignorant
+of its worth. But since my duty has not been incompatible with the
+admission of that remembrance, I have given it a place in my heart.”
+
+“You have always held your place in my heart,” I answered.
+
+And we were silent again until she spoke.
+
+“I little thought,” said Estella, “that I should take leave of you in
+taking leave of this spot. I am very glad to do so.”
+
+“Glad to part again, Estella? To me, parting is a painful thing. To me,
+the remembrance of our last parting has been ever mournful and
+painful.”
+
+“But you said to me,” returned Estella, very earnestly, “‘God bless
+you, God forgive you!’ And if you could say that to me then, you will
+not hesitate to say that to me now,—now, when suffering has been
+stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what
+your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but—I hope—into a
+better shape. Be as considerate and good to me as you were, and tell me
+we are friends.”
+
+“We are friends,” said I, rising and bending over her, as she rose from
+the bench.
+
+“And will continue friends apart,” said Estella.
+
+I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as
+the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so
+the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of
+tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting
+from her.
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens
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diff --git a/data/train/dickens_-_oliver_twist.txt b/data/train/dickens_-_oliver_twist.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/data/train/dickens_-_oliver_twist.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,19211 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+Title: Oliver Twist
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+Release Date: November, 1996 [EBook #730]
+[Most recently updated: November 28, 2020]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLIVER TWIST ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Peggy Gaugy and Leigh Little.  HTML version by Al Haines.
+
+
+
+
+Oliver Twist
+
+OR
+THE PARISH BOY’S PROGRESS
+
+by Charles Dickens
+
+
+Contents
+
+I        TREATS OF THE PLACE WHERE OLIVER TWIST WAS BORN AND OF THE
+         CIRCUMSTANCES ATTENDING HIS BIRTH
+II       TREATS OF OLIVER TWIST’S GROWTH, EDUCATION, AND BOARD
+III      RELATES HOW OLIVER TWIST WAS VERY NEAR GETTING A PLACE WHICH
+         WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN A SINECURE
+IV       OLIVER, BEING OFFERED ANOTHER PLACE, MAKES HIS FIRST ENTRY
+         INTO PUBLIC LIFE
+V        OLIVER MINGLES WITH NEW ASSOCIATES. GOING TO A FUNERAL FOR THE
+         FIRST TIME, HE FORMS AN UNFAVOURABLE NOTION OF HIS MASTER’S
+         BUSINESS
+VI       OLIVER, BEING GOADED BY THE TAUNTS OF NOAH, ROUSES INTO
+         ACTION, AND RATHER ASTONISHES HIM
+VII      OLIVER CONTINUES REFRACTORY
+VIII     OLIVER WALKS TO LONDON. HE ENCOUNTERS ON THE ROAD A STRANGE
+         SORT OF YOUNG GENTLEMAN
+IX       CONTAINING FURTHER PARTICULARS CONCERNING THE PLEASANT OLD
+         GENTLEMAN, AND HIS HOPEFUL PUPILS
+X        OLIVER BECOMES BETTER ACQUAINTED WITH THE CHARACTERS OF HIS
+         NEW ASSOCIATES; AND PURCHASES EXPERIENCE AT A HIGH PRICE.
+         BEING A SHORT, BUT VERY IMPORTANT CHAPTER, IN THIS HISTORY
+XI       TREATS OF MR. FANG THE POLICE MAGISTRATE; AND FURNISHES A
+         SLIGHT SPECIMEN OF HIS MODE OF ADMINISTERING JUSTICE
+XII      IN WHICH OLIVER IS TAKEN BETTER CARE OF THAN HE EVER WAS
+         BEFORE. AND IN WHICH THE NARRATIVE REVERTS TO THE MERRY OLD
+         GENTLEMAN AND HIS YOUTHFUL FRIENDS.
+XIII     SOME NEW ACQUAINTANCES ARE INTRODUCED TO THE INTELLIGENT
+         READER, CONNECTED WITH WHOM VARIOUS PLEASANT MATTERS ARE
+         RELATED, APPERTAINING TO THIS HISTORY
+XIV      COMPRISING FURTHER PARTICULARS OF OLIVER’S STAY AT MR.
+         BROWNLOW’S, WITH THE REMARKABLE PREDICTION WHICH ONE MR.
+         GRIMWIG UTTERED CONCERNING HIM, WHEN HE WENT OUT ON AN ERRAND
+XV       SHOWING HOW VERY FOND OF OLIVER TWIST, THE MERRY OLD JEW AND
+         MISS NANCY WERE
+XVI      RELATES WHAT BECAME OF OLIVER TWIST, AFTER HE HAD BEEN CLAIMED
+         BY NANCY
+XVII     OLIVER’S DESTINY CONTINUING UNPROPITIOUS, BRINGS A GREAT MAN
+         TO LONDON TO INJURE HIS REPUTATION
+XVIII    HOW OLIVER PASSED HIS TIME IN THE IMPROVING SOCIETY OF HIS
+         REPUTABLE FRIENDS
+XIX      IN WHICH A NOTABLE PLAN IS DISCUSSED AND DETERMINED ON
+XX       WHEREIN OLIVER IS DELIVERED OVER TO MR. WILLIAM SIKES
+XXI      THE EXPEDITION
+XXII     THE BURGLARY
+XXIII    WHICH CONTAINS THE SUBSTANCE OF A PLEASANT CONVERSATION
+         BETWEEN MR. BUMBLE AND A LADY; AND SHOWS THAT EVEN A BEADLE
+         MAY BE SUSCEPTIBLE ON SOME POINTS
+XXIV     TREATS ON A VERY POOR SUBJECT. BUT IS A SHORT ONE, AND MAY BE
+         FOUND OF IMPORTANCE IN THIS HISTORY
+XXV      WHEREIN THIS HISTORY REVERTS TO MR. FAGIN AND COMPANY
+XXVI     IN WHICH A MYSTERIOUS CHARACTER APPEARS UPON THE SCENE; AND
+         MANY THINGS, INSEPARABLE FROM THIS HISTORY, ARE DONE AND
+         PERFORMED
+XXVII    ATONES FOR THE UNPOLITENESS OF A FORMER CHAPTER; WHICH
+         DESERTED A LADY, MOST UNCEREMONIOUSLY
+XXVIII   LOOKS AFTER OLIVER, AND PROCEEDS WITH HIS ADVENTURES
+XXIX     HAS AN INTRODUCTORY ACCOUNT OF THE INMATES OF THE HOUSE, TO
+         WHICH OLIVER RESORTED
+XXX      RELATES WHAT OLIVER’S NEW VISITORS THOUGHT OF HIM
+XXXI     INVOLVES A CRITICAL POSITION
+XXXII    OF THE HAPPY LIFE OLIVER BEGAN TO LEAD WITH HIS KIND FRIENDS
+XXXIII   WHEREIN THE HAPPINESS OF OLIVER AND HIS FRIENDS, EXPERIENCES A
+         SUDDEN CHECK
+XXXIV    CONTAINS SOME INTRODUCTORY PARTICULARS RELATIVE TO A YOUNG
+         GENTLEMAN WHO NOW ARRIVES UPON THE SCENE; AND A NEW ADVENTURE
+         WHICH HAPPENED TO OLIVER
+XXXV     CONTAINING THE UNSATISFACTORY RESULT OF OLIVER’S ADVENTURE;
+         AND A CONVERSATION OF SOME IMPORTANCE BETWEEN HARRY MAYLIE AND
+         ROSE
+XXXVI    IS A VERY SHORT ONE, AND MAY APPEAR OF NO GREAT IMPORTANCE IN
+         ITS PLACE, BUT IT SHOULD BE READ NOTWITHSTANDING, AS A SEQUEL
+         TO THE LAST, AND A KEY TO ONE THAT WILL FOLLOW WHEN ITS TIME
+         ARRIVES
+XXXVII   IN WHICH THE READER MAY PERCEIVE A CONTRAST, NOT UNCOMMON IN
+         MATRIMONIAL CASES
+XXXVIII  CONTAINING AN ACCOUNT OF WHAT PASSED BETWEEN MR. AND MRS.
+         BUMBLE, AND MR. MONKS, AT THEIR NOCTURNAL INTERVIEW
+XXXIX    INTRODUCES SOME RESPECTABLE CHARACTERS WITH WHOM THE READER IS
+         ALREADY ACQUAINTED, AND SHOWS HOW MONKS AND THE JEW LAID THEIR
+         WORTHY HEADS TOGETHER
+XL       A STRANGE INTERVIEW, WHICH IS A SEQUEL TO THE LAST CHAMBER
+XLI      CONTAINING FRESH DISCOVERIES, AND SHOWING THAT SUPRISES, LIKE
+         MISFORTUNES, SELDOM COME ALONE
+XLII     AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE OF OLIVER’S, EXHIBITING DECIDED MARKS OF
+         GENIUS, BECOMES A PUBLIC CHARACTER IN THE METROPOLIS
+XLIII    WHEREIN IS SHOWN HOW THE ARTFUL DODGER GOT INTO TROUBLE
+XLIV     THE TIME ARRIVES FOR NANCY TO REDEEM HER PLEDGE TO ROSE
+         MAYLIE. SHE FAILS.
+XLV      NOAH CLAYPOLE IS EMPLOYED BY FAGIN ON A SECRET MISSION
+XLVI     THE APPOINTMENT KEPT
+XLVII    FATAL CONSEQUENCES
+XLVIII   THE FLIGHT OF SIKES
+XLIX     MONKS AND MR. BROWNLOW AT LENGTH MEET. THEIR CONVERSATION, AND
+         THE INTELLIGENCE THAT INTERRUPTS IT
+L        THE PURSUIT AND ESCAPE
+LI       AFFORDING AN EXPLANATION OF MORE MYSTERIES THAN ONE, AND
+         COMPREHENDING A PROPOSAL OF MARRIAGE WITH NO WORD OF
+         SETTLEMENT OR PIN-MONEY
+LII      FAGIN’S LAST NIGHT ALIVE
+LIII     AND LAST
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER I.
+TREATS OF THE PLACE WHERE OLIVER TWIST WAS BORN AND OF THE
+CIRCUMSTANCES ATTENDING HIS BIRTH
+
+
+Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons
+it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will
+assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently common to most towns,
+great or small: to wit, a workhouse; and in this workhouse was born; on
+a day and date which I need not trouble myself to repeat, inasmuch as
+it can be of no possible consequence to the reader, in this stage of
+the business at all events; the item of mortality whose name is
+prefixed to the head of this chapter.
+
+For a long time after it was ushered into this world of sorrow and
+trouble, by the parish surgeon, it remained a matter of considerable
+doubt whether the child would survive to bear any name at all; in which
+case it is somewhat more than probable that these memoirs would never
+have appeared; or, if they had, that being comprised within a couple of
+pages, they would have possessed the inestimable merit of being the
+most concise and faithful specimen of biography, extant in the
+literature of any age or country.
+
+Although I am not disposed to maintain that the being born in a
+workhouse, is in itself the most fortunate and enviable circumstance
+that can possibly befall a human being, I do mean to say that in this
+particular instance, it was the best thing for Oliver Twist that could
+by possibility have occurred. The fact is, that there was considerable
+difficulty in inducing Oliver to take upon himself the office of
+respiration,—a troublesome practice, but one which custom has rendered
+necessary to our easy existence; and for some time he lay gasping on a
+little flock mattress, rather unequally poised between this world and
+the next: the balance being decidedly in favour of the latter. Now, if,
+during this brief period, Oliver had been surrounded by careful
+grandmothers, anxious aunts, experienced nurses, and doctors of
+profound wisdom, he would most inevitably and indubitably have been
+killed in no time. There being nobody by, however, but a pauper old
+woman, who was rendered rather misty by an unwonted allowance of beer;
+and a parish surgeon who did such matters by contract; Oliver and
+Nature fought out the point between them. The result was, that, after a
+few struggles, Oliver breathed, sneezed, and proceeded to advertise to
+the inmates of the workhouse the fact of a new burden having been
+imposed upon the parish, by setting up as loud a cry as could
+reasonably have been expected from a male infant who had not been
+possessed of that very useful appendage, a voice, for a much longer
+space of time than three minutes and a quarter.
+
+As Oliver gave this first proof of the free and proper action of his
+lungs, the patchwork coverlet which was carelessly flung over the iron
+bedstead, rustled; the pale face of a young woman was raised feebly
+from the pillow; and a faint voice imperfectly articulated the words,
+“Let me see the child, and die.”
+
+The surgeon had been sitting with his face turned towards the fire:
+giving the palms of his hands a warm and a rub alternately. As the
+young woman spoke, he rose, and advancing to the bed’s head, said, with
+more kindness than might have been expected of him:
+
+“Oh, you must not talk about dying yet.”
+
+“Lor bless her dear heart, no!” interposed the nurse, hastily
+depositing in her pocket a green glass bottle, the contents of which
+she had been tasting in a corner with evident satisfaction.
+
+“Lor bless her dear heart, when she has lived as long as I have, sir,
+and had thirteen children of her own, and all on ’em dead except two,
+and them in the wurkus with me, she’ll know better than to take on in
+that way, bless her dear heart! Think what it is to be a mother,
+there’s a dear young lamb do.”
+
+Apparently this consolatory perspective of a mother’s prospects failed
+in producing its due effect. The patient shook her head, and stretched
+out her hand towards the child.
+
+The surgeon deposited it in her arms. She imprinted her cold white lips
+passionately on its forehead; passed her hands over her face; gazed
+wildly round; shuddered; fell back—and died. They chafed her breast,
+hands, and temples; but the blood had stopped forever. They talked of
+hope and comfort. They had been strangers too long.
+
+“It’s all over, Mrs. Thingummy!” said the surgeon at last.
+
+“Ah, poor dear, so it is!” said the nurse, picking up the cork of the
+green bottle, which had fallen out on the pillow, as she stooped to
+take up the child. “Poor dear!”
+
+“You needn’t mind sending up to me, if the child cries, nurse,” said
+the surgeon, putting on his gloves with great deliberation. “It’s very
+likely it _will_ be troublesome. Give it a little gruel if it is.” He
+put on his hat, and, pausing by the bed-side on his way to the door,
+added, “She was a good-looking girl, too; where did she come from?”
+
+“She was brought here last night,” replied the old woman, “by the
+overseer’s order. She was found lying in the street. She had walked
+some distance, for her shoes were worn to pieces; but where she came
+from, or where she was going to, nobody knows.”
+
+The surgeon leaned over the body, and raised the left hand. “The old
+story,” he said, shaking his head: “no wedding-ring, I see. Ah!
+Good-night!”
+
+The medical gentleman walked away to dinner; and the nurse, having once
+more applied herself to the green bottle, sat down on a low chair
+before the fire, and proceeded to dress the infant.
+
+What an excellent example of the power of dress, young Oliver Twist
+was! Wrapped in the blanket which had hitherto formed his only
+covering, he might have been the child of a nobleman or a beggar; it
+would have been hard for the haughtiest stranger to have assigned him
+his proper station in society. But now that he was enveloped in the old
+calico robes which had grown yellow in the same service, he was badged
+and ticketed, and fell into his place at once—a parish child—the orphan
+of a workhouse—the humble, half-starved drudge—to be cuffed and
+buffeted through the world—despised by all, and pitied by none.
+
+Oliver cried lustily. If he could have known that he was an orphan,
+left to the tender mercies of church-wardens and overseers, perhaps he
+would have cried the louder.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER II.
+TREATS OF OLIVER TWIST’S GROWTH, EDUCATION, AND BOARD
+
+
+For the next eight or ten months, Oliver was the victim of a systematic
+course of treachery and deception. He was brought up by hand. The
+hungry and destitute situation of the infant orphan was duly reported
+by the workhouse authorities to the parish authorities. The parish
+authorities inquired with dignity of the workhouse authorities, whether
+there was no female then domiciled in “the house” who was in a
+situation to impart to Oliver Twist, the consolation and nourishment of
+which he stood in need. The workhouse authorities replied with
+humility, that there was not. Upon this, the parish authorities
+magnanimously and humanely resolved, that Oliver should be “farmed,”
+or, in other words, that he should be dispatched to a branch-workhouse
+some three miles off, where twenty or thirty other juvenile offenders
+against the poor-laws, rolled about the floor all day, without the
+inconvenience of too much food or too much clothing, under the parental
+superintendence of an elderly female, who received the culprits at and
+for the consideration of sevenpence-halfpenny per small head per week.
+Sevenpence-halfpenny’s worth per week is a good round diet for a child;
+a great deal may be got for sevenpence-halfpenny, quite enough to
+overload its stomach, and make it uncomfortable. The elderly female was
+a woman of wisdom and experience; she knew what was good for children;
+and she had a very accurate perception of what was good for herself.
+So, she appropriated the greater part of the weekly stipend to her own
+use, and consigned the rising parochial generation to even a shorter
+allowance than was originally provided for them. Thereby finding in the
+lowest depth a deeper still; and proving herself a very great
+experimental philosopher.
+
+Everybody knows the story of another experimental philosopher who had a
+great theory about a horse being able to live without eating, and who
+demonstrated it so well, that he had got his own horse down to a straw
+a day, and would unquestionably have rendered him a very spirited and
+rampacious animal on nothing at all, if he had not died,
+four-and-twenty hours before he was to have had his first comfortable
+bait of air. Unfortunately for the experimental philosophy of the
+female to whose protecting care Oliver Twist was delivered over, a
+similar result usually attended the operation of _her_ system; for at
+the very moment when the child had contrived to exist upon the smallest
+possible portion of the weakest possible food, it did perversely happen
+in eight and a half cases out of ten, either that it sickened from want
+and cold, or fell into the fire from neglect, or got half-smothered by
+accident; in any one of which cases, the miserable little being was
+usually summoned into another world, and there gathered to the fathers
+it had never known in this.
+
+Occasionally, when there was some more than usually interesting inquest
+upon a parish child who had been overlooked in turning up a bedstead,
+or inadvertently scalded to death when there happened to be a
+washing—though the latter accident was very scarce, anything
+approaching to a washing being of rare occurrence in the farm—the jury
+would take it into their heads to ask troublesome questions, or the
+parishioners would rebelliously affix their signatures to a
+remonstrance. But these impertinences were speedily checked by the
+evidence of the surgeon, and the testimony of the beadle; the former of
+whom had always opened the body and found nothing inside (which was
+very probable indeed), and the latter of whom invariably swore whatever
+the parish wanted; which was very self-devotional. Besides, the board
+made periodical pilgrimages to the farm, and always sent the beadle the
+day before, to say they were going. The children were neat and clean to
+behold, when _they_ went; and what more would the people have!
+
+It cannot be expected that this system of farming would produce any
+very extraordinary or luxuriant crop. Oliver Twist’s ninth birthday
+found him a pale thin child, somewhat diminutive in stature, and
+decidedly small in circumference. But nature or inheritance had
+implanted a good sturdy spirit in Oliver’s breast. It had had plenty of
+room to expand, thanks to the spare diet of the establishment; and
+perhaps to this circumstance may be attributed his having any ninth
+birth-day at all. Be this as it may, however, it was his ninth
+birthday; and he was keeping it in the coal-cellar with a select party
+of two other young gentleman, who, after participating with him in a
+sound thrashing, had been locked up for atrociously presuming to be
+hungry, when Mrs. Mann, the good lady of the house, was unexpectedly
+startled by the apparition of Mr. Bumble, the beadle, striving to undo
+the wicket of the garden-gate.
+
+“Goodness gracious! Is that you, Mr. Bumble, sir?” said Mrs. Mann,
+thrusting her head out of the window in well-affected ecstasies of joy.
+“(Susan, take Oliver and them two brats upstairs, and wash ’em
+directly.)—My heart alive! Mr. Bumble, how glad I am to see you,
+sure-ly!”
+
+Now, Mr. Bumble was a fat man, and a choleric; so, instead of
+responding to this open-hearted salutation in a kindred spirit, he gave
+the little wicket a tremendous shake, and then bestowed upon it a kick
+which could have emanated from no leg but a beadle’s.
+
+“Lor, only think,” said Mrs. Mann, running out,—for the three boys had
+been removed by this time,—“only think of that! That I should have
+forgotten that the gate was bolted on the inside, on account of them
+dear children! Walk in sir; walk in, pray, Mr. Bumble, do, sir.”
+
+Although this invitation was accompanied with a curtsey that might have
+softened the heart of a church-warden, it by no means mollified the
+beadle.
+
+“Do you think this respectful or proper conduct, Mrs. Mann,” inquired
+Mr. Bumble, grasping his cane, “to keep the parish officers a waiting
+at your garden-gate, when they come here upon porochial business with
+the porochial orphans? Are you aweer, Mrs. Mann, that you are, as I may
+say, a porochial delegate, and a stipendiary?”
+
+“I’m sure Mr. Bumble, that I was only a telling one or two of the dear
+children as is so fond of you, that it was you a coming,” replied Mrs.
+Mann with great humility.
+
+Mr. Bumble had a great idea of his oratorical powers and his
+importance. He had displayed the one, and vindicated the other. He
+relaxed.
+
+“Well, well, Mrs. Mann,” he replied in a calmer tone; “it may be as you
+say; it may be. Lead the way in, Mrs. Mann, for I come on business, and
+have something to say.”
+
+Mrs. Mann ushered the beadle into a small parlour with a brick floor;
+placed a seat for him; and officiously deposited his cocked hat and
+cane on the table before him. Mr. Bumble wiped from his forehead the
+perspiration which his walk had engendered, glanced complacently at the
+cocked hat, and smiled. Yes, he smiled. Beadles are but men: and Mr.
+Bumble smiled.
+
+“Now don’t you be offended at what I’m a going to say,” observed Mrs.
+Mann, with captivating sweetness. “You’ve had a long walk, you know, or
+I wouldn’t mention it. Now, will you take a little drop of somethink,
+Mr. Bumble?”
+
+“Not a drop. Nor a drop,” said Mr. Bumble, waving his right hand in a
+dignified, but placid manner.
+
+“I think you will,” said Mrs. Mann, who had noticed the tone of the
+refusal, and the gesture that had accompanied it. “Just a leetle drop,
+with a little cold water, and a lump of sugar.”
+
+Mr. Bumble coughed.
+
+“Now, just a leetle drop,” said Mrs. Mann persuasively.
+
+“What is it?” inquired the beadle.
+
+“Why, it’s what I’m obliged to keep a little of in the house, to put
+into the blessed infants’ Daffy, when they ain’t well, Mr. Bumble,”
+replied Mrs. Mann as she opened a corner cupboard, and took down a
+bottle and glass. “It’s gin. I’ll not deceive you, Mr. B. It’s gin.”
+
+“Do you give the children Daffy, Mrs. Mann?” inquired Bumble, following
+with his eyes the interesting process of mixing.
+
+“Ah, bless ’em, that I do, dear as it is,” replied the nurse. “I
+couldn’t see ’em suffer before my very eyes, you know sir.”
+
+“No”; said Mr. Bumble approvingly; “no, you could not. You are a humane
+woman, Mrs. Mann.” (Here she set down the glass.) “I shall take a early
+opportunity of mentioning it to the board, Mrs. Mann.” (He drew it
+towards him.) “You feel as a mother, Mrs. Mann.” (He stirred the
+gin-and-water.) “I—I drink your health with cheerfulness, Mrs. Mann”;
+and he swallowed half of it.
+
+“And now about business,” said the beadle, taking out a leathern
+pocket-book. “The child that was half-baptized Oliver Twist, is nine
+year old to-day.”
+
+“Bless him!” interposed Mrs. Mann, inflaming her left eye with the
+corner of her apron.
+
+“And notwithstanding a offered reward of ten pound, which was
+afterwards increased to twenty pound. Notwithstanding the most
+superlative, and, I may say, supernat’ral exertions on the part of this
+parish,” said Bumble, “we have never been able to discover who is his
+father, or what was his mother’s settlement, name, or condition.”
+
+Mrs. Mann raised her hands in astonishment; but added, after a moment’s
+reflection, “How comes he to have any name at all, then?”
+
+The beadle drew himself up with great pride, and said, “I inwented it.”
+
+“You, Mr. Bumble!”
+
+“I, Mrs. Mann. We name our fondlings in alphabetical order. The last
+was a S,—Swubble, I named him. This was a T,—Twist, I named _him_. The
+next one comes will be Unwin, and the next Vilkins. I have got names
+ready made to the end of the alphabet, and all the way through it
+again, when we come to Z.”
+
+“Why, you’re quite a literary character, sir!” said Mrs. Mann.
+
+“Well, well,” said the beadle, evidently gratified with the compliment;
+“perhaps I may be. Perhaps I may be, Mrs. Mann.” He finished the
+gin-and-water, and added, “Oliver being now too old to remain here, the
+board have determined to have him back into the house. I have come out
+myself to take him there. So let me see him at once.”
+
+“I’ll fetch him directly,” said Mrs. Mann, leaving the room for that
+purpose. Oliver, having had by this time as much of the outer coat of
+dirt which encrusted his face and hands, removed, as could be scrubbed
+off in one washing, was led into the room by his benevolent
+protectress.
+
+“Make a bow to the gentleman, Oliver,” said Mrs. Mann.
+
+Oliver made a bow, which was divided between the beadle on the chair,
+and the cocked hat on the table.
+
+“Will you go along with me, Oliver?” said Mr. Bumble, in a majestic
+voice.
+
+Oliver was about to say that he would go along with anybody with great
+readiness, when, glancing upward, he caught sight of Mrs. Mann, who had
+got behind the beadle’s chair, and was shaking her fist at him with a
+furious countenance. He took the hint at once, for the fist had been
+too often impressed upon his body not to be deeply impressed upon his
+recollection.
+
+“Will she go with me?” inquired poor Oliver.
+
+“No, she can’t,” replied Mr. Bumble. “But she’ll come and see you
+sometimes.”
+
+This was no very great consolation to the child. Young as he was,
+however, he had sense enough to make a feint of feeling great regret at
+going away. It was no very difficult matter for the boy to call tears
+into his eyes. Hunger and recent ill-usage are great assistants if you
+want to cry; and Oliver cried very naturally indeed. Mrs. Mann gave him
+a thousand embraces, and what Oliver wanted a great deal more, a piece
+of bread and butter, less he should seem too hungry when he got to the
+workhouse. With the slice of bread in his hand, and the little
+brown-cloth parish cap on his head, Oliver was then led away by Mr.
+Bumble from the wretched home where one kind word or look had never
+lighted the gloom of his infant years. And yet he burst into an agony
+of childish grief, as the cottage-gate closed after him. Wretched as
+were the little companions in misery he was leaving behind, they were
+the only friends he had ever known; and a sense of his loneliness in
+the great wide world, sank into the child’s heart for the first time.
+
+Mr. Bumble walked on with long strides; little Oliver, firmly grasping
+his gold-laced cuff, trotted beside him, inquiring at the end of every
+quarter of a mile whether they were “nearly there.” To these
+interrogations Mr. Bumble returned very brief and snappish replies; for
+the temporary blandness which gin-and-water awakens in some bosoms had
+by this time evaporated; and he was once again a beadle.
+
+Oliver had not been within the walls of the workhouse a quarter of an
+hour, and had scarcely completed the demolition of a second slice of
+bread, when Mr. Bumble, who had handed him over to the care of an old
+woman, returned; and, telling him it was a board night, informed him
+that the board had said he was to appear before it forthwith.
+
+Not having a very clearly defined notion of what a live board was,
+Oliver was rather astounded by this intelligence, and was not quite
+certain whether he ought to laugh or cry. He had no time to think about
+the matter, however; for Mr. Bumble gave him a tap on the head, with
+his cane, to wake him up: and another on the back to make him lively:
+and bidding him to follow, conducted him into a large white-washed
+room, where eight or ten fat gentlemen were sitting round a table. At
+the top of the table, seated in an arm-chair rather higher than the
+rest, was a particularly fat gentleman with a very round, red face.
+
+“Bow to the board,” said Bumble. Oliver brushed away two or three tears
+that were lingering in his eyes; and seeing no board but the table,
+fortunately bowed to that.
+
+“What’s your name, boy?” said the gentleman in the high chair.
+
+Oliver was frightened at the sight of so many gentlemen, which made him
+tremble: and the beadle gave him another tap behind, which made him
+cry. These two causes made him answer in a very low and hesitating
+voice; whereupon a gentleman in a white waistcoat said he was a fool.
+Which was a capital way of raising his spirits, and putting him quite
+at his ease.
+
+“Boy,” said the gentleman in the high chair, “listen to me. You know
+you’re an orphan, I suppose?”
+
+“What’s that, sir?” inquired poor Oliver.
+
+“The boy _is_ a fool—I thought he was,” said the gentleman in the white
+waistcoat.
+
+“Hush!” said the gentleman who had spoken first. “You know you’ve got
+no father or mother, and that you were brought up by the parish, don’t
+you?”
+
+“Yes, sir,” replied Oliver, weeping bitterly.
+
+“What are you crying for?” inquired the gentleman in the white
+waistcoat. And to be sure it was very extraordinary. What _could_ the
+boy be crying for?
+
+“I hope you say your prayers every night,” said another gentleman in a
+gruff voice; “and pray for the people who feed you, and take care of
+you—like a Christian.”
+
+“Yes, sir,” stammered the boy. The gentleman who spoke last was
+unconsciously right. It would have been very like a Christian, and a
+marvellously good Christian too, if Oliver had prayed for the people
+who fed and took care of _him_. But he hadn’t, because nobody had
+taught him.
+
+“Well! You have come here to be educated, and taught a useful trade,”
+said the red-faced gentleman in the high chair.
+
+“So you’ll begin to pick oakum to-morrow morning at six o’clock,” added
+the surly one in the white waistcoat.
+
+For the combination of both these blessings in the one simple process
+of picking oakum, Oliver bowed low by the direction of the beadle, and
+was then hurried away to a large ward; where, on a rough, hard bed, he
+sobbed himself to sleep. What a novel illustration of the tender laws
+of England! They let the paupers go to sleep!
+
+Poor Oliver! He little thought, as he lay sleeping in happy
+unconsciousness of all around him, that the board had that very day
+arrived at a decision which would exercise the most material influence
+over all his future fortunes. But they had. And this was it:
+
+The members of this board were very sage, deep, philosophical men; and
+when they came to turn their attention to the workhouse, they found out
+at once, what ordinary folks would never have discovered—the poor
+people liked it! It was a regular place of public entertainment for the
+poorer classes; a tavern where there was nothing to pay; a public
+breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper all the year round; a brick and
+mortar elysium, where it was all play and no work. “Oho!” said the
+board, looking very knowing; “we are the fellows to set this to rights;
+we’ll stop it all, in no time.” So, they established the rule, that all
+poor people should have the alternative (for they would compel nobody,
+not they), of being starved by a gradual process in the house, or by a
+quick one out of it. With this view, they contracted with the
+water-works to lay on an unlimited supply of water; and with a
+corn-factor to supply periodically small quantities of oatmeal; and
+issued three meals of thin gruel a day, with an onion twice a week, and
+half a roll of Sundays. They made a great many other wise and humane
+regulations, having reference to the ladies, which it is not necessary
+to repeat; kindly undertook to divorce poor married people, in
+consequence of the great expense of a suit in Doctors’ Commons; and,
+instead of compelling a man to support his family, as they had
+theretofore done, took his family away from him, and made him a
+bachelor! There is no saying how many applicants for relief, under
+these last two heads, might have started up in all classes of society,
+if it had not been coupled with the workhouse; but the board were
+long-headed men, and had provided for this difficulty. The relief was
+inseparable from the workhouse and the gruel; and that frightened
+people.
+
+For the first six months after Oliver Twist was removed, the system was
+in full operation. It was rather expensive at first, in consequence of
+the increase in the undertaker’s bill, and the necessity of taking in
+the clothes of all the paupers, which fluttered loosely on their
+wasted, shrunken forms, after a week or two’s gruel. But the number of
+workhouse inmates got thin as well as the paupers; and the board were
+in ecstasies.
+
+The room in which the boys were fed, was a large stone hall, with a
+copper at one end: out of which the master, dressed in an apron for the
+purpose, and assisted by one or two women, ladled the gruel at
+mealtimes. Of this festive composition each boy had one porringer, and
+no more—except on occasions of great public rejoicing, when he had two
+ounces and a quarter of bread besides.
+
+The bowls never wanted washing. The boys polished them with their
+spoons till they shone again; and when they had performed this
+operation (which never took very long, the spoons being nearly as large
+as the bowls), they would sit staring at the copper, with such eager
+eyes, as if they could have devoured the very bricks of which it was
+composed; employing themselves, meanwhile, in sucking their fingers
+most assiduously, with the view of catching up any stray splashes of
+gruel that might have been cast thereon. Boys have generally excellent
+appetites. Oliver Twist and his companions suffered the tortures of
+slow starvation for three months: at last they got so voracious and
+wild with hunger, that one boy, who was tall for his age, and hadn’t
+been used to that sort of thing (for his father had kept a small
+cook-shop), hinted darkly to his companions, that unless he had another
+basin of gruel per diem, he was afraid he might some night happen to
+eat the boy who slept next him, who happened to be a weakly youth of
+tender age. He had a wild, hungry eye; and they implicitly believed
+him. A council was held; lots were cast who should walk up to the
+master after supper that evening, and ask for more; and it fell to
+Oliver Twist.
+
+The evening arrived; the boys took their places. The master, in his
+cook’s uniform, stationed himself at the copper; his pauper assistants
+ranged themselves behind him; the gruel was served out; and a long
+grace was said over the short commons. The gruel disappeared; the boys
+whispered each other, and winked at Oliver; while his next neighbors
+nudged him. Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger, and reckless
+with misery. He rose from the table; and advancing to the master, basin
+and spoon in hand, said: somewhat alarmed at his own temerity:
+
+“Please, sir, I want some more.”
+
+The master was a fat, healthy man; but he turned very pale. He gazed in
+stupefied astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds, and then
+clung for support to the copper. The assistants were paralysed with
+wonder; the boys with fear.
+
+“What!” said the master at length, in a faint voice.
+
+“Please, sir,” replied Oliver, “I want some more.”
+
+The master aimed a blow at Oliver’s head with the ladle; pinioned him
+in his arm; and shrieked aloud for the beadle.
+
+The board were sitting in solemn conclave, when Mr. Bumble rushed into
+the room in great excitement, and addressing the gentleman in the high
+chair, said,
+
+“Mr. Limbkins, I beg your pardon, sir! Oliver Twist has asked for
+more!”
+
+There was a general start. Horror was depicted on every countenance.
+
+“For _more_!” said Mr. Limbkins. “Compose yourself, Bumble, and answer
+me distinctly. Do I understand that he asked for more, after he had
+eaten the supper allotted by the dietary?”
+
+“He did, sir,” replied Bumble.
+
+“That boy will be hung,” said the gentleman in the white waistcoat. “I
+know that boy will be hung.”
+
+Nobody controverted the prophetic gentleman’s opinion. An animated
+discussion took place. Oliver was ordered into instant confinement; and
+a bill was next morning pasted on the outside of the gate, offering a
+reward of five pounds to anybody who would take Oliver Twist off the
+hands of the parish. In other words, five pounds and Oliver Twist were
+offered to any man or woman who wanted an apprentice to any trade,
+business, or calling.
+
+“I never was more convinced of anything in my life,” said the gentleman
+in the white waistcoat, as he knocked at the gate and read the bill
+next morning: “I never was more convinced of anything in my life, than
+I am that that boy will come to be hung.”
+
+As I purpose to show in the sequel whether the white waistcoated
+gentleman was right or not, I should perhaps mar the interest of this
+narrative (supposing it to possess any at all), if I ventured to hint
+just yet, whether the life of Oliver Twist had this violent termination
+or no.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER III.
+RELATES HOW OLIVER TWIST WAS VERY NEAR GETTING A PLACE WHICH WOULD NOT
+HAVE BEEN A SINECURE
+
+
+For a week after the commission of the impious and profane offence of
+asking for more, Oliver remained a close prisoner in the dark and
+solitary room to which he had been consigned by the wisdom and mercy of
+the board. It appears, at first sight not unreasonable to suppose,
+that, if he had entertained a becoming feeling of respect for the
+prediction of the gentleman in the white waistcoat, he would have
+established that sage individual’s prophetic character, once and for
+ever, by tying one end of his pocket-handkerchief to a hook in the
+wall, and attaching himself to the other. To the performance of this
+feat, however, there was one obstacle: namely, that
+pocket-handkerchiefs being decided articles of luxury, had been, for
+all future times and ages, removed from the noses of paupers by the
+express order of the board, in council assembled: solemnly given and
+pronounced under their hands and seals. There was a still greater
+obstacle in Oliver’s youth and childishness. He only cried bitterly all
+day; and, when the long, dismal night came on, spread his little hands
+before his eyes to shut out the darkness, and crouching in the corner,
+tried to sleep: ever and anon waking with a start and tremble, and
+drawing himself closer and closer to the wall, as if to feel even its
+cold hard surface were a protection in the gloom and loneliness which
+surrounded him.
+
+Let it not be supposed by the enemies of “the system,” that, during the
+period of his solitary incarceration, Oliver was denied the benefit of
+exercise, the pleasure of society, or the advantages of religious
+consolation. As for exercise, it was nice cold weather, and he was
+allowed to perform his ablutions every morning under the pump, in a
+stone yard, in the presence of Mr. Bumble, who prevented his catching
+cold, and caused a tingling sensation to pervade his frame, by repeated
+applications of the cane. As for society, he was carried every other
+day into the hall where the boys dined, and there sociably flogged as a
+public warning and example. And so far from being denied the advantages
+of religious consolation, he was kicked into the same apartment every
+evening at prayer-time, and there permitted to listen to, and console
+his mind with, a general supplication of the boys, containing a special
+clause, therein inserted by authority of the board, in which they
+entreated to be made good, virtuous, contented, and obedient, and to be
+guarded from the sins and vices of Oliver Twist: whom the supplication
+distinctly set forth to be under the exclusive patronage and protection
+of the powers of wickedness, and an article direct from the manufactory
+of the very Devil himself.
+
+It chanced one morning, while Oliver’s affairs were in this auspicious
+and comfortable state, that Mr. Gamfield, chimney-sweep, went his way
+down the High Street, deeply cogitating in his mind his ways and means
+of paying certain arrears of rent, for which his landlord had become
+rather pressing. Mr. Gamfield’s most sanguine estimate of his finances
+could not raise them within full five pounds of the desired amount;
+and, in a species of arithmetical desperation, he was alternately
+cudgelling his brains and his donkey, when passing the workhouse, his
+eyes encountered the bill on the gate.
+
+“Wo—o!” said Mr. Gamfield to the donkey.
+
+The donkey was in a state of profound abstraction: wondering, probably,
+whether he was destined to be regaled with a cabbage-stalk or two when
+he had disposed of the two sacks of soot with which the little cart was
+laden; so, without noticing the word of command, he jogged onward.
+
+Mr. Gamfield growled a fierce imprecation on the donkey generally, but
+more particularly on his eyes; and, running after him, bestowed a blow
+on his head, which would inevitably have beaten in any skull but a
+donkey’s. Then, catching hold of the bridle, he gave his jaw a sharp
+wrench, by way of gentle reminder that he was not his own master; and
+by these means turned him round. He then gave him another blow on the
+head, just to stun him till he came back again. Having completed these
+arrangements, he walked up to the gate, to read the bill.
+
+The gentleman with the white waistcoat was standing at the gate with
+his hands behind him, after having delivered himself of some profound
+sentiments in the board-room. Having witnessed the little dispute
+between Mr. Gamfield and the donkey, he smiled joyously when that
+person came up to read the bill, for he saw at once that Mr. Gamfield
+was exactly the sort of master Oliver Twist wanted. Mr. Gamfield
+smiled, too, as he perused the document; for five pounds was just the
+sum he had been wishing for; and, as to the boy with which it was
+encumbered, Mr. Gamfield, knowing what the dietary of the workhouse
+was, well knew he would be a nice small pattern, just the very thing
+for register stoves. So, he spelt the bill through again, from
+beginning to end; and then, touching his fur cap in token of humility,
+accosted the gentleman in the white waistcoat.
+
+“This here boy, sir, wot the parish wants to ’prentis,” said Mr.
+Gamfield.
+
+“Ay, my man,” said the gentleman in the white waistcoat, with a
+condescending smile. “What of him?”
+
+“If the parish vould like him to learn a right pleasant trade, in a
+good ’spectable chimbley-sweepin’ bisness,” said Mr. Gamfield, “I wants
+a ’prentis, and I am ready to take him.”
+
+“Walk in,” said the gentleman in the white waistcoat. Mr. Gamfield
+having lingered behind, to give the donkey another blow on the head,
+and another wrench of the jaw, as a caution not to run away in his
+absence, followed the gentleman with the white waistcoat into the room
+where Oliver had first seen him.
+
+“It’s a nasty trade,” said Mr. Limbkins, when Gamfield had again stated
+his wish.
+
+“Young boys have been smothered in chimneys before now,” said another
+gentleman.
+
+“That’s acause they damped the straw afore they lit it in the chimbley
+to make ’em come down again,” said Gamfield; “that’s all smoke, and no
+blaze; vereas smoke ain’t o’ no use at all in making a boy come down,
+for it only sinds him to sleep, and that’s wot he likes. Boys is wery
+obstinit, and wery lazy, Gen’l’men, and there’s nothink like a good hot
+blaze to make ’em come down vith a run. It’s humane too, gen’l’men,
+acause, even if they’ve stuck in the chimbley, roasting their feet
+makes ’em struggle to hextricate theirselves.”
+
+The gentleman in the white waistcoat appeared very much amused by this
+explanation; but his mirth was speedily checked by a look from Mr.
+Limbkins. The board then proceeded to converse among themselves for a
+few minutes, but in so low a tone, that the words “saving of
+expenditure,” “looked well in the accounts,” “have a printed report
+published,” were alone audible. These only chanced to be heard, indeed,
+or account of their being very frequently repeated with great emphasis.
+
+At length the whispering ceased; and the members of the board, having
+resumed their seats and their solemnity, Mr. Limbkins said:
+
+“We have considered your proposition, and we don’t approve of it.”
+
+“Not at all,” said the gentleman in the white waistcoat.
+
+“Decidedly not,” added the other members.
+
+As Mr. Gamfield did happen to labour under the slight imputation of
+having bruised three or four boys to death already, it occurred to him
+that the board had, perhaps, in some unaccountable freak, taken it into
+their heads that this extraneous circumstance ought to influence their
+proceedings. It was very unlike their general mode of doing business,
+if they had; but still, as he had no particular wish to revive the
+rumour, he twisted his cap in his hands, and walked slowly from the
+table.
+
+“So you won’t let me have him, gen’l’men?” said Mr. Gamfield, pausing
+near the door.
+
+“No,” replied Mr. Limbkins; “at least, as it’s a nasty business, we
+think you ought to take something less than the premium we offered.”
+
+Mr. Gamfield’s countenance brightened, as, with a quick step, he
+returned to the table, and said,
+
+“What’ll you give, gen’l’men? Come! Don’t be too hard on a poor man.
+What’ll you give?”
+
+“I should say, three pound ten was plenty,” said Mr. Limbkins.
+
+“Ten shillings too much,” said the gentleman in the white waistcoat.
+
+“Come!” said Gamfield; “say four pound, gen’l’men. Say four pound, and
+you’ve got rid of him for good and all. There!”
+
+“Three pound ten,” repeated Mr. Limbkins, firmly.
+
+“Come! I’ll split the diff’erence, gen’l’men,” urged Gamfield. “Three
+pound fifteen.”
+
+“Not a farthing more,” was the firm reply of Mr. Limbkins.
+
+“You’re desperate hard upon me, gen’l’men,” said Gamfield, wavering.
+
+“Pooh! pooh! nonsense!” said the gentleman in the white waistcoat.
+“He’d be cheap with nothing at all, as a premium. Take him, you silly
+fellow! He’s just the boy for you. He wants the stick, now and then:
+it’ll do him good; and his board needn’t come very expensive, for he
+hasn’t been overfed since he was born. Ha! ha! ha!”
+
+Mr. Gamfield gave an arch look at the faces round the table, and,
+observing a smile on all of them, gradually broke into a smile himself.
+The bargain was made. Mr. Bumble, was at once instructed that Oliver
+Twist and his indentures were to be conveyed before the magistrate, for
+signature and approval, that very afternoon.
+
+In pursuance of this determination, little Oliver, to his excessive
+astonishment, was released from bondage, and ordered to put himself
+into a clean shirt. He had hardly achieved this very unusual gymnastic
+performance, when Mr. Bumble brought him, with his own hands, a basin
+of gruel, and the holiday allowance of two ounces and a quarter of
+bread. At this tremendous sight, Oliver began to cry very piteously:
+thinking, not unnaturally, that the board must have determined to kill
+him for some useful purpose, or they never would have begun to fatten
+him up in that way.
+
+“Don’t make your eyes red, Oliver, but eat your food and be thankful,”
+said Mr. Bumble, in a tone of impressive pomposity. “You’re a going to
+be made a ’prentice of, Oliver.”
+
+“A prentice, sir!” said the child, trembling.
+
+“Yes, Oliver,” said Mr. Bumble. “The kind and blessed gentleman which
+is so many parents to you, Oliver, when you have none of your own: are
+a going to “prentice” you: and to set you up in life, and make a man of
+you: although the expense to the parish is three pound ten!—three pound
+ten, Oliver!—seventy shillins—one hundred and forty sixpences!—and all
+for a naughty orphan which nobody can’t love.”
+
+As Mr. Bumble paused to take breath, after delivering this address in
+an awful voice, the tears rolled down the poor child’s face, and he
+sobbed bitterly.
+
+“Come,” said Mr. Bumble, somewhat less pompously, for it was gratifying
+to his feelings to observe the effect his eloquence had produced;
+“Come, Oliver! Wipe your eyes with the cuffs of your jacket, and don’t
+cry into your gruel; that’s a very foolish action, Oliver.” It
+certainly was, for there was quite enough water in it already.
+
+On their way to the magistrate, Mr. Bumble instructed Oliver that all
+he would have to do, would be to look very happy, and say, when the
+gentleman asked him if he wanted to be apprenticed, that he should like
+it very much indeed; both of which injunctions Oliver promised to obey:
+the rather as Mr. Bumble threw in a gentle hint, that if he failed in
+either particular, there was no telling what would be done to him. When
+they arrived at the office, he was shut up in a little room by himself,
+and admonished by Mr. Bumble to stay there, until he came back to fetch
+him.
+
+There the boy remained, with a palpitating heart, for half an hour. At
+the expiration of which time Mr. Bumble thrust in his head, unadorned
+with the cocked hat, and said aloud:
+
+“Now, Oliver, my dear, come to the gentleman.” As Mr. Bumble said this,
+he put on a grim and threatening look, and added, in a low voice, “Mind
+what I told you, you young rascal!”
+
+Oliver stared innocently in Mr. Bumble’s face at this somewhat
+contradictory style of address; but that gentleman prevented his
+offering any remark thereupon, by leading him at once into an adjoining
+room: the door of which was open. It was a large room, with a great
+window. Behind a desk, sat two old gentleman with powdered heads: one
+of whom was reading the newspaper; while the other was perusing, with
+the aid of a pair of tortoise-shell spectacles, a small piece of
+parchment which lay before him. Mr. Limbkins was standing in front of
+the desk on one side; and Mr. Gamfield, with a partially washed face,
+on the other; while two or three bluff-looking men, in top-boots, were
+lounging about.
+
+The old gentleman with the spectacles gradually dozed off, over the
+little bit of parchment; and there was a short pause, after Oliver had
+been stationed by Mr. Bumble in front of the desk.
+
+“This is the boy, your worship,” said Mr. Bumble.
+
+The old gentleman who was reading the newspaper raised his head for a
+moment, and pulled the other old gentleman by the sleeve; whereupon,
+the last-mentioned old gentleman woke up.
+
+“Oh, is this the boy?” said the old gentleman.
+
+“This is him, sir,” replied Mr. Bumble. “Bow to the magistrate, my
+dear.”
+
+Oliver roused himself, and made his best obeisance. He had been
+wondering, with his eyes fixed on the magistrates’ powder, whether all
+boards were born with that white stuff on their heads, and were boards
+from thenceforth on that account.
+
+“Well,” said the old gentleman, “I suppose he’s fond of
+chimney-sweeping?”
+
+“He doats on it, your worship,” replied Bumble; giving Oliver a sly
+pinch, to intimate that he had better not say he didn’t.
+
+“And he _will_ be a sweep, will he?” inquired the old gentleman.
+
+“If we was to bind him to any other trade to-morrow, he’d run away
+simultaneous, your worship,” replied Bumble.
+
+“And this man that’s to be his master—you, sir—you’ll treat him well,
+and feed him, and do all that sort of thing, will you?” said the old
+gentleman.
+
+“When I says I will, I means I will,” replied Mr. Gamfield doggedly.
+
+“You’re a rough speaker, my friend, but you look an honest,
+open-hearted man,” said the old gentleman: turning his spectacles in
+the direction of the candidate for Oliver’s premium, whose villainous
+countenance was a regular stamped receipt for cruelty. But the
+magistrate was half blind and half childish, so he couldn’t reasonably
+be expected to discern what other people did.
+
+“I hope I am, sir,” said Mr. Gamfield, with an ugly leer.
+
+“I have no doubt you are, my friend,” replied the old gentleman: fixing
+his spectacles more firmly on his nose, and looking about him for the
+inkstand.
+
+It was the critical moment of Oliver’s fate. If the inkstand had been
+where the old gentleman thought it was, he would have dipped his pen
+into it, and signed the indentures, and Oliver would have been
+straightway hurried off. But, as it chanced to be immediately under his
+nose, it followed, as a matter of course, that he looked all over his
+desk for it, without finding it; and happening in the course of his
+search to look straight before him, his gaze encountered the pale and
+terrified face of Oliver Twist: who, despite all the admonitory looks
+and pinches of Bumble, was regarding the repulsive countenance of his
+future master, with a mingled expression of horror and fear, too
+palpable to be mistaken, even by a half-blind magistrate.
+
+The old gentleman stopped, laid down his pen, and looked from Oliver to
+Mr. Limbkins; who attempted to take snuff with a cheerful and
+unconcerned aspect.
+
+“My boy!” said the old gentleman, “you look pale and alarmed. What is
+the matter?”
+
+“Stand a little away from him, Beadle,” said the other magistrate:
+laying aside the paper, and leaning forward with an expression of
+interest. “Now, boy, tell us what’s the matter: don’t be afraid.”
+
+Oliver fell on his knees, and clasping his hands together, prayed that
+they would order him back to the dark room—that they would starve
+him—beat him—kill him if they pleased—rather than send him away with
+that dreadful man.
+
+“Well!” said Mr. Bumble, raising his hands and eyes with most
+impressive solemnity. “Well! of all the artful and designing orphans
+that ever I see, Oliver, you are one of the most bare-facedest.”
+
+“Hold your tongue, Beadle,” said the second old gentleman, when Mr.
+Bumble had given vent to this compound adjective.
+
+“I beg your worship’s pardon,” said Mr. Bumble, incredulous of having
+heard aright. “Did your worship speak to me?”
+
+“Yes. Hold your tongue.”
+
+Mr. Bumble was stupefied with astonishment. A beadle ordered to hold
+his tongue! A moral revolution!
+
+The old gentleman in the tortoise-shell spectacles looked at his
+companion, he nodded significantly.
+
+“We refuse to sanction these indentures,” said the old gentleman:
+tossing aside the piece of parchment as he spoke.
+
+“I hope,” stammered Mr. Limbkins: “I hope the magistrates will not form
+the opinion that the authorities have been guilty of any improper
+conduct, on the unsupported testimony of a child.”
+
+“The magistrates are not called upon to pronounce any opinion on the
+matter,” said the second old gentleman sharply. “Take the boy back to
+the workhouse, and treat him kindly. He seems to want it.”
+
+That same evening, the gentleman in the white waistcoat most positively
+and decidedly affirmed, not only that Oliver would be hung, but that he
+would be drawn and quartered into the bargain. Mr. Bumble shook his
+head with gloomy mystery, and said he wished he might come to good;
+whereunto Mr. Gamfield replied, that he wished he might come to him;
+which, although he agreed with the beadle in most matters, would seem
+to be a wish of a totally opposite description.
+
+The next morning, the public were once informed that Oliver Twist was
+again To Let, and that five pounds would be paid to anybody who would
+take possession of him.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER IV.
+OLIVER, BEING OFFERED ANOTHER PLACE, MAKES HIS FIRST ENTRY INTO PUBLIC
+LIFE
+
+
+In great families, when an advantageous place cannot be obtained,
+either in possession, reversion, remainder, or expectancy, for the
+young man who is growing up, it is a very general custom to send him to
+sea. The board, in imitation of so wise and salutary an example, took
+counsel together on the expediency of shipping off Oliver Twist, in
+some small trading vessel bound to a good unhealthy port. This
+suggested itself as the very best thing that could possibly be done
+with him: the probability being, that the skipper would flog him to
+death, in a playful mood, some day after dinner, or would knock his
+brains out with an iron bar; both pastimes being, as is pretty
+generally known, very favourite and common recreations among gentleman
+of that class. The more the case presented itself to the board, in this
+point of view, the more manifold the advantages of the step appeared;
+so, they came to the conclusion that the only way of providing for
+Oliver effectually, was to send him to sea without delay.
+
+Mr. Bumble had been despatched to make various preliminary inquiries,
+with the view of finding out some captain or other who wanted a
+cabin-boy without any friends; and was returning to the workhouse to
+communicate the result of his mission; when he encountered at the gate,
+no less a person than Mr. Sowerberry, the parochial undertaker.
+
+Mr. Sowerberry was a tall gaunt, large-jointed man, attired in a suit
+of threadbare black, with darned cotton stockings of the same colour,
+and shoes to answer. His features were not naturally intended to wear a
+smiling aspect, but he was in general rather given to professional
+jocosity. His step was elastic, and his face betokened inward
+pleasantry, as he advanced to Mr. Bumble, and shook him cordially by
+the hand.
+
+“I have taken the measure of the two women that died last night, Mr.
+Bumble,” said the undertaker.
+
+“You’ll make your fortune, Mr. Sowerberry,” said the beadle, as he
+thrust his thumb and forefinger into the proffered snuff-box of the
+undertaker: which was an ingenious little model of a patent coffin. “I
+say you’ll make your fortune, Mr. Sowerberry,” repeated Mr. Bumble,
+tapping the undertaker on the shoulder, in a friendly manner, with his
+cane.
+
+“Think so?” said the undertaker in a tone which half admitted and half
+disputed the probability of the event. “The prices allowed by the board
+are very small, Mr. Bumble.”
+
+“So are the coffins,” replied the beadle: with precisely as near an
+approach to a laugh as a great official ought to indulge in.
+
+Mr. Sowerberry was much tickled at this: as of course he ought to be;
+and laughed a long time without cessation. “Well, well, Mr. Bumble,” he
+said at length, “there’s no denying that, since the new system of
+feeding has come in, the coffins are something narrower and more
+shallow than they used to be; but we must have some profit, Mr. Bumble.
+Well-seasoned timber is an expensive article, sir; and all the iron
+handles come, by canal, from Birmingham.”
+
+“Well, well,” said Mr. Bumble, “every trade has its drawbacks. A fair
+profit is, of course, allowable.”
+
+“Of course, of course,” replied the undertaker; “and if I don’t get a
+profit upon this or that particular article, why, I make it up in the
+long-run, you see—he! he! he!”
+
+“Just so,” said Mr. Bumble.
+
+“Though I must say,” continued the undertaker, resuming the current of
+observations which the beadle had interrupted: “though I must say, Mr.
+Bumble, that I have to contend against one very great disadvantage:
+which is, that all the stout people go off the quickest. The people who
+have been better off, and have paid rates for many years, are the first
+to sink when they come into the house; and let me tell you, Mr. Bumble,
+that three or four inches over one’s calculation makes a great hole in
+one’s profits: especially when one has a family to provide for, sir.”
+
+As Mr. Sowerberry said this, with the becoming indignation of an
+ill-used man; and as Mr. Bumble felt that it rather tended to convey a
+reflection on the honour of the parish; the latter gentleman thought it
+advisable to change the subject. Oliver Twist being uppermost in his
+mind, he made him his theme.
+
+“By the bye,” said Mr. Bumble, “you don’t know anybody who wants a boy,
+do you? A porochial ’prentis, who is at present a dead-weight; a
+millstone, as I may say, round the porochial throat? Liberal terms, Mr.
+Sowerberry, liberal terms?” As Mr. Bumble spoke, he raised his cane to
+the bill above him, and gave three distinct raps upon the words “five
+pounds”: which were printed thereon in Roman capitals of gigantic size.
+
+“Gadso!” said the undertaker: taking Mr. Bumble by the gilt-edged
+lappel of his official coat; “that’s just the very thing I wanted to
+speak to you about. You know—dear me, what a very elegant button this
+is, Mr. Bumble! I never noticed it before.”
+
+“Yes, I think it rather pretty,” said the beadle, glancing proudly
+downwards at the large brass buttons which embellished his coat. “The
+die is the same as the porochial seal—the Good Samaritan healing the
+sick and bruised man. The board presented it to me on Newyear’s
+morning, Mr. Sowerberry. I put it on, I remember, for the first time,
+to attend the inquest on that reduced tradesman, who died in a doorway
+at midnight.”
+
+“I recollect,” said the undertaker. “The jury brought it in, ‘Died from
+exposure to the cold, and want of the common necessaries of life,’
+didn’t they?”
+
+Mr. Bumble nodded.
+
+“And they made it a special verdict, I think,” said the undertaker, “by
+adding some words to the effect, that if the relieving officer had—”
+
+“Tush! Foolery!” interposed the beadle. “If the board attended to all
+the nonsense that ignorant jurymen talk, they’d have enough to do.”
+
+“Very true,” said the undertaker; “they would indeed.”
+
+“Juries,” said Mr. Bumble, grasping his cane tightly, as was his wont
+when working into a passion: “juries is ineddicated, vulgar, grovelling
+wretches.”
+
+“So they are,” said the undertaker.
+
+“They haven’t no more philosophy nor political economy about ’em than
+that,” said the beadle, snapping his fingers contemptuously.
+
+“No more they have,” acquiesced the undertaker.
+
+“I despise ’em,” said the beadle, growing very red in the face.
+
+“So do I,” rejoined the undertaker.
+
+“And I only wish we’d a jury of the independent sort, in the house for
+a week or two,” said the beadle; “the rules and regulations of the
+board would soon bring their spirit down for ’em.”
+
+“Let ’em alone for that,” replied the undertaker. So saying, he smiled,
+approvingly: to calm the rising wrath of the indignant parish officer.
+
+Mr Bumble lifted off his cocked hat; took a handkerchief from the
+inside of the crown; wiped from his forehead the perspiration which his
+rage had engendered; fixed the cocked hat on again; and, turning to the
+undertaker, said in a calmer voice:
+
+“Well; what about the boy?”
+
+“Oh!” replied the undertaker; “why, you know, Mr. Bumble, I pay a good
+deal towards the poor’s rates.”
+
+“Hem!” said Mr. Bumble. “Well?”
+
+“Well,” replied the undertaker, “I was thinking that if I pay so much
+towards ’em, I’ve a right to get as much out of ’em as I can, Mr.
+Bumble; and so—I think I’ll take the boy myself.”
+
+Mr. Bumble grasped the undertaker by the arm, and led him into the
+building. Mr. Sowerberry was closeted with the board for five minutes;
+and it was arranged that Oliver should go to him that evening “upon
+liking”—a phrase which means, in the case of a parish apprentice, that
+if the master find, upon a short trial, that he can get enough work out
+of a boy without putting too much food into him, he shall have him for
+a term of years, to do what he likes with.
+
+When little Oliver was taken before “the gentlemen” that evening; and
+informed that he was to go, that night, as general house-lad to a
+coffin-maker’s; and that if he complained of his situation, or ever
+came back to the parish again, he would be sent to sea, there to be
+drowned, or knocked on the head, as the case might be, he evinced so
+little emotion, that they by common consent pronounced him a hardened
+young rascal, and ordered Mr. Bumble to remove him forthwith.
+
+Now, although it was very natural that the board, of all people in the
+world, should feel in a great state of virtuous astonishment and horror
+at the smallest tokens of want of feeling on the part of anybody, they
+were rather out, in this particular instance. The simple fact was, that
+Oliver, instead of possessing too little feeling, possessed rather too
+much; and was in a fair way of being reduced, for life, to a state of
+brutal stupidity and sullenness by the ill usage he had received. He
+heard the news of his destination, in perfect silence; and, having had
+his luggage put into his hand—which was not very difficult to carry,
+inasmuch as it was all comprised within the limits of a brown paper
+parcel, about half a foot square by three inches deep—he pulled his cap
+over his eyes; and once more attaching himself to Mr. Bumble’s coat
+cuff, was led away by that dignitary to a new scene of suffering.
+
+For some time, Mr. Bumble drew Oliver along, without notice or remark;
+for the beadle carried his head very erect, as a beadle always should:
+and, it being a windy day, little Oliver was completely enshrouded by
+the skirts of Mr. Bumble’s coat as they blew open, and disclosed to
+great advantage his flapped waistcoat and drab plush knee-breeches. As
+they drew near to their destination, however, Mr. Bumble thought it
+expedient to look down, and see that the boy was in good order for
+inspection by his new master: which he accordingly did, with a fit and
+becoming air of gracious patronage.
+
+“Oliver!” said Mr. Bumble.
+
+“Yes, sir,” replied Oliver, in a low, tremulous voice.
+
+“Pull that cap off your eyes, and hold up your head, sir.”
+
+Although Oliver did as he was desired, at once; and passed the back of
+his unoccupied hand briskly across his eyes, he left a tear in them
+when he looked up at his conductor. As Mr. Bumble gazed sternly upon
+him, it rolled down his cheek. It was followed by another, and another.
+The child made a strong effort, but it was an unsuccessful one.
+Withdrawing his other hand from Mr. Bumble’s he covered his face with
+both; and wept until the tears sprung out from between his chin and
+bony fingers.
+
+“Well!” exclaimed Mr. Bumble, stopping short, and darting at his little
+charge a look of intense malignity. “Well! Of _all_ the ungratefullest,
+and worst-disposed boys as ever I see, Oliver, you are the—”
+
+“No, no, sir,” sobbed Oliver, clinging to the hand which held the
+well-known cane; “no, no, sir; I will be good indeed; indeed, indeed I
+will, sir! I am a very little boy, sir; and it is so—so—”
+
+“So what?” inquired Mr. Bumble in amazement.
+
+“So lonely, sir! So very lonely!” cried the child. “Everybody hates me.
+Oh! sir, don’t, don’t pray be cross to me!” The child beat his hand
+upon his heart; and looked in his companion’s face, with tears of real
+agony.
+
+Mr. Bumble regarded Oliver’s piteous and helpless look, with some
+astonishment, for a few seconds; hemmed three or four times in a husky
+manner; and after muttering something about “that troublesome cough,”
+bade Oliver dry his eyes and be a good boy. Then once more taking his
+hand, he walked on with him in silence.
+
+The undertaker, who had just put up the shutters of his shop, was
+making some entries in his day-book by the light of a most appropriate
+dismal candle, when Mr. Bumble entered.
+
+“Aha!” said the undertaker; looking up from the book, and pausing in
+the middle of a word; “is that you, Bumble?”
+
+“No one else, Mr. Sowerberry,” replied the beadle. “Here! I’ve brought
+the boy.” Oliver made a bow.
+
+“Oh! that’s the boy, is it?” said the undertaker: raising the candle
+above his head, to get a better view of Oliver. “Mrs. Sowerberry, will
+you have the goodness to come here a moment, my dear?”
+
+Mrs. Sowerberry emerged from a little room behind the shop, and
+presented the form of a short, thin, squeezed-up woman, with a vixenish
+countenance.
+
+“My dear,” said Mr. Sowerberry, deferentially, “this is the boy from
+the workhouse that I told you of.” Oliver bowed again.
+
+“Dear me!” said the undertaker’s wife, “he’s very small.”
+
+“Why, he _is_ rather small,” replied Mr. Bumble: looking at Oliver as
+if it were his fault that he was no bigger; “he is small. There’s no
+denying it. But he’ll grow, Mrs. Sowerberry—he’ll grow.”
+
+“Ah! I dare say he will,” replied the lady pettishly, “on our victuals
+and our drink. I see no saving in parish children, not I; for they
+always cost more to keep, than they’re worth. However, men always think
+they know best. There! Get downstairs, little bag o’ bones.” With this,
+the undertaker’s wife opened a side door, and pushed Oliver down a
+steep flight of stairs into a stone cell, damp and dark: forming the
+ante-room to the coal-cellar, and denominated “kitchen”; wherein sat a
+slatternly girl, in shoes down at heel, and blue worsted stockings very
+much out of repair.
+
+“Here, Charlotte,” said Mr. Sowerberry, who had followed Oliver down,
+“give this boy some of the cold bits that were put by for Trip. He
+hasn’t come home since the morning, so he may go without ’em. I dare
+say the boy isn’t too dainty to eat ’em—are you, boy?”
+
+Oliver, whose eyes had glistened at the mention of meat, and who was
+trembling with eagerness to devour it, replied in the negative; and a
+plateful of coarse broken victuals was set before him.
+
+I wish some well-fed philosopher, whose meat and drink turn to gall
+within him; whose blood is ice, whose heart is iron; could have seen
+Oliver Twist clutching at the dainty viands that the dog had neglected.
+I wish he could have witnessed the horrible avidity with which Oliver
+tore the bits asunder with all the ferocity of famine. There is only
+one thing I should like better; and that would be to see the
+Philosopher making the same sort of meal himself, with the same relish.
+
+“Well,” said the undertaker’s wife, when Oliver had finished his
+supper: which she had regarded in silent horror, and with fearful
+auguries of his future appetite: “have you done?”
+
+There being nothing eatable within his reach, Oliver replied in the
+affirmative.
+
+“Then come with me,” said Mrs. Sowerberry: taking up a dim and dirty
+lamp, and leading the way upstairs; “your bed’s under the counter. You
+don’t mind sleeping among the coffins, I suppose? But it doesn’t much
+matter whether you do or don’t, for you can’t sleep anywhere else.
+Come; don’t keep me here all night!”
+
+Oliver lingered no longer, but meekly followed his new mistress.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER V.
+OLIVER MINGLES WITH NEW ASSOCIATES. GOING TO A FUNERAL FOR THE FIRST
+TIME, HE FORMS AN UNFAVOURABLE NOTION OF HIS MASTER’S BUSINESS
+
+
+Oliver, being left to himself in the undertaker’s shop, set the lamp
+down on a workman’s bench, and gazed timidly about him with a feeling
+of awe and dread, which many people a good deal older than he will be
+at no loss to understand. An unfinished coffin on black tressels, which
+stood in the middle of the shop, looked so gloomy and death-like that a
+cold tremble came over him, every time his eyes wandered in the
+direction of the dismal object: from which he almost expected to see
+some frightful form slowly rear its head, to drive him mad with terror.
+Against the wall were ranged, in regular array, a long row of elm
+boards cut in the same shape: looking in the dim light, like
+high-shouldered ghosts with their hands in their breeches pockets.
+Coffin-plates, elm-chips, bright-headed nails, and shreds of black
+cloth, lay scattered on the floor; and the wall behind the counter was
+ornamented with a lively representation of two mutes in very stiff
+neckcloths, on duty at a large private door, with a hearse drawn by
+four black steeds, approaching in the distance. The shop was close and
+hot. The atmosphere seemed tainted with the smell of coffins. The
+recess beneath the counter in which his flock mattress was thrust,
+looked like a grave.
+
+Nor were these the only dismal feelings which depressed Oliver. He was
+alone in a strange place; and we all know how chilled and desolate the
+best of us will sometimes feel in such a situation. The boy had no
+friends to care for, or to care for him. The regret of no recent
+separation was fresh in his mind; the absence of no loved and
+well-remembered face sank heavily into his heart.
+
+But his heart was heavy, notwithstanding; and he wished, as he crept
+into his narrow bed, that that were his coffin, and that he could be
+lain in a calm and lasting sleep in the churchyard ground, with the
+tall grass waving gently above his head, and the sound of the old deep
+bell to soothe him in his sleep.
+
+Oliver was awakened in the morning, by a loud kicking at the outside of
+the shop-door: which, before he could huddle on his clothes, was
+repeated, in an angry and impetuous manner, about twenty-five times.
+When he began to undo the chain, the legs desisted, and a voice began.
+
+“Open the door, will yer?” cried the voice which belonged to the legs
+which had kicked at the door.
+
+“I will, directly, sir,” replied Oliver: undoing the chain, and turning
+the key.
+
+“I suppose yer the new boy, ain’t yer?” said the voice through the
+key-hole.
+
+“Yes, sir,” replied Oliver.
+
+“How old are yer?” inquired the voice.
+
+“Ten, sir,” replied Oliver.
+
+“Then I’ll whop yer when I get in,” said the voice; “you just see if I
+don’t, that’s all, my work’us brat!” and having made this obliging
+promise, the voice began to whistle.
+
+Oliver had been too often subjected to the process to which the very
+expressive monosyllable just recorded bears reference, to entertain the
+smallest doubt that the owner of the voice, whoever he might be, would
+redeem his pledge, most honourably. He drew back the bolts with a
+trembling hand, and opened the door.
+
+For a second or two, Oliver glanced up the street, and down the street,
+and over the way: impressed with the belief that the unknown, who had
+addressed him through the key-hole, had walked a few paces off, to warm
+himself; for nobody did he see but a big charity-boy, sitting on a post
+in front of the house, eating a slice of bread and butter: which he cut
+into wedges, the size of his mouth, with a clasp-knife, and then
+consumed with great dexterity.
+
+“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Oliver at length: seeing that no other
+visitor made his appearance; “did you knock?”
+
+“I kicked,” replied the charity-boy.
+
+“Did you want a coffin, sir?” inquired Oliver, innocently.
+
+At this, the charity-boy looked monstrous fierce; and said that Oliver
+would want one before long, if he cut jokes with his superiors in that
+way.
+
+“Yer don’t know who I am, I suppose, Work’us?” said the charity-boy, in
+continuation: descending from the top of the post, meanwhile, with
+edifying gravity.
+
+“No, sir,” rejoined Oliver.
+
+“I’m Mister Noah Claypole,” said the charity-boy, “and you’re under me.
+Take down the shutters, yer idle young ruffian!” With this, Mr.
+Claypole administered a kick to Oliver, and entered the shop with a
+dignified air, which did him great credit. It is difficult for a
+large-headed, small-eyed youth, of lumbering make and heavy
+countenance, to look dignified under any circumstances; but it is more
+especially so, when superadded to these personal attractions are a red
+nose and yellow smalls.
+
+Oliver, having taken down the shutters, and broken a pane of glass in
+his effort to stagger away beneath the weight of the first one to a
+small court at the side of the house in which they were kept during the
+day, was graciously assisted by Noah: who having consoled him with the
+assurance that “he’d catch it,” condescended to help him. Mr.
+Sowerberry came down soon after. Shortly afterwards, Mrs. Sowerberry
+appeared. Oliver having “caught it,” in fulfilment of Noah’s
+prediction, followed that young gentleman down the stairs to breakfast.
+
+“Come near the fire, Noah,” said Charlotte. “I saved a nice little bit
+of bacon for you from master’s breakfast. Oliver, shut that door at
+Mister Noah’s back, and take them bits that I’ve put out on the cover
+of the bread-pan. There’s your tea; take it away to that box, and drink
+it there, and make haste, for they’ll want you to mind the shop. D’ye
+hear?”
+
+“D’ye hear, Work’us?” said Noah Claypole.
+
+“Lor, Noah!” said Charlotte, “what a rum creature you are! Why don’t
+you let the boy alone?”
+
+“Let him alone!” said Noah. “Why everybody lets him alone enough, for
+the matter of that. Neither his father nor his mother will ever
+interfere with him. All his relations let him have his own way pretty
+well. Eh, Charlotte? He! he! he!”
+
+“Oh, you queer soul!” said Charlotte, bursting into a hearty laugh, in
+which she was joined by Noah; after which they both looked scornfully
+at poor Oliver Twist, as he sat shivering on the box in the coldest
+corner of the room, and ate the stale pieces which had been specially
+reserved for him.
+
+Noah was a charity-boy, but not a workhouse orphan. No chance-child was
+he, for he could trace his genealogy all the way back to his parents,
+who lived hard by; his mother being a washerwoman, and his father a
+drunken soldier, discharged with a wooden leg, and a diurnal pension of
+twopence-halfpenny and an unstateable fraction. The shop-boys in the
+neighbourhood had long been in the habit of branding Noah in the public
+streets, with the ignominious epithets of “leathers,” “charity,” and
+the like; and Noah had bourne them without reply. But, now that fortune
+had cast in his way a nameless orphan, at whom even the meanest could
+point the finger of scorn, he retorted on him with interest. This
+affords charming food for contemplation. It shows us what a beautiful
+thing human nature may be made to be; and how impartially the same
+amiable qualities are developed in the finest lord and the dirtiest
+charity-boy.
+
+Oliver had been sojourning at the undertaker’s some three weeks or a
+month. Mr. and Mrs. Sowerberry—the shop being shut up—were taking their
+supper in the little back-parlour, when Mr. Sowerberry, after several
+deferential glances at his wife, said,
+
+“My dear—” He was going to say more; but, Mrs. Sowerberry looking up,
+with a peculiarly unpropitious aspect, he stopped short.
+
+“Well,” said Mrs. Sowerberry, sharply.
+
+“Nothing, my dear, nothing,” said Mr. Sowerberry.
+
+“Ugh, you brute!” said Mrs. Sowerberry.
+
+“Not at all, my dear,” said Mr. Sowerberry humbly. “I thought you
+didn’t want to hear, my dear. I was only going to say—”
+
+“Oh, don’t tell me what you were going to say,” interposed Mrs.
+Sowerberry. “I am nobody; don’t consult me, pray. _I_ don’t want to
+intrude upon your secrets.” As Mrs. Sowerberry said this, she gave an
+hysterical laugh, which threatened violent consequences.
+
+“But, my dear,” said Sowerberry, “I want to ask your advice.”
+
+“No, no, don’t ask mine,” replied Mrs. Sowerberry, in an affecting
+manner: “ask somebody else’s.” Here, there was another hysterical
+laugh, which frightened Mr. Sowerberry very much. This is a very common
+and much-approved matrimonial course of treatment, which is often very
+effective. It at once reduced Mr. Sowerberry to begging, as a special
+favour, to be allowed to say what Mrs. Sowerberry was most curious to
+hear. After a short duration, the permission was most graciously
+conceded.
+
+“It’s only about young Twist, my dear,” said Mr. Sowerberry. “A very
+good-looking boy, that, my dear.”
+
+“He need be, for he eats enough,” observed the lady.
+
+“There’s an expression of melancholy in his face, my dear,” resumed Mr.
+Sowerberry, “which is very interesting. He would make a delightful
+mute, my love.”
+
+Mrs. Sowerberry looked up with an expression of considerable
+wonderment. Mr. Sowerberry remarked it and, without allowing time for
+any observation on the good lady’s part, proceeded.
+
+“I don’t mean a regular mute to attend grown-up people, my dear, but
+only for children’s practice. It would be very new to have a mute in
+proportion, my dear. You may depend upon it, it would have a superb
+effect.”
+
+Mrs. Sowerberry, who had a good deal of taste in the undertaking way,
+was much struck by the novelty of this idea; but, as it would have been
+compromising her dignity to have said so, under existing circumstances,
+she merely inquired, with much sharpness, why such an obvious
+suggestion had not presented itself to her husband’s mind before? Mr.
+Sowerberry rightly construed this, as an acquiescence in his
+proposition; it was speedily determined, therefore, that Oliver should
+be at once initiated into the mysteries of the trade; and, with this
+view, that he should accompany his master on the very next occasion of
+his services being required.
+
+The occasion was not long in coming. Half an hour after breakfast next
+morning, Mr. Bumble entered the shop; and supporting his cane against
+the counter, drew forth his large leathern pocket-book: from which he
+selected a small scrap of paper, which he handed over to Sowerberry.
+
+“Aha!” said the undertaker, glancing over it with a lively countenance;
+“an order for a coffin, eh?”
+
+“For a coffin first, and a porochial funeral afterwards,” replied Mr.
+Bumble, fastening the strap of the leathern pocket-book: which, like
+himself, was very corpulent.
+
+“Bayton,” said the undertaker, looking from the scrap of paper to Mr.
+Bumble. “I never heard the name before.”
+
+Bumble shook his head, as he replied, “Obstinate people, Mr.
+Sowerberry; very obstinate. Proud, too, I’m afraid, sir.”
+
+“Proud, eh?” exclaimed Mr. Sowerberry with a sneer. “Come, that’s too
+much.”
+
+“Oh, it’s sickening,” replied the beadle. “Antimonial, Mr. Sowerberry!”
+
+“So it is,” acquiesced the undertaker.
+
+“We only heard of the family the night before last,” said the beadle;
+“and we shouldn’t have known anything about them, then, only a woman
+who lodges in the same house made an application to the porochial
+committee for them to send the porochial surgeon to see a woman as was
+very bad. He had gone out to dinner; but his ’prentice (which is a very
+clever lad) sent ’em some medicine in a blacking-bottle, offhand.”
+
+“Ah, there’s promptness,” said the undertaker.
+
+“Promptness, indeed!” replied the beadle. “But what’s the consequence;
+what’s the ungrateful behaviour of these rebels, sir? Why, the husband
+sends back word that the medicine won’t suit his wife’s complaint, and
+so she shan’t take it—says she shan’t take it, sir! Good, strong,
+wholesome medicine, as was given with great success to two Irish
+labourers and a coal-heaver, only a week before—sent ’em for nothing,
+with a blackin’-bottle in,—and he sends back word that she shan’t take
+it, sir!”
+
+As the atrocity presented itself to Mr. Bumble’s mind in full force, he
+struck the counter sharply with his cane, and became flushed with
+indignation.
+
+“Well,” said the undertaker, “I ne—ver—did—”
+
+“Never did, sir!” ejaculated the beadle. “No, nor nobody never did; but
+now she’s dead, we’ve got to bury her; and that’s the direction; and
+the sooner it’s done, the better.”
+
+Thus saying, Mr. Bumble put on his cocked hat wrong side first, in a
+fever of parochial excitement; and flounced out of the shop.
+
+“Why, he was so angry, Oliver, that he forgot even to ask after you!”
+said Mr. Sowerberry, looking after the beadle as he strode down the
+street.
+
+“Yes, sir,” replied Oliver, who had carefully kept himself out of
+sight, during the interview; and who was shaking from head to foot at
+the mere recollection of the sound of Mr. Bumble’s voice.
+
+He needn’t haven taken the trouble to shrink from Mr. Bumble’s glance,
+however; for that functionary, on whom the prediction of the gentleman
+in the white waistcoat had made a very strong impression, thought that
+now the undertaker had got Oliver upon trial the subject was better
+avoided, until such time as he should be firmly bound for seven years,
+and all danger of his being returned upon the hands of the parish
+should be thus effectually and legally overcome.
+
+“Well,” said Mr. Sowerberry, taking up his hat, “the sooner this job is
+done, the better. Noah, look after the shop. Oliver, put on your cap,
+and come with me.” Oliver obeyed, and followed his master on his
+professional mission.
+
+They walked on, for some time, through the most crowded and densely
+inhabited part of the town; and then, striking down a narrow street
+more dirty and miserable than any they had yet passed through, paused
+to look for the house which was the object of their search. The houses
+on either side were high and large, but very old, and tenanted by
+people of the poorest class: as their neglected appearance would have
+sufficiently denoted, without the concurrent testimony afforded by the
+squalid looks of the few men and women who, with folded arms and bodies
+half doubled, occasionally skulked along. A great many of the tenements
+had shop-fronts; but these were fast closed, and mouldering away; only
+the upper rooms being inhabited. Some houses which had become insecure
+from age and decay, were prevented from falling into the street, by
+huge beams of wood reared against the walls, and firmly planted in the
+road; but even these crazy dens seemed to have been selected as the
+nightly haunts of some houseless wretches, for many of the rough boards
+which supplied the place of door and window, were wrenched from their
+positions, to afford an aperture wide enough for the passage of a human
+body. The kennel was stagnant and filthy. The very rats, which here and
+there lay putrefying in its rottenness, were hideous with famine.
+
+There was neither knocker nor bell-handle at the open door where Oliver
+and his master stopped; so, groping his way cautiously through the dark
+passage, and bidding Oliver keep close to him and not be afraid the
+undertaker mounted to the top of the first flight of stairs. Stumbling
+against a door on the landing, he rapped at it with his knuckles.
+
+It was opened by a young girl of thirteen or fourteen. The undertaker
+at once saw enough of what the room contained, to know it was the
+apartment to which he had been directed. He stepped in; Oliver followed
+him.
+
+There was no fire in the room; but a man was crouching, mechanically,
+over the empty stove. An old woman, too, had drawn a low stool to the
+cold hearth, and was sitting beside him. There were some ragged
+children in another corner; and in a small recess, opposite the door,
+there lay upon the ground, something covered with an old blanket.
+Oliver shuddered as he cast his eyes toward the place, and crept
+involuntarily closer to his master; for though it was covered up, the
+boy felt that it was a corpse.
+
+The man’s face was thin and very pale; his hair and beard were grizzly;
+his eyes were bloodshot. The old woman’s face was wrinkled; her two
+remaining teeth protruded over her under lip; and her eyes were bright
+and piercing. Oliver was afraid to look at either her or the man. They
+seemed so like the rats he had seen outside.
+
+“Nobody shall go near her,” said the man, starting fiercely up, as the
+undertaker approached the recess. “Keep back! Damn you, keep back, if
+you’ve a life to lose!”
+
+“Nonsense, my good man,” said the undertaker, who was pretty well used
+to misery in all its shapes. “Nonsense!”
+
+“I tell you,” said the man: clenching his hands, and stamping furiously
+on the floor,—“I tell you I won’t have her put into the ground. She
+couldn’t rest there. The worms would worry her—not eat her—she is so
+worn away.”
+
+The undertaker offered no reply to this raving; but producing a tape
+from his pocket, knelt down for a moment by the side of the body.
+
+“Ah!” said the man: bursting into tears, and sinking on his knees at
+the feet of the dead woman; “kneel down, kneel down—kneel round her,
+every one of you, and mark my words! I say she was starved to death. I
+never knew how bad she was, till the fever came upon her; and then her
+bones were starting through the skin. There was neither fire nor
+candle; she died in the dark—in the dark! She couldn’t even see her
+children’s faces, though we heard her gasping out their names. I begged
+for her in the streets: and they sent me to prison. When I came back,
+she was dying; and all the blood in my heart has dried up, for they
+starved her to death. I swear it before the God that saw it! They
+starved her!” He twined his hands in his hair; and, with a loud scream,
+rolled grovelling upon the floor: his eyes fixed, and the foam covering
+his lips.
+
+The terrified children cried bitterly; but the old woman, who had
+hitherto remained as quiet as if she had been wholly deaf to all that
+passed, menaced them into silence. Having unloosened the cravat of the
+man who still remained extended on the ground, she tottered towards the
+undertaker.
+
+“She was my daughter,” said the old woman, nodding her head in the
+direction of the corpse; and speaking with an idiotic leer, more
+ghastly than even the presence of death in such a place. “Lord, Lord!
+Well, it _is_ strange that I who gave birth to her, and was a woman
+then, should be alive and merry now, and she lying there: so cold and
+stiff! Lord, Lord!—to think of it; it’s as good as a play—as good as a
+play!”
+
+As the wretched creature mumbled and chuckled in her hideous merriment,
+the undertaker turned to go away.
+
+“Stop, stop!” said the old woman in a loud whisper. “Will she be buried
+to-morrow, or next day, or to-night? I laid her out; and I must walk,
+you know. Send me a large cloak: a good warm one: for it is bitter
+cold. We should have cake and wine, too, before we go! Never mind; send
+some bread—only a loaf of bread and a cup of water. Shall we have some
+bread, dear?” she said eagerly: catching at the undertaker’s coat, as
+he once more moved towards the door.
+
+“Yes, yes,” said the undertaker,”of course. Anything you like!” He
+disengaged himself from the old woman’s grasp; and, drawing Oliver
+after him, hurried away.
+
+The next day, (the family having been meanwhile relieved with a
+half-quartern loaf and a piece of cheese, left with them by Mr. Bumble
+himself,) Oliver and his master returned to the miserable abode; where
+Mr. Bumble had already arrived, accompanied by four men from the
+workhouse, who were to act as bearers. An old black cloak had been
+thrown over the rags of the old woman and the man; and the bare coffin
+having been screwed down, was hoisted on the shoulders of the bearers,
+and carried into the street.
+
+“Now, you must put your best leg foremost, old lady!” whispered
+Sowerberry in the old woman’s ear; “we are rather late; and it won’t
+do, to keep the clergyman waiting. Move on, my men,—as quick as you
+like!”
+
+Thus directed, the bearers trotted on under their light burden; and the
+two mourners kept as near them, as they could. Mr. Bumble and
+Sowerberry walked at a good smart pace in front; and Oliver, whose legs
+were not so long as his master’s, ran by the side.
+
+There was not so great a necessity for hurrying as Mr. Sowerberry had
+anticipated, however; for when they reached the obscure corner of the
+churchyard in which the nettles grew, and where the parish graves were
+made, the clergyman had not arrived; and the clerk, who was sitting by
+the vestry-room fire, seemed to think it by no means improbable that it
+might be an hour or so, before he came. So, they put the bier on the
+brink of the grave; and the two mourners waited patiently in the damp
+clay, with a cold rain drizzling down, while the ragged boys whom the
+spectacle had attracted into the churchyard played a noisy game at
+hide-and-seek among the tombstones, or varied their amusements by
+jumping backwards and forwards over the coffin. Mr. Sowerberry and
+Bumble, being personal friends of the clerk, sat by the fire with him,
+and read the paper.
+
+At length, after a lapse of something more than an hour, Mr. Bumble,
+and Sowerberry, and the clerk, were seen running towards the grave.
+Immediately afterwards, the clergyman appeared: putting on his surplice
+as he came along. Mr. Bumble then thrashed a boy or two, to keep up
+appearances; and the reverend gentleman, having read as much of the
+burial service as could be compressed into four minutes, gave his
+surplice to the clerk, and walked away again.
+
+“Now, Bill!” said Sowerberry to the grave-digger. “Fill up!”
+
+It was no very difficult task, for the grave was so full, that the
+uppermost coffin was within a few feet of the surface. The grave-digger
+shovelled in the earth; stamped it loosely down with his feet:
+shouldered his spade; and walked off, followed by the boys, who
+murmured very loud complaints at the fun being over so soon.
+
+“Come, my good fellow!” said Bumble, tapping the man on the back. “They
+want to shut up the yard.”
+
+The man who had never once moved, since he had taken his station by the
+grave side, started, raised his head, stared at the person who had
+addressed him, walked forward for a few paces; and fell down in a
+swoon. The crazy old woman was too much occupied in bewailing the loss
+of her cloak (which the undertaker had taken off), to pay him any
+attention; so they threw a can of cold water over him; and when he came
+to, saw him safely out of the churchyard, locked the gate, and departed
+on their different ways.
+
+“Well, Oliver,” said Sowerberry, as they walked home, “how do you like
+it?”
+
+“Pretty well, thank you, sir” replied Oliver, with considerable
+hesitation. “Not very much, sir.”
+
+“Ah, you’ll get used to it in time, Oliver,” said Sowerberry. “Nothing
+when you _are_ used to it, my boy.”
+
+Oliver wondered, in his own mind, whether it had taken a very long time
+to get Mr. Sowerberry used to it. But he thought it better not to ask
+the question; and walked back to the shop: thinking over all he had
+seen and heard.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER VI.
+OLIVER, BEING GOADED BY THE TAUNTS OF NOAH, ROUSES INTO ACTION, AND
+RATHER ASTONISHES HIM
+
+
+The month’s trial over, Oliver was formally apprenticed. It was a nice
+sickly season just at this time. In commercial phrase, coffins were
+looking up; and, in the course of a few weeks, Oliver acquired a great
+deal of experience. The success of Mr. Sowerberry’s ingenious
+speculation, exceeded even his most sanguine hopes. The oldest
+inhabitants recollected no period at which measles had been so
+prevalent, or so fatal to infant existence; and many were the mournful
+processions which little Oliver headed, in a hat-band reaching down to
+his knees, to the indescribable admiration and emotion of all the
+mothers in the town. As Oliver accompanied his master in most of his
+adult expeditions too, in order that he might acquire that equanimity
+of demeanour and full command of nerve which was essential to a
+finished undertaker, he had many opportunities of observing the
+beautiful resignation and fortitude with which some strong-minded
+people bear their trials and losses.
+
+For instance; when Sowerberry had an order for the burial of some rich
+old lady or gentleman, who was surrounded by a great number of nephews
+and nieces, who had been perfectly inconsolable during the previous
+illness, and whose grief had been wholly irrepressible even on the most
+public occasions, they would be as happy among themselves as need
+be—quite cheerful and contented—conversing together with as much
+freedom and gaiety, as if nothing whatever had happened to disturb
+them. Husbands, too, bore the loss of their wives with the most heroic
+calmness. Wives, again, put on weeds for their husbands, as if, so far
+from grieving in the garb of sorrow, they had made up their minds to
+render it as becoming and attractive as possible. It was observable,
+too, that ladies and gentlemen who were in passions of anguish during
+the ceremony of interment, recovered almost as soon as they reached
+home, and became quite composed before the tea-drinking was over. All
+this was very pleasant and improving to see; and Oliver beheld it with
+great admiration.
+
+That Oliver Twist was moved to resignation by the example of these good
+people, I cannot, although I am his biographer, undertake to affirm
+with any degree of confidence; but I can most distinctly say, that for
+many months he continued meekly to submit to the domination and
+ill-treatment of Noah Claypole: who used him far worse than before, now
+that his jealousy was roused by seeing the new boy promoted to the
+black stick and hatband, while he, the old one, remained stationary in
+the muffin-cap and leathers. Charlotte treated him ill, because Noah
+did; and Mrs. Sowerberry was his decided enemy, because Mr. Sowerberry
+was disposed to be his friend; so, between these three on one side, and
+a glut of funerals on the other, Oliver was not altogether as
+comfortable as the hungry pig was, when he was shut up, by mistake, in
+the grain department of a brewery.
+
+And now, I come to a very important passage in Oliver’s history; for I
+have to record an act, slight and unimportant perhaps in appearance,
+but which indirectly produced a material change in all his future
+prospects and proceedings.
+
+One day, Oliver and Noah had descended into the kitchen at the usual
+dinner-hour, to banquet upon a small joint of mutton—a pound and a half
+of the worst end of the neck—when Charlotte being called out of the
+way, there ensued a brief interval of time, which Noah Claypole, being
+hungry and vicious, considered he could not possibly devote to a
+worthier purpose than aggravating and tantalising young Oliver Twist.
+
+Intent upon this innocent amusement, Noah put his feet on the
+table-cloth; and pulled Oliver’s hair; and twitched his ears; and
+expressed his opinion that he was a “sneak”; and furthermore announced
+his intention of coming to see him hanged, whenever that desirable
+event should take place; and entered upon various topics of petty
+annoyance, like a malicious and ill-conditioned charity-boy as he was.
+But, making Oliver cry, Noah attempted to be more facetious still; and
+in his attempt, did what many sometimes do to this day, when they want
+to be funny. He got rather personal.
+
+“Work’us,” said Noah, “how’s your mother?”
+
+“She’s dead,” replied Oliver; “don’t you say anything about her to me!”
+
+Oliver’s colour rose as he said this; he breathed quickly; and there
+was a curious working of the mouth and nostrils, which Mr. Claypole
+thought must be the immediate precursor of a violent fit of crying.
+Under this impression he returned to the charge.
+
+“What did she die of, Work’us?” said Noah.
+
+“Of a broken heart, some of our old nurses told me,” replied Oliver:
+more as if he were talking to himself, than answering Noah. “I think I
+know what it must be to die of that!”
+
+“Tol de rol lol lol, right fol lairy, Work’us,” said Noah, as a tear
+rolled down Oliver’s cheek. “What’s set you a snivelling now?”
+
+“Not _you_,” replied Oliver, sharply. “There; that’s enough. Don’t say
+anything more to me about her; you’d better not!”
+
+“Better not!” exclaimed Noah. “Well! Better not! Work’us, don’t be
+impudent. _Your_ mother, too! She was a nice ’un she was. Oh, Lor!” And
+here, Noah nodded his head expressively; and curled up as much of his
+small red nose as muscular action could collect together, for the
+occasion.
+
+“Yer know, Work’us,” continued Noah, emboldened by Oliver’s silence,
+and speaking in a jeering tone of affected pity: of all tones the most
+annoying: “Yer know, Work’us, it can’t be helped now; and of course yer
+couldn’t help it then; and I am very sorry for it; and I’m sure we all
+are, and pity yer very much. But yer must know, Work’us, yer mother was
+a regular right-down bad ’un.”
+
+“What did you say?” inquired Oliver, looking up very quickly.
+
+“A regular right-down bad ’un, Work’us,” replied Noah, coolly. “And
+it’s a great deal better, Work’us, that she died when she did, or else
+she’d have been hard labouring in Bridewell, or transported, or hung;
+which is more likely than either, isn’t it?”
+
+Crimson with fury, Oliver started up; overthrew the chair and table;
+seized Noah by the throat; shook him, in the violence of his rage, till
+his teeth chattered in his head; and collecting his whole force into
+one heavy blow, felled him to the ground.
+
+A minute ago, the boy had looked the quiet child, mild, dejected
+creature that harsh treatment had made him. But his spirit was roused
+at last; the cruel insult to his dead mother had set his blood on fire.
+His breast heaved; his attitude was erect; his eye bright and vivid;
+his whole person changed, as he stood glaring over the cowardly
+tormentor who now lay crouching at his feet; and defied him with an
+energy he had never known before.
+
+“He’ll murder me!” blubbered Noah. “Charlotte! missis! Here’s the new
+boy a murdering of me! Help! help! Oliver’s gone mad! Char—lotte!”
+
+Noah’s shouts were responded to, by a loud scream from Charlotte, and a
+louder from Mrs. Sowerberry; the former of whom rushed into the kitchen
+by a side-door, while the latter paused on the staircase till she was
+quite certain that it was consistent with the preservation of human
+life, to come further down.
+
+“Oh, you little wretch!” screamed Charlotte: seizing Oliver with her
+utmost force, which was about equal to that of a moderately strong man
+in particularly good training. “Oh, you little un-grate-ful,
+mur-de-rous, hor-rid villain!” And between every syllable, Charlotte
+gave Oliver a blow with all her might: accompanying it with a scream,
+for the benefit of society.
+
+Charlotte’s fist was by no means a light one; but, lest it should not
+be effectual in calming Oliver’s wrath, Mrs. Sowerberry plunged into
+the kitchen, and assisted to hold him with one hand, while she
+scratched his face with the other. In this favourable position of
+affairs, Noah rose from the ground, and pommelled him behind.
+
+This was rather too violent exercise to last long. When they were all
+wearied out, and could tear and beat no longer, they dragged Oliver,
+struggling and shouting, but nothing daunted, into the dust-cellar, and
+there locked him up. This being done, Mrs. Sowerberry sunk into a
+chair, and burst into tears.
+
+“Bless her, she’s going off!” said Charlotte. “A glass of water, Noah,
+dear. Make haste!”
+
+“Oh! Charlotte,” said Mrs. Sowerberry: speaking as well as she could,
+through a deficiency of breath, and a sufficiency of cold water, which
+Noah had poured over her head and shoulders. “Oh! Charlotte, what a
+mercy we have not all been murdered in our beds!”
+
+“Ah! mercy indeed, ma’am,” was the reply. I only hope this’ll teach
+master not to have any more of these dreadful creatures, that are born
+to be murderers and robbers from their very cradle. Poor Noah! He was
+all but killed, ma’am, when I come in.”
+
+“Poor fellow!” said Mrs. Sowerberry: looking piteously on the
+charity-boy.
+
+Noah, whose top waistcoat-button might have been somewhere on a level
+with the crown of Oliver’s head, rubbed his eyes with the inside of his
+wrists while this commiseration was bestowed upon him, and performed
+some affecting tears and sniffs.
+
+“What’s to be done!” exclaimed Mrs. Sowerberry. “Your master’s not at
+home; there’s not a man in the house, and he’ll kick that door down in
+ten minutes.” Oliver’s vigorous plunges against the bit of timber in
+question, rendered this occurance highly probable.
+
+“Dear, dear! I don’t know, ma’am,” said Charlotte, “unless we send for
+the police-officers.”
+
+“Or the millingtary,” suggested Mr. Claypole.
+
+“No, no,” said Mrs. Sowerberry: bethinking herself of Oliver’s old
+friend. “Run to Mr. Bumble, Noah, and tell him to come here directly,
+and not to lose a minute; never mind your cap! Make haste! You can hold
+a knife to that black eye, as you run along. It’ll keep the swelling
+down.”
+
+Noah stopped to make no reply, but started off at his fullest speed;
+and very much it astonished the people who were out walking, to see a
+charity-boy tearing through the streets pell-mell, with no cap on his
+head, and a clasp-knife at his eye.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER VII.
+OLIVER CONTINUES REFRACTORY
+
+
+Noah Claypole ran along the streets at his swiftest pace, and paused
+not once for breath, until he reached the workhouse-gate. Having rested
+here, for a minute or so, to collect a good burst of sobs and an
+imposing show of tears and terror, he knocked loudly at the wicket; and
+presented such a rueful face to the aged pauper who opened it, that
+even he, who saw nothing but rueful faces about him at the best of
+times, started back in astonishment.
+
+“Why, what’s the matter with the boy!” said the old pauper.
+
+“Mr. Bumble! Mr. Bumble!” cried Noah, with well-affected dismay: and in
+tones so loud and agitated, that they not only caught the ear of Mr.
+Bumble himself, who happened to be hard by, but alarmed him so much
+that he rushed into the yard without his cocked hat,—which is a very
+curious and remarkable circumstance: as showing that even a beadle,
+acted upon a sudden and powerful impulse, may be afflicted with a
+momentary visitation of loss of self-possession, and forgetfulness of
+personal dignity.
+
+“Oh, Mr. Bumble, sir!” said Noah: “Oliver, sir,—Oliver has—”
+
+“What? What?” interposed Mr. Bumble: with a gleam of pleasure in his
+metallic eyes. “Not run away; he hasn’t run away, has he, Noah?”
+
+“No, sir, no. Not run away, sir, but he’s turned wicious,” replied
+Noah. “He tried to murder me, sir; and then he tried to murder
+Charlotte; and then missis. Oh! what dreadful pain it is! Such agony,
+please, sir!” And here, Noah writhed and twisted his body into an
+extensive variety of eel-like positions; thereby giving Mr. Bumble to
+understand that, from the violent and sanguinary onset of Oliver Twist,
+he had sustained severe internal injury and damage, from which he was
+at that moment suffering the acutest torture.
+
+When Noah saw that the intelligence he communicated perfectly paralysed
+Mr. Bumble, he imparted additional effect thereunto, by bewailing his
+dreadful wounds ten times louder than before; and when he observed a
+gentleman in a white waistcoat crossing the yard, he was more tragic in
+his lamentations than ever: rightly conceiving it highly expedient to
+attract the notice, and rouse the indignation, of the gentleman
+aforesaid.
+
+The gentleman’s notice was very soon attracted; for he had not walked
+three paces, when he turned angrily round, and inquired what that young
+cur was howling for, and why Mr. Bumble did not favour him with
+something which would render the series of vocular exclamations so
+designated, an involuntary process?
+
+“It’s a poor boy from the free-school, sir,” replied Mr. Bumble, “who
+has been nearly murdered—all but murdered, sir,—by young Twist.”
+
+“By Jove!” exclaimed the gentleman in the white waistcoat, stopping
+short. “I knew it! I felt a strange presentiment from the very first,
+that that audacious young savage would come to be hung!”
+
+“He has likewise attempted, sir, to murder the female servant,” said
+Mr. Bumble, with a face of ashy paleness.
+
+“And his missis,” interposed Mr. Claypole.
+
+“And his master, too, I think you said, Noah?” added Mr. Bumble.
+
+“No! he’s out, or he would have murdered him,” replied Noah. “He said
+he wanted to.”
+
+“Ah! Said he wanted to, did he, my boy?” inquired the gentleman in the
+white waistcoat.
+
+“Yes, sir,” replied Noah. “And please, sir, missis wants to know
+whether Mr. Bumble can spare time to step up there, directly, and flog
+him—’cause master’s out.”
+
+“Certainly, my boy; certainly,” said the gentleman in the white
+waistcoat: smiling benignly, and patting Noah’s head, which was about
+three inches higher than his own. “You’re a good boy—a very good boy.
+Here’s a penny for you. Bumble, just step up to Sowerberry’s with your
+cane, and see what’s best to be done. Don’t spare him, Bumble.”
+
+“No, I will not, sir,” replied the beadle. And the cocked hat and cane
+having been, by this time, adjusted to their owner’s satisfaction, Mr.
+Bumble and Noah Claypole betook themselves with all speed to the
+undertaker’s shop.
+
+Here the position of affairs had not at all improved. Sowerberry had
+not yet returned, and Oliver continued to kick, with undiminished
+vigour, at the cellar-door. The accounts of his ferocity as related by
+Mrs. Sowerberry and Charlotte, were of so startling a nature, that Mr.
+Bumble judged it prudent to parley, before opening the door. With this
+view he gave a kick at the outside, by way of prelude; and, then,
+applying his mouth to the keyhole, said, in a deep and impressive tone:
+
+“Oliver!”
+
+“Come; you let me out!” replied Oliver, from the inside.
+
+“Do you know this here voice, Oliver?” said Mr. Bumble.
+
+“Yes,” replied Oliver.
+
+“Ain’t you afraid of it, sir? Ain’t you a-trembling while I speak,
+sir?” said Mr. Bumble.
+
+“No!” replied Oliver, boldly.
+
+An answer so different from the one he had expected to elicit, and was
+in the habit of receiving, staggered Mr. Bumble not a little. He
+stepped back from the keyhole; drew himself up to his full height; and
+looked from one to another of the three bystanders, in mute
+astonishment.
+
+“Oh, you know, Mr. Bumble, he must be mad,” said Mrs. Sowerberry.
+
+“No boy in half his senses could venture to speak so to you.”
+
+“It’s not Madness, ma’am,” replied Mr. Bumble, after a few moments of
+deep meditation. “It’s Meat.”
+
+“What?” exclaimed Mrs. Sowerberry.
+
+“Meat, ma’am, meat,” replied Bumble, with stern emphasis. “You’ve
+over-fed him, ma’am. You’ve raised a artificial soul and spirit in him,
+ma’am unbecoming a person of his condition: as the board, Mrs.
+Sowerberry, who are practical philosophers, will tell you. What have
+paupers to do with soul or spirit? It’s quite enough that we let ’em
+have live bodies. If you had kept the boy on gruel, ma’am, this would
+never have happened.”
+
+“Dear, dear!” ejaculated Mrs. Sowerberry, piously raising her eyes to
+the kitchen ceiling: “this comes of being liberal!”
+
+The liberality of Mrs. Sowerberry to Oliver, had consisted of a profuse
+bestowal upon him of all the dirty odds and ends which nobody else
+would eat; so there was a great deal of meekness and self-devotion in
+her voluntarily remaining under Mr. Bumble’s heavy accusation. Of
+which, to do her justice, she was wholly innocent, in thought, word, or
+deed.
+
+“Ah!” said Mr. Bumble, when the lady brought her eyes down to earth
+again; “the only thing that can be done now, that I know of, is to
+leave him in the cellar for a day or so, till he’s a little starved
+down; and then to take him out, and keep him on gruel all through the
+apprenticeship. He comes of a bad family. Excitable natures, Mrs.
+Sowerberry! Both the nurse and doctor said, that that mother of his
+made her way here, against difficulties and pain that would have killed
+any well-disposed woman, weeks before.”
+
+At this point of Mr. Bumble’s discourse, Oliver, just hearing enough to
+know that some allusion was being made to his mother, recommenced
+kicking, with a violence that rendered every other sound inaudible.
+Sowerberry returned at this juncture. Oliver’s offence having been
+explained to him, with such exaggerations as the ladies thought best
+calculated to rouse his ire, he unlocked the cellar-door in a
+twinkling, and dragged his rebellious apprentice out, by the collar.
+
+Oliver’s clothes had been torn in the beating he had received; his face
+was bruised and scratched; and his hair scattered over his forehead.
+The angry flush had not disappeared, however; and when he was pulled
+out of his prison, he scowled boldly on Noah, and looked quite
+undismayed.
+
+“Now, you are a nice young fellow, ain’t you?” said Sowerberry; giving
+Oliver a shake, and a box on the ear.
+
+“He called my mother names,” replied Oliver.
+
+“Well, and what if he did, you little ungrateful wretch?” said Mrs.
+Sowerberry. “She deserved what he said, and worse.”
+
+“She didn’t” said Oliver.
+
+“She did,” said Mrs. Sowerberry.
+
+“It’s a lie!” said Oliver.
+
+Mrs. Sowerberry burst into a flood of tears.
+
+This flood of tears left Mr. Sowerberry no alternative. If he had
+hesitated for one instant to punish Oliver most severely, it must be
+quite clear to every experienced reader that he would have been,
+according to all precedents in disputes of matrimony established, a
+brute, an unnatural husband, an insulting creature, a base imitation of
+a man, and various other agreeable characters too numerous for recital
+within the limits of this chapter. To do him justice, he was, as far as
+his power went—it was not very extensive—kindly disposed towards the
+boy; perhaps, because it was his interest to be so; perhaps, because
+his wife disliked him. The flood of tears, however, left him no
+resource; so he at once gave him a drubbing, which satisfied even Mrs.
+Sowerberry herself, and rendered Mr. Bumble’s subsequent application of
+the parochial cane, rather unnecessary. For the rest of the day, he was
+shut up in the back kitchen, in company with a pump and a slice of
+bread; and at night, Mrs. Sowerberry, after making various remarks
+outside the door, by no means complimentary to the memory of his
+mother, looked into the room, and, amidst the jeers and pointings of
+Noah and Charlotte, ordered him upstairs to his dismal bed.
+
+It was not until he was left alone in the silence and stillness of the
+gloomy workshop of the undertaker, that Oliver gave way to the feelings
+which the day’s treatment may be supposed likely to have awakened in a
+mere child. He had listened to their taunts with a look of contempt; he
+had borne the lash without a cry: for he felt that pride swelling in
+his heart which would have kept down a shriek to the last, though they
+had roasted him alive. But now, when there were none to see or hear
+him, he fell upon his knees on the floor; and, hiding his face in his
+hands, wept such tears as, God send for the credit of our nature, few
+so young may ever have cause to pour out before him!
+
+For a long time, Oliver remained motionless in this attitude. The
+candle was burning low in the socket when he rose to his feet. Having
+gazed cautiously round him, and listened intently, he gently undid the
+fastenings of the door, and looked abroad.
+
+It was a cold, dark night. The stars seemed, to the boy’s eyes, farther
+from the earth than he had ever seen them before; there was no wind;
+and the sombre shadows thrown by the trees upon the ground, looked
+sepulchral and death-like, from being so still. He softly reclosed the
+door. Having availed himself of the expiring light of the candle to tie
+up in a handkerchief the few articles of wearing apparel he had, sat
+himself down upon a bench, to wait for morning.
+
+With the first ray of light that struggled through the crevices in the
+shutters, Oliver arose, and again unbarred the door. One timid look
+around—one moment’s pause of hesitation—he had closed it behind him,
+and was in the open street.
+
+He looked to the right and to the left, uncertain whither to fly.
+
+He remembered to have seen the waggons, as they went out, toiling up
+the hill. He took the same route; and arriving at a footpath across the
+fields: which he knew, after some distance, led out again into the
+road; struck into it, and walked quickly on.
+
+Along this same footpath, Oliver well-remembered he had trotted beside
+Mr. Bumble, when he first carried him to the workhouse from the farm.
+His way lay directly in front of the cottage. His heart beat quickly
+when he bethought himself of this; and he half resolved to turn back.
+He had come a long way though, and should lose a great deal of time by
+doing so. Besides, it was so early that there was very little fear of
+his being seen; so he walked on.
+
+He reached the house. There was no appearance of its inmates stirring
+at that early hour. Oliver stopped, and peeped into the garden. A child
+was weeding one of the little beds; as he stopped, he raised his pale
+face and disclosed the features of one of his former companions. Oliver
+felt glad to see him, before he went; for, though younger than himself,
+he had been his little friend and playmate. They had been beaten, and
+starved, and shut up together, many and many a time.
+
+“Hush, Dick!” said Oliver, as the boy ran to the gate, and thrust his
+thin arm between the rails to greet him. “Is any one up?”
+
+“Nobody but me,” replied the child.
+
+“You musn’t say you saw me, Dick,” said Oliver. “I am running away.
+They beat and ill-use me, Dick; and I am going to seek my fortune, some
+long way off. I don’t know where. How pale you are!”
+
+“I heard the doctor tell them I was dying,” replied the child with a
+faint smile. “I am very glad to see you, dear; but don’t stop, don’t
+stop!”
+
+“Yes, yes, I will, to say good-b’ye to you,” replied Oliver. “I shall
+see you again, Dick. I know I shall! You will be well and happy!”
+
+“I hope so,” replied the child. “After I am dead, but not before. I
+know the doctor must be right, Oliver, because I dream so much of
+Heaven, and Angels, and kind faces that I never see when I am awake.
+Kiss me,” said the child, climbing up the low gate, and flinging his
+little arms round Oliver’s neck. “Good-b’ye, dear! God bless you!”
+
+The blessing was from a young child’s lips, but it was the first that
+Oliver had ever heard invoked upon his head; and through the struggles
+and sufferings, and troubles and changes, of his after life, he never
+once forgot it.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER VIII.
+OLIVER WALKS TO LONDON. HE ENCOUNTERS ON THE ROAD A STRANGE SORT OF
+YOUNG GENTLEMAN
+
+
+Oliver reached the stile at which the by-path terminated; and once more
+gained the high-road. It was eight o’clock now. Though he was nearly
+five miles away from the town, he ran, and hid behind the hedges, by
+turns, till noon: fearing that he might be pursued and overtaken. Then
+he sat down to rest by the side of the milestone, and began to think,
+for the first time, where he had better go and try to live.
+
+The stone by which he was seated, bore, in large characters, an
+intimation that it was just seventy miles from that spot to London. The
+name awakened a new train of ideas in the boy’s mind.
+
+London!—that great place!—nobody—not even Mr. Bumble—could ever find
+him there! He had often heard the old men in the workhouse, too, say
+that no lad of spirit need want in London; and that there were ways of
+living in that vast city, which those who had been bred up in country
+parts had no idea of. It was the very place for a homeless boy, who
+must die in the streets unless some one helped him. As these things
+passed through his thoughts, he jumped upon his feet, and again walked
+forward.
+
+He had diminished the distance between himself and London by full four
+miles more, before he recollected how much he must undergo ere he could
+hope to reach his place of destination. As this consideration forced
+itself upon him, he slackened his pace a little, and meditated upon his
+means of getting there. He had a crust of bread, a coarse shirt, and
+two pairs of stockings, in his bundle. He had a penny too—a gift of
+Sowerberry’s after some funeral in which he had acquitted himself more
+than ordinarily well—in his pocket. “A clean shirt,” thought Oliver,
+“is a very comfortable thing; and so are two pairs of darned stockings;
+and so is a penny; but they are small helps to a sixty-five miles’ walk
+in winter time.” But Oliver’s thoughts, like those of most other
+people, although they were extremely ready and active to point out his
+difficulties, were wholly at a loss to suggest any feasible mode of
+surmounting them; so, after a good deal of thinking to no particular
+purpose, he changed his little bundle over to the other shoulder, and
+trudged on.
+
+Oliver walked twenty miles that day; and all that time tasted nothing
+but the crust of dry bread, and a few draughts of water, which he
+begged at the cottage-doors by the road-side. When the night came, he
+turned into a meadow; and, creeping close under a hay-rick, determined
+to lie there, till morning. He felt frightened at first, for the wind
+moaned dismally over the empty fields: and he was cold and hungry, and
+more alone than he had ever felt before. Being very tired with his
+walk, however, he soon fell asleep and forgot his troubles.
+
+He felt cold and stiff, when he got up next morning, and so hungry that
+he was obliged to exchange the penny for a small loaf, in the very
+first village through which he passed. He had walked no more than
+twelve miles, when night closed in again. His feet were sore, and his
+legs so weak that they trembled beneath him. Another night passed in
+the bleak damp air, made him worse; when he set forward on his journey
+next morning he could hardly crawl along.
+
+He waited at the bottom of a steep hill till a stage-coach came up, and
+then begged of the outside passengers; but there were very few who took
+any notice of him: and even those told him to wait till they got to the
+top of the hill, and then let them see how far he could run for a
+halfpenny. Poor Oliver tried to keep up with the coach a little way,
+but was unable to do it, by reason of his fatigue and sore feet. When
+the outsides saw this, they put their halfpence back into their pockets
+again, declaring that he was an idle young dog, and didn’t deserve
+anything; and the coach rattled away and left only a cloud of dust
+behind.
+
+In some villages, large painted boards were fixed up: warning all
+persons who begged within the district, that they would be sent to
+jail. This frightened Oliver very much, and made him glad to get out of
+those villages with all possible expedition. In others, he would stand
+about the inn-yards, and look mournfully at every one who passed: a
+proceeding which generally terminated in the landlady’s ordering one of
+the post-boys who were lounging about, to drive that strange boy out of
+the place, for she was sure he had come to steal something. If he
+begged at a farmer’s house, ten to one but they threatened to set the
+dog on him; and when he showed his nose in a shop, they talked about
+the beadle—which brought Oliver’s heart into his mouth,—very often the
+only thing he had there, for many hours together.
+
+In fact, if it had not been for a good-hearted turnpike-man, and a
+benevolent old lady, Oliver’s troubles would have been shortened by the
+very same process which had put an end to his mother’s; in other words,
+he would most assuredly have fallen dead upon the king’s highway. But
+the turnpike-man gave him a meal of bread and cheese; and the old lady,
+who had a shipwrecked grandson wandering barefoot in some distant part
+of the earth, took pity upon the poor orphan, and gave him what little
+she could afford—and more—with such kind and gentle words, and such
+tears of sympathy and compassion, that they sank deeper into Oliver’s
+soul, than all the sufferings he had ever undergone.
+
+Early on the seventh morning after he had left his native place, Oliver
+limped slowly into the little town of Barnet. The window-shutters were
+closed; the street was empty; not a soul had awakened to the business
+of the day. The sun was rising in all its splendid beauty; but the
+light only served to show the boy his own lonesomeness and desolation,
+as he sat, with bleeding feet and covered with dust, upon a door-step.
+
+By degrees, the shutters were opened; the window-blinds were drawn up;
+and people began passing to and fro. Some few stopped to gaze at Oliver
+for a moment or two, or turned round to stare at him as they hurried
+by; but none relieved him, or troubled themselves to inquire how he
+came there. He had no heart to beg. And there he sat.
+
+He had been crouching on the step for some time: wondering at the great
+number of public-houses (every other house in Barnet was a tavern,
+large or small), gazing listlessly at the coaches as they passed
+through, and thinking how strange it seemed that they could do, with
+ease, in a few hours, what it had taken him a whole week of courage and
+determination beyond his years to accomplish: when he was roused by
+observing that a boy, who had passed him carelessly some minutes
+before, had returned, and was now surveying him most earnestly from the
+opposite side of the way. He took little heed of this at first; but the
+boy remained in the same attitude of close observation so long, that
+Oliver raised his head, and returned his steady look. Upon this, the
+boy crossed over; and walking close up to Oliver, said,
+
+“Hullo, my covey! What’s the row?”
+
+The boy who addressed this inquiry to the young wayfarer, was about his
+own age: but one of the queerest looking boys that Oliver had even
+seen. He was a snub-nosed, flat-browed, common-faced boy enough; and as
+dirty a juvenile as one would wish to see; but he had about him all the
+airs and manners of a man. He was short of his age: with rather
+bow-legs, and little, sharp, ugly eyes. His hat was stuck on the top of
+his head so lightly, that it threatened to fall off every moment—and
+would have done so, very often, if the wearer had not had a knack of
+every now and then giving his head a sudden twitch, which brought it
+back to its old place again. He wore a man’s coat, which reached nearly
+to his heels. He had turned the cuffs back, half-way up his arm, to get
+his hands out of the sleeves: apparently with the ultimate view of
+thrusting them into the pockets of his corduroy trousers; for there he
+kept them. He was, altogether, as roystering and swaggering a young
+gentleman as ever stood four feet six, or something less, in the
+bluchers.
+
+“Hullo, my covey! What’s the row?” said this strange young gentleman to
+Oliver.
+
+“I am very hungry and tired,” replied Oliver: the tears standing in his
+eyes as he spoke. “I have walked a long way. I have been walking these
+seven days.”
+
+“Walking for sivin days!” said the young gentleman. “Oh, I see. Beak’s
+order, eh? But,” he added, noticing Oliver’s look of surprise, “I
+suppose you don’t know what a beak is, my flash com-pan-i-on.”
+
+Oliver mildly replied, that he had always heard a bird’s mouth
+described by the term in question.
+
+“My eyes, how green!” exclaimed the young gentleman. “Why, a beak’s a
+madgst’rate; and when you walk by a beak’s order, it’s not straight
+forerd, but always agoing up, and niver a coming down agin. Was you
+never on the mill?”
+
+“What mill?” inquired Oliver.
+
+“What mill! Why, _the_ mill—the mill as takes up so little room that
+it’ll work inside a Stone Jug; and always goes better when the wind’s
+low with people, than when it’s high; acos then they can’t get workmen.
+But come,” said the young gentleman; “you want grub, and you shall have
+it. I’m at low-water-mark myself—only one bob and a magpie; but, as far
+as it goes, I’ll fork out and stump. Up with you on your pins. There!
+Now then! “Morrice!”
+
+Assisting Oliver to rise, the young gentleman took him to an adjacent
+chandler’s shop, where he purchased a sufficiency of ready-dressed ham
+and a half-quartern loaf, or, as he himself expressed it, “a fourpenny
+bran!” the ham being kept clean and preserved from dust, by the
+ingenious expedient of making a hole in the loaf by pulling out a
+portion of the crumb, and stuffing it therein. Taking the bread under
+his arm, the young gentlman turned into a small public-house, and led
+the way to a tap-room in the rear of the premises. Here, a pot of beer
+was brought in, by direction of the mysterious youth; and Oliver,
+falling to, at his new friend’s bidding, made a long and hearty meal,
+during the progress of which the strange boy eyed him from time to time
+with great attention.
+
+“Going to London?” said the strange boy, when Oliver had at length
+concluded.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Got any lodgings?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Money?”
+
+“No.”
+
+The strange boy whistled; and put his arms into his pockets, as far as
+the big coat-sleeves would let them go.
+
+“Do you live in London?” inquired Oliver.
+
+“Yes. I do, when I’m at home,” replied the boy. “I suppose you want
+some place to sleep in to-night, don’t you?”
+
+“I do, indeed,” answered Oliver. “I have not slept under a roof since I
+left the country.”
+
+“Don’t fret your eyelids on that score,” said the young gentleman.
+“I’ve got to be in London to-night; and I know a ’spectable old
+gentleman as lives there, wot’ll give you lodgings for nothink, and
+never ask for the change—that is, if any genelman he knows interduces
+you. And don’t he know me? Oh, no! Not in the least! By no means.
+Certainly not!”
+
+The young gentleman smiled, as if to intimate that the latter fragments
+of discourse were playfully ironical; and finished the beer as he did
+so.
+
+This unexpected offer of shelter was too tempting to be resisted;
+especially as it was immediately followed up, by the assurance that the
+old gentleman referred to, would doubtless provide Oliver with a
+comfortable place, without loss of time. This led to a more friendly
+and confidential dialogue; from which Oliver discovered that his
+friend’s name was Jack Dawkins, and that he was a peculiar pet and
+protege of the elderly gentleman before mentioned.
+
+Mr. Dawkin’s appearance did not say a vast deal in favour of the
+comforts which his patron’s interest obtained for those whom he took
+under his protection; but, as he had a rather flightly and dissolute
+mode of conversing, and furthermore avowed that among his intimate
+friends he was better known by the sobriquet of “The Artful Dodger,”
+Oliver concluded that, being of a dissipated and careless turn, the
+moral precepts of his benefactor had hitherto been thrown away upon
+him. Under this impression, he secretly resolved to cultivate the good
+opinion of the old gentleman as quickly as possible; and, if he found
+the Dodger incorrigible, as he more than half suspected he should, to
+decline the honour of his farther acquaintance.
+
+As John Dawkins objected to their entering London before nightfall, it
+was nearly eleven o’clock when they reached the turnpike at Islington.
+They crossed from the Angel into St. John’s Road; struck down the small
+street which terminates at Sadler’s Wells Theatre; through Exmouth
+Street and Coppice Row; down the little court by the side of the
+workhouse; across the classic ground which once bore the name of
+Hockley-in-the-Hole; thence into Little Saffron Hill; and so into
+Saffron Hill the Great: along which the Dodger scudded at a rapid pace,
+directing Oliver to follow close at his heels.
+
+Although Oliver had enough to occupy his attention in keeping sight of
+his leader, he could not help bestowing a few hasty glances on either
+side of the way, as he passed along. A dirtier or more wretched place
+he had never seen. The street was very narrow and muddy, and the air
+was impregnated with filthy odours.
+
+There were a good many small shops; but the only stock in trade
+appeared to be heaps of children, who, even at that time of night, were
+crawling in and out at the doors, or screaming from the inside. The
+sole places that seemed to prosper amid the general blight of the
+place, were the public-houses; and in them, the lowest orders of Irish
+were wrangling with might and main. Covered ways and yards, which here
+and there diverged from the main street, disclosed little knots of
+houses, where drunken men and women were positively wallowing in filth;
+and from several of the door-ways, great ill-looking fellows were
+cautiously emerging, bound, to all appearance, on no very well-disposed
+or harmless errands.
+
+Oliver was just considering whether he hadn’t better run away, when
+they reached the bottom of the hill. His conductor, catching him by the
+arm, pushed open the door of a house near Field Lane; and drawing him
+into the passage, closed it behind them.
+
+“Now, then!” cried a voice from below, in reply to a whistle from the
+Dodger.
+
+“Plummy and slam!” was the reply.
+
+This seemed to be some watchword or signal that all was right; for the
+light of a feeble candle gleamed on the wall at the remote end of the
+passage; and a man’s face peeped out, from where a balustrade of the
+old kitchen staircase had been broken away.
+
+“There’s two on you,” said the man, thrusting the candle farther out,
+and shielding his eyes with his hand. “Who’s the t’other one?”
+
+“A new pal,” replied Jack Dawkins, pulling Oliver forward.
+
+“Where did he come from?”
+
+“Greenland. Is Fagin upstairs?”
+
+“Yes, he’s a sortin’ the wipes. Up with you!” The candle was drawn
+back, and the face disappeared.
+
+Oliver, groping his way with one hand, and having the other firmly
+grasped by his companion, ascended with much difficulty the dark and
+broken stairs: which his conductor mounted with an ease and expedition
+that showed he was well acquainted with them.
+
+He threw open the door of a back-room, and drew Oliver in after him.
+
+The walls and ceiling of the room were perfectly black with age and
+dirt. There was a deal table before the fire: upon which were a candle,
+stuck in a ginger-beer bottle, two or three pewter pots, a loaf and
+butter, and a plate. In a frying-pan, which was on the fire, and which
+was secured to the mantelshelf by a string, some sausages were cooking;
+and standing over them, with a toasting-fork in his hand, was a very
+old shrivelled Jew, whose villainous-looking and repulsive face was
+obscured by a quantity of matted red hair. He was dressed in a greasy
+flannel gown, with his throat bare; and seemed to be dividing his
+attention between the frying-pan and the clothes-horse, over which a
+great number of silk handkerchiefs were hanging. Several rough beds
+made of old sacks, were huddled side by side on the floor. Seated round
+the table were four or five boys, none older than the Dodger, smoking
+long clay pipes, and drinking spirits with the air of middle-aged men.
+These all crowded about their associate as he whispered a few words to
+the Jew; and then turned round and grinned at Oliver. So did the Jew
+himself, toasting-fork in hand.
+
+“This is him, Fagin,” said Jack Dawkins; “my friend Oliver Twist.”
+
+The Jew grinned; and, making a low obeisance to Oliver, took him by the
+hand, and hoped he should have the honour of his intimate acquaintance.
+Upon this, the young gentleman with the pipes came round him, and shook
+both his hands very hard—especially the one in which he held his little
+bundle. One young gentleman was very anxious to hang up his cap for
+him; and another was so obliging as to put his hands in his pockets, in
+order that, as he was very tired, he might not have the trouble of
+emptying them, himself, when he went to bed. These civilities would
+probably be extended much farther, but for a liberal exercise of the
+Jew’s toasting-fork on the heads and shoulders of the affectionate
+youths who offered them.
+
+“We are very glad to see you, Oliver, very,” said the Jew. “Dodger,
+take off the sausages; and draw a tub near the fire for Oliver. Ah,
+you’re a-staring at the pocket-handkerchiefs! eh, my dear. There are a
+good many of ’em, ain’t there? We’ve just looked ’em out, ready for the
+wash; that’s all, Oliver; that’s all. Ha! ha! ha!”
+
+The latter part of this speech, was hailed by a boisterous shout from
+all the hopeful pupils of the merry old gentleman. In the midst of
+which they went to supper.
+
+Oliver ate his share, and the Jew then mixed him a glass of hot
+gin-and-water: telling him he must drink it off directly, because
+another gentleman wanted the tumbler. Oliver did as he was desired.
+Immediately afterwards he felt himself gently lifted on to one of the
+sacks; and then he sunk into a deep sleep.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER IX.
+CONTAINING FURTHER PARTICULARS CONCERNING THE PLEASANT OLD GENTLEMAN,
+AND HIS HOPEFUL PUPILS
+
+
+It was late next morning when Oliver awoke, from a sound, long sleep.
+There was no other person in the room but the old Jew, who was boiling
+some coffee in a saucepan for breakfast, and whistling softly to
+himself as he stirred it round and round, with an iron spoon. He would
+stop every now and then to listen when there was the least noise below:
+and when he had satisfied himself, he would go on whistling and
+stirring again, as before.
+
+Although Oliver had roused himself from sleep, he was not thoroughly
+awake. There is a drowsy state, between sleeping and waking, when you
+dream more in five minutes with your eyes half open, and yourself half
+conscious of everything that is passing around you, than you would in
+five nights with your eyes fast closed, and your senses wrapt in
+perfect unconsciousness. At such time, a mortal knows just enough of
+what his mind is doing, to form some glimmering conception of its
+mighty powers, its bounding from earth and spurning time and space,
+when freed from the restraint of its corporeal associate.
+
+Oliver was precisely in this condition. He saw the Jew with his
+half-closed eyes; heard his low whistling; and recognised the sound of
+the spoon grating against the saucepan’s sides: and yet the self-same
+senses were mentally engaged, at the same time, in busy action with
+almost everybody he had ever known.
+
+When the coffee was done, the Jew drew the saucepan to the hob.
+Standing, then in an irresolute attitude for a few minutes, as if he
+did not well know how to employ himself, he turned round and looked at
+Oliver, and called him by his name. He did not answer, and was to all
+appearances asleep.
+
+After satisfying himself upon this head, the Jew stepped gently to the
+door: which he fastened. He then drew forth: as it seemed to Oliver,
+from some trap in the floor: a small box, which he placed carefully on
+the table. His eyes glistened as he raised the lid, and looked in.
+Dragging an old chair to the table, he sat down; and took from it a
+magnificent gold watch, sparkling with jewels.
+
+“Aha!” said the Jew, shrugging up his shoulders, and distorting every
+feature with a hideous grin. “Clever dogs! Clever dogs! Staunch to the
+last! Never told the old parson where they were. Never poached upon old
+Fagin! And why should they? It wouldn’t have loosened the knot, or kept
+the drop up, a minute longer. No, no, no! Fine fellows! Fine fellows!”
+
+With these, and other muttered reflections of the like nature, the Jew
+once more deposited the watch in its place of safety. At least half a
+dozen more were severally drawn forth from the same box, and surveyed
+with equal pleasure; besides rings, brooches, bracelets, and other
+articles of jewellery, of such magnificent materials, and costly
+workmanship, that Oliver had no idea, even of their names.
+
+Having replaced these trinkets, the Jew took out another: so small that
+it lay in the palm of his hand. There seemed to be some very minute
+inscription on it; for the Jew laid it flat upon the table, and shading
+it with his hand, pored over it, long and earnestly. At length he put
+it down, as if despairing of success; and, leaning back in his chair,
+muttered:
+
+“What a fine thing capital punishment is! Dead men never repent; dead
+men never bring awkward stories to light. Ah, it’s a fine thing for the
+trade! Five of ’em strung up in a row, and none left to play booty, or
+turn white-livered!”
+
+As the Jew uttered these words, his bright dark eyes, which had been
+staring vacantly before him, fell on Oliver’s face; the boy’s eyes were
+fixed on his in mute curiousity; and although the recognition was only
+for an instant—for the briefest space of time that can possibly be
+conceived—it was enough to show the old man that he had been observed.
+
+He closed the lid of the box with a loud crash; and, laying his hand on
+a bread knife which was on the table, started furiously up. He trembled
+very much though; for, even in his terror, Oliver could see that the
+knife quivered in the air.
+
+“What’s that?” said the Jew. “What do you watch me for? Why are you
+awake? What have you seen? Speak out, boy! Quick—quick! for your life.
+
+“I wasn’t able to sleep any longer, sir,” replied Oliver, meekly. “I am
+very sorry if I have disturbed you, sir.”
+
+“You were not awake an hour ago?” said the Jew, scowling fiercely on
+the boy.
+
+“No! No, indeed!” replied Oliver.
+
+“Are you sure?” cried the Jew: with a still fiercer look than before:
+and a threatening attitude.
+
+“Upon my word I was not, sir,” replied Oliver, earnestly. “I was not,
+indeed, sir.”
+
+“Tush, tush, my dear!” said the Jew, abruptly resuming his old manner,
+and playing with the knife a little, before he laid it down; as if to
+induce the belief that he had caught it up, in mere sport. “Of course I
+know that, my dear. I only tried to frighten you. You’re a brave boy.
+Ha! ha! you’re a brave boy, Oliver.” The Jew rubbed his hands with a
+chuckle, but glanced uneasily at the box, notwithstanding.
+
+“Did you see any of these pretty things, my dear?” said the Jew, laying
+his hand upon it after a short pause.
+
+“Yes, sir,” replied Oliver.
+
+“Ah!” said the Jew, turning rather pale. “They—they’re mine, Oliver; my
+little property. All I have to live upon, in my old age. The folks call
+me a miser, my dear. Only a miser; that’s all.”
+
+Oliver thought the old gentleman must be a decided miser to live in
+such a dirty place, with so many watches; but, thinking that perhaps
+his fondness for the Dodger and the other boys, cost him a good deal of
+money, he only cast a deferential look at the Jew, and asked if he
+might get up.
+
+“Certainly, my dear, certainly,” replied the old gentleman. “Stay.
+There’s a pitcher of water in the corner by the door. Bring it here;
+and I’ll give you a basin to wash in, my dear.”
+
+Oliver got up; walked across the room; and stooped for an instant to
+raise the pitcher. When he turned his head, the box was gone.
+
+He had scarcely washed himself, and made everything tidy, by emptying
+the basin out of the window, agreeably to the Jew’s directions, when
+the Dodger returned: accompanied by a very sprightly young friend, whom
+Oliver had seen smoking on the previous night, and who was now formally
+introduced to him as Charley Bates. The four sat down, to breakfast, on
+the coffee, and some hot rolls and ham which the Dodger had brought
+home in the crown of his hat.
+
+“Well,” said the Jew, glancing slyly at Oliver, and addressing himself
+to the Dodger, “I hope you’ve been at work this morning, my dears?”
+
+“Hard,” replied the Dodger.
+
+“As nails,” added Charley Bates.
+
+“Good boys, good boys!” said the Jew. “What have you got, Dodger?”
+
+“A couple of pocket-books,” replied that young gentlman.
+
+“Lined?” inquired the Jew, with eagerness.
+
+“Pretty well,” replied the Dodger, producing two pocket-books; one
+green, and the other red.
+
+“Not so heavy as they might be,” said the Jew, after looking at the
+insides carefully; “but very neat and nicely made. Ingenious workman,
+ain’t he, Oliver?”
+
+“Very indeed, sir,” said Oliver. At which Mr. Charles Bates laughed
+uproariously; very much to the amazement of Oliver, who saw nothing to
+laugh at, in anything that had passed.
+
+“And what have you got, my dear?” said Fagin to Charley Bates.
+
+“Wipes,” replied Master Bates; at the same time producing four
+pocket-handkerchiefs.
+
+“Well,” said the Jew, inspecting them closely; “they’re very good ones,
+very. You haven’t marked them well, though, Charley; so the marks shall
+be picked out with a needle, and we’ll teach Oliver how to do it. Shall
+us, Oliver, eh? Ha! ha! ha!”
+
+“If you please, sir,” said Oliver.
+
+“You’d like to be able to make pocket-handkerchiefs as easy as Charley
+Bates, wouldn’t you, my dear?” said the Jew.
+
+“Very much, indeed, if you’ll teach me, sir,” replied Oliver.
+
+Master Bates saw something so exquisitely ludicrous in this reply, that
+he burst into another laugh; which laugh, meeting the coffee he was
+drinking, and carrying it down some wrong channel, very nearly
+terminated in his premature suffocation.
+
+“He is so jolly green!” said Charley when he recovered, as an apology
+to the company for his unpolite behaviour.
+
+The Dodger said nothing, but he smoothed Oliver’s hair over his eyes,
+and said he’d know better, by and by; upon which the old gentleman,
+observing Oliver’s colour mounting, changed the subject by asking
+whether there had been much of a crowd at the execution that morning?
+This made him wonder more and more; for it was plain from the replies
+of the two boys that they had both been there; and Oliver naturally
+wondered how they could possibly have found time to be so very
+industrious.
+
+When the breakfast was cleared away; the merry old gentlman and the two
+boys played at a very curious and uncommon game, which was performed in
+this way. The merry old gentleman, placing a snuff-box in one pocket of
+his trousers, a note-case in the other, and a watch in his waistcoat
+pocket, with a guard-chain round his neck, and sticking a mock diamond
+pin in his shirt: buttoned his coat tight round him, and putting his
+spectacle-case and handkerchief in his pockets, trotted up and down the
+room with a stick, in imitation of the manner in which old gentlemen
+walk about the streets any hour in the day. Sometimes he stopped at the
+fire-place, and sometimes at the door, making believe that he was
+staring with all his might into shop-windows. At such times, he would
+look constantly round him, for fear of thieves, and would keep slapping
+all his pockets in turn, to see that he hadn’t lost anything, in such a
+very funny and natural manner, that Oliver laughed till the tears ran
+down his face. All this time, the two boys followed him closely about:
+getting out of his sight, so nimbly, every time he turned round, that
+it was impossible to follow their motions. At last, the Dodger trod
+upon his toes, or ran upon his boot accidently, while Charley Bates
+stumbled up against him behind; and in that one moment they took from
+him, with the most extraordinary rapidity, snuff-box, note-case,
+watch-guard, chain, shirt-pin, pocket-handkerchief, even the
+spectacle-case. If the old gentlman felt a hand in any one of his
+pockets, he cried out where it was; and then the game began all over
+again.
+
+When this game had been played a great many times, a couple of young
+ladies called to see the young gentleman; one of whom was named Bet,
+and the other Nancy. They wore a good deal of hair, not very neatly
+turned up behind, and were rather untidy about the shoes and stockings.
+They were not exactly pretty, perhaps; but they had a great deal of
+colour in their faces, and looked quite stout and hearty. Being
+remarkably free and agreeable in their manners, Oliver thought them
+very nice girls indeed. As there is no doubt they were.
+
+The visitors stopped a long time. Spirits were produced, in consequence
+of one of the young ladies complaining of a coldness in her inside; and
+the conversation took a very convivial and improving turn. At length,
+Charley Bates expressed his opinion that it was time to pad the hoof.
+This, it occurred to Oliver, must be French for going out; for directly
+afterwards, the Dodger, and Charley, and the two young ladies, went
+away together, having been kindly furnished by the amiable old Jew with
+money to spend.
+
+“There, my dear,” said Fagin. “That’s a pleasant life, isn’t it? They
+have gone out for the day.”
+
+“Have they done work, sir?” inquired Oliver.
+
+“Yes,” said the Jew; “that is, unless they should unexpectedly come
+across any, when they are out; and they won’t neglect it, if they do,
+my dear, depend upon it. Make ’em your models, my dear. Make ’em your
+models,” tapping the fire-shovel on the hearth to add force to his
+words; “do everything they bid you, and take their advice in all
+matters—especially the Dodger’s, my dear. He’ll be a great man himself,
+and will make you one too, if you take pattern by him.—Is my
+handkerchief hanging out of my pocket, my dear?” said the Jew, stopping
+short.
+
+“Yes, sir,” said Oliver.
+
+“See if you can take it out, without my feeling it; as you saw them do,
+when we were at play this morning.”
+
+Oliver held up the bottom of the pocket with one hand, as he had seen
+the Dodger hold it, and drew the handkerchief lightly out of it with
+the other.
+
+“Is it gone?” cried the Jew.
+
+“Here it is, sir,” said Oliver, showing it in his hand.
+
+“You’re a clever boy, my dear,” said the playful old gentleman, patting
+Oliver on the head approvingly. “I never saw a sharper lad. Here’s a
+shilling for you. If you go on, in this way, you’ll be the greatest man
+of the time. And now come here, and I’ll show you how to take the marks
+out of the handkerchiefs.”
+
+Oliver wondered what picking the old gentleman’s pocket in play, had to
+do with his chances of being a great man. But, thinking that the Jew,
+being so much his senior, must know best, he followed him quietly to
+the table, and was soon deeply involved in his new study.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER X.
+OLIVER BECOMES BETTER ACQUAINTED WITH THE CHARACTERS OF HIS NEW
+ASSOCIATES; AND PURCHASES EXPERIENCE AT A HIGH PRICE. BEING A SHORT,
+BUT VERY IMPORTANT CHAPTER, IN THIS HISTORY
+
+
+For many days, Oliver remained in the Jew’s room, picking the marks out
+of the pocket-handkerchief, (of which a great number were brought
+home,) and sometimes taking part in the game already described: which
+the two boys and the Jew played, regularly, every morning. At length,
+he began to languish for fresh air, and took many occasions of
+earnestly entreating the old gentleman to allow him to go out to work
+with his two companions.
+
+Oliver was rendered the more anxious to be actively employed, by what
+he had seen of the stern morality of the old gentleman’s character.
+Whenever the Dodger or Charley Bates came home at night, empty-handed,
+he would expatiate with great vehemence on the misery of idle and lazy
+habits; and would enforce upon them the necessity of an active life, by
+sending them supperless to bed. On one occasion, indeed, he even went
+so far as to knock them both down a flight of stairs; but this was
+carrying out his virtuous precepts to an unusual extent.
+
+At length, one morning, Oliver obtained the permission he had so
+eagerly sought. There had been no handkerchiefs to work upon, for two
+or three days, and the dinners had been rather meagre. Perhaps these
+were reasons for the old gentleman’s giving his assent; but, whether
+they were or no, he told Oliver he might go, and placed him under the
+joint guardianship of Charley Bates, and his friend the Dodger.
+
+The three boys sallied out; the Dodger with his coat-sleeves tucked up,
+and his hat cocked, as usual; Master Bates sauntering along with his
+hands in his pockets; and Oliver between them, wondering where they
+were going, and what branch of manufacture he would be instructed in,
+first.
+
+The pace at which they went, was such a very lazy, ill-looking saunter,
+that Oliver soon began to think his companions were going to deceive
+the old gentleman, by not going to work at all. The Dodger had a
+vicious propensity, too, of pulling the caps from the heads of small
+boys and tossing them down areas; while Charley Bates exhibited some
+very loose notions concerning the rights of property, by pilfering
+divers apples and onions from the stalls at the kennel sides, and
+thrusting them into pockets which were so surprisingly capacious, that
+they seemed to undermine his whole suit of clothes in every direction.
+These things looked so bad, that Oliver was on the point of declaring
+his intention of seeking his way back, in the best way he could; when
+his thoughts were suddenly directed into another channel, by a very
+mysterious change of behaviour on the part of the Dodger.
+
+They were just emerging from a narrow court not far from the open
+square in Clerkenwell, which is yet called, by some strange perversion
+of terms, “The Green”: when the Dodger made a sudden stop; and, laying
+his finger on his lip, drew his companions back again, with the
+greatest caution and circumspection.
+
+“What’s the matter?” demanded Oliver.
+
+“Hush!” replied the Dodger. “Do you see that old cove at the
+book-stall?”
+
+“The old gentleman over the way?” said Oliver. “Yes, I see him.”
+
+“He’ll do,” said the Dodger.
+
+“A prime plant,” observed Master Charley Bates.
+
+Oliver looked from one to the other, with the greatest surprise; but he
+was not permitted to make any inquiries; for the two boys walked
+stealthily across the road, and slunk close behind the old gentleman
+towards whom his attention had been directed. Oliver walked a few paces
+after them; and, not knowing whether to advance or retire, stood
+looking on in silent amazement.
+
+The old gentleman was a very respectable-looking personage, with a
+powdered head and gold spectacles. He was dressed in a bottle-green
+coat with a black velvet collar; wore white trousers; and carried a
+smart bamboo cane under his arm. He had taken up a book from the stall,
+and there he stood, reading away, as hard as if he were in his
+elbow-chair, in his own study. It is very possible that he fancied
+himself there, indeed; for it was plain, from his abstraction, that he
+saw not the book-stall, nor the street, nor the boys, nor, in short,
+anything but the book itself: which he was reading straight through:
+turning over the leaf when he got to the bottom of a page, beginning at
+the top line of the next one, and going regularly on, with the greatest
+interest and eagerness.
+
+What was Oliver’s horror and alarm as he stood a few paces off, looking
+on with his eyelids as wide open as they would possibly go, to see the
+Dodger plunge his hand into the old gentleman’s pocket, and draw from
+thence a handkerchief! To see him hand the same to Charley Bates; and
+finally to behold them, both running away round the corner at full
+speed!
+
+In an instant the whole mystery of the hankerchiefs, and the watches,
+and the jewels, and the Jew, rushed upon the boy’s mind.
+
+He stood, for a moment, with the blood so tingling through all his
+veins from terror, that he felt as if he were in a burning fire; then,
+confused and frightened, he took to his heels; and, not knowing what he
+did, made off as fast as he could lay his feet to the ground.
+
+This was all done in a minute’s space. In the very instant when Oliver
+began to run, the old gentleman, putting his hand to his pocket, and
+missing his handkerchief, turned sharp round. Seeing the boy scudding
+away at such a rapid pace, he very naturally concluded him to be the
+depredator; and shouting “Stop thief!” with all his might, made off
+after him, book in hand.
+
+But the old gentleman was not the only person who raised the
+hue-and-cry. The Dodger and Master Bates, unwilling to attract public
+attention by running down the open street, had merely retired into the
+very first doorway round the corner. They no sooner heard the cry, and
+saw Oliver running, than, guessing exactly how the matter stood, they
+issued forth with great promptitude; and, shouting “Stop thief!” too,
+joined in the pursuit like good citizens.
+
+Although Oliver had been brought up by philosophers, he was not
+theoretically acquainted with the beautiful axiom that
+self-preservation is the first law of nature. If he had been, perhaps
+he would have been prepared for this. Not being prepared, however, it
+alarmed him the more; so away he went like the wind, with the old
+gentleman and the two boys roaring and shouting behind him.
+
+“Stop thief! Stop thief!” There is a magic in the sound. The tradesman
+leaves his counter, and the car-man his waggon; the butcher throws down
+his tray; the baker his basket; the milkman his pail; the errand-boy
+his parcels; the school-boy his marbles; the paviour his pickaxe; the
+child his battledore. Away they run, pell-mell, helter-skelter,
+slap-dash: tearing, yelling, screaming, knocking down the passengers as
+they turn the corners, rousing up the dogs, and astonishing the fowls:
+and streets, squares, and courts, re-echo with the sound.
+
+“Stop thief! Stop thief!” The cry is taken up by a hundred voices, and
+the crowd accumulate at every turning. Away they fly, splashing through
+the mud, and rattling along the pavements: up go the windows, out run
+the people, onward bear the mob, a whole audience desert Punch in the
+very thickest of the plot, and, joining the rushing throng, swell the
+shout, and lend fresh vigour to the cry, “Stop thief! Stop thief!”
+
+“Stop thief! Stop thief!” There is a passion FOR _hunting_ _something_
+deeply implanted in the human breast. One wretched breathless child,
+panting with exhaustion; terror in his looks; agony in his eyes; large
+drops of perspiration streaming down his face; strains every nerve to
+make head upon his pursuers; and as they follow on his track, and gain
+upon him every instant, they hail his decreasing strength with joy.
+“Stop thief!” Ay, stop him for God’s sake, were it only in mercy!
+
+Stopped at last! A clever blow. He is down upon the pavement; and the
+crowd eagerly gather round him: each new comer, jostling and struggling
+with the others to catch a glimpse. “Stand aside!” “Give him a little
+air!” “Nonsense! he don’t deserve it.” “Where’s the gentleman?” “Here
+his is, coming down the street.” “Make room there for the gentleman!”
+“Is this the boy, sir!” “Yes.”
+
+Oliver lay, covered with mud and dust, and bleeding from the mouth,
+looking wildly round upon the heap of faces that surrounded him, when
+the old gentleman was officiously dragged and pushed into the circle by
+the foremost of the pursuers.
+
+“Yes,” said the gentleman, “I am afraid it is the boy.”
+
+“Afraid!” murmured the crowd. “That’s a good ’un!”
+
+“Poor fellow!” said the gentleman, “he has hurt himself.”
+
+“_I_ did that, sir,” said a great lubberly fellow, stepping forward;
+“and preciously I cut my knuckle agin’ his mouth. I stopped him, sir.”
+
+The fellow touched his hat with a grin, expecting something for his
+pains; but, the old gentleman, eyeing him with an expression of
+dislike, look anxiously round, as if he contemplated running away
+himself: which it is very possible he might have attempted to do, and
+thus have afforded another chase, had not a police officer (who is
+generally the last person to arrive in such cases) at that moment made
+his way through the crowd, and seized Oliver by the collar.
+
+“Come, get up,” said the man, roughly.
+
+“It wasn’t me indeed, sir. Indeed, indeed, it was two other boys,” said
+Oliver, clasping his hands passionately, and looking round. “They are
+here somewhere.”
+
+“Oh no, they ain’t,” said the officer. He meant this to be ironical,
+but it was true besides; for the Dodger and Charley Bates had filed off
+down the first convenient court they came to.
+
+“Come, get up!”
+
+“Don’t hurt him,” said the old gentleman, compassionately.
+
+“Oh no, I won’t hurt him,” replied the officer, tearing his jacket half
+off his back, in proof thereof. “Come, I know you; it won’t do. Will
+you stand upon your legs, you young devil?”
+
+Oliver, who could hardly stand, made a shift to raise himself on his
+feet, and was at once lugged along the streets by the jacket-collar, at
+a rapid pace. The gentleman walked on with them by the officer’s side;
+and as many of the crowd as could achieve the feat, got a little ahead,
+and stared back at Oliver from time to time. The boys shouted in
+triumph; and on they went.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XI.
+TREATS OF MR. FANG THE POLICE MAGISTRATE; AND FURNISHES A SLIGHT
+SPECIMEN OF HIS MODE OF ADMINISTERING JUSTICE
+
+
+The offence had been committed within the district, and indeed in the
+immediate neighborhood of, a very notorious metropolitan police office.
+The crowd had only the satisfaction of accompanying Oliver through two
+or three streets, and down a place called Mutton Hill, when he was led
+beneath a low archway, and up a dirty court, into this dispensary of
+summary justice, by the back way. It was a small paved yard into which
+they turned; and here they encountered a stout man with a bunch of
+whiskers on his face, and a bunch of keys in his hand.
+
+“What’s the matter now?” said the man carelessly.
+
+“A young fogle-hunter,” replied the man who had Oliver in charge.
+
+“Are you the party that’s been robbed, sir?” inquired the man with the
+keys.
+
+“Yes, I am,” replied the old gentleman; “but I am not sure that this
+boy actually took the handkerchief. I—I would rather not press the
+case.”
+
+“Must go before the magistrate now, sir,” replied the man. “His worship
+will be disengaged in half a minute. Now, young gallows!”
+
+This was an invitation for Oliver to enter through a door which he
+unlocked as he spoke, and which led into a stone cell. Here he was
+searched; and nothing being found upon him, locked up.
+
+This cell was in shape and size something like an area cellar, only not
+so light. It was most intolerably dirty; for it was Monday morning; and
+it had been tenanted by six drunken people, who had been locked up,
+elsewhere, since Saturday night. But this is little. In our
+station-houses, men and women are every night confined on the most
+trivial charges—the word is worth noting—in dungeons, compared with
+which, those in Newgate, occupied by the most atrocious felons, tried,
+found guilty, and under sentence of death, are palaces. Let any one who
+doubts this, compare the two.
+
+The old gentleman looked almost as rueful as Oliver when the key grated
+in the lock. He turned with a sigh to the book, which had been the
+innocent cause of all this disturbance.
+
+“There is something in that boy’s face,” said the old gentleman to
+himself as he walked slowly away, tapping his chin with the cover of
+the book, in a thoughtful manner; “something that touches and interests
+me. _Can_ he be innocent? He looked like—Bye the bye,” exclaimed the
+old gentleman, halting very abruptly, and staring up into the sky,
+“Bless my soul!—where have I seen something like that look before?”
+
+After musing for some minutes, the old gentleman walked, with the same
+meditative face, into a back anteroom opening from the yard; and there,
+retiring into a corner, called up before his mind’s eye a vast
+amphitheatre of faces over which a dusky curtain had hung for many
+years. “No,” said the old gentleman, shaking his head; “it must be
+imagination.”
+
+He wandered over them again. He had called them into view, and it was
+not easy to replace the shroud that had so long concealed them. There
+were the faces of friends, and foes, and of many that had been almost
+strangers peering intrusively from the crowd; there were the faces of
+young and blooming girls that were now old women; there were faces that
+the grave had changed and closed upon, but which the mind, superior to
+its power, still dressed in their old freshness and beauty, calling
+back the lustre of the eyes, the brightness of the smile, the beaming
+of the soul through its mask of clay, and whispering of beauty beyond
+the tomb, changed but to be heightened, and taken from earth only to be
+set up as a light, to shed a soft and gentle glow upon the path to
+Heaven.
+
+But the old gentleman could recall no one countenance of which Oliver’s
+features bore a trace. So, he heaved a sigh over the recollections he
+awakened; and being, happily for himself, an absent old gentleman,
+buried them again in the pages of the musty book.
+
+He was roused by a touch on the shoulder, and a request from the man
+with the keys to follow him into the office. He closed his book
+hastily; and was at once ushered into the imposing presence of the
+renowned Mr. Fang.
+
+The office was a front parlour, with a panelled wall. Mr. Fang sat
+behind a bar, at the upper end; and on one side the door was a sort of
+wooden pen in which poor little Oliver was already deposited; trembling
+very much at the awfulness of the scene.
+
+Mr. Fang was a lean, long-backed, stiff-necked, middle-sized man, with
+no great quantity of hair, and what he had, growing on the back and
+sides of his head. His face was stern, and much flushed. If he were
+really not in the habit of drinking rather more than was exactly good
+for him, he might have brought action against his countenance for
+libel, and have recovered heavy damages.
+
+The old gentleman bowed respectfully; and advancing to the magistrate’s
+desk, said, suiting the action to the word, “That is my name and
+address, sir.” He then withdrew a pace or two; and, with another polite
+and gentlemanly inclination of the head, waited to be questioned.
+
+Now, it so happened that Mr. Fang was at that moment perusing a leading
+article in a newspaper of the morning, adverting to some recent
+decision of his, and commending him, for the three hundred and fiftieth
+time, to the special and particular notice of the Secretary of State
+for the Home Department. He was out of temper; and he looked up with an
+angry scowl.
+
+“Who are you?” said Mr. Fang.
+
+The old gentleman pointed, with some surprise, to his card.
+
+“Officer!” said Mr. Fang, tossing the card contemptuously away with the
+newspaper. “Who is this fellow?”
+
+“My name, sir,” said the old gentleman, speaking _like_ a gentleman,
+“my name, sir, is Brownlow. Permit me to inquire the name of the
+magistrate who offers a gratuitous and unprovoked insult to a
+respectable person, under the protection of the bench.” Saying this,
+Mr. Brownlow looked around the office as if in search of some person
+who would afford him the required information.
+
+“Officer!” said Mr. Fang, throwing the paper on one side, “what’s this
+fellow charged with?”
+
+“He’s not charged at all, your worship,” replied the officer. “He
+appears against this boy, your worship.”
+
+His worship knew this perfectly well; but it was a good annoyance, and
+a safe one.
+
+“Appears against the boy, does he?” said Mr. Fang, surveying Mr.
+Brownlow contemptuously from head to foot. “Swear him!”
+
+“Before I am sworn, I must beg to say one word,” said Mr. Brownlow;
+“and that is, that I really never, without actual experience, could
+have believed—”
+
+“Hold your tongue, sir!” said Mr. Fang, peremptorily.
+
+“I will not, sir!” replied the old gentleman.
+
+“Hold your tongue this instant, or I’ll have you turned out of the
+office!” said Mr. Fang. “You’re an insolent impertinent fellow. How
+dare you bully a magistrate!”
+
+“What!” exclaimed the old gentleman, reddening.
+
+“Swear this person!” said Fang to the clerk. “I’ll not hear another
+word. Swear him.”
+
+Mr. Brownlow’s indignation was greatly roused; but reflecting perhaps,
+that he might only injure the boy by giving vent to it, he suppressed
+his feelings and submitted to be sworn at once.
+
+“Now,” said Fang, “what’s the charge against this boy? What have you
+got to say, sir?”
+
+“I was standing at a bookstall—” Mr. Brownlow began.
+
+“Hold your tongue, sir,” said Mr. Fang. “Policeman! Where’s the
+policeman? Here, swear this policeman. Now, policeman, what is this?”
+
+The policeman, with becoming humility, related how he had taken the
+charge; how he had searched Oliver, and found nothing on his person;
+and how that was all he knew about it.
+
+“Are there any witnesses?” inquired Mr. Fang.
+
+“None, your worship,” replied the policeman.
+
+Mr. Fang sat silent for some minutes, and then, turning round to the
+prosecutor, said in a towering passion.
+
+“Do you mean to state what your complaint against this boy is, man, or
+do you not? You have been sworn. Now, if you stand there, refusing to
+give evidence, I’ll punish you for disrespect to the bench; I will,
+by—”
+
+By what, or by whom, nobody knows, for the clerk and jailor coughed
+very loud, just at the right moment; and the former dropped a heavy
+book upon the floor, thus preventing the word from being
+heard—accidently, of course.
+
+With many interruptions, and repeated insults, Mr. Brownlow contrived
+to state his case; observing that, in the surprise of the moment, he
+had run after the boy because he had saw him running away; and
+expressing his hope that, if the magistrate should believe him,
+although not actually the thief, to be connected with the thieves, he
+would deal as leniently with him as justice would allow.
+
+“He has been hurt already,” said the old gentleman in conclusion. “And
+I fear,” he added, with great energy, looking towards the bar, “I
+really fear that he is ill.”
+
+“Oh! yes, I dare say!” said Mr. Fang, with a sneer. “Come, none of your
+tricks here, you young vagabond; they won’t do. What’s your name?”
+
+Oliver tried to reply but his tongue failed him. He was deadly pale;
+and the whole place seemed turning round and round.
+
+“What’s your name, you hardened scoundrel?” demanded Mr. Fang.
+“Officer, what’s his name?”
+
+This was addressed to a bluff old fellow, in a striped waistcoat, who
+was standing by the bar. He bent over Oliver, and repeated the inquiry;
+but finding him really incapable of understanding the question; and
+knowing that his not replying would only infuriate the magistrate the
+more, and add to the severity of his sentence; he hazarded a guess.
+
+“He says his name’s Tom White, your worship,” said the kind-hearted
+thief-taker.
+
+“Oh, he won’t speak out, won’t he?” said Fang. “Very well, very well.
+Where does he live?”
+
+“Where he can, your worship,” replied the officer; again pretending to
+receive Oliver’s answer.
+
+“Has he any parents?” inquired Mr. Fang.
+
+“He says they died in his infancy, your worship,” replied the officer:
+hazarding the usual reply.
+
+At this point of the inquiry, Oliver raised his head; and, looking
+round with imploring eyes, murmured a feeble prayer for a draught of
+water.
+
+“Stuff and nonsense!” said Mr. Fang: “don’t try to make a fool of me.”
+
+“I think he really is ill, your worship,” remonstrated the officer.
+
+“I know better,” said Mr. Fang.
+
+“Take care of him, officer,” said the old gentleman, raising his hands
+instinctively; “he’ll fall down.”
+
+“Stand away, officer,” cried Fang; “let him, if he likes.”
+
+Oliver availed himself of the kind permission, and fell to the floor in
+a fainting fit. The men in the office looked at each other, but no one
+dared to stir.
+
+“I knew he was shamming,” said Fang, as if this were incontestable
+proof of the fact. “Let him lie there; he’ll soon be tired of that.”
+
+“How do you propose to deal with the case, sir?” inquired the clerk in
+a low voice.
+
+“Summarily,” replied Mr. Fang. “He stands committed for three
+months—hard labour of course. Clear the office.”
+
+The door was opened for this purpose, and a couple of men were
+preparing to carry the insensible boy to his cell; when an elderly man
+of decent but poor appearance, clad in an old suit of black, rushed
+hastily into the office, and advanced towards the bench.
+
+“Stop, stop! don’t take him away! For Heaven’s sake stop a moment!”
+cried the new comer, breathless with haste.
+
+Although the presiding Genii in such an office as this, exercise a
+summary and arbitrary power over the liberties, the good name, the
+character, almost the lives, of Her Majesty’s subjects, especially of
+the poorer class; and although, within such walls, enough fantastic
+tricks are daily played to make the angels blind with weeping; they are
+closed to the public, save through the medium of the daily
+press.[Footnote: Or were virtually, then.] Mr. Fang was consequently
+not a little indignant to see an unbidden guest enter in such
+irreverent disorder.
+
+“What is this? Who is this? Turn this man out. Clear the office!” cried
+Mr. Fang.
+
+“I _will_ speak,” cried the man; “I will not be turned out. I saw it
+all. I keep the book-stall. I demand to be sworn. I will not be put
+down. Mr. Fang, you must hear me. You must not refuse, sir.”
+
+The man was right. His manner was determined; and the matter was
+growing rather too serious to be hushed up.
+
+“Swear the man,” growled Mr. Fang, with a very ill grace. “Now, man,
+what have you got to say?”
+
+“This,” said the man: “I saw three boys: two others and the prisoner
+here: loitering on the opposite side of the way, when this gentleman
+was reading. The robbery was committed by another boy. I saw it done;
+and I saw that this boy was perfectly amazed and stupified by it.”
+Having by this time recovered a little breath, the worthy book-stall
+keeper proceeded to relate, in a more coherent manner the exact
+circumstances of the robbery.
+
+“Why didn’t you come here before?” said Fang, after a pause.
+
+“I hadn’t a soul to mind the shop,” replied the man. “Everybody who
+could have helped me, had joined in the pursuit. I could get nobody
+till five minutes ago; and I’ve run here all the way.”
+
+“The prosecutor was reading, was he?” inquired Fang, after another
+pause.
+
+“Yes,” replied the man. “The very book he has in his hand.”
+
+“Oh, that book, eh?” said Fang. “Is it paid for?”
+
+“No, it is not,” replied the man, with a smile.
+
+“Dear me, I forgot all about it!” exclaimed the absent old gentleman,
+innocently.
+
+“A nice person to prefer a charge against a poor boy!” said Fang, with
+a comical effort to look humane. “I consider, sir, that you have
+obtained possession of that book, under very suspicious and
+disreputable circumstances; and you may think yourself very fortunate
+that the owner of the property declines to prosecute. Let this be a
+lesson to you, my man, or the law will overtake you yet. The boy is
+discharged. Clear the office!”
+
+“D—n me!” cried the old gentleman, bursting out with the rage he had
+kept down so long, “d—n me! I’ll—”
+
+“Clear the office!” said the magistrate. “Officers, do you hear? Clear
+the office!”
+
+The mandate was obeyed; and the indignant Mr. Brownlow was conveyed
+out, with the book in one hand, and the bamboo cane in the other: in a
+perfect phrenzy of rage and defiance. He reached the yard; and his
+passion vanished in a moment. Little Oliver Twist lay on his back on
+the pavement, with his shirt unbuttoned, and his temples bathed with
+water; his face a deadly white; and a cold tremble convulsing his whole
+frame.
+
+“Poor boy, poor boy!” said Mr. Brownlow, bending over him. “Call a
+coach, somebody, pray. Directly!”
+
+A coach was obtained, and Oliver having been carefully laid on the
+seat, the old gentleman got in and sat himself on the other.
+
+“May I accompany you?” said the book-stall keeper, looking in.
+
+“Bless me, yes, my dear sir,” said Mr. Brownlow quickly. “I forgot you.
+Dear, dear! I have this unhappy book still! Jump in. Poor fellow!
+There’s no time to lose.”
+
+The book-stall keeper got into the coach; and away they drove.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XII.
+IN WHICH OLIVER IS TAKEN BETTER CARE OF THAN HE EVER WAS BEFORE. AND IN
+WHICH THE NARRATIVE REVERTS TO THE MERRY OLD GENTLEMAN AND HIS YOUTHFUL
+FRIENDS.
+
+
+The coach rattled away, over nearly the same ground as that which
+Oliver had traversed when he first entered London in company with the
+Dodger; and, turning a different way when it reached the Angel at
+Islington, stopped at length before a neat house, in a quiet shady
+street near Pentonville. Here, a bed was prepared, without loss of
+time, in which Mr. Brownlow saw his young charge carefully and
+comfortably deposited; and here, he was tended with a kindness and
+solicitude that knew no bounds.
+
+But, for many days, Oliver remained insensible to all the goodness of
+his new friends. The sun rose and sank, and rose and sank again, and
+many times after that; and still the boy lay stretched on his uneasy
+bed, dwindling away beneath the dry and wasting heat of fever. The worm
+does not work more surely on the dead body, than does this slow
+creeping fire upon the living frame.
+
+Weak, and thin, and pallid, he awoke at last from what seemed to have
+been a long and troubled dream. Feebly raising himself in the bed, with
+his head resting on his trembling arm, he looked anxiously around.
+
+“What room is this? Where have I been brought to?” said Oliver. “This
+is not the place I went to sleep in.”
+
+He uttered these words in a feeble voice, being very faint and weak;
+but they were overheard at once. The curtain at the bed’s head was
+hastily drawn back, and a motherly old lady, very neatly and precisely
+dressed, rose as she undrew it, from an arm-chair close by, in which
+she had been sitting at needle-work.
+
+“Hush, my dear,” said the old lady softly. “You must be very quiet, or
+you will be ill again; and you have been very bad,—as bad as bad could
+be, pretty nigh. Lie down again; there’s a dear!” With those words, the
+old lady very gently placed Oliver’s head upon the pillow; and,
+smoothing back his hair from his forehead, looked so kindly and loving
+in his face, that he could not help placing his little withered hand in
+hers, and drawing it round his neck.
+
+“Save us!” said the old lady, with tears in her eyes. “What a grateful
+little dear it is. Pretty creetur! What would his mother feel if she
+had sat by him as I have, and could see him now!”
+
+“Perhaps she does see me,” whispered Oliver, folding his hands
+together; “perhaps she has sat by me. I almost feel as if she had.”
+
+“That was the fever, my dear,” said the old lady mildly.
+
+“I suppose it was,” replied Oliver, “because heaven is a long way off;
+and they are too happy there, to come down to the bedside of a poor
+boy. But if she knew I was ill, she must have pitied me, even there;
+for she was very ill herself before she died. She can’t know anything
+about me though,” added Oliver after a moment’s silence. “If she had
+seen me hurt, it would have made her sorrowful; and her face has always
+looked sweet and happy, when I have dreamed of her.”
+
+The old lady made no reply to this; but wiping her eyes first, and her
+spectacles, which lay on the counterpane, afterwards, as if they were
+part and parcel of those features, brought some cool stuff for Oliver
+to drink; and then, patting him on the cheek, told him he must lie very
+quiet, or he would be ill again.
+
+So, Oliver kept very still; partly because he was anxious to obey the
+kind old lady in all things; and partly, to tell the truth, because he
+was completely exhausted with what he had already said. He soon fell
+into a gentle doze, from which he was awakened by the light of a
+candle: which, being brought near the bed, showed him a gentleman with
+a very large and loud-ticking gold watch in his hand, who felt his
+pulse, and said he was a great deal better.
+
+“You _are_ a great deal better, are you not, my dear?” said the
+gentleman.
+
+“Yes, thank you, sir,” replied Oliver.
+
+“Yes, I know you are,” said the gentleman: “You’re hungry too, an’t
+you?”
+
+“No, sir,” answered Oliver.
+
+“Hem!” said the gentleman. “No, I know you’re not. He is not hungry,
+Mrs. Bedwin,” said the gentleman: looking very wise.
+
+The old lady made a respectful inclination of the head, which seemed to
+say that she thought the doctor was a very clever man. The doctor
+appeared much of the same opinion himself.
+
+“You feel sleepy, don’t you, my dear?” said the doctor.
+
+“No, sir,” replied Oliver.
+
+“No,” said the doctor, with a very shrewd and satisfied look. “You’re
+not sleepy. Nor thirsty. Are you?”
+
+“Yes, sir, rather thirsty,” answered Oliver.
+
+“Just as I expected, Mrs. Bedwin,” said the doctor. “It’s very natural
+that he should be thirsty. You may give him a little tea, ma’am, and
+some dry toast without any butter. Don’t keep him too warm, ma’am; but
+be careful that you don’t let him be too cold; will you have the
+goodness?”
+
+The old lady dropped a curtsey. The doctor, after tasting the cool
+stuff, and expressing a qualified approval of it, hurried away: his
+boots creaking in a very important and wealthy manner as he went
+downstairs.
+
+Oliver dozed off again, soon after this; when he awoke, it was nearly
+twelve o’clock. The old lady tenderly bade him good-night shortly
+afterwards, and left him in charge of a fat old woman who had just
+come: bringing with her, in a little bundle, a small Prayer Book and a
+large nightcap. Putting the latter on her head and the former on the
+table, the old woman, after telling Oliver that she had come to sit up
+with him, drew her chair close to the fire and went off into a series
+of short naps, chequered at frequent intervals with sundry tumblings
+forward, and divers moans and chokings. These, however, had no worse
+effect than causing her to rub her nose very hard, and then fall asleep
+again.
+
+And thus the night crept slowly on. Oliver lay awake for some time,
+counting the little circles of light which the reflection of the
+rushlight-shade threw upon the ceiling; or tracing with his languid
+eyes the intricate pattern of the paper on the wall. The darkness and
+the deep stillness of the room were very solemn; as they brought into
+the boy’s mind the thought that death had been hovering there, for many
+days and nights, and might yet fill it with the gloom and dread of his
+awful presence, he turned his face upon the pillow, and fervently
+prayed to Heaven.
+
+Gradually, he fell into that deep tranquil sleep which ease from recent
+suffering alone imparts; that calm and peaceful rest which it is pain
+to wake from. Who, if this were death, would be roused again to all the
+struggles and turmoils of life; to all its cares for the present; its
+anxieties for the future; more than all, its weary recollections of the
+past!
+
+It had been bright day, for hours, when Oliver opened his eyes; he felt
+cheerful and happy. The crisis of the disease was safely past. He
+belonged to the world again.
+
+In three days’ time he was able to sit in an easy-chair, well propped
+up with pillows; and, as he was still too weak to walk, Mrs. Bedwin had
+him carried downstairs into the little housekeeper’s room, which
+belonged to her. Having him set, here, by the fire-side, the good old
+lady sat herself down too; and, being in a state of considerable
+delight at seeing him so much better, forthwith began to cry most
+violently.
+
+“Never mind me, my dear,” said the old lady; “I’m only having a regular
+good cry. There; it’s all over now; and I’m quite comfortable.”
+
+“You’re very, very kind to me, ma’am,” said Oliver.
+
+“Well, never you mind that, my dear,” said the old lady; “that’s got
+nothing to do with your broth; and it’s full time you had it; for the
+doctor says Mr. Brownlow may come in to see you this morning; and we
+must get up our best looks, because the better we look, the more he’ll
+be pleased.” And with this, the old lady applied herself to warming up,
+in a little saucepan, a basin full of broth: strong enough, Oliver
+thought, to furnish an ample dinner, when reduced to the regulation
+strength, for three hundred and fifty paupers, at the lowest
+computation.
+
+“Are you fond of pictures, dear?” inquired the old lady, seeing that
+Oliver had fixed his eyes, most intently, on a portrait which hung
+against the wall; just opposite his chair.
+
+“I don’t quite know, ma’am,” said Oliver, without taking his eyes from
+the canvas; “I have seen so few that I hardly know. What a beautiful,
+mild face that lady’s is!”
+
+“Ah!” said the old lady, “painters always make ladies out prettier than
+they are, or they wouldn’t get any custom, child. The man that invented
+the machine for taking likenesses might have known that would never
+succeed; it’s a deal too honest. A deal,” said the old lady, laughing
+very heartily at her own acuteness.
+
+“Is—is that a likeness, ma’am?” said Oliver.
+
+“Yes,” said the old lady, looking up for a moment from the broth;
+“that’s a portrait.”
+
+“Whose, ma’am?” asked Oliver.
+
+“Why, really, my dear, I don’t know,” answered the old lady in a
+good-humoured manner. “It’s not a likeness of anybody that you or I
+know, I expect. It seems to strike your fancy, dear.”
+
+“It is so pretty,” replied Oliver.
+
+“Why, sure you’re not afraid of it?” said the old lady: observing in
+great surprise, the look of awe with which the child regarded the
+painting.
+
+“Oh no, no,” returned Oliver quickly; “but the eyes look so sorrowful;
+and where I sit, they seem fixed upon me. It makes my heart beat,”
+added Oliver in a low voice, “as if it was alive, and wanted to speak
+to me, but couldn’t.”
+
+“Lord save us!” exclaimed the old lady, starting; “don’t talk in that
+way, child. You’re weak and nervous after your illness. Let me wheel
+your chair round to the other side; and then you won’t see it. There!”
+said the old lady, suiting the action to the word; “you don’t see it
+now, at all events.”
+
+Oliver _did_ see it in his mind’s eye as distinctly as if he had not
+altered his position; but he thought it better not to worry the kind
+old lady; so he smiled gently when she looked at him; and Mrs. Bedwin,
+satisfied that he felt more comfortable, salted and broke bits of
+toasted bread into the broth, with all the bustle befitting so solemn a
+preparation. Oliver got through it with extraordinary expedition. He
+had scarcely swallowed the last spoonful, when there came a soft rap at
+the door. “Come in,” said the old lady; and in walked Mr. Brownlow.
+
+Now, the old gentleman came in as brisk as need be; but, he had no
+sooner raised his spectacles on his forehead, and thrust his hands
+behind the skirts of his dressing-gown to take a good long look at
+Oliver, than his countenance underwent a very great variety of odd
+contortions. Oliver looked very worn and shadowy from sickness, and
+made an ineffectual attempt to stand up, out of respect to his
+benefactor, which terminated in his sinking back into the chair again;
+and the fact is, if the truth must be told, that Mr. Brownlow’s heart,
+being large enough for any six ordinary old gentlemen of humane
+disposition, forced a supply of tears into his eyes, by some hydraulic
+process which we are not sufficiently philosophical to be in a
+condition to explain.
+
+“Poor boy, poor boy!” said Mr. Brownlow, clearing his throat. “I’m
+rather hoarse this morning, Mrs. Bedwin. I’m afraid I have caught
+cold.”
+
+“I hope not, sir,” said Mrs. Bedwin. “Everything you have had, has been
+well aired, sir.”
+
+“I don’t know, Bedwin. I don’t know,” said Mr. Brownlow; “I rather
+think I had a damp napkin at dinner-time yesterday; but never mind
+that. How do you feel, my dear?”
+
+“Very happy, sir,” replied Oliver. “And very grateful indeed, sir, for
+your goodness to me.”
+
+“Good by,” said Mr. Brownlow, stoutly. “Have you given him any
+nourishment, Bedwin? Any slops, eh?”
+
+“He has just had a basin of beautiful strong broth, sir,” replied Mrs.
+Bedwin: drawing herself up slightly, and laying strong emphasis on the
+last word: to intimate that between slops, and broth will compounded,
+there existed no affinity or connection whatsoever.
+
+“Ugh!” said Mr. Brownlow, with a slight shudder; “a couple of glasses
+of port wine would have done him a great deal more good. Wouldn’t they,
+Tom White, eh?”
+
+“My name is Oliver, sir,” replied the little invalid: with a look of
+great astonishment.
+
+“Oliver,” said Mr. Brownlow; “Oliver what? Oliver White, eh?”
+
+“No, sir, Twist, Oliver Twist.”
+
+“Queer name!” said the old gentleman. “What made you tell the
+magistrate your name was White?”
+
+“I never told him so, sir,” returned Oliver in amazement.
+
+This sounded so like a falsehood, that the old gentleman looked
+somewhat sternly in Oliver’s face. It was impossible to doubt him;
+there was truth in every one of its thin and sharpened lineaments.
+
+“Some mistake,” said Mr. Brownlow. But, although his motive for looking
+steadily at Oliver no longer existed, the old idea of the resemblance
+between his features and some familiar face came upon him so strongly,
+that he could not withdraw his gaze.
+
+“I hope you are not angry with me, sir?” said Oliver, raising his eyes
+beseechingly.
+
+“No, no,” replied the old gentleman. “Why! what’s this? Bedwin, look
+there!”
+
+As he spoke, he pointed hastily to the picture over Oliver’s head, and
+then to the boy’s face. There was its living copy. The eyes, the head,
+the mouth; every feature was the same. The expression was, for the
+instant, so precisely alike, that the minutest line seemed copied with
+startling accuracy!
+
+Oliver knew not the cause of this sudden exclamation; for, not being
+strong enough to bear the start it gave him, he fainted away. A
+weakness on his part, which affords the narrative an opportunity of
+relieving the reader from suspense, in behalf of the two young pupils
+of the Merry Old Gentleman; and of recording—
+
+That when the Dodger, and his accomplished friend Master Bates, joined
+in the hue-and-cry which was raised at Oliver’s heels, in consequence
+of their executing an illegal conveyance of Mr. Brownlow’s personal
+property, as has been already described, they were actuated by a very
+laudable and becoming regard for themselves; and forasmuch as the
+freedom of the subject and the liberty of the individual are among the
+first and proudest boasts of a true-hearted Englishman, so, I need
+hardly beg the reader to observe, that this action should tend to exalt
+them in the opinion of all public and patriotic men, in almost as great
+a degree as this strong proof of their anxiety for their own
+preservation and safety goes to corroborate and confirm the little code
+of laws which certain profound and sound-judging philosophers have laid
+down as the main-springs of all Nature’s deeds and actions: the said
+philosophers very wisely reducing the good lady’s proceedings to
+matters of maxim and theory: and, by a very neat and pretty compliment
+to her exalted wisdom and understanding, putting entirely out of sight
+any considerations of heart, or generous impulse and feeling. For,
+these are matters totally beneath a female who is acknowledged by
+universal admission to be far above the numerous little foibles and
+weaknesses of her sex.
+
+If I wanted any further proof of the strictly philosophical nature of
+the conduct of these young gentlemen in their very delicate
+predicament, I should at once find it in the fact (also recorded in a
+foregoing part of this narrative), of their quitting the pursuit, when
+the general attention was fixed upon Oliver; and making immediately for
+their home by the shortest possible cut. Although I do not mean to
+assert that it is usually the practice of renowned and learned sages,
+to shorten the road to any great conclusion (their course indeed being
+rather to lengthen the distance, by various circumlocutions and
+discursive staggerings, like unto those in which drunken men under the
+pressure of a too mighty flow of ideas, are prone to indulge); still, I
+do mean to say, and do say distinctly, that it is the invariable
+practice of many mighty philosophers, in carrying out their theories,
+to evince great wisdom and foresight in providing against every
+possible contingency which can be supposed at all likely to affect
+themselves. Thus, to do a great right, you may do a little wrong; and
+you may take any means which the end to be attained, will justify; the
+amount of the right, or the amount of the wrong, or indeed the
+distinction between the two, being left entirely to the philosopher
+concerned, to be settled and determined by his clear, comprehensive,
+and impartial view of his own particular case.
+
+It was not until the two boys had scoured, with great rapidity, through
+a most intricate maze of narrow streets and courts, that they ventured
+to halt beneath a low and dark archway. Having remained silent here,
+just long enough to recover breath to speak, Master Bates uttered an
+exclamation of amusement and delight; and, bursting into an
+uncontrollable fit of laughter, flung himself upon a doorstep, and
+rolled thereon in a transport of mirth.
+
+“What’s the matter?” inquired the Dodger.
+
+“Ha! ha! ha!” roared Charley Bates.
+
+“Hold your noise,” remonstrated the Dodger, looking cautiously round.
+“Do you want to be grabbed, stupid?”
+
+“I can’t help it,” said Charley, “I can’t help it! To see him splitting
+away at that pace, and cutting round the corners, and knocking up
+again’ the posts, and starting on again as if he was made of iron as
+well as them, and me with the wipe in my pocket, singing out arter
+him—oh, my eye!” The vivid imagination of Master Bates presented the
+scene before him in too strong colours. As he arrived at this
+apostrophe, he again rolled upon the door-step, and laughed louder than
+before.
+
+“What’ll Fagin say?” inquired the Dodger; taking advantage of the next
+interval of breathlessness on the part of his friend to propound the
+question.
+
+“What?” repeated Charley Bates.
+
+“Ah, what?” said the Dodger.
+
+“Why, what should he say?” inquired Charley: stopping rather suddenly
+in his merriment; for the Dodger’s manner was impressive. “What should
+he say?”
+
+Mr. Dawkins whistled for a couple of minutes; then, taking off his hat,
+scratched his head, and nodded thrice.
+
+“What do you mean?” said Charley.
+
+“Toor rul lol loo, gammon and spinnage, the frog he wouldn’t, and high
+cockolorum,” said the Dodger: with a slight sneer on his intellectual
+countenance.
+
+This was explanatory, but not satisfactory. Master Bates felt it so;
+and again said, “What do you mean?”
+
+The Dodger made no reply; but putting his hat on again, and gathering
+the skirts of his long-tailed coat under his arm, thrust his tongue
+into his cheek, slapped the bridge of his nose some half-dozen times in
+a familiar but expressive manner, and turning on his heel, slunk down
+the court. Master Bates followed, with a thoughtful countenance.
+
+The noise of footsteps on the creaking stairs, a few minutes after the
+occurrence of this conversation, roused the merry old gentleman as he
+sat over the fire with a saveloy and a small loaf in his hand; a
+pocket-knife in his right; and a pewter pot on the trivet. There was a
+rascally smile on his white face as he turned round, and looking
+sharply out from under his thick red eyebrows, bent his ear towards the
+door, and listened.
+
+“Why, how’s this?” muttered the Jew: changing countenance; “only two of
+’em? Where’s the third? They can’t have got into trouble. Hark!”
+
+The footsteps approached nearer; they reached the landing. The door was
+slowly opened; and the Dodger and Charley Bates entered, closing it
+behind them.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XIII.
+SOME NEW ACQUAINTANCES ARE INTRODUCED TO THE INTELLIGENT READER,
+CONNECTED WITH WHOM VARIOUS PLEASANT MATTERS ARE RELATED, APPERTAINING
+TO THIS HISTORY
+
+
+“Where’s Oliver?” said the Jew, rising with a menacing look. “Where’s
+the boy?”
+
+The young thieves eyed their preceptor as if they were alarmed at his
+violence; and looked uneasily at each other. But they made no reply.
+
+“What’s become of the boy?” said the Jew, seizing the Dodger tightly by
+the collar, and threatening him with horrid imprecations. “Speak out,
+or I’ll throttle you!”
+
+Mr. Fagin looked so very much in earnest, that Charley Bates, who
+deemed it prudent in all cases to be on the safe side, and who
+conceived it by no means improbable that it might be his turn to be
+throttled second, dropped upon his knees, and raised a loud,
+well-sustained, and continuous roar—something between a mad bull and a
+speaking trumpet.
+
+“Will you speak?” thundered the Jew: shaking the Dodger so much that
+his keeping in the big coat at all, seemed perfectly miraculous.
+
+“Why, the traps have got him, and that’s all about it,” said the
+Dodger, sullenly. “Come, let go o’ me, will you!” And, swinging
+himself, at one jerk, clean out of the big coat, which he left in the
+Jew’s hands, the Dodger snatched up the toasting fork, and made a pass
+at the merry old gentleman’s waistcoat; which, if it had taken effect,
+would have let a little more merriment out than could have been easily
+replaced.
+
+The Jew stepped back in this emergency, with more agility than could
+have been anticipated in a man of his apparent decrepitude; and,
+seizing up the pot, prepared to hurl it at his assailant’s head. But
+Charley Bates, at this moment, calling his attention by a perfectly
+terrific howl, he suddenly altered its destination, and flung it full
+at that young gentleman.
+
+“Why, what the blazes is in the wind now!” growled a deep voice. “Who
+pitched that ’ere at me? It’s well it’s the beer, and not the pot, as
+hit me, or I’d have settled somebody. I might have know’d, as nobody
+but an infernal, rich, plundering, thundering old Jew could afford to
+throw away any drink but water—and not that, unless he done the River
+Company every quarter. Wot’s it all about, Fagin? D—me, if my
+neck-handkercher an’t lined with beer! Come in, you sneaking warmint;
+wot are you stopping outside for, as if you was ashamed of your master!
+Come in!”
+
+The man who growled out these words, was a stoutly-built fellow of
+about five-and-thirty, in a black velveteen coat, very soiled drab
+breeches, lace-up half boots, and grey cotton stockings which inclosed
+a bulky pair of legs, with large swelling calves;—the kind of legs,
+which in such costume, always look in an unfinished and incomplete
+state without a set of fetters to garnish them. He had a brown hat on
+his head, and a dirty belcher handkerchief round his neck: with the
+long frayed ends of which he smeared the beer from his face as he
+spoke. He disclosed, when he had done so, a broad heavy countenance
+with a beard of three days’ growth, and two scowling eyes; one of which
+displayed various parti-coloured symptoms of having been recently
+damaged by a blow.
+
+“Come in, d’ye hear?” growled this engaging ruffian.
+
+A white shaggy dog, with his face scratched and torn in twenty
+different places, skulked into the room.
+
+“Why didn’t you come in afore?” said the man. “You’re getting too proud
+to own me afore company, are you? Lie down!”
+
+This command was accompanied with a kick, which sent the animal to the
+other end of the room. He appeared well used to it, however; for he
+coiled himself up in a corner very quietly, without uttering a sound,
+and winking his very ill-looking eyes twenty times in a minute,
+appeared to occupy himself in taking a survey of the apartment.
+
+“What are you up to? Ill-treating the boys, you covetous, avaricious,
+in-sa-ti-a-ble old fence?” said the man, seating himself deliberately.
+“I wonder they don’t murder you! I would if I was them. If I’d been
+your ’prentice, I’d have done it long ago, and—no, I couldn’t have sold
+you afterwards, for you’re fit for nothing but keeping as a curiousity
+of ugliness in a glass bottle, and I suppose they don’t blow glass
+bottles large enough.”
+
+“Hush! hush! Mr. Sikes,” said the Jew, trembling; “don’t speak so
+loud!”
+
+“None of your mistering,” replied the ruffian; “you always mean
+mischief when you come that. You know my name: out with it! I shan’t
+disgrace it when the time comes.”
+
+“Well, well, then—Bill Sikes,” said the Jew, with abject humility. “You
+seem out of humour, Bill.”
+
+“Perhaps I am,” replied Sikes; “I should think you was rather out of
+sorts too, unless you mean as little harm when you throw pewter pots
+about, as you do when you blab and—”
+
+“Are you mad?” said the Jew, catching the man by the sleeve, and
+pointing towards the boys.
+
+Mr. Sikes contented himself with tying an imaginary knot under his left
+ear, and jerking his head over on the right shoulder; a piece of dumb
+show which the Jew appeared to understand perfectly. He then, in cant
+terms, with which his whole conversation was plentifully besprinkled,
+but which would be quite unintelligible if they were recorded here,
+demanded a glass of liquor.
+
+“And mind you don’t poison it,” said Mr. Sikes, laying his hat upon the
+table.
+
+This was said in jest; but if the speaker could have seen the evil leer
+with which the Jew bit his pale lip as he turned round to the cupboard,
+he might have thought the caution not wholly unnecessary, or the wish
+(at all events) to improve upon the distiller’s ingenuity not very far
+from the old gentleman’s merry heart.
+
+After swallowing two of three glasses of spirits, Mr. Sikes
+condescended to take some notice of the young gentlemen; which gracious
+act led to a conversation, in which the cause and manner of Oliver’s
+capture were circumstantially detailed, with such alterations and
+improvements on the truth, as to the Dodger appeared most advisable
+under the circumstances.
+
+“I’m afraid,” said the Jew, “that he may say something which will get
+us into trouble.”
+
+“That’s very likely,” returned Sikes with a malicious grin. “You’re
+blowed upon, Fagin.”
+
+“And I’m afraid, you see,” added the Jew, speaking as if he had not
+noticed the interruption; and regarding the other closely as he did
+so,—“I’m afraid that, if the game was up with us, it might be up with a
+good many more, and that it would come out rather worse for you than it
+would for me, my dear.”
+
+The man started, and turned round upon the Jew. But the old gentleman’s
+shoulders were shrugged up to his ears; and his eyes were vacantly
+staring on the opposite wall.
+
+There was a long pause. Every member of the respectable coterie
+appeared plunged in his own reflections; not excepting the dog, who by
+a certain malicious licking of his lips seemed to be meditating an
+attack upon the legs of the first gentleman or lady he might encounter
+in the streets when he went out.
+
+“Somebody must find out wot’s been done at the office,” said Mr. Sikes
+in a much lower tone than he had taken since he came in.
+
+The Jew nodded assent.
+
+“If he hasn’t peached, and is committed, there’s no fear till he comes
+out again,” said Mr. Sikes, “and then he must be taken care on. You
+must get hold of him somehow.”
+
+Again the Jew nodded.
+
+The prudence of this line of action, indeed, was obvious; but,
+unfortunately, there was one very strong objection to its being
+adopted. This was, that the Dodger, and Charley Bates, and Fagin, and
+Mr. William Sikes, happened, one and all, to entertain a violent and
+deeply-rooted antipathy to going near a police-office on any ground or
+pretext whatever.
+
+How long they might have sat and looked at each other, in a state of
+uncertainty not the most pleasant of its kind, it is difficult to
+guess. It is not necessary to make any guesses on the subject, however;
+for the sudden entrance of the two young ladies whom Oliver had seen on
+a former occasion, caused the conversation to flow afresh.
+
+“The very thing!” said the Jew. “Bet will go; won’t you, my dear?”
+
+“Wheres?” inquired the young lady.
+
+“Only just up to the office, my dear,” said the Jew coaxingly.
+
+It is due to the young lady to say that she did not positively affirm
+that she would not, but that she merely expressed an emphatic and
+earnest desire to be “blessed” if she would; a polite and delicate
+evasion of the request, which shows the young lady to have been
+possessed of that natural good breeding which cannot bear to inflict
+upon a fellow-creature, the pain of a direct and pointed refusal.
+
+The Jew’s countenance fell. He turned from this young lady, who was
+gaily, not to say gorgeously attired, in a red gown, green boots, and
+yellow curl-papers, to the other female.
+
+“Nancy, my dear,” said the Jew in a soothing manner, “what do _you_
+say?”
+
+“That it won’t do; so it’s no use a-trying it on, Fagin,” replied
+Nancy.
+
+“What do you mean by that?” said Mr. Sikes, looking up in a surly
+manner.
+
+“What I say, Bill,” replied the lady collectedly.
+
+“Why, you’re just the very person for it,” reasoned Mr. Sikes: “nobody
+about here knows anything of you.”
+
+“And as I don’t want ’em to, neither,” replied Nancy in the same
+composed manner, “it’s rather more no than yes with me, Bill.”
+
+“She’ll go, Fagin,” said Sikes.
+
+“No, she won’t, Fagin,” said Nancy.
+
+“Yes, she will, Fagin,” said Sikes.
+
+And Mr. Sikes was right. By dint of alternate threats, promises, and
+bribes, the lady in question was ultimately prevailed upon to undertake
+the commission. She was not, indeed, withheld by the same
+considerations as her agreeable friend; for, having recently removed
+into the neighborhood of Field Lane from the remote but genteel suburb
+of Ratcliffe, she was not under the same apprehension of being
+recognised by any of her numerous acquaintances.
+
+Accordingly, with a clean white apron tied over her gown, and her
+curl-papers tucked up under a straw bonnet,—both articles of dress
+being provided from the Jew’s inexhaustible stock,—Miss Nancy prepared
+to issue forth on her errand.
+
+“Stop a minute, my dear,” said the Jew, producing, a little covered
+basket. “Carry that in one hand. It looks more respectable, my dear.”
+
+“Give her a door-key to carry in her t’other one, Fagin,” said Sikes;
+“it looks real and genivine like.”
+
+“Yes, yes, my dear, so it does,” said the Jew, hanging a large
+street-door key on the forefinger of the young lady’s right hand.
+
+“There; very good! Very good indeed, my dear!” said the Jew, rubbing
+his hands.
+
+“Oh, my brother! My poor, dear, sweet, innocent little brother!”
+exclaimed Nancy, bursting into tears, and wringing the little basket
+and the street-door key in an agony of distress. “What has become of
+him! Where have they taken him to! Oh, do have pity, and tell me what’s
+been done with the dear boy, gentlemen; do, gentlemen, if you please,
+gentlemen!”
+
+Having uttered those words in a most lamentable and heart-broken tone:
+to the immeasurable delight of her hearers: Miss Nancy paused, winked
+to the company, nodded smilingly round, and disappeared.
+
+“Ah, she’s a clever girl, my dears,” said the Jew, turning round to his
+young friends, and shaking his head gravely, as if in mute admonition
+to them to follow the bright example they had just beheld.
+
+“She’s a honour to her sex,” said Mr. Sikes, filling his glass, and
+smiting the table with his enormous fist. “Here’s her health, and
+wishing they was all like her!”
+
+While these, and many other encomiums, were being passed on the
+accomplished Nancy, that young lady made the best of her way to the
+police-office; whither, notwithstanding a little natural timidity
+consequent upon walking through the streets alone and unprotected, she
+arrived in perfect safety shortly afterwards.
+
+Entering by the back way, she tapped softly with the key at one of the
+cell-doors, and listened. There was no sound within: so she coughed and
+listened again. Still there was no reply: so she spoke.
+
+“Nolly, dear?” murmured Nancy in a gentle voice; “Nolly?”
+
+There was nobody inside but a miserable shoeless criminal, who had been
+taken up for playing the flute, and who, the offence against society
+having been clearly proved, had been very properly committed by Mr.
+Fang to the House of Correction for one month; with the appropriate and
+amusing remark that since he had so much breath to spare, it would be
+more wholesomely expended on the treadmill than in a musical
+instrument. He made no answer: being occupied mentally bewailing the
+loss of the flute, which had been confiscated for the use of the
+county: so Nancy passed on to the next cell, and knocked there.
+
+“Well!” cried a faint and feeble voice.
+
+“Is there a little boy here?” inquired Nancy, with a preliminary sob.
+
+“No,” replied the voice; “God forbid.”
+
+This was a vagrant of sixty-five, who was going to prison for _not_
+playing the flute; or, in other words, for begging in the streets, and
+doing nothing for his livelihood. In the next cell was another man, who
+was going to the same prison for hawking tin saucepans without license;
+thereby doing something for his living, in defiance of the
+Stamp-office.
+
+But, as neither of these criminals answered to the name of Oliver, or
+knew anything about him, Nancy made straight up to the bluff officer in
+the striped waistcoat; and with the most piteous wailings and
+lamentations, rendered more piteous by a prompt and efficient use of
+the street-door key and the little basket, demanded her own dear
+brother.
+
+“I haven’t got him, my dear,” said the old man.
+
+“Where is he?” screamed Nancy, in a distracted manner.
+
+“Why, the gentleman’s got him,” replied the officer.
+
+“What gentleman! Oh, gracious heavens! What gentleman?” exclaimed
+Nancy.
+
+In reply to this incoherent questioning, the old man informed the
+deeply affected sister that Oliver had been taken ill in the office,
+and discharged in consequence of a witness having proved the robbery to
+have been committed by another boy, not in custody; and that the
+prosecutor had carried him away, in an insensible condition, to his own
+residence: of and concerning which, all the informant knew was, that it
+was somewhere in Pentonville, he having heard that word mentioned in
+the directions to the coachman.
+
+In a dreadful state of doubt and uncertainty, the agonised young woman
+staggered to the gate, and then, exchanging her faltering walk for a
+swift run, returned by the most devious and complicated route she could
+think of, to the domicile of the Jew.
+
+Mr. Bill Sikes no sooner heard the account of the expedition delivered,
+than he very hastily called up the white dog, and, putting on his hat,
+expeditiously departed: without devoting any time to the formality of
+wishing the company good-morning.
+
+“We must know where he is, my dears; he must be found,” said the Jew
+greatly excited. “Charley, do nothing but skulk about, till you bring
+home some news of him! Nancy, my dear, I must have him found. I trust
+to you, my dear,—to you and the Artful for everything! Stay, stay,”
+added the Jew, unlocking a drawer with a shaking hand; “there’s money,
+my dears. I shall shut up this shop to-night. You’ll know where to find
+me! Don’t stop here a minute. Not an instant, my dears!”
+
+With these words, he pushed them from the room: and carefully
+double-locking and barring the door behind them, drew from its place of
+concealment the box which he had unintentionally disclosed to Oliver.
+Then, he hastily proceeded to dispose the watches and jewellery beneath
+his clothing.
+
+A rap at the door startled him in this occupation. “Who’s there?” he
+cried in a shrill tone.
+
+“Me!” replied the voice of the Dodger, through the key-hole.
+
+“What now?” cried the Jew impatiently.
+
+“Is he to be kidnapped to the other ken, Nancy says?” inquired the
+Dodger.
+
+“Yes,” replied the Jew, “wherever she lays hands on him. Find him, find
+him out, that’s all. I shall know what to do next; never fear.”
+
+The boy murmured a reply of intelligence: and hurried downstairs after
+his companions.
+
+“He has not peached so far,” said the Jew as he pursued his occupation.
+“If he means to blab us among his new friends, we may stop his mouth
+yet.”
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XIV.
+COMPRISING FURTHER PARTICULARS OF OLIVER’S STAY AT MR. BROWNLOW’S, WITH
+THE REMARKABLE PREDICTION WHICH ONE MR. GRIMWIG UTTERED CONCERNING HIM,
+WHEN HE WENT OUT ON AN ERRAND
+
+
+Oliver soon recovering from the fainting-fit into which Mr. Brownlow’s
+abrupt exclamation had thrown him, the subject of the picture was
+carefully avoided, both by the old gentleman and Mrs. Bedwin, in the
+conversation that ensued: which indeed bore no reference to Oliver’s
+history or prospects, but was confined to such topics as might amuse
+without exciting him. He was still too weak to get up to breakfast;
+but, when he came down into the housekeeper’s room next day, his first
+act was to cast an eager glance at the wall, in the hope of again
+looking on the face of the beautiful lady. His expectations were
+disappointed, however, for the picture had been removed.
+
+“Ah!” said the housekeeper, watching the direction of Oliver’s eyes.
+“It is gone, you see.”
+
+“I see it is ma’am,” replied Oliver. “Why have they taken it away?”
+
+“It has been taken down, child, because Mr. Brownlow said, that as it
+seemed to worry you, perhaps it might prevent your getting well, you
+know,” rejoined the old lady.
+
+“Oh, no, indeed. It didn’t worry me, ma’am,” said Oliver. “I liked to
+see it. I quite loved it.”
+
+“Well, well!” said the old lady, good-humouredly; “you get well as fast
+as ever you can, dear, and it shall be hung up again. There! I promise
+you that! Now, let us talk about something else.”
+
+This was all the information Oliver could obtain about the picture at
+that time. As the old lady had been so kind to him in his illness, he
+endeavoured to think no more of the subject just then; so he listened
+attentively to a great many stories she told him, about an amiable and
+handsome daughter of hers, who was married to an amiable and handsome
+man, and lived in the country; and about a son, who was clerk to a
+merchant in the West Indies; and who was, also, such a good young man,
+and wrote such dutiful letters home four times a-year, that it brought
+the tears into her eyes to talk about them. When the old lady had
+expatiated, a long time, on the excellences of her children, and the
+merits of her kind good husband besides, who had been dead and gone,
+poor dear soul! just six-and-twenty years, it was time to have tea.
+After tea she began to teach Oliver cribbage: which he learnt as
+quickly as she could teach: and at which game they played, with great
+interest and gravity, until it was time for the invalid to have some
+warm wine and water, with a slice of dry toast, and then to go cosily
+to bed.
+
+They were happy days, those of Oliver’s recovery. Everything was so
+quiet, and neat, and orderly; everybody so kind and gentle; that after
+the noise and turbulence in the midst of which he had always lived, it
+seemed like Heaven itself. He was no sooner strong enough to put his
+clothes on, properly, than Mr. Brownlow caused a complete new suit, and
+a new cap, and a new pair of shoes, to be provided for him. As Oliver
+was told that he might do what he liked with the old clothes, he gave
+them to a servant who had been very kind to him, and asked her to sell
+them to a Jew, and keep the money for herself. This she very readily
+did; and, as Oliver looked out of the parlour window, and saw the Jew
+roll them up in his bag and walk away, he felt quite delighted to think
+that they were safely gone, and that there was now no possible danger
+of his ever being able to wear them again. They were sad rags, to tell
+the truth; and Oliver had never had a new suit before.
+
+One evening, about a week after the affair of the picture, as he was
+sitting talking to Mrs. Bedwin, there came a message down from Mr.
+Brownlow, that if Oliver Twist felt pretty well, he should like to see
+him in his study, and talk to him a little while.
+
+“Bless us, and save us! Wash your hands, and let me part your hair
+nicely for you, child,” said Mrs. Bedwin. “Dear heart alive! If we had
+known he would have asked for you, we would have put you a clean collar
+on, and made you as smart as sixpence!”
+
+Oliver did as the old lady bade him; and, although she lamented
+grievously, meanwhile, that there was not even time to crimp the little
+frill that bordered his shirt-collar; he looked so delicate and
+handsome, despite that important personal advantage, that she went so
+far as to say: looking at him with great complacency from head to foot,
+that she really didn’t think it would have been possible, on the
+longest notice, to have made much difference in him for the better.
+
+Thus encouraged, Oliver tapped at the study door. On Mr. Brownlow
+calling to him to come in, he found himself in a little back room,
+quite full of books, with a window, looking into some pleasant little
+gardens. There was a table drawn up before the window, at which Mr.
+Brownlow was seated reading. When he saw Oliver, he pushed the book
+away from him, and told him to come near the table, and sit down.
+Oliver complied; marvelling where the people could be found to read
+such a great number of books as seemed to be written to make the world
+wiser. Which is still a marvel to more experienced people than Oliver
+Twist, every day of their lives.
+
+“There are a good many books, are there not, my boy?” said Mr.
+Brownlow, observing the curiosity with which Oliver surveyed the
+shelves that reached from the floor to the ceiling.
+
+“A great number, sir,” replied Oliver. “I never saw so many.”
+
+“You shall read them, if you behave well,” said the old gentleman
+kindly; “and you will like that, better than looking at the
+outsides,—that is, some cases; because there are books of which the
+backs and covers are by far the best parts.”
+
+“I suppose they are those heavy ones, sir,” said Oliver, pointing to
+some large quartos, with a good deal of gilding about the binding.
+
+“Not always those,” said the old gentleman, patting Oliver on the head,
+and smiling as he did so; “there are other equally heavy ones, though
+of a much smaller size. How should you like to grow up a clever man,
+and write books, eh?”
+
+“I think I would rather read them, sir,” replied Oliver.
+
+“What! wouldn’t you like to be a book-writer?” said the old gentleman.
+
+Oliver considered a little while; and at last said, he should think it
+would be a much better thing to be a book-seller; upon which the old
+gentleman laughed heartily, and declared he had said a very good thing.
+Which Oliver felt glad to have done, though he by no means knew what it
+was.
+
+“Well, well,” said the old gentleman, composing his features. “Don’t be
+afraid! We won’t make an author of you, while there’s an honest trade
+to be learnt, or brick-making to turn to.”
+
+“Thank you, sir,” said Oliver. At the earnest manner of his reply, the
+old gentleman laughed again; and said something about a curious
+instinct, which Oliver, not understanding, paid no very great attention
+to.
+
+“Now,” said Mr. Brownlow, speaking if possible in a kinder, but at the
+same time in a much more serious manner, than Oliver had ever known him
+assume yet, “I want you to pay great attention, my boy, to what I am
+going to say. I shall talk to you without any reserve; because I am
+sure you are well able to understand me, as many older persons would
+be.”
+
+“Oh, don’t tell you are going to send me away, sir, pray!” exclaimed
+Oliver, alarmed at the serious tone of the old gentleman’s
+commencement! “Don’t turn me out of doors to wander in the streets
+again. Let me stay here, and be a servant. Don’t send me back to the
+wretched place I came from. Have mercy upon a poor boy, sir!”
+
+“My dear child,” said the old gentleman, moved by the warmth of
+Oliver’s sudden appeal; “you need not be afraid of my deserting you,
+unless you give me cause.”
+
+“I never, never will, sir,” interposed Oliver.
+
+“I hope not,” rejoined the old gentleman. “I do not think you ever
+will. I have been deceived, before, in the objects whom I have
+endeavoured to benefit; but I feel strongly disposed to trust you,
+nevertheless; and I am more interested in your behalf than I can well
+account for, even to myself. The persons on whom I have bestowed my
+dearest love, lie deep in their graves; but, although the happiness and
+delight of my life lie buried there too, I have not made a coffin of my
+heart, and sealed it up, forever, on my best affections. Deep
+affliction has but strengthened and refined them.”
+
+As the old gentleman said this in a low voice: more to himself than to
+his companion: and as he remained silent for a short time afterwards:
+Oliver sat quite still.
+
+“Well, well!” said the old gentleman at length, in a more cheerful
+tone, “I only say this, because you have a young heart; and knowing
+that I have suffered great pain and sorrow, you will be more careful,
+perhaps, not to wound me again. You say you are an orphan, without a
+friend in the world; all the inquiries I have been able to make,
+confirm the statement. Let me hear your story; where you come from; who
+brought you up; and how you got into the company in which I found you.
+Speak the truth, and you shall not be friendless while I live.”
+
+Oliver’s sobs checked his utterance for some minutes; when he was on
+the point of beginning to relate how he had been brought up at the
+farm, and carried to the workhouse by Mr. Bumble, a peculiarly
+impatient little double-knock was heard at the street-door: and the
+servant, running upstairs, announced Mr. Grimwig.
+
+“Is he coming up?” inquired Mr. Brownlow.
+
+“Yes, sir,” replied the servant. “He asked if there were any muffins in
+the house; and, when I told him yes, he said he had come to tea.”
+
+Mr. Brownlow smiled; and, turning to Oliver, said that Mr. Grimwig was
+an old friend of his, and he must not mind his being a little rough in
+his manners; for he was a worthy creature at bottom, as he had reason
+to know.
+
+“Shall I go downstairs, sir?” inquired Oliver.
+
+“No,” replied Mr. Brownlow, “I would rather you remained here.”
+
+At this moment, there walked into the room: supporting himself by a
+thick stick: a stout old gentleman, rather lame in one leg, who was
+dressed in a blue coat, striped waistcoat, nankeen breeches and
+gaiters, and a broad-brimmed white hat, with the sides turned up with
+green. A very small-plaited shirt frill stuck out from his waistcoat;
+and a very long steel watch-chain, with nothing but a key at the end,
+dangled loosely below it. The ends of his white neckerchief were
+twisted into a ball about the size of an orange; the variety of shapes
+into which his countenance was twisted, defy description. He had a
+manner of screwing his head on one side when he spoke; and of looking
+out of the corners of his eyes at the same time: which irresistibly
+reminded the beholder of a parrot. In this attitude, he fixed himself,
+the moment he made his appearance; and, holding out a small piece of
+orange-peel at arm’s length, exclaimed, in a growling, discontented
+voice.
+
+“Look here! do you see this! Isn’t it a most wonderful and
+extraordinary thing that I can’t call at a man’s house but I find a
+piece of this poor surgeon’s friend on the staircase? I’ve been lamed
+with orange-peel once, and I know orange-peel will be my death, or I’ll
+be content to eat my own head, sir!”
+
+This was the handsome offer with which Mr. Grimwig backed and confirmed
+nearly every assertion he made; and it was the more singular in his
+case, because, even admitting for the sake of argument, the possibility
+of scientific improvements being brought to that pass which will enable
+a gentleman to eat his own head in the event of his being so disposed,
+Mr. Grimwig’s head was such a particularly large one, that the most
+sanguine man alive could hardly entertain a hope of being able to get
+through it at a sitting—to put entirely out of the question, a very
+thick coating of powder.
+
+“I’ll eat my head, sir,” repeated Mr. Grimwig, striking his stick upon
+the ground. “Hallo! what’s that!” looking at Oliver, and retreating a
+pace or two.
+
+“This is young Oliver Twist, whom we were speaking about,” said Mr.
+Brownlow.
+
+Oliver bowed.
+
+“You don’t mean to say that’s the boy who had the fever, I hope?” said
+Mr. Grimwig, recoiling a little more. “Wait a minute! Don’t speak!
+Stop—” continued Mr. Grimwig, abruptly, losing all dread of the fever
+in his triumph at the discovery; “that’s the boy who had the orange! If
+that’s not the boy, sir, who had the orange, and threw this bit of peel
+upon the staircase, I’ll eat my head, and his too.”
+
+“No, no, he has not had one,” said Mr. Brownlow, laughing. “Come! Put
+down your hat; and speak to my young friend.”
+
+“I feel strongly on this subject, sir,” said the irritable old
+gentleman, drawing off his gloves. “There’s always more or less
+orange-peel on the pavement in our street; and I _know_ it’s put there
+by the surgeon’s boy at the corner. A young woman stumbled over a bit
+last night, and fell against my garden-railings; directly she got up I
+saw her look towards his infernal red lamp with the pantomime-light.
+‘Don’t go to him,’ I called out of the window, ‘he’s an assassin! A
+man-trap!’ So he is. If he is not—” Here the irascible old gentleman
+gave a great knock on the ground with his stick; which was always
+understood, by his friends, to imply the customary offer, whenever it
+was not expressed in words. Then, still keeping his stick in his hand,
+he sat down; and, opening a double eye-glass, which he wore attached to
+a broad black riband, took a view of Oliver: who, seeing that he was
+the object of inspection, coloured, and bowed again.
+
+“That’s the boy, is it?” said Mr. Grimwig, at length.
+
+“That’s the boy,” replied Mr. Brownlow.
+
+“How are you, boy?” said Mr. Grimwig.
+
+“A great deal better, thank you, sir,” replied Oliver.
+
+Mr. Brownlow, seeming to apprehend that his singular friend was about
+to say something disagreeable, asked Oliver to step downstairs and tell
+Mrs. Bedwin they were ready for tea; which, as he did not half like the
+visitor’s manner, he was very happy to do.
+
+“He is a nice-looking boy, is he not?” inquired Mr. Brownlow.
+
+“I don’t know,” replied Mr. Grimwig, pettishly.
+
+“Don’t know?”
+
+“No. I don’t know. I never see any difference in boys. I only knew two
+sort of boys. Mealy boys, and beef-faced boys.”
+
+“And which is Oliver?”
+
+“Mealy. I know a friend who has a beef-faced boy; a fine boy, they call
+him; with a round head, and red cheeks, and glaring eyes; a horrid boy;
+with a body and limbs that appear to be swelling out of the seams of
+his blue clothes; with the voice of a pilot, and the appetite of a
+wolf. I know him! The wretch!”
+
+“Come,” said Mr. Brownlow, “these are not the characteristics of young
+Oliver Twist; so he needn’t excite your wrath.”
+
+“They are not,” replied Mr. Grimwig. “He may have worse.”
+
+Here, Mr. Brownlow coughed impatiently; which appeared to afford Mr.
+Grimwig the most exquisite delight.
+
+“He may have worse, I say,” repeated Mr. Grimwig. “Where does he come
+from! Who is he? What is he? He has had a fever. What of that? Fevers
+are not peculiar to good people; are they? Bad people have fevers
+sometimes; haven’t they, eh? I knew a man who was hung in Jamaica for
+murdering his master. He had had a fever six times; he wasn’t
+recommended to mercy on that account. Pooh! nonsense!”
+
+Now, the fact was, that in the inmost recesses of his own heart, Mr.
+Grimwig was strongly disposed to admit that Oliver’s appearance and
+manner were unusually prepossessing; but he had a strong appetite for
+contradiction, sharpened on this occasion by the finding of the
+orange-peel; and, inwardly determining that no man should dictate to
+him whether a boy was well-looking or not, he had resolved, from the
+first, to oppose his friend. When Mr. Brownlow admitted that on no one
+point of inquiry could he yet return a satisfactory answer; and that he
+had postponed any investigation into Oliver’s previous history until he
+thought the boy was strong enough to hear it; Mr. Grimwig chuckled
+maliciously. And he demanded, with a sneer, whether the housekeeper was
+in the habit of counting the plate at night; because if she didn’t find
+a table-spoon or two missing some sunshiny morning, why, he would be
+content to—and so forth.
+
+All this, Mr. Brownlow, although himself somewhat of an impetuous
+gentleman: knowing his friend’s peculiarities, bore with great good
+humour; as Mr. Grimwig, at tea, was graciously pleased to express his
+entire approval of the muffins, matters went on very smoothly; and
+Oliver, who made one of the party, began to feel more at his ease than
+he had yet done in the fierce old gentleman’s presence.
+
+“And when are you going to hear a full, true, and particular account of
+the life and adventures of Oliver Twist?” asked Grimwig of Mr.
+Brownlow, at the conclusion of the meal; looking sideways at Oliver, as
+he resumed his subject.
+
+“To-morrow morning,” replied Mr. Brownlow. “I would rather he was alone
+with me at the time. Come up to me to-morrow morning at ten o’clock, my
+dear.”
+
+“Yes, sir,” replied Oliver. He answered with some hesitation, because
+he was confused by Mr. Grimwig’s looking so hard at him.
+
+“I’ll tell you what,” whispered that gentleman to Mr. Brownlow; “he
+won’t come up to you to-morrow morning. I saw him hesitate. He is
+deceiving you, my good friend.”
+
+“I’ll swear he is not,” replied Mr. Brownlow, warmly.
+
+“If he is not,” said Mr. Grimwig, “I’ll—” and down went the stick.
+
+“I’ll answer for that boy’s truth with my life!” said Mr. Brownlow,
+knocking the table.
+
+“And I for his falsehood with my head!” rejoined Mr. Grimwig, knocking
+the table also.
+
+“We shall see,” said Mr. Brownlow, checking his rising anger.
+
+“We will,” replied Mr. Grimwig, with a provoking smile; “we will.”
+
+As fate would have it, Mrs. Bedwin chanced to bring in, at this moment,
+a small parcel of books, which Mr. Brownlow had that morning purchased
+of the identical bookstall-keeper, who has already figured in this
+history; having laid them on the table, she prepared to leave the room.
+
+“Stop the boy, Mrs. Bedwin!” said Mr. Brownlow; “there is something to
+go back.”
+
+“He has gone, sir,” replied Mrs. Bedwin.
+
+“Call after him,” said Mr. Brownlow; “it’s particular. He is a poor
+man, and they are not paid for. There are some books to be taken back,
+too.”
+
+The street-door was opened. Oliver ran one way; and the girl ran
+another; and Mrs. Bedwin stood on the step and screamed for the boy;
+but there was no boy in sight. Oliver and the girl returned, in a
+breathless state, to report that there were no tidings of him.
+
+“Dear me, I am very sorry for that,” exclaimed Mr. Brownlow; “I
+particularly wished those books to be returned to-night.”
+
+“Send Oliver with them,” said Mr. Grimwig, with an ironical smile; “he
+will be sure to deliver them safely, you know.”
+
+“Yes; do let me take them, if you please, sir,” said Oliver. “I’ll run
+all the way, sir.”
+
+The old gentleman was just going to say that Oliver should not go out
+on any account; when a most malicious cough from Mr. Grimwig determined
+him that he should; and that, by his prompt discharge of the
+commission, he should prove to him the injustice of his suspicions: on
+this head at least: at once.
+
+“You _shall_ go, my dear,” said the old gentleman. “The books are on a
+chair by my table. Fetch them down.”
+
+Oliver, delighted to be of use, brought down the books under his arm in
+a great bustle; and waited, cap in hand, to hear what message he was to
+take.
+
+“You are to say,” said Mr. Brownlow, glancing steadily at Grimwig; “you
+are to say that you have brought those books back; and that you have
+come to pay the four pound ten I owe him. This is a five-pound note, so
+you will have to bring me back, ten shillings change.”
+
+“I won’t be ten minutes, sir,” said Oliver, eagerly. Having buttoned up
+the bank-note in his jacket pocket, and placed the books carefully
+under his arm, he made a respectful bow, and left the room. Mrs. Bedwin
+followed him to the street-door, giving him many directions about the
+nearest way, and the name of the bookseller, and the name of the
+street: all of which Oliver said he clearly understood. Having
+superadded many injunctions to be sure and not take cold, the old lady
+at length permitted him to depart.
+
+“Bless his sweet face!” said the old lady, looking after him. “I can’t
+bear, somehow, to let him go out of my sight.”
+
+At this moment, Oliver looked gaily round, and nodded before he turned
+the corner. The old lady smilingly returned his salutation, and,
+closing the door, went back to her own room.
+
+“Let me see; he’ll be back in twenty minutes, at the longest,” said Mr.
+Brownlow, pulling out his watch, and placing it on the table. “It will
+be dark by that time.”
+
+“Oh! you really expect him to come back, do you?” inquired Mr. Grimwig.
+
+“Don’t you?” asked Mr. Brownlow, smiling.
+
+The spirit of contradiction was strong in Mr. Grimwig’s breast, at the
+moment; and it was rendered stronger by his friend’s confident smile.
+
+“No,” he said, smiting the table with his fist, “I do not. The boy has
+a new suit of clothes on his back, a set of valuable books under his
+arm, and a five-pound note in his pocket. He’ll join his old friends
+the thieves, and laugh at you. If ever that boy returns to this house,
+sir, I’ll eat my head.”
+
+With these words he drew his chair closer to the table; and there the
+two friends sat, in silent expectation, with the watch between them.
+
+It is worthy of remark, as illustrating the importance we attach to our
+own judgments, and the pride with which we put forth our most rash and
+hasty conclusions, that, although Mr. Grimwig was not by any means a
+bad-hearted man, and though he would have been unfeignedly sorry to see
+his respected friend duped and deceived, he really did most earnestly
+and strongly hope at that moment, that Oliver Twist might not come
+back.
+
+It grew so dark, that the figures on the dial-plate were scarcely
+discernible; but there the two old gentlemen continued to sit, in
+silence, with the watch between them.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XV.
+SHOWING HOW VERY FOND OF OLIVER TWIST, THE MERRY OLD JEW AND MISS NANCY
+WERE
+
+
+In the obscure parlour of a low public-house, in the filthiest part of
+Little Saffron Hill; a dark and gloomy den, where a flaring gas-light
+burnt all day in the winter-time; and where no ray of sun ever shone in
+the summer: there sat, brooding over a little pewter measure and a
+small glass, strongly impregnated with the smell of liquor, a man in a
+velveteen coat, drab shorts, half-boots and stockings, whom even by
+that dim light no experienced agent of the police would have hesitated
+to recognise as Mr. William Sikes. At his feet, sat a white-coated,
+red-eyed dog; who occupied himself, alternately, in winking at his
+master with both eyes at the same time; and in licking a large, fresh
+cut on one side of his mouth, which appeared to be the result of some
+recent conflict.
+
+“Keep quiet, you warmint! Keep quiet!” said Mr. Sikes, suddenly
+breaking silence. Whether his meditations were so intense as to be
+disturbed by the dog’s winking, or whether his feelings were so wrought
+upon by his reflections that they required all the relief derivable
+from kicking an unoffending animal to allay them, is matter for
+argument and consideration. Whatever was the cause, the effect was a
+kick and a curse, bestowed upon the dog simultaneously.
+
+Dogs are not generally apt to revenge injuries inflicted upon them by
+their masters; but Mr. Sikes’s dog, having faults of temper in common
+with his owner, and labouring, perhaps, at this moment, under a
+powerful sense of injury, made no more ado but at once fixed his teeth
+in one of the half-boots. Having given in a hearty shake, he retired,
+growling, under a form; just escaping the pewter measure which Mr.
+Sikes levelled at his head.
+
+“You would, would you?” said Sikes, seizing the poker in one hand, and
+deliberately opening with the other a large clasp-knife, which he drew
+from his pocket. “Come here, you born devil! Come here! D’ye hear?”
+
+The dog no doubt heard; because Mr. Sikes spoke in the very harshest
+key of a very harsh voice; but, appearing to entertain some
+unaccountable objection to having his throat cut, he remained where he
+was, and growled more fiercely than before: at the same time grasping
+the end of the poker between his teeth, and biting at it like a wild
+beast.
+
+This resistance only infuriated Mr. Sikes the more; who, dropping on
+his knees, began to assail the animal most furiously. The dog jumped
+from right to left, and from left to right; snapping, growling, and
+barking; the man thrust and swore, and struck and blasphemed; and the
+struggle was reaching a most critical point for one or other; when, the
+door suddenly opening, the dog darted out: leaving Bill Sikes with the
+poker and the clasp-knife in his hands.
+
+There must always be two parties to a quarrel, says the old adage. Mr.
+Sikes, being disappointed of the dog’s participation, at once
+transferred his share in the quarrel to the new comer.
+
+“What the devil do you come in between me and my dog for?” said Sikes,
+with a fierce gesture.
+
+“I didn’t know, my dear, I didn’t know,” replied Fagin, humbly; for the
+Jew was the new comer.
+
+“Didn’t know, you white-livered thief!” growled Sikes. “Couldn’t you
+hear the noise?”
+
+“Not a sound of it, as I’m a living man, Bill,” replied the Jew.
+
+“Oh no! You hear nothing, you don’t,” retorted Sikes with a fierce
+sneer. “Sneaking in and out, so as nobody hears how you come or go! I
+wish you had been the dog, Fagin, half a minute ago.”
+
+“Why?” inquired the Jew with a forced smile.
+
+“Cause the government, as cares for the lives of such men as you, as
+haven’t half the pluck of curs, lets a man kill a dog how he likes,”
+replied Sikes, shutting up the knife with a very expressive look;
+“that’s why.”
+
+The Jew rubbed his hands; and, sitting down at the table, affected to
+laugh at the pleasantry of his friend. He was obviously very ill at
+ease, however.
+
+“Grin away,” said Sikes, replacing the poker, and surveying him with
+savage contempt; “grin away. You’ll never have the laugh at me, though,
+unless it’s behind a nightcap. I’ve got the upper hand over you, Fagin;
+and, d—me, I’ll keep it. There! If I go, you go; so take care of me.”
+
+“Well, well, my dear,” said the Jew, “I know all that; we—we—have a
+mutual interest, Bill,—a mutual interest.”
+
+“Humph,” said Sikes, as if he thought the interest lay rather more on
+the Jew’s side than on his. “Well, what have you got to say to me?”
+
+“It’s all passed safe through the melting-pot,” replied Fagin, “and
+this is your share. It’s rather more than it ought to be, my dear; but
+as I know you’ll do me a good turn another time, and—”
+
+“Stow that gammon,” interposed the robber, impatiently. “Where is it?
+Hand over!”
+
+“Yes, yes, Bill; give me time, give me time,” replied the Jew,
+soothingly. “Here it is! All safe!” As he spoke, he drew forth an old
+cotton handkerchief from his breast; and untying a large knot in one
+corner, produced a small brown-paper packet. Sikes, snatching it from
+him, hastily opened it; and proceeded to count the sovereigns it
+contained.
+
+“This is all, is it?” inquired Sikes.
+
+“All,” replied the Jew.
+
+“You haven’t opened the parcel and swallowed one or two as you come
+along, have you?” inquired Sikes, suspiciously. “Don’t put on an
+injured look at the question; you’ve done it many a time. Jerk the
+tinkler.”
+
+These words, in plain English, conveyed an injunction to ring the bell.
+It was answered by another Jew: younger than Fagin, but nearly as vile
+and repulsive in appearance.
+
+Bill Sikes merely pointed to the empty measure. The Jew, perfectly
+understanding the hint, retired to fill it: previously exchanging a
+remarkable look with Fagin, who raised his eyes for an instant, as if
+in expectation of it, and shook his head in reply; so slightly that the
+action would have been almost imperceptible to an observant third
+person. It was lost upon Sikes, who was stooping at the moment to tie
+the boot-lace which the dog had torn. Possibly, if he had observed the
+brief interchange of signals, he might have thought that it boded no
+good to him.
+
+“Is anybody here, Barney?” inquired Fagin; speaking, now that that
+Sikes was looking on, without raising his eyes from the ground.
+
+“Dot a shoul,” replied Barney; whose words: whether they came from the
+heart or not: made their way through the nose.
+
+“Nobody?” inquired Fagin, in a tone of surprise: which perhaps might
+mean that Barney was at liberty to tell the truth.
+
+“Dobody but Biss Dadsy,” replied Barney.
+
+“Nancy!” exclaimed Sikes. “Where? Strike me blind, if I don’t honour
+that ’ere girl, for her native talents.”
+
+“She’s bid havid a plate of boiled beef id the bar,” replied Barney.
+
+“Send her here,” said Sikes, pouring out a glass of liquor. “Send her
+here.”
+
+Barney looked timidly at Fagin, as if for permission; the Jew remaining
+silent, and not lifting his eyes from the ground, he retired; and
+presently returned, ushering in Nancy; who was decorated with the
+bonnet, apron, basket, and street-door key, complete.
+
+“You are on the scent, are you, Nancy?” inquired Sikes, proffering the
+glass.
+
+“Yes, I am, Bill,” replied the young lady, disposing of its contents;
+“and tired enough of it I am, too. The young brat’s been ill and
+confined to the crib; and—”
+
+“Ah, Nancy, dear!” said Fagin, looking up.
+
+Now, whether a peculiar contraction of the Jew’s red eye-brows, and a
+half closing of his deeply-set eyes, warned Miss Nancy that she was
+disposed to be too communicative, is not a matter of much importance.
+The fact is all we need care for here; and the fact is, that she
+suddenly checked herself, and with several gracious smiles upon Mr.
+Sikes, turned the conversation to other matters. In about ten minutes’
+time, Mr. Fagin was seized with a fit of coughing; upon which Nancy
+pulled her shawl over her shoulders, and declared it was time to go.
+Mr. Sikes, finding that he was walking a short part of her way himself,
+expressed his intention of accompanying her; they went away together,
+followed, at a little distant, by the dog, who slunk out of a back-yard
+as soon as his master was out of sight.
+
+The Jew thrust his head out of the room door when Sikes had left it;
+looked after him as he walked up the dark passage; shook his clenched
+fist; muttered a deep curse; and then, with a horrible grin, reseated
+himself at the table; where he was soon deeply absorbed in the
+interesting pages of the Hue-and-Cry.
+
+Meanwhile, Oliver Twist, little dreaming that he was within so very
+short a distance of the merry old gentleman, was on his way to the
+book-stall. When he got into Clerkenwell, he accidently turned down a
+by-street which was not exactly in his way; but not discovering his
+mistake until he had got half-way down it, and knowing it must lead in
+the right direction, he did not think it worth while to turn back; and
+so marched on, as quickly as he could, with the books under his arm.
+
+He was walking along, thinking how happy and contented he ought to
+feel; and how much he would give for only one look at poor little Dick,
+who, starved and beaten, might be weeping bitterly at that very moment;
+when he was startled by a young woman screaming out very loud. “Oh, my
+dear brother!” And he had hardly looked up, to see what the matter was,
+when he was stopped by having a pair of arms thrown tight round his
+neck.
+
+“Don’t,” cried Oliver, struggling. “Let go of me. Who is it? What are
+you stopping me for?”
+
+The only reply to this, was a great number of loud lamentations from
+the young woman who had embraced him; and who had a little basket and a
+street-door key in her hand.
+
+“Oh my gracious!” said the young woman, “I have found him! Oh! Oliver!
+Oliver! Oh you naughty boy, to make me suffer such distress on your
+account! Come home, dear, come. Oh, I’ve found him. Thank gracious
+goodness heavins, I’ve found him!” With these incoherent exclamations,
+the young woman burst into another fit of crying, and got so dreadfully
+hysterical, that a couple of women who came up at the moment asked a
+butcher’s boy with a shiny head of hair anointed with suet, who was
+also looking on, whether he didn’t think he had better run for the
+doctor. To which, the butcher’s boy: who appeared of a lounging, not to
+say indolent disposition: replied, that he thought not.
+
+“Oh, no, no, never mind,” said the young woman, grasping Oliver’s hand;
+“I’m better now. Come home directly, you cruel boy! Come!”
+
+“Oh, ma’am,” replied the young woman, “he ran away, near a month ago,
+from his parents, who are hard-working and respectable people; and went
+and joined a set of thieves and bad characters; and almost broke his
+mother’s heart.”
+
+“Young wretch!” said one woman.
+
+“Go home, do, you little brute,” said the other.
+
+“I am not,” replied Oliver, greatly alarmed. “I don’t know her. I
+haven’t any sister, or father and mother either. I’m an orphan; I live
+at Pentonville.”
+
+“Only hear him, how he braves it out!” cried the young woman.
+
+“Why, it’s Nancy!” exclaimed Oliver; who now saw her face for the first
+time; and started back, in irrepressible astonishment.
+
+“You see he knows me!” cried Nancy, appealing to the bystanders. “He
+can’t help himself. Make him come home, there’s good people, or he’ll
+kill his dear mother and father, and break my heart!”
+
+“What the devil’s this?” said a man, bursting out of a beer-shop, with
+a white dog at his heels; “young Oliver! Come home to your poor mother,
+you young dog! Come home directly.”
+
+“I don’t belong to them. I don’t know them. Help! help!” cried Oliver,
+struggling in the man’s powerful grasp.
+
+“Help!” repeated the man. “Yes; I’ll help you, you young rascal! What
+books are these? You’ve been a stealing ’em, have you? Give ’em here.”
+With these words, the man tore the volumes from his grasp, and struck
+him on the head.
+
+“That’s right!” cried a looker-on, from a garret-window. “That’s the
+only way of bringing him to his senses!”
+
+“To be sure!” cried a sleepy-faced carpenter, casting an approving look
+at the garret-window.
+
+“It’ll do him good!” said the two women.
+
+“And he shall have it, too!” rejoined the man, administering another
+blow, and seizing Oliver by the collar. “Come on, you young villain!
+Here, Bull’s-eye, mind him, boy! Mind him!”
+
+Weak with recent illness; stupified by the blows and the suddenness of
+the attack; terrified by the fierce growling of the dog, and the
+brutality of the man; overpowered by the conviction of the bystanders
+that he really was the hardened little wretch he was described to be;
+what could one poor child do! Darkness had set in; it was a low
+neighborhood; no help was near; resistance was useless. In another
+moment he was dragged into a labyrinth of dark narrow courts, and was
+forced along them at a pace which rendered the few cries he dared to
+give utterance to, unintelligible. It was of little moment, indeed,
+whether they were intelligible or no; for there was nobody to care for
+them, had they been ever so plain.
+
+
+The gas-lamps were lighted; Mrs. Bedwin was waiting anxiously at the
+open door; the servant had run up the street twenty times to see if
+there were any traces of Oliver; and still the two old gentlemen sat,
+perseveringly, in the dark parlour, with the watch between them.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XVI.
+RELATES WHAT BECAME OF OLIVER TWIST, AFTER HE HAD BEEN CLAIMED BY NANCY
+
+
+The narrow streets and courts, at length, terminated in a large open
+space; scattered about which, were pens for beasts, and other
+indications of a cattle-market. Sikes slackened his pace when they
+reached this spot: the girl being quite unable to support any longer,
+the rapid rate at which they had hitherto walked. Turning to Oliver, he
+roughly commanded him to take hold of Nancy’s hand.
+
+“Do you hear?” growled Sikes, as Oliver hesitated, and looked round.
+
+They were in a dark corner, quite out of the track of passengers.
+
+Oliver saw, but too plainly, that resistance would be of no avail. He
+held out his hand, which Nancy clasped tight in hers.
+
+“Give me the other,” said Sikes, seizing Oliver’s unoccupied hand.
+“Here, Bull’s-Eye!”
+
+The dog looked up, and growled.
+
+“See here, boy!” said Sikes, putting his other hand to Oliver’s throat;
+“if he speaks ever so soft a word, hold him! D’ye mind!”
+
+The dog growled again; and licking his lips, eyed Oliver as if he were
+anxious to attach himself to his windpipe without delay.
+
+“He’s as willing as a Christian, strike me blind if he isn’t!” said
+Sikes, regarding the animal with a kind of grim and ferocious approval.
+“Now, you know what you’ve got to expect, master, so call away as quick
+as you like; the dog will soon stop that game. Get on, young’un!”
+
+Bull’s-eye wagged his tail in acknowledgment of this unusually
+endearing form of speech; and, giving vent to another admonitory growl
+for the benefit of Oliver, led the way onward.
+
+It was Smithfield that they were crossing, although it might have been
+Grosvenor Square, for anything Oliver knew to the contrary. The night
+was dark and foggy. The lights in the shops could scarecely struggle
+through the heavy mist, which thickened every moment and shrouded the
+streets and houses in gloom; rendering the strange place still stranger
+in Oliver’s eyes; and making his uncertainty the more dismal and
+depressing.
+
+They had hurried on a few paces, when a deep church-bell struck the
+hour. With its first stroke, his two conductors stopped, and turned
+their heads in the direction whence the sound proceeded.
+
+“Eight o’clock, Bill,” said Nancy, when the bell ceased.
+
+“What’s the good of telling me that; I can hear it, can’t I!” replied
+Sikes.
+
+“I wonder whether _they_ can hear it,” said Nancy.
+
+“Of course they can,” replied Sikes. “It was Bartlemy time when I was
+shopped; and there warn’t a penny trumpet in the fair, as I couldn’t
+hear the squeaking on. Arter I was locked up for the night, the row and
+din outside made the thundering old jail so silent, that I could almost
+have beat my brains out against the iron plates of the door.”
+
+“Poor fellow!” said Nancy, who still had her face turned towards the
+quarter in which the bell had sounded. “Oh, Bill, such fine young chaps
+as them!”
+
+“Yes; that’s all you women think of,” answered Sikes. “Fine young
+chaps! Well, they’re as good as dead, so it don’t much matter.”
+
+With this consolation, Mr. Sikes appeared to repress a rising tendency
+to jealousy, and, clasping Oliver’s wrist more firmly, told him to step
+out again.
+
+“Wait a minute!” said the girl: “I wouldn’t hurry by, if it was you
+that was coming out to be hung, the next time eight o’clock struck,
+Bill. I’d walk round and round the place till I dropped, if the snow
+was on the ground, and I hadn’t a shawl to cover me.”
+
+“And what good would that do?” inquired the unsentimental Mr. Sikes.
+“Unless you could pitch over a file and twenty yards of good stout
+rope, you might as well be walking fifty mile off, or not walking at
+all, for all the good it would do me. Come on, and don’t stand
+preaching there.”
+
+The girl burst into a laugh; drew her shawl more closely round her; and
+they walked away. But Oliver felt her hand tremble, and, looking up in
+her face as they passed a gas-lamp, saw that it had turned a deadly
+white.
+
+They walked on, by little-frequented and dirty ways, for a full
+half-hour: meeting very few people, and those appearing from their
+looks to hold much the same position in society as Mr. Sikes himself.
+At length they turned into a very filthy narrow street, nearly full of
+old-clothes shops; the dog running forward, as if conscious that there
+was no further occasion for his keeping on guard, stopped before the
+door of a shop that was closed and apparently untenanted; the house was
+in a ruinous condition, and on the door was nailed a board, intimating
+that it was to let: which looked as if it had hung there for many
+years.
+
+“All right,” cried Sikes, glancing cautiously about.
+
+Nancy stooped below the shutters, and Oliver heard the sound of a bell.
+They crossed to the opposite side of the street, and stood for a few
+moments under a lamp. A noise, as if a sash window were gently raised,
+was heard; and soon afterwards the door softly opened. Mr. Sikes then
+seized the terrified boy by the collar with very little ceremony; and
+all three were quickly inside the house.
+
+The passage was perfectly dark. They waited, while the person who had
+let them in, chained and barred the door.
+
+“Anybody here?” inquired Sikes.
+
+“No,” replied a voice, which Oliver thought he had heard before.
+
+“Is the old ’un here?” asked the robber.
+
+“Yes,” replied the voice, “and precious down in the mouth he has been.
+Won’t he be glad to see you? Oh, no!”
+
+The style of this reply, as well as the voice which delivered it,
+seemed familiar to Oliver’s ears: but it was impossible to distinguish
+even the form of the speaker in the darkness.
+
+“Let’s have a glim,” said Sikes, “or we shall go breaking our necks, or
+treading on the dog. Look after your legs if you do!”
+
+“Stand still a moment, and I’ll get you one,” replied the voice. The
+receding footsteps of the speaker were heard; and, in another minute,
+the form of Mr. John Dawkins, otherwise the Artful Dodger, appeared. He
+bore in his right hand a tallow candle stuck in the end of a cleft
+stick.
+
+The young gentleman did not stop to bestow any other mark of
+recognition upon Oliver than a humourous grin; but, turning away,
+beckoned the visitors to follow him down a flight of stairs. They
+crossed an empty kitchen; and, opening the door of a low
+earthy-smelling room, which seemed to have been built in a small
+back-yard, were received with a shout of laughter.
+
+“Oh, my wig, my wig!” cried Master Charles Bates, from whose lungs the
+laughter had proceeded: “here he is! oh, cry, here he is! Oh, Fagin,
+look at him! Fagin, do look at him! I can’t bear it; it is such a jolly
+game, I can’t bear it. Hold me, somebody, while I laugh it out.”
+
+With this irrepressible ebullition of mirth, Master Bates laid himself
+flat on the floor: and kicked convulsively for five minutes, in an
+ectasy of facetious joy. Then jumping to his feet, he snatched the
+cleft stick from the Dodger; and, advancing to Oliver, viewed him round
+and round; while the Jew, taking off his nightcap, made a great number
+of low bows to the bewildered boy. The Artful, meantime, who was of a
+rather saturnine disposition, and seldom gave way to merriment when it
+interfered with business, rifled Oliver’s pockets with steady
+assiduity.
+
+“Look at his togs, Fagin!” said Charley, putting the light so close to
+his new jacket as nearly to set him on fire. “Look at his togs!
+Superfine cloth, and the heavy swell cut! Oh, my eye, what a game! And
+his books, too! Nothing but a gentleman, Fagin!”
+
+“Delighted to see you looking so well, my dear,” said the Jew, bowing
+with mock humility. “The Artful shall give you another suit, my dear,
+for fear you should spoil that Sunday one. Why didn’t you write, my
+dear, and say you were coming? We’d have got something warm for
+supper.”
+
+At his, Master Bates roared again: so loud, that Fagin himself relaxed,
+and even the Dodger smiled; but as the Artful drew forth the five-pound
+note at that instant, it is doubtful whether the sally of the discovery
+awakened his merriment.
+
+“Hallo, what’s that?” inquired Sikes, stepping forward as the Jew
+seized the note. “That’s mine, Fagin.”
+
+“No, no, my dear,” said the Jew. “Mine, Bill, mine. You shall have the
+books.”
+
+“If that ain’t mine!” said Bill Sikes, putting on his hat with a
+determined air; “mine and Nancy’s that is; I’ll take the boy back
+again.”
+
+The Jew started. Oliver started too, though from a very different
+cause; for he hoped that the dispute might really end in his being
+taken back.
+
+“Come! Hand over, will you?” said Sikes.
+
+“This is hardly fair, Bill; hardly fair, is it, Nancy?” inquired the
+Jew.
+
+“Fair, or not fair,” retorted Sikes, “hand over, I tell you! Do you
+think Nancy and me has got nothing else to do with our precious time
+but to spend it in scouting arter, and kidnapping, every young boy as
+gets grabbed through you? Give it here, you avaricious old skeleton,
+give it here!”
+
+With this gentle remonstrance, Mr. Sikes plucked the note from between
+the Jew’s finger and thumb; and looking the old man coolly in the face,
+folded it up small, and tied it in his neckerchief.
+
+“That’s for our share of the trouble,” said Sikes; “and not half
+enough, neither. You may keep the books, if you’re fond of reading. If
+you ain’t, sell ’em.”
+
+“They’re very pretty,” said Charley Bates: who, with sundry grimaces,
+had been affecting to read one of the volumes in question; “beautiful
+writing, isn’t is, Oliver?” At sight of the dismayed look with which
+Oliver regarded his tormentors, Master Bates, who was blessed with a
+lively sense of the ludicrous, fell into another ectasy, more
+boisterous than the first.
+
+“They belong to the old gentleman,” said Oliver, wringing his hands;
+“to the good, kind, old gentleman who took me into his house, and had
+me nursed, when I was near dying of the fever. Oh, pray send them back;
+send him back the books and money. Keep me here all my life long; but
+pray, pray send them back. He’ll think I stole them; the old lady: all
+of them who were so kind to me: will think I stole them. Oh, do have
+mercy upon me, and send them back!”
+
+With these words, which were uttered with all the energy of passionate
+grief, Oliver fell upon his knees at the Jew’s feet; and beat his hands
+together, in perfect desperation.
+
+“The boy’s right,” remarked Fagin, looking covertly round, and knitting
+his shaggy eyebrows into a hard knot. “You’re right, Oliver, you’re
+right; they _will_ think you have stolen ’em. Ha! ha!” chuckled the
+Jew, rubbing his hands, “it couldn’t have happened better, if we had
+chosen our time!”
+
+“Of course it couldn’t,” replied Sikes; “I know’d that, directly I see
+him coming through Clerkenwell, with the books under his arm. It’s all
+right enough. They’re soft-hearted psalm-singers, or they wouldn’t have
+taken him in at all; and they’ll ask no questions after him, fear they
+should be obliged to prosecute, and so get him lagged. He’s safe
+enough.”
+
+Oliver had looked from one to the other, while these words were being
+spoken, as if he were bewildered, and could scarecely understand what
+passed; but when Bill Sikes concluded, he jumped suddenly to his feet,
+and tore wildly from the room: uttering shrieks for help, which made
+the bare old house echo to the roof.
+
+“Keep back the dog, Bill!” cried Nancy, springing before the door, and
+closing it, as the Jew and his two pupils darted out in pursuit. “Keep
+back the dog; he’ll tear the boy to pieces.”
+
+“Serve him right!” cried Sikes, struggling to disengage himself from
+the girl’s grasp. “Stand off from me, or I’ll split your head against
+the wall.”
+
+“I don’t care for that, Bill, I don’t care for that,” screamed the
+girl, struggling violently with the man, “the child shan’t be torn down
+by the dog, unless you kill me first.”
+
+“Shan’t he!” said Sikes, setting his teeth. “I’ll soon do that, if you
+don’t keep off.”
+
+The housebreaker flung the girl from him to the further end of the
+room, just as the Jew and the two boys returned, dragging Oliver among
+them.
+
+“What’s the matter here!” said Fagin, looking round.
+
+“The girl’s gone mad, I think,” replied Sikes, savagely.
+
+“No, she hasn’t,” said Nancy, pale and breathless from the scuffle;
+“no, she hasn’t, Fagin; don’t think it.”
+
+“Then keep quiet, will you?” said the Jew, with a threatening look.
+
+“No, I won’t do that, neither,” replied Nancy, speaking very loud.
+“Come! What do you think of that?”
+
+Mr. Fagin was sufficiently well acquainted with the manners and customs
+of that particular species of humanity to which Nancy belonged, to feel
+tolerably certain that it would be rather unsafe to prolong any
+conversation with her, at present. With the view of diverting the
+attention of the company, he turned to Oliver.
+
+“So you wanted to get away, my dear, did you?” said the Jew, taking up
+a jagged and knotted club which lay in a corner of the fireplace; “eh?”
+
+Oliver made no reply. But he watched the Jew’s motions, and breathed
+quickly.
+
+“Wanted to get assistance; called for the police; did you?” sneered the
+Jew, catching the boy by the arm. “We’ll cure you of that, my young
+master.”
+
+The Jew inflicted a smart blow on Oliver’s shoulders with the club; and
+was raising it for a second, when the girl, rushing forward, wrested it
+from his hand. She flung it into the fire, with a force that brought
+some of the glowing coals whirling out into the room.
+
+“I won’t stand by and see it done, Fagin,” cried the girl. “You’ve got
+the boy, and what more would you have?—Let him be—let him be—or I shall
+put that mark on some of you, that will bring me to the gallows before
+my time.”
+
+The girl stamped her foot violently on the floor as she vented this
+threat; and with her lips compressed, and her hands clenched, looked
+alternately at the Jew and the other robber: her face quite colourless
+from the passion of rage into which she had gradually worked herself.
+
+“Why, Nancy!” said the Jew, in a soothing tone; after a pause, during
+which he and Mr. Sikes had stared at one another in a disconcerted
+manner; “you,—you’re more clever than ever to-night. Ha! ha! my dear,
+you are acting beautifully.”
+
+“Am I!” said the girl. “Take care I don’t overdo it. You will be the
+worse for it, Fagin, if I do; and so I tell you in good time to keep
+clear of me.”
+
+There is something about a roused woman: especially if she add to all
+her other strong passions, the fierce impulses of recklessness and
+despair; which few men like to provoke. The Jew saw that it would be
+hopeless to affect any further mistake regarding the reality of Miss
+Nancy’s rage; and, shrinking involuntarily back a few paces, cast a
+glance, half imploring and half cowardly, at Sikes: as if to hint that
+he was the fittest person to pursue the dialogue.
+
+Mr. Sikes, thus mutely appealed to; and possibly feeling his personal
+pride and influence interested in the immediate reduction of Miss Nancy
+to reason; gave utterance to about a couple of score of curses and
+threats, the rapid production of which reflected great credit on the
+fertility of his invention. As they produced no visible effect on the
+object against whom they were discharged, however, he resorted to more
+tangible arguments.
+
+“What do you mean by this?” said Sikes; backing the inquiry with a very
+common imprecation concerning the most beautiful of human features:
+which, if it were heard above, only once out of every fifty thousand
+times that it is uttered below, would render blindness as common a
+disorder as measles: “what do you mean by it? Burn my body! Do you know
+who you are, and what you are?”
+
+“Oh, yes, I know all about it,” replied the girl, laughing
+hysterically; and shaking her head from side to side, with a poor
+assumption of indifference.
+
+“Well, then, keep quiet,” rejoined Sikes, with a growl like that he was
+accustomed to use when addressing his dog, “or I’ll quiet you for a
+good long time to come.”
+
+The girl laughed again: even less composedly than before; and, darting
+a hasty look at Sikes, turned her face aside, and bit her lip till the
+blood came.
+
+“You’re a nice one,” added Sikes, as he surveyed her with a
+contemptuous air, “to take up the humane and gen—teel side! A pretty
+subject for the child, as you call him, to make a friend of!”
+
+“God Almighty help me, I am!” cried the girl passionately; “and I wish
+I had been struck dead in the street, or had changed places with them
+we passed so near to-night, before I had lent a hand in bringing him
+here. He’s a thief, a liar, a devil, all that’s bad, from this night
+forth. Isn’t that enough for the old wretch, without blows?”
+
+“Come, come, Sikes,” said the Jew appealing to him in a remonstratory
+tone, and motioning towards the boys, who were eagerly attentive to all
+that passed; “we must have civil words; civil words, Bill.”
+
+“Civil words!” cried the girl, whose passion was frightful to see.
+“Civil words, you villain! Yes, you deserve ’em from me. I thieved for
+you when I was a child not half as old as this!” pointing to Oliver. “I
+have been in the same trade, and in the same service, for twelve years
+since. Don’t you know it? Speak out! Don’t you know it?”
+
+“Well, well,” replied the Jew, with an attempt at pacification; “and,
+if you have, it’s your living!”
+
+“Aye, it is!” returned the girl; not speaking, but pouring out the
+words in one continuous and vehement scream. “It is my living; and the
+cold, wet, dirty streets are my home; and you’re the wretch that drove
+me to them long ago, and that’ll keep me there, day and night, day and
+night, till I die!”
+
+“I shall do you a mischief!” interposed the Jew, goaded by these
+reproaches; “a mischief worse than that, if you say much more!”
+
+The girl said nothing more; but, tearing her hair and dress in a
+transport of passion, made such a rush at the Jew as would probably
+have left signal marks of her revenge upon him, had not her wrists been
+seized by Sikes at the right moment; upon which, she made a few
+ineffectual struggles, and fainted.
+
+“She’s all right now,” said Sikes, laying her down in a corner. “She’s
+uncommon strong in the arms, when she’s up in this way.”
+
+The Jew wiped his forehead: and smiled, as if it were a relief to have
+the disturbance over; but neither he, nor Sikes, nor the dog, nor the
+boys, seemed to consider it in any other light than a common occurance
+incidental to business.
+
+“It’s the worst of having to do with women,” said the Jew, replacing
+his club; “but they’re clever, and we can’t get on, in our line,
+without ’em. Charley, show Oliver to bed.”
+
+“I suppose he’d better not wear his best clothes tomorrow, Fagin, had
+he?” inquired Charley Bates.
+
+“Certainly not,” replied the Jew, reciprocating the grin with which
+Charley put the question.
+
+Master Bates, apparently much delighted with his commission, took the
+cleft stick: and led Oliver into an adjacent kitchen, where there were
+two or three of the beds on which he had slept before; and here, with
+many uncontrollable bursts of laughter, he produced the identical old
+suit of clothes which Oliver had so much congratulated himself upon
+leaving off at Mr. Brownlow’s; and the accidental display of which, to
+Fagin, by the Jew who purchased them, had been the very first clue
+received, of his whereabout.
+
+“Put off the smart ones,” said Charley, “and I’ll give ’em to Fagin to
+take care of. What fun it is!”
+
+Poor Oliver unwillingly complied. Master Bates rolling up the new
+clothes under his arm, departed from the room, leaving Oliver in the
+dark, and locking the door behind him.
+
+The noise of Charley’s laughter, and the voice of Miss Betsy, who
+opportunely arrived to throw water over her friend, and perform other
+feminine offices for the promotion of her recovery, might have kept
+many people awake under more happy circumstances than those in which
+Oliver was placed. But he was sick and weary; and he soon fell sound
+asleep.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XVII.
+OLIVER’S DESTINY CONTINUING UNPROPITIOUS, BRINGS A GREAT MAN TO LONDON
+TO INJURE HIS REPUTATION
+
+
+It is the custom on the stage, in all good murderous melodramas, to
+present the tragic and the comic scenes, in as regular alternation, as
+the layers of red and white in a side of streaky bacon. The hero sinks
+upon his straw bed, weighed down by fetters and misfortunes; in the
+next scene, his faithful but unconscious squire regales the audience
+with a comic song. We behold, with throbbing bosoms, the heroine in the
+grasp of a proud and ruthless baron: her virtue and her life alike in
+danger, drawing forth her dagger to preserve the one at the cost of the
+other; and just as our expectations are wrought up to the highest
+pitch, a whistle is heard, and we are straightway transported to the
+great hall of the castle; where a grey-headed seneschal sings a funny
+chorus with a funnier body of vassals, who are free of all sorts of
+places, from church vaults to palaces, and roam about in company,
+carolling perpetually.
+
+Such changes appear absurd; but they are not so unnatural as they would
+seem at first sight. The transitions in real life from well-spread
+boards to death-beds, and from mourning-weeds to holiday garments, are
+not a whit less startling; only, there, we are busy actors, instead of
+passive lookers-on, which makes a vast difference. The actors in the
+mimic life of the theatre, are blind to violent transitions and abrupt
+impulses of passion or feeling, which, presented before the eyes of
+mere spectators, are at once condemned as outrageous and preposterous.
+
+As sudden shiftings of the scene, and rapid changes of time and place,
+are not only sanctioned in books by long usage, but are by many
+considered as the great art of authorship: an author’s skill in his
+craft being, by such critics, chiefly estimated with relation to the
+dilemmas in which he leaves his characters at the end of every chapter:
+this brief introduction to the present one may perhaps be deemed
+unnecessary. If so, let it be considered a delicate intimation on the
+part of the historian that he is going back to the town in which Oliver
+Twist was born; the reader taking it for granted that there are good
+and substantial reasons for making the journey, or he would not be
+invited to proceed upon such an expedition.
+
+Mr. Bumble emerged at early morning from the workhouse-gate, and walked
+with portly carriage and commanding steps, up the High Street. He was
+in the full bloom and pride of beadlehood; his cocked hat and coat were
+dazzling in the morning sun; he clutched his cane with the vigorous
+tenacity of health and power. Mr. Bumble always carried his head high;
+but this morning it was higher than usual. There was an abstraction in
+his eye, an elevation in his air, which might have warned an observant
+stranger that thoughts were passing in the beadle’s mind, too great for
+utterance.
+
+Mr. Bumble stopped not to converse with the small shopkeepers and
+others who spoke to him, deferentially, as he passed along. He merely
+returned their salutations with a wave of his hand, and relaxed not in
+his dignified pace, until he reached the farm where Mrs. Mann tended
+the infant paupers with parochial care.
+
+“Drat that beadle!” said Mrs. Mann, hearing the well-known shaking at
+the garden-gate. “If it isn’t him at this time in the morning! Lauk,
+Mr. Bumble, only think of its being you! Well, dear me, it _is_ a
+pleasure, this is! Come into the parlour, sir, please.”
+
+The first sentence was addressed to Susan; and the exclamations of
+delight were uttered to Mr. Bumble: as the good lady unlocked the
+garden-gate: and showed him, with great attention and respect, into the
+house.
+
+“Mrs. Mann,” said Mr. Bumble; not sitting upon, or dropping himself
+into a seat, as any common jackanapes would: but letting himself
+gradually and slowly down into a chair; “Mrs. Mann, ma’am, good
+morning.”
+
+“Well, and good morning to _you_, sir,” replied Mrs. Mann, with many
+smiles; “and hoping you find yourself well, sir!”
+
+“So-so, Mrs. Mann,” replied the beadle. “A porochial life is not a bed
+of roses, Mrs. Mann.”
+
+“Ah, that it isn’t indeed, Mr. Bumble,” rejoined the lady. And all the
+infant paupers might have chorussed the rejoinder with great propriety,
+if they had heard it.
+
+“A porochial life, ma’am,” continued Mr. Bumble, striking the table
+with his cane, “is a life of worrit, and vexation, and hardihood; but
+all public characters, as I may say, must suffer prosecution.”
+
+Mrs. Mann, not very well knowing what the beadle meant, raised her
+hands with a look of sympathy, and sighed.
+
+“Ah! You may well sigh, Mrs. Mann!” said the beadle.
+
+Finding she had done right, Mrs. Mann sighed again: evidently to the
+satisfaction of the public character: who, repressing a complacent
+smile by looking sternly at his cocked hat, said,
+
+“Mrs. Mann, I am going to London.”
+
+“Lauk, Mr. Bumble!” cried Mrs. Mann, starting back.
+
+“To London, ma’am,” resumed the inflexible beadle, “by coach. I and two
+paupers, Mrs. Mann! A legal action is a coming on, about a settlement;
+and the board has appointed me—me, Mrs. Mann—to dispose to the matter
+before the quarter-sessions at Clerkinwell.
+
+And I very much question,” added Mr. Bumble, drawing himself up,
+“whether the Clerkinwell Sessions will not find themselves in the wrong
+box before they have done with me.”
+
+“Oh! you mustn’t be too hard upon them, sir,” said Mrs. Mann,
+coaxingly.
+
+“The Clerkinwell Sessions have brought it upon themselves, ma’am,”
+replied Mr. Bumble; “and if the Clerkinwell Sessions find that they
+come off rather worse than they expected, the Clerkinwell Sessions have
+only themselves to thank.”
+
+There was so much determination and depth of purpose about the menacing
+manner in which Mr. Bumble delivered himself of these words, that Mrs.
+Mann appeared quite awed by them. At length she said,
+
+“You’re going by coach, sir? I thought it was always usual to send them
+paupers in carts.”
+
+“That’s when they’re ill, Mrs. Mann,” said the beadle. “We put the sick
+paupers into open carts in the rainy weather, to prevent their taking
+cold.”
+
+“Oh!” said Mrs. Mann.
+
+“The opposition coach contracts for these two; and takes them cheap,”
+said Mr. Bumble. “They are both in a very low state, and we find it
+would come two pound cheaper to move ’em than to bury ’em—that is, if
+we can throw ’em upon another parish, which I think we shall be able to
+do, if they don’t die upon the road to spite us. Ha! ha! ha!”
+
+When Mr. Bumble had laughed a little while, his eyes again encountered
+the cocked hat; and he became grave.
+
+“We are forgetting business, ma’am,” said the beadle; “here is your
+porochial stipend for the month.”
+
+Mr. Bumble produced some silver money rolled up in paper, from his
+pocket-book; and requested a receipt: which Mrs. Mann wrote.
+
+“It’s very much blotted, sir,” said the farmer of infants; “but it’s
+formal enough, I dare say. Thank you, Mr. Bumble, sir, I am very much
+obliged to you, I’m sure.”
+
+Mr. Bumble nodded, blandly, in acknowledgment of Mrs. Mann’s curtsey;
+and inquired how the children were.
+
+“Bless their dear little hearts!” said Mrs. Mann with emotion, “they’re
+as well as can be, the dears! Of course, except the two that died last
+week. And little Dick.”
+
+“Isn’t that boy no better?” inquired Mr. Bumble.
+
+Mrs. Mann shook her head.
+
+“He’s a ill-conditioned, wicious, bad-disposed porochial child that,”
+said Mr. Bumble angrily. “Where is he?”
+
+“I’ll bring him to you in one minute, sir,” replied Mrs. Mann. “Here,
+you Dick!”
+
+After some calling, Dick was discovered. Having had his face put under
+the pump, and dried upon Mrs. Mann’s gown, he was led into the awful
+presence of Mr. Bumble, the beadle.
+
+The child was pale and thin; his cheeks were sunken; and his eyes large
+and bright. The scanty parish dress, the livery of his misery, hung
+loosely on his feeble body; and his young limbs had wasted away, like
+those of an old man.
+
+Such was the little being who stood trembling beneath Mr. Bumble’s
+glance; not daring to lift his eyes from the floor; and dreading even
+to hear the beadle’s voice.
+
+“Can’t you look at the gentleman, you obstinate boy?” said Mrs. Mann.
+
+The child meekly raised his eyes, and encountered those of Mr. Bumble.
+
+“What’s the matter with you, porochial Dick?” inquired Mr. Bumble, with
+well-timed jocularity.
+
+“Nothing, sir,” replied the child faintly.
+
+“I should think not,” said Mrs. Mann, who had of course laughed very
+much at Mr. Bumble’s humour.
+
+“You want for nothing, I’m sure.”
+
+“I should like—” faltered the child.
+
+“Hey-day!” interposed Mrs. Mann, “I suppose you’re going to say that
+you _do_ want for something, now? Why, you little wretch—”
+
+“Stop, Mrs. Mann, stop!” said the beadle, raising his hand with a show
+of authority. “Like what, sir, eh?”
+
+“I should like,” faltered the child, “if somebody that can write, would
+put a few words down for me on a piece of paper, and fold it up and
+seal it, and keep it for me, after I am laid in the ground.”
+
+“Why, what does the boy mean?” exclaimed Mr. Bumble, on whom the
+earnest manner and wan aspect of the child had made some impression:
+accustomed as he was to such things. “What do you mean, sir?”
+
+“I should like,” said the child, “to leave my dear love to poor Oliver
+Twist; and to let him know how often I have sat by myself and cried to
+think of his wandering about in the dark nights with nobody to help
+him. And I should like to tell him,” said the child pressing his small
+hands together, and speaking with great fervour, “that I was glad to
+die when I was very young; for, perhaps, if I had lived to be a man,
+and had grown old, my little sister who is in Heaven, might forget me,
+or be unlike me; and it would be so much happier if we were both
+children there together.”
+
+Mr. Bumble surveyed the little speaker, from head to foot, with
+indescribable astonishment; and, turning to his companion, said,
+“They’re all in one story, Mrs. Mann. That out-dacious Oliver had
+demogalized them all!”
+
+“I couldn’t have believed it, sir” said Mrs Mann, holding up her hands,
+and looking malignantly at Dick. “I never see such a hardened little
+wretch!”
+
+“Take him away, ma’am!” said Mr. Bumble imperiously. “This must be
+stated to the board, Mrs. Mann.”
+
+“I hope the gentleman will understand that it isn’t my fault, sir?”
+said Mrs. Mann, whimpering pathetically.
+
+“They shall understand that, ma’am; they shall be acquainted with the
+true state of the case,” said Mr. Bumble. “There; take him away, I
+can’t bear the sight on him.”
+
+Dick was immediately taken away, and locked up in the coal-cellar. Mr.
+Bumble shortly afterwards took himself off, to prepare for his journey.
+
+At six o’clock next morning, Mr. Bumble: having exchanged his cocked
+hat for a round one, and encased his person in a blue great-coat with a
+cape to it: took his place on the outside of the coach, accompanied by
+the criminals whose settlement was disputed; with whom, in due course
+of time, he arrived in London.
+
+He experienced no other crosses on the way, than those which originated
+in the perverse behaviour of the two paupers, who persisted in
+shivering, and complaining of the cold, in a manner which, Mr. Bumble
+declared, caused his teeth to chatter in his head, and made him feel
+quite uncomfortable; although he had a great-coat on.
+
+Having disposed of these evil-minded persons for the night, Mr. Bumble
+sat himself down in the house at which the coach stopped; and took a
+temperate dinner of steaks, oyster sauce, and porter. Putting a glass
+of hot gin-and-water on the chimney-piece, he drew his chair to the
+fire; and, with sundry moral reflections on the too-prevalent sin of
+discontent and complaining, composed himself to read the paper.
+
+The very first paragraph upon which Mr. Bumble’s eye rested, was the
+following advertisement.
+
+“FIVE GUINEAS REWARD
+
+
+“Whereas a young boy, named Oliver Twist, absconded, or was enticed, on
+Thursday evening last, from his home, at Pentonville; and has not since
+been heard of. The above reward will be paid to any person who will
+give such information as will lead to the discovery of the said Oliver
+Twist, or tend to throw any light upon his previous history, in which
+the advertiser is, for many reasons, warmly interested.”
+
+And then followed a full description of Oliver’s dress, person,
+appearance, and disappearance: with the name and address of Mr.
+Brownlow at full length.
+
+Mr. Bumble opened his eyes; read the advertisement, slowly and
+carefully, three several times; and in something more than five minutes
+was on his way to Pentonville: having actually, in his excitement, left
+the glass of hot gin-and-water, untasted.
+
+“Is Mr. Brownlow at home?” inquired Mr. Bumble of the girl who opened
+the door.
+
+To this inquiry the girl returned the not uncommon, but rather evasive
+reply of “I don’t know; where do you come from?”
+
+Mr. Bumble no sooner uttered Oliver’s name, in explanation of his
+errand, than Mrs. Bedwin, who had been listening at the parlour door,
+hastened into the passage in a breathless state.
+
+“Come in, come in,” said the old lady: “I knew we should hear of him.
+Poor dear! I knew we should! I was certain of it. Bless his heart! I
+said so all along.”
+
+Having heard this, the worthy old lady hurried back into the parlour
+again; and seating herself on a sofa, burst into tears. The girl, who
+was not quite so susceptible, had run upstairs meanwhile; and now
+returned with a request that Mr. Bumble would follow her immediately:
+which he did.
+
+He was shown into the little back study, where sat Mr. Brownlow and his
+friend Mr. Grimwig, with decanters and glasses before them. The latter
+gentleman at once burst into the exclamation:
+
+“A beadle. A parish beadle, or I’ll eat my head.”
+
+“Pray don’t interrupt just now,” said Mr. Brownlow. “Take a seat, will
+you?”
+
+Mr. Bumble sat himself down; quite confounded by the oddity of Mr.
+Grimwig’s manner. Mr. Brownlow moved the lamp, so as to obtain an
+uninterrupted view of the beadle’s countenance; and said, with a little
+impatience,
+
+“Now, sir, you come in consequence of having seen the advertisement?”
+
+“Yes, sir,” said Mr. Bumble.
+
+“And you ARE a beadle, are you not?” inquired Mr. Grimwig.
+
+“I am a porochial beadle, gentlemen,” rejoined Mr. Bumble proudly.
+
+“Of course,” observed Mr. Grimwig aside to his friend, “I knew he was.
+A beadle all over!”
+
+Mr. Brownlow gently shook his head to impose silence on his friend, and
+resumed:
+
+“Do you know where this poor boy is now?”
+
+“No more than nobody,” replied Mr. Bumble.
+
+“Well, what _do_ you know of him?” inquired the old gentleman. “Speak
+out, my friend, if you have anything to say. What _do_ you know of
+him?”
+
+“You don’t happen to know any good of him, do you?” said Mr. Grimwig,
+caustically; after an attentive perusal of Mr. Bumble’s features.
+
+Mr. Bumble, catching at the inquiry very quickly, shook his head with
+portentous solemnity.
+
+“You see?” said Mr. Grimwig, looking triumphantly at Mr. Brownlow.
+
+Mr. Brownlow looked apprehensively at Mr. Bumble’s pursed-up
+countenance; and requested him to communicate what he knew regarding
+Oliver, in as few words as possible.
+
+Mr. Bumble put down his hat; unbuttoned his coat; folded his arms;
+inclined his head in a retrospective manner; and, after a few moments’
+reflection, commenced his story.
+
+It would be tedious if given in the beadle’s words: occupying, as it
+did, some twenty minutes in the telling; but the sum and substance of
+it was, that Oliver was a foundling, born of low and vicious parents.
+That he had, from his birth, displayed no better qualities than
+treachery, ingratitude, and malice. That he had terminated his brief
+career in the place of his birth, by making a sanguinary and cowardly
+attack on an unoffending lad, and running away in the night-time from
+his master’s house. In proof of his really being the person he
+represented himself, Mr. Bumble laid upon the table the papers he had
+brought to town. Folding his arms again, he then awaited Mr. Brownlow’s
+observations.
+
+“I fear it is all too true,” said the old gentleman sorrowfully, after
+looking over the papers. “This is not much for your intelligence; but I
+would gladly have given you treble the money, if it had been favourable
+to the boy.”
+
+It is not improbable that if Mr. Bumble had been possessed of this
+information at an earlier period of the interview, he might have
+imparted a very different colouring to his little history. It was too
+late to do it now, however; so he shook his head gravely, and,
+pocketing the five guineas, withdrew.
+
+Mr. Brownlow paced the room to and fro for some minutes; evidently so
+much disturbed by the beadle’s tale, that even Mr. Grimwig forbore to
+vex him further.
+
+At length he stopped, and rang the bell violently.
+
+“Mrs. Bedwin,” said Mr. Brownlow, when the housekeeper appeared; “that
+boy, Oliver, is an imposter.”
+
+“It can’t be, sir. It cannot be,” said the old lady energetically.
+
+“I tell you he is,” retorted the old gentleman. “What do you mean by
+can’t be? We have just heard a full account of him from his birth; and
+he has been a thorough-paced little villain, all his life.”
+
+“I never will believe it, sir,” replied the old lady, firmly. “Never!”
+
+“You old women never believe anything but quack-doctors, and lying
+story-books,” growled Mr. Grimwig. “I knew it all along. Why didn’t you
+take my advise in the beginning; you would if he hadn’t had a fever, I
+suppose, eh? He was interesting, wasn’t he? Interesting! Bah!” And Mr.
+Grimwig poked the fire with a flourish.
+
+“He was a dear, grateful, gentle child, sir,” retorted Mrs. Bedwin,
+indignantly. “I know what children are, sir; and have done these forty
+years; and people who can’t say the same, shouldn’t say anything about
+them. That’s my opinion!”
+
+This was a hard hit at Mr. Grimwig, who was a bachelor. As it extorted
+nothing from that gentleman but a smile, the old lady tossed her head,
+and smoothed down her apron preparatory to another speech, when she was
+stopped by Mr. Brownlow.
+
+“Silence!” said the old gentleman, feigning an anger he was far from
+feeling. “Never let me hear the boy’s name again. I rang to tell you
+that. Never. Never, on any pretence, mind! You may leave the room, Mrs.
+Bedwin. Remember! I am in earnest.”
+
+There were sad hearts at Mr. Brownlow’s that night.
+
+Oliver’s heart sank within him, when he thought of his good friends; it
+was well for him that he could not know what they had heard, or it
+might have broken outright.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XVIII.
+HOW OLIVER PASSED HIS TIME IN THE IMPROVING SOCIETY OF HIS REPUTABLE
+FRIENDS
+
+
+About noon next day, when the Dodger and Master Bates had gone out to
+pursue their customary avocations, Mr. Fagin took the opportunity of
+reading Oliver a long lecture on the crying sin of ingratitude; of
+which he clearly demonstrated he had been guilty, to no ordinary
+extent, in wilfully absenting himself from the society of his anxious
+friends; and, still more, in endeavouring to escape from them after so
+much trouble and expense had been incurred in his recovery. Mr. Fagin
+laid great stress on the fact of his having taken Oliver in, and
+cherished him, when, without his timely aid, he might have perished
+with hunger; and he related the dismal and affecting history of a young
+lad whom, in his philanthropy, he had succoured under parallel
+circumstances, but who, proving unworthy of his confidence and evincing
+a desire to communicate with the police, had unfortunately come to be
+hanged at the Old Bailey one morning. Mr. Fagin did not seek to conceal
+his share in the catastrophe, but lamented with tears in his eyes that
+the wrong-headed and treacherous behaviour of the young person in
+question, had rendered it necessary that he should become the victim of
+certain evidence for the crown: which, if it were not precisely true,
+was indispensably necessary for the safety of him (Mr. Fagin) and a few
+select friends. Mr. Fagin concluded by drawing a rather disagreeable
+picture of the discomforts of hanging; and, with great friendliness and
+politeness of manner, expressed his anxious hopes that he might never
+be obliged to submit Oliver Twist to that unpleasant operation.
+
+Little Oliver’s blood ran cold, as he listened to the Jew’s words, and
+imperfectly comprehended the dark threats conveyed in them. That it was
+possible even for justice itself to confound the innocent with the
+guilty when they were in accidental companionship, he knew already; and
+that deeply-laid plans for the destruction of inconveniently knowing or
+over-communicative persons, had been really devised and carried out by
+the Jew on more occasions than one, he thought by no means unlikely,
+when he recollected the general nature of the altercations between that
+gentleman and Mr. Sikes: which seemed to bear reference to some
+foregone conspiracy of the kind. As he glanced timidly up, and met the
+Jew’s searching look, he felt that his pale face and trembling limbs
+were neither unnoticed nor unrelished by that wary old gentleman.
+
+The Jew, smiling hideously, patted Oliver on the head, and said, that
+if he kept himself quiet, and applied himself to business, he saw they
+would be very good friends yet. Then, taking his hat, and covering
+himself with an old patched great-coat, he went out, and locked the
+room-door behind him.
+
+And so Oliver remained all that day, and for the greater part of many
+subsequent days, seeing nobody, between early morning and midnight, and
+left during the long hours to commune with his own thoughts. Which,
+never failing to revert to his kind friends, and the opinion they must
+long ago have formed of him, were sad indeed.
+
+After the lapse of a week or so, the Jew left the room-door unlocked;
+and he was at liberty to wander about the house.
+
+It was a very dirty place. The rooms upstairs had great high wooden
+chimney-pieces and large doors, with panelled walls and cornices to the
+ceiling; which, although they were black with neglect and dust, were
+ornamented in various ways. From all of these tokens Oliver concluded
+that a long time ago, before the old Jew was born, it had belonged to
+better people, and had perhaps been quite gay and handsome: dismal and
+dreary as it looked now.
+
+Spiders had built their webs in the angles of the walls and ceilings;
+and sometimes, when Oliver walked softly into a room, the mice would
+scamper across the floor, and run back terrified to their holes. With
+these exceptions, there was neither sight nor sound of any living
+thing; and often, when it grew dark, and he was tired of wandering from
+room to room, he would crouch in the corner of the passage by the
+street-door, to be as near living people as he could; and would remain
+there, listening and counting the hours, until the Jew or the boys
+returned.
+
+In all the rooms, the mouldering shutters were fast closed: the bars
+which held them were screwed tight into the wood; the only light which
+was admitted, stealing its way through round holes at the top: which
+made the rooms more gloomy, and filled them with strange shadows. There
+was a back-garret window with rusty bars outside, which had no shutter;
+and out of this, Oliver often gazed with a melancholy face for hours
+together; but nothing was to be descried from it but a confused and
+crowded mass of housetops, blackened chimneys, and gable-ends.
+Sometimes, indeed, a grizzly head might be seen, peering over the
+parapet-wall of a distant house; but it was quickly withdrawn again;
+and as the window of Oliver’s observatory was nailed down, and dimmed
+with the rain and smoke of years, it was as much as he could do to make
+out the forms of the different objects beyond, without making any
+attempt to be seen or heard,—which he had as much chance of being, as
+if he had lived inside the ball of St. Paul’s Cathedral.
+
+One afternoon, the Dodger and Master Bates being engaged out that
+evening, the first-named young gentleman took it into his head to
+evince some anxiety regarding the decoration of his person (to do him
+justice, this was by no means an habitual weakness with him); and, with
+this end and aim, he condescendingly commanded Oliver to assist him in
+his toilet, straightway.
+
+Oliver was but too glad to make himself useful; too happy to have some
+faces, however bad, to look upon; too desirous to conciliate those
+about him when he could honestly do so; to throw any objection in the
+way of this proposal. So he at once expressed his readiness; and,
+kneeling on the floor, while the Dodger sat upon the table so that he
+could take his foot in his laps, he applied himself to a process which
+Mr. Dawkins designated as “japanning his trotter-cases.” The phrase,
+rendered into plain English, signifieth, cleaning his boots.
+
+Whether it was the sense of freedom and independence which a rational
+animal may be supposed to feel when he sits on a table in an easy
+attitude smoking a pipe, swinging one leg carelessly to and fro, and
+having his boots cleaned all the time, without even the past trouble of
+having taken them off, or the prospective misery of putting them on, to
+disturb his reflections; or whether it was the goodness of the tobacco
+that soothed the feelings of the Dodger, or the mildness of the beer
+that mollified his thoughts; he was evidently tinctured, for the nonce,
+with a spice of romance and enthusiasm, foreign to his general nature.
+He looked down on Oliver, with a thoughtful countenance, for a brief
+space; and then, raising his head, and heaving a gentle sign, said,
+half in abstraction, and half to Master Bates:
+
+“What a pity it is he isn’t a prig!”
+
+“Ah!” said Master Charles Bates; “he don’t know what’s good for him.”
+
+The Dodger sighed again, and resumed his pipe: as did Charley Bates.
+They both smoked, for some seconds, in silence.
+
+“I suppose you don’t even know what a prig is?” said the Dodger
+mournfully.
+
+“I think I know that,” replied Oliver, looking up. “It’s a the—; you’re
+one, are you not?” inquired Oliver, checking himself.
+
+“I am,” replied the Dodger. “I’d scorn to be anything else.” Mr.
+Dawkins gave his hat a ferocious cock, after delivering this sentiment,
+and looked at Master Bates, as if to denote that he would feel obliged
+by his saying anything to the contrary.
+
+“I am,” repeated the Dodger. “So’s Charley. So’s Fagin. So’s Sikes.
+So’s Nancy. So’s Bet. So we all are, down to the dog. And he’s the
+downiest one of the lot!”
+
+“And the least given to peaching,” added Charley Bates.
+
+“He wouldn’t so much as bark in a witness-box, for fear of committing
+himself; no, not if you tied him up in one, and left him there without
+wittles for a fortnight,” said the Dodger.
+
+“Not a bit of it,” observed Charley.
+
+“He’s a rum dog. Don’t he look fierce at any strange cove that laughs
+or sings when he’s in company!” pursued the Dodger. “Won’t he growl at
+all, when he hears a fiddle playing! And don’t he hate other dogs as
+ain’t of his breed! Oh, no!”
+
+“He’s an out-and-out Christian,” said Charley.
+
+This was merely intended as a tribute to the animal’s abilities, but it
+was an appropriate remark in another sense, if Master Bates had only
+known it; for there are a good many ladies and gentlemen, claiming to
+be out-and-out Christians, between whom, and Mr. Sikes’ dog, there
+exist strong and singular points of resemblance.
+
+“Well, well,” said the Dodger, recurring to the point from which they
+had strayed: with that mindfulness of his profession which influenced
+all his proceedings. “This hasn’t go anything to do with young Green
+here.”
+
+“No more it has,” said Charley. “Why don’t you put yourself under
+Fagin, Oliver?”
+
+“And make your fortun’ out of hand?” added the Dodger, with a grin.
+
+“And so be able to retire on your property, and do the gen-teel: as I
+mean to, in the very next leap-year but four that ever comes, and the
+forty-second Tuesday in Trinity-week,” said Charley Bates.
+
+“I don’t like it,” rejoined Oliver, timidly; “I wish they would let me
+go. I—I—would rather go.”
+
+“And Fagin would _rather_ not!” rejoined Charley.
+
+Oliver knew this too well; but thinking it might be dangerous to
+express his feelings more openly, he only sighed, and went on with his
+boot-cleaning.
+
+“Go!” exclaimed the Dodger. “Why, where’s your spirit?” Don’t you take
+any pride out of yourself? Would you go and be dependent on your
+friends?”
+
+“Oh, blow that!” said Master Bates: drawing two or three silk
+handkerchiefs from his pocket, and tossing them into a cupboard,
+“that’s too mean; that is.”
+
+“_I_ couldn’t do it,” said the Dodger, with an air of haughty disgust.
+
+“You can leave your friends, though,” said Oliver with a half smile;
+“and let them be punished for what you did.”
+
+“That,” rejoined the Dodger, with a wave of his pipe, “That was all out
+of consideration for Fagin, ’cause the traps know that we work
+together, and he might have got into trouble if we hadn’t made our
+lucky; that was the move, wasn’t it, Charley?”
+
+Master Bates nodded assent, and would have spoken, but the recollection
+of Oliver’s flight came so suddenly upon him, that the smoke he was
+inhaling got entangled with a laugh, and went up into his head, and
+down into his throat: and brought on a fit of coughing and stamping,
+about five minutes long.
+
+“Look here!” said the Dodger, drawing forth a handful of shillings and
+halfpence. “Here’s a jolly life! What’s the odds where it comes from?
+Here, catch hold; there’s plenty more where they were took from. You
+won’t, won’t you? Oh, you precious flat!”
+
+“It’s naughty, ain’t it, Oliver?” inquired Charley Bates. “He’ll come
+to be scragged, won’t he?”
+
+“I don’t know what that means,” replied Oliver.
+
+“Something in this way, old feller,” said Charly. As he said it, Master
+Bates caught up an end of his neckerchief; and, holding it erect in the
+air, dropped his head on his shoulder, and jerked a curious sound
+through his teeth; thereby indicating, by a lively pantomimic
+representation, that scragging and hanging were one and the same thing.
+
+“That’s what it means,” said Charley. “Look how he stares, Jack!
+
+I never did see such prime company as that ’ere boy; he’ll be the death
+of me, I know he will.” Master Charley Bates, having laughed heartily
+again, resumed his pipe with tears in his eyes.
+
+“You’ve been brought up bad,” said the Dodger, surveying his boots with
+much satisfaction when Oliver had polished them. “Fagin will make
+something of you, though, or you’ll be the first he ever had that
+turned out unprofitable. You’d better begin at once; for you’ll come to
+the trade long before you think of it; and you’re only losing time,
+Oliver.”
+
+Master Bates backed this advice with sundry moral admonitions of his
+own: which, being exhausted, he and his friend Mr. Dawkins launched
+into a glowing description of the numerous pleasures incidental to the
+life they led, interspersed with a variety of hints to Oliver that the
+best thing he could do, would be to secure Fagin’s favour without more
+delay, by the means which they themselves had employed to gain it.
+
+“And always put this in your pipe, Nolly,” said the Dodger, as the Jew
+was heard unlocking the door above, “if you don’t take fogels and
+tickers—”
+
+“What’s the good of talking in that way?” interposed Master Bates; “he
+don’t know what you mean.”
+
+“If you don’t take pocket-handkechers and watches,” said the Dodger,
+reducing his conversation to the level of Oliver’s capacity, “some
+other cove will; so that the coves that lose ’em will be all the worse,
+and you’ll be all the worse, too, and nobody half a ha’p’orth the
+better, except the chaps wot gets them—and you’ve just as good a right
+to them as they have.”
+
+“To be sure, to be sure!” said the Jew, who had entered unseen by
+Oliver. “It all lies in a nutshell my dear; in a nutshell, take the
+Dodger’s word for it. Ha! ha! ha! He understands the catechism of his
+trade.”
+
+The old man rubbed his hands gleefully together, as he corroborated the
+Dodger’s reasoning in these terms; and chuckled with delight at his
+pupil’s proficiency.
+
+The conversation proceeded no farther at this time, for the Jew had
+returned home accompanied by Miss Betsy, and a gentleman whom Oliver
+had never seen before, but who was accosted by the Dodger as Tom
+Chitling; and who, having lingered on the stairs to exchange a few
+gallantries with the lady, now made his appearance.
+
+Mr. Chitling was older in years than the Dodger: having perhaps
+numbered eighteen winters; but there was a degree of deference in his
+deportment towards that young gentleman which seemed to indicate that
+he felt himself conscious of a slight inferiority in point of genius
+and professional aquirements. He had small twinkling eyes, and a
+pock-marked face; wore a fur cap, a dark corduroy jacket, greasy
+fustian trousers, and an apron. His wardrobe was, in truth, rather out
+of repair; but he excused himself to the company by stating that his
+“time” was only out an hour before; and that, in consequence of having
+worn the regimentals for six weeks past, he had not been able to bestow
+any attention on his private clothes. Mr. Chitling added, with strong
+marks of irritation, that the new way of fumigating clothes up yonder
+was infernal unconstitutional, for it burnt holes in them, and there
+was no remedy against the County. The same remark he considered to
+apply to the regulation mode of cutting the hair: which he held to be
+decidedly unlawful. Mr. Chitling wound up his observations by stating
+that he had not touched a drop of anything for forty-two moral long
+hard-working days; and that he “wished he might be busted if he warn’t
+as dry as a lime-basket.”
+
+“Where do you think the gentleman has come from, Oliver?” inquired the
+Jew, with a grin, as the other boys put a bottle of spirits on the
+table.
+
+“I—I—don’t know, sir,” replied Oliver.
+
+“Who’s that?” inquired Tom Chitling, casting a contemptuous look at
+Oliver.
+
+“A young friend of mine, my dear,” replied the Jew.
+
+“He’s in luck, then,” said the young man, with a meaning look at Fagin.
+“Never mind where I came from, young ’un; you’ll find your way there,
+soon enough, I’ll bet a crown!”
+
+At this sally, the boys laughed. After some more jokes on the same
+subject, they exchanged a few short whispers with Fagin; and withdrew.
+
+After some words apart between the last comer and Fagin, they drew
+their chairs towards the fire; and the Jew, telling Oliver to come and
+sit by him, led the conversation to the topics most calculated to
+interest his hearers. These were, the great advantages of the trade,
+the proficiency of the Dodger, the amiability of Charley Bates, and the
+liberality of the Jew himself. At length these subjects displayed signs
+of being thoroughly exhausted; and Mr. Chitling did the same: for the
+house of correction becomes fatiguing after a week or two. Miss Betsy
+accordingly withdrew; and left the party to their repose.
+
+From this day, Oliver was seldom left alone; but was placed in almost
+constant communication with the two boys, who played the old game with
+the Jew every day: whether for their own improvement or Oliver’s, Mr.
+Fagin best knew. At other times the old man would tell them stories of
+robberies he had committed in his younger days: mixed up with so much
+that was droll and curious, that Oliver could not help laughing
+heartily, and showing that he was amused in spite of all his better
+feelings.
+
+In short, the wily old Jew had the boy in his toils. Having prepared
+his mind, by solitude and gloom, to prefer any society to the
+companionship of his own sad thoughts in such a dreary place, he was
+now slowly instilling into his soul the poison which he hoped would
+blacken it, and change its hue for ever.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XIX.
+IN WHICH A NOTABLE PLAN IS DISCUSSED AND DETERMINED ON
+
+
+It was a chill, damp, windy night, when the Jew: buttoning his
+great-coat tight round his shrivelled body, and pulling the collar up
+over his ears so as completely to obscure the lower part of his face:
+emerged from his den. He paused on the step as the door was locked and
+chained behind him; and having listened while the boys made all secure,
+and until their retreating footsteps were no longer audible, slunk down
+the street as quickly as he could.
+
+The house to which Oliver had been conveyed, was in the neighborhood of
+Whitechapel. The Jew stopped for an instant at the corner of the
+street; and, glancing suspiciously round, crossed the road, and struck
+off in the direction of the Spitalfields.
+
+The mud lay thick upon the stones, and a black mist hung over the
+streets; the rain fell sluggishly down, and everything felt cold and
+clammy to the touch. It seemed just the night when it befitted such a
+being as the Jew to be abroad. As he glided stealthily along, creeping
+beneath the shelter of the walls and doorways, the hideous old man
+seemed like some loathsome reptile, engendered in the slime and
+darkness through which he moved: crawling forth, by night, in search of
+some rich offal for a meal.
+
+He kept on his course, through many winding and narrow ways, until he
+reached Bethnal Green; then, turning suddenly off to the left, he soon
+became involved in a maze of the mean and dirty streets which abound in
+that close and densely-populated quarter.
+
+The Jew was evidently too familiar with the ground he traversed to be
+at all bewildered, either by the darkness of the night, or the
+intricacies of the way. He hurried through several alleys and streets,
+and at length turned into one, lighted only by a single lamp at the
+farther end. At the door of a house in this street, he knocked; having
+exchanged a few muttered words with the person who opened it, he walked
+upstairs.
+
+A dog growled as he touched the handle of a room-door; and a man’s
+voice demanded who was there.
+
+“Only me, Bill; only me, my dear,” said the Jew looking in.
+
+“Bring in your body then,” said Sikes. “Lie down, you stupid brute!
+Don’t you know the devil when he’s got a great-coat on?”
+
+Apparently, the dog had been somewhat deceived by Mr. Fagin’s outer
+garment; for as the Jew unbuttoned it, and threw it over the back of a
+chair, he retired to the corner from which he had risen: wagging his
+tail as he went, to show that he was as well satisfied as it was in his
+nature to be.
+
+“Well!” said Sikes.
+
+“Well, my dear,” replied the Jew.—“Ah! Nancy.”
+
+The latter recognition was uttered with just enough of embarrassment to
+imply a doubt of its reception; for Mr. Fagin and his young friend had
+not met, since she had interfered in behalf of Oliver. All doubts upon
+the subject, if he had any, were speedily removed by the young lady’s
+behaviour. She took her feet off the fender, pushed back her chair, and
+bade Fagin draw up his, without saying more about it: for it was a cold
+night, and no mistake.
+
+“It is cold, Nancy dear,” said the Jew, as he warmed his skinny hands
+over the fire. “It seems to go right through one,” added the old man,
+touching his side.
+
+“It must be a piercer, if it finds its way through your heart,” said
+Mr. Sikes. “Give him something to drink, Nancy. Burn my body, make
+haste! It’s enough to turn a man ill, to see his lean old carcase
+shivering in that way, like a ugly ghost just rose from the grave.”
+
+Nancy quickly brought a bottle from a cupboard, in which there were
+many: which, to judge from the diversity of their appearance, were
+filled with several kinds of liquids. Sikes pouring out a glass of
+brandy, bade the Jew drink it off.
+
+“Quite enough, quite, thankye, Bill,” replied the Jew, putting down the
+glass after just setting his lips to it.
+
+“What! You’re afraid of our getting the better of you, are you?”
+inquired Sikes, fixing his eyes on the Jew. “Ugh!”
+
+With a hoarse grunt of contempt, Mr. Sikes seized the glass, and threw
+the remainder of its contents into the ashes: as a preparatory ceremony
+to filling it again for himself: which he did at once.
+
+The Jew glanced round the room, as his companion tossed down the second
+glassful; not in curiousity, for he had seen it often before; but in a
+restless and suspicious manner habitual to him. It was a meanly
+furnished apartment, with nothing but the contents of the closet to
+induce the belief that its occupier was anything but a working man; and
+with no more suspicious articles displayed to view than two or three
+heavy bludgeons which stood in a corner, and a “life-preserver” that
+hung over the chimney-piece.
+
+“There,” said Sikes, smacking his lips. “Now I’m ready.”
+
+“For business?” inquired the Jew.
+
+“For business,” replied Sikes; “so say what you’ve got to say.”
+
+“About the crib at Chertsey, Bill?” said the Jew, drawing his chair
+forward, and speaking in a very low voice.
+
+“Yes. Wot about it?” inquired Sikes.
+
+“Ah! you know what I mean, my dear,” said the Jew. “He knows what I
+mean, Nancy; don’t he?”
+
+“No, he don’t,” sneered Mr. Sikes. “Or he won’t, and that’s the same
+thing. Speak out, and call things by their right names; don’t sit
+there, winking and blinking, and talking to me in hints, as if you
+warn’t the very first that thought about the robbery. Wot d’ye mean?”
+
+“Hush, Bill, hush!” said the Jew, who had in vain attempted to stop
+this burst of indignation; “somebody will hear us, my dear. Somebody
+will hear us.”
+
+“Let ’em hear!” said Sikes; “I don’t care.” But as Mr. Sikes _did_
+care, on reflection, he dropped his voice as he said the words, and
+grew calmer.
+
+“There, there,” said the Jew, coaxingly. “It was only my caution,
+nothing more. Now, my dear, about that crib at Chertsey; when is it to
+be done, Bill, eh? When is it to be done? Such plate, my dear, such
+plate!” said the Jew: rubbing his hands, and elevating his eyebrows in
+a rapture of anticipation.
+
+“Not at all,” replied Sikes coldly.
+
+“Not to be done at all!” echoed the Jew, leaning back in his chair.
+
+“No, not at all,” rejoined Sikes. “At least it can’t be a put-up job,
+as we expected.”
+
+“Then it hasn’t been properly gone about,” said the Jew, turning pale
+with anger. “Don’t tell me!”
+
+“But I will tell you,” retorted Sikes. “Who are you that’s not to be
+told? I tell you that Toby Crackit has been hanging about the place for
+a fortnight, and he can’t get one of the servants in line.”
+
+“Do you mean to tell me, Bill,” said the Jew: softening as the other
+grew heated: “that neither of the two men in the house can be got
+over?”
+
+“Yes, I do mean to tell you so,” replied Sikes. “The old lady has had
+’em these twenty years; and if you were to give ’em five hundred pound,
+they wouldn’t be in it.”
+
+“But do you mean to say, my dear,” remonstrated the Jew, “that the
+women can’t be got over?”
+
+“Not a bit of it,” replied Sikes.
+
+“Not by flash Toby Crackit?” said the Jew incredulously. “Think what
+women are, Bill,”
+
+“No; not even by flash Toby Crackit,” replied Sikes. “He says he’s worn
+sham whiskers, and a canary waistcoat, the whole blessed time he’s been
+loitering down there, and it’s all of no use.”
+
+“He should have tried mustachios and a pair of military trousers, my
+dear,” said the Jew.
+
+“So he did,” rejoined Sikes, “and they warn’t of no more use than the
+other plant.”
+
+The Jew looked blank at this information. After ruminating for some
+minutes with his chin sunk on his breast, he raised his head and said,
+with a deep sigh, that if flash Toby Crackit reported aright, he feared
+the game was up.
+
+“And yet,” said the old man, dropping his hands on his knees, “it’s a
+sad thing, my dear, to lose so much when we had set our hearts upon
+it.”
+
+“So it is,” said Mr. Sikes. “Worse luck!”
+
+A long silence ensued; during which the Jew was plunged in deep
+thought, with his face wrinkled into an expression of villainy
+perfectly demoniacal. Sikes eyed him furtively from time to time.
+Nancy, apparently fearful of irritating the housebreaker, sat with her
+eyes fixed upon the fire, as if she had been deaf to all that passed.
+
+“Fagin,” said Sikes, abruptly breaking the stillness that prevailed;
+“is it worth fifty shiners extra, if it’s safely done from the
+outside?”
+
+“Yes,” said the Jew, as suddenly rousing himself.
+
+“Is it a bargain?” inquired Sikes.
+
+“Yes, my dear, yes,” rejoined the Jew; his eyes glistening, and every
+muscle in his face working, with the excitement that the inquiry had
+awakened.
+
+“Then,” said Sikes, thrusting aside the Jew’s hand, with some disdain,
+“let it come off as soon as you like. Toby and me were over the
+garden-wall the night afore last, sounding the panels of the door and
+shutters. The crib’s barred up at night like a jail; but there’s one
+part we can crack, safe and softly.”
+
+“Which is that, Bill?” asked the Jew eagerly.
+
+“Why,” whispered Sikes, “as you cross the lawn—”
+
+“Yes?” said the Jew, bending his head forward, with his eyes almost
+starting out of it.
+
+“Umph!” cried Sikes, stopping short, as the girl, scarcely moving her
+head, looked suddenly round, and pointed for an instant to the Jew’s
+face. “Never mind which part it is. You can’t do it without me, I know;
+but it’s best to be on the safe side when one deals with you.”
+
+“As you like, my dear, as you like” replied the Jew. “Is there no help
+wanted, but yours and Toby’s?”
+
+“None,” said Sikes. “Cept a centre-bit and a boy. The first we’ve both
+got; the second you must find us.”
+
+“A boy!” exclaimed the Jew. “Oh! then it’s a panel, eh?”
+
+“Never mind wot it is!” replied Sikes. “I want a boy, and he musn’t be
+a big ’un. Lord!” said Mr. Sikes, reflectively, “if I’d only got that
+young boy of Ned, the chimbley-sweeper’s! He kept him small on purpose,
+and let him out by the job. But the father gets lagged; and then the
+Juvenile Delinquent Society comes, and takes the boy away from a trade
+where he was earning money, teaches him to read and write, and in time
+makes a ’prentice of him. And so they go on,” said Mr. Sikes, his wrath
+rising with the recollection of his wrongs, “so they go on; and, if
+they’d got money enough (which it’s a Providence they haven’t,) we
+shouldn’t have half a dozen boys left in the whole trade, in a year or
+two.”
+
+“No more we should,” acquiesced the Jew, who had been considering
+during this speech, and had only caught the last sentence. “Bill!”
+
+“What now?” inquired Sikes.
+
+The Jew nodded his head towards Nancy, who was still gazing at the
+fire; and intimated, by a sign, that he would have her told to leave
+the room. Sikes shrugged his shoulders impatiently, as if he thought
+the precaution unnecessary; but complied, nevertheless, by requesting
+Miss Nancy to fetch him a jug of beer.
+
+“You don’t want any beer,” said Nancy, folding her arms, and retaining
+her seat very composedly.
+
+“I tell you I do!” replied Sikes.
+
+“Nonsense,” rejoined the girl coolly, “Go on, Fagin. I know what he’s
+going to say, Bill; he needn’t mind me.”
+
+The Jew still hesitated. Sikes looked from one to the other in some
+surprise.
+
+“Why, you don’t mind the old girl, do you, Fagin?” he asked at length.
+“You’ve known her long enough to trust her, or the Devil’s in it. She
+ain’t one to blab. Are you Nancy?”
+
+“_I_ should think not!” replied the young lady: drawing her chair up to
+the table, and putting her elbows upon it.
+
+“No, no, my dear, I know you’re not,” said the Jew; “but—” and again
+the old man paused.
+
+“But wot?” inquired Sikes.
+
+“I didn’t know whether she mightn’t p’r’aps be out of sorts, you know,
+my dear, as she was the other night,” replied the Jew.
+
+At this confession, Miss Nancy burst into a loud laugh; and, swallowing
+a glass of brandy, shook her head with an air of defiance, and burst
+into sundry exclamations of “Keep the game a-going!” “Never say die!”
+and the like. These seemed to have the effect of re-assuring both
+gentlemen; for the Jew nodded his head with a satisfied air, and
+resumed his seat: as did Mr. Sikes likewise.
+
+“Now, Fagin,” said Nancy with a laugh. “Tell Bill at once, about
+Oliver!”
+
+“Ha! you’re a clever one, my dear: the sharpest girl I ever saw!” said
+the Jew, patting her on the neck. “It _was_ about Oliver I was going to
+speak, sure enough. Ha! ha! ha!”
+
+“What about him?” demanded Sikes.
+
+“He’s the boy for you, my dear,” replied the Jew in a hoarse whisper;
+laying his finger on the side of his nose, and grinning frightfully.
+
+“He!” exclaimed Sikes.
+
+“Have him, Bill!” said Nancy. “I would, if I was in your place. He
+mayn’t be so much up, as any of the others; but that’s not what you
+want, if he’s only to open a door for you. Depend upon it he’s a safe
+one, Bill.”
+
+“I know he is,” rejoined Fagin. “He’s been in good training these last
+few weeks, and it’s time he began to work for his bread. Besides, the
+others are all too big.”
+
+“Well, he is just the size I want,” said Mr. Sikes, ruminating.
+
+“And will do everything you want, Bill, my dear,” interposed the Jew;
+“he can’t help himself. That is, if you frighten him enough.”
+
+“Frighten him!” echoed Sikes. “It’ll be no sham frightening, mind you.
+If there’s anything queer about him when we once get into the work; in
+for a penny, in for a pound. You won’t see him alive again, Fagin.
+Think of that, before you send him. Mark my words!” said the robber,
+poising a crowbar, which he had drawn from under the bedstead.
+
+“I’ve thought of it all,” said the Jew with energy. “I’ve—I’ve had my
+eye upon him, my dears, close—close. Once let him feel that he is one
+of us; once fill his mind with the idea that he has been a thief; and
+he’s ours! Ours for his life. Oho! It couldn’t have come about better!”
+The old man crossed his arms upon his breast; and, drawing his head and
+shoulders into a heap, literally hugged himself for joy.
+
+“Ours!” said Sikes. “Yours, you mean.”
+
+“Perhaps I do, my dear,” said the Jew, with a shrill chuckle. “Mine, if
+you like, Bill.”
+
+“And wot,” said Sikes, scowling fiercely on his agreeable friend, “wot
+makes you take so much pains about one chalk-faced kid, when you know
+there are fifty boys snoozing about Common Garden every night, as you
+might pick and choose from?”
+
+“Because they’re of no use to me, my dear,” replied the Jew, with some
+confusion, “not worth the taking. Their looks convict ’em when they get
+into trouble, and I lose ’em all. With this boy, properly managed, my
+dears, I could do what I couldn’t with twenty of them. Besides,” said
+the Jew, recovering his self-possession, “he has us now if he could
+only give us leg-bail again; and he must be in the same boat with us.
+Never mind how he came there; it’s quite enough for my power over him
+that he was in a robbery; that’s all I want. Now, how much better this
+is, than being obliged to put the poor leetle boy out of the way—which
+would be dangerous, and we should lose by it besides.”
+
+“When is it to be done?” asked Nancy, stopping some turbulent
+exclamation on the part of Mr. Sikes, expressive of the disgust with
+which he received Fagin’s affectation of humanity.
+
+“Ah, to be sure,” said the Jew; “when is it to be done, Bill?”
+
+“I planned with Toby, the night arter to-morrow,” rejoined Sikes in a
+surly voice, “if he heerd nothing from me to the contrairy.”
+
+“Good,” said the Jew; “there’s no moon.”
+
+“No,” rejoined Sikes.
+
+“It’s all arranged about bringing off the swag, is it?” asked the Jew.
+
+Sikes nodded.
+
+“And about—”
+
+“Oh, ah, it’s all planned,” rejoined Sikes, interrupting him. “Never
+mind particulars. You’d better bring the boy here to-morrow night. I
+shall get off the stone an hour arter daybreak. Then you hold your
+tongue, and keep the melting-pot ready, and that’s all you’ll have to
+do.”
+
+After some discussion, in which all three took an active part, it was
+decided that Nancy should repair to the Jew’s next evening when the
+night had set in, and bring Oliver away with her; Fagin craftily
+observing, that, if he evinced any disinclination to the task, he would
+be more willing to accompany the girl who had so recently interfered in
+his behalf, than anybody else. It was also solemnly arranged that poor
+Oliver should, for the purposes of the contemplated expedition, be
+unreservedly consigned to the care and custody of Mr. William Sikes;
+and further, that the said Sikes should deal with him as he thought
+fit; and should not be held responsible by the Jew for any mischance or
+evil that might be necessary to visit him: it being understood that, to
+render the compact in this respect binding, any representations made by
+Mr. Sikes on his return should be required to be confirmed and
+corroborated, in all important particulars, by the testimony of flash
+Toby Crackit.
+
+These preliminaries adjusted, Mr. Sikes proceeded to drink brandy at a
+furious rate, and to flourish the crowbar in an alarming manner;
+yelling forth, at the same time, most unmusical snatches of song,
+mingled with wild execrations. At length, in a fit of professional
+enthusiasm, he insisted upon producing his box of housebreaking tools:
+which he had no sooner stumbled in with, and opened for the purpose of
+explaining the nature and properties of the various implements it
+contained, and the peculiar beauties of their construction, than he
+fell over the box upon the floor, and went to sleep where he fell.
+
+“Good-night, Nancy,” said the Jew, muffling himself up as before.
+
+“Good-night.”
+
+Their eyes met, and the Jew scrutinised her, narrowly. There was no
+flinching about the girl. She was as true and earnest in the matter as
+Toby Crackit himself could be.
+
+The Jew again bade her good-night, and, bestowing a sly kick upon the
+prostrate form of Mr. Sikes while her back was turned, groped
+downstairs.
+
+“Always the way!” muttered the Jew to himself as he turned homeward.
+“The worst of these women is, that a very little thing serves to call
+up some long-forgotten feeling; and, the best of them is, that it never
+lasts. Ha! ha! The man against the child, for a bag of gold!”
+
+Beguiling the time with these pleasant reflections, Mr. Fagin wended
+his way, through mud and mire, to his gloomy abode: where the Dodger
+was sitting up, impatiently awaiting his return.
+
+“Is Oliver a-bed? I want to speak to him,” was his first remark as they
+descended the stairs.
+
+“Hours ago,” replied the Dodger, throwing open a door. “Here he is!”
+
+The boy was lying, fast asleep, on a rude bed upon the floor; so pale
+with anxiety, and sadness, and the closeness of his prison, that he
+looked like death; not death as it shows in shroud and coffin, but in
+the guise it wears when life has just departed; when a young and gentle
+spirit has, but an instant, fled to Heaven, and the gross air of the
+world has not had time to breathe upon the changing dust it hallowed.
+
+“Not now,” said the Jew, turning softly away. “To-morrow. To-morrow.”
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XX.
+WHEREIN OLIVER IS DELIVERED OVER TO MR. WILLIAM SIKES
+
+
+When Oliver awoke in the morning, he was a good deal surprised to find
+that a new pair of shoes, with strong thick soles, had been placed at
+his bedside; and that his old shoes had been removed. At first, he was
+pleased with the discovery: hoping that it might be the forerunner of
+his release; but such thoughts were quickly dispelled, on his sitting
+down to breakfast along with the Jew, who told him, in a tone and
+manner which increased his alarm, that he was to be taken to the
+residence of Bill Sikes that night.
+
+“To—to—stop there, sir?” asked Oliver, anxiously.
+
+“No, no, my dear. Not to stop there,” replied the Jew. “We shouldn’t
+like to lose you. Don’t be afraid, Oliver, you shall come back to us
+again. Ha! ha! ha! We won’t be so cruel as to send you away, my dear.
+Oh no, no!”
+
+The old man, who was stooping over the fire toasting a piece of bread,
+looked round as he bantered Oliver thus; and chuckled as if to show
+that he knew he would still be very glad to get away if he could.
+
+“I suppose,” said the Jew, fixing his eyes on Oliver, “you want to know
+what you’re going to Bill’s for—-eh, my dear?”
+
+Oliver coloured, involuntarily, to find that the old thief had been
+reading his thoughts; but boldly said, Yes, he did want to know.
+
+“Why, do you think?” inquired Fagin, parrying the question.
+
+“Indeed I don’t know, sir,” replied Oliver.
+
+“Bah!” said the Jew, turning away with a disappointed countenance from
+a close perusal of the boy’s face. “Wait till Bill tells you, then.”
+
+The Jew seemed much vexed by Oliver’s not expressing any greater
+curiosity on the subject; but the truth is, that, although Oliver felt
+very anxious, he was too much confused by the earnest cunning of
+Fagin’s looks, and his own speculations, to make any further inquiries
+just then. He had no other opportunity: for the Jew remained very surly
+and silent till night: when he prepared to go abroad.
+
+“You may burn a candle,” said the Jew, putting one upon the table. “And
+here’s a book for you to read, till they come to fetch you.
+Good-night!”
+
+“Good-night!” replied Oliver, softly.
+
+The Jew walked to the door: looking over his shoulder at the boy as he
+went. Suddenly stopping, he called him by his name.
+
+Oliver looked up; the Jew, pointing to the candle, motioned him to
+light it. He did so; and, as he placed the candlestick upon the table,
+saw that the Jew was gazing fixedly at him, with lowering and
+contracted brows, from the dark end of the room.
+
+“Take heed, Oliver! take heed!” said the old man, shaking his right
+hand before him in a warning manner. “He’s a rough man, and thinks
+nothing of blood when his own is up. Whatever falls out, say nothing;
+and do what he bids you. Mind!” Placing a strong emphasis on the last
+word, he suffered his features gradually to resolve themselves into a
+ghastly grin, and, nodding his head, left the room.
+
+Oliver leaned his head upon his hand when the old man disappeared, and
+pondered, with a trembling heart, on the words he had just heard. The
+more he thought of the Jew’s admonition, the more he was at a loss to
+divine its real purpose and meaning.
+
+He could think of no bad object to be attained by sending him to Sikes,
+which would not be equally well answered by his remaining with Fagin;
+and after meditating for a long time, concluded that he had been
+selected to perform some ordinary menial offices for the housebreaker,
+until another boy, better suited for his purpose could be engaged. He
+was too well accustomed to suffering, and had suffered too much where
+he was, to bewail the prospect of change very severely. He remained
+lost in thought for some minutes; and then, with a heavy sigh, snuffed
+the candle, and, taking up the book which the Jew had left with him,
+began to read.
+
+He turned over the leaves. Carelessly at first; but, lighting on a
+passage which attracted his attention, he soon became intent upon the
+volume. It was a history of the lives and trials of great criminals;
+and the pages were soiled and thumbed with use. Here, he read of
+dreadful crimes that made the blood run cold; of secret murders that
+had been committed by the lonely wayside; of bodies hidden from the eye
+of man in deep pits and wells: which would not keep them down, deep as
+they were, but had yielded them up at last, after many years, and so
+maddened the murderers with the sight, that in their horror they had
+confessed their guilt, and yelled for the gibbet to end their agony.
+Here, too, he read of men who, lying in their beds at dead of night,
+had been tempted (so they said) and led on, by their own bad thoughts,
+to such dreadful bloodshed as it made the flesh creep, and the limbs
+quail, to think of. The terrible descriptions were so real and vivid,
+that the sallow pages seemed to turn red with gore; and the words upon
+them, to be sounded in his ears, as if they were whispered, in hollow
+murmurs, by the spirits of the dead.
+
+In a paroxysm of fear, the boy closed the book, and thrust it from him.
+Then, falling upon his knees, he prayed Heaven to spare him from such
+deeds; and rather to will that he should die at once, than be reserved
+for crimes, so fearful and appalling. By degrees, he grew more calm,
+and besought, in a low and broken voice, that he might be rescued from
+his present dangers; and that if any aid were to be raised up for a
+poor outcast boy who had never known the love of friends or kindred, it
+might come to him now, when, desolate and deserted, he stood alone in
+the midst of wickedness and guilt.
+
+He had concluded his prayer, but still remained with his head buried in
+his hands, when a rustling noise aroused him.
+
+“What’s that!” he cried, starting up, and catching sight of a figure
+standing by the door. “Who’s there?”
+
+“Me. Only me,” replied a tremulous voice.
+
+Oliver raised the candle above his head: and looked towards the door.
+It was Nancy.
+
+“Put down the light,” said the girl, turning away her head. “It hurts
+my eyes.”
+
+Oliver saw that she was very pale, and gently inquired if she were ill.
+The girl threw herself into a chair, with her back towards him: and
+wrung her hands; but made no reply.
+
+“God forgive me!” she cried after a while, “I never thought of this.”
+
+“Has anything happened?” asked Oliver. “Can I help you? I will if I
+can. I will, indeed.”
+
+She rocked herself to and fro; caught her throat; and, uttering a
+gurgling sound, gasped for breath.
+
+“Nancy!” cried Oliver, “What is it?”
+
+The girl beat her hands upon her knees, and her feet upon the ground;
+and, suddenly stopping, drew her shawl close round her: and shivered
+with cold.
+
+Oliver stirred the fire. Drawing her chair close to it, she sat there,
+for a little time, without speaking; but at length she raised her head,
+and looked round.
+
+“I don’t know what comes over me sometimes,” said she, affecting to
+busy herself in arranging her dress; “it’s this damp dirty room, I
+think. Now, Nolly, dear, are you ready?”
+
+“Am I to go with you?” asked Oliver.
+
+“Yes. I have come from Bill,” replied the girl. “You are to go with
+me.”
+
+“What for?” asked Oliver, recoiling.
+
+“What for?” echoed the girl, raising her eyes, and averting them again,
+the moment they encountered the boy’s face. “Oh! For no harm.”
+
+“I don’t believe it,” said Oliver: who had watched her closely.
+
+“Have it your own way,” rejoined the girl, affecting to laugh. “For no
+good, then.”
+
+Oliver could see that he had some power over the girl’s better
+feelings, and, for an instant, thought of appealing to her compassion
+for his helpless state. But, then, the thought darted across his mind
+that it was barely eleven o’clock; and that many people were still in
+the streets: of whom surely some might be found to give credence to his
+tale. As the reflection occured to him, he stepped forward: and said,
+somewhat hastily, that he was ready.
+
+Neither his brief consideration, nor its purport, was lost on his
+companion. She eyed him narrowly, while he spoke; and cast upon him a
+look of intelligence which sufficiently showed that she guessed what
+had been passing in his thoughts.
+
+“Hush!” said the girl, stooping over him, and pointing to the door as
+she looked cautiously round. “You can’t help yourself. I have tried
+hard for you, but all to no purpose. You are hedged round and round. If
+ever you are to get loose from here, this is not the time.”
+
+Struck by the energy of her manner, Oliver looked up in her face with
+great surprise. She seemed to speak the truth; her countenance was
+white and agitated; and she trembled with very earnestness.
+
+“I have saved you from being ill-used once, and I will again, and I do
+now,” continued the girl aloud; “for those who would have fetched you,
+if I had not, would have been far more rough than me. I have promised
+for your being quiet and silent; if you are not, you will only do harm
+to yourself and me too, and perhaps be my death. See here! I have borne
+all this for you already, as true as God sees me show it.”
+
+She pointed, hastily, to some livid bruises on her neck and arms; and
+continued, with great rapidity:
+
+“Remember this! And don’t let me suffer more for you, just now. If I
+could help you, I would; but I have not the power. They don’t mean to
+harm you; whatever they make you do, is no fault of yours. Hush! Every
+word from you is a blow for me. Give me your hand. Make haste! Your
+hand!”
+
+She caught the hand which Oliver instinctively placed in hers, and,
+blowing out the light, drew him after her up the stairs. The door was
+opened, quickly, by some one shrouded in the darkness, and was as
+quickly closed, when they had passed out. A hackney-cabriolet was in
+waiting; with the same vehemence which she had exhibited in addressing
+Oliver, the girl pulled him in with her, and drew the curtains close.
+The driver wanted no directions, but lashed his horse into full speed,
+without the delay of an instant.
+
+The girl still held Oliver fast by the hand, and continued to pour into
+his ear, the warnings and assurances she had already imparted. All was
+so quick and hurried, that he had scarcely time to recollect where he
+was, or how he came there, when the carriage stopped at the house to
+which the Jew’s steps had been directed on the previous evening.
+
+For one brief moment, Oliver cast a hurried glance along the empty
+street, and a cry for help hung upon his lips. But the girl’s voice was
+in his ear, beseeching him in such tones of agony to remember her, that
+he had not the heart to utter it. While he hesitated, the opportunity
+was gone; he was already in the house, and the door was shut.
+
+“This way,” said the girl, releasing her hold for the first time.
+“Bill!”
+
+“Hallo!” replied Sikes: appearing at the head of the stairs, with a
+candle. “Oh! That’s the time of day. Come on!”
+
+This was a very strong expression of approbation, an uncommonly hearty
+welcome, from a person of Mr. Sikes’ temperament. Nancy, appearing much
+gratified thereby, saluted him cordially.
+
+“Bull’s-eye’s gone home with Tom,” observed Sikes, as he lighted them
+up. “He’d have been in the way.”
+
+“That’s right,” rejoined Nancy.
+
+“So you’ve got the kid,” said Sikes when they had all reached the room:
+closing the door as he spoke.
+
+“Yes, here he is,” replied Nancy.
+
+“Did he come quiet?” inquired Sikes.
+
+“Like a lamb,” rejoined Nancy.
+
+“I’m glad to hear it,” said Sikes, looking grimly at Oliver; “for the
+sake of his young carcase: as would otherways have suffered for it.
+Come here, young ’un; and let me read you a lectur’, which is as well
+got over at once.”
+
+Thus addressing his new pupil, Mr. Sikes pulled off Oliver’s cap and
+threw it into a corner; and then, taking him by the shoulder, sat
+himself down by the table, and stood the boy in front of him.
+
+“Now, first: do you know wot this is?” inquired Sikes, taking up a
+pocket-pistol which lay on the table.
+
+Oliver replied in the affirmative.
+
+“Well, then, look here,” continued Sikes. “This is powder; that ’ere’s
+a bullet; and this is a little bit of a old hat for waddin’.”
+
+Oliver murmured his comprehension of the different bodies referred to;
+and Mr. Sikes proceeded to load the pistol, with great nicety and
+deliberation.
+
+“Now it’s loaded,” said Mr. Sikes, when he had finished.
+
+“Yes, I see it is, sir,” replied Oliver.
+
+“Well,” said the robber, grasping Oliver’s wrist, and putting the
+barrel so close to his temple that they touched; at which moment the
+boy could not repress a start; “if you speak a word when you’re out
+o’doors with me, except when I speak to you, that loading will be in
+your head without notice. So, if you _do_ make up your mind to speak
+without leave, say your prayers first.”
+
+Having bestowed a scowl upon the object of this warning, to increase
+its effect, Mr. Sikes continued.
+
+“As near as I know, there isn’t anybody as would be asking very
+partickler arter you, if you _was_ disposed of; so I needn’t take this
+devil-and-all of trouble to explain matters to you, if it warn’t for
+your own good. D’ye hear me?”
+
+“The short and the long of what you mean,” said Nancy: speaking very
+emphatically, and slightly frowning at Oliver as if to bespeak his
+serious attention to her words: “is, that if you’re crossed by him in
+this job you have on hand, you’ll prevent his ever telling tales
+afterwards, by shooting him through the head, and will take your chance
+of swinging for it, as you do for a great many other things in the way
+of business, every month of your life.”
+
+“That’s it!” observed Mr. Sikes, approvingly; “women can always put
+things in fewest words.—Except when it’s blowing up; and then they
+lengthens it out. And now that he’s thoroughly up to it, let’s have
+some supper, and get a snooze before starting.”
+
+In pursuance of this request, Nancy quickly laid the cloth;
+disappearing for a few minutes, she presently returned with a pot of
+porter and a dish of sheep’s heads: which gave occasion to several
+pleasant witticisms on the part of Mr. Sikes, founded upon the singular
+coincidence of “jemmies” being a can name, common to them, and also to
+an ingenious implement much used in his profession. Indeed, the worthy
+gentleman, stimulated perhaps by the immediate prospect of being on
+active service, was in great spirits and good humour; in proof whereof,
+it may be here remarked, that he humourously drank all the beer at a
+draught, and did not utter, on a rough calculation, more than
+four-score oaths during the whole progress of the meal.
+
+Supper being ended—it may be easily conceived that Oliver had no great
+appetite for it—Mr. Sikes disposed of a couple of glasses of spirits
+and water, and threw himself on the bed; ordering Nancy, with many
+imprecations in case of failure, to call him at five precisely. Oliver
+stretched himself in his clothes, by command of the same authority, on
+a mattress upon the floor; and the girl, mending the fire, sat before
+it, in readiness to rouse them at the appointed time.
+
+For a long time Oliver lay awake, thinking it not impossible that Nancy
+might seek that opportunity of whispering some further advice; but the
+girl sat brooding over the fire, without moving, save now and then to
+trim the light. Weary with watching and anxiety, he at length fell
+asleep.
+
+When he awoke, the table was covered with tea-things, and Sikes was
+thrusting various articles into the pockets of his great-coat, which
+hung over the back of a chair. Nancy was busily engaged in preparing
+breakfast. It was not yet daylight; for the candle was still burning,
+and it was quite dark outside. A sharp rain, too, was beating against
+the window-panes; and the sky looked black and cloudy.
+
+“Now, then!” growled Sikes, as Oliver started up; “half-past five! Look
+sharp, or you’ll get no breakfast; for it’s late as it is.”
+
+Oliver was not long in making his toilet; having taken some breakfast,
+he replied to a surly inquiry from Sikes, by saying that he was quite
+ready.
+
+Nancy, scarcely looking at the boy, threw him a handkerchief to tie
+round his throat; Sikes gave him a large rough cape to button over his
+shoulders. Thus attired, he gave his hand to the robber, who, merely
+pausing to show him with a menacing gesture that he had that same
+pistol in a side-pocket of his great-coat, clasped it firmly in his,
+and, exchanging a farewell with Nancy, led him away.
+
+Oliver turned, for an instant, when they reached the door, in the hope
+of meeting a look from the girl. But she had resumed her old seat in
+front of the fire, and sat, perfectly motionless before it.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXI.
+THE EXPEDITION
+
+
+It was a cheerless morning when they got into the street; blowing and
+raining hard; and the clouds looking dull and stormy. The night had
+been very wet: large pools of water had collected in the road: and the
+kennels were overflowing. There was a faint glimmering of the coming
+day in the sky; but it rather aggravated than relieved the gloom of the
+scene: the sombre light only serving to pale that which the street
+lamps afforded, without shedding any warmer or brighter tints upon the
+wet house-tops, and dreary streets. There appeared to be nobody
+stirring in that quarter of the town; the windows of the houses were
+all closely shut; and the streets through which they passed, were
+noiseless and empty.
+
+By the time they had turned into the Bethnal Green Road, the day had
+fairly begun to break. Many of the lamps were already extinguished; a
+few country waggons were slowly toiling on, towards London; now and
+then, a stage-coach, covered with mud, rattled briskly by: the driver
+bestowing, as he passed, an admonitory lash upon the heavy waggoner
+who, by keeping on the wrong side of the road, had endangered his
+arriving at the office, a quarter of a minute after his time. The
+public-houses, with gas-lights burning inside, were already open. By
+degrees, other shops began to be unclosed, and a few scattered people
+were met with. Then, came straggling groups of labourers going to their
+work; then, men and women with fish-baskets on their heads;
+donkey-carts laden with vegetables; chaise-carts filled with live-stock
+or whole carcasses of meat; milk-women with pails; an unbroken
+concourse of people, trudging out with various supplies to the eastern
+suburbs of the town. As they approached the City, the noise and traffic
+gradually increased; when they threaded the streets between Shoreditch
+and Smithfield, it had swelled into a roar of sound and bustle. It was
+as light as it was likely to be, till night came on again, and the busy
+morning of half the London population had begun.
+
+Turning down Sun Street and Crown Street, and crossing Finsbury square,
+Mr. Sikes struck, by way of Chiswell Street, into Barbican: thence into
+Long Lane, and so into Smithfield; from which latter place arose a
+tumult of discordant sounds that filled Oliver Twist with amazement.
+
+It was market-morning. The ground was covered, nearly ankle-deep, with
+filth and mire; a thick steam, perpetually rising from the reeking
+bodies of the cattle, and mingling with the fog, which seemed to rest
+upon the chimney-tops, hung heavily above. All the pens in the centre
+of the large area, and as many temporary pens as could be crowded into
+the vacant space, were filled with sheep; tied up to posts by the
+gutter side were long lines of beasts and oxen, three or four deep.
+Countrymen, butchers, drovers, hawkers, boys, thieves, idlers, and
+vagabonds of every low grade, were mingled together in a mass; the
+whistling of drovers, the barking dogs, the bellowing and plunging of
+the oxen, the bleating of sheep, the grunting and squeaking of pigs,
+the cries of hawkers, the shouts, oaths, and quarrelling on all sides;
+the ringing of bells and roar of voices, that issued from every
+public-house; the crowding, pushing, driving, beating, whooping and
+yelling; the hideous and discordant dim that resounded from every
+corner of the market; and the unwashed, unshaven, squalid, and dirty
+figures constantly running to and fro, and bursting in and out of the
+throng; rendered it a stunning and bewildering scene, which quite
+confounded the senses.
+
+Mr. Sikes, dragging Oliver after him, elbowed his way through the
+thickest of the crowd, and bestowed very little attention on the
+numerous sights and sounds, which so astonished the boy. He nodded,
+twice or thrice, to a passing friend; and, resisting as many
+invitations to take a morning dram, pressed steadily onward, until they
+were clear of the turmoil, and had made their way through Hosier Lane
+into Holborn.
+
+“Now, young ’un!” said Sikes, looking up at the clock of St. Andrew’s
+Church, “hard upon seven! you must step out. Come, don’t lag behind
+already, Lazy-legs!”
+
+Mr. Sikes accompanied this speech with a jerk at his little companion’s
+wrist; Oliver, quickening his pace into a kind of trot between a fast
+walk and a run, kept up with the rapid strides of the house-breaker as
+well as he could.
+
+They held their course at this rate, until they had passed Hyde Park
+corner, and were on their way to Kensington: when Sikes relaxed his
+pace, until an empty cart which was at some little distance behind,
+came up. Seeing “Hounslow” written on it, he asked the driver with as
+much civility as he could assume, if he would give them a lift as far
+as Isleworth.
+
+“Jump up,” said the man. “Is that your boy?”
+
+“Yes; he’s my boy,” replied Sikes, looking hard at Oliver, and putting
+his hand abstractedly into the pocket where the pistol was.
+
+“Your father walks rather too quick for you, don’t he, my man?”
+inquired the driver: seeing that Oliver was out of breath.
+
+“Not a bit of it,” replied Sikes, interposing. “He’s used to it. Here,
+take hold of my hand, Ned. In with you!”
+
+Thus addressing Oliver, he helped him into the cart; and the driver,
+pointing to a heap of sacks, told him to lie down there, and rest
+himself.
+
+As they passed the different mile-stones, Oliver wondered, more and
+more, where his companion meant to take him. Kensington, Hammersmith,
+Chiswick, Kew Bridge, Brentford, were all passed; and yet they went on
+as steadily as if they had only just begun their journey. At length,
+they came to a public-house called the Coach and Horses; a little way
+beyond which, another road appeared to run off. And here, the cart
+stopped.
+
+Sikes dismounted with great precipitation, holding Oliver by the hand
+all the while; and lifting him down directly, bestowed a furious look
+upon him, and rapped the side-pocket with his fist, in a significant
+manner.
+
+“Good-bye, boy,” said the man.
+
+“He’s sulky,” replied Sikes, giving him a shake; “he’s sulky. A young
+dog! Don’t mind him.”
+
+“Not I!” rejoined the other, getting into his cart. “It’s a fine day,
+after all.” And he drove away.
+
+Sikes waited until he had fairly gone; and then, telling Oliver he
+might look about him if he wanted, once again led him onward on his
+journey.
+
+They turned round to the left, a short way past the public-house; and
+then, taking a right-hand road, walked on for a long time: passing many
+large gardens and gentlemen’s houses on both sides of the way, and
+stopping for nothing but a little beer, until they reached a town. Here
+against the wall of a house, Oliver saw written up in pretty large
+letters, “Hampton.” They lingered about, in the fields, for some hours.
+At length they came back into the town; and, turning into an old
+public-house with a defaced sign-board, ordered some dinner by the
+kitchen fire.
+
+The kitchen was an old, low-roofed room; with a great beam across the
+middle of the ceiling, and benches, with high backs to them, by the
+fire; on which were seated several rough men in smock-frocks, drinking
+and smoking. They took no notice of Oliver; and very little of Sikes;
+and, as Sikes took very little notice of them, he and his young comrade
+sat in a corner by themselves, without being much troubled by their
+company.
+
+They had some cold meat for dinner, and sat so long after it, while Mr.
+Sikes indulged himself with three or four pipes, that Oliver began to
+feel quite certain they were not going any further. Being much tired
+with the walk, and getting up so early, he dozed a little at first;
+then, quite overpowered by fatigue and the fumes of the tobacco, fell
+asleep.
+
+It was quite dark when he was awakened by a push from Sikes. Rousing
+himself sufficiently to sit up and look about him, he found that worthy
+in close fellowship and communication with a labouring man, over a pint
+of ale.
+
+“So, you’re going on to Lower Halliford, are you?” inquired Sikes.
+
+“Yes, I am,” replied the man, who seemed a little the worse—or better,
+as the case might be—for drinking; “and not slow about it neither. My
+horse hasn’t got a load behind him going back, as he had coming up in
+the mornin’; and he won’t be long a-doing of it. Here’s luck to him.
+Ecod! he’s a good ’un!”
+
+“Could you give my boy and me a lift as far as there?” demanded Sikes,
+pushing the ale towards his new friend.
+
+“If you’re going directly, I can,” replied the man, looking out of the
+pot. “Are you going to Halliford?”
+
+“Going on to Shepperton,” replied Sikes.
+
+“I’m your man, as far as I go,” replied the other. “Is all paid,
+Becky?”
+
+“Yes, the other gentleman’s paid,” replied the girl.
+
+“I say!” said the man, with tipsy gravity; “that won’t do, you know.”
+
+“Why not?” rejoined Sikes. “You’re a-going to accommodate us, and wot’s
+to prevent my standing treat for a pint or so, in return?”
+
+The stranger reflected upon this argument, with a very profound face;
+having done so, he seized Sikes by the hand: and declared he was a real
+good fellow. To which Mr. Sikes replied, he was joking; as, if he had
+been sober, there would have been strong reason to suppose he was.
+
+After the exchange of a few more compliments, they bade the company
+good-night, and went out; the girl gathering up the pots and glasses as
+they did so, and lounging out to the door, with her hands full, to see
+the party start.
+
+The horse, whose health had been drunk in his absence, was standing
+outside: ready harnessed to the cart. Oliver and Sikes got in without
+any further ceremony; and the man to whom he belonged, having lingered
+for a minute or two “to bear him up,” and to defy the hostler and the
+world to produce his equal, mounted also. Then, the hostler was told to
+give the horse his head; and, his head being given him, he made a very
+unpleasant use of it: tossing it into the air with great disdain, and
+running into the parlour windows over the way; after performing those
+feats, and supporting himself for a short time on his hind-legs, he
+started off at great speed, and rattled out of the town right
+gallantly.
+
+The night was very dark. A damp mist rose from the river, and the
+marshy ground about; and spread itself over the dreary fields. It was
+piercing cold, too; all was gloomy and black. Not a word was spoken;
+for the driver had grown sleepy; and Sikes was in no mood to lead him
+into conversation. Oliver sat huddled together, in a corner of the
+cart; bewildered with alarm and apprehension; and figuring strange
+objects in the gaunt trees, whose branches waved grimly to and fro, as
+if in some fantastic joy at the desolation of the scene.
+
+As they passed Sunbury Church, the clock struck seven. There was a
+light in the ferry-house window opposite: which streamed across the
+road, and threw into more sombre shadow a dark yew-tree with graves
+beneath it. There was a dull sound of falling water not far off; and
+the leaves of the old tree stirred gently in the night wind. It seemed
+like quiet music for the repose of the dead.
+
+Sunbury was passed through, and they came again into the lonely road.
+Two or three miles more, and the cart stopped. Sikes alighted, took
+Oliver by the hand, and they once again walked on.
+
+They turned into no house at Shepperton, as the weary boy had expected;
+but still kept walking on, in mud and darkness, through gloomy lanes
+and over cold open wastes, until they came within sight of the lights
+of a town at no great distance. On looking intently forward, Oliver saw
+that the water was just below them, and that they were coming to the
+foot of a bridge.
+
+Sikes kept straight on, until they were close upon the bridge; then
+turned suddenly down a bank upon the left.
+
+“The water!” thought Oliver, turning sick with fear. “He has brought me
+to this lonely place to murder me!”
+
+He was about to throw himself on the ground, and make one struggle for
+his young life, when he saw that they stood before a solitary house:
+all ruinous and decayed. There was a window on each side of the
+dilapidated entrance; and one story above; but no light was visible.
+The house was dark, dismantled: and the all appearance, uninhabited.
+
+Sikes, with Oliver’s hand still in his, softly approached the low
+porch, and raised the latch. The door yielded to the pressure, and they
+passed in together.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXII.
+THE BURGLARY
+
+
+“Hallo!” cried a loud, hoarse voice, as soon as they set foot in the
+passage.
+
+“Don’t make such a row,” said Sikes, bolting the door. “Show a glim,
+Toby.”
+
+“Aha! my pal!” cried the same voice. “A glim, Barney, a glim! Show the
+gentleman in, Barney; wake up first, if convenient.”
+
+The speaker appeared to throw a boot-jack, or some such article, at the
+person he addressed, to rouse him from his slumbers: for the noise of a
+wooden body, falling violently, was heard; and then an indistinct
+muttering, as of a man between sleep and awake.
+
+“Do you hear?” cried the same voice. “There’s Bill Sikes in the passage
+with nobody to do the civil to him; and you sleeping there, as if you
+took laudanum with your meals, and nothing stronger. Are you any
+fresher now, or do you want the iron candlestick to wake you
+thoroughly?”
+
+A pair of slipshod feet shuffled, hastily, across the bare floor of the
+room, as this interrogatory was put; and there issued, from a door on
+the right hand; first, a feeble candle: and next, the form of the same
+individual who has been heretofore described as labouring under the
+infirmity of speaking through his nose, and officiating as waiter at
+the public-house on Saffron Hill.
+
+“Bister Sikes!” exclaimed Barney, with real or counterfeit joy; “cub
+id, sir; cub id.”
+
+“Here! you get on first,” said Sikes, putting Oliver in front of him.
+“Quicker! or I shall tread upon your heels.”
+
+Muttering a curse upon his tardiness, Sikes pushed Oliver before him;
+and they entered a low dark room with a smoky fire, two or three broken
+chairs, a table, and a very old couch: on which, with his legs much
+higher than his head, a man was reposing at full length, smoking a long
+clay pipe. He was dressed in a smartly-cut snuff-coloured coat, with
+large brass buttons; an orange neckerchief; a coarse, staring,
+shawl-pattern waistcoat; and drab breeches. Mr. Crackit (for he it was)
+had no very great quantity of hair, either upon his head or face; but
+what he had, was of a reddish dye, and tortured into long corkscrew
+curls, through which he occasionally thrust some very dirty fingers,
+ornamented with large common rings. He was a trifle above the middle
+size, and apparently rather weak in the legs; but this circumstance by
+no means detracted from his own admiration of his top-boots, which he
+contemplated, in their elevated situation, with lively satisfaction.
+
+“Bill, my boy!” said this figure, turning his head towards the door,
+“I’m glad to see you. I was almost afraid you’d given it up: in which
+case I should have made a personal wentur. Hallo!”
+
+Uttering this exclamation in a tone of great surprise, as his eyes
+rested on Oliver, Mr. Toby Crackit brought himself into a sitting
+posture, and demanded who that was.
+
+“The boy. Only the boy!” replied Sikes, drawing a chair towards the
+fire.
+
+“Wud of Bister Fagid’s lads,” exclaimed Barney, with a grin.
+
+“Fagin’s, eh!” exclaimed Toby, looking at Oliver. “Wot an inwalable boy
+that’ll make, for the old ladies’ pockets in chapels! His mug is a
+fortin’ to him.”
+
+“There—there’s enough of that,” interposed Sikes, impatiently; and
+stooping over his recumbant friend, he whispered a few words in his
+ear: at which Mr. Crackit laughed immensely, and honoured Oliver with a
+long stare of astonishment.
+
+“Now,” said Sikes, as he resumed his seat, “if you’ll give us something
+to eat and drink while we’re waiting, you’ll put some heart in us; or
+in me, at all events. Sit down by the fire, younker, and rest yourself;
+for you’ll have to go out with us again to-night, though not very far
+off.”
+
+Oliver looked at Sikes, in mute and timid wonder; and drawing a stool
+to the fire, sat with his aching head upon his hands, scarecely knowing
+where he was, or what was passing around him.
+
+“Here,” said Toby, as the young Jew placed some fragments of food, and
+a bottle upon the table, “Success to the crack!” He rose to honour the
+toast; and, carefully depositing his empty pipe in a corner, advanced
+to the table, filled a glass with spirits, and drank off its contents.
+Mr. Sikes did the same.
+
+“A drain for the boy,” said Toby, half-filling a wine-glass. “Down with
+it, innocence.”
+
+“Indeed,” said Oliver, looking piteously up into the man’s face;
+“indeed, I—”
+
+“Down with it!” echoed Toby. “Do you think I don’t know what’s good for
+you? Tell him to drink it, Bill.”
+
+“He had better!” said Sikes clapping his hand upon his pocket. “Burn my
+body, if he isn’t more trouble than a whole family of Dodgers. Drink
+it, you perwerse imp; drink it!”
+
+Frightened by the menacing gestures of the two men, Oliver hastily
+swallowed the contents of the glass, and immediately fell into a
+violent fit of coughing: which delighted Toby Crackit and Barney, and
+even drew a smile from the surly Mr. Sikes.
+
+This done, and Sikes having satisfied his appetite (Oliver could eat
+nothing but a small crust of bread which they made him swallow), the
+two men laid themselves down on chairs for a short nap. Oliver retained
+his stool by the fire; Barney wrapped in a blanket, stretched himself
+on the floor: close outside the fender.
+
+They slept, or appeared to sleep, for some time; nobody stirring but
+Barney, who rose once or twice to throw coals on the fire. Oliver fell
+into a heavy doze: imagining himself straying along the gloomy lanes,
+or wandering about the dark churchyard, or retracing some one or other
+of the scenes of the past day: when he was roused by Toby Crackit
+jumping up and declaring it was half-past one.
+
+In an instant, the other two were on their legs, and all were actively
+engaged in busy preparation. Sikes and his companion enveloped their
+necks and chins in large dark shawls, and drew on their great-coats;
+Barney, opening a cupboard, brought forth several articles, which he
+hastily crammed into the pockets.
+
+“Barkers for me, Barney,” said Toby Crackit.
+
+“Here they are,” replied Barney, producing a pair of pistols. “You
+loaded them yourself.”
+
+“All right!” replied Toby, stowing them away. “The persuaders?”
+
+“I’ve got ’em,” replied Sikes.
+
+“Crape, keys, centre-bits, darkies—nothing forgotten?” inquired Toby:
+fastening a small crowbar to a loop inside the skirt of his coat.
+
+“All right,” rejoined his companion. “Bring them bits of timber,
+Barney. That’s the time of day.”
+
+With these words, he took a thick stick from Barney’s hands, who,
+having delivered another to Toby, busied himself in fastening on
+Oliver’s cape.
+
+“Now then!” said Sikes, holding out his hand.
+
+Oliver: who was completely stupified by the unwonted exercise, and the
+air, and the drink which had been forced upon him: put his hand
+mechanically into that which Sikes extended for the purpose.
+
+“Take his other hand, Toby,” said Sikes. “Look out, Barney.”
+
+The man went to the door, and returned to announce that all was quiet.
+The two robbers issued forth with Oliver between them. Barney, having
+made all fast, rolled himself up as before, and was soon asleep again.
+
+It was now intensely dark. The fog was much heavier than it had been in
+the early part of the night; and the atmosphere was so damp, that,
+although no rain fell, Oliver’s hair and eyebrows, within a few minutes
+after leaving the house, had become stiff with the half-frozen moisture
+that was floating about. They crossed the bridge, and kept on towards
+the lights which he had seen before. They were at no great distance
+off; and, as they walked pretty briskly, they soon arrived at Chertsey.
+
+“Slap through the town,” whispered Sikes; “there’ll be nobody in the
+way, to-night, to see us.”
+
+Toby acquiesced; and they hurried through the main street of the little
+town, which at that late hour was wholly deserted. A dim light shone at
+intervals from some bed-room window; and the hoarse barking of dogs
+occasionally broke the silence of the night. But there was nobody
+abroad. They had cleared the town, as the church-bell struck two.
+
+Quickening their pace, they turned up a road upon the left hand. After
+walking about a quarter of a mile, they stopped before a detached house
+surrounded by a wall: to the top of which, Toby Crackit, scarcely
+pausing to take breath, climbed in a twinkling.
+
+“The boy next,” said Toby. “Hoist him up; I’ll catch hold of him.”
+
+Before Oliver had time to look round, Sikes had caught him under the
+arms; and in three or four seconds he and Toby were lying on the grass
+on the other side. Sikes followed directly. And they stole cautiously
+towards the house.
+
+And now, for the first time, Oliver, well-nigh mad with grief and
+terror, saw that housebreaking and robbery, if not murder, were the
+objects of the expedition. He clasped his hands together, and
+involuntarily uttered a subdued exclamation of horror. A mist came
+before his eyes; the cold sweat stood upon his ashy face; his limbs
+failed him; and he sank upon his knees.
+
+“Get up!” murmured Sikes, trembling with rage, and drawing the pistol
+from his pocket; “Get up, or I’ll strew your brains upon the grass.”
+
+“Oh! for God’s sake let me go!” cried Oliver; “let me run away and die
+in the fields. I will never come near London; never, never! Oh! pray
+have mercy on me, and do not make me steal. For the love of all the
+bright Angels that rest in Heaven, have mercy upon me!”
+
+The man to whom this appeal was made, swore a dreadful oath, and had
+cocked the pistol, when Toby, striking it from his grasp, placed his
+hand upon the boy’s mouth, and dragged him to the house.
+
+“Hush!” cried the man; “it won’t answer here. Say another word, and
+I’ll do your business myself with a crack on the head. That makes no
+noise, and is quite as certain, and more genteel. Here, Bill, wrench
+the shutter open. He’s game enough now, I’ll engage. I’ve seen older
+hands of his age took the same way, for a minute or two, on a cold
+night.”
+
+Sikes, invoking terrific imprecations upon Fagin’s head for sending
+Oliver on such an errand, plied the crowbar vigorously, but with little
+noise. After some delay, and some assistance from Toby, the shutter to
+which he had referred, swung open on its hinges.
+
+It was a little lattice window, about five feet and a half above the
+ground, at the back of the house: which belonged to a scullery, or
+small brewing-place, at the end of the passage. The aperture was so
+small, that the inmates had probably not thought it worth while to
+defend it more securely; but it was large enough to admit a boy of
+Oliver’s size, nevertheless. A very brief exercise of Mr. Sike’s art,
+sufficed to overcome the fastening of the lattice; and it soon stood
+wide open also.
+
+“Now listen, you young limb,” whispered Sikes, drawing a dark lantern
+from his pocket, and throwing the glare full on Oliver’s face; “I’m a
+going to put you through there. Take this light; go softly up the steps
+straight afore you, and along the little hall, to the street door;
+unfasten it, and let us in.”
+
+“There’s a bolt at the top, you won’t be able to reach,” interposed
+Toby. “Stand upon one of the hall chairs. There are three there, Bill,
+with a jolly large blue unicorn and gold pitchfork on ’em: which is the
+old lady’s arms.”
+
+“Keep quiet, can’t you?” replied Sikes, with a threatening look. “The
+room-door is open, is it?”
+
+“Wide,” replied Toby, after peeping in to satisfy himself. “The game of
+that is, that they always leave it open with a catch, so that the dog,
+who’s got a bed in here, may walk up and down the passage when he feels
+wakeful. Ha! ha! Barney ’ticed him away to-night. So neat!”
+
+Although Mr. Crackit spoke in a scarcely audible whisper, and laughed
+without noise, Sikes imperiously commanded him to be silent, and to get
+to work. Toby complied, by first producing his lantern, and placing it
+on the ground; then by planting himself firmly with his head against
+the wall beneath the window, and his hands upon his knees, so as to
+make a step of his back. This was no sooner done, than Sikes, mounting
+upon him, put Oliver gently through the window with his feet first;
+and, without leaving hold of his collar, planted him safely on the
+floor inside.
+
+“Take this lantern,” said Sikes, looking into the room. “You see the
+stairs afore you?”
+
+Oliver, more dead than alive, gasped out, “Yes.” Sikes, pointing to the
+street-door with the pistol-barrel, briefly advised him to take notice
+that he was within shot all the way; and that if he faltered, he would
+fall dead that instant.
+
+“It’s done in a minute,” said Sikes, in the same low whisper. “Directly
+I leave go of you, do your work. Hark!”
+
+“What’s that?” whispered the other man.
+
+They listened intently.
+
+“Nothing,” said Sikes, releasing his hold of Oliver. “Now!”
+
+In the short time he had had to collect his senses, the boy had firmly
+resolved that, whether he died in the attempt or not, he would make one
+effort to dart upstairs from the hall, and alarm the family. Filled
+with this idea, he advanced at once, but stealthily.
+
+“Come back!” suddenly cried Sikes aloud. “Back! back!”
+
+Scared by the sudden breaking of the dead stillness of the place, and
+by a loud cry which followed it, Oliver let his lantern fall, and knew
+not whether to advance or fly.
+
+The cry was repeated—a light appeared—a vision of two terrified
+half-dressed men at the top of the stairs swam before his eyes—a
+flash—a loud noise—a smoke—a crash somewhere, but where he knew
+not,—and he staggered back.
+
+Sikes had disappeared for an instant; but he was up again, and had him
+by the collar before the smoke had cleared away. He fired his own
+pistol after the men, who were already retreating; and dragged the boy
+up.
+
+“Clasp your arm tighter,” said Sikes, as he drew him through the
+window. “Give me a shawl here. They’ve hit him. Quick! How the boy
+bleeds!”
+
+Then came the loud ringing of a bell, mingled with the noise of
+fire-arms, and the shouts of men, and the sensation of being carried
+over uneven ground at a rapid pace. And then, the noises grew confused
+in the distance; and a cold deadly feeling crept over the boy’s heart;
+and he saw or heard no more.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXIII.
+WHICH CONTAINS THE SUBSTANCE OF A PLEASANT CONVERSATION BETWEEN MR.
+BUMBLE AND A LADY; AND SHOWS THAT EVEN A BEADLE MAY BE SUSCEPTIBLE ON
+SOME POINTS
+
+
+The night was bitter cold. The snow lay on the ground, frozen into a
+hard thick crust, so that only the heaps that had drifted into byways
+and corners were affected by the sharp wind that howled abroad: which,
+as if expending increased fury on such prey as it found, caught it
+savagely up in clouds, and, whirling it into a thousand misty eddies,
+scattered it in air. Bleak, dark, and piercing cold, it was a night for
+the well-housed and fed to draw round the bright fire and thank God
+they were at home; and for the homeless, starving wretch to lay him
+down and die. Many hunger-worn outcasts close their eyes in our bare
+streets, at such times, who, let their crimes have been what they may,
+can hardly open them in a more bitter world.
+
+Such was the aspect of out-of-doors affairs, when Mrs. Corney, the
+matron of the workhouse to which our readers have been already
+introduced as the birthplace of Oliver Twist, sat herself down before a
+cheerful fire in her own little room, and glanced, with no small degree
+of complacency, at a small round table: on which stood a tray of
+corresponding size, furnished with all necessary materials for the most
+grateful meal that matrons enjoy. In fact, Mrs. Corney was about to
+solace herself with a cup of tea. As she glanced from the table to the
+fireplace, where the smallest of all possible kettles was singing a
+small song in a small voice, her inward satisfaction evidently
+increased,—so much so, indeed, that Mrs. Corney smiled.
+
+“Well!” said the matron, leaning her elbow on the table, and looking
+reflectively at the fire; “I’m sure we have all on us a great deal to
+be grateful for! A great deal, if we did but know it. Ah!”
+
+Mrs. Corney shook her head mournfully, as if deploring the mental
+blindness of those paupers who did not know it; and thrusting a silver
+spoon (private property) into the inmost recesses of a two-ounce tin
+tea-caddy, proceeded to make the tea.
+
+How slight a thing will disturb the equanimity of our frail minds! The
+black teapot, being very small and easily filled, ran over while Mrs.
+Corney was moralising; and the water slightly scalded Mrs. Corney’s
+hand.
+
+“Drat the pot!” said the worthy matron, setting it down very hastily on
+the hob; “a little stupid thing, that only holds a couple of cups! What
+use is it of, to anybody! Except,” said Mrs. Corney, pausing, “except
+to a poor desolate creature like me. Oh dear!”
+
+With these words, the matron dropped into her chair, and, once more
+resting her elbow on the table, thought of her solitary fate. The small
+teapot, and the single cup, had awakened in her mind sad recollections
+of Mr. Corney (who had not been dead more than five-and-twenty years);
+and she was overpowered.
+
+“I shall never get another!” said Mrs. Corney, pettishly; “I shall
+never get another—like him.”
+
+Whether this remark bore reference to the husband, or the teapot, is
+uncertain. It might have been the latter; for Mrs. Corney looked at it
+as she spoke; and took it up afterwards. She had just tasted her first
+cup, when she was disturbed by a soft tap at the room-door.
+
+“Oh, come in with you!” said Mrs. Corney, sharply. “Some of the old
+women dying, I suppose. They always die when I’m at meals. Don’t stand
+there, letting the cold air in, don’t. What’s amiss now, eh?”
+
+“Nothing, ma’am, nothing,” replied a man’s voice.
+
+“Dear me!” exclaimed the matron, in a much sweeter tone, “is that Mr.
+Bumble?”
+
+“At your service, ma’am,” said Mr. Bumble, who had been stopping
+outside to rub his shoes clean, and to shake the snow off his coat; and
+who now made his appearance, bearing the cocked hat in one hand and a
+bundle in the other. “Shall I shut the door, ma’am?”
+
+The lady modestly hesitated to reply, lest there should be any
+impropriety in holding an interview with Mr. Bumble, with closed doors.
+Mr. Bumble taking advantage of the hesitation, and being very cold
+himself, shut it without permission.
+
+“Hard weather, Mr. Bumble,” said the matron.
+
+“Hard, indeed, ma’am,” replied the beadle. “Anti-porochial weather
+this, ma’am. We have given away, Mrs. Corney, we have given away a
+matter of twenty quartern loaves and a cheese and a half, this very
+blessed afternoon; and yet them paupers are not contented.”
+
+“Of course not. When would they be, Mr. Bumble?” said the matron,
+sipping her tea.
+
+“When, indeed, ma’am!” rejoined Mr. Bumble. “Why here’s one man that,
+in consideration of his wife and large family, has a quartern loaf and
+a good pound of cheese, full weight. Is he grateful, ma’am? Is he
+grateful? Not a copper farthing’s worth of it! What does he do, ma’am,
+but ask for a few coals; if it’s only a pocket handkerchief full, he
+says! Coals! What would he do with coals? Toast his cheese with ’em and
+then come back for more. That’s the way with these people, ma’am; give
+’em a apron full of coals to-day, and they’ll come back for another,
+the day after to-morrow, as brazen as alabaster.”
+
+The matron expressed her entire concurrence in this intelligible
+simile; and the beadle went on.
+
+“I never,” said Mr. Bumble, “see anything like the pitch it’s got to.
+The day afore yesterday, a man—you have been a married woman, ma’am,
+and I may mention it to you—a man, with hardly a rag upon his back
+(here Mrs. Corney looked at the floor), goes to our overseer’s door
+when he has got company coming to dinner; and says, he must be
+relieved, Mrs. Corney. As he wouldn’t go away, and shocked the company
+very much, our overseer sent him out a pound of potatoes and half a
+pint of oatmeal. ‘My heart!’ says the ungrateful villain, ‘what’s the
+use of _this_ to me? You might as well give me a pair of iron
+spectacles!’ ‘Very good,’ says our overseer, taking ’em away again,
+‘you won’t get anything else here.’ ‘Then I’ll die in the streets!’
+says the vagrant. ‘Oh no, you won’t,’ says our overseer.”
+
+“Ha! ha! That was very good! So like Mr. Grannett, wasn’t it?”
+interposed the matron. “Well, Mr. Bumble?”
+
+“Well, ma’am,” rejoined the beadle, “he went away; and he _did_ die in
+the streets. There’s a obstinate pauper for you!”
+
+“It beats anything I could have believed,” observed the matron
+emphatically. “But don’t you think out-of-door relief a very bad thing,
+any way, Mr. Bumble? You’re a gentleman of experience, and ought to
+know. Come.”
+
+“Mrs. Corney,” said the beadle, smiling as men smile who are conscious
+of superior information, “out-of-door relief, properly managed:
+properly managed, ma’am: is the porochial safeguard. The great
+principle of out-of-door relief is, to give the paupers exactly what
+they don’t want; and then they get tired of coming.”
+
+“Dear me!” exclaimed Mrs. Corney. “Well, that is a good one, too!”
+
+“Yes. Betwixt you and me, ma’am,” returned Mr. Bumble, “that’s the
+great principle; and that’s the reason why, if you look at any cases
+that get into them owdacious newspapers, you’ll always observe that
+sick families have been relieved with slices of cheese. That’s the rule
+now, Mrs. Corney, all over the country. But, however,” said the beadle,
+stopping to unpack his bundle, “these are official secrets, ma’am; not
+to be spoken of; except, as I may say, among the porochial officers,
+such as ourselves. This is the port wine, ma’am, that the board ordered
+for the infirmary; real, fresh, genuine port wine; only out of the cask
+this forenoon; clear as a bell, and no sediment!”
+
+Having held the first bottle up to the light, and shaken it well to
+test its excellence, Mr. Bumble placed them both on top of a chest of
+drawers; folded the handkerchief in which they had been wrapped; put it
+carefully in his pocket; and took up his hat, as if to go.
+
+“You’ll have a very cold walk, Mr. Bumble,” said the matron.
+
+“It blows, ma’am,” replied Mr. Bumble, turning up his coat-collar,
+“enough to cut one’s ears off.”
+
+The matron looked, from the little kettle, to the beadle, who was
+moving towards the door; and as the beadle coughed, preparatory to
+bidding her good-night, bashfully inquired whether—whether he wouldn’t
+take a cup of tea?
+
+Mr. Bumble instantaneously turned back his collar again; laid his hat
+and stick upon a chair; and drew another chair up to the table. As he
+slowly seated himself, he looked at the lady. She fixed her eyes upon
+the little teapot. Mr. Bumble coughed again, and slightly smiled.
+
+Mrs. Corney rose to get another cup and saucer from the closet. As she
+sat down, her eyes once again encountered those of the gallant beadle;
+she coloured, and applied herself to the task of making his tea. Again
+Mr. Bumble coughed—louder this time than he had coughed yet.
+
+“Sweet? Mr. Bumble?” inquired the matron, taking up the sugar-basin.
+
+“Very sweet, indeed, ma’am,” replied Mr. Bumble. He fixed his eyes on
+Mrs. Corney as he said this; and if ever a beadle looked tender, Mr.
+Bumble was that beadle at that moment.
+
+The tea was made, and handed in silence. Mr. Bumble, having spread a
+handkerchief over his knees to prevent the crumbs from sullying the
+splendour of his shorts, began to eat and drink; varying these
+amusements, occasionally, by fetching a deep sigh; which, however, had
+no injurious effect upon his appetite, but, on the contrary, rather
+seemed to facilitate his operations in the tea and toast department.
+
+“You have a cat, ma’am, I see,” said Mr. Bumble, glancing at one who,
+in the centre of her family, was basking before the fire; “and kittens
+too, I declare!”
+
+“I am so fond of them, Mr. Bumble, you can’t think,” replied the
+matron. “They’re _so_ happy, _so_ frolicsome, and _so_ cheerful, that
+they are quite companions for me.”
+
+“Very nice animals, ma’am,” replied Mr. Bumble, approvingly; “so very
+domestic.”
+
+“Oh, yes!” rejoined the matron with enthusiasm; “so fond of their home
+too, that it’s quite a pleasure, I’m sure.”
+
+“Mrs. Corney, ma’am,” said Mr. Bumble, slowly, and marking the time
+with his teaspoon, “I mean to say this, ma’am; that any cat, or kitten,
+that could live with you, ma’am, and _not_ be fond of its home, must be
+a ass, ma’am.”
+
+“Oh, Mr. Bumble!” remonstrated Mrs. Corney.
+
+“It’s of no use disguising facts, ma’am,” said Mr. Bumble, slowly
+flourishing the teaspoon with a kind of amorous dignity which made him
+doubly impressive; “I would drown it myself, with pleasure.”
+
+“Then you’re a cruel man,” said the matron vivaciously, as she held out
+her hand for the beadle’s cup; “and a very hard-hearted man besides.”
+
+“Hard-hearted, ma’am?” said Mr. Bumble. “Hard?” Mr. Bumble resigned his
+cup without another word; squeezed Mrs. Corney’s little finger as she
+took it; and inflicting two open-handed slaps upon his laced waistcoat,
+gave a mighty sigh, and hitched his chair a very little morsel farther
+from the fire.
+
+It was a round table; and as Mrs. Corney and Mr. Bumble had been
+sitting opposite each other, with no great space between them, and
+fronting the fire, it will be seen that Mr. Bumble, in receding from
+the fire, and still keeping at the table, increased the distance
+between himself and Mrs. Corney; which proceeding, some prudent readers
+will doubtless be disposed to admire, and to consider an act of great
+heroism on Mr. Bumble’s part: he being in some sort tempted by time,
+place, and opportunity, to give utterance to certain soft nothings,
+which however well they may become the lips of the light and
+thoughtless, do seem immeasurably beneath the dignity of judges of the
+land, members of parliament, ministers of state, lord mayors, and other
+great public functionaries, but more particularly beneath the
+stateliness and gravity of a beadle: who (as is well known) should be
+the sternest and most inflexible among them all.
+
+Whatever were Mr. Bumble’s intentions, however (and no doubt they were
+of the best): it unfortunately happened, as has been twice before
+remarked, that the table was a round one; consequently Mr. Bumble,
+moving his chair by little and little, soon began to diminish the
+distance between himself and the matron; and, continuing to travel
+round the outer edge of the circle, brought his chair, in time, close
+to that in which the matron was seated.
+
+Indeed, the two chairs touched; and when they did so, Mr. Bumble
+stopped.
+
+Now, if the matron had moved her chair to the right, she would have
+been scorched by the fire; and if to the left, she must have fallen
+into Mr. Bumble’s arms; so (being a discreet matron, and no doubt
+foreseeing these consequences at a glance) she remained where she was,
+and handed Mr. Bumble another cup of tea.
+
+“Hard-hearted, Mrs. Corney?” said Mr. Bumble, stirring his tea, and
+looking up into the matron’s face; “are _you_ hard-hearted, Mrs.
+Corney?”
+
+“Dear me!” exclaimed the matron, “what a very curious question from a
+single man. What can you want to know for, Mr. Bumble?”
+
+The beadle drank his tea to the last drop; finished a piece of toast;
+whisked the crumbs off his knees; wiped his lips; and deliberately
+kissed the matron.
+
+“Mr. Bumble!” cried that discreet lady in a whisper; for the fright was
+so great, that she had quite lost her voice, “Mr. Bumble, I shall
+scream!” Mr. Bumble made no reply; but in a slow and dignified manner,
+put his arm round the matron’s waist.
+
+As the lady had stated her intention of screaming, of course she would
+have screamed at this additional boldness, but that the exertion was
+rendered unnecessary by a hasty knocking at the door: which was no
+sooner heard, than Mr. Bumble darted, with much agility, to the wine
+bottles, and began dusting them with great violence: while the matron
+sharply demanded who was there.
+
+It is worthy of remark, as a curious physical instance of the efficacy
+of a sudden surprise in counteracting the effects of extreme fear, that
+her voice had quite recovered all its official asperity.
+
+“If you please, mistress,” said a withered old female pauper, hideously
+ugly: putting her head in at the door, “Old Sally is a-going fast.”
+
+“Well, what’s that to me?” angrily demanded the matron. “I can’t keep
+her alive, can I?”
+
+“No, no, mistress,” replied the old woman, “nobody can; she’s far
+beyond the reach of help. I’ve seen a many people die; little babes and
+great strong men; and I know when death’s a-coming, well enough. But
+she’s troubled in her mind: and when the fits are not on her,—and
+that’s not often, for she is dying very hard,—she says she has got
+something to tell, which you must hear. She’ll never die quiet till you
+come, mistress.”
+
+At this intelligence, the worthy Mrs. Corney muttered a variety of
+invectives against old women who couldn’t even die without purposely
+annoying their betters; and, muffling herself in a thick shawl which
+she hastily caught up, briefly requested Mr. Bumble to stay till she
+came back, lest anything particular should occur. Bidding the messenger
+walk fast, and not be all night hobbling up the stairs, she followed
+her from the room with a very ill grace, scolding all the way.
+
+Mr. Bumble’s conduct on being left to himself, was rather inexplicable.
+He opened the closet, counted the teaspoons, weighed the sugar-tongs,
+closely inspected a silver milk-pot to ascertain that it was of the
+genuine metal, and, having satisfied his curiosity on these points, put
+on his cocked hat corner-wise, and danced with much gravity four
+distinct times round the table.
+
+Having gone through this very extraordinary performance, he took off
+the cocked hat again, and, spreading himself before the fire with his
+back towards it, seemed to be mentally engaged in taking an exact
+inventory of the furniture.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXIV.
+TREATS ON A VERY POOR SUBJECT. BUT IS A SHORT ONE, AND MAY BE FOUND OF
+IMPORTANCE IN THIS HISTORY
+
+
+It was no unfit messenger of death, who had disturbed the quiet of the
+matron’s room. Her body was bent by age; her limbs trembled with palsy;
+her face, distorted into a mumbling leer, resembled more the grotesque
+shaping of some wild pencil, than the work of Nature’s hand.
+
+Alas! How few of Nature’s faces are left alone to gladden us with their
+beauty! The cares, and sorrows, and hungerings, of the world, change
+them as they change hearts; and it is only when those passions sleep,
+and have lost their hold for ever, that the troubled clouds pass off,
+and leave Heaven’s surface clear. It is a common thing for the
+countenances of the dead, even in that fixed and rigid state, to
+subside into the long-forgotten expression of sleeping infancy, and
+settle into the very look of early life; so calm, so peaceful, do they
+grow again, that those who knew them in their happy childhood, kneel by
+the coffin’s side in awe, and see the Angel even upon earth.
+
+The old crone tottered along the passages, and up the stairs, muttering
+some indistinct answers to the chidings of her companion; being at
+length compelled to pause for breath, she gave the light into her hand,
+and remained behind to follow as she might: while the more nimble
+superior made her way to the room where the sick woman lay.
+
+It was a bare garret-room, with a dim light burning at the farther end.
+There was another old woman watching by the bed; the parish
+apothecary’s apprentice was standing by the fire, making a toothpick
+out of a quill.
+
+“Cold night, Mrs. Corney,” said this young gentleman, as the matron
+entered.
+
+“Very cold, indeed, sir,” replied the mistress, in her most civil
+tones, and dropping a curtsey as she spoke.
+
+“You should get better coals out of your contractors,” said the
+apothecary’s deputy, breaking a lump on the top of the fire with the
+rusty poker; “these are not at all the sort of thing for a cold night.”
+
+“They’re the board’s choosing, sir,” returned the matron. “The least
+they could do, would be to keep us pretty warm: for our places are hard
+enough.”
+
+The conversation was here interrupted by a moan from the sick woman.
+
+“Oh!” said the young man, turning his face towards the bed, as if he
+had previously quite forgotten the patient, “it’s all U.P. there, Mrs.
+Corney.”
+
+“It is, is it, sir?” asked the matron.
+
+“If she lasts a couple of hours, I shall be surprised,” said the
+apothecary’s apprentice, intent upon the toothpick’s point. “It’s a
+break-up of the system altogether. Is she dozing, old lady?”
+
+The attendant stooped over the bed, to ascertain; and nodded in the
+affirmative.
+
+“Then perhaps she’ll go off in that way, if you don’t make a row,” said
+the young man. “Put the light on the floor. She won’t see it there.”
+
+The attendant did as she was told: shaking her head meanwhile, to
+intimate that the woman would not die so easily; having done so, she
+resumed her seat by the side of the other nurse, who had by this time
+returned. The mistress, with an expression of impatience, wrapped
+herself in her shawl, and sat at the foot of the bed.
+
+The apothecary’s apprentice, having completed the manufacture of the
+toothpick, planted himself in front of the fire and made good use of it
+for ten minutes or so: when apparently growing rather dull, he wished
+Mrs. Corney joy of her job, and took himself off on tiptoe.
+
+When they had sat in silence for some time, the two old women rose from
+the bed, and crouching over the fire, held out their withered hands to
+catch the heat. The flame threw a ghastly light on their shrivelled
+faces, and made their ugliness appear terrible, as, in this position,
+they began to converse in a low voice.
+
+“Did she say any more, Anny dear, while I was gone?” inquired the
+messenger.
+
+“Not a word,” replied the other. “She plucked and tore at her arms for
+a little time; but I held her hands, and she soon dropped off. She
+hasn’t much strength in her, so I easily kept her quiet. I ain’t so
+weak for an old woman, although I am on parish allowance; no, no!”
+
+“Did she drink the hot wine the doctor said she was to have?” demanded
+the first.
+
+“I tried to get it down,” rejoined the other. “But her teeth were tight
+set, and she clenched the mug so hard that it was as much as I could do
+to get it back again. So I drank it; and it did me good!”
+
+Looking cautiously round, to ascertain that they were not overheard,
+the two hags cowered nearer to the fire, and chuckled heartily.
+
+“I mind the time,” said the first speaker, “when she would have done
+the same, and made rare fun of it afterwards.”
+
+“Ay, that she would,” rejoined the other; “she had a merry heart. “A
+many, many, beautiful corpses she laid out, as nice and neat as
+waxwork. My old eyes have seen them—ay, and those old hands touched
+them too; for I have helped her, scores of times.”
+
+Stretching forth her trembling fingers as she spoke, the old creature
+shook them exultingly before her face, and fumbling in her pocket,
+brought out an old time-discoloured tin snuff-box, from which she shook
+a few grains into the outstretched palm of her companion, and a few
+more into her own. While they were thus employed, the matron, who had
+been impatiently watching until the dying woman should awaken from her
+stupor, joined them by the fire, and sharply asked how long she was to
+wait?
+
+“Not long, mistress,” replied the second woman, looking up into her
+face. “We have none of us long to wait for Death. Patience, patience!
+He’ll be here soon enough for us all.”
+
+“Hold your tongue, you doting idiot!” said the matron sternly. “You,
+Martha, tell me; has she been in this way before?”
+
+“Often,” answered the first woman.
+
+“But will never be again,” added the second one; “that is, she’ll never
+wake again but once—and mind, mistress, that won’t be for long!”
+
+“Long or short,” said the matron, snappishly, “she won’t find me here
+when she does wake; take care, both of you, how you worry me again for
+nothing. It’s no part of my duty to see all the old women in the house
+die, and I won’t—that’s more. Mind that, you impudent old harridans. If
+you make a fool of me again, I’ll soon cure you, I warrant you!”
+
+She was bouncing away, when a cry from the two women, who had turned
+towards the bed, caused her to look round. The patient had raised
+herself upright, and was stretching her arms towards them.
+
+“Who’s that?” she cried, in a hollow voice.
+
+“Hush, hush!” said one of the women, stooping over her. “Lie down, lie
+down!”
+
+“I’ll never lie down again alive!” said the woman, struggling. “I
+_will_ tell her! Come here! Nearer! Let me whisper in your ear.”
+
+She clutched the matron by the arm, and forcing her into a chair by the
+bedside, was about to speak, when looking round, she caught sight of
+the two old women bending forward in the attitude of eager listeners.
+
+“Turn them away,” said the woman, drowsily; “make haste! make haste!”
+
+The two old crones, chiming in together, began pouring out many piteous
+lamentations that the poor dear was too far gone to know her best
+friends; and were uttering sundry protestations that they would never
+leave her, when the superior pushed them from the room, closed the
+door, and returned to the bedside. On being excluded, the old ladies
+changed their tone, and cried through the keyhole that old Sally was
+drunk; which, indeed, was not unlikely; since, in addition to a
+moderate dose of opium prescribed by the apothecary, she was labouring
+under the effects of a final taste of gin-and-water which had been
+privily administered, in the openness of their hearts, by the worthy
+old ladies themselves.
+
+“Now listen to me,” said the dying woman aloud, as if making a great
+effort to revive one latent spark of energy. “In this very room—in this
+very bed—I once nursed a pretty young creetur’, that was brought into
+the house with her feet cut and bruised with walking, and all soiled
+with dust and blood. She gave birth to a boy, and died. Let me
+think—what was the year again!”
+
+“Never mind the year,” said the impatient auditor; “what about her?”
+
+“Ay,” murmured the sick woman, relapsing into her former drowsy state,
+“what about her?—what about—I know!” she cried, jumping fiercely up:
+her face flushed, and her eyes starting from her head—“I robbed her, so
+I did! She wasn’t cold—I tell you she wasn’t cold, when I stole it!”
+
+“Stole what, for God’s sake?” cried the matron, with a gesture as if
+she would call for help.
+
+“_It_!” replied the woman, laying her hand over the other’s mouth. “The
+only thing she had. She wanted clothes to keep her warm, and food to
+eat; but she had kept it safe, and had it in her bosom. It was gold, I
+tell you! Rich gold, that might have saved her life!”
+
+“Gold!” echoed the matron, bending eagerly over the woman as she fell
+back. “Go on, go on—yes—what of it? Who was the mother? When was it?”
+
+“She charged me to keep it safe,” replied the woman with a groan, “and
+trusted me as the only woman about her. I stole it in my heart when she
+first showed it me hanging round her neck; and the child’s death,
+perhaps, is on me besides! They would have treated him better, if they
+had known it all!”
+
+“Known what?” asked the other. “Speak!”
+
+“The boy grew so like his mother,” said the woman, rambling on, and not
+heeding the question, “that I could never forget it when I saw his
+face. Poor girl! poor girl! She was so young, too! Such a gentle lamb!
+Wait; there’s more to tell. I have not told you all, have I?”
+
+“No, no,” replied the matron, inclining her head to catch the words, as
+they came more faintly from the dying woman. “Be quick, or it may be
+too late!”
+
+“The mother,” said the woman, making a more violent effort than before;
+“the mother, when the pains of death first came upon her, whispered in
+my ear that if her baby was born alive, and thrived, the day might come
+when it would not feel so much disgraced to hear its poor young mother
+named. ‘And oh, kind Heaven!’ she said, folding her thin hands
+together, ‘whether it be boy or girl, raise up some friends for it in
+this troubled world, and take pity upon a lonely desolate child,
+abandoned to its mercy!’”
+
+“The boy’s name?” demanded the matron.
+
+“They _called_ him Oliver,” replied the woman, feebly. “The gold I
+stole was—”
+
+“Yes, yes—what?” cried the other.
+
+She was bending eagerly over the woman to hear her reply; but drew
+back, instinctively, as she once again rose, slowly and stiffly, into a
+sitting posture; then, clutching the coverlid with both hands, muttered
+some indistinct sounds in her throat, and fell lifeless on the bed.
+
+
+“Stone dead!” said one of the old women, hurrying in as soon as the
+door was opened.
+
+“And nothing to tell, after all,” rejoined the matron, walking
+carelessly away.
+
+The two crones, to all appearance, too busily occupied in the
+preparations for their dreadful duties to make any reply, were left
+alone, hovering about the body.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXV.
+WHEREIN THIS HISTORY REVERTS TO MR. FAGIN AND COMPANY
+
+
+While these things were passing in the country workhouse, Mr. Fagin sat
+in the old den—the same from which Oliver had been removed by the
+girl—brooding over a dull, smoky fire. He held a pair of bellows upon
+his knee, with which he had apparently been endeavouring to rouse it
+into more cheerful action; but he had fallen into deep thought; and
+with his arms folded on them, and his chin resting on his thumbs, fixed
+his eyes, abstractedly, on the rusty bars.
+
+At a table behind him sat the Artful Dodger, Master Charles Bates, and
+Mr. Chitling: all intent upon a game of whist; the Artful taking dummy
+against Master Bates and Mr. Chitling. The countenance of the
+first-named gentleman, peculiarly intelligent at all times, acquired
+great additional interest from his close observance of the game, and
+his attentive perusal of Mr. Chitling’s hand; upon which, from time to
+time, as occasion served, he bestowed a variety of earnest glances:
+wisely regulating his own play by the result of his observations upon
+his neighbour’s cards. It being a cold night, the Dodger wore his hat,
+as, indeed, was often his custom within doors. He also sustained a clay
+pipe between his teeth, which he only removed for a brief space when he
+deemed it necessary to apply for refreshment to a quart pot upon the
+table, which stood ready filled with gin-and-water for the
+accommodation of the company.
+
+Master Bates was also attentive to the play; but being of a more
+excitable nature than his accomplished friend, it was observable that
+he more frequently applied himself to the gin-and-water, and moreover
+indulged in many jests and irrelevant remarks, all highly unbecoming a
+scientific rubber. Indeed, the Artful, presuming upon their close
+attachment, more than once took occasion to reason gravely with his
+companion upon these improprieties; all of which remonstrances, Master
+Bates received in extremely good part; merely requesting his friend to
+be “blowed,” or to insert his head in a sack, or replying with some
+other neatly-turned witticism of a similar kind, the happy application
+of which, excited considerable admiration in the mind of Mr. Chitling.
+It was remarkable that the latter gentleman and his partner invariably
+lost; and that the circumstance, so far from angering Master Bates,
+appeared to afford him the highest amusement, inasmuch as he laughed
+most uproariously at the end of every deal, and protested that he had
+never seen such a jolly game in all his born days.
+
+“That’s two doubles and the rub,” said Mr. Chitling, with a very long
+face, as he drew half-a-crown from his waistcoat-pocket. “I never see
+such a feller as you, Jack; you win everything. Even when we’ve good
+cards, Charley and I can’t make nothing of ’em.”
+
+Either the master or the manner of this remark, which was made very
+ruefully, delighted Charley Bates so much, that his consequent shout of
+laughter roused the Jew from his reverie, and induced him to inquire
+what was the matter.
+
+“Matter, Fagin!” cried Charley. “I wish you had watched the play. Tommy
+Chitling hasn’t won a point; and I went partners with him against the
+Artfull and dumb.”
+
+“Ay, ay!” said the Jew, with a grin, which sufficiently demonstrated
+that he was at no loss to understand the reason. “Try ’em again, Tom;
+try ’em again.”
+
+“No more of it for me, thank ’ee, Fagin,” replied Mr. Chitling; “I’ve
+had enough. That ’ere Dodger has such a run of luck that there’s no
+standing again’ him.”
+
+“Ha! ha! my dear,” replied the Jew, “you must get up very early in the
+morning, to win against the Dodger.”
+
+“Morning!” said Charley Bates; “you must put your boots on over-night,
+and have a telescope at each eye, and a opera-glass between your
+shoulders, if you want to come over him.”
+
+Mr. Dawkins received these handsome compliments with much philosophy,
+and offered to cut any gentleman in company, for the first
+picture-card, at a shilling at a time. Nobody accepting the challenge,
+and his pipe being by this time smoked out, he proceeded to amuse
+himself by sketching a ground-plan of Newgate on the table with the
+piece of chalk which had served him in lieu of counters; whistling,
+meantime, with peculiar shrillness.
+
+“How precious dull you are, Tommy!” said the Dodger, stopping short
+when there had been a long silence; and addressing Mr. Chitling. “What
+do you think he’s thinking of, Fagin?”
+
+“How should I know, my dear?” replied the Jew, looking round as he
+plied the bellows. “About his losses, maybe; or the little retirement
+in the country that he’s just left, eh? Ha! ha! Is that it, my dear?”
+
+“Not a bit of it,” replied the Dodger, stopping the subject of
+discourse as Mr. Chitling was about to reply. “What do _you_ say,
+Charley?”
+
+“_I_ should say,” replied Master Bates, with a grin, “that he was
+uncommon sweet upon Betsy. See how he’s a-blushing! Oh, my eye! here’s
+a merry-go-rounder! Tommy Chitling’s in love! Oh, Fagin, Fagin! what a
+spree!”
+
+Thoroughly overpowered with the notion of Mr. Chitling being the victim
+of the tender passion, Master Bates threw himself back in his chair
+with such violence, that he lost his balance, and pitched over upon the
+floor; where (the accident abating nothing of his merriment) he lay at
+full length until his laugh was over, when he resumed his former
+position, and began another laugh.
+
+“Never mind him, my dear,” said the Jew, winking at Mr. Dawkins, and
+giving Master Bates a reproving tap with the nozzle of the bellows.
+“Betsy’s a fine girl. Stick up to her, Tom. Stick up to her.”
+
+“What I mean to say, Fagin,” replied Mr. Chitling, very red in the
+face, “is, that that isn’t anything to anybody here.”
+
+“No more it is,” replied the Jew; “Charley will talk. Don’t mind him,
+my dear; don’t mind him. Betsy’s a fine girl. Do as she bids you, Tom,
+and you will make your fortune.”
+
+“So I _do_ do as she bids me,” replied Mr. Chitling; “I shouldn’t have
+been milled, if it hadn’t been for her advice. But it turned out a good
+job for you; didn’t it, Fagin! And what’s six weeks of it? It must
+come, some time or another, and why not in the winter time when you
+don’t want to go out a-walking so much; eh, Fagin?”
+
+“Ah, to be sure, my dear,” replied the Jew.
+
+“You wouldn’t mind it again, Tom, would you,” asked the Dodger, winking
+upon Charley and the Jew, “if Bet was all right?”
+
+“I mean to say that I shouldn’t,” replied Tom, angrily. “There, now.
+Ah! Who’ll say as much as that, I should like to know; eh, Fagin?”
+
+“Nobody, my dear,” replied the Jew; “not a soul, Tom. I don’t know one
+of ’em that would do it besides you; not one of ’em, my dear.”
+
+“I might have got clear off, if I’d split upon her; mightn’t I, Fagin?”
+angrily pursued the poor half-witted dupe. “A word from me would have
+done it; wouldn’t it, Fagin?”
+
+“To be sure it would, my dear,” replied the Jew.
+
+“But I didn’t blab it; did I, Fagin?” demanded Tom, pouring question
+upon question with great volubility.
+
+“No, no, to be sure,” replied the Jew; “you were too stout-hearted for
+that. A deal too stout, my dear!”
+
+“Perhaps I was,” rejoined Tom, looking round; “and if I was, what’s to
+laugh at, in that; eh, Fagin?”
+
+The Jew, perceiving that Mr. Chitling was considerably roused, hastened
+to assure him that nobody was laughing; and to prove the gravity of the
+company, appealed to Master Bates, the principal offender. But,
+unfortunately, Charley, in opening his mouth to reply that he was never
+more serious in his life, was unable to prevent the escape of such a
+violent roar, that the abused Mr. Chitling, without any preliminary
+ceremonies, rushed across the room and aimed a blow at the offender;
+who, being skilful in evading pursuit, ducked to avoid it, and chose
+his time so well that it lighted on the chest of the merry old
+gentleman, and caused him to stagger to the wall, where he stood
+panting for breath, while Mr. Chitling looked on in intense dismay.
+
+“Hark!” cried the Dodger at this moment, “I heard the tinkler.”
+Catching up the light, he crept softly upstairs.
+
+The bell was rung again, with some impatience, while the party were in
+darkness. After a short pause, the Dodger reappeared, and whispered
+Fagin mysteriously.
+
+“What!” cried the Jew, “alone?”
+
+The Dodger nodded in the affirmative, and, shading the flame of the
+candle with his hand, gave Charley Bates a private intimation, in dumb
+show, that he had better not be funny just then. Having performed this
+friendly office, he fixed his eyes on the Jew’s face, and awaited his
+directions.
+
+The old man bit his yellow fingers, and meditated for some seconds; his
+face working with agitation the while, as if he dreaded something, and
+feared to know the worst. At length he raised his head.
+
+“Where is he?” he asked.
+
+The Dodger pointed to the floor above, and made a gesture, as if to
+leave the room.
+
+“Yes,” said the Jew, answering the mute inquiry; “bring him down. Hush!
+Quiet, Charley! Gently, Tom! Scarce, scarce!”
+
+This brief direction to Charley Bates, and his recent antagonist, was
+softly and immediately obeyed. There was no sound of their whereabout,
+when the Dodger descended the stairs, bearing the light in his hand,
+and followed by a man in a coarse smock-frock; who, after casting a
+hurried glance round the room, pulled off a large wrapper which had
+concealed the lower portion of his face, and disclosed: all haggard,
+unwashed, and unshorn: the features of flash Toby Crackit.
+
+“How are you, Faguey?” said this worthy, nodding to the Jew. “Pop that
+shawl away in my castor, Dodger, so that I may know where to find it
+when I cut; that’s the time of day! You’ll be a fine young cracksman
+afore the old file now.”
+
+With these words he pulled up the smock-frock; and, winding it round
+his middle, drew a chair to the fire, and placed his feet upon the hob.
+
+“See there, Faguey,” he said, pointing disconsolately to his top boots;
+“not a drop of Day and Martin since you know when; not a bubble of
+blacking, by Jove! But don’t look at me in that way, man. All in good
+time. I can’t talk about business till I’ve eat and drank; so produce
+the sustainance, and let’s have a quiet fill-out for the first time
+these three days!”
+
+The Jew motioned to the Dodger to place what eatables there were, upon
+the table; and, seating himself opposite the housebreaker, waited his
+leisure.
+
+To judge from appearances, Toby was by no means in a hurry to open the
+conversation. At first, the Jew contented himself with patiently
+watching his countenance, as if to gain from its expression some clue
+to the intelligence he brought; but in vain.
+
+He looked tired and worn, but there was the same complacent repose upon
+his features that they always wore: and through dirt, and beard, and
+whisker, there still shone, unimpaired, the self-satisfied smirk of
+flash Toby Crackit. Then the Jew, in an agony of impatience, watched
+every morsel he put into his mouth; pacing up and down the room,
+meanwhile, in irrepressible excitement. It was all of no use. Toby
+continued to eat with the utmost outward indifference, until he could
+eat no more; then, ordering the Dodger out, he closed the door, mixed a
+glass of spirits and water, and composed himself for talking.
+
+“First and foremost, Faguey,” said Toby.
+
+“Yes, yes!” interposed the Jew, drawing up his chair.
+
+Mr. Crackit stopped to take a draught of spirits and water, and to
+declare that the gin was excellent; then placing his feet against the
+low mantelpiece, so as to bring his boots to about the level of his
+eye, he quietly resumed.
+
+“First and foremost, Faguey,” said the housebreaker, “how’s Bill?”
+
+“What!” screamed the Jew, starting from his seat.
+
+“Why, you don’t mean to say—” began Toby, turning pale.
+
+“Mean!” cried the Jew, stamping furiously on the ground. “Where are
+they? Sikes and the boy! Where are they? Where have they been? Where
+are they hiding? Why have they not been here?”
+
+“The crack failed,” said Toby faintly.
+
+“I know it,” replied the Jew, tearing a newspaper from his pocket and
+pointing to it. “What more?”
+
+“They fired and hit the boy. We cut over the fields at the back, with
+him between us—straight as the crow flies—through hedge and ditch. They
+gave chase. Damme! the whole country was awake, and the dogs upon us.”
+
+“The boy!”
+
+“Bill had him on his back, and scudded like the wind. We stopped to
+take him between us; his head hung down, and he was cold. They were
+close upon our heels; every man for himself, and each from the gallows!
+We parted company, and left the youngster lying in a ditch. Alive or
+dead, that’s all I know about him.”
+
+The Jew stopped to hear no more; but uttering a loud yell, and twining
+his hands in his hair, rushed from the room, and from the house.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXVI.
+IN WHICH A MYSTERIOUS CHARACTER APPEARS UPON THE SCENE; AND MANY
+THINGS, INSEPARABLE FROM THIS HISTORY, ARE DONE AND PERFORMED
+
+
+The old man had gained the street corner, before he began to recover
+the effect of Toby Crackit’s intelligence. He had relaxed nothing of
+his unusual speed; but was still pressing onward, in the same wild and
+disordered manner, when the sudden dashing past of a carriage: and a
+boisterous cry from the foot passengers, who saw his danger: drove him
+back upon the pavement. Avoiding, as much as was possible, all the main
+streets, and skulking only through the by-ways and alleys, he at length
+emerged on Snow Hill. Here he walked even faster than before; nor did
+he linger until he had again turned into a court; when, as if conscious
+that he was now in his proper element, he fell into his usual shuffling
+pace, and seemed to breathe more freely.
+
+Near to the spot on which Snow Hill and Holborn Hill meet, opens, upon
+the right hand as you come out of the City, a narrow and dismal alley,
+leading to Saffron Hill. In its filthy shops are exposed for sale huge
+bunches of second-hand silk handkerchiefs, of all sizes and patterns;
+for here reside the traders who purchase them from pick-pockets.
+Hundreds of these handkerchiefs hang dangling from pegs outside the
+windows or flaunting from the door-posts; and the shelves, within, are
+piled with them. Confined as the limits of Field Lane are, it has its
+barber, its coffee-shop, its beer-shop, and its fried-fish warehouse.
+It is a commercial colony of itself: the emporium of petty larceny:
+visited at early morning, and setting-in of dusk, by silent merchants,
+who traffic in dark back-parlours, and who go as strangely as they
+come. Here, the clothesman, the shoe-vamper, and the rag-merchant,
+display their goods, as sign-boards to the petty thief; here, stores of
+old iron and bones, and heaps of mildewy fragments of woollen-stuff and
+linen, rust and rot in the grimy cellars.
+
+It was into this place that the Jew turned. He was well known to the
+sallow denizens of the lane; for such of them as were on the look-out
+to buy or sell, nodded, familiarly, as he passed along. He replied to
+their salutations in the same way; but bestowed no closer recognition
+until he reached the further end of the alley; when he stopped, to
+address a salesman of small stature, who had squeezed as much of his
+person into a child’s chair as the chair would hold, and was smoking a
+pipe at his warehouse door.
+
+“Why, the sight of you, Mr. Fagin, would cure the hoptalmy!” said this
+respectable trader, in acknowledgment of the Jew’s inquiry after his
+health.
+
+“The neighbourhood was a little too hot, Lively,” said Fagin, elevating
+his eyebrows, and crossing his hands upon his shoulders.
+
+“Well, I’ve heerd that complaint of it, once or twice before,” replied
+the trader; “but it soon cools down again; don’t you find it so?”
+
+Fagin nodded in the affirmative. Pointing in the direction of Saffron
+Hill, he inquired whether any one was up yonder to-night.
+
+“At the Cripples?” inquired the man.
+
+The Jew nodded.
+
+“Let me see,” pursued the merchant, reflecting.
+
+“Yes, there’s some half-dozen of ’em gone in, that I knows. I don’t
+think your friend’s there.”
+
+“Sikes is not, I suppose?” inquired the Jew, with a disappointed
+countenance.
+
+“_Non istwentus_, as the lawyers say,” replied the little man, shaking
+his head, and looking amazingly sly. “Have you got anything in my line
+to-night?”
+
+“Nothing to-night,” said the Jew, turning away.
+
+“Are you going up to the Cripples, Fagin?” cried the little man,
+calling after him. “Stop! I don’t mind if I have a drop there with
+you!”
+
+But as the Jew, looking back, waved his hand to intimate that he
+preferred being alone; and, moreover, as the little man could not very
+easily disengage himself from the chair; the sign of the Cripples was,
+for a time, bereft of the advantage of Mr. Lively’s presence. By the
+time he had got upon his legs, the Jew had disappeared; so Mr. Lively,
+after ineffectually standing on tiptoe, in the hope of catching sight
+of him, again forced himself into the little chair, and, exchanging a
+shake of the head with a lady in the opposite shop, in which doubt and
+mistrust were plainly mingled, resumed his pipe with a grave demeanour.
+
+The Three Cripples, or rather the Cripples; which was the sign by which
+the establishment was familiarly known to its patrons: was the
+public-house in which Mr. Sikes and his dog have already figured.
+Merely making a sign to a man at the bar, Fagin walked straight
+upstairs, and opening the door of a room, and softly insinuating
+himself into the chamber, looked anxiously about: shading his eyes with
+his hand, as if in search of some particular person.
+
+The room was illuminated by two gas-lights; the glare of which was
+prevented by the barred shutters, and closely-drawn curtains of faded
+red, from being visible outside. The ceiling was blackened, to prevent
+its colour from being injured by the flaring of the lamps; and the
+place was so full of dense tobacco smoke, that at first it was scarcely
+possible to discern anything more. By degrees, however, as some of it
+cleared away through the open door, an assemblage of heads, as confused
+as the noises that greeted the ear, might be made out; and as the eye
+grew more accustomed to the scene, the spectator gradually became aware
+of the presence of a numerous company, male and female, crowded round a
+long table: at the upper end of which, sat a chairman with a hammer of
+office in his hand; while a professional gentleman with a bluish nose,
+and his face tied up for the benefit of a toothache, presided at a
+jingling piano in a remote corner.
+
+As Fagin stepped softly in, the professional gentleman, running over
+the keys by way of prelude, occasioned a general cry of order for a
+song; which having subsided, a young lady proceeded to entertain the
+company with a ballad in four verses, between each of which the
+accompanyist played the melody all through, as loud as he could. When
+this was over, the chairman gave a sentiment, after which, the
+professional gentleman on the chairman’s right and left volunteered a
+duet, and sang it, with great applause.
+
+It was curious to observe some faces which stood out prominently from
+among the group. There was the chairman himself, (the landlord of the
+house,) a coarse, rough, heavy built fellow, who, while the songs were
+proceeding, rolled his eyes hither and thither, and, seeming to give
+himself up to joviality, had an eye for everything that was done, and
+an ear for everything that was said—and sharp ones, too. Near him were
+the singers: receiving, with professional indifference, the compliments
+of the company, and applying themselves, in turn, to a dozen proffered
+glasses of spirits and water, tendered by their more boisterous
+admirers; whose countenances, expressive of almost every vice in almost
+every grade, irresistibly attracted the attention, by their very
+repulsiveness. Cunning, ferocity, and drunkeness in all its stages,
+were there, in their strongest aspect; and women: some with the last
+lingering tinge of their early freshness almost fading as you looked:
+others with every mark and stamp of their sex utterly beaten out, and
+presenting but one loathsome blank of profligacy and crime; some mere
+girls, others but young women, and none past the prime of life; formed
+the darkest and saddest portion of this dreary picture.
+
+Fagin, troubled by no grave emotions, looked eagerly from face to face
+while these proceedings were in progress; but apparently without
+meeting that of which he was in search. Succeeding, at length, in
+catching the eye of the man who occupied the chair, he beckoned to him
+slightly, and left the room, as quietly as he had entered it.
+
+“What can I do for you, Mr. Fagin?” inquired the man, as he followed
+him out to the landing. “Won’t you join us? They’ll be delighted, every
+one of ’em.”
+
+The Jew shook his head impatiently, and said in a whisper, “Is _he_
+here?”
+
+“No,” replied the man.
+
+“And no news of Barney?” inquired Fagin.
+
+“None,” replied the landlord of the Cripples; for it was he. “He won’t
+stir till it’s all safe. Depend on it, they’re on the scent down there;
+and that if he moved, he’d blow upon the thing at once. He’s all right
+enough, Barney is, else I should have heard of him. I’ll pound it, that
+Barney’s managing properly. Let him alone for that.”
+
+“Will _he_ be here to-night?” asked the Jew, laying the same emphasis
+on the pronoun as before.
+
+“Monks, do you mean?” inquired the landlord, hesitating.
+
+“Hush!” said the Jew. “Yes.”
+
+“Certain,” replied the man, drawing a gold watch from his fob; “I
+expected him here before now. If you’ll wait ten minutes, he’ll be—”
+
+“No, no,” said the Jew, hastily; as though, however desirous he might
+be to see the person in question, he was nevertheless relieved by his
+absence. “Tell him I came here to see him; and that he must come to me
+to-night. No, say to-morrow. As he is not here, to-morrow will be time
+enough.”
+
+“Good!” said the man. “Nothing more?”
+
+“Not a word now,” said the Jew, descending the stairs.
+
+“I say,” said the other, looking over the rails, and speaking in a
+hoarse whisper; “what a time this would be for a sell! I’ve got Phil
+Barker here: so drunk, that a boy might take him!”
+
+“Ah! But it’s not Phil Barker’s time,” said the Jew, looking up. “Phil
+has something more to do, before we can afford to part with him; so go
+back to the company, my dear, and tell them to lead merry lives—_while
+they last_. Ha! ha! ha!”
+
+The landlord reciprocated the old man’s laugh; and returned to his
+guests. The Jew was no sooner alone, than his countenance resumed its
+former expression of anxiety and thought. After a brief reflection, he
+called a hack-cabriolet, and bade the man drive towards Bethnal Green.
+He dismissed him within some quarter of a mile of Mr. Sikes’s
+residence, and performed the short remainder of the distance, on foot.
+
+“Now,” muttered the Jew, as he knocked at the door, “if there is any
+deep play here, I shall have it out of you, my girl, cunning as you
+are.”
+
+She was in her room, the woman said. Fagin crept softly upstairs, and
+entered it without any previous ceremony. The girl was alone; lying
+with her head upon the table, and her hair straggling over it.
+
+“She has been drinking,” thought the Jew, cooly, “or perhaps she is
+only miserable.”
+
+The old man turned to close the door, as he made this reflection; the
+noise thus occasioned, roused the girl. She eyed his crafty face
+narrowly, as she inquired to his recital of Toby Crackit’s story. When
+it was concluded, she sank into her former attitude, but spoke not a
+word. She pushed the candle impatiently away; and once or twice as she
+feverishly changed her position, shuffled her feet upon the ground; but
+this was all.
+
+During the silence, the Jew looked restlessly about the room, as if to
+assure himself that there were no appearances of Sikes having covertly
+returned. Apparently satisfied with his inspection, he coughed twice or
+thrice, and made as many efforts to open a conversation; but the girl
+heeded him no more than if he had been made of stone. At length he made
+another attempt; and rubbing his hands together, said, in his most
+conciliatory tone,
+
+“And where should you think Bill was now, my dear?”
+
+The girl moaned out some half intelligible reply, that she could not
+tell; and seemed, from the smothered noise that escaped her, to be
+crying.
+
+“And the boy, too,” said the Jew, straining his eyes to catch a glimpse
+of her face. “Poor leetle child! Left in a ditch, Nance; only think!”
+
+“The child,” said the girl, suddenly looking up, “is better where he
+is, than among us; and if no harm comes to Bill from it, I hope he lies
+dead in the ditch and that his young bones may rot there.”
+
+“What!” cried the Jew, in amazement.
+
+“Ay, I do,” returned the girl, meeting his gaze. “I shall be glad to
+have him away from my eyes, and to know that the worst is over. I can’t
+bear to have him about me. The sight of him turns me against myself,
+and all of you.”
+
+“Pooh!” said the Jew, scornfully. “You’re drunk.”
+
+“Am I?” cried the girl bitterly. “It’s no fault of yours, if I am not!
+You’d never have me anything else, if you had your will, except
+now;—the humour doesn’t suit you, doesn’t it?”
+
+“No!” rejoined the Jew, furiously. “It does not.”
+
+“Change it, then!” responded the girl, with a laugh.
+
+“Change it!” exclaimed the Jew, exasperated beyond all bounds by his
+companion’s unexpected obstinacy, and the vexation of the night, “I
+_will_ change it! Listen to me, you drab. Listen to me, who with six
+words, can strangle Sikes as surely as if I had his bull’s throat
+between my fingers now. If he comes back, and leaves the boy behind
+him; if he gets off free, and dead or alive, fails to restore him to
+me; murder him yourself if you would have him escape Jack Ketch. And do
+it the moment he sets foot in this room, or mind me, it will be too
+late!”
+
+“What is all this?” cried the girl involuntarily.
+
+“What is it?” pursued Fagin, mad with rage. “When the boy’s worth
+hundreds of pounds to me, am I to lose what chance threw me in the way
+of getting safely, through the whims of a drunken gang that I could
+whistle away the lives of! And me bound, too, to a born devil that only
+wants the will, and has the power to, to—”
+
+Panting for breath, the old man stammered for a word; and in that
+instant checked the torrent of his wrath, and changed his whole
+demeanour. A moment before, his clenched hands had grasped the air; his
+eyes had dilated; and his face grown livid with passion; but now, he
+shrunk into a chair, and, cowering together, trembled with the
+apprehension of having himself disclosed some hidden villainy. After a
+short silence, he ventured to look round at his companion. He appeared
+somewhat reassured, on beholding her in the same listless attitude from
+which he had first roused her.
+
+“Nancy, dear!” croaked the Jew, in his usual voice. “Did you mind me,
+dear?”
+
+“Don’t worry me now, Fagin!” replied the girl, raising her head
+languidly. “If Bill has not done it this time, he will another. He has
+done many a good job for you, and will do many more when he can; and
+when he can’t he won’t; so no more about that.”
+
+“Regarding this boy, my dear?” said the Jew, rubbing the palms of his
+hands nervously together.
+
+“The boy must take his chance with the rest,” interrupted Nancy,
+hastily; “and I say again, I hope he is dead, and out of harm’s way,
+and out of yours,—that is, if Bill comes to no harm. And if Toby got
+clear off, Bill’s pretty sure to be safe; for Bill’s worth two of Toby
+any time.”
+
+“And about what I was saying, my dear?” observed the Jew, keeping his
+glistening eye steadily upon her.
+
+“You must say it all over again, if it’s anything you want me to do,”
+rejoined Nancy; “and if it is, you had better wait till to-morrow. You
+put me up for a minute; but now I’m stupid again.”
+
+Fagin put several other questions: all with the same drift of
+ascertaining whether the girl had profited by his unguarded hints; but,
+she answered them so readily, and was withal so utterly unmoved by his
+searching looks, that his original impression of her being more than a
+trifle in liquor, was confirmed. Nancy, indeed, was not exempt from a
+failing which was very common among the Jew’s female pupils; and in
+which, in their tenderer years, they were rather encouraged than
+checked. Her disordered appearance, and a wholesale perfume of Geneva
+which pervaded the apartment, afforded strong confirmatory evidence of
+the justice of the Jew’s supposition; and when, after indulging in the
+temporary display of violence above described, she subsided, first into
+dullness, and afterwards into a compound of feelings: under the
+influence of which she shed tears one minute, and in the next gave
+utterance to various exclamations of “Never say die!” and divers
+calculations as to what might be the amount of the odds so long as a
+lady or gentleman was happy, Mr. Fagin, who had had considerable
+experience of such matters in his time, saw, with great satisfaction,
+that she was very far gone indeed.
+
+Having eased his mind by this discovery; and having accomplished his
+twofold object of imparting to the girl what he had, that night, heard,
+and of ascertaining, with his own eyes, that Sikes had not returned,
+Mr. Fagin again turned his face homeward: leaving his young friend
+asleep, with her head upon the table.
+
+It was within an hour of midnight. The weather being dark, and piercing
+cold, he had no great temptation to loiter. The sharp wind that scoured
+the streets, seemed to have cleared them of passengers, as of dust and
+mud, for few people were abroad, and they were to all appearance
+hastening fast home. It blew from the right quarter for the Jew,
+however, and straight before it he went: trembling, and shivering, as
+every fresh gust drove him rudely on his way.
+
+He had reached the corner of his own street, and was already fumbling
+in his pocket for the door-key, when a dark figure emerged from a
+projecting entrance which lay in deep shadow, and, crossing the road,
+glided up to him unperceived.
+
+“Fagin!” whispered a voice close to his ear.
+
+“Ah!” said the Jew, turning quickly round, “is that—”
+
+“Yes!” interrupted the stranger. “I have been lingering here these two
+hours. Where the devil have you been?”
+
+“On your business, my dear,” replied the Jew, glancing uneasily at his
+companion, and slackening his pace as he spoke. “On your business all
+night.”
+
+“Oh, of course!” said the stranger, with a sneer. “Well; and what’s
+come of it?”
+
+“Nothing good,” said the Jew.
+
+“Nothing bad, I hope?” said the stranger, stopping short, and turning a
+startled look on his companion.
+
+The Jew shook his head, and was about to reply, when the stranger,
+interrupting him, motioned to the house, before which they had by this
+time arrived: remarking, that he had better say what he had got to say,
+under cover: for his blood was chilled with standing about so long, and
+the wind blew through him.
+
+Fagin looked as if he could have willingly excused himself from taking
+home a visitor at that unseasonable hour; and, indeed, muttered
+something about having no fire; but his companion repeating his request
+in a peremptory manner, he unlocked the door, and requested him to
+close it softly, while he got a light.
+
+“It’s as dark as the grave,” said the man, groping forward a few steps.
+“Make haste!”
+
+“Shut the door,” whispered Fagin from the end of the passage. As he
+spoke, it closed with a loud noise.
+
+“That wasn’t my doing,” said the other man, feeling his way. “The wind
+blew it to, or it shut of its own accord: one or the other. Look sharp
+with the light, or I shall knock my brains out against something in
+this confounded hole.”
+
+Fagin stealthily descended the kitchen stairs. After a short absence,
+he returned with a lighted candle, and the intelligence that Toby
+Crackit was asleep in the back room below, and that the boys were in
+the front one. Beckoning the man to follow him, he led the way
+upstairs.
+
+“We can say the few words we’ve got to say in here, my dear,” said the
+Jew, throwing open a door on the first floor; “and as there are holes
+in the shutters, and we never show lights to our neighbours, we’ll set
+the candle on the stairs. There!”
+
+With those words, the Jew, stooping down, placed the candle on an upper
+flight of stairs, exactly opposite to the room door. This done, he led
+the way into the apartment; which was destitute of all movables save a
+broken arm-chair, and an old couch or sofa without covering, which
+stood behind the door. Upon this piece of furniture, the stranger sat
+himself with the air of a weary man; and the Jew, drawing up the
+arm-chair opposite, they sat face to face. It was not quite dark; the
+door was partially open; and the candle outside, threw a feeble
+reflection on the opposite wall.
+
+They conversed for some time in whispers. Though nothing of the
+conversation was distinguishable beyond a few disjointed words here and
+there, a listener might easily have perceived that Fagin appeared to be
+defending himself against some remarks of the stranger; and that the
+latter was in a state of considerable irritation. They might have been
+talking, thus, for a quarter of an hour or more, when Monks—by which
+name the Jew had designated the strange man several times in the course
+of their colloquy—said, raising his voice a little,
+
+“I tell you again, it was badly planned. Why not have kept him here
+among the rest, and made a sneaking, snivelling pickpocket of him at
+once?”
+
+“Only hear him!” exclaimed the Jew, shrugging his shoulders.
+
+“Why, do you mean to say you couldn’t have done it, if you had chosen?”
+demanded Monks, sternly. “Haven’t you done it, with other boys, scores
+of times? If you had had patience for a twelvemonth, at most, couldn’t
+you have got him convicted, and sent safely out of the kingdom; perhaps
+for life?”
+
+“Whose turn would that have served, my dear?” inquired the Jew humbly.
+
+“Mine,” replied Monks.
+
+“But not mine,” said the Jew, submissively. “He might have become of
+use to me. When there are two parties to a bargain, it is only
+reasonable that the interests of both should be consulted; is it, my
+good friend?”
+
+“What then?” demanded Monks.
+
+“I saw it was not easy to train him to the business,” replied the Jew;
+“he was not like other boys in the same circumstances.”
+
+“Curse him, no!” muttered the man, “or he would have been a thief, long
+ago.”
+
+“I had no hold upon him to make him worse,” pursued the Jew, anxiously
+watching the countenance of his companion. “His hand was not in. I had
+nothing to frighten him with; which we always must have in the
+beginning, or we labour in vain. What could I do? Send him out with the
+Dodger and Charley? We had enough of that, at first, my dear; I
+trembled for us all.”
+
+“_That_ was not my doing,” observed Monks.
+
+“No, no, my dear!” renewed the Jew. “And I don’t quarrel with it now;
+because, if it had never happened, you might never have clapped eyes on
+the boy to notice him, and so led to the discovery that it was him you
+were looking for. Well! I got him back for you by means of the girl;
+and then _she_ begins to favour him.”
+
+“Throttle the girl!” said Monks, impatiently.
+
+“Why, we can’t afford to do that just now, my dear,” replied the Jew,
+smiling; “and, besides, that sort of thing is not in our way; or, one
+of these days, I might be glad to have it done. I know what these girls
+are, Monks, well. As soon as the boy begins to harden, she’ll care no
+more for him, than for a block of wood. You want him made a thief. If
+he is alive, I can make him one from this time; and, if—if—” said the
+Jew, drawing nearer to the other,—“it’s not likely, mind,—but if the
+worst comes to the worst, and he is dead—”
+
+“It’s no fault of mine if he is!” interposed the other man, with a look
+of terror, and clasping the Jew’s arm with trembling hands. “Mind that.
+Fagin! I had no hand in it. Anything but his death, I told you from the
+first. I won’t shed blood; it’s always found out, and haunts a man
+besides. If they shot him dead, I was not the cause; do you hear me?
+Fire this infernal den! What’s that?”
+
+“What!” cried the Jew, grasping the coward round the body, with both
+arms, as he sprung to his feet. “Where?”
+
+“Yonder! replied the man, glaring at the opposite wall. “The shadow! I
+saw the shadow of a woman, in a cloak and bonnet, pass along the
+wainscot like a breath!”
+
+The Jew released his hold, and they rushed tumultuously from the room.
+The candle, wasted by the draught, was standing where it had been
+placed. It showed them only the empty staircase, and their own white
+faces. They listened intently: a profound silence reigned throughout
+the house.
+
+“It’s your fancy,” said the Jew, taking up the light and turning to his
+companion.
+
+“I’ll swear I saw it!” replied Monks, trembling. “It was bending
+forward when I saw it first; and when I spoke, it darted away.”
+
+The Jew glanced contemptuously at the pale face of his associate, and,
+telling him he could follow, if he pleased, ascended the stairs. They
+looked into all the rooms; they were cold, bare, and empty. They
+descended into the passage, and thence into the cellars below. The
+green damp hung upon the low walls; the tracks of the snail and slug
+glistened in the light of the candle; but all was still as death.
+
+“What do you think now?” said the Jew, when they had regained the
+passage. “Besides ourselves, there’s not a creature in the house except
+Toby and the boys; and they’re safe enough. See here!”
+
+As a proof of the fact, the Jew drew forth two keys from his pocket;
+and explained, that when he first went downstairs, he had locked them
+in, to prevent any intrusion on the conference.
+
+This accumulated testimony effectually staggered Mr. Monks. His
+protestations had gradually become less and less vehement as they
+proceeded in their search without making any discovery; and, now, he
+gave vent to several very grim laughs, and confessed it could only have
+been his excited imagination. He declined any renewal of the
+conversation, however, for that night: suddenly remembering that it was
+past one o’clock. And so the amiable couple parted.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXVII.
+ATONES FOR THE UNPOLITENESS OF A FORMER CHAPTER; WHICH DESERTED A LADY,
+MOST UNCEREMONIOUSLY
+
+
+As it would be, by no means, seemly in a humble author to keep so
+mighty a personage as a beadle waiting, with his back to the fire, and
+the skirts of his coat gathered up under his arms, until such time as
+it might suit his pleasure to relieve him; and as it would still less
+become his station, or his gallantry to involve in the same neglect a
+lady on whom that beadle had looked with an eye of tenderness and
+affection, and in whose ear he had whispered sweet words, which, coming
+from such a quarter, might well thrill the bosom of maid or matron of
+whatsoever degree; the historian whose pen traces these words—trusting
+that he knows his place, and that he entertains a becoming reverence
+for those upon earth to whom high and important authority is
+delegated—hastens to pay them that respect which their position
+demands, and to treat them with all that duteous ceremony which their
+exalted rank, and (by consequence) great virtues, imperatively claim at
+his hands. Towards this end, indeed, he had purposed to introduce, in
+this place, a dissertation touching the divine right of beadles, and
+elucidative of the position, that a beadle can do no wrong: which could
+not fail to have been both pleasurable and profitable to the
+right-minded reader but which he is unfortunately compelled, by want of
+time and space, to postpone to some more convenient and fitting
+opportunity; on the arrival of which, he will be prepared to show, that
+a beadle properly constituted: that is to say, a parochial beadle,
+attached to a parochial workhouse, and attending in his official
+capacity the parochial church: is, in right and virtue of his office,
+possessed of all the excellences and best qualities of humanity; and
+that to none of those excellences, can mere companies’ beadles, or
+court-of-law beadles, or even chapel-of-ease beadles (save the last,
+and they in a very lowly and inferior degree), lay the remotest
+sustainable claim.
+
+Mr. Bumble had re-counted the teaspoons, re-weighed the sugar-tongs,
+made a closer inspection of the milk-pot, and ascertained to a nicety
+the exact condition of the furniture, down to the very horse-hair seats
+of the chairs; and had repeated each process full half a dozen times;
+before he began to think that it was time for Mrs. Corney to return.
+Thinking begets thinking; as there were no sounds of Mrs. Corney’s
+approach, it occured to Mr. Bumble that it would be an innocent and
+virtuous way of spending the time, if he were further to allay his
+curiousity by a cursory glance at the interior of Mrs. Corney’s chest
+of drawers.
+
+Having listened at the keyhole, to assure himself that nobody was
+approaching the chamber, Mr. Bumble, beginning at the bottom, proceeded
+to make himself acquainted with the contents of the three long drawers:
+which, being filled with various garments of good fashion and texture,
+carefully preserved between two layers of old newspapers, speckled with
+dried lavender: seemed to yield him exceeding satisfaction. Arriving,
+in course of time, at the right-hand corner drawer (in which was the
+key), and beholding therein a small padlocked box, which, being shaken,
+gave forth a pleasant sound, as of the chinking of coin, Mr. Bumble
+returned with a stately walk to the fireplace; and, resuming his old
+attitude, said, with a grave and determined air, “I’ll do it!” He
+followed up this remarkable declaration, by shaking his head in a
+waggish manner for ten minutes, as though he were remonstrating with
+himself for being such a pleasant dog; and then, he took a view of his
+legs in profile, with much seeming pleasure and interest.
+
+He was still placidly engaged in this latter survey, when Mrs. Corney,
+hurrying into the room, threw herself, in a breathless state, on a
+chair by the fireside, and covering her eyes with one hand, placed the
+other over her heart, and gasped for breath.
+
+“Mrs. Corney,” said Mr. Bumble, stooping over the matron, “what is
+this, ma’am? Has anything happened, ma’am? Pray answer me: I’m on—on—”
+Mr. Bumble, in his alarm, could not immediately think of the word
+“tenterhooks,” so he said “broken bottles.”
+
+“Oh, Mr. Bumble!” cried the lady, “I have been so dreadfully put out!”
+
+“Put out, ma’am!” exclaimed Mr. Bumble; “who has dared to—? I know!”
+said Mr. Bumble, checking himself, with native majesty, “this is them
+wicious paupers!”
+
+“It’s dreadful to think of!” said the lady, shuddering.
+
+“Then _don’t_ think of it, ma’am,” rejoined Mr. Bumble.
+
+“I can’t help it,” whimpered the lady.
+
+“Then take something, ma’am,” said Mr. Bumble soothingly. “A little of
+the wine?”
+
+“Not for the world!” replied Mrs. Corney. “I couldn’t,—oh! The top
+shelf in the right-hand corner—oh!” Uttering these words, the good lady
+pointed, distractedly, to the cupboard, and underwent a convulsion from
+internal spasms. Mr. Bumble rushed to the closet; and, snatching a pint
+green-glass bottle from the shelf thus incoherently indicated, filled a
+tea-cup with its contents, and held it to the lady’s lips.
+
+“I’m better now,” said Mrs. Corney, falling back, after drinking half
+of it.
+
+Mr. Bumble raised his eyes piously to the ceiling in thankfulness; and,
+bringing them down again to the brim of the cup, lifted it to his nose.
+
+“Peppermint,” exclaimed Mrs. Corney, in a faint voice, smiling gently
+on the beadle as she spoke. “Try it! There’s a little—a little
+something else in it.”
+
+Mr. Bumble tasted the medicine with a doubtful look; smacked his lips;
+took another taste; and put the cup down empty.
+
+“It’s very comforting,” said Mrs. Corney.
+
+“Very much so indeed, ma’am,” said the beadle. As he spoke, he drew a
+chair beside the matron, and tenderly inquired what had happened to
+distress her.
+
+“Nothing,” replied Mrs. Corney. “I am a foolish, excitable, weak
+creetur.”
+
+“Not weak, ma’am,” retorted Mr. Bumble, drawing his chair a little
+closer. “Are you a weak creetur, Mrs. Corney?”
+
+“We are all weak creeturs,” said Mrs. Corney, laying down a general
+principle.
+
+“So we are,” said the beadle.
+
+Nothing was said on either side, for a minute or two afterwards. By the
+expiration of that time, Mr. Bumble had illustrated the position by
+removing his left arm from the back of Mrs. Corney’s chair, where it
+had previously rested, to Mrs. Corney’s apron-string, round which it
+gradually became entwined.
+
+“We are all weak creeturs,” said Mr. Bumble.
+
+Mrs. Corney sighed.
+
+“Don’t sigh, Mrs. Corney,” said Mr. Bumble.
+
+“I can’t help it,” said Mrs. Corney. And she sighed again.
+
+“This is a very comfortable room, ma’am,” said Mr. Bumble looking
+round. “Another room, and this, ma’am, would be a complete thing.”
+
+“It would be too much for one,” murmured the lady.
+
+“But not for two, ma’am,” rejoined Mr. Bumble, in soft accents. “Eh,
+Mrs. Corney?”
+
+Mrs. Corney drooped her head, when the beadle said this; the beadle
+drooped his, to get a view of Mrs. Corney’s face. Mrs. Corney, with
+great propriety, turned her head away, and released her hand to get at
+her pocket-handkerchief; but insensibly replaced it in that of Mr.
+Bumble.
+
+“The board allows you coals, don’t they, Mrs. Corney?” inquired the
+beadle, affectionately pressing her hand.
+
+“And candles,” replied Mrs. Corney, slightly returning the pressure.
+
+“Coals, candles, and house-rent free,” said Mr. Bumble. “Oh, Mrs.
+Corney, what an Angel you are!”
+
+The lady was not proof against this burst of feeling. She sank into Mr.
+Bumble’s arms; and that gentleman in his agitation, imprinted a
+passionate kiss upon her chaste nose.
+
+“Such porochial perfection!” exclaimed Mr. Bumble, rapturously. “You
+know that Mr. Slout is worse to-night, my fascinator?”
+
+“Yes,” replied Mrs. Corney, bashfully.
+
+“He can’t live a week, the doctor says,” pursued Mr. Bumble. “He is the
+master of this establishment; his death will cause a wacancy; that
+wacancy must be filled up. Oh, Mrs. Corney, what a prospect this opens!
+What a opportunity for a jining of hearts and housekeepings!”
+
+Mrs. Corney sobbed.
+
+“The little word?” said Mr. Bumble, bending over the bashful beauty.
+“The one little, little, little word, my blessed Corney?”
+
+“Ye—ye—yes!” sighed out the matron.
+
+“One more,” pursued the beadle; “compose your darling feelings for only
+one more. When is it to come off?”
+
+Mrs. Corney twice essayed to speak: and twice failed. At length
+summoning up courage, she threw her arms around Mr. Bumble’s neck, and
+said, it might be as soon as ever he pleased, and that he was “a
+irresistible duck.”
+
+Matters being thus amicably and satisfactorily arranged, the contract
+was solemnly ratified in another teacupful of the peppermint mixture;
+which was rendered the more necessary, by the flutter and agitation of
+the lady’s spirits. While it was being disposed of, she acquainted Mr.
+Bumble with the old woman’s decease.
+
+“Very good,” said that gentleman, sipping his peppermint; “I’ll call at
+Sowerberry’s as I go home, and tell him to send to-morrow morning. Was
+it that as frightened you, love?”
+
+“It wasn’t anything particular, dear,” said the lady evasively.
+
+“It must have been something, love,” urged Mr. Bumble. “Won’t you tell
+your own B.?”
+
+“Not now,” rejoined the lady; “one of these days. After we’re married,
+dear.”
+
+“After we’re married!” exclaimed Mr. Bumble. “It wasn’t any impudence
+from any of them male paupers as—”
+
+“No, no, love!” interposed the lady, hastily.
+
+“If I thought it was,” continued Mr. Bumble; “if I thought as any one
+of ’em had dared to lift his wulgar eyes to that lovely countenance—”
+
+“They wouldn’t have dared to do it, love,” responded the lady.
+
+“They had better not!” said Mr. Bumble, clenching his fist. “Let me see
+any man, porochial or extra-porochial, as would presume to do it; and I
+can tell him that he wouldn’t do it a second time!”
+
+Unembellished by any violence of gesticulation, this might have seemed
+no very high compliment to the lady’s charms; but, as Mr. Bumble
+accompanied the threat with many warlike gestures, she was much touched
+with this proof of his devotion, and protested, with great admiration,
+that he was indeed a dove.
+
+The dove then turned up his coat-collar, and put on his cocked hat;
+and, having exchanged a long and affectionate embrace with his future
+partner, once again braved the cold wind of the night: merely pausing,
+for a few minutes, in the male paupers’ ward, to abuse them a little,
+with the view of satisfying himself that he could fill the office of
+workhouse-master with needful acerbity. Assured of his qualifications,
+Mr. Bumble left the building with a light heart, and bright visions of
+his future promotion: which served to occupy his mind until he reached
+the shop of the undertaker.
+
+Now, Mr. and Mrs. Sowerberry having gone out to tea and supper: and
+Noah Claypole not being at any time disposed to take upon himself a
+greater amount of physical exertion than is necessary to a convenient
+performance of the two functions of eating and drinking, the shop was
+not closed, although it was past the usual hour of shutting-up. Mr.
+Bumble tapped with his cane on the counter several times; but,
+attracting no attention, and beholding a light shining through the
+glass-window of the little parlour at the back of the shop, he made
+bold to peep in and see what was going forward; and when he saw what
+was going forward, he was not a little surprised.
+
+The cloth was laid for supper; the table was covered with bread and
+butter, plates and glasses; a porter-pot and a wine-bottle. At the
+upper end of the table, Mr. Noah Claypole lolled negligently in an
+easy-chair, with his legs thrown over one of the arms: an open
+clasp-knife in one hand, and a mass of buttered bread in the other.
+Close beside him stood Charlotte, opening oysters from a barrel: which
+Mr. Claypole condescended to swallow, with remarkable avidity. A more
+than ordinary redness in the region of the young gentleman’s nose, and
+a kind of fixed wink in his right eye, denoted that he was in a slight
+degree intoxicated; these symptoms were confirmed by the intense relish
+with which he took his oysters, for which nothing but a strong
+appreciation of their cooling properties, in cases of internal fever,
+could have sufficiently accounted.
+
+“Here’s a delicious fat one, Noah, dear!” said Charlotte; “try him, do;
+only this one.”
+
+“What a delicious thing is a oyster!” remarked Mr. Claypole, after he
+had swallowed it. “What a pity it is, a number of ’em should ever make
+you feel uncomfortable; isn’t it, Charlotte?”
+
+“It’s quite a cruelty,” said Charlotte.
+
+“So it is,” acquiesced Mr. Claypole. “An’t yer fond of oysters?”
+
+“Not overmuch,” replied Charlotte. “I like to see you eat ’em, Noah
+dear, better than eating ’em myself.”
+
+“Lor!” said Noah, reflectively; “how queer!”
+
+“Have another,” said Charlotte. “Here’s one with such a beautiful,
+delicate beard!”
+
+“I can’t manage any more,” said Noah. “I’m very sorry. Come here,
+Charlotte, and I’ll kiss yer.”
+
+“What!” said Mr. Bumble, bursting into the room. “Say that again, sir.”
+
+Charlotte uttered a scream, and hid her face in her apron. Mr.
+Claypole, without making any further change in his position than
+suffering his legs to reach the ground, gazed at the beadle in drunken
+terror.
+
+“Say it again, you wile, owdacious fellow!” said Mr. Bumble. “How dare
+you mention such a thing, sir? And how dare you encourage him, you
+insolent minx? Kiss her!” exclaimed Mr. Bumble, in strong indignation.
+“Faugh!”
+
+“I didn’t mean to do it!” said Noah, blubbering. “She’s always
+a-kissing of me, whether I like it, or not.”
+
+“Oh, Noah,” cried Charlotte, reproachfully.
+
+“Yer are; yer know yer are!” retorted Noah. “She’s always a-doin’ of
+it, Mr. Bumble, sir; she chucks me under the chin, please, sir; and
+makes all manner of love!”
+
+“Silence!” cried Mr. Bumble, sternly. “Take yourself downstairs, ma’am.
+Noah, you shut up the shop; say another word till your master comes
+home, at your peril; and, when he does come home, tell him that Mr.
+Bumble said he was to send a old woman’s shell after breakfast
+to-morrow morning. Do you hear sir? Kissing!” cried Mr. Bumble, holding
+up his hands. “The sin and wickedness of the lower orders in this
+porochial district is frightful! If Parliament don’t take their
+abominable courses under consideration, this country’s ruined, and the
+character of the peasantry gone for ever!” With these words, the beadle
+strode, with a lofty and gloomy air, from the undertaker’s premises.
+
+And now that we have accompanied him so far on his road home, and have
+made all necessary preparations for the old woman’s funeral, let us set
+on foot a few inquires after young Oliver Twist, and ascertain whether
+he be still lying in the ditch where Toby Crackit left him.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXVIII.
+LOOKS AFTER OLIVER, AND PROCEEDS WITH HIS ADVENTURES
+
+
+“Wolves tear your throats!” muttered Sikes, grinding his teeth. “I wish
+I was among some of you; you’d howl the hoarser for it.”
+
+As Sikes growled forth this imprecation, with the most desperate
+ferocity that his desperate nature was capable of, he rested the body
+of the wounded boy across his bended knee; and turned his head, for an
+instant, to look back at his pursuers.
+
+There was little to be made out, in the mist and darkness; but the loud
+shouting of men vibrated through the air, and the barking of the
+neighbouring dogs, roused by the sound of the alarm bell, resounded in
+every direction.
+
+“Stop, you white-livered hound!” cried the robber, shouting after Toby
+Crackit, who, making the best use of his long legs, was already ahead.
+“Stop!”
+
+The repetition of the word, brought Toby to a dead stand-still. For he
+was not quite satisfied that he was beyond the range of pistol-shot;
+and Sikes was in no mood to be played with.
+
+“Bear a hand with the boy,” cried Sikes, beckoning furiously to his
+confederate. “Come back!”
+
+Toby made a show of returning; but ventured, in a low voice, broken for
+want of breath, to intimate considerable reluctance as he came slowly
+along.
+
+“Quicker!” cried Sikes, laying the boy in a dry ditch at his feet, and
+drawing a pistol from his pocket. “Don’t play booty with me.”
+
+At this moment the noise grew louder. Sikes, again looking round, could
+discern that the men who had given chase were already climbing the gate
+of the field in which he stood; and that a couple of dogs were some
+paces in advance of them.
+
+“It’s all up, Bill!” cried Toby; “drop the kid, and show ’em your
+heels.” With this parting advice, Mr. Crackit, preferring the chance of
+being shot by his friend, to the certainty of being taken by his
+enemies, fairly turned tail, and darted off at full speed. Sikes
+clenched his teeth; took one look around; threw over the prostrate form
+of Oliver, the cape in which he had been hurriedly muffled; ran along
+the front of the hedge, as if to distract the attention of those
+behind, from the spot where the boy lay; paused, for a second, before
+another hedge which met it at right angles; and whirling his pistol
+high into the air, cleared it at a bound, and was gone.
+
+“Ho, ho, there!” cried a tremulous voice in the rear. “Pincher!
+Neptune! Come here, come here!”
+
+The dogs, who, in common with their masters, seemed to have no
+particular relish for the sport in which they were engaged, readily
+answered to the command. Three men, who had by this time advanced some
+distance into the field, stopped to take counsel together.
+
+“My advice, or, leastways, I should say, my _orders_, is,” said the
+fattest man of the party, “that we ’mediately go home again.”
+
+“I am agreeable to anything which is agreeable to Mr. Giles,” said a
+shorter man; who was by no means of a slim figure, and who was very
+pale in the face, and very polite: as frightened men frequently are.
+
+“I shouldn’t wish to appear ill-mannered, gentlemen,” said the third,
+who had called the dogs back, “Mr. Giles ought to know.”
+
+“Certainly,” replied the shorter man; “and whatever Mr. Giles says, it
+isn’t our place to contradict him. No, no, I know my sitiwation! Thank
+my stars, I know my sitiwation.” To tell the truth, the little man
+_did_ seem to know his situation, and to know perfectly well that it
+was by no means a desirable one; for his teeth chattered in his head as
+he spoke.
+
+“You are afraid, Brittles,” said Mr. Giles.
+
+“I an’t,” said Brittles.
+
+“You are,” said Giles.
+
+“You’re a falsehood, Mr. Giles,” said Brittles.
+
+“You’re a lie, Brittles,” said Mr. Giles.
+
+Now, these four retorts arose from Mr. Giles’s taunt; and Mr. Giles’s
+taunt had arisen from his indignation at having the responsibility of
+going home again, imposed upon himself under cover of a compliment. The
+third man brought the dispute to a close, most philosophically.
+
+“I’ll tell you what it is, gentlemen,” said he, “we’re all afraid.”
+
+“Speak for yourself, sir,” said Mr. Giles, who was the palest of the
+party.
+
+“So I do,” replied the man. “It’s natural and proper to be afraid,
+under such circumstances. I am.”
+
+“So am I,” said Brittles; “only there’s no call to tell a man he is, so
+bounceably.”
+
+These frank admissions softened Mr. Giles, who at once owned that _he_
+was afraid; upon which, they all three faced about, and ran back again
+with the completest unanimity, until Mr. Giles (who had the shortest
+wind of the party, as was encumbered with a pitchfork) most handsomely
+insisted on stopping, to make an apology for his hastiness of speech.
+
+“But it’s wonderful,” said Mr. Giles, when he had explained, “what a
+man will do, when his blood is up. I should have committed murder—I
+know I should—if we’d caught one of them rascals.”
+
+As the other two were impressed with a similar presentiment; and as
+their blood, like his, had all gone down again; some speculation ensued
+upon the cause of this sudden change in their temperament.
+
+“I know what it was,” said Mr. Giles; “it was the gate.”
+
+“I shouldn’t wonder if it was,” exclaimed Brittles, catching at the
+idea.
+
+“You may depend upon it,” said Giles, “that that gate stopped the flow
+of the excitement. I felt all mine suddenly going away, as I was
+climbing over it.”
+
+By a remarkable coincidence, the other two had been visited with the
+same unpleasant sensation at that precise moment. It was quite obvious,
+therefore, that it was the gate; especially as there was no doubt
+regarding the time at which the change had taken place, because all
+three remembered that they had come in sight of the robbers at the
+instant of its occurance.
+
+This dialogue was held between the two men who had surprised the
+burglars, and a travelling tinker who had been sleeping in an outhouse,
+and who had been roused, together with his two mongrel curs, to join in
+the pursuit. Mr. Giles acted in the double capacity of butler and
+steward to the old lady of the mansion; Brittles was a lad of all-work:
+who, having entered her service a mere child, was treated as a
+promising young boy still, though he was something past thirty.
+
+Encouraging each other with such converse as this; but, keeping very
+close together, notwithstanding, and looking apprehensively round,
+whenever a fresh gust rattled through the boughs; the three men hurried
+back to a tree, behind which they had left their lantern, lest its
+light should inform the thieves in what direction to fire. Catching up
+the light, they made the best of their way home, at a good round trot;
+and long after their dusky forms had ceased to be discernible, the
+light might have been seen twinkling and dancing in the distance, like
+some exhalation of the damp and gloomy atmosphere through which it was
+swiftly borne.
+
+The air grew colder, as day came slowly on; and the mist rolled along
+the ground like a dense cloud of smoke. The grass was wet; the
+pathways, and low places, were all mire and water; the damp breath of
+an unwholesome wind went languidly by, with a hollow moaning. Still,
+Oliver lay motionless and insensible on the spot where Sikes had left
+him.
+
+Morning drew on apace. The air become more sharp and piercing, as its
+first dull hue—the death of night, rather than the birth of
+day—glimmered faintly in the sky. The objects which had looked dim and
+terrible in the darkness, grew more and more defined, and gradually
+resolved into their familiar shapes. The rain came down, thick and
+fast, and pattered noisily among the leafless bushes. But, Oliver felt
+it not, as it beat against him; for he still lay stretched, helpless
+and unconscious, on his bed of clay.
+
+At length, a low cry of pain broke the stillness that prevailed; and
+uttering it, the boy awoke. His left arm, rudely bandaged in a shawl,
+hung heavy and useless at his side; the bandage was saturated with
+blood. He was so weak, that he could scarcely raise himself into a
+sitting posture; when he had done so, he looked feebly round for help,
+and groaned with pain. Trembling in every joint, from cold and
+exhaustion, he made an effort to stand upright; but, shuddering from
+head to foot, fell prostrate on the ground.
+
+After a short return of the stupor in which he had been so long
+plunged, Oliver: urged by a creeping sickness at his heart, which
+seemed to warn him that if he lay there, he must surely die: got upon
+his feet, and essayed to walk. His head was dizzy, and he staggered to
+and fro like a drunken man. But he kept up, nevertheless, and, with his
+head drooping languidly on his breast, went stumbling onward, he knew
+not whither.
+
+And now, hosts of bewildering and confused ideas came crowding on his
+mind. He seemed to be still walking between Sikes and Crackit, who were
+angrily disputing—for the very words they said, sounded in his ears;
+and when he caught his own attention, as it were, by making some
+violent effort to save himself from falling, he found that he was
+talking to them. Then, he was alone with Sikes, plodding on as on the
+previous day; and as shadowy people passed them, he felt the robber’s
+grasp upon his wrist. Suddenly, he started back at the report of
+firearms; there rose into the air, loud cries and shouts; lights
+gleamed before his eyes; all was noise and tumult, as some unseen hand
+bore him hurriedly away. Through all these rapid visions, there ran an
+undefined, uneasy consciousness of pain, which wearied and tormented
+him incessantly.
+
+Thus he staggered on, creeping, almost mechanically, between the bars
+of gates, or through hedge-gaps as they came in his way, until he
+reached a road. Here the rain began to fall so heavily, that it roused
+him.
+
+He looked about, and saw that at no great distance there was a house,
+which perhaps he could reach. Pitying his condition, they might have
+compassion on him; and if they did not, it would be better, he thought,
+to die near human beings, than in the lonely open fields. He summoned
+up all his strength for one last trial, and bent his faltering steps
+towards it.
+
+As he drew nearer to this house, a feeling come over him that he had
+seen it before. He remembered nothing of its details; but the shape and
+aspect of the building seemed familiar to him.
+
+That garden wall! On the grass inside, he had fallen on his knees last
+night, and prayed the two men’s mercy. It was the very house they had
+attempted to rob.
+
+Oliver felt such fear come over him when he recognised the place, that,
+for the instant, he forgot the agony of his wound, and thought only of
+flight. Flight! He could scarcely stand: and if he were in full
+possession of all the best powers of his slight and youthful frame,
+whither could he fly? He pushed against the garden-gate; it was
+unlocked, and swung open on its hinges. He tottered across the lawn;
+climbed the steps; knocked faintly at the door; and, his whole strength
+failing him, sunk down against one of the pillars of the little
+portico.
+
+It happened that about this time, Mr. Giles, Brittles, and the tinker,
+were recruiting themselves, after the fatigues and terrors of the
+night, with tea and sundries, in the kitchen. Not that it was Mr.
+Giles’s habit to admit to too great familiarity the humbler servants:
+towards whom it was rather his wont to deport himself with a lofty
+affability, which, while it gratified, could not fail to remind them of
+his superior position in society. But, death, fires, and burglary, make
+all men equals; so Mr. Giles sat with his legs stretched out before the
+kitchen fender, leaning his left arm on the table, while, with his
+right, he illustrated a circumstantial and minute account of the
+robbery, to which his bearers (but especially the cook and housemaid,
+who were of the party) listened with breathless interest.
+
+“It was about half-past two,” said Mr. Giles, “or I wouldn’t swear that
+it mightn’t have been a little nearer three, when I woke up, and,
+turning round in my bed, as it might be so, (here Mr. Giles turned
+round in his chair, and pulled the corner of the table-cloth over him
+to imitate bed-clothes,) I fancied I heerd a noise.”
+
+At this point of the narrative the cook turned pale, and asked the
+housemaid to shut the door: who asked Brittles, who asked the tinker,
+who pretended not to hear.
+
+“—Heerd a noise,” continued Mr. Giles. “I says, at first, ‘This is
+illusion’; and was composing myself off to sleep, when I heerd the
+noise again, distinct.”
+
+“What sort of a noise?” asked the cook.
+
+“A kind of a busting noise,” replied Mr. Giles, looking round him.
+
+“More like the noise of powdering a iron bar on a nutmeg-grater,”
+suggested Brittles.
+
+“It was, when _you_ heerd it, sir,” rejoined Mr. Giles; “but, at this
+time, it had a busting sound. I turned down the clothes”; continued
+Giles, rolling back the table-cloth, “sat up in bed; and listened.”
+
+The cook and housemaid simultaneously ejaculated “Lor!” and drew their
+chairs closer together.
+
+“I heerd it now, quite apparent,” resumed Mr. Giles. “‘Somebody,’ I
+says, ‘is forcing of a door, or window; what’s to be done? I’ll call up
+that poor lad, Brittles, and save him from being murdered in his bed;
+or his throat,’ I says, ‘may be cut from his right ear to his left,
+without his ever knowing it.’”
+
+Here, all eyes were turned upon Brittles, who fixed his upon the
+speaker, and stared at him, with his mouth wide open, and his face
+expressive of the most unmitigated horror.
+
+“I tossed off the clothes,” said Giles, throwing away the table-cloth,
+and looking very hard at the cook and housemaid, “got softly out of
+bed; drew on a pair of—”
+
+“Ladies present, Mr. Giles,” murmured the tinker.
+
+“—Of _shoes_, sir,” said Giles, turning upon him, and laying great
+emphasis on the word; “seized the loaded pistol that always goes
+upstairs with the plate-basket; and walked on tiptoes to his room.
+‘Brittles,’ I says, when I had woke him, ‘don’t be frightened!’”
+
+“So you did,” observed Brittles, in a low voice.
+
+“‘We’re dead men, I think, Brittles,’ I says,” continued Giles; “‘but
+don’t be frightened.’”
+
+“_Was_ he frightened?” asked the cook.
+
+“Not a bit of it,” replied Mr. Giles. “He was as firm—ah! pretty near
+as firm as I was.”
+
+“I should have died at once, I’m sure, if it had been me,” observed the
+housemaid.
+
+“You’re a woman,” retorted Brittles, plucking up a little.
+
+“Brittles is right,” said Mr. Giles, nodding his head, approvingly;
+“from a woman, nothing else was to be expected. We, being men, took a
+dark lantern that was standing on Brittle’s hob, and groped our way
+downstairs in the pitch dark,—as it might be so.”
+
+Mr. Giles had risen from his seat, and taken two steps with his eyes
+shut, to accompany his description with appropriate action, when he
+started violently, in common with the rest of the company, and hurried
+back to his chair. The cook and housemaid screamed.
+
+“It was a knock,” said Mr. Giles, assuming perfect serenity. “Open the
+door, somebody.”
+
+Nobody moved.
+
+“It seems a strange sort of a thing, a knock coming at such a time in
+the morning,” said Mr. Giles, surveying the pale faces which surrounded
+him, and looking very blank himself; “but the door must be opened. Do
+you hear, somebody?”
+
+Mr. Giles, as he spoke, looked at Brittles; but that young man, being
+naturally modest, probably considered himself nobody, and so held that
+the inquiry could not have any application to him; at all events, he
+tendered no reply. Mr. Giles directed an appealing glance at the
+tinker; but he had suddenly fallen asleep. The women were out of the
+question.
+
+“If Brittles would rather open the door, in the presence of witnesses,”
+said Mr. Giles, after a short silence, “I am ready to make one.”
+
+“So am I,” said the tinker, waking up, as suddenly as he had fallen
+asleep.
+
+Brittles capitulated on these terms; and the party being somewhat
+re-assured by the discovery (made on throwing open the shutters) that
+it was now broad day, took their way upstairs; with the dogs in front.
+The two women, who were afraid to stay below, brought up the rear. By
+the advice of Mr. Giles, they all talked very loud, to warn any
+evil-disposed person outside, that they were strong in numbers; and by
+a master-stoke of policy, originating in the brain of the same
+ingenious gentleman, the dogs’ tails were well pinched, in the hall, to
+make them bark savagely.
+
+These precautions having been taken, Mr. Giles held on fast by the
+tinker’s arm (to prevent his running away, as he pleasantly said), and
+gave the word of command to open the door. Brittles obeyed; the group,
+peeping timorously over each other’s shoulders, beheld no more
+formidable object than poor little Oliver Twist, speechless and
+exhausted, who raised his heavy eyes, and mutely solicited their
+compassion.
+
+“A boy!” exclaimed Mr. Giles, valiantly, pushing the tinker into the
+background. “What’s the matter with the—eh?—Why—Brittles—look
+here—don’t you know?”
+
+Brittles, who had got behind the door to open it, no sooner saw Oliver,
+than he uttered a loud cry. Mr. Giles, seizing the boy by one leg and
+one arm (fortunately not the broken limb) lugged him straight into the
+hall, and deposited him at full length on the floor thereof.
+
+“Here he is!” bawled Giles, calling in a state of great excitement, up
+the staircase; “here’s one of the thieves, ma’am! Here’s a thief, miss!
+Wounded, miss! I shot him, miss; and Brittles held the light.”
+
+“—In a lantern, miss,” cried Brittles, applying one hand to the side of
+his mouth, so that his voice might travel the better.
+
+The two women-servants ran upstairs to carry the intelligence that Mr.
+Giles had captured a robber; and the tinker busied himself in
+endeavouring to restore Oliver, lest he should die before he could be
+hanged. In the midst of all this noise and commotion, there was heard a
+sweet female voice, which quelled it in an instant.
+
+“Giles!” whispered the voice from the stair-head.
+
+“I’m here, miss,” replied Mr. Giles. “Don’t be frightened, miss; I
+ain’t much injured. He didn’t make a very desperate resistance, miss! I
+was soon too many for him.”
+
+“Hush!” replied the young lady; “you frighten my aunt as much as the
+thieves did. Is the poor creature much hurt?”
+
+“Wounded desperate, miss,” replied Giles, with indescribable
+complacency.
+
+“He looks as if he was a-going, miss,” bawled Brittles, in the same
+manner as before. “Wouldn’t you like to come and look at him, miss, in
+case he should?”
+
+“Hush, pray; there’s a good man!” rejoined the lady. “Wait quietly only
+one instant, while I speak to aunt.”
+
+With a footstep as soft and gentle as the voice, the speaker tripped
+away. She soon returned, with the direction that the wounded person was
+to be carried, carefully, upstairs to Mr. Giles’s room; and that
+Brittles was to saddle the pony and betake himself instantly to
+Chertsey: from which place, he was to despatch, with all speed, a
+constable and doctor.
+
+“But won’t you take one look at him, first, miss?” asked Mr. Giles,
+with as much pride as if Oliver were some bird of rare plumage, that he
+had skilfully brought down. “Not one little peep, miss?”
+
+“Not now, for the world,” replied the young lady. “Poor fellow! Oh!
+treat him kindly, Giles for my sake!”
+
+The old servant looked up at the speaker, as she turned away, with a
+glance as proud and admiring as if she had been his own child. Then,
+bending over Oliver, he helped to carry him upstairs, with the care and
+solicitude of a woman.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXIX.
+HAS AN INTRODUCTORY ACCOUNT OF THE INMATES OF THE HOUSE, TO WHICH
+OLIVER RESORTED
+
+
+In a handsome room: though its furniture had rather the air of
+old-fashioned comfort, than of modern elegance: there sat two ladies at
+a well-spread breakfast-table. Mr. Giles, dressed with scrupulous care
+in a full suit of black, was in attendance upon them. He had taken his
+station some half-way between the side-board and the breakfast-table;
+and, with his body drawn up to its full height, his head thrown back,
+and inclined the merest trifle on one side, his left leg advanced, and
+his right hand thrust into his waist-coat, while his left hung down by
+his side, grasping a waiter, looked like one who laboured under a very
+agreeable sense of his own merits and importance.
+
+Of the two ladies, one was well advanced in years; but the high-backed
+oaken chair in which she sat, was not more upright than she. Dressed
+with the utmost nicety and precision, in a quaint mixture of by-gone
+costume, with some slight concessions to the prevailing taste, which
+rather served to point the old style pleasantly than to impair its
+effect, she sat, in a stately manner, with her hands folded on the
+table before her. Her eyes (and age had dimmed but little of their
+brightness) were attentively upon her young companion.
+
+The younger lady was in the lovely bloom and spring-time of womanhood;
+at that age, when, if ever angels be for God’s good purposes enthroned
+in mortal forms, they may be, without impiety, supposed to abide in
+such as hers.
+
+She was not past seventeen. Cast in so slight and exquisite a mould; so
+mild and gentle; so pure and beautiful; that earth seemed not her
+element, nor its rough creatures her fit companions. The very
+intelligence that shone in her deep blue eye, and was stamped upon her
+noble head, seemed scarcely of her age, or of the world; and yet the
+changing expression of sweetness and good humour, the thousand lights
+that played about the face, and left no shadow there; above all, the
+smile, the cheerful, happy smile, were made for Home, and fireside
+peace and happiness.
+
+She was busily engaged in the little offices of the table. Chancing to
+raise her eyes as the elder lady was regarding her, she playfully put
+back her hair, which was simply braided on her forehead; and threw into
+her beaming look, such an expression of affection and artless
+loveliness, that blessed spirits might have smiled to look upon her.
+
+“And Brittles has been gone upwards of an hour, has he?” asked the old
+lady, after a pause.
+
+“An hour and twelve minutes, ma’am,” replied Mr. Giles, referring to a
+silver watch, which he drew forth by a black ribbon.
+
+“He is always slow,” remarked the old lady.
+
+“Brittles always was a slow boy, ma’am,” replied the attendant. And
+seeing, by the bye, that Brittles had been a slow boy for upwards of
+thirty years, there appeared no great probability of his ever being a
+fast one.
+
+“He gets worse instead of better, I think,” said the elder lady.
+
+“It is very inexcusable in him if he stops to play with any other
+boys,” said the young lady, smiling.
+
+Mr. Giles was apparently considering the propriety of indulging in a
+respectful smile himself, when a gig drove up to the garden-gate: out
+of which there jumped a fat gentleman, who ran straight up to the door:
+and who, getting quickly into the house by some mysterious process,
+burst into the room, and nearly overturned Mr. Giles and the
+breakfast-table together.
+
+“I never heard of such a thing!” exclaimed the fat gentleman. “My dear
+Mrs. Maylie—bless my soul—in the silence of the night, too—I _never_
+heard of such a thing!”
+
+With these expressions of condolence, the fat gentleman shook hands
+with both ladies, and drawing up a chair, inquired how they found
+themselves.
+
+“You ought to be dead; positively dead with the fright,” said the fat
+gentleman. “Why didn’t you send? Bless me, my man should have come in a
+minute; and so would I; and my assistant would have been delighted; or
+anybody, I’m sure, under such circumstances. Dear, dear! So unexpected!
+In the silence of the night, too!”
+
+The doctor seemed especially troubled by the fact of the robbery having
+been unexpected, and attempted in the night-time; as if it were the
+established custom of gentlemen in the housebreaking way to transact
+business at noon, and to make an appointment, by post, a day or two
+previous.
+
+“And you, Miss Rose,” said the doctor, turning to the young lady, “I—”
+
+“Oh! very much so, indeed,” said Rose, interrupting him; “but there is
+a poor creature upstairs, whom aunt wishes you to see.”
+
+“Ah! to be sure,” replied the doctor, “so there is. That was your
+handiwork, Giles, I understand.”
+
+Mr. Giles, who had been feverishly putting the tea-cups to rights,
+blushed very red, and said that he had had that honour.
+
+“Honour, eh?” said the doctor; “well, I don’t know; perhaps it’s as
+honourable to hit a thief in a back kitchen, as to hit your man at
+twelve paces. Fancy that he fired in the air, and you’ve fought a duel,
+Giles.”
+
+Mr. Giles, who thought this light treatment of the matter an unjust
+attempt at diminishing his glory, answered respectfully, that it was
+not for the like of him to judge about that; but he rather thought it
+was no joke to the opposite party.
+
+“Gad, that’s true!” said the doctor. “Where is he? Show me the way.
+I’ll look in again, as I come down, Mrs. Maylie. That’s the little
+window that he got in at, eh? Well, I couldn’t have believed it!”
+
+Talking all the way, he followed Mr. Giles upstairs; and while he is
+going upstairs, the reader may be informed, that Mr. Losberne, a
+surgeon in the neighbourhood, known through a circuit of ten miles
+round as “the doctor,” had grown fat, more from good-humour than from
+good living: and was as kind and hearty, and withal as eccentric an old
+bachelor, as will be found in five times that space, by any explorer
+alive.
+
+The doctor was absent, much longer than either he or the ladies had
+anticipated. A large flat box was fetched out of the gig; and a bedroom
+bell was rung very often; and the servants ran up and down stairs
+perpetually; from which tokens it was justly concluded that something
+important was going on above. At length he returned; and in reply to an
+anxious inquiry after his patient; looked very mysterious, and closed
+the door, carefully.
+
+“This is a very extraordinary thing, Mrs. Maylie,” said the doctor,
+standing with his back to the door, as if to keep it shut.
+
+“He is not in danger, I hope?” said the old lady.
+
+“Why, that would _not_ be an extraordinary thing, under the
+circumstances,” replied the doctor; “though I don’t think he is. Have
+you seen the thief?”
+
+“No,” rejoined the old lady.
+
+“Nor heard anything about him?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“I beg your pardon, ma’am, interposed Mr. Giles; “but I was going to
+tell you about him when Doctor Losberne came in.”
+
+The fact was, that Mr. Giles had not, at first, been able to bring his
+mind to the avowal, that he had only shot a boy. Such commendations had
+been bestowed upon his bravery, that he could not, for the life of him,
+help postponing the explanation for a few delicious minutes; during
+which he had flourished, in the very zenith of a brief reputation for
+undaunted courage.
+
+“Rose wished to see the man,” said Mrs. Maylie, “but I wouldn’t hear of
+it.”
+
+“Humph!” rejoined the doctor. “There is nothing very alarming in his
+appearance. Have you any objection to see him in my presence?”
+
+“If it be necessary,” replied the old lady, “certainly not.”
+
+“Then I think it is necessary,” said the doctor; “at all events, I am
+quite sure that you would deeply regret not having done so, if you
+postponed it. He is perfectly quiet and comfortable now. Allow me—Miss
+Rose, will you permit me? Not the slightest fear, I pledge you my
+honour!”
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXX.
+RELATES WHAT OLIVER’S NEW VISITORS THOUGHT OF HIM
+
+
+With many loquacious assurances that they would be agreeably surprised
+in the aspect of the criminal, the doctor drew the young lady’s arm
+through one of his; and offering his disengaged hand to Mrs. Maylie,
+led them, with much ceremony and stateliness, upstairs.
+
+“Now,” said the doctor, in a whisper, as he softly turned the handle of
+a bedroom-door, “let us hear what you think of him. He has not been
+shaved very recently, but he don’t look at all ferocious
+notwithstanding. Stop, though! Let me first see that he is in visiting
+order.”
+
+Stepping before them, he looked into the room. Motioning them to
+advance, he closed the door when they had entered; and gently drew back
+the curtains of the bed. Upon it, in lieu of the dogged, black-visaged
+ruffian they had expected to behold, there lay a mere child: worn with
+pain and exhaustion, and sunk into a deep sleep. His wounded arm, bound
+and splintered up, was crossed upon his breast; his head reclined upon
+the other arm, which was half hidden by his long hair, as it streamed
+over the pillow.
+
+The honest gentleman held the curtain in his hand, and looked on, for a
+minute or so, in silence. Whilst he was watching the patient thus, the
+younger lady glided softly past, and seating herself in a chair by the
+bedside, gathered Oliver’s hair from his face. As she stooped over him,
+her tears fell upon his forehead.
+
+The boy stirred, and smiled in his sleep, as though these marks of pity
+and compassion had awakened some pleasant dream of a love and affection
+he had never known. Thus, a strain of gentle music, or the rippling of
+water in a silent place, or the odour of a flower, or the mention of a
+familiar word, will sometimes call up sudden dim remembrances of scenes
+that never were, in this life; which vanish like a breath; which some
+brief memory of a happier existence, long gone by, would seem to have
+awakened; which no voluntary exertion of the mind can ever recall.
+
+“What can this mean?” exclaimed the elder lady. “This poor child can
+never have been the pupil of robbers!”
+
+“Vice,” said the surgeon, replacing the curtain, “takes up her abode in
+many temples; and who can say that a fair outside shell not enshrine
+her?”
+
+“But at so early an age!” urged Rose.
+
+“My dear young lady,” rejoined the surgeon, mournfully shaking his
+head; “crime, like death, is not confined to the old and withered
+alone. The youngest and fairest are too often its chosen victims.”
+
+“But, can you—oh! can you really believe that this delicate boy has
+been the voluntary associate of the worst outcasts of society?” said
+Rose.
+
+The surgeon shook his head, in a manner which intimated that he feared
+it was very possible; and observing that they might disturb the
+patient, led the way into an adjoining apartment.
+
+“But even if he has been wicked,” pursued Rose, “think how young he is;
+think that he may never have known a mother’s love, or the comfort of a
+home; that ill-usage and blows, or the want of bread, may have driven
+him to herd with men who have forced him to guilt. Aunt, dear aunt, for
+mercy’s sake, think of this, before you let them drag this sick child
+to a prison, which in any case must be the grave of all his chances of
+amendment. Oh! as you love me, and know that I have never felt the want
+of parents in your goodness and affection, but that I might have done
+so, and might have been equally helpless and unprotected with this poor
+child, have pity upon him before it is too late!”
+
+“My dear love,” said the elder lady, as she folded the weeping girl to
+her bosom, “do you think I would harm a hair of his head?”
+
+“Oh, no!” replied Rose, eagerly.
+
+“No, surely,” said the old lady; “my days are drawing to their close:
+and may mercy be shown to me as I show it to others! What can I do to
+save him, sir?”
+
+“Let me think, ma’am,” said the doctor; “let me think.”
+
+Mr. Losberne thrust his hands into his pockets, and took several turns
+up and down the room; often stopping, and balancing himself on his
+toes, and frowning frightfully. After various exclamations of “I’ve got
+it now” and “no, I haven’t,” and as many renewals of the walking and
+frowning, he at length made a dead halt, and spoke as follows:
+
+“I think if you give me a full and unlimited commission to bully Giles,
+and that little boy, Brittles, I can manage it. Giles is a faithful
+fellow and an old servant, I know; but you can make it up to him in a
+thousand ways, and reward him for being such a good shot besides. You
+don’t object to that?”
+
+“Unless there is some other way of preserving the child,” replied Mrs.
+Maylie.
+
+“There is no other,” said the doctor. “No other, take my word for it.”
+
+“Then my aunt invests you with full power,” said Rose, smiling through
+her tears; “but pray don’t be harder upon the poor fellows than is
+indispensably necessary.”
+
+“You seem to think,” retorted the doctor, “that everybody is disposed
+to be hard-hearted to-day, except yourself, Miss Rose. I only hope, for
+the sake of the rising male sex generally, that you may be found in as
+vulnerable and soft-hearted a mood by the first eligible young fellow
+who appeals to your compassion; and I wish I were a young fellow, that
+I might avail myself, on the spot, of such a favourable opportunity for
+doing so, as the present.”
+
+“You are as great a boy as poor Brittles himself,” returned Rose,
+blushing.
+
+“Well,” said the doctor, laughing heartily, “that is no very difficult
+matter. But to return to this boy. The great point of our agreement is
+yet to come. He will wake in an hour or so, I dare say; and although I
+have told that thick-headed constable-fellow downstairs that he musn’t
+be moved or spoken to, on peril of his life, I think we may converse
+with him without danger. Now I make this stipulation—that I shall
+examine him in your presence, and that, if, from what he says, we
+judge, and I can show to the satisfaction of your cool reason, that he
+is a real and thorough bad one (which is more than possible), he shall
+be left to his fate, without any farther interference on my part, at
+all events.”
+
+“Oh no, aunt!” entreated Rose.
+
+“Oh yes, aunt!” said the doctor. “Is is a bargain?”
+
+“He cannot be hardened in vice,” said Rose; “It is impossible.”
+
+“Very good,” retorted the doctor; “then so much the more reason for
+acceding to my proposition.”
+
+Finally the treaty was entered into; and the parties thereunto sat down
+to wait, with some impatience, until Oliver should awake.
+
+The patience of the two ladies was destined to undergo a longer trial
+than Mr. Losberne had led them to expect; for hour after hour passed
+on, and still Oliver slumbered heavily. It was evening, indeed, before
+the kind-hearted doctor brought them the intelligence, that he was at
+length sufficiently restored to be spoken to. The boy was very ill, he
+said, and weak from the loss of blood; but his mind was so troubled
+with anxiety to disclose something, that he deemed it better to give
+him the opportunity, than to insist upon his remaining quiet until next
+morning: which he should otherwise have done.
+
+The conference was a long one. Oliver told them all his simple history,
+and was often compelled to stop, by pain and want of strength. It was a
+solemn thing, to hear, in the darkened room, the feeble voice of the
+sick child recounting a weary catalogue of evils and calamities which
+hard men had brought upon him. Oh! if when we oppress and grind our
+fellow-creatures, we bestowed but one thought on the dark evidences of
+human error, which, like dense and heavy clouds, are rising, slowly it
+is true, but not less surely, to Heaven, to pour their after-vengeance
+on our heads; if we heard but one instant, in imagination, the deep
+testimony of dead men’s voices, which no power can stifle, and no pride
+shut out; where would be the injury and injustice, the suffering,
+misery, cruelty, and wrong, that each day’s life brings with it!
+
+Oliver’s pillow was smoothed by gentle hands that night; and loveliness
+and virtue watched him as he slept. He felt calm and happy, and could
+have died without a murmur.
+
+The momentous interview was no sooner concluded, and Oliver composed to
+rest again, than the doctor, after wiping his eyes, and condemning them
+for being weak all at once, betook himself downstairs to open upon Mr.
+Giles. And finding nobody about the parlours, it occurred to him, that
+he could perhaps originate the proceedings with better effect in the
+kitchen; so into the kitchen he went.
+
+There were assembled, in that lower house of the domestic parliament,
+the women-servants, Mr. Brittles, Mr. Giles, the tinker (who had
+received a special invitation to regale himself for the remainder of
+the day, in consideration of his services), and the constable. The
+latter gentleman had a large staff, a large head, large features, and
+large half-boots; and he looked as if he had been taking a
+proportionate allowance of ale—as indeed he had.
+
+The adventures of the previous night were still under discussion; for
+Mr. Giles was expatiating upon his presence of mind, when the doctor
+entered; Mr. Brittles, with a mug of ale in his hand, was corroborating
+everything, before his superior said it.
+
+“Sit still!” said the doctor, waving his hand.
+
+“Thank you, sir,” said Mr. Giles. “Misses wished some ale to be given
+out, sir; and as I felt no ways inclined for my own little room, sir,
+and was disposed for company, I am taking mine among ’em here.”
+
+Brittles headed a low murmur, by which the ladies and gentlemen
+generally were understood to express the gratification they derived
+from Mr. Giles’s condescension. Mr. Giles looked round with a
+patronising air, as much as to say that so long as they behaved
+properly, he would never desert them.
+
+“How is the patient to-night, sir?” asked Giles.
+
+“So-so”; returned the doctor. “I am afraid you have got yourself into a
+scrape there, Mr. Giles.”
+
+“I hope you don’t mean to say, sir,” said Mr. Giles, trembling, “that
+he’s going to die. If I thought it, I should never be happy again. I
+wouldn’t cut a boy off: no, not even Brittles here; not for all the
+plate in the county, sir.”
+
+“That’s not the point,” said the doctor, mysteriously. “Mr. Giles, are
+you a Protestant?”
+
+“Yes, sir, I hope so,” faltered Mr. Giles, who had turned very pale.
+
+“And what are _you_, boy?” said the doctor, turning sharply upon
+Brittles.
+
+“Lord bless me, sir!” replied Brittles, starting violently; “I’m the
+same as Mr. Giles, sir.”
+
+“Then tell me this,” said the doctor, “both of you, both of you! Are
+you going to take upon yourselves to swear, that that boy upstairs is
+the boy that was put through the little window last night? Out with it!
+Come! We are prepared for you!”
+
+The doctor, who was universally considered one of the best-tempered
+creatures on earth, made this demand in such a dreadful tone of anger,
+that Giles and Brittles, who were considerably muddled by ale and
+excitement, stared at each other in a state of stupefaction.
+
+“Pay attention to the reply, constable, will you?” said the doctor,
+shaking his forefinger with great solemnity of manner, and tapping the
+bridge of his nose with it, to bespeak the exercise of that worthy’s
+utmost acuteness. “Something may come of this before long.”
+
+The constable looked as wise as he could, and took up his staff of
+office: which had been reclining indolently in the chimney-corner.
+
+“It’s a simple question of identity, you will observe,” said the
+doctor.
+
+“That’s what it is, sir,” replied the constable, coughing with great
+violence; for he had finished his ale in a hurry, and some of it had
+gone the wrong way.
+
+“Here’s the house broken into,” said the doctor, “and a couple of men
+catch one moment’s glimpse of a boy, in the midst of gunpowder smoke,
+and in all the distraction of alarm and darkness. Here’s a boy comes to
+that very same house, next morning, and because he happens to have his
+arm tied up, these men lay violent hands upon him—by doing which, they
+place his life in great danger—and swear he is the thief. Now, the
+question is, whether these men are justified by the fact; if not, in
+what situation do they place themselves?”
+
+The constable nodded profoundly. He said, if that wasn’t law, he would
+be glad to know what was.
+
+“I ask you again,” thundered the doctor, “are you, on your solemn
+oaths, able to identify that boy?”
+
+Brittles looked doubtfully at Mr. Giles; Mr. Giles looked doubtfully at
+Brittles; the constable put his hand behind his ear, to catch the
+reply; the two women and the tinker leaned forward to listen; the
+doctor glanced keenly round; when a ring was heard at the gate, and at
+the same moment, the sound of wheels.
+
+“It’s the runners!” cried Brittles, to all appearance much relieved.
+
+“The what?” exclaimed the doctor, aghast in his turn.
+
+“The Bow Street officers, sir,” replied Brittles, taking up a candle;
+“me and Mr. Giles sent for ’em this morning.”
+
+“What?” cried the doctor.
+
+“Yes,” replied Brittles; “I sent a message up by the coachman, and I
+only wonder they weren’t here before, sir.”
+
+“You did, did you? Then confound your—slow coaches down here; that’s
+all,” said the doctor, walking away.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXXI.
+INVOLVES A CRITICAL POSITION
+
+
+“Who’s that?” inquired Brittles, opening the door a little way, with
+the chain up, and peeping out, shading the candle with his hand.
+
+“Open the door,” replied a man outside; “it’s the officers from Bow
+Street, as was sent to to-day.”
+
+Much comforted by this assurance, Brittles opened the door to its full
+width, and confronted a portly man in a great-coat; who walked in,
+without saying anything more, and wiped his shoes on the mat, as coolly
+as if he lived there.
+
+“Just send somebody out to relieve my mate, will you, young man?” said
+the officer; “he’s in the gig, a-minding the prad. Have you got a coach
+’us here, that you could put it up in, for five or ten minutes?”
+
+Brittles replying in the affirmative, and pointing out the building,
+the portly man stepped back to the garden-gate, and helped his
+companion to put up the gig: while Brittles lighted them, in a state of
+great admiration. This done, they returned to the house, and, being
+shown into a parlour, took off their great-coats and hats, and showed
+like what they were.
+
+The man who had knocked at the door, was a stout personage of middle
+height, aged about fifty: with shiny black hair, cropped pretty close;
+half-whiskers, a round face, and sharp eyes. The other was a
+red-headed, bony man, in top-boots; with a rather ill-favoured
+countenance, and a turned-up sinister-looking nose.
+
+“Tell your governor that Blathers and Duff is here, will you?” said the
+stouter man, smoothing down his hair, and laying a pair of handcuffs on
+the table. “Oh! Good-evening, master. Can I have a word or two with you
+in private, if you please?”
+
+This was addressed to Mr. Losberne, who now made his appearance; that
+gentleman, motioning Brittles to retire, brought in the two ladies, and
+shut the door.
+
+“This is the lady of the house,” said Mr. Losberne, motioning towards
+Mrs. Maylie.
+
+Mr. Blathers made a bow. Being desired to sit down, he put his hat on
+the floor, and taking a chair, motioned to Duff to do the same. The
+latter gentleman, who did not appear quite so much accustomed to good
+society, or quite so much at his ease in it—one of the two—seated
+himself, after undergoing several muscular affections of the limbs, and
+the head of his stick into his mouth, with some embarrassment.
+
+“Now, with regard to this here robbery, master,” said Blathers. “What
+are the circumstances?”
+
+Mr. Losberne, who appeared desirous of gaining time, recounted them at
+great length, and with much circumlocution. Messrs. Blathers and Duff
+looked very knowing meanwhile, and occasionally exchanged a nod.
+
+“I can’t say, for certain, till I see the work, of course,” said
+Blathers; “but my opinion at once is,—I don’t mind committing myself to
+that extent,—that this wasn’t done by a yokel; eh, Duff?”
+
+“Certainly not,” replied Duff.
+
+“And, translating the word yokel for the benefit of the ladies, I
+apprehend your meaning to be, that this attempt was not made by a
+countryman?” said Mr. Losberne, with a smile.
+
+“That’s it, master,” replied Blathers. “This is all about the robbery,
+is it?”
+
+“All,” replied the doctor.
+
+“Now, what is this, about this here boy that the servants are a-talking
+on?” said Blathers.
+
+“Nothing at all,” replied the doctor. “One of the frightened servants
+chose to take it into his head, that he had something to do with this
+attempt to break into the house; but it’s nonsense: sheer absurdity.”
+
+“Wery easy disposed of, if it is,” remarked Duff.
+
+“What he says is quite correct,” observed Blathers, nodding his head in
+a confirmatory way, and playing carelessly with the handcuffs, as if
+they were a pair of castanets. “Who is the boy? What account does he
+give of himself? Where did he come from? He didn’t drop out of the
+clouds, did he, master?”
+
+“Of course not,” replied the doctor, with a nervous glance at the two
+ladies. “I know his whole history: but we can talk about that
+presently. You would like, first, to see the place where the thieves
+made their attempt, I suppose?”
+
+“Certainly,” rejoined Mr. Blathers. “We had better inspect the premises
+first, and examine the servants afterwards. That’s the usual way of
+doing business.”
+
+Lights were then procured; and Messrs. Blathers and Duff, attended by
+the native constable, Brittles, Giles, and everybody else in short,
+went into the little room at the end of the passage and looked out at
+the window; and afterwards went round by way of the lawn, and looked in
+at the window; and after that, had a candle handed out to inspect the
+shutter with; and after that, a lantern to trace the footsteps with;
+and after that, a pitchfork to poke the bushes with. This done, amidst
+the breathless interest of all beholders, they came in again; and Mr.
+Giles and Brittles were put through a melodramatic representation of
+their share in the previous night’s adventures: which they performed
+some six times over: contradicting each other, in not more than one
+important respect, the first time, and in not more than a dozen the
+last. This consummation being arrived at, Blathers and Duff cleared the
+room, and held a long council together, compared with which, for
+secrecy and solemnity, a consultation of great doctors on the knottiest
+point in medicine, would be mere child’s play.
+
+Meanwhile, the doctor walked up and down the next room in a very uneasy
+state; and Mrs. Maylie and Rose looked on, with anxious faces.
+
+“Upon my word,” he said, making a halt, after a great number of very
+rapid turns, “I hardly know what to do.”
+
+“Surely,” said Rose, “the poor child’s story, faithfully repeated to
+these men, will be sufficient to exonerate him.”
+
+“I doubt it, my dear young lady,” said the doctor, shaking his head. “I
+don’t think it would exonerate him, either with them, or with legal
+functionaries of a higher grade. What is he, after all, they would say?
+A runaway. Judged by mere worldly considerations and probabilities, his
+story is a very doubtful one.”
+
+“You believe it, surely?” interrupted Rose.
+
+“_I_ believe it, strange as it is; and perhaps I may be an old fool for
+doing so,” rejoined the doctor; “but I don’t think it is exactly the
+tale for a practical police-officer, nevertheless.”
+
+“Why not?” demanded Rose.
+
+“Because, my pretty cross-examiner,” replied the doctor: “because,
+viewed with their eyes, there are many ugly points about it; he can
+only prove the parts that look ill, and none of those that look well.
+Confound the fellows, they _will_ have the why and the wherefore, and
+will take nothing for granted. On his own showing, you see, he has been
+the companion of thieves for some time past; he has been carried to a
+police-officer, on a charge of picking a gentleman’s pocket; he has
+been taken away, forcibly, from that gentleman’s house, to a place
+which he cannot describe or point out, and of the situation of which he
+has not the remotest idea. He is brought down to Chertsey, by men who
+seem to have taken a violent fancy to him, whether he will or no; and
+is put through a window to rob a house; and then, just at the very
+moment when he is going to alarm the inmates, and so do the very thing
+that would set him all to rights, there rushes into the way, a
+blundering dog of a half-bred butler, and shoots him! As if on purpose
+to prevent his doing any good for himself! Don’t you see all this?”
+
+“I see it, of course,” replied Rose, smiling at the doctor’s
+impetuosity; “but still I do not see anything in it, to criminate the
+poor child.”
+
+“No,” replied the doctor; “of course not! Bless the bright eyes of your
+sex! They never see, whether for good or bad, more than one side of any
+question; and that is, always, the one which first presents itself to
+them.”
+
+Having given vent to this result of experience, the doctor put his
+hands into his pockets, and walked up and down the room with even
+greater rapidity than before.
+
+“The more I think of it,” said the doctor, “the more I see that it will
+occasion endless trouble and difficulty if we put these men in
+possession of the boy’s real story. I am certain it will not be
+believed; and even if they can do nothing to him in the end, still the
+dragging it forward, and giving publicity to all the doubts that will
+be cast upon it, must interfere, materially, with your benevolent plan
+of rescuing him from misery.”
+
+“Oh! what is to be done?” cried Rose. “Dear, dear! why did they send
+for these people?”
+
+“Why, indeed!” exclaimed Mrs. Maylie. “I would not have had them here,
+for the world.”
+
+“All I know is,” said Mr. Losberne, at last: sitting down with a kind
+of desperate calmness, “that we must try and carry it off with a bold
+face. The object is a good one, and that must be our excuse. The boy
+has strong symptoms of fever upon him, and is in no condition to be
+talked to any more; that’s one comfort. We must make the best of it;
+and if bad be the best, it is no fault of ours. Come in!”
+
+“Well, master,” said Blathers, entering the room followed by his
+colleague, and making the door fast, before he said any more. “This
+warn’t a put-up thing.”
+
+“And what the devil’s a put-up thing?” demanded the doctor,
+impatiently.
+
+“We call it a put-up robbery, ladies,” said Blathers, turning to them,
+as if he pitied their ignorance, but had a contempt for the doctor’s,
+“when the servants is in it.”
+
+“Nobody suspected them, in this case,” said Mrs. Maylie.
+
+“Wery likely not, ma’am,” replied Blathers; “but they might have been
+in it, for all that.”
+
+“More likely on that wery account,” said Duff.
+
+“We find it was a town hand,” said Blathers, continuing his report;
+“for the style of work is first-rate.”
+
+“Wery pretty indeed it is,” remarked Duff, in an undertone.
+
+“There was two of ’em in it,” continued Blathers; “and they had a boy
+with ’em; that’s plain from the size of the window. That’s all to be
+said at present. We’ll see this lad that you’ve got upstairs at once,
+if you please.”
+
+“Perhaps they will take something to drink first, Mrs. Maylie?” said
+the doctor: his face brightening, as if some new thought had occurred
+to him.
+
+“Oh! to be sure!” exclaimed Rose, eagerly. “You shall have it
+immediately, if you will.”
+
+“Why, thank you, miss!” said Blathers, drawing his coat-sleeve across
+his mouth; “it’s dry work, this sort of duty. Anythink that’s handy,
+miss; don’t put yourself out of the way, on our accounts.”
+
+“What shall it be?” asked the doctor, following the young lady to the
+sideboard.
+
+“A little drop of spirits, master, if it’s all the same,” replied
+Blathers. “It’s a cold ride from London, ma’am; and I always find that
+spirits comes home warmer to the feelings.”
+
+This interesting communication was addressed to Mrs. Maylie, who
+received it very graciously. While it was being conveyed to her, the
+doctor slipped out of the room.
+
+“Ah!” said Mr. Blathers: not holding his wine-glass by the stem, but
+grasping the bottom between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand:
+and placing it in front of his chest; “I have seen a good many pieces
+of business like this, in my time, ladies.”
+
+“That crack down in the back lane at Edmonton, Blathers,” said Mr.
+Duff, assisting his colleague’s memory.
+
+“That was something in this way, warn’t it?” rejoined Mr. Blathers;
+“that was done by Conkey Chickweed, that was.”
+
+“You always gave that to him” replied Duff. “It was the Family Pet, I
+tell you. Conkey hadn’t any more to do with it than I had.”
+
+“Get out!” retorted Mr. Blathers; “I know better. Do you mind that time
+when Conkey was robbed of his money, though? What a start that was!
+Better than any novel-book _I_ ever see!”
+
+“What was that?” inquired Rose: anxious to encourage any symptoms of
+good-humour in the unwelcome visitors.
+
+“It was a robbery, miss, that hardly anybody would have been down
+upon,” said Blathers. “This here Conkey Chickweed—”
+
+“Conkey means Nosey, ma’am,” interposed Duff.
+
+“Of course the lady knows that, don’t she?” demanded Mr. Blathers.
+“Always interrupting, you are, partner! This here Conkey Chickweed,
+miss, kept a public-house over Battlebridge way, and he had a cellar,
+where a good many young lords went to see cock-fighting, and
+badger-drawing, and that; and a wery intellectual manner the sports was
+conducted in, for I’ve seen ’em off’en. He warn’t one of the family, at
+that time; and one night he was robbed of three hundred and
+twenty-seven guineas in a canvas bag, that was stole out of his bedroom
+in the dead of night, by a tall man with a black patch over his eye,
+who had concealed himself under the bed, and after committing the
+robbery, jumped slap out of window: which was only a story high. He was
+wery quick about it. But Conkey was quick, too; for he fired a
+blunderbuss arter him, and roused the neighbourhood. They set up a
+hue-and-cry, directly, and when they came to look about ’em, found that
+Conkey had hit the robber; for there was traces of blood, all the way
+to some palings a good distance off; and there they lost ’em. However,
+he had made off with the blunt; and, consequently, the name of Mr.
+Chickweed, licensed witler, appeared in the Gazette among the other
+bankrupts; and all manner of benefits and subscriptions, and I don’t
+know what all, was got up for the poor man, who was in a wery low state
+of mind about his loss, and went up and down the streets, for three or
+four days, a pulling his hair off in such a desperate manner that many
+people was afraid he might be going to make away with himself. One day
+he came up to the office, all in a hurry, and had a private interview
+with the magistrate, who, after a deal of talk, rings the bell, and
+orders Jem Spyers in (Jem was a active officer), and tells him to go
+and assist Mr. Chickweed in apprehending the man as robbed his house.
+‘I see him, Spyers,’ said Chickweed, ‘pass my house yesterday morning,’
+‘Why didn’t you up, and collar him!’ says Spyers. ‘I was so struck all
+of a heap, that you might have fractured my skull with a toothpick,’
+says the poor man; ‘but we’re sure to have him; for between ten and
+eleven o’clock at night he passed again.’ Spyers no sooner heard this,
+than he put some clean linen and a comb, in his pocket, in case he
+should have to stop a day or two; and away he goes, and sets himself
+down at one of the public-house windows behind the little red curtain,
+with his hat on, all ready to bolt out, at a moment’s notice. He was
+smoking his pipe here, late at night, when all of a sudden Chickweed
+roars out, ‘Here he is! Stop thief! Murder!’ Jem Spyers dashes out; and
+there he sees Chickweed, a-tearing down the street full cry. Away goes
+Spyers; on goes Chickweed; round turns the people; everybody roars out,
+‘Thieves!’ and Chickweed himself keeps on shouting, all the time, like
+mad. Spyers loses sight of him a minute as he turns a corner; shoots
+round; sees a little crowd; dives in; ‘Which is the man?’ ‘D—me!’ says
+Chickweed, ‘I’ve lost him again!’ It was a remarkable occurrence, but
+he warn’t to be seen nowhere, so they went back to the public-house.
+Next morning, Spyers took his old place, and looked out, from behind
+the curtain, for a tall man with a black patch over his eye, till his
+own two eyes ached again. At last, he couldn’t help shutting ’em, to
+ease ’em a minute; and the very moment he did so, he hears Chickweed
+a-roaring out, ‘Here he is!’ Off he starts once more, with Chickweed
+half-way down the street ahead of him; and after twice as long a run as
+the yesterday’s one, the man’s lost again! This was done, once or twice
+more, till one-half the neighbours gave out that Mr. Chickweed had been
+robbed by the devil, who was playing tricks with him arterwards; and
+the other half, that poor Mr. Chickweed had gone mad with grief.”
+
+“What did Jem Spyers say?” inquired the doctor; who had returned to the
+room shortly after the commencement of the story.
+
+“Jem Spyers,” resumed the officer, “for a long time said nothing at
+all, and listened to everything without seeming to, which showed he
+understood his business. But, one morning, he walked into the bar, and
+taking out his snuffbox, says ‘Chickweed, I’ve found out who done this
+here robbery.’ ‘Have you?’ said Chickweed. ‘Oh, my dear Spyers, only
+let me have wengeance, and I shall die contented! Oh, my dear Spyers,
+where is the villain!’ ‘Come!’ said Spyers, offering him a pinch of
+snuff, ‘none of that gammon! You did it yourself.’ So he had; and a
+good bit of money he had made by it, too; and nobody would never have
+found it out, if he hadn’t been so precious anxious to keep up
+appearances!” said Mr. Blathers, putting down his wine-glass, and
+clinking the handcuffs together.
+
+“Very curious, indeed,” observed the doctor. “Now, if you please, you
+can walk upstairs.”
+
+“If _you_ please, sir,” returned Mr. Blathers. Closely following Mr.
+Losberne, the two officers ascended to Oliver’s bedroom; Mr. Giles
+preceding the party, with a lighted candle.
+
+Oliver had been dozing; but looked worse, and was more feverish than he
+had appeared yet. Being assisted by the doctor, he managed to sit up in
+bed for a minute or so; and looked at the strangers without at all
+understanding what was going forward—in fact, without seeming to
+recollect where he was, or what had been passing.
+
+“This,” said Mr. Losberne, speaking softly, but with great vehemence
+notwithstanding, “this is the lad, who, being accidently wounded by a
+spring-gun in some boyish trespass on Mr. What-d’ ye-call-him’s
+grounds, at the back here, comes to the house for assistance this
+morning, and is immediately laid hold of and maltreated, by that
+ingenious gentleman with the candle in his hand: who has placed his
+life in considerable danger, as I can professionally certify.”
+
+Messrs. Blathers and Duff looked at Mr. Giles, as he was thus
+recommended to their notice. The bewildered butler gazed from them
+towards Oliver, and from Oliver towards Mr. Losberne, with a most
+ludicrous mixture of fear and perplexity.
+
+“You don’t mean to deny that, I suppose?” said the doctor, laying
+Oliver gently down again.
+
+“It was all done for the—for the best, sir,” answered Giles. “I am sure
+I thought it was the boy, or I wouldn’t have meddled with him. I am not
+of an inhuman disposition, sir.”
+
+“Thought it was what boy?” inquired the senior officer.
+
+“The housebreaker’s boy, sir!” replied Giles. “They—they certainly had
+a boy.”
+
+“Well? Do you think so now?” inquired Blathers.
+
+“Think what, now?” replied Giles, looking vacantly at his questioner.
+
+“Think it’s the same boy, Stupid-head?” rejoined Blathers, impatiently.
+
+“I don’t know; I really don’t know,” said Giles, with a rueful
+countenance. “I couldn’t swear to him.”
+
+“What do you think?” asked Mr. Blathers.
+
+“I don’t know what to think,” replied poor Giles. “I don’t think it is
+the boy; indeed, I’m almost certain that it isn’t. You know it can’t
+be.”
+
+“Has this man been a-drinking, sir?” inquired Blathers, turning to the
+doctor.
+
+“What a precious muddle-headed chap you are!” said Duff, addressing Mr.
+Giles, with supreme contempt.
+
+Mr. Losberne had been feeling the patient’s pulse during this short
+dialogue; but he now rose from the chair by the bedside, and remarked,
+that if the officers had any doubts upon the subject, they would
+perhaps like to step into the next room, and have Brittles before them.
+
+Acting upon this suggestion, they adjourned to a neighbouring
+apartment, where Mr. Brittles, being called in, involved himself and
+his respected superior in such a wonderful maze of fresh contradictions
+and impossibilities, as tended to throw no particular light on
+anything, but the fact of his own strong mystification; except, indeed,
+his declarations that he shouldn’t know the real boy, if he were put
+before him that instant; that he had only taken Oliver to be he,
+because Mr. Giles had said he was; and that Mr. Giles had, five minutes
+previously, admitted in the kitchen, that he began to be very much
+afraid he had been a little too hasty.
+
+Among other ingenious surmises, the question was then raised, whether
+Mr. Giles had really hit anybody; and upon examination of the fellow
+pistol to that which he had fired, it turned out to have no more
+destructive loading than gunpowder and brown paper: a discovery which
+made a considerable impression on everybody but the doctor, who had
+drawn the ball about ten minutes before. Upon no one, however, did it
+make a greater impression than on Mr. Giles himself; who, after
+labouring, for some hours, under the fear of having mortally wounded a
+fellow-creature, eagerly caught at this new idea, and favoured it to
+the utmost. Finally, the officers, without troubling themselves very
+much about Oliver, left the Chertsey constable in the house, and took
+up their rest for that night in the town; promising to return the next
+morning.
+
+With the next morning, there came a rumour, that two men and a boy were
+in the cage at Kingston, who had been apprehended over night under
+suspicious circumstances; and to Kingston Messrs. Blathers and Duff
+journeyed accordingly. The suspicious circumstances, however, resolving
+themselves, on investigation, into the one fact, that they had been
+discovered sleeping under a haystack; which, although a great crime, is
+only punishable by imprisonment, and is, in the merciful eye of the
+English law, and its comprehensive love of all the King’s subjects,
+held to be no satisfactory proof, in the absence of all other evidence,
+that the sleeper, or sleepers, have committed burglary accompanied with
+violence, and have therefore rendered themselves liable to the
+punishment of death; Messrs. Blathers and Duff came back again, as wise
+as they went.
+
+In short, after some more examination, and a great deal more
+conversation, a neighbouring magistrate was readily induced to take the
+joint bail of Mrs. Maylie and Mr. Losberne for Oliver’s appearance if
+he should ever be called upon; and Blathers and Duff, being rewarded
+with a couple of guineas, returned to town with divided opinions on the
+subject of their expedition: the latter gentleman on a mature
+consideration of all the circumstances, inclining to the belief that
+the burglarious attempt had originated with the Family Pet; and the
+former being equally disposed to concede the full merit of it to the
+great Mr. Conkey Chickweed.
+
+Meanwhile, Oliver gradually throve and prospered under the united care
+of Mrs. Maylie, Rose, and the kind-hearted Mr. Losberne. If fervent
+prayers, gushing from hearts overcharged with gratitude, be heard in
+heaven—and if they be not, what prayers are!—the blessings which the
+orphan child called down upon them, sunk into their souls, diffusing
+peace and happiness.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXXII.
+OF THE HAPPY LIFE OLIVER BEGAN TO LEAD WITH HIS KIND FRIENDS
+
+
+Oliver’s ailings were neither slight nor few. In addition to the pain
+and delay attendant on a broken limb, his exposure to the wet and cold
+had brought on fever and ague: which hung about him for many weeks, and
+reduced him sadly. But, at length, he began, by slow degrees, to get
+better, and to be able to say sometimes, in a few tearful words, how
+deeply he felt the goodness of the two sweet ladies, and how ardently
+he hoped that when he grew strong and well again, he could do something
+to show his gratitude; only something, which would let them see the
+love and duty with which his breast was full; something, however
+slight, which would prove to them that their gentle kindness had not
+been cast away; but that the poor boy whom their charity had rescued
+from misery, or death, was eager to serve them with his whole heart and
+soul.
+
+“Poor fellow!” said Rose, when Oliver had been one day feebly
+endeavouring to utter the words of thankfulness that rose to his pale
+lips; “you shall have many opportunities of serving us, if you will. We
+are going into the country, and my aunt intends that you shall
+accompany us. The quiet place, the pure air, and all the pleasure and
+beauties of spring, will restore you in a few days. We will employ you
+in a hundred ways, when you can bear the trouble.”
+
+“The trouble!” cried Oliver. “Oh! dear lady, if I could but work for
+you; if I could only give you pleasure by watering your flowers, or
+watching your birds, or running up and down the whole day long, to make
+you happy; what would I give to do it!”
+
+“You shall give nothing at all,” said Miss Maylie, smiling; “for, as I
+told you before, we shall employ you in a hundred ways; and if you only
+take half the trouble to please us, that you promise now, you will make
+me very happy indeed.”
+
+“Happy, ma’am!” cried Oliver; “how kind of you to say so!”
+
+“You will make me happier than I can tell you,” replied the young lady.
+“To think that my dear good aunt should have been the means of rescuing
+any one from such sad misery as you have described to us, would be an
+unspeakable pleasure to me; but to know that the object of her goodness
+and compassion was sincerely grateful and attached, in consequence,
+would delight me, more than you can well imagine. Do you understand
+me?” she inquired, watching Oliver’s thoughtful face.
+
+“Oh yes, ma’am, yes!” replied Oliver eagerly; “but I was thinking that
+I am ungrateful now.”
+
+“To whom?” inquired the young lady.
+
+“To the kind gentleman, and the dear old nurse, who took so much care
+of me before,” rejoined Oliver. “If they knew how happy I am, they
+would be pleased, I am sure.”
+
+“I am sure they would,” rejoined Oliver’s benefactress; “and Mr.
+Losberne has already been kind enough to promise that when you are well
+enough to bear the journey, he will carry you to see them.”
+
+“Has he, ma’am?” cried Oliver, his face brightening with pleasure. “I
+don’t know what I shall do for joy when I see their kind faces once
+again!”
+
+In a short time Oliver was sufficiently recovered to undergo the
+fatigue of this expedition. One morning he and Mr. Losberne set out,
+accordingly, in a little carriage which belonged to Mrs. Maylie. When
+they came to Chertsey Bridge, Oliver turned very pale, and uttered a
+loud exclamation.
+
+“What’s the matter with the boy?” cried the doctor, as usual, all in a
+bustle. “Do you see anything—hear anything—feel anything—eh?”
+
+“That, sir,” cried Oliver, pointing out of the carriage window. “That
+house!”
+
+“Yes; well, what of it? Stop coachman. Pull up here,” cried the doctor.
+“What of the house, my man; eh?”
+
+“The thieves—the house they took me to!” whispered Oliver.
+
+“The devil it is!” cried the doctor. “Hallo, there! let me out!”
+
+But, before the coachman could dismount from his box, he had tumbled
+out of the coach, by some means or other; and, running down to the
+deserted tenement, began kicking at the door like a madman.
+
+“Halloa?” said a little ugly hump-backed man: opening the door so
+suddenly, that the doctor, from the very impetus of his last kick,
+nearly fell forward into the passage. “What’s the matter here?”
+
+“Matter!” exclaimed the other, collaring him, without a moment’s
+reflection. “A good deal. Robbery is the matter.”
+
+“There’ll be Murder the matter, too,” replied the hump-backed man,
+coolly, “if you don’t take your hands off. Do you hear me?”
+
+“I hear you,” said the doctor, giving his captive a hearty shake.
+
+“Where’s—confound the fellow, what’s his rascally name—Sikes; that’s
+it. Where’s Sikes, you thief?”
+
+The hump-backed man stared, as if in excess of amazement and
+indignation; then, twisting himself, dexterously, from the doctor’s
+grasp, growled forth a volley of horrid oaths, and retired into the
+house. Before he could shut the door, however, the doctor had passed
+into the parlour, without a word of parley.
+
+He looked anxiously round; not an article of furniture; not a vestige
+of anything, animate or inanimate; not even the position of the
+cupboards; answered Oliver’s description!
+
+“Now!” said the hump-backed man, who had watched him keenly, “what do
+you mean by coming into my house, in this violent way? Do you want to
+rob me, or to murder me? Which is it?”
+
+“Did you ever know a man come out to do either, in a chariot and pair,
+you ridiculous old vampire?” said the irritable doctor.
+
+“What do you want, then?” demanded the hunchback. “Will you take
+yourself off, before I do you a mischief? Curse you!”
+
+“As soon as I think proper,” said Mr. Losberne, looking into the other
+parlour; which, like the first, bore no resemblance whatever to
+Oliver’s account of it. “I shall find you out, some day, my friend.”
+
+“Will you?” sneered the ill-favoured cripple. “If you ever want me, I’m
+here. I haven’t lived here mad and all alone, for five-and-twenty
+years, to be scared by you. You shall pay for this; you shall pay for
+this.” And so saying, the mis-shapen little demon set up a yell, and
+danced upon the ground, as if wild with rage.
+
+“Stupid enough, this,” muttered the doctor to himself; “the boy must
+have made a mistake. Here! Put that in your pocket, and shut yourself
+up again.” With these words he flung the hunchback a piece of money,
+and returned to the carriage.
+
+The man followed to the chariot door, uttering the wildest imprecations
+and curses all the way; but as Mr. Losberne turned to speak to the
+driver, he looked into the carriage, and eyed Oliver for an instant
+with a glance so sharp and fierce and at the same time so furious and
+vindictive, that, waking or sleeping, he could not forget it for months
+afterwards. He continued to utter the most fearful imprecations, until
+the driver had resumed his seat; and when they were once more on their
+way, they could see him some distance behind: beating his feet upon the
+ground, and tearing his hair, in transports of real or pretended rage.
+
+“I am an ass!” said the doctor, after a long silence. “Did you know
+that before, Oliver?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“Then don’t forget it another time.”
+
+“An ass,” said the doctor again, after a further silence of some
+minutes. “Even if it had been the right place, and the right fellows
+had been there, what could I have done, single-handed? And if I had had
+assistance, I see no good that I should have done, except leading to my
+own exposure, and an unavoidable statement of the manner in which I
+have hushed up this business. That would have served me right, though.
+I am always involving myself in some scrape or other, by acting on
+impulse. It might have done me good.”
+
+Now, the fact was that the excellent doctor had never acted upon
+anything but impulse all through his life, and it was no bad compliment
+to the nature of the impulses which governed him, that so far from
+being involved in any peculiar troubles or misfortunes, he had the
+warmest respect and esteem of all who knew him. If the truth must be
+told, he was a little out of temper, for a minute or two, at being
+disappointed in procuring corroborative evidence of Oliver’s story on
+the very first occasion on which he had a chance of obtaining any. He
+soon came round again, however; and finding that Oliver’s replies to
+his questions, were still as straightforward and consistent, and still
+delivered with as much apparent sincerity and truth, as they had ever
+been, he made up his mind to attach full credence to them, from that
+time forth.
+
+As Oliver knew the name of the street in which Mr. Brownlow resided,
+they were enabled to drive straight thither. When the coach turned into
+it, his heart beat so violently, that he could scarcely draw his
+breath.
+
+“Now, my boy, which house is it?” inquired Mr. Losberne.
+
+“That! That!” replied Oliver, pointing eagerly out of the window. “The
+white house. Oh! make haste! Pray make haste! I feel as if I should
+die: it makes me tremble so.”
+
+“Come, come!” said the good doctor, patting him on the shoulder. “You
+will see them directly, and they will be overjoyed to find you safe and
+well.”
+
+“Oh! I hope so!” cried Oliver. “They were so good to me; so very, very
+good to me.”
+
+The coach rolled on. It stopped. No; that was the wrong house; the next
+door. It went on a few paces, and stopped again. Oliver looked up at
+the windows, with tears of happy expectation coursing down his face.
+
+Alas! the white house was empty, and there was a bill in the window.
+“To Let.”
+
+“Knock at the next door,” cried Mr. Losberne, taking Oliver’s arm in
+his. “What has become of Mr. Brownlow, who used to live in the
+adjoining house, do you know?”
+
+The servant did not know; but would go and inquire. She presently
+returned, and said, that Mr. Brownlow had sold off his goods, and gone
+to the West Indies, six weeks before. Oliver clasped his hands, and
+sank feebly backward.
+
+“Has his housekeeper gone too?” inquired Mr. Losberne, after a moment’s
+pause.
+
+“Yes, sir”; replied the servant. “The old gentleman, the housekeeper,
+and a gentleman who was a friend of Mr. Brownlow’s, all went together.”
+
+“Then turn towards home again,” said Mr. Losberne to the driver; “and
+don’t stop to bait the horses, till you get out of this confounded
+London!”
+
+“The book-stall keeper, sir?” said Oliver. “I know the way there. See
+him, pray, sir! Do see him!”
+
+“My poor boy, this is disappointment enough for one day,” said the
+doctor. “Quite enough for both of us. If we go to the book-stall
+keeper’s, we shall certainly find that he is dead, or has set his house
+on fire, or run away. No; home again straight!” And in obedience to the
+doctor’s impulse, home they went.
+
+This bitter disappointment caused Oliver much sorrow and grief, even in
+the midst of his happiness; for he had pleased himself, many times
+during his illness, with thinking of all that Mr. Brownlow and Mrs.
+Bedwin would say to him: and what delight it would be to tell them how
+many long days and nights he had passed in reflecting on what they had
+done for him, and in bewailing his cruel separation from them. The hope
+of eventually clearing himself with them, too, and explaining how he
+had been forced away, had buoyed him up, and sustained him, under many
+of his recent trials; and now, the idea that they should have gone so
+far, and carried with them the belief that he was an impostor and a
+robber—a belief which might remain uncontradicted to his dying day—was
+almost more than he could bear.
+
+The circumstance occasioned no alteration, however, in the behaviour of
+his benefactors. After another fortnight, when the fine warm weather
+had fairly begun, and every tree and flower was putting forth its young
+leaves and rich blossoms, they made preparations for quitting the house
+at Chertsey, for some months.
+
+Sending the plate, which had so excited Fagin’s cupidity, to the
+banker’s; and leaving Giles and another servant in care of the house,
+they departed to a cottage at some distance in the country, and took
+Oliver with them.
+
+Who can describe the pleasure and delight, the peace of mind and soft
+tranquillity, the sickly boy felt in the balmy air, and among the green
+hills and rich woods, of an inland village! Who can tell how scenes of
+peace and quietude sink into the minds of pain-worn dwellers in close
+and noisy places, and carry their own freshness, deep into their jaded
+hearts! Men who have lived in crowded, pent-up streets, through lives
+of toil, and who have never wished for change; men, to whom custom has
+indeed been second nature, and who have come almost to love each brick
+and stone that formed the narrow boundaries of their daily walks; even
+they, with the hand of death upon them, have been known to yearn at
+last for one short glimpse of Nature’s face; and, carried far from the
+scenes of their old pains and pleasures, have seemed to pass at once
+into a new state of being. Crawling forth, from day to day, to some
+green sunny spot, they have had such memories wakened up within them by
+the sight of the sky, and hill and plain, and glistening water, that a
+foretaste of heaven itself has soothed their quick decline, and they
+have sunk into their tombs, as peacefully as the sun whose setting they
+watched from their lonely chamber window but a few hours before, faded
+from their dim and feeble sight! The memories which peaceful country
+scenes call up, are not of this world, nor of its thoughts and hopes.
+Their gentle influence may teach us how to weave fresh garlands for the
+graves of those we loved: may purify our thoughts, and bear down before
+it old enmity and hatred; but beneath all this, there lingers, in the
+least reflective mind, a vague and half-formed consciousness of having
+held such feelings long before, in some remote and distant time, which
+calls up solemn thoughts of distant times to come, and bends down pride
+and worldliness beneath it.
+
+It was a lovely spot to which they repaired. Oliver, whose days had
+been spent among squalid crowds, and in the midst of noise and
+brawling, seemed to enter on a new existence there. The rose and
+honeysuckle clung to the cottage walls; the ivy crept round the trunks
+of the trees; and the garden-flowers perfumed the air with delicious
+odours. Hard by, was a little churchyard; not crowded with tall
+unsightly gravestones, but full of humble mounds, covered with fresh
+turf and moss: beneath which, the old people of the village lay at
+rest. Oliver often wandered here; and, thinking of the wretched grave
+in which his mother lay, would sometimes sit him down and sob unseen;
+but, when he raised his eyes to the deep sky overhead, he would cease
+to think of her as lying in the ground, and would weep for her, sadly,
+but without pain.
+
+It was a happy time. The days were peaceful and serene; the nights
+brought with them neither fear nor care; no languishing in a wretched
+prison, or associating with wretched men; nothing but pleasant and
+happy thoughts. Every morning he went to a white-headed old gentleman,
+who lived near the little church: who taught him to read better, and to
+write: and who spoke so kindly, and took such pains, that Oliver could
+never try enough to please him. Then, he would walk with Mrs. Maylie
+and Rose, and hear them talk of books; or perhaps sit near them, in
+some shady place, and listen whilst the young lady read: which he could
+have done, until it grew too dark to see the letters. Then, he had his
+own lesson for the next day to prepare; and at this, he would work
+hard, in a little room which looked into the garden, till evening came
+slowly on, when the ladies would walk out again, and he with them:
+listening with such pleasure to all they said: and so happy if they
+wanted a flower that he could climb to reach, or had forgotten anything
+he could run to fetch: that he could never be quick enough about it.
+When it became quite dark, and they returned home, the young lady would
+sit down to the piano, and play some pleasant air, or sing, in a low
+and gentle voice, some old song which it pleased her aunt to hear.
+There would be no candles lighted at such times as these; and Oliver
+would sit by one of the windows, listening to the sweet music, in a
+perfect rapture.
+
+And when Sunday came, how differently the day was spent, from any way
+in which he had ever spent it yet! and how happily too; like all the
+other days in that most happy time! There was the little church, in the
+morning, with the green leaves fluttering at the windows: the birds
+singing without: and the sweet-smelling air stealing in at the low
+porch, and filling the homely building with its fragrance. The poor
+people were so neat and clean, and knelt so reverently in prayer, that
+it seemed a pleasure, not a tedious duty, their assembling there
+together; and though the singing might be rude, it was real, and
+sounded more musical (to Oliver’s ears at least) than any he had ever
+heard in church before. Then, there were the walks as usual, and many
+calls at the clean houses of the labouring men; and at night, Oliver
+read a chapter or two from the Bible, which he had been studying all
+the week, and in the performance of which duty he felt more proud and
+pleased, than if he had been the clergyman himself.
+
+In the morning, Oliver would be a-foot by six o’clock, roaming the
+fields, and plundering the hedges, far and wide, for nosegays of wild
+flowers, with which he would return laden, home; and which it took
+great care and consideration to arrange, to the best advantage, for the
+embellishment of the breakfast-table. There was fresh groundsel, too,
+for Miss Maylie’s birds, with which Oliver, who had been studying the
+subject under the able tuition of the village clerk, would decorate the
+cages, in the most approved taste. When the birds were made all spruce
+and smart for the day, there was usually some little commission of
+charity to execute in the village; or, failing that, there was rare
+cricket-playing, sometimes, on the green; or, failing that, there was
+always something to do in the garden, or about the plants, to which
+Oliver (who had studied this science also, under the same master, who
+was a gardener by trade,) applied himself with hearty good-will, until
+Miss Rose made her appearance: when there were a thousand commendations
+to be bestowed on all he had done.
+
+So three months glided away; three months which, in the life of the
+most blessed and favoured of mortals, might have been unmingled
+happiness, and which, in Oliver’s were true felicity. With the purest
+and most amiable generosity on one side; and the truest, warmest,
+soul-felt gratitude on the other; it is no wonder that, by the end of
+that short time, Oliver Twist had become completely domesticated with
+the old lady and her niece, and that the fervent attachment of his
+young and sensitive heart, was repaid by their pride in, and attachment
+to, himself.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXXIII.
+WHEREIN THE HAPPINESS OF OLIVER AND HIS FRIENDS, EXPERIENCES A SUDDEN
+CHECK
+
+
+Spring flew swiftly by, and summer came. If the village had been
+beautiful at first it was now in the full glow and luxuriance of its
+richness. The great trees, which had looked shrunken and bare in the
+earlier months, had now burst into strong life and health; and
+stretching forth their green arms over the thirsty ground, converted
+open and naked spots into choice nooks, where was a deep and pleasant
+shade from which to look upon the wide prospect, steeped in sunshine,
+which lay stretched beyond. The earth had donned her mantle of
+brightest green; and shed her richest perfumes abroad. It was the prime
+and vigour of the year; all things were glad and flourishing.
+
+Still, the same quiet life went on at the little cottage, and the same
+cheerful serenity prevailed among its inmates. Oliver had long since
+grown stout and healthy; but health or sickness made no difference in
+his warm feelings of a great many people. He was still the same gentle,
+attached, affectionate creature that he had been when pain and
+suffering had wasted his strength, and when he was dependent for every
+slight attention, and comfort on those who tended him.
+
+One beautiful night, when they had taken a longer walk than was
+customary with them: for the day had been unusually warm, and there was
+a brilliant moon, and a light wind had sprung up, which was unusually
+refreshing. Rose had been in high spirits, too, and they had walked on,
+in merry conversation, until they had far exceeded their ordinary
+bounds. Mrs. Maylie being fatigued, they returned more slowly home. The
+young lady merely throwing off her simple bonnet, sat down to the piano
+as usual. After running abstractedly over the keys for a few minutes,
+she fell into a low and very solemn air; and as she played it, they
+heard a sound as if she were weeping.
+
+“Rose, my dear!” said the elder lady.
+
+Rose made no reply, but played a little quicker, as though the words
+had roused her from some painful thoughts.
+
+“Rose, my love!” cried Mrs. Maylie, rising hastily, and bending over
+her. “What is this? In tears! My dear child, what distresses you?”
+
+“Nothing, aunt; nothing,” replied the young lady. “I don’t know what it
+is; I can’t describe it; but I feel—”
+
+“Not ill, my love?” interposed Mrs. Maylie.
+
+“No, no! Oh, not ill!” replied Rose: shuddering as though some deadly
+chillness were passing over her, while she spoke; “I shall be better
+presently. Close the window, pray!”
+
+Oliver hastened to comply with her request. The young lady, making an
+effort to recover her cheerfulness, strove to play some livelier tune;
+but her fingers dropped powerless over the keys. Covering her face with
+her hands, she sank upon a sofa, and gave vent to the tears which she
+was now unable to repress.
+
+“My child!” said the elderly lady, folding her arms about her, “I never
+saw you so before.”
+
+“I would not alarm you if I could avoid it,” rejoined Rose; “but indeed
+I have tried very hard, and cannot help this. I fear I _am_ ill, aunt.”
+
+She was, indeed; for, when candles were brought, they saw that in the
+very short time which had elapsed since their return home, the hue of
+her countenance had changed to a marble whiteness. Its expression had
+lost nothing of its beauty; but it was changed; and there was an
+anxious haggard look about the gentle face, which it had never worn
+before. Another minute, and it was suffused with a crimson flush: and a
+heavy wildness came over the soft blue eye. Again this disappeared,
+like the shadow thrown by a passing cloud; and she was once more deadly
+pale.
+
+Oliver, who watched the old lady anxiously, observed that she was
+alarmed by these appearances; and so in truth, was he; but seeing that
+she affected to make light of them, he endeavoured to do the same, and
+they so far succeeded, that when Rose was persuaded by her aunt to
+retire for the night, she was in better spirits; and appeared even in
+better health: assuring them that she felt certain she should rise in
+the morning, quite well.
+
+“I hope,” said Oliver, when Mrs. Maylie returned, “that nothing is the
+matter? She don’t look well to-night, but—”
+
+The old lady motioned to him not to speak; and sitting herself down in
+a dark corner of the room, remained silent for some time. At length,
+she said, in a trembling voice:
+
+“I hope not, Oliver. I have been very happy with her for some years:
+too happy, perhaps. It may be time that I should meet with some
+misfortune; but I hope it is not this.”
+
+“What?” inquired Oliver.
+
+“The heavy blow,” said the old lady, “of losing the dear girl who has
+so long been my comfort and happiness.”
+
+“Oh! God forbid!” exclaimed Oliver, hastily.
+
+“Amen to that, my child!” said the old lady, wringing her hands.
+
+“Surely there is no danger of anything so dreadful?” said Oliver. “Two
+hours ago, she was quite well.”
+
+“She is very ill now,” rejoined Mrs. Maylies; “and will be worse, I am
+sure. My dear, dear Rose! Oh, what shall I do without her!”
+
+She gave way to such great grief, that Oliver, suppressing his own
+emotion, ventured to remonstrate with her; and to beg, earnestly, that,
+for the sake of the dear young lady herself, she would be more calm.
+
+“And consider, ma’am,” said Oliver, as the tears forced themselves into
+his eyes, despite of his efforts to the contrary. “Oh! consider how
+young and good she is, and what pleasure and comfort she gives to all
+about her. I am sure—certain—quite certain—that, for your sake, who are
+so good yourself; and for her own; and for the sake of all she makes so
+happy; she will not die. Heaven will never let her die so young.”
+
+“Hush!” said Mrs. Maylie, laying her hand on Oliver’s head. “You think
+like a child, poor boy. But you teach me my duty, notwithstanding. I
+had forgotten it for a moment, Oliver, but I hope I may be pardoned,
+for I am old, and have seen enough of illness and death to know the
+agony of separation from the objects of our love. I have seen enough,
+too, to know that it is not always the youngest and best who are spared
+to those that love them; but this should give us comfort in our sorrow;
+for Heaven is just; and such things teach us, impressively, that there
+is a brighter world than this; and that the passage to it is speedy.
+God’s will be done! I love her; and He knows how well!”
+
+Oliver was surprised to see that as Mrs. Maylie said these words, she
+checked her lamentations as though by one effort; and drawing herself
+up as she spoke, became composed and firm. He was still more astonished
+to find that this firmness lasted; and that, under all the care and
+watching which ensued, Mrs. Maylie was ever ready and collected:
+performing all the duties which had devolved upon her, steadily, and,
+to all external appearances, even cheerfully. But he was young, and did
+not know what strong minds are capable of, under trying circumstances.
+How should he, when their possessors so seldom know themselves?
+
+An anxious night ensued. When morning came, Mrs. Maylie’s predictions
+were but too well verified. Rose was in the first stage of a high and
+dangerous fever.
+
+“We must be active, Oliver, and not give way to useless grief,” said
+Mrs. Maylie, laying her finger on her lip, as she looked steadily into
+his face; “this letter must be sent, with all possible expedition, to
+Mr. Losberne. It must be carried to the market-town: which is not more
+than four miles off, by the footpath across the field: and thence
+dispatched, by an express on horseback, straight to Chertsey. The
+people at the inn will undertake to do this: and I can trust to you to
+see it done, I know.”
+
+Oliver could make no reply, but looked his anxiety to be gone at once.
+
+“Here is another letter,” said Mrs. Maylie, pausing to reflect; “but
+whether to send it now, or wait until I see how Rose goes on, I
+scarcely know. I would not forward it, unless I feared the worst.”
+
+“Is it for Chertsey, too, ma’am?” inquired Oliver; impatient to execute
+his commission, and holding out his trembling hand for the letter.
+
+“No,” replied the old lady, giving it to him mechanically. Oliver
+glanced at it, and saw that it was directed to Harry Maylie, Esquire,
+at some great lord’s house in the country; where, he could not make
+out.
+
+“Shall it go, ma’am?” asked Oliver, looking up, impatiently.
+
+“I think not,” replied Mrs. Maylie, taking it back. “I will wait until
+to-morrow.”
+
+With these words, she gave Oliver her purse, and he started off,
+without more delay, at the greatest speed he could muster.
+
+Swiftly he ran across the fields, and down the little lanes which
+sometimes divided them: now almost hidden by the high corn on either
+side, and now emerging on an open field, where the mowers and haymakers
+were busy at their work: nor did he stop once, save now and then, for a
+few seconds, to recover breath, until he came, in a great heat, and
+covered with dust, on the little market-place of the market-town.
+
+Here he paused, and looked about for the inn. There were a white bank,
+and a red brewery, and a yellow town-hall; and in one corner there was
+a large house, with all the wood about it painted green: before which
+was the sign of “The George.” To this he hastened, as soon as it caught
+his eye.
+
+He spoke to a postboy who was dozing under the gateway; and who, after
+hearing what he wanted, referred him to the ostler; who after hearing
+all he had to say again, referred him to the landlord; who was a tall
+gentleman in a blue neckcloth, a white hat, drab breeches, and boots
+with tops to match, leaning against a pump by the stable-door, picking
+his teeth with a silver toothpick.
+
+This gentleman walked with much deliberation into the bar to make out
+the bill: which took a long time making out: and after it was ready,
+and paid, a horse had to be saddled, and a man to be dressed, which
+took up ten good minutes more. Meanwhile Oliver was in such a desperate
+state of impatience and anxiety, that he felt as if he could have
+jumped upon the horse himself, and galloped away, full tear, to the
+next stage. At length, all was ready; and the little parcel having been
+handed up, with many injunctions and entreaties for its speedy
+delivery, the man set spurs to his horse, and rattling over the uneven
+paving of the market-place, was out of the town, and galloping along
+the turnpike-road, in a couple of minutes.
+
+As it was something to feel certain that assistance was sent for, and
+that no time had been lost, Oliver hurried up the inn-yard, with a
+somewhat lighter heart. He was turning out of the gateway when he
+accidently stumbled against a tall man wrapped in a cloak, who was at
+that moment coming out of the inn door.
+
+“Hah!” cried the man, fixing his eyes on Oliver, and suddenly
+recoiling. “What the devil’s this?”
+
+“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Oliver; “I was in a great hurry to get
+home, and didn’t see you were coming.”
+
+“Death!” muttered the man to himself, glaring at the boy with his large
+dark eyes. “Who would have thought it! Grind him to ashes! He’d start
+up from a stone coffin, to come in my way!”
+
+“I am sorry,” stammered Oliver, confused by the strange man’s wild
+look. “I hope I have not hurt you!”
+
+“Rot you!” murmured the man, in a horrible passion; between his
+clenched teeth; “if I had only had the courage to say the word, I might
+have been free of you in a night. Curses on your head, and black death
+on your heart, you imp! What are you doing here?”
+
+The man shook his fist, as he uttered these words incoherently. He
+advanced towards Oliver, as if with the intention of aiming a blow at
+him, but fell violently on the ground: writhing and foaming, in a fit.
+
+Oliver gazed, for a moment, at the struggles of the madman (for such he
+supposed him to be); and then darted into the house for help. Having
+seen him safely carried into the hotel, he turned his face homewards,
+running as fast as he could, to make up for lost time: and recalling
+with a great deal of astonishment and some fear, the extraordinary
+behaviour of the person from whom he had just parted.
+
+The circumstance did not dwell in his recollection long, however: for
+when he reached the cottage, there was enough to occupy his mind, and
+to drive all considerations of self completely from his memory.
+
+Rose Maylie had rapidly grown worse; before mid-night she was
+delirious. A medical practitioner, who resided on the spot, was in
+constant attendance upon her; and after first seeing the patient, he
+had taken Mrs. Maylie aside, and pronounced her disorder to be one of a
+most alarming nature. “In fact,” he said, “it would be little short of
+a miracle, if she recovered.”
+
+How often did Oliver start from his bed that night, and stealing out,
+with noiseless footstep, to the staircase, listen for the slightest
+sound from the sick chamber! How often did a tremble shake his frame,
+and cold drops of terror start upon his brow, when a sudden trampling
+of feet caused him to fear that something too dreadful to think of, had
+even then occurred! And what had been the fervency of all the prayers
+he had ever muttered, compared with those he poured forth, now, in the
+agony and passion of his supplication for the life and health of the
+gentle creature, who was tottering on the deep grave’s verge!
+
+Oh! the suspense, the fearful, acute suspense, of standing idly by
+while the life of one we dearly love, is trembling in the balance! Oh!
+the racking thoughts that crowd upon the mind, and make the heart beat
+violently, and the breath come thick, by the force of the images they
+conjure up before it; the desperate anxiety _to be doing something_ to
+relieve the pain, or lessen the danger, which we have no power to
+alleviate; the sinking of soul and spirit, which the sad remembrance of
+our helplessness produces; what tortures can equal these; what
+reflections or endeavours can, in the full tide and fever of the time,
+allay them!
+
+Morning came; and the little cottage was lonely and still. People spoke
+in whispers; anxious faces appeared at the gate, from time to time;
+women and children went away in tears. All the livelong day, and for
+hours after it had grown dark, Oliver paced softly up and down the
+garden, raising his eyes every instant to the sick chamber, and
+shuddering to see the darkened window, looking as if death lay
+stretched inside. Late that night, Mr. Losberne arrived. “It is hard,”
+said the good doctor, turning away as he spoke; “so young; so much
+beloved; but there is very little hope.”
+
+Another morning. The sun shone brightly; as brightly as if it looked
+upon no misery or care; and, with every leaf and flower in full bloom
+about her; with life, and health, and sounds and sights of joy,
+surrounding her on every side: the fair young creature lay, wasting
+fast. Oliver crept away to the old churchyard, and sitting down on one
+of the green mounds, wept and prayed for her, in silence.
+
+There was such peace and beauty in the scene; so much of brightness and
+mirth in the sunny landscape; such blithesome music in the songs of the
+summer birds; such freedom in the rapid flight of the rook, careering
+overhead; so much of life and joyousness in all; that, when the boy
+raised his aching eyes, and looked about, the thought instinctively
+occurred to him, that this was not a time for death; that Rose could
+surely never die when humbler things were all so glad and gay; that
+graves were for cold and cheerless winter: not for sunlight and
+fragrance. He almost thought that shrouds were for the old and
+shrunken; and that they never wrapped the young and graceful form in
+their ghastly folds.
+
+A knell from the church bell broke harshly on these youthful thoughts.
+Another! Again! It was tolling for the funeral service. A group of
+humble mourners entered the gate: wearing white favours; for the corpse
+was young. They stood uncovered by a grave; and there was a mother—a
+mother once—among the weeping train. But the sun shone brightly, and
+the birds sang on.
+
+Oliver turned homeward, thinking on the many kindnesses he had received
+from the young lady, and wishing that the time could come again, that
+he might never cease showing her how grateful and attached he was. He
+had no cause for self-reproach on the score of neglect, or want of
+thought, for he had been devoted to her service; and yet a hundred
+little occasions rose up before him, on which he fancied he might have
+been more zealous, and more earnest, and wished he had been. We need be
+careful how we deal with those about us, when every death carries to
+some small circle of survivors, thoughts of so much omitted, and so
+little done—of so many things forgotten, and so many more which might
+have been repaired! There is no remorse so deep as that which is
+unavailing; if we would be spared its tortures, let us remember this,
+in time.
+
+When he reached home Mrs. Maylie was sitting in the little parlour.
+Oliver’s heart sank at sight of her; for she had never left the bedside
+of her niece; and he trembled to think what change could have driven
+her away. He learnt that she had fallen into a deep sleep, from which
+she would waken, either to recovery and life, or to bid them farewell,
+and die.
+
+They sat, listening, and afraid to speak, for hours. The untasted meal
+was removed, with looks which showed that their thoughts were
+elsewhere, they watched the sun as he sank lower and lower, and, at
+length, cast over sky and earth those brilliant hues which herald his
+departure. Their quick ears caught the sound of an approaching
+footstep. They both involuntarily darted to the door, as Mr. Losberne
+entered.
+
+“What of Rose?” cried the old lady. “Tell me at once! I can bear it;
+anything but suspense! Oh, tell me! in the name of Heaven!”
+
+“You must compose yourself,” said the doctor supporting her. “Be calm,
+my dear ma’am, pray.”
+
+“Let me go, in God’s name! My dear child! She is dead! She is dying!”
+
+“No!” cried the doctor, passionately. “As He is good and merciful, she
+will live to bless us all, for years to come.”
+
+The lady fell upon her knees, and tried to fold her hands together; but
+the energy which had supported her so long, fled up to Heaven with her
+first thanksgiving; and she sank into the friendly arms which were
+extended to receive her.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXXIV.
+CONTAINS SOME INTRODUCTORY PARTICULARS RELATIVE TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN
+WHO NOW ARRIVES UPON THE SCENE; AND A NEW ADVENTURE WHICH HAPPENED TO
+OLIVER
+
+
+It was almost too much happiness to bear. Oliver felt stunned and
+stupefied by the unexpected intelligence; he could not weep, or speak,
+or rest. He had scarcely the power of understanding anything that had
+passed, until, after a long ramble in the quiet evening air, a burst of
+tears came to his relief, and he seemed to awaken, all at once, to a
+full sense of the joyful change that had occurred, and the almost
+insupportable load of anguish which had been taken from his breast.
+
+The night was fast closing in, when he returned homeward: laden with
+flowers which he had culled, with peculiar care, for the adornment of
+the sick chamber. As he walked briskly along the road, he heard behind
+him, the noise of some vehicle, approaching at a furious pace. Looking
+round, he saw that it was a post-chaise, driven at great speed; and as
+the horses were galloping, and the road was narrow, he stood leaning
+against a gate until it should have passed him.
+
+As it dashed on, Oliver caught a glimpse of a man in a white nightcap,
+whose face seemed familiar to him, although his view was so brief that
+he could not identify the person. In another second or two, the
+nightcap was thrust out of the chaise-window, and a stentorian voice
+bellowed to the driver to stop: which he did, as soon as he could pull
+up his horses. Then, the nightcap once again appeared: and the same
+voice called Oliver by his name.
+
+“Here!” cried the voice. “Oliver, what’s the news? Miss Rose! Master
+O-li-ver!”
+
+“Is it you, Giles?” cried Oliver, running up to the chaise-door.
+
+Giles popped out his nightcap again, preparatory to making some reply,
+when he was suddenly pulled back by a young gentleman who occupied the
+other corner of the chaise, and who eagerly demanded what was the news.
+
+“In a word!” cried the gentleman, “Better or worse?”
+
+“Better—much better!” replied Oliver, hastily.
+
+“Thank Heaven!” exclaimed the gentleman. “You are sure?”
+
+“Quite, sir,” replied Oliver. “The change took place only a few hours
+ago; and Mr. Losberne says, that all danger is at an end.”
+
+The gentleman said not another word, but, opening the chaise-door,
+leaped out, and taking Oliver hurriedly by the arm, led him aside.
+
+“You are quite certain? There is no possibility of any mistake on your
+part, my boy, is there?” demanded the gentleman in a tremulous voice.
+“Do not deceive me, by awakening hopes that are not to be fulfilled.”
+
+“I would not for the world, sir,” replied Oliver. “Indeed you may
+believe me. Mr. Losberne’s words were, that she would live to bless us
+all for many years to come. I heard him say so.”
+
+The tears stood in Oliver’s eyes as he recalled the scene which was the
+beginning of so much happiness; and the gentleman turned his face away,
+and remained silent, for some minutes. Oliver thought he heard him sob,
+more than once; but he feared to interrupt him by any fresh remark—for
+he could well guess what his feelings were—and so stood apart, feigning
+to be occupied with his nosegay.
+
+All this time, Mr. Giles, with the white nightcap on, had been sitting
+on the steps of the chaise, supporting an elbow on each knee, and
+wiping his eyes with a blue cotton pocket-handkerchief dotted with
+white spots. That the honest fellow had not been feigning emotion, was
+abundantly demonstrated by the very red eyes with which he regarded the
+young gentleman, when he turned round and addressed him.
+
+“I think you had better go on to my mother’s in the chaise, Giles,”
+said he. “I would rather walk slowly on, so as to gain a little time
+before I see her. You can say I am coming.”
+
+“I beg your pardon, Mr. Harry,” said Giles: giving a final polish to
+his ruffled countenance with the handkerchief; “but if you would leave
+the postboy to say that, I should be very much obliged to you. It
+wouldn’t be proper for the maids to see me in this state, sir; I should
+never have any more authority with them if they did.”
+
+“Well,” rejoined Harry Maylie, smiling, “you can do as you like. Let
+him go on with the luggage, if you wish it, and do you follow with us.
+Only first exchange that nightcap for some more appropriate covering,
+or we shall be taken for madmen.”
+
+Mr. Giles, reminded of his unbecoming costume, snatched off and
+pocketed his nightcap; and substituted a hat, of grave and sober shape,
+which he took out of the chaise. This done, the postboy drove off;
+Giles, Mr. Maylie, and Oliver, followed at their leisure.
+
+As they walked along, Oliver glanced from time to time with much
+interest and curiosity at the new comer. He seemed about
+five-and-twenty years of age, and was of the middle height; his
+countenance was frank and handsome; and his demeanor easy and
+prepossessing. Notwithstanding the difference between youth and age, he
+bore so strong a likeness to the old lady, that Oliver would have had
+no great difficulty in imagining their relationship, if he had not
+already spoken of her as his mother.
+
+Mrs. Maylie was anxiously waiting to receive her son when he reached
+the cottage. The meeting did not take place without great emotion on
+both sides.
+
+“Mother!” whispered the young man; “why did you not write before?”
+
+“I did,” replied Mrs. Maylie; “but, on reflection, I determined to keep
+back the letter until I had heard Mr. Losberne’s opinion.”
+
+“But why,” said the young man, “why run the chance of that occurring
+which so nearly happened? If Rose had—I cannot utter that word now—if
+this illness had terminated differently, how could you ever have
+forgiven yourself! How could I ever have know happiness again!”
+
+“If that _had_ been the case, Harry,” said Mrs. Maylie, “I fear your
+happiness would have been effectually blighted, and that your arrival
+here, a day sooner or a day later, would have been of very, very little
+import.”
+
+“And who can wonder if it be so, mother?” rejoined the young man; “or
+why should I say, _if_?—It is—it is—you know it, mother—you must know
+it!”
+
+“I know that she deserves the best and purest love the heart of man can
+offer,” said Mrs. Maylie; “I know that the devotion and affection of
+her nature require no ordinary return, but one that shall be deep and
+lasting. If I did not feel this, and know, besides, that a changed
+behaviour in one she loved would break her heart, I should not feel my
+task so difficult of performance, or have to encounter so many
+struggles in my own bosom, when I take what seems to me to be the
+strict line of duty.”
+
+“This is unkind, mother,” said Harry. “Do you still suppose that I am a
+boy ignorant of my own mind, and mistaking the impulses of my own
+soul?”
+
+“I think, my dear son,” returned Mrs. Maylie, laying her hand upon his
+shoulder, “that youth has many generous impulses which do not last; and
+that among them are some, which, being gratified, become only the more
+fleeting. Above all, I think” said the lady, fixing her eyes on her
+son’s face, “that if an enthusiastic, ardent, and ambitious man marry a
+wife on whose name there is a stain, which, though it originate in no
+fault of hers, may be visited by cold and sordid people upon her, and
+upon his children also: and, in exact proportion to his success in the
+world, be cast in his teeth, and made the subject of sneers against
+him: he may, no matter how generous and good his nature, one day repent
+of the connection he formed in early life. And she may have the pain of
+knowing that he does so.”
+
+“Mother,” said the young man, impatiently, “he would be a selfish
+brute, unworthy alike of the name of man and of the woman you describe,
+who acted thus.”
+
+“You think so now, Harry,” replied his mother.
+
+“And ever will!” said the young man. “The mental agony I have suffered,
+during the last two days, wrings from me the avowal to you of a passion
+which, as you well know, is not one of yesterday, nor one I have
+lightly formed. On Rose, sweet, gentle girl! my heart is set, as firmly
+as ever heart of man was set on woman. I have no thought, no view, no
+hope in life, beyond her; and if you oppose me in this great stake, you
+take my peace and happiness in your hands, and cast them to the wind.
+Mother, think better of this, and of me, and do not disregard the
+happiness of which you seem to think so little.”
+
+“Harry,” said Mrs. Maylie, “it is because I think so much of warm and
+sensitive hearts, that I would spare them from being wounded. But we
+have said enough, and more than enough, on this matter, just now.”
+
+“Let it rest with Rose, then,” interposed Harry. “You will not press
+these overstrained opinions of yours, so far, as to throw any obstacle
+in my way?”
+
+“I will not,” rejoined Mrs. Maylie; “but I would have you consider—”
+
+“I _have_ considered!” was the impatient reply; “Mother, I have
+considered, years and years. I have considered, ever since I have been
+capable of serious reflection. My feelings remain unchanged, as they
+ever will; and why should I suffer the pain of a delay in giving them
+vent, which can be productive of no earthly good? No! Before I leave
+this place, Rose shall hear me.”
+
+“She shall,” said Mrs. Maylie.
+
+“There is something in your manner, which would almost imply that she
+will hear me coldly, mother,” said the young man.
+
+“Not coldly,” rejoined the old lady; “far from it.”
+
+“How then?” urged the young man. “She has formed no other attachment?”
+
+“No, indeed,” replied his mother; “you have, or I mistake, too strong a
+hold on her affections already. What I would say,” resumed the old
+lady, stopping her son as he was about to speak, “is this. Before you
+stake your all on this chance; before you suffer yourself to be carried
+to the highest point of hope; reflect for a few moments, my dear child,
+on Rose’s history, and consider what effect the knowledge of her
+doubtful birth may have on her decision: devoted as she is to us, with
+all the intensity of her noble mind, and with that perfect sacrifice of
+self which, in all matters, great or trifling, has always been her
+characteristic.”
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+“That I leave you to discover,” replied Mrs. Maylie. “I must go back to
+her. God bless you!”
+
+“I shall see you again to-night?” said the young man, eagerly.
+
+“By and by,” replied the lady; “when I leave Rose.”
+
+“You will tell her I am here?” said Harry.
+
+“Of course,” replied Mrs. Maylie.
+
+“And say how anxious I have been, and how much I have suffered, and how
+I long to see her. You will not refuse to do this, mother?”
+
+“No,” said the old lady; “I will tell her all.” And pressing her son’s
+hand, affectionately, she hastened from the room.
+
+Mr. Losberne and Oliver had remained at another end of the apartment
+while this hurried conversation was proceeding. The former now held out
+his hand to Harry Maylie; and hearty salutations were exchanged between
+them. The doctor then communicated, in reply to multifarious questions
+from his young friend, a precise account of his patient’s situation;
+which was quite as consolatory and full of promise, as Oliver’s
+statement had encouraged him to hope; and to the whole of which, Mr.
+Giles, who affected to be busy about the luggage, listened with greedy
+ears.
+
+“Have you shot anything particular, lately, Giles?” inquired the
+doctor, when he had concluded.
+
+“Nothing particular, sir,” replied Mr. Giles, colouring up to the eyes.
+
+“Nor catching any thieves, nor identifying any house-breakers?” said
+the doctor.
+
+“None at all, sir,” replied Mr. Giles, with much gravity.
+
+“Well,” said the doctor, “I am sorry to hear it, because you do that
+sort of thing admirably. Pray, how is Brittles?”
+
+“The boy is very well, sir,” said Mr. Giles, recovering his usual tone
+of patronage; “and sends his respectful duty, sir.”
+
+“That’s well,” said the doctor. “Seeing you here, reminds me, Mr.
+Giles, that on the day before that on which I was called away so
+hurriedly, I executed, at the request of your good mistress, a small
+commission in your favour. Just step into this corner a moment, will
+you?”
+
+Mr. Giles walked into the corner with much importance, and some wonder,
+and was honoured with a short whispering conference with the doctor, on
+the termination of which, he made a great many bows, and retired with
+steps of unusual stateliness. The subject matter of this conference was
+not disclosed in the parlour, but the kitchen was speedily enlightened
+concerning it; for Mr. Giles walked straight thither, and having called
+for a mug of ale, announced, with an air of majesty, which was highly
+effective, that it had pleased his mistress, in consideration of his
+gallant behaviour on the occasion of that attempted robbery, to
+deposit, in the local savings-bank, the sum of five-and-twenty pounds,
+for his sole use and benefit. At this, the two women-servants lifted up
+their hands and eyes, and supposed that Mr. Giles, pulling out his
+shirt-frill, replied, “No, no”; and that if they observed that he was
+at all haughty to his inferiors, he would thank them to tell him so.
+And then he made a great many other remarks, no less illustrative of
+his humility, which were received with equal favour and applause, and
+were, withal, as original and as much to the purpose, as the remarks of
+great men commonly are.
+
+Above stairs, the remainder of the evening passed cheerfully away; for
+the doctor was in high spirits; and however fatigued or thoughtful
+Harry Maylie might have been at first, he was not proof against the
+worthy gentleman’s good humour, which displayed itself in a great
+variety of sallies and professional recollections, and an abundance of
+small jokes, which struck Oliver as being the drollest things he had
+ever heard, and caused him to laugh proportionately; to the evident
+satisfaction of the doctor, who laughed immoderately at himself, and
+made Harry laugh almost as heartily, by the very force of sympathy. So,
+they were as pleasant a party as, under the circumstances, they could
+well have been; and it was late before they retired, with light and
+thankful hearts, to take that rest of which, after the doubt and
+suspense they had recently undergone, they stood much in need.
+
+Oliver rose next morning, in better heart, and went about his usual
+occupations, with more hope and pleasure than he had known for many
+days. The birds were once more hung out, to sing, in their old places;
+and the sweetest wild flowers that could be found, were once more
+gathered to gladden Rose with their beauty. The melancholy which had
+seemed to the sad eyes of the anxious boy to hang, for days past, over
+every object, beautiful as all were, was dispelled by magic. The dew
+seemed to sparkle more brightly on the green leaves; the air to rustle
+among them with a sweeter music; and the sky itself to look more blue
+and bright. Such is the influence which the condition of our own
+thoughts, exercise, even over the appearance of external objects. Men
+who look on nature, and their fellow-men, and cry that all is dark and
+gloomy, are in the right; but the sombre colours are reflections from
+their own jaundiced eyes and hearts. The real hues are delicate, and
+need a clearer vision.
+
+It is worthy of remark, and Oliver did not fail to note it at the time,
+that his morning expeditions were no longer made alone. Harry Maylie,
+after the very first morning when he met Oliver coming laden home, was
+seized with such a passion for flowers, and displayed such a taste in
+their arrangement, as left his young companion far behind. If Oliver
+were behindhand in these respects, he knew where the best were to be
+found; and morning after morning they scoured the country together, and
+brought home the fairest that blossomed. The window of the young lady’s
+chamber was opened now; for she loved to feel the rich summer air
+stream in, and revive her with its freshness; but there always stood in
+water, just inside the lattice, one particular little bunch, which was
+made up with great care, every morning. Oliver could not help noticing
+that the withered flowers were never thrown away, although the little
+vase was regularly replenished; nor, could he help observing, that
+whenever the doctor came into the garden, he invariably cast his eyes
+up to that particular corner, and nodded his head most expressively, as
+he set forth on his morning’s walk. Pending these observations, the
+days were flying by; and Rose was rapidly recovering.
+
+Nor did Oliver’s time hang heavy on his hands, although the young lady
+had not yet left her chamber, and there were no evening walks, save now
+and then, for a short distance, with Mrs. Maylie. He applied himself,
+with redoubled assiduity, to the instructions of the white-headed old
+gentleman, and laboured so hard that his quick progress surprised even
+himself. It was while he was engaged in this pursuit, that he was
+greatly startled and distressed by a most unexpected occurrence.
+
+The little room in which he was accustomed to sit, when busy at his
+books, was on the ground-floor, at the back of the house. It was quite
+a cottage-room, with a lattice-window: around which were clusters of
+jessamine and honeysuckle, that crept over the casement, and filled the
+place with their delicious perfume. It looked into a garden, whence a
+wicket-gate opened into a small paddock; all beyond, was fine
+meadow-land and wood. There was no other dwelling near, in that
+direction; and the prospect it commanded was very extensive.
+
+One beautiful evening, when the first shades of twilight were beginning
+to settle upon the earth, Oliver sat at this window, intent upon his
+books. He had been poring over them for some time; and, as the day had
+been uncommonly sultry, and he had exerted himself a great deal, it is
+no disparagement to the authors, whoever they may have been, to say,
+that gradually and by slow degrees, he fell asleep.
+
+There is a kind of sleep that steals upon us sometimes, which, while it
+holds the body prisoner, does not free the mind from a sense of things
+about it, and enable it to ramble at its pleasure. So far as an
+overpowering heaviness, a prostration of strength, and an utter
+inability to control our thoughts or power of motion, can be called
+sleep, this is it; and yet, we have a consciousness of all that is
+going on about us, and, if we dream at such a time, words which are
+really spoken, or sounds which really exist at the moment, accommodate
+themselves with surprising readiness to our visions, until reality and
+imagination become so strangely blended that it is afterwards almost
+matter of impossibility to separate the two. Nor is this, the most
+striking phenomenon incidental to such a state. It is an undoubted
+fact, that although our senses of touch and sight be for the time dead,
+yet our sleeping thoughts, and the visionary scenes that pass before
+us, will be influenced and materially influenced, by the _mere silent
+presence_ of some external object; which may not have been near us when
+we closed our eyes: and of whose vicinity we have had no waking
+consciousness.
+
+Oliver knew, perfectly well, that he was in his own little room; that
+his books were lying on the table before him; that the sweet air was
+stirring among the creeping plants outside. And yet he was asleep.
+Suddenly, the scene changed; the air became close and confined; and he
+thought, with a glow of terror, that he was in the Jew’s house again.
+There sat the hideous old man, in his accustomed corner, pointing at
+him, and whispering to another man, with his face averted, who sat
+beside him.
+
+“Hush, my dear!” he thought he heard the Jew say; “it is he, sure
+enough. Come away.”
+
+“He!” the other man seemed to answer; “could I mistake him, think you?
+If a crowd of ghosts were to put themselves into his exact shape, and
+he stood amongst them, there is something that would tell me how to
+point him out. If you buried him fifty feet deep, and took me across
+his grave, I fancy I should know, if there wasn’t a mark above it, that
+he lay buried there?”
+
+The man seemed to say this, with such dreadful hatred, that Oliver
+awoke with the fear, and started up.
+
+Good Heaven! what was that, which sent the blood tingling to his heart,
+and deprived him of his voice, and of power to move! There—there—at the
+window—close before him—so close, that he could have almost touched him
+before he started back: with his eyes peering into the room, and
+meeting his: there stood the Jew! And beside him, white with rage or
+fear, or both, were the scowling features of the man who had accosted
+him in the inn-yard.
+
+It was but an instant, a glance, a flash, before his eyes; and they
+were gone. But they had recognised him, and he them; and their look was
+as firmly impressed upon his memory, as if it had been deeply carved in
+stone, and set before him from his birth. He stood transfixed for a
+moment; then, leaping from the window into the garden, called loudly
+for help.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXXV.
+CONTAINING THE UNSATISFACTORY RESULT OF OLIVER’S ADVENTURE; AND A
+CONVERSATION OF SOME IMPORTANCE BETWEEN HARRY MAYLIE AND ROSE
+
+
+When the inmates of the house, attracted by Oliver’s cries, hurried to
+the spot from which they proceeded, they found him, pale and agitated,
+pointing in the direction of the meadows behind the house, and scarcely
+able to articulate the words, “The Jew! the Jew!”
+
+Mr. Giles was at a loss to comprehend what this outcry meant; but Harry
+Maylie, whose perceptions were something quicker, and who had heard
+Oliver’s history from his mother, understood it at once.
+
+“What direction did he take?” he asked, catching up a heavy stick which
+was standing in a corner.
+
+“That,” replied Oliver, pointing out the course the man had taken; “I
+missed them in an instant.”
+
+“Then, they are in the ditch!” said Harry. “Follow! And keep as near
+me, as you can.” So saying, he sprang over the hedge, and darted off
+with a speed which rendered it matter of exceeding difficulty for the
+others to keep near him.
+
+Giles followed as well as he could; and Oliver followed too; and in the
+course of a minute or two, Mr. Losberne, who had been out walking, and
+just then returned, tumbled over the hedge after them, and picking
+himself up with more agility than he could have been supposed to
+possess, struck into the same course at no contemptible speed, shouting
+all the while, most prodigiously, to know what was the matter.
+
+On they all went; nor stopped they once to breathe, until the leader,
+striking off into an angle of the field indicated by Oliver, began to
+search, narrowly, the ditch and hedge adjoining; which afforded time
+for the remainder of the party to come up; and for Oliver to
+communicate to Mr. Losberne the circumstances that had led to so
+vigorous a pursuit.
+
+The search was all in vain. There were not even the traces of recent
+footsteps, to be seen. They stood now, on the summit of a little hill,
+commanding the open fields in every direction for three or four miles.
+There was the village in the hollow on the left; but, in order to gain
+that, after pursuing the track Oliver had pointed out, the men must
+have made a circuit of open ground, which it was impossible they could
+have accomplished in so short a time. A thick wood skirted the
+meadow-land in another direction; but they could not have gained that
+covert for the same reason.
+
+“It must have been a dream, Oliver,” said Harry Maylie.
+
+“Oh no, indeed, sir,” replied Oliver, shuddering at the very
+recollection of the old wretch’s countenance; “I saw him too plainly
+for that. I saw them both, as plainly as I see you now.”
+
+“Who was the other?” inquired Harry and Mr. Losberne, together.
+
+“The very same man I told you of, who came so suddenly upon me at the
+inn,” said Oliver. “We had our eyes fixed full upon each other; and I
+could swear to him.”
+
+“They took this way?” demanded Harry: “are you sure?”
+
+“As I am that the men were at the window,” replied Oliver, pointing
+down, as he spoke, to the hedge which divided the cottage-garden from
+the meadow. “The tall man leaped over, just there; and the Jew, running
+a few paces to the right, crept through that gap.”
+
+The two gentlemen watched Oliver’s earnest face, as he spoke, and
+looking from him to each other, seemed to feel satisfied of the
+accuracy of what he said. Still, in no direction were there any
+appearances of the trampling of men in hurried flight. The grass was
+long; but it was trodden down nowhere, save where their own feet had
+crushed it. The sides and brinks of the ditches were of damp clay; but
+in no one place could they discern the print of men’s shoes, or the
+slightest mark which would indicate that any feet had pressed the
+ground for hours before.
+
+“This is strange!” said Harry.
+
+“Strange?” echoed the doctor. “Blathers and Duff, themselves, could
+make nothing of it.”
+
+Notwithstanding the evidently useless nature of their search, they did
+not desist until the coming on of night rendered its further
+prosecution hopeless; and even then, they gave it up with reluctance.
+Giles was dispatched to the different ale-houses in the village,
+furnished with the best description Oliver could give of the appearance
+and dress of the strangers. Of these, the Jew was, at all events,
+sufficiently remarkable to be remembered, supposing he had been seen
+drinking, or loitering about; but Giles returned without any
+intelligence, calculated to dispel or lessen the mystery.
+
+On the next day, fresh search was made, and the inquiries renewed; but
+with no better success. On the day following, Oliver and Mr. Maylie
+repaired to the market-town, in the hope of seeing or hearing something
+of the men there; but this effort was equally fruitless. After a few
+days, the affair began to be forgotten, as most affairs are, when
+wonder, having no fresh food to support it, dies away of itself.
+
+Meanwhile, Rose was rapidly recovering. She had left her room: was able
+to go out; and mixing once more with the family, carried joy into the
+hearts of all.
+
+But, although this happy change had a visible effect on the little
+circle; and although cheerful voices and merry laughter were once more
+heard in the cottage; there was at times, an unwonted restraint upon
+some there: even upon Rose herself: which Oliver could not fail to
+remark. Mrs. Maylie and her son were often closeted together for a long
+time; and more than once Rose appeared with traces of tears upon her
+face. After Mr. Losberne had fixed a day for his departure to Chertsey,
+these symptoms increased; and it became evident that something was in
+progress which affected the peace of the young lady, and of somebody
+else besides.
+
+At length, one morning, when Rose was alone in the breakfast-parlour,
+Harry Maylie entered; and, with some hesitation, begged permission to
+speak with her for a few moments.
+
+“A few—a very few—will suffice, Rose,” said the young man, drawing his
+chair towards her. “What I shall have to say, has already presented
+itself to your mind; the most cherished hopes of my heart are not
+unknown to you, though from my lips you have not heard them stated.”
+
+Rose had been very pale from the moment of his entrance; but that might
+have been the effect of her recent illness. She merely bowed; and
+bending over some plants that stood near, waited in silence for him to
+proceed.
+
+“I—I—ought to have left here, before,” said Harry.
+
+“You should, indeed,” replied Rose. “Forgive me for saying so, but I
+wish you had.”
+
+“I was brought here, by the most dreadful and agonising of all
+apprehensions,” said the young man; “the fear of losing the one dear
+being on whom my every wish and hope are fixed. You had been dying;
+trembling between earth and heaven. We know that when the young, the
+beautiful, and good, are visited with sickness, their pure spirits
+insensibly turn towards their bright home of lasting rest; we know,
+Heaven help us! that the best and fairest of our kind, too often fade
+in blooming.”
+
+There were tears in the eyes of the gentle girl, as these words were
+spoken; and when one fell upon the flower over which she bent, and
+glistened brightly in its cup, making it more beautiful, it seemed as
+though the outpouring of her fresh young heart, claimed kindred
+naturally, with the loveliest things in nature.
+
+“A creature,” continued the young man, passionately, “a creature as
+fair and innocent of guile as one of God’s own angels, fluttered
+between life and death. Oh! who could hope, when the distant world to
+which she was akin, half opened to her view, that she would return to
+the sorrow and calamity of this! Rose, Rose, to know that you were
+passing away like some soft shadow, which a light from above, casts
+upon the earth; to have no hope that you would be spared to those who
+linger here; hardly to know a reason why you should be; to feel that
+you belonged to that bright sphere whither so many of the fairest and
+the best have winged their early flight; and yet to pray, amid all
+these consolations, that you might be restored to those who loved
+you—these were distractions almost too great to bear. They were mine,
+by day and night; and with them, came such a rushing torrent of fears,
+and apprehensions, and selfish regrets, lest you should die, and never
+know how devotedly I loved you, as almost bore down sense and reason in
+its course. You recovered. Day by day, and almost hour by hour, some
+drop of health came back, and mingling with the spent and feeble stream
+of life which circulated languidly within you, swelled it again to a
+high and rushing tide. I have watched you change almost from death, to
+life, with eyes that turned blind with their eagerness and deep
+affection. Do not tell me that you wish I had lost this; for it has
+softened my heart to all mankind.”
+
+“I did not mean that,” said Rose, weeping; “I only wish you had left
+here, that you might have turned to high and noble pursuits again; to
+pursuits well worthy of you.”
+
+“There is no pursuit more worthy of me: more worthy of the highest
+nature that exists: than the struggle to win such a heart as yours,”
+said the young man, taking her hand. “Rose, my own dear Rose! For
+years—for years—I have loved you; hoping to win my way to fame, and
+then come proudly home and tell you it had been pursued only for you to
+share; thinking, in my daydreams, how I would remind you, in that happy
+moment, of the many silent tokens I had given of a boy’s attachment,
+and claim your hand, as in redemption of some old mute contract that
+had been sealed between us! That time has not arrived; but here, with
+not fame won, and no young vision realised, I offer you the heart so
+long your own, and stake my all upon the words with which you greet the
+offer.”
+
+“Your behaviour has ever been kind and noble.” said Rose, mastering the
+emotions by which she was agitated. “As you believe that I am not
+insensible or ungrateful, so hear my answer.”
+
+“It is, that I may endeavour to deserve you; it is, dear Rose?”
+
+“It is,” replied Rose, “that you must endeavour to forget me; not as
+your old and dearly-attached companion, for that would wound me deeply;
+but, as the object of your love. Look into the world; think how many
+hearts you would be proud to gain, are there. Confide some other
+passion to me, if you will; I will be the truest, warmest, and most
+faithful friend you have.”
+
+There was a pause, during which, Rose, who had covered her face with
+one hand, gave free vent to her tears. Harry still retained the other.
+
+“And your reasons, Rose,” he said, at length, in a low voice; “your
+reasons for this decision?”
+
+“You have a right to know them,” rejoined Rose. “You can say nothing to
+alter my resolution. It is a duty that I must perform. I owe it, alike
+to others, and to myself.”
+
+“To yourself?”
+
+“Yes, Harry. I owe it to myself, that I, a friendless, portionless,
+girl, with a blight upon my name, should not give your friends reason
+to suspect that I had sordidly yielded to your first passion, and
+fastened myself, a clog, on all your hopes and projects. I owe it to
+you and yours, to prevent you from opposing, in the warmth of your
+generous nature, this great obstacle to your progress in the world.”
+
+“If your inclinations chime with your sense of duty—” Harry began.
+
+“They do not,” replied Rose, colouring deeply.
+
+“Then you return my love?” said Harry. “Say but that, dear Rose; say
+but that; and soften the bitterness of this hard disappointment!”
+
+“If I could have done so, without doing heavy wrong to him I loved,”
+rejoined Rose, “I could have—”
+
+“Have received this declaration very differently?” said Harry. “Do not
+conceal that from me, at least, Rose.”
+
+“I could,” said Rose. “Stay!” she added, disengaging her hand, “why
+should we prolong this painful interview? Most painful to me, and yet
+productive of lasting happiness, notwithstanding; for it _will_ be
+happiness to know that I once held the high place in your regard which
+I now occupy, and every triumph you achieve in life will animate me
+with new fortitude and firmness. Farewell, Harry! As we have met
+to-day, we meet no more; but in other relations than those in which
+this conversation have placed us, we may be long and happily entwined;
+and may every blessing that the prayers of a true and earnest heart can
+call down from the source of all truth and sincerity, cheer and prosper
+you!”
+
+“Another word, Rose,” said Harry. “Your reason in your own words. From
+your own lips, let me hear it!”
+
+“The prospect before you,” answered Rose, firmly, “is a brilliant one.
+All the honours to which great talents and powerful connections can
+help men in public life, are in store for you. But those connections
+are proud; and I will neither mingle with such as may hold in scorn the
+mother who gave me life; nor bring disgrace or failure on the son of
+her who has so well supplied that mother’s place. In a word,” said the
+young lady, turning away, as her temporary firmness forsook her, “there
+is a stain upon my name, which the world visits on innocent heads. I
+will carry it into no blood but my own; and the reproach shall rest
+alone on me.”
+
+“One word more, Rose. Dearest Rose! one more!” cried Harry, throwing
+himself before her. “If I had been less—less fortunate, the world would
+call it—if some obscure and peaceful life had been my destiny—if I had
+been poor, sick, helpless—would you have turned from me then? Or has my
+probable advancement to riches and honour, given this scruple birth?”
+
+“Do not press me to reply,” answered Rose. “The question does not
+arise, and never will. It is unfair, almost unkind, to urge it.”
+
+“If your answer be what I almost dare to hope it is,” retorted Harry,
+“it will shed a gleam of happiness upon my lonely way, and light the
+path before me. It is not an idle thing to do so much, by the utterance
+of a few brief words, for one who loves you beyond all else. Oh, Rose:
+in the name of my ardent and enduring attachment; in the name of all I
+have suffered for you, and all you doom me to undergo; answer me this
+one question!”
+
+“Then, if your lot had been differently cast,” rejoined Rose; “if you
+had been even a little, but not so far, above me; if I could have been
+a help and comfort to you in any humble scene of peace and retirement,
+and not a blot and drawback in ambitious and distinguished crowds; I
+should have been spared this trial. I have every reason to be happy,
+very happy, now; but then, Harry, I own I should have been happier.”
+
+Busy recollections of old hopes, cherished as a girl, long ago, crowded
+into the mind of Rose, while making this avowal; but they brought tears
+with them, as old hopes will when they come back withered; and they
+relieved her.
+
+“I cannot help this weakness, and it makes my purpose stronger,” said
+Rose, extending her hand. “I must leave you now, indeed.”
+
+“I ask one promise,” said Harry. “Once, and only once more,—say within
+a year, but it may be much sooner,—I may speak to you again on this
+subject, for the last time.”
+
+“Not to press me to alter my right determination,” replied Rose, with a
+melancholy smile; “it will be useless.”
+
+“No,” said Harry; “to hear you repeat it, if you will—finally repeat
+it! I will lay at your feet, whatever of station of fortune I may
+possess; and if you still adhere to your present resolution, will not
+seek, by word or act, to change it.”
+
+“Then let it be so,” rejoined Rose; “it is but one pang the more, and
+by that time I may be enabled to bear it better.”
+
+She extended her hand again. But the young man caught her to his bosom;
+and imprinting one kiss on her beautiful forehead, hurried from the
+room.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXXVI.
+IS A VERY SHORT ONE, AND MAY APPEAR OF NO GREAT IMPORTANCE IN ITS
+PLACE, BUT IT SHOULD BE READ NOTWITHSTANDING, AS A SEQUEL TO THE LAST,
+AND A KEY TO ONE THAT WILL FOLLOW WHEN ITS TIME ARRIVES
+
+
+“And so you are resolved to be my travelling companion this morning;
+eh?” said the doctor, as Harry Maylie joined him and Oliver at the
+breakfast-table. “Why, you are not in the same mind or intention two
+half-hours together!”
+
+“You will tell me a different tale one of these days,” said Harry,
+colouring without any perceptible reason.
+
+“I hope I may have good cause to do so,” replied Mr. Losberne; “though
+I confess I don’t think I shall. But yesterday morning you had made up
+your mind, in a great hurry, to stay here, and to accompany your
+mother, like a dutiful son, to the sea-side. Before noon, you announce
+that you are going to do me the honour of accompanying me as far as I
+go, on your road to London. And at night, you urge me, with great
+mystery, to start before the ladies are stirring; the consequence of
+which is, that young Oliver here is pinned down to his breakfast when
+he ought to be ranging the meadows after botanical phenomena of all
+kinds. Too bad, isn’t it, Oliver?”
+
+“I should have been very sorry not to have been at home when you and
+Mr. Maylie went away, sir,” rejoined Oliver.
+
+“That’s a fine fellow,” said the doctor; “you shall come and see me
+when you return. But, to speak seriously, Harry; has any communication
+from the great nobs produced this sudden anxiety on your part to be
+gone?”
+
+“The great nobs,” replied Harry, “under which designation, I presume,
+you include my most stately uncle, have not communicated with me at
+all, since I have been here; nor, at this time of the year, is it
+likely that anything would occur to render necessary my immediate
+attendance among them.”
+
+“Well,” said the doctor, “you are a queer fellow. But of course they
+will get you into parliament at the election before Christmas, and
+these sudden shiftings and changes are no bad preparation for political
+life. There’s something in that. Good training is always desirable,
+whether the race be for place, cup, or sweepstakes.”
+
+Harry Maylie looked as if he could have followed up this short dialogue
+by one or two remarks that would have staggered the doctor not a
+little; but he contented himself with saying, “We shall see,” and
+pursued the subject no farther. The post-chaise drove up to the door
+shortly afterwards; and Giles coming in for the luggage, the good
+doctor bustled out, to see it packed.
+
+“Oliver,” said Harry Maylie, in a low voice, “let me speak a word with
+you.”
+
+Oliver walked into the window-recess to which Mr. Maylie beckoned him;
+much surprised at the mixture of sadness and boisterous spirits, which
+his whole behaviour displayed.
+
+“You can write well now?” said Harry, laying his hand upon his arm.
+
+“I hope so, sir,” replied Oliver.
+
+“I shall not be at home again, perhaps for some time; I wish you would
+write to me—say once a fort-night: every alternate Monday: to the
+General Post Office in London. Will you?”
+
+“Oh! certainly, sir; I shall be proud to do it,” exclaimed Oliver,
+greatly delighted with the commission.
+
+“I should like to know how—how my mother and Miss Maylie are,” said the
+young man; “and you can fill up a sheet by telling me what walks you
+take, and what you talk about, and whether she—they, I mean—seem happy
+and quite well. You understand me?”
+
+“Oh! quite, sir, quite,” replied Oliver.
+
+“I would rather you did not mention it to them,” said Harry, hurrying
+over his words; “because it might make my mother anxious to write to me
+oftener, and it is a trouble and worry to her. Let it be a secret
+between you and me; and mind you tell me everything! I depend upon
+you.”
+
+Oliver, quite elated and honoured by a sense of his importance,
+faithfully promised to be secret and explicit in his communications.
+Mr. Maylie took leave of him, with many assurances of his regard and
+protection.
+
+The doctor was in the chaise; Giles (who, it had been arranged, should
+be left behind) held the door open in his hand; and the women-servants
+were in the garden, looking on. Harry cast one slight glance at the
+latticed window, and jumped into the carriage.
+
+“Drive on!” he cried, “hard, fast, full gallop! Nothing short of flying
+will keep pace with me, to-day.”
+
+“Halloa!” cried the doctor, letting down the front glass in a great
+hurry, and shouting to the postillion; “something very short of flying
+will keep pace with _me_. Do you hear?”
+
+Jingling and clattering, till distance rendered its noise inaudible,
+and its rapid progress only perceptible to the eye, the vehicle wound
+its way along the road, almost hidden in a cloud of dust: now wholly
+disappearing, and now becoming visible again, as intervening objects,
+or the intricacies of the way, permitted. It was not until even the
+dusty cloud was no longer to be seen, that the gazers dispersed.
+
+And there was one looker-on, who remained with eyes fixed upon the spot
+where the carriage had disappeared, long after it was many miles away;
+for, behind the white curtain which had shrouded her from view when
+Harry raised his eyes towards the window, sat Rose herself.
+
+“He seems in high spirits and happy,” she said, at length. “I feared
+for a time he might be otherwise. I was mistaken. I am very, very
+glad.”
+
+Tears are signs of gladness as well as grief; but those which coursed
+down Rose’s face, as she sat pensively at the window, still gazing in
+the same direction, seemed to tell more of sorrow than of joy.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXXVII.
+IN WHICH THE READER MAY PERCEIVE A CONTRAST, NOT UNCOMMON IN
+MATRIMONIAL CASES
+
+
+Mr. Bumble sat in the workhouse parlour, with his eyes moodily fixed on
+the cheerless grate, whence, as it was summer time, no brighter gleam
+proceeded, than the reflection of certain sickly rays of the sun, which
+were sent back from its cold and shining surface. A paper fly-cage
+dangled from the ceiling, to which he occasionally raised his eyes in
+gloomy thought; and, as the heedless insects hovered round the gaudy
+net-work, Mr. Bumble would heave a deep sigh, while a more gloomy
+shadow overspread his countenance. Mr. Bumble was meditating; it might
+be that the insects brought to mind, some painful passage in his own
+past life.
+
+Nor was Mr. Bumble’s gloom the only thing calculated to awaken a
+pleasing melancholy in the bosom of a spectator. There were not wanting
+other appearances, and those closely connected with his own person,
+which announced that a great change had taken place in the position of
+his affairs. The laced coat, and the cocked hat; where were they? He
+still wore knee-breeches, and dark cotton stockings on his nether
+limbs; but they were not _the_ breeches. The coat was wide-skirted; and
+in that respect like _the_ coat, but, oh how different! The mighty
+cocked hat was replaced by a modest round one. Mr. Bumble was no longer
+a beadle.
+
+There are some promotions in life, which, independent of the more
+substantial rewards they offer, require peculiar value and dignity from
+the coats and waistcoats connected with them. A field-marshal has his
+uniform; a bishop his silk apron; a counsellor his silk gown; a beadle
+his cocked hat. Strip the bishop of his apron, or the beadle of his hat
+and lace; what are they? Men. Mere men. Dignity, and even holiness too,
+sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people
+imagine.
+
+Mr. Bumble had married Mrs. Corney, and was master of the workhouse.
+Another beadle had come into power. On him the cocked hat, gold-laced
+coat, and staff, had all three descended.
+
+“And to-morrow two months it was done!” said Mr. Bumble, with a sigh.
+“It seems a age.”
+
+Mr. Bumble might have meant that he had concentrated a whole existence
+of happiness into the short space of eight weeks; but the sigh—there
+was a vast deal of meaning in the sigh.
+
+“I sold myself,” said Mr. Bumble, pursuing the same train of relection,
+“for six teaspoons, a pair of sugar-tongs, and a milk-pot; with a small
+quantity of second-hand furniture, and twenty pound in money. I went
+very reasonable. Cheap, dirt cheap!”
+
+“Cheap!” cried a shrill voice in Mr. Bumble’s ear: “you would have been
+dear at any price; and dear enough I paid for you, Lord above knows
+that!”
+
+Mr. Bumble turned, and encountered the face of his interesting consort,
+who, imperfectly comprehending the few words she had overheard of his
+complaint, had hazarded the foregoing remark at a venture.
+
+“Mrs. Bumble, ma’am!” said Mr. Bumble, with a sentimental sternness.
+
+“Well!” cried the lady.
+
+“Have the goodness to look at me,” said Mr. Bumble, fixing his eyes
+upon her.
+
+“If she stands such a eye as that,” said Mr. Bumble to himself, “she
+can stand anything. It is a eye I never knew to fail with paupers. If
+it fails with her, my power is gone.”
+
+Whether an exceedingly small expansion of eye be sufficient to quell
+paupers, who, being lightly fed, are in no very high condition; or
+whether the late Mrs. Corney was particularly proof against eagle
+glances; are matters of opinion. The matter of fact, is, that the
+matron was in no way overpowered by Mr. Bumble’s scowl, but, on the
+contrary, treated it with great disdain, and even raised a laugh
+thereat, which sounded as though it were genuine.
+
+On hearing this most unexpected sound, Mr. Bumble looked, first
+incredulous, and afterwards amazed. He then relapsed into his former
+state; nor did he rouse himself until his attention was again awakened
+by the voice of his partner.
+
+“Are you going to sit snoring there, all day?” inquired Mrs. Bumble.
+
+“I am going to sit here, as long as I think proper, ma’am,” rejoined
+Mr. Bumble; “and although I was _not_ snoring, I shall snore, gape,
+sneeze, laugh, or cry, as the humour strikes me; such being my
+prerogative.”
+
+“_Your_ prerogative!” sneered Mrs. Bumble, with ineffable contempt.
+
+“I said the word, ma’am,” said Mr. Bumble. “The prerogative of a man is
+to command.”
+
+“And what’s the prerogative of a woman, in the name of Goodness?” cried
+the relict of Mr. Corney deceased.
+
+“To obey, ma’am,” thundered Mr. Bumble. “Your late unfortunate husband
+should have taught it you; and then, perhaps, he might have been alive
+now. I wish he was, poor man!”
+
+Mrs. Bumble, seeing at a glance, that the decisive moment had now
+arrived, and that a blow struck for the mastership on one side or
+other, must necessarily be final and conclusive, no sooner heard this
+allusion to the dead and gone, than she dropped into a chair, and with
+a loud scream that Mr. Bumble was a hard-hearted brute, fell into a
+paroxysm of tears.
+
+But, tears were not the things to find their way to Mr. Bumble’s soul;
+his heart was waterproof. Like washable beaver hats that improve with
+rain, his nerves were rendered stouter and more vigorous, by showers of
+tears, which, being tokens of weakness, and so far tacit admissions of
+his own power, pleased and exalted him. He eyed his good lady with
+looks of great satisfaction, and begged, in an encouraging manner, that
+she should cry her hardest: the exercise being looked upon, by the
+faculty, as strongly conducive to health.
+
+“It opens the lungs, washes the countenance, exercises the eyes, and
+softens down the temper,” said Mr. Bumble. “So cry away.”
+
+As he discharged himself of this pleasantry, Mr. Bumble took his hat
+from a peg, and putting it on, rather rakishly, on one side, as a man
+might, who felt he had asserted his superiority in a becoming manner,
+thrust his hands into his pockets, and sauntered towards the door, with
+much ease and waggishness depicted in his whole appearance.
+
+Now, Mrs. Corney that was, had tried the tears, because they were less
+troublesome than a manual assault; but, she was quite prepared to make
+trial of the latter mode of proceeding, as Mr. Bumble was not long in
+discovering.
+
+The first proof he experienced of the fact, was conveyed in a hollow
+sound, immediately succeeded by the sudden flying off of his hat to the
+opposite end of the room. This preliminary proceeding laying bare his
+head, the expert lady, clasping him tightly round the throat with one
+hand, inflicted a shower of blows (dealt with singular vigour and
+dexterity) upon it with the other. This done, she created a little
+variety by scratching his face, and tearing his hair; and, having, by
+this time, inflicted as much punishment as she deemed necessary for the
+offence, she pushed him over a chair, which was luckily well situated
+for the purpose: and defied him to talk about his prerogative again, if
+he dared.
+
+“Get up!” said Mrs. Bumble, in a voice of command. “And take yourself
+away from here, unless you want me to do something desperate.”
+
+Mr. Bumble rose with a very rueful countenance: wondering much what
+something desperate might be. Picking up his hat, he looked towards the
+door.
+
+“Are you going?” demanded Mrs. Bumble.
+
+“Certainly, my dear, certainly,” rejoined Mr. Bumble, making a quicker
+motion towards the door. “I didn’t intend to—I’m going, my dear! You
+are so very violent, that really I—”
+
+At this instant, Mrs. Bumble stepped hastily forward to replace the
+carpet, which had been kicked up in the scuffle. Mr. Bumble immediately
+darted out of the room, without bestowing another thought on his
+unfinished sentence: leaving the late Mrs. Corney in full possession of
+the field.
+
+Mr. Bumble was fairly taken by surprise, and fairly beaten. He had a
+decided propensity for bullying: derived no inconsiderable pleasure
+from the exercise of petty cruelty; and, consequently, was (it is
+needless to say) a coward. This is by no means a disparagement to his
+character; for many official personages, who are held in high respect
+and admiration, are the victims of similar infirmities. The remark is
+made, indeed, rather in his favour than otherwise, and with a view of
+impressing the reader with a just sense of his qualifications for
+office.
+
+But, the measure of his degradation was not yet full. After making a
+tour of the house, and thinking, for the first time, that the poor-laws
+really were too hard on people; and that men who ran away from their
+wives, leaving them chargeable to the parish, ought, in justice to be
+visited with no punishment at all, but rather rewarded as meritorious
+individuals who had suffered much; Mr. Bumble came to a room where some
+of the female paupers were usually employed in washing the parish
+linen: when the sound of voices in conversation, now proceeded.
+
+“Hem!” said Mr. Bumble, summoning up all his native dignity. “These
+women at least shall continue to respect the prerogative. Hallo! hallo
+there! What do you mean by this noise, you hussies?”
+
+With these words, Mr. Bumble opened the door, and walked in with a very
+fierce and angry manner: which was at once exchanged for a most
+humiliated and cowering air, as his eyes unexpectedly rested on the
+form of his lady wife.
+
+“My dear,” said Mr. Bumble, “I didn’t know you were here.”
+
+“Didn’t know I was here!” repeated Mrs. Bumble. “What do _you_ do
+here?”
+
+“I thought they were talking rather too much to be doing their work
+properly, my dear,” replied Mr. Bumble: glancing distractedly at a
+couple of old women at the wash-tub, who were comparing notes of
+admiration at the workhouse-master’s humility.
+
+“_You_ thought they were talking too much?” said Mrs. Bumble. “What
+business is it of yours?”
+
+“Why, my dear—” urged Mr. Bumble submissively.
+
+“What business is it of yours?” demanded Mrs. Bumble, again.
+
+“It’s very true, you’re matron here, my dear,” submitted Mr. Bumble;
+“but I thought you mightn’t be in the way just then.”
+
+“I’ll tell you what, Mr. Bumble,” returned his lady. “We don’t want any
+of your interference. You’re a great deal too fond of poking your nose
+into things that don’t concern you, making everybody in the house
+laugh, the moment your back is turned, and making yourself look like a
+fool every hour in the day. Be off; come!”
+
+Mr. Bumble, seeing with excruciating feelings, the delight of the two
+old paupers, who were tittering together most rapturously, hesitated
+for an instant. Mrs. Bumble, whose patience brooked no delay, caught up
+a bowl of soap-suds, and motioning him towards the door, ordered him
+instantly to depart, on pain of receiving the contents upon his portly
+person.
+
+What could Mr. Bumble do? He looked dejectedly round, and slunk away;
+and, as he reached the door, the titterings of the paupers broke into a
+shrill chuckle of irrepressible delight. It wanted but this. He was
+degraded in their eyes; he had lost caste and station before the very
+paupers; he had fallen from all the height and pomp of beadleship, to
+the lowest depth of the most snubbed hen-peckery.
+
+“All in two months!” said Mr. Bumble, filled with dismal thoughts. “Two
+months! No more than two months ago, I was not only my own master, but
+everybody else’s, so far as the porochial workhouse was concerned, and
+now!—”
+
+It was too much. Mr. Bumble boxed the ears of the boy who opened the
+gate for him (for he had reached the portal in his reverie); and
+walked, distractedly, into the street.
+
+He walked up one street, and down another, until exercise had abated
+the first passion of his grief; and then the revulsion of feeling made
+him thirsty. He passed a great many public-houses; but, at length
+paused before one in a by-way, whose parlour, as he gathered from a
+hasty peep over the blinds, was deserted, save by one solitary
+customer. It began to rain, heavily, at the moment. This determined
+him. Mr. Bumble stepped in; and ordering something to drink, as he
+passed the bar, entered the apartment into which he had looked from the
+street.
+
+The man who was seated there, was tall and dark, and wore a large
+cloak. He had the air of a stranger; and seemed, by a certain
+haggardness in his look, as well as by the dusty soils on his dress, to
+have travelled some distance. He eyed Bumble askance, as he entered,
+but scarcely deigned to nod his head in acknowledgment of his
+salutation.
+
+Mr. Bumble had quite dignity enough for two; supposing even that the
+stranger had been more familiar: so he drank his gin-and-water in
+silence, and read the paper with great show of pomp and circumstance.
+
+It so happened, however: as it will happen very often, when men fall
+into company under such circumstances: that Mr. Bumble felt, every now
+and then, a powerful inducement, which he could not resist, to steal a
+look at the stranger: and that whenever he did so, he withdrew his
+eyes, in some confusion, to find that the stranger was at that moment
+stealing a look at him. Mr. Bumble’s awkwardness was enhanced by the
+very remarkable expression of the stranger’s eye, which was keen and
+bright, but shadowed by a scowl of distrust and suspicion, unlike
+anything he had ever observed before, and repulsive to behold.
+
+When they had encountered each other’s glance several times in this
+way, the stranger, in a harsh, deep voice, broke silence.
+
+“Were you looking for me,” he said, “when you peered in at the window?”
+
+“Not that I am aware of, unless you’re Mr.—” Here Mr. Bumble stopped
+short; for he was curious to know the stranger’s name, and thought in
+his impatience, he might supply the blank.
+
+“I see you were not,” said the stranger; an expression of quiet sarcasm
+playing about his mouth; “or you have known my name. You don’t know it.
+I would recommend you not to ask for it.”
+
+“I meant no harm, young man,” observed Mr. Bumble, majestically.
+
+“And have done none,” said the stranger.
+
+Another silence succeeded this short dialogue: which was again broken
+by the stranger.
+
+“I have seen you before, I think?” said he. “You were differently
+dressed at that time, and I only passed you in the street, but I should
+know you again. You were beadle here, once; were you not?”
+
+“I was,” said Mr. Bumble, in some surprise; “porochial beadle.”
+
+“Just so,” rejoined the other, nodding his head. “It was in that
+character I saw you. What are you now?”
+
+“Master of the workhouse,” rejoined Mr. Bumble, slowly and
+impressively, to check any undue familiarity the stranger might
+otherwise assume. “Master of the workhouse, young man!”
+
+“You have the same eye to your own interest, that you always had, I
+doubt not?” resumed the stranger, looking keenly into Mr. Bumble’s
+eyes, as he raised them in astonishment at the question.
+
+“Don’t scruple to answer freely, man. I know you pretty well, you see.”
+
+“I suppose, a married man,” replied Mr. Bumble, shading his eyes with
+his hand, and surveying the stranger, from head to foot, in evident
+perplexity, “is not more averse to turning an honest penny when he can,
+than a single one. Porochial officers are not so well paid that they
+can afford to refuse any little extra fee, when it comes to them in a
+civil and proper manner.”
+
+The stranger smiled, and nodded his head again: as much to say, he had
+not mistaken his man; then rang the bell.
+
+“Fill this glass again,” he said, handing Mr. Bumble’s empty tumbler to
+the landlord. “Let it be strong and hot. You like it so, I suppose?”
+
+“Not too strong,” replied Mr. Bumble, with a delicate cough.
+
+“You understand what that means, landlord!” said the stranger, drily.
+
+The host smiled, disappeared, and shortly afterwards returned with a
+steaming jorum: of which, the first gulp brought the water into Mr.
+Bumble’s eyes.
+
+“Now listen to me,” said the stranger, after closing the door and
+window. “I came down to this place, to-day, to find you out; and, by
+one of those chances which the devil throws in the way of his friends
+sometimes, you walked into the very room I was sitting in, while you
+were uppermost in my mind. I want some information from you. I don’t
+ask you to give it for nothing, slight as it is. Put up that, to begin
+with.”
+
+As he spoke, he pushed a couple of sovereigns across the table to his
+companion, carefully, as though unwilling that the chinking of money
+should be heard without. When Mr. Bumble had scrupulously examined the
+coins, to see that they were genuine, and had put them up, with much
+satisfaction, in his waistcoat-pocket, he went on:
+
+“Carry your memory back—let me see—twelve years, last winter.”
+
+“It’s a long time,” said Mr. Bumble. “Very good. I’ve done it.”
+
+“The scene, the workhouse.”
+
+“Good!”
+
+“And the time, night.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“And the place, the crazy hole, wherever it was, in which miserable
+drabs brought forth the life and health so often denied to
+themselves—gave birth to puling children for the parish to rear; and
+hid their shame, rot ’em in the grave!”
+
+“The lying-in room, I suppose?” said Mr. Bumble, not quite following
+the stranger’s excited description.
+
+“Yes,” said the stranger. “A boy was born there.”
+
+“A many boys,” observed Mr. Bumble, shaking his head, despondingly.
+
+“A murrain on the young devils!” cried the stranger; “I speak of one; a
+meek-looking, pale-faced boy, who was apprenticed down here, to a
+coffin-maker—I wish he had made his coffin, and screwed his body in
+it—and who afterwards ran away to London, as it was supposed.
+
+“Why, you mean Oliver! Young Twist!” said Mr. Bumble; “I remember him,
+of course. There wasn’t a obstinater young rascal—”
+
+“It’s not of him I want to hear; I’ve heard enough of him,” said the
+stranger, stopping Mr. Bumble in the outset of a tirade on the subject
+of poor Oliver’s vices. “It’s of a woman; the hag that nursed his
+mother. Where is she?”
+
+“Where is she?” said Mr. Bumble, whom the gin-and-water had rendered
+facetious. “It would be hard to tell. There’s no midwifery there,
+whichever place she’s gone to; so I suppose she’s out of employment,
+anyway.”
+
+“What do you mean?” demanded the stranger, sternly.
+
+“That she died last winter,” rejoined Mr. Bumble.
+
+The man looked fixedly at him when he had given this information, and
+although he did not withdraw his eyes for some time afterwards, his
+gaze gradually became vacant and abstracted, and he seemed lost in
+thought. For some time, he appeared doubtful whether he ought to be
+relieved or disappointed by the intelligence; but at length he breathed
+more freely; and withdrawing his eyes, observed that it was no great
+matter. With that he rose, as if to depart.
+
+But Mr. Bumble was cunning enough; and he at once saw that an
+opportunity was opened, for the lucrative disposal of some secret in
+the possession of his better half. He well remembered the night of old
+Sally’s death, which the occurrences of that day had given him good
+reason to recollect, as the occasion on which he had proposed to Mrs.
+Corney; and although that lady had never confided to him the disclosure
+of which she had been the solitary witness, he had heard enough to know
+that it related to something that had occurred in the old woman’s
+attendance, as workhouse nurse, upon the young mother of Oliver Twist.
+Hastily calling this circumstance to mind, he informed the stranger,
+with an air of mystery, that one woman had been closeted with the old
+harridan shortly before she died; and that she could, as he had reason
+to believe, throw some light on the subject of his inquiry.
+
+“How can I find her?” said the stranger, thrown off his guard; and
+plainly showing that all his fears (whatever they were) were aroused
+afresh by the intelligence.
+
+“Only through me,” rejoined Mr. Bumble.
+
+“When?” cried the stranger, hastily.
+
+“To-morrow,” rejoined Bumble.
+
+“At nine in the evening,” said the stranger, producing a scrap of
+paper, and writing down upon it, an obscure address by the water-side,
+in characters that betrayed his agitation; “at nine in the evening,
+bring her to me there. I needn’t tell you to be secret. It’s your
+interest.”
+
+With these words, he led the way to the door, after stopping to pay for
+the liquor that had been drunk. Shortly remarking that their roads were
+different, he departed, without more ceremony than an emphatic
+repetition of the hour of appointment for the following night.
+
+On glancing at the address, the parochial functionary observed that it
+contained no name. The stranger had not gone far, so he made after him
+to ask it.
+
+“What do you want?” cried the man, turning quickly round, as Bumble
+touched him on the arm. “Following me?”
+
+“Only to ask a question,” said the other, pointing to the scrap of
+paper. “What name am I to ask for?”
+
+“Monks!” rejoined the man; and strode hastily away.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+CONTAINING AN ACCOUNT OF WHAT PASSED BETWEEN MR. AND MRS. BUMBLE, AND
+MR. MONKS, AT THEIR NOCTURNAL INTERVIEW
+
+
+It was a dull, close, overcast summer evening. The clouds, which had
+been threatening all day, spread out in a dense and sluggish mass of
+vapour, already yielded large drops of rain, and seemed to presage a
+violent thunder-storm, when Mr. and Mrs. Bumble, turning out of the
+main street of the town, directed their course towards a scattered
+little colony of ruinous houses, distant from it some mile and a-half,
+or thereabouts, and erected on a low unwholesome swamp, bordering upon
+the river.
+
+They were both wrapped in old and shabby outer garments, which might,
+perhaps, serve the double purpose of protecting their persons from the
+rain, and sheltering them from observation. The husband carried a
+lantern, from which, however, no light yet shone; and trudged on, a few
+paces in front, as though—the way being dirty—to give his wife the
+benefit of treading in his heavy footprints. They went on, in profound
+silence; every now and then, Mr. Bumble relaxed his pace, and turned
+his head as if to make sure that his helpmate was following; then,
+discovering that she was close at his heels, he mended his rate of
+walking, and proceeded, at a considerable increase of speed, towards
+their place of destination.
+
+This was far from being a place of doubtful character; for it had long
+been known as the residence of none but low ruffians, who, under
+various pretences of living by their labour, subsisted chiefly on
+plunder and crime. It was a collection of mere hovels: some, hastily
+built with loose bricks: others, of old worm-eaten ship-timber: jumbled
+together without any attempt at order or arrangement, and planted, for
+the most part, within a few feet of the river’s bank. A few leaky boats
+drawn up on the mud, and made fast to the dwarf wall which skirted it:
+and here and there an oar or coil of rope: appeared, at first, to
+indicate that the inhabitants of these miserable cottages pursued some
+avocation on the river; but a glance at the shattered and useless
+condition of the articles thus displayed, would have led a passer-by,
+without much difficulty, to the conjecture that they were disposed
+there, rather for the preservation of appearances, than with any view
+to their being actually employed.
+
+In the heart of this cluster of huts; and skirting the river, which its
+upper stories overhung; stood a large building, formerly used as a
+manufactory of some kind. It had, in its day, probably furnished
+employment to the inhabitants of the surrounding tenements. But it had
+long since gone to ruin. The rat, the worm, and the action of the damp,
+had weakened and rotted the piles on which it stood; and a considerable
+portion of the building had already sunk down into the water; while the
+remainder, tottering and bending over the dark stream, seemed to wait a
+favourable opportunity of following its old companion, and involving
+itself in the same fate.
+
+It was before this ruinous building that the worthy couple paused, as
+the first peal of distant thunder reverberated in the air, and the rain
+commenced pouring violently down.
+
+“The place should be somewhere here,” said Bumble, consulting a scrap
+of paper he held in his hand.
+
+“Halloa there!” cried a voice from above.
+
+Following the sound, Mr. Bumble raised his head and descried a man
+looking out of a door, breast-high, on the second story.
+
+“Stand still, a minute,” cried the voice; “I’ll be with you directly.”
+With which the head disappeared, and the door closed.
+
+“Is that the man?” asked Mr. Bumble’s good lady.
+
+Mr. Bumble nodded in the affirmative.
+
+“Then, mind what I told you,” said the matron: “and be careful to say
+as little as you can, or you’ll betray us at once.”
+
+Mr. Bumble, who had eyed the building with very rueful looks, was
+apparently about to express some doubts relative to the advisability of
+proceeding any further with the enterprise just then, when he was
+prevented by the appearance of Monks: who opened a small door, near
+which they stood, and beckoned them inwards.
+
+“Come in!” he cried impatiently, stamping his foot upon the ground.
+“Don’t keep me here!”
+
+The woman, who had hesitated at first, walked boldly in, without any
+other invitation. Mr. Bumble, who was ashamed or afraid to lag behind,
+followed: obviously very ill at ease and with scarcely any of that
+remarkable dignity which was usually his chief characteristic.
+
+“What the devil made you stand lingering there, in the wet?” said
+Monks, turning round, and addressing Bumble, after he had bolted the
+door behind them.
+
+“We—we were only cooling ourselves,” stammered Bumble, looking
+apprehensively about him.
+
+“Cooling yourselves!” retorted Monks. “Not all the rain that ever fell,
+or ever will fall, will put as much of hell’s fire out, as a man can
+carry about with him. You won’t cool yourself so easily; don’t think
+it!”
+
+With this agreeable speech, Monks turned short upon the matron, and
+bent his gaze upon her, till even she, who was not easily cowed, was
+fain to withdraw her eyes, and turn them towards the ground.
+
+“This is the woman, is it?” demanded Monks.
+
+“Hem! That is the woman,” replied Mr. Bumble, mindful of his wife’s
+caution.
+
+“You think women never can keep secrets, I suppose?” said the matron,
+interposing, and returning, as she spoke, the searching look of Monks.
+
+“I know they will always keep _one_ till it’s found out,” said Monks.
+
+“And what may that be?” asked the matron.
+
+“The loss of their own good name,” replied Monks. “So, by the same
+rule, if a woman’s a party to a secret that might hang or transport
+her, I’m not afraid of her telling it to anybody; not I! Do you
+understand, mistress?”
+
+“No,” rejoined the matron, slightly colouring as she spoke.
+
+“Of course you don’t!” said Monks. “How should you?”
+
+Bestowing something half-way between a smile and a frown upon his two
+companions, and again beckoning them to follow him, the man hastened
+across the apartment, which was of considerable extent, but low in the
+roof. He was preparing to ascend a steep staircase, or rather ladder,
+leading to another floor of warehouses above: when a bright flash of
+lightning streamed down the aperture, and a peal of thunder followed,
+which shook the crazy building to its centre.
+
+“Hear it!” he cried, shrinking back. “Hear it! Rolling and crashing on
+as if it echoed through a thousand caverns where the devils were hiding
+from it. I hate the sound!”
+
+He remained silent for a few moments; and then, removing his hands
+suddenly from his face, showed, to the unspeakable discomposure of Mr.
+Bumble, that it was much distorted and discoloured.
+
+“These fits come over me, now and then,” said Monks, observing his
+alarm; “and thunder sometimes brings them on. Don’t mind me now; it’s
+all over for this once.”
+
+Thus speaking, he led the way up the ladder; and hastily closing the
+window-shutter of the room into which it led, lowered a lantern which
+hung at the end of a rope and pulley passed through one of the heavy
+beams in the ceiling: and which cast a dim light upon an old table and
+three chairs that were placed beneath it.
+
+“Now,” said Monks, when they had all three seated themselves, “the
+sooner we come to our business, the better for all. The woman know what
+it is, does she?”
+
+The question was addressed to Bumble; but his wife anticipated the
+reply, by intimating that she was perfectly acquainted with it.
+
+“He is right in saying that you were with this hag the night she died;
+and that she told you something—”
+
+“About the mother of the boy you named,” replied the matron
+interrupting him. “Yes.”
+
+“The first question is, of what nature was her communication?” said
+Monks.
+
+“That’s the second,” observed the woman with much deliberation. “The
+first is, what may the communication be worth?”
+
+“Who the devil can tell that, without knowing of what kind it is?”
+asked Monks.
+
+“Nobody better than you, I am persuaded,” answered Mrs. Bumble: who did
+not want for spirit, as her yoke-fellow could abundantly testify.
+
+“Humph!” said Monks significantly, and with a look of eager inquiry;
+“there may be money’s worth to get, eh?”
+
+“Perhaps there may,” was the composed reply.
+
+“Something that was taken from her,” said Monks. “Something that she
+wore. Something that—”
+
+“You had better bid,” interrupted Mrs. Bumble. “I have heard enough,
+already, to assure me that you are the man I ought to talk to.”
+
+Mr. Bumble, who had not yet been admitted by his better half into any
+greater share of the secret than he had originally possessed, listened
+to this dialogue with outstretched neck and distended eyes: which he
+directed towards his wife and Monks, by turns, in undisguised
+astonishment; increased, if possible, when the latter sternly demanded,
+what sum was required for the disclosure.
+
+“What’s it worth to you?” asked the woman, as collectedly as before.
+
+“It may be nothing; it may be twenty pounds,” replied Monks. “Speak
+out, and let me know which.”
+
+“Add five pounds to the sum you have named; give me five-and-twenty
+pounds in gold,” said the woman; “and I’ll tell you all I know. Not
+before.”
+
+“Five-and-twenty pounds!” exclaimed Monks, drawing back.
+
+“I spoke as plainly as I could,” replied Mrs. Bumble. “It’s not a large
+sum, either.”
+
+“Not a large sum for a paltry secret, that may be nothing when it’s
+told!” cried Monks impatiently; “and which has been lying dead for
+twelve years past or more!”
+
+“Such matters keep well, and, like good wine, often double their value
+in course of time,” answered the matron, still preserving the resolute
+indifference she had assumed. “As to lying dead, there are those who
+will lie dead for twelve thousand years to come, or twelve million, for
+anything you or I know, who will tell strange tales at last!”
+
+“What if I pay it for nothing?” asked Monks, hesitating.
+
+“You can easily take it away again,” replied the matron. “I am but a
+woman; alone here; and unprotected.”
+
+“Not alone, my dear, nor unprotected, neither,” submitted Mr. Bumble,
+in a voice tremulous with fear: “_I_ am here, my dear. And besides,”
+said Mr. Bumble, his teeth chattering as he spoke, “Mr. Monks is too
+much of a gentleman to attempt any violence on porochial persons. Mr.
+Monks is aware that I am not a young man, my dear, and also that I am a
+little run to seed, as I may say; bu he has heerd: I say I have no
+doubt Mr. Monks has heerd, my dear: that I am a very determined
+officer, with very uncommon strength, if I’m once roused. I only want a
+little rousing; that’s all.”
+
+As Mr. Bumble spoke, he made a melancholy feint of grasping his lantern
+with fierce determination; and plainly showed, by the alarmed
+expression of every feature, that he _did_ want a little rousing, and
+not a little, prior to making any very warlike demonstration: unless,
+indeed, against paupers, or other person or persons trained down for
+the purpose.
+
+“You are a fool,” said Mrs. Bumble, in reply; “and had better hold your
+tongue.”
+
+“He had better have cut it out, before he came, if he can’t speak in a
+lower tone,” said Monks, grimly. “So! He’s your husband, eh?”
+
+“He my husband!” tittered the matron, parrying the question.
+
+“I thought as much, when you came in,” rejoined Monks, marking the
+angry glance which the lady darted at her spouse as she spoke. “So much
+the better; I have less hesitation in dealing with two people, when I
+find that there’s only one will between them. I’m in earnest. See
+here!”
+
+He thrust his hand into a side-pocket; and producing a canvas bag, told
+out twenty-five sovereigns on the table, and pushed them over to the
+woman.
+
+“Now,” he said, “gather them up; and when this cursed peal of thunder,
+which I feel is coming up to break over the house-top, is gone, let’s
+hear your story.”
+
+The thunder, which seemed in fact much nearer, and to shiver and break
+almost over their heads, having subsided, Monks, raising his face from
+the table, bent forward to listen to what the woman should say. The
+faces of the three nearly touched, as the two men leant over the small
+table in their eagerness to hear, and the woman also leant forward to
+render her whisper audible. The sickly rays of the suspended lantern
+falling directly upon them, aggravated the paleness and anxiety of
+their countenances: which, encircled by the deepest gloom and darkness,
+looked ghastly in the extreme.
+
+“When this woman, that we called old Sally, died,” the matron began,
+“she and I were alone.”
+
+“Was there no one by?” asked Monks, in the same hollow whisper; “No
+sick wretch or idiot in some other bed? No one who could hear, and
+might, by possibility, understand?”
+
+“Not a soul,” replied the woman; “we were alone. _I_ stood alone beside
+the body when death came over it.”
+
+“Good,” said Monks, regarding her attentively. “Go on.”
+
+“She spoke of a young creature,” resumed the matron, “who had brought a
+child into the world some years before; not merely in the same room,
+but in the same bed, in which she then lay dying.”
+
+“Ay?” said Monks, with quivering lip, and glancing over his shoulder,
+“Blood! How things come about!”
+
+“The child was the one you named to him last night,” said the matron,
+nodding carelessly towards her husband; “the mother this nurse had
+robbed.”
+
+“In life?” asked Monks.
+
+“In death,” replied the woman, with something like a shudder. “She
+stole from the corpse, when it had hardly turned to one, that which the
+dead mother had prayed her, with her last breath, to keep for the
+infant’s sake.”
+
+“She sold it,” cried Monks, with desperate eagerness; “did she sell it?
+Where? When? To whom? How long before?”
+
+“As she told me, with great difficulty, that she had done this,” said
+the matron, “she fell back and died.”
+
+“Without saying more?” cried Monks, in a voice which, from its very
+suppression, seemed only the more furious. “It’s a lie! I’ll not be
+played with. She said more. I’ll tear the life out of you both, but
+I’ll know what it was.”
+
+“She didn’t utter another word,” said the woman, to all appearance
+unmoved (as Mr. Bumble was very far from being) by the strange man’s
+violence; “but she clutched my gown, violently, with one hand, which
+was partly closed; and when I saw that she was dead, and so removed the
+hand by force, I found it clasped a scrap of dirty paper.”
+
+“Which contained—” interposed Monks, stretching forward.
+
+“Nothing,” replied the woman; “it was a pawnbroker’s duplicate.”
+
+“For what?” demanded Monks.
+
+“In good time I’ll tell you.” said the woman. “I judge that she had
+kept the trinket, for some time, in the hope of turning it to better
+account; and then had pawned it; and had saved or scraped together
+money to pay the pawnbroker’s interest year by year, and prevent its
+running out; so that if anything came of it, it could still be
+redeemed. Nothing had come of it; and, as I tell you, she died with the
+scrap of paper, all worn and tattered, in her hand. The time was out in
+two days; I thought something might one day come of it too; and so
+redeemed the pledge.”
+
+“Where is it now?” asked Monks quickly.
+
+“_There_,” replied the woman. And, as if glad to be relieved of it, she
+hastily threw upon the table a small kid bag scarcely large enough for
+a French watch, which Monks pouncing upon, tore open with trembling
+hands. It contained a little gold locket: in which were two locks of
+hair, and a plain gold wedding-ring.
+
+“It has the word ‘Agnes’ engraved on the inside,” said the woman.
+
+“There is a blank left for the surname; and then follows the date;
+which is within a year before the child was born. I found out that.”
+
+“And this is all?” said Monks, after a close and eager scrutiny of the
+contents of the little packet.
+
+“All,” replied the woman.
+
+Mr. Bumble drew a long breath, as if he were glad to find that the
+story was over, and no mention made of taking the five-and-twenty
+pounds back again; and now he took courage to wipe the perspiration
+which had been trickling over his nose, unchecked, during the whole of
+the previous dialogue.
+
+“I know nothing of the story, beyond what I can guess at,” said his
+wife addressing Monks, after a short silence; “and I want to know
+nothing; for it’s safer not. But I may ask you two questions, may I?”
+
+“You may ask,” said Monks, with some show of surprise; “but whether I
+answer or not is another question.”
+
+“—Which makes three,” observed Mr. Bumble, essaying a stroke of
+facetiousness.
+
+“Is that what you expected to get from me?” demanded the matron.
+
+“It is,” replied Monks. “The other question?”
+
+“What do you propose to do with it? Can it be used against me?”
+
+“Never,” rejoined Monks; “nor against me either. See here! But don’t
+move a step forward, or your life is not worth a bulrush.”
+
+With these words, he suddenly wheeled the table aside, and pulling an
+iron ring in the boarding, threw back a large trap-door which opened
+close at Mr. Bumble’s feet, and caused that gentleman to retire several
+paces backward, with great precipitation.
+
+“Look down,” said Monks, lowering the lantern into the gulf. “Don’t
+fear me. I could have let you down, quietly enough, when you were
+seated over it, if that had been my game.”
+
+Thus encouraged, the matron drew near to the brink; and even Mr. Bumble
+himself, impelled by curiousity, ventured to do the same. The turbid
+water, swollen by the heavy rain, was rushing rapidly on below; and all
+other sounds were lost in the noise of its plashing and eddying against
+the green and slimy piles. There had once been a water-mill beneath;
+the tide foaming and chafing round the few rotten stakes, and fragments
+of machinery that yet remained, seemed to dart onward, with a new
+impulse, when freed from the obstacles which had unavailingly attempted
+to stem its headlong course.
+
+“If you flung a man’s body down there, where would it be to-morrow
+morning?” said Monks, swinging the lantern to and fro in the dark well.
+
+“Twelve miles down the river, and cut to pieces besides,” replied
+Bumble, recoiling at the thought.
+
+Monks drew the little packet from his breast, where he had hurriedly
+thrust it; and tying it to a leaden weight, which had formed a part of
+some pulley, and was lying on the floor, dropped it into the stream. It
+fell straight, and true as a die; clove the water with a scarcely
+audible splash; and was gone.
+
+The three looking into each other’s faces, seemed to breathe more
+freely.
+
+“There!” said Monks, closing the trap-door, which fell heavily back
+into its former position. “If the sea ever gives up its dead, as books
+say it will, it will keep its gold and silver to itself, and that trash
+among it. We have nothing more to say, and may break up our pleasant
+party.”
+
+“By all means,” observed Mr. Bumble, with great alacrity.
+
+“You’ll keep a quiet tongue in your head, will you?” said Monks, with a
+threatening look. “I am not afraid of your wife.”
+
+“You may depend upon me, young man,” answered Mr. Bumble, bowing
+himself gradually towards the ladder, with excessive politeness. “On
+everybody’s account, young man; on my own, you know, Mr. Monks.”
+
+“I am glad, for your sake, to hear it,” remarked Monks. “Light your
+lantern! And get away from here as fast as you can.”
+
+It was fortunate that the conversation terminated at this point, or Mr.
+Bumble, who had bowed himself to within six inches of the ladder, would
+infallibly have pitched headlong into the room below. He lighted his
+lantern from that which Monks had detached from the rope, and now
+carried in his hand; and making no effort to prolong the discourse,
+descended in silence, followed by his wife. Monks brought up the rear,
+after pausing on the steps to satisfy himself that there were no other
+sounds to be heard than the beating of the rain without, and the
+rushing of the water.
+
+They traversed the lower room, slowly, and with caution; for Monks
+started at every shadow; and Mr. Bumble, holding his lantern a foot
+above the ground, walked not only with remarkable care, but with a
+marvellously light step for a gentleman of his figure: looking
+nervously about him for hidden trap-doors. The gate at which they had
+entered, was softly unfastened and opened by Monks; merely exchanging a
+nod with their mysterious acquaintance, the married couple emerged into
+the wet and darkness outside.
+
+They were no sooner gone, than Monks, who appeared to entertain an
+invincible repugnance to being left alone, called to a boy who had been
+hidden somewhere below. Bidding him go first, and bear the light, he
+returned to the chamber he had just quitted.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXXIX.
+INTRODUCES SOME RESPECTABLE CHARACTERS WITH WHOM THE READER IS ALREADY
+ACQUAINTED, AND SHOWS HOW MONKS AND THE JEW LAID THEIR WORTHY HEADS
+TOGETHER
+
+
+On the evening following that upon which the three worthies mentioned
+in the last chapter, disposed of their little matter of business as
+therein narrated, Mr. William Sikes, awakening from a nap, drowsily
+growled forth an inquiry what time of night it was.
+
+The room in which Mr. Sikes propounded this question, was not one of
+those he had tenanted, previous to the Chertsey expedition, although it
+was in the same quarter of the town, and was situated at no great
+distance from his former lodgings. It was not, in appearance, so
+desirable a habitation as his old quarters: being a mean and
+badly-furnished apartment, of very limited size; lighted only by one
+small window in the shelving roof, and abutting on a close and dirty
+lane. Nor were there wanting other indications of the good gentleman’s
+having gone down in the world of late: for a great scarcity of
+furniture, and total absence of comfort, together with the
+disappearance of all such small moveables as spare clothes and linen,
+bespoke a state of extreme poverty; while the meagre and attenuated
+condition of Mr. Sikes himself would have fully confirmed these
+symptoms, if they had stood in any need of corroboration.
+
+The housebreaker was lying on the bed, wrapped in his white great-coat,
+by way of dressing-gown, and displaying a set of features in no degree
+improved by the cadaverous hue of illness, and the addition of a soiled
+nightcap, and a stiff, black beard of a week’s growth. The dog sat at
+the bedside: now eyeing his master with a wistful look, and now
+pricking his ears, and uttering a low growl as some noise in the
+street, or in the lower part of the house, attracted his attention.
+Seated by the window, busily engaged in patching an old waistcoat which
+formed a portion of the robber’s ordinary dress, was a female: so pale
+and reduced with watching and privation, that there would have been
+considerable difficulty in recognising her as the same Nancy who has
+already figured in this tale, but for the voice in which she replied to
+Mr. Sikes’s question.
+
+“Not long gone seven,” said the girl. “How do you feel to-night, Bill?”
+
+“As weak as water,” replied Mr. Sikes, with an imprecation on his eyes
+and limbs. “Here; lend us a hand, and let me get off this thundering
+bed anyhow.”
+
+Illness had not improved Mr. Sikes’s temper; for, as the girl raised
+him up and led him to a chair, he muttered various curses on her
+awkwardness, and struck her.
+
+“Whining are you?” said Sikes. “Come! Don’t stand snivelling there. If
+you can’t do anything better than that, cut off altogether. D’ye hear
+me?”
+
+“I hear you,” replied the girl, turning her face aside, and forcing a
+laugh. “What fancy have you got in your head now?”
+
+“Oh! you’ve thought better of it, have you?” growled Sikes, marking the
+tear which trembled in her eye. “All the better for you, you have.”
+
+“Why, you don’t mean to say, you’d be hard upon me to-night, Bill,”
+said the girl, laying her hand upon his shoulder.
+
+“No!” cried Mr. Sikes. “Why not?”
+
+“Such a number of nights,” said the girl, with a touch of woman’s
+tenderness, which communicated something like sweetness of tone, even
+to her voice: “such a number of nights as I’ve been patient with you,
+nursing and caring for you, as if you had been a child: and this the
+first that I’ve seen you like yourself; you wouldn’t have served me as
+you did just now, if you’d thought of that, would you? Come, come; say
+you wouldn’t.”
+
+“Well, then,” rejoined Mr. Sikes, “I wouldn’t. Why, damme, now, the
+girls’s whining again!”
+
+“It’s nothing,” said the girl, throwing herself into a chair. “Don’t
+you seem to mind me. It’ll soon be over.”
+
+“What’ll be over?” demanded Mr. Sikes in a savage voice. “What foolery
+are you up to, now, again? Get up and bustle about, and don’t come over
+me with your woman’s nonsense.”
+
+At any other time, this remonstrance, and the tone in which it was
+delivered, would have had the desired effect; but the girl being really
+weak and exhausted, dropped her head over the back of the chair, and
+fainted, before Mr. Sikes could get out a few of the appropriate oaths
+with which, on similar occasions, he was accustomed to garnish his
+threats. Not knowing, very well, what to do, in this uncommon
+emergency; for Miss Nancy’s hysterics were usually of that violent kind
+which the patient fights and struggles out of, without much assistance;
+Mr. Sikes tried a little blasphemy: and finding that mode of treatment
+wholly ineffectual, called for assistance.
+
+“What’s the matter here, my dear?” said Fagin, looking in.
+
+“Lend a hand to the girl, can’t you?” replied Sikes impatiently. “Don’t
+stand chattering and grinning at me!”
+
+With an exclamation of surprise, Fagin hastened to the girl’s
+assistance, while Mr. John Dawkins (otherwise the Artful Dodger), who
+had followed his venerable friend into the room, hastily deposited on
+the floor a bundle with which he was laden; and snatching a bottle from
+the grasp of Master Charles Bates who came close at his heels, uncorked
+it in a twinkling with his teeth, and poured a portion of its contents
+down the patient’s throat: previously taking a taste, himself, to
+prevent mistakes.
+
+“Give her a whiff of fresh air with the bellows, Charley,” said Mr.
+Dawkins; “and you slap her hands, Fagin, while Bill undoes the
+petticuts.”
+
+These united restoratives, administered with great energy: especially
+that department consigned to Master Bates, who appeared to consider his
+share in the proceedings, a piece of unexampled pleasantry: were not
+long in producing the desired effect. The girl gradually recovered her
+senses; and, staggering to a chair by the bedside, hid her face upon
+the pillow: leaving Mr. Sikes to confront the new comers, in some
+astonishment at their unlooked-for appearance.
+
+“Why, what evil wind has blowed you here?” he asked Fagin.
+
+“No evil wind at all, my dear, for evil winds blow nobody any good; and
+I’ve brought something good with me, that you’ll be glad to see.
+Dodger, my dear, open the bundle; and give Bill the little trifles that
+we spent all our money on, this morning.”
+
+In compliance with Mr. Fagin’s request, the Artful untied this bundle,
+which was of large size, and formed of an old table-cloth; and handed
+the articles it contained, one by one, to Charley Bates: who placed
+them on the table, with various encomiums on their rarity and
+excellence.
+
+“Sitch a rabbit pie, Bill,” exclaimed that young gentleman, disclosing
+to view a huge pasty; “sitch delicate creeturs, with sitch tender
+limbs, Bill, that the wery bones melt in your mouth, and there’s no
+occasion to pick ’em; half a pound of seven and six-penny green, so
+precious strong that if you mix it with biling water, it’ll go nigh to
+blow the lid of the tea-pot off; a pound and a half of moist sugar that
+the niggers didn’t work at all at, afore they got it up to sitch a
+pitch of goodness,—oh no! Two half-quartern brans; pound of best fresh;
+piece of double Glo’ster; and, to wind up all, some of the richest sort
+you ever lushed!”
+
+Uttering this last panegyric, Master Bates produced, from one of his
+extensive pockets, a full-sized wine-bottle, carefully corked; while
+Mr. Dawkins, at the same instant, poured out a wine-glassful of raw
+spirits from the bottle he carried: which the invalid tossed down his
+throat without a moment’s hesitation.
+
+“Ah!” said Fagin, rubbing his hands with great satisfaction. “You’ll
+do, Bill; you’ll do now.”
+
+“Do!” exclaimed Mr. Sikes; “I might have been done for, twenty times
+over, afore you’d have done anything to help me. What do you mean by
+leaving a man in this state, three weeks and more, you false-hearted
+wagabond?”
+
+“Only hear him, boys!” said Fagin, shrugging his shoulders. “And us
+come to bring him all these beau-ti-ful things.”
+
+“The things is well enough in their way,” observed Mr. Sikes: a little
+soothed as he glanced over the table; “but what have you got to say for
+yourself, why you should leave me here, down in the mouth, health,
+blunt, and everything else; and take no more notice of me, all this
+mortal time, than if I was that ’ere dog.—Drive him down, Charley!”
+
+“I never see such a jolly dog as that,” cried Master Bates, doing as he
+was desired. “Smelling the grub like a old lady a going to market! He’d
+make his fortun’ on the stage that dog would, and rewive the drayma
+besides.”
+
+“Hold your din,” cried Sikes, as the dog retreated under the bed: still
+growling angrily. “What have you got to say for yourself, you withered
+old fence, eh?”
+
+“I was away from London, a week and more, my dear, on a plant,” replied
+the Jew.
+
+“And what about the other fortnight?” demanded Sikes. “What about the
+other fortnight that you’ve left me lying here, like a sick rat in his
+hole?”
+
+“I couldn’t help it, Bill. I can’t go into a long explanation before
+company; but I couldn’t help it, upon my honour.”
+
+“Upon your what?” growled Sikes, with excessive disgust. “Here! Cut me
+off a piece of that pie, one of you boys, to take the taste of that out
+of my mouth, or it’ll choke me dead.”
+
+“Don’t be out of temper, my dear,” urged Fagin, submissively. “I have
+never forgot you, Bill; never once.”
+
+“No! I’ll pound it that you han’t,” replied Sikes, with a bitter grin.
+“You’ve been scheming and plotting away, every hour that I have laid
+shivering and burning here; and Bill was to do this; and Bill was to do
+that; and Bill was to do it all, dirt cheap, as soon as he got well:
+and was quite poor enough for your work. If it hadn’t been for the
+girl, I might have died.”
+
+“There now, Bill,” remonstrated Fagin, eagerly catching at the word.
+“If it hadn’t been for the girl! Who but poor ould Fagin was the means
+of your having such a handy girl about you?”
+
+“He says true enough there!” said Nancy, coming hastily forward. “Let
+him be; let him be.”
+
+Nancy’s appearance gave a new turn to the conversation; for the boys,
+receiving a sly wink from the wary old Jew, began to ply her with
+liquor: of which, however, she took very sparingly; while Fagin,
+assuming an unusual flow of spirits, gradually brought Mr. Sikes into a
+better temper, by affecting to regard his threats as a little pleasant
+banter; and, moreover, by laughing very heartily at one or two rough
+jokes, which, after repeated applications to the spirit-bottle, he
+condescended to make.
+
+“It’s all very well,” said Mr. Sikes; “but I must have some blunt from
+you to-night.”
+
+“I haven’t a piece of coin about me,” replied the Jew.
+
+“Then you’ve got lots at home,” retorted Sikes; “and I must have some
+from there.”
+
+“Lots!” cried Fagin, holding up is hands. “I haven’t so much as would—”
+
+“I don’t know how much you’ve got, and I dare say you hardly know
+yourself, as it would take a pretty long time to count it,” said Sikes;
+“but I must have some to-night; and that’s flat.”
+
+“Well, well,” said Fagin, with a sigh, “I’ll send the Artful round
+presently.”
+
+“You won’t do nothing of the kind,” rejoined Mr. Sikes. “The Artful’s a
+deal too artful, and would forget to come, or lose his way, or get
+dodged by traps and so be perwented, or anything for an excuse, if you
+put him up to it. Nancy shall go to the ken and fetch it, to make all
+sure; and I’ll lie down and have a snooze while she’s gone.”
+
+After a great deal of haggling and squabbling, Fagin beat down the
+amount of the required advance from five pounds to three pounds four
+and sixpence: protesting with many solemn asseverations that that would
+only leave him eighteen-pence to keep house with; Mr. Sikes sullenly
+remarking that if he couldn’t get any more he must accompany him home;
+with the Dodger and Master Bates put the eatables in the cupboard. The
+Jew then, taking leave of his affectionate friend, returned homeward,
+attended by Nancy and the boys: Mr. Sikes, meanwhile, flinging himself
+on the bed, and composing himself to sleep away the time until the
+young lady’s return.
+
+In due course, they arrived at Fagin’s abode, where they found Toby
+Crackit and Mr. Chitling intent upon their fifteenth game at cribbage,
+which it is scarcely necessary to say the latter gentleman lost, and
+with it, his fifteenth and last sixpence: much to the amusement of his
+young friends. Mr. Crackit, apparently somewhat ashamed at being found
+relaxing himself with a gentleman so much his inferior in station and
+mental endowments, yawned, and inquiring after Sikes, took up his hat
+to go.
+
+“Has nobody been, Toby?” asked Fagin.
+
+“Not a living leg,” answered Mr. Crackit, pulling up his collar; “it’s
+been as dull as swipes. You ought to stand something handsome, Fagin,
+to recompense me for keeping house so long. Damme, I’m as flat as a
+juryman; and should have gone to sleep, as fast as Newgate, if I hadn’t
+had the good natur’ to amuse this youngster. Horrid dull, I’m blessed
+if I an’t!”
+
+With these and other ejaculations of the same kind, Mr. Toby Crackit
+swept up his winnings, and crammed them into his waistcoat pocket with
+a haughty air, as though such small pieces of silver were wholly
+beneath the consideration of a man of his figure; this done, he
+swaggered out of the room, with so much elegance and gentility, that
+Mr. Chitling, bestowing numerous admiring glances on his legs and boots
+till they were out of sight, assured the company that he considered his
+acquaintance cheap at fifteen sixpences an interview, and that he
+didn’t value his losses the snap of his little finger.
+
+“Wot a rum chap you are, Tom!” said Master Bates, highly amused by this
+declaration.
+
+“Not a bit of it,” replied Mr. Chitling. “Am I, Fagin?”
+
+“A very clever fellow, my dear,” said Fagin, patting him on the
+shoulder, and winking to his other pupils.
+
+“And Mr. Crackit is a heavy swell; an’t he, Fagin?” asked Tom.
+
+“No doubt at all of that, my dear.”
+
+“And it is a creditable thing to have his acquaintance; an’t it,
+Fagin?” pursued Tom.
+
+“Very much so, indeed, my dear. They’re only jealous, Tom, because he
+won’t give it to them.”
+
+“Ah!” cried Tom, triumphantly, “that’s where it is! He has cleaned me
+out. But I can go and earn some more, when I like; can’t I, Fagin?”
+
+“To be sure you can, and the sooner you go the better, Tom; so make up
+your loss at once, and don’t lose any more time. Dodger! Charley! It’s
+time you were on the lay. Come! It’s near ten, and nothing done yet.”
+
+In obedience to this hint, the boys, nodding to Nancy, took up their
+hats, and left the room; the Dodger and his vivacious friend indulging,
+as they went, in many witticisms at the expense of Mr. Chitling; in
+whose conduct, it is but justice to say, there was nothing very
+conspicuous or peculiar: inasmuch as there are a great number of
+spirited young bloods upon town, who pay a much higher price than Mr.
+Chitling for being seen in good society: and a great number of fine
+gentlemen (composing the good society aforesaid) who established their
+reputation upon very much the same footing as flash Toby Crackit.
+
+“Now,” said Fagin, when they had left the room, “I’ll go and get you
+that cash, Nancy. This is only the key of a little cupboard where I
+keep a few odd things the boys get, my dear. I never lock up my money,
+for I’ve got none to lock up, my dear—ha! ha! ha!—none to lock up. It’s
+a poor trade, Nancy, and no thanks; but I’m fond of seeing the young
+people about me; and I bear it all, I bear it all. Hush!” he said,
+hastily concealing the key in his breast; “who’s that? Listen!”
+
+The girl, who was sitting at the table with her arms folded, appeared
+in no way interested in the arrival: or to care whether the person,
+whoever he was, came or went: until the murmur of a man’s voice reached
+her ears. The instant she caught the sound, she tore off her bonnet and
+shawl, with the rapidity of lightning, and thrust them under the table.
+The Jew, turning round immediately afterwards, she muttered a complaint
+of the heat: in a tone of languor that contrasted, very remarkably,
+with the extreme haste and violence of this action: which, however, had
+been unobserved by Fagin, who had his back towards her at the time.
+
+“Bah!” he whispered, as though nettled by the interruption; “it’s the
+man I expected before; he’s coming downstairs. Not a word about the
+money while he’s here, Nance. He won’t stop long. Not ten minutes, my
+dear.”
+
+Laying his skinny forefinger upon his lip, the Jew carried a candle to
+the door, as a man’s step was heard upon the stairs without. He reached
+it, at the same moment as the visitor, who, coming hastily into the
+room, was close upon the girl before he observed her.
+
+It was Monks.
+
+“Only one of my young people,” said Fagin, observing that Monks drew
+back, on beholding a stranger. “Don’t move, Nancy.”
+
+The girl drew closer to the table, and glancing at Monks with an air of
+careless levity, withdrew her eyes; but as he turned towards Fagin, she
+stole another look; so keen and searching, and full of purpose, that if
+there had been any bystander to observe the change, he could hardly
+have believed the two looks to have proceeded from the same person.
+
+“Any news?” inquired Fagin.
+
+“Great.”
+
+“And—and—good?” asked Fagin, hesitating as though he feared to vex the
+other man by being too sanguine.
+
+“Not bad, any way,” replied Monks with a smile. “I have been prompt
+enough this time. Let me have a word with you.”
+
+The girl drew closer to the table, and made no offer to leave the room,
+although she could see that Monks was pointing to her. The Jew: perhaps
+fearing she might say something aloud about the money, if he
+endeavoured to get rid of her: pointed upward, and took Monks out of
+the room.
+
+“Not that infernal hole we were in before,” she could hear the man say
+as they went upstairs. Fagin laughed; and making some reply which did
+not reach her, seemed, by the creaking of the boards, to lead his
+companion to the second story.
+
+Before the sound of their footsteps had ceased to echo through the
+house, the girl had slipped off her shoes; and drawing her gown loosely
+over her head, and muffling her arms in it, stood at the door,
+listening with breathless interest. The moment the noise ceased, she
+glided from the room; ascended the stairs with incredible softness and
+silence; and was lost in the gloom above.
+
+The room remained deserted for a quarter of an hour or more; the girl
+glided back with the same unearthly tread; and, immediately afterwards,
+the two men were heard descending. Monks went at once into the street;
+and the Jew crawled upstairs again for the money. When he returned, the
+girl was adjusting her shawl and bonnet, as if preparing to be gone.
+
+“Why, Nance!” exclaimed the Jew, starting back as he put down the
+candle, “how pale you are!”
+
+“Pale!” echoed the girl, shading her eyes with her hands, as if to look
+steadily at him.
+
+“Quite horrible. What have you been doing to yourself?”
+
+“Nothing that I know of, except sitting in this close place for I don’t
+know how long and all,” replied the girl carelessly. “Come! Let me get
+back; that’s a dear.”
+
+With a sigh for every piece of money, Fagin told the amount into her
+hand. They parted without more conversation, merely interchanging a
+“good-night.”
+
+When the girl got into the open street, she sat down upon a doorstep;
+and seemed, for a few moments, wholly bewildered and unable to pursue
+her way. Suddenly she arose; and hurrying on, in a direction quite
+opposite to that in which Sikes was awaiting her returned, quickened
+her pace, until it gradually resolved into a violent run. After
+completely exhausting herself, she stopped to take breath: and, as if
+suddenly recollecting herself, and deploring her inability to do
+something she was bent upon, wrung her hands, and burst into tears.
+
+It might be that her tears relieved her, or that she felt the full
+hopelessness of her condition; but she turned back; and hurrying with
+nearly as great rapidity in the contrary direction; partly to recover
+lost time, and partly to keep pace with the violent current of her own
+thoughts: soon reached the dwelling where she had left the
+housebreaker.
+
+If she betrayed any agitation, when she presented herself to Mr. Sikes,
+he did not observe it; for merely inquiring if she had brought the
+money, and receiving a reply in the affirmative, he uttered a growl of
+satisfaction, and replacing his head upon the pillow, resumed the
+slumbers which her arrival had interrupted.
+
+It was fortunate for her that the possession of money occasioned him so
+much employment next day in the way of eating and drinking; and withal
+had so beneficial an effect in smoothing down the asperities of his
+temper; that he had neither time nor inclination to be very critical
+upon her behaviour and deportment. That she had all the abstracted and
+nervous manner of one who is on the eve of some bold and hazardous
+step, which it has required no common struggle to resolve upon, would
+have been obvious to the lynx-eyed Fagin, who would most probably have
+taken the alarm at once; but Mr. Sikes lacking the niceties of
+discrimination, and being troubled with no more subtle misgivings than
+those which resolve themselves into a dogged roughness of behaviour
+towards everybody; and being, furthermore, in an unusually amiable
+condition, as has been already observed; saw nothing unusual in her
+demeanor, and indeed, troubled himself so little about her, that, had
+her agitation been far more perceptible than it was, it would have been
+very unlikely to have awakened his suspicions.
+
+As that day closed in, the girl’s excitement increased; and, when night
+came on, and she sat by, watching until the housebreaker should drink
+himself asleep, there was an unusual paleness in her cheek, and a fire
+in her eye, that even Sikes observed with astonishment.
+
+Mr. Sikes being weak from the fever, was lying in bed, taking hot water
+with his gin to render it less inflammatory; and had pushed his glass
+towards Nancy to be replenished for the third or fourth time, when
+these symptoms first struck him.
+
+“Why, burn my body!” said the man, raising himself on his hands as he
+stared the girl in the face. “You look like a corpse come to life
+again. What’s the matter?”
+
+“Matter!” replied the girl. “Nothing. What do you look at me so hard
+for?”
+
+“What foolery is this?” demanded Sikes, grasping her by the arm, and
+shaking her roughly. “What is it? What do you mean? What are you
+thinking of?”
+
+“Of many things, Bill,” replied the girl, shivering, and as she did so,
+pressing her hands upon her eyes. “But, Lord! What odds in that?”
+
+The tone of forced gaiety in which the last words were spoken, seemed
+to produce a deeper impression on Sikes than the wild and rigid look
+which had preceded them.
+
+“I tell you wot it is,” said Sikes; “if you haven’t caught the fever,
+and got it comin’ on, now, there’s something more than usual in the
+wind, and something dangerous too. You’re not a-going to—. No, damme!
+you wouldn’t do that!”
+
+“Do what?” asked the girl.
+
+“There ain’t,” said Sikes, fixing his eyes upon her, and muttering the
+words to himself; “there ain’t a stauncher-hearted gal going, or I’d
+have cut her throat three months ago. She’s got the fever coming on;
+that’s it.”
+
+Fortifying himself with this assurance, Sikes drained the glass to the
+bottom, and then, with many grumbling oaths, called for his physic. The
+girl jumped up, with great alacrity; poured it quickly out, but with
+her back towards him; and held the vessel to his lips, while he drank
+off the contents.
+
+“Now,” said the robber, “come and sit aside of me, and put on your own
+face; or I’ll alter it so, that you won’t know it agin when you do want
+it.”
+
+The girl obeyed. Sikes, locking her hand in his, fell back upon the
+pillow: turning his eyes upon her face. They closed; opened again;
+closed once more; again opened. He shifted his position restlessly;
+and, after dozing again, and again, for two or three minutes, and as
+often springing up with a look of terror, and gazing vacantly about
+him, was suddenly stricken, as it were, while in the very attitude of
+rising, into a deep and heavy sleep. The grasp of his hand relaxed; the
+upraised arm fell languidly by his side; and he lay like one in a
+profound trance.
+
+“The laudanum has taken effect at last,” murmured the girl, as she rose
+from the bedside. “I may be too late, even now.”
+
+She hastily dressed herself in her bonnet and shawl: looking fearfully
+round, from time to time, as if, despite the sleeping draught, she
+expected every moment to feel the pressure of Sikes’s heavy hand upon
+her shoulder; then, stooping softly over the bed, she kissed the
+robber’s lips; and then opening and closing the room-door with
+noiseless touch, hurried from the house.
+
+A watchman was crying half-past nine, down a dark passage through which
+she had to pass, in gaining the main thoroughfare.
+
+“Has it long gone the half-hour?” asked the girl.
+
+“It’ll strike the hour in another quarter,” said the man: raising his
+lantern to her face.
+
+“And I cannot get there in less than an hour or more,” muttered Nancy:
+brushing swiftly past him, and gliding rapidly down the street.
+
+Many of the shops were already closing in the back lanes and avenues
+through which she tracked her way, in making from Spitalfields towards
+the West-End of London. The clock struck ten, increasing her
+impatience. She tore along the narrow pavement: elbowing the passengers
+from side to side; and darting almost under the horses’ heads, crossed
+crowded streets, where clusters of persons were eagerly watching their
+opportunity to do the like.
+
+“The woman is mad!” said the people, turning to look after her as she
+rushed away.
+
+When she reached the more wealthy quarter of the town, the streets were
+comparatively deserted; and here her headlong progress excited a still
+greater curiosity in the stragglers whom she hurried past. Some
+quickened their pace behind, as though to see whither she was hastening
+at such an unusual rate; and a few made head upon her, and looked back,
+surprised at her undiminished speed; but they fell off one by one; and
+when she neared her place of destination, she was alone.
+
+It was a family hotel in a quiet but handsome street near Hyde Park. As
+the brilliant light of the lamp which burnt before its door, guided her
+to the spot, the clock struck eleven. She had loitered for a few paces
+as though irresolute, and making up her mind to advance; but the sound
+determined her, and she stepped into the hall. The porter’s seat was
+vacant. She looked round with an air of incertitude, and advanced
+towards the stairs.
+
+“Now, young woman!” said a smartly-dressed female, looking out from a
+door behind her, “who do you want here?”
+
+“A lady who is stopping in this house,” answered the girl.
+
+“A lady!” was the reply, accompanied with a scornful look. “What lady?”
+
+“Miss Maylie,” said Nancy.
+
+The young woman, who had by this time, noted her appearance, replied
+only by a look of virtuous disdain; and summoned a man to answer her.
+To him, Nancy repeated her request.
+
+“What name am I to say?” asked the waiter.
+
+“It’s of no use saying any,” replied Nancy.
+
+“Nor business?” said the man.
+
+“No, nor that neither,” rejoined the girl. “I must see the lady.”
+
+“Come!” said the man, pushing her towards the door. “None of this. Take
+yourself off.”
+
+“I shall be carried out if I go!” said the girl violently; “and I can
+make that a job that two of you won’t like to do. Isn’t there anybody
+here,” she said, looking round, “that will see a simple message carried
+for a poor wretch like me?”
+
+This appeal produced an effect on a good-tempered-faced man-cook, who
+with some of the other servants was looking on, and who stepped forward
+to interfere.
+
+“Take it up for her, Joe; can’t you?” said this person.
+
+“What’s the good?” replied the man. “You don’t suppose the young lady
+will see such as her; do you?”
+
+This allusion to Nancy’s doubtful character, raised a vast quantity of
+chaste wrath in the bosoms of four housemaids, who remarked, with great
+fervour, that the creature was a disgrace to her sex; and strongly
+advocated her being thrown, ruthlessly, into the kennel.
+
+“Do what you like with me,” said the girl, turning to the men again;
+“but do what I ask you first, and I ask you to give this message for
+God Almighty’s sake.”
+
+The soft-hearted cook added his intercession, and the result was that
+the man who had first appeared undertook its delivery.
+
+“What’s it to be?” said the man, with one foot on the stairs.
+
+“That a young woman earnestly asks to speak to Miss Maylie alone,” said
+Nancy; “and that if the lady will only hear the first word she has to
+say, she will know whether to hear her business, or to have her turned
+out of doors as an impostor.”
+
+“I say,” said the man, “you’re coming it strong!”
+
+“You give the message,” said the girl firmly; “and let me hear the
+answer.”
+
+The man ran upstairs. Nancy remained, pale and almost breathless,
+listening with quivering lip to the very audible expressions of scorn,
+of which the chaste housemaids were very prolific; and of which they
+became still more so, when the man returned, and said the young woman
+was to walk upstairs.
+
+“It’s no good being proper in this world,” said the first housemaid.
+
+“Brass can do better than the gold what has stood the fire,” said the
+second.
+
+The third contented herself with wondering “what ladies was made of”;
+and the fourth took the first in a quartette of “Shameful!” with which
+the Dianas concluded.
+
+Regardless of all this: for she had weightier matters at heart: Nancy
+followed the man, with trembling limbs, to a small ante-chamber,
+lighted by a lamp from the ceiling. Here he left her, and retired.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XL.
+A STRANGE INTERVIEW, WHICH IS A SEQUEL TO THE LAST CHAMBER
+
+
+The girl’s life had been squandered in the streets, and among the most
+noisome of the stews and dens of London, but there was something of the
+woman’s original nature left in her still; and when she heard a light
+step approaching the door opposite to that by which she had entered,
+and thought of the wide contrast which the small room would in another
+moment contain, she felt burdened with the sense of her own deep shame,
+and shrunk as though she could scarcely bear the presence of her with
+whom she had sought this interview.
+
+But struggling with these better feelings was pride,—the vice of the
+lowest and most debased creatures no less than of the high and
+self-assured. The miserable companion of thieves and ruffians, the
+fallen outcast of low haunts, the associate of the scourings of the
+jails and hulks, living within the shadow of the gallows itself,—even
+this degraded being felt too proud to betray a feeble gleam of the
+womanly feeling which she thought a weakness, but which alone connected
+her with that humanity, of which her wasting life had obliterated so
+many, many traces when a very child.
+
+She raised her eyes sufficiently to observe that the figure which
+presented itself was that of a slight and beautiful girl; then, bending
+them on the ground, she tossed her head with affected carelessness as
+she said:
+
+“It’s a hard matter to get to see you, lady. If I had taken offence,
+and gone away, as many would have done, you’d have been sorry for it
+one day, and not without reason either.”
+
+“I am very sorry if any one has behaved harshly to you,” replied Rose.
+“Do not think of that. Tell me why you wished to see me. I am the
+person you inquired for.”
+
+The kind tone of this answer, the sweet voice, the gentle manner, the
+absence of any accent of haughtiness or displeasure, took the girl
+completely by surprise, and she burst into tears.
+
+“Oh, lady, lady!” she said, clasping her hands passionately before her
+face, “if there was more like you, there would be fewer like me,—there
+would—there would!”
+
+“Sit down,” said Rose, earnestly. “If you are in poverty or affliction
+I shall be truly glad to relieve you if I can,—I shall indeed. Sit
+down.”
+
+“Let me stand, lady,” said the girl, still weeping, “and do not speak
+to me so kindly till you know me better. It is growing late. Is—is—that
+door shut?”
+
+“Yes,” said Rose, recoiling a few steps, as if to be nearer assistance
+in case she should require it. “Why?”
+
+“Because,” said the girl, “I am about to put my life and the lives of
+others in your hands. I am the girl that dragged little Oliver back to
+old Fagin’s on the night he went out from the house in Pentonville.”
+
+“You!” said Rose Maylie.
+
+“I, lady!” replied the girl. “I am the infamous creature you have heard
+of, that lives among the thieves, and that never from the first moment
+I can recollect my eyes and senses opening on London streets have known
+any better life, or kinder words than they have given me, so help me
+God! Do not mind shrinking openly from me, lady. I am younger than you
+would think, to look at me, but I am well used to it. The poorest women
+fall back, as I make my way along the crowded pavement.”
+
+“What dreadful things are these!” said Rose, involuntarily falling from
+her strange companion.
+
+“Thank Heaven upon your knees, dear lady,” cried the girl, “that you
+had friends to care for and keep you in your childhood, and that you
+were never in the midst of cold and hunger, and riot and drunkenness,
+and—and—something worse than all—as I have been from my cradle. I may
+use the word, for the alley and the gutter were mine, as they will be
+my deathbed.”
+
+“I pity you!” said Rose, in a broken voice. “It wrings my heart to hear
+you!”
+
+“Heaven bless you for your goodness!” rejoined the girl. “If you knew
+what I am sometimes, you would pity me, indeed. But I have stolen away
+from those who would surely murder me, if they knew I had been here, to
+tell you what I have overheard. Do you know a man named Monks?”
+
+“No,” said Rose.
+
+“He knows you,” replied the girl; “and knew you were here, for it was
+by hearing him tell the place that I found you out.”
+
+“I never heard the name,” said Rose.
+
+“Then he goes by some other amongst us,” rejoined the girl, “which I
+more than thought before. Some time ago, and soon after Oliver was put
+into your house on the night of the robbery, I—suspecting this
+man—listened to a conversation held between him and Fagin in the dark.
+I found out, from what I heard, that Monks—the man I asked you about,
+you know—”
+
+“Yes,” said Rose, “I understand.”
+
+“—That Monks,” pursued the girl, “had seen him accidently with two of
+our boys on the day we first lost him, and had known him directly to be
+the same child that he was watching for, though I couldn’t make out
+why. A bargain was struck with Fagin, that if Oliver was got back he
+should have a certain sum; and he was to have more for making him a
+thief, which this Monks wanted for some purpose of his own.”
+
+“For what purpose?” asked Rose.
+
+“He caught sight of my shadow on the wall as I listened, in the hope of
+finding out,” said the girl; “and there are not many people besides me
+that could have got out of their way in time to escape discovery. But I
+did; and I saw him no more till last night.”
+
+“And what occurred then?”
+
+“I’ll tell you, lady. Last night he came again. Again they went
+upstairs, and I, wrapping myself up so that my shadow would not betray
+me, again listened at the door. The first words I heard Monks say were
+these: ‘So the only proofs of the boy’s identity lie at the bottom of
+the river, and the old hag that received them from the mother is
+rotting in her coffin.’ They laughed, and talked of his success in
+doing this; and Monks, talking on about the boy, and getting very wild,
+said that though he had got the young devil’s money safely now, he’d
+rather have had it the other way; for, what a game it would have been
+to have brought down the boast of the father’s will, by driving him
+through every jail in town, and then hauling him up for some capital
+felony which Fagin could easily manage, after having made a good profit
+of him besides.”
+
+“What is all this!” said Rose.
+
+“The truth, lady, though it comes from my lips,” replied the girl.
+“Then, he said, with oaths common enough in my ears, but strange to
+yours, that if he could gratify his hatred by taking the boy’s life
+without bringing his own neck in danger, he would; but, as he couldn’t,
+he’d be upon the watch to meet him at every turn in life; and if he
+took advantage of his birth and history, he might harm him yet. ‘In
+short, Fagin,’ he says, ‘Jew as you are, you never laid such snares as
+I’ll contrive for my young brother, Oliver.’”
+
+“His brother!” exclaimed Rose.
+
+“Those were his words,” said Nancy, glancing uneasily round, as she had
+scarcely ceased to do, since she began to speak, for a vision of Sikes
+haunted her perpetually. “And more. When he spoke of you and the other
+lady, and said it seemed contrived by Heaven, or the devil, against
+him, that Oliver should come into your hands, he laughed, and said
+there was some comfort in that too, for how many thousands and hundreds
+of thousands of pounds would you not give, if you had them, to know who
+your two-legged spaniel was.”
+
+“You do not mean,” said Rose, turning very pale, “to tell me that this
+was said in earnest?”
+
+“He spoke in hard and angry earnest, if a man ever did,” replied the
+girl, shaking her head. “He is an earnest man when his hatred is up. I
+know many who do worse things; but I’d rather listen to them all a
+dozen times, than to that Monks once. It is growing late, and I have to
+reach home without suspicion of having been on such an errand as this.
+I must get back quickly.”
+
+“But what can I do?” said Rose. “To what use can I turn this
+communication without you? Back! Why do you wish to return to
+companions you paint in such terrible colors? If you repeat this
+information to a gentleman whom I can summon in an instant from the
+next room, you can be consigned to some place of safety without half an
+hour’s delay.”
+
+“I wish to go back,” said the girl. “I must go back, because—how can I
+tell such things to an innocent lady like you?—because among the men I
+have told you of, there is one: the most desperate among them all; that
+I can’t leave: no, not even to be saved from the life I am leading
+now.”
+
+“Your having interfered in this dear boy’s behalf before,” said Rose;
+“your coming here, at so great a risk, to tell me what you have heard;
+your manner, which convinces me of the truth of what you say; your
+evident contrition, and sense of shame; all lead me to believe that you
+might yet be reclaimed. Oh!” said the earnest girl, folding her hands
+as the tears coursed down her face, “do not turn a deaf ear to the
+entreaties of one of your own sex; the first—the first, I do believe,
+who ever appealed to you in the voice of pity and compassion. Do hear
+my words, and let me save you yet, for better things.”
+
+“Lady,” cried the girl, sinking on her knees, “dear, sweet, angel lady,
+you _are_ the first that ever blessed me with such words as these, and
+if I had heard them years ago, they might have turned me from a life of
+sin and sorrow; but it is too late, it is too late!”
+
+“It is never too late,” said Rose, “for penitence and atonement.”
+
+“It is,” cried the girl, writhing in agony of her mind; “I cannot leave
+him now! I could not be his death.”
+
+“Why should you be?” asked Rose.
+
+“Nothing could save him,” cried the girl. “If I told others what I have
+told you, and led to their being taken, he would be sure to die. He is
+the boldest, and has been so cruel!”
+
+“Is it possible,” cried Rose, “that for such a man as this, you can
+resign every future hope, and the certainty of immediate rescue? It is
+madness.”
+
+“I don’t know what it is,” answered the girl; “I only know that it is
+so, and not with me alone, but with hundreds of others as bad and
+wretched as myself. I must go back. Whether it is God’s wrath for the
+wrong I have done, I do not know; but I am drawn back to him through
+every suffering and ill usage; and I should be, I believe, if I knew
+that I was to die by his hand at last.”
+
+“What am I to do?” said Rose. “I should not let you depart from me
+thus.”
+
+“You should, lady, and I know you will,” rejoined the girl, rising.
+“You will not stop my going because I have trusted in your goodness,
+and forced no promise from you, as I might have done.”
+
+“Of what use, then, is the communication you have made?” said Rose.
+“This mystery must be investigated, or how will its disclosure to me,
+benefit Oliver, whom you are anxious to serve?”
+
+“You must have some kind gentleman about you that will hear it as a
+secret, and advise you what to do,” rejoined the girl.
+
+“But where can I find you again when it is necessary?” asked Rose. “I
+do not seek to know where these dreadful people live, but where will
+you be walking or passing at any settled period from this time?”
+
+“Will you promise me that you will have my secret strictly kept, and
+come alone, or with the only other person that knows it; and that I
+shall not be watched or followed?” asked the girl.
+
+“I promise you solemnly,” answered Rose.
+
+“Every Sunday night, from eleven until the clock strikes twelve,” said
+the girl without hesitation, “I will walk on London Bridge if I am
+alive.”
+
+“Stay another moment,” interposed Rose, as the girl moved hurriedly
+towards the door. “Think once again on your own condition, and the
+opportunity you have of escaping from it. You have a claim on me: not
+only as the voluntary bearer of this intelligence, but as a woman lost
+almost beyond redemption. Will you return to this gang of robbers, and
+to this man, when a word can save you? What fascination is it that can
+take you back, and make you cling to wickedness and misery? Oh! is
+there no chord in your heart that I can touch! Is there nothing left,
+to which I can appeal against this terrible infatuation!”
+
+“When ladies as young, and good, and beautiful as you are,” replied the
+girl steadily, “give away your hearts, love will carry you all
+lengths—even such as you, who have home, friends, other admirers,
+everything, to fill them. When such as I, who have no certain roof but
+the coffinlid, and no friend in sickness or death but the hospital
+nurse, set our rotten hearts on any man, and let him fill the place
+that has been a blank through all our wretched lives, who can hope to
+cure us? Pity us, lady—pity us for having only one feeling of the woman
+left, and for having that turned, by a heavy judgment, from a comfort
+and a pride, into a new means of violence and suffering.”
+
+“You will,” said Rose, after a pause, “take some money from me, which
+may enable you to live without dishonesty—at all events until we meet
+again?”
+
+“Not a penny,” replied the girl, waving her hand.
+
+“Do not close your heart against all my efforts to help you,” said
+Rose, stepping gently forward. “I wish to serve you indeed.”
+
+“You would serve me best, lady,” replied the girl, wringing her hands,
+“if you could take my life at once; for I have felt more grief to think
+of what I am, to-night, than I ever did before, and it would be
+something not to die in the hell in which I have lived. God bless you,
+sweet lady, and send as much happiness on your head as I have brought
+shame on mine!”
+
+Thus speaking, and sobbing aloud, the unhappy creature turned away;
+while Rose Maylie, overpowered by this extraordinary interview, which
+had more the semblance of a rapid dream than an actual occurrence, sank
+into a chair, and endeavoured to collect her wandering thoughts.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XLI.
+CONTAINING FRESH DISCOVERIES, AND SHOWING THAT SUPRISES, LIKE
+MISFORTUNES, SELDOM COME ALONE
+
+
+Her situation was, indeed, one of no common trial and difficulty. While
+she felt the most eager and burning desire to penetrate the mystery in
+which Oliver’s history was enveloped, she could not but hold sacred the
+confidence which the miserable woman with whom she had just conversed,
+had reposed in her, as a young and guileless girl. Her words and manner
+had touched Rose Maylie’s heart; and, mingled with her love for her
+young charge, and scarcely less intense in its truth and fervour, was
+her fond wish to win the outcast back to repentance and hope.
+
+They purposed remaining in London only three days, prior to departing
+for some weeks to a distant part of the coast. It was now midnight of
+the first day. What course of action could she determine upon, which
+could be adopted in eight-and-forty hours? Or how could she postpone
+the journey without exciting suspicion?
+
+Mr. Losberne was with them, and would be for the next two days; but
+Rose was too well acquainted with the excellent gentleman’s
+impetuosity, and foresaw too clearly the wrath with which, in the first
+explosion of his indignation, he would regard the instrument of
+Oliver’s recapture, to trust him with the secret, when her
+representations in the girl’s behalf could be seconded by no
+experienced person. These were all reasons for the greatest caution and
+most circumspect behaviour in communicating it to Mrs. Maylie, whose
+first impulse would infallibly be to hold a conference with the worthy
+doctor on the subject. As to resorting to any legal adviser, even if
+she had known how to do so, it was scarcely to be thought of, for the
+same reason. Once the thought occurred to her of seeking assistance
+from Harry; but this awakened the recollection of their last parting,
+and it seemed unworthy of her to call him back, when—the tears rose to
+her eyes as she pursued this train of reflection—he might have by this
+time learnt to forget her, and to be happier away.
+
+Disturbed by these different reflections; inclining now to one course
+and then to another, and again recoiling from all, as each successive
+consideration presented itself to her mind; Rose passed a sleepless and
+anxious night. After more communing with herself next day, she arrived
+at the desperate conclusion of consulting Harry.
+
+“If it be painful to him,” she thought, “to come back here, how painful
+it will be to me! But perhaps he will not come; he may write, or he may
+come himself, and studiously abstain from meeting me—he did when he
+went away. I hardly thought he would; but it was better for us both.”
+And here Rose dropped the pen, and turned away, as though the very
+paper which was to be her messenger should not see her weep.
+
+She had taken up the same pen, and laid it down again fifty times, and
+had considered and reconsidered the first line of her letter without
+writing the first word, when Oliver, who had been walking in the
+streets, with Mr. Giles for a body-guard, entered the room in such
+breathless haste and violent agitation, as seemed to betoken some new
+cause of alarm.
+
+“What makes you look so flurried?” asked Rose, advancing to meet him.
+
+“I hardly know how; I feel as if I should be choked,” replied the boy.
+“Oh dear! To think that I should see him at last, and you should be
+able to know that I have told you the truth!”
+
+“I never thought you had told us anything but the truth,” said Rose,
+soothing him. “But what is this?—of whom do you speak?”
+
+“I have seen the gentleman,” replied Oliver, scarcely able to
+articulate, “the gentleman who was so good to me—Mr. Brownlow, that we
+have so often talked about.”
+
+“Where?” asked Rose.
+
+“Getting out of a coach,” replied Oliver, shedding tears of delight,
+“and going into a house. I didn’t speak to him—I couldn’t speak to him,
+for he didn’t see me, and I trembled so, that I was not able to go up
+to him. But Giles asked, for me, whether he lived there, and they said
+he did. Look here,” said Oliver, opening a scrap of paper, “here it is;
+here’s where he lives—I’m going there directly! Oh, dear me, dear me!
+What shall I do when I come to see him and hear him speak again!”
+
+With her attention not a little distracted by these and a great many
+other incoherent exclamations of joy, Rose read the address, which was
+Craven Street, in the Strand. She very soon determined upon turning the
+discovery to account.
+
+“Quick!” she said. “Tell them to fetch a hackney-coach, and be ready to
+go with me. I will take you there directly, without a minute’s loss of
+time. I will only tell my aunt that we are going out for an hour, and
+be ready as soon as you are.”
+
+Oliver needed no prompting to despatch, and in little more than five
+minutes they were on their way to Craven Street. When they arrived
+there, Rose left Oliver in the coach, under pretence of preparing the
+old gentleman to receive him; and sending up her card by the servant,
+requested to see Mr. Brownlow on very pressing business. The servant
+soon returned, to beg that she would walk upstairs; and following him
+into an upper room, Miss Maylie was presented to an elderly gentleman
+of benevolent appearance, in a bottle-green coat. At no great distance
+from whom, was seated another old gentleman, in nankeen breeches and
+gaiters; who did not look particularly benevolent, and who was sitting
+with his hands clasped on the top of a thick stick, and his chin
+propped thereupon.
+
+“Dear me,” said the gentleman, in the bottle-green coat, hastily rising
+with great politeness, “I beg your pardon, young lady—I imagined it was
+some importunate person who—I beg you will excuse me. Be seated, pray.”
+
+“Mr. Brownlow, I believe, sir?” said Rose, glancing from the other
+gentleman to the one who had spoken.
+
+“That is my name,” said the old gentleman. “This is my friend, Mr.
+Grimwig. Grimwig, will you leave us for a few minutes?”
+
+“I believe,” interposed Miss Maylie, “that at this period of our
+interview, I need not give that gentleman the trouble of going away. If
+I am correctly informed, he is cognizant of the business on which I
+wish to speak to you.”
+
+Mr. Brownlow inclined his head. Mr. Grimwig, who had made one very
+stiff bow, and risen from his chair, made another very stiff bow, and
+dropped into it again.
+
+“I shall surprise you very much, I have no doubt,” said Rose, naturally
+embarrassed; “but you once showed great benevolence and goodness to a
+very dear young friend of mine, and I am sure you will take an interest
+in hearing of him again.”
+
+“Indeed!” said Mr. Brownlow.
+
+“Oliver Twist you knew him as,” replied Rose.
+
+The words no sooner escaped her lips, than Mr. Grimwig, who had been
+affecting to dip into a large book that lay on the table, upset it with
+a great crash, and falling back in his chair, discharged from his
+features every expression but one of unmitigated wonder, and indulged
+in a prolonged and vacant stare; then, as if ashamed of having betrayed
+so much emotion, he jerked himself, as it were, by a convulsion into
+his former attitude, and looking out straight before him emitted a long
+deep whistle, which seemed, at last, not to be discharged on empty air,
+but to die away in the innermost recesses of his stomach.
+
+Mr. Browlow was no less surprised, although his astonishment was not
+expressed in the same eccentric manner. He drew his chair nearer to
+Miss Maylie’s, and said,
+
+“Do me the favour, my dear young lady, to leave entirely out of the
+question that goodness and benevolence of which you speak, and of which
+nobody else knows anything; and if you have it in your power to produce
+any evidence which will alter the unfavourable opinion I was once
+induced to entertain of that poor child, in Heaven’s name put me in
+possession of it.”
+
+“A bad one! I’ll eat my head if he is not a bad one,” growled Mr.
+Grimwig, speaking by some ventriloquial power, without moving a muscle
+of his face.
+
+“He is a child of a noble nature and a warm heart,” said Rose,
+colouring; “and that Power which has thought fit to try him beyond his
+years, has planted in his breast affections and feelings which would do
+honour to many who have numbered his days six times over.”
+
+“I’m only sixty-one,” said Mr. Grimwig, with the same rigid face. “And,
+as the devil’s in it if this Oliver is not twelve years old at least, I
+don’t see the application of that remark.”
+
+“Do not heed my friend, Miss Maylie,” said Mr. Brownlow; “he does not
+mean what he says.”
+
+“Yes, he does,” growled Mr. Grimwig.
+
+“No, he does not,” said Mr. Brownlow, obviously rising in wrath as he
+spoke.
+
+“He’ll eat his head, if he doesn’t,” growled Mr. Grimwig.
+
+“He would deserve to have it knocked off, if he does,” said Mr.
+Brownlow.
+
+“And he’d uncommonly like to see any man offer to do it,” responded Mr.
+Grimwig, knocking his stick upon the floor.
+
+Having gone thus far, the two old gentlemen severally took snuff, and
+afterwards shook hands, according to their invariable custom.
+
+“Now, Miss Maylie,” said Mr. Brownlow, “to return to the subject in
+which your humanity is so much interested. Will you let me know what
+intelligence you have of this poor child: allowing me to promise that I
+exhausted every means in my power of discovering him, and that since I
+have been absent from this country, my first impression that he had
+imposed upon me, and had been persuaded by his former associates to rob
+me, has been considerably shaken.”
+
+Rose, who had had time to collect her thoughts, at once related, in a
+few natural words, all that had befallen Oliver since he left Mr.
+Brownlow’s house; reserving Nancy’s information for that gentleman’s
+private ear, and concluding with the assurance that his only sorrow,
+for some months past, had been not being able to meet with his former
+benefactor and friend.
+
+“Thank God!” said the old gentleman. “This is great happiness to me,
+great happiness. But you have not told me where he is now, Miss Maylie.
+You must pardon my finding fault with you,—but why not have brought
+him?”
+
+“He is waiting in a coach at the door,” replied Rose.
+
+“At this door!” cried the old gentleman. With which he hurried out of
+the room, down the stairs, up the coachsteps, and into the coach,
+without another word.
+
+When the room-door closed behind him, Mr. Grimwig lifted up his head,
+and converting one of the hind legs of his chair into a pivot,
+described three distinct circles with the assistance of his stick and
+the table; sitting in it all the time. After performing this evolution,
+he rose and limped as fast as he could up and down the room at least a
+dozen times, and then stopping suddenly before Rose, kissed her without
+the slightest preface.
+
+“Hush!” he said, as the young lady rose in some alarm at this unusual
+proceeding. “Don’t be afraid. I’m old enough to be your grandfather.
+You’re a sweet girl. I like you. Here they are!”
+
+In fact, as he threw himself at one dexterous dive into his former
+seat, Mr. Brownlow returned, accompanied by Oliver, whom Mr. Grimwig
+received very graciously; and if the gratification of that moment had
+been the only reward for all her anxiety and care in Oliver’s behalf,
+Rose Maylie would have been well repaid.
+
+“There is somebody else who should not be forgotten, by the bye,” said
+Mr. Brownlow, ringing the bell. “Send Mrs. Bedwin here, if you please.”
+
+The old housekeeper answered the summons with all dispatch; and
+dropping a curtsey at the door, waited for orders.
+
+“Why, you get blinder every day, Bedwin,” said Mr. Brownlow, rather
+testily.
+
+“Well, that I do, sir,” replied the old lady. “People’s eyes, at my
+time of life, don’t improve with age, sir.”
+
+“I could have told you that,” rejoined Mr. Brownlow; “but put on your
+glasses, and see if you can’t find out what you were wanted for, will
+you?”
+
+The old lady began to rummage in her pocket for her spectacles. But
+Oliver’s patience was not proof against this new trial; and yielding to
+his first impulse, he sprang into her arms.
+
+“God be good to me!” cried the old lady, embracing him; “it is my
+innocent boy!”
+
+“My dear old nurse!” cried Oliver.
+
+“He would come back—I knew he would,” said the old lady, holding him in
+her arms. “How well he looks, and how like a gentleman’s son he is
+dressed again! Where have you been, this long, long while? Ah! the same
+sweet face, but not so pale; the same soft eye, but not so sad. I have
+never forgotten them or his quiet smile, but have seen them every day,
+side by side with those of my own dear children, dead and gone since I
+was a lightsome young creature.” Running on thus, and now holding
+Oliver from her to mark how he had grown, now clasping him to her and
+passing her fingers fondly through his hair, the good soul laughed and
+wept upon his neck by turns.
+
+Leaving her and Oliver to compare notes at leisure, Mr. Brownlow led
+the way into another room; and there, heard from Rose a full narration
+of her interview with Nancy, which occasioned him no little surprise
+and perplexity. Rose also explained her reasons for not confiding in
+her friend Mr. Losberne in the first instance. The old gentleman
+considered that she had acted prudently, and readily undertook to hold
+solemn conference with the worthy doctor himself. To afford him an
+early opportunity for the execution of this design, it was arranged
+that he should call at the hotel at eight o’clock that evening, and
+that in the meantime Mrs. Maylie should be cautiously informed of all
+that had occurred. These preliminaries adjusted, Rose and Oliver
+returned home.
+
+Rose had by no means overrated the measure of the good doctor’s wrath.
+Nancy’s history was no sooner unfolded to him, than he poured forth a
+shower of mingled threats and execrations; threatened to make her the
+first victim of the combined ingenuity of Messrs. Blathers and Duff;
+and actually put on his hat preparatory to sallying forth to obtain the
+assistance of those worthies. And, doubtless, he would, in this first
+outbreak, have carried the intention into effect without a moment’s
+consideration of the consequences, if he had not been restrained, in
+part, by corresponding violence on the side of Mr. Brownlow, who was
+himself of an irascible temperament, and party by such arguments and
+representations as seemed best calculated to dissuade him from his
+hotbrained purpose.
+
+“Then what the devil is to be done?” said the impetuous doctor, when
+they had rejoined the two ladies. “Are we to pass a vote of thanks to
+all these vagabonds, male and female, and beg them to accept a hundred
+pounds, or so, apiece, as a trifling mark of our esteem, and some
+slight acknowledgment of their kindness to Oliver?”
+
+“Not exactly that,” rejoined Mr. Brownlow, laughing; “but we must
+proceed gently and with great care.”
+
+“Gentleness and care,” exclaimed the doctor. “I’d send them one and all
+to—”
+
+“Never mind where,” interposed Mr. Brownlow. “But reflect whether
+sending them anywhere is likely to attain the object we have in view.”
+
+“What object?” asked the doctor.
+
+“Simply, the discovery of Oliver’s parentage, and regaining for him the
+inheritance of which, if this story be true, he has been fraudulently
+deprived.”
+
+“Ah!” said Mr. Losberne, cooling himself with his pocket-handkerchief;
+“I almost forgot that.”
+
+“You see,” pursued Mr. Brownlow; “placing this poor girl entirely out
+of the question, and supposing it were possible to bring these
+scoundrels to justice without compromising her safety, what good should
+we bring about?”
+
+“Hanging a few of them at least, in all probability,” suggested the
+doctor, “and transporting the rest.”
+
+“Very good,” replied Mr. Brownlow, smiling; “but no doubt they will
+bring that about for themselves in the fulness of time, and if we step
+in to forestall them, it seems to me that we shall be performing a very
+Quixotic act, in direct opposition to our own interest—or at least to
+Oliver’s, which is the same thing.”
+
+“How?” inquired the doctor.
+
+“Thus. It is quite clear that we shall have extreme difficulty in
+getting to the bottom of this mystery, unless we can bring this man,
+Monks, upon his knees. That can only be done by stratagem, and by
+catching him when he is not surrounded by these people. For, suppose he
+were apprehended, we have no proof against him. He is not even (so far
+as we know, or as the facts appear to us) concerned with the gang in
+any of their robberies. If he were not discharged, it is very unlikely
+that he could receive any further punishment than being committed to
+prison as a rogue and vagabond; and of course ever afterwards his mouth
+would be so obstinately closed that he might as well, for our purposes,
+be deaf, dumb, blind, and an idiot.”
+
+“Then,” said the doctor impetuously, “I put it to you again, whether
+you think it reasonable that this promise to the girl should be
+considered binding; a promise made with the best and kindest
+intentions, but really—”
+
+“Do not discuss the point, my dear young lady, pray,” said Mr.
+Brownlow, interrupting Rose as she was about to speak. “The promise
+shall be kept. I don’t think it will, in the slightest degree,
+interfere with our proceedings. But, before we can resolve upon any
+precise course of action, it will be necessary to see the girl; to
+ascertain from her whether she will point out this Monks, on the
+understanding that he is to be dealt with by us, and not by the law;
+or, if she will not, or cannot do that, to procure from her such an
+account of his haunts and description of his person, as will enable us
+to identify him. She cannot be seen until next Sunday night; this is
+Tuesday. I would suggest that in the meantime, we remain perfectly
+quiet, and keep these matters secret even from Oliver himself.”
+
+Although Mr. Losberne received with many wry faces a proposal involving
+a delay of five whole days, he was fain to admit that no better course
+occurred to him just then; and as both Rose and Mrs. Maylie sided very
+strongly with Mr. Brownlow, that gentleman’s proposition was carried
+unanimously.
+
+“I should like,” he said, “to call in the aid of my friend Grimwig. He
+is a strange creature, but a shrewd one, and might prove of material
+assistance to us; I should say that he was bred a lawyer, and quitted
+the Bar in disgust because he had only one brief and a motion of
+course, in twenty years, though whether that is recommendation or not,
+you must determine for yourselves.”
+
+“I have no objection to your calling in your friend if I may call in
+mine,” said the doctor.
+
+“We must put it to the vote,” replied Mr. Brownlow, “who may he be?”
+
+“That lady’s son, and this young lady’s—very old friend,” said the
+doctor, motioning towards Mrs. Maylie, and concluding with an
+expressive glance at her niece.
+
+Rose blushed deeply, but she did not make any audible objection to this
+motion (possibly she felt in a hopeless minority); and Harry Maylie and
+Mr. Grimwig were accordingly added to the committee.
+
+“We stay in town, of course,” said Mrs. Maylie, “while there remains
+the slightest prospect of prosecuting this inquiry with a chance of
+success. I will spare neither trouble nor expense in behalf of the
+object in which we are all so deeply interested, and I am content to
+remain here, if it be for twelve months, so long as you assure me that
+any hope remains.”
+
+“Good!” rejoined Mr. Brownlow. “And as I see on the faces about me, a
+disposition to inquire how it happened that I was not in the way to
+corroborate Oliver’s tale, and had so suddenly left the kingdom, let me
+stipulate that I shall be asked no questions until such time as I may
+deem it expedient to forestall them by telling my own story. Believe
+me, I make this request with good reason, for I might otherwise excite
+hopes destined never to be realised, and only increase difficulties and
+disappointments already quite numerous enough. Come! Supper has been
+announced, and young Oliver, who is all alone in the next room, will
+have begun to think, by this time, that we have wearied of his company,
+and entered into some dark conspiracy to thrust him forth upon the
+world.”
+
+With these words, the old gentleman gave his hand to Mrs. Maylie, and
+escorted her into the supper-room. Mr. Losberne followed, leading Rose;
+and the council was, for the present, effectually broken up.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XLII.
+AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE OF OLIVER’S, EXHIBITING DECIDED MARKS OF GENIUS,
+BECOMES A PUBLIC CHARACTER IN THE METROPOLIS
+
+
+Upon the night when Nancy, having lulled Mr. Sikes to sleep, hurried on
+her self-imposed mission to Rose Maylie, there advanced towards London,
+by the Great North Road, two persons, upon whom it is expedient that
+this history should bestow some attention.
+
+They were a man and woman; or perhaps they would be better described as
+a male and female: for the former was one of those long-limbed,
+knock-kneed, shambling, bony people, to whom it is difficult to assign
+any precise age,—looking as they do, when they are yet boys, like
+undergrown men, and when they are almost men, like overgrown boys. The
+woman was young, but of a robust and hardy make, as she need have been
+to bear the weight of the heavy bundle which was strapped to her back.
+Her companion was not encumbered with much luggage, as there merely
+dangled from a stick which he carried over his shoulder, a small parcel
+wrapped in a common handkerchief, and apparently light enough. This
+circumstance, added to the length of his legs, which were of unusual
+extent, enabled him with much ease to keep some half-dozen paces in
+advance of his companion, to whom he occasionally turned with an
+impatient jerk of the head: as if reproaching her tardiness, and urging
+her to greater exertion.
+
+Thus, they had toiled along the dusty road, taking little heed of any
+object within sight, save when they stepped aside to allow a wider
+passage for the mail-coaches which were whirling out of town, until
+they passed through Highgate archway; when the foremost traveller
+stopped and called impatiently to his companion,
+
+“Come on, can’t yer? What a lazybones yer are, Charlotte.”
+
+“It’s a heavy load, I can tell you,” said the female, coming up, almost
+breathless with fatigue.
+
+“Heavy! What are yer talking about? What are yer made for?” rejoined
+the male traveller, changing his own little bundle as he spoke, to the
+other shoulder. “Oh, there yer are, resting again! Well, if yer ain’t
+enough to tire anybody’s patience out, I don’t know what is!”
+
+“Is it much farther?” asked the woman, resting herself against a bank,
+and looking up with the perspiration streaming from her face.
+
+“Much farther! Yer as good as there,” said the long-legged tramper,
+pointing out before him. “Look there! Those are the lights of London.”
+
+“They’re a good two mile off, at least,” said the woman despondingly.
+
+“Never mind whether they’re two mile off, or twenty,” said Noah
+Claypole; for he it was; “but get up and come on, or I’ll kick yer, and
+so I give yer notice.”
+
+As Noah’s red nose grew redder with anger, and as he crossed the road
+while speaking, as if fully prepared to put his threat into execution,
+the woman rose without any further remark, and trudged onward by his
+side.
+
+“Where do you mean to stop for the night, Noah?” she asked, after they
+had walked a few hundred yards.
+
+“How should I know?” replied Noah, whose temper had been considerably
+impaired by walking.
+
+“Near, I hope,” said Charlotte.
+
+“No, not near,” replied Mr. Claypole. “There! Not near; so don’t think
+it.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“When I tell yer that I don’t mean to do a thing, that’s enough,
+without any why or because either,” replied Mr. Claypole with dignity.
+
+“Well, you needn’t be so cross,” said his companion.
+
+“A pretty thing it would be, wouldn’t it to go and stop at the very
+first public-house outside the town, so that Sowerberry, if he come up
+after us, might poke in his old nose, and have us taken back in a cart
+with handcuffs on,” said Mr. Claypole in a jeering tone. “No! I shall
+go and lose myself among the narrowest streets I can find, and not stop
+till we come to the very out-of-the-wayest house I can set eyes on.
+“Cod, yer may thanks yer stars I’ve got a head; for if we hadn’t gone,
+at first, the wrong road a purpose, and come back across country, yer’d
+have been locked up hard and fast a week ago, my lady. And serve yer
+right for being a fool.”
+
+“I know I ain’t as cunning as you are,” replied Charlotte; “but don’t
+put all the blame on me, and say I should have been locked up. You
+would have been if I had been, any way.”
+
+“Yer took the money from the till, yer know yer did,” said Mr.
+Claypole.
+
+“I took it for you, Noah, dear,” rejoined Charlotte.
+
+“Did I keep it?” asked Mr. Claypole.
+
+“No; you trusted in me, and let me carry it like a dear, and so you
+are,” said the lady, chucking him under the chin, and drawing her arm
+through his.
+
+This was indeed the case; but as it was not Mr. Claypole’s habit to
+repose a blind and foolish confidence in anybody, it should be
+observed, in justice to that gentleman, that he had trusted Charlotte
+to this extent, in order that, if they were pursued, the money might be
+found on her: which would leave him an opportunity of asserting his
+innocence of any theft, and would greatly facilitate his chances of
+escape. Of course, he entered at this juncture, into no explanation of
+his motives, and they walked on very lovingly together.
+
+In pursuance of this cautious plan, Mr. Claypole went on, without
+halting, until he arrived at the Angel at Islington, where he wisely
+judged, from the crowd of passengers and numbers of vehicles, that
+London began in earnest. Just pausing to observe which appeared the
+most crowded streets, and consequently the most to be avoided, he
+crossed into Saint John’s Road, and was soon deep in the obscurity of
+the intricate and dirty ways, which, lying between Gray’s Inn Lane and
+Smithfield, render that part of the town one of the lowest and worst
+that improvement has left in the midst of London.
+
+Through these streets, Noah Claypole walked, dragging Charlotte after
+him; now stepping into the kennel to embrace at a glance the whole
+external character of some small public-house; now jogging on again, as
+some fancied appearance induced him to believe it too public for his
+purpose. At length, he stopped in front of one, more humble in
+appearance and more dirty than any he had yet seen; and, having crossed
+over and surveyed it from the opposite pavement, graciously announced
+his intention of putting up there, for the night.
+
+“So give us the bundle,” said Noah, unstrapping it from the woman’s
+shoulders, and slinging it over his own; “and don’t yer speak, except
+when yer spoke to. What’s the name of the house—t-h-r—three what?”
+
+“Cripples,” said Charlotte.
+
+“Three Cripples,” repeated Noah, “and a very good sign too. Now, then!
+Keep close at my heels, and come along.” With these injunctions, he
+pushed the rattling door with his shoulder, and entered the house,
+followed by his companion.
+
+There was nobody in the bar but a young Jew, who, with his two elbows
+on the counter, was reading a dirty newspaper. He stared very hard at
+Noah, and Noah stared very hard at him.
+
+If Noah had been attired in his charity-boy’s dress, there might have
+been some reason for the Jew opening his eyes so wide; but as he had
+discarded the coat and badge, and wore a short smock-frock over his
+leathers, there seemed no particular reason for his appearance exciting
+so much attention in a public-house.
+
+“Is this the Three Cripples?” asked Noah.
+
+“That is the dabe of this ’ouse,” replied the Jew.
+
+“A gentleman we met on the road, coming up from the country,
+recommended us here,” said Noah, nudging Charlotte, perhaps to call her
+attention to this most ingenious device for attracting respect, and
+perhaps to warn her to betray no surprise. “We want to sleep here
+to-night.”
+
+“I’b dot certaid you cad,” said Barney, who was the attendant sprite;
+“but I’ll idquire.”
+
+“Show us the tap, and give us a bit of cold meat and a drop of beer
+while yer inquiring, will yer?” said Noah.
+
+Barney complied by ushering them into a small back-room, and setting
+the required viands before them; having done which, he informed the
+travellers that they could be lodged that night, and left the amiable
+couple to their refreshment.
+
+Now, this back-room was immediately behind the bar, and some steps
+lower, so that any person connected with the house, undrawing a small
+curtain which concealed a single pane of glass fixed in the wall of the
+last-named apartment, about five feet from its flooring, could not only
+look down upon any guests in the back-room without any great hazard of
+being observed (the glass being in a dark angle of the wall, between
+which and a large upright beam the observer had to thrust himself), but
+could, by applying his ear to the partition, ascertain with tolerable
+distinctness, their subject of conversation. The landlord of the house
+had not withdrawn his eye from this place of espial for five minutes,
+and Barney had only just returned from making the communication above
+related, when Fagin, in the course of his evening’s business, came into
+the bar to inquire after some of his young pupils.
+
+“Hush!” said Barney: “stradegers id the next roob.”
+
+“Strangers!” repeated the old man in a whisper.
+
+“Ah! Ad rub uds too,” added Barney. “Frob the cuttry, but subthig in
+your way, or I’b bistaked.”
+
+Fagin appeared to receive this communication with great interest.
+
+Mounting a stool, he cautiously applied his eye to the pane of glass,
+from which secret post he could see Mr. Claypole taking cold beef from
+the dish, and porter from the pot, and administering homeopathic doses
+of both to Charlotte, who sat patiently by, eating and drinking at his
+pleasure.
+
+“Aha!” he whispered, looking round to Barney, “I like that fellow’s
+looks. He’d be of use to us; he knows how to train the girl already.
+Don’t make as much noise as a mouse, my dear, and let me hear ’em
+talk—let me hear ’em.”
+
+He again applied his eye to the glass, and turning his ear to the
+partition, listened attentively: with a subtle and eager look upon his
+face, that might have appertained to some old goblin.
+
+“So I mean to be a gentleman,” said Mr. Claypole, kicking out his legs,
+and continuing a conversation, the commencement of which Fagin had
+arrived too late to hear. “No more jolly old coffins, Charlotte, but a
+gentleman’s life for me: and, if yer like, yer shall be a lady.”
+
+“I should like that well enough, dear,” replied Charlotte; “but tills
+ain’t to be emptied every day, and people to get clear off after it.”
+
+“Tills be blowed!” said Mr. Claypole; “there’s more things besides
+tills to be emptied.”
+
+“What do you mean?” asked his companion.
+
+“Pockets, women’s ridicules, houses, mail-coaches, banks!” said Mr.
+Claypole, rising with the porter.
+
+“But you can’t do all that, dear,” said Charlotte.
+
+“I shall look out to get into company with them as can,” replied Noah.
+“They’ll be able to make us useful some way or another. Why, you
+yourself are worth fifty women; I never see such a precious sly and
+deceitful creetur as yer can be when I let yer.”
+
+“Lor, how nice it is to hear yer say so!” exclaimed Charlotte,
+imprinting a kiss upon his ugly face.
+
+“There, that’ll do: don’t yer be too affectionate, in case I’m cross
+with yer,” said Noah, disengaging himself with great gravity. “I should
+like to be the captain of some band, and have the whopping of ’em, and
+follering ’em about, unbeknown to themselves. That would suit me, if
+there was good profit; and if we could only get in with some gentleman
+of this sort, I say it would be cheap at that twenty-pound note you’ve
+got,—especially as we don’t very well know how to get rid of it
+ourselves.”
+
+After expressing this opinion, Mr. Claypole looked into the porter-pot
+with an aspect of deep wisdom; and having well shaken its contents,
+nodded condescendingly to Charlotte, and took a draught, wherewith he
+appeared greatly refreshed. He was meditating another, when the sudden
+opening of the door, and the appearance of a stranger, interrupted him.
+
+The stranger was Mr. Fagin. And very amiable he looked, and a very low
+bow he made, as he advanced, and setting himself down at the nearest
+table, ordered something to drink of the grinning Barney.
+
+“A pleasant night, sir, but cool for the time of year,” said Fagin,
+rubbing his hands. “From the country, I see, sir?”
+
+“How do yer see that?” asked Noah Claypole.
+
+“We have not so much dust as that in London,” replied Fagin, pointing
+from Noah’s shoes to those of his companion, and from them to the two
+bundles.
+
+“Yer a sharp feller,” said Noah. “Ha! ha! only hear that, Charlotte!”
+
+“Why, one need be sharp in this town, my dear,” replied the Jew,
+sinking his voice to a confidential whisper; “and that’s the truth.”
+
+Fagin followed up this remark by striking the side of his nose with his
+right forefinger,—a gesture which Noah attempted to imitate, though not
+with complete success, in consequence of his own nose not being large
+enough for the purpose. However, Mr. Fagin seemed to interpret the
+endeavour as expressing a perfect coincidence with his opinion, and put
+about the liquor which Barney reappeared with, in a very friendly
+manner.
+
+“Good stuff that,” observed Mr. Claypole, smacking his lips.
+
+“Dear!” said Fagin. “A man need be always emptying a till, or a pocket,
+or a woman’s reticule, or a house, or a mail-coach, or a bank, if he
+drinks it regularly.”
+
+Mr. Claypole no sooner heard this extract from his own remarks than he
+fell back in his chair, and looked from the Jew to Charlotte with a
+countenance of ashy paleness and excessive terror.
+
+“Don’t mind me, my dear,” said Fagin, drawing his chair closer. “Ha!
+ha! it was lucky it was only me that heard you by chance. It was very
+lucky it was only me.”
+
+“I didn’t take it,” stammered Noah, no longer stretching out his legs
+like an independent gentleman, but coiling them up as well as he could
+under his chair; “it was all her doing; yer’ve got it now, Charlotte,
+yer know yer have.”
+
+“No matter who’s got it, or who did it, my dear,” replied Fagin,
+glancing, nevertheless, with a hawk’s eye at the girl and the two
+bundles. “I’m in that way myself, and I like you for it.”
+
+“In what way?” asked Mr. Claypole, a little recovering.
+
+“In that way of business,” rejoined Fagin; “and so are the people of
+the house. You’ve hit the right nail upon the head, and are as safe
+here as you could be. There is not a safer place in all this town than
+is the Cripples; that is, when I like to make it so. And I have taken a
+fancy to you and the young woman; so I’ve said the word, and you may
+make your minds easy.”
+
+Noah Claypole’s mind might have been at ease after this assurance, but
+his body certainly was not; for he shuffled and writhed about, into
+various uncouth positions: eyeing his new friend meanwhile with mingled
+fear and suspicion.
+
+“I’ll tell you more,” said Fagin, after he had reassured the girl, by
+dint of friendly nods and muttered encouragements. “I have got a friend
+that I think can gratify your darling wish, and put you in the right
+way, where you can take whatever department of the business you think
+will suit you best at first, and be taught all the others.”
+
+“Yer speak as if yer were in earnest,” replied Noah.
+
+“What advantage would it be to me to be anything else?” inquired Fagin,
+shrugging his shoulders. “Here! Let me have a word with you outside.”
+
+“There’s no occasion to trouble ourselves to move,” said Noah, getting
+his legs by gradual degrees abroad again. “She’ll take the luggage
+upstairs the while. Charlotte, see to them bundles.”
+
+This mandate, which had been delivered with great majesty, was obeyed
+without the slightest demur; and Charlotte made the best of her way off
+with the packages while Noah held the door open and watched her out.
+
+“She’s kept tolerably well under, ain’t she?” he asked as he resumed
+his seat: in the tone of a keeper who had tamed some wild animal.
+
+“Quite perfect,” rejoined Fagin, clapping him on the shoulder. “You’re
+a genius, my dear.”
+
+“Why, I suppose if I wasn’t, I shouldn’t be here,” replied Noah. “But,
+I say, she’ll be back if yer lose time.”
+
+“Now, what do you think?” said Fagin. “If you was to like my friend,
+could you do better than join him?”
+
+“Is he in a good way of business; that’s where it is!” responded Noah,
+winking one of his little eyes.
+
+“The top of the tree; employs a power of hands; has the very best
+society in the profession.”
+
+“Regular town-maders?” asked Mr. Claypole.
+
+“Not a countryman among ’em; and I don’t think he’d take you, even on
+my recommendation, if he didn’t run rather short of assistants just
+now,” replied Fagin.
+
+“Should I have to hand over?” said Noah, slapping his breeches-pocket.
+
+“It couldn’t possibly be done without,” replied Fagin, in a most
+decided manner.
+
+“Twenty pound, though—it’s a lot of money!”
+
+“Not when it’s in a note you can’t get rid of,” retorted Fagin. “Number
+and date taken, I suppose? Payment stopped at the Bank? Ah! It’s not
+worth much to him. It’ll have to go abroad, and he couldn’t sell it for
+a great deal in the market.”
+
+“When could I see him?” asked Noah doubtfully.
+
+“To-morrow morning.”
+
+“Where?”
+
+“Here.”
+
+“Um!” said Noah. “What’s the wages?”
+
+“Live like a gentleman—board and lodging, pipes and spirits free—half
+of all you earn, and half of all the young woman earns,” replied Mr.
+Fagin.
+
+Whether Noah Claypole, whose rapacity was none of the least
+comprehensive, would have acceded even to these glowing terms, had he
+been a perfectly free agent, is very doubtful; but as he recollected
+that, in the event of his refusal, it was in the power of his new
+acquaintance to give him up to justice immediately (and more unlikely
+things had come to pass), he gradually relented, and said he thought
+that would suit him.
+
+“But, yer see,” observed Noah, “as she will be able to do a good deal,
+I should like to take something very light.”
+
+“A little fancy work?” suggested Fagin.
+
+“Ah! something of that sort,” replied Noah. “What do you think would
+suit me now? Something not too trying for the strength, and not very
+dangerous, you know. That’s the sort of thing!”
+
+“I heard you talk of something in the spy way upon the others, my
+dear,” said Fagin. “My friend wants somebody who would do that well,
+very much.”
+
+“Why, I did mention that, and I shouldn’t mind turning my hand to it
+sometimes,” rejoined Mr. Claypole slowly; “but it wouldn’t pay by
+itself, you know.”
+
+“That’s true!” observed the Jew, ruminating or pretending to ruminate.
+“No, it might not.”
+
+“What do you think, then?” asked Noah, anxiously regarding him.
+“Something in the sneaking way, where it was pretty sure work, and not
+much more risk than being at home.”
+
+“What do you think of the old ladies?” asked Fagin. “There’s a good
+deal of money made in snatching their bags and parcels, and running
+round the corner.”
+
+“Don’t they holler out a good deal, and scratch sometimes?” asked Noah,
+shaking his head. “I don’t think that would answer my purpose. Ain’t
+there any other line open?”
+
+“Stop!” said Fagin, laying his hand on Noah’s knee. “The kinchin lay.”
+
+“What’s that?” demanded Mr. Claypole.
+
+“The kinchins, my dear,” said Fagin, “is the young children that’s sent
+on errands by their mothers, with sixpences and shillings; and the lay
+is just to take their money away—they’ve always got it ready in their
+hands,—then knock ’em into the kennel, and walk off very slow, as if
+there were nothing else the matter but a child fallen down and hurt
+itself. Ha! ha! ha!”
+
+“Ha! ha!” roared Mr. Claypole, kicking up his legs in an ecstasy.
+“Lord, that’s the very thing!”
+
+“To be sure it is,” replied Fagin; “and you can have a few good beats
+chalked out in Camden Town, and Battle Bridge, and neighborhoods like
+that, where they’re always going errands; and you can upset as many
+kinchins as you want, any hour in the day. Ha! ha! ha!”
+
+With this, Fagin poked Mr. Claypole in the side, and they joined in a
+burst of laughter both long and loud.
+
+“Well, that’s all right!” said Noah, when he had recovered himself, and
+Charlotte had returned. “What time to-morrow shall we say?”
+
+“Will ten do?” asked Fagin, adding, as Mr. Claypole nodded assent,
+“What name shall I tell my good friend.”
+
+“Mr. Bolter,” replied Noah, who had prepared himself for such
+emergency. “Mr. Morris Bolter. This is Mrs. Bolter.”
+
+“Mrs. Bolter’s humble servant,” said Fagin, bowing with grotesque
+politeness. “I hope I shall know her better very shortly.”
+
+“Do you hear the gentleman, Charlotte?” thundered Mr. Claypole.
+
+“Yes, Noah, dear!” replied Mrs. Bolter, extending her hand.
+
+“She calls me Noah, as a sort of fond way of talking,” said Mr. Morris
+Bolter, late Claypole, turning to Fagin. “You understand?”
+
+“Oh yes, I understand—perfectly,” replied Fagin, telling the truth for
+once. “Good-night! Good-night!”
+
+With many adieus and good wishes, Mr. Fagin went his way. Noah
+Claypole, bespeaking his good lady’s attention, proceeded to enlighten
+her relative to the arrangement he had made, with all that haughtiness
+and air of superiority, becoming, not only a member of the sterner sex,
+but a gentleman who appreciated the dignity of a special appointment on
+the kinchin lay, in London and its vicinity.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XLIII.
+WHEREIN IS SHOWN HOW THE ARTFUL DODGER GOT INTO TROUBLE
+
+
+“And so it was you that was your own friend, was it?” asked Mr.
+Claypole, otherwise Bolter, when, by virtue of the compact entered into
+between them, he had removed next day to Fagin’s house. “Cod, I thought
+as much last night!”
+
+“Every man’s his own friend, my dear,” replied Fagin, with his most
+insinuating grin. “He hasn’t as good a one as himself anywhere.”
+
+“Except sometimes,” replied Morris Bolter, assuming the air of a man of
+the world. “Some people are nobody’s enemies but their own, yer know.”
+
+“Don’t believe that,” said Fagin. “When a man’s his own enemy, it’s
+only because he’s too much his own friend; not because he’s careful for
+everybody but himself. Pooh! pooh! There ain’t such a thing in nature.”
+
+“There oughn’t to be, if there is,” replied Mr. Bolter.
+
+“That stands to reason. Some conjurers say that number three is the
+magic number, and some say number seven. It’s neither, my friend,
+neither. It’s number one.
+
+“Ha! ha!” cried Mr. Bolter. “Number one for ever.”
+
+“In a little community like ours, my dear,” said Fagin, who felt it
+necessary to qualify this position, “we have a general number one,
+without considering me too as the same, and all the other young
+people.”
+
+“Oh, the devil!” exclaimed Mr. Bolter.
+
+“You see,” pursued Fagin, affecting to disregard this interruption, “we
+are so mixed up together, and identified in our interests, that it must
+be so. For instance, it’s your object to take care of number
+one—meaning yourself.”
+
+“Certainly,” replied Mr. Bolter. “Yer about right there.”
+
+“Well! You can’t take care of yourself, number one, without taking care
+of me, number one.”
+
+“Number two, you mean,” said Mr. Bolter, who was largely endowed with
+the quality of selfishness.
+
+“No, I don’t!” retorted Fagin. “I’m of the same importance to you, as
+you are to yourself.”
+
+“I say,” interrupted Mr. Bolter, “yer a very nice man, and I’m very
+fond of yer; but we ain’t quite so thick together, as all that comes
+to.”
+
+“Only think,” said Fagin, shrugging his shoulders, and stretching out
+his hands; “only consider. You’ve done what’s a very pretty thing, and
+what I love you for doing; but what at the same time would put the
+cravat round your throat, that’s so very easily tied and so very
+difficult to unloose—in plain English, the halter!”
+
+Mr. Bolter put his hand to his neckerchief, as if he felt it
+inconveniently tight; and murmured an assent, qualified in tone but not
+in substance.
+
+“The gallows,” continued Fagin, “the gallows, my dear, is an ugly
+finger-post, which points out a very short and sharp turning that has
+stopped many a bold fellow’s career on the broad highway. To keep in
+the easy road, and keep it at a distance, is object number one with
+you.”
+
+“Of course it is,” replied Mr. Bolter. “What do yer talk about such
+things for?”
+
+“Only to show you my meaning clearly,” said the Jew, raising his
+eyebrows. “To be able to do that, you depend upon me. To keep my little
+business all snug, I depend upon you. The first is your number one, the
+second my number one. The more you value your number one, the more
+careful you must be of mine; so we come at last to what I told you at
+first—that a regard for number one holds us all together, and must do
+so, unless we would all go to pieces in company.”
+
+“That’s true,” rejoined Mr. Bolter, thoughtfully. “Oh! yer a cunning
+old codger!”
+
+Mr. Fagin saw, with delight, that this tribute to his powers was no
+mere compliment, but that he had really impressed his recruit with a
+sense of his wily genius, which it was most important that he should
+entertain in the outset of their acquaintance. To strengthen an
+impression so desirable and useful, he followed up the blow by
+acquainting him, in some detail, with the magnitude and extent of his
+operations; blending truth and fiction together, as best served his
+purpose; and bringing both to bear, with so much art, that Mr. Bolter’s
+respect visibly increased, and became tempered, at the same time, with
+a degree of wholesome fear, which it was highly desirable to awaken.
+
+“It’s this mutual trust we have in each other that consoles me under
+heavy losses,” said Fagin. “My best hand was taken from me, yesterday
+morning.”
+
+“You don’t mean to say he died?” cried Mr. Bolter.
+
+“No, no,” replied Fagin, “not so bad as that. Not quite so bad.”
+
+“What, I suppose he was—”
+
+“Wanted,” interposed Fagin. “Yes, he was wanted.”
+
+“Very particular?” inquired Mr. Bolter.
+
+“No,” replied Fagin, “not very. He was charged with attempting to pick
+a pocket, and they found a silver snuff-box on him,—his own, my dear,
+his own, for he took snuff himself, and was very fond of it. They
+remanded him till to-day, for they thought they knew the owner. Ah! he
+was worth fifty boxes, and I’d give the price of as many to have him
+back. You should have known the Dodger, my dear; you should have known
+the Dodger.”
+
+“Well, but I shall know him, I hope; don’t yer think so?” said Mr.
+Bolter.
+
+“I’m doubtful about it,” replied Fagin, with a sigh. “If they don’t get
+any fresh evidence, it’ll only be a summary conviction, and we shall
+have him back again after six weeks or so; but, if they do, it’s a case
+of lagging. They know what a clever lad he is; he’ll be a lifer.
+They’ll make the Artful nothing less than a lifer.”
+
+“What do you mean by lagging and a lifer?” demanded Mr. Bolter. “What’s
+the good of talking in that way to me; why don’t yer speak so as I can
+understand yer?”
+
+Fagin was about to translate these mysterious expressions into the
+vulgar tongue; and, being interpreted, Mr. Bolter would have been
+informed that they represented that combination of words,
+“transportation for life,” when the dialogue was cut short by the entry
+of Master Bates, with his hands in his breeches-pockets, and his face
+twisted into a look of semi-comical woe.
+
+“It’s all up, Fagin,” said Charley, when he and his new companion had
+been made known to each other.
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+“They’ve found the gentleman as owns the box; two or three more’s a
+coming to ’dentify him; and the Artful’s booked for a passage out,”
+replied Master Bates. “I must have a full suit of mourning, Fagin, and
+a hatband, to wisit him in, afore he sets out upon his travels. To
+think of Jack Dawkins—lummy Jack—the Dodger—the Artful Dodger—going
+abroad for a common twopenny-halfpenny sneeze-box! I never thought he’d
+a done it under a gold watch, chain, and seals, at the lowest. Oh, why
+didn’t he rob some rich old gentleman of all his walables, and go out
+as a gentleman, and not like a common prig, without no honour nor
+glory!”
+
+With this expression of feeling for his unfortunate friend, Master
+Bates sat himself on the nearest chair with an aspect of chagrin and
+despondency.
+
+“What do you talk about his having neither honour nor glory for!”
+exclaimed Fagin, darting an angry look at his pupil. “Wasn’t he always
+the top-sawyer among you all! Is there one of you that could touch him
+or come near him on any scent! Eh?”
+
+“Not one,” replied Master Bates, in a voice rendered husky by regret;
+“not one.”
+
+“Then what do you talk of?” replied Fagin angrily; “what are you
+blubbering for?”
+
+“’Cause it isn’t on the rec-ord, is it?” said Charley, chafed into
+perfect defiance of his venerable friend by the current of his regrets;
+“’cause it can’t come out in the ’dictment; ’cause nobody will never
+know half of what he was. How will he stand in the Newgate Calendar?
+P’raps not be there at all. Oh, my eye, my eye, wot a blow it is!”
+
+“Ha! ha!” cried Fagin, extending his right hand, and turning to Mr.
+Bolter in a fit of chuckling which shook him as though he had the
+palsy; “see what a pride they take in their profession, my dear. Ain’t
+it beautiful?”
+
+Mr. Bolter nodded assent, and Fagin, after contemplating the grief of
+Charley Bates for some seconds with evident satisfaction, stepped up to
+that young gentleman and patted him on the shoulder.
+
+“Never mind, Charley,” said Fagin soothingly; “it’ll come out, it’ll be
+sure to come out. They’ll all know what a clever fellow he was; he’ll
+show it himself, and not disgrace his old pals and teachers. Think how
+young he is too! What a distinction, Charley, to be lagged at his time
+of life!”
+
+“Well, it is a honour that is!” said Charley, a little consoled.
+
+“He shall have all he wants,” continued the Jew. “He shall be kept in
+the Stone Jug, Charley, like a gentleman. Like a gentleman! With his
+beer every day, and money in his pocket to pitch and toss with, if he
+can’t spend it.”
+
+“No, shall he though?” cried Charley Bates.
+
+“Ay, that he shall,” replied Fagin, “and we’ll have a big-wig, Charley:
+one that’s got the greatest gift of the gab: to carry on his defence;
+and he shall make a speech for himself too, if he likes; and we’ll read
+it all in the papers—‘Artful Dodger—shrieks of laughter—here the court
+was convulsed’—eh, Charley, eh?”
+
+“Ha! ha!” laughed Master Bates, “what a lark that would be, wouldn’t
+it, Fagin? I say, how the Artful would bother ’em wouldn’t he?”
+
+“Would!” cried Fagin. “He shall—he will!”
+
+“Ah, to be sure, so he will,” repeated Charley, rubbing his hands.
+
+“I think I see him now,” cried the Jew, bending his eyes upon his
+pupil.
+
+“So do I,” cried Charley Bates. “Ha! ha! ha! so do I. I see it all
+afore me, upon my soul I do, Fagin. What a game! What a regular game!
+All the big-wigs trying to look solemn, and Jack Dawkins addressing of
+’em as intimate and comfortable as if he was the judge’s own son making
+a speech arter dinner—ha! ha! ha!”
+
+In fact, Mr. Fagin had so well humoured his young friend’s eccentric
+disposition, that Master Bates, who had at first been disposed to
+consider the imprisoned Dodger rather in the light of a victim, now
+looked upon him as the chief actor in a scene of most uncommon and
+exquisite humour, and felt quite impatient for the arrival of the time
+when his old companion should have so favourable an opportunity of
+displaying his abilities.
+
+“We must know how he gets on to-day, by some handy means or other,”
+said Fagin. “Let me think.”
+
+“Shall I go?” asked Charley.
+
+“Not for the world,” replied Fagin. “Are you mad, my dear, stark mad,
+that you’d walk into the very place where—No, Charley, no. One is
+enough to lose at a time.”
+
+“You don’t mean to go yourself, I suppose?” said Charley with a
+humorous leer.
+
+“That wouldn’t quite fit,” replied Fagin shaking his head.
+
+“Then why don’t you send this new cove?” asked Master Bates, laying his
+hand on Noah’s arm. “Nobody knows him.”
+
+“Why, if he didn’t mind—” observed Fagin.
+
+“Mind!” interposed Charley. “What should he have to mind?”
+
+“Really nothing, my dear,” said Fagin, turning to Mr. Bolter, “really
+nothing.”
+
+“Oh, I dare say about that, yer know,” observed Noah, backing towards
+the door, and shaking his head with a kind of sober alarm. “No, no—none
+of that. It’s not in my department, that ain’t.”
+
+“Wot department has he got, Fagin?” inquired Master Bates, surveying
+Noah’s lank form with much disgust. “The cutting away when there’s
+anything wrong, and the eating all the wittles when there’s everything
+right; is that his branch?”
+
+“Never mind,” retorted Mr. Bolter; “and don’t yer take liberties with
+yer superiors, little boy, or yer’ll find yerself in the wrong shop.”
+
+Master Bates laughed so vehemently at this magnificent threat, that it
+was some time before Fagin could interpose, and represent to Mr. Bolter
+that he incurred no possible danger in visiting the police-office;
+that, inasmuch as no account of the little affair in which he had
+engaged, nor any description of his person, had yet been forwarded to
+the metropolis, it was very probable that he was not even suspected of
+having resorted to it for shelter; and that, if he were properly
+disguised, it would be as safe a spot for him to visit as any in
+London, inasmuch as it would be, of all places, the very last, to which
+he could be supposed likely to resort of his own free will.
+
+Persuaded, in part, by these representations, but overborne in a much
+greater degree by his fear of Fagin, Mr. Bolter at length consented,
+with a very bad grace, to undertake the expedition. By Fagin’s
+directions, he immediately substituted for his own attire, a waggoner’s
+frock, velveteen breeches, and leather leggings: all of which articles
+the Jew had at hand. He was likewise furnished with a felt hat well
+garnished with turnpike tickets; and a carter’s whip. Thus equipped, he
+was to saunter into the office, as some country fellow from Covent
+Garden market might be supposed to do for the gratification of his
+curiousity; and as he was as awkward, ungainly, and raw-boned a fellow
+as need be, Mr. Fagin had no fear but that he would look the part to
+perfection.
+
+These arrangements completed, he was informed of the necessary signs
+and tokens by which to recognise the Artful Dodger, and was conveyed by
+Master Bates through dark and winding ways to within a very short
+distance of Bow Street. Having described the precise situation of the
+office, and accompanied it with copious directions how he was to walk
+straight up the passage, and when he got into the side, and pull off
+his hat as he went into the room, Charley Bates bade him hurry on
+alone, and promised to bide his return on the spot of their parting.
+
+Noah Claypole, or Morris Bolter as the reader pleases, punctually
+followed the directions he had received, which—Master Bates being
+pretty well acquainted with the locality—were so exact that he was
+enabled to gain the magisterial presence without asking any question,
+or meeting with any interruption by the way.
+
+He found himself jostled among a crowd of people, chiefly women, who
+were huddled together in a dirty frowsy room, at the upper end of which
+was a raised platform railed off from the rest, with a dock for the
+prisoners on the left hand against the wall, a box for the witnesses in
+the middle, and a desk for the magistrates on the right; the awful
+locality last named, being screened off by a partition which concealed
+the bench from the common gaze, and left the vulgar to imagine (if they
+could) the full majesty of justice.
+
+There were only a couple of women in the dock, who were nodding to
+their admiring friends, while the clerk read some depositions to a
+couple of policemen and a man in plain clothes who leant over the
+table. A jailer stood reclining against the dock-rail, tapping his nose
+listlessly with a large key, except when he repressed an undue tendency
+to conversation among the idlers, by proclaiming silence; or looked
+sternly up to bid some woman “Take that baby out,” when the gravity of
+justice was disturbed by feeble cries, half-smothered in the mother’s
+shawl, from some meagre infant. The room smelt close and unwholesome;
+the walls were dirt-discoloured; and the ceiling blackened. There was
+an old smoky bust over the mantel-shelf, and a dusty clock above the
+dock—the only thing present, that seemed to go on as it ought; for
+depravity, or poverty, or an habitual acquaintance with both, had left
+a taint on all the animate matter, hardly less unpleasant than the
+thick greasy scum on every inanimate object that frowned upon it.
+
+Noah looked eagerly about him for the Dodger; but although there were
+several women who would have done very well for that distinguished
+character’s mother or sister, and more than one man who might be
+supposed to bear a strong resemblance to his father, nobody at all
+answering the description given him of Mr. Dawkins was to be seen. He
+waited in a state of much suspense and uncertainty until the women,
+being committed for trial, went flaunting out; and then was quickly
+relieved by the appearance of another prisoner who he felt at once
+could be no other than the object of his visit.
+
+It was indeed Mr. Dawkins, who, shuffling into the office with the big
+coat sleeves tucked up as usual, his left hand in his pocket, and his
+hat in his right hand, preceded the jailer, with a rolling gait
+altogether indescribable, and, taking his place in the dock, requested
+in an audible voice to know what he was placed in that ’ere disgraceful
+sitivation for.
+
+“Hold your tongue, will you?” said the jailer.
+
+“I’m an Englishman, ain’t I?” rejoined the Dodger. “Where are my
+priwileges?”
+
+“You’ll get your privileges soon enough,” retorted the jailer, “and
+pepper with ’em.”
+
+“We’ll see wot the Secretary of State for the Home Affairs has got to
+say to the beaks, if I don’t,” replied Mr. Dawkins. “Now then! Wot is
+this here business? I shall thank the madg’strates to dispose of this
+here little affair, and not to keep me while they read the paper, for
+I’ve got an appointment with a genelman in the City, and as I am a man
+of my word and wery punctual in business matters, he’ll go away if I
+ain’t there to my time, and then pr’aps ther won’t be an action for
+damage against them as kep me away. Oh no, certainly not!”
+
+At this point, the Dodger, with a show of being very particular with a
+view to proceedings to be had thereafter, desired the jailer to
+communicate “the names of them two files as was on the bench.” Which so
+tickled the spectators, that they laughed almost as heartily as Master
+Bates could have done if he had heard the request.
+
+“Silence there!” cried the jailer.
+
+“What is this?” inquired one of the magistrates.
+
+“A pick-pocketing case, your worship.”
+
+“Has the boy ever been here before?”
+
+“He ought to have been, a many times,” replied the jailer. “He has been
+pretty well everywhere else. _I_ know him well, your worship.”
+
+“Oh! you know me, do you?” cried the Artful, making a note of the
+statement. “Wery good. That’s a case of deformation of character, any
+way.”
+
+Here there was another laugh, and another cry of silence.
+
+“Now then, where are the witnesses?” said the clerk.
+
+“Ah! that’s right,” added the Dodger. “Where are they? I should like to
+see ’em.”
+
+This wish was immediately gratified, for a policeman stepped forward
+who had seen the prisoner attempt the pocket of an unknown gentleman in
+a crowd, and indeed take a handkerchief therefrom, which, being a very
+old one, he deliberately put back again, after trying it on his own
+countenance. For this reason, he took the Dodger into custody as soon
+as he could get near him, and the said Dodger, being searched, had upon
+his person a silver snuff-box, with the owner’s name engraved upon the
+lid. This gentleman had been discovered on reference to the Court
+Guide, and being then and there present, swore that the snuff-box was
+his, and that he had missed it on the previous day, the moment he had
+disengaged himself from the crowd before referred to. He had also
+remarked a young gentleman in the throng, particularly active in making
+his way about, and that young gentleman was the prisoner before him.
+
+“Have you anything to ask this witness, boy?” said the magistrate.
+
+“I wouldn’t abase myself by descending to hold no conversation with
+him,” replied the Dodger.
+
+“Have you anything to say at all?”
+
+“Do you hear his worship ask if you’ve anything to say?” inquired the
+jailer, nudging the silent Dodger with his elbow.
+
+“I beg your pardon,” said the Dodger, looking up with an air of
+abstraction. “Did you redress yourself to me, my man?”
+
+“I never see such an out-and-out young wagabond, your worship,”
+observed the officer with a grin. “Do you mean to say anything, you
+young shaver?”
+
+“No,” replied the Dodger, “not here, for this ain’t the shop for
+justice: besides which, my attorney is a-breakfasting this morning with
+the Wice President of the House of Commons; but I shall have something
+to say elsewhere, and so will he, and so will a wery numerous and
+’spectable circle of acquaintance as’ll make them beaks wish they’d
+never been born, or that they’d got their footmen to hang ’em up to
+their own hat-pegs, afore they let ’em come out this morning to try it
+on upon me. I’ll—”
+
+“There! He’s fully committed!” interposed the clerk. “Take him away.”
+
+“Come on,” said the jailer.
+
+“Oh ah! I’ll come on,” replied the Dodger, brushing his hat with the
+palm of his hand. “Ah! (to the Bench) it’s no use your looking
+frightened; I won’t show you no mercy, not a ha’porth of it. _You’ll_
+pay for this, my fine fellers. I wouldn’t be you for something! I
+wouldn’t go free, now, if you was to fall down on your knees and ask
+me. Here, carry me off to prison! Take me away!”
+
+With these last words, the Dodger suffered himself to be led off by the
+collar; threatening, till he got into the yard, to make a parliamentary
+business of it; and then grinning in the officer’s face, with great
+glee and self-approval.
+
+Having seen him locked up by himself in a little cell, Noah made the
+best of his way back to where he had left Master Bates. After waiting
+here some time, he was joined by that young gentleman, who had
+prudently abstained from showing himself until he had looked carefully
+abroad from a snug retreat, and ascertained that his new friend had not
+been followed by any impertinent person.
+
+The two hastened back together, to bear to Mr. Fagin the animating news
+that the Dodger was doing full justice to his bringing-up, and
+establishing for himself a glorious reputation.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XLIV.
+THE TIME ARRIVES FOR NANCY TO REDEEM HER PLEDGE TO ROSE MAYLIE. SHE
+FAILS.
+
+
+Adept as she was, in all the arts of cunning and dissimulation, the
+girl Nancy could not wholly conceal the effect which the knowledge of
+the step she had taken, wrought upon her mind. She remembered that both
+the crafty Jew and the brutal Sikes had confided to her schemes, which
+had been hidden from all others: in the full confidence that she was
+trustworthy and beyond the reach of their suspicion. Vile as those
+schemes were, desperate as were their originators, and bitter as were
+her feelings towards Fagin, who had led her, step by step, deeper and
+deeper down into an abyss of crime and misery, whence was no escape;
+still, there were times when, even towards him, she felt some
+relenting, lest her disclosure should bring him within the iron grasp
+he had so long eluded, and he should fall at last—richly as he merited
+such a fate—by her hand.
+
+But, these were the mere wanderings of a mind unable wholly to detach
+itself from old companions and associations, though enabled to fix
+itself steadily on one object, and resolved not to be turned aside by
+any consideration. Her fears for Sikes would have been more powerful
+inducements to recoil while there was yet time; but she had stipulated
+that her secret should be rigidly kept, she had dropped no clue which
+could lead to his discovery, she had refused, even for his sake, a
+refuge from all the guilt and wretchedness that encompasses her—and
+what more could she do! She was resolved.
+
+Though all her mental struggles terminated in this conclusion, they
+forced themselves upon her, again and again, and left their traces too.
+She grew pale and thin, even within a few days. At times, she took no
+heed of what was passing before her, or no part in conversations where
+once, she would have been the loudest. At other times, she laughed
+without merriment, and was noisy without a moment afterwards—she sat
+silent and dejected, brooding with her head upon her hands, while the
+very effort by which she roused herself, told, more forcibly than even
+these indications, that she was ill at ease, and that her thoughts were
+occupied with matters very different and distant from those in the
+course of discussion by her companions.
+
+It was Sunday night, and the bell of the nearest church struck the
+hour. Sikes and the Jew were talking, but they paused to listen. The
+girl looked up from the low seat on which she crouched, and listened
+too. Eleven.
+
+“An hour this side of midnight,” said Sikes, raising the blind to look
+out and returning to his seat. “Dark and heavy it is too. A good night
+for business this.”
+
+“Ah!” replied Fagin. “What a pity, Bill, my dear, that there’s none
+quite ready to be done.”
+
+“You’re right for once,” replied Sikes gruffly. “It is a pity, for I’m
+in the humour too.”
+
+Fagin sighed, and shook his head despondingly.
+
+“We must make up for lost time when we’ve got things into a good train.
+That’s all I know,” said Sikes.
+
+“That’s the way to talk, my dear,” replied Fagin, venturing to pat him
+on the shoulder. “It does me good to hear you.”
+
+“Does you good, does it!” cried Sikes. “Well, so be it.”
+
+“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed Fagin, as if he were relieved by even this
+concession. “You’re like yourself to-night, Bill. Quite like yourself.”
+
+“I don’t feel like myself when you lay that withered old claw on my
+shoulder, so take it away,” said Sikes, casting off the Jew’s hand.
+
+“It make you nervous, Bill,—reminds you of being nabbed, does it?” said
+Fagin, determined not to be offended.
+
+“Reminds me of being nabbed by the devil,” returned Sikes. “There never
+was another man with such a face as yours, unless it was your father,
+and I suppose _he_ is singeing his grizzled red beard by this time,
+unless you came straight from the old ’un without any father at all
+betwixt you; which I shouldn’t wonder at, a bit.”
+
+Fagin offered no reply to this compliment: but, pulling Sikes by the
+sleeve, pointed his finger towards Nancy, who had taken advantage of
+the foregoing conversation to put on her bonnet, and was now leaving
+the room.
+
+“Hallo!” cried Sikes. “Nance. Where’s the gal going to at this time of
+night?”
+
+“Not far.”
+
+“What answer’s that?” retorted Sikes. “Do you hear me?”
+
+“I don’t know where,” replied the girl.
+
+“Then I do,” said Sikes, more in the spirit of obstinacy than because
+he had any real objection to the girl going where she listed. “Nowhere.
+Sit down.”
+
+“I’m not well. I told you that before,” rejoined the girl. “I want a
+breath of air.”
+
+“Put your head out of the winder,” replied Sikes.
+
+“There’s not enough there,” said the girl. “I want it in the street.”
+
+“Then you won’t have it,” replied Sikes. With which assurance he rose,
+locked the door, took the key out, and pulling her bonnet from her
+head, flung it up to the top of an old press. “There,” said the robber.
+“Now stop quietly where you are, will you?”
+
+“It’s not such a matter as a bonnet would keep me,” said the girl
+turning very pale. “What do you mean, Bill? Do you know what you’re
+doing?”
+
+“Know what I’m—Oh!” cried Sikes, turning to Fagin, “she’s out of her
+senses, you know, or she daren’t talk to me in that way.”
+
+“You’ll drive me on the something desperate,” muttered the girl placing
+both hands upon her breast, as though to keep down by force some
+violent outbreak. “Let me go, will you,—this minute—this instant.”
+
+“No!” said Sikes.
+
+“Tell him to let me go, Fagin. He had better. It’ll be better for him.
+Do you hear me?” cried Nancy stamping her foot upon the ground.
+
+“Hear you!” repeated Sikes turning round in his chair to confront her.
+“Aye! And if I hear you for half a minute longer, the dog shall have
+such a grip on your throat as’ll tear some of that screaming voice out.
+Wot has come over you, you jade! Wot is it?”
+
+“Let me go,” said the girl with great earnestness; then sitting herself
+down on the floor, before the door, she said, “Bill, let me go; you
+don’t know what you are doing. You don’t, indeed. For only one
+hour—do—do!”
+
+“Cut my limbs off one by one!” cried Sikes, seizing her roughly by the
+arm, “If I don’t think the gal’s stark raving mad. Get up.”
+
+“Not till you let me go—not till you let me go—Never—never!” screamed
+the girl. Sikes looked on, for a minute, watching his opportunity, and
+suddenly pinioning her hands dragged her, struggling and wrestling with
+him by the way, into a small room adjoining, where he sat himself on a
+bench, and thrusting her into a chair, held her down by force. She
+struggled and implored by turns until twelve o’clock had struck, and
+then, wearied and exhausted, ceased to contest the point any further.
+With a caution, backed by many oaths, to make no more efforts to go out
+that night, Sikes left her to recover at leisure and rejoined Fagin.
+
+“Whew!” said the housebreaker wiping the perspiration from his face.
+“Wot a precious strange gal that is!”
+
+“You may say that, Bill,” replied Fagin thoughtfully. “You may say
+that.”
+
+“Wot did she take it into her head to go out to-night for, do you
+think?” asked Sikes. “Come; you should know her better than me. Wot
+does it mean?”
+
+“Obstinacy; woman’s obstinacy, I suppose, my dear.”
+
+“Well, I suppose it is,” growled Sikes. “I thought I had tamed her, but
+she’s as bad as ever.”
+
+“Worse,” said Fagin thoughtfully. “I never knew her like this, for such
+a little cause.”
+
+“Nor I,” said Sikes. “I think she’s got a touch of that fever in her
+blood yet, and it won’t come out—eh?”
+
+“Like enough.”
+
+“I’ll let her a little blood, without troubling the doctor, if she’s
+took that way again,” said Sikes.
+
+Fagin nodded an expressive approval of this mode of treatment.
+
+“She was hanging about me all day, and night too, when I was stretched
+on my back; and you, like a blackhearted wolf as you are, kept yourself
+aloof,” said Sikes. “We was poor too, all the time, and I think, one
+way or other, it’s worried and fretted her; and that being shut up here
+so long has made her restless—eh?”
+
+“That’s it, my dear,” replied the Jew in a whisper. “Hush!”
+
+As he uttered these words, the girl herself appeared and resumed her
+former seat. Her eyes were swollen and red; she rocked herself to and
+fro; tossed her head; and, after a little time, burst out laughing.
+
+“Why, now she’s on the other tack!” exclaimed Sikes, turning a look of
+excessive surprise on his companion.
+
+Fagin nodded to him to take no further notice just then; and, in a few
+minutes, the girl subsided into her accustomed demeanour. Whispering
+Sikes that there was no fear of her relapsing, Fagin took up his hat
+and bade him good-night. He paused when he reached the room-door, and
+looking round, asked if somebody would light him down the dark stairs.
+
+“Light him down,” said Sikes, who was filling his pipe. “It’s a pity he
+should break his neck himself, and disappoint the sight-seers. Show him
+a light.”
+
+Nancy followed the old man downstairs, with a candle. When they reached
+the passage, he laid his finger on his lip, and drawing close to the
+girl, said, in a whisper.
+
+“What is it, Nancy, dear?”
+
+“What do you mean?” replied the girl, in the same tone.
+
+“The reason of all this,” replied Fagin. “If _he_”—he pointed with his
+skinny fore-finger up the stairs—“is so hard with you (he’s a brute,
+Nance, a brute-beast), why don’t you—”
+
+“Well?” said the girl, as Fagin paused, with his mouth almost touching
+her ear, and his eyes looking into hers.
+
+“No matter just now. We’ll talk of this again. You have a friend in me,
+Nance; a staunch friend. I have the means at hand, quiet and close. If
+you want revenge on those that treat you like a dog—like a dog! worse
+than his dog, for he humours him sometimes—come to me. I say, come to
+me. He is the mere hound of a day, but you know me of old, Nance.”
+
+“I know you well,” replied the girl, without manifesting the least
+emotion. “Good-night.”
+
+She shrank back, as Fagin offered to lay his hand on hers, but said
+good-night again, in a steady voice, and, answering his parting look
+with a nod of intelligence, closed the door between them.
+
+Fagin walked towards his home, intent upon the thoughts that were
+working within his brain. He had conceived the idea—not from what had
+just passed though that had tended to confirm him, but slowly and by
+degrees—that Nancy, wearied of the housebreaker’s brutality, had
+conceived an attachment for some new friend. Her altered manner, her
+repeated absences from home alone, her comparative indifference to the
+interests of the gang for which she had once been so zealous, and,
+added to these, her desperate impatience to leave home that night at a
+particular hour, all favoured the supposition, and rendered it, to him
+at least, almost matter of certainty. The object of this new liking was
+not among his myrmidons. He would be a valuable acquisition with such
+an assistant as Nancy, and must (thus Fagin argued) be secured without
+delay.
+
+There was another, and a darker object, to be gained. Sikes knew too
+much, and his ruffian taunts had not galled Fagin the less, because the
+wounds were hidden. The girl must know, well, that if she shook him
+off, she could never be safe from his fury, and that it would be surely
+wreaked—to the maiming of limbs, or perhaps the loss of life—on the
+object of her more recent fancy.
+
+“With a little persuasion,” thought Fagin, “what more likely than that
+she would consent to poison him? Women have done such things, and
+worse, to secure the same object before now. There would be the
+dangerous villain: the man I hate: gone; another secured in his place;
+and my influence over the girl, with a knowledge of this crime to back
+it, unlimited.”
+
+These things passed through the mind of Fagin, during the short time he
+sat alone, in the housebreaker’s room; and with them uppermost in his
+thoughts, he had taken the opportunity afterwards afforded him, of
+sounding the girl in the broken hints he threw out at parting. There
+was no expression of surprise, no assumption of an inability to
+understand his meaning. The girl clearly comprehended it. Her glance at
+parting showed _that_.
+
+But perhaps she would recoil from a plot to take the life of Sikes, and
+that was one of the chief ends to be attained. “How,” thought Fagin, as
+he crept homeward, “can I increase my influence with her? What new
+power can I acquire?”
+
+Such brains are fertile in expedients. If, without extracting a
+confession from herself, he laid a watch, discovered the object of her
+altered regard, and threatened to reveal the whole history to Sikes (of
+whom she stood in no common fear) unless she entered into his designs,
+could he not secure her compliance?
+
+“I can,” said Fagin, almost aloud. “She durst not refuse me then. Not
+for her life, not for her life! I have it all. The means are ready, and
+shall be set to work. I shall have you yet!”
+
+He cast back a dark look, and a threatening motion of the hand, towards
+the spot where he had left the bolder villain; and went on his way:
+busying his bony hands in the folds of his tattered garment, which he
+wrenched tightly in his grasp, as though there were a hated enemy
+crushed with every motion of his fingers.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XLV.
+NOAH CLAYPOLE IS EMPLOYED BY FAGIN ON A SECRET MISSION
+
+
+The old man was up, betimes, next morning, and waited impatiently for
+the appearance of his new associate, who after a delay that seemed
+interminable, at length presented himself, and commenced a voracious
+assault on the breakfast.
+
+“Bolter,” said Fagin, drawing up a chair and seating himself opposite
+Morris Bolter.
+
+“Well, here I am,” returned Noah. “What’s the matter? Don’t yer ask me
+to do anything till I have done eating. That’s a great fault in this
+place. Yer never get time enough over yer meals.”
+
+“You can talk as you eat, can’t you?” said Fagin, cursing his dear
+young friend’s greediness from the very bottom of his heart.
+
+“Oh yes, I can talk. I get on better when I talk,” said Noah, cutting a
+monstrous slice of bread. “Where’s Charlotte?”
+
+“Out,” said Fagin. “I sent her out this morning with the other young
+woman, because I wanted us to be alone.”
+
+“Oh!” said Noah. “I wish yer’d ordered her to make some buttered toast
+first. Well. Talk away. Yer won’t interrupt me.”
+
+There seemed, indeed, no great fear of anything interrupting him, as he
+had evidently sat down with a determination to do a great deal of
+business.
+
+“You did well yesterday, my dear,” said Fagin. “Beautiful! Six
+shillings and ninepence halfpenny on the very first day! The kinchin
+lay will be a fortune to you.”
+
+“Don’t you forget to add three pint-pots and a milk-can,” said Mr.
+Bolter.
+
+“No, no, my dear. The pint-pots were great strokes of genius: but the
+milk-can was a perfect masterpiece.”
+
+“Pretty well, I think, for a beginner,” remarked Mr. Bolter
+complacently. “The pots I took off airy railings, and the milk-can was
+standing by itself outside a public-house. I thought it might get rusty
+with the rain, or catch cold, yer know. Eh? Ha! ha! ha!”
+
+Fagin affected to laugh very heartily; and Mr. Bolter having had his
+laugh out, took a series of large bites, which finished his first hunk
+of bread and butter, and assisted himself to a second.
+
+“I want you, Bolter,” said Fagin, leaning over the table, “to do a
+piece of work for me, my dear, that needs great care and caution.”
+
+“I say,” rejoined Bolter, “don’t yer go shoving me into danger, or
+sending me any more o’ yer police-offices. That don’t suit me, that
+don’t; and so I tell yer.”
+
+“That’s not the smallest danger in it—not the very smallest,” said the
+Jew; “it’s only to dodge a woman.”
+
+“An old woman?” demanded Mr. Bolter.
+
+“A young one,” replied Fagin.
+
+“I can do that pretty well, I know,” said Bolter. “I was a regular
+cunning sneak when I was at school. What am I to dodge her for? Not
+to—”
+
+“Not to do anything, but to tell me where she goes, who she sees, and,
+if possible, what she says; to remember the street, if it is a street,
+or the house, if it is a house; and to bring me back all the
+information you can.”
+
+“What’ll yer give me?” asked Noah, setting down his cup, and looking
+his employer, eagerly, in the face.
+
+“If you do it well, a pound, my dear. One pound,” said Fagin, wishing
+to interest him in the scent as much as possible. “And that’s what I
+never gave yet, for any job of work where there wasn’t valuable
+consideration to be gained.”
+
+“Who is she?” inquired Noah.
+
+“One of us.”
+
+“Oh Lor!” cried Noah, curling up his nose. “Yer doubtful of her, are
+yer?”
+
+“She has found out some new friends, my dear, and I must know who they
+are,” replied Fagin.
+
+“I see,” said Noah. “Just to have the pleasure of knowing them, if
+they’re respectable people, eh? Ha! ha! ha! I’m your man.”
+
+“I knew you would be,” cried Fagin, elated by the success of his
+proposal.
+
+“Of course, of course,” replied Noah. “Where is she? Where am I to wait
+for her? Where am I to go?”
+
+“All that, my dear, you shall hear from me. I’ll point her out at the
+proper time,” said Fagin. “You keep ready, and leave the rest to me.”
+
+That night, and the next, and the next again, the spy sat booted and
+equipped in his carter’s dress: ready to turn out at a word from Fagin.
+Six nights passed—six long weary nights—and on each, Fagin came home
+with a disappointed face, and briefly intimated that it was not yet
+time. On the seventh, he returned earlier, and with an exultation he
+could not conceal. It was Sunday.
+
+“She goes abroad to-night,” said Fagin, “and on the right errand, I’m
+sure; for she has been alone all day, and the man she is afraid of will
+not be back much before daybreak. Come with me. Quick!”
+
+Noah started up without saying a word; for the Jew was in a state of
+such intense excitement that it infected him. They left the house
+stealthily, and hurrying through a labyrinth of streets, arrived at
+length before a public-house, which Noah recognised as the same in
+which he had slept, on the night of his arrival in London.
+
+It was past eleven o’clock, and the door was closed. It opened softly
+on its hinges as Fagin gave a low whistle. They entered, without noise;
+and the door was closed behind them.
+
+Scarcely venturing to whisper, but substituting dumb show for words,
+Fagin, and the young Jew who had admitted them, pointed out the pane of
+glass to Noah, and signed to him to climb up and observe the person in
+the adjoining room.
+
+“Is that the woman?” he asked, scarcely above his breath.
+
+Fagin nodded yes.
+
+“I can’t see her face well,” whispered Noah. “She is looking down, and
+the candle is behind her.
+
+“Stay there,” whispered Fagin. He signed to Barney, who withdrew. In an
+instant, the lad entered the room adjoining, and, under pretence of
+snuffing the candle, moved it in the required position, and, speaking
+to the girl, caused her to raise her face.
+
+“I see her now,” cried the spy.
+
+“Plainly?”
+
+“I should know her among a thousand.”
+
+He hastily descended, as the room-door opened, and the girl came out.
+Fagin drew him behind a small partition which was curtained off, and
+they held their breaths as she passed within a few feet of their place
+of concealment, and emerged by the door at which they had entered.
+
+“Hist!” cried the lad who held the door. “Dow.”
+
+Noah exchanged a look with Fagin, and darted out.
+
+“To the left,” whispered the lad; “take the left had, and keep od the
+other side.”
+
+He did so; and, by the light of the lamps, saw the girl’s retreating
+figure, already at some distance before him. He advanced as near as he
+considered prudent, and kept on the opposite side of the street, the
+better to observe her motions. She looked nervously round, twice or
+thrice, and once stopped to let two men who were following close behind
+her, pass on. She seemed to gather courage as she advanced, and to walk
+with a steadier and firmer step. The spy preserved the same relative
+distance between them, and followed: with his eye upon her.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XLVI.
+THE APPOINTMENT KEPT
+
+
+The church clocks chimed three quarters past eleven, as two figures
+emerged on London Bridge. One, which advanced with a swift and rapid
+step, was that of a woman who looked eagerly about her as though in
+quest of some expected object; the other figure was that of a man, who
+slunk along in the deepest shadow he could find, and, at some distance,
+accommodated his pace to hers: stopping when she stopped: and as she
+moved again, creeping stealthily on: but never allowing himself, in the
+ardour of his pursuit, to gain upon her footsteps. Thus, they crossed
+the bridge, from the Middlesex to the Surrey shore, when the woman,
+apparently disappointed in her anxious scrutiny of the foot-passengers,
+turned back. The movement was sudden; but he who watched her, was not
+thrown off his guard by it; for, shrinking into one of the recesses
+which surmount the piers of the bridge, and leaning over the parapet
+the better to conceal his figure, he suffered her to pass on the
+opposite pavement. When she was about the same distance in advance as
+she had been before, he slipped quietly down, and followed her again.
+At nearly the centre of the bridge, she stopped. The man stopped too.
+
+It was a very dark night. The day had been unfavourable, and at that
+hour and place there were few people stirring. Such as there were,
+hurried quickly past: very possibly without seeing, but certainly
+without noticing, either the woman, or the man who kept her in view.
+Their appearance was not calculated to attract the importunate regards
+of such of London’s destitute population, as chanced to take their way
+over the bridge that night in search of some cold arch or doorless
+hovel wherein to lay their heads; they stood there in silence: neither
+speaking nor spoken to, by any one who passed.
+
+A mist hung over the river, deepening the red glare of the fires that
+burnt upon the small craft moored off the different wharfs, and
+rendering darker and more indistinct the murky buildings on the banks.
+The old smoke-stained storehouses on either side, rose heavy and dull
+from the dense mass of roofs and gables, and frowned sternly upon water
+too black to reflect even their lumbering shapes. The tower of old
+Saint Saviour’s Church, and the spire of Saint Magnus, so long the
+giant-warders of the ancient bridge, were visible in the gloom; but the
+forest of shipping below bridge, and the thickly scattered spires of
+churches above, were nearly all hidden from sight.
+
+The girl had taken a few restless turns to and fro—closely watched
+meanwhile by her hidden observer—when the heavy bell of St. Paul’s
+tolled for the death of another day. Midnight had come upon the crowded
+city. The palace, the night-cellar, the jail, the madhouse: the
+chambers of birth and death, of health and sickness, the rigid face of
+the corpse and the calm sleep of the child: midnight was upon them all.
+
+The hour had not struck two minutes, when a young lady, accompanied by
+a grey-haired gentleman, alighted from a hackney-carriage within a
+short distance of the bridge, and, having dismissed the vehicle, walked
+straight towards it. They had scarcely set foot upon its pavement, when
+the girl started, and immediately made towards them.
+
+They walked onward, looking about them with the air of persons who
+entertained some very slight expectation which had little chance of
+being realised, when they were suddenly joined by this new associate.
+They halted with an exclamation of surprise, but suppressed it
+immediately; for a man in the garments of a countryman came close
+up—brushed against them, indeed—at that precise moment.
+
+“Not here,” said Nancy hurriedly, “I am afraid to speak to you here.
+Come away—out of the public road—down the steps yonder!”
+
+As she uttered these words, and indicated, with her hand, the direction
+in which she wished them to proceed, the countryman looked round, and
+roughly asking what they took up the whole pavement for, passed on.
+
+The steps to which the girl had pointed, were those which, on the
+Surrey bank, and on the same side of the bridge as Saint Saviour’s
+Church, form a landing-stairs from the river. To this spot, the man
+bearing the appearance of a countryman, hastened unobserved; and after
+a moment’s survey of the place, he began to descend.
+
+These stairs are a part of the bridge; they consist of three flights.
+Just below the end of the second, going down, the stone wall on the
+left terminates in an ornamental pilaster facing towards the Thames. At
+this point the lower steps widen: so that a person turning that angle
+of the wall, is necessarily unseen by any others on the stairs who
+chance to be above him, if only a step. The countryman looked hastily
+round, when he reached this point; and as there seemed no better place
+of concealment, and, the tide being out, there was plenty of room, he
+slipped aside, with his back to the pilaster, and there waited: pretty
+certain that they would come no lower, and that even if he could not
+hear what was said, he could follow them again, with safety.
+
+So tardily stole the time in this lonely place, and so eager was the
+spy to penetrate the motives of an interview so different from what he
+had been led to expect, that he more than once gave the matter up for
+lost, and persuaded himself, either that they had stopped far above, or
+had resorted to some entirely different spot to hold their mysterious
+conversation. He was on the point of emerging from his hiding-place,
+and regaining the road above, when he heard the sound of footsteps, and
+directly afterwards of voices almost close at his ear.
+
+He drew himself straight upright against the wall, and, scarcely
+breathing, listened attentively.
+
+“This is far enough,” said a voice, which was evidently that of the
+gentleman. “I will not suffer the young lady to go any farther. Many
+people would have distrusted you too much to have come even so far, but
+you see I am willing to humour you.”
+
+“To humour me!” cried the voice of the girl whom he had followed.
+“You’re considerate, indeed, sir. To humour me! Well, well, it’s no
+matter.”
+
+“Why, for what,” said the gentleman in a kinder tone, “for what purpose
+can you have brought us to this strange place? Why not have let me
+speak to you, above there, where it is light, and there is something
+stirring, instead of bringing us to this dark and dismal hole?”
+
+“I told you before,” replied Nancy, “that I was afraid to speak to you
+there. I don’t know why it is,” said the girl, shuddering, “but I have
+such a fear and dread upon me to-night that I can hardly stand.”
+
+“A fear of what?” asked the gentleman, who seemed to pity her.
+
+“I scarcely know of what,” replied the girl. “I wish I did. Horrible
+thoughts of death, and shrouds with blood upon them, and a fear that
+has made me burn as if I was on fire, have been upon me all day. I was
+reading a book to-night, to wile the time away, and the same things
+came into the print.”
+
+“Imagination,” said the gentleman, soothing her.
+
+“No imagination,” replied the girl in a hoarse voice. “I’ll swear I saw
+‘coffin’ written in every page of the book in large black letters,—aye,
+and they carried one close to me, in the streets to-night.”
+
+“There is nothing unusual in that,” said the gentleman. “They have
+passed me often.”
+
+“_Real ones_,” rejoined the girl. “This was not.”
+
+There was something so uncommon in her manner, that the flesh of the
+concealed listener crept as he heard the girl utter these words, and
+the blood chilled within him. He had never experienced a greater relief
+than in hearing the sweet voice of the young lady as she begged her to
+be calm, and not allow herself to become the prey of such fearful
+fancies.
+
+“Speak to her kindly,” said the young lady to her companion. “Poor
+creature! She seems to need it.”
+
+“Your haughty religious people would have held their heads up to see me
+as I am to-night, and preached of flames and vengeance,” cried the
+girl. “Oh, dear lady, why ar’n’t those who claim to be God’s own folks
+as gentle and as kind to us poor wretches as you, who, having youth,
+and beauty, and all that they have lost, might be a little proud
+instead of so much humbler?”
+
+“Ah!” said the gentleman. “A Turk turns his face, after washing it
+well, to the East, when he says his prayers; these good people, after
+giving their faces such a rub against the World as to take the smiles
+off, turn with no less regularity, to the darkest side of Heaven.
+Between the Mussulman and the Pharisee, commend me to the first!”
+
+These words appeared to be addressed to the young lady, and were
+perhaps uttered with the view of affording Nancy time to recover
+herself. The gentleman, shortly afterwards, addressed himself to her.
+
+“You were not here last Sunday night,” he said.
+
+“I couldn’t come,” replied Nancy; “I was kept by force.”
+
+“By whom?”
+
+“Him that I told the young lady of before.”
+
+“You were not suspected of holding any communication with anybody on
+the subject which has brought us here to-night, I hope?” asked the old
+gentleman.
+
+“No,” replied the girl, shaking her head. “It’s not very easy for me to
+leave him unless he knows why; I couldn’t give him a drink of laudanum
+before I came away.”
+
+“Did he awake before you returned?” inquired the gentleman.
+
+“No; and neither he nor any of them suspect me.”
+
+“Good,” said the gentleman. “Now listen to me.”
+
+“I am ready,” replied the girl, as he paused for a moment.
+
+“This young lady,” the gentleman began, “has communicated to me, and to
+some other friends who can be safely trusted, what you told her nearly
+a fortnight since. I confess to you that I had doubts, at first,
+whether you were to be implicitly relied upon, but now I firmly believe
+you are.”
+
+“I am,” said the girl earnestly.
+
+“I repeat that I firmly believe it. To prove to you that I am disposed
+to trust you, I tell you without reserve, that we propose to extort the
+secret, whatever it may be, from the fear of this man Monks. But
+if—if—” said the gentleman, “he cannot be secured, or, if secured,
+cannot be acted upon as we wish, you must deliver up the Jew.”
+
+“Fagin,” cried the girl, recoiling.
+
+“That man must be delivered up by you,” said the gentleman.
+
+“I will not do it! I will never do it!” replied the girl. “Devil that
+he is, and worse than devil as he has been to me, I will never do
+that.”
+
+“You will not?” said the gentleman, who seemed fully prepared for this
+answer.
+
+“Never!” returned the girl.
+
+“Tell me why?”
+
+“For one reason,” rejoined the girl firmly, “for one reason, that the
+lady knows and will stand by me in, I know she will, for I have her
+promise: and for this other reason, besides, that, bad life as he has
+led, I have led a bad life too; there are many of us who have kept the
+same courses together, and I’ll not turn upon them, who might—any of
+them—have turned upon me, but didn’t, bad as they are.”
+
+“Then,” said the gentleman, quickly, as if this had been the point he
+had been aiming to attain; “put Monks into my hands, and leave him to
+me to deal with.”
+
+“What if he turns against the others?”
+
+“I promise you that in that case, if the truth is forced from him,
+there the matter will rest; there must be circumstances in Oliver’s
+little history which it would be painful to drag before the public eye,
+and if the truth is once elicited, they shall go scot free.”
+
+“And if it is not?” suggested the girl.
+
+“Then,” pursued the gentleman, “this Fagin shall not be brought to
+justice without your consent. In such a case I could show you reasons,
+I think, which would induce you to yield it.”
+
+“Have I the lady’s promise for that?” asked the girl.
+
+“You have,” replied Rose. “My true and faithful pledge.”
+
+“Monks would never learn how you knew what you do?” said the girl,
+after a short pause.
+
+“Never,” replied the gentleman. “The intelligence should be brought to
+bear upon him, that he could never even guess.”
+
+“I have been a liar, and among liars from a little child,” said the
+girl after another interval of silence, “but I will take your words.”
+
+After receiving an assurance from both, that she might safely do so,
+she proceeded in a voice so low that it was often difficult for the
+listener to discover even the purport of what she said, to describe, by
+name and situation, the public-house whence she had been followed that
+night. From the manner in which she occasionally paused, it appeared as
+if the gentleman were making some hasty notes of the information she
+communicated. When she had thoroughly explained the localities of the
+place, the best position from which to watch it without exciting
+observation, and the night and hour on which Monks was most in the
+habit of frequenting it, she seemed to consider for a few moments, for
+the purpose of recalling his features and appearances more forcibly to
+her recollection.
+
+“He is tall,” said the girl, “and a strongly made man, but not stout;
+he has a lurking walk; and as he walks, constantly looks over his
+shoulder, first on one side, and then on the other. Don’t forget that,
+for his eyes are sunk in his head so much deeper than any other man’s,
+that you might almost tell him by that alone. His face is dark, like
+his hair and eyes; and, although he can’t be more than six or eight and
+twenty, withered and haggard. His lips are often discoloured and
+disfigured with the marks of teeth; for he has desperate fits, and
+sometimes even bites his hands and covers them with wounds—why did you
+start?” said the girl, stopping suddenly.
+
+The gentleman replied, in a hurried manner, that he was not conscious
+of having done so, and begged her to proceed.
+
+“Part of this,” said the girl, “I have drawn out from other people at
+the house I tell you of, for I have only seen him twice, and both times
+he was covered up in a large cloak. I think that’s all I can give you
+to know him by. Stay though,” she added. “Upon his throat: so high that
+you can see a part of it below his neckerchief when he turns his face:
+there is—”
+
+“A broad red mark, like a burn or scald?” cried the gentleman.
+
+“How’s this?” said the girl. “You know him!”
+
+The young lady uttered a cry of surprise, and for a few moments they
+were so still that the listener could distinctly hear them breathe.
+
+“I think I do,” said the gentleman, breaking silence. “I should by your
+description. We shall see. Many people are singularly like each other.
+It may not be the same.”
+
+As he expressed himself to this effect, with assumed carelessness, he
+took a step or two nearer the concealed spy, as the latter could tell
+from the distinctness with which he heard him mutter, “It must be he!”
+
+“Now,” he said, returning: so it seemed by the sound: to the spot where
+he had stood before, “you have given us most valuable assistance, young
+woman, and I wish you to be the better for it. What can I do to serve
+you?”
+
+“Nothing,” replied Nancy.
+
+“You will not persist in saying that,” rejoined the gentleman, with a
+voice and emphasis of kindness that might have touched a much harder
+and more obdurate heart. “Think now. Tell me.”
+
+“Nothing, sir,” rejoined the girl, weeping. “You can do nothing to help
+me. I am past all hope, indeed.”
+
+“You put yourself beyond its pale,” said the gentleman. “The past has
+been a dreary waste with you, of youthful energies mis-spent, and such
+priceless treasures lavished, as the Creator bestows but once and never
+grants again, but, for the future, you may hope. I do not say that it
+is in our power to offer you peace of heart and mind, for that must
+come as you seek it; but a quiet asylum, either in England, or, if you
+fear to remain here, in some foreign country, it is not only within the
+compass of our ability but our most anxious wish to secure you. Before
+the dawn of morning, before this river wakes to the first glimpse of
+day-light, you shall be placed as entirely beyond the reach of your
+former associates, and leave as utter an absence of all trace behind
+you, as if you were to disappear from the earth this moment. Come! I
+would not have you go back to exchange one word with any old companion,
+or take one look at any old haunt, or breathe the very air which is
+pestilence and death to you. Quit them all, while there is time and
+opportunity!”
+
+“She will be persuaded now,” cried the young lady. “She hesitates, I am
+sure.”
+
+“I fear not, my dear,” said the gentleman.
+
+“No sir, I do not,” replied the girl, after a short struggle. “I am
+chained to my old life. I loathe and hate it now, but I cannot leave
+it. I must have gone too far to turn back,—and yet I don’t know, for if
+you had spoken to me so, some time ago, I should have laughed it off.
+But,” she said, looking hastily round, “this fear comes over me again.
+I must go home.”
+
+“Home!” repeated the young lady, with great stress upon the word.
+
+“Home, lady,” rejoined the girl. “To such a home as I have raised for
+myself with the work of my whole life. Let us part. I shall be watched
+or seen. Go! Go! If I have done you any service all I ask is, that you
+leave me, and let me go my way alone.”
+
+“It is useless,” said the gentleman, with a sigh. “We compromise her
+safety, perhaps, by staying here. We may have detained her longer than
+she expected already.”
+
+“Yes, yes,” urged the girl. “You have.”
+
+“What,” cried the young lady, “can be the end of this poor creature’s
+life!”
+
+“What!” repeated the girl. “Look before you, lady. Look at that dark
+water. How many times do you read of such as I who spring into the
+tide, and leave no living thing, to care for, or bewail them. It may be
+years hence, or it may be only months, but I shall come to that at
+last.”
+
+“Do not speak thus, pray,” returned the young lady, sobbing.
+
+“It will never reach your ears, dear lady, and God forbid such horrors
+should!” replied the girl. “Good-night, good-night!”
+
+The gentleman turned away.
+
+“This purse,” cried the young lady. “Take it for my sake, that you may
+have some resource in an hour of need and trouble.”
+
+“No!” replied the girl. “I have not done this for money. Let me have
+that to think of. And yet—give me something that you have worn: I
+should like to have something—no, no, not a ring—your gloves or
+handkerchief—anything that I can keep, as having belonged to you, sweet
+lady. There. Bless you! God bless you. Good-night, good-night!”
+
+The violent agitation of the girl, and the apprehension of some
+discovery which would subject her to ill-usage and violence, seemed to
+determine the gentleman to leave her, as she requested.
+
+The sound of retreating footsteps were audible and the voices ceased.
+
+The two figures of the young lady and her companion soon afterwards
+appeared upon the bridge. They stopped at the summit of the stairs.
+
+“Hark!” cried the young lady, listening. “Did she call! I thought I
+heard her voice.”
+
+“No, my love,” replied Mr. Brownlow, looking sadly back. “She has not
+moved, and will not till we are gone.”
+
+Rose Maylie lingered, but the old gentleman drew her arm through his,
+and led her, with gentle force, away. As they disappeared, the girl
+sunk down nearly at her full length upon one of the stone stairs, and
+vented the anguish of her heart in bitter tears.
+
+After a time she arose, and with feeble and tottering steps ascended
+the street. The astonished listener remained motionless on his post for
+some minutes afterwards, and having ascertained, with many cautious
+glances round him, that he was again alone, crept slowly from his
+hiding-place, and returned, stealthily and in the shade of the wall, in
+the same manner as he had descended.
+
+Peeping out, more than once, when he reached the top, to make sure that
+he was unobserved, Noah Claypole darted away at his utmost speed, and
+made for the Jew’s house as fast as his legs would carry him.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XLVII.
+FATAL CONSEQUENCES
+
+
+It was nearly two hours before day-break; that time which in the autumn
+of the year, may be truly called the dead of night; when the streets
+are silent and deserted; when even sounds appear to slumber, and
+profligacy and riot have staggered home to dream; it was at this still
+and silent hour, that Fagin sat watching in his old lair, with face so
+distorted and pale, and eyes so red and blood-shot, that he looked less
+like a man, than like some hideous phantom, moist from the grave, and
+worried by an evil spirit.
+
+He sat crouching over a cold hearth, wrapped in an old torn coverlet,
+with his face turned towards a wasting candle that stood upon a table
+by his side. His right hand was raised to his lips, and as, absorbed in
+thought, he hit his long black nails, he disclosed among his toothless
+gums a few such fangs as should have been a dog’s or rat’s.
+
+Stretched upon a mattress on the floor, lay Noah Claypole, fast asleep.
+Towards him the old man sometimes directed his eyes for an instant, and
+then brought them back again to the candle; which with a long-burnt
+wick drooping almost double, and hot grease falling down in clots upon
+the table, plainly showed that his thoughts were busy elsewhere.
+
+Indeed they were. Mortification at the overthrow of his notable scheme;
+hatred of the girl who had dared to palter with strangers; and utter
+distrust of the sincerity of her refusal to yield him up; bitter
+disappointment at the loss of his revenge on Sikes; the fear of
+detection, and ruin, and death; and a fierce and deadly rage kindled by
+all; these were the passionate considerations which, following close
+upon each other with rapid and ceaseless whirl, shot through the brain
+of Fagin, as every evil thought and blackest purpose lay working at his
+heart.
+
+He sat without changing his attitude in the least, or appearing to take
+the smallest heed of time, until his quick ear seemed to be attracted
+by a footstep in the street.
+
+“At last,” he muttered, wiping his dry and fevered mouth. “At last!”
+
+The bell rang gently as he spoke. He crept upstairs to the door, and
+presently returned accompanied by a man muffled to the chin, who
+carried a bundle under one arm. Sitting down and throwing back his
+outer coat, the man displayed the burly frame of Sikes.
+
+“There!” he said, laying the bundle on the table. “Take care of that,
+and do the most you can with it. It’s been trouble enough to get; I
+thought I should have been here, three hours ago.”
+
+Fagin laid his hand upon the bundle, and locking it in the cupboard,
+sat down again without speaking. But he did not take his eyes off the
+robber, for an instant, during this action; and now that they sat over
+against each other, face to face, he looked fixedly at him, with his
+lips quivering so violently, and his face so altered by the emotions
+which had mastered him, that the housebreaker involuntarily drew back
+his chair, and surveyed him with a look of real affright.
+
+“Wot now?” cried Sikes. “Wot do you look at a man so for?”
+
+Fagin raised his right hand, and shook his trembling forefinger in the
+air; but his passion was so great, that the power of speech was for the
+moment gone.
+
+“Damme!” said Sikes, feeling in his breast with a look of alarm. “He’s
+gone mad. I must look to myself here.”
+
+“No, no,” rejoined Fagin, finding his voice. “It’s not—you’re not the
+person, Bill. I’ve no—no fault to find with you.”
+
+“Oh, you haven’t, haven’t you?” said Sikes, looking sternly at him, and
+ostentatiously passing a pistol into a more convenient pocket. “That’s
+lucky—for one of us. Which one that is, don’t matter.”
+
+“I’ve got that to tell you, Bill,” said Fagin, drawing his chair
+nearer, “will make you worse than me.”
+
+“Aye?” returned the robber with an incredulous air. “Tell away! Look
+sharp, or Nance will think I’m lost.”
+
+“Lost!” cried Fagin. “She has pretty well settled that, in her own
+mind, already.”
+
+Sikes looked with an aspect of great perplexity into the Jew’s face,
+and reading no satisfactory explanation of the riddle there, clenched
+his coat collar in his huge hand and shook him soundly.
+
+“Speak, will you!” he said; “or if you don’t, it shall be for want of
+breath. Open your mouth and say wot you’ve got to say in plain words.
+Out with it, you thundering old cur, out with it!”
+
+“Suppose that lad that’s laying there—” Fagin began.
+
+Sikes turned round to where Noah was sleeping, as if he had not
+previously observed him. “Well!” he said, resuming his former position.
+
+“Suppose that lad,” pursued Fagin, “was to peach—to blow upon us
+all—first seeking out the right folks for the purpose, and then having
+a meeting with ’em in the street to paint our likenesses, describe
+every mark that they might know us by, and the crib where we might be
+most easily taken. Suppose he was to do all this, and besides to blow
+upon a plant we’ve all been in, more or less—of his own fancy; not
+grabbed, trapped, tried, earwigged by the parson and brought to it on
+bread and water,—but of his own fancy; to please his own taste;
+stealing out at nights to find those most interested against us, and
+peaching to them. Do you hear me?” cried the Jew, his eyes flashing
+with rage. “Suppose he did all this, what then?”
+
+“What then!” replied Sikes; with a tremendous oath. “If he was left
+alive till I came, I’d grind his skull under the iron heel of my boot
+into as many grains as there are hairs upon his head.”
+
+“What if I did it!” cried Fagin almost in a yell. “I, that knows so
+much, and could hang so many besides myself!”
+
+“I don’t know,” replied Sikes, clenching his teeth and turning white at
+the mere suggestion. “I’d do something in the jail that ’ud get me put
+in irons; and if I was tried along with you, I’d fall upon you with
+them in the open court, and beat your brains out afore the people. I
+should have such strength,” muttered the robber, poising his brawny
+arm, “that I could smash your head as if a loaded waggon had gone over
+it.”
+
+“You would?”
+
+“Would I!” said the housebreaker. “Try me.”
+
+“If it was Charley, or the Dodger, or Bet, or—”
+
+“I don’t care who,” replied Sikes impatiently. “Whoever it was, I’d
+serve them the same.”
+
+Fagin looked hard at the robber; and, motioning him to be silent,
+stooped over the bed upon the floor, and shook the sleeper to rouse
+him. Sikes leant forward in his chair: looking on with his hands upon
+his knees, as if wondering much what all this questioning and
+preparation was to end in.
+
+“Bolter, Bolter! Poor lad!” said Fagin, looking up with an expression
+of devilish anticipation, and speaking slowly and with marked emphasis.
+“He’s tired—tired with watching for her so long,—watching for _her_,
+Bill.”
+
+“Wot d’ye mean?” asked Sikes, drawing back.
+
+Fagin made no answer, but bending over the sleeper again, hauled him
+into a sitting posture. When his assumed name had been repeated several
+times, Noah rubbed his eyes, and, giving a heavy yawn, looked sleepily
+about him.
+
+“Tell me that again—once again, just for him to hear,” said the Jew,
+pointing to Sikes as he spoke.
+
+“Tell yer what?” asked the sleepy Noah, shaking himself pettishly.
+
+“That about— _Nancy_,” said Fagin, clutching Sikes by the wrist, as if
+to prevent his leaving the house before he had heard enough. “You
+followed her?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“To London Bridge?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Where she met two people.”
+
+“So she did.”
+
+“A gentleman and a lady that she had gone to of her own accord before,
+who asked her to give up all her pals, and Monks first, which she
+did—and to describe him, which she did—and to tell her what house it
+was that we meet at, and go to, which she did—and where it could be
+best watched from, which she did—and what time the people went there,
+which she did. She did all this. She told it all every word without a
+threat, without a murmur—she did—did she not?” cried Fagin, half mad
+with fury.
+
+“All right,” replied Noah, scratching his head. “That’s just what it
+was!”
+
+“What did they say, about last Sunday?”
+
+“About last Sunday!” replied Noah, considering. “Why I told yer that
+before.”
+
+“Again. Tell it again!” cried Fagin, tightening his grasp on Sikes, and
+brandishing his other hand aloft, as the foam flew from his lips.
+
+“They asked her,” said Noah, who, as he grew more wakeful, seemed to
+have a dawning perception who Sikes was, “they asked her why she didn’t
+come, last Sunday, as she promised. She said she couldn’t.”
+
+“Why—why? Tell him that.”
+
+“Because she was forcibly kept at home by Bill, the man she had told
+them of before,” replied Noah.
+
+“What more of him?” cried Fagin. “What more of the man she had told
+them of before? Tell him that, tell him that.”
+
+“Why, that she couldn’t very easily get out of doors unless he knew
+where she was going to,” said Noah; “and so the first time she went to
+see the lady, she—ha! ha! ha! it made me laugh when she said it, that
+it did—she gave him a drink of laudanum.”
+
+“Hell’s fire!” cried Sikes, breaking fiercely from the Jew. “Let me
+go!”
+
+Flinging the old man from him, he rushed from the room, and darted,
+wildly and furiously, up the stairs.
+
+“Bill, Bill!” cried Fagin, following him hastily. “A word. Only a
+word.”
+
+The word would not have been exchanged, but that the housebreaker was
+unable to open the door: on which he was expending fruitless oaths and
+violence, when the Jew came panting up.
+
+“Let me out,” said Sikes. “Don’t speak to me; it’s not safe. Let me
+out, I say!”
+
+“Hear me speak a word,” rejoined Fagin, laying his hand upon the lock.
+“You won’t be—”
+
+“Well,” replied the other.
+
+“You won’t be—too—violent, Bill?”
+
+The day was breaking, and there was light enough for the men to see
+each other’s faces. They exchanged one brief glance; there was a fire
+in the eyes of both, which could not be mistaken.
+
+“I mean,” said Fagin, showing that he felt all disguise was now
+useless, “not too violent for safety. Be crafty, Bill, and not too
+bold.”
+
+Sikes made no reply; but, pulling open the door, of which Fagin had
+turned the lock, dashed into the silent streets.
+
+Without one pause, or moment’s consideration; without once turning his
+head to the right or left, or raising his eyes to the sky, or lowering
+them to the ground, but looking straight before him with savage
+resolution: his teeth so tightly compressed that the strained jaw
+seemed starting through his skin; the robber held on his headlong
+course, nor muttered a word, nor relaxed a muscle, until he reached his
+own door. He opened it, softly, with a key; strode lightly up the
+stairs; and entering his own room, double-locked the door, and lifting
+a heavy table against it, drew back the curtain of the bed.
+
+The girl was lying, half-dressed, upon it. He had roused her from her
+sleep, for she raised herself with a hurried and startled look.
+
+“Get up!” said the man.
+
+“It is you, Bill!” said the girl, with an expression of pleasure at his
+return.
+
+“It is,” was the reply. “Get up.”
+
+There was a candle burning, but the man hastily drew it from the
+candlestick, and hurled it under the grate. Seeing the faint light of
+early day without, the girl rose to undraw the curtain.
+
+“Let it be,” said Sikes, thrusting his hand before her. “There’s enough
+light for wot I’ve got to do.”
+
+“Bill,” said the girl, in the low voice of alarm, “why do you look like
+that at me!”
+
+The robber sat regarding her, for a few seconds, with dilated nostrils
+and heaving breast; and then, grasping her by the head and throat,
+dragged her into the middle of the room, and looking once towards the
+door, placed his heavy hand upon her mouth.
+
+“Bill, Bill!” gasped the girl, wrestling with the strength of mortal
+fear,—“I—I won’t scream or cry—not once—hear me—speak to me—tell me
+what I have done!”
+
+“You know, you she devil!” returned the robber, suppressing his breath.
+“You were watched to-night; every word you said was heard.”
+
+“Then spare my life for the love of Heaven, as I spared yours,”
+rejoined the girl, clinging to him. “Bill, dear Bill, you cannot have
+the heart to kill me. Oh! think of all I have given up, only this one
+night, for you. You _shall_ have time to think, and save yourself this
+crime; I will not loose my hold, you cannot throw me off. Bill, Bill,
+for dear God’s sake, for your own, for mine, stop before you spill my
+blood! I have been true to you, upon my guilty soul I have!”
+
+The man struggled violently, to release his arms; but those of the girl
+were clasped round his, and tear her as he would, he could not tear
+them away.
+
+“Bill,” cried the girl, striving to lay her head upon his breast, “the
+gentleman and that dear lady, told me to-night of a home in some
+foreign country where I could end my days in solitude and peace. Let me
+see them again, and beg them, on my knees, to show the same mercy and
+goodness to you; and let us both leave this dreadful place, and far
+apart lead better lives, and forget how we have lived, except in
+prayers, and never see each other more. It is never too late to repent.
+They told me so—I feel it now—but we must have time—a little, little
+time!”
+
+The housebreaker freed one arm, and grasped his pistol. The certainty
+of immediate detection if he fired, flashed across his mind even in the
+midst of his fury; and he beat it twice with all the force he could
+summon, upon the upturned face that almost touched his own.
+
+She staggered and fell: nearly blinded with the blood that rained down
+from a deep gash in her forehead; but raising herself, with difficulty,
+on her knees, drew from her bosom a white handkerchief—Rose Maylie’s
+own—and holding it up, in her folded hands, as high towards Heaven as
+her feeble strength would allow, breathed one prayer for mercy to her
+Maker.
+
+It was a ghastly figure to look upon. The murderer staggering backward
+to the wall, and shutting out the sight with his hand, seized a heavy
+club and struck her down.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XLVIII.
+THE FLIGHT OF SIKES
+
+
+Of all bad deeds that, under cover of the darkness, had been committed
+within wide London’s bounds since night hung over it, that was the
+worst. Of all the horrors that rose with an ill scent upon the morning
+air, that was the foulest and most cruel.
+
+The sun—the bright sun, that brings back, not light alone, but new
+life, and hope, and freshness to man—burst upon the crowded city in
+clear and radiant glory. Through costly-coloured glass and paper-mended
+window, through cathedral dome and rotten crevice, it shed its equal
+ray. It lighted up the room where the murdered woman lay. It did. He
+tried to shut it out, but it would stream in. If the sight had been a
+ghastly one in the dull morning, what was it, now, in all that
+brilliant light!
+
+He had not moved; he had been afraid to stir. There had been a moan and
+motion of the hand; and, with terror added to rage, he had struck and
+struck again. Once he threw a rug over it; but it was worse to fancy
+the eyes, and imagine them moving towards him, than to see them glaring
+upward, as if watching the reflection of the pool of gore that quivered
+and danced in the sunlight on the ceiling. He had plucked it off again.
+And there was the body—mere flesh and blood, no more—but such flesh,
+and so much blood!
+
+He struck a light, kindled a fire, and thrust the club into it. There
+was hair upon the end, which blazed and shrunk into a light cinder,
+and, caught by the air, whirled up the chimney. Even that frightened
+him, sturdy as he was; but he held the weapon till it broke, and then
+piled it on the coals to burn away, and smoulder into ashes. He washed
+himself, and rubbed his clothes; there were spots that would not be
+removed, but he cut the pieces out, and burnt them. How those stains
+were dispersed about the room! The very feet of the dog were bloody.
+
+All this time he had, never once, turned his back upon the corpse; no,
+not for a moment. Such preparations completed, he moved, backward,
+towards the door: dragging the dog with him, lest he should soil his
+feet anew and carry out new evidence of the crime into the streets. He
+shut the door softly, locked it, took the key, and left the house.
+
+He crossed over, and glanced up at the window, to be sure that nothing
+was visible from the outside. There was the curtain still drawn, which
+she would have opened to admit the light she never saw again. It lay
+nearly under there. _He_ knew that. God, how the sun poured down upon
+the very spot!
+
+The glance was instantaneous. It was a relief to have got free of the
+room. He whistled on the dog, and walked rapidly away.
+
+He went through Islington; strode up the hill at Highgate on which
+stands the stone in honour of Whittington; turned down to Highgate
+Hill, unsteady of purpose, and uncertain where to go; struck off to the
+right again, almost as soon as he began to descend it; and taking the
+foot-path across the fields, skirted Caen Wood, and so came on
+Hampstead Heath. Traversing the hollow by the Vale of Heath, he mounted
+the opposite bank, and crossing the road which joins the villages of
+Hampstead and Highgate, made along the remaining portion of the heath
+to the fields at North End, in one of which he laid himself down under
+a hedge, and slept.
+
+Soon he was up again, and away,—not far into the country, but back
+towards London by the high-road—then back again—then over another part
+of the same ground as he already traversed—then wandering up and down
+in fields, and lying on ditches’ brinks to rest, and starting up to
+make for some other spot, and do the same, and ramble on again.
+
+Where could he go, that was near and not too public, to get some meat
+and drink? Hendon. That was a good place, not far off, and out of most
+people’s way. Thither he directed his steps,—running sometimes, and
+sometimes, with a strange perversity, loitering at a snail’s pace, or
+stopping altogether and idly breaking the hedges with a stick. But when
+he got there, all the people he met—the very children at the
+doors—seemed to view him with suspicion. Back he turned again, without
+the courage to purchase bit or drop, though he had tasted no food for
+many hours; and once more he lingered on the Heath, uncertain where to
+go.
+
+He wandered over miles and miles of ground, and still came back to the
+old place. Morning and noon had passed, and the day was on the wane,
+and still he rambled to and fro, and up and down, and round and round,
+and still lingered about the same spot. At last he got away, and shaped
+his course for Hatfield.
+
+It was nine o’clock at night, when the man, quite tired out, and the
+dog, limping and lame from the unaccustomed exercise, turned down the
+hill by the church of the quiet village, and plodding along the little
+street, crept into a small public-house, whose scanty light had guided
+them to the spot. There was a fire in the tap-room, and some
+country-labourers were drinking before it.
+
+They made room for the stranger, but he sat down in the furthest
+corner, and ate and drank alone, or rather with his dog: to whom he
+cast a morsel of food from time to time.
+
+The conversation of the men assembled here, turned upon the
+neighbouring land, and farmers; and when those topics were exhausted,
+upon the age of some old man who had been buried on the previous
+Sunday; the young men present considering him very old, and the old men
+present declaring him to have been quite young—not older, one
+white-haired grandfather said, than he was—with ten or fifteen year of
+life in him at least—if he had taken care; if he had taken care.
+
+There was nothing to attract attention, or excite alarm in this. The
+robber, after paying his reckoning, sat silent and unnoticed in his
+corner, and had almost dropped asleep, when he was half wakened by the
+noisy entrance of a new comer.
+
+This was an antic fellow, half pedlar and half mountebank, who
+travelled about the country on foot to vend hones, strops, razors,
+washballs, harness-paste, medicine for dogs and horses, cheap
+perfumery, cosmetics, and such-like wares, which he carried in a case
+slung to his back. His entrance was the signal for various homely jokes
+with the countrymen, which slackened not until he had made his supper,
+and opened his box of treasures, when he ingeniously contrived to unite
+business with amusement.
+
+“And what be that stoof? Good to eat, Harry?” asked a grinning
+countryman, pointing to some composition-cakes in one corner.
+
+“This,” said the fellow, producing one, “this is the infallible and
+invaluable composition for removing all sorts of stain, rust, dirt,
+mildew, spick, speck, spot, or spatter, from silk, satin, linen,
+cambric, cloth, crape, stuff, carpet, merino, muslin, bombazeen, or
+woollen stuff. Wine-stains, fruit-stains, beer-stains, water-stains,
+paint-stains, pitch-stains, any stains, all come out at one rub with
+the infallible and invaluable composition. If a lady stains her honour,
+she has only need to swallow one cake and she’s cured at once—for it’s
+poison. If a gentleman wants to prove this, he has only need to bolt
+one little square, and he has put it beyond question—for it’s quite as
+satisfactory as a pistol-bullet, and a great deal nastier in the
+flavour, consequently the more credit in taking it. One penny a square.
+With all these virtues, one penny a square!”
+
+There were two buyers directly, and more of the listeners plainly
+hesitated. The vendor observing this, increased in loquacity.
+
+“It’s all bought up as fast as it can be made,” said the fellow. “There
+are fourteen water-mills, six steam-engines, and a galvanic battery,
+always a-working upon it, and they can’t make it fast enough, though
+the men work so hard that they die off, and the widows is pensioned
+directly, with twenty pound a-year for each of the children, and a
+premium of fifty for twins. One penny a square! Two half-pence is all
+the same, and four farthings is received with joy. One penny a square!
+Wine-stains, fruit-stains, beer-stains, water-stains, paint-stains,
+pitch-stains, mud-stains, blood-stains! Here is a stain upon the hat of
+a gentleman in company, that I’ll take clean out, before he can order
+me a pint of ale.”
+
+“Hah!” cried Sikes starting up. “Give that back.”
+
+“I’ll take it clean out, sir,” replied the man, winking to the company,
+“before you can come across the room to get it. Gentlemen all, observe
+the dark stain upon this gentleman’s hat, no wider than a shilling, but
+thicker than a half-crown. Whether it is a wine-stain, fruit-stain,
+beer-stain, water-stain, paint-stain, pitch-stain, mud-stain, or
+blood-stain—”
+
+The man got no further, for Sikes with a hideous imprecation overthrew
+the table, and tearing the hat from him, burst out of the house.
+
+With the same perversity of feeling and irresolution that had fastened
+upon him, despite himself, all day, the murderer, finding that he was
+not followed, and that they most probably considered him some drunken
+sullen fellow, turned back up the town, and getting out of the glare of
+the lamps of a stage-coach that was standing in the street, was walking
+past, when he recognised the mail from London, and saw that it was
+standing at the little post-office. He almost knew what was to come;
+but he crossed over, and listened.
+
+The guard was standing at the door, waiting for the letter-bag. A man,
+dressed like a game-keeper, came up at the moment, and he handed him a
+basket which lay ready on the pavement.
+
+“That’s for your people,” said the guard. “Now, look alive in there,
+will you. Damn that ’ere bag, it warn’t ready night afore last; this
+won’t do, you know!”
+
+“Anything new up in town, Ben?” asked the game-keeper, drawing back to
+the window-shutters, the better to admire the horses.
+
+“No, nothing that I knows on,” replied the man, pulling on his gloves.
+“Corn’s up a little. I heerd talk of a murder, too, down Spitalfields
+way, but I don’t reckon much upon it.”
+
+“Oh, that’s quite true,” said a gentleman inside, who was looking out
+of the window. “And a dreadful murder it was.”
+
+“Was it, sir?” rejoined the guard, touching his hat. “Man or woman,
+pray, sir?”
+
+“A woman,” replied the gentleman. “It is supposed—”
+
+“Now, Ben,” replied the coachman impatiently.
+
+“Damn that ’ere bag,” said the guard; “are you gone to sleep in there?”
+
+“Coming!” cried the office keeper, running out.
+
+“Coming,” growled the guard. “Ah, and so’s the young ’ooman of property
+that’s going to take a fancy to me, but I don’t know when. Here, give
+hold. All ri—ight!”
+
+The horn sounded a few cheerful notes, and the coach was gone.
+
+Sikes remained standing in the street, apparently unmoved by what he
+had just heard, and agitated by no stronger feeling than a doubt where
+to go. At length he went back again, and took the road which leads from
+Hatfield to St. Albans.
+
+He went on doggedly; but as he left the town behind him, and plunged
+into the solitude and darkness of the road, he felt a dread and awe
+creeping upon him which shook him to the core. Every object before him,
+substance or shadow, still or moving, took the semblance of some
+fearful thing; but these fears were nothing compared to the sense that
+haunted him of that morning’s ghastly figure following at his heels. He
+could trace its shadow in the gloom, supply the smallest item of the
+outline, and note how stiff and solemn it seemed to stalk along. He
+could hear its garments rustling in the leaves, and every breath of
+wind came laden with that last low cry. If he stopped it did the same.
+If he ran, it followed—not running too: that would have been a relief:
+but like a corpse endowed with the mere machinery of life, and borne on
+one slow melancholy wind that never rose or fell.
+
+At times, he turned, with desperate determination, resolved to beat
+this phantom off, though it should look him dead; but the hair rose on
+his head, and his blood stood still, for it had turned with him and was
+behind him then. He had kept it before him that morning, but it was
+behind now—always. He leaned his back against a bank, and felt that it
+stood above him, visibly out against the cold night-sky. He threw
+himself upon the road—on his back upon the road. At his head it stood,
+silent, erect, and still—a living grave-stone, with its epitaph in
+blood.
+
+Let no man talk of murderers escaping justice, and hint that Providence
+must sleep. There were twenty score of violent deaths in one long
+minute of that agony of fear.
+
+There was a shed in a field he passed, that offered shelter for the
+night. Before the door, were three tall poplar trees, which made it
+very dark within; and the wind moaned through them with a dismal wail.
+He _could not_ walk on, till daylight came again; and here he stretched
+himself close to the wall—to undergo new torture.
+
+For now, a vision came before him, as constant and more terrible than
+that from which he had escaped. Those widely staring eyes, so
+lustreless and so glassy, that he had better borne to see them than
+think upon them, appeared in the midst of the darkness: light in
+themselves, but giving light to nothing. There were but two, but they
+were everywhere. If he shut out the sight, there came the room with
+every well-known object—some, indeed, that he would have forgotten, if
+he had gone over its contents from memory—each in its accustomed place.
+The body was in _its_ place, and its eyes were as he saw them when he
+stole away. He got up, and rushed into the field without. The figure
+was behind him. He re-entered the shed, and shrunk down once more. The
+eyes were there, before he had laid himself along.
+
+And here he remained in such terror as none but he can know, trembling
+in every limb, and the cold sweat starting from every pore, when
+suddenly there arose upon the night-wind the noise of distant shouting,
+and the roar of voices mingled in alarm and wonder. Any sound of men in
+that lonely place, even though it conveyed a real cause of alarm, was
+something to him. He regained his strength and energy at the prospect
+of personal danger; and springing to his feet, rushed into the open
+air.
+
+The broad sky seemed on fire. Rising into the air with showers of
+sparks, and rolling one above the other, were sheets of flame, lighting
+the atmosphere for miles round, and driving clouds of smoke in the
+direction where he stood. The shouts grew louder as new voices swelled
+the roar, and he could hear the cry of Fire! mingled with the ringing
+of an alarm-bell, the fall of heavy bodies, and the crackling of flames
+as they twined round some new obstacle, and shot aloft as though
+refreshed by food. The noise increased as he looked. There were people
+there—men and women—light, bustle. It was like new life to him. He
+darted onward—straight, headlong—dashing through brier and brake, and
+leaping gate and fence as madly as his dog, who careered with loud and
+sounding bark before him.
+
+He came upon the spot. There were half-dressed figures tearing to and
+fro, some endeavouring to drag the frightened horses from the stables,
+others driving the cattle from the yard and out-houses, and others
+coming laden from the burning pile, amidst a shower of falling sparks,
+and the tumbling down of red-hot beams. The apertures, where doors and
+windows stood an hour ago, disclosed a mass of raging fire; walls
+rocked and crumbled into the burning well; the molten lead and iron
+poured down, white hot, upon the ground. Women and children shrieked,
+and men encouraged each other with noisy shouts and cheers. The
+clanking of the engine-pumps, and the spirting and hissing of the water
+as it fell upon the blazing wood, added to the tremendous roar. He
+shouted, too, till he was hoarse; and flying from memory and himself,
+plunged into the thickest of the throng. Hither and thither he dived
+that night: now working at the pumps, and now hurrying through the
+smoke and flame, but never ceasing to engage himself wherever noise and
+men were thickest. Up and down the ladders, upon the roofs of
+buildings, over floors that quaked and trembled with his weight, under
+the lee of falling bricks and stones, in every part of that great fire
+was he; but he bore a charmed life, and had neither scratch nor bruise,
+nor weariness nor thought, till morning dawned again, and only smoke
+and blackened ruins remained.
+
+This mad excitement over, there returned, with ten-fold force, the
+dreadful consciousness of his crime. He looked suspiciously about him,
+for the men were conversing in groups, and he feared to be the subject
+of their talk. The dog obeyed the significant beck of his finger, and
+they drew off, stealthily, together. He passed near an engine where
+some men were seated, and they called to him to share in their
+refreshment. He took some bread and meat; and as he drank a draught of
+beer, heard the firemen, who were from London, talking about the
+murder. “He has gone to Birmingham, they say,” said one: “but they’ll
+have him yet, for the scouts are out, and by to-morrow night there’ll
+be a cry all through the country.”
+
+He hurried off, and walked till he almost dropped upon the ground; then
+lay down in a lane, and had a long, but broken and uneasy sleep. He
+wandered on again, irresolute and undecided, and oppressed with the
+fear of another solitary night.
+
+Suddenly, he took the desperate resolution to going back to London.
+
+“There’s somebody to speak to there, at all event,” he thought. “A good
+hiding-place, too. They’ll never expect to nab me there, after this
+country scent. Why can’t I lie by for a week or so, and, forcing blunt
+from Fagin, get abroad to France? Damme, I’ll risk it.”
+
+He acted upon this impulse without delay, and choosing the least
+frequented roads began his journey back, resolved to lie concealed
+within a short distance of the metropolis, and, entering it at dusk by
+a circuitous route, to proceed straight to that part of it which he had
+fixed on for his destination.
+
+The dog, though. If any description of him were out, it would not be
+forgotten that the dog was missing, and had probably gone with him.
+This might lead to his apprehension as he passed along the streets. He
+resolved to drown him, and walked on, looking about for a pond: picking
+up a heavy stone and tying it to his handkerchief as he went.
+
+The animal looked up into his master’s face while these preparations
+were making; whether his instinct apprehended something of their
+purpose, or the robber’s sidelong look at him was sterner than
+ordinary, he skulked a little farther in the rear than usual, and
+cowered as he came more slowly along. When his master halted at the
+brink of a pool, and looked round to call him, he stopped outright.
+
+“Do you hear me call? Come here!” cried Sikes.
+
+The animal came up from the very force of habit; but as Sikes stooped
+to attach the handkerchief to his throat, he uttered a low growl and
+started back.
+
+“Come back!” said the robber.
+
+The dog wagged his tail, but moved not. Sikes made a running noose and
+called him again.
+
+The dog advanced, retreated, paused an instant, and scoured away at his
+hardest speed.
+
+The man whistled again and again, and sat down and waited in the
+expectation that he would return. But no dog appeared, and at length he
+resumed his journey.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XLIX.
+MONKS AND MR. BROWNLOW AT LENGTH MEET. THEIR CONVERSATION, AND THE
+INTELLIGENCE THAT INTERRUPTS IT
+
+
+The twilight was beginning to close in, when Mr. Brownlow alighted from
+a hackney-coach at his own door, and knocked softly. The door being
+opened, a sturdy man got out of the coach and stationed himself on one
+side of the steps, while another man, who had been seated on the box,
+dismounted too, and stood upon the other side. At a sign from Mr.
+Brownlow, they helped out a third man, and taking him between them,
+hurried him into the house. This man was Monks.
+
+They walked in the same manner up the stairs without speaking, and Mr.
+Brownlow, preceding them, led the way into a back-room. At the door of
+this apartment, Monks, who had ascended with evident reluctance,
+stopped. The two men looked at the old gentleman as if for
+instructions.
+
+“He knows the alternative,” said Mr. Browlow. “If he hesitates or moves
+a finger but as you bid him, drag him into the street, call for the aid
+of the police, and impeach him as a felon in my name.”
+
+“How dare you say this of me?” asked Monks.
+
+“How dare you urge me to it, young man?” replied Mr. Brownlow,
+confronting him with a steady look. “Are you mad enough to leave this
+house? Unhand him. There, sir. You are free to go, and we to follow.
+But I warn you, by all I hold most solemn and most sacred, that instant
+will have you apprehended on a charge of fraud and robbery. I am
+resolute and immoveable. If you are determined to be the same, your
+blood be upon your own head!”
+
+“By what authority am I kidnapped in the street, and brought here by
+these dogs?” asked Monks, looking from one to the other of the men who
+stood beside him.
+
+“By mine,” replied Mr. Brownlow. “Those persons are indemnified by me.
+If you complain of being deprived of your liberty—you had power and
+opportunity to retrieve it as you came along, but you deemed it
+advisable to remain quiet—I say again, throw yourself for protection on
+the law. I will appeal to the law too; but when you have gone too far
+to recede, do not sue to me for leniency, when the power will have
+passed into other hands; and do not say I plunged you down the gulf
+into which you rushed, yourself.”
+
+Monks was plainly disconcerted, and alarmed besides. He hesitated.
+
+“You will decide quickly,” said Mr. Brownlow, with perfect firmness and
+composure. “If you wish me to prefer my charges publicly, and consign
+you to a punishment the extent of which, although I can, with a
+shudder, foresee, I cannot control, once more, I say, for you know the
+way. If not, and you appeal to my forbearance, and the mercy of those
+you have deeply injured, seat yourself, without a word, in that chair.
+It has waited for you two whole days.”
+
+Monks muttered some unintelligible words, but wavered still.
+
+“You will be prompt,” said Mr. Brownlow. “A word from me, and the
+alternative has gone for ever.”
+
+Still the man hesitated.
+
+“I have not the inclination to parley,” said Mr. Brownlow, “and, as I
+advocate the dearest interests of others, I have not the right.”
+
+“Is there—” demanded Monks with a faltering tongue,—“is there—no middle
+course?”
+
+“None.”
+
+Monks looked at the old gentleman, with an anxious eye; but, reading in
+his countenance nothing but severity and determination, walked into the
+room, and, shrugging his shoulders, sat down.
+
+“Lock the door on the outside,” said Mr. Brownlow to the attendants,
+“and come when I ring.”
+
+The men obeyed, and the two were left alone together.
+
+“This is pretty treatment, sir,” said Monks, throwing down his hat and
+cloak, “from my father’s oldest friend.”
+
+“It is because I was your father’s oldest friend, young man,” returned
+Mr. Brownlow; “it is because the hopes and wishes of young and happy
+years were bound up with him, and that fair creature of his blood and
+kindred who rejoined her God in youth, and left me here a solitary,
+lonely man: it is because he knelt with me beside his only sisters’s
+death-bed when he was yet a boy, on the morning that would—but Heaven
+willed otherwise—have made her my young wife; it is because my seared
+heart clung to him, from that time forth, through all his trials and
+errors, till he died; it is because old recollections and associations
+filled my heart, and even the sight of you brings with it old thoughts
+of him; it is because of all these things that I am moved to treat you
+gently now—yes, Edward Leeford, even now—and blush for your
+unworthiness who bear the name.”
+
+“What has the name to do with it?” asked the other, after
+contemplating, half in silence, and half in dogged wonder, the
+agitation of his companion. “What is the name to me?”
+
+“Nothing,” replied Mr. Brownlow, “nothing to you. But it was _hers_,
+and even at this distance of time brings back to me, an old man, the
+glow and thrill which I once felt, only to hear it repeated by a
+stranger. I am very glad you have changed it—very—very.”
+
+“This is all mighty fine,” said Monks (to retain his assumed
+designation) after a long silence, during which he had jerked himself
+in sullen defiance to and fro, and Mr. Brownlow had sat, shading his
+face with his hand. “But what do you want with me?”
+
+“You have a brother,” said Mr. Brownlow, rousing himself: “a brother,
+the whisper of whose name in your ear when I came behind you in the
+street, was, in itself, almost enough to make you accompany me hither,
+in wonder and alarm.”
+
+“I have no brother,” replied Monks. “You know I was an only child. Why
+do you talk to me of brothers? You know that, as well as I.”
+
+“Attend to what I do know, and you may not,” said Mr. Brownlow. “I
+shall interest you by and by. I know that of the wretched marriage,
+into which family pride, and the most sordid and narrowest of all
+ambition, forced your unhappy father when a mere boy, you were the sole
+and most unnatural issue.”
+
+“I don’t care for hard names,” interrupted Monks with a jeering laugh.
+“You know the fact, and that’s enough for me.”
+
+“But I also know,” pursued the old gentleman, “the misery, the slow
+torture, the protracted anguish of that ill-assorted union. I know how
+listlessly and wearily each of that wretched pair dragged on their
+heavy chain through a world that was poisoned to them both. I know how
+cold formalities were succeeded by open taunts; how indifference gave
+place to dislike, dislike to hate, and hate to loathing, until at last
+they wrenched the clanking bond asunder, and retiring a wide space
+apart, carried each a galling fragment, of which nothing but death
+could break the rivets, to hide it in new society beneath the gayest
+looks they could assume. Your mother succeeded; she forgot it soon. But
+it rusted and cankered at your father’s heart for years.”
+
+“Well, they were separated,” said Monks, “and what of that?”
+
+“When they had been separated for some time,” returned Mr. Brownlow,
+“and your mother, wholly given up to continental frivolities, had
+utterly forgotten the young husband ten good years her junior, who,
+with prospects blighted, lingered on at home, he fell among new
+friends. This circumstance, at least, you know already.”
+
+“Not I,” said Monks, turning away his eyes and beating his foot upon
+the ground, as a man who is determined to deny everything. “Not I.”
+
+“Your manner, no less than your actions, assures me that you have never
+forgotten it, or ceased to think of it with bitterness,” returned Mr.
+Brownlow. “I speak of fifteen years ago, when you were not more than
+eleven years old, and your father but one-and-thirty—for he was, I
+repeat, a boy, when _his_ father ordered him to marry. Must I go back
+to events which cast a shade upon the memory of your parent, or will
+you spare it, and disclose to me the truth?”
+
+“I have nothing to disclose,” rejoined Monks. “You must talk on if you
+will.”
+
+“These new friends, then,” said Mr. Brownlow, “were a naval officer
+retired from active service, whose wife had died some half-a-year
+before, and left him with two children—there had been more, but, of all
+their family, happily but two survived. They were both daughters; one a
+beautiful creature of nineteen, and the other a mere child of two or
+three years old.”
+
+“What’s this to me?” asked Monks.
+
+“They resided,” said Mr. Brownlow, without seeming to hear the
+interruption, “in a part of the country to which your father in his
+wandering had repaired, and where he had taken up his abode.
+Acquaintance, intimacy, friendship, fast followed on each other. Your
+father was gifted as few men are. He had his sister’s soul and person.
+As the old officer knew him more and more, he grew to love him. I would
+that it had ended there. His daughter did the same.”
+
+The old gentleman paused; Monks was biting his lips, with his eyes
+fixed upon the floor; seeing this, he immediately resumed:
+
+“The end of a year found him contracted, solemnly contracted, to that
+daughter; the object of the first, true, ardent, only passion of a
+guileless girl.”
+
+“Your tale is of the longest,” observed Monks, moving restlessly in his
+chair.
+
+“It is a true tale of grief and trial, and sorrow, young man,” returned
+Mr. Brownlow, “and such tales usually are; if it were one of unmixed
+joy and happiness, it would be very brief. At length one of those rich
+relations to strengthen whose interest and importance your father had
+been sacrificed, as others are often—it is no uncommon case—died, and
+to repair the misery he had been instrumental in occasioning, left him
+his panacea for all griefs—Money. It was necessary that he should
+immediately repair to Rome, whither this man had sped for health, and
+where he had died, leaving his affairs in great confusion. He went; was
+seized with mortal illness there; was followed, the moment the
+intelligence reached Paris, by your mother who carried you with her; he
+died the day after her arrival, leaving no will—_no will_—so that the
+whole property fell to her and you.”
+
+At this part of the recital Monks held his breath, and listened with a
+face of intense eagerness, though his eyes were not directed towards
+the speaker. As Mr. Brownlow paused, he changed his position with the
+air of one who has experienced a sudden relief, and wiped his hot face
+and hands.
+
+“Before he went abroad, and as he passed through London on his way,”
+said Mr. Brownlow, slowly, and fixing his eyes upon the other’s face,
+“he came to me.”
+
+“I never heard of that,” interrupted Monks in a tone intended to appear
+incredulous, but savouring more of disagreeable surprise.
+
+“He came to me, and left with me, among some other things, a picture—a
+portrait painted by himself—a likeness of this poor girl—which he did
+not wish to leave behind, and could not carry forward on his hasty
+journey. He was worn by anxiety and remorse almost to a shadow; talked
+in a wild, distracted way, of ruin and dishonour worked by himself;
+confided to me his intention to convert his whole property, at any
+loss, into money, and, having settled on his wife and you a portion of
+his recent acquisition, to fly the country—I guessed too well he would
+not fly alone—and never see it more. Even from me, his old and early
+friend, whose strong attachment had taken root in the earth that
+covered one most dear to both—even from me he withheld any more
+particular confession, promising to write and tell me all, and after
+that to see me once again, for the last time on earth. Alas! _That_ was
+the last time. I had no letter, and I never saw him more.”
+
+“I went,” said Mr. Brownlow, after a short pause, “I went, when all was
+over, to the scene of his—I will use the term the world would freely
+use, for worldly harshness or favour are now alike to him—of his guilty
+love, resolved that if my fears were realised that erring child should
+find one heart and home to shelter and compassionate her. The family
+had left that part a week before; they had called in such trifling
+debts as were outstanding, discharged them, and left the place by
+night. Why, or whither, none can tell.”
+
+Monks drew his breath yet more freely, and looked round with a smile of
+triumph.
+
+“When your brother,” said Mr. Brownlow, drawing nearer to the other’s
+chair, “When your brother: a feeble, ragged, neglected child: was cast
+in my way by a stronger hand than chance, and rescued by me from a life
+of vice and infamy—”
+
+“What?” cried Monks.
+
+“By me,” said Mr. Brownlow. “I told you I should interest you before
+long. I say by me—I see that your cunning associate suppressed my name,
+although for ought he knew, it would be quite strange to your ears.
+When he was rescued by me, then, and lay recovering from sickness in my
+house, his strong resemblance to this picture I have spoken of, struck
+me with astonishment. Even when I first saw him in all his dirt and
+misery, there was a lingering expression in his face that came upon me
+like a glimpse of some old friend flashing on one in a vivid dream. I
+need not tell you he was snared away before I knew his history—”
+
+“Why not?” asked Monks hastily.
+
+“Because you know it well.”
+
+“I!”
+
+“Denial to me is vain,” replied Mr. Brownlow. “I shall show you that I
+know more than that.”
+
+“You—you—can’t prove anything against me,” stammered Monks. “I defy you
+to do it!”
+
+“We shall see,” returned the old gentleman with a searching glance. “I
+lost the boy, and no efforts of mine could recover him. Your mother
+being dead, I knew that you alone could solve the mystery if anybody
+could, and as when I had last heard of you you were on your own estate
+in the West Indies—whither, as you well know, you retired upon your
+mother’s death to escape the consequences of vicious courses here—I
+made the voyage. You had left it, months before, and were supposed to
+be in London, but no one could tell where. I returned. Your agents had
+no clue to your residence. You came and went, they said, as strangely
+as you had ever done: sometimes for days together and sometimes not for
+months: keeping to all appearance the same low haunts and mingling with
+the same infamous herd who had been your associates when a fierce
+ungovernable boy. I wearied them with new applications. I paced the
+streets by night and day, but until two hours ago, all my efforts were
+fruitless, and I never saw you for an instant.”
+
+“And now you do see me,” said Monks, rising boldly, “what then? Fraud
+and robbery are high-sounding words—justified, you think, by a fancied
+resemblance in some young imp to an idle daub of a dead man’s Brother!
+You don’t even know that a child was born of this maudlin pair; you
+don’t even know that.”
+
+“I _did not_,” replied Mr. Brownlow, rising too; “but within the last
+fortnight I have learnt it all. You have a brother; you know it, and
+him. There was a will, which your mother destroyed, leaving the secret
+and the gain to you at her own death. It contained a reference to some
+child likely to be the result of this sad connection, which child was
+born, and accidentally encountered by you, when your suspicions were
+first awakened by his resemblance to your father. You repaired to the
+place of his birth. There existed proofs—proofs long suppressed—of his
+birth and parentage. Those proofs were destroyed by you, and now, in
+your own words to your accomplice the Jew, ‘_the only proofs of the
+boy’s identity lie at the bottom of the river, and the old hag that
+received them from the mother is rotting in her coffin_.’ Unworthy son,
+coward, liar,—you, who hold your councils with thieves and murderers in
+dark rooms at night,—you, whose plots and wiles have brought a violent
+death upon the head of one worth millions such as you,—you, who from
+your cradle were gall and bitterness to your own father’s heart, and in
+whom all evil passions, vice, and profligacy, festered, till they found
+a vent in a hideous disease which had made your face an index even to
+your mind—you, Edward Leeford, do you still brave me!”
+
+“No, no, no!” returned the coward, overwhelmed by these accumulated
+charges.
+
+“Every word!” cried the gentleman, “every word that has passed between
+you and this detested villain, is known to me. Shadows on the wall have
+caught your whispers, and brought them to my ear; the sight of the
+persecuted child has turned vice itself, and given it the courage and
+almost the attributes of virtue. Murder has been done, to which you
+were morally if not really a party.”
+
+“No, no,” interposed Monks. “I—I knew nothing of that; I was going to
+inquire the truth of the story when you overtook me. I didn’t know the
+cause. I thought it was a common quarrel.”
+
+“It was the partial disclosure of your secrets,” replied Mr. Brownlow.
+“Will you disclose the whole?”
+
+“Yes, I will.”
+
+“Set your hand to a statement of truth and facts, and repeat it before
+witnesses?”
+
+“That I promise too.”
+
+“Remain quietly here, until such a document is drawn up, and proceed
+with me to such a place as I may deem most advisable, for the purpose
+of attesting it?”
+
+“If you insist upon that, I’ll do that also,” replied Monks.
+
+“You must do more than that,” said Mr. Brownlow. “Make restitution to
+an innocent and unoffending child, for such he is, although the
+offspring of a guilty and most miserable love. You have not forgotten
+the provisions of the will. Carry them into execution so far as your
+brother is concerned, and then go where you please. In this world you
+need meet no more.”
+
+While Monks was pacing up and down, meditating with dark and evil looks
+on this proposal and the possibilities of evading it: torn by his fears
+on the one hand and his hatred on the other: the door was hurriedly
+unlocked, and a gentleman (Mr. Losberne) entered the room in violent
+agitation.
+
+“The man will be taken,” he cried. “He will be taken to-night!”
+
+“The murderer?” asked Mr. Brownlow.
+
+“Yes, yes,” replied the other. “His dog has been seen lurking about
+some old haunt, and there seems little doubt that his master either is,
+or will be, there, under cover of the darkness. Spies are hovering
+about in every direction. I have spoken to the men who are charged with
+his capture, and they tell me he cannot escape. A reward of a hundred
+pounds is proclaimed by Government to-night.”
+
+“I will give fifty more,” said Mr. Brownlow, “and proclaim it with my
+own lips upon the spot, if I can reach it. Where is Mr. Maylie?”
+
+“Harry? As soon as he had seen your friend here, safe in a coach with
+you, he hurried off to where he heard this,” replied the doctor, “and
+mounting his horse sallied forth to join the first party at some place
+in the outskirts agreed upon between them.”
+
+“Fagin,” said Mr. Brownlow; “what of him?”
+
+“When I last heard, he had not been taken, but he will be, or is, by
+this time. They’re sure of him.”
+
+“Have you made up your mind?” asked Mr. Brownlow, in a low voice, of
+Monks.
+
+“Yes,” he replied. “You—you—will be secret with me?”
+
+“I will. Remain here till I return. It is your only hope of safety.”
+
+They left the room, and the door was again locked.
+
+“What have you done?” asked the doctor in a whisper.
+
+“All that I could hope to do, and even more. Coupling the poor girl’s
+intelligence with my previous knowledge, and the result of our good
+friend’s inquiries on the spot, I left him no loophole of escape, and
+laid bare the whole villainy which by these lights became plain as day.
+Write and appoint the evening after to-morrow, at seven, for the
+meeting. We shall be down there, a few hours before, but shall require
+rest: especially the young lady, who _may_ have greater need of
+firmness than either you or I can quite foresee just now. But my blood
+boils to avenge this poor murdered creature. Which way have they
+taken?”
+
+“Drive straight to the office and you will be in time,” replied Mr.
+Losberne. “I will remain here.”
+
+The two gentlemen hastily separated; each in a fever of excitement
+wholly uncontrollable.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER L.
+THE PURSUIT AND ESCAPE
+
+
+Near to that part of the Thames on which the church at Rotherhithe
+abuts, where the buildings on the banks are dirtiest and the vessels on
+the river blackest with the dust of colliers and the smoke of
+close-built low-roofed houses, there exists the filthiest, the
+strangest, the most extraordinary of the many localities that are
+hidden in London, wholly unknown, even by name, to the great mass of
+its inhabitants.
+
+To reach this place, the visitor has to penetrate through a maze of
+close, narrow, and muddy streets, thronged by the roughest and poorest
+of waterside people, and devoted to the traffic they may be supposed to
+occasion. The cheapest and least delicate provisions are heaped in the
+shops; the coarsest and commonest articles of wearing apparel dangle at
+the salesman’s door, and stream from the house-parapet and windows.
+Jostling with unemployed labourers of the lowest class,
+ballast-heavers, coal-whippers, brazen women, ragged children, and the
+raff and refuse of the river, he makes his way with difficulty along,
+assailed by offensive sights and smells from the narrow alleys which
+branch off on the right and left, and deafened by the clash of
+ponderous waggons that bear great piles of merchandise from the stacks
+of warehouses that rise from every corner. Arriving, at length, in
+streets remoter and less-frequented than those through which he has
+passed, he walks beneath tottering house-fronts projecting over the
+pavement, dismantled walls that seem to totter as he passes, chimneys
+half crushed half hesitating to fall, windows guarded by rusty iron
+bars that time and dirt have almost eaten away, every imaginable sign
+of desolation and neglect.
+
+In such a neighborhood, beyond Dockhead in the Borough of Southwark,
+stands Jacob’s Island, surrounded by a muddy ditch, six or eight feet
+deep and fifteen or twenty wide when the tide is in, once called Mill
+Pond, but known in the days of this story as Folly Ditch. It is a creek
+or inlet from the Thames, and can always be filled at high water by
+opening the sluices at the Lead Mills from which it took its old name.
+At such times, a stranger, looking from one of the wooden bridges
+thrown across it at Mill Lane, will see the inhabitants of the houses
+on either side lowering from their back doors and windows, buckets,
+pails, domestic utensils of all kinds, in which to haul the water up;
+and when his eye is turned from these operations to the houses
+themselves, his utmost astonishment will be excited by the scene before
+him. Crazy wooden galleries common to the backs of half a dozen houses,
+with holes from which to look upon the slime beneath; windows, broken
+and patched, with poles thrust out, on which to dry the linen that is
+never there; rooms so small, so filthy, so confined, that the air would
+seem too tainted even for the dirt and squalor which they shelter;
+wooden chambers thrusting themselves out above the mud, and threatening
+to fall into it—as some have done; dirt-besmeared walls and decaying
+foundations; every repulsive lineament of poverty, every loathsome
+indication of filth, rot, and garbage; all these ornament the banks of
+Folly Ditch.
+
+In Jacob’s Island, the warehouses are roofless and empty; the walls are
+crumbling down; the windows are windows no more; the doors are falling
+into the streets; the chimneys are blackened, but they yield no smoke.
+Thirty or forty years ago, before losses and chancery suits came upon
+it, it was a thriving place; but now it is a desolate island indeed.
+The houses have no owners; they are broken open, and entered upon by
+those who have the courage; and there they live, and there they die.
+They must have powerful motives for a secret residence, or be reduced
+to a destitute condition indeed, who seek a refuge in Jacob’s Island.
+
+In an upper room of one of these houses—a detached house of fair size,
+ruinous in other respects, but strongly defended at door and window: of
+which house the back commanded the ditch in manner already
+described—there were assembled three men, who, regarding each other
+every now and then with looks expressive of perplexity and expectation,
+sat for some time in profound and gloomy silence. One of these was Toby
+Crackit, another Mr. Chitling, and the third a robber of fifty years,
+whose nose had been almost beaten in, in some old scuffle, and whose
+face bore a frightful scar which might probably be traced to the same
+occasion. This man was a returned transport, and his name was Kags.
+
+“I wish,” said Toby turning to Mr. Chitling, “that you had picked out
+some other crib when the two old ones got too warm, and had not come
+here, my fine feller.”
+
+“Why didn’t you, blunder-head!” said Kags.
+
+“Well, I thought you’d have been a little more glad to see me than
+this,” replied Mr. Chitling, with a melancholy air.
+
+“Why, look’e, young gentleman,” said Toby, “when a man keeps himself so
+very ex-clusive as I have done, and by that means has a snug house over
+his head with nobody a prying and smelling about it, it’s rather a
+startling thing to have the honour of a wisit from a young gentleman
+(however respectable and pleasant a person he may be to play cards with
+at conweniency) circumstanced as you are.”
+
+“Especially, when the exclusive young man has got a friend stopping
+with him, that’s arrived sooner than was expected from foreign parts,
+and is too modest to want to be presented to the Judges on his return,”
+added Mr. Kags.
+
+There was a short silence, after which Toby Crackit, seeming to abandon
+as hopeless any further effort to maintain his usual devil-may-care
+swagger, turned to Chitling and said,
+
+“When was Fagin took then?”
+
+“Just at dinner-time—two o’clock this afternoon. Charley and I made our
+lucky up the wash-us chimney, and Bolter got into the empty water-butt,
+head downwards; but his legs were so precious long that they stuck out
+at the top, and so they took him too.”
+
+“And Bet?”
+
+“Poor Bet! She went to see the Body, to speak to who it was,” replied
+Chitling, his countenance falling more and more, “and went off mad,
+screaming and raving, and beating her head against the boards; so they
+put a strait-weskut on her and took her to the hospital—and there she
+is.”
+
+“Wot’s come of young Bates?” demanded Kags.
+
+“He hung about, not to come over here afore dark, but he’ll be here
+soon,” replied Chitling. “There’s nowhere else to go to now, for the
+people at the Cripples are all in custody, and the bar of the ken—I
+went up there and see it with my own eyes—is filled with traps.”
+
+“This is a smash,” observed Toby, biting his lips. “There’s more than
+one will go with this.”
+
+“The sessions are on,” said Kags: “if they get the inquest over, and
+Bolter turns King’s evidence: as of course he will, from what he’s said
+already: they can prove Fagin an accessory before the fact, and get the
+trial on on Friday, and he’ll swing in six days from this, by G—!”
+
+“You should have heard the people groan,” said Chitling; “the officers
+fought like devils, or they’d have torn him away. He was down once, but
+they made a ring round him, and fought their way along. You should have
+seen how he looked about him, all muddy and bleeding, and clung to them
+as if they were his dearest friends. I can see ’em now, not able to
+stand upright with the pressing of the mob, and draggin him along
+amongst ’em; I can see the people jumping up, one behind another, and
+snarling with their teeth and making at him; I can see the blood upon
+his hair and beard, and hear the cries with which the women worked
+themselves into the centre of the crowd at the street corner, and swore
+they’d tear his heart out!”
+
+The horror-stricken witness of this scene pressed his hands upon his
+ears, and with his eyes closed got up and paced violently to and fro,
+like one distracted.
+
+While he was thus engaged, and the two men sat by in silence with their
+eyes fixed upon the floor, a pattering noise was heard upon the stairs,
+and Sikes’s dog bounded into the room. They ran to the window,
+downstairs, and into the street. The dog had jumped in at an open
+window; he made no attempt to follow them, nor was his master to be
+seen.
+
+“What’s the meaning of this?” said Toby when they had returned. “He
+can’t be coming here. I—I—hope not.”
+
+“If he was coming here, he’d have come with the dog,” said Kags,
+stooping down to examine the animal, who lay panting on the floor.
+“Here! Give us some water for him; he has run himself faint.”
+
+“He’s drunk it all up, every drop,” said Chitling after watching the
+dog some time in silence. “Covered with mud—lame—half blind—he must
+have come a long way.”
+
+“Where can he have come from!” exclaimed Toby. “He’s been to the other
+kens of course, and finding them filled with strangers come on here,
+where he’s been many a time and often. But where can he have come from
+first, and how comes he here alone without the other!”
+
+“He”—(none of them called the murderer by his old name)—“He can’t have
+made away with himself. What do you think?” said Chitling.
+
+Toby shook his head.
+
+“If he had,” said Kags, “the dog ’ud want to lead us away to where he
+did it. No. I think he’s got out of the country, and left the dog
+behind. He must have given him the slip somehow, or he wouldn’t be so
+easy.”
+
+This solution, appearing the most probable one, was adopted as the
+right; the dog, creeping under a chair, coiled himself up to sleep,
+without more notice from anybody.
+
+It being now dark, the shutter was closed, and a candle lighted and
+placed upon the table. The terrible events of the last two days had
+made a deep impression on all three, increased by the danger and
+uncertainty of their own position. They drew their chairs closer
+together, starting at every sound. They spoke little, and that in
+whispers, and were as silent and awe-stricken as if the remains of the
+murdered woman lay in the next room.
+
+They had sat thus, some time, when suddenly was heard a hurried
+knocking at the door below.
+
+“Young Bates,” said Kags, looking angrily round, to check the fear he
+felt himself.
+
+The knocking came again. No, it wasn’t he. He never knocked like that.
+
+Crackit went to the window, and shaking all over, drew in his head.
+There was no need to tell them who it was; his pale face was enough.
+The dog too was on the alert in an instant, and ran whining to the
+door.
+
+“We must let him in,” he said, taking up the candle.
+
+“Isn’t there any help for it?” asked the other man in a hoarse voice.
+
+“None. He _must_ come in.”
+
+“Don’t leave us in the dark,” said Kags, taking down a candle from the
+chimney-piece, and lighting it, with such a trembling hand that the
+knocking was twice repeated before he had finished.
+
+Crackit went down to the door, and returned followed by a man with the
+lower part of his face buried in a handkerchief, and another tied over
+his head under his hat. He drew them slowly off. Blanched face, sunken
+eyes, hollow cheeks, beard of three days’ growth, wasted flesh, short
+thick breath; it was the very ghost of Sikes.
+
+He laid his hand upon a chair which stood in the middle of the room,
+but shuddering as he was about to drop into it, and seeming to glance
+over his shoulder, dragged it back close to the wall—as close as it
+would go—and ground it against it—and sat down.
+
+Not a word had been exchanged. He looked from one to another in
+silence. If an eye were furtively raised and met his, it was instantly
+averted. When his hollow voice broke silence, they all three started.
+They seemed never to have heard its tones before.
+
+“How came that dog here?” he asked.
+
+“Alone. Three hours ago.”
+
+“To-night’s paper says that Fagin’s took. Is it true, or a lie?”
+
+“True.”
+
+They were silent again.
+
+“Damn you all!” said Sikes, passing his hand across his forehead. “Have
+you nothing to say to me?”
+
+There was an uneasy movement among them, but nobody spoke.
+
+“You that keep this house,” said Sikes, turning his face to Crackit,
+“do you mean to sell me, or to let me lie here till this hunt is over?”
+
+“You may stop here, if you think it safe,” returned the person
+addressed, after some hesitation.
+
+Sikes carried his eyes slowly up the wall behind him: rather trying to
+turn his head than actually doing it: and said, “Is—it—the body—is it
+buried?”
+
+They shook their heads.
+
+“Why isn’t it!” he retorted with the same glance behind him. “Wot do
+they keep such ugly things above the ground for?—Who’s that knocking?”
+
+Crackit intimated, by a motion of his hand as he left the room, that
+there was nothing to fear; and directly came back with Charley Bates
+behind him. Sikes sat opposite the door, so that the moment the boy
+entered the room he encountered his figure.
+
+“Toby,” said the boy falling back, as Sikes turned his eyes towards
+him, “why didn’t you tell me this, downstairs?”
+
+There had been something so tremendous in the shrinking off of the
+three, that the wretched man was willing to propitiate even this lad.
+Accordingly he nodded, and made as though he would shake hands with
+him.
+
+“Let me go into some other room,” said the boy, retreating still
+farther.
+
+“Charley!” said Sikes, stepping forward. “Don’t you—don’t you know me?”
+
+“Don’t come nearer me,” answered the boy, still retreating, and
+looking, with horror in his eyes, upon the murderer’s face. “You
+monster!”
+
+The man stopped half-way, and they looked at each other; but Sikes’s
+eyes sunk gradually to the ground.
+
+“Witness you three,” cried the boy shaking his clenched fist, and
+becoming more and more excited as he spoke. “Witness you three—I’m not
+afraid of him—if they come here after him, I’ll give him up; I will. I
+tell you out at once. He may kill me for it if he likes, or if he
+dares, but if I am here I’ll give him up. I’d give him up if he was to
+be boiled alive. Murder! Help! If there’s the pluck of a man among you
+three, you’ll help me. Murder! Help! Down with him!”
+
+Pouring out these cries, and accompanying them with violent
+gesticulation, the boy actually threw himself, single-handed, upon the
+strong man, and in the intensity of his energy and the suddenness of
+his surprise, brought him heavily to the ground.
+
+The three spectators seemed quite stupefied. They offered no
+interference, and the boy and man rolled on the ground together; the
+former, heedless of the blows that showered upon him, wrenching his
+hands tighter and tighter in the garments about the murderer’s breast,
+and never ceasing to call for help with all his might.
+
+The contest, however, was too unequal to last long. Sikes had him down,
+and his knee was on his throat, when Crackit pulled him back with a
+look of alarm, and pointed to the window. There were lights gleaming
+below, voices in loud and earnest conversation, the tramp of hurried
+footsteps—endless they seemed in number—crossing the nearest wooden
+bridge. One man on horseback seemed to be among the crowd; for there
+was the noise of hoofs rattling on the uneven pavement. The gleam of
+lights increased; the footsteps came more thickly and noisily on. Then,
+came a loud knocking at the door, and then a hoarse murmur from such a
+multitude of angry voices as would have made the boldest quail.
+
+“Help!” shrieked the boy in a voice that rent the air. “He’s here!
+Break down the door!”
+
+“In the King’s name,” cried the voices without; and the hoarse cry
+arose again, but louder.
+
+“Break down the door!” screamed the boy. “I tell you they’ll never open
+it. Run straight to the room where the light is. Break down the door!”
+
+Strokes, thick and heavy, rattled upon the door and lower
+window-shutters as he ceased to speak, and a loud huzzah burst from the
+crowd; giving the listener, for the first time, some adequate idea of
+its immense extent.
+
+“Open the door of some place where I can lock this screeching
+Hell-babe,” cried Sikes fiercely; running to and fro, and dragging the
+boy, now, as easily as if he were an empty sack. “That door. Quick!” He
+flung him in, bolted it, and turned the key. “Is the downstairs door
+fast?”
+
+“Double-locked and chained,” replied Crackit, who, with the other two
+men, still remained quite helpless and bewildered.
+
+“The panels—are they strong?”
+
+“Lined with sheet-iron.”
+
+“And the windows too?”
+
+“Yes, and the windows.”
+
+“Damn you!” cried the desperate ruffian, throwing up the sash and
+menacing the crowd. “Do your worst! I’ll cheat you yet!”
+
+Of all the terrific yells that ever fell on mortal ears, none could
+exceed the cry of the infuriated throng. Some shouted to those who were
+nearest to set the house on fire; others roared to the officers to
+shoot him dead. Among them all, none showed such fury as the man on
+horseback, who, throwing himself out of the saddle, and bursting
+through the crowd as if he were parting water, cried, beneath the
+window, in a voice that rose above all others, “Twenty guineas to the
+man who brings a ladder!”
+
+The nearest voices took up the cry, and hundreds echoed it. Some called
+for ladders, some for sledge-hammers; some ran with torches to and fro
+as if to seek them, and still came back and roared again; some spent
+their breath in impotent curses and execrations; some pressed forward
+with the ecstasy of madmen, and thus impeded the progress of those
+below; some among the boldest attempted to climb up by the water-spout
+and crevices in the wall; and all waved to and fro, in the darkness
+beneath, like a field of corn moved by an angry wind: and joined from
+time to time in one loud furious roar.
+
+“The tide,” cried the murderer, as he staggered back into the room, and
+shut the faces out, “the tide was in as I came up. Give me a rope, a
+long rope. They’re all in front. I may drop into the Folly Ditch, and
+clear off that way. Give me a rope, or I shall do three more murders
+and kill myself.”
+
+The panic-stricken men pointed to where such articles were kept; the
+murderer, hastily selecting the longest and strongest cord, hurried up
+to the house-top.
+
+All the windows in the rear of the house had been long ago bricked up,
+except one small trap in the room where the boy was locked, and that
+was too small even for the passage of his body. But, from this
+aperture, he had never ceased to call on those without, to guard the
+back; and thus, when the murderer emerged at last on the house-top by
+the door in the roof, a loud shout proclaimed the fact to those in
+front, who immediately began to pour round, pressing upon each other in
+an unbroken stream.
+
+He planted a board, which he had carried up with him for the purpose,
+so firmly against the door that it must be matter of great difficulty
+to open it from the inside; and creeping over the tiles, looked over
+the low parapet.
+
+The water was out, and the ditch a bed of mud.
+
+The crowd had been hushed during these few moments, watching his
+motions and doubtful of his purpose, but the instant they perceived it
+and knew it was defeated, they raised a cry of triumphant execration to
+which all their previous shouting had been whispers. Again and again it
+rose. Those who were at too great a distance to know its meaning, took
+up the sound; it echoed and re-echoed; it seemed as though the whole
+city had poured its population out to curse him.
+
+On pressed the people from the front—on, on, on, in a strong struggling
+current of angry faces, with here and there a glaring torch to lighten
+them up, and show them out in all their wrath and passion. The houses
+on the opposite side of the ditch had been entered by the mob; sashes
+were thrown up, or torn bodily out; there were tiers and tiers of faces
+in every window; cluster upon cluster of people clinging to every
+house-top. Each little bridge (and there were three in sight) bent
+beneath the weight of the crowd upon it. Still the current poured on to
+find some nook or hole from which to vent their shouts, and only for an
+instant see the wretch.
+
+“They have him now,” cried a man on the nearest bridge. “Hurrah!”
+
+The crowd grew light with uncovered heads; and again the shout uprose.
+
+“I will give fifty pounds,” cried an old gentleman from the same
+quarter, “to the man who takes him alive. I will remain here, till he
+come to ask me for it.”
+
+There was another roar. At this moment the word was passed among the
+crowd that the door was forced at last, and that he who had first
+called for the ladder had mounted into the room. The stream abruptly
+turned, as this intelligence ran from mouth to mouth; and the people at
+the windows, seeing those upon the bridges pouring back, quitted their
+stations, and running into the street, joined the concourse that now
+thronged pell-mell to the spot they had left: each man crushing and
+striving with his neighbor, and all panting with impatience to get near
+the door, and look upon the criminal as the officers brought him out.
+The cries and shrieks of those who were pressed almost to suffocation,
+or trampled down and trodden under foot in the confusion, were
+dreadful; the narrow ways were completely blocked up; and at this time,
+between the rush of some to regain the space in front of the house, and
+the unavailing struggles of others to extricate themselves from the
+mass, the immediate attention was distracted from the murderer,
+although the universal eagerness for his capture was, if possible,
+increased.
+
+The man had shrunk down, thoroughly quelled by the ferocity of the
+crowd, and the impossibility of escape; but seeing this sudden change
+with no less rapidity than it had occurred, he sprang upon his feet,
+determined to make one last effort for his life by dropping into the
+ditch, and, at the risk of being stifled, endeavouring to creep away in
+the darkness and confusion.
+
+Roused into new strength and energy, and stimulated by the noise within
+the house which announced that an entrance had really been effected, he
+set his foot against the stack of chimneys, fastened one end of the
+rope tightly and firmly round it, and with the other made a strong
+running noose by the aid of his hands and teeth almost in a second. He
+could let himself down by the cord to within a less distance of the
+ground than his own height, and had his knife ready in his hand to cut
+it then and drop.
+
+At the very instant when he brought the loop over his head previous to
+slipping it beneath his arm-pits, and when the old gentleman
+before-mentioned (who had clung so tight to the railing of the bridge
+as to resist the force of the crowd, and retain his position) earnestly
+warned those about him that the man was about to lower himself down—at
+that very instant the murderer, looking behind him on the roof, threw
+his arms above his head, and uttered a yell of terror.
+
+“The eyes again!” he cried in an unearthly screech.
+
+Staggering as if struck by lightning, he lost his balance and tumbled
+over the parapet. The noose was on his neck. It ran up with his weight,
+tight as a bow-string, and swift as the arrow it speeds. He fell for
+five-and-thirty feet. There was a sudden jerk, a terrific convulsion of
+the limbs; and there he hung, with the open knife clenched in his
+stiffening hand.
+
+The old chimney quivered with the shock, but stood it bravely. The
+murderer swung lifeless against the wall; and the boy, thrusting aside
+the dangling body which obscured his view, called to the people to come
+and take him out, for God’s sake.
+
+A dog, which had lain concealed till now, ran backwards and forwards on
+the parapet with a dismal howl, and collecting himself for a spring,
+jumped for the dead man’s shoulders. Missing his aim, he fell into the
+ditch, turning completely over as he went; and striking his head
+against a stone, dashed out his brains.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER LI.
+AFFORDING AN EXPLANATION OF MORE MYSTERIES THAN ONE, AND COMPREHENDING
+A PROPOSAL OF MARRIAGE WITH NO WORD OF SETTLEMENT OR PIN-MONEY
+
+
+The events narrated in the last chapter were yet but two days old, when
+Oliver found himself, at three o’clock in the afternoon, in a
+travelling-carriage rolling fast towards his native town. Mrs. Maylie,
+and Rose, and Mrs. Bedwin, and the good doctor were with him: and Mr.
+Brownlow followed in a post-chaise, accompanied by one other person
+whose name had not been mentioned.
+
+They had not talked much upon the way; for Oliver was in a flutter of
+agitation and uncertainty which deprived him of the power of collecting
+his thoughts, and almost of speech, and appeared to have scarcely less
+effect on his companions, who shared it, in at least an equal degree.
+He and the two ladies had been very carefully made acquainted by Mr.
+Brownlow with the nature of the admissions which had been forced from
+Monks; and although they knew that the object of their present journey
+was to complete the work which had been so well begun, still the whole
+matter was enveloped in enough of doubt and mystery to leave them in
+endurance of the most intense suspense.
+
+The same kind friend had, with Mr. Losberne’s assistance, cautiously
+stopped all channels of communication through which they could receive
+intelligence of the dreadful occurrences that so recently taken place.
+“It was quite true,” he said, “that they must know them before long,
+but it might be at a better time than the present, and it could not be
+at a worse.” So, they travelled on in silence: each busied with
+reflections on the object which had brought them together: and no one
+disposed to give utterance to the thoughts which crowded upon all.
+
+But if Oliver, under these influences, had remained silent while they
+journeyed towards his birth-place by a road he had never seen, how the
+whole current of his recollections ran back to old times, and what a
+crowd of emotions were wakened up in his breast, when they turned into
+that which he had traversed on foot: a poor houseless, wandering boy,
+without a friend to help him, or a roof to shelter his head.
+
+“See there, there!” cried Oliver, eagerly clasping the hand of Rose,
+and pointing out at the carriage window; “that’s the stile I came over;
+there are the hedges I crept behind, for fear any one should overtake
+me and force me back! Yonder is the path across the fields, leading to
+the old house where I was a little child! Oh Dick, Dick, my dear old
+friend, if I could only see you now!”
+
+“You will see him soon,” replied Rose, gently taking his folded hands
+between her own. “You shall tell him how happy you are, and how rich
+you have grown, and that in all your happiness you have none so great
+as the coming back to make him happy too.”
+
+“Yes, yes,” said Oliver, “and we’ll—we’ll take him away from here, and
+have him clothed and taught, and send him to some quiet country place
+where he may grow strong and well,—shall we?”
+
+Rose nodded “yes,” for the boy was smiling through such happy tears
+that she could not speak.
+
+“You will be kind and good to him, for you are to every one,” said
+Oliver. “It will make you cry, I know, to hear what he can tell; but
+never mind, never mind, it will be all over, and you will smile again—I
+know that too—to think how changed he is; you did the same with me. He
+said ‘God bless you’ to me when I ran away,” cried the boy with a burst
+of affectionate emotion; “and I will say ‘God bless you’ now, and show
+him how I love him for it!”
+
+As they approached the town, and at length drove through its narrow
+streets, it became matter of no small difficulty to restrain the boy
+within reasonable bounds. There was Sowerberry’s the undertaker’s just
+as it used to be, only smaller and less imposing in appearance than he
+remembered it—there were all the well-known shops and houses, with
+almost every one of which he had some slight incident connected—there
+was Gamfield’s cart, the very cart he used to have, standing at the old
+public-house door—there was the workhouse, the dreary prison of his
+youthful days, with its dismal windows frowning on the street—there was
+the same lean porter standing at the gate, at sight of whom Oliver
+involuntarily shrunk back, and then laughed at himself for being so
+foolish, then cried, then laughed again—there were scores of faces at
+the doors and windows that he knew quite well—there was nearly
+everything as if he had left it but yesterday, and all his recent life
+had been but a happy dream.
+
+But it was pure, earnest, joyful reality. They drove straight to the
+door of the chief hotel (which Oliver used to stare up at, with awe,
+and think a mighty palace, but which had somehow fallen off in grandeur
+and size); and here was Mr. Grimwig all ready to receive them, kissing
+the young lady, and the old one too, when they got out of the coach, as
+if he were the grandfather of the whole party, all smiles and kindness,
+and not offering to eat his head—no, not once; not even when he
+contradicted a very old postboy about the nearest road to London, and
+maintained he knew it best, though he had only come that way once, and
+that time fast asleep. There was dinner prepared, and there were
+bedrooms ready, and everything was arranged as if by magic.
+
+Notwithstanding all this, when the hurry of the first half-hour was
+over, the same silence and constraint prevailed that had marked their
+journey down. Mr. Brownlow did not join them at dinner, but remained in
+a separate room. The two other gentlemen hurried in and out with
+anxious faces, and, during the short intervals when they were present,
+conversed apart. Once, Mrs. Maylie was called away, and after being
+absent for nearly an hour, returned with eyes swollen with weeping. All
+these things made Rose and Oliver, who were not in any new secrets,
+nervous and uncomfortable. They sat wondering, in silence; or, if they
+exchanged a few words, spoke in whispers, as if they were afraid to
+hear the sound of their own voices.
+
+At length, when nine o’clock had come, and they began to think they
+were to hear no more that night, Mr. Losberne and Mr. Grimwig entered
+the room, followed by Mr. Brownlow and a man whom Oliver almost
+shrieked with surprise to see; for they told him it was his brother,
+and it was the same man he had met at the market-town, and seen looking
+in with Fagin at the window of his little room. Monks cast a look of
+hate, which, even then, he could not dissemble, at the astonished boy,
+and sat down near the door. Mr. Brownlow, who had papers in his hand,
+walked to a table near which Rose and Oliver were seated.
+
+“This is a painful task,” said he, “but these declarations, which have
+been signed in London before many gentlemen, must be in substance
+repeated here. I would have spared you the degradation, but we must
+hear them from your own lips before we part, and you know why.”
+
+“Go on,” said the person addressed, turning away his face. “Quick. I
+have almost done enough, I think. Don’t keep me here.”
+
+“This child,” said Mr. Brownlow, drawing Oliver to him, and laying his
+hand upon his head, “is your half-brother; the illegitimate son of your
+father, my dear friend Edwin Leeford, by poor young Agnes Fleming, who
+died in giving him birth.”
+
+“Yes,” said Monks, scowling at the trembling boy: the beating of whose
+heart he might have heard. “That is the bastard child.”
+
+“The term you use,” said Mr. Brownlow, sternly, “is a reproach to those
+long since passed beyond the feeble censure of the world. It reflects
+disgrace on no one living, except you who use it. Let that pass. He was
+born in this town.”
+
+“In the workhouse of this town,” was the sullen reply. “You have the
+story there.” He pointed impatiently to the papers as he spoke.
+
+“I must have it here, too,” said Mr. Brownlow, looking round upon the
+listeners.
+
+“Listen then! You!” returned Monks. “His father being taken ill at
+Rome, was joined by his wife, my mother, from whom he had been long
+separated, who went from Paris and took me with her—to look after his
+property, for what I know, for she had no great affection for him, nor
+he for her. He knew nothing of us, for his senses were gone, and he
+slumbered on till next day, when he died. Among the papers in his desk,
+were two, dated on the night his illness first came on, directed to
+yourself”; he addressed himself to Mr. Brownlow; “and enclosed in a few
+short lines to you, with an intimation on the cover of the package that
+it was not to be forwarded till after he was dead. One of these papers
+was a letter to this girl Agnes; the other a will.”
+
+“What of the letter?” asked Mr. Brownlow.
+
+“The letter?—A sheet of paper crossed and crossed again, with a
+penitent confession, and prayers to God to help her. He had palmed a
+tale on the girl that some secret mystery—to be explained one
+day—prevented his marrying her just then; and so she had gone on,
+trusting patiently to him, until she trusted too far, and lost what
+none could ever give her back. She was, at that time, within a few
+months of her confinement. He told her all he had meant to do, to hide
+her shame, if he had lived, and prayed her, if he died, not to curse
+his memory, or think the consequences of their sin would be visited on
+her or their young child; for all the guilt was his. He reminded her of
+the day he had given her the little locket and the ring with her
+christian name engraved upon it, and a blank left for that which he
+hoped one day to have bestowed upon her—prayed her yet to keep it, and
+wear it next her heart, as she had done before—and then ran on, wildly,
+in the same words, over and over again, as if he had gone distracted. I
+believe he had.”
+
+“The will,” said Mr. Brownlow, as Oliver’s tears fell fast.
+
+Monks was silent.
+
+“The will,” said Mr. Brownlow, speaking for him, “was in the same
+spirit as the letter. He talked of miseries which his wife had brought
+upon him; of the rebellious disposition, vice, malice, and premature
+bad passions of you his only son, who had been trained to hate him; and
+left you, and your mother, each an annuity of eight hundred pounds. The
+bulk of his property he divided into two equal portions—one for Agnes
+Fleming, and the other for their child, if it should be born alive, and
+ever come of age. If it were a girl, it was to inherit the money
+unconditionally; but if a boy, only on the stipulation that in his
+minority he should never have stained his name with any public act of
+dishonour, meanness, cowardice, or wrong. He did this, he said, to mark
+his confidence in the mother, and his conviction—only strengthened by
+approaching death—that the child would share her gentle heart, and
+noble nature. If he were disappointed in this expectation, then the
+money was to come to you: for then, and not till then, when both
+children were equal, would he recognise your prior claim upon his
+purse, who had none upon his heart, but had, from an infant, repulsed
+him with coldness and aversion.”
+
+“My mother,” said Monks, in a louder tone, “did what a woman should
+have done. She burnt this will. The letter never reached its
+destination; but that, and other proofs, she kept, in case they ever
+tried to lie away the blot. The girl’s father had the truth from her
+with every aggravation that her violent hate—I love her for it
+now—could add. Goaded by shame and dishonour he fled with his children
+into a remote corner of Wales, changing his very name that his friends
+might never know of his retreat; and here, no great while afterwards,
+he was found dead in his bed. The girl had left her home, in secret,
+some weeks before; he had searched for her, on foot, in every town and
+village near; it was on the night when he returned home, assured that
+she had destroyed herself, to hide her shame and his, that his old
+heart broke.”
+
+There was a short silence here, until Mr. Brownlow took up the thread
+of the narrative.
+
+“Years after this,” he said, “this man’s—Edward Leeford’s—mother came
+to me. He had left her, when only eighteen; robbed her of jewels and
+money; gambled, squandered, forged, and fled to London: where for two
+years he had associated with the lowest outcasts. She was sinking under
+a painful and incurable disease, and wished to recover him before she
+died. Inquiries were set on foot, and strict searches made. They were
+unavailing for a long time, but ultimately successful; and he went back
+with her to France.”
+
+“There she died,” said Monks, “after a lingering illness; and, on her
+death-bed, she bequeathed these secrets to me, together with her
+unquenchable and deadly hatred of all whom they involved—though she
+need not have left me that, for I had inherited it long before. She
+would not believe that the girl had destroyed herself, and the child
+too, but was filled with the impression that a male child had been
+born, and was alive. I swore to her, if ever it crossed my path, to
+hunt it down; never to let it rest; to pursue it with the bitterest and
+most unrelenting animosity; to vent upon it the hatred that I deeply
+felt, and to spit upon the empty vaunt of that insulting will by
+draggin it, if I could, to the very gallows-foot. She was right. He
+came in my way at last. I began well; and, but for babbling drabs, I
+would have finished as I began!”
+
+As the villain folded his arms tight together, and muttered curses on
+himself in the impotence of baffled malice, Mr. Brownlow turned to the
+terrified group beside him, and explained that the Jew, who had been
+his old accomplice and confidant, had a large reward for keeping Oliver
+ensnared: of which some part was to be given up, in the event of his
+being rescued: and that a dispute on this head had led to their visit
+to the country house for the purpose of identifying him.
+
+“The locket and ring?” said Mr. Brownlow, turning to Monks.
+
+“I bought them from the man and woman I told you of, who stole them
+from the nurse, who stole them from the corpse,” answered Monks without
+raising his eyes. “You know what became of them.”
+
+Mr. Brownlow merely nodded to Mr. Grimwig, who disappearing with great
+alacrity, shortly returned, pushing in Mrs. Bumble, and dragging her
+unwilling consort after him.
+
+“Do my hi’s deceive me!” cried Mr. Bumble, with ill-feigned enthusiasm,
+“or is that little Oliver? Oh O-li-ver, if you know’d how I’ve been
+a-grieving for you—”
+
+“Hold your tongue, fool,” murmured Mrs. Bumble.
+
+“Isn’t natur, natur, Mrs. Bumble?” remonstrated the workhouse master.
+“Can’t I be supposed to feel—_I_ as brought him up porochially—when I
+see him a-setting here among ladies and gentlemen of the very affablest
+description! I always loved that boy as if he’d been my—my—my own
+grandfather,” said Mr. Bumble, halting for an appropriate comparison.
+“Master Oliver, my dear, you remember the blessed gentleman in the
+white waistcoat? Ah! he went to heaven last week, in a oak coffin with
+plated handles, Oliver.”
+
+“Come, sir,” said Mr. Grimwig, tartly; “suppress your feelings.”
+
+“I will do my endeavours, sir,” replied Mr. Bumble. “How do you do,
+sir? I hope you are very well.”
+
+This salutation was addressed to Mr. Brownlow, who had stepped up to
+within a short distance of the respectable couple. He inquired, as he
+pointed to Monks,
+
+“Do you know that person?”
+
+“No,” replied Mrs. Bumble flatly.
+
+“Perhaps _you_ don’t?” said Mr. Brownlow, addressing her spouse.
+
+“I never saw him in all my life,” said Mr. Bumble.
+
+“Nor sold him anything, perhaps?”
+
+“No,” replied Mrs. Bumble.
+
+“You never had, perhaps, a certain gold locket and ring?” said Mr.
+Brownlow.
+
+“Certainly not,” replied the matron. “Why are we brought here to answer
+to such nonsense as this?”
+
+Again Mr. Brownlow nodded to Mr. Grimwig; and again that gentleman
+limped away with extraordinary readiness. But not again did he return
+with a stout man and wife; for this time, he led in two palsied women,
+who shook and tottered as they walked.
+
+“You shut the door the night old Sally died,” said the foremost one,
+raising her shrivelled hand, “but you couldn’t shut out the sound, nor
+stop the chinks.”
+
+“No, no,” said the other, looking round her and wagging her toothless
+jaws. “No, no, no.”
+
+“We heard her try to tell you what she’d done, and saw you take a paper
+from her hand, and watched you too, next day, to the pawnbroker’s
+shop,” said the first.
+
+“Yes,” added the second, “and it was a ‘locket and gold ring.’ We found
+out that, and saw it given you. We were by. Oh! we were by.”
+
+“And we know more than that,” resumed the first, “for she told us
+often, long ago, that the young mother had told her that, feeling she
+should never get over it, she was on her way, at the time that she was
+taken ill, to die near the grave of the father of the child.”
+
+“Would you like to see the pawnbroker himself?” asked Mr. Grimwig with
+a motion towards the door.
+
+“No,” replied the woman; “if he”—she pointed to Monks—“has been coward
+enough to confess, as I see he has, and you have sounded all these hags
+till you have found the right ones, I have nothing more to say. I _did_
+sell them, and they’re where you’ll never get them. What then?”
+
+“Nothing,” replied Mr. Brownlow, “except that it remains for us to take
+care that neither of you is employed in a situation of trust again. You
+may leave the room.”
+
+“I hope,” said Mr. Bumble, looking about him with great ruefulness, as
+Mr. Grimwig disappeared with the two old women: “I hope that this
+unfortunate little circumstance will not deprive me of my porochial
+office?”
+
+“Indeed it will,” replied Mr. Brownlow. “You may make up your mind to
+that, and think yourself well off besides.”
+
+“It was all Mrs. Bumble. She _would_ do it,” urged Mr. Bumble; first
+looking round to ascertain that his partner had left the room.
+
+“That is no excuse,” replied Mr. Brownlow. “You were present on the
+occasion of the destruction of these trinkets, and indeed are the more
+guilty of the two, in the eye of the law; for the law supposes that
+your wife acts under your direction.”
+
+“If the law supposes that,” said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat
+emphatically in both hands, “the law is a ass—a idiot. If that’s the
+eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is,
+that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience.”
+
+Laying great stress on the repetition of these two words, Mr. Bumble
+fixed his hat on very tight, and putting his hands in his pockets,
+followed his helpmate downstairs.
+
+“Young lady,” said Mr. Brownlow, turning to Rose, “give me your hand.
+Do not tremble. You need not fear to hear the few remaining words we
+have to say.”
+
+“If they have—I do not know how they can, but if they have—any
+reference to me,” said Rose, “pray let me hear them at some other time.
+I have not strength or spirits now.”
+
+“Nay,” returned the old gentlman, drawing her arm through his; “you
+have more fortitude than this, I am sure. Do you know this young lady,
+sir?”
+
+“Yes,” replied Monks.
+
+“I never saw you before,” said Rose faintly.
+
+“I have seen you often,” returned Monks.
+
+“The father of the unhappy Agnes had _two_ daughters,” said Mr.
+Brownlow. “What was the fate of the other—the child?”
+
+“The child,” replied Monks, “when her father died in a strange place,
+in a strange name, without a letter, book, or scrap of paper that
+yielded the faintest clue by which his friends or relatives could be
+traced—the child was taken by some wretched cottagers, who reared it as
+their own.”
+
+“Go on,” said Mr. Brownlow, signing to Mrs. Maylie to approach. “Go
+on!”
+
+“You couldn’t find the spot to which these people had repaired,” said
+Monks, “but where friendship fails, hatred will often force a way. My
+mother found it, after a year of cunning search—ay, and found the
+child.”
+
+“She took it, did she?”
+
+“No. The people were poor and began to sicken—at least the man did—of
+their fine humanity; so she left it with them, giving them a small
+present of money which would not last long, and promised more, which
+she never meant to send. She didn’t quite rely, however, on their
+discontent and poverty for the child’s unhappiness, but told the
+history of the sister’s shame, with such alterations as suited her;
+bade them take good heed of the child, for she came of bad blood; and
+told them she was illegitimate, and sure to go wrong at one time or
+other. The circumstances countenanced all this; the people believed it;
+and there the child dragged on an existence, miserable enough even to
+satisfy us, until a widow lady, residing, then, at Chester, saw the
+girl by chance, pitied her, and took her home. There was some cursed
+spell, I think, against us; for in spite of all our efforts she
+remained there and was happy. I lost sight of her, two or three years
+ago, and saw her no more until a few months back.”
+
+“Do you see her now?”
+
+“Yes. Leaning on your arm.”
+
+“But not the less my niece,” cried Mrs. Maylie, folding the fainting
+girl in her arms; “not the less my dearest child. I would not lose her
+now, for all the treasures of the world. My sweet companion, my own
+dear girl!”
+
+“The only friend I ever had,” cried Rose, clinging to her. “The
+kindest, best of friends. My heart will burst. I cannot bear all this.”
+
+“You have borne more, and have been, through all, the best and gentlest
+creature that ever shed happiness on every one she knew,” said Mrs.
+Maylie, embracing her tenderly. “Come, come, my love, remember who this
+is who waits to clasp you in his arms, poor child! See here—look, look,
+my dear!”
+
+“Not aunt,” cried Oliver, throwing his arms about her neck; “I’ll never
+call her aunt—sister, my own dear sister, that something taught my
+heart to love so dearly from the first! Rose, dear, darling Rose!”
+
+Let the tears which fell, and the broken words which were exchanged in
+the long close embrace between the orphans, be sacred. A father,
+sister, and mother, were gained, and lost, in that one moment. Joy and
+grief were mingled in the cup; but there were no bitter tears: for even
+grief itself arose so softened, and clothed in such sweet and tender
+recollections, that it became a solemn pleasure, and lost all character
+of pain.
+
+They were a long, long time alone. A soft tap at the door, at length
+announced that some one was without. Oliver opened it, glided away, and
+gave place to Harry Maylie.
+
+“I know it all,” he said, taking a seat beside the lovely girl. “Dear
+Rose, I know it all.”
+
+“I am not here by accident,” he added after a lengthened silence; “nor
+have I heard all this to-night, for I knew it yesterday—only yesterday.
+Do you guess that I have come to remind you of a promise?”
+
+“Stay,” said Rose. “You _do_ know all.”
+
+“All. You gave me leave, at any time within a year, to renew the
+subject of our last discourse.”
+
+“I did.”
+
+“Not to press you to alter your determination,” pursued the young man,
+“but to hear you repeat it, if you would. I was to lay whatever of
+station or fortune I might possess at your feet, and if you still
+adhered to your former determination, I pledged myself, by no word or
+act, to seek to change it.”
+
+“The same reasons which influenced me then, will influence me now,”
+said Rose firmly. “If I ever owed a strict and rigid duty to her, whose
+goodness saved me from a life of indigence and suffering, when should I
+ever feel it, as I should to-night? It is a struggle,” said Rose, “but
+one I am proud to make; it is a pang, but one my heart shall bear.”
+
+“The disclosure of to-night,”—Harry began.
+
+“The disclosure of to-night,” replied Rose softly, “leaves me in the
+same position, with reference to you, as that in which I stood before.”
+
+“You harden your heart against me, Rose,” urged her lover.
+
+“Oh Harry, Harry,” said the young lady, bursting into tears; “I wish I
+could, and spare myself this pain.”
+
+“Then why inflict it on yourself?” said Harry, taking her hand. “Think,
+dear Rose, think what you have heard to-night.”
+
+“And what have I heard! What have I heard!” cried Rose. “That a sense
+of his deep disgrace so worked upon my own father that he shunned
+all—there, we have said enough, Harry, we have said enough.”
+
+“Not yet, not yet,” said the young man, detaining her as she rose. “My
+hopes, my wishes, prospects, feeling: every thought in life except my
+love for you: have undergone a change. I offer you, now, no distinction
+among a bustling crowd; no mingling with a world of malice and
+detraction, where the blood is called into honest cheeks by aught but
+real disgrace and shame; but a home—a heart and home—yes, dearest Rose,
+and those, and those alone, are all I have to offer.”
+
+“What do you mean!” she faltered.
+
+“I mean but this—that when I left you last, I left you with a firm
+determination to level all fancied barriers between yourself and me;
+resolved that if my world could not be yours, I would make yours mine;
+that no pride of birth should curl the lip at you, for I would turn
+from it. This I have done. Those who have shrunk from me because of
+this, have shrunk from you, and proved you so far right. Such power and
+patronage: such relatives of influence and rank: as smiled upon me
+then, look coldly now; but there are smiling fields and waving trees in
+England’s richest county; and by one village church—mine, Rose, my
+own!—there stands a rustic dwelling which you can make me prouder of,
+than all the hopes I have renounced, measured a thousandfold. This is
+my rank and station now, and here I lay it down!”
+
+
+“It’s a trying thing waiting supper for lovers,” said Mr. Grimwig,
+waking up, and pulling his pocket-handkerchief from over his head.
+
+Truth to tell, the supper had been waiting a most unreasonable time.
+Neither Mrs. Maylie, nor Harry, nor Rose (who all came in together),
+could offer a word in extenuation.
+
+“I had serious thoughts of eating my head to-night,” said Mr. Grimwig,
+“for I began to think I should get nothing else. I’ll take the liberty,
+if you’ll allow me, of saluting the bride that is to be.”
+
+Mr. Grimwig lost no time in carrying this notice into effect upon the
+blushing girl; and the example, being contagious, was followed both by
+the doctor and Mr. Brownlow: some people affirm that Harry Maylie had
+been observed to set it, originally, in a dark room adjoining; but the
+best authorities consider this downright scandal: he being young and a
+clergyman.
+
+“Oliver, my child,” said Mrs. Maylie, “where have you been, and why do
+you look so sad? There are tears stealing down your face at this
+moment. What is the matter?”
+
+It is a world of disappointment: often to the hopes we most cherish,
+and hopes that do our nature the greatest honour.
+
+Poor Dick was dead!
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER LII.
+FAGIN’S LAST NIGHT ALIVE
+
+
+The court was paved, from floor to roof, with human faces. Inquisitive
+and eager eyes peered from every inch of space. From the rail before
+the dock, away into the sharpest angle of the smallest corner in the
+galleries, all looks were fixed upon one man—Fagin. Before him and
+behind: above, below, on the right and on the left: he seemed to stand
+surrounded by a firmament, all bright with gleaming eyes.
+
+He stood there, in all this glare of living light, with one hand
+resting on the wooden slab before him, the other held to his ear, and
+his head thrust forward to enable him to catch with greater
+distinctness every word that fell from the presiding judge, who was
+delivering his charge to the jury. At times, he turned his eyes sharply
+upon them to observe the effect of the slightest featherweight in his
+favour; and when the points against him were stated with terrible
+distinctness, looked towards his counsel, in mute appeal that he would,
+even then, urge something in his behalf. Beyond these manifestations of
+anxiety, he stirred not hand or foot. He had scarcely moved since the
+trial began; and now that the judge ceased to speak, he still remained
+in the same strained attitude of close attention, with his gaze bent on
+him, as though he listened still.
+
+A slight bustle in the court, recalled him to himself. Looking round,
+he saw that the juryman had turned together, to consider their verdict.
+As his eyes wandered to the gallery, he could see the people rising
+above each other to see his face: some hastily applying their glasses
+to their eyes: and others whispering their neighbours with looks
+expressive of abhorrence. A few there were, who seemed unmindful of
+him, and looked only to the jury, in impatient wonder how they could
+delay. But in no one face—not even among the women, of whom there were
+many there—could he read the faintest sympathy with himself, or any
+feeling but one of all-absorbing interest that he should be condemned.
+
+As he saw all this in one bewildered glance, the deathlike stillness
+came again, and looking back he saw that the jurymen had turned towards
+the judge. Hush!
+
+They only sought permission to retire.
+
+He looked, wistfully, into their faces, one by one when they passed
+out, as though to see which way the greater number leant; but that was
+fruitless. The jailer touched him on the shoulder. He followed
+mechanically to the end of the dock, and sat down on a chair. The man
+pointed it out, or he would not have seen it.
+
+He looked up into the gallery again. Some of the people were eating,
+and some fanning themselves with handkerchiefs; for the crowded place
+was very hot. There was one young man sketching his face in a little
+note-book. He wondered whether it was like, and looked on when the
+artist broke his pencil-point, and made another with his knife, as any
+idle spectator might have done.
+
+In the same way, when he turned his eyes towards the judge, his mind
+began to busy itself with the fashion of his dress, and what it cost,
+and how he put it on. There was an old fat gentleman on the bench, too,
+who had gone out, some half an hour before, and now come back. He
+wondered within himself whether this man had been to get his dinner,
+what he had had, and where he had had it; and pursued this train of
+careless thought until some new object caught his eye and roused
+another.
+
+Not that, all this time, his mind was, for an instant, free from one
+oppressive overwhelming sense of the grave that opened at his feet; it
+was ever present to him, but in a vague and general way, and he could
+not fix his thoughts upon it. Thus, even while he trembled, and turned
+burning hot at the idea of speedy death, he fell to counting the iron
+spikes before him, and wondering how the head of one had been broken
+off, and whether they would mend it, or leave it as it was. Then, he
+thought of all the horrors of the gallows and the scaffold—and stopped
+to watch a man sprinkling the floor to cool it—and then went on to
+think again.
+
+At length there was a cry of silence, and a breathless look from all
+towards the door. The jury returned, and passed him close. He could
+glean nothing from their faces; they might as well have been of stone.
+Perfect stillness ensued—not a rustle—not a breath—Guilty.
+
+The building rang with a tremendous shout, and another, and another,
+and then it echoed loud groans, that gathered strength as they swelled
+out, like angry thunder. It was a peal of joy from the populace
+outside, greeting the news that he would die on Monday.
+
+The noise subsided, and he was asked if he had anything to say why
+sentence of death should not be passed upon him. He had resumed his
+listening attitude, and looked intently at his questioner while the
+demand was made; but it was twice repeated before he seemed to hear it,
+and then he only muttered that he was an old man—an old man—and so,
+dropping into a whisper, was silent again.
+
+The judge assumed the black cap, and the prisoner still stood with the
+same air and gesture. A woman in the gallery, uttered some exclamation,
+called forth by this dread solemnity; he looked hastily up as if angry
+at the interruption, and bent forward yet more attentively. The address
+was solemn and impressive; the sentence fearful to hear. But he stood,
+like a marble figure, without the motion of a nerve. His haggard face
+was still thrust forward, his under-jaw hanging down, and his eyes
+staring out before him, when the jailer put his hand upon his arm, and
+beckoned him away. He gazed stupidly about him for an instant, and
+obeyed.
+
+They led him through a paved room under the court, where some prisoners
+were waiting till their turns came, and others were talking to their
+friends, who crowded round a grate which looked into the open yard.
+There was nobody there to speak to _him_; but, as he passed, the
+prisoners fell back to render him more visible to the people who were
+clinging to the bars: and they assailed him with opprobrious names, and
+screeched and hissed. He shook his fist, and would have spat upon them;
+but his conductors hurried him on, through a gloomy passage lighted by
+a few dim lamps, into the interior of the prison.
+
+Here, he was searched, that he might not have about him the means of
+anticipating the law; this ceremony performed, they led him to one of
+the condemned cells, and left him there—alone.
+
+He sat down on a stone bench opposite the door, which served for seat
+and bedstead; and casting his blood-shot eyes upon the ground, tried to
+collect his thoughts. After awhile, he began to remember a few
+disjointed fragments of what the judge had said: though it had seemed
+to him, at the time, that he could not hear a word. These gradually
+fell into their proper places, and by degrees suggested more: so that
+in a little time he had the whole, almost as it was delivered. To be
+hanged by the neck, till he was dead—that was the end. To be hanged by
+the neck till he was dead.
+
+As it came on very dark, he began to think of all the men he had known
+who had died upon the scaffold; some of them through his means. They
+rose up, in such quick succession, that he could hardly count them. He
+had seen some of them die,—and had joked too, because they died with
+prayers upon their lips. With what a rattling noise the drop went down;
+and how suddenly they changed, from strong and vigorous men to dangling
+heaps of clothes!
+
+Some of them might have inhabited that very cell—sat upon that very
+spot. It was very dark; why didn’t they bring a light? The cell had
+been built for many years. Scores of men must have passed their last
+hours there. It was like sitting in a vault strewn with dead bodies—the
+cap, the noose, the pinioned arms, the faces that he knew, even beneath
+that hideous veil.—Light, light!
+
+At length, when his hands were raw with beating against the heavy door
+and walls, two men appeared: one bearing a candle, which he thrust into
+an iron candlestick fixed against the wall: the other dragging in a
+mattress on which to pass the night; for the prisoner was to be left
+alone no more.
+
+Then came the night—dark, dismal, silent night. Other watchers are glad
+to hear this church-clock strike, for they tell of life and coming day.
+To him they brought despair. The boom of every iron bell came laden
+with the one, deep, hollow sound—Death. What availed the noise and
+bustle of cheerful morning, which penetrated even there, to him? It was
+another form of knell, with mockery added to the warning.
+
+The day passed off. Day? There was no day; it was gone as soon as
+come—and night came on again; night so long, and yet so short; long in
+its dreadful silence, and short in its fleeting hours. At one time he
+raved and blasphemed; and at another howled and tore his hair.
+Venerable men of his own persuasion had come to pray beside him, but he
+had driven them away with curses. They renewed their charitable
+efforts, and he beat them off.
+
+Saturday night. He had only one night more to live. And as he thought
+of this, the day broke—Sunday.
+
+It was not until the night of this last awful day, that a withering
+sense of his helpless, desperate state came in its full intensity upon
+his blighted soul; not that he had ever held any defined or positive
+hope of mercy, but that he had never been able to consider more than
+the dim probability of dying so soon. He had spoken little to either of
+the two men, who relieved each other in their attendance upon him; and
+they, for their parts, made no effort to rouse his attention. He had
+sat there, awake, but dreaming. Now, he started up, every minute, and
+with gasping mouth and burning skin, hurried to and fro, in such a
+paroxysm of fear and wrath that even they—used to such sights—recoiled
+from him with horror. He grew so terrible, at last, in all the tortures
+of his evil conscience, that one man could not bear to sit there,
+eyeing him alone; and so the two kept watch together.
+
+He cowered down upon his stone bed, and thought of the past. He had
+been wounded with some missiles from the crowd on the day of his
+capture, and his head was bandaged with a linen cloth. His red hair
+hung down upon his bloodless face; his beard was torn, and twisted into
+knots; his eyes shone with a terrible light; his unwashed flesh
+crackled with the fever that burnt him up. Eight—nine—then. If it was
+not a trick to frighten him, and those were the real hours treading on
+each other’s heels, where would he be, when they came round again!
+Eleven! Another struck, before the voice of the previous hour had
+ceased to vibrate. At eight, he would be the only mourner in his own
+funeral train; at eleven—
+
+Those dreadful walls of Newgate, which have hidden so much misery and
+such unspeakable anguish, not only from the eyes, but, too often, and
+too long, from the thoughts, of men, never held so dread a spectacle as
+that. The few who lingered as they passed, and wondered what the man
+was doing who was to be hanged to-morrow, would have slept but ill that
+night, if they could have seen him.
+
+From early in the evening until nearly midnight, little groups of two
+and three presented themselves at the lodge-gate, and inquired, with
+anxious faces, whether any reprieve had been received. These being
+answered in the negative, communicated the welcome intelligence to
+clusters in the street, who pointed out to one another the door from
+which he must come out, and showed where the scaffold would be built,
+and, walking with unwilling steps away, turned back to conjure up the
+scene. By degrees they fell off, one by one; and, for an hour, in the
+dead of night, the street was left to solitude and darkness.
+
+The space before the prison was cleared, and a few strong barriers,
+painted black, had been already thrown across the road to break the
+pressure of the expected crowd, when Mr. Brownlow and Oliver appeared
+at the wicket, and presented an order of admission to the prisoner,
+signed by one of the sheriffs. They were immediately admitted into the
+lodge.
+
+“Is the young gentleman to come too, sir?” said the man whose duty it
+was to conduct them. “It’s not a sight for children, sir.”
+
+“It is not indeed, my friend,” rejoined Mr. Brownlow; “but my business
+with this man is intimately connected with him; and as this child has
+seen him in the full career of his success and villainy, I think it as
+well—even at the cost of some pain and fear—that he should see him
+now.”
+
+These few words had been said apart, so as to be inaudible to Oliver.
+The man touched his hat; and glancing at Oliver with some curiousity,
+opened another gate, opposite to that by which they had entered, and
+led them on, through dark and winding ways, towards the cells.
+
+“This,” said the man, stopping in a gloomy passage where a couple of
+workmen were making some preparations in profound silence—“this is the
+place he passes through. If you step this way, you can see the door he
+goes out at.”
+
+He led them into a stone kitchen, fitted with coppers for dressing the
+prison food, and pointed to a door. There was an open grating above it,
+through which came the sound of men’s voices, mingled with the noise of
+hammering, and the throwing down of boards. They were putting up the
+scaffold.
+
+From this place, they passed through several strong gates, opened by
+other turnkeys from the inner side; and, having entered an open yard,
+ascended a flight of narrow steps, and came into a passage with a row
+of strong doors on the left hand. Motioning them to remain where they
+were, the turnkey knocked at one of these with his bunch of keys. The
+two attendants, after a little whispering, came out into the passage,
+stretching themselves as if glad of the temporary relief, and motioned
+the visitors to follow the jailer into the cell. They did so.
+
+The condemned criminal was seated on his bed, rocking himself from side
+to side, with a countenance more like that of a snared beast than the
+face of a man. His mind was evidently wandering to his old life, for he
+continued to mutter, without appearing conscious of their presence
+otherwise than as a part of his vision.
+
+“Good boy, Charley—well done—” he mumbled. “Oliver, too, ha! ha! ha!
+Oliver too—quite the gentleman now—quite the—take that boy away to
+bed!”
+
+The jailer took the disengaged hand of Oliver; and, whispering him not
+to be alarmed, looked on without speaking.
+
+“Take him away to bed!” cried Fagin. “Do you hear me, some of you? He
+has been the—the—somehow the cause of all this. It’s worth the money to
+bring him up to it—Bolter’s throat, Bill; never mind the girl—Bolter’s
+throat as deep as you can cut. Saw his head off!”
+
+“Fagin,” said the jailer.
+
+“That’s me!” cried the Jew, falling instantly, into the attitude of
+listening he had assumed upon his trial. “An old man, my Lord; a very
+old, old man!”
+
+“Here,” said the turnkey, laying his hand upon his breast to keep him
+down. “Here’s somebody wants to see you, to ask you some questions, I
+suppose. Fagin, Fagin! Are you a man?”
+
+“I shan’t be one long,” he replied, looking up with a face retaining no
+human expression but rage and terror. “Strike them all dead! What right
+have they to butcher me?”
+
+As he spoke he caught sight of Oliver and Mr. Brownlow. Shrinking to
+the furthest corner of the seat, he demanded to know what they wanted
+there.
+
+“Steady,” said the turnkey, still holding him down. “Now, sir, tell him
+what you want. Quick, if you please, for he grows worse as the time
+gets on.”
+
+“You have some papers,” said Mr. Brownlow advancing, “which were placed
+in your hands, for better security, by a man called Monks.”
+
+“It’s all a lie together,” replied Fagin. “I haven’t one—not one.”
+
+“For the love of God,” said Mr. Brownlow solemnly, “do not say that
+now, upon the very verge of death; but tell me where they are. You know
+that Sikes is dead; that Monks has confessed; that there is no hope of
+any further gain. Where are those papers?”
+
+“Oliver,” cried Fagin, beckoning to him. “Here, here! Let me whisper to
+you.”
+
+“I am not afraid,” said Oliver in a low voice, as he relinquished Mr.
+Brownlow’s hand.
+
+“The papers,” said Fagin, drawing Oliver towards him, “are in a canvas
+bag, in a hole a little way up the chimney in the top front-room. I
+want to talk to you, my dear. I want to talk to you.”
+
+“Yes, yes,” returned Oliver. “Let me say a prayer. Do! Let me say one
+prayer. Say only one, upon your knees, with me, and we will talk till
+morning.”
+
+“Outside, outside,” replied Fagin, pushing the boy before him towards
+the door, and looking vacantly over his head. “Say I’ve gone to
+sleep—they’ll believe you. You can get me out, if you take me so. Now
+then, now then!”
+
+“Oh! God forgive this wretched man!” cried the boy with a burst of
+tears.
+
+“That’s right, that’s right,” said Fagin. “That’ll help us on. This
+door first. If I shake and tremble, as we pass the gallows, don’t you
+mind, but hurry on. Now, now, now!”
+
+“Have you nothing else to ask him, sir?” inquired the turnkey.
+
+“No other question,” replied Mr. Brownlow. “If I hoped we could recall
+him to a sense of his position—”
+
+“Nothing will do that, sir,” replied the man, shaking his head. “You
+had better leave him.”
+
+The door of the cell opened, and the attendants returned.
+
+“Press on, press on,” cried Fagin. “Softly, but not so slow. Faster,
+faster!”
+
+The men laid hands upon him, and disengaging Oliver from his grasp,
+held him back. He struggled with the power of desperation, for an
+instant; and then sent up cry upon cry that penetrated even those
+massive walls, and rang in their ears until they reached the open yard.
+
+It was some time before they left the prison. Oliver nearly swooned
+after this frightful scene, and was so weak that for an hour or more,
+he had not the strength to walk.
+
+Day was dawning when they again emerged. A great multitude had already
+assembled; the windows were filled with people, smoking and playing
+cards to beguile the time; the crowd were pushing, quarrelling, joking.
+Everything told of life and animation, but one dark cluster of objects
+in the centre of all—the black stage, the cross-beam, the rope, and all
+the hideous apparatus of death.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER LIII.
+AND LAST
+
+
+The fortunes of those who have figured in this tale are nearly closed.
+The little that remains to their historian to relate, is told in few
+and simple words.
+
+Before three months had passed, Rose Fleming and Harry Maylie were
+married in the village church which was henceforth to be the scene of
+the young clergyman’s labours; on the same day they entered into
+possession of their new and happy home.
+
+Mrs. Maylie took up her abode with her son and daughter-in-law, to
+enjoy, during the tranquil remainder of her days, the greatest felicity
+that age and worth can know—the contemplation of the happiness of those
+on whom the warmest affections and tenderest cares of a well-spent
+life, have been unceasingly bestowed.
+
+It appeared, on full and careful investigation, that if the wreck of
+property remaining in the custody of Monks (which had never prospered
+either in his hands or in those of his mother) were equally divided
+between himself and Oliver, it would yield, to each, little more than
+three thousand pounds. By the provisions of his father’s will, Oliver
+would have been entitled to the whole; but Mr. Brownlow, unwilling to
+deprive the elder son of the opportunity of retrieving his former vices
+and pursuing an honest career, proposed this mode of distribution, to
+which his young charge joyfully acceded.
+
+Monks, still bearing that assumed name, retired with his portion to a
+distant part of the New World; where, having quickly squandered it, he
+once more fell into his old courses, and, after undergoing a long
+confinement for some fresh act of fraud and knavery, at length sunk
+under an attack of his old disorder, and died in prison. As far from
+home, died the chief remaining members of his friend Fagin’s gang.
+
+Mr. Brownlow adopted Oliver as his son. Removing with him and the old
+housekeeper to within a mile of the parsonage-house, where his dear
+friends resided, he gratified the only remaining wish of Oliver’s warm
+and earnest heart, and thus linked together a little society, whose
+condition approached as nearly to one of perfect happiness as can ever
+be known in this changing world.
+
+Soon after the marriage of the young people, the worthy doctor returned
+to Chertsey, where, bereft of the presence of his old friends, he would
+have been discontented if his temperament had admitted of such a
+feeling; and would have turned quite peevish if he had known how. For
+two or three months, he contented himself with hinting that he feared
+the air began to disagree with him; then, finding that the place really
+no longer was, to him, what it had been, he settled his business on his
+assistant, took a bachelor’s cottage outside the village of which his
+young friend was pastor, and instantaneously recovered. Here he took to
+gardening, planting, fishing, carpentering, and various other pursuits
+of a similar kind: all undertaken with his characteristic impetuosity.
+In each and all he has since become famous throughout the neighborhood,
+as a most profound authority.
+
+Before his removal, he had managed to contract a strong friendship for
+Mr. Grimwig, which that eccentric gentleman cordially reciprocated. He
+is accordingly visited by Mr. Grimwig a great many times in the course
+of the year. On all such occasions, Mr. Grimwig plants, fishes, and
+carpenters, with great ardour; doing everything in a very singular and
+unprecedented manner, but always maintaining with his favourite
+asseveration, that his mode is the right one. On Sundays, he never
+fails to criticise the sermon to the young clergyman’s face: always
+informing Mr. Losberne, in strict confidence afterwards, that he
+considers it an excellent performance, but deems it as well not to say
+so. It is a standing and very favourite joke, for Mr. Brownlow to rally
+him on his old prophecy concerning Oliver, and to remind him of the
+night on which they sat with the watch between them, waiting his
+return; but Mr. Grimwig contends that he was right in the main, and, in
+proof thereof, remarks that Oliver did not come back after all; which
+always calls forth a laugh on his side, and increases his good humour.
+
+Mr. Noah Claypole: receiving a free pardon from the Crown in
+consequence of being admitted approver against Fagin: and considering
+his profession not altogether as safe a one as he could wish: was, for
+some little time, at a loss for the means of a livelihood, not burdened
+with too much work. After some consideration, he went into business as
+an informer, in which calling he realises a genteel subsistence. His
+plan is, to walk out once a week during church time attended by
+Charlotte in respectable attire. The lady faints away at the doors of
+charitable publicans, and the gentleman being accommodated with
+three-penny worth of brandy to restore her, lays an information next
+day, and pockets half the penalty. Sometimes Mr. Claypole faints
+himself, but the result is the same.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Bumble, deprived of their situations, were gradually
+reduced to great indigence and misery, and finally became paupers in
+that very same workhouse in which they had once lorded it over others.
+Mr. Bumble has been heard to say, that in this reverse and degradation,
+he has not even spirits to be thankful for being separated from his
+wife.
+
+As to Mr. Giles and Brittles, they still remain in their old posts,
+although the former is bald, and the last-named boy quite grey. They
+sleep at the parsonage, but divide their attentions so equally among
+its inmates, and Oliver and Mr. Brownlow, and Mr. Losberne, that to
+this day the villagers have never been able to discover to which
+establishment they properly belong.
+
+Master Charles Bates, appalled by Sikes’s crime, fell into a train of
+reflection whether an honest life was not, after all, the best.
+Arriving at the conclusion that it certainly was, he turned his back
+upon the scenes of the past, resolved to amend it in some new sphere of
+action. He struggled hard, and suffered much, for some time; but,
+having a contented disposition, and a good purpose, succeeded in the
+end; and, from being a farmer’s drudge, and a carrier’s lad, he is now
+the merriest young grazier in all Northamptonshire.
+
+And now, the hand that traces these words, falters, as it approaches
+the conclusion of its task; and would weave, for a little longer space,
+the thread of these adventures.
+
+I would fain linger yet with a few of those among whom I have so long
+moved, and share their happiness by endeavouring to depict it. I would
+show Rose Maylie in all the bloom and grace of early womanhood,
+shedding on her secluded path in life soft and gentle light, that fell
+on all who trod it with her, and shone into their hearts. I would paint
+her the life and joy of the fire-side circle and the lively summer
+group; I would follow her through the sultry fields at noon, and hear
+the low tones of her sweet voice in the moonlit evening walk; I would
+watch her in all her goodness and charity abroad, and the smiling
+untiring discharge of domestic duties at home; I would paint her and
+her dead sister’s child happy in their love for one another, and
+passing whole hours together in picturing the friends whom they had so
+sadly lost; I would summon before me, once again, those joyous little
+faces that clustered round her knee, and listen to their merry prattle;
+I would recall the tones of that clear laugh, and conjure up the
+sympathising tear that glistened in the soft blue eye. These, and a
+thousand looks and smiles, and turns of thought and speech—I would fain
+recall them every one.
+
+How Mr. Brownlow went on, from day to day, filling the mind of his
+adopted child with stores of knowledge, and becoming attached to him,
+more and more, as his nature developed itself, and showed the thriving
+seeds of all he wished him to become—how he traced in him new traits of
+his early friend, that awakened in his own bosom old remembrances,
+melancholy and yet sweet and soothing—how the two orphans, tried by
+adversity, remembered its lessons in mercy to others, and mutual love,
+and fervent thanks to Him who had protected and preserved them—these
+are all matters which need not to be told. I have said that they were
+truly happy; and without strong affection and humanity of heart, and
+gratitude to that Being whose code is Mercy, and whose great attribute
+is Benevolence to all things that breathe, happiness can never be
+attained.
+
+Within the altar of the old village church there stands a white marble
+tablet, which bears as yet but one word: “AGNES.” There is no coffin in
+that tomb; and may it be many, many years, before another name is
+placed above it! But, if the spirits of the Dead ever come back to
+earth, to visit spots hallowed by the love—the love beyond the grave—of
+those whom they knew in life, I believe that the shade of Agnes
+sometimes hovers round that solemn nook. I believe it none the less
+because that nook is in a Church, and she was weak and erring.
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens
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diff --git a/data/train/swift_-_a_modest_proposal.txt b/data/train/swift_-_a_modest_proposal.txt
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Modest Proposal, by Jonathan Swift
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Modest Proposal
+       For preventing the children of poor people in Ireland,
+              from being a burden on their parents or country, and for
+              making them beneficial to the publick - 1729
+
+Author: Jonathan Swift
+
+Release Date: July 27, 2008 [EBook #1080]
+Last Updated: October 17, 2019
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A MODEST PROPOSAL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+A Modest Proposal
+
+For preventing the children of poor people in Ireland,
+from being a burden on their parents or country,
+and for making them beneficial to the publick.
+
+by Dr. Jonathan Swift
+
+1729
+
+
+
+
+It is a melancholy object to those, who walk through this great town,
+or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and
+cabbin-doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three,
+four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passenger for
+an alms. These mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest
+livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in stroling to beg
+sustenance for their helpless infants who, as they grow up, either turn
+thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country, to fight
+for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes.
+
+I think it is agreed by all parties, that this prodigious number of
+children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their
+mothers, and frequently of their fathers, is in the present deplorable
+state of the kingdom, a very great additional grievance; and therefore
+whoever could find out a fair, cheap and easy method of making these
+children sound and useful members of the commonwealth, would deserve so
+well of the publick, as to have his statue set up for a preserver of
+the nation.
+
+But my intention is very far from being confined to provide only for
+the children of professed beggars: it is of a much greater extent, and
+shall take in the whole number of infants at a certain age, who are
+born of parents in effect as little able to support them, as those who
+demand our charity in the streets.
+
+As to my own part, having turned my thoughts for many years upon this
+important subject, and maturely weighed the several schemes of our
+projectors, I have always found them grossly mistaken in their
+computation. It is true, a child just dropt from its dam, may be
+supported by her milk, for a solar year, with little other nourishment:
+at most not above the value of two shillings, which the mother may
+certainly get, or the value in scraps, by her lawful occupation of
+begging; and it is exactly at one year old that I propose to provide
+for them in such a manner, as, instead of being a charge upon their
+parents, or the parish, or wanting food and raiment for the rest of
+their lives, they shall, on the contrary, contribute to the feeding,
+and partly to the clothing of many thousands.
+
+There is likewise another great advantage in my scheme, that it will
+prevent those voluntary abortions, and that horrid practice of women
+murdering their bastard children, alas! too frequent among us,
+sacrificing the poor innocent babes, I doubt, more to avoid the expence
+than the shame, which would move tears and pity in the most savage and
+inhuman breast.
+
+The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned one million
+and a half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred
+thousand couple, whose wives are breeders; from which number I subtract
+thirty thousand couple, who are able to maintain their own children,
+(although I apprehend there cannot be so many under the present
+distresses of the kingdom) but this being granted, there will remain a
+hundred and seventy thousand breeders. I again subtract fifty thousand,
+for those women who miscarry, or whose children die by accident or
+disease within the year. There only remain a hundred and twenty
+thousand children of poor parents annually born. The question therefore
+is, How this number shall be reared and provided for? which, as I have
+already said, under the present situation of affairs, is utterly
+impossible by all the methods hitherto proposed. For we can neither
+employ them in handicraft or agriculture; they neither build houses, (I
+mean in the country) nor cultivate land: they can very seldom pick up a
+livelihood by stealing till they arrive at six years old; except where
+they are of towardly parts, although I confess they learn the rudiments
+much earlier; during which time they can however be properly looked
+upon only as probationers; as I have been informed by a principal
+gentleman in the county of Cavan, who protested to me, that he never
+knew above one or two instances under the age of six, even in a part of
+the kingdom so renowned for the quickest proficiency in that art.
+
+I am assured by our merchants, that a boy or a girl, before twelve
+years old, is no saleable commodity, and even when they come to this
+age, they will not yield above three pounds, or three pounds and half a
+crown at most, on the exchange; which cannot turn to account either to
+the parents or kingdom, the charge of nutriments and rags having been
+at least four times that value.
+
+I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will
+not be liable to the least objection.
+
+I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in
+London, that a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a
+most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted,
+baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a
+fricasee, or a ragoust.
+
+I do therefore humbly offer it to publick consideration, that of the
+hundred and twenty thousand children, already computed, twenty thousand
+may be reserved for breed, whereof only one fourth part to be males;
+which is more than we allow to sheep, black cattle, or swine, and my
+reason is, that these children are seldom the fruits of marriage, a
+circumstance not much regarded by our savages, therefore, one male will
+be sufficient to serve four females. That the remaining hundred
+thousand may, at a year old, be offered in sale to the persons of
+quality and fortune, through the kingdom, always advising the mother to
+let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them
+plump, and fat for a good table. A child will make two dishes at an
+entertainment for friends, and when the family dines alone, the fore or
+hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little
+pepper or salt, will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially
+in winter.
+
+I have reckoned upon a medium, that a child just born will weigh 12
+pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, encreaseth to 28
+pounds.
+
+I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for
+landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem
+to have the best title to the children.
+
+Infant’s flesh will be in season throughout the year, but more
+plentiful in March, and a little before and after; for we are told by a
+grave author, an eminent French physician, that fish being a prolifick
+dyet, there are more children born in Roman Catholick countries about
+nine months after Lent, than at any other season; therefore, reckoning
+a year after Lent, the markets will be more glutted than usual, because
+the number of Popish infants, is at least three to one in this kingdom,
+and therefore it will have one other collateral advantage, by lessening
+the number of Papists among us.
+
+I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar’s child (in
+which list I reckon all cottagers, labourers, and four-fifths of the
+farmers) to be about two shillings per annum, rags included; and I
+believe no gentleman would repine to give ten shillings for the carcass
+of a good fat child, which, as I have said, will make four dishes of
+excellent nutritive meat, when he hath only some particular friend, or
+his own family to dine with him. Thus the squire will learn to be a
+good landlord, and grow popular among his tenants, the mother will have
+eight shillings neat profit, and be fit for work till she produces
+another child.
+
+Those who are more thrifty (as I must confess the times require) may
+flay the carcass; the skin of which, artificially dressed, will make
+admirable gloves for ladies, and summer boots for fine gentlemen.
+
+As to our City of Dublin, shambles may be appointed for this purpose,
+in the most convenient parts of it, and butchers we may be assured will
+not be wanting; although I rather recommend buying the children alive,
+and dressing them hot from the knife, as we do roasting pigs.
+
+A very worthy person, a true lover of his country, and whose virtues I
+highly esteem, was lately pleased in discoursing on this matter, to
+offer a refinement upon my scheme. He said, that many gentlemen of this
+kingdom, having of late destroyed their deer, he conceived that the
+want of venison might be well supplied by the bodies of young lads and
+maidens, not exceeding fourteen years of age, nor under twelve; so
+great a number of both sexes in every county being now ready to starve
+for want of work and service: and these to be disposed of by their
+parents if alive, or otherwise by their nearest relations. But with due
+deference to so excellent a friend, and so deserving a patriot, I
+cannot be altogether in his sentiments; for as to the males, my
+American acquaintance assured me from frequent experience, that their
+flesh was generally tough and lean, like that of our schoolboys, by
+continual exercise, and their taste disagreeable, and to fatten them
+would not answer the charge. Then as to the females, it would, I think,
+with humble submission, be a loss to the publick, because they soon
+would become breeders themselves: and besides, it is not improbable
+that some scrupulous people might be apt to censure such a practice,
+(although indeed very unjustly) as a little bordering upon cruelty,
+which, I confess, hath always been with me the strongest objection
+against any project, how well soever intended.
+
+But in order to justify my friend, he confessed, that this expedient
+was put into his head by the famous Psalmanaazor, a native of the
+island Formosa, who came from thence to London, above twenty years ago,
+and in conversation told my friend, that in his country, when any young
+person happened to be put to death, the executioner sold the carcass to
+persons of quality, as a prime dainty; and that, in his time, the body
+of a plump girl of fifteen, who was crucified for an attempt to poison
+the Emperor, was sold to his imperial majesty’s prime minister of
+state, and other great mandarins of the court in joints from the
+gibbet, at four hundred crowns. Neither indeed can I deny, that if the
+same use were made of several plump young girls in this town, who
+without one single groat to their fortunes, cannot stir abroad without
+a chair, and appear at a playhouse and assemblies in foreign fineries
+which they never will pay for, the kingdom would not be the worse.
+
+Some persons of a desponding spirit are in great concern about that
+vast number of poor people, who are aged, diseased, or maimed; and I
+have been desired to employ my thoughts what course may be taken, to
+ease the nation of so grievous an incumbrance. But I am not in the
+least pain upon that matter, because it is very well known, that they
+are every day dying, and rotting, by cold and famine, and filth, and
+vermin, as fast as can be reasonably expected. And as to the young
+labourers, they are now in almost as hopeful a condition. They cannot
+get work, and consequently pine away from want of nourishment, to a
+degree, that if at any time they are accidentally hired to common
+labour, they have not strength to perform it, and thus the country and
+themselves are happily delivered from the evils to come.
+
+I have too long digressed, and therefore shall return to my subject. I
+think the advantages by the proposal which I have made are obvious and
+many, as well as of the highest importance.
+
+For first, as I have already observed, it would greatly lessen the
+number of Papists, with whom we are yearly overrun, being the principal
+breeders of the nation, as well as our most dangerous enemies, and who
+stay at home on purpose with a design to deliver the kingdom to the
+Pretender, hoping to take their advantage by the absence of so many
+good Protestants, who have chosen rather to leave their country, than
+stay at home and pay tithes against their conscience to an episcopal
+curate.
+
+Secondly, The poorer tenants will have something valuable of their own,
+which by law may be made liable to a distress, and help to pay their
+landlord’s rent, their corn and cattle being already seized, and money
+a thing unknown.
+
+Thirdly, Whereas the maintainance of a hundred thousand children, from
+two years old, and upwards, cannot be computed at less than ten
+shillings a piece per annum, the nation’s stock will be thereby
+encreased fifty thousand pounds per annum, besides the profit of a new
+dish, introduced to the tables of all gentlemen of fortune in the
+kingdom, who have any refinement in taste. And the money will circulate
+among our selves, the goods being entirely of our own growth and
+manufacture.
+
+Fourthly, The constant breeders, besides the gain of eight shillings
+sterling per annum by the sale of their children, will be rid of the
+charge of maintaining them after the first year.
+
+Fifthly, This food would likewise bring great custom to taverns, where
+the vintners will certainly be so prudent as to procure the best
+receipts for dressing it to perfection; and consequently have their
+houses frequented by all the fine gentlemen, who justly value
+themselves upon their knowledge in good eating; and a skilful cook, who
+understands how to oblige his guests, will contrive to make it as
+expensive as they please.
+
+Sixthly, This would be a great inducement to marriage, which all wise
+nations have either encouraged by rewards, or enforced by laws and
+penalties. It would encrease the care and tenderness of mothers towards
+their children, when they were sure of a settlement for life to the
+poor babes, provided in some sort by the publick, to their annual
+profit instead of expence. We should soon see an honest emulation among
+the married women, which of them could bring the fattest child to the
+market. Men would become as fond of their wives, during the time of
+their pregnancy, as they are now of their mares in foal, their cows in
+calf, or sows when they are ready to farrow; nor offer to beat or kick
+them (as is too frequent a practice) for fear of a miscarriage.
+
+Many other advantages might be enumerated. For instance, the addition
+of some thousand carcasses in our exportation of barrel’d beef: the
+propagation of swine’s flesh, and improvement in the art of making good
+bacon, so much wanted among us by the great destruction of pigs, too
+frequent at our tables; which are no way comparable in taste or
+magnificence to a well grown, fat yearling child, which roasted whole
+will make a considerable figure at a Lord Mayor’s feast, or any other
+publick entertainment. But this, and many others, I omit, being
+studious of brevity.
+
+Supposing that one thousand families in this city, would be constant
+customers for infants flesh, besides others who might have it at merry
+meetings, particularly at weddings and christenings, I compute that
+Dublin would take off annually about twenty thousand carcasses; and the
+rest of the kingdom (where probably they will be sold somewhat cheaper)
+the remaining eighty thousand.
+
+I can think of no one objection, that will possibly be raised against
+this proposal, unless it should be urged, that the number of people
+will be thereby much lessened in the kingdom. This I freely own, and
+was indeed one principal design in offering it to the world. I desire
+the reader will observe, that I calculate my remedy for this one
+individual Kingdom of Ireland, and for no other that ever was, is, or,
+I think, ever can be upon Earth. Therefore let no man talk to me of
+other expedients: Of taxing our absentees at five shillings a pound: Of
+using neither clothes, nor houshold furniture, except what is of our
+own growth and manufacture: Of utterly rejecting the materials and
+instruments that promote foreign luxury: Of curing the expensiveness of
+pride, vanity, idleness, and gaming in our women: Of introducing a vein
+of parsimony, prudence and temperance: Of learning to love our country,
+wherein we differ even from Laplanders, and the inhabitants of
+Topinamboo: Of quitting our animosities and factions, nor acting any
+longer like the Jews, who were murdering one another at the very moment
+their city was taken: Of being a little cautious not to sell our
+country and consciences for nothing: Of teaching landlords to have at
+least one degree of mercy towards their tenants. Lastly, of putting a
+spirit of honesty, industry, and skill into our shopkeepers, who, if a
+resolution could now be taken to buy only our native goods, would
+immediately unite to cheat and exact upon us in the price, the measure,
+and the goodness, nor could ever yet be brought to make one fair
+proposal of just dealing, though often and earnestly invited to it.
+
+Therefore I repeat, let no man talk to me of these and the like
+expedients, till he hath at least some glympse of hope, that there will
+ever be some hearty and sincere attempt to put them into practice.
+
+But, as to myself, having been wearied out for many years with offering
+vain, idle, visionary thoughts, and at length utterly despairing of
+success, I fortunately fell upon this proposal, which, as it is wholly
+new, so it hath something solid and real, of no expence and little
+trouble, full in our own power, and whereby we can incur no danger in
+disobliging England. For this kind of commodity will not bear
+exportation, and flesh being of too tender a consistence, to admit a
+long continuance in salt, although perhaps I could name a country,
+which would be glad to eat up our whole nation without it.
+
+After all, I am not so violently bent upon my own opinion, as to reject
+any offer, proposed by wise men, which shall be found equally innocent,
+cheap, easy, and effectual. But before something of that kind shall be
+advanced in contradiction to my scheme, and offering a better, I desire
+the author or authors will be pleased maturely to consider two points.
+First, As things now stand, how they will be able to find food and
+raiment for a hundred thousand useless mouths and backs. And secondly,
+There being a round million of creatures in humane figure throughout
+this kingdom, whose whole subsistence put into a common stock, would
+leave them in debt two million of pounds sterling, adding those who are
+beggars by profession, to the bulk of farmers, cottagers and labourers,
+with their wives and children, who are beggars in effect; I desire
+those politicians who dislike my overture, and may perhaps be so bold
+to attempt an answer, that they will first ask the parents of these
+mortals, whether they would not at this day think it a great happiness
+to have been sold for food at a year old, in the manner I prescribe,
+and thereby have avoided such a perpetual scene of misfortunes, as they
+have since gone through, by the oppression of landlords, the
+impossibility of paying rent without money or trade, the want of common
+sustenance, with neither house nor clothes to cover them from the
+inclemencies of the weather, and the most inevitable prospect of
+intailing the like, or greater miseries, upon their breed for ever.
+
+I profess in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least
+personal interest in endeavouring to promote this necessary work,
+having no other motive than the publick good of my country, by
+advancing our trade, providing for infants, relieving the poor, and
+giving some pleasure to the rich. I have no children, by which I can
+propose to get a single penny; the youngest being nine years old, and
+my wife past child-bearing.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Modest Proposal, by Jonathan Swift
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diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ead8162
--- /dev/null
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+[build-system]
+requires = ["setuptools>=46.4.0", "wheel"]
+build-backend = "setuptools.build_meta"
diff --git a/setup.cfg b/setup.cfg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fc8a13
--- /dev/null
+++ b/setup.cfg
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+[metadata]
+version = attr: faststylometry.__version__
+license_files = LICENSE
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4578397
--- /dev/null
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -0,0 +1,87 @@
+'''
+MIT License
+
+Copyright (c) 2023 Fast Data Science Ltd (https://fastdatascience.com)
+
+Maintainer: Thomas Wood
+
+Tutorial at https://fastdatascience.com/faststylometry-python-library/
+
+Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
+of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
+in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
+to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
+copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
+furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
+
+The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
+copies or substantial portions of the Software.
+
+THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
+IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
+FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
+AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
+LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
+OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
+SOFTWARE.
+
+'''
+
+import setuptools
+
+with open("README.md", "r", encoding="utf-8") as fh:
+    long_description = fh.read()
+
+setuptools.setup(
+    name = 'faststylometry',
+    author="Thomas Wood",
+    author_email="thomas@fastdatascience.com",
+    description='Python library for calculating the Burrows Delta.',
+    keywords= ['stylometry', 'nlp', 'burrows delta', 'delta', 'forensic stylometry', 'natural language processing'],
+    long_description=long_description,
+    long_description_content_type="text/markdown",
+    url="https://fastdatascience.com/faststylometry-python-library",
+    project_urls={
+        "Documentation": "https://fastdatascience.com/fast-stylometry-python-library",
+        "Bug Reports": "https://github.com/fastdatascience/faststylometry/issues",
+        "Source Code": "https://github.com/fastdatascience/faststylometry",
+        # 'Funding': '',
+        # 'Say Thanks!': '',
+    },
+    package_dir={"": "src"},
+    packages=setuptools.find_packages(where="src"),
+    classifiers=[
+        # see https://pypi.org/classifiers/
+        "Development Status :: 5 - Production/Stable",
+        "Intended Audience :: Developers",
+        "Topic :: Software Development :: Build Tools",
+        "Programming Language :: Python :: 3",
+        "Programming Language :: Python :: 3.6",
+        "Programming Language :: Python :: 3.7",
+        "Programming Language :: Python :: 3.8",
+        "Programming Language :: Python :: 3.9",
+        "Programming Language :: Python :: 3.10",
+        "Programming Language :: Python :: 3 :: Only",
+        "License :: OSI Approved :: MIT License",
+        "Operating System :: OS Independent",
+    ],
+    python_requires=">=3.6",
+      install_requires=[
+          'numpy==1.24.3',
+          'pandas==2.0.0',
+          'scikit-learn==1.3.0',
+          'nltk==3.7'
+      ],
+    extras_require={
+        "dev": ["check-manifest"],
+        # 'test': ['coverage'],
+    },
+    package_data={'': ['*.csv']},
+    include_package_data=True,
+    # entry_points={
+    #     'console_scripts': [  # This can provide executable scripts
+    #         'run=examplepy:main',
+    # You can execute `run` in bash to run `main()` in src/examplepy/__init__.py
+    #     ],
+    # },
+)
diff --git a/src/faststylometry/__init__.py b/src/faststylometry/__init__.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2aa8858
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/faststylometry/__init__.py
@@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
+'''
+MIT License
+
+Copyright (c) 2023 Fast Data Science Ltd (https://fastdatascience.com)
+
+Maintainer: Thomas Wood
+
+Tutorial at https://fastdatascience.com/faststylometry-python-library/
+
+Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
+of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
+in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
+to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
+copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
+furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
+
+The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
+copies or substantial portions of the Software.
+
+THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
+IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
+FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
+AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
+LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
+OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
+SOFTWARE.
+
+'''
+
+__version__ = "1.0.0"
+
+
+from faststylometry.corpus import Corpus
+from faststylometry.util import load_corpus_from_folder
+from faststylometry.en import tokenise_remove_pronouns_en
+from faststylometry.burrows_delta import calculate_burrows_delta
+from faststylometry.probability import predict_proba, calibrate, get_calibration_curve
diff --git a/src/faststylometry/burrows_delta.py b/src/faststylometry/burrows_delta.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..209e658
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/faststylometry/burrows_delta.py
@@ -0,0 +1,192 @@
+'''
+MIT License
+
+Copyright (c) 2023 Fast Data Science Ltd (https://fastdatascience.com)
+
+Maintainer: Thomas Wood
+
+Tutorial at https://fastdatascience.com/fast-stylometry-python-library/
+
+Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
+of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
+in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
+to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
+copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
+furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
+
+The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
+copies or substantial portions of the Software.
+
+THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
+IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
+FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
+AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
+LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
+OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
+SOFTWARE.
+
+'''
+
+import operator
+from collections import Counter
+
+import numpy as np
+import pandas as pd
+
+from faststylometry import Corpus
+
+
+def get_top_tokens(corpus: Corpus, vocab_size: int) -> list:
+    """
+    Identify the n highest ranking tokens in the corpus.
+
+    :param corpus: The corpus to look for the commonest words in. The corpus must be tokenised.
+    :param vocab_size: The n most common words in the corpus will be used.
+    :return: A list of the n most common tokens in the corpus.
+    """
+
+    assert (len(corpus.tokens) > 0)  # you should have tokenised the corpus.
+
+    token_freqs = Counter()
+    for token_seq in corpus.tokens:
+        for token in token_seq:
+            token_freqs[token] += 1
+
+    corpus.top_tokens = [tok for tok, freq in
+                         sorted(token_freqs.items(), key=operator.itemgetter(1), reverse=True)[:vocab_size]]
+    corpus.top_tokens_set = set(corpus.top_tokens)
+
+    return corpus.top_tokens
+
+
+def set_top_tokens(corpus: Corpus, top_tokens: list):
+    """
+    Use a predefined set of tokens to calculate Burrows' Delta on this corpus.
+    You would do this, if the corpus is a test corpus, and your model has been trained on a training corpus.
+
+    :param corpus: the corpus you want to set the top tokens for.
+    :param top_tokens: the top tokens which you have calculated elsewhere, e.g. from a training corpus.
+    """
+    corpus.top_tokens = top_tokens
+    corpus.top_tokens_set = set(top_tokens)
+
+
+def get_token_counts(corpus: Corpus):
+    """
+    Calculate the number of times each of the top tokens occurs in the corpus, and store this data in two dataframes in the corpus.
+
+    :param corpus: The corpus to run the operation on and store the result in.
+    """
+    token_counts = np.zeros((len(corpus.authors), len(corpus.top_tokens)))
+
+    total_token_counts = np.asarray([len(tokens) for tokens in corpus.tokens])
+
+    for idx in range(len(corpus.authors)):
+
+        this_work_token_counts = Counter()
+        for tok in corpus.tokens[idx]:
+            if tok in corpus.top_tokens_set:
+                this_work_token_counts[tok] += 1
+
+        for tok_idx, tok in enumerate(corpus.top_tokens):
+            token_counts[idx, tok_idx] = this_work_token_counts.get(tok, 0)
+
+    corpus.df_token_counts = pd.DataFrame(token_counts, columns=corpus.top_tokens)
+
+    corpus.df_token_counts["author"] = corpus.authors
+    author_book_combinations = [a + " - " + b for a, b in zip(corpus.authors, corpus.books)]
+    corpus.df_token_counts["author_book"] = author_book_combinations
+
+    corpus.df_total_token_counts = pd.DataFrame({"count": total_token_counts})
+    corpus.df_total_token_counts["author"] = corpus.authors
+    corpus.df_total_token_counts["author_book"] = author_book_combinations
+
+
+def get_token_counts_by_author(corpus: Corpus):
+    """
+    Group the token counts across works by the same author, so we have a token count for each author.
+    :param corpus:  The corpus to run the operation on and store the result in.
+    """
+    corpus.df_token_counts_by_author = corpus.df_token_counts.groupby("author").sum()
+    corpus.df_total_token_counts_by_author = corpus.df_total_token_counts.groupby("author").sum()
+
+
+def get_token_counts_by_author_and_book(corpus: Corpus):
+    """
+    Group the token counts across works by the same author and book, so we have a token count for each book.
+    :param corpus:  The corpus to run the operation on and store the result in.
+    """
+    corpus.df_token_counts_by_author = corpus.df_token_counts.groupby("author_book").sum()
+    corpus.df_total_token_counts_by_author = corpus.df_total_token_counts.groupby("author_book").sum()
+
+
+def get_token_proportions(corpus: Corpus):
+    """
+    Calculate the fraction of words in each author's subcorpus which are equal to each word in our vocabulary.
+    :param corpus:  The corpus to run the operation on and store the result in.
+    """
+    cols = corpus.df_token_counts_by_author.columns[:-1]
+
+    token_proportions = np.asarray(corpus.df_token_counts_by_author[cols]) / np.asarray(corpus.df_total_token_counts_by_author[["count"]])
+
+    corpus.df_token_proportions = pd.DataFrame(token_proportions, columns=corpus.top_tokens,
+                                               index=corpus.df_token_counts_by_author.index)
+
+
+def get_author_z_scores(test_corpus: Corpus, training_corpus: Corpus = None) -> pd.DataFrame:
+    """
+    Calculate the Z-score relating the test corpus to each author's subcorpus in the training corpus.
+    :param test_corpus:  The corpus to run the operation on and store the result in.
+    :param training_corpus: The training corpus with a number of authors' subcorpora, which will be compared to the test corpus.
+    :return: A dataframe of Z-scores for each author in the training corpus.
+    """
+    if not training_corpus:
+        training_corpus = test_corpus
+    test_corpus.df_author_z_scores = (
+                                             test_corpus.df_token_proportions - training_corpus.df_token_proportions.mean()) / training_corpus.df_token_proportions.std()
+
+    return test_corpus.df_author_z_scores
+
+
+def calculate_difference_from_train_corpus(test_corpus, train_corpus=None):
+    """
+    Calculate the difference between the Z-scores of the test corpus and the Z-scores of each author in the training corpus.
+    :param test_corpus:  The corpus to run the operation on and store the result in.
+    :param train_corpus: The training corpus with a number of authors' subcorpora, which will be compared to the test corpus.
+    """
+    test_corpus.df_difference = [None] * len(test_corpus.df_author_z_scores)
+    for i in range(len(test_corpus.df_author_z_scores)):
+        test_corpus.df_difference[i] = train_corpus.df_author_z_scores.sub(test_corpus.df_author_z_scores.iloc[i, :])
+
+
+def calculate_burrows_delta(train_corpus: Corpus, test_corpus: Corpus, vocab_size: int = 50) -> pd.DataFrame:
+    """
+    Calculate the Burrows' Delta statistic for the test corpus vs every author's subcorpus in the training corpus.
+    :param train_corpus: A corpus of known authors, which we will use as a benchmark to compare to the test corpus by an unknown author.
+    :param test_corpus: The corpus by an unknown author.
+    :param vocab_size: We will take the top n tokens from the training corpus and use as the vocabulary for the model. Normally 50-100 make sensible values.
+    :return: A DataFrame of Burrows' Delta values for each author in the training corpus.
+    """
+    get_top_tokens(train_corpus, vocab_size)
+    get_token_counts(train_corpus)
+    get_token_counts_by_author(train_corpus)
+    get_token_proportions(train_corpus)
+    get_author_z_scores(train_corpus)
+
+    set_top_tokens(test_corpus, train_corpus.top_tokens)
+    get_token_counts(test_corpus)
+    get_token_counts_by_author_and_book(test_corpus)
+    get_token_proportions(test_corpus)
+    get_author_z_scores(test_corpus, train_corpus)
+
+    calculate_difference_from_train_corpus(test_corpus, train_corpus)
+
+    deltas = {}
+    for test_author_idx in range(len(test_corpus.df_author_z_scores)):
+        deltas[test_corpus.df_author_z_scores.index[test_author_idx]] = test_corpus.df_difference[
+            test_author_idx].abs().mean(axis=1)
+
+    df_delta = pd.concat(deltas, axis=1)
+
+    return df_delta
+
diff --git a/src/faststylometry/corpus.py b/src/faststylometry/corpus.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a4b8d69
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/faststylometry/corpus.py
@@ -0,0 +1,91 @@
+'''
+MIT License
+
+Copyright (c) 2023 Fast Data Science Ltd (https://fastdatascience.com)
+
+Maintainer: Thomas Wood
+
+Tutorial at https://fastdatascience.com/fast-stylometry-python-library/
+
+Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
+of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
+in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
+to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
+copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
+furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
+
+The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
+copies or substantial portions of the Software.
+
+THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
+IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
+FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
+AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
+LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
+OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
+SOFTWARE.
+
+'''
+
+class Corpus:
+
+    def __init__(self, authors: list = None, books: list = None, tokens: list = None):
+        """
+        Create a new corpus object, which is empty by default, but which can be initialised optionally with a set of books.
+        :param authors: A list of strings representing author names. If a set of books are being used to initialise the corpus, len(authors) must equal len(books) and len(tokens)
+        :param books:  A list of strings representing book titles.
+        :param tokens: A list of lists representing tokens in the books.
+        """
+        if authors and books and tokens:
+            self.authors = authors
+            self.books = books
+            self.tokens = tokens
+            self.texts = None
+        else:
+            self.authors = []
+            self.books = []
+            self.tokens = []
+            self.texts = []
+
+    def add_book(self, author: str, book: str, text: str):
+        """
+        Add a single book to the corpus. This can only be done if the corpus has not been initialised with books in the constructor.
+        :param author: The author's name as string.
+        :param book: The book title as string.
+        :param text: The book content as string.
+        """
+        assert (len(self.tokens) == 0)
+        self.authors.append(author)
+        self.books.append(book)
+        self.texts.append(text)
+
+    def tokenise(self, tokenise):
+        """
+        Tokenise all books in the corpus using the custom tokenisation function.
+
+        :param tokenise: a tokenise function which takes a str and returns a list of tokens. It is language-specific and should remove pronouns.
+        """
+        self.tokens = [tokenise(text) for text in self.texts]
+
+    def split(self, segment_length: int = 1000):
+        """
+        Split the books in the corpus into smaller books of a specified maximum length. So if segment_length = 1000 and you have a book of length 1500,
+        it will be split into two books of lengths 1000 and 500 respectively, with the same author and title attributes.
+        This Corpus object is not modified but a new instance will be constructed.
+
+        :param segment_length: The maximum length of books in the new corpus.
+        :return: The new corpus with split books.
+        """
+        new_authors = []
+        new_books = []
+        new_tokens = []
+
+        for author_id in range(len(self.authors)):
+            for ctr, segment_start in enumerate(range(0, len(self.tokens[author_id]), segment_length)):
+                segment_tokens = self.tokens[author_id][
+                                 segment_start:min(segment_start + segment_length, len(self.tokens[author_id]))]
+                new_authors.append(self.authors[author_id])
+                new_books.append(self.books[author_id] + "_" + str(ctr))
+                new_tokens.append(segment_tokens)
+
+        return Corpus(new_authors, new_books, new_tokens)
diff --git a/src/faststylometry/en.py b/src/faststylometry/en.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2e59c44
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/faststylometry/en.py
@@ -0,0 +1,81 @@
+'''
+MIT License
+
+Copyright (c) 2023 Fast Data Science Ltd (https://fastdatascience.com)
+
+Maintainer: Thomas Wood
+
+Tutorial at https://fastdatascience.com/fast-stylometry-python-library/
+
+Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
+of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
+in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
+to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
+copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
+furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
+
+The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
+copies or substantial portions of the Software.
+
+THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
+IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
+FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
+AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
+LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
+OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
+SOFTWARE.
+
+'''
+
+import re
+
+import nltk
+
+is_alpha_pattern = re.compile(r'^\w+$')
+
+# pronouns
+stopwords = {"he",
+             "her",
+             "hers",
+             "herself",
+             "him",
+             "himself",
+             "his",
+             "i",
+             "me",
+             "mine",
+             "my",
+             "myself",
+             "our",
+             "ours",
+             "ourselves",
+             "she",
+             "thee",
+             "their",
+             "them",
+             "themselves",
+             "they",
+             "thou",
+             "thy",
+             "thyself",
+             "us",
+             "we",
+             "ye",
+             "you",
+             "your",
+             "yours",
+             "yourself", }
+
+
+def tokenise_remove_pronouns_en(text: str) -> list:
+    """
+    Tokenise a sentence according to Englsh rules, and remove all pronouns.
+
+    :param text: the original sentence.
+    :return: all non-pronoun tokens.
+    """
+    tokens = [tok for tok in nltk.word_tokenize(text.lower()) if is_alpha_pattern.match(tok)]
+
+    tokens_without_stopwords = [tok for tok in tokens if tok not in stopwords]
+
+    return tokens_without_stopwords
diff --git a/src/faststylometry/probability.py b/src/faststylometry/probability.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a9cc910
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/faststylometry/probability.py
@@ -0,0 +1,103 @@
+'''
+MIT License
+
+Copyright (c) 2023 Fast Data Science Ltd (https://fastdatascience.com)
+
+Maintainer: Thomas Wood
+
+Tutorial at https://fastdatascience.com/fast-stylometry-python-library/
+
+Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
+of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
+in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
+to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
+copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
+furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
+
+The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
+copies or substantial portions of the Software.
+
+THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
+IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
+FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
+AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
+LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
+OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
+SOFTWARE.
+
+'''
+
+import numpy as np
+import pandas as pd
+from sklearn.base import BaseEstimator
+from sklearn.linear_model import LogisticRegression
+
+from faststylometry.burrows_delta import calculate_burrows_delta
+from faststylometry.corpus import Corpus
+
+
+def every_item_but_one(l: list, idx: int) -> list:
+    """
+    Returns every item in the list except for the one at index idx.
+    :param l: a list to process.
+    :param idx: the index to be excluded from the list.
+    :return: the list l minus the item at index idx.
+    """
+    return [item for i, item in enumerate(l) if i != idx]
+
+
+def get_calibration_curve(corpus: Corpus) -> tuple:
+    """
+    Calculates the probability calibration curve of the Burrows' Delta calculation on the train corpus, using a cross-validation technique.
+    :param corpus: the corpus for which we desire a probability calibration curve.
+    :return: two arrays, an array of ground truths (0: different authors, 1: same author), and of Burrows' delta values. These can be used to calibrate a model such as logistic regression, or to generate a ROC curve.
+    """
+    ground_truths = []
+
+    delta_values = []
+
+    num_books = len(corpus.authors)
+
+    for i in range(num_books):
+        tmp_train_corpus = Corpus(every_item_but_one(corpus.authors, i), every_item_but_one(corpus.books, i),
+                                  every_item_but_one(corpus.tokens, i))
+        tmp_test_corpus = Corpus(corpus.authors[i:i + 1], corpus.books[i:i + 1], corpus.tokens[i:i + 1])
+
+        true_author = tmp_test_corpus.authors[0]
+
+        df_delta = calculate_burrows_delta(tmp_train_corpus, tmp_test_corpus)
+
+        ground_truths.extend(list(df_delta.index == true_author))
+        delta_values.extend(list(df_delta.iloc[:, 0]))
+
+    return np.asarray(ground_truths), np.asarray(delta_values)
+
+
+def calibrate(corpus: Corpus, model: BaseEstimator = LogisticRegression(class_weight="balanced")):
+    ground_truths, delta_values = get_calibration_curve(corpus)
+
+    model.fit(np.reshape(delta_values, (-1, 1)), ground_truths)
+
+    corpus.probability_model = model
+
+
+def predict_proba(train_corpus: Corpus, test_corpus: Corpus) -> pd.DataFrame:
+    """
+    Returns the probability that the test corpus is by the same author as the training corpus.
+
+    :param train_corpus: The corpus to serve as a baseline for the word frequency calculations.
+    :param test_corpus: The corpus to compare it with.
+    :return: The probability according to the calibrated model, that the test corpus was by the same author as the train corpus.
+    """
+    df_delta = calculate_burrows_delta(train_corpus, test_corpus)
+
+    df_probas = pd.DataFrame()
+    for test_author_idx in range(df_delta.shape[1]):
+        values = train_corpus.probability_model.predict_proba(
+            np.reshape(list(df_delta.iloc[:, test_author_idx]), (-1, 1)))[:,
+                 1]
+        df_probas[df_delta.columns[test_author_idx]] = list(values)
+
+    df_probas.index = df_delta.index
+
+    return df_probas
diff --git a/src/faststylometry/util.py b/src/faststylometry/util.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a30a27
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/faststylometry/util.py
@@ -0,0 +1,57 @@
+'''
+MIT License
+
+Copyright (c) 2023 Fast Data Science Ltd (https://fastdatascience.com)
+
+Maintainer: Thomas Wood
+
+Tutorial at https://fastdatascience.com/fast-stylometry-python-library/
+
+Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
+of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
+in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
+to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
+copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
+furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
+
+The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
+copies or substantial portions of the Software.
+
+THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
+IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
+FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
+AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
+LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
+OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
+SOFTWARE.
+
+'''
+
+import os
+import re
+
+from faststylometry.corpus import Corpus
+
+
+def load_corpus_from_folder(folder: str, pattern: str = None) -> Corpus:
+    """
+    Iterates over the .txt files in a folder and adds their contents to the corpus.
+
+    Assumes that files are of the format [author]_-_[title].txt.
+
+    :param folder: the folder ony our local system to iterate over.
+    :param pattern: an optional filter to apply to the filenames.
+    :return: a corpus of the files found.
+    """
+    corpus = Corpus()
+    for root, _, files in os.walk(folder):
+        for filename in files:
+            if pattern is not None and not pattern in filename:
+                continue
+            if filename.endswith(".txt") and "_" in filename:
+                with open(os.path.join(root, filename), "r", encoding="utf-8") as f:
+                    text = f.read()
+                author, book = re.split("_-_", re.sub(r'\.txt', '', filename))
+
+                corpus.add_book(author, book, text)
+    return corpus
diff --git a/tests/__init__.py b/tests/__init__.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b749bd6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tests/__init__.py
@@ -0,0 +1,29 @@
+'''
+MIT License
+
+Copyright (c) 2023 Fast Data Science Ltd (https://fastdatascience.com)
+
+Maintainer: Thomas Wood
+
+Tutorial at https://fastdatascience.com/faststylometry-python-library/
+
+Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
+of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
+in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
+to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
+copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
+furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
+
+The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
+copies or substantial portions of the Software.
+
+THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
+IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
+FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
+AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
+LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
+OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
+SOFTWARE.
+
+'''
+
diff --git a/tests/test_drugs_finder.py b/tests/test_drugs_finder.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1212dad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tests/test_drugs_finder.py
@@ -0,0 +1,74 @@
+'''
+MIT License
+
+Copyright (c) 2023 Fast Data Science Ltd (https://fastdatascience.com)
+
+Maintainer: Thomas Wood
+
+Tutorial at https://fastdatascience.com/faststylometry-python-library/
+
+Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
+of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
+in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
+to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
+copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
+furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
+
+The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
+copies or substantial portions of the Software.
+
+THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
+IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
+FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
+AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
+LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
+OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
+SOFTWARE.
+
+'''
+
+import unittest
+
+from faststylometry.drugs_finder import find_drugs
+
+class TestDrugsFinder(unittest.TestCase):
+
+    def test_drugs_1(self):
+        drugs = find_drugs("i bought some Sertraline".split(" "))
+
+        self.assertEqual(1, len(drugs))
+        self.assertEqual("Sertraline", drugs[0][0]['name'])
+
+    def test_drugs_lowercase(self):
+        drugs = find_drugs("i bought some sertraline".split(" "))
+
+        self.assertEqual(0, len(drugs))
+
+    def test_drugs_synonym(self):
+        drugs = find_drugs("i bought some Zoloft".split(" "))
+
+        self.assertEqual(1, len(drugs))
+        self.assertEqual("Sertraline", drugs[0][0]['name'])
+
+    def test_drugs_synonym_lc(self):
+        drugs = find_drugs("i bought some zoloft".split(" "))
+
+        self.assertEqual(0, len(drugs))
+
+    def test_generic_lc(self):
+        drugs = find_drugs("i bought some Rimonabant".split(" "))
+
+        self.assertEqual(1, len(drugs))
+        self.assertEqual("Rimonabant", drugs[0][0]['name'])
+
+    def test_two_word_drug(self):
+        drugs = find_drugs("i bought some Amphotericin B".split(" "))
+
+        self.assertEqual(1, len(drugs))
+        self.assertEqual("Amphotericin B", drugs[0][0]['name'])
+
+    def test_hemlibra(self):
+        drugs = find_drugs("i bought some HEMLIBRA".split(" "))
+
+        self.assertEqual(1, len(drugs))
+        self.assertEqual("Emicizumab", drugs[0][0]['name'])
diff --git a/tox.ini b/tox.ini
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a1616b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tox.ini
@@ -0,0 +1,13 @@
+[tox]
+envlist = py{36,310}
+minversion = 3.3.0
+isolated_build = true
+
+[testenv]
+deps =
+    check-manifest >= 0.42
+    pytest
+commands =
+    check-manifest --ignore 'tox.ini,tests/**,.editorconfig,vscode.env,.vscode/**'
+    python setup.py check -m -s
+    pytest tests {posargs}